Is it Classical Liberalism, Gladstonian Liberalism or something else?

Continuing the discussion from Jonathan Haidt's book presents stark data on the negative effects of smartphones on youth:

LIberalism is not left leaning when compared to socialism, and it is generally a bad idea to call a socialist a liberal.

What would you call Manchester Liberalism or Gladstonian Liberalism in non-British contexts?

1 Like

I’d call them both awful, especially the Manchester variant. Which over here is known as Manchesterkapitalismus.

3 Likes

My fave is “Burekean liberal” which, here at least, means a racist fascist who has been to university.

3 Likes

I think “Classical Liberalism” is the most widely used term to get across what you mean.

Unfortunately, common usage is to divorce political terminology entirely from its foundations, and “Conservative” and “Liberal” now just commonly mean “Reactionary” and “vaguely socially progressive”. This is probably because “Liberal” capitalism is so hegemonic in the west (or at least the Anglosphere), that politics has been reduced to a hyper focus on personal and social issues, and excluding the possibility of economic change or class politics.

So… Richard Spencer, then?

richard-spencer-punch

1 Like

Well they are all just as punchable!

2 Likes

Gotta punch them all!!!

2 Likes

The Wikipedia Classical liberalism article is awful.

Rather than starting with who defined this usage of the term, and when, it starts by cherry-picking early liberals and ideas and slotting them into the term, which they certainly never used, and pretending that it’s a tradition that’s always been there with junk like “Classical liberalism gained full flowering in the early 18th century, building on ideas starting at least as far back as the 16th century, within the Iberian, British, and Central European contexts”, and that the “social liberals” are the ones that branched off.

From what I can tell, Friedrich Hayek used it in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom. Apparently it was at odds with how other people were using the term, because he added a clarification in 1956 to explain his Humpty-Dumptying of it.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.