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Liberalism and
Socialism since
the Nineteenth
Century
Tensions, Exchanges, and
Convergences
Edited by
Stéphane Guy · Ecem Okan ·
Vanessa Boullet · Jeremy Tranmer
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Liberalism and Socialism since the Nineteenth
Century
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Stéphane Guy · Ecem Okan · Vanessa Boullet ·
Jeremy Tranmer
Editors
Liberalism
and Socialism
since the Nineteenth
Century
Tensions, Exchanges, and Convergences
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About This Book
This book aims to re-evaluate the relations between two major ideologies that have been increasingly contested in recent years, yet continue
to be invoked or rejected as foundational systems for political thought or
action. With socialism conceiving of itself as an alternative to economic
liberalism, the two systems of thought emerged partially in opposition
to each other. However, this book seeks to redefine their specificities
and the way in which they have not only opposed each other but
drew on common notions or paradigms to become both competing
and complementary systems of thought and practices. With contributions
from eminent political scientists and historians of political and economic
thought, the book examines how the polarisation of debates and politicisation of concepts such as property, freedom, the individual or the State,
serve to construct the adversary and form a basis for political commitment. Offering an interdisciplinary assessment of the relation between
liberalism and socialism, the authors help to make sense of current debate
on individual freedom, political obligation and the changing role of the
State. Providing an innovative perspective, this edited collection will be
of interest to scholars and students researching political and economic
thought, history or science, as well as anyone seeking to understand
current developments affecting Western societies, and their past, present
and future ideologies.
vii
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Contents
Introduction
Stéphane Guy
1
Friends or Foes? Liberalism and Socialism Between
Concepts and Experience
Liberalisms and Socialisms: Recalibrating Some Analytical
Criteria
Michael Freeden
17
Antinomies of Socialism and Liberalism: Some Debatable
Propositions
Cornelius Crowley
37
Social Liberalism and Liberal Socialism: Tensions
and Compatibility
Françoise Orazi
59
Reassessing the Liberalism-Socialism Paradigm in
Economic Thought
Marx, socialism and liberty
Fabien Tarrit
79
Centralization, Decentralization and Adaptation
Dean V. Williamson
99
ix
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x
CONTENTS
Marx’s Socialism, Mises’s Liberalism and Their
Problematic Theories of Needs and Preferences
Sina Badiei
119
On Utopia and Melancholy: Liberalism and Socialism
at the End of the Cold War
Iason Zarikos
141
Socialist and/or Liberal Identities: Polity, Politics and
Policy
Individual, Free Association and Common Ownership:
The British Co-operative Movement and Political Ideology
François Deblangy
165
The Labour Party’s International Thought from 1900
to 1918: Webs of British Liberal and Socialist Traditions
Niaz Cary-Pernon
191
Exploring the Relationship Between Liberalism
and Socialism in Britain’s NHS
Louise Dalingwater
213
From Conceptual to Discursive Struggles: Activism,
Partisanship and Rhetorical Strategies
New Deal Liberalism and ‘Creeping Socialism’: The
Republican Party and the Construction of Modern
American Conservatism, c. 1933–c. 1960
Robert Mason
233
The Conservatives’ Representation of Socialism
and Liberalism During PMQs Since the 1990s
Stéphane Revillet
251
Prefigurative Activism Today: From Socialist Values
via Anarchist Tactics Back to the Neoliberal Status Quo
Rafal Soborski
275
Index
295
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Editors and Contributors
About the Editors1
Stéphane Guy is a Professor of British history at the University of
Lorraine, France and specialises in the history of ideas. The author of
a monograph on the roots of British socialism, Genèse du travaillisme
britannique (Michel Houdiard, 2019), he has published articles and
edited books on political and intellectual history, the role of intellectuals
in the public sphere and socialist thought. He is Deputy Head of the
research centre IDEA (UR 2338). He launched in 2022 and currently
supervises the seminar series ‘Constructing ideologies’ at the University
of Lorraine.
Ecem Okan is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of
Lorraine, France and specialises in the history of economic thought. She
works on the relations between economics, political and moral philosophy, on the philosophy of history through the works of David Hume and
Adam Smith in particular and on the Scottish Enlightenment in general.
She is a co-organiser of the seminar series ‘Constructing ideologies’ at
the centre for Interdisciplinarity in English Studies (IDEA), University of
Lorraine.
1 The
authors are members of the Interdisciplinarité dans les
Anglophones (IDEA) research centre at the University of Lorraine (France).
Etudes
xi
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xii
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Vanessa Boullet is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lorraine.
Her research focuses on Irish studies and on the interactions between
economy, society and politics. She has developed an interest in the
impact of multinationals on the Irish economy and its uneven development and also on economic policies implemented during the pandemic
in Ireland. In 2022, she published The Unequal Costs of Covid-19 on
Well-being in Europe with Louise Dalingwater, Iside Constantini and Paul
Gibbs (Springer). She also tries to develop research in Applied Foreign
Languages departments in France and she is the editor-in-chief of the
journal Revue International des Langues Appliquées Etrangères.
Jeremy Tranmer is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lorraine
in Nancy, France, where he teaches British political, social and cultural
history. He has published widely on the history and evolution of the
British left, particularly of parties to the left of Labour such as the
Communist Party of Great Britain. He has also worked on social movements such as anti-racism and anti-fascism. He is interested in the
relationship between the left and popular music, especially in the 1970s
and 1980s.
Contributors
Sina Badiei is Junior Lecturer at the Centre Walras-Pareto of the
University of Lausanne and Director of Program in the Philosophy and
Human Sciences Department at the Collège International de Philosophie
(Université Paris Lumières). His Ph.D., entitled “Positive Economics and
Normative Economics in Marx, Mises, Friedman and Popper”, was the
winner of the 2022 Best Dissertation Prize of the “Association Charles
Gide pour l’Étude de la Pensée Économique”. His research deals with the
relationship between normative economics and positive economics in the
history of economic thought, especially in the Marxist and Neo-Ricardian
schools, the Austrian school, the Chicago school and the Lausanne
school.
Niaz Cary-Pernon holds a doctorate from Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3. She is a member of the Research Unit ‘Études Montpelliéraines
du Monde Anglophone’ (EMMA), France. Her interests cover the
Labour Party’s international thought, British foreign policy, the Cold War
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EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
xiii
and the interpretive approach to international relations. Her recent publications include an article on British identities and the 2016 European
Union referendum in Observatoire de la société britannique.
Cornelius Crowley is Emeritus Professor of British Studies in Université Paris Nanterre. He recently published Jamesian Reading Lessons, The
Wings of the Dove, Presses universities de Nanterre, 2021.
Louise Dalingwater is a Professor of British Politics at Sorbonne Université. Her current research focuses on health and well-being in the
United Kingdom, with some comparative research on European health
systems (notably France) and global health policy research. She is Visiting
Professor at the East European University. She is also chair of the International Health, Wellness and Society research network based in Illinois,
United States. She was recently part of the Precision Health Network (an
international research project led by the Universities of Lund and Malmo
in Sweden).
François Deblangy is a Ph.D. student in British modern history at
Rouen University, France. His research work focuses on socio-economic
history and industrial democracy. He is currently writing a Ph.D. thesis
under the supervision of Pr. John C. Mullen about the history of worker
co-operatives in Great Britain. He recently published an article about
the development of the British worker co-operative movement from its
inception to the late twentieth century. He is also a member of the
Co-Operative Researchers; Network (CORNet).
Michael Freeden is Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Oxford
and Emeritus Professorial Fellow, Mansfield College Oxford. His books
include The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford,
1978); Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford,
1996); The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (co-edited, Oxford,
2013); Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015). He was the
founder-editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies. He has been awarded
the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for Lifetime Contribution to Political Studies by
the UK Political Studies Association, and the Medal for Science, Institute
of Advanced Studies, Bologna University, and is a Fellow of the Academy
for Social Sciences.
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xiv
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Mason is a Professor of US history at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New
Majority (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and The Republican Party and American Politics from Hoover to Reagan (Cambridge
University Press, 2012). With Iwan Morgan, he is co-editor of Seeking a
New Majority: The Republican Party and American Politics, 1960–1980
(Vanderbilt University Press, 2013) and The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered: American Politics and Society in the Postwar Era (University Press of
Florida, 2017). With Patrick Andelic and Mark McLay, he is co-editor of
Midterms and Mandates: Electoral Reassessments of Presidents and Parties
(Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
Françoise Orazi is a Professor of British Studies at Lyon 2 University (France). Her work centres on the history of political ideas with a
focus on liberalism. Her latest books are La Tolérance politique, Nouvelles
perspectives sur les influences anglo-saxonnes, (Classiques Garnier, 2021)
and L’Individu libre Le libéralisme anglo-saxon de John Stuart Mill à nos
jours (Classiques Garnier, 2018).
Stéphane Revillet is a doctoral researcher and teacher at the University of
Bourgogne. He is a member of the research centre Centre InterlanguesTexte, Image, Langage (TIL). Specialised in British studies his research
interests include parliamentary studies with a special focus on the Conservative party and leadership in the UK.
Rafal Soborski is Professor of International Politics at Richmond American University London and Senior Research Fellow at University of
Roehampton, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has taught
and published extensively on ideology, social movements, globalisation,
green politics and the far right. He is the author of two books: Ideology
in a Global Age: Continuity and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and
Ideology and the Future of Progressive Social Movements (Rowman and
Littlefield, 2018). He chairs the Global Studies Research Network and
is Editor of the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies.
He currently works on an ESRC-funded project on immigrants and the
far right.
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EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
xv
Fabien Tarrit is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Economics,
Management and Social Sciences, University of Reims ChampagneArdenne in France. He is a member of the multidisciplinary research
team REGARDS, in which he is in charge of the ‘Economic Philosophy
and Theory’ research axis. His research interests focus on Marxism, class
struggle, theories of justice and left-libertarianism. His recent publications include “Marx, Schumpeter et les classes sociales” in Actuel Marx
(with Fabrice Dannequin), “Sorry, We Missed You-Unveiling the XXIst
Century Proletarian Life” in M@n@gement (with Florent Giordano),
“Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019): classes and utopia” in Cescontexto, and
“Marxisme et théorie néo-classique” in Cahiers d’économie politique.
Dean V. Williamson is an Economist (Ph.D. Caltech 1999) and an Independent Researcher. He spent twenty years as a research economist with
the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice. More recently he
spent time in Kyiv working as an advisor to the Antimonopoly Committee
of Ukraine. He is the author of The Economics of Adaptation and
Long-term Relationships (Edward Elgar, 2019).
Iason Zarikos is a Historian and Post-doctoral Researcher at the National
University of Athens. He has worked in Greek and EU-funded research
projects. His doctoral thesis was an intellectual history of Liberalism in
late twentieth century. He has co-authored a monograph on the 1970’s.
He has also published papers on the history of Climate Change, Liberalism as well as the links between the ideology of economic growth, the
environment and consumerism. He is the co-editor of the two-volume
project “The Making of the Atlantic Monarchy”, to be published by
Bloomsbury. His current research project is an intellectual history of the
early twenty-first century through the prism of climate change.
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List of Tables
Marx’s Socialism, Mises’s Liberalism and Their
Problematic Theories of Needs and Preferences
Table 1
Comparative advantage with three goods
134
The Conservatives’ Representation of Socialism and
Liberalism During PMQs Since the 1990s
Table 1
Representation of the stakeholding society
by the Conservatives
266
xvii
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Introduction
Stéphane Guy
Although the fall of the Berlin Wall led Francis Fukuyama in 1992 to
predict the triumph of liberal democracy, the terrorist attacks of 2001
in the USA and 2005 in the UK, the economic crisis of 2008, Brexit,
the COVID-19 crisis and the rise of illiberal regimes within Europe have
resulted in the reappearance of debates about the relationship between
the state and the individual, ranging from the issue of voter representation and equality to the distribution of wealth and the role of public
authorities in the promotion of the good life or environmentalism. These
transformations have questioned the boundaries between systems of political and economic thought that had previously been considered, perhaps
wrongly, as separate: China claims to fuse socialism and capitalism, while
the ruling British Conservatives, like other governments advocating freemarket economics, have increased public spending massively to address
the health crisis. In countries where the left has not gained sufficient
support to be elected to government, it has displayed both a vibrancy
that refutes the thesis of its collapse, but also deep divisions over the
nature and extent of social reforms or the role of the state in the face
S. Guy (B)
University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
e-mail: stephane.guy@univ-lorraine.fr
1
S. Guy et al. (eds.), Liberalism and Socialism since the Nineteenth
Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41233-2_1
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2
S. GUY
of globalization and multiculturalism. The principles of emancipation
and individual rights based on modernity and the Enlightenment have
faced criticism, expressed in the rise of populism, conservatism and the
invocation of traditional values. A number of recent social and political
developments and upheavals have made it necessary to reconsider simultaneously two founding pillars of Western culture, liberalism and socialism,
their differences as well as their convergences and interactions.
The war in, or invasion of, Ukraine that began in February 2022
is but one instance of the need to take the broader view when examining these ideologies. Basing oneself on Chantal Delsol’s conception, the
conflict could well be the latest manifestation of a clash between civilizations, the Western culture of individualism (that includes both liberalism
and socialism) being fundamentally at odds with the holism rooted in
Russia as well as China or Arab countries (Delsol 2020). The flourishing
and endurance of illiberal democracies in Central Europe highlight the
disconnect between notions that, until the early twenty-first century, had
seemed to go hand in hand: a free market, individual rights and universal
suffrage (Mounk 2018). Tradition, paternalism and a critique of materialism have been repeatedly and increasingly pitted against the progressive
perspective that liberals and socialists had so far claimed to embody. This
conservative counteroffensive was partly grounded on the conviction that
the 2007–2008 crisis exposed the limits of an exclusively growth-based
economy promoted by the two ideologies alike, at the expense of ethics
and community: What was needed urgently, on that view, was reflection
about the purpose of production and “how much is enough” (Skidelsky
2012).
The necessity for a combined reassessment of the legacy of socialism
and liberalism is also prompted by the latest forms of popular left-wing
activism found in environmentalist and animal welfare movements. In
a number of these groups, the two ideologies have not been dismissed
as the complementary faces of modernity but have provided inspiration
and an intellectual basis for action and theory. On the one hand, in
their defense of the common good, a large share of environmentalists
embrace the critique of capitalism or neoliberalism along the lines of
socialist theory: the thirst for profit and competition should be replaced,
they contend, by cooperation and redistribution, democracy requiring
not only procedural freedom but also positive justice and respect. At
the same time, however, the founding principles of their protest and
sometimes direct action draw on a liberal belief in universal rights, albeit
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INTRODUCTION
3
extended to the non-human. In that sense, some traditional socialists have
reproached them for condoning capitalist ideology by diverting attention from economic to what are deemed less urgent matters. Similar
debates and paradoxes could be identified as regards minority activism:
race and gender inequalities are considered alternatively as the outgrowth
of neoliberalism which only state intervention could remedy, or as part
of a convenient stratagem of the powerful (sometimes described derogatively as “pinkwashing”) to preserve their privilege and curb the economic
and political freedoms of the majority. Figures such as Marxist scholar
Adolph Reed (2020) and left-leaning philosophers like Richard AndersonConnolly (2019), Olúf´e.mi O. Táíwò (2022) and Susan Neiman (2023)
have reproached identity politics for diverting attention from structural
economic and class issues to what are deemed less urgent matters, thereby
condoning capitalist ideology.
All these recent, and less recent, tendencies and events raise the question as to what extent the two major ideologies of modernity, socialism
and liberalism, have been transformed, diluted or recast over the decades
and have interacted upon each other in the past and in the present.
From a contemporary perspective, socialism and liberalism are undoubtedly perceived as two antithetical ideologies that point to competing
conceptions of the State, the individual and justice. In everyday life and
conversations, while the former term may be associated with intervention, collectivism or redistribution, the latter evokes individual rights,
emancipation from any form of control, self-help and the free market.
Such a binary account of the two systems, however, breaks down on
closer inspection. History shows us conflicting loyalties among the leading
figures of either ideology, along with circulation of ideas and endless
reformulations of principles and dogma.
On a number of occasions, liberalism and socialism have intersected.
Departing from the strict philosophical radicalism of Jeremy Bentham,
John Stuart Mill famously came to advocate state intervention as a necessary step to allow individuality to flourish and the higher pleasures to be
satisfied, drawing on the romantic tradition that inspired a number of
socialists in their critique of capitalism (Mill 2008). Heirs to the reformist
thought of T. H. Green, the New Liberals of the early twentieth century
saw in the state a crucial actor in promoting the liberty, i.e., fulfillment, of
the individual (Tyler 2010–2012). More broadly, research on liberalism
has on several occasions sought to emancipate it from reductive grids of
interpretation that would overstate hard-nosed individualism (Rosenblum
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4
S. GUY
1987), legal processes (Rosenblatt 2018) or even the homogeneity of the
ideology itself (Bell 2014), remarking that “liberalism’s vulnerability to
critique emerges from its internal confusion” (Stears and Freeden 2015,
341). All these fault lines of the ideology have constituted opportunities
for socialism to engage with liberal principles rather than simply reject
them wholesale.
On the other hand, at the turn of the twentieth century, socialism
itself was increasingly divided between the Marxist call for a proletarian
revolution and the rejection of bourgeois democratic institutions and
the reformism supported by such intellectuals as the Fabians who, often
initially attracted to Mill’s radicalism, claimed to reconcile individualism
with a collectivist economy (Guy 2019). In Germany, the revisionist
controversy was yet another instance of interaction between the two
ideologies. Opposing economic determinism and the Marxist teleological prophecy of the collapse of capitalism, Eduard Bernstein advocated
parliamentary reform and party politics to precipitate the advent of
socialism, relying on pillars of the liberal tradition, democracy and selfdetermination (Bernstein 1993). In the twentieth century, the rise of the
New Left and its assertion of social rights was a response to the oppressive state socialism of the Soviet bloc, endorsing liberal democracy as an
unavoidable partner in the promotion of socialism. Under Tony Blair,
New Labour went further in the process of emancipating socialism from
the state by amending Clause IV: “power, wealth and opportunity are in
the hands of the many not the few.”
Yet even before this momentous change, Labour was marked by
intrinsic contradictions, notably an attraction to the liberal principle of
individual autonomy alongside the quest for social justice. A cornerstone
of Labour’s socialist program in postwar Britain, the Beveridge Report’s
commitment to minimum protection ensuring individual initiative would
never be stifled by the state has been at the heart of not only the Conservative but the Labourite approach to welfare. These ambivalences of
socialism have led to repeated attempts at defining a system of values
that might transcend historical circumstances or partisanship, paving the
way for an interaction with liberalism, theorized by thinkers like Leszek
Kolakowski (1990), Norman Geras (1983, 2017; Pitts 2020) or, more
recently, Axel Honneth, arguing for a renewal of socialism based on its
traditional commitment to “social freedom” (2017).
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INTRODUCTION
5
The diversity of cases where socialism and liberalism have seemed to
overlap and indeed sometimes converge suggests that political, historical, economic and philosophical factors must be considered in order to
make sense of these interactions. Depending on the disciplinary area in
which they are studied, the two ideologies take on different meanings.
If, for an economist, liberalism suggests a free market and socialism state
control of the economy, philosophy will focus on the political implications of freedom. Distinguishing between positive and negative liberty,
following the approach popularized by Isaiah Berlin, may lead one to
consider liberalism as compatible with institutions that foster individual
accomplishment (Berlin 1969), thereby qualifying the economist’s identification of the state with socialism. The political scientist will be keen
to uncover the strategies underlying politicians’ and parties’ discourse
resorting to the two notions, thereby pointing to the multilayered meanings of the two notions that may be appropriated, distorted, recycled in
an endless competition for holding power and pressing the public into
supporting them. Conversely, philosophers will seek to assess the claims
laid by each system to the most equitable and reasonable way of organizing the polity and the production of wealth through a reflection on
justice, democracy or equality. From another perspective, the historian of
ideas shows the extent to which the abstract notions of society or freedom
are deeply embedded in different contexts and how their meanings vary,
often imperceptibly, according to circumstances and power struggles as
well as abstract reasoning and argumentation. All these complementary
approaches prove that any attempt at accounting for the complex relationships between socialism and liberalism requires an interdisciplinary
analysis of definitions and theories that will take into account historical developments, the thought of the figures that have embodied and
contributed to fashioning the two traditions, and the ways in which
practical politics has not only reflected but informed these world-views.
Drawing on different fields of knowledge, this book offers a conjoint
study of socialism and liberalism by examining how they have both
rejected each other and evolved by interacting and sharing common
ground, sometimes speaking the same language and pursuing the same
ideals, while posing, and being represented, as antagonists. Referring
to past and contemporary contexts, drawing on economic and political
science and ideas, on the history of thought and philosophy and on political history, the volume aims at providing readers with a multi-perspective
account of how the two ideologies have been shaped over the centuries
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6
S. GUY
and continue to determine public debate despite recurring claims that the
left–right divide is no longer relevant or that we live in a post-ideological
age (Freeden 2005).
The first part of the book focuses on what it means to bring together
the notions of socialism and liberalism as objects of study. Embracing
the two concepts raises epistemological and methodological questions
that Michael Freeden sets out to formulate in historical and contemporary perspective. The chapter examines the shifting borders between
the two ideologies: far from being monolithic, they are shown to be
constantly overlapping and changing in space and time. Crucial to Freeden’s analysis is the tension between the grand narratives of the past and
current challenges to party politics such as race, gender, the environment
and mass democracy. A particular instance of the unsteady boundaries
between the two ideologies is provided in chapter three with Françoise
Orazi’s comparison and discussion of two seemingly equivalent systems of
political thought: social liberalism and liberal socialism. Basing her contribution on various liberal traditions that have invoked equality or state
intervention, and socialist ones advocating rights and choice over uniformity and bureaucracy, the author analyzes the political and philosophical
implications of seeking to reconcile collective well-being with individual
autonomy. From another standpoint, Cornelius Crowley also aims to
come to terms with the dichotomy between socialism and liberalism
by examining their common rootedness in a narrative of Promethean
and definitive emancipation. Questioning the panacea of a solely institutional solution to injustice offered by socialists and liberals, the author
argues that bridging categories, including “planetary deference” and the
“inalienable dignity” of human beings, may both help to expose the
flaws in the rhetoric of slavery and highlight the need for agency and
responsibility as prerequisites to the realization of social justice.
As economic and political systems, liberalism and socialism share the
goal of satisfying the needs of humanity by defining the function of civil
society and institutions to achieve prosperity alongside justice and selfdetermination. The contributions of Part II of the book show to what
extent economic theory, whether advocating one or the other system,
cannot dispense with reflecting on the purpose of society or community, the meaning of history or the very nature of the good life, thereby
paving the way for a dialogue between two age-old foes. Fabien Tarrit, for
instance, elaborates on the underlying humanism of the Marxist project,
elsewhere explored by Muriel Seltman (2019), with the aim of showing
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INTRODUCTION
7
the convergence between the liberal and socialist narratives of emancipation. Deploying a critique of capitalism, the author argues that Marx’s
and Engels’ rejection of the state and invocation of free association as
the end of history strike their roots in the liberal aspiration to individual
freedom. In an attempt to vindicate the compatibility between individual
liberty and communism, Tarrit nuances the accusation of authoritarianism
that is usually leveled at the latter and seeks to shed light on the type of
society that it could allow to flourish.
A more critical approach to the possible convergences between the
two traditions is voiced by Dean Williamson in his discussion of the
assumption, formulated by Lenin among others, that the efficiency that
capitalist economies strive for would be accomplished in a centralized
collectivist system. The contributor’s chief contention is that the economy
is subject to all sorts of contingencies that require careful thought about
the nature of firms, governance and organizations: a reductive opposition
between socialist centralization and liberal decentralization can be overcome by theorizing the shortcomings of each system and reviewing the
tradeoffs, in organizational terms, induced by the shift from one to the
other. A key point made by Williamson is the ability of agents, beyond
the socialist/liberal opposition, to adapt to circumstances that contracts
cannot anticipate.
The flaws of binary oppositions are particularly obvious when theoretical pleas for socialism and liberalism fail to take account the anthropological factors underlying the aspiration of individuals to combine prosperity
and self-determination. Sina Badiei, for instance, brings to light the
common difficulties that are inherent in the theories of two of the ideologies’ arch-apostles, Ludwig von Mises and Karl Marx. While promoting
systems that aim at prosperity (with the underlying common assumption
that they disagree on the means to achieve it rather than on the principle as such), both writers fail to make the difference between different
kinds of needs, in particular between basic needs and preferences. Badiei
argues that factoring in such a distinction would help avoid the dangers
of inequalities resulting from “pure” economic liberalism, or of totalitarianism under a socialist regime: it would enable public authorities
to guarantee a collective minimum alongside individual fulfillment and
initiative.
The status of needs and preferences in economic theory points to
another area that is common to socialism and liberalism: the belief in
unlimited growth. Seeking to account for a sense of melancholy that has
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8
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been perceptible since the collapse of the Berlin wall and the wouldbe end of ideologies, Iason Zarikos suggests that growthism, which
formed an “iron connection between socialists and liberals,” was devoid
of any mobilizing force. Against such an ideology that presents growth
as universal, Zarikos suggests that only a historicization of the notion can
help address the challenge of consumption-induced climate change.
What the theoretical debates and controversies on the strengths and
weaknesses of either system display is how, beyond antagonisms, socialism
and liberalism have tended to overlap and to share common assumptions
and ideals deeply rooted in modernity. At stake in the conjoined study
of the two systems is not so much the intrinsic, would-be essential values
that they claim to stand for as the way in which actors in various contexts
seek to (re)appropriate a number of notions while endeavoring to present
them as universal, or, in Michael Freeden’s words, to “decontest” them
(Freeden 2013, 23). A contextualization of ideological disputes reveals
the ever-changing borders between socialism and liberalism. Part III of
the volume supplies the reader with a number of past situations where
the political identity of movements or institutions, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, appears to have been at the intersection
of socialist and liberal traditions.
Providing a historical overview of the cooperative movement from its
inception in the early nineteenth century to the 1990s, François Deblangy
highlights the competing ideals and principles that have been its fortune
and misfortune: through its critique of capitalist exploitation, cooperatism has tended to be identified with left-wing activism, ever since
Robert Owen, the father of “socialism,” launched the New Lanark experiment in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Yet the chapter also
emphasizes how the cooperators’ suspicion toward the state and their
strong attachment to individual initiative and prosperity prevented them
from embracing a full-scale, state-initiated reorganization of the economy,
leading them to be at odds with the Labour Party since its creation in
1906. Deblangy’s contention that cooperation was in fact more liberal in
essence than socialist points to the difficulty raised by a facile opposition
between “individualist” liberalism and “collectivist” socialism.
In light of the chapter’s discussion, it is safe to assume that, historically, no human enterprise, of which cooperators were only an instance,
may be identified absolutely with one or the other system, since, as Mark
Bevir puts it, “ideologies are not mutually exclusive, reified entities. They
are overlapping traditions with ill-defined boundaries” (Bevir 2011, 86).
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INTRODUCTION
9
One might add that underlying Deblangy’s study are the paradoxes that
socialism has repeatedly been confronted with, the ideology seeking both
to emancipate the individual through the satisfaction of their desires
(with selfish consumption as a basis for the good life) and to transcend
material claims by achieving social justice and equality. Similarly, cooperation exposes liberalism’s ambivalent assumption that individual freedom
constitutes the foundation of the good life in society: though “socialist” for its members, the cooperative does not challenge the competitive
nature of the market economy, beyond the belief that the cooperative
spirit may spread to society as a whole.
Focusing on international policy in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, Niaz Pernon sheds light on such paradoxes by
demonstrating to what extent progressive political figures and intellectuals
adopted a variety of nuanced standpoints regarding the British Empire
and its interaction with domestic affairs. Although they shared a number
of aspirations to justice in Britain and abroad, liberals, Fabian socialists and later Labour politicians or supporters invoked alternatively the
need for regulation, cooperation, community or moral duties in dealing
with international relations, blurring the distinctions between parties or
groups. Within each of them, crises like the Macedonian campaign or
the Boer Wars sparked debates over the function of the Empire and gave
rise to new nuances and elaborations that constantly recast the boundaries between socialism and liberalism. Circumstances, party politics and
individual commitments and trajectories all contributed to the expression
of different views regarding freedom and equality that outgrew neatly
defined, ahistorical conceptions of socialism and liberalism.
A landmark achievement of postwar Labour policy, the NHS also
exemplifies the interaction of both ideologies when it comes to
reconciling well-being, social justice and efficiency. Louise Dalingwater
discusses, throughout her chapter, the so-called socialist inspiration, in
Aneurin Bevan’s words, for the NHS and the reforms that it has undergone, facing the two-pronged challenge of meeting the needs of the
population as a coherent whole while remaining cost-effective. The principle of free access to healthcare has never been significantly questioned as
such in its history and a crisis such as the COVID-19 outbreak has led to a
rise in public spending on public health that might reflect the institution’s
socialist roots. However, the author argues, continuous financial pressure
alongside the implementation of a neoliberal agenda since the 1980s have
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caused the NHS to resort to market methods that have been increasingly perceived as being at odds with its founding principles. Against the
backdrop of a shift from postwar welfarism to capitalist efficiency, the
chapter reveals the difficulty of preserving a universalist, socialist-based,
provision of healthcare while taking account of the individual’s growing
aspiration to consume and spend less on a tax-funded NHS. In recent
years, rationing has constituted a case in point of this tension: Louise
Dalingwater argues that in response to financial pressure, the NHS has
used this type of allocation to exclude certain groups from the services
when they were deemed not to need them. Of course, this shows that,
whether viewed as a socialist institution or a private enterprise, the NHS,
like any organization, is confronted with political and ethical dilemmas
that will be responded to by invoking alternatively the public interest or
individual responsibility.
By seeking to determine to what extent various movements or institutions are socialist or liberal, the contributions of Part III touch upon
another fundamental dimension of a comparison between the two ideologies: that of interpretation. While actors engage in politics in the name
of what they deem to be a coherent body of ideas, values or beliefs,
history shows us that the meanings of these tenets vary according to their
context: to grasp the relationship between the two ideologies, it is, therefore, necessary to consider them less as abstract philosophical systems of
thought than as part of conversations (Skinner 2002) and discursive struggles that endow them with a multiplicity of meanings. Part IV of the
book examines a number of situations where the notions of socialism and
liberalism are wielded as political weapons, exposing the partisanship of
competing actors as well as the flaws and gaps in their respective outlooks
and agendas.
Robert Mason, for instance, pays close attention to the American
Republican Party’s response to New Deal “liberalism” from the 1930s to
the 1960s. The very fact that in the American context, liberalism refers to
left-wing policies involving federal or state intervention, and the promotion of individual rights is telling of its multiple ambiguities, much in
the same way as “socialism” covers a whole range of sometimes incompatible ideas and practices. Robert Mason emphasizes how, beyond the
scarecrow label of socialism that it tended to pin onto Democratic New
Deal reforms, the GOP was deeply divided over its founding principles
and identity. In different ways and terms, Republican officials oscillated
between claims that their party embodied “true liberalism” as opposed
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INTRODUCTION
11
to the “false” one of F. D. Roosevelt’s program, and attempts at reappropriating, when in office, some of the measures without appearing
inconsistent and losing credibility. Beyond their “negative” stance, as
Mason describes it, and their inability to come to terms with reforms
that on principle were hard to challenge, these verbal contests testify
to the difficulty of determining the inherently socialist or liberal (in the
British sense) nature of a policy or agenda. Political actions and debates
are informed not only by beliefs as such but also by rhetorical strategies
that are, at best, ill-informed, at worst disingenuous and manipulative.
On this view, the chapter by Stéphane Revillet shows how the multilayered meanings of socialism and liberalism can both converge or diverge,
depending on the standpoint and interests of the persons who use the
terms. Basing his work on Parliamentary debates in the UK, the author
analyzes a whole range of instances when the notions were used by
Conservative leaders to discredit Labour or vindicate their own party.
Through the multiplicity of strategies that are discussed, the contribution
exemplifies the ways in which the two notions can be opposed, merged,
poached or even paraphrased by one group, blurring the facile identification of post-Thatcherite Conservatism with liberalism and Labour with
socialism. From a broader perspective, Revillet’s and Mason’s contributions highlight the risks of minimizing the implications of the discursive
struggle underlying practical politics. If actions, reforms and revolutions
result from ideas, imagination and narratives rather than merely economic
or social circumstances, then the fight over concepts is crucial.
A concrete example of meanings determining political developments
can be found in the last chapter of the book. Rafal Soborski seeks to assess
the significance of the anti-capitalist response to the 2008 global crisis by
focusing on the “movements of the squares” that sprang up in the USA,
Spain or France. Analyzing what he calls a “99% vs 1%” populist rhetoric
that was deeply rooted in anarchist conceptions of freedom (a concomitant critique of state socialism and capitalist exploitation, alongside an
assertion of individual rights and autonomy), the author contends that
the movements’ inability to achieve a momentous change of the financial
markets’ supremacy was due to a lack of theory articulating practical and
practicable alternatives to neoliberalism. Considering their own organizations as necessarily “prefigurative” of another social order, they failed to
develop a program that might have transcended the crisis effectively.
In that sense, the contribution highlights the deep and often paradoxical interactions between the two ideologies that this volume repeatedly
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12
S. GUY
brings to light: while relying on a left-wing rhetoric striking its roots in
socialism, in effect, the movements’ promotion of individual emancipation
has drawn on myths, notably the “technological miracle” of social media,
that form the bedrock of the neoliberal ideology which they claim to
break down. This suggests that, far from disappearing from public debate,
the socialism and liberalism paradigm will continue, albeit in unexpected
ways, to mobilize groups and inform political action and thought for
many years to come.
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Friends or Foes? Liberalism and Socialism
Between Concepts and Experience
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