Liberalism
F. A. Hayek
Written in 1973 for the Italian Enciclopedia del Novicento where the
article appeared in an Italian translation.
Reprinted as Chapter Nine of Hayek, F. A., New Studies in Philosophy,
Politics, Economics and the History of
Ideas, Routledge & Keagan Paul, London and Henley, 1982 [1978], pp.
119-151 ORDER THIS BOOK
The term is now used with a variety of meanings
which have little in common beyond describing an openness to new ideas,
including some which are directly opposed to those which are originally
designated by it during the nineteenth and the earlier parts of the twentieth
centuries. What will alone be considered here is that broad stream of political
ideals which during that period under the name of liberalism operated as one of
the most influential intellectual forces guiding developments in western and
central Europe. This movement derives, however, from two distinct sources, and
the two traditions to which they gave rise, though generally mixed to various
degrees, coexisted only in an uneasy partnership and must be clearly
distinguished if the development of the liberal movement is to be understood.
The one tradition, much older than the name
'liberalism', traces back to classical antiquity and took its modern form
during the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries as the political
doctrines of the English Whigs. It provided the model of political institutions
which most of the European nineteenth‑century liberalism followed. It was
the individual liberty which a 'government under the law' had secured to the
citizens of Great Britain which inspired the movement for liberty in the
countries of the Continent in which absolutism had destroyed most of the
medieval liberties which had been largely preserved in Britain. These
institutions were, however, interpreted on the Continent in the light of a
philosophical tradition very different from the evolutionary conceptions
predominant in [119] Britain, namely of it rationalist or
constructivistic view which demanded a deliberate reconstruction of the whole
of society in accordance with principles of reason. This approach derived from
the new rationalist philosophy developed above all by René Descartes (but also
by Thomas Hobbes in Britain) and gained its greatest influence in the
eighteenth century through the philosophers of the French Enlightenment.
Voltaire and J.‑J. Rousseau were the two most influential figures of the
intellectual movement that culminated in the French Revolution and from which
the Continental or constructivistic type of liberalism derives. The core of
this movement, unlike the British tradition, was not so much a definite
political doctrine as a general mental attitude, a demand for an emancipation
from all prejudice and all beliefs which could not be rationally justified, and
for an escape from the authority of 'priests and kings'. Its best expression is
probably B. de Spinoza's statement that 'he is a free man who lives according
to the dictates of reason alone'.
These two strands of thought which provided the
chief ingredients of what in the nineteenth century came to be called
liberalism were on a few essential postulates, such as freedom of thought, of
speech, and of the press, in sufficient agreement to create a common opposition
to conservative and authoritarian views and therefore to appear as part of a
common movement. Most of liberalism's adherents would also profess a belief in
individual freedom of action and in some sort of equality of all men, but
closer examination shows that this agreement was in part only verbal since the
key terms 'freedom' and 'equality' were used with somewhat different meanings.
While to the older British tradition the freedom of the individual in the sense
of a protection by law against all arbitrary coercion was the chief value, in
the Continental tradition the demand for the self‑determination of each
group concerning its form of government occupied the highest place. This led to
an early association and almost identification of the Continental movement with
the movement for democracy, which is concerned with a different problem from
that which was the chief concern of the liberal tradition of the British type.
During the period of their formation these
ideas, which in the nineteenth century came to be known as liberalism, were not
yet described by that name. The adjective 'liberal' gradually assumed its political connotation during the later part of the
eighteenth century when it was used in such occasional phrases as when Adam
Smith wrote of 'the liberal
plan of equality, liberty, and justice'. As the [120] name of a
political movement liberalism appears, however, only at the beginning of the
next century, first when in 1812 it was used by the Spanish party of Liberales,
and a little later when it was adopted as a party name in France. In Britain it
came to be so used only after the Whigs and the Radicals joined in a single
party which from the early 1840s came to be known as the Liberal Party. Since
the Radicals were inspired largely by what we have described as the Continental
tradition, even the English Liberal Party at the time of its greatest influence
was based on a fusion of the two traditions mentioned.
In view of these facts it would be misleading
to claim the term 'liberal' exclusively for either of the two distinct
traditions. They have occasionally been referred to as the 'English',
'classical' or 'evolutionary', and as the 'Continental' or 'constructivistic'
types respectively. In the following historical survey both types will be
considered, but as only the first has developed a definite political doctrine,
the later systematic exposition will have to concentrate on it.
It should be mentioned here that the USA never
developed a liberal movement comparable to that which affected most of Europe
during the nineteenth century, competing in Europe with the younger movements
of nationalism and socialism and reaching the height of its influence in the
1870s and thereafter slowly declining but still determining the climate of
public life until 1914. The reason for the absence of a similar movement in the
USA is mainly that the chief aspirations of European liberalism were largely
embodied in the institutions of the United States since their foundation, and
partly that the development of political parties there was unfavourable to the
growth of parties based on ideologies. Indeed, what in Europe is or used to be
called 'liberal' is in the USA today with some justification called
'conservative'; while in recent times the term 'liberal' has been used there to
describe what in Europe would be called socialism. But of Europe it is equally
true that none of the political parties which use the designation 'liberal' now
adhere to the liberal principles of the nineteenth century.
