Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best a necessary evil. Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individuals life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.

John Locke, oil on canvas by Herman Verelst, 1689; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Liberalism is a political and economic doctrine that emphasizes individual autonomy, equality of opportunity, and the protection of individual rights (primarily to life, liberty, and property), originally against the state and later against both the state and private economic actors, including businesses.

The intellectual founders of liberalism were the English philosopher John Locke (16321704), who developed a theory of political authority based on natural individual rights and the consent of the governed, and the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (172390), who argued that societies prosper when individuals are free to pursue their self-interest within an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and competitive markets, controlled neither by the state nor by private monopolies.

In John Lockes theory, the consent of the governed was secured through a system of majority rule, whereby the government would carry out the expressed will of the electorate. However, in the England of Lockes time and in other democratic societies for centuries thereafter, not every person was considered a member of the electorate, which until the 20th century was generally limited to propertied white males. There is no necessary connection between liberalism and any specific form of democratic government, and indeed Lockes liberalism presupposed a constitutional monarchy.

Classical liberals (now often called libertarians) regard the state as the primary threat to individual freedom and advocate limiting its powers to those necessary to protect basic rights against interference by others. Modern liberals have held that freedom can also be threatened by private economic actors, such as businesses, that exploit workers or dominate governments, and they advocate state action, including economic regulation and provision of social services, to ameliorate conditions (e.g., extreme poverty) that may hamper the exercise of basic rights or undermine individual autonomy. Many also recognize broader rights such as the rights to adequate employment, health care, and education.

Modern liberals are generally willing to experiment with large-scale social change to further their project of protecting and enhancing individual freedom. Conservatives are generally suspicious of such ideologically driven programs, insisting that lasting and beneficial social change must proceed organically, through gradual shifts in public attitudes, values, customs, and institutions.

The problem is compounded when one asks whether this is all that government can or should do on behalf of individual freedom. Some liberalsthe so-called neoclassical liberals, or libertariansanswer that it is. Since the late 19th century, however, most liberals have insisted that the powers of government can promote as well as protect the freedom of the individual. According to modern liberalism, the chief task of government is to remove obstacles that prevent individuals from living freely or from fully realizing their potential. Such obstacles include poverty, disease, discrimination, and ignorance. The disagreement among liberals over whether government should promote individual freedom rather than merely protect it is reflected to some extent in the different prevailing conceptions of liberalism in the United States and Europe since the late 20th century. In the United States liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies (see below Contemporary liberalism).

This article discusses the political foundations and history of liberalism from the 17th century to the present. For coverage of classical and contemporary philosophical liberalism, see political philosophy. For biographies of individual philosophers, see John Locke; John Stuart Mill; John Rawls.

Liberalism is derived from two related features of Western culture. The first is the Wests preoccupation with individuality, as compared to the emphasis in other civilizations on status, caste, and tradition. Throughout much of history, the individual has been submerged in and subordinate to his clan, tribe, ethnic group, or kingdom. Liberalism is the culmination of developments in Western society that produced a sense of the importance of human individuality, a liberation of the individual from complete subservience to the group, and a relaxation of the tight hold of custom, law, and authority. In this respect, liberalism stands for the emancipation of the individual.See alsoindividualism.

Liberalism also derives from the practice of adversariality in European political and economic life, a process in which institutionalized competitionsuch as the competition between different political parties in electoral contests, between prosecution and defense in adversary procedure, or between different producers in a market economy (see monopoly and competition)generates a dynamic social order. Adversarial systems have always been precarious, however, and it took a long time for the belief in adversariality to emerge from the more traditional view, traceable at least to Plato, that the state should be an organic structure, like a beehive, in which the different social classes cooperate by performing distinct yet complementary roles. The belief that competition is an essential part of a political system and that good government requires a vigorous opposition was still considered strange in most European countries in the early 19th century.

Underlying the liberal belief in adversariality is the conviction that human beings are essentially rational creatures capable of settling their political disputes through dialogue and compromise. This aspect of liberalism became particularly prominent in 20th-century projects aimed at eliminating war and resolving disagreements between states through organizations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice (World Court).

Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the centre of democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.

Like other political doctrines, liberalism is highly sensitive to time and circumstance. Each countrys liberalism is different, and it changes in each generation. The historical development of liberalism over recent centuries has been a movement from mistrust of the states power on the ground that it tends to be misused, to a willingness to use the power of government to correct perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth resulting from economic competitioninequities that purportedly deprive some people of an equal opportunity to live freely. The expansion of governmental power and responsibility sought by liberals in the 20th century was clearly opposed to the contraction of government advocated by liberals a century earlier. In the 19th century liberals generally formed the party of business and the entrepreneurial middle class; for much of the 20th century they were more likely to work to restrict and regulate business in order to provide greater opportunities for labourers and consumers. In each case, however, the liberals inspiration was the same: a hostility to concentrations of power that threaten the freedom of the individual and prevent him from realizing his full potential, along with a willingness to reexamine and reform social institutions in the light of new needs. This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical. It is this very eagerness to welcome and encourage useful change, however, that distinguishes the liberal from the conservative, who believes that change is at least as likely to result in loss as in gain.

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liberalism | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica