Liberalism: what is in a name?
Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog, Sam Bowman has launched a competition to find an alternative name for libertarianism. I have to confess that I played a small role in this re-branding exercise. Sam tweeted that he was looking for a new way to describe classical liberalism and I replied by suggesting he holds a competition.
There have been many responses and I believe Sam may announce a winner soon.
One of the challenges that liberals face in making their case is that people have different views on what liberal, liberalism and libertarianism mean. I suspect that whatever word you choose to describe a set of beliefs you will always find that someone endows the word with another meaning. Then there is the problem that the meaning of words change over time. This is partly due to the policies pursued by those claiming to be liberal/socialist/conservative differing from the policies of their predecessors.
For instance, was the party that Lloyd George led the same as the party Gladstone inspired in the nineteenth century? Many believe that Lloyd George took the Liberal party down a social democratic road by introducing national insurance regardless of whether it was the intention at the time. So if one now says one is a liberal, are you a Gladstonian night watchman State liberal, a Lloyd George furniture mover State liberal or a Liberal Democrat?
I should explain that I have invented the furniture mover concept and as far as I know no one else has every used that expression before. I was looking for something to contrast with the night watchman and for now it will do.
The only way round this problem is to always make an ‘elevator pitch’ when you explain where you are on the political spectrum. For those unfamiliar with the term, the ‘elevator pitch’ is a short snappy way to make your case to a stranger in a confined space. Although I am not sure if the confined space is a prerequisite for stating what you think.
Perhaps we should take comfort in the words of the Bard: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It doesn’t so much matter what the word you use is as long as people understand the meaning you have for it.
For liberalism of all varieties that is the real challenge.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:57 am
I’m trying to remember the Hayek quote about the greatest complement to liberalism being the way in which its opponents have stolen it’s clothes.
I fail to accept the premise of the argument that we should abandon the name of our philosophy to social democrats who have been forced to give up the use of the term socialism and so have decided to appropriate liberalism instead, despite their policies reducing freedom.
It is fascinating that Americans, and increasingly the British, equate liberalism with social democracy (even socialism) whereas the French, and to some degree the Australians, still associate it with free markets and individual liberty – in the case of the French, negatively.
As regards your comparrison of Gladstone and Lloyd George, I tend to feel that Gladstone was more of a liberal, but it is worth remembering that Herbert Spencer thought that Gladstone’s government was responsible for all sorts of wicked interventions in private life (including, horrors!, compulsory education).
April 20th, 2011 at 9:16 am
Tom
I wasn’t suggesting that liberals – of the Liberal Vision variety – abandon the word. Personally, I prefer using the term liberal to libertarian. I was merely trying to tease out the challenges and try to find a solution. My last point was that we should be try to be relatively relaxed about whether we say liberal, classical liberal or libertarian. The more important thing is to define what one means.
I shall attempt an ‘elevator pitch’ in another blog to see encourage debate on how best to explain liberalism.
Simon
April 20th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Simon,
I basically agree, but share Hayek’s feeling that Libertarian sounds too alien, to which I would add that it now carries a lot of American baggage.
And I refuse to abandon Liberalism to a bunch of Trots!
April 20th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Tom: Not to mention that libertarianism tends to be more doctrinaire (and, dare I say, unsophisticated) on some issues and approaches where I think those of us in the wider classical liberal camp might demur or at least allow disagreement. I can think of gradualism, the gold standard and progressivity in taxation as three examples.
Partly, I suspect, there’s a Hayek/Mises distinction: Hayek’s influence being stronger in the UK and Mises’ in the US, for fairly obvious historical reasons.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Philip,
I know what you mean, but actually even American Libertarians are more mixed than that.
I recently attended a talk by George Selgin in which he argued that the Gold Standard would actually encourage inflation.
My favourite line in the presentation was “Try not to spend so much time reading stuff from the Von Mises Institute.”
April 20th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
The replacement for the word ‘libertarianism’ is ‘free to …’
April 20th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
So Tom Papworth refuses to abandon the word Liberalism to a “bunch of Trots”. Whoever could he mean?! Pre-SDP Liberalism never was the sole preserve of “Classic Liberals” or worse still Libertarians. There were plenty of the “beard and sandals brigade” (or in my case punk rockers!) who felt we were to the left of the SDP and had the same sort of suspicion of them that we had of the progressive credentials of New Labour.
Nobody ever talked about Social Liberals then, and just because the word ‘Social’ appears in SDP, it doesn’t mean that’s where the roots lie.
Liberalism has always had a healthy internal debate as to where the balance should lie between laissez-faire economics and the safety net of the state, and long may that continue.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
I have to admit I don’t know all the party’s policies from the 1970s but memory and perception tells me that the party was fairly free market with a commitment to decentralisation, encouraging worker’s co-operatives and wanting employees to be on boards of companies. I believe there was also talk of a negative income tax and perhaps land value tax. While not a classical liberal party it was less Statist than the SDP. While putting workers on boards may be using the government to encourage an outcome once done the government would be getting out of the way, so although not something classical liberals may love it is very different to engineering an economy.
I don’t know why people think that classical liberals are not committed to a safety net. They are. How that safety net works might be something for discussion.
April 23rd, 2011 at 11:38 am
I never said that the gold standard would encourage inflation, Tom: I said that making banks keep 100% reserves under a gold standard would do so relative to letting them use fractional reserves. The reason is that the higher relative price of gold in the first instance would encourage more gold production as well as more gold prospecting.
Of course, compared to a fiat standard, any sort of gold standard is likely to be much less inflationary.
April 25th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
An important distinction. Thank you, George.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5pKUc3ruY
May 14th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Sophia
Many thanks for posting the link.
Simon