Liberalism
35
Free trade has economic benefits, as it allows each country to specialize in the production of goods and services that it is best suited to produce, the ones in which they have ‘comparative advantage’. However, free trade is no less important in drawing states into a web of interdependence which means that the material costs of international conflict are so great that warfare becomes virtually unthinkable. Cobden and Bright argued that free trade would draw people of different races, creeds and languages together into what Cobden described as ‘the bonds of eternal peace’. Free market and free trade ideas became economic orthodoxy in the UK and the USA during the nineteenth century. The high point of free-market beliefs was reached with the doctrine of laissez-faire . This suggests that the state should have no economic role, but should simply leave the economy alone and allow businesspeople to act however they please. Laissez-faire ideas opposed all forms of factory legislation, including restrictions on the employment of children, limits to the number of hours worked, and any regulation of working conditions. Such economic individualism is usually based on a belief that the unrestrained pursuit of profit will ultimately lead to general benefit. Laissez-faire theories remained strong in the UK throughout much of the nineteenth century, and in the USA they were not seriously challenged until the 1930s. However, since the late twentieth century, faith in the free market has been revived through the rise of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism was counter-revolutionary: it aimed to halt, and if possible reverse, the trend towards ‘big’ government that had dominated most Western countries, especially since 1945. Although it had its greatest initial impact in the two countries in which free-market economic principles had been most firmly established in the nineteenth century, the USA and the UK, from the 1980s onwards neoliberalism exerted a wider influence. At the heart of neoliberalism’s assault on the ‘dead hand’ of government lies a belief in market fundamentalism . In that light, neoliberalism can be seen to go beyond classical economic theory.Thematter is further complicated by the fact that in the case of both ‘Reaganism’ in the USA and ‘Thatcherism’ in the UK, neoliberalism formed part of a larger, New Right ideological project that sought to foster laissez-faire economics with an essentially conservative social philosophy. This project is examined in more detail in Chapter 3. Social Darwinism One of the distinctive features of classical liberalism is its attitude to poverty and social
equality. An individualistic political creed will tend to explain social circumstances in terms of the talents and hard work of each individual human being. Individuals make what they want, and what they can, of their own lives. Those with ability and a willingness to work will prosper, while the incompetent or the lazywill not.This ideawasmemorably expressed in the title of Samuel Smiles’ book Self-Help ([1859] 1986) which begins by reiterating the well-tried maxim that ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’. Such ideas of individual responsibility were widely employed by supporters of laissez- faire in the nineteenth century. For instance, Richard Cobden advocated an improvement of the conditions of the working classes, but argued that it should come about through ‘their own efforts and self-reliance, rather than from law’. He advised them to ‘look not to Parliament, look only to yourselves’. Ideas of individual self-reliance reached their boldest expression in Herbert Spencer’s The Man versus the State ([1884] 1940). Spencer (1820–1904), the
Free market: The principle or policy of unfettered market competition, free from government interference. Laissez-faire : Literally, ‘leave to do’; the doctrine that economic activity should be entirely free from government interference. Market fundamentalism: An absolute faith in the market, reflecting the belief that the market mechanism offers solutions to all economic and social problems.
Powered by FlippingBook