Liberalism is one of the most important of intellectual movements beginning in Western Europe during the 16th-17th centuries, gathering support and strength and winning widespread acceptance and penetrating to the eastern parts of Europe by the late 18th century and becoming a dominant influence by the 19th century. It is significant that the first African state founded in 1822 (of freed American slaves) established independence in 1847 and recognised by Great Britain called itself Liberia. Even earlier, Freetown was established, once again freed of slaves from Nova Scotia. These testify to the central thesis of Liberalism that all men are born free and have an individuality of their own. The cardinal principles of Liberalism were enunciated in the Constitution drawn of Liberia including a Bill of Rights - for the first time in a non-European country. By the end of the last century, the Sultan of Turkey was compelled to include a Charter of Rights in the Constitution of his country (1876).

Religious Freedom

Liberalism was initially an assertion of religious freedom and it evolved with the development of the modern state. The characteristic feature of the modern state was its emphasis on Sovereignty, that is its monopoly of authority and of exercising force. It also extended in the 16th century to dictating as to the variety of religion that the subject should follow. After the Reformation, it was felt intensely and increasingly that religion was the concern of the individual. Each could read the Holy Book and interpret it for himself. He was answerable to God and to himself; none was entitled to dictate to him as to what religion he should follow. When kings began to dictate that their subjects should follow the religion of the Royalty, protests, migrations and revolts followed. Thousands of people would rather cross dangerous seas across thousands of miles and found their own religious colonies for themselves and their co-religionists than live under an oppressive regime. With kings adamant on their subjects following the royal faith and the subjects opposing this, it was inevitable that civil war, religious persecutions, and human misery on an unprecedented scale should follow.

Since one's religion was another's heresy, 'the right to heresy' became an important right. The number of people burnt at the stakes or publicly killed during the 16th-17th centuries is legion. And the most ardent of religious reformers and leaders could be the most ruthless. Calvin and his Geneva were notorious for religious orthodoxy, and for sedulous suppression of all individuality. No public assertion similar to the European liberal, i.e. the right to one's conscience was experienced anywhere else in the world. In our own country, in ancient times, people had protested but it was on grounds of Dharma or Niti but not on grounds of one's conscience. It was in this fire of opposing faiths and wars of religion that liberalism was born.

Scepticism, Tolerance and Secularisation

Two important consequences of this right to heresy follow. One, is a sceptical temper. Since I hold to my religion as the only true one and so do you, who has in his possession the ultimate truth? Since both of us cannot be right simultaneously, it is likely that both of us are mistaken. Is not scepticism a better attitude to one's belief than that he has the monopoly of truth? 'I beseech you, gentlemen, by the bowels of Christ, think that you might be mistaken', exclaimed Cromwell. A sceptical attitude was not widespread even among intellectuals, but exceptional individuals had it in full measure men of the calibre of Descartes, Bayle etc. The Catholic Church had many members of the clergy who were personally doubtful of their calling. This sceptical attitude was to be widespread among among many liberals later during the 18th century.

The other equally important consequence was that of a tolerant temper. The most widely known of the pamphlets was Locke's famous Letter on Toleration (1689). It represented the consensus of the advanced section of the population. Interestingly, this was printed, not in England, but in Holland and perhaps not under Locke's name. The arguments are direct and to the point. Tolerance was held as an important value and some countries practised it as in Holland. But the battle for tolerance was long. The cause had to be fought again and again. One of the glories of Liberalism was its continuous championing of this priceless value.

Secularisation of public institutions too was to gradually develop in Europe. It did not matter which religion you belonged to, to qualify you for occupying a public office. This again was not won immediately and battles for this as for tolerance were fought acrimoniously and continually. Even the most exalted of universities were not totally secularised. The teaching members of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities till late in the 19th century had to subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Church of England in which of course many did not believe. These were abolished in 1871.

Liberalism in its core asserts the primacy of the individual and his rights, his right to be his own self, not be cribbed and confined by authorities, groups or other individuals. Many things follow from this core principle. It is also a temper and an attitude of the mind. Also it can be fostered institutionally. It has ideological dimensions but loosely held together in contrast to Marxism. Being loosely structured, it becomes difficult to categorise it in positive terms. It is more easily identified in negative dimensions.

Liberalism, like Rights, is a modern concept and it was unknown in ancient times though there were aspects of it which informed society, politics and philosophy. It is rooted in the individual and individuality and developed in Protestant countries - though many distinguished men of Catholic origin (perhaps lapsed Catholics) conributed to its development.

Unlike other ideologies, it is essentially optimistic in its approach and looks to the future than to the past. In this respect, it is in contrast to Conservatism which harks to traditions for guidance. Not only was it oriented to the future, but it did not appeal to the great figures of the past. If anything, it was sceptical of the wisdom of the ancients as guides. It uses Reason as a touchstone to test the validity or otherwise of positions taken.

Developed in an agrarian climate in a pre-industrial era, it was able to adapt itself to the compulsions of an industrialising environment. While it was initially ranged against the State as a potential enemy to the rights of the individual, over time, it saw the need to muster the aid of the state to help problems of the disadvantaged and did not hesititate to call for its help to meet new unforseen circumstances in an industrialising climate. In this sense, it has remained pragmatic rather than docrtinaire.

It is best understood historically for many of its central positions got clarified not in the abstract but in specific situations. Also, being continually evolving, it explored areas that it had not earlier. The American variety of Liberalism is not the European; the German is different from the British as is the British from the French. Liberals have been at some stage suspicious of the march of democracy and on other occasions of socialism. It had to battle with the consequences of the French Revolution though it was in sympathy with its initial philosophy.

Authority Suspect

The right to religious freedom and the fostering of one's conscience logically led to a suspicion of authority, whether it be of the church or the State or any other dominant group. It will be difficult to conceive for us today of the pervasiveness of the Church's control over the individual's life, regulating almost every aspect of the faithful, and continually monitoring his activities. In countries that were predominantly Catholic, this was widespread and one characteristic feature of Liberalism in many Catholic countries has been its severe anti-clericalism. With the powers of the Church gradually reducing the anti-clerical attitude became less intense but it was nevertheless to be seen. It could be said that almost every liberal in France and Italy was against the domain of the Church and they fought against it continually.

When the Church was close to the State, the liberal found individual rights to be doubly in jeopardy and his anti-authoritarianism and suspicion of the power holders became sharper.

This naturally led to a philosophy of limited government and simultaneously an attempt in Catholic countries to reduce the reach of the Church in matters social. One cannot think of a Church with limited functions; neither can one postulate a limited Church. Limited government entailed the subjection of the executive to the legislative wing of the government. But it should be emphasised that the legislatures then were far from representative people; they were not elected bodies and they met intermittently and often were under the control of the monarch.

Rights

Against the claims of unlimited sovereign powers was posited the natural rights of the citizens. Natural Rights became central to the Liberal credo. It was to be revolutionary in its potential and from the time of its proclamation, it was invoked on every occasion to strike a case for the individual. It was a fighting creed and kindled many revolutions. Ambiguous in its formulation, it made absolute claims and had an appeal that was irresistible. Yet it summed up a claim on behalf of the individual that needed to be evoked in a climate that was heavily weighed in favour of the political power holders. Ridiculed by some of the most eminent philosophers questioning the validity of the grand claims made on its behalf, it yet has an appeal that reverberates down the centuries and even today remains as appealing as it was in the 17th century. It has continually expanded its jurisdiction and has remained the arsenal of nationalities and has found today new constitutents to appeal to - that of women and children and even of others who cannot heed it but on whose behalf passionate battles are being waged - that of animals. Beginning as a liberal credo, it has been appropriated by almost all varieties of social philosophy - Marxism, anarchism, nationalism.

If to Liberalism, the individual is at the centre of all values, so it is to the philosophy of Rights as well. It should be emphasised that what the natural rights philosophers were postulating was something totally novel in the history of mankind. Hitherto, individuals were seen as belonging to a group, a tribe, a religious or linguistic order. Rights were advocated as accruing to an individual as an individual, not as a member of a group or a tribe or a religion. It also implied other things. He was not seen as being bound to the group in which he was born or grew up. He could move away geographically and acquire a higher status because of his skills or competence. This gave the individual a new freedom that he could not have dreamt of earlier. This opening up of opportunities was indeed a liberation compared to the earlier confined environment.

Seperation of Powers

Though the legislature was regarded as supreme, yet it too was circumscribed and could not legislate as it willed. Locke put it in words that are unforgettable :

"… (the legislature) … is not, nor can possibly be, absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people … Their power in the utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subject …" (sec.135, Book ii, The Two Treatises of Government, 1690).

The implication is clear. True, there are rights that are sacrosanct, the monarch cannot ride roughshod over the claims of the individual or the legislature. But even more fundamental are the ideals of a civil order which even a legislature cannot appropriate. It was this emphasis on the constraints on even the legislature that were forgotten or overlooked by legislators, heady with the success of their revolution in England, later in France.

Locke also formulated the theory of consent. The individual has rights and he is prepared to surrender some of these voluntarily for the benefit of governance and this consent is regarded as what makes the sovereign power to gain its legitimacy to rule. Consent is implicit in liberal philosophy and though it has several difficulties in its formulation, yet it is regarded as a unsatisfactory but workable explanation for the right of the executive to rule.

If concentration of power in the same hands is the very definition of tyranny, it follows that division of some of it would ensure freedom for the individual. Locke was to go into this doctrine of Separation of Powers which was explored fully by Montesquieu.

Liberalism had almost all the elements that was to characterise it - natural rights, a theory of consent, separation of powers and above all civilities which could not be ignored even by a legislature. It needed to be rounded off by a philosophy of participatory citizenship which would imply democracy but this was something that was viewed with scepticism by the Liberals right up to the end of the last century.

Liberalism and Democracy - Rousseau vs. Constant

Liberalism had developed in England long before democracy. In England, the right to vote in elections began to be demanded from the early 19th century. However, the importance of democratic participation of the citizen had been put forward by Rousseau. The philosopher's views were not to be accepted wholly on the continent and in France, several were to be critical of him. Rousseau had stated that the political body representing as it did the will of the people, could legislate without any hindrance from any quarter. This was seen as a threat to the liberties of all men; more the incipient threat to the right of property of the well-to-do was resented. Also, the attempt at making everyone free was seen as "self-defeating taking away with one hand what it gives with the other".

Apart from Rousseau, the experiences in France after the French Revolution with the Jacobin terror and later Bonapartist tyranny made them suspicious of all varieties of populist democracy. Liberals of undoubted credentials like Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) recalled the troubled days of post-revolutionary terror. No civilised country had seen the excesses similar to those unleashed by the regime of Robespierre, where all liberties were trampled upon. The Bonapartist regime which followed was only in a qualified sense any better. The modern phenomena of political demagogues using popular slogans to perpetuate themselves and to mow down opposition was a new phenomenon. The whole population, it feared, would never understand the novel experience of populist absolutism which would be more terrible than the despotic regime of the royalty that it had replaced. It needs the educated, the propertied, to understand the nuances of liberty, justice and rights. Rulers should be responsible to them rather than to the masses.

The apprehensions of Constant were to be expressed later by de Tocqueville (1805-1859) as well. Liberals were to be haunted by this throughout the 19th century and many of them including Lord Acton were to express this time and again. In our own days, Nani Palkhivala, a liberal of unimpeachable credentials has reiterated this. There was an apprehension that the new enfranchised working classes would not care for the liberal values that they scarcely understand. Many today in our country witnessing the happenings in many parts of the land have expressed similar reservations.

The fact remains that liberalism and populism generally do not go together. The nuances of social and political life to which the Liberal is geared to are seen as irrelevant by populist leaders who have their own sense of legitimacy, a sense of political urgency and above all the demands made by the supportive masses that instant viable solutions be found and implemented. Rhetoric, demonstrative antics, policies pandering to instant gratification to the masses take the place of carefully deliberated, crafted legislation. The social costs of these in the long run are indeed onerous. And a sense of the future which is central to the liberal intellectual is not seen as equally important to a leader heady with success who has to impress in public, no less than impress himself.

By the 19th century, social philosophers (with the exception of the Marxists) as well as Liberals had arrived at some insights. Freedom of individuals was seen as broadening from one age to another; this implied continuous social intercourse spread over long periods of history. The rights that the individual exercises were seen as possible of realisation only within the confines of a modern state. The state is essential for ensuring these rights, but it may well be the greatest obstacle as well for their realisation. It is not uncommon for the state to be overshadowed by powerful groups in nullifying or even in negating individual liberties. A broad consensus had been arrived regarding the importance of social and political rights and the Liberals played an important role in the explication of these. These were, the right to education and specialised training, to be employed, to privacy including to choose one's spouse and above all to a minimum standard of living. These were realisable in a widespread manner only in the context of an industrial revolution that was gradually overtaking the countries. Equally important and primary were other political rights which were basic: freedom of expression, to form associations, free elections and the right to be tried in court for offences.

Varieties of Liberalism

Classical Liberalism was developed in England, continually modifying its perspectives, and undergoing several shifts in emphasis. It remained non-ideological and sought new avenues and continually laboured to ameliorate the condition of the citizens.

While it was able to strike a balance between the need for a strong state and the guaranteeing of ancient liberties, on the continent the record of Liberalism was to take different paths and highways.

German Liberalism was to develop in a manner that was indeed different from other countries. A German philosopher, Johannes Althusius (1557-1638) who argued that sovereignty was to be traced to the people should be regarded as one who influenced Locke. A German school of jurists upholding natural rights and attempting to trace it to the Stoic Ideal of Natural Law influenced Locke's ideas. He, in turn, was to influence the great German scientist and humanist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) who in his famous book in 1792 (Essay on the Limits of the Action of the State) asserted the rights of the individual, against the state. Kant (1724-1804) too stressed the moral rights of the individual as an individual. But in spite of the enormous influence of Kant, the claims of nationalism dominated all other values. The paramount question was the unification of the Germany. The collective rights of the German people was posited rather than individual rights. The emphasis of the Liberals here was submission to a strong, unified, nationalist state.

The British tended to stress the right to form associations and peacefully assembling as important dimensions of Liberalism. This right was denied by the government, because of the fear of the French Revolution and an apprehension that these would become agencies for promoting revolution in the land. The importance of the right to association was to become evident in the 19th century when organised opinion was able to mobilise people and to make demands upon the government.

In France, intellectuals and aristocrats who were smarting under the restraints upon the publishing of books and journals were to stress the importance of a free press and the right to publish pamphlets. Apart from the State, they were to be restive under the authoritarian Catholic church. It turned them anti-clerical. One could almost say that to be a French Liberal was to be one who had an eye of disapproval on the Catholic Church and all it stood for. In Britain, such a similar antagonism was never to be widespread for the Church had split into a number of sects and on specific issues certain sects and the Liberals worked together. French liberalism took a middle position between Royalism and radicalism. Royalism and Conservatism were unacceptable to Liberals as were the varieties of radical philosophies like Syndicalism, Communism, Anarchism and only a qualified acceptance of Socialism.

French social and political experience throughout the last century was marked by violence, settlements, revolutions and restoration of monarchy, republicanism and an attempt at Imperialism. There was a continuous appeal of authoritarianism under the influence of Rousseau which subordinates the individuals. The Church in spite of assaults remained an important factor and continued to be so throughout the century. Though the country was predominantly rural, slogans of varieties of socialism had their own appeal. And the towering personality of Napoleon and his cult was a dominant factor and it was not for the furtherance of liberal values.

It was amidst these intellectual churning of ideas and of political turmoil, that a constitutional monarchy (1830) was set up, perpetuating bourgeois ideas and of wealthy classes. In spite of scandalous political bribing, the regime was hospitable to freedom of expression. The Year of Revolutions (1848) saw the establishent of a republic and universal adult franchise. The voting saw the return of upper class representatives. Differences erupted with the workers being ranged against the bouregiosies and the peasantry. The government was compelled to do away with the national workshops which had been established to give employment to the workers. The Paris workers started a revolution against this which was bloody and led to the massacre of thousands of people by a merciless government. The workers had been led by confused ideologies, were uneducated and had only the vaguest notion of what they wanted. The result was a working class radicalism rather than a working class movement. The middle classes frightened by the power of radicalism founded a Party for the Defence of Property, Religon and the Family. This party passed a law disenfranchising the unpropertied. In the general unsettlement that followed, Louis Napoleon emerged claiming to be champion of the disenfranchised. Deadlocked with the assembly, he staged a coup d'etat, got himself legitimised as Emperor with support from a stunning majority of the people and ruled, trampling over liberal values but manipulating the people and instilling an accalamatory regime. The workmen had the right to vote; he started public works, recognised trade unions, introduced social welfare legislation. But he continued his repressive measures exiling the intellectuals.

It was in this context that the French intellectuals began to once again ruminate the problems of liberalism. The adventures of Louis Napoleon doomed his fate and the die was cast for a republic. There was no going back to a minimalist state. The III Republic was the first European country to have universal suffrage, though this was not to the liking of many intellectuals. A moderate middle of the road Republican leadership made for all liberal values to be enshrined and political parties kept in check extremes of the right and left. The Church was separated from the State. The rural-urban divide, the peasant-capitalist suspicion of the proletarian was to linger for decades. The Liberal cause was largely won, but not entirely, there were sections that still persisted in their illiberal values.

Laissez Faire

For almost all educated persons, Liberalism in effect evokes images of factories and mines popularised by the disciples of Marx and the realistic novels of the late nineteenth century - of driving factory managers, of captains of industry crying hoarse over attempts at regulation, all legitimised under the phrase Laissez Faire. Adam Smith is generally regarded as its high priest and division of labour its mantra. Marx was to memorably capture for his readers the revolutionary role of capital and of the capitalist process, predatory and spreading its tentacles throughout the world.

The economic dimension of Liberalism has been Janus-faced; on the one hand relentlessly promoting the case for unbridled competitive market economy; later, calling for regulation of the market and accepting government regulation to correct the excesses of the market. This was to be a later development and the name of John Stuart Mill is associated with it.

The central ideology of laissez faire was developed in protest against the crippling regulations and taxes laid by Colbert in France by a school of economists, known as the physiocrats who wanted the country to be rid of these imposts and the economy to be developed without hindrances; and the greatest hindrance was from the state. Adam Smith was to develop these. The principle of the Liberals then was that the economic needs of a society will be taken care of by society itself, if neither the state nor any other authority interfered in the working of the economy. The presumption was that of self-regulating mechanism at work in society and which would work for the advantage of all sections of the population. In modern economy, division of labour is central and the market the arena of all decisions. The phrase laissez faire became popular in the middle of the nineteenth century with J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy.

According to the philosophy of laissez faire, individuals acting on their own would be better judges of their needs than any other body and this is true of economic activities as well. Consumers freely backing up their demand in the absence of artificial regulations would result in generating maximum production of wealth and of individual satisfaction. The taxes collected by the government will be spent in unproductive activities.

Apart from this, there was an unfeeling attitude to the problems of the proletariat. The British economists were impressed by laws which they held to be immutable. Malthus was to argue of the impossibility of improving the lot of the poor - they tend to have an excessive birth rate. The subsistance theory of wages argued that the wage tends to be at a level which would allow the labour to exist and perpetuate itself without increase or decrease of their numbers. Any legislation which would augment the wage of the labour will result in a population increase which would offset the gain and poverty would continue. Also, increase in wages would eat into profits, reduce investment into production, increase unemployment and perpetuate misery. Nassau Senior advocated a view that legislation to shorten the hours of labour would militate against the profits; for profits are made only in the last hour of the working day. If one were to shorten the working hours, it would lead to the closing of the factories and mines. He was dubbed as 'Last Hour Senior'. The Liberals were described as creating a science for wealth rather than a science of wealth.

From the middle of the nineteenth century, Liberals tended to be divided on matters relating to laissez faire. Advocates of the extreme position were lionised and regarded as new prophets particularly in the U.S. Herbert Spencer (1802-1903) a great champion used the theory of evolution to promote economic competition. In nature, survival of the fittest is the rule; the weak and the effete make way for the strong and the swift. This law of nature cannot be altered, for it is spontaneous and will not brook human interference; any interference will end in disaster. The Gospel of Social Darwinism was very popular in the U.S. and his books were sold in millions. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court in one of its judicial decisions, was guided by Spencer's Social Statistics. This book was reprinted in 1915 by Conservatives to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party.

But not all the Liberal Economists took such a stand. McCulloch wanted legalisation of trade unions. Bentham's influence which was pervasive was to modify the rigour of laissez faire. He argued that unequal income could not bring equal satisfaction and since the greatest good of the greatest number was the guiding principle, he called not for equality of wages but for redistribution of income as well. J. S. Mill starting as an exponent of market individualism, became a supporter of state legislation in favour of the working classes. He supported control of unregulated competition, of the regulation of wages and profits and was to be sympathetic to socialistic ideas.

The Liberal Theorists were also finding it difficult to account for combinations among the producers. Theoretically, there should be free competition. But the rise of cartelism in Germany compelled the state to regulate these and strike a blow against free enterprise. The separation of economics and politics could not be sustained.

The rapid development of modern large scale industrialisation weakened whatever merits there were in a laissez faire position in earlier times and to a reconsideration of the credo. Business organisations were becoming powerful and correspondingly the consumers were in a weakened situation; however, with consumers getting the right to vote, there was a strident demand that political power should be used to curb business interest when they were getting excessively powerful and out of control.

The Marxist Challenge

The 19th century witnessed the propagation of Liberalism at its fullest; it also was to equally witness strident voices against the claims made for Liberalism. It should be remembered that as early as in the 1640s, in England, certain radical sects had asserted the need for an elected representative assembly, manhood suffrage and abolition of the monarchy. They advocated religious and social equality. They were known as Levellers. Similarly, the Diggers, another sect wanted the poor and the dispossessed to cultivate wastelands. Naturally, there was opposition to this. The radical protest was to continue.

These protest movements snowballed in a continent that was undergoing social changes; Socialism and Marxism in particular, were to reject the claims made by Liberalism that the Individual should be allowed to develop his potentialities without hindrances. The issue raised was that there was no individual as postulated by Liberalism. The average individual belongs to a group, a society, and these have already fixed the role that he would play. The freedom that he is supposed to exercise is no freedom at all. The Liberal saw the market as the institution that would harmonize the different constituents. Contesting this, Marx argued that the different institutions would be in conflict all the time and conflict, not harmony, is the basis of all societies and this particularly so of liberal capitalist societies.

He saw contemporary Europe as the playground of capitalist forces which would see immiserisation of the working classes with capitalism becoming more rapacious; and the workers driven to the wall would rise up in a revolution and establish a civilised social order. Marx saw the responsibility of intellectuals in organising the proletariat in their conflict with the entrenched classes, namely the capitalists. He was confident of the working classes ultimately emerging victorious from their conflicts. Meanwhile with capitalism becoming international in its ramifications, the leaders of the labouring classes too had to turn international and form alliances across national boundaries. Though Marx was optimistic of the victory of the working classes, yet his hopes were not to be. As late as 1870, he was to confess of his disappointment with the working classes losing all their revolutionary fervour. And none worked harder than Marx in trying to popularise his philosophy. It looked as though the hopes of Marx would be realised in Germany. While a powerful German working class party arose, it did not go the way that was expected by Marx.

Marxists themselves had to concede to the enormous resilence of capitalism and its vitality. The organisation of workers' parties, the electoral processes, and the development of industries and of technology cumulatively made for the fulfilment of the liberal dreams even for the working classes. Ideas and ideals could be very significant. With political and economic developments, changes could be brought about through manipulation and reconcilation. The working classes could be accommodated into the ongoing political process. It would be possible to reconcile the claims of the workers and that of the capitalists. Though both sections would not be totally satisfied, yet they would learn to respect the inevitable. Social cleavages continued; while Marx regarded them to be unbridgeable, the Liberals pointed to the small but effective ways of trying to bring different sections closer. European society did not go the way Marx had hoped them to; but in its evolution, it took note of the Marxist criticisms and tried to accommodate them too. Workers' parties were not banned but allowed to have their role in society and government.

Meanwhile, Liberalism was to modernize itself and accept the state which it had viewed with great distrust. It saw new tasks for the state, tasks that would help the individual to find new opportunities for bettering himself. A modified liberalism saw the inevitability of the state stepping in, and correcting the inequities that an unregulated market economy had bred. While a small coterie reaped enormous rewards from the market, countless lived in abysmally impoverished conditions. The modern corporations enabled a new group of managerial class which was in control of enormous resources and which could be almost as powerful as the small potentates of earlier societies. These classes and the business groups were well organised and "some of them used their power to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate electorate, to limit competition and to obstruct substantive social reform. Some of the same forces that had demolished the power of the despots now nourished a new despotism. Such, at any rate was the condition of the verdict of the 20th century liberals and such were the conditions that led them to oppose private collectivism by supporting a positive role for government and encouraging the formation of power centres outside business and government".

The Liberals sensitive to the enormities of regimentation and bureaucratic control that regulated and planned economies necessarily entail see a role for the market; and when necessary, a control of it as the means that cannot be avoided in modern society. The market is no perfect tool, its rewards are not always defensible and it can come heavily upon the poor and those sections that do not have opportunities to better themselves. Resources can be wasted and this can be indeed dear in a globe where these are becoming alarmingly scarce. Also social costs cannot be computed in the market. Primary needs like health, basic education, housing and public transport may be difficult to meet within the confines of the market run on a calculation of profit.

These need to be tackled; they have not been met through any overall philosophical approach as through empirical attempts to tackle problems as they arose. This has resulted in a wide spread of social services, and in the development of a welfare state. This has necessarily entailed heavy taxation; resented, it is recognised that when you pay taxes, you buy civilisation.

Liberalism as an open loose intellectual system has been changing its emphasis; earlier, it was opposed to the powers of the state, now it sees the need for making the very government for correcting the shortcomings of the market. The central issue has remained constant - an apprehension of any concentration of power, whether it be of the state or of the Church, or the Trade Union which would endanger the freedom of the citizen and come in the way of his individual fulfilment. It freely draws from even opposing ideologies such as socialism or marxism - the goal is the individual, the fulfilment of his potentialities and enlargement of his areas of freedom and choices available to him.