In our comments section, Jim Faas asks for some more detail about what classical liberalism is. It’s a very good question.
Classical liberalism is a major political movement in the West for the past two centuries and more, traceable to the English Whigs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its central vision is to expand opportunity.
In understanding classical liberalism, it helps, I think, to look at the idea of political temperaments.
Temperament is an indicator of how much and how quickly an individual would like to see society change, regardless of the direction or political content of the changes desired. Some people are reasonably content with things as they are (although almost no one is ever perfectly happy with the current political and social situation) and hence want to go slowly with any changes. Some see an ideal vision of the future and push for change to make it a reality, regardless of the amount and rapidity of transformation required. And some believe that all human societies are imperfect and inevitably must be so. As a consequence they push for steady reforms toward not a vision of an ideal society (which they believe can never be achieved anyway) but to create the greatest measure of human justice possible in the current place in history.
These three temperaments are the conservative, radical, and liberal, respectively.
Political temperament is revealed in and reflects an individual’s basic concerns in political and social matters, as follows:
Conservatives strive to preserve civilization.
Liberals strive to extend civilization.
Radicals strive to transform civilization.
There are people with all three political temperaments on both Left and Right. Hence, six categories: Conservative Left, Liberal Left, Radical Left, Conservative Right, Liberal Right, Radical Right.
The classical liberal position is basically as follows: Political and social liberty make perpetual change inevitable in modern Western society—because of technological advances, economic development, social movements, changes in religious observance, etc. Freedom ensures that any society will always be changing.
As conditions change in society, political change is necessary, if only to preserve what has been accomplished (as conservatives would wish to do).
In answer to Jim’s question regarding whether Barry Goldwater’s conservative philosophy of the early 1960s is very close to classical liberalism, I’d say yes, in most ways it is. Later, Goldwater became pretty much what I call in my NRO article a "New Age Conservative," meaning a conservative of the Left. And one place where I can immediately identify a difference between Goldwater and pure classical liberalism is in the Arizonan’s opposition to providing civil rights for blacks in the South, as in the Voting Rights Act. The very first classical liberals, such as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, emphasized the need to spread opportunity as widely as possible, which is what the long-overdue liberalization of the South (which was begun by Republicans such as President Eisenhower and pressed forward by the classical liberal JFK) was meant to accomplish. It was their way of extending the benefits of Western civilization to people being denied them.
In the twentieth century, the best-known great classical liberals are probably the Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Milton Friedman would undoubtedly qualify as well.
When describing classical liberalism, I sometimes refer to it as Reagan-Burke liberalism. Consider the following statement by Ronald Reagan in an interview before he became President:
If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals—if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
That’s as succinct a definition as you could hope for. Reagan uses the term conservatism, but what he’s really describing is classical liberalism (as he was undoubtedly well aware).
That’s a very good observation, Matt, and indicates that the Barry Goldwater of the early 1960s was indeed a pretty good approximation of a classical liberal. I think that Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy are probably the best examples of classical liberalism among post-FDR presidents–which suggests that the early 1960s were a high point for the philosophy, with Kennedy and Goldwater at or near the top of their respective parties. Things went very wrong thereafter, alas.
It should also be noted that there were and are perfectly valid classical-liberal reasons for opposing the Vorting Rights Act. (That is, opposing the specific legislation which was passed by the US Congress under that name…which is a very different thing than opposing voting rights per se, or voting rights for blacks per se.)
The provision, for example, which denies states the right to a nonproportional chamber in the legislature (such as, indeed, the Federal government continues to have in the Senate) has proven to be rather a disaster for liberty on the ground.
Thanks, Hunter. I agree with your characterization of Goldwater’s motivation for opposing certain federal civil rights actions and his likely willingness to accept changes on the state level. However, I think Burke, Smith and other Whigs would have agreed with Ike and JFK on this one, which distinguishes Goldwater a bit from the main body of classical liberal thought even in his prime.
Interestingly, the main opposition to the Voting Rights Act came mostly from Democrats–definitely not classical liberals then or now, regardless of which side of the issue they end up on.
Helpful classifications, S.T. I take slight issue with what you say about Goldwater. I think his opposition to civil rights legislation was based on his reading of the constitution rather than his own ideology of civil rights. He would surely have embraced a measure from a particular state achieving the same thing.
I think you are quite right in your characterization of his later years.
You’re very welcome, Jim. I’d say that there are some significant differences between classical liberalism and libertarianism. In the main, I’d say that libertarianism is one of those philosoophies that has a specific vision of the world and wants to press society into the desired mold. Liberty is the paramount concern, and a good deal of social disorder and individual unhappiness are willingly tolerated in pursuit of the ideal of maximal liberty.
Classical liberalism, by contrast, judges all propositions on the basis of whether they will create the best possible balance of liberty and order attainable, and thereby truly maximize each. Classical liberalism is therefore not an ideology but instead more of a pragmatic philosophy with core principles of liberty and order as the central matters of interest.
Thanks so much for you definations and descriptions. So…are there any differences between classical liberalism and libertarians? Thanks again!