Mike Huben poses the question: “I never see a list of who the classical liberals were and who their contemporaries were who were not classical liberals.”
Classical liberalism was a political and philosophical tradition, often distinct from later political liberalism as in organised political parties, and it is also necessary to distinguish political liberalism from economic liberalism.
Liberalism originally consisted in opposition to state power. Classical liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries were left-wing because they defended individual rights and laissez-faire, while conservatives were absolutist defenders of the centralized state and the divine right of kings. In the UK, this Classical liberal tradition existed well before the formation of the Whig party, which dominated Britain between 1688 and the 1830s. In the 1830s, the Whig party split: the progressives joined with the Utilitarians, democrats, and some Chartists to form the Liberal Party, whilst others joined the Conservative party. The term “Liberal” was used c. 1830, and British liberalism continued developing in different forms until the Liberal party was crushingly defeated in 1922. Keynes, as a matter of fact, regarded himself as in the British Liberal tradition, and was neither a Marxist or socialist.
I give a list of Classical liberals and some of the New (“Progressive”) British Liberals below.
Classical Liberals
John Locke
John Trenchard (1662–1723)
Thomas Gordon (c. 1692–1750)
David Hume
Adam Smith
Thomas Paine
Montesquieu
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)
Benjamin Constant (1767–1830)
Edward Gibbon
Jeremy Bentham
Philosophes: Liberals of the French Enlightenment
Pierre le Pesant, Sieur de Boisguilbert 1646–1714
Richard Cantillon 1680?–1734
John Law 1671–1729
Etienne Bonnot, Abbe de Condillac 1714–1780
Denis Diderot 1713–1784
Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot 1727–1781
Abbe Andre Morellet 1727–1819
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet 1743–1794
American Liberals
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
John Jay (1745–1829)
Andrew Jackson
James Madison
British Liberals
Classical Economists
David Ricardo 1772–1823
James Mill 1773–1836
John Ramsay McCulloch 1789–1864
Thomas de Quincey 1785–1859
Nassau William Senior 1790–1864
John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
Philosophical Radicals
James Mill 1773–1836
Thomas Babington Macaulay (Whig conservative)
John Bright 1811–1889
Richard Cobden 1804–1865
Lord John Russell 1792–1878
Palmerstone
Charles Darwin
Thomas Henry Huxley
Henry David Thoreau
Roebuck
Robert Lowe
Lord Acton
William E. Gladstone
Matthew Arnold
George Eliot
John Morley
R. B. Haldane
Extreme/Doctrinaire Laissez faire
Jane Marcet
Harriet Martineau
James Wilson (The Economist)
Thomas Hodgskin
Herbert Spencer
Nassau Senior
Social Darwinists
Herbert Spencer
Manchester School Liberalism
Jane Haldimand Marcet 1769–1858
Harriet Martineau 1802–1876
Richard Cobden 1804–1865
John Bright 1811–1889
Walter Bagehot 1826–1877
Sir Robert Giffen 1837–
French Liberals
Jean Joseph Mounier
Jacques Mallet du Pan
Pierre Claude Francois Daunou
Madame de Stael
Abbe de Lamennais
Alphonse de Lamartine
Francois Guizot
Royer-Collard
Charles de Remusat
Alexis de Tocqueville
Ideologues: Republican Liberals
Comte Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy 1754–1836.
Comte Germain Garnier 1754–1821.
Jean-Baptiste Say 1767–1832
Restoration Liberals
Charles Dunoyer 1786–1862
Francois-Charles-Louis Comte 1782–1837
Horace Emile Say 1794–1860
Pelegrino Rossi 1787–1848
Jereme-Adolphe Blanqui 1798–1854
Journalistes: Liberals of the Second Empire
Claude Frederic Bastiat 1801–1850
Michel Chevalier 1806–1879
Jean-Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil 1813–1892
Gustave de Molinari 1819–1912
Joseph Clement Garnier 1813–1881
Maurice Block 1816–1901
Leon B. Say 1826–1896
Pierre Emile Levasseur 1828–1911
Yves Guyot 1843–1928
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu 1843–1916
German Liberals
Immanuel Kant
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Schiller
Karl Heinrich Rau 1792–1870
Friedrich B.W. Hermann 1795–1868
Eugen Karl Doehring 1833–1921
C. von Rotteck
C. T. Weicker
New Liberals/Later British Liberals
– by 1910, those in the UK Liberal party committed to laissez faire had moved to the Conservative party
Thomas H. Green
Arnold Toynbee 1852–1883
Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie 1825–1882
D. G. Ritchie
Viscount Herbert Samuel
L. T. Hobhouse (Liberal Socialism)
H. Campbell Bannerman 1899–1908
H. H. Asquith
Charles Masterman
David Lloyd George 1926–1931
J. A. Hobson
Sir Andrew McFadyean
Willliam Beveridge
Sir Winston Churchill
E. M. Forster
Leonard Woolf (liberal socialist)
>John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, von Mises dismissed him as a socialist in Human Action. Mill's comments on co-operatives are interesting, though. This suggests something more than a classical liberal -- a liberal socialist, perhaps?
> Thomas Hodgskin
His early works are distinctly socialist in their analysis and critique of capital. Marx was impressed by them, for example.
Iain
An Anarchist FAQ
This is a pathetic attempt at legitimizing today's left - aka progressive movement which has nothing to do with liberalism.
ReplyDeleteYou are a proponent of social democracies. Nothing about social democracies is consistent with classical liberalism. Individual liberty / freedom is a pre-requisite of classical liberalism. Social democracies promote creation of rights other than natural rights (such as right to healthcare among others). You CANNOT create such rights without intruding in to natural rights of man as specified in the Declaration of Independence. Therefore social democracies are WHOLLY INCONSISTENT with classical liberalism.
Thus your pathetic attempt to legitimize the left - the progressive left which you are a part of - by making bogus, non-exisiting connections with classical liberalism.
"Nothing about social democracies is consistent with classical liberalism."
ReplyDeleteClassical liberalism isn't some unified, consistent movement: it has clear diverging and inconsistent strands.
In fact, utilitarianism came to be a major ethical theory of Classical liberalism by teh 19th century, and liberals like John Stuart Mill were already making the case for state interventions on utilitarian grounds.
I have a few further comments and questions.
ReplyDelete"Liberalism originally consisted in opposition to state power. Classical liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries were left-wing because they defended individual rights and laissez-faire, while conservatives were absolutist defenders of the centralized state and the divine right of kings."
I would at the very least rephrase that first sentence: liberalism consisted of opposition to PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of state power. Thus natural rights were invented to counter the equally invented rights of kings. But very few liberals opposed the centralized state: they desperately wanted something more manageable than a king or dictator.
Are these all classical liberals except the new liberals? Are the Whig conservatives classical liberals?
Why are the first 9 dateless and not in the various subclasses?
By what standards are all these people classical liberals?
How did you compose this list?
What is the range of variation among the supposedly unifying characteristics of classical liberals?
Which are primarily economists and not political philosophers?
you list John Stuart Mill twice
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon are missing
Alexander Hamilton and John Jay are missing
"Which are primarily economists and not political philosophers?"
ReplyDeleteThese are the Classical Economists (or Classical Political economits):
Adam Smith
David Ricardo 1772–1823
James Mill 1773–1836
John Ramsay McCulloch 1789–1864
Thomas de Quincey 1785–1859
Nassau William Senior 1790–1864
John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
Philosophical Radicals
James Mill 1773–1836
"I would at the very least rephrase that first sentence: liberalism consisted of opposition to PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of state power."
ReplyDeleteNot an unfair comment.
Are these all classical liberals except the new liberals?
Yes but, again, classical liberalism is broad church: it has different wings and sometimes contradictory strands, and one can't expect a nice and tidy "school".
"you list John Stuart Mill twice"
Ah! I'll fix that.
"John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon are missing
ReplyDeleteAlexander Hamilton and John Jay are missing "
Yes, I have.. That is something of an oversight!
I have added them.
"How did you compose this list?"
ReplyDeleteFrom memory, research and notes I took a long time ago in a university history class on Enlightment/19th century history.
As far as I am aware these people above are conventionally regarded as Classila liberals,
Has Rousseau never been regarded as a classical liberal?
ReplyDelete--successfulbuild
Yes, his thought is, but:
ReplyDeleteConsequently, a central question of liberal political theory is whether political authority can be justified, and if so, how. It is for this reason that social contract theory, as developed by Thomas Hobbes (1948 [1651]), John Locke (1960 [1689]), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1973 [1762]) and Immanuel Kant (1965 [1797]), is usually viewed as liberal even though the actual political prescriptions of, say, Hobbes and Rousseau, have distinctly illiberal features.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/#DebAboLib
I will add him.
I still would like to know by what standard all these people are classical liberals. Or perhaps a standard for excluding people as classical liberals.
ReplyDelete"I heard they were" and "I know one when I see one" doesn't really do it for me.
I lik ethe rest of your answers, and I think this is going to be really useful.
"I still would like to know by what standard all these people are classical liberals. Or perhaps a standard for excluding people as classical liberals."
ReplyDeleteWell, many of British people above were members of the British liberal party after c. 1830. There was a 19th century German liberal party too whose important members are listed above.
People who self-identify as liberals would seem to be a good starting point!
Before 1830s the Whig party was the natural home of classical liberals, or people who
(1) urging constitutional govrnment, and an end to despotism.
(2) some kind of limited government
(3) liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, and freedom of the press
(4) A secular attitute to government and society, although some of the French liberals were strongly anti-religious and anti-clerical
(5) some commitment to free markets and laissez faire.
But again there were different strands. So, for example, some liberals were fairly disgusted by the effects of industrialization and free markets, and were urging remedial interventions by government even by the late 18th century. Chomsky calls these people "pre-capitalist" Classical liberals.
Also, there was a split between those who supported (1) natural rights ethics and (2) utilitarian ethics.
Utilitarianism led itself to support a greater role for the state.
Also, a lot of 18th century liberals were deists and sometimes quite harsh critics of organised Chrstianity. Sometimes you got the occasional atheist too.
Voltaire is famous for his hatred of and lifelong opposition to the Catholic church and its horrible superstitions. He was actually still having to defend people from being burned at the stake for blasphemy in the 18th century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_de_la_Barre
People just forget how brutal and horrific some forms of 18th century Christianity were.