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* [[File:Volt.png]] [[European Federalism|Damian Boeselager]] (1988-) [[File:Cball-Germany.png]] Germany
* [[File:Volt.png]] [[European Federalism|Damian Boeselager]] (1988-) [[File:Cball-Germany.png]] Germany
* [[File:Destiny.png]] [[Social Capitalism|Steven Kenneth "Destiny" Bonnell II]] (1988- ) [[File:Cball-US.png]] United States
* [[File:Destiny.png]] [[Social Capitalism|Steven Kenneth "Destiny" Bonnell II]] (1988- ) [[File:Cball-US.png]] United States
|caption="Not me. Us."
|examples=*[[File:Cball-Canada.png]] Canada
|likes =[[File:Lib.png]] Liberalism<br> [[File:Neoliberalism-alt.png]] Globalization <br> [[File:Liberal Democracy.png]] Democracy <br> [[File:Markets.png]] Free Trade <br> [[File:Welf.png]] Welfare <br> [[File:Prgess.png]] Progress <br> [[File:Liberty.png]] Freedom
|likes =[[File:Lib.png]] Liberalism<br> [[File:Neoliberalism-alt.png]] Globalization <br> [[File:Liberal Democracy.png]] Democracy <br> [[File:Markets.png]] Free Trade <br> [[File:Welf.png]] Welfare <br> [[File:Prgess.png]] Progress <br> [[File:Liberty.png]] Freedom
|dislikes = [[File:Neonazi ball.png]] Nazis<br>[[File:Tankie.png]] Tankies<br> [[File:Nation.png]] Nationalism <br> [[File:Soc.png]] Socialism <br> [[File:Austrobert.png]] Austrian Economics <br> [[File: Totalitarian.png]] Totalitarianism <br> [[File:Insarch.png]] Political Violence
|dislikes = [[File:Neonazi ball.png]] Nazis<br>[[File:Tankie.png]] Tankies<br> [[File:Nation.png]] Nationalism <br> [[File:Soc.png]] Socialism <br> [[File:Austrobert.png]] Austrian Economics <br> [[File: Totalitarian.png]] Totalitarianism <br> [[File:Insarch.png]] Political Violence

Revision as of 14:39, 12 December 2021

Template:Featured

Social Liberalism (SocLib) also called Left-Liberalism (LeftLib), Modern Liberalism (ModLib), Welfare Liberalism (WelLib) and New Liberalism (NewLib) is an economically center to center-left, civically liberal, and culturally progressive political ideology which combines elements of liberal democracy and economic interventionism in the name of "ensuring economic justice as well as civil liberty". Social Liberals view the common good as harmonious with individual freedom. Much of Social Liberalism's success is due to the fact that it's polices have gained broad support across the political spectrum because of it's reform-minded polices that address societal problems without overhauling the capitalist economic system. As economic circumstances became more dire in places, many were more willing to accept social liberalism since it seemed to be less radical and evil than other forms of left-wing government. Because of this, Social liberalism has been characterized by cooperation between businesses, government and labor unions. Many governments throughout the modern world have successfully adopted social liberal policies, and is now the dominant form of liberalism in North America, where it's often referred to as simply 'liberalism'.

History

Heavily inspired by his father Radicalism, SocLib began to take his first steps in the late 19th century as welfare states around the world started to grow. But it didn't become a more fully developed ideology until the post-war period when numerous Western democracies throughout the world began to implement social liberal policies in the aftermath of World War II.

United Kingdom

Social Liberalism started in the United Kingdom at the end of the 19th century as a trend within the Liberal Party that moved away from laissez-faire economics, accepting certain market regulations, and moved more towards a social welfare system and from the more traditional classical liberal deontological view of morality to a more utilitarian view of morality based on the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.

The most influential figure behind the move towards this kind of liberalism is the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, who believed in certainly free markets along with welfare systems to assure equal opportunities.

The New Liberals

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, a group called the New Liberals began to argue against the laissez-faire economic system of classical liberalism and argued in favor of state interventionism in the economy as a way to ensure individual liberty would be secured under favorable social and economic circumstances.

The Liberal Party, one of the two major political parties in the UK during the 19th and early 20th century, established the foundations of the welfare state in the United Kingdom before World War I. These liberal welfare reforms included progressive taxation, pensions for poor elderly people, and the National Insurance Act of 1911 which established health, sickness and unemployment insurance. At this time, big bussiness owners, who regularly opposed these reforms, started to leave the Liberal Party to join the Conservative Party. The welfare state in the United Kingdom became more robust after World War II, mainly due to the efforts of the Labour Party, and was heavily inspired by the economics of John Maynard Keynes and the welfare system of William Beveridge.

In modern day United Kingdom, Social Liberalism is most prominently represented by the Liberal Democrats and has had a strong influence on the Labour Party.

Germany

In the 1860s, some left-liberal politicians in Germany started to establish trade unions with the goal of improving worker conditions through cooperation between employees and employers. By the 1870s, some liberal economists were promoting social reform that rejected classical economics and supported an alternative to classical liberalism and File:Soc.png Socialist Revolution.

In the 19th century, the German left-liberal movement began to fragment into new parties including the German Progress Party. The main objectives of these parties were free speech, freedom of assembly, representative government, and protection of private property but they were opposed to the creation of a welfare state which they called state socialism.

The Protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann founded the National-Social Association Party in 1896 which proposed a mix of nationalism, christian socialism, and social liberalism. He attempted to use this party to draw workers away from Marxism but it only lasted for roughly seven years and was unable to win any seats.

In the Weimar Republic, the German Democratic Party was founded in 1918. It had both a social-liberal and classical liberal wing. It heavily favored republicanism over monarchism. It's ideas consisted of a socially balanced economy with solidarity, duty and rights among all workers, but it struggled due to the economic sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles.

In 1932, the economist Alexander Rüstow called his version of social liberalism Neoliberalism, although that term now carries a meaning different from the one proposed by Rüstow. His form of liberalism provided an alternative to File:Soc.png socialism and to the classical liberal economics developed in the German Empire. In 1938, Alexander Rüstow attended the Colloque Walter Lippmann conference. There, Rüstow advocated a strong state to enforce free markets and state intervention to correct market failures.

Following World War II, Rüstow's neoliberalism, now usually called ordoliberalism or the social market economy, was adopted by the West German government under Ludwig Erhard, who was the Minister of Economics and later became Chancellor. Price controls were lifted and free markets were introduced. While these policies are credited with Germany's post-war economic recovery, the welfare state—which had been established under Bismarck—became increasingly costly.

After 1945, the Free Democrats included most of the social liberals while others joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Until the 1960s, post-war ordoliberalism was the model for Germany. It had theoretical influence of social liberalism based on duty and rights. As the Free Democrats discarded social liberal ideas in favor of more conservative and economical liberal approach in 1982, some members left the party and formed the social liberal Liberal Democrats.

United States

American political discourse resisted this social turn in European liberalism. In the United States, the term social liberalism was used to differentiate it from classical liberalism or laissez-faire, which dominated political and economic thought for a number of years until the term branched off from it around the Great Depression and the New Deal.

In the 1870s and the 1880s, the American economists Richard Ely, John Bates Clark and Henry Carter Adams—influenced both by File:Soc.png socialism and the Evangelical Protestant movement—castigated the conditions caused by industrial factories and expressed sympathy towards labor unions. However, none developed a systematic political philosophy and they later abandoned their flirtations with File:Soc.png socialist thinking. In 1883, Lester Frank Ward published the two-volume Dynamic Sociology and formalized the basic tenets of social liberalism while at the same time attacking the laissez-faire policies advocated by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. The historian Henry Steele Commager ranked Ward alongside William James, John Dewey and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and called him the father of the modern welfare state. Writing from 1884 until the 1930s, John Dewey—an educator influenced by Hobhouse, Green and Ward—advocated File:Soc.png socialist methods to achieve liberal goals. Some social liberal ideas were later incorporated into the New Deal, which developed as a response to the Great Depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office.

While the economic policies of the New Deal appeared Keynesian, there was no revision of liberal theory in favor of greater state initiative. Even though the United States lacked an effective File:Soc.png socialist movement, New Deal policies often appeared radical and were attacked by the right. The separate development of modern liberalism in the United States is often attributed to American exceptionalism, which kept mainstream American ideology within a narrow range.

John Rawls' principal work A Theory of Justice (1971) can be considered a flagship exposition of social liberal thinking, advocating the combination of individual freedom and a fairer distribution of resources. According to Rawls, every individual should be allowed to choose and pursue his or her own conception of what is desirable in life, while a socially just distribution of goods must be maintained. Rawls argued that differences in material wealth are tolerable if general economic growth and wealth also benefit the poorest. A Theory of Justice countered utilitarian thinking in the tradition of Jeremy Bentham, instead following the Kantian concept of a social contract, picturing society as a mutual agreement between rational citizens, producing rights and duties as well as establishing and defining roles and tasks of the state. Rawls put the equal liberty principle in the first place, providing every person with equal access to the same set of fundamental liberties, followed by the fair equality of opportunity and difference principle, thus allowing social and economic inequalities under the precondition that privileged positions are accessible to everyone, that everyone has equal opportunities and that even the least advantaged members of society benefit from this framework. This was later restated in the equation of Justice as Fairness. Rawls proposed these principles not just to adherents of liberalism, but as a basis for all democratic politics, regardless of ideology. The work advanced social liberal ideas immensely within the 1970s political and philosophic academia. Rawls may therefore be seen as a "patron saint" of social liberalism.

In recent US history, both former democratic President Barrack Obama and current democratic President Joe Biden have incorporated social liberal principles and policies throughout their presidencies.

France

Historically, Radicalism emerged in an early form with the French Revolution and the similar movements it inspired in other countries. It grew prominent during the 1830s in the United Kingdom with the Chartists and Belgium with the Revolution of 1830, then across Europe in the 1840s–1850s during the Revolutions of 1848. In contrast to the social conservatism of existing liberal politics, radicalism sought political support for a radical reform of the electoral system to widen suffrage. It was also associated with republicanism, liberalism, left-wing politics, modernism, secular humanism, anti-imperialism, civic nationalism, abolition of titles, File:Enlightnenment.png rationalism and the resistance to a single established state religion, redistribution of property and freedom of the press.

In 19th-century France, radicalism had emerged as a minor political force by the 1840s as the extreme left of the day, in contrast to the socially-conservative liberalism of the Moderate Republicans and Orléanist monarchists and the anti-parliamentarianism of the Legitimist monarchists and Bonapartists. By the 1890s, the French radicals were not organized under a single nationwide structure, but rather they had become a significant political force in parliament. In 1901, they consolidated their efforts by forming the country's first major extra-parliamentary political party, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party which became the most important party of government during the second half (1899 to 1940) of the French Third Republic. The success of the French Radicals encouraged radicals elsewhere to organize themselves into formal parties in a range of other countries in the late 19th and early 20th century, with radicals holding significant political office in Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. During the interwar period, European radical parties organized the Radical Entente, their own political international.

As social democracy emerged as a distinct political force in its own right, the differences that once existed between historical left-wing radicalism and Liberal Conservatism dimenished. Between 1940 and 1973, radicalism became defunct in most of its European heartlands, with its role and philosophy taken on by social-democratic and Conservative Liberal parties.

Turkey

Kemalist Economic Model was designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. His economic model can be summarized as "solidarist liberal economy". Atatürk put the principle of "Statism" in his Six Arrows and explained this principle as follows:

"State can't take the place of individuals, but, it must take into consideration the individuals to make them improve and develop themselves. Etatism includes the work that individuals won't do because they can't make profit or the work which are necessary for national interests. Just as it is the duty of the state to protect the freedom and independence of the country and to regulate internal affairs, the state must take care of the education and health of its citizens. The state must take care of the roads, railways, telegraphs, telephones, animals of the country, all kinds of vehicles and the general wealth of the nation to protect the peace and security of the country. During the administration and protection of the country, the things we just counted are more important than cannons, rifles and all kinds of weapons. (...) Private interests are generally the opposite of the general interests. Also, private interests are based on rivalries. But, you can't create a stable economy only with this. People who think like that are delusional and they will be a failure. (...) And, work of an individual must stay as the main basis of economic growth. Not preventing an individual's work and not obstructing the individual's freedom and enterprise with the state's own activities is the main basis of the principle of democracy."

Moreover, Atatürk said this at his opening speech in November 1, 1937: "Unless there is an absolute necessity, the markets can't be intervened; also, no markets can be completely free."

Also he said that the principle of statism is a special economic system for Turkey, and said that it's different from socialism, communism and collectivism.

As it's understood from his words, Atatürk's statism is a social liberal economic system.

Liberal Kemalism

The Free Republican Party (sometimes referred to as the Liberal Republican Party; in Turkish: Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) was a political party founded by Fethi Okyar upon President Kemal Atatürk's request in the early years of the Turkish Republic.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk requested that Okyar create it as an opposition party to confront the ruling Republican People's Party with the aim of establishing the tradition of multi-party democracy in Turkey.

In addition, this party defended the Liberal Kemalist thought in line with Atatürk's wishes.

However, the party was quickly embraced by the conservatives who saw it as an opportunity to reverse the reforms of Atatürk, particularly regarding secularism, and was personally dissolved in November 1930 by Okyar who himself was an ardent supporter of the reforms.


Beliefs and Ideas

Consequentalism

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This historically important and still popular theory embodies the basic intuition that what is best or right is whatever makes the world best in the future, because we cannot change the past, so worrying about the past is no more useful than crying over spilled milk. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is probably consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all humans equally. Proponents of utilitarianism have disagreed on a number of points, such as whether actions should be chosen based on their likely results (act utilitarianism), or whether agents should conform to rules that maximize utility (rule utilitarianism). There is also disagreement as to whether total (total utilitarianism), average (average utilitarianism) or minimum utility should be maximized.

Rule Utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism, Created by John Stuart Mill, that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance". Philosophers Richard Brandt and Brad Hooker are major proponents of such an approach.

For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge an act in terms of the consequences of that act alone (such as stopping at a red light), rather than judging whether it faithfully adhered to the rule of which it was an instance (such as, "always stop at red lights"). Rule utilitarians argue that following rules that tend to lead to the greatest good will have better consequences overall than allowing exceptions to be made in individual instances, even if better consequences can be demonstrated in those instances.

Economics

SocLib believes in modestly regulated capitalism with a large social safety net in a similar vein to Social Democracy. In the Vein of Keynesianism, Social Liberals generally argue that aggregate demand is volatile and unstable and that, consequently, a market economy often experiences inefficient macroeconomic outcomes – a recession, when demand is low, and inflation, when demand is high. Further, they argue that these economic fluctuations can be mitigated by economic policy responses coordinated between government and central bank. In particular, fiscal policy actions (taken by the government) and monetary policy actions (taken by the central bank), can help stabilize economic output, inflation, and unemployment over the business cycle. Social liberals advocate a market economy – predominantly private sector, but with an active role for government intervention during recessions and depressions. These ideas were largley developed during and after the Great Depression.

A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls, in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society). The theory uses an updated form of Kantian philosophy and a variant form of conventional social contract theory. Rawls's theory of justice is fully a political theory of justice as opposed to other forms of justice discussed in other disciplines and contexts. However, the theory of justice itself is applicable to other moral systems.

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality that is meant to apply to the basic structure of a well-ordered society. Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some of Immanuel Kant's views. Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties. These parties are recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic. They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation with others on mutually acceptable terms. Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose mutually acceptable principles of justice. Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied alternatives, including utilitarian and 'right wing' libertarian accounts.

File:Progress.png Progressivism

Social Liberalism is in support of social reform based on the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society. Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.

Feminism

Social Liberals have contributed monumentally to feminist theory. Liberal Feminism largely grew out of and was often associated with social liberalism; the modern liberal feminist tradition notably includes both social liberal and social democratic streams, and many often diverging schools of thought such as equality feminism, social feminism, equity feminism, and difference feminism Additionaly, the most seminal work of early feminism, The Subjection of Women, written by John Stuart Mill, would go on to have a crucial influence of feminist politics.


Personality

Social Liberalism either acts like a stereotypical western urban/suburban middle-class millennial, or a worn out, sleepy old English man, similar to Classical Liberalism. If he's the former he's very modern and loves to read analytic philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, and John Stuart Mill. He's also a massive DGGer.

If he's the later he'll still read those analytic philosophers, although he'll usually take a much more pessimistic and pragmatic approach to politics. He'll also talk about "the glory days" like FDR's presidency and the woman's sufferage movment.

How to Draw

File:Soclib flag(2).png
Flag of Social Liberalism

The Social Liberal design is the Social Democratic Rose in the Liberal colours of Blue and Gold.

  1. Draw a ball,
  2. Fill it with the same shade of blue as Liberalism (#006AA7),
  3. Draw a rose in gold (#FFD700),
  4. Draw the eyes, and you're done!
Color Name HEX RGB
Blue #005C94 0, 92, 148
Gold #EEE8AA 238, 232, 170


Relationships

Friends

Frenemies

Enemies

Further Information

For overlapping political theory, see:

Liberalism, Social Democracy, Welfarism, File:Prog.png Progressivism, Keynesianism, Regulationism, and Third Way.

Literature

Wikipedia

People

Videos

Communities

Gallery

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