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Authors: Michael Freeden
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regarding them as the consequence of social membership—an obligatory gift of society to its crucial building blocks: human beings. Indeed, the salience of liberty in the liberal groundsheet was slightly decentred as it was made to share prime billing with human welfare and flourishing. But liberalism’s second sheet—that regarded human relations above all as individual market transactions—was virtually removed from the sheaf by the left-liberals. It took almost half a century for that sheet to be re-inserted in the British liberal tradition, though it continued to be more evident in continental versions. Fourth layer liberals were prone to denounce what they termed ‘the Manchester School’ with its self-centred economic man, its lack of focus on the underprivileged, and its overlooking of the role that society plays in the creation of wealth. Though they welcomed free trade, it had to be trade emancipated from the control of financial, industrial, and military monopolies. Those monopolies may have grown out of the adulation of unlimited private enterprise but they transmogrified into exploitative imperialism.
Layer five
The fifth layer of liberalism—which is far more contemporary—dispenses with the unitary view of society promoted by layer four. Sociological transformations and cultural insights have increasingly impinged on liberal thinking. From the early 20th century onwards liberals became aware of the dispersal of power in a society, not as something to be overcome because it set group against group—as in class conflict—but as something to be welcomed. Social and political analysts discovered that society was composed of many disparate interest groups, none of which could monopolize power—a monopoly the state had been assumed to wield by German liberals such as Max Weber. That new kind of spread-out power supplemented and strengthened the legal and constitutional separation of powers. A liberal society had to take on board the interplay not only among individuals, but among such groups, a pluralist perspective that weakened the centralizing role of the state. Liberal politics could be re-conceptualized as a different kind of free market, not an economic one, but one in which a variety of social groups were jostling for positions of influence.
4. The social reforms of the Liberal government in and around 1911 provided limited state health and unemployment insurance and set the basis for the future welfare state.
Later in the 20th century, what was known as the ‘politics of identity’ came to the fore. Just taking account of the plurality of groups competing over the realization of their commercial, financial, or local interests in the public sphere was no longer sufficient for liberals. A more permanent map of human diversity emerged in which the older, problematic categories of race and biology were in part superseded. Alternative categories based on gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation slowly worked their way into mainstream liberal consciousness, rather than being denied, excluded, or ignored. Liberals in India, for example, prioritize the protection of minorities who are denied fair participation. In the Netherlands the safeguarding of different lifestyles is prioritized over harnessing the state to achieve liberal ends. Those multiple identities—cultural, psychological, and social—are increasingly seen by liberals as normal rather than marginal features of communal life and have been added to the ideational heart of what they profess to hold dear.
Liberal dilemmas
The fifth layer constitutes a difficult terrain for liberals, interspersed as it is with some ethical and ideological quagmires. Its hallmarks are confusion and uncertainty, precisely because it attempts to amalgamate incompatible sections of the other layers. The incorporation of group diversity and uniqueness into the liberal lexicon has introduced a particularistic counter-current that has partly eaten away
Layer five
The fifth layer of liberalism—which is far more contemporary—dispenses with the unitary view of society promoted by layer four. Sociological transformations and cultural insights have increasingly impinged on liberal thinking. From the early 20th century onwards liberals became aware of the dispersal of power in a society, not as something to be overcome because it set group against group—as in class conflict—but as something to be welcomed. Social and political analysts discovered that society was composed of many disparate interest groups, none of which could monopolize power—a monopoly the state had been assumed to wield by German liberals such as Max Weber. That new kind of spread-out power supplemented and strengthened the legal and constitutional separation of powers. A liberal society had to take on board the interplay not only among individuals, but among such groups, a pluralist perspective that weakened the centralizing role of the state. Liberal politics could be re-conceptualized as a different kind of free market, not an economic one, but one in which a variety of social groups were jostling for positions of influence.
4. The social reforms of the Liberal government in and around 1911 provided limited state health and unemployment insurance and set the basis for the future welfare state.
Later in the 20th century, what was known as the ‘politics of identity’ came to the fore. Just taking account of the plurality of groups competing over the realization of their commercial, financial, or local interests in the public sphere was no longer sufficient for liberals. A more permanent map of human diversity emerged in which the older, problematic categories of race and biology were in part superseded. Alternative categories based on gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation slowly worked their way into mainstream liberal consciousness, rather than being denied, excluded, or ignored. Liberals in India, for example, prioritize the protection of minorities who are denied fair participation. In the Netherlands the safeguarding of different lifestyles is prioritized over harnessing the state to achieve liberal ends. Those multiple identities—cultural, psychological, and social—are increasingly seen by liberals as normal rather than marginal features of communal life and have been added to the ideational heart of what they profess to hold dear.
Liberal dilemmas
The fifth layer constitutes a difficult terrain for liberals, interspersed as it is with some ethical and ideological quagmires. Its hallmarks are confusion and uncertainty, precisely because it attempts to amalgamate incompatible sections of the other layers. The incorporation of group diversity and uniqueness into the liberal lexicon has introduced a particularistic counter-current that has partly eaten away
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