[This is a section in the Student Study Guide for the Honors “Comparative Social and Political Philosophies” class taught by Dwight Murphey at Wichita State University in the Fall semester 1996.  The Study Guide contained a short essay on each of the major social-political philosophies.]

 

 

Modern (Twentieth Century American) Liberalism

The body of thought that in the 20th century United States has been called "liberal" has been a mixture of diverse tendencies. Perhaps more than anything else, it has represented the thinking of the world Left to the extent that American intellectuals who have wanted to stay on speaking terms with the American mainstream have been able to embrace it. It has been the American socialism that has not seen its way clear to call itself, most of the time, socialist.

Its thinking has coincided mainly with that of democratic socialists. Because of this, it would be tempting to define modern liberalism as "'social democracy' applied in a politic way to the American context." But on at least two occasions America's liberal-Left has revealed a different side: in the early 1930s and the late 1960s its thinking has embraced, or has come very close to embracing, totalitarian socialism. In the 1990s, its insistence on "political correctness" has evinced an hostility to freely-expressed opinion. These things necessarily give us pause as to how precisely to classify it. At other times it has amounted to little more than the watered-down welfare statism and social-market thinking that has been forced upon European socialism by the failures of the various attempts at socialism.

One of the defining characteristics of modern liberals, as distinguished from those on the Left who have declared themselves socialists per se, has been that they have been sensitive to the fact that most Americans have not been willing to accept anything directly labelled "socialist." Accordingly, the label is avoided, and modern liberals don't call themselves socialist (and even deny it), except from time to time in their in-house literature.

From the perspective of those on the far Left, modern liberalism is, however, seen as perhaps one of three things: as too much of a "cop-out" to merit the socialist label; as a reformism that runs counter to the things-must-get-worse-before-they-can-get-better school of revolutionary thinking; or as a shoring up of capitalism by those members of the bourgeoisie who are "smart enough to see that coopting the Left's positions is the best defense against a full on-rush of socialism." They do not recognize modern liberalism as a type of socialist thought.

When I suggest that modern American liberalism has been a product of the socialist worldview, I realize that this is true only in major part. Several factors that are not themselves socialist have fed into it: (a) that there has at all times, even in the absence of socialist influence, been a movement within American history that has wanted a more active federal government; (b) that a number of long-term tendencies in American life, which have themselves had nothing to do with socialist ideas, have created a demand for a more politicized and centralized life, breaking down local loyalties; (c) that classical liberals, on the defensive, lost their reformist zeal and thereby handed over much of the leadership role; and (d) that most of the measures that are called "liberal" are only a shadow of what liberal thought has asked for.

Modern liberalism has accordingly been a mixture that has existed, often in varying forms, within a specific and changing historical setting. I doubt whether any ideology has ever been rooted more relativistically in its own time and place. Few ideologies have been less candid about their aspirations or quite so opportunistic in their quest for approval by blocs that often have not fully sensed or shared those aspirations. Because of the role of those blocs in the shifting liberal "coalition," it would be a mistake to say that everyone who has called himself a liberal in this sense has been either consciously or subconsciously a socialist.

It is worth considering whether the above discussion has not overstressed the role of socialist thinking by ignoring the possibility that modern liberalism is a "middle way" between capitalism and socialism, influenced by both but actually amounting to a separate form.

Such a view has been seriously asserted, and anyone studying modern liberalism must fully consider this interpretation. But I see it as contradicted by the facts of liberal history. We need to distinguish between liberal thought and the popular version of liberalism that has been preoccupied with the agenda of specific measures that liberal politicians have kept before the country. It has only been in the intellectual dimension that the socialist content has appeared consistently and clearly. Liberal thought has never identified itself wholeheartedly with the "mixed society" model (i.e., one that mixes capitalism and socialism); rather, the mixed society has been forced upon its intellectual community by circumstances.

Looking back upon American intellectual development historically, what we see is that in the early 19th century a great ferment of dissatisfaction with ("alienation from") the main society came into being, largely, I think, as a reflection of the Romantic movement that was growing so strong in Europe. This alienation continued after the Civil War and formed into a common ideology among the predominant American intellectual subculture as a result of many hundreds of American graduate students' studying under the "German Historical School" in various German universities during the final third of the 19th century. During the 1910s and early 1920s, there was enthusiasm for the "Guild Socialist" ideas then popular in England; but this was soon supplanted by infatuation with the "Soviet experiment" that was occurring under Lenin and then Stalin in Russia. (This infatuation was a major part of modern liberal thought from 1917 to 1947, as anyone perusing the issues of The New Republic or The Nation during those three decades can readily see.) Domestically during the 1930s, liberal thought was to the left of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and focused on various proposals for "central planning."

Since World War II, a principal fact about modern liberalism has been its loss of thrust toward a comprehensive socialist vision. The world Left underwent a series of devastating shocks, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s. (The loss of intellectual momentum is hardly apparent to the general public, which sees modern liberalism almost entirely through the main media and Hollywood. The liberalism apparent from those sources has always been "up-beat," whereas the liberalism that has been apparent among the intellectuals themselves has most often been discouraged, often despairing, in tone.)

As with the Left in general, modern liberalism has in large part consisted of an alienated intelligentsia's having sought unassimilated or disaffected allies to champion, using the state as the means to address their needs. What was often called the "New Deal coalition" consisted of the intellectuals, organized labor, the "solid South" (reflecting the fact that the South had voted Democratic since the end of the Reconstruction), the big city political "machines," and certain racial and religious minorities. After World War II, it became difficult to hold this coalition together, so that by 1968 there was much talk of the collapse of the coalition.

Prior to the end of World War II, modern liberal thought aspired to use such a coalition to fashion socialism. A major shift occurred at mid-century, however. What has provided the moving impetus since then has been the moral appeal of egalitarianism as applied to race and ethnicity. To this was soon added, though the feminist movement, gender; and, through the homosexual rights movement, sexual orientation. ("The environment" and "animal rights" have also provided allies -- but of a new sort. Whereas most of the "disaffected" groups that the Left has sought as allies have shown, over time, a considerable reluctance to have their destinies determined by the intellectual subculture, and have for that reason broken off from the coalition, non-human "exploited entities" such as "the environment" and animals will have no such propensities.)

The "multiculturalist" focus on racial and ethnic minorities has given modern liberalism a powerful new potential, since large-scale immigration and the growth of minorities already here offer to make Americans of European origin a minority by the middle of the 21st century. Modern liberalism has, in effect, fashioned an alliance with the Third World.

But it is merely a potential. Most of the allies of the alienated intellectual subculture eventually go their own way, not wanting to be on anyone's lead-strings. So there is no assurance that an ethnic swamping-out of American culture as we have known it will produce the sort of society the intellectuals want. The latter will have effected a "revolution," no doubt; but, as has long been known, revolutions have a way of devouring those who most inspired them.

 

Bibliographical Notes

Superficially, Eric Goldman's Rendezvous With Destiny, which is eminently readable, would seem to be the best overall history of modern liberalism. Goldman sees it as "modern American reform," reacting to the growth of big business. He traces modern liberalism through several historical phases, giving a good picture of such things as Populism and Progressivism. He denies that it has been fundamentally socialist. (The professor's quarrel with him about this is highlighted by the fact that Goldman seems first to have voiced his interpretation of modern liberalism in the liberal journal The New Republic in 1944, at which time it seemed totally out of place in light of the journal's almost 30-year infatuation with the Soviet Union and with socialist models of various kinds.)

Arthur M. Schlesinger is a leading liberal historian whose many books include The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval and The Vital Center. His more recent The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, in which he argues for the maintenance of a common culture rather than an encouragement of many distinct cultures in the United States in coming years, reflects a division within contemporary liberalism over the intent of multiculturalism.

Herbert Croly, the first editor of The New Republic starting in 1914, wrote Progressive Democracy and The Promise of American Life, each of which is considered something of a "founding document" for twentieth century liberalism. Several years before, in the 1880s, Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, a socialist novel that had great influence, most especially upon Croly. Lester Ward was also an early modern liberal author (see Lester Ward and the Welfare State).

John Dewey is considered by many the preeminent philosopher of twentieth century American liberalism, but his writing is so abstruse and vague that I am hard-pressed to cite a good representative sample.

Hubert H. Humphrey's The Cause is Mankind argues the case for modern liberalism's political agenda in the years immediately following World War II.

A book of readings by a variety of liberal authors, such as John Dewey and Thurman Arnold, prior to 1945 is Howard Zinn's New Deal Thought.

Those wishing more detail about the German Historical School, which was so seminal to the modern liberal orientation, should read Jurgen Herbst's The German Historical School in American Scholarship.

Although it is hardly a programmatic statement of modern liberal ideology, a book that was considered by many 1920s and 1930s liberals as central to their orientation was Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams.