It this an Anglo-Saxon thing? In his very fine volume, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Michael Freeden writes:
to the extent that Marxist socialism traversed the Channel it was ... rapidly assimilated into local cultural preferences. It reflected the general appeal of liberty as a personal political value cutting across British ideological loyalties. In particular, British socialists were not prone to dwell on liberty as a macro-phenomenon relating to the emancipatory casting-off of class shackles, but tended to 'privatize' it by attaching it to individual benefits. (457)
Elsewhere, however, he writes of the continental "socialist conception of liberty in which liberty was associated not with human
fulfilment but with a notion of individual action and choice facilitated by material means - a capitalist view transported into socialist organization." (475). The authors he quotes in support of this are Émile Vandervelde, Alexandre Millerand and Jean Jaurès. They were all more or less on the right of the movement, and perhaps influenced by the British model?
Marc, A very interesting post, though when it comes to Burke himself you can find plenty of examples of him discussing 'liberty' in the abstract. In the Speech to Electors of Bristol, and in Reflections. What is maybe distinctive is the counterposition of 'regulated liberty' or 'ordered liberty' to the emancipatory and 'terroristic' abstract right. Just a hypothesis, would require closer textual analysis.
ReplyDeleteAlex is right. He uses the word "liberty" throughout Reflections (and in other writings). Never in a consistent way, however, and not always in simple opposition to the liberty of the French Revolution. My favorite quote, by the way, from Burke on liberty is this one: "liberty, when men act in bodies, is power."
ReplyDeleteYou're both quite right, I see. He's not too keen on "liberty in the abstract".
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