Is Liberalism the Most Optimal Solution???

Liberalism, like socialism, fascism, or nationalism, is a political ideology. Liberalism has a longer history than most political ideologies. It has primarily evolved out of sustained struggles against hierarchically organised social and political relations. In various ways, liberalism captures the ideological map of various political struggles that human beings have witnessed, roughly in the last 300 years. Benjamin Constant, a forerunner of liberalism, held that liberty for the ancients ‘consisted in an active and constant participation in collective power’, whereas for the moderns it consisted in ‘peaceful enjoyment and private independence’.

Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. The gathering wreckage of liberalism’s twilight years can be seen all around, especially in America, Mr Deneen’s main focus. The founding tenets of the faith have been shattered. Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige.

Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”?

Liberalism is more than one thing. On any close examination, it seems to fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions. In this entry we focus on debates within the liberal tradition. (1) We contrast three interpretations of liberalism’s core commitment to liberty. (2) We contrast ‘old’ and ‘new’ liberalism.(3) We ask whether liberalism is a ‘comprehensive’ or a ‘political’ doctrine. (4) We close with questions about the ‘ reach’ of liberalism — does it apply to all humankind? Must all political communities be liberal? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying No? Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying Yes?

Political Liberalism:-

As his work evolved, Rawls insisted that his liberalism was not a ‘comprehensive’ doctrine, that is, one which includes an overall theory of value, an ethical theory, an epistemology, or a controversial metaphysics of the person and society. Our modern societies, characterized by a ‘reasonable pluralism’, are already filled with such doctrines. The aim of ‘political liberalism’ is not to add yet another sectarian doctrine, but to provide a political framework that is neutral between such controversial comprehensive doctrines.If it is to serve as the basis for public reasoning in our diverse western societies, liberalism must be restricted to a core set of political principles that are, or can be, the subject of consensus among all reasonable citizens. Rawls’s notion of a purely political conception of liberalism seems more austere than the traditional liberal political theories discussed above, being largely restricted to constitutional principles upholding basic civil liberties and the democratic process.

Optimal liberal solutions can be used to remove political inequality from the society. There are two ways to this. One, Rights of Capital from the perspective of income and control. Two, Rights to Capital which could be direct or indirect. Hence, these are the two main things through which liberalism can do good to the society.

Although liberalism had been on the ascendant since the end of Cold War and the demise of communism in Soviet Russia, prompting some to even make the foolhardy claim of an end to ideology, the future of liberal theory and practice will depend largely on how precisely it meets its criticisms and shortcomings.

“The way in which liberalism Institutionalises self-criticism will itself be a gurantee of its progress”.) – Alan Ryan

Refrences:-opendemocrcy.in