Liberal socialism
Socialism is seen as the method to realize this recognition of liberty through political and economic autonomy and emancipation from the grip of pressing material necessity.
[6] Mill rejected centralised models of socialism that he thought might discourage competition and creativity, but he argued that representation is essential in a free government and democracy could not subsist if economic opportunities were not well distributed, therefore conceiving democracy not just as a form of representative government, but as an entire social organisation.
[9] Principles that can be described as liberal socialist are based on the works of classical liberal, social liberal, radical, socialist and anarchist economists and philosophers such as Roberto Ardigò,[10] Eduard Bernstein,[11] Henry Charles Carey,[12] G. D. H. Cole,[11] Jean Hippolyte Colins de Ham [fr],[13] John Dewey,[11] Eugen Dühring,[12] François Huet [fr],[13] John Stuart Mill,[11] William Ogilvie of Pittensear,[14] Thomas Paine,[15] Karl Polanyi,[16] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,[17] Carlo Rosselli,[11] Thomas Spence,[14] Herbert Spencer[18] and Léon Walras.
[19] Other important liberal socialist figures include Norberto Bobbio,[20] Guido Calogero [it],[21] Anthony Crosland,[22] Piero Gobetti,[23] Theodor Hertzka,[12] Leonard Hobhouse,[22] Oszkár Jászi,[24] Josef Macek [cz],[14] Chantal Mouffe,[11] Franz Oppenheimer,[25] John Rawls[26] and R. H.
[1] To Polanyi, liberal socialism's goal was overcoming exploitative aspects of capitalism by expropriation of landlords and opening to all the opportunity to own land.
[33] It emphasises the need for a morally conscious economy based upon the principles of service, cooperation and social justice while opposing possessive individualism.
[31] He opposed what he called the "acquisitive society" that causes private property to be used to transfer surplus profit to "functionless owners"—capitalist rentiers.
[37] During the National Autonomist Party governments, liberal socialism emerged in Argentina's politics as opposed to the Julio Argentino Roca's ruling conservative liberalism, though president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento had previously implemented an agenda influenced by John Stuart Mill's writings.
[39] In the 2003 Argentine general election, Ricardo López Murphy (who has declared himself a liberal socialist in the tradition of Alem and Juan Bautista Alberdi) ended third with 16.3 per cent of the popular vote.
[40] Contemporary Argentine liberal socialists include Mario Bunge,[41] Carlos Fayt and Juan José Sebreli.
[43]The main classical liberal English thinker John Stuart Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets.
[52] Mill also promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives,[53] writing: The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.
Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee supported the ideology, which played a large role in his party's policies during the postwar 1940s.
[58] Blair argued that Labour ran into problems in the 1960s and 1970s when it abandoned ethical socialism and that its recovery required a return to the values promoted by the Attlee government.
[59] While Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a revolutionary, his social revolution did not mean civil war or violent upheaval, but rather the transformation of society.
I will be as happy if the social market economy—as perfect or imperfect as it might be—continues to bear witness to the work, to the intellectual stance of the ideas and teachings of Franz Oppenheimer.
[67] After the restoration of democracy in West Germany, the SPD's Godesberg Program in 1959 eliminated the party's remaining Marxist policies.
[71] He argued that "[i]n no small measure, the present terrible, bewildering world crisis is a consequence of Marxism's mechanical Communism and amoral nihilism.
[70] He juxtaposed this ideal version of socialism with the then-existing political system in the Soviet Union, which he identified as being based upon dictatorial and militarist perils, statism, and a crippled economic order where competition and quality are disregarded.
[73] Jászi's views on socialism and works denouncing Bolshevik communism came back into Hungarian public interest in the 1980s when copies of his manuscripts were discovered and were smuggled into Hungary that was then under communist party-rule.
Contrary, without clear and detailed endgoal (how it will work/regulated the new society in the reality), the socialist/communist movements will fall, slowly pass away by exhaustion/tensions, or worse: hijacked by more aggressive/fundamentalistic/etc.
He compared socialism with Christianity, that, unlike other religions (more similar with liberalism, especially east-asian or ancient), it does not describe in detail the structure of heaven, the extraterrestrial rewards, and the exact punishments beyond death for each sin.
He wrote a short Epistolary novel about an alternate timeline (and planned a drama), where this didn't happen, because in a crucial moment the conciliar movement won against the popes and kings.
And (in Hungary) this didn't meant a path of returning to a earlier political system or the orthodox stalinism/leninism (or this last with mixed with Kádár's acts and policies, that he opposed ethically and morally, and he and his friends were victims/prisoners personally).
This was against Jászi views, where this was the role of only the independent and international cooperation of the intellectuals and intelligentsia (Republic of Letters), as (he thought) happened in the Dreyfuss affair, and in the Great War.
[80] In 1925, Rosselli defined the ideology in his work of the same name in which he supported the type of socialist economy defined by socialist economist Werner Sombart in Der modern Kapitalismus (1908) that envisaged a new modern mixed economy that included both public and private property, limited economic competition and increased economic cooperation.
His admiration of British socialism increased after his visit to the United Kingdom in 1923 where he met George Drumgoole Coleman, R. H. Tawney and other members of the Fabian Society.
[81] Giustizia e Libertà was committed to militant action to fight the Fascist regime and it saw Benito Mussolini as a ruthless murderer who himself deserved to be killed as punishment.
[88]After World War II, Ferruccio Parri of the liberal socialist Action Party briefly served as Prime Minister of Italy in 1945.
[91][full citation needed] While advocating socialism, Lulism aims for a 'social liberal' approach that gradually resolves the gap between the rich and the poor in a market-oriented way.
