Liberalism 101

Modern Liberalism is quite often confused with Socialism. Mostly by Americans. Liberals... are not socialists. There are quite a few differences there, most notably that a modern Liberal – at least in theory – doesn't care about equality.

I hate the word 'equality' (not the concept, the word), and I'm not going to explain why I hate it right now, but I do. Just know for the moment that I'm referring to equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity* can go sit in the corner for a while to let it's ugly step-sibling take up the attention. A Socialist*** wants everyone to have an outcome which is... roughly equal. Fair, at least. Some might think that effort should be exactly proportional to reward, and that everyone should thus be able to have exactly the same quality of life as anyone else, no matter what awful mistakes they might have made in the past. Some might think that all reward should be equal and thus that everyone should work for the good of the collective, rather than their own selfish ends. Some might think that effort should be based on contribution... there are a lot of Socialisms. But the point is that the outcome should be roughly equal in some way. Noone should be left behind. If anyone is, it'd be because they refuse to do any work. They're probably evil capitalist landowners who live on the sweat of the poor, downtrodden masses, and are incapable of being of benefit to society, like the salt of the earth workers are*****.

Modern Liberals don't, inherently, care about this. This might seem like a rather counter-intuitive statement, since modern liberalism seems to have sprung entirely out of concern for the poor. A large part of the point of the development of modern liberalism was that the 'freedom' of the classical liberals was all very well, but that this freedom might be, for the poorest in society, actually no more than the freedom to starve. It was modern liberalism which brought into being in the UK the beginning of the welfare state, which takes care of its citizens from cradle to grave. But the difference here is illustrated by the ideas of a classical liberal – Hayek (and no, the dates don't matter). He said that what we should have to protect people from poverty is a minimum level of provision – a line which noone would be allowed to fall below. Modern Liberalism carries on this tradition (despite predating Hayek). They care about lifting people out of poverty^††, but not necessarily about how far above 'not in poverty' the top – or even the average – member of society might be. Whilst Socialists care about the range of wealth levels, modern liberals are focused on the minimum.

Of course, the distinction is not always this clear cut. Even in the time of Smith, it was recognised that there were such things as positional goods, goods the utility of which is based upon the position of the rest of society. What is absolutely vital to a modern westerner might be not classify in the same way if you happen to be a Medieval Spaniard – a car, the internet, proper nutrition, etc. And this means that a greater objective level of wealth may be required in some places, times or societies, and for some people, to achieve the same level of utility – giving results similar to a sort-of system of relative poverty, but one with entirely different motives – one concerned about a basic level of utility (or standard of living), one concerned about equality of outcome.

The spread of liberalism also, at least arguably, has a tendency to increase the drive for equality. In a feudal society, a peasant might consider themselves 'wealthy', regardless of falling short of the poorest king, because a king is not measured on the same scale as a peasant, and so the presence or absence of positional goods in the life of a king is not to the same extent an influence on the happiness of the peasant. As social mobility (or at least the perception of it) increases, and society becomes less organised into castes, people start comparing themselves to a larger portion of society. So whilst a peasant might not compare themselves to a king, a worker will compare themselves to their boss in a modern liberal society – and moreso as class mobility increases. So someone who is objectively better off, living further up a much more liberal society, may actually feel worse off than someone who is further down a poorer society, simply because of who they're comparing themselves against.

So Modern Liberals support universalised healthcare, unemployment benefits, and all those myriad other things that prevent someone's life from becoming a hellish living drudge, from which the only escape is death. But their motivation is the extension of freedom, since 'work twelve hours a day or die of malnutrition' is not really freedom. Meanwhile Socialists tend to support far more radical wealth redistribution programmes, and their goal is equality.

So yeah. Modern liberalism is not Socialism. There's a difference – a huge difference. Liberals don't have to be modern liberals, either. And I'm focused on the Liberal side of things here. Being, y'know, a Liberal. Also, the UK isn't socialist. Neither is any of the rest of Europe, but some bits do have more of a Socialist bent than others^††††.

I have run out of things to say. I will now stop typing.

*The good kind of equality, but that's just my opinion**

**And also the correct one.

***As the term I used today in political science, or at least in the kind of political science I've studied.****

****On the USSR, I wrote an essay once on whether they were actual socialists or not. I should update it one of these days.

*****The salt of the Earth is, if I remember my Mill correctly, the kind of intellectual/revolutionary person who massively improves the world, but in small quantities – you couldn't have a society made entirely of that kind of person, in the same way that you wouldn't want to eat salt, but you add a little bit of it to something, and it improves it. I have no idea how this ended up meaning what it does now, but I'm guessing it was probably the Illuminati. It's usually the Illuminati.^†

^†OK, fine, yes, I do also know about the Sermon on the Mount. You should never trust me again. But, honestly, I prefer the version above – which makes sense in a modern context – to continuing to use it in a way which not only doesn't, but which also probably wasn't the way Jesus meant it.

^††Absolute poverty, by the way – not the whole stupid 'relative poverty' thing, where you can lift people out of poverty by causing the right kind of recession, and where people can fall into poverty for no other reason than that even though their lives are actually improving in economic terms, there are some other people hundreds of miles away, whose lives are improving faster.

^†††France. I'm talking about France. In case that wasn't clear.