Matt McManus
Liberalism in many ways anteceded socialism as the great modernist doctrine committed to liberty, equality, and solidarity for all. The ideas have roots that go back deeper still, but the liberal tradition deserves praise for raising them to revolutionary potential, as any good Marxist would point out. I think today one of the core things it adds to socialism is the need to protect individual rights and impose significant limitations on state power.
Deeper than that, one can stress how liberalism contributes a much-needed sense of anti-utopianism to the socialist tradition. Some socialists assumed that with a transition to a new social form not only would the state eventually wither away as everyone’s needs were met. Many even ascribed perfectionist expectations onto socialism and communism.
As [Leon] Trotsky once put it,
the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
I don’t think that’s really plausible.
Indeed, a core insight of liberalism that can marry quite easily to socialism is that human beings might ethically and cognitively improve, but they will never be perfected and many of our most sinister features will persist as long as we do. Call it the Augustinian principle. In fact, I’d follow Ben Burgis in maintaining that a core argument for socialism should be a wariness of human nature and how easily it can be corrupted when some people enjoy enormous amounts of power and…
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Auteur: Matt McManus
