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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
the legacy of historical liberalism
Political scientists have some difficulty in dealing with the nature of liberalism and the role played by liberal parties. The problems are not new. In The Rise of European Liberalism, Harold Laski drew attention to the latent conflict between two fundamental liberal principles:
What, then, is the liberalism we have here to discuss? It is not easy to describe, much less to define, for it is hardly less a habit of mind than a body of doctrine. As the latter, no doubt, it is directly related to freedom; for it came as the foe of privilege conferred upon any class in the community by virtue of birth or creed. But the freedom it sought had no title to universality, since its practice was limited to men who had property to defend.
It is not that freedom and property necessarily stand in conflict, but in the context of modern European political development, with the rise of mass democracy, the contradictions became evident, soon to be expressed as property versus freedom.
One consequence is that there is a streak of ambiguity running through European liberalism which is seen in the varied character of liberal parties: some are regarded as belonging to the left, some are more at home on the right, while others hover uneasily between the two. Other political traditions, it is true, also give rise to uncertainties, but not to the same extent. The major families – conservative, Christian democrats, social democrats, and communist – all have a greater ideological coherence.
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