It was hardly surprising that John Rawls' argument that a liberal political theory had to include a commitment to welfare rights was quickly countered by Robert Nozick's contention that welfare rights were incompatible with liberalism's devotion to freedom and private property. This controversy over the relationship between state funded welfare and liberty, especially the liberty to acquire property, has been and is still part of the politics of all advanced industrial nations, including America. As a matter of political fact, however, the welfare interpretation of liberalism has been triumphant. Government programs to alleviate suffering, to increase economic opportunities available to the poor, and to redistribute wealth go hand in hand with representation and civil liberties in virtually all of the advanced industrial nations of the West. That this has occurred, I want to argue here, is entirely consistent with the mainstream of the liberal tradition and ought to be presented that way to students.

The distinction between classical or libertarian liberalism and welfare or the new liberalism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in England. From the start this distinction was politically charged, meant to imply that the welfare measures enacted particularly during the second Gladstone administration represented a treasonous repudiation of the liberal tradition. Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State (1884), little read now but enormously influential then, was most important to spreading this view.