Alexis de Tocqueville is not easily characterized as either a liberal or a conservative. In this respect he resembles Edmund Burke. Both may be best understood as “liberal conservatives”—figures who straddled both camps. On a number of specific dimensions, including their attitudes toward aristocracy, colonialism, property, rationalism, the tyranny of the majority, pluralism, and the meaning of history, they are remarkably similar. Their thinking foreshadows the rapprochement between liberals and conservatives in the latter half of the twentieth century reflected in the prominence of right-of-center parties and leaders and in the work of such political thinkers as Raymond Aron and Michael Oakeshott.

The Lion and the Unicorn has remained the most obscure of Orwell's major works, condemned both as a propagandistic attempt to enlist the British left in the war effort and for its erroneous prediction that the war could not been won without a socialist revolution in Britain. Yet it can also be read as Orwell's greatest single attempt to define the values of the democratic socialism to which he adhered from 1936 until his death. Patriotism represented for Orwell not the temporary need to fight for one's country, but the essential decency and democratic bias of British customs and institutions, which he believed could be wedded to socialism without producing totalitarianism. The preservation of these qualities he identified in particular with the working classes, which illuminates his views of them in his later works and demonstrates the continuity of Orwell's thought on this important political issue.

In this paper Althusser's concept of overdetermination is examined from two distinct but related perspectives. The first is the more empirical aspect. Althusser uses this concept to explain the relation between the Marxist “base” and “superstructure.” While Althusser has made a novel and perhaps even profound contribution to Marxist theory, his explanation stumbles on an unresolved tension between the twin principles of the determination “in the last instance” by the base and the “relative autonomy” of the superstructure. The second aspect is the more philosophical. If the concept of overdetermination is correct, it can only be so because the self has been dissolved into a set of social relationships in which there is no room for such traditional human attributes as free action, purposiveness and responsibility. The result renders meaningless the search for any permanent core of the self which is thought to define our common humanity. It is this second theme which makes Althusser one of the most powerful postmodern critics of the Western humanistic tradition.

Liberal constitutionalism embodies an aspiration to public moral justification. The practice of liberal politics, on this view, is bound up with an ongoing effort to justify our political arrangements to one another, an effort that must not be collapsed into the mere affirmation of community standards or conventions. This ideal of public justification lends support to judicial review, an institution that helps make constitutional government a publicly principled enterprise. But it also suggests the value of drawing the “political” branches into the interpretive project: the Supreme Court is not the final interpreter of our Constitution's liberal public morality. The “political” branches of the national government, and citizens themselves play a crucial role in the interpretive process. Viewed in this way, the theory and practice of constitutionalism embody ideals of virtue, citizenship, and community that add up to positive rejoinders to liberalism's communitarian and republican critics.

In the aftermath of the military revolt that overthrew the Popular Unity government of Dr. Salvador Allende in September 1973, reports began to seep out of Chile that the junta was supervising revision of the constitution in a “corporativist” sense. The structural alterations contemplated are designed, in the first instance, to ensure permanent military representation in the councils of government. However, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, head of the military junta, has made it known that the new constitution will also give a prominent place to industrial, commercial, agrobusiness, mining, and professional associations, which he terms “the authentic representatives of the people.” Such employers' and trade associations—known collectively as “gremios patronales,” to distinguish them from trade unions or “gremios de obreros” — have been in existence for many years, but a number of them experienced a sharp upsurge of political militancy in the late 1960's in reaction to what their leaders perceived as the leftward drift of the then-ruling Christian Democratic Party. Their role, under the direction of the Confederation of Production and Commerce, in arousing resistance to the Popular Unity government elected in 1970 and, ultimately, in paralyzing it before its final downfall is widely known, at least in outline.

Liberalism is now thought to be particularly inclined toward internationalism, so that international guarantees of human rights are regarded as a quintessentially liberal project. Classical liberal thought had a different view. So Vattel's mid-eighteenth-century Law of Nations, which is much more insistent on individual rights, is also much more sympathetic to national claims than the pre-liberal doctrines of Grotius. Even John Locke's classical liberalism is quite attentive to the claims of nationality. The national element in classical liberal thought remains evident in the thought of the American Founders and in nineteenth-century liberalism.

Systematic analysis shows the psychological premises of Machiavelli's political theory to be fairly consistent and to transcend historical circumstance. Above all, the apparent contradiction between its rapacious and consensual sides can be resolved by unearthing his distinction between necessary properties and contingent attributes qua habits. Following medieval medical theory, necessary properties include: spirit that animates the body; mind with faculties of ingenuity, imagination, and memory; desires for preservation, glory, power, freedom, wealth, and sexual pleasure; and four humors received from the stars. While serving the desires, mind stimulates them to expand into the limitless ambition characteristic of Machiavellian individuals. Habituation to laws and gods makes possible the institutional life of republics, in that cooperative habits solve the collective-action problem faced by a multitude of self-ruling citizens. However, such republics are ultimately alliances for joint gain rather than structures of virtue—challenging the ascendant view of Machiavelli as a “civic humanist” and Aristotelian.

The question addressed by this essay is whether Thomas Hobbes is the true intellectual forebear of John Locke. A brief comparison of the teachings of these two authors with respect to natural justice and civil justice would seem to suggest that Locke is a determined adversary of Hobbes whose views on justice are reducible to the maxim that “might makes right.” But a reexamination of Locke's Second Treatise shows that Locke adopts this principle with hardly less thoroughness than Hobbes. Even so, an important difference remains, for Locke takes steps to disguise the grim reality of power, whereas Hobbes makes the enlightenment of people the sine qua non of his political science. Locke's departure from Hobbes is seen as an attempt to instill in the body politic a degree of justice that would not otherwise exist.

To Avoid misunderstanding, I should note at once that my point of view is here not that of the mere logic of ideas and doctrines, but that of the concrete logic of the events of history.

From the first point of view, that of the mere logic of ideas and doctrines, it is evident that there are many possible positions other than the “pure” positions which I shall examine. One might ask theoretically and in the abstract, what value these various positions have. That is not what I plan to do. In a word, my point of view is that of the philosophy of culture, and not that of metaphysics.

The task of sketching the history of liberalism, though modest, is for methodological reasons difficult. For we stand before the question of whether there is even such a thing as liberalism as a clearly definable subject and whether this subject, should it not be clearly definable, can have a history. We touch here upon a general methodological problem. Toynbee, for example, opens his great work with the question whether England has a history; he concludes that the English nation as a society is so closely related to the society of Western civilization that one cannot write an English history without going into the entire history of Western civilization. It is in this sense that there arise the questions of how liberalism is to be delimited and whether it has a history. And they arise more acutely because the case of liberalism is much more complicated than that of England. For even if some phases of English history, for example the Reformation, can be dealt with only in relation to the general European history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, still there are long periods of isolated, specifically English history. In the case of liberalism, a narrowing of the subject to national societies — German, French, English or American — is hardly justifiable. For all the regional phases of liberalism are only parts of a common Western movement; and furthermore, this movement can only with difficulty be isolated from other movements which run parallel with it in time.

Most commentators see Henry David Thoreau's political essays as an endorsement of liberal democracy, but this essay holds that Thoreau's critique of majoritarianism and his model of civil disobedience may intend something much more radical: when his criticisms of representative democracy are articulated in more formal terms of political and moral obligation, it becomes clear that the theory and practice of democracy fundamentally conflict with Thoreau's conviction in moral autonomy and conscientious action. His critical examination of the way in which a democratic state threatens the commitments that facilitate and give meaning to the practice of morality intends to reorient the focus of politics, away from institutions and toward the people such institutions were ostensibly in place to serve. His critique stands as a warning that becoming complacent about democracy will inhibit the search for better (perhaps more liberal) ways to organize political life.

The consensus view of today's Congress — that its decentralized structure and dispersed power has pushed it to the edge of chaos — is badly in need of correcting. Despite the legacy of decentralization and fragmentation from the 1960's and 1970's reform era, the 1980's have seen a discernible trend toward leadership and order. Leading elements of this “new centralization” in congressional operations are described in this article. These include: contraction of the legislative workload; limitations in the numbers of participants at crucial junctures; resort to omnibus “mega-bills” to enact controversial policies; high levels of partisanship in voting; resurgence of leadership, especially in the House; and subtle shifts in power within the two chambers, primarily away from authorizing committees and toward fiscal committees. Taken together, these developments denote an institution markedly more cohesive and even hierarchical than portrayed in scholarly or journalistic accounts.

In the midst of the European Revolution of 1848, T. B. Macaulay offered the classical Whig explanation for England's immunity to it. England needed no revolution in 1848 because it had had its own safe and sane revolution of 1688, climaxed by that masterpiece of political wisdom, the Whig settlement. Without wholly superseding this distinctly Whig interpretation of England's stability in the midst of Europe's mid-nineteenth century cataclysms, Elie Halévy has supplemented it by pointing to the stabilizing influence of the Methodist-Evangelical Movement.Macaulay and Halévy overlooked one important element in Britannia's ability to rule the waves of revolution. It is an element somewhat repellent to liberal-minded historians, both in its nature and its source. For one of the factors in England's stability was the growth of a xenophobic, anti-revolutionary, nationalistic spirit and it was closely connected with anti-Catholicism. This anti-Catholicism was fostered and given direction by the Conservatives between 1832 and 1845, at which time it split that party wide open over the issue of the grant to the Roman Catholic Seminary of Maynooth in Ireland, as it had sixteen years earlier over Catholic Emancipation. The remarkable success of the Conservatives in rallying Englishmen to the anti-Irish “no-Popery” standard has been obscured by the traditional view that the period 1829–1848 saw the triumph of the liberal ideology, beginning with Catholic Emancipation, passing through the Reform Bill of 1832, and culminating in the Repeal of the Corn Laws.

In St. Thomas and the Gentiles I tried to define the obligations of perennial philosophy in the twentieth century. Philosophy may be perennial, but its work changes according to the cultural conditions in which the philosopher lives and thinks. In its Greek beginnings, philosophy arose out of the dialectical efforts of Plato and Aristotle to clarify and order the welter of opinion. They struggled not only with the sophists to divide the line between knowledge and opinion; but they also moved in the realm of opinion to distinguish the true from the false; and, in their patient consideration of pre-Socratic thought, they both tried, though differently, to convert right opinion into knowledge by making it evident to reason. Although the result of their work was the establishment of philosophy as a body of knowledge, founded on principles and developed by demonstrations, we must not forget that, in their day, the mode of their work was primarily dialectical. In saying this I do not overlook the demonstrative or scientific achievements of Plato and Aristotle; but those must be regarded a secondary, for the first work of pioneers is to stake out the land, to clear away the brush, to prepare the soil, and to dig for firm foundations Only thereafter can a city be planned, buildings raised, and interiors decorated The Platonic dialogues certainly reveal an intellectual pioneer at work; but no less do the so-called “scientific” works of Aristotle, for they are primarily records of exploration and discovery. Rather than orderly expositions of accomplished knowledge, they are, not only in their opening chapters but throughout, dialectical engagement with adversaries, wrestlings with the half-truths of error and opinion in order to set the whole truth forth.

Political theorists have long disagreed about what Rousseau's account of conscience means. While most approaches to that account focus on the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” this essay focuses on another aspect of Emile, the development of conscience in Emile himself. First, I argue that conscience is transformed from problem to solution when self-love is transformed, first into gratitude, then, with the aid of religion, rhetoric, and imagination, into duty. Those who insist that conscience is rooted in passion are right, though that passion is not necessarily low. Second, those who argue that Rousseau's teaching on conscience, as set forth in the First Discourse and elsewhere, is a salutary untruth are right. Emile's conscience shouts “virtue!” not because conscience always does so in uncorrupted souls once they enter the moral world but because it has had voice lessons from Emile's governor, who makes liberal use of illusion and rhetoric.

Locke claims that his moral and political teaching is capable of a fully rational demonstration. It would seem then that Lockean citizens are expected to grasp the rational bases of their regime. But Locke was notoriously vague or incomplete on what the rational demonstration entailed, in matters of theology especially, but in other matters as well. I examine this question in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and conclude that Locke did not expect most citizens to grasp the full philosophical demonstration of liberalism, but they would understand a simplified version of it. This, however, risks leaving liberal culture in an unsettled state.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke's treatise on education, has yet to be fully integrated with his more familiar political and philosophical works. On the surface, there seems to be some tension between Locke's advice on how best to educate the young, and his prescriptions for political legitimacy. The emphasis on consent in the Second Treatise of Government seems to require a parallel emphasis on freedom of thought, but it is the possibility of precisely this sort of freedom that Locke calls into question with a theory of education grounded in the external inculcation of mental habits that control behavior throughout life. This surface tension, however, is dispelled by Locke's theory of knowledge, as it is expressed in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Essay's skepticism with regard to an objective and public knowledge makes clear, first, that education is reducible to indoctrination, and second, that liberty therefore requires the rejection or fundamental reconstitution of what has been learned.

The disagreements between Professor Mayer and me turn to some extent on legitimate differences in interpreting and understanding my intentions and text, and to a larger extent on differences in the ways we interpret and understand certain important economic and political aspects of the world in which we live.

I believe my argument is more consequentialist than he understands it to be. The question is: consequences for what ends, goals, or values? Simplifying my discussion somewhat. I was concerned with three general types of consequences: consequences for economic effectiveness, for property rights, and for rights to a democratic process.

As to property rights, though I expressed skepticism about applying the standard moral argument for property rights to business firms, my preferred solution, as Professor Mayer points out, does not entail a violation of basic rights to property, or, for that matter, existing property rights in business firms. It could simply“entail a shift ownership from stockholders to employees”(p. 113).

As to economic effectiveness, I argued that employee-owned firms could be as effective in achieving such intermediate goods as investment, growth, and employment (p.120ff.). I argued further that they could be as efficient as American corporations at present in minimizing“the ratio of valued inputs to valued outputs”both in the narrow sense ordinarily employed by economists, for whom the outputs are those valued by consumers, and in a broader sense that would include outputs“we as producers value”(p. 130).

In this essay Montesquieu's reflections on international politics are interpreted as a more-or-less coherent whole rooted in his understanding of the structural changes in European history from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Montesquieu's study of history led him to recognize a new context for European politics—a regular system of relations among independent states dependent upon the development of commerce. The expansion of commerce engendered a mutual dependence among European states which opened new possibilities for international politics. A cosmopolitan vision of mutuality, embodied in principles of international law and justice, could replace the power politics of drives for universal monarchy. Furthermore, commerce implied the possibility of a revival of republics, although based not on the political virtue of classical republics (unattainable by modern Europeans in Montesquieu's view), but on the formal justice of fairness and contract.