/lit/ - Literature

>>17232344

A part of the reason political liberalism is floundering truly is that it is so materially unequal, but there is a discordance between political liberalism and the economy. The economy doesn’t exist under a liberal regime, it exists under a regime of servitude. There are several varieties of liberalism, but the 2 major ones which are the liberalism of natural rights, and the liberalism of “justice and liberty” so to speak. The former has pretty well defined principles for its political philosophy, mainly the idea that people have natural rights that literally cannot be usurped from them, as in their own inalienable will. That tradition is associated a lot with Locke. But the justice and liberty tradition is more the standard, and it is associated with people like Smith, Hayek or Rawls (even Hobbes, although I wouldn’t call him liberal). The idea is that there is some way to think of the conditions of liberty and justice, which we then create or nudge institutions toward fulfilling because we value liberty and justice.

And while the latter is the prevailing view, either implicitly or explicitly, it is because it is very floaty and is kind of just an ad hoc rationalization for what exists. It has usually been deployed to champion what exists while also suggesting relatively minor ways in which it could be perfected. The natural rights tradition was much more radical in the sense that it was actually deployed to justify revolution almost every time it presented itself, but its advocates rarely took it to its conclusions because the conclusions were unsavory. The conclusion of the natural rights tradition is that servitude in general is an illegitimate social role, and that doesn’t just include servitude to an absolute political sovereign, but also servitude to a master, as in the traditional master/slave relation we call employment. Ironically, for how much liberalism has resisted that conclusion, I think it would bring the most stability to the whole system. Markets, contract and private property all prevail, but excessive wealth inequality is extinguished and individualism and community find a significant resolution in the private sector rather than the state.

>>17049554
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England is a good place to start.