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The Ideologies of Change: \
Powerful movements of change at work depending on ideas of political philosophies
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Liberalism
- a. Developed in Enlightenment of 18th and to American and French Revolutions at the end of the century
- b. More significant as Industrial Revolution made rapid strides because developing industrial middle class largely adopted the doctrine as its own
- c. Divergences of opinion among people called liberals, but all started with belief that people should be as free from restraint as possible
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Economic Liberalism
- a. that people should be as free from restraint as possible
- b. Economic Liberalism (classical economics)
- i. Primary roots in laissez-faire, the belief that the state shouldn’t interrupt the free play of natural economic forces, especially supply and demand
- 1. Government shouldn’t restrain the economic liberty of the individual and should restrict itself to only three jobs:
- a. Country defense, police protection of individuals, and construction and maintenance of public works too expensive for people to afford
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Economic Liberalism--> If people allowed economic liberty
If people allowed economic liberty, they would bring maximum good for max number and benefit the general welfare of society
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Economic Liberalism
Thomas Malthus
- 1. Enhanced defense against government interference
- a. Essay on the Principles of Population
- i. Argued that population, when unchecked, increases at a geometric rate while the food supply correspondingly increases at much slower arithmetic rate
- 1. Result: overpopulationà starvation if growth unchecked
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Economic Liberalism
Malthus says
a. He says nature imposes major restraintà misery and poverty were simply the inevitable result of the law of nature; no government or individual should interfere with its operations
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Economic Liberalism
David Ricardo
- 1. Furthered Malthus’ ideas’
- 2. Principles of Political Economy
- a. Developed “iron law of wages” and argued that increase in population means more workers; more workers in turn causes wages to fall below subsistence level; the result is misery and starvation, which reduces populationà worker amount declines and wages rise above level again, which encourages workers to have larger families againà cycle continues
- b. Raising wages arbitrarily= pointless; does little but perpetuate vicious circle
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Political Liberalism
- i. Liberals’ beliefs
- 1. Protection of civil liberties or basic rights of all people, which included equality before the law
- 2. Freedom of assembly, speech, and press; and from arbitrary arrest
- a. All freedoms should be guaranteed by written document
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Political Liberalism: in addition
- 1. In addition to religious toleration, they advocated separation of church and state
- a. Right of peaceful opposition to government in and out of parliament and making of laws by a representative assembly (legislature) elected by qualified voters constituted two other liberal demands
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Political Liberalism
Many liberals believed
- i. Many liberals believed in constitutional monarchy or constitutional state with limits on powers of government to prevent despotism and in written constitutions that would guarantee these rights
- ii. Many advocated ministerial responsibility, which would give legislative branch a check on power of executive because the king’s ministers would answer to the legislature rather than to the king
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Political Liberalism
Liberals in 1st half
- i. Liberals in 1st half also believed in limited suffrage
- 1. Although all people entitled to equal civil rights, they shouldn’t have equal political rights
- a. Right to vote and hold office would be open only to men who met certain property qualifications
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Political Liberalism
Tied to..
- i. As political philosophy, liberalism tied to middle-class men, especially industrial middle-class men who favored extension of voting rights so that they could share power with the landowning classes
- b. They had little desire to let lower classes share that power
- i. Liberals were not democrats
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Political Liberalism
John Stuart Mill
- 1. Liberty (statement on liberty of individual)
- a. Argued for “absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects” that needed to be protected from both government censorship and tyranny of the majority
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Political Liberalism
Mill was instrumental in ....
- 1. Instrumental in expanding meaning of liberalism by supporting women’s rights
- a. Attempt to include women in voting reform bill of 1867 failedà published On the Subjection of Women, written with his wife Harriet Taylor
- i. Argued that inferiority of one sex to another is wrong
- 1. Differences not due to different natures but social practices
- a. With equal education, women could achieve same as men
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