POL S101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Human Nature, Arche, Utopia
7 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 5
Traditional Western Ideologies
What Is an Ideology?
•A set of ideas designed to …
oDescribe the existing political order
oPresent an ideal vision of what the political order should look like
oPrescribe a means to transform the existing into the ideal
•Seeks to promote a particular social and political order
•Contains empirical, semantic, and normative elements
Features of Ideology
•Action oriented
•Typically less rigorous than “proper” theory
•Tends to combine concepts that political philosophers treat separately
•Both reflects and shapes the historical context within which it emerges
Liberalism
•Dominant Western tradition
•Originates with the rise of capitalist political economies in the 17th and 18th centuries
oThomas Hobbes
oJohn Locke
•Individualism as central theme
•In some countries, it is associated with a free market; in others, most notably the United
States with state intervention
Classical Liberalism
•Adam Smith (1723–90) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
•Emphasis on limiting the role of the state to providing:
oInternal and external security
oEnforcement of property rights
•Also a moral dimension in that a limited state maximizes individual freedom and rewards
those who work hardest
New Liberalism
•Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Hobhouse, John Hobson
•Late 1800s, early 1900s
•Emphasis on social reform
•State intervention could increase liberty by expanding individual opportunity
•The new liberalism dominated the political landscape for much of the twentieth century
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Liberal Thought
•Core meaning found in the concepts of liberty, tolerance, individualism, and equality (of a
particular type)
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•The value of liberty lies in the possibilities for self-development it produces
•Classical liberalism emphasises negative liberty
•New liberalism emphasises positive liberty
Liberal Thought, cont’d
•The notion of rights is prominent in liberal thought because of the centrality of the
individual
•Individuals are rational and self-interested
•Communities are aggregates of individuals with competing interests
•Equality refers to opportunity, not outcomes
oNew liberals try to offer this through free education and health care
Liberal Thought, cont’d
•Liberals look to equality of opportunity to ensure fairness on the principle that if
individuals start from the same position, then they will be rewarded according to their
merit
•However, the free market does not allow for genuine equality of opportunity, because
individuals don’t start out in life from the same position
Socialism
•Emerges with the rise of the industrial working class in the 19th century with three pre-
Marxian thinkers:
oClaude-Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825)
oCharles Fourier (1772–1837)
oRobert Owen (1771–1858)
•Karl Marx develops a “scientific” theory, suggesting that socialism is both ethical and
historically inevitable
•Two camps:
oThe “Third International”
oSocial democracy
Key Socialist Principles
•Generally optimistic
oSocialists see human nature as capable of being shaped by social, economic, and
political circumstances
•Equality
oSocialists advocate equality of outcome, because they understand inequality to be the
result of different positions in a social structure, rather than differences in ability
•Community
oThere is an emphasis on co-operation and collective, rather than individual, goals
Utopianism and Authoritarianism
•Socialism is often criticized as being utopian
•Critics say that its goal, in which human beings can achieve genuine emancipation and
fulfillment as members of a community demands too much of its citizens
•Its emphasis on egalitarianism can result in an authoritarian state
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