Political Thought

Economic Determinism of Dialectical Materialism. Feuerbach’s claim that the motive forces in social history are material meant for Marx that these forces are economic. The economic, moreover, meant for him the method of economic production, for he was convinced that any system of production carries with it a corresponding way of distributing the social product, … Read more

Dialectical Materialism. Marx’s first statements of dialectical materialism were made in a group of works written between 1844 and 1848 under the stimulus of feuerbach’s materialist interpretation of Hegel and as incidents in Marx’s career as a revolutionary socialist. It should be noted that Marx used the word “materialism” In a specialized sense that may … Read more

The Proletarian Revolution with Marx and dialectical materialism. Liberal political thought developed largely as an elaboration of two fundamental social or moral ideas, that politics is distinctively an art of reaching non-coercive adjustments between antagonistic interests and that democratic procedures are the only effective ways for making such adjustments. Consequently, though its later history undertook … Read more

The Present Meaning of Liberalism. An estimate of the meaning of liberalism and its present position in political theory must take account of the fact that the word is used, with some consistency, in two senses, the one more restricted and the other more general. This usage, however, is not arbitrary, for there are valid … Read more

Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism. Green’s restatement of liberalism did away with the rigid line between economics and politics by which the older liberals had excluded the state from interfering with the operation of a free market. From Green’s point of view even a free market was a social institution rather than a natural condition, and quite … Read more

The Idealist Revision of Liberalism. This revision of liberal theory was accomplished in the two decades following 1880 by the Oxford idealists of whom Thomas Hill Green was the most important representative, at least in political philosophy. In the United States there was an analogous and related movement in philosophy of which Josiah Royce was … Read more

Herbert Spencer. For the purpose of gauging the state of liberal theory in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it is both interesting and instructive to compare the philosophy of Mill with that of Herbert Spencer. The two men were generally recognized as the most important exponent, of the philosophy of political liberalism and … Read more

The Principles of Social Study. Mill’s theory of political and ethical liberalism, developed chiefly in his Utilitarianism, the essay On Liberty, and the Representative Government, remained for the most part within the circle of subjects and of ideas native to his English tradition. The very important changes which he made were considered by him, mistakenly, … Read more

John Stuart Mill Liberty. The general outlook of John Stuart Mill’s social philosophy, and especially his ethics, was determined perhaps as much by personal experience as by intellectual considerations. From birth he was destined by his father to carry on the crusade of the Philosophical Radicals, and certainly the elder Mill never envisaged the possibility … Read more

Modernized Liberalism. The greatest legislative success of Philosophical Radicalism was coeval with the beginning of its recession. The high water mark of its influence was reached in 1846 with the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of free trade as British national policy. But even before that date the social effects of unregulated … Read more