Classical liberalism, that is. From Daniel McCarthy at ISI:
ShareAristotle warns in Book IV of the Politics about the danger of revolution within the form, where the outward semblance of a constitution remains the same while its substance becomes something else: “the people do not easily change, but love their own ancient customs; and it is by small degrees only that one thing takes place of another; so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about a revolution in the state.”
The reinterpretation of American history as a history of liberalism is such a revolution. Although the letter of the U.S. Constitution remains, the charter is now taught in schools as an expression of liberalism, an early and crude expression, perhaps, but a step in the long march of progress to the values and practices of today. The chief challenge to this interpretation comes not from those who view the Constitution in a pre-liberal light, but from critics who are to the left of liberalism and decry the Constitution as nothing more than an artifact of white supremacism. Confronted by that alternative, conservatives may reflexively defend the liberal ideological reading instead.
Liberal ideology itself, however, is a revolution within the form of the word “liberal.” Among liberals, this point often surfaces in conflicts between “classical liberals,” who say that the term meant one thing in the nineteenth century and should retain that older meaning today, and progressive liberals who see the liberalism of the twenty-first century as the fulfillment of what was implicit in the earlier liberalism. Both types of ideological liberal, however, downplay the earlier, non-ideological meaning of “liberal,” which related not to the politics of liberalism but to the virtue of liberality.
Liberalism is closely associated with commerce and the profit motive, but liberality is about giving, not exchange. And if it does not imply total contempt for money, liberality does mean a preference for giving it away to good purpose rather than accumulating it. Progressive liberalism is as much at odds with this virtue as market liberalism is, however: liberality, as Aristotle makes clear, requires generosity with one’s own money, not the state’s. Welfare states are not liberal. They are, in an Aristotelian light, a vicious replacement for liberality. The same might be said for much private (but equally bureaucratic) “philanthropy.”
Liberality is a mean between the extremes of prodigality and covetousness. The prodigal expends his means irresponsibly, ruining himself and perhaps others in the process. The covetous man wants to keep what wealth he has and get more—simply for the sake of getting more, and even if it means taking unjustly from others.
To be liberal, a person must have the means to support himself and his household, with enough surplus to show generosity to others. There are liberal assumptions of this kind in the economic thought of both great political factions in the early American republic. The ideal of the independent yeoman farmer in the politics of Thomas Jefferson is conducive to liberality. So, too, is the Federalist ideal of government by well-to-do burghers, the better and wealthier sort of citizen. In each case, the citizen, whether yeoman or burgher, has sufficient means to show largesse to others after his own needs and those of his family have been supplied.
What Jefferson feared was an urbanized proletariat that would be so poor, or so mean of spirit, that it could not or would not practice the virtues of the independent gentleman. The Federalists, for their part, feared mob-rule democracy, in which the covetous—including improvident and indebted farmers—would outvote the liberal.
There is both an economic order and an ethos implied by the virtue of liberality. The economic requirement is for something resembling a prosperous middle class. A society in which there is a vast gulf between the wealthy and poor is likely to be characterized by relationships of economic dependence in which the many will not have the means to act liberally, while the few will be tempted to prodigality or mercenary expenditure, turning the recipients of generosity into subservient clients rather than (more or less) independent friends. To give with the aim of gaining power over others is the opposite of the liberal ethos.
Liberality should also be distinguished from compassion: Aristotle emphasizes the free and spontaneous nature of liberality, which entails giving without a sense of needing to give. The pain that one feels at the plight of the poor is different from the motive behind liberality, which is a noble sense of being free from inordinate desire for money. Alms-giving can be liberal, but liberality is best characterized by giving for the sake of improvement rather than to meet anyone’s necessities. In the centuries before student loan debt, it was an archetypal act of liberality for a wealthy relation (or even non-relation) to pay for a student’s tuition. While gratitude was expected, the student did not become an employee or servant, although he might choose to work for his benefactor.
The roots of the Greek and Latin words for liberality—eleutheriotēs and liberalitas, respectively—denote the status of a free person. It’s a virtue most likely to flourish under conditions of moderate inequality: equals would be little disposed to accept gifts from one another and would benefit little by doing so; but where there is a modicum of inequality, the benefit to the recipient is meaningful, and he has reason to accept. Where there is great categorical inequality, however, a gift that is meaningful to the recipient may be trivial to the giver, signifying not his freedom from the grip of money so much as his distance from the condition of the other. Liberality is the virtue of a gentleman, not a plutocrat or a slave master.
“Liberal” democracy informed by liberality rather than liberalism is a democracy in which gentlemen of more-than-self-sufficient means exhibit generosity toward their fellow citizens, who are not a dependent class but are rather free and potentially capable of liberality themselves. This is a very different kind of democracy from that feared by many philosophers and by the American Founders, a regime in which all are covetous: the many are tempted to expropriate the wealthy few, and the few are jealous of the power with which they can protect their riches. The mitigation of the class divisions endemic to democracies in the ancient world comes about both through the cultivation of a middle class and through the liberal ethos that makes it the mark of a gentleman to be above merely pecuniary interests.
At the end of the eighteenth century, both the newborn United States and Great Britain were liberal democracies in this sense. The franchise was limited in both countries, but even in Britain the popular branch of government was effectively paramount, and the House of Commons would only gain greater power at the expense of Crown and Lords over the next two centuries. Neither country had yet to experience “liberalism” in the ideological sense, which emerged by name only in the nineteenth century. (Read more.)
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