National Socialism vs. liberal philosophy (2 of 6): Classical liberalism

James Madison

This is the second in a series of posts about Herbert Marcuse's 1934 essay, "The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State." See Part 1.

In government, the US Constitution was mostly a classic liberal document, its acceptance of chattel slavery being a big exception. It established a national government elected by the people, though directly only in the case of the House of Representatives. It established an elaborate system of checks and balances along the lines developed in the philosophical realm by Locke and Montesquieu (1689-1755). It insisted on the sanctity of private contracts. It eliminated remnants of feudal law like entail and primogeniture. It required that the President be a native-born American to minimize the chances of a European royal dynasty taking power through the Electoral College. It established a strong, robust central government, incorporating a liberal notion of nationalism. The Federalist is a leading statement of classical liberal political theory.

Today, even neoconservatives encouraging wars under the excuse of “democracy promotion” typically describe parliamentary democracy with rule of law and individual rights protected as “liberal democracy.”

Liberalism in Britain advanced through the mechanism of Parliament without the kind of traumatic internal revolutions the Continent experienced starting with the French Revolution of 1789. Liberalism in Germany and the Habsburg Empire took a big hit during the Revolutions of 1848. The German Parliament meeting in Frankfurt’s Pauskirche was the highpoint of liberalism in the German lands. It attempted to establish parliamentary rule in the context of a constitutional monarchy. But the Paulkirche movement was crushed and the parliament disbanded.

And in the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, a distinct working-class-based political movement began to emerge. It shared with classical liberals the desire for democratic political institutions, though they tended to prefer broader suffrage rather than the more restricted versions that many liberal businessmen found more congenial. But the working class movements also demanded that the abuses of the part of capitalist enterprises also be ended and focused on social inequities that classical liberalism prescribed should be left to the Invisible Hand of the free market. The working class movements formed the basis for the Social Democratic parties that emerged in the second half of the 19th century.

By the late 1900s, classical liberalism had become a defender of the unrestrained freedom of the capitalist, big and small, even at the expense of the rest of society, of the workers and the farmers. Social Darwinism may have been a more cynical and extreme brand of this line of thought. But it fit in well with the classical liberal insistence on the freedom of enterprise and limited government.

Harry Gervitz writes in his article on “liberalism” in Encyclopædia Britannica 2006:

In general, liberals believed that government must not do for the individual what he is able to do for himself. Legislation like Britain's Ten Hours Act 1847), which limited the labour of women and children to 58 hours a week, was denounced by the English jurist A.V. Dicey as late as 1905 as socialistic. Criticizing the Adulteration of Food or Drink Act and the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1899, he contended that such laws safeguard individuals from mistakes "which often may be avoided by a man's own care and sagacity" and therefore "rest upon the idea ... that the State is a better judge than a man himself of his own interest ..." (Law and Public Opinion in England, 2nd ed.; 1914; pp. 237–238; 263–264). Such views were even more prevalent in the United States.

The classical liberal tradition was largely based on the model of an economy dominated by individual capitalists. But with the consolidation of the corporations and trusts in the last three decades of the 19th century, capitalism in the leading capitalist countries had become dominated by monopolies. Corporations are not individuals, even though the US Supreme Court considers them to be. They are collective institutions that can manipulate markets and require a degree of planning at both the enterprise level and at the level of the national economy not accounted for in the Invisible Hand free-market theory of classical liberalism.

When 18th century business enterprises demanded to be released from unnecessary restrictions like mercantilist rules of others that served to preserve the feudal economy at the expense of business freedom and economic development, they were advocating policies that in the context advanced both political freedom and economic development. Giant 20th century corporations demanding freedom from government regulations for themselves often produced severe restrictions of the freedoms of much of the public and inflicted devastating depressions on their economies. The social context had changed radically. And there were many decades of experience with some of the devastating social ills that capitalist enterprises had created.

Otto von Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor"

In Germany and France, the capitalist/liberal parties largely accommodated themselves to the authoritarian monarchies of Napoleon III in France and of Wilhelm I and his “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck in Germany. Bismarck not only promoted the development of industry and opposed the socialist movements on behalf of business. He also unified Germany in wars with Denmark, Austria and France. Wilhelm I’s German Empire represented the fulfillment of the Paulskirche Parliament’s “little German” (kleindeutsch) version of German nationalism, i.e., one excluding Austria. National unity was a major liberal goal. German liberals also supported Bismarck’s in the so-called Kulturkampf (culture fight) with the Catholic Church on behalf of more secularized government, also a major goal for liberals.

In Germany, the liberal goals of parliamentary democracy and civil liberties for all came to be primarily championed by the Social Democratic Party. Liberals were more captive politically to the monarchy, part of Bismarck’s political legacy. In classical liberal political theory, parliamentary democracy was the ideal government for a capitalist economy and society. But Bismarck and Napoleon III had shown that capitalist economies could also do very well under a nominal feudal form of government like a strong monarchy.

During the Weimar Republic, the main political battle was between the parties that supported Weimar’s “liberal democracy” (Social Democrats [SPD], the Catholic Center Party and the small German Democratic Party), on the one hand, and the authoritarian parties of the far right, on the other. The one of the latter group that eventually won out was, of course, Hitler’s NSDAP, the Nazi Party. The Communist Party (KPD) was opposed to the far right, but they also opposed Weimar’s brand of parliamentarianism in favor of a Soviet model. (The split and lasting hostility between the SPD and KPD is a fascinating and important story, but one that is not especially relevant to the purpose of this essay.)

This was the background in which Marcuse was looking at the philosophies identifying with the Third Reich and their rejection of key parts of liberal philosophy.

Tags: critical theory, frankfurt school, herbert marcuse, liberalism, national socialism