Rethinking classical liberalism in 'progressive' times (conference paper) : The divergent sociologies of Spencer and Sumner

Nineteenth-century liberal political thought was intimately interwoven with theories of transformative social change. Liberal institutions and ideals were championed as the optimal political order for “modern” or “advanced” societies.1 This mode of argument was premised on beliefs about the character of such societies and how they arise. When early nineteenth-century liberals such as Benjamin Constant articulated these beliefs they drew on the theory of the rise of “commercial society” associated with the Scottish Enlightenment.2 But that theory predated, and thus did not speak directly to, democratization and industrialization, the two dominant socially transformative trends of the new century. When Tocqueville updated liberalism by addressing these trends in the 1830s he interpreted them as potential threats tothe political order classical liberals advocated: a representative government limited to securing peace, property, and the rule of law, and thereby, a society in which the motor of progress is free competition and association. The dark edge of Tocqueville’s analysis was, however, mitigated by mid-century as liberals such as John Stuart Mill intellectually tamed industrialization and suffrage expansion by interpreting them as extensions of paths of economic and political progress charted in the rise of commerce. Classical liberalism’s limited government ideal was thereby rearticulated as being just as relevant and forward-looking a political theory as it had been early in the century.