Page "Classical liberalism" Paragraph 44

Many modern scholars of liberalism argue that no particularly meaningful distinction between classical and modern liberalism exists.

Alan Wolfe summarises this viewpoint, which reject ( s ) any such distinction and argue ( s ) instead for the existence of a continuous liberal understanding that includes both Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes ...

The idea that liberalism comes in two forms assumes that the most fundamental question facing mankind is how much government intervenes into the economy ...

When instead we discuss human purpose and the meaning of life, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are on the same side.

Both of them possessed an expansive sense of what we are put on this earth to accomplish.

Both were on the side of enlightenment.

Both were optimists who believed in progress but were dubious about grand schemes that claimed to know all the answers.

For Smith, mercantilism was the enemy of human liberty.

For Keynes, monopolies were.

It makes perfect sense for an eighteenth-century thinker to conclude that humanity would flourish under the market.

For a twentieth century thinker committed to the same ideal, government was an essential tool to the same end ... odern liberalism is instead the logical and sociological outcome of classical liberalism.