Aspects of Classical Liberalism

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

Classical liberalism is a political ideology that advocates civil liberties within the rule of law and emphasizes economic freedom. The term has particularly been used retrospectively to differentiate between earlier liberalism of the 19th century and social liberalism. Classical liberalism was characterized by extreme stressing of personal interests, independent economic activities, and negative freedoms. Up to 1900, classical liberalism was referred to as liberalism. The term classical developed as liberalism evolved to be linked with various interventions, including the market, to achieve egalitarian goals and private property.

Discussion

Classical liberalism was reflected in America’s War for Independence. The renowned theme of Separation of Church and state is one of the multiple interconnected ideas that could be summarized as the separation of the economy from the state, differentiation of the land from the state, the distinction of the press, speech, military affairs, war, and indeed the parting of almost everything from the state. Particularly the state was to be kept small, with very little and almost no budget. While classical liberals never had a taxation theory, they bitterly fought any new kind of tax or any tax increase. This bitter and vehement fight against tea and stamp tax was one of the contributory factors that led to the American Revolution.

The initial classical liberalism theoreticians were levelers throughout the English Revolution and included John Locke, a late seventeenth-century philosopher. John Locke laid down each person’s natural rights to his property, limiting the government’s purpose to ensuring such rights are defended. In short, John Locke inspired the American Declaration of Independence, “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the People’s Right to alter or abolish it….” (Rothbard, 2021).

Conclusion

In conclusion, while American colonies extensively read Locke, his abstract philosophy hardly stirred men to revolution. Instead, men were stimulated to revolution by 18th-century radical Lockeans, who wrote in a more passionate, hard-hitting, and popular manner and applied basic philosophy to the concrete problems facing the British government of the day. An example was Cato’s letters in 1720, which were published in newspaper articles identifying irrepressible conflicts between liberty and power with the power of governments, advocating for power to be kept small and faced.

Reference

Rothbard, M. N. (2021). The american revolution and classical liberalism. Home. Web.

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Aspects of Classical Liberalism

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