Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Socialism grew up in opposition to capitalism, just as liberalism developed in reaction to feudalism. Both liberalism and socialism combined potent critiques of the existing socio-economic order with blueprints for a desirable future society. However, liberalism provides a rather more coherent body of thought than does socialism, and its theories are linked with the emergence of a dominant system combining capitalism and liberal democracy. By contrast, no widespread socio-economic order has as yet emerged which can be confidently or closely associated with the ideas of socialism. In both cases the relationship between theories and actual systems is a contestable one, but it has been particularly problematic in the history of socialism. Liberalism preached a doctrine of free competition and exchange between isolated individuals, policed by an impartial state but unfettered by aristocratic rights and privi-leges. Liberalism took many centuries to overcome feudalism with its ‘old conservative’ doctrine of a stable system of hierarchical classes and hereditary rule. As late as 1914 the feudal order remained dominant in Prussia, Austria and Russia, while as Schumpeter (1943) noted, modern capitalism continued to be nursed within the decaying fabric of a more glamorous aristocratic shell. Moreover, the gradual triumph of liberal democracy involved a very considerable dilution and for ... log in or subscribe to read full text