Qué es el LIBERALISMO? 💡| Historia y teoría del pensamiento liberal clásico ☕

What is liberalism? When did it arise?

Is being libertarian the same as being liberal?

My goal today is to explain liberalism to you as it was explained to me:

with apples.

But to be part of this journey, you have to keep one thing in mind:

NUCLEI, yes, nuclei.

The nuclei will help us understand how

ideologies work and be able to differentiate one from another.

Ready? Perfect, now.

LIBERALISM

Let's imagine that liberalism is...

a cell.

You must have seen this image ad nauseam in biology classes at school.

And what is inside a cell?

Uhum, we already said it:

a core.

And the nucleus of the liberalism cell will be the individual.

What does that mean?

Well, at the center of liberalism is the individual, but he is not alone, there is also

his freedom.

Well, it is not called liberalism for nothing...

So we have to assume that all questions related

to liberalism will be answered with this nucleus:

free individual.

But free from what?

Everything,

every kind of abuse of power,

wherever it comes from.

And to understand this, you have to fasten your

seatbelts because we are going to 17th century England.

This man you see here is called Thomas Hobbes,

considered the theorist of political absolutism

par excellence and an arduous defender of absolute monarchy, according to Wikipedia.

But the latter is not entirely true; It is rather debatable,

and I am going to explain it to you in another video, because if not the issue will get out of hand.

What you have to know is that Hobbes wrote this work,

The Leviathan,

where he explained that the origin of society and the State

(and, consequently, of the power of the king)

was the product of an original contract between human beings.

Well, at this point you might wonder why I'm

talking about kings if the video is about liberalism, but

that's where I'm going.

Already in this book, Hobbes introduces ideas that will be important for liberal political thought.

Ideas that I am going to mention to you later.

So you're telling me that Hobbes was the first liberal?

No, more like proto-liberal,

it's like in limbo.

Hobbes theorized absolute monarchy,

but with arguments that brought us a little closer to what future liberal thought would be.

I had told you before that the central subject of political liberalism was the individual and

his freedom, and that the way to protect that freedom was by controlling the abuse of power,

wherever it came from.

This gives us three generations of liberals.

The first generation sought to guarantee the freedom of the

individual against the abuse of power that came from above,

from the absolute king.

In this generation we can place authors like Hobbes

(although halfway, more distant than close),

but we can place John Locke and Montesquieu, among others.

From there are born the classic liberal rights that we all know because they are very famous, such as:

freedom of expression,

freedom of worship,

freedom of representation,

etc.

Well, as the centuries go by, times change and we no longer have absolute kings, but

democracies.

There appears the second generation of liberals, with authors such as Tocqueville,

Benjamin Constant or John Stuart Mill.

This generation sought to protect the individual

from the abuse of power that came not from above, but from below,

from the famous "tyranny of the majority." .

Time continues to pass and contexts change.

Now we are in the era of capitalism,

and the abuses of power that put the freedom of the individual at risk come from the sides,

from large corporations.

Here we have authors like Leonard Hobhouse or John Hobson.

This generation considered that, to appease the problem,

workers should associate, giving rise to what we all know as unions.

Parenthesis: Important note that I had forgotten to emphasize.

While a new generation of liberals emerged, the previous ones did not cease to exist.

This is important to know, please don't forget. Now yes, we continue.

Let's see, we have talked about Hobbes, the proto-liberal, and the different generations of liberals,

but we have not talked about the ideas that make up liberal thought.

I'm going to explain that to you now.

Well, we already know that the subject of political liberalism is the individual.

Sorry, I'm not going to get tired of repeating it, because this is the basics of the topic.

Term that comes from the Latin individuus,

that is, indivisible,

something that cannot be divided.

And what is it that cannot be divided?

An atom.

The individual is the social atom.

Society, for liberalism, is a sum of individuals,

it is built as a result of an agreement or contract between these free individuals.

Social contract? Like those where you sign and such?

Yes, metaphorically, yes.

Here the word "contract" is transferred from the economic to the political sphere,

because originally liberalism was the ideology of the ascending bourgeoisie:

an economically well-off middle-class social group that rose against the aristocracy,

the social group privileged for reasons of lineage or birth .

All this arises at a specific time,

in the era of Enlightenment (as always)

a historical, cultural and intellectual period associated with modern science.

Until then, religion and tradition had been the

main reason why an authority was considered worthy of trust or respect:

such a person deserved to be in office because that was how they had always been.

But that is disappearing, and reason prevails.

And so with everything.

What made something considered correct or legitimate—be it an action,

a social position, or authority—was not due to the fact that it had always

been done that way, but because the logic of reason dictated it.

Thus, for classical liberalism, the social position should be that

which the person earned through his or her own work, effort and merit,

and not that which indicated his or her status at birth or one's own tradition.

Be careful, but just as he could win through his own merit, he could also lose through his own fault.

In liberalism, each person is responsible for their situation, their gain and their misfortunes.

So, the main authors of the contractarian current,

those who theorized the social contract and that we mentioned in the first generation of liberals,

not only conceived society as a voluntary association of individuals,

but also that these individuals were prior to society and the same State.

That is, they arose before, and therefore had natural rights.

These rights, therefore, were prior to the emergence

of society and the State, and therefore should not be attacked by it.

Following this line, the legitimacy of a government came from the consent

of the governed, who, through this

hypothetical contract,

gave up part of their freedom.

But, just as they consented to this agreement, they could also dissolve it.

This idea was completely revolutionary and

contrary to the power of divine origin held by the kings of the time.

In a liberal scale of values,

the individual took precedence over civil society, and this over the State,

because, as we said, the individual was the atom, what emerged first and before everything.

This separation was something that did not exist before,

because until then the figure of the king tended to be confused with that of the State:

the king was everything, he was absolute. But no more,

because liberalism will assign another role to the State.

What role? A limited role as much as possible.

Liberalism sought to protect the individual, and that implied

the least possible interference with his freedom.

That is why they understood freedom as non-interference—that is, “being free from.”

Also known as negative freedom,

this will be the type of freedom characteristic of classical political liberalism:

the less interference I have, the freer I am.

Therefore, the role of the State will be reduced to a minimum,

like that of a simple "night watchman",

and its only function would be to enforce liberal rights:

law, contracts, order and security.

This surely makes you think about something we all know...

the Constitution.

Social contracts emerged from the liberal revolutions in the form of constitutions,

such as the Constitution of the United States,

the Bill of Rights

and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in the French Revolution,

among others.

But also the division of powers as a way to control excess power,

generating a balance of checks and balances.

Now you may be thinking: if we have an increasingly free individual,

does that mean that he could choose whatever he wanted, even his religion, for example?

And yes, exactly.

A key episode occurred in the United Kingdom during the period of the religious wars.

Do you remember Hobbes?

This was the time in which he wrote Leviathan,

a work where he also introduced the idea of ​​the "naturalness of conflict."

In a context where there were many groups fighting among themselves, Hobbes realizes

that there was no way out and that they had to coexist.

It is the recognition of

pluralism,

a concept that, as I already mentioned, planted the first seeds of liberalism.

But not only that:

he considered that an authority was necessary to put order in the political and religious spheres.

Then, the idea developed that religion should be relegated

to the private sphere, and with that the notion of

tolerance was born.

Do you notice how this idea that everyone can choose their

own religion fits much better with the idea of ​​freedom as "non-interference"?

Liberal details.

Let's see, and where is equality in liberal thought?

Liberalism understands that, to the extent that we all have the same rights, we are equal;

that is, formal equality or equality before the law.

In its time, this idea was also oriented against the

aristocratic or birth privilege that we already talked about.

For liberalism, at the center is not blood or lineage,

but the effort of the individual, and therefore society should not

be ordered based on tradition, but on reason.

That is why he defends that we are all equal before the law.

As you see, everything is perfectly connected.

I know what you're thinking: I haven't even mentioned free market economics.

And yes,

it's the first thing everyone thinks of when they hear the word "liberalism."

Now I'm going with that.

However, it is good to know that liberalism is not only reduced

to the economic sphere, but goes much further.

An individual who wants to maximize his freedom not only needs the least

possible interference, but also resources.

Therefore, private property is crucial.

In fact, John Locke, in "Two Treatises on Civil Government,"

argues that private property is a natural right that arises from the

work of the free individual and his interaction with nature.

He gave as an example picking apples from a tree that are in a state of

nature, that is, without having been claimed by someone else.

By doing so, those apples become your property,

because you have invested your labor in obtaining them.

From a liberal perspective, Locke maintains that it is work

that gives the individual the legitimate right of ownership over those fruits.

Therefore, the State must protect this natural right of property

and guarantee the security of individuals in the enjoyment of their legitimately acquired property.

And hence liberals do not view the payment of taxes favorably.

So, private property is crucial for

classical political liberalism because it ensures your freedom in two ways:

in a material sense, because being an owner frees you from necessity,

guaranteeing your individual freedom,

and in a political sense, because it allows you to have autonomy. of the will.

Autonomy of what?

Autonomy of the will.

And that is...?

Autonomy of will is the ability of the individual

to make decisions rationally without depending on anyone else.

If we transfer this to the political sphere, it means that, if you depend on someone else, you can no longer

discern the collective good for yourself, because you depend on the will of that other person.

In other words, you are not really free to choose.

This argument was used in the past to deny the right to vote to categories

considered "dependent", such as women and workers.

Well, I digressed, let's get back to it.

Continuing along the lines of the economy, money displaced titles, allowing social positions to be equalized.

Regardless of your family or your ancestry, if you had money you were going to be treated in a certain way and you could grow socially.

Let's see, let's see, but not all of us have the same opportunities to generate wealth, a super poor person is not going to grow as quickly as someone from the middle class.

Exact.

Some liberals saw that their system could collapse if

there was no real equality of opportunity, and from that branch of liberals

social liberalism emerged.

Well, at this point I hope I haven't entangled you with so much information.

Now you may be wondering: what is social liberalism?

What we have seen so far in the video is classical liberalism,

that is, the original, or the "purest" if you want to call it that.

But then we are going to see that some things, over time, change.

I'm going to explain social liberalism to you in the next

video. And I haven't answered you if being liberal is the same as being libertarian

, but I'll also leave that for the next video,

because if not, I won't have the life to edit it all

, sorry, I don't have an editor.

So nothing, I'll see you in the next video!

Leave me in the comments if you have any ideas or topics of interest.

Help me, please, because I'm not very creative about those things.

And nothing, see you in "Liberalism: part two", which I don't know if it will be the next one or the one after that.

But they're going to have it anyway.

Bye bye!