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Liberalism as a political doctrine is one that emphasises individual rights, and tolerance between individuals. It is therefore an outlook which has difficulty in adequately accommodating the collective side of human life. Though liberals are agitated by such conditions and attitudes as poverty, racism and homelessness, their commitment to The Individual is in great tension with their social commitment.

This individualism was focused in the economic theory that inspired 19th century liberals, that of free trade or laissez-faire. The idea was that individual manufacturers and traders, unhampered in their inventiveness or price-setting by anything apart from that which other individuals (supposedly just as "free") would be willing to pay for their products, would be encouraged to offer them for no more than the market would bear. This naively assumed that enlarging profits and cutting costs in ways that cheated or exploited the worker or consumer would not occur, they allegedly being free to buy from a myriad of suppliers or work for a myriad of employers. The adulterating food producer, the exacting employer, etc. are simply put out of business under laissez-faire theory by the freedom of workers and consumers to go elsewhere.

If this description sounds familiar, it should, for it sketches the essential delusions underpinning today's mainstream economics. In 150 years, what was liberalism has become conservatism. The Liberal Democrats have their roots in this ideology, though other influences and their need to reposition themselves with regard to other parties have tempered it. The main later development in liberal thought originates in the increase in working-class organisation and electoral strength in the later 19th century, combined with the undeniably widespread problems of poverty and unemployment. All this brought home to the then Liberal Party the inadequacy of unfettered capitalism and individual action in the face of its attendant problems. Having become identified with reform, the Liberal Party originally secured much of the working-class vote as sections of it became enfranchised. But more searching criticisms of capitalism and the legal system upholding it saw many workers move towards a political expression that could result in a decisive changing of laws in their favour, ( i.e.) through Parliament and their "own" party, Labour.

Still stressing the classless individual above all, but now with some recognition of the inability of that individual to resolve all of his/her problems alone, Liberal ideology thus ended up being basically social democrat decades before the Social Democratic party (SDP) was created in 1981. The latter was mainly based on Labour malcontents like David Owen and Shirley Williams. Their outlook, favouring employer-employee cooperation, political decentralisation, membership of NATO and multilateral disarmament, was very much akin to the Liberals'. Having allied within months of the SDP's birth, their 1988-89 merger and change to the name Liberal Democrats were inevitable. However, coming from a Labour/union background, the SDP side brought to Liberal politics a new influx of members and a basis for revamping liberalism so as to claim the centre ground whilst the Tories and Labour could be painted as champions of the Right and Left. (This late 80s scenario has now largely dissolved as all concerned squabble over the increasingly crowded centre).

Wealth and War

Today the Liberal Democrats have a vast programme of reform in view. Yet time and again this reformism conflicts with a conservatism about capitalism and its accompanying politics. So although many things they propose might, if achieved, make life more bearable, they still wish to retain much in the way of institutions and attitudes that generate the problems in the first place. Some examples from current Liberal Democrat policies will attempt to show this.

Outstanding in this respect are their economic policies. They can state "Modern business finds success by motivating everyone involved with the enterprise to work together as 'stakeholders'", yet also "A strongly competitive domestic market is an important ingredient for success in the global market". What competition means in actuality is economic winners and losers or, more concretely, jobs and joblessness, rich and poor and, ultimately, the difference between living well and dying miserably. In a further twist in the spiral of contradictions, Liberal Democrats also back "reform of the world trading and financial systems , to remove discrimination against developing countries". (This dovetails with their desire to more strongly regulate the City).

But the history of capitalism shows that powerful companies will, having attained that postion, do all they can in terms of legal mechanisms, cartels or inter-governmental institutions to keep it. Such reforms as are made (e.g. in recent years in GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), while making noises about dealing with poverty, are in the end always an attempt of the already rich to confirm their place. This is "the grain of the international economy" ; can it be desirable to try and "work with" it?

The Liberal Democrats" defence commitments make clearer their hankering to preserve the essentials of the domestic and global set-up, even as they perceive many of its faults. They favour continued membership of NATO and reform of the United Nations which would include a larger Security Council and a "permanent peacekeeping force". Of course various factors in global troublespots can complicate the aims of the militarily powerful when participating in "peacekeeping" (e.g. the US in Somalia). The fact remains that, beyond settling the immediate conflict, the underlying objective is to make the country in question safe for the market. Clearly those who are already prosperous are best placed to take advantage of "peace" through investment, trade tie-ups and cooperative local rulers.

The continuation of NATO, the retention of nuclear weapons and the maintenance of "the current real level of defence spending" jointly raise the question of what is being defended, and against whom? Why this anticipated array of enemies if a reformed international capitalism is going to generate and distribute wealth so fairly?

On the most immediate international level, they are more enthusiastic about membership of the European Union than the Tories or Labour. There is some logic in this: as they point out, "acid rain and water pollution know no boundaries" But this acknowledgement of common regional interests in the environmental sphere continues in the economic in a much more contradictory way. Thus they also advocate "improving Europe's competitiveness in world markets" at the same time as the laissez-faire of the Single Market "presents great opportunities for the British economy...widening and strengthening (it) so that British industry can compete better". The confusing logic of these positions, in essence, seems to be: the countries of the EU should compete with each other, but as a bloc compete with the rest of the globe. This allegedly makes for "a fairer and more prosperous world". This aim of strengthening the cohesion of the European bloc also makes them the most enthusiastic of the major parties about joining the Euro.

Regrettably, for all the fine words about a more united Europe, this stress on competition is tailor-made both to bolster nationalism (because of the variations in national economic circumstances) and, beyond this, the hardening of the world into new regional blocs to succeed those of the Cold War. Where economic interests are concerned, military involvement is never far behind, either to protect economic advantage or to help achieve it. (The gradual development of common EU positions on foreign and defence policy is part of this process).

Reform...but not too much

But the Liberal Democrats tend to envisage social and political reformation rather than the conservatism apparent in the defence field, usually attempting to mingle the two. Undoubtedly this is seen as being commonsensical and practical. Thus more money would be allocated to the NHS, so as to reduce waiting-lists and abolish eye and dental check-up charges, but not those for prescriptions, which would merely be frozen. Thus 2 billion pounds more is pledged for education, but university students would still eventually have to repay what they had been granted in living expenses. And thus local councils would have restored freedom to build new homes and use the money from council house sales to this end, a mortgage benefit would be granted to low-earners, and so on, but this desire that housing should be affordable for all clashes with the drive for profit and the preservation of private landlords. Most builders would rather obtain lucrative contracts for offices and shopping centres Proft is increased by the scarcity of a commodity in relation to demand: when the demand is for such a basic human need as housing, it is naturally very high, a capitalist's dream that these proposals would not end.

This split between seeing the need for change but being too committed to the old ways of capitalism and political hierarchy runs throughout liberalism : it almost defines it. Liberal Democrats see the injustices produced by centralisation and so propose decentralisation throughout Britain at all levels; but there remains a ruling-class, economically and politically. They propose a Freedom of Information Act; but there remain politicians and bosses with secrets to conceal and the power to do so.. They suggest sound measures for tackling pollution and waste; but their opposition to nuclear power has grown ever more diluted. More broadly on the environmental front, though opting for measures like a carbon tax on energy sources, they will not seek the end of an economic system that favours short-term gratification and therefore a short-sighted use of natural resources.

Beyond the General Election

For the Liberal Democrats the 1997 General Election was their most successful for many years in terms of seats won (46, a rise of 26 since the 1992 election), though in fact their overall share of the vote fell slightly . The chief factors in this were tactical voting by both Liberal Democrat and Labour voters (lowering their sights simply to getting the Tories out of office), and the former's concentration of limited resources on their most winnable seats. The boost to Liberal confidence made the leader, Paddy Ashdown, pursue a policy of "constructive opposition": taking a stance of being a potential coalition partner (hardly required by Labour with its immense majority) but at the same time stubbornly continuing to demand a PR electoral system. Despite a continuing stream of dissent which felt Labour could happily go it alone, given its success via the first past the post system, Tony Blair has pursued a course begun in the later years of the Major government in an agreement on constitutional reform brokered by Robin Cook and Robert Maclennan. This led to the setting up of a commission to consider reform of the voting system, its symbolic choice of head being a Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Jenkins: in another life this was Roy Jenkins, one of the Labour renegades who founded the SDP.

Blair's perspective on this has been the idea that the Tories can be kept out of power for decades by making it easier for parties of the so-called centre-left to get candidates elected. But the price of this is that those self-same parties must co-operate more than they have ever done before. For the Liberal Democrats this has meant a particularly difficult struggle. Seeing the chance to influence the Government of the day on some issues they have often watered down or abandoned any principled criticism in other areas, most cravenly when they failed to oppose the highly repressive and illiberal "anti-terrorism" law that was rushed into existence following the Omagh bombing of August 1998. Yet the contradictory impulse, to assert an independent political existence, has for instance led to continuing explicit calls for higher taxes to fund public services which New Labour's rhetoric at least has condemned.

This impulse led delegates at the September 1998 conference to reject ideas pushed by the leadership which were close to Labour thinking (e.g. accepting a lower rate minimum wage for 16-20 year olds), and must surely have influenced Ashdown's decision to stand down as party leader in 1999, finally defeated by the contradictions of bringing his party much closer to Labour and opposing political "tribalism", and yet in the next breath criticisng such tendencies as Labour's authoritarianism with classic liberal complaints about centralised power and lack of belief in the citizen.

In the short term the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to improve their standing much. They are currently treading a delicate path between coalition with Labour, through which they sniff influence if not outright power, and the continuation of ineffectual independence. This applies not only at Westminster but even more so in the Scottish Parliament . In the latter, their 17 seats have been critical in achieving a share in power with Labour, though fighting talk over the issue of student fees was watered down as the possibility of losing this degree of influence became apparent. Their share of the vote in the June 1999 European elections (13%) was in fact less than they tend to get in national elections, although as these were held under Proportional Representation (PR), they still achieved representation in each constituency. PR remains a prime goal for them at all levels of British politics, but Blair's commitment within the period 1997-2002 is only to hold a referendum on a system of PR, not to actually institute one. After Labour's drubbing in the European elections, the party in general has even less appetite for such a reform than ever. But if Ashdown's successor, Charles Kennedy, (elected in August 1999) makes a strong effort to differentiate the party from Labour, it may pay off if the degree of unpopularity that already exists for the Government on various issues grows worse, which is most likely if the economic strategy fails. However the bedrock Liberal commitment to no more than a caring, cleaned-up capitalism cannot really address the injustices which stem from such a system.

The Individual and the Class Struggle

Anarchism arguably grew, in part, from the liberal tradition. There is a common belief in the value of the individual and individual freedom. But whereas anarchists see freedom realised in society, through the interwoven activities of individuals, liberalism cannot reconcile the contradiction between its commitment to economic individualism (which cannot help but create an elite) and its professed concern over the social and economic privileges and injustices which flow from this. Anarchism looks deeper into the roots of oppression, and finds them not in the defective workings of the system but integral to it. This is the class struggle, and it can only be ended in the abolition of classes, not the pretence of partnership. This is why anarchists go much further than liberalism: beyond reformism, towards revolution.