The Liberal Commons

Within this section, the author examines the liberal case for the commons through the perspective of leading theorists on the area. Elinor Ostrom, Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler. All three place the development of the commons in parallel with state and market operation. They advocate for the coexistence of the commons with capitalism and the state. Ostrom’s work is discussed as focusing on the problem of collective action by elaborating the model of polycentrism. Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler expand Ostrom’s work from the local to the global commons of the Internet and free/open source software. They introduce the term ‘digital commons’ to describe a non-market sector of information characterised by an ethic of sharing, self-management and cooperation between peers who have free access to online platforms. Benkler often diverges from classic liberalism by pointing to the autonomous development of the commons beyond capitalism and the state. Yet this underlying goal generally conforms to the liberal tradition. Discussion of the arguments of Cornelius Castoriadis and others stresses the impotence of the liberal commons in addressing the contradictions of capitalism and the state pointing to the ‘lack of the political’. The author argues in line with these perspectives that economic democracy is vital to underpin a digital commons.

Sectarian Discrimination in Local Councils and Myth-Making

Scottish local authorities have been accused of sectarianism in hiring policies because the proportion of workers who declare their religion as Catholic falls below the Catholic proportion of the population as a whole. This rejoinder points out the methodological flaw of drawing conclusions from such incomplete data and presents an alternative way of interpreting the partial statistics. It also notes that, with the high proportion of Labour councillors who are Catholic and the Labour party's history of council control, such discrimination is highly unlikely. Finally, it draws on classic liberalism to defend workers’ refusal to declare their religion.

Income Inequality in Advanced Capitalism: How Protective Institutions can Promote Egalitarian Societies

This study develops a Polanyian perspective on income inequality in advanced capitalist countries. Polanyi’s historical account of the rise and fall of classic liberalism in Britain illustrated how social groups and society at large devised “protective institutions” to shield themselves from socially destructive market forces. Recent qualitative applications of this idea identify three protective institutions as being the most important – the public sector economy, trade unions, and the family. Using data from 16 Western countries from 1970 to 2010, this study demonstrates that cross-national and temporal variations in these protective institutions explain a considerable amount of the observed patterns of income inequality among these countries, helping to explain why some countries have recently experienced rising inequality but others have not. The study ends by arguing that a Polanyian perspective provides more analytical and theoretical leverage than other sociological approaches to understanding income inequality.

VERDI E IL WAGNERISMO NEL MOVIMENTO GERMANICO ITALIANO

Deutsche bewegung (Prussian way) and “classical liberalism” are two opposite concepts; and in the gap between them Verdi’s concern about the “germanesimo” is to be placed. Verdi meets the German culture very early: in 1834 he conducts Haydn’s Die Schöpfung and in 1838 writes two songs on Goethe’s Faust Italian translations. But at that time Goethe and Haydn are considered as universal culture and not as particular “german” expressions. German culture will be seen as an foreign entity, as a potential colonizer, only with the rise of Prussian nationalism, after French débâcle at Sedan. Then everything changes, and Verdi raises his voice complaining that “now all is German”; but now in Haydn’s place there is Wagner; in the place of Goethe there is Heine. What worries Verdi is not only the artistic situation, but a more general, radical and deep danger. Actually under the government of Francesco Crispi Italy is starting on a new “Prussian way”, e Deutsche bewegung, a “movement” more political and economic, than artistical. The approaching to the Bismarck model is a consequence of the worsening of relationship between Italy and France (until the so-called Guerra doganale, “Tariff war”. The Triplice Alleanza is so one of the main origins of Italian Wagnerism; and Verdi’s dismay doesn’t follow from the artistic situation (or better, not only), but from the real wave which submerged the whole everyday life, endangering the process of national consciousness. Verdi is one of the first who understood to what extent the “Prussian way” was unsuitable to a nation grounded on classic liberalism ethical, before than political principles.

The Early Modern Foundations of Classic Liberalism

The term “liberalism” is of nineteenth-century vintage, but only the most pedantic historian would limit its use to that period. By then, David Hume and the utilitarians had undermined traditional accounts of rights and contract, and “liberalism” largely denoted a reforming mode of political economy. Nineteenth-century liberals were heirs more of Adam Smith than of John Locke, and in this sense the term “liberalism” post-dated the development of “classic,” natural-rights liberalism. Two schemas have tended to structure the historical interpretation of the seventeenth century. “Proto-liberalism” is presumed to be the victorious foe either of Christian political theology, or of antique republicanism. This article explores liberalism's theoretical fundaments, including a dedication to monopolistic sovereignty; belief in the artificiality of political order; an atomistic individualism; dedication to natural equality and popular sovereignty; deployment of the juridical language of rights and contract; a privileging of stability as the primary end of politics.

Kant on Punishment

Unlike that of most liberal thinkers, Kant's theory of punishment is unabashedly retributive. For classical liberals punishment is justified only by the harms it can prevent, not by any allegedly intrinsic good served by making the guilty suffer. Here Hobbes' blunt insistence that the aim of punishment ‘is not a revenge, but terror’ is prototypical in substance, if not in style. Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Bentham and Beccaria, for all their differences, agree that punishment must look to future good rather than to avenging past wrongs. This attitude on the part of classic liberalism toward retribution is not surprising, given its association with the kind of theocratic politics liberalism arose to combat.

Creole Nationalism and Mexican Liberalism

Absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, domination by the privileged orders, union with the United States, communism, the preponderance of the Aztecs: all these aberrations have their apostles, their writers and their conspirators. Meanwhile the government, without a policy, power or political support, survives by the general inertia and is reduced to preserving the status quo.-Mariano Otero to Dr. MoraAlthough one recent influential textbook on Latin America has characterized the decades immediately following the achievement of independence as “the long wait,” in Mexico at least, these years were marked by an intense political and ideological conflict which defined the direction of its future (Halperín Donghi, 1969: 134-206). The most perceptive student of the epoch, Edmundo O'Gorman (1960) traces within the confused welter of pronunciamientos and manifestos two great forces: the search for a providential leader and the desire for some form of democratic populism. An analysis of ideology cannot be separated from a consideration of society. The presidential power created by Benito Juárez and perpetuated by Porfirio Díaz operated outside the strict legal confines of the Constitution. At the same time, the failure of classic liberalism to express popular aspirations retarded social reform for over half a century. Without the sanction of theory, few such demands could be translated into law.