NATIONALIST AND SOCIALIST LIBERALISM

NATIONALIST AND SOCIALIST LIBERALISM Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872). In his youth he was part of a secret society the Carbonari's fighting a war to unify Italy and liberate it from Austrian rule. In 1831 he founded Young Italy and campaigned for a unitary republican state modeled on liberal France across the whole peninsula. He was forced into exile in England and wrote his Duties of man In 1848 after the revolution he was briefly a public figure in the Roman Republic but after its defeat, he returned to exile. He was a universalist humanist, but added membership in a national community to the 12 basic precepts of liberalism. Freedom meant freedom of the nation to govern itself, and sovereignty involved citizenship and belonging to a national community in equal measure. 20th century anti colonial movements like Ghandiism have taken Mazzini's liberal nationalism as a model. {Not read} Nineteenth century liberals differed from the ideas of Adam Smith (really a vulgarization of Smith) in trying to define and negotiate the absolute liberalism of the "market man" in relation to the relative political liberty of men and women in society. Society is not identical with economy. So if for example free trade would militate against the movement of economic actors, a restriction on the right to associate (as in forming unions) would appear to further economic freedom, but would also infringe on the rights and liberties of individuals, e.g., workers to organize trade unions to defend their social position. Freedom of the labor contract versus freedom for labor as a social right.
Conclusion What links these two concepts nationalism and liberalism is that they base their political philosophies on a new conceptualization of the people. They are vaguely democratic to the extent that they view the nation as collectivity, either as an organic whole as with nationalism and conservatism, or as an aggregate of economic actors, as with liberalism. None require kings or popes as their motive force. It's this conceptualization of the people that will lead up to the next round of revolutions in 1848 and it will underwrite many colonial revolts through to this century as well. Neither accommodates one might note the growing economic differentiation within a people and next week we will have to look at a powerful new idea --class.