Liberal socialism
Political philosophy incorporating liberal principles to socialism / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liberal socialism is a political philosophy that incorporates liberal principles to socialism.[1] This synthesis sees liberalism as the political theory that takes the inner freedom of the human spirit as a given and adopts liberty as the goal, means and rule of shared human life. Socialism is seen as the method to realize this recognition of liberty through political and economic autonomy and emancipation from the grip of pressing material necessity.[2] Liberal socialism opposes abolishing certain components of capitalism and supports something approximating a mixed economy that includes both social ownership and private property in capital goods.[3][4]
Liberal socialism has been particularly prominent in British and Italian politics.[5] Its seminal ideas can be traced to John Stuart Mill, who theorised that capitalist societies should experience a gradual process of socialisation through worker-controlled enterprises, coexisting with private enterprises.[6] Mill rejected centralised models of socialism that he thought might discourage competition and creativity, but he argued that representation is essential in a free government and democracy could not subsist if economic opportunities were not well distributed, therefore conceiving democracy not just as a form of representative government, but as an entire social organisation.[7] While some socialists have been hostile to liberalism, accused of "providing an ideological cover for the depredation of capitalism", it has been pointed out that "the goals of liberalism are not so different from those of the socialists", although this similarity in goals has been described as being deceptive due to the different meanings liberalism and socialism give to liberty, equality and solidarity.[8] In a modern context, liberal socialism is sometimes used interchangeably with modern social liberalism[lower-alpha 1] or social democracy.[9]