Dies und Jenes » Buchtipp - Classical Liberalism: A Primer

von Eamonn Butler, herausgegeben vom Londoner Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), Juli 2015

Für die meisten hier wohl nichts grundlegend Neues, aber ein brauchbares Kompendium & eine griffige Übersicht.

Zitat von S. 91
"Classical liberals are internationalist in their beliefs, regarding the whole of humanity as sharing in basic rights and freedoms. But they nurse no Utopian idea of world government, or even world civil society. Realistically, they accept that citizens are highly attached to their own nation states; and they seek only to educate them and to defuse conflict between those states. That is something that international travel and economic interdependence can help with greatly – spreading ideas, opportunities, choices and freedom at the same time.

Classical liberals believe that the principles of freedom that apply in any nation should be matched internationally, in principles such as freedom of trade, capital and migration across borders, and non-discrimination against foreigners or their goods, services and property. But, as the German Ordo-liberal Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966) put it, internationalism begins at home. If we maintain just laws, freedoms and the rule of law within our own nation states, there is then at least some possibility that the same principles will inform our international dealings and institutions. Classical liberals have no imperialist ambitions for their ideas: empires are no way to win people’s minds, though they often suppress their thoughts. Classical liberals welcome diversity between cultures and countries as they do between communities, families and individuals."
...
An interesting problem for classical liberals, however, is how they should deal with groups and nations that are
highly illiberal. The problem has become more urgent. There have always been religious and political fundamentalists who reject any idea of political, social and economic freedom and who would gladly extinguish our own freedoms if they had the reach to do so. But now, with travel so easy and destructive technologies so obtainable, the potential threat has become more dangerous.

Classical liberals have generally favoured toleration over intervention, which they see as conflicting with people’s rights of self-determination. But if other groups or states have set their goal as destroying freedom and toleration itself, the question is how much intolerance classical liberals can tolerate. Mill, writing in the nineteenth century, argued that we had every right to intervene in ‘barbarian’ states, but not ‘civilised’ ones, since only ‘civilised’ states were on a moral par with us; and, in any event, it was unlikely that intervention into the affairs of ‘civilised’ states would change them. Much more recently, John Rawls used a similar argument, that we could tolerate ‘decent’ but not ‘outlaw’ states.

http://www.amazon.de/Classical-Liberalis...tmm_pap_title_0

Inhalt:
The author x
Acknowledgements xi
Foreword xii
Summary xvii

1 Introduction 1
The purpose of this book 1
Outline of the book 1

2 What is classical liberalism? 3
Ten principles of classical liberalism 4

3 Classical liberalism: the family tree 14
Early ancestors 14
The rise of classical liberalism 16
Success and reassessment 22
The modern revival of classical liberalism 24
The diversity of classical liberal ideas 27

4 Classical liberalism and freedom 28
The arguments for freedom 28
Positive and negative liberty 34
Rights and freedoms 36
Restraints on freedom 37

5 Classical liberal morality 38
Coercion and toleration 38
The arguments for toleration 40
Toleration and the state 47

6 Classical liberal politics 50
The origin and purpose of government 50
The myth of social justice 54
Public choice and private interests 56
The legitimacy of government 61

7 Classical liberal society 62
Spontaneous orders 62
Justice and the rule of law 65
The rationality of natural orders 69
Civil society 71
Spontaneous order and natural rights 73

8 Classical liberal economics 74
The spontaneous order of the market 74
The spontaneous ‘miracle’ of prices 74
Markets without commands 76
Rules and property 77
The arguments for economic freedom 79
The destabilising effects of government 82
Trade and protectionism 85

9 Classical liberalism today 86
Eclipse and revival 86
The rebirth of classical liberalism 87
The meaning of classical liberalism 88
Classical liberal internationalism 91
The classical liberal vision 94

10 Key classical liberal thinkers 98
John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher 98
Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), Anglo–Dutch satirist 99
Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet] (1694–1778), French writer 99
Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), Scottish social theorist 100
Adam Smith (1723–1790), Scottish philosopher and economist 100
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), American revolutionary leader 101
Frédéric Bastiat (1801–50), French political theorist 101
Richard Cobden (1804–1865), English manufacturer and politician 102
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), English philosopher and reformer 102
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English anthropologist and philosopher 103
Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992), Anglo–Austrian political scientist 104
Ayn Rand (1905–82), Russian–American novelist and moralist 105
Isaiah Berlin (1909–97), Latvian–British philosopher 105
Milton Friedman (1912–2006), American economist 106
James M. Buchanan (1919–2013), American economist 107
Robert Nozick (1938–2002), American philosopher 108

11 Classical liberal quotations 109
Magna Carta 109
Natural rights 110
Limited government 111
Spontaneous order… 112
…Benign guidance… 113
…Versus planning and controls 114
Justice and the rule of law 115
Economic freedom 117
Personal freedom 118
Political freedom 120

12 Classical liberalism timeline 122

13 Further reading 128
Introductions 128
Overviews 129
Classic texts 130
Selected web links 131
About the IEA 134

(Das Beste aber: den ganzen Text gibt's hier: http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/file...interactive.pdf)