Liberalism has come to be seen as a conservative ideology but its roots are based in Rousseau and the French Revolution, focused on individual freedom and limited government. Matt McManus argues that "Cold War" liberals reshaped it to favor elites and stifle more radical calls for equality. Liberalism's true heritage is rooted in a commitment to social justice and egalitarianism, advocating for a version of liberalism that extends democratic principles and counters the populist revival.

“Our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to.” —  J. S. Mill, Autobiography

Many ideas come before their time in part because people insist it will never be their time. In Liberalism Against Itself Samuel Moyn discusses how luminaries of 20th century liberalism edited out the traditions revolutionary history of demanding liberty, equality, and fraternity for all. In its stead they presented a vision of liberalism which drew heavily on the very conservative ideas it once confronted; stressing the cautious management of change, a wariness of human nature, and a deep allergy to hope as a tool of political mobilization. In the eyes of the “Cold War” liberals hope lead to inflated expectations of utopia, the dreams of which curdled into nightmares during the totalitarian 20th century. On this view, liberals had to be resolutely police leftism and radical calls for equality before they got out of hand again. They were very successful, and by the turn of the millennia intelligent Cold War liberals could congratulate themselves on having reached the end of history with themselves at the summit.

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The liberal project is worth saving if it can once again inspire a sense of hope for ordinary people in a better world.

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As it turned out the end of history lasted about 25 years in the “Western” world, and from 2016 onwards a series of far right “illiberal” democrats and authoritarians won major elections or crept to the threshold of power. This led to a widespread panic amongst many liberals, plenty of whom blissfully assumed the threat of the far right had been forever buried in the ruins of Berlin. Today not a week goes by without another prognosis of liberalism’s failure. Less acknowledged is the fact that Cold War liberalism and neoliberalism deserved to fail, with millions coming to feel they had little say in their own governance since affluent elites paid more attention to transnational jetsetters than their own citizens.
But the liberal project is worth saving if it can once again inspire a sense of hope for ordinary people in a better world. The principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all are inspiring and just. But the can only inspire if we do really mean for justice for all and not “just us” as the self-described “black radical liberal” Charles Mills memorably put it. It is long past time to bury the liberalism which defends the rich and resurrect liberalism the fighting creed. This is why it is time to retrieve the tradition of liberal socialism.

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Retrieving Liberal Socialism
The term “retrieval” is a reference to the great Canadian political theorist C.B Macpherson, author of The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Macpherson explored how the classical liberal thinking began from the assumption that in nature human beings were fundamentally equal, atomized individuals intent on pursuing their self-interest. Keen on protecting what they acquired, the state was established to facilitate infinite acquisitiveness which in turn led to ballooning inequalities of wealth and power. Starting from equality and equal freedom classical liberals concluded their thought by arguing the earth would belong only to the rational and industrious. And yet Macpherson always insisted that there was a powerful moral core to liberalism which had always resisted this perversion and insisted that liberals had to champion the flourishing of all rather than just Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy.” Much of his work was a project of retrieving this egalitarian moral core, which Macpherson detected in the writings of authors like John Stuart Mill.

My forthcoming book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism follows in this spirit of retrieval. It tries to recover an inspiring stream of liberal thought which stretches from revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft to liberal luminaries like Mill and Rawls, and of course “radical” liberals like Charles Mills and Chantal Mouffe.

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I argue that Paine and Wollstonecraft are the most important antecedents to liberal socialism. Paine was of course famous for his agitation against the Ancien Regimes of Europe, first in the United States circa his bestseller Common Sense and later in fiery polemics defending the French Revolution against critics like Edmund Burke. Only recently have commentators noted how far-sighted Paine was in his treatment of economic inequality. In The Rights of Man and “Agrarian Justice” Paine described property as fundamentally a social institution, which the rich owed the rest of society for protecting. This debt could only be paid through redistributive policies intended to massively ameliorate inequalities of wealth and power. Wollstonecraft was even more fiery. In her Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark she described the nouveaux riche bourgeois class as tantamount to a fungus who were mushrooming across northern Europe. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women she insisted that from the “respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.” She imagined a world less defined by the pursuit of wealth, where individuals from all backgrounds could develop themselves and their moral sentiments more equally.

Liberal socialism truly came into its own in the writings of John Stuart Mill. As expertly chronicled by Helen McCabe, Mill gradually came to the conclusion that the core aims of liberalism could not be achieved in a society defined by domination of the poor by the wealthy. Worst still was how this domination was justified by an appeal to meritocratic mythologies. Mill was scathing of this view, insisting in his pamphlet Socialism that “great poverty, and that poverty very little connected with desert-are the first grand failure of the existing arrangement of society.” On Mill’s view, liberal socialism would still require respect for markets. But major firms would be run directly by workers, and the state would play a major role redistributing wealth.

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Liberals should make clear to citizens that the problem isn’t who makes the ruling class, but that we have a ruling class at all.

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In the 20th century, major authors came to endorse liberal socialism: including John Maynard Keynes, Carlo Rosselli, and Norberto Bobbio. But without a doubt the most significant author to flirt with it was John Rawls. Often taken to be an apologist for the mid-century welfare state, by the time of Justice as Fairness Rawls insisted that in fact welfarism permitted too many inequalities-especially in fair value of the political rights-to be just. Instead only a “property owning democracy” or “liberal socialist” regime could fully instantiate liberal justice. In Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy he singles out liberal socialism as an “illuminating and worthwhile” view and lists four characteristics such a regime might have:

• A constitutional democratic political regime, with the fair value of the political liberties

• A system of competitive markets, ensured by law as necessary.

• A scheme of worker-owned business, or, in part, also public-owned through stock shares, and managed by elected of firm-chosen managers.

• A property system establishing a widespread and a more or less even distribution of the means of production and natural resources.

This list is undoubtedly thought provoking, though not necessarily decisive. I’d argue instead that liberal socialists have been and should be committed to the following three principles:

• Being jointly committed to methodological collectivism about social ontology and a form normative individualism.

• A commitment to each person having as equal an opportunity to lead a good life as possible through the provision of shared resources and the design of social institutions for the development of their human powers. This developmental ethic is distinct from the extractive or acquisitive one characteristic of possessive individualism.

• A basic social structure with highly participatory liberal-democratic political institutions and protections for liberal rights,. Liberal socialists want to extend liberal democratic principles into the economy and the family to establish more egalitarian arrangements free of domination and exploitation.

Conclusion
As I discuss in The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism the tradition has many flaws. These include a tendency toward superficial thinking about power, a failure to understand capitalism as a global system through an instinct towards statism, and worst still a failure to successfully integrate egalitarian struggles on behalf of women, the racially marginalized, LGBTQ, and developing states into their thinking. These are all serious gaps which liberal socialists today need to fill.

Despite these flaws, the time has come to take a serious look at the virtues of liberal socialism. At this very moment right wing populism is resurging in the United States through its promises to stand up for the working classes against the ruling class. What they really intend to do, as an interview with J.D Vance made clear, is replace one ruling class with another which is instinctively hostile to democracy. Liberals should make clear to citizens that the problem isn’t who makes the ruling class, but that we have a ruling class at all. Liberal socialism can make good the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all.