Transformation of American Liberalism

With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the US government ushered in a new era of social welfare policies, to counteract the devastation of The Great Depression. While political philosophers generally view the welfare state to be built on values of equality and human dignity, America's politicians, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, argued on different grounds. From the beginning, Roosevelt based his defense of the welfare state on the individualist,or Lockean premises inherent in America's political culture. As a result, he not only encouraged the United States' commitment to individualism, but also contributed to distinctively harsh American stigmatization of welfare recipients.In The Transformation of American Liberalism, George Klosko explores how American political leaders have justified social welfare programs since the 1930s, ultimately showing how their arguments have contributed to notably ungenerous programs. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in Americanpolitical culture is incomplete. Individualist values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America's leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between thearguments necessary to do so and American culture's individualist assumptions. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in American political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

Klosko should be applauded for being so forthright about the misleading arguments upon which the new American state has been built. He observes very early on that its founders were following the advice of Old Nick, Machiavelli, that he who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though they are entirely different from the old ones (7).

George Klosko is the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy and has authored books, including The Development of Plato's Political Theory, Second Edition (Oxford, 2006); Democratic Procedures and Liberal Consensus (Oxford University Press, 2000); and Political Obligations (Oxford University Press,2005).