Liberals and Social Democrats

This book is about the relationship between liberalism and socialism in Britain in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Peter Clarke (Author)

9780521286510, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 November 1981

360 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'… an important contribution to the intellectual history of early twentieth-century Britain. It also throws important light on the enduring tensions in the relationship between the Liberal intelligentsia and the Labour movement, and hence on a crucial aspect of present-day British politics as well.' The Listener

This ambitious and wide-ranging book is about the relationship between liberalism and socialism in Britain in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It focuses largely on a group of intellectuals whose names are familiar but whose work has been neglected or misunderstood. Graham Wallas is the forgotten man of early Fabianism. L. T. Hobhouse has misleadingly been typecast as the last major exponent of a dying liberal tradition. J. A. Hobson's reputation has been obscured by repeated claims that he was a precursor either of the Leninist theory of imperialism or of the Keynesian revolution in economics. The historical work of J. L. and Barbara Hammond has suffered similar revenges from the whirligig of time. There are other liberals or socialists - notably Gilbert Murray, Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, R. H. Tawney and J. M. Keynes - who receive considerable attention. In the later chapters the economic approaches of Hobson and Keynes are disentangled and put in their proper historical setting.

Preface
System of references
Prologue: original sin and the modern state
1. The passion for improving mankind
2. Good men fallen among Fabians
3. Imperialism
4. The State and the Nation
5. Human nature in politics
6. War
7. Hobson's choice
8. The bleak age
Epilogue: sans everything
Bibliographical notes
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]