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Jason Brennan and John Tomasi have argued that if we focus on income alone, the Difference Principle supports welfare-state capitalism over property-owning democracy, because capitalism maximizes long run income growth for the worst off. If so, the defense of property-owning democracy rests on the priority of equal opportunity for political influence and social advancement over raising the income of the worst off, or on integrating workplace control into the Difference Principle’s index of advantage. The thesis of this paper is that even based on income alone, the Difference Principle is not as hostile to property-owning democracy as it may seem, because the Difference Principle should not be interpreted to require maximizing income growth. The main idea is that it is unfair to make the present worst off accept inequality that doesn’t benefit them, for the sake of benefitting the future worst off, if the future worst off will be better off than they are anyway.

Critical scholarship often presents corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a reflection or embodiment of neoliberalism. Against this sort of sweeping political characterization we argue that CSR can indeed be considered a liberal concept but that it embodies a “varieties of liberalism.” Building theoretically on the work of Michael Freeden on liberal languages, John Ruggie and Karl Polanyi on embedded forms of liberalism, and Michel Foucault on the distinction between classical liberalism and neoliberalism, we provide a conceptual treatment and mapping of the ideological positions that constitute the bulk of modern scholarly CSR debate. Thus, we distinguish between embedded liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and re-embedded liberalism. We develop these four orientations in turn and show how they are engaged in “battles of ideas” over the meaning and scope of corporate responsibilities—and how they all remain relevant for an understanding of contemporary debates and developments in the field of CSR and corporate sustainability.

At a London railway station bookstall in 1903, E. M. Forster purchased a copy of the inaugural issue of Independent Review journal. Upon opening it, he felt that a “new age had begun” (Forster 1934, 116). Summing up the Review’s political perspective, Forster said that “[i]t was not so much a Liberal review as an appeal to Liberalism from the Left to be its better self” (115). This “Liberalism from the Left”, or New Liberalism as it was better known, aimed to be more ethical than its classically Liberal predecessor through the introduction of welfare schemes such as unemployment insurance and better housing for the poor. By analysing the fragments, working notes and manuscripts associated with Howards End (1910) alongside the published version of the novel, my paper aims to reveal how Forster’s affinity towards New Liberalism influenced his portrayal of the lower-middle-class insurance clerk, Leonard Bast, as he drafted his novel. From initially being rendered as a lothario and opportunist, Bast evolved into a lowly office worker, who is sympathetically depicted as a victim of laissez-faire liberal economics and at risk of falling into an abyss of poverty through no fault of his own. This article ultimately reveals that Forster’s delineation of Bast is more compassionate than some critics have argued, but it is a compassion which is obscured by what Forster refers to as his “failure of technique” in the published version of the novel (Wilson 1993, 32).

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. InPost-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russiabeyondthe Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s,Post-Soviet Socialuses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.

Classical liberals have been more preoccupied by domestic policy and institutions than by international affairs. This paper makes the case for a classical liberal foreign policy outlook that could address the collective challenges facing free societies. In the United States, libertarian foreign policy thinking has been outsourced to structural realism. However, in the form in which it is deployed to make the case for restraint, such realism often contradicts basic analytic and normative tenets of classical liberalism. The current international situation is a wake-up call for classical liberals to rethink and update their foreign policy intuition to an era in which the international environment seems less conducive to classical liberal values than much of the post-war period.

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset has influenced several thinkers of the twentieth century, among whom Julius Evola, Ayn Rand, and Pierre Bourdieu specifically have been examined in this article. The selection of thinkers indicates that Ortega has influenced both those on the left and those on the various strands of the right. In relation to Evola, Ortega’s critique of the emergent masses in the age of modern democracy has been emphasized, although they do not share the same overarching social philosophy as Ortega is essentially a proponent of liberalism which Evola fiercely opposes. Regarding Rand, there are striking affinities between Ortega’s major work Revolt of the Masses and Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness in relation to personal responsibility and the state’s role in providing welfare. Bourdieu, on his behalf, has manifestly linked his reasoning in his major work Distinction to Ortega’s work The Dehumanization of Art . Overall, this shows that Ortega’s philosophy has an impact on both the left and the right.

Albania, for 30 years, has entered the phase of transition from a society organized into a one-party central governing regime to a democratic society of a free market economy. But the pace of moving in this direction and modernizing the country is not the expected one, because the centralized proclamations of the political elite and expertise have not allowed liberal approaches to enter Albanian legislation and governing practices. This has been the case in particular in the sector of territorial planning, where central governments have aimed and managed to not allow the actual decentralization of the governing function of drafting and adopting local territorial planning instruments. This has resulted in a shortage of local instruments, in general, but even when managed to ensure they are presented far beyond the needs, problems and objective local imbalances. This is because their distance mapping from the actual municipality for which they were designed failed to recognize the specifics and characteristics of each of them. The result has been evident; in both cases, planning has been inexistent to drive sustainable, smart and inclusive urban development processes. In this paper we aim to build another approach for future development in Albania, a country which aims at integration into the European Union. This path should be development based on previously adopted territorial planning instruments, drawn up in democratic and parliamentary processes as a local political activity. Central government must understand and accept the new and different role than the one it played 30 years ago in territorial development issues, and that the process of drafting and adopting local territorial planning instruments should be a function of local government itself.

This review essay evaluates The Dialectics of Liberty, a recent collection, edited by Roger E. Bissell, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and Edward W. Younkins. It describes the dialectical turn in libertarian political and economic theory and analyzes the diverse contributions to dialectics by the various authors in this volume.

Can libertarians care about social justice? InFree Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a \"market democratic\" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style. Provocative and vigorously argued,Free Market Fairnessoffers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice--one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.