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Classical liberalism (also called laissez-faire liberalism) is a term used: more...

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to label the philosophy developed by early liberals from the Age of Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill ; to label the revived economic liberalism of the 20th century, seen in work by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.; as a synonym for minarchist libertarianism.;

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order of cooperation in exchanging goods and services emerges that satisfies human wants. It is a blend of political liberalism and economic liberalism which is derived from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Immanuel Kant, and their precursors, such as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza.

Many elements of this ideology developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The early liberal figures now described as "classical liberals" rejected many foundational assumptions which dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion, focusing instead on individual freedom, reason, justice and tolerance.. Such thinkers and their ideas helped to inspire the American Revolution and French Revolution.

The qualification "classical" was applied in retrospect to distinguish the early 19th century laissez-faire form of liberalism from modern interventionist social liberalism.

Overview

Historian of liberalism Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans that liberalism (in America) became more pragmatic than methodological in response to the industrial revolution

Liberalism in America has been a party of social progress rather than of intellectual doctrine, committed to ends rather than to methods. When a laissez-faire policy seemed best calculated to achieve the liberal objective of equality of opportunity for all -- as it did in the time of Jefferson -- liberals believed, in the Jeffersonian phrase, that that government is best which governs least. But, when the growing complexity of industrial conditions required increasing government intervention in order to assure more equal opportunities, the liberal tradition, faithful to the goal rather than to the dogma, altered its view of the state.

Read more at Wikipedia.org