Eugen Richter and Late German Manchester Liberalism: A Reevaluation

Abstract

For several generations now there has existed an overarching interpretation of modern history conditioning and shaping the views held by nearly all educated people on the issue of socialism and the market economy. This interpretation goes roughly as follows: once there was a “class”—“the” bourgeoisie—that came into being with the colossal economic and social changes of early modern history, and strove for recognition and domination. Liberalism, which admittedly helped to achieve a limited degree of human liberation, was the ideological expression of the bourgeoisie’s self-interested struggle.¹ Meanwhile, however, another, much larger class came into being, “the” working class, victims of the triumphant bourgeoisie. This class strove in its turn for recognition and domination, and, accordingly, developed its own ideology, socialism, which aimed, through revolution, at the transition to a higher, broader level of human liberation. The natural and inevitable conflict of interests of these two classes— basically, of the exploiters and the exploited—fills modern history, and has led in the end, in the welfare state of our own time, to a kind of accommodation and compromise. With this historical paradigm I think we are all quite familiar.