MAKARI-Organicism New Liberalism

New Liberalism and the Organic Society: Reconciling Liberalism and
Community in Turn-of-the-Century Britain
by
Jack Makari
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor Arts In
the Department of History at Brown University
Thesis Advisor: Meltem Toksöz
“Democracy is not founded merely on the right or the private interest of the individual. This is
only one side of the shield. It is founded equally on the function of the individual as a member of
the community. It founds the common good upon the common will, in forming which it bids
every grown-up, intelligent person to take a part.”1
Leonard T. Hobhouse
Liberalism (1911)
1
L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 116.
1
2
Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................. 7
SECTION I: A GERMAN INTERVENTION AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE ORGANIC SOCIETY ................... 11
A. AMBIGUITY AND THE ISSUES OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM ..................................................................................................... 20

B. HEGEL IN T.H. GREEN: REASON AND SELF-REALIZATION .................................................................................................. 24
C. GENESIS OF A NEW LIBERAL PHILOSOPHY ............................................................................................................................ 30
SECTION II: THEORY TO PRACTICE: L.T. HOBHOUSE AND NEW LIBERAL REFORMS .................................. 35
A. THE SOCIAL QUESTION ........................................................................................................................................................... 37

B. A NEW LIBERAL ANSWER TO THE SOCIAL QUESTION.......................................................................................................... 42
C. RECEPTION AND THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM ................................................................................................................. 57
D. EMPIRE AND THE ORGANIC COMMUNITY .............................................................................................................................. 61
SECTION III: THE GREAT WAR AND THE DECLINE OF NEW LIBERALISM ....................................................... 66
A. HOBHOUSE, WAR, AND INTERVENTION IN 1915 ................................................................................................................. 68

B. CATASTROPHE AND COLLAPSE, NEW LIBERALISM BY 1918 ............................................................................................... 74
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................................... 83
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................................................... 87
3
4
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank my thesis advisor Professor Meltem Toksöz at Brown University. She
consistently allowed this paper to be my own, but steered me in the right the direction whenever
it was needed. Without her, this paper would have been far from its best, and for that I am
eternally grateful.
I would also like to thank Professor Mary Gluck, who has been a remarkable influence not only
for this paper, but my entire undergraduate education. If it was not for her class on the Fin-de-
Siècle, the genesis of this thesis would never had occurred. Her advice for this project was
critical to the framework that underlies its basic assumptions for analysis. She introduced me to
the depths of intellectual and cultural history and encouraged my curiosity to pursue them. I am
gratefully indebted to her for this invaluable influence.
To Librarians at the Bodleian Library, Oxford who assisted me throughout my research of L.T.
Hobhouse and his letters, I would also like to send warm regards. Having studied Hobhouse
closely, it was an unforgettable experience to work with his writings first hand.
Finally, I must express my profound gratitude to my parents. They provided me with unfailing
support and encouragement throughout my undergraduate career and throughout this process of
researching and writing a thesis. They imbued me with the importance of history and culture
which undoubtedly provoked my own desires for writing this thesis. This accomplishment would
not have been possible without them.
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6
Introduction
After the French Revolution, the idea of civilization free from the bounds of the
monarchy and the church dominated the imaginations and nightmares of Europe. From that
moment, countless constructions and reconstructions of social organization were developed
based on different and often competing ontological principles. In 19th century Great Britain, a
group called the New Liberals sought to develop a political philosophy that answered many of
the questions raised by secular, liberal ideology. Though they were not unique in their effort to
build a liberal society, their proposals were remarkably innovative. A movement of philosophers,
journalists, sociologists, and politicians, the New Liberals sought to inject theories of social
harmony and cooperation into the liberal tradition in Britain. Often overlooked, they represented
a critical inflection point in the history of liberalism between the Utilitarianism of John Stuart
Mill and the creation of the British Welfare State in the early decades of the 20th century.
This thesis will explore the emergence of the New Liberals more as an ideology rather
than as a political program, so as to explore the rise of their philosophy and then its ultimate
demise after World War One. Though the New Liberal’s authority peaked by 1914, their
philosophical foundation developed in final half of the 19th century. The innovations proposed by
a British philosopher named Thomas Hill Green (1836 – 1882), otherwise referred to as T.H.
Green, were critical to this development. Green attacked the foundations of the established
liberal tradition. He argued against the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau through a demonstration of their internal contradictions and paradoxes. This attack
destabilized the supremacy of atomism and hyper-individualism, as it demonstrated the fallibility
of these liberal shibboleths. Instead, T.H. Green sought to reconcile man’s relationship to society
on non-atomist terms. Based upon notions of German Idealism, particularly those of Hegel,
7
Green emphasized the social nature of man’s subjectivity. Animated by a theological and
metaphysical notion of progress, Green argued that the individual was intrinsically linked to
society in what formed a living fabric. This bridge between the natural and the social led T.H.
Green towards a new argument for civil rights, property, and the state based upon new
understandings of democracy, equality, and freedom. The consequences of Green’s work were
not explored within his lifetime, but his work established what could aptly be named the organic
society theory of the New Liberals.
Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse (1864-1929) was part of the next generation of New
Liberals that worked to translate Green’s organic society theory into real political reforms.
Hobhouse viewed Green’s theory not in metaphysical terms but on a socio-economic basis.
Particularly, Green’s outline of the state as the protector of society’s organicism was critical for
Hobhouse’s argument against “laissez-faire” economics. Notions of organicism legitimized the
state’s role to intervene in property and the economy so as to better society collectively. These
reforms were not in themselves so novel; they included an expansion of welfare, taxes, and
regulations. Rather than the reforms themselves, what is of importance is how Hobhouse
supported them through the organic community theory.
New Liberalism addressed the social issues of modern British society through a middle-
class perspective. Particularly, it sought to relieve the friction between the working class and
bourgeois society. In many ways, New Liberals were progressive in their recognition of the
socio-economic inequalities of their time. In this sense, there was a very real egalitarianism that
was a part of the New Liberal project. However, as demonstrated by Hobhouse’s economic
proposals, there was also a distinct social and moral superiority felt by the New Liberals over the
working class. Both Green and Hobhouse were well-to-do, Oxford-trained white men. They were
8
part of the Victorian middle-class. For the most part, they sought to pull the extremes of society
towards their own middle-class position. New Liberalism sought to make the rich pay their fair
share, while the poor were to be supported and educated. Through this, society would become
less polarized, and both the individual and society would become harmonized with modern life.
The New Liberal theory found itself no longer bound to theoretical discussions alone,
when in 1906 the Liberal Party won a land-slide victory in the British Parliament. That year, the
Liberals secured 474 votes compared to the Conservative’s 98.2 It was a clear statement by the
British public, and it offered Liberals the keys to the largest empire in world history. Finally, the
New Liberals found real political leverage. During this period, the British Welfare State was
established through the “People’s Budget.” This created a “Super-tax” on the wealthiest
individuals and provided funds for Liberal proposals such as welfare for the elderly, sick, and the
working class.3 However, by 1914 the New Liberal’s project was forced into a pressure cooker,
as the British Empire clashed with the belligerent German Empire and entered World War One.
The Great War shattered New Liberal authority. It placed immediate pressure on the New
Liberals to balance their principles with the costs of victory. As we shall see, L.T. Hobhouse was
a pacifist in 1911, yet by the time the war came around, he became a staunch advocate for
complete victory. This was not a rejection of the organic theory, but rather Hobhouse viewed the
Great War through its lens. Defeat meant more than the occupation of London, but also the death
of the seeds of Western Civilization: reason, freedom, and democracy, all the foundations of the
organic society. However, as the War progressed, complete victory became incompatible with
these ideals. Issues such as conscription demonstrate the failures of the organic community when
2
Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy, The Roots of Romanticism, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 45
(Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999).
3
G. R. Searle, The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886-1929 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992),
85–88.
9
faced with political realities. In the end, the Great War left unhealable wounds on New Liberal
philosophy. It exploded the tension between lived history and philosophy, while it left clues as to
why New Liberalism disappeared in Britain and where it still may survive.
A reexamination of the British New Liberals is timely. Recently, the doctrines
underwriting liberalism and especially neo-liberalism have come under great scrutiny. This thesis
will seek to historicize this rich variant of liberal philosophy. It will demonstrate how the New
Liberal message, though not new in many of its ends, was extremely innovative in its rethinking
of basic assumptions of liberalism. While the New Liberals were not homogenous, we will
examine these ideas through the lens of their two leading thinkers, T.H. Green and L.T.
Hobhouse. This will provide a vision of the dominant strands of the New Liberal’s ideology and
its consequences. A study focusing on these two thinkers additionally allows one to consider the
manner in which theory becomes practice, as Hobhouse translates Green’s philosophy into social
and political policies. Finally, this allows us to consider the way in which the Great War
undermined their program and its notions of an organic society.
10
Section I: A German Intervention and the Foundation of the Organic Society
This first section concerns itself with the development of New Liberal thought over the
second half of the 19th century. The protagonist of this section is T.H. Green, whose philosophic
significance to the New Liberals was twofold. First, Green argued that there were internal
contradictions within the liberal theory of the “State of Nature.” This destabilized the authority
of classical liberalism, particularly its hyper-individualistic consequences. Then, Green proposed
a distinct political theory which outlined a new foundation for civil rights and state authority for
liberalism. Green’s view on the organic nature of society reoriented the roles of democracy,
freedom, and equality in social life. This organic community theory was not based in a holism
that proposed society was an organism. Rather, its organicism was based on a metaphysical
bridge between the forces of nature and society.
T.H. Green’s theory was an important forefather of British Idealism, a major philosophic
trend in Britain by the turn-of-the-century. Compared to this remarkable achievement, Green’s
own biography does not offer the same excitement.4 He was born in the Spring of 1836 in a
small English town named West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Valentine Green, worked as as
a rector in the clergy, and it was at home that T.H. Greens first developed an interest with the
religion and theology. After his mother’s death, Green attended the Rugby School for boys and
then Balliol college at Oxford in 1855. For the most part, it was at Oxford where Green’s
intellectual fascinations blossomed.5
4
For further reference on T.H. Green’s biography see Denys P. Leighton, The Greenian Moment: T.H. Green,
Religion, and Political Argument in Victorian Briatin, 1st ed, British Idealist Studies Series 3, Green 2 (Exeter, UK ;
Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2004).
5
Nettleship, Memoir, in The Works of Thomas Hill Green: Philosophical Works (Longmans, Green, and Company,
1888), xi-xii.
11
One significant academic experience for T.H. Green came from outside of the classroom.
In 1858, Green joined a radical university society known as the “Old Mortality Club.” This club
was founded by John Nichol, who built a following on campus for those with an aversion to the
empiricism of George Berkeley, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill.6 The realms of conversation
and debate extended from contemporary politics and culture towards universal question of man’s
place within society and the world. The club met once a week to discuss and analyze different
works of literature, politics, or aesthetics. The theory discussed ranged from Aristotle and Cicero
to empiricists such as David Hume and even German philosophers such as Fichte and Hegel. The
literature read ranged from classical tragedies to the Bible and British poetry. However, its
reading list did not define the importance of the Old Mortality Club, but the radical nature in
which these texts were analyzed and discussed. The Old Mortality Club allowed for discussions
and theories that were not acceptable in the larger discourses of Oxford, such as the purely
academic settings. One alumni of the club, Andrew Caird, recalled on the environment of
discussion. “The free discussion of everything in heaven or earth, the fresh enjoyment of
intellectual sympathy, the fearless intercommunion of spirits, the youthful faith that the key of
truth lies very near to our hands, give a unique zest and charm to those meetings of students with
students”7 The significance of the Club might best be established by the career’s its members
would go on to have. It not only included T.H. Green, but also some of the notable minds of the
Victorian periods, A.C. Swinburne, Walter Pater, J.A. Symonds, and Edward Caird just to name
a few.8
6
Gerald C. Monsman, “Old Mortality at Oxford,” Studies in Philology 67, no. 3 (1970): 359.
7
Monsman, “Old Mortality at Oxford,” 364.
8
Monsman, 360-364.
12
It was in these conversations that one can see how Green’s theology and his political
theory mixed. One Club member close to Green wrote that he “saw in history the self-
development of an eternal spirit, because he regarded religion as the highest form of citizenship,
because he believed reason to be at once the most human and the most divine things in man.”9
Reason bridged Green’s deep spiritual inclination to his political philosophy. And, it should be
mentioned that just as Green attended the Old Mortality Club every week, he also participated in
a Bible study and prayer group every Sunday in Balliol College.10 Green’s later political
philosophy cannot be described as Christian, because that would be a dramatic simplification.
Rather, this represented T.H. Green’s willingness to synthesize and blend different intellectual
influences and priorities together so as to create something inherently new.
Two of Green’s major intellectual influences were the Romantics and German Idealism.
The former worked as a broader cultural motivation, while the second was a critical philosophic
one. It should be recognized that Green’s interaction with both of these can be attributed in part
to the Old Mortality Club. Their reading list included Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, for to
whom Green shared particular affinity, and Romantic theorists like Fichte and Schiller. Green
also wrote one of his earliest political essays, “Political Idealism,” in 1858, for discussion in the
Old Mortality Club.11 From the minutes of the group on Green’s essay:
“The writer asserted that human society could not be looked upon as a mere machine, and
that the results of such doctrines were highly pernicious, as destroying individual effort,
and preventing men of ability and virtue from engaging in politics. The opinions now in
vogue were contrasted with those that prevailed two hundred years ago, representative
passages being read from Milton and Buckle respectively. The essayist concluded by
pleading for the recognition of a nation's moral responsibilities, and showed how infinitely
important it was that lofty ideas on the duties of the individual to the state should be more
widely diffused.”12
9
Monsman, 379.
10
Monsman, 378.
11
Monsman, 365; L.T. Nettleship, Memoir, xxv.
12
Nettleship, xxi.
13
By this early age, T.H. Green had already articulated core sentiments of his larger political
philosophy. It demonstrated the rejection of past epistemologies and an affirmation for civil
morality. And, so the importance of the Old Morality Club was a place for recreational
discussion and an avenue for deep thought and synthesis.
The importance of the Romanticism for T.H. Green was that it provided an intellectual
bridge between his theological intuitions and his theory of history and social organization. One
of Green’s successors in the Old Morality Club and life-time collaborator, R.L. Nettleship
(1846–1892) discussed this influence in his memoir of Green. Out of the immensity that is the
Romanticism, he noted, the works of Wordsworth, Carlyle, Maurice, and Fichte had the greatest
effect on Green. Particularly, these authors imbued in Green a few key sentiments: “the
congenial idea of divine life or spirit pervading the world, making nature intelligible, giving
unity to history, embodying itself in states and churches, and inspiring individual men of
genius.”13 The bridge into politics was Green’s understanding that the spiritual manifested itself
in raw experience as the highest form of the natural. Reason was man’s divine gift, as it allowed
for an understanding of nature and thus a closer appreciation of God. This gift also imbued man
with society, as it allowed for man to free himself from the “bonds of nature and animality.”14
History was the record of man’s progress towards higher and higher forms of reason which
allowed for an expansion of social organization. The Romantics affirmed Green’s theological
vision of an interconnectedness in life.
The Romantic influence on Green, however, was far from a coincidence. Whether in
visual art, poetry, or theory, the Romantic movement focused on the conditions of modern life.
13
Nettleship, xxv.
14
Nettleship, xxvii.
14
In the wake of the French Revolution, there was a growing disenchantment to the Age of Reason.
Life suddenly became mechanistic, rational, and cold. Edmund Burke, though a conservative,
recognized the same cultural problems as the Romantics:
“But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle and
obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland
assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private
society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the
decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.”15
The Romantic project thus can be summarized as the attempt to revitalize life anew, yet instead
of through dogma or tradition it was to do so through aesthetics.16
Romanticism, however, was far from a homogenous movement. For example, many
Romantics emphasized the role of the genius to remedy social ills and reenchant modern life.
The details of the genius, however, remained in contention. For Schiller, it was the artist, while
for Carlyle, it was the “Great Man.” More importantly for Green, the Romantics were also
important in that they began to formulate a distinction between “organic and inorganic bodies or
systems.” 17 These were opposed to mechanical systems, which were static and
uncompromising. Raymond Williams argued that this was the origins of the “organic society”
which was ‘grown’ rather than ‘made.’18
The notion of the organic emerged in response to the cultural damage caused by the
“Empire of Light and Reason.” Burke had blamed empiricism for the French Revolution’s
haphazard assault on culture. In reaction, the Romantic project attempted to remedy this damage
through aesthetics. It did so through its counter-proposal on man, his role in society, history, and
15
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford ; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 14.
16
For reference on the Romantic project: Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the
Fine Arts 45 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999).
17
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2015, 228.
18
Raymond Williams, 228.
15
the spiritual notion of reason. It sought to bring a new social harmony to modern life, a
resurrection not of past dogmas, but of human vitality. 19 The organic paired itself with the
mechanical. This rhetoric evoked a sense of urgency and necessity for social change, while it
simultaneously ensured the possibility to transition from a life-less state into a rejuvenated one.
By 1858, Romanticism had mostly disappeared in popular British discourse even before
T.H. Green joined the Old Mortality Club. And conclusively, Green was not a Romantic. In more
ways than not, Green’s theory of rights, liberty, and freedom opposed rather than conformed to
romantic theories of Carlyle and Fichte. Rather, Romanticism offered Green a bridge between
theology and politics, and it energized Green to work towards theories of a more harmonious
society. And so, even when Green’s New Liberal successors rejected the romantic aspects of his
work, he still succeeded in the establishment of new intellectual foundation for liberalism.20
The Romantics offered Green a general framework to perceive history and social
progress in a new way. T.H. Green would go on to criticize the major figures of the liberal
tradition in such a way that implicitly held them accountable for the fractionated society in which
he lived. However, Romanticism did not offer Green any philosophic structure to replace
liberalism and empiricism. Rather, it was from German Idealism and especially Hegel that Green
found a new philosophy for liberal thought.
19
Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 21.
20
Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism, 88; The role of German Romantics starts a theme of conversation that will last
till the final section of this thesis, specifically, the role of German thought on New Liberalism. The relationship can
be defined as neither totally symbiotic nor antagonistic, yet ultimately the throws of the German Empire in World
War One will be destructive to New Liberal authority. The connection between German thought and the German
Empire will be a major topic of the Third Section, as they will come to represent the anti-thesis of the New Liberals
despite their shared intellectual origins.
16
The German, Georg Friedrich Hegel was a major influence on T.H. Green.21 Hegel’s first
major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806), began Hegel’s delineation of man’s place in
society and history based around new conceptions of human perception and experience. This
became incredibly important for T.H. Green who utilized Hegel’s new philosophic structures as
a replacement for the broken parts of the classical liberal tradition.22
Like Romanticism, it was not a coincidence that Hegelianism offered Green exactly the
tools needed to complete his project, as it was also a reaction to the perceived failures of
empiricism. When Hegel published his first work, its significance was immediately recognized,
and it flung him into academic stardom. Yet, his resonance extended much further than just
scholastic circles. Hegel’s innovative theory struck a cultural chord. He not only became a
successful academic, but also a popular celebrity throughout many of the German provinces of
the Holy Roman Empire.23 After the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel published three other major
works that defined his entire philosophic system. His final publication, Elements of the
Philosophy of Right (1820) connected two decades of thought to form Hegel’s political
philosophy, his conception of the State, civil rights, and freedom.24 Alongside his publication,
collections of Hegel’s lectures on history, religion, aesthetics, and philosophic work were also
published, many posthumously. Though Hegel’s cult of popularity shrunk after the German
21
The literature on Hegel is immense, two key references are Thom Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A
Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Robert B. Pippin,
Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
22
Marek N. Jakubowski, “T.H. Green's ‘Analysis of Hegel,’” History of Political Thought 13, no. 2 (1992): 339–40.
23
Vincent B. Leitch et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Second edition (New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2010), 536–38.
24
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 15. print, Cambridge Texts in the History of
Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).
17
liberal Revolution of 1848 failed to produce a German state, his philosophy radiated outside of
Germany and reset Western European discourse as a whole.25
T.H. Green was introduced to the works of Hegel not through a personal voyage for new
answers, but through the teachings and influence of Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), a master of
Balliol College, Oxford. The importance of Jowett cannot be understated, both because he was
Green’s greatest influence and mentor at Oxford and because Jowett venerated Hegel’s work.
“Hegel,” Jowett wrote in his introduction to Plato’s Sophist, “if not the greatest philosopher, is
certainly the greatest critic of philosophy.”26 And as master of Balliol college, Jowett recognized
his own hand in the dissemination of German philosophy. “They [Kant and Hegel] have been
read in Balliol College (more) than probably anywhere else in England.”27 Green credited
Jowett as the strongest influence of his career, and without the “stirring up” from Jowett, Green
conceded his intellectual life would have remained in a state of “permanent lethargy.”28 Jowett
was also credited to having directly introduced Green to Hegel and other portions of German
thought.29
Hegelianism offered Green’s political philosophy two key ingredients. First, it provided a
philosophic structure that legitimized many of the Romantic notions which inspired T.H. Green.
Specifically, Hegel identified a spirit or Geist that was omniscient throughout life and history.
25
Paul Redding, “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N.
Zalta, Summer 2018 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018),
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/hegel/.
26
Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, eds. The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Master of Balliol
College, Oxford (J. Murray, 1897), 250.
27
From letter on Jul 19, 1885; Abbott and Campbell, 250.
28
L.T. Nettleship, Memoir, in The Works of Thomas Hill Green ...: Philosophical Works (Longmans, Green, and
Company, 1888), xxvii.
29
L.T. Nettleship, lxx; One final note to be made was the extent of Hegel’s influence on British discourse generally.
Though Jowett was a forefather of Hegel’s influence in Britain, this did not limit British Idealism to T.H. Green. A
few of Green’s contemporaries were F. H. Bradley, also at Oxford, J. M. E. McTaggart, and Bernard Bosanquet. The
significance of this was that Green’s attraction to Idealism was not unique, but rather he apart of a larger wave of
Idealist thought in Britain that would last until just after the First World War.
18
Green adopted a similar notion that related his theology with German metaphysics.30 Then,
Hegel offered a powerful critique against the sense-certainty of empiricism. He concluded that
empiricism failed to capture any true knowledge about external reality, but rather it worked only
to define the objectivity and subjectivity of the individuals in relation to their own external
perception.31 These two provisions from Hegel, not only offered Green tools to escape from the
atomist and hyper-individualistic notions of liberalism, but they were critical to Green’s own
philosophy. Hegel’ notion of “mutual recognition” became a new basis for Green’s theory of
society. From that starting point, Green constructed a new system of rights that allocated new
authorities to the State in its role to promote and protect freedom, democracy, and equality.
Mentored by Jowett, inspired by Romanticism, and empowered by Hegel, T.H. Green’s
philosophical project can now be situated to the rest of the liberal tradition. Pierre Manent, in his
book An Intellectual History of Liberalism, offered a window into a possible historical reason for
Green’s reaction. Manent argued that the desire for a third intellectual space free from the
tradition of the monarch and the dogma of the church formed the early liberal tradition. After the
French Revolution, liberalism completed its primary function and toppled the hegemony of its
rivals.32 Early liberals built classical liberalism as counters to these forces. Implicitly, Green
recognized that these arguments were not effective against modern ills, as their intellectual
successors, the utilitarians, failed to address these issues. Liberalism needed to evolve. Green’s
work sought to over throw the “hedonism of Hume” and its mutation, utilitarianism, and save the
“culture” of England. 33 He viewed that in the balance between stubborn willfulness and social
30
L.T. Nettleship, lxxiii.
31
Jeanne A. Schuler, “Empiricism without the Dogmas: Hegel's Critique of Locke's Simple Ideas,” History of
Philosophy Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2014): 347–68; Thom Brooks, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading
of the Philosophy of Right (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 100–110.
32
Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), viii-vii,
39-52, 114-117.
33
L.T. Nettleship, xliv.
19
right, the atomism which had once protected the individual from the despotism of the State and
the Church had run wild once its previous rivals had been conquered. In effect, Green sought to
bring back an equilibrium between the individual’s will and social good.34 Green was not a
revolutionary but a reformer, as his theories renovated liberalism rather than destroyed it.
A. Ambiguity and the Issues of Classical Liberalism
Within his 1885 publication of Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, T.H.
Green levied criticisms against Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). His analysis articulated the internal contradictions within
their theories. The fundamental problem for Green was that these philosophers’ core theories
utilized ambiguous variables to contradicting ends.35 Green identified the theory of the State of
Nature to be the foundation of classical liberalism’s failure.
“Men live first in a state of nature, subject to a law of nature, also called the law
of reason; that in this state they are in some sense free and equal; that ‘finding
many inconveniences’ in it they covenant with each other to establish a
government—a covenant which they are bound by the ‘law of nature’ to
observe—and that out of this covenant the obligation of submission to the
‘powers that be’ arises.”36
The State of Nature incarnated a third intellectual space that allowed humanity to imagine life
before their obedience to either the Church or the State.37
The State of Nature was critical to the establishment of liberalism’s most notable ideas.
The difference between natural rights versus civil rights, for example, was based on the covenant
34
One minor detail about T.H. Green as reformer was his avid membership of the Temperance movement which
was a mass movement against alcohol. This movement was critical in that it worked to establish the public image of
a moral lower-class. An argument that was demanded when it came to the right to vote. Green also campaigned for
the Second Reform Act in 1867 to include all sane men living in any borough of the state, a radical position
compared to even other progressive liberals.
35
Thomas Hill Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche, 1999), 69.
36
Thomas Hill Green, 69.
37
Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, 36–37.
20
made in order for man to leave the State of Nature. This agreement between individuals
established the authority of the democratic State. It determined that the implementation of the
State to legislate positive freedoms was unjust, while negative freedoms, however, were
legitimate. Property, justice, security, all major liberal issues fit within this paradigm.38
One final consequence of the Liberal State of Nature theory was that it imbedded
atomism in to liberal doctrine. It defined society as the net aggregate of individuals who accepted
this social covenant and the relationships between them. Though classical liberals contested
whether the atom was the individual or the family, this notion molded the bedrock of classical
liberal thought no matter the denominator. 39 It was critical for the advocation of individual rights
for property, justice, and representation. It formed the basis for powerful arguments on liberty
and equality that effectively motivated the intellectual and cultural contexts of the American and
French Revolution. However, T.H. Green saw this theory as archaic, ineffective, and illogical.
This ambiguity, he argued, made for a logic that could quickly run past its intended
function and “so as to readily lend itself to opposite applications.” 40 Specifically, Green sought
to demonstrate the ambiguous definitions of the State of Nature compared to civil society,
particularly focusing in on how men transitioned from one to the other.
Green argued that classical liberal conceptions of the differences between the State of
Nature and Civil Society was confused at its best and duplicitous at its worst. He came to this
conclusion after he analyzed the texts of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Between them, he
discovered that the only unifying aspect of each philosopher’s definition of the State of Nature
38
The summary comes from the sections on Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau in Manent, An Intellectual History of
Liberalism, 20-38, 39-53, 65-79.
39
Avital Simhony and D. Weinstein, "Introduction," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community
(Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.
40
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 69.
21
was a negative assertion; the State of Nature was not civil society. 41 Other than that
qualification, there was an immense range regarding what State of Nature meant.
To begin, what defined the State of Nature as distinct from Civilization remained opaque.
For Thomas Hobbes, Green noted, the State of Nature was void of all individual
interconnections. In this way, humanity lived in a state of freedom and equality, as each
individual lived bounded to no one but themselves. The law of nature ruled this state, yet it more
so resembled anarchy than order.42 John Locke, on the other hand, imagined the State of Nature
also as a state of equality. However, unlike Hobbes, Locke argued that this equality was based on
a “consciousness of equality with each other on the part of men that they recognize the principle
‘do as you would be done by.’” 43 As such, in Locke’s State of Nature, individuals recognized
one another and respected a shared code-of-conduct. In this way, the State of Nature was not a
State of War, as the former devolved into the latter when individuals rejected the law of nature.
Finally, Green argued that Rousseau imagined a similar State of Nature to Locke in his notion of
equality, yet it was based on different principles. Rousseau emphasized the individual’s
compassion as a factor for the State of Nature, while for Locke, something closer to instincts and
basic reason defined human equality in this state.44 This consequence of this defined the
differences between how Locke and Rousseau imagined man’s transitions into civil society.
Green argued on this basis that there was little shared understanding of what defined the State of
Nature between these philosophers. When there was agreement, the foundations were never
based on same grounds.
41
Green, 39–40.
42
Green, 65–67.
43
Green, 71–72.
44
Green, 80–91.
22
Intellectual difference was not inherently problematic for Green, but rather the problem
was that these discrepancies were hidden based upon vague and often illusionary rhetoric. One
key of this rhetorical sleight-of-hand was the conception of the “law of nature” which governed
the State of Nature. T.H. Green argued that the ambiguity of this term particularly represented
the sophistry of this theory in how it conflated the notions of “law” and “nature.” These liberal
thinkers utilized this notion as an argument for equality and freedom in the State of Nature, as all
individuals were treated equally by the law of nature. The major issue with this notion was the
relationship between the individual and the law. Green argued that each of these theorists
“implicitly assume a consciousness of the law of nature in the state of nature.” Green argued that
an individual couldn’t know of the law of nature let alone be bound to it, without first
understanding the claims of other individuals which opposed their own momentary inclinations.
Secondly, if the State of Nature maintained a system for recognition that ensured freedom and
equality, then there was no difference between it and Civil Society.45
Green summarized his argument: “the radical fault of the theory which finds the origin of
political society in compact, that it has to reverse the true process.”46 The State of Nature theory
presumed that individuals preceded society and thus at some came together to create it. To
account for this, liberal thought endowed the individual with a semi-consciousness; they felt
obligations, yet never explicitly were bound to them. For Hobbes, it was man’s desire for
personal security; for Locke, it was a need for vengeance and justice; for Rousseau, it was man’s
demand for self-preservation and his own compassion. These internal forces were endowed into
the individual by the law of nature. Green argued that this law of nature hid the arbitrary
enforcement of the individual’s passion. Logically, within the conditions of the State of Nature,
45
Green, 71–72.
46
Green, 72.
23
Green concluded that “with no imponent but man’s consciousness…there could have been no
motive to the establishment of civil government.” 47
Overall, Green constructed a double bind around classical liberal theory. It was either
false in how it conceived of “the State of Nature” or “the law of Nature.” Either, the pre-social
conditions of humanity were constructed correctly, to which Green saw no way for or any form
of law to exist nor the inclination to enter civil society. Or, the conditions of the state were ill
defined, individuals were bound together under a shared law that maintained equality and
freedom, which made the State of Nature indistinct from Civil Society.48
Green concluded that the ambiguity between these notions allowed liberal thinkers to
construct the possibility of rights and obligations independent of society.49 Manent would argue
that this was critical for liberal authority against the Church and the King. Green demonstrated
that this argument relied upon a distinction between human society and the natural world. In the
French Revolution, the notion that society was man’s synthetic creation supported the beliefs in
the rights of the masses. For Green, this theory was inappropriate for modern contexts, and the
preservation of a synthetic society was no longer practical.
B. Hegel in T.H. Green: Reason and Self-Realization
The State of Nature theory answered many of pressing political and social questions
raised upon the rejection of dogma and tradition. Where did civil rights come from? What
authority does the State have over the individual? What freedoms should one possess in society?
Suddenly, all these questions were unbounded. With his attack on the State of Nature, Green
47
Green, 72.
48
Green, 71–72.
49
Green, 65–66.
24
needed to simultaneously affirm contrary principles that could answer these same questions. This
was where German metaphysics and the influence of Hegel was critically important for Green. It
offered him a whole new set of tools clean of atomist influence with which he could modernize
liberalism.
One of the significant contributions that Hegel provided T.H. Green was the German’s
attack on empiricism. Hegel unraveled the inherent contradiction of empiricism’s basic
assumptions, particularly the legitimacy of an individual’s perception of the external world.
Sense-certainty was the empiricist’s claim over true knowledge based upon human experience.
Those within this fold, such as John Locke, argued that for an argument or idea to be true, it had
to be made out of an aggregate of these undeniable experiences. 50 When an empiricist stated
“this is a tree,” they can prove their claim based on preconceived notions of tree, such as its hard
bark and green leaves. These rely on yet another layer of accepted notions, particularly on
texture and color. These visual and physical sensations could not be debated, and so the
empiricist utilized them as the foundation for their claim’s truth. This supported classical
liberalism because it authorized the individual to directly know and therefore make claims over
the world around them. This defined atomism, which determined man’s individual properties
were distinct from the reality in which they functioned. 51
Hegel’s argument against empiricism was that it ignored many of its own assumptions.
Empiricism assumed from the immediacy of experience that sensations were unmediated by
consciousness and thus were objective. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel demonstrated that
this was not the case. Consciousness always meditated the relationship between the individual
50
Schuler, “Empiricism Without the Dogmas: Hegel's Critique of Locke's Simple Ideas,” 350–51.
51
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford Paperbacks (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
2013), 58–65; Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life, 46.
25
and the world around them, and the relationship between subject and object was never explicit.
Whenever a subject observed an object, their perception of it was always based on their own
relationship to it. When one states “this is a tree,” they attempt to communicate their particular
experience through the generalities of language. In this way, language was the first barrier that
separated the empiricist from being objective. This form of communication failed to capture the
particularity of their experience. Because of this, the empiricists could never mean what they
said, nor say what they meant. So, Hegel concluded that sense-certainty crippled empiricism’s
ability to provide knowledge about the external world, as it could not adequately resolve this
inherent problem. 52
For T.H. Green, the significance of Hegel’s polemic against empiricism was his larger
claim about man’s own consciousness. Empiricism assumed that consciousness was a wholistic
and internal aspect within the individual. Like a window, consciousness provided a static view of
the external world over which one could then make claims. Hegel argued that consciousness did
not function in this way, as it was neither static nor independent of the outside world. When the
empiricist stated “this is a tree,” Hegel argued that the critical truth produced by this claim
included the subject, not just the tree of which they spoke. Specifically, this utterance affirmed
the subject’s ability to reflect upon the outside world more than it proved something about the
object in question. So, Hegel argued that consciousness was not wholistic and static, but built
upon the constant reaffirmation of one’s position in relation to the external world. This was the
“truth of sense-certainty,” rather than any objective knowledge about the external world.53
52
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 58–62; Schuler, “Empiricism Without the Dogmas: Hegel's Critique of Locke's
Simple Ideas, 350-354”
53
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 70–73.
26
Hegel extrapolated this paradigm between subject and object into a new foundation for
how individuals related to one another. He argued that inter-subject relationships were the basis
an individual’s subjectivity. Simply put, Hegel affirmed that man could only reflect upon himself
as a man, when he recognized that there were others like him. The twist came when one
individual recognized themselves in another, they also acknowledged the consciousness of the
other subject. So, the individual realized that their consciousness was unique and distinct from
the other person’s. “I” exists so as to distinguish oneself from “you” or “them.” Simply put,
selfhood was a social product, and inter-subject relationships defined individual subjectivity.
Human nature was thus inherently based on social bonds.54
Hegel provided Green with a link between the individual and society on completely non-
atomist terms. This theory of “mutual recognition” was the key to bringing an equilibrium
between individualism and communitarianism, the glue of the Aristotelian idea of man’s social
nature, and the poison arrow to atomism’s hegemony. It argued that there was no atom of society,
because there was no such thing as “an abstract empty self.” Rather, Green argued, the self-
existed only “in manifold relations to nature and other persons” and “the relations form the
reality of the self.”55 The importance of it should thus be recognized, however there was also a
critical corollary to “mutual recognition.” Human subjectivity animated this theory of mutual
recognition, as it vulcanized humanity and society.
Green argued that self-consciousness was defined by human reason and will, and that
these were the key for unlocking the purpose of subjectivity. Reason defined humanity’s virtue
for Green. His close colleague, Nettleship, stated that Green “believed reason to be at once the
54
55
Avital Simhony, "T.H. Green's Complex Common Good," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and
Community ed. Avital Simhony and D. Weinstein (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 80.
27
most human and the most divine thing in man, that he could be comprehensive without
vagueness, elevated without loss of geniality, reverent without superstition.” 56 However, reason
itself must be defined in Hegelian terms.
Humanity could not to perceive reason immediately, as an empiricist might assume, but
rather produced it through a constant process of self-reflection and action. Knowledge reflected
humanity’s production of reason and was a dynamic rather than static thing for Hegel. This
process defined Hegel’s dialectic and was the basis for human progress. Humanity was not
endowed with reason coincidentally but by a certain omnipresent and benevolent force. Hegel
called this force Geist or spirit.57 Green was more ambiguous about what he named this force, as
he often shifted between metaphysics and theology. So, it was not unimaginable that Green
conceived of this force as God or God’s will. Either way, both Hegel and Green concluded that
human progress was an inherently positive social force, as it reflected Geist or God. For the
individual, this progress was known as self-realization, and it defined the purpose of human
existence.58
For all its importance, “self-realization” must be defined. The notion of the “self” in self-
realization was critical. Green identified this progress to only occur within and by the individual.
There was no uniform pattern for what self-realization meant, and it only occurred through each
individual’s use of their reason and will. Self-realization often meant moral self-realization for
Green. In Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, Green stated that moral goodness is
“not the same thing as control over the outward circumstance and appliances of life. It is the end
to which such control is a generally necessary means and which gives it value.”59
56
Nettleship, xxv.
57
Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life, 9.
58
Nettleship, xxv-xxiii.
59
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 218–19.
28
Though it was an internal process, self-realization was recognizable by its symptoms. For the
individual, it was associated with a certain satisfaction and ease. It was marked by the intuition to
cooperate with others rather than compete with them. For society, the accumulation of individual
progress produced social harmony and growth. Like knowledge, society’s basis was reason. This
made it a dynamic creature as well. In a very literal sense, it grew or shrank based on the
progress of its citizens.60
In such, Green’s theory was non-dogmatic. Society was incapable of declaring the
material form of an individual’s self-realization, only their own reason and will could produce it.
However, Green argued that because the individual and society were intertwined, individual
progress was also social progress. So, society was incentivized to maintain the best conditions to
catalyze the individual’s own self-realization. This process of individuals working to improve
themselves and each other was known as mutually-assured self-realization.61
If this sounds like an idealistic image of society, that’s because it is. Hegel recognized
that mutual recognition was the desired state for inter-subject relationships, but it was not
ensured nor was it constant. Individuals often failed to reciprocate their recognition. For Hegel,
this failure formed the master-slave relationship. These two subjects, the master and the slave,
were mutually exclusive and opposed to one another. Hegel argued that within this unequal
relationship, true progress was dramatically limited for both individuals and society. It was only
when both subjects recognized an equality and respect for one another that the third state of
60
D. Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 34–37;
Simhony, "T.H.Green's Complex Common Good," 89–91.
61
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 213; Rex Martin, "T.H. Green on Individual Rights and
the Common Good," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community ed. Avital Simhony and D.
Weinstein (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 51-57.
29
mutual recognition could occur. And, it was in this third state that man’s full self-consciousness
and individualism was established.62
To summarize, Hegel offered Green a new argument for human subjectivity that was
dependent on society. The individual was blessed with the ability for reason and will so as to
utilize it for self-realization. However, this progress was not guaranteed but relied upon a
prolonged state of mutual recognition. With all that’s been said, one can finally cross the bridge
from Hegel’s metaphysics on perception to T.H. Green’s political philosophy.
C. Genesis of a New Liberal Philosophy
Green argued that the state in a liberal society was the apparatus meant to ensure the self-
realization of its citizens. It assured that citizens remained in a state of mutual recognition to one
another. On the individual level, the state’s function was to maintain the freedom of each
citizens. For society, Green’s notion of equality was defined by the state’s uniform protection of
individual freedoms. This conception of the state was the cornerstone of New Liberalism, as it
offered new answers for the questions of freedom and equality, the powers of the state, and the
role of civil rights.
Green’s paradigm redefined freedom. It was the equilibrium between the individual’s
actions and restraints. Because, not all actions lead towards self-realization, freedom was critical
for citizens to explore their own subjectivity, to think and to act by their own reason and will.
This was a necessary component for progress. However, there were also actions that were not
only neutral but malevolent to progress. It was the state’s obligation to curb individuals from
committing such actions, for both their own benefit and society’s. For example, the State was
62
30
right to stop murders, because it was uniformly recognized that murder did not benefit social
progress.63
Green’s notion of equality was based on the state’s protection of freedom for society as a
whole. The state must offer equal enforcement and protection for the freedoms of all citizens, if
it was to accomplish its goal. If the state strayed to support a singular stratum of society, it no
longer functioned towards its raison-d’être but promoted coercion between citizens and master-
slave relationships. It must be applied to the highest and lowest strata of society. Even “the slave
has a right to citizenship to a recognised equality of freedom with any and everyone with whom
he has to do.” 64 Finally, this was also the reason for why the state must be democratic, because
if it was not, the state would no longer represent society as a whole but the wills of select
individuals.
Social progress and the “Common Good” was promoted by the state through its
implementation of justice. In other terms, the state was in part an institution that recorded and
maintained society’s past reflections on individual’s actions. The state ensured that man was not
free to murder, because society had reflected on murder and determined it to be bad for social
progress. If a citizen killed someone, they must be punished as a reaffirmation of this social
knowledge. However, every murderer should go to trial, not because the question of murder was
up for debate, but because the self-reflection benefited society’s fine-tuning of freedom. For this
reason, the Liberal State was a dynamic system. It was not infallible, but it also demanded
respect and was authorized to execute justice in society.65
63
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 85–86; Andrew Vincent, "The New Liberalism and
Citizenship," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community ed. Avital Simhony and D. Weinstein
64
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 140.
65
Green, 18–20.
31
From this point, Green laid the foundation for civil rights. Rights were established by
society and were defined for each individual. Rights were the boundaries maintained by the state
in which the individual was authorized to become self-realized. There was no moment where the
state created man’s rights, however, within every moment it sought to reaffirm them towards “a
fuller reality.”66 For this reason, rights were both explicit and dynamic. The state was obligated
to define and protect them, as well as adjust them to maximize justice.
This construction of rights had two major consequences for T.H. Green’s theory. The first
was that it removed another critical notion from the State of Nature theory, that of natural rights.
Green’s argument demonstrated that rights existed only in society and through the state’s
constant effort. The second consequences of this structure for rights was that it placed an
obligation on citizens to their community. The state’s duty toward individual freedom and social
equality was reciprocated by the citizen’s obligation to be a positive social contributor. This
benefited the individual as well, as social growth and individual growth were a feedback loop.67
One final consequence of Green’s political philosophy was that his structure of freedom
did not explicitly bar the state from legislating positive freedoms. This was a notable difference
compared to the rest of the liberal tradition, which viewed positive freedoms to be dogmatic.
However, for Green, the state’s role was to promote the individual’s self-realization. If a positive
freedom was a net benefit for the individual’s self-realization it could be legislated by the Liberal
State.68
To conclude, Green’s theory proposed a vision for a liberal community that were organic
and interconnected based on shared individual and social goals. His construction of civil rights
66
Green, 138.
67
Green, 47–48.
68
Green, 207.
32
and the state, freedom and equality, authority and obligation were based on the foundational
notion that society was in man’s nature. “The admission of a right to free life on the part of every
man, as man, does in fact logically imply the conception of all men as forming one society in
which each individual has some service to render, one organism in which each has a function to
fulfil.”69 Society defined man’s subjectivity, personhood, and nature. The state was “purely
natural,” rather than a “moral, organism.” It reflected the human reason endowed to each
individual by Geist or God that animated the world-over.70
Now that the intellectual innovations of T.H. Green have been established and its
structure qualified, one can address the important differences between it and its predecessor,
Utilitarianism. Green’s Lectures on Political Obligation interacted with Utilitarianism indirectly,
as his direct criticisms of the liberal tradition stopped just before the French Revolution. Green
did not critique later thinkers like John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) or Jeremy Bentham, the two
most famous utilitarians to date. One possible reason for their absence was that Mill and
Bentham continued to utilize the same core liberal theory of the State of Nature. In fact, they
pushed the older atomist theory to its extremes, so as to promote a radical individualism
recognizable in laissez-faire economics. For the most part, the social problems of class tensions
and alienation were not only unaffected but magnified by the utilitarian’s atomist position.71 So,
Green’s critic of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau was also very contemporary.
This does not mean Utilitarianism had nothing to offer to New Liberalism. New
Liberalism, D. Weinstein argues, was not just a rejection of Utilitarianism, but he demonstrated
how it also incorporated aspects of Utilitarian thought. Green’s theory of self-realization was
69
Green, 158.
70 Green, 94.
71
Simhony and Weinstein, "Introduction," 17.
33
approximate to J.S. Mill’s ideal on individual potential.72 However, the differences remained that
Mill functioned within empiricism. He valorized the individual’s ability to obtain objective
knowledge, and this limited the scope of what individual potential meant for him. In addition,
Mill viewed society as competitive rather than cohesive state. Individual’s maximized their
potential despite their community rather than through it. So, in a way, New Liberalism coopted
Mill’s advocation for individual potential based upon non-atomist position. This allowed for the
consequences of Mill’s thought to be pushed to new extremes. 73
Commencing in that old warm room at Oxford in 1858, where the boys of the Old
Mortality Club first were infected with the rebellious passion, T.H. Green created an impressive
body of theory. He lived until 1882, when he died of blood poisoning. His demise came at the
height of his academic authority and many of his influential works were published
posthumously. In Green’s theory, there was a light of rebellion and courage in his intellectual
life. However, Green should not be considered a genius, but rather someone who tapped into the
larger cultural milieu of his time. It took before him the revolt of the Romantics and the Idealism
of Hegel to synthesize a new paradigm of liberalism based on an organic notion of community. If
Green was not the one to do it, someone else likely would have, as his work responded to the
greatest demand of his time. There was the need for a new philosophy to reinvigorate modern
life yet avoid revolution. It needed to tear liberalism down, break apart its atomist structure, and
reconstruct it anew.
72
D. Weinstein, "The New Liberalism and the Rejection of Utilitarianism," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling
Liberty and Community ed. Avital Simhony and D. Weinstein (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 165–67.
73
Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism, 44.
34
Section II: Theory to Practice: L.T. Hobhouse and New Liberal Reforms
T.H. Green’s construction of the organic community theory provided the philosophic
foundation for New Liberal politics. However, it was necessary to translate this theory into
practice. One major New Liberal figure, L.T. Hobhouse, attempted to do just that. 74 The focus of
this section will be to examine Hobhouse’s comprehension of Green’s theory, so as to explore
how he mobilized it to advocate for social change.
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse was born in 1864 in the small town of St. Ives in the South-
West of England.75 His family could adequately be described as a remarkably Victorian
household. His father, the Venerable Reginald Hobhouse, was educated at Eton and then Oxford
and became the Archdeacon of Bodmin. L.T. Hobhouse did preparatory school at Marlborough
college and then Corpus Christi College, Oxford. There, Hobhouse gravitated towards the works
of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Giuseppe Mazzini, the great liberal thinkers of the
time. However, what John Hobson, a contemporary and close friend, wrote of Hobhouse’s
relationship to liberal theory remains telling. “He [Hobhouse] was always ‘disinterested’ in his
pursuit for philosophic truth; knowledge and the life of reason were never conceived by him as
ends in themselves, but as contributions to the wider purpose of a better human life.”76 At least in
his early life, Hobhouse judged liberal doctrines on their social consequences, rather than their
traditional value or ontological claims.
After Oxford, L.T. Hobhouse worked as an editorial writer for the Manchester Guardian,
a major liberal paper of the time. There, Hobhouse was a force. As Stefan Collini described it,
74
Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880-1914
75
For Hobhouse’s biography reference: John Hobson and Morris Ginsberg, "LT Hobhouse, His Life and Works."
(1931); Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Clarendon Press, 1986); Collini,
Liberalism and Sociology.
76
L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 2.
35
“the five years he spent on the Guardian were exhausting years for all that they were active,
exciting, and creative ones.”77 His journalism and politics went hand-in-hand as he defined his
stance within British discourse on the radical left. Hobhouse’s politics and his journalism were
backed by the same wind. “Both were directed towards remedying ‘the present decadence of
liberalism’, the roots of which he traced ‘to the weakening of the intellectual basis upon which
the reformers of an older generation founded themselves.’” 78 In retrospect, Hobhouse’s affinity
for Green’s organic theory was obvious, as it offered the journalist a coherent philosophy that
legitimized his public arguments. And even after Hobhouse’s youth, he was extremely active in
periodicals. Remarkably, it was recorded that Hobhouse wrote 322 articles for the Gaudian in
1902 alone.79 However, it was after his early period in journalism that Hobhouse started to
publish his own canon of books on British politics, sociology, and philosophy alongside his
contributions to periodicals.
One may divide Hobhouse’s subsequent writing into three phases. For the most part,
Hobhouse’s earlier period, marked by books such as The Labour Movement (1893), Mind in
Evolution (1901), and Democracy and Reaction (1905), which focused on his examination of
contemporary politics both domestic and abroad.80 Two specific areas of interest recur. The civil
unrest of the working class and the foreign engagements of the British Empire. Hobhouse’s
middle period was marked his most cited work, Liberalism (1911). This was Hobhouse’s
synthesis of New Liberal political theory and it sought to resolve the problems he had analyzed
in his youth.81 The third period of Hobhouse’s writing, which was marked by World War One
77
Hobhouse, 3.
78
Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 92.
79
Collini, 259.
80
L. T. Hobhouse, The Labour Movement, Society and the Victorians, no. 16 (Brighton, Eng: Harvester Press,
1974); Hobhouse, L.T., Mind in Evolution (London: The Macmillan company, 1901); L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy
and Reaction (London: T.F. Unwin, 1904).
81
36
and ended with Hobhouse’s passing, reflected a turn towards new historical conditions and
liberalism’s uncertain future; this is the focus of the third section of this thesis.
A. The Social Question
In 1911, Liberalism defined Hobhouse’s clearest translation of T.H. Green’s theory. In
the estimation of contemporary critics, it was described as the “authoritative statement of New
Liberal political theory” and “the best twentieth-century statement of Liberal ideals.”82
Liberalism immediately had the weight of a work written by “Locke, Bentham, John Stuart Mill,
and T.H. Green.”83 Notably, it was published at the apex of New Liberalism’s authority in
British discourse and was generally viewed then as the liberal authority of its time.84
Hobhouse’s work did more than just push Green’s philosophy to political conclusions.
For the most part, Green wrote within academic and philosophical discourses. Hobhouse needed
to translate Green’s theory for public discourse, so as to ensure that the authority of Green’s
work was recognized.
Hobhouse framed Green’s theory to the public by positioning it as an answer to the so-
called “Social Question.” Holly Case offered a discursive analysis of what the “Social Question”
was and why New Liberals like Hobhouse utilized it as a framework for discussion. Historically,
the “Social Question” was actually an aggregation of many questions about social problems that
arose throughout 19th century Britain. Case argued that the earliest notions of the “Social
Question” can first be dated to 1820s. Particularly, the crisis of food and currency after the
Napoleonic Wars were converted into the “Corn Question” and the “Bullion Question.”85 By the
82
83
Hobhouse, Liberalism, 1.
84
Sykes, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism, 1776-1988, 154–55.
85
Holly Case, “The ‘Social Question,’ 1820–1920,” Modern Intellectual History 13, no. 03 (November 2016): 749.
37
mid-century and onwards, the number of questions encompassed by the “Social Question” grew
rapidly. It was no longer just the “Corn Question” but the “Woman Question,” the “Agrarian
Question,” and the “Workers Question.”86 At this time other famous intellectuals such as John
Stuart Mill and Karl Marx published works such as the “Negro Question” and the “Jewish
Question.”87 This rhetoric was not incidental nor objective, as it reified singular elements out of
large structural problems. It categorized the boundaries over what was an issue and what was
not. As such, it determined certain arguments to be legitimate and certain members of society to
be authoritative.
By the end of the 19th century, sociology was an established science. Much like
philosophers, the sociologist questioned man’s existence and role in society, however, the
sociologist took those questions and made a science out of them. Through their science of
society, this elite group felt as though they had access to and thus authority over any subject
which fell under their gaze. The worker, the woman, the Jew, and the Negro all could be
understood, and if done correctly society’s problems would be resolved. As the New Liberals
sought to solve the Social Question through welfare, temperance, and equality, their authority
was born out of an unquestioned epistemological position of privilege.88
Hobhouse synthesized Green’s organic society theory as his own sociological basis. He
defined the discipline as the study of society’s tissues, the relations into which human beings
were connected with one another. Hobhouse considered societies to differ in three principal
points. “(A) the efficiency of their operation, (B) their scale or scope, (C) the basis or principle of
86
Case, 756.
87
“On The Jewish Question by Karl Marx,” accessed March 13, 2019,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/; Mill, John Stuart (1850). "The Negro
Question". Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. Vol. XLI, pp. 25–31.
88
Case, “The ‘Social Question,’ 1820–1920,” 767.
38
their organization.”89 These would all be familiar to Green’s readers, since Hobhouse took the
core aspects of progress and society from Green’s theory and translated them into his supposed
science. However, there was one major obstacle for Hobhouse’s sociological translation of
Green’s philosophy. For Green’s theory, the omnipresent force, Geist or God, was critical to the
metaphysical structure of his argument. It made Green’s theory organic as it was the omnipresent
force that bridged the social and the natural worlds. It also defined reason as a benevolent force
for good. On the other hand, Hobhouse’s sociology was extremely secular, and it cut out Green’s
theological influences. To manage this gap, Hobhouse argued that reason itself was an “organic
principle in thought.” Or rather, the knowledge identified by reason even when incomplete was
part of an organic whole. Similarly, Hobhouse argued that reason’s benevolent nature was based
not in its metaphysical origins but in its results. The historically observed progress produced by
reason established its own benevolence. 90 Overall, Hobhouse notion of organicism was closer to
Green’s than it was to Darwin’s. Despite that, it would be fair to describe Hobhouse’s view as
taxonomical.91 What society was to man, a spine was to vertebrate; it defined the human species
and human-nature.
If Hobhouse’s argument for the organic nature of his theory seems contrived, Holly Case
offered a possible motive for why Hobhouse’s was motivated to protect it. Case argued that
organicism was a critical discursive tool for the New Liberals, as it framed the New Liberal’s
general position towards the Social Question.92 Though this was never bluntly stated by
Hobhouse, Case’s point can be seen in the conclusion of Liberalism.
89
Collini, 217, 222-223.
90
Michael Freeden, “Liberal Community,” in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community ed. Avital
Simhony and D. Weinstein (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34.
91
Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 174; L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State: A Criticism
(London ; New York: G. Allen & Unwin, 1918), 132.
92
Case, “The ‘Social Question,’ 1820–1920,” 763–66.
39
“A nation as a whole cannot be in the full sense free while it fears another or gives
cause of fear to another. The social problem must be viewed as a whole. We touch
here the greatest weakness in modern reform movements. The spirit of specialism
has invaded political and social activity, and in greater and greater degree men
consecrate their whole energy to a particular cause to the almost cynical disregard
of all other considerations.”93
Hobhouse argued that the focus of the New Liberals was unusual in that it viewed the
Social Problem as a whole rather than in parts. Organicism was a powerful rhetorical tool
to represent this position. This biological language effectively shifted the Social Problem
from being the aggregate of smaller problems to a singular illness though with many
symptoms. This perception allowed Hobhouse to make economic arguments that were
simultaneously social, political, and moral ones as well.
L.T. Hobhouse’s interest in the Social Question was for the most part focused on the
Workmen’s Question and class conflict. The issue of civil unrest had long dominated British
culture even before Marx published his manifesto in 1848. The Luddite Revolts, for example,
were violent reactions by workmen to industrialization and its threats in the early 1810s and 20s.
And for the rest 19th century, the rise of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class in Britain
correlated with an ever-growing wealth inequality. This theme was often at the core of 19th
century British literature. It formed the basis for understanding famous characters such as
Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff. Throughout the century, the labor
strikes, revolts, and the rise of Socialism had instilled within middle-class society a deep-seated
anxiety of a revolution. These fears started to materialize in the second half of the 19th century,
when the late working class were noticeably becoming more organized.94 For the New Liberals,
it was a priority to resolve these class tensions, to reharmonize society, and avoid a complete re-
93
94
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914, Reprint edition (New York: Vintage, 1989), 118–24.
40
structuring of it at the workman’s hand. Yet, because of the organic nature of the New Liberals,
their solutions to the Workmen’s question were also remedies to the other issues encompassed by
the Social Question.
The New Liberals sought to protect the prevailing order rather than destroy it. Even as the
New Liberals argued for socio-economic reforms, they affirmed that only an elite class had
authority to speak on them. Specifically, it was the intellectual, the scientist, and the statesmen,
whose answers to the Social Question were legitimate.95 Noticeably, these positions were
generally filled by white, highly educated, and land-owning men. Like T.H. Green, L.T.
Hobhouse did not question the power structure of British society. Hobhouse made radical claims
from within this older, unquestioned structure, as a member of an elite circle imbued with
authority over the topic. He was empowered to do so because he was an Oxford graduate, a
respected journalist, and utilized “scientific” sociological practices. This should not simply paint
the New Liberals as hypocrites, however, but rather work to demonstrate from what position the
New Liberals spoke and how they deployed their arguments.
95
Case, “The ‘Social Question,’ 1820–1920,” 749.
41
B. A New Liberal Answer to the Social Question
L.T. Hobhouse proposed “Economic Liberalism” as a remedy for the Social Question and
a schematic for social harmony.96 This economic theory worked hand-in-hand with the notion of
social progress, and it was based on Hobhouse’s observation of the economic inequality and
injustice in modern Britain. Particularly, Hobhouse sought to challenge the undisturbed powers
of the wealthy to coerce both the working class and the state.97 This power created an imbalance
that was supported by the state through laissez-faire policy.98 Though technically legal, the rich’s
coercion of the working class was an attack on their freedoms which a “genuine spirit of liberty”
would “ not fail to recognize as its enemy.”99 Hobhouse presumed that to fix inequality, there
needed to be reforms made on the power of the wealthy. He also recognized that a social debt
was owed to the working class, which needed to be invested by the state through welfare,
pensions, and mini-wage laws. This debt had caused not only an economic but moral and social
degradation of the working class, and so these reforms were also a method for the redemption of
the destitute.100 The consequence of such state intervention would be that the rich were to
become more humanized, and the working class’s moral and social degeneracy would progress
towards middle-class virtues.
It was critical for Hobhouse’s plan that the state had the authority to make such economic
changes. However, the state’s ability to interfere with an individual’s private property was one of
96
Hobhouse, Liberalism. 88.
97
Hobhouse, 81; “The tempter is coolly seeking his profit, and the sufferer is beset with a fiend within. There is a
form of coercion here which the genuine spirit of liberty will not fail to recognize as its enemy, and a form of
injury.”
98
Hobhouse, 54.
99
Hobhouse, 81.
100
Hobhouse, Liberalism, 95; “The suggestion underlying the movement for the breakup of the Poor Law is just the
general application of this principle. It is that, instead of redeeming the destitute, we should seek to render generally
available the means of avoiding destitution, though in doing so we should uniformly call on the individual for a
corresponding effort on his part.”
42
the key tenets of the “laissez-faire” economics established by the liberal tradition. Hobhouse
utilized the organic community theory to combat “laissez-faire” beliefs and authorize the state to
make reforms with real teeth. Through the organic society theory, Hobhouse argued that the
citizen’s property was not entirely their own but contained a social factor to it. It was due to this
social element that the state could make legitimate claims authority over wealth and property.101
The social element of property was developed through the role society played for in
wealth’s creation. One example offered by Hobhouse was the state’s role in security and the right
to property. The state protected the citizen’s property from “thieves and depredators” and
punished those who it failed to stop.102 On the other hand, the personal element of wealth formed
only through the individual’s use of certain conditions or opportunities provided for by society.
The ability to be more or less productive in whatever position an individual found themselves in
was the basis for their increased or decreases claim to personal reward. This was the basic
principle for why the right to property was important for the New Liberals. One’s property was
directly tied to the positive use of the individual’s reason and will, and so was critical for their
own self-realization.103 For this right, the individual was obligated to support the state through
taxes and social engagement. This was both positive for the individual and society, as the state
maintained the conditions and opportunities for wealth’s production.
Hobhouse argued that as the state invested more into the maintenance and production of
the necessary conditions for wealth, the society would become wealthier. However, the
individuals who benefited from the state’s work were also obligated to pay back a surplus to the
101
Hobhouse, 98.
102
Hobhouse, 98.
103
Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 216–17; John Morrow, "Private Property, Liberal
Subjects, and the State," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community ed. Avital Simhony and D.
Weinstein (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 92–93.
43
state. This created a feedback loop and a constant expansion of social prosperity. However, if the
social aspect of wealth was ignored, this ecosystem could not function. It would “deplete the
national resources, deprive the community of its just share in the fruits of industry and so result
in a one-sided and inequitable distribution of wealth.”104
Hobhouse saw modern industry was the apex of the state’s investment in the conditions
and opportunities of wealth. The state’s role in the creation and maintenance of roads, railways,
and sea transport alone was huge deployment of capital that catalyzed individual production.
Hobhouse also pointed to the market place for more examples. Particularly, the state’s role in the
standardization of prices, exchange rates, of supply and demand, all were built upon and
supported by larger social investments. This was a complex apparatus that functioned based upon
society and the state’s support. To compound this, there was a social debt to be found in all the
skilled and unskilled masses which the state supported in various ways. They were the critical
labor force who produced all the commodities that defined modern life. Finally, one last value
the state added was in its function to support the systems of knowledge which were critical to the
inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs of modern industry.105
Overall, Hobhouse was still pro-capitalism, as he viewed its systems to be based on the
promotion of reason and bent towards self-realization.106 Also, he never argued that the state was
to be a profitable business. It did not make these investments to see a larger return, but rather to
support itself towards its raison-d’etre. However, Hobhouse clearly felt that the state’s
investment had gone unrewarded to the point that it no longer functioned in the interest of all its
citizens. If this was not reconciled, the final result would either be the full enslavement of society
104
105
Hobhouse, Liberalism. 99.
106
Hobhouse, 99.
44
or the actuality of a class war.107 Thus, Hobhouse did not conclude that all wealth was social, but
simply sought to demonstrate that the foundations of personal property were social.
The basic assumption of Economic Liberalism was that the immense prosperity of the
British state obligated it to ensure that every citizen had “full means of earning by socially useful
labour” and all “the necessary basis of a healthy, civilized existence.”108 However, economic
justice transcended the sustenance of the individual. It was the equal payment for “the
performance of useful service” based on the state’s investment “to stimulate and maintain the
efficient exercise of that useful function.”109 This fundamentally shifted what reward was for the
individual. The value of work was not the production of profit, but its social function. The state
was obligated to ensure that social value was rewarded justly, indifferent to profit margins.
Hobhouse argued that this meant the modern wage laborer was grossly
undercompensated. In reality, the average laborer’s wages were not sufficient to cover “all the
fortunes and misfortunes of life.” It failed “to provide for sickness, accident, unemployment and
old age, in addition to the regular needs of an average family.”110 Indifferent to the fact that both
employer and wage laborer technically consented to the contract of work, Hobhouse argued that
this was a form of oppression, as the workmen’s conditions failed to facilitate his personal liberty
and capability for self-realization. In the opposite regard, the state was to be guarded against any
association in competition with its existence. Hobhouse pointed towards American trusts as an
economic example of such a “state within the state.” 111 The threat of such a powerful
organization was both possible and dangerous. Hobhouse insisted that the state should protect the
107
“Literature Review of Liberalism,” in The Nation, ( November 27th, 1913) as quoted by Collini, Liberalism and
Sociology, 144.
108
Hobhouse, Liberalism, 96–97.
109
Hobhouse, 100.
110
Hobhouse, 92.
111
Hobhouse, 24.
45
individual against the association more than it should protection the association against the
restriction of the law. Though not all rich citizens needed to be taxed, nor should the whole
working class be supported, Hobhouse argued that there needed to be a reconciliation made for
the prevalent economic injustices of the times.
Hobhouse argued that the insatiable accumulation of wealth was characteristically anti-
social in that it aligned with an unabashed desire for social power and vanity.112 This was
obvious in the relationship between the rich and the state. Hobhouse believed that for too long
the rich felt as though they had “an unlimited right to command the state, as their servant, to
secure them by the free use of the machinery of law in the undisturbed enjoyment of their
possessions.”113 So, Hobhouse argued the state needed to reaffirm its authority and priority over
the wealthy and force them to pay their social dues. To do this, the state had two main tools:
regulation and reform. However, Hobhouse did not view the wealth’s avarice to be ubiquitous
nor inherent to the successful accumulation of wealth; rather he identified specific malicious
areas from which the wealth benefited while society did not. In Liberalism, Hobhouse offered the
roles of inherited wealth and market speculation as to examples of economic structures in need
of change.
The role of inherited wealth was considered by Hobhouse to be the determining factor for
the economic and social structure for his time. The distinction between acquired and inherited
wealth was pivotal as Hobhouse could not identify any empirical proof for social positives of
inherited wealth. He attacked the contemporary beliefs that the right to inherit wealth was indeed
necessary for society, and he dismissed the notion that state intervention would diminish the total
capital for use in society, nor would it damage social motivation, such as the desire to provide for
112
Hobhouse, 104.
113
Hobhouse, 98.
46
one’s family. In such, the state had the right and the duty to recoup property when it came to
inheritance based upon its lack of a real positive social function. 114
This same logic was utilized in terms of speculation reform. Speculation was not a
positive function within society and arguably led to negative results for the community. Within
his historical contexts, Hobhouse saw how speculation offered the potential for huge rewards to
those who were astute or fortunate enough to profit from it. The danger of speculation to society
was its resemblance to gambling. To the popular argument that speculation was critical to the
adjustment of market values and forces, Hobhouse pointed again to observable realities. He
accepted the economic fact that speculation adjusted market values rationally so far as every
player who participated was rational in their choices. When speculation was limited to experts
and businesses, for example, this system worked well. However, the obvious state of affairs was
not this rational picture. Rather, Hobhouse observed that the market worked as a lottery or
roulette table. The moment irrational players entered the market, the motive to play transformed
from a positive social function to an individual desire for power and affluence. The fortunate or
astute were not rewarded based on their social productivity, but rather utilized the market as a
forum to levy a tax. This was a tax not on only the unfortunate, ill-advised who participated in
the game of speculation, but the real-world referents of these investments. 115
Hobhouse’s proposed reforms for speculation and inheritance were not radical and
demonstrated the status quo methods which New Liberal policy advocated for change. Hobhouse
did not seek for the state to destroy the stock market or even the act of speculation, but he simply
sought to realign its reward with its function. He offered two practical reforms. He recognized
that he could not stop people from speculating, particularly he could not stop irrational or
114
Hobhouse, 102.
115
Hobhouse, 101–102.
47
uninformed speculation, however, one could tax the income made from speculation. Hobhouse
recognized that this could “hamper the process of production” in a negative way. Despite this
possibility, the likely outcome of the tax was positive. “It would prove that the total profit now
absorbed by individuals exceeds… the remuneration necessary to maintain that particular
economic function.”116 The tax would extract a useful social value from a normally negative
practice. This was a practical response to the economic injustice produced by certain unequal
advantages in the market. This very practical measure demonstrates the moderate reforms that
the organic community provoked. It did not need to facilitate sweeping change to the economic
system, but rather had to counter for unbalanced areas of injustice and inequality.
Another example of reform for speculation demonstrated how Hobhouse prioritized
social-use over individual profit. Hobhouse sought to counteract the effects of market
irrationality in its determination of the life of a company, with a new form of investment where
the company's success was not be intimately tied to its stock price but the function it played in
society.117 Though Hobhouse does not directly implicate the state as that collective organization,
one could imagine how the state could offer subsidies to help companies survive alongside their
stock’s price.
What becomes clear within Hobhouse’s argument over speculation and inheritance was
that without the prevailing ideology of classical liberalism to defend the undeterred ability to
accrue capital, the organic community empowered the state to take active measures against social
imbalances and dysregulations such as economic injustice. The organic community allowed the
economy and moral life to be interconnected.118 It declared the state had a duty to ensure all
116
Hobhouse, 101–2.
117
Hobhouse, 103.
118
48
citizens certain economic privileges. It was the key that allowed him to seamlessly move
between arguments on equality and freedom to the state and to intervention on the market and
property. Hobhouse moved between economics and social justice, moral decisions fell in line
with economic functioning.119
Hobhouse observed certain economic mechanisms that perpetuate social ills. There was a
certain imbalance, where large fortunes sat in few hands and which remained there for
generations. Yet, on the other extreme of society, a large population simply lived under the
axiom: “naked we enter, naked we leave.”120 Hobhouse exemplified that for this working class,
there was more that needed to be done by the state than regulations on the wealthy. Three prongs
of Hobhouse’s approach will be examined. The first was to dismiss the popular perceptions of
the working class and replace them with sociological facts. The second was to invest in the
working class and their conditions through welfare and pensions. The third was to provide both
moral and academic education so as to imbue the working class with bourgeois virtue. Though
Hobhouse’s approach to the wealthy set a foundation for state intervention, it was with the poor
that the limits of the organic community theory were extended the furthest.
The working class in 19th century Britain were viewed in popular and academic culture as
a state within a state. They were a community with their own culture, language, and values
distinct from the rest of Victorian England. For example, Henry Mayhew, a significant journalist
of the working class, published London Labour and the London Poor (1851) opened his three-
volume encyclopedia about the poor with an historical construction about the working class’s
existence in England.
“Here, then, we have a series of facts of the utmost social importance. (1) There are
two distinct races of men, viz.:— the wandering and the civilized tribes… It is
119
Collini, 134.
120
49
curious that no one has as yet applied the above facts to the explanation of certain
anomalies in the present state of society among ourselves. That we, like the Kafirs,
Fellahs, and Finns, are surrounded by wandering hordes—the “Sonquas” and the
“Fingoes” of this country—paupers, beggars, and outcasts, possessing nothing but
what they acquire by depredation from the industrious, provident, and civilized
portion of the community”121
Mayhew utilized an historical and anthropological construction to explain the class tension of
Britain. For bourgeois society, the workman was a mysterious and dangerous creature thoroughly
distinct from the other strata of society. Though L.T. Hobhouse did not believe in any such
history of the working class, he did not seek to glorify it either. Hobhouse firmly believed that
middle-class virtues were righteous while the lower classes were not, and he did not seek out the
voice of the worker but believed himself authorized to speak for them.
Sociology was a very useful tool for Hobhouse to rhetorically combat the popular
understandings against the state’s investment in the workman. Particularly, the popular bourgeois
consensus about welfare was that the additional wealth provided by the state would go to waste.
This was based also on arrogance and the cultural perception of the immorality of the lower
caste. Cultural depictions of the mysterious working class culture was one that did concede there
were individuals who were virtuous, but those were more so exceptions than the rule. Hobhouse
countered this narrative as he insisted on the laboring class’s ability to change so as to grow
morally and become like the middle-class. Hobhouse reaffirmed the sociological principles that
progress was possible for all individuals in society. His proof was the decades of work done by
British temperance movements. He argued that their effectiveness to change the habits of the
poor demonstrated this dynamism and potential.122 It also came from the hands of a volunteer
121
Henry Mayhew, Rosemary O’Day, and David England, London Labour and the London Poor, Wordsworth
Classics of World Literature (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2008), 3.
122
50
movement. If the state involved itself in the project the potential to overcome the current
degeneracy of the lower class was magnified many times over.
This sociological perspective was critical for Hobhouse as it transformed public money
from being a “dole” or charity to the working class, but an investment in their civil service.123
Welfare was the state’s investment in society. Hobhouse utilized the example of a widowed or
abandoned mother in the working class to make this point. He argued that the mother should be
supported by the state to stay at home and tend to her children rather than have to labor in a
factory. This was not because the labor was cruel, but because it was of a greater social benefit to
not have her children unraised, wild, and in the streets.124 Despite this, Hobhouse envisioned that
welfare would never to be enough to satisfy the working man but rather provided a cushion to
offer “greater security, a brighter outlook, a more confident hope of being able to keep his head
above water.”125 This new state of mind would promote freedom for all citizens. In Liberalism,
Hobhouse made this argument specifically about the Old Age Pension Act of 1908. This bill
passed under a Liberal government was meant to ensure that those who could no longer work
still maintained a source of income. He argued that “it is not a narcotic but a stimulus to self-
help…it is precisely one of the conditions of independence.”126
Alongside welfare for those who could not work, Hobhouse was a strong proponent for
the right to fair compensation for those that did. Minimum wage laws were a key point of
discussion for Hobhouse. Particularly, he utilized the argument that social service must equal
individual reward if economic freedom was to be maintained. “The competitive system has
123
Hobhouse, 94.
124
Freeden, The New Liberalism, 86; Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 140–41; Though this essay cannot speak
more to it due to length, this example demonstrates the gendered social roles Hobhouse and the New Liberalism
maintained from their positionality. Even as they supported the realities of women, the agency they offer them
remains limited at best.
125
Hobhouse, Liberalism, 95
126
Hobhouse, 93.
51
failed” as it allowed for such treatment between individuals that did not secure “the material
means of health and efficiency” for a large demographic of society.127 As such, the state was
authorized to ensure that this bare standard was met by employers, as they were the perpetrators
of the economic injustice and thus should bear the consequences of it.
The “stimulus” of welfare and economic reforms was uniquely produced by the state and
not private philanthropy. Welfare was the renewal of the workman’s place in the social fabric, a
reminder that the state had a duty to them, and the working class was obligated to society.
Charity failed to do this. The wealth distributed through philanthropy only worked to further
coerce the workman as it developed their reliance to the wealthy. This did not resolve economic
injustice nor promote social harmony.128
The extent that state was to interfere with the personal aspect of an individual, such as
their morality, can be exemplified by the rights of the drunkard. At the core of organic society
was the notion of rational self-direction. For all the freedom provided by the state, self-
realization relied upon the individual’s own reason. The right of the individual was secured by
the state under the presumption that the capable person utilized their reason for both self-
development. The drunkard did not utilize such reason even though they were capable of it. So,
the drunkard forfeited a degree of their rights due to their failure to meet this obligation to
society, particularly, they abandoned any claim against Government intervention or claim for
welfare.129
This demonstrates another key aspect of Hobhouse’s theory that has for the most part
been ignored, the role of capability. At the crux of the organic community was the notion that
127
Hobhouse, 107.
128
Hobhouse, 94.
129
Hobhouse, 81.
52
one should not be punished due to circumstance outside of their control, especially when that
punishment was a net-negative for society.130 For this reason, Hobhouse’s theory allowed for the
rights of the drunkard to be voided, but much less so the mentally disabled. For example, when a
bill for state intervention on the “mentally deficient” was proposed in 1912, Hobhouse made
extensive public criticism on the bill’s looseness. He argued that it offered extravagant powers to
officials over whom could be classified as “feeble-minded” and needed to be revised. He even
described his irritation with the bills “abandonment of democratic principles in favor of the
dominant ‘expert craze’” of his time.131 Hobhouse’s rejection of the drunkards rights and
affirmation of the mentally ill’s demonstrate the justification for liberty based upon rights
dependent on a firm notion of capacity and potential.
The obvious question then becomes, how does the state determine capability? For the
most part, this question remained opaque for Hobhouse. On one hand, he sought to ensure that
paupers, the class who were capable yet chose not to participate, were punished. However,
Hobhouse’s recognition that the working class were the victims of systematic social injustice
meant that one was hard pressed to currently determine whether one was a pauper or not.
Pauperism could only be adequately determined in a state of economic equality. So, the ability to
observe and punish true pauperism was another effect of Economic Liberalism.132
To promote the conditions for individual self-realization, the State needed to stop moral
corruption. One popular belief of the 19th century was that the immorality of the lower class
developed as children in the streets. With both parents laboring in the factory and no access to
130
131
"The Guardianship of the Feeble-Minded." The Manchester Guardian (1901-1959), Jan 03, 1913.
132
Collini, 139; Hobhouse, Liberalism, 95.
53
education, children who idled in the street would be introduced to different immoralities and
vices. It was in this realm that the state had the authority to be aggressive in its reforms.
Hobhouse argued vehemently for a reorganization in public education. Hobhouse
recognized that within Europe there was maintained a monopoly of certain occupations such as
public appointments based on patronage and heredity.133 This produced a prevailing spirit of
class superiority throughout society, as the experience of those not endowed with affluence was
distinctly foreign to those in power. Once again Hobhouse’s argument folds back to the organic
society and the themes of equality and freedom. The freedom to choose and follow an occupation
was a recognized social liberty, and it demanded an equality in the opportunities for following
such occupations.134 This was not to say that everyone had the right to participate in the
occupation of their desires, but rather that those who were the most effective should not be
barred from occupations due to access to education and class. Hobhouse specifically determined
that the general idea of the state as an “Over-parent” was a liberal one that was necessary to
ensure the “physical, mental, and moral care” of children.135
It should be mentioned that the New Liberals were not distinct in their belief towards
public educations nor did such beliefs survive only in theory. It was in the years after Liberal
Party’s victory in 1906 that extensive child labor and public education initiatives were passed.
The same year as the election, all children in school are provided free school meals and by 1907,
school medical reforms were enacted so school children received free medical inspections and
free treatments were given to school children after 1912. The Children Charter Act of 1908
allowed for safeguards for children at home so as to protect them from abuse, as well as the
133
134
Hobhouse, 21.
135
Hobhouse, 25.
54
creation of a separate juvenile court system.136 This was not to say that the New Liberals were
responsible for these legislative initiatives, however, they were not insignificant either.
New Liberals were intellectuals whose voice were credible if at times fringe in public
discourse. Hobhouse, for example, was a major contributor to prominent newspapers such as the
Manchester Guardian, where he would argue for reforms utilizing his sociological position. It
should also be noted that Lloyd George and other politicians were known to confer with New
Liberal thinkers such as Hobhouse, though the degree of their influence extends past the interests
of this thesis.137 It would be wrong to suggest that the organic theory of community itself led to
radical changes; rather, it was part of a more complex blend of thought and practice which
occurred throughout British society by the early 20th century.
For example, one can examine the language of the Children Charter Act of 1908 to
demonstrate how legislation on state intervention was more aligned to New Liberal thought than
it was with the atomism of the last few generations. The actual powers invested to the state by
the Children’s Charter Act demonstrate the extensiveness of this legislation. It banned children
from participation in immoral acts, such as smoking, or being in immoral places. The act also
compelled children to attend school. Specifically, it allowed “any persons” to bring a child to
court to force them to go to a reformatory or industrial school if said child lived in conditions
that risked “serious moral contamination,” such as parents who had “criminal or drunken
habits.”138 In such, this law demonstrated the dual ability of the state to complete its goal. It both
offered opportunity to the impoverished children, yet the consequence of that equality was the
state’s authority over the youth.
136
Sykes, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism, 1776-1988, 155.
137
Sykes, 188-189.
138
“Children Act, 1908,” 8 Edw. 7. Ch. 67 § (A1-A5.).
55
One public advocate for the bill, A.M. Humphry argued for this expansion of powers as
well within the function of the state: “Is this grandmotherly legislation? I am inclined to think
that when parental authority fails, even a grandmother may have her uses.”139 Though masked
with a certain humor, the rhetoric of this bill actually placed the authority of the state within the
family itself. The state’s limits no longer ceased at the front-door but it had the right to
participate in familial matters for the benefit of society. This not to say this New Liberal policy
verbatim, but one can presently understand how a New Liberal like Hobhouse would support this
bill, as it empowered the state to promote social harmony.
Overall, it was this moral education that became an intrinsic aspect to the economic
reforms made by Hobhouse and the New Liberals. This morality was oriented towards the
supremacy of middle-class virtues, such as education and self-restraint, yet also always sought to
be a remedy for immediate social problems of the times.140 However, for all their Idealism, the
New Liberals and especially Hobhouse were realists. They recognized the pressures and
limitations of their theory to produce actual reforms. However, their analysis on welfare and
education reform structured upon the paradigm of the organic community theory were critical to
the viability of such reforms. The connection between economics and political theory, which has
been the focus of this section, went hand in hand so as to reorient the liberal program. At the
minimum, the New Liberals were instrumental in re-establishing a strong connection between a
modernized liberal theory and its counterpart in political action, the translations of theory to
practice.141
139
A. M. Humphry, “Children Act, 1908,” Charity Organisation Review 25, no. 148 (1909): 199.
140
Freeden, The New Liberalism, 243.
141
Freeden, 243–44.
56
C. Reception and the Challenge of Socialism
Though considered an authority of its time, L.T. Hobhouse’s Liberalism was not met with
unanimous public support. Despite their loss in 1906, the conservatives remained a major
opponent on the political battleground of Britain. The Spectator was a major conservative
newspaper of the time, and their review of Liberalism situated it outside of progressive politics.
The reviewer spoke of Hobhouse’s affirmation for state intervention as a “deus ex machina”
where “natural economic law is suspended and untold mischief may be done.”142 Hobhouse’s
criticism of Benthamism and “old-fashion Liberalism” was described as an “odious conclusion
of despair,” a “plea” for progress. The power of the Hobhouse’s work was not unnoticed. “It
would be impossible to have the essential principles of any political creed more clearly stated
than…in this little book.” For the conservative, this was preferable. “We wish nothing better for
Mr. Hobhouse’s book than it may show Liberals exactly what path they are following” and for
this reason, it would “make people draw back from the creed” just as “it will do to attract and
convert.”143 Undoubtedly, Hobhouse’s work was the precise articulation of his theory; for
conservatives, this made clear its failures. However, Hobhouse’s work was not just reacting to
the ideological right, but constantly emphasized its distinctions from the far left as well.
Hobhouse’s conception of the state was a key distinction not only from conservatives, but
from Socialists as well. Hobhouse argued that the state had no intrinsic personality. It did not
seek to create or form a body to its liking or imagination. It was nothing more that the
summation of its parts, and most importantly, it reflected both the positive and negative
characteristics of those parts. The state’s actions were not always benevolent or cooperative, and
142
“Books. Liberalism,” The Spectator, August 12, 1911. 248.
143
“Books. Liberalism,” The Spectator, August 12, 1911. 248.
57
it was far from infallible. However, the state was the best apparatus man had to ensure justice
was executed and freedom secured. As such, the individual was obligated to remain engaged
with the state, so as to continue the facilitation of freedom optimal for self-realization.
However, this view of the state and society would be challenged not just by conservatives
but also a growing chorus of socialists. On a macro-scale, Socialism and New Liberalism have
many similarities. To name two: they both viewed that the state was the only avenue for social
harmony and as they both advocated for state intervention through the lens that property
maintained social features. There was no one more aware of this than L.T. Hobhouse, and he
spent a significant portion of his work Liberalism depicting all the reasons why New Liberalism
was in fact distinct and even antithetical to Socialism. The reasons he provided are worthy of
discussion, as Hobhouse’s arguments provide an ever clearer definition of what New Liberalism
truly meant and the extents it was meant to go.
One of the core differences that separated New Liberalism from Socialism was their
philosophic basis. T.H. Green appropriated Hegel’s teleological structure and his notions of
progress. Generally, that meant he believed that higher order forces, such as reason and will,
guided the structure of history through a dialectic and these thus defined our lived experience.
Karl Marx criticized the basic form of Hegel and inverted it. He declared that it was the realities
of the material existence that came to define our higher order notions such as reason. In this way,
the New Liberals and Socialists viewed society, time, and progress in complete contradiction to
one another.144
Hobhouse’s dismissal of socialist epistemology reaffirmed this difference. Specifically,
he pointed to Marxist theory as Mechanical Socialism’s “false interpretation of history.”145 He
144
Leitch et al., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 547–51.
145
58
denounced Socialism’s perception of “a class war, resting on a clear-cut distinction of class
which does not exist.”146 Hobhouse’s argument against socialism reflect back to the New
Liberal’s stance on the Social Question. He dismissed how Marxism divided society into distinct
and competing elements, and affirmed that that those divisions even if recognizable were not
intrinsic parts to the community. For this reason, the organicism of the New Liberals can be
viewed to be in direct confrontation with Socialism. The latter reified social divisions, while
New Liberalism demonstrated their connections and dynamism.
Another major criticism from Hobhouse was that Socialism’s analysis based on labor,
capital, and property created an illegitimate sociological analysis. He stated that “the
constructions of Utopias is not a sound method of social sciences” and specifically that the
notion of promised Utopia offered little space for of liberty, freedom, and organic self-
realization. Rather, Socialism promised a grand illusion based off of “artificial ideas” and not
“living facts.”147 Again, this demonstrated the supremacy of established sociological practices
and the authenticity of middle-class virtues which mobilized them.
In addition to taking on the Mechanical Socialist, Hobhouse also argued against what he
called “Official Socialism.”148 This creed was based less off the philosophy and sociological
element of Marxism, but rather pertained to the Socialist Party. Particularly, one socialist group
Hobhouse contested was the Fabian Society.149 In his early years, when Hobhouse was much
more radical about his collectivist principles, he gravitated closer to the Fabians.150 However, by
146
Hobhouse, 88–89.
147
Ibid. P. 88-91.
148
149
Founded in 1884, The Fabian Society was a popular socialist political group in Britain. They were distinct from
other Marxist political groups in that they believed the social revolution should occur gradually over time, rather
than in a single revolutionary event. One important mode for this was the permeation of socialist principles into
liberal discourse. It was to utilize the established political system as the medium for its socialist agenda.
150
59
the turn of the century, Hobhouse’s New Liberalism was defined by its “persistent anti-
Fabianism.” This switch was based upon key moral differences Hobhouse identified between the
two groups. Hobhouse argued that Official Socialism did not value the individual and the masses
and stripped them of any intrinsic importance. Their worth was only established by and through
the state. The state was thus a despotic creature as the individual had neither consent nor liberty
within socialist organizations. Hobhouse emphasized the uniformity of it all. One type of citizen
would inevitably fill the bureaucracy, while the whole state apparatus would naturally centralize
power into a few hands, despots who Hobhouse called the “master-minds.”151
The New Liberals were diametrically opposed to this. They viewed individuality not as
insignificant, not as sheep for the state to herd, but the basis for the state’s very strength and
fabric. The result of New Liberal government was not uniformity but a widening of individual
differences. “In New Liberal ideology, under the ideal liberal state, the individual was to grow
more eccentric, more personalized, and more realized internally, and that even if these
eccentricities were “futile,” “wasteful,” and even “abhorrent to witness” they would still be
valuable as they created a “fuller and richer” collective experience. 152 One example of this
sentiment can be found in Hobhouse’s argument for religious freedom. Because of the unique
aspects of each individual’s positive growth, all religious creeds must be respected as possible
tools for self-realization. So, if a public works was most conveniently built on Saturday that does
not mean the state has a right to coerce a Jewish worker to build on that day. “The mere
convenience of the majority cannot be fairly weighed against the religious convictions of the
few.”153
151
Hobhouse, Liberalism, 89–90.
152
Hobhouse, 60.
153
Hobhouse, 78–79.
60
Hobhouse does well to demonstrate the gap between Socialism and New Liberalism, yet
both their similarities and differences should have been expected. In the end, Socialism
represented the very real anxiety of the middle-class. It was the creed that called for Revolution
based upon the problems presented in the Social Question. In many ways, New Liberalism was
built as a response to Socialism. The Organic Community was a New Liberal synthesis that
saved the key the spirit of liberalism, specifically freedom, equality, and individual rights, while
it also offered society a non-revolutionary way to relieve the social and class unrest oriented by
the authority middle-class virtues.
D. Empire and the Organic Community
For the most part, the bounds of the New Liberal theory remained domestic, yet the
stakes of British politics reigned much further than the Homefront and included all the territories
of one of the largest Empires of all time. This assemblage of complex laws and social
organizations spanned the world though it found its core in London. Though New Liberal theory
was focused on the Social Question of domestic unrest, they also needed to address foreign
policy. So, the question must be asked, where were the boundaries of the “organic community?”
Within the British liberal tradition, L.T. Hobhouse was one of the earliest hard-core
advocates against imperialism in a large part due to his conception of the “organic community.”
While this was not so for all New Liberals, it demonstrates the power of the organic community
theory to shift the affinity for imperialism long before popular discourse would sway in that
direction throughout the 20th century.154
154
Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 2016). 344.
61
The outcome of Hobhouse’s beliefs was that democracy and imperialism were
antithetical forces. “For democracy is government of the people by itself. Imperialism is
government of one people by another.”155 Now, this former statement alone seems relatively
uniform to the liberal tradition. In fact, that same liberal tradition were utilized as philosophic
support for imperialism, under the basis that England provided freedom and democracy to savage
lands. For Hobhouse, suddenly his theory determined this no longer to be the truth. This result
was based upon how Hobhouse defined imperialism.
A key realization for this change was that Hobhouse no longer viewed “British Peace,”
otherwise known as global British hegemony, as no peace at all. It was however an “endless
succession of frontier wars, some small, some great, but all ending with the annexation of further
territory.”156 The insatiability and endlessness of these conflicts determined for Hobhouse that
there was no democracy or freedom being exported by British Imperialism. It was a constant
rage for order that had a remarkable cost.
“Under the reign of Imperialism the temple of Janus is never closed. Blood never
ceases to run. The voice of the mourner is never hushed. Of course, in every case
some excellent reason has been forthcoming. We were invariably on the defensive.
We had no intention of going to war.”157
For Hobhouse, this made Imperialism’s relationship to liberalism remarkably clear. “The central
principle of liberalism is self-government. The central principle of Imperialism, whatever words
may be used to cloak it, is the subordination of self-government to Empire. The one stands for
autonomy and the other for ascendency, and between these two ideas there can be no
reconciliation, for they represent the most fundamental cleavage of political opinion.”158
155
L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction (London: T.F. Unwin, 1909). 146-147.
156
Hobhouse, 28.
157
Hobhouse, 28.
158
Hobhouse, 47–48.
62
Hobhouse’s criticisms of British Imperialism were widely influenced by the Boer War.
This colonial war lasted from 1899 to 1902, in which the British Empire mobilized close to
400,000 troops to stop the Boer rebels. The war devolved into guerilla fighting and a scramble
over dominance for the nation’s resources, yet the war was sold to the British public to be over
the protection of the freedom of white laborers.159 This rationalization and duplicity influenced
Hobhouse’s larger criticism of Imperialism.160 The Boer War was to be an easy Imperial victory.
It resulted in a costly three year war. It was meant to remove a corrupt, incompetent, and spend-
thrift administration, yet in its place the new bureaucracy was more expensive than the former
and firmly controlled by capitalist investors. Finally, it promised to propagate the white subjects’
freedom, yet “the Miner’s War” was more so to provide the Financier a cornucopia.161 In many
ways, the Boer War disenchanted the British Imperial project for world order. For Liberal
thinkers like L.T. Hobhouse, it demonstrated the failure of Empire to promote freedom over
profits. It forced a critical look at Empire’s role in world.
“The colonies could no longer be governed in the interests of the other country, nor
ought they to require standing garrisons maintained by the mother country. They
were distant lands, each, if we gave it freedom, with a great future of its own,
capable of protecting itself, and developing with freedom into true nationhood.
Personal freedom, colonial freedom, international freedom, were parts of one
whole.”162
He does not state this out of altruism. Here, the influence of “organic society” is most clear. One
segment of the body cannot be so oppressed and ravaged without it damaging the whole.163
Freedom could not grow with a boot on its back.
159
Hobhouse, 40-41.
160 It should be noted that Hobhouse’s life-long friend John Hobson was a vocal anti-imperialist. For reference
on Hobson’s views see John Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2009).
161
Hobhouse, 42-43.
162
163
The psychology within the British Empire had long feared the negative effects on the metropole due to the
pestilence of the colonies. Particularly, there was the anxiety of despotism in colonial enterprises translating to
despotism at home. However, Hobhouse’s conception of this danger translated this same psychology from an
63
One important inspiration for L.T. Hobhouse’s sentiments towards the Boer War was the
heroic story of Emily Hobhouse, L.T.’s sister. Emily Hobhouse travelled to South Africa and
reported on the concertation camps in which many Boer civilians were held under by the British
army. Abroad, Emily provided private aid to the refugees suffering due to the war. Domestically,
she utilized liberal newspapers like the Guardian to expose British concentration camps in South
Africa. The flak she received for her work labelled her a traitor by many of her
contemporaries.164 The importance of Emily’s work should be recognized, as it was not only
theory but true courageous journalism on her part that influenced L.T. Hobhouse’s own anti-
imperialism.
For a modern skeptic, there are reasons to doubt Hobhouse anti-imperialism. Though the
organic theory worked to resist many theories of division, the most recently discussed being
Socialism’s division of bourgeoisie and proletariat, certain boundaries were too strong to be
destroyed. For example, John Hobson, a staunch anti-imperialist, New Liberal, and close friend
to L.T. Hobhouse, still believed in the truth of “subject races” whose opinions were not
significant in the list of British priorities. Edward Said utilized this to demonstrate how even the
liberal progressive denied the subjectivity of foreign peoples and culture. 165 This must be
recognized to honestly understand the anti-imperial position of New Liberalism.
Another hesitation in Hobhouse’s anti-imperialism was that even though he rejected the
current Imperial project, he does not discard the idea of Empire away altogether. L.T. Hobhouse
did maintain certain optimism for a world order that was firmly rooted in an empire of
anxiety about a potential future worry to a dramatic statement on the present. Now, the colonies hurt the freedom of
Britain through their existing structure, not because of localized despotism but international colonialism.
164
John V. Crangle and Joseph O. Baylen, “Emily Hobhouse’s Peace Mission, 1916,” Journal of Contemporary
History 14, no. 4 (1979): 731–33.
165
Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Times Books, 1979), 20.
64
federations. This notion for Hobhouse was that the “organic society” might at some future date
grow to encompass more nations and peoples, as the progress of reason allowed for more
complex relations to be harmonized. Within a certain eschatological timeline, world order was
somewhere far in the future, but inevitably there, based on the long standing march of freedom
throughout history. Nevertheless, L.T. Hobhouse’s position on the British Empire and
interventionism demonstrated how the notion of the “organic society” could be applied abroad,
outside of the core homeland. It worked to rationalize a discomfort felt due to British aggression
despite the overarching ideological narrative of the British Imperial project.166
Overall, this section has analyzed how L.T. Hobhouse’s utilized the skeleton of Green’s
Liberal theory so as to form a coherent and effective theory of the organic community. Based
upon a reorientation of liberalism, Hobhouse depicted a new avenue for discussion about British
social, economic, and foreign policies. He directly sought to address and resolve the class unrest
in Britain otherwise known as the “Social Question,” as organic community theory formed a
foundation for increased state authority. The private individual, whether it be in their home or
their pocket books, was no longer free to act with zero regard for their community. Conversely,
the state was obligated to act for the public good, not just for certain individual. Social reforms
finally found their philosophic backbone in New Liberal theory that could not only stand up to
old Liberal criticism but to go on the offensive.
166
L. T. Hobhouse, The World in Conflict (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1918), 88–95.
65
Section III: The Great War and the Decline of New Liberalism
The First World War left the New Liberals in critical condition both politically and
ideologically. The Liberal party that had won by a landslide in 1906 was considered for all
practical purposes dead by 1924. 167 This left New Liberalism’s ideology in turbulent waters, as it
was suddenly abandoned by its political party and left adrift in public discourse. New Liberal
thought failed to compete with a new ideological competitor, the “arid intellectualism” of
Keynesian liberalism.168 This section will analyze what happened in World War One to cause
this dramatic failure for New Liberal thought. It will first focus on how the New Liberals, and
Hobhouse in particular, initially positioned themselves in regards to the War in 1914 and 1915.
Then it will examine how by 1918, the Great War fundamentally cracked the basic assumptions
of the modern liberal theory. For both, the critical focus will be on how the organic community
theory was deployed and transformed by World War One.
In the summer of 1914, London offered an ultimatum to the German Empire. If the
Germans chose to invade France through Belgium, a British ally, Britain was to intervene in the
war-effort. The British stance and posturing behind Belgium, a nation so small in comparison to
Germany that it would be undoubtedly crushed even with British support, was met with
confusion by the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. The British-Belgium treaty being
invoked by the British was created in 1839, and the British evocation of it raised questions of
international law and procedure. Bethmann-Hollweg was reportedly unprepared for British
intervention over a simple “scrap of paper.”169
167
Paul Adelman, The Decline of the Liberal Party, 1910-1931, Seminar Studies in History (Harlow: Longman,
1981). Searle, The Liberal Party. Sykes, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism, 1776-1988.
168
Sykes, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism, 1776-1988, 242, 265.
169
Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University
Press, 2004), 43; The literature on the Great War is immense for further reference look towards Hew Strachan, The
First World War. Vol. 1: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr, 2003) and Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First
66
The ultimatum also came after Germany had already maneuvered to advance through the
Belgium, not only by maneuvering troops at the border, but building railroads and long support
channels to supply the three quarters of a million men ready to invade.170 One could see how this
British action was duplicitous, as it would be hard to imagine German war plans changing
because of the ultimatum.171 Britain seemed ready to pit itself against one of the most powerful
industrial nations in the World; Belgium was the means to do it.172
Despite the confidence displayed within this ultimatum, both British public and political
support for intervention were hardly unanimous. For instance, the Prime Minister H.H Asquith’s
cabinet had a predominant demographic of pacifist members, many of whom were ready to
resign if war was declared.173 Many viewed the whole conflict as far from the realm of Britain.
Cabinet member John Burns remarked, “why four great powers should fight over Serbia no
fellow can understand.” 174 This was not an uncommon sentiment. Movements and literature all
around Britain hotly debated what to do about the war obviously present in Europe. There were
10,000 person rallies in favor of peace, and H.H. Asquith, the Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916,
confided that “a good ¾ of our party in the House of Common are for non-interference at any
price.”175 Nevertheless, Germany invaded Belgium as demanded by the Schlieffen Plan, and
Britain entered the first modern European War.
World War and English Culture (London: Bodley Head, 1990) and Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-
1949 (New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2016).
170
Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium, 1.
171
Another reason why Germany could not have followed Britain’s ultimatum was because of time. The German
battle strategy, the Schlieffen Plan, relied on a quick attack and total destruction of France before Russia could
mobilize to the Eastern Front. The time it would have taken for Germany re-organize its logistics would have meant
to completely abandon the Plan and take on a two-front war.
172
Toby Thacker, British Culture and the First World War: Experience, Representation and Memory (London ;
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). P. 35
173
Alan G. V. Simmonds, Britain and World War One (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge, 2012). P. 25.
174
Simmonds, 25.
175
Simmonds, 25.
67
Between Britain’s intervention in 1914 and the summer of 1915, L.T. Hobhouse
transformed from a self-described pacifist into a war advocate. This transformation hinged upon
the recognition by Hobhouse that the Great War transcended imperial politics or clashing
economics but rather was the ultimate duel of cultures. Yet, how could the “Organic
Community” permit such variability, so as to support both pacifist and pro-war sentiments? And,
if it did support the War, then on what grounds could one fight a liberal World War?
A. Hobhouse, War, and Intervention in 1915
Before 1914, L.T. Hobhouse’s pacifism was based on his views of colonial wars, which
he viewed as avoidable and illiberal. Much like his anti-imperialism, this stance was influenced
by the Second Boer War (1893-1894). As discussed in Hobhouse’s anti-imperialism, he viewed
this war as unjust. It not only propagated illiberal policy, but was diametrically opposed to
liberalism because it enforced the subordination of individuals to others rather than their own
self-rule.176 Imperialism placed Britain “invariably on the defensive” so that wars occurred
without “intention.”177 It was this perennial state of war that became the cornerstone of
Hobhouse’s pacifism. However, Hobhouse’s stance was also based on his observations on
British soldiers. Hobhouse criticized how the individual was transformed into a soldier by the
state. The system sought to strip citizens of their excess characteristics, to conform and bend
them to the hierarchy of bureaucracy no matter the setting. This placed war in direct opposition
to the individual’s self-realization. Finally, when a nation was focused on its foreign policy, it
quickly sponged up the national resources capable of promoting the betterment of public burdens
176
Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 1909. 48.
177
Hobhouse, 28.
68
and social ills.178 These three reasons defined Hobhouse’s pacifism; for him, war was an
unnecessary hinderance to the state in its raison-d’être, the self-realization of its citizens.
In 1915, Hobhouse recognized that the Great War was a “calamity,” yet he did not place
it in the same contexts as the Boer War, which founded his pacifism.179 World War One did not
represent these same internal failures of liberalism, but rather an external assault upon it. In one
of Hobhouse’s of letters to his sister Emily, he discussed this difference.
“There is no analogy between this and the Boer war. There we were doing a wrong
- deliberately destroying two small peoples. Here we are fighting for France and
Belgium which if beaten will be dismembered or annexed… Further, in South
Africa our own national existence was never at state. Here it certainly is.”180
Hobhouse understood that World War One was something unlike the wars which had been
waged in his life. It struck exactly at the heart of Britain, yet for Hobhouse it would come to
represent the life and death of not only the British Empire, but now reason, freedom, and all
liberalism had tried to promote in Western Europe.
L.T. Hobhouse published The Soul of Civilization in the summer of 1915; it marked
almost exactly one year into the Great War. In the context of the war at this time, it was just the
beginning. The British had started their invasion of Asia Minor at Gallipoli, the first use of
poisonous gas had been deployed, and Italy had just entered the war, while the carnage of now
infamous battles such as Verdun and the Somme were yet to be witnessed. This piece published
in the Contemporary Review, a bi-annual British journal, was a dialogue between the narrator,
presumably Hobhouse, and Marryat, a liberal pessimist constructed by Hobhouse. It represented
178
Hobhouse, 53.
179
Hobhouse, L.T. “The Soul of Civilisation. A Dialogue.,” Contemporary Review, no. 108 (August 1915): 165.
180
L. T. Hobhouse, “To Emily Hobhouse,” August 8th, Catalogue of the archive of Emily Hobhouse, Bodleian
Library, University of Oxford.
69
how New Liberal philosophy could comprehend the war and what their approach to the war
might look be in 1915.
Marryat opened the work with a prediction: “it is the end of everything that you and I
have cared about and worked for these twenty years.”181 Hobhouse placed center-stage what was
at stake in World War One; he continues on a later page, “No; it is not military defeat that I fear,
but the breakup of civilization, the stifling of all the germs of a better social life.” Instantly,
Hobhouse transported his audience outside the realm of daily news reels, of politics and military
battles and oriented them towards a new perception of World War One.
For Marryat, to lose the Great War did not mean the physical occupation by the German
Empire, but the cultural invasion of Prussian Militarism and tyranny in British society. This
cultural defeat would mark the end of “Western Civilization,” the annihilation of a society loyal
to Reason, and the death of liberalism. Hobhouse was brutally honest about his views of German
culture. German thought and society functioned on a rationale that was not only separate from
Britain or France, but it was their antithesis. It was this divide between “Western Civilisation”
and German Kultur that becomes the structure of how Hobhouse interpreted the War.182
L.T. Hobhouse utilized an intellectual and political history to construct his notion of
German Kultur. He traced its origins to the year 1848 and the German Revolution. This was the
failed revolt of 31 German provinces against the autocratic Holy Roman Empire which
Hobhouse marked as the Liberal moment in German history. This defeat established German
Kultur as the antithesis of Liberal ideology.183
“Germany stood out from the new civilistaion of the West. She reacted against all the
ideals that sprang up in France, England, America, and countries in sympathy with them.
She did not return to barbarism. She developed a new variant in civilization – in point of
181
Hobhouse, 158.
182
Hobhouse, 161.
183
Hobhouse, 162.
70
fact a new religion. This religion had a god – one being in two incarnations. One
incarnation was called Energy or Power, or perhaps Will. The other was called the State –
the State conceived really in terms of a War Lord and a general staff driving the
organized Power of a people to victory. Militarism, therefore, is the link between the two
incarnations of this novel German deity.”
Hobhouse argued that after 1848 German thought transformed Hegel’s conception of the state
into a more deformed, tyrannical power compared to how the British Idealists had understood it.
It was from that moment to the World War that Hobhouse presented a genealogy of German
thought which sought to attack liberalism. Particularly, he identified the roles of Nietzsche and
Treitschke as the catalysts for German militarism and the creation of this new “religion.”
This cultural history of the German Empire explained the contemporary atrocities
committed by them throughout the War. It rationalized Germany’s invasion of Belgium, the
brutal occupation and punishment of non-combatants, the unrelenting U-Boat campaign, and
particularly the sinking of the Lusitania that killed 1,198 civilians as manifestations of German
Kultur.184 For the German Empire, life was based on the assertion of Will through Power. The
German State provoked war so as to attain victory and reaffirm its dominion over the individual.
As such, any universal morality was absent from German warfare, as any means to victory
became permissible.185
For L.T. Hobhouse, the construction of German Kultur demanded an articulation of its
opposite, “Western Civilisation.” However, “Western Civilisation” did not contain all Western
history as it was known, but specifically the “the new ideas that budded out in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, ideas that center, I suppose upon the sacredness of human personality and
radiate out into all our familiar democratic and humanitarian conceptions.”186 In many ways,
184
Hobhouse, 161-164.
185
Hobhouse, L.T. “The Social Effects of the War,” Atlantic Monthly, no. 115 (April 1915): 547.
186
Hobhouse, “The Soul of Civilisation. A Dialogue,” 160.
71
Hobhouse conflated the Enlightenment with the Liberal tradition and the notion of Reason in
general. So, when he described the threat of the war to Western Civilization, he more so spoke of
the threat to liberalism. Britain would lose this culture war if it succumbed to the principles of
German Kultur, particularly militarism, so as to win World War One.
Though the stakes were high, L.T. Hobhouse’s work in the early periods of the War was
imbued with a noticeable optimism. He was self-conscious of this in The Soul of Civilisation.
The narrator’s voice was the positive alternative to Marayat’s pessimism. This optimism
revolved around a certain positive outcome which Hobhouse imagined the War could produce.
Particularly, Hobhouse imagined that the Great War could produce a more cohesive Europe
through a renewed affirmation of liberalism. Just as Napoleon united Europe against his Empire,
Germany has united the Western world. This was the core of Hobhouse’s hope. Due to the
catastrophe of the Great War, there would be a unified attack on the irrational that would “shake
the nonsense out of the world.”187 If England won the culture war, there would be a “movement
of liberation” throughout Europe. Everyone would “feel much more genuinely about many
things…nationality, for example, and public right -- than ever they did in the past.”188 The
significance of this should not be understated. Hobhouse saw the potential of the Great War to
awaken in every citizen a new found sentiment of social connection.189 It would end the era
dominated by “mutual suspicion” from which “real feeling for the unity of human interests” will
emerge. 190 The future had the potential to be liberalism’s strongest expansion rather than its
annihilation.
187
Hobhouse, The World in Conflict. 74.
188
Hobhouse, “The Soul of Civilisation. A Dialogue.” 164.
189
One can look at the collection of essays by Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) such as The Duties of Man (1851)
and Faith and the Future (1849) where he constructed the ideal of the Liberal nation-state; Giuseppe Mazzini, The
Duties of Man and Other Essays (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005).
190
Hobhouse, The World in Conflict, 103.
72
Hobhouse saw the potential for social good in the manner by which the Nation became
unified towards the Great War. The “young man from behind the counter took his place beside
the miner, the spinner, and the schoolmaster under canvas in the drenching autumn rains. The
Oxford undergraduate left his football and his clubs to drill and be drilled. The city man
abandoned golf and motor-car and moneymaking to get him ready for the front.”191 Not only did
the war unite all classes in Britain towards a single cause, it ended the sentiments of British
decay, as the spirit and virtue of the youngest generation were ready to heed the call and fight for
Western Civilization.
In retrospect, Hobhouse’s notion that the Great War was a catalyst for a more intense
devotion to the values of liberalism might seem misguided, however, it perfectly aligned with
Hobhouse’s notion of progress. When liberalism confronted German Kultur, it was a conflict
between reason and the irrational. Hobhouse recognized that German Kultur could survive so
long as the German State was victorious. Upon their defeat, its power was lost. Liberalism
however was “impervious to failure.” This was because reason and self-reflection meant
liberalism was dynamic, in fact, it “often taken its deepest inspiration from defeat.”192 L.T.
Hobhouse’s faith in Reason was what imbued his thought with optimism. Even if World War
One would dramatically change liberalism to make it unrecognizable from the past, it maintained
the very same soul.193 It was this faith that allowed Hobhouse to remain hopeful during the early
years of the War, as British intervention had rescued France and “saved our souls alive.”194
In the Summer of 1915, L.T. Hobhouse reconciled the Great War and British intervention
with his own views on liberalism and its future. He constructed a history of separation and
191
Hobhouse, 24-25.
192
Hobhouse, “The Social Effects of the War,” 547.
193
Hobhouse, “The Soul of Civilisation. A Dialogue.” 162.
194
Hobhouse, 165.
73
cultural friction so as to consolidated the whole liberal tradition with the notion of Reason and to
argue on a cultural basis for British intervention against the German Empire. He stipulated
British involvement to be guided by liberal virtues and warned against the threat of his
countrymen adopting German militarism. In the end, he foresaw both a positive and negative
outcome for the War, yet maintained faith in Reason and liberal society offered an optimism to
his audience.
B. Catastrophe and Collapse, New Liberalism by 1918
After the summer of 1915, the Great War would go on to ravage the British Empire. The
totality of the Empire became totally arranged to be effective in the War. The bodies which piled
up within the mud and forests of Europe at sites such as Verdun and the Somme demonstrated
for the first time the amount of carnage modern weapons could inflict on the flesh of man. The
body was brittle in regard to the storm and steel of trench warfare. The piles of corpses grew.
Battlefields became theaters of experimentation as the War exposed for the first time the powers
of poisonous gas, artillery that could fire from kilometers away, trench warfare, as well as many
aspects of a modern army.195 More than anything however, the scale of men, ammunition, and
supplies was never-before seen. By the end of the War, the total number of British casualties
sustained ranged from 550 thousand to 1.1 million, while the total number dead has reliably been
placed hovering just above 720 thousand.196 The bare necessities to feed not only the frontlines
but the population back home was immense. Wheat, sugar, and meat were bought in the millions
of tons, yet still there were shortages as all allied and belligerent parties fought to precure the
195
Simmonds, Britain and World War One, 76.
196
Simmonds, 300.
74
same supplies.197 The Ministry of Munitions came to employ 28,000 women, 4,200 men, and
6,500 children.198 This was all deemed necessary to combat the German army, which was the
most advanced and largest modern army at that point in history. By the end of the War, Germany
had deployed almost thirteen million soldiers compared to Britain’s slightly less than four
million soldiers and France’s almost nine million. By sheer man power, the Germans were
formidable against the coalition of France and England.
The War became a gruesome bloodletting, the grave of a lost generation. These realities
of Total War blurred the lines that Hobhouse’s delineated in the Summer of 1915 between
Western Civilization and Prussian militarism. Two main examples that demonstrate what
appeared to be a militarism in British Society was the economic interventions made by the
British State and conscription. Economically, the British State took over rail-ways, coalmines,
and factories. This had a duel effect. The first was that it ensured the effectiveness of these
critical industries towards the war effort. The second was that labor disputes could more easily
be managed by the state.199 These actions were extremely radical and almost inconceivable
outside of a Socialist context before the War, yet were demanded by the realities of this conflict.
For the most part, Hobhouse saw this as one of the only positive outcomes of the war. He
imagined that the effectiveness of economic intervention was be recognized after the war’s end,
and there would be “a corresponding call for state control when the war ends. Indeed, the most
remarkable economic effect of the war hitherto has been the impetus given to State
Socialism.”200
197
Simmonds, 195.
198
Simmonds, 72.
199
Simmonds, 267.
200
Hobhouse, “The Social Effects of the War,” 550.
75
Hobhouse’s optimism over state intervention shifted after 1916 when both industrial and
military inscription were put in place. For many progressives, conscription was the pinnacle of
illiberal war policy. 201 It was the representation of all Hobhouse’s forewarnings of German
Kultur’s penetration into Western Civilization. The Military Service Act implemented
conscription for all capable men to join the war-effort, and it reflected a key moment for
Hobhouse’s stance on the War. Before this moment, as described earlier, Hobhouse was a
staunch supporter of Total Victory against Germany. To destroy the German Empire partially
would be to allow the chance for liberalism’s greatest enemy to re-grow and strike again. After
conscription was mandated, Hobhouse’s view on Total Victory shifted. Alongside other liberal
thinkers, Hobhouse would form the Writers Group, which sought to petition for a creation of
new war aims and to end the war immediately.202 Peace was the priority at this point, not the
destruction of Prussian militarism.
One focus of this group as it pertained to Hobhouse was to reconcile how the Great War
could be diplomatically ended without another conflict after it. Hobhouse proposed many similar
ideas for reconciliation as Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. For example, Hobhouse believed
in the creation of a league or federation of nations, and he supported softer restrictions against
Germany. 203 He recognized that if the German Empire nation was to be broken up, the same
cultural forces which sparked the Great War would repeat themselves. In some ways, this could
be viewed as a redaction of Hobhouse’s earlier sentiments, or rather, a recognition that Marayat’s
prediction was a very real one, and Britain needed to move carefully to end the War and avoid
any further escalation of domestic militarism.
201
202
Harold Smith, “World War I and British Left Wing Intellectuals: The Case of Leonard T. Hobhouse,” Albion: A
Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 5, no. 4 (1973): 272.
203
Hobhouse, The World in Conflict, 92.
76
For New Liberals, the greatest scar was arguably the intellectual one made due to the
influence of German metaphysics on their ideology. In 1915, Hobhouse’s construction of
German Kultur focused around the contemporary German philosophy of Nietzsche and
Treitschke. He argued that these German philosophers deformed Hegel’s theory of the state and
produced the illiberal German’s one of the War. By 1918, L.T. Hobhouse published The
Metaphysical Theory of the State.204 This work focused directly on Hegel’s theory itself as being
illiberal, and in it, Hobhouse attacked the major British Idealists of war-time Britain. In
particular, the Idealist Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923) was a major focus of Hobhouse’s
criticism. His argument was that Bosanquet utilized the social sciences erroneously. They
confused what was with what ought to be, the real and the ideal, and made sophistic arguments
based on this confusion.205 Hobhouse vehemently opposed Bosanquet’s view of a general will, a
force that connected all the minds of individuals different from their own private experiences.
Bosanquet argued that this general will was represented by the state alone, which made it a
distinct entity from any citizen. This was an holistic interpretation of metaphysical organicism
that Hobhouse argued was not only erroneous but dangerous. Bosanquet’s theory was in line
with German Kultur, and Hobhouse feared it to be the seedling of domestic militarism.206
For Hobhouse to save the theory of the organic community, holistic interpretations, or
supra-individual organicism, could not survive the Great War. The energy behind this critique
was directly related to the Great War’s effects on Hobhouse. He opened the Metaphysical Theory
of the State with a dedication to his son Lieutenant Oliver Hobhouse who served in the War. He
204
Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State: A Criticism.
205
John Morrow, “British Idealism, ‘German Philosophy’ and the First World War,” Australian Journal of Politics
& History, no. 28 (1982): 384-385; For reference, a major work of Bosanquet was Principle of Individuality and
Value (Classic Reprint). (London: Forgotten Books, 2015).
206
Morrow, “British Idealism, ‘German Philosophy’ and the First World War,” 386.
77
described a simple scene set in his own garden where he sat quietly to read. Suddenly, the
tranquility of the moment shattered against the sound of machine gun fire which filled the sky. It
was an air-raid. The fear of a bombing suddenly emerged, yet then just as easily as it had come
the moment faded. The machine guns slowly trailed off into the distance and tranquility returned.
He returned to his book; it was Hegel’s theory on freedom. Then the realization hit him, the
bombing raid was “the visible and tangible outcome of a false and wicked doctrine” whose
foundations were within the book he at that moment held in his hands.207 The war, the death, and
the gun-fire found its roots in Hegelianism. Hobhouse was imbued with a new energy. He was
going to fight Hegelianism. It was his wartime duty “to combat this doctrine effectively is to take
such part in the fight as the physical disabilities of middle age allow…I must be content with
more pedestrian methods. But ‘to make the world a safe place for democracy,’ the weapons of
the spirit are as necessary as those of the flesh.”208 He committed the same fury to his pen, as that
of a young man who gripped his rifle on the Western Front.
In his conclusion of The Metaphysics of the State, Hobhouse offered the reader an
interpretation of what the false doctrines produced by Hegel had done. It had made a god out of
the state. For that god, the youth of Europe offered themselves as martyrs so as to drench the
continent in their blood, and millions more died so as to repel the assault.209 Hobhouse
recognized that after World War One, humanity would once again question where true religion
and political doctrine lay. The sorrow in his response cannot go unnoticed.
“The answer, whatever it be, must rest on this truth, that the higher ethics and the
deeper religion do not come to destroy the simplest rights and duties of neighbour
to neighbour, but to fulfil and extend them… But the true progress of political
thought lies in the cultivation of imaginative power. It insists on going back from
the large generality, the sounding abstraction, the imposing institution, to the
207
Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State: A Criticism, 5.
208
Hobhouse, 6.
209
Hobhouse, 134-135.
78
human factors which it covers. Not that it wishes to dissolve the fabric. Men must
continue to build, add on deeper foundations and with larger plans. But there must
be no slave buried alive beneath the corner stone. Or rather, the fabric is no building,
but a tissue of living, thinking, feeling beings, of whom everyone is ‘an end and not
a means merely,’ and the value of the whole is marred if it requires the suffering of
any single element.”210
And so by 1918, the organic theory of community, with its roots in British interpretations
of Hegel, faced an unprecedented attack on its core assumptions. Yet, despite it,
Hobhouse in this passage demonstrated his remaining faith in this theory though he
qualified it so as to position it against Hegel and German culture. The Organic
Community could not be literal and it must not view the state with any intrinsic authority.
The individual above all else must be privileged.
For this reason, Hobhouse’s protected T.H. Green from the rest of his criticism on
British Idealism. For Hobhouse, “Green, who, whatever the idealistic basis of his theory,
retained his fundamental humanity, saw that there were instances in which it was a mere
mockery to describe the institutions of a state as the realization of freedom for all its
members, and contended forcibly that the requirements of the state have largely arisen
out of force directed by selfish motives.”211 Hobhouse recognized that Green transmuted
Hegel in his own way to maximize human freedom rather than sacrifice individual
interests to the ends of the Absolute.212 Green understood something Bosanquet did not;
the state was “not the outcome of a unitary will but of the clash of wills.”213 The authority
of the state was not due to its own perfection, but its authority was based on its constant
progress towards an unattainable ideal despite the perennial existence of flaws. In the
210
Hobhouse, 136–37.
211
Hobhouse, 83.
212
Morrow, “British Idealism, ‘German Philosophy’ and the First World War,” 385.
213
Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State: A Criticism, 83.
79
end, one can spot a certain irony in Hobhouse’s argument. The Organic Community was
meant to attack atomism so as to recognize the social elements within daily life. By the
end of World War One however, New Liberal theory found refuge in its most
individualistic components.
The post-War era marked the decline of New Liberal authority. In the next decade
most liberals would abandon their political party led by Lloyd George to join the Labour
or Conservative party.214 Even though of an organic community faced grave challenges in
World War One and scrambled to reject its German influence and collectivist principles,
it for the most part this political ideology survived the event. L.T. Hobhouse maintained
his faith in it and qualified the theory so as to be manage the pressures of the War. And
yet, despite its survival, the organic community based in British Idealism and Green’s
theory failed to make the generational leap as a whole. And, for the most part, it was not
only World War One but also the rejection by the next generation of the organic
community theory which ended the influence of this political theory.215
The changes in L.T. Hobhouse’s perception of the state and Liberal history due to the
Great War fundamentally cracked certain visions for the “organic community.” The Great War
forced New Liberalism to take a cold, hard look at itself and its influences. In 1929, Hobhouse
died. By that point, he was no longer associated with any political party and died an independent.
Unlike many of his liberal counterparts, he refused to join the Labour party. In the last decade of
his life, his focus shifted from sociology to philosophy. In this later period, he offered a general
outline of liberalism’s future. The outline was telling. It demonstrated how for even the most
214
Morrow, “British Idealism, ‘German Philosophy’ and the First World War,” 273; Further readings on this failed
transition of Lloyd George: Morgan, Kenneth O. Consensus and disunity: the Lloyd George coalition government,
1918-1922. Oxford University Press, 1986.
215
Morrow, 388.
80
loyal of believers, the idealism and optimism which seemed to invigorate New Liberalism in the
pre-War era had disappeared. In conversations with his son, Hobhouse admitted, “I don’t expect
you to agree to this but like to express…the idealism of the last generation,” and to his sister
Emily he sadly concluded that “the point of view of the new generation differs from ours.”216
The inter-war period was a new era of suspicion. The aura of the state as a positive force
dissolved, as the benevolence that defined the state’s authority in the organic community theory,
suddenly became harder to imagine. 217 The Liberal party collapsed in 1924, yet even by 1918,
the face of British Liberalism, Lloyd George reportedly thought that the Liberal party was “a
thing of the past [which] cannot be galvanized into life.”218 Politically, the New Liberals were
stranded; ideologically, they were crippled. New Liberalism was vulnerable. A symbolic moment
came in 1923 when the Nation, once a powerful supporter of Hobhouse and the New Liberals,
experienced a coup by Keynesian liberals. Their rejection of social services based on public
wealth and of stiffer taxes for the wealthy marked a new chapter for liberalism.219
The theory of the organic community failed to successfully jump to the next
generation of liberals. The new historical conditions after the War made New Liberalism
culturally irrelevant. Though the variables to this change were numerous, on a smaller
scale, an explanation can be found in Hobhouse himself. This thesis painted Hobhouse as
a radical and a progressive, someone who transgressed norms based on a vision for a
more perfect society. Yet, after the war, Hobhouse no longer looked towards the future
for hope, but was nostalgic of the Victorian Era. He criticized the new generation for
216
Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, 251; Taken from 29 Oct, 1924 letter between Hobhouse and Oliver Hobhouse
and 4 Jan, 1920 letter between Hobhouse and Emily.
217
218
Sykes, 210.
219
Sykes, 242–43.
81
their public scorn of past virtues. Discipline, purity, and duty no longer were important,
and the notion of inevitability progress had dried up.220 The undoubtable valor of middle
class ideals, the glue of the organic community, had fallen from its pedestal. The War
evoked “regret,” “doubt,” and “disappointment” for how things turned out. It left L.T.
Hobhouse, the most loyal of New Liberals, in a pendulum between optimism and
pessimism for society’s future.221
220
221
Collini, 251–52.
82
Conclusion
The philosophy of the New Liberals represented one inflection point away from the
hyper-individualism that dominated British liberal discourse throughout the 19th century. T.H.
Green and L.T. Hobhouse’s emphasis on cooperation, social progress, and harmony did not
vanish after World War One, though they fell out of the mainstream. Hobhouse’s Liberalism,
first printed in 1911, was republished for eight more editions all the way until 1950.222 Despite
his later pessimism, his vision for social progress was written with the next generation in
mind.223 The endurance of this work could be credited to the concise and clear arguments made
by Hobhouse. Even for a contemporary reader, it remains a relevant articulation of this brand of
liberal theory.
A latent function of this study was to demonstrate how theory is constructed and
disseminated in society. Throughout this narrative, there was a constant tension between the
lived historical conditions and the New Liberal’s theoretical response to them. The social
instability of Britain and the cultural damage articulated by Burke and the Romantics set the
stage for a liberal reaction. T.H. Green’s adoption of German Idealism and Hegel were critical
tools for social reconciliation while avoiding revolution. The role of characters such as Benjamin
Jowett and spaces such as the Old Mortality Club were important for T.H. Green’s synthesis, and
their roles demonstrate how philosophic ingenuity is not ahistorical. Even though this thesis has
focused on Green and Hobhouse, it had sought to embed them in a broader generative context,
which demonstrates how New Liberalism was not a single individual, book, or article, but a long
222
223
Hobhouse, 5.
83
chain of reactions and self-reflections that connect to form their own fabric of intellectual
thought.
The organic community theory constructed by Green was based upon the failure of
empiricism and the classical liberals to reconcile the cultural ills of their time. German
metaphysics offered Green both an avenue to renovate liberalism that was palatable to his
theological intuition. The notion of a worldly spirit that endowed man with reason was
fundamental for his notion of progress for both individual and social self-realization. It also
demanded that a new structure for social organization be based around these ideas. The organic
community theory transformed the individual’s relationship to the state from one of suspicion
and coercion into one of obligation and mutually beneficial cooperation. The role of civil rights
and the justice system became reconstructed within this basic outline as critical tools for the
maintenance of freedom, liberty, and equality.
For Hobhouse, this foundation was critical for a new sociological paradigm. His work
brought the key aspects Green’s philosophy in the public realm. It offered a new proposal for the
Social Question that approached it holistically. And the consequences of this theory were
distinct. Hobhouse called for state intervention based on his own privileged positionality. On this
basis, “Economic Liberalism” was established as an effective way to reharmonize social life. It
demanded tax and regulation reforms on the wealthiest of society, while advocated for an
renewed investment in the working class. The middle-class were the implicit orientation for these
proposals, as Hobhouse’s authority was projected on to the voices of those he sought to aid. This
tension between preserving the middle-class and making social progress must be recognized
within its historical climate. The fear of Socialism and the damages of Empire were two critical
matters that deeply influenced and limited the ways liberals considered these issues. In the end,
84
Hobhouse’s proposal demonstrated the possibilities and constraints of New Liberalism, as radical
philosophy was translated into moderate social reforms.
By the end of the World War, historical conditions had changed. Hegel’s
influence became a problem for Hobhouse. Its preeminence in New Liberal theory forced
an ironic retreat towards valorizing the individualism within the organic society theory,
as witnessed in Hobhouse’s The Metaphysics of the State. The War demanded an explicit
definition of the state that was void of any potential for echoing German Kultur and
militarism. Regardless of this effort, the Great War destroyed the illusionary element of
the New Liberalism. For the majority, it became impossible to imagine the State as a
benevolent force after it sent a generation to their graves. Even for Hobhouse, there was a
clear recognition that times had changed.
In the era after the War, Hobhouse was noted to have hated modern art, noisy
automobiles, and the mass media of the post-war era. 224 Yet, he remained hopeful that
World War One had not completely petrified social progress. He recognized that the
continued advancement in the women’s suffrage movement, the increased welfare of the
working classes, and the liberation of colonial peoples as evidence that liberal society
survived the violence of the war.225 The soul of Europe was in critical condition, but it
was alive nevertheless.
For the contemporary observer, the residues of New Liberal thought have clearly
survived. Throughout the 20th century and up till today, the liberal notion of citizenship
has become endowed with a sense of social duty. As contemporary neo-liberalism
resurrected the hyper-individualism of the classical tradition, the problems Green and
224
225
Collini, 252.
85
Hobhouse identified within that broader body of theory again must be revisited. The
integral role of society in human subjectivity and experience must be acknowledged, not
as a passive medium, but an active one. It presses on citizens duties to themselves and
their neighbors; it evokes reciprocal obligations from the state. The New Liberals
demonstrated that progress is a communal project. In an ever-challenging world, they
convincingly argued, it is not competition that empowers humanity but cooperation.
86
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New Liberalism and the Organic Society: Reconciling Liberalism and

Community in Turn-of-the-Century Britain

Thesis Advisor: Meltem Toksöz

A. AMBIGUITY AND THE ISSUES OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM ..................................................................................................... 20

A. THE SOCIAL QUESTION ........................................................................................................................................................... 37

A. HOBHOUSE, WAR, AND INTERVENTION IN 1915 ................................................................................................................. 68

gratefully indebted to her for this invaluable influence.

not have been possible without them.

moment, countless constructions and reconstructions of social organization were developed

destabilized the supremacy of atomism and hyper-individualism, as it demonstrated the fallibility

society theory of the New Liberals.

Hobhouse’s argument against “laissez-faire” economics. Notions of organicism legitimized the

supported them through the organic community theory.

A reexamination of the British New Liberals is timely. Recently, the doctrines

undermined their program and its notions of an organic society.

of classical liberalism, particularly its hyper-individualistic consequences. Then, Green proposed

bridge between the forces of nature and society.

trend in Britain by the turn-of-the-century. Compared to this remarkable achievement, Green’s

intellectual fascinations blossomed.5

philosophy cannot be described as Christian, because that would be a dramatic simplification.

influences and priorities together so as to create something inherently new.

discussion and an avenue for deep thought and synthesis.

vision of an interconnectedness in life.

recognized the same cultural problems as the Romantics:

of through dogma or tradition it was to do so through aesthetics.16

which was ‘grown’ rather than ‘made.’18

found a new philosophy for liberal thought.

a replacement for the broken parts of the classical liberal tradition.22

Germany and reset Western European discourse as a whole.25

Mentored by Jowett, inspired by Romanticism, and empowered by Hegel, T.H. Green’s

A. Ambiguity and the Issues of Classical Liberalism

Nature to be the foundation of classical liberalism’s failure.

before their obedience to either the Church or the State.37

particularly focusing in on how men transitioned from one to the other.

based on same grounds.

equality, then there was no difference between it and Civil Society.45

motive to the establishment of civil government.” 47

preservation of a synthetic society was no longer practical.

B. Hegel in T.H. Green: Reason and Self-Realization

attack on empiricism. Hegel unraveled the inherent contradiction of empiricism’s basic

assumptions, particularly the legitimacy of an individual’s perception of the external world.

to be made out of an aggregate of these undeniable experiences. 50 When an empiricist stated

were distinct from the reality in which they functioned. 51

Human nature was thus inherently based on social bonds.54

recognition, as it vulcanized humanity and society.

itself must be defined in Hegelian terms.

progress of its citizens.60

themselves and each other was known as mutually-assured self-realization.61

and individualism was established.62

from Hegel’s metaphysics on perception to T.H. Green’s political philosophy.

C. Genesis of a New Liberal Philosophy

role of civil rights.

respect and was authorized to execute justice in society.65

to define and protect them, as well as adjust them to maximize justice.

individual by Geist or God that animated the world-over.70

Utilitarianism. Green’s Lectures on Political Obligation interacted with Utilitarianism indirectly,

consequences of Mill’s thought to be pushed to new extremes. 73

of Hegel to synthesize a new paradigm of liberalism based on an organic notion of community. If

this section will be to examine Hobhouse’s comprehension of Green’s theory, so as to explore