ARGUMENTS ABOUT the intellectual relationship between socialism and liberalism (understood in the European sense) are probably familiar to most left-wing Americans. To left-wing Europeans, and for the French in particular, it’s a difficult matter. The idea that there is a positive relation between socialist and liberal concepts is scandalous in some quarters. Liberals are viewed by them as class enemies and false friends who threaten socialist integrity.
It is true that economic liberalism in its brutal “laissez-faire” sense is opposed to any traditional socialist ethos. Socialist movements emerged in the nineteenth century in reaction against liberal capitalism. Socialists saw in it only a deceptive form of liberty and advocated instead the socialization of the means of production and economic equality. They argu...
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