The Political Theory of Social Democracy

Abstract

For more than two decades, C. B. Macpherson has waged a relentless campaign to expose and critize the ‘possessive individualist’ assumptions of classical and liberal democratictheory. This new book —a collection of essays, including several not previously published —gives a clear focus to this campaign and provides the fullest expression to date of its positive side: the elaboration of a social philosophy incorporating liberal values but free from possessive individualist assumptions. What is defective in the assumptions is less the internal theoretical problems they generate than that they have become historically outmoded. For Macpherson, liberal democracy is historically — even politically — inadequate, before it is theoretically inadequate. It is inadequate for us — now — because it rests on assumptions we no longer need, assumptions that have ceased to be historically progressive. However, liberal democracy is not, as surgeons would say, beyond operation. On Macpherson's view, nearly everything that is attractive in liberal theory can be salvaged. Democratic Theory is appropriately subtitled: Essays in Retrieval.