The Sociological Foundations of Pluralist Politics

Abstract

We tend to forget in these days of post-Cold War, post-ideological politics, how far political parties and movements of the right and left have usually drawn sustenance from systematic bodies of social thought. Distinct philosophies, conceptions of human nature and social scientific paradigms have given shape and direction to the political programmes of traditional conservatives, economic liberals, collectivistic liberals, social democrats and Marxist revolutionaries alike. We only need think of such figures as Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrich von Hayek, on the side of capitalism; and Marx, Gramsci, Bernstein, Polanyi, William Morris or Tawney, on the side of the various socialisms, to see the importance of these connections. There is also a third tradition of ‘social liberalism’ represented by the ideas of Keynes, Beveridge and Hobhouse (and today perhaps by David Marquand and Will Hutton) which has also continued to find expression, for example, in defence of ‘Keynesian’ and ‘stakeholder’ approaches to the economy against the economic liberalism of the new right. These various political positions have drawn much of their analytic, programmatic and persuasive force from such theoretical underpinnings.