Manchester liberalism

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The Manchester liberalism or Manchester capitalism , the Manchester School or the Manchester School refers to a political movement and free trade movement in Britain in the 19th century , in the city of Manchester has started. The most important representatives of Manchester liberalism were the English Richard Cobden and John Bright as well as the French Frédéric Bastiat and the Belgian Gustave de Molinari . In Germany manchester liberal positions from were German Progressive Party ( Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch , Eugen Richter ) and the left wing of the National Liberals ( Ludwig Bamberger , John Prince-Smith ) and their successor organizations ( Liberal Union , German Radical Party , Radical People's Party , Radical Association ) represented.

The writings of the authors of classical economics , classical economic liberalism and utilitarianism served as inspiration . Sometimes Herbert Spencer is also mentioned as an inspiration, but this is not possible chronologically because Herbert Spencer did not publish his first book Social Statics until 1851, i.e. after the Manchester Liberals had achieved the abolition of grain tariffs in 1846 with the Anti-Corn Law League founded in 1838.

The term Manchester liberalism today often describes a policy that relies on the market as much as possible, and thus an extreme form of economic liberalism. Since the 19th century it has also been used as a fighting term by conservatives and social democrats.

term

The term Manchester School goes back to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to designate the political movement around Richard Cobden . Disraeli used it in a disparaging way for the occasional coalition of parliamentary opponents of "corn law" , who were, however, very heterogeneous in their other views. In England the term meant the left wing of the Liberal Party , which had a firm base in Manchester, or simply the free trade doctrine that began in that city as part of the agitation against the Corn Laws.

In the public perception, the term Manchester School was associated with the belief in free trade, self-interest (individualism) and laissez-faire , as well as with the salient doctrine that - as Benjamin Kidd saw it - every economic or social evil is overcome through voluntary commitment and self-help let.

The German labor leader Ferdinand Lassalle developed the abusive word Manchesterism to denote the German free trade movement. He first used this in 1863 in his publication The indirect tax and the situation of the working class . In it he wrote that "our nothing but free traders, the monkeys of the Manchester men, these ridiculous who think themselves to be economists" are in his view responsible for the fact that the state (at that time) remained socio-politically passive and the workers their fate left. As a result, both social democratic and conservative authors adopted the term Manchester school as a fighting term. The aim was to brand German scholars, journalists and politicians who advocated a liberal economy as advocates of a foreign ideology that served British interests. Werner Sombart wrote in 1915: "But then there was still a gloomy time for Germany, when in the 1860s and 1870s the representatives of the so-called Manchester School shamelessly offered English imported goods for sale on the German streets as a German product."

Manchester Liberalism in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

There has never been Manchester liberalism as a consistent school, least of all in the strict sense of a scientific school. Cobden and his associates were practical businessmen and politicians who had little interest in developing a broadly and fully consistent theory. They were more likely to draft polemic pamphlets and give speeches on various occasions. Within the movement there were different ideas about individual issues and also about the extent to which the basic principles were to be applied. However, the basic principles were generally recognized within the movement.

The original corn-law's opponents were composed of very different groups together, differing only in the question of the abolition of the Corn Laws reasonably agreed and watched in their entirety no reason to go beyond this political campaign and laissez faire to announce, however there was a Most of the participants in the movement are very negative about government action. In this sense, as Goldwin Smith wrote, a laissez-faire attitude is characteristic of Manchesterism. According to Gramp, the Manchester School never represented a coherent laissez-faire policy. According to Hayek, however, they represented a “somewhat more extreme laissez-faire position” than the classic economic liberals . The extreme libertarian message was consistently promoted, and Manchester was also prepared to abandon the idea of ​​free trade as soon as it had to be accepted with an undesirable degree of state interventionism with regard to social aspects.

Free trade

Manchester liberalism stood primarily for free trade . The liberals around Richard Cobden and John Bright saw free trade as the key to more prosperity. Protectionism, embodied for example by the Corn Laws, was seen by free traders not only as harmful to foreign countries, but also to the domestic economy. In addition, the Manchester liberals hoped for more peace from free trade, because the increasing dependency due to the advanced division of labor between the peoples should - according to the Manchester liberals - make it almost impossible for some governments to turn their peoples against one another. Frédéric Bastiat : "If goods are not allowed to cross the border, soldiers will."

Even Adam Smith had in the 18th century warned that import restrictions particularly in basic goods such as cereals, for poorer citizens to, malnutrition could result. However, in 1815 the British government imposed a high tariff on grain imports. Bad harvests in the years 1846–1849 actually led to a great famine ; In the winter of 1847 alone there were 250,000 starvation deaths in England.

John Bright and Richard Cobden, the two main exponents of Manchester liberalism

.

From 1815, the discussion about grain imports determined the political landscape of Great Britain. In the discussion about free trade, the new entrepreneurial elites and the growing proletariat faced the old landowner elites and, in some cases, the simple rural population. In the opinion of the entrepreneurs, the high grain prices have an impact on wages in Great Britain. In their view, falling grain prices would have opened up the possibility of lowering wages and thus lowering production costs.

The Manchester liberals around the poor entrepreneur Richard Cobden and John Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839 with the aim of abolishing the Corn Laws. Thanks to strong financial support from the textile industry, the Anti-Corn Law League developed into a very powerful organization with more than 800 employees. The league collected signatures and spread its criticism of the disastrous effect of the Corn Laws among the population with brochures and speeches. In doing so, they pursued a dual strategy. They told the workers that the abolition of grain tariffs would make the price of bread cheaper. They told the industrialists that this would open up the opportunity to lower wages and that increasing foreign trade would provide an opportunity to sell more manufactured goods abroad. The expectation of falling wages was based on the then current iron law formulated by David Ricardo that wages always tend to a level that was just about securing a livelihood.

In May 1846 , at the urging of the Manchester Liberals and with popular support, Parliament abolished the Corn Laws; that was the first great success of the Manchester Liberals. This success not only divided the conservatives in Britain, but also gave free trade a better reputation. The changed customs regulations did not prevent more than 1 million people from starving to death in Ireland alone between 1845 and 1849 ( Great Famine in Ireland ). Indeed, the repeal of the corn laws was an additional disaster for Ireland, as the country traditionally sold large quantities of grain to the English part of the country. Nevertheless, free trade seemed the only possible solution for the doctrinalists Cobden, Bright, Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax and Sir Charles Trevelyan , they believed that government support programs were wrong. At the time, Manchester liberalism was a widespread philosophy that played an important role in parliament and government circles. This can also be seen in the example of Sir Charles Trevelyan, head of the Treasury, who as such was responsible for dealing with the Irish and Scottish famine. In long letters, he warned other government representatives and also private charities of the demoralizing effect that it has when people receive something for nothing.

Due to the positive experience with the fall of the Corn Laws, France and Great Britain created a free trade agreement in 1860, which included the abolition of most trade barriers (including 371 tariffs on the British side). Later Belgium, Italy and Switzerland as well as the German Customs Union also joined. This agreement lasted until 1880. After that, only Great Britain pursued a free trade policy, which had become the basic principle of its foreign trade policy. This free trade agreement is often just called the Cobden Treaty .

Thanks to free trade, the already industrialized England had trade advantages over economically less developed states, especially within the informal empire (see also: British Empire ). According to the historian Peter Wende, the products produced by English industry there were guaranteed a “monopoly-like primacy” analogous to the trade restrictions under mercantilism through free trade . This economic primacy within the informal empire was secured by the British fleet, which improved market access for English products.

Restriction of the state

The research of Gary M. Anderson and Robert D. Tollison, two representatives of the New Political Economy , come to the conclusion that the Anti-Corn Law League (a movement of industrialists) took up a popular topic with the fight against the Corn Laws but its main purpose was the abolition of the import duty on cotton and the fight against factory laws .

The Anti-Corn Law League was constitutionally limited to the issue of grain tariffs. Nevertheless, from the outset, it also used resources in the fight against an expansion of the factory law . The Factory Act, first introduced in 1833, restricted child labor. As early as 1839, a propaganda pamphlet by the Anti-Corn Law League against the prominent social reformer Lord Ashley has come down to us, and from 1841 a pamphlet against the expansion of the factory law. Until its dissolution, the Anti-Corn Law League was the leading party in opposition to an extension of the factory law.

The wing of society associated with the name Manchester Party, which developed into a powerful movement in the fight against the Corn Laws in particular and against an economic policy geared to agrarian interests in general, later propagated the blessings of laissez "loudly and believingly simplistic" -faire , the greatest possible restraint of the state in all areas. This wing of society became a pillar of the multiple Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone , the adversary of Disraeli. The most famous popular speaker of this wing became John Bright. Some representatives of Manchester liberalism had been MPs in the House of Commons (United Kingdom) since the 1840s . Richard Cobden , John Bright and Charles Pelham Villiers in particular fought against the expansion of factory laws there, by which the working hours of women and children should be limited to a maximum of 10 hours per day. John Bright became the greatest opponent of the social reformer Lord Ashley . He described Bright as "ever my most malignant opponent (= the most vicious opponent I've ever had)". Bright also voted against tightening the law against the trucking system and was a staunch opponent of public schools . Cobden also regularly voted against various expansions of the Factory Act, but he made an exception when he advocated the ban on women’s labor in mines in 1842.

In the fight against attempts to limit child labor and the general reduction of working hours to a maximum of 10 hours a day, John Bright formulated a maxim that was extremely characteristic of the Manchester School.

"Most of our evils arise from legislative interference."

"Most of our grievances arose through interference by the legislature."

- John Bright

Frédéric Bastiat , who dealt with the problem with his satirical petition of the candle makers , added: "The state is the great fiction according to which everyone tries to live at everyone's expense."

Anti-militarism and anti-colonialism

The Manchester liberals rejected the militarism practiced at the time because they saw it as an exploitation (e.g. through conscription ) of the poorer sections of the population by the royal family and the nobility.

The colonialism was just rejected because he was considered "expensive hobby" of the nobility and could be operated with the military. In addition, the Manchester Liberals considered the creation of colonies and the tutelage and exploitation of the people living there to be injustice. The Manchester Liberals also campaigned against slavery. Richard Cobden took this position especially during the Civil War .

Manchester liberalism in Germany

In Germany, Manchester liberalism was barely able to gain a foothold, as the influence of the state on social life was much greater than in England. Almost the entire education system was organized by the state or the churches, the regional public savings banks were the preferred institutions of the financial sector and numerous mines and traffic routes were also operated by the state.

From 1840 the German Free Trade Association, led by the German-British John Prince-Smith , existed . Although Manchester liberalism in its pure form was a minority position, liberal politicians implemented some of its principles. Otto von Bismarck pursued a policy of economic liberalization in the course of the unification of the empire, but an express protective tariff policy towards the outside world. The decided opponent of protective tariffs, Ludwig Bamberger, is considered the founder of the Reichsbank and was temporarily Bismarck's advisor. The final end of the influence of the Manchester liberals on Bismarck's politics came in 1879/1880 when Bismarck enforced his protective tariff policy. In 1880 there was also a break in the National Liberal Party. The German Manchester liberals, above all the progressive Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and his pupil Eugen Richter , exerted significant influence on the development of the cooperative system and the workers' associations and enjoyed the support of the German Progressive Party , but only partly from the National Liberals . The rejection of free trade was already popular in the German Reich. Craftsmen, farmers and large landowners in particular felt threatened by increasing world trade, industrialization and a liberal economic system (no guilds, no master craftsmen ).

The liberalism was now on the representatives of the German Progressive Party and the Radical People's Party represented. One of the most important representatives of Manchester liberalism was Eugen Richter, who in the Reichstag argued very hard on the one hand with Bismarck and the Conservatives, on the other hand with August Bebel's Social Democratic Party . Eugen Richter rejected the allegations against the "Manchester Party" as follows:

“Manchester is a city in England in which the ideas and interests of free trade were preferred in its time. The protective customs officers like to assign these foreign names to the German free traders, although the German free traders advocate free trade not for English interests but for German interests. Apart from free trade and protective tariffs, that direction is also called the Manchester Party, which forms the opposition to state socialism and social democracy and primarily advocates the freedom of the individual and society in the economic field and only wants to allow restrictions on this freedom as far as that The necessity and usefulness of the same can be demonstrated beyond doubt in detail.

The program of economic freedom for legislation does not come from Manchester, the English factory town, but from the Prussian legislation of Stein and Hardenberg of 1808 and 1810. Opponents accuse the principle of promoting selfishness. Just the other way around! In freedom, selfishness finds a limit in the selfishness of the other. Those who want to sell as dearly as possible find an obstacle in the efforts of those who want to buy as cheaply as possible. If one is given freedom with the other, both must subordinate their selfishness to the common interest. But if someone is prevented from buying as cheaply as possible, e.g. B. by tariff restrictions on imports from abroad, while the other part is not prevented from selling as dearly as possible, for example by exporting abroad, the selfishness of one is supported at the expense of the other and instead of justice a system who favors injustice. "

reception

David Ricardo , Thomas Robert Malthus , John Ramsay McCulloch , Robert Torrens , John Stuart Mill , Nassau William Senior , John Elliot Cairnes , William Stanley Jevons and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth distanced themselves from the extreme laissez-faire approach adopted by the Manchester Party just as Frédéric Bastiat was represented.

The Reutlingen economist Friedrich List was in principle a supporter of free trade, but thought free trade only made sense for developed countries. For poorly developed nations, he advocated a so-called education tariff . This tariff should help the industry in a poorly developed country and make it competitive. List himself saw the negative effects of short-term abstinence from consumption and named them.

Well-known representatives

literature

  • Julius Becker: The German Manchesterism. A study on the history of economic and political individualism . G. Braun, Karlsruhe, 1907
  • Carl Brinkmann: Richard Cobden and Manchesterism , Berlin 1924.
  • Richard Cobden: Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden , MP, 2 * volumes, ed. v. John Bright, JE Thorold Rogers, London 1870.
  • Detmar Doering: Manchesterism - an anti-Semitic battle term ; in: liberal, issue 3, August 2004.
  • Detmar Doering: A lance for Manchester liberalism ; in: liberal, issue 3, August 1994.
  • Nicholas C. Edsall: Richard Cobden, Independent Radical, Cambridge / London , 1986.
  • William Dyer Grampp: The Manchester School of Economics . Stanford University Press, 1960. ISBN 0804715645 .
  • Volker Hentschel: The German free traders and the economic congress 1858 to 1885 , Stuttgart 1975.
  • Erik Kan: The infiltration of economic liberalism. Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill and their instrumentalization by Manchester and neoliberalism . Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2011 ISBN 978-3-8288-2676-2 .
  • Detlev Mares: 'Not Entirely a Manchester Man': Richard Cobden and the Construction of Manchesterism in Nineteenth-Century German Economic Thinking . In: Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism. Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays, ed. by Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan. Aldershot 2006, ISBN 978-0-7546-5572-5 , pp. 141-160.
  • Norman McCord: The Anti-Corn Law League 1838-1846 , Unwin University Books 1958.
  • Kurt Meine: England and Germany at the time of the transition from Manchester to imperialism . Kraus, Vaduz 1965.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Dyer Grampp: The Manchester School of Economics, p. 5
  2. ↑ Wolf Rainer Wendt: History of Social Work , Volume 1, Issue 5, UTB 2008, ISBN 3825230937 , p. 392
  3. ^ WH Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition , Volume 2 The Ideological Heritage , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-30301-X , p. 48
  4. ^ William Dyer Grampp: The Manchester School of Economics . Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804715645
  5. ↑ http://www.bpb.de/popup/popup_lemmata.html?guid=XRDJ21
  6. ↑ a b c Otto Brunner, Reinhart Koselleck, Werner Conze, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe , Volume 3, Klett-Kotta, Stuttgart, 1982, ISBN 3-608-91500-1 , page 806
  7. ↑ a b c d W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition , Volume 2 The Ideological Heritage , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-30301-X , pages 41, 42
  8. ↑ Willem Albeda, Erich Streissler , Norbert Kloten , Studies for the Development of Economic Theory, Volume 1, Volume 115 of Writings of the Association for Social Policy, Duncker & Humblot, 1997, original from University of California, ISBN 3428090926 , page 94
  9. ^ WH Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition , Volume 2 The Ideological Heritage , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-30301-X , pp. 41, 42
  10. ↑ Ralph Raico: The party of freedom. Studies on the history of German liberalism. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-8282-0042-7 , page 29
  11. ↑ Ralph Raico: The party of freedom. Studies on the history of German liberalism. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-8282-0042-7 , page 43
  12. ↑ a b c Erich Streissler : Power and freedom in the view of liberalism. in: Hans K. Schneider, Christian Watrin (Ed.): Power and economic law. Writings of the Verein für Socialpolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik , Duncker & Humblot 1973, ISBN 3428029658 , p. 1396
  13. ^ WH Greenleaf: The British Political Tradition: The ideological heritage. Volume 2 of The British Political Tradition . Taylor & Francis, 2004, ISBN 0415302994 , pp. 47, 48
  14. ^ WH Greenleaf: The British Political Tradition: The ideological heritage. Volume 2 of The British Political Tradition . Taylor & Francis, 2004, ISBN 0415302994 , pp. 42f
  15. ↑ Grampp p.78
  16. ^ FA Hayek, Principles of a Liberal Social Order , Mohr-Siebeck, 2002, ISBN 3-16-147623-9 , page 97
  17. ^ WH Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition , Volume 2 The Ideological Heritage , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-30301-X , page 47
  18. ↑ Garry M. Anderson and Robert D. Tollison, Ideology, Interest Groups, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws in: Gordon Tullock, The Political Economy of the Educational Process, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988, ISBN 0-89838-241 -6 , page 201
  19. ^ A b Richard Tames, Economy and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain , Routledge, 2006, ISBN 0415382505 , page 64
  20. ^ HG Wood, John Bright , in: Alfred Barratt Brown, Great Democrats, 1970, ISBN 0-8369-1942-4 , page 59
  21. ^ Paul Scherer, Lord John Russell , Associated University Presses, 1999, ISBN 1-57591-021-7 , 158
  22. ^ WH Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition , Volume 2 The Ideological Heritage , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-30301-X , page 43
  23. ↑ Peter Wende, The British Empire. History of a world empire, Munich 2008, p. 132.
  24. ^ John Singleton, The Lancashire Cotton Industry, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire c. 1700-c. 1960, in: Douglas A. Farnie, David J. Jeremy (Eds.), The Fiber that Changed the World. The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600-1990s, New York 2004, 57-84, p. 82.
  25. ↑ a b c d Garry M. Anderson and Robert D. Tollison, Ideology, Interest Groups, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws in: Gordon Tullock, The Political Economy of the Educational Process, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988, ISBN 0 -89838-241-6 , page 205
  26. ↑ a b Robert von Mohl, Journal for the Entire Political Science , Mohr, 1985, page 204
  27. ^ Rudolf Albertini: Europe in the Age of Nation-States and European World Politics up to the First World War . In: Handbook of European History . tape 6 . Union Verlag, Stuttgart 1968, ISBN 3-8002-1112-2 , p. 275 .
  28. ↑ a b C. A. Vince : John Bright , 1898, new edition Kessinger Publishing , 2005, ISBN 978-1417935994 , page 32
  29. ↑ a b C. A. Vince, John Bright , Kessinger Publishing, 1898, new edition 2005, ISBN 978-1417935994 , page 35
  30. ^ CA Vince, John Bright , Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 978-1417935994 , page 38
  31. ↑ Garry M. Anderson and Robert D. Tollison, Ideology, Interest Groups, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws in: Gordon Tullock, The Political Economy of the Educational Process, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988, ISBN 0-89838-241 -6 , page 205, 206
  32. ^ CA Vince, John Bright , Kessinger Publishing, 1898, new edition 2005, ISBN 978-1417935994 , page 34
  33. ↑ Eugen Richter: Political ABC book, 9th edition. Verlag "Progress, Aktiengesellschaft", Berlin 1898, page 236. Article "Manchester party".
  34. ↑ Razeen Sally, Classical Liberalism and International Economic Order , Routledge 1998, ISBN 0-203-00699-2 , page 89