The Evolution of Leftist and Liberal Ideas from the 18th Century to Today
IN FOCUS, 23 Jun 2025
Prof. Ernesto Kahan – TRANSCEND Media Service
From Enlightened Liberty to Global Double Standards
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)“All men are created equal.”
— United States Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1776)
21 Jun 2025 – The American and French revolutions not only transformed political power but also set in motion a radical shift in how human beings understand themselves within society.
The former, rooted in liberalism, proclaimed the defense of individual rights and limited government.
The latter, more radical, advanced toward social justice, popular participation, and structural transformation of power. Both were born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, rational humanism, and a profound longing for freedom.
The Birth of Two Great Currents: Liberalism and the Left
Modern liberalism finds its philosophical foundation in thinkers like John Locke, who asserted that the purpose of the State is to protect life, liberty, and property. Along similar lines, Thomas Paine, defender of American independence and later a protagonist of the French Revolution, wrote:
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.”
(Common Sense, 1776)
The left, in contrast, defined itself not only by opposition to absolutism but also to economic power. Its spirit crystallized with The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), which declared:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
The 19th and 20th Centuries: Promises, Fractures, and Shadows
In the 19th century, liberals defended market capitalism and individual liberties, yet often overlooked growing social inequalities. The left, from the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier to Marxist radical critique, demanded wealth redistribution and democratic control of the means of production.
In the 20th century, the horrors of totalitarianism left a lasting mark. Liberalism opposed both fascism and communism, while parts of the Western left fell into the trap of defending repressive regimes in the name of “the people”: from Stalin to Mao. As the great liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin warned:
“Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”
Atomic Power and Geopolitical Hypocrisy
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear weapon became a symbol of absolute power. Yet its possession was legalized only for a few — the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom — all permanent members of the UN Security Council. The left, once dreaming of global disarmament, fell into a trap: it condemns Western arsenals but sometimes justifies the nuclear ambitions of regimes like Iran or North Korea, so long as they oppose “the West.”
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) formalized this inequality: the world accepts a closed nuclear club while demanding selective disarmament from others. Progressive thought should denounce this colonial logic — but too often remains silent, trapped in automatic anti-Westernism.
Religion, Authoritarianism, and Moral Relativism
A delicate chapter in the present is the left’s relationship with theocratic regimes. In the name of cultural diversity and anti-colonialism, some progressive intellectuals have turned a blind eye to oppression carried out by non-democratic religious governments — especially when these governments present themselves as victims of Western imperialism.
Where, then, are the universal principles of feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, or freedom of expression when it comes to countries with laws rooted in strict interpretations of sacred texts?
Voltaire, one of the fathers of the Enlightenment, had already warned:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
A Call for Coherence
Leftism and liberalism, though distinct, share a common root: the humanist universalism of the Enlightenment. Today, both currents are weakened by internal contradictions. Economic liberalism has lost the social soul it once carried, while parts of the left have abandoned the universal defense of human rights in favor of geopolitical relativism.
Recovering credibility means returning to fundamentals: liberty with justice, equality without uniformity, criticism without sectarianism. As Albert Camus, who opposed both fascism and Stalinism, once said:
“If man fails to reconcile justice and liberty, he fails in everything.”
In my opinion, those who fail to do so not only betray the movement that generated the greatest human revolution since the agricultural revolution — the Renaissance humanism — but also act as immoral intellectuals, driven by partisan political interests.
_______________________________________________
Ernesto Kahan – Physician, university professor, poet, humanist, honorary doctor of literature. Vice President of “Doctors Against Nuclear War” (an institution awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985). ekahan@post.tau.ac.il
Tags: Democracy, Double Standards, Freedom, History, Human behaviors, Humanism, Humanity, Left Politics, Liberalism, Revolution
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 23 Jun 2025.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: The Evolution of Leftist and Liberal Ideas from the 18th Century to Today, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.