Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/448

422 Liberalism is differently tinted in various countries and as advocated by various nationalities. English, American, German, French, Italian, and Spanish liberalism are divergent types.

The relationships of liberalism, of the primary principles of the liberal doctrine, to anarchism and socialism are obvious.

According to Bouglé, French liberalism was "dead and buried" in 1902; the same diagnosis concerning liberalism comes from England, Germany, everywhere. Of late years, therefore, there has been in progress among liberals a serious self-examination, which has culminated in the conviction that liberalism must rediscover its democratic past, and must renew its earlier aspirations towards liberty. The liberals must cease to dread freedom. "The only cure for liberty is more liberty" (Macaulay).

As regards German liberalism, various counsels are offered for promoting a democratic renaissance. Naumann cherished hopes of a union between democracy and emperordom. More important is the demand that the liberals should join forces with the social democracy.

It can hardly be said that any precise formula has been offered for this alliance, but from time to time a transient cooperation has been effected, such a cooperation as has been recommended by L. Brentano, and earlier by Barth, Mommsen, and others.

From the social democratic camp advances in the same direction have been made by the revisionists (in the "Sozialistische Monatshefte" and elsewhere). The revisionists point to the numerous members of the so-called new middle class, and contend that these could make cooperation between the social democrats and the liberals a practical possibility.

It is hardly necessary to demonstrate the political importance of such cooperation for Germany and for the world at large; the importance is self-evident in view of the numerical strength of the German social democracy.

In France, Italy, and even England, the course of political evolution has brought the liberals nearer to socialism.

In considering these plans for cooperation on the part of liberals and social democrats, we must not forget that Marxism and socialism, too, have undergone theoretical and political changes, and have in a sense become liberalised (if the word be rightly understood). For the time being, however,