Liberalism and Capitalism Today

1Political and Legal Conditions

There can be no capitalism without freedom. The appearance of liberalism was therefore an essential condition for the emergence of this economic system. In France, this was part of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which extended from the death of Louis XIV to the Revolution of 1789 and would come to gradually impose itself, first, in the minds of the intellectuals of the time, and subsequently in the minds of the French people as a whole. The word liberalism initially had a purely political meaning, as the leaders of a nation were forced to promote the freedom and equality of individuals owing to the return of a political regime that had proved its worth many centuries earlier but had been forgotten in many countries: democracy.

At a legal level, liberalism extends the right of ownership from the right to just land to the holding of all production assets. This was an essential condition for economic growth in the form of savings and thus for the formation of productive capital. This legal evolution was the result of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, composed of entrepreneurs whose domination began to impose itself on the whole of society. However, this domination came up against the appearance of another source of domination: that of state bureaucracy.

1.1. Liberalism and democracy: new eldorados of political thought and political life

Liberalism brought the superiority of the individual to the fore. Prior to that period, the individual ...