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Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on
private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic
planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core
of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through
market competition based on private property, then capitalism
has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been
accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout
most of the Third World and in most of the formerly Communist
states. In the advanced industrial states of the West, Labor
and "democratic socialist" parties have rejected
socialism, by deregulating markets and privatizing industries,
utilities, and transport. The U.K. Labour Party's 1945
manifesto declared the party to be a "Socialist Party,
and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the
Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain." Today the Labour
Party insists that markets are a given.

The 20th century did not witness a significant development in liberalism & liberal theory. Instead, liberal theory today is remarkably similar to the liberal theory of 100 years ago. The same conflicting principles that existed at the close of the 19th century -- such as individualism-collectivism, constructivism-anticonstructivism, value rationalism-skepticism -- are still present at the close of the 20th century. While innovative & complex thought has been introduced, the overall understanding of liberalism has remained static. This phenomenon does not necessary connote a weakness in liberal theory. However, both classical & contemporary viewpoints must be considered if liberalism is ever to become the prevailing political ideology. K. Larsen

At the close of the 20th century, liberalism has apparently vanquished its traditional rivals. However, whatever cause for celebration liberals might derive from their political victories over conservatives & socialists, in an important respect, the 20th century has been a disappointment for liberal theory. The same antinomies or tensions that marked it at the close of the 19th century characterize it today. In this essay, I show how disputes between liberal individualists & collectivists, & between rationalists & skeptics, have persisted throughout this century. I then examine several explanations for this apparent lack of progress in liberal theorizing. Adapted from the source document.

Liberal political theory is all too familiar with the divide between classical and welfare-state liberals. Classical liberals, as we all know, insist on the importance of small government, negative liberty, and private property. Welfare-state liberals, on the other hand, although they too stress civil rights, tend to be sympathetic to "positive liberty," are for a much more expansive government, and are often ambivalent about private property. Although I do not go so far as to entirely deny the usefulness of this familiar distinction, I think in many ways it is misleading. In an important sense, most free-market liberals are also "welfare-state" liberals. I say this because the overwhelming number of liberals, of both the pro-market and the pro-government variety, entertain a welfarist conception of political economy. On this dominant welfarist view, the ultimate justification of the politico-economic order is that it promotes human welfare. Traditional "welfare-state liberals" such as Robert E. Goodin manifestly adopt this welfarist conception. But it is certainly not only interventionists such as Goodin who insist that advancing welfare is the overriding goal of normative political economy. J. R. McCulloch, one of the great nineteenth-century laissez-faire political economists, was adamant that "freedom is not, as some appear to think, the end of government: the advancement of public prosperity and happiness is its end." To be sure, McCulloch would have disagreed with Goodin about the optimal welfare-maximizing economic policy: the welfarist ideal, he and his fellow classical political economists believed, would best be advanced by provision of a legal and institutional framework — most importantly, the laws of property, contract, and the criminal code — that allows individuals to pursue their own interests in the market and, by so doing, promote public welfare. In general, what might be called the "classical-liberal welfare state" claims to advance welfare by providing the framework for individuals to seek wealth for themselves, while welfarists such as Goodin insist that a market order is seriously flawed as a mechanism for advancing human welfare and, in addition, that government has the competency to "correct market failures" in the provision of welfare.