Liberalism and capitalist development

This paper compares the English and French liberal traditions with reference to the evolution of each society’s respective social–property relations or class contexts from the early modern period to the 19th century. Despite their discursive commonalities, I claim that the absence (France) or presence (England) of dynamic capitalist development is the pivotal factor which differentiates the social function that liberalism as an ideological force played in each historical context. While liberalism in England was the product of and ancillary to capitalism, French liberalism was primarily the standard-bearer of political moderation against the absolutist state.