Political Ideologies: Difference between revisions

Note that most of these authors are generally considered classical liberals rather than social liberals, although confusingly, there is asubstantial greatdiversity deal of difference between e.g. theamongst classical liberalism of Adam Smith (who actually reserved some rather strong barbs for the upper class) versus the classical liberalism of Ayn Rand, who was much more right-wing (and therefore much moreliberal controversial)thinkers. Among the writers of non-fiction on this list, Isaiah Berlin, (sometimes) John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Popper, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz (probably the only person on this list who could be considered a social democrat, although Rousseau is arguable), and to a lesser extent Benjamin Constant are generally the exceptions; they are usually considered social liberals. Amongst the fiction authors, Heinlein is an interesting case because he actually drifted from social liberalism (''[[For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs]]'' and ''[[Beyond This Horizon]]'', for example, although these actually border on socialism, advocating an economy called Social Credit which is effectively a mixture of socialism and capitalism) to classical liberalism (much of his later writing with the arguable exception of ''[[Stranger in A Strange Land]]'', which generally doesn't discuss economics) throughout his writing career; ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'' could actually be considered to advocate a form of individualist anarchism. The only author currently on the fiction list who was consistently a social liberal is Steinbeck.