The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations might well be called "The Capitalist Manifesto." Smith (1723-1790) expounded the doctrine that merchants could best serve the interests of their societies and governments if left to themselves without government interference in their work. One can also find the virtues and benefits of mass production and of machinery lauded in this work. Smith's economic theories are rooted in a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature and of the workings of divine providence in human affairs: if each individual pursues his or her own true interest, everything will work out for the general good.

The Italian scholar and liberal politician Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was one of the greatest historians of his day. He served as a Senator in 1910, Minister of Education in 1920-1921, and Minister Without Portfolio in 1944. Croce's scholarly works explored philosophy, literature, and history. Croce's History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century is an attempt to fathom the "spirit" of the nineteenth century; it is less a narrative of events themselves than an effort to grasp the play of ideas and feelings that, for Croce, reveal to us the motivations and significance of the past. Croce interprets liberalism and its ideological rivals as essentially religious value-systems, in that each constituted "a concept of reality" with "an ethics that corresponds to that concept."

British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a founding theorist for liberalism and utilitarianism. In this excerpt from his Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham explains the social philosophy of utilitarianism and its foundation in human nature. Bentham thought that the desire to have pleasure and to avoid pain is the prime motivation for human behavior. He also thought it possible to construct a mathematical evaluation of the morality or immorality of actions, on the basis of which government and law could effectively provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

In this classic interpretation of utilitarianism as a program for social and political reform, Elie Halévy examines how classical liberalism blended the economic theories of Adam Smith with the legal and moral philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Doing so, according to Halévy, required a form of government that would foster the "identity of interests" that Smith had been inclined to think would occur "naturally."

Count Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) was a conservative critic of the philosophes, French Revolution, and constitutionalism. A nobleman from Savoy (the Franco-Italian border region), de Maistre did not appreciate having his estates occupied by the invading French Revolutionary army; nor did he approve of the ideals and values of the revolutionaries. In this work, de Maistre upholds the values and traditions of monarchic rule as God-given, and condemns the revolutionary effort to compose new constitutions as rebellions against divinely-ordained authority.

Hannah More (1745-1833) was one of the most popular writers in the English-speaking world during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She was the first author in history to sell over a million copies. Her writings generally advocated pious acceptance of the established order, especially in opposition to novel programs for social and political change. In this essay, possibly written in reaction to her fellow Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), More defends the traditional domestic role of woman against ideas for women's rights; for More, women and men are fundamentally different by nature; therefore, it is only natural and just that women should be restricted to specifically "feminine" activities. The essay represents an example of how conservatism functioned as a social ideology.

In this treatise On the Subjection of Women, British liberal and utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) argues that women ought to be accorded equal rights and opportunities as those that "enlightened" societies give to men. In this work, readers can perceive that a transition occured in liberal ideology, from its former emphasis on interests or utility as the basis for social and political ethics, to a foundation upon certain universal human rights, e.g. the right to happiness. Thus, for Mill, since women are human beings, they merit the same rights as those accorded to men--quite different from the overall social utility that would follow from such a liberation of women.

Henri Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was an aristocratic Frenchman deeply troubled by the misery of his poorer countrymen and the apparent inability of the government to create a better society. In the work excerpted below, Saint-Simon argues that governments generally exist only for their own power and gain. Saint-Simon proposes an ideal society that would recognize the cherished ideal of equality and that would dispense with humankind's ostensible need for government.

In this work, French socialist Louis Blanc (1811-1882) proposes that "an economic revolution must be attempted," not simply for the benefit of the poor, but for the interests of society as a whole. Blanc's argument was addressed in part to those who regarded socialism as impractical or sentimental, as his main emphasis was on the practical, tangible benefits that would accrue from the socialist "organization of work" he proposed.

Don Juan Donoso-Cortés, Marqués de Valdegamas (1809-1853) was a descendant of the famous (or infamous) sixteenth-century conqueror of Mexico. Donoso-Cortés served in the Spanish Parliament and then as Spain's ambassador to France. The revolutionary ferment he witnessed during his lifetime converted him from his earlier liberalism into a staunch advocate of conservatism. A devout Catholic, Donoso-Cortés found in his religion the theological foundations for his conservative interpretation of human nature, politics, and society. The excerpt below apparently influenced Pope Pius IX, who incorporated some of its ideas into the Syllabus of Errors (decreed in 1864).

Inspired by the changes of the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, the German socialists Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) wrote their famous political tract, The Communist Manifesto. In it, they defined history as one of class struggle, and claimed that two classes existed in their time: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or working class. Marx and Engels called for a proletarian revolution to overthrow the capitalist system, arguing in their closing sentence for workers across Europe to unite.

Karl Marx

After writing his Communist Maifesto and actively participating in the 1848 revolts, Marx moved to London. There he wrote Capital, his massive explanation of his socialist theories.

Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) has been called the father of Russian socialism. Educated at Moscow University, and having subsequently traveled throughout Europe, Herzen was well acquainted with Western European intellectual, social, and political affairs. In this letter to the famous French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874), whose work he generally admired, Herzen responds to some derogatory remarks the Frenchman had made about the Russian people. Herzen not only sets out to correct what he considers to have been Michelet's superficial and misleading view of the Russian people, but suggests that the communist lifestyle and values of the uneducated peasants of his homeland provide a far superior model for society than does any other existing polity.

In this excerpt from his three-volume study of the "rise, growth, and dissolution" of Marxism, the Polish scholar Leszek Kolakowski describes and interprets the relationship between Karl Marx's thought and that of other socialists. Kolakowski finds that Marx borrowed a great deal from his socialist predecessors and contemporaries. However, Kolakowski asserts that Marx also created a fundamentally new interpretation of capitalist society and proposed a revolutionary solution for its problems.

In this lecture delivered at Oxford on 31 October 1959, Isaiah Berlin suggests that nineteenth-century Europe was the battleground for two concepts of liberty that had long been at odds in European history. Berlin implies that these two concepts of liberty may well be mutually exclusive and that the conflict between them has not been definitively resolved--and may never be.