Nineteenth century, however, ruefully confessed the inherent shortcomings of free economy and the limited state. The conflict of interest between the landed or the aristocratic class and the rising capitalist class was already won in favour of the latter. Now, the growing problem of inequality and economic hardship in terms of working conditions, poor sanitation, health and habitation and other attendant problems were staring in eyes of the labour class. While negative liberalism dealt with the issue of liberty, it neither thought of nor required to deal with the issue of equality. The latter was to get its due when the ‘self-interested individual’ has come to face a class of its own creed having neither the same psychology nor capacity to use it. The condition and plight of the proletariat, the working class, was in no way an expression of their self-interest. They had neither economic freedom nor political liberty. How would Peter Happy, a worker working twelve hours a day and living in a congested slum-like housing without knowing what value he has created and how much he is entitled, be happy when he knows that the employer is getting richer out of his labour? It is not only restrictive of his economic activity, but is morally degenerating. Where is his liberty, his chance to express the god of self-interest, his chance to maximize his utility, and above all, to feel that this is his world as well? These were not simple day-to-day problems but causes for the degeneration of the same individual that liberalism sought to crown and Europe fought to retrieve from medieval decadence by bringing renaissance, reformation and enlightenment.
Thus came positive liberalism, remorseful, espousing the cause of equality, morality and self-development of the individual and ready to compensate for the wretchedness that its earlier avatar, negative individualism, has created. However, this was not without fear from the rising proletarian philosophy and socialistic thought in Europe. The utopian socialists and later, the Marxian thought had already given a new direction to the condition that prevailed due to the capitalist exploitation. The genre of positive liberals, while keeping the individual at the centre of thought, argued for equality, moral development of all, and an interventionist state.
Negative liberalism and positive liberalism differ from each other in that while the former advocates liberty as absence of interference or constraints or ‘freedom from’ outside authority, the latter advocates liberty as ‘freedom to’ moral and self-development, self-realization and self-mastery. While one excludes the States’ interference, the other seeks its assistance to serve the cause. It is in this latter sense that the role and functions of the State advocated by the positive liberals can be discussed below.
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