The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

by Matthew McManus

(Routledge, 2025)

268 pages

Description

Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of liberal socialism from a sympathetic but critical standpoint, Matthew McManus traces its core to the Revolutionary period that catalyzed major divisions in liberal political theory to the French Revolution that saw the emergence of writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine who argued that liberal principles could only be inadequately instantiated in a society with high levels of material and social inequality to John Stuart Mill, the first major thinker who declared himself a liberal and a socialist and who made major contributions to both traditions through his efforts to synthesize and conciliate them. McManus argues for liberal socialism as a political theory which could truly secure equality and liberty for all.

Contents [Preview]

Introduction: Retrieving Liberal Socialism 

1. What is Liberal Socialism? 

Part I: The Origins of Liberal Socialism  

2. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity  

3. Thomas Paine’s Denaturalization of Inequality  

4. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Egalitarian Rights of Man and Woman  

Part II: The Maturation of Liberal Socialism  

5. John Stuart Mill-The First Liberal Socialist  

6. Karl Marx’s Critique of Liberalism 

7. Ethical Socialism and Social Democratic Reformism  

8. C.B Macpherson’s Critique of “Possessive Individualism”  

9. John Rawls’ Just Society 

10. On Racial and Black Radical Liberalism  

Part III: The Future of Liberal Socialism 

11. Chantal Mouffe, Norberto Bobbio, and Axel Honneth-Agonistic Liberal Socialism and the Dialectics of Recognition 

12. A Future For Liberal Socialism?

Matthew McManus is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan. 

New book on John Rawls: Justice and Reciprocity

Justice and Reciprocity

by Andrew Lister

(Oxford University Press, 2024)

304 pages

Description

"Justice and Reciprocity" examines the place of reciprocity in egalitarianism, focusing on John Rawls’s conception of ‘justice as fairness’. Reciprocity was central to justice as fairness, but Rawls wasn’t fully explicit about the concept or its diverse roles. The book’s main thesis is threefold. First, reciprocity is not simply a fact of human psychology or a duty to return benefits, but a limiting condition on general duties. Second, such conditions are a natural consequence of thinking of equality as a relational value. However, third, we can identify limits on this conditionality, which explain how some duties of justice can be unconditional. The book explores the ramifications of this argument in a series of debates about distributive justice in which Rawls’s theory has played an organizing role: the justice of productive incentives, duties to future generations, unconditional basic income, and global justice. In each domain, thinking about reciprocity as a limiting condition rather than simply a duty helps explain otherwise puzzling aspects of justice as fairness, in some cases making the view more plausible, but in others underlining limits of the view that will be unappealing to egalitarians of a more unilateral bent. The overall aim of the book is to show that reciprocity involves more than returning benefits, and that limiting justice with reciprocity conditions need not make justice implausibly undemanding. In this way, I hope to rehabilitate reciprocity for egalitarianism.

Contents

1. Reciprocity and Egalitarianism [Preview]

2. Reciprocity as Motivation

3. Reciprocity as Duty

4. Reciprocity as Limiting Condition

5. Role Reversal and the Difference Principle

6. Cooperation, Competition, and Incentives

7. Future Generations

8. Unconditional Basic Income

9. Global Justice

10. Conclusion

Andrew Lister is Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. See his blog here.

James Rosenberg: Essays on John Rawls and Social Theory

A doctoral dissertation by James Rosenberg, Harvard University:

"Essays on John Rawls and Social Theory" (2024) 

Dissertation advisor: Michael Rosen.

Abstract:

"How does Rawlsian political philosophy relate to social theory? Rawls thought that principles of justice must be developed in light of social theory. I argue that his own social theory, that of society as a fair system of cooperation, is responsible for some of the limitations of the Rawlsian framework. The dissertation uses Rawls’s insight about the relationship between political philosophy and social theory to internally criticize Rawlsian political philosophy with respect to its capacity to diagnose and offer adequate prescriptions against the injustices it criticizes. Each of the chapters attempt to elaborate on Rawls’s own methodological thesis that political philosophy must be in dialogue with social theory."

50 Best Political Philosophy Blogs in 2025

I am honored to be ranked number 2 on this list:

50 Best Political Philosophy Blogs and Websites in 2025

Peter Dews on Dieter Henrich

Peter Dews on Dieter Henrich (1927-2022)

"Commemorating Dieter Henrich: Subjectivity and Metaphysics" [Open access]

(Hegel Bulletin)

Interview with Claus Offe, 2008

An interview with Claus Offe recorded in 2008:

"Demontage des Sozialen im 21. Jahrhundert" (30 minutes)

Interviewer: Stefan Fuchs.

Peter Gordon on Adorno and critical theory

In "The Nation", Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins talks with Peter E. Gordon (Harvard) about his book "A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity", and the future of critical theory:

What Adorno Can Still Teach Us

Excerpt:

"Adorno is too often seen as a thoroughgoing pessimist who devoted his criticism only to the task of exposing what is “negative” or irrational in modern society. The widespread caricature of Adorno as a scowling contrarian or snob continues to inhibit our understanding of his work. This caricature, I believe, does a grave injustice to the complexity of his thought. My general argument is that Adorno was far more conflicted - or, to use the more technical term, dialectical - than the standard interpretation allows. As a critical theorist, he devoted his work to exposing the negative, but with an anticipatory orientation toward the largely unrealized possibility of human flourishing.

His writing, though often dark and even ruthless in its criticism of present irrationality, is nonetheless shot through with glimpses of what happiness would be. These anticipations are admittedly uncertain, since in a damaged world we see as if through a glass darkly. But the concept of an unrealized good is already implicit in the critique of what is bad."