Contemporary liberalism
The contemporary variant of liberalism is even more amorphous than the classical. There are no "fathers" such as John Locke or Adam Smith. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where socialists, even though they trace their ancestry to Marx, are overwhelmingly revisionist, it is difficult to distinguish between their program and programs elsewhere designated as liberal. British mainstream socialism never embraced Marx, and the Labour Party has at times been difficult to distinguish from the Liberal Party, which largely accounts for the decline of the latter. U.S. liberal social legislation since the crash of 1929 has been notably formless. But even so, the outlines of contemporary liberalism are fairly discernible.
Critique of the market
Cognizant of the real achievements of the profit system, liberals do not seek its abolition, only its modification and control. They find no fixed line laid up in heaven eternally dividing the private and the public sectors of the economy; the determination, they contend, must be by reference to what works. The spectre of regimentation in completely planned economies and the dangers of bureaucracy even in mixed economies deter them from jettisoning the market and substituting an omnicompetent state. On the other hand--and this is a basic difference between classical (or neoclassical) and contemporary liberalism--most liberals now believe that the dispensations of the market, as it has in fact operated, must be supplemented and corrected in substantive ways. They hold that the rewards dispensed by the market are too crude a measure of the contribution many or most people make to society, and that the needs of those who lack opportunity or are physically handicapped are ignored. They contend that enormous social costs incurred in production are not reflected in market prices, and that resources are used wastefully. Not least, liberals charge that the market biasses the allocation of human and physical resources in the direction of satisfying superficial wants (for oversized motor cars in annual models, changing fashions in attire, and unnecessary gadgets), while basic needs (for schools, housing, rapid public transit, sewage treatment plants) go unmet. Finally, although liberals believe that prices, wages, and profits should continue to be subject to negotiation among the interested parties and responsive to conventional market pressures, they insist that price-wage-profit decisions affecting the economy as a whole must be reconciled with public policy.
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