C.B. Macpherson: Liberalism and the Task of Socialist Political Theory

Abstract

C.B. Macpherson has for many years been the single major voice from the left in the traditional disciplines of political philosophy and the history of political thought. His work, especially his classic The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism published in 1962, has been groundbreaking. Above all, it has done much to repoliticize political philosophy, giving it some foundation in history and revealing its ideological function. Macpherson's theory and method are not, however, Marxist; and questions can be raised about what his standpoint actually is. Certainly he writes from a perspective that rejects the consequences of capitalism, but the rejection of capitalism is not consistently grounded in a commensurate analysis of capitalist social relations. Often Macpherson's analysis of capitalism appears to accept that system at its own valuation. At such times, the effect of his argument is not so different from the very theories he criticizes-pluralist political science, marginal utility economics, the "market model" of man and society; and he ends by confirming their ideological mystifications.