ABSTRACT
Liberalism is not a dogma. It may only be, in fact, a temperament or an attitude towards other persons and society. This chapter focuses on the political and economic dilemmas of liberalism. It sketches the central features of liberalism as we have known it in the past 200 years. The chapter provides a description of the structural trends in contemporary society and the problems these pose for liberalism. Since the focus is on the future of liberalism, and the challenges that liberalism faces, the chapter singles out those aspects of postindustrial issues which create some novel problems for a liberal philosophy. One of the premises is that in a postindustrial phase, there is a knowledge theory of value, not a labor theory of value, that is central to the character of the society. The major feature of a postindustrial society is the rise of the science-based industries. These industries are capital-saving, rather than capital-using.
