ABSTRACT
Chapter four considers how modern liberalism evolved. In the mid-nineteenth it emphasized individual free choice and small government. A century later it stressed government intervention and large government. The chapter looks at the continuities between classic liberalism and social liberalism. The commonality is voluntarism, the idea that individual choice and collective choice determine economic outcomes. This contrasts with the view that there are economic laws of nature. Successful modern self-regulating economic and social systems combine freedom and nature, choice and determination, liberty and order. Similarly the political power of procedure and intervention is often overridden or outstripped by providential patterns and persistent power-laws. Voluntarism is less effective in practice than is often assumed.
