ABSTRACT
Liberalism was self-identified with reason from the outset. However, it is also worth reviewing what exactly in the liberal view was reason's ‘other’ — the intellectual and practical targets of the liberal critique — in order to assess how reasonable or unreasonable liberal reason really is (Hampsher-Monk 1992, pp. 153–154; Eccleshall et al. 1994, p. 32). Marx self-identified as a critic of liberalism, but also as a proponent and associate, both in theory and in practice (Carver 1998, pp. 119–145). The latter aspect of his thought and practice has been distinctly undervalued in all traditions of commentary, and he has been categorized much too readily as non-liberal. This sometimes happens because he was a revolutionary and advocated violence, both of which are erroneously taken to be alien to the liberal tradition, its institutions and practice ( McLellan 1980a ). In other commentary his views on rights, justice, dictatorship, class and democracy are taken simplistically, so that they fit the given presumption that he was nonliberal to the core (Popper 2003, Kolakowski 1978, cf. Levin 1989). Liberals and Marxists alike have had a stake in making Marx non-liberal for political purposes, finding distance between his views and liberalism, emphasizing contradiction between his theory and liberal ideals, and even giving him a personality at odds with the supposed virtues in character and conduct that liberals like to think they exemplify, namely respect for others' views, willingness to compromise, acknowledgement of value-pluralism, and the like (Berlin 1996).
