ABSTRACT
C. B. Macpherson’s critique of the “possessive” character of liberal individualism and of the foundations of “market society” is both morally compelling and impressive. His Political Theory of Possessive Individualism 1 locates the origins of the liberal tradition in the struggles of the English seventeenth century. Out of these struggles emerged an individualism which, according to his interpretation, rejected traditional concepts of society, justice and natural law, sometimes emphasized the equal worth of every human being, but most importantly, acquired from the start a “possessive quality.” This new notion of “possessive individualism” therefore involved an almost total break with classical and mediaeval -conceptions of the nature of man, of society and of freedom.
