ABSTRACT
New liberalism proper (or progressivism) should be seen as the Anglo-American variant of continental European social democracy, or, as Guy Sorman has written, as socialism that had lost touch with theory and that did not know Marx. This supposition, that concerted state action could gradually create a cooperative, eventually socialised, community that operated in the interests of all, was what ultimately bound together new liberalism and social democracy. Indeed, many liberals regarded social democracy as having always been immanent within liberalism and believed that such socialism was the logical extension of liberal thought. The historical economists who introduced European social democracy to America were prompted by such a Christian perspective, as were most of the early leaders of the British Labour Party, especially Arthur Henderson, a lay Methodist preacher.
