A Study of Thoughts on Improvement of Economic Society in 20th Century Britain : From New Liberalism to New Labour

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We can better understand the historical process of the British thoughts on improvement of economic society in the twentieth century than ever, if we investigate it in terms of the formation, the various developments both before and after the Second World War, the temporary disappearance of the 1980s and the revival in the late twentieth century of the new liberalism which emerged to cope with the difficulties the classical liberalism faced in the late nineteenth century. And we would emphasize the following three points in particular ; (a) that Ritchie's theory of social evolution marked an epoch in the formation of the new liberalism ; (b) that we could see a variant of its development in the thoughts on improvement of economic society of Marshall, Pigou, Keynes and the Webbs ; (c) that while the Thatcher governments appeared to eliminate the British tradition of new liberalism in the thoughts on improvement of economic society in the 1980s, New Labour revived this tradition in the newly changing circumstances of the late 1990s through furthering and adapting to these new circumstances the idea of governmental intervention in market which the Major governments advanced in order to try to propel the Thatcherite policies forward in the 1990s.