There is a widespread misunderstanding of liberalism and its relationship to conservatism, often leading to the mistaken use of these terms to frame political, economic, and policy debates along a simplistic ‘Left vs. Right’ axis.
In reality, liberalism and conservatism are not polar opposites; both traditions emerge from the broader classical liberal intellectual framework that arose during the Enlightenment, emphasising individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law. They represent different points on the liberal spectrum rather than entirely separate or opposing doctrines.
Conservatism, especially in its Anglo-American form, evolved within the liberal order, seeking to preserve social institutions, moral traditions, and gradual reform while still affirming personal freedom and private property. This explains why many conservatives are themselves products of the liberal tradition, and why confusion persists over what truly distinguishes a classical liberal from a conservative.
Modern liberalism is deeply rooted in the idea of self-actualisation and individual responsibility, emphasising that there should be no arbitrary restraints on human freedom and no unjust constraints on personal liberty. It is important, however, to distinguish modern liberalism from classical liberalism.
The latter is centred on the pursuit of self-emancipation, a concept far richer than mere freedom. Emancipation is not only the absence of external control; it is the process of realising one’s authentic self, of reaching one’s full potential through reason and choice. It entails the courage to think freely, to question authority and hierarchy, and to act according to conscience.
At its core, liberalism seeks to unshackle the individual from arbitrary power and coercion. It holds that dignity arises from the exercise of reason and the autonomy of choice. In this sense, self-determination is not only a political right but also a moral ideal, a virtue that defines what it means to be fully human.
‘No such thing as society’
Thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, towering figures of the European Enlightenment, emphasised securing individual rights and ensuring freedom from interference, whether from feudal lords, monarchs, or the state. Their shared intellectual project, later termed Classical Liberalism, was concerned primarily with protecting the individual’s negative liberty, that is, freedom from external constraint or coercion.
As social thought evolved, it became clear that freedom defined merely as the absence of restraint was insufficient for genuine human flourishing. The Enlightenment had also produced Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the social contract, which stressed that liberty could only endure within a framework of mutual obligation and shared civic responsibility. Absolute individual freedom, in an anarchic setting, risked undermining the very conditions that made liberty meaningful.
In this evolution, liberalism matured from a doctrine of protection to a philosophy of empowerment: an understanding that human dignity and autonomy require both freedom and the means to exercise it. Mill represents a crucial junction in this intellectual journey, a gradual movement away from a narrow focus on negative liberty towards a more expansive conception that anticipates the need for positive liberty.
Through his writing in ‘On Liberty’ (1859) and ‘Considerations on Representative Government’ (1861), Mill came to recognise that liberty entails more than mere non-interference; it requires the social and material conditions that enable individuals to develop their faculties and exercise reasoned choice. He blended individual autonomy with social responsibility, arguing that a free society depends on citizens capable of self-governance, and that the state has a legitimate role in cultivating the conditions for such moral and intellectual growth.
Building upon this foundation, later thinkers such as T.H. Green and L.T. Hobhouse would deepen and systematise this evolution of liberalism. Green’s ‘Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation’ (1885) redefines freedom as the power to do or enjoy something worth doing or enjoying, emphasising that the state must remove social and economic barriers to self-realisation, betraying an undercurrent of romanticism.
Hobhouse, in ‘Liberalism’ (1911), further articulated this vision into a coherent theory of social liberalism, asserting that liberty and equality were not opposing forces but complementary pillars of a just society. Together, they transformed liberalism into a philosophy concerned not only with defending rights but with creating the moral and institutional framework in which those rights become meaningful.
This philosophical progression eventually mapped itself onto the Left-Right political spectrum. The Left came to champion positive liberty, asserting that the state and society have a duty to provide the conditions for individual flourishing through education, healthcare, and social welfare. The conservative tradition, while still rooted in the liberal framework, often viewed these interventions with caution, reflecting a mistrust of state power and a belief that overreach could weaken personal responsibility and autonomy. In more libertarian strains of modern conservatism, the state’s role in advancing positive liberty is seen as inherently coercive. Taxation to fund public goods, for example, is sometimes portrayed as a violation of individual property rights – a form of ‘theft’ that undermines personal freedom.
Traditional conservatism, particularly as articulated by Edmund Burke, did not regard the state as a hostile force but rather as a necessary authority, a custodian of order, morality, and the inherited institutions that sustain social order.
Burke’s conservatism was deeply communitarian in spirit. He believed that liberty could not survive in a moral vacuum or amid the destruction of social structures that bind people together. For him, the state, the church, the family, and other long-standing institutions formed the ‘little platoons’ through which individuals learnt virtue, responsibility, and mutual obligation.
Burke, himself a figure of the Enlightenment liberal tradition, sought to reconcile freedom with order and progress with continuity. His concern was not to resist change altogether, but to ensure that change was organic, evolutionary, and grounded in experience, rather than revolutionary or abstract.
In this sense, traditional conservatism was not anti-liberal but a temperate branch within the liberal family, a worldview that accepted human freedom as a moral good while insisting that it must operate within a framework of shared norms, inherited wisdom, and civic duty.
Institutions and enterprise
By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) took office as American President in 1933, liberalism was in crisis. The Great Depression had torn through the faith in markets and individual self-help that had defined the classical liberal age. Freedom, conceived as the absence of interference, now meant little to those without work, shelter, or food. Roosevelt captured this moral failure in a single line that would redefine modern liberalism: “Necessitous men are not free men.”
That sentence became the hinge between the old and new liberalisms, between freedom as isolation and freedom as participation. The idea that economic security is part of freedom itself transformed political thought. It was not the end of liberalism, but a sort of moral renewal.
Roosevelt’s genius was to make this philosophical turn concrete: The New Deal was not a rejection of capitalism but its rescue through reconstruction. He rebuilt liberalism on foundations of social justice and institutional strength, turning ideals into durable public architecture.
The Social Security Act of 1935 guaranteed pensions and unemployment insurance, acknowledging that liberty without security was hollow. The National Labor Relations Board gave workers the right to organise; public works programmes restored both jobs and dignity. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rebuilt public trust in banks and financial markets, and in the rural south, the Tennessee Valley Authority electrified communities.
Each of these institutions was more than a policy; it was a statement of purpose, that a free society must secure the conditions for its people to stand on their own feet. The New Deal made liberalism tangible, turning abstract rights into the social infrastructure of human dignity.
The great success of Roosevelt’s project was institutional, not ideological. It restored legitimacy to capitalism by embedding it within rules and fairness, what Karl Polanyi would later call “re-embedding markets in society”. It redefined citizenship as a moral economy of mutual obligation, where everyone contributed to and benefited from the common good.
The New Deal also created what scholars now call ‘institutional memory,’ agencies and norms that outlasted Roosevelt himself. These institutions learnt, adapted, and became the muscle of democratic governance. The liberal reconciliation was complete: freedom secured not by abstract faith in markets, but by institutions that made opportunity real.
Of course, Roosevelt’s revolution was incomplete. Many of its benefits bypassed African Americans and women; southern legislators ensured that farm and domestic workers, mostly Black, were excluded from Social Security.
The New Deal also relied on technocratic power, sometimes more bureaucratic than democratic. Its durability was tied to post-war prosperity; when growth slowed in the 1970s, its moral consensus gave way to the neoliberal revival.
Despite its failings, the New Deal gave liberalism a soul; in his 1944 ‘Second Bill of Rights,’ Roosevelt expressed this new moral synthesis: “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”
He listed the rights to work, housing, medical care, education, and protection from economic fear. It was a liberalism of shared emancipation; freedom, institutionalised.
Sri Lanka’s liberal dynasty
For much of its post-independence history, Sri Lanka reflected this same social-liberal spirit. D.S. Senanayake’s early United National Party (UNP) understood the connection between liberty and social investment. Free education and healthcare, subsidies for food and housing, and public works like the Mahaweli project were the country’s own ‘new deal,’ a recognition that political stability requires social security and public investment.
The results were remarkable. Sri Lanka’s literacy rates, life expectancy, and gender equality outperformed nearly every developing country. For decades, it stood as a model of how a small democracy could combine liberal freedoms with social welfare.
This moral architecture soon eroded; the open economy reforms of 1977 modernised trade but weakened the social contract. As crucial as the ’77 reforms were, it was also a period of missed opportunity. The later neoliberal turn of the 1990s and 2000s hollowed out the State’s developmental role, reducing welfare to handouts and industrial policy to tax breaks and cheap energy.
Sri Lanka today mirrors America in the 1930s: a nation adrift between market failure and institutional decay. The middle class has lost faith in the system, the poor have lost safety nets, and the young see freedom as a privilege they cannot afford.
A Sri Lankan ‘new deal’ would not imitate Roosevelt’s blueprint; it would translate his moral insight into our reality.
Reinstitutionalising the State as an enabler of opportunity – the scaffolding of human development by prioritising investments in schools, hospitals, and social protection.
Reviving productive employment: Like Roosevelt’s public works, Sri Lanka can use State-backed industrial and infrastructure programmes to rebuild jobs, skills, and dignity. Such investment must be in sync with a specific strategy, whether tourism, energy independence, or export processing industrial zones. Public-Private Partnerships in manufacturing, green energy, and regional development could mirror the logic of the Mahaweli and apparel-sector successes.
Democratising governance to avoid the technocratic trap of past reforms, institutions must be local, participatory, and transparent. Positive liberty must never become paternalism.
Balancing markets with morality: fiscal discipline must coexist with social justice. The goal of policy cannot be the satisfaction of creditors alone, but the emancipation of citizens.
This is not a call for bigger government, but for better institutions. If Roosevelt saved liberalism by making it compassionate, Sri Lanka must save democracy by making it humane. A ‘new deal’ for Sri Lanka would reclaim the idea that liberty and welfare are not opposites but twins, that people cannot be free when they are hungry, indebted, or excluded.
This new social contract would re-legitimise the social and economic systems that Sri Lankans have lost faith with, by restoring its purpose. It would revive civic trust through shared security, instead of drowning millions in austerity. It would rebuild the State as a partner in progress, not a broker of privilege.
The journey from Locke and Mill to Roosevelt and Green teaches a timeless lesson: liberalism survives only when it listens to human need. In the United States, the New Deal redefined freedom through social responsibility. A Sri Lankan ‘new deal’ would make liberalism real again – a living compact between freedom and fairness, enterprise and equity. It would remind us that the true measure of a nation is not its GDP, but its capacity to secure dignity for all.
(The writer is a political commentator, media presenter, and foreign affairs analyst. He serves as Adviser on Political Economy to the Leader of the Opposition and is a member of the Working Committee of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya [SJB]. A former banker, he spent 11 years in the industry in Colombo and Dubai, including nine years in corporate finance at DFCC Bank, where he worked closely with some of Sri Lanka’s largest corporates on project finance, trade facilities, and working capital. He holds a Master’s in International Relations from the University of Colombo and a Bachelor’s in Accounting and Finance from the University of Kent [UK]. He can be contacted via email: kusumw@gmail.com and X: @kusumw)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)