Origins of liberalism and its relation to aristocracy and democracy30.05.25

The origins of liberalism lie in periods in which a noble aristocracy defended its privileges and feudal liberties against centralized monarchies by seeking to limit monarchical power through constitutional control.

Therefore, in early liberal constitutions, the right to vote was restricted to the property-owning class—more precisely, to the property-owning white man. Consequently, liberalism favored traditional census suffrage, in which the right to vote, the weight of votes, and the holding of political office were tied to the possession of wealth. Census suffrage as an instrument for stabilizing prevailing power relations lost importance to the extent that the mass media were able to assume this function even before the act of voting, namely in shaping political opinion.

The historian Dieter Langewiesche states:
"European liberals had always rejected democratic voting.
" Only those who fulfilled the liberal criteria of citizenship could be considered full political citizens: a certain degree of education and economic independence. Liberal ideals were tailored to the intellectually and materially independent citizen, politically, socially, economically, and culturally.

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL272137A/Dieter_Langewiesche

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Origins of liberalism and its relation to aristocracy and democracy30.05.25

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