How to understand liberalism, socialism and conservatism?

From time to time, I am reading about political theory, ideology and political communication. One of the most fascinating moments of history for me is the French revolution. Its legacy in the form of ideas had a significant influence on the process of transformation of societies from agricultural and feudal to industrial and democratic ones. The legacy of the revolution was also about the formation of civic and “classical” ideologies of liberalism, socialism and conservatism.

One was an insightful article explaining the fundamental differences between these three is written by James Alexander who is working as Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at Bikent University. He argues that the study of ideologies is often the case of “coterie activity” where ideologies are mostly studied by researchers in terms of collection. Meaning that studies of ideologies have been focusing on aspects such as “general idea” or “hierarchy” of the ideologies. In academic and other literature, it is often the case to find categorisations of ideologies by logical order such as liberalism, socialism and conservatism or conservatism, socialism, liberalism. What Alexander questions here is why there is a lack of explanation about such orders? Why are ideologies divided and presented as they are? 

Alexander argues that the logical order and division is liberalism, socialism and conservatism by focusing on the notion of the individual and “debt” as the criterion. In this case, debt is used as criterion, as a rule for which a judgment can be applied to and based on. He writes that “the ideologies share many core, adjacent and peripheral concepts, but they arrange and order them in different ways.” The differences and similarities can be presented in the following way regarding the notions of the individual and debt:

Individual

Liberalism: Society consists of individuals.

Socialism: Society does not consist of individuals; it expresses the sum of connections and relationships in which individuals find themselves.

Conservatism: Society does not consist of individuals; it does not even express the sum of connections and relationships in which individuals find themselves: it is the expression of the connections and relationships which emerged from a past that is no longer present and have to be conveyed to a future that is not yet present.

Debt

Liberalism: Debt to the self.

Socialism: Debt to self as constituted by the society.

Conservatism: Debt to society, history, collective, traditions.

Regarding the mentioned three Alexander writes that each of the ideologies is enlightened, critical and takes order seriously. Also, each is critical of a particular order in relation to which it posits itself as having a superior criterion. For more reading please follow this in link in order to download the article.

References

Alexander, James. “Major Ideologies of Liberalism, Socialism and Conservatism”. Political Studies 2015. Vol 63. Publishing date: 2014-06-02. Downloaded: 2017-03-05. Website: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9248.12136/abstract