The political philosophy of liberalism has been subject of criticism at the hands of its advocates as well as its opponents, by the former on account of their polemical interpretations and by the latter, on account of their indictment of the premises of individualism. Both as a doctrine and as a movement, liberalism is an amorphous ideology. Used coherently by all, it lacks political, moral and intellectual clarity. This very lack of clarity is exploited by all interests. It calls its indecision as open-mindedness, its absence of moral criterion as tolerance, and formality of criteria as ‘broadly speaking’. The liberal view of man and society has also been criticised. It considers man as egoistic, lonely, separate from the society, possessive and concerned with the fulfillment of his selfish interests and states that the society is no more than a jungle where animals roam in the grab of men. According to Laski, liberalism has always seen the poor, as if they became poor because of their own mistakes. Classical liberalism always underplayed the fact that property also brings with it the power to rule over men and things. The criticism passed on this kind of liberalism was that it neglected institutions and their historical growth and that, it worked with a falsely schematic conception of human nature and motives.
