Matthew McManus and the Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

Review of McManus, Matthew. The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. New York: Routledge, 2025

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34024/csr.2026.62.1.21335

Keywords:

Liberal socialism, Liberalism, Liberty, Equality, Democracy

Abstract

This review discusses the book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism (2025), by Matthew McManus, which reconstructs the tradition of liberal socialism through a genealogy involving Paine, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Bernstein, Rosselli, Dewey, Keynes, Macpherson, Walzer, Mouffe, Mills, Anderson, and Rawls. The book argues that liberty, equality, and solidarity form a single normative core, and that the recent hollowing-out of liberalism results from its possessive and neoliberal versions. McManus convincingly argues that liberal socialism provides conceptual resources to renew liberalism by strengthening its egalitarian and democratic commitments. The review highlights the relevance of this reconstruction, especially in contexts where liberalism is equated with unrestricted market advocacy.

Author Biography

  • Ulysses Ferraz de Camargo Filho, Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos - IESP-UERJ

    PhD in Philosophy from the Graduate Program in Logic and Metaphysics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PPGLM-UFRJ) and PhD candidate in Political Science at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ). Recipient of a Doctoral Fellowship (Nota 10) from the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ).

References

Anderson, E. (2017). Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’t Talk About It). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Anderson, E. (2023) Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned The Work-Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bernstein, E. (1993) The Preconditions of Socialism [Original work published 1899]. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Dewey, J. (2000). Liberalism and Social Action [Original work published 1935]. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.

Edmundson, W. A. (2017). John Rawls: Reticent Socialist. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Edmundson, W. (2021). Socialism for Soloists. Medford, MA: Polity Press.

Macpherson, C.B. (1973). Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

McManus, M. (2025) The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. New York: Routledge,

Mill, J. S. (1848). Principles of Political Economy. Online Library of Liberty, n.d. Recuperado de: https:// oll.libertyfund.org/ titles/ mill-principles-of-political-economy-ashley-ed.

Mills, C. W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Mills, C. W. (2017). Black Rights/ White Wrongs: A Critique of Racial Liberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Mouffe, C. (1993). Toward a Liberal Socialism? Dissent Magazine. 40, 1, 81–87.

Mouffe, C. (2019). For a Left Populism. London, UK: Verso Books.

Paine, T. (1987). The Thomas Paine Reader [Original work published 1797]. London, UK: Penguin Books.

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Rosselli, C. (1994) Liberal Socialism [Original work published 1930]. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sen, Amartya. (2009). The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Walzer, M. (2023). The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On ‘Liberal’ As an Adjective. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2023.

Wollstonecraft, M. (1967). A Vindication of the Rights of Women [Original work published 1792]. New York: Norton Library.

Downloads

Published

2026-04-09

Issue

Vol. 62 No. 1 (2026): January/April

Section

Book reviews

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Ulysses Ferraz de Camargo Filho (Autor)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All publications in Ciências Sociais em Revista (CSR) are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0, which permits sharing, copying, and redistributing the material in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to Cite

Matthew McManus and the Political Theory of Liberal Socialism: Review of McManus, Matthew. The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. New York: Routledge, 2025. (2026). Ciências Sociais Em Revista, 62(1). https://doi.org/10.34024/csr.2026.62.1.21335