Semantics of Liberalism: What Did It Mean to Be “Liberal” in Interwar Czech, Austrian and Slovene Contexts?

Beginning by outlining the structural place that “liberalism” continued to occupy within the party landscapes of the discussed countries, the chapter pursues to answer the general question What did it mean to be “liberal” in the interwar Czech, Austrian and Slovene party politics. Discussing “liberalism” as a political label and element of contemporary public discourses, it sets to analyze the patterns of its employment by asking about its common users and recipients and exploring the various associated meanings, as well as usual functions (pejorative, neutral, self-identification). While in all the three contexts the most common was the pejorative one, there also existed established neutral meanings, to some extent accepted by the recipients themselves. In the case of “national liberal heirs” as the most common recipients of the liberal label, which themselves however mostly preferred other labels, this reflected a complex interplay between political ideas, political practice and political languages. The older meanings of “liberalism” were being partly superseded, but also intertwined with the newer ones, in various ways also coalescing with the employment of alternative labels such as “progressive,” “free-minded” and “freiheitlich” and often causing confusion. This reflected both in rather general and equivocal rejection of the already long buried economic ideas of laissez-faire, as well as the very firm and persistent association of liberalism with anti-clericalism, especially distinctive for the Slovene and Austrian contexts. Lastly, the deeply entrenched close association between the “liberal” and “national” orientations, along with the radicalization of the latter, also persisted, among other things resulting in critique against the “liberals.”