Political Science · Political thought. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.
Montesquieu held that liberty is safe only when legislative, executive and judicial powers lie in different hands, so that power checks power. Bentham and J. S. Mill judged laws by their results: the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Mill added that some pleasures are higher than others and that individual liberty must be protected.
Hegel saw history as the progress of ideas through conflict, and the state as the highest form of ethical life, in which freedom is realised.
Marx kept Hegel's dialectic but made material conditions, not ideas, the moving force. The way a society produces its goods shapes everything else, and history advances through the struggle of classes.
Hegel and Marx both use the dialectic, but in opposite ways. For Hegel ideas drive history (idealism); for Marx material and economic conditions drive it (materialism).
Answer: Liberty is in danger, because the three powers are not separated.
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