The intellectual founders of liberalism were the English philosopher John Locke (1632β1704), who developed a theory of political authority based on natural individual rights and the consent of the governed, and the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723β90), who argued that societies prosper when individuals are free to pursue their self-interest within an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and competitive markets, controlled neither by the state nor by private monopolies.
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