[This is Chapter Eight of Murphey’s book Modern Social and Political Philosophies: Burkean Conservatism and Classical Liberalism.]
Chapter 8
THE STRUCTURE OF FREEDOM: LIBERTY, LAW AND ETHICS
“Liberty” as Classical Liberalism’s Central Concept
In the Burkeans’ thinking, the emphasis is on religion, order and community; in the Left’s, it is on the twin problems of entrapment and exploitation, and on collective effort to achieve “social justice.”
The focus in classical liberal thought, however, is on liberty. To it, liberty is the main desideratum in human life. Classical liberals have been consistent with their vitalist perspective when they have considered liberty a necessary and almost a sufficient element if men are to enjoy such other human values as dignity, fulfillment and progress. It isn’t surprising that the main theme in their interpretation of history is the conflict between liberty and oppression.
Thomas Jefferson typified this preoccupation with liberty when he prepared the epitaph for his own tombstone. He listed only that he had been the “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” He deliberately omitted any reference to his having been President so that he could accent the greater significance of his contributions to freedom. Edward Dumbauld writes that “it is characteristic of (Jefferson’s) thinking that he enumerated as most important among the events of his career not his incumbency of high offices of state where he wielded power over his fellow men, but his contributions to the cause of liberty.”1
This emphasis on liberty was Herbert Spencer’s main point when he wrote the following passage:
"Liberty of action being the first essential to exercise of faculties, and therefore the first essential to happiness; and the liberty of each limited by the like liberties of all, being the form which this first essential assumes when applied to many instead of one; it follows that this liberty of each, limited by the like liberties of all, is the rule in conformity with which society must be organized. Freedom being the prerequisite to normal life in the individual, equal freedom becomes the prerequisite to normal life in society. And if this law of equal free is the primary law or right relationship between man and man, then no desire to get a secondary law can warrant us in breaking it.”2
Another example of this stress on liberty comes from Thomas Macaulay; John Griffin tells us that "Macaulay stated, with the precedent of Milton before him, that the greatest measure of a nation's achievement was the quality and extent of its liberty.”3 It seems natural, then, that Lord Acton would write a "history of freedom" and that Frederic Bastiat's understanding of the main tension in history could be captured by his statement: "Liberty! here at length we have the principle of harmony. Oppression! here we have the principle of dissonance. The struggle of these two powers fills the annals of the human race.”4
Differences in approach. Although it is accurate to think of classical liberalism as "the philosophy of liberty," it is worthwhile to take into account some important differences of opinion among classical liberal thinkers about the approach that should be made to such a philosophy.
F.A. Hayek has been one of the leading figures in classical liberalism in the twentieth century, but he deplores rather than applauds the modern development of the philosophy of liberty. Before Locke in the late 17th century, classical liberalism hardly existed as a systematic view of society. Its development as a comprehensive philosophy awaited Adam Smith and the classical economists. But Hayek objects precisely to this rationalistic comprehensiveness. He would have preferred classical liberalism to have continued to have been founded upon certain legal and institutional forms that had grown up through an organic process over time. In The Constitution of Liberty, he wrote that "the new liberalism that gradually displaced Whiggism came more and more under the influence of the rationalist tendencies of the philosophical radicals and the French tradition. Bentham and his Utilitarians introduced into Britain what had so far been entirely absent -- the desire to remake the whole of her law and institutions on rational principles.”5 To Hayek, the struggle for liberty since ancient times had been almost entirely a struggle for the “Rule of Law” in the traditional sense of that term, which suggests a body of known law that applies equally and that restrains the caprice of government. The Rule of Law had been enhanced by certain American contributions in the eighteenth century -- federalism and a written constitution. Hayek regrets that the Rule of Law wasn't kept as the main principle of a liberal society without an overall rationalistic "thinking through" of the many aspects of society.
This relates both to my earlier discussion of rationalism and to the concept of liberty. Most classical liberals would accept Hayek's definition of liberty in the first chapter of The Constitution of Liberty, where he defined it as being life in a society in which coercion is reduced as much as possible. I don't believe that they would agree that this is the same thing as merely having the Rule of Law, which is the position to which Hayek had gravitated as the book went on, even though they would agree that the Rule of Law is quite important. For myself, I can't join Hayek in his aversion to a rationalistic concept of liberty. It is hard for me to imagine that the political-legal principle of known and equal law will be embraced for very long in a society in which the many other intellectual and social prerequisites of a free society are not cultivated and given a philosophic rationale. Nor, in my opinion, can the human mind resign itself to a limited use of reason after it has lost the religious beliefs that underlay the earlier age of authority and faith. Once these inhibiting beliefs are gone, the full use of the mind becomes one of the highest values. As liberals, we dare not place the philosophy of liberty in conflict with openness of mind. If we look back over the intellectual history of the past two centuries, we can see that it would have been intellectually and politically impossible to continue with an organic approach in an age in which the Left has been using relativism to undermine every aspect of inherited belief. Classical liberal thought had to become rationalistic both because to do so represented an advance in the integrity of man’s mind and in his comprehension, however shaky, of reality; and, because modern thought in general had taken that turn.
Frank H. Knight has also disagreed with the main thrust of classical liberal thought, but on different grounds than Hayek. Knight's objection has been to making liberty the sole desideratum. "The idea that freedom, or any single principle, contains the solution, or the best solution, of social problems is of course unrealistic . . . Exaggeration or over-emphasis of the significance of freedom to the neglect of other principles was the great error of the liberal age, and is partly responsible for the reaction we now witness.”6 Needless to say, an observation that is as pregnant as this one calls into play all aspects of classical liberal theory. What are we to think of it? Personally, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with Knight. Liberty is a human relation; its principle is that coercion should be reduced as much as possible, and the voluntary accentuated. It is a major value in itself. It is also an all-pervasive means that has no incompatability with countless forms of activity that can be pursued consistently with it. Accordingly, it isn't immediately apparent why it should rank as just one of several principles that may be necessary for a full satisfaction of human values. It may be sufficient by itself.
And yet, at least three questions come to mind that have to be considered if we are to judge the sufficiency of liberty as a social nexus. First, there is a question of the prerequisites of liberty. These involve extensive legal, institutional, ethical, spiritual and social preconditions. To the extent that classical liberal and anarcho-capitalist thinkers have driven the philosophy to extremes by denying or by giving insufficient attention to these prerequisites, their projected fulfillment of the broad spectrum of human values will not have seemed sufficiently assured. When I have insisted on a type of classical liberalism that will view itself in all its wholeness, I have been out of tune with a lot of classical liberal writing. A good deal of judgment is involved in deciding how it is best to reduce coercion and accentuate the voluntary. The methods for accomplishing this must be chosen with an eye toward making the system expansively able to accommodate human values. Knight may well have had this in mind when he made his observation.
In the second place, the sufficiency of liberty depends on the soundness of classical liberalism's overall critique of society and of human nature. Liberty can hardly be the appropriate principle to guide society if it is true, for example, that liberty equates with entrapment and exploitation, or if a great many people are incapable of taking care of themselves in a free society. If the classical liberal worldview is incorrect, the libertarian nexus will have to be modified or even abandoned entirely. I don't believe, however, that we have seen a clear demonstration that its postulates about humanity are wrong, even though modern events clearly make them problematical, since there have been significant other variables that have been at work that have obscured the outcome. Nor do I see a better alternative. If human beings are more imperfect than classical liberals have generally thought them to be, the adoption of some type of coercivist social system will almost certainly prove more destructive than the flaws of a free society. I doubt, though, whether a failure of the classical liberal view of man is what Knight had in mind.
It is more likely that he was thinking of the third question, which has to do with whether the market economy and the principle of voluntarism can or will lead to the types of activity that will satisfy all important human wants. This is a potent question that involves more than first meets the eye.
There are many values that most people, including perhaps ourselves, will consider important, but that the market won't be able to serve. Milton Friedman speaks of "neighborhood effects": that there are projects that are highly beneficial but that the market can't perform because it isn't possible or feasible to collect from everyone who benefits. And there are other projects, such as the exploration of space or the discovery of a cure for cancer, that can hardly be approached by the market, because they require immense organization and funding. If we exaggerate the market's role or if we declare everything that is beyond its capacity off-limits for a free society, we don't help the free society, we weaken it. We turn it into an insufficient vehicle for the accomplishment of human objectives.
Still further, there are values that are important to civilization but that the market won’t perform even though it could. It won't perform them because too few people are really interested. I am thinking of the arts, of the best in literature, of learning, and of pure research. At one time, I would have thought it necessary to argue as to these, as virtually all classical liberals do, that "they must depend on voluntary development if they are to find expression; it would be too great a departure from the voluntaristic principle to make their development a function of government." I have changed my mind about this, though, for two reasons: An active artistic, intellectual culture should, in light of the intellectual history of the past two centuries, be considered one of the long-term prerequisites for the maintenance of a free society. Such a culture, in its appropriate relationship to the larger society, has many functions to serve for the free society; but, more immediately, the absence of a solid basis for art and learning is a substantive cause of the force that has most threatened the free society -- the alienation of the intellectual. We are too committed to static, model-building analysis, and too little concerned with an historically-minded understanding, if we won't allow ourselves to satisfy such prerequisites. The second reason is that art, learning, literature and pure research are civilizationally central values in themselves. In the "calculus of values" it seems to me that a free society that makes enough of an exception to its "principle of ‘voluntarism’" to provide support for them is a better rounded, more supportable society than one that does not. I believe that it is better to frame the issue as one of “what does it take to make a free society a fully satisfactory one?” than to frame it entirely in terms of "what are the implications of voluntarism as a consistent principle?" In saying this, I am departing from the method I followed in Emergent Man, since I did adopt the latter way of framing the issue there.
In taking the position I just have, I fully share the concern of those who will say that such a concept is so open-ended that it could become the excuse for so much government activity that the market would cease to play a central role. I would myself prefer a more delineated principle if I knew of one, since I do believe in the importance of principle. However, I also feel that it is misguided to count on verbal formulas rather than overall values as the main line of defense of a free society. A society that is basically committed to the classical liberal worldview and to classical liberal values won't carry the non-market functions to excess; and one that isn't committed will hardly be deterred for long from doing all sorts of things that are inconsistent with a free society because of the existence in our literature of a too-pinched delineated principle. All things considered, I think that a free society is better served by a philosophical recognition of the validity of some important non-market functions.
I would point to an additional dimension, too. In considering the ethic of a free society, I once thought that voluntarism was the only principle that was appropriate. No doubt if we are to be free it must remain a central principle. This is especially true when we speak not just of ethical demands, but also of legally enforceable ones. But further thought has caused me to believe that there are many things that can be done within a purely voluntary contractual format that will violate important human sensibilities. There is a need for warmth of fellow-feeling, for considerateness, and for taking into account the general effects of a course of conduct. It is important to realize that these are things that the voluntary principle would hope for, but that it doesn't necessarily speak to. However, the ethic of freedom is best served if the pursuit of that ethic is informed by the spirit of that broader ethic that we find in the principal religions of humanity. "Do unto others . . ." isn't logically inferable from the principle of voluntarism, but has to be considered an indispensable companion to it if voluntarism is to be enriched and is to deserve the strongest claim to the sympathies of men. This point is particularly important as our civilization slides more and more into the behavioral aberrations of spoiledness and primitiveness. For a population undisciplined by an inner voice of decency, civility and common concern, a "do your own thing" version of libertarianism will be the quickest way to bring the voluntaristic principle into disrepute. It has become more and more necessary to emphasize the responsibilities that accompany freedom.
The observations by Hayek and Knight that I have discussed in the preceding pages had to do with method and emphasis. If we look at the views that were expressed by John Stuart Mill and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, though, we see that they differed from the usual classical liberal position by basing their overall positions on moral assumptions that were either in direct conflict with the concept of liberty or asserted major primacy to it. Anyone who reads Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty finds that his main value consisted of “happiness” or “utility,” which he defined as involving "utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.”7 A vast and amorphous range of values was accordingly picked up by this concept. He stressed the crucial nature of liberty as a prerequisite for the individual’s self-development, but his main emphasis was on intellectual freedom; economic freedom was subordinated to what the society considered expedient. To most classical liberals, this offers far too open-ended a possibility of wandering away from limited government and voluntarism. The way Mill formulated his philosophy is undoubtedly one of the factors that made possible his later flirtation with socialism. I have just indicated that I myself believe a society based on liberal principles should be sufficiently open-ended that additional values are served than those satisfied by the market. I agree with Mill that values "in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being," are the ultimate test of any system; but I would assert more strongly than he did that freedom of action is a major value in itself and that such freedom must be installed as the primary means for the attainment of man’s other ends. My fear of collectivism is, in addition, greater than his, and this allows me far less cavalier an attitude toward economic freedom.
It wasn't until recently that I read Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk. When I did so, I was surprised, because of his importance in the vigorously classical liberal "Austrian School of Economics," to find that he accepted the underlying socialist ethical premise with regard to exploitation. The labor theory of value as applied by the socialist authors Rodbertus and Marx involved a value-judgment that each factor of production should receive the full equivalent of its contribution. For the capitalist to receive any return from the workers' efforts was exploitation per se. The best classical liberal answer to this, in my opinion, is that it is founded on a moral premise that is inappropriate to a free society and that mankind would be better served by a moral premise that would say that each person may morally receive whatever return voluntary contractual relations will give him. This substitutes contract for a static equivalency. It permits the parties to establish their own relationship and drops out the role of an outside observer who would judge the equivalency. The significant thing about Bohm-Bawerk's argument against the labor theory of value is that he didn't deny the validity of the "full return to the factors of production" premise. He accepted that, and argued by way of "confession and avoidance." He attempted to show that each factor actually does receive its true return. The return to the capitalist, he said, is a payment to him for having delayed his own consumption of his resources so that he could pay his workers now rather than later when the sale of the product brings in revenue. Profit is a recompense born out of the “time preference” that men have for immediate consumption and of their consequent willingness to pay someone who bears the burden of waiting.8
"Time preference" is a
valuable economic concept, even though I disagree with Ludwig von Mises'
insistence that it is an a priori rather than an empirical concept. But in itself it would succeed in justifying
only part of the return to capital (assuming the validity of the
factors-of-production moral premise).
Beyond that, it accepts a moral premise that is suited to a status
society but not to a contractual one.
If classical liberalism doesn't assert the moral primacy of the
voluntary nexus, it will remain on the defensive against doctrines that don't
share its values and that have no better claim to metaphysical sanction than it
has (the reader will remember the views I expressed earlier about there being no
such thing as a metaphysical sanction and that all value judgments necessarily
arise out of the preferences and perceptions of people).
The meaning of “liberty.” So far, I have referred to liberty as though the reader and I had settled upon a common definition of it. In discussing such a definition, I won't want to repeat the detailed analysis I made in Emergent Man. But we can't get into the heart of classical liberalism without giving attention to the diverse connotations of "liberty" and to the definition that, for reasons I will mention, I consider most serviceable to classical liberalism.
Certainly the thing not to do is to pick a meaning out of the air as though it were a preordained metaphysical entity. Man isn't "given" meanings in that way; and to treat concepts in that fashion leads to unending dogmatism among people who are making claims that they can't substantiate. In choosing a meaning we will want to stay close to the conventional usage people give to the term "liberty," but at the same time we should arrive at a definition that will be most useful as an intellectual tool. The meaning will be a subordinate part of our total worldview and will be chosen precisely because it promises to be the most serviceable as an expression of that worldview. Classical liberalism wishes to address itself to the central issues that are posed by the human condition. A first step in arriving at the most appropriate meaning is to have in mind what those issues are.
This requires a look at the human condition. If the classical liberal perception of humanity is correct, mankind is well on its way toward satisfying the great run of men's wants -- with one important proviso: that man's relationships with his fellow man are satisfactory. Historically, those relationships have been extremely unsettled; people have been torn in belief and interests since the beginning of time. History tells the story of the conflict, oppression and suffering that this has entailed. The tearing would be a major fact of life regardless of what might be true about religion and ultimate values. But it is especially significant in light of what I consider to be the ultimate human reality: that values spring from people and not from any other source, even though people usually think otherwise. The implication of this is that we can't count on a solution to the tearing that would come from man's progressing toward an ultimate consensus that would be based on the discovery of an underlying religious or metaphysical reality. Instead, mankind will remain multicentered by existential necessity; people will continue to germinate values and perceptions from within their respective cultures, ideologies and individualities.
The question is how a multicentered humanity can get along. If men can coexist and cooperate, they can move on toward the solution of their other needs. It is this that suggests the immense usefulness of a social order that is based on a system of mutual rights. Earlier in this chapter I quoted Herbert Spencer's statement about how liberty is essential to the exercise of the faculties and about how this liberty takes the form of mutual liberty when it is applied to more than one person. The mutuality of the liberty is a condition to its long-run universal acceptability. No one can be expected to remain permanently satisfied with less, and at least we can plausibly hope to inhibit those who strive for more by seeking supremacy over others. From the point of view of each man's respective values, there is security and opportunity in a society in which a broad conciliation of interests has come about through freedom. This is “justified,” in the absence of a metaphysical stamp of validity, from the point of view of each person's own deep commitment to his own values; by the commitment others feel, in turn, to theirs; and by the fellow-feeling, often amounting to a broad identification with humanity at large and even with other generations than one's own, that each person may feel for others that will cause him to want to acknowledge a right in those others, and not just in himself, to live. Accordingly, I think that the ultimate justification for the libertarian principle lies in my own values and in the values of many other people as brought together in a mutually advantageous consensus that is possible because it is based on our respect for each other. It is here that its “legitimacy” lies.
One of the main purposes for this conciliation within freedom is to remove the tearing, since conflict has terrible costs. We should be aware, though, that many thinkers, including many who can't simply be classified as "social Darwinists," have felt that conflict is desirable. To them, it strengthens an otherwise effete humanity, gives expression to selfless impulses and provides the context for heroic striving. To me, though, destructive conflict, as distinguished from a creative competition, seems existentially hollow. When we “see through it,” it appears empty -- a sick show that the misery has robbed of all real nobility. I would suggest that the challenge is to express heroic values in a way that is consistent with the placidity of settled civilization. To those who say that that is impossible, we need to point to the thrill of intellectual achievement, of artistic creation, of productive ingenuity, of athletic accomplishment. These are all "bloodless adventures," in the sense that they don't require the shedding of blood. One of the very real challenges to humanity, and especially to the intellectual community that could easily do a great deal about it if it would, is precisely to make "bourgeois" civilization the plateau from which an untold renaissance of creative activity will blossom. Unless it is true that free men are bound by their natures to be mediocre, there is no reason the problem can't be solved within a free society.
What I have said so far, though, still begs the issue so far as the questions raised by the socialist critique of man are concerned. The perspective taken by the Left denies the usefulness of a system of mutual rights. It doesn't agree that this gives the broad run of people a satisfactory mutuality. Instead, the Left sees a system of mutual rights as involving entrapment for some and exploitive gain for others. (Although by the curious twists and turns of ideological semantics Adolf Hitler was classified as a “rightist,” he expressed the Left's critique quite well when he referred to bourgeois society as "a mutual swindling match.") The socialist feels that there can be no true conciliation within mankind until people are put on a real parity and are assured of its continuation by the state, or the movement, or the revolution, or by a return to man's primordial goodness.
The Left's criticism highlights the fact that the justification for such a concept of "liberty" depends radically upon the soundness of the classical liberal view of human nature and of the situation of individuals within a market economy. If liberty is a social relationship that isn't capable of satisfying the great run of people, it can't be the basis for the conciliation I just mentioned. This wouldn't mean, though, that any other system of conciliation would be sustainable; it may mean that people would be condemned to continuing laceration. If "exploitation" and greed are inherent in freedom, it would be almost inevitable that socialism would also be eaten alive by them. Collectivism calls into play combinations of power that provide much more effective instruments for totalitarian control than we can imagine within the system of dispersed power that is found within a free society. It is no wonder that socialist theory consists so largely of rationalizations to get around these concerns. Socialists argue that the greed they see in capitalism is only the product of the system and not of man himself. They are confident that the collective power that they would create will be able to be kept within the bounds of benevolence -- or at least in line with man's best interests in one form or another, as conceived by the cultural, racial or intellectual predilections of each author. They distinguish away Stalin's enormities as aberrations, and talk themselves into seeing in him no proof of the long-run tendencies of the collectivist principle. Even more significantly, they positively deny the relationship of Hitler to socialist thought. (In this connection, it is interesting that they would readily acknowledge that Proudhon was a major socialist thinker, but they conveniently forget that he was one of the early proponents of the very thing that is thought to seal Hitler's infamy – a program to exterminate the Jews.9 Proudhon's philosophy shows a marriage between one of the milder, more decentralized forms of socialism, in fact, and the atrocious abuse of power.) All of these things show that the Left carries its own strong burden of proof. It has come out very badly in the twentieth century so far as carrying that burden is concerned.
My support for a system of mutual rights is based on my belief that classical liberalism is correct in its perception of man and that socialism is not. But in addition to the need for a broad conciliation of interests within civilized society, I have still other reasons to favor a free society. I would be extremely claustrophobic in a collectivist society even if it weren't totalitarian. Edward Bellamy's socialist model had in mind great personal freedom and even privacy, but I don't anticipate that that is the way even democratic socialism would turn out. We aren't about to see the abolition of the neuroses of the human race, or of the herd-like quality with which people establish moods and fashions, or of the conservatism of vested interests. I would find it spiritually intolerable if any of these were able to press me too closely. Nor can we expect that most creative men would relish seeing their talent so utterly dependent upon politics, where the recognition of talent would be so contingent upon preferment and where there would be so few other outlets. The pressure to conform to the conventional wisdom under the threat of never otherwise being heard exists, of course, in every society; but I would rather take my chances in a market than in a collectivist milieu.
In seeking to serve these
purposes, the definition of "liberty" that I have found most useful
is the one that defines it as "life within a society in which coercion is
reduced as much as possible and in which the voluntary is most
accentuated." This is the
definition that Hayek discussed in detail in The Constitution of Liberty
and that I explored in Emergent Man.
As I go into it further here, I will first want to examine the concept
of "coercion." Then we can
consider why this definition of liberty is arguably more useful than competing
concepts, and can discuss the implications of the definition.
The concept of "coercion." Coercion, it seems to me, is best defined as involving more than just physical force or the threat of force. In a broader sense, it suggests any form of adverse manipulation of one person's alternatives to advance someone else's purposes. The coerced individual's choices are altered detrimentally (from his own point of view) by the placement of penalties on, or obstacles in front of, the other courses of action that have been open to him so that the course of action that is desired by the person doing the coercing is made to appear relatively more desirable. The effect from the point of view of the coerced individual is to diminish his alternatives. It represents an injury to his interests. Coercion is just the opposite of one person's offering another an inducement without diminishing his other alternatives. The effect of an inducement is to enhance, not to injure. A relationship that is based on inducements can be made the basis for a mutually self-fulfilling conciliation of the interests of the individuals who are involved. But in the case of coercion their interests are in conflict, even though one may wind up doing what the other wants.
Coercion can be accomplished by any type of penalty or obstacle, and these don’t have to involve the use of force. To be effective, they merely need to be of enough strength and credibility that the person who is acted upon sees them as reducing the attractiveness of his other alternatives and is caused to see the preferred alternative as best in light of the lessened desirability of the others. "Do business according to my terms or I will cause all of your suppliers to boycott you" can be just as effective as a threat of violence in coercing someone. Because of this, I believe that Ayn Rand's focus on physical force is too narrow. It doesn't encompass the full scope of adverse manipulation and destructive conflict.
Up to this point in the analysis, Hayek's definition of coercion and my own agree. But at this juncture Hayek is careful to exclude a broad area of conduct from his definition. This area pertains to a person's refusal to deal with someone else. Since a "refusal to deal" involves a person's control over his own property or effort, Hayek chooses to say that it shouldn't be thought of as a type of "penalty" that would bring it within the definition of coercion. Hayek makes an exception with regard to this exclusion where the person holds a monopoly over an essential commodity or service. The purpose behind the exclusion and the exception to it is clear: it is to take out of the meaning of coercion a type of conduct that has relatively less adverse effect on others and that is virtually indistinguishable from a person's ordinary liberty to act. Liberty must, if it is to be meaningful, involve considerable control over one's own person and property. Hayek sees that if we want to affirm the right of an individual to direct his own life, subject only to such restraints as are needed to assure an equal right to others, we should hardly condemn as "coercion" almost everything that he might do in controlling his property. When he has made an exception about monopoly control over an essential commodity, he has again been practical in his selection of meanings, since monopoly control involves a substantial ability of the monopolist to penalize the alternatives of others and hence evokes an especially high potential for conflict.
In Emergent Man, though, I chose to include a person's control over his own person and property among the acts that can penalize the alternatives that someone else has. Since I included "refusal to deal" within my definition, I then had to include some qualifications that would address the same practical problems that Hayek faced. I said that such a type of coercion would necessarily have to be considered acceptable in a free society when it is moderate in its effects and when it is exercised by an individual who is pursuing his own otherwise non-coercive activity. I, too, felt that it is inseparable from the very liberty we are trying to affirm. The result was that under my definition we can't say we hope to "eliminate all coercion"; all we can do is to “minimize” the role of coercion by reducing it to the level that is inherent in individual interaction based on each man's control over himself and his property.
The inability under my definition to formulate an absolute will seem to be a disadvantage to those who would like clear-cut verbal formulas from which all else can be deduced. But I frankly see this as an advantage. It frustrates that automatic methodology and causes us to look again and again to the substance of values and means. A second and more important advantage, however, is that it focuses attention on the problem of aggregates in a free society. If we remain aware that even individuals exercise an unavoidable coercive influence in almost everything they do, we are potentially more sensitive to the compounding of coercive potential that arises out of a combination of persons and resources. This isn't to say that such a sensitivity couldn't exist consistently with Hayek's or even some other definition of coercion, but one of the weaknesses of a good deal of classical liberal theory has been precisely in this area. Ayn Rand, for example, adopted the concept that physical force is the main evil. Accordingly, she arrived at a category that is even less inclusive than Hayek's. From there, she moved on to a view that bigness is not a problem in a free society and that anti-trust laws are wrong in principle. For my part, I would have us recognize that combinations, whether in business or in labor, do increase the ability to exercise coercion, usually far beyond what an individual could do alone. This suggests that we should scrutinize each type of aggregate to determine whether it exercises any separable coercive activity that could be eliminated without serious injury to its noncoercive efforts; or whether its coercive impact, if it isn't separable, outweighs its contributions to the voluntary nexus. To Rand, combinations have an almost unchallengeable presumptive validity. To me, they may or may not be valid, depending upon whether their role can be rationalized as consistent with the overall health of a free society. While Ayn Rand opposed anti-trust legislation, I consider it a valuable part of the legal framework of a market economy. Consistently with the classical liberal ideal of the Rule of Law, I would like to see the ambiguities of anti-trust law removed as much as possible (and here I disagree with the school of thought within modern liberalism that favors ambiguities for the sake of enforcement flexibility). I agree with many classical liberals who say that monopoly would be considerably reduced if government could be restrained from granting preferential treatment to some over others. Nevertheless, I don't believe that the theory of a free society is complete without an adequate facing up to the fact that aggregates can develop that close off avenues of free action for others. It simply isn't consistent with a philosophy of freedom, for example, to say that a combination of shipbuilders may effectively bar the entry of an additional competitor into the industry by going to his potential suppliers and telling them that if they sell to him they won't receive any more business from the shipbuilders' group. From one perspective, their boycott of the suppliers can be viewed as the existing shipbuilders’ simply exercising control over their own resources. But from a sounder classical liberal perspective the boycott is an exercise of the coercive potential that has been enlarged precisely by combination. Its effect is to severely inhibit the freedom both of the suppliers and of the person who wants to enter the industry. I would much prefer a definition of terms and a choice of value judgments that will consider such a combination inconsistent with freedom.
We should notice that this overlaps with the question of what the permissible entities are to be. It isn't only the coming together of several separate entities that brings about a powerful combination; the combination can also result from the growth of a single entity. There is nothing in my theory that would suggest that aggregates should have a moral claim to grow to any size their participants may choose. As a part of my concern over the level of coercion in the society, I would have the legal framework permit entities to grow only to the extent that their growth is consistent with overall freedom.
Indeed, the specter of "big business" and “corporate capitalism” has fueled so much of the attack on capitalism that I am inclined to believe that classical liberalism would be well served by removing the attack's plausibility altogether. We could do this by not acknowledging the validity of gigantic entities at all. Exceptions would be called for in industries where there are substantial efficiencies of scale, especially if the industry is vital to national defense. But the general freedom to get big to the point of dominating markets doesn't seem to me to have a strong claim under an appropriate theory of aggregates. If this principle were adopted by classical liberalism itself, one of the more damaging substantive attacks against capitalism would disappear. And even further, the tendency of much twentieth century "liberal" and socialist thought -- such as Theodore Roosevelt's and Herbert Croly's -- to welcome large aggregates precisely because they lend themselves to eventual government control could be frustrated.
So far, I have compared my concept of coercion with Hayek's and Rand's. Still another approach to libertarian theory starts with "private property" as the axiom. It then elaborates the implications of a "purist" system of private ownership. Needless to say, this method will lead to conclusions that will overlap with many that I or Hayek or any other classical liberal will reach, since private property is an integral part of our systems, too. But I have yet to see an adequate theory derived from the property axiom. The systems that I have seen that have been based on the property axiom have been dogmatically deductive and have been associated with the ethical methodology that affirms moral absolutes. I am not prepared to say that a theory couldn't be developed based on a central concept of property that would hold itself open to accommodate flexibly all of the values that must be taken into account. But even if this were done, I don't perceive that it would have advantages that would surpass the approach that Hayek and I have made through the concept of coercion.
Before launching into a discussion
of the various implications of the definition of liberty that I have given, it
is worthwhile to remind the reader that I devoted over three hundred pages to such
an analysis in Emergent Man. My
discussion here won't attempt to be exhaustive, but is intended to be read in
combination with that earlier discussion.
The voluntary nexus. It is a truism, I think, that people must cooperate together if they are to produce on a scale that will surpass that of the pre-Stone Age man. Civilization couldn't exist without cooperation and the division of labor. There are, however, two contrasting principles about how such cooperation can come about: joint effort can result either from coercion or from the giving of mutually beneficial inducements. Because classical liberalism has wanted to negate the first and affirm the second of these, it has sought a society that would be based on voluntary contractual arrangements.10 It was the genius of classical economics to see the immense potential of the contractual nexus. Until then, the market's potential had been denied by those who were persuaded that voluntarism meant chaos. The market economy is a massive implementation of classical liberal values. It is highly productive because it gives free play to the resourcefulness of individuals and spurs on their motivation by involving them in efforts that directly benefit themselves; it leads to an extensive division of labor and specialization because of the existence of markets; it disperses economic power widely over millions of holders rather than concentrating such power in a party, a government or a narrow class; and it distributes goods according to the rewards of an impersonal market that reflect the sum product of the interactions within it. All of this serves quite well the vision of a society of self-reliant self-fulfilling individuals. (This doesn't mean, though, that classical liberalism demands a system of “perfect competition” or “perfect mobility” or “perfect knowledge.” These are analytical tools used by economists that become straw men who are easily knocked down if they are construed, as the Left likes to construe them, as necessities for a satisfactory market.)
The central place that is given to
a voluntary nexus has important implications so far as the morality of market
behavior is concerned. In the history
of ideas, it was commonplace from the time of the ancient Jews through the
Middle Ages and on through current anti-capitalist ideology to apply a morality
of "fair price," "fair profit," "fair wage" or
"fair interest rate." Such a
moral principle was based on religious conceptions or on notions of equivalency
or on views about what was customary.
It is apparent that anyone's idea of "fairness" can easily
differ from the market price or return that is agreed upon by contracting
parties. But classical liberalism must
necessarily take a different approach.
It must affirm as its basic principle that whatever is arrived at
without coercion or fraud is morally acceptable to it, and that it has moral
objections to a critique based on other criteria. Every philosophy, including the philosophy of freedom, supplies
its own moral theory. I have indicated,
and will discuss further in the future, my belief that the contractual nexus
requires certain legal and institutional preconditions under some circumstances
if it is to give expression to the full needs of the parties; and I have argued
that an ethic of fellow-feeling and of considerateness should supplement the
principle of voluntarism; but I would have us be careful that neither of these
aspects draws us very far away from the central principle. Rather, I intend them as enhancing that
principle. I strongly oppose the
ideological tendency of the past century in the United States to have
government interfere with contractual relations to the extent of prescribing
maximum interest rates or profits or minimum wages.
A protected sphere for the individual. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek carried further than I did in Emergent Man the subtleties that are involved in the need for a socio-legal recognition of a protected "private sphere" for the individual. Such a sphere is inherent in the idea of separate individuals who live and act for themselves within a system of mutually coordinated rights. The essential individuality of the person -- in terms of his privacy, reputation and the inviolability of his body and his living space -- must be protected by the community’s ethical and cultural consensus, as well as by the civil and criminal law. The Anglo-Saxon common law, as it developed over the centuries, was occupied almost entirely with defining and enforcing such a protected private sphere.
The content of this private sphere is, as Hayek noted, variable within certain limits. It is impossible to delineate it by exact principles. But in general there must be security for the individual's vital interests, and security may also be extended to those that are simply useful. No doubt his person must be inviolable, except from such punishments as may have to flow from the operation of general laws that apply equally to everyone and that assert the mutual rights of others. Going further, classical liberalism correctly considers the protection of private property a fundamentally important part of the private sphere. This is so because a man's economic relations are intimately a part of his life; they are extensions of his personality and of his life plan. And, too, the individual's dependence upon political authority for his economic existence would be dangerous to the whole pattern of a free society. Private property in a fluid market system is vital as an extension of the person's private sphere and as a dispersal of economic power.
An aspect of the private sphere that hasn't received adequate attention in classical liberal thought is the need for a "commons." If a person is to be free, it is hardly sufficient for him to have the right of decision over his own property, but to have no other places from which he might not be excluded. He can hardly exist without space to move about in and areas he can go to without others having the right to exclude him. Two examples come to mind from my own experience: I recall a time when I tried to find a place for a picnic in the mountains west of Denver. I drove for hours, meeting one “no trespassing” sign after another. Finally I found a curve in the road where the fence didn't quite come up to the road, and this provided space for the picnic. On another occasion, I wanted to get out of my apartment, with its paper-thin walls, to find a place to practice reading aloud a lay sermon that I was to give at the coming Sunday's service of the Universalist Church in Denver. I drove out to a vacant lot and sat in my car reading. But then a police car stopped and I was told to move on (probably because the policeman was concerned that I might be "casing the neighborhood" for a burglary). I drove several more miles out to a country road.
These illustrations involve insignificant instances, but they have caused me to reflect upon the need for common areas for free movement even within a society based on private property. We usually take that access to common areas for granted, as though it were a "free good" or a gift of nature. (An anarcho-capitalist will argue that this need not be, that all such space could be rented from the owner, perhaps in the form of a contractual easement. But it isn't apparent to me how such a system could be made conveniently workable and how it might not in many cases choke off the capacity to live. A social philosophy will remain outside the realm of practicable implementation if it requires that someone almost cease to exist if he cannot afford to pay for such a thing as his physical presence in the community at large, or if for one reason or another an entrepreneur isn't ready to make the access available.)
There is also a category that Milton Friedman has referred to as "neighborhood effects" that relates closely to the matter of a "commons." Certain undertakings benefit everybody, but don't lend themselves to being charged for; or else once they are installed there is hardly any way they can be duplicated by competitors, so that everyone who needs the service either has to use the one that has been installed or go without entirely. In both cases, the market isn’t well suited to meet the needs that are involved. This means that libertarian theory is well advised to recognize these as proper areas for the role of the state. Hayek saw this when he wrote that “there are some kinds of services, such as sanitation or roads, which, once they are provided, are normally sufficient for all who want to use them. The provision of such services has long been a recognized field of public effort, and the right to share in them is an important part of the protected sphere of the individual.” (Emphasis added)
It is significant that we are at a point that relates closely to some of the main theoretical concerns of democratic socialism and of welfare liberalism. We should notice both the overlap and the difference between those philosophies and the appropriate philosophy for classical liberalism.
If the argument can be made, as I just have, that a certain protection and substratum for the individual is a vital component of individual freedom, and that even such a thing as an undivided share of the commons or an equal access to community facilities is a part of the private sphere, then it isn't unreasonable to ask (as democratic socialism does) whether human freedom wouldn't in the same way be well served by a guarantee of the normal means of life. Wouldn't any extension of a person's ability to assert his interests and his talents act to further his freedom? Such thoughts led Hubert Humphrey to ask, "How free is a scientist, if he does not have laboratory equipment?"11 Accordingly, the question invokes the entire conception of liberty held by the Left. This conception declares that liberty is, above all else, "having the means of life." Since the Left's worldview sees entrapment and exploitation as major parts of existence for millions of people, this meaning of "liberty" becomes crucially important. The "private sphere" only becomes really meaningful to the Left when the sphere is extended by outside help from the state or a collective sufficiently to overcome entrapment and exploitation. [Note in 2001: It has certainly been valid to point to this distinction between classical liberalism and the socialist outlook. However, it would now appear that the advent of computers, robots and biotechnology, along with still other labor-saving sciences, threatens, in the not-too-distant future, a vast displacement of labor, resulting either in immense poverty for many or in a polarization of wealth and incomes that is vastly at odds with the classical liberal aspiration for a mainly middle-class society consisting of successful individuals. If that occurs, the market will no longer be serving as a satisfactory milieu for individuals’ and families’ existence, and the difference between the pro-market outlook of the classical liberal and the society-as-provider outlook of the socialist will have to disappear. Erstwhile classical liberals who continue under those circumstances to insist that the individual “look to the free market” for sustenance, or to countenance immense polarities of wealth and income, will be holding to a premise that no longer applies and will thereby be undercutting the philosophy of individual liberty as a whole.]
I agree, of course, that having the means to accomplish his ends, and especially to satisfy the requirements of subsistence (whatever these may be, since they are culturally variable), is of great importance to the individual. Subsistence is needed for his very survival, much less for his liberty; and further means relate to his ability to live effectively. But the question between the philosophies is not whether such means are desirable. No modern philosophy extols the virtue of privation. The question is instead about the social relationships that are to be used in people's obtaining these means. There is the argument over motivation and productivity, and hence over which system is really most able to provide for human wants. But beyond that there is the argument over freedom itself. If in the name of freedom and of an extended private sphere we expand the role of government or of a collective to include the enormous function of providing economically for individuals, what are we to think of the power that we are gathering in government? A classical liberal fears power, so that this is for him a serious question. He isn't ready to suppose, as the socialist almost always does, that the power will be safe because it will be exercised by people who agree with his values. And to provide those means requires cutting into the means of some to provide for others. The goods and services that such a provision calls for don't come out of the sky; they are taken from some through taxation or inflationary financing to be given to others. The enhancement of one person's "freedom" is counterbalanced by a reduction in someone else's. [Note in 2001: These loom as serious questions under the scenario I mentioned in the note at the end of the preceding paragraph. Classical liberals will need to address them in ways that are consistent with the protection of the individual from state power. That won’t be easy, since the admonitions I give in these passages about the dangers of “state-as-provider” are certainly on the mark.]
Classical liberalism can't be prepared to define liberty as "having the means" unless it is willing to abandon the vision of a society in which people go their own way self-reliantly and without dependence on political powers-that-be. Various undertakings do fall within the scope of government consistently with a voluntaristic nexus: the “commons” to a point that cannot feasibly be provided by the market; enterprises that the market can't perform either because of the vast organization or funding they require; services that are outside the market because of their "neighborhood effects"; and at least some areas that involve natural monopoly. But even these have to be kept within limits if they aren't to cause a level of taxation or of inflationary financing that will eat away the substance of the great corpus of private life that it is the purpose of classical liberal society to foster. For most things, the contractual processes of the market have to be the chief reliance. If we don’t agree, as classical liberals don’t, that entrapment and exploitation are legitimate problems in a free society, we will consider the market sufficient when combined with the governmental functions just mentioned.
The type of welfare liberalism that argues for no more than a guaranteed floor that will assure subsistence is, of course, not as far removed from classical liberal thinking as democratic socialism is. Such a liberalism's "floor" differs, though, from the type of floor classical liberalism would provide. I explored this subject in detail in the preceding chapter, where I said that classical liberalism will want to make the assistance less attractive than effort within the market. Although the "floor" is there and can even be thought of as part of the protected private sphere that classical liberalism advocates for the individual, every effort is made to motivate the individual to resume a self-reliant life. Lord Robbins has commented that "we can justify paternalism if it can genuinely be said to be a preparation for freedom," but this connection with a return to self-reliance must be emphasized.12 [Note in 2001: Here again, the premise is that the market will be available as a source of widely-enjoyed wealth. It that ceases to be true, the points made in this paragraph become to that extent inapplicable.]
We shouldn't leave this subject, however, without an additional word. The major tendency within classical liberal thought during the past century has been toward ideological extremes in search for purity of principle. This has led to anarcho-capitalism or to positions near it. And yet, I strongly believe that this is the wrong direction for the philosophy to be taking. The liberty we are talking about requires an entire framework of law, ethics and acculturation. The classical liberal's wholesome fear of government and of socialism shouldn't keep us from favoring a fully workable, rounded system in which the many preconditions and institutions can operate without being unduly cramped. Classical liberalism is seriously damaged if in its defensiveness against socialism it denies itself the chance to put forward a sensibly workable social order. Pointing to Herbert Spencer's opposition even to state-ordered drainage systems and contrasting this with the position of the English Classical tradition, Lord Robbins wrote: "Let me try to indicate what, in my judgment, are the main deficiencies of the system, let us say, of Bastiat or Herbert Spencer [and I would add, in the recent past, of Robert LeFevre, Murray Rothbard or Robert Nozick] . . . First, I would say, that a laissez-faire system thus conceived, enormously underestimates, if it does not entirely ignore, the whole world of desirable state action that may be described as the provision of indiscriminate benefit [or what Milton Friedman calls neighborhood effects]. It is clear that it recognized the necessity for defense and a police force, and in Bastiat there are some references to what he calls the 'common domain (Rivers, Forests, Roads)'. But . . . it is surely clear that the scope of state action in this respect was regarded as very restricted indeed. Personally, I think that, both in regard to the advancement of knowledge and to the general appearance of things, there is still room in the twentieth century for considerable extensions of this kind of state activity."
Robbins'
insight is important at this juncture in American history more than it ever has
been before. The deep cultural
alienation that has been inherent within modern liberalism caused, in
conjunction with certain catalysts, the upheaval during the 1960s that we know
as the "New Left." Modern
liberalism has been badly divided ever since.
There is a possibility that those who are intensely alienated will
continue to go into avowedly socialist and even revolutionary movements. But what direction will those who are not
highly alienated take? What will their
theory of society be? They may stay
with a welfare liberalism, but much of its rationale disappears if the alienation
isn't an ingredient. There is an
opening toward classical liberalism. If
substantial numbers of intellectuals don’t move toward classical liberal
thought, their failure to do so will probably be caused by two faetors: first,
the inability of classical liberalism in its present decimated condition to
articulate its viewpoint prominently; there may be too few classical liberals
to make their voices heard within academia and the media, and many of those who
remain have been cowed too long to articulate anything. Second, classical liberalism won’t be
attractive, except to a few intellectuals who may undergo a sharp doctrinal
conversion, if it is narrowly dogmatic; it won’t seem to meet satisfactorily
the requisites of civilized society and so will be passed over. Because of the latter, I believe that
libertarian philosophy should go out of its way at this time to indicate the
outermost boundaries of the state action that it considers desirable in a free
society.
Private property; the market economy. As a corollary to the private sphere, our definition of liberty implies a system of private property and beyond that of the market economy. I will talk about these economic foundations of classical liberalism in Chapter 10, so it is enough for now to bring to mind only briefly the many ways that private property and the market economy serve classical liberal values.
These are so important to freedom that classical liberalism hardly became possible as a comprehensive theory of society until the theory of the market economy demonstrated the harmony of the market system -- that it wasn't the chaos that Mercantilism thought it would be. Some of the advantages of the market to classical liberalism are:
. The market means, in effect, that an infinite variety of productive activity can be carried on within a voluntary nexus.
. Immense productivity for the satisfaction of human wants results from the free play it gives to the resourcefulness of individuals and from the heightened motivation people feel when they are acting for ends that directly benefit themselves.
. Specialization and a wide division of labor come about through the interplay within the market. In turn, these enhance the productivity of the participants.
. Goods and services are distributed according to the demand of an impersonal market that reflects the sum product of the free interactions within it.
. Finally, private property and the market involve a wide dispersion of economic power. The means of life are in many rather than a few hands. This reduces significantly the potential for tyranny. Lord Robbins expressed a characteristic classical liberal view when he wrote that "the concentration of property under general collectivism must eventually be inimical to freedom . . . If freedom is to be preserved and progress assured, we must look . . . to a system in which there is truly independent initiative and truly dispersed power."
Because of these contributions, private property and the market take their place as constituent elements in the concept of freedom itself. They represent reductions of coercion and accentuations of the voluntary.
Denial of the entrapment and exploitation theories. Socialist authors consider the entire classical liberal concept of liberty unsound. They believe a great many people are trapped by circumstances and are exploited in a society that leaves them to their own devices. The socialist contentions underscore the fact that classical liberalism’s concept of liberty is closely tied to the classical liberal view of human capability. In my book on the Left I will discuss in detail the differences among the ideologies about entrapment and exploitation, although I have referred to those differences less exhaustively already in Chapter 7 of the present book and Chapter 6 of Understanding the Modern Predicament. In the discussion that follows, I will limit myself to a few words about the sources of the opposing perspectives.
There is a genuine problem relating to human capability. The rise of the “common man” during the past two centuries has made his capabilities, both in public and private life, an increasingly significant factor. And those capabilities have, at best, been problematical. Even now, near the end of the twentieth century, average humanity even in Europe and America has yet to "prove itself." This is something that I discussed in the preceding volume in connection with the insights of Jose Ortega y Gasset. Because I felt the necessity of taking a long-term perspective of it, I devoted considerable attention to contemporary man's place on the evolutionary ladder. I stressed the chronic immaturity of the human race at all times since the beginning of written history a few thousand years ago. Mine is, accordingly, a mixed view of human nature that neither denies man's potential nor asserts that he has arrived at the highest level. And it is the man who is neither totally pessimistic nor utopian whose philosophical premises tend to lead him to the classical liberal outlook. People are capable enough to be free, but not to wield enormous power over each other. Still, the issue is up in the air; it certainly isn't settled. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who remarked at the end of the Philadelphia convention that "we have given you a republic -- if you can keep it." This observation recognizes the degree to which such a thing is problematical. The same shakiness can be repeated today about the welfare state and democratic socialism: "We have given you a benevolent paternalism -- if you can keep it."
There is more to the debate though than is to be found in the substant:ive issue. For tactical as well as substantive reasons, the intellectuals of the Left have asserted that enormous numbers of people are trapped and exploited. This assertion is part of the intellectual's ideological, political alliance with the "have-nots." If the intellectual is to champion the down-and-outer against the acting man of commerce and industry, he will put forward a theory that will relieve the have-not of any imputation of fault and will place the blame for his misfortune directly on the shoulders of the intellectual's rival, the businessman. So long as this tactical necessity operates in the world of ideology and, through it, of government policy, we can't make a true assessment of how amenable the average person really is to liberty. We aren't getting a direct reading, since the intellectuals' bias colors the entire social scene, the moral tone of modern life and even our perception of human well-being. Time may show that people really need paternalism, but we won’t know definitely until the average person is able to make that choice for himself without the overweening solicitude of an intellectual culture that itself has interests that bind it to the view that the average person is incapable. Even if men prove incapable, though, so that entrapment and exploitation are actually their lot, I am at a loss to know what good alternative there is to a free society. For such a humanity, people are sheep who are merely standing ready for the wolves. A kind tutelage would in that case be desirable; but where is the elite that is fitted to guarantee it?
The Role of Culture and Ethics
For many twentieth century points of view, it has been commonplace to attack the ethical and cultural foundations of middle class society. This has been true of some aspects of Burkean thought and has been overwhelmingly true with regard to the Left. In the 1960s the hostility was picked up even by young libertarians who, as a part of their generation, had absorbed many of the premises underlying the New Left. The alienation hasn't simply been against mediocrity, as mediocrity arises from extroverted culture and from the “revolt of the masses” described by Ortega. Beyond that it has been an attack on precisely the strong points within the so-called “bourgeois” values. Not just the worst, but even the best attributes of modern society have been undermined. Bourgeois strengths stand in the way of the worldviews and social prescriptions advocated by the anti-capitalist ideologies.
A free society, in the classical liberal sense, depends very profoundly upon ethical norms and a whole fabric of acculturated patterns. (The latter are belittled relativistically as “arbitrary social structurings” by the New Left and by much of the feminist movement.) In a society in which the interaction of self-reliant individuals is the ideal, the overall tone of life has to honor self-reliance and the various virtues associated with it. These values need to inhere in the individual, as if from birth. They must also become joined with values that stress respect for the rights of others and create a sense of civic obligation. A society that emphasizes a private sphere for the individual can't rely basically on law to protect the interests that make up that sphere. If every trespass, every libel, every breach of privacy had to be enforced by a lawsuit or by the police, the private sphere would exist only mockingly -- as an unaccomplished dream. Instead, the society must rely on the ubiquitous observance of such values by the great majority of citizens, whose conduct will only rarely make coercive enforcement by the state necessary. This is essential if the values are to be effective in practice; and it is also fundamental if the power of government is to be kept at the minimal level that classical liberals prefer. In the economic area, the contractual nexus and private property can hardly work without a high degree of dependability that contracts will be carried out and that property rights will be respected.
Classical liberal thinkers have repeatedly emphasized this need for socially inculcated norms. Herbert Spencer expressed a keen sense of the connection between ethics and the state when he wrote that "the diminution of external restraint can take place only at the same rate as the increase of internal restraint. Conduct has to be ruled either from without or from within . . . Now the chief faculty of self-rule being the moral sense, the degree of freedom in their institutions which any given people can bear, will be proportionate to the diffusion of this moral sense among them." Wilhelm von Humboldt spoke of “the feeling of morality" as "the mainstay of the security of the citizens in a State.”13 It would be a mistake to interpret this as a simple harking back to a principle out of Burkean conservatism, since civilized behavior is as essential to a voluntaristic society as it ever was to medieval life. We see this from Adam Smith's observation that "without (a) sacred regard to general rules, there is no man whose conduct can be much depended upon. It is this which constitutes the most essential difference between a man of principle and honour and a worthless fellow . . . Upon the tolerable observance of these duties depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with reverence for those important rules of conduct.”14 Smith didn't think of these norms through the eye of a cultural relativism as just “bourgeois” norms; they weren't to be debunked by pigeon-holing them in that way; they were standards upon which the "very existence of human society" rested. Wilhelm Roepke said that his classical liberalism "implies the existence of a society in which certain fundamentals are respected and color the whole network of social relationships: individual effort and responsibility, absolute norms and values, independence based on ownership, prudence and daring, calculating and saving, responsibility for planning ones own life, proper coherence with the community, family feeling, a sense of tradition and the succession of generations combined with an open-minded view of the present and the future, proper tension between individual and community, firm moral obligation, respect for the value of money, the courage to grapple on one's own with life and its uncertainties, a sense of the natural order of things and a firm scale of values.15 This is quite a list; and it is apparent how damaging the attacks on such values can be if in fact these values, as I believe them to be, are as important as Roepke says they are.
Such norms are needed to lend support to every aspect of classical liberal society. For example, we can cite John Stuart Mill's very legitimate concern in favor of an ethic against parents' having more children than they can foreseeably support. "Every one has a right to live. We will suppose this granted," Mill wrote in his Principles of Political Economy. "But no one has a right to bring creatures into life, to be supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last.”16 In On Liberty he wrote: "To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime." In another area -- that of economic life -- there is the feeling that ethics should underlie all market transactions, keeping the ethical denominator high. Cobden wasn't always appreciated for stressing this, as we can see from Morley's passage that says that "Cobden . . . thus strove to diffuse the notion of moral responsibility in connexion with the use of capital . . . The City resented the intrusion of irrelevancies of right and wrong into the region of scrip, premium, and speculative percentage." Cobden wrote that "I was told that a man had a right to lend his money without inquiring what it was wanted for. But if he knew it was wanted for a vile purpose had he a right of so lending it? I put this question to the City man: -- 'Somebody asks you to lend money to build houses with, and you know it is wanted for the purpose of building infamous houses: would you be justified in lending the money?' He replied, 'I would.' I rejoined, ‘then I am not going to argue with you -- you are a man for the police magistrate to look after; for if you would lend money to build infamous houses, you would very likely keep one yourself, if you could get ten per cent by it.’”
It isn't easy to elevate the ethical denominator of a society above simply what the law requires, but a free society is well served by doing so. It is especially difficult in an age, such as our own, that is essentially secular, is hedonistic in its day-to-day preoccupations, involves action by the average "mass man" of Ortega's description, and that elevates "getting on" to a central value in the extroverted man's scheme of things. The inability of American society to have an intellectual culture that is supportive of "middle class values" (in the best sense) has been particularly harmful in the twentieth century. Many elements are needed, but one of the foremost is an overwhelming intellectual and cultural consensus in support of the decencies and self-reliant virtues.
Over the years, I have pondered -- sometimes I have agonized over -- the very apparent ethical mediocrity of the average "practical man." I have come to think in terms of the "milieu of the practical realist." This is a milieu that involves a thorough preoccupation with practical matters, a lack of sensitivity, and considerable vitality. Such a person "gets the job done," although without much sensibility about how, and gains respect and rewards from doing so. This isn't to say that he will ordinarily let himself fall below the “common denominator” of means that men such as himself are using. But a higher standard will appear to him "naive" and perverse. He is thoroughly convinced of the rightness of his expediency. One consequence of his being so convinced of the justification for his own cleverness and mastery of means is that he puts up the strictest resistance to the moral compunctions of others. Morality, when it occurs, doesn't fall on a sterile plain, but into a patch of thorns where it has to struggle to survive against those who militantly assert the prerogatives of mediocrity. One of the hardest things for a decent man to understand is that mediocrity is almost never passive, as a lack of experience with it would cause us to suppose it to be; it is usually militant on behalf of its own numerical strength and its own view of things. Unless he understands this, a person of moral scruple can begin to doubt his own values and even to feel a sense of guilt for holding them. Most assuredly the milieu tests his character. I recall Thucydides' observation during the war between Athens and Sparta: "A victory won by treachery gave one a title for superior intelligence. And indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simple-mindedness honesty."18
The case is by no means all in favor of the man with scruples and against the practical realist. The latter is in the "give and take" for all it is worth; he is often a "doer" with lots of energy. We can try to raise the common denominator that determines his behavior, but we needn't overlook the contribution he makes to productivity.
In considering the factors that influence the level of the common denominator, I have found that they are quite numerous. I won't be able to devote the space that would be necessary to elaborate on them, but it is worthwhile to get a feel for what they entail:.
. Acculturated spiritual and religious attitudes, and established mores. A more or less minor example would be the effort by the American Cancer Society to create an anti-smoking ethic by commercials on television. The Society has been attempting to create a socially-enforced standard.
. Attitudes in the intellectual community. When we stop to think that these often come slowly to pervade the whole climate of opinion within a community, they take on a significance that we might not otherwise appreciate. Intellectual attitudes operate over a long period and are ultimately very influential.
. The legal framework. It is often said that "law can't legislate morals," but this overlooks the interaction between law and morals. The courts and legislatures are by far the most active and continuous instruments in a secular society for examining conduct and making formal judgments about it. In doing this they by no means act independently of other factors, but in many instances it is the law that refines and articulates our moral judgments. Law can't differ too widely from the behavior that the community at large accepts, or it will itself run into difficulties. But just the same, a change in the law will often affect the common denominator.
. Institutionalized professional norms, such as the ethical codes of the American Bar Association and of the National Association of Realtors. These interact with the legal and regulatory systems, which can give them considerable force. In part, they consist of high-minded ideals of public service. It must be kept in mind, though, that codes of ethics have also very often served as the means for the restriction of competition within a profession or industry.
. The strength or weakness of the family as an institution.
. The economic situation. It is interesting that differing conditions can evoke dual responses: affluence minimizes the anti-social behavior that originates out of need, but increases the behavioral manifestations that accompany spoiledness; poverty reverses these.
. Accepted cosmic beliefs. An example of these would be apparent if people believed deeply that unethical behavior would cause them to be sent to hell, and that hell were very real. These beliefs would, by themselves, impose a stern discipline; and the lack of such beliefs releases those pressures.
. Whether honesty actually pays. If it were true that overall self-interest, in the short-run, were served by honesty, this would be a powerful stimulus on behalf of ethics. It seems to me that it is naive, though, for an ethics professor to argue that honesty always pays. Whether it does depends upon the situation.
. Whether the market is personal or impersonal. The way in which people deal with each other influences the denominator, but in a direction that isn't always clear. It is commonplace today to say that the impersonal nature of mass dealings lends itself to insensitive corner-cutting. This is true, at least as to firms that aren't trying to establish a permanent reputation for dependability; but I think we should remember back, too, to such fraudulent person-to-person dealings as told about in Huckleberry Finn. A personalized market had its own kinds of fraud.
. The technical context and the quality of information available. I think of this as a major factor, since the common denominator depends quite a lot on the knowledge, information and techniques that are available. For example, the development of inexpensive automotive diagnostic tests using electronic equipment offers a possibility, which otherwise might never have occurred, of raising the ability of the competitors in the used car business to be ethical. It might now be possible to grade cars and sell them at prices that are based on reliable information about their condition. In a market that has lacked that information, it has necessarily been very difficult for any one competitor to make a practice of disclosing adverse factors about his cars. Although he might gain to the extent his reputation for honesty spread, most practical men wouldn't take the risk of losing a great many sales.
Undoubtedly, there are many
others. There is no one source, easily
manipulable, for the ethical denominator.
To me, then, this lends even more importance to the seamless web of
factors that go together to make up a civilized order. The fact that the many delicate nuances of
this web have been under heavy attack from both the cultural vulgarity and
intellectual sophistries of our time is, needless to say, a portentous evil. All of those nuances are important to maintaining
an acceptable level of behavior.
Social enforcement of an ethical code. In the twentieth century, one of the main issues relating to ethics has had to do with whether norms should be socially enforced. We have recently adopted a laissez-faire attitude about the behavior of others that would have been shocking to our grandparents. More and more, we have backed off of ethical controls. Peers, institutions, and often even parents have come to take a neutral stance, remaining non-judgmental and certainly giving up the role of in loco parentis. A controversy that has gotten some attention in the newspapers while I have been writing this chapter has been whether children in their early teens should be given birth control devices by the public health department without the department's consulting the children's parents. The expediency of giving them the devices is obvious, and it is hoped that a "constructive relationship" with the children will produce better results than moral condemnation can. But at the same time such an attitude overlooks the delicate fabric of civilized values relating to morality and to the family that themselves have the highest long-term instrumental value. Such values rarely seem to weigh heavily in comparison to the short-term "solve the problem now" sort of remedies that are invoked by what we might call the "constructive realist" point of view. In large measure, we have lost our perception of the usefulness of a socially-enforced moral tone. We accept the benefits of ad hoc expediency, and overlook the need to maintain a behavioral denominator. Without an acceptable denominator, there is little to stop unrestrained hedonistic conduct on the part of the more irresponsible members of society. The teenagers involved in the birth control issue are examples of an aggravated social problem.
Classical liberals have usually thought of morality as involving a code. They have backed up this code by favoring the social enforcement of ethics through the ubiquitous influences and pressures of family, peers and the larger community. John Stuart Mill commented about "how large a portion of the motives which induce the generality of men to take care even of their own interest, is derived from regard for opinion -- from the expectation of being disliked or despised for not doing it." Adam Smith said that "there is scarce any man . . . who by discipline, education, and example, may not be so impressed with a regard to general rules, as to act upon almost every occasion with tolerable decency." Thomas Macaulay went contrary to our twentieth century tendencies when he wrote, with regard to literature, that "morality is deeply interested in this -- that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in constant connexion with what is attractive.”19 When he said this, he was wanting to reenforce civilized values, not defend prudery. He made this clear when, as a counterweight, he added that "the virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian virtue -- a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all spirited exertion -- not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating." Lord Robbins has added his voice in support of an ethical code: "Freedom in society does not mean freedom to do just anything regardless of the effect on others, but rather freedom within a code of rules designed to eliminate disharmonies." And John Howard, while president of Rockford College, said that "the manners and mores, the informal standards of conduct which a society develops, may be just as important for maintaining a civilized society as those acts which the society has seen fit to govern by legislation. These informal codes depend upon a wide consensus . . . .”2O
Needless to say, the idea of socially-enforced codes of behavior has been attacked repeatedly in modern thought. The theologian Paul Tillich expressed a point of view that made the moral precept immanent (i.e., indwelling) within the individual (which, of course, it must be even if it is also enforced by others) and made this the basis for denying the value of ethical codes. Both aspects of his position are apparent in his statement that "a moral act is not an act of obedience to an external law, human or divine. It is the inner law of our true being, of our essential or created nature, which demands that we actualize what follows from it. And the antimoral act is not the transgression of one or several precisely circumscribed commands, but an act that contradicts the self-realization of the person as a person and drives toward disintegration.”21 A similar philosophy was held by Joseph Fletcher, the reputed father of "situation ethics." Fletcher made “love” the guiding principle for an immanent ethic. "If the act is loving," he wrote, "it is good and therefore right." A commentator on his ethic has written that he "presses for what might be labeled a 'love-morality' as opposed to a 'code-morality.’”22
This sort of ethic is a natural offshoot of the type of relativism that we have found so familiar. It bears a strong relationship both to the attitudes of modern science and to the tactical needs of the Left, which has sought intellectual weapons to use in undercutting bourgeois values. The reader should especially notice the aspect of the above quotations that has to do with opposing codes. I believe that what this “morality” opposes is probably more important to it than what it favors.
I wouldn't deny that morality must be indwelling. It also has to be circumstantially variable. What is at issue is whether it is also important for it to represent a consensus that will be socially enforced. For my part, I don’t think that a society that hopes to implement classical liberal values would be well served by having each individual formulate his or her own personal ethic. Such an approach expects each person to be a philosoher king. It also makes the person a constant judge "in his own case." Accordingly, it contradicts the astute observation about human nature that I quoted from John Stuart Mill approximately two pages ago. If we want a really workable reenforcement of the behavior that is needed for self-reliance and for respect for the rights of others, we will do well not to forfeit the role of parents, peers, churches, schools, institutions, art and literature in inculcating and insisting on socially acceptable behavior.
In The Psychology of
Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden demonstrated how far the “objectivism”
endorsed by him and by Ayn Rand differs from a sound classical liberalism when
he opposed a moral code. He spoke
disparagingly of a “conventional social metaphysician” -- by which he meant
anyone who has the substance of his life defined for him by the standard ways
of his community. "Faced with the
question, 'What am I to do with my life?' or 'What will make me happy?' -- the Conventional social metaphysician seeks
the answer,” Branden said, "among the standard values of his culture: respectability,
financial success, marriage, family, professional competence, prestige, etc." Later, he referred to "an abstraction
called ‘morality,’ which he argued is "a residue of an older, religious
way of thinking about morality."
This, in turn, is "entirely incompatible with the nature and spirit
of the Objectivist ethics.”23
Rand and Branden deny the need for conformity to socially-approved behavioral norms for other reasons, of course, than do Fletcher and Tillich. The more I have read Objectivist writings, the more I have become persuaded that the view of life held by Rand and Branden is only superficially related to the individualistic nexus that has been favored by most classical liberals. Its origins are at least as much in the "noble outlaw" that was exalted by the "Storm and Stress" movement in early nineteenth century Germany and later found expression in Nietzsche. I didn't realize this until I read Rand's play The Night of January 16th, in which the hero is hardly comparable to the creative master-builders in her later novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I anticipate that her more impressionable young followers will think that I am doing her an injustice by reaching this conclusion, but I believe that they should ask themselves why it is that Ayn Rand deals out only the most miserable eventual fate to the secondary heroes in Atlas Shrugged. She hasn't been concerned to paint the face of a society in which even the finest type of average man can have a place. Galt's Gulch is reserved only for the truly heroic. This is acceptable poetic license in a novel in which her purpose may be to point the way toward the highest nobility of which people are capable, but when it leads to conclusions such as those that I have just quoted from Branden and to the type of hero whom she acclaimed in her play we come to see that what she most fundamentally seeks is the Superman -- not a society of millions of self-reliant, albeit in most cases average, people who live their lives amidst the decencies of responsibility and civic virtue. Her social vision is at odds with this; and hence it is at odds, in my opinion, with a society's general implementation of liberty. I say this without wanting to detract in any way from the magnificent vista she paints of the human potential.
It is worthwhile to close this discussion of libertarian ethics by pointing out again that classical liberalism hasn't been ideally represented during the century in which it has been on the defensive. It should be a reforming creed (and in this regard Ayn Rand's heroic ethic involves much that is desirable for a truly meaningful classical liberalism). Our contemporaries hardly recognize classical liberalism as a philosophy with a moral premise, much less an ennobling feature. They tend to see it almost entirely as the rationalization of vested interests. This is so for several reasons: because the philosophy's friends have been preoccupied with the apologetics of defense, often in a doctrinaire way; because the society at large has held its principles with less and less commitment and inspiration; and because the philosophy's enemies haven't been inclined, because of their own perceptions, to see it as a respectable alternative to their own viewpoint.
The Role of the Family and the Sexes
I have found surprisingly little in classical liberal writing on the role of the family and the sexes in a free society. This isn't because the subject lacks importance to classical liberalism. The omission follows far more, I think, from the fact that libertarian thinkers have been preoccupied with issues of economics and government, and from the additional fact that it has been possible to take the family virtually as a given.
The few references I have found have been divided. Wilhelm von Humboldt expressed a basic classical liberal premise when he said, with regard to state intervention into the child-rearing function, that "the State must see that the parents strictly fulfill their duty towards their children, that is, to fit them, as far as their situation allows, to choose a plan of life of their own . . . The State’s object must be restricted to this; and every attempt to bring about positive ends in this connection -- such as, for example, to encourage a particular development of the children’s faculties -- lies outside the limits of its activity.” This places strong reliance on the family for one of humanity's more significant activities.
In like fashion, Herbert Hoover was doing more than indulging in a politician's homilies when, in.his book The Challenge to Liberty, he wrote that "the unit of American life is the family and the home. Through it vibrates every hope of the future. It is the economic unit as well as the moral and spiritual unit. But it is more than this. It is the beginning of self-government. It is the throne of our highest ideals.