[This is Chapter Seven of Murphey’s book Modern Social and Political Philosophies: Burkean Conservatism and Classical Liberalism.]
Chapter 7
SOME VIEWS ABOUT
The classical liberal perception of "human nature.” Within itself, each social philosophy has arrived at an overall view of what most of us would call "human nature." This is an assessment of humanity that necessarily is central to the “worldview” (what the Gemans have called the Weltanschauung) of the philosophy.
It is not difficult to see how the "doctrine of human depravity" which is an integral part of the Burkean worldview ties in closely with the Burkean's desire for a strong religion, a hierarchical organization of society and a powerful state. These are considered necessary if mankind is to avoid a chaos created by unbridled passion and will.
Rousseau, on the other hand, saw human nature as having been simple, group-directed and non-competitive until it was warped out of shape by civilization, private property and a predatory spirit. His perception of human nature has served as the basis for an immense amount of leftist thought since the early eighteenth century. We see this view in the anarchist vision that runs through so much socialist thought. It underlies the eventual "classless society" that makes up the final stage in the Marxian dialectic; and it is basic to the utopia that was proposed in the 1960s by the New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse.
For his part, the classical liberal usually sees human nature as mixed. To him, it involves a combination of good and evil, capability and incapability. Since mankind's condition is mixed, it isn't clearly resolved toward either an optimistic or a pessimistic pole. My theme in Understanding the Modern Predicament that stressed the “cosmic immaturity” of mankind is an example of this perspective.
The result of a mixed view of mankind is that the classical liberal will seek a balance between the centrifugal and the centripetal forces in society. He will want an interaction of liberty and order. He will want neither to sit hard upon mankind nor to be so permissive that people feel no restraint. Herbert Hoover expressed this perspective in his book The Challenge to Liberty when he said that "if we examine the characteristics of human nature and human behavior we find (that) . . . there are such evil instincts and impulses as shiftlessness, envy, hate, malice, fear, over-pugnacity, greed, and will to destruction . . . There are the selfish instincts and impulses of self-preservation, acquisitiveness, curiosity, rivalry, ambition, desire for self-expression, for adulation, for power. There are the altruistic instincts of courage, love and fealty to family and to country; of pity, of kindness and generosity; of love of liberty and of justice; the desire to work and construct, for expression of creative faculties; the impulse to serve the community and nation; and with these also hope, faith, and the mystical yearning for spiritual things. All these instincts and qualities vary in proportion in every individual and their proportions are modified by intelligence, ability and physical vigor. They are further modified by education, by moral and spiritual training, by the vast fund of human experience." He readily tied this to his perception of the need for individual freedom when he wrote that "a free people maintains as many potential centers of enterprise, leadership, and intellectual and spiritual progress as there are individuals. We might as well talk of abolishing the sun's rays if we would secure our food, as to talk of abolishing individualism as a basis of successful society.”1
This same view of man appears in Milton Friedman's comment that "the liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings,”2 and in John Van Sickle's statement that "man is an imperfect creature; a mixture of saint and sinner; sometimes bold, sometimes timid; at one moment unbelievably generous, at another incredibly ruthless; sometimes rational, at other times naively credulous; a believer in myths and miracles.”3 I don't mean to suggest that all classical liberals fully agree on their assessment of mankind. Some are optimistic, some pessimistic; but to the extent someone becomes totally optimistic (about human reason, for example) he tends to gravitate toward anarcho-capitalism and away from classical liberalism; and to the extent he becomes totally pessimistic he tends to move toward the Burkean worldview.
It is worth noticing that the classical liberal doesn't share in some prevailing notions that have in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries emanated from the Left's worldview. The Left sees large numbers of people as entrapped within their environments, inert and immobilized while awaiting help from outside themselves. The classical liberal thoroughly disagrees with this imputation of inertia and entrapment. The Left also adheres quite often to a cultural and ethical relativism that denies the desirability of norms and asserts the value of a permissive view of life. This relativism is a result of several factors within the Left: its alliance with the have-nots, its desire to have an intellectual cutting tool in its opposition to bourgeois society, and its close association intellectually with the atmosphere of modern science. In contrast, classical liberalism asserts the need for norms as a vital part of a free society. The thinkers within it who embrace a relativistic perspective do so in a way that differs significantly from the Left's use of relativism. They don't make it tantamount to the undercutting of social structures and norms that they consider serviceable to a free society.
Much of the Left also opts for a deterministic view of man, and tries to deny or skip over his volitional nature. This is evident in Marx, in Watson and in B. F. Skinner, to name a few. It would, on the contrary, be a rare classical liberal who would denigrate human personality this way. There is a profound incompatibility between such a view of man and the classical liberal's aspiration for the ennoblement of each individual. Without being too "tongue in cheek," we could say that the Left's infatuation with determinism is a "conditioned reflex" that arises out of (1) the presumptuous elitism of an intellectual group that considers itself qualified to remold mankind (as per Skinner), and (2) the downplaying of energetic life that is a predictable result of the Left's alliance with the have-not (a type of man who isn't especially flattered if a philosophy honors the potential of mankind for achievement). Because the classical liberal shares in neither of these root causes, he isn't predisposed to a deterministic view.
Capability in private life. In Chapter 6 of Understanding the Modern Predicament I discussed the implications that man's continuing immaturity has for classical liberal thought. Although I will discuss some of the same points in what follows, I will refrain from repeating everything I said there.
Important aspects of the classical liberal view about human capability can be highlighted by comparing its view with the Left's on what the Burkean calls "the environmentalist assumption." To the Burkean, a person's environment (i.e., his circumstances) is considerably less important in its influence upon him than is the person's relationship to God. The Burkean considers both the Left and classical liberalism, as types of rationalistic and secular thought, to share an assumption that people are mainly, if not entirely, the creatures of the environmental influences upon them. [Note in 2003: This use of the words “environment” and “environmentalism” is very different from the use those terms have come to have as relating to the ecology movement. The reader here needs simply to remember that I am referring simply to “the person’s total circumstances.”]
This is no doubt correct, so far as it goes, since environmentalism will tend to be the viewpoint of any secular philosophy. It is no coincidence that it was John Locke -- one of the first and main-classical liberal thinkers -- who postulated that men begin life as a "tabula rasa,” i.e., a clean slate, upon which experience writes. A thorough-going commitment to environmentalism is difficult at a time such as our own when genetic investigations are receiving considerable attention and when there is so much instinct-theory coming from the anthropological studies of such men as Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris. But any secularist will certainly be inclined to say that at the very least the environment has a major impact on the individual and on mankind in general.
But I would point out that classical liberalism and the Left are in sharp disagreement about the application of the environmentalist perspective. They are divided so sharply, in fact, that considerable insight can be gained into each philosophy by understanding its views on this point.
First off, they disagree about the amount of energy and self-starting motivation most individuals bring to life. If we use a simple form of "input-output" theory as the basis for an illustration, we can say that the question is whether the "black box" itself (which would represent the individual) contributes anything to the process, or whether the "outputs" are entirely the product of the "inputs" into the box. Even though we will notice a contradictory position by it in a moment, the Left tends strongly to see the individual's situation and behavior as determined by the environmental inputs. The classical liberal, on the other hand, feels that the individual isn't purely a passive receptor -- but instead contributes significantly to the process by his own volition, intelligence and energy. He doesn’t hold to determinism, either of “nature” (genetics) or of “nurture” (the person’s environment). To the Left, the individual is inert, trapped and exploited; to the classical liberal, he is an active manipulator of life in his own right. I recognize that this difference could just be one of degree; but innumerable conversations over the years have convinced me that the gulf is actually quite wide. A polarization of viewpoint on it has occurred between the ideologies.
[An illustration went in here in the published original to present the differing viewpoints visually. In the present version, the verbal description takes its place.]
As a parenthesis, it is worthwhile to notice that the Left's imputation of inertia to so much of humanity contradicts its faith in Rousseau's view that people are spontaneously creative, if only other people don't put barriers in their way by discouragements, frustrations and sources of boredom. Rousseau's perspective appears in Emile, his book on education, which has been the foundation for the modern “progressive” and “unstructured” philosophy of education. Despite the qualification I am about to express, Rousseau himself and his many followers seem basically to assume a worthwhile creativity and vigor in the absence of direction, content and norms. (The qualification is that in Emile there was a single adult who devoted countless hours to manipulating the child's environment so that he would actually learn valuable lessons from his experiences. In such a one-on-one teaching situation, there isn't really an absence of content. What is missing is more a verbalization of the content. There is a reliance on the non-verbal. It translates into a denial of content when the assumption of an intensive one-on-one relationship is dropped and an attempt is made to extend the non-verbalizing method to the ordinary classroom situation. There, there can be no comprehensive manipulation of the child's environment in the way Rousseau envisioned. His method was divorecd from practical.application, since adults could not possibly devote the attention to children that he called for.) Rousseau’s extrapolated method leads into the Left's moral relativism and permissiveness.
But all of this is contradicted
when the Left comes to assess, for example, the ability of an unemployed
The argument between classical liberalism and the Left over how much energy and intelligence the individual brings to life can hardly be considered, however, separately from two other points. The first is one that is often overlooked in a discussion of these issues. The critic of classical liberalism argues that "you are heartlessly demanding that the individual 'pull himself up by his bootstraps.’” He believes the classical liberal is expecting the individual to do it all by himself, entirely on his own motion. But that is a mistaken assessment of what the classical liberal is saying. It is true, as we have just seen, that the classical liberal does posit a meaningful amount of energy in the individual. But when an individual pulls on his own "bootstraps" in a classical liberal society, he is hardly doing it entirely on his own. We shouldn't overlook that in a free society a social consensus on an ethic of self-reliance, responsibility, effort and initiative is precisely a part of the individual's social environment. From the vantage point of the individual, such a consensus, which is impressed upon him from birth by his parents, school, church and peers, is a major part of his environment. He doesn't produce it, but is led by it to exercise his own faculties.
Whether such an ethical consensus is to be maintained as a vital part of each person's environment -- i.e., as one of the "inputs" to him -- is one of the main points of disagreement between classical liberalism and the Left. The classical liberal asserts that such an ethic is absolutely necessary for a free society. It is to be an ethic that asserts a "moral imperative" to capability and self-reliance. Classical liberalism intends a continuing interaction between the individual's own energy and the social expectation that that energy be put to use in the service of his own stature as an upstanding member of the community. But the Left, for its part, attacks such an ethic. Morris Cohen provided a succinct example of the Left's view when he argued that "it is the Puritanic feeling of responsibility which has blighted our art and philosophy and has made us as a people unskilled in the art of enjoying life.”4 This shows the attack on the ethic; and at the same time it shows how the Left isolates the ethic, attempting to destroy its claim to universality, by using a culturally relativistic method to categorize the ethic as "Puritanic." This assault on an ethic of responsibility reflects, again, the Lef't’s drive to undercut bourgeois life. The result, when we relate this to the "environmentalist perspective," is that the Left disagrees profoundly with classical liberalism about what the content -- i.e., the “inputs” -- of the ethical environment of the individual are to be. The Left favors ethical inputs that will stress the individual's support for collective action, such as when it urges an ethic of "social responsibility"; but it opposes the ethic suitable for an individualistic society.
The second of the two remaining
points pertains to the differing perspectives of the general environment and
its effect on the individual. The Left
considers the environment monolithic, entrapping, overpowering
in its compelling sweep. Classical
liberalism, though, sees the individual’s environment -- especially in advanced
civilization -- as pluralistic, rich in the diversity of its suggestions. To the classical liberal view, the individual
(especially if he brings his own vitality to the situation and if he is
impressed by society with the desirability of doing so) can do a great deal to
select his own environment and its continuing influence upon himself. He can choose, for example, whether he wants
to hang out with a street gang or whether he wants to spend his time at the
local branch library. In combination
with the ethic of responsibility, it is up to him to determine whether he will
take advantage of the immense educational opportunitites
that are available and that offer him an unending set of influences through the
accumulated wisdom of mankind. The
"environment" in this sense is far from entrapping. His situation is very different from that of
a farmer in a remote area of rural
I have indicated the question of whether the "inputs" are pluralistic or monolithic. In this difference in perspective we see once again that the classical liberal affirms the ability of men to be free in a civilization such as ours, and that the Left posits, instead, theories of entrapment, determinism and exploitation that deny the possibility of freedom in the absence of what they see as the helping hand of collectivism. (This helps explain why the Left sees itself as libertarian, while classical liberalism views the Left as inimical to freedom.)
I have never seen all of this
discussed clearly in the literature of either philosophy, but at least the
components of each position are readily apparent in each viewpoint's
literature. The classical liberal
assessment of human capability -- that most living men are among the quick, not
the dead, and bring a pretty fair vitality to life that sometimes amounts to an
almost irrepressible self-assertion -- can be seen in Richard Cobden's
evaluation of his contemporaries: "Give me a sober Englishman, possessing
the truthfulness common to his country, and the energy so peculiarly his own,
and I will match him for being capable of equaling any other man in the
everyday struggles of life. He has a
self-depending and self-governing instinct which carries him triumphantly
through all difficulties and dangers.”5 This is similar to Theodore Sedgwick's
observation that "neither a virtuous man, nor a class of such men, can be
kept down."6
Cobden felt deeply that any man of energy can rise in the world:
Morley says that "he declared his conviction, from what he had seen, that
if he were stripped naked and turned into
Not only are people imbued with
energy; they are also capable of reason.
A characteristic classical liberal attitude is expressed by Ludwig von Mises when he says that "man is not a being who cannot
help yielding to the impulse that most urgently asks for satisfaction. Man is a being capable of subduing his
instincts, emotions, and impulses; he can rationalize his behavior . . . He is
not a puppet of his appetites.”7
And Nathaniel Branden echoes Ayn Rand's philosophy when he says that "to the extent
that a man defaults on the responsibility of thinking, he is in
significant measure, ‘the product of his environment.’ But such is not the nature of man. It is an instance of pathology."8
The classical liberal view that
there is a moral imperative (which most would agree should be socially enforced
by family, peers and the like) to be self-reliant and capable is often noted. Henry Hazlitt
comments that "I see no harm in drawing the picture of a society in which
each individual is supposed strictly to fulfill his duties.”9 Theodore Sedgwick urged a moral order:
"There is nothing that debases the lower classes more than placing the
individuals in them upon the same footing in esteem and compensation. Every man should be paid, other things being
equal, as far as that be possible, according to what he earns, as this gives to
every man the best chance of rising according to his merit, which is
conformable to all just democratic ideas."
Cobden, in a passage that expresses his opposition to the Left's
relativistic pandering to the have-nots but that also contains his own moral
sensibilities, says that "mine is that masculine species of charity which
would lead me to inculcate in the minds of the labouring
classes, the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain
of being patronized or petted, the desire to accumulate, and the ambition to
rise . . . Again I say to them, 'Look not to Parliament, look only to
yourselves."' Herbert Spencer asked "what now is the most important
attribute of man as a being?" and answered with another question:
"May we not answer -- the faculty of self-control?"10
Probably because it reminds me of an elevator operator I knew in New York City, I am especially fond of a passage in Mario Pei’s The America We Lost in which he tells of a middle-aged Negro elevator operator: "What particularly drew my attention to him after a time was the fact that when he ran the elevator he invariably brought it to a straight stop on an absolute flush with the floor level. The stop at the floor was not automatic, and a hit-or-miss procedure could result in the spread of an inch or two between elevator and floor level, with a consequent courteous warning to 'please watch your step . . .’ Louis, I observed, never had to issue these warnings. His stops were always perfect.
"'How do you manage it, Louis?' I asked him one day with a smile. 'Manage what, Professor?' he smiled back at me. 'Make a perfect landing every time.' He smiled a little thoughtfully. 'You see, Professor, back in the days when I went to school there wasn't too much chance to go on to higher education. I took a job running an elevator when I was seventeen. It gave me a pretty good living, and I kept on doing it. Since I wasn't doing anything else, I thought I'd learn to do it right. I studied that elevator until I knew all the tricks. I've done that with every elevator I've ever run. It's not hard if you really try.'
“He paused for an instant, then went on. ‘I believe that whatever people do, they should do well. It may not amount to much in the case of any one man, but if everybody did his job right this would be a better world to live in.”11
In Chapter 6 of Understanding the Modern Predicament, I discussed an ambiguity in the classical liberal concept of capability. At least, I spoke of it as an ambiguity, although what I was actually doing, more precisely, was to point out that people sometimes need the presence of certain institutional preconditions before they are ready to "handle their own affairs" in a given area. The classical liberal favors a network of human interactions based on the voluntary transaction, but that transactional nexus may not be fully satisfactory in meeting the individual's legitimate needs unless a certain degree of institutional sophistication has been attained. Much of the substantive basis for the complaint that a market economy is unsatisfactory and exploitive has, in my opinion, resulted from the fact that capitalism rose so quickly and even now has hardly had time to mature and round itself out. The technology, economy and society have been developing at such a pace that almost nothing has become refined. This may not seem so apparent at first glance, but it "becomes more evident when we consider any ideal satisfaction of the human needs that are involved. I don't mean to say that progress has not been significant, since considerable progress has been made. But there are still many rough edges.
In The Iron Heel, Jack London was able to make militant anti-capitalist use of a fictional account of the plight of a worker who was seriously injured in an industrial accident. The lack a century ago of an adequate insurance system to safeguard a workman from the aftermath of such an injury meant that that individual's primary needs weren't really looked to by his job situation. He entered into a lifetime of employment, but with attention fixed primarily on the wage to be received. The many other incidents of employment were undeveloped, despite their eventual seriousness to him. It was (and in some ways remains) like a person who would enter into an extremely serious contract based solely on an agreement about the price, with none of the other details ironed out by professional foresight and detailed contract terms. We can hardly imagine anyone buying an office building, say, with anything less than full legal counsel and contractual protection. But people enter into a lifetime of work on no more than an "employment at will" basis, and with no expectation of sitting down with the employer to discuss the many ancillary aspects of the relationship. I will discuss this much more fully in my book on socialist thought when I examine the pro's and con's of the various theories of "exploitation," but that discussion is fully pertinent here, too.
I am one who believes that classical liberal thought should give continuing attention to the ways by which the voluntary nexus can be improved in its serviceability to human needs. During the past century, classical liberalism has pretty much failed in this area, and I think the reason is that the ideology has been forced so much on the defensive by the rise of intellectual alienation and the drain of mental resources to the Left. This has removed the reformist cutting edge from classical liberal thinking and has made it less possible to give attention to all of the many details of perfecting a voluntaristic society. A fundamental assumption of classical liberal thought is that the individual will be capable, especially where the moral imperative is emphasized by the society, but this assumption is to some degree falsified unless the market and the larger society are developed in ways that will make available a good flow of information to the individual, a wide range of options to choose from, and ways to look after his own interests. This doesn't mean that I favor a general concept of paternalism in the name of "facilitating individual action." Far from it. No classical liberal thinks the average individual needs others to lead him through life. A good example of paternalistic legislation that violates the freedom of the individual by substituting a legislative judgment for his own is usury laws. It is no wonder they were opposed by Jeremy Bentham. John Stuart Mill expressed the classical liberal rationale about them in the second volume of his Principles of Political Economy. I would draw your attention especially to the last sentence in the following passage, since that sentence bases his view precisely on the classical liberal outlook about human capability:
Next to the system of Protection, among mischievous interferences with the spontaneous course of industrial transactions, may be noticed certain interferences with contracts. One instance is that of the Usury laws . . . In more improved countries, legislation no longer discountenances the receipt of an equivalent for money lent; but it has everywhere interfered with the free agency of the lender and borrowers, by fixing a legal limit to the rate of interest, and making the receipt of more than the appointed maximum a penal offence. This restriction, though approved by Adam Smith, has been condemned by all enlightened persons since the triumphant onslaught made upon it by Bentham in his 'Letters on Usury,' which may still be referred to as the best extant writing on the subject. In so far as the motive of the restriction may be supposed to be, not public policy, but regard for the interest of the borrower it would be difficult to point out any case in which such tenderness on the legislator's part is more misplaced. A person of sane mind, and of the age at which persons are legally competent to conduct their own concerns, must be presumed to be a sufficient guardian of his pecuniary interests. (Emphasis added)12
In another passage, Mill shows how invalid a theory of entrapment is when applied to the charging of high interest on loans:
Where there is the whole monied capital of a wealthy community to resort to, no borrower is placed under any disadvantage in the market merely by the urgency of his need. If he cannot borrow at the interest paid by other people, it must be because he cannot give such good security: and competition will limit the extra demand to a fair equivalent for the risk of his proving insolvent.
This is an exceedingly important discussion, because the exploitation theories that make up so important a part of the socialist worldview strike at the very heart of the classical liberal perspective relating to individual self-reliance and the feasibility of human freedom. If someone denies the capacity of the average individual, he can hardly accept a voluntaristic system. Hans Sennholz wasn't overstating the importance of this when he said in his introduction to Eugene von Bohm-Bawerk's The Exploitation Theory that:
As the
development of the exploitation theory was one of the more portentous events of
the nineteenth century, its general acceptance and triumphant spread
constitutes the most ominous event of the twentieth century. There cannot be any doubt that the
exploitation theory has conquered the world . . . Such notions, which are
popular versions of the exploitation theory, have invaded our colleges and
universities, indeed all channels of education and communication. They have
radically changed our political parties and our churches. They have given rise to a gigantic labor
union movement and to the 'New Deal' in social and economic matters. In fact, the exploitation theory determines
our basic economic policies on all levels of government.13
Classical liberals deny that a voluntaristic nexus is chronically befouled by "exploitation.” They disagree wholeheartedly with the "Montaigne dogma" [which is what is now referred to by many as a “zero sum game”] which has asserted that each person's gain is somebody else’s loss, and with each of the three main theories of exploitation: the labor theory of value, with its "surplus value" condemnation of profit; the class theory; and the strength-versus-weakness theory. Ayn Rand expressed a classical liberal view on this with her characteristic eloquence:
Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions -- and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?
Trevelyan
referred to John Bright's “characteristic faith in
the common interest of employer and employed.”15 And we know that Richard Cobden felt that
there was no substance to the charge that workers were subject to "the
tyranny of the employers," since they could gain independence from the
labor market easily just by saving the small amount of money that was needed to
give them mobility to America.
Approach to human weakness. Needless to say, the classical liberal's approach to human weakness will reflect his perspective on the questions of capability, the moral imperative and exploitation. But the issue of what to do about weakness is a major subject just in itself, about which there is a lot to say.
It is worth noting at the beginning that the classical liberal favors a "free floating" system in which the individual can rise or fall within a voluntaristic milieu. He opposes the pyramid-type Burkean model, in which the average person occupies the lowest stations and that, at least in the ideal, looks paternalistically after his welfare. The classical liberal also opposes the "leveling" model of the radical egalitarian, where it is desired to bring the wealthy down and the lowest up, with everyone supposedly coming to occupy the same level.
This means that the classical liberal has no automatic repugnance to a man's failing, and no objection to there being substantial "inequalities" in property and income. To the classical liberal this is the hallmark of a free society, an incident of the liberty people possess. He doesn't apologize for inequalities as though they were a boil on the body politic. Ludwig von Mises was expressing a necessary classical liberal position when he wrote that "the inequality of income and wealth is an inherent feature of the market economy. Its elimination would entirely destroy the market economy." [Note in 2003: See Chapter 18 of my book The Emerging Crisis of Economic Displacement for a discussion of some legitimate and necessary limits on this inequality.]
There is even justice in a
person's failing when he is lazy, incompetent, a drunkard or foolish. Without
such consequences there would be no "distributive justice" in the
classical liberal sense of that term (which is most often used, instead, in a
socialist sense). A major spur to the
"moral imperative" would be gone.
Lord Robbins voiced this sensibility when he wrote that from the points
of view of both ethics and expediency "it is surely clear that a system
which guaranteed the same reward to the industrious and to the idle, to the
clever and to the stupid, would be a system which would be very much less
productive than . . . any person would regard as satisfactory.”16 And the same thought was expressed by
Herbert Spencer: "'They have no work,' you say. Say rather that they either refuse work or
quickly turn themselves out of it. They are simply good-for-nothings, who in
one way or other live on the good-for-somethings --
vagrants and sots, criminals and those on the way to crime, youths who are
burdens on hard-worked parents, men who appropriate the wages of their wives,
fellows who share the gains of prostitutes . . . Is it natural that happiness
should be the lot of such? . . . Is it not manifest that there must exist in
our midst an immense amount of misery which is a normal result of misconduct,
and ought not to be dissociated from it? There is a notion, always more or less
prevalent and just now vociferously expressed, that all social suffering is
removable, and that it is the duty of somebody or other to remove it. But these beliefs are false. To separate pain from ill-doing is to fight
against the constitution of things."17
Wilhelm von Humboldt observed that "if ignorance or indolence should bring men to neglect their personal rights, the State should not interfere on its own account"18 and John Stuart Mill noted that "poverty, like most social evils, exists because men follow their brute instincts without due consideration." (He was consistent with the classical liberal view of man, though, when he added quickly: "But society is possible, precisely because man is not necessarily a brute.") Bastiat said that "the mission of suffering is gradually to destroy its own causes.”19 It follows from all of this, as Robbins has said in abstract terms, that "if you believe in private property on any substantial scale, if you think, as I do, that it safeguards liberty and decentralized initiative, you are ipso facto committed to a social objective which involves some negation of the objective of equality."
What do classical liberals say, then, about extremes of poverty that might occur within a "free floating" system? The answer involves a fairly definite hierarchy of response in most classical liberal thought. First, as we have seen, the classical liberal would call upon the individual's own resources, invoking his energy and sense of pride. Next, there would be a reliance on the person's family as a supportive network of human relationships. Much of the "welfare function" is, in a classical liberal society, to be performed by the family, which is considered a central institution in itself. Going further, the classical liberal would rely on a circumspect private charity. This would have the advantage of being consistent with the voluntaristic principle. It would also have the advantage of being person-to-person help. Such help would almost inherently address itself to the recipient's actual need and pay attention to the merit of the recipient. Henry Hazlitt quotes John Stuart Mill with favor on this point. Mill saw it to be a real advantage of private charity that it could discriminate on the basis of merit, whereas he didn't believe that a state program could very well deny subsistence even to the undeserving poor.
Ludwig von Mises talked about the role of charity in a capitalistic society in Human Action. "Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves . . . Provision for those invalids who lack means of sustenance and are not taken care of by their next of kin has long been considered a work of charity . . .[Note his mention of the role of the family, which precedes his mention of private charity.] The charity system is criticized for two defects. One is the paucity of the means available . . . It is highly probable that the funds of the charitable institutions would be sufficient in the capitalist countries if interventionism were not to sabotage the essential institutions of the market economy . . . The second defect charged to the charity system is that it is charity and compassion only . . . What he receives is a voluntary gift for which he must be grateful. To be an almsman is shameful and humiliating." He went on to say that the moral sensibility that makes it shameful arises out of the classical liberal "moral imperative" and is a beneficial motivator to impel the individual to remove his dependency at the earliest possible moment.
Herbert Spencer was no doubt the classical liberal who was most inclined to support a principle of "natural selection" that would permit both the weakest and the worst elements of the human race to perish (and although this isn't my own sensibility about it, I am not prepared to say categorically that history will necessarily prove him wrong). He wasn't, however, opposed to private charity that would help the deserving poor: "In so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated; albeit there is unquestionably harm done when sympathy is shown, without any regard to ultimate results." Then later: "The more there are of men and women who help the poor to help themselves -- the more there are of those whose sympathy is exhibited directly and not by proxy, the more we may rejoice."
As the next step, classical liberals would favor the large organized systems of voluntary charity, of which there are a great many in American society.
Beyond that, many classical liberals favor a system of poor relief on the local level. I will be quick to point out that not all classical liberals have favored this: Bastiat said critically about legislators that "obeying socialist influences they gave charity a place in the statute book, thereby banishing justice from it, and destroying by the same act private charity, which is ever prompt to recede before a compulsory poor-rate." Herbert Spencer argued that even though, in his opinion, private charity to the deserving wouldn't involve more harm in the evolutionary development of mankind than its beneficial effects would counterbalance, state aid would start a process that would undermine the evolutionary well-being of the human race. (Here again, although my sentiments don't agree with him, I can't say definitely that he will prove wrong.) Other classical liberals, though, have favored local relief as a supplement to charity. This appears in Lord Robbins' argument (which in common with Bastiat and Spencer is expressed in the context of classical liberal values) that: "I do not think that the principles of a free society exclude measures for the relief of misfortune. I think the principle of compulsory contribution may be carried too far -- to the sapping of independence and the undue burdening of the main body of the citizens. But, at least at this stage in the evolution of modern societies, I should regard such measures as part of the indispensable cement of social union and as conferring on most of us a positive satisfaction in the functions that are performed. Further, I do not rule out, but rather welcome, various supplements to family provisions that do something to mitigate for young people the inequality of opportunity that necessarily arises from inequality of parental position . . . That, in the present position of most Western societies, some provision of this sort is desirable and creative of greater eventual freedom I have absolutely no doubt at all."
In his book The
Conquest of Poverty, Henry Hazlitt traced the
“Poor Law” question through the history of
(a) The state should assure that no one lacks subsistence, but that
(b) The aid should be such that the recipient's overall situation doesn't become as attractive as that of people who are not on relief.
Hazlitt quotes Senior as having said that the main problem is "how to afford to the poorer classes adequate relief without material injury to their diligence or their providence."
The consequence was the workhouse system, which was in effect until the early twentieth century. Senior wrote that "it is to require the man who demands to be supported by the industry and frugality of others to enter an abode provided for him by the public, where all the necessaries of life are amply provided, but excitement and mere amusement are excluded -- an abode where he is better lodged, better clothed, and more healthily fed than he would be in his own cottage, but is deprived of beer, tobacco, and spirits - is forced to submit to habits of order and cleanliness -- is separated from his usual associates and his usual pastimes, and is subject to labor, monotonous and uninteresting." The intention was to guarantee that "no one need perish from want," but to restore "the pauper to a position below that of the independent laborer" so that he could develop the motivation to become independent.
John Stuart Mill approved of this approach, seeing it as both sufficiently compassionate and founded on sound principle. "In so far as the subject admits of any general doctrine or maxim, it would appear to be this -- that if assistance is given in such a manner that the condition of the person helped is as desirable as that of the person who succeeds in doing the same thing without help, the assistance, if capable of being previously calculated on is mischievous: but if, while available to everybody, it leaves to everyone a strong motive to do without it if he can, it is then for the most part beneficial. This principle, applied to the system of public charity, is that of the Poor Law of 1834.”
I haven't seen any mention of it that I can recall, but I would think that the workhouse system wouldn't need to be applied to people who are in need because of physical or mental disability. The system of relief could be considerably more generous to them without violating the classical liberal concern over motivation and distributive justice.
Outwardly, classical liberals seem
to disagree over whether a distinction should be made between the deserving and
the undeserving poor. Such a distinction
would be consistent with the moral views held by classical liberals. But John Stuart Mill argued that, although
private charity can make such a distinction, "the state must act by general
rules. It cannot undertake to
discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving indigent. It owes no more than subsistence to the
first, and can give no less to the last."
Henry Hazlitt supports Mill in this and argues
that "the more we try to make sure . . . that no loafers or cheaters get
on the relief rolls, the more certain we can be that we are also keeping some
of the really needy off the relief rolls." For myself, I believe the
position just quoted from Mill and Hazlitt is
acceptable to classical liberalism where the method of relief is a sound one
such as the original conception of the workhouse system. Even a free society has much to gain from
underwriting the subsistence even of the undeserving if there is good reason to
believe that they won't be motivated to recline back into permanent retirement
based on the aid. But in any system
where the aid is much more ample and consistent with pursuing an ordinary life,
such as it has been in the
It is hardly possible to state the concrete elements of a permanent relief system that would satisfy classical liberal objectives, since the form a system will have to take at a given time in history will depend largely on what is politically and culturally possible. The austerity and yet sufficiency of the workhouse system for the able-bodied poor recommends it as perhaps the best alternative, if the system is supplemented by other programs for people who aren't able-bodied. But overweening egalitarianism, sentiment and ideology in the twentieth century have ruled that out and have made a realistic approach very difficult. One suggestion has been to suspend the right of a recipient of relief to vote while he's on it. Another is to limit payments to "payments in kind"; i.e., the payment of goods, not cash. Still another is to have the payments taper off as the person reaches a certain level of income, so that the person receiving them will have incentive to work (he would lack incentive if anything he earned were to reduce the amount of the aid on a dollar-for-dollar basis).20 I very much agree with Henry Hazlitt's criticisms of the latter proposal, however; it is certainly no panacea, even though it does preserve incentives somewhat. Hazlitt pointed out that a “negative income tax" or "tapered guaranteed income" would lend itself to quite a lot of fraud in the non-reporting of earned income and would be under considerable pressure politically for increasing benefits.21 [Note in 2001: The United States has now for several years had a cash-payment system for the poor called the “earned income tax credit.” As surmised in the preceding discussion, there has indeed been a non-reporting of actual income and a continuing political pressure for more benefits, as was apparent in the Democratic Party’s oppositon to President George W. Bush’s tax-cut proposal and in the frequently-mentioned desire, in place of it, to increase the tax credit.]
One of the more difficult problems posed by the concrete aspects of the problem of what to do about poverty is raised by the existence of destitute children. It is one thing to talk about devising a system that will provide support and at the same time leave strong incentives to get off the system; it is another thing to talk about the support of children to whom the problem of incentives is irrelevant.
The classical liberal has an exceedingly difficult time offering a solution to this aspect that can in any way satisfy the expectations of an age that feels almost a revulsion against making "harsh" moral expectations and that has been willing to call upon government for a direct monetary solution to any perceived problem. But even though the classical liberal solutions cannot be popular in such a milieu, society does need to face up to the realities that are involved in the issue. I heard a woman complaining on a radio talk show one time about "how hard it is to live decently" with eight children on Aid to Dependent Children money. The host of the show commented, after she finished, that "there's a deserving case." The classical liberal precisely does not believe that her case is worthy. He would not positively reinforce by favorable comments her behavior in having had eight children when she couldn't support them. He would recall, in fact, John Stuart Mill's comment in On Liberty that "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."22
Hazlitt has suggested that society should "limit any welfare payment to no more, and preferably less, than a father could earn if he were employed at low-skilled work." Or, he says, the state should "make no additional payment for the support of any child beyond, say, the second or third." Such limits would provide incentive to the mother not to have more than a couple of children who will be on welfare. Undoubtedly, though, the limits won't seem satisfactory to those who will ask "what are we to do after the next five or six children are born, though? Let them starve?" It will seem even harsher if the classical liberal responds, in answer to this, that "society should perhaps require the sterilization of any mother who already has two children on welfare." And yet I believe that Hazlitt's relatively mild solution should be tried first; and that if children continue to be born to welfare mothers despite the limits he's suggested, society should insist on the sterilization remedy to avoid still further children. (My suggestion that it be the mother who is sterilized is based on the factual assumption that in an overwhelming number of these cases the father is either unknown or has disappeared.) Those who consider sterilization “unthinkable” should ask themselves whether they have themselves proposed a solution that at all preserves a free society's legitimate interests. Certainly the modern liberal approach of simply “throwing money at the problem” and of maintaining a morally neutral stance toward the mother doesn't do this.
It is always important to remind
ourselves that relief deals with symptoms.
From a classical liberal standpoint, poverty is best addressed by an
increasingly productive economy. It has
been through such productivity that the immense majority of people in
A classical liberal will want to
see much of the solution come from a heightened moral sense that will reduce
the vices that play a substantial role in causing poverty. Any such long-term solution, though, can only
be accomplished if several factors that are at work in modern society are
reversed. It will require a
strengthening, not a weakening, of the family; a re-affirmation of moral
values, not a continuation of moral relativism; a lessening of the
spoiled-child mentality that is so characteristic of modern man; and a shift
away from the ideological pandering to the have-not by the alienated
intelligentsia. We can readily see how
difficult it will be to bring about such a reversal. If it were to occur, our civilization would
enter an entirely new phase.
A non-utopian expectation. History may prove that classical liberalism has been too utopian in believing that people are capable enough to sustain a free society. The demand for the welfare state and for socialism would seem to indicate that the people themselves don't want to rely on their own capabilities. I don't feel, though, that we are getting a clear reading of this in the present age, since much of the movement away from an individualist society is attributable to the alienation of the intellectual and its ideological effects rather than to any demonstrable incapacity of the public for freedom. To get a true reading, we will have to see how people respond in an age in which the intellectual and moral leadership is seeking to reenforce, and not disparage, the moral imperative toward capability. I acknowledge the possibility that classical liberalism may be too utopian, but I don't feel that that has been established definitely by our experience in the twentieth century.
A utopian variant off of classical liberal pbilosophy has, however, received a flurry of attention during the 1960's and 1970's. "Anarcho-capitalism" takes the classical liberal position on "enlightened self-interest" and extrapolates it to the point of saying that such self-interest is a sufficient basis for society without any government. It reaches this position by becoming clearly removed from the "mixed view" of human nature held by most classical liberals. The result is a right-wing utopianism.
The utopian vision that has had
the greatest impact, though, during the past two centuries has come from the
Left in the form of Rousseauistic socialism. I have referred to this repeatedly, so I
won't elaborate on it again. It is
enough now to point out that the mixed view of human nature that is taken by
classical liberalism doesn't permit a
view that says, in effect, that all of mankind's problems are caused by warping
influences and that the removal of these influences will allow a purely
brotherly "original human nature" to shine through. The classical liberal certainly can't accept
the notion that collectivism is beneficial rather than dangerous because it
builds on an innate moral goodness in man.
Instead, the classical liberal sees constant reminders of why he needs
to continue his distrust of power. This distrust is profoundly connected with
his mixed view of human nature.
Capability in
public affairs. In Chapter
9, I will discuss the classical liberal views about democracy and majority
rule. At that time, we will see that
English and American classical liberalism differed substantially from
continental classical liberalism. The
English and American varieties were much more democratic than the
continental. This difference may have
been caused by the varying circumstances faced by the respective thinkers. "Enlightened despotism" may have
been the only viable alternative in nineteenth century
Neither group, though, has ever
favored an unbridled democracy.
Classical liberalism welcomes majority rule as part of its ideal model,
but only within the Rule of Law and as applied to the legitimate functions of
government within a free society. Even majority rule would be restricted to
these by "the chains of a constitution." This apprehension arises directly out of the
classical liberal's view of man: power is dangerous and men are easily
corrupted by it; it is one of the central problems in human history; and as a
release from its abuse, freedom is so important that not even a majority may be
given the right to trample on it. There
is no overall faith that men are good enough or strong enough that they can be
given general power to exercise as they will, even though a democratic
classical liberalism has sufficient faith in the majority that it considers the
majority, not an elite, the best vehicle for running a limited state. (This
should be qualified, though, by two observations. The first is that classical
liberals have usually preferred a "republic" to a "democracy." They have hoped that men of character and
ability will rise to the top in a representative system. The second is that, in the ideal condition of
society where the "alienation of the intellectual" won't be a chronic
feature of things, the majority will receive criticism and advice from an
uplifting intellectual community.)
Its aspirations: "Emergent
Man." Classical liberalism is
the theory of a free society. As such,
it has seen in freedom the greatest potential for human development, nobility
and self-actualization. But certain
aspects of the modern age have clouded this aspect of it. Classical liberalism is identified with the
commercial middle class, but that class has had a certain spiritual and
intellectual mediocrity. Also, there has
been a shift of intellectual direction away from classical liberalism in
This impression is mistaken, however. Freedom had its main significance to Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill, for example, precisely because of its potential for human edification. Humboldt wrote that "whatever man receives externally is only like the seed. It is his own active energy alone that can turn the most promising seed into a full and precious blessing for himself. It is beneficial only to the extent that it is full of vital power and essentially individual. The highest ideal, therefore, of the coexistence of human beings, seems to me to consist in a union in which each strives to develop himself from his own inmost nature, and for his own sake . . . I therefore deduce, as the natural inference from what has been argued, that reason cannot desire for man any other condition than that in which each individual not only enjoys the most absolute freedom of developing himself by his own energies, in his perfect individuality, but in which external nature itself is left unfashioned by any human agency, but only receives the impress given to it by each individual by himself and of his own free will, according to the measure of his wants and instincts, and restricted only by the limits of his powers and his rights." He went on to say that "the very variety arising from the union of numbers of individuals is the highest good which social life can confer, and this is undoubtedly lost in proportion to the degree of State interference;" and that "setting aside the fact that coercion and guidance can never succeed in producing virtue, they manifestly tend to weaken energy; and what is outward morality without true moral strength and virtue?" Such thinking by Humboldt coincided closely with John Stuart Mill's. In On Liberty Mill primarily stressed the value of liberty as an essential means to human improvement: "The only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty." His essay On Bentham and Coleridge is a striking example of his awareness that many doctrines, whether generally accepted or not, perceive only part of the truth - but a part, just the same, that ought to be listened to. This tolerance gave him a profound respect for intellectual freedom.
To Ayn Rand, freedom is the great imperative of life. Only through freedom can the individual be truly human. No other author has ever expressed with such moral force the necessity of man's being free if he is to face reality with his own mind and is to cultivate the self-esteem that gives life meaning. Nor has any other author stated so powerfully the moral claim a person has to be fully human in this sense. Ayn Rand's philosophy is a philosophy of the heroic and the rational - with those qualities being considered the rightful condition of mankind. When her emphasis on the heroic causes her to repudiate all conventionality and to insist upon each person's autonomous self-definition (at peril, otherwise, of being dubbed a "conventional social metaphysician"), I have pointed out that this involves a significant departure from the usual classical liberal position, which I consider sound. Her heroicism goes to an extreme, even though a sublime one. This extreme is incompatible with the model of a social order based on a framework of law, mores, ethics, and civic virtue designed to enable the great majority of average human beings to live their lives productively within a system of mutual liberty. Such a model presupposes that the average citizen will, in effect, be existentially defined by the norms of such a community. Just the same, Ayn Rand's identification of freedom with the exalted would seem to be the secret of her immense appeal. Whatever the flaws in her philosophy, she will remain one of the towering figures in classical liberal literature precisely because of the sublimity of her perception of the human potential.
I was undoubtedly influenced by her considerably when I wrote in Emergent Man that "the humanism of liberty can be understood only when one looks with full sensibility at the excellence of human creativity, at the nobility of intelligent and virile men. If this captures his vision, so that his main concern becomes one of stimulating these forces and of liberating them, then he is well on his way to accepting liberty as his philosophy. To appreciate the human potential, and to will with all one's mind and spirit the full blossoming of this potential is to take the libertarian perspective . . . With this perspective, it seems to the libertarian that all of the suggestions for human betterment, all of the humanitarian devices contrived by men of good will, are humbled in their significance before the greatest humanitarian device of all: the liberty of the human being to live, to create, to think, to produce, to struggle with problems and feel the joy of their conquest.”23
This is the significance of freedom in its religious aspect, if we use the word "religious" in its secular connotation. A philosophy of liberty isn't fully appreciated if it is thought to identify with mediocrity and not to aspire to an elevation of man. I look upon a free society as a plateau from which men are able to rise and to live, according to their own lights, a full life. If we take "religious" to relate, in its broadest sense, to the more profound questions about the meaning of life, we can easily see that Robert A. Taft was assigning a religious significance to freedom when he wrote that "when I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as 'free enterprise.' I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing."
In light of these sentiments, we can see how unfortunate it is that classical liberalism is no longer identified either by most intellectuals or in the public mind with a vigorous pursuit of moral and spiritual values. For over a century, classical liberalism has been on the defensive. This is by no means an ideal posture. A philosophy of freedom should be in the forefront of reform wherever there are obstructions to the principles of a free society; and it must ideally be in the forefront of social criticism whenever the culture lags into a mediocrity of lifestyle or of values. I find students today who are genuinely amazed, and a bit suspicious, when I tell them that classical liberalism holds to a strong ethic that innately opposes racial discrimination. They consider such an assertion a belated attempt to "jump aboard the bandwagon" after the initiative has long been taken by others. They don't realize that classical liberalism was hurt badly when the mass of Western intellectuals moved to the left more than a century ago and that its few remaining advocates have simply not been in a position that would enable them to be on the cutting edge of reform. Classical liberals haven't been able to throw themselves wholeheartedly into other people's reform movements, because they have had too many legitimate reservations about the statist approach being taken by such movements. And they haven't been able to lead their own because it seems an altogether childish enterprise to draw up political programs and try in vain to lead public movements when no one is willing to follow. Still further, we need to notice that the brain drain and the lack of stimulus that would have come from a possibility of success have actually caused the philosophy to suffer in its substantive content. In several ways, and certainly in the important area of social criticism, it has undergone considerable atrophy. The resulting philosophy has been less satisfactory than it otherwise would have been.
This has been a costly loss. Classical liberalism does champion middle class commercial society, since that is the prototype of the sort of self-reliant, self-fulfilling individualism it seeks. But classical liberalism was bound to lose an essential dimension if ever its intellectual leadership permitted itself to settle complacently for the mediocrities of bourgeois culture. It has even more reason than the alienated intelligentsia to desire a spiritual, intellectual uplifting of bourgeois life. Unfortunately, one of the atrophied elements in its development has been in the area of social criticism. As the philosophy went more and more on the defensive, there was never a follow-up on the awareness that several mid-nineteenth century classical liberals had of the mediocrity of the middle class. I have just commented about this having been caused at least in part by the "brain drain" and the resulting defensiveness. It was also caused in part by an undue preoccupation by classical liberalism with economics. I wouldn't downplay the importance of economic theory or detract in any way from our appreciation for the classical and neoclassical economists; but I would suggest that there were additional important dimensions of life that ideally should have received just as much attention.
Friedrich Hayek pointed to this failure of moral leadership when he wrote that "socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength to the socialists which traditional liberalism sadly lacks . . . What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical . . . The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals.”25 I am somewhat afraid that when he speaks of the Utopian he is apt to be misunderstood. I don't gather that what he means is that he favors the sort of utopianism that is predicated on a naive view of man and that is willing to destroy existing values to fly to panaceas; he means, instead, as I understand him, the unabashed articulation of principle even when it isn't politically popular so that the conscientious mind will hear in it the ring of truth. No doubt American “conservatives” have stood against the tide enunciating many unfashionable truths during the past century, and they aren't to be denied the credit that is due them for that courage; but a long-term look at the factors that have affected the development of classical liberalism reveals a loss of reformist energy and insight after the main body of the world's intellectuals left for other pastures.
Intellectual humility. Since the classical liberal is committed to a certain type of civilization and to a set of values, he isn't value-free. He is ready to insist on certain values, to fight for them, to impress them coercively, in fact, upon the criminal element that would deny them. And that, in my opinion, is as it should be. But it is worth noting that notwithstanding this commitment, his position is one of the most fundamental humility. He doesn't claim to have all of the answers about how everybody should live. He wants to guarantee the parameters of a social order within which people are free to choose from countless alternatives. The fact that such a social order presupposes consensus and its own self-maintaining structuring shouldn't obscure its libertarian purpose. Leonard Read wrote of "a wisdom few ever attain: a sense of being men, not gods, and, as a consequence, an awareness of (the) inability to run the lives of others.”26 In another place he told of Ludwig von Mises: "He once was asked, 'Were you the dictator of these United States, what steps would you take, to remedy our current ills?' Mises replied, 'I would abdicate.' . . . Mises knew he lacked the wisdom to rule, an understanding as rare as it is profound.”27
Classical liberals often contrast their own attitude with that of socialists, who treat the state as a modern "social church" to transform people according to the values of the particular socialist. "Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations," was Bastiat's observation.28 And Adam Smith expressed the same idea in his criticism of "the man of system": "He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board; he does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it . . . Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all objections, everything which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him, and not he to them."
To me, this humility should be able to lead on to a sound "theory of values" on the part of classical liberalism. When someone says that he doesn't want to absolutize his own values, he is saying in effect that he doesn't have values that he believes warrant absolutizing. Essentially, his method is non-absolutist - that of a person who acknowledges more than one source of values. He doesn't want to run roughshod over these and claims no metaphysical justification for doing so. Since this is his posture in social and political philosophy, it would be incongruous if a similar humility were not also his position with regard to the starting-point of his philosophy.
Most philosophies insist on a source of values outside of individual men -- a metaphysical stamp of validity for certain preferences --, and tell people that a theological or metaphysical source outside themselves demands their allegiance to certain principles or values. Even a libertarian philosophy can be predicated on such a beginning. But the result is that the individual is misled into a functional surrender of his role as the only possible source existentially of values. He can delegate his role by adhering to a fiction (in which case he remains, whether he realizes it or not, the source of the values); but he has to be the source of values because values are necessarily teleological in origin. By this I mean that they have to consist of judgments that are made by an evaluating consciousness. It makes no sense to say that something is good or bad to a rock or other unconscious entity, whether that entity be physical or an abstraction. Values presuppose an evaluator. Most philosophies do either one of two things: either they base values, and consequently ethical judgments, on a teleology (i.e., a consciousness) other than that that exists in each person's own individual consciousness; or else they commit what I call "the fallacy of misplaced teleology" by imputing valuational capability to something that isn't a consciousness. Each of these is precisely the wrong starting-place for an ethic, since it starts the philosophy off on an insupportable axiom.
In recognition of this reality, I would have classical liberalism make a consistent use of its humility by making its appeal directly to each person in terms of his own values without a theological or metaphysical intermediary. The case I would argue for classical liberalism would be a “prudential” case; i.e., one that would seek to demonstrate the usefulness of classical liberalism in relation to each person's own values. Its acceptance among people would depend, as it should in my opinion, upon their perceiving freedom both as a value in itself (as part of their own values) and as serviceable to the achievement of their other values.
Such a prudential demonstration isn't easy, of course. It enjoys none of the shortcuts invoked by theological and metaphysical systems when they short-circuit the more mundane questions of feasibility. It doesn't find shelter behind a cosmic validating stamp of some sort. Another reason it isn't easy is that the merit of classical liberal policies depends directly on the validity of the classical liberal perception of man and society. All of the many questions we have been discussing about human capability, the exploitation theories, the environmentalist perspective, the alienation of the intellectual, etc., have a bearing on the correctness of its vision and its usefulness to people. Such issues are difficult and involve delicate matters of judgment and perspective.
By one route or another all classical liberals have come to accept a society in which individuals make their own choices within the parameters of a system of equal rights. What I am suggesting is that the humility they express with regard to man's life in freedom is the same humility with which they would do well to approach the theoretical questions about the source of values. When Ludwig von Mises asserts, for example, that scientific method confirms the exclusive merit of classical liberalism, I am critical of the pretension this involves;30 the larger questions in human society can hardly be definitively settled by scientific method, and after all influences and considerations are taken into account all value questions finally come down to a matter of individual preference (which at its root is outside the domain of science, even though the influences upon such preference can be studied). When, too, Ayn Rand says that laissez-faire capitalism is the only course dictated by reason as "the life appropriate to a rational being," I am convinced that she has based her conclusion on a philosophically invalid premise. I would have us abandon that premise so that we can move on to a more tenable foundation.
When I say that values originate
with individuals, I don't mean to imply that there are no values. Rather, I would suggest that value is
coterminous with life. We value because
we are alive and because we identify with ourselves, others and the existence
around us. There is much that we cherish
and would defend -- and I see a free society as the optimum way to embrace
those things.
Attitudes on values and lifestyles. The crescendo of leftist criticism of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie began with Rousseau two and a half centuries ago and has been a major feature of our civilization during the past century and a half. This criticism was the theme of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt and of Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class. It was powerfully stated by Thoreau and came jumping out with savage ferocity during the period of the New Left. It is no overstatement to say that this criticism has been reiterated tens of thousands of times.
For their part, though, classical liberals have had relatively little to say about middle class values. They haven't felt the alienation and haven't thrilled to its literature This is partly because their conceptual system supports much of what the Left deplores, and partly because classical liberalism has been placed on the defensive and hasn't maintained a socially critical stance, as I indicated earlier.
The conceptual disagreement with the Left over values is apparent in the difference of perspective between, for example, Thorstein Veblen and Richard Cobden. Veblen analyzed American culture as being shot-through with a false value-system based on "invidious comparison" and "conspicuous consumption." He saw greed and the desire for status as the motive-force for all our activity, and he compared this unfavorably with a Rousseauistic view of man's original condition. It is fascinating, by way of contrast, that Cobden arrived at exactly the opposite conclusions. He saw the “spirit of emulation” as a necessary mover of humanity from what might otherwise be a state of torpor. "It is the universal hope of rising in the social scale which is the key to much of the superiority that is visible in (the United States)," he wrote to John Bright. Bright himself had made a trip to Turkey and had commented: "Thus property and life being insecure, no inducement is held out to the people to march on the road of civilization. There exists no spirit of emulation amongst them, and they drag on their existence as nearly as possible in the same listless and apathetic manner in which their fathers have done before them."31
A passage in Bastiat's writing is especially pertinent on this point because Bastiat compared his own view with Rousseau's: "He establishes undeniably the indefinite elasticity of human wants, and the power of habit, and admits even the part which I assign to them in preventing the human race from retrograding; only, that which I admire is what he deplores." The classical liberal has no basic antagonism against the man of action and hasn't developed a rationale that undercuts the tradesman's striving and affluence. "What is the reward most proper for encouraging industry, prudence, and circumspection? -- Success in every sort of business. And is it possible that in the whole of life these virtues should fail of attaining it? Wealth and external honours are their proper recompence, and the recompense which they can seldom fail of acquiring," Adam Smith wrote.
Just the same, several classical liberals have expressed some criticism of a purely acquisitive lifestyle. John Stuart Mill presaged Veblen when he wrote that "the vulgarity of prizing them (goods) for the pitiful vanity of being known topossess them, or the paltry shame of being suspected to be without them, (are) the presiding motives of three-fourths of the expenditure of the middle classes." He wrote sharply against "a general indifference to those kinds of knowledge and mental culture which cannot be immediately converted into pounds, shillings, and pence" and added that "the energies of the middle classes are almost confined to money-getting." An associate of his, Mrs. Grote, complained of “a stupid middle class who dream only of shop.”32 More recently, Wilhelm Ropke has written that our "free time is a conglomeration of disjointed sensual and intellectual attractions. There is the non-political local newspaper, radio, movies, and television. There are magazines, sports, news, and illustrated papers. There are endless books from lending libraries or reading clubs. There are technical gadgets, the motorized bicycle and the motorcycle, the whirring pinball machines - but nowhere true leisure, never true contemplation.”33 Herbert Spencer was able to write that "among money-hunting people a man is commended in proportion to the number of hours he spends in business. In our day, the mad rage for accumulation has apotheosized work."
The views I have just quoted from Mill, Grote, Roepke and Spencer aren't necessarily at odds with those from Cobden, Bright, Bastiat and Smith. No classical liberal has a deeply rooted antagonism toward trade or the acquisitive life; but, at the same time, virtually all would like the trading life to serve merely as a plateau from which individuals can enrich their lives further. Both aspects are part of the philosophy. I only wish that classical liberalism had had both the inclination and the historic opportunity to articulate the need for enrichment more forcefully during the past century. A free society has as one of its more fundamental needs -- a need that has rarely been commented upon - the on-going pull of an intellectual culture that will at one and the same time support its underlying principles and criticize its lapses. Many factors in human life make such a pull an indispensable part of a sound social order: the essential immaturity of the human race at this stage in its development; the uninspired spiritual tone of the average man in an age of what several authors have called "the mass man"; and the submergence of the inner soul of the individual in a commercial civilization that establishes an extroverted outer flow of trivia as the primary human relationship. I discussed these factors in Understanding the Modern Predicament.
An additional matter of values that was discussed by John Ruskin, a Burkean, is pertinent here. He pointed to the almost universal moral preference that people have felt for professions involving sacrifice over that of the tradesman. "I have already alluded to the difference hitherto existing between regiments of men associated for purposes of violence, and for purposes of manufacture; in that the former appear capable of self-sacrifice -- the later, not; which singular fact is the real reason of the general lowness of estimate in which the profession of commerce is held, as compared with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeavored to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the soldier. And this is right. For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world honours it for . . . If, therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called liberal professions are still, somehow, in public estimate of honour, preferred before the head of a commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the measurement of their several powers of mind. The essential reason for such preference will be found to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the community; but the motive of it is understood to be wholly personal." He recommended a different spiritual tone for commerce: "They will have to discover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively selfish . . . It is necessary to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss; that sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a sense of duty; that the market may have its martyrdoms as well as the pulpit; and trade its heroisms as well as war.”34
This is a consideration that, it
seems to me, has received too little attention by classical liberal
thought. Ruskin told us in the passage
just quoted that many writers had sought to show that the peaceable tradesman
was actually morally superior, and he would certainly add Ayn
Rand to the list of those if he were alive today. For myself, I agree with those writers and
with Ayn Rand in the point they have made, that the
life of the honest tradesman involves much that isn't seen by the passing eye.
There is far more adventure, risk and thrill of achievement to it than we
normally stop to consider. But I believe
there is also substance to the view that Ruskin expressed so well. The contractual nexus among people (which
Carlyle sneered at as being "cash payment for the sole nexus") can't
exist satisfactorily without being part of a much more comprehensive milieu
that will involve fellow-feeling and mutual concern. There is an entire ethical dimension --
involving such values as considerateness and generosity -- that should never be
lost sight of among men. Certainly there
is no reason for free men to lose sight of it. (Not surprisingly, Adam Smith's
book The Theory of Moral Sentiments is the best discussion of it I have
read.) In saying this, I am not
advocating any of the doctrines of self-denial and sacrifice. Nor am I calling for an altruistic ethic, if
by that we mean a disproportionate concern for others rather than oneself. What I would have us see is that people live,
except in rare cases, among their fellow human beings, and that many of their
needs and values are formed there. Such
social values as warmth, integrity, concern, mutual thoughtfulness, willingness
to help, good neighborliness, and the like are important to them. Even though he would seem to have a reputation
to the contrary among people who haven't read his novels, Horatio Alger is orie of the main authors to emphasize these values right
along with such values as hard work and thrift.
There is nothing about a free society that should involve a denial of
these social values. I know that Ruskin
opposed a lot of what I support, but I agree with his concluding remark about
the need for a "kind of commerce which is not exclusively selfish."
Methodology; philosophical origins. Classical liberals do not have a consensus among themselves about the appropriate metaphysical premises for their philosophy and about methodology. It is a fair generalization, though, to say that most classical liberals occupy a philosophical "middle ground" that embraces neither pure theology and mysticism, on the one hand, nor radical positivism and relativism on the other. Some believe in God and others do not. Almost all bring to their thinking a mixture of rationalism and empiricism. Even the views that are based on a belief in God involve a relatively secular "liberal religion" or even deism.
Earlier I quoted a passage from Wilhelm Roepke that showed substantial Burkean influence when he based his philosophy on Christian religious principles: "Here I am not at all sure that I do not belong to the conservative rather than the liberal camp, in so far as I dissociate myself from certain principles of social philosophy which, over long stretches of the history of thought, rested on common foundations with liberalism and socialism, or at least accompanied them. I have in mind such ‘isms’ as utilitarianism, progressivism, secularism, rationalism, optimism and what Eric Voegelin aptly calls 'immanentism' or ‘social gnosticism.’” Roepke’s is, however, a type of Christianity that is consistent with classical liberalism when it sees the individual as of central importance and when it looks with suspicion upon anyone's attempt to remake man: "My picture of man is fashioned by the spiritual heritage of classical and Christian tradition. I see in man the likeness of God; . . . each man's soul is something unique, irreplaceable, priceless, in comparison with which all other things are as naught. I am attached to a humanism which is rooted in these convictions and which regards man as the child and image of God, but not as God himself, to be idolized as he is by the hubris of a false and atheist humanism. These I believe, are the reasons why I so greatly distrust all forms of collectivism." Mario Pei has voiced a similar religious orientation: "If God did not exist, modern civilized man would have to create Him, because his civilization could not endure otherwise."
Bastiat, Smith and Paine, however, have probably been more typical of the classical liberals who have believed in God. Bastiat wrote of "a central, dominant thought" that "pervades every page" of his writing. "It is the thought that begins the Christian's creed: I believe in God.”35 He spoke against the view, "which is so much in fashion nowadays," that "there are no absolute principles." And yet, for Bastiat, God stands in the background. His method is quasi-empirical and rationalistic, very much concerned for the things of this world. He felt that in discovering the "laws of nature" we discover, also, the will of God. This is apparent in his statement that "the constant approximation of all men towards a level which is always rising -- in other terms: Improvement and Equalization; in a single word, Harmony. Such is the definitive result of the arrangements of Providence -- of the great laws of nature -- when they act without impediment." He could say that God "has placed in the human breast the feeling of personal interest, which, like a magnet, attracts everything to itself.”36
Such a religious view leads easily into secular thought, serving as a backdrop for rationalism and empiricism, and providing the source for a belief in an orderly world that is amenable to scientific description. When he elaborated the principles of classical economics, Bastiat felt that he was discovering the design intended by Providence. The same opinion was the foundation for Adam Smith's study of moral theory and later of economics; he wrote that "since these were plainly intended to be the governing principles of human nature, the rules which they prescribe are to be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, promulgated by those viceregents which he has thus set up within us." In