[This
is, in full, the monograph The Principles of Classical Liberalism that
Murphey published under the label “A New Liberal Library Monograph” in
1972. There is no Table of Contents, but
each section of the monograph is short.]
"Classical
Liberalism"
Definition. A
great deal that is in fact heterogeneous passes under the
"conservative" label in the
From a philosophical standpoint, however, such a
person would more accurately be described as a "classical liberal."
The word "conservative" may have to be applied to him for want of a
better term and is partly appropriate because he is opposed to the Welfare
State and because his views have been on the defensive, but he is not
philosophically or temperamentally a stand-patter. Nor is he a conservative in
the historic European sense; the classical liberal was in earlier centuries the
most articulate opponent of the medievalist world-view.
To differentiate him from today's
"liberalism," however, it is necessary to call him a "classical
liberal." His liberalism finds its genuine roots in what was called
liberalism in early
Scope. A
listing of the main ingredients of classical liberalism ought not to obscure
the fact that there have been countless individual points of view within it.
The term is able as a generic noun to accommodate such diverse individuals as,
say, Frederic Bastiat and Herbert Hoover. Bastiat, a nineteenth century French economist, held to the
"social compact" theory so popular during the Enlightenment -- and
advocated a government with strictly limited protective functions. On the other
hand,
Today there are those who are exploring anarcho-capitalism, not wanting any government. It can be
said that they are by definition not classical liberals, but this ought not to
obscure their deep classical liberal roots. So, too, are there those who seek a
fusion with Burkean traditionalism -- and come up
with something of both.
Historical
Development. Classical liberal thinking and practices have
developed over many centuries and cannot be ascribed to a single source. The
ancients contributed much; even the feudal ideals of the Middle
Ages contained important ingredients. In his The Constitution of
Liberty, F. A. Hayek has traced a 2500 year development of the Rule of Law
as a restraint upon arbitrary government.
The development of classical liberalism as a
comprehensive social philosophy awaited, however, the rise of the commercial
middle class at the end of the Middle Ages. Although a
Marxian class critique is clearly wrong, it is not incorrect to note that
classical liberalism has a strong and necessary identification with the middle
class; indeed, the middle class is both its vehicle and a sine qua non to
its success.
Classical
and neo-classical economics has most thoroughly formulated classical liberal
thinking. Although there are many "non-economic" elements in its
total position, classical liberalism has primarily been formulated as a
"theory of capitalism."
For
more than a century it has been on the defensive. The world's intellectuals
have overwhelmingly gone to the left. The result has been that the free society
has been deprived of continuing sympathetic intellectual work on a large scale.
On the defensive, classical liberal intellectuals have had two divergent
tendencies: to become shallow apologists, or to probe more deeply. There are
today countless intellectual tasks left undone; there is a tendency to
isolation and fragmentation; and yet in other ways ours is an extremely
fruitful period for classical liberal thought, with such thinkers as Rand,
Friedman, Mises and Hayek.
Differentiation
from a Contemporary "Liberal."
Classical liberals would generally think ludicrous the argument that Welfare
State "liberalism" arises out of classical liberal origins. They view
classical liberalism as, after all, the enemy of the Welfare State.
But the issue is not so easily resolved. In The
Cause Is Mankind, Hubert Humphrey argued that his views were merely an
extension of classical liberalism, with simply an added willingness to use
government beneficently. Eric Goldman made the same point in Rendezvous With Destiny.
Were this argument accepted, it would mean that
no real philosophical difference existed between Hubert Humphrey and Robert A.
Taft. Taft was willing to have government "place a floor" under
living standards, but was in countless ways distinguishable from contemporary
"liberalism."
There is some historical evidence for the
Humphrey-Goldman claim. Some men have begun as clear-cut classical liberals and
have then moved to an advocacy of an active state. Woodrow Wilson's change of
position in the middle of his 1912 campaign provides a good example.
Welfare State "liberalism" as a whole
is, however, not a product of such shifts, but of an intellectual movement thath began as early as the generation of Emerson and
Thoreau in the early nineteenth century. It involved a deep alienation by a
growing number of intellectuals from middle class culture, an alienation clearly
evidenced in the writings of Veblen, Dreiser, London,
Bellamy, Sinclair Lewis and innumerable others.
To the extent that modern liberalism is the
result of this alienation and of the leftist ideology based on that
disaffection, it is a species of socialist thought, not a progeny of classical
liberalism. To the extent, however, that a person has absorbed its Zeitgeist
without drinking deeply at the well of alienation and of socialist
thinking, he may not have drifted too far from classical liberalism. Such a man
would still have a cultural identification with American life and its past
ideals, despite his acceptance of current "liberal" cliches.
Contemporary
"Relevance." As the very minimum, we can
expect that there will always be some thinkers who will understand and favor
the ideals of individual liberty. But
classical liberalism has even more relevance today than this minimum would
suggest.
In
the short run, as Kevin Phillips has argued, there may be a new suburban,
western and southern demographic base forming for it. In the long run, we can
see that as we move into the space age the human options will not be tied to
contemporary social neuroses. In the transition, classical liberalism, provided
it can regain intellectual impetus, will have a renewed opportunity.
Identification
with the "Bourgeoisie." The democratic aspiration has
long been that the average man, the so-called "common man," be able
to rise to a level of intelligence, freedom and culture. This aspiration has
largely been achieved in modern
The Roman or Greek aristocrat of ancient times
looked with some contempt upon the man of trade. The same attitude was
exemplified by the landed aristocrat during the Middle
Ages. In modern western civilization it has been the intellectual who has been
the acting man's primary rival for power and prestige; it has been the members
of the "intelligentsia" who have had most to say about the
bourgeoisie -- and what they have said has been almost invariably critical.
Marx pictured the bourgeoisie as oppressors and
predicted their "inevitable" overthrow. Veblen
analyzed their culture in Rousseauistic terms as
based pervasively on "invidious comparison." Sinclair Lewis wrote of
the fictional businessman Babbitt as though he were an unregenerate mediocrity.
Hitler decried having been born in an "age of shopkeepers."
And yet a classical liberal views trade and the
trading .life as the very soul of voluntarism and as certainly far more noble
and moral than any of the coercivist organizations of
society. Ayn Rand may shock some when she makes the
dollar sign her symbol, but that sign symbolizes the moral value of the act of
free exchange. If we seek a society of self-reliant men, and seek this for the
population in general, it is to a system of free trade -- and to the resulting
bourgeois lifestyle -- that the classical liberal will look.
Central
Concern for
Of
the many definitions of "liberty," the classical liberal holds those
to be spurious that do not concern themselves with the problem of coercion. By
coercion is meant one man's manipulation of another's circumstances in a way to
cause him to act as the first desires, where the effect is detrimental from the
point of view of the man manipulated.
Socialist
definitions of "liberty" are not centrally concerned with coercion in
this sense. The upshot is that socialists are willing to use the state or a
collectivist social order in an effort to achieve some other goal that they
think desirable and that they call "liberty." This other goal varies,
depending upon the type of socialist.
Aspirations
for Human Dignity. Every philosophy claims, perhaps
sincerely, to seek human dignity. To a classical liberal, however, this
aspiration has at least two specific ingredients. The first is that he looks
back upon history and sees all of the immense human degradation and laceration
that has occurred in the building of the pyramids by the Pharoahs,
the burning of heretics by the Inquisition, the gassing of Jews in Nazi Germany
and the brutal incarceration of millions in Stalin labor camps. In striving for
a society founded upon a voluntary nexus, the classical liberal seeks to
obviate this degradation -- to permit human beings to live as their own agents
rather than as effluvia in the maelstrom of power-lusts.
The
second is that he views the free society as a peaceable, productive plateau
from which men may rise to illimitable heights of intellectual, aesthetic,
artistic and moral attainment. In this sense, it is a tragedy that the voluntaristic society has come to be identified so closely
with the mundane lifestyle of the "bourgeoisie." Though the free
society is based upon that broad social class and its way of life, that
lifestyle needs frequently to be transcended. Classical liberalism, as best
conceived, contemplates substantial human greatness.
Intellectual
Humility. Classical liberals are diverse as to the
religious and metaphysical foundations given for their social philosophy. My
own formulation is existentialist: I view the primary metaphysical reason for
liberty to be precisely in the fact that the cosmos does not give human life an
assigned meaning, that values do not exist as attributes of inert matter but come
from within human beings, that metaphysically there is no stamp of validation
on any given set of values. In this state of things, I am struck by a cosmic
humility; I have no perceivable basis for insisting that all men march to the
same drum. Yet, there are immediate difficulties. What if one man chooses to
kill, the other not to be killed? I answer, without any cosmic pretensions
whatsoever, that as an act of will I prefer life -- and proceed to formulate a
social construct that will permit life, but still with as little interference
with men's value choices as that goal will permit. Thus we arrive at a view of
society as properly being based on voluntary human action within a social order
that imposes such constraints as are necessary to preserve a general
voluntarism.
Whatever
their metaphysical suppositions, all classical liberals share in something akin
to this "cosmic humility." When they are willing to admit another
man's right to his own pursuits or beliefs, they are in effect saying that they
do not have the conviction that they have all of the answers for him. They do
not, like the religious antagonists of the sixteenth century, feel a compulsion
to save the other man's soul.
Rationalism,
Secularism. Despite this basic humility, classical liberals
are fundamentally rationalistic in the sense that they wish to think through
their social institutions and not take them on faith or simply because they are
old. This is the reason Burkean traditionalists often
think classical liberalism not-far-separated from socialist thought; the man
who places deep reliance on faith and prescription necessarily thinks, by
virtue of his own perspective, that all forms of social planning are closely
related. But there is a basic difference between classical liberal and
socialist planning: one plans only in order to establish the prerequisites for
a voluntaristic, "unplanned" society; the
other often wishes to have a continuing voice in what men do.
Secularism is a concern for the things of this
world as distinguished from a preoccupation with the "City of
The
"Vitalist Perspective."
Perhaps one of the most important mental characteristics of the classical
liberal is that he has come to hold what I call the "vitalist
perspective." He is persuaded that the world can in fact operate
successfully if people are left to their own devices (assuming a social order
that establishes the preconditions for this). He does not think that liberty is
chaos. He is willing to rely on human vitality; men are not inert matter.
The
assumption that liberty is chaos pervades non-classical liberal thinking. The
modern liberal assumes that if the coal mines in
Actually, this perspective involves several
separate elements. First, classical liberals view men as basically capable of
handling their own affairs; they indulge no supposition that many men are non
compos mentis (though this is an empirical assumption; if men in a given
period prove incapable, their very incapacity will be one of the most potent
reasons for their rejection of classical liberalism).
Second, the classical liberal feels deeply a
moral imperative that men make themselves capable. His assertion of human
capability is partly an empirical observation and partly a moral injunction.
When he recalls the horrible degradation of the galley slave, he is ready to
call out: "So conduct yourself that human life
can be placed on a better footing." (Needless to say, if men lose sight of
this moral imperative and are willing to discount it as merely a "WASP
prejudice" or as "nothing more than" the "Protestant or
middle class ethic," one of the spiritual preconditions of individual
liberty is destroyed.)
The entire classical liberal "model"
for society was built upon this assumption of human capability. Economists
talked in terms of abundance arising out of the division of labor, itself the
result of free trade. In the Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville,
though still influenced by many mercantilist assumptions, laid the foundation
for classical and neo-classical economics when he spoke of the rich benefits to
society that accrue from the "vice" of acquisitiveness. Adam Smith's
conception of a workable market economy was predicated on a new realization of
the harmony of voluntary human energies.
At the same time, the classical liberal has been
a realist. He has not dreamt of far-off utopias; he has always recognized life
as hard, resources as scarce. Unlike the socialist, he does not presume a
"pie" to divide; the problem is for him primarily one of production,
motivation, work. He is ready, in keeping with his principles generally, to let
the distribution be determined by the contractual arrangements men choose to
make. Many socialists have assumed that if only the greedy were restrained from
taking too much there would be plenty; it was on this hypothesis that the
utopias of Fourier and Bellamy were based a hundred years ago. Such New Left
authors as Herbert Marcuse and Robert Theobald today seek to place this hypothesis on a less
naive foundation and therefore say that "there may not have been enough
abundance to accomplish that a century ago, but space age technology now makes
it possible." We are reminded, however, of Sir Henry Maine's observation,
which still holds good today, that mankind consumes its existing wealth very
quickly; it only maintains its standard of living by a perpetual regeneration.
If this is so, the acquisitive motivation to effort is not obsolete.
Its View of
For
his part, the classical liberal does not think the average man
"depraved" or otherwise befouled -- although classical liberals
differ among themselves as to whether they take, as Andrew Jackson did, an
essentially democratic, hopeful view of the "common man" or, as
Alexis de Tocqueville did, a more aristocratically pessimistic view. Man is
both capable of taking care of himself and capable of decency, and has a moral
imperative to achieve both.
The
classical liberal at the same time recognizes that men frequently have other
tendencies. It is often painful or unpleasant to exert effort; creative work
requires at the least a certain modicum of patience and tedium; accordingly,
there will always be pressures on the human being to recline into sloth. There
is no empirical basis for the assumption that he is spontaneously, invariably
energetic and intelligent, particularly if he is sheltered, as collectivism
would often seek to shelter him, from the exigencies of life. If we think man
totally vigorous, we err; if we think him totally inert, we err; the truth,
says the classical liberal, lies between the two poles.
In
any event, men are inclined to abuse coercive power. The dictum of Lord Acton
is so well known as to be cliched: "Power tends
to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is a tendency that classical liberals seek
to frustrate whenever possible.
Approach to Human
Weakness. Whatever generalization we may make about human
capabilities, it is evident that many men are weak and that much of the human
race is of relatively low intelligence. This is an inescapable given.
Burkean
conservatism answers the problem of weakness by urging a benevolent
hierarchical society, intending that the lower orders should be subordinated to
the higher and that all should live happily within an organic whole. This was
the view expressed by Samuel Johnson in the conversations reported by Boswell.
Socialist
thought has often been implicitly elitist, with the intellectual assuming that
he will lead, but because of the alliance of the intelligentsia with the
"have-not" against the man of commerce that has been so important to
the modern left, the ideology and rhetoric of socialism have most often sought
an actual leveling of society. At least in the theoretical model, all persons
are thrown into hotchpot and guaranteed roughly the
same level of well-being without regard to their attainments. Thus, socialism
treats human weakness by pulling all men down to approximately the same level.
The moral implications of this are self-evident.
The
classical liberal answer to weakness is to motivate by competitiveness, to
assert the moral imperative, and to resort first to private charity and finally
to local government and only as a last resort to the central government to give
assistance to those who cannot make it. Contrary to a recent ruling of the
United States Supreme Court based on modern liberal assumptions, the classical
liberal would differentiate between the 'deserving poor" and those who are
not deserving.
A
Society of Individuals. It is rare that an author will
sum up in a single passage the real essence of something vital. In his The
Acquisitive Society, the British socialist R.H. Tawney
has laid his suppositions bare when he has written that "to say that the
end of social institutions is happiness, is to say that they have no common end
at all. For happiness is individual, and to make happiness the object of society
is to resolve society itself into the ambitions of numberless individuals, each
directed towards the attainment of some personal purpose." In so saying,
he has stated succinctly the major premise of collectivist thought.
The
classical liberal couldn't disagree more vehemently; to him, the end of social
institutions is precisely to permit numberless individuals to attain their
personal purposes. He knows no mold into which he would feel justified in
pouring them. We will see later, however, that the proponents of the free
society do need to give additional attention to the human craving for a sense
of community and for a transcendental purpose -- needs that an individualistic
social order has not usually placed at the forefront of its objectives.
The Need
for a Framework. The classical liberal seeks to maximize
individual voluntarism, but in a hedonistic age this is easily misunderstood.
Within the classical liberal conception of liberty there is as much emphasis on
responsibility as on the individual's unfettered right to do as he pleases. A
system of mutually recognized rights within a society containing over two
hundred million people and involving extensive human interaction has
complexities far surpassing anyone's "commonsense" intuition. It
depends profoundly upon an omnipresent net of subtle cultural patterns or
mores, an ethical sensibility shared by the overwhelming majority of the
population, and finally upon law and government. The right of the individual to
live his own life is the overriding purpose, but to accomplish his requires all
of the cements that go to hold civilization together. There must be centripetal
as well as centrifugal forces. An exploration of what these preconditions are
is, in fact, the central subject of classical liberal discussion; it is this
that will occupy us in the next section.
Classical
Liberalism 's Social Ideal or "Model." Each
social philosophy includes a conception of society as it would like to see it,
a "model." Burkean conservatives often
assert that they are non-rationalistic in this sense; they say that they do not
have a model, but actually they do -- except that, believing they are right,
they are unwilling to admit that their conception of society is a
"construct." For its part, classical liberalism has a specific social
ideal.
This
is not to say that classical liberals all agree on the model or its sources.
Eighteenth century theorists spoke of society established according to a
"social contract"; the content of the contract varied from thinker to
thinker. Others begin with a conception of, say, "property rights"
and deduce the consequences of these rights under varying conditions; their
reasoning is almost invariably deductive, with any questions of policy incorporated
in their original definition of property. There is a strong "natural
rights" tradition in classical liberalism -- founded on such thinkers as
Locke and Jefferson -- to which these approaches are related.
Another
method is to look upon classical liberalism as an attempt to accommodate as
many diverse human values as possible, and to formulate a social model by the
"weighing" of conflicting interests against each other with the
purpose of arriving at principles that will provide a mutual accommodation
wherever possible.
I personally prefer this latter methodology. In The
Constitution of Liberty, F. A. Hayek began with this method, but wound up
with the Rule of Law as his exclusive criterion, apparently because his studies
had persuaded him that the Rule of Law has been central in the historical
development of liberty.
Reduction
of Coercion. Those who make a specific concept, such as
private property or the Rule of Law, the center of classical liberal theory
must first define it and state why they choose the definition they do. Those
who pursue the "accomm6dation of interests" approach will concern
themselves with how best to establish a voluntary nexus; and here their
attention will focus on the problem of coercion.
I
have defined coercion as the detrimental manipulation of another's
alternatives. If A wants B to do something (such as to work for
him) and makes this more attractive than B's alternatives, but does so
by placing a penalty on those alternatives (such as "if you do any of
them, I will harm your children"), then he will get B to do it; he
will, however, have accomplished this at the expense of B's own view of
his alternatives.
The opposite of this coercive transaction is a
voluntary one, where A offers B an enhancement of one alternative
to make it more attractive to B than his other options. This involves
putting B in a better, not worse, overall position (though
"exploitation" theories say otherwise). B's own values will be
served without sacrificing them to A; the ends of both are harmonized, not
placed in conflict.
Because
of their "vitalist perspective," classical
liberals believe a complex society can be built on the basis of this voluntary
transaction; thus, the uncoerced contract becomes for
them the basic building block for human relationships.
Some
subtleties in defining "coercion" lead to differences among classical
liberals. These involve two related questions: Does only physical violence or
its threat constitute coercion? Is a person exercising coercion when, as a
penalty, he threatens to withhold his own goods or services? Each classical
liberal will have an almost reflexive response, one way or the other, to these
questions.
The
important thing in answering them is to look ahead to see whether one
definition serves classical liberal purposes better than another. Doing so, I opt for the broader definition;
a man can be starved into submission by a boycott: physical violence is not
necessary, and the effect may be accomplished by many people withholding simply
their own services. This inclusive definition causes us to focus our minds more
on the problem of aggregates, while those who take the narrower definition seem
to look more favorably upon monopolistic restraints on trade, strikes and
boycotts.
If
we say that even the concerted withholding of goods and services cannot be
coercive, then either our definition leads us to conclude that such restraints
are legitimate or we conclude that there are some definitionally
non-coercive actions that clash with classical liberal purposes. On the other
hand, if we hold this to be coercive, we tend to declare such concerted action
illegitimate; we also must then admit that some "coercive" acts, such
as an individual's independent choice not to buy something, are legitimate.
I
am not greatly concerned which view is adopted; what is important is that we be
fully conscious of the semantic process, so that the definitional tail does not
wag the substantive dog, as so often happens. Values must be kept in mind;
whatever we formulate must serve the purpose of permitting men to co-exist with
the least sacrifice of their individual ends.
If
coercion is physical force, then we speak of eliminating it; if it is more
broadly defined, we speak of "minimizing" it.
The
Role of the State. Anarchists of the left want no state (just
a collectivist social order), saying that men are essentially good if not made
greedy by competitiveness. Anarchists of the right, the "anarcho-capitalists," posit, as do classical liberals,
that men are not invariably considerate of the rights of others; they argue,
however, that market-type institutions can perform all the present functions of
government and that such institutions can certainly do no worse than the state.
A
classical liberal accepts neither of these theses. He certainly does not think
men innately loving; nor does he think the essential functions of order and of
respect for reciprocal rights can be performed without a center of superior
strength, the state. He is as concerned about the centripetal needs of a voluntaristic society as with the right to do as one
pleases. Wishing assurance that all men will have the same right to do as they
please, he is concerned for context. This is a concern that is not
satisfactorily resolved by unduly wishful thinking about the market's
usefulness. Thus, he favors a state -- but a state fearfully guarded. A major
area of classical liberal theory consequently pertains to defining the
legitimate functions of the state.
A Private Sphere for the
Individual Within a Cultural, Ethical, Legal Shield. If he
is to have a life of his own not impinged upon constantly by others, an
individual must have a "private sphere" of his own. A large portion
of the Anglo-Saxon common law, as of other legal systems, is concerned with
protecting such a private sphere. Crimes and torts are often defined to protect
the integrity of the person, his property, reputation or privacy.
The
private sphere cannot rest entirely upon legal remedies, however; it depends
even more on the virtually unquestioned acceptance of person, property,
reputation and privacy by the community at large. This is, foremost, a cultural
matter based on long experience; it also very much involves the ethic of the
society.
To
be "free" in the special sense that one does not have to worry about
losing a job or being denied a promotion or the like, a man's private sphere
must include an independent income. Few men in any society are able to be fully
"free" in this sense.
Private Property.
Private property bears an important relationship to the private sphere; it
enables a man to have his own domain that is no one else's. There are at least
two additional reasons for private property's importance to classical
liberalism: as the subject matter of an economic system based on voluntary
production and exchange, arid because private property involves a broad
diffusion of power as compared to central state ownership.
If
the state or a collective holds the major forms of property, it has the means,
as Trotsky candidly admitted, to reduce the citizen to a beggar. To avoid this,
classical liberalism seeks a broad, contractually arrived at, diffusion of
property. A Marxist argues that this does not really diffuse property, but only
places it in a social class (the bourgeoisie) -- but a classical liberal
recognizes this argument as a way to obviate any voluntaristic
arrangement of society.
The
"Act of Exchange"; the Market Economy.
Classical liberalism is alone among the major ideologies in wholeheartedly
endorsing capitalism; it looks with favor upon the "act of exchange"
as a constructive, peaceable nexus consonant with each man's pursuit of his own
ends.
While
it views competitiveness as an excellent motivator, the primary reason it
favors capitalism is not that it works so well, though that is important; the
reason is that capitalism is the necessary expression of individual liberty. An
Olympian observer may like or not like the "allocation of resources"
or "distribution of wealth" effected under capitalism, but a
classical liberal will accept them as the by-products of liberty (unless they
in some way undermine the preconditions of classical liberalism). He views the
role of Olympian judge as presumptuous.
He
is not without his own preferences; he may utterly dislike the general public's
taste in music or books. But his "cosmic humility" makes it incumbent
upon him to change their standards only by education.
Though considerable emphasis is placed on the
market economy's competitive nature, the classical liberal thinks of it equally
as much as being cooperative: though sellers compete with sellers and buyers
with buyers, each transaction when consummated is an example of mutually
beneficial cooperation. The entire system of division of labor is built upon
this.
Accentuating
the Voluntary. In Emergent Man, I have stated the
classical liberal formula as being "to minimize coercion, and to
accentuate the voluntary," assuming that the first does not automatically
effect the second. Thus, I stated something over which classical liberals
differ. To some, the state's action against coercion exhausts its functions; to
others, the state has a role to play in establishing an institutional, legal,
cultural and ethical "framework" for voluntarism.
Milton
Friedman has written of "neighborhood effects" where some
"actions of individuals have effects on other individuals for which it is
not feasible to charge or recompense them." An example is the network of
roads (though not long-distance turnpikes); everyone shares in their utility,
but it would not be feasible to have them all privately owned and to charge a
toll each time someone uses one of them. From this perspective, public roads
are a legitimate service function of the state because they enhance the market
economy. Along the same lines, a county "register of deeds" office is
a useful aid to the system of private ownership; the Secretary of State's
office, which accepts the filing of corporate documents, provides the
institutional framework for the existence of corporate entities; the
"power of eminent domain" makes possible certain forms of private
activity (such as is involved in roads, airports and parks) that may not
otherwise be able to be put together.
In
my opinion it has hurt classical liberalism when its advocates have taken a
narrow view on these questions; we fail in our intellectual demonstration when
we do not formulate a model of a rounded, adequate, complete social system. It
is true that classical liberals have been at the barricades fighting the
expansion of governmental power for over a century, but they ought not to
permit this emphasis to cripple their perception of what is needed as
institutional preconditions for the society they seek to attain.
The
Parameters of a
The
Rule of Law. "
The Rule of Law has been debunked by modern
liberalism, which has not generally understood the purpose for it and has
confused empiricism with an ideal by arguing that "things don't work that
way.” Statist ideologies almost invariably want more
governmental flexibility than the Rule of Law allows.
Constitutionalism. Hayek
has said that
Separation
of Powers. Ever since Montesquieu, classical liberals have
sought to separate the powers among the several branches of government so that
no one person can have in his hands all of the power needed to be oppressive.
The "checks and balances" limit power, and
have often been at least partially effective -- as when Andrew Johnson stood in
the way of a harsh Reconstruction during the first three years after the Civil
War.
Decentralization
of Power. "States rights" serve several
classical liberal purposes: (a) By providing a number
of governmental centers, a "coup d'etat"
becomes very difficult. (b) Government is more democratically controlled at a
local level; it is easier, say, for voters to replace members of a board of
education than a federal education czar. (c) Because people could "vote
with their feet," a despotism in one of the
states could not last.
Modern
transportation and communication have weakened the decentralization by breaking
up local loyalties and somewhat homogenizing the country. In addition, the
scale of federal activity today captures the imagination of intellectual and
politician far more than does the statehouse. These tendencies weaken classical
liberalism.
The
Ethical Order. In a hedonistic age it is unpopular to speak
favorably of moral restraints on individual behavior. Classical liberalism,
however, depends vitally on a moral order. Not wishing to rely
much on governmental action, it must rely on acculturation and ethical suasion.
Racial discrimination, for instance, violates the ethic of an individualistic
philosophy, which would have men judged by their talents, character and acts --
but a classical liberal is loath to bring in the police power to regulate all
the subtle interpersonal relations among the races.
Young "libertarians" influenced by the
"cultural revolution" of the 1960s sometimes tend to overlook this
feature of classical liberalism.
The
Family. The monogamous family is in several ways
important to classical liberalism: because it serves as a supportive unit for
the individual; because it is a source of moral values; and because it provides
a multicentered source for the passing on of ideas
and values to the new generation. While the state nursery is the ideal of the
totalitarian state, the family cluster is the ideal of classical liberalism.
The desirability of a pluralism of millions of
families has implications in several areas. The classical liberal sexual ethic
will seek to support the monogamous marriage. Classical liberal educational
theory will seek to keep education in the hands of the parents, as through
Milton Friedman's "voucher plan" which would permit parents to spend
the tax money for education at schools of their own choice.
The
Political System. Because they are identified with the middle
class, have confidence in men's capabilities, and desire a government beholdened to no one interest, classical liberals certainly
include representative government in their model. However, they have differed
among themselves as to how much they have trusted the "common man" to
preserve liberty.
None
are willing totally to subordinate the basic ingredients of individual liberty
to the will of the majority. They favor majority rule in the operation of a
limited government, but oppose majority rule to the extent that it becomes a
rationale for widespread statist action. At a less
advanced state of culture they would perhaps even opt for a limited,
constitutional regime not founded on majority rule in preference to a more
dangerous one based on a universal franchise, though the need for such a choice
would mean that their ideal could not be totally achieved in that setting.
Although
classical liberal residuals remain significantly in our society, and capitalism
and the middle class have gone dynamically on despite the attacks made upon
them, it is nevertheless true that classical liberalism is in many ways out of
harmony with the intellectual and spiritual qualities of twentieth century man.
This is due partially to its own incompleteness and
partially to weaknesses in that type of man.
Relation to the
Spiritual Qualities of Modern
Ortega
ascribes to this man the elements of a spoiled child's psychology: a wide
expansion of desires, a wish for immediate gratification, impatience, a
willingness to use "direct action" (as a child does a tantrum) to
gain what he wishes, a lack of understanding of what has been involved in
creating the means to the gratifications he seeks, and a lack of both real
satisfaction and of gratitude for the gratification after he gets it.
Hedonistically oriented, his life lacks central purpose; the psychologist
Viktor Frankl has written that the characteristic
twentieth century neurosis is that of a lack of perceived meaning in life. It
is no wonder that the social religions of the age have had immense appeal when
they have offered a filling of the void.
This
cannot, of course, be the whole story; were it a complete description of modern
man, western civilization would long since have perished. But it does describe
certain salient features. Without reference to such spiritual factors it is
impossible to understand the Russian nihilist, the pre-World War I German youth
movement, the syndicalist, the fascist, the New Left
and much more besides.
Ironically,
by helping effect the freedom of the common man, classical liberalism has
partially brought on its own spiritual negation. The spiritual qualities of
modern man have played a major role in the decline of classical liberalism.
Even if we were able to establish a thoroughly classical liberal social model
today, there would be strong spiritual forces to undermine it. (We often think,
say, that the Welfare State encourages indolence; it does so, but the causation
also runs the other way: mediocrity breeds the Welfare State.)
The
question of whether a free society is ultimately stable is still unresolved. A
hundred years ago, Sir Henry Maine wrote that "popular government"
had yet to prove itself viable. The horror is that in
its absence there is no decent alternative.
The
Intellectual Division in Modern Civilization.
Classical liberalism was an integral part of the secularist, rationalist,
empirical tendencies as western civilization emerged from the medieval emphasis
on theology, faith and prescriptive right. It was also identified with the
bourgeoisie, trade and individual liberty.
For the past two to three centuries, however,
one of the most significant facts about our civilization has been a bifurcation
of its intellectuality from the remainder of society. The great mass of
intellectuals early became intensely alienated from the bourgeoisie. Several
reasons are suggested: (1) Because the acting man has displaced the
intellectual from the topmost role in society (Hoffer's
displacement theory); (2) because of personal envy (the view expressed in Mises' The Anti-Capitalist Mentality); and (3)
because of the presence of some real deficiencies in bourgeois life to which
the intellectual is particularly sensitive (as witness the social critique by
sensitive men of many persuasions for three centuries).
A
centuries-long alliance between the intellectual and the "have-nots"
against the man of commerce has been perhaps the most important consequence of
this alienation. Many aspects of modern intellectuality can only be understood
with reference to this not-altogether-natural alliance.
Additionally,
the alienated intellectuals have become a sub-culture and the modern
intellectual orthodoxy.
The upshot has been an intellectual abandonment
of classical liberalism and, to that degree, of western civilization. Since the
eighteenth century most intellectuals have gone to the left, with the result
that capitalism and the middle class have received comparatively little
continuing sympathetic attention. The effect has been to place classical
liberalism on the defensive. This has strengthened it by making it probe deeply
into its own fundamentals; I have already commented that some of its best work
has been done in our time by, say, Rand, Mises,
Hayek, Friedman and Roepke. But often the
defensiveness has reduced classical liberals to dogmatists and apologists.
There are today vast issues to which classical liberals have hardly addressed
themselves because of their small numbers and their frequent inability to
expand their horizons.
No doubt the greatest need of modern western
civilization, and hence of the world, is for a reconstruction of modern
intellectuality. Our civilization will lack constructive ideals and will remain
extremely vulnerable until the division between the intellectual and the
bourgeoisie is resolved. Though this will not occur unless conditions become
ripe for it (and they may never do so), classical liberal values must
necessarily be crucial to any such reconciliation.
Certain
Unresolved Issues: Anti-Trust, Monetary Policy, Philosophical and Religious
Base. It is not to be supposed that even in the absence of the
drain on intellectual resources to which I have referred there would have
developed a total consensus among classical liberals on all issues. Within
classical liberalism today there are several viewpoints on major subjects.
One
of these has to do with anti-trust. Some argue that no anti-trust laws are
necessary because monopolies and restraints on trade would not exist without
governmental help. Others agree that government plays a large role in creating
monopolies, but that there is nevertheless a problem of the coercive potential
of aggregates that it is a legitimate function of the classical liberal state
to act against.
With
regard to monetary and banking institutions, some classical liberals favor
returning to the gold standard and perhaps favor a system of "free
banking." Others would cut the economy free of gold and provide a set
legal rule that the Federal Reserve Board would be required to follow with
regard to the volume of money and credit. This difference in part reflects
their differing assessments of what is workable within the modern setting as
well as of what is politically achievable (see W .H. Hutt's
recent monograph on the "politically impossible.")
Probably
the deepest difference among classical liberals pertains to their religious and
philosophical roots. While many classical liberals are sincere Christians, Ayn Rand has attacked Christianity for its altruistic
ethic, which she says is fundamentally at odds with capitalism. Such questions
can only be avoided by superficiality; they will necessarily lie at the heart
of much future discussion.
Differing Ethical Methodologies. The
sociologist Max Weber commented a number of years ago on two opposed approaches
to ethical theory: that which holds that "the intrinsic value of ethical
conduct is sufficient for its justification," and that which holds that
"the responsibility for the predictable consequences of the action is to
be taken into consideration."
In
my discussions with young libertarians, I have seen the continuing importance
of this distinction. Many start their theory with a moral axiom such as
"private property" and follow strict deduction from it. No argument
seems to them fully to the point that concerns itself with whether a workable
model is established. Since my own methodology consists of starting only with
classical liberal values as the given and then flexibly working out the optimal
achievement of those values in an overall rationalistic model, my discussions
with some of them reach an impasse founded upon Weber's distinction. Though the
philosophy of someone who pursues the "pure axiom" method may in many
ways be similar to my own, it is fundamentally different in methodology and
will have practical differences that are irreconcilable. Robert LeFevre's anarcho-capitalist and
pacifist philosophy is of this sort: he is willing to say "I will do what
is right regardless of the consequences"; I am compelled to answer that
"I only know what is right after I have evaluated the consequences."
The burgeoning anarcho-capitalist
viewpoint is often based on this methodological error; I view it also as
representative of the tendency of many thinkers to lose balance: by emphasizing
some truths exclusively, they come out very differently than they would if they
were to maintain a balance in perspective and of values. This has long been a
characteristic failing among intellectuals of the left; we see it now on the
right.
The
Need for a Transcendence of Bourgeois Values. One of
the great challenges to classical liberalism involves the need to transcend the
lifestyle of its own supportive social class, the bourgeoisie. Though a
classical liberal will easily see that the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie has
much to commend it, the complaints of such diverse thinkers as Thoreau, Veblen, Weaver, Ortega and Roepke
attest to its serious deficiencies. Since classical liberalism is the only
major ideology that supports the middle class, it is the only philosophy in a
position to lend itself to a sympathetic solution to these problems.
A
commercial civilization, particularly if the "common man" is
culturally predominant, will necessarily tend to stress extroverted or
"outer-directed" human relationships. To the extent it is
economically successful, its members will also tend toward
a hedonistic preoccupation. And to the extent that it enjoys peaceable trade,
there will be a mundane, everyday-life quality about it.
Little
has been said in defense of this resulting culture, though much could be. And
yet, its deficiencies are apparent; for many sensitive men the meaning of life
depends upon its not being trivialized and rendered mundane: there needs to be
a transcendent purpose in existing. To those who care deeply about ideas or
sensibilities, a trivialized, mundane, fun-oriented human nexus can be deeply
dissatisfying.
The
alienated intellectuality of the past three hundred years has responded by
attempting to tear down capitalism and the middle class. A classical liberal
will see that a much more constructive answer lies in retaining a free society
based on commerce and the common man, but adding to it a compatible but
sensitive intellectuality. This intellectuality could address itself to
spiritual solutions and could use such a culture as a plateau from which
readily to rise to creative heights surpassing anything previously known to
man.
Today's Relevance and Tomorrow's Possibilities
Classical
Liberalism in Today's World. It often seems to a classical liberal that
the world, and even the
I
am persuaded that the classical liberal, and not the other, has the more
correct perspective; there are indeed important tendencies away from classical
liberal values. And yet, the difference in viewpoint serves to highlight the
point that
So
long as its dynamic carries it forward, this society will provide a
substantial, albeit imperfect, base for classical liberal thinking and practice.
It is even possible that demographic changes and the pressures of a hostile
world will render it more receptive to "conservative" approaches;
hopefully, these will be constructively classical liberal.
The
Potential for a "New
Liberalism." In the
American
"liberalism" is, as I have argued, not simply an extension of
classical liberalism by men who have thought an active state needful under
modern circumstances. Instead, it has arisen out of the alienation of the
intellectual from middle class culture. This intellectual has for a century
gone to European socialist theory and applied it in his ideology. At the same
time, this intellectual has played the part of a pragmatist in American life,
rarely openly avowing the socialism in his theory and often building on such
indigenous American elements as the Jeffersonian distrust for any marriage
between money and government.
This
pattern is, however, deeply fractured in the 1970s. The alienated intellectual
is emboldened by his dominance in the media and in academia, and yet
intensely frustrated over the continuing progress of our society. It has come
to the point where the Welfare State simply is not enough to satisfy the
alienation. The consequence is that those who have been deeply alienated are
now espousing socialism and sometimes revolution. It is this phenomenon that we
call the New Left in
But
what of the "liberal" who has favored modern liberalism's programs
and even imbibed its conceptual framework, but who simply has no deep hatred
for the
His
response will depend upon many things, not least of which will be his own
personal situation and qualities. He could become an open socialist himself
because of the conceptual frame of reference to which he has been so long
accustomed. Or as a "loyalist" he could turn in a direction that
would face him back toward classical liberalism. In the split in
"liberal" intellectuality, there is an opening to the right.
In
the transition, such a person might be subject to conversion to one of the
forms of classical liberalism that is doctrinaire and that places tight
limitations on governmental functions. But most are likely to be more receptive
to an expansive, flexible sort of classical liberalism -- a "new
liberalism" that can address itself to the great issues of our time.
This
new liberalism need not in its theory vary from classical liberalism as I have
described it, but it will need to be the sort of classical liberalism that
understands the legitimacy of governmental action that creates a fully workable
framework for a free society. For example, it will not be the type of classical
liberalism that opposes all tax-supported education, but it will be the type
that favors the voucher plan to permit parents to select schools, public or
private, of their own choice. It will not be the type that argues that
government ought to take a hands-off attitude about the monetary system, but
the type that would subject the present system to the Rule of Law. It will not
be the type that asserts that there is no problem of monopoly, but the type
that supports anti-trust laws while at the same time making them less ambiguous
and arbitrary and while driving hard toward the removal of governmental
encouragements to monopoly.
It will be the type that has regained its role
as social critic, perceiving that for many reasons the moral tone of our
society is not what it ought to be and that there are indeed spiritual
deficiencies in the middle class lifestyle that need to be transcended.
Thus
it can at one and the same time be deeply loyal to and
identified with American culture and the free society and be dynamic as a
movement for social and spiritual reform. In other words, it can be what classical
liberalism was itself envisioned to be before it lost its impetus and became
purely defensive.
This
is not to say that it will not have the opposition of major elements in
contemporary American life. It is difficult to see a way in which organized
labor with its coercive instruments can be reconciled with classical liberal
theory (though a classical liberal society that establishes a truly
satisfactory structure for the man who is employed, that is beyond the
beginning stages of industrialization and that has reached a level of affluence
that enables such a man to live comfortably and with leisure will over time be
able to bypass the present union problem). Nor will the alienated intellectual
acquiesce (except that a deeper concern for problems of lifestyle will tend to
remove one of the grounds for his alienation, though unfortunately not the key
one). And neither will such a new liberalism be able to escape the problems
inherent in the "spoiled child" spiritual tone of modern man; there
are no panaceas to cure that (except that the new liberalism would help by
reversing the ethical relativism that has undermined contemporary standards of
education and behavior).
Continuing
Importance to Civilization. From this we can see that
classical liberal values are far from obsolete in the