Libertarianism
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Libertarianism BIBLIOGRAPHY maintaining residence within the polity, one voluntarily The Committee of Santa Fe. 1980. A New Inter-American Policy agrees to the government laws one lives under. for the Eighties. Washington, DC: Council for Inter-American Government is recognized as a special kind of organiza- Security. tion, and might be said to enjoy a special kind of legiti- Cone, James H. 1990. A Black Theology of Liberation. 20th macy, but it does not get a special dispensation on Anniversary ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. coercion. In the eyes of the libertarian, everything the gov- Gutierrez, Gustavo. 1988. A Theology of Liberation: History, ernment does that would be deemed coercive and crimi- Politics, and Salvation. Trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and nal if done by any other party in society is still coercive. John Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. For example, imagine that a neighbor decided to impose a Levine, Daniel H. 1992. Popular Voices in Latin American minimum-wage law on you. Since most government Catholicism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. action, including taxation, is of that nature, libertarians Smith, Christian. 1991. The Emergence of Liberation Theology: see government as a unique kind of organization engaged Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory. Chicago: in wholesale coercion, and coercion is the treading on lib- University of Chicago Press. erty. This semantic, libertarians say, was central in eigh- teenth- and nineteenth-century custom and social Otto Maduro thought, for example in Adam Smith’s treatment of “nat- ural liberty” and through the American founders, the abolitionists, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and William Graham Sumner LIBERTARIANISM (1840–1910). (Indeed, libertarians will argue that the From the customs of liberal society and the writings of vocabulary of modern liberalism is in many respects a sys- John Locke (1632–1704), David Hume (1711–1776), tematic undermining of the older vocabulary.) Adam Smith (1723–1790), and myriad others, there To just about anyone, coercion has a negative conno- emerged an ideological sensibility dubious of government tation. And, indeed, libertarians generally oppose govern- activism, leery of collectivist urges, and resistant of nation- ment action. That disposition holds not only against alistic sentiments. It learned to accept commercial society economic intervention, but extends to coercive egalitari- and cosmopolitanism, and even celebrate them. It main- anism (the welfare state), restrictions on personal lifestyle tains a presumption of individual liberty. The name of this (such as drug prohibition), and extensive government sensibility has varied in time and place, but in the United ownership of resources. Libertarians also tend to oppose States since the 1970s the name has been libertarianism. military action abroad, though some libertarians may The signal feature of libertarianism is the distinction favor it when they believe that it bids fair to reduce coer- between voluntary and coercive action. Coercion is the cion on the whole (that is, across the globe). aggressive invasion (including the threat of invasion) of Within libertarian thought, there has been much one’s property or freedom of consent (or contract). debate over whether the principle of liberty is absolute Libertarians maintain a logic of ownership whereby own- (that is, 100 percent), or, as Adam Smith held, simply a ers have a claim to the control and use of their property, a presumption (say, 90 percent). Most classical liberals claim good against the world. The logic is exhibited regarded it as a presumption, as have the transitional fig- throughout centuries of liberal society in the normal, ures Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and Friedrich Hayek legitimate goings-on of private parties. It emerges as intu- (1899–1992), both originally from Austria, and the itive and natural. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of famous American economist Milton Friedman. In judg- Nations (1776) that “the obvious and simple system of ing where coercive government policy should be accepted natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord” (bk. 4, or even deemed desirable, the “maxim” libertarians appeal chap. 9). As for the determination of who owns what, to broad sensibilities about consequences, including moral there are universal norms, beginning with ownership in and cultural consequences, of alternative policy arrange- one’s own person, and extending to property acquired ments. They do not attempt to set out any complete or within the family and in voluntary interaction with others definitive characterization of such sensibilities, any algo- (such as trade, production, and gift relations). Libertarians rithm of desirability, and they declare that it is unreason- admit the holes and gray areas, but argue that the distinc- able to demand that they do so, especially since the same tions nonetheless hold much water, and that rival ideolo- demand is not made of rival ideologies. gies are also plagued by holes and gray areas, even more so. In justifying the presumption of liberty, most liber- Libertarians reject any “social contract” device as a tarians, especially economists, emphasize the practical way to bring political relations into “consent.” They reject arguments—liberty works better than government inter- the idea that, whether by virtue of democracy or simply by vention—but others have maintained that liberty has an INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2ND EDITION 437 Libertarianism ethical authority established quite separately from any One, exemplified by Mises and Rothbard, champions consideration of practical results. human reason as an engine of discovery of scientific truth The emergence of libertarianism, as such, comes and purports to deduce a priori the superiority of volun- about from the retreat of classical liberalism (particularly tary arrangements. The other, inspired by Smith and after 1900) and, particularly in the United Kingdom and exemplified by Hayek, criticizes the pretense of knowl- the United States, the concurrent change of the popular edge. It views economic processes as a skein of local prac- meaning of liberalism, such that those who kept up cos- tices and peculiarities, with their own dialectics of change mopolitan, laissez-faire, antistatist views no longer had a and correction, and hence largely unknowable to regula- name. tors or even the most assiduous intellectuals. Followers of Mises, Hayek, and Friedman clung to the old term Mises and Rothbard claim a scientific foundation for lais- liberalism. The term libertarian was used occasionally, but sez-faire economics; followers of Smith and Hayek criti- was really seized by the critical figure of modern libertari- cize the scientific claims of interventionist economics. All anism, Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995). Beginning in “Austrian” economists are at least broadly libertarian in the 1960s, Rothbard reasserted the old definition of lib- their policy views, but many libertarians are mainstream erty and infused libertarianism with a paradigmatic con- in economic method; Milton Friedman and David tent holding that institutionalized coercion is always Friedman, for example, though admiring of Hayek, would wrong and government action always damaging to social be sharply critical of Austrian economics, particularly the utility. Libertarianism implied anarchism. A prodigious Mises-Rothbard version. In fact, Hayek surely had grave polymath and challenging, charismatic personality, misgivings about that as well, and never favored the fash- Rothbard erected an integrated doctrine for ethics, poli- ioning of a separate “Austrian” school of economics. tics, and economics. Another important figure in the resurgence of anti- Anarcho hyphenates (such as anarcho-capitalism) were statist ideas was the novelist and pop-philosopher Ayn discussed also by other libertarian theoreticians, notably Rand (1905–1982). Like Rothbard a messianic personal- favorably by David Friedman and critically by Robert ity, though with much less learning and scholarship, Rand Nozick (1938–2002). Rothbard, David Friedman, and too set forth a highly integrated belief system, “objec- others built on the notion that private ownership and vol- tivism.” However, Rand strongly favored government’s untary exchange are intuitive and focal, and hence lend function as the keeper of the peace, and, in sharp contrast themselves to a kind of spontaneous adoption by decen- to Rothbard, an anticommunist foreign policy. She tralized social institutions. They speculated on how there detested libertarianism, and Rothbard attacked her move- could be a free market in the enforcement of property ment as a cult. rights, like private security companies today. Later Rothbard’s paradigm was so clear and consistent that research on voluntary reputational practices and institu- even the libertarians who soundly rejected his extreme tions, exemplified, for example, by credit reporting agen- claims for liberty nonetheless found themselves working cies, would lend support to the view that, in a world out their ideas in relation to principles like those he pro- where practically all property is privately owned, govern- pounded. Nowadays, there remain loyal Rothbardians, ment police would not be necessary to resolving disputes but most libertarians think more in the fashion of Smith, and maintaining internal order. As for defense from exter- Hayek, and Friedman. They insist that government inter- nal aggression,