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Home , Adam Smith, Austrian School, For a New Liberty, Friedrich Hayek, Libertarianism, Lifestyle (sociology)

BIBLIOGRAPHY maintaining residence within the polity, one voluntarily The Committee of Santa Fe. 1980. A New Inter-American Policy agrees to the 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 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, the gov- Gutierrez, Gustavo. 1988. A Theology of Liberation: , ernment does that would be deemed coercive and crimi- , and Salvation. Trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and nal if done by any other party in 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 American minimum- on you. Since most government Catholicism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. action, including taxation, is of that , libertarians Smith, Christian. 1991. The of Liberation Theology: see government as a unique kind of organization engaged Radical and Social Movement Theory. Chicago: in wholesale coercion, and coercion is the treading on lib- Press. erty. This semantic, libertarians say, was central in eigh- teenth- and nineteenth-century custom and social Otto Maduro thought, for example in ’s treatment of “nat- ural ” and through the American founders, the abolitionists, (1806–1873), (1820–1903), and William Graham Sumner LIBERTARIANISM (1840–1910). (Indeed, libertarians argue that the From the customs of liberal society and the writings of vocabulary of modern is in many respects a sys- (1632–1704), (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- , 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 , and even celebrate them. It main- anism (the ), restrictions on personal tains a presumption of liberty. The name of this (such as drug prohibition), and extensive government sensibility has varied in and place, but in the United 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 or of (or contract). debate over whether the of liberty is absolute Libertarians maintain a 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 (1881–1973) and legitimate goings-on of private parties. It emerges as intu- (1899–1992), both originally from , and the itive and natural. Adam Smith wrote in The of famous American . 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 “” 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 out any complete or within the and in voluntary interaction with others definitive characterization of such sensibilities, any algo- (such as , 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 . gies are also plagued by holes and gray areas, even more so. In justifying the presumption of liberty, most liber- Libertarians reject any “” device as a tarians, especially , emphasize the practical way to bring political relations into “consent.” They reject —liberty works better than government inter- the that, whether by of or simply by vention—but others have maintained that liberty has an

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL , 2ND EDITION 437 Libertarianism ethical authority established quite separately from any One, exemplified by Mises and Rothbard, champions consideration of practical results. human as an engine of discovery of scientific The emergence of libertarianism, as such, comes and purports to deduce a priori the superiority of volun- about from the of (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 . 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 ; 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 . Libertarianism implied . A prodigious Mises-Rothbard version. In , Hayek surely had grave polymath and challenging, charismatic personality, misgivings about that as well, and never favored the fash- Rothbard erected an integrated for , 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-) were statist was the novelist and pop- 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 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 , and, in sharp contrast themselves to a kind of spontaneous adoption by decen- to Rothbard, an anticommunist foreign policy. She tralized social . They speculated on how there detested libertarianism, and Rothbard attacked her move- could be a free in the enforcement of property ment as a . , like private security today. Later Rothbard’s 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 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 of Smith, and maintaining internal order. As for defense from exter- Hayek, and Friedman. They insist that government inter- nal aggression, Rothbard tended to argue that no foreign vention, including taxation, is coercive, but they take the government would have plausible cause or the practical anticoercion principle to be, not a natural , but a means to conquer an anarcho-libertarian society, while natural maxim. They see government as having at least David Friedman admitted . The anarcho one important and necessary function—the undoing of , as well as Rothbard’s extreme claims for lib- other governmental functions. (In contrast, Rothbard’s erty, arguably diverted libertarians from the task of devel- vision of libertarian social transformation held that after oping a persuasive, relevant , and hindered the long years of ideological stirrings, there would come the penetration of libertarian thinking into mainstream dis- inevitable internal political crisis, yielding to a widespread course. awakening and some kind of spontaneous, bottom-up Many of the same people in the United States who institutional house-cleaning.) were fashioning modern libertarianism were also busy Libertarianism joins the mainstream conversation as fashioning the so-called of economics, a political anchored in the status quo, not named for the influence of the Austrians Mises and Hayek some ideal libertarian society, and yet opposed to the sta- (who in 1974 was awarded a in economics). tus quo, favoring freer arrangements pretty much across Austrian economics is solidly pro-laissez-faire, but there the board. It is perhaps best represented by public-policy has always been a tension between two types of thought. institutes, such as the and the Independent

438 INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2ND EDITION Liberty

Institute, that develop policy argumentation on an issue- Liberty, as a political ideal, has had a profound influ- by-issue basis. As for the academic world, the most ence over the course of human events going back to the notable libertarian strongholds are the economics depart- eighteenth century. It was a central theme for both the ment and law school at University. American (1775–1783) and the French Libertarianism is now a broad tent, rooted in policy Revolution (1789–1799). Liberty was a fundamental issues and insistent on the Locke-Smith-Spencer- motivation for the rise of the modern democratic state, Rothbard definition of liberty. Within the tent, only a capitalist , and the concern for . small portion would defend “anarchism,” but all remain In contemporary practice, a number of are com- radical in the sense that they insist that government inter- monly protected by the state, including assembly, associa- vention is coercive, and on most issues they entertain and tion, press, religion, speech, thought, and trade. The quite likely favor abolishing the government agency or importance and significance of liberty is widely acknowl- interventions in question. edged. Still, there are fundamentally different understand- There has also existed since the 1970s in the United ings about what it means and why it is valuable. States a Libertarian Party. However, libertarians are usu- (1767–1830), for example, dis- ally not much interested in it, chiefly because they feel tinguishes between what he calls “liberty of the ancients” that within the American system third parties are impos- and “liberty of the moderns.” Ancient liberty refers to the sible or even damaging to their own cause. direct sharing of political power. It is the “active and con- stant” participation of citizens in the governing SEE ALSO Freedom; Friedman, Milton; Hayek, Friedrich of their communities. Consequently, it can only be real- August; Mises, Ludwig Edler von; Philosophy, Political ized in smaller political units such as the city-state. Ancient liberty involves citizens able to make truly BIBLIOGRAPHY meaningful contributions to political decisions on a con- Boaz, David. 1997. Libertarianism: A Primer. New York: Free tinual basis, thus allowing them to an intimate role in Press. determining the course of their collective lives. This iden- Hayek, Friedrich. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: tification of liberty with ongoing collective political deci- University of Chicago Press. sion-making, however, entails the “complete subjection of Klein, Daniel B. 2004. Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek the citizen to the authority of the community” (Constant and Rothbard. Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary [1820] 1988, p. 311). Still, authentic self-government Normative Studies 27: 7–43. http://www.reasonpapers. brought such a “vivid and repeated pleasure” (p. 316) that com/pdf/27/rp_27_1.pdf. citizens were willing to make great sacrifices to preserve Rothbard, Murray. 1978. : The Libertarian this form of liberty. The problem is that too little Manifesto. Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of was attached to the rights of individual citizens. America. With the emergence of larger political units like the Smith, Adam. [1776] 1904. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of . 5th ed. Ed. Edwin Cannan. nation-state, ancient liberty was no longer possible. “Lost London: Methuen. http://www.econlib.org/library/ in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive Smith/smWN.html. the influence he exercises” (Constant [1820] 1988, p. 316). Liberty, therefore, became associated with individ- ual rights and freedoms. This modern liberty consists in Daniel B. Klein “peaceful enjoyment and private independence” (p. 316) for each citizen. It is made possible by legal guarantees such as the , freedom of expression, property rights, , elected political representa- tion, and to petition the government. The pur- LIBERTY pose of modern liberty is to give citizens the opportunity The etymological origin of liberty is the Latin word liber- to choose and enjoy their own “private pleasures.” The tas, from liber, which means “free.” In the social sciences, danger of this type of liberty is that people will get so liberty and freedom are often used interchangeably. absorbed in pursuing their personal and inter- However, in common parlance, a distinction can be made. ests that they neglect their political responsibilities, Freedom is the more general term referring to a lack of thereby allowing the government to overstep its limits. restraint in all its manifestations. Liberty, in contrast, is Another well-known distinction is ’s typically used when discussing the political and legal (1909–1997) understandings of negative and positive aspects of the human condition, particularly those involv- conceptions of liberty. On the one hand, ing choice. simply refers to the absence of external constraints and

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