Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part I Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part I New Direction MMXX CONTENTS Hannes H. Gissurarson is Professor of Politics at the University of Iceland and Director of Research at RNH, the Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth. The author of several books in Icelandic, English and Swedish, he has been on the governing boards of the Central Bank of Iceland and the Mont Pelerin Society and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford, UCLA, LUISS, George Mason and other universities. He holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University and a B.A. and an M.A. in History and Philosophy from the University of Iceland. Introduction 7 Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) 13 St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) 35 John Locke (1632–1704) 57 David Hume (1711–1776) 83 Adam Smith (1723–1790) 103 Edmund Burke (1729–1797) 129 Founded by Margaret Thatcher in 2009 as the intellectual Anders Chydenius (1729–1803) 163 hub of European Conservatism, New Direction has established academic networks across Europe and research Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) 185 partnerships throughout the world. Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) 215 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) 243 Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) 281 New Direction is registered in Belgium as a not-for-profit organisation and is partly funded by the European Parliament. Registered Office: Rue du Trône, 4, 1000 Brussels, Belgium President: Tomasz Poręba MEP Executive Director: Witold de Chevilly Lord Acton (1834–1902) 313 The European Parliament and New Direction assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in this publication. Sole liability rests with the author. 7 INTRODUCTION onservative liberalism is not a political programme: it is a tradition which can be traced back to medieval ideas about Cgovern ment by consent, found in the writings of Snorri Sturlu­ son, and a natural law applying both to princes and the people, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught. These two principles were combined by John Locke into a theory of a social contract and a justification of private property. In the eighteenth century, these ideas were refined by Adam Smith, who based his political theory on the twin pillars of authority and utility and who presented powerful arguments for economic freedom, and by David Hume and Edmund Burke who conceived of the social contract as being written by history, consisting in a partnership between people living, dead, and unborn. Smith, Hume, and Burke all believed that coordination without commands would be possible in a free society. Their contemporary, a Nordic clergyman, Anders Chydenius, expressed similar thoughts about natural law and economic harmony. Conservative liberalism may be contrasted with eighteenth century French rationalism and nineteenth century English utilitarianism, as three French thinkers demonstrate, Benjamin Constant, Frédéric Bastiat and Alexis de Tocqueville. Their case for liberty was moral no less than economic, and they stressed the importance of limited government, spontaneous cooperation, and voluntary associations. They were also, like Hume and Burke, sceptical of claims that individual reason, unaided by practice, could and should reconstruct society, while 8 Introduction Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers - Part I 9 they sought to uncover and explain the role of social reason, embodied made significant contributions to the conservative­liberal tradition: in traditions, customs, habits, and manners. In England, Lord Acton Milton Friedman by elucidating many unintended consequences of took a similar view. He and his forerunners in the con servative­liberal interventionism, while presenting ingenious proposals for liberal tradition all held that the 1688 Glorious Revolution in Great Britain and reforms, James M. Buchanan by exposing the myth of benevolent the 1776 American Revolution were made to preserve liberties, while the despots and Robert Nozick by explaining the principles of justice in 1789 French Revolution was about relocating power instead of trying to initial appropriation and voluntary exchange and by refuting arguments limit it. Although Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, writing for extensive redistribution. in the late nineteenth century, employed conse quentialist arguments, as Of the twenty­four thinkers discussed in this work, seven are sensible people do, they rejected futile efforts to make the world over. British, the English Locke, Spencer, Acton, and Oakeshott, the Scots For them, people could claim the fullest liberty to exercise their faculties Hume and Smith, and the Irish Burke; and five are Ameri can, Sumner, compatible with the pos session of the same liberty for others. Rand, Friedman, Buchanan, and Nozick. Five come from German­ Economics, a discipline founded by Adam Smith, has provided strong speaking countries (one from Germany and four from Austria), Röpke, intellectual support for conservative liberalism. In Austria, Carl Menger Menger, Mises, Hayek, and Popper; four are French, Constant, Bastiat, not only presented the subjective theory of value, but also cogently ex­ Tocqueville, and Jouvenel; one is Icelandic, Snorri, one Italian, plained spontaneous development. Another economist in the Austrian Aquinas, and one Swedish, Chydenius. Some of them straddle borders: tradition, Ludwig von Mises, pointed out the chief weaknesses of social­ Hayek and Popper can be said to be Anglo­Austrian, Mises Austrian­ ism, being belatedly vindicated by its collapse in the late 1980s. The American, Rand Russian­American, Constant Franco­Swiss and Röpke Austrian­English economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek German­Swiss. Of these emigrants, four were refugees from European developed the insights found in Austrian economics and the British totalitarianism, Mises, Röpke, Popper and Rand. Locke also had to flee polit ical tradition into a social and political theory which seeks to explain his country, although he was able to return after a successful revolution. the enormous achievements of Western civilisation despite individual Acton, perhaps the most cosmopolitan of these twenty­four thinkers, is ignorance. After the Second World War his friend and compatriot Karl half­English, one fourth German and one fourth Italian. Incidentally, Popper published a spirited defence of the open society. At the same five of the thinkers discussed here are Jewish (by ethnicity rather than time, Wilhelm Röpke in Germany and Bertrand de Jouvenel in France religion), Mises, Popper, Rand, Friedman, and Nozick, and one is half­ re affirmed liberal values in a confrontation with the totalitarianism that Jewish, Jouvenel, whereas two are ordained clergymen, the Catholic haunted Europe in the twentieth century. In 1947, Mises, Hayek, Popper, Aquinas and the Evangelical­Lutheran Chydenius. Eight belonged to Röpke and Jouvenel all became founding members of the Mont Pelerin the nobility, Aquinas, Constant (who rarely used his title, Baron de Society, an international academy of liberal thinkers which has played a Rebecque), de Tocqueville, Lord Acton, Menger (who never used his pivotal role in the rejuvenation of the conservative­liberal tradition. title, von Wolfersgrün), von Mises, von Hayek and de Jouvenel, and two In America, Russian­born Ayn Rand forcefully responded to the were knighted, Snorri Sturluson and Sir Karl R. Popper. chal lenge posed by Burke and Tocqueville that in commercial societies Ten of the twenty­four thinkers are political philosophers, Aquinas, heroes might be replaced by mere calculators. In her novels, she described Locke, Hume, Constant, Tocqueville, Spencer, Popper, Jouvenel, Oake­ innovators and entrepreneurs who refuse to be enslaved by the masses. shott, and Nozick; eight are economists, Smith, Bastiat, Menger, Mises, In England, Michael Oakeshott further articulated the British political Hayek, Röpke, Friedman, and Buchanan; two are historians, Snorri and tradition, conservative in its emphasis on proven practices, liberal in Acton; one is a sociologist, Sumner, and one a novelist, Rand. Six were its celebration of individuality. Three American thinkers have since men of independent means, Snorri, Constant, Bastiat, Tocqueville, 10 Introduction Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers - Part I 11 Acton, and Jouvenel, three mainly supported themselves by their books, France; Acton was adviser to British Prime Minister William Gladstone; Hume, Spencer, and Rand, whereas thirteen were university professors, Hayek’s books were avidly read by British Prime Ministers Winston at least for some time, Aquinas, Locke, Smith, Sumner, Menger, Mises, Churchill and Margaret Thatcher and by President Ronald Reagan of Hayek, Röpke, Oakeshott, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan, and Nozick. the United States; Röpke was adviser to the German government during Chydenius was a government official, and Burke did not fall into any the rapid recovery of his country; Popper was an effective spokesman for single category. the West in the Cold War; and Friedman’s proposals were implemented There are three reasons why in this work I frequently use examples in countries as diverse as the United States, China, Great Britain, New from Iceland. First, I am as an Icelander more familiar with her history Zealand, Chile, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Iceland. than that of other countries. I am using my comparative advantage, as Moreover, eight of these thinkers sat in the national assemblies of their Smith would understand. In the second