The following is an interesting article on the nature and *history* of Libertarianism as compared with Conservatism and modern Liberalism. It was written by Tim Sandefur, a Libertarian Constitutional Attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, and a friend of mine for many years. It's very insightful, and given all the Conservative/Liberal bashing and banter here lately I hope that it will help everyone's understanding a little. It's currently the last article on his blog site at http://sandefur.blogspot.com
What is Libertarianism?
Libertarianism is a variety of liberalism which traces its modern face to seventeenth century England (although of course it can find some roots in the ancient world as well). With the accession of the Stuart monarchy, a conflict broke out between those who came to be called Whigs?Protestants who insisted on limiting the power of the crown?and the Stuarts?Catholics who believed in absolute monarchy. This conflict rose to the point of civil war, and the Stuarts lost?temporarily. The restoration of the Stuart monarchy was of brief duration, and the Glorious Revolution sent them packing for good. When John Locke returned from exile in Holland, it was on the same ship that brought the new king of England, William, and his queen Mary. Theory and practice combined, you might say.
Anyway, a ?liberal? at the dawn of the eighteenth century would have been a man who defended the rights of the lower classes against the limitations imposed by traditional and class-based rules. He believed that individuals have rights, not society. He believed in the equal right of each person to earn a living without being prohibited by monopolies. He believed in the freedom of speech and even religion. Of course, this liberalism was profoundly influential in the American colonies, and triumphed with the publication and vindication of the Declaration of Independence. It held, in Jefferson?s words, that the ?sum of good government? was one which ?shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.?
But then there was the French Revolution. France was a very different situation than America, because America never had feudalism (except in the South, sort of: one of the quandaries of libertarian thought, but time prevents addressing this now). Thus a political revolution was generally enough to satisfy the farmer, who got to keep the private property that was already his before the Revolution. Europe, on the other hand, had undergone generations of unequal laws, so that simply getting government off folks? back wasn?t enough?or at least, such was the argument of people like Thomas Paine (see his Agrarian Justice, reprinted in The Life And Major Writings of Thomas Paine 606 (P. Foner ed. 1993)), or Percy Bysshe Shelley, people who might be called libertarian proto-socialists. They had a good point: things like primogeniture and entail?legal presumptions which couldn?t clearly be described as ?government interference in private life??as well as generations-old injustices which had become intertwined with European culture and traditions, had given the aristocracy unique social power, so just ending political oppression wasn?t going to really fix things. (Not to mention which, there was a far more plausible argument that the ?initial outlay? of property was unjust, than there was in America, where the ?initial outlay? had been?to the European mind?pretty much tabula rasa.) They therefore argued for a redistribution of property, and they found in the works of romantic theorists like Jean-Jacques Rousseau the philosophical ground for arguing that the concept of private property was itself one of these social impositions that oppressed people. Why, eradicate that, and people will be free and equal! Eventually you have Marxism. Of course, many Marxists were fundamentally anti-individualist, but others were drawn to Marxism for just the opposite reason?they believed that eradicating private property was the best way to accomplish the traditionally liberal (or libertarian) goal: freeing the individual from the impositions of others, so that he could accomplish his potential. This accounts for the anti-authoritarian socialists of the early twentieth century scientific community in England?enthusiasts for the Spanish Civil War and whatnot.
During the 1920s, therefore, it became possible for the term ?liberal? to be applied to what had once been its exact opposite?defenders of government bureaucracy. The ?Progressive? era embraced the notion that bureaucracy could help the poor to realize their potential. Nobody describes this better than John Dewey, himself a leading ?Progressive?:
The emphasis of earlier liberalism upon individuality and liberty?was fundamentally a demand for freedom of the tax-payer from governmental arbitrary action?for confessional freedom in religion by the Protestant churches...[and] against restrictions placed by government, in legislation, common law and judicial action (and other institutions having connection with the political state) upon freedom of economic enterprise?. [Modern] liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made[, but] is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical:?including in ?cultural,? economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art. [Modern l]iberalism?takes an active interest in the working of social institutions that have a bearing, positive or negative, upon the growth of individuals?. The commitment of liberalism to experimental procedure carries with it the idea of continuous reconstruction of the ideas of individuality and of liberty, in their intimate connection with changes in social relations.
John Dewey, The Future of Liberalism, 32 J. Phil. 225 (1935).
The reversal of the term ?liberal? during this period of the 1920s to the 1940s, shocked people like H.L. Mencken or Herbert Hoover, who had considered themselves liberals because they defended individual freedom and opportunity against government obstruction. (As Mencken wrote, ?If [Progressivism] is Liberalism, then all I can say is that Liberalism is not what I was when I was young.? Mr. Justice Holmes, reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy 258, 259 (New York: Vintage, 1982) (1949)). But the older liberalism that they referred to was becoming more marginalized, and would be better described today as libertarianism.
In the end, therefore, libertarianism is a type of liberalism in that it aims at a goal that has always been called ?liberal?: the liberation of the individual from restraints imposed by others. Defenders of the Regulatory Welfare State believe that it accomplishes this goal?we libertarians strongly disagree, because the state can only give people something by stealing it from someone else?but in the end, the goal is the same: freeing the individual. The fact that libertarians are often considered a type of conservative is a historical accident based on the fact that because America was based on libertarian principles, those who oppose change will find themselves allied with libertarianism. See Friedrich Hayek, Why I Am Not A Conservative, reprinted in The Constitution of Liberty 397, 399 (1960).
Conservatism is a whole nuther thing. Of course, all these definitions are complicated by the fact that many people who call themselves ?conservatives? are actually libertarians (and vice versa!), but properly speaking, the primary concern of the conservative is not the individual, but society. To him, society?not the people who make it up?is the fundamental element of politics, and the goal of politics is to create a healthy society. One might say the conservative reifies society and views as a creature for whom things can be good or bad, and which has a right to defend itself against people. To the conservative, community is primary, and the purpose of individuals is to serve it. See generally Robert Bork, The Tempting of America (1990); Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953); Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (1948). While the libertarian believes that government can only have the rights given to it by its constituents?and thus that it can have no right to steal people?s property or tell them whom they may sleep with?the conservative believes that each person, as a member of the community, owes it obedience, and that the ?health? of society justifies the state in interfering in private behavior. This view, often called ?communitarianism,? is the essence of conservatism. Because the conservative believes that society has the right to choose its moral framework and enforce it upon individuals, and that individuals have no right to object to that framework (since society is primary), conservatives find themselves defending countries which assert a fundamental right to rule without outside interference. Also, it is for this reason that conservatives tend to be drawn toward nationalism, and the reason for the common observation that the most extreme forms of conservatism are found in Fascist parties. And it is the reason that modern liberalism finds itself increasingly allied with conservatism (as Virginia Postrel has so well demonstrated). They are both opposed to the dynamic, unpredictable, undesigned creativity of individuals.
One might, with some exaggeration, say that to the libertarian, there is no such thing as Society?indeed, you will almost never hear us use the cliché ?society as a whole.? Rather, there are only individuals and groups of individuals. The fundamental principle of libertarian politics is that the individual owns himself and has the right to do with himself what he will. Thus, I believe, a libertarian, to be consistent, must be a believer in natural rights. The view that society may legitimately ?choose? to deprive individuals of their rights, is incompatible with libertarianism, because it overlooks the fundamental libertarian view that, again, society can have no rights that the individual does not (or cannot) give it. This opinion is, of course, controversial within the libertarian community?many people calling themselves libertarians do not believe in natural rights theory. But, again, I do not believe they can accurately be called libertarians. A libertarian cannot regard a slave society as politically legitimate, because no group of people may subvert the fundamental libertarian principle that the individual owns himself, and that political authority, to be legitimate, can only arise as a function of this principle. (This is why I refer to the defenders of the Confederacy as ?Doughface? libertarians?libertarians with slaveocrat principles.)
It should be clear now why there can be libertarians on both sides of an issue like abortion. A libertarian might say that the unborn foetus has no rights, and therefore that the woman has the right to abort it if she wishes?or might say that the foetus has a right to life and therefore a right not to be aborted. One or the other of these views might be wrong, but both are libertarian?as opposed to the conservative argument that abortion is a corrupting social phenomenon and that for the sake of our society, it should be prohibited. (Cf. Bork, supra, at 121-22 (?That view of the individual and his obligations can hardly be taken seriously.... In [Bork?s] view of morality and responsibility, no husband or wife, no father or mother, should act on the principle that a ?person belongs to himself and not to others.? No citizen should take the view that no part of him belongs to ?society as a whole.??)). Another example would be the drug war: both William F. Buckley and Thomas Szasz believe drugs should be legalized. But for Buckley, the reason is that the Drug War is harming society, while for Szasz it?s that the individual has the right to injest what he wishes, without anyone interfering. Buckley is a conservative; Szasz is a libertarian.
Posted by: TMS / 7:51 AM
What is Libertarianism?
Libertarianism is a variety of liberalism which traces its modern face to seventeenth century England (although of course it can find some roots in the ancient world as well). With the accession of the Stuart monarchy, a conflict broke out between those who came to be called Whigs?Protestants who insisted on limiting the power of the crown?and the Stuarts?Catholics who believed in absolute monarchy. This conflict rose to the point of civil war, and the Stuarts lost?temporarily. The restoration of the Stuart monarchy was of brief duration, and the Glorious Revolution sent them packing for good. When John Locke returned from exile in Holland, it was on the same ship that brought the new king of England, William, and his queen Mary. Theory and practice combined, you might say.
Anyway, a ?liberal? at the dawn of the eighteenth century would have been a man who defended the rights of the lower classes against the limitations imposed by traditional and class-based rules. He believed that individuals have rights, not society. He believed in the equal right of each person to earn a living without being prohibited by monopolies. He believed in the freedom of speech and even religion. Of course, this liberalism was profoundly influential in the American colonies, and triumphed with the publication and vindication of the Declaration of Independence. It held, in Jefferson?s words, that the ?sum of good government? was one which ?shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.?
But then there was the French Revolution. France was a very different situation than America, because America never had feudalism (except in the South, sort of: one of the quandaries of libertarian thought, but time prevents addressing this now). Thus a political revolution was generally enough to satisfy the farmer, who got to keep the private property that was already his before the Revolution. Europe, on the other hand, had undergone generations of unequal laws, so that simply getting government off folks? back wasn?t enough?or at least, such was the argument of people like Thomas Paine (see his Agrarian Justice, reprinted in The Life And Major Writings of Thomas Paine 606 (P. Foner ed. 1993)), or Percy Bysshe Shelley, people who might be called libertarian proto-socialists. They had a good point: things like primogeniture and entail?legal presumptions which couldn?t clearly be described as ?government interference in private life??as well as generations-old injustices which had become intertwined with European culture and traditions, had given the aristocracy unique social power, so just ending political oppression wasn?t going to really fix things. (Not to mention which, there was a far more plausible argument that the ?initial outlay? of property was unjust, than there was in America, where the ?initial outlay? had been?to the European mind?pretty much tabula rasa.) They therefore argued for a redistribution of property, and they found in the works of romantic theorists like Jean-Jacques Rousseau the philosophical ground for arguing that the concept of private property was itself one of these social impositions that oppressed people. Why, eradicate that, and people will be free and equal! Eventually you have Marxism. Of course, many Marxists were fundamentally anti-individualist, but others were drawn to Marxism for just the opposite reason?they believed that eradicating private property was the best way to accomplish the traditionally liberal (or libertarian) goal: freeing the individual from the impositions of others, so that he could accomplish his potential. This accounts for the anti-authoritarian socialists of the early twentieth century scientific community in England?enthusiasts for the Spanish Civil War and whatnot.
During the 1920s, therefore, it became possible for the term ?liberal? to be applied to what had once been its exact opposite?defenders of government bureaucracy. The ?Progressive? era embraced the notion that bureaucracy could help the poor to realize their potential. Nobody describes this better than John Dewey, himself a leading ?Progressive?:
The emphasis of earlier liberalism upon individuality and liberty?was fundamentally a demand for freedom of the tax-payer from governmental arbitrary action?for confessional freedom in religion by the Protestant churches...[and] against restrictions placed by government, in legislation, common law and judicial action (and other institutions having connection with the political state) upon freedom of economic enterprise?. [Modern] liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made[, but] is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical:?including in ?cultural,? economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art. [Modern l]iberalism?takes an active interest in the working of social institutions that have a bearing, positive or negative, upon the growth of individuals?. The commitment of liberalism to experimental procedure carries with it the idea of continuous reconstruction of the ideas of individuality and of liberty, in their intimate connection with changes in social relations.
John Dewey, The Future of Liberalism, 32 J. Phil. 225 (1935).
The reversal of the term ?liberal? during this period of the 1920s to the 1940s, shocked people like H.L. Mencken or Herbert Hoover, who had considered themselves liberals because they defended individual freedom and opportunity against government obstruction. (As Mencken wrote, ?If [Progressivism] is Liberalism, then all I can say is that Liberalism is not what I was when I was young.? Mr. Justice Holmes, reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy 258, 259 (New York: Vintage, 1982) (1949)). But the older liberalism that they referred to was becoming more marginalized, and would be better described today as libertarianism.
In the end, therefore, libertarianism is a type of liberalism in that it aims at a goal that has always been called ?liberal?: the liberation of the individual from restraints imposed by others. Defenders of the Regulatory Welfare State believe that it accomplishes this goal?we libertarians strongly disagree, because the state can only give people something by stealing it from someone else?but in the end, the goal is the same: freeing the individual. The fact that libertarians are often considered a type of conservative is a historical accident based on the fact that because America was based on libertarian principles, those who oppose change will find themselves allied with libertarianism. See Friedrich Hayek, Why I Am Not A Conservative, reprinted in The Constitution of Liberty 397, 399 (1960).
Conservatism is a whole nuther thing. Of course, all these definitions are complicated by the fact that many people who call themselves ?conservatives? are actually libertarians (and vice versa!), but properly speaking, the primary concern of the conservative is not the individual, but society. To him, society?not the people who make it up?is the fundamental element of politics, and the goal of politics is to create a healthy society. One might say the conservative reifies society and views as a creature for whom things can be good or bad, and which has a right to defend itself against people. To the conservative, community is primary, and the purpose of individuals is to serve it. See generally Robert Bork, The Tempting of America (1990); Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953); Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (1948). While the libertarian believes that government can only have the rights given to it by its constituents?and thus that it can have no right to steal people?s property or tell them whom they may sleep with?the conservative believes that each person, as a member of the community, owes it obedience, and that the ?health? of society justifies the state in interfering in private behavior. This view, often called ?communitarianism,? is the essence of conservatism. Because the conservative believes that society has the right to choose its moral framework and enforce it upon individuals, and that individuals have no right to object to that framework (since society is primary), conservatives find themselves defending countries which assert a fundamental right to rule without outside interference. Also, it is for this reason that conservatives tend to be drawn toward nationalism, and the reason for the common observation that the most extreme forms of conservatism are found in Fascist parties. And it is the reason that modern liberalism finds itself increasingly allied with conservatism (as Virginia Postrel has so well demonstrated). They are both opposed to the dynamic, unpredictable, undesigned creativity of individuals.
One might, with some exaggeration, say that to the libertarian, there is no such thing as Society?indeed, you will almost never hear us use the cliché ?society as a whole.? Rather, there are only individuals and groups of individuals. The fundamental principle of libertarian politics is that the individual owns himself and has the right to do with himself what he will. Thus, I believe, a libertarian, to be consistent, must be a believer in natural rights. The view that society may legitimately ?choose? to deprive individuals of their rights, is incompatible with libertarianism, because it overlooks the fundamental libertarian view that, again, society can have no rights that the individual does not (or cannot) give it. This opinion is, of course, controversial within the libertarian community?many people calling themselves libertarians do not believe in natural rights theory. But, again, I do not believe they can accurately be called libertarians. A libertarian cannot regard a slave society as politically legitimate, because no group of people may subvert the fundamental libertarian principle that the individual owns himself, and that political authority, to be legitimate, can only arise as a function of this principle. (This is why I refer to the defenders of the Confederacy as ?Doughface? libertarians?libertarians with slaveocrat principles.)
It should be clear now why there can be libertarians on both sides of an issue like abortion. A libertarian might say that the unborn foetus has no rights, and therefore that the woman has the right to abort it if she wishes?or might say that the foetus has a right to life and therefore a right not to be aborted. One or the other of these views might be wrong, but both are libertarian?as opposed to the conservative argument that abortion is a corrupting social phenomenon and that for the sake of our society, it should be prohibited. (Cf. Bork, supra, at 121-22 (?That view of the individual and his obligations can hardly be taken seriously.... In [Bork?s] view of morality and responsibility, no husband or wife, no father or mother, should act on the principle that a ?person belongs to himself and not to others.? No citizen should take the view that no part of him belongs to ?society as a whole.??)). Another example would be the drug war: both William F. Buckley and Thomas Szasz believe drugs should be legalized. But for Buckley, the reason is that the Drug War is harming society, while for Szasz it?s that the individual has the right to injest what he wishes, without anyone interfering. Buckley is a conservative; Szasz is a libertarian.
Posted by: TMS / 7:51 AM
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