The Libertarian Worldview
What is libertarianism? We are introducing a freedom-based worldview that is long-forgotton by most Europeans
BY GEORGE AZARU
Libertarianism is not a complete system of thought. It is a movement in political philosophy that deals with one of the most striking things of them all: the use of violence in social life. In conclusion, libertarianism deals with the very existence of the one entity commonly known as the state.
The State As a Threat To Freedom
For libertarians the greatest enemy of freedom is institutionalized violence through state power. Naturally, it is a given that all around the world state authority has always been heavily criticised. Who really is in favor of any
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it
institution setting limits to your individual freedom? Ironically, criticism of the state is often conducted by those who would not mind more resources thrown at the symptoms of what they complain about. Those complaining about state power are often the same people who see no alternative to state intervention or who simply want to protect their own privileges while criticizing others for doing the same.
On the other hand, there are those few that criticize state legitimacy precisely because it has too much authority — the libertarians. To conclude, the world is divided into the two camps of those who believe in institutionalized violence in the form of state regulation like taxes and government, and those who consider this being destructive for individuals and for society in general. Chances are that when you hear an argument against a policy that seeks to maintain or even grow government power you might hear the voice of a libertarian.
Most Valuable Freedom Right: Private Property.
But what should you make of libertarians or libertarianism in general? As it is favoring individual liberty either as a value in itself – something that is refered to as natural rights- libertarianism – or as an indispensable instrument for achieving other goals such as a harmonious and wealthy society – often refered to as consequential libertarianism – libertarianism stands as a unified block raising an intellectual challenge for any attempt to implement a state-sponsored intervention in the right to private property. According to one leading libertarian scholar, Murray N. Rothbard:
The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.”
“Aggression“, according to Rothbard, is defined as the “initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else“. Rothbard concludes that “aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.“
Property Comes From Scarcity
The scarcity of resources is the prerequisite for property rights to arise. The role of property rights is to settle competing claims on scarce resources, claims that create the possibility of conflicts between parties. Contrary to what Marxists and various strands of socialism claim,
Murray N. Rothbard (1925 - 1995) | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
libertarians believe that scarcity and other imperfections, such as limited knowledge, are not the result of a capitalist, free market system. For them, they are inherent in the nature of reality and no system can eliminate them. Free markets are not ‘imperfect,’ they do no create scarcity, the world we live in is imperfect, and we have to deal with reality as it is. And free, unhampered markets are the best way to mitigate this. German-born American libertarian theorist Hans Herman Hoppe, a disciple of the late Murray Rothbard, summarizes the origin of property like this:
For a concept of property to arise, there must be a scarcity of goods. Should there be no scarcity, and should all goods be so-called “free goods” whose use by any one person for any one purpose would not in any way exclude (or interfere with or restrict) its use by any other person or for any other purpose, then there would be no need for property.
In a world characterized by scarcity, freedom without respect for property rights is just a slogan. If a person is not free to control his own body, engage in voluntary exchanges or to manage the fruits of his labor, slavery is the best term to characterize his stance. A society that protects property rights is a free society. In essence, libertarianism is a current of thought that sees freedom as having the highest intrinsic value. In one word, libertarians are radicals for freedom.
What Is a Libertarian?
The libertarian is an individualist. But how what kind of individualism do libertarians relate to? For libertarians freedom is a relation between individuals, a relation between one person and another. Only individuals can be free, and only individuals respect or infringe the freedom of others. Libertarianism holds that every person is unique, that only individuals act and that only individuals have rights. Thus the individual is the irreducible political unit. When we say that company X decided to expand its activities we mean that the individuals leading that company took that decision. When the Department of Finance decided to raise the tax level we understand that the government officials in the Department of Finance concluded to an increase in taxes.
Novelist, playwright and radical libertarian Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) has earned world-wide recognition for the 1946 Textbook of Americanism. In it, Rand sums up the relation of individualism and freedom as follows:
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982). Born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, Rand came to the United States in 1926. She witnessed the nationalization of her father's pharmacy during the Russian February Revolution of 1917. | Photo: signature-reads.com
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
Suspicion Towards Government: The Early American Republic
The libertarian is suspicious towards political authority. The Early American Republic was a striking example of how individuals left to themselves can set and achieve their own goals, with no help or hindrance from any government. In a world of empires, contrary to conventional belief, the American “experiment” only proved that a small government was in fact the most efficient way to achieve greatness, both at the individual and societal level.
In favor of a government with fewer prerogatives, Thomas Jefferson pointed out in his inaugural address of March 4, 1801 that:
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels, in the form of kings, to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Even earlier in 1788, James Madison, in his famous essay Federalist No 51 which was published as the 51st of the Federalist Papers, warned that suspicion towards government should be the default position: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
The analogy between angels and heads of governments is by no means odd. In a world led by kings with divine authority, the power of the sovereign, the king, was seen as directly proportional with virtue. As strange as this thought may seem to us today, back then any increase in monarchial power was to be accompanied by an increase in virtue. Can you then imagine the affront imposed on European empires when a small government with no monarch could guarantee an unheard-of degree of freedom for the majority of its commoners?
The “Demise” Of Libertarianism
One thing that the Early American Republic also showed was that a free people can lose its freedom. Starting as a weakling during the Early Republic the American state nowadays is the greatest bureaucracy on earth.
James Madison (1751 - 1836), political theorist and major contributor to the American Constitution. Madison also served as 4th president of the United States. | Photo: fineartamerica.com
Within only one and a half century a new Zeitgeist emerged, that of big government led by all knowing, benevolent bureaucrats. Almost 200 years after Jefferson’s inaugural address, James M. Buchanan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and a philosophical anarchist, mirrored what the former President had said:
“The romance is gone, perhaps never to be regained. The socialist paradise is lost. Politicians and bureaucrats are seen as ordinary persons much like the rest of us, and “politics” is viewed as a set of arrangements, a game if you will, in which many players with quite disparate objectives interact so as to generate a set of outcomes that may not be either internally consistent or efficient by any standards.”
James M. Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty
The financial crisis of 2007-08 was a pivotal moment for the libertarian movement. While the authors of the narrative of a regulated economy within the welfare-state found the free market as the official culprit, libertarians were ready to show how interventions by the central bank created the cycle of boom and bust.
The mismanagement of economy, sky rocketing public deficits and negative interest rates that discourage savings and thus real investments were the result of massive governmental programs that created more problems than they solved. Libertarians were correct to show that these gigantic plans are the result of a mindset of omniscience by a small ruling elite in position of political power. As knowledge plays a crucial role in any economical theory, an audacious point of view that is close to being omniscient or even forecasting economic outcomes, as assumed by most above-all economic institutions, is a recipe for disaster.
Friedrich August von Hayek, one of the most prominent members of the libertarian Austrian School of Ecomics underlined the pitfalls of such a pretence of knowledge:
Friedrich August von Hayek (1899 - 1922) | Photo: F.A. von Hayek Stiftung
But the effects on policy of the more ambitious constructions have not been very fortunate and I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much indetermined and unpredictable, to a pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.
What Libertarianism is Not
On a first note, libertarianism does not deal with aesthetics. While libertarianism has ethical foundations it is not concerned with the aesthetics of life or what we might call ‘personal morality’. The art of living is for everyone to decide as long as the rights of others are not infringed. Libertarianism does not offer a certain way of life, it just offers liberty. Liberty, as such,brings with it a great diversity of lifestyles to choose from. You can be a great spender and go for the Côte d’Azur and drink the finest French Champagnes or you can live an ascetic life. The choice and the responsibility are yours.
Secondly and desprite common belief, libertarians are not against law and order. In fact, these two are the building blocks of every civilization. In all societies people had to come together and reach an agreement on a set of rules that were to be respected. However, many imagine that libertarians are outcasts bent on destroying the civilized world and bring chaos. Due to this, in numerous places of the world libertarians are not seen as a legitimate political opposition, and, sadly, this image is perpetuated by the dominant social narrative of the left/right dichotomy present in most countries.
Far from this, law and order together with peaceful cooperation are values central to libertarianism. Hitherto, every advanced society to a degree has already been libertarian. It is a brutal irony of history that the majority of wrongdoings in the world are committed under the banner of law and legitimitacy (think the wars and genocides of the 20th century that were all committed by states – and not by outlaws like thugs, cartels or criminals). Libertarians speak out against the perversion of the noble concepts of law, order and cooperation.
Enter Positivism
According to the idea of positivism, laws are made not by a heavenly power, but by man exclusively. This can take place in a direct manner, say in a small tribal community, or by a legislative organ, i.e. government. But once laws are being passed by a government oexclusively this also means that it is up to the discretion of the government – and not the people – what our rights shall be in the first place. A government can also take rights away from us or limit them.
Libertarianism: Natural Law (Not Positive Law)
Libertarians, however, are in opposition to the positivist approach to law. Libertarianism are in support of the counterpart to positivist law, that is natural law. From positive law we can deduct that men rule other men, be that directly or through representation. With natural law each individual has inherent rights in the fiber of his being, and no government has any legitimacy in expanding or limiting these rights.
The omnipresence and dominance of positive law over natural law in our times raises great confusion and suffering in the world. Lamenting the perversion of law in his times, Claude Frédéric Bastiat in his famous essay The Law is quoted saying:
The law perverted! The law—and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation—the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary!
Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801 - 1850) is known for the eloquence of his writings on economics and political economy. Bastiat is famous for expressing his thoughts in an almost lyrical writing style.
Conclusion
The concepts of freedom and individual liberty are fiercely contested in the modern political discourse. In the realm of political ideas it is the task of every historian, philosopher or economist to clarify their meaning, because using the same term we often understand different things. For the sake of this introductory article we can conclude that libertarians understand liberty as the mutual respect for private property rights.
Leave a Reply