At the core of classical-liberal arguments, especially in the nineteenth century, was what economists Sandra Peart and David Levy call “analytical egalitarianism.” Classical liberals, going back at least as far as John Locke, began their analysis of the social world by assuming that human beings were equal both in their moral standing (everyone’s preferences count equally) and in their capacity for making economic decisions. As Adam Smith phrased it, there was no difference between the street porter and the philosopher.

Peart and Levy contrast “analytical egalitarianism” with what they call “analytical hierarchicalism,” in which some people are thought to be different from others and therefore, in the view of those at the time, superior or inferior. Such differences might be attributed to any variety of inborn traits, from race to ethnicity to gender. By contrast, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and other classical liberals believed that the observed differences among human beings were not due to inborn traits and capacities, but rather to factors such as incentives, luck, and history, as Peart and Levy put it. In the view of most early classical liberals, no inborn trait or capacity consigns some groups to inferiority while marking others for superiority. In understanding the social world, we must treat people as equal with respect to the things that matter for our theories and therefore for the policy conclusions that emerge from them.

Racial Equality

As Levy demonstrated in an earlier book, this mattered at a practical level in the nineteenth-century debates over racial equality. Classical liberals such as Mill supported racial equality because they believed race was irrelevant to people’s moral standing and capacity for choice. Classical economics assumed its models applied to all human beings, including the theorists themselves. They believed that free markets and a free society were desirable because all people were equal and capable of acting in the way their theories described, leading to the peaceful and prosperous world they promised. By contrast the Romantic critics of capitalism hated it for exactly those reasons: Their starting point was the assumption of hierarchy, specifically among the races, and they understood correctly that free markets would undermine that hierarchy, which is why they opposed it. This is also why the Romantics called economics the “dismal science” – they saw a future without hierarchy as dismal. (See David Levy’s Freeman article on the subject.)

If there really were morally relevant differences among human beings, or if some groups were unable to engage in reasonably rational decision-making, it would be easier to construct an argument that these humans should ruled by their superiors – and this is precisely the argument that a good number of critics of classical liberalism constructed. They wanted the State to treat some people differently from others because some groups were not equal to others in their capacity for free choice. Lest you think this went on only in the nineteenth century, these views manifested themselves again in the early twentieth century, as Progressive Era critics of capitalism used eugenic arguments to limit the economic rights of nonwhites and women.

Two Principles

The classical-liberal argument for freedom was premised on equality, both in people’s moral worth and in their capacity for free choice. In other words, the arguments for equality came first and the desirability of liberty followed from them. (See also Roderick Long’s “Liberty: The Other  Equality.”) Classical liberalism’s critics denied that people should be free because they denied that people were equal. It was classical liberalism that defended the principles of both equality and freedom.

No doubt the concept of equality has been altered in the last 150 years. Too often it is used to mean “equalizing outcomes” by the hand of the State as opposed to treating people equally and accepting that unequal, but just and socially desirable, outcomes will result. Libertarians who rightly defend such inequalities of outcomes need to recognize that those are only possible in a world where the assumption of analytical egalitarianism operates and where the State treats all humans as having equal moral standing and equal capacity for free choice. Equality should not be a dirty word for libertarians since equality of liberty and equality before the law are in our intellectual DNA. Equality is one of our foundational concepts without which the argument for freedom would be that much weaker, if not nonexistent.

I thank Aeon Skoble for comments on an earlier draft.

Part of the problem today is that an increasing number of libertarians lean toward the anarchist position.  When one’s whole political perspective begins with the proposition that anything and everything the State does is evil and/or unnecessary, it’s easy to ignore questions about about how the State — given its existence – should properly conduct its business.  These questions involve matters of justice and liberty, and if we libertarians ignore them, we risk not only irrelevance in important conversations but also risk consigning our fellow citizens to continued injustice and denials of liberty.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in New York last week has brought these tensions to the surface.  Libertarians seem split over whether to celebrate this action.  On one side is a group arguing that the real problem is State involvement in marriage in the first place and that this decision just makes it more involved.  Therefore, this group seems to be arguing, we should oppose the action (or at least be indifferent about it) and work to separate marriage and State.

Equality under the Law

On the other side are those like me who — while agreeing that the long-term goal is separation of marriage and State — argue that, given the slim chance of separation happening any time soon, classical-liberal principles require the State to treat all citizens as equal before the law.

For most of human history political leaders acted with near total discretion, distributing benefits and impositions among their subjects however they like.  One of the most important accomplishments of the liberal movement was to subject those with political power to rules.  Starting with the Magna Carta and up through the democratic revolutions and constitutions of the eighteenth century, liberalism worked to create a society ruled by law not by men.  Since the eighteenth century the liberal movement has also worked to ensure that all citizens, by virtue of their being adult humans, have their rights fully respected.  The liberalism of the nineteenth century was antislavery, antiracist, and part of the earliest movements for women’s rights.  It powerfully combined a commitment to liberty with a commitment to equality to make the case for the liberal order.

The advent of socialism led more and more liberals to abandon the liberty half of the equation in favor of the equality half, wrongly believing that restricting economic liberties in the name of the “positive” liberties promised by socialism would bring about a better world.  Modern libertarianism pushed back by picking up the liberty side while often deemphasizing or outright abandoning the equality side.  That, in my view, was a mistake.

We cannot avoid making judgments about how governments should act.  Our own tradition as libertarians points to how to do this: Government must treat all its citizens equally, and nothing paid for with tax dollars may involve invidious discrimination.  It would be wrong on classical-liberal grounds for a government to refuse to pay Social Security to nonwhites even though we think Social Security is an illegitimate use of government power.

Interracial Prohibition

The same is true of same-sex marriage.  If government grants certain privileges to those who are married, it must grant them equally to all its citizens who wish to marry.  In the same way that prohibitions on interracial marriage were wrong on libertarian grounds, so are the prohibitions on same-sex marriage.  There is no credible evidence that legalizing it would harm innocent third parties, and there is no relevant functional difference between same-sex marriages and many of the marriages the State now licenses for heterosexuals. For example, many individuals who simply love each other and wish to make a life-long commitment but who do not wish or are unable to have children are issued marriage licenses.

Finally, it would also be wrong for governments to compel private religious organizations to perform same-sex marriages or to dictate whom private business must serve.  The State must not discriminate, but individuals and private organizations should retain their rights of association.

In the case of same-sex marriage, letting the perfect be the enemy of the better would require that we tolerate true injustice.  Libertarians should proudly support what the New York State Assembly has done.  It is true to the oldest of our principles.

Arnold first asks if reasoned agreement between liberals about this agenda could be achieved by some shared principle. Liberals disagree too much about basic rights to provide common ground, but perhaps this ground could be generated by a common principle that the State has some role to play in providing public goods. Some classical liberals, however, accept the legitimacy of State-provided public goods only if they cannot feasibly be provided by nongovernmental means, and if the State does provide them, everyone who benefits must pay his share of the costs. But the goods provided by this regulatory agenda aren’t really public goods (for example, product safety regulations), or could be provided privately (for example, the FDA’s assurance of safe and effective drugs), or are not paid for proportionately by everyone who benefits (for example, land-use regulation’s costs fall almost exclusively on affected landowners).

Finding no common ground between liberals on the modern liberal regulatory agenda, Arnold then discusses conversion arguments, arguments for why classical liberals ought to make exceptions to their principles about the scope of government action. Typically, modern liberals use these arguments by identifying some alleged failure in the market order that would supposedly be solved by government regulation; classical liberals reply that regulation makes things worse than they would be if the programs were dismantled or radically altered. After thoroughly canvassing this debate, Arnold concludes the replies are reasonable, which means reasonable disagreement between liberals persists.

Faced with persisting disagreement about the proper scope of government, Arnold argues that liberals must commit to certain procedural requirements to legitimately impose their values on society: The policies must be established democratically (by the elected branches of government) and be both publicly justified and transparent. By publicly justified, Arnold means that reasons must be given for legislation, which requires taking the views of the other side seriously and not misrepresenting its arguments. By transparency, he means that the beneficiaries and victims of legislation—both intended and unintended—must be identified. While the democracy requirement is, in my view, more contentious than Arnold appreciates, these requirements are quite modest. Public justification requires intellectual respect for opponents’ arguments; transparency requires attention to the costs of the legislation.

Although these requirements are modest, Arnold shows that selected elements of the modern liberal regulatory agenda—the antidiscrimination regulatory regime, OSHA, and the FDA—dismally fail to meet them and thus have been illegitimately imposed. An exception is Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In that case, the concern that banning employer discrimination on the basis of race would produce hiring by quotas was taken seriously by the bill’s defenders. That led to clarification that the bill only made intentional discrimination illegal and didn’t affect hiring decisions that had “disparate impact” on different races. (By contrast, proponents of the 1991 Civil Rights bill dismissed opponents’ plausible claim that the bill’s forbiddance of disparate-impact employment decisions—unless necessary for business survival—would lead to employers hiring by quotas to avoid lawsuits.)

As for OSHA the case was based only on anecdotes, which violated the public-justification requirement, as did the refusal to discuss the costs of the legislation. Furthermore, the statute’s aim “to assure as far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation a safe and healthful working condition” was so vague as to violate the transparency requirement.

As an illustration of imposing values, Arnold’s analysis of the sleight of hand behind the mandate that FDA-approved drugs require a doctor’s prescription is particularly devastating. The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act required that drug labels contain directions for use, recommended dosages, and warnings of possible dangers. The FDA’s given rationale was improved self-medication. Afterward, however, the FDA proclaimed the prescription requirement by regulation. A 1951 amendment solidified that requirement, but no justification was offered; indeed, a majority report admitted, “[A]t present the restrictions on dispensing ‘prescription’ drugs are not specifically stated in the [1938] statute.” As Arnold dryly notes, that was “a polite way of saying that the FDA had just made it up.”

Arnold’s book belongs on every liberal’s bookshelf. Quite simply, there is no book like it—a philosophically acute, exhaustive analysis of the classical-modern liberal debate about regulation, which ends up siding, in an original way, with classical liberalism.

Hayek emphasized that one of the great advantages of the liberal market order is that by requiring agreement on only a small number of things, the scope for peaceful coexistence and collaboration is widened among people who disagree on many other things.  One need only recognize that people with different consumer preferences manage not only to coexist with one another but also engage in mutually beneficial trade with producers who meet those various needs.  Even more generally, liberal societies enable people with different values and ideas about life to find peaceful ways of interacting to achieve their respective goals.

Hayek understood that the only way a society can respect diversity is if people agree on basic rules, especially what he called “ends-independent” rules of justice.  These rules must permit all individuals to pursue their own ends peacefully rather than being aimed at specific social ends.  That is, the rules cannot have a concrete purpose; rather, they must be general enough to allow the achievement of a variety of purposes.

Like Money and Language

In this way the rules of justice are analogous to money or language, both of which can be seen as “ends-independent” means for achieving a variety of ends.  Money and language have no purpose of their own.  They are simply means by which people pursue their own particular purposes and plans. Moreover, they permit peaceful interaction among people who disagree about ends.

So it is with the legal order of a liberal society.  Instead of our having to agree on the ends, with the State controlling the means, markets allow us to agree on the means while respecting a diversity of ends.

Note that classical liberalism still requires a common commitment, not to a set of ends or values, but to a set of means that comprise legitimate behavior under the rule of law.  The agreement on private property, contract, and exchange as legitimate means to one’s ends, as well as the agreement that force and fraud are illegitimate means, are what unite the members of a liberal order.

It is this that makes peaceful disagreement about ends possible.  The liberal order is the only way to achieve a society in which diverse preferences, values, and ends are truly respected.  Indeed, classical liberalism’s emphasis on agreement over means nourishes the diversity of ends.  However, once we take the social-justice approach and begin to demand agreement on ends, we eradicate the possibility of peacefully coexisting with those whose ends differ.  In other words, social justice can kill real diversity.

Wolf ponders the question, “What is the role of the state,” and notes that a “strand” of classical liberalism (or libertarianism) “believes the answer is to define the role of the state so narrowly and the rights of individuals so broadly that many political choices (the income tax or universal health care, for example) would be ruled out a priori.”

Wolf here looks at choice from the perspective of the group, although only individuals choose. Thus he thinks if individuals are free, society is not free to do all that it might want to do, such as tax people’s incomes.

But the contest is not between society and individuals. So actually Wolf is lamenting that if libertarians had their way, some people could not use the State to restrict other people’s choices through the threat and use of aggressive force.

It is certainly true that libertarianism rules out some choices. But some choices are illegitimate. I can’t join Wolf in seeing a moral equivalence between wanting to keep the fruits of one’s labor and wanting to deprive others of theirs.

Wolf thinks libertarianism is “a hopeless strategy, both intellectually and politically.”

Why intellectually? “[B]ecause the values people hold are many and divergent and some of these values do not merely allow, but demand, government protection of weak, vulnerable or unfortunate people. Moreover, such values are not ‘wrong’. The reality is that people hold many, often incompatible, core values.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t quite get this. Is Wolf saying that government is the only advocate of the weak? When has government ever truly been the advocate of the weak? In any political system—including democracy—some are closer to power than others; some have a comparative advantage in manipulating the system, but it’s not the weak and vulnerable. Those in power use the weak to justify their usurpations. The weak may even be provided some level of succor—after having been exploited through mercantilism, corporatism, or one of the other alternatives to the free market. They must be pacified and rendered harmless, after all.

Wolf is certainly right that people hold incompatible values. One payoff of liberalism is that it permits peaceful coexistence among such people. When religion was a State matter, everyone had to be concerned that if his sect didn’t control the government, he would be persecuted. When no sect could gain political power, that threat disappeared and people could live peacefully even if they didn’t particularly like each other.

And why is liberalism hopeless politically? “[B]ecause democracy necessitates debate among widely divergent opinions. Trying to rule out a vast range of values from the political sphere by constitutional means will fail. Under enough pressure, the constitution itself will be changed, via amendment or reinterpretation.”

Here Wolf stands on more solid ground. If people generally see nothing wrong in taking other people’s things or otherwise depriving them of liberty, they will undoubtedly get around any constitutional prohibition. A constitution is only as good as people’s understanding of it. No constitution interprets itself. We can’t program a computer with The True Meaning and have it resolve all constitutional disagreements. People will do the interpreting, and no interpretation can put an end to the interpretative process.

I have no simple answer for how to establish liberty or prevent ideological erosion once it’s established. Through a variety of activities (cultural and educational) we’ll have to re-instill the libertarian maxims most people learn as children but fail to apply politically: Don’t hit, don’t take other people’s stuff, and don’t break your promises (contracts). Libertarianism is just the consistent application of those maxims. Maybe, as Anthony de Jasay suggests, these need to become taboos—things people just don’t do, even if they can’t recite a philosophical argument telling you why.

* * *

Until now the world of fashion has been innovative and competitive without the protection of “intellectual property” law, but some want Congress to extend copyright to fashion design. Good idea? Edward López has his doubts.

The adage “less is more” is an important guide to explicit rulemaking. Thomas Snyder and Noel Campbell find an example in an unlikely place.

We’ve seen mandated recycling of trash before. Get ready for the next step: electronic surveillance of your recycling and refuse activities. Wendy McElroy has the details.

In recent decades many nations made at least some progress in expanding economic freedom. However, the response around the world to the latest economic debacle has caused the index of economic freedom to decline. James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Joshua Hall interpret the results they have compiled.

Since 1980 the U.S. government has required 18-year-old males to register with the Selective Service System, although no draft has been in effect since the mid-1970s. There is a criminal penalty for not complying, but as N. Joseph Potts explains, there are other penalties as well.

Can an economy be stimulated by extending unemployment benefits? Our Keynesian culture thinks so. James Ahiakpor dissents.

Rare earth elements are becoming increasingly important in the production of high-tech products, with China being a major producer. Should the U.S. government stockpile these materials to guard against supply disruptions? Warren Gibson takes up the question.

Although inconsistent, the California courts are beginning to see that free speech is rooted in property rights and that owners should be free to set the rules. Steven Greenhut looks at recent cases.

In the columns department, Lawrence Reed expresses his admiration for Scotland’s William Wallace. Thomas Szasz reflects on the nature of psychiatry’s “bible.” Stephen Davies celebrates the Scottish Enlightenment. John Stossel sounds the alarm for entrepreneurs under attack. David Henderson ponders the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. And Ivan Pongracic, Jr., confronting the ipse dixit that wealth distribution would end the recession, responds, “It Just Ain’t So!”

The coming dollar crisis, the orgy of government spending, the drug war, and democratic tyranny are the subjects of books under review this issue.

Capital Letters challenges the argument that savings lowers GDP.

Wolf ponders the question “What is the role of the state,” and notes that a “strand” of classical liberalism (or libertarianism) “believes the answer is to define the role of the state so narrowly and the rights of individuals so broadly that many political choices (the income tax or universal health care, for example) would be ruled out a priori.”

Wolf here looks at choice from the perspective of the group, although only individuals choose. Thus he thinks if individuals are free, society is not free to do all that it might want to do, such as tax people’s incomes.

But the contest is not between society and individuals. So actually Wolf is lamenting that if libertarians had their way, some people could not use the State to restrict other people’s choices through the threat and use of aggressive force.

It is certainly true that libertarianism rules out some choices. But some choices are illegitimate. I can’t join Wolf in seeing a moral equivalence between wanting to keep the fruits of one’s labor and wanting to deprive others of theirs.

Hopeless Strategy

Wolf thinks libertarianism is “a hopeless strategy, both intellectually and politically.”

Why intellectually? “[B]ecause the values people hold are many and divergent and some of these values do not merely allow, but demand, government protection of weak, vulnerable or unfortunate people. Moreover, such values are not ‘wrong’. The reality is that people hold many, often incompatible, core values.”

I’m sorry but I don’t quite get this. Is Wolf saying that government is the only advocate of the weak? He must be kidding. When has government ever truly been the advocate of the weak? In any political system – including democracy – some are closer to power than others; some have a comparative advantage in manipulating the system, and some don’t. Guess what: it’s not the weak and vulnerable who have access to power. Oh sure, those in power use the weak to justify their usurpations. The weak may even be provided some level of succor – after having been exploited by the strong through mercantilism, corporatism, or one of the other alternatives to the free market. They must be pacified and rendered harmless, after all. The welfare state should seen as a massive system of State bribery designed to protect the power elite’s privilege.

Wolf is certainly right that people hold incompatible values. One value of liberalism (including property rights) is that it permits peaceful coexistence among such people. When religion was a State matter, everyone had to be concerned that if his sect didn’t control the government, some other sect would. When no sect could gain political power, that threat disappeared and people could live peacefully even if they didn’t particularly like each other.

State Coercion

Wolf adds at this point: “Libertarians argue that the only relevant wrong is coercion by the state. Others disagree and are entitled to do so.” Not all libertarians believe State coercion is the only relevant wrong, though historically government has indeed been the greatest fount of violence and exploitation. Of course others are entitled to disagree with those who do believe it. They just aren’t entitled to use aggressive force to get what they cannot get through consent. This doesn’t mean the weak and vulnerable are without protection. Wrongs not backed by the State can be dealt with through mutual aid and other means. Besides, it’s the State that helps keep people weak and vulnerable in the first place.

And why is liberalism hopeless politically? “[B]ecause democracy necessitates debate among widely divergent opinions. Trying to rule out a vast range of values from the political sphere by constitutional means will fail. Under enough pressure, the constitution itself will be changed, via amendment or reinterpretation.”

Here Wolf stands on more solid ground. If people generally see nothing wrong in taking other people’s things or otherwise depriving them of their liberty, they will undoubtedly get around any constitutional prohibition. A constitution is only as good as people’s understanding of it. No constitution (or law) interprets itself. We can’t program a computer with The True Meaning and have it resolve all constitutional disagreements. People will be doing the interpreting, and no interpretation can be dispositive. (See relevant articles here, here, here, and here.)

I have no simple answer for how to establish liberty or prevent ideological erosion once it’s established. Through a variety of activities (cultural and educational) we’ll have to re-instill the libertarian maxims most people learn as children but fail to apply politically: Don’t hit, don’t take other people’s stuff, and don’t break your promises (contracts). Libertarianism is just the consistent application of those maxims. Maybe, as Anthony de Jasay suggests, these need to become taboos — things people just don’t do, even if they can’t recite a philosophical argument telling you why.

I’m doing this in two different classes this semester.  The more historical of the two is a senior seminar on the Great Depression, which I’m teaching for the second time.  (The syllabus is here).  We started the class last week by walking through what I like to call the “High School History” version of the Great Depression.  This is the version in which laissez-faire capitalism caused the stock market crash and Herbert Hoover stood around doing nothing (committed lover of laissez-faire that he was), allowing the crash to become a depression.  Of course this version also tells us that FDR and the New Deal saved us from utter chaos and that our entry into World War II finally pulled us out of the Depression.

The students nod quietly as I repeat this narrative, only to look a little shocked when I then say, “Every piece of that story is wrong and we’re going to explore why over the course of the semester.”

In the world of liberal arts we like to talk about throwing students out of their comfort zones.  That feeling of disequilibrium is the first step toward learning.  And it’s one of the most powerful moments one can have in the classroom.  But it’s also crucial for helping anyone, not just students, understand the classical-liberal framework.

Understanding the Present

Getting a better understanding of the history, especially of major events like the Great Depression, is so important because historical narratives and interpretations fuel our understanding of current events and how to respond to them.  Just think of the ways in which the High School History version of the Great Depression has informed the national discussion of the current recession.  If one really believes that story, it’s a small step to applying the same narrative to today’s situation and to believing that capitalism failed and more government is the answer.

The other course is comparative economics.  We started by talking about how the West grew rich (and reading Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell’s wonderful book by that name).  In the opening chapter, Rosenberg and Birdzell offer nine different commonly believed reasons the West grew rich, including three that are staples of the contemporary college curriculum:  exploitation, colonialism/imperialism, and slavery.

My students who have studied First-Third World relationships in other courses nod their heads quietly until I start to explore the counterevidence Rosenberg and Birdzell offer.  It’s hard to argue exploitation, they point out, when the real wages of labor have steadily risen over the last 200 years and capitalists have more or less willingly paid them.  As for the other two, they offer examples of western countries that were colonial powers but did not get rich and other countries that had no colonies but did get rich.  As for slavery, they make the same point: Some slave societies did not get rich, and some rich countries did not have slaves.  The bottom line of their first chapter is that none of these “standard” explanations seem reliable.  They argue instead that it was the unique institutions of the West (private property, limited government, freedom of thought and exchange) that generated our prosperity.

This unmasking of history is not just powerful in the college classroom; it should be one of the key ways we classical liberals make our arguments and try to persuade anyone of our views.  Arguing theory is fine, but many who disagree with us often trot out historical examples they believe undermine the theory.  Those examples are usually wrong, but to show it, classical liberals must have a good command of history and be prepared to offer a different narrative of the event in question.  I submit that at the bottom of most disagreements with classical liberalism lies a bad reading of history.

If we want to change people’s minds, we’re going to have to start by challenging their reading of history.  Learning that history is among the most important things classical liberals can do.

In our first issue, on October 2, 1950, we published an editorial called “The Faith of the Freeman,” in which we outlined our fundamental economic, political and moral philosophy.  In the fifteen months since then our articles and editorials, we trust, have made that basic philosophy and its practical application increasingly clear.

Now, at the completion of our first full calendar year of existence, we think it appropriate to say something about our function.  That function is in one respect obvious.  It is to propagate our announced philosophy, and to apply it, as we have been doing, to current issues as they arise.  On the constructive and positive side, in other words, our function is to expound and apply the principles of traditional liberalism and individual freedom. On the negative side, it is to expose the errors of collectivism of all shades – of statism, “planning,” controllism, socialism, fascism and communism.  One of our central aims is, on the one hand, to hearten and strengthen those who already accept most of the philosophy of individual freedom and to help them to clarify their own thinking; and, on the other hand, to convert open-minded collectivists to the philosophy of freedom.

The mere announcement of such an aim is likely to be followed by immediate expressions of skepticism or incredulity.  Some of our correspondents tell us, for example, that a magazine like the Freeman is read only by those who already believe in its aims, and therefore we are doing nothing more than “talking to ourselves.”  But even if this were true, which we do not believe, we would still be performing a very important function.  It is imperative that those who already believe in a market economy, limited government and individual freedom should have the constant encouragement of knowing that they do not stand alone, that there is high hope for their cause.  It is imperative that all such people keep abreast of current developments and know their correct interpretation, and that, through constant restatement and mutual criticism of each other’s ideas; they continue to clarify, improve and perfect their understanding. Only if they do this can they be counted upon to remain true to a libertarian philosophy, and be proof against collectivist fallacies.  Only if those on “our side” do this can we even hope to hold our ranks together and cease constantly to lose converts, as in the past, to collectivism.

Making Converts

But the function of a journal of opinion like the Freeman only begins here; it does not stop here.  It is necessary for the believers in a free system to do far more than hold their present thin ranks together.  If they hope to see their ideas triumph, it is imperative that they make converts themselves from the philosophy of collectivism, “security” and serfdom that dominates the world today.

They can do this only if they themselves have a deeper understanding than the collectivists, and are able not only to recognize the collectivist errors, but to refute them in such a way that the more intelligent and well-meaning collectivists themselves will recognize, acknowledge and renounce them as errors.  And those on “our side” cannot do this, cannot live up to their responsibilities, unless they have troubled to keep themselves informed to make their ideas clearer and their understanding deeper than those of the collectivists.  For our side can hope to grow only if it attracts and keeps adherents who in turn will become, not blind or one-eyed partisans, but enlightened and able expositors, teachers, disseminators, proselytizers.

To make this possible, it is essential that there should exist a prospering periodical with the aims of the Freeman.

(Sheldon Richman is on vacation. TGIF will resume next week.)

by Lynne Viola

Oxford University Press • 2007 • 278 pages • $30.00

Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling

In The Harvest of Sorrow (1986), historian Robert Conquest estimated that in the early 1930s as many as nine million people may have died during the forced collectivization of land in the Soviet Union. They were shot, tortured, or starved to death. Peasant resistance to the state’s seizure of their farms was dealt with by Stalin through a planned famine that finally broke all countryside opposition to the march into the bright and beautiful socialist future.

In 1931 Lady Astor of Great Britain was privileged with an audience with Stalin in the Kremlin. She point-blank asked him, “And how long are you going to go on killing people?” Stalin calmly replied, “As long as it is necessary. . . . The violent death of a large number of people was necessary before the Communist State could be firmly established.”

One of the few Western journalists of the time who was able to get outside Moscow to visit some of the famine areas in southern European Russia and Ukraine was William Henry Chamberlin. In a series of articles that he wrote on his return to the United States in 1934, he reported seeing skeleton-like undernourished children, adults barely able to walk from hunger, and hushed whispers of cannibalism in a gruesome attempt by some to stay alive. Red Army detachments and units of the secret police attempted to block all roads into these areas to prevent any of the victims from escaping or their friends and family members in the cities from bringing food to those condemned to this terrible fate.

The main target of Stalin’s wrath was the supposedly richer peasants known as kulaks, who were said to be the main opponents and resisters of collectivization. They were labeled the countryside “capitalist class” and therefore the primary “enemies of the people.”

Stalin’s other method of dealing with the kulaks was compulsory exile to some of the harshest and least inhabitable parts of northern European Russia. These victims are the subject of Lynne Viola’s book, The Unknown Gulag, the tragic details of which have never been thoroughly studied before. She estimates that between 1930 and 1933, well over two million people were transported to these faraway regions of the Soviet state.

Hundreds of young Communist Party members from the cities, who knew nothing about the peasantry or farming, were sent to the rural areas to assist in the collectivization. Indoctrinated by the party’s propaganda that the kulaks were the stumbling block to “building socialism,” these communist thugs intimidated and violently abused people when and how they wanted. Inspired by the idea of production quotas under the newly instituted five-year plan, they set up quotas for killing and exiling peasants as quantitative indicators of breaking the resistance to state-run collective farming.

Like much in the Soviet planned society, the details of exiling millions of people had not been thought out beforehand: how to transport and feed hundreds of thousands of families, how they would build shelter, what types of work they would be required to do once they reached their assigned locations. But trains were arranged, and these hapless people were crowded into cattle cars with barely room to stand, little or no food, and no hygienic facilities. The journeys would take two or more weeks to the north Russia territories around the towns of Archangel, Vologda, and Kotlas, or across the Ural Mountains to northern Siberia.

Only slowly were party commissions appointed to decide what was to be done with the exiles. In their secret reports to senior party officials, the heads of these commissions admitted that disease, starvation, and bitter cold weather were decimating the kulak families. It was reported that during a two-month period in 1931, more than 3,000 children who succumbed to the harsh conditions were buried in the Vologda area.

Stalin’s dream was to use the vast army of slave laborers to work in the deep forests of the north to supply lumber for construction projects and to mine for the rich minerals buried above the Arctic Circle. The exiled families were to be divided into groups of 1,500 people and made to construct permanent settlements for themselves in the forest and mining areas. Their sentences would be indeterminate so they might be used for as long as it served the interests of the state. If in the process many died, the multifamily barracks in these settlements would simply be filled with the next group of slave laborers.

Violence was the main tool to maintain order. One of these exiles said, “Here they beat us horribly. . . . They beat us with revolvers while we slept. The commandant broke one man’s skull. . . . There is no defense from anyone. We will likely perish here.” Some attempted to escape; by 1933 the authorities estimated that several hundred thousand had tried. But most either didn’t make it through the frigid land or were recaptured and usually sent to a camp worse than the first one.

By the end of 1931 “the plan” for the design and construction of these settlements and the work to be done there had been drawn up to the smallest detail. But as Viola explains, “It represented an ‘imagined future’—laid out in endless plans, reports, memos, figures, tables, graphs, and budgets—superimposed on the present-day realities of the Soviet hinterlands. . . . Reality was vastly different—untidy, unmanaged, and shaped more by geographical, economic, and cultural realities than by Moscow ‘s seeming omnipotence.”

These “imagined” exile-populated settlements, which she reminds us were nothing more than “a shoddily constructed institution of forced labor,” were brought down by the nationwide government-caused famine of 1933–1934. Because of the failure of “the plan” and the shortage of food and materials, most of them were closed.

But the human cost was horrific. Out of the more than two million exiles sent to these areas, by 1934 only 973,000 had survived. Subtracting those who succeeded in escaping, close to 50 percent had died. Sometimes, however, there is a perverse justice in the world. Two of the leading party officials responsible for the planning and initial execution of this forced-labor system were themselves arrested during Stalin’s Great Purges and executed in 1937 as “enemies of the people.”

Most of the kulaks who survived were merely transferred to the larger and far more terrifying and lethal Gulag system of labor camps that stretched across the entire length of the Soviet Union and consumed tens of millions of lives during the nearly 75 years of the nightmare socialist experiment.

* * *

In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

by Charles Murray

AEI Press • 2006 • 140 pages • $20.00

Reviewed by Michael Tanner

If, as Richard Weaver famously wrote, “ideas have consequences,” then Charles Murray is a truly consequential man. Only a handful of thinkers over the past quarter century have had as much impact on public policy. It was his 1984 classic, Losing Ground, that led to a bipartisan consensus about the failure of the Great Society welfare state. Now, ten years after the welfare reform that owes its existence to Murray ‘s ideas, he is back with a thought-provoking approach to government antipoverty policies.

Murray ‘s latest book, In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State, provides a blueprint for doing just that.

By Murray’s estimate, federal, state, and local governments spend roughly $522 billion per year on antipoverty programs, yet poverty rates have barely budged over the past 40 years. As he notes, “Only government could spend money so ineffectually.” His answer, therefore, is to take the money away from the government and give it directly to the people.

Murray would abolish all welfare programs. He would also terminate all other government transfer programs: Social Security, Medicare, and even agricultural price supports. In their place he would provide every American citizen with an annual grant of $10,000 to do with as he or she pleases. The grant would be untaxed for those earning less than $25,000 per year, thereby establishing a floor of national income, and entirely taxed back for high-income earners. There would be no work requirements or other restrictions. All Americans would get that check—but nothing else.

This, of course, wouldn’t actually abolish welfare. In fact, Murray’s proposal would initially be more expensive than current programs. Yet it would sweep away the vast edifice of the modern welfare state—not just the agencies and bureaucrats who administer the dozens of overlapping aid programs, but the rules, regulations, and restrictions that make the welfare state as much the overseer of the poor’s behavior as a dispenser of alms. At a time when big-government conservatives seek to use welfare as a weapon to micromanage the lives of the poor, this comes as a breath of fresh air.

For example, it is widely acknowledged that existing welfare laws act as a disincentive to family formation. Recipients are frequently penalized for marrying. Big-government conservatives would counteract this by creating federal programs to teach the poor about the benefits of marriage, or even bribe welfare mothers into marrying with the offer of additional benefits.

Murray ‘s plan avoids all this. Those who act responsibly, who marry, save for their retirement, purchase health insurance, and so on would be better off. Those who make irresponsible choices would be forced to fall back on private charity. Murray accepts the inevitability that modern societies will redistribute income, but doesn’t want them to run people’s lives.

Yet Murray ‘s proposal is undermined by one simple flaw. His plan would establish as both a legal and philosophical concept that every American citizen is entitled to a minimum income—exacted from the taxpayers. Once that “right” is established, the political process will inevitably expand it. Murray argues that $10,000 is the correct amount. But how long before some politician comes along and says, “No one can live on $10,000. We need to make it $11,000.” Soon another politician, not wanting to be thought less compassionate than the first, will propose $12,000. Look to the current debate over “a living wage” to see how this would work.

The book is not a casual read. It packs a great deal of information into a short space, and sometimes the numbers and programmatic interactions fly by in a blur. Murray can unexpectedly veer off to discuss subjects such as tort reform or expected future stock returns. These are topics that have consumed volumes in their own right. It is hard to do them justice in the few pages Murray devotes to them. Many of the details are designed to show that Murray has thought through all the implications of his proposal. This is a testament to his excellence as a scholar, and a treasure trove to policy wonks, but of marginal utility to the average reader.

Also, there’s a general assumption that the reader shares Murray’s view that the current welfare state is a failure. Consequently, the book is unlikely to persuade anyone who starts from a different premise.

Murray says he conceives of his proposal as a “thought experiment.” It fulfills the role brilliantly. His solution is dubious, but if Murray can once more get us to question traditional wisdom, he will have again proven how consequential ideas can be.

* * *

Actual Ethics

by James R. Otteson

Cambridge University Press • 2006 • 349 pages • $75.00 hardcover; $25.99 paperback

Reviewed by Tibor R. Machan

More and more books sympathetic to classical liberalism and libertarianism are coming on the market from publishers that haven’t offered such works until recently. Cambridge University Press has started to take on such works regularly.

This is important because in the contest of ideas, it matters where the ideas are published. It influences their use in classrooms, the promotion of the authors, and so forth, so when a certain line of thinking gains a forum at the more prestigious publishing houses, that can be identified as an advance. Thus James Otteson’s Actual Ethics is a triumph, and all those who value individual liberty should rejoice.

Having said this, I should also note a small quibble, namely, with the idea that classical liberalism and libertarianism are ethical rather than political stances. It is not new, of course, to believe this. Murray Rothbard and quite a few of those who discuss the constitution of a free society suggest that this is a matter of ethics proper, not only of political theory. Yet prominent classical liberals, such as Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek, have held that no commitment to any kind of ethics is involved in championing the free society. (I myself have argued that there is but a minimal ethical substance in such a political position.) This is supported by the idea that ethics addresses the question of how we ought to live our lives, day in and out, while politics is about how human communities are best organized.

Otteson, who has been teaching philosophy at the University of Alabama but is moving to Yeshiva University, contends that ethics is directly relevant to the politics of classical liberalism. In his own words, he is advancing “the simple and . . . inspiring vision of free and independent individuals who take no and brook no violation of personhood, who thus meet each others as equals in personhood, and who seek to provide for themselves and for those they care about a good and happy life.” For him this is an ethical claim, not so much one concerned with politics or law.

Actual Ethics is a work with a unique approach, one that reminds me of John Hospers’s way of philosophizing—common-sense philosophy. Otteson says he is concerned with “how you should live,” yet the book is more often than not about how you should not live, as well as about the important notion that one needs to figure out for oneself the details of how one should live. For Otteson government’s purpose is “to secure people in their lives,” although this could imply a far more extensive role for law than Otteson supports—for example, universal health care. That is why the American Founders’ notion that government is about securing our rights (to life and so on) is, I believe, more precise. But I think Otteson agrees with that position.

Otteson’s achievement here is to make a persuasive case for classical liberalism based on the moral superiority of individual freedom and responsibility. With so much philosophy these days tending to support the expansion of the state, this book is a gust of fresh air.

Actual Ethics has a lot of provocative and well-executed discussion about all the problem areas that critics of the free society keep mentioning—welfare, health care, child care, poverty, education, and so forth. These are all dealt with in admirably accessible fashion, free of the kind of jargon that often mars philosophical discussions of human affairs. For example, Otteson considers various reasons for placing education in the hands of government and although his idea of inviolable personhood would render any kind of state schooling indefensible, he patiently examines most of the justifications and finds them wanting.

Each chapter ends with a long list of relevant publications that would be of great use to anyone wishing to develop some of the nuances of the questions that Otteson is exploring.

I would like to end this brief review by commending Otteson for invoking the ideas of the late Julian Simon, especially the extremely important notion that the greatest resource for making advances in our lives is the individual’s initiative, the creative mind. I would also like to take exception to Otteson’s calling me something of an anarchist. His list of those who are supposedly in the anarcho-capitalist school is debatable. But that debate will have to await another book. Actual Ethics has so much value to offer that this minor mistake can be set aside.

* * *

Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History

by Paul Moreno

Louisiana State University Press • 2006 • 325 pages • $49.95

Reviewed by George C. Leef

Among the virtues of free markets is that they provide all who wish to compete the opportunity to do so. Free markets are not burdened by coercive interference that favors some groups and shuts others out. That is particularly beneficial for people who are of a religious sect, nationality, race, or other group that is widely disliked. Even if most people choose to discriminate against them, they can still succeed by working for or selling to those who don’t share the general prejudice, or at least who will put prejudice aside in favor of good-quality work.

On the other hand, where a market is subject to government regulation, unpopular groups are often excluded or handicapped. That is because dominant groups are able to exercise their political power to pass laws that stamp out competition from outsiders.

Black Americans have suffered a great deal from official discrimination in the labor market. For example, under the Jim Crow laws enacted in southern textile-producing states, it was illegal for a mill owner to employ black workers in better-paying positions. The job of loom fixer, among others, was by law a whites-only job. Many owners would have been glad to hire or promote people for that job just on the basis of work quality, but racist politics dictated otherwise.

Labor unions have long used both legal and illegal means to secure for their members higher pay than they would be able to get in a free market. In the early years of America, virtually every labor union admitted whites only. Racist sentiments teamed up with the desire for economic advantage to produce overwhelming hostility toward any blacks who had the temerity to try to compete. In his book Black Americans and Organized Labor, Hillsdale College history professor Paul Moreno gives a detailed account of the one-sided battle between blacks and unions. It’s a “warts and all” picture that reveals much about the ugly, coercive side of organized labor that is usually kept hidden from the public. Moreno quotes Samuel Gompers, who once ranted that “Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs, or any other.” The early civil-rights leader A. Philip Randolph clearly understood what the unions were all about when he said that the American Federation of Labor was “the most wicked machine for the propagation of race prejudices in the country.”

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, violence was often used by white unionists against black workers and white-owned businesses that employed them. Moreno gives some revolting instances. What he labels “the bloodiest race riot in American history” took place in New York City in 1862 when white workers rioted against a tobacco-manufacturing company that had hired black workers. Hundreds were killed and injured before the riot was put down by army troops. Violence was illegal, of course, but the unionists were certain that they could get away with it.

One of the key themes in the book is that black workers and white business owners were allies against the attempts to cartelize the labor market by unions. In the post-Civil War South, Moreno writes, “industrialization could have undermined the region’s racial hierarchy, but segregation forced business to conform to it.. . . Railroad owners balked at enforcing racial segregation and fought the laws in court—joining Homer Plessy, for example, in challenging the requirement of separate accommodations in New Orleans streetcars.” Frequently businesses that chose to employ black workers were targeted by unions with violence.

Nor was racial animosity confined to the South. In Northern states unions used their power to ensure that skilled trades remained exclusive white preserves. One favorite tactic was to get occupational-licensing laws passed, and then to use their control over apprenticeship programs to keep anyone they didn’t like from learning the trade.

Eventually some unions began to soften their stance against blacks, a combination of receding racial hostility and self-interest. (The money of black union members was just as good as that of whites.) Political pressure was building for legislation to forbid racial discrimination by unions, and most union officials supported it, although there were some who opposed it and even declined to comply until forced to do so.

Unionists like to talk about what they call “labor’s bitter struggle”—which is their rhetoric for efforts at establishing legally protected cartels—but the really bitter struggle was that of black (and other minority) workers to be allowed to compete freely in the labor market. Paul Moreno’s book beautifully tells the story of that struggle but also makes a bigger point, namely that society must not allow interest groups to use the law as a sword to cut down competition from other people.

* * *

There have been efforts to reclaim the term by those who sometimes describe themselves as “old-fashioned liberals,” but these have not succeeded. Faced with this situation, supporters of the original liberal position have resorted to a number of linguistic expedients. For a while many adopted the label “conservative,” which had been previously attached to some of their most steadfast opponents. This nomenclature, while widely used in the United States, has never caught on elsewhere and has not fully taken hold even there. This was partly because many old-style liberals refused to use it and also because the right to the label was vigorously contested by what we may call old-style or “traditionalist” conservatives, who claimed a right of first usage.

More recently most advocates of strictly limited government have settled on the term “libertarian,” while others prefer the more learned-sounding “classical liberal.” (I have used both terms myself.)

However, these alternatives still present problems and are arguably not satisfactory. As F. A. Hayek pointed out, the term “conservative” not only brings allusions to a tradition of thought that while distinguished is not “liberal” in the older sense, it also carries implications of a mistrust of reason and skepticism about change combined with a reverence for the past and an affection for such things as tradition, hierarchy, and authority, none of which are core parts of the historic liberal tradition, with its emphasis on individual liberty, innovation, and personal responsibility.

The expression “classical liberal” is much better but is clumsy and has the clear implication that the ideas are some kind of preserved tradition rather than a developing body of thought. “Libertarian” is the most popular (and is now found on Facebook!) but has disadvantages of its own. As well as being an ugly word, it has the implication for anyone familiar with its history that the person using it as a label is an anarchist. In most cases this is not true and causes confusion.

More seriously, the term “libertarian” draws attention to only one part of a much larger philosophy: opposition to extensive government and political power. This is indeed a central part of the philosophy, but it is not the whole of it and use of the term tends to lead to the other elements being slighted or ignored.

Is this really a problem? If so, is it serious enough to warrant any thought? Clearly this isn’t the most serious difficulty, but history and political experience suggest that it is more serious than one might imagine. All words, and political labels in particular, come with a whole range of historical and cultural associations and secondary meanings that have a significant effect on the way people respond to individuals and ideas associated with them. Some labels can come to have a series of associations so negative that it is impossible to use them to identify your argument if you want to persuade people.

In the United States, for example, any argument for greater decentralization and less centralization is doomed if linked with the expression “states’ rights” because of that term’s association with racial privilege and segregation. Other words carry a whole set of broadly positive associations, and this makes neutrals more favorably disposed toward the arguments identified with them. This was once very much the case with “liberal,” which is why people made enormous and successful efforts to appropriate it.

There is a term available that is seldom used now, but that was once the predominant and accepted label for the set of ideas related to personal freedom and responsibility. This is “individualism”—or rather “Individualism.” Before the mid-nineteenth century the word “individualism” was rarely used and when it was, it was usually as a pejorative, with connotations of selfishness and irresponsibility. However, from about the 1850s onwards a whole series of writers on both sides of the Atlantic (and not just in the English-speaking world) began to use the word and associated ones such as “individuality” in a positive way. From the 1870s onwards it came to be capitalized and used as a political label.

The period between roughly 1880 and 1912 saw an intense debate in Britain and the British Empire, the United States, and France in particular between two fairly well-defined and -organized intellectual camps, the self-defined Individualists and Collectivists. The second group included Fabian socialists and American Progressives (who went on to capture the word “liberal”), but also included conservative imperialists and advocates of policies such as nativism and racism, as well as the wing of the Republican party represented by figures such as Theodore Roosevelt. (Many of the socialist and “left-wing” progressives were also supporters of imperialism, racism, and policies such as eugenics—something now often forgotten.) The Individualists were the advocates of minimal government and opposition to empire and indeed all forms of collectivism, whether racial or national. They were also associated with a number of other movements, above all feminism, with many leading feminists of the time strongly self-identified as Individualists. The heart of the argument was about whether government has a duty to promote a general collective welfare, defined as something above and beyond the pursuit of individual happiness, and whether there is some collective identity that trumps the claims of actual individual men and women.

Term Disappears

Up until the 1930s this division between Individualism and Collectivism was generally understood to be one of the basic distinctions in modern politics. As late as the 1930s the opposition to the New Deal came largely from people who identified themselves as individualists and as belonging to what by then was a well-established intellectual tradition. Then quite suddenly in the 1940s and 1950s the term disappeared from general use as a political label and reverted to a more general, uncapitalized use. Why this happened is a mystery, but it was clearly part of the general reshuffling of “right wing” politics that took place with the advent of the Cold War.

Apart from its historical associations, now largely forgotten but ripe for rediscovery, Individualism has a number of advantages over other terms in the contemporary world. It has broadly positive connotations for many people but also makes divisions between those who respond favorably and others who do not more clear cut and obvious. As such it sends a clear message. It has a wide range of meanings and associations in addition to implying a clear view about government and its role, as it also has implications for one’s attitudes toward culture, philosophy, and social life in general. It does not imply that if you define yourself in this way then you are a supporter of the status quo (you may be, but that isn’t the clearly understood implication of the word).

Above all it relates to what is increasingly the real debate in modern societies. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have increasingly reverted to the debate of the period between 1880 and 1914 between increasingly aggressive collectivists of many kinds on the one side and defenders of individual autonomy and voluntary choice on the other. We may say, and not tongue in cheek, “Individualists of the world unite.” It’s time to dust off that label and revive it.