Precisely. The great virtue of the book is how Rockwell shows that when people on the political right point to “liberal” increases in government power and say, “They’re attacking freedom!” they are correct—as are those on the political left who point to “conservative” increases in government power and say the same thing. The problem Rockwell illuminates is that both camps are blind to the damage done by their own impulses to expand the power of the State. A massive, unrestrained government is a bull in a china shop.

Each reader will undoubtedly find certain essays especially insightful. One of my favorites is “Freedom is Not ‘Public Policy.’” Rockwell argues that one of the worst errors of free-market intellectuals is their discussion of liberty as just another policy option for politicians and bureaucrats to consider. That formulation, he writes, “implies that it is up to the state—its managers and kept intellectuals—to decide how, when, and where freedom is to be permitted.” He cites as an egregious example the Reagan administration’s approach to tax cutting, when tax cuts were defended on the grounds that they would ultimately bring in more government revenue. We don’t cherish freedom, Rockwell observes, because it maximizes the government’s haul of money. Instead, tax cuts should be advanced on the grounds that it is right for people to keep and decide how to spend the money they earn.

Rockwell has sharp words for both the left and the right on the ways they have been lured by the siren song of government to abandon principles they formerly held. On the right, for example, he shows that pro-family advocates have been drawn into the big-government orbit with such nonlibertarian policies as school vouchers. He also takes aim at “free-market” scholars who propose “solutions” to welfare-state problems, such as Social Security, that merely involve some trimming of that poisonous plant, rather than uprooting it entirely.

The left also gets taken to the woodshed over issues like its abandonment of free speech in favor of restrictive campus speech codes. And what has become of the old leftist commitment to civil liberties? Today it’s little more than a fading memory, with leftist politicians jumping on the bandwagon for the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, expansive eminent-domain powers, and so forth. The omnipotent State now tramples all over the rights of “the little guy.” The left used to care, but now prefers to turn a blind eye.

After several hundred pages of razor-edged attacks on the waste, folly, and outright evils of “liberal” and “conservative” statism, Rockwell gets to the crucial question: What do we do? Examining and then rejecting various suggested courses, he argues that libertarians must work to cultivate sound ideas. We can make no progress against our greedy, intrusive, authoritarian government so long as most Americans accept the false idea that government action is the key to progress and prosperity.

For example, since most Americans believe that economic recessions are a natural part of the free market and we need government action to “stimulate the economy” when it turns sick, it’s inevitable that politicians will support massive federal spending to cure it. We need to explain the truth about economic cycles to the public. Similarly, most Americans believe that we must have “public” education or else suffer from widespread illiteracy. We need to convey the truth that the market for education works and would deliver far better results at less cost if it were allowed to function.

Indeed—cultivate sound ideas. Reading Rockwell’s book will help you do exactly that.

Known as a moderate on the court, [Supreme Court nominee-designate Sonia] Sotomayor often forges consensus and agreeing with her more conservative nominees far more frequently than she disagrees with them. In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time.

Hat tip: Roderick Long.

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.

What is the role of government? This has been and remains the most fundamental question in all political discussions and debates. Its answer will determine the nature of the social order and how people will be expected and allowed to interact with one another—on the basis of either force or freedom.

The alternatives are really rather simple. Government may be narrowly limited to perform the essential task of protecting each individual’s right to his life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Or it may be used to try to modify, influence, or dictate the conduct of the citizenry.

In the first case, the government is assigned the duty of impartial umpire, enforcing the societal rules against assault, murder, robbery, and fraud. All human relationships are to be based on mutual consent and voluntary association and exchange.

In the second case, government is an active player in people’s affairs, using its legitimized power of coercion to determine how the members of the society may live, work, and associate with each other. The government tries to assure certain outcomes or forms of behavior considered desirable by those who wield political authority.

We need to remember what government ultimately is all about. This was concisely explained by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises: “Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, of gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.”

Under a political regime of liberty, each individual gives purpose and moral compass to his own life. He is treated as independent and self-governing; as long as he does not violate the rights of others he is sovereign over his own affairs. He may choose and act wisely or absurdly, but it is his life to live as he pleases. If any of us—family members, friends, or just concerned fellow human beings—believe someone has chosen a path to perdition, we may try to persuade him to mend his ways. But we are expected to respect his freedom; we may not threaten or use force to make him change course.

Nor are we allowed to use political power to manipulate his options so that he does what we want him to do. Using taxation and regulation to induce conduct more to our liking is no less a political imposition than the sterner and more explicit police power.

The totalitarian systems of the twentieth century used the direct means of command and prohibition to get people to do what a Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or Mao wanted done. In the interventionist welfare state such brute means are normally shunned for the more indirect and subtle method of influencing people’s behavior through manipulation of incentives. Suppose an individual stands at a crossroads and is told he may choose which way to go. But in front of one of the roads is a government toll booth, while in front of the other is a machine that dispenses a cash subsidy from the state. The choice is his, but the tradeoffs have been manipulated to influence his decision. In the 1950s the French coined a term for this type of political control: indicative planning. Through the use of fiscal and regulatory powers the government could get people to do what the politicians, bureaucrats, and various special-interest groups wanted, all the while maintaining the illusion that people were freely deciding where to invest or work or carry on their business.

Recently the well-known movie critic and editorialist Michael Medved devoted two newspaper columns to contrasting the liberal and conservative worldviews. Modern American liberals, he explained, are all about government solving problems of “victimhood” and alleviating the effects of claimed private-sector oppression of the poor and the weak. They wish to use the power of government to redistribute wealth from the rich to the supposedly needy and deserving. They want to use the regulatory power of the state to assure certain “ethically desirable” patterns of employment and to divert business from producing things without “real” social value.

Medved also emphasized that these policies often reward and reinforce the wrong types of behavior by not requiring people to bear the consequences of their actions, resulting in a weakening of the character and spirit of self-reliance among large segments of the population.

What, then, distinguishes a conservative from this contemporary American liberal? Medved tells us that “The essential instinct behind modern conservatism goes beyond a desire for small government. . . . Above all, conservatives feel impelled to make clear distinctions between right and wrong. In deciding where society should confer reward or punishment, conservatives consider whether behavior’s been right or wrong.” Furthermore, he considers free markets and the profit-and-loss system as good only because they “encourage wholesome, constructive choices.”

The conservative, as understood by Medved, therefore, wishes to use the power of the state to assure wholesome conduct by the citizenry. If the liberal wants to tax inheritance to prevent some from having a financial advantage over others, the conservative wants to use the tax system to give a differential “reward” for the meritorious choice to leave more wealth for the next generation. The conservative wants to use the legislative and regulatory authority of government to induce the “right” social choices concerning the nature of families and the quality of communities.

Medved concludes his brief explanation by saying that the key to the conservative worldview is that “the choices we make in this life, for better or worse, carry consequences both practical and eternal.”

Under Medved’s understanding, conservatism is not about freedom, but is merely a competing system of social engineering. Like the modern liberals, he also believes it is the duty of government to influence and modify people’s behavior. His only dispute with the liberals concerns the particular purposes for which the fiscal and regulatory tools of the state should be applied. He accepts the market economy only as long as it generates those outcomes he considers “wholesome” and “constructive.” He presumably is willing to regulate the market if its outcomes are not to his liking.

Liberty, the Highest Political Good

The great nineteenth-century historian and Christian classical liberal Lord Acton once said, “By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and custom, and opinion.” For this reason, he declared that the securing of liberty “is the highest political good.”

How can men be free to follow their conscience if they are not free from political control?

A conservative like Medved may reply that not all men are strong enough to do what conscience and duty require of them. But moral conduct is not fostered when the political dice are rigged to assure certain outcomes. Indeed, government weakens the development of character when it manipulates the tradeoffs.

Furthermore, once the state is given the responsibility to see that we do the “right thing,” we have no certainty that those empowered to implement the necessary policies will share our values and beliefs. We may be setting up the institutional mechanisms for the government to undermine the very ideals we hold most dear.

Finally, the very notion of a free society is threatened by viewing people as objects to be manipulated rather than as unique individuals, whose very individuality as special creatures of God and nature should be treated with dignity and respect: as free men and not as bondsmen to be used and abused by an earthly Lord, whether that Lord is labeled “liberal” or “conservative.”

Towards a liberal utopia? You mean, like Sweden?

No, decidedly not. This wonderful volume comes to us from the venerable British free-market think tank, The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). In Britain the term “liberal” has not been subjected to quite the degree of corruption that it has in the United States, and the liberal utopia about which the authors write means a nation where the state has been reduced to its essential order-keeping functions. In a country that has waded so far into the swamp of socialism as Britain, that is an extremely radical vision.

Published to honor the 50th anniversary of the founding of the IEA, the book’s essayists playfully imagine that they are looking back at the present from 50 years in the future and speculate as to what has transpired to bring about the liberal utopia. (The full book may be downloaded from the IEA website: www. iea.org.uk/files/upld-book402pdf?.pdf.) The result is at once entertaining and thought provoking as the IEA’s crack theoreticians explain how Britain might have metamorphosed from a statist caterpillar to a liberal butterfly in the next half century.

The 21 essays cover a wide range of topics, only a small sampling of which can be noted in a short review. Here are some of my favorites.

Tim and Helen Evans lead off with a piece on the infamous National Health Service, the socialist innovation that has set such a bad example for other nations. “The root of the problem,” they explain, “is that British medicine, all British medicine (be it state or independent), is ultimately a government sponsored monopoly.” They envision a future where the free market has been restored in medical services. What brings that about is the growing revulsion of people against the inefficiency of socialized medicine (long waits for treatment) and the loss of privacy as the state begins to collect information on patients without their consent.

James Tooley writes about the reclamation of education from the grasp of the state. He imagines conducting focus-group sessions in the future in which “people looked back on our obsession with schooling with a mixture of horror and bewilderment.” The British 50 years hence have given up on government-run education in favor of a system built around family, freedom, and philanthropy. The state does not run the educational system; in fact there isn’t really a system at all, but rather individuals and families doing whatever they think best to learn. Released from government control, the market liberates learners and teachers to explore for the ideal arrangements.

J. R. Shackleton tackles the issue of labor-market regulation. Capitalizing on naïve voter beliefs that government action can and should improve the lot of the worker, nearly all governments have enacted a host of measures that supposedly do so by interfering with freedom of contract. Shackleton points out that “The true cost of introducing mandated benefits—longer holidays, shorter working hours, paternal leave—does not ultimately reduce the profits of private business: it is instead passed on to workers in the form of cuts in wages and employment.” He views all such interventions as inflicting unseen economic damage and proposes the radical change of reinstituting freedom of contract between worker and employer.

Other excellent essays in the book include liberal approaches to policing, the environment, trade, land-use regulation, limiting taxation, pensions, and constitutionalism.

The second part of the book consists of five chapters written by the late Lord (Ralph) Harris. Harris was one of the founders of the IEA—an act that took great fortitude in the Britain of 1955. In the postwar years Britain had fallen under the spell of Keynesian economic theory and egalitarianism, and Harris writes that the role of the IEA was like that of “a missionary in a pagan land.”

With limited resources, Harris and his colleagues had to decide how to maximize their impact. The brilliant economist Arthur Seldon was instrumental in the decision to establish “a niche market specializing in short, scholarly texts aimed principally at teachers and students of economics, but accessible to interested laymen, journalists, and the minority of politicians with a taste for serious reading.” Perhaps the most famous of those publications was F. A. Hayek’s 1976 monograph advocating the denationalization of money.

Friends of liberty around the globe should be grateful for the efforts of the IEA over the last half century. Towards a Liberal Utopia is a most commendable volume, and readers are encouraged to look into the steady stream of IEA books and papers.

Aside from the countless amenities extended to us, it was also nice to be in a place where the word “liberal” is understood. In the linguistically challenged United States, to be a liberal is to favor the government over the individual. Before the word was hijacked in the Progressive Era by devotees of what Ludwig von Mises called “statolatry,” a liberal supported private property, free markets, and the rule of law as a bulwark against the state. The words “liberal” and “liberty” obviously share the same root. They originate in the Latin word for “free.”

But that’s all forgotten. Now that “liberal” is associated with bully government, it has become a dirty word, especially during elections, and no one wants it anymore—not even the advocates of bully government. The Economist on November 4 pointed out that it is derisory in Europe too, although over there it retains much of its original meaning.

I’d like to associate myself with what The Economist said:

There ought to be a word . . . to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government—but, crucially, it viewed a government’s efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.

The magazine went on to lament the absurd division of freedom into personal and economic varieties, one for the left and one for the right: “That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why ‘liberal’ has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.”

There is no better person to turn to for insight into the changing notion of liberalism than Herbert Spencer, who examined the matter in “The New Toryism,” found in his 1884 collection The Man Versus the State (online, thanks to the Liberty Fund, at www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Spencer/spnMvS.html). Not so ironically, Spencer worked at The Economist from 1848 (five years after its founding) to 1853.

Spencer reminded his readers that two types of societies had long been in contention: the militant, or status-based, type versus the industrial, or contract-based, type. Advocates of the latter, who later became known as both Whigs and Liberals, accomplished the Herculean task of “resist[ing] and decreas[ing] the coercive power of the ruler over the subject.” After detailing this earth-shaking record, Spencer wrote, “[I]t seems needful to remind everybody what Liberalism was in the past, that they may perceive its unlikeness to the so-called Liberalism of the present. . . . They have lost sight of the truth that in past times Liberalism habitually stood for individual freedom versus State-coercion.”

This raises the question Spencer wishes to answer: “How is it that Liberalism . . . has grown more and more coercive in its legislation?” It was a case of confused thinking. Later activists mistook Liberalism’s elimination of coercive government “hindrances to happiness” for the use of coercive government to achieve the good directly. “And seeking to gain it directly, they have used methods intrinsically opposed to those originally used.”

Today’s Economist editors wisely prefer that left and right continue to shun the word “liberal,” leaving it to “its original owner[s]. That will free ‘liberal’ to be used exclusively from now on in its proper sense, as we shall continue to use it regardless.”

Same here.

February 5 marks the 100th anniverary of the birth of that passionate champion of capitalism, novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. Chris Matthew Sciabarra contributes a centennial appreciation.

All kinds of political impositions are justified in the name of consensus. Russell Madden deconstructs that treacherous notion.

As California goes, so goes the nation—and Los Angeles is experiencing an alarming loss of emergency-room service. Steven Greenhut describes a scary development that could be coming to a city near you.

Hitting someone over the head has never been an effective way to win him to one’s point of view. Ralph Hood learned this the hard way and now is reformed.

Take me out to the ballgame. Take me out to the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks, just as long as I don’t pay that tax. Ray Keating shows why no one should be forced to pay for a stadium.

The words “Lear” and “jet” go together like peanut and butter. But who was Bill Lear? Anthony Young knows.

Last October, Congress ended the 70-year-old tobacco price-support program. That was the good news. The bad news is that smokers will be forced to pay off the tobacco farmers. E. C. Pasour, Jr., explains.

Searching the political-economic landscape, our columnists have come up with this: Richard Ebeling explains political corruption. Donald Boudreaux ponders the nature of progress. Burton Folsom relates a story from the days of the underground railroad. Walter Williams considers the moral underpinnings of a free society. And Jane Orient, reading the claim that America needs socialized medicine, replies, “It Just Ain’t So!”

Our reviewers render verdicts on books about the status of nations, the morality of the market, the racial gap in learning, and politics.

—Sheldon Richman

Use of the single left-right scale makes impossible a satisfactory description of libertarian (and classical- liberal) attitudes toward government. Libertarians oppose not only government direction of economic affairs, but also government meddling in the personal lives of peaceful people. Does this opposition make libertarians “rightists” (because they promote free enterprise) or “leftists” (because they oppose government meddling in people’s private affairs)? As a communications tool, the left-right distinction suffers acute anemia.

Nevertheless, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the familiar left-right—”liberal-conservative”—lingo, such use continues. One reason for its durability is convenience. Never mind that all-important nuances are ignored when describing someone as being, say, “to the right of Richard Nixon” or “to the left of Lyndon Johnson. The description takes only seconds and doesn’t tax the attention of nightly news audiences.

Therefore, no practical good is done by lamenting the mass media’s insistence on using a one-dimensional tool for describing political views. A better strategy for helping to improve political discussion is to devise a set of more descriptive terms.

There is much to be said for a suggestion offered by Professor Richard Gamble, who teaches history at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Gamble proposes that instead of describing someone as either “left” or “right,” or “liberal” or “conservative,” we describe him as being either a centralist or a decentralist. This “centralist- decentralist” language would be a vast improvement over the muddled “left-right” language.

Unfortunately, “centralist-decentralist” language contains its own potential confusion–namely, “decentralist” might be taken to mean someone who is indifferent to what Clint Bolick calls “grassroots tyranny.” Is there an even better set of labels for a one-dimensional political spectrum? I think so: “coercivist-voluntarist.”

At one end of this spectrum are coercivists. Coercivists believe that all order in society must be consciously designed and implemented by a sovereign government power. Coercivists cannot fathom how individuals without mandates from above can ever pattern their actions in a way that is not only orderly, but also peaceful and productive. For the coercivist, direction by sovereign government is as necessary for the creation of social order as the meticulous craftsmanship of a watchmaker is necessary for the creation of a watch.

At the other end of the spectrum are voluntarists. Voluntarists understand two important facts about society that coercivists miss. First, voluntarists understand that social order is inevitable without coercive direction from the state as long as the basic rules of private property and voluntary contracting are respected. This inevitability of social order when such rules are observed is the great lesson taught by Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and all of the truly great economists through the ages.

Second, voluntarists understand that coercive social engineering by government—far from promoting social harmony—is fated to ruin existing social order. Voluntarists grasp the truth that genuine and productive social order is possible only when each person is free to pursue his own goals in his own way, constrained by no political power. Coercive political power is the enemy of social order because it is unavoidably arbitrary—bestowing favors for reasons wholly unrelated to the values the recipients provide to their fellow human beings. And even if by some miracle the exercise of political power could be shorn of its arbitrariness, it can never escape being an exercise conducted in gross ignorance. It is a simpleton’s fantasy to imagine that all the immense and detailed knowledge necessary for the successful central direction of human affairs can ever be possessed by government.

Society emerges from the cooperation of hundreds of millions of people, each acting on the basis of his own unique knowledge of individual wants, talents, occupations, and circumstances. No bureaucrat can know enough about software design to outperform Bill Gates, or enough about retailing to successfully second-guess the folks at Wal-Mart, or enough about any of the millions of different industries to outdo people who are highly specialized in their various trades.

The coercivist-voluntarist vocabulary is superior to the left-right, or liberal-conservative, vocabulary at distinguishing liberty’s friends from its foes. Support for high taxes and intrusive government commercial regulation is a “liberal” trait. A supporter of high taxes and regulation is also, however, properly labeled a coercivist. But note: no less of a coercivist is the conservative who applauds government regulation of what adults voluntarily read, view, or ingest. Both parties believe that social order will deteriorate into chaos unless government coercion overrides the myriad private choices made by individuals.

Voluntarists are typically accused of endorsing complete freedom of each individual from all restraints. This accusation is nonsense. While they oppose heavy reliance upon coercively imposed restraints, sensible voluntarists do not oppose restraints per se. Voluntarists, in contrast to coercivists, recognize that superior restraints on individual behavior emerge decentrally and peaceably. Parents restrain their children. Neighbors use both formal and informal means to restrain each other from un-neighborly behaviors. The ability of buyers to choose where to spend their money restrains businesses from abusing customers.

A free society is chock-full of such decentrally and noncoercively imposed restraints. Indeed, it is the voluntary origins of such restraints that make them more trustworthy than coercively imposed restraints. A voluntary restraint grows decentrally from the give and take of everyday life and is sensitive to all the costs and benefits of both the restraint itself and of the restrained behavior. But a coercive restraint too often is the product not of that give and take of all affected parties but, instead, of political deals. And political deals are notoriously biased toward the wishes of the politically well-organized while ignoring the wishes of those unable to form effective political coalitions. What’s more, members of the political class often free themselves from the very restraints they foist upon others. Coercively imposed restraints are not social restraints at all; rather, they are arbitrary commands issued by the politically privileged.

The true voluntarist fears nothing as much as he fears coercive power—whether exercised by those on the “left” or the “right.”

Donald J. Boudreaux

President

The free man’s library is a descriptive and critical bibliography of works on the philosophy of individualism—“individualism” in a broad sense. The bibliography includes works which explain the workings and advantages of free trade, free enterprise, and free markets; which recognize the evils of excessive state power; and which champion the cause of individual freedom of worship, speech, and thought.

Such a compilation seemed to me to be increasingly urgent because so few writers and speakers on public questions today reveal any idea of the wealth, depth, and breadth of the literature of freedom. What threatens us today is not merely the outright totalitarian philosophies of fascism and communism, but the increasing drift of thought in the totalitarian direction. Many people today who complacently think of themselves as “middle-of-the-roaders” have no conception of the extent to which they have already taken over statist, socialist, and collectivist assumptions—assumptions which, if logically followed out, must inevitably carry us further and further down the totalitarian road.

One of the crowning ironies of the present era is that it is precisely the people who flatteringly refer to themselves as “liberals” who have forgotten or repudiated the essence of the true liberal tradition. The typical butts of their ridicule are such writers as Adam Smith, Bastiat, Cobden (“the Manchester School”), and Herbert Spencer. Whatever errors any of these writers may have been guilty of individually, they were among the chief architects of true liberalism. Yet our modern “progressives” now refer to this whole philosophy contemptuously as laissez faire.

Many of today’s writers who are most eloquent in their arguments for liberty in fact preach philosophies that would destroy it. It seems to be typical of the books of our intelligentsia to praise one kind of liberty incessantly while disparaging or ridiculing another kind. The liberty that they so rightly praise is the liberty of thought and expression. But the liberty that they so foolishly denounce is economic liberty.

Unfortunately the authors who have fallen into this practice include some of the finest minds of our generation. (I think particularly of Bertrand Russell and the late Morris Cohen.) Such writers seem to me to be at least in part reflecting an occupational bias. Being writers and thinkers, they are acutely aware of the importance of liberty of writing and thinking. But they seem to attach scant value to economic liberty because they think of it not as applying to themselves but to businessmen. Such a judgment may be uncharitable; but it is certainly fair to say that they misprize economic liberty because, in spite of their brilliance in some directions, they lack the knowledge or understanding to recognize that when economic liberties are abridged or destroyed, all other liberties are abridged or destroyed with them. “Power over a man’s subsistence,” as Alexander Hamilton reminded us, “is power over his will.” And if we wish a more modern authority, we can quote no less a one than Leon Trotsky, the colleague of Lenin, who in 1937, in a moment of candor, pointed out clearly that: “In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation: The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”

Liberty is a whole, and to deny economic liberty is finally to destroy all liberty. Socialism is irreconcilable with freedom. This is the lesson that most of our modern philosophers and littérateurs have yet to learn.

Historically, the liberals fought against governmental tyranny; against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech and action; against governmental restrictions on agriculture, manufacture, and trade; against constant detailed governmental regulation, interference, and harassment at a hundred points; against (to use the phrases of the Declaration of Independence) “a multitude of new offices” and “swarms of officers”; against concentration of governmental power, particularly in the person of one man; against government by whim and favoritism. Historic liberalism called, on the other hand, for the Rule of Law, and for equality before the law. The older conservatives opposed many or most of these liberal demands because they believed in existing governmental interferences and sweeping governmental powers; or because they wished to retain their own special privileges and prerogatives; or simply because they were temperamentally fearful of altering the status quo, whatever it happened to be.

Those who flatteringly call themselves “liberals” today, and to whom confused opponents allow or even assign the name, are for nearly everything that the old liberals opposed. Most self-styled present-day “liberals,” particularly in America, are urging the constant extension of governmental power, of governmental intervention, of governmental “planning.” They constantly press for a greater concentration of governmental power, whether in the central government at the expense of the States and localities or in the hands of a one-man executive at the expense of any check, limitation, or even investigation by a legislature. And they look with favor on an ever-growing bureaucracy and on the spread of bureaucratic discretion at the expense of a Rule of Law. Those who oppose this trend toward a new despotism, on the other hand, and plead for the preservation of the ancient freedoms of the individual, are today’s conservatives. The intelligent conservative, in brief, is today the true defender of liberty.

This conclusion should not seem too paradoxical. It was always possible to reconcile intelligent conservatism with real liberalism. There is no conflict between wishing to conserve and hold the precious gains that have been achieved in the past, which is the aim of the true conservative, and wishing to carry those achievements even further, which is the aim of the true liberal.

The privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus shall not be suspended . . .

The liberty of person guaranteed in the foregoing language of our federal Constitution and paraphrased in our state constitutions needs occasional dramatization lest we forget its significance.
The following experiences of a young refugee from communist tyranny serve as a reminder that freedom includes respect for the dignity of each individual, thus enabling even a minority of one to challenge the authority of any power which would constrain him without due process of law.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between traditional liberals and twentieth century liberals is their attitude toward man. The traditional liberal thinks in terms of man as an individual. The twentieth century liberal thinks of man as a member of a group. The traditional liberal agrees with John Stuart Mill that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, to interfere with the liberty of action of any of their members is self protection.”

The twentieth century liberal thinks that society should interfere with the liberty of the individual whenever it serves the interests of the groups to which the individuals belong. Thus the closed shop and the union shop deny employment to the individual who is not a union member or who refuses to join a union. This infringement upon the liberty of the individual workman is justified upon the grounds that it makes the union strong—that it benefits the group to which the individual workman belongs or which he should be forced to join. The same reasoning is used to justify infringements upon the liberty of individual farmers. For example, in 1955 Joseph Blattner, a poultry raiser of Norristown, Pennsylvania, was fined because he raised more wheat than the government decreed. Blattner raises his own wheat to feed his six thousand chickens and raises no wheat to sell. His freedom to raise wheat on his own land to feed his own chickens was denied on the theory that crop controls are good for farmers generally.

The twentieth century liberal is always eager to limit the liberty of the individual for the real or fancied benefit of the groups to which he belongs. The emphasis upon the importance of the group is strikingly illustrated in the trend of modern education. Our twentieth century liberal educators take the view that the subject matter taught in our schools is of minor importance—that the real purpose of education is to teach children to cooperate. In other words, the purpose of education is not learning, but is to teach children to become cooperative members of groups. The traditional liberal thinks in terms of man as an individual. The twentieth century liberal thinks of man as a member of a group.

The new liberals faced a dilemma. How could they justify the infringements upon individual liberty which they advocated and still call themselves liberals? How could they still call themselves liberals if liberalism was identified with individual freedom? The answer was to redefine freedom and make it mean its opposite. They found the answer they sought in the philosophy of Hegel and Marx. Hegel taught that when man follows his own base desires, he is not free. He taught that man is subordinate to a higher force or purpose, and that he becomes free only as he serves this higher purpose and makes his desires conform to it. Hegel conceived this higher purpose as the State and taught that man is only free as he serves the State. Karl Marx based his philosophy very largely on that of Hegel. Marxian communism teaches that man is enslaved by capitalism and that man will become free only when private capitalism is abolished. It teaches that the “legal liberty” of Western democracies is merely “formal liberty” without substance.

When Hegel’s view that man is only free when he serves the State was applied to Hitler’s Germany, twentieth century liberals indignantly rejected Hegel’s definition of freedom. But, they implicitly accept his definition when it is applied to the benevolent Welfare State. Furthermore, they accept without reservation the Marxian theory that “liberty under the law” is a hoax and a deception, that it is merely “formal liberty,” and that it lacks real substance. For example, the late Professor John Dewey of Columbia University, who was the leading philosopher of twentieth century liberalism, adopted the Marxian definition of liberty. He said:

The majority who call themselves liberals today are committed to the principle that organized society must use its powers to establish the conditions under which the mass of individuals can possess actual as distinct from merely legal liberty.

The key words of Dewey’s statement are “organized society must use its powers.” If it must use its powers, it must use them in the only way the State can act through compulsion. The State makes laws and enforces them. The penalties for disobedience are fines, imprisonment, and death. The soldier’s bayonet, the policeman’s club, the jailer’s keys, the hangman’s noose—these are the methods by which organized society uses its powers.

Dewey promulgates a charter for broad-scale government control of social and economic life backed by the full coercive powers of the State. That is diametrically opposed to the traditional liberalism of John Locke and John Stuart Mill.

In broad historic perspective, twentieth century liberalism is merely a part of what may properly be termed the Counter Revolution against liberalism. The Liberal Revolution covered about 300 years and represented the revolt of man against authority. The Counter Revolution of Reaction is a world-attempt to turn the clock back. Its purpose is to subordinate man to the State, to reassert authority, and to suppress liberty. Communism, fascism, British socialism, and our own social Welfare State are but different aspects of this Counter Revolution.

The principle of authority is as basic to the Welfare State as it is to the totalitarian regime of Soviet Russia and as it was to Hitler’s Germany. That is why the great threat to our liberties comes not from the communists, but from the liberals. The communists are few and have little influence the Welfare State liberals are many and dominate our society.

Nearly any “liberal” politician in the United States could run on this platform:

” . . . the development of rural electrification”; “financial and other support for agricultural cooperation and for all forms of collective production in the rural districts (cooperative societies, communes, etc.)”; “every encouragement to be given to consumers’ cooperatives”; “the centralization of banking; all nationalized big banks to be subordinated to the central State bank”; “reduction of the working day to seven hours”; “social insurance in all forms (sickness, old age, accident, unemployment, etc.) at State expense”; “comprehensive measures of hygiene; the organization of free medical service”; “the establishment of state organs on the management of industry with provision for the close participation of the trade unions in this work of management.”

The above quotation is not taken from either the Democratic or Republican platform. It was not published as the program of Americans for Democratic Action. It is taken from the Program of the Communist International adopted by the Sixth World Congress, September 1, 1928, at Moscow.

Some of us call ourselves “individualists,” but others point out that the opposition often uses that word to describe a heartless person who doesn’t care about the problems and aspirations of other people.

Some of us call ourselves “conservatives,” but that term describes many persons who base their approval of an institution more on its age than on its inherent worth.

Many of us call ourselves “liberals.” And it is true that the word “liberal” once described persons who respected the individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify themselves and their program of more government ownership of property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in the uncorrupted classical sense. At best, this is awkward and subject to misunderstanding.

Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word “libertarian.”

Webster’s New International Dictionary defines a libertarian as “One who holds to the doctrine of free will; also, one who upholds the principles of liberty, esp. individual liberty of thought and action.”

In popular terminology, a libertarian is the opposite of an authoritarian. Strictly speaking, a libertarian is one who rejects the idea of using violence or the threat of violence—legal or illegal—to impose his will or viewpoint upon any peaceful person. Generally speaking, a libertarian is one who wants to be governed far less than he is today.

A libertarian believes that the government should protect all persons equally against external and internal aggression, but should otherwise generally leave people alone to work out their own problems and aspirations.

While a libertarian expects the government to render equal protection to all persons against outright fraud and misrepresentation, he doesn’t expect the government to protect anyone from the consequences of his own free choices. A libertarian holds that persons who make wise choices are entitled to enjoy the fruits of their wisdom, and that persons who make unwise choices have no right to demand that the government reimburse them for their folly.

A libertarian expects his government to establish, support, and enforce the decisions of impartial courts of justice—courts which do not recognize or refer to a person’s race, religion, or economic status. If justice is to be rendered, the decisions of these courts must be as binding upon government officials and their actions as upon other persons and their actions.

A Libertarian respects the right of every person to use and enjoy his honestly acquired property—to trade it, to sell it, or even to give it away—for he knows that human liberty cannot long endure when that fundamental right is rejected or even seriously impaired.

A libertarian believes that the daily needs of the people can best be satisfied through the voluntary processes of a free and competitive market. And he holds the strong belief that free persons, using their own honestly acquired money, are in the best possible position to understand and aid their fellow men who are in need of help.

A Libertarian favors a strictly limited form of government with many checks and balances—and divisions of authority—to foil the abuses of the fearful power of government. And generally speaking, he is one who sees less, rather than more, need to govern the actions of others.

A libertarian has much faith in himself and other free persons to find maximum happiness and prosperity in a society wherein no person has the authority to force any other peaceful person to conform to his viewpoints or desires in any manner. His way of life is based on respect for himself and for all others.

A Libertarian doesn’t advocate violent rebellion against prevailing governments—except as a last resort before the concentration camps. But when a libertarian sees harm rather than good in certain acts of government, he is obligated to try his best to explain to others who advocate those measures why such compulsory means cannot bring the ends which even they desire.

The libertarian’s goal is friendship and peace with his neighbors at home and abroad. []

Charles T. Sprading

Liberty for the few is not liberty. Liberty for me and slavery for you means slavery for both.

Samuel M. Jones

We are told what fine things would happen if every one of us would go and do something for the welfare of somebody else; but why not contemplate also the immense gain which would ensue if everybody would do something for himself?

Wherever collective standards, codes, ideals, and motives take the place of individual responsibility, we know from ample experience that the spontaneity and independent responsibility which are essential to moral vigor are sure to be lost.

William Graham Sumner