Luke Morris
August 24, 2004
What is Liberalism?
Liberalism is a political philosophy, a set of beliefs about the nature of government and social organization. In its original and true form, liberalism upholds the individual’s right to his own life, liberty, and property, and his right to be free from physical coercion in his personal and economic activities. These rights are subsumed under the principle of non-initiation of force. This principle states that one may do whatever he wishes with his own person and property, as long as he doesn’t violate another’s right to do the same – that is, as long as he does not initiate force against anyone else.
This principle sets strict limits on the powers of the state. The state is the ultimate coercive body in a given geographic area – it monopolizes the use of retaliatory force. Through the law of the land, the state acts to protect the citizens within its borders from the initiation of force. In the words of 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat, the law is “the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense” (The Law 2). The government’s proper function, then, is to protect its citizens from force outside the country, via the military; to protect them from force within, via the police; and to protect their right of contract from fraud, via a system of courts and objective law. As political-economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill says, “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection” (On Liberty 9). When the state steps beyond these bounds, it necessarily violates the rights of individuals. In a democratic-based society, this involves the majority using the machinery of the state to impose its will upon any minority from which it has something to gain.
In the long run, though, nobody gains through violating the rights of others. When the government imposes income taxes, welfare programs, corporate bail-outs, tariffs, antitrust regulations, minimum wages, or rent controls, some people benefit at the expense of others, in the short term. However, the unseen effects of such policies are destructive to everyone – redistributing wealth and sending false market signals diminishes productivity and decreases the total wealth in society. Progress is stilted, and we all become poorer, or at least less rich than we might have been. As economist Gene Callahan writes, “Private enterprise is fully capable of awful screwups. But both theory and practice indicate that its screwups are less pervasive and more easily corrected than those of government enterprises, including regulatory ones” (Economics for Real People 252).
Economic and utilitarian considerations do not provide the only reason to support liberty, however; we find the real foundation for a liberal society in a philosophy of natural law, which bases man’s rights on his nature as a rational being. The English philosopher John Locke states that “The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will” (Second Treatise of Government 35). Thus man, by his identity as man (his rational nature), possesses the natural right to do as he sees fit, so long as he does not trample on another’s right to do the same. What makes the classical liberal, laissez-faire capitalist system a good political ideal is not only that it allows for economic efficiency and the greatest total social happiness, but that it is necessary to the nature of man as both an individual and a social being. As philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand puts it, “The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 20).
Liberalism, then, is not what “liberals” and “conservatives” today might consider it to be. A truly liberal political-economic system does not involve regulations, subsidies, and redistribution programs; it is not a mixed-economy or “socialist democracy” in which the government controls business and personal affairs for the sake of the “common good.” On the contrary, liberalism holds that only through voluntary association and trade with others can each person create the best life for himself. The essence of it is that every person is an individual, endowed with the power to reason and create. This human nature, the actualization of human potential, demands that a man be free from the threat of physical force from others; thus man, when he associates with other men, possesses the right to have his life, liberty, and property respected. Government’s sole purpose is to protect that right. Our main purpose, as liberals, is to see that the government does just that – and only that. Then we will be free to live our lives, keep our stuff, and find our own roads to happiness.
Reading Suggestions
The more we learn about human nature and the benefits of free human action, the better we are able to teach the values of classical liberalism, the greater the change we can cause in the culture and, eventually, the political structure of our world. For anyone who wants to begin or continue his study in the ideas of liberty, I suggest the following:
First, for those who are not too familiar with liberalism, or who just need a fresh burst of inspiration, I highly recommend:
Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Some good introductions to free-market economics are:
Gene Callahan, Economics for Real People
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist
For those interested in the basic philosophies of liberalism, one needs first to understand that not all such philosophies are consistent and rational. Nevertheless, these philosophers all present ideas in support of individual liberty, from different points of view:
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
If you’d like to delve deeper into the philosophies of freedom, I recommend:
David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary
David Kelley, A Life of One’s Own
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
And the real, hard-core economists must read:
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Websites devoted to classical liberalism abound in cyberspace. The first among these I would recommend are (of course) the Hillsdale Liberals home page and the Hillsdale Liberals blog. Other good sites are:
The Foundation for Economic Education
The Institute for Humane Studies
The Ludwig von Mises Institute