The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism

On election day, 1976, the Libertarian party presidential ticket of Roger L. MacBride for President and David P. Bergland for Vice President amassed 174,000 votes in thirty-two states throughout the country. The sober Congressional Quarterly was moved to classify the fledgling Libertarian party as the third major political party in America. The remarkable growth rate of this new party may be seen in the fact that it only began in 1971 with a handful of members gathered in a Colorado living room. The following year it fielded a presidential ticket which managed to get on the ballot in two states. And now it is America's third major party.

Even more remarkably, the Libertarian party achieved this growth while consistently adhering to a new ideological creed — "libertarianism" — thus bringing to the American political scene for the first time in a century a party interested in principle rather than in merely gaining jobs and money at the public trough. We have been told countless times by pundits and political scientists that the genius of America and of our party system is its lack of ideology and its "pragmatism" (a kind word for focusing solely on grabbing money and jobs from the hapless taxpayers). How, then, explain the amazing growth of a new party which is frankly and eagerly devoted to ideology?

One explanation is that Americans were not always pragmatic and nonideological. On the contrary, historians now realize that the American Revolution itself was not only ideological but also the result of devotion to the creed and the institutions of libertarianism. The American revolutionaries were steeped in the creed of libertarianism, an ideology which led them to resist with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor the invasions of their rights and liberties committed by the imperial British government. Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral liberty, political independence, and the freedom to trade and produce as all part of one unblemished system, what Adam Smith was to call, in the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written, the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

The libertarian creed emerged from the "classical liberal" movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Western world, specifically, from the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. This radical libertarian movement, even though only partially successful in its birthplace, Great Britain, was still able to usher in the Industrial Revolution there by freeing industry and production from the strangling restrictions of State control and urban government-supported guilds. For the classical liberal movement was, throughout the Western world, a mighty libertarian "revolution" against what we might call the Old Order — the ancien régime which had dominated its subjects for centuries. This regime had, in the early modern period beginning in the sixteenth century, imposed an absolute central State and a king ruling by divine right on top of an older, restrictive web of feudal land monopolies and urban guild controls and restrictions. The result was a Europe stagnating under a crippling web of controls, taxes, and monopoly privileges to produce and sell conferred by central (and local) governments upon their favorite producers. This alliance of the new bureaucratic, war-making central State with privileged merchants — an alliance to be called "mercantilism" by later historians — and with a class of ruling feudal landlords constituted the Old Order against which the new movement of classical liberals and radicals arose and rebelled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The object of the classical liberals was to bring about individual liberty in all of its interrelated aspects. In the economy, taxes were to be drastically reduced, controls and regulations eliminated, and human energy, enterprise, and markets set free to create and produce in exchanges that would benefit everyone and the mass of consumers. Entrepreneurs were to be free at last to compete, to develop, to create. The shackles of control were to be lifted from land, labor, and capital alike. Personal freedom and civil liberty were to be guaranteed against the depredations and tyranny of the king or his minions. Religion, the source of bloody wars for centuries when sects were battling for control of the State, was to be set free from State imposition or interference, so that all religions — or nonreligions — could coexist in peace. Peace, too, was the foreign policy credo of the new classical liberals; the age-old regime of imperial and State aggrandizement for power and pelf was to be replaced by a foreign policy of peace and free trade with all nations. And since war was seen as engendered by standing armies and navies, by military power always seeking expansion, these military establishments were to be replaced by voluntary local militia, by citizen-civilians who would only wish to fight in defense of their own particular homes and neighborhoods.

Thus, the well-known theme of "separation of Church and State" was but one of many interrelated motifs that could be summed up as "separation of the economy from the State," "separation of speech and press from the State," "separation of land from the State," "separation of war and military affairs from the State," indeed, the separation of the State from virtually everything.

The State, in short, was to be kept extremely small, with a very low, nearly negligible budget. The classical liberals never developed a theory of taxation, but every increase in a tax and every new kind of tax was fought bitterly — in America twice becoming the spark that led or almost led to the Revolution (the stamp tax, the tea tax).

"Being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other."

The earliest theoreticians of libertarian classical liberalism were the Levelers during the English Revolution and the philosopher John Locke in the late seventeenth century, followed by the "True Whig" or radical libertarian opposition to the "Whig Settlement" — the regime of eighteenth-century Britain. John Locke set forth the natural rights of each individual to his person and property; the purpose of government was strictly limited to defending such rights. In the words of the Lockean-inspired Declaration of Independence, "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…."

While Locke was widely read in the American colonies, his abstract philosophy was scarcely calculated to rouse men to revolution. This task was accomplished by radical Lockeans in the eighteenth century, who wrote in a more popular, hard-hitting, and impassioned manner and applied the basic philosophy to the concrete problems of the government — and especially the British government — of the day. The most important writing in this vein was "Cato's Letters," a series of newspaper articles published in the early 1720s in London by True Whigs John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. While Locke had written of the revolutionary pressure which could properly be exerted when government became destructive of liberty, Trenchard and Gordon pointed out that government always tended toward such destruction of individual rights. According to "Cato's Letters," human history is a record of irrepressible conflict between Power and Liberty, with Power (government) always standing ready to increase its scope by invading people's rights and encroaching upon their liberties. Therefore, Cato declared, Power must be kept small and faced with eternal vigilance and hostility on the part of the public to make sure that it always stays within its narrow bounds:

We know, by infinite Examples and Experience, that Men possessed of Power, rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it; and scarce ever any Man upon Earth went out of it as long as he could carry every thing his own Way in it…. This seems certain, That the Good of the World, or of their People, was not one of their Motives either for continuing in Power, or for quitting it.

It is the Nature of Power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary Power, granted at particular Times, and upon particular Occasions, into an ordinary Power, to be used at all Times, and when there is no Occasion, nor does it ever part willingly with any Advantage….

Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a Success too evident; and the Balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole Earth, and striking at Mankind Root and Branch, makes the World a Slaughterhouse; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.

Such warnings were eagerly imbibed by the American colonists, who reprinted "Cato's Letters" many times throughout the colonies and down to the time of the Revolution. Such a deep-seated attitude led to what the historian Bernard Bailyn has aptly called the "transforming radical libertarianism" of the American Revolution.

For the revolution was not only the first successful modern attempt to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism — at that time, of the world's mightiest power. More important, for the first time in history, Americans hedged in their new governments with numerous limits and restrictions embodied in constitutions and particularly in bills of rights. Church and State were rigorously separated throughout the new states, and religious freedom enshrined. Remnants of feudalism were eliminated throughout the states by the abolition of the feudal privileges of entail and primogeniture. (In the former, a dead ancestor is able to entail landed estates in his family forever, preventing his heirs from selling any part of the land; in the latter, the government requires sole inheritance of property by the oldest son.)

The new federal government formed by the Articles of Confederation was not permitted to levy any taxes upon the public; and any fundamental extension of its powers required unanimous consent by every state government. Above all, the military and war-making power of the national government was hedged in by restraint and suspicion; for the eighteenth-century libertarians understood that war, standing armies, and militarism had long been the main method for aggrandizing State power.

The modernization of American Politics and government during and after the Revolution took the form of a sudden, radical realization of the program that had first been fully set forth by the opposition intelligentsia … in the reign of George the First. Where the English opposition, forcing its way against a complacent social and political order, had only striven and dreamed, Americans driven by the same aspirations but living in a society in many ways modern, and now released politically, could suddenly act. Where the English opposition had vainly agitated for partial reforms … American leaders moved swiftly and with little social disruption to implement systematically the outermost possibilities of the whole range of radically liberation ideas.

In the process they … infused into American political culture … the major themes of eighteenth-century radical libertarianism brought to realization here. The first is the belief that power is evil, a necessity perhaps but an evil necessity; that it is infinitely corrupting; and that it must be controlled, limited, restricted in every way compatible with a minimum of civil order. Written constitutions; the separation of powers; bills of rights; limitations on executives, on legislatures, and courts; restrictions on the right to coerce and wage war — all express the profound distrust of power that lies at the ideological heart of the American Revolution and that has remained with us as a permanent legacy ever after.

Thus, while classical liberal thought began in England, it was to reach its most consistent and radical development — and its greatest living embodiment — in America. For the American colonies were free of the feudal land monopoly and aristocratic ruling caste that was entrenched in Europe; in America, the rulers were British colonial officials and a handful of privileged merchants, who were relatively easy to sweep aside when the Revolution came and the British government was overthrown. Classical liberalism, therefore, had more popular support, and met far less entrenched institutional resistance, in the American colonies than it found at home. Furthermore, being geographically isolated, the American rebels did not have to worry about the invading armies of neighboring, counterrevolutionary governments, as, for example, was the case in France.

Thus, America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power. The revolution resulted in governments unprecedented in restrictions placed on their power. But while there was very little institutional resistance in America to the onrush of liberalism, there did appear, from the very beginning, powerful elite forces, especially among the large merchants and planters, who wished to retain the restrictive British "mercantilist" system of high taxes, controls, and monopoly privileges conferred by the government. These groups wished for a strong central and even imperial government; in short, they wanted the British system without Great Britain. These conservative and reactionary forces first appeared during the Revolution, and later formed the Federalist party and the Federalist administration in the 1790s.

During the nineteenth century, however, the libertarian impetus continued. The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian movements, the Democratic-Republican and then the Democratic parties, explicitly strived for the virtual elimination of government from American life. It was to be a government without a standing army or navy; a government without debt and with no direct federal or excise taxes and virtually no import tariffs — that is, with negligible levels of taxation and expenditure; a government that does not engage in public works or internal improvements; a government that does not control or regulate; a government that leaves money and banking free, hard, and uninflated; in short, in the words of H. L. Mencken's ideal, "a government that barely escapes being no government at all."

"America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power."

The Jeffersonian drive toward virtually no government foundered after Jefferson took office, first, with concessions to the Federalists (possibly the result of a deal for Federalist votes to break a tie in the electoral college), and then with the unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory. But most particularly it foundered with the imperialist drive toward war with Britain in Jefferson's second term, a drive which led to war and to a one-party system which established virtually the entire statist Federalist program: high military expenditures, a central bank, a protective tariff, direct federal taxes, public works. Horrified at the results, a retired Jefferson brooded at Monticello, and inspired young visiting politicians Martin Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton to found a new party — the Democratic party — to take back America from the new Federalism, and to recapture the spirit of the old Jeffersonian program. When the two young leaders latched onto Andrew Jackson as their savior, the new Democratic party was born.

The Jacksonian libertarians had a plan: it was to be eight years of Andrew Jackson as president, to be followed by eight years of Van Buren, then eight years of Benton. After twenty-four years of a triumphant Jacksonian Democracy, the Menckenian virtually no-government ideal was to have been achieved. It was by no means an impossible dream, since it was clear that the Democratic party had quickly become the normal majority party in the country. The mass of the people were enlisted in the libertarian cause. Jackson had his eight years, which destroyed the central bank and retired the public debt, and Van Buren had four, which separated the federal government from the banking system. But the 1840 election was an anomaly, as Van Buren was defeated by an unprecedentedly demagogic campaign engineered by the first great modern campaign chairman, Thurlow Weed, who pioneered in all the campaign frills — catchy slogans, buttons, songs, parades, etc. — with which we are now familiar. Weed's tactics put in office the egregious and unknown Whig, General William Henry Harrison, but this was clearly a fluke; in 1844, the Democrats would be prepared to counter with the same campaign tactics, and they were clearly slated to recapture the presidency that year. Van Buren, of course, was supposed to resume the triumphal Jacksonian march. But then a fateful event occurred: the Democratic party was sundered on the critical issue of slavery, or rather the expansion of slavery into a new territory. Van Buren's easy renomination foundered on a split within the ranks of the Democracy over the admission to the Union of the republic of Texas as a slave state; Van Buren was opposed, Jackson in favor, and this split symbolized the wider sectional rift within the Democratic party. Slavery, the grave antilibertarian flaw in the libertarianism of the Democratic program, had arisen to wreck the party and its libertarianism completely.

The Civil War, in addition to its unprecedented bloodshed and devastation, was used by the triumphal and virtually one-party Republican regime to drive through its statist, formerly Whig, program: national governmental power, protective tariff, subsidies to big business, inflationary paper money, resumed control of the federal government over banking, large-scale internal improvements, high excise taxes, and, during the war, conscription and an income tax. Furthermore, the states came to lose their previous right of secession and other states' powers as opposed to federal governmental powers. The Democratic party resumed its libertarian ways after the war, but it now had to face a far longer and more difficult road to arrive at liberty than it had before.

We have seen how America came to have the deepest libertarian tradition, a tradition that still remains in much of our political rhetoric, and is still reflected in a feisty and individualistic attitude toward government by much of the American people. There is far more fertile soil in this country than in any other for a resurgence of libertarianism.

We can now see that the rapid growth of the libertarian movement and the Libertarian party in the 1970s is firmly rooted in what Bernard Bailyn called this powerful "permanent legacy" of the American Revolution. But if this legacy is so vital to the American tradition, what went wrong? Why the need now for a new libertarian movement to arise to reclaim the American dream?

To begin to answer this question, we must first remember that classical liberalism constituted a profound threat to the political and economic interests — the ruling classes — who benefited from the Old Order: the kings, the nobles and landed aristocrats, the privileged merchants, the military machines, the State bureaucracies. Despite three major violent revolutions precipitated by the liberals — the English of the seventeenth century and the American and French of the eighteenth — victories in Europe were only partial. Resistance was stiff and managed to successfully maintain landed monopolies, religious establishments, and warlike foreign and military policies, and for a time to keep the suffrage restricted to the wealthy elite. The liberals had to concentrate on widening the suffrage, because it was clear to both sides that the objective economic and political interests of the mass of the public lay in individual liberty. It is interesting to note that, by the early nineteenth century, the laissez-faire forces were known as "liberals" and "radicals" (for the purer and more consistent among them), and the opposition that wished to preserve or go back to the Old Order were broadly known as "conservatives."

Indeed, conservatism began, in the early nineteenth century, as a conscious attempt to undo and destroy the hated work of the new classical liberal spirit — of the American, French, and Industrial revolutions. Led by two reactionary French thinkers, de Bonald and de Maistre, conservatism yearned to replace equal rights and equality before the law by the structured and hierarchical rule of privileged elites; individual liberty and minimal government by absolute rule and Big Government; religious freedom by the theocratic rule of a State church; peace and free trade by militarism, mercantilist restrictions, and war for the advantage of the nation-state; and industry and manufacturing by the old feudal and agrarian order. And they wanted to replace the new world of mass consumption and rising standards of living for all by the Old Order of bare subsistence for the masses and luxury consumption for the ruling elite.

"Slavery, the grave antilibertarian flaw in the libertarianism of the Democratic program, had arisen to wreck the party and its libertarianism completely."

By the middle of and certainly by the end of the nineteenth century, conservatives began to realize that their cause was inevitably doomed if they persisted in clinging to the call for outright repeal of the Industrial Revolution and of its enormous rise in the living standards of the mass of the public, and also if they persisted in opposing the widening of the suffrage, thereby frankly setting themselves in opposition to the interests of that public. Hence, the "right wing" (a label based on an accident of geography by which the spokesmen for the Old Order sat on the right of the assembly hall during the French Revolution) decided to shift their gears and to update their statist creed by jettisoning outright opposition to industrialism and democratic suffrage. For the old conservatism's frank hatred and contempt for the mass of the public, the new conservatives substituted duplicity and demagogy. The new conservatives wooed the masses with the following line: "We, too, favor industrialism and a higher standard of living. But, to accomplish such ends, we must regulate industry for the public good; we must substitute organized cooperation for the dog-eat-dog of the free and competitive marketplace; and, above all, we must substitute for the nation-destroying liberal tenets of peace and free trade the nation-glorifying measures of war, protectionism, empire, and military prowess." For all of these changes, of course, Big Government rather than minimal government was required.

And so, in the late nineteenth century, statism and Big Government returned, but this time displaying a proindustrial and pro-general-welfare face. The Old Order returned, but this time the beneficiaries were shuffled a bit; they were not so much the nobility, the feudal landlords, the army, the bureaucracy, and privileged merchants as they were the army, the bureaucracy, the weakened feudal landlords, and especially the privileged manufacturers. Led by Bismarck in Prussia, the New Right fashioned a right-wing collectivism based on war, militarism, protectionism, and the compulsory cartelization of business and industry — a giant network of controls, regulations, subsidies, and privileges which forged a great partnership of Big Government with certain favored elements in big business and industry.

Something had to be done, too, about the new phenomenon of a massive number of industrial wage workers — the "proletariat." During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, indeed until the late nineteenth century, the mass of workers favored laissez-faire and the free competitive market as best for their wages and working conditions as workers, and for a cheap and widening range of consumer goods as consumers. Even the early trade unions, e.g., in Great Britain, were staunch believers in laissez-faire. New conservatives, spearheaded by Bismarck in Germany and Disraeli in Britain, weakened the libertarian will of the workers by shedding crocodile tears about the condition of the industrial labor force, and cartelizing and regulating industry, not accidentally hobbling efficient competition. Finally, in the early twentieth century, the new conservative "corporate state" — then and now the dominant political system in the Western world — incorporated "responsible" and corporatist trade unions as junior partners to Big Government and favored big businesses in the new statist and corporatist decision-making system.

To establish this new system, to create a New Order which was a modernized, dressed-up version of the ancien régime before the American and French revolutions, the new ruling elites had to perform a gigantic con job on the deluded public, a con job that continues to this day. Whereas the existence of every government from absolute monarchy to military dictatorship rests on the consent of the majority of the public, a democratic government must engineer such consent on a more immediate, day-by-day basis. And to do so, the new conservative ruling elites had to gull the public in many crucial and fundamental ways. For the masses now had to be convinced that tyranny was better than liberty, that a cartelized and privileged industrial feudalism was better for the consumers than a freely competitive market, that a cartelized monopoly was to be imposed in the name of antimonopoly, and that war and military aggrandizement for the benefit of the ruling elites was really in the interests of the conscripted, taxed, and often slaughtered public. How was this to be done?

"Classical liberalism constituted a profound threat to the political and economic interests — the ruling classes…" In all societies, public opinion is determined by the intellectual classes, the opinion moulders of society. For most people neither originate nor disseminate ideas and concepts; on the contrary, they tend to adopt those ideas promulgated by the professional intellectual classes, the professional dealers in ideas. Now, throughout history, as we shall see further below, despots and ruling elites of States have had far more need of the services of intellectuals than have peaceful citizens in a free society. For States have always needed opinion-moulding intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable; into believing that the "emperor has clothes." Until the modern world, such intellectuals were inevitably churchmen (or witch doctors), the guardians of religion. It was a cozy alliance, this age-old partnership between Church and State; the Church informed its deluded charges that the king ruled by divine command and therefore must be obeyed; in return, the king funneled numerous tax revenues into the coffers of the Church. Hence, the great importance for the libertarian classical liberals of their success at separating Church and State. The new liberal world was a world in which intellectuals could be secular — could make a living on their own, in the market, apart from State subvention.

To establish their new statist order, their neomercantilist corporate State, the new conservatives therefore had to forge a new alliance between intellectual and State. In an increasingly secular age, this meant with secular intellectuals rather than with divines: specifically, with the new breed of professors, Ph.D.'s, historians, teachers, and technocratic economists, social workers, sociologists, physicians, and engineers. This reforged alliance came in two parts. In the early nineteenth century, the conservatives, conceding reason to their liberal enemies, relied heavily on the alleged virtues of irrationality, romanticism, tradition, theocracy. By stressing the virtue of tradition and of irrational symbols, the conservatives could gull the public into continuing privileged hierarchical rule, and to continue to worship the nation-state and its war-making machine. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the new conservatism adopted the trappings of reason and of "science." Now it was science that allegedly required rule of the economy and of society by technocratic "experts." In exchange for spreading this message to the public, the new breed of intellectuals was rewarded with jobs and prestige as apologists for the New Order and as planners and regulators of the newly cartelized economy and society.

To insure the dominance of the new statism over public opinion, to insure that the public's consent would be engineered, the governments of the Western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved to seize control over education, over the minds of men: over the universities, and over general education through compulsory school attendance laws and a network of public schools. The public schools were consciously used to inculcate obedience to the State as well as other civic virtues among their young charges. Furthermore, this statizing of education insured that one of the biggest vested interests in expanding statism would be the nation's teachers and professional educationists.

One of the ways that the new statist intellectuals did their work was to change the meaning of old labels, and therefore to manipulate in the minds of the public the emotional connotations attached to such labels. For example, the laissez-faire libertarians had long been known as "liberals," and the purest and most militant of them as "radicals"; they had also been known as "progressives" because they were the ones in tune with industrial progress, the spread of liberty, and the rise in living standards of consumers. The new breed of statist academics and intellectuals appropriated to themselves the words "liberal" and "progressive," and successfully managed to tar their laissez-faire opponents with the charge of being old-fashioned, "Neanderthal," and "reactionary." Even the name "conservative" was pinned on the classical liberals. And, as we have seen, the new statists were able to appropriate the concept of "reason" as well.

"For the old conservatism's frank hatred and contempt for the mass of the public, the new conservatives substituted duplicity and demagogy." If the laissez-faire liberals were confused by the new recrudescence of statism and mercantilism as "progressive" corporate statism, another reason for the decay of classical liberalism by the end of the nineteenth century was the growth of a peculiar new movement: socialism. Socialism began in the 1830s and expanded greatly after the 1880s. The peculiar thing about socialism was that it was a confused, hybrid movement, influenced by both the two great preexisting polar ideologies, liberalism and conservatism. From the classical liberals the socialists took a frank acceptance of industrialism and the Industrial Revolution, an early glorification of "science" and "reason," and at least a rhetorical devotion to such classical liberal ideals as peace, individual freedom, and a rising standard of living. Indeed, the socialists, long before the much later corporatists, pioneered in a co-opting of science, reason, and industrialism. And the socialists not only adopted the classical liberal adherence to democracy, but topped it by calling for an "expanded democracy," in which "the people" would run the economy — and each other.

On the other hand, from the conservatives the socialists took a devotion to coercion and the statist means for trying to achieve these liberal goals. Industrial harmony and growth were to be achieved by aggrandizing the State into an all-powerful institution, ruling the economy and the society in the name of "science." A vanguard of technocrats was to assume all-powerful rule over everyone's person and property in the name of the "people" and of "democracy." Not content with the liberal achievement of reason and freedom for scientific research, the socialist State would install rule by the scientists of everyone else; not content with liberals setting the workers free to achieve undreamt-of prosperity, the socialist State would install rule by the workers of everyone else — or rather, rule by politicians, bureaucrats, and technocrats in their name. Not content with the liberal creed of equality of rights, of equality before the law, the socialist State would trample on such equality on behalf of the monstrous and impossible goal of equality or uniformity of results — or rather, would erect a new privileged elite, a new class, in the name of bringing about such an impossible equality.

Socialism was a confused and hybrid movement because it tried to achieve the liberal goals of freedom, peace, and industrial harmony and growth — goals which can only be achieved through liberty and the separation of government from virtually everything — by imposing the old conservative means of statism, collectivism, and hierarchical privilege. It was a movement which could only fail, which indeed did fail miserably in those numerous countries where it attained power in the twentieth century, by bringing to the masses only unprecedented despotism, starvation, and grinding impoverishment.

But the worst thing about the rise of the socialist movement was that it was able to outflank the classical liberals "on the Left": that is, as the party of hope, of radicalism, of revolution in the Western World. For, just as the defenders of the ancien régime took their place on the right side of the hall during the French Revolution, so the liberals and radicals sat on the left; from then on until the rise of socialism, the libertarian classical liberals were "the Left," even the "extreme Left," on the ideological spectrum. As late as 1848, such militant laissez-faire French liberals as Frederic Bastiat sat on the left in the national assembly. The classical liberals had begun as the radical, revolutionary party in the West, as the party of hope and of change on behalf of liberty, peace, and progress. To allow themselves to be outflanked, to allow the socialists to pose as the "party of the Left," was a bad strategic error, allowing the liberals to be put falsely into a confused middle-of-the-road position with socialism and conservatism as the polar opposites. Since libertarianism is nothing if not a party of change and of progress toward liberty, abandonment of that role meant the abandonment of much of their reason for existence — either in reality or in the minds of the public.

But none of this could have happened if the classical liberals had not allowed themselves to decay from within. They could have pointed out — as some of them indeed did — that socialism was a confused, self-contradictory, quasi-conservative movement, absolute monarchy and feudalism with a modern face, and that they themselves were still the only true radicals, undaunted people who insisted on nothing less than complete victory for the libertarian ideal.

But after achieving impressive partial victories against statism, the classical liberals began to lose their radicalism, their dogged insistence on carrying the battle against conservative statism to the point of final victory. Instead of using partial victories as a stepping-stone for evermore pressure, the classical liberals began to lose their fervor for change and for purity of principle. They began to rest content with trying to safeguard their existing victories, and thus turned themselves from a radical into a conservative movement — "conservative" in the sense of being content to preserve the status quo. In short, the liberals left the field wide open for socialism to become the party of hope and of radicalism, and even for the later corporatists to pose as "liberals" and "progressives" as against the "extreme right wing" and "conservative" libertarian classical liberals, since the latter allowed themselves to be boxed into a position of hoping for nothing more than stasis, than absence of change. Such a strategy is foolish and untenable in a changing world.

But the degeneration of liberalism was not merely one of stance and strategy, but one of principle as well. For the liberals became content to leave the war-making power in the hands of the State, to leave the education power in its hands, to leave the power over money and banking, and over roads, in the hands of the State — in short, to concede to State dominion over all the crucial levers of power in society. In contrast to the eighteenth-century liberals' total hostility to the executive and to bureaucracy, the nineteenth-century liberals tolerated and even welcomed the buildup of executive power and of an entrenched oligarchic civil service bureaucracy.

Moreover, principle and strategy merged in the decay of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century liberal devotion to "abolitionism" — to the view that, whether the institution be slavery or any other aspect of statism, it should be abolished as quickly as possible, since the immediate abolition of statism, while unlikely in practice, was to be sought after as the only possible moral position. For to prefer a gradual whittling away to immediate abolition of an evil and coercive institution is to ratify and sanction such evil, and therefore to violate libertarian principles. As the great abolitionist of slavery and libertarian William Lloyd Garrison explained: "Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend."

Socialism was a confused and hybrid movement because it tried to achieve liberal goals by imposing the old conservative means of statism, collectivism, and hierarchical privilege. There were two critically important changes in the philosophy and ideology of classical liberalism which both exemplified and contributed to its decay as a vital, progressive, and radical force in the Western world. The first, and most important, occurring in the early to mid-nineteenth century, was the abandonment of the philosophy of natural rights, and its replacement by technocratic utilitarianism. Instead of liberty grounded on the imperative morality of each individual's right to person and property, that is, instead of liberty being sought primarily on the basis of right and justice, utilitarianism preferred liberty as generally the best way to achieve a vaguely defined general welfare or common good. There were two grave consequences of this shift from natural rights to utilitarianism. First, the purity of the goal, the consistency of the principle, was inevitably shattered. For whereas the natural-rights libertarian seeking morality and justice cleaves militantly to pure principle, the utilitarian only values liberty as an ad hoc expedient. And since expediency can and does shift with the wind, it will become easy for the utilitarian in his cool calculus of cost and benefit to plump for statism in ad hoc case after case, and thus to give principle away. Indeed, this is precisely what happened to the Benthamite utilitarians in England: beginning with ad hoc libertarianism and laissez-faire, they found it ever easier to slide further and further into statism. An example was the drive for an "efficient" and therefore strong civil service and executive power, an efficiency that took precedence, indeed replaced, any concept of justice or right.

Second, and equally important, it is rare indeed ever to find a utilitarian who is also radical, who burns for immediate abolition of evil and coercion. Utilitarians, with their devotion to expediency, almost inevitably oppose any sort of upsetting or radical change. There have been no utilitarian revolutionaries. Hence, utilitarians are never immediate abolitionists. The abolitionist is such because he wishes to eliminate wrong and injustice as rapidly as possible. In choosing this goal, there is no room for cool, ad hoc weighing of cost and benefit. Hence, the classical liberal utilitarians abandoned radicalism and became mere gradualist reformers. But in becoming reformers, they also put themselves inevitably into the position of advisers and efficiency experts to the State. In other words, they inevitably came to abandon libertarian principle as well as a principled libertarian strategy. The utilitarians wound up as apologists for the existing order, for the status quo, and hence were all too open to the charge by socialists and progressive corporatists that they were mere narrow-minded and conservative opponents of any and all change. Thus, starting as radicals and revolutionaries, as the polar opposites of conservatives, the classical liberals wound up as the image of the thing they had fought.

This utilitarian crippling of libertarianism is still with us. Thus, in the early days of economic thought, utilitarianism captured free-market economics with the influence of Bentham and Ricardo, and this influence is today fully as strong as ever. Current free-market economics is all too rife with appeals to gradualism; with scorn for ethics, justice, and consistent principle; and with a willingness to abandon free-market principles at the drop of a cost-benefit hat. Hence, current free-market economics is generally envisioned by intellectuals as merely apologetics for a slightly modified status quo, and all too often such charges are correct.

A second, reinforcing change in the ideology of classical liberals came during the late nineteenth century, when, at least for a few decades, they adopted the doctrines of social evolutionism, often called "social Darwinism." Generally, statist historians have smeared such social Darwinist laissez-faire liberals as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner as cruel champions of the extermination, or at least of the disappearance, of the socially "unfit." Much of this was simply the dressing up of sound economic and sociological free-market doctrine in the then-fashionable trappings of evolutionism. But the really important and crippling aspect of their social Darwinism was the illegitimate carrying-over to the social sphere of the view that species (or later, genes) change very, very slowly, after millennia of time. The social Darwinist liberal came, then, to abandon the very idea of revolution or radical change in favor of sitting back and waiting for the inevitable tiny evolutionary changes over eons of time. In short, ignoring the fact that liberalism had had to break through the power of ruling elites by a series of radical changes and revolutions, the social Darwinists became conservatives preaching against any radical measures and in favor of only the most minutely gradual of changes.

In fact, the great libertarian Spencer himself is a fascinating illustration of just such a change in classical liberalism (and his case is paralleled in America by William Graham Sumner). In a sense, Herbert Spencer embodies within himself much of the decline of liberalism in the nineteenth century. For Spencer began as a magnificently radical liberal, as virtually a pure libertarian. But, as the virus of sociology and social Darwinism took over in his soul, Spencer abandoned libertarianism as a dynamic, radical historical movement, although without abandoning it in pure theory. While looking forward to an eventual victory of pure liberty, of "contract" as against "status," of industry as against militarism, Spencer began to see that victory as inevitable, but only after millennia of gradual evolution. Hence, Spencer abandoned liberalism as a fighting, radical creed and confined his liberalism in practice to a weary, conservative, rearguard action against the growing collectivism and statism of his day.

"This utilitarian crippling of libertarianism is still with us." But if utilitarianism, bolstered by social Darwinism, was the main agent of philosophical and ideological decay in the liberal movement, the single most important, and even cataclysmic, reason for its demise was its abandonment of formerly stringent principles against war, empire, and militarism. In country after country, it was the siren song of nation-state and empire that destroyed classical liberalism. In England, the liberals, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, abandoned the antiwar, anti-imperialist "Little Englandism" of Cobden, Bright, and the Manchester School. Instead, they adopted the obscenely entitled "Liberal Imperialism" — joining the conservatives in the expansion of empire, and the conservatives and the right-wing socialists in the destructive imperialism and collectivism of World War I. In Germany, Bismarck was able to split the previously almost triumphant liberals by setting up the lure of unification of Germany by blood and iron. In both countries, the result was the destruction of the liberal cause.

In the United States, the classical liberal party had long been the Democratic party, known in the latter nineteenth century as "the party of personal liberty." Basically, it had been the party not only of personal but also of economic liberty; the stalwart opponent of Prohibition, of Sunday blue laws, and of compulsory education; the devoted champion of free trade, hard money (absence of governmental inflation), separation of banking from the State, and the absolute minimum of government. It construed state power to be negligible and federal power to be virtually nonexistent. On foreign policy, the Democratic party, though less rigorously, tended to be the party of peace, antimilitarism, and anti-imperialism. But personal and economic libertarianism were both abandoned with the capture of the Democratic party by the Bryan forces in 1896, and the foreign policy of nonintervention was then rudely abandoned by Woodrow Wilson two decades later. It was an intervention and a war that were to usher in a century of death and devastation, of wars and new despotisms, and also a century in all warring countries of the new corporatist statism — of a welfare-warfare State run by an alliance of Big Government, big business, unions, and intellectuals — that we have mentioned above.

You can listen to this article as a Mises.org podcast. The last gasp, indeed, of the old laissez-faire liberalism in America was the doughty and aging libertarians who banded together to form the Anti-Imperialist League at the turn of the century, to combat the American war against Spain and the subsequent imperialist American war to crush the Filipinos who were striving for national independence from both Spain and the United States. To current eyes, the idea of an anti-imperialist who is not a Marxist may seem strange, but opposition to imperialism began with laissez-faire liberals such as Cobden and Bright in England, and Eugen Richter in Prussia. In fact, the Anti-Imperialist League, headed by Boston industrialist and economist Edward Atkinson (and including Sumner) consisted largely of laissez-faire radicals who had fought the good fight for the abolition of slavery, and had then championed free trade, hard money, and minimal government. To them, their final battle against the new American imperialism was simply part and parcel of their lifelong battle against coercion, statism and injustice — against Big Government in every area of life, both domestic and foreign.

We have traced the rather grisly story of the decline and fall of classical liberalism after its rise and partial triumph in previous centuries. What, then, is the reason for the resurgence, the flowering, of libertarian thought and activity in the last few years, particularly in the United States? How could these formidable forces and coalitions for statism have yielded even that much to a resurrected libertarian movement? Shouldn't the resumed march of statism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries be a cause for gloom rather than usher in a reawakening of a seemingly moribund libertarianism? Why didn't libertarianism remain dead and buried?

We have seen why libertarianism would naturally arise first and most fully in the United States, a land steeped in libertarian tradition. But we have not yet examined the question: Why the renaissance of libertarianism at all within the last few years? What contemporary conditions have led to this surprising development? We must postpone answering this question until the end of the book, until we first examine what the libertarian creed is, and how that creed can be applied to solve the leading problem areas in our society.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) was dean of the Austrian School. This article is excerpted from the first chapter of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.

An audiobook version of this chapter, read by Jeff Riggenbach, including a new introduction, written and read by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is available for podcast or download. The full audiobook will be available by the end of the summer.

You can receive the Mises Daily Article in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

How are these tradintional values[establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, etc.], when we were the first in history to promulgate them?

From post 54:

Let’s see… establishing justice… I seem to recall something about “an eye for eye” in a document thousands of years older than the US Constitution as a concept of justice. Maybe there was something about that concept of justice addressed in English Common Law or perhaps the Magna Carta or the Mayflower Compact or… Naw… that couldn’t make establishing justice a traditional value, could it?

….

Let’s see… there was democracy invented in Greece a few thousand years earlier, a republic invented in Rome a couple of thousand years earlier, a republic in England about a century earlier, English common law, the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, the British Parliament, the Articles of Confederation, the writings of John Locke, the governments and charters of the various colonies prior to the revolution… .the US Constitution couldn’t have had a basis in any of those things. Could it?

The VALUE was freedom, period…

To paraphrase one of the founding fathers: freedom without restraint is license not liberty. Consequently, it would appear that the VALUE cherished by our founders was not freedom, rather it was “liberty.” However, beyond this issue, liberty was not the only value sought by our founders and enshrined in our system of government: conflict resolution with justice is most certainly another one among others.

From post 14:

The classic case of conflict of individual liberties is the individual enjoyment of private property. If a neighbor’s enjoyment of his or her property involves an activity that impairs the enjoyment of my property, whose rights are to be paramount? For example, suppose my neighbor enjoys playing loud music, but I enjoy peace and quiet. Must my neighbor cease enjoying his or her right to do whatever he or she chooses on his or her own property so that I can enjoy whatever I choose on my own property? The foregoing is but one of many potential conflicts in individual liberties and rights that must be balanced.

Even pure libertarians agree that some type of government must be called upon to coercively balance individual rights based upon certain principles. The quarrel then becomes on what principles should this coercive power be founded and exactly how should that coercive force be wielded.…

Could it be that to “balance individual rights based upon certain principles” is to “establish justice?” Would that not be a function of government?

Check those excellent links I posted earlier.

Beyond the original post and http://mises.org:88/Sophocleus I found none of those excellent links to which you refer. Perhaps, I just over looked it. Could you cite the post number in which you cited those links?

What we now have is nearly 180 degrees from it.

I have not commented on “what we have now” as being the most desirable of situations. In fact, I have grave misgivings about “what we have now” in terms of government. However, libertarianism (note the lack of a capital) must be tempered with practicality if it is to be a viable political force (see post 14).

Our various level of governments have no delegated powers to promote socalled "traditional values".
Nothing in the Constitution can be cited to support this communitarian position.

US Constitution, Preamble
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Are not establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare "traditional values?"

They were pretty radical [libertarian] values in the context of their day. I doubt any other traditional government had such values at the time.

Let's see… establishing justice… I seem to recall something about "an eye for eye" in a document thousands of years older than the US Constitution as a concept of justice. Maybe there was something about that concept of justice addressed in English Common Law or perhaps the Magna Carta or the Mayflower Compact or… Naw… that couldn't make establishing justice a traditional value, could it?

Nevertheless, the Constitution gave no delegated power to promote what you call the "traditional values" of prohibiting commerce in booze, guns or drugs.

Is establishing a constitution which specifies executive, legislative and judicial branches to carry out the traditional values, so specified, supporting them?

There again, our Constitutions structure was a radical [libertarian] departure from any previous attempt at self government.

Let's see… there was democracy invented in Greece a few thousand years earlier, a republic invented in Rome a couple of thousand years earlier, a republic in England about a century earlier, English common law, the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, the British Parliament, the Articles of Confederation, the writings of John Locke, the governments and charters of the various colonies prior to the revolution… Yep, the US Constitution couldn't have had a basis in any of those things.

Of course it used those things in its radical new structure. -- But nothing in that new structure gave some men the power to prohibit the liberties of others, without due process of [it's new constitutional] law.

Which branch of government [at what level] would be empowered to decide what are to be "traditional values"?
-- The very idea of trusting any elected official/or branch with such power is a ludicrous dream.

US Constitution, Article I Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to…
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof

Does this answer your question on which branch of government is empowered to decide what are to be "traditional values?"

No.

Feel free to try again.

There's that towering intellect in operation, again…

Unable to formulate an actual answer, you make snide comments on "intellect". So much for who here is being juvenile.

And I didn't even mention the judicial branch's power to interpret and apply the law or the executive's discretion in how and when it enforces those laws. Those activities certainly aren't based in "traditional values," are they?

No, they're not -- they are part of the radical departure our Constitution took in an attempt to make checks & balances on governments powers.

The Constitution prohibits those powers, not Congress or "the government".
… no one is at 'liberty' to commit criminal acts.

In deed, and who is it that determines exactly what is a criminal act? It couldn't be Congress or the various state legislatures, (government) could it?

You're getting it, -- but you're forgetting that they too are restrained by due process of [constitutional] law. Prohibitions violate that due process.

Naw, a crime is a violation of a legal prohibition,

There you go again, claiming there can be "legal" prohibitions on life, liberty or property, without violating due process of law. -- Both the writing & enforcement of fiat prohibitions violate due process.

and, according to the "towering intellect," government can't "prohibit" anything.

It conceded in the 18th that it required an Amendment to prohibit booze. Case closed.
-- You really should study the document a bit more. and history…

If the shoe fits,

Ah yes, another clever bon mot from he who is obsessed with "towering intellect". -- Whatta joker.

In a debate, it is customary to offer a defense and explanation of your assertions. Your assertion was challenged politely with a question citing some examples that some would say counter your point. That, in a nutshell, is the reason for answering the question.
In a debate a leading question is not a counter argument. It is merely a question. Further by allowing you to frame the discussion in such a specific manner it allows you to quickly change questions at anytime and at the end of the day you can always fall back to the "but I didn't claim any opinion I just asked questions" argument.

Very well, I contend that your assertion is erroneous. As you provided no support for your assertion when you made it, it known as a “gratuitous assertion” and it is logically defeated by my “gratuitous denial.” By posing the question to you, I was inviting you to produce your evidence and reasoning, if you have any.
Now you make a simple denial instead of a leading question yet somehow you posit that I am somehow in error without ever stating how. A simple "your wrong" is not a counter argument to a specific statement. Further I already answered one of your leading question demonstrating my statement to be correct to the best of my knowledge and your further "debate" tactic is only to ask more questions.

Such a statement indicates a lack of willingness to even consider changing one’s position. Very well, I accept that you won’t “waste your time posting.” Good day, sir.

I disagree and in fact the statement "you've offered me nothing to change my position" indicates that if you were to offer a rational counter argument it would further the discussion and possibly change my position.

One last time I will entertain your counter argument that you have only given hints about rather then stated. I suspect that your argument goes something like this (and I further suspect that if I attempt to pin you down on your position you will attempt to slide out of it) I "think" that you are claiming that Monopolies are the bane of capitalism and that only with Government regulation of markets (with it's infinite wisdom and in-depth understanding of the marketplace) we would face the horrible evils of the oft mentioned "robber barons" of the 19th century.

If this is in fact your position let me begin with the statement that the majority of "trust breaking" and "anti-trust" and "monopoly breaking" government actions have hurt the marketplace and the economy. Monopolies are not inherently evil unless there is force being exerted to gain monopoly share of the market, usually with government collusion, or force being exerted to maintain monopoly share, again usually with Government intervention. Free market mechanics make monopolies rare and short lived.

Gentlemen:

There appears to have developed some rather gross misunderstandings about my positions on this thread. Consequently, allow me to re-post my original statement in its entirety for your consideration:

From post 14:

The function of any, and all, governments is the maintenance of social order. Ultimately, disagreements and conflicts among the various advocates of differing governmental systems stem from what should be the proper “social order” that is to be maintained. By definition, a “social order” is what makes a “society.” In short, arguments of the proper type of government and proper “social order” are arguments about what should be the proper type of “society.”

Pure libertarians hold that government should be minimized and that government should have only that power necessary to prevent an individual or group of individuals from coercively imposing their will on other individuals or groups. Such a philosophy is, indeed, laudable, but fraught with potential pitfalls. Not the least of the many practical pitfalls is where to draw the limits when valid, individual rights come into conflict.

The classic case of conflict of individual liberties is the individual enjoyment of private property. If a neighbor’s enjoyment of his or her property involves an activity that impairs the enjoyment of my property, whose rights are to be paramount? For example, suppose my neighbor enjoys playing loud music, but I enjoy peace and quiet. Must my neighbor cease enjoying his or her right to do whatever he or she chooses on his or her own property so that I can enjoy whatever I choose on my own property? The foregoing is but one of many potential conflicts in individual liberties and rights that must be balanced.

Even pure libertarians agree that some type of government must be called upon to coercively balance individual rights based upon certain principles. The quarrel then becomes on what principles should this coercive power be founded and exactly how should that coercive force be wielded. With this concession, the pure libertarian is in the same “philosophical boat” with all other advocates of differing forms of government.

A pure libertarian could never philosophically support socialism, Marxism, monarchism, feudalism, fascism, or even unlimited democracy. Each of these systems of government (and, in some cases, economy) can allow, and have allowed in the past, the state to trample the liberty of individual. Therefore, the pure libertarian, it appears, can only support a constitutionally limited, democratically-elected, republican form of government with certain individual rights immutably and irrevocably enshrined in that constitution. Further, a pure libertarian could never support any economic system except capitalism since all others arbitrarily limit the individual’s freedom to engage any commercial enterprise of choice. Unfortunately, another of those pesky, practical, pitfalls appears, again.

Capitalism, unbridled, leads to monopolies which, in turn, strangle capitalism. In other words, this economic system, unregulated, contains the seeds of its own destruction. Consequently, even pure libertarians must concede that some form of coercive regulation has to be emplaced to prevent monopolies from developing and stifling the economic liberties of the individual. However, what type of regulation and how much is appropriate? Once again, with this concession, the pure libertarian is lumped together in the same competition with all other advocates of differing forms of government.

Inevitably, the argument returns to what should be the proper type of “society.” “Societies,” it seems, have some principles of their own that must be observed. For example, a society that discourages, or at least, fails to encourage its citizens to procreate is doomed to collapse from an eventual lack of population. Therefore, a government supporting a society must encourage, or, minimally, not discourage, the production of new potential citizens.

Yet, again, another conundrum arises for a pure libertarian. Gay marriage would seem to be an individual liberty choice on the face of the issue. However, the practice weakens the heterosexual family unit and thus, potentially the “society” in which the libertarian would exist. Does the pure libertarian take the position of saying the government should not be involved in the issue and allow such advocacy to potentially weaken the “society” to the point of collapse, and with it, his or her liberties? Alternately, does the libertarian take the position that limits must be emplaced on individual liberty for the continued existence of a society of limited liberties?

Another problem of “societies” is that a certain percentage of the population must, of necessity, be “productive” or the entire population starves and the “society,” again, collapses. Whether and individual chooses to abuse his or her body with hallucinogenic and narcotic drugs appears, on the surface, to be purely and individual liberty choice. However, if a “society” does not encourage its members to be “productive” by penalizing, or, at least, discouraging, non-productive behavior, it risks collapse from starvation. Consequently, a libertarian is, again, faced with the choice or risking loss of his own liberties due to the collapse of a “society” which would support a government protecting them. Alternately, the libertarian must support limiting the liberties of fellow citizens to engage in destructive behavior.

The modern Libertarian (note the capital letter) Party seems to have ill-defined concepts of how to balance individual liberty with the requirements of a stable “society” that remains capable of supporting and protecting those very liberties IMHO.

Our boy [presumably referring to Lucky Dog] willfully ignores the "presumption of liberty" inherent in our Constitution.

You are decidedly incorrect in your assessment.

The Constitution was written and ratified to secure liberty through limited government. Central to its design were two principles: federalism and economic liberty…

I have no basic philosophical quarrel with these statements. However, I think we part company on matters of degree. Let me remind you that in the original document universal “liberty” was not acknowledged, i.e., there was no universal suffrage and slavery was an officially recognized institution. “Liberty” was exclusively for those who were of the correct race, sex and economic status.

Our various level of governments have no delegated powers to promote so called "traditional values".

US Constitution, Article I Section 8.

The Congress shall have power to…

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof

Exactly what part of making laws do you think excludes “traditional values?”

There you go again, claiming there can be "legal" prohibitions on life, liberty or property, without violating due process of law.

First, I never claimed that there can be “legal” prohibitions on life. However, one could view a death sentence for lawful conviction of a capital crime as such. As an item of interest there are hundreds of constitutionally valid “legal prohibitions” in our legal system. As a minor example, your liberty travel on a public highway in excess of the posted speed limit is, in fact, “legally prohibited.”

It appears that you are confused about the definition of “due process of law.” The term simply means that a citizen can not be deprived by the legal system of life, liberty or property without a legally recognized and proper proceeding such as a trial before a competent tribunal with valid jurisdiction.

-- Both the writing & enforcement of fiat prohibitions violate due process.

Exactly where did you come up with the idea that I proposed the writing & enforcement of fiat prohibitions? I have never even mentioned such. Rather, I have spoken of Congress and state legislatures passing laws under the authority granted them by the US Constitution and their various state constitutions. However, unless you are woefully ignorant, or willfully perfidious, such can, in no way, be termed the writing & enforcement of fiat prohibitions. As I have previously noted, due process of law is about the legal sanctions for violations of “legal prohibitions.”

I trust we have "cleared the air" of misunderstandings.

Let us begin anew our debate about capitalism and monopolies.

First, my position is based upon the words of the Declaration concerning certain inalienable rights: “among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In particular, the term “pursuit of happiness” refers to a desired lawful occupation and/or economic activity, if you will (not the “chasing of personal joy” as some would have it mean).

In essence, I support the liberty of doing whatever lawful work fulfills a person psychologically and sustains that person economically and that such should not be unnecessarily infringed upon by government.

As I noted in post 14, unbridled capitalism can, and has, in the past, lead to the existence of monopolistic restraints on the market place. For support of my point I cite the existence of “robber barons” and their organizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From this support, I ask that you to concede that monopolies (and all of their “cousins” such as trusts, cartels, etc.) can exist in unregulated capitalism.

By definition, a monopoly “controls” a particular market or economic segment. The monopolist’s control and restraint of competition unfairly prevents me (or other entrepreneurs) from potentially exercising my right to the “pursuit of happiness.” Therefore, a monopoly presents a conflict of liberties: the monopolist’s rights versus my rights.

If you concede that a conflict exists, then a balancing of rights and liberties must take place. It is one function of government to so resolve such disputes based upon principles of justice. Therefore, it is appropriate for government to establish coercive measures to prohibit such an unjust situation from developing. The only remaining debate that can exist is what should be the principles upon which such justice is to be founded.

Your position that monopolies are not inherently evil unless there is force being exerted to gain monopoly share… is wrong in a libertarian sense. The mere fact that monopolies can prevent (and have, in the past, prevented) citizens from freely entering into a “pursuit of happiness,” one of their God given rights, makes them unacceptable restraints upon liberty.

First, my position is based upon the words of the Declaration concerning certain inalienable rights: “among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In particular, the term “pursuit of happiness” refers to a desired lawful occupation and/or economic activity, if you will (not the “chasing of personal joy” as some would have it mean).
While you and I might agree that the Declaration is a wonderfully written document you must understand that it has no force of law. Secondly when reading all of our founding documents I tend to think they mean what they say "like pursuit of happiness" means pursuit of happiness.

As I noted in post 14, unbridled capitalism can, and has, in the past, lead to the existence of monopolistic restraints on the market place. For support of my point I cite the existence of “robber barons” and their organizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From this support, I ask that you to concede that monopolies (and all of their “cousins” such as trusts, cartels, etc.) can exist in unregulated capitalism.
You claim that the existence of robber barons created a need for Government involvement in the marketplace. I disagree and suggest that government involvement created an ever increasing need for involvement. This, of course, is typical of bureaucrats. Their stupidity creates a problem and for some reason they expect more stupidity to fix it. In the case of the robber barons States had begun to exert "controls" over the business's of these men. In an effort regain control they began to incorporate, when States began regulating corporations they formed trusts, then the Fed Government regulated trusts. So on and so forth to this day when we can barely claim that we have a free market at all. I have already conceded that monopolies may exist in a free market but they are rare and short lived.

"By definition, a monopoly “controls” a particular market or economic segment. The monopolist’s control and restraint of competition unfairly prevents me (or other entrepreneurs) from potentially exercising my right to the “pursuit of happiness.” Therefore, a monopoly presents a conflict of liberties: the monopolist’s rights versus my rights."
By definition a monopoly has complete control of a market but that does not mean that they gained 100% market share unfairly or that they are using "unfair" practices to maintain said market share. You are stuck on the concept that monopolies are inherently immoral. Further, in a free market, the only way to gain 100% market share is to offer the best goods or services at a better value then the competition. Anything other then rising to the top through competition, and maintaining that position through competition, would have to involve Government collusion, Government "regulation", or Government failure. The conflict, as you see it, isn't between a monopoly and the individual but between interaction of individuals, specifically the initiation of force or fraud, that the government is required to halt. They can do this without regulating the market place.

"If you concede that a conflict exists, then a balancing of rights and liberties must take place. It is one function of government to so resolve such disputes based upon principles of justice. Therefore, it is appropriate for government to establish coercive measures to prohibit such an unjust situation from developing. The only remaining debate that can exist is what should be the principles upon which such justice is to be founded."
As you can see I have not agreed that a conflict inherently exists, I do not believe that monopolies are inherently immoral, but I certainly agree that the government exists to resolve disputes between individuals. This does not require regulation of the market.

Your position that monopolies are not inherently evil unless there is force being exerted to gain monopoly share… is wrong in a libertarian sense. The mere fact that monopolies can prevent (and have, in the past, prevented) citizens from freely entering into a “pursuit of happiness,” one of their God given rights, makes them unacceptable restraints upon liberty.
A cartel, organization, corporation, trust, or any other group that has a monopoly is not necessarily stamping out competition through unfair trade practices. They may have 100% percent market share because they are better then everyone. In truth there has rarely been an actual monopoly with or without unfair trade practices and it's extremely unlikely that in a free market (capitalism) one is ever likely to flourish. This hysterical fear of monopolies is socialist driven propaganda designed to instill distrust of a free market and it would appear that you have taken the propaganda at face value. Typically the answer to the hysteria is the call for regulation which only stifles competition usually to the benefit of a large corporation which only can exist without competition.

While you and I might agree that the Declaration is a wonderfully written document you must understand that it has no force of law.

Absolutely agree. Nonetheless, its principles are part of the “traditional values” of our nation’s legal system. As such, it does have influence.

when reading all of our founding documents I tend to think they mean what they say "like pursuit of happiness" means pursuit of happiness.

There is no “belief” required. I suggest you consult some reference books such as Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology by Allen Jayne or Declaration of Independence : A Study in the History of Political Ideas by Carl L. Becker.

Regardless of your belief, or lack thereof, the point is the same.

You claim that the existence of robber barons created a need for Government involvement in the marketplace.

I said no such thing. I used the existence of such to establish the fact that monopolies come to exist under capitalistic systems. The requirement for government involvement exists only if there is a conflict of rights as the result of the existence and practices of a monopoly.

I have already conceded that monopolies may exist in a free market but they are rare and short lived.

Regardless of their rarity or brevity of existence, that fact that they exist creates the potential for the conflict in individual rights to fairly pursue commercial enterprise versus the rights of monopolies to restrict such. Is it your position that if such an infringement of personal liberties exists it is acceptable because it is only short term?

By definition a monopoly has complete control of a market but that does not mean that they gained 100% market share unfairly or that they are using "unfair" practices to maintain said market share.

The very existence of a monopoly gives it the power to control prices and, thus, the potential profit margins of any competitor. It has been a standard business practice of, not just monopolies, but any large competitor confronting a smaller, potentially better competitor to lower prices long enough to drive the smaller competitor out of business. In fact, historically, that is typically the way monopolies have achieved their monopolistic status.

The conflict, as you see it, isn't between a monopoly and the individual but between interaction of individuals, specifically the initiation of force or fraud, that the government is required to halt. They can do this without regulating the market place.

On the contrary, it is neither force nor fraud, but perfectly legal, for a monopoly to lower its prices to drive a competitor out of business in a situation without market regulation. It may unethical and unfair, but not illegal, because, by definition, without market regulation, there is no governing law for such a practice.

As you can see I have not agreed that a conflict inherently exists,…

An individual owning a monopoly denies another the individual the right to ethically compete on a “level playing field.” How is this situation any different from the “enjoyment of private property” conflict of rights I cited earlier? Was not that situation a conflict?

I do not believe that monopolies are inherently immoral, but I certainly agree that the government exists to resolve disputes between individuals. This does not require regulation of the market.

The morality, or lack thereof, for monopolies is not the issue. Rather, the issue is their ability to arbitrarily restrict the economic liberties of others.

Antitrust laws are indeed inherently anticompetitive.

First off, we have to note that monopolies are not inherently bad. They are neither inherently bad or inherently good; they simply are. For instance, a small town in rural America may only have one drug store. That drug store certainly has a monopoly on selling drugs, but it is not bad--people need drugs, and the small town market may well not support an additional drug store. An additional drug store might cause both drug stores to go out of business, which would be a net societial loss.

The only "bad" monopolies are those monopolies that are coercive--or, as is referred to in today's economics, those companies with "market power;" i.e., an ability to raise prices to supracompetitive levels. BUT, in a free market, the free flow of capital acts as a check on any company's ability to institute supracompetitive pricing. As a company with market power begins to charge supracompetitive prices, capital will shift to that particular industry because it offers a higher rate of return than other industries--thus encouraging new entrants, which will, in turn, lower prices to competitive levels.

A common response to this from Big Government types is a need to regulate "predatory pricing," which, in theory, is where a company that is faced with a new entrant lowers prices below marginal cost in order to drive the new entrant out of business which would then allow the existing company to raise prices to supracompetitive levels. Again, though, the free capital market prevents predatory pricing--an industry offering a higher rate of return attracts capital and new entrants, and a company cannot continue to engage in predatory pricing indefinitely. Indeed, even modern economics and antitrust law have recognized that predatory pricing is essentially impossible and you can really no longer state this type of antitrust claim.

More importantly, the concept of cross-elasticity of demand also makes it very difficult for most market players, even if they are to have a "monopoly" in a particular industry, to have a coercive monopoly. Any attempts to raise prices to supracompetitive levels will result in consumers switching to a different, less expensive (but equally useful) product. For instance, if SC Johnson were to attempt to raise the price of Saran Wrap to supracompetitive levels, consumers would respond by buying tin foil, a lower cost substitute.

So the capital market acts as a regulator of price, and so long as capital is free to flow, then prices are kept at competitive levels. ONLY in situations in which government restricts free flow of capital (stock market regulations, for instance) or places artifical barriers to entry (for many years, telephone and cable regulatory schemes, for instance) can a coercive monopoly take hold.

Let's make no mistake about it: antitrust laws are not designed to "level the economic playing field;" quite the opposite. Antitrust laws are a response to capitalists who have suceeded and accumulated (not by any sort of force, mind you, but simply by offering a product that consumers desire) massive amounts of wealth. Antitrust laws are simply schemes to redistribute wealth. Like income taxes, they are a thinly veiled socialist shot at the wealthy. That socialists have managed to clothe their laws in a defense of capitalism is the ultimate coup.

I note, incidently, the people you named weren't monopolists, but had tremendous industrial rivals: Jay Gould to Cornelius Vanderbilt; Getty had numerous rivals in oil, not the least of which was Standard; Morgan was hardly a "robber baron," of course; indeed, he essentially saved the government from bankruptcy.

You make some interesting points. While I am willing to concede your points in a number of areas, something comes to mind that you don’t seem to address.

The only "bad" monopolies are those monopolies that are coercive--or, as is referred to in today's economics, those companies with "market power;" i.e., an ability to raise prices to supracompetitive levels. BUT, in a free market, the free flow of capital acts as a check on any company's ability to institute supracompetitive pricing. As a company with market power begins to charge supracompetitive prices, capital will shift to that particular industry because it offers a higher rate of return than other industries--thus encouraging new entrants, which will, in turn, lower prices to competitive levels.

If the monopolistic entity has the “market power” to use predatory pricing to drive out new entrants, it has the power to deny any competitor entry regardless of the capital flow situation. Any market entrant able to withstand such pressure long enough to force the monopoly to return to competitive prices would have to have access to huge amounts of up-front “loss capital.” Such a loss would deny the investors the opportunity to achieve profitability in any reasonable time. In the final analysis, after a successful market penetration, even if enough “loss capital” were theoretically available, the prices would only return to a “competitive” level and the recovery of “loss capital” over any reasonable period would be virtually impossible making the capital return on investment unjustifiable.

More importantly, the concept of cross-elasticity of demand also makes it very difficult for most market players, even if they are to have a "monopoly" in a particular industry, to have a coercive monopoly. Any attempts to raise prices to supracompetitive levels will result in consumers switching to a different, less expensive (but equally useful) product.

This is true only if a suitable, substitute product is readily available and can be available at a cheaper price than the supracompetitive levels charged by the monopoly. The monopolist only need keep the price just below the elasticity point to achieve a market shut out position to new, competitive entrants and avoid the cross flow problem. For example, in theory, carbon fiber technology would be a suitable, cross-elasticity product for steel in many applications. However, steel would have to reach nearly the price of silk per pound for such product elasticity to exist. A steel monopolist need only keep that price just below that level to deny such elasticity and, given the start up costs of new steel mills, could theoretically deny any non-governmentally aided, new entrant a market position. Additionally, there are products for which no alternative product exists.

Having posited the above, please do not assume as have some on this thread, that I am advocating “big government.” I am not, by any means. I merely intend to point out that there are situations that can reasonably be foreseen where pure libertarianism cannot provide a practical answer. My point is, and has been, all along, that while Jefferson was generally right that the best government is the least government, there are situations where some government intervention is a practical necessity.

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