Posted on 01/04/2012 6:50:05 AM PST by Vintage Freeper
The latest data show that book sales are way up this season. So much for the prediction that books will be killed by technology. On the contrary, technology has enabled the great literature of the ages and the present to be put in the hands of everyone. I can’t think of a better time to begin refurbishing Laissez-Faire Books (founded in 1972), because it is the market that laissez-faire celebrates that has made all the literature we love more accessible than ever.
Addison Wiggin, president of Agora Financial, and I were discussing the various challenges ahead of us as we infuse new life into an old and venerable institution. He drew my attention to a point that I’ve overlooked. Most people don’t know the term “laissez-faire.” They don’t know how to say it (that very day, I was introduced for a speech, and the host mispronounced it) and they don’t know what it means. Once in common circulation, this term has not been in common use, even in libertarian circles. So we have some work to do, in helping people even understand the name of the bookstore at lfb.org.
The pronunciation in English is lay-say-fair. Its French origins date back to the late Renaissance. As the story goes, it was first used about the year 1680, a time when the nation-state was on the rise throughout Europe. The French finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, asked a merchant named M. Le Gendre what the state could do to promote industry.
According to legend, the reply came: “Laissez-nous faire,” or “let it be.” This incident was reported in 1751 in the Journal Oeconomique by the free-trade champion Rene de Voyer, Marquis d’Argenson. The slogan was codified finally in the words of Vincent de Gournay: “Laissez-faire et laissez-passer, le monde va de lui même!” The loose translation: “Let it be and let goods pass; the world goes by itself.”
We’ve rendered this in the form you see on our masthead: Leave the world alone, it manages itself. You could shorten it: Let it be.
All these renderings express not only the idea of free trade — a main subject of dispute in 18th-century European politics — but also a larger and more-beautiful vision of the way society can be permitted to work.
This idea can be summed up in the phrase “laissez-faire,” or in the doctrine of what was once called simply liberalism, which today is clarified as classical liberalism. This idea is this: Society contains within itself the capacity for ordering and managing its own path of development. It follows that people should enjoy the liberty to manage their own lives, associate as they please, exchange with anyone and everyone, own and accumulate property and otherwise be unencumbered by state expansion into their lives.
In the centuries that have followed, millions of great thinkers and writers have elaborated on this core idea within all disciplines of the social science. Then as now, there stand two broad schools of thought: those who believe in state control of one or many aspects of the social order and those who believe that such attempts at control are counterproductive to the cause of prosperity, justice, peace and the building of the civilized life.
These two ways of thinking are different from what is called the right and the left today. The left is inclined to think that if we let the economic sphere be free, the world will collapse, which advances some theory of the disaster that would befall us all without government control. The right is similarly convinced that the state is necessary lest the world collapse into violent, warring, culture-destroying gangs.
The laissez-faire view rejects both views in favor of what Claude Frédéric Bastiat called “the harmony of interests” that make up the social order. It is the view that the artists, merchants, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and property owners — and not the cartelizing thugs of the state — ought to be permitted to drive the course of history.
This view is now held by millions of thinkers around the world. It is the most exciting intellectual movement today, and in places where we might least expect to find it. There are institutions in every country devoted to the idea. Blogs and forums are everywhere dedicated to the conviction. Books are pouring out by the week and the day. The revolt against the state is growing.
The growth of the idea of laissez-faire in our times is infused by a digital energy. But the idea itself is not new in world history. Though it is mostly associated with 18th-century British thought, it is a view of society that has much-deeper roots in the Christian Middle Ages and early Jewish thought. Nor is laissez-faire somehow a Western idea alone. The deepest roots of laissez-faire actually trace to ancient China, and even today, the thoughts of the masters offer a fine summary.
Here are some examples:
Lao Tzu (6th century B.C.): “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be…”
“The Sage says: ‘I take no action, yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves…’”
Chuang Tzu (369-286 B.C.): “I would rather roam and idle about in a muddy ditch, at my own amusement, than to be put under the restraints that the ruler would impose. I would never take any official service, and thereby I will [be free] to satisfy my own purposes.”
“There has been such thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success].” The world “does simply not need governing; in fact, it should not be governed.”
Pao Ching-yen (4th century A.D.): “Where knights and hosts could not be assembled, there was no warfare afield…Ideas of using power for advantage had not yet burgeoned. Disaster and disorder did not occur…People munched their food and disported themselves; they were carefree and contented.”
Ssu-ma Ch’ien (145-90 B.C.): “Each man has only to be left to utilize his own abilities and exert his strength to obtain what he wishes…When each person works away at his own occupation and delights in his own business, then like water flowing downward, goods will naturally flow ceaseless day and night without being summoned, and the people will produce commodities without having been asked.”
These early beginnings of the idea began here but can be traced through thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome and through the Middle Ages, until the notion swept the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, giving rise to unheard-of prosperity, liberty and peace for all. In the 18th century and in large parts of the world (other than the English-speaking world), laissez-faire has been called liberalism or classical liberalism, a doctrine of social organization that can be summed up in the words of Lord Acton: Liberty is the highest political end of humankind.
To be sure, the notion of liberalism was already corrupted early in the 20th century. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in his book Liberalism (1929), “The world today wants to hear no more of liberalism. Outside England, the term ‘liberalism’ is frankly proscribed. In England, there are, to be sure, still ‘liberals,’ but most of them are so in name only. In fact, they are rather moderate socialists. Everywhere today, political power is in the hands of the anti-liberal parties.”
That remains true today. And the revolt against this is often termed “libertarian,” a word that has long been associated with a primary concern for human liberty. In current understanding, it refers to a tightening and radicalizing of the old liberal view. It asserts the inviolability of property rights, the primacy of peace in world affairs and the centrality of free association and trade in the conduct of human affairs. It differs from the old liberal view in dispensing the naive view that the state can be limited by law and constitutions; it imagines the possibility that society can manage itself without a state, defined as the one institution in society that is permitted the legal right of aggression against person and property. Libertarians are consistently against war, protectionism, taxation, inflation and any laws that interfere with the right of free association.
Libertarianism came of age in the early 1970s with the writings of Murray Rothbard and, later, with the founding of Laissez-Faire Books and the work of Robert Nozick and Tibor Machan. Libertarians are not necessarily anarchists or anarcho-capitalists, but the main strain of thinking in the libertarian world today revolves around the idea of statelessness as an intellectual benchmark. This view is not utopian or far-flung; it is only the hope for an ideal in which theft, murder, kidnapping and counterfeiting are not legally sanctioned by the state.
Nor is such a society historically unprecedented. Rothbard wrote about Colonial America as an example of a wildly successful experiment of society without a central state. Medieval Europe made the first great economic revolution without recourse to the power of the nation-state. David Friedman has documented anarchism and competitive legal orders in medieval Iceland. Other writers go so far as to say that given how we conduct our lives day to day, relying on the productivity of private institutions and associations, we never really leave anarchy.
As Mises says, liberalism/libertarianism/laissez-faire is not a completed doctrine. There are so many areas remaining to be explored and so many applications to make both in history and in our time. The most-exciting books of our time are being written from the vantage point of human liberty. The state is on the march, but the resistance is growing.
It is my great honor to be involved in the Agora effort to revive Laissez-Faire Books as the international distribution and publishing house for the greatest ideas of our time. It is a debilitating thing to watch the state on the march, but it is a source of joy to know that ideas are more powerful than all the armies of the world. Reason, literacy and relentless work for what is right and true will eventually lead the idea of laissez-faire to victory
Mr. Tucker has given us some great quotes and an elegant history. But he leaves us unsated. In a world where the state is growing exponentially, how do we render the state impotent, or at least limit it to its few legitimate purposes? Surely, if Mr. Tucker knew, he would enlighten us.
Do the leaders of either political party know?
It should be obvious to anyone that the Democratic party is committed to growing the state. The Democratic Party is the antithesis of freedom and laissez-faire. While it is not discussed or admitted by anybody, it is self-evident that the Democratic Party is anti-freedom and in truth, and in fact, un-American. Can there be any wonder that the Democrats, academia, and the media were scared to death of Joe McCarthy?
What about Republicans? If the Republican leadership knows how to restore our American Republic, it should be obvious from the current debates associated with the candidates campaigning to run for President. With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republicans seem to only want to slow the rate of growth of government, not abolish ninety percent of it.
Congress? You're kidding, right?
Congress is the source of the problem. Herein lies the clue to solving the problem:
You, Laissez-Faire Books, Bill Bonner, Addison Wiggins, and Agora could greatly expedite the realization of laissez-faire and capitalism.
Any one of you might be able to send a link to Charles Koch, David Koch, or Richard Fink. Alternatively, you may know someone who can.
The Kochs have the means to implement and lead an effort that has the potential to restore our American Republic, and with it, laissez-faire capitalism. Here is the link that you are being asked to send them:
“Hands off”.
LLS
Laissez les bons temps roulez!
First, it is going to be necessary to "hand-cuff" the government.
Take a good look at those who control our two political parties. You will find that most hide behind two facades, The first facade has some proclaiming they are Republican others Democrat. Peal away the first facade to find a second facade where all of them claim to be progressives. Behind that second facade you find their core political philosophy, communist/socialist.
Our two party system is really one party where they work hand in hand to destroy this nation as a bastion of freedom with torch held high where it can be seen world wide by those who yearn for those same freedoms.
The world wide communist/socialist utopia can not be attained as long as we exist.
I don’t think you’ll find many on this website who will disagree with the concept that society functions better, the smaller the government is.
The only question is, how do we actually go about achieving real government shrinkage?
“The left is inclined to think that if we let the economic sphere be free, the world will collapse, which advances some theory of the disaster that would befall us all without government control. The right is similarly convinced that the state is necessary lest the world collapse into violent, warring, culture-destroying gangs.”
I don’t think that captures the difference between the left & the right. In my experience, the left believes businessman are evil because they’re only after profits. They are not worried about gov’t, because gov’t doesn’t make a profit - they are only their to ‘help’.
Those on the right (particularly religious right) realize that human beings are ‘fallen’ or at least not uniformly good, so gov’t is there to constrain those that will do harm.
Lefties will never understand the real issue is human beings. They trust human beings in gov’t, but not business. I have friends (some former now) who just could not get that point.
Government has a life of it’s own and the only solution to making it smaller is a revolution. Does anyone believe that once granted power, anyone is going to give it up? Look at the life Obama and Michelle are living on the public purse, do you think they want to give that up willingly? He will spend a billion dollars to retain his power. That’s a billion of someone else’s money.
Laissez-Faire is what I told my first boyfriend was my dating policy when we went to the drive-in.
Agreed. As I told a friend the other day, the American people are tense enough to 'storm the Bastille', but no one wants to be the first to step over the line.
Heaven help the tyrants, if someone does. It'll spark a full-scale revolt, and it won't stop until the America of the Framers is restored.
Indeed.
LLS
bmfl.
I'll cut to the chase and say that I don't hold out much hope for us reducing the gargantuan size and reach of the federal government by working within the system. The system itself has been compromised beyond all recognition, and has become corrupt beyond redemption, in my view.
I see 'interesting times' ahead for some of us and our progeny.
When people indict the business community or condemn anyone seeking profit, give them a link to this page or print the article and give them a copy:
You are simply speculating. No one has a crystal ball that works. And at least once in every century, there is an interval of time during which large changes are made possible.
Under Austrian economic theory, fractional reserve banking is the source of the business cycle. But super-imposed on the business cycle are several other larger cycles that likely take their roots from the same source. Of these, the Kondratieff cycle appears to the largest and longest.
First inflation produces a boom (spring), followed by a peak/plateau (summer/fall), and then by a deflationary bust (winter). If the Austrians are correct, and if the global economy is at the edge of Kwave Winter, the stage is set for large numbers of people to recognize that the current model is not working, and maybe take the next step in recognitition, the realization that the current model does not work at all and is the source of our recurring malaise.
Think of our gargantuan government as an inverted pyramid balanced on the apex point of the pyramid. One push at the right time and place, and the whole structure will topple (major paradigm change).
After you have read ALL of the articles posted here, you will see that it outlines a simple and easily executed plan that could result in a stable government very much like the one put in place by the Constitutional Convention with the added benefit of the modern Constitution having been amended in several keys areas designed to prevent the politicians and bankers from corrupting it again.
Read the articles for yourselves,
Thanks! I’ve bookmarked it.
"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
Friend, you're trying to have a much deeper conversation than I have the time or inclination to engage in right now. That's why I said, "I'll cut to the chase."
Why not just 'cut to the chase' and give me your bottom line on what you feel the way forward is? Thanks.
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