Liberal Vision

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Reflections On The Revolution In France (1790)

Edmund Burke is often referred to as the founder of modern conservatism.  Nevertheless,  he certainly has a part in the history of liberal thought (as understood by classical  liberals and libertarians).  How much is a matter of discussion.  Two of the reasons for  considering Burke in the liberal tradition are William Ewart Gladstone  and Friedrich Hayek.

Gladstone (1809-1898) one of Britain’s most distinguished Prime Ministers in four  terms adding upto 14 years, and the greatest political figure in nineteenth century British  liberalism.  Gladstone was a life time reader of Burke from his early ultra-Tory years, to  his later years as a Liberal with a contempt for the Tory British establishment that it  returned.  Gladstone’s progress can in part be traced to his belief that the aristocracy  pursued sectional interests, in betrayal of its legitimate role as provider of disinterested  national leadership.  In some degree, Gladstone was the converse of the stereotypical  socialist whose view changes on encounter with harsh reality.  He did not agree with  everything in Burke, seeing him as too resistant to political change, but did read him  frequently, maybe daily, for a large part of his life.

Hayek as in the economist and political thinker, who was probably the greatest figure in the twentieth century revival of classical liberalism.  As we have seen in earlier posts, Hayek also had a highly appreciative view of John Rawls, the political philosopher often associated with  left liberalism and social democracy.  One lesson here is that traditions of political thought overlap and interpenetrate, so that we cannot, and should not, try to isolate liberalism as an immaculate doctrine with a completely self-contained existence.

The issues on which Gladstone disagreed with Burke included the French Revolution.  Burke was a fierce opponent of the French Revolution, which began in 1789, passed through its most radical  phase in the years 1792 to ’94 , and came to an end with Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power in 1798 (or maybe Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor in 1804).  Burke’s opposition came as a surprise to many, and alienated him from the more radical Whigs in Parliament, like Charles Fox and the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with whom he had been associated.  Whig refers to the more parliamentary of the two main political forces of the time, along with the Tories.

Burke himself, like Sheridan, came from Ireland, spending his adult life in England.  He made a name as a writer early on, particularly for his 1757 book on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.  The connection between that book and his political ideas is that Burke, like many Enlightenment thinkers, including his friends David Hume and Adam Smith, thought of a taste for beauty and for the sublime, as growing in history, in conjunction with the growth of commerce, law, and civil society.  Burke moved to England and became one of the great parliamentarians of British history, though more for the content of his speeches than any capacity for exciting delivery.  He was often on the most radical side in parliament, most famously with regard to the treatment of Ireland, India and the American colonies.  Nevertheless, this did not extend to a wish to change the aristocratically dominated  political system, or challenge national traditions.  This became clear in his reaction to the French Revolution.  Though he claimed to be still a Whig, he was closer to the Tories now than to his old Whig associates, or the radicals, republicans, and liberty lovers of the time, who were often what we would now call classical liberals.

Burke’s attitude to the French Revolution surprised many, but also came to seem prophetic.  Burke might be taken to have exaggerated the violence of the first three years of the Revolution, but the Jacobin Terror of 1792 to ’94 and the rise of the young army officer Bonaparte to absolute power, also made Burke seem like a seer, who grasped the violent forces that the Revolution was unleashing.  Burke encountered ridicule when he famously lamented the failure of French men to follow medieval traditions of chivalry in defending Queen Marie Antoinette, but also correctly perceived that the Revolution would brutally crush any royal, or aristocratic opposition, and that of the most humble people whose rights it claimed to advance.

Burke explained that he thought liberty must be an ordered liberty, which requires the rule of law, and that the rule of law requires respect for traditional institutions, and authority.  The state needs to be restrained from exercising absolute power, through the plurality of dispersed, and localised, institutions and customs, which grow over time.  Those restraining forms also required deference from the lower classes, and a sense of mystique, to reinforce intellectual and moral respect.

Burke claimed that the radicalism and violence of the French Revolution was in contrast with British history, where even revolutions came in legal forms respectful of legal traditions, and which reflected the understanding of most people of all classes about rights and authority.  This claim of continuity, and unity, in British history certainly does not command universal assent. All the horrors that Burke identifies in the French Revolution have equivalents in British history, from Henry VIII’s confiscation of church lands (1536-41), through the Civil War (1642-51), the Glorious Revolution (1688), the crushing of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, and so on.  Where Burke refers to such events, he goes to implausible lengths to describe them as legal, and as continuous with time worn traditions.

Whether we think these thoughts belong more to the liberal or conservative tradition, Burke certainly had an impact on liberal thinking.  He ought to be read by anyone who cares for the use of good English literary style in presenting political ideas, the history of political ideas, and a rounded understanding of liberal thought.

 

 

Polybius (200-118 BCE) The Histories

POLYBIUS 200-118 BCE, THE HISTORIES

Polybius was born in Megalopolis in Greece and was the son of the leader of the Achaen League, a confederation of Greek city states which had some success in reducing the domination of the Macedonian monarchy in Greece.  This was a struggle for liberty, in the ancient sense of living in an independent state, in which citizens had equal rights and participated in government.  The Macedonian monarchy under Philip II and Alexander the Great had largely undermined that antique liberty, by subordinating those states and reducing the power of their institutions of self-government.

The Achaen League found itself caught between Macedonia and the rising power of Rome.  The solution for a while was to ally with Rome.  However, Rome did not trust the League and Polybius was one of those taken to Rome as a hostage.  In the end, all of Greece came under Roman rule and was no more free than under Macedonian hegemony.  Nevertheless Polybius was deeply impressed by the Roman constitution.  Even as a hostage, he befriended Scipio Africanus the Younger, a general who played a major role in the defeat of Carthage, the north African city which was Rome’s rival in the western Mediterranean.

Polybius’ histories largely discuss the wars of the time, and are particularly famous for the discussion of Hannibal’s war with Rome.  Hannibal was the Carthaginian general who led an army, including elephants, from Spain into Italy via the Alps.  Polybius walked through Hannibal’s route through the Alps.  The other, particularly famous aspect of The Histories, is the discussion of the Roman constitution in Book Five.  Some of the best ancient discussion of ideas of liberty can be found in the work of historians.  The main examples, apart from Polybius, are the Greek Thucydides; and the Romans Livy and Tacitus.

Polybius’ discussion of the Roman constitution, and comparisons of it with the constitutions of various Greek city states, was enormously influential in the Ancient world, particularly through Cicero.  Cicero’s On the Republic, includes Polybius’ friend Scipio Africanus the Younger as a speaker.   Polybius’ influence lasted into the Italian republics of the late medieval and early modern period, like Venice and Florence, which transmitted ideas of antique liberty and republicanism to the rest of Europe.  Polybius was very well known to seventeenth and eighteenth century British political thinkers, and was one of the major references in the discussions behind the American Constitution.

The key idea that all these people drew on was a of a ‘mixed constitution’, that is a constitution which shared power between people, aristocracy and monarchy.  For the founders of the American Republic, the President was the equivalent of the monarch, the Senate was an aristocratic body, and the House of Representatives was the people.  For ancient writers, the people meant a poor uneducated majority.  Polybius, like Aristotle before him, and Cicero after him, feared ‘democracy’ as the unrestrained power of such people.  In the language, which began to develop around the American Constitution, we can think of this of the fear of the power of unrestrained temporary majorities.  Polybius’ conception of senatorial and monarchical elements in the constitution does in part refer to the idea that some people are naturally better than others, but also refers to the idea that no one part of society, or of the constitutional structure, should have unlimited power.  Unlimited democracy leads to mob rule, unlimited aristocracy leads to oligarchy, unlimited monarchy leads to tyranny.

Polybius saw a model for restraint, in the way that the Roman republican constitution set up divisions and overlaps between popular, aristocratic, and monarchical power.  For ancient and early modern writers, it was normal to think of a republic, or the Greek word that was its equivalent, polity, as consistent with limited forms of monarchy.  The Roman Republic (that is the Roman system from the overthrow of the last ‘tyrannical’ king to the emergence of the Imperial system under Julius Caesar) took the idea of a limited form of monarchy to the extreme in the Consulship, which was two aristocrats elected to rule jointly for one year only.  The aristocracy participated as a whole through the Senate; and the people were represented through meetings of all citizens, and elected tribunes with veto powers.  Polybius saw this as a system, which produced enduring strength and harmony, through creative tension between the three elements, and which always found a compromise between them.

Polybius’ second best constitution was the Greek state of Sparta.  Sparta has acquired the image of a precursor of modern totalitarianism, but Sparta was taken as a possible model for republican liberty for a long time.  That small minority of the population, who were citizens, did rule themselves through a mixed constitution of the type favoured by Polybius, with city assemblies, a senate, and a dual monarchy, but also with Ephors who shared monarchical type powers for a year.  Polybius, like other ancient republicans thought of freedom in terms of promoting common virtue and strength in war, which may not seem like liberalism now.  However, these ideas of virtue are a precedent for modern ideas of civil society, in which humans flourish, through their individual energy, and moral responsibility, in voluntary activity, and associations.  The military strength was thought of as expressing individual pride and courage, and these are precedents for modern ideas of inner responsibility and independence.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Political Writings (1970 edition)

Author: Barry Stocker

Immanuel Kant spent his whole life in the east Baltic city of Königsberg.  Königsberg is now the Russian city of Kaliningrad, in the Russian enclave of that name between Poland and Lithuania.  In Kant’s time, the city was the major centre of East Prussia, that is the most eastern lands of the Germanic Kingdom of Prussia which was ruled from Berlin.  Kant was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Königsberg, and is usually considered one of the greatest philosophers, even the greatest, ever. His work covers all branches of philosophy over many volumes.  His political theory is mostly found in Part One of Metaphysics of Right and in five essays: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, ‘Theory and Practice’, ‘Perpetual Peace’, ‘Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’, ‘The Contest of Faculties’.  Some attention has also been devoted to his theory of art and beauty in Critique of the Power of Judgements, as a way of approach questions of political judgement.  Samuel Fleischacker has made a major contribution to this discussion.  Kant’s most famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason, sets up the idea of reason as connected with the work of law courts which prevent despotism, equivalent to abstract ideas unrestrained by experience, and anarchy, equivalent to unformed sensory stimulation

Kant was deeply effected by the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly David Hume, along with Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and others.  He defined Enlightenment as the capacity to think for yourself and to only accept what is based on experience and reason, rather than on tradition, revelation, or authority.  The appropriate political structure for this is a republic.  For Kant, a republic did not mean a state without a monarchy, it meant a state where governmental power was distinct from legislative power.  Kant argued that it is despotism for one body to have the power to both make laws and implement them.  Ideally laws should be made by a representative assembly elected by all those capable of independent judgment, as the best way of forming laws based of the universal moral laws of rational humanity.  Kant strongly emphasised the rational aspect of humans as the most important aspect, and the aspect which gives us autonomy, that is the capacity to rule ourselves and establish moral principles.

Kant criticised ‘democracy’ as a system where the people make laws and implement them.  He is thinking here of the original meaning of democracy, as a system in which city assemblies of all citizens both make laws and govern the city.  What Kant is partly arguing for is the importance of division of powers, for a political system that allows individual freedom from an over powerful state.

The scope of government is limited for Kant, though less so than in the slightly later  German liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt.  Kant thinks that liberty and prosperity rest on the process Hume and Smith describe, in which economic competition leaders to great prosperity; and that the state should not impede this process.  Government should protect property rights, maintain law and order, and defend national frontiers.  It should also raise taxes from the rich to keep the poorest out of destitution, and raise taxes more generally to provide for orphaned an abandoned children.

Kant opposes all wars of aggression and forcible incorporation of any people into a state.  He refers to a principle of hospitality in international relations, in which we all obliged to respect the stranger visiting our land.  He regards colonialism as an abuse of that hospitality.  Republican states are pacific states according to Kant, which are concerned with the welfare of the population, not dynastic ambitions for more territory and more colonies.  Kant argues that increase in republican governments throughout the world is inevitable.  That is because of the way that competition, between states, leads to agreement on cooperation in order to avoid mutual destruction.  This process should be completed by some kind of global law enforcement agency to preserve peace.  The argument is not for a form of global government, but purely for a body that enforces peace, and the laws that guarantee peace.  Conditions for peace include a ban on standing armies and on national debt, since the latter tends to finance war.  These are issues of what Kant calls international (relations between nations)  and cosmopolitan (universal) right, building on the issues of public right within nations.  The cosmopolitan order is one which is assisted by commerce, a constant factor in the progress that Kant finds in humanity.  Trade and exchange are a power for the increasing recognition of the moral  equality of all individuals, and the recognition of the moral interests of humanity as a whole.

BOOK REVIEW – Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty: An Account of its Argument

• Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty: An Account of its Argument, by Eugene F. Miller
• Institute of Economic Affairs (www.iea.org.uk), 2010
• Get your copy HERE.

Eugene Miller, who sadly died earlier this year, wrote a summary and commentary on Hayek’s book of 1960 where he explained a modern version of classical liberalism in relation to political theory, public policy, law, and history, as well as economic principles.

Together with Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979), The Constitution of Liberty is Hayekʼs fullest presentation of his
version of classical liberalism. It is probably more widely read than the later text, and is one of the key texts in Twentieth Century liberal thought.

It is not a very difficult book to read, but it is long and it does integrate a very wide range of material, so there are strong reasons for publishing an introductory version, with guidance for the reader. Hayekʼs book of over 400 pages is condensed into a summary, together with comments, into less than 200 pages. Miller puts passages into the context of other works by Hayek, and sometimes the history of liberal thought. The reader gets a good idea of the issues in The Constitution of Liberty and the flow of arguments, along with a few ideas about how to interpret and contextualise.

Miller points out that the proposed policies in The Constitution of Liberty will not satisfy the most radical libertarians, though though Hayek’s analysis can be used for more radical ends. Hayek himself did not use the word “libertarian”, because he considered it an artificial substitute for the word liberal; and he did not support the idea of a radical lurch in society of the kind that “libertarianism” might suggest. Hayek regards the state as having a legitimate role, not only in the night watchman functions of law and order, and national security, but also with regard to maintaining the incomes of the poorest, and providing core public services. Hayek emphasised the improved efficiency of government as well as reducing the size of government. The two go tother to some degree, as over-extended government becomes inefficient, but Hayek did not think that smaller meant better in every circumstance. He suggests that the tendency for government to do to much went back to the 1870s, when classical liberalism started giving away to a “progressivist” statism, trying to find, and impose, state solutions for everything.

The reasons that large government is inefficient, and threatens liberty, were explored by Hayek in earlier books and papers on economics, most famously in The Road to Serfdom (1944). What Hayek adds in The Constitution of Liberty in particular is more detail about dysfunctional planning, and an overview of the development of law. As Hayek had already argued, any planning agency has limited information about the economy it is trying to plan, and the consequences of intervention. This problem cannot be solved by more information, as the agency will never match the constantly changing totality of information, that individuals in aggregate have through the price mechanism. Since this mechanism conveys dynamic information about the constantly changing preferences of many individuals, no plan can capture it. Even by 1960, Hayek suggests, state socialism in the sense of the state owning everything in the economy, was an exhausted ideology. However, statism was still growing, and has since, through attempts to improve society from above.

What makes this book most distinct in relation to Hayek’s earlier work, is the emphasis on law. Hayek obtained a doctorate in law before his fame as an economist and political thinker, and here he puts an interest in the history and theory of law to great use. Hayek had developed a strong belief in the benefits of evolutionary law, or law as a discovery procedure, that is law that evolves through judgements in particular cases. Hayek opposed an evolutionary understanding of law, in terms of legal theory, to the major schools of positivism and natural law. According to positivism, law is the system of legal commands issued by the sovereign power; according to natural law, law is the commands deduced from basic natural rights.

Hayek thinks that we know what ‘law’ is from the activity of judges as opposed to the commands of any sovereign body, or any notion of what is right by nature. This gives Hayek a basis for criticism of legislation, which goes beyond what emerges from the independent judicial process. The evolutionary understanding of law led him to highly value the British common law tradition, of law from precedent; and German administrative law before it became absorbed into a centralised state system in the late Nineteenth century. Administrative law comes from the continental European tradition of courts, which evaluate acts of the state machinery, and which clarify, and refine, the principles that underly them. Miller is particularly helpful in providing contextual information on Hayek’s attitude to law, referring to lectures Hayek gave in Cairo in the 1950s; and he explains how Hayek used the trip to Cairo to follow the European travels of John Stuart Mill, a great hero of Hayek’s, particularly in his earlier years.

Through this kind of analysis, historical information, Miller succeeded in providing an ideal introduction to the reading of The Constitution of Liberty, and interpretation of it. Those new to Hayek will find this the perfect introduction to his thought, along with The Road to Serfdom, and The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945). Those already familiar with Hayek will also find it very useful as a thought provoking overview.

Tags: Eugene F. Miller, F. A. Hayek, Institute of Economic Affairs, The Constitution of Liberty

A Liberal Literary Hero: Mario Vargas Llosa wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

Liberal Vision has already celebrated the award of the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, and now we celebrate the award of the literature prize to the liberal Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose great literary achievements have been accompanied by major contributions to  politics, and to political commentary in the Americas and in Spain.  For an overview of his literary achievements go to William Boyd at The Guardian and Marie Arana at The Washington Post.  Neither do justice to Llosa’s political views though, respectively describing Llosa as ‘libertarian right’ and ‘neo-liberal’.  Llosa defines himself as a liberal and criticises the use of the term ‘neo-liberal’.  While ‘libertarian right’ is a less intrinsically insulting term than neo-liberal, why should we call an advocate of progress in general, of secularism, gay marriage, and abortion rights, ‘right-wing’?

Llosa, who has Spanish citizenship, withdrew support from the centre-right Popular Party in Spain in 2007, to support the formation of Union, Progress and Democracy, which drew some of its leaders and activists from the Spanish left.  In any case, Llosa himself has ever adopted a right-wing identity, and that should be respected.  He clearly thinks of liberalism in the sense understood by classical liberals and libertarians, referring approvingly to Adam Smith, Tocqueville, and Mises.

Llosa began as a Communist in politics, but publicly turned against Latin America’s Communist icons Castro and Guevara, after persecution of the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in the early seventies.  In the eighties Llosa became a public advocate of liberal political and economic ideas, culminating in his 1990 campaign for the Presidency of Peru, against the forces of left populism, Marxism, and the emergent authoritarianism of Alberto Fujimori.   Unfortunately Fujimori became President, but Llosa has continued to contribute to public life in Peru.  His resignation, a few weeks ago, from a commission overseeing a museum to commemorate a dirty war against he insurrectionary left, forced the government to drop a law to grant effective amnesty for human rights abuses of that time.

Llosa’s turn from Marxism to liberalism has earned him extraordinary enmity from leftist literati and intelligentsia, who are determined to smear him as supporting right-wing dictatorship and violent United States interventions in Latin America; and as a chauvinistic despiser of indigenous peoples in Latin America.   Llosa’s political writings and his literary creations clearly contradict such claims.  His novel The Feast of the Goat (2000) is a condemnatory portrayal of the right-wing dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.  The novel many consider his best, The War of the End of the World (1981), shows the horror of cruelty and fanaticism from all sources, referring to real events in nineteenth century Brazil.

Not only has Mario Vargas Llosa made a major contribution to liberal thought and culture, his son Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a very notable liberal writer on economics and politics, particularly with regard to Latin America.  More information can be found at The Independent Institute, where his journalistic articles are regularly posted.

Sadly only a small proportion of Mario Vargas Llosa’s political commentary is presently available in English.  There are some quotations below taken from items available online.  Names of  items, with links, are listed below, followed by items discussing Llosa on leading liberal websites.

‘Liberty, I believe, is the greatest contribution of the culture that created the sovereign individual, the owner of rights that other individuals and the state must respect at all times.   The culture that gives liberty an unprecedented and primary role in all realms of life has attained its leading role in science and technology, and has produced an abundance of wealth’ (‘The Children of Columbus’)

‘Globalisation opens up a first-class opportunity for the democratic countries of the world—and especially for the advanced democracies of America and Europe—to contribute to expanding tolerance, pluralism, legality, and liberty’ (‘Global Village or Global Pillage?’)

‘The idea of a world united around a culture of liberty is not a utopia but a beautiful and achievable reality that justifies our efforts’  (‘Liberalism in the New Millennium’)

‘Thus, the liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy. The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal.’ (‘Confessions of a Liberal’)

Links and Texts on Llosa:

• Mario Vargas Llosa (1995) Reason, ‘The Children of Columbus: From Violent Conquest to Common Culture’, LINK
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2001) Reason, ‘Global Village or Global Pillage? Why we must create a universal culture of liberty’, LINK
• A slightly different version of the above can also be found online
  ‘Liberalism in the New Millennium’ in ‘Global Fortune: The stumble and rise of world capitalism’, edited by Ian Vasquez, Cato Institute 2000.
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2005) American Enterprise Institute, ‘Confessions of a Liberal’, LINK
• Michael Valdez Moses, ‘Viva Mario’, Reason, LINK
• Nick Gillespie, ‘Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Prize in Literature  Reason, LINK
• Ian Vasquez on LLosa’s Nobel Prize, Cato@Liberty, LINK
• David Boaz ‘The Politics of Mario Vargas Llosa’, Cato@Liberty, LINK
• Ian Vasquez (2009) on Llosa’s view of Venezuela under Chavez. Cato@Liberty, LINK

Tags: liberal, Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature