{"id":373,"date":"2016-07-08T13:29:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T13:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bohemiantangents.com\/?p=373"},"modified":"2016-07-08T13:29:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T13:29:03","slug":"the-many-faces-of-libertarianism-part-ii-classical-liberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohemiantangents.com\/?p=373","title":{"rendered":"The Many Faces of Libertarianism, Part II: Classical Liberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term “libertarian” has changed meaning over time. Joseph\u00a0D\u00e9jacque, the first self-described libertarian was an anarcho-communist. He lived in the period influenced by the French Revolution and his anarchism meant he was anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical, anti-private-property and anti-state. His philosophy was based on workers being able to cooperate and essentially to govern themselves in a non-hierarchical manner, free of any institutional oppression\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today’s American capitalist libertarians cite a different historical tradition from that of\u00a0D\u00e9jacque to explain their roots. If you talk to a Ron Paul supporter who’s into history you will likely hear about classical liberalism and this is not quite like the liberalism (called “social liberalism”) you’re accustomed to. Classical liberalism is the historical basis of libertarianism as fancied both by Ron Paul as well as Murray Rothbard whom I quoted in Part I who admitted he stole this word from left-wing anarchists.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Classical liberalism developed from the Whigs of Great Britain, who were essentially the first political party, originating from opposition to absolute monarchy, or particularly that of Catholic monarchy. Great Britain had a Civil War in the 1640’s due to the tyranny of King Charles I who was beheaded in 1649 and the Commonwealth headed up by Oliver Cromwell followed, but his regime turned out to be a Puritan Dictatorship of sorts and he slaughtered the Irish because they were Catholics. After 11 years of this unsatisfactory solution to absolute monarchy, many Brits were more than ready to get their “good old fashioned” monarchy back and Charles’ son, Charles II came to the throne in 1660. Problems emerged in 1670 when he entered into the Secret Treaty of Dover,\u00a0an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France.\u00a0Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War\u00a0and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence,\u00a0but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates’s\u00a0\u00a0revelations of a supposed “Popish Plot”\u00a0sparked the Exclusion Crisis\u00a0when it was revealed that Charles’s brother and heir (James, Duke of York)\u00a0was a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig\u00a0and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot\u00a0to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685.<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_II_of_England<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Whigs_%28British_political_party%29<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Whigs’ ideology emerged dominant over that of the Tories following the Glorious Revolution\u00a0of 1688, and was associated with the defense of Parliament, upholding the rule of law and defending landed property.\u00a0The origins of rights were seen as being in an ancient constitution\u00a0which had existed from time immemorial. So now the stage was set for classical liberals who were committed to individualism, liberty and equal rights. They believed these things required a free economy with minimal government interference.\u00a0Central to classical liberal ideology was their interpretation of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government \u00a0and “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, which had been written as a defense of the Glorious Revolution\u00a0of 1688. Although these writings were considered too radical at the time for Britain’s new rulers, they later came to be cited by Whigs, radicals and supporters of the American Revolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The standardbearer of American right-wing capitalist libertarianism, the Mises Institute defines\u00a0“Classical liberalism” as:”the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade” The original designation of classical liberalism was simply “liberalism”. Over time “social liberalism” came into existence and was “associated with wide-ranging\u00a0<\/strong>interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/mises.org\/library\/what-classical-liberalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

One key factor in this was the labor movement and workers wanting more wages and rights to be able to afford their own private property and climb the socio-economic ladder to approach the level of their capitalist “benefactors”. Classical liberalism encompassed the sociological\u00a0concept of society as a complex set of social networks\u2014that individuals were “egoistic, coldly calculating, essentially inert and atomistic”\u00a0and that society was no more than the sum of its individual members. The purpose of government was to protect the citizens from each other as each citizen pursued enlightened self-interest without control or restraint by government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Classical liberals believed that individuals should be free to obtain work from the highest-paying employers, while the profit motive would ensure that products that people desired were produced at prices they would pay. In a free market, both labor and capital would receive the greatest possible reward, while production would be organised efficiently to meet consumer demand.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drawing on selected ideas of Adam Smith,\u00a0classical liberals believed that all individuals are able to equally freely pursue their own economic self-interest, without government direction, serving the common good.\u00a0They were critical of welfare\u00a0as interfering in a free market. They criticized labour’s group rights\u00a0being pursued at the expense of individual rights\u00a0while they accepted big corporations’ rights\u00a0being pursued at the expense of inequality of bargaining power\u00a0noted by Adam Smith.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was not until emergence of social liberalism that child labor\u00a0was forbidden, minimum standards of worker safety\u00a0were introduced, a minimum wage\u00a0and old age pensions were established, and financial institutions regulations with the goal of fighting cyclic depressions, monopolies, and cartels, were introduced. They were met by classical liberalism as an unjust interference of the state.<\/span>\u00a0So called “slim state’ was argued for, instead, serving only the following functions:<\/strong><\/p>\n