Tag Archives: montesquieu

O.P. Recommends: The Many Deaths of Liberalism, by Daniel Cole and Aurelian Craiutu

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‘The Liberal Deviseth Liberal Things,’ memorial at St Bernard’s Well on the Water of Leith

I read an excellent essay this morning on the nature, history, and purported death struggles of liberalism. It clarified many things for me, reminded me of others, and provided a renewed sense of hope and strength in what I believe is a treacherous political period, especially in my home country.

Here are a few excerpts to pique your interest:

“…[T]he meaning of ‘liberalism’ has always been ambiguous. As Montesquieu noted nearly 300 years ago: ‘No word has received more different significations and has struck minds in so many ways as has liberty.’ The same might be said about its close relation, liberalism. According to the legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron writing in 1987, ‘liberalism’ does not describe a unified, coherent political theory but serves as an umbrella for a large family of theories created over the course of several centuries by diverse authors with disparate notions of its meaning, and harbouring no intentions of creating a fully fledged system of governance.

The name ‘liberalism’ has been used to describe systems of governance as distinctive as the French physiocrats’ laissez-faire, the libertarians’ ‘night watchman state’, Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, the law-ordered state of German Ordoliberals, including Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke, and Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’. Today, ‘new’ liberals criticise ‘neoliberalism’ as a cause of increasing inequality and declining social mobility. At the same time, ‘classical’ liberals denounce the excesses of the social welfare state for its encroachments on individual liberty and the state-dependency it creates.”

– and –

“…[L]iberalism creates a big tent for many different conceptions of the ‘good life’, in accordance with its commitment to individual choice. Some have seen this feature as a weakness of liberalism. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset could not have disagreed more. Writing at a moment when liberalism’s death was being widely proclaimed in the Western world, he argued in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) that liberalism should best be defined as ‘the supreme form of generosity’. In liberal regimes, he argued, the majority, which has power on its side, concedes to weaker minorities the right to live on their own terms, thus announcing the determination to share existence with – and respect those – who have a different view of the good society.

That such ‘generosity’ can be a source of real strength is attested by liberalism’s real successes. Late in his life, Popper, a self-described liberal ‘optimist’, named several liberal achievements as undeniable facts. At no other time, and nowhere else, he pointed out in 1986, have human beings been more valued, as individuals, than in liberal societies: ‘Never before have their human rights, and their human dignity, been so respected, and never before have so many been ready to bring great sacrifices for others, especially for those less fortunate than themselves.’

Popper was no Dr Pangloss. He did not believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Nor did he overlook social problems that persist in liberal societies. But he appreciated that modern liberal societies are the best political systems we fallible humans have managed to create. He believed that such societies create the best conditions for individual development and social improvement”

– and –

“Success itself is a highly ambiguous and contingent concept. It would be inappropriate for the members of a liberal society ever to expect more than a partial success. Given what Immanuel Kant in 1784 called the ‘crooked timber of humanity’, liberalism’s ambitions and hopes will always exceed its actual achievements. Moreover, liberal democratic societies remain congenitally unstable and imperfect, in part because of liberalism’s conflicting demands for both more individual autonomy and greater equality. Because of that inherent tension, liberalism carries the seeds of its own destruction.

At the same time, it might be short-sighted to see liberalism’s alleged failures as anything more than partial and temporary ones. Even if liberalism does not provide a telos or supreme good toward which we should strive, it helps us avoid greater evils, the most salient being cruelty and the fear it inspires. As Ortega y Gasset reminds us, it was no mean accomplishment ‘that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined’ in the course of a long history marked by bloodshed, intolerance and violence.”

– and –

“For all its progress, liberalism is inseparable from the doubts we feel about it. Those doubts should cause us to heed, even celebrate, liberalism’s critics for pointing out its real flaws. Less attention should be paid, however, to the loud prophets of liberalism’s demise, who declare the entire liberal project dead or fatally flawed. To the extent that liberalism is about solving problems, if only incrementally, we must continue to conjecture, experiment and refute hypotheses about the best means of maintaining and improving our coexistence on Earth.blockquote

Declaring the ‘death of liberalism’ might trigger alarm bells in the media and help to sell books. But it will not solve any of the real problems that modern liberal societies confront, including the real threats to liberal values about which nearly everyone cares and agrees.”

I hope you enjoy and are as enlightened by this essay as I am!

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

First Day in Paris Following Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Jefferson

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My first rented room in Paris, France, following Paine, Wollstonecraft, and Jefferson

Sunday, August 9th, 2015

I arrive at Charles De Gaulle airport on Sunday afternoon, fairly well rested for once. Usually, I don’t sleep well on planes, and stumble off the walkway groggy and stupified. This time I slept about two thirds of the way through the 10 1/2 hour flight …not well, mind you, but much better than nothing. I attribute it to the ibuprofen tablets I took shortly before boarding, making the cramped quarters less painful to sleep in: my travel tip of the day! It was great to arrive and feel competent to navigate the trains, find my destination, and go out and start enjoying myself without delay.

At about 6pm, I meet my host Aurelia at 46 Rue Voltaire, a couple blocks down from Oberkampf station, in the 11th Arrondissement. She is sweet and helpful, and a practiced Airbnb-er: she has a series of photos on her iPhone at the ready so she can show me how to navigate the passageways, six flights of stairs, and unmarked doors to reach my mini apartment. The place is tiny, with the loft bed over the desk, the toilet tucked into a cubbyhole beside the shower, and the whole place the size of a small bedroom. On the whole, it suits me just fine, since it’s clean, private, and in a great neighborhood at a cheap price, but being somewhat tall and not used to these close quarters, I whack my head often.

Triomphe de la République, the sculpture at the Place de la Nation

I decide not to dive right in my historical adventures, but to take an aimless walk around instead, to get my bearings, wake up a little more, and re-immerse myself in this city which I last visited seven years ago on honeymoon. Right away, I find myself feeling a little wistful, feels odd to be here without Bryan. He’ll be joining me in a couple of days, so I console myself and head out.

I walk down Boulevard Voltaire in search of something better to eat than airplane food, which takes me awhile: most places are closed (usual in late July to mid-August, as my host informs me), until I get closer to Place de la Nation, which is is getting busier as the night crowd are starting to emerge. I find a boulangerie, where I pick up a butter croissant and another sweet one for tomorrow’s breakfast. I admire the sculpture, then turn up Boulevard Diderot, sit down for an Edelweiss (lightly tart beer), a couple of smokes (an old habit I like to indulge myself in on special occasions) and a little people-watching. It’s a lovely warm evening.

Latin dancers at the Quai St-Bernard along the Seine, Paris, France

I continue on towards the Seine, cross the Pont d’Austerlitz, and walk east along the river. In the park and sculpture garden on Quai St-Bernard, I happen upon masses of people dancing on three dance floors: the first was dedicated to the foxtrot, the other two to Latin dancing. One was huge, must have been well over a hundred people dancing until the sweat was dripping, ringed by crowds of spectators. I dare not join in the dancing: I can’t seem to learn steps to save my life, last time I took a dance class I caught the teacher apologizing to my assigned dance partner, probably for the bruises I pounded into his feet with my own.

The sunset is pink, orange, and gold against the blue sky and above the silver Seine as I pass by Notre Dame.

Gazing at the Île de la Cité from the Left Bank of Paris, France

On the bridge to the Île de la Cité, there was another crowd clapping and cheering for three performers, two on roller skates and one on rollerblades. In turn, they speed-skate up a ramp and over a crossbar set very high in the air, perhaps 15 feet or so.

As I’m reminded constantly on my evening stroll, Paris, like our Washington D.C., has not forgotten its nation’s Revolution. Its heroes and events are memorialized in the names of street after boulevard after avenue, in monument after statue after city square: Rue La Fayette, Place de la Bastille, Place de la Republique. So are its philosophes: along with Voltaire and Diderot, there’s Jean Jacque Rousseau, Montesquieu… even our own Thomas Jefferson is an honorary member of this elite company: his larger-than-life bronze sculpture adorns the Left Bank of the Seine.

Hôtel de Ville, Paris, France, on the right bank of the Seine

Other than some of the street names and monuments, my evening stroll took me by only one site
associated with a subject of my trip: the Hôtel de Ville, which has several connections with the life of Thomas Paine. It’s a very grand building, and looks both lovely and impressive all lit up at night, but it’s not the original building of Paine’s time. That one was burned down in another French revolution in 1871, in the same round of anti-monarchical arsonists that claimed the Tuileries palace and nearly claimed the Louvre.

I walk around the building to see if one of the statues in its many niches was Paine, but I can’t find one. It’s pretty dark out, though; the statues I see whose caption I can see in the half-light are all Frenchmen. However, Paine was a celebrity in France following his publication of Common Sense, which offered a comprehensive philosophical defense for the rightness of the cause for American Revolution, and again when he wrote The Rights of Man. His arguments resonated with many of the French people, who felt themselves chafing under a rigid hierarchical structure and high taxation maintained and imposed by an unchallengeable monarchy, aristocracy, and clergy. So it was at the Hotel de Ville on August 26, 1790 that the Paris Commune voted to make Paine an honorary citizen. When he returned to Paris in September of 1792, he was elected to the French National Convention; no matter that he couldn’t really speak French, one who so eloquently speaks for human freedom and dignity speak to all. So though he might be properly honored by a sculptural portrait here, so far as I can find out, he has none among the niches.

More to come soon: my next day in Paris is entirely dedicated to following in the footsteps of Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Jefferson. Stay tuned!  > Second Day, Part 1
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Sources and inspiration:

Adams, William Howard. The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1997.

Bell, David. ‘5 Myths About the French Revolution‘, New York Post, Jul 9th, 2015.

‘French Revolution.’ Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication:  A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.

Jacobs, Diane. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Owl Books, 2004.

Nelson, Craig. Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006.

Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000

Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1974.

Williamson, Audrey. Thomas Paine: His Life, Work, and Times. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.

Thomas Jefferson Sites, Part 4: Washington, D.C., Second Day

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Fourth day, April 22nd

I wake up a little late, having not gotten much sleep the day before, and spend the morning going through countless photos I’ve snapped so far, jotting down notes, and writing up some of my reflections from the memorial tour on my first day visiting sites in Washington, D.C..

Then, I take the Metro to L’Enfant Plaza station, and walk south towards my first destination.

By the way, DC has a very good subway system: comprehensive, easy to use, clean, and safe. Driving in DC, by contrast, is kind of a drag: the streets and freeways form a big tangled spiderweb, so it’s easy to get lost. As a nearsighted person, I also find the street signs too small, nearly impossible to read when the only one there is located all the way on the opposite side of the intersection, especially when it’s dark or raining.

I’m heading to G Street between 9th and 10th, where a man named Notley Young owned a house that Thomas Jefferson visited in the fall of 1790. Young owned a large plantation which bordered on the Potomac and extended northeast from the river. His land, along with neighboring plantations, was obtained by an act of Congress to build the new capital city on. Jefferson, Secretary of State to President George Washington, was appointed to help with planning out the city, and the 1790 visit was part of the trip to visit landowners in the area in preparation. The first stone formally marking out one of the new capital’s boundary lines was laid the following April, 1791. There’s a promenade parallel to 10th St which, according to a sign I find here, covers the original site of the Young house.

The promenade ends at Benjamin Banneker Park, which overlooks the river and is named for another Jefferson connection.

You know, you could easily play a sort of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game around here, but for this trip, we could change it to, say, Three Degrees of Thomas Jefferson.

In case you hadn’t heard of it, the Kevin Bacon game challenges you to link him to any given movie in the smallest number of steps via the actors who co-starred in them. For example, challenged with the movie Excaliber, you might answer: ‘Gabriel Byrne played Uther Pendragon in Excaliber and he also appeared in The Usual Suspects with Benicio Del Toro; Benicio Del Toro appeared in Things We Lost in the Fire with Halle Berry; Halle Berry appeared in Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks appeared in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon’. (Excalibur being a campy early 1980’s movie, I bet a real movie buff could make the connection much more quickly.)

Similarly, if you took any public landmark associated with any historical person from 1750’s – 1820’s America, you could make the connection with Jefferson using very few links every time, as he had an even longer, more prolific career in public life than Bacon has had as an actor. If I were to follow every Jefferson connection, my trip and my account of it would go on interminably, but since Banneker’s link to Jefferson is an especially interesting and illuminating one, it’s well worth exploring.

This park named for Banneker, by the way, is a rather un-parklike-park, all concrete, with a dry fountain and some sparse-looking trees. I can see there’s some construction work going on around it and it’s still spring; if the trees fill out, the work is done, and the fountain turned back on, it might be very nice. It used to have a good view, I’m sure, but now it’s marred by the freeway.

I had heard of the famous letter Benjamin Banneker once wrote to Thomas Jefferson challenging his views on race; back to that in a moment. What I learn doing further research is what prompted the letter in the first place.

Banneker, a largely self-educated man of impressive mathematical, scientific, mechanical, and other accomplishments, accompanied Major Andrew Ellicott in 1791 to help survey the land in preparation for building Washington DC. Ellicott was working on this project with Jefferson, who, as we discussed, was another of these city planners. Someone at the time noticed, and having read Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, editorialized the story, pointing out the discrepancy between Jefferson’s stated view that black people possessed inferior intelligence, and Banneker’s accomplishments in all manner of skilled and intellectual pursuits.

So Banneker took the opportunity to use this as a teaching moment, writing to Jefferson himself. In the letter, he points out the incongruity between Jefferson’s demanding that Britain give the American colonists their freedom while he’s denying this to his own slaves. While he compliments Jefferson on his past as a champion for the rights of black Americans, he shows the inconsistency between Jefferson’s recent stated views on the innate inferiority of intelligence of black people, and the evidence, that black people can achieve as much as any white person so long as their capacities are nurtured by education. Banneker even offers to send a manuscript of his work written out in his own handwriting, in case Jefferson is distrustful. As a fellow man of science in the age of Enlightenment, he knows that Jefferson can’t just ignore evidence that’s right in front of his eyes.

Jefferson writes a polite and rather evasive response, saying that he’s glad to see that Banneker presents a challenge to ideas of inferiority ‘which have been entertained of’ the intellectual capacities of black people. Notice how he uses the passive voice, as if he wasn’t among those not only ‘entertaining’, but very publicly voicing such ‘doubts’! I think Jefferson responds this way not only because he’s scrupulously polite in most circumstances, but because he knows he has no good response. Most of the arguments Banneker makes regarding the universal longing for freedom, the commonality of the cause between slaves and the colonists, and the evidence that slavery generally equates to enforced ignorance, are the same or similar to arguments Jefferson himself made as a young lawyer and politician, even as he wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Since Jefferson can’t defend himself in this case, he’s silent. (I’ll soon write a piece about Jefferson and slavery, stay tuned.)

I head back, via the promenade, towards the east end of the National Mall, and pass the Capitol Building through the park. The clouds are blowing in, and the predicted rain which leads me to select this day as perfect for my next destination, appears imminent.

As you can see, the Capitol dome is surrounded by scaffolding as it’s being restored. It’s made of cast iron, and in the mid-1800’s, replaced the original one, disproportionately small since the building’s many expansions. The first part of the Capitol Building was finished in 1800, the year the United States government moved to its official new home.

Jefferson and President George Washington held a contest for the design, but none of the original entries won. A later entry by a doctor was approved, and many of Jefferson’s classical design elements, especially those inspired by the Pantheon, were included.

I pass by the Capitol without going in. (Who wants to compete for space with several hundred schoolkids on field trips anyway?)

My main and final destination for the day is the Library of Congress. The LOC is founded on Jefferson’s original library of 6,487 books, purchased by Congress in 1815 from Jefferson at a discount, its original collection having been destroyed by the British during the War of 1812. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: Congress needed a new library, and the idealistic, projects-oriented, often impractical Jefferson needed some debt relief (he was always in debt, he loved to live large).

It’s fitting that the largest private book collection of Jefferson’s time would become the seed collection of what’s now the largest library in the world. As for me, the LOC is my go-to source for published images in the public domain with which to illustrate my essays, as well as material for research.

And oh my goodness: the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, the first and still main building, is one of the most beautiful works of architectural art I’ve ever been in in my life. I might place it next in line to Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, in fact. There may very well be more beautiful buildings than these, and if so, I look forward to visiting them!

The floor and ceiling are covered with intricate mosaics, in lovely shades of rose, soft green, golden maize, gray, and white, of neoclassical decorative elements and the names of great authors and scientists, interspersed with gorgeous neoclassical and Art Nouveau paintings, allegorical and representative, representing moments in history and fields of inquiry.

After my first good, long gaze at the atrium and first floor hallway, a sign caches my eye, and I follow it to an exhibit which features the first published map of the United States.

It was drawn by Abel Buell, and published in 1784. As you can see, the western sides of the states follow lines of latitude past a certain point, and end at the Mississippi River. Much of the land was as yet unsettled by colonists, and not thoroughly explored by non-native people; lines of latitude, then, was a practical way of defining state borders beyond the areas originally colonized.

The gallery at the southwest corner of the second floor is really what I’m looking for, and I head upstairs.

I see a sign at the entrance of the Jefferson gallery announcing a special exhibit. It covers the history leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I’m particularly interested in the history of civil rights movements, so I’m excited to see it.

Among countless fascinating artifacts and the accompanying historical accounts, I’m struck by one which directly relates to the subject of my trip. It’s a contract between Jefferson and James Madison, drawing up the terms of a slave sale. There’s something extra disheartening about the fact that it was drawn up in 1809, after both men had served so many years in public office.

This is a fascinating exhibit with so many significant artifacts, including the anti-lynching flag that used to fly over New York City from the windows of the NAACP office in the 1930’s, each time a new one occurred. Reading simply, ‘A Man Was Lynched Yesterday’, they had to stop hanging it at a certain point or lose their lease. Isn’t that amazing? Make a simple statement of fact, and get kicked out. But then again, think of how Billie Holiday was hounded until she died, persecuted by government officials just for singing ‘Strange Fruit’.

The Jefferson Gallery holds what remains of the original Jefferson collection; about two-thirds of it was lost in a fire in 1851. The LOC is currently rebuilding the original collection, seeking out original copies, in sufficiently good condition, of the same books in the same edition that Jefferson originally collected, if they can be obtained.

The collection is beautifully arranged, in a wide open spiral of shelves walled by glass, in the same order that Jefferson arranged them on his own shelves. Instead of an alphabetical system, he used a system modeled after that of Francis Bacon, organizing them by three broadly defined subject categories. For Bacon, it was ‘Memory’, ‘Reason’, and ‘Imagination’; Jefferson personalized it as ‘History’, ‘Philosophy’, and ‘Fine Arts’. The books are marked with little colored ribbons tucked into them like bookmarks: green means it’s from the original Jefferson collection, gold means it’s recently been purchased to replace the original, and no ribbon means it’s been replaced by a more or less identical book Congress already owned in another collection. There are little book-size boxes too, with the names and descriptions printed on their ‘spines’, of books that have not been located to replace the originals yet. Jefferson was a meticulous, some might say obsessive, record-keeper, so knowing exactly what needs to be replaced is pretty straightforward. Not only did he write down which books he owned, he described them in detail, with notes about their contents, even their measurements!

I love to find connections between the ideas of thinkers I admire, as well as between various theories and historical people and places. So, I search the shelves for books that he would have read, especially by people who have been featured in one of my traveling philosophy series, or will be. I know that Jefferson was very critical of David Hume’s history of England, describing it as too ‘Tory’, but I wonder if he ever read any of Hume’s philosophy, and if so, what he thought of it. (More on this shortly.) I find he owns work by Baruch Spinoza, Condorcet, and Voltaire, along with books on women’s rights, anti-slavery books, and of course, much, much more: the classics, science, philosophy, government, art, you name it. The man, as we’ve discussed before, was well-read.
I pore over the shelves for a good long while, then decide I needed to take a break and look at something purely decorative for a moment again while I walk around. I see a little crowd gathering and think, oh, yes, whatever it is, I’ll look at it too. It turns out it’s the line to get to the balcony that overlooks the Main Reading Room. Great. It was my plan all along to find out more about how I could access the collection and do some research. So I stand in line, get onto the balcony, and see a vaulted, domed library room, the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen. Through thick protective plexiglass.

So I think, well, that’s where I’m going next. I’m here to do research, so research is what I’ll do, and it will be in that beautiful room.

I go back down and ask the lady at the front service desk how I go about this. She looks at me doubtfully, repeats several times that the room is just for doing research, and finally directs me to the Madison Building across the street to sign up. So that’s where I go, and find, as I expected, it’s very like the process of signing up to do research in the National Library of Scotland’s rare books room, takes some time, must have the proper ID, and so on. I go through the process, grab a cub of coffee, and prepare for a lovely and informative evening.

I return to Jefferson Building through the tunnel which shortcuts under the street (there was a little rain falling when I had left it earlier) and turn in all my things, except writing materials, to the coat check.

Guided by what I had discovered in the searchable guide accompanying Jefferson’s collection, I gather up a volume of the annotated complete catalog of the Jefferson collection, a collection of his papers, and his correspondence with Abigail and John Adams. In the catalog, I find more evidence that he had, in fact, owned some of Hume’s essays, but the notation, unusually, is incomplete, so there doesn’t seem to be evidence of which exact essays he read. Then I turn to his letters and find that he wrote to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, in May of 1790: ‘In political oeconomy (sic) I think Smith’s wealth of nations the best book extant. In the science of government Montesquieu’s spirit of laws is generally recommended. It contains indeed a great number of political truths; but also an equal number of political heresies: so the reader must be constantly on his guard. … Locke’s little book on government is perfect as far as it goes. Descending from theory to practice there is no better book than the Federalist. … Several of Hume’s political essays are good also…’ (p. 449) While this isn’t a ringing endorsement, compared with his often harsh criticism of Hume’s History, it’s almost fulsome praise. But however I search in the time I have, I can’t find any mention of whether he read Hume’s philosophical work, or what he thought of it.

So this might, now, be the second most beautiful room I’ve ever been in in my life. (Still doesn’t top Sainte-Chapelle.) I do get some research done, but not as nearly as much as I might considering the amount of time I spend here; I happen to be there on a day the Reading Room is open late, and I stay for a few hours all told. Between my reading, I gaze, marveling and a little drop-jawed, at the loveliness around me, made more intense by my awareness of how vast the records of human inquiry and inventiveness are contained within its walls.

*Listen to the podcast version here or on iTunes.

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Sources and Inspiration:

Benjamin Banneker‘, Africans in America, PBS.org, Letter to Jefferson, and Jefferson’s response‘History of the Library‘, Library of Congress website.

Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Owl Books, 2004.

Jefferson, Thomas. Writings. Compiled by The Library of America, New York: Penguin Books.

Jenkinson, Clay. The Thomas Jefferson Hour. Podcast.

Meacham, Jon. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. New York: Random House, 2012.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Volume 16, 30 November 1789 to 4 July 1790. Ed Julian P. Boyd. 1961 Princeton, New Jersey

Moore, Joseph West. Picturesque Washington: Pen and Pencil Sketches of Its Scenery, History…, 1884.

‘Timeline of Jefferson’s Life‘. Monticello.org. Website of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

‘U.S. Capitol‘, Washington D.C.,  National Park Service website.

‘Washington, D.C.: Sites Associated with Thomas Jefferson’. Monticello.org. Wiki, Thomas Jefferson Foundation. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Washington,_D.C.

Free Market Fundamentalism: A Moral Objection, and What Should Take Its Place

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‘Free market fundamentalism?!? What do you mean by that? Isn’t that a loaded term?’

Well might you ask! And yes, it is a loaded term! I’m sure you’re aware that the phrase, as commonly used, implies a negative attitude towards the idea that strict adherence to free market principles is the best economic path for a society to follow. And it also implies that proponents of a strict laissez-faire economic approach possess a blind faith in the power of the market.

According to this view, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, operating only in a free market, is the only force or principle in the universe that will assure the best overall outcome for both personal liberty and the fair distribution of goods. But if you detect a certain…. skepticism on my part towards belief in that hypothesis, well, you’re right. I think that the term ‘free market fundamentalism’ accurately conveys the sense of an unshakable and all-encompassing belief in free market principles that I want to critique. Devotees of laissez-faire economics are commonly referred to as libertarians here in the US, but I’m not using that term here because it’s too broad for my purpose here: libertarianism also includes very liberal attitudes towards free speech rights, gun ownership, drug use, sex work, and so on. Here, I’m focusing on the economic issues only. In this essay, I’ll be using the acronym FMF to refer both to these common terms for strict free market philosophy (free market fundamentalism) and its proponents (free market fundamentalists), and speaking in general terms; of course, there are individual takes on the specifics of each issue, but I think my summaries of the arguments reflect the beliefs of the average FMF (free market fundamentalist).

Because all economic choices are based primarily on self-interest, so the FMF argument goes, no one will purposefully decide to act against their own self-interests. Even if it’s true that one’s choices result in satisfying only short-term self interests but are harmful over the long term, over time and in the aggregate, these choices with balance each other out in the marketplace. The tendency to make harmful choices will wane and eventually cease when the harm becomes apparent and other choices are observed to be better options. Self-interest will, therefore, inevitably cause people to make better economic decisions over time. There are many parallels between the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market and the biological force of natural selection, as Michael Shermer points out in his The Mind of the Market. (Disclaimer: I haven’t yet read it, and may never get around to it, but I’m familiar with many of the central arguments he makes in the book from his talks and interviews.)

A prime example of people making very harmful decisions on a large scale, based on short-sighted self interests put into practice in a free market, is the Dust Bowl disaster in 1930’s United States. Farmers, en masse, planted high-market-value crops that impoverished the soil and led to widespread erosion problems. These, combined with unusual weather conditions, caused a massive dust storm and drought that caused hundreds of thousands of farms to fail, thousands of people to die from dust pneumonia and other drought- and famine-related illnesses, and millions to become homeless. These people were hard-working and did not lack in that enterprising, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic lauded by the FMF. They also made a rational choice: to make a success of the farm, to achieve the American dream as well as to pay debts necessarily incurred by a self-starting farmer, which do you plant: a crop that will bring in more money, like wheat, or a far less profitable, more sustainable one? Of course, the one that brings in more money! And how much of your land do you plant: just part of it (leaving the rest covered by that prairie grass that kept the topsoil in place, or planted with crops that must be plowed under to repair the soil), or all of it? You can guess which rational, short-sighted self-interest will lead one to choose.

So most farmers chose to forgo the more prudent methods of farming and chose instead to lift themselves out of their current state of debt and poverty by planting wheat. And in the end, this strategy soon proved disastrous to almost everyone’s long-term self-interest, including many prudent farmers who had made wiser choices. This pattern of harmful economic behavior considered in the long term, based on short-sighted self-interest, is endemic in the human species. From casino gambling to trading in high-risk derivatives, from daily eating at fast-food restaurants to choosing ‘natural, alternative’ treatments for usually curable cancer, from choosing great-looking, gas-guzzling, highly polluting cars to instituting a system of health care coverage that’s highly profitable to a few but unobtainable to many, market choices abound that lead to disastrous results for life, health, and financial well-being.

So even though it’s true people sometimes and even often make self-destructive decisions due to short-sighted self-interest, the FMF might point out that the ‘invisible hand’ force of the free market will correct this tendency overall. After all, we haven’t had another Dust Bowl (well, not exactly), and even if we’ve gotten ourselves into similar messes for similar reasons, each episode serves to correct our tendencies to make those particular unwise decisions. So the corrective force of the free market even renders moot recent studies by behavioral economists that indicate that human beings usually make irrational but emotionally satisfying economic decisions. Irrational choices that only negatively effect the individual on a small scale may happen all the time, but in the long run, the tendency to make truly harmful economic decisions will be weeded out by the market equivalent of natural selection. The individual might choose irrationally, but the system overall is rational.

But human beings are not just economic actors who allow our choices to be judged and corrected in the long run by the impartial and heartless forces of nature. We are moral agents: we judge each other’s actions, as well as our own, according to a(n) intuitive and/or written code of conduct, and hold each person accountable, in real time, for acting in accordance with that code. We also consider the potential consequences of our actions and choose to act according to how morally acceptable they are. The code might be a universal one, such as that which requires all human beings to respect each other’s right to freely make decisions for themselves, or it might be a particular one, which specifically prevents a doctor from selling her patients’ private health information to an interested third party. These moral codes make it possible for human beings to live and thrive together in a society, attaining the maximum level of flourishing and personal liberty while limiting the opportunities of others to infringe on these. As moral agents, we are not only driven by such self-interested concerns as satiating our own hunger and thirst, obtaining and defending property, and so on. We are also driven by wider social instincts and concerns, such as helping those in danger or in need, earning the approval of our peers, and improving the future prospects of our children and friends. The latter is often partly driven by self-interest: so the saying goes, we sink or swim together. But much of our human moral character is quite selfless: throughout history (and even pre-history) and in every culture, human beings perform acts of kindness that provide no immediate or foreseeable benefit to ourselves.

Here’s where our roles as ‘rational’, self-interested economic actors and as moral agents conflict. The corrective force of the free market, like biological natural selection, is an amoral force, which doesn’t ‘care’ who flourishes and who does not, who suffers and who does not, who lives or who dies. Human beings, as moral agents, do care about these things, both on a rational and on an emotional level. (I am convinced that the sharp distinction between emotion and reason is artificial and largely misleading, but that’s a topic for another essay. Here, I’ll use this distinction as it’s colloquially used, as two ways of looking at things, one that’s instinctive and one that’s more considered.)

So should humans, as moral beings, leave the weeding out of bad economic decisions mostly or entirely up to the amoral force of the free market? Returning to the example of the bad decision to farm intensively and unsustainably: time and the evidence revealed that these farming practices were harmful and actually against one’s rational self-interest, though the opposite had initially appeared to most to be true. But the harm was revealed by the resulting death of thousands and the financial ruin of millions. Is it morally right, or even acceptable, to allow the chips to fall as they may, so that bad effects (or the morally neutral term ‘inefficiencies’ of economics) end up correcting the whole system on its own? Is this true for everything in the economic sphere, from polluting cars and industries to the health care system in the United States? The corrective force of the free market, like natural selection, needs inefficiencies to correct against, in order to work its magic. But, the moral agent objects, these ‘inefficiencies’ that die out are, all too often, human lives! And I hold that most moral agents, most morally committed human beings, consider death and the risk of death to human persons to be a morally unacceptable result of our choices. And not only do we, as moral, social beings, do and should hold ourselves accountable, we hold each other accountable.

The FMF might allow that this is true, but  while the damage to individual finances, health, and life are regrettable, the corrective force of the free market is a better alternative to any other to ensure the greatest outcome to preserve human life and health. From Stalin and Mao’s communist regimes to Cuba’s socialist system, the FMF says, we’ve proved time and again that laissez-faire may sometimes look bad, but interference is almost always worse. Yet for every one of these cautionary tales of coercive top-down economic systems, there’s another tale of the horrors of laissez-faire: the Dust Bowl famine, the Industrial Revolution’s Manchester and other factory towns where the laboring poor were deformed and died from harsh working conditions and disease, child labor, the factory collapse in Bangladesh and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the exploded fertilizer plant in Texas whose owners ignored regulations…. who’s right?

Well, we can start with the observation that there’s a massive difference between a totalitarian regime ruled by a single unchecked despot who’s more often than not a deranged sociopath (a mentally healthy person is not one who desires unchecked power, I presume I’m in agreement with the public and with mental health professionals on this one) and a representative government whose powers are wisely limited by a bill of rights. I will betray my American prejudices (‘United-Statesian’ is just too clumsy an expression to use, so I apologize to Mexicans and Canadians, I’m not forgetting about you!) and proclaim that I’m a huge, HUGE fan of the checks-and-balances theory of government of Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Madison, in which several branches of government share power and so act as a check on any one person, branch of government, or set of interests holding too much power. But I’m not just a fan because I’m an American, I’m a fan because of how well it works. But it’s evident that a system of checks and balances not only works in government, it works marvelously in a multitude of other domains as well, from the worldwide scientific community to organizations to families to the inner and public life of each individual person. In all of these domains, the conflicting needs and interests are balanced against one another so that no one single interest or factor holds unchecked sway and potentially lead the whole into ruin for lack of a corrective mechanism. For example, the scientific community is rife with individuals who hold conflicting theories, who know disparate facts, and who wish to triumph over their colleagues by formulating the best theory or by cleverly debunking a seemingly established one. Over time, faulty theories are amended or are weeded out as science is ‘kept honest’, its theories constantly put to the test by the growing body of evidence.

The FMF focuses on the marketplace as the overarching system that’s subject to the corrective forces provided by the competition which animates the ‘invisible hand’. I think this is, at least partially, where the mistake lies. What corrects the marketplace itself when it comes to moral concerns? For example, in a free market, a worker’s wages are determined by how easy it is to replace them, according to the principle of supply and demand. As we’ve seen throughout history, the wages of relatively unskilled labor remains very low, since there’s usually a very large supply of it. The result, as it is in most of the world today, is that the people who pick the harvests on which our health and lives depend make very little money, and in fact can often hardly keep food on the table for themselves and their families. In contrast, a computer programmer, which requires a higher level of education and more technical skill, can make a very high salary developing video games or apps, a fun but relatively frivolous pursuit, which all too often encourages a sedentary lifestyle and poor attention span, negatively affecting health. (I’m not hating on video games, which bring joy and relaxation to many, though I have no interest in playing them myself; I’m making the point that they’re luxury items that are often addictive and misused). I think that for most people, other than the most extreme FMF, this is a regrettable result, at the very least. That’s because our morality includes a strong sense of justice and fairness, which indicates that people who do the most difficult and most beneficial jobs should be rewarded more than people who do the less difficult and less essential jobs.

It appears, then, that the market might better be regarded as one of the components of society that needs to be checked by and balanced with others. It needs, for one, to be checked by the essential practical needs of a community, such as a legal system, infrastructure, and defense, which is generally done by government (which, in turn, should be representative of and accountable to the people as a whole). But above all, it’s our moral commitments that should keep the market in its place (for an excellent explanation and defense of this, read Michael Sandel’s ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets‘). The marketplace has proven to be an excellent and efficient institution for bringing goods to the people who want them, providing social mobility, and driving and funding technological innovation. It’s also been a very handy tool for oppressive and greedy institutions and individuals to exploit others, as earlier discussed, even being co-opted for these purposes by tyrannical regimes. I believe that it’s a mixed economy that can provide the best overall results for a society, that provides the most goods for the most people while ensuring that no-one (or as few as possible, realistically) goes without or is oppressed by the unscrupulous. By a mixed economy, I mean one that is free within limits, regulated wisely so as to prevent harm but not enough to stifle trade, and where those goods essential for life are not subject to the vagaries of market forces, but are provided by and for the people as a whole, again, through accountable and representative government. These essential goods, such as water, power, and health care are as essential as any infrastructure of roads or system of laws, and should be re-categorized and treated as such. It makes no more sense to me that a citizen, which enjoys the protections and other benefits of society, can complain about being ‘forced’ to pay taxes for health care that they may or may not use, while not complaining about being ‘forced’ to pay taxes to support the police force that may or may not actually have to catch a burglar in their home, or to pay for a murder trial where they have no relation to the murdered victim. That’s because societal goods, from health care to the criminal justice system, are not only based on the practical needs of individuals within a society. They arise from our moral concerns, which apply to everyone in a society. It’s no less acceptable, I submit, that we let people die because they could afford no health care provider to diagnose and treat their illnesses, than we let people die because they couldn’t pay for private security to protect themselves from armed burglars. That’s because our moral commitments to justice and the value we place on empathy demand that we look out for the welfare of the poor as well as the rich, and that we place on ourselves the public responsibility of relieving the suffering of everyone as best we can.

A general commitment to being a good citizen and a morally worthy human being should replace free market fundamentalism as the driving force behind one’s political and social views. I have no doubt that many who espouse FMF have, in fact, made this commitment and that’s what led to their beliefs. But clinging fiercely to the idea that there’s one and only one chief principle behind the betterment of society is no more defensible than believing there’s one and only one true theory in science, or one and only one branch of government that works. The facts of observation and of history reveal that the market is a force for ill as well as for good, and the morally committed, good citizen relies on the evidence, all of the evidence, to correct and sustain their beliefs and to inform their actions, and welcomes a system of checks and balances to keep them honest and on the right course.