Political Theory

The Laffer Curve from the 1920s reflects the truism that a 77 percent tax rate produces the same amount of revenue as a 7 percent tax rate. Once the tax rate exceeds twenty-five percent, less will be collected.

Humans across the globe develop the division of labor. Hunter gatherers had limited association with each other. Languages were many and varied. Division of labor was only within their tribes. Agricultural life allowed many more people to live in settlements and capital could be accumulated for the first time.

Mises’ book, Liberalism, states that liberalism sufficed to change the face of the earth. The term liberal has since been hijacked by social democrats, so they don’t have to use the tainted word socialism. Raico defines liberalism to be civil society, minus the state, running itself within the bounds of private property.

Germany surrendered conditionally in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles. Everybody opposed the treaty, but it was forcibly implemented. Revisionism is necessary to combat state propaganda, e.g. the lie in WWII that FDR was surprised by Pearl Harbor.

It was thought that the ultimate antidote to war was universal democracy. It was not. Spencer defined liberal democracy as an individual free to control the product of his own efforts on the market. Welfare societies could not rationally be termed democracies.

Utopian socialism was a term created by Marx and Lenin to denigrate the enemies of Marx and Lenin. Henri de Saint-Simon’s ideology of the industrial class, opposed to the idling class, inspired and influenced utopian socialism.

Mill played a crucial, but inflated, role in liberalism. Rothbard did not like Mill much. Mill was a disaster on economic freedom and international issues. Mill rejected that workers and capitalists shared interests. Mill was anti-capitalist.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of the prosperity of capitalism, Marxists were forced to rephrase their arguments from material provisions to quality of life. Robert Nozick, a brilliant philosopher of liberty, became a libertarian. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, his main book, dominates debate in political philosophy.

What condition does mankind find itself in? Language, property and production are elements unique to mankind. Humans are social animals. Cooperation is normal. Language permits direct communication. Animals can’t abstract in the way humans can. They can form sounds but not words. Animals cannot make inferences explicitly. Animals do not have what we call self-consciousness (reflection).

Ralph Raico covers classical liberalism’s growth, development and possible future. Liberalism arose in Europe entwined with Christianity. Why Europe? The East lacked the idea of freedom from the state and never established the legal system that could protect wealth. Europe had multiple, decentralized competing powers, not a universal empire.