One of the great heros of American classical liberalism was William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), author of this weekend’s read.
Wikipedia calls him “the leading American advocate of free markets, anti-imperialism, and the gold standard.’
Also:
Sumner opposed the Spanish American War and the subsequent U.S. effort to quell the insurgency in the Philippines. He was a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League which had been formed after the war to oppose the annexation of territories. In his speech “The Conquest of the United States,” he lambasted imperialism as a betrayal of the small government ideals of anti-militarism, the gold standard, and free trade. According to Sumner, imperialism would enthrone a new group of “plutocrats,” or businesspeople who depended on government subsidies and contracts.
But 19th-century classical liberals (with the exception of a few radical liberals in France) were supposed to be minarchists, right? Defenders of the State as a necessary evil.
Well, according to Irving Fisher, a neoclassical economist from the early 20th century and certainly no friend to laissez-faire thought, Sumner told his Yale students the following:
Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.
(From a biography of Fisher by his son, quoted by Mark Thornton in his book on Prohibition — a policy Fisher supported, by the way — and also on Roderick Long’s website, where Fisher is quoted as commenting, ‘That amused his class very much, for he was as far from a revolutionary as you could expect. But I would like to say that if that time comes when there are two great parties, Anarchists and Socialists, then I am a Socialist.’)
