Ideas on Liberty

BY ROBERT G. ANDERSON

AN EXPANDING community of individuals, given adequate time and proper values, will eventually become a civilization. The ultimate structure of these civilizations, however, can never be known because a multitude of forces will interact in their development. There is no way that the process which brought them into existence can ever be identified or evaluated in advance.

In contrast to socialist planners, those who wish to advance a free society clearly understand this point and would not presume to formulate any outcome for a social order. Their knowledge of the freedom philosophy commits them to nurturing those processes necessary for maximizing the freedom of choice for each individual member of society.

A free society, which is based on the moral imperatives of human liberty and private property, is presented as the ideal process for a social order because such a system creates the best arrangement for individuals to pursue their own personal welfare. In recognition of this fact, it is vitally important that methods for advancing a free society be formulated in such a way as to ensure that this objective is achieved.

Friedrich Hayek warned us almost twenty years ago that our primary commitment should be “the defense of our civilization against intellectual error.” In that same address he observed that “. . . we differ not so much on ultimate values, but on the effective means of achieving them.”

The desire to achieve a better quality of life for more people is a universal goal of all individuals of good will. The choice of means by which to achieve this goal is what divides them. Differences in ideas, many of which are founded on “intellectual error,” lead inexorably to radically different methods for accomplishing similar goals.

Modern socialism has been a tragic case in point. The twentieth century has witnessed the implementation of a multitude of socialist intellectual errors. Because of the persistence of the fallacious notion that a better society could be prefabricated by human planners in a socialist mold, this century has witnessed an imposed poverty and human misery on an unprecedented scale. The result is that those who seek a more humane world are no longer able to ignore these failures nor the vast amount of literature which has completely repudiated these socialist ideas.

Yet, the knowledge of socialism’s failures has not opened our minds to the better idea of freedom nor freed us from the fallacies of socialism. Instead, we must now contend with a mutation of socialism, a more “pragmatic” socialism that purportedly incorporates “market” principles into a socialist structure.

A “Pragmatic Socialism”?

Those who would graft such superficial changes on to an otherwise fundamentally flawed system have not repudiated the socialist idea that some individuals should forcibly exercise control over other individuals. We have indeed a very significant threat that this new “pragmatic socialism,” utilizing market-type devices, will replace the failed socialist planning of the past.

This idea of a new “pragmatic socialism” is not originating only among socialist theoreticians. It is gaining much support from proponents of the free market as well. Free market economists who have failed to recognize the importance of safeguarding the moral absolutes of human liberty and private property often propose and welcome interventionist programs in the belief that they can mitigate the greater harm which has been caused by past socialist economic planning.

It is difficult to criticize such behavior by free market proponents. Given that there are only two kinds of government intervention in the economy (bad and worse), their desire to make things less bad by supporting the lesser of two evils is a rather typical reaction. But it does not follow that less bad programs to replace worse programs will ever lead to the free society.

Efforts to ameliorate the harmful effects of socialism by substituting more efficient interventionist programs is a serious mistake in strategy. When such activity violates the philosophical ideal of an unhampered market economy by desecrating private property rights and individual freedom of choice, it is a certainty that those proposals will never lead us to a free society. Instead, such efforts only serve to transform free market economists into “government efficiency experts,” and prolong the harms caused by the socialist planning.

Ludwig von Mises pointed out that the end result of such socialist tampering is to create more government intervention to correct the ill effects of earlier government intervention. The difference today is that we must now witness these past socialist errors being committed by so-called advocates of a free market.

Today, more ominous than ever before, is the ever-present danger resulting from our inability to identify properly our “intellectual error.” That error is the idea that it is appropriate to use government force to modify individual behavior and to politicalize private economic resources. Most important of all is the failure to understand that it is human liberty rather than economic efficiency which is the ultimate goal of the free society.

The importance of protecting human liberty and private property as moral absolutes has not been firmly grasped. The result is that strategies have been formulated which violate either freedom of choice, the property rights of an individual, or both. Such practices are taking us further from the free society and, in the process, creating a greater likelihood that all of us may someday be living in a “pragmatic socialist” society.

The incorporation of privatization policies, market structured allocation devices, or taxation provisions only increases the presence of the state in our lives whenever their adoption compromises human liberty and private property rights. Such government programs do not bring us back to freedom. Rather, they ensure the continuance of socialist ideas by entrenching the state more securely in its sovereign role over society.

Utilizing market-type devices, this modified form of “pragmatic socialism” may possibly realize what pure socialism could never have achieved—a command society with an omnipresent state exercising control over the citizenry. Even more ominous is the possibility that such a social order may survive for a lengthy time because of its use of more efficient market-type devices to strengthen its power over society.

Failing to understand the importance of remaining consistent to the principles of human liberty and private property is one of the most dangerous risks we encounter in our efforts to realize the free society. The temptation to deviate momentarily from the ideal concept of a completely unhampered market economy in order to gain some small victory over socialism is an ever-present danger.

Such temptations are typically attractive because they seem so reasonable. The opportunity for an immediate success often seems worth the price of a slight infringement on human liberty and private property. This is especially true when such proposals attract much public attention and appear to be politically feasible. The consequence of such reasoning, of course, is the eventual demise of the free society.

Advancing a free society requires a strategy which consistently applies the moral absolutes of human liberty and private property to any proposed endeavor. Dr. Paul Poirot never deviated from these ideals in his thirty years as managing editor of The Freeman. Until others fully understand and practice his kind of principled action, the cause of liberty will never be advanced.

Good intentions built on socialist ideas have exacted an awesome toll on our historical process. It is time that we begin to build our future on the ideals of a free society—human liberty and private property. The result will be a life of peace, harmony, and prosperity for all future generations to know and enjoy.

Mr. Anderson is Vice President of Operations at The Foundation for Economic Education.