Libertarianism

A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, libertarianism values and promotes personal liberty and responsibility, small government, and a free-market economy. Libertarianism is also known as classical or 19th-century liberalism. During the 20th century, the “liberal” label was appropriated in the United States, though not in Europe, by those who value personal liberty and a state that intervenes extensively in the economy. Hence, the “libertarian” [Page 738]label was created in 1950 to distinguish between the two ideologies.

Libertarian analysis locates political regimes between statist and libertarian poles according to their size of government. At the statist pole are totalitarian regimes that expand the state to occupy all the social space between the family and the state, abolishing civil society, for example, communism and Nazism. At the other pole, Libertarians would keep the state as small as possible, concerned with defense and law enforcement. Only anarchists would suggest doing away with the state altogether. While conventional political analysis of ideologies considers communism and fascism to be at opposite ends, libertarians consider them to be two heads of the same totalitarian monster.

Libertarians may be divided into a right-wing majority and a left-wing minority. Left-wing libertarians also value individual rights and free association. However, they believe that liberty and small government should result in associations that foster greater economic equality. Right-wing libertarianism is the prevalent interpretation of the philosophy.

Libertarians consider the state to be often the source of social problems rather than their solution. The concentration of power in any single institution is bound to lead, given human nature, to inefficiency, waste, and corruption at best and tyranny at worst. At its totalitarian extreme, the state sets to have complete control of the economy, a command economy, an attempt to run society like an army. Libertarians like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek highlighted the inefficiencies of command economies, the absence of incentives to innovate or work harder, and the absence of a price mechanism that indicates to producers that there is more or less demand through higher or lower prices, respectively. Consequently, command economies are marked by waste, overproduction of what nobody wants, and shortages, underproduction of what people need.

Libertarians construct the political system on the basis of inviolable individual rights. The government cannot violate these rights, even by popular democratic consent, and must protect them against popular intolerance. The right to private property is particularly important for libertarians. Private property guarantees personal independence and creates incentives for long-term planning and care of the property as well as for its optimal economic use.

A free market emerges when independent property owners exchange goods voluntarily. The distribution of ownership that emerges as a result of countless individual transactions is a spontaneous, unplanned order. Universal laws that do not benefit any particular special interest should regulate voluntary interactions between individuals. Some libertarians believe that the best laws emerge spontaneously, for example common law. When laws are planned, imposed from the top down, they are subjected to unforeseen consequences at best and service to special interests at worst.

Historically, libertarian ideas emerged as a result of the economic and political struggles in Europe between the industrious and trading middle classes and the aristocratically controlled central government that attempted to tax them and control their economic activities. John Locke introduced in the late 17th century the theory that the state is founded on a social contract with its citizens that should ensure the protection of their rights, mainly to life, liberty, and property. These ideas influenced many of the founders of the United States, most notably Thomas Jefferson. The Industrial Revolution and the globalization of free trade and migration during the 19th century created, despite colonialism and lingering monarchic regimes in Europe, conditions that resembled the kind of world libertarians would like to live in. The outbreak of World War I led to decline in global trade and the Russian totalitarian revolution. After the war, the introduction of immigration restrictions in the United States further damaged the global economy. The rise of totalitarianism in Russia, Italy, and Germany; the economic Depression of the 1930s; and the ensuing expansion of the state even in democratic countries (the New Deal in America) seemed have sealed the fate of libertarianism.

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