The following was originally intended as a reply to Mr Gavin Rice’s post ‘On the Inadequacy of Liberty’ but I realised it had become quite long before I had said my peace.
Libertarianism does not have to be about defending individual rights, or freedoms, or paycheques. Rather, it is rendered best to me as a weapon against the might of government. Since we cannot defeat the police force or the Army without creating a chaos out of which a new and mighty government would rise to take their place, we must reign in such governments with limits that take advantage of the legalistic structure with which they deploy their might.
I do not believe, any more, that apologists for modern Liberalism really believe in relativism. Rights-speak often serves as buttery dressing for bitter hedonic calculation, usually made necessary because that calculation is in error. Take, for example, the notion that elective abortions must be legal and state-funded because a woman has a ‘right to choose’. This argument is often given even in reply to the claim that foetuses are humans, whereupon it collapses because we do not entitle anyone else the right to kill in any other situation. Rights-speak here disguises the hedonic calculation that abortion policy makes women happier and spare potential unhappiness to children born into poverty. It is necessary because the claim is in the first instance demonstrably false and in the second uncalculable (happiness units do not average out where they were never gained or lost).
My point there was that the ‘liberalism’ that apologises for modern society and statism is founded in moral intention (the desire to maximise happiness units) and formed in its wonky shape by intuition and cowardice that rail against such an intention (happiness units would be maximised by injecting people with certain hormones for a few years until they die, not by allowing them to live full lives – few but Peter Singer himself would have the balls to bite that bullet). The fact that moral intention can, when misguided or misapplied, lead to destructive policies is why people are so reluctant to use the language of morality when talking politics or economics. Not only do they fear abusing the language. They also, for the most part, share the same ‘moral vision’ and so think it unnecessary.
Benthamite Utilitarianism is not a theory which has won humanity over in the last century or so. It could not. There is no good literature in its defense. Rather, utilitarianism in its most basic form – the belief that the feeling of happiness is what we are supposed to seek with our lives – is a constant temptation offered to human civilisation. Currently, in the vacuum created by the failure of atheism to come up with a coherent account of universal morality, we in secular European countries have reverted to selfish default. We egg our governments on to ‘make’ us feel happy. The men who tend to fill the chambers of these governments have in the most part been produced by the same philosophical, cultural circumstances as ourselves and embrace the task with baton-wielding, needle-jabbing relish.
Mr Rice has below implied that inviting governments to participate in, rather than get out of the way of, helping to create a better society is more effective. I do not agree with him and here is why. He proposes the recapture of virtues to reform and improve our situation. Virtues must, by their nature, be taught by exhortation, encouragement and example. This is the way that Aristotle taught them, that medieval priests taught them and Victorian gentlemen (the few real ones) taught them to the societies in which they lived. Governments have a very different way of enacting their ‘moral visions’. This is not because of which vision it may be, who is in them, or who elected them but because of what governments essentially are: monopolies of force. If you beat a man for ignoring a beggar, you will teach him violence, not charity.
Everything governments do stems from what they are. Taxation is carried out by the threat of force and so every action that governments carry out with the revenue raised is carried out by force. Laws are merely a means of teaching morals to people in the way that parents slap their childrens’ wrists when they try to steal. They impose by force the moral beliefs of a governing minority (or at best the original beliefs of electors filtered through that minority) onto their subjects, often remaking subjects’ beliefs in the minority’s ideological image. This problem is extended in proportion to how far the government extends. The messages given to the taxpayer by institutions like the NHS or the National Curriculum include “plastic surgery must be a human right because if I do not pay for someone else’s I will be imprisoned” and “global warming must be true because if I do not pay for it to be taught I will be imprisoned”. I did my best here to think of the least reprehensible of examples I could.
This is one reason why Libertarianism, primarily legal and secondarily fiscal, because money is power, is necessary if we wish to morally reform society. The alternative, where the power of government is utilised to teach people how to be better, is much easier in less democratic and stable societies – one needs only catch the young king’s ear, or have get together some fesity paramilitaries.
In modern Britain, however, it would require still the uphill struggle of moral education required by the civil method of reform, in order to get sufficient candidates and voters to be better than Utilitarians. The large influence of large government on people’s minds would, however, raise the gradient of that uphill struggle tenfold. Even if this mission were completed, I am sure that those very virtues we had wanted the government to inculcate in the populace would be rendered meaningless or destructive as it beat, cajoled and hollered them at Britain.
The key to all of this may be the term ‘moral reform’. It is a double-entendre. I believe that extortion, threat and violence are immoral. These are the tools government uses to bring about reform, the first made possible by the second and finally the third if necessary. How then can a government bring about moral reform? On the contrary, in order to prevent immoral reform we must restrict its ability to use these tools. The goal of Libertarianism is a muzzle on Leviathan.
Tags: libertarianism, morality, society, sovereignty, statism
Gavin, didn’t you say something similar?:
“The state cannot be a moral enforcer, because it will inevitably result in being an immoral enforcer.”
Indeed I did Hugo. However, it is my view that Hugh and I are essentially in agreement: I do not believe that the state is capable of enforcing morality effectively or correctly. Perhaps my article was a little misunderstood: what I was attempting to challenge is the idea that a libertarian society will inevitably be a good one. This is plainly not the case; a libertarian society could be good (if communities and individuals practise the virtues and are willing to talk openly about right and wrong) or it could be awful, if the underlying philosophy of libertarians (i.e. what I term “garden fence” theory) becomes individuals’ approach to life.
In short, big government doesn’t create a good society, but small government won’t necessarily either, since “life, liberty and property” are (I have argued) insufficient. It is the responsibility of people, not the state, to bring about a moral society. The only difference is that with smaller government the state is less likely to be enforcing bad (immoral) things that are damaging to society, and therefore individuals and communities will be freer to pursue moral ends. My challenge was to a liberal ideology of how humans ought to behave, not to the idea of smaller government.