Archive for Christianity
Thinking About Economics: It’s more than just money.
Posted by: |By Edmund Opitz, author of The Libertarian Theology of Freedom and Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies. This article originally appeared in the May 1979 issue of The Freeman.
Man is not simply a spiritual being; he is a spiritual being who feels hunger, needs protection from the cold, and seeks shelter from the elements. In order to feed, house and clothe himself, a person must work. Augmenting his labor with tools and machinery, he converts the raw materials of his natural environment into consumable goods. He learns to cooperate with nature and use her forces to serve his ends. He also learns to cooperate with his fellows, his natural sociability reinforced by the discovery that the division of labor benefits all. "Trade is the great civilizer." There’s an unbroken thread that runs from these primitive beginnings to the complex economic order of our own time: it is the human need to cope with scarcity, to satisfy creaturely needs, to provide for material well-being.
The visible signs of this endeavor are all about us; factories, stores, offices, farms, mines, power plants. These are the locations where work is performed, services rendered, goods exchanged, wages paid, money spent, and so on. This is the economy, and in the free society the economy is not under government control and regulation.
In the free society the law protects life, liberty and property of all men alike, ensuring peaceful conditions within the community. This lays down a framework and a set of rules, enabling people to compete and cooperate as they go about the job of providing for their material well being. When government performs as an impartial umpire who interprets and enforces the agreed upon rules, then the uncoerced economic activities of people display regularity and harmony—as if guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand!
The Capitalistic Economy
In a society where people are free, the economy is referred to as capitalistic. Some prefer the term free enterprise; others like the private enterprise system, or the private property system, or the market economy. Now, of course, no society has ever been one hundred per cent free, which means that we’ve never had a completely free market economy. Some people have always seized and misused political power to rig the market in their favor. Obviously, it is not the market’s fault if some people choose to break the rules.
The appalling thing is that many intellectuals mistake these deviations from free enterprise for free enterprise itself! And so they condemn "capitalism." But the "capitalism" they condemn is actually the failure of certain people to live up to the rules of capitalism–the system of voluntary exchange among uncoerced people. We’re aware of human frailties and shortcomings; we know that it’s easier to preach than to practice, easier to announce a set of ideals than to live up to them. Economic theory provides us with a description of the way an economy would work among a people who exercise individual liberty and practice voluntary association. It is this theory we seek to understand and explain, and it is the deviations from this ideal that we seek to correct.
Every person of good will wants to see other people better off; better fed, better housed, better clothed, and well provided with the amenities. So everyone wants the economic order to function efficiently. But how important is it that the economic order be free from bureaucratic direction and political controls? Does it do any harm if we allow the economic order to be quarterbacked by government? Let’s examine a concrete example to indicate the serious secondary consequences of government control.
In the economic sector of our society there is a multi-billion dollar industry engaged in the production of newspapers, magazines, and journals of opinion. There is also the book trade. Those who publish and distribute the printed word constitute The Press, and one of the important freedoms cherished in our intellectual heritage is Freedom of the Press. The concept is now extended to cover the media—radio and television—where the same principle applies.
Freedom of the Press means simply that the government does not tell editors what to print and what not to print–nor does it dictate to purveyors of television commentary. Some editors print stuff they think will sell. Some editors are men of strong conviction trying to promote a cause they believe in; others are party hacks thumping the tub for some ideological idiocy like communism, or anarchism, or the New Left, or whatever. But not a single editor in the country is out crusading for government censorship of the press; except indirectly!
Editorial Inconsistency
A large number of editors, writers and commentators who demand freedom for themselves in one breath, demand government regulation of business and industry with the next! If, at the urging of The Press, government continues to extend its controls over one business after another, how can anyone believe that government will respect the editorial room as a privileged sanctuary, and keep its hands off that section of business known as The Press? Socialize the economy and The Press becomes a branch of the government bureaucracy, free no longer.
The fact that The Press actively cooperates in its own entrapment makes the end result even more bitter. It is one thing to go down fighting; it is something else to cooperate in your own demise. Political control and regulation of the written and spoken word means excessive influence over the minds and thoughts of people. It means eventually a ministry of Propaganda and Information, and an Office of Censorship.
If you get the impression that I don’t think highly of some of the people involved with The Press, you’d be correct; they are—with notable exceptions—a sorry lot. They, along with their counterparts in the University and in the Church—with notable exceptions—are guilty of that "treason of the intellectuals" denounced by the French writer, Julien Benda, in his 1927 book of that title. The intellectuals’ treason in the modern world, wrote Benda, is to abandon the pursuit of truth and to seek political preferment instead.
Lest you think I am being unduly harsh on some of those who refer to themselves as Intellectuals, I shall quote a few words of C. S. Lewis:
It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by an unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her… It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary; it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.(1)
A Vital Connection
I use The Press to point up the vital relationship between intellectual freedom and economic freedom. Freedom of thought, bound only by the rules of thought itself; freedom of belief, in terms of the mind’s own energy; freedom of utterance, guided by logic and within reason–these spiritual freedoms are of the very essence of our being. When they are threatened directly all of us rush to their defense. My point is that they are threatened indirectly whenever—and to whatever degree—their material and economic support is straitjacketed by government regulations and controls.
The same analysis would apply to the Academy and to the Church. If the government owns the campus and pays the professor’s salary, the teacher becomes a political flunky, no longer free to research, write, and teach according to his best insights and conscience. And when private property is no longer regarded as the sine qua non of a free people, when private property suffers increasing encroachments by government, then church properties, too, become politicized. And, as taxes increase and disposable individual income diminishes, private voluntary funding of churches correspondingly declines and religious programs suffer. Accept economic controls, and what then becomes of Academic Freedom and Freedom of Worship?
In short, freedom is all of a piece; philosophy is not the same as digging a ditch, but socialize the ditch-digger and the philosopher begins to lose some of his freedom. Freedom of the marketplace and liberties of the mind hang together as one depends on the other.
The great philosopher, George Santayana, reflected sadly that, in this life of ours, the things that matter most are at the mercy of the things which matter least. A bullet, a tiny fragment of common lead, can snuff out the life of a great man; a few grains of thyroxin one way or the other can upset the endocrine balance and alter the personality, and so on. But the more we think about this situation and the more instances of this sort we cite, the more obvious it becomes that the things Santayana declared matter least, actually matter a great deal. They are so tied in with the things which matter most that the things which matter most depend on them!
Economic Liberty Paramount
In precisely the same way, economic liberty matters a great deal because every liberty of the mind is joined to freedom of the market, economic freedom. There’s an old proverb to the effect that whoever controls a man’s subsistence has acquired a leverage over the man himself, which impairs his freedom of thought, speech, and worship. The man who cannot claim ownership over the things he produces has no control over the things on which his life depends; he is a slave, by definition. A man who is not allowed to own becomes the property of whoever controls his means of survival, for "a power over a man’s support is a power over his will," wrote Hamilton in The Federalist. Economic planning implies the power to regulate the noneconomic sectors of life.
F. A. Hayek puts it this way in his influential book, The Road to Serfdom: "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."(2)
In a totalitarian country like Russia or China the government acts as a planning board to assign people to jobs and direct the production and distribution of goods. The whole country is, in effect, a gigantic factory. In practice, there is bound to be a lot of leakage—as witness the inevitable black market. But to whatever extent the State does control the economic life of the Russian and Chinese people it directs every other aspect of their lives as well.
The Masses Content to Drift
The masses of people everywhere and at all times are content to drift along with the trend; they pose no problem for the planner. But what happens to the rebels in a planned economy? Suppose you wanted to publish an opposition newspaper in a place like Russia or China. You could not go out and simply buy presses, paper, and a building; you’d have to acquire these from the State. For what purpose? Why, to attack the State! You would have to find workmen willing to risk their necks to work for you; ditto, people to distribute; ditto people willing to be caught buying or reading your paper. A Daily Worker may be published in a capitalist country, but a Daily Capitalist in a communist country is inconceivable!
Or take the orator who wants to protest. Where could he find a platform in a country in which the State owns every stump, street corner, and soap box—not to mention every building?
Suppose you didn’t like your job, where could you go and what could you do? Your job is pretty bad, but it is one notch better than Siberia or starvation, and these are the alternatives. Strike? This is treason against the State, and you’ll be shot. Listen to George Bernard Shaw, defending Socialism, writing in Labor Monthly, October 1921: "Compulsory labor, with death as the final penalty, is the keystone of Socialism." Shaw was a vegetarian because he loved animals; perhaps he was a Socialist because he hated people!
Point One: Economic freedom is important in itself, and it is doubly important because every other freedom is related to it.
To have economic freedom does not, of course, mean that you will be assured the income you think you deserve, nor the job to which you think you may be entitled. Economic freedom does not dispense with the necessity for work. Its only promise is that you may have your pick from among many employment opportunities, or go into business for yourself, and as a bonus the free economy puts a multiplier onto your efforts to enrich you far beyond what the same effort returns you under any alternative system.
Under primitive conditions a family grows its own potatoes, builds its own shelter, shoots its own game, and so on. But we live in a division of labor society where individuals specialize in production and then exchange their surpluses for the surpluses of other people until each person gets what he wants. Most of us work for wages; we produce our specialty, and in return we acquire a pocketful of dollar bills. The dollars are neutral, and thus we can use them to achieve a variety of purposes. We use some of them to satisfy our needs for food, clothing and shelter; we give some to charity; we take a trip; we pay taxes; we go to the theater, and so on. The money we earn is a means we use to satisfy our various ends.
These interlocking events—production, exchange, and consumption—are market phenomena, and the science of economics emerged, as Mises put it, with "the discovery of regularity and sequence in the concatenation of market events."
Economics Concerns the Means to Achieve Human Goals
Economics has often been called a science of means. The economist, speaking as an economist, does not try to instruct people as to the nature and destiny of man, nor does he try to guide them toward the proper human goals. The ends or goals people strive for are, for the economist, part of his given data, and his business is merely to set forth the means by which people may attain their preferences most efficiently and economically. Economics, as Mises says, "is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen." And a "science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends."(3)
When people are free to spend their money as they please, they will often spend it foolishly—I mean other people, of course! As consumers they will demand—and producers will obediently supply—goods that glitter but are shoddy; styles that are tasteless; entertainment that bores; and music that drives us nuts. Nobody ever went broke, H. L. Mencken used to say, by underestimating the taste of the American public. But this, of course, is only half the story. The quality product is available in every line for those who seek it out, and many do. The choices men make in the economic sector will be based upon their scales of values; the market is simply a faithful mirror of ourselves and our choices.
Now, man does not live by bread alone, and no matter how much we might increase the quantity of available material goods, nearly everyone will acknowledge that there is more to life than this. Individual human life has a meaning and purpose which transcends the social order; man is a creature of destiny.
As soon as we begin talking in these terms, of human nature and destiny, we move into the field of religion—the realm of ends. A science of means, like economics, needs to be hitched up with a science of ends, for a means all by itself is meaningless; a means cannot be defined except in terms of the ends or goals to which it is related. The more abundant life is not to be had in terms of more automobiles, more bathtubs, more telephones, and the like. The truly human life operates in a dimension other than the realm of things and means; this other dimension is the domain of religion—using the term in its generic sense. Or, call it your philosophy of life, if you prefer.
If we as a people are squared away in this sector of life—if our value system is in good shape so that we can properly order our priorities—then we’ll be able to take economic and political problems in our stride. On the other hand, if there is widespread confusion about what it means to be a human being, so that people are confused as to the proper end and goal of human life—some seeking power, others wealth, fame, publicity, pleasure or chemically induced euphoria—then our economic and political problems overwhelm us.
If economics is a science of means, that is, a tool, we need some discipline to help us decide how to use that tool. The ancient promise of "seek ye first the Kingdom" means that if we put first things first, then second and third things will drop naturally into their proper places. Our actions will then conform to the laws of our being and we’ll get the other things we want as a sort of bonus.
Point Two: Once we understand that economics is a science of means, we realize that economics cannot stand alone—it needs to be hooked up with a discipline which is concerned with ends, which means religion or philosophy.
There is no easy answer to questions about the ends for which life should be lived, or the goals proper for creatures of our species, but neither is the human race altogether lacking in accumulated wisdom in the matter. Let me offer you a suggestion from Albert Jay Nock. Nock used to speak of "man’s five fundamental social instincts," and he listed them as an instinct of expansion and accumulation, of intellect and knowledge, of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. He then makes the charge that our civilization, especially during the past two centuries, has given free reign only to the instinct of expansion and accumulation, that is, the urge to make money and exert influence; while the other four instincts have been disallowed and perverted. Our culture is lopsided as a result, and some basic drives of human nature are being thwarted.
Let’s move to the next stage of our inquiry and ask: What is the distinguishing feature of a science, and in what sense is economics a science? Adam Smith entitled his great work The Wealth of Nations (1776); one of Mises’ books is entitled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth (1927). It is clearly evident that these works deal with national prosperity, with the overall well-being of a society, with upgrading the general welfare. These are works of economic science, insofar as they lay down the general rules which a society must follow if it would be prosperous.
General Principles
The distinguishing feature of a science, any science, is that it deals with the general laws governing the behavior of particular things. Science is not concerned with particular things, except insofar as some particular thing exemplifies a general principle. When we concentrate on a particular flower, like Tennyson’s "flower in the crannied wall," we move into the realm of art and poetry. Should we want the laws of growth for this species of flower, we consult the science of botany. These books by Smith and Mises lay down the rules a society must conform to if it wants to prosper, they do not tell you as an individual how to make a million in real estate, or a killing in the stock market. This is another subject.
The question before the house in economic inquiry is: "How shall we organize the productive activities of man so that society shall attain maximum prosperity?" And the answer given by economic science is: "Remove every impediment that hampers the market and all the obstructions which prevent it from functioning freely. Turn the market loose and the nation’s wealth will be maximized." The economist, in short, establishes the rules which must be followed if we want a society to be prosperous; but no conceivable elaboration of these rules tells John Doe that he ought to follow them.
Economic science can prescribe for the general prosperity, but it cannot tell John Doe that he ought to obey that prescription. That job can be performed, if at all, by the moralist. The problem here is to bridge the gap between the economist’s prescription for national prosperity and John Doe’s adoption of that prescription as a guide for his personal conduct.
A Science of Means
Economics is a science of means. It abstains from judgments of value and does not tell John Doe what goals he should choose. If you want to persuade John Doe to follow the rules of economics for maximizing the general prosperity you must argue that he has a moral obligation to conform his actions to certain norms already established in his society by the traditional ethical code.
This code extols justice, forbids murder, theft, and covetousness, and culminates in love for God and neighbor. This is old stuff, you say; true, but it’s good stuff! It’s the very stuff we need when constructing a proper framework for economic activity.
The market economy is not something which comes out of nothing. But the market economy emerges naturally whenever certain noneconomic conditions are right. There is a realm of life outside the realm of economic calculation, on which the market economy depends. Let me cite Ludwig Mises again, quoting this time from his great work, Socialism. Mises speaks of beauty, health, and honor, calling them moral goods. Then he writes: "For all such moral goods are goods of the first order. We can value them directly; and therefore have no difficulty in taking them into account, even though they lie outside the sphere of monetary computation." In other words, the market economy is generated and sustained within a larger framework consisting of, among other things, the proper ethical ingredients.
Point Three: The free market will not function in a society where the sense of moral obligation is weak or absent.
Nearly everything on this planet is scarce. There are built-in shortages of almost everything people want. For this reason we need a science of scarcity, and this is economics—a science of scarcity. Goods which are needed but not scarce, such as air, are not economic goods. Air is a free good. Economics deals with things which are in short supply, relative to human demand for them, and this includes most everything we need and use. Our basic situation on this planet is an unbalanced equation with man and his expanding wants on one side, and the world of scanty resources on the other.
Human Wants Insatiable
The human being is a creature of insatiable wants, needs, and desires; but he is placed in an environment where there are but limited means for satisfying those wants, needs, and desires. Unlimited wants on one side of this unbalanced equation; limited means for satisfying them on the other. Now, of course, it is true that no man, nor the human race itself, has an unlimited capacity for food, clothing, shelter, or any other item singly or in combination. But human nature is such that if one want is satisfied the ground is prepared for two others to come forward with their demands. A condition of wantlessness is virtually inconceivable, short of death itself.
What does all this mean? The upshot of all this is that the economic equation will never come out right. It’s insoluble. There’s no way of taking a creature with unlimited wants and satisfying him by any organization or reorganization of limited resources. Something’s got to give, and economic calculation is the human effort to achieve the maximum fulfillment of our needs while avoiding waste.
Let me, at this point, offer you a little parable. This story has to do with a bright boy of five whose mother took him to a toy store and asked the proprietor for a challenging toy for the young man. The owner of the shop brought out an elaborate gadget, loaded with levers, buttons, coils of wire, and many movable parts. The mother examined the complicated piece of apparatus and shook her head. "Jack is a bright boy," she said, "but I fear that he is not old enough for a toy like this."
"Madam," said the proprietor, "this toy has been designed by a panel of psychologists to help the growing child of today adjust to the frustrations of the contemporary world. No matter how he puts it together, it won’t come out right."
Relative Scarcity
Economics is indeed the science of scarcity, but it’s important to realize that the scarcity we are talking about in this context is relative. In the economic sense, there is scarcity at every level of prosperity. Whenever we drive in city traffic, or look vainly for a place to park, we are hardly in a mood to accept the economic truism that automobiles are scarce. But of course they are, relative to our wishes. Who would not want to replace his present car with a Rolls Royce if it were available merely for the asking?
These simple facts make hash of the oft repeated remark that "we have solved the problem of production, and now we must organize politically to redistribute our abundance." Economic production involves engineering and technology, in that men, money, and machines are linked to turn out airplanes, or automobiles, or tractors, or typewriters, or what not. But resources are limited, and the men, money, and machines we employ to turn out airplanes are not available for the production of automobiles, or tractors, or anything else. The dollar you spend for a package of cigars is no longer available to you for a hamburger.
The economic equation can never be solved; to the end of time there will be scarce goods and unfulfilled wants. There will never be a moment when everyone will have all he wants. "Economics," in the words of Wilhelm Roepke, "should be an anti-ideological, anti-utopian, disillusioning science,"(5) and indeed it is. The candid economist is a man who comes before his fellows with the bad news that the human race will never have enough. Organize and reorganize society from now till doomsday and we’ll still be trying to cope with scarcity. This truth does not set well with those who have the perfect solution in hand—and the woods are full of such. No wonder economists are unpopular!
Point Four: Things are scarce, and therefore we need a science of scarcity in order to make the best of an awkward situation.
The modern mind takes the dogma of inevitable progress for granted. Most of our contemporaries assume that day by day, in every way, we are getting better and better, until some day the human race will achieve perfection. The modern mind is passionately utopian, confident that some piece of social machinery, some ideological gadgetry, is about to solve the human equation. Minds fixed in such a cast of thought, minds with this outlook on life, are immune to the truths of economics. The conclusions of economics, in their full significance, are incompatible with the facile notions of automatic human progress which are part of the mental baggage of modern man—including many economists!
I’m not denying that there is genuine progress in certain limited areas of our experience. This year’s color television set certainly gives a better picture than the first set you bought in, say, 1950. The jet planes of today deliver you more rapidly and in better shape than did the old prop jobs—although there’s some truth in the remark of some comedian: "Breakfast in Paris, luncheon in New York, dinner in San Francisco—baggage in Rio de Janeiro!" Automobiles are more luxurious, we have more conveniences around the house, we are better equipped against illness. There is real progress in certain branches of science, technology, and mechanics.
But are the television programs improving year by year? Are the novels of this year so much better than the novels of last year, or last century? Are the playwrights whose offerings we have seen on Broadway this season that much better than Shakespeare? Has the contemporary outpouring of poetry rendered Homer, Dante, Keats and Browning obsolete? Is the latest book on the "new morality" superior to Aristotle’s Ethics?
Are the prevailing economic doctrines of 1979, reflecting the Samuelson text, sounder than those of a generation ago, nourished on Fairchild, Furness and Buck? Are today’s prevailing political doctrines more enlightened than those which elected a Grover Cleveland? Henry Adams in his Education observed that the succession of presidents from Washington, Adams and Jefferson down to Ulysses Grant was enough to disprove the theory of progressive evolution! What would he say if he were able to observe the recent past?
The dogma of inevitable progress does not hold water. Perfect anthills may be within the realm of possibility; but a perfect human society, never! Utopia is a delusion. Man is the kind of a creature for whom complete fulfillment is not possible within history; unlike other organisms, he has a destiny in eternity which takes him beyond biological and social life. This is the world outlook of all serious religion and philosophy. The conclusion of economics—that life holds no perfect solutions—is just what a person who embraces this world view would expect. Economic truths are as acceptable to the religious world view as they are unacceptable to the world view premised on automatic progress into an earthly paradise.
Another Dimension Transcends the Natural Order
If there is another dimension of being which transcends the natural order—the natural order being comprised of the things we can see and touch, weigh and measure—and if man is really a creature of both orders and at home in both, then he has an excellent chance of establishing his earthly priorities in the right sequence. He will not put impossible demands on the economic order, nor will he strive for perfection in the political order. Earth is enough, so he’ll leave heaven where it belongs, beyond the grave! The effort to build a newfangled heaven on earth in countries like Russia and China has resulted in conditions that resemble an old-fashioned hell. Let us strive for a more moderate goal, let us work for a tolerable society —not a perfect one—and we may make it!
Point Five: Economics tells us that the Kingdom of God is beyond history.
Economics is a discipline in its own right, but it has some larger meanings and implications. Its very nature demands a framework in which there are religious and ethical ingredients. Establish these necessary conditions—together with their legal and political corollaries —and within this framework the economic activities of men are self-starting, self-operating, and self-regulating. Given the proper framework, the economy does not have to be made to work; it works by itself, and it pays rich dividends in the form of a free and prosperous commonwealth.
(1) The Abolition of Man, pp. 34-35.
(2) The Road to Serfdom, p. 92.
(3) Human Action, p. 10.
(4) Socialism, p. 116.
(5) A Humane Economy, p. 150.
Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.
Tags: capitalism, Christianity, culture, economics, free market, free society
On the Consistency of Christian Libertarianism
Posted by: |Two weeks ago I wrote an initial post critiquing Joe Carter of the Acton Institute for his ill-conceived criticism of libertarianism, and specifically the idea of libertarianism from a Christian point of view. In this post, I will continue to make the case that Carter simply does not understand libertarianism properly and is woefully misinformed about Christian libertarianism in particular.
Carter curiously wrote in What is a Christian Libertarian? that he does not really understand what it means to be a Christian libertarian. He then proceeds to give five conjectures about how he thinks people use the term. I will not address his types labeled #2 through #5 because they are basically ridiculous and have no semblance at all to what Christian libertarianism is truly about. Those types could be equally applied to any other political philosophy – yes, even his dearly held conservatism – so I do not see it as having much substance worth addressing. (Also, I want to note Jacqueline Otto’s apt response Four Things Christian Libertarians Believe, which I recommend.)
Moreover, he clearly had never heard of LibertarianChristians.com beforehand, nor had he noticed how many hard core libertarians like Lew Rockwell or Tom Woods or Robert Murphy or Ron Paul are also hard core Christians. This leads us to Type #1, which is where he begins to sound sensible, if still relatively unaware of the facts.
Type #1 Those who have developed a consistent philosophy in which libertarianism and Christianity are fully compatible. – Although I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Type 1—and I’m not sure it’s even possible—I believe this is the ideal use of the term.
Just because you haven’t met one doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I am glad he admits that this ought to be the standard for the term.
Of course no one is going to be have a perfectly consistent religio-political worldview. But this should be our goal. And if we find that it’s nearly impossible to resolve the tensions between the two (as with Christian Marxism), then the intellectually respectable choice would be two abandon one or the other.
The trouble with being a Type 1 Christian libertarian is that it appears to limit the types of Christian views you can hold. For instance, I’m not sure it’s possible to be a politically consistent Catholic and politically consistent libertarian since the social doctrines of the Catholic Church are often antithetical to libertarian doctrines. (But I could be wrong.)
Not only could you be wrong to say such, you would be wrong. Again, see how Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods have dealt with this in their writings on Catholic social doctrine, especially Tom Woods’s book The Church and the Market.
The most obvious possibility for integration is a form of Two Kingdoms theology. If I were a libertarian trying to integrate my political views with my faith, that is where I would start.
Kudos to Carter, the background theology of much of what I write about has a lot of similarity to the Two Kingdoms theology.
But that leads me to a primary complaint I have with most libertarians: They often work backwards from a desire or grievance to the development of their core principles. Christians, on the other hand, must start with principles derived from the Bible and/or Christian tradition and work their way forward toward a coherent political philosophy. Again, I may be wrong, but I don’t see how starting from Biblical principles you’d end up with any political philosophy that resembled American-style libertarianism.
From my Protestant point of view, his statement about libertarianism “limiting” the “Christian” views I can hold I find completely silly. Of course it “limits” things, as any more specialized knowledge of the universe will do. If I hold a PhD in a scientific field, it definitely puts a “limit” on the types of pure conjectures about science and the universe that I might glean from Scripture. But so what? The Bible is not a scientific textbook, or an economics textbook. All truth is God’s truth, and I fundamentally believe that whatever truth I come to discover in nature will not contradict my Christian beliefs.
Likewise, an understanding from natural ethics that the State is an inherently immoral institution that requires aggression to operate would obviously preclude me from saying that the Bible mandates statism – that is a limitation. But so what? I can come to the same conclusion directly from Scripture as well.
I can see from the Bible that man has a sinful nature, and even if you put the best people in positions of power they will abuse it and rain havoc upon both the good and the evil. The narrative from Scripture clearly shows that the State is not the Kingdom of God and that the State in fact continually stands against it. The narrative from Scripture clearly mandates an ethical code that is voluntary in nature, not aggressive, and no one is given special privileges of position that exempt them from that ethical code. What is Statism but a philosophy that compels one group of people to follow a special, privileged set of people who claim exemption from certain ethical norms?
Perhaps this is not exactly his point, though. I suppose it is also possible that Carter thinks that by affirming “Christian libertarianism” one must also affirm certain immoral actions that have heretofore been made illegal by the State. Nonetheless, these notions are fallacious as well. I do not have to approve of activity X in any moral sense in order to advocate that activity X should not be punitively punished by the State. Libertarians oppose aggression, even when it is used to thwart non-aggressive behaviors that I find morally reprehensible. I can persuade against, preach against, or write against prostitution, but I will not burn down a whore house or throw them all in prison just because I consider it to be immoral.
I’ll admit that I’m intrigued by the idea of Christian libertarianism. But so far I haven’t seen any strong arguments for the philosophy. For instance, in order to be truly Christian, the Christian libertarian would have to resolve the tension between libertarianism’s focus on the individual rights and Christianity’s emphasis on communal obligations.
Some Christian libertarians attempt to do this, of course, but it is often at the expense of their libertarianism. For all its faults, libertarianism is an internally coherent self-contained political ideology. That is one of its chief selling points. Yet when you try to incorporate an alien worldview (such as Christianity) into the system it waters down the philosophy and short circuits its internal consistency. The result is that you have a form of libertarianism that is ad hoc and confused.
Again, just because you have not seen any strong arguments does not mean they are non-existent. Please, spend any amount of time on LibertarianChristians.com and you will see plenty of these arguments.
I wonder if he is confusing libertarianism with Ayn Rand and objectivism, which do in many respects advocate a very different kind of lifestyle than a Christian. If so, then once again I would say that Carter is just downright misinformed about libertarianism in general.
Libertarianism does not claim to give a comprehensive philosophy of life, the universe, and everything. It is a political philosophy focusing on the ethics of aggression and government and the value of voluntary interactions, nothing more. Where is libertarianism’s conflict with Christianity when they essentially say the same things? Unless Carter is assuming that libertarians take on a Randian view of selfishness, then this resolves the tension of individual rights and communal obligations. I am not forced to comply with the discipline of the Church, for instance, but I choose to do so. My obligations come from my voluntary assent. It is as simple as that.
However, if by “communal obligations” Carter means something akin to government-provided safety nets and whatnot, then I defy him to justify why the State should be able to force such “obligations” upon people either by Scripture or natural law.
I am not confused in my libertarian philosophy or my Christianity. I have no king but King Jesus, no allegiance but to the Kingdom of God, no desire for violence upon my fellow man, and no better term that can summarize all of it together as succinctly as Christian libertarianism.
Tags: Bible, christian libertarian, christian libertarianism, Christianity, ethics, theology
I will be on the Aaron Barker Program (see the Facebook page too) today at 5 p.m. CST / 6 p.m. EST to talk about Christianity, liberty, and politics. The program is broadcast locally from Cincinnati, OH and streamed live online. Aaron is a member of the Christian libertarian Facebook group and we have become fast friends in the short time I have known him. I am honored to be on his program, and I hope you’ll check it out.
To tune in later today, go to Aaron’s website and look for the “listen live” link on the right hand side.
Tags: christian libertarianism, Christianity, libertarianism, radio, Ron Paul
Debating Christian Libertarianism
Posted by: |I have historically been a fan of the Acton Institute. Their site has been on LCC’s blogroll for quite a long time. Yet they (or at least one particular blogger) seem to be becoming more and more “conservative” rather than sticking with their relatively libertarian roots.
A few weeks ago, Acton blogger Joe Carter wrote Libertarians, Religious Conservatives, and the Myth of Social Neutrality and spoke against what he admittedly called a “grossly simplistic caricature” of libertarianism. His main point was, simply, that the “conservative” position trumps the “libertarian” position because it is more “realistic” about “neutrality” and “bias.” (I use the scare quotes intentionally because I think the terms of the debate are basically a bunch of straw-men set up to be pushed back down, and his “caricature” is truly, grossly, simplistic.) About a week later, Jacqueline Otto responded with Christian Libertarians and the Myth of Legislating Morality, which argued that the Christian libertarian position powerfully answers his objections. Carter then promptly responded more or less by saying there ain’t no such thing as a Christian libertarian because I haven’t seen one. 106 comments later on that post, one could not tell whether he had changed his mind. After Jacqueline’s next followup (Four Things Christian Libertarians Believe), Carter again responded with what amounts to “Sorry, libertarianism and Christianity have irreconcilable differences.”
To be fair, Carter seems like a fine fellow. Overall he is a courteous interlocutor, which is something to be commended. However, he also seems strangely uninformed about what libertarianism actually is, and even less informed about Christian libertarians. In this series of posts I intend to respond to a number of his objections in short form and put forward a consistent Christian libertarian position that answers his primary complaints. That being said, I want to recommend again reading Jacqueline Otto’s response in full, as it is superb.
In this particular post, I want to address his “grossly simplistic caricature” of libertarianism:
Libertarians believe that neutrality between the various spheres of society—and especially between the government and the individual—are both possible and desirable, and so the need for bias toward a certain outcome is not only unnecessary, but contrary to liberty.
Even if this were a true statement, it would be too vague to be operational because of its lack of specific terms. More importantly, this caricature misses the central point of the libertarian creed: the non-aggression principle. Libertarians believe that all aggression (that is, the use of property/person without consent of the owner) is unjustified. There is no “neutrality” of libertarians on institutionalized aggression, we are absolutely against it, and we expect this to be reflected in the law.
We then come to his contrasting statement about “religious conservatives,” which he defines as “political (though not necessarily theological) conservatives whose views are influenced and sustained by religious principles.”
Religious conservatives, in contrast, recognize that such neutrality between individual and social spheres is illusory and that bias is an intractable aspect of human nature.
This is essentially a disguised way of saying that Carter is in favor of aggression in some cases. Such shall be demonstrated in the rest of Carter’s article.
Carter then writes:
If these caricatures are generally applicable (as I believe they mostly are), then it helps to explain how libertarians and conservatives can use language that is similar—if not exactly the same—and yet come to wildly different conclusions.
I do believe there is similar language used, and in fact Carter even admits that this is because conservatives have adopted certain forms of libertarian speech. Of course, I would add that they do this while holding over totalitarian streaks within them and twisting certain conclusions out of such language. This is why it is possible for George W. Bush to wax eloquent on freedom one minute, and then in the next start two massive wars, socialize health care, and consolidate Federal power to an extent that would have made the Caesars cringe in fear.
Carter seems to think that the libertarian is just a stupid conservative. On the contrary, it seems to me to be extremely generous to say that conservatives are massively inconsistent libertarians.
Carter continues:
By placing an overemphasis on individual liberty without an equal accent on individual virtue, the libertarian unwittingly erodes the foundation of order on which her political theory stands. Order is a necessary precondition of liberty and must be maintained from the lowest level of government (the individual conscience) to the highest (the State). The individual conscience is the most basic level of government and it is regulated by virtues. Ordered liberty, in this view, is not an end unto itself but a means by which eudaimonia (happiness or human flourishing) can most effectively be pursued. Liberty is a necessary component of virtue, but it cannot serve as a substitute.
This is another disguised way of saying that although liberty is of value to the conservative/Carter, there is another ulterior motive that will trump any prior commitment to non-aggression. In other words, the conservative is perfectly fine with aggression if committed toward his own virtuous end. This is sounding much more like Objectivism than Christianity to me.
Now this does not mean the Christian libertarian is unconcerned with virtue – we are talking about particular political norms, not our standards of individual, personal morality. I choose not to commit fornication, but I shall not commit aggression against those who do.
Lastly, this paragraph betrays the other major conservative problem – the assumption of government. Carter believes that order precedes liberty, and that this order is established by government. There can be no greater divergence from the libertarian – and Christian libertarian – creed than this. Note in this selection how he indirectly suggests that there must be laws that will require aggression so that order is maintained, and yet there is no justification for it other than the implicit: “there must be order, my kind of order.” True libertarians cannot accept this.
It is through voluntary interaction and peaceable exchange of goods and ideas that order comes into being. As Proudhon said, “Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order.” Until the conservative recognizes this fundamental principle, he is as far away from libertarianism as a neo-liberal.
Tags: christian libertarian, christian libertarianism, Christianity, conservatism, ethics, government, libertarian christian, order
6 Myths Catholics Tell About Libertarians
Posted by: |Norman’s note: This guest post is by Prof. Ryan McMaken. Even though the article is specifically about Catholic Christians, every major point could be applied to Protestants as well. Many thanks to Ryan for giving his blessing to posting his work here!
Catholic libertarians like myself have become accustomed to being lectured by priests, bishops and Catholic pundits about the inherent incompatibility of Catholicism and libertarianism. This assertion, whether presented in writing or as a harangue from the pulpit, is generally accompanied by a set of reliably tried-and-true myths about libertarianism that often demonstrates a poor grasp of what libertarianism even is. Of course, one never encounters a wholesale condemnation of Liberalism or Conservatism, mainly because large numbers of American Catholics generally self-identify as one or the other. Given the relatively small number of libertarians among the faithful however, one can safely denounce it, and neither courage nor erudition is required.
The opposition to libertarianism stems from a handful of myths that are circulated among Catholics about libertarianism.
Myth #1: Libertarians are libertines
It is certainly true that some libertarians are libertines, just as some people who profess to be Catholic are libertines as well. There is certainly nothing in the libertarian philosophy that precludes a person from being a libertine. Libertarianism after all, is a political theory only, and is based on the idea that it is immoral, except in cases of self-defense, to engage in violence against other persons. The state, being an organization that maintains a monopoly on the means of coercion, is based on the use of coercion and is thus inherently violent. To the libertarian then, the cases in which states can act morally must be either constrained to a very small number of situations or must be eliminated entirely.
So, libertarians merely argue that it is not moral for states to fine, imprison, kill persecute or otherwise coerce human beings who wish to behave in immoral ways that do not involve physical violence against others. For example, if a person wishes to smoke a joint, it is not moral for the state to persecute such a person since he or she has not done anything violent.
Mind you, there is nothing to prevent a private voluntary organization, such as a family or church or club or business from discouraging or denouncing such behavior in its members of employees. Indeed, libertarianism argues strongly in favor of private organizations like churches and families and businesses being free to demand whatever behavior they wish from their own members and employees.
This situation, of course, is what has predominated historically in Christendom. Drug laws, for example are an invention of the 20th century. Did Christians walk around high on drugs every day prior to the prohibition of marijuana use in the 1930s? Obviously not. Indeed one could argue that drug use is far more prevalent among Christians now than it was before drugs were made illegal. Saint Thomas Aquinas famously spoke against civil governments attempting to outlaw human vice. His contention that "[a]ccordingly in human government also, those who are in authority rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain evils be incurred," wasn’t a declaration that moral vices like prostitution were morally permissible. It was simply a recognition of the fact that to have the state outlaw a vice was often a cure worse than the disease.
Myth #2: Libertarians hate the poor
Those of us who have been involved in right-wing politics for years have all seen how some people might get this impression. Among Conservative and Republican pundits and activists, who often unconvincingly claim to be in favor of "free markets," one will often hear denunciations of poor people who are presumably lazy, deceptive and foolish. This, apparently, means that poor people and their children "deserve" to be poor.
It is very rare that someone will encounter this attitude with a libertarian who is not just a Conservative pretending to be a libertarian in an attempt to appear more hip.
In fact, a major reason that libertarians are so opposed to state power is that we recognize that the state causes most of the poverty that it later then turns around and claims to be eradicating. The current depression is a perfect example. There are now at least 8-10 million unemployed Americans. The current bust is the result of at least 20 years of economic meddling and wealth destruction encouraged by the government through manipulation of the money supply and through a runaway regulatory state. This has led to the current situation of a stagnant economy and rampant unemployment and underemployment.
As the middle class shrinks and millions descend into poverty, thanks to the state, how can we say that the state’s most vulnerable victims, the poor, "deserve" their present situation?
Libertarians recognize that providing for one’s self and one’s family is a difficult job and that people need to be as free as possible in pursuing those goals. Those people should also have more control of their income and their wealth so that they can provide more fully for their Churches as well. As it is, millions of working Americans give 40-50 percent of their income to fund massive government departments in Washington, DC, endless warfare and the bailouts of billionaires. Meanwhile, the government that we are taxed to fund is causing the poverty we’re told it can fix. The argument that the government is the best way to provide poverty relief is naïve in the extreme. Indeed, when it comes to letting the government be in charge of reducing poverty, one might as well put communists in charge of food production.
Myth #3: Libertarians neglect solidarity
Many libertarian Catholics, like Thomas Woods, have often made the point that libertarian ideals of a just civil government and just economy are well grounded in the subsidiarity principle –the idea that any act of government should be performed at the most local level possible- that has long been favored by Catholic theologians and popes.
Some Catholic pundits, such as Mark Shea, claim that libertarians inflate a concern for subsidiarity at the expense of solidarity. This notion of course, is based on an acceptance of Myths #1 and #2.
This myth can be dispelled in two different ways. First, we can note that libertarianism is not opposed to the success and legality of non-governmental organizations. Secondly, we note that libertarians oppose the organization that has done more to destroy human solidarity than any other organization in human history: the state.
First, there is nothing in libertarianism that makes libertarians opposed to the success and propagation of organizations and bodies on which solidarity is built. These include families, churches, clubs, association, schools, and even labor unions. Libertarians believe that all of these organizations should be free to exist without molestation from the state. For the Catholic libertarian, the most important foundations of society are of course the family and the Church. Under a libertarian regime, these organizations can be freely supported by any person, and he or she may peacefully encourage others to do so as well.
On the other hand, libertarians oppose the state. It is difficult to image just how exactly pro-state Catholics imagine that the state actually promotes solidarity. Does it promote solidarity by sowing class warfare through the stealing from one class to give to another? Is it the crony capitalism that impoverishes the poor for the sake of billionaires? Do the endless wars promote solidarity? Did the dropping of atomic bombs on women and children help solidarity? How about all the famines caused by governments from Ireland to China? Did the mass murder of priests in Mexico during the twenties promote solidarity?
Some Catholics will say, "You libertarians are too extreme. You want to cut back government too much just because some states have been really awful. If we can just vote in the right people, bad things like that won’t happen." In response I have one question: How has that been working out for you?
Myth #4: Libertarians support liberty only because it is in their self-interest
This one is the most easily disproven. Anyone who has been involved in libertarian activism knows that being a libertarian is not exactly a great career move. It is likely to make one unpopular and, if one is lucky, he will merely be considered to be a harmless eccentric by his co-workers and family members. Often, people are not that charitable. Most libertarians support libertarianism because they think it is the right thing to do, and not because there is some kind of expected material benefit. Very few libertarians expect major libertarian victories in the near future anyway.
Although there are real victories, such as the end of global communism in 1989 and the fact that Keynesian economics is now virtually discredited among everyone except government employees and academic economists, no libertarian actually expects to benefit in any meaningful way from the advance of libertarian ideas in his lifetime. For example, a great libertarian victory would be major cuts in military spending and the ending of the government’s many foreign wars. How that would monetarily benefit any libertarian who advocates for such a turn of events is hardly obvious.
Myth #5: Libertarians want to persecute Christianity
There are no doubt some libertarians who wish to persecute Christians, but if those libertarians actually adhere to libertarian principles of not using government power against people, then we don’t have much to fear from them, now do we?
On the other hand, a strong government is one of the most dangerous weapons in the hands of those who seek to persecute the faith (and also in the hands of those who don’t.)
One need not be a historian to notice that Catholicism in the United States has been persecuted to a much smaller extent than in many countries, including many so-called Catholic countries.
This is due in no small part to (quickly-waning) libertarian traditions in the United States regarding how the state interacts with religions. The First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This amendment is born from a tradition that comes to us from many lessons learned over the centuries in both Britain and in the American colonies. The colonials had learned that religious majorities tend to persecute religious minorities, and many of the framers of the Constitution came to the conclusion that the best way to promote Christianity was to leave it alone. Many Catholics have bought into the incorrect contention made by leftists that the establishment clause was the work of secularists, and that the separation of Church and state is somehow detrimental to Churches.
On the contrary, the separation of Church and state in America has been one of the greatest obstacles in the path of those who might have sought to persecute Catholics in what, for most of its history, has been a country imbued with anti-Catholicism.
Why is it, for example, that there have never been anti-clerical purges in the United States as there were in Mexico during the twenties? Why have Catholic women and children never been gunned down specifically for their faith as was the case in Spain during the thirties? Why were attempts at outlawing Catholic schools struck down as illegal? The answer is that there is a tradition in America, when it comes to religion, in which it is believed that the state which governs best, governs least. We call that philosophy a libertarian philosophy.
Unfortunately, in our present age of the unlimited state, the old constraints on the state, even in matters of religion, are breaking down at an increasingly rapid pace.
Not helping matters is the fact that there has long been a pro-state element within the Catholic clergy and hierarchy that has been whooping it up for all types of socialism in the name of poverty-relief.
Recently after decades of naïve pro-government boosterism, the bishops finally figured out that a state that is powerful enough to wage total war and to distribute wealth and regulate on a massive scale, is big enough to persecute and prosecute Catholics who refuse to commit sin in the face of government regulations.
Obviously, such a situation would never come to pass under even a militantly secularist libertarian regime since libertarians would never regulate health care. Catholic doctors, pharmacists and hospitals would be free to govern themselves in line with their Catholic faith.
Myth #6: Libertarians are not pro-life
There is no doubt that libertarians are split as to whether or not abortion should be legal. Since this is an open debate among libertarians, there is no "libertarian position" on the legality of abortion, and any claim that libertarians are "pro-abortion" is simply contrary to the facts.
On the other hand, we can note that libertarians are far less bellicose toward babies that are ex utero than are either Conservatives or Liberals. Both look the other way or actively defend horrific injuries to children in the name of "national defense" or "global democracy." Rare is the Conservative or Liberal who will denounce, for example, the firebombing of Japan as a crime against humanity, in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Japanese women, children, toddlers and infants were burned to death horribly, as can be seen here.
The final document issued by the Second Vatican Council, known as Gaudium et Spes states that "[e]very act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."
Conservatives and Liberals routinely defend this sort of violence against civilians in the name of the war on terror or ridding the world of evil or some other unattainable and impractical utopia, yet it is the libertarians who are supposedly anti-Catholic.
The state is not our friend. Many Catholics oppose libertarians because apparently, some Catholics still cling to notions about government that have never been true, but have contended that states are somehow built on consent and virtue and that they do more good than harm. The reality is much different. Even the most uncorrupted and constrained states sow discord among their people, expropriate massive amounts of wealth to dole out to the politically well-connected, wage wars against civilians, suppress dissent, supplant the family and persecute the religious.
Clearly, this institution that is supposed to bring us so many blessings, is not nearly constrained enough.
The state is fundamentally an institution founded on violence. Saint Augustine once famously compared secular rulers to pirates. According to historian Ralph Raico:
In City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. The Emperor angrily demanded of him, "How dare you molest the seas?" To which the pirate replied, "How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor." St. Augustine thought the pirate’s answer was "elegant and excellent."
Alexander sought to bring civilization and enlightenment to the world. Our own government seeks the same. The times are different, but the outcomes are the same.
Originally posted on LewRockwell.com on January 4, 2012.
Tags: catholicism, christian libertarian, Christianity, ethics, libertarianism, myths
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 