Liberty -- Without Wisdom and Without Virtue
Nicholas Bilitch
[Reprinted from Land & Liberty,
July-August, 1977]
A perennial charge levelled against economic libertarians is that
they are "guilty" of naivete, defined by the Oxford
Dictionary as a condition of being "unsophisticated, or
unconventional, simple or artless". That, incidentally, is the
kindest charge lie many enemies of economic freedom level against us;
the more bellicose antagonist of the free market sees (or wishes
others to see) libertarians as a collection of Gradgrinds straight out
of the pages of Charles Dickens' Hard Times. In this caricature of the
hard-faced capitalist of a legendary laissez-faire society, economic
libertarians are seen as freebooters motivated only by the most narrow
self-interest where greed, avarice, cupidity and mean rapacity allow
for no intrusion of sentiment, emotion and individuality for those on
the make.
An analysis of individuals describing themselves as economic
libertarians would, without doubt, reveal an unhealthy number of such
persons. Many self-styled capitalists are, by their attitudes and
behaviour, among the very worst enemies of freedom. Robbers, thieves,
forgers, counterfeiters and various entrepreneurs of commercial and
business sharp practices are very individualistic people, whose notion
of liberty is characteristically anti-social. However, liberty is no
mere abstraction. It can succeed only where a climate of social and
political responsibility is universally accepted and respected.
Defenders of liberty and freedom must heed the wisdom of Edmund Burke
in recognizing that:
"Men are qualified for civil
liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains
upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is
above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety
of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in
proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the councils of
the wise and the good, in preference to the flattery of knaves."
If Burke's wise observations were true in 1791, how less true are
they today? In my view, they are timeless wisdom which the most
elaborate sophistry cannot render false. The charge that some
libertarians are negligent and guileless is not without substance; as
Burke correctly asserted, "The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." A great many
pseudo-libertarians are apt to dismiss (or play down) the incidence of
mischievous behaviour among false "friends". Do monopolists,
protectionists, along with statists, socialists, communists and
fascists act only from mistaken belief? For the proliferation of evil
there has to be some motive at work, whether deliberate in origin, or
arising out of honest ignorance or just cynical perversity. Protective
tariffs do not just happen; land monopoly is not just an unfortunate
historical accident; industrial and commercial cartels require much
forethought, arrangement and political accommodation.
The pages of history are stained with tyrants and bad men; neither
could have prevailed without the connivance of other men's vanity,
greed and lust for power. An armed individual might hold a family to
ransom. It is stretching credulity to the boundaries of reason to
suggest that, by such slender means, entire nations can be so ruled.
The history of land tenure the world over is the history of the misuse
of authority by governments to confer privileges on the few at the
expense of the many; wise government abolished the iniquitous Corn
Laws and brought free trade to the United Kingdom; weak, perverse and
expedient government reimposed protection at the prompting of narrow
vested interests. Those same interests, now enlarged and of wider
political orientation have, with the ready approval of government,
trades unions and monopoly capitalism, continued to demand the
buttressing of these harmful privileges by ever more protection and
monopoly power, thereby accommodating a growing army of applicants for
a place among the ranks of the favoured.
These trends gather a momentum of their own, taking on board groups
of self-seekers whose narrow interests are nearly always in direct
conflict with the general interest. Both in the U.K. and the U.S.A.,
trades unions and big business espouse the cause of protection as
being in their joint interest -- what Adam Smith called the conspiracy
to defraud the consumer by raising prices against the public in
collusion with governments.
It is the same sad story with land. Planners nearly always favour the
powerful property developer, the large farming interest and the
growing army of bureaucrats. Is it surprising that fraud, corruption
and cynicism are everywhere on the increase?
Protection and land have, in large measure, been at the root of the
long history of crime, corruption, and unsavoury politics which are a
regrettable feature of the 200 years history of the United States.
Here is a large democratic nation founded on the principles of liberty
and equal opportunity, which, from its very inception as a sovereign
state, allowed some of its citizens the right to own slaves, while the
founding fathers wasted little time in carving out massive estates
from the best lands. Its first President, George Washington, was no
laggard in the early carve-up of prime real estate, securing something
like 250,000 acres for his exclusive use. Long before the final breach
with Great Britain, settlers in the New World were busy fencing off
millions of lush acres as private fiefdoms ready to be worked by an
army of African slaves from the west coast of Africa and future
immigrants from Eastern Europe; an unsavoury trade in human beings was
the foundation of many a fortune, and the racial problems it gave rise
to are with us today. That the operation of such a trade required the
active participation of bad men is beyond doubt; that the history of
the slave trade has spawned many a myth (and some dubious history)
does not invalidate the charge that evil and dark forces were at work
over a long period of time. Is it therefore surprising that while the
founding fathers of modern America were drafting the Declaration of
Independence and drawing up the Constitution, the ~ss scrupulous of
their ambitious colleagues were busy serving their own selfish ends?
A recent history of some of the more notorious of America's numerous
scoundrels has been written by a distinguished American journalist,
Nathan Miller. Carrying the apt title The Founding Finaglers,* it is
described by the publishers as "a fascinating history of
corruption in America from Jamestown to Teapot Dome." The tales
of wrongdoing it tells are not new; what it describes has been written
about on many previous occasions. Well-written, informative, it leaves
one with the thought that were it not for the innate decency and
honesty of most Americans, past and present, the U.S.A. would have
been reduced to the level of the many societies where civil government
has become impossible without the aid of the tyrant's lash. It does,
however, go a long way to explain the phenomenon of how a large and
unbelievably wealthy sector of organised crime and villainy manages to
survive in a free and prosperous country. Miller observes how early on
in the history of his country land speculation and land acquisition
was the prime target for personal aggrandisement: ". . . land was
the favourite object of speculation.
" There was ". .
. an insatiable lust for land in colonial America. Such prominent
members of the Revolution generation as George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin, Patrick Henry and Robert Morris were all deeply involved in
land speculation."
Miller's next paragraph concerns the book's most pertinent message: "Concentration
of the lands in fewer and fewer hands directed the covetous eyes of
the land speculators towards the vast unsettled areas west.
The
prospects for clever operators were dazzling. The initial investment
didn't have to be lavish, as the land was not bought (my italics) but
secured from the Crown or the colonial governments for the asking --
as long as one knew who to ask and had greased the way with
well-placed bribes (my italics).
Thus, for the expenditure of
only a few hundred pounds in bribes and a promise of a generous share
of the boodle to interested British and colonial officials, grants
totalling several hundred thousand acres in size were handed out."
Shades of Wigan slag heaps, and the squalid land deals which have
surfaced here in Britain of recent years! The fortunes involved may be
small beer, compared to the enormous fortunes ultimately made in
America; the name of the game is the same. Civic malfeasance can be
profitable where careless (or malign) government operates against the
public interest.
Power is a heady brew which attracts the good and the bad. It can
lead good men astray, their innate vanity unleashing the dark side of
their nature, readily surfacing as the lust for power grows. Conceited
men and women, seeking office to perform good deeds often find
themselves in the company of others who are frequently imbued with
less noble ambitions; lack of courage can often corrupt otherwise good
men into serving interests which they did not deliberately seek, but
whose influence and power they have need of if high office is not to
be denied 'them. It has been said that the ungodly prosper, because
the godly are such damned fools, who allow them to do so. As Burke
said, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they
will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible
struggle."
The lust for power and riches which ~d some of the earlier settlers
in America to covet large areas of colonial territory as their
exclusive domain provided a power base which has inevitably led to
what Miller describes as a prime factor whereby ". . . the
Constitution advanced the interests of the moneyed class while
practically ignoring the rights and wishes of the common man. It
charted the course for the establishment of a business civilisation in
which property in all its myriad forms was to reign supreme."
In contrast to the optimism of his contemporaries (those great
Victorian Liberals), Lord Acton -- a distinguished libertarian in the
best classical tradition ---took a view more sanguine than the one
which regarded as inevitable that good would prevail over evil. He
noted, above all else, that tyranny had a much longer history than
freedom; that regrettably all too often, dark forces had a habit of
extinguishing liberty over long periods of time; that bad men's rule
had prevailed more often than rule of just laws and enlightened
government. This was no mere pessimistic cynicism; rather was it the
realism of a thinker who, because he cherished civilized values and
individual liberty, was under no illusion that both were fragile
values requiring eternal vigilance, necessitating that governments be
given a minimum of power so as to prevent tyrants and evildoers from
effecting their worst. Who among genuine libertarians (not also a
fool) can look back no further than the seventy-six years of the
present century, and then take issue with Acton's assertion that, "the
one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or
rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds by force
or fraud, in carrying elections." Tyrants and evildoers may have
been inspired by what they set out to achieve; they cannot, on that
account, be exonerated from the means, methods, and ends they willed;
neither can they be excused from their association with others, less
inspired, whose sole wish was a share of power, glory and riches,
which it was hoped such associations would readily provide. It is
true, that among the hangers-on and influence pedlars, the sin is
usually no more than one of amorality. "If you can't beat 'em,
join 'em!" In many ways these contemptible creatures are the
greatest menace of all, in that they readily provide tyrants,
corrupters and other evildoers with an army of "volunteers"
who will carry out any depredation on the public domain if the prizes
and rewards offer sufficient temptation.
That free trade, free land and sound money are causes we should be
constantly fighting for, is not in doubt; that selfish and rapacious
forces are working in the Opposite direction is also undeniable --
history testifies to the fact. Libertarians who ignore such truths are
ill-equipped to advance the cause of liberty and justice. In
themselves motives may not be important; however, sound policies, just
measures and libertarian goals remain mere abstractions without the
active involvement of men and women of good will who not only believe
but are, at all times, ready to act honourably to bring about the just
and free society.
The fact that the U.S. Constitution was founded on democratic and
(ostensibly) libertarian principles, did not deter a number of
founding rascals from indulging in the most outrageous finagling. As
Miller so graphically describes: "Even while the new Government
was taking shape, finagling was making an early bow. Congress convened
on March 4, 1789, and had only been in session a few weeks before it
was discovered that some members were already using their position to
line their pockets. To provide funds to meet the immediate
requirements of the Government it had been agreed after a process of
give and take worthy of the Constitutional Convention that a tariff
should be imposed upon imports coming into the country. Yet for some
unexplained reason, final congressional action had been stalled for
some time. No one seemed to know why. William Maclay, a fiercely
democratic senator from Western Pennsylvania began to delve into the
mystery.
Maclay found that the Bill was being obstructed by
some members of Congress who were deeply involved in seaborne
commerce. They hoped to delay final approval of the measure until
their ships had returned safely from current voyages and the cargoes
unloaded into their warehouses-free of duty, of course. The merchants
had already raised the price of goods on hand to cover the duties
which hadn't been paid, but that was the public's worry.
Maclay
noted unhappily in his journal that when a man acted in the double
capacity of both merchant and congress man, 'You will always find the
merchant uppermost'."
In other words, Adam Smith's invisible hand is frequently found, up
to the elbow, raiding the public till; wise legislation should be
concerned to see that it does not happen. Tariffs and protection are
always a temptation for rogues on the make to fleece the public by
suborning governments in the interest of a single class.
It is my personal view that because of its immense size, the land
question was of less importance in corrupting the commercial life of
America than the incidence of graft and political log-rolling which
went into (and still does) the build-up of protection and tariff
legislation in the U.S.A. As in the U.K., land ownership is very
fragmented and fairly widely dispersed. This means that in the market
place competition acts on land prices so as to keep the more
speculative excesses in check. Of course, large fortunes are still
made from real estate; only land-value taxation would curb it. By way
of contrast, tariff lobbies have grown up over the decades into a
major industry, giving rise to cartels, price-fixing and a host of
other commercial malpractices. With the moral and ethical climate it
has produced, it is no wonder 'that the Mafia, and other
well-organised groups of crooks and business miscreants have
flourished, using their ill-gotten gains to bribe politicians,
government officials and the police in pursuit of riches. This
unsavoury trend gathered momentum following the Civil War. The
protectionist mania which grips America from time to time has brought
in its train powerful countervailing forces in the shape of organised
labour who are more concerned in sharing out the loot than in fighting
the entrenched privilege the ensuing commercial bonanza produces. Is
it surprising that these well-organised labour monopolies are riddled
with hard-nosed crooks clamouring for the very protection from which
their legions are the principal victims. The result is that America,
like Britain, is moving more and more down the road which leads to the
socialist corporate state.
In the concluding chapter of Progress and Poverty, Henry George
prophesies that should land reform and free trade not be introduced in
his native land, the ultimate clamour of the "mob" could
well lead to a dictatorship. The political follies which have
characterised the politics since George's day have seen the growth of
the welfare state and social security financed by large government
deficits. In his own country it has reduced cities like New York to
bankruptcy, unbelievable corruption and crime of mind-boggling
dimensions. Further south in Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, democracy
is dead, having been replaced by brutal and repressive dictatorships;
in Cuba, the only difference is that the repressive regime is a
Marxist dictatorship. So alarming has the situation grown in Britain,
that the normally imperturbable Professor Milton Friedman has recently
questioned as to how much longer can it be before freedom and
parliamentary government are brought to an end here. Was he being
unduly alarmist? All the symptoms are there which would give credence
to such a prophesy with public expenditure out of control; inflation
at historically high levels not seen here since Tudor times; taxation
levels not experienced since the time of the Napoleonic era; public
sector employment growing at an alarming rate, with an organisation
comparable with any industrial trade union; crime, corruption,
nepotism and patronage on a scale not seen since the days of the
rotten boroughs of Walpole's premiership. I think the Professor was
right in expressing anxiety for a country he holds in affection, and
for which he has the highest regard and respect.
To echo again the wise words of Burke: "But what is liberty
without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible
evils; for it is folly, vice and madness, without tuition or
restraint."
At the turn of this century
when the protectionist forces were gathering strength under the
banner of Tariff Reform and were being led by a "radical
reformer" and political opportunist, Joseph Chamberlain, a
group of eminent British economists of impeccable classical
learning, sent a letter to the London Times (15 August 1903). In
retrospect, the two sentences from the letter which were most
prophetic when viewed against the contemporary world crisis,
were those where the signatories warned their countrymen that a
return to protection would mean that: "The evil would
probably be a lasting one since experience shows that
protection, when it has once taken root, is likely to extend
beyond the limits at first assigned to it, and is very difficult
to extirpate. There are also to be apprehended those evils other
than material which protection brings in its train, the loss of
purity of politics, the unfair advantage given to those who
wield the powers of jobbery and corruption, unjust distribution
of wealth, and the growth of sinister interests."
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