What Is Libertarianism and

Why Is It Important? Part II

 

Philip Vander Elst

      Philip Vander Elst is a British freelance author, journalist and lecturer. For many years he was editor of Freedom Today and has worked on the staff of the Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs. This is the second article in a series of four. These articles are from the pamphlet, “Libertarianism, A Christian Critique,” published by The Christian Institute.

      What can Christians learn from Libertarianism? How much truth is contained in this ideology? A great deal, is again the short answer.

      What is true in Libertarianism are the insights it shares with the great Western classical liberal tradition of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a tradition which also embraces the post-war American Conservative movement and elements within British Conservatism. Of these insights, the first and most important one is religious.

      Individuals, the Bible teaches us, are not only made in the image of God, possessing the gifts of reason, conscience and free will, but are also the objects of God’s love. It therefore follows that individuals are ends in themselves and have God-given rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—to quote the famous phrase from the American Declaration of Independence. This in turn means that the individual does not belong to the State and that all totalitarian political ideologies and systems are therefore immoral and evil.

      Libertarians are not only correct in insisting that we have “natural rights” which no government ought to be allowed to violate; they are also correct in their insistence on the fact that personal liberty is essential to moral growth. Unless we are free to choose between good and evil, right and wrong, we cannot be held responsible for our actions and we cannot learn from our mistakes and grow into better people. It is also true, from a theological point of view, that we cannot enter into a love-relationship with God if our obedience and worship is coerced. That is precisely why God has given us free will, and with it, the ability to think and discover truth. We are not robots to be ordered about by the Church or the State.

      If freedom of conscience is essential to moral and spiritual growth, it is also an essential requirement for the pursuit of knowledge and truth, as Milton argued in defence of the freedom of the press in the 17th century, and John Stuart Mill argued in his famous essay On Liberty in 1859. Unless we are free to compare and discuss ideas, and to pursue different avenues of inquiry, we cannot grow in our understanding of life, society, and the world in which we live. This is especially important in religion, politics, and science. The more controversial the issue, the more wide-ranging its implications, the more we need to be free to listen to different points of view and form our own opinions. That is why it is essential that political correctness should not be allowed to reduce the ideological space within which it is permitted to debate homosexuality, Islam, the theory of evolution, or any other contemporary ideological “hot potato.”

      The great traditional arguments in defence of “civil liberties” are extremely compelling and need to be rediscovered and restated in every generation, but does the same apply to private property rights and economic freedom?

      Undoubtedly. In the first place, individuals have a right (though not an absolute one) to the product of their labour, especially if that labour has brought into existence resources or benefits which did not previously exist. Secondly, it does not take a genius to realise that private property rights and the right to a free choice of occupation and employment are essential conditions of productive achievement. Without them, personal thrift, creativity and effort are stillborn, and general poverty results, as has been demonstrated in every age and culture, particularly in 20th century socialist countries. But even more important is the fact that the existence of private property and economic freedom is essential to the maintenance of a free society, since power is then diffused throughout society rather than being concentrated in the State. To quote Trotsky’s famous and rueful verdict on Soviet Communism in the 1930s: “In a society in which the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.”

      If the “positive” case for liberty is a powerful one, the “negative” case is even more conclusive, and is similarly rooted in the inherent nature of human beings. Not only does liberty give us the “space” we need for personal growth and fulfilment; it also offers some protection against evil by limiting the extent to which we can harm each other.

      Here we hit upon a vital truth which Christians, above all others, ought to appreciate, but have all too often forgotten. It is this: since human nature is inherently flawed and imperfect, as we know from our personal lives and are reminded by every news bulletin, power always has a tendency to corrupt unless it is strictly limited and controlled. Even the most benevolent rulers may turn into tyrants if their good intentions are thwarted or their appetites aroused by the temptations of office. It follows from this, that one of the primary functions of any political system, is to create a framework of checks and balances which will prevent governments from oppressing their own citizens. It also suggests that people must not automatically assume that State intervention or regulation is the best answer to every social problem. Politicians and officials are not inherently more virtuous or intelligent than the rest of us, nor are public sector bodies or collective institutions immune to the temptation to pursue their own selfish interests. These truths, moreover, apply to democracies as well as autocracies, since majorities are as likely to elect dictators and oppress minorities as anyone else. The German Jews discovered this in the 1930s, as have many tribes in post-colonial Africa.

     For all these reasons, Libertarians are right to be inherently suspicious of the State, particularly when one examines the record of the State throughout history. As the evidence of centuries demonstrates, in different countries and across different cultures, the chief cause of oppression, poverty, and war has always been tyrannical government. Again and again, it has been the desire of flawed and fallen human beings for power, prestige and pleasure, which has been the chief motive of ruling elites. Hence the recurring pattern throughout history of armed conflict, civil war, oppressive taxation, corruption, injustice, plunder and persecution. Hence, too, the significant fact that the growth of liberty and humanitarianism has been directly linked to the success of particular societies in curbing the power of the State.

      If anyone doubts the truth of this general thesis they should read the seminal work in this field by an American political scientist, Professor R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii. According to the detailed and exhaustive statistical studies incorporated in his recent books, Death by Government and Power Kills (Transaction Publishers), 133 million people were killed in internal repression by tyrannical governments between 30 B.C. and 1900, compared with over 40 million deaths in war over the same period. In the twentieth century, the age of Communism, Fascism and revolutionary socialism in the Third World, the murderous record of the overmighty State has been even more terrible. Between 1900 and 1987, 170 million people were killed by their own governments, more than four times the total number killed in all the wars of that period.

      History not only teaches the lesson that power corrupts and government should be limited; it also teaches that this lesson applies to the Church as much as the State. Whilst the Church acted as “the conscience of kings” and a check on secular rulers during most of the Middle Ages, it often abused power in its own domain and it did not respect freedom of conscience or allow dissent except within very narrow limits. In the 16th and 17th centuries, after the explosion of the Reformation and the fragmentation of Christendom, some Catholics and some Protestants used the power of the State to persecute each other with great cruelty, a pattern of intolerant behaviour which lasted in many parts of Europe well into the 19th century.     Ω