(Talk given in
I should point out from the
outset that I am not going to talk about politics: my brief foray into the
political arena taught me that no party is fully liberal and that most
politicians are more eager to force us into the system they advocate, by dint
of laws and regulations, than to let us live as we wish. This, by the way,
reflects on their part an obvious contempt for the individual, since they do
not consider him capable of behaving properly and in a spirit of solidarity if
he does not conform to their system. However, the reality is quite the
opposite. The individual no longer strives for virtue when all he needs is to apply the
rules to have a clear conscience and he or she feels no needs for mutual
support when the state provides that support instead.
In
You will note in passing
that four of these great thinkers come from
The truth is that liberal
thought enjoys such prestige that it puts in the shade those who wield power.
This is why they give it various derogatory names and are careful not to teach
it in their education system. The result is that there are
many misconceptions about it. My aim is to reestablish the truth by giving
a clear definition of liberalism and by demonstrating the implacable logic that
connects its different concepts.
But if you have liberal
convictions and want to defend them effectively logic is not enough. Most
people are not willing to fight for rational arguments. Lucky if they are willing
to listen to them. On the other hand they are ready to listen to, and even if
necessary to die, for moral principles. I shall therefore attempt to show
that liberalism is not only the most efficient system from an economic point of
view but also the only social system that is morally consistent.
Liberalism is first of
all an individual ethic, then a philosophy of life in society derived from this
ethic and only lastly an economic doctrine that is logically entailed by this
ethic and this philosophy.
This ethic is founded upon
two key concepts :
Individual
responsibility :
being responsible means accepting the consequences of one’s own actions.
It is a principle of learning by trial and error and of self-improvement.
Individual freedom :
These concepts are not independent
from one another. Neither can exist without the other. Indeed one can
only be responsible for one’s actions if one is free to perform them or
not. Conversely if one wishes to respect the freedom of others one must oneself
accept on the consequences of one’s actions.
These two concepts are not
arbitrary either. They are entailed by a universal principle, that of the
preservation of life and the pursuit of happiness.
All the functions of all
living things, from the simplest to the most complex, have only one
objective: self-preservation. It follows therefore that anything that preserves
life is good and anything that threatens it is bad. This for liberals is the
foundation of ethics.
A living thing must obtain
the energy and food needed for it to live and multiply and to protect itself
against outside threats
. It must respond and react
to external conditions (such as heat and cold) or attacks. In plants and the
lower animals, these actions are entirely involuntary and unconscious. In man
the situation is rather more complicated :
Man has a well-developed
brain that enables him to :
This decisive mental
capacity is called REASON.
It is immediately clear that
thanks to his efforts and the use of his reason man can only progress
indefinitely in the pursuit of happiness on two conditions :
If he enjoys freedom man
can create and invent new ways forward.
If he accepts
responsibility he can benefit from his mistakes to progress.
Thus we find again here the
two key principles of liberal thought : Freedom and Responsibility.
Let us now consider the
consequences to be drawn from these two principles :
1. To ensure his survival
man must produce goods that he will be able to consume, store or exchange or
services that he will able to exchange for other goods or services. The person
who is not entitled to the result of his efforts is not certain to be able to
maintain himself as he would wish. The person who produces only for others to
avail themselves of what he produces is a slave. Property acquired by effort
and reason is therefore an essential pre-condition for the exercise of freedom.
The person who produces and
exchanges earns what he has. He gives nor takes nothing that he has not
deserved. He does not expect to be paid for his good looks or his complaints or
for the passive expression of his needs, but for his achievements, for what he
has accomplished.
Conversely, property
acquired by force, theft or deception is in complete contradiction with the
liberal ethic. Perhaps the firmest rule of liberalism is that one must
obtain nothing from others by coercion, but only with their consent.
2. Man produces by dint of
effort and by using his reason. The greater the effort he makes and the more he
uses his reason the better the results will be. This is the only source of
inequality consistent with the liberal ethic.
The corollary is that the
liberal ethic will not tolerate inequality before the law, what its forms may
be : slavery, the caste system, nobiliary titles or privileges.
We shall now see that the
existence of society considerably improves the effectiveness of the individual
in his pursuit of happiness by dint of effort and reason and that conversely
the individual pursuit of happiness by dint of effort and reason produces
extremely positive consequences for society.
Firstly the comparison of
one person’s results with another’s enables progress – providing
that the assessment is not clouded by jealousy. Thus the pursuit of
effectiveness advances ethics.
Next, if he enjoys freedom
man can create and invent new ways forward. In so doing he also enriches
others. The person who only does physical work consumes roughly as much value
as he produces. The person who produces an idea or an invention receives
only an infinitesimal part of the value he has added to the heritage of
humanity and which an unlimited number of people will benefit from.
Lastly, the individual can
obtain goods or services that he cannot or will not produce for himself thanks
to exchange, approved by a contract if the exchange takes place over an
extended period of time. When the exchange is freely consented both parties
find it to their advantage and no third person is harmed.
Thus if no outside
authority intervenes to dictate his/her choices a person can choose the work he
prefers, specialise in that work and succeed in it as far as his will-power
and talent allow. But this success depends on the objective value of this work
for others. When people are free to exchange goods and services it is the
best product and the best judgment that win out in all spheres of human
activity and that raises the standard of living and the quality of mind of all
those who who take part in that activity.
The exchange of goods and
services fosters peaceful relations between people and helps to make these
relations more ethical. For the exchanges to be efficient they must preclude
deception. Exchange of goods and services within fairly complex societies
therefore require a degree of trust.
Unlike kings and feudal
lords in the past or today’s dictators or even the representatives of
governments such as ours, the head of a company acquires nothing by force: he
serves others. He has to satisfy his customers, and he loses all his power once
he is no longer able to provide better services than his rivals. The largest of
companies loses its power and influence from the moment it loses it customers. Profit
goes only to the person who has understood what others want. The same is not true for the activities of the
state since the former are not subject to any penalties.
This has been perfectly
expressed by the great American philosopher and novelist Ayn
«...I work for
nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men
who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at
the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of
theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor they sacrifice theirs to
me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of
every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of
every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and
through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with - the voluntary consent
of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who
work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.
I
shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to
pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to
sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do
I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do what
you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine.
I am earning my own living, as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as
guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to accept as
guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that
my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors and that more men are
willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize
for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money.»
Does this mean that the
liberal acts only out of self-interest ? Not at all, but for him concern for
fellow human beings and solidarity with others are individual virtues that are
exercised directly or via free association. He does not recognise as solidarity
the redistribution by the state of money taken from others.
To meet objectives that go
beyond his own capacities the individual associates freely with other
individuals to constitute associations or societies. These groups can in turn
associate to attain even more ambitious objectives. But the higher order
groups must not take away from the lower order groups (the smallest of
which is the individual) what the latter can do themselves : this is the
famous principle of subsidiarity.
For the liberal the state
itself should be a higher order association to which the lower order
associations may delegate certain powers and certain means, according to the
principle of subsidiarity. But we have always lived in quite the opposite
system, whereby the state has all the levers of power in its hands and only
deigns to delegate small areas of freedom to citizens when the latter wrest it
from the state.
The state poses the
greatest potential danger to the individual because it holds the monopoly of
the use of force against isolated and unarmed victims, and this power attracts
ambitious people like flies. Year after year the reports by Amnesty
International are full of the horrors
perpetrated by states : wars, massacres, displaced populations,
concentration camps, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, torture, famine, persecution
and confiscation of property.
Short of being able to
rebuild institutions according to the principle of subsidiarity, liberals
strive to limit the power of states. It is they who invented the principle of
the separation of power, which is so difficult to put into practice even in our
well-established democracy. It is they who invented the Declaration of the
Rights of Man in 1789 to protect the individual against the state.
But the liberal is aware
that if a person can acquire goods by dint of effort and reason he can also
acquire them at the expense of others. He accepts therefore as the lesser of
two evils an authority whose sole purpose is precisely that of ensuring the
rights of the individual. In practice this means a state limited to only the
so-called regalian functions : justice, the police and national defence,
which implies a diplomatic service. All other functions are better accomplished
by the free association of individuals according to the principle of
subsidiarity.
It is worth remembering
that this vision of a minimal state is that of the founders of American
democracy :
« We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
To sum up, liberalism is a
system which enables the full development of those who use their reason or efforts,
who exchange or associate freely with others, especially to appoint a
government to which they delegate the power to ensure individual rights. In
this system the transfer of goods from one individual to another is not carried
out by decree, redistribution, expropriation, theft, pillage or favouritism but
by voluntary exchange.
In all other systems, a
central power dominates the individual to a greater or lesser extent, and
despoils him in various ways.
Liberalism, unlike all
other political systems, does not allow the one injustice that is truly
unjust : inequality before the law : it is liberals who abolished
slavery, the caste system, nobiliary titles and privileges. On the other hand
it does not consider as immoral inequalities of outcome. Is it not deeply
unfair to give equal reward to the lazy as to those who strive hard? Those who
do whatever they feel like and those who think ? It is because of the
existence of this reward for reason and effort that the societies that apply
the liberal ethic have always been, in every time and place, the most
prosperous societies, as well as the most tolerant, the most open-minded and
the most humane.
Saint-Loubouer, 2000
(Translated
by Michael Glencross)
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