As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.
Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.
Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.
Madison, Hamilton and Jay, Federalist Papers (Madison, Federalist 55), 346.
4.0 New Strategies for a Paradigm Shift (1850 - 1900) - Economising Justice and the Machinery of Legitimation
In a free society, attempts at spurring innovation of the political infrastructure are an important part of the discovery process supported by politics and the state. A formative outcome of political innovation specific to an open-access society is the shift in the relative weight of decisions or policies designated as “just” compared to those categorised as “legitimate.” In traditional, culturally uniform societies with little value diversity, the minutest details of life may be regulated in terms of being “just” or “unjust.” In a complex and populous society that grants considerable personal autonomy, there is a need to economise on absolute judgements. Justice as an absolute value becomes reserved to authenticate fundamental requirements of coexistence, the constitutive rules of the game. Many other contentious issues are processed by the political infrastructure to classify them as “legitimate” or “not legitimate.” Once a policy proposal has passed the various tests of legitimacy it may still not be regarded as “just” by sizeable numbers of players, but it will be tolerated as “legitimate,” i.e. legitimately arrived at. For instance, legislation concerning abortion may be countenanced as “legitimate” by the same people who view it as “unjust.” The political construct of legitimacy provides a peaceable diversion around a deadly battlefield where absolute concepts of justice collide unforgivingly. Again, we encounter a case of repeated games helping to transcend rational impasses by showing promise to improve the odds for mutually advantageous long-term conditions of coexistence. It is for this reason that the machinery of legitimation figures as a prime target for political innovation in a free society.
When by the mid-1800s restrictionist interest groups found themselves cut off from effective political support by the dominant parties, and emerging third parties congenial to their cause foundered, they poured energy into developing innovative ways to influence the machinery of legitimation. By (1) aligning themselves with trendy intellectual developments favourable to their cause and (2) pioneering extra-party and non-electoral forms of political influence they came close to bringing about a shift of paradigm in the public outlook on immigration.
As for intellectual developments, one needs to bear in mind that for many people it used to be second nature to think of certain other humans in racial, quasi-racial or otherwise discriminatory terms. The inviting attitude in regard to immigration was largely a form of favourable racial discrimination confined to males hailing from the Northwest of Europe. At the time, the Darwinian revolution was acquiring new guises in the social sciences, some influential variants of which would lend the dignity of science to blatantly racist taxonomies. Eugenics, founded by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, was beginning to gain popular credibility and scientific respect.
“In an outpouring of scholarly articles published during the 1890s, several of the countries most respected intellectuals fundamentally recast the American immigration debate.” (p.77) The new paradigm spawned a multi-variant arsenal of reasons for excluding aliens, such as differentiating between old immigrants, needful at the time and of hardy stock, and new immigrants, depraved, effeminate and unneeded in the face of an allegedly lessened demand of unskilled labour.
The movement was spearheaded by the Immigration Restriction league (IRL), an organisation founded by Harvard alumni fearing for their political and economic clout, and drawing support “from the ranks of upper-class academics, businessmen, politicians, and various professionals who saw themselves as the last line of defence for Anglo-Saxon traditions.” (p.76)
Taking skilfully advantage of (1) the newly acquired scientific semblance of discriminatory theories, and (2) frustration with corruption in politics, the IRL also pioneered new ways to benefit from (3) the growth of the federal state and the increased bureaucratic complexity of government.
Aware of the expansion of congressional administrative tasks and tools, protagonists of the IRL realised that the new standing congressional committees resembled what Woodrow Wilson was to designate as “little legislatures” and “the most essential machinery of our government system.” (p.76)
They set out to advocate Progressive notions of “scientific government” and “direct democracy,” capturing the bureaucracies’ natural need for and susceptibility to direct input by those successfully presenting themselves as experts. Given the intellectual climate and their direct connection with policy makers, restrictionists had the edge over expansionists, especially over the new targets of anti-immigration initiatives: politically unorganised newcomers from eastern and southern Europe. IRL activists became integral part of a national immigration policy network, supplying the pertinent House and Senate committees with a welcome stream of statistical material, research papers, and expert witnesses. In this way, the IRL was able to seize the initiative in shaping policies and providing rationalisations that reform-minded lawmakers were happy to ponder or even adopt.
The lynch-pin of the envisioned shift in the national policy paradigm was a bill requiring a mandatory literacy test for all immigrants.
In 1898, the bill won passage in the Senate, its success owing “much to the endorsement of the immigration committee, prominent support from social scientists, and the relative absence of interest group opposition.” (p.82) But when House and Senate conferees met to discuss the bill, increasingly organised interests, pro-immigrant business and ethnic groups, began to build a formidable front of resistance. The bill’s fate showcases how under political freedom different interests compete over the right to change the social contract. In the face of mounting opposition, the IRL ultimately failed to rally significant additional support for the bill, notably from organised labour, while key ethnic constituencies of the Democratic party exerted pressure on president Grover Cleveland to veto the literacy test bill. The president complied. However, the bill’s sponsors were confident that a large Republican majority in Congress would override the presidential veto. But the oppositional forces from business groups, German organisations, Jewish, Italian and Catholic leaders, the Chamber of Commerce and other organisations were relentless, demonstrating a cautious Congress the determination and prowess of a whole phalanx of pro-immigration interests. At the end of the day, Congress elected not to overturn the presidential decision. Also, the near success of the bill alerted oppositional forces to the political innovation that the anti-immigrant movement had been able to exploit to its advantage.
Political competition always affects and is affected by intellectual currents vying for epistemic hegemony in the public discourse. Both in a dependent position as well as a driving force, the political discovery process is enmeshed in the evolution of intellectual and scientific trends. A vast subject in its own right, we can only touch on the fact that politics is exposed to episodes of intellectual history whose soundness may be revealed, if ever, only by some considerable delay. Add to it that the subjects of political discourse may not be amenable to objective assessment, and that politics is faced with rational ignorance and substantive ignorance on a massive scale. Cognitive separation, i.e. completely different and irreconcilable perceptions, among the contestants in the political race is substantial, normal, and inevitable. It must be admitted and peaceably managed in a free society.
5.0 Conclusion
Discovery through political competition is not without risks, and it cannot guarantee the absence of severe error, but it is still the best way (1) to incorporate knowledge generated in civil society, (2) to keep politically dominant views exposed to ongoing corroboration and (3) to include the largest possible number of interest groups in the permanent sequel of repeated games that produce effective trust in society, thus bringing about the dynamic equilibrium of dissension and pacification which defines feasible freedom.
5.1 Lessons for Freedom
Classical liberalism tends to misunderstand or ignore the political logic of freedom, owing to a monadic conception of the rights underlying personal freedom. In theory, these rights are absolute, immutable, and monadic, i.e. attached to and owned by the individual in inalienable form. Under feasible freedom, however, people, in exercising their liberty, negotiate and renegotiate these rights, both in politics and in private transactions. Free citizens constantly renegotiate new permutations of feasible freedom, thereby constantly rewriting the social contract.
We detect an unexpected and rather incongruous similarity of deficiency in socialist ambitions for central planning and liberal calls for a depoliticised society. Both desiderata are based on incomprehension of a vital spontaneous order which concerns the economy in the case of socialism and politics and the state in the case of liberalism. Both political camps underrate or misconstrue the need and the logic of the indispensable discovery procedures required for strong economic performance and, respectively, the feasibility of civil society at large.
As there is no single person or group of persons capable of registering all inputs needed to calculate an efficient allocative distribution, Hayek suggests inclusion of all citizens in a free economy to approximate far better the needed range and quality of information. Analogously, no single person or group of persons is capable of registering the inputs needed to take better political decisions than are available from a regime that guarantees the possibility for all citizens to make their contribution to political decision making. Incongruously, liberalisms akin to Hayek’s insinuate the equivalent of an impersonal central planer by suggesting that observance of certain rules activate automatisms in a free society, notably the market mechanism and the rule of law, that reduce the need of politics to such an extent as to portray freedom as a state of affairs distinguished by the absence of significant levels of politicisation - a visionary predilection that amounts to the disenfranchisement of the public.
A free society, this is the claim of the present paper, is akin to a free economy, in so far as only the mobilisation of dispersed knowledge lodged in decentralised units (citizens and their organisations) can bring about a discovery process capable of sustaining human relations that make freedom is feasible.
Liberalism cannot fulfil its role in a free society unless it acknowledges that its leadership in matters of constitutional integrity does not carry over into the area of legitimate political discretion. And liberalism must recognise that within the boundaries of constitutional integrity there is substantial leeway for political discretion by players of quite distinct emphases of vision. Freedom remains an open-ended project.
In order to establish her meaning and detailed shape, liberty depends on a political infrastructure that engages contestants in a competitive discovery process that is likely to result in eclectic policy outcomes deviating from puristic ideological positions. Adaptability is a survival requirement for any agent participating in the political discovery process. Puristic ideologies fail to stay in touch with the diversity of interests and views that push toward concrete policies. Feasible freedom may be conceived of as a dynamic equilibrium balancing dissension and peaceableness. Approximating the balance requires that the competing agents continuously search for new information about the prospects of their agendas, swiftly adjusting the latter to sustain support and the power to exercise influence. Precise and consistent accounts of freedom such as endeavoured by classical liberalism play an important role in clarifying the rules of the discovery game and the inalienable contours of freedom, but they are too abstract and too general to be able to prejudge the differing aims that people ought to be free to pursue within the competitive political framework of an open access society. Ideologies lend impetus to freedom’s sine qua non: discovery by political competition, but they do so fruitfully only when being capable of changing and renewing themselves in response to the findings elicited by the search.
The success of politics under feasible freedom is to be judged by the ability to balance dissension and peaceableness under the auxiliary conditions of high levels of personal autonomy, productivity, and wealth. We may register good performance and even progress along these lines in the very presence of state of affairs that appear insufferable from a classical liberal point of view. But it should not be forgotten that classical liberalism is just a set of hypotheses, some of which are rejected by freedom. Freedom is not identical with liberalism. Freedom is not identical with liberalism‘s account or expectations of her.
Studying politics and the state from an angle that reveals them as an emergent order may be instrumental in overcoming the liberal’s or indeed anybody’s sweepingly hostile presumption against them. A change of perspective of this kind may enable us to discern among the tangle and turmoil of politics moves as if by an invisible hand, bringing to the fore the benign effects of practices habitually dismissed as corrupt or underhanded. Consider political opportunism.
2.1 The Indeterminacy of Freedom and Heuristic Opportunism
What lends the system of political freedom an often sordid and even corrupt quality, namely the opportunism of shifting and duplicitous positions, makes it also more flexible and representative. After all, in an adaptable political order, there is a need for trial, error, and error elimination, demanding a kind of responsiveness that leaves behind patterns both of apparent and real opportunism. Introducing erratic and unpredictable conduct into politics and thus dividing contestants, such patterns of opportunism may eventually mark a path that brings foes together or at least allows for pacific competition. There is a fine line between genuine opportunism, on one hand, and political learning and experimentation, on the other. In large measure, politics is about reconciling the irreconcilable. Indeed, politics is the art of finding compromises and forms of power sharing suitable to sustain repeated games that, in turn, produce a durable atmosphere of effective trust.
2.2 Opportunism, Political Learning and Effective Trust
Effective trust is attained when people act as if they trusted one another, without entering into relationships of personal trust. Entrusting one’s political enemy with a high political office is a case in point. Effective trust is brought about not by personal encounters and the subsequent discovery of mutual congeniality but rather by virtue of the constraining effects of institutions that ensure fairness and prevent vicious and costly retribution. Office and person become separable. The political and the private personae are assigned distinct spheres. People cooperate peacefully and productively in one sphere - say as employer and employee - while being fundamentally at odds with each other in a different sphere where they act as political partisans.
The classical liberal expectation that social order may be derived from observing firm principles and certain generally applicable rules of just conduct represents a necessary, yet not a sufficient condition for citizenship in civil society. The classical liberal’s overly pronounced confidence in static rules is unrealistic because patterns of apparent and real opportunism play a key role in balancing (1) the right to disagree with one another in a free society against (2) the need to establish effective trust and peaceable conditions. Political reality is subtle. Behaviour that gives the appearance of opportunism and duplicity may be beneficial in helping to feel one’s way in unchartered terrain, sound out the popular consensus and its tolerance for innovation and nonconformity, forge alliances on issues of lesser weight to gain support on questions deemed more significant, withdraw from or reduce the impact of infelicitous political experiments etc. Political manoeuvring is not exhaustively captured when viewed solely under the aspects of mischief and bad faith. Moreover, a measure of deviousness on the part of the politically active may be inevitable and even required to effect the benefit of living in a society that supports (1) high levels of rivalry alongside (2) a condition of robust pacification.
3.0 Path Dependent Consolidation (1800 - 1900) – Establishing Effective Trust, the Invisible Hand of Politics, and Feasible Freedom
From a divisive plurality of views on immigration emerges in the 18th century a range of conditions ensuring a preponderance and continuity of policies that favour immigration in the U.S. While ineffective in terms of asserting their preferred policies in that period, as becomes clear with hindsight, nativist and other restrictionist forces always maintained a significant presence in the political process and never ceased to search for opportunities to gain the upper hand. Before we look at the factors supporting the path dependent unfolding of a pro-immigration consensus in early U.S. policy regimes, three fundamental starting conditions merit attention.
While the Constitution (1) outlines the framework for political competition and the political discovery process in the new republic, it is (2) parsimonious in regard to specific substantive issues, avoiding preconceptions on controversial subjects like immigration. Add to this that (3) the Constitution has been prepared, ratified and actualised in a manner highly democratic by historical comparison and, in that way, inclusive of the main interests and protagonists invested in immigration. As a result, political competition and discovery were made credible as fair processes. creating an environment for trust-building repeated games and credible commitment, which, in turn, encourage loyalty to the political order not only by the winners but also by the losers in a given episode of political decision making. By reinforcing trust in the rules of the new political game, it was possible to meet the defining conditions of feasible freedom: namely the ability of strike a balance between the two pans of the scales of liberty: maximal dissension, on the one side, and, on the other, peaceableness during competition and later in the face of policy enforcement. This is a result that is as subtle as it is important and powerful: it reflects the transrational mechanisms of politics in a free society – an aspect that falls in the category of “moves by the invisible hand of politics and the state.” Having reached an insurmountable impasse on the rational level, with neither of the parties willing to give up on their views concerning immigration (abortion, capital punishment etc.), irreconcilability and emotional tension are reduced by converting them into effective trust in a repeated game that may yield disappointing outcomes on individual issues but promises a net gain in terms of long-term overall coexistence. While Jeffersonians steadfastly continued to translate “pro-immigrant polices into foreign-born votes” (p. 55), the Federalists, later the Whigs and still later the Republicans grappled with a legacy of nativism and other anti-immigrant positions. It proved an inheritance hard to shed, partly for reasons of conviction, partly for reasons of credibility, and partly for reasons of electoral calculation.
Until its total demise in the 1820s, the Federalist Party was split on the immigration issue, with its leader Alexander Hamilton urging the need to accommodate immigrant voters by advocating open immigration policies, a position resonating strongly with Federalists in the urban centres where immigrant voting blocs were substantial.
Dissension among the Federalists is indicative of the discovery and learning process that political agents are subjected to by changing circumstances and competing proposals of adapting to them. With unprecedented mass immigration setting in, there were opportunities to profit from xenophobic propaganda, notably during the 1837 depression. Especially Catholics and the Irish were subjected to venomous attacks. But the long-term trend in favour of the newcomers could not be reversed. During the 1844 presidential campaign, the Whigs ran for the last time on an anti-immigrant platform, only to conclude eventually that their narrow defeat had been due to a lack of immigrant support. From then on, the Whigs dissociated themselves from nativist currents. With that, the party system closed itself off from anti-immigrant constituencies. From 1820 to 1860, immigrants as a proportion of the total population had grown from 4.4% to 31.5 %.
Path dependent patterns of generous immigration conditions were boosted when the expansion of U.S. territory thanks to the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Mexican-American War (1846/47) significantly increased demand for settlers and labourers. Receptivity for immigrants was further strengthened with the spread of industrialisation in the New World. Indubitably, the most basic and weighty factor, however, helping to turn the first hundred years of the U.S. into an era of accommodating immigration policies is to be found in the “extraordinary shift in American government from … “a regime of notables” to the world’s first mass-based democracy in which universal white male suffrage, party organizations, and competitive elections predominated.” (p.59)
From the draft of an unpublished paper that I have recently presented at a Conference on immigration:
1.1 Classical Liberalism, Feasible Freedom, and Immigration Politics in the US (1776 – 1900)
While the classical liberal tradition from Locke to Hayek is united by an emphasis on the self-organising features of free societies, it entirely fails to account for politics and the state as a spontaneous order, thus missing the political nature of liberty. Hayek correctly describes economic competition as a discovery procedure, yet neglects to appreciate that politics too is a discovery procedure, in the absence of which freedom is impossible. Thus, owing to an inability to understand that political practices and institutions lie at the heart of freedom, classical liberalism suffers from nothing less than a misconception of her central value, its normative vision of liberty being blind to the conditions of feasible freedom.
In this paper we wish to highlight some of the pivotal features of freedom overlooked by classical liberalism and sketch the contours of a theory of feasible freedom. To this purpose, we are drawing upon evidence from immigration politics as it was to unfold during the first 120 years after the founding of the United States of America. The history of the new American republic, which was strongly inspired by the ideas of classical liberalism, promises to yield interesting insights into the advancement of feasible freedom.
2.0 Trend Finding (1776 - 1800) – Political Competition as a Discovery Process
“Americans have been ambivalent about immigration since the earliest days of their republic. The founding generation grew up in British North American colonies that had contrasting traditions of governing European immigration. Some colonies were routinely hostile to outsiders; some granted entry and equal membership to immigrants who shared their ecclesiastical goals; some recruited immigrant labor but limited the rights newcomers enjoyed; and still others extended generous terms of immigration and membership to all white male settlers […]” (p.49f.)
This and all subsequent page references in the present selective draft paper refer to Tichenor, D.J. (2002), Dividing Lines. The Politics of Immigration Control in America, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton Paperbacks.
In 1781, Thomas Jefferson expressed apprehension about European immigration doubting that newcomers would be able to renounce their Old World loyalties to “absolute monarchy.” He did not believe that new waves of immigrants were capable of honouring republican principles, individual liberty and self-government. In order to avert the danger, he advocated constraints on future admissions.
By contrast, Thomas Paine urged “the nation to adopt the cosmopolitan individualism of Pennsylvania, where the equal membership of English, Dutch, Germans and Swedes showed that <we surmount the force of local prejudice as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world>.” (p.51). Paine’s universalist cosmopolitanism was echoed in George Washington’s pronouncement of 1783 that “America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.” (p.51)
In a summer of closed meetings in Philadelphia, when America’s leading statesmen were deliberating the Constitution which they finally published in the same year on September 17, 1787, the debate revealed significant differences of opinion and among them also rather ambiguous positions. George Mason, for instance, hailed the economic benefits of alien labour, while opposing broad political rights to “foreigners and adventurers.” (p.52) By contrast, James Madison was worried that denial of public office to immigrants would “give a tincture of illiberality to the Constitution.” (p.52). In the end, the delegates to the convention struck a compromise by determining the foreign-born to be ineligible only for the presidency, while resolving on modest residency requirements for congressional office. (p.52)
The framers did not touch on the subject of immigration in the text of the Constitution (except indirectly, as noted above). It was wise of them not to prejudge the issue, as, we conjecture, their restraint kept the political discovery process open, a condition vital to political stability in the early years of the new republic. At the time, however, the founding fathers had tactical options to consider. To all intents and purposes, practical immigration issues were handled by the states, which the framers did not wish to alienate by pre-emptive constitutional determinations. Also, it appears, in remaining seemingly neutral, they effectively relied on the expectation that the states would continue to pursue policies of pragmatic leniency toward immigrants. Only a few years later, the first Congress in 1790 enacted a uniform rule of naturalization that made citizenship very easy to acquire for European men. It provided that <free white persons> who resided in the United States for as little as two years could be naturalized by <any common law court of record in any of the States.> (p.53)
At once, the restrictionists prepared to strike back. During the 1790s, the atmosphere for immigration grew inclement. The Anglo-French conflict fuelled support for restrictionist demands. One of the two leading parties at the time, the Federalists denounced French and Irish immigrants for putatively aligning themselves with the ideals of the French Revolution and fostering factionalism by participating in democratic clubs. What is more, the Federalists were alerted by the fact that in large cities, Irish and other immigrants would tend to cast their votes in favour of the other large party: the Democratic Republicans. Thus, taking advantage of congressional majorities, the Federalists enacted laws curbing access of European aliens to citizenship and enfranchisement. In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts which increased the residency requirement for eligibility to citizenship to 14 years, and allowed the president to imprison or deport aliens considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" at any time. An effort at forestalling the political decline of the Federalists, the Acts did not have the intended effect, and strengthened the bond between foreign-born voters and the Democratic-Republican party. With their help, Jefferson won the presidential election in 1800, and proceeded quickly to rescind the restrictionist legislation of the Federalists. He presided over the return of control of alien admissions to the states and the restoration of generous conditions of naturalisation. Once a man of nativist inclinations, Jefferson emerged as a staunch defender of the rights of white male immigrants, cementing the pro-immigration trend of the 18th century and handing a structure of expansionist path dependency on to the new century.
The political search for a dominant trend was accompanied by uncertainty and erratic turns. By the late-eighteenth century, however, compelling circumstances and pragmatic considerations predisposed a preponderance of political forces to embrace European immigration: (1) a paucity of labour, (2) abundant territory and (3) a vibrant desire for rapid settlement and economic development along the advancing frontiers of the United States.
Jefferson and other leading political figures, such as Benjamin Franklin, betrayed duplicity, opportunism and even full reversal of opinion in the matter of immigration. Why? The political discovery process of a free society confronted them with new evidence, forcing them to learn and adjust their public-facing agendas.
"Negotiable freedom" sounds like a phrase used in selling out to the enemies of liberty, when in fact it points to a fundamental feature and one of the biggest advantages of liberty.
In preparation of a conference paper, I have recently noted down these ideas:
Classical liberalism has been politically ineffective and intellectually marginalised since declining precipitously from its zenith of influence in the mid 19th century. At the same time, liberty has prospered along with the political opponents of liberalism. This constitutes the paradox of freedom, the phrase chosen for the title of our paper presented at the first X conference: “The Paradox of Freedom – F.A. Hayek and the Crisis of Liberalism.”
We have identified an inability to comprehend the role of politics and the state in a free society as the chief reason why classical liberalism has failed to marshal the popular support requisite to achieve substantial political weight.
Among the robust conditions of freedom - the conditions indispensable if feasible freedom is to be attained - is political freedom, the possibility for every citizen to participate in the political processes through which many of the most important forms of social governance are being shaped. Classical liberalism does not appreciate that the spontaneous order of politics and the state drives the future shape and meaning of liberty.
Classical liberalism is inclined to overlook the political nature of the forces and processes that define feasible liberty for two reasons in particular: [In the present post, I am concerned with only the first of the two reasons, G.T.]
Robust Conditions of Freedom – A Pool of Elements with (Re-)Negotiable Relations and Alterable Mutual Effects
In the first place, classical liberalism tends to be inspired by the presumption that liberty
(1) is rooted in a number of inalterable and non-negotiable basic premises and demands, and
(2) is to be achieved only to the extent that these fundamental precepts are being honoured in human interaction.
While it is true that feasible liberty depends on the presence of certain indispensable conditions, the latter represent nonetheless a set of features that are relational to one another, being subject to mutual trade-offs rather than absolute, complete and immutable in their meaning and implications.
Within the set of robust conditions of liberty, we address different subsets and seek different relative weightings of the relevant conditions depending on
(1) the specific nature of an issue, and
(2) the outcomes of our political handling of them.
For instance: on introducing minimum wages, we witness a stronger weighting of political freedom vis-à-vis contractual freedom. The supporters of national minimum wage laws having prevailed in the process of political legitimisation, are entitled to override certain aspects that otherwise would be protected under contractual freedom.
In a different context, say, the question of using employer resources to express one’s political preferences, there tends to be a stronger weighting of contractual freedom than political freedom, i.e. the wish of the employer not to be forced to support with his company's resources (other than indirectly by wage payments) an employee's political activism is generally protected by contractual freedom and unenforceable by appeal to political freedom.
The set of robust conditions of freedom is constantly reshuffled, whereby its elements assume different relations and proportions vis-à-vis one another, depending on the issue at hand, as well as the political acumen and dexterity of the negotiating parties.
The dynamism and negotiability of the permutations formed by the indispensable conditions of freedom is not recognised in classical liberalism. Hence a large number of policies and significant social developments based on internal trade-offs among robust conditions of freedom are perceived by classical liberals as violations of freedom.
The fact that we still enjoy high levels of freedom in societies permeated by such violations (from a classical liberal perspective) speaks to the resilience of freedom in the face of changing permutations of relative weightings among her robust conditions.
Mechanisms That Aren’t Mechanisms – But Politically Induced Outcomes
The most seminal shared heritage in classical liberal thought over a period of 300 years has a modern name: spontaneous order.
From John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek, the belief that order can be achieved in human society by observance of appropriate rules rather than by authoritarian fiat is the differentia specifica of the classical liberal vision of “the good society.” This vision gives rise to an entirely new paradigm of the ideal society.
If by following the correct set of generally applicable rules we can ensure a better outcome for all members of society than by bowing down to the edicts and whims of a ruler or a ruling elite, we are faced with an entirely new model of society, one in which there is a standard by which to rationally criticise and limit the discretion of authorities; one in which, every person matters, for she is a welcome and integral part of a community whose collective compliance with rules of a certain nature produces a better world. This is tantamount to an enormous upgrading of the individual and her emancipation in a number of important aspects, not the least of which being her right to take part in the ruling of society.
The individual becomes a player in a game whose outcome is freedom. She is tied to the game through rights, individual rights. How exactly the individual is related to her rights proves contentious and decisive concerning the view one holds of liberty.
Monadic "Freedom" Versus Relational Freedom
In using subsequently the term monadic, I mean: "relating to the individual alone," as opposed to "relational, i.e. regarding the relationship between two or more individuals." In their monadic construal, rights defining liberty are absolute and inhere solely in the individual. That is, by virtue of vesting a right in the individual, it can no longer change or loose its meaning simply owing to an alteration in the relationship of that individual with other individuals. Thus, if the individual has an absolute right to contractual freedom, no circumstances can modify this entitlement, including contrary demands of political freedom.
In reality, people are forced to and often quite like to engage in a trade of the components that make up the precise and viable meaning of their rights - "I will sell part of my property to you, if you let me use the driveway you are planing to built." In fact, the insistence on the monadic nature of liberty rights (think "rugged individualism") is the reason why political freedom, the very lever of relational rights and negotiable freedom, is so poorly integrated into the world view of classical liberalism.
Spontaneous Order and Feasible Liberty
Ultimately, it is the monadic construal of liberal precepts that proves detrimental to the career of liberalism’s most basic idea: spontaneous order. The latter is thought to be a mechanism, an automatism, something that runs by itself, an "automobile" in the broadest sense of the term. But that is certainly not what the spontaneous order of a free society is.
Sure enough, there is a strong temptation to commit the fallacy of composition by taking the automatic processes of a spontaneous order, say, in the form of a reasonably free economy, to represent the whole, when it is only one aspect embedded in more formative aspects.
What is not seen is the political depth structure of the spontaneous order.
What is not seen is that the possibility for every individual to participate in negotiating the conditions of order in human interaction and a congenial negotiation process itself are core features of freedom.
What lends classical liberal recommendations an unpalatable flavour for so many people is the blanket consent they are asked to grant in too many cases and with promises painted in too broad strokes not to act by their own discretion but to stand back and await the benefits of an automatism.
Of course, the classical liberal overkill in terms of restricting political deliberateness encourages an overkill by political pragmatists in terms of dysfunctional intervention.
Risks and Costs of Liberty
Fair enough, liberal political abstention can never be the proximate cause of societal catastrophe, only excessive mal-intervention can play that role.
Though I do not think that the destruction of liberty can ever be ruled out, still in the freest countries the safeguards against such an event are substantial. But, we cannot have freedom without the costs and risks involved in living out her possibilities, which dangers are especially pertinent with respect to political freedom. For more see Costs and Benefits of Freedom.
However, if I see it right, the best we can achieve is to make the mistakes we are prone to make within (not outside!) the framework of robust conditions of freedom which strengthen and expedite our capacity of correction, recovery and renaissance.
Image credit. I am not always particularly conscious of a logical link between the images at the top of my posts and the written content underneath them, though mostly, I think, I would be able to explain some sort of association. The present picture has been chosen as an allusion to the wishful thinking underlying Bryan Caplan's immigration policy proposals. Once one assumes a certain depth of conviction, the belief system one subscribes to tends to develop a logic with its own dynamic. For instance: if you believe in advantageous spontaneous processes firmly enough, it might appear perfectly reasonable that immigration can be turned into a spontaneous order, upon which exhilarating prospect one may develop a selective fervour in search of data and theories that confirm the vision so beautifully in sync with one's dearest presumptions. I suspect, this is the psychological backdrop to Bryan Caplan's wishful thinking on immigration, in which regard it is indeed of a libertarian nature -, being, at the same time, not philosophically, but practically almost identical with Angela Merkel's recent political whim to declare Germany and Europe an area of open borders - err, to Syrians, err to who exactly is not really clear. Like Caplan, she proposes a general invitation, only to be qualified, when reality replaces rhetoric, by a mess of arbitrary ad hoc conditions.
The Indeterminacy of Immigration
In a recent post, I maintain that Bryan Caplan's libertarian take on immigration is flawed. In the meantime, I have had second thoughts as to whether it is accurate to describe Caplan's policy proposal as libertarian at all. My doubts are of a duplex nature: first, Caplan does not seem to derive his position from libertarian principles. Rather, his stance is based on a wish, namely that
unconditionally open borders ought to be recognised as
(1) a moral necessity, and
(2) a doable way of alleviating world misery superior in its outcomes both for the guests and hosts to any other outcome.
In explaining his "solution," Caplan is strangely confident in the well-functioning and benignity of the state.
Suddenly, the state is unproblematic in that host countries are not inhibited in their immigration-qua-deliverance by government-induced deficiencies that might frustrate the absorption of unlimited numbers of immigrant.
Suddenly, Caplan happily relies on government as it is to provide the kind of environment in which it is possible to easily cope with the migration of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of immigrants. While in all other respects the government is held to be a botcher of catastrophic import.
Suddenly, to top it all, he insists that should problems occur - a state of affairs which Caplan precludes, but toys with in a thought-experiment intended to assuage his critics - we have a state at our disposal that can be used to add any number of ad-hoc laws and policies capable of amending what difficulties may emerge.
In a word: Caplan relies on an enormous amount of confidence in the governmental status quo to be able to carry out his vision of immigration. In this sense, his proposal is hardly congenial to the libertarian or minarchist ethos, but rather of pronounced leftist pedigree - à la: since I have a good idea - which, I am sure, makes me morally superior to my opponents, - my proposition must be feasible, into the bargain.
There Is No Such Thing as a Uniquely Valid Libertarian Position on Immigration
These sceptical observations inspired in me another doubt: namely, that there cannot be any such thing as THE LIBERTARIAN POSITION on immigration.
Why not?
Consider this historic scene - borrowed from Borjas: US president Carter and Dengxiao Ping meet in the oval office - a great act of rapprochement between the US and communist China. Carter comes in heavily laden with folders documenting anti-humanitarian cases detected in China. The American president loses no time to explain his Chinese counterpart that China must not keep its population as if in a prison, and should rather open its borders, so that those unhappy with the bad state of human rights in China are free to leave the country and come to the US.
Upon this reproach, Dengxiao Ping turns pensive for a while, before suddenly a smile appears on his face, and he replies: "You are right, absolutely right, Mister President. Just tell me, how many Chinese do you plan to welcome to your country? 20 million? 50 million? 200 million? We shall be happy to oblige." And that is not even considering billions of other people living in countries with a gruesome human rights record. Little wonder, Carter quickly changed the subject.
To cut a long story short: the issue is how many people is a host nation willing to and capable of absorbing, and which people are to be invited? And what is easily overlooked: whatever decision is taken, inumerous ramifications and consequences are making themselves felt as soon
At this point, it transpires that there cannot be any such thing as THE LIBERTARIAN POSITION - as no one is able to provide us with a set of libertarian premisses that deliver a unique answer to these questions: how many people, and who to include and who not to include, subject to which conditions.
If there is not a unique libertarian answer to the question of immigration, then neither - by implication is there a state of liberty uniquely corresponding with THE right immigration policy. This holds true when we go on to admit any doctrine that claims to represent the requirements of freedom. Careful, this is not tantamount to saying that all immigration policies are equally good. What I am saying is that there cannot be any such thing as an immigration policy uniquely determined as right and indispensable in terms of this or that doctrine outlining the needs of a free society.
Freedom is more about the way in which we ought to play the game of political dissent so as to ensure we cope with the tensions inherent in political strife than it is a nucleus from which to extract determinate solutions to specific questions embodying explosive political scarcity.
Immigration is a severe case of political scarcity.
Political scarcity occurs when there is more than one way of looking at an issue that affects a group of people who are not easily persuaded to give up their differing views in order to come up with a common, a mutually agreed position. A group may be as large as the American electorate, and the number of issues that create political scarcity is infinite, while the issues are not amenable to bilateral negotiation and resolution, but require political compromise, collective decision-making, and ultimately the credible threat of coercion. Generally, the mitigation of political scarcity may be perfect in that it avoids violence, but otherwise it will tend to be regarded as rather imperfect since in a free society differences of opinion will proliferate and be allowed to prevail in the presence of a more or less transient, politically dominant compromise.
Liberalism (in all its variants) is not identical with freedom. Liberalism is a set of hypotheses, some of which are being refuted by freedom, which latter includes integrally political freedom, and hence the right of non-liberals to compete for and gain transient political dominance. Freedom is an amalgam of different political views, a fusion more or less visible in most of her institutions and policies.
Maximalist libertarian demands appear convincing only if one overlooks the nature of political freedom, which is often traded off against some of the other robust conditions of freedom - as when contractual freedom is restricted in certain cases, because the legitimate processes of political freedom authenticate a certain policy, say the minimum wage, as being entitled to transient and contestable political dominance. What is overlooked are the innumerable cases where political freedom is restricted by contractual freedom - or are you allowed to use the resources of your employer against her will to advertise the promises of communism?
The various indispensable (= robust) conditions of freedom form a pulsating cloud of interrelated particles that by affecting one another wax and wane, pulsate, stretch and contract dynamically. If one treats contractual freedom as an absolute, as opposed to a relational right that is sculpted by many interrelated forces, one misses the essential resilience of freedom and sees instead catastrophic violations of her all over the place.
No society is free from political scarcity. Freedom cannot achieve the abolition of political scarcity, she is an effort to handle political scarcity as best as we can. Her ability to manage political scarcity well is among the prime reasons to value and defend liberty.
The various "branches of government have their roles, but it's time to give us some of our government back, to embrace our heritage, and to breath life back into our constitutional system," thus argues Mark Levin, whose book "The Liberty Amendments" Ed Stevens has recommended to me to better understand the LR 35 initiative.
It seems to me an exceedingly commendable initiative, for nothing is more important than keeping the public aware of and actively participating in the constitutional framework of American politics.
You may disagree with Levin on this or that issue, or not; in any case, the initiative offers an excellent opportunity to compete politically in the context of a set of needful and constructive categories such as living federalism and true subsidiarity.
And it is recognised across party lines that we need to engage in a discussion that restores the respect for the fundamental principles of a constitutional republic:
I have long believed that the most likely outcome of Islam’s civilizational crisis is a body count that would beggar the last century’s world wars.
And, even if the best possible outcome is achieved, the author expects,
There would be no glorious era of Arab democracy, no Arab spring, no happy ending, just a less murderous sort of despotism and an armistice rather than a real peace between Shia and Sunni. That is as good as ever it will get in that miserable region.
At any rate, too fragile are the solutions sketched in the below article that they would seem likely to succeed. Also, I have reservations concerning the author's hopes for the requisite statesmanship.
Still, it is a remarkable article that has yielded me new perspectives and - in many ways - a surprisingly conclusive global assessment of the region and its players (including the US and Europe).
Recommended reading:
The great task of diplomacy in the 21st century is a sad and dreary one, namely managing the decline of Muslim civilization. There is a parallel to the great diplomatic problem of the late 19th and early 20th century, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which the diplomats bungled horribly.
It is no job for the idealistic, namely the Americans, nor for the squeamish, namely the Europeans. The breakdown of civil order in a great arc from Beirut to Basra has already displaced 20 million people and raised the world refugee count from 40 million in 2011 to 60 million in 2014, with scores of millions at risk. After it failed to build democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States fell into a sullen torpor in which serious discussion of intervention in the regime is excluded. The hypocritical Europeans averted their eyes until millions of desperate people appeared on their doorstep, and remain clueless in the face of the worst humanitarian crisis since the last world war.
That leaves Vladimir Putin as the last, best hope of a region already halfway over the brink into the abyss. That is a disturbing thought, because the Russian leader has played the spoiler rather than the statesman in his wrangling with Western powers over the past decade and a half. Nonetheless, Russia has an existential interest in sorting out the Levant. Muslims comprise a seventh of the population of the Russian Federation, and the growing influence of ISIS threatens to give a fresh wind to terrorism inside Russia.
Kearney, NE - A push for historic legislation made its way to Kearney Saturday. LR-35 would include Nebraska in a call for a convention of states. It's a way to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has never been used before. The method more commonly used is a two-thirds vote of Congress. State Senator Laura Ebke, of Crete, is leading the charge in Nebraska.
It is a fascinating initiative. I am not yet awfully knowledgeable about the details, but it does look to me like an important and most welcome move toward invigorating the constitutional debate with a much called for inclusion of the perspectives and concerns at the state level.
I am looking forward to learn more about the initiative and hope to continue to report here on its progress.
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