RedStateEclectic

Reprise (3) - Why It Is Not True That Politics Makes Us Worse - Thirteen Conjectures on Politics (1/3)

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Aaron Ross Powell and Trevor Burrus, research fellows at the CATO Institute, have written an article entitled Politics Makes Us Worse. Below I shall comment on each of the thirteen paragraphs of which their article consists. Powell and Burrus are making many valid points, but they spoil their take by over-generalisation, which is the cardinal defect underlying the libertarian presumption against politics. In that way, the arguments displayed in Politics Makes Us Worse are almost a mini primer containing many of the central misconceptions of politics entertained in libertarian circles.

First, it is in order to comment on the title the authors have chosen: Politics Makes Us Worse. It can be inevitable, and in some cases even useful, to introduce phrases that come over more strongly than the wider message they are intended to support - such as, say, in a socially well-understood and accepted exaggeration (like "Americans are great people.")

Such is the case with the title of my present post - I do not believe that politics makes us better; rather I think politics can make us better, but it also can make us worse. Moreover, politics can have functions and effects that do not relate to the issue of people becoming better or worse. Hence, in the text I qualify the title's bait.

The authors do not make any such qualification whatsoever. I am therefore entitled to take the statement - politics makes us worse - as an absolute. And precisely therein lies the difficulty with their position, which is representative of the attitude maintained by a large number of libertarians. In the below text, the authors' phrasings are

indented and completely in italics,

followed underneath by my comment (without emphasis):

1.

Increasing the sphere of politics leads to bad policy and increased vice.

By and large, the freer a country, the more likely it is to allow political engagement by any citizen interested in such activity, increasing the sphere of politics compared to a closed access society where the privilege of participating in politics is reserved to a small ruling elite. It appears that the absence (as in Mabutos's Kongo) or the retraction (as in Nazi Germany) of such freedom leads to increased vice, rather than the other way around.

An interesting special case might be provided by a class of countries that do not have a democratic political order, yet enjoy the status of favourites in the eyes of many libertarians, such as Hong Kong or Singapore. To begin with, the absence of a Western-type democratic political order does not mean that politics, with all its pluses and cons, is not happening in such countries. The relevant processes may be less familiar to the Westerner, naturally more opaque, or it may be the case that in order for the political goings-on to become more transparent to an observer, she must seek intimate and enduring participation in the social life of the respective countries.

Furthermore, I strongly suspect that Hong Kong and Singapore have benefited from other people having done politics in their stead - namely the British people, who exported practices and institutions of a modern civil society to these two places. Excellent conditions for commercial advancement (enabled by the imported model of a modern Western civil society) combined with an impoverished population eager to take advantage of the opportunities to grow materially more comfortable, the people of Hong Kong and Singapore may have had low demand for democratic politics for a number of decades. They certainly had strong governments whose political orientation and political decisions were decisive for the economic success of both places. Indubitably, politics has made Hong Kong and Singapore better (places to live in).

2.

Even if we try to ignore it, politics influences much of our world. For those who do pay attention, politics invariably leads in newspapers and on TV news and gets discussed, or shouted about, everywhere people gather. Politics can weigh heavily in forging friendships, choosing enemies, and coloring who we respect.

What the authors want their readers to focus on is a part of politics fraught with problems and unpleasant challenges: the divisiveness in politics, the ways in which politics creates division, and enhances or exploits it.

What the authors do not see is that politics is the only way in which we can hope to deal with issues that drive us apart.

What the authors do not see is that we cannot ignore politics - understood as dealing with the inevitable fundamental disagreements that the social order of a viable community must come to grips with.

Politics communicates, resolves or attenuates strife resulting from the manifold sources of significant disagreement among human beings. Bashing politics in total is like rejecting tragedy and drama in human affairs as a needless luxury willfully created by the bored and playful.

Of course, try as we may, we cannot ignore politics - it is part of the human condition. Of course, politics influences much of our world - which is full of dissent and potential for oppression and violence that needs to be kept under control. The compromises of politics will tend to be imperfect, because the more fundamental disagreements among human beings will not go away, when our political arrangements help us to avoid the crassest, bloodiest, and especially destructive forms of battle.

3.

It’s not difficult to understand why politics plays such a central role in our lives: political decision-making increasingly determines so much of what we do and how we’re permitted to do it. We vote on what our children will learn in school and how they will be taught. We vote on what people are allowed to drink, smoke, and eat. We vote on which people are allowed to marry those they love. In such crucial life decisions, as well as countless others, we have given politics a substantial impact on the direction of our lives. No wonder it’s so important to so many people.

Does political decision-making really increasingly determine so much of what we do and how we're permitted to do it? Can we do less and are we more regimented and patronised than in 1965, in 1912, or in 1860? By what metric?

Is it not the case that we are living in zones of reduced freedom and other zones of increased freedom, many of which may not be easily netted, if this is possible at all? I suppose, as drivers we may be considerably more regulated today than in 1912 - but is this not largely an appropriate response to mass transportation, and a large contribution to personal freedom? Have the regulations to which mass transportation has led been brutally imposed upon us by political decisionmaking, or is it not rather the case that countless institutions of a free society, from the legal world, to the media, to the many events and practices that make up our political order have allowed millions of us to exercise influence on the process by which such regulations get formed?

What do we gain in denying a role for politics in improving our lives?

To be continued.

The original.

Illiberal Dreams of an Ideal State

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I find the below attempt at classifying the political camps of the US, especially the 'right', interesting, though I have slight doubts as to the competence of the author, considering that he presents Murray Rothbard as an aficionado of the night-watchman state, which the confessed anarchist certainly was not.

What strikes me most though is the ease, even facileness with which many proponents of (libertarian-leaning) freedom like to play God by pontificating about the mix of creed they would like to prevail in the country. Freedom is all about admitting, generating, tolerating and accommodating people who think differently from the way you and I do.

There is something deeply illiberal about visions of the right kind of attitudinal landscape, because freedom is not only a civilizatory stage that tolerates plurality, she is actually an engine of diversity and change.

At times, one might get lost in reveries of a society strictly and comprehensively conforming to one's own preferences. But once we wake up again from such dreams, it is to be hoped, our awareness returns that it is the right of all mature citizens to compete for and jointly effect the society we live in, which as a result of such pluralism will tend to be rather eclectic and heterogeneous.

Of course, I may be picking a vantage point that is not entirely fair to the author, who, my misgivings notwithstanding, has a right to ponder an ideal state and to argue, oddly in my view:

Perhaps an ideal ‘state’ would be akin to United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which have capitalism and some degree of personal autonomy but also religious and cultural homogeneity. But even those countries, as culturally conservative as they are, have a lot of foreign laborers, which racialists on the ‘alt right’ would not condone. But it’s probably too late for the United States to reverse its course, being that it’s already too diverse, too entrenched in the ‘status quo’, and too populous.

The entire article.

See also Freedom - A Force of Creative Destruction in the Moral Realm.

Related articles

Efficiency and Freedom (3/3) - Efficiency-Attractors and Ethics

We the People? Constitutional Legitimacy Without Unanimous Consent?

Rand Paul and Richard Epstein

Multiculturalism and Cultural Relativism

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Thomas Sowell's dictum may be overly trenchant, but the point he is trying to make is cogent.

Also, I do not condone the insult expressed at time mark 02:25, but otherwise Rushdie's argument strikes me as sound.

Writes Richard Larsen:

America has a rich history as a melting pot of cultures, ethnicity, and religion. Those who have come here over the past couple hundred years have sought a better life through the freedoms and liberties assured by our Constitution and the free enterprise system that fosters their “pursuit of happiness.” They’ve brought their culture, customs, and language with them, but they became Americans: learned English, learned our customs and conventions, and became encultured into the American way. America is great in large part because of the diversity of our people, and the richness of our cultural elements brought here. But multiculturalism has become much more than that, and is now more destructive than ameliorative, to American culture.

Make sure to read the entire article.

 

Coercion in a Free Society

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For a number of reasons, I have decided to anonymise the below RSE-post, which I have written almost exactly 3 months ago to deliberate on my getting barred from commenting on a certain blog. It would be hard for me to prove that, at the time, I had been wilfully precluded from writing at the blog in question. My claim could be simply denied by the blog's host, explained in terms of a transient technical glitch, and the barring could be lifted at any time to "prove" me wrong. More importantly, I do not wish to draw RedStateEclectic into a personal skirmish between another individual and myself. Also, I am far more interested in publishing my personal findings concerning the twinning of micro-freedoms and macro-freedoms than in complaining about the conduct of any particular individual.

How fitting, X. bars me from commenting on his W-post entitled "Y," at the Z-blog. (The title included a politically charged term used to describe the policy of keeping people from different groups, especially different races, separate.)

The state protects my right to free speech, whereas the libertarian X. denies it to me.

If it came to a court hearing (which would be ridiculous for me to contemplate), presumably, it would turn out that the state is willing to protect X.'s privacy/personal rights by protecting his right to segregate at his whim those who may enter comments at his blog from those who may not.

Mind you, in principle, a court, and more cogently a legislature, might rule in such a way as to demand the admission of all and any comments to a blog - in which case coercive advantage of one party over another would simply reverse. In fact, it is hard to predict what consequences such a ruling would have, and whether it would, as I surmise, cause many blogs to shut down, or whether blogs would adapt to it and more or less continue as before or even show increased activity. Anyhow, the libertarian values of (a) protected privacy and (b) freedom of expression prove rivalrous. They can only be reconciled or rather coordinated by credibly committing to exercise coercion - if need be - in favour of interests attached to one value (a), and thus, at the same time, at the expense of interests attached to the other value (b). 

Shutting up a critical voice, is a poor and illiberal reaction in a libertarian or anyone else expressly inviting comments. At the same time, I think, the state is laudably honouring liberty in defending, as it probably would, X.'s right to suppress my views.

I should add that, for what my testimony is worth, I have never been uncivil or digressive in my comments, but I have been persistently critical of X.'s posts, especially by pointing out flaws in libertarian patterns of argument.

Free citizens coercing one another

X.'s decision to suppress my freedom of expression demonstrates an instance of what I have called the ongoing rearrangement (or negotiation via political competition, judicial contestation. media-using influencing) of "micro-freedoms and micro-unfreedoms" in a free society. Within the framework of liberty there is plenty of room to redefine relationships of asymmetrical power among free human beings, with one party (A) exerting coercion over B. and the other (B) correspondingly suffering coercion by A.

One Man's Micro-Freedom Is Another Man's Micro-Unfreedom

X. used to afford me the micro-freedom of expressing my opinion in his blog, presumably until he felt I was dealing out too much micro-unfreedom to him in terms of restricting his comfort as the blog's host.

He then changed his policy to establish for himself the micro-freedom of being protected against an inconvenient voice, while simultaneously erecting a barrier of micro-unfreedom for me, by curtailing my right to express myself on his blog.

A perfectly legal move to make, and one compatible with liberty at large. Yet coercion has been applied/redistributed/rearranged, furthering the interest of one party and damaging the interest of the other party.

The Warren-Samuels Constellation, as I have termed it, denotes the fact that while a free society is characterised by institutions that serve, or at least intend, to minimise unnecessary or unproductive or socially disruptive coercion - the state's monopoly of coercion being an example -, a free society is still one in which we exercise coercion against one another in millions of ways. We assert our micro-freedom at the expense of another person's micro-unfreedom; we practice coercion and make others suffer oppression, but in small doses that are not liable to undermine the robust conditions of freedom which ensure we are living in a society still deserving to be called free. Extensive coercion is part and parcel of the microstructure of freedom. And freedom is an improved way of dealing with ubiquitous coercion among human beings.

The rights of which freedom is made up, are relational, not monadic. They are established, maintained, and removed by a process through which we define the relations in which we stand vis-à-vis one another. Contrary to classical liberalism's presumption, the rights that define freedom cannot be attached to the individual monadically, i.e. in a way insulated from the processes by which we keep defining and redefining our mutual relationships. For every free citizen has the right to take the initiative in defining his position vis-à-vis his fellow citizens and enter into the competition for enforceable social rules. That is the way in which slaves become citizens in a free society, women become voters and full participants in the Constitution's scope etc. The robust conditions of freedom represent a framework that is itself subject to orderly change and inner rearrangement. Rights are a means, among other things, of bringing about orderly progress concerning the interpretation and ultimately the socially valid meaning of rights. Rights are dynamic, an instrument of freedom in her implacable capacity as the engine of creative destruction in our culture.

Granting the citizen a private domain, as freedom does, opens up space for individual creativity and privately organised order (like one's own idea of a nice garden) with its own responsibilities, which latter may justify and require acts of personally ordained and socially admissible coercion. It is behind the walls that protect our private domain that we can build an arsenal with which to change the whole order of contemporary rights. Strong individuals with strong rights make for formidable combatants.

There is another insight one may draw from X.'s banning me from writing at his blog.

Private Arbitrariness and Public Principledness

Private charities, which X. promotes for the purposes of dealing with immigration issues, have their (more or less hidden) agendas.

They will be acting like X. himself in the present case, i.e. by their own standards of who to benefit and who to exclude. The standards may be arbitrary, but legitimately so. They are situated within the scope of permissible private discretion. Which is why for purposes that we wish to protect from private arbitrariness, a community may desire the benefit of public bodies that can be forced to treat everybody equally in accordance with generalised standards.

I suspect, therefore, the public often favours providers of public social services as opposed to an exclusive or at least nationally dominant regime of private charities because the former are more likely to be (made to) run on non-arbitrary principles. That is disregarding the question whether private charities are as good at resource pooling or in terms of administrative economies as public bodies.

Radicalising the argument for private charity, Hoppe demands that anyone wishing to visit a free country can do so only on being invited and fully insured by property owning private citizens -- who, to take arbitrariness to extremes, are free to block the passage of visitors to their neighbouring invitors. By contrast, the modern state guarantees entry conditions valid for and predictable to every prospective visitor.

For the argument that private charities were neither intended to nor capable of absorbing a shock as large as the Great Depression see The Political Ontology of the Welfare State.

See also The Libertarian Triangle of Oblivion, and Demos and Freedom - Robust and the Non-Robust Conditions of Freedom, Immigration and Freedom (7/10) - The Anarcho-Capitalist Case for Closed Borders.

Related articles

Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty (1/2) - Core, Frontier, and Relational Freedom

Competing for Liberty (6/6) - Coercion, Real Weath, and Efficiency

Negative Liberty and Positive Liberty (2/2) - A Tug-of-War

Competing for Liberty (3/6) - Coercion as an Inverse Index of Freedom and Freedom as Real Wealth

Towards a Theory of Feasible Freedom

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Freedom is an Open-Ended Discovery Procedure

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.

Monadic Rights versus the Constant Rewriting of the Social Contract

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.

Open Discovery Processes Underlying Economic and Political Freedom

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 politics and the state in the case of liberalism and also the economy in the case of socialism. Both political camps underrate or misconstrue the need and the logic of the indispensable discovery procedures required for strong economic performance (socialism's defect) and the feasibility of civil society at large (classical liberalism's defect).

Search by Free Persons versus Automatisms

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 activates 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 render freedom a state of affairs distinguished by the absence of significant levels of politicisation - a visionary predilection that amounts to the disenfranchisement of the public.

Decentralisation versus Disenfranchisement

A free society, I contend, 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 feasible.

Freedom's Boundaries of Contingencies

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.

Feasible Freedom - A Dynamic Equilibrium Balancing Dissension and Peaceableness

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 states 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.

Related articles

Competing for Liberty (1/3)

The Libertarian Triangle of Oblivion

Violence, Sustenance, and Faith - Civil Society and Social Cohesion - (Ernest Gellner) (1/4)

The Miracle of Freedom

Immigration and Freedom (10/10) - III. Feasible Freedom and Early US Immigration Politics (1776 - 1900)

Just-So Stories in Economics and Politics - Consequences for Liberty

Civic Virtue

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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.

Related articles

Scarce Justice - When What Is "Just" Is Not Known

The Miracle of Freedom

Violence, Sustenance, and Faith - Civil Society and Social Cohesion - (Ernest Gellner) (4/4)

Political Overload versus Irreducible Politics

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In an unpublished paper entitled "The Paradox of Freedom - Austrian Thought and the Crisis of Liberalism," I argue as follows below. In this preface-comment, I refer to the quote by Armen Alchian, in the second paragraph below.

Political Overload versus Irreducible Politics

In arguing that markets need politics to be viable, I recommend that we differentiate between

illicit or inefficient political blockages to the market order such as rent control, let us call it "political overload,"

and

the fact that economic activities are always embedded in and permeated by outcomes from political action, which circumstance one might call "irreducible politics,"

as when, say, a new market (in securities or fish) is established, requiring innumerable political decisions: who is to be admitted to it - as supplier, as consumer, as arbiter etc - which rules are to be adhered to, by whom, who is entitled to ratify any such rules and so on.

The distinction between "political overload" and "irreducible politics" is important. Unlike Armen Alchian seems to insinuate below, it is not true that there is a unilateral, ongoing, and irreversible displacement of economics by politics - political errors such as rent controls do get revoked, and large areas of economic activity are constantly kept free from political blockage.

Markets Depend on Outcomes of Political Contestation

At the same time, the very feasibility of markets depends on the outcomes of political contestation, which is not only true for the detailed structure of, say, a stock exchange (which may be favoured by securities firm A more than by securities firm B) but also for the return of a rent-controlled housing sector to a situation where market forces have more room to operate (a situation which may have become possible only because ways have been found to negotiate new legislation concerning the obligations and duties of landlords and tenants.)

So, we had better discern

market roll-back via dysfunctional "political overload"

from

inevitable and seminal constitution of markets by acts of "irreducible politics."

Good markets depend on "irreducible politics," and they are damaged by "political overload."

7.1 Why Markets Are No Substitute for Politics

A market transaction presupposes not only that two parties have recognised a mutually advantageous trading opportunity, but also that there is no internal or externally imposed conflict between them that inhibits exchange. A market transaction does not create concordance between the trading parties; rather it presupposes the compatibility of their respective interests and the possibility of peaceful exchange. Market transactions are not a means to overcoming conflict, instead they are being engaged in to take advantage of mutually complementary benefits already present, when no conflictive circumstances prevent them from transacting with one another. By contrast, elections, for instance, though in principle they may register (not create) unanimity, i.e. complete concordance, are preponderantly a procedure resorted to in the face of conflict and disagreement, and are intended to serve as a means of mitigating rivalry. Political scarcity occurs when concordance is scarce. Elections are one of the means tried to attenuate the inconvenience, nuisance, or blatant danger of unresolved disagreement in a group of people. In a large class of cases, when we are faced with political scarcity, we cannot help but apply non-market procedures. These may be rather imperfect, but comparing them to a spurious ideal is not helpful. Politics is about managing rivalry and compromise. Markets are about bringing together perfectly fitting interests. Politics and the state are more fundamental than economics in that they are instrumental in controlling more factors vital to individuals and humankind than can be achieved by “well-behaved” market transactions. The options for economic behaviour are set by politics and the state.

Writes Armen Alchian:

“I know of no way to reduce the prospective enhancement from greater political power-seeking, but I do know ways to reduce the rewards to market-oriented capitalist competition. Political power is dominant in being able to set the rules of the game to reduce the rewards to capitalist-type successful competitors. It is rule maker, umpire, and player … But I have been unable to discern equivalently powerful ways for economic power to reduce the rewards to competitors for political power!”

Economic Reason versus Political Reason

I am no longer sure I can accept the apodictic tone of Alchian's conclusion. As if there had never been an election dominated and decided by the electorate's economic preferences (in favour of greater market orientation). Moreover, while e.g. the advantages of short-term populism may provide a strong incentive for politicians to disregard economic rationality, government has also strong motives to foster or preserve its economic base. 

The political infrastructure of a free society is intended to and capable of resisting encroachment through "political overload." Thus, I know of cases, where firms were able to get politics to revoke legislation that would have killed a market or made its inception impossible.

And, of course, not every market that gets established is a good thing or free from unseen repression (of competitors and better market arrangements etc). In areas where private firms negotiate the political framework of a market (say, by defining a worldwide standard for certain electronic gadgets), there is no intrinsic advantage in being a non-public entity as far as political conflict is concerned. There are plenty of "private" reasons to wish for a standard different from that favoured by one's competitors. Also, as Adam Smith would readily confirm, privately established "markets," are subject to insalubrious temptations to collude or harm outsiders or the public in other ways. 

And then, there is the wide field of pluralistic indeterminacy, the fact that we must come to final policy outcomes in the face of irreconcilable differences among the many concepts defining economic desiderata. "Keynesians" argue that "Neo-Liberals" seriously harm the public by non-intervention in markets, adhering thereby to a wider definition of markets that incorporates hallmarks which the "Neo-Liberals" disapprove of, and vice versa, with "Neo-Liberals perceiving Keynesian "Public Goods" as "Public Bads" and Keynesian "markets" as "non-markets."

Under any circumstances, we will be confronted with diverging visions of "the right economy," no matter how free a society is - in fact, the freer a society, the more likely is widespread dissension.

In that sense, dealing with economic disagreement, so as to establish and sustain a common base for tolerance and legitimacy, is prior to economic insight, which is subjective and partisan. We cannot establish a total consensus on the right economic policy, but we can make us all coexist reasonably well in the absence of such a consensus, which is an important precondition for a society with reasonably free markets, and by itself represents a political achievement that is required before any variant of more or less free markets can be enforced.

8. SO1 Subset of SO2

The spontaneous order of free markets (SO1) does not cover all evolutionary adaptations serving to deal with challenges arising from human interaction in large communities. It is a different sphere of spontaneous order (SO2), precisely the area ignored by Hayek as an object of research into self-generating order that provides the substratum in which SO1 is embedded. Markets are a derivative of SO2, the spontaneous order of politics and the state, in which conditions may or may not evolve that are sufficiently peaceful and tolerant of the individual to allow for voluntary and mutually beneficial transactions of the type constituting free markets.

It is an illusion to think that markets create peaceful reciprocity; functioning markets always presuppose a political order that does well at managing political scarcity.

Within SO2 competitive processes develop to deal with contentious issues that can not be settled through the means of market exchange, especially regarding

• the cultural validity and political prevalence of rival values, objectives, and interests, as well as
• the manner in which diversity and divergence of these fundamental convictions are to be managed so as to minimise violence and strengthen trust in a community in sufficient measure to make free markets and a civil society possible.

See also Alchian on Politics, Property Rights, Why the State Persists, Prelude Concerning the State.

Related articles

In Defence of Democracy

The Fault in Public Choice

The Economics of Rent Control

Immigration and Freedom (10/10) - III. Feasible Freedom and Early US Immigration Politics (1776 - 1900)

Image credit. Continued from Immigration and Freedom (9/10).

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.

Summary of Milestones of US Immigration Policies

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Image credit. Continued from Immigration and Freedom (8/10):

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)

Continued at Immigration and Freedom (10/10).

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Image credit.

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.

Continued at Immigration and Freedom (9/10) - II. Feasible Freedom and Eraly US Immigration Politics (1776-1900)

See also Immigration and Freedom (6/10) - Political Scarcity and the Indeterminacy of Freedom and Negotiable Freedom.

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