Among my three articles in the Fall issue of Regulation, which is just out in printed and online formats, two are reviews of recent books that are, not surprisingly, related to individual liberty.
The first one is about Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi’s The Individualists, which provides a detailed intellectual history of libertarianism since its birth in the 19th century (see pp. 40-43 in the magazine). In the authors’ typology, which is defendable, libertarianism in its broad sense includes not only the most radical libertarians but also the contemporary version of classical libertarianism. It is a serious and well-documented book, challenging in many ways for both libertarians and non-libertarians.
One of my critiques is the neglect of Anthony the Jasay. I write:
There is a big absence in the book’s review of contemporary libertarian schools of thought. Nowhere is the work of economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay mentioned. In my opinion, de Jasay fundamentally renewed both the critique of the state and the liberal–libertarian argument for anarchy. (See “A Conservative Anarchist? Anthony de Jasay, 1925–2019,” Spring 2019.) De Jasay’s work also attenuates the relevance of the standard left–right, progressive–conservative distinction, and throws new light on political philosophy and libertarianism. For sure, he is far from an academic household name, but his first, seminal book, The State, was published four decades ago. Since I did not myself immediately discover its importance (Buchanan was quicker), I can’t really cast the first stone.
My review concludes:
Is libertarianism too large a tent, with too many diverse occupants? The authors of The Individualists believe that “libertarianism is not accidentally but intrinsically a diverse ideology” and that “the tension between radical and reactionary elements is not accidental but intrinsic to libertarian thinking.” They seem to attribute this characteristic to the different circumstances where the major threats to liberty changed. Perhaps it is also because libertarianism is defined along a different dimension than the standard left-right spectrum: the dimension of individual choice/collective choice. At any rate, analysis, discussion, peaceful diversity, and tolerance are pluses, not minuses. Zwolinski and Tomasi’s book is a useful guide in these interrogations.
The second book I review in this hot issue of Regulation is a defense of the Middle Ages as a precursor of classical liberalism: The Medieval Constitution of Liberty: Political Foundations of Liberalism in the West (see pp. 51-54 in Regulation online) by two libertarian economists, Alexander William Salter and Andrew Young. The incipit of my review:
The Middle Ages seem mysterious. The period from the fall of Rome in the 5th century through the 15th century is often—or used to be, anyway—referred to as the Dark Ages. Yet, this period was followed by the Renaissance, the Early Modern period and, in the 18th and 19th century, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and (to borrow from Deirdre McCloskey) the “Great Enrichment.” There must have been something in the Middle Ages that was not antithetical to the birth of modernity.
Salter and Young explain what that was. They also argue that we (in the West) owe the measure of liberty we have not to the “state capacity” (one of today’s academic buzzwords) that developed between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment but, on the contrary, to the decentralized political power that characterized the High Middle Ages (11th-13th century). Let me quote the last few paragraphs of my review:
The medieval constitution did not survive long after the High Middle Ages, notably because of the shocks of the 14th century. The Black Death, a plague or viral epidemic, ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. Depending on the region, it killed between one-eighth and two-thirds of the population. Another shock was the siege cannon, which produced economies of scale in coercion and eliminated the relative advantage of fortified places. Centralized nation-states rose with “state capacity” for producing what we would now call public goods.
State-capacity scholars believe that the privatization of political authority in the High Middle Ages prevented state centralization and the building of useful state capacity, notably for supporting economic growth. They point to the correlation between high taxes and high economic growth since the Industrial Revolution. (See “A Shackled Leviathan That Keeps Roaming and Growing,” Fall 2021, and “A Fashionable Appeal to a Benevolent State,” Winter 2023–2024.) An example of the perverse effects of decentralized medieval institutions can be found in the guilds, which limited innovation and competition among artisans, and existed from the 11th to the 18th century. Local tolls offer another example. Only the modern central state, goes the argument, was able to abolish these obstacles to the Great Enrichment. Salter and Young consider the state capacity argument “a significant challenge,” which they endeavor to meet.
The state capacity explanation for economic development has been challenged by several scholars such as Peter Boettke, Roselino Candela, Vincent Geloso, Ennio Piano, and Salter and Young themselves. Strong states can be predatory as much as producers of public goods. Historically, state capacity has generally stifled economic development; we only need to think about imperial China or, in recent times, North Korea or the Soviet Union. To support prosperity, state capacity must be limited by the rule of law and a market economy. The state must be constrained in the use of its capacity. Western countries’ march toward the Great Enrichment suggests that something must have prevented state capacity from becoming predatory. Salter and Young argue that this something “was the set of background constraints bequeathed by the constitutional heritage of medieval Europe.”
Thus, we cannot explain “the bounty of modernity” without the conditions that existed in the High Middle Ages. “The rise of the West must be viewed not as an escape from the High Middle Ages,” the authors write, “but a continuation of the proto-liberal traditions that solidified in the High Middle Ages.”
Salter and Young’s book confirms that capitalism or, more generally, individual liberty is the daughter of anarchy or, at least, of polycentric and limited political power. Let’s repeat that the Middle Ages were not perfect and mankind had to wait for 19th century classical liberalism to have a glimpse at the bounty that individual liberty can produce.
Sociologist and historian Jean Baechler said something similar (his emphasis):
The expansion of capitalism owes its origins and its raison d’être to political anarchy.
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DALL-E hopes somebody is listening
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Sep 25 2024 at 7:46am
“There must have been something in the Middle Ages that was not antithetical to the birth of modernity.”
Christendom was under external pressure by the rise of Islam/Ottoman Empire. Turks also were a physical barrier to the East, the impetus for the Age of Discovery to literally get around them. Columbus wasn’t just about finding a shorter route to the east, they, particularly the Portuguese, had found their way around Africa.
Roger McKinney
Sep 25 2024 at 9:44am
As McCloskey has shown, capitalism required a major change in values. Historians ignore values and the importance of religion to people until recently. For 1500 years the Church taught that commerce is evil so people despised it. That changed it the Dutch Republic because scholars and the people embraced the new theology of commerce coming from the University of Salamanca that sanctified commerce.
Helmut Schoeck adds in his classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior that envy caused people to build institutions that thwarted innovation that leads to development. Only Christianity had suppressed envy enough to allow for economic growth.
steve
Sep 25 2024 at 12:48pm
Wife is an amateur Medieval historian and one of our lawyer friends has a special interest in the history of the development of common law. I have spent hours listening to them argue. Will recommend the book to them. I can see maybe making the claim of anarchy/less centralization with conflict between the king and nobles leading to king actually becoming subject to the law. In France the king was essentially above the law and the source of all law, though in theory he was subject to divine law and should lead an exemplary life (LOL). However, in reality the king and nobility were often effectively above the law as it could not be enforced. It took state capacity in many ways to make the laws work. Also, there were a couple of kings who were also instrumental in improving the law like Edward 1.
As an example, sheriffs acted as representatives of the king to enforce the law. In practice they were mostly pretty corrupt so the office of coroner was created so the sheriff couldn’t automatically confiscate stuff when someone was killed. Also, compared with France the law was much more uniform and uniformly enforced in England.
OTOH, the church was more involved in the law in France and the church (Catholic) was generally kept more separate in England and the advent of Protestantism certainly had something of a decentralizing effect.
Mactoul
Sep 25 2024 at 11:50pm
Converse could be as easily argued. Henry VIII merged the office of Head of the Church with the kingship. Previously the Catholic Church was an authority distinct from the English king but Protestantism (in its initial phase) centralized all authority in England.
Of course, the fissiparous tendency inherent in Protestantism lead to further and further divisions among the Protestants thus to decentralization leading to English Civil war.
steve
Sep 26 2024 at 12:01pm
Fair point. In the short term it benefitted Henry, but in the longer term I still think it mostly had a decentralizing effect but it’s hard to separate it from other stuff going on. Wealth went from being highly concentrated in the land and agriculture and then you had the miners and the wool trade. The rise of the merchant class which the law really wasn’t set up to address and how the law had to adapt. Really complex changes so I think it’s really hard to make a case that it was one particular change that was dominant.
Steve
Kurt Schuler
Sep 25 2024 at 10:06pm
An older book that makes the case that the intellectual and procedural roots of American freedoms lie mainly in the Middle Ages, rather than with the Enlightenment, is M. Stanton Evans’s The Theme Is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition (1994). Salter and Young do not cite it. Evans has some discussion of continental Europe but focuses mainly on England, and on the development and extension of English ideas of freedom in America well before the American Revolution.
Mactoul
Sep 25 2024 at 11:52pm
I should suppose that a reference to Russell Kirk’s Roots of American Order would be pertinent but Kirk appears to be a persona non grata among libertarians.
Mactoul
Sep 26 2024 at 1:55am
Of the six markers, one is vague (individualism), another is held by as reactionary as institution as the Catholic Church (private property), and spontaneous order is merely in the eye of beholder
In my opinion, libertarianism is most precisely defined by denial of the moral authority of community.
The moral authority lies in defining the moral premises of a community which work their way to settle the moral arguments within a community. Thus, removing the need for violence within a community (since the disputes can be resolved by arguments).
This was put succinctly by Milton Friedman –how to decide the limits of private property in air above a property–1000 feet, 10000 feet ? No individual can decide this matter, only a community can do so.
No libertarian, not even David Friedman attempts to answer this question.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 27 2024 at 3:59pm
Mactoul: A “community” (the Redneck-Appalachian” community, the NYC cosmopolitan community, or the community of both, or perhaps Facebook?) is not a social organism with two arms, a brain, and vocal cords How does it decide anything? (See Arrow, etc.) If you mean conventions, then you may build a rational and defendable argument along the lines of Adam Smith’s “laws and institutions,” or Friedrich Hayek’s “rules of just conduct,” or David Hume’s and Anthony de Jasay’s conventions, or as conventions explained by game theory (de Jasay, Sugden, etc.).
Milton Friedman was not very strong on these matters of political philosophy. But still, can you give us a quote and precise citation?
Mactoul
Sep 28 2024 at 12:43am
By community i meant a political community. My preferred term is City but that tends to lead to further confusion and explanations.
For Milton Friedman’s question, I refer you to Bryan Caplan’s recent posts on the speech that Friedman gave in 1978: Friedman Contra Open Borders.
Friedman made this point in passing, as if too obvious to expand upon.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 29 2024 at 1:14pm
Mactoul: Can you give your definition of “political”–and of “politics” if your definition includes that word? And what is the difference between “political” and “social.”
(I am tempted to ask you what would be the corresponding definitions for Buchanan and de Jasay, but that is a more involved question–albeit a good exercise.)
Mactoul
Sep 30 2024 at 1:26am
Politics is study of power-struggles between men. The power-struggles give rise to states aka political communities.
The political community grounds private property by defining the rules and rights which comprise private property.
How can an individual define private property by himself. Why would other individuals agree to his definitions?
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 30 2024 at 12:04pm
Mactoul:
I don’t think that defining a fire as what results from a spark is a good definition. If what you want to say is that politics is the activities of a ruler who stops and prevents decentralized violence (“the war of all against all”), you have given either (1) the definition of a superior power that wins the war (by internal or external conquest), or (2) Hobbes’s definition of Leviathan. (Note however that Hobbes’ Leviathan does not have the power to redefine property rights as he wishes.) I think that Smith, Hume, and Hayek would accept the first, fuzzier definition, and look for evolved conventions and institutions that can limit Leviathan’s power. Buchanan starts with Hobbes and inquires about what sort of social contract and enforcer could conceptually obtain the unanimous consent of all individuals. He concludes that a rational individual will not accept an unconditional and irreversible power powerful enough to exploit him, and he explores the limits the signatory of the virtual social contract will want to impose to this power. De Jasay argues that Humean conventions are sufficient to prevent the war of all against all (but not perhaps invasions by foreign states) and to solve other “public good” problems; and that anyway once an organization (“the state”) is given the power to make “social choices” that override individual choices, it will naturally, by the logic of institutions, grow into Leviathan. (Note how “community” is basically useless, except by its fuzziness and perhaps by smuggling in an assumption of unanimity.)
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 30 2024 at 12:12pm
Mactoul: I should have added that Buchanan would define politics as the coercive exploitation of minorities, except at the contractual stage (the social-contract stage) where individual veto power offers no scope for exploitation politics and where politics is exchange among the “framers” of the social contract. See my review of The State and The Calculus of Content on that.
Mactoul
Sep 28 2024 at 12:49am
Your question, how a community decides anything, is tantamount to asking whether there are any public matters.
And this question, i observe, is not answered in the negative by Jasay himself cf. the presumption of liberty quote.
So despite the Machinery of Liberty effort to reduce public matters to private transactions, there are public matters and then somehow they get to be decided.