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Liberalism: Political and Economic*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

Russell Hardin
Russell Hardin
Affiliation:
Political Science and Philosophy, University of Chicago
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Extract

Political liberalism began in the eighteenth century with the effort to establish a secular state in which religious differences would be tolerated. If religious views include universal principles to apply to all by force if necessary, diverse religions must conflict, perhaps fatally. In a sense, then, political liberalism was an invention to resolve a then current, awful problem. Its proponents were articulate and finally persuasive. There have been many comparable social inventions, many of which have failed, as Communism, egalitarianism, and perhaps socialism have all failed to date. The extraordinary thing about political liberalism is that it seems to have succeeded in its authors' initial hope for it. It may have helped end the turmoil occasioned by religious differences. Political liberalism has since expanded in various ways under other influences, and, if it were not for Islamic fundamentalism with its seemingly coercive theocratic program, we might no longer today associate religious conflict with the core of liberalism in its actual practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 1993 , pp. 121 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1993

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References

1 For a fuller account, see Hardin, Russell, “Hobbesian Political Order” Political Theory, vol. 19, no. 2 (05 1991), pp. 156–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Hobbes speaks of enforcing promises. The vocabulary of exchange is a later efflorescence.

3 For a clear statement and argument, see Polinsky, A. Mitchell, An Introduction to Law and Economics, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), p. 13.Google Scholar

4 Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950).Google Scholar

5 Locke, ever careful, wrote of Mahometans rather than Catholics (Ibid., pp. 51–52). Also, atheists could not be trusted because they could not bind themselves with an oath whose violation would bring punishment after death (ibid., p. 52).

6 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political EconomyGoogle Scholar (any standard seventh edition), book 5, ch. 11, sect. 12.

7 See Hardin, Russell, “Efficiency,” in Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993).Google Scholar

8 See Brennan, Geoffrey and Buchanan, James M., The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 38–40.Google Scholar

9 Hayek, Friedrich A., “The Uses of Knowledge in Society,”Google Scholar in Hayek, , Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948Google Scholar; reprinted by Gateway, no date; essay first published 1945), pp. 77–91, esp. pp. 86–89.

10 Leichter, Howard M., Free to Be Foolish: Politics and Health Promotion in the United States and Great Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 257.Google Scholar

11 See Nedelsky, Jennifer, Private Power and the Limits of American Constitutionalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

12 White, Leslie A., The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fail of Rome (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 346.Google Scholar

13 It would be anachronistic to call their view Benthamite, but Mandeville and Smith clearly valued economic liberty for its general effects on all.

14 Dell, Daniel, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London: Heinemann, 1976), p. 77.Google Scholar

15 The Levelers pushed for egalitarianism and democracy during the seventeenth-century English Revolution. Not surprisingly, they appealed both to welfarist considerations — society will be better off — and to deontological considerations that sound like natural rights.

16 Hart, H. L. A., “Between Utility and Rights,”Google Scholar in Hart, , Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar; essay first published 1979), p. 198.

17 See Hardin, Russell, “The Morality of Law and Economics” Law and Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 4 (11 1992), pp. 331–84, esp. pp. 380–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 See Locke, , Letter Concerning Toleration.Google Scholar

19 For further discussion of Hobbesian efficiency and its normative limits, see Hardin, , “The Morality of Law and Economics.”Google Scholar The concept of Hobbesian efficiency is related to Paretian efficiency (it is Parelo efficient to make a change in distribution that makes one or more individuals better off and none worse off). Hobbesian efficiency is an early grasp of the core concern in Paretian efficiency in contexts of choosing between government and anarchy (which, in Hobbes's view, entails chaos and grievous losses to all). It yields a resolution only because Hobbes supposes that we know too little to distinguish between the benefits we would receive from one form of government (e.g., monarchy) and those from another form (e.g., oligarchy). Hence, epistemological constraints play as strong a role for Hobbes as they do for Locke in his arguments for religious toleration.

20 For a clear and important discussion, see Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 407–16.Google Scholar

21 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

22 See Hardin, Russell, “To Rule in No Matters, To Obey in None” Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 12 (11–12 1991), pp. 6–12, esp. pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

23 Sen, Amartya, “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 78 (1970) pp. 152–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Political philosophy ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous.

25 If elaborated this way, Sen's paradox requires a fourth condition. In addition to having two individual rights and the principle of dyadic agreement (Sen speaks of unanimity), he now adds the random intuition about the wrongness of a particular outcome. That these conditions cannot universally be satisfied is no paradox. For discussion of further problems with Sen's paradox, see Hardin, Russell, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 108–13Google Scholar. In particular. Sen speaks of unanimity when what he means is agreement of two people in a two-person society. In such a society, rights talk is pointless.

26 See, e.g., Sen, Amartya, “Liberty as Control: An Appraisal,” in Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 7 of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, ed. French, Peter A., Uehling, Theodore E. Jr., and Wettstein, Howard K. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 207–21.Google Scholar

27 Hardin, Russell, “Efficiency vs. Equality and the Demise of Socialism” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 2 (06 1992), pp. 149–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see especially the section on “Egal-itarianism in one society,” pp. 156–58.Google Scholar

28 From 1967 to 1989, gross domestic product per capita in Burma rose 31 percent, from 9–16 kyats to 1239 kyats (in 1985 prices), for a dismal annual rate of growth of slightly over 1 percent (International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics, 1991).Google Scholar

29 The Statesman's Year-Book 1991–92, ed. Hunter, Brian (New York: St. Martin's, 1991), pp. 254, 781, 787.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Discussed above in Section IV under “Deontological additions.”

31 Nor can there be any religious test required as a qualification for any office or public trust in the United States (Article 6 of the Constitution).

32 As argued by Greenawalt, Kent, Religious Convictions and Political Choice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. ch. 3.Google Scholar

33 Even India has abandoned much of its socialist economic program. See New York Times, 03 29, 1992, sect. I, pp. 1, 9.Google Scholar

34 Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs: Studies in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Goodin, Robert E., Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).Google Scholar

35 One could add Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and others in the long lines of economic and political liberalism to this list.