Liberty Is More Important than Democracy
by Richard M. Ebeling
[Posted April 30, 2002]
The 20th century was most certainly the most inhuman and brutal one
hundred years in modern history. Two World Wars as well as the Nazi and
Communist forms of totalitarianism have been estimated to have caused
the death of at least 250 million people. This would be equivalent to
the mass murder of the entire populations of Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
Peru, and Paraguay.
Freedom in all its forms was sacrificed on the altar of nationalism,
imperialism, racism, and class warfare. Tyrants and dictators claimed
that all their actions were in the name of the people and for the
interest of the masses. But the common characteristic of both
totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in the 20th century was their
rejection of the right of the people to demonstrate their desires and
preferences through the democratic voting process. Democracy was
condemned as divisive and corrupt. Democracy was declared to be an
illusion of freedom, through which powerful social and economic
interests manipulated the political system for their own benefit at the
expense of the rest of the society.
The rejection of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes around the world
has represented a rebirth of the ideal of the democratic order. Hundreds
of millions of people have declared their belief in their ability to
rule over the political affairs of their own countries. The people of
the world have proclaimed their dedication to self-government. But it is
important to remember that "self-government" can mean and has meant two
different, but complementary, ideals.
Self-government in the political sense means that the members of society
shall have the right to participate in and decide through the electoral
process who holds office in the government. The people shall choose
those who will enact and enforce the laws of the land. The role of
political self-government is to assure that those who administer the
state are accountable to those whom they represent. Periodic elections
enable the people to judge the continuing fitness and integrity of the
elected officials, and to help prevent abuses of power at the expense of
the electorate.
Political self-government also serves as a means of changing both the
men and the policies that rule over the society without recourse to
violent revolution or civil war. Democracy introduces civil peace into
the political process by eliminating the necessity of taking up arms to
remove those in high office. Death and destruction are no longer the
price for political change.
But there is a second meaning to the idea of self-government. This
refers to the self-governing individual.& The great ideal of the liberal
thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries was that the ultimate goal of
political reform away from monarchy and autocracy was to liberate and
free the individual from the tyranny of the one or the few over the
many. But they also warned of the equal and perhaps even greater danger
of the tyranny of the majority over the minority or even over the one.
Their ideal was not unrestricted democracy but individual liberty under
a constitutional order limiting the powers of the government.
When they spoke of the sovereignty of the people, they meant that each
individual should be sovereign over the affairs of his own life.\xa0This
was the idea behind the North American revolution of 1776, when the
signers of the Declaration of Independence declared that all men are
equal in possessing certain unalienable rights, among them life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that governments are formed
by men precisely to secure and protect these individual rights. Any
meaningful conception of "human rights" must refer to the individual
rights of distinct human beings. There is no "collective" man. There are
only separate individuals who think, value, hope, dream ,and have goals
and purposes that guide their lives.
The liberals of the past also emphasized that freedom is never secure if
people do not have the means of living their lives independently of, and
sometimes in opposition to, the political authority. That is one of the
reasons why they considered the right to private property so essential
and crucial.\xa0Private property gives an individual ownership and
control over a portion of the means of production through which he may
choose how and for what purposes he will live his life. Private property
gives him a "territory" that is under his own jurisdiction for a degree
of "self-rule" in his home and on his property. In the free, liberal
society, he can design his personal "country" that his private property
represents to fit his values, ideals, and desires.
It is true that no man is an island. Man is a social animal who needs
the assistance and companionship of his fellowmen. But in that free,
liberal society, human association is brought about through the market
and its social system of division of labor. The market is an arena of
peaceful, voluntary exchange. The moral premise of the market is that
men are prohibited from using either force or fraud in their dealings
with each other. Each man’s freedom to live and choose is respected by
the others in the society, just as he is expected to respect their
freedom in turn.
Since coercion is prohibited in the market, if a man wishes the
companionship or cooperation of other people, he must learn to practice
politeness, courtesy, good manners, honesty, and trustworthiness in all
his dealings with them. Otherwise they will turn away from him and will
associate and do business with others more respectful and sensitive in
their dealings. Thus, the fact that in the market all interactions are
voluntary and based on mutual consent results in men becoming more civil
and refined in their relationship with others.
Furthermore, the marketplace is far more democratic than the political
arena. In the free market, each individual makes his own decisions
concerning a wide variety of tradable goods and services. Given his
preferences and his wealth and income, he purchases the combination of
goods and services that he considers will most improve the quality,
enjoyment, and purposes of his life. And in the private, free market,
his decisions and choices do not directly restrict the decisions and
choices of others. That one man enjoys purchasing ham and eggs for his
breakfast does not prevent another man from buying cold cereal for his
morning meal, and still a third individual from choosing to buy nothing
at all to eat for the early part of the day and instead spend his money
in some other way.
The entrepreneurs and businessmen on the supply side of the market
respond to our different demands by competing against each other for the
purchase and hire of the resources, capital equipment, and labor
services with which the goods can be produced that the consuming public
is demanding.\xa0Entrepreneurs and businessmen cannot compel the
consumers to purchase the goods and services they bring to market. They
must persuade the buying public, on the basis of the qualities and
prices of the goods they offer for sale. Nor can they force people to
work for them, as suppliers of resources and labor services. Each
entrepreneur and businessman competes against his rivals for the
purchase, renting, or hiring of those resource owners and workers. And
neither are any of those entrepreneurs and businessmen guaranteed to
make a profit, or even to break even, unless the consumers choose to
purchase what they have for sale.
What gets produced and the prices those goods are sold for ultimately
are determined by the public, who "vote" with their money for what is
brought to the market. At the same time, the outcomes of the market are
"pluralistic." That is, the market provides a form of "proportional
representation." Minorities are supplied with goods and services just as
much as the majority and to the degree that reflects the spending of
their money "votes" in the market. Indeed, any minority of consumers can
receive at least some of the goods and services they desire as long as
they are willing and able to offer prices for them sufficient to cover
the costs of some supplier bringing those goods to market.
But don’t consumers in the market have an unequal number of "votes" in
terms of the amount of money incomes they have with which to demand the
various goods they desire? Yes, that is true. But in a free, competitive
market, what determines the number of money "votes" each consumer has is
a reflection of the income he has earned as a producer supplying other
goods that his fellow consumers desired to buy. Thus each individual’s
relative income share in the society is a reflection of what the other
members of the society think his services are worth in terms of the
value they place upon his contribution to a particular production
process.
The democratic pluralism of the free-market economy stands in stark
contrast to the outcome that results from the political democratic
process.\xa0The goods and services provided by government are not open
to individual decision-making and choice. We cannot pick and choose
among the government goods and services in terms of the relative amounts
we would like to have.\xa0And we certainly cannot choose to completely
reject some of those goods and services and not have them at all. Nor do
we have the option only to pay for the government goods and services we
do want. Government acquires the financial means to supply the things it
supplies to society through taxation, the compulsory taking of a part of
the citizenry’s income and wealth without their individual, voluntary
consent.
In a dictatorship, this taking is determined by the wishes of the ruler
and those closest to him, on the basis of their need and uses for the
resources of the nation. In the democratic society, the limits on
taxation depend on the extent to which those in political power are able
to persuade the general population that the forced taking through
taxation is a legitimate reflection of "the people’s" own will as
expressed in the electoral process. It is also influenced by the
formation of coalitions of special interest groups that participate in
justifying and pressuring for various government programs for
redistributing income and restricting markets through regulation, trade
barriers, and monopoly privileges. These are all claimed, of course, to
be in the "national interest," or for the "common good."
It is the use and abuse of the political democratic process for various
interventionist and welfare redistributive schemes that is the source of
the accusations of divisiveness and corruption in democratic society
that are made by the enemies of freedom. But it is not democracy that
has failed in the past. The problem has been caused by the extending of
political democracy into the areas that properly should be left to both
the arena of individual self-governing and personal sovereignty, and the
voluntary, democratic pluralism of the free market.
If democracy is to succeed and thrive in the 21st century, it must be in
the form of liberal and limited democracy. Unlimited democracy means
that majorities and special interest coalitions that form majorities may
violate the freedom and sovereignty of the individual and coercively
interfere with the peaceful and productive voluntary relationships of
the market.
Liberal democracy and the market economy require the following:
1. Recognition and respect for the individual’s civil liberties. These
include the traditional freedoms of speech, the press, religion, and
voluntary association.
2. Recognition and respect for the individual’s economic
liberties--the right to real and personal property, and the right to
its free use and disposal by the owner, as long as its use and
disposal is consistent with the recognition and respect of the same
equal rights of all other individuals in the society.
3. All means of production are privately owned.& And the use of these
means of production is under the control of private owners, who may be
individuals or corporate entities.
4. Consumer demands determine how the means of production will be
used, with the competitive forces of supply and demand determining the
prices for consumer goods and the various factors of production,
including labor.
5. The freedom of the market is not confined to domestic transactions,
but includes the freedom of international trade and investment.
6. The monetary system is based on a market-determined commodity (for
example, gold or silver), and the banking system is private and
competitive, neither controlled nor regulated by government. Or if a
central bank is in charge of the monetary system, it is strictly
limited to a series of narrow rules for management of the money supply
to prevent both inflation and its political use for the purposes of
special interest groups.
7. Government is primarily limited in its activities to the
enforcement and protection of life, liberty, and property. The law
clearly defines and strictly enforces private property rights.
For the most part, these were the principles upon which liberalism and
liberal democracy were based before First World War, before the 20th
century ushered in totalitarian collectivism, aggressive political and
economic nationalism, authoritarianism of various forms and types, and
the interventionist-welfare state.\xa0
If we can establish this liberal democratic and free market ideal the
21st century can be the great century of freedom, prosperity and peace.
It can be the century of tolerance for and the dignity of the
individual. It can be a century of domestic civility and international
harmony. It can be a century with far less political corruption,
violence and deception. Will it be that kind of century? That depends
upon each and every one of us, and whether we want such a liberal world
and are willing to defend it as an ideal and to do what is necessary to
bring it about. |
