Atomistic Individualism

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3 (KJV)

I once had a professor of economic history who used to begin every year with the most famous part of that quote: "Man doth not live by bread only."  He was not by any means a religious man but he felt the quote helped remind his students, everyone of them either economics minors or majors, that economics wasn't everything, that Economic Man was not Man.  Many libertarians, who frequently become so because of their readings on economic topics, tend to forget this.  It's why political discussions with libertarians can become quite tedious.  I am not referring to most serious scholars who are of an Austrian or libertarian bent, but to those who can be called vulgar libertarians, people who agree with the idea of laissez-faire government but lack the tools to properly fight the battle. 

They frequently have a limited knowledge of history and philosophy and often say very silly - though well meaning - things that are promptly torn apart by leftists like John Ralston Saul and Linda McQuaig.  A bad defense, as Ayn Rand noted, is usually worse than no defense.  Statists have succeeded in implementing their agenda by distorting both ideas and history, as such a sound knowledge of both is needed to defend the cause of individual rights and minimal government.  Saying that poverty is caused by government intervention belies the complexity of the topic.  In a laissez-faire society people will still be sick, unfortunate or simply irrational.  All those issues must still be dealt with.  Saying that utopia is just a take cut away makes one sound fool hearty, and even at times like an outright fool.  I have seen many very bright people say some very silly things because they're specialization is in an unrelated field.  The opposition will cut you no slack.

I bring all this up in response to a post over at Burkean Canuck:

Why I don't want "Tory" to mean "Libertarian Party of Canada"

Or, "Why I don't the Conservative Party of Canada to be thorough-goingly libertarian." In yesterday's National Post, here, Brian Chen, self-described as "a teenaged, card-carrying Conservative living in Ontario," argued against "social conservatism" in the Conservative Party and "for small government and personal freedom." I disagree with Mr. Chen's first contention, and I have a different understanding of what the second means, and how it may best be achieved:

In the name of radical individualism, varieties of libertarianism -- including Ayn Rand's objectivism -- take too little account of the importance of institutions and associations. Here, even von Hayek departs from radical individualism as he recognizes the importance to society of such institutions as family and church . . . in his The Road to Serfdom, if I recall correctly. This may be an instance of "the Law of Unintended Consequences" -- ergo, until radical individualism has done its work and diminished institutions and associations, we may not be aware of just how important they are to things like, oh, freedom. Burke wrote of associations as "little platoons," the British associationists of the turn of the 19th to the 20th century saw their importance, and over the last twenty-five years or so there has been a revival of interest in the importance of "intermediating institutions" between the state and the individual. 

He is largely correct on this point, though he misrepresents Rand's thoughts (Rand, not incidentally, was highly critical of libertarians because of their refusal to ground their defense of freedom in anything but technical and non-essential arguments).  Many, but by no means all, libertarians do fail to take into account "intermediating institutions."  Partly, I suspect, this comes from an over emphasis on economics in much of libertarian analysis, and partly because of an ignorance of the history of methods of social provision prior to the development of the welfare state.  They are not alone in this.  A surprising number of educated, and generally honest and well meaning, people accept with little dissent the statist assertion that if not for government the poor would starve, most of the sick would die for lack of medicine and that other untold horrors would visit the land. 

The too common conservative, libertarian and occasionally objectivist reply is; "Well, tough."  Some vague mention of private charity or insurance is on occasion offered but it often sounds more like a desperate fig leaf than a well thought out alternative.  The skeptical come away believing even more that we are faced with either big government or mass misery.  Call it the "King or Chaos" defence.  During the 1935 General Election Mackenzie King, then in one of his uncharacteristic periods in opposition, declared that Canadians could either continue with the Depression wrought, or prolonged, by the governing Conservatives or they could accept him as Prime Minister, yet again.  The alternative, however, isn't between big government (King) and mass suffering (Chaos), it's between the suffering caused by big government and the genuine and effective compassion resulting from private and voluntary action.

Rand herself was, if you read her journal writings and letters, perfectly cognizant of intermediating institutions, and she probably assumed so was everyone else.  She was, after all, born in 1905 and wrote her majors works from the 1940s through to the 1960s.  There were still many alive then who remembered what American society was like before the New Deal.  The intellectual battle of the time was over the future.  Capitalism was blamed for the Great Depression and for the mass poverty that inside.  The reason for this intellectual consensus lay less in the economic theories of Keynes and his allies, which were anyway riven through with theoretical gaps and omissions, but in the widespread philosophical assumption that individualism was evil. 

Individualism was equated, rather logically, with selfishness.  Selfishness was regarded as an evil, as was the creation of wealth.  That a moral evil might lead to economic disaster and harm matched the intellectual assumptions of the 19th and 20th centuries far more neatly than Smith's counter-intuitive declaration that selfishness is not harmful if properly understood and applied.  That Smith did not, in Rand's sense, properly understand either the self or selfishness does not undercut this point.  The sin was greed, the punishment poverty and economic collapse.  Of course some are poor, declared the Progressives and the New Dealers, is that not to be expected when we allow such "selfish" monsters as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan to run our economy?  Of course we suffer from economic crises, untamed individualism creates economic anarchy, only planning and intervention can lead to stability.

Rand sought to challenge the philosophical assumptions behind statism rather than its technical failings.  A small army of economists was doing exactly that from the 1950s onward.  Any honest historian could look at the past and see how capitalism had actually worked.  Few were challenging the basic assumptions of the age, and those who were, such as William F. Buckley, she believed were doing so in a deeply flawed and ultimately harmful way.

Burkean Canuck continues:

Libertarians favour not just a limited state, but a minimalist state

As Dooyeweerd presents it, however, the role of government and the State is to pursue "public justice" with the over-riding objective of achieving human flourishing. That means that while government -- the State -- has no business being in business, er, profit-making enterprises, it does have a role in creating a level playing field for profit-making enterprise countering mercantilism and monopolism, and laying the ground rules for employer-employee relations, for example;

The pursuit of public justice is precisely what the Progressives and the New Dealers were fighting for too.  It was, however, their very flawed conception of both that lead them to argued for big government.  One of the key principles behind the argument for laissez-faire is that public justice cannot be accomplished if the state exceeds its proper bounds.  Public justice and laissez-faire are not exclusionary but corollary ideas here.  One may argue as to what the proper role of government is, though that requires a deeper discussion of the ideas of both public and justice, but to place justice ahead of freedom is to create a needless and dangerous conflict.  John Ralston Saul talks a lot about public justice too, so did Tommy Douglas.

Burkean Canuck continues:

Libertarianism wants a public square characterized by thoroughgoing secularism and the autonomous individual.

Some libertarians, and again I believe that Burkean is confusing vulgar libertarians with the more scholarly variety, believe that autonomous means atomistic.  They do seem to believe that every man is an island, to twist Donne's wordings.  There is however an important concept that must always be kept in mind when discussing individualism and laissez-faire; individual sovereignty.  The idea that an individual may be part of a society, and join in its civil institutions, yet always have the right of withdrawal.  Morally and legally a man maybe an island, if he chooses.  That it generally is not in his interests to do so is a separate issue.  Indeed an often very highly active participation might very well be within his or her interests and often is. 

As for secularism; there is a secularism that insists on the separation of church and state and that religious dogma, or ideological dogma, may not interfere in the freedom of public debate in the public square.  That many now extend that, or more accurately contradict, that principle to exclude those of faith is a plain injustice.  The reasons have less to do with secularism, extreme or not, as secularism did not mean in the 18th or 19th centuries that religion was to be banished from serious discourse.  Certainly many of those who led the fight for the separation of church and state were highly critical of either organized religion or faith itself.  Thomas Jefferson comes to mind in the former sense.  But few intended to bar the participation of Christians, Muslims, Jews or members of any other religion.  They wanted the freedom of debate previously denied to them to be turned into an established social principle. 

The type of secularism that Burkean decries is really statism attempting to squelch public debate.  Statists, and their intellectual courtiers, do not like competition.  Religion has always been a powerful competitor for intellectual influence over society.  Just as those who called for smaller, limited or minimal government were banished from serious intellectual debate a half century ago now the same attempt is being made against the religious.  The point of allowing freedom of debate is not whether religion is a positive or a negative thing, or even whether the religious are deluded in thinking that some type of supreme being presides over the destiny of men, but the freedom itself. 

The religious will not change their convictions through suppression and contempt, the history of Christianity alone demonstrates that clearly enough.  Suppressing such debate either through formal censorship, which we do not have in Canada - though the various "Hate Crime" laws are a disturbing trend in this regard - or through the more common avenue of snide disregard, accomplishes nothing.  These ideas need to be debated as freely as possible.  To do otherwise is to drive such ideas underground and have them pop up in unexpected places, often with unpleasant results.  When people believe they are not being heard in the public square they choose other avenues of expression.  This may seem a fantastic comment in a society like Canada but peaceful societies remain peaceful because they allow for free public debate.  Even if violence is not the end point apathy and discontent are enough of a danger to a free society to warrant an open forum.

On a side note as regards libertarian contempt for religion I again refer to the influence of economic analysis as one of the causes.  Religion cannot be fit into a Cobb-Douglas function.  Another reason for this dismissal of religion out of hand is that we live in many ways in a post-religious society - indeed, in a post-philosophic society too.  Many young libertarians have little direct experience with religion except through popular culture, whose rendition is often crude and overly simplistic, as well as being hostile.  That the religious are nothing but a collection of foaming fanatics demanding a return to the 8th century is a caricature many cannot get passed.  Particularly those who have been exposed to nothing else.  Those libertarians who have had personal contact with religion are often in rebellion against it.  Why is a another question.  It is difficult to ask for context from those who are in full fight against what they view as a clear evil.

I am not a religious person by any stretch.  Some of my "secular" friends criticize me for not attacking religion with greater vigor.  My answer to them is that I have more of an issue with faith than with religion.  Faith, to me, is an abdication of reason.  It is the demand that I place a wish above an understanding.  This may seem too stark a phrasing for some.  Those who follow in the footsteps of Thomas Aquinas will counter that reason and faith are not - as public justice and laissez-faire are not - exclusionary but corollary.  I do not agree with this.  I believe they are by necessity exclusionary. 

Religion, and the religious, are, however, an almost completely separate topic.  All that the religious share as a group is an acceptance of faith and some organized creed derived from it.  It is a concept that subsumes the fanatic, the thoughtful, the deluded and a whole range of opinions and beliefs.  The religious are too heterogeneous a group to either damn or praise as a group.  It should not have to be reiterated that the "religious" include figures such as Gladstone, Wilberforce, Reagan and Thatcher, to mention only some of the devout Christians who have furthered the cause of freedom.  That faith made their arguments less strong than they might have been, and need to be if we are to move forward, does not discount their accomplishments or reduce the debt we owe to them.