Abstract
This paper contrasts Buchanan’s contractarian–constitutional liberalism with Hayek’s evolutionary liberalism and Rothbards free-market liberalism as representative branches of the classical liberal tradition. While Hayek and Rothbard focus on individual liberty as private autonomy, Buchanan posits that individual sovereignty should be recognized as the fundamental normative premise of liberalism. He insists that a consistent application of this premise requires liberals to respect individuals as sovereigns not only in their capacity as private law subjects but also at the constitutional level of choice where, as sovereign citizens, they choose, jointly with their fellow citizens, the rules under which they wish to live. It is argued that by supplementing the notion of individual liberty as private autonomy with the concept of individual sovereignty in constitutional matters Buchanan lays the theoretical foundation for complementing the well-developed liberal theory of the market with a consistent liberal theory of democracy.
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Notes
Hayek (1979: 111): “Individual liberty … requires that coercion be used only to enforce the universal rules of just conduct protecting the individual domains and that the individual can be restrained only in such conduct as may encroach upon the protected domain of others.”—Hayek (1978: 109): “The limitation of all coercion to the enforcement of general rules of just conduct was the fundamental principle of classical liberalism, or, I would almost say, its definition of liberty.”
Hayek (1960: 139): “The ‘rights’ of the individual are the result of the recognition of such a private sphere.”—“The recognition of property is clearly the first step in the delimitation of the private sphere which protects us against coercion” (ibid.: 140).
Hayek (1948: 19): “But if our main conclusion is that an individualist order must rest on the enforcement of abstract principles … this still leaves open the question of the kind of general rules we want.”
Hayek (1978: 124f.): “Adam Smith’s decisive contribution was the account of a self-generating order which formes itself spontaneously if the individuals were constrained by appropriate rules of law.”
To the role of Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution in the context of his version of liberalism—which is indeed the reason why I refer to it as “evolutionary liberalism”—I shall return below.
Hayek (1960: 139): “Nor would it be desirable to have the particular contents of a man’s private sphere fixed once and for all.”
To the quoted statement Rothbard (1970: 152) adds the comment: “The question of the means by which this condition is best established is not at present under consideration. … Whether the enforcement is undertaken by each person or by some sort of agency, we assume here that such a condition—the existence of an unhampered market—is maintained in some way.”
H.-H. Hoppe (2001: 235f.): “Liberals will have to recognize that … liberalism has to be transformed into the theory of private property anarchism (or a private law society) … Private property anarchism is simply consistent liberalism; liberalism thought through to its ultimate conclusion, or liberalism restored to its original intent.”
When Hayek (1978: 137) speaks of “indefeasible or natural rights of the individual (also described as fundamental rights or rights of man)” as—along with “the separation of powers”—one of “two conceptions characteristic of liberal constitutionalism” he is clearly not endorsing the kind of natural law philosophy that Rothbard advocates. In Hayek’s evolutionary liberalism the concept of natural rights can find a systematic place only in the sense that the codification of law always takes place in the context of pre-existing, shared customary rules, or, as Hayek (1979: 123) puts it, that “government never starts from a lawless state.”—See also Hayek (1976: 60): “The evolutionary approach to law … which is here defended has thus little to do with the rationalist theories of natural law as with legal positivism.”
Rothbard (1970: 72): “The major form of voluntary interaction is voluntary interpersonal exchange. … The essence of the exchange is that both people make it because they expect that it will benefit them.”
Rothbard (1970: 77): “A society based on voluntary exchanges is called a contractual society.”
Buchanan (1975: 24): “Under regimes whose individual rights to do things are well defined and recognized, the free market offers maximal scope … for individual freedom in its most elementary meaning.”
For a comparison between Buchanan’s contractarian liberalism and Hayek’s evolutionary liberalism see Vanberg (1994).
If there is no agreement on what rights are “natural,” conflicting interpretations can only be settled by one interpretation being imposed on those who disagree raising the question of what legitimizes such imposition. Alternatively, if there is agreement on what rules should be respected, it is the agreement that provides legitimacy, and calling the agreed-on rules “natural” serves only as an expandable decoration.
Mises (1957: 49) recognizes this problem when he notes: “Thus the appeal to natural law does not settle the dispute. It merely substitutes dissent concerning the interpretation of natural law for dissenting judgments of value.”
Buchanan and Tullock (1962: 46) speak of the “collectivization of activity that is involved in the initial definition of human and property rights and the enforcement of sanctions against violations of these rights.”
Buchanan (1999 [1986]: 461): “Improvement in the workings of politics is measured in terms of the satisfaction of that which is desired by individuals, whatever this may be, rather than in terms of moving closer to some externally defined, supra-individualistic ideal.”—See also (ibid.; 462): “An indirect evaluation may be based on some measure of the degree to which the political process facilitates the translation of expressed individual preferences into observed political outcomes. The focus of evaluative attention becomes the process itself … (T)he constitution of politics rather than policy itself becomes the relevant object for reform.”
As long as free entry and exit is secured for private organizations operating within a market context the constitutional contracts on which they are based can be claimed to be legitimized by the participants’ voluntary agreement—as expressed by their continued participation in an organization –, even if for the prudential reasons specified by Buchanan and Tullock (1962) the constitution allows for revisions to be made without unanimous approval of all participants.
Hayek (1978: 137): “The individuals have reasons to agree to play this game because it makes the pool from which the individual shares are drawn larger than it can be made by any other method.”
Rothbard (1970: 581): “’Free’ … is used in the interpersonal sense of being unmolested by other persons.”
About “praxeology” as the foundational theory Rothbard (1970: 64) notes that it is concerned with the “formal implications of the fact that men use means to attain various ends,” and he states: “Praxeology asserts the action axiom as true, and from this … are deduced, by the rules of logical inference, all the propositions of economics” (ibid.: 65). By contrast to the physical sciences in which “the premises are only hypothetical” (ibid.) this grants, as Rothbard supposes, economics an “apodictically true” foundation.
Hoppe (1998: xxix) speaks of Rothbard’s “rationalist-axiomatic-deductive, praxeological, or Austrian-libertarianism” and notes about “Rothbard’s unique contribution to ethics”: “Ethics … is demonstrably not dependent and contingent upon agreement or contract … Ethics is the logical-praxeological presupposition … rather than the result of agreement or contract” (ibid.: xxxiv).
Rothbard (1970: 572): “A common argument holds that cartel action involves collusion. … What is involved here is co-operation to increase the incomes of the producers. … What is the essence of a cartel action? Individual producers agree to pool their assets into a common lot … to make the decisions on production and price policies for all the owners … But is this process not the same as any sort of joint partnership or the formation of a single corporation?”
Rothbard (1970: 570): “To regard a cartel as immoral or as hampering some sort of consumer sovereignty is therefore completely unwarranted.”
Hayek (1967: 162): “Adam Smith and his followers developed the basic principles of liberalism in order to demonstrate the desirability of their general application.”
In Hayek (1948: 77–91).
Hayek (1973: 56) speaks of “the insight that the benefits of civilization rest on the use of more knowledge than can be used in deliberately concerted effort.”
The context in which this sentence appears indicates, though, that Mises‘statement need not at all be read as an a priori justification of liberalism but, instead, as asserting that—in advocating the ideal order—liberals can count on the support of scientific insights that demonstrate the “unworkability”—and therefore the unattractiveness—of potential alternative regimes. As Mises (ibid.: 61f.) puts it: “These sciences show us that of all the conceivable alternative ways of organizing society only one, viz., the system based on private ownership of the means of production, is capable of being realized, because all other conceivable systems … are unworkable…” And further: “What liberalism maintains is … that for the attainment of the ends that men have in mind only the capitalist system is suitable” (ibid.: 63).
Mises (2005: xxii f.): “…liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all…Liberalism is distinguished from socialism, which likewise professes to strive for the good of all, not by the goal at which it aims, but by the means that it chooses to attain that goal.”
Hayek (1978: 136): “The rules conducive to the formation of such a spontaneous order were regarded as the product of long experimentation in the past. And though they were regarded as capable of improvement it was thought that such improvement must proceed slowly and step by step as new experience showed it to be desirable.”
Hayek (1978: 143): “Thus, though the consistent application of liberal principles leads to democracy, democracy will preserve liberalism only if, and so long as, the majority refrains from using its powers to confer on its supporters special privileges which cannot be similarly offered to all citizens.”—It is worth noting that von Mises has also emphasized the common individualist foundation of the ideals of liberalism and democracy. The “nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism,” he argued, “assigned supremacy to the common man. In his capacity as a consumer the ‘regular fellow’ was called upon to determine ultimately what should be produced, in what quantity and of what quality, by whom, how, and where; in his capacity as voter, he was sovereign in directing his nation’s policies” (Mises 2005: xiii).—See also Mises (1949: 271): A “democratic constitution is a scheme to assign to the citizens in the conduct of government the same supremacy the market gives them in their capacity as consumers.”
Hayek (1960: 106): “To him (the liberal, V.V.) it is not from a mere act of will of the momentary majority but from a wider agreement on common principles that a majority decision derives its authority. …(The) authority of democratic decisions rests on … certain beliefs common to most members … (The) acceptance of such common principles … is the indispensable condition for a free society.”
It is in a similar spirit when Mises (1985: 68) notes: “Government must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people.”
Hayek (1960: 103f.): “Its (liberalism’s, V.V.) aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles. It accepts majority rule as a method of deciding, but not as an authority for what the decision ought to be.” And further: “Majority decisions tell us what people want at the moment, but not what it would be in their interest to want if they were better informed … True, there is the convention that the view of the majority should prevail so far as collective action is concerned, but this does not in the least mean that one should not make every effort to alter it. One may have profound respect for that convention and yet very little for the wisdom of the majority” (ibid.: 109).
Hayek (1960: 115): “He (the liberal, V.V.) simply believes that he has an argument which, when properly understood, will induce the majority to limit the exercise of its own powers and which he hopes it can be persuaded to accept as a guide when deciding on particular issues.”—And further: “It is not ‘antidemocratic’ to try to persuade the majority that there are limits beyond which its action ceases to be beneficial and that it should observe principles which are not of its own deliberate making” (ibid.: 117).
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Prepared for Buchanan Memorial Conference, George Mason University, September 28–29, 2013.
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Vanberg, V.J. James M. Buchanan’s contractarianism and modern liberalism. Const Polit Econ 25, 18–38 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-014-9152-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-014-9152-4