Spoken Like a True Liberal

The economic and political situation you have awoken me to is quite sobering, although not altogether surprising. When I left Chicago forty years ago, socialism was just as quietly and poisonously thriving in America as it is today.

The current unrest in Wisconsin is held up as proof by your modern-day “liberals” (socialists) of the exploitative and socially unjust nature of capitalism; it is a common confusion, it seems, that first, America is currently operating under a free market economy – and second, that it is the competition within such an economy which creates monopoly and oppression. One need only briefly examine America's economic history, however, to see that the American government has repeatedly altered the rules by which the economy is run, in order to force a stimulus of production and profit. While I support a small amount of guidance – the government must establish the Rule of Law, the formal rules to which all aspects of the market are subject – the government must not be given the power to change those rules at whim. The American government today is the very image of the collectivist government. It must make decisions based on immediate circumstances, and seeks always to determine and control the outcome. I wrote in The Road to Serfdom that such a government would have to “decide how many pigs are to be raised or how many busses are to be run, which coal mines are to operate, or at what prices shoes are to be sold” (113). Does this not sound familiar?

In many ways, the citizens of Wisconsin make valid claims against a controlling government. They have felt the coercive power of a state which would dictate precisely the amount of money they would earn, and how much money they would receive in retirement – and without any potential opposition. The fault, however, does not lie with capitalism. The American people have put their fates in the hands of their government; they have asked for centralized control, and now they protest it. I quoted Adam Smith in my chapter on individualism and collectivism, where he says that the “regimentation of economic life...puts governments in a position where “to support themselves they are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical”” (84). Governor Scott Walker now finds himself in this position, and he is being heavily criticized for it – but what more rational choice does he have? I would argue that Governor Walker begins to retreat from the path to socialism and takes small steps toward a more liberal government. Unions are themselves coercive units; once formed, they force all workers of a group to join or pay dues, thus sacrificing the wills of the individual for the general mass. This is an undeniable assault against liberty. Moreover, the ability of the worker to coerce economic gain through power relations rather than according to economic law exempts them from the governing principles by which all other business is conducted.

A contemporary of mine, Ayn Rand, may be useful in comprehending some of these principles. Although I would refute her staunch laissez-faire position on economics, her premise of rationality as morality speaks to my Rule of Law. A liberal economy does not promise social or economic equality; in fact, it is rather inevitable that there will be inequalities. These are only material inequalities, however, and (most importantly) are not predetermined – are not the consequences of any prejudice or favoritism. Under Rule of Law, everyone is subject to the same formal rules; no particular group may be privileged – and this rule is a rational tool, a product of human logic. It is designed only to allow the individual human being to plan for himself – to think for himself – to behave rationally and in self-interest, according to shared and visible laws. And only under these principles are freedom and justice possible.

I therefore urge all of the protestors in Wisconsin to halt their collective demands and seek true liberty: the freedom to compete individually, creatively, in a market which operates according to its own rules, rather than the whims of the arbitrary state.