Hayekian Liberty and the Predatory State
By Wanjiru Njoya
Mises.org
August 5, 2024
In the “Constitution of Liberty” Friedrich Hayek highlights the malleability of the word “liberty,” explaining that “in totalitarian states liberty has been suppressed in the name of liberty.” Deployed in that way, the concept of liberty could mean anything, including its very opposite: coercion. Hayek writes:
“There is no limit to the sophisms by which the attractions of the word ‘liberty’ can be used to support measures which destroy individual liberty, no end to the tricks by which people can be exhorted in the name of liberty to give up their liberty. It has been with the help of this equivocation that the notion of collective power over circumstances has been substituted for that of individual liberty and that in totalitarian states liberty has been suppressed in the name of liberty.”
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Kamala Harris is a good example of this travesty as she frequently employs the word “freedom” to justify encroachments on freedom. She recently depicted the demands for abortion, for voting without showing any identification, for gender ideology in schools, and for a ban on guns as “freedom.” Progressive liberals view liberty as a platform for promoting egalitarian values, primarily what they call “equal opportunities.” Hayek aims to show why this view of liberty is wrong and why it ultimately erodes individual liberty by conflating ability or power to pursue one’s political goals with the ideal of liberty. Liberty in Hayek’s view is not the positive pursuit or enjoyment of one’s political preferences; it is a negative concept that denotes the absence of coercion:
“[Liberty] becomes positive only through what we make of it. It does not assure us of any particular opportunities, but leaves it to us to decide what use we shall make of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”
Hayek also emphasizes that liberty does not become meaningless simply because we do not like the results it produces:
“It is therefore no argument against individual freedom that it is frequently abused. Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like. Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.”
An example of what Hayek has in mind would be people who use their liberty to indulge in dangerous, immoral or unhealthy pastimes. We may not like it, but nonetheless we defend their liberty to make their own choices. Hayek also highlights the breadth of individual liberty, as it encompasses liberty to pursue any goals that an individual may value. These need not be economic goals in the sense that most people mean when they speak of the “economy.” Hayek explains:
“But the concept of freedom of action is much wider than that of economic liberty, which it includes; and, what is more important, it is very questionable whether there are any actions which can be called merely ‘economic’ and whether any restrictions on liberty can be confined to what are called merely ‘economic’ aspects. Economic considerations are merely those by which we reconcile and adjust our different purposes, none of which, in the last resort, are economic (excepting those of the miser or the man for whom making money has become an end in itself).”
In this way Hayek defends a broad concept of individual liberty, whose limits only arise at the boundary of another person’s liberty. This means that there is no freedom to associate with someone who does not wish to associate with us, as that would encroach on that person’s freedom. Some Hayekians conceptualize this as privacy or autonomy, each person having unrestricted freedom within his own private sphere.
In the “Ethics of Liberty” Murray Rothbard identifies some weaknesses — indeed, what he describes as fallacies — in Hayek’s concept of liberty. Significantly, Hayekian liberty lacks an account of the predatory state. While he strongly defends individual liberty and the importance of the rule of law in protecting the individual from arbitrary state power, Hayek regards the state as the source of rights: “For Hayek, government — and its rule — of law creates rights, rather than ratifies or defends them.” Hayek thus depicts the state, through the rule of law, as a defender of liberty. Hayek is concerned that “the word ‘liberty’ can be used to support measures which destroy individual liberty,” yet he does not acknowledge that the state itself is the greatest threat to liberty.
Hayek cautions against arbitrary state power but does not recognize Rothbard’s point that it is in the nature of the state to resist any limitation of its powers: “Historically, no government has long remained ‘limited’ in this way. And there are excellent reasons to suppose that it never will. … Given the unchecked power of the State, the State and its rulers will act to maximize their power and wealth, and hence inexorably expand beyond the supposed ‘limits’.” In that context Hayek’s notion of defending individual liberty even when it is being abused, and defending liberty even when one is not able to achieve one’s goals, is vulnerable to being pressed to precisely the end he warns about: the destruction of liberty at the hands of the state.
A good example of this threat to liberty is seen in one of Kamala Harris’ concerns, what she describes as Republicans “banning books.” Such bans typically affect books on gender ideology, including pornographic (progressives would call that simply “graphic”) material. The New York Times reports that “the rise in book bans has accelerated in recent years, driven by conservative groups and by new laws and regulations that limit what kinds of books children can access. … Censorship efforts have become increasingly organized and politicized, supercharged by conservative groups like Moms for Liberty and Utah Parents United, which have pushed for legislation that regulates the content of library collections.” No mention is made of the content being taught to children, which many parents say makes them gag. The New York Times merely reports that “the targeted titles feature L.G.B.T.Q. characters” — implying that the parents who want the books banned are motivated by bigotry against LGBTQ people.
On one interpretation of the Hayekian view of liberty, pornography in schools could be seen as an abuse of liberty — to many parents, justifying pornographic books in school libraries by reference to freedom of thought is deeply aggravating and amounts to wielding individual liberty to undermine parents’ moral values and threaten the well-being of their children. Yet Hayek’s concept of liberty could nevertheless be relied on to defend pornography in schools, as there do exist families who want such books in the libraries and want their children to be exposed to them. This implies that banning these books would (in the view of those who want the books) impede their liberty. This is indeed the argument advanced by progressive liberals. Crucially, defenders of pornographic books make no mention of the content of these books or the tender age of the children, as liberals regard the content of banned books as irrelevant to the principle of liberty: the principle, in their view, is that people should be free to read whatever they want. After all, they argue, if we start banning pornography we might soon be back in the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition. On this point progressives draw upon an essential principle of individual liberty and protection of the individual from the state.
In that sense, as Rothbard points out, the conservative recourse to bans is incompatible with liberty: “Aside from other sound arguments against enforced morality (e.g., that no action not freely chosen can be considered ‘moral’), it is surely grotesque to entrust the function of guardian of the public morality to the most extensive criminal (and hence the most immoral) group in society — the State.”
But there is more to this example than the regulation of pornography. Republicans want to protect young children from being exposed to what they consider inappropriate and harmful material at school, while Democrats demand the liberty to teach children progressive ideologies of gender and sexuality from the age of four, as recommended by the World Health Organization. The Hayekian notion of liberty “leaves it to us to decide what use we shall make of the circumstances in which we find ourselves” and therefore cannot resolve this impasse — or rather, when Hayek says “freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like” the only resolution it proposes is that parents who support liberty must put up with their children being taught masturbation lessons at school by communist teachers who are intent on destroying the family, even if parents do not like it. After all, so the middle-of-the-road liberals reason, we should defend the liberty of our political opponents to promote their values even if we do not agree with them.
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In the “Ethics of Liberty” Murray Rothbard strikes at the heart of such intractable disputes about liberty — the role of the predatory state. In the example of pornography in schools, the state seizes power to tax citizens to fund public schools, as well as power to control the school curriculum. Thence arise battles over the content of schoolbooks and school lessons that cannot be resolved by reference to middle-of-the-road Hayekian liberty. This situation is ultimately a clash of values between parents who want their children to have masturbation lessons at school because they regard that as “perfectly normal,” and parents who regard this as depravity and are determined to protect their children from it. There is no middle ground between them, as the progressives feel their precious children are being “erased” if they cannot learn about sexuality at school, while conservatives are not prepared to sacrifice their precious children on the altar of progressivism. Parents may be “free” to withdraw their children from school, but they are not “free” to decide not to pay the taxes levied by the state. Thus, the battle is joined. Rothbard explains:
“What the State has is not so much a monopoly of ‘coercion’ as of aggressive (as well as defensive) violence, and that monopoly is established and maintained by systematically employing two particular forms of aggressive violence: taxation for the acquisition of State income, and the compulsory outlawry of competing agencies of defensive violence within the state’s acquired territorial area. … The state is not, and can never be, justified as a defender of liberty.”
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
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