Liberals often talk about the incremental implementation of their creed, envisaging liberal ideals slowly seeping into the mainstream to eventually supplant the will to plan and the will to coerce. I disagree with this prediction of events. The model of the modern developed state will only decline when a popular perception that it is simply unaffordable exists. I contend that such a notion will only be wholly planted in the popular imagination by a sudden, catastrophic failure of the state, of which I believe we will sooner or later experience. This is not an unrealistic prediction; the state-initiated welfare programmes in all their myriad contortions are by nature self-perpetuating and ever-expanding, and thus the parasite will eventually consume so much of the creative juices of its host that the host will starve. This will result in massive social and economic upheaval for an enormous bulk of individuals who had made provisions for the future assuming the existence of government-controlled and distributed social welfare.
Consequently, the modern first world welfare state is in the process of clogging its own arteries. I am envisaging a scenario whereby a critical mass of nonproductive citizens and inadequately funded retirees overwhelm the social security systems of the developed world, causing most (if not all) of these governments to respond in a manner befitting a state hell-bent on survival – namely, progressively increasing taxes. Of course, the majority of future retirees are likely to be underfunded to such an extent that the welfare state, supported by relatively few, could never hope to provide for so many people. However, the period in which this is being realised will see taxes increase, in the vain hope of closing the funding gap, to a level whereby the aforementioned taxes start killing the economic activity that enables taxation revenue to be collected in the first place. Desperately, governments will make increasingly onerous tax imposts on the productive, which will result in collapse – not fiscal equilibrium. I think that the trend towards increasing individual responsibility will find its genesis in a widespread and deeply painful economic catastrophe as severe as any that has gone before; something equal to or greater than the magnitude of the Great Depression, which profoundly and permanently altered the values of so many of those who lived through it. I believe that liberalism’s best chance of popular acceptance will rapidly rise out of fateful ashes like these. Such a shift in beliefs may not come to pass, simply because The Majority has proven itself to be capable of Herculean levels of strength of denial and/or misperception. However, I believe such a scenario holds the greatest opportunity for liberals to effectively spread their message. An erstwhile commenter at this site, Euan Gray, used to taunt liberals that opposed him with claims that their ideals of personal responsibility lacked widespread support; claims that are almost certainly correct at this point in time. The point at which Gray is wrong and the liberals are right revolves around the fact that the liberals have realised our current political and economic system is unsustainable. Expect to wait a while for Gray’s triumphantly announced majority to cotton on, no doubt at the precise moment when we are all careening over the cliff. Unfortunately, the aggregate ability of our governments to force their values upon others means that those who believe in a much higher standard of conduct towards one’s fellow man (individual responsibility) will be forced to eat the ugly fruit that Gray’s majority nurture with their continuing support of such coercive governmental behaviour. However, I believe this hideous and popularly-attended banquet could well be a harbinger of rapid state decline. When statism demonstrably fails to live up to what’s written on the label – by proving itself incapable of fulfilling its promises to provide welfare for those under its aegis – then, amongst the probably unprecedented chaos, ordinary people will quickly abandon their trust in government (or in the potential of government) to do good. This is the moment of opportunity for an alternative to modern statism to arise. Perhaps old-fashioned liberalism?
So Mr Gray is right; comprehensive liberal philosophy is certainly not held dear by the majority in any developed nation in the world. However, I firmly believe that this could change. What we liberals do now in establishing a coherent agenda is critically important, as the rationality of a well-argued and ably marketed liberal perspective could suddenly and manifestly become obvious to enormous numbers of individual citizens recovering from the dishonouring of the grand pact the state made with the people. Far from the gradual implementation of laissez-faire, I believe liberalism’s second coming will be relatively swift and revolutionary. And painful.
You might want to add a definition that your term “liberal” means “libertarian” for any new American readers of Samizdata. Australian use of “liberal” is almost the opposite of the American use.
Otherwise, I totally agree with you. The grasping parasitical nature of statism will never allow a gradual backing off of the state once it has grown to a certain size, so the inevitable result will be an eventual and drastic collapse. The sooner the better; let’s get the pain over with.
Actually, in Australia people tend to say “liberal” when what they mean is “conservative”.
I am using the proper definition of the word “liberal”. If there are any confused and benighted Australians, Americans or anyone else, please submit to Wikipedia for re-education….
For what it is worth, you can never go wrong with “libertarian.”
(JW: I prefer “liberal”. It is more specific)
As for the inevitable failure of the welfare state, this has been abundantly proven in the failure of the Soviet bloc. But ignorance is the default setting of the human race, so these things will persist for some time.
Sadly, I think you have far too much faith in humanity. The catastrophic collapse you mention is assuredly coming, but I do not think the result will be a largescale shift to liberalism. Quite the opposite, it will only serve to make society more brutally collectivist.
Collectivism is ultimately based on the threat of force, a threat that society currently softens and disguises in order to rationalize it. In a crisis all that will happen is that the state’s use of force will become far more explicit and immediate.
As excessive taxation begins to strangle the economy, the productive segments of society will be accused of shirking their duty to society at large. This scapegoating will be come the basis for the government using force to compel the productivity that economic incentives no long can.
There are clear signs that this starts to happen in Germany. There accusations are made by politicians and large parts of the press that companies and rich individuals act ‘unpatriotic’. This was used to introduce the ‘Reichensteuer’ (rich men’s tax) and is still used to blame captital for going elsewhere for higher profits. Since taxes are so high and growth so low, capital is looking for better places, and there was eve talk about coercing ‘low-tax-countries’ into ‘homogenisation’ e.g. inreasing their tax rates to German levels. Desperate, isn’t it?
I do agree with the post. However, I think there has to be some acknowledgement of the effect of capitalism unchecked, even if only in the nowadays-off-putting concept of ‘noblesse oblige.’
If I rightly recall (perhaps a better historian can enlighten us), some parishes in northern Buckinghamshire have already experienced this. The taxes imposed by the Poor Laws became so onerous that eventually all economic activity ceased; anyone doing any work would become liable to support everyone else in the parish, with the inevitable consequences.
I notice that in your article you refer to the state as parasitic; I used to think this as well. But most parasites have evolved so as to keep their depredations to reasonable limits to avoid killing their hosts, which would of course be their own undoing.
The State is not a Parasite; the State is a Cancer.
Googling around to find the state of Europe’s economies, it looks to me like several of them are lined up for a crash. Germany is stagnant. France and Italy are growing more or less on pure debt spending. All three are politically paralysed. At least one of them is likely to crash out of the Euro fairly soon, with its economy in tatters, probably dragging the whole Euro down with them, followed by the EU.
Unfortunately, the usual reaction of a country with its economy going to hell is to turn ultra-statist. Germany might go soft-right. I’m pretty certain France and Italy would go isolationist, nationalist and authoritarian. Britain is really the best hope in the Eurozone, since we seem to be the only electorate who learn from our mistakes, after giving them a jolly good try first. (CF: the continuing total unelectability of Old Labour.)
Ayn Rand described it all in “Alas Shrugged”: the slow stagnation, the turning off of the lights in the factories, the decline into abject and primitive poverty, and then the catastrophe and the sudden, violent revolution.
Lamentably I’m not endowed with poetic powers of prophecy, so I cannot comment on the way things will evolve. Seems that at least Europe is deep into the stagnation and decline process. Other countries, India and China for example – are on an up slope.
I’m not nearly so sanguine (if talking about economic collapse can be called sanguine). Why shouldn’t a neo-Confucian bureaucratic state be stable? Whether polities survive is a matter of political factors: power, not merely money. (Or the EU would have ceased to exist long ago, when its economic justification, a free trading block in a tariff-bound world, was supplanted by the WTO.) Why should ‘collapse’ occur as opposed to finding a maximum sustainable level of interference and sustaining it?
The Soviet Union, saddled with insane economic policies, and with its technological and administartive establishment frequently crippled by purges, in a continual state of war with external powers, survived 70 years before competitive example ground it down. The nascent cartelised bureaucratic superstates could be with us for centuries.
Spruance, the German approach to tax competition has taken hold of the OECD cartel, for the last decade and a half. (The extraterritorial fashion lags the globalisation trend by a little way, but no-one has given up one controlling private commerce.) They have been jointly bullying tax havens for a while, to ensure that for the majority of the population at least, there is no economic escape-route.
Indeed. Prosperity.
Take a look on any revolutionary socialist website and you will find they are awaiting the “collapse” with similar glee, intending to use it as a method of bringing about socialist revolution. I am sure Islamists would use it as proof of their prophecy that the West will collapse similarly and will be converting desperate peoples to their religion too. I see no reason to assume that an individualist utopia will arise out of the ashes of Europe. It will just regress back to despots and gangsters.
Guy – I don’t think the point of collapse due to an overweening state is close at hand. However, things will start to get interesting when the population really starts to age in a few decades time.
On this point we disagree. I don’t think the welfare state knows how to cease growing and interfering, let alone determine where the point of unsustainability lies so it can stop just short. Even if it could, external shocks would sooner or later topple such a marginal model.
Nic – well, yes, your point about the socialists and Islamists is rather obvious, and the ensuing competition is simply a battle of ideas. Liberals have a dog in that fight, too, you know? So what if socialists and Islamists predict the collapse of the current political model. They are right to do so, despite the fact they may be very wrong on other issues.
Much of this discussion centers around the concept of inevitability which Marx seemed to like so well. It is the idea that our ideas are right and will win simply because that is the way it has to be. This is what made communists so optimistic and utterly unrealistic. They figured they were merely pushing a cart down a hill.
The problem with inevitability in regard to liberty is that it does not adhere to reality. History shows that tyranny can persist for long periods of time, and humanity is not on a continual upward slope of progress.
The concept I like is the one known as “default.” For instance, poverty is a default setting of life because all you have to do is do nothing to be poor. The same thing applies to health and knowledge. People are ignorant because they are born this way. It takes effort to become enlightened. (I’ll have an essay on this on my blog over the next week or so.)
Tyranny triumphs because people are stupid. This is why Iraq and the rest of the Middle East is such a cesspool of violence, tyranny, and rank stupidity. Somehow somewhere someone must do the hard work of changing people’s minds. This is done by those who are actively involved in the culture challenging the stupidity.
Liberty does not lie at the bottom of the hill. It is at the top of the mountain. It is hard work. And it never ends.
Agreed, Charlie. Although I suppose this is compatible with James’ view in so far as there will be little motivation for people to educate themselves while the welfare state is working (by its own standards) quite well. A catastrophe will he highly risky because there is no historical tendency towards freedom, but there is at least the opportunity for it.
I agree that a catastrophic economic downturn might encourage people to embrace liberal(liberatarian) ideas, but that is assuming that the populace are smart enough or wise enough to grasp the reason why a society collapses. Alas, humans have an endless ability to get the wrong end of the stick. The Great Depression, which was caused by delinquent central banking policies and protectionism, did not serve as a warning about the perils of Big Government, but instead was the trigger for a serious increase in Big Government.
It is all too likely that deeply authortarian political creeds could flourish, simply because the public, in their desperation, will want a quick fix.
Where I think libertarianism could flourish is if a very basic function of government were to collapse and demonstrate the badness of big government.
One would have to wish for a complete collapse in the government and its attendant revenue-raising powers. Any “major crisis” that fails to topple the political class will probably be used as a pretext to crack down on the citizens. In brief, we’d better hope for a very sharp collapse…possibly involving the use of firearms!
The reason the Great Depression brought on more Big Government is because the libertarian types tried to fix things as the ship was sinking, and got blamed for the sinking when it actually happened, by those who were actually responsible. It would be better if we all sat out the collapse, kept our powder dry and rifles polished, and simply walked in after the collapse and simply wiped the slate clean. We know the radical left (at least some parts of it) are planning similarly.
Don’t worry Samizdatists, we in largely self-funded Oz will let the rest of you in as long as you serve three years in our ever-expanding army helping keep all the rest out 🙂
But Europeans have to serve a double term.
Seriously speaking, it is true that the economics of a lot of European countries’ pension liabilities just defies belief. Think of the revolution in manufacturing to come – perhaps the world’s biggest, most educated and most productive workforce, reduced working for Indian or Chinese-style pittances! Instead of paying 20c for t-shirts from India we’ll be paying $20 for Krups coffee machines 🙂
Unfortunately this won’t extend to services as much, they tend not to be as good at that 🙂
First “liberal” – there never was a time (at least in the English speaking world) when it meant libertarian.
Liberal (or Libre or whatever it is) in French may come from libertas (however spelt) in Latin.
But in English liberal also comes from liberality – being loose and generous.
J. S. Mill and many other 19th century liberals were no supporters of strictly limited government (whatever their reputation – read the details of their works, not the high sounding language).
Few writers could be relied upon to resist the desire to use the state to further their own desires (whether this desire is to undermine land owners out of some perverse notion that land is to be used for the “good of the people”, or some other desire).
And we expect the mass of the population to flock to our banner?
Yes indeed, sooner or later, the welfare state – fiat money state will fall apart.
But (as has been stated above) most people will believe (or half believe0 what the media and edcuation system will tell them – it is all the fault of “capitalism”.
“But why should we care what the majority believe?”
I agree that, in moral terms, there is no reason to care. If two men desire to steal another man’s property (or tell him what to do) that is just two men to kill. They have no “democratic right” (by the sacred two votes against one vote) to steal or regulate.
However, how are we to win this battle?
Call me coward if you wish, but I see no road to victory against the security forces of the state – the population may hate any particular government, but they still look to the state to solve their problems and the greater the failure the more statism they may demand (they have been taught to think like this).
“But this road will end in mass starvation”.
That is possible.
However, unless you can think of a way of winning over a majority of voters we will not win.
“The people voted for Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan”.
So they did, but “education” has gone further since then. And how many elections do you think either Mrs Thatcher or Ronald Reagan would have won if they had really spoke and acted against the Welfare State (or the fiat money system and the fractional reserve banks and politically connected corporations that depend on it)?
JS Mill and Bertrand Russel and the other Fabians were NOT the originators of the term “liberal”, Paul. The fabians, in fact, were socialists who purposely expropriated the word in the world’s first entryist campaign.
True Liberalism dates to the founding of the Whig Party in the late 17th century and the champions of our Enlightenment philosophies of natural law, individual rights, the free market, and a rational universe ruled by science, not superstition.
As I said, you can’t go wrong with “libertarian.”
Um, Reagan did, in fact, speak and act against the welfare system and fiat money.
He said, “Government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.”
He passed a coinage bill that reauthorized the mint to issue silver and gold coins once again (the fact that their metal content, in compliance with the original Coinage Act, is worth far more than the debased face value, only means they all go immediately on the collectible market). Repealing the Federal Reserve Act was a bit beyond his power.
Reagan essentially turned around the whole idea that a democratic welfare state was anything to emulate, aspire to, or take joy in being, and made possible the 1990’s dismantling of much of the welfare system here in the US after the GOP finally got control of congress.
That would, of course, be the ideal. Unfortunately in such a downturn it is very rare, if at all, that people look to liberal values to help them out of a tight situation, preferring instead to opt for the ‘voice that shouts loudest and promises the most’ mentality. Sadly that voice is all too often the mask of the authoritarian.
I have just returned to Australia from a week in Hong Kong. Despite the increasingly appalling smog (Kowloon is now a blur from Central), gridlocked streets and sauna-like climate, i met a ton of Australians doing business in HK. None had plans to return home any time soon.
Top tax rates in HK are 16% and there is no Sales Tax or Capital Gains Tax. Strangely enough, tax revenues are thriving.
I returned home to find 2.5% lopped off the top tax rate to reduce it to a trifling 46%.
However, it is finally moving in the right direction. Why? Possibly because Australia has something that Britain does not – competitive neighbours.
Australia is lucky to be located where it is. So long as our trading partners in SE Asia continue to eschew collectivism, we at least have hope. The extreme egalitarian ethos that seems to be ingrained in our national psyche would probably have us living in total socialist squalor if we were any closer to the EUSSR.
Ayn Rand described it all in “Alas Shrugged”: the slow stagnation, the turning off of the lights in the factories, the decline into abject and primitive poverty, and then the catastrophe and the sudden, violent revolution.
I’m reading this at the moment and am really struggling. Her dialogue is attrocious and the motivations of Jim Taggart are completely unbelievable. I must say the future history of Ayn Rand’s world is completely ahistorical. It is a story of princes and wizards told with an industrialist backdrop. The most realistic part of the book so far has been the summation of the modern state by Dr Ferris:
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. … We’re after power and we mean it. … There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
If there is a better summary of the nanny state Australia is becoming, I’d like to hear it.
I agree with Charlie. Freedom and prosperity are, in terms of the whole of human history, flukes.
Evolution makes clear that there is no hierarchy. Humans are not the ultimate result of an inevitable process towards any kind of final goal.
The same for liberty and prosperity. Look around the world and see how hard it is to convince people that it is even worth striving for. It is not perfect, and when people want security and comfort in the reinforcement of their own prejudices, they will very easily succumb to despots. Didn’t Italy and Germany collapse during the twenties and thirties, and what stepped in to fill the breach? Totalitarianism.
I think that if you want the world to turn liberal/libertarian, then you must turn the ship of state around before it sinks.
This discussion brings to mind this TCS Daily article I read last week, about how populist socialism is making a comeback in Latin America even though it is, or at least should have been, discredited years ago. The author’s hypothesis is that socialism has morphed from a mere ideology into, for all intents and purposes, a secular religion in the minds of its adherents, making it more or less impossible to discredit.
If that’s the sort of mindset small-government types like us are up against, it’s likely to make our persuasion efforts an uphill battle even if/when the shortcomings of collectivism become crystal-clear. It’s one thing to convince people intellectually that collectivism is not a path to prosperity or happiness. It’s another thing altogether to convince people that collectivism is not the One True, Righteous Path to Enlightenment and Purity of Conscience (or at least, the only such path that doesn’t involve a deity).
Venezuela can currently afford to sustain and export socialism to its neighbours thanks to high oil prices. This is a temporary situation.
Latin America is perhaps a scary foreshadow of what might happen in Europe.
I think the idea of socialism as almost a religion is intriguing. Socialism has definite enemies and a Good vs. Evil cosmic struggle just like religion. There isn’t too much difference between the rhetoric of Bin Laden or Chavez (what with the later referring to Bush as “Hitler” all the time). And just as with the Islamicists (with whom socialists share much the same enemies) the power of global corporations or the US or whatever is such that they can explain away all their failures by making reference to the strength of the fiendish hordes set against them
When the wheel comes off in Venezuela (which it will) socialists will blame Charvez was brought down by evil Uncle Sam – rather than his ludicrous policies and deep corruption. He’ll become a martyr to the cause.
I’m not so sure, Nick. People like Chavez don’t just let go of their positions at the top. Chavez will be able to buy popularity within his country whilst the oil price is up, and thus will not have to be too grotesque to his people to stay in power. This can’t last forever. I reckon it’s more likely he’ll do a Mugabe and cling to power, impoverishing his country in the process and using state apparatus in an increasingly autocratic and ruthless manner – turning on portions of his supporters if necessary.
I think it far more likely that by the time an assassin’s bullet (or similar) finds him, he will be so hated that no one will bother making excuses for him.
The Dragon up stream got it right. A collapse would only bring about even more fearful scaremongering and scapegoating. It is, in fact, the worst possible scenario for the progression of anti-statist ideas.
Success in further advances in technology, energy development, increased trade and market development in Asian countries, and some modest improvement in the Islamic/Middle East situation are much more friendly to the strengthening of the case for enhanced individual liberties than some form of societal meltdown.
Repression is a function of fear and insecurity.
Freedom and respect for liberty is a function of confidence and intellectual/moral coherence.
While I agree the “free world”, to recycle a cold war term, faces some enormous challenges, it is anti-historical to expect good things for individual rights to come from panic and economic or political collapse. In fact, those are the very elements most beloved by statists and collectivists of all stripes and flavors.
Rand has been mentioned above, however naively, in this context. She was wrong. The path to more and stronger freedoms and respect for individual liberties is through the positive engagement of coherent and relentless advocates for the dignity of each and every human person in every setting and clash of ideas.
Those who value freedom have confidence in the ability of human beings to live their own lives without being controlled by some external agent at every turn.
We must convery that confidence, and the values it is based on, to the average person, who may be fearful of the challenges confronting us.
Free men and women will respect and follow leaders who respect them, and demonstrate their calm ability to deal competently with difficult problems.
When the collectivists are screaming in panic that the sky is falling, proponents of liberty must be able to calmly and rationally ennunciate positive steps and solutions. We must be ready to do our true duty to society—provide an alternative to repressive statism when the chips are down, and people are searching for answers.
As the Bible says, “you know not the day, or the hour.”
Regardless of your religious beliefs, it is always imperative to have one’s intellectual house in order.