From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics,ba.politics,misc.legal
Subject: Classical Liberalism vs. Libertarianism
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:32:57 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <SLAGLE.92Jul24232028@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com>, slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle) writes:
> In article <11379@optilink.UUCP>, cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> > The poor grasp of reality of the LP ideologues, and the inability
> > of the ideologues to admit that they have engaged in a significant
> > distortion of American history to justify their position, is one
> > of the reasons I am no longer a member of the LP.  I am not even
> > a small-l libertarian, but a classical liberal with libertarian
> > leanings.  (Classical liberalism being almost as far as you can
> > get from modern liberalism).
> 
> Your political distinctions are getting a bit too fine
> for me.  Would you care to enlarge upon your distinction
> between classical liberalism and small "l" libertartianism?
> --
> Mark E. Slagle                                 PO Box 61059

I've discussed this in another posting, but the essential 
difference is that classical liberalism recognized that there 
was a place for economic regulation and subsidy, if it was for the 
common good, using narrow definitions of "common good."  This is
one of the reasons that in the early history of the U.S., there
was a lot of governmental involvement in certain transportation
infrastructures: the Erie Canal, subsidies to railroads (good for
Americans, bad for Indians), road building projects, subsidies
to schools.  Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, for example,
argued that the government could legitimately build roads,
provided that the real costs of those roads were paid back by
tolls.

Another area where classical liberalism and libertarianism are
at variance is the issue of "common good."  Libertarians will
argue that even in a famine, a person who has hoarded food has
a right to charge whatever he wants -- even with people starving
outside his door, because they don't have any money.  Locke's
ideas expressed in _Two Treatises on Government_, and the English 
legal tradition (borrowing from the Bible, of course) was that
there were certain contracts that were unconscionable, and where
the rights of the individual must inevitably give way before the
common good.  See Forrest McDonald's _Novus Ordo Seclorum:
The Ideological Origins of the Constitution_ for a detailed 
discussion of this issue.  Eric Foner's _Tom Paine and Revolutionary
America_ discusses how the populist abuses of price controls in 
Revolutionary Philadelphia caused Paine to back off from his early 
enthusiasm for democracy, and its abuse of this theory of the
common good, and become more supportive of individual rights
as being stronger than majority will.

The problem with such an ideology is that common sense and
intelligence is required to recognize the difference between
"starving people need bread" and "my apartment on the beach is
too expensive -- please pass rent control," and a certain
level of integrity is required to say, "Yes, we'll adopt price
controls during this famine" and "No, if living in paradise
is too expensive, maybe you should move or buy that apartment."
Hence, the libertarian attempt at coming up with a clearer,
more precise rule that stops the current madness about regulation.

The other problem with classical liberalism's ideology is that
it was clearly based on the Judeo-Christian code of ethics,
and made many assumptions based on that.  For example, read
why Adam Smith always capitalized "Invisible Hand," in his
_Theory of Moral Sentiments_.  Libertarianism is an attempt to
come up with non-sectarian theory that comes to the same conclusions
as a Bible-based ideology.  Also, at least some of libertarian
ideology seeks to avoid the sexual morality of the Bible,
without abandoning the rest of the framework of classical
liberalism.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:34862 alt.politics.clinton:104