Libertarianism and the Welfare State

Libertarianism and the Welfare State

Libertarianism as both a political movement and an ideology has shown itself to be as much an American historical byproduct as the tattered semantic heir to America's true and original political philosophy. The Libertarian movement, drawing on the writings and inspiration of men like Lysander Spooner, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Francis Hayek, arose in the United States in the twentieth century as a response to the seizure of political and discursive power by the Progressive Liberalism of the Left and the Nationalist Democracy of the Right. It is the historical heir to Jeffersonian Democracy and the Classical Liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Nock 1988, 757). And yet it does not call itself "Liberalism." The reason for this is that the latter term was over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries usurped by the Progressive (i.e. socialist) Left. It was Hayek who once wrote:

In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of governmental control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. (xxxv-xxxvi)

What is today called "liberalism" in America is in fact the historical homologue of mercantilist and late medieval forms of political economy. This is important in any attempt to argue the Libertarian position towards and general critique of the modern Welfare State. "Libertarianism" was the guiding philosophy and political system for the United States for the first one hundred and twenty years or so of the Republic. It was only after the influence of European socialism became all too great that traditional Liberalism was abandoned in the United States in favor of a potpourri of statist political and economic programs. As Hayek called them, "[a] hodgepodge of ill-assembled and often inconsistent ideals which [go] under the name of the Welfare State…" (xxxiv).

A central part of the Libertarian critique of the Welfare State is not that the latter does not have the responsibility to help individuals of poor economic conditions. Rather it is that the government cannot help poor people and what poor people it does help are only helped by impoverishing other people. The idea that the State can and must "help" people is a belief reminiscent of feudalism. Feudalism stood as a system based upon the State owning or controlling near all features and facets of life. People were for the most part the property of the State and in need of its "help" (i.e. patronage). Classical Liberalism came about largely as a reaction to that state of affairs. Many classical liberals naively thought that they had done away with mercantilist and political interference in the private economic affairs of individuals. The twentieth century was testament to their naivete. When social democrats and Progressives in the twenties and thirties began using the term "liberal" in its current meaning they did so in order to disingenuously imply that they really were liberals in the traditional sense. "Some wished to hide the radical nature of their reformist agenda, and most were looking for a self-description that linked them to the American past" (Gottfried 1999, 9). In fact, the modern ideology of the Welfare State, in all its myriad semantic forms, is in many ways a religion. It is based upon the ill-founded belief that the State is the answer and solution to all problems as well as being a belief wholly inimical to the interests, rights, and dignity of the individual. In political philosophy this mindset can be traced to thinkers, influential in Europe and America of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, like G.W.F. Hegel. He wrote that public administration "represented the generality and carried out the daily work of a modern nation state without the taint of social or material particularity" (Gottfried 1999, 50). The modern Welfare State operates under the seductive guise of helping individuals all the while suppressing them, overtaxing them, weakening their civil rights, and robbing them of their economic sovereignty.

The idea that the Welfare State, that is the government, must help people is based upon a complete misreading of Western political history. The lessons of history aptly demonstrate that when power is given it only breeds corruption, tyranny, and a thirst for power. Allowing the political authorities all too many powers is a recipe for disaster largely because the growth of power often has been shown to be an exponential one. The reason the American Colonials revolted against the British King was because of his government's various attempts to subdue and unduly tax them. Were they transported to the present, the Founding Fathers would almost certainly revolt against the current political and economic establishment centered around the Federal government. In order to propagate this misreading, Welfare Statism has, in addition to implementing its various social programs, made use of the education system to spread the idea that the State exists to remedy the social iniquities that arise from free market economies. American proponents of the Welfare State like John Dewey and Herbert Croly "believed that 'a democratic nation must not accept human nature as it is but must move in the direction of improvement'" (Gottfried 1999, 60). Consequently, American school textbooks began to voice the idea that the poor must be helped and that the government is the one entity and force that could do it.

In addition to an historical distortion, the ideology of the Welfare State is largely based upon theft. Government, whether just or unjust, is wholly dependent upon the supply and availability of a tax base. Without money there could be no programs. This money must come from somewhere. The modern State claims that it must institute its various programs in order to meet the requirements and demands of those suffering from want of basic necessities. Instead of advocating voluntary charity, the Welfare State "appropriates," a euphemism for the wanton seizure of property and wealth. "When the government, in short, takes money at gun point from a and gives it to B, who is demanding what?...it would be straining credulity to claim that a, the fleeced, is also 'demanding' this activity. a…is the reluctant supplier, the coerced donor; B. is gaining at a's expense" (Rothbard 1996, 193). Furthermore, this legalized theft breeds an enormous amount of corruption and lawlessness. Government officials have the power to take property as long as it serves the "good of all." As Rothbard pointed out, "G [government] gets a rake-off, a handling charge, a finder's fee, so to speak, for this little transaction. G…performs his act of 'redistribution' by fleecing a for the benefit of B. And of himself" (193). The Welfare State then is based upon the morally dubious claim that good can be derived from an act of evil.