A FRESH LOOK AT LIBERALISM / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

A fresh look at liberalism

By Samuel Brittan

Published: January 7 2010 20:11

It is far too early to pick up the pieces and reconstruct either mainstream economics or the free market version of it after the debacle of the past two years. It is not, however, too early to restate some liberal values that need to be preserved whatever technical changes are made in the conduct of economic policy.

(The word “liberal” has acquired so many meanings that I need to make clear that I am using it in the classical European sense of someone who attaches especial importance to personal freedom, and therefore wishes to reduce the number of human made obstacles to the exercise of actual or potential choice. The late Isaiah Berlin called this “negative freedom”.)

Many socialists and social democrats regard the negative definition of freedom as far too narrow and ask whether someone can be really free if he or she has not enough to eat or is deprived of the opportunity of a decent education. The confusion arises from the attempt to derive all public policy from one central goal. Freedom is not the same as prosperity, equality, self-government or any other desired state of affairs. These goals may sometimes be complementary, at other times competitive.

Modern discussion of the subject begins with John Stuart Mill’s still controversial 1859 essay On Liberty. This states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection”, that is to “prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant”. The distinction is sometimes made between self- regarding and other-regarding action.

We need to move on from Mill, partly because there will always be argument about how to draw the line between self and other-regarding actions. Almost all conduct has some effect on other people. There is a famous example by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen concerning a prude who is made unhappy by the thought of his companion reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The art is where to draw the line to exclude trivial, frivolous or indirect interactions or those exhibiting intolerance of others’ lifestyle. There is also the practical question of which political arrangements are most likely to preserve negative freedoms.

Some classical liberals make the rule of law their central doctrine. By this they do not mean any law that happens to pass the legislature, but general rules applying to all without fear or favour. But this is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for freedom to prevail. It is easy to think of perfectly general laws, such as Germany’s ban on Sunday shopping, which are inimical to personal freedom. But even though it is not a good definition of liberalism the ideal of a government of laws rather than men and women is a profound one. It is weakened every time the media announce that the prime minister or president is to order or forbid certain things, as if the mere whim of a political leader should prevail without going through any constitutional or legal process.

I would myself favour an informal concept put forward by John Maynard Keynes in an essay he wrote in the 1920s, which distinguished between the agenda and non-agenda of government. This could not be fixed for all eternity but would vary over time. Keynes devised the idea to separate himself from those 19th-century Liberals who saw little useful role for the state. But it could equally be applied in reverse to cordon off areas where the government has no business interfering with citizens. It is the refusal to recognise any such limits that is the real crime of New Labour and why some of us will find it hard to support it again.

To conclude, here are three examples that starkly expose anti-liberal ways of thinking.

Some people advocate compulsory national service, not necessarily military, as a way of improving the character of young people. The late James Tobin – he of the Tobin tax – favoured the US draft as an egalitarian ideal and even suggested setting soldiers’ pay well below what they could earn elsewhere so as to rule out a volunteer army. Whatever his other qualities, he was an arch anti-liberal.

Consider, too, the rigid exchange restrictions that have at times been imposed on foreign travel to conserve official holdings of foreign currency. When these were imposed by Harold Wilson’s UK Labour government for three years there was hardly a word of protest from Labour’s supposedly enlightened intellectual camp followers.

A final example is the smoking ban in public places – and I speak as lifelong non-smoker. So long as there are designated areas to ensure non-smokers are protected from smoke pollution, what is the harm in providing a room where people can smoke at their own risk? Why is this worse than making smokers stand outside in the cold?

However difficult it is to define a liberal, it is not hard to spot anti-liberals.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010