Totalitarianism: An Essay in the Philosophy of History
by
Bryan Caplan
Spring, 1994
1. Preface
The present essay will sketch my philosophy of history, with a
focus on the concept of totalitarianism. It will be self-consciously
broad in scope; it really has to be if I am to present a truly coherent
picture. Being merely an outline of my theory, it will have to leave
many objections unanswered for the time being. I realize that to
some it may seem foolhardy to try to handle so many issues at once;
but I stress that this is merely a research program, a related set of
hypotheses that may prove to be wrong, but so far seem to me to
have remarkable explanatory power.
2. The Christian Roots of Totalitarianism
Western society's first totalitarian civilization began with
medieval Christianity. For the first time, an all-encompassing
ideology could be and was forcibly imposed on everyone. Around the
same time, most urban centers collapsed or drastically de-
populated, leaving the overwhelming majority of the population as
serfs, tied to the land for life.1 As Catholic historian Paul Johnson
describes early medieval Christian society,
"Men had agreed, or at least had appeared to agree, on an all-
enveloping theory of society which not only aligned virtue with law
and practice, but allotted to everyone in it precise, Christian-
oriented tasks. There need be no arguments or divisions because
everyone endorsed the principles on which the system was run. They
had to. Membership of the society, and acceptance of its rules, was
ensured by baptism, which was compulsory and irrevocable. The
unbaptized, that is the Jews, were not members of society at all;
their lives were spared but otherwise they had no rights. Those
who, in effect, renounced their baptism by infidelity or heresy, were
killed. For the remainder, there was total agreement and total
commitment. The points on which men argued were slender,
compared to the huge areas of complete acquiesence which embraced
almost every aspect of their lives."2
Now this form of totalitarianism was peculiar in several ways.
First of all, Christian ideology did not focus on justifying the
medieval economic system; it was accepted as a given that most
people would be serfs, tied to the land, rather than argued for as the
most desirable economic system. The totalitarianism of medieval
Christian society therefore existed only partially on principled
grounds (in the realm of intellectual, cultural, and personal
matters), and partially from sheer inertia (in the economic realm).
Neverthless, the freedom of the individual was virtually non-
existent, and the denial of his freedom was in large part an
essential doctrine of the reigning ideology. The second oddity was
that Christian totalitarianism co-existed with remarkable division
of powers. The Church co-existed with the state, sharing power
with it, and within Christendom there were many sovereign and
semi-sovereign rulers. Still, if we identify totalitarianism by the
complete absence of individual freedom coupled with a
comprehensive and compulsory ideology, medieval Christian society
definitely qualifies.
2. The Erosion of Catholic Totalitarianism: The Growth
of Cities and the Renaissance
Now the division of powers within medieval Christendom
proved to be one of its central weaknesses. The first major break
with totalitarianism came with the rebirth of cities. Local rulers
frequently found it profitable to grant charters to cities which
guaranteed certain rights and liberties. Once they arose, these
cities spelled the beginning of the end for the medieval economic
order. As Henri Pirenne writes, "An increasingly intimate solidarity
bound them together, the country attending to the provisioning of the
towns, and the towns supplying, in turn, articles of commerce and
manufactured goods. The physical life of the burgher depended upon
the peasant, but the social ife of the peasant depended upon the
burgher. For the burgher disclosed to him a more comfortable sort
of existence, a more refined sort, and one which, in arousing his
desires, multiplied his needs and raised his standard of living."3
If all power had been monopolized in the hands of a central
government, the long-term risks of this policy to the social order
might have been recognized. As it was, financial incentives to local
rulers overshadowed the long-run social effects. But these were
substantial; the cities directly undermined the manorial system by
creating new (if illegal) economic opportunities for serfs, and
indirectly undermined it by showing that a better, richer, freer way
of life was within reach. Again quoting Pirenne, "The first thing
which should be considered is the status of the individual as it was
when city law was definitely evolved. That status was one of
freedom. Every vestige of rural serfdom disappeared within its
walls. Whatever might be the differences and even the contrasts
which wealth set up between men, all were equal as far as civil
status was concerned. 'The air of the city makes free,' says the
German proverb (Die Stadtluft macht frei), and this truth held good
in every clime."4
But the growth of cities touched chiefly the lack of economic
freedom; the first movement towards intellectual and cultural
freedom came with the Renaissance. The two were of course closely
linked: the Renaissance began in the most advanced cities in Europe,
centering in Italy.5 Naturally it could not safely challenge the
compulsory ideology of Catholic Christianity directly. Rather it
began a two-fold indirect attack. On the one hand, there was a
revival of the classical authors; on the other hand, the growth of
secular art. Together these made an impressive dent in the
ideological monopoly of the Church, and contributed to a new
atmosphere of relative tolerance.
4. The Protestant Reformation's Reaction
Most historians present the Protestant Reformation as
somehow the religious corollary of the Renaissance, but even a
cursory study of the theology of Luther and Calvin makes this
intepretation hard to believe. While the classical revival did
indirectly influence the Reformation by stimulating interest in
accurate Biblical translation, the central thrust of both Lutheranism
and Calvinism was implacable hostility to the emerging tolerant,
worldly, humanistic society of the Renaissance. In particular, both
Luther and Calvin were adamant opponents of any sort of religious
toleration (Luther waited till he attained significant power to adopt
this view, while Calvin from the earliest stage of his career argued
that, "Because the Papists persecute the truth, should we on that
account refrain from repressing error?"6) Against the humanist
celebration of man, their theologies emphasized the depths of human
depravity. And against the renewed appreciation of reason stemming
from the Renaissance, and indeed against the more moderate
Catholic position which left some legitimate place for reason,
Lutheran and Calvinist theology placed a strong emphasis upon the
need for unquestioning faith and the impotence of reason. As with
earlier Catholic totalitarianism, the focus of Protestant ideology
was not on economic matters, but they were in no way enthusiastic
proponents of the growing commercial society.7
Naturally the emergence of two new militant Christian
factions led the mainstream Catholic establishment to "reform"
itself; but this internal reformation was in many ways a reversion
to the totalitarian ways of the past. As Nietzsche puts it, "Luther
restored the church: he attacked it."8 The fanatical intolerance of
all three factions became evident in the subsequent religious wars
and internal persecutions.
5. The Rise of Liberalism and the Enlightenment
Yet it must be admitted that the indirect effect of the
Reformation was the opposite of what its founders intended. For
once the European religious monopoly collapsed, the only
alternatives were endless war or toleration. Especially in the
religiously divided nations, religious toleration began to be adopted,
albeit with reluctance. And once toleration existed in the religious
realm, it began to spread to philosophy, science, and art. Accepted
reluctantly at first, intellectual freedom found ardent and principled
defenders among the thinkers who had finally been freed from the
demands of religious conformity. To a large extent the earliest
principled proponents of toleration centered in Britain, beginning
during the upheaveals of the 1640's. Milton was the most famous of
these, and later decades added the illustrious names of Locke,
Spinoza, and Voltaire.
So we have seen that medieval totalitarianism first broke
down on the economic side, and that intellectual freedom had to
wait for several additional centuries. But it was the theory of
intellectual freedom that matured first, with the theoretical
defense of economic freedom trailing behind. The first steps toward
a general theory of human freedom came with the radical Whigs, and
especially with Locke. While of course there was considerable
continuity with the preceding religious traditions of natural law, it
was the "true" Whigs who gave natural law a radical intepretation
that was deeply subversive of what remained of feudalism. As Locke
forthrightly stated his basic theory of human rights, "every Man has
a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any right to but
himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may
say, are properly his."9
But as radical as this theory was, it was too vague to
constitute a full theory of the most desirable economic system. It
was all well and good to proclaim each person's right to his own
person and property, but how exactly would a system based on this
principle work? Wouldn't it lead to utter chaos? About a century
after Locke, the theory of economic freedom took a giant step
forward with the work of the Physiocrats and the classical
economists. For in the work Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo,
David Hume, Jean-Baptiste Say, and other economists, the workings
of a free-market economy based closely upon Lockean rights were
explained in rigorous detail. Their central conclusion was that
unregulated markets, free international trade, private property, and
freedom of labor -- the very economic features that had been slowly
emerging in Europe over the previous six or seven hundred years --
were the key to economic prosperity for everyone. And far from
being chaotic, the market economy was an intricate and orderly
network held together quite well by the price system alone.
The economic theory of laissez-faire and the political theory
of tolerance and individual freedom (which together came to be
known as classical liberalism) were closely linked to a broader
cultural movement, the Enlightenment. Taken together, we can see
that the Enlightenment synthesis was for the most part the
antithesis of the totalitarian society that it had replaced. Gone
were the Christian doctrines, shared by orthodox Catholics and
Protestants alike, of the weakness of human reason, the need for
faith, human depravity, and compulsory belief. Gone too was the de
facto total government management of economic life. In its place
arose a strong confidence in human reason and science, optimism,
the quest for individual happiness, freedom of thought and
discussion, and laissez-faire in economic matters. Of course even
the most "enlightened" societies fell short of these ideals, but a full
critique and radical alternative to Christian totalitarianism had
arrived.10
6. Rousseau and the Conservative and Socialist Critics
of the Enlightenment
Of course not every 18th-century thinker embraced the
Enlightenment whole-heartedly. Psychologically speaking, it was
very difficult to make a complete break with the past. And it was
easy to criticize the Enlightenment on Christian grounds, since it
implicitly (and often explicitly) rejected the whole cultural
tradition of the preceding centuries. At the same time, there were
naturally many thinkers who wanted to build some kind of synthesis
between the old values and the new.
The most pivotal figure in this respect was probably Rousseau.
While closely linked personally to other Enlightenment thinkers,
even his contemporaries recognized that he was not fully behind
their program. And while Rousseau spoke the language of freedom,
many of his ideas bore an ominous resemblance to the preceding era
of totalitarianism. Each of Rousseau's three most influential works
targets one of the bastions of the Enlightenment, offering either a
rejection or a synthesis with non-Enlightenment views. Thus, The
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences argued that the development of
the arts and sciences tends to corrupt morals, offering a dire list of
the consequences of the growth of civilization: "No more sincere
friendships; no more real esteem; no more well-based confidence.
Suspicions, offenses, fears, coldness, reserve, hate, betrayal will
hide constantly under that much vaunted urbanity which we owe to
the enlightenment of our century."11 The Discourse on the Origin
and Foundations of Inequality argued strongly against the natural
right to property, and therefore implicitly against laissez-faire
economics. And Rousseau's Social Contract, while maintaining a
nominal commitment to freedom, gave it a majoritarian rather than
an individualistic slant. As Rousseau expresses the "essence" of his
social contract: "Each of us places in common his person and all his
power under the supreme direction of the general will; and as one
body we all receive each member as an indivisible part of the
whole."12 And he does not shrink from the potentially totalitarian
implications of this idea: the losing minority to a vote remains
bound to it, because "When, therefore, the motion which I opposed
carries, it only proves to me that I was mistaken, and that what I
believed to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion
had prevailed, I should have done what I was not willing to do, and,
consequently, I should not have been in a state of freedom."13 The
irreconcilability of this doctrine with Europe's new-found cultural
and intellectual freedom is palpable.
Interestingly, scholars still debate whether Rousseau was a
socialist or a conservative or something else. Interesting, because
in the 19th century two distinct factions opposed to the theory and
practice of classical liberalism arose. These were the
conservatives and the socialists. Of course these two groups were
different from each other in many ways: class background, religious
views, attitude towards tradition and established authority. But
more important was what they shared: a suspicion or active
hostility to either laissez-faire economics, intellectual and cultural
freedom, or both.
The socialists' opposition to laissez-faire is well-known; and
while there was certainly some disagreement on the issue of
intellectual and cultural freedom among socialists, it must be
admitted that a very large part of 19th-century socialism regarded
these as unjustifiable "bourgeois rights." The orthodox Marxist
tradition certainly had little respect for the rights of free
expression; and other seminal socialists such as Saint-Simon were
explicitly opposed to these sorts of civil liberties.
Less well-known, but very significant, is the fact that 19th-
century conservatives had many of the same complaints as the
socialists with regards to both economic and personal freedom.
Thus, in his European Socialism, Carl Landauer explains that, "The
socially minded Tories believed that the medieval relationship of
allegiance between the lord and the men under his manorial
jurisdiction, or among the members of a guild had given the lower
classes more security and real satisfaction than they could enjoy
under the modern economic system in which human beings figure
only as buyers and sellers of commodities and labor. The
aristocratic guardians of tradition and authority should accept the
responsibility for leading the masses in their struggle against the
evils of industrialism."14 Similar strains of thought could be
found among the German and French aristocracy, for example in
Bismark's social programs. And like many socialists, the
conservatives had a hard time adjusting to intellectual and cultural
freedom, though of course the particular doctrines and practices
that they sought to suppress differed.
The key fact is that these conservatives had no sympathy for
laissez-faire economics, and on this issue they were in agreement
with the socialists. Their alternative economic programs differed,
with the conservatives leaning towards a return to feudalism, and
the socialists leaning towards a state-managed industrialism. But
there was significant overlap: there were medievally-oriented
socialists, and especially by the mid-19th-century, there were pro-
industrialization conservatives.15
7. The Triumph of Classical Liberalism and the Return
to Totalitarianism
But the conservative and socialist critics of classical
liberalism, especially its economic program, met with relatively
little practical success in the 19th century. And to summarize one
of the few questions on which there is virtually unanimous
agreement among economists, classical liberalism fulfilled all of
its promises. The standard of living for everyone rose at a fantastic
rate throughout the nineteenth century, generally long before any
sort of social legislation was passed which could possibly lay claim
to a share of the credit.16 The classical economists' claim that free
trade and small government promoted peace, while economic
nationalism and powerful government promoted war, seemed to be at
least partially confirmed by the relative absence of war in the 19th
century.
If all this is true, then why did the socialist and conservative
movements grow throughout the 19th century? The simplest
explanation is that despite all of its achievements, people wanted
even more. Conditions for ordinary people prior to the Industrial
Revolution were so horrible that even a tremendous magnification of
their previous wealth still left them poor in absolute terms. Still,
the mere wish for a faster rate of progress hardly supplied
convincing evidence that there was any economic system that could
deliver more. And yet the conservatives and socialists were
convinced that such a system had to exist.
Since the facts gave so little support to their views, it seems
likely that the real foundation of the anti-capitalist critique
stemmed not from facts, but from underlying values. The basic
values of Christian totalitarianism were never fully destroyed by
the Enlightenment. The masses and government officials were never
won over to classical liberalism, and the intellectuals were won
over only briefly. Then came the reaction. It once again became
intellectually acceptable to attack the open society, with its values
of reason, individualism, and individual freedom. Intellectuals began
to develop new, anti-liberal systems of thought.
Some of these intellectuals were direct descendents of
Christian totalitarianism -- for the most part, the conservatives.
Others were secular heretics, equally opposed to religious
totalitarianism and classical liberalism. Philosopher George Walsh
describes this group as "the secular discontents of the modern
world," which he defines in the following way: "(1) He holds to
Judeo-Christian ethics; (2) He has very largely lost the religious
beliefs which would alone give him a metaphysical foundation for
these values; (3) Still, he judges and even condemns the modern
world for falling short of these values; (4) And finally he concludes
that the problem has to be solved by any means other than rejecting
the Judeo-Christian ethics."17 They planned out new societies
based on secular totalitarian creeds.18 These were the socialists.
Of course, it would be unfair to claim that all of the critics were
totalitarians; some of them merely wanted to take what they saw as
the best features of liberalism with the best features of either
conservatism or socialism. But the trend, away from liberalism and
towards a new coercive society, was clear.
By the end of the 19th century, it was clear that classical
liberal policies, to the extent that they had been adopted in the first
place, were going to be seriously modified with a healthy dose of
conservatism or socialism. Initially, the move was chiefly away
from laissez-faire economic policies: Germany, France, England, and
the United States had all made important concessions to the critics
of capitalism by 1900, and the gradual trend was towards a larger
economic role for the state. On the sidelines stood the implacable
opponents of any compromise with classical liberalism.
It must be admitted that but for some unfortunate historical
coincidences, these implacable opponents of liberalism might have
stayed permanently marginalized. As it happened, though, war,
political unrest, and other factors made it possible for one of the
most anti-liberal factions of socialists, the Bolsheviks under Lenin,
to seize power in Russia. Then the world saw how modern industry
and science could be wedded to totalitarianism to make it more
total that it had ever been under Christian totalitarianism. Lenin's
Bolsheviks swiftly moved towards a sociey of compulsory belief and
total economic planning by the state; and while there were a few
periods of liberalization during which other socialist parties were
tolerated and some economic decisions were left to the market,
within about a decade every vestige of freedom of any kind had been
completely destroyed.19 The history and extent of Communist
despotism is well-known, so there is no need to elaborate here.
Once the first modern totalitarian state had been established,
totalitarians of the socialist variety had a model to point to and
emulate. But there was another element that wanted emulate the
Bolshevik state, but at the same time attack it and use the fear of
Communism as their path to power. The first to do so were the
Italian fascists. To some extent, their ideology was was a
totalitarian variant of 19th-century conservatism, whose
connections to socialism we have already seen. And yet fascism
was also to some extent a direct descendent of totalitarian
socialism. As democratic socialist historian Carl Landauer puts it,
"In a history of socialism, fascism deserves a place not only as the
opponent which, for a time, threatened to obliterate the socialist
movement. Fascism is connected with socialism by many
crosscurrents, and the two movements have some roots in common,
especially the dissatisfaction with the capitalist economy of the
pre-1918 type."20 Or as Mussolini stated, "It is the State alone that
can solve the internal contradictions of capitalism. Where are the
shades of Jules Simon, who, at the dawn of liberalism, proclaimed
that 'the State must strive to render itself unnecessary and to
prepare for its demise,' of the MacCullochs who, in the second half
of the last century, affirmed that the State must abstain from too
much governing? And faced with the continual, necessary and
inevitable interventions of the State in economic affairs what would
the Englishman Bentham now say, according to which industry should
have asked of the State only to be left in peace? It is true that the
second generation of liberal economists was less extremist than the
first. But when one says liberalism one says the individual; when
one says Fascism, one says the State."21 Fascism of course often
aligned with big business, but hardly to promote laissez-faire; as
Adam Smith and other classical liberals had observed, businessmen
are always eager for the government to protect them from
competition and grant them privileges, which was one of their
central arguments for drastically restraining government's ability
to intervene in business.
After the rise of Italian fascism, both socialist and
conservative totalitarians had inspiring models of the sort of
society that they wished to bring to the world. And even more
liberal societies came to believe that the very existence of such
societies offered an argument for more moderate expansions of
state power; indeed, the existence of such societies showed that
communism or fascism might be in their own future. This belief
turned out to be justified in Weimar Germany when another fascist
movement, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler, managed to seize power by a
combination of electoral and extraparliamentary methods. Again,
the Nazi movement drew on both conservative and socialist
totalitarianism for its program, as its full name (National Socialist
German Workers' Party) starkly suggests. As Carl Landauer explains,
"The earlier protagonists of a merger between conservatism and
proletarian anticapitalism had been traditionalists. Although this
element, too, was present in the minds of the men around the Tat [a
conservative, anti-capitalist, but non-Nazi magazine] and in the
Strasser wing of the Nazis - as it was, indeed, in the whole Nazi
movement - yet the emphasis had shifted, especially in the field of
economics: in the creed of Strasser and the Tat groups, there was
some affinity to the feudal hostility against the moneyed interest,
but there was an even stronger element of Marxism purged of
internationalism."22
There were many doctrinal differences between the fascists
and Nazis on the one hand and the Communists on the other. In
fascism, the Communist emphasis on class struggle was
transformed into racial and national struggle. Communists generally
claimed that totalitarianism was merely a transition phase,
whereas the fascists seemed to conceive of totalitarianism as
permanent. Fascism appealed more to the lower-middle class and
farmers, and less to the working class than the Communists did. All
this and more may be freely conceded, yet the essential similarity
of these two forms of totalitarianism, in both origins and practice,
is hard to dispute. Perhaps Paul Johnson best sums up the
relationship between Communism and fascism when he writes that,
"As early as 1923 the Bulgarian peasant regime of Aleksandr
Stamboliski, which practiced 'agrarian Communism,' was ousted by a
fascist putsch. The Comintern, the new international bureau created
by the Soviet government to spread and co-ordinate Communist
activities, called on the 'workers of the world' to protest against
the 'victorious Bulgarian fascist clique,' thus for the first time
recognizing fascism as an international phenomenon. But what
exactly was it? There was nothing specific about it in Marx. It had
developed too late for Lenin to verbalize it into his march of History.
It was unthinkable to recognize it for what it actually was - a
Marxist heresy, indeed a modification of the Leninist heresy
itself."23
8. A Few Objections Answered
Here I will briefly counter a few objections, though obviously
a great deal more space would be needed to be comprehensive.
a. Does the Bible authorize totalitarianism? There are two
replies to this. First of all, it needn't be the case that the
Scriptures authorized totalitarianism; it is only necessary that
historical Christians assumed that it did and acted accordingly.
Secondly, the textual argument is not that difficult to make: the Old
Testament unambiguously embraces a compulsory religion and
unlimited cruelty against unbelievers where it is convenient, and the
New Testament, though it does not focus on such topics, never
repudiates the totalitarianism of the Old Testament. To view Jesus
and the early Christians as proto-liberals strikes me as a bizarre
interpretation of the Gospels and the Pauline texts.24
b. Was medieval Catholicism really thoroughly totalitarian?
No, of course not. Some measure of freedom of thought existed, but
only within carefully regulated boundaries. Several doctrines
limiting the power of rulers such as the doctrine of the right of
resistance and the theory of natural rights later evolved into
important checks upon government power and even a positive
program of liberation. But the effect of these doctrines in
mitigating the essential totalitarianism of medieval life was
minimal.
c. Was the Protestant Reformation thoroughly totalitarian?
Again, of course not. The Protestants were instrumental in
developing theories of the right of resistance and the right of
revolution (later Protestants, that is; not Luther or Calvin). And as
I conceded, the long-run effect of the Reformation was liberating,
since it made religious toleration necessary on pragmatic grounds,
and thereby paved the way for religious toleration on principle.
d. Doesn't your reading of the radical Whigs and especially
Locke downplay the democratic element in their thought in favor of
the liberal element? Yes, to some extent. Basically, I see a serious
gap in Locke's thought between his doctrine of natural rights and his
attempt to reconcile these rights with a social contract that falls
short of unanimity. On the other hand, there is little textual
evidence for the view that Locke was a proto-welfare liberal
(section 42 of the First Treatise seems like a rather slim basis for
this interpretation); and there is much textual evidence that even
after the establishment of a democratic government he mainly
envisioned government as a means for protecting property.
e. Don't you under-estimate the Christian influence upon the
Enlightenment? Again, of course there was some continuity between
the two traditions, and most of the Enlightenment intellectuals
retained some kind of religious belief. But there was a rather
extreme break at least with the Christianity of medieval
Catholicism, or that of Luther and Calvin. In any case, a central part
of my argument is that the Enlightenment never really rid itself of
its Christian background, and that this background later returned to
haunt it.
f. Doesn't your analysis presuppose the desirability of laissez-
faire? Partially; but a large part of my obvious sympathy for
laissez-faire stems from the study of history itself. Obviously in so
short a space I cannot answer the many objections to laissez-faire
economic policy, but my general observation is that laissez-faire
correlates with vast economic growth as well as non-economic
freedom, whereas government economic activity correlates with
lower or even declining economic welfare, and to a lesser but still
significant extent with the suppression of non-economic freedoms.
g. Aren't you overlooking important differences between
socialists and conservatives in the 19th-century, and Communists
and fascists in the 20th-century? I have already admitted a large
number of differences, and I don't think that it would seriously alter
my general thesis if more differences were found. So long as it is
conceded that these groups shared a common rejection of laissez-
faire, and a preference for extensive government involvement in
economic life, I think I have established an important link between
these allegedly disparate movements.
9. Conclusion
The idea of totalitarianism has deep roots in Western
civilization, and therefore great explanatory power. In particular,
when we view history as a struggle between the polar opposite ideas
of totalitarianism on the one hand and classical liberalism on the
other, a large number of seemingly disparate events and ideas cohere
neatly with each other: medieval Christianity, the rise of cities, the
Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, liberalism, socialism,
conservatism, communism, and fascism all fit logically together.
Now it would be a mistake to try to force every historical detail
into an a priori mold, but a sound philosophy of history can avoid
this error by appropriately qualifying its conclusions, admitting
exceptions, and continuing to search for falsifying as well as
confirming evidence.
To briefly comment on the contemporary relevence of my
theory of history: the collapse of Communism marks the second
death of totalitarianism. The rhetoric of classical liberalism, with
its appreciation for both personal and economic freedom, can now be
heard from every political faction. Nevertheless, actual government
policies in even the most capitalist nations bear far more
resemblance to the ideal of moderate socialism than to laissez-
faire. Now that the world has repudiated totalitarianism, steeped in
anti-capitalist philosophy, the time has come to re-examine
whether any aspect whatever of that anti-capitalist philosophy is
valid. More fundamentally, the time has come to re-examine the
philosophy of the Enlightenment, with its commitment to
autonomous reason, a secular outlook, individualism, the pursuit of
personal happiness, progress, and individual freedom, and see
whether the modern civilization's partial rejection of that
philosophy was justified or mistaken.
Notes
1: On de-urbanization after the fall of the Roman Empire, see
Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1925), esp. pp.5-25.
2: Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York:
Atheneum, 1976), pp.191-192.
3: Pirenne, op. cit., p.102.
4: Ibid, p.193.
5: On the connection between the Renaissance and the rise of
cities, as well as further information on the liberating aspects of
city life, see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political
Thought, Vol. 1: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), esp. pp.3-22.
6: Quoted in George Smith, "Philosophies of Toleration," in
Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1991), p.109.
7: For an interesting case study of Calvinist hostility to early
capitalism in the Netherlands, see Simon Schama, The Embarassment
of Riches (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1987), pp.323-343. "But even if
the Calvinist clergy, as Weber has it, allowed this [the spread of
capitalist values] to happen unintentionally, it is certainly not
apparent from the tenor of their remarks about the place of money in
Christian life. Indeed, there seems to be no real break at all in the
uninterrupted flow of polemics against wealth from Flanders to
Holland, from Antwerp to Amsterdam. Far from endorsing finance
capitalism, the Dutch general synods did their level best to proclaim
their disapproval," ibid, pp.329-330.
8: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist in Walter Kaufman, ed.,
The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p.654.
9: John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, in Peter
Laslett, ed., Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1960), pp. 287-288.
10: On the Enlightenment generally, and particularly the
influence of Enlightenment ideas upon European monarchs, see John
Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan
Davidson, 1967).
11: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and
Sciences, in Roger and Judith Masters, eds., The First and Second
Discourses (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), p.38.
12: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, or Principles
of Political Right (New York: Hafner Publishing co., 1947), p.15.
13: ibid, p.96.
14: Carl Landauer, European Socialism: A History of Ideas and
Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), p.22.
15: See ibid, pp.21-71. For more on conservative hostility to
laissez-faire, see Frank O'Gorman, British Conservatism (New York:
Langman, 1986).
16: See for example T.S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution:
1760-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), or virtually any
economic history of the period.
17: From his lecture series "Marxism: Philosophy and Political
Ideology."
18: Others, such as Auguste Comte and Enfantin, borrowed
from both trends by defining new religious systems.
19: See Landauer, op. cit., pp.701-789, 1183-1242.
20: Ibid, p.873.
21: Benito Mussolini, "The Doctrine of Fascism," in Carl Cohen,
Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism, p.362.
22: Landauer, op. cit., pp.1463.
23: Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York: Harper & Row,
1983), p.102.
24: A plausible argument could be made that the differences
between the Old and New Testaments stem from the fact that the
Old Testament was canonized after Judaism was already an
established religion, whereas the New Testament was canonized
when Christianity was still a small minority sect.