The dawn of English 'classical liberalism'

from A History of Libertarianism | Libertarianism.org - David Boaz:

"English opposition to royal absolutism created a great deal of intellectual ferment, and the first stirrings of clearly proto-liberal ideas can be seen in 17th-century England. Again, liberal ideas developed out of the defense of religious toleration. The great poet John Milton published Areopagitica in 1644, a powerful argument for freedom of religion and against official licensing of the press. Dealing with the relationship between freedom and virtue, an issue that vexes American politics to this day, Milton wrote, 'Liberty is the best school of virtue.' Virtue, he said, is only virtuous if chosen freely. On freedom of speech, he wrote, 'Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?'

"During the Interregnum, ... when England was between kings and under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, ... the Levellers began enunciating the full set of ideas that would come to be known as liberalism. They placed the defense of religious liberty and the ancient rights of Englishmen in a context of self-ownership and natural rights.... Leveller leader Richard Overton argued that every individual has a 'self-propriety'; that is, everyone owns himself and thus has rights to life, liberty, and property. 'No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s.'

"Despite the efforts of the Levellers and other radicals, the Stuart dynasty returned to the throne in 1660, in the person of Charles II. Charles ... and his brother James II again tried to extend royal power. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary of Holland (both grandchildren of Charles I) ... [who] agreed to respect the 'true, ancient, and indubitable rights' of Englishmen, as put down in the Bill of Rights in 1689. We can date the birth of liberalism to the Glorious Revolution.

'John Locke is rightly seen as the first real liberal and as the father of modern political philosophy. If you don’t know the ideas of Locke, you really can’t understand the world we live in. Locke’s great work The Second Treatise of Government was published in 1690.... Locke asked, what is the point of government? Why do we have it? He answered, people have rights prior to the existence of government — thus we call them natural rights, because they exist in nature. People form a government to protect their rights. They could do that without government, but a government is an efficient system for protecting rights. And if government exceeds that role, people are justified in revolting. Representative government is the best way to ensure that government sticks to its proper purpose....

"Locke also articulated clearly the idea of property rights.... People have an inalienable right to life and liberty, and they acquire a right to previously unowned property that they 'mix their labor with,' such as by farming. It is the role of government to protect the 'Lives, Liberties, and Estates' of the people.

"These ideas were enthusiastically received. Europe was still in the grip of royal absolutism, but thanks to their experience with the Stuarts the English were suspicious of all forms of government. They warmly embraced this powerful philosophical defense of natural rights, the rule of law, and the right of revolution. They also, of course, began carrying the ideas of Locke and the Levellers on ships bound for the New World."

Read more: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/history-libertarianism
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Six classic libertarian books

The Most Influential Libertarian Philosophers and Thinkers - The Libertarian Republic - Austin Petersen:

November 8, 2019 - "Libertarian thinkers focus on the rights of the individual.... They value the individual’s freedom of choice.... Below, we briefly introduce some of the most influential philosophers and thinkers who have shaped that way of thinking.

"David Boaz, a modern-day libertarian thinker, wrote [The Libertarian Mind] on the historical roots of libertarianism and he defines the basic philosophy of libertarianism in simple but deep terms. If a person is interested in finding out more about what the basic premise of the philosophy is they could start here.... The book is a thorough rendering of the basic economic and political thinking of this philosophy....

“The Law written by Frenchman Frederic Bastiat, ... was written in 1850, and attacked the 'legal plunder' or government directed taking of property by force. Bastiat, says that the original meaning of the law was to protect our basic rights but when it turns into a forced redistribution of property it destroys its own objective.... This defeats the whole intent of the law....

"Robert Nozick ... said [in Anarchy, State and Utopia] that the individual has the right to govern themselves in fact they have the most radical set of rights.... Nozick was a very smart person [who] birthed the self-ownership concept....

"The Machinery of Freedom was written by David Friedman and ... describes different levels of libertarian thinking.... Classic [liberals] allow for government to tax some services but minimalists allow for government to only provide services such as law enforcement, courts, etc. Anarcho-capitalists ... want to abolish any form of government ... to replace government with private and voluntary services.... Friedman ... fully embraces this radical form of libertarianism....

"The granddaddy of Libertarian books [is] Second Treatise of Civil Government [sic].... John Locke wrote this legendary book on libertarian thinking which was instrumental in the founding of the United States.... He came up with a hypothetical country in which government is limited in the affairs of people and ... human rights are developed. The government is to protect the rights of the people.

"Gustave de Molinari was a[n]  ... early 20th century Belgian philosopher who exceeded his counterparts in thinking about the role government should play in [The Production of Security].... He is one of the most underrated philosophers of recent times ... ahead of his time in his thinking about libertarian philosophy."

Read more: https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/the-most-influential-libertarian-philosophers-and-thinkers/
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Rethinking the Lockean Proviso

Libertarian property rights and the Lockean sufficiency proviso - The Washington Post - Fabian Wendt, Volokh Conspiracy:

September 22, 2017 - "John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689) contains a defense of private property that makes use of the idea of labor-mixing. In §27, Locke writes: ‘[…] for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.’ The ‘at least’ clause has become known as the ‘Lockean proviso’. It is usually understood as specifying a limit to labor-based acquisition of private property.

"Since libertarians care a lot about private property and its justification, the Lockean proviso has been an important tenet in libertarian theories of justice....  Right-libertarians either reject the Lockean proviso or endorse very weak interpretations of it, while left-libertarians endorse some egalitarian interpretation of the Lockean proviso (which allows appropriation until one has one’s equal share of natural resources or as long as the appropriation is compatible with equality of opportunity for welfare).

"In between right- and left-libertarianism, there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation, a sufficiency proviso. It is remarkable that this option has rarely been defended. The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism’.... [M]oderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place.

"What is this rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice? It starts with the rather trivial fact that persons are purposive beings. They have the capacity to pursue all kinds of projects. Almost all projects require external resources, and they require being able to count on one’s resources. For that reason, persons as project-pursuers need the opportunity to acquire private property in external resources in one way or another. Following Eric Mack, one can take this to establish a ‘natural right to the practice of private property’. Together with the idea of self-ownership, this natural right can be regarded as the core of a libertarian theory of justice. Note that the project pursuit rationale for libertarianism does not rely on the moral force of Lockean labor-mixing. Rather, private property as a practice is justified as being responsive to persons as project pursuers....

"[I]f one embraces a libertarian theory of justice due to the project pursuit rationale, then one should also embrace a sufficientarian proviso. The basic idea is simple: Without sufficient resources, people are unable to live their lives as project pursuers. Because this is so, a libertarian who advances a libertarian theory of justice because s/he cares about people as project pursuers must also care about everyone actually having sufficient resources for living a life as a project-pursuer. This is why some sort of sufficientarian proviso should be incorporated into a libertarian theory of justice....

"First of all, my sufficiency proviso does not apply to specific acts of appropriation, but to the practice of private property as a whole. The practice of private property is justified because private property is necessary for living as a project pursuer, but it can only be justified under condition that it actually enables everyone to live as a project pursuer.

"Second, the sufficiency proviso does not unconditionally require us to bring everyone above the sufficiency threshold. The proviso only prescribes that the practice of private property should be designed in a way that makes sure that everyone has sufficient resources to live as a project pursuer, if this is possible without undermining the point of having a practice of private property in the first place."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/22/libertarian-property-rights-and-lockes-sufficiency-proviso/?utm_term=.47439424a2b7
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A brief account of property

by George J. Dance

Property is a relation between some people ('owners'), some things ('goods' or 'resources'), and, by implication, other people. Property rights are either liberty or claim negative rights that include rights (1) to appropriate things, or acquire them as property, (2) to use them as goods (usus), and therefore (3) to use them as resources to create new goods, which are also the creator's property (fructus). They comprise both basic property rights (to acquire and use things at all), which look inalienable, and derivative ownership rights to specific things, which are fully alienable. Because ownership rights are alienable, they include rights (4) to get rid of the property, either by destroying it, including consuming it or using it up to make something else (abusus), or by giving ownership rights to it to someone else.

Everyone has the basic property rights needed to be an owner, but only owners have derivative ownership rights. Because the latter are rights of owners only, it follows that there is an owner's right to exclude non-owners from using those specific things if she wants to.

Back in 1689, John Locke theorized that "Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself."[1, 27] In other words, while basic rights to negative liberty were held by everyone, only one person had the derivative rights over her own person (which both explains and justifies the idea of asymmetrical ownership rights).

Since people have to eat to live, their rights must include a right to eat, and therefore a right to gather food to feed oneself: "And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him."[1, 28] Since a right to feed oneself is a right to consume specific goods (meaning both to acquire, use, and destroy them, and to exclude everyone else from using them), it is a property right, which shows the necessity of property rights to some goods.

Locke did place four conditions on appropriation of things. The first three were necessary: The thing had to be "in the common state nature provided it," in other words not already owned;[1, 27] the owner had to have "mixed his labour with" (used) it;[1, 27] and no one could appropriate more than she could use.[1, 33] Without satisfying those conditions with respect to appropriating any specific thing, one could not become its owner.

The fourth, when added to the above, looks instead like a sufficient condition: if one's appropriation of a good satisfied it, one would be unquestionably an owner; "for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."[1, 27]
 
Since people have been eating, and letting others eat, since the dawn of time, one can place the first implicit property rights that far back. However, the first explicit property rights were probably communal. Robert Lefevre theorizes that, in primitive tribes, the food "would have been for the use of the entire tribe."[2, 13.] Tribal ownership persisted when hunters became nomads: Tribes followed their herds, a property right they enforced against outsiders; kills were probably divided among the whole tribe by its patriarch.[3, 16] It probably was the first type of property during the agricultural revolution (10,000 B.C.) as well; but given evidence that recognizing individual rights to a crop leads to higher productivity,[4] and given the enormous increase in productivity during the revolution, it is reasonable to think that individual or family ownership began to catch on then.

The increasing prosperity attracted the notice of the nomads, who began raiding and plundering agricultural sentiments. Beginning around 5,000 BC, some got the idea of conquering agricultural lands and settling down as rulers, managing the inhabitants like a herd. Von Rustow calls this process "superstratification," and sees it as the emergence of the first states:

Superstratification produced, for the first time in history, human social groupings that, in their inner structure, were based on bloodshed and violence.... For the first time outer morality, the morality of violence, penetrates, domineeringly and determinedly, into the interior of a social body.... [As Nietzche wrote:] 'The state originates in the cruelest way, through conquest, through the production of a race of drones.'"[3, 35-36]  

Not surprisingly, violence and blooshed invaded the sphere of property rights as well. First, the conquerors took over existing property by force and became the new owners. Second, they established property laws backed by a police power.

This historical sequence shows that ownership rights do not necessarily imply a right to use violence and bloodshed (since the first has existed without the second). Before the coming of the state, as Lefevre notes, whatever enforcement of property rights there was, played little if any role in their protection: "as properties multiplied, opportunity for theft far exceeded the ability of physical defenders, both in time and numbers." Property rights were mainly supported by religions: "Non-trespass of private property became one of the earliest taboos, substituted for still earlier taboos against tribal trespass. Here is the early root of the Golden Rule, and even of the late development of the Decalogue."[2, 7].

Religions are still the major support for private property rights in some communities, the pacifist Amish communities being a good example. Even where the state does enforce property rights, as Lefevre also points out, its violence and bloodshed play but a minor role in protecting them:

What is not easily grasped is the fact that ownership of property and its retention in private hands are dependent on understanding and belief, and not upon force. The only real protection we have arises from the unwillingness of individuals to commit trespass, and not upon the willingness of certain men, hired as a constabulary, to pursue those who have violated property rights, in order to bring restitution, or to punish the offenders, or both.[2, 9]

Notes

[1] John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government (edited by C.B. McPherson). Indianapolis, IN, & Cambridge, UK: Hackett, 1980. Print.

[2] Robert Lefevre, The Philosophy of Ownership. Rampart College, 1974. Print.

[3] Alexander Rustow, Freedom and Domination (translated by Salvator Attanasio; edited by Dankwart A. Rustow). Princton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Print.

[4] Gary Galles, "Private Property and the first U.S. Thanksgiving," GD's Political Animal, November 27, 2016, Blogspot, Web, June 7, 2017. http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.ca/2016/11/private-property-and-first-us.html

Activist SCOTUS needed to defend U.S. liberty

George F. Will: The Constitution Is A Libertarian Tool - Investors.com:

October 21, 2015 - "A supremely important presidential issue is being generally neglected ... presidential candidates should explain how they would select judicial nominees....

"Republicans can't speak their minds about the judicial supervision of democracy because their minds are unsettled. Fortunately, they are being urged, by thinkers like Randy Barnett, to adopt a vocabulary that disconcerts conservatives who have grown lazily comfortable with rhetorical boilerplate in praise of 'judicial restraint.'

"Barnett, a Georgetown law professor, recently took to a place that needs it — the University of California, Berkeley — this message: 'The judicial passivism of the Supreme Court has combined with the activism of both congresses and presidents to produce a behemoth federal government, which seemingly renders the actual Constitution a mere relic, rather than the governing document it purports to be.'

"In his lecture, 'Is the Constitution Libertarian?' Barnett acknowledged that in many respects American life 'feels freer' than ever, and that we have more choices. In other ways, however, freedom is too constricted, and individual rights are too brittle, because for decades America's Lockeans have lost ground to Hobbesians: 'The Lockeans are those for whom individual liberty is their first principle of social ordering, while the Hobbesians are those who give the highest priority to government power to provide social order and to pursue social ends'....

"Lockeans favor rigorous judicial protection of certain individual rights -- especially private property and freedom of contract -- that define and protect the zone of sovereignty within which people are free to act as they please.... Lockeans say the Constitution circumscribes the majoritarian principle by protecting all rights that are crucial to individual sovereignty....  And, Barnett argues, a properly engaged judiciary bears the burden of saying when the government has not justified its restrictions as necessary and proper.

"So, Barnett says, yes, the Constitution — 'the law that governs those who govern us' — is libertarian. And a Lockean president would nominate justices who would capaciously define and vigorously defend, against abuses by majoritarian government, what the 14th Amendment calls Americans' 'privileges or immunities.'

"Republican presidential aspirants must be forced to join their party's argument about the judiciary's proper function. Then we can distinguish the Lockean constitutionalists from the merely rhetorical conservatives whose reflexive praise of 'judicial restraint' serves the progressives' Hobbesian project of building an ever-larger Leviathan.""

Read more: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/102115-776739-george-f-will-constitutions-focus-on-securing-natural-rights-makes-it-libertarian.htm
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