Wonderful!

Finally an Austrian author discusses my comments on religion without trying to pass me off as a Christian.

Particularly upsetting is this claim from the Grove City College economics department website: ‘Because no understanding exists outside of God’s truth, economic laws must be grounded in Christian presuppositions about the nature of man.’ Please let me be clear: THE ACTION AXIOM has NOTHING to do with CHRISTIAN PRESUPPOSITIONS.

Remember that I complained that the gospel of Jesus is ‘utterly negative.’ “He [Jesus] rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. He arrives at dissolving all existing social ties. The disciple shall not merely be indifferent to supporting himself, shall not merely refrain from work and dispossess himself of all goods, but he shall hate ‘father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life’ . . . His zeal in destroying social ties knows no limits. The motive force behind the purity and power of this complete negation is ecstatic inspiration, enthusiastic hope of a new world. Hence his passionate attack upon everything that exists. Everything must be destroyed because God in His omnipotence will rebuild the future order . . . The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. The Bolshevists, too, wish to destroy everything that exists because they regard it as hopelessly bad. But they have in mind ideas, indefinite and contradictory though they may be, of the future social order. They demand not only that their followers shall destroy all that is, but also that they pursue a definite line of conduct leading towards the future Kingdom of which they have dreamt. Jesus’ teaching in this respect, on the other hand, is mere negation.”

Vance’s article probably points to the crux of the libertarian-conservatie debate. Sometimes I fully understand why conservative Prof. Marion Montgomery said that libertarians gave him the willies! Mr. Vance’s article is a good example of John Lennon libertarianism. One can imagine the atheist-agnostic libertarians with locked hands singing, “Imagine there’s no heaven…”
I think libertarians make a fatal mistake when they sever libertarianism from its religious roots. The Austrian School is a direct descendant from the Spanish Scholastics, who, we probably need little reminding, were profoundly religious. Given its Catholic roots, it’s no coincidence that the Austrian School came out of Vienna and Salamanca.
When libertarianism is severed from its religious roots it ultimately becomes utopian and Gnostic and, therefore, leftist.

Sam wrote:

“I think libertarians make a fatal mistake when they sever libertarianism from its religious roots.”

You are saying this as if being religious would make me a specially clever person, able to understand the ideas of freedom and liberty better than if I wasn’t. Sorry, I do not agree with this assertion. The ideas of freedom, liberty and private property are universal.

Sam wrote:
“When libertarianism is severed from its religious roots it ultimately becomes utopian and Gnostic and, therefore, leftist.”

You are pushing a false dichotomy. Freedom and religion are not these siamese twins that cannot live without each other. Slaves can be pretty religious, at least that is what I gathered from the last US presidential election. I prefer to think libertarianism welcomes everyone who loves freedom – not just the pious or the heathen, but both.

A one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind and Mises had two! But I think he suffers a small degree of near sightedness in history. The French, Germans and British wrote 20th century history, each nationality slanting it in their own favor. That’s why the British consider Smith to be the father of economics while the French look to the physiocrats. However, in the past decade a lot of research on the history of the Dutch Republic has come to light that paints a different picture. In summary, when Dutch Protestants rebelled against Spanish mass murder and established the first republic in European history (after Rome), they followed the Protestant teachings of Erasmus (not Calvin) when creating the state and its institutions. Chief among these teachings were the sanctity of private property, individual freedom of conscience, the rule of law, free markets (as an extension of private property rights), and an honest court system. In addition to Erasmus’ teachings, they were helped by Hugenot writers who taught that the tyranny of Kings should be opposed on Biblical grounds, and by the theologians at the Spanish school in Salamanca who espoused many of the economic ideas that Adam Smith would discover 200 years later. (In fact, Smith hold up the Dutch as the best example of his ideas in “Wealth of Nations.”) I argue in a book I have written that the Dutch Protestants created capitalism inadvertently in their effort to establish a completely new form of government in Europe that would be based on Biblical principles.

It’s saddens me that Protestants have lost sight of their origins and support socialism as they do. I’m a Bible-thumpin’ fire-breathing evangelical and am trying to win converts among them to capitalism as founded by Dutch Protestants, but they’re a hard-hearted bunch! One reason for their hardness is the reverence they have for John Calvin. But as the history of the Dutch demonstrates, Calvin and the Calvinists opposed the “capitalist” ideas of the Erasmian Protestants, preferring the church/state intervention practiced throughout the middle ages. As for Catholics, they fought Dutch capitalism from the very beginning and I have no hope for them.

I appreciate the replies to my comments.
I would just refer to Murray Rothbard’s wonderful “History of Economic Thought” for a brilliant explanation of the Spanish Scholastic-Austrian School connection.
I do maintain that it is no coincidence that the Austrian School sprung from the intellectual environment of Catholic Vienna. I do believe, along with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn,that the Catholic world tended to be anarchistic and monarchical (not mutually exclusive terms)as opposed to the millenial and statist Protestant world. I understand that these are generalizations but essentially true. I just think it’s a mistake to try and sever the Austrian school from these roots.

Vance, “Conservative churchmen today are for the most part interventionist to the core” may or may not be true, but the issue is that everyone must be “interventionist to the core” at some level, it is a matter of what and where should the intervention occur.

Should we allow murderers to go free? And what of the moral pollution that we find our children raised in, as it is common understanding that no society can long exist if its children are given to evil behavior and temptations which corrupt and twist their nature toward wrong.

If I might be so bold as to assume that the position you hold is in common enough libertarianism to be appropriate, consider the following.

The libertarian argument has long been plagued by a key contradiction: because men are imperfect or evil or insufficient, we must reduce his power over other men in government. But if true, how can the reduction of the state lead to a better society?

The result is that libertarianism (and Misesianism as it pertains to the sphere of moral human action) has been reduced to a purely economic argument as to how to “become successful” while allowing the moral core to drift. But morality is a critical founding point that cannot be avoided, and it cannot be divorced from the sphere of human economic activity.

The only point in the favor of the libertarian is that a reduction of government intervention likely is a reduction of the influence of error and evil, as those that have the inclination to violently rule others are more likely to have severe defects in their character. That is a commendable truth.

But in fact, the U.S. and it’s economic structure was not founded on an agnostic vision, it was founded by men of deep religious conviction motivated by a view of the fallen nature of man, and thus not only can the state not be god, the state is a reflection of man’s evil – thus the concept of the “balance of power” which is likely more appropriately named “the balance of evil” — that man not be allowed unrestricted power over other men.

It simply is not true that adhering to the libertarian ideal, in and of itself, will cure the economic problems in which men find themselves. The will of the majority becomes good only if the majority IS good – and since man is fallen, he cannot be good, being in bondage to his sin nature as being separated from God: the source of creation and of all good. It is only under the transforming power of Jesus Christ (Jesus being God in the flesh who took the cost our sin does upon himself when he suffered and died on the cross) that we can again have a relationship with God and a future perfected being. (You can imagine the suffering Jesus being the picture that more completely illustrates: THAT is what sin DOES).

The state is a reflection of man’s evil, not “the evil” itself. Men of true integrity know that they cannot have the knowledge to run other people’s lives and that other people have inalienable rights given them by their creator and that there is no source of perfect goodness in man.

By reducing the state we can ultimately no more redeem man to a better society than by removing one’s arm will cure the evil of poison ivy.

So are you SURE that reducing the influence of Christian interventionists that we’ll have a better nation? It sounds to me like it could be the opposite – even though I greatly disagree with their economic views. And while I agree that it is of no right that Christians use force to bend others to all their views, we as a nation must agree on some views as being right and just and true. What will those be? Views that accord themselves to man’s nature as a fallen being, or views that ignore the reality of man’s nature and thus cannot exist without transmutation into something altogether at variance with the original viewpoint. It’s somewhat like socialism: it cannot ever exist in the form it is supposed to because it is impossible; and so it is with libertarianism.

Just two short observations. I believe that the stance of the vast majority of individuals regarding economic policy issues is much more related to their economic/financial status, as opposed to their religious affiliation. Unfortunately, many people, including clergy, choose or bend their religious beliefs to fit their ideas of economic “justice”. Also, Micky’s comment, “Economics is not about which ends man should choose, but rather about the relationships between ends and means, and the nature and consequences of human action” is on the mark.

The problem that Christians – and all people with strong ideologies – face is the fallacy that their own ideas must be forced on the world in order to succeed. This is not a result of Christianity, but a result of evil and misguided people who also happen to be Christians. The State is their true god, but to keep their illusions strong, this god must be cunningly fashioned to resemble their ideas of the real God as much as possible. Politicians are this religion’s priesthood, and democracy its principle dogma.

In fact, one can easily make the case that one must be a libertarian if one is to practice true Christianity. Few people have ever put peace, non-intervention, and charity into practice the way Jesus did in the Gospels. Many of his parables were about working hard and investing. None advocated anything remotely like socialism. The civic-religious leadership of that day were corrupt, much like Christian leadership of today; Jesus reserved some of his harshest words for those people.

The Israelite nation that God created in the Old Testament was also remarkably libertarian. Aside from some extra ceremonial and religious laws not worth discussing here, the main laws were simply those prohibiting violence – no murder, no theft, no rape, etc. – with non-abritary punishment consisting of restitution wherever possible. There was no central state, no legislature, no king, and no standing army; law was administered by judges and local civic leaders (sounding much like the Hamilton’s natural aristocracy). Nearly all land in the nation was private property. That nation flourished and was the envy of its neighbours until the Israelites foolishly demanded a king. Things went downhill fast from there.

Anyway, there is nothing Christian about the beliefs and practices that most Western Christians follow today. It’s a mockery of everything the Bible says.

BTW, Ronnie, this blog entry is not the right place for blithe, oversimplified criticisms of the Bible. Yes, I personally do believe that our planet was created in seven discrete stages, that Noah survived a flood that encompassed the known world at the time, and that the Hebrews were once enslaved in Egypt. However, I would agree that the Bible’s primary purpose is not to be a historical compendium.

“For the record, the Catholic Church has been full of clerics and laypeople who oppose interventionism for ethical reasons, which come directly out of the Catholic religious tradition.”

Good point, Mr. Daliessio. Catholics and conservative denominations like the Mennonites have much stronger principles in this regard than the evangelicals that dominate religious politics in the US and Canada. I grew up in an evangelical environment, being taught that Catholics and their ilk were stodgy and backward. Obviously, I’ve rejected a lot of what I was taught back then.

In former years Ludovicus Magister Magnus of Austria quoted Scipture; verily, in these latter days, his disciples seemingly quote his works *as* Scripture!

I think the article was accurate in describing the link between religion and state, in particular, in connection with socialism. I think it also important to recognize something that some people have come very close to, but not actually said, and what others who have flatly denied in their comments.

Economics, particularly its concepts of private property and how people will respond to various incentives, have some universality; this is evidenced very plainly in the failure of socialism due to the fact that its citizens had no strong incentive to work hard because they usually saw no direct benefit for themselves from their labors. Yet statements like these could also be applied to religions; most religious people all have things in common in terms morals. But religious differences arise when one delves deeper into each religion’s practices and theology. Likewise, once one advances deeper into the foibles of human action as related to means and ends, people will invariably act differently due to culture, religion, etc.

Thus, what needs to be affirmed is that the principles of either Austrian economics and/or libertarianism will only be accepted by people who have a moral system that recognizes these principles as just and good. I would like to think that Austrian economics, like I think with Christianity, is the best path. But I likewise do not think that it can forced on people.

True, it is different with economics as we can see real and tangible results from various economic systems versus others—we have no such luxury with religion, as we cannot keep a running tally of who is “saved” (or, if one is an atheist or on the fence, if they are saved at all). Still, the economic principles one may take as self-evident will not work for a people if their moral system does not parallel the economic arrangements that are implemented. Economics must be taught, not forced. Anything else would result in a “Clockwork Orange” scenario, where things would look reformed at first glance, but would be fundamentally a forced mechanical action instead of a human action.

On a related note, it would seem to be the best (though certainly not the only) way to “teach” economic principles is through their very action, that is, through free trade. By using its own principles in free trade, a people operating under an Austrian or libertarian system, would demonstrate their superiority (if they are in fact superior) and thus encourage others to push for the adoption of such a system in their own lands. This is merely a broader application of the evident, but rarely appreciated, idea that the best way to handle tyrants is a staunch protection of one’s own property and then the slow but sure poison of free trade with the tyrants’ own territories. This will slowly dissolve the tyrants’ power as individuals under the dictator begin to clamor for similar independence of their trade partners. If Austrian or libertarian ideals are indeed the best path, their successful practice, even by a limited group of people, would lead to their spread; forcing them on an uneducated populace will almost certainly fail in most, if not all, of its respects.

Brian — hear!! hear!! Libertarians by all means should “practice what they preach.” Good comment.