At its heart, liberty means renouncing the use of coercion against others. That is why those who would employ coercion against others must invent arguments to defend their actions as consistent with liberty. That is also why slavery — the opposite of liberty — is a useful touchstone in evaluating defenses that coercion is consistent with liberty, when it always increases the enslavement of someone.
One of those most adept at using slavery to test supposed justifications for coercive policies was F.A. Harper. He recognized that ‘Strange is a concept of ‘liberty’ [where]…you enjoy the right to be forced to bow to the dictates of others.’ He rebutted arguments for why obvious violations of people’s liberty — as with innumerable government price controls, regulatory restrictions and tax impositions — do not ‘really’ take it away, by showing that they were consistent with slavery. Mere rhetorical tap-dancing cannot demonstrate that liberty is maintained by government acts or approaches that are consistent with slavery.
Harper’s use of this approach was particularly pronounced in Liberty: A Path for its Recovery. There he used them to clarify Abraham Lincoln statement that ‘We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different but incompatible things.’
Consider some common ‘liberty is not really lost’ defenses that are offered and Harper’s responses.
- Our liberty is maintained because the federal government can only do what advances the general welfare.
- Our right to petition the government for redress of our grievances guarantees that liberty is maintained.
- Though our power to vote, infringements on our liberty are prevented.
- Government does not violate our liberty because it just provides goods and services people want.
- Liberty is maintained because there is nothing like slavery in America today.
- Our voluntary tax system demonstrates that our tax burdens are consistent with liberty.
- The size of the tax burden is not so large as to infringe on liberty.
Suppose that the master pleads innocence of slaveholding on the ground that he is spending the slave’s earnings for what he considers to be the slave’s own welfare. Would that change the degree of liberty of the slave? Is liberty to defined in such a way as to allow me to take from you the product of your labor, so long as I claim that I shall use it for your welfare, or for the ‘general welfare’? Should the robbing of banks be allowable under liberty, provided the bank robbers promise to put the proceeds of the robbery to some use they claim to be worthy, or even to some use that a majority of the people have judged to be worthy?
Being able to review a decision or to request its review…does not assure that liberty will be protected. Reinstatement of lost liberty can be requested and refused time and time again, without end. A slave, similarly, might ask his master for his freedom time and again; he is not considered to be free by reason of the fact that his is allowed to ask for liberty.
[L]iberty is…the right of a person to have control over his own affairs…the expansion of governmental activities…[requires that] Minorities become the slaves of the others … Participation in these steps that make it possible for someone to rule others does not ensure liberty. It is fantastic nonsense to assert that the democratic process will assure liberty to the individuals of any nation…it would be more accurate to say that it is a most certain path to slavery.
[C]hanging of top personnel in the government, or ‘reform governments,’ [is not] any answer to the basic problem. The gaining of better administration of an evil in the form of unwarranted power is a victory without virtue. The most efficient and best possible administration of slavery will not transform it into liberty.
The excess that the government takes is no longer available for the citizen to spend as he wishes, as required under liberty. It may be said that the people want these services and would buy them anyhow if they were performed by private business instead of by government. But the slave who is given some turnips by his master cannot be called free economically because of the fact that he might have wanted to buy some turnips with some of his wages as a free man, had he been free. The citizen, likewise, is not judged to be free because of the fact that he might have bought, in a free market, services similar to those offered by the governmental monopoly where users and non-users alike are forced to pay the costs in their tax bills.
In the same sense that the welfare state grants benefits, the slave-master grants to his slaves certain allotments of food and other economic goods. In fact, slavery might be described as just another form of welfare state, because of its likeness in restrictions and ‘benefits.’
Partial liberty under slavery is well illustrated…masters granted their serfs two days out of the week to work for themselves. They had that degree of economic liberty…The test of economic liberty…[is] the right to the product of one’s own labor. One who is deprived of these rights is a slave. To whatever extent he is deprived of these rights, he is to that extent a slave.
[A] temporary grant of freedom by the welfare state…[is like] when a master allows his slave a day off from work to spend as he likes…the person who is permitted some freedom by the welfare state is still a vassal of that state just as a slave is still a slave on his day off from work.
Slavery cannot be transformed into no slavery by having a group of owners combine to do the same thing…even when it is government that does the taking…
[T]he slavery of person to person…has been judged to violate the rights of persons to be free. But there is rapidly arising a form of slavery even more dangerous and deadly … The superstition prevails that if the government takes from unwilling people the product of their labor to pay for governmental costs of which they disapprove, it becomes a commendable act unlike that of the master taking from his slave…as though… robbery becomes a commendable act if a large enough number of people approve of it…the government is…engaging more and more in the enslavement of the citizens. If this process had involved the complete enslavement of certain persons, it would be more noticeable and we would then be able to see it in its true light.
The mere fact of taxes having been paid is no test of basic willingness; it is no evidence that a form of slavery does not exist…that a slave works in his master’s field, similarly, is no evidence that slavery is not involved. The giving of one’s wallet to the hold-up robber is no evidence that the robbery did not take place… there is an overhanging threat which causes the seemingly peaceful submission; the unfortunate victim is allowed no alternative consistent with liberty.
Acquiescence of the citizens to that part of their taxes in excess of what is necessary to preserve liberty is no evidence that liberty has not been lost thereby. Loss of liberty is not to be measured by the extent of refusal to pay taxes any more than slavery is to be measured by the degree of rebellion of the slaves. Slaves are none the less slaves because they are not always attached to their masters by a chain!
The administrative costs…of control operated by the government greatly understates the total loss of liberty which it entails…Iike that of a slaveholder who may spend no more than the equivalent of one-tenth of what the slave produces as the cost of hiring an overseer to hold the slaves under the yoke of complete slavery; it is not necessary to spend all that the slave produces as the cost of depriving him of his liberty.
F.A. Harper’s powerful use of slavery to test liberty claims gives new life to Patrick Henry’s famous 1775 declaration: ‘Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!’
He reminds us of the fact ‘[T]hat some other person or persons will decide what you shall do, and force you to do it…[is] a definition of slavery rather than of liberty,’ and demonstrates that ‘The belief of the master that his judgment is superior to that of the slave or vassal, and that control is ‘for his own good,’ is not a moral justification for the idea of the welfare state.’ He showed how inadequate supposed proofs that the modern coercive state has not destroyed liberty are by bringing us back to the fact that ‘Liberty…specifies the right to do what [one] desires, rather than the obligation to bow to the force of others in doing what they desire him to do; otherwise slavery becomes ‘liberty, and true liberty is lost.’
Harper saw how confusion about liberty, constantly bent, spindled and manipulated by the misleading assertions of those who wish to justify their coercion of others, was a dangerous threat to maintaining it. And he knew how high the stakes were—that ‘[I]t is, in fact, a main purpose of liberty that the blind are free to follow those who can see. The danger is that in the absence of liberty the blind may become authorized to lead those who can see—by a chain around their necks!’ If we are to stop or reverse the continuing erosion of our liberty, we need to see that as clearly as he did, so that we can better defend the truth about liberty, allowing other open-minded individuals to also discover it, despite persistent attempts to cloud the most essential issues.
{ 8 comments }
Great post!
great great post. so true. i’m so tired of people thinking that just because life is still pretty good for most americans that infringements upon our rights are okay as long as a majority of the citizenry can be convinced of the expediency of the matter. a slave who leads a comfortable life is still a slave and nobody seems to realize that anymore. great post, wish more people were reading this and would take it to heart.
Are you kidding me? This post shows the lameness of anarcho-Capitalist claptrap. “I’m a slave!” Sure!
I posted a few times that I find it hard to see what qualifies as a slave in a meaningful sense. “I’m a tax slave” for the Libertarian is being a drama queen as “I’m a wage slave” by the Marxist. The only qualifier between slavery and non-slavery that I can possibly think of is that one is prevented from leaving the presumed ‘master’. Governments don’t qualify as monopolies since there are many governments around the world. Or to say governments have monopolistic force over their property is bunk as private landowners would have monopolistic force over their land if people were allowed to own land privately.
TWLP Sam, I repeat, why do you come here? Is it to troll? You’re no Austrian, that is for sure. I’ve dealt with your ridiculous claims time and time again, yet you repeat them. Governments are a TERRITORIAL monopoly of force, which encompasses lands they do not own. They prohibit their subject-citizens from seeking justice (without the State as final arbiter) over property they, and not the government, own. The claptrap is all yours.
To make the logic even more plainly visible than it already is, taxation is retroactive slavery precisely because it deprives you of the fruits of your labour, that you had to work for. What gives government the right to do this? It has no legitimate property claim other than myths such as the “social contract”. Trying to insist that private landownership is the same while neglecting all the differentiating essentials is pure state-socialist deception.
Maybe my gripe is I can’t see the difference at the hardcore level between private landownership over government landowership. I use invariably use the term ‘landowner’ over ‘landholder’ because technically the government’s the landowner but people lease the land and therefore are ‘landholders’ (but you knew this already). I mean seriously if government land ownership was disbanded and people clamoured for the bits and pieces they get the full ownership of the land whereby they get to make their own rules, called themselves a sovereign ruler and collect rent if they lease it out to anyone who didn’t have any land (which is to say the good lands of course). Yet the same ol’ rules would apply as with government. The landowner makes the rules, the land tenants have to abide by them or keep on moving. Interestingly if the land tenants don’t pay the landowner gets to eject the non-paying tenants. And if, heaven forbid, there are more potential tenants than openings for tenants then landowners had lotsa bargaining leverage. So life would come full circle wouldn’t it? Maybe competition could make things better but then again it’d probably be much the same. The main difference would be as least this time it called ‘private rent’ versus ‘taxes’. Maybe I’ll quit if someone here admits it’s about all about ‘private power’ versus ‘public power’.
P.S. Why? I don’t know. I don’t add my two cents here as often as I used to, do I? I think I’ve seen the same ol’ blog issues crop up again and again that I don’t feel like adding much any more anyway. It’s just a few issues now and then that still compel me to add a few more cents. But yes I’m think I too am getting to where my new two cents are pretty much the same as the old two cents. Maybe I’ll just be a spectator and watch Mike Sproul duke it out!
P.P.S. I don’t rememer arguing over a hippie social contract. If I went for a type of social contract it’d be this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract#Thomas_Hobbes.27s_Leviathan_.281651.29
P.P.P.S. Well: Australian – al = Austrian }>:P
But you’re missing the point. Left-libertarians may have a more “rich” idea as to what libertarianism should involve in order to work well, but at the base of it libertarianism concerns justice, and the fact that the state never appropriated any of its holdings legitimately is a major strike against it. Even if one were to grant the scenario you paint above, none of the landlords involved would be presuming to act as arbiters over land that was not theirs. Rules will exist under anarchism of any sort, with the difference that market anarchism (incl. anarcho-capitalism and mutualism) is more devolved than leftist forms of it, and certainly more so than any state. Claptrap it is not.
I’m simply curious what interests you in this site – are you an Austrian or libertarian of the moderate sort, or what? It’s a simple question, and if you’re not just say it, I won’t take issue.
“Maybe I’ll quit if someone here admits it’s about all about ‘private power’ versus ‘public power’.”
Not that I want you or anyone to quit.The above quote is quite good.Austrians believe there is an important difference between public and private power.
The owner of private property is at the mercy of the market.He cannot compel anyone.Further, competition from other owners keeps him from setting arbitrary rules, charging arbitrary prices.
He is at the mercy of, and is the servant of, his customers or tenants or employees.They are all free to choose.
An example from practical experience- Prussian farm workers leaving for better paying factory jobs in the 1800s.(the landowners lobbied for laws that would have forced them to stay where they were-unsuccessfully.)
The rules are not the same at all.They are different,
the rent on privately owned land cannot be compared to the taxes one pays to remain on public property, the latter is not subject to any market forces, merely bureaucratic whim and coercion.
“And if, heaven forbid, there are more potential tenants than openings for tenants then landowners had lotsa bargaining leverage.”
Um, there are always more potential tenants or customers than there are available supplies of anything. The desire for goods is infinite.Prices serve to provide a signal to develop more resources
thus increasing the supply, we will just as often see
customers in the drivers seat.
Publicly owned resources do not respond in this way. I could go on. But its time for Popeye.
TWLP Sam: “I can’t see the difference at the hardcore level between private landownership over government landowership.”
Not sure what you mean about the “hardcore level”, but surely you acknowledge the difference in results, especially in the rampant rent-seeking and political battles over valuable assets.
TT
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