The Mediaeval Rise of Free-Market Universities

Life in mediaeval universities has been an abiding interest, and so it was serendipity itself that a recent column by The Telegraph’s Simon Heffer extolled the virtues of a BBC Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’. Its host is the Labour peer Melvin Bragg who, along with a guest panel each week, discusses a variety of that would normally be categorised as ‘high culture’; in Heffer’s words, ‘it informs, educates and entertains.’

I scrolled through the comprehensive list of available episodes — which may prove material for future postings — and found one from a month ago, ‘The Medieval University’.

It was a fascinating account about the rise and consolidation of universities in what is considered the High Middle Ages, from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries: how they arose out of nowhere from the demands of churchmen and statesmen for educated assistants, becoming intellectual centres in the study of theology, law, and medicine.

The system of university education was so successful that it remains a powerful force to this day in the arts and sciences. In this broad category we owe the notion of the artes liberales — the ‘liberal arts’ — disciplines pursued not as means to an ulterior goal (the ‘servile arts’ or artes serviles) but as ends in their own right.

In our day, the term ‘liberal’ has come to have many meanings, oftentimes diametrically opposed to each other. Contemporaneously it has become synonymous with activist government promoting social welfare policies, a far contrast with its popular usage originating in the Enlightenment to mean less State interference and more personal freedom.

Yet listening to Lord Bragg and his guests these same impulses can be attributed to the rise of mediaeval universities, which ought to come as no surprise to anyone aware of the Austrian School of Economics and its efforts — successful to my mind — to rehabilitate the liberal, market advances that were pioneered during the Middle Ages. ¹

The most noticeable free market characteristic of the rise of mediaeval universities is their ‘spontaneous order’ à la Friedrich von Hayek by ‘an invisible hand’ à la Adam Smith, without any originating central planning or oversight from either Church or State.

Universities in large urban centres, such as Paris, enjoyed an early advantage over smaller colleagues in less populated areas; as Adam Smith would describe in The Wealth of Nations:

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for (I.iii.1).²

Population size impacted the development and variety of business opportunities, with greater numbers influencing a greater selection of trades — one of which was education; at the university level, this meant that a greater number of students would seek a greater choice or ‘supply’ of subject-courses, necessitating the ‘demand’ for a greater diversity of teachers, and the die was cast in favour of innovation and specialisation.

Aspects of free trade were also in existence, as masters and students travelled from one university to another across the European continent and into the British Isles, searching for the ‘university product’ — whether it be salary, tuition costs, or programme of study, that met their needs — with Latin as the ‘gold standard’ of academic discourse. A standardised canon and licentiate also ensured that university graduates could offer their learning with credentials that were widely recognised and accepted.

Universities could not have arisen without the widespread use of money, as more primitive methods of exchange would have been unfeasible in this international enterprise. Private wealth itself was a contributing factor — although some Italian universities were financed by the towns in which they took root — as it was the bounty of the rich and their endowments that allowed the universities to take shape, and whose benevolence supported both their own offspring and the worthy poor. Voluntary charity and noblesse oblige, then, funded the great spread of universities in the high Middle Ages. This fact is borne out by the Oxbridge college system.

Competition, too, was the rule, not only within the university between masters and masters, students and students, and masters and students, but also between the universities themselves, in their rivalry to attract leading scholars and the best scholarship of the time so as to entice the best young students. Then, as now, a rising reputation translated into increased financial support and patronage.

Likewise, students were ‘sovereign consumers’ (in the terminology of Austrian economics), whose desire and demand for the teaching of specific subjects influenced the development of the curricula and the promotion or rejection of the teaching staff. What is taken to be a new marketing ploy of student-centred activities and outreach is rather very old indeed.

Throughout this free-market rise of universities, though, can be seen the ‘visible’ hand of ‘Tory’ interests; that is, the interventions of both Church and State in imposing order upon divergent, disparate action; the granting of charters and setting up the formal university structure, both in infrastructure and in the establishment of curricula and degrees: universitas is synonymous with the corporate guilds that help to define the Middle Ages.

‘Town-Gown’ conflicts and riots called forth the firm control the law. Unacceptable topics of scholastic debate, oftentimes in opposition to the powers that be, were suppressed by ecclesial and secular authorities.

In time, too, with the decline of organic Christendom and the development of the nation-state, universities grew less ‘free’ and more the instruments of national will, serving the interests of their local communities and of their royal patrons.

Factions also were to be found among the hallowed halls themselves; sometimes this was beneficial, as when a group of scholars decamped from the University of Oxford after such a dispute and took up residence in remote Cambridgeshire. Oftentimes the results were less inviting, as when academia became the instrument of stifling dissent. The trial of Joan of Arc, under partial supervision of faculty from the University of Paris, is one example. (In our own time, we can point to ‘political correctness’ and the pressures exerted against freedom of speech as trends against the animating spirit of the original universities.)

Here, too, is evidence of why universities slowly lost their predominance and influence in the later Middle Ages: an exhaustion with the curricula set in, aided in part by frustrations induced by the burgeoning internal bureaucracy and the demands of special ‘cloistered’ interests. Masters and students, unable to teach or to be taught as they pleased, escaped to cities where innovation was welcomed, authority less strict, and the new Humanism was taking hold of Renaissance minds.

Universities, of course, didn’t pass away, and their continuing relevance is witnessed by the liberal arts colleges that thrive in the United States. But their dominance has waned and been superseded in many respects by the ‘think-tank’ phenomenon and by private research organisations.

Yet universities may be the only significant institutions serving as repositories of Western civilisation, charged with the preservation and transmission of culture. While they may no longer assume the leading role in its creation, the university ideal of universality, of the artes liberales, is unique in to-day’s world of partisan and applied research.

Many may recoil from a free-market interpretation of universities, yet their mediaeval origins owe much to the free interplay of individuals and ideas implied by the free economy. By continued emphasis upon innovation and competition — by ensuring that they can be the best that they can be — can universities ensure their success for another millennium.


ENDNOTES

1. See, for instance,‘The Major Contributions of the Scholastics to Economics (Mises Daily, 3 December 2010)’ by Gerard N. Casey, ‘The School of Salamanca Saw This Coming (Mises Daily, 26 August 2009)’ by Jerzy Strzelecki, ‘The World of Salamanca (Mises Daily, 27 October 2009)’ by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., and volume 1 of Murray N. Rothbard’s history of economic thought, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, especially chapters 2-5 inclusive.

2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, eds. Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. Vol. 2a. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981.

‘Mediaeval Toryism’: Anglo-Canadian Conservatism and Its Mediaeval Sensibilities

A long time ago, when I entertained thoughts of pursuing a doctoral programme in political philosophy, my aim was to examine the roots of a species of British Toryism that were exemplified by Benjamin Disraeli and his Young England colleagues, and that were echoed, to a significant degree, by Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

Many of the tenets of this Toryism — known in some quarters, with more or less accuracy, as ‘One Nation Toryism’ or ‘wet’ Toryism or ‘progressive conservatism’ — owe their origins to a mediaeval sensibility of organic obligation and reciprocal responsibilities that grew up in the fertile soil of feudal society. To acknowledge this debt to the Middle Ages, I termed my particular approach ‘Mediaeval Toryism’.

One correspondent to whom I broached the viability of my thesis pointed out the anachronistic nature of my appellation: there being no ‘Tories’ cognisant of that description in that period. Upon reflexion, revisions were made and, given the particular ‘Victorian’ nature of the time frame I wished to explore, a working dichotomy was established between ‘Disraelian Toryism’ and ‘Peelite Conservatism’, the former taking its exemplars from the ‘communal’ Middle Ages, the latter from the ‘individualistic’ Enlightenment period. Over time, as my reading became more comprehensive and analytical, the Victorian backdrop became less prominent and a new nomenclature reflected that shift in emphasis: ‘Organic Toryism’.

My focus was on the tried-and-true, and revolved around the familiar themes of the individual, civil society, and the State — each with the aim of realising the Common Good. For me, the State was a far more amenable (and less odious) character in the triad. Catholic Social Teaching was an additional avenue to discover feudal impulses (along with their religious and ethical underpinning) in modern political thought and action.

In the new year I re-read Joseph Rickaby’s slim volume on mediaeval thought, Scholasticism, and my desire to limn conservatism’s antecedents was rekindled. I resolved to see if I could bring a fresh perspective to the reigning orthodoxy, or at least challenge the prevailing zeitgeist.

In many ways the political beliefs of Disraeli and Macdonald still influence my approach, but mediaeval philosophy comes more to the fore, whether in the form of individuation, or personalism, or natural law. Likewise, political economy has assumed a larger role in my thinking — thanks to the Austrian School of Economics — with what is called the market economy or ‘the free economy’ being no longer restricted to an Enlightenment foundation. Instead, many of the themes often credited to the study of economics originating with Adam Smith can trace their provenance at least to the Late Middle Ages (if not before), attaining their apogee in the scholastic economic treatises of the School of Salamanca.

The original Disraeli and Macdonald template also adheres with respect to politics proper, observable in the development of constitutionalism (as understood, for instance, in the CST principles of ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘solidarity’). The British North America Act, 1867 is a fine example of Anglo-Canadian conservatism at work. In contrast, the Enlightenment liberal (or libertarian) values which serve so well as opposites to this mediaeval mindset find their best expression in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, so an element of American political theory will also have a role to play.

While the State no longer assumes as prominent a part in my thesis — due to the influence of public choice economics or the theory of ‘government failure’ — it has come to resemble not the laisser-faire State of classical liberalism but what I consider the pis-aller State: intervening in affairs of personal independence only as a ‘last resort’.

Thus outlined, this is quite an all-encompassing topic, too broad to do it justice. As such, much narrowing of the field is necessary. My hope is to focus on specific questions and to write about them for The Organic Tory and, with luck, for publication in journals and periodicals, seeing what ideas will develop both during the writing process and in relation to public reaction.

Much of the research will overlap with this blog’s regular themes of organic Toryism, although it will have the dimension of a concerted effort to link aspects of Anglo-Canadian conservatism to a patrimony located in the Middle Ages. And so, to distinguish this added feature — with apologies to scholarly pendants! — essays in this bent will be labelled ‘Mediaeval Toryism’.

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Leaders’ Debate: Players Only Need Apply

As the first full week of the Canadian election campaign unfolds, one interesting controversy — apart from what constitutes ‘a coalition’ — concerns the yet-to-be finalised leaders’ debate. Already, though, we have been told by the media consortium that runs this staple of prime time info-tainment that Elizabeth May, leader of the Green party, will not be invited.

May’s exclusion has elicited the usual round of anguish from political commentators. Denunciations of this ‘travesty of justice’ and ‘slur to the democratic process’ abound. Not surprisingly, the Green’s leader has hired a lawyer to overturn the decision, saying ‘This is an unacceptable, outrageous, high-handed attempt to shut down democracy in this country.’ Yet, a few voices are willing to run counter to prevailing opinion, and offer a dissenting view.

David Akin, the National Bureau Chief for Sun Media, tweeted: ‘Excellent decision by the networks. The barrier to clear is simple: Get an MP; get in the debates.’ Whereas Andrew Potter, who writes for Maclean’s magazine, opines

I’m genuinely agnostic on the question of whether May should be there; I think there are defensible arguments to be made for both sides. But the question over whether to include her or not contains a tacit assumption, viz., that the leaders’ debates—as currently run—are themselves worthy democratic exercises. I think they are not.

Allow me to join them with a few thoughts of my own.

First: The problem lies in nomenclature: the leaders’ debates. In fact, what is really at issue in this forum is the character of the party — and, perhaps as important, the party leader — that will form the next Government of Canada.

Second: From this perspective, then, only those leaders who have a reasonable chance of forming the next government ought to be seated at the debate table. (As events currently stand, while both main leaders have made all the necessary, pro forma statements protesting their willingness for an open debate forum, Michael Ignatieff has signalled his willingness to debate Stephen Harper one-on-one, a challenge which the Prime Minister has taken up.)

Third: The only exception to this guideline, given the nature of our Westminster parliamentary democracy and the likelihood of minority governments — where no one party receives the majority of seats in the House of Commons — is to also invite the leaders of parties who may have a hand in deciding which party forms the next government; participating, perhaps, in a reduced capacity. (I confess this last point admits of great variation.)

Under this framework, it is easy to see why both the Conservative party and the Liberal party are, as a matter of course, invited to the leaders’ debate. History has shown that either one or the other becomes prime minister. It is also clear, from past experience, why the leaders of the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois are asked to join the forum. But it is not clear why the leader of the Green party should also have a voice, given the above criterion: that of forming, or of influencing the formation of, the next federal ministry.

Based solely on past election returns, Green MPs in the House are unlikely to have a say in who will become the next prime minister. Indeed, the party does not currently have any seats in Parliament. Were they to break this record of underachievement and elect a significant number of members, and if no party received a majority of seats in the House so that negotiations would have to be undertaken — either in a formal coalition or by way of agreement to throw support behind a party that would enjoy the confidence of the House — then at that time would the Greens have an active role. But not before.

The alternative is to permit anyone who leads a recognised political party (by Elections Canada registration standards) to enter the fray, or to devise arbitrary figures encompassing number of sitting MPs and vote percentages from the last election. What would result — as has been witnessed from previous encounters where the doors were thrown open — is an amorphous free-for-all with minor players competing for attention while major players (especially those unwilling to risk favourable polling numbers) wait to run down the clock.

For any debate format to be effective the two main contenders for office must be allowed an opportunity to criticise each other’s record and campaign platform and to defend their own. This is why the John Turner-Brian Mulroney debates of 1984 and 1988 were so decisive and memorable. Anything else is a distraction.

The problem at present partly involves the confusion that arises when there are no hard-and-fast guidelines in determining the representation at these leaders’ debates (made more obscure by the profusion of parties). Such rules that exist obviously don’t garner widespread respect. Instead, too much time is being expended arguing about the minutiae of party standings, vote percentages, public outpourings of umbrage and indignation, &c. — much of it with ulterior motives, either by partisan political jockeying or by media requirements to fill air time and newspaper columns. We are encouraged not to see the forest for the trees.

Were we to focus, rather, on the true purpose of the leaders’ debates — Who will be Her Majesty’s first minister for the Dominion of Canada? — then the miasma of electoral obfuscation would dissipate. Invite only those leaders who will either directly command or indirectly mould the confidence of the 41st Parliament of Canada, and let all others engage from the periphery, much as they would in the House itself.

The Conflicting Legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald

To-day, 11th January, conservatives in Canada celebrate the birthday of Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815): principal author of the British North America Act, first Dominion prime minister, and enduring role model of Anglo-Canadian Toryism.

Yet while the general outlines of Macdonald’s legacy is clear, specific beliefs are less certain in the popular mind, particularly when it comes to charting a contemporary course. Thus he has been made the exemplar for every ideological and mutually exclusive position. Poor Sir John A! If he could find his way to a bar—or a bottle—in his present capacity, surely no angelic observer (I refuse to countenance the alternative!) would begrudge him.

With the merger of the Reform-Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties in 2003, the dominance of the former has resulted in a Macdonald who is portrayed as a proponent of ‘provincial rights’ on the American states’ rights model and of an elected Senate, just to name two offences of the right.

On the left, too, Macdonald has been claimed as the guiding spirit of active government and the social and economic interventions of the welfare state.

Macdonald, his advocates notwithstanding, was by no means a supporter of greater provincial autonomy; every school child knows (or should!) that a unitary government was his first choice for Canada—indeed, his hope was that the provinces would shrink to little more than municipal entities, with the Dominion government eventually assuming the preponderance of authority. Sir George-Étienne Cartier and French delegates at the Quebec conference were instrumental in convincing him that without local guarantees of French religious, language, and cultural rights, there would be no Confederation.

Likewise, while Macdonald may have harboured early favour for an elected upper chamber, the experiences of the united Province of Canada in the 1850s soon soured his sympathies. As his colleague and biographer Joseph Pope remarked in his Memoirs of Macdonald,

It is true that, at an early period of his career, he favoured an elective Upper House, but eight years’ experience of this system was sufficient to change his views, and to convert him into a firm upholder of the nominative principle. Every year since Confederation strengthened the conviction of his matured judgment, and showed him more and more clearly the advantages of the nominative over the elective system. To his mind the chief among the objections to a Senate chosen by the popular vote, was the ever-present danger of its members claiming the right to deal with money Bills, and the consequent possibility of disputes with the House of Commons. The proposal that the provincial legislatures, whose members are elected for purely local purposes, should choose the senators to legislate on matters of general concern, was also objectionable, being opposed to the spirit of the constitution, which confined the local assemblies to a strictly limited sphere of action. He held that the system unanimously agreed to at the Quebec Conference had worked well, and should be undisturbed. A senatorship, in his opinion, was an important and dignified office, and a worthy object of ambition to any Canadian. [1]

The left is guilty of a similar story of dissimulation. The Liberal-Conservative party which Macdonald led in its formative years of existence and in the House of Commons as premier was not the social democratic party that is often betrayed by the sobriquet Red Tory. It was a merger of moderate Liberals and moderate Conservatives who were not, respectively, either Grits or ultra Tories. And, although Macdonald did speak of himself as a progressive conservative, he spoke much as did Sir Robert Peel in his famous Tamworth Manifesto:

...if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies a careful review of institutions [...] undertaken in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances,—in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

Indeed, the Liberal-Conservative label did not denote Progressive Conservatism per se, as contemporaneously understood, but simply the merger of like-minded Liberals and Conservatives. Think rather of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, or the Cunard-White Star line.

As such, the Liberal-Conservative party may best be considered a mix between Liberals of the ‘night-watchman state’ with the latter appropriating pis aller responsibilities—i.e., in addition to law and order oversight, welfare prerogatives as a last resort, when individual and voluntary associations are overwhelmed—and Tories who still have faith in the ability of the State to foster the Common Good: the ‘National Policy’ and the Canadian Pacific Railway were nation-building exercises undertaken in co-operation between government and the business community.

‘Free Trade’, then, was a fine principle in the abstract, and no doubt true, but the young Dominion—with fledgling business interests, her trade competing with powerful countries with varying degrees of protection and with strong robust industries of their own—was at a distinct disadvantage. Moreover, Macdonald had a nation to build on the North American continent, its very existence an irritant to the American behemoth to the south, whose siren call of wealth and opportunity was siphoning off Canada’s youth and future promise.

And so, in the economic depression of the mid-1870s that struck during the Reform ministry of Alexander Mackenzie, Macdonald raised a motion in the House of Commons:

...the welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy, which, by a judicious readjustment of the Tariff, will benefit and foster the Agricultural, the Mining, the Manufacturing and other interests of the Dominion; that such a policy will retain in Canada thousands of our fellow countrymen now obliged to expatriate themselves in search of the employment denied them at home, will restore prosperity to our struggling industries, now so sadly depressed, will prevent Canada from being made a sacrifice market, will encourage and develop an active interprovincial trade, and moving (as it ought to do) in the direction of a reciprocity of Tariffs with our neighbours, so far as the varied interests of Canada may demand, will greatly tend to procure for this country, eventually, a reciprocity of Trade (12 March 1878). [2]

If not exactly free trade, nor is it an unflinching nationalist programme: Macdonald would accept economic liberalisation, but only with reciprocal responsibilities. Free market adherents may deride Sir John’s protectionist programme, but its ‘open borders’ under-current can give no comfort to economic autarkists. [3]

Furthermore, if Macdonald wanted to campaign under the banner of social democracy, the works of Marx and Engels and their brethren were undoubtedly at his disposal, as were the theories of Rousseau’s collectivised general will. That he did not do so is an indication that he was first a believer in the free economy, if not necessarily a capitalism left to furrow the field unaided or unscrutinised.

Sir John’s legacy, then, provides challenges for his twenty-first century admirers. While a few of his ideas have fallen into disfavour and desuetude—such as the withering away of the provinces—many more remain resilient and key to Canada’s continuing prosperity. Strong central government with ‘holistic’ oversight over the country; the complementary, symbiotic roles of Ottawa’s upper and lower parliamentary chambers; accommodating and respecting the cultures of the founding peoples, while welcoming all immigrants who aspire to adopt the Canadian identity as their own; fealty to the monarchical principle and to the Commonwealth of shared history and traditions—all this, and more, we owe to Macdonald.

So long as the Dominion endures, Macdonald will live on. A supporter once cheered in a crowd, ‘Sir John A., you’ll never die!’ We echo those sentiments on his birthday.

For more on Macdonald and his legacy, see the Centre for Confederation Politics.

ENDNOTES

1. Joseph Pope, Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Volume II (Ottawa: J. Durie & Son, 1894), 235 (emphasis added). Nor is this view of upper chambers in the Westminster parliamentary system antiquated; see the Parliamentary Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber and the excellent essay by Lord Norton of Louth, ‘Complementing the Commons’.

2. Quoted in Pope, Memoirs, 200.

3. Any serious student of contemporary Toryism—with its economic roots firmly planted in the soil of protectionism—must reconcile his beliefs with the free market critique of state intervention and its consequences. See Ludwig von Mises’s Planning for Freedom (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008)—its eponymous first essay plus ‘Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism’.

Safeguarding the Liberal-Tory Consensus

Whitehall’s renewed interest in once-mighty British think tanks is the focus of a column in a recent edition of The Economist. In these uncertain times, when politicians seek to avert financial meltdown and the risks of sovereign debt, what are the implications for One Nation Toryism?

After years of creeping irrelevance and funding difficulty, political, economic, and social organisations devoted to policy formation/programme implementation once again have the attentive ear of Government. The change in Ministries following the general election may account for this resurgence; more relevant still is the economic crisis in which the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government finds itself, as ‘the most ambitious think-tanks believe the crisis could lead to a fundamental rethink of the way government is run.’ Equally important, newly sworn-in servants of the Crown are eager to buttress the substance of party manifestos, motivated in no small part to reconciling ‘the competing philosophies of the Tories and the Lib Dems.’

The report highlights the work of several groups in particular: the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies, and ResPublica. I can attest to the scholarship of all, having personally benefited from their numerous publications and from communication with staff members.

Besides reviewing some of the policy recommendations these think tanks will be presenting the new government, the Economist article includes a provocative sentiment from the Director General of IEA, Mark Littlewood, who

thinks the government should have started with a blank sheet of paper, worked out what the state should do and eliminated unneeded programmes entirely.

Framed thus, this is an axiomatic viewpoint: its contrary is rendered meaningless, since it advocates the State to undertake what it should not undertake.

The problem, of course, lies in deciding just what legitimate activities lie within the State’s purview. From one end of the spectrum, the libertarian position best described as anarcho-capitalism or market anarchy, the answer is short: individuals within reciprocating society are paramount, and there should be no State at all. [1] From the other end, of full-blown social democracy that morphs into socialism (whether openly articulated as such or hidden euphemistically), the answer is equally concise: there are relatively few areas of public interaction into which the State should not intervene. The coalition government has ambitions to resolve this dilemma, according to The Economist, and is intent on ‘an attempt to break away from the idea that political action is a simple choice between big government and isolated individuals.’

Let me set these two extremes aside for present purposes, and focus on what may be assumed to be Littlewood’s aim, that of promoting the liberal tradition—given the IEA’s mission ‘to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems’—which, I believe, is closely allied with organic Toryism, so as to form what can be called the Liberal-Tory consensus.

Thus, herein lies the first quandary: What programmes should the State legitimately perform?

The classical liberal position confines itself to maintaining law and order (comprising domestic security and contractual obligations) and defence from foreign threats. Yet, within the contemporary Anglo-Canadian tradition as practised, this list has come to include such provisions as education, healthcare, and basic welfare (encompassing national insurance/old age pensions and unemployment benefits—the social security net). Liberals may differ as to whether the State should provide these as either standard prescriptive entitlements (contingent, but not absolute) or as measures of last resort, preferring individuals to exercise responsibility where at all possible (while making basic services available to those in obvious need). Regardless, this liberal practice is very far from the night-watchman minimalism of its classical liberal forebear.

Simon Heffer is an example of the standard-entitlement liberal; in a recent Telegraph column, he wrote:

The state’s functions, in a compassionate and ordered society, can be confined to relatively few things. It should protect the public with a police force and armed services. It should provide education and health care, while perhaps finding ways to incentivise people to use non-state provision wherever possible. It should give the support that the elderly and the disabled require to live with dignity. It should see that public hygiene and essential infrastructure are maintained; and that’s about it. This requires a revolution in our way of viewing the state’s relationship with us.

As for the last-resort liberal, Philip Booth, IEA’s Programme Director, stated in a recent BBC Analysis programme, ‘Time to Get Real’ (broadcast 12th July and available on-line until January 2099!):

The State must defend itself, protect private property, and so on—what was often called the night-watchman State, the sort of thing that the State did in the nineteenth century. But there are other things which in a democratic society the majority of people believe ought to be in some way financed by the State. And so health, education—make some basic safety net welfare provision—and so on. But what the State should be doing in providing those things is assisting people to obtain education, healthcare, &c and not designing bureaucratic mechanisms which are inflexible and which they impose upon the population. (Professor Booth articulates the ‘last resort’ aspect particularly with respect to pension provision, further along in this broadcast.)

What intrigues the organic Tory is how closely this variant of liberalism hews to One Nation Toryism; perhaps the most important distinguishing feature consists of determining the absolute/prescriptive quality of entitlements. Unlike market anarchists who view the State only as a coercive entity, organic Tories conceive it as a means of realising communal ends that can only be met by the united efforts of all, over an indefinite period of time—through the obligatory State.

This school of conservatism may adopt some goods that liberalism forswears to the private sphere—e.g., museums and galleries and other cultural organisations that the Tory believes the State should support as part of a civic, patriotic entitlement. Nevertheless, it can be argued that contemporary liberalism and One Nation Toryism exemplify what Aristotle called ‘the golden mean’, the former presenting a variant of deficiency, the latter of excess, but both clustered around ‘the right course’.

And so we return to Littlewood’s ‘blank piece of paper’ and the thesis that Liberalism and Toryism have more or less shared ideas about what constitutes legitimate State activity. The next hurdle concerns funding.

According to the Rahn Curve—a measure of optimal government spending, in relation to Gross Domestic Product, for economic prosperity [2]—20 per cent approximates the ideal level of government involvement in the economy. Positive outcomes begin to decline (and disincentives to personal initiative rise) past this level. It is hoped that the State where the Liberal-Tory consensus thrives straddles this percentage.

Taxation rates must be set to meet these obligations, ceteris paribus, in a balanced budget framework; that is, government revenue should be sufficient to pay for government expenditure. Unfortunately, most countries have deficits and debts that make this equilibrium impossible.

Within the Liberal-Tory consensus, two alternatives are available—one minor, one draconian:

1. Governments may raise taxes beyond what is necessary to support the Rahn ideal, with the excess revenue devoted to reducing deficits to zero and then to attacking the debt. However, according to the Laffer Curve—a measure of optimal government taxation, in relation to GDP, for economic prosperity [3]—if taxes are raised too high (especially on investors and entrepreneurs), the initiative of private enterprise will be compromised, with resultant lower taxes than expected.
   
   
2. Another possibility is to compromise the Liberal-Tory consensus; One Nation Tory programmes will be sacrificed in the short term, and last-resort liberalism will be more prominent than the standard-entitlement variant. It is possible to conceive of even more stringent measures of a minarchist or libertarian character (i.e., the night-watchman model), but given the popularity of current entitlement programmes, it is doubtful that the public would tolerate such strict austerity measures except in the most dire economic conditions imaginable. In Canada, however, slaying the deficit and a return to balanced budgets and surpluses, achieved by the Liberal government in the mid-1990s, was accomplished by just such a public consensus.
   
   I call this the ‘Franklin Effect’, after the ill-fated attempt by Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition to return to civilisation after his crew abandoned their ships to impassable ice floes: minor concessions are taken initially in pursuit of one’s goal—in the case of Franklin’s men, leaving the comfort of the ships and carrying the accoutrement of society (such as books and silver tea sets) in their trek southward —but, confronted with mounting obstacles that hinder progress, more stringent measures become necessary (later adventurers discovered a trail of ‘household debris’ in the frozen tundra as Franklin’s men despaired of their condition and jettisoned more personal belongings in a vain attempt to lighten their loads and reach safety). [4]

So much for a theoretical examination of determining what functions of civil society belong to the purview of the State and of addressing how to pay for them. The key measure of success of such a governing framework—as in most things in life—is achieving it in reality.

Herein, then, lies the second quandary: How does the State finance its chosen programmes?

Given the nature of the deficits and debts in most Western countries, and the growing burdens placed upon them by their largely unfunded, ever expanding, entitlement programmes—particularly healthcare and social security requirements—the prospects appear grim.

Britain has taken the leading role (at least cosmetically) in prescribing austerity measures and implementing a series of retrenchments that will doubtless be studied by similarly indebted countries. Yet far from being sanguine of long-term results, the record of effectively curbing the appetite of the welfare State isn’t encouraging. Eamonn Butler, Director of ASI, was disappointed that the recent UK Budget ‘looked like salami-slicing, but that is not a sustainable way to cut spending.’

Will the twenty-first century echo the seventeenth’s penchant for radically recasting the role of the State? With socio-political norms having coalesced in the mid-twentieth century, will looming economic catastrophe in the new millennium end politics as we’ve known it?

And what of the Liberal-Tory consensus? How will the organic values of One Nation Toryism withstand the financial pressures to further restrain the obligatory State—if a minimum level of basic entitlements cannot be sustained? For however much the organic Tory stares at his own blank sheet of paper, he cannot change the laws of economics. Ultimately, they will shape the contours of the obligatory State. But he can act now to safeguard more of its contribution to the Common Good rather than less, and ensure better odds for One Nation Tory values to flourish again in the future.


ENDNOTES
1. See, for instance, Murray Rothbard’s ‘Society without a State’, Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s ‘Reflections on the Origin and the Stability of the State’, and the short monograph by Robert Murphy, Chaos Theory. [back]

2. For more information on the Rahn Curve, see Daniel Mitchell’s Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video, plus his chapter in A Beginner’s Guide to Liberty (ASI, 2009), ‘Taxation and government spending’. [back]

3. For more information on the Laffer Curve, see Daniel Mitchell’s CF & P Foundation videos I, II, and III, plus his aforementioned chapter in A Beginner’s Guide to Liberty. Also see Thomas Woods, Jr’s entry in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. [back]

4. In Man and the State, Jacques Maritain wrote that while at the beginning of the modern age many reformers envisioned various welfare measures for the Common Good—for instance universal education—these plans could not be put into practice until the market economy advanced to the point where a portion of its bounty could be channelled to these public endeavours. In the Franklin Effect scenario sketched above, it may be necessary to scale back public policy advances on the same principle—that current economic conditions can no longer justify their expenditure. [back]