Liberalism is More Than Libertarianism with Exceptions

A Rejoinder to Chris Freiman

On his Substack, Chris Freiman argues that libertarianism is “liberalism without exceptions.” Basically, liberals (in the European meaning of the word) and libertarians agree that the state ought to prioritize a range of civil liberties (freedom of association, freedom of speech, …) but disagree with respect to the status of property. He makes two interesting and related points. First, the very justification of property rights is of the same nature as the justification of other “jurisdictional rights,” i.e., they are necessary to pursue one’s way of life and guarantee one’s autonomy. Second, while liberals are prone to find reasons to limit property rights, these reasons prima facie also apply to other rights and could in principle justify their restrictions. However, liberals typically do not take this road, which makes their views inconsistent. Indeed, Freiman identifies a dilemma for non-libertarian-liberals: “either consistently limit other liberal rights and avoid libertarianism or reject the relevant limits on property rights and embrace libertarianism.”

Freiman identifies three reasons that liberals are used to invoking to justify restrictions of property rights but that could also apply to other jurisdictional rights:

(i)             Limitations of property rights are needed for redistribution to prevent bad outcomes for the poorest.

(ii)            Individuals can be autonomous and live according to their conceptions of the good life without too expansive property rights.

(iii)          Unrestricted property rights would create political inequalities.

At first sight, this is a convincing argument. It is hard to deny that unrestricted jurisdictional rights, minus property rights, can lead to bad outcomes disproportionally affecting the poorest, or create political inequalities. The problem, however, is that I don’t think it is appropriate to characterize liberalism as a doctrine defending unrestricted jurisdictional rights except for property rights. Indeed, I think that liberals of all stripes are also willing to restrict other jurisdictional rights such as freedom of speech or religious freedom when circumstances call for it. Liberals rather argue that we have a prima facie reason to recognize these rights and that any restriction or limitation of their scope should be duly justified by appropriate reason. This applies not only to property rights but to all forms of rights constitutive of the individual’s private sphere. This does not refute however Freiman’s more general point that libertarianism is an exceptionless form of liberalism. Quite the contrary actually, it seems to reinforce the view that libertarianism is the only genuine form of liberalism.

As far as I can tell, Freiman’s view is indeed very common among libertarians who generally consider libertarianism as the true heir of 19^th-century classical liberalism. As Alan Kahan convincingly argues in his recent incomplete history of liberalism (reviewed here),[1] liberalism finds its roots in the political struggle against various kinds of fears over the last three centuries. Liberalism first emerged as a reaction to despotism and religious fanaticism in the 17^th century. It was consolidated further when the fear of revolution and reaction started to grow, especially in Europe. Liberals’ search for constitutional principles and designs holding political power in check is part of the reaction to the threat of revolution and despotism. What I’ve called jurisdictional rights have come to be viewed at the time as a necessary part of a constitutional order that harnesses political power, and in particular, the state, to offer guarantees that individuals will remain free from tyranny, either of a despot or the conformism of the majority. Indeed, jurisdictional rights are nothing but what Constant called the “liberty of the moderns” that he correctly identified as constitutive of the then-emerging liberal democracies.    

Kahan identifies however a point of departure in the history of liberalism at the end of the “short 19^th century.” A new kind of fear, the “fear of poverty,” made its appearance, and liberals reacted in different ways to it. This is at this time, according to Kahan, that what is called “classical liberalism” started to become a liberal strand distinct from the kind of “progressive liberalism” that will largely inspire the 20^th-century welfare state. Classical liberals, contrary to progressive liberals, tended to downplay the social and philosophical importance of poverty, not seeing it as a major issue to be addressed.

This history may seem to confirm Freiman’s view that libertarianism is the child of classical liberalism, while the rest of liberalism is really nothing but a continuation of progressive liberalism. Because they don’t consider poverty as a major problem that justifies restricting jurisdictional rights, especially property rights, classical liberals and libertarians are “exceptionless liberals.” The problem with this interpretation, however, is that it is oblivious to a key feature of Kahan’s history, namely that previous fears and the way they are tackled don’t disappear from the picture when a new fear emerges. Liberalism, whether progressive or classical, remains a political doctrine that is motivated by the fear of despotism and revolution.

This leads to what constitutes, in my view, the key difference between libertarianism and liberalism regarding its attitudes toward politics and the political. The former, as I’ve already argued here, intends to do without politics. Libertarians assume that jurisdictional rights, especially property rights, can be a substitute for politics. The underlying postulate is that political power can be reduced to consent-based and contractual relations. Coercion would only be needed and justified to enforce contractual agreements but – at least in a genuinely libertarian society – the relationship between contractors and the enforcing agents would also be contractual. Libertarianism is in this sense not a political doctrine because its very assumptions negate the necessary existence of the political as a sphere constitutive of human societies. In a libertarian society, there is no public space, no public reason, and no collective choice.

It could be debated whether such a society is desirable or even possible at all (I don’t think it is). My point here is however elsewhere. The very history of liberalism makes it a doctrine that is the opposite of the negation of politics and the political. Liberalism takes politics and the political seriously as a domain of life that must be dealt with. If we don’t acknowledge this, then the danger is precisely to be oblivious to the risk of tyranny that can come from state authorities, but also from the conformist majority or from big corporations. Hence, while Freiman sees liberalism caught in a dilemma, I think it is rather libertarianism that faces what I call the “paradox of politics,” i.e., any idea of a society conceived to escape politics is an idea of a political society that ultimately justifies coercive institutions.

There is therefore a difference in nature between libertarianism and liberalism. The former pretends to escape politics, the latter is devising principles and mechanisms to harness it. Libertarianism sees only contractual relations and voluntary submission to coercion (which would no longer be coercion then), liberalism recognizes the necessary existence of a public domain that transcends individuals’ private spheres. Libertarianism only acknowledges the relevance of private reasons that account for and justify personal choices, liberalism emphasizes the importance of public reasons to justify collective choices and rules that have authority on us. This isn’t a small difference. On Freiman’s account, liberalism is charged with inconsistency and asked to provide an account of why some jurisdictional rights must be limited. On the view I defend here, liberalism is the only plausible doctrine that acknowledges the prima facie justification of jurisdictional rights while at the same time recognizing the impossibility of escaping politics and the resulting necessity to submit the perimeter of jurisdictional rights to public reason.

Perspectives change with narratives. Freiman’s narrative suggests that liberalism has been perverted by non-liberal considerations, resulting in inconsistencies that only libertarianism is immune to. My narrative suggests that libertarianism has betrayed the political roots of liberal thought and evolved as an autonomous doctrine oblivious to the political nature of human societies.

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[1] Alan S. Kahan, Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 2023). Ironically, libertarianism is completely forgotten by Kahan’s history, except for a few pages on Nozick.