Wendy McElroy recently wrote one of the more lucid defenses of the way in which free markets fosters political liberalism. Originally given as a speech at a conference about the European Commission, McElroy’s piece was published in January on the Mises Institute web site as Equality vs. Freedom.
McElroy goes back to Voltaire’s observations — made while living in exile in England — that France’s efforts to impose homogeneous values from the top had resulted in nothing but social conflict, while England’s generally laissez-faire attitude toward differences of religion and philosophy allowed for people holding many different views to peacefully co-exist.
McElroy writes,
The “Philosophical Letters” reversed a traditionally accepted argument in Voltaire’s Europe on how to create a harmonious society. traditionally, France had attempted to enforce a homogeneous system of values upon its people in the belief that common values were necessary to ensure peace and harmony. Common values were seen to be the social glue that held together the social fabric. Thus, those in authority needed to centrally planned and to rigorously enforce the values that should be practiced by the common people. After all, if people were allowed to choose and practice their own values, especially religious ones, then civil chaos and conflict would ensue.
Voltaire argued that the opposite was true. The imposition of homogeneous values — the denial of the right to personally discriminate — was what led to conflict and religious wars. Instead of common values and governmental control, it was diversity and personal freedom that created a thriving and peaceful society. Voltaire commented, “If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace.”
The truth of this is seen in the gradual turn toward statism within the United States. As government officials of every stripe attempt to dictate values from on high, inevitably the result is ever-fractious battles between competing interest groups to determine which values become official policy.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the only result of such disputes must in the end be tyranny as one group or another finally wrests control.
As McElroy notes, the only way to avoid this situation is to renounce the notion of highly centralized governments attempting to set specific, narrow outcomes which one group or another considers to be good. Rather, government should concentrate simply on preserving the rights of individuals to enter into contracts free from threats and violence, and let individuals rather than states determine to which values they will subscribe.
Source:
Equality vs. Freedom. Wendy McElroy, Mises Institute, January 22, 2001.