Libertarian Regulation by Democratic Means: Utilitarianism and the Demythologization of Authority

I’ve beforehand defined how for Ludwig von Mises, democracy is critical for the libertarian society due to its usefulness in reaching and sustaining social peace, insofar as social peace is a prerequisite for financial and civil liberty.

This time I wish to clarify an thought that’s implicit in Mises’s subjectivist philosophy and that leads him to defend democracy, understood because the consent of the ruled, however which can go unnoticed as a result of it’s dispersed all through his work: a “philosophy of consent.” Mises’s philosophy of consent is just not a “worth judgment,” however a “factual judgment”—an outline of the capabilities—of human motion within the realm of norms, authorities, and authorities.

Demythologization of Social Conventions

Mises explains that free-market liberalism, or libertarianism, is a part of the Enlightenment motion and is its most devoted successor. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this motion intellectually freed people from their obedience to authority primarily based on mere custom. Via using reasoning, they have been free of their philosophical chains solid with supposedly goal and everlasting ethical values—that demanded obedience for the advantage of kings, clergy, noble landlords, guilds, and different authorities. Mises described this course of as follows:

The social order created by the philosophy of the Enlightenment assigned supremacy to the frequent man. In his capability as a shopper, the “common fellow” was known as upon to find out finally what must be produced, in what amount and of what high quality, by whom, how, and the place; in his capability as a voter, he was sovereign in directing his nation’s insurance policies.

Nevertheless, the primary technology of enlightened-liberals usually confronted essentialist authoritarianism that attraction to an “essentialist” individualism—see “pure rights,” “absolute justice,” and different moral fallacies of interesting to “nature”—one thing that in Misesian logic meant liberating oneself from some myths and changing them with different myths. The previous Enlightenment was then perfected in utilitarianism, with David Hume as an in depth precursor, after which restated by Mises, liberating itself from the myths of essentialism. Mises defined the worth of utilitarianism as follows:

It’s ineffective to emphasise that nature is the last word arbiter of what’s proper and what’s incorrect. Nature doesn’t clearly reveal its plans and intentions to man. Thus the attraction to pure legislation doesn’t settle the dispute. It merely substitutes dissent regarding the interpretation of pure legislation for dissenting judgments of worth. Utilitarianism, then again, doesn’t deal in any respect with final ends and judgments of worth. It invariably refers solely to means.

Utilitarianism overcame essentialist individualism with an “existentialist,” or subjectivist, individualism. This subjectivist individualism postulates that we will know nothing in regards to the goal essences or ethical values or functions to which we’re topic. We solely know that there are people who assemble and dynamically change the values of what they name “good” and “unhealthy,” which in actuality solely means “I like” and “I don’t like.” As Mises explains:

All judgments of worth are private and subjective. There aren’t any judgments of worth apart from these asserting I favor, I like higher, I want. It can’t be denied by anyone that numerous people disagree extensively with regard to their emotions, tastes, and preferences and that even the identical people at numerous instants of their lives worth the identical issues another way. In view of this reality it’s ineffective to speak about absolute and everlasting values. This doesn’t imply that each particular person attracts his valuations from his personal thoughts. The immense majority of individuals take their valuations from the social setting into which they have been born, through which they grew up, that moulded their persona and educated them. Few males have the ability to deviate from the standard set of values and to ascertain their very own scale of what seems to be higher and what seems to be worse.

With goal values—suprasocial rights of essentialist individualism—eradicated as an impossibility, social norms grow to be human conventions meant to facilitate cooperation and devices (extra helpful or much less helpful) that serve to take care of the issues arising from interindividual coexistence. Mises sees essentialist doctrines as flawed as a result of justice has no relevance previous to the formation of society:

All these moral doctrines have failed to understand that there’s, exterior of social bonds and previous, temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing to which the epithet “simply” might be given. A hypothetical remoted particular person should beneath the stress of organic competitors look upon all different folks as lethal foes. His solely concern is to protect his personal life and well being; he doesn’t must heed the implications which his personal survival has for different males; he has no use for justice. His solely solicitudes are hygiene and protection. However in social cooperation with different males the person is pressured to abstain from conduct incompatible with life in society. Solely then does the excellence between what’s simply and what’s unjust emerge. It invariably refers to interhuman social relations.

All Authorities as Social Conventions

Individuals create or settle for conventions—previous and current—as a result of they assume they serve their very own curiosity, no matter they consider it to be. In Mises’s philosophy of consent there aren’t any pure social norms or pure authorities, solely typical ones. Whereas “the idea of absolute and everlasting values is an indispensable component” of totalitarian authority, he says,

an moral doctrine that doesn’t take into full account the consequences of motion is mere fancy. Utilitarianism doesn’t train that folks ought to attempt solely after sensuous pleasure (although it acknowledges that the majority or no less than many individuals behave on this method). Neither does it bask in judgments of worth. By its recognition that social cooperation is for the immense majority a way for attaining all their ends, it dispels the notion that society, the state, the nation, or another social entity is an final finish and that particular person males are the slaves of that entity. It rejects the philosophies of universalism, collectivism, and totalitarianism. On this sense it’s significant to name utilitarianism a philosophy of individualism.

Consent, subsequently, is just not a suprasocial proper to be claimed earlier than a metaphysical court docket however an inevitable reality of existence—the logic of means and ends. This reasoning results in a demythologization of the the social order, which ceases to be “sacred” and in thus turns into topic to scrutiny. Mises sees this demystification as decidedly good:

In such issues, at least in all our different mundane affairs, mysticism is simply an evil. Our powers of comprehension are very restricted. We can’t hope ever to find the last word and most profound secrets and techniques of the universe. However the truth that we will by no means fathom the which means and goal of our existence doesn’t hinder us from taking precautions to keep away from contagious ailments or from making use of the suitable means to feed and dress ourselves, nor ought to it deter us from organizing society in such a method that the earthly objectives for which we try might be most effectually attained. Even the state and the authorized system, the federal government and its administration usually are not too lofty, too good, too grand, for us to deliver them inside the vary of rational deliberation. Issues of social coverage are issues of social expertise, and their answer have to be sought in the identical methods and by the identical means which are at our disposal within the answer of different technical issues: by rational reflection and by examination of the given situations.

Mises arrives at antiauthoritarianism by way of demythologization, which shouldn’t be understood right here as one other essentialism however a rejection of all perception that doesn’t acknowledge that every one norms and authority are the results of dynamic social conference originating in consent.

Conclusion

Mises’s philosophy of consent is a Promethean message to all mankind that reveals us that with out consent, norms and authority—together with authorities—are sustained by nothing and haven’t any intrinsic worth.