Why 'public' issues don't usually need a governmental response

            A common objection levied against libertarians is that they supposedly fail to realize that there are ‘private’ issues and there are ‘public’ issues, instead thinking everything is a ‘private’ issue, and thus not realizing that when ‘public’ issues are involved, a governmental response is needed. This objection is exemplified in a piece on the Washington Post’s ‘Wonk Blog’ by Mike Konczal where he criticizes the libertarian elements of American Right-Wing conservatism. Konczal follows John Dewey in arguing that whenever an action between two people has consequences “that extend beyond the two directly concerned”, the ‘public’ is involved. Given, according to Dewey: “that they affect the welfare of many others, the act acquires a public capacity”. Konczal finishes the thought by adding that acts which acquire a public capacity need a public (invariably governmental) response. Failure to realize this, he argues, is what makes conservatism and libertarianism flawed ideologies.

           

           Is it really true that libertarians don’t realize that many transactional acts affect the welfare of people outside the transaction? To put it briefly: No, it is absolutely not true. Consider the libertarian argument against heavily taxing rich people. The issue of whether to heavily tax rich people or not, like most issues, has both ‘private’ and ‘public’ features, and the libertarian argument against it deals with both. Thus, when the government taxes rich people heavily, libertarians argue that the rich people are hurt by the coercive taking of their privately-owned resources that they had earned through previous acts of production and exchange. This can be considered the ‘private’ argument against heavily taxing the rich. But the libertarian argument does not end here. For the rest of society, the ‘public’ if you will, are harmed by their government heavily taxing rich people. Heavy taxation of the rich results in less incentives for them to produce well for the consumers, less accumulation of private investment capital which would have raised the standard of living of almost everyone, and results in supporting and re-affirming a general political principle, that of coercive redistributionism, that is not conducive to a free and prosperous society. With these arguments, the libertarian clearly recognizes that the consequences of heavily taxing the rich affect more parties than just the government doing the taxing and the rich people being taxed, they also affect the rest of that society.  

            

           Let us take another example. Imagine all the share holders of WalMart decide to turn all of their superstores into private driving ranges for themselves. Now, a libertarian would argue that they technically have the right to do so, provided that there are no contractual restrictions on such actions, and provided that they are willing to pay the exorbitant price of such an action out of their own pockets and are prepared to lose all of their wealth that they had invested in WalMart. But would a libertarian argue that this action would not affect anyone else in society besides the WalMart shareholders and employees, and thus that this would not be a ‘public’ act (in Dewey’s sense of the term)?  Certainly not, it would quite obviously affect every customer who wished to shop at Wal Mart and all of Wal Mart’s suppliers. Rather, the libertarian would argue that a ‘public’ response in the form of government prohibitions would not be necessary to prevent such a thing from occurring, the ordinary financial self-interest of Wal Mart shareholders would be enough to preclude such an action. For the libertarian, it’s not that no actions have a ‘public’ dimension, in Dewey’s sense of the word. It’s just that it should not be automatically assumed that such actions should be put under government control or regulation. Free-market forces exert their own control through the mechanism of individual, financial self-interest.

            

           Now, more sophisticated ‘public goods’ theorists are bound to object that while free-market forces and the pursuit of financial self-interest work as regulators for the provision of a class of goods known as ‘private goods’, where benefits to others from the good can be translated fairly directly into monetary gain for the producer, it is inadequate for ‘public goods’, goods where a significant portion of the benefits to others cannot be translated into monetary gain for the producer, and hence take the form of ‘positive externalities’. These ‘externalities’ are showered on beneficiaries without them paying for the good, and hence may result in a ‘sub-optimal’ provisioning of the ‘public goods’ in question because their benefits to society are not substantially captured as monetary gains for the producer, and hence they are ignored in his profit and loss calculations. Having the government compel people to contribute to the cost of producing the goods, according to such theorists, could be a way of correcting this problem.

            

           Even this, more sophisticated version of the theory that government should involve itself in the provision of ‘public goods’, has several grave problems with it though. First is the fact that no good is a pure ‘private good’ or a pure ‘public good’. No matter what the action or the good, it is always possible that people outside of the transaction will be affected either positively (positive externalities) or negatively (negative externalities). If Fred decides to buy and wear pink overalls, clothing generally being considered a ‘private good’, others are forced to look at him wear this clothing while walking down the street. If they like the look, they experience positive externalities from Fred’s purchase of the good, if they dislike the look, they experience negative externalities from Fred’s purchase of the good. Now take military protection, generally considered to be a ‘public good’. Is it not possible that a large landowner could buy, with his own funds, tanks and tank operators to defend his land and no one else’s against foreign invaders, thus turning what is usually considered a ‘public good’ into a ‘private good’?  Thus, the line between ‘private good’ and ‘public good’ is not clear at all, thus reducing the categorization’s usefulness of delineating the activities that the free market should direct from the activities that the government should direct.

           

           The second problem with the theory that government must be heavily involved in providing a class of goods known as ‘public goods’ is that if considered carefully, the logic of the theory actually boomerangs back on itself and destroys the theory. In the theory, the government is implicitly assumed to be a ‘good government’, that is, a government that earnestly tries with its activities to advance the lives of its citizens, as opposed to a government that just uses its coercive powers to favour itself and its clique of supporters at the expense of the rest of the population. The former type of government would be interested in solving genuine ‘externalities and public goods problems’, while the latter type of government wouldn’t particularly care about that. But, isn’t the selection and maintenance of a ‘good government’ a prime example of a public good? In a democracy, governments are selected and then scrutinized by the general voting public. But taking the time to really scrutinize and evaluate the activities of governments, and then voting in elections and being vocal about issues in between elections accordingly, takes a lot of effort. This effort, while redounding in some respects to the actor’s direct benefit, mainly takes on the form of positive externalities, because the benefits of having an honest, ‘good government’, spread out all across that society. Given this, according to the public goods and externalities theory, the activity of ‘ensuring that government is good’ will be ‘sub-optimally provisioned’, thus resulting in a ‘sub-optimal production’ of ‘good government’.

            

           What can be done to solve this ‘public goods’ problem? The government can’t be called in to solve it, because the public good is the quality of the government itself! If there is a more powerful level of government above the government in question, the same ‘public goods problem’ applies to the quality of that government! Thus, to call for the government to solve a private-sector ‘public goods problem’ is akin to calling for a voluntary charity to solve the ‘public goods problem’ of not enough people donating to voluntary charities, ie. it doesn’t make much sense.

           

           Let us, however, for the sake of argument, disregard my first two objections and assume that public goods can be clearly delineated from private goods and that the government of the society is somehow always a ‘good government’, genuinely intent on making the lives of its citizens better and having no ulterior motives. There remains a third objection against the theory that governments should solve public goods problems. This is that in trying to solve ‘positive externalities’/’public goods’ problems, the government has no idea what the actual magnitude of these positive externalities are, and if it guesses wrongly, it is highly possible that the government will create negative externalities greater in magnitude than the positive externalities it is trying to solve. Government actions always involve taking resources from one person or use and redirecting them to another person or use. On the taking side, there will always be direct losers, and the larger societal effects of the government taking the resources will be negative, regardless of how beneficial a use the resources are eventually put to by the government. Given that the government cannot measure the magnitude of the positive externalities of the potential actions that it is trying to use force to make happen, they may well end up causing more pain in the form of negative externalities than they create benefit in the form of ensuring that positive externality-generating actions are undertaken.

           

           Let us take an example. Imagine that a government decides that the inhabitants of a certain small town would really benefit from having a highway built from their small town to the nearest major city. Let us assume that the government has no redistributionist aims, and thus decides to tax only the citizens of the small town alone to build the road, taxing citizens they expect will gain more from the highway being built more than the citizens they expect will gain less from the highway being built. Now, how does the government, or anyone else, know that they have, on net, benefitted the populace of the town? Maybe the citizens had more beneficial things to spend their money on had it been left to them to spend freely? Maybe the negative societal effects of taxation on incentives and capital accumulation outweighed the positive effect of having a highway? Because the citizens of the town never clearly demonstrated, in the form of market actions, that they valued having a highway more than other things they could have spent that money on, no one can ever know for sure.

            

           Thus, when confronted with ‘public goods’ or ‘positive externalities’ issues, there are two choices. The first is to essentially play a game of Russian roulette by choosing the governmental option. We must not only hope for the unlikely event that the government will be completely well-intentioned and absent ulterior motives, without proper voter scrutiny, but we must also hope that it will be very good at guessing when it comes to assessing the relative magnitudes of positive externalities issues versus the negative externalities it will create with its interventions.

            

           The second option is to try to find free-market ways of ‘internalizing the externalities’ so that free-market forces and the power of pursuing self-interest can spur the production of ‘public goods’ as effectively as it spurs the production of ‘private goods’. Some previously successful ways that this has been done in the past include: 1. Voluntary collective action (private charities, Turnpike Road Construction in Early America), 2. Packaging and selling the public good by attaching it to a marketable private good (common elements, maintenance, and security in condominium buildings, urban infrastructure of historical St. Louis Private Places and Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District).

Personally, I would prefer in most cases to go with the second option, and not play the extremely dangerous game of letting government coercion dictate production choices, and most libertarians would agree with me. Does this fact mean that other libertarians and I are oblivious to the notion of public goods and externalities? Not in the slightest.

Commentary: The Communitarian Political Thought of Leonardo Bruni

   (Note: I recommend you read the essay on which this commentary is based first: http://thinkingabouthumansociety.blogspot.ca/2013/08/spotlight-communitarian-political.html)         

           The Italian Renaissance, specifically its Florentine manifestation, is a period of history that is, for many good reasons, typically portrayed in a very positive light by historians. Immortal works of art and architecture were produced in this period, and the period featured the (in most cases) salutary revival and adaptation of many branches of ancient Greco-Roman culture. There is a danger, though, that when a period of history is portrayed in a very positive light, that positivity extends to almost all of its productions as well, which can lead to sometimes uncritical praise of the cultural, literary, and political works of the period. I do not intend to make that mistake here, as I will be criticizing in many ways the political thought of Leonardo Bruni that I laid out in my previous post.

            

           I argued in my essay that Leonardo Bruni’s political thought can be characterized predominantly as civic nationalist/communitarian, a form of collectivist political ideology. Any collectivist political ideology has three foundational tasks to accomplish: 1. To define the favoured collective and justify that choice. 2. To explain why the interests of individuals must be subordinated to the supposed ‘interests of the collective’. 3. To explain why the chosen collective has a special moral status, not shared by other, rival, collectives. This is how I structured my descriptive essay about Bruni’s thought, so this is how I will structure my critique of it.

1. Defining the Collective:

            

          Nation-states, ‘social classes’, ethnic groups, religious groups, local geographical groups, these have been some of the favourite collectives that various collectivist political ideologies have been based on. Bruni’s favoured collective can be defined as a cross between a modern nation-state and a local geographical group collective, a supposedly ‘self-sufficient’ group of associated citizens designated as a city, or polis. How coherent is his definition of this collective and his justification for making it supreme in his thought?

            

           As noted in the essay, while claiming that every good city was ‘self-sufficient’, and claiming that Florence and her surrounding countryside were self-sufficient, the fact is that Florence was not self-sufficient, but very dependent on the wider European economy of the time. The wealth of the most prominent citizens of Florence at the time, and the foundation of the city’s political power, was international banking, trading, and wool clothing manufacture for the European economy. Now, if bare self-sufficiency were Bruni’s only criteria, he could have responded that if Florence and her countryside had been forced into autarchy, the inhabitants still would have been able to sustain their lives, though at a lower standard of living. But Bruni also claims that the city can provide its inhabitants, without outside help, with a “good standard of living” and that Florence is self-sufficient not just for “necessities”, but also for “luxuries”. But this is simply not a true statement, an autarchic Florentine regional state would not have enjoyed a “good standard of living” or “luxuries” by any stretch of the imagination, thus Bruni’s claim about Florence is a fictitious one.

            

           Bruni is actually forced to make this fictitious claim about Florence’s economic independence because of the nature of the political ideology he is trying to formulate. If he had recognized that Florence was dependent on a wider European economy for its prosperity, he would have been forced to espouse either imperialism or a more universalistic form of morality. If Bruni had recognized that his civic community was forced to trade with inhabitants from other parts of Europe, either the civic community would have had to conquer and subjugate these other parts of Europe to establish its economic independence, or economic independence as an ideal would have had to be abandoned and a more universalistic code of morality and conduct which facilitated peaceful exchange with these other parts of Europe would have had to be recognized. The British advocates of international free-trade in the 19^th century tried the latter; the government of Nazi Germany tried the former. Bruni, not wishing to discuss either option, made fictitious claims about economic independence instead.

            

          Thus, Bruni’s definition of the supreme collective unit is not logically coherent, based as it is on fictitious claims.

2. Collective over Individuals:

            

            The trickiest (and in my opinion, insurmountable) part of formulating a collectivist ideology is to come up with a reason why the ‘interests’ of the collective (whatever those are…) are more important than the total interests of the individuals who are members of the collective. As illustrated in my essay, Bruni attempts to surmount this dilemma by arguing (by implication, in his historical work) that the civic community and its laws are necessary to protect the individual freedom of citizens from domestic and external aggression. This being the case, in his political works, Bruni asserts that since happiness and life itself are dependent on such civic communities, individuals should revere, fight for, be taxed by, and even die for, their civic communities, their ‘native lands’.

            

           Now, if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that the arguments of the anarchists are wrong, and that without States enjoying monopolies of the use of coercive force over their territorial turfs, life would be nasty, brutish, and short for individuals, there is something to Bruni’s argument. The problem with his argument is that it involves an intellectual bait-and-switch maneuver. From the plausible assertion that the lives and happiness of individuals depend on them being organized into some kind of political collective, Bruni leaps to the assertion that individuals owe undying loyalty and service to the particular political collective they happen to be living under at the moment. But it is the prime function of organized political collectives (the protection of the life, liberty, and property of citizens in John Locke’s terminology) that Bruni argues is necessary for the happiness of individual citizens, not the existence of any particular political collective. And if this is the case, than the political collective that fulfills that function best should be preferred, in all cases, to political collectives who fulfill that function less well, or who engage in aggression themselves against the life, liberty, and property of their citizens. There is no particular reason why the political collective that fulfills this function best should necessarily be a ‘city’, or even be based out of the ‘native land’ of its citizens. Thus, if for instance an expansionist Duke of Milan, or Holy Roman Emperor, or French King seemed likely to do a better job at fulfilling the main function of political collectives at less cost in taxation for Florentines than the Florentine Republic had been, Bruni’s calls for Florentines to be taxed dry and to die in defense of the Republic would have no logical backing.

            

            Throughout his political works, Bruni is more intent on telling Florentines what they should do for their country, rather than on telling them what their country is doing for them (to use the language of JFK). But this contradicts the nature of the political collective that Bruni himself identifies as a means to the end of individual happiness. It reverses it and implies that the ‘well-being’ of the political collective is really the end to be pursued, and the lives and fortunes of individuals are merely means for the pursuit of this end. But no collectivist, including Bruni, has ever logically established why this should be the case.

3. Favoured Collective over Other Collectives:

            

            Another major problem with collectivist ideologies is that they often call for actions which favour one collective over other collectives. To do so convincingly, they must come up with reasons why their favoured collectives should take precedence over other, competing collectives. Take a common collectivist policy: protectionism. A common argument for protectionism is that Country A should develop certain advanced industries but cannot under the competitive pressure of these same industries which have been established for a long time in Country B. Hence, tariffs barriers should be set in place to prevent the industries of Country B from out-competing the newly-emerging industries of Country A.

If such policies were universalized and adopted by all countries though, then the result would be a duplicate of all the ‘desirable industries’ in every country and a partial disintegration of the productivity-improving international division of labor. Producers would be frustrated at the limited extent of their markets, with most international markets off-limits due to protectionist tariff barriers. In the worst case, frustrated by their inability to exchange for much-needed products of other countries, aggressive imperialistic expansion to ‘solve’ these problems might be resorted to by countries with poorer natural resources (Nazi Germany, in a world that was becoming increasingly protectionist, leaps to mind as a real-world example of this phenomenon). Policies that seem to advance the interests of the thinker’s favoured political collective, if adopted by other political collectives, become spreaders of misery on a large scale. The lack of norms of conduct capable of being effectively universalized becomes a serious problem.

           

            Does Bruni provide a good explanation for why his favoured political collective should take precedence over other political collectives? Besides praising the lineage, the cultural achievements, and the foreign policy record of the Florentine Republic, Bruni offers no real explanation. He basically just assumes that it should be self-evident, especially to Florentines. Parochialism and national chauvinism are not good reasons, in my opinion, for holding tenets of political thought though.

            

           Thus, despite his cultural and literary achievements, skills as an orator, and relatively good tenure as Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, Leonardo Bruni’s political thought is unsatisfactory in many regards. While we may marvel at other products of the Italian Renaissance such as Michelangelo’s exquisite sculptures, Leonardo Bruni’s political thought should not be considered a marvel of that period.

                       

                     

                               

Spotlight: The Communitarian Political Thought of Leonardo Bruni (Florentine Renaissance Humanist)

                Civic humanism, a political ideology developed in Florence, especially by Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444, Chancellor of Florence 1427-1444), was a branch of Renaissance humanism that used ancient sources and humanist principles in order to come out in favour of republican government, particularly Florence’s republican government. Hans Baron argues that the reason for the creation and popularity of Bruni’s civic humanism in Florence was due, in particular, to Florence’s near-annexation by the Duke of Milan, Giangaleazzo Visconti, in 1402. Florence was seen as the one city to stand firm against Visconti’s aggressive tyranny, which bore fruit when Giangalezzo died before he was able to conquer Florence[1]. Leonardo Bruni, in his Panegyric to the City of Florence in 1402, used this event to ‘prove’ that Florence’s foreign policy had always been to preserve liberty in Italy against tyrants and that it was due to the “high morale” of Florence’s republican citizens that Giangaleazzo was defeated[2].  This event helps explain why humanism took on a particularly passionate republican tone in Florence, while it had a more royalist tone in other Italian cities such as Milan or Mantua.

            

           The origins of civic humanism, however, are not to be the topic of this paper. Rather, we seek to examine the contents of the ideology itself through an analysis of Bruni’s political works. Specifically, we will focus on the communitarian and civic nationalist aspects of Bruni’s civic humanism, a crucial aspect of his political thought. This was the idea that the interests of the city collective/community were to be esteemed above the interests of individuals, on the one hand, and above more universalistic notions of morality and justice on the other hand. Bruni uses ancient sources to pinpoint the city as the perfect unit for a community of men. Because of this, he argues that service to the city-collective becomes one of the highest virtues that individuals can strive for. He implies, further, that morally, republican Florence could basically do no wrong to others, because in a way, what served the interests of the Florentine community became, almost de facto, a moral action.

           

           Why was the city the favoured political unit in Bruni’s political thought? First, we must realize that, according to Bruni, the definition of a city is that it be a self-sufficient community: “When it is not self-sufficient it should not be called a city, since it is a property of a city to contain the means of satisfying whatever is required to sustain life”[3]. Using the modern definition of a city as a particular urban area, this is impossible, for doesn’t a city need a countryside to grow food for its inhabitants in order for it to be self-sufficient? And indeed, Bruni identifies not just “artisans” and “warriors”, but also “agriculturists” as the three vital classes of people necessary to form a self-sufficient city[4]. Accordingly, in the Panegyric, Bruni does not confine his praise of Florence solely to urban, metropolitan Florence. He also considers the country houses, walled towns, and the agricultural countryside surrounding Florence to be a key aspect of the Florentine ensemble.  He praises the productive agricultural countryside for making Florence self-sufficient and the walled towns that are like “the stars” surrounding “the moon”, which is Florence[5]. Thus, though the urban, metropolitan city is the most important part of the polity in Bruni’s thought, the polity also includes the surrounding towns and countryside.

           

           In political fact, as Baron argues, the more medieval political order of Trecento Italy “with fragmented local allegiances but a universal allegiance either to emperor or pope” had given way in the Quattrocento to “a system of sovereign region-states each of which had absorbed the abundance of local autonomies”[6]. It was the regional city-state of Florence that Bruni took as his ideal political community. To justify this choice, Bruni, as noted above, defined cities, with Aristotle and his followers, in his notes on his translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian economics, as a “common society” whose inhabitants, when pooled together, “can have enough to support a good standard of living” and who “live under the same laws”[7]. This is why he made the point in the Panegyric that Florence and its countryside were self-sufficient, making them “independent of outside help either for necessities or even for luxuries”[8]. Of course, this assertion was in no way true. Florence at that time relied heavily on international banking and the international wool trade for its great wealth. Nevertheless, Bruni had to claim that Florence was self-sufficient in order to legitimize it as the perfect community of men, the polis of the ancient Greeks. By doing so, he was able to justify making the interests of this particular collective supreme in his political thought.

            

           Having identified his favoured political collective, Bruni had to define the proper relationship between this collective and the individual, and between this collective and other, rival political collectives. Starting with the individual, Bruni often hinted that he saw the individual mainly as an instrument to serve the interests of the city collective. Of course, in Bruni’s original justification of the city as supreme collective, he mentions that cities are formed in order to enable individuals to live well. Nevertheless, because the city collective is such an important component of the general happiness of individual citizens, its preservation and interests, in Bruni’s thought, becomes even more important than the preservation and interests of individuals themselves. This idea is expressed in the following passage: “Since without cities there is no life for human beings, devotion to country and the acceptance of death for its salvation are praised to the skies”[9]. And again: “Foremost honor is deservedly given to his native land, for that is the first and prerequisite basis of human happiness, to be put as object of veneration ahead even of parents.”[10].

This theme appears in Bruni’s History of the Florentine People too, where Bruni claims that Giano della Bella, the leader of those agitating for the Ordinances of Justice, criticized the Florentine people who “kept letting individuals suffer injustice” and who “failed to realize that they were all as a group being threatened by shameful servitude”[11]. By contrast, once the Ordinances were passed, the Florentine people exercised their collective power by joining the first post-Ordinances Standard-Bearer of Justice, Baldo Ruffoli, in exiling and destroying the properties of the clan of a noble who murdered a common citizen[12]. In Bruni’s historical narrative, when individuals cared only about themselves, they were ripe to be assaulted and enslaved by violent noblemen, but when they came together as a collective, they were able to amass enough power to protect their lives, liberty, and property from their rapacious enemies.

             

           This idea also shaped Bruni’s ideas concerning the accumulation of wealth. In general, Bruni was far friendlier towards the accumulation of wealth than his medieval predecessors. In the Preface to his translation of the Economics, Bruni says that: “Wealth is indeed useful, since it is both an embellishment for those who possess it, and the means by which they may exercise virtue”, and then says that: “Therefore for our own sakes, and even more for love of our children, we ought to strive as far as we honorably can to increase our wealth, since it is included by the philosophers among the things that are good”[13]. It would appear that Bruni has adopted a fairly individualistic, or at least family-oriented, view of the virtues of accumulating wealth here, but in his political orations, he takes a different stance. In his Oration for the Funeral of Nanni Strozzi, Bruni brags about the wealth of Florentine citizens, but then says: “Evidence of it (Florence’s great wealth) is this long Milanese war which has been waged at incredible cost, in which we are spending over thirty-five hundred thousand (florins), and nevertheless men are prompter in paying their levy now when the war is drawing to a close than they were at is beginning”[14]. The relevant evidence of Florentine wealth for Bruni is here their ability to spend on collective endeavours, not individual gratifications. Bruni chooses not to brag about the luxuries that Florentine patricians can enjoy or the rich estates that Florentines are able to leave to their children. Rather, it is the promptness in paying taxes for a war effort of the city collective that receives Bruni’s praise.

It may be objected that in the Panegyric, Bruni talks about the interior and exterior beauty of Florentine buildings, perhaps indicating that he does praise wealth for its ability to buy luxuries[15]. However, he does so in the context of praising Florence as a whole, rather than in order to praise the good taste and wealth of individual Florentines. Bruni uses the beauty of Florentine buildings as a praise of Florence as a collective, over other, rival, city collectives. Bruni interprets city beautification not as an individual affair, but as a collective affair, concerning the pride of the whole city. Thus, in his political works at least, the accumulation of wealth, and individual endeavours in general, are primarily to be instruments for advancing the welfare of the city as a collective entity.

            

           What of the relationship in Bruni’s thought between Florence, Bruni’s favoured collective, and other political collectives? In the Panegyric Bruni writes: “Therefore, to you, also, men of Florence, belongs by hereditary right dominion over the entire world and possession of your parental legacy (because they were descended from the Romans and carried on their spirit). From this it follows that all wars that are waged by the Florentine people are most just, and this people can never lack justice in its wars since it necessarily wages war for the defense or recovery of its own territory”[16]. This passage is quite bombastic and, admittedly, Bruni takes a more moderate stance in other places, but it suggests his general attitude towards the perennial justice of his collective’s cause. Later on in the Panegyric, Bruni asserts that Florence has always kept all its promises to other states and that its primary goal was always to preserve the liberty of the states of Italy[17]. Thus, Bruni did not really advocate that Florence conquer the whole world and excuse this by claiming some shadowy inheritance rights from ancient Rome, as the first passage quoted might suggest, but at no point does he assert that anything republican Florence did in its foreign policy was unjust.

            

           A good example of this is in Bruni’s letter he wrote as chancellor, justifying Florence’s 1429 invasion of Lucca, A Rebuttal of the Critics of the People of Florence for the Invasion of Lucca. Bruni writes: “I wish therefore to state that the invasion of Lucca, until the people of Florence decided upon it, was something I did not favor, and always counselled against; not, however, because I thought it unjust or dishonorable, but because wars entail such evils, desolations and other great misfortunes that the very thought of them causes me instinctively to hold them in horror and to seek to avoid them. Yet, when the decision was made, it was my duty and that of every citizen to accept what the city had decided and ordained”[18]. In this passage, Bruni expresses his personal disapproval of the war, but quickly reassures us of two things. First, that the war could not possibly be unjust, even though you would think that the justice of something that involved “evils, desolations and other great misfortunes” would at least be questioned for that reason alone. Second, that even though he was personally opposed, once the city collective had decided something, it was his duty as an individual to put away his misgivings and support the city wholeheartedly. This suggests that for Bruni, the justice of something that the city collective had decided was unquestionable. Another passage, from De Militia, lends support to this view: “we should consider man’s true duties only those which have been established by its (the city’s) constitution and ordinance”[19]. Conspicuously absent from this statement is the religious view that man’s primary duties are assigned by God or that man has certain moral duties to his fellow men, regardless of which political collective they belong to. Rather, the city collective becomes the ultimate source of men’s duties, and thus of justice as well.

            

           Another example of Bruni’s city-centered conception of justice is found in De Militia. He says that the main function of the warrior, or miles, is to defend citizens against evil[20]. Bruni says that the miles should not just defend citizens against evil coming from foreign powers, but he should also “help his country by word and deed when it is being troubled by wicked citizens” by protecting the weak against the aggression of the strong[21]. However, Bruni also praises Romulus for attaching great importance to his armed forces, or militia, confirmed in Romulus’s supposed last words to Julius Proculus: “tell the Romans it is the will of the gods that my Rome should be the capital of the world. Let them therefore cultivate and master the art of the military, and pass it on to their posterity, so that no human power will be able to resist Roman arms”[22]. Despite what Bruni says about the miles being defenders of citizens against evil, he praises the attitude of a ruler who wanted to strengthen the militia in order that his city could become lord of the world, hardly a defensive undertaking. The paradox is resolved however, when we realize that Bruni assigned to the miles the duty of protecting their own citizens against evil, he said nothing about any other collective’s citizens. In Bruni’s thought, the warriors, like other citizens, have duties only to their particular city collective, not to God or to a more universal morality or justice. This allows them, without contradiction, to defend their own citizens against evil, while aggressing against the citizens of other political collectives, because they owe these outsiders no protection.

               

           Thus, the idea that the perfect political collective was the city-state and that both the individual citizen and more universal considerations of morality and justice should be subordinate to the interests of this city collective was an important aspect of Leonardo Bruni’s civic humanist political thought. This communitarian worldview would take a place beside the more religious, Christian-universalist worldview characteristic of medieval thought and the more individualist worldview that would later emerge in the thought of some Enlightenment and classical liberal thinkers in the array of Europeans’ potential political philosophies. As such, an elucidation of this aspect of Bruni’s thought helps place him, as a political thinker, within the broader trajectory of European intellectual history.

             

           

              

               

---

[1] Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1955), 33.

[2] Leonardo Bruni, “Panegyric to the City of Florence,” in The Earthly Republic, ed. Benjamin Kohl and Ronald Witt, trans. Benjamin Kohl (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 165-167.

[3] Leonardo Bruni, “On Knighthood (De Militia),” in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, David Thomson, trans. Gordon Griffiths (Binghamton, New York: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies State University of New York at Binghamton, 1987), 129.

[4] Bruni, De Militia, 129.

[5] Bruni, Panegyric, 144-145.

[6] Baron, 9.

[7] Leonardo Bruni, “Bruni’s Translation and Notes on the Economics: Bruni’s Notes to Book I, Chapter 1,” in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 309.

[8] Bruni, Panegyric, 145.

[9] Bruni, De Militia, 130.

[10] Bruni, “Oration for the Funeral of Nanni Strozzi,” in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 123.

[11]Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People ,vol I, trans. James Hankins (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001), 361.

[12] Bruni, History of the Florentine People Vol I, 373.

[13] Leonardo Bruni, “Preface to Book I of the Aristotelian Treatise on Economics, or Family Estate Management, addressed to Cosimo de’ Medici,” in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 305-306.

[14] Bruni, Oration for the Funeral of Nanni Strozzi, 127.

[15] Bruni, Panegyric, 140.

[16] Bruni, Panegyric, 150.

[17] Bruni, Panegyric, 161, 165-166.

[18] Leonardo Bruni, “A Rebuttal of the Critics of the People of Florence for the Invasion of Lucca,” in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 146.

[19] Bruni, De Militia, 128.

[20] Bruni, De Militia, 131.

[21] Bruni, De Militia, 139-140.

[22] Bruni, De Militia, 134-135.

Commentary: Albertan Support for Free-Trade in 1911 and 1921 Federal Elections

(Note: Before reading this commentary, I suggest you read the historical essay upon which it is based here: http://thinkingabouthumansociety.blogspot.ca/2013/08/spotlight-albertan-support-for-free.html)

            Though I tried to confine myself to a factual, historical description in my last post, regular readers of this blog will know which ideology for supporting free-trade policies I favor: the classical-liberal one which was stronger before the First World War. I posted this essay I wrote on political ideology issues surrounding the 1911 and 1921 federal elections in Alberta for two reasons.

Firstly, the argument implicitly challenges the viewpoint of many intellectual historians who recognize no fundamental difference between classical-liberal political ideology and social democratic, ‘modern-liberal’, political ideology. Alan Wolfe, a political scientist who wrote a book about Liberalism, argues:

“The idea that liberalism comes in two forms assumes that the most fundamental question facing mankind is how much government intervenes into the economy. To me, perhaps because so little of the means of production lies under my control, this is a remarkably uninteresting subject. I think of the whole question of governmental intervention as a matter of technique. Sometimes the market does pretty well and it pays to rely on it. Sometimes it runs into very rough patches and then you need government to regulate it and correct its course. No matters of deep philosophy or religious meaning are at stake when we discuss such matters. A society simply does what it has to do.

           When instead we do discuss human purpose and the meaning of life, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are on the same side. Both of them possessed an expansive sense of what we are put on this earth to accomplish. Both were on the side of enlightenment. Both were optimists who believed in progress but were dubious about grand schemes that claimed to know all the answers. For Smith, mercantilism was the enemy of human liberty. For Keynes, monopolies were. It makes perfect sense for an eighteenth century thinker to conclude that humanity would flourish under the market. For a twentieth century thinker committed to the same ideal, government was an essential tool to the same end.”[1]

            Now, first of all, the fact that Doctor Wolfe finds the question of government ownership versus private ownership “uninteresting” does not mean it is unimportant. As for governmental intervention being “a matter of technique”, who are the technicians qualified to prescribe whether private ownership or government intervention is best in any particular case if not politicians and social thinkers that subscribe to various political ideologies? Is the answer really so straightforward, and does it really have nothing to do with philosophy and value judgements? Were the differences between East and West Germany, North and South Korea, differentiated primarily by the amount of government intervention in their respective economies, really just “technical” and “uninteresting”, and completely unrelated to “human purposes” and “the meaning of life”?

            The idea that somehow, completely uninfluenced by political ideologies and philosophies, ‘society’s’ will simply ‘do what they have to do’ economically and automatically decide on the optimal amount of economic freedom versus government intervention in every area of human endeavour is simply not true. Contrary to Doctor Wolfe, the answers to such economic questions are vitally important for societal well-being, have very deep philosophical implications (whether you are allowed to pursue your own ends with the resources you own or are forced to pursue the ends determined by political elites with the resources you once owned seems a pretty deep philosophical difference to me), and as such, one’s position on these issues constitutes one of the most substantial aspects of any person’s political ideology.

            Doctor Wolfe’s suggested criteria for being a ‘liberal’ thinker are very vague and relatively all-encompassing. Optimism, belief in progress, belief in ‘enlightenment’, disbelief of ‘grand schemes’ (although one could argue that Keynes’ plan for the government to ‘manage the economy’ was indeed a ‘grand scheme’), there aren’t all that many modern thinkers who wouldn’t match these criteria. The point of distinguishing phenomena in the world, be they physical entities or ideas, is to increase our understanding of the world and the things that make it up. Precise, exclusive definitions are more useful in this regard than vague, all-encompassing ones, and thus Doctor Wolfe’s criteria, I would suggest, does not aid our understanding of different ideologies, but reduces it.

            The argument of my historical essay is a clear anti-thesis to the view of classical versus modern liberalism represented by Doctor Wolfe. I argue not only that classical-liberalism and social-democratic ‘modern’ liberalism represent two different ideological traditions, but that even when the same political measure (in this case freer trade) is supported by two different political movements, one must still examine the respective ideological backgrounds for their support of the measure. When the ideological background has changed, one is no longer dealing with the same political ideology and must recognize that historically in order to achieve a higher level of understanding of the past, even if the two political movements are supporting the same political measure and thus, superficially, seem to share the same political ideology.

            The second reason I wrote about free-trade politics in Alberta in 1911 and 1921 is because the shift in ideological disposition recognized in the essay serves to represent one of the most significant political-ideological shifts in Western world history: the general post-WWI shift away from classical liberalism towards social democratic ideas. Though classical liberalism had been declining in popularity and social democratic ideology gaining in popularity since the late 19^th century, WWI was a watershed that dramatically accelerated this process.

            The reasons why WWI contributed to causing this acceleration are undoubtedly numerous and complex. I will here suggest a few: 1. Marxist-inspired writers blamed capitalism for the phenomena of European imperialism, and European imperial ambitions for the First World War, thus discrediting capitalism in the eyes of those who believed this causal chain to be correct. 2. WWI and its aftermath showed rulers and citizens that military might was once again going to play a major role in human affairs, and that nations had to be ‘strong’ and ‘centrally directed’ in order to be able to survive in that climate, which legitimised some interventionist policies in the name of ‘war-preparedness’. 3. The victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, which the war had made possible, stirred revolutionary hopes in the minds of communists and fears in the minds of anti-communists, which resulted in more frequent and more brutal clashes between these forces in the post-war period. 4. Blame for the war fell, in the eyes of many, especially younger, people, on the shoulders of the ‘old order’ and all that it represented. In the minds of many, classical liberalism and free-market capitalism were part of this old order which had to be reinvented. 5. The unprecedented governmental powers taken on by the governments of the belligerent countries during the war gave rulers and economic elites a taste for expanded political power which inspired them to try to have the government take on more responsibilities during peacetime in the post-war period.

            In any case, this shift was a momentous one, and suggestive evidence for it is presented in my historical essay.

        

                 

           

     

---

[1] Alan Wolfe, “A False Distinction”, The New Republic, April 13, 2009. http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/alan-wolfe/false-distinction#

Spotlight: Albertan Support for Free-Trade in 1911 and 1921 Federal Elections

            It is imperative that any historian of political ideas and political movements be aware that different groups may support the same political cause for very different reasons, and based on very different political ideologies. This is the case when we consider widespread political support for free-trade politics in Alberta in the 1911 federal election and the 1921 federal election respectively.  In both elections, the majority of voters from Alberta chose the parties that promised them freer trade policies between Canada and the United States, these being Laurier’s Liberals in 1911 and the Progressives/United Farmers of Alberta in 1921. However, the freer trade policies promised were couched in notably different ideological contexts and terms in the two elections. To illustrate this point and its implications, we will begin by laying out the results of the two elections, and then we will go on to compare the different ideological contexts in which freer trade policies were situated in the two elections, by examining the ideological/rhetorical strategies of the Laurier Liberals’ 1911 campaign and the Progressives’ 1921 campaign respectively.

The 1911 election, pitting the incumbent Laurier, Liberal government against the challenging Borden, Conservative opposition, was contested mainly on the issue of reciprocity with the United States. If the reciprocity agreement was ratified as Laurier wanted to do and which Borden opposed, this would have meant producing something closer to free-trade between the two countries, especially in agricultural products. Though Laurier’s Liberals were defeated nationally, in Alberta the Liberals won 6 of 7 seats, losing only Calgary to the Conservatives[1]. As O.D. Skelton, an academic observer writing shortly after the 1911 election said, in Alberta (and Saskatchewan) the economic benefits expected from reciprocity tended to outweigh, in the minds of many voters, the kinds of nationalistic sentiments that the Conservatives had been able to capitalize on elsewhere in Canada[2].

           

           In the 1921 election,  a new, third, party, the Progressives, which had been founded in 1920 by disillusioned former Liberals and backed by representatives of a rapidly-growing agrarian political movement, with T.A. Crerar chosen as leader, became a political force[3]. Freer trade with the United States was an important plank of the Progressive/agrarian platform. In the 1921 federal election in Alberta, agrarian candidates (Progressive and United Farmer of Alberta members) won every seat except for the two Calgary seats, which were won by Labour Party representatives[4]. The Labour Party was at that point a political ally of the agrarian movement and thus these seats were not contested by agrarian candidates[5]. No Liberal or Conservative candidates won a seat in Alberta.

            

           It might seem as if we could explain these two election results by arguing that free-trade/reciprocity was a very important issue to Albertan voters, and hence most of them voted in favour of whichever political grouping promised them freer trade with the United States. In 1911 this was Laurier’s Liberals; in 1921 this was the Progressive/agrarian candidates (henceforth to be designated just as ‘Progressives’). There is some truth to this argument, but it is not complete and obscures some important distinctions between the political dynamics of the two elections.

This is because free-trade/reciprocity was supported by the Liberals in 1911 and the Progressives in 1921 respectively for different reasons, and coming from two very different political-ideological traditions. As we will see, Laurier’s Liberals generally worked within a classical liberal ideological tradition which tended to shun interest-group politics and favor a smaller government, while the Progressives leaned towards a social democratic ideological tradition which tended to embrace interest-group politics and favor a larger government. The two parties’ espousal of free-trade was justified for different reasons in their respective ideologies, and the two cannot be considered as part of the same political-ideological movement.

            

            Classical liberalism is a political ideology that became popular especially in Britain, France, and the United States, in the late 18^th century and throughout most of the 19^th century. It was strongly influenced by the free-market views of classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John-Baptiste Say, and Frederic Bastiat. Classical liberals tended to favour individual liberty, in personal and economic spheres, and a small, limited government.

In The Law, an essay originally published in 1850 by the French classical economist and classical liberal, Frederic Bastiat, Bastiat calls it a “fatal principle” if: “under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artists and comedians”[6].  Similarly, Ludwig von Mises, an economist and classical liberal from Austria-Hungary, wrote in his book on classical liberal ideas, originally published in 1927: “Liberalism addresses itself to all and proposes a program acceptable to all alike. It promises no one privileges.” Mises contrasts this with “the parties of special interests” who: “address themselves only to a part of society. To this part, for which alone they intend to work, they promise special advantages at the expense of the rest of society”[7].

Whether one believes the arguments to be true or not, a popular rhetorical strategy of classical liberal ideologists was to try to convince the reader/listener that freedom and limited government results in a situation where no one group in society may benefit at the expense of another through political privileges. This state of affairs will then, according to classical liberal ideology, result in a maximization of the peacefulness and prosperity of a given society.

            

           Wilfrid Laurier, in his speech to the House of Commons on March 7, 1911, defending the reciprocity agreement he had negotiated with the US and wanted to have ratified, shows that he employed important aspects of classical liberal ideology in his defense of reciprocity. Near the very beginning of the speech, Laurier says:

“If, Sir, I were to state to my hon. friends on the other side that amongst civilized mankind, all those who work, work with the object of disposing of the product of their labour, I should be told, this is a truism that is running in the street. If I were to add that the man who works had the legitimate ambition of getting the greatest possible remuneration for his labour, I should be told, this is a mere truism. If I were to say that the man who works, will be better remunerated the more clients he has, seeking the products of his labour, I should be told, this is a truism. And yet, this is the very thing, this very truism, which is embodied in the proposition now before you. All that we ask under these resolutions is to obtain for the man who works in the fields, the best possible remuneration for his labour”[8].

Here, Laurier is defending, in universal and general terms, the right of every individual man to try to make the greatest economic profit he can, and arguing that tariff barriers stand in the way of this right. The “man who works in the fields”, the farmer, should have the same rights in this regard as everyone else, no more and no less. Laurier frames it not as a ‘farmer’s issue’, but as an issue of simply extending the individual rights of man that classical liberals believe all men should be entitled to, to the farmers, who have been unreasonably deprived of it by the tariff.

Of course, despite him generally working within the classical liberal ideological tradition on this issue, Laurier was not primarily a classical liberal ideologist, but an expert at practical politics. In the middle of his speech, Laurier comments on why the reciprocity agreement did not include reciprocity for all manufactured products or full free-trade for agricultural implements: “I know that we have not gone as far as certain sections of the community wanted us to go. A certain section wanted free [agricultural] implements altogether, but we did not think it prudent or advisable to go that far”[9]. Though full free-trade would have been the only policy in accordance with strict classical liberal ideology, Laurier does not think it politically “prudent” to go this far.

Nevertheless, even in his explanation of the reasons for this compromise, Laurier betrays his classical liberal sympathies. He says: “It is obvious that if you raise the customs duty or impose a protective duty you create at once a fictitious economical atmosphere; and if the industries established under that tariff and under that temperature and condition, have to face suddenly a removal of the duty, you might annihilate in the course of one night millions of capital and reduce to non-employment thousands of operatives”[10]. Laurier’s use of the term “fictitious economical atmosphere” to describe conditions under a protective tariff implies that there was something unnatural and wrong about establishing the tariff in the first place. Regrettably, the protective tariff was established in the past, and Laurier’s argument to maintain part of it in force is solely based on the difficulties that the manufacturers who had gotten used to a protectionist atmosphere would experience if they were forced to rapidly adjust to a free-trade atmosphere.

Another interesting invocation of classical liberal ideology in the 1911 Liberal campaign is found in a letter that W.S. Fielding, Laurier’s Minister of Finance, wrote to George Graham, a fellow Liberal MP, on May 30, 1911. In the letter, Fielding suggests ways that Liberal propaganda could be set up to vilify the Conservatives. One of his suggestions is to get a cartoonist to draw Robert Borden as the “character of Mr. Facing Both Ways”. The cartoon should make fun of the Conservatives because: “with one voice the conservatives are telling the farmers that under reciprocity they will suffer competition and have to sell at lower prices. At the same time, their agents are going into the factories of Montreal getting anti-reciprocity petitions signed upon representations that the cost of food will be made higher”[11]. Fielding suggests that the Conservatives be mocked for their duplicitous behavior of supporting a policy (protectionism) that, according to classical liberalism, must favor one group at the expense of another, but trying to make it universally appealing by telling different groups why reciprocity would hurt their interests, even if the explanations given to different groups contradict one another. Fielding implies that the only way that the Conservatives can appeal to different interest-groups is by lying, maintaining, impossibly, that every group will get a special political privilege from protectionism, whereas the Liberals simply maintain that no one should, by right, have any political privileges, which must come at the expense of their fellow citizens.

Thus, such was the ideological framing of the Laurier Liberals’ championing of reciprocity, or freer trade. We cannot know for sure what general political ideology, if any, every Albertan voter in 1911 held, but suffice it to say that many generally favored freer trade and reciprocity, and sympathized enough with the more general ideology used by the Laurier Liberals to frame and contextualize that issue, to vote for that party.

We are presented with a very different political/ideological climate in Alberta leading up to the 1921 Federal election. An agrarian movement had been building up in Alberta since at least 1909, which became especially politicized from 1919-1921, leading up to the victory of the United Farmers of Alberta in the July 1921 Alberta provincial general election[12]. 

A revised ‘Farmers’ Platform’, issued in late 1918 by the Canadian Council of Agriculture, the agrarian organization representative of the Canadian farmer’s movement that was active in federal politics, called the ‘New National Policy’, helped politicize the movement by setting out an explicit, federal political platform that many in the agrarian movement felt they could get behind[13]. This is a very important document for our purposes, which we will turn to now, as it shows how ideologically, the agrarian movement differed significantly from the classical liberal-bearing of the Laurier Liberals of 1911.

 Right off the bat, the authors of the ‘New National Policy’ accuse the government of being unfairly dominated by an economic class of people: “It is becoming more apparent each year that our parliament is becoming more and more under the direct influence of industrial, financial and transportation interests, represented by men of wealth in financial and industrial centres”[14]. The authors attribute the popularity of protectionism to this domination and make a clear stand in favor of freer trade: “whereas the Protective Tariff has been and is a chief corrupting influence in our national life because the protected interests, in order to maintain their unjust privileges, have contributed lavishly to political and campaign funds, thus encouraging both political parties to look to them for support, thereby lowering the standard of public morality”[15]. This emphasis on economic class-based political conflict from the beginning already suggests that this document is not a classical liberal one. Classical liberal rhetoric tended to be directed, in general and universal terms, against any individual or group seeking any political privileges, rather than singling out a specific economic class, seen to be benefitting unfairly from political privileges, to attack as this document does.

Interestingly, the authors borrow several arguments from free-market economics in favour of international trade and against protectionism in order to make their case[16]. They even evoke some straight classical liberal arguments, such as when they write: “For the tariff, in a word, means fundamentally, preferential treatment – preference to certain classes of producers at the expense of others, as well as of the whole body of consumers”[17].

We must not be fooled by these passages into thinking that the ‘New National Policy’ is a classical liberal manifesto for free-trade though. There are some distinct social democratic ideological elements mixed in which cannot be ignored. For example, the authors recognize that sharply reducing the tariff would result in a fall in government revenue. This would not bother most classical liberals, as they see only a very limited role for government in a society. The authors of the platform, by contrast though, suggest the following ways of maintaining or increasing government revenue: “1. By a direct tax on unimproved land values, including all natural resources. 2. By a sharply graduated personal income tax. 3. By a heavy graduated inheritance tax on large estates. 4. By a graduated income tax on the profits of corporations”[18]. They also call for “the nationalization of all railway, telegraph and express companies” and demand “that no more natural resources be alienated from the Crown”[19].

The authors justify the graduated personal income tax “because, perhaps more than any other tax, it measures faculty or ability to pay”[20]. This ‘ability to pay’ doctrine fits in with the Marxist/social democratic idea of: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.

The heavy graduated inheritance tax is justified because there is allegedly: “a sort of co-partnership existing between captains of industry and the government, under which the people at large should share in the wealth thereby created. From this standpoint the state merely takes by legal action from the estate of the deceased, what it is entitled to in equity”[21]. A strict classical liberal would see such co-partnerships, if they existed, as cases of a political privilege that should be abolished, the government being made smaller in the process. They would not, as the authors do, implicitly accept this state of affairs but call for the government to collect what it is ‘owed’, for the ‘benefit of the people at large’, the government being made bigger in the process.

The authors espouse economic egalitarianism explicitly, writing: “Moreover, it is impossible to conceive of a truly democratic state where great wealth and poverty exist side by side. It is in the interests of a real commonwealth to diffuse great fortunes, to break them up, to smooth out class distinctions based on wealth, and to place the whole people on the footing of equal opportunity”[22]. Calling for political steps to be taken towards establishing equality of incomes, wealth, and ‘opportunity’, rather than just equality before the law, is perhaps the most important feature that distinguishes a social democratic ideology from a classical liberal ideology.

Finally, calls for the nationalization of railroads and the continued public ownership of natural resources is not something that aligns with the classical liberal ideal of full private ownership of the means of production.

Thus, the Canadian Council of Agriculture’s (CCA’s) ‘New National Policy’ was a political platform that featured certain classical liberal arguments, but also arguments from social democratic ideology. The CCA was closely intertwined with the Alberta agrarian movement, not least because Henry Wise Wood, the president of the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), was also the president of the CCA throughout the important period 1917-1921[23]. Nevertheless, as Gerald Friesen notes, there was a discernible ideological divide within the Progressive movement, between the more ‘moderate’ reform ideology of those like Progressive Party Leader T.A. Crerar that was more popular in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and the more ‘radical’ reform ideology of Henry Wise Wood, which was strongest in Alberta[24]. It is likely that the CCA’s ‘New National Policy’ represented an acceptable compromise/baseline position linking these two ideological camps. To get a sense of the agrarian political ideology popular in Alberta though, we have to turn to a speech of Henry Wise Wood himself.

Wood delivered a speech on June 25^th 1921 at Medicine Hat, as part of a campaign to get UFA candidate Robert Gardiner elected as a federal MP in a by-election that was to be held on June 27^th (which Gardiner proceeded to win). In the speech, Wood unveils his rationale for why the farmers have to organize into a political force. He sees history as a long struggle between two basic laws, or principles, of social organization: the principle of competition and the principle of cooperation. Wood argues that the manufacturers had already learned to cooperate with each other through manufacturers’ associations and that by doing so; they have taken a big step “towards the establishment of a true civilization”. However, by cooperating among themselves, they are consequently able to compete very effectively against other, un-organized, economic classes of people. Wood does not see the possibility or desirability of forcing the manufacturers to stop cooperating with each other, so he thinks that the only thing to do is for the farmers, and other hitherto un-organized economic classes such as labour, to organize and “build a counter force”, organized on the strong basis of economic class interests[25]. When they do so, “the Plutocrats”, the already-organized rich manufacturers, will try to maintain “the false law of competition”, while “the Democrats”, who are “the unsuccessful competitors”, can “only hope to serve their best interests by the operation of the true law of co-operation”[26].

Thus, Wood’s implied criticism of classical liberal ideology is twofold. Firstly, he thinks that economic class warfare and political privileges are here to stay, thus to hope, as the classical liberals do, that people will stop pursuing them is idealistic. Rather, what one must do is join the class warfare with an organized group of your own economic class. Secondly, he thinks that universal ‘cooperation’, probably designating some kind of social democratic political arrangement, is better than the universal ‘competition’ that would exist in a free-market, classical liberal system anyway. Thus, a return to the classical liberal ideal is, according to Wood, both impossible and overly idealistic and, even if it were possible, would not be desirable anyway.

The speech of Robert Gardiner, the Federal MP Candidate himself, three days earlier on June 22^nd 1921, was not as philosophical as Wood’s. He essentially endorsed the ‘New National Policy’ wholesale and re-used a lot of the economic arguments against the tariff contained within that platform[27]. Also, he insisted that the platform he endorsed was “not a class platform”, arguing that it “embraces all classes except one – except that class which has been unmercifully exploiting us”[28].

Thus, the arguments contained in the ‘New National Policy’, as well as the more radical, philosophical arguments of Henry Wise Wood, were both used in Alberta to drum up support for the UFA/Progressive candidates in the 1921 Federal Election. The free-trade issue was not framed, as it was in 1911 by the Laurier Liberals, in the context of classical liberal ideology. Rather, it was framed more in the context of social democratic ideology, where it was presented as a way to advance the class interests of the hitherto disadvantaged and disorganized classes of people, rather than presented as a way to achieve the classical liberal ideal of the absence of special political privileges. Also, it was not associated with classical liberal calls for smaller government, but with social democratic calls for bigger government and economic egalitarianism, as seen in the ‘New National Policy’.

Thus, in conclusion, while support for free-trade policies remained a constant in most Albertans’ federal political stances, most other political variables were in flux, including the very political ideologies that calls for freer trade were grounded in. By recognizing this, historians of political ideas and movements can escape the temptation to oversimplify and just interpret the 1911 and 1921 elections as two similar instances of a free-trade oriented Alberta opposing itself to protectionism. Instead, we should recognize the complexities of Alberta’s political/ideological development between these two periods and not neglect the differences between the two elections in the popular, general political/ideological background of support for free-trade.

---

[1] Parliament of Canada, “12^th Parliament (1911 Election),” History of Federal Ridings Since 1867,

http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Parliament/FederalRidingsHistory/hfer.asp?Language=E&Search=Gres&genElection=12&ridProvince=1&submit1=Search

[2] O.D. Skelton, “Canada’s Rejection of Reciprocity,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 19, No. 9 (Nov. 1911), 728.

[3] Bradford James Rennie, The rise of Agrarian Democracy: the United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909-1921 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 205.

[4] Parliament of Canada, “14^th Parliament (1921 Election),” History of Federal Ridings Since 1867. http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Parliament/FederalRidingsHistory/hfer.asp?Language=E&Search=Gres&genElection=14&ridProvince=1&submit1=Search

[5] Henry Wise Wood, “Report of Speech Made by Mr. H.W.Wood, President, U.F.A., At the Empress Theatre. Medicine Hat. On Saturday, June 25^th 1921,” in Medicine Hat by-election speeches, from the Glenbow Archives, digitized by the Archives Society of Alberta, accessed February 19, 2013, p. 11. http://asalive.archivesalberta.org:8080/?proc=page&sess=ASALIVE-644-O_Ff5&dbase=documents_alberta&item=GLEN-257&page=8

In the speech, Wood, United Farmers of Alberta president says: “Labours’ interests are just as democratic as ours”, and hence they can be considered as political allies, but because farmers and labour have “a different view-point” due to their different economic positions, they should not be organized into one comprehensive group.

[6] Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Auburn, Alabama : Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 11.

[7] Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism In The Classical Tradition, 3^rd edition (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1985), 160.

[8] Wilfrid Laurier, “The Summation of the Defence,” in The 1911 General Election: A Study in Canadian Politics, ed. Paul Stevens (Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970), 50.

[9] Laurier, 59.

[10] Laurier, 59.

[11] W.S. Fielding, “Election Propaganda,” in The 1911 General Election: A Study in Canadian Politics, ed. Paul Stevens (Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970), 178.

[12] Rennie, 3-4.

[13] Rennie, 189-190.

[14] Canadian Council of Agriculture, The farmers’ platform: A new national policy for Canada as adopted by the Canadian Council of Agriculture at Winnipeg, on November 29, 1918 (Winnipeg: Canadian Council of Agriculture, 1918), accessed February 26, 2013,  p. 3. http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/4377/3.html

[15] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 4.

[16] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 6-13.

[17] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 14.

[18] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 4.

[19] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 5.

[20] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 33.

[21] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 36.

[22] Canadian Council of Agriculture, 36.

[23] Rennie, 206.

[24] Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 371-372.

[25] Wood, 11.

[26] Wood, 12-13.

[27] Robert Gardiner, “Report of Speech Made by Mr Gardiner, At the Empress Theatre. Medicine Hat. Wednesday June 22^nd 1921,” in Medicine Hat by-election speeches, from the Glenbow Archives, digitized by the Archives Society of Alberta, accessed February 19, 2013, p. 2-4.

http://asalive.archivesalberta.org:8080/?proc=page&sess=ASALIVE-644-O_Ff5&dbase=documents_alberta&item=GLEN-257&page=1

[28] Gardiner, 1.