A collection of essays on political philosophy that explains our views on things such as liberalism and capitalism. Written by Claus Volko.
The following synopsis is from the year 2019.
When Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor in 800, a period of political stability lasting about a thousand years followed. Stable in this context does not necessarily mean peaceful; there have been many wars. But the social order was clear, there was a spiritual hierarchy with the Pope at the top and a secular hierarchy with emperors, kings, princes and serfs at the bottom. This was also not doubted.
With the American Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, a republic arose on the North American continent in which all light-skinned citizens were free and equal. This was followed by the French Revolution, which transformed France into a republic of this kind. As with all revolutions, the French Revolution also contained the danger that a power-hungry sociopath could seize leadership in the country. This actually happened in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Napoleonic Wars led to the dissolution of the Holy German Nation; at the Congress of Vienna a post-war monarchist order was adopted. But the fire of the revolution was kindled; the nationalities in Hungary and other Austrian crown countries brought about "reconciliation". With the victory of the Germans in the Franco-German war of 1871, the second German Empire was finally founded, which now sought overseas colonies and was therefore perceived as a threat by the English in particular. The Englishmen, who at that time ruled the founding world empire of all time, joined forces with the French and the Russians against the Germans. The tensions increased, and it was clear that they would eventually unload. When the Austrian heir to the throne was murdered in 1914, a chain reaction of mutual declarations of war led to the First World War.
The result of the war was that Germany, Austria and Russia became republics or a Soviet republic. Large parts of Europe were now republican. However, the democratic system proved unstable, with dictators coming to power in many of the young republics. Dissatisfaction with the Versailles peace dictatorship, which had brought much hardship and misery to the German population, led to Hitler's election as Reich Chancellor. He started the Second World War, a consistent continuation of the First World War.
When Germany was defeated once again, the winners divided Europe; the communist-ruled Soviet Union, which had emerged from the Russian tsarist empire, wanted to increase its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. After all, almost the entire Eastern bloc was under Soviet yoke; the border between East and West ran through the middle of Germany. At the same time the construction of NATO and the European communities began in the West.
1989 brought the turning point; predominantly peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe brought about the resignation of the communist governments and the holding of free elections. In the 1990s, the European Communities were transformed into the European Union, which also Austria joined; the common currency, the Euro, was introduced in 2002, and from 2004 the accession of Eastern European countries to the Union followed. Then, however, in 2008, the great financial crisis came, triggered by irresponsible business in the United States - banks had given loans to private individuals for the construction of homes, although they knew that they would never repay the loans, and resold these loans to unsuspecting European banks. In addition, there was the sovereign debt crisis, which particularly affected countries such as Portugal, Italy and Greece; Greece had even joined the euro zone without meeting the so-called Maastricht criteria.
The next crisis followed in 2015 with the mass influx of refugees, although the phenomenon of mass influx is nothing new; it already existed in the 1990s (Balkan wars). Overall, there was a strengthening of European-critical, "right-wing populist" parties, and Great Britain even voted in favour of leaving the Union ("Brexit").
At the moment there is a clear picture that Europe's leading politicians have no visions. They only have problems and are trying to react, but they don't know where the journey is going. While Helmut Kohl was still talking about a political union to follow the Monetary Union, there only a small party in Austria that still speaks of the "United States of Europe".
When an industrial working class formed in the cities in the 19th century, various theorists thought about how politics could be pursued in the interests of the working class. Karl Marx was the most radical thinker of all, and that will also be the reason why most politicians oriented themselves to his variant of socialism.
According to Marx, socialism means two things:
1) Socialism is a form of government in which the proletariat exerts domination ("dictatorship of the proletariat").
2) Socialism is a form of society in which there is no private ownership of means of production. This means that all enterprises are in the hands of the state.
Marx regarded socialism as a preliminary stage to communism. While in socialism everyone is obliged to work according to his abilities and is paid according to his performance, in communism everyone is paid according to his needs.
The basic idea of Karl Marx was by no means to improve the world. On the contrary, he wanted everyone to feel the same (equally bad). This idea alone is worth rejecting.
Socialism is an attempt by the state to intervene in the economy and society to mitigate or even eliminate certain aspects of the natural course of things. The fact that the state is used as the main instrument for this, however, already reveals the weaknesses of socialism. The state is nothing other than a system of rule based on the threat of violence. Moreover, if a tyrant wants to be taken seriously, he must not be afraid to draw the consequences, i.e. to use force, if he violates the rules he has laid down. This is the reason why socialism, every time it has been implemented in a country, has caused thousands, if not millions, of deaths and will continue to do so in the future, should such an attempt be made again.
Communism is in principle nothing other than state capitalism. Thus communism has all of the known problems that are associated with capitalism itself, and also the enormous disadvantage that there is a monopolist, namely the state. Communism is therefore by no means an alternative to a market economy system.
In his major work "Nationalökonomie - Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaftens" (published in 1940, but still topical), the Austrian scholar Ludwig von Mises dedicates a chapter to the subject of "polylogism". What is meant here is the assertion that there is no universal logic inherent in humanity, but rather many different logics that are characteristic of certain population groups. The thesis of polylogism was propagated by both Marxists and National Socialists. The Marxists thought logic was class specific, and the National Socialists thought it was race specific. Mises, on the other hand, is of the opinion that all people would in principle think according to the same patterns and act according to the same patterns; differences only exist to the extent that some people might not be able to grasp all conceivable thought processes.
According to Mises, Marxism is absurd because from the Marxist point of view one can "refute everything and prove nothing". For from a Marxist perspective, Marxism itself should actually be seen as a form of bourgeois logic. And thus it would lead itself ad absurdum.
It may be that as Western Europe's culularisation progresses, it will become increasingly difficult for future generations to understand the phenomenon of real existing socialism in the former Eastern bloc.
For centuries, Eastern Europe had been shaped by Christianity. The ruling aristocrats used faith to legitimize their rule. It was clear to revolutionaries like Lenin that they would only have a chance of success if they had a substitute religion that could replace Christianity. Marxism became this substitute religion. Precisely because Marxism took on the role of Christianity in the Eastern bloc, it was punishably forbidden there to doubt statements that came from Marx, Engels or Lenin, even if they were as stupid and ill-considered as they might have been.
That the 1968 movement also turned to Marxism may be due to the fact that even in 1968 religion still played a major role in Western Europe.
Perhaps in the long run, due to the increasing proportion of Muslims in the population, secularisation will eventually come to an end.
For many people of our time the term "liberal" unfortunately has negative connotations because they associate it with extreme measures such as the abolition of the welfare state or the complete deregulation of the economy.
In reality, however, liberalism means among other things:
1. The rule of law, i.e. protection from state arbitrariness.
2. Separation of powers in the state apparatus.
3. The granting by the State of fundamental rights and freedoms (right to private property, right to life and limb, right to freedom of expression, etc.).
4. Self-realization as a recognized goal of each individual.
These are all points that have to do with a liberal philosophy of life. In other ideologies these things play no or only a subordinate role. In Real Existing Socialism there was neither separation of powers nor the rule of law.
According to the constitution - thanks to Hans Kelsen! - Austria is a liberal democracy. That is why all parties are obliged to be faithful to certain basic liberal principles. But only with decidedly liberal parties one can be reasonably sure that they will not betray these principles.
There are two main types of people who claim to have a non-Marxist worldview. Some call themselves conservatives, others liberals.
Many theorists think of terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" as doctrines of some kind, such as that conservatives want to maintain existing social hierarchies and leave privileges to the privileged, while liberals want to stand up for social advancement and Marxists want to make everyone equal. However, it must be remembered that in practice these concepts mean quite different, tangible things:
Anyone under a Conservative's thumb must wear a tie, shirt and jacket. Many find this repulsive for aesthetic reasons. In addition, a conservative in Austria must follow a particular religion, celebrate Christmas and Easter, ideally go to church every Sunday and pray in the evening and before lunch. Many find this repulsive for personal and ideological reasons. Furthermore, a true conservative must marry the first woman he likes and have children with her, because sex before marriage is a taboo and sex in marriage must only serve reproductive purposes.
Liberals, on the other hand, do not dictate to anyone how to lead their lives, and only adhere to those social norms which they themselves consider to be meaningful and correct.
"Neoliberalism" is a combat term created by Marxists to associate - quite questionable - economic excesses with the idea of liberalism, against which no one with common sense can object.
Basically, the use of the term "neoliberalism" by Marxists borders on slander.
Many supporters of the liberal movement have decided to become politically active because they believe that it is not good for the state if public debt continues to grow. After all, at some point they will have to be paid back. The other parties often give the impression that they have no serious efforts to reduce the mountain of debt.
From the state's point of view, public debt has been particularly problematic since we have had the euro, because the state has now been deprived of the opportunity to pull itself out of the affair by printing banknotes. It should be noted, however, that the printing of banknotes would in any case be a bad thing from the point of view of the citizens, because the expansion of the money supply could lead to an increase in inflation. The euro therefore forces us to budget discipline - an advantage from a liberal point of view.
Liberals assume that there is a natural right. So that every human being is naturally entitled to certain rights, for example: Right to life, right to freedom of expression, right to property. From a liberal point of view, there can be no discussion about this. These rights must be guaranteed by law by the state apparatus. This natural right still stands above agreements that have been democratically established. Under no circumstances may a law be passed that contradicts natural law, even if a majority votes for it.
At school we hear a lot about democracy, but very little about the liberal principles on which our constitution is based. Liberalism is in fact even more important than democratism. Think, for example, of democracy in ancient Athens and its extensions (keyword: ostracism). Only the liberal constitution forbids such referendums on the life of an individual human being.
"The economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out that countries with socialised or nationalised production are not as wealthy as countries where production is in private hands."
This quotation comes from the Wikipedia. A PDF file (unfortunately removed in the meantime) on the Hoppe website was cited as the source.
In 1989, when I was six years old, I was able to get an idea of the poverty of Central and Eastern Europe with my own eyes. In this respect, Hoppe's argument is a matter of course for me - but perhaps not for younger people.
In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 11 April 2009 there is an article in the feuilleton with the headline "Wie der Markt wirklich sozial wird" (How the market really becomes social) about the "inventor of the social market economy", a certain Mr. Müller-Armack. This article quotes two interesting references from his book:
"From the point of view of freedom, the market economy should still be preferable even if its economic performance is lower than that of economic governance. This is in no way the case, as we can see, but it seems necessary to point out that the last criterion for an economic order rests also in the spiritual and not in the economic alone."
Capitalism is not a "system", but a natural human behaviour. This is the main misunderstanding of many Marxists. However, natural human behavior naturally has its flaws and can lead to unexpected side effects. But the "solutions" proposed by Marx are not; Ludwig von Mises already gave a theoretical explanation in the 1920s as to why socialism would not work, and history has now told us that all previous attempts to implement socialism have led to millions of deaths and not a single one to lasting economic prosperity.
In my opinion, the debate between capitalism and socialism is somewhat outdated. The reason for this is that capitalism is not a system. Rather than being a system, capitalism is a natural human behaviour resulting from the circumstances in which we live (limited resources, limited access to resources, etc.). Socialism can be described as a system, but it is not a system that replaces capitalism; it is only a system of intervention and violence with the intention of changing property relations and restricting human freedom. Even in a socialist country there is a kind of capitalism, at least to some extent, because what is called capitalism is actually, as I said, natural human behaviour.
Marxist-oriented politicians, who still say that their goal is the "overcoming" of capitalism, have apparently not yet realized what I said above.
Personally, I prefer as little intervention and coercion as possible. There is no "coercion" without "violence" - the English have recognized that, so there is a word for both things in their language, "force". Violence is a bad thing that I think should be avoided at all costs; it should at least be used as an "Ultima Ratio" when there is no other possibility.
Life is not about work, life is about access to the resources necessary for survival. Ideally, it is also about access to resources that improve and make happy the quality of life (you could call them "luxury goods"). It does not matter how one can gain access to these things unless one behaves unsocially, i.e. treats and exploits other people unfairly without giving them anything to return.
I do not share the socialist view that all people should be employed and gainfully employed. People should work when they want to work, but not because they are forced to. Of course, many have no alternative to access to resources than through paid work. But the idea that everyone should be employed and work, even if (for whatever reason) they were able to sustain themselves and lead a happy life without working, is in my opinion inhumane, to say the least.
Artificial intelligence and robotics represent a real challenge as they will make many jobs obsolete. We need to think about ways to organize society and make a living for people, even if people of many professions are replaced by machines. Altruism is called for; it will no longer be enough just to take care of oneself. We will have to work out solutions together, in cooperation, not in competition.
In short, the Austrian Social Democrats are absolutely right when they say that it is not just about the absolute wealth of a country, but also about how it is distributed. But socialism is not a solution.
The following essay is from 2018 and was written by the author shortly after the election of Ms Rendi-Wagner as the new chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party of Austria.
The political left - whatever that may be; we will devote ourselves later to an attempt at a definition - is in crisis, and has been so for some time, since, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The collapse of the Eastern bloc has led the population to believe that Karl Marxens teachings have been definitively refuted; the classic recipes of the left have failed, that they cannot work. Although Marxism was by no means historically the only variety of socialism that existed, for some reason it had largely established itself within the political left - probably because it was the most radical of all. This Marxist monoculture led, in the eyes of many observers, to a refutation of socialism as a whole after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The only question that arose was what alternatives the left-wing parties, which had always presented themselves as the representatives of the interests of the workers, now had. In Austria, there was still a party in power in the nineties that initially called itself socialist, but no longer pursued Marxist politics; after all, Marx's teaching also included the "abolition of private ownership of means of production," that is, the nationalization of all enterprises. But what the SPÖ did in the 1990s was exactly the opposite: the privatization of numerous state-owned enterprises took place. This was the reason why Chancellor and party leader Vranitzky decided to rename the SPÖ from "socialist" to "social democratic". But the exact difference between "socialism" and "social democracy" remained open. Only the turning away from the orthodox Marxist doctrine was a fact that could not be denied.
In my view, the crisis of the political left is such that, although they are no longer prepared to understand Marx's teachings, they have not yet formed a new foundation capable of supporting a movement dedicated to representing the interests of workers. In addition, the political right has largely taken over opinion leadership in the print media. Here in Austria, for example, many people have allowed themselves to be misled by the views of Andreas Unterberger; under the Federal Chancellor Werner Faymann who belonged to the SPÖ, this man was even editor-in-chief of the Wiener Zeitung, the official organ of the Republic. Was there no man on the left in the camp with comparable abilities who could become editor-in-chief of the Wiener Zeitung under an SPÖ-chancellor like Unterberger? I suspect that I was not the only one to ask myself this question.
This text is intended as an attempt to give new foundations to the political left as a representation of the interests of the economically active population.
Marx has written that in human society since ancient times there has always been a class of people who have ruled and exploited another class.
The modern nation states of today have their basis in the Middle Ages. At that time they were still association states. The actual rulers were the sovereigns, whose private ownership the respective countries were de facto. This property also included the people who lived in these countries - they were serfs.
This feudal system faded away only with the Enlightenment and later with the burgeoning liberalism of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution created a working class in the cities that was de jure "free", but de facto wage-dependent. Working and living conditions prevailed which are hardly imaginable in this country today: Job-work between two and sixteen hours a day, plus hunger, which was just enough to survive; it was not possible for ordinary workers to call on capital and prosperity through thrift. The early Socialists thought about how these economic dependencies could be mitigated, thus extending their thinking beyond liberalism, which was only concerned with the abolition of political dependencies.
There wasn't just one, there were different socialisms. Don't forget, for example, that the ideology of the German SPD is primarily to be found in Lassalle and not in Marx. The fact that so many socialists later referred to Marx may be due to the fact that Marx was the most radical thinker of all.
After the two world wars, the world was divided into a capitalist West and a communist East. Although socialist parties were temporarily in power in the West in some countries as well, no ruler of a Western country seriously questioned the basic order of a market economy.
The "real existing socialism" of the East collapsed partly because of the horrendous national debt; the governments of these countries were simply no longer able to service their creditors. But anyone who believes that the peaceful revolutions in the East came about spontaneously without the influence of the West must be quite naïve.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States of America in particular has been forcing globalization. New markets are to be opened up, customs dismantled and free trade agreements signed with as many states as possible. The European Union should also be seen in this context. The dividing line between the various political strands has shifted in part from "employee-friendly versus employer-friendly" to "globalists versus advocates of nation-state solutions", with some of these boundaries passing through the parties.
A second recent development is increasing automation and digitization. The enormous progress that Artificial Intelligence has made in the last five years raises many questions. Will not only manual workers but also academics soon be replaced by machines? Will education still protect us from unemployment in the future? What perspective do we want to give to those people who "nobody needs anymore"? These are precisely the issues that responsible politicians should take care of. In this respect, it may no longer be quite contemporary if the left concentrated only on the working people.
My personal definition of "left" policy is: it is a policy that primarily benefits the broad mass of working people, especially those working people who do not have their own private property in means of production. Secondly, there is politics that seeks to overcome the opposition between the "ruling" class and the "serving" class: All people should at least be equal before the law; it would be ideal if they also met each other in real life on equal terms.
The fact is that there is a Babylonian linguistic diversity in the political discourse. Only recently I read a book by the former German SPD politician Peter Glotz in which he wrote that under "links" he understood, among other things: advocacy for the rule of law and human rights, democracy instead of tyranny, rational thinking and acting. These are all things that I, as a liberal, also advocate and which I had until then rather classified under the term "liberalism". Obviously, terms like "left", "right" and "liberal" are obviously blurred; it could easily be that someone who sees himself as a left thinks in reality just like someone who sees himself as a liberal, and the only difference is that the two people use different terminologies.
The end of the Cold War has, as one can often read in the media, brought about an age of a new performance orientation. This means that criteria such as "efficiency" are playing an increasingly important role in the economy; attempts are being made to "optimise" processes in and around the company; employees are regarded as "human resources", not as people; employees can be exchanged or dismissed at will when they are no longer needed. Often the keyword "social coldness" is also used.
The fact is that many commentators wrote after the fall of the Berlin Wall that it was now finally proven that socialism would not work. It has been forgotten, however, that public debt is also a major problem in Western countries; as the example of Greece showed a few years ago, even a country fundamentally governed by market principles can become insolvent and ungovernable. However, it seems to me that the collapse of the Eastern bloc was simply a pretext for many right-wing political forces to push through their agenda.
What unites rights in all heterogeneity is the rejection of the view that all people are equal (at least before the law). Thus it is clear that even a New Left must first and foremost push the principle of equality (before the law). But at the same time it must not leave the principle of freedom to the rights without a fight. The simple equation "left is equality, right is freedom" is too simple to be true or to be allowed to be true. Because: Inequality is by no means synonymous with freedom - on the contrary! In the end, serfs are anything but free people.
If, for example, the social democracy in Austria attaches the four values "freedom, equality, justice, solidarity" to its flags, then at least in principle it is already on the right track.
It is not enough for the left to position itself as an antithesis to so-called "neoliberalism" (a Marxist combat term). One must not only be against something, one must also be for something. But: one can argue, for example, that "efficiency" is not the decisive factor; what is decisive is rather effectiveness. What counts is what comes out in the end. The means used to achieve this end are secondary (as long as they are admissible). The disadvantage of trying to achieve the highest possible "efficiency" and "optimisation" of work processes is that it puts pressure on the participants, creates stress, causes illness and thus weakens the performance of the participants, so that in the end the result is often worse than if you had not tried to achieve "efficiency".
In order to counter the view of people as "human resources" with something, the New Left must gain clarity about its own image of man; it must perceive man as a holistic being to whom not only the will to perform and the ability to perform are added; the main thing is that the human being is not only a person's will and ability to perform, but also his or her needs, wishes, desires, and desires; people have both "brains" and "hearts," everyone has different interests and passions; one cannot reduce people to qualifications and lifelong aspirations alone. The question arises as to whether changes in the school system might be necessary in order to focus on the aspects of being human that have been neglected so far.
A New Left must also take to heart what many liberals are burning for, namely that people like to have the freedom to think for themselves, to think about everything possible of their own and also to express it, put it on paper or discuss it with other people. Freedom of expression must not be allowed only within a narrow "framework". If the New Left is committed to tolerance, then it must also tolerate strongly divergent opinions, which some readers, emotionally speaking, could bring "to the palm of their hand". Admittedly, this does not mean that the New Left should refrain from regaining opinion leadership in the media. It should only be clear to itself that liberal parties are also supported by those who have nothing to do with meaning and what Marxists call "neoliberalism", and who would certainly be willing to support a coalition government with left-wing parties if they were more "open to the world" and "tolerant" of "strangers".
The New Left must also think about all those who are unable to participate actively in the acquisition process, whether because of a disability or simply because they cannot find employment. It has already been demanded from many sides to introduce an "unconditional basic income". I don't want to say that this idea of wisdom is the last conclusion, but it is at least to think about how to make a humane existence possible for those excluded from the acquisition process. In any case, it is untruthful to claim that the welfare state is unaffordable: in fact, state social benefits currently account for only a fraction of the budget; much more money is spent on pensions than on social welfare.
It is also a fact that Marx's demand for the "abolition of private ownership of means of production" has become obsolete. If the state were really the only employer, from an employee's point of view it would have enormous disadvantages: if for some reason it were to make fun of its superior, it would have no chance of switching to another employer. That alone is reason enough, in my view, to finally say goodbye to Marxism.
Marx's demand for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" must also be rejected. It may well be that he did not necessarily mean a dictatorship of Soviet influence, but simply that the working class should take power in the state. Basically, however, I find it unacceptable that anyone should rule anyone else. The principle of rule should at best be replaced by the principle of leadership: A leader is someone who, through his personal example, shows other people what a good way of life looks like. No one should dominate anyone; there should at most be people who serve others as role models and thus offer them guidance.
In addition, the New Left must be clear whether it supports or opposes globalisation. Disagreement can be observed in this respect. Some leftists, such as Hans-Peter Martin or parts of the Green Party, are very critical of globalisation. Others, on the other hand, seem to be open to it, perhaps because one wants to distance oneself from the nationally minded right. As long as there are still nation states, the Left should insist that national law be observed in the international movement of goods and money, i.e. that the taxes incurred in a country are actually paid in that country. From the Left's point of view, at any rate, the abolition of interstate differences must not be at the expense of employees. That is clear.
If one takes into account the points I have mentioned, then one has laid the foundations of a New Left that can claim to represent the rights of the working population without resorting to Marxist recipes.
The following essay is from the year 2011.
Even if most people consider "freedom" a good thing: The term liberalism - the ideology with the primary aim being to help people get more freedom - does not always arouse positive assocations. The reason for this is that since the 1990s, the media have often claimed "neoliberalism" to be the cause for an increase in social insecurity. Neoliberalism is understood to be a radical focus on economic issues, and neoliberal politicians are supposed to care more about the profit margins of big companies than the provision of less fortunate people with vital goods. This neoliberalism is made responsible for an increasing reduction of social welfare. Occasionally liberals are reproached for advocating a dog-eat-dog society in which everybody cares for themselves and the weak ones perish. In this context the term "social darwinism" is sometimes mentioned. Social darwinism is the ideology postulating that society should be designed in such a way that the natural selection processes discovered by Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) take effect. In the following essay I want to show that even radical liberals are not social darwinists although it is possible that consistent implementation of liberal policies without consideration of the social component might lead to a social darwinist society. The conclusion is that if liberal parties get a majority one day, they will also have to take care of social problems. But as long as the liberals are a minority group, other issues might have priority.
It is certainly admissible to state that the liberal way of thinking stems from the urge to develop freely without having to consider social forces and repressions. In our society there are limits to free development. Already as children, we are forbidden to do certain things by our parents, and a couple of years later the state-run educational process begins, which has a definite influence on the next few years of our lives. Obligations and bans dominate the lives of infants. And as soon as you are mature, nothing will change. Whatever you do, you have to take care of laws invented by people and enacted by state authorities. If you ignore them, you risk breaking a law and getting punished for that.
The primary aim of liberal politics is to reduce the legal limits to free development. Liberalism is an attempt to change the rules of the game on a political level in such a way that free development and self-actualization of individuals are supported. Of course liberalism is only a piece of a puzzle in a person's struggle for personal freedom. To actually demand this freedom, is up to the individual. Politics only defines the legal frame.
In classical liberalism, which got popular in Central and Western Europe in the 19th century, government was considered the source of all unfreedom. Back then Europe was ruled by absolute monarchies and the crowned heads of state had a lot of power over their subjects. As the emperors and kings were able to do what they wanted, and thus restrict other people's freedom, it is understandable that classical liberals were primarily interested in the adoption of a constitution which restricted the rights of the monarch and granted all citizens basic rights such as the right to life and property. Classical liberalism mostly focvused on "negative" freedom, such as the freedom from force, paternalism and arbitrariness. This is different from some political movements which consider themselves modern liberals and demand "positive" freedom, such as scholarships which would allow people from less privileged classes to study at university. While the classical liberals of the 19th century were principally opposed to the state, some who consider themselves modern liberals view the state as an instrument that may help people obtain freedom.
Nowadays there are various political movements which consider their roots to be in liberalism. They differ in their concrete goals. Apart from "modern liberalism", which mostly addresses the portions of the US American population that would vote for social democratic parties if they were Europeans, there are also movements which disapprove of governmental interference in the economy. One of them is the libertarian movement. The radical opposition towards government which the libertarian ideology is based on includes a total rejection of social welfare. That is the reason why radical forms of liberalism are sometimes considered to be related to social darwinism.
After Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", other 19th century thinkers applied Darwin's ideas about natural selection on human society. One of them was Francis Galton (1822 - 1911), a cousin of Darwin's and the author of "Hereditary Genius". Galton was of the opinion that intellectual abilities and personality attributes which made individuals outstanding people had a genetic basis and were present in young people from all walks of life. Therefore the educational system should identify and support these talents already at an early stage. A generous system of scholarships should allow gifted young people to pursue studies which would enable them to get a professional occupation in which they could fully unfold their talents.
Galton's line of thinking so far resembles "modern liberalism": The government should help gifted youngsters to actualize their positive freedom. However, Galton not only reasoned about education. He was also interested in "improving" the population itself by increasing the number of gifted people. This was supposed to be achieved by means that would make gifted people reproduce earlier and more often than less talented ones. A basic element of Galton's plan was the abolition of social welfare. In this way people unable to sustain themselvs should be hindered from reproduction. Instead, they should live in celibatary monastries.
These ideas of Galton's are considered the root of eugenics. Many scholars in all of Europe and even more in the United States adopted them. Consequently politicians enacted measures to hinder people with undesired features from reproduction, such as compulsory sterilization of mentally handicapped people. Even in Northern Europe and Switzerland such measures were implemented until the 1970s.
Of course compulsory sterilization is not compatible with liberalism since they are restrictions to personal freedom. What some people reproach liberals for is social darwinist tendencies in the following sense: People who are able and willing to work can make a good living, while those who are not perish.
Consistent classical liberalism may lead to a society resembling social darwinism. For this reason it is legitimate to pose the question whether liberals are social darwinists.
From what I wrote about the nature of liberalism, no demand for implementation of natural selection in human society follows. The demand for more individual freedom and the wish for self-actualization do not imply that anybody wants to harm anybody else. Natural selection may only be a possible consequence of a radically liberal social order.
However, you have to pay attention to the fact that consistent liberalism includes the freedom to help other people. This is not desired by social darwinists. Social darwinists would want to forbid helping other people as it would harm his aim to exterminate the less fortunate. For this reason a social darwinist cannot be a liberal, and so a liberal cannot be a social darwinnist. The question whether liberals are social darwinists must hence be answered with a clear no.
Another question is whether some people who claim to be liberals are actually social darwinists. In Austria there is a party named Liberal Forum, which political opponents often call "left-liberal". One of the reasons for this may be that the Liberal Forum proposes a basic income for all grown-up persons which they should receive no matter whether they are employed or not. Some people consider this non-liberal, while as a matter of fact it was the liberal economist Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006) who made this idea popular. A basic income enables people to live without existential worries. Since basic income makes some types of social welfare, such as unemployment benefit, obsolete, administration costs can be reduced. This is a pleasant side-effect which economic-oriented observes sometimes forget. The only admissible criticism from a liberal perspective is that it is a government measure. If you consider government as the ultimate enemy or even want to abolish it as some radical liberals desire, the introduction of basic income is inconsistent. But most classical liberals do not desire the total abolition of government. They only want to reduce the influence of government in areas that endanger individual freedom.
With this essay I managed to show that it is not legitimate to call liberals social darwinists while it is in theory possible that a radically liberal society would have social darwinist traits. For this reason liberal politicians have to ponder over how to organize an efficient and fair social system. The idea of basic income seems quite reasonable to me.
This short essay is from the year 2025.
Now I'm going to try to look at the big picture. In what direction is this world developing?
Migration is likely to have the greatest impact. Masses of people from developing countries are coming to industrialized nations. This is because, although living conditions in their home countries have improved in recent decades, they still do not meet local standards. In addition, there are conflicts in their home countries, some of which are violent. The effect is a change in the composition of the population, accompanied by a decline in the birth rate among the native population. Effectively, white Europeans will be only a very small minority worldwide in the future. It is questionable whether the standard of living in Western countries will be able to be maintained in the face of this demographic change, because immigrants often do not have the necessary cognitive abilities to learn and practice demanding professions. This raises the question of whether, for example, the US will simply develop into another Latin American country.
Another key issue is the imperialist policies of authoritarian states such as Russia and China. These challenge the globalism of the West. China already has more influence than America and Europe in parts of Africa and Asia. The world will once again split into blocs.
Finally, climate change raises the question of whether our lifestyle can be sustained at all. We must not forget that resources are running out. We are consuming more than we are rebuilding. This cannot continue in the long term.
However, technological innovations, especially artificial intelligence, could bring about a change in that cognitive abilities will become less important in professional life. Other skills will become more important instead. Ultimately, this will also have an impact on the composition of the population. Future generations may be less intelligent, but they will be stronger.
A statement from 2019.
Dear people,
it says a lot about the situation of this world that nowadays also classic-liberal or libertarian weblogs, if they are perceived by the mainstream at all, are often called "right-wing populist". Anyone who has dealt a little with the history of political ideas knows that liberalism is an ideology that as such contains no nationalist or xenophobic ideas. But liberalism is not "left". The mainstream is "left", and everything that is not "left" is either ignored or fought by it. And of course it is easiest to defame what is not "left" as "right" or "right-wing populist".
We now live in a time in which freedom of opinion is allowed as long as one represents the "correct" opinions. Which opinions are to be regarded as "correct" is decided by the catalogue of "political correctness". State media are committed to this catalogue of opinions; who is ultimately behind it can only be conjectured. Roland Baader once wrote that socialism is an infectious mental illness - in other words, whoever this whole thing started from, there are now so many who have been infected with this virus that the whole thing has developed into a self-runner.
It is quite clear that anyone who is classically liberal or even libertarian and stands by his opinions is a dissident. He has to reckon with reprisals accordingly. Those who don't keep their own opinions behind them live dangerously. That's how it is, and has always been. Only with the difference that in the course of time it has changed which opinions are considered desirable by the authorities and which are not.
It already says a lot that the term "liberalism" is not taught in our schools, although our country is supposed to be a "liberal democracy" according to its constitution. Instead, much of what is actually the fruit of liberalism is attributed to democracy, denying that democracy in the truest sense of the word is in itself a form of rule, namely the rule of the majority of the people over the minority.
The fact that the real-political situation could, of course, be described more as a multi-party dictatorship is also a fact that one normally only dares to pronounce behind closed mouths.
Long live the world of alternative media, long live alternative communication channels in which social fringe groups organize themselves and lead a free life beyond the rules of the rulers, at least as far as it is possible!
Let us use the technical possibilities to create our own worlds!
The education system in the western industrial countries is designed for mass production of labour that can be used in the work process. The same curriculum is presented to thousands of people in the same age group. Those who can cope with it get ahead in the system, those who cannot get along with it fall out and have to look for alternatives. However, individuality is only provided for at university level, where students are able to compile their own study plan for an individual diploma course and have it approved by a commission. Why not start with first grade elementary school?
The economy needs workers who meet certain profiles. The system is based on coercion and in principle contemptuous of human beings, because it repeatedly produces graduates who have no chance on the labour market and who are often looking for a job for months or years after graduation. It is clear why individual diploma studies are the exception: most students consider themselves to have better chances if they correspond to a given profile. However, many do not consider that the most adapted are also the most interchangeable.
The education system demands but does not guarantee success on the labour market. In the worst case, one sacrifices one's entire youth for the occupation with things that do not interest one, and stands afterwards on the street. In addition, individual talents and talents are not sufficiently developed.
My vision is an individual education programme from the age at which you normally attend first grade primary school. Those who know from the outset that they want to work in a profession in which they do not have to be able to read and write do not have to learn.
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