Imposing Values: An Essay on Liberalism and Regulation (Oxford Political Philosophy)

505 Pages·2009·0.98 MB·English

by  N Scott Arnold

IMPOSING VALUES
OXFORD POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
General Editor: Samuel Freeman
University of Pennsylvania
Oxford Political Philosophy publishes books on theoretical and app-
lied political philosophy within the Anglo-American tradition. The
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vidual rights, democracy, liberalism, socialism, and constitutionalism.
N. Scott Arnold
Imposing Values: An Essay on Liberalism and Regulation
IMPOSING VALUES
An Essay on Liberalism and Regulation
N. Scott Arnold
1
2009
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arnold, N. Scott.
Imposing values : an essay on liberalism and regulation / N. Scott Arnold.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-19-537496-4
1. Liberalism. 2. Deregulation. I. Title.
JC574.A75 2009
320.51'3—dc22 2008029351
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To My Father
There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety
or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested.
People decide according to their personal preferences. Some,
whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied,
would willingly instigate the government to undertake the
business, while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social
evil rather than add one to the departments of human interests
amenable to governmental control.
—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Preface
Perhaps the most basic and fundamental question of politi-
cal philosophy concerns the moral justifi cation for the state.
Why should there be government? And if there should be govern-
ment, what kind of government should it be, and what should be its
proper scope? The question of the proper scope of government is an
enduring one in liberal polities and has a salience that it does not
have in societies where the line circumscribing the legitimate role of
the state is drawn as an afterthought. This is because liberals of all
persuasions believe that there are certain areas of social life that are
and ought to be off limits to government.
A philosophically adequate response to the question of the proper
role of government would seem to require an argument from fi rst prin-
ciples. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argues for the Harm Principle,
which says that the only legitimate grounds for social coercion is to
prevent harm to others. The argument of that book is of course utili-
tarian. If Mill were asked why utilitarian considerations should be
determinative, he would refer the questioner to Utilitarianism, specif-
ically chapter 4, “Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Sus-
ceptible.” In this way, his answer to the question of the proper scope
of government is rooted in deeper political, and ultimately moral,
principles. As a philosopher, my fi rst inclination was to approach
the subject matter of this book in this way. I soon recognized, how-
ever, that whatever answer I gave to any of these deeper philosophical
questions would be unlikely to be persuasive to those inclined to dis-
agree with me about the proper scope of government. Another strat-
egy suggested itself, but it required that I resist the impulse to try to
answer fundamental philosophical questions. Instead, a more modest
goal might be to seek agreement among my fellow liberals, leaving to
others the task of justifying more fundamental principles.
As I understand it (and as defended in chapter 1), to be a liberal
involves a commitment to limited constitutional government, which
in turn involves a belief in equal liberty, democratic governance, and
viii PREFACE
a more or less free market in which most of the means of production
are privately owned. Although many parts of the world are ruled by
illiberal governments, Western (and some Asian) societies are not,
and it is for members of these societies that this book is written. Fur-
thermore, although there are many immigrants from nonliberal polit-
ical traditions living in contemporary Western societies, liberalism
remains, in one form or another, the dominant ideology in the West.
There is an important sense in which “there’s no one here but us liber-
als,” though that may change in the future. This in turn permits a use-
ful discussion about the proper scope of a liberal state, which would
not be possible if fi rst principles were up for discussion. Besides, the
resolution of the deepest disputes in political philosophy are, how
shall we say, a long way off.
As I began to write this book, I cast it in terms intended to cover
all liberal societies but soon recognized that this would not work.
I had to come down from the level of philosophical abstraction at
which I am accustomed to writing and talk at the level of particular
policies and laws. Since I know U.S. society best, that became my
topic, though it should be accessible and (I hope) of interest to non-
Americans as well. Still, this is a very ambitious project.
The fi rst four chapters are intended to be a comprehensive survey of
the differences between classical liberalism and modern liberalism
regarding the proper scope of government. Chapter 1 offers a prelimi-
nary characterization of classical liberalism and modern liberalism
and explains the main areas of agreement between them. Although all
liberals believe in limited constitutional government, classical liber-
als are inclined to favor a more limited role for government, whereas
modern liberals are inclined to favor a more extensive role for govern-
ment. This is aptly captured in the epigraph to this book from Mill’s
On Liberty. Chapter 2 begins a discussion of these differences. Classi-
cal liberals and modern liberals differ on the extent to which the state
should own productive assets in an essentially private enterprise
economy. It turns out, however, that these differences are not deep:
classical liberals do not oppose all state ownership of productive
assets, and modern liberals are open to privatizinggovernment-owned
assets and indeed have supported the latter. Deeper (philosophical)
differences are to be found regarding tax policy and transfer pro-
grams, however. I argue that modern liberalism presupposes a form of
social ownership of productive assets even though, at the end of the
day, they favor private property in (most) of the means of p roduction.
PREFACE ix
A presupposition of social ownership best explains modern liberal
attitudes and beliefs about tax policy and transfer policy. These
include, but are not limited to, redistributive taxation and transfer
programs. Classical liberals, by contrast, believe that property rights
in the fi rst instance reside with private parties, either on grounds of
natural rights or on utilitarian grounds. Government has the right to
take some of that property—classical liberals are not anarchists—but
government is much more constrained in what it may legitimately do
in the name of tax policy and in transfer programs than in the modern
liberal vision. In keeping with my methodology, I make no effort to
resolve this philosophical difference.
Chapter 3 outlines the points of agreement and disagreement
between modern and classical liberals on the extent to which owner-
ship rights should be restricted by the state through regulation. Prop-
erty is a complex of rights, terms, and conditions, and there are major
and systematic differences between classical liberalism and modern
liberalism about what regulatory restrictions they will countenance.
Chapters 1 through 3 constitute a comprehensive statement of the
points of agreement and disagreement between classical liberals and
modern liberals about the proper role or scope of the government in
modern U.S. society. One of the purposes of this book is to articulate
a range of plausible forms of classical liberalism. It is unfortunate that
classical liberalism has typically been identifi ed with libertarianism.
Libertarians believe that the sole legitimate function of government
is to protect and enforce people’s rights to life, liberty, and property.
Some libertarians also allow that the state can legitimately supply
some public goods. Classical liberalism need not be so narrowly
understood, however. Indeed, historically, it has not been. There are
versions of classical liberalism that do not presuppose the extremely
stringent rights to private property and freedom of contract favored
by contemporary libertarians, which their critics have used as a stick
to beat them with. One purpose of this book is to outline a more mod-
erate version of classical liberalism.
Chapter 4 identifi es what I call “the modern liberal regulatory
agenda,” which consists of the various regulatory regimes that mod-
ern liberals are inclined to favor and classical liberals are inclined
to oppose. The fi rst section of this chapter distinguishes economic
from noneconomic regulation. The former includes rate regulation,
regulation of entry and exit, antitrust law, and wage and price con-
trols. It is argued that the traditional disputes between modern lib-
erals and classical liberals about economic regulation have become