Liberalism is the political philosophical ideology which has so many branches and their derivations. There are many political philosophers claiming their own believing liberalism is the legitimate mainstream ideology of liberalism. Some claim that less autocratic form of socialism is the most updated evolved liberalism among all branches of liberalism existing in this world. Nevertheless, the founders of liberalism as the modern Western philosophers from 16th to 19th century would have disagreed with this definition. This essay sticks to the original definition of liberalism defined by the liberalist philosophers in these early time. Liberalism mentioned here is often called the classical-Liberalism or Neoliberalism. The true liberalism mentioned here is an antithesis of these modern political self-proclaimed liberalists.
(The Classical) Liberalism (/Neoliberalism) promotes the restricted size of government and their intervention to offer individuals freedom of choice based on their voluntary actions and free will. Liberalism encourages individuals to be self-governable which is free from excess intervention of any authority. Individuals should be free to think, act, and desire as long as they are responsible for their choices. In order to encourage individuals to cohabit together under a strong consensus with a minimum conflict, they often have to trade between different individuals with the right feasible exchange rate. Free competition of production and bargain and mutual agreement with individuals’ free will are the key to derive these feasible trade operations at optimum conditions. These processes must be moderated by the spontaneous order called the free market mechanism.
Liberalism regards highly of the free market mechanism which is also called the Invisible-Hand of God. Free market shall be only the sovereign guiding individuals to optimise their action patterns and their deriving consequences adjusted to what is needed/wanted within availability. The free market force is required to control the demand and the supply of natural resources and the production capacity in order to avoid an extinction of resources and both excess and lack of desire. Individuals are free to decide the amount of their reward for their labour and skill and the price of their products freely, and negotiate their exchange with each other. The free flow of exchange is volatile but enables their trading products with their suggesting price converge to the equilibrium rate which is the optimum level to balance the demand and supply. One monopolistic individual or organisation ought not to subjectively decide what the equilibrium quantity and price in trade are.
Nobody except for God perfectly either knows about the current environmental state or perfectly predicts the future state. So, individuals should rely on a spontaneous flow of the free market where many different demand and supply conditions are interacting each other to eventually determine the equilibrium point. No human individuals can be perfectly objective meanwhile this spontaneous force called the free market is not determined by a subjective motive. The frequent interaction of the demand of individuals, the supply of what are available, and the mutual agreement through various free competition, gradually selects the optimum combination of demand and supply. Only the supernatural power, which is called God but nobody is perfectly sure what exactly is, might know the right optimisation. This unknown but certainly existing spontaneous force is neutral among all individuals so this characteristics should be considered as objective i.e. not subjective as superstition explained below.
Liberalism defies superstition which illogically and irrationally guides individuals’ choice and will. Liberalism aims to liberate people from traditions retained without proper assessments and hypocritical moral principles subjectively determined by a bunch of moral entrepreneurs. Of course, traditions and moral principles are important but need to be constantly evaluated and revised regularly in order to assess whether or not they are truly necessary at the current time, place, and occasion by means of the market force and individuals’ free will. Each individuals’ must rely on their own rationality to choose what is right and wrong. Individuals may refer to some objective guide line as long as their rational intuition indicates it as legitimately objective to follow. No superstition should be their guide line of choice and mind.
(Military) Defence is the factor which cannot be dictated by the previously mentioned free market mechanism. Providing the adequate defence power requires an extraordinarily huge scale of economics whose marginal cost will never be diminished by a free competition among individuals and their enterprises. This is the case that bigger the organisation is always better. The defence cost must be shared among all individuals and collect their expensive with an involuntary force regardless of their free will. Their benefit gained from a good defence force is a public good as same as the air they breathe. Therefore, defence should be operated by one monopolising institution which is free from the market competition.
Judicature, explaining law and its legal code and determining the law enforcement level, is also the factor which is required to be a monopolistic institute considered as the public good. Law is not perfectly objective unlike the free market force. But, it is still considered as the important guide line for individuals to follow when they require some explicitly indicated guide line to follow. Understanding law and its codes and executing law enforcement at the equitable level to what the target commits require a high level of intelligence. There should be a competition of interpreting law from different angles. But, the final decision making power needs to be one body in order to maintain the consistent measure of judgement. The one holding this measure of the final decision power should be law which exists to prevail as a semi-objective guideline in a long run.
Individuals are free to do and desire whatever they want to the certain extend. But, they are not completely free from ignorance. It is a destiny for human individuals to be haunted by ignorance. They do not always know their choice derives their desired consequence. They do not always know the true value of exchanged goods and services in their trade with the others. Their level of rationality is not always capable to know what really a rational and objective guide line is for their life. They are often involved in an unproductive conflict when they misunderstand each other so something objective needs to mediate and stabilise the situation. Law maintained in a long time partially evaluated and amended if necessary prevails.
2. Rule by Law
Karl Marx, the figure head of socialism, argued that law is created by means of the minority ruling class individuals’ interest to rule the majority subordinate class individuals. Nonetheless, Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, the remarkable schooler famous for studying comparative law, argued that more equal and freer political structures eventually require law whereas law tends to be less significant in an autocratic politics than the former. In a politics which undermines the significance of law, those who hold a charisma take advantage of their political power to lead the rest of individuals with their subjective commands. Marxian socialism thus consequently ends up with either a tyranny of government bureaucrats or a tyranny of mass. Montesquieu’s argument effectively explains why Marxian socialism of both autocratic form and democratic form tend to be less liberalistic.
Democracy does not always imply liberalism. Democracy contains its high risk of failing into a tyranny of mass/mobs. The majority may enforce all the member of this political structure to follow a homogeneous norms and values. Then, they may start undermining individual sovereignty in favour of majority’s enforcing norms and values, and any unique characteristics is endangered by this rule. This majority rule discourages the cohabitation of different individuals. For example, unique individuals living in a unique life style can be seen as strange for the majority mass so that the majority may discriminate or even threaten the life style of these individuals.
This majority rule may harm themselves in the long run. For example, when they prefer printing excess money and claiming to increase public expenditure while reducing tax revenue, their economic system will be unstable and chaotic as the hyper price inflation and the lack of public goods & services against their demand. Moreover, the majority mass can be jealous of a few talented individuals, and may induce policy to penalise these competent talented individuals under their majority rule. This consequently discourages competition basing economic productivity and cultural maturity and devalues the respect for competence.
The majority rule can also discriminate or even threaten some patient and kind-hearted individuals. Human-beings are often driven by cruel and vile motives as human-beings cannot be always virtuous and generous. Often, not many of them are patient and merciful enough to repress their cruelty and vice. When they find themselves as miserable and then become frustrated by their inevitable bitterness of their life, they may often target somebody weaker than them to easily bully to release their frustration off. There needs something rational as well as objective to prevent such an uncivil motivation of humans as much as possible. Then, law and ethical principle are required for this purpose.
Even Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the devote supports of democracy, argued that the tyranny by mass is dangerous as much as the tyranny by one/few. They affirmed that there need to be law and legislation and a rational (legal) authority monitoring the system based on them not to induce such a havoc while maintaining to deserve for the happiness of individual citizens living there. Thus, law becomes a significant factor to balance the restriction by law and legislation monitored by the rational authority and the mass’s desire.
In the developed stable civilisation which succeeds in maintaining the balance regards highly of the rule by law. The well-defined law functions as the explicit guideline for both rational authority and mass to refer in order to accomplish their happy productive balance. By contrast, the civilisation which puts priority only on doing favour for a particular group of citizens, including both aristocracy (Favouring minority elite) and socialism (Favouring majority mass), depreciate the aggregate prosperity of this civilisation.
The Western European, the North American, and some of Asian nations are remarkable for maintaining the rule by law mentioned above. In these nations, there are two forms of the legal principles, the natural law and the positive law. In the modern national legal system, there is no exact clear cut between these two forms of law. The natural law is based on what the rational as well as emotional wishes of individuals require at each different time, place as well as the invincible universal moral principle. These individuals’ decision is flexible as long as it is not noticeably deviated from the moral principle. The positive law is based on the explicitly written forms of agreements based on logically coded definitions of what law allows and prohibits. This law is rigidly defined by the rational authoritarian censorship. But, the objectivity of judgement is preserved by its logically coded written guideline. Both forms of law fulfil keep the power balance of the rational authority and the majority as well as the aforementioned condition required by Liberalism.
Before the modern time periods, majority of human tribes and civilisation followed their own unique customary law, and their own interpretation of the natural law existed. The modern liberal interpretation of natural law was developed by England (and then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the United States of America. The UK and the USA have taken advantage of their natural law base legal system which is flexible to adjust to what individuals’ demand in business.
The positive law bases many of the modern national laws. The positive law was firstly established by Ancient Romans, and imitated by Roman Catholic Church and many feudalist rulers in the medieval Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte put a high emphasis on the Roman style positive law under his rule, and he spread his legal codes over his conquered lands. Prussian empire took an advantage of substituting the traditional German traditional law with their contemporary new legal model to expand its power. Japan imitated Prussian legal model so that the born of Japanese legal structure is still influenced by it.
The objective principle of the positive law varies across different time periods, places, and occasions. Before French revolution, the objective of the positive law was to deserve the ruling class’s interest. From French revolution to the current time period, the positive law has been designed to satisfy majority citizens while maintain the political order. Since more individuals and their belonging institutes and nations became aware of the need of being adapted to the free market mechanism, the positive law has functioned as the explicitly written format of business agreements. In the global economy, even some illiberal nations partially adapted the positive law in order to take an advantage of the explicative positive law as their explicit business guide lines.
3. Comparative Study of the Laws supporting Liberalism
As explained, there are two mainstreams of the law principles, the natural law and the positive law, supporting Liberalism. The type of Liberalism predominantly following the natural law as the principle of law and ethics is called Natural Law Liberalism. There is another type of Liberalism which is sceptical about how Natural Law Liberalism derives Liberalist law and ethics from. Both kinds of Liberalism has its own strengths and methodologies to define and encourage Liberalism and the political structure based on it.
Both laws are relatively compatible to support Liberalism. But, both laws are not perfectly fulfilling what Liberalism claims for individuals and their action patterns and mind sets. Liberalism maintained by the rule by law traditionally requires the existence of a nation state as a guardian of its rule. So, this essay explains some examples of how the rule by law protecting Liberalism functions in a nation.
3.1. America as an example of Natural Law Liberalist Nation.
When the United States of America (America) was established, America seemed to be an unstable nation. Because America is a democratic republic nation without a unified political decision making code, majority of American people think their voice frequently represents American politics and American future and so actively participate into politics. Because there is neither a hereditary monarchy nor any paternalistic autocratic executive branch who would have a final say in politics, it looks like resulting in unstable outcomes where the ongoing havoc continues to takes place. Then, Americans decided to emphasis on and follow an abstract universal principle for their legal and moral judgement instead of one unified man-made autocratic body.
There was no monarchy, or no autocratic executive branch, who guides the nation to follow or refer to their suggesting principle, American nation is endowed with a nonhuman/non-manmade sovereign, and then all American have become equal under it since American establishment. This nonhuman sovereign is called God by believers, and called either humanity or the categorical imperative by agnostics and atheists. In America, even agnostics and atheists tend to have a faith in a mystic transcendental being. Even though they challenge against the traditional faith in God, their custom of worshiping a nonhuman sovereign above all human-beings has never changed since America was founded. This characteristics of American ethics still forms American politics and influences how America as a whole nation changes over time. This aspect has encouraged Americans to share and aspire in pursing one universal moral principle, the natural right created by either God or any transcendental being.
Even though there are more than one fragmented groups of political thought which American politicians and people belong to, majority of them share the common ethical principle which is called the natural right. Natural Right is an impregnable universal right provided equally to all human-beings. In Anglo-Saxon territories like America and Great Britain, it was most notably spread by John Locke, a devout Christian as well as the British philosopher dialectically defined the Natural Right theory, and Thomas Paine, one of American founding fathers. When America was founded, both Christian value and the enlightenment philosophy of the natural right, were introduced to be the base universal ethical principle of American nation. Both Christianity and Natural Right ethics regard highly of a universal eternal reality which is believed to exist at any time, place, and occasion and also believed to be the universally legitimate measurement of legal and moral judgements. This universal eternity is called Natural Law, and the type of Liberalism follows Natural Law as its fundamental principle is called Natural Law Liberalism.
3.2. The New American Ethical Principle: Kantian Deontology
When several years after American independence had passed, the change in American people's mind started taking place. During the 20th century, the new modern political ideology emerged in Europe, and this spread the strong scepticism about religion, history, culture, and the pre-existing perception of this world in Europe, and then the rest of the world afterward. The mastermind of this movement was Immanuel Kant, and his followers encouraged this movement. America was not an exception from its influence, and in a different form from the others, the influence was way stronger than the rest of the world.
The speed of spreading its influence was slower in America than the rest of the world due to Americans' strong resistance against this European born politics which seemed to decay the traditional American Liberal Democracy based on the Natural Right ethics originated from Christianity. Nevertheless, because Kantian ethics was evolved from Lockean Natural Right theory, Kantian Deontology was familiar to American political culture. As same as American traditional Natural Right theory, Kantian theory puts emphasis on the universally right morality, an absolute truth, and the challenge against the reality, and these characteristics of Kantian philosophy corresponded to American personality. More than Europe, because the natural right ethics is more influential in America, Americans are more likely to constantly put emphasis on the universally right morality, aspire after an absolute truth which they believe in, and express their world view by means of their idealism. Then, Americans adapted Kantian philosophy to America as a different form from the European counterparts.
After some time passed, agnostics and atheists started appearing in America. But, even though the characteristics of someone changes, the fundamental quality of the innate personality of all the people tends to remain unchanged. As America, the nation, was born as a Christian and Liberal Democratic nation who has a strong invincible universal ethical principle, American agnostics and atheists tend to look for the agnosticism and the atheism whose fundamental characteristics is similar to both Christianity and the traditional Natural Right. Kantian characteristics of God-less monotheism has attracted many American individuals who were disappointed by Christianity for some reason, and then Kantian Deontology has become an alternative belief for these Americans which is different from Christianity but whose characteristics is similar to Christianity.
Kant was a German, but his ethics as well as the legal philosophy influenced by Kantian ethics seemed to be more influential in America. In European and any modern secular nations, the objective of creating legal codes of law and imposing the law enforcement is the economic and political stability. Then, in these nations, morality is considered to be relative to various different cultures and situations in these nations so that morality tends to be considered not as a primary matter in law. Therefore, their social justice tends to refer to the objectively (Kantian theorists call "hypothetically" instead) determined measures and values such as property values, utility (pleasure minus pain), and any form of physical or psychological sanctions predicted to induce a desired consequence i.e. the stability. By contrast, American social justice regards highly of the abstract but absolute universal moral code equally important as or sometimes more than any legal legal codes of law which Kantian theorists may call hypothetical (Not categorical). All in all, Kantian ethics and legal philosophy deeply corresponds to American mentality and was adapted to one of the big political ideology groups of America (The other groups tend to be deeply sceptical about Kantian philosophy due to its compatibility with their characteristics and political aim).
3.3. Liberalism of the Father of Economics originated from Legal Positivism
Adam Smith is the father of economics as well as one of the remarkable scholars of British Liberalism. So, his philosophy is a good example of Liberalism, and his Scottish background will help to compare and contrast the previously mentioned Natural Law Liberalism, most notably influential in England and North America, with his Liberalism born in Scotland.
Firstly, more than English and American legal system, Scotland has had a closer relationship with Continental European counterpart. So, the influence of Continental Europe on Scotland is still strong, and Scotland adapted both Enlightenment Philosophy and Legal Positivism much faster than England. For example, Scottish regional law is based on Legal Positivism as same as Continental Europe, and the concept of Separation of church from state strongly exists in Scotland unlike the rest of Great Britain. This is the aspect that Smith's Liberalism became eventually different from Natural Law Liberalism. Adam Smith’s philosophy was highly inspired by Scottish and European enlightenment (The enlightenment) and Legal Positivist philosophy. So, they insisted that only the optimum way is to let all be free to do what they want instead of relying on a particular moral and legal entrepreneur to command all.
Adam Smith’s philosophy cannot be compatible with Natural Law Liberalism and its derivations such as the Natural Right ethics and Kantian Deontology. He would have argued that Natural Law Liberalism and its derivations put excessive emphasis on paternalism to command humans to follow their abstract moral principle. He would have pointed out that there is no guarantee to accomplish what the abstract moral principle without any sacrifice of either the material prosperity or the big collective involuntary force. Because humans are not God, it is impossible to control their surrounding nature and unseen future. Therefore, by referring to his theory of the Invisible Hand, he explained that there is no absolute moral or legal command which creates a perfect world.
4. Beyond Nation State: The Transnational Rule of Law and The Unknown Ideal
Both Liberalism and the rule by law have been prevailing in the modern nation states. Law has been created to fit in with what a nation requires. National law is applied to a nation which creates this law so that a nation has its jurisdiction over where it governs. Also, a province of a nation has jurisdiction over its province. Both national law and provincial law are applied to this province of this nation. Then, individuals living or visiting in a certain province in a certain nation have to follow the national and provincial law there. Overall, as long as both provinces and individuals belong to a nation, the national law prevails, and this nation has its legal authority to monitor and direct the legal structure.
There is an assumption that the concept and the structure of nation states will everlastingly keep existing and thriving as long as the rule by law is going to be maintained. Therefore, this assumption infers that liberalism, encouraged by the rule by law, may only prevail with a nation state so that the end of nation state may imply the end of liberalism. Nevertheless, there are some counter-arguments against this assumption. There are newly emerging forces challenging against the regime of nationalism, and they offer various alternative forms of the rule by law. The following only introduces the alternative form promoting liberalism.
4.1. The United Nation (UN)
First of all, many transnational public organisations have been established since the last century, and they have the legal authority as a transnational judicature. The United Nation (UN) is a politically as well as a philosophically significant transnational. Its power of the legal authority is not absolute as same as a national and provincial judicature because the UN does not hold its law enforcement power to execute its legal sanction. However, by means of the current interest in maintaining an international unity in all over the world, the UN and its legal responsibility is well considered and respect in this world. Therefore, the UK and its international law are not negligible factors to discuss about.
The UN law is a form of the customary law and its principle philosophy is the Kantian deontology which regards highly of the universally absolute morality. This political philosophy is a form of a utopian idealism promoting its idealistic goal which is extremely difficult to accomplish with the limited resource supply. The UN idealism seems to be effective to attract many dreaming individuals to the UN’s aspiring political ideology. But, its idealism is struggling to attract the investment funding it owing to its impractical politics.
There are many objections to allowing the UN to hold a huge power. As same as socialism seen in history, the big government combined with the law enforcement power may consequently induces its original politics to an oppressive totalitarian. Even though they start from having a virtuous political motivation, they may become corrupted after gaining its monopoly power prevented from constant scrutiny. In addition, this principle is too abstract to measure how sanction should be provided. So, there is a risk that fluctuant emotional whims and a charisma of the orators may control over the level of sanction instead of more objective measures of judgement like those stated by the positivist law. Thus, the UN law and its legal sanctions are not favoured by practical thinkers.
All in all, the UN is a remarkable example of the rule by law which is not a traditional one executed by nations. However, this does not seem to be a more powerful legal authority than a national judicature. The UN might only keep existing as an auxiliary structure cohabiting with various nations, and the UN law may exist as a simple principle of laws like a constitution of nations.
4.2. The European Union (EU)
The European Union (EU) is also the emerging transnational structure semi-governing all over the EU member nations and individual citizens there. This has a more limited jurisdiction but a more significant legal authority and a stronger law enforcement than the UN. If these EU members are willing to develop and maintain their EU integration, the EU as a more legitimate and powerful judicature than it is for the time being.
The EU law is based on the legal positivism which is the traditionally dominant legal codes in the Continental European nations as majority of the EU member nations’ judicature is based on the legal positivism. The function of the EU legal positivism is also aimed at promoting individual liberty for all EU citizens and rationally functional economic and legal policies. These law are positively coded in order to provide these EU members with concrete planning to maintain their unity and further growth.
There are two major challenges the EU faces. The one is the establishment of the European Monetary Union (EMU) integrating several EU member nations into one monetary policy under the prudential fiscal policy. The other is providing individual European citizens with the positive liberal contract between these states and their citizens. These policies which the EU manifests are Liberalistic so that the rule of law is inevitably a significant and unavoidable factor which the EU needs to emphasise. The explicitly written and logically explained positive instructions are required to conduct these two challenges as explained in the following paragraphs.
The EU economic policy is to offer a prosperous as well as fiscally stable union of nations with a wide trade zone available. In order to stabilise the monetary policy of such a wide scale, it critically requires a strict tight measure to control the balanced sustainable growth rate among the Eurozone nations. In particular, as the fiscal policy of these EMU member nations (the Eurozone) is not unified unlike their monetary policy, this challenge is severely difficult as only the monetary policy is only the reliable direct tool for this objective. In a relatively smaller scale of economy, this kind of matter is less likely to arise because individual economic agents are easier to correct their errors themselves. By contrast, in such a huge scale of economy, the misguided errors of their actions contiguously affecting the others in a huge scale, the strict guide line attempting to minimise these errors is essential.
The EU personal policy is to offer the pluralistic politics which is morally and politically permissive to provide their citizens with a high degree of freedom. One of the aims of the European integration is to derive a strong peaceful unity and its hopeful prosperous future of Europeans together. The moral neutrality is high essential to avoid the conflict of values in these various different political and religious backgrounds of Europeans. The positively stated law and legislation are also the key factors to create agreeable as well as explicitly understandable contracts among these Europeans. Therefore, the legal positivism prevails for their aim.
Those who are mostly benefitted and improved are the Ex-Communist new EU member nations. In order to liberate individuals in these Ex-Communist nations, liberalism under the rule by law is a brand new treasure to guide them to the EU liberalism. They have been suffering from the lawlessness of illiberal socialist nations since they were forced to follow Marxian socialism. As explained in the aforementioned chapter, Marxist socialism undermines the rule by law and strongly defies liberalism so that these citizens’ liberty has been violated there. By contrast, the EU is attempting to replace their chaotic Marxian socialist asset with the new liberal policy positively stated and conducted by the rule by law.
The problem is its technocratic autocracy limiting individual citizens’ participation in the legislature and the judicature. As the governed jurisdiction size is so massive that it is often very inefficient to seek citizens’ opinions about the new policy proposals and the ongoing judgements every time. Furthermore, as those who are well informed and qualified with the laws and the legal procedures have to be appointed to the legislators and the judges under the EU legal positivism, it is extremely inefficient to base the system on the fully representative system. As same as the UN, there is a significant risk of transforming to a totalitarian regime when they started putting an excess priority on the integration and the administrative efficiency. Thus, balancing between the EU liberalistic ideal and the administrative reality is a touch challenge.
4.3. Unknown Ideal: Stirnerian Anarchism
There is another attempt to overcome from the regime of nationalism. These two previously introduced examples, the UN and the EU, are those which rule individual citizens from a bigger scale than a nation state. The other case is the opposite direction: This suggests for liberalism in a smaller scale of rule by law. This is a form of anarchism but different from almost all kinds of the Classical Anarchism. This form of anarchism is not yet put into practice in the real world.
Anarchism pursues the maximum possibility to accomplish the perfect political structure providing individuals with what liberalism offers. The most notable difference between the mainstream sides of liberalism and anarchism is their perspective on law. The mainstream sides of liberalism regard highly of the rule by law meanwhile the most forms of anarchism defy the significance of law. Some forms of anarchism, especially Godwinian anarchism, tend to glorify the regime of the tyranny by mass as the counter to the tyranny by few. Communist/Socialist forms of Anarchism contradict the modern progress of rationally understanding the objective forces of this world. In other word, they reject the development of civilisation based on individualism, equitable trades (which is only the fair trade) in free market, and any material prosperity. They claim that these factors conversely divert individuals from what liberalism originally aspires. The alternative form of anarchism introduced in this essay is considerably different from these forms of anarchism.
There is an anarchist political philosopher called Max Stirner who created his own unique political theory to endeavour to liberate all individuals living in this world. His theory largely accepts and even promotes, equitable trades (which is only the fair trade) in free market, the civilisation development based on individualism, and any material prosperity. He defended individuals’ own property right and the existence of money as an intermediary of trading their possessions and natural resources. He put emphasis on the importance of rationally forming contracts between individuals as same as anyone supporting the rule by law. The remarkable accept of Stirnerian political theory is to accomplish these aims without moral entrepreneurs, rational legal authorities, and nation states.
Stirner was also against the tyranny by mass as much as the tyranny by few in both feudalism and modern nationalism. He attempted to liberate all individuals to let them live freely with their own free mind and their individual sovereignty prevail without any interaction by any superior authority or moral censorship. So, any form of tyranny interrupting each individual’s own sovereignty is an ultimate enemy of individual liberty. Then, individuals’ free will and their freely formed contracts have to be rationally carried out, and there needs to be an alternative political structure propping up this system, and the process needs to be spontaneous rather than forcible.
Stirner claimed that the moral entrepreneurship promoted by natural law liberalism narrow down individuals’ ethical views to only already existing traditional perspectives. This is then preventing them from inventing an innovative new ethical perspective fitting into what a new situation requires. As same as Jeremy Bentham claimed to contradict British Common Law, Stirner also put emphasis on the objective measurement of justice not restrained by old tradition and irrational whims.
However, Stirner also claimed that the strict legal positivism perpetuates the power monopoly of the rational (legal) authorities in a national or transnational judicature. He affirmed that all individual humans are endowed with their potential to be rational enough to be self-governable. He also argued that freedom of choices without any paternal guardianship by any authority is the key to not only maximise individuals’ happiness but also train their self-discipline. Therefore, he suggested that individuals should have their own free mind to contradict the already existing positivist rule to insist on their own positive agreement/disagreement on contracts.
The critical condition of Stirnerism is that citizens of this political structure have to become highly self-governable and maintain their relationship with their objective mutual interest. This means that they can no longer rely on any national welfare programmes and any paternalistic opinion leader. The public goods and services may be able to survive by introducing the public sector governed by a cooperative of autonomous citizens where all its participants voluntarily expense for the cost and voluntarily operate to provide goods and services. But, this has been considered as extremely difficult or even impossible due to its lack of certainty to collect their expenditure and define who is responsible to pay. The positive opinion to reincarnate the cooperative model is that the surveillance technology has been dramatically developed. So, as long as individuals willing to prop up this cooperative public sector are voluntarily as well as collectively participate to be responsible for sustaining and operating it, it may function. If it is possible to operate, then something not able to privatise such as defence and judicature may be preserved even in an anarchist politics. However, this is still an unknown ideal which has never been experimented yet.
The world politics and public sector economies have been controlled by each nation state and its nationalism. In addition, since the world diplomacy and economy became globalised, some transnational public political institutes have emerged. Since individuals’ activities become more active and dynamic, the size of public sectors has become bigger. At this time, individuals’ reliance on their paternalistic authorities in charge of administrating the public sector has become heavy, and the political structure has become more stratified. When this growing spiral is kept perpetuated, more individuals sacrifice their individual autonomy to expending for propping up this system. Otherwise, no defence and no judicature which are necessary to maintain ones of the liberalist objectives will not be sustained in this already developed and expanded scale of economy and politics.
The objectives which Liberalists pursue are individuals’ autonomic sovereignty encouraging their freedom of choice, voluntary participation to their exchange of their labour, goods, and services with the others, and the fair (agreeable), functional, and rational justice. As the modern world has become more reliant on a bigger scale autocratic paternalism, all the Liberalist objectives have become difficult to accomplish all together at once. Then, under the current world political structure, some of these objective need to be compromised to sustain the current technological and structural development. It is either keep expanding or start repressing the currently growing world economic and political network growth.
Nonetheless, there may need to innovate a new political structure which will attempt to maintain the political network growth while encouraging individuals’ self-governability in the world wide scale. Individuals should not forfeit their Liberalist ideal, and should invent their new innovative political structure adapted to the new economic and political environment. The key stimulus of this new attempt is their power of aspiration encouraging them to aspire their Liberalist objectives which will never be compromised in any occasion. Without the power of individuals’ aspiration, no voluntary mind and movement will take place to attempt to establish the unknown ideal. This shall be the condition for the further progress of material and the endeavour to spiritual prosperity.
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