# Crosscurrents (Vol. 5 No. 1) **URL:** **Published:** October 1, 1987 --- “The emergence of classical liberal thought from its precursors is an immensely interesting and challenging topic for historical investigation.” ## Origins of Liberalism Examined The emergence of classical liberal thought from its precursors is an immensely interesting and challenging topic for historical investigation. Tyler Cowen’s essay on “Nicholas Barbon and the Origins of Economic Liberalism” (_Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology_, Volume 4, pp. 67-83) is a welcome addition to our knowledge of this process. Barbon was a seventeenth-century entrepreneur in the fields of building, banking, and insurance, and author of several important tracts on economic thought. Cowen situates Barbon’s contributions to economic theory and policy in the context of mercantilist thought and shows that “While Barbon cannot be considered a ‘true’ liberal, his works are an important development in the intellectual history of economic liberalism because much of the liberal arsenal of ‘antimercantilist’ arguments comes from the mercantilists themselves.” Cowen’s essay could be profitably read along with Joyce Appleby’s “Modernization Theory and the Modernization of England and America” (_Comparative Studies in Society and History_, \[20\] April 1978, pp. 259-285). Appleby shows how the writings of Barbon and others (including Lee, North, and Briscoe) articulated “a new social reality in which human beings possessed an internal regulator more effective than master or magistrate.” These works enrich our understanding of mercantilism and the origins of liberalism and should be read by students and scholars interested in these subjects, as well as those specializing in intellectual history.♦ ## History of International Trade Students of economic history, as well as of international relations, will find much of value in James Foreman-Peck’s work _A History of the World Economy: International Economic Relations Since 1850_ (Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes \& Noble, 1983). Foreman-Peck combines extensive historical research with sound economic analysis, examining the development of international exchange, the international monetary system, the relationship between economic growth and free trade, and the migration of people and capital. Included in the analysis are the effects of wars, imperialism and colonial policy, and various political crises. The book provides a useful overview of the subject and a rich bibliography, which should prove useful to students and scholars in many disciplines.♦ ## Cooperation Without Coercion Understanding the spontaneous generation of social cooperation (and conflict) is an important element of any sophisticated system of political economy. Following on such important works on the spontaneous evolution of cooperation as Robert Axelrod’s _The Evolution of Cooperation_ (New York: Basic Books, 1984) and Robert Sugden’s _The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), Ulrich Witt (“Evolution and Stability of Cooperation Without Enforceable Contracts,” _Kyklos_, Vol. 39, 1986, pp. 245-266) has shed new light on the emergence of cooperation even in the absence of formal systems of enforcement. Beginning with the standard two-person “prisoner’s dilemma,” Witt introduces into such models the dimensions of entrepreneurial alertness, learning, and “norm-internalization,” as well as the possibility that agents can “retaliate” against those who “defect” or “cheat” in their transactions with others. Such threats of retaliation improve the likelihood that cooperation, rather than conflict, will emerge from the multiplication of such interactions. Witt attempts to explain an important phenomenon in liberal society: “Many economic interactions are not based on codified entitlement rights, or on exhaustive judicial arrangements, nevertheless, mutual expectations are met.... Such interactions...in fact...constitute a large fraction of the exchange activities run in the economic system.” This essay should prove especially useful to students of sociology and anthropology, economics, and history.♦ ## Development Economics on Trial P. T. Bauer and other market-oriented development economists have long criticized many of their colleagues for their failure to appreciate the actual workings of the economies of developing nations. It has been the anthropologists, often little schooled in economics, who have sometimes shown the greatest understanding of the workings of rural societies and economies, while the economists have failed to make the effort to appreciate the subtle variations of economic interaction of which humans are capable. Now an economic anthropologist, Polly Hill, has amply demonstrated the truth of this claim. In her new book, _Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for a Prosecution_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), Hill, drawing on decades of careful field work among rural populations in West Africa and Southern India, shows how so many development economists base their conclusions on startlingly meaningless or inaccurate statistics, on unthinking moralizing about indebtedness or inequality, and on a failure to understand the workings of land-tenure systems, creditor-debtor relationships, the role of trading and entrepreneurship (especially as carried out by women), and other elements of the economies of rural communities. Hill’s work should prove invaluable to economists, anthropologists, and sociologists and could be profitably read in conjunction with Samuel Popkin’s path-breaking work, _The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). (Hill would take strong issue with Popkin’s use of the term “peasant,” but the differing approaches taken by these two scholars add to our understanding of rural societies.) Popkin contrasts the “moral economy” approach with the “political economy” approach and reveals the peasant as “a rational problem-solver, with a sense both of his own interests and of the need to bargain with others to achieve mutually acceptable outcomes.” Both Hill and Popkin provide powerful antidotes to those historicist approaches that would implicitly deny to the members of rural, developing, or non-Western societies the dignity of individual rights and liberty. A different but complementary approach to understanding economic development can be found in the works of Grace E. Goodell. Much of Goodell’s work focuses on the disruptions of local spontaneous orders induced by technocratic intervention, often as part of state-sponsored “development” schemes. Goodell examines the relationships between “benefactors” and “beneficiaries” in her essay “Paternalism, Patronage, and Potlatch: the Dynamics of Giving and Being Given To” (_Current Anthropology_, \[26\] April 1985, pp. 247-266) (drawing a somewhat curious distinction between “patronage” and “paternalism”), and offers an extended case study of this process in her book _The Elementary Structures of Political Life: Rural Development in Pahlavi Iran_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). In that book she neatly illustrates Bruno Leoni’s distinction between the predictability of spontaneously evolved law and the unpredictability of legislation (_Freedom and the Law_ \[Los Angeles: Nash Publishing Co., 1972\]). As Goodell writes, “The essence of law, without which sustained ‘development’ is impossible, lies in the clear definition of memberships and boundaries, the predictability of rules of conduct to all those concerned, and the reasonable certainty of their enforcement. When social organization becomes more complex through an organic process, this clarity and predictability of law constitute the mortar between its bricks. In the Dez \[Irrigation\] Project, the Iranian State and its numerous Western advocates proposed ‘development’ without law—that is, without predictability and security (despite the State’s numerous formal decrees).” While the works of Hill, Popkin, and Goodell differ on many points, each contains valuable insights that contribute to our understanding of economic and social processes in developing nations. Students of economics, anthropology, and related disciplines would benefit from a careful reading of these works. ## Legal, Economic, Historical Dimensions of Licensing Licensing of professions is one of the principal forms of exploitation in modern societies, as privileged groups with access to state power seek to exclude others from entering into competition with them. A new work from the Cato Institute (224 Second Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003) offers a useful overview of occupational licensing. _The Rule of Experts: Occupational Licensing in America_ (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1987) by S. David Young is a thorough survey of the scholarly literature on occupational licensing. It illuminates the historical genesis of licensing, its relationship to earlier guild restrictions, the economic impact of restrictions on freedom of entry, and the particular harm of such apparently neutral restrictions to minorities and the poor. Students in economics, sociology, political science, and law would benefit from the book’s useful bibliography, as well as from the author’s sound analysis. ## Scholarly Look at Freedom of Movement > “It may have seemed that there was little room for innovation in man’s inhumanity to man. Our ancestors long ago perfected most of the injustices and brutalities that human creativity could devise. But in one respect modern states have managed to shackle individuals in a way that tyrants of old might have envied: never before have states so effectively controlled the right of their citizens to leave or stay. The plight of the refugee has never been easy, but today many are denied even the right to become refugees. The only way they can escape, paradoxically, is to be expelled.” So writes Alan Dowty in his important new scholarly work on freedom of movement, _Closed Borders_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Dowty subjects state policies on migration to a careful mixture of historical exegesis, economic analysis, and moral reasoning, including a wealth of bibliographical material. _Closed Borders_ could profitably be read by students of law, political science, history, economics, and moral philosophy and could provide the starting point for numerous research papers, theses, and dissertations. ## Role of Human Agency in Law Examined The central role of human agency in law receives a careful legal and philosophical analysis by S. C. Coval and Joseph C. Smith in their _Law and Its Presuppositions: Actions, Agents and Rules_ (London: Routledge \& Kegan Paul, 1986). Coval and Smith argue that “all basic relevant considerations which appear in law (perhaps in morals as well) are either direct expansions of agency or justifiable by it.” Beginning with a systematic description of the concept of “action,” the authors display the various dimensions of legal responsibility by means of an examination of “action adjustors” such as “accident,” “mistake,” “inadvertence,” “carelessness,” “involuntariness,” and “unintentionality.” By focusing on responsibility and agency, the work provides a powerful philosophical supplement to classical liberal approaches to law and should be read by students of philosophy as well as of law. ## Political Thought A useful collection of essays on various political thinkers and topics is to be found in _The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought_ (ed. by David Miller, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). Essays by Jeremy Shearmur (on F. A. Hayek), David Gordon (on “libertarianism”), and Hillel Steiner (on Herbert Spencer), to name but a few classical liberal contributors, are joined by numerous essays by other distinguished social thinkers. The volume is a valuable reference work and should be requested for university libraries. ## Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Liberty The study of spontaneously generated orders extends beyond the sciences of man. Speciation and biological evolution, ecological systems, and the very structure of the universe itself also have shown themselves to be characterized by spontaneous order. In a new work by astrophysicists John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, _The Anthropic Cosmological Principle_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ideas on spontaneous order from many different disciplines are drawn together in support of a very controversial thesis. In its strongest form (FAP, or Final Anthropic Principle), this thesis asserts that “Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.” Regardless of whether the authors convincingly support their thesis, they have succeeded in assembling a very useful and interesting survey of information and analysis relating to spontaneous order, including the work of such thinkers as Hayek, Friedman, Spencer, Mises, and Polanyi.