Introduction (Vol. 2 No. 3)

After a period of suspended publication, we are pleased to resume our series of articles on “The Basic Tenets of Real Liberalism.” This and the next article will deal with related but antithetical problems, namely the opposition between “Social Harmony, Free Trade and Peace” and “Interventionism, Social Conflict and War.”

In this issue we deal with the former group of concepts which forms such a vital element in any theory of Real Liberalism. The underlying assumption is that all freely interacting individuals enjoy a harmony of interests. These shared interests include the maximization of opportunity and production brought about by the division of labor and the industrial economy. As long as the use of coercive force is outlawed, no individual or group of individuals can create legal privileges which disrupt the natural harmony of the market.

Many real liberals have seen the important theoretical connection between the free market and international peace. Just as the division of labor and the abolition of legal privilege on an individual plane maximizes human well-being, so too does the extension of these principles to the international plane bring about an opportunity for greater productivity and the lessening of inter-state rivalries. Since peace is the most important consequence of free trade and free market policies it is not surprising that liberals have been active over the centuries in attempting to bring about an end to the waste and destruction brought on by state intervention, both internally and externally.

The great Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, provides us with the concept of “interventionism” that explains how the prosperity and peace of the market is replaced by the disruption and conflict of state intervention. We conclude this article with a brief discussion of Mises’s theory of interventionism and we will return to it in the next issue when we will discuss the problems of “Interventionism, Social Conflict, and War.”

We are also pleased to be able to continue “An Outline of the History of Libertarian Thought.” We began in volume one, number one with the Radical Reformation and continued up to the French and German Enlightenment in volume one, number two. In this issue we discuss the astonishingly fertile period known as the Scottish Enlightenment.

In the Crosscurrents section we have several shorter reviews to bring our readers up to date with some of the more interesting items published during the last year.