Are declining economic growth rates likely to have undesirable impacts on social attitudes?

 

Research for an earlier essay on this blog led to the conclusion that declining economic growth rates in high income countries are likely to cause an increasing proportion of the population of those countries to feel that their standard of living is worse than that of their parents at a comparable age, and therefore to experience lower average life satisfaction. In this essay I extend that analysis to consider the social attitudes of people in the USA, Britain and Australia who feel worse off than their parents.

In the previous study I used data from the World ValuesSurvey to examine the relationship between the perceptions of respondents about their standard of living relative to their parents at a comparable age and economic growth in the countries in which they reside. That data was then linked to average life satisfaction.

The main findings were:

• Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.
• In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.
• The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.

These findings imply that lower economic growth rates would be likely to result in an increasing proportion of the population having lower living standards than their parents, and hence, lower average life satisfaction. The psychic costs of adjustment to lower economic growth would initially fall most heavily on young and middle-aged people.

Those findings raise questions about likely changes in social attitudes if economic growth prospects continue to decline in high-income countries, resulting in an increasing proportion of people who feel worse off than their parents were at a comparable age. This essay uses World Values Survey data to explore how some of the social attitudes of people who perceive themselves to have a lower standard of living that parents differ from those of the rest of the population.

I focus on three high-income countries – USA, Britain and Australia. The USA survey was undertaken in 2017, the British survey in 2022, and the Australian survey in 2018.

Figure 1 provides further evidence that people in the USA, Britain and Australia tend to have lower average life satisfaction if they perceive that their standard of living is lower than that of their parents.

 

Demographics

Figure 2 indicates that people who perceive themselves to be “worse off” than their parents tend to be concentrated in the 25-54 age groups.

 

Figure 3 suggests that the sex composition of those who feel “worse off” than their parents differs somewhat by age group in the countries considered, but I have no idea why. There appears to be a higher percentage of young women in that category in Australia, a higher percentage of women in the 30-49 age group in Britain and a higher percentage of older women in the United States.

 

Work and Success

Figure 4 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are less likely to agree that hard work brings a better life.

 

Attitude to Migrants and Migration

The only conclusion I can draw from Figures 5 and 6 is that Australians who feel “worse off” than their parents tend to have more negative attitudes toward migrants and immigration than those who feel better off or about the same.

 

Trust

Figure 7 suggests that a lower percentage in the "worse off" category say most people can be trusted.

Figure 8 suggests that a lower percentage of those in the "worse off" category have confidence in the justice system.

Priority given to Freedom

Figures 9 and 10 suggest that there is not much difference between the three groups in terms of priority given to freedom. Slightly fewer of those in the “worse off” category tend to give freedom higher priority than freedom. Surprisingly, in Australia and Britain, slightly more of the people in that category tend to give freedom higher priority than security.

 

Government objectives

Figure 11 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are more inclined to want government to take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for. The percentages shown are for the top 3 ratings on a 10 point scale.

 

Figure 12 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are less inclined to give high priority to economic growth. Respondents were asked to select from a list which national aim should be given highest priority. Other items on the list include having strong defence forces and individuals having more say in decision making.

 

Politics

Figure 13 suggests that those in the “worse off” category are no more interested in politics than other people in the countries considered.

 

Figure 14 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are no more likely to consider that it is good to have a strong political leader.

 

Figure 15 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are no less likely to consider that democracy is important.

 

Figure 16 suggests that people in the “worse of” category are less likely to be satisfied with political system performance than are people in the other categories.

 

Figure 17 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are as strongly opposed to political violence as are people in the other categories.

 

Conclusions

The social attitudes of people who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents at a comparable age are similar in many respects to those of people who perceive their standard of living to be better or about the same as that of their parents.

However, there are some important differences. People who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents at a comparable age are more inclined to:

• Skepticism about hard work bringing a better life;
• Pessimism about trustworthiness of others and lack of confidence in the justice system;
• Collectivism in terms of responsibility for the wellbeing of citizens;
• Negativity about giving high priority to economic growth; and
• Dissatisfaction with political system performance.

That combination of attitudes seems likely to be self-perpetuating because it is likely to promote policy responses that will lead to lower economic growth and a further increase in the proportion of the population who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents. Adoption of more market-friendly economic policies to facilitate higher economic growth seems unlikely to occur before that course of action becomes more obviously necessary to avert major economic crises.   

Will economic freedom continue to triumph?

 

As I was reading The Triumph of Economic Freedom, the recently published book by Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux, I wondered whether its title might be too optimistic. The book certainly supports its conclusion that “freedom has been the key to the great progress we have made in the past, and it the key to our progress in the future” (p. 197). However, the impression I was left with is that the authors are not overly optimistic that economic freedom will continue to triumph in America.

The subtitle of the book is Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism. In the introduction the authors suggest that current “conventional wisdom” about the desirability of “expanding the government’s role” (i.e. reducing economic freedom) is supported by those myths (pp. xii-xiii). The ongoing triumph of economic freedom will depend importantly on whether enough people understand its merits and are willing to defend it.

Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux have both been staunch defenders of economic freedom over a long period. Phil Gramm is an economist and former politician. He represented Texas in both chambers of the U.S. Congress and, at different times, served as both a Democrat and a Republican. Donald Boudreaux is an economics professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at Mercatus Center. He has vigorously sought to make economic issues, particularly issues surrounding international trade, understandable to a broad audience. He has used his Café Hayek blog for that purpose for over 20 years.

My aim in this essay is to draw on The Triumph of Economic Freedom to consider where anti- market myths come from and who defends them.

Myth 1: The industrial revolution caused a great deal of misery.

This bleak assessment dominates conventional wisdom and popular literature to this day, yet the authors point out that it is refuted by “every major measure of material well-being”.

The myth seems to have its origins in the fact that poor people become much more visible when they move from the countryside in search of a better life in factory work in urban areas. Victorian literature, particularly the novels of Charles Dickens, paint a “worst of times” portrait at the end of the Industrial Revolution.

There has been debate among economic historians about the point at which average real wages actually began to rise in England during the 19th century (even some discussion on this blog) but there can be no doubt that the industrial revolution was the beginning of a golden age of material well-being.

Why does the myth persist? Those who wish to question the merits of free markets still see it as a useful narrative for their purposes (which may include encouraging opposition to imports from “sweatshops” in developing countries).

Myth 2: Progressive era regulation in the U.S. was necessary to meet the threat posed by corporate monopolies.

This myth seems to have had its origins in the inability of many small, local firms to withstand the competition of economic giants serving the national market. These corporate giants contributed to widespread growth of economic opportunity, but their competition was portrayed as harmful by interest groups and politicians seeking greater control of the economy.

This myth is still to be found in leading history textbooks. It is still a useful narrative for those who promote a new progressive vision for regulation of tech giants.

Myth 3: The great depression was a failure of capitalism.

Gramm and Boudreaux suggest: 

“When failed government policies produce a crisis, government blames capitalism and then uses the crisis to expand the very powers that initially caused the crisis” (p. 193).

Some prominent economists who prefer market failure explanations to government failure explanations certainly helped governments to do this. Advocates of market failure put forward some explanations of the depression that appeared to be plausible e.g. the idea that free market capitalism has a tendency toward under-consumption. Gramm and Boudreaux point out, however, that the long period of economic growth after the end of World War II, following restoration of “a largely free market”, testifies against theories of underconsumption (p. 80).

Myth 4: The myth of trade hollowing out American manufacturing.

This myth has its origins in the decline in employment in manufacturing as a percentage of total employment. As Gramm and Boudreaux point out, as part of the economic growth process, advances in technology eliminate jobs in manufacturing (as in agriculture beginning at an earlier point) and create jobs in the service sector. This process enables wages and other incomes to rise.

Import competition is blamed because nationalism is “always a powerful force than can be tapped to stoke support for protectionism, and significant benefits can be granted to a small number of economic interests, with the costs spread almost imperceptibly across society as a whole” (p. 193).

Myths about international trade persist because the roles of economic freedom and technological progress in the economic growth process are poorly understood by most citizens. Few economists support protectionist policies.

Myth 5: The myth that deregulation caused the financial crisis of 2008.

The central element of the myth is that financial deregulation enabled banks to “recklessly gamble depositors’ funds in securities markets”.  Gramm and Boudreaux point out that government “regulatory policy pressured banks to make bad loans”, “forced government-sponsored enterprises to purchase and securitize those loans”, and “manipulated financial institutions’ capital standards to encourage banks to hold massive quantities of mortgage-backed securities” (p. 193).

As with the great depression, this is another example of government causing a crisis and then creating a myth to suggest that the crisis occurred because of insufficient government regulation.

Myth 6: The myth that income inequality in America is high and rising on a secular basis.

Gramm and Boudreaux point out that this myth has its origins in reliance on official Census Bureau data which fails to count two-thirds of transfer payments. When appropriate adjustments are made to the official figures, the ratio of average household income in the top quintile to average household income in the bottom quintile falls from 16.7 to 1 to 4 to 1, and the appearance of growth of inequality disappears.

The idea that income inequality is high and rising in America is so ingrained in conventional wisdom that I had some difficulty accepting that it is a myth. However, the authors have presented a persuasive argument based largely on research by John Early, who was formerly assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Census Bureau apparently includes footnotes in its publications to acknowledge the limitations of its measures of household income, but it is difficult to understand why it has not produced more accurate measures.

Myth 7: The myth that poverty is a failure of American capitalism.

The authors argue that poverty is a failure of U.S. government rather than free markets. The growth of welfare payments has diminished labor force participation to such an extent that it has largely delinked the bottom quintile of income earners from the economy. The authors suggest that by making the poor dependent on the government the welfare system has severed their “avenue for success and personal achievement”.

The authors suggest that the current welfare system might serve “the political interests of the government” rather than the interests of poor people.

Discussion

The common element in many of these myths is a lack of understanding of the spontaneous forces of a free market, in combination with a planning mentality, and a tendency to overlook the potential for deliberate government controls to have unintended adverse consequences. Another common element is the activity of interest groups that have an incentive to create and perpetuate myths that advance their interests at the expense of others.

Lack of understanding of spontaneous forces poses a particular problem in the context of economic change. As Friedrich Hayek noted, in the context of complex spontaneous orders, it is not possible “to predict the particular changes that any event in the environment will bring about”. He suggested that this “ignorance of how the mechanism of the spontaneous order will solve such a ‘problem’ … often produces a panic-like alarm and the demand for government action for the restoration of the disturbed balance” (LLL, v1, p. 63).

Hayek went on to note that when it is possible to foresee how market forces are likely to restore the disturbed balance, the situation can become even worse:

“The necessity of adaptation to unforeseen events will always mean that someone is going to be hurt, that someone’s expectations will be disappointed or his efforts frustrated. This leads to the demand that the required adjustment be brought about by deliberate guidance, which in practice must mean that authority is to decide who is to be hurt” (LLL, v1, p. 63).

How can anti-market myths be debunked? I can’t think of a better way than via publications such as this book by Phil Gramm and Donald J. Boudreaux, who are following in the footsteps of Frédéric Bastiat. I hope that their book will be widely read in the U.S. and in other countries (including Australia) where anti-market myths seem to be even more widely accepted.

It seems appropriate to end this essay by quoting in full the paragraph by Frédéric Bastiat from which the epigraph was extracted:

“By the dissemination of knowledge, by enlightened discussion of cause and effect, to bring public opinion back to the intelligent attitude that condemns bad tendencies and resists the adoption of harmful measures, is to render a great service to one's country. When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe” (Economic Harmonies, 1850).

Why do scientists politicize science?

 

Source for graphic: Dan Kahan, 'What is the science of science communication', Journal of Science Communication, 2015 

This is a slightly edited version of an essay I published here about 10 years ago. It raises issues that are worth thinking about further at this time.

When I hear scientists engaged in policy advocacy I often cheer them on. At other times I make cynical comments questioning whether their conjectures have any substance. I notice that other people seem to have similar reactions, but some jeer when I cheer and vice versa.

In thinking about my own reactions I am able to rule out some possible reasons for negativity without much difficulty.

Expertise: My reactions are not always closely related to my own expertise. I can react positively or negatively to scientific advocacy in relation to areas of public policy in which I have no expertise as well as in aspects of economic policy where I can claim some expertise.

Conservatism: My reactions do not seem to be consistently conservative in the sense of being cautious about change. Sometimes I feel that scientists are setting out to make me worry unduly about the implications of our current lifestyles, but I am less inclined to feel that they are trying to make me feel more complacent than I should be about potential adverse effects of various innovations e.g. GM food or health effects of living close to power lines or wind farms.

Research funding: My reactions are not necessarily related to the question of how the scientists fund their research. In some instances I might suspect that they are advocating in the interests of the people who have provided funding, or slanting their presentations to further their interests in obtaining more funding, but such factors are not always relevant.

Indoctrination: My reactions are unlikely to be the result of indoctrination by particular branches of the news media. I am exposed to a range of media organisations with a range of different biases.

I had to think more carefully about whether my reactions could be related to the presentation skills of the scientists. I know I have a strong allergic reaction to being preached at or manipulated. So, I took a look at Jason Nazar’s 21 principles of persuasion and some other web sites discussing the art of persuasion. In the end I realized that I don’t have too much difficulty these days in being able to appreciate the persuasive skills of speakers while disagreeing with the messages they are presenting. I can also support the message being presented by speakers while thinking they could do with some help to improve their presentation skills.  Membership of Toastmasters encourages people to think about such matters.

It was not until I stumbled on an article by Dan Kahan on the science of science communication that I realized that the reactions that people have to advocacy by scientists might be related to Bryan Caplan’s concept of rational irrationality and Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory (which have previously been discussed on this blog). Caplan suggests that people can have an almost religious attachment to irrational beliefs about economics, while Haidt suggests that identification with groups tends to blind people to the wisdom of people outside those groups.

Cutting to the chase, Kahan tests the performance of two hypotheses to explain why there is so much public dispute over science-based conjectures about the risks that humans are facing. The first thesis, the public irrationality thesis (PIT), predicts that the gap between public and expert assessments of risk narrows as members of the public become more literate about science. On that basis, people who scored highest on science comprehension could be expected to be more concerned about climate change than those with lower scores. However, this doesn’t happen - at least it doesn’t happen in studies cited by the author.

The second thesis, the cultural cognition thesis (CCT) posits that certain types of group affinities are integral to the mental processes ordinary members of the public use to assess risk. Kahan cites various studies that have tested CCT, but the results of one which tests CCT head-to-head against PIT are particularly interesting. The results show that on issues that have become politicized – such as global warming and fracking – the average divergence between risk assessments of people who identify as liberal democrats and conservative republicans is greater among those who have high levels science comprehension than among those who have low levels of science comprehension. (See chart at the top of this essay.) The results suggest that individuals who are most adept at scientific reasoning search out evidence to support their political dispositions.

The study suggests that there is little difference between risk assessment of liberals and conservatives on issues that have not become politicized e.g. artificial food colorings, exposure to radio waves from cell phones, GM food, exposure to magnetic field of high voltage power lines, use of artificial sweeteners and nanotechnology. The PIT thesis does apply to such issues. I guess the results might differ in countries where some of these issues, e.g. the risks associated with GM food, have become politicized.

So, in the light of the above, how should I react to the Earth Statement recently published by a group of eminent scientists which suggests that “2015 is a critical year for humanity” and predicts dire consequences if international forums to be held this year decide to postpone substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? Let me quote a paragraph:

“We can still avert dangerous climate change. However, we are currently on a warming trajectory that will leave our world irrevocably changed, far exceeding the 2°C mark. This gamble could propel us into completely uncharted waters, with unmanageable sea-­level rise and a vastly different climate, including devastating heat waves, persistent droughts and unprecedented floods. The foundations of our societies, including food security, infrastructure, ecosystem integrity and human health, would be in jeopardy, impacting most immediately the poor and vulnerable.”

My immediate reaction was along the lines that they would say that wouldn’t they. Those who preach about the end of the world can always be expected to tell us to repent now for the end of the world is nigh. Would you expect them to say that it is now too late to do avoid catastrophe, or that there is no need to worry much for the next 20 years or so?

I claim no expertise in climate modelling, but the little I know suggests to me that current models are not reliable enough to tell us that it is critical that further action be initiated in 2015. Such claims seem to me to be more like hysteria than science.

So, why don’t scientists take more care to avoid politicizing science?

 

How can dialectics help us to defend liberty?

 

This guest essay by Dr Edward W. Younkins is a review of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s book “Total Freedom”, which was published 25 years ago. The epigraph is from page 354 of that book.

Ed Younkins is Professor of Accountancy and Business at Wheeling University, and Executive Director of its Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. He is author of a trilogy of important books on freedom and flourishing: “Capitalism and Commerce”, “Champions of a Free Society”, and “Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society”. Ed has numerous other publications, including an essay reviewing books by David L. Norton, which was published here in January.    

 Ed Younkins’s review was previously published in 2001 in “Le Québécois Libre”. 

There are two reasons why it is appropriate for it to be re-published now.

First,“Total Freedom” deserves more attention, and the 25^th anniversary of its publication is a particularly appropriate time for that to occur.

Second, in the light of declining economic and personal freedom in many parts of the world, the defense of liberty has become more urgent than it was 25 years ago. Ian Vásquez and his colleagues responsible for measurement of human freedom for Cato and the Fraser Institute have noted that on a world-wide basis, and using a population weighted comparison, a high point for freedom occurred in 2005–2007, followed by a steady decline through 2019, and a precipitous descent in 2020 through 2021 associated with government responses to the Covid virus (“The Human Freedom Index 2024, pp. 21-25). The latest data suggest although some recovery has occurred since, human freedom remains lower than in the year 2000.

Younkins ended his review by noting that he was “looking forward to seeing what Sciabarra will offer us next that will contribute toward the development of a comprehensive defense of freedom.” Chris Sciabarra has continued to make important contributions in this field even though illness has somewhat constrained his efforts.

Here is Ed Younkins’s review of:

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Pennsylvania State University Press: 2000).

In Total Freedom, Chris Matthew Sciabarra offers a provocative, scholarly, and original work in social theory for the analysis of society and human liberty. The author aims to reclaim the dialectical method, the art of context keeping, in the name of liberty and from the authoritarian left in order to make it the foundation for a radical (i.e., one that goes to the root) defense of libertarianism.

The necessity of context

Sciabarra is convinced that a successful libertarian project must stress the necessity of context – the totality of systemic and dynamic connections among social problems. More specifically, the libertarian ideal cannot be isolated from the context upon which it depends and freedom cannot be defended successfully when separated from its broader requisite conditions. The author proposes in Total Freedom a metatheoretical foundation upon which to construct a comprehensive libertarian social theory. Rather than making a convincing argument for liberty, he offers a means for structuring the methodology of social inquiry. The book is about how a context-sensitive methodology can be used to defend freedom. In order to think about freedom, people need to grasp the totality of its prerequisites and implications. Emphasizing the indivisible unity of theory and practice, Sciabarra says that any effort to understand or change society requires an analysis of its many related aspects.  

Sciabarra explains that dialectics emphasizes the centrality of context in the intertemporal analysis of systems. It is a thinking style that stresses the contextual analysis of systems across time. Dialectics may be viewed as a method of analysis, a mode of inquiry, or a type of meta-methodological orientation or set of assumptions about how we approach the object of our study. Dialectics is an approach to thinking that attempts to grasp the full context of a philosophy or social problem. Dialectical thinking endeavors to understand the whole through differential vantage points and levels of generality and by a systemic and dynamic extension of analytical units. 

The author emphasizes that dialectical thinking necessitates that we do not engage in context dropping, but instead make every possible effort to see interconnections between seemingly disparate branches of knowledge. Such an approach compels scholars to investigate empirically the potential connections between various spheres in an effort to attain integrated knowledge of the full context. Since people are not omniscient, understanding a complex world thoroughly requires an on-going investigation of its many interrelated facets from shifting vantage points. 

Down to earth dialectics

As a methodological orientation, dialectics has been employed in the analysis of systems of argumentation, philosophy, ethics, linguistics, history, culture, psychology, social theory, political economy, etc. One of Sciabarra's goals is to capture the essence of the many dialectical approaches that have appeared throughout intellectual history. He argues that in its origins dialectics is not an especially Hegelian or Marxian tradition, but rather in its inception it is firmly Aristotelian. 

Sciabarra explains that, although the pre-Socratics and Plato were the earliest practitioners of dialectics, it was Aristotle, the true father (or fountainhead) of dialectical inquiry, who first articulated its theoretical principles and techniques. Plato had connected dialectics to an idealist ontology that entailed the search for comprehensive transcendent truth. Plato's unrealistic epistemological standard was for human beings to somehow attain a synoptic perspective on the whole society. 

Aristotle brought the dialectic down to earth by severing its principles from their Platonic-idealist formulation. The Aristotelian idea of dialectics eliminates cosmology from philosophy and relies on a minimalist metaphysics that states that existence is what it is, that consciousness is our means for understanding it, and that everything that exists is part of one reality. The history of dialectics is filled with battles between the synoptic Platonic idealist conception and the contextual Aristotelian realist understanding. As a dialectical reality, Sciabarra tells us that we should rightfully criticize those who form dialectical abstractions with no regard for their relationship to the facts of reality. 

Sciabarra explains that Aristotle advocates shifting our viewpoints on any object of study in order to illuminate different aspects of it. In this way, Aristotle keeps the Platonic predilection for organic unity, but acknowledges the central importance of context. Aristotle's principles of inquiry call for us to constantly shift our perspective on any object of study. Each point of view provides a different context of meaning. It is by piecing together the various perspectives that a person can gain a comprehensive understanding of the full context of the object. 

Like Aristotle, the Medieval Scholastics applied dialectical principles to the argumentative arts. Sciabarra observes that they brought dialectics to the consideration of Biblical texts and thus began the centuries-long journey toward the secularization of the human mind because they were brave enough to subject the scriptures to analysis, something that was disapproved of for centuries before.  

Sciabarra argues that Hegel's conception of the dialectic harks back to the Ancient Greek ideal of organic unity and to the Platonic penchant for the divine. In turn, Marx anchored dialectics to investigations of the real world. However, Marx's vision presumed god-like planning and control of many nuances, tacit practices, and unintended consequences of social action. He also presumed a total grasp of history and often attempted to study the present as if from an imagined future. When Marxists suggest that history can lead to a victory over human ignorance, they are implying privileged access to total knowledge of future social conditions. This is inherently utopian and undialectical since it is unbounded by the context that exists and is based on a « synoptic delusion, » a belief that one can live in a world in which every action produces consistent and predictable outcomes.

The art of context keeping

 If dialectics is the art of context keeping, then historical materialism proposes a theory of history that places the theoretician outside the context of the human condition. The problem occurs when Marx steps into the future to evaluate the present. He assumes the information needed by future planners will be available despite the fact that these planners will have destroyed the context (i.e., the price system), which permits such information to be generated and socially traded. By holding this incorrect assumption, Marx is placing himself outside the historical process that he analyzes. Sciabarra observes that it is as though Marx is permitting himself privileged access to information about a future that is ontologically and epistemologically impossible. Such a Utopian way of viewing the world is essentially an a-contextual, a-historical search for human ideals with no understanding of the limits or nature of reason. It is as if people can step outside the bounds of culture and society to re-create the world. 

Sciabarra goes on to explore the manifestations of dialectics among those from the liberal tradition including Herbert Spencer, Carl Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rand, and especially Murray Rothbard. The author's goal here is to show how classical liberal and modern libertarian approaches embody conflicting orientations. He also describes how these thinkers have been richer, more complex, and more context-sensitive than their critics have been willing to acknowledge. Total Freedom documents how a contextual-dialectical approach informed many of the classical liberal, and libertarian thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

A large portion of the second half of Sciabarra's work involves a comprehensive case study of the writings of Murray Rothbard, one of the major libertarian thinkers of the 20th century. Sciabarra attempts to identify the dialectical and undialectical aspects of Rothbard's wide-ranging anarcho-capitalist analytical model. Rothbard's work is used to expose and analyze the dialectical strengths and nondialectical weaknesses that are typical in modern libertarian social theory. 

Sciabarra observes that Rothbard, for most of his life, believed that libertarianism did not require a theory of culture. Rothbard appeared to think that his axiom of non-aggression could resolve social and political problems by itself. Like many other libertarians, he simply dropped the larger context which freedom requires in order to flourish and stressed libertarian goals without considering the problem of meeting them. He insisted that libertarianism was a political philosophy that could accommodate any culture. For example, Rothbard believed that men could simply use their reason to develop a permanently fixed Libertarian Law Code in accordance with anarcho-capitalist principles.  

Sciabarra questions the efficacy of such an imposition because it does not take into account the philosophical, cultural, and historical context upon which libertarian principles depend. The acceptance of a Libertarian Law Code in the real world would require a deeper understanding of personal and cultural factors. Rothbard had abstracted a single principle of non-aggression and created a dualistic tension between theory and reality by declaring that state institutions are at odds with human nature. This led Rothbard to universalize the market as a means of destroying the state.  

Sciabarra points out that later Rothbard realized that proponents of a free society needed a fully articulated theory of culture, since some cultures foster, while others threaten, a free society. Rothbard's later greater dialectical sensibility is exhibited in his theory of structural crisis which was simultaneously historical, political, economic, and sociological and in the foundations of his non-Marxist theory of class struggle. 

In need of an effective strategy

Toward the end of his book, Sciabarra briefly surveys the growing dialectical trend among libertarians such as Peter Boettke, Douglas Den Uyl, Don Lavoie, Douglas Rasmussen, Mario Rizzo, and others. Sciabarra is convinced that libertarianism as a social theory is valuable and offers a valid perspective on the nature of the crisis in modern society and that voluntary social relations, with all their preconditions and effects, are morally and consequentially preferable to the status quo and to statism in all its varieties. However, he does not believe that libertarian theorists have presented the best formulations and arguments in the context of social conditions that exist. Freedom cannot be defended successfully when severed from its broader requisite conditions. Libertarians must pay greater attention to the broader context within which their goals and values can be realized.

Sciabarra's message is that libertarians need an effective strategy that recognizes the dynamic interrelationships between the personal, political, historical, psychological, ethical, cultural, economic, etc., if they are to be successful in their quest for a free society. He explains that attempts to define and defend a non-aggression axiom in the absence of a broader philosophical and cultural context are doomed to fail. Libertarians must pay greater attention to the broader context within which their goals and values can be realized. The battle against statism is simultaneously structural (political and economic), cultural (with implications for education, race, sex, language, and art) and personal (with connections to individuals' tacit moral beliefs, and psycho-epistemological processes).

The author wants people to understand both the necessity for objective conceptual foundations for a free society and the need for cultural pre-requisites in the battle for the free society. The fight for freedom is multidimensional and takes place on a variety of levels with each level influencing and having reciprocal effects on the other levels. Dialectics require that people take into account and pay attention to all the levels and structures that a politics of freedom depends upon. Sciabarra contends that it is possible to look at society from different angles and on different levels of analytical generality in order to obtain an enriched portrait of its total form. Change must occur on many different levels and cannot be dictated from the realm of politics – it must filter through all the various levels.

The goals of Total Freedom are to defend the need for a dialectical libertarianism that synthesizes multiple disciplines and to reclaim dialectics as a viable methodology for libertarian social theory. The author accomplishes this in his well-documented, innovative, and academic treatise. He offers libertarianism as a valid and valuable perspective that is preferable to the status quo and to statism in all its varieties. However, Sciabarra stops short of developing his own substantive dialectical libertarian social theory. 

His work is primarily methodological and only articulates the view that a dialectical libertarianism is essential to the future of both dialectics and libertarianism. He has taken the first step by offering a metatheoretical structure for social inquiry, rather than a comprehensive argument for liberty. Sciabarra cautions that much work needs to be done to test the validity of various libertarian theories. I am looking forward to seeing what Sciabarra will offer us next that will contribute toward the development of a comprehensive defense of freedom.

Addendum

Readers may also be interested in an essay that Chris M. Sciabarra recently published to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the first two books in his "Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy": "Marx, Hayek, and Utopia" and "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical," and the twenty-fifth anniversary of "Total Freedom." This "Trilogy Anniversary" essay can be found on both Notablog and Medium:

https://notablog.net/2025/06/09/a-trilogy-anniversary/

https://medium.com/@cm.../a-trilogy-anniversary-6265b10c1258