Progress pill
How freedom works

Replacing contract with policy

Freedom as a Social Project

Replacing contract with policy

  • The myth of the state as a deity
  • The electoral process versus individual deliberation
  • Necessary and parasitic attributions of the state
  • The superiority of contract over political choice

The myth of the state as a deity

The state has been the object of a remarkable mythologisation, particularly during the nineteenth century under the influence of German writers. These authors presented it as a kind of earthly deity: an intangible, superior being, devoid of human defects, endowed with a capacity for foresight and direction that no individual could possibly possess.
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who had studied in Germany as a young man and knew this literature intimately, confronted it head-on in L'État moderne et ses fonctions (1890). He opposed to this idealised vision a much more down-to-earth analysis of what the modern state actually is:
"The state is not a philosopher-king, endowed with supernatural wisdom and released from all human weakness. It is a group of men, chosen by methods that have no necessary connection with competence, exercising functions for which they have rarely been trained, under the pressure of interests that are frequently incompatible with the general welfare. To speak of the state as if it were a rational agent superior to the individuals of whom it is composed is to commit the most elementary of sociological errors."
In other words, the democratic state does not function like the Ancien Régime, where power derived from a hereditary family line: its reality is far humbler. Men organised into parties vie for possession of political power. These parties operate a monopoly that is all the more harmful for being temporary, leading to hasty enjoyment of the benefits of power, waste of public resources, and laws drafted by individuals who are not always suited to the functions they assume.
Indeed, the mythologisation of the state is not a mere intellectual error; it is a political danger. For the higher the authority attributed to the state, the less resistance the citizen feels entitled to offer its encroachments. The German philosophical tradition, from Hegel to the historical school of economics, had performed a disservice to liberty by consecrating the state as the highest expression of human reason.

The electoral process versus individual deliberation

The electoral process differs fundamentally from the process of individual judgement. What is the true nature of this difference? It is not merely a matter of scale or complexity; it is a matter of the quality of the deliberation involved.
When a person makes a private decision, whether to enter into a contract, make an exchange, or undertake a line of work, he makes observations and reflects carefully before acting. This deliberation takes place slowly and peacefully within his own mind. He bears the direct consequences of his choice, which both motivates careful thought and corrects errors rapidly. In the political sphere, by contrast, decisions emerge from agitation and election fever, in a climate of short-termism hardly conducive to the enlightened judgement that the complex issues the state claims to handle would require.
Leroy-Beaulieu described this contrast with great precision:
"The consumer in the market knows what he wants, because he has felt the want directly. He knows what he is being offered, because he can examine it. He knows what he is paying, because the price is stated clearly. And he knows immediately whether the exchange satisfied him, because he feels the result. The voter in the election knows none of these things. He knows only a vague impression of a candidate, filtered through partisan newspapers and public speeches designed to excite rather than to inform. He cannot know in advance whether the policies he is supporting will satisfy him; and by the time he finds out, his vote has long since been cast and cannot be recalled."
The democratic state also systematically sacrifices minority interests. Since decisions emerge from a majority, that majority naturally tends, in the absence of sufficient constitutional constraints, to infringe on the individual rights of minority citizens. Worse still, future generations find themselves taxed in advance, inheriting debts and interest on expenditure to which they have never consented.

Necessary and parasitic attributions of the state

We must draw a careful distinction between the legitimate functions of the state and its parasitic functions. Laws that guarantee the protection of individuals through a judicial and police system establish the security necessary for exchanges and contracts. These are what Leroy-Beaulieu called the "negative" attributions of the state, meaning attributions that merely protect without intervening in the substance of individual choices.
Bastiat expressed this distinction with his customary economy of language:
"The mission of the law is not to compel us to do what is right, but to prevent us from doing what is wrong. It is not to make us virtuous, but to prevent us from being wicked toward others. These are, it may seem, modest ambitions. But they are, in fact, immense ones, because the law that restricts itself to this mission leaves infinite space for the free development of individual energy and talent."
Unfortunately, far too many laws hinder, prevent, and regulate the activities of individuals who are not infringing the rights of others. These are the "positive" attributions of the state, replacing contract and exchange by majority decision and administrative regulation. The individual is hindered in his ownership of things, or in his ownership of himself, under pretexts of indefinite and indefinable harm to society or to certain categories of persons.
Indeed, it is precisely this replacement of contract by politics that constitutes the core mechanism of unfreedom. The question is not whether the state has functions; of course it has functions, and necessary ones. The question is whether those functions should grow without limit, colonising domains that were previously organised by free agreement between individuals.

The superiority of contract over political choice

Let us compare the two systems directly. In a society founded on contract, the individual is responsible for his fate and master of his faculties. He decides to satisfy his needs, seeks solutions to improve his existence, and engages in a process of discovery and deliberation that is part and parcel of his own individuality. Free competition constantly improves the alternatives on offer.
Leroy-Beaulieu articulated the comparison with precision:
"In the market, everyone can choose freely between competing alternatives; the market for political ideas, by contrast, remains restricted and under tutelage. As a consumer, I can judge immediately whether a particular purchase satisfied my needs; but how am I to judge whether the grand reforms of national education or the postal service have given me satisfaction? I am not a consumer of everything, and my individual experience bears on something that vastly exceeds me."
In other words, political choice is always a package deal, imposed by majority and presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis that no market would tolerate. The individual is forced to acquiesce to an entire programme, entering into exchanges that may well be disadvantageous to him, whereas contractual freedom would allow him to make of his faculties and properties the use he deems best according to his own criteria.
In a system founded on political power, this process is truncated at every stage. Electoral agitation and misleading promises replace calm deliberation. The citizen votes on the basis of a general impression of a candidate rather than a careful assessment of specific measures. The choices are too complex and all-encompassing for any individual to measure their effects on himself. Finally, political choice is imposed by majority and by package: the individual is denied the granular, personal, immediate feedback that the market provides at every transaction.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
According to the critique of democratic states, what fundamental problem arises from the temporary nature of political power?