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The Rise of Freedom: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

A Key Year for the Free World: 1776

A Philosophical History of Freedom

A Key Year for the Free World: 1776

  • The Disgrace of Turgot
  • The Masterpiece of Condillac
  • A Manifesto for Freedom in America
  • The Philadelphia Congress
  • The Wealth of Nations
1776 is a year that often goes unnoticed in history textbooks. However, in three countries — France, Scotland, and North America — several events will leave an indelible mark on the history of freedom.

The Disgrace of Turgot

During his brief tenure as Minister of Finance (Controller General), from August 1774 to May 1776, Ann-Robert Jacques Turgot attempted to implement major reforms aimed at ending lavish spending, abolishing numerous local monopolies, and returning to free trade. He even went so far as to admonish King Louis XVI in these terms:
You must, Sire, arm yourself against your kindness, with your kindness itself, considering whence comes the money that you can distribute to your courtiers.
In 1774, he published his Six Edicts to abolish the guilds and masteries (corporations that had become monopolies and barriers to entry in the labor market), abolish internal customs duties on the grain trade, abolish forced labor (corvée), and establish tolerance towards Protestants.
Unfortunately, the soaring wheat prices, following a poor harvest, cast doubt on his reforms. Turgot wrote in his defense:
When in the provinces, there would still be famines; it should not be taken as an objection against freedom; it should only be concluded that liberty has not been established long enough to have produced all its effects.
However, he mainly encountered the wrath of the nobles, who attempted to defend their privileges. Faced with a cabal mounted by the Prince of Conti, he preferred to resign in May 1776 rather than yield on what he regarded as the salvation of the monarchy and France. His fall ended the first experiment in France with a free-market economy (For further reading, see Edgar Faure, La disgrâce de Turgot).
Turgot's major work, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (1766), owes much to the doctrine of the Physiocrats. Turgot revisits and extends the free-market model proposed by Quesnay and, before him, by Boisguilbert against the mercantilists. But his ideas are at least equally influenced by his friend Jacques Vincent de Gournay, appointed intendant of commerce in 1751. Turgot traveled with him throughout the country during his inspection tours.
Turgot is an apostle of natural law, which he also refers to as the "system of liberty." He often emphasizes that competition in a free market naturally regulates prices and prevents abuses. Moreover, he makes the merchant the cornerstone of the market mechanism. Indeed, state agents are less motivated and, in particular, less well-informed than merchants. Therefore, it is more efficient to leave commerce in the hands of private interests. It is unnecessary to prove that each individual is the sole judge of the most advantageous use of their mind and arms. They alone possess the local knowledge without which the most enlightened man can only reason blindly. They alone have an experience that is all the more reliable, as it is limited to a single object. They learn through their repeated trials, their successes, and their losses, and acquire a tact whose finesse, sharpened by the feeling of need, far surpasses all the theory of the indifferent speculator. (Praise of Vincent de Gournay).
Here, Turgot largely anticipates the argument of Mises and Hayek on the impossibility of any economic calculation in a socialist economic system.
Dedicating a chapter to "The Brilliance of Turgot," Murray Rothbard, in his economic history from an Austrian perspective, emphasizes that "Turgot's influence on subsequent economic thought was seriously restricted (...) by the following myth that Adam Smith was the founder of political economy." And he adds, "It was on the Frenchman J.B. Say, officially a follower of Smith, that Turgot ultimately had the most influence, particularly his theory of utility value."

The Masterpiece of Condillac

In 1776, the philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac published Commerce and Government, arguably one of the most magnificent pleas of that era in favor of free trade and individual liberty.
Commerce and Government contains what would later be called a theory of the subjectivity of value, which earned him all the praises of the Austrian economists, starting with Menger. Following Turgot, but with greater clarity, Condillac asserts that value resides not in labor but in the fact that everyone finds an interest in the exchange:
The value of things, he writes, is based on their utility, or, which amounts to the same thing, on the need we have for them; or, which again amounts to the same thing, on the use we can make of them. And he adds: "A thing does not have value because it costs, as is supposed; but it costs, because it has a value.
Thus, value does not reside inside the thing in the form of a quantity of labor that would have had to be produced (the labor value thesis that would be that of Adam Smith and Ricardo) but outside the thing, in other words, in the intensity of the desire that the buyer experiences. It is also a treatise on philosophy in that it demonstrates how free and voluntary exchange is a tool of emancipation more just than state intervention because it is egalitarian and anti-hierarchical. It is capable of establishing mature and responsible citizens and is the answer to the tyrannical drifts of the Ancien Régime. Indeed, if the market can regulate the excesses of individualism, nothing can regulate the abuses of central power. This is why Condillac invites the power to free commerce from any hindrance and to renounce any intervention in the economic sphere.

A Manifesto for Freedom in America

In 1776, an Englishman named Thomas Paine published a virulent pamphlet in America, criticizing the English monarchy and advocating for the independence of the American colonists, titled Common Sense.
Paine argues that:
  • Civil society exists before the government
  • The monarchy is an outdated and despotic political system.
  • America suffers under British domination.
  • The American Revolution is a universal cause that defends the values of freedom, equality, and responsibility.
  • America must separate from England and establish a republic to embody these values.
The author takes care to distinguish between civil society and the State:
Society is the result of our needs, the government is that of our wickedness. […] The social state is a good under all hypotheses. The government, even in its perfection, is but a necessary evil; in its imperfection, it is an unbearable evil.
The book's success is immense. It sold around 100,000 copies in a few months in a country of three million inhabitants, contributing to the galvanisation of American sentiment in favor of independence.
Thomas Paine, through his pamphlet, played a crucial role in the American Revolution and in inspiring the ideals of liberty and democracy. He directly influenced the American Declaration of Independence, which was adopted a few months after its drafting.

The Philadelphia Congress

On July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, where they are gathered in Congress (in English, "Convention"), the representatives of the Thirteen English Colonies of North America adopt a resolution stating that the "United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." The resolution is supported by John Adams, one of the inspirers of the Tea Party, and Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson, a delegate from Virginia, will draft the Declaration of Independence.
Over the years that followed, the Frenchmen La Fayette, Rochambeau, Admiral de Grasse, Count d'Estaing, General Duportail, Marquis de la Rouerie, Commander Pierre L'Enfant, writer Beaumarchais, and many others fought alongside the Insurgents to free them from the yoke of the King of England.
141 years later, on July 4, 1917, amid World War I, a ceremony was held at the Picpus Cemetery in Paris for the first soldiers of the AEF who had arrived in the city. The ceremony took place near the tomb of La Fayette, the "hero of two worlds." On this occasion, Captain Charles E. Stanton from General Pershing's staff delivered a famous speech:
I regret that I cannot address the French population in the beautiful language of its loyal country. It cannot be forgotten that your nation was our friend when America fought for its existence, when a handful of brave and patriotic men were determined to defend the rights their Creator had given them -- that France, in the person of Lafayette, came to our aid in words and deeds. It would be ungrateful not to remember this, and America will not fail in its obligations... Therefore, it is with great pride that we embrace the colors in tribute of respect towards this citizen of your great Republic, and here and now in the shadow of the illustrious dead, we assure him of our heart and our honor to give this war a favorable outcome. Lafayette, we are here!
In 1789, it was again La Fayette, with Jefferson, who laid the first foundations of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789.

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith published in 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. A prolific work that often categorizes him as an economist even though he taught moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. In a caricatured way, he is remembered as the father of modern economics.
In reality, Smith owed much to the economists Quesnay and Turgot, whom he met during a nearly year-long journey in France. In this book, he notably describes a "simple system of natural liberty" in which individuals, pursuing their interests, are led "by an invisible hand" to promote the overall well-being of society.
Here is the most famous passage: By favoring the success of the national industry over that of foreign industries, he only thinks of giving himself greater security; and by directing this industry so that its product is of the highest possible value, he only thinks of his gain; in this, as in many other cases, he is led by an invisible hand to achieve an end that is not at all part of his intentions. It is not always the worst thing for society that this end is not part of his intentions. (The Wealth of Nations)
This famous invisible hand illustrates the idea that free competition in a free market leads to an efficient allocation of resources and a maximization of general well-being.
Smith's most significant contribution to the concept of freedom was to clarify the idea of spontaneous order. Indeed, Smith argues that individuals, in seeking to satisfy their own needs and desires, are encouraged to produce and exchange goods and services in a way that meets the needs of society more effectively than central planning could.
The concept of spontaneous order became a key idea in the work of Friedrich Hayek, who acknowledged his debt to the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly to Adam Smith.
Quiz
Quiz1/5
Why is the idea of spontaneous order important for liberal thought?