Juan Ramón Rallo - Liberalism (Chapter 1)

This is a translation of the first chapter of "Liberalism: The 10 basic principles of liberal political order" written by Juan Ramón Rallo. You can buy the original book here.
Esta es una traducción a inglés del primer capítulo de "Liberalismo: Los 10 principios básicos del orden político liberal" escrito por Juan Ramón Rallo y que puedes comprar aquí

Political Individualism

Principle 1: Individuals are right holders

Liberalism is an individualist political philosophy: namely, is an intellectual current that reflects upon the political order taking the individual as a starting point. Liberalism’s moral subject is not collectivism, nor nature, nor divinity, but the human being, this being understood as an autonomous agent that produces and pursues its own vital projects in a deliberated way (Lomasky, 1987: 31-34); this is, like an individual that defines itself and develops when it exercises its agency capability. Accordingly, political order will be judged depending on how it affects each person individually considered, not in function of how it affects other entities different from the human being (Kukathas y Pettit, 1991: 93).

Liberalism stands in direct opposition to other philosophical currents like the different varieties of collectivism, ecocentrism or religious fundamentalism, whose moral core isn’t constituted by the individual, but by the group, by the environment or by divinity: that is to say, unlike liberalism, collectivism will evaluate political order depending on how it will affect the group deemed as morally relevant (natural community, political community, nation, the working class, the male gender, etcetera.) and not the individual members of that or any other group; ecocentrism will qualify political order depending on how it will underscore the environment and not only over the individuals that take part of it; and the different religious fundamentalisms will sanction political order depending on how it will collide with their version of divinity and not with human beings.

Liberalism’s own political individualism is not to be mistaken with social atomism, nor with ethical selfishness, nor with ethical subjectivism: social atomism maintains that society is only made up of individuals and that each of them interacts with the rest without any external influence; ethical selfishness argues that individuals should only seek their own well-being, paying no attention to others; and ethical subjectivism affirms that ethical propositions only express personal preferences of each individual and don’t describe, under no circumstances, objective reality that is independent of the perception of every subject.

What political individualism isn't

Political individualism does not equate social atomism because it is perfectly compatible considering the individual as the centre of moral analysis and, at the same time, recognizing that groups exist and, in addition, are very relevant at the time of shaping someone’s identity: political individualism only maintains that, although groups exists, political order must be evaluated depending on its repercussions on the individual and not on the groups (since, ultimately, groups are valuable insofar as they meet the needs of individuals). For example, one of the most important liberal thinkers of the 20^th Century, Ludwig von Mises, was blunt when stating that: "Man is inconceivable as an isolated being, because humanity exists only as a social phenomenon, and men have passed the stage of animality insofar as cooperation has strengthened social ties between individuals. The evolution of the human animal to the human person has been effected through social cooperation and only through social cooperation” (Mises, 1922 [1951]: 292). But that groups are essential to the individual does not equate to saying that groups are more morally important than individuals.

Likewise, political individualism neither does equate ethical selfishness, because evaluating a political order according to its repercussions on the individual is not the same as exhorting each individual to act solely driven by their solipsist preferences: in fact, such a maxim – to act without concern for others - could well engender a political order that was undesirable for those same individuals. In words from another great liberal of the 20th century, Friedrich Hayek (1946): "To state that individuals are and should be guided by their interests and wishes may be misinterpreted or distorted equating it to the false statement that individuals act and must act only guided by their personal needs or their selfish interests: In reality, what we mean is that individuals should be allowed to strive to get everything that they consider desirable [including "the needs of your family and friends, or anything else that may concern people ”]».

And finally, political individualism is not necessarily equal to ethical subjectivism either, since it is reasonable to contend that the propositions of liberal political philosophy refer to objective facts regardless of the personal preferences of each individual (Huemer, 2005: 48-65). In fact, and with regard to ethical subjectivism, liberalism does not argue that political individualism — as an alternative to collectivism, ecocentrism, and fundamentalism — constitutes an arbitrary analytical starting point for political philosophy; this is, depending on what our particular preferences are, it is possible to choose between the individual, the group, the nature or the divinity as moral core of political philosophy: on the contrary, what liberalism maintains is that the reference point of political philosophy must be the individual, as groups, nature or divinity are valuable only in so far in which they are for individuals (Kukathas, 2003: 67-69) and different individuals do not have to share the same impersonal value standard to which give precedence over your own personal preferences (Lomasky, 1987: 35). Or, to put it in another way, given the preferences of individuals are privative, plural and heterogeneous, political philosophy will focus on analysing the relationship between the political order and each of those individuals with privative, plural and heterogeneous preferences. Furthermore, even when a certain political order would be evaluated based on other variables, such as the interest of the group or the designs of divinity; actually we would only be evaluating it with respect to moral personal standards of some individuals that would not necessarily be shared by others:

There is no social entity for whose sake is worth sacrificing. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Instrumenting some of these people to benefit others only implies using them and benefiting others, nothing else. What happens is that something is done to them in the interest of others. Referring to a general social good only (intentionally?) conceals this fact. By using this way a person is not being respected enough nor is being taken into account that they are different than the rest, and that theirs is the only life they have (Nozick, 1974: 32-33). 

Individual sovereignty and rights

Converting the individual into the referencing moral point of political philosophy implies placing it in a privileged position against the rest of the political order: in a position of sovereignty over itself. So to speak of political individualism is to speak of individual sovereignty:

Associated with the idea of ​​individualism we find the idea of ​​political sovereignty of the human being: the idea that, within a political community, its individual members are sovereigns: not the political community itself, nor its leaders, nor any corrupt representative. It is you and I, as citizens, who own sovereignty: those of us who are not subjected to any other sovereign whose natural superiority or divine election has granted them the right to rule over us (Machan, 1998: 163).

That the individual is the sovereign within the political order implies recognizing the existence of limitations to what can be (or not) done to each individual: if such restrictions did not exist, if an individual could be done anything, then we could hardly say that we are sovereign; in reality, we would be at mercy of what the political order would like to do. Well, we will name those restrictions that limit what can be (or not) done to each individual, "individual rights."

In this regard, it is worth emphasizing the difference, from a philosophical point of view, between "license" and "right" so that the meaning of the latter can be outlined more correctly. The term "law" implies the correlative presence of a "duty": an individual A has a right against another individual B if individual B has a duty (to individual A) to do or not to do something (let's call that something X). License implies the absence of duty: an individual A has the license to do X if he is not under the duty not to do X; that is, if another individual B does not have the right to prevent him from doing X (Hohfeld, 1913).

For example, in a boxing match, each fighter is allowed to hit the other, but neither of them have a duty to be beaten by the other: that is, the fighters have the license to hit but not the right to hit. On the other hand, if a person has the right to go through a property, its owner has the duty to allow passage: that is, the person has a right to cross and the owner has a correlative duty to let them cross. So, when liberalism claims that individuals possess rights and not licenses is declaring that the political order (and, therefore, all other individuals and associations of individuals that make up that political order) burdens each individual with duties (Narveson, 1988 [2001]: 41-46). A political order without duties - in which everything was licenses - would be an unrestricted political order: a "law of the jungle" where individuals would force themselves upon other individuals. In the end, if subject A is licensed to do anything (that is, if B does not have the right to stop A from doing anything) and if, in turn, the Subject B is licensed to do anything (that is, if A does not have the right to stop B from doing anything), then there are no rules beyond the power of each subject to impose itself on the other. And a political order in which there were no restrictions on what can be done on each individual would be a political order that would ultimately be unconcerned with individuals (that is, where they would not be sovereign).

In principle, political individualism is compatible with existence of many types of individual rights: in the third chapter we will explore what the position of liberalism on the content of those individual rights is, but for now it is necessary to emphasize that, for liberalism, rights correspond to people and that such rights are binding - duties - for the rest of the political order (for the rest of the people). This idea of ​​individual rights as restrictions imposed on the political order in favour of the individual is key within liberalism’s philosophical tradition. Robert Nozick begins his famous book Anarchy, State and utopia (1974: IX) precisely with this proposition: «Individuals have rights and there are things that no person or group can do to them (without violating their rights)". In fact, liberal thinkers have come to speak on numerous occasions about "natural rights" of people to refer to those restrictions that, in their opinion, should be inherent to any political order. Probably the clearest expression of this naturalistic mentality is to be found in the Declaration of Independence of the United States: «We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness». This idea of individual rights naturally derived from individual sovereignty that is very well collected in the Declaration of Independence of the United States is at the very genesis of liberal political thought:

The presupposition of the ideas of the Founding Fathers - and of liberalism - is that the individual members of human communities are sovereign; this is, self-determined and self-governed. They are agents to whose sovereignty any legal system must adapt. […] The revolutionary element in the Declaration of Independence is that, unlike other previous political documents, it considers that it is the individuals who make up a society the ones who deserve to become the focus of political attention: not the monarch, not the leader, not the tribe, not the party, not the class or even the majority. Furthermore, the reference to the inalienability of rights gives the Declaration a particularly radical tone: it affirms that the defence of the rights of all people is an absolute priority for the political order (Machan, 2005: 3-44).

Who are right holders?

Therefore, liberalism’s own political individualism makes the individual - each individual - sovereign and, consequently, right holder against the rest of the political order (compared to the rest of the individuals and groups). Now, what is an individual or a person, namely, the category that liberalism makes a right holder? Are they all living things or only humans? Are they all human beings or just adult human beings? Are they all non-adult human beings, including those in an embryonic state?

The answer to such questions is, to a large extent, an answer that transcends liberalism or that cannot be answered only from within liberal political philosophy: specifically, it requires the participation of other branches of philosophy (such as metaphysics, ethics, or the philosophy of law) and other scientific disciplines (such as biology or anthropology). In any case, what liberalism can do is to present some restrictions to which, for internal coherence with its defence of political individualism, any answer we give to these questions must submit.

First, rights are assigned to individuals as agents; that is, in terms of beings who deliberately pursue vital projects and, in fact, develop their own distinctive identity as they execute such projects. What it is intended to safeguard with rights is, precisely, “moral space" (Nozick, 1974: 57) for people to develop their vital plans. Thus, full right holders will be those who have full capacity to act, namely, with the ability to make decisions using their own rights and agreeing to respect the rights of other agents. Because of that, liberalism usually takes adult human beings as the ideal type of (full) subject of rights and fully aware and responsible for their actions. Second, and despite the above, an agent lacking a full capacity to act does not imply necessarily lack any rights: there are at least two reasons to recognize some rights to agents without full capacity to act.

On the one hand, if these agents have the partial capacity to act - that is, they are not capable of acting in all scopes taking into account their rights and the rights of others, must logically have the appropriate rights to the areas in which they can  shape their action plans: this would be the case of, for example, minors or disabled elderly, who are recognized certain rights (such as the right to life, for example), but are subjected to guardianship of the exercise of other rights (for example, the purchase and sale of real estate).

It could also be the case, for example, of animals (or some animals): that is, of living beings - or, more specifically, sentient beings – with enormously limited agency capacity (especially in regards of the shaping of action plans that are formulated under the restriction of respecting the rights of others), but in any case with some agency capacity that could make them holders of some right (for some animal thinkers, the right to life or, at a minimum, to protection from torture). Likewise, this could also become the case of robots with the ability to recognize themselves as autonomous agents in the elaboration of their own existential plans.

On the other hand, if the agents do not have any capacity to act but they have the potential to develop it then they could have rights expressly aimed at protecting the development of that potential (for example, the right to life or including the right to support against those responsible for their situation): this could be the case of nasciturus or people who are in a coma. In both cases, we have living beings with a null capacity to act but that, however, could end up developing it under certain conditions which are what their (limited) rights might be trying to protect.

In other words, given these inherent restrictions to political individualism, there will be various responses potentially compatible with liberalism about which beings must be considered right holders: that is why we can find liberals who oppose animal rights (Rothbard, 1982a [1998]: 155-157) and partisan liberals of animal rights (Nozick, 1974: 35-42; Huemer, 2018); or liberals who deny any kind of right to embryos and, therefore, do not characterize abortion of the embryo as a violation of any individual right (Rand, 1979), or liberals who recognize the embryo as subject of certain rights and, consequently, characterize abortion of the embryo as a violation of their rights (Esplugas, 2004). Rather than providing closed and dogmatic answers to each of these questions, each liberal should first try to find an answer that is as close as possible to the best evidence available in the rest of the scientific disciplines; and, finally, integrate those political communities that apply the different principles of liberalism in the closest way to the answer granted to each of those questions (as we will study in the following chapters, the liberal political order admits a plurality of different political communities but equally compatible with its general principles).

Therefore, what liberalism maintains is that, given a concept of individual or moral agent, it will be subjected to law. In fact, the alternative to the individual being holder of rights would imply that the individual was the object of law (that is, that the individual was subordinated to the majority, to the class, to the nation, etc.) or, simply, that there were no rights (that everything would be licenses) and that, therefore, we would consider morally valid whatever acts took place («law of the jungle"). And considering the individual as an object of law is frontally incompatible with liberalism, since it involves trampling on their sovereignty and disregarding the safeguard of their moral space.

The trap of anti-individualist philosophies

Basically, and as we have already said, all those thinkers who have historically defended that individuals should subjugate themselves to other types of ideals or collective entities, have only been arguing that some individuals are objects of law that must be subordinated to the ideas or interests of other individuals. This is exactly what Auberon Herbert exposed: «When we place a social entity against the individual, are we not deceiving ourselves? Aren’t we actually placing some individuals in front of others individuals? If a person is manipulated and transformed by that social entity, actually, is only being manipulated and transformed by other individuals» (Herbert, 1885 [1978]: 110). Suffice it to analyse some typically anti-individualist ideologies to, by contrast, highlight the crucial importance that political individualism plays within the liberal tradition. For example, neo-Calvinist theologian Abraham Kuyper (1898: 50-51) affirmed that individuals should submit to their particular religious faith, which was the moral centre of his political philosophy (religious fundamentalism):

Authority over men cannot arise from men. Neither can it arise from the majority over the minority, because as history shows almost on every page, minority was often right. And therefore, to the first Calvinistic statement that only sin made necessary the institution of governments, we add this second statement no less shocking, namely, that all authority of governments on earth originates solely from the sovereignty of God. When God says to me, "Obey", then I humbly bow my head, without compromising my personal dignity as a man. In the same measure how you degrade when you bow to a son of men, so you rise when you submit to the authority of the Lord of heaven and earth. 

Thus Scripture says: "By me kings rule"; or as the apostle declares: "The authorities that are, are ordered by God. Therefore, he who resists against authority opposes God’s orders». Government is an instrument of "grace common" to counteract all debauchery and transgression, and to protect the good against the bad. But government is even more than that: it is instituted by God as His servant, to protect God’s glorious work of creating humanity from total destruction. Sin attacks God’s work, God’s plan, God’s justice, God’s honour, as the supreme architect and builder. Thus, establishing the authorities to keep through them His righteousness against the attempts of sin, God gave governments the terrible right to life and death. So, all the authorities that exist; be it in the form of empires or republics, cities or states, govern "by the grace of God". For the same reason, justice has a holy character. And by the same reason, every citizen is obliged to obey, not only out of fear of punishment, but because of his own conscience.

Also, Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism (1932 [1933]) denied all moral autonomy to the individual, consequently being subject to the fascist state and, of course, to the fascist elites who ran it:

The cornerstone of fascism is its conception of the state: its essence, its functions and its objectives. For fascism, the state is absolute, while the individual and the groups are relative. Individuals and groups are only admissible insofar as they exist within the state.

Also Karl Marx (1843 [1970]: §308) outright rejected individualism as the political foundation of society, advocating the prevalence of organized community upon personal autonomy (even reducing to the category of animal the ones who tried to put his individual sovereignty first to that of the State):

Political matters of general interest are in the interest of the State, of the State as a real interest. Deliberation and taking decisions are the realization of the state as that real interest. Therefore, it is evident that all members of the State keep a relationship with him for representing his real interest. The concept of member of the State presupposes that each is part of the State and that it assumes them as their parts. Now, if these are part of the State, then their very social existence will obviously materialize through their effective participation in it. They are not only part of the State, but the State is their integral part. Being consciously an integral part of something is consciously participating in it, consciously integrating into it. A member the State that lacks this consciousness would be an animal.

Or, finally, ecologist Aldo Leopold (1949) also defended that the human being should submit to the promotion of nature's well-being: “Something is correct if it contributes to preserving the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong if it tends to the opposite”. As if being human was not part of nature or as if the pattern for judging the integrity, stable and beautiful nature of nature was not an eminently human pattern.

Liberalism rejects all these anti-individualist worldviews because, as we said, they only camouflage the imposition of personal preferences of some individuals -preferences about how society or nature should be organized— over other individuals. If each person is a right holder, then no one has the right to prevail above the others: the political order will not be characterized by the imposition of some on others, but for the necessary coexistence of all sovereign subjects in the exercise of their rights.

In short, the liberalism’s own individualism leads to a political order that recognizes the individual as right holder and in which, therefore, their rights constitute a limit to the type of behaviours that are politically acceptable to and for the rest of the individuals.