The continuing history of bleeding-heart libertarianism

Antoine Claude Destutt de Tracy has a plausible claim to being the first libertarian, if by that word we understand something like the combination of rights theory, consent theory, and thoroughly market-oriented economics that has characterized libertarian thought in the past fifty years. He was relentlessly individualistic in method and laissez-faire in conclusions. Compared with Locke, he was far more concerned with commerce and far more radically democratic-republican in his views of constitutional government.. Compared with Smith, he was much more individualistic. much more committed to natural rights, much less tolerant of public expenditure, and much more radical in his views about the appropriate speed of political change.

In light of that, I found this interesting: from his A Treatise on Political Economy, Thomas Jefferson trans. (yes, really), 1817 edition reprinted by Kelley, 1970, p. 139:

I will commence by remarking, with satisfaction, that humanity, justice and policy, equally require that of all interests those of the poor should always be the most consulted, and the most constantly respected; and by the poor I mean simple hirelings, and every where those whose labour is worst paid.
First, humanity: for we should observe, that when it respects the poor, the word interest has quite a different degree of energy, from what it has when men are spoken of whose wants are less urgent, and sometimes even imaginary. We every day say, that the interests of one minister are contrary to those of another; that such a body has interests opposed to those of another body; that it is the interest of certain undertakers, that the raw material should sell high; and the interest of some others to buy them low. And we often espouse these motives with warmth as if they were worth the trouble. Yet this means no more than that some men believe, and often erroneously, that they have a little more or a little less enjoyment under some circumstances than under others. The poor, in his small sphere, has, assuredly, also interests of this kind; but they disappear before greater ones; we only do not perceive them—and, when we attend to him, the question is almost always on the possibility of his existence or the necessity of his destruction, that is to say of his life or his death. Humanity does not permit interests of this kind to be placed in the balance with simple conveniences.

Justice is equally opposed to it; and, moreover, it obliges us to take into consideration the number of those interested. Now, as the lowest class of society is every where much the most numerous, it follows, that whenever it is in opposition with others, what is useful to it, ought always to be preferred.

Policy leads us to the same result: for it is well agreed, that it is useful to a nation to be numerous and powerful. Now it has just been proved, that the extent to which the lower class can go, is that which determines the limits of the total population; and it is not less so by the experience of all ages and countries, that wherever this lowest class is too wretched, there is neither activity, nor industry, nor knowledge, nor real national force—and we may even say, nor interior tranquillity well established.

You can read the rest of the chapter here. I certainly don’t endorse everything in it; Tracy is far from being one of my intellectual heroes. But given the interest some of my co-bloggers have in historical precedents for libertarian policy arguments built on Rawls-like foundations, I thought the passage was worth pointing out.