6.2.4.3 Small Government and Laissez-Faire
Laissez-faire policies are advocated by those who distrust concentrated power, seeing it as potentially oppressive and liable to change.
Conservatives with these views see politicians as unqualified to take important decisions on behalf of the population and argue that government should be non-intrusive: letting people make their own choices for the most part.
Michael Oakeshott, in his essay The Political Economy of Freedom (published in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays), described distributed power as a guarantee of freedom:
“In short, we consider ourselves to be free because no one in our society is allowed unlimited power – no leader, faction, party or ‘class’, no majority, no government, church, corporation, trade or professional association or trade union. The secret of its freedom is that it is composed of a multitude of organizations in the constitution of the best of which is reproduced that diffusion of power which is characteristic of the whole.” [p. 41]
Edmund Burke, in paragraph 293 of Reflections on the French Revolution, argued that distributed power also increases social cohesion:
“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.”
Burke’s vision of conservatism was repeatedly mentioned by Thomas Sowell, in his book A Conflict of Visions, as being consistent with a “constrained vision” of mankind. Sowell argues that it is unsafe to put too much power in the hands of politicians. The “unconstrained vision” places its trust in:
“the social experience of the many, as embodied in behaviour, sentiments, and habits, rather than the specially articulated reason of the few, however talented or gifted those few might be.” [p. 37]
A policy of laissez-faire leaves most power to institutions and markets – allowing them to make most of the detailed administrative decisions and to evolve naturally. This is consistent with a neoliberal economic policy (3.5.9.1).
The Republican Tea Party movement, which emerged in 2009 according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a recent example of this type of conservatism. Its name harks back to the Boston Tea Party, which was a protest against British taxation without representation. Its supporters cite the American Constitution as granting only limited powers to the Federal government.
Laissez-faire – a small government – results in low taxes. This is compatible with conserving wealth and privilege, as described above (6.2.4.2), and there is also an overlap of interests with libertarians who want to keep what they have earned in the name of personal freedom (6.2.2.3). These ideas are often to be found in the same political party, as with American Republicans and the British Conservative Party.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/6243a.htm.