Left, right in freedom march

I have frequently argued the liberal alternative is made of whole cloth – it includes both economic and social freedom, which are intricately in lockstep with one another.

Ultimately, the only way to oppose the one is to oppose the other.

In recent years, in various parts of the globe, we have seen what the religious right calls a “culture war”.

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What freedom entails

At the same time, the parties under their control have started to turn their backs on markets.

We have witnessed the rise of protectionism and, while they speak of liberty, they often think it means the liberty to tell others what to do with their lives and properties.

A major problem for such conservatives is freer markets produce the very things they want to stamp out. They demand social conformity over diversity, but markets help create diversity.

One example I saw recently was something minor.

I was looking at the “street view” option of a small rural village in Eastern Europe where my paternal great-grandparents were born.

I was surprised by how rural it was and how much more rural it would have been 150 years ago when they emigrated.

Then I saw a sign for one restaurant and it only said, “Kebabs & Burgers”, neither of which is part of the past culture of that region.

Free markets mean the free movement of capital, goods, services, ideas, and labour.

Yet many in today’s conservative parties want to prevent the free movement of goods and most importantly, to them stop the free movement of labour.

Their “liberalism” ends the moment freedom means people make choices they disapprove of.

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About conservatism

Often wrongly thought of as conservative, the novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand described the conservatives of 1973: “The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth.

“But they advocate government control of man’s spirit, i.e. man’s consciousness; they advocate the state’s right to impose censorship, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect.”

The problem is conservatives can’t have freedom in the material realm and achieve the social conformity their culture wars demand.

Social freedom requires the use of resources and labour; it offers people choices in the marketplace.

There is the dilemma for the “culture warriors” – to achieve social conformity they have to regulate and plan how markets are allowed to act.

Free speech means people present ideas we don’t like. I see it all the time, but I don’t advocate for book bans or other state measures to restrict such ideas.

But, in various countries we have all sorts of laws being pushed by the “religious right” to control the content of books or restrict access to them merely because they offend their religious values – with no concern regarding the values of the actual reader.

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Control of production

The use of property to produce goods and services is the heart of markets.

If you want to control what results come into being, you must control production as well and that means controlling what others do with their private property.

This doesn’t give the left a pass, I should add, because, while they say they support diversity, they often propose regulatory controls and measures that also restrict diversity in their culture.

It is often forgotten, or intentionally neglected, that Fidel Castro’s socialist dictatorship put gay Cubans into concentration camps. Ultimately, to embarrass the US, Castro allowed Cubans to sail to Florida.

During the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, thousands of gay Cubans fled paradise for the “oppression” of capitalism. While many culture warriors claim social freedom is “Marxist”, they ignore the fact most Marxist nations were socially repressive and implemented the sort of policies today’s Culture Warriors advocate.

So, both the left and the right advocate selective freedom. Rand said: “Each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to activities it despises.”

Just as the far-right advocates social policies that ultimately must attack economic freedom, the far-left pushes policies that ultimately undermine social freedom.

This is why I argue the “radical centre” is a position that supports both market liberalism and social liberalism.

Sir Samuel Brittan, an advisor to Margaret Thatcher, wrote an essay arguing social toleration and markets go hand in hand – of which he approved.

He said the liberal revolution in markets brought about the liberal change in the culture: “The important point, however, is that both the political and economic philosophy and the capitalist practices of a century ago set in motion a train of events and ideas which eventually undermined the status-ridden conventional society of the time and brought into being the more tolerant England of today.”

• Peron is president of the Moorfield Storey Institute and is a Free Market Foundation associate