Minimal State Theories and Democracy in Europe: From the 1880s to Hayek

Summary

This article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted.     

Kameralismus als paradoxe Konzeption der gleichzeitigen Stärkung von Markt und Staat. Komplexe Theorielagen im deutschen 18. Jahrhundert

Cameralism as the paradox concept of simultaneous strengthening of market and state. Complex theoretical constellations in Eighteenth Century's Germany. Cameralism is an early theory of political economy of the 17^th and 18^th century in Germany and Austria, defining markets as a mode of political order of the absolutistic state. Men are incomplete actors; the state has to arrange a secure life and well being. But all regulation and order is the basement for individual action and a certain kind of early liberty. To regulate men's actions is to protect them against any arbitrariness of the governor. In the shadow of strong regulation of the economy and the society we see the development of the liberal market society.