Salmond presents the bill as a result, not of the normal processes of democracy, but of a global conspiracy of ‘neo-liberal’ think tanks tracing their lineage to 20th-century thinkers such as Friedrich von Hayek. She also implicates the New Zealand Initiative, the organisation where I have worked since 2022.
The lurid picture painted in Salmond’s article is one in which ACT is seeking to strip ordinary New Zealanders of their human rights, and in which my Initiative colleagues play a supporting role as mindless purveyors of an ideology which is fundamentally illiberal, anti-democratic, and even racist.
Ironically, though, it is Salmond’s piece which is narrow-minded and prejudiced. And the intellectual history she draws on – which supposedly lays bare the extremism lurking behind centrist liberalism – itself represents an extreme and extremely partial reading of classical liberal thought over the past century.
A Standard Bill on Standards
Flashes of insight based on secondary literature are all very well, but my own historical training made me wonder whether it might not be worth checking the primary sources as well.
I would have found it surprising had Hayek, the main focus of Salmond’s ire, put property rights (let alone the property rights of the rich) above individual freedom. After all, many of Hayek’s books, most obviously perhaps The Constitution of Liberty, are first and foremost about freedom in general, not property rights.
In The Road to Serfdom, though, Hayek makes absolutely clear that ‘the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom,’ not the other way round, and he specifies that this is the case ‘not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.’
Salmond says that neo-liberals like Hayek strove ‘to protect the world market, a spontaneous, self-balancing order beyond human comprehension.’ Her formulation implies a hazy mysticism that placed a vague ideal above the back and forth of democratic deliberation.
But Hayek’s point was that market mechanisms like prices compress a bewildering amount of up-to-date information (in this case, about supply and demand) into a single, easy-to-use signal, in a way that no set of planners, however brilliant, could ever do. It was not that democratic nations should never deliberate about economics.
The Real Bastards
That’s partly because Hayek’s fundamental orientation was against authoritarianism, either of the left or the right. The main concern The Road to Serfdom is clearly that we should avoid the errors (and terrors) of the Nazism that had taken over Hayek’s native Austria. This is something the book shares with another classic liberal work written by a Viennese exile during the Second World War, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies.
Popper and Hayek were both members of the Mont Pelerin Society, the worldwide association of liberal thinkers that Salmond also has concerns about. In Salmond’s telling, ‘a direct genealogy can be traced from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce in the 1920s to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, the Atlas Foundation’ and the New Zealand Initiative.
But even the most cursory research would have revealed that all these organisations share the same fundamentally anti-authoritarian orientation as Hayek and Popper. The Atlas Network’s public website boasts of projects with names like ‘Promoting Free Societies’ and ‘Protecting Civil Rights’ (since ‘only by protecting the civil rights of all can the institutions of liberal democracy truly flourish.’)
This also applies to The New Zealand Initiative, of course, with our Executive Director Oliver Hartwich recently penning only the latest of his many warnings against the threat that the European far-right poses to democracy.
It’s very strange, then, that Salmond associates us with the likes of Wilhelm Röpke, whose pro-apartheid racism she documents (without mentioning the anti-apartheid work of other members of the Mont Pelerin Society), as well as Curtis Yarvin (a.k.a. ‘Mencius Moldbug’), who has argued for the restoration of monarchical rule in Western nations.
It’s especially strange since Hartwich has argued against the likes of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (whom many libertarians view as sharing some of Röpke’s prejudice), and I have myself argued against Yarvin’s bizarre anti-democratic theories, which I see as a modern revival of Plato’s arguments against ancient Athenian democracy.
These thinkers (as I know my Initiative colleagues would agree) represent severe distortions of classical liberal thought. They are Hayek’s real bastards.
We on the other hand, view ourselves as the descendants not only of Hayek and Popper, but of the broad mainstream of liberal thought, which includes thinkers such as Milton, Locke, Smith, J.S. Mill, and John Rawls.
It’s a tradition that has a considerable overlap with liberal-minded people on the Keynesian and the progressive left. It might even overlap with Salmond’s own convictions to an extent that would surprise her.
That makes us very ready to engage in dialogue with thinkers of all stripes who share our fundamental commitment to the open society. A true dialogue, though, requires both sides to actually listen to what the other is saying, and not put words in other people’s mouths.
Dr James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.This article was first published HERE
The lurid picture painted in Salmond’s article is one in which ACT is seeking to strip ordinary New Zealanders of their human rights, and in which my Initiative colleagues play a supporting role as mindless purveyors of an ideology which is fundamentally illiberal, anti-democratic, and even racist.
Ironically, though, it is Salmond’s piece which is narrow-minded and prejudiced. And the intellectual history she draws on – which supposedly lays bare the extremism lurking behind centrist liberalism – itself represents an extreme and extremely partial reading of classical liberal thought over the past century.
A Standard Bill on Standards
Let’s start with Salmond’s comments on the Regulatory Standards Bill. For Salmond, ACT is seeking ‘to impose its ideologies on Parliament.’ But it is simply not possible, of course, for a minority party to impose its policies on Parliament without winning a regular vote. And this is what ACT is seeking to do – it remains to be seen with what success.
Salmond further suggests that ACT is committed to imposing its will ‘in perpetuity, and to set themselves up as the “mind police” to enforce this imposition.’ Putting a policy beyond the reach of the legislature might be possible in the United States, through a constitutional amendment (difficult as these are to pass). But in New Zealand Parliament is sovereign, and can reverse acts at any time – including the proposed act on regulatory standards.
And as my colleague Bryce Wilkinson makes clear in a recent column, the proposed regulatory standards are not even binding. Even if a mooted independent board finds that a minister has violated the proposed standards, ‘parliament can choose to do nothing.’ It’s a far cry from Salmond’s ‘mind police.’ (Police, mental or otherwise, usually have the power to compel compliance.)
All of this makes Salmond’s claim that the bill ‘would strip away the rights of all those New Zealanders who wish to live in a country in which collective and environmental rights are also respected’ seem somewhat exaggerated. It would not, of course, strip away any of our rights, and social and environmental concerns would continue to be debated in the public sphere and in Parliament as they are now.
High on Slobodian on Hayek
In an effort to ‘to work out what’s going on,’ Salmond looked at three books – Globalists, Crack-up Capitalism and Hayek’s Bastards – by the Canadian intellectual historian Quinn Slobodian.
According to Salmond, these books produced a sudden flash of insight:
As I read, lights began to flash. For the founders of neoliberal thought, freedom is for capital and investors, not ordinary people. If the freedom of people works against the freedom of capital, that’s a problem, in their view.
Salmond further suggests that ACT is committed to imposing its will ‘in perpetuity, and to set themselves up as the “mind police” to enforce this imposition.’ Putting a policy beyond the reach of the legislature might be possible in the United States, through a constitutional amendment (difficult as these are to pass). But in New Zealand Parliament is sovereign, and can reverse acts at any time – including the proposed act on regulatory standards.
And as my colleague Bryce Wilkinson makes clear in a recent column, the proposed regulatory standards are not even binding. Even if a mooted independent board finds that a minister has violated the proposed standards, ‘parliament can choose to do nothing.’ It’s a far cry from Salmond’s ‘mind police.’ (Police, mental or otherwise, usually have the power to compel compliance.)
All of this makes Salmond’s claim that the bill ‘would strip away the rights of all those New Zealanders who wish to live in a country in which collective and environmental rights are also respected’ seem somewhat exaggerated. It would not, of course, strip away any of our rights, and social and environmental concerns would continue to be debated in the public sphere and in Parliament as they are now.
High on Slobodian on Hayek
In an effort to ‘to work out what’s going on,’ Salmond looked at three books – Globalists, Crack-up Capitalism and Hayek’s Bastards – by the Canadian intellectual historian Quinn Slobodian.
According to Salmond, these books produced a sudden flash of insight:
As I read, lights began to flash. For the founders of neoliberal thought, freedom is for capital and investors, not ordinary people. If the freedom of people works against the freedom of capital, that’s a problem, in their view.
Flashes of insight based on secondary literature are all very well, but my own historical training made me wonder whether it might not be worth checking the primary sources as well.
I would have found it surprising had Hayek, the main focus of Salmond’s ire, put property rights (let alone the property rights of the rich) above individual freedom. After all, many of Hayek’s books, most obviously perhaps The Constitution of Liberty, are first and foremost about freedom in general, not property rights.
In The Road to Serfdom, though, Hayek makes absolutely clear that ‘the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom,’ not the other way round, and he specifies that this is the case ‘not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.’
Salmond says that neo-liberals like Hayek strove ‘to protect the world market, a spontaneous, self-balancing order beyond human comprehension.’ Her formulation implies a hazy mysticism that placed a vague ideal above the back and forth of democratic deliberation.
But Hayek’s point was that market mechanisms like prices compress a bewildering amount of up-to-date information (in this case, about supply and demand) into a single, easy-to-use signal, in a way that no set of planners, however brilliant, could ever do. It was not that democratic nations should never deliberate about economics.
The Real Bastards
That’s partly because Hayek’s fundamental orientation was against authoritarianism, either of the left or the right. The main concern The Road to Serfdom is clearly that we should avoid the errors (and terrors) of the Nazism that had taken over Hayek’s native Austria. This is something the book shares with another classic liberal work written by a Viennese exile during the Second World War, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies.
Popper and Hayek were both members of the Mont Pelerin Society, the worldwide association of liberal thinkers that Salmond also has concerns about. In Salmond’s telling, ‘a direct genealogy can be traced from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce in the 1920s to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, the Atlas Foundation’ and the New Zealand Initiative.
But even the most cursory research would have revealed that all these organisations share the same fundamentally anti-authoritarian orientation as Hayek and Popper. The Atlas Network’s public website boasts of projects with names like ‘Promoting Free Societies’ and ‘Protecting Civil Rights’ (since ‘only by protecting the civil rights of all can the institutions of liberal democracy truly flourish.’)
This also applies to The New Zealand Initiative, of course, with our Executive Director Oliver Hartwich recently penning only the latest of his many warnings against the threat that the European far-right poses to democracy.
It’s very strange, then, that Salmond associates us with the likes of Wilhelm Röpke, whose pro-apartheid racism she documents (without mentioning the anti-apartheid work of other members of the Mont Pelerin Society), as well as Curtis Yarvin (a.k.a. ‘Mencius Moldbug’), who has argued for the restoration of monarchical rule in Western nations.
It’s especially strange since Hartwich has argued against the likes of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (whom many libertarians view as sharing some of Röpke’s prejudice), and I have myself argued against Yarvin’s bizarre anti-democratic theories, which I see as a modern revival of Plato’s arguments against ancient Athenian democracy.
These thinkers (as I know my Initiative colleagues would agree) represent severe distortions of classical liberal thought. They are Hayek’s real bastards.
We on the other hand, view ourselves as the descendants not only of Hayek and Popper, but of the broad mainstream of liberal thought, which includes thinkers such as Milton, Locke, Smith, J.S. Mill, and John Rawls.
It’s a tradition that has a considerable overlap with liberal-minded people on the Keynesian and the progressive left. It might even overlap with Salmond’s own convictions to an extent that would surprise her.
That makes us very ready to engage in dialogue with thinkers of all stripes who share our fundamental commitment to the open society. A true dialogue, though, requires both sides to actually listen to what the other is saying, and not put words in other people’s mouths.
Dr James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.This article was first published HERE
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