The Birth of the Liberal Society

Dan Usher

No 273173, Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics

Abstract: The liberal society might be supposed to have emerged directly from anarchy; spontaneously or in a social contract; or the liberal society might; be supposed to have emerged indirectly by a roundabout process in which anarchy gave way in the first instance to despotism and then despotism gave way to a liberal society. The liberal society, for the purposes of this paper, is a society with an economy based on private property and with a polity based on majority rule voting. Anarchy is a society without law or government in which people divide their time among production, defending what they have produced and taking goods from others. Despotism is a society with a ruling class that exploits the rest of the population as a shepherd exploits a flock of sheep. It makes more sense to suppose that the liberal society evolved by the indirect route through despotism than to suppose that it evolved directly out of anarchy.

Keywords: International Development; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59
Date: 1990-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/273173/files/qed_wp_770.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Birth of the Liberal Society (1990)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:quedwp:273173

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.273173

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().