The "Free" Market

Reading once again through the comments to the post on the role of the State at The Distributist Review, I think there may be some competing notions of freedom at work with respect to what people mean by the "free market." Some liberals/capitalists tend to think of the lack of regulation or constraint. Paleolibertarians like Ron Paul talk about the need for unfettered competition and enabling the small guy to compete against the corporations by getting rid of corporate subsidies and other government benefits for large organizations.

Distributists like Belloc talk about economic freedom, the ownership of property or the means of production. Do they apply this understanding of economic freedom (or of freedom ordered to virtue) to their definition of the "free" market? It would seem that John Médaille does. (I still have to buy his Toward a Truly Free Market!) For distributists, curbing the power of the wealthy may not be sufficient to restore a free market, in this sense.

There is another sense in which the free market may be free, if freedom is understood as living rightly, or in accordance with the human good. The free market is the one in which the agents are acting in conformity with what virtue (particularly justice) requires, even if they are not acting out of virtue.

Is there a link between the two senses of freedom? Aristotle recognizes that one must be properly equipped to live a life of virtue. Economic freedom may be a necessary condition for moral freedom, freedom in the second sense. But is economic freedom really necessary for the virtuous life? It depends upon what virtue and what role one plays. It does seem that one may be virtuous with respect to family and neighbor without economic freedom, but it may be more difficult to exercise virtue because he is not in complete control of his life. On the other hand, economic freedom, then, may be necessary for the exercise of citizenship or political freedom. Economic freedom may not be needed for all in all forms of polities, but it is integral to citizenship in a republic.

IHS Press

Update (6/20/11): An excerpt of Belloc on property and economic freedom.