{"id":810,"date":"2020-10-14T13:48:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T02:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/?p=810"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:29:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:29:05","slug":"an-introduction-to-classical-liberal-class-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/an-introduction-to-classical-liberal-class-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction to Classical Liberal Class Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Introduction to Classical Liberal\/Libertarian Class Analysis<\/a>
\nIn my long monograph on Libertarian Class analysis (Blog post<\/a> and main paper<\/a>) I have sections which deal with some of the themes which were common to most if not all CLs who wrote on class, as well as a chronological analysis of some of the key thinkers going back to the Levellers of the 1640s.<\/p>\n

In this much shorter version I have dispensed with discussing in detail the work of five key figures from the heyday of CLCA (Bastiat, Spencer, Molinari, Sumner, and Pareto) and focussed more on the following key themes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the central role played by state coercion in creating \u201cclass\u201d (understood in its political sense)<\/li>\n
  2. the idea that there are two mutually exclusive ways in which wealth can be acquired, \u201cthe economic means\u201d (by producing things oneself or by voluntary trade with others) and \u201cthe political means\u201d (by the use of force to acquire things other people have produced) (to use Franz Oppenheimer\u2019s terminology)<\/li>\n
  3. that those who use \u201cthe economic means\u201d to acquire wealth constitute one class which has been variously described as the \u201cproductive\u201d or \u201cindustrious \u201c class\u201d, \u201cla classe spoli\u00e9e\u201d (the plundered class), or more generally as \u201cthe ruling class\u201d; and that those who use \u201cthe political means\u201d constitute an \u201cunproductive\u201d class, \u201cla classe spoliatrice\u201d (the plundering class), or more generally \u201cthe ruled\u201d<\/li>\n
  4. that there has been an antagonistic relationship between these two classes which has manifested itself over the centuries as a \u201cclass struggle\u201d<\/li>\n
  5. that this class struggle and system of exploitation has interested CL historians and political economists in three paradigmatic forms: the conquering class vs. the conquered class; the slave owning class vs. the slaves; and the tax-receivers of consumers vs. the tax payers (with perhaps today a new form of \u201cthe regulators\u201d vs. \u201cthose who are regulated\u201d)<\/li>\n
  6. that societies have evolved over time through stages each with its own particular means of producing wealth and with its own particular types of \u201cruling class\u201d which extracts this wealth from the producing class<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Read a draft of it here: An Introduction to Classical Liberal\/Libertarian Class Analysis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An Introduction to Classical Liberal\/Libertarian Class Analysis In my long monograph on Libertarian Class analysis (Blog post and main paper) I have sections which deal with some of the themes which were common to most if not all CLs who wrote on class, as well as a chronological analysis of some of the key thinkers … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203934,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/203934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/davidmhart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}