Harvard University is a great private institution, albeit too enmeshed in our naive political zeitgeist. At least two PhD graduates from that university—and in economics, of all fields!—occupy senior positions in Trump’s entourage. About one of them, Elon Musk said that he is “dumber than a sack of bricks,” to which I would not strenuously object. Note that Harvard University is not just a factory of “radical leftists”; it also produces collectivists of the right. And the VERITAS (“truth”) motto on its coat of arms is reassuring, even if it must look like Chinese in the White House.
My main point, however, is that as a wealthy and influential private organization, Harvard University can provide a barrier to the power grab within the federal government and the centralization of power in this country. It is true that, like all large private universities, Harvard has imprudently become dependent on federal government money, but this was under the tacit, albeit naive, understanding that the government was motivated by education, research, and a love of free inquiry and the people.
I wouldn’t say that the Federal Reserve System is a great institution, as its creation was at best a diversion from an overregulated and thus fragile banking system. Moreover, the organization is only marginally private through its regional components, each of which is an association of mostly private regional banks but with only a minority of private bankers on its Board of Directors. As a sort of central planning bureau, the Federal Reserve System flies blind in manipulating the money supply and meddling with interest rates, not to mention its growing regulatory mandates. Yet it introduces a crucial element of decentralization in the City of Command (as Bertrand de Jouvenel called the seats of modern Leviathans). Imagine if Donald Trump held the levers of monetary policy (or if Joe Biden had, to add the mandatory qualification “But Biden.”)
I take an institution to be a set of rules, like when we say that the family or the free market are useful institutions. Some institutions double as organizations or generate organizations, in the sense of structured entities with goals, agents, and representatives: Harvard is an organization within the institution of higher education and research. In a free society, institutions and accompanying organizations help coordinate independent individual actions.
Many institutional barriers to power exist in the private sector (private property, large companies, a free press, financial markets, and so forth, including even organizations that can be otherwise detrimental such as trade unions) and in the public sector (independent courts, federalism, separation of power, inspectors general, FOIA, etc.). In the public sector, Montesquieu noted that to prevent the abuse of power, “it is necessary [that] from the very [arrangement] of things, power should be a check to power.” (I think that “arrangement” is a better translation than “nature.”) Strong private institutions constitute essential barriers to the expansion of political power outside its domain.
Anthony de Jasay, a classical liberal anarchist, believed that the domain of political power can and should be reduced to zero or, at least, as close to zero as possible. The current functions of governments could be assumed by private institutions, notably private property and free markets. Their accompanying organizations would provide private producers of “public goods.” Which leads to an observation we find in his seminal book, The State:
Self-imposed limits on sovereign power can disarm mistrust, but provide no guarantee of liberty and property beyond those afforded by the balance between state and private force.
A model often invoked by other theorists is the decentralized armed power of the High Middle Ages, where lords were able to protect their domains and even resist the king’s power. Of course, local political power can only approximate private force—if it does not degenerate into roving bandits, which the Church effectively prevented. (See William Salter and Andrew T. Young, The Medieval Constitution of Liberty [University of Michigan Press, 2023]; and also Jouvenel.)
This balance of force may have lasted until the 16th century in England. In his History of England (Volume 1), Thomas Babington Macaulay offers a qualified statement:
It was, however, impossible for the Tudors to carry oppression beyond a certain point: for they had no armed force, and they were surrounded by an armed people.
Two centuries later, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (Volume 1), British jurist William Blackstone extended the private force barrier to the armed force of common people:
The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute, 1 W. and M. st. 2, c. 2, and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.
It is true that—especially today—individuals armed with handguns or assault rifles could not easily resist our heavily armed Leviathans, but what often matters is the marginal cost of imposing tyranny: What cost (including in political capital and public support) is the government willing to support to climb another rung on the ladder of tyranny?
De Jasay, who was an admirer of the liberal 19th century, was no doubt closer to (a more radical) Blackstone than to medieval lords. Powerful private organizations, backed by a general belief in private property and in a strict limitation of political power, would hold a potential of private force in the literal sense. Whether large capitalist corporations would ever actualize this potential to physically resist tyranny is uncertain, and therefore so is the solidity of this barrier. They could still, however, resist in indirect ways like employing unpopular dissidents as Hollywood studios did during the McCarthyist persecutions (as noted by Milton Friedman in his Capitalism and Freedom).
Decentralized government and its internal barriers to power can sometimes be detrimental, as when southern American states resisted attempts by the central state to stop the public discrimination they imposed. No political system is perfect, but central tyranny is more dangerous than localized tyranny—unambiguously so when free movement of people is possible at relatively low cost. As Montesquieu noted,
Since a despotic government is productive of the most dreadful calamities to human nature, the very evil that restrains it is beneficial to the subject.
[French original] Comme le despotisme cause à la nature humaine des maux effroyables, le mal même qui le limite est un bien.
In short, private institutions, especially large private organizations, provide a barrier to government power, even if their “private force” is limited. Public or quasi-public organizations can play a similar role as long as they are not subverted by the central power. When these countervailing organizations are enfeebled, liberties become more fragile.
On paper the idea of zero govt power may sound good but there is no existing model in which this produces a place most of us would want to live. It’s clear that at the extremes where the govt controls everything (monarchy, dictatorships, communism) you have bad outcomes. Its also clear that when there is no functioning govt you have bad outcomes (Somalia, Afghanistan).
Since I live with an amateur medievalist I find it odd that era is used as an example. It’s mostly true that there was a balance of forces between the kind and his nobles but it was otherwise not a great time to live for everyone else. There was no effective way to balance the power of the nobles as they interacted with the common folk.
I do agree that private ownership of arms is a check on power, or could be. It would make the cost of action very high. Note the example of the Jews fighting in the Warsaw ghetto. They had relatively few arms and no high level arms like machine guns or artillery yet they provided effective resistance and cost the Germans lives and times they did not anticipate.
Steve: Re: your first two paragraphs. I share many of your doubts, as echoed in my post, but note two things.
In the 16th or 17th century, there was no practical model of free speech either, which did not mean that it was impossible. As for theoretical models of anarchy we have a couple of them, notably (David) Friedman and Anthony de Jasay.
You and I may not like how the government of Afghanistan functions, but it is a functioning state, although not as well functioning as the Chinese, Russian, and North Korean states. This says nothing about anarchy.
Except, of course, if one can demonstrate a large probability that anarchy would lead to that, But in these cases, this is not what happened historically.
“… as a wealthy and influential private organization, Harvard University can provide a barrier to the power grab within the federal government and the centralization of power in this country.”
No, Hillsdale is such a private institution. Harvard promotes Marxism. It merely dislikes the current government but promotes a far worse dictatorship.
Besides, Trump has taken on no new powers. He merely exercises those given to previous Democrat presidents, especially Wilson, FDR, and Johnson. Democrats have assumed they will always be in power when they expanded the power of the presidency. They are apalled when a Republican gets that power.
You forgot to mention Lincoln, who was elected with 40% of the popular vote. He makes Trump look like a rank amateur when it comes to the authoritarian department..
Roger: What do you mean when you say that “Harvard promotes marxism? The university has about 2,500 faculty members (including lecturers and instructors) and I would be surprised if 1% were Marxist. As I am sure you know, only a small minority of socialists (and even a smaller minority of social democrats) are Marxists. And like in all once-influential philosophies, one can learn something in Marxism–if only that its theoretical structure is much tighter than that of fascism or populism.
Pierre: Our democracy is an indirect democracy wherein citizens do not handle the affairs of government. We, the amorphous we, elect our representatives. That seems to be the rub. The proliferation of podcasts, blogs and the internet, as independent institutions, rail against the central planners, stunting their power. It’s not perfect. But relative to regimes where there is no free press, no private ownership of weapons and women are chattel, our form of central planning is preferred. At the granular level, I can openly refer to DJT as rather dim and petulant with out fear of being hung from a crane.
School I went to back in the 1990s objected to military recruiters on campus, the federal government said that for students to qualify military recruiters would have to be permitted and since the student body needed those loans to pay the tuition, the school ultimately permitted the recruiters. Also just a minor comment on the threat Trump poses to the tax exempt status of Harvard, but the government has greatly silenced churches by effectively ensuring that 501c3 organizations are not allowed to engaging in politics. Well, they can but if they do they could threaten their 501c3 status which isn’t just tax exempt it also allows people contributing to deduct contributions to that organization off of their taxes. Larger churches like Catholic Church separate their activities into a 501c3 and a 501c4 and take pains to ensure those entities paths are not conflated by tax authorities.
I wouldn’t call Harvard and similar places “private universities.” In reality, they are federal universities in contrast to state universities.
It’s not enforced. There has not been a single case in the last 3 years and few before that. Multiple cases of churches actively endorsing candidates from both parties have been well documented and sent to the IRS and they ignore it. There is even a group (Alliance Defending Freedom) of pastors who think the law is unconstitutional so they deliberately endorse a candidate every year, record it, and send it to the IRS hoping to provoke a court case (Pulpit Freedom Sunday). The IRS ignores it.
https://www.taxnotes.com/research/federal/other-documents/irs-tax-correspondence/irs-ignores-church-electioneering-nonprofit-organization-says/7my9t
I question the legitimacy of the tax free status itself to a large degree. Many churches are simply businesses that sell guilt. Misfortune is punishment for your sins and good fortune is from Gods grace. Heads you win and tails I lose.
I’m not 100% advocating eliminating the tax free status, just skeptical of its’ legitimacy in the majority of the “churches”. I see no reasonable way of separating the sheep from the goats though.
I support the current tax free system for churches, HOWEVER, if I had my way ( I wont) and we switched to a single land tax, I would want no exceptions. Not for churches, not for governments. The Feds would have to pay the western states a big tax bill every year for their land ownership. And states and local governments would be paying the federal portion on their lands.
Hayek called Several Property as essential to liberty. Key thing is that property should be dispersed and several, not that it should be private.
Distributionists, among them Belloc and Chesterton, also make the same point. A free society needs distributed property. But for libertarians generally, all this talk is socialism.
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