Lobbying and Liberalism

First, it is necessary to clearly define lobbying. According to the dictionary definition, lobbying refers to “extramural activities that promote or block legislation in the legislature and exercise the influence required for that purpose in order to advance the interests of pressure groups.” Broadly speaking, it can be said to relate to the legislative branch. Gun rights advocates in the United States provide enormous political funding to the Republican Party in order to block gun control bills. This is lobbying “for obstruction.” By contrast, Jewish Americans lobby to secure U.S. aid to Israel, and in this case it is lobbying “for promotion.”

People often regard lobbying as a result of applying the capitalist system to politics. However, this inference is an error that looks only at the surface while attempting to penetrate the essence.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., the founder of the Mises Institute, the home of sound economics, and someone who worked for many years in the U.S. House of Representatives as an aide to Republican Congressman Ron Paul, is perhaps the person best qualified to explain exactly what lobbying is from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Rockwell points out that lobbying is “an institutionalized theft.” He explains that politicians (especially in the United States) exist only to extract money and power from special interest groups—that is, to be lobbied. Of course, his insight stems more from personal know-how than from academic rigor. Nevertheless, viewed theoretically, his understanding is largely accurate.

In general, large corporations and special interest groups use bribery to create political and institutional environments unfavorable to their competitors, and to win more government subsidies or government contracts. In this process, the benefits obtained by large corporations are, of course, based on taxpayers’ money transferred from the public to the government, or on the inflation tax. If so, lobbying is not peaceful competition based on nonviolent norms of property, but violent competition grounded in the use of aggressive force and struggle, and it has nothing to do with capitalism.

As long as lobbying exists, corrupt and evil entrepreneurs who conflict with entrepreneurship in theory will appear in reality. In other words, entrepreneurship forms cronyism with almost a 100 percent probability. Entrepreneurs seek to generate the greatest profit with the least investment, and colluding with the state is the most efficient way to achieve that goal.

And as long as government and the state exist as monopolistic institutions capable of exercising unilateral power over the entire economy and society, lobbying is unlikely to disappear. Therefore, it is necessary to redefine or radically overhaul the functions of the state so as to create conditions in which lobbying is structurally impossible. How exactly that can be achieved, however, remains an open question.

Then can liberals make use of such powerful lobbying to contribute to the goal of smaller government and a larger market economy? In other words, can they pressure politicians by persuading them with money (or something else) to advance liberal legislation?

On this point, the view generally shared by American liberals in the homeland of both lobbying and liberalism is that liberals should not lobby. Because lobbying is fundamentally a subordinate activity dependent on the vested-interest legislative process, it is not an appropriate means of reaching liberal ends. Instead, they present education and enlightenment activities as practical means for liberal goals. Although it is a more arduous and indirect path, they argue that in the end it is the only means fundamentally consistent with liberalism.

A liberal who believes in the power of civil society and the market rather than politics is inevitably anti-political. Liberals oppose politics because it distorts the spontaneous order that is the driving force behind our real lives and social prosperity. Accordingly, liberal activity must always proceed only indirectly, in ways that guide spontaneous order in the right direction. To defend spontaneous order while employing political means that conflict with it is a kind of contradiction.

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Original title: 로비와 자유주의

Author: Kyeong-hun Kim

Date: 2020-06-04

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=14&idx=22797