The Difference Between Political and Economic Freedom

The notion that economic freedom precedes political freedom is a popular myth amongst academic leftists. Perhaps you have heard "Well who cares about ideology when there is starvation" or the bearded close fisted revolutionary yell of "bread precedes liberty" Ironically ivory tower socialists claim philosophy or ideology "is a middle class term throw away" term without any practical implications because men’s needs are primarily economic and not political or said differently physical instead of intellectual. Declaring man’s needs as material and that the mind is of no importance is not original; it’s an essential tenet of Communism and is rehashed in many alternate forms by contemporary leftists. Believing man’s needs may not move beyond the material until his physical needs are met is naïve at best as it is easily seen to be evidentially false in both historical and logical contexts.


Historically the idea is radically false. Never in history has an increase in economic wealth existed prior to political freedom. Liberty preceded wealth in ancient Greece. Rule of law (rule of law awards liberty because it frees people from being ruled by the unpredictable arbitrary whims of a tyrant. Instead there is an open code of laws which all men, regardless of birth, must adhere to) lead to the prosperity in ancient Rome. Free trade—the Corn laws— led to the industrial revolution in Great Britain, The bill of Right led to America being the most prosperous county in the modern world and freedom preceded wealth in 20’th century South Korea, Hong Kong, And Japan. And in contrast evaluate the economic freedom produced in historically politically un-free countries—China, North Korea, Palestine, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and East Germany. This is not a coincidence because individual freedom and limited government are absolutely necessary for obtaining man’s most basic needs and material wealth.


Logically the notion that man can be a slave ruled by force and still be economically prosperous—on any general level— is false and ultimately arbitrary because the assertion refuses to attach itself to any context. It fails to take into account how material wealth is created or how physical requirements are most efficiently met. To claim they both exist separately and independent from one and another is absurd. They are not corollaries but rather they are related causally. Man needs to be free for the very reason of meeting his most basic goals. A moral code that says man has no right to his own life, or to the rewards he produces is antithetical to in every way to economic freedom. To deny man freedom is to condemn him to death for the very reason that on a grand scale he will not be able to meet his physical needs.


Marxists claim that philosophy is a bourgeois pastime of no relevance to the real world yet this philosophical misunderstanding has lead to over 100 million deaths. "Philosophy" and "Freedom" are not unimportant middle class leisure words but rather they are some of the most important concepts man has ever created and without their understanding we doomed to endless misery, slavery, famine and warmongering