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• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Economics and Ideology: Aspects of the Post-ricardian Literature
• I: Political Economy
• The Classical Model of Political Economy
• Modernization, Ideology, and Economic Freedom
• Individualism Vs. Collectivism?
• The Industrial Revolution and Literacy
• Parliamentary Enclosure and Uprooted Labor
• Smith's Critique of Monopoly
• Ricardo and the “dual Development”
• Ricardo On Money
• Inflation and Political Crisis: Germany
• Inflation and Unemployment
• Government and Inflation: the Mccracken Report
• II: Concepts of Liberty
• Liberty and Its Components
• Is the Right to Freedom Vacuuous?
• Liberty, Slavery, and Utilitarianism
• Individualism, Freedom, and Society
• Liberty and Habeas Corpus
• Should Britain Have a Bill of Rights?
• Locke, Women, and Freedom
• Locke, Women, Freedom, and Individualism
• Locke, Property, and Individualism
• Children, Freedom, and Individualism
• Liberty and Mental Illness
• Sismondi and Liberty
• Mill: On Liberty
• Mill, Freedom, and Happiness
• Freedom of Speech and Moral Development
• Freedom In Kant, Hegel, and Marx
• Marx, Freedom, and Property
• Neoconservatives, Liberty, and Equality
• Freedom: the Politics of Justice and Existence
• Liberty and the American Revolution
• American Libertarians
• III: Economics and Public Policy
• How Economics Influences Political Theory
• Why Democracies Choose Deficits
• Inflation and the Welfare State
• Monetarism and the Depression
• Asian Monetary History: Gold & Silver
• Specie Money Vs. Antibullionists
• Inflation Effects On Capital
• Consumption of Public Health Services
• Factory Regulation and Vested Interests
• Poverty Programs and Government
• The Costs of Regulating Market Information
• Rent Regulation
• Engels On Economics
• IV: Social Analysis
• The Depoliticization of Society
• Is Philosophy Politically Subversive?
• Plato's Republic As a Political Dystopia
• Cicero and Modern Political Philosophy
• The Roman Jurist Gaius and Social Thought
• The Myth of Social Hierarchy
• Contract and Political Thought
• Private Vs. Public: the Domain of Freedom
• Montaigne and the Value of Tolerance
• Commerce, Utility, Character, and Republicanism
• Quintin Skinner and Western Political Thought
• Public Choice
• Editorial Board
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 2
• Contents of Vol. 33 No. 3

Freedom: the Politics of Justice and Existence

Gerhart Niemeyer

• Notre Dame University

“Freedom and Rights: What Is To Be Done?” The Review of Politics 40 (April 1978): 183–195.

Does political necessity diminish the exercise of individual liberty? Taking as his backdrop the survival of the United States confronted by the Soviet Union, the author believes that some political exigences may affect individual rights and liberties. He divides politics into two branches: (1) the politics of justice which is natural, and (2) the politics of existence, which is artificial. The politics of existence may delimit the politics of justice and liberty.; Niemeyer believes that Communist domination would itself eliminate liberty and impose political monopolization with the attendant suppression of individuals as “class enemies.” The West cannot win if it defines the moral battle as capitalism versus socialism, since, he argues, no one will sacrifice for the “selfishness, injustice, inhumanity, and waste” of capitalism. To battle the seductive appeal of socialism, we must define the issue as freedom versus oppression. For Niemeyer, freedom is intimately connected to a religious conception of man's mind in contact with the divine in contrast with Marxian materialism. Marxism must be permanently blind to the true source of man's being and hence is ideologically vulnerable in its materialism and historical determinism.

Niemeyer stresses that what also needs dramatization is the connection between freedom and prosperity. Freedom is in the greatest jeopardy, however, when those who dominate political power also control all property.

How does Niemeyer translate these ideas into foreign policy? Applying his distinction between the politics of justice and the politics of existence, he concludes that we should avoid “making the world safe for democracy.” Thus, we should avoid interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. Instead, we should define as our motive for opposing communism the intent to preserve freedom. Human rights should not dictate to us who our friends ought to be in the “politics of existence.”