Summary and Conclusions

Conventional classical liberalism poses the fundamental question as “consent versus coercion.” Hence it provides no argument for completely abolishing a truly voluntary contract. Instead classical liberalism promotes greater freedom of contract, a veritable smorgasbord of different voluntary contracts should be available. Yet, in the advanced democratic countries, at least three types of voluntary contracts have been abolished: a contract for voluntary slavery or lifetime servitude, a non-democratic constitution for a city or state, and the coverture marriage contract. This historical fact points to a deeper tradition of classical liberalism which might called “democratic classical liberalism.” Our task has been threefold: to recover the intellectual history of this deeper form of classical liberalism, to express it clearly in modern terms, and finally to show that the arguments against those already abolished contracts to alienate some aspects of personhood also apply against the current voluntary contract to rent, hire, employ, or lease human beings. The deeper themes in democratic classical liberalism can be grouped into three groups: inalienable rights theory, the labor or natural rights theory of property, and the democratic theory based on social or collective contracts of delegation rather than alienation. This concluding chapter briefly recapitulated these basic theories.