This former law professor and Constitutional Court judge has become a sort of natural leader for opponents of Uribe, whose voting intention ratings remain well over 50%. Very often, Carlos Gaviria claims that his political philosophy is liberalism. Here, this word is used in its original meaning, not in the meaning given to it in American politics.

Antonio Caballero, a well-known leftist columnist, wrote in a recent column entitled “Un Liberal” (A Liberal, Semana N. 1253) that Carlos Gaviria is in fact a liberal “in the philosophical sense of the word”. In explaining the meaning of this, Caballero says that a liberal is someone who “doesn’t believe his reasons are the only valid ones; someone who is tolerant, open-minded and freedom-lover”. He also says that this is the liberalism of Kant, Voltaire and the Enlightenment.

This outline, however brief, correctly captures the ideological essence of political liberalism. Nevertheless, I don’t think Carlos Gaviria can be considered a “liberal” in the philosophical sense of the word. Why?

Let’s start by recognizing that, in certain topics, Carlos Gaviria indeed thinks as a liberal. For example, as a Constitutional Court judge, he wrote the sentence that legalized the possession and consumption of small amounts of drugs. The consumption of drugs is quintessentially an individual decision, and generally, individuals are well placed to consider and evaluate the risks of such decision. It is true that some drug consumers commit crimes, but it’s those crimes that must be prosecuted and punished.

There are other aspects, however, that place Gaviria very far from the political philosophy of liberalism. And I don’t think that merely having a few isolated liberal views is enough to qualify as “a liberal”.

Let’s take the case of Gaviria’s view of the market economy. Both his public statements as his formal political program contain a radical rejection of the market economy. We already quoted columnist Caballero as saying that a liberal doesn’t think his reasons are the only valid ones. Well, the market economy is nothing but the application of this principle to political economy. In the opposite point of view, the state mandates that its own reason is the only valid one, and uses its coercion to impose it. Besides, free markets are an essential part of human dignity in the political sphere. In the words of Amartya Sen, free markets need no justification, since they are “part of the way human beings in society live and interact with each other.”

In a note published in his website, Carlos Gaviria says that the error of those who defend free markets is “to believe that individuals always make better decisions.” False. What we believe is that nobody has the knowledge nor the moral authority to know and mandate by decree, in a centralized manner, what is best for each individual, or for society itself. The same argument made by Gaviria would justify government dictating what books we must read, and what music we must listen to, since individuals can be “wrong” in their decisions. And in fact, in matters economic, every time that governments have believed they have the knowledge and the truth, results have been a disastrous combination of poverty, backwardness and oppression.

Equally anti-liberal is Carlos Gaviria’s radical rejection of the Colombia-US Free Trade Agreement and free trade more generally. Caballero mentioned Voltaire; well, let’s her it from Voltaire: “As trade enriched the citizens in England, so it contributed to their freedom, and this freedom on the other side extended their commerce, whence arose the grandeur of the State.” (Letters on the English, N. 10)

In addition, I find it hard to understand how someone who claims to be philosophically liberal can seek and accept political support from groups such as the Communist Party. These groups, which are part of Gaviria’s coalition, maintain totalitarian ideologies and hate freedom. Is it necessary to remind to him and his followers that Communism built, in the 20th century, a totalitarian bloc where liberty didn’t exist, and where nearly 100 million people died from starvation and poverty, and in many other cases, faced a firing squad for the crime of reading some book?

To be a good liberal, it’s not enough to recognize the value of liberty in a few instances of social life. It’s also not enough to be politically leftist, as columnist Caballero suggests. He is deeply wrong when he says that “liberty is the root of most of the leftist thought.” In fact, a desire for the annihilation of liberty is the root of most of the leftist philosophy.

* Andrés Mejía-Vergnaud is the Executive Director of the Instituto Libertad y Progreso, Bogota, Colombia.

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