The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton Classics)

by Karl Popper

The view of the state which I have sketched here may be called ‘protectionism’. The term ‘protectionism’ has often been used to describe tendencies which are opposed to freedom. Thus the economist means by protectionism the policy of protecting certain industrial interests against competition; and the moralist means by it the demand that officers of the state shall establish a moral tutelage over the population. Although the political theory which I call protectionism is not connected with any of these tendencies, and although it is fundamentally a liberal theory, I think that the name may be used to indicate that, though liberal, it has nothing to do with the policy of strict non-intervention (often, but not quite correctly, called ‘laissez-faire’). Liberalism and state-interference are not opposed to each other.