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Title: Libertarianism and Liberalism Author: Kevin Carson Date: March 2008 Language: en Topics: libertarianism, liberalism, analysis, c4ss, Georgism, individualism, Left Libertarianism Source: Retrieved on 1st September 2021 from https://c4ss.org/content/11951][c4ss.org]], [[https://c4ss.org/content/12507][c4ss.org]] and [[https://c4ss.org/content/12511
Since the general theme of this blog is an anti-authoritarian entente –
or even coalition – of diverse liberal and libertarian elements, one
question that comes to mind is: “What are the most objectionable
features of both establishment libertarianism, and establishment
liberalism, from the standpoint of achieving such a coalition?”
The problem with mainstream libertarianism is its almost total departure
from its radical roots. Early classical liberalism was a revolutionary
doctrine, which declared war on the most entrenched class interests of
its day. Even the most mainstream of classical liberals (like Adam
Smith, James Mill and David Ricardo) displayed considerable hostility to
the landed oligarchy and the politically connected mercantilists who
dominated Britain in the early nineteenth century. And the classical
liberal movement included, as well, a large radical wing represented by
thinkers like Thomas Hodgskin, who saw the new capitalist system as a
bastard fusion of partially free markets and industrialism with the old
feudal class system. For Hodgskin, the new industrial capitalists were
amalgamating with the old landed aristocracy to form a new ruling class.
The capitalist system that was coming into existence was not a free
market, but a new class system in which capitalists controlled the state
and used it to enforce special privileges for themselves, in exactly the
same way that the landed interests had controlled the state for their
own interests under the Old Regime.
The significance of this radicalism increases when you bear in mind that
Hodgskin’s radical wing of classical liberalism overlapped heavily with
the early socialist movement, back when a major part of the workers’
movement still aimed simply at abolishing the special privileges of
landlords and capitalists and building a market economy based on
workers’ cooperatives.
The radical wing of the classical liberal movement did not by any means
disappear, even when classical liberalism as a whole shifted rightward.
It survived in the American individualist anarchism of Warren, Tucker
and Spooner, and in the various offshoots of Henry George (e.g. Albert
Nock and Ralph Borsodi), among other places. Nevertheless, it was
relegated to the margin of the larger classical liberal movement.
For the overall movement, the transition came toward the middle of the
nineteenth century, when the industrial capitalists had supplanted the
landed elites as the dominant class in Britain. At this point, the main
body of classical liberalism shifted its emphasis from an attack on
entrenched privilege of the great land-owning classes and mercantilists,
to a defense of the interests of industrial capitalists.
With the political triumph of the Third Estate, the mainstream of
classical political economy–the generation after Ricardo and Mill–made
the switch to what Marx called “vulgar political economy,” and took up
the role of hired ideological prizefighters for capitalist interests.
From a revolutionary ideology aimed at breaking down the powers of
feudal and mercantilist ruling classes, mainstream libertarianism has
evolved into a reflexive apology for the institutions today most nearly
resembling a feudal ruling class: the giant corporations.
A useful illustration of the shift is the contrasting positions of the
early and late Herbert Spencer. The early Spencer was a disciple of
Thomas Hodsgkin, who attacked the artificial property rights of the
landed elites and regarded the rents collected by the great landowners
as a species of taxation. The later Spencer (although still a more
complex thinker than these remarks might suggest) was described by
Benjamin Tucker:
It seems as if he had forgotten the teachings of his earlier writings,
and had become a champion of the capitalistic class. It will be noticed
that in these later articles, amid his multitudinous illustrations (of
which he is as prodigal as ever) of the evils of legislation, he in
every instance cites some law passed, ostensibly at least, to protect
labor, alleviate suffering, or promote the people’s welfare. He
demonstrates beyond dispute the lamentable failure in this direction.
But never once does he call attention to the far more deadly and
deep-seated evils growing out of the innumerable laws creating privilege
and sustaining monopoly. You must not protect the weak against the
strong, he seems to say, but freely supply all the weapons needed by the
strong to oppress the weak. He is greatly shocked that the rich should
be directly taxed to support the poor, but that the poor should be
indirectly taxed and bled to make the rich richer does not outrage his
delicate sensibilities in the least. Poverty is increased by the poor
laws, says Mr. Spencer. Granted; but what about the rich laws that
caused and still cause the poverty to which the poor laws add? That is
by far the more important question; yet Mr. Spencer tries to blink it
out of sight.
In other words, as Cool Hand Luke would say, “Them pore ole bosses need
all the help they can get.”
Establishment liberalism, on the other hand, is all too true to its
roots. Its origins lie at the turn of the twentieth century.
After the Civil War, American society was transformed by giant,
centralized, hierarchical organizations: the large corporation and the
large government agency. To these was eventually added the large
charitable foundation and the university. All these large organizations
shared a common organizational style, and a common managerial culture.
Progressivism, which was the direct ancestor of twentieth century
liberalism, was the ideology of the professional and managerial New
Middle Classes that ran these large organizations. Especially as
exemplified by Herbert Croly and his associates in the New Republic
circle and the National Civic Federation, Progressivism sought to
organize and manage society as a whole by the same principles that
governed the large organization. The managerial revolution carried out
by the New Middle Class, in the large corporation, was in its essence an
attempt to apply the engineer’s approach (standardizing and
rationalizing tools, processes, and systems) to the organization of
society as a whole. And these Weberian/Taylorist ideas of scientific
management and bureaucratic rationality, first applied in the large
corporation, quickly spread not only to all large organizations, but to
the dominant political culture. The tendency in all aspects of life was
to treat policy as a matter of expertise rather than politics: to remove
as many questions as possible from the realm of public debate to the
realm of administration by “properly qualified authorities.” As a New
Republic editorial put it, “the business of politics has become too
complex to be left to the pretentious misunderstandings of the
benevolent amateur.” At the same time, the individual was transformed
from the independent and self-governing yeoman of the Jeffersonian
ideal, to the client of professional bureaucracies. He became a “human
resource” who took orders from the Taylorist managers at work to whom he
had alienated his craft skills, went hat in hand to the “helping
professionals” to whom he had alienated his common sense, and expressed
his “individuality” entirely in the realm of private consumption.
So what do we need? Libertarianism needs to move back to its radical
roots. The elements of the libertarian movement that favor genuinely
free markets as a matter of principle, as opposed to defending corporate
interests under the guise of phony “free market” rhetoric, need to
separate the sheep from the goats.
Liberalism, on the other hand, needs to move away from its managerialist
roots (”The body of Leviathan and the head of a social worker,” in
Joseph Stromberg’s memorable phrase) and become more genuinely
left-wing. It needs to embrace direct democracy, self-management, and
decentralism.
I think there is a huge, unmet demand in this country for a third
alternative in politics. Right now, mainstream American politics
consists of a Daddy Party and a Mommy Party. The Daddy Party, the Banana
Republicans, want to turn this country into one giant dioxin-soaked
corporate sweatshop, while acting as Pecker Police and making sure
nobody catches a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s tit. The Mommy Party,
personified by a 900-foot-tall nanny in kevlar vest and gas mask, has as
its slogan “Momma don’t allow! Momma don’t allow!”
We need an alternative that appeals to everyone who finds both of the
above distasteful. The third agenda would be something along the lines
of the “Common Sense II” pamphlet put out by the People’s Bicentennial
Commission thirty years ago, which promoted local self-government and
cooperative economics. Its centerpiece would be reducing the power of
both big government and big business, and devolving power to human scale
political and economic organizations subject to direct democratic
control. The overriding principle would be to eliminate privilege, and
to eliminate all the ways that government currently stacks the deck in
favor of the rich and big business, and then get out of the way as much
as possible. Let workers keep the share of our product that’s currently
consumed by useless eaters (landlords, usurers, bureaucrats, and
licensed monopolists), and then do with it as we will.
In “Libertarianism and Liberalism: What Went Wrong,” I tried to describe
some of the features of conventional libertarianism and conventional
liberalism that inhibit an anti-authoritarian coalition between them. In
this post, I’d like to mention some promising trends within liberalism
that offer hope for common ground with libertarians.
At the most modest level, I’ve been encouraged in some ways by Obama’s
insurgency against Clinton, who personifies the most objectionable
features of establishment liberalism. Obama’s preference for working
with the market mechanism instead of through the administrative state
(purportedly resulting from the influence of Austan Goolsbee on his
economics staff), seems on the whole to be a positive sign.
Of course Obama and Goolsbee are a mixed bag. The positive note is
tempered somewhat by Goolsbee’s part in the NAFTA flap. Assuming there’s
some fire behind that smoke, his fondness for NAFTA suggests he
conflates “markets” way too much with the existing corporate system. His
idea of “democratizing markets,” as Daniel Koffler describes it in the
link above, relies heavily on subsidies to higher education, which
sounds too much like both the New Labour and New Democratic approach:
Accepting corporate domination and meritocracy as given, and using
education as a social engineering tool to turn everyone into managers.
The danger is that Goolsbee’s affinity for “markets” will translate, not
into taking big business off the government teat, but into simply
splitting the difference with the Reagan/Thatcher version of banana
republicanism – in other words, the DLC model of kinder and gentler
neoliberalism.
I also confess to being a bit sick of Obama’s whole Oprah/New Age/”Law
of Success” shtik about everybody just getting along, and transcending
partisan differences, and all that happy crappy. I might be in a bit
more conciliatory mood after the bleeding heads of every billionaire and
Fortune 500 CEO in America are mounted on pikes along Wall Street. We’ll
just have to wait and see. As for Oprah’s recycled version of the old
“name it and claim it” gospel, I care a lot less about whether the board
rooms “look like the rest of America,” than about the power those
boardrooms exercise in the first place.
Still, there’s the possibility that with Obama’s more genuinely
left-wing (as opposed to liberal) voting record, and the influence of
Goolsbee’s market-friendliness, he might just manage to combine them in
a novel way that promotes egalitarian goals outside the conventional
liberal box. The combination of pro-market and left-leaning rhetoric,
taken at face value, offers at least a hope of the kind of thing Jesse
Walker mentioned (“How to be a Half-Decent Democrat“) as a way for
Democrats to attract libertarian votes,
Don’t be a slave to the bureaucracy. Look, I don’t expect you to turn
into a libertarian. But there are ways to achieve progressive goals
without expanding the federal government, and if you’re willing to
entertain enough of those ideas, you’ll be more appealing than a
“free-market” president who makes LBJ look thrifty. You could talk about
the harm done by agriculture subsidies, by occupational licensing, by
eminent domain, by the insane tangle of patent law. And no, I don’t
expect you to call for abolishing the welfare state — but maybe you’d
like to replace those top-heavy bureacracies with a negative income tax?
Consistently applied, what this suggests is essentially the
geolibertarian approach of replacing the administrative and regulatory
state with Pigovian taxation of negative externalities and economic
rents, and replacing the welfare state bureaucracy with a basic income
funded by taxation of rents and externalities.
Although Obama’s departures from establishment liberalism are modest at
best, the same tendencies show themselves much more strongly elsewhere
within the traditional liberal camp.
RFK, Jr. is a good example. He refers to markets in a positive way, but
(unlike Obama and Goolsbee) sharply distinguishes the free market from
corporate capitalism. In fact he demonizes the corporate economy in
terms of free market principles,
You show me a polluter and I’ll show you a subsidy. I’ll show you a fat
cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market
and load his production costs onto the backs of the public.
… Free markets, when allowed to function, properly value raw materials
and encourage producers to eliminate waste – pollution – by reducing,
reusing, and recycling…
The truth is, I don’t even think of myself as an environmentalist
anymore. I consider myself a free-marketeer.
Corporate capitalists don’t want free markets, they want dependable
profits, and their surest route is to crush the competition by
controlling the government.
Let’s not forget that we taxpayers give away $65 billion every year in
subsidies to big oil, and more than $35 billion a year in subsidies to
western welfare cowboys. Those subsidies helped create the billionaires
who financed the right-wing revolution on Capitol Hill and put George W.
Bush in the White House.
Even better, Dean Baker has explained how the conventional “liberal” vs.
“conservative” scripting on economic issues gets everything exactly
backward:
Political debates in the United States are routinely framed as a battle
between conservatives who favor market outcomes, whatever they may be,
against liberals who prefer government intervention to ensure that
families have decent standards-of-living. This description of the two
poles is inaccurate…
It is not surprising that conservatives would fashion their agenda in a
way that makes it more palatable to the bulk of the population, most of
whom are not wealthy and therefore do not benefit from policies that
distribute income upward. However, it is surprising that so many
liberals and progressives, who oppose conservative policies, eagerly
accept the conservatives’ framing of the national debate over economic
and social policy. This is comparable to playing a football game where
one side gets to determine the defense that the other side will play.
This would be a huge advantage in a football game, and it is a huge
advantage in politics. As long as liberals allow conservatives to write
the script from which liberals argue, they will be at a major
disadvantage in policy debates and politics. The conservative framing of
issues is so deeply embedded that it has been widely accepted by
ostensibly neutral actors, such as policy professionals or the news
media that report on national politics. For example, news reports
routinely refer to bilateral trade agreements, such as NAFTA or CAFTA,
as “free trade” agreements. This is in spite of the fact that one of the
main purposes of these agreements is to increase patent protection in
developing countries, effectively increasing the length and force of
government-imposed monopolies. Whether or not increasing patent
protection is desirable policy, it clearly is not “free trade.” It is
clever policy for proponents of these agreements to label them as “free
trade” agreements…, but that is not an excuse for neutral commentators
to accept this definition….
Unfortunately, the state of the current debate on economic policy is
even worse from the standpoint of progressives. Not only have the
conservatives been successful in getting the media and the experts to
accept their framing and language, they have been largely successful in
getting their liberal opponents to accept this framing and language, as
well. In the case of trade policy, opponents of NAFTA-type trade deals
usually have to explain how they would ordinarily support “free trade,”
but not this particular deal. Virtually no one in the public debate
stands up and says that these trade deals have nothing to do with free
trade….
Testify!
In “Libertarianism and Liberalism: What Went Wrong,” I gave my opinion
of what was wrong with both mainstream libertarianism and mainstream
liberalism (”wrong” in the sense to presenting an obstacle to an
anti-authoritarian coalition of liberals and libertarians). In my last
post, “Liberalism: What’s Going Right,” I discussed some reasons for
hope within movement liberalism: some individuals who show signs of
thinking outside the box when it comes to abandoning the worst features
of the liberal establishment and finding common ground with free market
libertarians. Now I’d like to do the same thing on the libertarian side.
The following are tendencies and subgroups within the larger free market
libertarian movement, loosely defined, that largely steer clear of
“vulgar libertarianism” (i.e., pro-corporate apologetics under the cover
of phony “free market” rhetoric) and present some basis for a possible
entente not only with liberalism but with the broader left. I may write
additional, more detailed posts later on some of these groups, but my
purpose here is just to summarize them.
The movement with which I identify most closely as a libertarian, also
probably the least important from the standpoint of actual influence, is
the classical individualist anarchism of Josiah Warren, Lysander
Spooner, Benjamin Tucker and the Liberty circle. I call us “classical”
to distinguish us from modern, left-leaning followers of Murray Rothbard
who also claim the individualist anarchist label–not because the latter
are not entitled either to that label or to our good fellowship, but
because there are substantive differences and we need some verbal
distinction to reflect them. The central difference is that we classical
individualist anarchists still view our free market libertarianism as a
form of socialism, and have views on rent and profit that are closer to
those of Tucker’s Boston anarchists than to the Austrianism of Rothbard.
Modern adherents of this nineteenth century radicalism include Shawn
Wilbur, Joe Peacott, Joel Schlosberg, Matt Jenny, and Crispin Sartwell
(although I’ve probably missed a few). R.A. Wilson, recently departed,
promoted this version of anarchism in The Illuminatus! Trilogy (for
example here).
On a related note, Larry Gambone of the Voluntary Cooperation Movement
is heavily influenced by the mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and
Robert Owen, the direct European ancestors of American individualism.
Gambone played a large role in introducing Proudhon’s thought to modern
North American anarchists (see his pamphlet “Proudhon and Anarchism“).
He and Dick Martin, both in British Columbia, are the primary editors of
Any Time Now.
The left-Rothbardians trace their origins to Murray Rothbard’s project,
in the late ’60s and early ’70s, of an alliance with the New Left
against the corporate state. Rothbard and other right-wing libertarians
contributed to the New Left journal Ramparts (home of David Hororwitz,
before he became an odious neocon) and William Appleman Williams’
revisionist history study group Studies on the Left. Rothbard’s journal
Left and Right, and the early volumes of Libertarian Forum, were largely
preoccupied with the New Left alliance.
Rothbard himself abandoned the project as hopeless after a few years,
and moved rightward. But his close associate Karl Hess went on (for a
while) to develop much closer ties of affinity to the left,
participating in a community technology project in the Adams-Morgan
neighborhood of Washington DC and even joining the Wobblies. And another
Rothbard associate, Samuel Edward Konkin III, founded the Movement of
the Libertarian Left as a vehicle for continuing Rothbard’s Old
Right/New Left project. Konkin’s central contribution to what he called
“Agorism,” the New Libertarian Manifesto (warning: pdf), is available at
Agorisim.Info (with a lot of other Konkin pamphlets as well). The
current Alliance of the Libertarian Left and Blogosphere of the
Libertarian Left include many of those who have preserved and continued
this left-Rothbardian line of thought.
Geolibertarianism, or Georgism, is large; it contains multitudes.
Founded (of course) by Henry George, it amounts to an whole libertarian
movement of its own, with variants ranging pretty far to the left and
right: from Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov and Fred Foldvary on the
right, to Ralph Borsodi and Michael Hudson on the left.
Georgism and individualist anarchism are both unlike mainstream
contemporary libertarianism in that they remain much closer in spirit to
the classical liberalism of Paine, Smith and Ricardo. Both retain the
classical political economists’ understanding, abandoned by the main
line of marginalist economics, that “land is different” from other
factors of production because, as Will Rogers said, “They ain’t making
any more of it.”
The central idea is that land isn’t governed by the normal market
mechanism that regulates the price of reproducible goods, by driving it
toward production cost. The more social wealth increases, the more
people and dollars are bidding up the fixed supply of land, so that
rents continue to rise relative to wages and more and more wealth
disappears down the landlords’ rathole. The Georgist remedy is to
eliminate all taxes on labor and capital, and put a “single tax” on the
site value of land, so as to make unearned scarcity rent the main source
of tax revenue. The effect is for the land currently being held out of
use for speculative purposes to be put to use by human labor, and for
rents to fall relative to wages.
The most left-leaning version of Georgism is the geolibertarian agenda I
mentioned in my earlier post: taxing land value, resource extraction,
and carbon emissions and other externalities, funding a guaranteed
minimum income out of this rent collected by society, and then allowing
progressive ends to be promoted entirely by the price incentives
resulting from these policies, in a totally unregulated market. The idea
is that in a society where workers have the bargaining power that comes
with unlimited access to cheap land and a social dividend of ten or
fifteen thousand bucks per capita, labor regulations will be
superfluous. And in a society where pollution is heavily taxed and the
price of fossil fuels reflects high severance fees, the same is true of
pollution laws. And so on, and so on.
I’m not a Georgist, for reasons that would require way too much
digression to go into now. But George’s thought, in all its
manifestations, has been an immensely positive leavening force on both
left and right, bringing out the best aspects of both communities. On
the left, it softens the tendency to rely on the bureaucratic state, and
promotes in its place an egalitarianism that works through the removal
of privilege and the perfection of market mechanisms. On the right, it
counteracts the instinctive tendency to rally to the defense of the rich
and corporate interests.
Each of these movements, in its own way, offers some potential as a
basis for common action with the left against the increasing
authoritarian police state, and against the corporate-state nexus that
dominates the economy.