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Title: Materialism and Thick Libertarianism
Author: Eric Fleischmann
Date: August 2nd, 2022
Language: en
Topics: historical materialism, materialism, Karl Marx, cooperatives, localism, environmentalism, anti-racism
Source: Retrieved 8/2/22 from https://c4ss.org/content/57122

Eric Fleischmann

Materialism and Thick Libertarianism

Two years ago, I gave a presentation titled “Prerequisites for Freedom:

An Individualist Anarchist Perspective” to a philosophy discussion

group, in which I talked about the connection between thick

libertarianism and 19th century North American individualist anarchism

and how progressive and liberatory values are necessary for genuine and

necessarily anti-capitalist individualism. For the uninitiated, the

‘thickness’ in thick libertarianism is, according to Nathan Goodman,

“any broadening of libertarian concerns beyond overt aggression and

state power to concern about what cultural and social conditions are

most conducive to liberty.” This broadening takes a number of different

forms as outlined extensively by Charles Johnson: for instance, there is

“strategic thickness,” which holds that libertarians need to be

concerned about problems like economic inequality because “[e]ven a

totally free society in which a small class of tycoons own the

overwhelming majority of the wealth, and the vast majority of the

population own almost nothing is unlikely to remain free for long;” or

there is “thickness from grounds,” which maintains that opposition to

ostensibly non-violent hierarchy and domination emerge from the same

underlying reasons as the libertarian non-aggression principle does. The

cases go on, but in its general usage thick libertarianism is often

understood as any libertarianism that sees ideas such as feminism,

anti-racism, queer liberation, egalitarianism, and environmentalism as

essential to any libertarian program internally and therefore desirable

for external proliferation in a libertarian society. I have written

extensively about thick libertarianism: in my review of Chris Matthew

Sciabarra’s Ayn Rand, Homosexuality, and Human Liberation, I claim that

“[w]e are all thick libertarians now” and that it’s just a difference of

whether that thickness is liberatory or reactionary; in my analysis of

anarcho-capitalism’s relationship to anarchism, I argue that thickness

is one of the defining qualities that places stateless

left-libertarianism within and anarcho-capitalism outside of the

anarchist canon; etc. However, I have yet to explicitly connect my

endorsement of thick libertarianism with material analysis (in its

dialectical form)—my favored lens when attempting to make sense of the

world. I will therefore take an opportunity to do so with this piece.

A final point I made in the aforementioned philosophy presentation was

that such liberatory thickness or, as I put it, ideologico-cultural

values extend to the economic realm and entail anti-hierarchy,

cooperation, and worker power in the form of cooperatives, an

ethico-cultural labor theory of value, “[c]ommunity land trusts,

community currencies, open source technology, mutual banks, etc.” There

is nothing wrong with this model from a purely individualist anarchist

perspective, however I think that—from my personal perspective—this

logic is a bit backwards. That is to say: it is actually the economic

base that produces ideologico-cultural values and culture in general.

This is in accordance with Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’s model of

historical materialism, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the Marxist

theory of history and society that holds that ideas and social

institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic

base.” According to this view, society forms around the means of

production—land, labor, tools, machinery—and the relations of

production—property distribution, class divisions, the commodity form—to

constitute, as Marx writes in A Contribution to the Critique of

Political Economy, on“the economic structure of society, the real

foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to

which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” and, based on

this core analysis, he posits in The German Ideology that “[t]he nature

of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their

production.” It is important to note however that the influence is not

entirely unidirectional. The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci writes of

“a necessary reciprocity between structure [aka base] and

superstructure, a reciprocity which is nothing other than the real

dialectical process” that must not be ignored when attempting a complete

socio-historical analysis. This overall model is often used to organize

historical change through various types of societies—slave, feudal,

capitalist, socialist, communist—but can be used on a smaller scale to

demonstrate how to not only achieve immediate thick libertarian ends but

also how to generate the desired thick values in general society.

[]

Let’s take a look at the case of producing values like anti-racism and

racial egalitarianism. It must first be admitted that racism is

extremely complicated, but one way to look at it is as a mechanism of

capitalism. This can be seen on a number of levels; racism (particularly

anti-Black racism), as explained by Marco La Grotta, has been used to

“divide and rule for capitalist gain.” Historically this can be seen in

“the transatlantic slave trade, which accompanied the birth of both U.S.

and British capitalism. In the early days of slavery, a firm distinction

hadn’t yet been drawn between black slaves and white indentured

servants.” So in order to quell the possibility of multi-racial

rebellions, “the U.S. ruling class developed racist theories to ‘prove’

the inferiority of blacks, doing so to drive a wedge between their

subjects, undercut rebellion and to justify their enslavement.” This has

continued into the present day through “codifying [racism] in law,

funding racist ‘science’ and broadening its scope . . . [in order for]

the capitalists to drive down wages, while creating a seemingly infinite

set of divisions in the working class.” Additionally, Robert Knox points

out that…

[c]apitalism, as an expansive system organised around the geographically

and geopolitically differentiated exploitation of labour needs racism.

Capitalist social relations expanded internationally through the

racialised dispossession of non-capitalist societies, techniques of

racialisation were crucial in imposing labour discipline – up to and

including slavery – on the working class, and racialisation (in

sometimes subtle forms) remains key in managing and dividing populations

in contemporary capitalism, both internationally and domestically.

What these analyses demonstrate is that one way to look at racism is as

a tool to solidify and expand control by capitalists over labor and the

means of production.

An response to this can then be found in the work of Cooperation

Jackson, who are attempting to “develop a cooperative network based in

Jackson, Mississippi” built upon the “basic theory of change . . . that

organizing and empowering the structurally under and unemployed sectors

of the working class, particularly from Black and Latino communities, to

build worker organized and owned cooperatives will be a catalyst for the

democratization of our economy and society overall.” Such a project

addresses the immediate material concerns of anti-racists through

community-based businesses, a living wage, non-hierarchical work

relationships, etc. but on another level help produce anti-racist

values. The main thrust of this argument is that if racism thrives in

helping capitalism accomplish its imperatives of controlling the working

class and expanding extraction/production, then this specific catalyst

for racism can be challenged through the creation of economic

communities—such as that promoted by Cooperation Jackson—separate from

the logic of capitalism; opening up spaces for conversation,

accountability, and reparations without the interference of Capital.[1]

To somewhat bastardize a quote from La Grotta’s piece, the potential of

this project is not “that racist beliefs die as soon as capitalism

disappears” or, in this model, is pushed back from autonomous spaces, it

is that it…

at last provides the arena to stomp out racism; and not only racism, but

sexism, homophobia, and so on. Racism has material roots. It must

therefore have a material solution.

It should be noted that this cooperative dual power strategy has been

called “market syndicalism” by Wesley Morgan and criticized in the same

breath for still participating in the logic of capitalism as units of

the market economy. But what I think this analysis misunderstands is

that present existence and imperatives of ‘the market’ revolve primarily

around state-sanctioned/state-enforced monopolies and direct

interference by the corporate state. Since this state-capitalist

influence over market action is originally rooted in violence and/or

threat of violence wielded by the state, strategies that work to

dissuade or circumvent said violence—such as radical community

self-defense and agorist practices—can make it possible to utilize

markets autonomously of the present economy.

Another example of the connection between (dialectical) materialism and

thick libertarianism is the way in which not only democratizing but also

localizing the material base of society can help make individuals and

communities more environmentally conscious and defensive. Localization,

according to the P2P Foundation Wiki, describes the “production of goods

nearer to end users to reduce environmental and other external costs of

globalization.” There is a great deal of work on how this reduction in

environmental costs happens, but a central point is usually that certain

economic activity—whether it be industrial agriculture or the extraction

and international importation of fossil fuel—currently takes place at an

unsustainable scale and needs to be radically scaled down (à la

degrowth). Additionally, Helena Norberg-Hodge argues that localization

“also contributes to resiliency in the face of climate change: diverse

localized production systems in an interdependent network, rather than

dependence for our basic needs on far-off sources, will better equip

communities to withstand the upheavals to come.” Internal to this

localization is ideally the proliferation of cooperative enterprises to

fill out community economies, which the UN sees as helping to ensure

“sustainable consumption and production.” Although the UN’s vision of

cooperatives is more globalized than localized, they do give the good

examples of the IMAI Farming Cooperative in South Africa: “a women’s

cooperative that has partnered with non-profits and government

institutions to turn surplus fresh vegetable produce into pickles.

Through this initiative the cooperative increases the incomes of its

members by adding value to their products while also reducing food

waste.” They also write of the Association of Recycling Collectors and

Sorters of La Paz in Bolivia, who “formed a cooperative in 2006 to

overcome the waste collection challenges. Their 40 members earn a better

income through recycling in total about 194 tonnes of solid waste on a

daily basis, including plastic, cardboard, metals, used clothing, glass

and occasionally e-waste,” the last of which is sold at an “informal

market.” Even specimens provided by the UN that are linked up with

longer supply chains and multiple production or sale locations would

seem to be more closely controlled by communities; and while these are

only preliminary in terms of the local cooperativization of the means of

production it does provide a glimpse of the future as well as a proof of

concept.[2]

Once again, these directly address ecological concerns at an immediate

level but in doing so can also, as stated above, help produce

environmental concern among people. Democratization (through

cooperatives) and localization can, for example, follow the logic of

Aaron Koek’s call for “direct confrontation with our current

hierarchical conditions . . . [by] seizing the land and resources out of

the hands of Capitalists and into our own. Such conditions would mean a

direct interaction with individuals and their communities in regards to

their immediate biological surroundings, allowing them to make rational

decisions based within the knowledge and understanding that comes with

localized living.” This new control over property by the masses as

opposed to a small group of capitalists leads to “direct power to affect

a meaningful relationship with the biosphere” and therefore the

de-alienation of people from their local environment, allowing people to

“protect the biosphere as an extension of ourselves.” Additionally,

environmental conservatives in the UK have latched on to the idea of

“oikophilia,” a term originating in the work of Roger Scruton and

defined by Sarah Newton as “a family of motives at whose centre is love

of one’s home.” The context of this idea within conservative politics

runs the risk of engendering ethnocentrism, xenophobia, nationalism, and

other deeply undesirable ‘values,’ but I do not believe there is

anything inherent in it that would not allow both a love of local

multiculturalism and a pursuit of something like cosmopolitan localism

(the latter being environmentalist thinker Wolfgang Sachs’s idea of a

networked linking of mutually supportive communities across the globe).

In a more general sense, oikophilia is used, as it is by Newton, to

simply describe an impulse to protect one’s home—including (and often

especially) the environment. The idea is that when one witnesses

“decreases in wildlife or flooding as a result of extreme weather” and

other consequences of climate change there is a “natural urge for people

to want to work together to protect their environment.” Coupled with the

localized ability to actually affect change in their households and

communities through such projects as green energy neighborhood planning

and local enterprise initiatives, this urge finds a material footing and

is therefore able to flourish. I would argue this would be even more the

case if the projects extended beyond the status quo economics of UK

conservatives and into the localized, democratic market system gestured

toward throughout this piece.

The illustrations of how alteration of the material base can cause

shifts in cultural values (and in turn reinforce those alterations) go

on and on—one might consider looking into the material social

construction of gender roles (as theorized by Marxist and materialist

feminists) or the understanding of queerphobia and cishetetonormativity

as being schemes of Capital to enforce both the standardized

reproduction of the workforce and the restricted commodification of

difference. Although starting a cooperative will not magically make

everyone an anti-racist or an environmentalist, as part of a broader

movement toward localization of politico-economic power and autonomy

from state-capitalism, a mass cooperative movement could begin to make a

series of changes in the material base and thereby also the

superstructure (particularly cultural values). All left-libertarians

already support cooperatives wholeheartedly—either as an acceptable or

ideal form of market entity—with much of the call for the labor theory

of value, mutual banking, and the common ownership of natural resources

centering around allowing for workers to collectively generate and

operate enterprises free from capitalist clutches. Additionally, Kevin

Carson—one of the most prominent theorists of left-libertarianism—has

theorized in such pieces as “Economic Calculation in the Corporate

Commonwealth” and “The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies”

that it is through state intervention that economies become artificially

large-scale and delocalized, and so it stands to reason that without

said state interference, it might be possible to move toward networks of

local economies (à la the aforementioned cosmopolitan localism).

However, it seems deeply important to emphasize how these economic

projects can also directly lead to the thick libertarian cultural values

that left-libertarians desire, thereby further conceptually fusing

thickness and anti-capitalist economics within left-libertarianism.

[1] I am here using the term Capital in the Marxian sense, that is: a

social relation based on accumulation through extraction from wage labor

via private property.

[2] Obviously all information coming from the UN should be taken

skeptically, because it’s coming from… well, the UN.