March 08, 2005
Libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right...
I highly recommend this critique of Libertarianism, by Robert Locke, in American Conservative Magazine...
....But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace “street” libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We’ve seen Marxists pull that before.
This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society...
.......
....Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians...
We never see Libertarian revolutionaries seizing control of the state like leftists do. I suspect they lack a certain ooompf, because they don't have the biggest psychological attraction of Socialism: the prospect of being one of the superior people who control everyone else's lives in minute detail. (If there ever were a Libertarian state, I suspect that the outcomes Libertarianism predicts would soon be compulsory, and the totalitarian apparatus would evolve accordingly.) But socialists have this in mind all along (perhaps unconsciously), so the little Lenins are happy to labor for decades in obscure Zurichs, or pour fanatic energy into controlling the student council at the local Junior College.
Libertarians can't match that ant-like dedication, because they have no tantalizing vision of the wonders they will achieve in the first 5-Year Plan...
Posted by John Weidner at March 8, 2005 02:47 PM...and I highly recommend this dissection of Mr. Locke's fatuous and slanderous article.
People who write for public consumption ought to know whereof they speak.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at March 8, 2005 05:16 PMFrancis, I don't find your dissection to be up to your usual high standard. It's not convincing.
For instance, to say two things are mirror-images is not the same as claiming they are the same thing. And it is a perfectly legitmate debating tactic for a critic to define what the group he's criticizing is, when the group itself is slippery to the point of mendacity about defining itself...
Posted by: John Weidner at March 9, 2005 09:27 AMUm, John, it would be helpful if you would make it clear whether you're talking about Libertarianism or libertarianism. It's sorta like the difference between a Democrat and a democrat.
Libertarianism (upper-case "L") does sometimes attract to it people who are True Believers in the sense that Popper used the phrase. I'm a libertarian who is a life member of the Libertarian Party. (The life membership was bestowed on me in 2000 for my generous contributions that year. Since 9/11, I kinda wonder why I bothered. But that's another rant....) Still, for all the faults of the Party, I'm not sure how Libertarianism or libertarianism is Marxism in any sense. After all, how does one "impose" freedom on anyone in the same sense that one imposes tyranny on someone?
Yes, too much freedom leads to anarchy, but no serious Libertarian (or libertarian) supports anarchy, only more freedom than we have now to run our own lives. And the funny thing about freedom is that it allows one to participate VOLUNTARILY in arrangements that might well be authoritarian or paternalistic in nature (Social Security, anyone?) that under the present system are compulsory. I don't know about you, John, but I like being INVITED to participate in something, as opposed to being forced to participate whether or not I want to, and whether or not it's in my best interest to do so. It's the difference between being treated like an adult and being treated like a child. And I know that *I* reached 21 a long time ago.
Yes, if people have too much freedom, they'll make mistakes. But isn't that how you and I and everybody else learns how to do things the right way? My late father liked to say, "Experience is a expensive school, and there are some who will learn in no other, boy." Well, the old man was right. But he never did like being reminded that most of us are fools. And he never did let on that he must have made his own share of mistakes when he was young and not so young. How else could he have been as competent (frighteningly so, sometimes) as he was at so many things?
If you want freedom for yourself, John, you have to allow it for others. And, subject to the need to a certain irreducible minimum of government, the more freedom the better. Unfortunately, Mr. Locke thinks so poorly of his fellow citizens that he's reluctant to grant them the freedom that is their birthright as Americans.
Posted by: Hale Adams at March 9, 2005 01:42 PMThe Locke piece was thought provoking, but readers should continue with In Defense of Freedom, the "counterpoint" article by Daniel McCarthy that follows it in the same issue of The American Conservative.
Locke goes off course immediately, claiming that libertarians hold "the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government." McCarthy points out that libertarian philosophy is mainly about government, not ethics. It only addresses ethics to the extent of where to draw the line when different individuals' freedoms conflict. It may be immoral for me to defile my body by smoking cigarettes, for example, and libertarianism doesn't deny you the right to try and convince me to stop. It does, however, hold that you don't have a right to force me to stop.
"Libertarian" does not mean "libertine." Sure, emphasising individual freedom attracts many free spirits, but for most of us, the philosophy values individual responsibility just as highly, something Locke pretty much ignores. His extreme description of libertarians is about like saying that liberals are all merely Bush haters or that conservative is just another word for Radical Right-Wing Christian.
In one area he is right, though: the government will never impose libertarianism on the nation. Those who lead a government do so because they wish to govern, often with the best of intentions. By their nature, few libertarians will ever find themselves in that group. A libertarian society will have to come from the bottom up, by people refusing to accept bribes or stand for impositions from Washington.
A libertarian government cannot impose libertarianism. It works the other way round.
Posted by: Doug Murray at March 10, 2005 12:08 PM
