Libertarianism: Marxism of the Right?

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March 14, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative


Marxism of the Right

by Robert Locke

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake.

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties—I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism—enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. 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.

The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.

Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill.

Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?

Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental failing of libertarianism’s believers but an intrinsic temptation of the doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism.

Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question.

Furthermore, if limiting freedom today may prolong it tomorrow, then limiting freedom tomorrow may prolong it the day after and so on, so the right amount of freedom may in fact be limited freedom in perpetuity. But if limited freedom is the right choice, then libertarianism, which makes freedom an absolute, is simply wrong. If all we want is limited freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean conservatism that reveres traditional liberties. There is no need to embrace outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is America’s traditional liberties.

Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile.

Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred.

And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

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.

The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record.

A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.

Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better.
__________________________________________________ _______

Robert Locke writes from New York City.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html

I came across this a while ago in part of a larger collection of criticisms of libertarianism that some guy posted in a thread on Fark.

Is Locke right about libertarianism and what it is as an ideology? Why or why not?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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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.

An interesting if flawed criticism. Altruism and collectivism are themselves the result of selfish motives. For instance, people would not give of themselves to others or participate in families if they didn't stand to gain from the exchange.

People naturally gravitate towards participation in families in a free society because it offers a base social safety net. It's when artificial incentives (welfare) or great economic success becomes prevalent that familial systems begin to atrophy. Why have children when society will front the bill for you, and alternatively, why take care of one's parents when society is taking care of them?

The concept that Libertarians would decry the family because it limits freedom is inherently flawed, because participation in family is itself a consentual act.

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Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill.

Another rediculous assertion. Good and Bad choices can only be determined within the context of their consequences. It's impossible for choices to be inherently good because their results can be observed to be bad, e.g. losing one's job to drug abuse.

It's hardly choice which is perceived as being inherently good, but the freedom to choose, and the ability to give consent.

This also begs the question of comparing lives in the first place. If one could live one's life playing tiddlywinks, be happy doing it, and not infringe on the rights of others doing it, what does it matter if one has lead a life that's not as "worthy" as Churchill or George Washington? It presumes that people are incapable of determining utility.

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Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?

A ridiculous criticism, considering that determining a factory's contribution to pollutants and their effects on the suing party are fairly easily determined. Things like "healthy cultures" are also naturally forming, and if cultural impacts are considered generally "unhealthy" then society or culture will gravitate towards trends that are generally considered "healthy."

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Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

I fail to see how this hypothetically infringes on the liberties of the person who doesn't care for pornography. Are they not free to affect change on society by their own means?

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Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental failing of libertarianism’s believers but an intrinsic temptation of the doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism.

If benefits are provided, it's inherently illogical not to take advantage of them. Not to mention that those benefits have already been payed for by one's involvement in society. One of the foundations of Libertarianism, in fact, is to seek positions where one does not need to rely on any of these artificial benefits.

It's also inherently impossible to collect from such benefits as Highways. The assertion of this argument seems to be that Libertarianism is bunk because we'd have to be hermits living in the arctic in order to avoid being hypocrites, a flawed criticism because people are inherently hypocritical. That doesn't make Libertarian criticisms or policies any more false.

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In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question.

If this was the case, then would it not mean that the alternative is ultimately false? The "reasonable alternative" provided doesn't necessarily ensure the freedom of society any more than libertarianism because it still provides the means by which to limit freedoms harmfully.

It sounds like what Locke is proposing is the preservation of freedom by maintaining a philosophical persistance, which doesn't make his position anymore legitimate than libertarianism, as libertarianism requires a philosophical consenus in order to establish itself.

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Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.)

Queer, yes, but hardly a legitimate criticism considering the consent involved in giving oneself up to slavery.

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And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile.

The problem with this criticism is that it presumes that libertarianism needs to account for these problems, when acting humans account for them naturally. If one is incapable of offering consent, then the determination of action naturally defaults to the next-of-kin. In the absence of kin, then it's sane individuals on-the-scene which have to make decisions according to the context.

It's true that children aren't capable of determining what is best for themselves, however that doesn't mean that decisions must be made for them to their detriment, such as truancy laws.

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Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen.

Isn't there? Native Americans maintained societies in the absence of central authority, and established a "natural order" through communal interaction.

Since it is impossible not to interact with a community, communal order develops naturally within context. It's no mystery why European defection to native societies was such a problem during the colonial period.

Again, the presumtion being made here is that people are incapable of determining utility, when the entirety of history and human nature indicates otherwise.

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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.

The counter-point to this assertion is fairly simple, considering that people are naturally conditioned by authority to presume that they can only be happy within the presence of authority, even when factors indicate that they aren't. If libertarianism is the natural state, yet the common state is artificial, does that not mean that it is being perpetuated artificially?

What fault is there in attempting to convince people that liberty is the right choice? "Seizing power" would also be a very un-libertarian thing to do, which would be why no libertarian movement has ever done so, even to our detriment.

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It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

Leaving said society would be the "opt out."

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But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out.

Which is itself a historical myth. "Wildcat banking" while present during America's Free Banking period has since been grossly overstated:

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http://www.fee.org/publications/the-...e.asp?aid=2046
Instability is often the fear of those who think that “free banking” laws in some parts of the antebellum United States led to irresponsible or “wildcat” banking. It turns out that “wildcat” banking is largely a myth. Although stories about crooked banking practices are entertaining—and for that reason have been repeated endlessly by textbooks—modern economic historians have found that there were in fact very few banks that fit any reasonable definition of”wildcat bank.” For example, of 141 banks formed under the “free banking” law in Illinois between 1851 and 1861, only one meets the criteria of lasting less than a year, being set up specifically to profit from note issue, and operating from a remote location.[2]...

...2. This statistic, from a study by Andrew J. Economopoulos, is cited by Kevin Dowd, “U. S. Banking in the ‘Free Banking’ Period,” in Dowd, ed., The Experience of Free Banking (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 218. Pioneering modern work on the U. S. experience with “free banking” laws, which is the source for the information in the next paragraph of the text, has been done by Hugh Rockoff and by Arthur J. Rolnick and Warren E. Weber.

Wildcat banks almost always had to be situated in remote locations, because the inaccessibility prevented the cashing of their promissory notes. Considering modern transportation and the free exchange of information, wildcat banks could only take advantage of the criminally gullible and wouldn't be able to last long in the face of fraud charges.

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A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

Japan also had built up its industrial base using money loaned from the United States through the Bretton-Woods system, and has since been able to grow through shrewd business practices which circumvent government obstacles, or do their best to perform within them.

Russia's economy had also come out from a previously socialist one. When everyone starts out dirt poor, it's going to take a while to build up into a powerhouse. Russia's economic failures are also likely due, in no small part, to its inability to enforce law, and prevent extortion and fraud.

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Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.

An interesting statement, considering that America established its free society in the face of tyranny, and that Third-World tyranny arises due to the inability of the populace to oppose it, an ability which Americans possess in about 2/3rds of their closets.

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They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock.

A statement which isn't based on any real empirical observation or record.

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Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint.

Which is a lie. The difference, essentially, between do-as-you-please, and do-as-you-should. People are perfectly capable of restraining themselves within the context of the utility derived from that restraint. Libertarianism has never attacked this, in so far as I'm aware.

How ya doing, buddy?

I won't tackle that whole monstrosity, but this caught my eye:

Originally Posted by Bradylama

The problem with this criticism is that it presumes that libertarianism needs to account for these problems, when acting humans account for them naturally. If one is incapable of offering consent, then the determination of action naturally defaults to the next-of-kin. In the absence of kin, then it's sane individuals on-the-scene which have to make decisions according to the context.

Insanity is a hard concept for any rational ideological model to address, but your statement assumes that everyone will know who an insane person is and what a bad decision is. Most of the time, we know only because they are *ahem* "certifiable."

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It's true that children aren't capable of determining what is best for themselves, however that doesn't mean that decisions must be made for them to their detriment, such as truancy laws.

Truancy laws don't apply to home-schooled kids, so I don't see that as a decision being made for them. The parents ultimately choose where their kids go, whether it's public or private school, or home schooling. Public and private schools are given the job of the family in this case. They have the power to enforce attendance because the parents have given them that power.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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Insanity is a hard concept for any rational ideological model to address, but your statement assumes that everyone will know who an insane person is and what a bad decision is. Most of the time, we know only because they are *ahem* "certifiable."

True, but the ability to grant certificates of insanity is itself based on certain criteria which may not be sound. Like you said, it's a difficult issue no matter the system.

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Truancy laws don't apply to home-schooled kids, so I don't see that as a decision being made for them. The parents ultimately choose where their kids go, whether it's public or private school, or home schooling. Public and private schools are given the job of the family in this case. They have the power to enforce attendance because the parents have given them that power.

If truancy laws exist period that's a decision being made for students. Truancy laws are also the default, so it's hard to argue that parents give the state the right to enforce them when opting out of them requires immense personal and economic effort. It all depends, I guess, on whether or not you think "social contract" is bullshit.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I understand this is a criticism but I say this is just another termite chewing holes in a tasty structure that took time for people to build.

As a Christian I am called to talk about my faith and convince others to believe by presenting my own testimony and tackling failures of other belief systems with my own rule book the Bible.

But this guy doesn't. He just slams and slams. This is all too common these days, people running around with axes taking swings at any sort of discipline or belief system as if its virtuous to do so and not attempt to defend their own position in contrast to the one they are attempting to tear down.
His format is weak and ineffective because it doesn't solve anything or invites dialogue. Just another crybaby who is screaming for a bottle to shut him up.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

But this guy doesn't. He just slams and slams. This is all too common these days, people running around with axes taking swings at any sort of discipline or belief system as if its virtuous to do so and not attempt to defend their own position in contrast to the one they are attempting to tear down.
His format is weak and ineffective because it doesn't solve anything or invites dialogue. Just another crybaby who is screaming for a bottle to shut him up.

I think perhaps you totally miss the point of what Locke is trying to say. This article seems to indicate that he thinks libertarianism challenges any sense of virtue and order, and that people would not be capable of restraining themselves and making their own decisions with the gift of freedom.

Personally I don't find his arguments to be horribly flawed with the exception that I think he is thinking too much in terms of theory instead of actual practice.

For example:

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Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

If libertarianism were to become a widespread following or major political party then I'd assume these kinds of things would be addressed and the overall strength of the system would be more practical.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Libertarianism isn't a philosophy of anarchy and no rules, and trusting people to restrain themselves. People seem to believe it's like anarchy, but it's important to realize that's nothing like that.

At the core it's the idea that everyone is free to do as they want so long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else.

Now, that put aside - I agree with the Libertarians on most social issues. However economically they scare the shit out of me. I mean, just look at the list of questions above that Kalekkan posted. I think a "Libertarian Economy" would send this country into shambles. For one thing, I know that they want completely free immigration, and the fact is, no matter how robust our economy is, it CANNOT handle the MASSIVE influx of immigrants that want to come here every year, but cannot. That's the whole reason behind immigration limits. Well, part of it. At least that's why the limits are still in place today...

Anyway, yeah. IMHO the best political system would be a mix of philosophies. Socially I like what the Libertarians have to offer, in most cases, economically...not to sure. I don't think any party has it correct there at the moment.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Kalekkan

I think perhaps you totally miss the point of what Locke is trying to say. This article seems to indicate that he thinks libertarianism challenges any sense of virtue and order, and that people would not be capable of restraining themselves and making their own decisions with the gift of freedom.

If this is the case, I have a question. What is the source by which the terms virtue & order is defined that gives a backbone to what was stated.
It helps me to know where the critique starts and attempts to finish.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by LordsSword

If this is the case, I have a question. What is the source by which the terms virtue & order is defined that gives a backbone to what was stated.
It helps me to know where the critique starts and attempts to finish.

The author's point isn't to show how order is currently in comparison to how it would be under libertarianism. It is to suggest that the libertarianism philosophy when applied would have negative consequences. Much like Marxism, it all sounds good in theory.

I really think the following paragraph addresses your question to an extent:

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Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

However, as you'll notice, no particular order or virtue are clearly suggested. There's implication in lack of virtue in the quote above and from that you can derive what the author considers good virtues (no overindulgence with alcohol, no use of drugs, no premarital pregnancies, etc). Of course with libertarianism, virtue is relative since the base concept is that you are free to do what you like as long as you do not infringe upon the rights of others. The author is arguing that concept and claiming that when applied it would cause disorder and also that order can be found in self-restraint and a strong family.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Maybe I don't understand enough about Libertarianism, but isn't excessive drug & alcohol use indirectly very harmful to family, friends, etc? In which case I can see why it would be outlawed, unless Libertarians only outlaw things that directly infringe on the rights of others.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The general wisdom behind anti-prohibition movements is that prohibition hurts more than it helps. There's no real indication that legal possession will lead to significantly greater instances of substance abuse, and even in the event that it did, do you think that throwing those people in prison is going to help families deal with drug problems?

Nevermind the financial concerns involved in prosecuting victimless crimes.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by DarkLink2135

Maybe I don't understand enough about Libertarianism, but isn't excessive drug & alcohol use indirectly very harmful to family, friends, etc? In which case I can see why it would be outlawed, unless Libertarians only outlaw things that directly infringe on the rights of others.

Aside from an initial increase is marijuana and mushroom usage in the Netherlands, once said drugs were decriminalized usage remained constant, and, according to some, even dropped. =/

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I said that wrong. What I mean is, some forms of drunkenness, drug usage, etc, are already outlawed due to reasons of being harmful to others (dui?) and I don't see why a Libertarian adminstration would necessarily make those things lawful.

Overall though I'm not really against legalizing drug usage. Like Capo said, usage remains constant, the overdoser's would kill themselves off, ridding society of it's idiots...so it's a win/win.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Oh no, I completely agree with you on that point. Laws like "drugged driving" and such would have to be put in place for this to be any sort of success.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

The counter-point to this assertion is fairly simple, considering that people are naturally conditioned by authority to presume that they can only be happy within the presence of authority, even when factors indicate that they aren't. If libertarianism is the natural state, yet the common state is artificial, does that not mean that it is being perpetuated artificially?

Why would libertarianism be the 'natural state' and what does that mean? Aren't all states 'natural' because they exist in nature?

Also, how can you say that people are 'conditioned' to think they can only be happy within the presence of authority? When looking at the conditions in 'lawless' countries like the Sudan or Iraq, I'm sure most people would prefer being ruled by someone than having to live by 'the rule of the jungle' that prevails in these countries.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

An interesting statement, considering that America established its free society in the face of tyranny, and that Third-World tyranny arises due to the inability of the populace to oppose it, an ability which Americans possess in about 2/3rds of their closets.

Right, like your average suburbanite with a hunting rifle stands a chance against an army with tanks, special ops. and other crazy-ass gizmos.

FELIPE NO

Quote:

Why would libertarianism be the 'natural state' and what does that mean? Aren't all states 'natural' because they exist in nature?

Nope. Authoritarianism can never be considered natural, becuase people are coerced into compliance, and did not participate in the system naturally.

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Also, how can you say that people are 'conditioned' to think they can only be happy within the presence of authority? When looking at the conditions in 'lawless' countries like the Sudan or Iraq, I'm sure most people would prefer being ruled by someone than having to live by 'the rule of the jungle' that prevails in these countries.

That's a part of conditioning, yes. People assume that without the monopoly of force controlled by the state that we'd all go crazy, yet the only examples are based on countries with deep-seeded racial prejudices and poor economies. At present the most successful anarchist movement occurred during the Spanish Civil War, but the Social Anarchists at the time were overtaken by the communists.

It's also important to note as well, that Libertarianism isn't anarchy.

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Right, like your average suburbanite with a hunting rifle stands a chance against an army with tanks, special ops. and other crazy-ass gizmos.

Worked for the Vietnamese.

The largest standing army belongs to the Chinese at several million, yet even their reservists couldn't even approach making up the difference between the number of Chinese troops and American gun owners.

It'd be practically impossible to even think of supporting an army large enough to even approach 1/3 of that number.

Casualties would be lopsided, sure, but the threat of constant harrassment from an entire nation armed and angry should be enough to give anyone (except us apparently) pause.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Worked for the Vietnamese.

If you consider AK-47s hunting rifles, and the PAVN and NLF the equivalent of "average suburbanites".

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Kalashnikovs make decent hunting rifles from what I've heard.

How ya doing, buddy?

This is so disgusting...

Here is a novel idea: try to figure out what you think about the world before looking for a theory to be the meaning of your life.

I doubt you even know who Nozick or Hayek are.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

There's nothing wrong with finding a specific philosophy that, as a whole, matches with your ideals. However, if you start letting that philosophy decide things for you, THAT actually IS disgusting.

I didn't discover Libertarianism until I started being disgusted with the Republican party over a lot of recent issues, and since I'm a supporter of small government (something both current major parties have totally ignored in the US) I looked around to see if there was a different party I could identify myself with.

Like I said earlier, on economic issues I don't agree with them much at all, but most social issues I do. It's something I can generally identify myself by but I don't let them shape my views. Nothing wrong with labels.

I don't understand this current trend of everyone wanting to buck "labels." There's nothing wrong with labels and it doesn't make you any more of a free thinker than someone who labels him/herself as a Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, whatever.

How ya doing, buddy?

"I regard trademarks and labels as prejudices." Anton Chekhov

It isn't about striving to be a free-thinker, because then I'd be as guilty as you are. It's about understanding the problem of living strictly to a definition, rather than living for your interests.

I find it funny that you think that a enmity towards labels is a new thing.

I was speaking idiomatically.

It's more that I've seen a surge online enmity towards it recently. It's not anything new.

But that is exactly what I said. Labels become a problem when you let them shape you.

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I find it interesting how in the past few years I've seen a lot of young people switch from Republican to Libertarian. I know that I personally was majorly turned off by the sheer number of scandals as of late. It'll be interesting to see if the party regains some of its followers after 2008.

The human mind often groups things, categorizes, and tries to make them more efficient or understandable. An unfortunate side effect from this is labelling and even things such as racism. I don't care for it much either because I believe that most people don't completely agree with a particular philosophy 100% (unless they wrote it).

FELIPE NO

Found an essay written in 2001 that addresses a lot of those criticisms.

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Libertarians and Social Anarchy

by Ryan McMaken

One of the most common criticisms of libertarians is their alleged obsession with self interest and complete freedom to do anything at any time. This criticism usually manifests itself in condemning articles penned by the likes of neo-conservatives like Jonah Goldberg as he recently did in his most recent installment of the anti-libertarian chronicles.

In it he states that the problem with libertarians is that they latch onto libertarianism as a feel-good philosophy because it justifies all manor of selfish personal behavior. What Mr. Goldberg and many neo-cons fail to understand is that there is a difference between freedom from government coercion and freedom from every imaginable constraint upon human behavior.

Since Mr. Goldberg claims that he prefers to quote "The Simpsons" instead of Scripture, let me humor the neo-con audience with an anecdote from the eminent show itself: In the predictably hilarious episode in which the town of Springfield must decide whether or not to build a casino in town, the townspeople consult the local Reverend and ask his opinion on the matter. The Reverend responds that once something is made legal, it can no longer be immoral.

The good Reverend’s response to the town query is useful in illustrating the problem that the neo-cons have with understanding the nature of a libertarian society. After all, libertarians in general call for little more than a reduction of the state to a minimal role in society. This does not mean, as Mr. Goldberg would have us believe, that libertarians therefore call for the destruction of all institutions in civilized society. It is rare that one will find libertarians assembled to call for the destruction of the Rotary club or the local church. Sure, there are some libertarians out there who despise religion, but there are also a lot of libertarians who hate Volkswagens, but I would contend that neither is relevant to the policy prescriptions of libertarianism.

What the libertarians understand, and what the neo-cons fail to understand is that minimal government is key in preserving the "mediating institutions" that all conservatives should be in favor of preserving. It is government that deserves the blame for the destruction of our local institutions in the 20th century. The government’s courts have done more to destroy freedom of association and freedom of religion than any libertarian movement could ever do. It is our government which has taken upon itself the mission of cleansing our American communities of anything religious and classifying any references to God as "hate speech." It is government which has ruined our local communities by creating a dependence on a snooping federal government which seeks to centrally plan every aspect of our lives. And yet, neo-cons like Mr. Goldberg insist on claiming that it is libertarians who are seeking to ruin the traditional life of America.

When exactly was it when a bunch of libertarians rose up and demanded that all Americans give up their current way of life for the "libertarian" way of life? Libertarians fully accept that civil society is full of institutions like family and church which govern our actions and do not allow complete freedom. All these institutions, though, unlike the state, allow fluid and free entry and exit. Libertarians recognize that in order to receive the benefits of family and church, certain "tradeoffs" must be made. Such tradeoffs are a good thing, but apparently, voluntary tradeoffs like these don’t count when viewed through the eyes of a neo-conservative like Mr. Goldberg.

Social engineering and social policy is the stuff of government, not libertarianism. Only when the arrogance of government apologists allows them to think their plan for society is superior are the valued institutions of American civilization trashed in the pursuit of the "better society". This, of course, is the central inconsistency of neo-conservatism. They feel that they can somehow figure out a way to use government to shape society more along the lines of what they would like to see. In order to do this, however, they have to make sure that government remains strong enough, so that when they do occasionally get some power, they can use that power to shove their intellectualism down everyone else’s throats. The real American tradition of conservatism is that of limited government to allow the natural development of mediating institutions within American civil society. It is not a tradition of conservative scheming to socially engineer American society.

It is time that all conservatives who value American traditions and institutions to examine the historical record and recognize that government control as manifested through war, welfare statism, and social policy is the main destroyer of American civil institutions. As long as government is kept strong and viable, government will continue this destructive process, and the fact that conservatives may be in charge every now and then will not do anything to reverse it.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?