What Libertarianism Means to Me
James Hanley on Aug 18th 2008
I recently asked PL readers why people had such inaccurate views of libertarianism. As a follow-up and as a way of more fully introducing myself to PLers, I thought it would be appropriate to explain what libertarianism means to me.
I actually began, when I first began really thinking about these issues, as a “market socialist.” At least that’s what I called it, although one of my friends derided the idea that socialism could be market-based. In retrospect, I was more or less thinking in terms of European-style democratic socialism. I wasn’t thinking too deeply about it; I was just reacting to my perception that corporations had too much power over workers and consumers. I believed the argument that they told people what to buy, and like sheep, we obeyed. But this was at a conservative Christian college, and I was also reacting to the political conservatism of most of my fellow students, which seemed very unbiblical to me. The individualism, and even greed, that seemed to be the basis of free market economics seemed especially un-Christian to me. The New Testament quite clearly reveals a sort of communalism in the early Christian church that seemed at odds with the cold-hearted “let the buyer beware” attitude of the market, and I thought that surely Christianity was more socialist than Republican (I had not yet heard the word libertarian).
Given what I objected to, my drift toward libertarianism was logical, but not inevitable. A few unpredictable events, random mutations if you will, were the cause of my political evolution. The first was stumbling, purely by chance, across Jacques Ellul’s Anarchy and Christianity, and Jesus and Marx in our college library. Thinking it would provide the intellectual underpinnings for my belief, I eagerly read it, and was disturbed to find Ellul actually arguing for an anarchic view of Christianity. In a nutshell, he argues that the Bible has a consistent strain of opposition to temporal power. When the Hebrews ask for a king so that they can be like the other nations around them, they are told in detail that kings will take their money, and send their sons off to die in war. As they still want a king, God appoints one, and he proceeds to abuse them just as predicted. And Jesus, of course, insisted that his kingdom was not of this earth, and repeated offers of, and requests to take, temporal power.
There are few things as fruitful as intellectual disturbance, and I drifted into political science in order to more fully understand the ideas with which I was struggling. Soon I became familiar with Max Weber’s definition of the state, “that human community having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a given territory.” As my concern about the market had been about the power of corporations, I suddenly realized that government was based on power as well, and that just handing the power over to someone else didn’t solve the essential problem. (Call me slow, if you will: In retrospect it does seem obvious.)
In addition, I also began studying economics, which is still something of a surprise, as I hated my first economics course, and today have no idea why I decided to continue studying it. But eventually I learned that corporations don’t have as much power as I had feared, or as they would like. I think this is the fundamental lesson most anti-corporate people don’t get, that by ferociously competing against each other, lowering prices and improving service and quality to steal business from their competitors, corporations are playing into the hands of the consumers. As I began to realize that giant corporations can and do decline and even go out of business altogether, and that the great majority of new products that come onto the market fail, I began to realize that corporations had little actual power—they were just engaged in a desperate and never-ending effort to figure out what the hell consumers were actually willing to pay for. And advertising, the great bane of Galbraithian liberals, was a game of seduction, rather than coercion. A clever ad might get me to buy a product once (and I can think of specific cases where it has), but it can’t get me to buy it twice if I don’t like it the first time.
And I learned that economics is about trying to maximize human well-being in a world of limited resources, that definitions of well-being are subjective, and that as a consequence nobody outside the individual, even government, can tell them what will really make them better off. And I eventually learned about the socialist planning debate, which dashed any remaining hopes I had that government could simply step in to the gap and efficiently resolve market failures.
It may be apparent by now that unlike many—perhaps most—libertarians, I don’t come from a natural law /natural rights perspective. I don’t quite agree with Bentham that natural law is nonsense on stilts, but as I became increasingly empirically minded I decided that unless someone could demonstrate both that natural laws exist and that they had any actual effect when someone broke them, then I would just set them aside as not particularly relevant.
But from a pragmatic perspective, I thought that in most cases voluntary actions were superior to coerced actions, (a view influenced by John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, as well as Hayek’s claims that human institutions are the accumulated product of human action, but cannot be designed from scratch) and as markets are based on voluntarism while government is based on coercion, that markets were in general preferable to government. That does not provide the kind of hard and fast rule that a natural law approach might, but it does put the burden of proof on government. In a nutshell, I believe voluntary actions do not need to be justified, whereas coercive actions do. This leaves the door open for some coercive actions to be justified. And I don’t just mean as a response to coercion—it’s not just about allowing government to punish thieves and murderers, but a recognition that the set of legitimate government actions that coerce people for reasons other than punishment is not empty. Along with Adam Smith, for example, I do not find forced taxation for universal education and welfare for those unable to care for themselves very offensive. I find comparatively few other government policies justified, but I am not an absolutist libertarian. There are many who don’t believe there can be such a thing as a moderate libertarian, but here I am.
And my emphasis on voluntarism distinguishes me in another way from a certain sort of libertarianism that I would call individualistic. This, at least in its extreme, is the Randian kind of libertarianism, that exalts the individual to the point of denying community attachments. I reject that approach for two reasons. First, from an evolutionary perspective, it just doesn’t ring true. Humans evolved as a social species, and human nature is more social and communitarian, and less individualistic, than Ayn Rand claimed.* Second, her form of individualism perversely deprives individuals of the choice of being less individualistic and more communitarian if that is what they desire. When, Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden gives Dagny Taggart a necklace, he is at pains to explain that he doesn’t care about her pleasure; he is giving it to her because he will enjoy how it looks on her. This is a dehumanizing individualism that exalts the subject but degrades the object of the action.
I think this is what many people think of when they hear the word “libertarian”—at least that is what they seem to accuse me of—and they are justifiably revolted by it. It is, quite literally, inhuman to be so individualistic as to consider only one’s own satisfaction.
But I am a libertarian who does care about others, and I suspect I’m far from alone. If we want to stress the liberty of the individual, we have to include the right of individuals to cluster together in communitarian groupings, to voluntarily put some needs of that community ahead of their own. Indeed, at the extreme, a commune can be a libertarian ideal, so long as it is wholly voluntary. Probably the great majority of libertarians are individualistic enough that they would not personally want to live in such a commune, but I suspect most are communitarian-minded enough to help their neighbors jump-start their car, donate food and clothing to a family whose home has burned, buy a raffle ticket whose proceeds go to charity to help a teenage girl become the fair queen, etc., etc.
I believe there is communitarianism in the heart of nearly every libertarian—and that what makes us different is that we believe it’s more meaningful when expressed voluntarily than when it’s coerced.
* To be fair, Rand wrote long before we developed as much understanding of evolved human nature as we now have. She also was a refugee from communism, and can perhaps be excused for being anti-collectivist in the way ex-smokers are anti-tobacco.
Filed in The Barracks, The Basement, The Bookshelf
James Hanley said:
“As my concern about the market had been about the power of corporations, I suddenly realized that government was based on power as well, and that just handing the power over to someone else didn’t solve the essential problem. (Call me slow, if you will: In retrospect it does seem obvious.)”
It seems obvious to us, but it’s unfortunately not obvious to most people, so don’t feel bad :P
This is really a key observation: socialists, and in general, people who support even limited government interference in markets don’t seem to see the contradiction in their ideas. They want to limit corporate strength/power/whatnot but don’t seem to think that government having power is bad. I think part of the disconnect is that they think that if people aren’t motivated by profit, they will “do good things”. It’s as if they think people who go into government do so entirely out of altruism (certainly is the case sometimes), and nothing bad can come from such an endeavor.
This is absolutely terrific James. I don’t agree with every single word, but you’ve captured the essence of what I think is a humane vision of libertarianism, and one that I wish more libertarians had and that our opponents better understood.
Hrm. My comment is “awaiting moderation” - first time I’ve noticed this.
Rand’s philosophy is certainly individualistic; however, it is not accurate to characterize her philosophy as one “that exalts the individual to the point of denying community attachments.” What Rand denies is the moral validity of _unchosen_ community attachments. Community and social interaction are essential components of the life Rand portrays as the moral ideal: but these must be based on voluntary, mutually beneficial interactions.
Shawn,
The difference I see between my view and Rand’s is that in her writing she emphasized the purely self-interested attachments–my connections with others, hence the others themselves, are objects I use for my own satisfaction–while I emphasize that there is an innate need for human attachments; they are an end in themselves rather than a means.
She was quite clear that she would despise anyone who sacrificed themselves for another, or put another’s needs before their own. I don’t think doing so is necessarily problematic.
[...] Positive Liberty addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fasecondhandconjecture.com%2Findex.php%2F2008%2F08%2F18%2Fone-mans-journey-to-libertarianism%2F’; addthis_title = ‘One+Man%26%238217%3Bs+Journey+to+Libertarianism’; addthis_pub = ”; [...]
Hi, James. Glad to see you posting here. I enjoyed reading your comments over at Dispatches.
I’m one of those who don’t believe that any coercive actions are justified. And I don’t consider retaliation against thiefs and murderers to be coercion, but self defense. I’m afraid that if you leave the door open for some coercive actions to be justified, because you have justified coercion, then eventually any and all coercive actions will be justified. That seems to be the situation that we Americans are approaching. I simply don’t understand how someone who did absolutely nothing to cause another person’s misfortune should be held financially accountable for that person’s misfortune. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t help each other, but that we shouldn’t be compelled to do so by anything other than our own conscience.
I do agree with just about everything else you say, and I thought that your characterization of advertising as seduction rather than coercion was well put.
Steven, personally I think the slippery slope you identify is real, but can be forestalled. The trick is to have a clear intellectual framework underpinning what is proper and improper behaviour for a government and making sure the voting population gets it.
From a foreigner’s perspective, one of the strangest things about American politics is that while both parties like to pay homage to the Constitution and the ideals of the Founders, they don’t seem to actually treat those ideals with any respect in practice.
The only way I can make sense of this is to conclude that American voters like the word “Constitution”, but have little or no grasp of what the point of the Constitution was: to restrict the government and thus prevent tyranny of the majority.
Instead of:
Constitution => Constrained Government => Personal Freedom => Good
We get the superficial version:
Constitution => Good
This is how liberty dies. The only way to restrain perfidious politicians is for the electorate to monitor and punish them when they go too far. An uninterested or uninformed electorate cannot do that, making them prone to manipulation.
DISCLAIMER: My above comment was fairly insulting of the intelligence of American voters. This is reflective of my opinion of average voters, not of Americans. The average voter in my country is just as foolish, but about different things.
Most of the power held by corporations comes in the form of privilege granted by government. This is mercantilism/corporatism and bears little resemblance to an actual free market. It’s difficult for most people to imagine real economic freedom. Mercantilism/corporatism in various forms has been the status quo since for at least 1,000 years. The initiation of coercive force goes by many names. Besides the aforementioned, there’s socialism, fascism, communism, (communalism usually denotes a voluntary arrangement), monarchy, and it’s most popular alias today, democracy. I have some stuff on the web you might find interesting, on my blog (Click on my name.), my web site which I don’t work on often enough, libertarianchristians.org and a yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Christian_Libertarians/
Peace,
Bryan
Mr. Hanley, thank you for sharing your thoughts… if I wasn’t known for the world’s longest blog posts/comments I would make some snarky comment about your lack of brevity… or how I’ve never known an economist to use so many words… but this post was such a joy to read, and I wouldn’t delete a single word of it. I’ve had a lot of similar thoughts to these in my head for some time, and it is good to see them mirrored in someone else’s.
As Mr. Horwitz said above I’m not sure I agree with every thing you say, but the last two paragraphs are definitely quotable… I’ve often had conversations with liberals/socialists who criticize libertarian measures like free-market health care or free-market education (publicly funded, or not, the reply still holds.) The response I have finally found to satisfy myself, and more often than not at least force my interlocutors to think, is to ask “How many people have you met in your life that weren’t worthy of love and care?” and sometimes followed by “and if they aren’t worthy of love and care, then what purpose do they really serve in our society, and why should the state help perpetuate the lowest elements of humanity?” Of course the answer to the first one is generally VERY few. People don’t seem to realize that if we ended these sorts of welfare programs that the resources that funded them do not disappear, they simply would remain in the hands of the people who created them, and we would save on the bureaucratic overhead… and I find in my daily life that most of people have pretty big hearts, and are willing to help out those around them… either for altruistic purposes or self-interested calculations, the result is same. Libertarianism relies on a deep trust in the capacities of individuals to care for one another, and if we can’t rely on humans, then we’re really in a bind… cause that is all we have… though I have recently read some interesting research on Octopi, so maybe there is hope in the deep seas…
Lastly, when I was first studying Political Science I sort of had an interesting epiphany when encountering Communism and Libertarianism, and it very much relates to your comments… If you follow each one out to its ultimate extremity they look very much the same. The only difference is how you get there: compulsion or freedom. [I know I haven't fully fleshed out my ideas here, but I figured I'd get them in before the conversation winds down... I'll look forward to the next post, and try to get in on the discussion a bit earlier.]
[...] my post, “What Libertarianism Means to Me,” I wrote: I believe voluntary actions do not need to be justified, whereas coercive actions do. This [...]