It’s been the thing lately, among certain establishment liberals, to dismiss libertarians as “Koch-funded shills.” We’ve heard a lot of it from Mark Ames and Yasha Levine at NSFWCorp, for example.
This is stupid, first of all, because it’s historically illiterate. Free market libertarianism has its origins in the classical liberalism of two hundred years ago. And historically, much of that movement was quite left-wing. There was a great deal of overlap between the early free market and socialist movements. The English free market thinker Thomas Hodgskin wrote several books arguing, at great length, that land rent, profit and interest were extorted from labor through artificial property rights enforced by the state. Benjamin Tucker, at one time the leading figure in the American individualist anarchist movement, shared Hodgskin’s view of rent and profit, and considered himself a socialist. Dyer Lum, a contributor to Tucker’s Boston anarchist circle and magazine, Liberty, was heavily involved in the radical Chicago labor movement, edited The Alarm with and after Albert Parsons, had ties to future Wobblies and wrote the radical, 1892, pamphlet “Philosophy of Trade Unions” for the American Federation of Labor. Henry George regarded land rent as parasitic and favored taxing the site value of land to prevent landlords from soaking up the entire surplus wealth of society; his followers — like Albert Nock, Ralph Borsodi and Frank Chodorov — have been a significant strand of the libertarian movement ever since.
It’s true that the mainstream of libertarianism fell under right-wing domination in the 20th century, and frequently shilled for big business interests, for more historical reasons than I have space to go into. But the Right and big business apologists have never had uncontested hegemony over the libertarian movement. And there are a growing number of left-wing libertarians in recent years, like those of us at Center for a Stateless Society (the organization which pays me to write this), who use free market conceptual tools to critique corporate power.
The “Koch shills” talking point is also stupid from the standpoint of what the Koch brothers actually promote. What the Kochs and their pet think tanks call “free markets” and “free enterprise,” by and large, is just a smokescreen for their particular economic interests. And they use the state just as obsessively to promote those interests as any other corporate capitalist.
For example, a recent report released by the International Forum on Globalization shows that the Koch brothers are heavily invested in the Alberta tar sands, and stand to make up to $100 billion in profits if the KeystoneXL pipeline is completed (“Koch brothers could make $100 billion out of KeystoneXL pipeline,” Undernews, Oct. 25). The Koch brothers and the think tanks they fund all constitute one big Amen corner in favor of this project.
Is the Keystone project anything a principled libertarian could possibly condone? Let’s see … The construction of that pipeline has entailed the use of eminent domain to condemn land from Alberta to Texas — much of it in violation of treaties with Indian nations. Demonstrators have fought pitched battles with cops and hired company thugs to prevent construction of the pipeline across stolen land in Oklahoma and Texas. In Canada, members of the Mi’kmaq nation were clubbed and gassed by RCMP cops in full militarized riot gear, trying to stop the evil pipeline company from building on land stolen from the First Nations. You know — just like in “Billy Jack.”
Fracking in Alberta also depends on the use of the state’s minimalist, least-common-denominator regulatory standards, drafted in collusion with polluting industry, to preempt traditional common law standards of liability and protect oil companies from legal action by the surrounding communities whose groundwater and air they’ve poisoned.
Anyone who advocates such things is no libertarian. The Koch brothers are not libertarians.
Let’s get something straight: The “pot-smoking Republican” kind of libertarian isn’t a libertarian at all. He’s just a Republican. And frankly, I suspect he really doesn’t even like pot that much.
See, Republicans don’t really believe in free markets or economic freedom. They represent one wing of the economic ruling class, and actively seek to promote its interests through the state — just like the Democrats. The Democrats represent the “Yankee” wing of the economic ruling class, in Carl Oglesby’s framework — finance capital and large, capital-intensive, globally-oriented industry. The Republicans represent the “Cowboy” wing — medium-sized, labor-intensive, domestically-oriented industry, extractive industries and “provincial notables” like Sun Belt real estate speculators.
And although Cowboys like the Kochs cloak their statist rent-seeking in “free market” rhetoric, they are the enemies of free markets and of anyone who sincerely believes in them.
Update Note:
This article denies that the Kochs are major players in Alberta tar sands extraction and claims they stand to lose money if the project opens their U.S. oil interests to competition.
Whether or not that is so, it does not alter the facts that the Kochs support the Keystone project, or that the project is feasible only with massive land theft via eminent domain and regulatory preemption of common law liability for polluters. Whether or not the Kochs tip their hat to condemning eminent domain in principle, the fact remains that a project like Keystone is as closely tied to the state and its land thefts as were, say, the land grant railroads. So the Kochs’ defense is a bit like Lincoln’s Jesuit who, accused of killing ten men and a dog, triumphantly produced the dog in court.
Suggestions that alleging Koch financial interests in the project entail making it “all about the Kochs,” or that opposition to the project comes only from “liberals,” are strawman attacks. There are plenty of principled REASONS for free market advocates to oppose a corporatist project like Keystone without “liberals” ever coming into the picture.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Real Libertarians Don’t Shill for the Kochs, Before It’s News, 10/28/13
I was converted from libertarian-leaning Republican to left-leaning anarchist by a Koch-funded think tank.
Obviously a glitch in the Matrix.
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OMG carson, none of those people except Chodorov are free market thinkers. The labor theory of value is a crock. You are a confused little man.
All the folks Mr. Carson mentioned were opposed to state-created/enforced monopolies (which *I thought* was fairly basic to freeing markets). I'm wondering…what, then, are your criteria for being considered a Genuine Free Market Thinker?
go on…
"It’s true that the mainstream of libertarianism fell under right-wing domination in the 20th century, and frequently shilled for big business interests, for more historical reasons than I have space to go into"
I hope you make space for this sometime, since I've read a fair amount of Kevin Carson and don't remember ever reading your views on those historical reasons.
Berserkl is right. In what speech did Karl Hess say, "I don't understand how libertarians or anarchists have so much time on their hands to attack their friends"? It was something like that. Look, I support Carson's critique here, especially the first half of it. But I know many "pot-smoking republicans" who are at least sympathetic to libertarianism, if not dying inwardly to convert but resist due to peer pressure. (Pussies.)
But here's the biggest problem with Carson's article here: "fracking in Alberta also depends on the use of the state’s minimalist, least-common-denominator regulatory standards, drafted in collusion with polluting industry, to preempt traditional common law standards of liability and protect oil companies from legal action by the surrounding communities whose groundwater and air they’ve poisoned."
Well, okay. Now we have anarchists defending "legal action" by "surrounding communities". Hmmm…Right, because "legal action" is always the anarchist way to go. And are such "surrounding communities" really just local governments or HOAs? (Which is worse!)
Yes, the Koch's are dicks for supporting the pipeline, sort of. They also gave a mil to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. But if you don't want to be dismissed as a "Koch-funded shrill," the best reply to such idiocy is this: fuck you. No more excuses for supporting freedom is necessary, even if we libertarians and anarchists have our economical and political disagreements regarding various methods of achieving a common goal. Really, Carson should follow the lead of Crispin Sartwell and Keith Preston by at least making an attempt to get over the "left-right" paradigm bullshit. He's too smart not to. Which is why he writes these articles, and I, on the other, reply to statist accusers with a stylistic variant of this: suck my balls, you fascist pig.
well, broken clocks…
NSFWCorp's obsession is just moronic. four hundred different articles uncovering the shocking news that some self-identified libertarians are actually just frontmen for rich arseholes. you don't say. of course mainstream libertarianism is controlled by big business shills. just like mainstream liberalism, mainstream conservatism, mainstream social democracy etc. the whole reason certain groups become the mainstream is that they've kissed ass enough to get wealth and access.
Liberals and progressives do this out of a defensive knee-jerk reaction to claim they have the most 'power to the people' cred while wrestling with the inner contradictions in their authoritarian ideology. So they put up a front to comfort themselves and rationalize this. I'm going to repeat a comment I made on another article here:
ps. I have to marvel at the utterly incoherent obsession by liberals with Ayn Rand (or in this case, the Kochs) as an all-purpose boogeywoman to shoehorn into their responses to anything critical of government. References to her pop up at a moment's notice seemingly everywhere.
How come? They seem to project their own contradictory views of society onto that woman. "We need" a monopolizing class of ubermen bosses and technocrats to plan for 'progress', that is, to make the gears of capital churn smoother, to help us learn 'who moved my cheese', to make us 'pay our fair share' to the masters who keep civilization afloat, or be shamed as degenerate, irrational free riders (Elizabeth Warren's 'anarchists' sound a lot like those 'looters' eh?). More than coincidental parallels emerge.
Thus the cognitive dissonance. Thus the defensive need to otherize and separate themselves by galaxies from Ayn Rand; in her authoritarianism they see quite a bit of themselves
I would consider the belief that "land rent, profit and interest were extorted from labor through artificial property rights enforced by the state," and the endorsement of "taxing the site value of land to prevent landlords from soaking up the entire surplus wealth of society," to not be free-market in nature. I understand the arguments behind them, and am not claiming that people who endorse such views are evil, but I think they fall outside the realm of free-market thought and enter something more akin to mutualism. And yes, though there is significant overlap between the two there are also some important differences in basic premises.
Are you seriously going to argue that Benjamin Tucker wasn't a free market thinker? In "State Socialism and Anarchism", Tucker describes the individualist anarchists on which he bases his views, and says "So they raised the banner of Absolute Free Trade; free trade at home, as well as with foreign countries; the logical carrying out of the Manchester doctrine; laissez faire the universal rule. Under this banner they began their fight upon monopolies, whether the all-inclusive monopoly of the State Socialists, or the various class monopolies that now prevail." How is that not free market thinking?
Albert Nock wrote the book "Our Enemy the State." His radically anti-state politics was a major influence on Rothbard.
I find your view that these thinkers were somehow not "free market thinkers" to be bizarre.
Well, the expropriation of the commons to the ruling class in England — re Hodgskin — certainly doesn't really strike me as a free-market process. Likewise, the state monopoly on money, allowing the banks to borrow money at 0% interest and lend it to us at usurious rates (while, at the same time, forbidding mutual-aid banking/lending) doesn't represent a free market to me. And, given that state coercion was at its foundation of even these couple of examples, the rents/interest/profits thus extracted from the working class could be fairly termed as "extortion."
I admit I'm still struggling with the Georgist vs. Lockean debate, so I'll leave that fight to others while I ruminate some more.
But one other statement you made particularly struck me. So, you consider mutualism to be "outside the realm of free-market thought?" In what way?
1960s – era (pre-crank) Rothbard goes into this quite a bit.
Dale, you are aware that most market anarchists — Rothbard included — see tort liability for damages as the legitimate response to such damages, are you not?
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So basically there were no free market thinkers before Jeavons, Menger and Walras?
I'm guessing I'm more familiar with the points at issue between the classical labor theory of value and the marginalist critique than you are, since I spent a couple of years actually reading what Jeavons, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Clark and Mises had to say about them, and wrote a book analyzing the issues under contention point by point — I didn't just make an "every schoolboy knows" argument from authority based on third-hand spoon-feeding in polemics at Mises.org.
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So basically there were no free market thinkers before Jeavons, Menger and Walras?
I'm guessing I'm more familiar with the points at issue between the classical labor theory of value and the marginalist critique than you are, since I spent a couple of years actually reading what Jeavons, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Clark and Mises had to say about them, and wrote a book analyzing the issues under contention point by point — I didn't just make an "every schoolboy knows" argument from authority based on third-hand spoon-feeding in polemics at Mises.org.
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(I am not an expert on Tucker, Proudhon, Mutualism, etc. so please correct any factual mistakes I may make, especially if my argument is premised on such a mistake. Also, for the purposes of length, I'm going to focus on rent as an example and leave out profit and interest.)
If the statement, "land rent, profit and interest were extorted from labor through artificial property rights enforced by the state" was a critique of a particular historical process (e.g. enclosure laws in England) then I would wholeheartedly agree. It is my understanding, however, that Tucker and co. were saying that ALL forms of land rent, profit, and interest are illegitimate either because they wouldn't exist without state interference or that they are illegitimate even in a stateless scenario.
If you take my land then charge me rent to live one it, that is clearly theft. If, however, you legitimately own a piece of land (either by homesteading it yourself, or acquiring it from a chain of title leading to the original homesteader) that is currently unused and I ask to live there, I believe you have every right to charge me rent to do so. Tucker and I would agree in the first case. But, as I understand him, Tucker would not consider the second case to be a legitimate agreement.
Which brings us to the question of mutualism. Historically, mutualism is based on the works of Proudhon. As I understand him, Proudhon believed that property (the absolute control of rightfully acquired property, even when not in use) was illegitimate and should be replaced with possession (the control over rightfully acquired property only when currently in use). Given this premise, it makes sense to reject the above scenario because the land is not in use so it's basically up-for-grabs again. You have no more right to charge me rent for living there than someone living half-way across the globe who has never even seen the land in question.
That's a logically sound position given the premises, but I consider possession to be an inadequate recognition of a person's rights. I think that a truly free-market recognizes every aspect of a person's rights, including control of property not currently in use. I think it's perfectly legitimate to utilize such property in such endeavors as renting it out, loaning it at interest, or hiring people at an agreed-upon wage to improve it.
Now, your definition of mutualism may not include the exclusion of property in favor of possession. Perhaps you focus on the mutual banks from whence it derives its name. That's fine, maybe my definition is antiquated, but at least now you understand where I'm coming from.
You may agree with Proudhon that "property is theft" and believe that the only legitimate rights are those of possession. That's fine, but I disagree and would reject a possession-only order as insufficient just as a mutualist would reject state communism (i.e. not even rights in possession being free from interference) as insufficient.
You may advocate property but consider possession as close enough that it warrants the title of free-market, even if it isn't your ideal. That's fine. There would be many market oriented activities going on under mutualism just as there are today, but I don't consider either to be fully free-market in character.
In any case, I suspect that you are my ally and hope that dialogues like this help us understand each other better!
As far as I can tell, it's sheer mercenary work on their part. As journalists desperate for attention and a continuation of their funding, they need to draw 'hits' and so forth. Constant Koch-bashing is red meat for the liberal base out there. Doesn't matter how thoughtless it is. The more inflammatory the better. It's a shame, too, because Ames used to be good…back when he was a critic of the US government rather than the apologist he's become.