Center for a Stateless Society » libertarians

In economics, both orthodox Communism and Libertarianism are equally wrong, callous, and dangerous examples of ideological blindness, a set of principles taken to an extreme that caused many people to die. Both are more alike than either set of fanatics (as both set of true believers are) would want to admit. Both fall back on the same defense of “there has never been a true or pure form”of their system. Both systems clearly failed. Communism only lasted 70 years in the first nation to have it, and killed tens of millions with purely man made famines and extreme repression. Libertarianism and its influence on US conservatism takes the greatest share of blame for extreme economic inequality, the Great Recession, and most financial elite crime waves of the past 30 years.

As usual with many critics, he fails to take account of different brands of libertarianism. He only refers to a seemingly singular “libertarianism”. This will be written from a left-libertarian market anarchist perspective. The cliched “you claim your system has never existed in pure form” is trotted out. Democracy has probably never existed in pure form either, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t viable. There have been particular libertarian policies implemented with some success such as drug decriminalization. It may be true that the full libertarian package has never existed in systematic form, but this doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Liberal democratic societies never did and now do.

It’s partially unfair to pin economic inequality on libertarians, because they have hardly been in charge. Some libertarians will justify inequality, but there is good reason to think that freed markets would produce less inequality. That will be the subject of a future blog post. As for blaming the Great Recession on libertarianism; it’s once again worth pointing out that libertarians aren’t in charge. A detailed examination of why libertarians aren’t to blame for economic recessions or depressions will have to come later though. Libertarians oppose fraud by financial elites or anyone else, so it’s silly to blame us for the crime wave emanating from said people.

The question then becomes, to what degree should there be a mixed system? The slogans of libertarians and many conservatives that “government is the problem” or “regulation doesn’t work” are easily proven wrong, and fairly foolish falsehoods.

Conservative protestations against government are often hypocritical and insincere. It’s also true that these questions require defining what constitutes a problem and by what standard of value doesn’t regulation work. The New Leftist historian, Gabriel Kolko, documented the purpose regulations served in concentrating economic power and resources:

As Gabriel Kolko demonstrates in his masterly The Triumph of Conservatism and in Railroads and Regulation, the dominant trend in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth was not towards increasing centralization, but rather, despite the growing number of mergers and the growth in the overall size of many corporations,

toward growing competition. Competition was unacceptable to many key business and financial leaders, and the merger movement was to a large extent a reflection of voluntary, unsuccessful business efforts to bring irresistible trends under control. … As new competitors sprang up, and as economic power was diffused throughout an expanding nation, it became apparent to many important businessmen that only the national government could [control and stabilize] the economy. … Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly which caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.1

He also writes:

This article argues some basic humanitarian principles should be applied to economics and the human and humane spheres or politics, ones so obvious it seems absurd to have to make them explicit:

1. Helping people obviously helps people more than not helping them.

2. Watching out for and preventing or stopping abuse and harm is obviously better than not watching and not stopping abuse and harm, or even refusing to look and denying harm exists.

3. Generosity and selflessness are obviously better than stinginess and selfishness,

4. Democratic control obviously is better than elite control.

There is nothing in these four points that a libertarian could not embrace. There are ways of helping people that don’t require government or state intervention. These approaches are known as mutual aid societies. The prevention and stopping of abuse is compatible with libertarianism, because we believe said action is a justifiable response to rights violations. Some libertarians are egoists, but this is not the only ethical viewpoints that has been adopted. The rational egoist definition of selfishness as elaborated by Ayn Rand is not what you typically refer to as egoism. It pertains to not sacrificing others to yourself or yourself to others. Libertarians have an admittedly uneasy relationship with democracy, but the left-wing market anarchist position is democratic in the sense that it grants everyone an equal right to control their own lives and make decisions affecting them. That’s all for now. Stay tuned for my next blog post on this article!

A Libertarian in Solidarity with the Jimmy Johns Workers’ Union

Ross Kenyon — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:21:51 +0000

Labor unionization generally produces mixed if not outright negative reactions from libertarians. Labor Day was at the beginning of this previous week, and currently the Industrial Workers of the World are garnering the media spotlight for organizing Jimmy Johns workers to achieve better working conditions on the sandwich line. If I didn’t see disparaging comments, I saw hardly any libertarians paying attention or showing virtually any amount of solidarity whatsoever with working people.

Libertarians often spend a lot of time defending the rich who have supposedly earned their wealth in the marketplace purely through productivity, and then they denounce the crooked labor unions and “socialists”who seek to steal the justly acquired property of the rich. This is a dangerous oversimplification of how the economy is structured, and it unfortunately pushes libertarians away from their true allies on the progressive left.

Working class activism is generally perceived in libertarian circles as collectivist, riddled with economic fallacies, and as yet another coercive state intrusion into the voluntary and peaceful exchange of goods. This very well might be true, but mainstream labor activism is in reality a well-justified but misled reaction to the horrors of state power and capitalism. After all, the elite have been using the state to rig the scales in their favor for virtually all of history. It should come as no surprise when people fight fire with fire by trying to steer the state into advancing their interests instead of that of their oppressors. Unfortunately, libertarians leave out the first part of this cycle and focus exclusively on the statism of the unionizers, ignoring the original anti-market behavior committed by the capitalists.

These positions are chosen as a result of the system of false choices which confront us politically.

We are currently born into a cruel dialectic where one can only reasonably support “markets” or support state power, and virtually all American politickin’ falls within this analytical framework. However, both options further entrench our corporate rulers.

Free market rhetoric in the United States is almost universally a euphemism for fascism. Being for “free markets” in cable news-speak means one wishes to keep the loot corporations have acquired through lobbying, removing none of their numerous subsidies, helpful regulations, competing good prohibitions, tariffs, land use policies, favorable tax codes, inflationary central banking practices & legal tender laws, licensing requirements, zoning mandates, intellectual property restrictions, etc. which bolster the position of the rich at the expense of the working poor, while at the same time removing all protection for the impoverished in the way of welfare programs and labor laws.

This is clearly an insane and disastrous course of action, and definitely an anti-libertarian one. Progressives are correct to oppose “free markets” if this is what they mean.

Consistent libertarians also reject virtually all of the policies I listed, but fail to recognize and frame what this position means for the impoverished of America. The liberty movement is absolutely a fight which can include those who traditionally agitate with labor movements. Libertarian aversion to sounding like a leftist is, in this author’s humble opinion, primarily a result of their long-standing alliance with the right. It is time to end this pattern permanently, but we must also confront the established progressive strategy.

The alternative culturally-approved political avenue of supporting state power to oppose the criminal manipulation of the economy perpetuated by capitalists is well-intentioned, but should be opposed for practical considerations. As it currently stands, very few progressives or libertarians would deny that the state works for the benefit of corporations and not for the average person. As public choice economics sadly elucidates, average people are not incentivized to pay close attention to politics because their vote is statistically unlikely to make a difference, and the costs which they accrue from the political machinations of corporations are spread thinly amongst themselves and all citizens, whereas the benefits are horrifically concentrated for special interests groups like Monsanto who lobby for unjust economic advantages in the marketplace.

Politicians and bureaucrats are primarily motivated by self interest, like everyone else, and thus have far more to gain from supporting those who receive concentrated benefits rather than the rationally oblivious (and often poor) John Q. Public. Mr. Public is being slyly stolen from and subverted but simply does not have the time or resources to become educated about the countless threats to his social and economic well-being. The threats are too numerous, costly, and diverse, and thus political action to combat special interests is extremely difficult. Contrasted with those who have massive opportunities for extreme profit as a result of state power, the amount of regulatory capture and special interest rulership which dominates the American state is no real surprise .

As long as those justly seeking to limit the power of corporations follow the regulatory route, they will face an incredibly well-financed group with money to burn in order to keep their unjust anti-market privileges.

There is, however, a way out of this incredibly destructive and marginalizing false dichotomy now while reflecting upon Jimmy Johns and the IWW.

Eliminating the state’s power to grant special favors to in-groups would genuinely please both libertarians and progressives. We need to acknowledge this immediately and work together to end corporate tyranny.

The state’s intrusion into the economy has purposefully limited competition to the corporations and has dramatically narrowed the range of opportunities for working people to become entrepreneurs through self-employment or collectives/co-ops. Thus they are forced to accept less benefits, worse working conditions, and “wages so low they freaked” as a result of the deck being stacked against freedom of competition in conscious favor of the corporations, the highest bidders for state power.

If Americans removed the state’s ability to play favoritism to the economic elite, which forces labor to be the pawns of the holders of capital, rather than workers jockeying for an artificially low number of jobs, businesses would be forced to compete in order to attract and keep laborers. Why would anyone work for a capitalist when one could reasonably be one’s own boss in a syndicalist or otherwise horizontally-organized workplace? The Jimmy Johns’ workers might very well have been able to start their own sandwichery! And if they ever did choose to work for a capitalist, it’d be because they were getting one heck of a deal.

This freed market approach wouldn’t face the huge public choice problems of avoiding regulatory capture, nor would it unnecessarily limit human creativity and productivity, and it would lead to the progressive end of a more egalitarian society. Libertarians and progressives would be able to make incredible progress by breaking through the false dichotomy and by creating our envisioned world through this strategy.

So next time you see a libertarian being a sourpuss about workers unionizing at Jimmy Johns or celebrating Labor Day, remind them gently that all of us are reacting against corporatism in our own way. For whilst libertarians oppose the use of the state to artificially raise the status of one group at the expense of other peaceful individuals, they have little to fear from laborers rightfully seeking whatever solace they can glean from the corporatist state. They are merely victims of the current system of false choices. The enemies of libertarianism are absolutely not laborers who desperately need economic freedom, nor progressives, but the corporate overlords who criminally wield state power and “free markets” against the impoverished.