C4SS Media presents Joel Schlosberg‘s “Did Somebody Say McThor’s?” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

Only in an industry with grotesquely overextended operating costs could a film like Hulk take significant creative risks, gross a quarter-billion dollars, and still be regarded as box office poison. Even in an economy stacked against their audience awareness, comics properties like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Walking Dead have achieved multimedia success while remaining independently owned. Steadily decreasing capital costs for multimedia production could allow this to become the rule rather than the exception.

Gary Chartier shows that market anarchism satisfies Rawlsian demands of a system of justice.

The Bundy ranch saga has been the subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good guys in this.

The respective echo chambers for the two sides differ on whether the land in question was originally federal property from the time of acquisition or originally property of Bundy’s ancestors and then taken over by the government. There’s disagreement over whether Bundy attempted to pay the fees and there was some bureaucratic snafu about who to make the check out to, or he’d just flat-out refused from the beginning.

The claim that Bundy’s family owned the land since the 1880s seems rather tenuous, given that one condition for Nevada’s admission as a state was the recognition of all federal land claims dating to the acquisition of the land from Mexico. And Bundy doesn’t object to the idea of vacant land acquired in war passing into the public domain – he just believes, on constitutional grounds, that it’s the State of Nevada or Clark County, and not the U.S. government, that’s the rightful owner he should be paying taxes to.

And the Paiute Nation included the whole area of Nevada that Bundy’s ranch sits on, before the Paiute were driven into reservations on a minuscule fraction of that land. So they really ought to be shooting at Bundy.

But regardless of all that, there’s some stuff we should be able to agree on.

The feds aren’t good guys. Far from it. Let’s start by asking how the federal government came to own such a large share of Nevada land in the first place. The answer is it had been in the domain of one settler state after another from the time of initial European conquest and colonization: First of the Spanish crown, and then of the government of the Republic of Mexico. From there, it passed via the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo – following a war of aggression predicated entirely on lies by the United States government – into the U.S. “public” domain.

Naturally, much of the land in the state domain under all three of these empires was never really as “vacant” or “unowned” as it was made out to be in official legal doctrine (as is the case with the Paiute).

And whether any particular tract of land in Nevada was the rightful property of the First Nations who lived on it, or was genuinely vacant and uninhabited, the preemption of actually or theoretically vacant land is what settler states do. It’s a counterpart to the Old World phenomenon of landed aristocracies claiming “ownership” of already settled areas and collecting rent from its rightful owners: The peasants whose ancestors had been cultivating the land from time out of mind.

Free access to unused land is a nightmare for economic ruling classes. Franz Oppenheimer argued, in The State, that economic exploitation was impossible so long as employers had to compete for workers against the possibility of self-employment – most importantly, until a little over a century ago, self-employment on vacant land. Oppenheimer argued that – at least in predominantly agricultural societies – exploitation is only possible when all land has been appropriated and no more is available for self-employment, leaving no alternative but accepting wage labor on whatever terms are offered. But natural appropriation of all the land – appropriation by occupying and altering it with one’s labor – would be impossible. The world was, indeed, almost universally appropriated, Oppenheimer said. But it was appropriated by law rather than labor – i.e., simply enclosed as artificial property by landed aristocrats in the Old World, as large land grants to politically connected individuals in settler states like the U.S., or incorporated into the public domain from which ordinary homesteaders were excluded, as with the Western lands.

In the early days of another settler state, Australia, economist E.G. Wakefield called for state enclosure of vacant land into the public domain. He argued that free access to land by ordinary settlers was making it impossible for employers to hire labor at a low enough wage to be profitable. In Britain before the Enclosures, likewise, farmers complained that when peasants had access to rights of common pasturage or could erect cottages on the common waste, wood or fen, it was impossible to get them to work at agricultural labor as cheaply, or for as many hours, as desired.

The Homestead Act, passed during the Lincoln administration, is generally framed as a triumph of populism. But it actually involved only a small fraction of total public domain lands out West, and the sodbusters – who, if a given parcel were genuinely unoccupied and unused, should have automatically become the first owners without anybody’s permission when they mixed their labor with it — had to pay for the land.

But guess what? The U.S. government gave a much larger portion of public domain lands to railroad companies – an area the size of France. And not only did they not have to pay for it, they were given ten-mile strips of land on either side of the actual right-of-way, so that the railroads could use the rapidly appreciating speculative prices of real estate along a future train route as a source of revenue.

As for the enormous tracts of land kept in the public domain, the U.S. government gave preferential access rights to extractive industries like mining, oil, logging – and ranching. And the tracts of land were quite conveniently unencumbered by even sparse homesteading, which would have entailed having to buy out families a lot less favorably disposed than Uncle Sam.

The government supposedly auctions off leases to timberland, oil reserves and the like via competitive bidding. But such auctions are always restricted to firms in the relevant industry. They don’t have to compete with anyone outside the club like, say, environmentalist groups who might want to hold old-growth forest out of use, and who might bid up the price higher. In one case where it turned out an extractive industry CEO was actually an activist who deliberately bid up the price so as to sabotage the good ol’ boy arrangement, the industry and Bureau of Land Management screamed for blood. So between oligopsony pricing (a market with just a few buyers, who can easily engage in collusion) and the political pull of extractive corporations, the leases are generally kept to sweetheart prices.

If this doesn’t yet sound quite loathsome enough, the government frequently subsidizes these favored industries by building access roads on public lands, at taxpayer expense, so the extractive industries can haul off the pillaged resources without having to spend any of their own money.

So Bundy really isn’t much of a candidate for knight in shining armor, either. Normally the federal government is the natural ally of extractive industries – including ranchers like Bundy – when it comes to exploiting Western lands. The fees that Bundy is charged with not paying were entirely nominal – just another example of those sweetheart prices for favored interests.

What would have been the rightful course of development, then. First of all, of course, the land would never have been conquered in the first place by either Spain, Mexico or the United States. The sparsely populated lands out West would have been governed by the simple principle that the land belonged to whatever people were currently living on it and using it, and land not yet in use would belong to the first people to cultivate it. So the First Nations would continue to enjoy their traditional hunting grounds and agricultural land, and settlers would be free to make use of land not in use, without paying tribute to government or corporate overlords of any kind.

Extractive industries could exploit only lands not currently in use, or acquire land from those already using it if they were willing to leave it and found the payment acceptable. And any activity by extractive industries that poisoned surrounding air or groundwater, or interfered with the preexisting uses of their neighbors’ land, would be subject to full tort liability without any caps or regulatory exemptions conferred by the state.

As Media Director Tom Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society commented, the low carrying capacity of land like that Bundy’s cattle graze makes it ideal for some sort of commons-based management (of the kind Elinor Ostrom wrote about for most of her career) by an association of neighboring ranchers. Of course well-managed common pastures had effectively enforced rules restricting the total pasturage rights apportioned to the sustainable carrying capacity of the land – the kind of rules that self-styled “Sagebrush Rebels” like Bundy would probably object to even if they came from fellow ranchers rather than the government. And it’s equally plausible that areas of Nevada would be nature preserves managed as commons by conservationists in the interest of preserving endangered species like the tortoise that keeps cropping up in this story (never mind, of course, that the same tortoise lives on military testing grounds that regularly have the crap blasted out of them). The rival property claims of homesteaders, First Nations, and managed commons of all kinds would be a matter for horizontal negotiation based on the agreed-upon civil law principles of free local juries, not not administrative fiat or political pull.

So what we see on the Bundy ranch is really just a fight between bad guys: A corrupt state in league with corrupt economic interests, versus a rogue member of those same corrupt economic interests.

Yesterday I read Cormac McCarthy’s wonderful 2006 novel, The Road. The book tells the story of an unnamed man and his son, as they move through an apocalyptic landscape in the hope of finding a safer place to live. McCarthy doesn’t specify the nature of the apocalypse, although nuclear war is strongly hinted at. The pair face a range of horrors, from marauding gangs to cannibals to the simple impossibility of surviving on the face of a dead Earth. The action of the novel is simply their persistent efforts to sustain life and the will to survive.

A nuclear apocalypse is something we see as solidly in the realm of somewhat antiquated science fiction. The Fallout series of video games is set in a “retrofuturistic” future, that is, a future as imagined from the 1950s, and takes as its central premise a central anxiety of that decade, nuclear war. We are now occasionally treated to declassified government plans for dealing with such a catastrophe, such as the recent declassification of a speech written for Elizabeth II in the event of nuclear war. Such artifacts are treated as relics of the past, reminding us of fears now allayed. Now instead of The Day After, the 1983 TV movie on the aftermath of a nuclear war, we fret about biotechnology in Rise of the Planet of the Apes or climatological catastrophes in 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow. But the demons of the past are not dead.

According to the Arms Control Association, nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons exist in the world today, including more than 3,000 at this moment sitting atop missiles ready for launch. These weapons are a mortal threat to every man, woman, and child on this planet. At any moment, everything we have built, all our art and science, all our lives and all our loved ones, could be snuffed out at the whim of a politician, or even more chillingly, by accident.

The history of nuclear near-misses is well worth examining, but during this centennial year of the outbreak of the Great War, the whims of politicians deserve our focus. For all their careful pretense of competence, history reveals that the great statesmen are as inept at war and peace as they are at running the DMV. During the July Crisis of 1914, the wise statesmen of Europe each entirely misjudged the others and stumbled blindly into a catastrophic war. A minor crisis in a comparatively obscure (to the West) corner of Europe became, by stumbles and errors, a cataclysm.

Last summer, a war between the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Syria, a Russian ally hosting a small Russian military base, was narrowly averted. At this moment, Russia and the West are jockeying for influence and control over Ukraine, and shots have already been fired in Slovyansk. Our leaders have confidently unleashed war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Pakistan just over the last ten years, and casually discuss possibly attacking Iran and Syria while aggressively “confronting” Russia today. When we talk about war, we gamble with the end of our civilization. Such an end seems remote now, just as a world war seemed to most Europeans in July, 1914. But the missiles are still armed. If one crisis runs out of control, if one of these eminently fallible politicians feels cornered or spiteful or just like his bluff won’t be called, everything we have built in the West since the last time we inadvertently destroyed our own civilization in the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era could be lost, to say nothing of the millennia-old civilizations of Asia and Africa.

The end of a civilization is a difficult thing to contemplate. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road does an excellent job, as does the aforementioned Fallout series. But for a more concrete example, Bryan Ward-Perkins’s The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization is superb. While much recent scholarship, following Peter Brown’s classic The World of Late Antiquity, has emphasized continuities between classical antiquity and the medieval world that followed, Ward-Perkins emphasizes the human costs of the collapse of classical Mediterranean civilization. The disintegration of trade networks and the concomitant collapse of the division of labor led to a dramatic decline in quality of life as well as population levels- in less antiseptic terms, mass suffering and death. Progress in the West was set back dramatically; a thousand years would pass before Europeans could build anything like the Pantheon and nearly two thousand before medicine surpassed the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. Countless works of art, literature, philosophy, science and mathematics were lost, as well as much priceless practical knowledge- clean, fresh water would not become a regular feature of urban life in Europe again for centuries.

When the politicians and their media minions begin to bloviate about the need for “resolve,” for “action,” they are betting everything we as a species have achieved on their latest pet concern. Many terrible things are happening and will happen around the world. But whenever any nation, especially a great power, bares its teeth at another, we hope that this latest crisis du jour won’t be the last thing we get to fret about over a printed newspaper or a tablet screen. The end of everything is what we talk about when we talk about war.

As iniciativas inovadoras de ocupação dos espaços (nominalmente) públicos que têm brotado em todo lugar neste dealbar do século 21 ainda tratam com preconceito o comércio. Imaginam que um evento (ou programa) de convivência realizado nas praças e ruas das cidades tem que ser sem fins lucrativos para ser legítimo.

Assim, organizam feiras de trocas, mas não fazem uma feira propriamente dita. Montam bibliotecas (para emprestar livros gratuitamente), mas não livrarias (para vender livros mesmo). Fazem vaquinhas para comprar cerveja no buteco, mas não uma barraquinha para vender comes e bebes. Realizam picnics (onde cada um leva um tipo de comida), mas não montam um restaurante para vender refeições. Articulam oficinas para consertar equipamentos (por exemplo, veículos, como bicicletas) mas desde que seja tudo de grátis. É como se permitir a uma pessoa vender um produto ou um serviço nesses espaços retirasse a legitimidade da ação empreendida, que deveria ser sempre colaborativa. Fica parecendo que cobrar por algum produto ou serviço não é uma coisa do bem, desinteressada e sim algo degenerado pela contaminação de interesses econômicos — o que seria egoísta e não altruísta.

Todavia, uma coisa não colide com a outra. Podemos ter ambientes colaborativos onde acontecem coisas gratuitas e remuneradas, onde haja doação e troca e, ao mesmo tempo, venda (de produtos e serviços).

Penso que isso acontece porque confundimos mercado com capitalismo. Embora o mercado exista há milênios e o capitalismo propriamente dito tenha apenas alguns séculos. E embora mercado não tenha nada a ver com uma visão mercadocêntrica do mundo (como na ideologia do liberalismo econômico ou do chamado neoliberalismo), que quer impor a sua racionalidade (econômica) às outras formas de agenciamento (como o Estado e a chamada sociedade civil). Mas capitalismo não é mercado, nem foi inventado pelo mercado. O capitalismo nasce do conúbio (meio incestuoso, convenhamos) entre a empresa-monárquica e o Estado-hobbesiano, o que é uma coisa muito diferente do livre-mercado (em certo sentido, até oposta).

Cabe refletir um pouco sobre o papel do mercado. O mercado sempre foi interativo. E o mercador sempre esteve aberto à interação com o outro-imprevisível. Ele tem que estar aberto ao freguês porque isso é da sua natureza. Não pode vender apenas para os escolhidos e selecionados antes da interação por qualquer critério extra-mercantil. Por exemplo, não pode vender apenas para os que são da sua nação, da sua língua, da sua religião, do seu partido, da sua etnia, da sua cor. O mercado quebrou as barreiras hierárquicas e autocráticas entre as pessoas de diferentes povos e de culturas distintas. Falar outro idioma nunca foi grande impedimento para fazer um negócio: o linguagear e suas coordenações de coordenações de gestos e atitudes sempre deram conta do recado. E a própria negociação mercantil para abaixar o preço de um produto ou serviço (o famoso regatear) ensejou uma interação social riquíssima. Quem já comprou rede (de pano ou linha, daquelas de deitar e dormir) em alguma praia nordestina no Brasil entenderá de pronto o que estou falando.

A ágora ateniense era um espaço mercantil. As pessoas iam para a praça não apenas para comprar (como hoje acontece num supermercado) mas também para conviver, interagir, conversar. Foi na praça do mercado de Atenas que a democracia foi inventada pela primeira vez, mas ela só pode nascer porque se conformou uma rede de conversações num espaço (que se tornou) público. Foi a interação (a conversação) que fundou o espaço público sem o qual não poderia ter nascido a primeira democracia. Antes o espaço urbano não era público. Era apenas um espaço estatal, regulado — como tudo numa autocracia – pelo rei. Os assuntos comuns não existiam porque não existia o commons. Esses assuntos que deveriam ser comuns (posto que afetavam ou concerniam a todos) na verdade não eram comuns porque estavam privatizados pelo autocrata (no caso, pelos filhos do tirano Psístrato: Hípias e Hiparco). A democracia nasce como desprivatização dos assuntos comuns a partir da publicização dos espaços onde esses assuntos podiam ser conversados por todos. Mas anotem aí: não foi obedecendo às leis da sua época nem pedindo autorização aos psistrátidas que os atenienses fizeram isso!

Sim, uma coisa não é pública a não ser que tenha passado por um processo de publicização. Público não é um status (uma configuração pregressa que se manteve) ou um dado, mas o resultado de um processo. Nada pode ser realmente público por força de declaração normativa, bastando que esteja determinado ou seja regulado por uma lei. Público é um ambiente humano socialmente configurado de maneira a constituir o que chamamos de commons. Publicizar e democratizar são processos coevos. A publicização dos espaços urbanos e a democratização dos modos de regulação estatais são realidades coetâneas. A existência de atividades mercantis nunca impediu a materialização dessas realidades; pelo contrário, ensejou que elas se realizassem. A evidência mais eloquente é a de que onde há comércio a vibe não é guerreira. Ao livre comércio aborrece, sempre aborreceu, a guerra. Prejudica os negócios, prejudica a interação.

Pois bem. Se estamos querendo interagir com as pessoas que aparecem e não apenas com aquelas que desejamos que apareçam porque julgamos que serão as pessoas capazes de entender o sentido último de nossas intervenções urbanas (a expressão é ruim) — ignorando que as pessoas que aparecem são as pessoas certas — então falta commercium nas nossas atividades. Não adianta tentar elaborar teoricamente uma razão douta para justificar nossas atitudes de escolher alguns. Aqui, como dizia von Baader, “o nexus rerum não é um nexus phenomenurum mas um commercium spiritum”.

Imaginem o que estamos perdendo de oportunidades de estabelecer conexões e atalhos para fora dos nossos clusters por falta de comércio! Poderíamos ter muitas pessoas ofertando e demandando produtos e serviços variados (desde a venda de cachorro-quente até o conserto de smartphones e computadores para os transeuntes e os moradores do entorno, passando por cursos de culinária ou de como resolver equações de segundo grau). E em muito breve poderemos ter até gente fabricando (com impressoras 3D e máquinas de corte CNC) objetos personalizados, peças de equipamentos etc.

Alguns dirão que comercializar sem licença é contra a lei, que a fiscalização governamental virá perturbar e, no limite, impedir nossas atividades. Ora, bolas! Imaginem se os atenienses que inventaram a democracia (e o espaço público) ficassem esperando autorização dos funcionários do tirano para fizer o que fizeram. É de comercio livre que se trata aqui e não de comércio regulado. Se fosse para obedecer as leis, nunca teria havido os Occupy e a Praça Tahrir e a Praça Maidan jamais teriam sido ocupadas.

Ah! Isso é outra coisa! Não! Não é. Eis o ponto. É a mesma coisa! Se não estamos dispostos a desobedecer, como podemos pretender publicizar espaços estatais? Isso é revolução social, mas revolução social talvez não seja bem o que você pensava… Não, não é a conquista de algum palácio de inverno e nem a vitória eleitoral contra “as elites”! Não é a troca dos ocupantes do Estado, mas algo que acontece na intimidade da sociedade, alterando os fluxos interativos da convivência social e mudando comportamentos.

Fazer uma horta urbana onde não é permitido (ou não estava previsto pelo planejamento normativo estatal) é revolução, fazer um grande almoço em via pública interrompendo o tráfego é revolução, fazer uma atividade educativa na praça instalando uma comunidade de livre-aprendizagem em rede é revolução e fazer uma feira livre (de fato) é revolução social propriamente dita: tudo isso é reconfiguração de um ambiente hierárquico regido por modos autocráticos no sentido de mais rede (mais distribuição, mais conectividade, mais interatividade) e mais liberdade. Não há outro caminho para fazer isso a não ser a desobediência civil e política.

Está faltando comércio na ocupação dos espaços urbanos (ditos) públicos.

When I was given the title “Ethical Assumptions of Economics,” my first thought was to say, “economics has no ethical assumptions.” But then I thought this might not be the best way to earn my keep here. So I’m going to talk about some senses in which economics might have implications for ethics.

There are these two terms that we often hear as characterizing Austrian economics. One is “value-freedom,” or Wertfreiheit. Wertfreiheit does not mean free in a valuable way; it just means a description that doesn’t involve evaluation. To be value-free is simply to describe things, to tell how things are, without advocating any particular point of view.

And closely related is this notion of “value-subjectivism,” the notion that Austrian economics in some sense recognizes only subjective values, only the values to the participants whose actions are being described or explained, and doesn’t evaluate their actions.

Well, if Austrian economics is value-free and value-subjectivist, then it might seem as though it couldn’t have much in the way of implications for ethics. But there are several respects in which ethics and economics nevertheless interestingly interact.

First, it’s worth pointing out that economics is often presented in ways that are perhaps not completely value-free. For example, words like “welfare” and “property” and so forth tend to have value connotations. Now you can try to interpret them value-neutrally, but ordinarily when we say that such-and-such promotes social welfare, it sounds like we’re in favor of it — since we are part of society, and we do care about our own welfare. And when we say that something is someone’s property, that often implies that it’s their legitimate property, and so calling something someone’s property might imply that they ought to have it, not just that they happen to possess it.

You might think this can be used to bias the discussion, but medicine’s a value-free science too; strictly speaking, in purely descriptive terms, medicine is indifferent between health and sickness — it just wants to describe what causes what — but since as a matter of fact practitioners of medicine are practicing it in order to promote health, naturally they’re going to describe it in such a way, where it’s understood that all the participants in the discussion agree that they’re trying to promote health rather than promoting sickness.

Objective Value

There’s perhaps a deeper worry that’s raised by the Greek philosopher Socrates in a couple of Socratic dialogues that are attributed to Plato (but it’s not clear whether they’re really by Plato or not), the Hipparchus and the Eryxias, where he explores the meanings of certain economic concepts like “wealth” and “profit,” and gives something like an argument that these can’t really be value-neutral terms.

Socrates asks the person he’s talking with, “how would you define profit?” And the person answers, “getting more in exchange for less.” You put in a smaller amount, and you get back a greater return than you put in. That’s profit. (Now this doesn’t really distinguish between profit and interest, risk premium, and all that, but never mind.)

Socrates says — translating his example into our money — “if I gave you one $10 bill, and you gave me three $1 bills back, I wouldn’t think I’d made a profit, even though I’d gotten more in exchange for less — I’d given only one bill and I got three back.” So what matters is the value of the bills, and the fact that a $10 bill is more valuable than a $1 bill. You can’t just describe the exchange in terms of empirical mass quantities; you have to describe it in terms of value. You don’t really profit unless you’re getting something of greater value.

And of course Socrates wants to spin this into, ultimately, a moral argument that you don’t really benefit from what you get unless what you get really is of greater real value. So if I get a lot of money by cheating you, then since cheating you is a great harm to my soul and is not outweighed by the benefit of the money I get, I haven’t really profited.

It’s clear enough what someone like Mises would say to this. He’d say: well, it’s certainly true that you can’t define profit in terms of just getting more physical things in exchange for fewer physical things; but you don’t have to interpret it in terms of objective value — you can interpret it in terms of subjective value. You get a profit, not if you get things that are genuinely objectively better in return, but if you get things you value more instead of what you value less.

Part of the reason Socrates and Mises disagree here is that Socrates thinks that valuing something more involves judging that it’s better, and these judgments can be true or false. And what you really want is not to get what you think is better; what you really want is to get whatever is better. And that whole way of thinking is something that Mises opposes, so they’re not really going to see eye to eye here.

Value Subjectivism

Is Austrian economics committed to rejecting any kind of objective morality?

We can distinguish between two kinds of value-subjectivism. You can have explanatory value-subjectivism, which simply means that in explaining someone’s actions, you appeal to their evaluations, not yours — just as in explaining someone’s actions you appeal to their beliefs and not yours. If you see someone walking out on a bridge, and you know the bridge is unsafe and is likely to collapse, but they don’t know that, then in interpreting why they’re doing what they’re doing you shouldn’t attribute to them your belief that the bridge is unsafe if they don’t have that belief. If you try to explain their action by appealing to your belief that the bridge is unsafe, your explanation isn’t going to be any good.

So likewise, if you’re explaining their actions you also have to appeal to their values. Suppose that you hate vanilla ice cream, and you see someone trying to get some. What they’re doing would make no sense if you assumed that they share your value. Instead, your evaluation of their taste in ice cream doesn’t make any difference to explaining — whether they’re right or wrong to like vanilla ice cream, nevertheless the fact that they like it is what explains their going after it.

So explanatory value-subjectivism doesn’t say anything one way or the other about whether there is such a thing as objective value; it just says that if you’re going to explain people’s actions, you explain them in terms of their desires, not yours.

Normative value-subjectivism, on the other hand, means that there are no objective values, that there is nothing to value over and above just whatever any person happens to want. There’s no right or wrong way to want things; you can’t be right or wrong about your ultimate desires.

So these are two different things, and you can see that at least it’s not obvious that explanatory value-subjectivism entails normative value-subjectivism.

Now Mises seems to have thought it did, and I think his reason for thinking this is not just that he somehow confused two kinds of subjectivism; I think there’s a deeper reason he thought this. The fact that Mises thinks that these two go together, and that both explanatory value-subjectivism and normative value-subjectivism are true, helps to explain why a lot of people interpret Austrian economics as being against any kind of objective value.

Rothbard, on the other hand, accepted explanatory value-subjectivism. He thought that in explaining people’s actions, or in trying to understand and describe economic behavior, you appeal to their beliefs and desires, not yours — but he thought normative value-subjectivism was false. He thought that there was, on the basis of philosophical arguments — the kinds of arguments he gives for example in his book The Ethics of Liberty, where he tries to develop a libertarian theory of rights — he thought you could give arguments to establish that certain values were objectively valid. But he thought those arguments didn’t make any difference to how you interpreted people’s economic behavior.

If economics is value-free in the sense that it doesn’t presuppose any particular values, as Mises and Rothbard both seem to agree about economics, you might wonder how economics can serve as a basis for advice. Economists are often called upon to give advice; how can they do that? Well, there are several different possibilities.

Mises’s view is that it’s impossible to give advice about ultimate goals — except in terms of just saying, “well, I like this goal, you should pursue that,” but you can’t really give any reasons, Mises thinks, for ultimate goals. But given a certain ultimate goal, you can give reasons for adopting certain means to it. And economics is useful for that. Economics can tell us what sorts of actions tend to have what sorts of consequences. So if you happen to want to have, or want to avoid, certain consequences, then the economist can tell you what things to do that are likely to get you the consequences you want and to avoid the consequences you don’t want.

Although you might be in the field of medicine working on germ warfare, in which case you’re interested in causing sickness, most doctors, most of the time, are interested in curing disease, we hope, and so if you go to a doctor for advice, the doctor can just assume that what you want is what will promote health.

But of course it’s not part of the medical expertise to tell you whether health is a good thing. Nowhere in medical school can you learn any reason for thinking health is a good thing. That’s not a medical question. Mises would say it’s not an answerable question at all; others might say, well yes, maybe it is an answerable question, but at any rate it’s not a medical question — maybe it’s a philosophical question or a theological question or something like that.

Socrates used to say that the doctor can tell you what’s likely to make you live or die, but the doctor can’t tell you whether you’d be better off alive or dead. That goes outside of the doctor’s area of expertise. The philosopher tells you whether your life is worth living or not: “the unexamined life is not worth living,” so if you’re not examining your life, you’re better off dead. That’s what Dr. Socrates would say.

Mises thinks economics can tell us how to pursue the ends we happen to have, and given that most people prefer prosperity to poverty and cooperation to chaos, Mises thought that there’s some general, all-purpose advice that economists can give.

Rothbard went further. In the last chapter of Power and Market, Rothbard says that although economics per se can’t give us positive ethical advice — it can’t tell us what goals to aim at — it can criticize certain goals as being incoherent. And although I say that Rothbard here is going beyond Mises, in a sense Rothbard would think of himself as continuing what Mises was doing, even if Mises didn’t call it this. So for example Mises argues that socialist calculation is impossible: you cannot rationally allocate resources in a socialist economy. Well, suppose that was your goal — to rationally allocate resources in a socialist economy. It certainly seems relevant to find out that the goal is impossible. If the goal is impossible, then it seems like you don’t have any good reason to pursue it.

This is a way of criticizing ends: not criticizing ends on the grounds that they’re bad, that it would be a bad thing to achieve this goal, but rather to argue that the goal can’t be achieved at all. So in the last chapter of Power and Market, Rothbard runs through what he calls various positions of “anti-market ethics,” and tries to refute various positions on the grounds that they posit goals that are somehow economically impossible, or logically incoherent, or in one way or another can be shown not to be possible. But he doesn’t think that economics can per se give us positive goals to aim at, or show us what is really worthwhile; he thinks you have to do philosophy for that. That’s why he only does this criticism of ethical theories in Power and Market, and you have to go to The Ethics of Liberty to get his positive ethical arguments.

Positive Ethics

The question is: can economics or praxeology give us anything more than that? Can it give us any implications for positive ethical theorising? What more can it tell us about ethics? I’m going to explore some various possibilities. If you’re hoping that I’m going to derive an ethical system from the axioms of praxeology for you today, well — we don’t have time for that! So I’m just going to give various suggestions about various issues.

First of all there’s this big dispute between Mises on the one hand and Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, on the other. Menger had a category of what he called “imaginary goods.” He said that in order for something to be a good, it has to meet a certain number of criteria, one of which is that it has to be suitable for achieving certain goals or satisfying certain human needs. But, he says, there are some things that don’t really satisfy any human need, while you think they do — like fake cures, things that are supposed to cure you but they don’t really work; he seems for some reason to have included cosmetics in this category; you might wonder about that. But anyway, he thinks various things that don’t really meet any human need are not real goods, they’re imaginary goods, because although they may be suitable means to certain goals, those goals are not in fact genuine human needs.

Mises thought this was a horrible mistake. Mises said the economist has no business pontificating about whether these are genuine needs or not; if you want to explain human behavior, what we think of the person’s desires is irrelevant. If you want to understand the market for horoscopes, or if you want to understand the market for something genuinely valid, it doesn’t make any difference. As long as people think horoscopes are valuable, then they’ll be willing to pay for them, and if they don’t think they’re valuable, then they won’t, regardless of whether they really are valuable or not. Mises thought this category was irrelevant for economics.

But he didn’t just think it was irrelevant for economics, he thought it was irrelevant, period. It wasn’t just that classifying something as an imaginary good was a job for the philosopher rather than for the economist; Mises thought that it wasn’t a job for anybody — because he thought the only way we can make mistakes is about means. We can’t evaluate ends as right or wrong. Our ends are just whatever we want. If you want to justify what you’re doing, you have to appeal to some further end you have. Why am I walking over here? In order to get to the chair. Why do I want to get to the chair? In order to sit down. Why do I want to sit down? Well, at some point you just have to end with “because I want to, and that’s that,” Mises thought.

Mises thought the ultimate goal is not capable of being rationally assessed. The only things you can criticize are people’s means. The only mistakes you can make are about the means to your ends, not about the ends themselves.

However, there’s a distinction which Mises doesn’t consider which might complicate this. It’s the distinction between instrumental means and constitutive means. And here’s a way of thinking about this. Suppose that I want to play the Moonlight Sonata; and so I save money to buy a piano, and to buy sheet music, and to take piano lessons and so forth, so that I’ll be able to play the Moonlight Sonata. These are all means to the end of playing the Moonlight Sonata; if you ask me why am I saving this money, why am I buying a piano, etc., I would say these are all means to my ultimate goal, which is to play the Moonlight Sonata.

But now suppose you come upon me in the middle of playing the Moonlight Sonata, and I’m hitting a particular note. And you ask me: “Why are you hitting that particular note? Is it just that you find that note valuable in and of itself?” And I would answer: “No, I’m playing that note because I want to play the Moonlight Sonata, and I can’t play the Moonlight Sonata without playing that note at that point.” Well, in a sense, then, playing that note is a means to playing the Moonlight Sonata; but it’s not a means in the other way. It’s not a means that’s external to the end; it’s a means that’s part of the end.

When a means is external to or merely instrumental to an end, then it would make sense to say, “I wish I could have the end without having to go through all these means.” I wish I could be at the top of the mountain without having to climb all this way up, or I wish I could play the Moonlight Sonata without having to save all this money to buy a piano. But it doesn’t make any sense to say, “I wish I could play the Moonlight Sonata without having to play all these notes” — because the Moonlight Sonata just is those notes in that order.

So there are cases where a means can be a constitutive part of the end rather than being an external means to it. And a lot of things that Mises considers ultimate ends you might think are really means, but they’re constitutive means rather than instrumental means. So then the question is: well, can we deliberate about constitutive means? How do we determine whether something is a constitutive means to an end? It seems it’s not a matter of cause and effect any more; it’s more a matter of logical or conceptual analysis.

Why does Mises think that if you’re an explanatory value-subjectivist, you have to be a normative value-subjectivist? I think that his reason comes in his two-step argument for why he thinks explanatory value-subjectivism implies utilitarianism. (Both these steps, I think, are denied by Rothbard.) So first he thinks that explanatory value-subjectivism implies normative value-subjectivism: if you can only explain things in terms of people’s subjective values, then you have to give up the idea of there being any objective standard of value. I’ll say in a minute why I think he thinks that. Second, he thinks that that position in turn implies utilitarianism.

And you might think that’s very odd; because you might think that if someone says economics implies utilitarianism, it sounds like they think that economics implies a positive ethical theory — because we usually think of utilitarianism as a particular ethical theory, a theory that says that certain things are objectively good. The standard versions of utilitarianism, like John Stuart Mill’s version, assert that a certain goal — human welfare, happiness, pleasure, satisfaction — is intrinsically valuable and worth pursuing, objectively so. And then our job is to pursue it.

Clearly Mises can’t mean that. Since Mises thinks that there are no objective values, when Mises embraces utilitarianism he can’t be embracing the view that human welfare is an objective value. What Mises means by “utilitarianism” is a little bit different from the kind of utilitarianism that people like John Stuart Mill advocate. By “utilitarianism” Mises means something like simply giving people advice about how to achieve the goals they already have. So you’re not necessarily endorsing their goals, but utilitarianism says that really the only real role for any kind of evaluation is simply to talk about means to ends, because you can’t evaluate the ends.

And I think we can see both why he thinks explanatory value-subjectivism implies normative value-subjectivism, and why he thinks that in turn implies utilitarianism of his sort, in this quote from Theory and History:

All nonutilitarian systems of ethics look upon the moral law as something outside the nexus of means and ends. The moral code has no reference to human well-being and happiness, to expediency, and to the mundane striving after ends. It is heteronomous, i.e., enjoined upon man by an agency that does not depend on human ideas and does not bother about human concerns.

So that’s the position that Mises thinks he’s attacking. He’s attacking the view that the proper moral code is completely independent of what actually makes people happy or what they actually happen to want.

And in a sort of slap at Kant, he calls this sort of thing “heteronomous.” Now the term “heteronomous,” which is supposed to be the opposite of “autonomous” — “autonomous” means somehow governed by a law you give to yourself, and “heteronomous” means governed by a law imposed on you from something else — Kant had used the term “heteronomous” to mean following your inclinations, which are external to and distinct from your rational will, and therefore you’re acting heteronomously when you obey your inclinations. Now Mises is sort of turning Kant’s terminology upside-down here.

But Mises thinks it’s presumptuous to tell people that they ought to be pursuing something completely unrelated to anything they actually happen to want, desire, or have any motivation or personal reason to pursue. Now I think the reason he thinks that is that if you think that all action, as praxeology teaches, is a matter of pursuing ends, and the ends you pursue are your own — you can’t pursue someone else’s end unless it also happens to be your own end — then it just doesn’t even make sense to demand of people that they pursue some end that they have no motivation for, no interest in, no personal reason to pursue.

So you might say that he’s relying on something like the “ought implies can” principle — that it doesn’t make sense to demand that you morally ought to do something unless you can do it. If I said, “you are morally obligated all to fly up to the ceiling right now,” that wouldn’t make any sense, to say that you ought to do it or that you should feel guilty for not doing it, because you don’t have the choice, you don’t have any control over whether you do that or not. I think that Mises thinks that because our actions can only be actions aiming at ends that we have — we can’t perform an action without aiming at some end, and the end has to be an end we’ve got — it just doesn’t make any sense to demand of us that we act in accordance with some objective code of ethics.

However, I think that what he’s really arguing for here is better understood as a kind of ethical internalism rather than genuine normative value-subjectivism. Ethical internalism is the view that you can’t have any moral duties that you don’t have any motivation to pursue. Now that’s a broad family of theories, because according to some theories the moral duty just gives you a motivation, whereas for other theories, no, you’ve already got your motivations, and the moral duty can’t get its foot in the door unless you’ve already got one. Those are very different kinds of internalism. But still the internalists all agree that there are no moral duties without some corresponding motivation on your part. And I think that Mises is really arguing for that. But it’s important to see that that’s not the same thing as normative value-subjectivism, because it might be that, given your motive, and given some appropriate story, the moral duty really is an objective one.

And likewise, the reason he thinks that this has to be purely utilitarian, that there can’t be any actions that are right or wrong in themselves, but only as part of promoting some further goal, is that he thinks all action has to have a means-end structure. But again, you can have a means that is constitutive rather than instrumental. If I’m playing this particular note because I want to play the Moonlight Sonata, then that note is a means to playing the entire sonata, but it’s not an external one. Likewise, people who say a certain action is morally right in and of itself might mean that it isn’t an external or instrumental means to some further goal, but is just part of, say, the good life.

The Goal of Happiness

Now something like Mises’s view was recently defended by Leland Yeager in a book called Ethics As Social Science, where he accepts Mises’s view that ultimate goals cannot be rationally assessed. He says: therefore, ultimate goals are rationally arbitrary, but the means to those goals aren’t, and therefore the advantage of utilitarianism of Mises’s sort, which simply says, “promote whatever satisfies human desires,” is that it’s the best theory because it minimises the amount of ethical arbitrariness. All that’s arbitrary is just this ultimate goal, happiness; but although it’s arbitrary, it’s not terribly controversial: most people are pro-happiness. Whereas if you add more intrinsic values in addition to happiness, things like moral duties and so forth, then you’re increasing the number of ultimate ends. And since ultimate ends are rationally arbitrary, your theory is getting more arbitrary the more of those you add.

I’m not so sure about that; if you really think the whole thing rests on an ultimate thing that’s arbitrary, I’m not sure that whether it’s one or many makes that much difference. But at any rate, the assumption that you can’t rationally assess ends is something that I’m not convinced of. There’s something called reflective equilibration, which is the idea that you weigh various beliefs and values and judgments against each other and see whether they conflict with each other. If they conflict with each other then you revise them to make them not conflict. And so if you’ve got some ultimate end, you can’t assess it as a means to some further end, perhaps, but you can assess it by whether it fits in consistently with everything else. Now that’s a kind of assessment. You might think it’s a kind of wimpy assessment, but it’s an assessment.

We started off with Socrates, and Socrates has to come in again. There’s this tradition I call the eudaimonic tradition, from the Greek word for happiness or well-being, eudaimonia. And this is a tradition that runs through Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and it runs on through the medieval philosophers and the Scholastics, Aquinas and so forth; in fact it’s the dominant ethical tradition of the first 2,000 years of Western philosophy. It’s not until after the end of the Middle Ages that it begins to be whittled away by new theories. And this is the view according to which there is an ultimate good, which usually gets called “happiness” — but that can be somewhat misleading, because it’s not a pleasant feeling of satisfaction, although it may involve that — but it’s a state of your life objectively going well, your life being an objective success, something like your being successful at living a good human life: that’s what eudaimonia is. That’s the ultimate good.

And morality is not just an instrumental means to that good; it’s actually part of it. Morality stands to the ultimate human good as playing one note stands to playing the whole sonata — or actually, probably as playing two-thirds of the sonata stands to the whole sonata (or if you’re a Stoic, as playing the entire sonata stands to playing the entire sonata).

And there are some interesting connections between this tradition and Austrian economics, simply because Austrian economics in a way indirectly grows out of this tradition. The earliest forerunners of Austrian economics are the late Scholastics, who developed a subjective theory of value in the explanatory sense of “subjective,” and they developed many of the early theories and early parts of what would later go on, running through the French School, finally to become the Austrian School. And if you look at Rothbard’s History of Economic Thought, there’s a long section on how cool the Scholastics were. So from the fact that the Scholastics are forerunners of Austrian economics, and the Scholastics are coming at the tail end of this tradition that runs back to Socrates and Aristotle and so forth, I think it’s not that surprising that there are some commonalities.

For this tradition means-end analysis is central: we evaluate things in terms of their being means to ends. But each person has an ultimate end. And this ultimate end isn’t just feeling satisfied or something like that; it’s an objective state of human flourishing. And we can talk about wrong ends as well as wrong means, because those wrong ends are really misidentified constitutive means. So in other words, if you wrongly value something as an end, what’s really going on is that you are taking it to be a constitutive part of your ultimate good when it isn’t.

Now according to this tradition, why do they say that we have just one ultimate end? Why not say that we have lots, that there are lots of things we want: ice cream, fame, not being killed? We’ve got all these different things, but why suppose that they’re all constituents of some big super-end? Well, I think part of the reason they think this is: what happens when you make trade-offs? Suppose there are two ultimate ends you have: ice cream and fame. Those are two ultimate ends you have, and they come in degrees. (That’s why I didn’t use not being killed, because that’s less a matter of degree.) So you want more ice cream, and you want more fame. And sometimes those go together, like winning an ice-cream-eating contest. But still there are lots of cases where these goals might conflict, and so you have to do trade-offs, and decide between them.

If you’re deciding between them, that’s an action. Actions have to have a means-end structure, right? So if you’re trying to decide how to trade off between ice cream and fame, then doing that must be a means to some end. Well, what is the end? It can’t be the end of maximizing the ice cream, because you haven’t decided whether that’s what you’re going to do. It can’t be the end of maximizing fame, because you haven’t decided that. It can’t be the end of getting the maximization of both, because it’s a trade-off — that’s impossible. Instead, you’re trying to maximize something of which these two are parts, some general, overall satisfaction — that’s what you’re trying to maximize. You might wonder whether “maximize” is even the right word, but anyway you’re trying to promote some good that includes both of these intrinsic good; these are intrinsic parts of your overall good. And it’s that sort of thing that leads the eudaimonists to think that whenever you’re acting, you’re always promoting some ultimate good of yours, some ultimate end or aim.

Why not just say that the ultimate aim you’re pursuing is some psychological state, like pleasure? We know how John Stuart Mill would have analyses this; he’d say, well, you like ice cream because ice cream isn’t really your final end, ice cream promotes pleasure. And you like fame because it also gives you pleasure. And so it’s really pleasure that’s the ultimate goal, and ice cream and fame are simply means to that. And then your trade-off is just to determine which one will give you the most pleasure.

Or as Mises puts it, Mises talks about getting rid of uneasiness. And sometimes he seems to mean this in a purely formal sense: simply getting something that satisfies you more instead of something that satisfies you less, getting something you prefer over something you “dis-prefer,” to use a Stoic term. (Actually to misuse it, in this context.) But sometimes Mises talks as though there’s this feeling you get of uneasiness: which of the various things I can choose will make this feeling go away? Getting rid of that horrible feeling of uneasiness is the goal. Sometimes Mises sounds like that, sometimes he doesn’t.

At any rate, you might say: why not take that view? Why not say that our ultimate goal is some psychological feeling like pleasure, or decreasing felt uneasiness, or something like that, and that everything else we do is a means to that?

Well, here’s the problem with that view. Suppose I buy life insurance. And you ask me, why am I doing that? And I say: so that my loved ones will do well after my death. So it looks like I’m treating buying life insurance as a means to my loved ones’ doing well after my death. Now this is either an ultimate goal of mine, or it’s a means to some further goal. Well, whichever one it is, this is not a feeling. And it’s also not the cause of a feeling. Unless you’re assuming that you’re looking down from heaven after you’re dead — or up, if things go worse — but anyway you’re hanging around after death and seeing your loved ones doing well, and you’re getting a charge out of that. But it seems like you don’t have to assume that you’re actually going to experience your loved ones’ doing well in order to buy life insurance. People who don’t believe in an afterlife, or people who believe in an afterlife where they’re off somewhere not being involved with human concerns, still buy life insurance. So it seems that this is something we do that is not a means to pleasure.

Now obviously someone could say: well, wait a second, you get pleasure out of the thought that your loved ones will do well after your death, right? Yeah, that’s true. So here’s something, the belief that my loved ones will do well. And that causes pleasure. And maybe that’s part of my reason for buying life insurance. But is it really plausible to say it’s really that belief rather than their actually doing well? Because one isn’t a means to the other. Your loved ones’ doing well in the future can’t be a cause of your belief that they’ll do well now, unless you believe in backward causation. So even if you believe that the belief is part of your goal, there’s still the goal of their actually doing well too — unless you think you don’t really have that goal at all, you really just have the belief as your goal.

Suppose I offer you a magic pill that costs half the cost of the life insurance. And this magic pill will make you believe that your loved ones will do well after you’re dead. And so you can either have the life insurance for $100, or this pill for $50. If all you care about is the belief that your loved ones will do well, then you’d take the pill over the life insurance. Well, from the fact that presumably at least a lot of people would buy the life insurance rather than the pill, that suggests that they care about their loved ones’ actually doing well.

And likewise Aristotle thinks that this is naturally the way we think. He raises the question: can people’s welfare be affected after they’re dead? And he didn’t believe in an afterlife, at least not a personal afterlife — he thought there was some aspect of you that lived on, but it wasn’t your personal identity — so he wasn’t talking about an afterlife. He thought that if there’s something you cared about, a loved one or some project, and right after you die the project either succeeded or failed, he thought that would make some difference to how we evaluate the success of your whole life.

So our ultimate good, according to this tradition, is not pleasure — although pleasure’s part of it, pleasure’s one of the things we care about, relief from felt uneasiness is great, but it’s not the only thing that we actually pursue.

Aristotle would say that your life’s being an objective success includes the well-being of your friends. It’s not that the well-being of your friends causes you some jollies — it does, sure, but that’s not all there is to it. In fact, he would say that the welfare of your friends causes you pleasure because it’s part of your good, not vice versa — that pleasure is a byproduct of getting what you think is good rather than the opposite.

Rights and Utility

Okay, let me finish up with a largely unrelated question — though it’s not completely unrelated, because these all interconnect. The question is about the relation between rights and utility.

The question is whether rights derive from utility — in other words, is the reason that we have rights the fact that rights are a strategy that’s most likely to promote either our personal self-interest or social welfare (you can take either an egoistic or a universalistic version of utilitarianism) — is that the ultimate foundation of rights? Or are our rights completely independent of utility? There are those who think that our rights are completely based on utility, that the only grounding for rights is that they somehow are strategies for promoting human welfare, either one’s own or everybody’s. And in some sense Mises seems to think something like that. On the other hand, you might think rights are completely independent of utility, that rights just are what they are, regardless of their results. Maybe Walter Block thinks that, I’m not sure. Rothbard is often said to have thought that, but if you read The Ethics of Liberty it’s not so clear; there is some sort of eudaimonic thing going on in the background there, with the Aristotelian stuff in the early chapters.

I want to end by giving some quick reasons why I think that it’s a mistake to think either that rights depend wholly on utility or that rights are wholly independent of utility.

Here’s why I think rights can’t depend wholly on utility: because whatever we choose, we choose either as an ultimate end or as a means — in economic terms, either as a producer’s good or a consumer’s good. Either you choose it as some ultimate thing you want for its own sake, or you choose it as a means to producing some further thing. So if any sort of utilitarianism is true, then morality is a producer’s good, not a consumer’s good. And it’s solely a producer’s good; I mean, everyone agrees that it’s partly a producer’s good. Everyone agrees that one of the things about morality that’s good is that it has good results. But if you’re a utilitarian, you have to think that morality is not a constitutive means to the good, it’s simply a purely instrumental means.

Why is that problematic? Well, nearly all sophisticated utilitarians — and this definitely includes Mises — think that it’s not a good strategy to promote human welfare to constantly be deciding everything on a case-by-case basis. Most sophisticated utilitarians are some kind of rule-utilitarians, or indirect utilitarians. They think that you have to commit yourself to some general set of principles or values. You can’t just decide everything that comes up on a case-by-case basis. The best way to achieve long-term results of the kind you want is to commit yourself to acting in a principled fashion.

Here’s an example that John Hospers, a former Libertarian Party candidate for President, gives in one of his books. He says: suppose you’re an umpire in a game, or a referee, and you’re making decisions, making calls — “he’s safe,” “he’s out,” — and you suddenly begin to reflect philosophically while you’re standing out there, and you think, “What’s the purpose? What’s my purpose here as a referee? Well, my purpose is to facilitate the game going well. What’s the purpose of the game?” And suppose that you conclude that the purpose of the game is to give pleasure to the spectators. I don’t know whether that’s the right story about the purpose of the game, but suppose that’s what you conclude. Then you might conclude: “Well, then, when I give my calls and decide who’s safe and who’s out, I should make whatever call will be most pleasing to the spectators. And so I won’t pay any attention to the actual rules of the game; I’ll just consider: is it a home game or an away game? How happy are the people in the stands going to be with my ruling?”

Now this might maximize spectator pleasure in the short run, but soon it’ll become obvious that winning or losing in this game no longer depends at all on the skill and abilities of the players. The players can just do any darn thing, and you’ll automatically rule in favor of team A if there are more people in the stands favoring team A. Once it turns out that you’re ruling in this manner, all the fun’s going to go out of the game for the spectators. If you’re constantly ruling with an attempt to please the spectators, that’s going to end up in the long run making the spectators very unhappy. You’re much more likely to please the spectators in the long run if you just stick to the rules of the game.

Likewise, most utilitarians think that you’re more likely to promote human welfare in the long run if you stick to definite rules. And libertarian utilitarians think these definite rules include rules of property rights and non-aggression and so forth, that sticking to those in the long run causes more happiness, because people can count on having their rights respected, they’re not constantly worried that suddenly their rights are going to be overridden for social utility, and so forth. So they’re going to be better off.

So what most utilitarians say is that you should behave as if you valued these rules for their own sake, even though you really value them just for the sake of utility. But my worry is: what does it mean to say that you should value something as if it were valuable for its own sake? I mean, either you value it for its own sake or you don’t. If you value it for its own sake, then you’ll choose it if it competes with some other value; if you don’t value it for its own sake, then you’ll give it up if you find some other way of promoting the same goal. If your only reason for respecting rights is to promote social utility, then you’d be irrational not to give up rights in any particular case when you could promote social utility otherwise. So my worry is that this rule-utilitarianism or indirect consequentialism or whatever you want to call it is praxeologically unstable.

However, I also think there are good praxeological reasons not to think that rights are completely independent of utility. And that’s because given precisely the view I discussed earlier, according to which whenever you’re doing trade-offs between different things, where you’ve got different ends, you have to regard them as different parts of an overarching end. Well, unless rights are the only thing you care about, the only value you have — and I’ve sometimes told Walter that that’s his view (although it isn’t really, but it’s fun to say that) — unless rights are the only values you have, then you have to say: here are a bunch of values, there’s the content of justice or rights, but there are also these other values, and they all have to fit together. And if all your values have to fit together, then it doesn’t really make sense to think that you can sort of separate one off and completely decide it without paying attention to any of the rest of them. I think each part of your value system has to have its content at least responsive to the other parts.

And this is what the Greeks called “unity of virtue.” Now people often say that the unity of virtue just means that if you have one virtue, you have to have them all; but I think the real core of the view is that the content of any one virtue is partly determined by, or responsive to, the content of the other virtues. Your account of what justice requires can’t be completely independent of your account of what courage requires, or your account of what generosity requires, or your account of any other virtue.

Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this: Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material world, and from direct experience of the constraints offered by material reality.

For example, earlier this month the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a judge could rightly weigh a police officer’s memory of events, as recalled in testimony, more heavily than video evidence. That’s right: When a video recording of events contradicts the subjective recollection of a police officer, so much the worse for what actually happened. A cop’s “experience” and “superior observational skills” should carry more weight even when what the cop observed didn’t happen.

As ridiculous as this sounds, it’s really not that unusual. Back in the 1960s systems theorist Kenneth Boulding observed that “the larger and more authoritarian the organization, the better the chance that its top decision-makers will be operating in purely imaginary worlds.” The system of information flow in a hierarchy is designed to filter out messages from below that contradict the carefully constructed images of the world in the minds of those at the top. Advancement in a hierarchy is predicated on being a “team player,” which means reinforcing the image of reality held by those at the top and protecting them from exposure to any, you know, actual reality that might contradict it. So naturally when those in authority inadvertently come into contact with real-world information that undermines their official worldview, they dispose of it as quickly as possible using all available Hazardous Materials protocols.

At the same time, those at the tops of hierarchies make decisions, and issue endless decrees to those below them, in utter disregard of the actual resources required to carry them out effectively or possible material constraints on their implementation. The Pharaoh of Egypt anticipated the very best practices of today’s corporate CEOs in the age of downsizing when he said “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore:  let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof.”

When the implementation of the Studer Group’s idiotic management gimmicks was at its peak frenzy a few years ago, we all got (as “gifts” for “Employee Appreciation Day”) little inspirational booklets full of all kinds of sayings from Gandhi and Mother Theresa about giving endlessly without expecting anything in return, out of the sheer fulfilling joy of doing good for others. “Take no care for thy paycheck or staffing ratios. Behold the lilies of the field: Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” They also reassured us in a newsletter that we could provide “extraordinary patient care” despite our “abundance or lack of resources.”

Oddly enough though our management, despite their seeming belief that we lived in a world of pure light and spirit beyond the concerns of the physical world, were not similarly immune from the requirements of the material realm. Our corporate CEO made an $18 million salary that same year, plus a $3.6 million bonus. And management constantly poor-mouths us about the need to economize on staffing because “nursing staff is our biggest cost” (even though the salaries in our hospital’s C-Suite are probably the same general order of magnitude as hourly wages for all nursing staff). I had to wonder why management couldn’t just miraculously multiply its funds to hire enough staff, like Jesus did with the loaves and fishes. That’s apparently what they expected us to do when it came to providing adequate care with the dangerous and criminally negligent staffing levels they provided us with.

So people in authority are completely out of touch with reality. What does that mean for us? The good news is voluntary self-organization, like horizontal networks, is running circles around the old government and corporate hierarchies and eating them alive, like piranha skeletonizing a cow. Over twenty years ago John Gilmore said “The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.” Self-organized networks and other voluntary associations, similarly, treat the intrusions of irrational authority as damage and route around them. We’re building a world in which the irrational interference of those in authority is becoming less and less relevant to our lives and their stupid commands are becoming unenforceable. Maybe you’d like to join us?

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) annual conference. I saw many excellent presentations, including Ed Stringham’s talk on anarchism, Abigail Hall presenting a paper on how foreign wars bring repression home, David Skarbek discussing prison gangs as self-governing institutions that facilitate market exchange, Brian Meehan explaining regulatory capture in the private security industry, and presentations on the political economy of slavery by Jeffrey Rogers Hummell and Phil Magness. I also met Molinari Institute president Roderick Long and joined him in presenting on a panel on Lysander Spooner’s Legacy for the 21st Century. The following is based on what I presented there. 

Lysander Spooner is perhaps best known for his passionate abolitionism. In a letter to The Commonwealth, Spooner wrote, “I have no sympathy with the pusillanimous and criminal statement, If slavery will let us alone, we will let it alone … I hope then to see freedom and slavery meet face to face with no question between them, except which shall conquer, and which shall die.” He articulated this radical antislavery position in such pieces as The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845) and A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery, a letter to the non-slaveholders of the South urging them to aid and abet slave revolts.

Long after the civil war and the passage of the 13th Amendment, some may question the relevance of abolitionism to the 21st Century. But slavery did not experience a clean and straightforward end. The 13th Amendment prohibited slavery “except as punishment for a crime.” In the South, this was followed by the passage of the Black Codes, which criminalized a litany of innocuous actions specifically for blacks. So rather than abolishing slavery, the 13th Amendment simply changed its form. This created forced labor that was arguably worse than chattel slavery. As Angela Davis explains:

Slave owners may have been concerned for the survival of individual slaves, who, after all, represented significant investments. Convicts, on the other hand, were leased not as individuals, but as a group, and they could be worked literally to death without affecting the profitability of a convict crew.

Let’s look to today. The Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as “Angola,” was converted from a slave plantation to a prison, and is still used for forced agricultural labor. Sweatshop conditions exist in prisons across the country. Companies like Walmart, AT&T, and Starbucks all profit from this slave labor. So do war profiteers like BAE, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. The racism of slavery persists; according to the Sentencing Project, 60% of prisoners are people of color, with 1 in 3 black men experiencing imprisonment in their lifetime. America incarcerates on a mass scale, with more than 2.4 million people imprisoned. The abolitionist movement has some unfinished business here.

Beyond his abolitionism, Spooner’s broader libertarian radicalism provides us with a useful framework for opposing this brutally unjust prison system. Spooner’s natural law approach to anarchism, articulated in Vices Are Not Crimes, provides us with a strong ethical and legal argument against the majority of the criminal code. In particular, it provides a solid argument against the drug prohibitions and immigration restrictions that have fueled mass incarceration, as well as against the anti-prostitution laws that have enabled police harassment and assault against many women, particularly transgender women of color. Spooner actually used the argument that vices are not crimes to oppose the establishment of a professional police department in Boston in 1885.  Similar arguments can be used to support abolishing the police today. Where people wish to protect themselves from crimes and aggression, they have incentives to hire this sort of security on the market. A centralized state police force, however, socializes the costs of busybodies policing vices. Policing lends itself to violations of natural law in a Spoonerite sense.

Spooner further argued, in An Essay on the Trial By Jury, that it is a jury’s “right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.” He is articulating a case for what is often called jury nullification. Today, jury instructions exist to explicitly deny the right of a jury to judge the justice of laws. Organizations like the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA), seek to educate jurors on this right. Spooner argues, “if the government may dictate to the jury what laws they are to enforce, it is no longer a trial by the country, [*9] but a trial by the government; because the jury then try the accused, not by any standard of their own — by their own judgments of their rightful liberties — but by a standard dictated to them by the government. And the standard, thus dictated by the government, becomes the measure of the people’s liberties. If the government dictate the standard of trial, it of course dictates the results of the trial.” Reversing the trend from trial by jury to trial by government is one tactic available to us for thwarting the power of police, prosecutors, and prisons.

But perhaps the most interesting tactical insight prison abolitionists can glean from Spooner is derived from his American Letter Mail Company. The United States Postal Service monopoly behaved as we might expect a monopoly to: high costs and poor service. Rather than lobbying government to improve their services, Spooner directly competed with the Postal Service. This can point us towards a tactic for challenging any state monopoly: entrepreneurial direct action!

The state’s monopoly on law is riddled with perverse incentives. Police forces, employed by the state rather than by clients who seek protection for their persons and property, have no incentives to encourage them to prioritize violent crimes or property crimes over victimless crimes. To the contrary, there are various incentives that encourage them to redirect resources towards pursuing victimless crimes, such as sex work and drug offenses, rather than violent crimes. Asset forfeiture laws, for example, grant police the power to seize property that they believe was obtained or used in relation to a crime. In many jurisdictions, they can seize the property without convicting or even charging the property owner with any crime. The seized property is then auctioned off to financially benefit the police department. This introduces a profit motive to engage in more asset forfeiture. Violent crimes like rape and murder are rarely lucrative in this regard, but “crimes” of commerce and entrepreneurship such as drug dealing and sex work typically do implicate money and property. This means that police have a profit motive that encourages them to direct resources towards vice enforcement rather than thoroughly investigating violent crimes. Federal funding that is explicitly tied to militarization and vice enforcement exacerbates these perverse incentives.

Vice enforcement is often highly discriminatory and makes marginalized groups vulnerable to state violence. The criminalization of particular realms of commerce means that those engaged in such commerce are deterred from reporting violent crimes or property crimes, particularly any related to their work. Moreover, discriminatory enforcement deters marginalized communities from seeking police assistance. Many communities of color view police as an occupying army rather than an institution they can safely seek assistance from. As of 2011, 46% of transgender people were “uncomfortable seeking police assistance.” Under Secure Communities, local police forces share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), thus making immigrants fear interaction with law enforcement. This is the reality of modern American policing.

The state’s system of justice encourages diversion of resources away from finding abusers and towards discriminatory enforcement of vice laws. The practical effect is to guarantee that many victims of violence, abuse, and plunder have good reasons not to seek police assistance. The state then crowds out alternative security and justice options; indeed, it overtly seeks to eliminate them to preserve its monopoly on force and law. So many people who are among the most vulnerable to violence are deprived of avenues for security and justice.

Entrepreneurial direct action can help solve this problem. There are some examples of this being built, particularly by feminists and anti-racists. For example, the Gulabi Gang in India engages in direct action against domestic abusers and corrupt government officials, and sometimes also engages in legal arbitration. In New York City, the Audre Lorde Project trains local businesses and community spaces to defuse violent situations without calling the police. These forms of entrepreneurial direct action are community projects enacted without a profit motive, but we can also build for-profit attempts to provide alternatives to the state’s criminal injustice system.

In the age of mass incarceration, Spooner’s writings and actions provide us with many insights for building a prison abolitionist movement. From his uncompromising attacks on slavery, to his natural law critique of vice laws and policing, to his defense of jury nullification, to his entrepreneurial direct action, a Spoonerite approach provides us with tools to end America’s prison state.

Os Estados Unidos têm uma história inconsistente com o ambientalismo. Os americanos sempre tiveram orgulho de sua herança natural. O movimento de conservação dos anos 1890, liderado por John Muir e outros, deu origem a instituições cívicas, públicas e privadas dedicadas à proteção da natureza. A revolução industrial, porém, em conjunto com o advento do capitalismo moderno, o New Deal e a explosão econômica pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial fez com que os americanos adotassem as ideias da economia do crescimento. Essa história inconsistente, de dois países opostos, chegou a seu auge na década das mudanças, os anos 1960. O moderno movimento ambiental têm seu discurso calcado nas ideias daquela época.

Esse ambientalismo moderno, movido pelo crescente movimento anti-guerras, deu origem ao primeiro Dia da Terra que foi reconhecido nacionalmente, em 22 de abril de 1970. Nesse dia, 20 milhões de americanos ocuparam as ruas, parques, campi de universidades e praças públicas para construir um movimento social em prol da sustentabilidade.

Com isso, o “espaço dentro da jaula” foi aumentado. O movimento pela sustentabilidade fez com que fosse criada a Agência de Proteção Ambiental e as leis do ar limpo, da água limpa e das espécies animais ameaçadas. Embora tenha havido progresso, permanecemos dentro da jaula.

O progresso pode ser bom ou mau, é inevitável nas dinâmicas naturais e sociais. Desde o advento do capitalismo industrial e do neoliberalismo de Reagan, o progresso tem sido medido pelo crescimento — a jaula: mais ruas, mais carros, mais governo, maiores corporações, estados-nação mais agressivos e setores financeiros grandes demais para quebrar. As próprias instituições criadas pelo movimento ambientalista moderno são partes da jaula. É claro que há pessoas muito preocupadas, dedicadas e inteligentes envolvidas na luta dentro da atual estrutura de poder, mas seus esforços são limitados pela jaula em que estão presos. Não importam quais sejam as ações tomadas em nome do público e do meio ambiente, o estado-nação continua sendo o maior agressor de todos os tempos do meio ambiente, do ar, do solo, das rochas, da água, da flora e da fauna.

Nossa espécie, contudo, é levada a fazer perguntas. Neste Dia da Terra e de agora em diante, eu peço que nossa natureza intrinsecamente inquisitora se volte para as fronteiras políticas. Por que as maiores ameaças ao meio ambiente são os estados-nação militarizados? Se devemos nos orgulhar de valores democráticos, esses valores não são a antítese da autoridade centralizada? O conceito de crescimento contínuo em nome do “progresso” dá espaço para a sustentabilidade? Não deveríamos, talvez, nos livrar da jaula em que vivemos e redefinir o conceito de progresso?

Como humanos, somos incrivelmente adaptáveis. Quando temos a chance, plantamos as sementes de uma sociedade futura que farão com que a vida na Terra valha a pena ser vivida na posteridade. Podemos liberar nosso trabalho do atual sistema econômico, descentralizar nossas instituições, respeitar fronteiras naturais como as das bio-regiões e cultivar uma sociedade na qual todo indivíduo tenha uma voz genuína nas decisões que afetam suas vidas. Essa é a luta do século 21 — a luta para nos livrarmos da jaula e tomar o controle democrático da sociedade.

A agência individual sobre nossas instituições, sociedade, trabalho, propriedade e pessoas é a práxis final dos libertários. Nessa sociedade, nós estaríamos livres para proteger nossas heranças culturais e naturais, nossas relações locais, nossas águas, paisagens e biodiversidade. O trabalho e a inclinação à liberdade libertarão a sociedade das economias centralizadas e de governos hegemônicos.

Neste Dia da Terra, que nos lembremos que os problemas complexos com que a humanidade se depara — mudança climática, fome, guerra, colonialismo corporativo, extinção animal, depreciação de ecossistemas etc — estão ligados ao sistema atual. Também nos lembremos de que temos uma resposta a todos esses problemas — essa resposta, como sempre, é a liberdade.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Following the military defeat of the Southern Jeffersonians in the Civil War and the war reparations placed upon their property and livelihood, the American political world was left to the Hamiltonians for a generation. There were few options left. Jeffersonians in the North were tagged as Copperheads and rebel sympathizers. Southern Jeffersonians were disenfranchised in more ways than one. Tariff increases initiated by the Republican Party sent long-time Jeffersonian strongholds into bankruptcy. Many would later attempt to rebuild the lost economy of the South with the few scraps left by the carpetbaggers of the North; others left for the West in the hopes of finding better opportunities. The power gained by the Republicans was to give political control of the South and most of the other states within the Union to the G.O.P. With this free hand, there was little opposition to the special grants and privileges which were sought by their supporters and interests.

The next political battle the Jeffersonians were to undertake was much later against the Tariff. This effort energized a new generation of Jeffersonians. Tariffs, by the late 1870’s not only eliminated the federal debt but filled the coffers of the federal government with a surplus unheard of by any of the previous administrations. Indeed, it was an embarrassing surplus with little reason to exist. There were interest groups fighting over control of this surplus, including railroad interests, Northern banking interests and ex-soldiers and soldier wives’ pension demands.

Much of the later American designs in the Pacific and elsewhere were a consequence of this surplus as Republicans fought to gain additional territory through military occupation and continued increasing control over lands reserved for Indians. Imperial designs were made upon Spanish claims.

As the Republicans understood, tariffs are a natural income for a nationalist state. It places control at the border as to what products may or may not enter. It is only a national state dominated by special interests which inherently benefits from these taxes. What is the proper revenue for local needs and focuses on benefits accrued from individuals within states and local jurisdictions for a republican state allied with other republican states in a federal system? Of necessity, it must be a form which, if not a voluntary payment, is of a nature which is controlled by the polity closest to the individual, wherein choices are made on the smallest level possible. Tariffs were certainly not the answer

The growing Free Trade Movement sought an end to the tariffs and corruption in state and federal governments by every means available to them, leading to several outcomes. The first and most important was the rise of the Democratic Party with Grover Cleveland [PDF] at its helm. The next most important were the rise of the “Mugwumps” within the Republican party. For many Jeffersonian radicals, neither went far enough or sufficiently effective in their efforts and looked for alternatives.

The first major movement of the radical Jeffersonians evolved from the insights of a young journalist and firebrand, Henry George. With the publication of Progress and Poverty, as well as number of other books, pamphlets, essays and articles, a new movement arose with ideas for a dynamic capitalist free society, the single tax movement. The idea of limiting all government to a single tax based upon land value was debated across dinner tables and lecture halls throughout the country. It would preserve the Jeffersonian ideal by its primary emphasis upon providing income for cities and local communities (as land taxes have always done) and little for the higher levels (state and federal) save for what would accrue for a frugal government willing to provide for state and national concerns. This paleolibertarian notion was the direction of political activism for radical libertarians for generations.

Following the Civil War came a growing preoccupation with public corruption, beginning to overshadow concerns among reformers with Reconstruction itself. Their enthusiasm for the Republican party began to evaporate during Grant’s administration. Tucker described his only sojourn into politics in The Life of Benjamin Tucker, Disclosed by Himself, In the Principality of Monaco, At the Age of 74:

Four years of Grant and corruption had disgusted me with the Republican party, and the chance of seeing an honest man in the White House in the person of Horace Greeley, whom I had so long admired, made me eager for the fray. In Theodore Tilton’s …establishment of his new paper, The Golden Age, I found an immediate opportunity for participation, as Tilton, in his youth a Tribune reporter under Greeley, had espoused the cause of his old employer, and was devoting both pen and tongue to his election. …I had still a few weeks in New Bedford, and it occurred to me that a part of that time might well be devoted to a canvass for subscriptions to The Golden Age. Less than a week’s work in the city resulted in a list of respectable propositions, — about thirty names, I believe, — and without previous consultation with the management of the paper, I dispatched both the addresses and the money…, they rose promptly to the occasion. Straightway came a letter … urgently inviting me to take the agency for the entire State of Massachusetts. My refusal [was] based on the ground that I was soon to accompany my parents to Vermont…However, even in hopelessly Republican Vermont, I had one opportunity, while at Bellows Fall, to lift my feeble voice in the good cause…

The stagnation of party politics in the mire of narrow partisanship and repeated scandals during the “Great Barbecue” of the Gilded Age cleared the way. The abolitionist, freethinker and father of the mutual insurance industry, Elizur Wright, spoke to black voters in the 1872 election that the Party of Lincoln had only freed the slaves as a wartime “expedient…It is you[r] obvious policy not to wed yourselves for better or worse to either party…but to go for that which best deserves and most needs your help…The great question now before the Republican party, and all the rest of us is whether after our bloody cutting out of cancer [slavery], we are to rot by the cancer of our corruption.” While he supported Grant’s troops ordered to combat the KKK, he would later say, “What is the use of keeping people’s throats from being cut, if they are to be perpetually robbed?” (p. 180-81).

By July 4, 1876, Wright would found, with other former abolitionists (such as Moses Harmon), the National Liberal League which supported black emancipation, women’s rights, but above all they identified themselves as individualists threatened by the imposition of state-enforced Christian dogma: “The platform of the coming millions is the individual,” as Wright would say (p. 182). The League’s stress was upon personal rights, civil liberties and freedom of thought. Anthony Comstock’s crusade against vice and obscenity was to become their most noted battle front, with Ezra Heywood, who was arrested for the publication of his essay, Cupid’s Yoke. D.M. Bennett, editor of freethought periodical, The Truthseeker, was also arrested by Comstock for mailing a copy of Cupid’s Yoke through the U.S. Postal Service.

Ezra Heywood, an elderly abolitionist and opponent of the Civil War (he had opposed the violent methods used by Lincoln as well as that of the Confederate States of America), was highly regarded as a “gentle anarchist” who was fighting a battle for freedom of information, and the rights of consenting adults to their own personal relationships. An ardent feminist as well (and married to a strident feminist, Angela Heywood), he believed that men had reduced women to such socioeconomic dependence that, in order to live, women were forced to chose between selling their labor for next to nothing or selling their bodies into unwanted unions. This Heywood believed to be an insufferable injustice and devoted his writings to free love as a form of freedom from another type of slavery, as he explained in Uncivil Liberty as well as in Cupid’s Yoke.

Here is the point where the subject of this article comes in, for he meets Ezra Heywood in 1873 at the National Free-Love Convention held in Ravenna, Ohio. Benjamin Tucker, who had become one of the controversial feminist Victoria Woodhull‘s “boy-toy” at the age of 19. As a long-time friend, J. William Lloyd would describe Tucker as a:

Well-groomed, fashionably dressed, with a neatly trimmed dark beard (beards were fashionable then), a swarthy complexion, flashing black eyes, a frequent if perhaps slightly nervous laugh, and a charmingly genial manner, which I never knew him to lose… Handsome, a brilliant translator, an editor of meticulous care and finish, a trenchant reasoner, with a faith and enthusiasm for his “ism” that had no bounds, he was like a strong current that swept us along… Tucker’s manner of writing was what chiefly attracted attention to him. No more fiery and furious apostle ever put pen to paper. A veritable baresark of dialectics. He was dogmatic to the extreme, arrogantly positive, browbeating and dominating, true to his “plumb-line” no matter who was slain, and brooked no difference, contradiction or denial. Biting sarcasm, caustic contempt, invective that was sometimes almost actual insult, were poured out on any who dared criticize or oppose… this swashbuckler, on paper, when you met him in person, was the most genial, affable, and charming gentlemen that you could possibly imagine, kind, gentle and always smiling. I discounted this as toward myself but I could not learn that anyone had ever had a hard spoken word from him, and I have never to this day heard of one who had. Face to face this tiger was a dove.

Benjamin R. Tucker was to become America’s greatest expositor of the philosophy of “unterrified Jeffersonianism” (as he called it), most commonly known as anarchism. Child of a Quaker father. a Jeffersonian Democrat and Painite Unitarian mother activist, both of old Yankee stock, he grew up as a child reading Darwin, Spencer, Buckle, Huxley and Tyndall, and listened to speeches by such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Carl Shurz and Charles Bradlaugh. When he moved in 1872 to Boston to study at MIT, he would meet and become friends with other American radicals like Josiah Warren, William B. Greene, Stephen Pearl Andrews and, of course, Ezra Heywood. As a matter of course while beginning his career as a journalist, mainly with the Boston Globe, he would work with journalists, many sympathetic with his views, and become familiar with other writers who would come into his circle of friends as he began publishing, editing and writing in the radical press of this time.

In 1892 in “Why I am an Anarchist” in The Twentieth Century, a New York weekly edited by Hugh O. Pentecost, Tucker said that anarchy is,

The realization of liberty. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition. Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labour will rise at a level with its product. And it is the same with the other monopolies. Abolish the tariffs, issue no patents, take down the bars from unoccupied land, and labour will straightaway rush in and take possession of its own. Then mankind will live in freedom and in comfort. That is what I want to see; that is what I love to think of. And because Anarchism will give this state of things, I am an Anarchist.” (reprinted in Man! An Anthology of Anarchist Ideas, Essays, Poetry and Commmentaries edited by Marcus Graham, London: Cienfuegos Press, 1976. p. 136)

Tucker’s beliefs were set down in the first issue of Liberty in August 1881:

Liberty insists on the sovereignty of the individual and the just reward of labor; on the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury; on no more government of man by man, and no more exploitation of man by man; on Anarchy and Equity.-Liberty‘s war-cry is ‘Down with authority’ and its chief battle with the State-the State that corrupts children; the state that trammels law; the State that stifles thought; the State that monopolizes land; the State that give idle capital the power to increase, and through interest, rent, profit and taxes robs industrious labor of its products.

Tucker is best known as the author of Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy to Write One and Individual Liberty, both collections of essays culled mainly from Radical Review (1877-1878) and Liberty (1881-1908). Tucker’s free-wheeling, laissez-faire, free market anarchism tinged with free love, Stirnerism with a good dose of humor, was analyzed, criticized, commended and blackballed, but it could not be ignored. His periodicals included discussion, propaganda, literary writings of note, debates, essays. The periodicals were brilliantly edited, typed in the best formats of its day, with beautiful artwork and photos. It would be in his periodicals that libertarians would know what is available and what were the issues were being debated.

A generation of radicals grew up reading his periodicals, books and essays in America, Europe and elsewhere. His staff of associates and writers were the best that Liberty produced. He popularized Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and printed G.B. Shaw prior to any other American publisher. When Liberty stopped publishing in 1908 when Tucker’s bookstore burned down, he would continue to write and communicate with others until his death in Monaco.

His impact was considerable, both within his own generation, and to the generations of libertarians that have come afterward as Rudolf Rocker points out in Pioneers of American Freedom (Los Angeles: Rocker Publication Committee, 1949. pp. 118-154)

The United States has a varied history with environmentalism. Americans have always taken pride in their natural heritage. The conservation movement of the 1890s, championed by the likes of John Muir, gave rise to civic, public and private sector institutions dedicated to conservation. The industrial revolution, however, coupled with the rise of modern capitalism, the era of the New Deal and the economic boom following WWII assimilated Americans into growth economics.  This varied history, two opposing Americas, came to a head in the decade of change, the 1960s. The modern environmental movement finds its roots in the discourse of this era.

This modern environmentalism, fueled by the energy of a growing anti-war movement, bore the first nationally recognized Earth Day – April 22, 1970. On this day, 20 million Americans occupied streets, parks, college campuses and public squares to build a social movement for sustainability.

As a result, the floor of the cage expanded. The sustainability movement yielded the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency along with the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Though progress was made and the floor expanded, the cage still remained.

Progress can be good or bad, regardless, it is unavoidable in nature and human society. Since the rise of industrial capitalism and then Reagan era neo-liberalism, “progress” has been gauged by growth – the cage: More roads, more cars, bigger government, bigger corporations, bolder nation-states and a too big to fail financial sector. The very institutions that the modern environmental movement helped craft are part of this cage. Don’t get me wrong, there are very concerned, dedicated and intelligent people fighting the good fight within the current power structure, but alas, their efforts are bounded by the cage. Regardless of the moves made on behalf of public and environmental health, the nation-state remains the largest wrecker of climate, air, soil, rock, water, flora and fauna of all time.

Our species, however, is driven to ask questions. On this Earth Day, and ever afterward, I ask that our intrinsic, inquisitive nature be turned to manufactured political boundaries. Why is the greatest threat to the environment great militarized nation states? If we are to take pride in democratic values, are these values not the anti-thesis of concentrated authority? Does the concept of continual growth in the name of “progress” allow for sustainability? Or should we perhaps rid ourselves of this cage and redefine progress?

As a species humans are incredibly adaptive. If given the chance we can and will plant the seeds of a future society that will make life on Earth worth living for our posterity. We can liberate our labor from the current economic system, decentralize our institutions, respect natural boundaries such as bio-regions and cultivate a society in which every individual will have a genuine say in the decisions that impact their lives. This is the fight of the 21st century — to rid ourselves of the cage and claim democratic control of society.

Individual agency over our institutions, society, labor, property and person is the ultimate libertarian praxis. In such a society we would be freed to protect our cultural and natural heritage, place connections, watersheds, landscapes and biodiversity. Our inclined labor and disposition to liberty will free society from centralized economies and hegemonic governments.

On this Earth Day may we realize that all the complex problems facing humanity – climate change, hunger, war, corporate colonialism, extinction, depreciating ecosystem services, etc. – are tied to the current state system. May we also realize that we have an answer to these problems – that answer, as always, is liberty.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Um Dia da Terra libertário.
• Italian, Una Giornata della Terra Libertaria.

Ahmad Barqawi discusses why the Arab League should be dissolved.

Binoy Kampmark discusses the military dictatorship in Egypt.

Roberta A. Modugno discusses the Levellers.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses how the War on Drugs is literal.

James Bovard discusses USDA’s regulation of raisin production and distribution.

Ryan McMaken discusses Ron Paul, Richard Cobden, and the risky nature of opposition to war.

Laurence M. Vance discusses questioning the U.S. military.

A. Barton Hinkle discusses how government power rests on violence and coercion.

Kevin Carson discusses the statist character of factory farming.

Michael Young reviews America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford.

Bob Rijkers, Caroline Freund, and Antonio Nucifora discuss Tunisia’s crony capitalism.

Murray Polner discusses the prospect of WW3.

A. Barton Hinkle discusses the suppression of free speech across America.

John Stossel discusses the bullying character of the FDA.

Abby Wisse Schachter discusses the criminalization of fun.

Matt Welch, Ronald Bailey, Jeffrey A. Singer, and Sandy Reider discuss whether vaccines should be mandatory.

Winslow T. Wheeler discusses the false claim that the U.S. has an inadequate defense budget.

Ajamu Barkaka discusses the whitewashing of white terrorism.

W. James Antle III discusses crony capitalism.

John P. McCaskey discusses what he calls the new libertarians.

Kevin Carson discusses what taxes pay for.

Joseph S. Diedrich discusses whether intellectual property defies human nature.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses U.S. coups of past and present.

Lilany Obando discusses the criminalization of social movements in Colombia.

Kevin Carson discusses phony “free market” reform.

Alexander R. Cohen discusses taxation.

Daniel Robelo discusses the drug war’s fueling of mass deportations of migrants.

Wendy McElroy discusses regulators harming microbusinesses.

Max Euwe defeats Alexander Alekhine.

Max Euwe defeats Bobby Fischer.

What is the proper relation between legality and morality?

To friends I stated that what was morally required is not what is legally required. This post is an exploration of my evolving thought on this issue. In the process of thinking further about it, I discovered a revised train of thought. As Ayn Rand stated:

“Rights” are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Let me note that I only partially agree with Ayn Rand’s statement above. Legality can relate to morality, but it doesn’t, of necessity, have to. It’s possible for something to be immoral without being a violation of a libertarian law code. This is due to the fact that the only legal obligations one has are to respect the individual rights of others You may have non-consensual moral obligations that are only legitimately enforceable through non-violent means. This would still be eminently libertarian as long as people were being pressured for rational and individualistic pro-liberty reasons. The obligation to help customers without discriminating on grounds of irrational bigotry comes to mind. No one can be ethically forced to help another through legal force, but a person can be non-violently pressured to do so. Other examples include an obligation to engage in contextually justified mutual aid. You can’t rightfully have the product of your labor seized for this purpose, but you still have a moral obligation to do so.

A libertarian law code completely divorced from morality would be a nihilist one. How can you justify the defensive use of force that would be permitted by such a code without invoking a moral reason? You can’t. It would mean that libertarianism was nothing more than a subjective preference with no moral weight. That is no basis for building a substantive legal system. Libertarianism is a value laden ideology and this is preferably reflected in its laws. In the absence of this, it would simply be authorizing a coercion filled subjective brawl among competing wills. That kind of Hobbesian scenario is not conducive to liberty. It’s compatible with a chaotic tyranny. A world where different warlords or feudal lords compete for power and control over others would be created. Do I contradict myself by claiming that non-moral libertarian law is nihilistic and that morality is not of necessity related to legality? No, because I am not claiming that all of morality needs to be the basis of a legal system. I just argue that some moral rules need to inform the legal foundations of a libertarian society.

The final thing to discuss is when things are both moral and legal. This happily resolves the problem of whether to make something ethical mandated by law. The enshrinement of ethics into law allows one to discharge their moral obligations without fearing punishment. It’s precisely valuable for this reason. One example is murder. It’s both immoral and preferably illegal to commit an act of murder. Another example is rape. It’s once again both immoral and preferably illegal. We could multiply these examples further, but I wish to bring this post to a close. I encourage my readers to leave comments and think critically about what I’ve written. It’s always fun to receive feedback and constructive criticism. I only ask that my readers respectfully reply rather than insult me. I look forward to your responses!

Part 1: Kolko at Home

An earlier generation of libertarians was interested in Gabriel Kolko, a historian of the Left. Who was he?

Born in 1932 in Paterson, NJ, historian Gabriel Kolko studied at Kent State, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University (PhD: 1962). From 1970 until his retirement he taught history at York University in Toronto, where he remains Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus. In Wealth and Power in America (1962) he reflected on persistent poverty in the United States. Other works in American economic history followed. Thereafter, events moved Kolko increasingly into issues of war and peace. Gifted with a definite independence of thought, he was generally seen as part of the New Left.

Kolko’s vision of American economic history overlapped with, but differed from, that of other New Left historians. William Appleman Williams, for example, divided American history into three ages: Mercantilism (1740-1828), Laissez Nous Faire (1819-1896), and Corporation Capitalism (1882 to present). By the early 20th century a “class-conscious industrial gentry” sought to guarantee the dominance of large corporations by using government (1) to engross foreign markets for goods and capital; (2) to provide market stability and predictability, partly through formal or informal cartelization; and (3) to reduce discontent by recognizing union rights (within limits) and instituting a very minimal welfare state. The New Deal rounded out this system of “corporate syndicalism” (Williams’s term). Other New Left historians, including James Weinstein, David W. Eakins, Martin J. Sklar, and R. Jeffrey Lustig, tended to speak of “liberal corporatism” or “corporate liberalism.” Pursuing this system’s origins, historians ventured back into the 19th century, and Kolko’s early work reflected that journey, so let us begin with his second, more focused study, Railroads and Regulation (1965).

The locomotive of history

In Kolko’s view, all historically existing capitalist systems have relied on the state. Once state-promoted railroads had become the biggest 19th-century investment sector, their subsequent difficulties necessarily called forth further aid from a political system eager to help. Given their origins, American railroads essentially rested on gross over- or malinvestment, a situation made worse by the land speculation they encouraged, as well as watered stock and endless promotional scams. Alas, just enough sharp fellows had scrambled into railroading to create a degree of competition that might ruin or certainly inconvenience the owners once they actually had to transport something and make money on their massive fixed capital. Following regulatory proposals through Congress (and elsewhere) between 1877 and 1916, Kolko concluded that railroads dominated overall and got most of what they wanted. This was the birth of self-conscious political capitalism. (Meanwhile, one could add, the railroad industry had done much harm, economically and socially, by fostering “economies” on a new and artificial scale [“national markets”]; and, as economist Michael Perelman writes, the railroad industry’s seeming immunity to market forces confused economists, who developed new — and not necessarily better — economic theories.)

Political capitalism: Free market and strong state

Railroads had spurred the rise of corporations in other key industries, and the new political capitalism necessarily spread to other sectors. Kolko’s Triumph of Conservatism (1963) takes a grand tour of the late-19th- and early-20th-century American economy, its general trends and exceptions to them, covering steel, oil, automobiles, agricultural machinery, telephone services, copper, insurance, meatpacking, and banking. Broadly speaking, America’s rapidly industrializing economy still displayed much decentralization and considerable (and unwelcome) competition. Now, key businessmen consciously sought political solutions to preserve or improve their positions. (This mattered far more than their subjective or theoretical views, including arbitrarily deployed free-market verbiage.) Above all, they wanted the stability and rationalization that only law and the state could give them.

For Kolko, a conservative consensus shaped the “reforms” of the Progressive Era. Politicians generally put business first. Industry wanted (and got) a veto over regulatory agencies. The outcome, Kolko wrote, was political capitalism: “the functional unity of major political and business leaders,” doing business (as of 1963) as the Establishment, an “interlocking social, economic, and political elite.” This was not entirely new. American economic organization during World War I fulfilled the Progressive program of the eastern elites, and later Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt worked within the war model.

In Kolko’s view the best European social theorists shed little light on the specifically American experience. Marx’s “purely economic” categories proved unsuited for dealing with American developments. For Kolko, from 1887 on, new U.S. political bureaucracies aimed at shielding the profits of established businesses from both unwanted competition and unpredictable political developments.

Wealth and power further pursued

In his Main Currents in Modern American History (1976), Kolko presented an overall vision of American history and pursued political capitalism well into the 20th century. Here he stated his disagreements with Williams and the Wisconsin school on the relative importance of the Open Door for American exports. Kolko stressed instead American capital’s need (all through the 20th century) for imported raw materials for their industrial processes, a connection that sheds needed light on persistent American interest (and intervention) in rather secondary overseas markets such as Southeast Asia. (Oil of course speaks for itself.) Kolko thus brought subsidized exports together with American control of overseas resources (raw materials) in a more powerful notion of what the Open Door entailed for American planners from at least 1941 onward.

I would add that since 1789 American federal courts and bureaucracies have tended to see the promotion of private business and economic growth as their main job. (See the critiques of this policy that John Taylor of Caroline wrote between 1814 and 1822.) By the late 19th century, key economic and political actors began to see themselves as a central planning board for the American capitalist system as a whole, a project that the New Deal raised to a new level. Broadly speaking, business was happy enough with these new services, and most Americans complied with the ever-changing new order, perhaps because the federal apparatus had already shown its power to crush whole sections of the American people from 1861 forward — whether separatists, labor unions, or dissenters from World War I. (See below.)

Interestingly, Kolko laments the defeat of the southern and western populism of the 1880s and ’90s, which he calls “the most truly libertarian social force” of its time. The movement’s eclipse was assured when close to a million American populists departed for the farming provinces of Canada (an emigration that American historians mostly ignore). Where labor history is concerned, Kolko sketched the history of an ethnically divided working class, immigrant and native, sold out (as it were) by business-oriented union leaders. He comments,

Violence was used in America more than in any other country that bothered preserving the façade of democracy, but what was clear from this, apart from the fact that the threat to constituted order evoked a response all out of proportion to the real danger, was the readiness to employ yet far more if it were required.

Unlike populism, eastern progressivism was all about sustaining the going order through political capitalism. Referring to World War I, Kolko writes, “The national government had built a vast administrative structure which businesses had defined and guided from its inception, and they might yet do so once again.” Later, New Deal banking legislation reflected the same purpose: “Using political means, big banking could now impose its norms in a national banking structure….”

In chapters 7 (“The Accumulation of Power”) and 8 (“Politics and the Foundations of Power”) ofMain Currents, Kolko zeroes in on the workings of the American political and economic structure. Given the selection of key state officials (especially for foreign policy) from the ranks of big business, big banks, and top law firms, policy is inevitably subservient to the interests of commerce broadly conceived. Even those recruited from other strata receive training in this received outlook. The resulting leadership class exhibits a collective myopia, only made worse by the serial crises that this class manages to produce. Given the higher policymakers’ shared (and fixed) worldview and class ties, conformity, promotion, and fear of losing influence are all that counts. In recent times almost no one has resigned from office over a matter of principle.

The elite proceeds with complete contempt for the wishes of the governed: “‘Freedom’ thereby becomes a posture the powerful tolerate among the powerless, and those in power make certain they will remain ineffectual.” At the same time, consensus “becomes an ideological phrase which wholly obscures the real basis of authority in United States society since the Civil War — law and the threat of repression.”

Kolko paints a gloomy picture of a banal, empty culture with no real community at any level. The early, unconditional, and violent victory of the American elite, along with its inability ever to feel really secure, has led to unhappy results: “Having fulfilled their desire to break the possibility of opposition, they also destroyed, as well, social cohesion and community.” Further, in American political life, “charlatanism, infantilism, cynicism, apathy, and gangsterism have all merged in ever-changing ways with the regulatory functions of the political mechanism and its responsibility to perform essential and predictable tasks.” Deliberate exclusion of the people from any effective participation in political life — or even their own lives — caps the whole edifice.

Inside the American whale

Two recent critics, Robert L. Bradley Jr. and Roger Donway, fault Kolko for not approving of any phase of American capitalism, laissez-faire or corporatist. This is a fair point: He does not approve. But if Kolko stands convicted of not being a libertarian, it is not clear how this invalidates his historical work. History is not theory, and back-and-forth leaps between facts and theory (ideology) may not avail. And the little matter of “laissez-faire” needs another look: A fairly minimal state was quite strong enough in England to clear peasants off the land and (later) to remove sundry traditional rights that blocked rapid industrialization. In the United States, governments undertook similar projects of bourgeois social engineering chiefly in aid of already wealthy or (sometimes) rising interests.

As Kolko knows, big business is not ideologically naïve; its embrace of the state is rational and interest-driven. Like Hobbes and Locke, big business knows that the kind of market society it desires absolutely requires a strong state. The trick is to have such a state while publicly demanding the opposite. Accordingly, big business subsidizes free-market ideas (which retain some mass appeal) and enrolls petty-bourgeois (small-business) elements as defenders of the corporate sector. The authoritarian populist style of Thatcher and Reagan, combining a strengthened state with much free-market rhetoric, showed that this formula sometimes works. It is surely an exercise in futility for anti-imperialists, decentralist conservatives, agrarians, libertarians, etc., to serve such causes.

But to return directly to Kolko, it seems fair to say that his accounts of progressive reform down into the early Cold War have held up rather well. Perhaps Elizabeth Sanders is right to say that big business, while dominant, did not completely control the progressive reform process. Yet Nancy Cohen’s work on the remoter origins of the new federal bureaucratic state allied with corporations reinforces Kolko’s main conclusions.

Running all through Kolko’s important and informative historical work is a consistent critique of (and contempt for) the activities and claims of America’s ruling elite. (They have earned it.) His turn toward the history of wars, American or otherwise, led him to focus on the autonomous power of states, and therewith to an even higher level of criticism.

Part 2: Kolko Abroad

Gabriel Kolko’s historical writing hinges on the interrelations of economic, political, and ideological power in American history. His later work increasingly focused on those phenomena in relation to war, peace, and empire. As his project went forward, Kolko increasingly departed from that Marxist framework in which state power becomes so utterly subordinate as to be historically negligible. The result has been a more realistic, but no less radical, critique.

In The Roots of American Foreign Policy (1969, especially chapters 7 and 8), Kolko connected the domestic and foreign aspects of American political capitalism in terms of class, state and private institutions, economic goals, and supporting ideology. We find here very useful reflections on the forces and ideas underlying “vaunting and fear” and “perpetual war for perpetual peace” (timeworn Old Right phrases) as inevitable companions of American foreign activities. (We can only sample some key points here.)

Class. With similar class origins and the same education, the “very top foreign policy decision-makers were … intimately connected with dominant business circles in their law firms.” The result has been a “dual relationship — one which uses the political structure to advance the domestic and global economic interests of American [political] capitalists,” one that “has characterized Washington leaders for the better part of this century.”

Ends and means. U.S. policymakers use the dependence of raw-material-producing nations as leverage for gaining access to their markets and resources. Strangely enough, for all the American rhetoric about free enterprise, America “is the world’s leading state trader, even though it has consistently attacked this principle when other industrial nations used it to advance their own neocolonial export positions.”

Ideology. Having described the U.S. political economy elsewhere (see part 1 in last month’s issue), Kolko notes that “neo-Hamiltonian” ideas serve as “a justification for the political capitalism that was the most critical outcome of American liberal reform” in its domestic and overseas dimensions. Interestingly, the relatively nonideological American military had failed (as of 1969) to rally around this Hamiltonian ideology of “the positive and predatory state.” The career of Robert McNamara as a corporate-liberal, technocratic secretary of defense “showed how fully the Military Establishment was merely the instrument of warfare liberalism in the Fair Deal-Great Society period.”

World War II

American Non-Diplomacy, 1943– 1945. Kolko’s Politics of War (1968) set out many broad themes that would dominate his later work. U.S. policymakers in 1943–45 found themselves faced with three overriding issues: (1) the global, revolutionary Left; (2) the Soviet Union as a great power and suspected source of all revolutions; and (3) Britain as enemy and rival, mainly because of its sterling bloc and imperial trade preference.

In important respects the real drama began in Italy, where Anglo-American occupation policies set precedents for later occupations: precedents the Soviet Union might exploit as its headlong pursuit of retreating German armies left Soviet forces in possession of Eastern Europe. To keep Italy away from the sterling bloc, Americans elbowed Britain aside, but U.S. and British forces jointly suppressed Italian political activity, disarmed the Resistance, and kept fascist administrators in place, as needed. Britain was promoting France — soon to be liberated — as a phony Great Power subordinate to a projected, British-dominated Western European economic bloc.

Ironically, the French Communist Party, feared by all, had become a patriotic, nationalist bulwark of order. Kolko reasons that if the Soviets (as reputed) controlled the French CP, then Soviet intentions were quite moderate. In Belgium the British repressed the Left. Here was another precedent for the rule cujus regio, ejus economia — whose region, his economy (my phrase). Anglo-American rivalry and their shared suspicion of Soviet intentions affected policies toward every nation about to be occupied by any of the three powers.

Despite Western expectations, the Soviets followed a pragmatic, country-by-country strategy as their armies came westward. In contrast, Kolko writes, “By the end of 1944 both the United States and Great Britain had intervened in the internal affairs of every major Western European nation in order to contain the Left and proscribe each other’s influence, systematically restricting Soviet influence as much as possible while Russia fought the European land war in the theater of central importance.” Underneath mounds of verbiage, then, a de facto division of Europe was in the cards from mid-1943, well before anyone ever yelled “Cold War!” The Soviets, willing enough “to leave the Greeks and Yugoslavs to their own fate,” could not afford such luxuries in Poland or Romania.

As of 1944, American strategic planning was shifting from the German to the Soviet menace, but policymakers postponed almost all diplomatic issues, biding their time until U.S. predominance could settle them in America’s favor. American peace plans, from 1941 forward, consisted of: (1) economic goals “inherited almost completely from the world view of Woodrow Wilson”; and (2) improvisation to meet crises and enforce those goals. Goals were “highly explicit in the economic field,” and American reconstruction of the world economy was “by far the most extensively discussed peace aim.”

Open doors and raw materials. Throughout Politics of War Kolko stresses the centrality of Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s conception of free trade as American officials’ chief war aim, aside from bare victory. This “free trade” was of course the famous Open Door policy, which was considered to be a global panacea, and which entailed a very large role for American state power as its motor of progress. As Kolko puts it,

For an international free trade doctrine, the Hullian program, which in principle received the approbation of most business organizations and firms interested in the subject, seemed to rely much more strongly on the Federal government’s active and continuous intervention than Adam Smith’s invisible hand, but nearly a century of pragmatic business-government relations had determined the precedent.

As I noted in part 1, Kolko adds American planners’ felt need for access to overseas resources and key raw materials to the William Appleman Williams school’s emphasis on the Open Door policy for American exports of goods and capital. This broadening of the applied Open Door reflected American policymakers’ own internal expansion of their operational ideology. A “right” to raw-materials access is a perfect counterpart to a “right” to overseas markets, and from at least May 1944, U.S. policymakers treated American access to raw materials as a self-evident implication “of the Open Door, which originally only meant equality with the most-favored foreign nation rather than [with a target country’s] domestic interests.”

The Open Door (or equal opportunity everywhere) for American corporate business was the key to U.S. world policy and something to which the United States would readily sacrifice its professed interest in overseas democracy. If American economic goals had been met, Kolko speculates, the United States could easily have tolerated total Soviet control of Eastern Europe, with that region back in its old, semicolonial economic role and the Russians as middlemen. “Rhetoric aside, expedient references to the Open Door … functionally meant American economic predominance, often monopoly control, over many of the critical raw materials on which modern industrial power is based.” There was little that was truly new in the full use of state power to shape this “free market.” With intermediaries like the Saudi oligarchs and the Iranian state on the payroll, America “saw underdeveloped areas primarily as a problem of raw-materials supplies, and that misery and stagnation would be the basis of such an American-led world was of no consequence in American planning for peace.”

Conduct of the war. Britain and the United States had long planned what became the terror bombing of World War II. In the Far East the Americans hoped to use both Russia and the atom bomb against Japan. In Kolko’s view (Politics of War), “The war had so brutalized the American leaders that burning vast numbers of civilians no longer posed a real predicament by the spring of 1945.” In the end, a “mechanistic attitude” prevailed. For U.S. leaders there was never any moral dilemma about using the new gadget. Elsewhere Kolko writes that, whatever the other side’s systematic inhumanity, “the Allies consistently transgressed traditional legal and ethical standards concerning civilians and war crimes,” and in Korea (1950–1952) the United States departed even farther from those rules.

Global planning and open doors. The United Nations grew up in the shadow of “the reality that America’s brand of internationalism was truly a plan for its own hegemony in the postwar world” (Main Currents of American History). U.S. plans for world monetary reform entailed accelerated trade and turnover, and massive overseas (private and state) lending as a floor under U.S. exports. American policymakers fielded their choicest “anticolonial” rhetoric as leverage in the quest for raw materials. Expected American control over the UN would make colonial economic resources available to all mankind, but mostly to American corporations. More practically, Washington used the leverage supplied by Lend-Lease and other means to open up the British trade bloc and to deprive Britain of its export markets in Latin America and, in time, its Middle Eastern and Iranian oil fields.

Anatomy of a War

The outcome of all this American effort was the classic Cold War system that “contained” defeated enemies (Germany and Japan) and certain victors (Russia and Britain) under the guise of containing communism. This broad story continues in Kolko’s Limits of Power, coauthored with his wife, Joyce Kolko (1972), but here we shall rush ahead into Vietnam, as treated in Kolko’s Anatomy of a War (1994 [1985]). In great detail Kolko sketches out the “vast orgy of violence [that] was the product … of the capital intensive premises of U.S. reliance on firepower. Officers fought the only war possible and the Vietnamese people paid a monumental price not because of individual caprices but because the United State’s entire military system performed exactly as it was intended to” (emphasis added).

Kolko thoroughly discusses the ideology and practice of “the Revolution” (the party in Hanoi and allied forces in South Vietnam) and tensions between them. In North and South alike, those resisting the Saigon government and American forces showed remarkable adaptability in military and economic affairs that belied the top-down Leninist party model.

War, economy, and state

Kolko’s Century of War (1994) is a broad study of the impact of modern wars on society and politics. One important conclusion Kolko draws is that “it was not the wisdom of Leninist revolutionaries, much less the glacially paced manifestation of Marxist axioms regarding the economy, but rather the folly of old orders that was the origin of the Left’s greatest political and ideological successes in the twentieth century.” Twentieth-century wars were the clearest expression of this universal ruling-class folly. (As for the war-bred Left, Soviet pragmatic conservatism and the power lust of left-wing leaders in various countries aborted its radical social and nationalist goals.)

World War I was a technology-driven train wreck that irreparably scarred European civilization and marginalized officer classes everywhere, sidelining their feudal-heroic values and replacing them with technocrats allied with heavy industry. If “stupidity in high places has been the bane of modern history,” Americans leaders — ever surprised, idiotically optimistic — earn special mention.

War, capital, and the state

Kolko’s tour of mankind’s bellicose folly leads him to conclude that conservative, Weberian, and Marxist theories of bureaucracy “gravely distort much of mankind’s past experiences” and leave researchers unable “to fathom the consummately self-destructive irresponsibility of leaders playing with the lives of their subjects and gambling on the very future of their social and political orders.” He sees some kind of radical, humanist exit as needed, but gives only hints in the works surveyed here. Kolko’s historical thought might seem to rest on methodological cynicism and justified anger. It is perhaps better to see it as the product of stark realism and considerable intellectual courage.

Charles T. Sprading was a libertarian activist and prolific writer in a number of causes, ranging from freedom and freethought advocacy, cooperativism, Irish Independence, publisher of libertarian books and periodicals, opponent of anti-blue laws, and, in his last years before his health failed him (d. approx 1960), supporter of the Bricker Amendment and strident opponent to the U.N.

Probably his best-known work outside of Liberty and the Great Libertarians (Los Angeles: The Libertarian Publishing Company, 1913, reprinted in 1978 and 1995), was The Science of Materialism (New York: The Truth Seeker Company, Inc., 1942) which ran through several reprints and one of the most popular freethought works of the 1940’s and 1950’s. He wrote freethought essays throughout his life and numerous other freethought books. Another freethought work, Science versus Dogma (Los Angeles: The Libertarian Publishing Company, 1925) is largely a defense of evolution written with the assistance of the naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Two other freethought books were American Religions (a humorous look at American religion) and Is Materialism A Science?

Sprading was a significant transitional figure in the evolution of the libertarian movement. Starting as a “plumb-line protagonist of freedom” (“plumb-line” generally referred to the Tuckerite wing of the anarchist movement. See, for example, Men Against the State by James J. Martin, who refers to Sprading as one of the Tuckerites.), he remained an anarcho-spencerian proponent of the law of equal rights throughout his life. Perhaps the most well-known proponent of this form of “rational anarchism” was Victor Yarros, particularly in his early writings in Benjamin Tucker’s periodical, Liberty (1881-1908. Yarros was co-editor of Liberty for a period of time.). Yarros was to later move from his radicalism to a form of progressive liberalism, particularly during the period writing for the socialist and freethought publisher, E. Haldeman-Julius.

As an interesting aside, one copy of Liberty and the Great Libertarians has been located with an inscription in the front to President Woodrow Wilson, “a fellow worker for a greater freedom”. Sprading held high hopes for Wilson’s term of office. Sprading admired Woodrow Wilson, as many radical classical liberals (i.e., libertarians–Spencer Heath is another example) did. Wilson was the author of a book entitled, The State, highly regarded by the classical liberals of the time, many of whom were to join with him in his administration. Some shed their fundamental beliefs and stayed with him in positions of power. Others, such as Albert Jay Nock (who worked under William Jennings Bryan in the State Department), left in horror over the directions that his administration was going, never to return to politics again.

As is frequently the case, alas, once in power, Acton’s Disease soon becomes a permanent ailment.

It was particularly saddening to see so many single taxers (influenced by the works of Henry George and tended to be the political activists in the radical wing of the classical liberal movement) in his administration as, in many respects, they were localists in their orientation akin to modern paleolibertarianism and paleoconservativism. The single tax position (taxing only the ground rent of land) places the tax base on land and hence, the benefits from this tax, such as roads and other public services, naturally accrue to the neighboring communities. Many single taxers, including Henry George, sought a drastic reduction in the power of the federal government (contrary to Wilson’s designs). George, for example, wanted the Navy entirely abolished as well as other federal departments. Others, including Nock and Chodorov, believed that the entire structure of the federal government should be limited in size to a single (albeit large) building.

Sprading began his career as a wealthy landowner in the San Francisco area until his properties were destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1906 (one of the founders of the Oakland Museum and his name remains on the building), following which he traveled to Los Angeles, where he remained until his death.

A leading figure of the Los Angeles Liberal Club, along with several other “plumb-liners”, such as Clarence Lee Swartz (author of What is Mutualism? in 1927 and editor of Benjamin Tucker’s Individual Liberty in 1926), Cassius V. Cook (Rocker Publications), Sadie Cook (Rocker Publications) and H. F. Rossner, Sprading was part of the radical wing of the organization. He formed The Libertarian League around 1920 which published a periodical called The Libertarian for several years. Its primary emphasis was opposition to the blue laws (Sunday business closure laws) and prohibition. Incidentally, this was the only organization which H.L. Mencken officially joined. The Declaration of Principles of The Libertarian League, which remains a good statement to this day, from Sprading’s Freedom and Its Fundamentals (Los Angeles, Libertarian Publishing Company, 1923, pp. 9-10) expressed his position:

The Law of Equal Freedom, as Adopted by The Libertarian League

Since life itself contains the impulse of physical growth and the development of faculties and therefore needs room and freedom to function; and since liberty is necessary to the exercise of faculties; and since the exercise of faculties is essential to happiness; therefore, to attain happiness one must have liberty. And since liberty, being essential to the individual, is also necessary to the race; and since this necessitates limiting the liberty of each to the like liberty of all, we therefore arrive at the sociological Law of Equal Freedom.

Libertarian Principles:

• Freedom of thought is essential to the discovery of truth.
• Freedom of speech is essential to the vindication of truth.
• Freedom of the press is requisite for the dissemination of knowledge.
• Freedom of assembly is essential for the discussion of public questions.
• Freedom in education is essential to the development of correct principles of study and teaching.
• Freedom in science is essential to the demonstration of fact, through investigation and experimentation.
• Freedom in literature, art and music is necessary for the highest expression of conceptions and emotions.
• Freedom in amusements and sports is essential to the fullest enjoyment of recreation.
• Freedom in religion is necessary to avert persecution (as, e.g., for adopting and professing religious opinions, and for worshiping or not worshiping, according to the dictates of conscience).
• Freedom of initiative and association is necessary for efficiency and economic in individual or co-operative enterprise.

Equal Freedom and Its Friends was written approximately 1920, between the publication of his Liberty and the Great Libertarians and Freedom and Its Fundamentals. War, Its Cause and Cure was written in the late 1930’s and continues the approach taken in Chapter XI, “Freedom and Militarism” in Freedom and Its Fundamentals. Here is an excerpt from Chapter XI (pp. 165-6, 179-182):

Militarism is a violation of the principle of Equal Freedom. Militarism is founded on force; its method is violence; its theory is “Might is right”; its purpose is to conquer or destroy. Its greatest heroes are those who have slaughtered the greatest number of people. When differences between nations are settled by appeals to force, and not to justice, the stronger nations soon demonstrate that they are right. While the majority of men have outgrown the notion that a pugilist is in the right and an invalid is in the wrong because the former can thrash the latter, an analogous opinion is still entertained by those nations that rely solely on arms to vindicate the right.

The function of the militarist is war. His business is a fighting one. His teachings are to prepare the people for war and to excite other countries to war.

The distinguishing characteristic of the militarist is parasitism; the power and ability to destroy, and to levy tribute, to impose arbitrary restrictions and collect taxes, to take and to consume; in short, to govern…

Even the people in republics, who boast that “We are the Government,” have not a word to say about whether they are to be involved in war and killed. They may have something to say about whether the tariff is to be LOWERED or not, but they have nothing to say about whether they are to be LOWERED into the grave or not.

It is a simple matter to decide whether you want to kill or be killed. Most people have already decided in their own minds against killing, but they have no opportunity to vote against it. They should work for general disarmament.

(1) Those who believe in the use of the ballot should demand it in matters of life and death to themselves and their nation.

(2) Let those who vote for invasive war be registered as such, both male and female, so they may be called on first to face the bullets.

(3) Take away from the military class the power to declare war.

(4) Secret diplomacy should be wiped out; the people should know what is now concealed from them.

(5) Let an International Board of Arbitration composed of men of peace, not militarists, furnish an International Guard, composed of the navies and air fleets of all countries, and if this guard behaves itself, it will soon be seen that even it is not needed.

(6) Demand that the nations accept Equal Freedom (which implies equal rights and equal opportunities) as the guiding principle of nations.

One way to abolish invasive war, is to stop invading other countries. The way to stop bloodshed is to refuse to shed blood. The way to abolish the military class is to stop supporting it. Stop teaching war. Stop believing in war. Stop patronizing war papers. Stop teaching strife; teach mutual aid.

Stop teaching destruction, teach and practice co-operation.

Stop teaching force and murder; teach justice and liberty.

Instead of war mottoes like “My country, right or wrong,” let us have peace mottoes something like these:

It is better to work for your own country than to fight for another country.

It is nobler to live in peace in your own country than to die fighting in another.

It is finer to strive for the liberty to live, than to die in a ditch at the command of a class.

With proper teaching peace can be brought about, the teachers of force and murder must be replaced by teachers of truth and justice, of equal liberty, and the brotherhood of all mankind.

When that day comes murder will cease, for the militarist will have no way to glorify it…

His views on economics, like a number of libertarians of the time, leaned toward co-operation. He wrote several books on the subject, Mutual Service and Cooperation (1930), Cooperation—The Economic Solution(1935) and Ethics of Cooperation (early 1950’s). James P. Warbasse’s book, Cooperative Peace (Cooperative Publishing Association,, 1950) explains their economic theories. You will find Cooperation, the journal of the cooperative movement, was radically antipolitical in its focus during the 1920’s.

Sprading’s Real Freedom (Wetzel Publishing Co., Inc., 1954) and The World State Craze (Wetzel Publishing Co., Inc., 1954) were his final works. Real Freedom continued the effort of Sprading to describe the general position of libertarianism and follows Liberty and The Great Libertarians, Freedom and Its Fundamentals, Equal Freedom and Its Friends and Positive and Constructive Freedom and the Struggle for Rights and Freedom (1959) in this effort.

The World State Craze was his final attack on militarist trends in the U.S. This includes his defense of the Bricker Amendment and his opposition to the United Nations treaties (which he foresaw as destroying the last constitutional protections of the American citizen), as well as his opposition to the Marshal Plan and the World Bank. By this time, he lost any of the belief of the traditional 19th century classical liberal in international agreements for peace. As he made clear (pp. 19-22):

The talk about an “International Police Force” is a fraud. A police force belongs to a city, is governed by the city, and can be discharged and replaced by the city. This is not true of the armed force to control the world that is proposed. No city or citizens have any control of it. It is an International body, and must be controlled by an International State, and this International State supersedes all National States. It sets aside all the national sovereignties of all nations…

In the light of existing standards of international morality, the natural question is whether the people of the United States will consent to a military force of sufficient strength to crush the armed forces of this country?

American youth will be expected to join or be conscripted into a force which might be used to overwhelm the United States, and the citizens of this nation will have to pay the largest part of the expenses of that army, as it did of World War II…

The nature of a World State is to rule the world. Its nature is to encroach upon the legal rights and activities of the national states within the federation and to effect gradually a centralized form of government under which nations’ rights disappear…

A World State rulership is foreign rule to all nations and no nation likes foreign rule. The English rule has been the most perfect for centuries, and yet its colonies revolted against that rule. Now how can one expect the rulership of a World State to be satisfactory to all nations?

The history of the past furnishes plenty of evidence of nations revolting against foreign rule. As a World State is of that nature, revolt against that rule is certain when it conflicts with the interests of some nations, and when these revolts occur, the revolting nation must be subdued. Judging from past history, there will be plenty of such revolts, which will mean perpetual war, instead of peace.

…So this International Army will have plenty to do in suppressing uprisings which will not mean “peace” that has been heralded to the world by the Internationalists, but perpetual war.

Sprading is an important transitional figure. Not only was he one of the few classical liberal/libertarian activists spanning the period from WWI to the Cold War, but he was, along with Leonard Read and Frank Chodorov (although predating both), a leading advocate of the evolution of libertarians from their traditional nomenclature of “liberalism” into the new terminology of “libertarianism”. Beginning at the turn of the century and continuing through WWI, progressives had largely co-opted the term “liberal” from its traditional meanings of rationalism, free markets at home and abroad into almost the opposite sense–a hatred of individualism, pro-regulations, creation of an amazing array of taxes, and the imperialist Wilsonian internationalism which has dominated the last century in American liberal foreign policy.

Largely through the proliferation of Sprading’s writings, the term libertarian had become popularized throughout the radical classical liberal circles increasingly estranged from their traditional position on the left by a proto-fascist progressive liberalism. With the loss of the once dominating Cleveland Democrats who supported the hard gold, anti-tariff, pro-laissez-faire classical liberals, and the rise of the Wilsonian progressives, the old liberalism was supplanted by progressivism. The last great effort by the classical liberals was their anti-prohibition efforts in the 1920’s and the feeble attempts to organize (such as the Liberty League in the 1930’s) against their quisling, Franklinstein (as FDR was referred to by a libertarian radical of the time, E. C. Riegel).

The final issue which separated libertarians from the left was the growing awareness by the libertarians that the other leftist groups sanctioned a tyrannical soviet regime responsible for the murder of millions of people under Stalin. As this problem was swept under the rug or ignored by many of the leftists of the period (particularly among the communist and socialist left), the libertarian left would not condone such measures. This process continued through the 1920’s and, by the mid-30’s, was largely complete (Murray Rothbard’s classic essay, “Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty” discusses this in a different focus than the one here.

The creation of the new classical liberal paradigm, libertarianism, largely followed the personalities and philosophies identified in Sprading’s classic Liberty and the Great Libertarians. By identifying the libertarian American traditions and those elsewhere with fundamental principles of individualism and equal freedom, the radical classical liberals of the ‘20’s, and 30’s were able to clearly grasp who their friends were, and who were not. Sprading was known by many radicals throughout various anarchist and pro-freedom movements and his name would crop up in as many periodicals that he did not write for as the ones he did (Marcus Graham’s MAN! which was published part of the time in Los Angeles during the 1930’s is an example. See MAN! An Anthology of Anarchist Ideas, Essays, Poetry and Commentaries (London: Cienfuegos Press, 1974) edited by Marcus Graham) at a time when libertarian and pro-freedom periodicals and books were few and far between.

The evolution and popularity of new paradigm was to continue with the creation of the Foundation for Economic Education with Leonard Read (who had studied the missteps of The Liberty League and the Chambers of Commerce), F.A. Harper, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, and such independents as Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, R.C. Hoiles and Robert LeFevre with the founding of the Freedom School during the 1950’s.

By the time that Charles T. Sprading died around 1960 of pneumonia, he was little remembered by the current crop of libertarians. His old friends and colleagues were all dead and forgotten. A few people still remembered him, including Queen Silver. You can find references to Sprading in Wendy McElroy’s biography, Queen Silver: The Godless Girl (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 1999), for example, and in Emma Goldman’s Living My Life, Vol. I (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931) which mentions Sprading’s financial support for Goldman.

Livre mercado: Condição social em que todas as transações econômicas são resultado de escolhas voluntárias sem coerção.

Estado: Instituição que intervém no livre mercado através do exercício direto da coerção ou da concessão de privilégios (sustentados pela coerção).

Impostos: Forma de coerção ou interferência no livre mercado em que o estado coleta tributos (os impostos) que permitem que ele contrate forças armadas para agir de forma coercitiva na defesa de privilégios, além de se envolver em guerras, aventuras, experimentos, “reformas” e outras atividades custeadas não por seus próprios recursos, mas às custas de “seus” súditos.

Privilégio: Do latim privi, privado, e lege, lei. Uma vantagem concedida pelo estado e protegida por seus poderes de coerção. Uma lei em benefício privado.

Usura: Forma de privilégio ou interferência no livre mercado em que um grupo, apoiado pelo estado, monopoliza a emissão de moeda e, com isso, cobra tributos (juros), diretos ou indiretos, sobre todas as transações econômicas.

Latifundismo: Forma de privilégio ou interferência no livre mercado em que um grupo, apoiado pelo estado, passa a ser “dono” da terra e, assim, extrai tributos (rendas, aluguéis) daqueles que vivem, trabalham ou produzem nela.

Tarifas: Forma de privilégio ou interferência no livre mercado em que as mercadorias produzidas fora do estado não podem competir em igualdade com aquelas produzidas dentro do âmbito do estado.

Capitalismo: Organização social que incorpora elementos como impostos, usura, latifúndios e tarifas e, portanto, é contrária ao livre mercado, embora alegue representá-lo.

Conservadorismo: Escola filosófica capitalista que afirma apoiar o livre mercado, mas que, na verdade, defende a usura, os direitos artificiais à terra, as tarifas e, às vezes, impostos.

Social-democracia: Escola filosófica capitalista que pretende corrigir as injustiças do capitalismo acrescentando novas leis às já existentes. Toda vez que os conservadores passam novas leis que criam privilégios, os social-democratas criam outras leis modificando esses privilégios, o que impele os conservadores a fazerem leis mais sutis que recriam os antigos privilégios e assim por diante, até que “tudo que não seja proibido é obrigatório” e “tudo que não seja obrigatório é proibido”.

Socialismo: Tentativa de abolição de todos os privilégios através da concentração de todo poder no agente coercitivo por trás dos privilégios, o estado, transformando a oligarquia capitalista em monopólios estatais. É o mesmo que tentar branquear uma parede pintando-a de preto.

Anarquismo: Organização social na qual o mercado opera de modo livre, sem impostos, usura, concentrações de terras, tarifas ou outras formas de coerção ou privilégio. Os anarquistas de “direita” preveem que, num livre mercado, as pessoas escolheriam voluntariamente competir mais do que cooperar; anarquistas de “esquerda” preveem que, num livre mercado, as pessoas escolheriam voluntariamente cooperar mais do que competir.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

C4SS Media presents Sheldon Richman‘s “In Praise of “Thick” Libertarianism” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

The freedom philosophy is intimately related to ethical, political, and methodological individualism. Therefore, the philosophy should be expected to detest any kind of collectivism — and particularly its “lowest, most crudely primitive form” — even in its nonviolent manifestations.

To put it more concretely, if a libertarian observed a growing propensity to embrace (nonviolent) racism, that person, qua libertarian, ought to be concerned. Why? Because that attitude and resulting conduct can be expected to eat away at the values conducive to libertarianism. It’s the same sort of reason that a libertarian would be concerned by, say, a growing acceptance of Keynesian ideas, even though merely holding and advocating those ideas does not require the use of force.

“The libertarian is in no sense a utopian. He argues only that in a world in which each imperfect individual was left free to make his own imperfect decisions and to act on them in any way that was peaceful, enjoying the fruits of his successes and suffering the agony of his mistakes, man could at least fully attain to the dignity and tragedy and comedy that comes with being a man rather than a thing.” —Benjamin Rogge, “The Freeman” October 1969

WHAT ARE LIBERTARIANISM, ANYWAY?

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist (fish scientist) is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he arrives at two generalizations:

1. No sea-creature is less than two inches long;
2. All sea-creatures have gills.

An onlooker may object: “There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them.”

The ichthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. “Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of ichthyological knowledge. In short, what my net can’t catch isn’t fish.”

A more tactful onlooker makes a rather different suggestion: “May I point out that you could have arrived more easily at the same generalization by examining the net and the method of using it? The net can never bring up anything that it is not adapted to catch.” [1]

Indeed, there are many ichthyologists of libertarianism who claim that libertarianism is tied to: individualism, Austrian or Chicagoan economics, egoism, utopianism, nihilism, anarchism, a night-watchman state… Well, the list is innumerable. For libertarians expound a wide range of philosophies in many different areas: metaphysics, ethics, economics, structure of government, strategy. There are Aristotelians, Kantians, existentialists, Christians, deists, who would agree on little else except restricting the sphere of governmental activity. There are libertarians who are socialists, syndicalists, mutualists, cooperativists, capitalists, and those who adhere to almost every economic policy. There are anarchists, Georgists, voluntarists, advocates of night-watchman states. There are libertarians who wish to create a free society through education, political activism, creating free-port enclaves and many other techniques.

Each of these, libertarian, socialist, free market economist, objectivist, Christian libertarian, anarchocapitalist and others who regard themselves as libertarians have only one point in common: opposition to an expanded sphere of activity by the government. They identify the focus of harm in society with the government. All of the different schools within libertarian thought interface in one area: opposition to the government (although not necessarily total rejection of government, which would be anarchism–one subset of the wider umbrella concept of libertarianism) and a demand for the limitation of state activity.

SOCIETY VERSUS THE STATE

For libertarians, statist intervention constitutes the ultimate source of both stratified class relationships and the consequent economic exploitation of one class by another. Statist intervention inevitably transforms a free society from a matrix of purely economic means for the acquisition and preservation of wealth to a system infused with the principles and institutions of the political means. The economic means involved the acquisition of wealth through one’s own labor and all subsequent voluntary exchanges, while the political means covers all other methods of acquiring wealth. The latter, therefore, encompasses the direct or indirect expropriation of previously produced wealth, either through direct coercion or threat of coercion. The prevalent method of expropriation (and hence exploitation) is taxation. Taxation is also the source of other indirect forms of intervention which, in turn, leads to even greater exploitation.

While a free society represents the institutionalization of the economic means, the government is the organization of the political means. The introduction of the political means into a society creates a system of statism, i.e., a society with increasing elements of monopoly and class privilege incorporated within it. The state is antithetical to society and statist intervention produces a hampered social structure, a system of monopoly privilege, the systematization of exploitation and class antagonisms.

As long as the use of the political means continues, social evolution will be shaped by a process of class conflict. The state, as the institutionalization of the political means, necessarily generates a process of continuing class conflict since the political means, by its very nature, creates a series of negative sum relationships. That is, one individual or group gains only at the expense of another. This is in comparison to the economic means where all exchanges lead to increased benefits for all participants entering into them, otherwise the exchange would not be consummated in the first place. Antagonistic interests, therefore, emerge from the application of the political means and between those who gain from the use of the political means and those whose wealth is expropriated.

The beneficiaries of the political means in a society are dependent on the existence of the economic means in order to survive and prosper. The political means presupposes the economic means since the political means alone is unproductive and parasitic, whereas the economic means can exist and, in fact, thrives best in the absence of the political means. In this sense, there is always a conflict between society and the state.

LIBERTARIAN THEORY VS. LIBERTARIAN SENTIMENTS

There is an important distinction to make at this juncture between libertarian theory and libertarian sentiments. For there are many philosophies which, while opposing the current state, would, if the opportunity came to pass, enable their exponents to seek to take over the state apparatus or become successful in establishing their own state mechanism, and not only fail to minimize the sphere of state activity, but seek to entrench the state into every realm of human action.

A litmus test is available in the form of a question. Do the proponents of a given school of thought justify any statist intervention? If the answer is yes, then the exponents are not libertarians, although they may have libertarian sentiments. Only if they oppose all statist action, could they be considered proponents of a libertarian theory.

Once the Pandora’s Box of statism is opened with a single intervention, it sets in motion a process of retrogression from a free society to a system characterized by an increasingly statist set of relationships. The political means inevitably distorts the social mechanisms necessary for the successful operation of the economic means in a society. Distortion of the decision-making processes produces dislocations which necessitate one of two actions: either the initial intervention through the political means must be eliminated or additional intervention will be introduced in an effort to remove the existing dislocation. Rather than attempting to remove the original causes of these distortions, the response of governmental policy makers is normally to expand government intervention in the society, thereby aggravating the original distortions even further.

WHAT ARE LIBERTARIANISM?

Libertarianism is a direction, a movement toward freedom and away from statism. Those who uphold libertarianism uphold a free society as a guiding light, a standard for action. He/she may do so by individual effort or by cooperation with others. The total amount of freedom thereby released may not be apparent to all observers, however. Indeed, it is possible that the libertarian and the observer may see the whole in a similar manner, but weigh the alternatives or judge the consequences differently. This is a matter of subject judgment which in the spirit of freedom should be left for each person to consider. However accomplished, the goal is to free mankind (both the individual and society) from the mad Moloch, the state.

Libertarianism is not a single, unified philosophy. Rather, libertarianism is an umbrella concept under whose cover many approaches and schools of thought blossom forth. Libertarianism embraces all of the philosophies that seek to restrict the sphere of state action and release the free modes of social action. What are libertarianism? Libertarianism are the philosophies of freedom!

FOOTNOTE

[1] Arthur Eddington, Philosophy of Physical Science (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967. pp. 16-19)

POSTSCRIPT

What Are Libertarianism, Anyway? was written and published in the 1970’s by the Society For Libertarian Life (SLL) based in Orange County, California. SLL was an organization of young libertarian activists (myself included) involved on local campuses and neighboring communities. The following is the platform of the organization.

THE LIBERTAS STATEMENT

We, as libertarians, affirm:

That full individual liberty is impossible in any society other than a voluntary one that aggresses upon no one;

That men and women require the full and independent use of their own judgment in order to survive at an optimum level, and therefore have a natural right to do their own thing, providing that thy do not physically harm or coercively restrict another individual’s life, liberty or property;

That everyone is exclusively sovereign, and is a slave to no one;

That the individual is best served by society when he or she is free from the forcefully imposed controls of others, acting alone or in concert (as a government);

That all forms of coercion, aggression and fraud are always immoral;

That the only system consistent with personal freedoms in the economic arena is one that does not interfere with free trade between consenting individuals.

THEREFORE, we, as libertarians, resolve to oppose all forms of aggression by any State, Government, self-appointed savior, individual or association of individuals. We further resolve to oppose taxation, conscription, eminent domain, laws which create victimless “crimes,” and all programs forced onto individuals without their consent. It is time that the chains of authoritarianism in economics and morality be broken. Individual rights and coercion cannot co-exist. Liberty cannot be compromised, and we will settle for no less than freedom in our time. (adopted on May 5, 1973)

Last year the Nevada GOP decided to remove opposition to gay marriage and abortion from its platform. It’s not clear whether this is about votes or reflects genuine sentiment. It’s certainly out of touch with other GOP platforms across the country. This is definitely a good thing though. It also doesn’t go far enough. It’s much more preferable that the Nevada GOP embrace legal stateless gay marriage or non-discrimination in the issuing of licenses as long as we have a government. This is also true of legalized abortion. The deletion of the issues from the platform could signal that they are indifferent rather than an active embrace of liberty.

Does this mean we left-libertarian market anarchists are better off embracing the Nevada GOP as a vehicle for libertarian reform? Not at all. The Nevada GOP is probably still, on balance, far from embracing radically limited government. We’re also anarchists and not interested in even very small government. I mention this, because an anarchist may still prefer an extremely tiny government to a larger one in relative terms. This would only hold true as long as government existed.

What about the option of infiltrating the Nevada GOP and striving to push it in a more radically libertarian direction? This is arguably a waste of resources that could be spent on building anarchy. We would have to hide our left-libertarian market anarchist identity. There would otherwise be a backlash against the “evil” anarchist entryists. It’s important to remember that statists at least sometimes deal with disagreement by initiating force via the government, so we left-libertarian market anarchists would be subject to said force by the Nevada GOP. As long as they continued to embrace the institution of government at least.

An interesting question is whether this will have an impact on the broader GOP. If the Nevada GOP is more successful at the polls, other state parties and even the national organization may decide to embrace its approach. This would be encouraging and have a positive impact on the politics of the U.S. It’s something to welcome, but it shouldn’t distract us from achieving anarchism. It would lighten the burden of statism on women and same-sex marriage, so there is merit in pursuing this kind of reform. As long as it doesn’t mean abandoning the goal of creating anarchy. That is our ultimate goal.

The final point to make is that this does represent progress, but it’s fairly limited. The next step is to actively embrace the pro-liberty position on both issues. Let’s encourage our GOP friends to go the distance and really embrace freedom. You can let them know that left-libertarian market anarchism is the true embodiment of the sometimes freedom friendly rhetoric of the GOP. It’s also a good idea to spread this message to your Democratic Party friends and anyone else who will listen. There is great disillusionment with the existing political system. The time is ripe for friends of freedom to convince others of the morality and practicality of our vision. It’s better to act before this despair disappears. We may never get a better time than now to act. Let’s work on creating a free society.

C4SS Media presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “Kontinued Keystone Konfusion” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

Over the years, I’ve been skeptical of lefty claims that prominent “libertarian” think tanks just shill for whatever corporations are willing to write checks for favorable “analysis.” But this kind of thing makes me wonder.