Forums of the Libertarian Left

Libertarians are just republicans who want to smoke weed.

-The Internet
When Kerry Howley made the irrefutable and yet quixotic point that any proper concern with liberty, whether practical or, ahem, merely philosophical, must grapple with the strictures of cultural mores and social conventions, for they affect the lives and freedom of those individuals with whose liberty libertarianism supposedly concerns itself equally to and sometimes more than the official acts and proscriptions and promulgations of the government-même, I made no comment, because honestly, this again? I like and respect Kerry. She is probably smarter than I am. I am sure she looks better in heels. Her efforts along these lines are perhaps noble, but nonetheless doomed. It is not so much that they lack merit--on the merits, she is correct--as that they make a sort of category error. The problem is not that many libertarians are unwilling to consider the broader implications of their philosophy, but rather, that libertarianism is not a philosophy, not even a "political ideology," as the more careful bet-hedgers might have it.

It is instead a lame, purely American third-party movement that sometimes appropriates the trappings of ideology in order to justify self-perpetuation in the face of a plurality-takes-all electoral system wholely inimical to minor parties. In reality, it is no more an ideology, let alone a philosophy, than is "Democrat" or "Republican." It is moderately more consistent than either major American political party because it has no constituency. In the absence of a coalition, coherence. This is nothing to brag about. Still yet, as Eugene Volokh et al. so often and ably demonstrate, in the classic Henley sumnation:
It’s not like Eugene Volokh thinks much of me, either, but I’ve always considered his specialty to be showy moral handwringing on the way to siding with Power anyway.
This is particularly apropos because Will Wilkinson finds Ilya Somin, who is not quite the patented moron as that blog's eponymous proprietor, undermining any notion that libertarianism constitutes anything other than an uproariously unsuccessful effort to turn classic American anti-Federal paranoia into a difference-splitting political third way that abjures both the moral paternalism of Republicans and the economic paternalism of Democrats (whatever any of that means) and thus gathers all together toward a new gilded age. Or something. Somin writes:
These points are distinct from Todd Seavey’s tactical argument in his critique of Kerry, where he points out that identification with one set of cultural values is likely to drive away potential allies for libertarianism. If libertarians are seen as aligned with cultural liberalism, it is likely to alienate cultural conservatives, and vice versa. Linking libertarianism to a narrow cultural agenda would be a mistake similar to Ayn Rand’s insistence that libertarianism entails atheism — a stance that did much to alienate potential supporters who were religious. At the same time, cultural “wedge issues” sometimes do make for good political strategy.
To which I say, Oh, please. Even a bastard term like "political ideology" encompasses more than mere coalition-building. The phrase "alienate potential supporters" is a dead giveaway.

I think it is high time that people like Kerry, who are rightly and righteously concerned with actual liberty, the actual freedom of human beings as individuals to construct and determine the paths of their own lives within their own families, communities, and countries, behave in their own rational best interest and stop calling themselves libertarians. I did! It was not difficult. Indeed, I would go so far as to call it . . . liberating to be unyoked from the ceaseless burden of shit-polishing. Libertarianism is the plaything of cossetted white Americans. That is a fact. In its relentless insistence on state-supremacy, it commits precisely the sin that Kerry identifies: it reifies that which it claims to seek to undermine. It is narrow and parochial, American. What has libertarianism got to say about life within failed states, or clerical democracies, or about Japan, or China, or Myanmar, or Nepal, or occupied Palestine, or Israel, or South Africa? What has it got to say about the construction of community, the nature of cooperative endeavor in the absence of coercion? Most libertarians aren't even willing to accept that property, their central fetish, is itself a cultural artifact, not a constant of nature.

And if the question finally becomes: well, then, what will we call ourselves? Then I suggest a question in reply: why must you call yourselves anything at all?

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/10/re ... -than.html

It is instead a lame, purely American third-party movement that sometimes appropriates the trappings of ideology in order to justify self-perpetuation in the face of a plurality-takes-all electoral system wholely inimical to minor parties.

Yeah, a lame purely american third party movement started by a French Communist.

All these people who talk about 'Libertarianism' and dismiss it as some kind of obscure american middle class movement piss me off. They generally have an even poorer understanding of the history or theory of Libertarianism than the Party line morons they're criticising.

That depends, I think you need to differentiate between 'libertarianism' and 'Libertarianism', with the little l version being synonymous with Anarchism. At least that's my thinking.

RoyceChristian wrote:That depends, I think you need to differentiate between 'libertarianism' and 'Libertarianism', with the little l version being synonymous with Anarchism. At least that's my thinking.

Well 'Libertarian' is essentially an atonym of 'authoritarian' and states are authoritarian by definition so any 'Libertarian' who isn't an anarchist is kind of kidding themselves.

Zanthorus wrote:All these people who talk about 'Libertarianism' and dismiss it as some kind of obscure american middle class movement piss me off. They generally have an even poorer understanding of the history or theory of Libertarianism than the Party line morons they're criticising.

IOZ's article actually makes more sense if you view it in context, as a response to the reaction to Kerry Howley's article. "Mainstream" libertarian response to Howley's article has been pretty much exactly what IOZ criticizes, from pretty much the kind of person that IOZ criticizes.

Interestingly, Arthur Silber endorsed the article in a way while writing a harsh criticism of Rand. I'm interested in hearing your reaction, LLL, as I know you to be a big fan of both Rand and Silber.

I'm not sure I share is pessimism about the prerequisites for the success of anarchism.

I view anarchism as useful in theory only at this point, although the theory is of immense importance. Until and unless a critical number of individuals alter the primary motives that move most people (the desire for power and control, and the demand for obedience, being chief among them), any state of affairs approximating anarchism will lead only to more chaos and death. If humanity manages to evolve through several more stages, which assumes we don't kill ourselves in huge numbers in the meantime (a fragile hope, indeed), then peaceful anarchism might have a chance....The disavowal of a single overriding authority -- a power that commands the obedience of all under its sway, under penalty of law -- could only rest on a radically different conception of our own nature and, of equal importance, of how we relate to one another, in contrast to the ideas almost all people accept today.

To the degree that I think people need to change their view, it's not as "radically different" as he sees it. I've always liked to view anarchism as just under the surface and actually active in most of our daily life; we are more fundamentally anarchist than we are obedient to rulers. We commit a number of fallacies whenever we appeal to the state but that doesn't mean that we don't already have the framework to be anarchist; there is no need to wait for evolution to develop what we already have the capacity to do and actually do everyday. Yes, in speaking with most people, it seems that Arthur's point is very true: we are drowning in a psychology of obedience to arbitrary authority. Yet it seems more a matter of consciousness than evolution. I worry about a view that lacks giving the proper credit to our anarchist nature and that saves anarchy for another day, another generation, another species that we aren't yet.

Neverfox,

Thanks for asking! To be honest; I am not entirely sure what Arthur thinks about Rand. He has yet to write a lengthier detailed explanatory essay outlining the specifics of his generalized charges against her. I suspect that Arthur's criticisms are well worth reading. He certainly knows how to comprehensively discuss an issue! My suspicions are that he conceives of her as a philosophical dualist. Arthur has clearly rejected what he characterizes as a peculiarly Western absolute good vs evil approach. You can see this in his critiques of American foreign policy. Nevertheless, I am not sure I'd agree with him that Rand is insufficently contextual....

Many instrincists often misinterpet Rand by forcing her into their instrincist framework. They postulate acontextual duties and obligations to be charitable or social workerish. When Rand rejects charitableness as a duty or primary virtue; the presumption becomes she does not support charity or geneorsity under any circumstances. The critic is interpeting her through a framework of morality consisting of absolutes unto themselves. There is no room for context and hence no meaningful place for individuality.

LLL wrote:Neverfox,

Thanks for asking! To be honest; I am not entirely sure what Arthur thinks about Rand. He has yet to write a lengthier detailed explanatory essay outlining the specifics of his generalized charges against her. I suspect that Arthur's criticisms are well worth reading. He certainly knows how to comprehensively discuss an issue! My suspicions are that he conceives of her as a philosophical dualist. Arthur has clearly rejected what he characterizes as a peculiarly Western absolute good vs evil approach. You can see this in his critiques of American foreign policy. Nevertheless, I am not sure I'd agree with him that Rand is insufficently contextual....

Many instrincists often misinterpet Rand by forcing her into their instrincist framework. They postulate acontextual duties and obligations to be charitable or social workerish. When Rand rejects charitableness as a duty or primary virtue; the presumption becomes she does not support charity or geneorsity under any circumstances. The critic is interpeting her through a framework of morality consisting of absolutes unto themselves. There is no room for context and hence no meaningful place for individuality.

Arthur clearly suffered a lot at the hands of people within Objectivist culture. The homophobia that has plagued the movement is inexcuseable and patently bizarre ~ given Rand's normative convictions about the power of reason.

Perhaps; they've just mindlessly latched onto to Rand's somewhat conventional perspective on gender politics or repeated her own view on homosexuality verbitam. Nevertheless, I do believe that honorable contrary examples to Arthur's conviction that Rand's ideas must play out destructively do exist. My own experience with Objectivists has been markedly better and much more selective.