Forums of the Libertarian Left

http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/20/are-property-rights-enough

Reading the comments made me die a little inside.

As it turns out, all libertarians are cultural libertarians. We just don’t share the same agenda. Some prefer to advance their agenda by pretending it doesn’t exist: that social convention is not a matter of concern for those who believe in individual liberty. But when a libertarian claims that his philosophy has no cultural content—has nothing to say, for instance, about society’s acceptance of gays and lesbians—he is engaging in a kind of cultural politics that welcomes the paternalism of the mob while balking at that of the state.

This line hits home for me. "Thin libertarianism" seems to consist in this sort of thing, in which one outwardly proclaims cultural neutrality, while simultaneously advancing a cultural agenda. That is, I view it as dishonest or misleading, and a tendency to switch in and out of culture-mode. The "culture doesn't matter" cliche often ends up being a misleading way to push one's own cultural agenda or pretend that it doesn't exist. What's more, it's function is a green light to authoritarian cultures.

I think there's some confusion about this that has come about in libertarian discourse. "Thin libertarianism" doesn't mean that one has no values outside of non-aggression, property rights, and anti-statism. Everyone does. What it means is that one either pretends that those other values don't exist or are not relevant. This also may coincide with a denial that one's cultural values color their libertarianism, and a tendency to smell authoritarianism when anyone else asserts cultural values while putting on a facade of neutrality.

IMO, the libertarian focus on property rights is actually detrimental to the libertarian understanding of freedom. Under the monomaniacal propertarian worldview, there is no way to justify the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement. Sure, they can say that they were fighting an unjust state law, but they were doing it by tresspassing on the properties of small restaurant owners. There's just no way for propertarians to spin their rhetoric to make it compatible with sit-ins. They can't say that the small restaurant owners were illegitimate beneficiaries of the corporatist state who are de-facto government property because they got more than 50% of their revenue from th government. No, the propertarian worldview rules out one of the most successful liberatory strategies of our age.

Ceapmann wrote:IMO, the libertarian focus on property rights is actually detrimental to the libertarian understanding of freedom. Under the monomaniacal propertarian worldview, there is no way to justify the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement...No, the propertarian worldview rules out one of the most successful liberatory strategies of our age.

But it seems to me that the impact & power of sit-ins is precisely due to the fact that it would force people to exercise their property rights in a visual way if they valued their discriminatory feelings more than economic incentives. There is nothing like news coverage of being frog-marched out of a diner. If it were "justified" then it just becomes another day at the coffee counter, with the owner fuming silently to him or herself. In a sense, sit-ins and property rights are natural allies. It conveys the message, "Yes, this owner can march me out but he makes himself look like a total dick; and hey, aspiring non-racists, there is a great market for our business if you'd like to move in and compete."

Also, I'm not sure it's really strictly monomaniacal propertarian to think that people need to have the freedom to be wrong (e.g. racist) even if we do think that they would be limited in the degree of enforcement (e.g. shooting the sit-in participants). In that sense, I think sit-ins would still be effective in a non-strict-propertarian proportionality-respecting society because they would take advantage of those limitations, creating a natural tension: participants would be removed visibly and with the sympathy it can induce but without death or injury (ideally).

neverfox wrote:
But it seems to me that the impact & power of sit-ins is precisely due to the fact that it would force people to exercise their property rights in a visual way if they valued their discriminatory feelings more than economic incentives. There is nothing like news coverage of being frog-marched out of a diner. If it were "justified" then it just becomes another day at the coffee counter, with the owner fuming silently to him or herself. In a sense, sit-ins and property rights are natural allies.

That's like saying censorship and free speech are natural allies. Yes, the authoritarian regime will throw you in jail, but they'll look like total dicks, man! But in a country with free speech, spouting controversial ideas is just another day.

Brainpolice wrote:"Thin libertarianism" doesn't mean that one has no values outside of non-aggression, property rights, and anti-statism. Everyone does. What it means is that one either pretends that those other values don't exist or are not relevant. This also may coincide with a denial that one's cultural values color their libertarianism, and a tendency to smell authoritarianism when anyone else asserts cultural values while putting on a facade of neutrality.

Well said! Couldn't agree more.

There have been positive aspects to the traditional insistence on a thin construction, though. It has kept people with differing religions, philosophies, and other trappings in line within a basic "meta-culture" that articulated some pretty positive ideas. While the libertarian consensus hasn't *achieved* a lot, it has formed a rather broad constituency, all things considered. After all, it is within this constituency that we are able to start this discussion of first cultural principles, setting the stage for a new vector of libertarian thought. It would also be a shame to ignore the political utility of such a consensus, though we shouldn't be blithe about it either.

As we deconstruct this thin alliance, shedding light onto deeper issues at work in the libertarian milieu, we must endeavor to avoid the trap of cultural dogmatism - certainly to the degree that libertarians are accustomed to approach, say, individual rights with a certain rigidity. I highly doubt that there is "one libertarian culture to rule them all". I'm not sure what that would mean, how it would be discoverable, or how workable it would be in the real world.

Furthermore, since we're now calling the cultural question, how do we judge between cultures? Without a common, if shallow, understanding of what is desirable to achieve, upon what basis do we choose a model worthy of advocacy? If it's not just about liberty anymore, but deeper, competing constructs, where's the touchstone sufficiently common to compel libertarians to consensus?

I suspect Brainpolice is right, and there is a "meta-culture" implied by anarchism / libertarianism. But I'll be damned if anybody's offered it yet, at least to my knowledge.

Ceapmann wrote:

neverfox wrote:
But it seems to me that the impact & power of sit-ins is precisely due to the fact that it would force people to exercise their property rights in a visual way if they valued their discriminatory feelings more than economic incentives. There is nothing like news coverage of being frog-marched out of a diner. If it were "justified" then it just becomes another day at the coffee counter, with the owner fuming silently to him or herself. In a sense, sit-ins and property rights are natural allies.

That's like saying censorship and free speech are natural allies. Yes, the authoritarian regime will throw you in jail, but they'll look like total dicks, man! But in a country with free speech, spouting controversial ideas is just another day.

Perhaps "natural allies" isn't the right term, but I see what he's saying - this is how human animals arrive at social consensus. It is messy, though.

One more thing, B to the P:

Brainpolice wrote:The "culture doesn't matter" cliche often ends up being a misleading way to push one's own cultural agenda or pretend that it doesn't exist. What's more, it's function is a green light to authoritarian cultures.

Having deconstructed libertarian principles to their cultural foundations, do you not perceive a bit of confusion around what, precisely, defines "authoritarian"? I mean, you and I both know it when we see it, generally, but haven't we complicated the inquiry a bit? It's no longer a matter of established, traditional consensus around enlightenment principles like "natural rights" and Lockean philosophy; now it's a complex matter of how you assemble a constellation of cultural concerns.

Do not misunderstand me; I welcome this new questioning of libertarian premises. There is much in consensus libertarianism that should be broken down and better comprehended for its genuine liberating potential. But I wonder if, in the process, we render the label "libertarian" useless.

Let me offer an allegory: at my job we are working on a project to use some voice analysis technology commonly used in deception detection. When speaking to a psychology expert about the psycho-physiological mechanism underlying the analysis, we got into the question of what it means psychologically to "lie". After explaining a multi-tiered construction of how deception is thought to neurologically function, and how the technology detects it, the expert added a startling fact. Say the questioner asks me where I was born, and I truthfully answer "Newport News, VA". That is a technically a lie, neurologically, because I'm omitting that I was born on a certain street at a certain address in a certain room, etc. etc. The curious conclusion being: the capacity to generalize and abstract utilizes the exact same competency of the brain to deceive.

I wonder if, in engaging in politics, there won't always be some degree of "pulling the wool over our own eyes" in order for us to achieve socially useful consensuses. As an anarchist, I'm motivated by the R.A. Wilson concept of a society where nobody has to lie; I'm increasingly convinced that this is not an absolute capable of being achieved. Lying is intrinsic to society - depressed people are defined by their inability to lie to themselves, obsessing on every bad truth no matter how trivial. On the other end, sociopaths seem adept at lying to manipulate the social body by its formative mechanism. The issue for me is not whether or not to seek the truth as best I understand it; clearly, this endeavor must continue. But acting upon that truth in the real world presents real problems - indeed, similar problems as those being considered among libertarians with respect to the convenient lie of thin libertarianism.

Ceapmann wrote:That's like saying censorship and free speech are natural allies. Yes, the authoritarian regime will throw you in jail, but they'll look like total dicks, man! But in a country with free speech, spouting controversial ideas is just another day.

Yes, natural allies wasn't the best term; natural outgrowth is probably better. I'm only trying to say that without property you don't have sit-ins because the concept would be meaningless. What are you sitting in on exactly? How can you use a sit-in to point out racism if the racism has no means of asserting itself in response or made visible? It's not like they were holding signs or chanting. The sit-ins were a way of saying that they refused to respect the owner's right to exclude.

Now it's true that you were not just talking about property but propertarianism, but I don't see how the simple fact that a stronger accepted level of defensive force concerning property rights would make sit-ins pointless; after all, the property rights of the place that were sat-in on during the civil rights movement were de facto accepted by society and it's not outside the realm of possibility that a very propertarian outcome (say shooting them) would have resulted in any charges against the property owners. Yet the sit-ins were effective. The stronger the enforcement of the property right, the more impactful the sit-in would seem to be. Your analogy is interesting because, yes, I do think that free speech protests (as opposed to free speech itself) are more visible and noticeable the tighter the regime of censorship (think Tienanmen square vs. your average Keene civil disobedience and the news coverage they get), and more taken for granted the greater the freedom. That's not the same as saying that censorship should exist because I don't think any protest tactic is desirable in the sense that the cause of protest should exist simply to allow us the protest. But I wouldn't argue that tighter censorship would render disobedient speech acts useless. To say that an acceptance of propertarianism would end sit-ins seems to ignore the fact that sit-ins by their nature are meant to reject the accepted policy for a higher cause. To argue that the -ism can somehow define away dissent seems to miss the point of civil disobedience.

Anyway, I hope that clarifies my observation and...down with propertarianism!

For some reason this discussion about property rights and sit ins reminded me of:

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:Look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?

A droll response from Monsieur IOZ:

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/10/renouncing-libertarianism-is-cuter-than.html

Libertarianism is the plaything of cossetted white Americans.

Haha. Clueless.

Most libertarians aren't even willing to accept that property, their central fetish, is itself a cultural artifact, not a constant of nature.

Even more clueless.

I guess what bugs me the most about Howley's essay is not her point but what she packaging up in her point that's unnecessary to libertarianism. For instance, I agree with her that non-state forms of oppression are real, serious, and require some answer from libertarians. The question I always have for thick libertarians, though, is "what should this answer *be*?" Howley is correct that

it is the role of someone who professes to believe in the virtues of individualism—and emphatically the role of someone who believes that social persuasion is preferable to legal coercion—to foster a culture that is tolerant of nonconformity.

but I must admit that I distrust her. I don't think she means *a* culture tolerant of nonconformity. I think she means *the* culture tolerant of nonconformity. I don't trust anybody - even a libertarian - to promote the one right and true tolerant culture for all time. Working to build a culture that promotes your values is one thing; working to fuck with other people's cultures and integrate them into a larger culture is totally different. Yes: even if you're "right". This is the "totalitarian humanism" Preston talks about, because once you've decided that you're right you will naturally use force to achieve the right outcome.

We need more freedom to socially experiment, to exercise our competency of persuasion, to invest in our beliefs rather than just promulgate them and gain the upper hand so as to force them down others' throats. But accepting this would require us to admit that our overarching, arresting, cleansing sense of self-righteousness is not helpful. We would need to demonstrate our ideas, not just talk about them.

Besides, I'm not sure I like where she's going with her reduction of everything right and good and true about libertarianism to mere "individualism". Individuals are constructed by societies in large part, just as societies are constructed by individuals in large part. Putting one over the other doesn't solve the problems we face in getting both to coexist peacefully and to mutual benefit, since one is just a mode of the other.

This, then, should be the libertarian / anarchist / whatever pluralism: a belief in the freedom of individuals to associate and form their own cultures because their experiences yield data that we all benefit from as we negotiate the margins where the individual and the society blend. In such a meta-society, the competition of cultures and values becomes completely open. It's the closest thing to pure libertarian exit we're likely to achieve, and if I see a better way for allowing people exit - that most sublime and empowering of individual "rights" - I'll jump on that.

This is the "totalitarian humanism" Preston talks about, because once you've decided that you're right you will naturally use force to achieve the right outcome.

I think this is a fallacy. Strongly having principles and taking yourself seriously doesn't inherently equal initiatory violence. And "thin" libertarians are always strawmaning "thick" libertarians in this way, whenever anyone brings up values other than non-initiatory violence itself, as if "normative" = "force your preferences on me". This "force theory of preferences" seems like a Hobbesian view.

The problem with people like Preston is that they're biased hypocrites who sniff authoritarianism in strong leftist values while pretending that there isn't any involved in the paleo-bolsheviks (yea, I called them paleo-bolsheviks) that he aligns with. I think it's time to aknowledge the fact that vague platitudes of "free association" just enable micro-authoritarianism. The "freedom" to form social systems that limit other people's freedom is pure nonsense.

Brainpolice wrote:And "thin" libertarians are always strawmaning "thick" libertarians in this way, whenever anyone brings up values other than non-initiatory violence itself, as if "normative" = "force your preferences on me".

I've experienced this personally on a number of occasions and I see it all the time implicitly embedded in some writings.

Brainpolice wrote:paleo-bolsheviks

While I normally applaud any attempt at coming up with derogatory terms for racist/nationalists I don't think the kind of people we're talking about here have much to do with traditional Leninism.

Brainpolice wrote:Strongly having principles and taking yourself seriously doesn't inherently equal initiatory violence.

Well, of course not, but that's not what I meant by what I said. What you take as a given necessarily circumscribes the domain in which freedom exists, indeed, the universe in which freedom can be said to have meaning. If you think it is totally unacceptable to be sexist, for instance, you're more likely to support the enforcement of that doctrine than if you just think it's probably troublesome.

Brainpolice wrote:And "thin" libertarians are always strawmaning "thick" libertarians in this way, whenever anyone brings up values other than non-initiatory violence itself, as if "normative" = "force your preferences on me". This "force theory of preferences" seems like a Hobbesian view.

You're right, no question. It's a mistake to assume that anytime values other than NAP are introduced into the equation it necessarily implies that force will be used to realize those values.

HOWEVER

By the same token, it's incumbent on thick libertarians - which is all of them, whether or not they realize it, right? - to promote a vision of achieving these values in non-absolute, voluntary ways. I can't recall a single person adhering to, say, an anti-sexist thickness who doesn't see the transformation of the entire world as the goal. If a closed, repressive society of monopolized values is stifling, why is the proper replacement yet another set of monopoly values?

See, to me, it seems Hobbesian to claim that we can't have competing value complexes because humans might not adopt the right ones. Who's to say which ones are right and which are wrong? "The same people who always use force for the claimed common good" is not an unwarranted answer.

The "freedom" to form social systems that limit other people's freedom is pure nonsense.

But every social system is distinguished by limits on perfect freedom. Even plumb line libertarianism, since one's freedom to initiate aggression is precluded.

Also, let me add that I was pleased by Howley's response to McCarthy, since his approach definitely seems closest to mine. Howley's recognition that cultural escape is important to human flourishing, despite the dangers, pleases me. I still chafe a little at her insistence that we have to "teach" proper individual choice making, but only because it's a big problem with hyper-individualist philosophies of all kinds with which I share many goals.

jeremy6d wrote:If a closed, repressive society of monopolized values is stifling, why is the proper replacement yet another set of monopoly values?

Think about an economic analogy: believing that competition is a good institution to have doesn't mean that you oppose progress. Likewise, the rise of an economic monopoly isn't enough to condemn it; you need look at how the monopoly is maintained. We all hope, in the realm of economics, that the innovators will bring something better: progress. And if they succeed well enough to be the only game in town, does that make them closed and repressive? Opposition to closed, repressive societies of monopolized values is not usually focused on how monopolized the values are but how repressive they are. Monopoly is bad only when it is forcibly maintained; monopoly isn't inherently normative per se. That's implicit in the objection to the state's monopoly of force: it's not that it is a monopoly, but that it's a monopoly that is forcibly maintained. The very nature of the objection comes from the circularity of the thing monopolized and the method of maintaining the monopoly being one and the same. I don't think there is any more reason to think that we can't strive for an ever increasing civility and justice, getting closer and closer, than I do that we can't strive for ever increasing technology. I don't appreciate the marketplace of ideas or objects because of the variety but because of the progress the variety will hopefully bring. I think there is such a thing as taking a step backwards.

I regret using the term "monopoly", Neverfox, because it implies that I see this economically when I think economics and these kinds of values questions are totally different. In economics, we can talk about a common understanding of raising the standard of living or meeting everbody's needs as the end goal to be achieved. Economics concerns itself with a narrow aspect of the human condition.

What, however, do people mean by "progress" when it comes to values? It seems to me that different value complexes by their very natures comprise distinct goals. It's often a zero sum game among value complexes, with the currency being irrational human allegiance. We've exited the realm where one can compare these different complexes on their merits, because adherence to them defies reason.

The most we can hope for is to judge them by their effects, which are at least empirical phenomena. The more systems, the more effects, the more data, the more informed our decisions.

jeremy6d wrote:The most we can hope for is to judge them by their effects, which are at least empirical phenomena. The more systems, the more effects, the more data, the more informed our decisions.

First of all, I think it should be pretty clear a priori that some systems are going to have bad effects like racism, sexism at least according to libertarian principles because they lead to domination of one group over another.

And of course how exactly do we judge effects? A misogynist might see the domination of women in a patriarchal society to be a god thing wereas a feminist would abhor it. If you're going to be a 'libertarian' then you should opt for the system with the least amount of domination of certain groups over others.

Zanthorus wrote:First of all, I think it should be pretty clear a priori that some systems are going to have bad effects like racism, sexism at least according to libertarian principles because they lead to domination of one group over another.

Of course. What I'm trying to point out is that there is nothing we can establish that precludes that possibility. There's no "system" we establish to get over that. Domination is always a possible outcome in any system. Instead of placing all your money on the bet that you can, unlike everybody else in history, establish the right and true culture for all time, why not instead work to establish a plurality of cultures that preserve the possibility of exit for people?

And of course how exactly do we judge effects? A misogynist might see the domination of women in a patriarchal society to be a god thing wereas a feminist would abhor it. If you're going to be a 'libertarian' then you should opt for the system with the least amount of domination of certain groups over others.

"Who decides" is my whole point. Should one person decide? One group of ideological adherents? Or should it be closer to a "market" (ugh - I'm sorry for having to use that word) for cultures, where the people who decide are the people who have to participate?

Sure, I'd elect for a system as free from domination as possible, but the only way I know I'm in the least dominated culture is by comparing it to others. Similarly, there are many who live in dominated cultures who probably don't understand the degree to which they are dominated. Competition yields data.

jeremy6d wrote:Of course. What I'm trying to point out is that there is nothing we can establish that precludes that possibility. There's no "system" we establish to get over that. Domination is always a possible outcome in any system. Instead of placing all your money on the bet that you can, unlike everybody else in history, establish the right and true culture for all time, why not instead work to establish a plurality of cultures that preserve the possibility of exit for people?

"Who decides" is my whole point. Should one person decide? One group of ideological adherents? Or should it be closer to a "market" (ugh - I'm sorry for having to use that word) for cultures, where the people who decide are the people who have to participate?

Sure, I'd elect for a system as free from domination as possible, but the only way I know I'm in the least dominated culture is by comparing it to others. Similarly, there are many who live in dominated cultures who probably don't understand the degree to which they are dominated. Competition yields data.

Ah, I think I understand (and agree with) you now. Maybe this quote from Bakunin might be of interest -

Mikhail Bakunin wrote:Is it possible even by means of the most cleverly devised and energetically expressed propaganda to imbue the great masses of a nation with tendencies, aspirations, passions, and thoughts that are absolutely foreign to them, that are not the product of their own history, of their customs and traditions? It seems to me that when the question is so posed, any reasonable and sensitive man who has even the least idea of how the popular conscience is developed, can answer only in the negative. Ultimately, no propaganda has ever artificially created a source or basis for a people’s aspirations and ideas, which are always the product of their spontaneous development and the actual conditions of life.

Zanthorus wrote:First of all, I think it should be pretty clear a priori that some systems are going to have bad effects like racism, sexism at least according to libertarian principles because they lead to domination of one group over another.

And of course how exactly do we judge effects? A misogynist might see the domination of women in a patriarchal society to be a god thing wereas a feminist would abhor it. If you're going to be a 'libertarian' then you should opt for the system with the least amount of domination of certain groups over others.

If we simply stop the production of males, then we can easily eliminate patriarchy. No one could be patriarchal. Neither men nor womyn would be oppressed. It is interesting that some supporters of patriarchy have openly supported sex-selective abortion of female fetuses. John Postgate discusses some of the implications:

All sorts of taboos would be expected and it is probable that a form of purdah would become necessary. Women's right to work, even to travel alone freely, would probably be forgotten transiently.

It is notable that sex-selective abortion of female fetuses is widespread and is shaping the world's demography, but sex-selective abortion of male fetuses is taboo, and womyn who raise the subject tend to be marginalized. Violence going down is normalized; violence going up the hierarchy is punished.