Left libertarianism

(xpost) Momus's Pim Fortuyn argument to thread.

(xpost - Dave OTM)

If big state, taxation and redistribution are neither direct or indirect of socialism, I wonder what your definition of socialism is. I would have defined socialism as a system in which the means of wealth generation is in some way collectively controlled or regulated. And the definition of libertarianism pretty much the opposite.

libertarians need a big state to secure themselves -- the US is one of the biggest states of them all, of course.

You can't be libertarian and left wing

This is almost exclusively an American response, overlooking the undoubtedly libertarian tradition of European anarcho-syndicalism. It was, after all, the important French anarchist thinker Proudhon who declared that property is theft.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the likes of Emma Goldman were identified as libertarians long before the term was adopted by some economic rightwingers. And what about the libertarian collectives of the mid-late 1800s and 1960s?

Americans like Noam Chomsky can claim the label 'libertarian socialist' with the same validity that Milton Friedman can be considered a 'libertarian capitalist'.

The assumption that Social Darwinism delivers more social freedom is questionable. The welfare states of, for example, Sweden and The Netherlands, abolished capital punishment decades ago and are at the forefront of progressive legislation for women, gays and ethnic minorities - not to mention anti-censorship. Such developments would presumably be envied by genuine libertarians in socially conservative countries - even if their taxes are lower.

Interestingly, many economic libertarians express to us their support for or indifference towards capital punishment; yet the execution of certain citizens is a far stronger assertion of state power than taxation.

N.B. The death penalty is practised in all seriously authoritarian states. In Eastern Europe it was abolished with the fall of communism and adoption of democracy. The United States is the only western democracy where capital punishment is still practised.

maybe it's not "your" income?
(ie the defn of property which rests on this absolute of ownership is always abt the restriction of everyone else's liberty not to use "your" stuff) (or even raise the issue of how it got to be "yours" in the first place)

If you bin the whole idea of private property, you don't need no redistributive taxes!

or, on another level, is all power in society held at governmental level. or is some held at corporate level? if govt power is reduced, a libertarian position, how does that help with corporate power? and who is going to benefit from the lessening of state involvement? people, or business?

if the state dont take action against the company, preventing the dumping of effluent, because they are a libertarian state, how has that helped the people who live there? power and action doesnt just come from the state. do we want a state that is able to regulate other power sources, or do we want those other power sources to have total freedom?

I've also often thought that the whole Thatcherite "we are on the side of individual freedom" was a way of spinning it to working class voters many of whom were being fucked over by said 'freedom' as much as others were benefiting from it.

Collective does not necessarily mean state: state is a mechanism which absolves us of collective responsibility / decision-making in any really meaningful sense. One account of the state would be that it develops precisely in order to take social responsibility out of the hands of profit-earning liberals: externalising this aspect of social relations leads to the reification of the state, hence radical liberal position comes to be anti-state. But libertarianism = unimaginable before the rise of the big state apparatus: c.f. adolescent rebellion against parents.

small-holder => large-holder

large-holder: this is all mine!!
workers/slaves etc: ahem excuse me i seem to remember WE did all the work!!

*cliffhanger: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT??*

But we will never resolve this question of justifying ownership morally, whether it's individual or collective ownership. It's a question that can only be resolved legally. How can I justify the ownership of my flat when people are homeless and starving in Angola etc. etc. Attacking libertarianism on those grounds seems weak to me, because you may as well call into question the whole edifice of Western civilisation. There are better arguments against libertarianism.

They all lez up

so how far should libertarianism go? how far should govt retreat? and how to prevent the above scenario taking place re: power.

i am definitely interested in an argument that explains how corporate power structures will diminish in tandem with govt power structures, now that would be interesting!

ie the debate involving everybody is still all to come - a "legal" argument if you like, but that means wrangling over which legal system we use and who gets to be judges in it, or jury

Any chance you could make at least some attempt to justify or at least explain these huge sweeping statements?

libertarians would argue that if things like rivers and even the air above land were private property then the owners would have a financial incentive(which is clearly the strongest) to prevent others from polluting on their property, right now it's a measure of competing risk levels the risk of getting caught and fined by the overtaxed govt regulatory apparatus for illegal dumping and the cost of dumping waste legally. italy is pretty socialist and the entire country seems to have become a toxic waste dump. libertarianism(in the us at least) isn't the lack of a central government, just a return to that delineated in the original constitution, limited government and the elimination of most of the cabinet positions. so the police would not disappear but they certainly would not engage in any sort of drug war. corporations already have checks in their governance and besides that they don't exercise nearly the power people believe they do.

being a slave would probably actually be BETTER than being an owner in the libertarian utopia bcz you wouldn't have to worry yrself about any financial decisions — in a world where it's not a crime to know your place and stick in it, but it IS a crime (*the* crime, really) to fall from plutocratic grace, which wd mean the only miserable ppl are rich ppl... ("I'm not bad, I'm just bad at business..." "That's the only bad there is, buddy")

We'd have to put a guillotine on the Mall in Washington, just to get the right atmosphere.

Found myself going on about left-libertarianism on the Deadwood thread last night (positing Deadwood and The Wire as having a left-libertarian perspective). But apart from Deadwood and The Wire, and maybe some other movies and music and books (Hunter S., RIP), I'm wondering where are the other left-libertarian voices? It seems curious that it's such a muted position in actual political dialogue, given its potential appeal -- except that it doesn't, because people in government of both parties tend more toward authoritarianism, which is how they got in government in the first place. Still, if I were Howard Dean or one of these other guys charged with figuring out what "Democrat" means or should mean today, that's the direction I'd be exploring.

But anyway, all that said, what would left-libertarianism mean more concretely, in policy terms etc.? I have only vague ideas about this. I don't know if anyone's ever constructed a left-libertarian Contract With America or whatever. One nice example, tho, is the approach to health care outlined in this NYT Magazine article, which marries market efficiency and incentives to universal coverage.

I agree with whoever (xxxxxx-post) that MOST Libertarians are looking for a way to hold to (1) their money and (2) their guns. The justifications come later.

As someone who embraces both libertarianism AND plain-old liberalism, I consider "less gov't" to be the single most over-riding concern for left-libs or whatever. Less gov't puts power back into the hands of the people. In the US, however, this would be almost impossible to achieve since we're so goddam big. Anarcho-socialism (...) is far easier to implement in smaller (geographically) and less populous nations.

er uh what? hasn't that notion basically been out of date for like 150 years?

i guess i don't know what you mean by "less govt".

I was going to get into how complexity theory might apply here, but...I won't, for the moment.

x-post

er uh what? hasn't that notion basically been out of date for like 150 years?

...I guess I was pretty vague there. I see libertarianism as being diametrically opposed to authoritarianism. The gov't should not exist to govern me; it should exist to service me (....sweeeet).

While hard-line libertarians would disagree with me, I would say that the gov't should exist for things like the post office and schools (though that's a touchy one in many ways) and border protection. It should not exist to take my money to enrich itself (or corps etc), start preemptive wars or to imprison its constiuents.

To assume that ushering in Lib like, tomorrow, would solve all ills is naive and dangerous.

How about: less gov't = less bureaucracy?

(sorry I don't mean that to be bitchy. I'm kinda touchy with such language - for example: my dad, a jr. high school teacher, is always fending off demands to cut the school's budget because people who don't know what they're talking about regularly assume there is "waste" and "bureaucracy" which can be eliminated from systems of which they have pretty much zero understanding. A lot of times, when people complain about "govt" or "bureaucracy" they mean the above - ie., "I pay my taxes for ME, not for YOU")

otherwise, I'm entirely serious about breaking up this country. smaller units = more efficiently managed units, its true.

And I really do agree with you w/r/t breaking up the country. If we ignore the issue of economic inequality (which I think is a big one), everyone should be pleased:
(a) If the rural south wants to go batshit fundamentalist: fine. I don't live there.
(b) Libs will be happy with the return to republicanism (lower-case).
(c) Gays will finally be able to get married
(d) etc. etc.

...this is a topic worthy of its own thread, I think.

maybe we should just attempt to morph into the EU model...

Yeah, I've had this same frustration as a political and education reporter -- once you really start digging into govt. budgets, you realize how overblown so much of that "waste" talk is. I mean, you can find massive misuses of funds (cities building sports stadiums, for example), but those are policy issues. Most govt. bureaucracies are run on shoestrings with too few people doing too much work. (Really saw this in the welfare system, where you have "case managers" managing 200 cases; not even time to notice whether people are falling through the cracks.) And the idea that the private sector is somehow more competent or efficient should be hilarious to anyone who's ever worked for a good-sized company.

But to bring that back to the subject at hand, I think there are ways to approach some functions of government differently -- to introduce some competition, allow for innovation and adaptability -- in ways that don't buy into the entire free marketeer mythology. Decentralization can be part of that, altho it's hardly a panacea.

While I'm shaky on the details: didn't the gov't, facing competition from FedEx/UPS/et al, cut the Post Office loose and demand that it pay its own bills instead of subsidization? Thus resulting in a vastly more efficient/cheaper/faster Post Office?

Still, that's a tricky model to apply to other services. We all pay for stamps as we use them (ergo the Post Office has its own de facto currency), and the price is small enough that we don't mind paying for the service up front, as opposed to an annual "mail tax" or something. But how would something like schools work? Or infrastructure development like roads and pipelines?

Right. You can't exactly buy a subscription to roads. Maybe schools, however... While I'm not exactly in favor of vouchers, I do think that most of school was total bullshit. Home/community schooling is not a bad idea (I'm thinking more the "No More Prisons" style rather than Fundie).

x-post: And I think left libertarians tend to see government as partly a protector of rights and liberties, not just the fascist boogeyman that right-libertarians tend to reduce it to.

It pays for itself like any government monopoly does.

ntroducing more competition and distributed decision-making doesn't have to be just a right-wing position.

Obv, except that I think a lot of knee-jerk Dems/liberals/whatevers automatically assume that it is. That is HAS to be.

x-post

uh. Monopoly? I guess FedEx UPS and DHL don't count, huh.

Really, the trick would be to figure out how much of what the gov't does can be reduced to "service" industries. The Post Office can't be the only one, right? Right?

No, they do not. They cannot deliver regular mail.

x-post

x-post

Those fees are called taxes. If you are referring to a strict, exclusive tax expressly for wars, you're proposing something that is politically impossible. And likely unconstitutional.

Don - I think yr confused about how the post office is actually funded, and/or yr taking "The Crying of Lot 49" a little too seriously.

No, I think you're confused about how the post office is actually funded. Are you sure you want to argue this point with me? I'm not taking it too seriously--just pointing out that the USPO is a government protected monopoly, which is the only reason that private competitors have not eradicated it.

Those fees are called taxes. If you are referring to a strict, exclusive tax expressly for wars, you're proposing something that is politically impossible. And likely unconstitutional.

Don - I think yr confused about how the post office is actually funded, and/or yr taking "The Crying of Lot 49" a little too seriously.

No, I think you're confused about how the post office is actually funded. Are you sure you want to argue this point with me? I'm not taking it too seriously--just pointing out that the USPO is a government protected monopoly, which is the only reason that private competitors have not eradicated it.

You really have no idea what you're talking about.

Right. I went to a very public school (rural MN) and for socialization it was great. However, all the actual "learning" I did was outside of school (leisure reading, hobbies, etc). Overly specialised ("tracked") schools have the potential for socioeconomic stratification (Japan and others), while providing a more thoroughly "trained" populace.

...was apprenticeship such a bad idea? (well, yeah, but...)

But anyway, I'm still interested in what might be more models of left-libertarianism in action.

I think many arguments about 'efficiency' are misleading.

...a vital distinction between right and left Lib?

In theory, one could run every company in the world as a non-profit.

BTW: you should all read "Natural Capitalism" by Amory Lovins et al. RIGHT NOW.

A light tidbit (that should not be taken for the entire book): if companies that pump effluent into rivers had their water uptake DOWNstream of where they dumped, they would get environmentally conscious really really fast.

Also: the Rocky Mountain Institute (which Amory founded) is in my 'hood and pays something like 5 cents a year (!!!!) in energy bills. They have a banana tree growing inside, despite being at 9000 ft in Colorado.

xpost: The book sounds interesting.

The monopolistic part is that the USPO is the only entity that is allowed to deliver regular mail. FedEx and the others cannot offer such a service--you might also want to look into whether or not FedEx can price match USPO's shipping rates as that would enlighten your perspective on this matter. Regular mail is an astounding volume of pieces, and FedEx would like to compete with USPO in this area but the government will not allow it. There is virtually no evidence anywhere that the USPO is more efficient than FedEx or UPS or that FedEx would be significantly more expensive with regular mail than the USPO (for starters, the trans/log systems developed at UPS and FedEx are far, far superior to that of the USPO.)

At risk of sounding like a total dweeb: there's a reason that the Internet and other distributed computer systems are so powerful AND accessible. (please don't mistake this for a 1:1 gov't/internet comparison, however...those are usually grossly grossly over simplified)

But major concentrations of capital or labor can achieve things which cannot otherwise be achieved.

You're missing the point. You cannot compare the two this way--FedEx is not allowed to deliver "mail". If they were, they would be competitive in price with USPO.

Of course, but usually these are temporary concentrations that dissipate after teh work is done (pyramids, wars, revolutions, the Big Dig). Deeply entrenched concentrations of wealth, power, etc. are suspect.

x-post

Are these good examples? Pharoah kept huge labor armies building to his glory for ages. Even countries founded in distrust of large standing armies, like the U.S., finally succombed. Win a revolution and watch your friends/family/fellow partisans keep the power and the money. Found a big enough bureaucracy whether it be beloved of the right (the Army) or the left (HUD) and try to get rid of it afterwards.

In the U.S., it's apparently controlled by the National Assn. of Broadcasters. There was a really good article in National Journal's Feb. 19 issue. The article is subscription only, but the author has a Web site: http://www.drewclark.com/

Maybe the means of resolving it morally could be based upon utilitarianism. As others have said, it's weird that libertarianism has been applied first and foremost to property and not to other rights.

One account of the state would be that it develops precisely in order to take social responsibility out of the hands of profit-earning liberals: externalising this aspect of social relations leads to the reification of the state, hence radical liberal position comes to be anti-state. But libertarianism = unimaginable before the rise of the big state apparatus: c.f. adolescent rebellion against parents. -- alext (alext.il...), November 28th, 2003.

I think this Washington Monthly article - Off Track - might be relevant, esp. what the government could do in terms of microeconomic policy. By taking an active role in facilitating research, the government would actually be helping people do more for themselves.

Libertarians of both the right and left varieties, and anarchists too, I suppose, believe that society must progress organically (i.e. without state coercion) and that the best guarantors of rights are neither documents nor institutions but widespread social conventions which precede government. There are vague vestiges of this in the U.S. constitution in as much as the rights not reserved to the Fed. Govt. or the States revert to 'the people'. Left Libertarian isn't an oxymoron, it's just that that their vision for society is different than right wing libertarians'. -- Michael White (Sanmichel...), March 14th, 2005.

Yes, really, Michael White OTMFM.

or indeed, the American tradition of the International Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies, beloved of folk songs by the like of Woody Guthrie.

www.politicalcompass.org

Economic Left/Right: -3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.31

Economic Left/Right: -9.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -9.49

I'm crazeeeee.

Economic Left/Right : -3.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.67

Now, I just took it again:

Economic Left/Right : -3.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72

Some of the questions are really dumb, though.

Yeah, like that one.

They used to have one asking if Jews were partially responsible for their oppression over the years.

i don't consider myself so much a libertarian as much as massively anti-authoritarian.

i think the "do you generally agree that..." part is implied.

my answer there was "strongly disagree" cuz my parents used to have a "question authority" bumper sticker on their car.

why?

it's the asians, man.

"I've often dreamed of pulling a Guy Fawkes on the Texas legislature. Just blow the damn thing sky high! I've got maps in my room and I'll do it some day."

why?

what do i look like, an authority?

for real tho, the word "question" is the key part of that. the phrase isn't "jizz in the face of authority."

Economic Left/Right: 4.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56

BTW--my result is economically right, as notated by the positive number.

What should the z axis be?

Libertarianism can borrow some elements from the left and right, much like fascism does (which has been argued to be its political opposite).

William Godwin had many libertarian principles along with the main modern liberal assumption that people are inherently good and that it is social conditioning that corrupts them, along with many other leftist ideas.

The problem with the left/right dichotomy is that the left is more defined than the right. The "right" to some people means monarchists, free-market libertarians, fascists, populists and other diverse groups that don't necessarily have anything in common with each other. This is why there is confusion when a "right-leaning" ideology like libertarianism is said to be liberal.

Saying "people are inherently good" is like saying "squirrels are inherently good." People are inherently people, is what they are.

People inherrently act on their self-interest, this is why people who have limited power should pool their power to take their self-interest forward against those who have much more individual power to push their own self-interest forward; or at leat that is the syndacalist model.