Post on 25-Dec-2015
How (and why) to be a Free-Market Radical Leftist
Roderick T. LongAuburn University /
Molinari Institute
Two Perspectives
Two Perspectives
By “radical leftists” I don’t mean these folks:
Two Perspectives
I mean these folks:
Two Perspectives
Of course there are plenty of people who read Chomsky but vote for Obama. Like people who read Hayek but vote for Bush.
Two Perspectives
FREE-MARKET LIBERTARIANISM:
Right to dispose of own life and property without government interference so long as the like right of others is respected
moral basis: self-ownership
economic basis: incentival and informational advantages of markets
Two Perspectives
RADICAL LEFTISM:
Concern with domination, exclusion, inequality, oppression, exploitation, hierarchy, and environmental degradation
See capitalist society as pervaded by malign power structures of class, race, gender, etc.
Two Perspectives
Proponents of either perspective tend to be hostile to the other
Some overlap in what they condemn – notably, war (usually) – but reasons and applications differ
Radical Leftists see Free-Market Libertarians as defenders of the rich
Two Perspectives
Free-Market Libertarianism seems to permit what Radical Leftism forbids: socioeconomic inequality, discrimination, hierarchical workplaces, environmental damage
Radical Leftism seems to permit what Free-Market Libertarianism forbids: coercive interference with liberty and property
Two Perspectives
Yet the two perspectives once went together, as in the case of the 19th-century individualist anarchists:
Two Perspectives
Common roots:
equality of authority
opposition to privilege
Two Perspectives
Since the 19th-century:
Libertarians have specialised in studying forms of oppression that are directly governmental, while leftists have specialised in studying forms that aren’t
Each can learn from the other
Two Perspectives
Free-Market Libertarianism and Radical Leftism belong together; each is the natural completion of the other.
Two Perspectives
Those who value Radical Leftist ends have reason to care about Free-Market Libertarian means –
because the chief (though not sole) enabler of the evils that Radical Leftists oppose is not the market but rather the State
Two Perspectives
Those who value Free-Market Libertarian means have reason to care about Radical Leftist ends –
because if it’s wrong to push people around by using force, it’s arguably wrong (even if not a rights-violation) to push people around at all
“Thick Libertarianism”
Libertarians as libertarians must embrace certain values causally or conceptually connected with, even though not entailed by, the nonaggression principle
“Thick Libertarianism”
grounds thickness: values entailed by the best reasons for NAP (anti-authoritarianism)
application thickness: values needed in order to apply NAP correctly (animal rights)
“Thick Libertarianism”
strategic thickness: causal preconditions for implementing NAP (gross economic inequality)
consequence thickness: opposing independently bad things caused by NAP violations (sweatshops)
“Thick Libertarianism”
Hence libertarians should see their struggle against the state as part of a unified struggle against, e.g., patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, bossism, and environmental waste
This is a return to libertarianism’s 19th-century roots
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Both defenders and opponents of modern “capitalist” society tend to assume that a) our society approximates to a free market, and so b) the socioeconomic inequality and corporate power that prevail in our society are mainly the result of the market
Conflation of corporatism (i.e. rule of big business / big government partnership) with free markets
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Left-conflationism: treat the evils of present-day corporatism as a reason to reject free markets
Right-conflationism: treat the virtues of free markets as a reason to defend the results of present-day corporatism
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Historically the term “capitalism” refers to a system favouring employers (“capital”) against workers (“labour”)
Most people use the term conflationistically, to mean “the free-market system we [supposedly] have now”
On both counts, libertarians should stop using the term to mean a genuinely freed market
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Is Free-Market Anti-Capitalism (FMAC) the same as Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism (BHL)?
Yes and no.
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
BHL is the combining of the social-justice perspective of the left with the free-market concerns of libertarians
So in that sense, FMAC is a form of BHL
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
But most members of BHL (not all; Gary Chartier and I are exceptions) seem to see the libertarian and leftist commitments as moderating each other
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
For example, many BHLs:water down libertarianism by accepting a government-guaranteed minimum income (ignoring property rights, the levelling effects of markets, and the dangers of state power)water down leftism by defending sweatshops as the “best available alternative” (without asking what conditions have ruled out better options)
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
By contrast, those taking an FMAC perspective tend to see libertarian and leftist commitments as reinforcing each other
We are radically libertarian and radically leftist
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Big business as libertarians sometimes describe it:
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Big business as most people actually experience it:
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Right Cop, Left Cop: conservatives pose as critics of big government, liberals pose as critics of big business
Those who oppose one wing of the ruling Gov/Biz partnership are lured into supporting the other
The genuine libertarian alternative is rendered invisible
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Gov and Biz each want to be dominant partner (like Church & State), so hostility between them is not fake – but commitment to partnership is real too.
Left Cop duped voter Right Cop
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
In fact markets are a levelling force
Regulations insulate dominant firms from market feedback, making them islands of centrally planned chaos
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Competition would render firms smaller and less hierarchical
More workers’ cooperatives and independent contractors
More employee control over conditions of employment
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Libertarians developed theory of class struggle before Marx did
In libertarian version, differential access to the means of production is mainly the product, not the cause, of differential access to state privilege
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Libertarian defense of private property does not (or anyway should not) mean defense of all existing property arrangements
The present distribution of property is maintained by systematic state interference with libertarian property rights
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
As a firm grows larger, economies of scale (gains in efficiency from larger size) at some point get overtaken by diseconomies of scale (informational and incentival chaos from growing too unwieldy)
Free-Market Anti-Capitalism
Firms that grow past the efficiency point will be weeded out by competition –
unless government-granted privilege enables them to pocket the benefits while socialising the costs
Some Examples
Direct and indirect subsidiesBailoutsProtectionist tariffsEminent domainLicensing, zoning, and other
regulatory restrictions that hurt small start-ups more than large established firms
Some Examples
Increased firm size greater productivity need to distribute products over wider area higher distribution costs
Government to the rescue: highway subsidies. Long-distance shipping causes most wear & tear; so distribution indirectly subsidised
Some Examples
Transactions between firms are taxed; transactions within firms aren’t
Incentive to move operations in-house
Smaller firms penalised
Some Examples
Inflation fueled by monetary expansion:
Favoured firms get new money first while still facing old, lower prices
The “little people” face new, higher prices before getting new money
Some Examples
Quality standards: implicit cartelisation, pricing smaller competitors out of business
Copyrights and patents: ruling aspects of service off limits to competition
Some Examples
Deposit insurance encourages banks to make risky investments
Liability caps encourage oil companies to drill in risky ways
Obamacare’s individual mandate = corporate welfare
Government enforces land titles not based on homesteading
Some Examples
Large hierarchical firms have greater trouble determining employee productivity, but (thanks to government) can avoid the cost this brings
Hence racial, sexual, etc. discrimination are subsidised
Some Examples
Labour laws tame unions by diverting them from worker empowerment to being junior partners of the Gov/Biz partnership, bargaining for higher wages
Unions that bypass such co-opting are penalised
Some Examples
Regulatory restrictions on mutual aid and on starting small firms, plus artificial scarcity caused by resource monopoly, force people to work for employers, and create a employers’ market
The left’s complaints about wage slavery are right!
Where Do We Go From Here?
The ruling powers in society (both governmental and corporate) are too far outnumbered by those they rule to be the sources of social order they claim to be
Both social order and elite power depend on popular acquiescence
Where Do We Go From Here?
Hence:a) the state is not necessary for maintaining social order; anarchy is a viable endb) petitioning the state, or seizing control of it (whether by electoral or revolutionary methods) is not necessary as a means
Where Do We Go From Here?
The path to a free society:
education
direct, bottom-up grassroots action
building alternative institutions to bypass the state
Where Do We Go From Here?
We abolish the ruling elite merely by ceasing to support them.
Where to Learn More
all-left.net
Where to Learn More
molinari.co
Where to Learn More
RadGeek.com AAEblog.com Mutualist.org
Where to Learn More
c4ss.org s4ss.org