Roderick T. Long Auburn University / Molinari Institute.

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


grounds thickness: values entailed by the best reasons for NAP (anti-authoritarianism)

application thickness: values needed in order to apply NAP correctly (animal rights)


strategic thickness: causal preconditions for implementing NAP (gross economic inequality)

consequence thickness: opposing independently bad things caused by NAP violations (sweatshops)


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


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


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


Is Free-Market Anti-Capitalism (FMAC) the same as Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism (BHL)?

Yes and no.


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


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


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)


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


Big business as libertarians sometimes describe it:


Big business as most people actually experience it:


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


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


In fact markets are a levelling force

Regulations insulate dominant firms from market feedback, making them islands of centrally planned chaos


Competition would render firms smaller and less hierarchical

More workers’ cooperatives and independent contractors

More employee control over conditions of employment


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


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


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)


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


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


The path to a free society:

education

direct, bottom-up grassroots action

building alternative institutions to bypass the state


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

Roderick T. Long Auburn University / Molinari Institute.

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