the claims and self-image of libertarianism

Libertarians tend to speak in slogans - "we want freedom", "we are against bureaucracy" - and not in political programmes. Even when they give a direct definition of libertarianism, it is not necessarily true.

• non-coercion:
  The principle of non-coercion, or non-initiation of force, appears in most self-definitions. It is the equivalent of the liberal concept of 'negative liberty' and some libertarians use that term. Libertarians say they are against coercion, but they support the free market. The introduction of a free market in Russia after 1989, lead to an excess mortality of about 3 million people. I call that force (and not defensive or retaliatory force): libertarians do not. Some US employers require their employees to smile at all customers, or lose their job. I call that coercion: libertarians call it freedom of contract. There is no point in further discussion of these issues: they are examples of irreconcilable value conflicts.
• moral autonomy:
  Libertarians claim to value the moral autonomy of the individual. However, in the free market which they advocate, there is no connection between individual action and social outcome. A one-person boycott of meat will not stop the slaughter of animals. In reality, the individual is powerless in the face of the market - and without some decision-making power there is no real moral autonomy. The implicit position of most libertarians is that this must be accepted - that the outcome of the market is morally legitimate, even if it does not correspond to the conscience of the individual. Certainly, all libertarians distrust even limited interference with the market: many reject it entirely.
• political freedom:
  Libertarians say they favour political freedom. But even to simply enforce the outcome of the market, the apparatus of a state would be necessary - an army to prevent invasions, a police force to suppress internal revolt, a judicial system. Most libertarians go much further: they want a libertarian regime. Some of them have written complete and detailed constitutions. But like any state, a libertarian state will have to enforce its constitution - otherwise it will be no more than a suggested constitution. Even if the state is founded on the planet Mars (as some libertarians suggest), someone else with different ideas will probably arrive sometime. The libertarian constitutions might work in a freshly established libertarian colony, inhabited only by committed libertarians. But sooner or later there will be an opposition, perhaps resolutely hostile to the founding principles. States, which fail to enforce their own political system against opposition to the state itself, ultimately collapse or disappear. If libertarian states want to survive in such circumstances, they will use political repression against their internal opponents.
  In the case of libertarianism within existing states, the position is much clearer. There is no question of a fresh start with a fresh population. The Libertarian Party of the United States, for instance, seeks to impose a libertarian system on the United States. It is an imposition, and can not be anything else. Unless they are prepared to accept the division of the country, they will have to deal with millions of anti-libertarians, who reject the regime entirely. They might call the riot police the Liberty Police, they might call the prisons Liberty Camps, but it's still not 'political freedom'.
• instrumental claims:
  Libertarians often make many instrumental claims - claims that their system would produce desirable results. Arguing from results is not generally considered sufficient to justify a political philosophy. (The attitude of British and American fascist sympathisers was caricatured in the expression "Mussolini made the trains run on time"). Most libertarians favour a drastic deregulation and full privatisation of the economy, and this is typically where the instrumental claims are made. The libertarian reforms will, they claim, improve education and medical services and make better and cheaper products available. Similar claims are made by almost all liberals. However, like David Friedman's 'bad trucks' argument, they rely on a value judgment.
  There is no neutral common standard of what is good and bad, in consumer goods or education. Different economic systems and different societies produce different types of goods and services. Libertarians implicitly claim that their preferences are the right preferences, and that the economic system itself should be chosen to produce their preferred goods and services. They don't want Soviet-style goods in the shops, so they want a non-Soviet system. Perhaps you don't want Soviet-style goods in the shops either. The point is: did they ask you?
  All instrumental arguments are paternalistic. The fascist sympathisers who praised Mussolini's train timekeeping, assumed that was the most relevant factor to judge Italian fascist society. For themselves - but also for their listeners. Libertarians assume everyone wants an American-style economy directed to consumer goods. Some people do. But other people have different tastes, and different priorities. Libertarians ignore these differences, and simply assume that everyone wants exactly the same, from the economy, from health care, from the educational system. That paternalism is incompatible with the moral autonomy and economic freedom, which libertarians claim to promote.
  That is an inconsistency in libertarian claims to political power. It is a separate issue from the accuracy of their predictions about the wonders of deregulation and privatisation. If libertarians say, for instance, that global deregulation will lead to increased electricity production in Ghana in 2050, there is no point in discussion. No-one knows anyway. The instrumental arguments of libertarians are untested, since no country has a fully libertarian economic system. There are partial neoliberal and libertarian 'experiments' - deregulation and privatisation. But, as the Californian electricity crisis showed, if the experiment fails, its supporters will simply claim that it was not sufficiently neoliberal or libertarian. So even the evidence for the instrumental claims of libertarians is a matter of interpretation and preference: it would be futile to use it as a basis for discussion.
• "choose us or choose Hitler":
  Perhaps it is no more than a style of argument, but a 'dual world' is a feature of many libertarian texts. On one side is libertarianism, on the other totalitarianism and dictatorship. The historic examples cited are almost always Nazism and Stalinism, the historic figures are Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. If it is not just a style of argument, then it is a specific from of utilitarianism: the legitimation of libertarianism by the (presumed) prevention of the horrors of totalitarianism. That would imply a libertarian claim, that even if libertarian society is unpleasant for everyone, they should accept it - to avoid the Gulag. As a style of argument this is very common, but it is hard to judge whether its users seriously think that there is a 'two-way switch' built into recent history.
• specific position in the USA:
  Here too, it is hard to judge how far libertarians have identified themselves with the USA. Certainly libertarianism is a largely North American phenomena, and European libertarians are usually Atlanticist. But the question is, whether the USA is the promised land for libertarians - the only possible location of their libertarian revolution. And if it is, would they accept a strategy of 'libertarianism-in-one-country'? Libertarianism is ultimately a universal ideology: that implies that a libertarian USA would become a vehicle for global libertarianism. In other words, when the USA went libertarian, libertarians would proceed to an expansionist war of conquest. However, I have never seen such a proposal: in fact US libertarians seem only vaguely aware that there is anywhere outside the USA.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

LIBERTARIANISM LlMITS LIBERTY
The problem with libertarianism can be seen once we recognize the limitations that negative rights (libertarian constraints) themselves place on individual liberty. Suppose, for example, that I am the biggest and strongest guy on the block. My size is a natural asset, a physical trait I inherited and then developed. But can I use my strength and size any way I please? No! At least not morally. Though I am physically capable of pummeling the peasants, pillaging property, and ravishing women, I am not morally justified in doing so. My freedom is restricted without my consent. I didn't make a contract with the property owners or the women; I didn't promise not to rap, rob, or rape. Just the same, morally I cannot perform these actions and others can justifiably prohibit me from performing them.
Consequently, everyone's life is not, given the presence of negative general rights and negative general duties, free from the interference of others. The "mere" presence of others imposes duties on each of us, it limits everyone's freedom. In fact, these restrictions are frequently extensive. For example, in the previously described case I could have all of the goods I wanted; I could take what I wanted, when I wanted. To say that such actions are morally or legally impermissible significantly limits my freedom, and my "happiness," without my consent. Of course I am not saying these restrictions are bad. Obviously they aren't. But it does show that the libertarian fails to achieve his major objective, namely, to insure that an individual's freedom cannot be limited without his consent. The libertarian's own moral constraints limit each person's freedom without consent.7
This is even more vividly seen when we look at an actual historical occurrence. In the nineteenth century American slaveholders were finally legally coerced into doing what they were already morally required to do: free their slaves. In many cases this led to the slave owners' financial and social ruin: they lost their farms, their money, and their power. Of course they didn't agree to their personal ruin; they didn't agree to this restriction on their freedom. Morally they didn't have to consent; it was a remedy long overdue. Even the libertarian would agree. The slave holders' freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people; the fact that there were other persons limited their acceptable alter natives. But that is exactly what the libertarian denies. Freedom, he claims, cannot be justifiably restricted without consent. In short, the difficulty in this: the libertarian talks as if there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitations on freedom, yet his very theory involves just such limitations. Not only does this appear to be blatantly inconsistent, but even if he could avoid this inconsistency, there appears to be no principled way in which he can justify only his theory's non-consensual limitations on freedom.
This theoretical difficulty is extremely important. First, the libertarian objections against redistribution programs (like those practiced in the welfare state) are weakened, if not totally disarmed. His ever-present objection to these programs has always been that they are unjust because they are non-consensual limitations on freedom. However, as I have shown, libertarian constraints themselves demand such limitations. Therefore, that cannot be a compelling reason for rejecting welfare statism unless it is also a compelling reason for rejecting libertarianism.
Secondly, once we see that justice demands certain non-consensual limitations on someone (X's) freedom, there seems to be no good reason for concluding (and good reason not to conclude) that X's freedom can be limited only by negative general duties. There seems to be no reason, for example, for concluding that X's freedom to make $l million should not be restricted to aid other people, e.g., to give some workers enough funds to help them escape the de facto slavery in which they find themselves.
Think of it this way. Liberty, for the libertarian, is negative in nature. An individual's liberty is restricted whenever (and only if) his potential actions are restricted. This is essentially a Hobbesian view of liberty. So imagine with Hobbes and some libertarians that individuals are seen as initially being in a state of perfect freedom. In such a state, Hobbes claims, "nothing can be just. Right and wrong have there no place."8 To introduce right and wrong of any sort is to put moral limitations on individual freedom. To that extent, everyone's freedom is restricted. Each person has an external impediment--a moral rule which can be coercively enforced--against doing some action A (and actions relevantly like A). Therefore, to introduce negative general rights and duties, as the libertarian does, is to admit that there are non-consensual limitations on freedom. And these limits--as I argued--are sometimes significant and far-reaching. They arise--and this is crucial--without consent; each person has them simply because he is a person. Now if one's freedom can be limited without consent by negative rights, then it is unreasonable to hold that these are the only limitations on freedom which can legitimately arise without consent. This is particularly apparent when we realize that in a number of cases the limitations on freedom imposed by negative duties are more--even much more--than limitations which would be imposed if some claims of positive rights or duties were recognized. For example, forcing a slaveholder to free his slaves would limit his freedom more than would a law forcing him to pay ten percent of his salary to educate and provide health care for his slaves. Or forcing Hitler to not take over the world (in other words, forcing him to recognize others' negative rights) would limit his freedom more extensively than would forcing him to support, by his taxes, some governmental welfare program. Yet the libertarian concludes that redistribution of income is unjust since it limits the taxed person's liberty without his consent. If redistribution is unjust for that reason, then so are libertarian constraints. Libertarian constraints also limit personal liberty without consent.
The libertarian might attempt to immediately avoid my conclusion by claiming that there is a principled difference between redistribution of income and libertarian constraints such that the former is never a justified restriction of liberty while the latter is always justified. For although both do limit personal liberty without consent, he might argue, libertarian constraints only restrict liberty in order to protect individual rights. And it is the protection of personal rights which justifies these, and only these, non-consensual restrictions on liberty.
However, this reply won't do. For as I have stated, any libertarian conception of rights is itself grounded in--justified by reference to--personal liberty. Or, as Eric Mack puts it, they are grounded in the right not to be coerced.9 Hence, given my preceding argument, there is no principled way that concerns for personal liberty could generate only libertarian rights and duties, since negative rights restrict liberty as much as, or more than, would some positive rights or duties. Consequently, appeals to personal rights cannot provide the libertarian with a principled basis for distinguishing between types of non-consensual limitations on liberty.
We have uncovered a very telling incoherence. We have taken the main libertarian weapon against welfare statism and turned it on itself. The once so-sharp sword is seen to have two sides. Instead of menacing the enemy, the sword only frustrates its wielder. As everyone knows, two edged swords cut both ways. The libertarian is unable to support his conception of the minimal state. At least some redistribution of tax monies is justified.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

OMG....med, where is the link?....this has got to be one of the dumbest observations and pathetically desperate interpretations I have ever seen!
Who is the dopey writer?

Of course he probably thinks all employment is a type of coercion, after all, do we not have to do what our jobs require us to do?

Exceedingly silly!

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If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.
~ Frank Zappa ~

Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard Shaw~

OMG....med, where is the link?.... If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

__________________
Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

The introduction of a free market in Russia after 1989, lead to an excess mortality of about 3 million people. I call that force (and not defensive or retaliatory force): libertarians do not.
what happened in russia was the equivolent of opening a can of spam in a large crowd 6 weeks into a good famine. that was not a free market, that was a free for all.

Some US employers require their employees to smile at all customers, or lose their job. I call that coercion: libertarians call it freedom of contract.
wrong, this was a policy at a large grocery chain, not a requirement. when an attractive checkout girl complained because men were getting too friendly they changed the policy.

There is no point in further discussion of these issues: they are examples of irreconcilable value conflicts.
there was no discussion, non-coercion is the core of human freedom and liberty. coercion is the core of non-freedom and anti-liberty; the stuff that democrats strive for every day. they coerce block votes by proclaiming that they dole out "equility" and "fairness" but they do nothing more than trample self-responsibility, which causes a lack of self-respect, which causes a lack of self-regard, which causes a bunch of people to be losers... just turn on the news and you'll see this policy in action.


Libertarians claim to value the moral autonomy of the individual. However, in the free market which they advocate, there is no connection between individual action and social outcome. A one-person boycott of meat will not stop the slaughter of animals. In reality, the individual is powerless in the face of the market - and without some decision-making power there is no real moral autonomy.
i really did laugh out loud here... the anti-meat person can boycott meat and automatically suceeds in doing so. the anti-meat person should not be able to force everyone to go without... laughing again. the one person votes with their money, they can also convince others to do so, if they have a case. that's why leftists democrats hate classic liberalism so much, you have to have factual reasons or a real basis to get something done, a bunch of hype and salesmanship won't go very far. now you can see why hollywood is so overwhelmingly democrat, it's all about BS and that's what they're sooooo good at!!


Libertarians say they favour political freedom. But even to simply enforce the outcome of the market, the apparatus of a state would be necessary - an army to prevent invasions, a police force to suppress internal revolt, a judicial system. Most libertarians go much further: they want a libertarian regime. Some of them have written complete and detailed constitutions. But like any state, a libertarian state will have to enforce its constitution - otherwise it will be no more than a suggested constitution. Even if the state is founded on the planet Mars (as some libertarians suggest), someone else with different ideas will probably arrive sometime. The libertarian constitutions might work in a freshly established libertarian colony, inhabited only by committed libertarians. But sooner or later there will be an opposition, perhaps resolutely hostile to the founding principles.

more BS. you don't "enforce the outcome of the market", the market exists already and as long as people live you have markets... i can underbid you or overbid, my choice.. as far as invasions, that's what a militia is for, a voluntary force that can be quickly organized to prevent invasions. the revolutionary war is a great example of this principle in action...we won by the way.

Most libertarians favour a drastic deregulation and full privatisation of the economy, and this is typically where the instrumental claims are made. The libertarian reforms will, they claim, improve education and medical services and make better and cheaper products available.
this is just common sense, if you take blundering, unspecialized oversight from "politicians" out of the picture you get better everything...

There are partial neoliberal and libertarian 'experiments' - deregulation and privatisation. But, as the Californian electricity crisis showed, if the experiment fails, its supporters will simply claim that it was not sufficiently neoliberal or libertarian.
again, more BS. didn't we come to find out that politicians were involved in socialist style price fixing and that because of that price fixing the market couldn't provide power? there was no true crisis, there was a refusal to pay a fair price. correct me if i'm wrong, but that's a failure caused by anything but libertarian economics. libertarian economics would probably require that Ca. get some damn power plants and stop having so much electricity piped in from other states.


Perhaps it is no more than a style of argument, but a 'dual world' is a feature of many libertarian texts. On one side is libertarianism, on the other totalitarianism and dictatorship. The historic examples cited are almost always Nazism and Stalinism, the historic figures are Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. If it is not just a style of argument, then it is a specific from of utilitarianism: the legitimation of libertarianism by the (presumed) prevention of the horrors of totalitarianism. That would imply a libertarian claim, that even if libertarian society is unpleasant for everyone, they should accept it - to avoid the Gulag. As a style of argument this is very common, but it is hard to judge whether its users seriously think that there is a 'two-way switch' built into recent history.

naturally, from an anarcho-capitalist perspective, everything with a coercive, centralized government power can be viewed as totalitarian, or authoritarian - they are opposite of self-reliance. libertarianism or classic liberalism gives credence to the natural rights of the self much more so than synthetic, forced rights "issued" by authority. if you like socialism you should be completely enamored with the prospect of libertarianism Med. the playing field is level, it's all your choice, the free-riders don't exist..charity thrives, people do their best work and feel pride. if you could set up your own country, how you could prefer having concentrated power and the elite rulling class of government beaurocracts to having total liberty is beyond me...


Libertarianism is ultimately a universal ideology: that implies that a libertarian USA would become a vehicle for global libertarianism.

if we ever achieved true libertarianism the world would follow, no guns, no bombs, it would just make sense. there would be fights and bloodshed but only as people stood up to their gvnmnts to cast them down. it would ultimately reshape the destiny of mankind into something much more promising than what we see now... it would take more hard work than simply bowing down to an authoritarian leader and turning your life over to them but in the end, wouldn't it be better to have a direct impact on the world, on your future?

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"But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race."

- Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, Hero to the servants of big government, Racist War Monger

There are partial neoliberal and libertarian 'experiments' - deregulation and privatisation. But, as the Californian electricity crisis showed, if the experiment fails, its supporters will simply claim that it was not sufficiently neoliberal or libertarian.
again, more BS. didn't we come to find out that politicians were involved in socialist style price fixing and that because of that price fixing the market couldn't provide power? there was no true crisis, there was a refusal to pay a fair price. correct me if i'm wrong, but that's a failure caused by anything but libertarian economics. libertarian economics would probably require that Ca. get some damn power plants and stop having so much electricity piped in from other states.

Well then, let me correct you. The great California Power shortage was created by unscrupulous power brokers that kept re-selling the same commodity over and over (hot air) untill it was so over priced that no one could afford it, Greed personified. In fact, they have begun prosecution of these individuals that pocketed millions on the scam..... Private enterprise and criminal behavior in partnership, the American way! These guys are the epitomy of greedy scum that inhabit the private sector, right along with Enron (in fact I believe somehow Enron was involved in this scandal). If this is your shining example of private enterprise, then you're not too bright!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

maybe i don't understand...but didn't they (power distributor companies) have to sell all their assets before they could negotiate prices for power? isn't the fact that they were so wrapped in red tape doing this a big reason it took so long? isn't that the reason they were buying power at "auction" in the first place, causing them to get hit with high rates??

i'm glad you agree with everything else then.

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"But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race."

- Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, Hero to the servants of big government, Racist War Monger

I agree, I was laughing my ass off the whole time. I for one agree with most libertarian principles and will not be facilitating our bullshit 2 party system next year.

7x ...

Man, that was an excellent job in refuting each point of that BS article. Great work, Bro ... I always look forward to your posts.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.