Are Minarchists closet apologists for Stalin?

[CrazyCoot]

The argument that it’s inconsistent and therefore weak footing to believe that the market is better at delivering goods and services than the government for almost everything, but one is not a weak argument. If one concedes that the state is better off at providing defense then how does one reconcile this belief with a belief in the supremacy of the free market? If it’s a weak argument then explain why instead of merely just calling it an invalid syllogism. Explain why it makes sense to argue for the market to deal with everything except defense and law and order.

Government is a state backed monopoly, which tend to expand. Classical liberals recognized the validity of government to operate in certain areas, which left them weak to attacks by people who argued that government should expand into more areas. And if a state doesn’t have to respond to market forces, operates under perverse incentives, and operates through a taxation system that results in wealth transfer; how are you going to stop it from growing?

How would a society with private arbitration, PDAs etc. be more prone to a totalitarian takeover than our current system, or even a nightwatchman state? And how you can say you support the market over the state, but not believe that the market is capable of taking care of itself without the state?

There is no point, was just agreeing with you on the Stalinists accusing unionists of being closet Rothbardians; just saying the accusation could work both ways depending on whose looking at it.

And if you think the conclusion is inflammatory, well don’t have secret dreams about show trials and gulags and 5 year plans and your feelings won’t be so hurt.

[Illuminatus]

Peter Boettke of George Mason University called his blog “Austrian Economics”. He has now decided to change the name of the blog.

He says in his blog post New Thinking for a New Decade

“As of January 1, 2010, we are changing our name to “Coordination Problem”. This name change is symbolic as well as substantive. The term “Austrian economics” has become as much a hindrance to the advancement of thought as a convenient shorthand to signal certain methodological and analytical presumptions. We started this blog with a clear purpose to emphasize ongoing research in the scientific literature, and developments in higher education as related to economics and political economy. As a group we are committed to methodological individualism, market process theory, institutional analysis, and spontaneous order theorizing. And while we do not shy away from policy discussions, we do not identify with any political party or specific political movement.

As an experiment, over the past six months we have been tracking the use of the term Austrian economics in the news and in the blogosphere. Less systematically, we have also been listening carefully to the use of the term among fellow professional economists and what they think the label means. The results do not fit our intention. Google alert, for example, inevitably points to financial advice or libertarian politics, rarely to the research paradigm of F. A. Hayek, never to the scholarship of Israel Kirzner. Mises is often mentioned, but Mises the ideological symbol, not Mises the analytical economist. The “Austrian” theory of the business cycle is mentioned, but only in relationship to anti-fed politics and hard money advocacy, and never as an ongoing research program among professional economists

These trends are not recent, but have been constant throughout our respective careers. We have always been among those who attempted to offer resistance to this use of the term. It has become evident to us that our efforts have been futile**. Rather than resist the pure ideological identification, we are choosing to devote our efforts elsewhere. The name Austrian economics has been lost as a focal point for a tradition of economic scholarship, and is now a focal point for something else. We have to let it go.”**

When one of the few university professors that have in the past openly been an Austrian Economist and a follower of Mises decides to change the name of his blog because of the radicalization, political movements and misuse of Mises theories by Rothbardians/moral anarchists/Tea Party Activists. Tthen Austrian Economics and Mises seems to be going the same way as Marxism and Marx in the 70’s. Becoming more insular, marginalized, doctrinaire and sect/cult like. Anybody not clinging to the pure doctrinaire was ostracized and denounced as a heretic, unbeliever.

I cannot for my life understand why pragmatic, consequentiality classic liberals that believe in a minimal state and gradualism cannot cooperate with the followers of Rothbard. I myself have as seems Peter Boettke has given up.

[Marko]

@J. Grayson Lilburne

I would contend it is the consistent natural rights libertarian who would oppose the state as a mental exercise, as opposed to hating it. For the consistent natural rights libertarian, right or wrong is not about love and hate (that would be “emotivist yaying and booing” as G.A. Plauche says). For the consistent natural rights libertarian, right or wrong is a scientific question, the answer of which is to be deduced logically from certain premises. If the consistent natural rights libertarian were confronted with some master logician, and was was shown using formal logic, that the state was right, in spite of his bloody hate for it, he would be impelled as a scientist to drop his libertarian stance.

Indeed he would need to. But then in order to be a radical he would need to love the state and hate freedom. It would be insufficient if he merely acknowledged that state is right and freedom is wrong.

Reasoning and hatred are not opposed. The latter stems from the former. A radical complements mental reasoning with hatred, because he can not bring himself to bear wrong with any part of his being, a non-radical stops at the mental exercise.

@J. Grayson Lilburne

I think this is because the hate for state is actually the deeper cause of their libertarianism, and natural rights philosophizing is an intellectual super-structure erected around it and for the sake of it.

I think there is no hate for the state per se. Hatred for the state is merely the hatred of injustice and of an attempt to justify injustice.

Hatred for capitalism is similarly merely the hatred for what appears to the radical anti-capitalist as injustice and for the attempt to justify this seeming injustice.

[Marko]

It must be noted that radical anti-capitalists have influenced history and thought to a far greater extent than non-radical anti-capitalists. So their sin was not their radicalism. Only their faulty reasoning which radicalized them for the wrong cause.

[Lilburne]

@CrazyCoot

The argument that it’s inconsistent and therefore weak footing to believe that the market is better at delivering goods and services than the government for almost everything, but one is not a weak argument.

It’s similarly “inconsistent” to say that ventilation is a good thing in almost all vehicles except for submarines. Such “inconsistency” doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

@CrazyCoot

If it’s a weak argument then explain why instead of merely just calling it an invalid syllogism. Explain why it makes sense to argue for the market to deal with everything except defense and law and order.

One need not hoist up a positive argument to prove the invalidity of your negative argument. Your argument is an invalid syllogism. Its conclusion doesn’t follow from its premises. Recognizing that obvious fact is all that is required to refute your negative argument.

@CrazyCoot

Government is a state backed monopoly, which tend to expand. Classical liberals recognized the validity of government to operate in certain areas, which left them weak to attacks by people who argued that government should expand into more areas. And if a state doesn’t have to respond to market forces, operates under perverse incentives, and operates through a taxation system that results in wealth transfer; how are you going to stop it from growing?

How would a society with private arbitration, PDAs etc. be more prone to a totalitarian takeover than our current system, or even a nightwatchman state? And how you can say you support the market over the state, but not believe that the market is capable of taking care of itself without the state?

Again, I am in no way making a positive argument for any particular political order. I’m simply pointing out that you have in no way established the validity of the ambitious premise that lies behind the sweeping conclusion of your OP.

@CrazyCoot

And if you think the conclusion is inflammatory, well don’t have secret dreams about show trials and gulags and 5 year plans and your feelings won’t be so hurt.

It’s not inflammatory to Stalinists; it’s inflammatory to minarchists. And I myself am ancap, so it wouldn’t be inflammatory to me anyway. I want ancap to succeed, which is why I don’t like to see fellow ancaps writing inflammatory checks that their argumentation can’t cash.

[Lilburne]

@Sage

Well, if you come across a logical proof that contradicts all of your intuitions, that’s a very good reason to be skeptical.

A good reason to be skeptical, but not to rationalize, which is what I think libertarians who truly hate the state would do if push came to shove.

@Sage

Moreover, how is this any different for a consequentialist? If they were shown that Keynesian economics was right, wouldn’t they likewise have to abandon libertarianism, but “would never accept such a conclusion”?

Yes, that’s true, defining consequentalism a certain way. But it would be completely different for conscience-driven libertarians like me, who resort neither to “social consequentialism” nor natural rights.

[I_Ryan]

@J. Grayson Lilburne

It’s similarly “inconsistent” to say that ventilation is a good thing in almost all vehicles except for submarines. Such “inconsistency” doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Awesome analogy. I might borrow it sometime in the future.

[Thedesolateone]

@CrazyCoot

Well, are they?

Absurd

[CrazyCoot]

Actually ventilation systems do exist on submarines, and are a good idea; just to be pedantic. You wouldn’t want to have a convertible sub for obvious reasons, but that’s because of the external environment is different from when you’re driving a car. Don’t know of any different economic environments where it would be beneficial to have the market under some circumstances, but not under others.

And of course it’s a trolling title; I don’t believe minarchists long for Soviet Russia. Just can’t understand how minarchism could be anything more than a transitional phase; either towards ancap or a more watered down version of European style liberalism.

[scineram]

Without the state there is no market at all.

Every system is a transitional phase to the next system.

[econ_student]

This is not a constructive question at all. One can certainly make a case that minarchists or classical liberals were inconsistent, but to suggest that this position somehow transforms into an apology for totalitarianism [AD HOMINEM DELETED] At any rate, the answer is no. I hope that this was only a tounge-in-check question.

[Conza]

[COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE POSTING CHOICES OF OTHER MEMBERS BELONG IN THE ISSUES FORUM]

[Nitroadict]

[SORRY, NITRO. LET’S PLEASE KEEP THIS KIND OF “MEMBER ISSUES” BACK-AND-FORTH OFF THE FRONT PAGE. -LILBURNE]

[AnarchomarxistLibert]

Nah, but they do make the same mistake as Stalinists in believing in the state ab inito.

[scineram]

You don’t believe in the state? You don’t think it exists?

[MaikU]

When people say they “don’t believe in the state” what it means is usually they don’t find it a good solution for our social problems etc. It’s not meant to be taken literally, as when someone says he doesn’t believe in deities.

[econ_student]

Understood. But I do think that there is a considerable difference between “a watered down version of European style liberalism” and Stalinism. And I still wish that a more appropriate title had been chosen.