Martin, thank you for sharing. Welcome!
No, but I’ve seen a libertarian become a Marxist.
A friend of mine was once a libertarian (granted, he didn’t study the subject in any depth, but he had libertarian leanings and usually agreed with me on specific policy-issues: e.g. drug policy, welfare, etc), but then he went to university and now he’s a Marxist, and a radical feminist!
Maybe I’ll convert him back someday.
What’s wrong with being a feminist?
“What’s wrong with being a feminist?”
Nothing, if the goal of feminism is to achieve equal rights for women.
But unfortunately the goal of modern feminism in the West is to carve out special legal privilages for women, in the same way that other Leftists seek to carve out special legal privilages for racial minorities.
…not to mention the importance of feminism in the ongoing and intentional destruction of all traditional mores, otherwise known as cultural Marxism.
One of the problems in trying to bring a leftist around to libertarianism is that the left eventually realized that science and facts are against them in economic theory (Mises’s economic-calculation) and they decided to turn away from facts to emotion, away from reason to mysticism.
So, there’s a built in resistance to facts on the left and to clear, reason-based thinking.
You see this in the philosophic attacks on the concept of knowledge, with the left holding the epistemological line that it is impossible to know anything for sure. The whole co-opting of the concept of relativity, twisted into the idea that ‘everything is relative and therefore nothing is true’ follows the same line.
On the extreme end you have those who believe that there is no such thing as reality, that truth is created by the mind–a lapse into philosophic solipsism.
Those immersed in these anti-intellectual concepts are inherently resistant to facts contrary to their existing conclusions. Combine that with certain biases of the human mind to discount evidence contrary to what they want to be true, and you have a group particularly resistant to facts.
I think this explains why so many socialists continue parroting the idea that socialism as an economic system was never tried faithfully, or that somehow Stalin ‘screwed it all up.’
As for me, I was raised in a home marginally republican. My path to libertarianism largely began through listening to talk radio, moved into a study of economics via Sowell and the Austrians, and then into political theory and philosophy, which led me to libertarian writers such as Rose Wilder Lane, LeFevre, Hayek, and many more.
It was perhaps my study of economics that proved to me that freedom was essential. In economics you could get hard numbers and hard facts such as one could not in political theory. I think approaching political concepts of freedom from an economic viewpoint is key because of that aspect of provability that pure theory largely lacks.
I’m less interested than many of you in deep economic theory in a world without an Austrian economy in place. To my mind, a free economy is just a consequence of a free society and largely would take care of itself. The larger goal of putting a free society in place is more important, and a free market would be emergent from that. We know it would work, let’s get it going.
removed dupe
The first three books I read on economics was the three volumes of Das Kapital. I thought it was a garbled mess at the time.
I considered myself a socialist when I was a teenager but someone pointed out that I was using the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to justify my arguments for intervention. I immediately ceased advocating socialism and decided to study economics. Economics led me to the Austrian School. The Austrian School’s champions led me to libertarianism.
You forgot to add at the end, “Now all I need are your credit-card numbers.”
Hi Anenome. You say that “the left eventually realized that science and facts are against them in economic theory (Mises’s economic-calculation) and they decided to turn away from facts to emotion, away from reason to mysticism.”
I don’t believe that is correct. Typically the left is 100% certain that they are the ones who stand on the side of science and facts. For example, they are likely to show you things like income statistics showing disparities between, say, male and female income and call you a “denier” if you dare to say that females are not necessarily being discriminated against as much as is often thought. They are also quick to observe that religious belief and oposition to the theory of evolution is more common among non-leftists than among leftists, not to menion manmade global warming. Moreover, in a broader sense, the idea of having a specialist board that plan the economy and use “reasonable” estimates on what kind of prices are just, what types of compensationary privilieges should be given certain groups to compensate for innate obstacles etc, is in some sense much closer to scientific procedure than to accept that “value is subjective”, “man is not capable of improving on the spontaneous outcomes of the market” etc. Many leftists are indeed convinced that a communist society would work out just fine if it weren’t for all “non-scientific” and “irrational” and “egocentric” reactionaries who stand in the way for their paradise. Sowell analyzes very neatly in “A conflict of visions” how people come to logically sound but completely different conclusions by making different assumptions of the nature of mankind and the meaning of words such as justice and freedom.
Well I was a Marxist before I was a libertarian.
"Many leftists are indeed convinced that a communist society would work out just fine if it weren’t for all “non-scientific” and “irrational” and “egocentric” reactionaries who stand in the way for their paradise.’
Indeed, as witnessed by all the unmarked mass-graves East of the Vistula.
Anarchast Ep. 25 with Josh Luther - Josh’s road from Marxism to Anarchism
…stupid glitch won’t let me post video directly.
I’ll let Kickstarter handle the payment processing ^_~
Seriously tho, we’re too complacent. New options have opened up in recent decades. We no longer have to change hearts and minds to get a libertarian society going, we can start an experiment of our own and show the results of our actions.
It was argument by deed that convinced the British to deregulate during the 1800’s, to rampant success, spurred on by the example of America’s then-free trade. That could happen again, in the face of mixed-economy states failing the world over, their economies and currencies sinking under the battering waves of soaring interest rates, just as we predicted.
What we need is not another book on Austrian economics or libertarianism or more theory–those are good things too, but probably not going to have the greatest impact on a tone-deaf public and a media that ignores anything but the status quo. What we need is the argument of the deed, to show in reality the incontrovertible outcome of a free society.
And why wouldn’t libertarians flock to such a society, to put their money where their mouth is?
America forced the world to advance right along with it, and the waves of the American revolution crashed upon European and world monarchy and converted them to republicanism right along with us. Why couldn’t a truly free society, a libertarian society, similarly complete the revolution the Americans began and create an even greater impact?
That one doesn’t even stand up to a passing scrutiny. If firms could get the same work from women for any % less wage, firms would be forced to hire nothing but women to compete with others doing the same thing, becuase the firms hiring nothing but women would have a lower cost base and could compete strongly on price. It also doesn’t explain why women-owned firms don’t do exactly that.
So, it’s not a question of believing they’re right, it’s confirmation bias and ignoring contrary evidence. They’d rather believe in mythical oppression as an explanation because that’s a political cause. It’s the feminists who actually start thinking whom then become the enemy, to be silenced and ignored, like, say Tammy Bruce.
Leftists have always been extremely weak on economic theory–especially when it comes to theory of production. To cover for that, their economic theory has to exist in a fog of confused generalizations, platitudes, confusions of cause and effect, and simplistic reasoning. The result is more like anti-thought than thought.
The driver on the left is undoubtedly social issues, and they justify using force in order to achieve so-called good ends. But they do not look at the results–meaning they ignore outcomes and focus on intentions–which is again to ignore reality.
I love the story of the legislator whom thought she was doing a good thing by banning babies being held on airplanes. A plane had crashed and a poor baby had been ripped out of its mother’s arms in the crash, flew through the cabin and killed. So she proposed legislation to save kids’ lives by requiring parents to buy an extra seat so the poor kid can be strapped in.
But this fails to account for how people will react to such a law. The intention may be good, to save lives, but what is the outcome? What happens if we think beyond stage one? Will parents strap down their kids?
Parents have the option generally to fly or drive. Requiring parents to buy an extra plane ticket means many won’t be able to fly and will instead choose to drive. It is however much more dangerous to drive than to fly. Which means that, should such a policy go in place, it’s likely that the actual result of such a policy would be more dead babies than if you simply let parents hold their toddlers on the plane.
But the left doesn’t realize that every cause has an effect, and that every effect is in turn itself a cause.
Which, again, makes no sense for any student of history who can look at the actual results of societies where leftists have gained unopposed power in societies, places like Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and in the Khmer Rouge.
Conflict of Visions is a fantastic book sagenod.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was easier for a Marxist or whatever fringe ideology to turn to another frings ideology. It would probably be harder for a succesful mainstream progressive or social dem to turn libertarian, as that form of leftist liberalism is the relevant social custom.
Fortunately for us, we actually do speak an esoteric academic language that progressives loves so much -unfortuanatley for us - it essentially dissolves their hard on for the type of scientism aesthetic they have. So our arguments are irrelevant. It’s kind of hard saying intellectuals and science aren’t that special when you are addressing a view that is built off of classic Enlightenment principles.
yes ive turned a couple.if you allow x marxists who had never read marx.but they have read rothbard.
Nice reply, achaquesabetudo.
… the idea of having a specialist board that plan the economy and use “reasonable” estimates on what kind of prices are just, what types of compensationary privilieges should be given certain groups to compensate for innate obstacles
I find these people the hardest ones to convert.
achaquesabetudo and Anenome are both correct, but refer to different strands of collectivism.
You have the scientific type who use a form of faulty deductive reasoning that leads to the labour theory of value. They think that freedom and respect for property rights lead to capitalist exploitation, lead to the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few while everyone else ends up earning a subsistance wage.
Then you have the cultural marxists, who are positivist and relativist, attack science, attack logic, attack theory, run on pure emotion, usually work in Academia and the social sciences.
The first type can be made to see the logic of libertarianism and turned, as achaquesabetudo shows (Hans Hoppe has a brilliant article about this called ‘Marxist Austrian Class Analysis’). For the second type there is no hope for them, because their mental philosophy rejects logic and reality.
OT