Proudhon was not a Marxist. He was a mutualist.
And you called his definition of capitalism “marxism” because…?
What are you having trouble understanding EiK?
LS, socialism isn’t necessarily Marxist. As for saying “left-libs don’t accept AE”, left-libs are Austrian dissidents. If you look at Konkin, Spangler or Carson, they all incorporate Austrian insights into their work. They just refuse to settle into the dogmatism you see here of “egalitarianism is bad, all voluntary actions are equally good, free markets and capitalism are identical”.
Danny, you’re getting into No True Scotsman territory with your claim that left-libertarian free markets aren’t markets(!). Capital and land would still exist, you know, and left-libertarianism would actually have more entrepeneurship.
I am scrolling up and I cannot find where LS stated this.
On a side note, Marxism is necessarily socialist, not the other way around.
Danny, you’re getting into No True Scotsman territory with your claim that left-libertarian free markets aren’t markets(!). Capital and land would still exist, you know, and left-libertarianism would actually have more entrepeneurship.
Can you actually substantiate your assertions? (Minus the part about land still existing)
As filc indicated, I never claimed that. I try to argue with precision. Address what I have written. If you need clarification or have a query, ask it.
I have yet to meet a left-lib who understands and consistently employs praxeology as a starting point for human action. If you do not understand and employ praxeology, but make claims in conflict with it, in my mind, you can no more be an Austrian than an apple is a banana. And you can call it a No True Scotsman, but Austrianism is SOMETHING, and to claim that Mises contributions are outside Austrianism reduces AE to what?
I am not talking about philosophy, or ethics, I am strictly speaking about economics as a value free science, which is what Austrianism is. So to claim that left-libs, which are a political/philosophical group, are dissidents from value free science, is ridiculous.
If you believe this ^^^ is Austrianism, then you do not understand economics or Austrianism at all.
You’re a nice enough guy, but like so many leftists who land here, you have a perception of the “is” that makes your own claims contradictory. Please, please, please take the time to learn about AE so you can decide for yourself if it has merit or not. Do the work which others will not do. It’s necessary to be taken seriously, and not another knee jerk defender of strawmen arguments.
LS,
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You said something was Marxist, when it seems you meant it was socialist.
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I don’t mean that left-libs are dissidents from Austrian economics. I’m saying that they’re dissidents within an Austrian framework from ancap orthodoxy.
No, I meant Marxist. Socialism is too broad and general a term to have any meaning.
Ancap has nothing to do with Austrian economics whatsoever. The only people who would conflate the two, are those who understand neither.
I never claimed that ancap is inherently linked to Austrian economics. I guess I meant the strict ancap framework prevalent amongst many Austrians today, such as Block, Hoppe, and Kinsella.
I would say there are four general themes that come up in left-libertarianism that tend not to come up in more standard versions.
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Semantics. TBH this is just annoying, to virtually everyone I think, but for some reason left-libertarians have made a big deal out of how libertarianism should be labelled and presented. It’s not there is no validity to the the points made but I highly doubt they are worth the effort. I tend to not really bother calling myself LL anymore just because there are far more interesting things to debate than the true meaning of left and right.
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Thick Libertarianism. All left-libertarians believe that libertarianism is part of a wider bundle of concepts and that the NAP is a necessary but insufficient condition for a truly free society. In other words, LLs argue that a person can be free from aggression while still lacking much in the way of autonomous decision making and that certain cultural values end up being antithetical to non-aggression in the long run. For example, if everyone believes insert marginalised minority here are really subhuman it’s very unlikely that they will refrain from aggression. Obviously no one is in favour of enforcing cultural values by law.
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“Leftist ends, Libertarian means”. Related to the above. The sort of ideas LLs like to work on are ways in which the concerns traditionally associated with the left would not only be promoted by the NAP but are actually hindered by more statist means. Essentially, if you agree with the second point, these are just extra points in favour of libertarianism. As well as it being good because it respects people’s rights and creates more wealth it’s also good for ending cultural authoritarianism too.
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Different views on property and contracts. Almost all LLs will have at least one “deviation” in the following areas: what counts as a proportional response when defending property, what counts as just appropriation and what counts as abandonment. This is less true of left-rothbardians though. Some differ on rules for transfering property too, though it seems to be much rarer. It’s this point that causes the most controversy in my experience.
What does this,
an Austrian framework from ancap orthodoxy
mean?
An all round good explanation
Overall good post, JamesB, but I’d like to comment on some things.
From my perspective, the libertarian right and so-called “plumbline” or “standard” libertarianism is just as if not more mired in attachment to certain semantics. The problem is that they cling so much to certain esoteric meanings for terms that when they encounter a left-libertarian they end up misunderstanding what is being said and attacking strawmen.
I would say that semantics is useful insofar as the purpose is to clarify things in a discussion or debate. It’s not that there is an essential, true meaning to words, but that it is nonetheless relevant to take the historical, common, and esoteric usages of terms into account if one really wants to whittle away at ambiguities.
Just to be clear, thick libertarianism is a broad concept that is not exclusive to left-libertarianism. Substantive versions of left-libertarianism are forms of thick libertarianism, but there are also right-libertarian forms of thickness. In a sense, thickness is holism in that it interconnects different domains, refusing to reduce things to a particular domain. It integrates libertarianism within the context of a broader view of the world, with which it is inseparable.
With that being said, it may be the case that more standard verisons of libertarianism are not as “thick” as left-libertarianism because there is an overal discrepancy between the degree to which or level at which each of them merge or separate political economy from other areas. The “plumbline” narrative is essentially a statement rejecting thickness, although I also think it often functions as an obfuscation of the commitments that people actually have and hence is intellectually dishonest.
So when a Left-Lib says something nonesensical like the following
It is, folks like me, who are too mired in my own esoteric meanings that I mis-understood the statement? Can we just be honest here and admit that some Left-Lib concepts largely are disjointed and when, in fairness, we request a definition of their own we can’t get one. Many of us make a best effort to resolve any semantical issues which may exist. You pretend like we don’t, and it’s us mired in our own esoteric jargon. But when I read statements like the above it seems like your comment should be more applied to folks who believe in those types of things, unwilling to critically analyze the reasoning in their beliefs.
Finally, why are we still clinging on to this left-right dichotomy.
Simple minds love abstractions and totems.
Great explanation.
Sure, I just think an unecessary amount of time has been devoted to defining what the meaning of left, capitalism, wage slavery etc is. Or more absurdly, that Rothbardians are actually socialists. I think that was when I decided to call it a day with the whole definition debate. It’s useful insofar as it clarifies what we mean in debates but when it’s got to the point of insisting on the terms even when both parties know exactly what is being meant by them.
This is true. Maybe “All left-libertarianism is thick libertarianism, but not all thick libertarianism is left-libertarianism” would be a suitable qualifier.
As BP says thin libertarianism often seems to be a cover for subtle endorsement of immorality and I’ve yet to meet a libertarian who is 100% a thin libertarian.
I wonder how much BP agrees with your take on morality, your thoughts of leftism, and your manifesto. I wonder what the consequences of the world would be that you state are good for the things he would disagree with, should he have any disagreements.