I am currently debating with a libertarian socialist (a strange contradiction in terms) over property. He insists that society can function without property rights AND central control of any kind. I am trying to pry information out of him as to how exactly this would function, but it is proving to be a frustrating endeavor. So I wanted to ask if anyone here knows the mechanics involved or had a decent source of information on it. I want to give him the benefit of doubt, but the whole left libertarianism issue is starting to sound like wishful thinking.
Any of their silly critiques of property in resources can be extended to self-ownership or ‘personal’ property. If he does not believe in public property, what does he believe in? ‘Usage’ rights? These do nothing to resolve conflicts.
I’m not quite sure what he is getting at, which is why I am trying to research libertarian socialists views on property a bit.
His take on property seems to revolve around Locke, but I still can’t understand how it could be implemented realistically and without state or community control.
He offers this analogy:
“Moreover, think of land in common as an apartment shared by three individuals, each have their own room. They have interest in their own room, and can decorate it as they want, etc but they don’t own the room as PROPERTY, thus they cannot start smashing the walls without the consent of every other member of the commons because it all belongs to all and at the same time to none.”
Hmmm, I have never come across the term “libertarian socialist” before. I’ve heard of anarcho-communists, however. Perhaps you can start there and investigate. Don’t forget to report your findings!
There is no such animal. A Liberterian believes rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. These rights are based upon individual property rights starting with ownership of self and going on to ownership of other things. A socialist by definition is against private property and therefore against the basis of the right of an individual to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. The first part to go for the socialist is the Pursuit of Happiness as the government or other agency determines through violent force how the individual pursues happiness. Notice that this is really not a right at all to the socialist. The worst thing a socialist does short of curtailing liberty and life is to curtail the ability of individual owners of things to transact (trade) these things on mutually agreeable terms. Now the slippery slope to violent oblivion… As individuals resist the force of the agency, the agency must increase penalties to keep the individuals complying. This situation is now unstable as the increasing resistance from the individual results in increased reduction in propperty and/or liberty from individual. Eventually as always happens in socialist societies the agency or state turns to violence and destroys life.
The three largest socialist experiments in history bore this out: 1. Russian Revolution and subsequent Purges of Stalin, 30 to 50 million people killed. 2. Facists (National Socialists) Revolutions in Germany and Italty, and subsequent massacre of WW2-20-30 million killed. 3. Original Communist Revolution in China plus subsequent Cultural Revolutions in China-10 to 15 million people killed.
Its a misuse of words, anyways. Libertarianism is free market. What he wants is liberal socialism, that fantasy existed about 80 years ago but was destroyed by the experiences of real socialism in the USSR.
Liberty can not exist without property rights. If you depend on the state for all your needs you have no choice but to obey the state. There can be no political dissent because those in power literally own you and can destroy you. If there is only one employer, you can not afford to offend it.
That scenario is perflectly compatible with free markets. “Private” property does not imply singular ownership. Group ownership is common, and oftentimes prefered over ownership by a single, private individual. In a free market, property is distributed according to the wishes and desires of the actors in that market. An apartment with three co-owners would certainly include some sort of an agreement, whether implicit or explicit, on how to treat the common areas (and walls, for that matter).
The real issue is how that property was allocated in the first place. Does the co-ownership come from three individuals freely choosing to co-own an apartment? If so, then we could call that process the free market, capitalism or libertarianism. On the other hand, if the co-ownership is not arrived at through purely voluntary means (say one or two of the co-owners forcefully change the ownership contract for whatever reason), we’d call it socialism.
Or course there are commons we don’t willfully choose to be a part of, such as the atmosphere. But to critique libertarianism on its treatment of those commons, he’ll need a better analogy.
Which, of course, assumes land is owned in common to begin with. How did such ownership come by? It is question-begging.
it all belongs to all and at the same time to none
Now that definitely doesn’t make much sense. In a situation where everyvody owns everything it becomes clearly impossible to do anything since one would spend all his time on negotiations, if it in fact is a libertarian world. In case there is some kind of a social contract that sets what can be done with property, then it’s no more a libertarian world, since it is clearly violating the rights of people who were unable to take part in the creation of the contract (by being unborn). Anyway, for me everykind of these leftist libertarians and anarchists make no sense since in their lack of state still some kind of instituions is required which would handle all the “planning” or they’re society would just break down since they couldn’t do anything. And the moment they allow some one to separate himself from this common-contract they become free-market capitalists.
Libertarians as such oppose the initiation of force. Whatever else specific libertarians may believe does not become part of libertarian doctrine simply because most libertarians believe it, unless of course it is a priori derivable from the opposition to the initiation of force. What we need to do with an idea like “libertarian socialism” (not a contradiction in terms, even if it may be a contradiction in practice) is to first figure out what it means. Is it possible to bring out a world without ownership without initiating force, regardless of whether it is preferable? It would seem not to be, but a proxy exists - we can imagine a word where ownership is exercised by a group or organization of some kind, which manages the property in a socialist, centrally controlled manner. Thus, for example, a commune is imaginable in a free world - the members of the commune simply come together and make the appropriate agreements (among us, no one may exercise ownership privileges over…) Now, will there be conflict among these people? Of course, and I predict that they would starve if the commune did not draft other people. But libertarian socialism certainly is possible, if we understand it as simply a management policy. For example, consider the family. This was also one of my problems with Atlas Shrugged - the payment and work assignment policies of the engine company are presented as the ultimate evil, but they were no such thing - people were free to quit, as John Galt amply demonstrated. In fact, he could have quit without giving a bitter speech, if he chose to.
Well yes, in that way it certainly could exist. But this means that it’s just one way for some to live and it shouldn’t be put on the same level as libertarianism and communism as an order for the whole society. As a way of management it can’t be compared to free-market anarchism, which is the world where this libertarian socialism can be practised.
Well yes, sure. In a libertarian world there’s nothing to prevent people from forming voluntary groups of any kind, including communistic ones, but I think the original question was is it possible to have world “libertarian socialism”? Obviously a world totally devoid of property rights is completely untenable because of the problems of self-ownership. And in a world partially devoid of property rights, all you have is socialism, certainly not libertarianism. So the whole idea is nonsense.
Oh I misread. So he’s just a Communist. It was believed that the Socialist State would melt away and a stateless “communism” would form.
In short, Russell Kirk, who claims that socialism was the heir of classical liberalism, and Ronald Hamowy, who sees socialism as the heir of conservatism, are both right; for the question is on what aspect of this confused centrist movement we happen to be focusing. Socialism, like liberalism and against conservatism, accepted the industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mobility, progress, higher living standards for the masses, and an end to theocracy and war; but it tried to achieve these ends by the use of incompatible, conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc. Or rather, to be more precise, there were from the beginning two different strands within socialism: one was the right-wing, authoritarian strand, from Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism and which was thus a projection of conservatism trying to accept and dominate the new industrial civilization. The other was the left-wing, relatively libertarian strand, exemplified in their different ways by Marx and Bakunin, revolutionary and far more interested in achieving the libertarian goals of liberalism and socialism; but especially the smashing of the state apparatus to achieve the “withering away of the State” and the “end of the exploitation of man by man.” Interestingly enough, the very Marxian phrase, the “replacement of the government by men by the administration of things,” can be traced, by a circuitous route, from the great French radical laissez-faire liberals of the early nineteenth century, Charles Comte (no relation to Auguste Comte) and Charles Dunoyer. And so, too, may the concept of the “class struggle”; except that for Dunoyer and Comte the inherently antithetical classes were not businessmen versus workers, but the producers in society (including free businessmen, workers, peasants, etc.) versus the exploiting classes constituting, and privileged by, the State apparatus. [4] Saint-Simon at one time in his confused and chaotic life was close to Comte and Dunoyer and picked up his class analysis from them, in the process characteristically getting the whole thing balled up and converting businessmen on the market, as well as feudal landlords and others of the State privileged, into “exploiters.” Marx and Bakunin picked this up from the Saint-Simonians, and the result gravely misled the whole left-socialist movement; for, then, in addition to smashing the repressive State, it became supposedly necessary to smash private capitalist ownership of the means of production. Rejecting private property, especially of capital, the left socialists were then trapped in a crucial inner contradiction: if the State is to disappear after the revolution (immediately for Bakunin, gradually “withering” for Marx), then how is the “collective” to run its property without becoming an enormous State itself in fact, even if not in name? This was a contradiction which neither the Marxists nor the Bakuninists were ever able to resolve.
In my experience, there are two basic types of “libertarian socialists”: (1) those that support free association and (2) those that do not. I get along relatively well with the former, but the latter I have major problems with. I found the idea of libertarian socialism to be a contradiction in terms for a while, however, upon further research and reflection it makes sense in terms of a voluntary communal or syndicalist type of organization structure. Granted, in utilitarian terms it is a horrid and unworkable idea, but I fully support anyone’s liberty to join or not join such an organization, provided of course that they do not force me into it. On the other hand, the types who favor it as a compulsory system, and who advocate mass-theft, are really not libertarians at all. Unfortunately, from my observations at least, a good chunk of the anarchist left is constituted by people who advocate violence as means to their ends, and also hypocritically support state interventions in the present as some kind of pretext to a future anarchy (probably because of the left-over influence of Marx).
I did try to find specifics on my own, but didn’t really come away with anything, beyond some vague rational between ownership and posession. I have no idea how that would work without some outside authority.
True, but that would make it only a commune within a libertarian society. But the elimination of private property would apparently be society-wide since libertarian socialism is based on the ‘private ownership is exploitation’ mantra of Marxists.
A good article on the matter of left- vs market anarchism.
He is confusing common ownership & rights with collective ownership & rights.
Well since the “land” pre-exists human labor it can not be the result of human labor. Property rights are based on labor as the natural extension of self.
The first human being in the world can go anywhere and do anything they wish. With the addition of others those abilities are not abrogated they are only transformed into individual EQUAL rights (common rights). You are free to act so long as you do not infringe on any other individuals equal right to the same.
Community of goods what certainly be possible in a libertarian society. The other way round would however not work that well, since the state has control over all (technical/formal) means of production under socialism. If people are opposed to capitalism/market/private property etc., they ought to start a commune by their own means. Funny, but I don’t see Marxists, Socialists doing that. They seem to prefer living in “Capitalist” countries.