The difference between big-L and little-l libertarianism

Miscellaneous General
1

I think the root philosophical difference is that big-L Libertarianism is concerned with the pursuit of happiness, where little-l libertarianism is concerned with simply being happy. The pursuit of happiness is not happiness. In fact, if you allow yourself to be sucked into and consumed by the political argument over how and whether the government will allow you to pursue your own happiness, you are not furthering your happiness.

The modern political order rests on the inversion of the natural human instinct to pursue individual happiness. This inversion is the result of a long history of many ideas and attitudes which have infused our culture. The greatest threat to the State is a public which is simply happy. A public which cannot be made to fear deprivation and loss cannot be negotiated with.

This is why so many of the State’s memes are centered around whetting the material appetites and making you feel that you’re missing out on life. The path to happiness is to throw your whole being into service to the status quo order, to scratch and claw your way up that corporate ladder.

Liberty itself is just a means. The end is happiness or satisfaction. Preoccupation with the means (“being free”) can lead to a loss of focus on the end. The government cannot take your happiness away. The Establishment cannot take your happiness away. Nothing can take your happiness away unless you let it.

Happiness is a two-sided equation. On the one side is contentment, that is, squelching your appetites to suit your situation in life. The once wealthy man who drinks himself to death is a fool… why should the pleasant memories of the good things he had in life cause him misery? All that is required for him to be happy is to simply a re-adjust his expectations from life.

On the other side of the equation is good fortune or prosperity. Being prosperous is the result of a combination of preparation, diligence and good luck. It’s like the old phrase “the early bird gets the worm.” Getting the worm is the prerequisite to expanding the appetites which you can afford to maintain in your life. If you build a better widget and start a company that earns lots of income for you, you can afford to eat better cuisine, live in a finer house, and so on. Your situation has improved and so may the appetites which you cultivate within yourself.

Just like you must live within your means if you do not want to go bankrupt (spend less than or equal to what you earn), so you must restrict your appetites to remain happy within the situation you find yourself in. Whetting appetites which you cannot maintain is a sure recipe for all sorts of mental disorders… depression, neurosis, etc. You must exhibit virtues (diligence, industry, frugality, etc.) if you intend to improve your wealth. Similarly, you must exhibit virtues if you intend to increase your prosperity in the most general sense - your social standing and accolades, your personal relations and friendships, your family relations, your physical well-being, etc.

The most important goal for the furtherance of liberty (increasing the ease with which we may pursue our own happiness without fear of plunder and arbitrary rights violations) is to educate people about the science of happiness or satisfaction. This is where big-L libertarianism parts ways with little-l libertarianism. The former sees the promotion of angst regarding the disintegration or tyrannization of society as the primary vehicle for furthering liberty. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Whether or not these kinds of statements are true, fixation on the ascetic aspects of liberty is a contradiction of the very end to which liberty is but a means: happiness.

We need to teach people to be happy. A society composed of individuals with bullet-proof happiness is indomitable. It simply cannot be intimidated, subjugated or ruled over. The problem of tyranny is, then, self-solving… the tyrants will go away and seek greener pastures. There is no need to wring our hands over liberty. We simply need to each carefully maintain our own happiness and pursue it in whatever ways are available to us irrespective of the political environment in which we find ourselves.

Clayton -

2

I guess I would be “big L” than according to you?

If one sees the working of intersubjectivity in constant flux, disequalibrium, and in a continual state of “creative destruction”, with expectations that contain too many unique variables to really care about - that all we are concerned with is pursuit, process etc . This is the working of things, this is force/ action, why things are, and what things are.

Any form of looking at stuff as things “as such” seems like a type of conservativism and Platonism.

I agree with you that “to be free” is merely “to be rid of” - and when one acknowledges they are “rid of” something - it automatically shows them the power to assert something. One is “free” due to the weakness of uneccessary institutions that try to assert power they simply don’t have. In the end this is probably all left wing deconstructions is - and why it works both psychologically and socially within the world. This is probably why the world looks best when people dispel nonsense - as it calrifies how they use their power to pursue their ends at any given moment.

3

I am in the Libertarian Party and generally capitalize most ideologies or principles to which I adhere. At least that is my reasoning.

But feel free to make whatever distinctions you wish. My only point is that some of us may have a very different reasoning for our capitalization or lack thereof.

4

Would it be prudent to stray into what will certainly become a psychological discussion if we approach people on these terms? What I myself always liked about libertarianism is that it is caveman-simple and Victorian gentleman-cold: do.not.hit.me (but otherwise drop dead if you please)! Morphing this basic idea into a quest to guide others to happiness is the road to utopia, I feel.

But I agree that sometimes we get too involved in the ideology for our own sake: can you believe that there are people who are full time libertarians, as in, for a living?

5

I believe there is a science of happiness, though it is mostly inductive (experimental) in nature, not deductive. Introspection is not much use in determining what will make you happy. Here’s a thread on this subject I wrote recently, I would be happy to have your input.

And, by the way, what happened to your “How the State has outdone anarchy (until now)” thread? I’ve been thinking of the ideas presented there more and more frequently lately.

Clayton -

6

It evolved into the “minarchy and panarchy” thread in the new forums. Back then I was roughly a Rothbardian, now I’m more of a Hayekian on societal matters.

Will certainly check the linked thread out!

7

I was under the impression that Big L Libertarian meant the Libertarian Party, while small l was the idea

8

@Joe: Me, too. But then, there is this “tension” between the two… if the party’s ideas are, in fact, little-libertarianism, then why the tension? I believe it goes back to the tension over whether libertarianism is something that requires self-sacrifice to bring about or whether libertarianism is simply something that you believe to be the case about human beings, i.e. that we seek happiness/satisfaction and that, in order to attain that, we desire liberty. The self-sacrifice view of libertarianism has a more “religious” feel to it and fits well with the ideologically-driven world of politics.

Clayton -

9

Clayton,

About your original post. I was with you all the way until your last paragraph. I see no evidence for it.

That said, I agree and with, and was inspired by, the rest.

10

I don’t mean it normatively as in “everyone has a duty to teach others …” rather, I mean “if liberty is a cause for you and you would like to further it, then…” Wringing your hands about the fact that people are not free will not change anything, it will only make you less happy (and, thus, less free). If, instead, you teach others to be happy (because you want them to be free), freedom will come as a by-product of their happiness.

A society of individuals that pursue their own happiness is indomitable because they cannot really be threatened. Even if they are conquered and forced to pay taxes, they have not been defeated because they continue to be happy anyway. It is not until society becomes confused about the moral status of happiness and sees the conscientious pursuit of self-fulfillment and happiness as a vice, that society is truly defeated and, therefore, become enslaved.

Conquest and subjugation is always a temporary state of affairs. Like bad weather, it will one day pass. It might take several generations but it will not last forever. This is the historical record. But slavery is a different matter. A society that has given up hope for individual happiness and begins to make a vice out of happiness has become perverted in the fullest sense - it is unnatural. Subjugation is inevitable for such a society. If it is not ruled by one man, it will be ruled by another. Throwing off tyranny is useless because the society has become self-tyrannizing.

This is why I wrote the last paragraph. If liberty is a cause for you, then stop wringing your hands and start being happy and teaching others to do likewise. For those that do not have liberty as a cause, this admonition does not apply. There is no element of sanctimoniousness to this, either… I don’t think people who take up the cause of liberty are more moral or noble than those who do not.

Clayton -

11

I’ve been thinking about this lately, but in a different perspective. In the light of pursuit of happiness compared to being happy, but I was thinking that a government can not guarantee happiness. People expect the government to handle their material concerns and desires they feel they have a right to or some overall standard of living that our technology has let us reach, and this standard should be accessible to all (or to that extent). Instead you see the government finding more ways to restrict whatever pursuits there are through it’s various bureaucratic obstacles.

I see the difference in big L and little l libertarianism just from those who associate themselves with the party itself and their views and perspectives on libertarianism. The difference (I may be generalizing) is those who are less well read compared to those who are more well read. The language and focus for some is liberty, that’s the end, compared to just being happy, which is the base for others. If liberty is your goal, you may go through a lot and not be happy about any of it. If being happy is your goal, you’ll find joy in pursuing liberty.

There’s some Leonard Read quotes that fit this idea perfectly, but not being on my own computer right now I don’t have them on me. I’ll just post this instead.

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12

@Bert: Great quote!

I have two little kids in school right now and it’s just astounding the amount of mind-f*** that kids are put through by the schools. Part of the reason I spend so much time thinking about these issues is I want to be in a position to “de-program” my kids, at least, to the extent I am able… I want them to see the world without the blinders the school system is trying to put onto them with “education”. From there, it’s ultimately up to them what choices they make in life. But, for the most part, kids don’t even have a fighting chance at really making their own choices in life after they are crippled by the government school system.

Instead of seizing life and making of it what they will, they stumble through life from one consumer product to the next. They have been filled with any of a number of non-specific fears that keep them from pursuing happiness, trap them in a cycle of depression and, most importantly, prevent them from critically examining their own life. I was homeschooled so this provides me a little bit of an outsider’s perspective in this regard… but then I went to university and got a corporate job and the soul-stifling pressures that public school is intended to prepare you for have hit me twice as hard. I just want my kids to be able to find a way to escape the whole racket and live happy, fulfilling lives without being forced to submit to the mind-f*** either in grade school or in the bullshit corporate world.

Clayton -

13

I seem to be facing the same expectations of what I should want to be and aspire to be in 10, 15, 20 years. Thing is I never felt the most obvious mold fit me: graduate high school, graduate college, get a corporate job, etc. I watched the people around me and how it affected them and turned away from it. Might not be the best idea in the long run, but I don’t have that figured out either.

Last year I took a semester off (of which I didn’t have the money to go back anyway), took some time off work, and my girlfriend and I went across the country. Visiting national parks, museums, skate parks, and other things across the country was better than staring at a computer in a class room. After that I haven’t been back, I really don’t plan on going back, and it’s more likely I’ll travel the country than go back to college (anytime soon). The thing is that change or idea doesn’t appear to everyone, it breaks the cycle, and family and those who don’t see outside the box don’t like it. At least I don’t have a ton of student loan debt or in a job I’m miserable with like a lot of people I know. It’s not like I wouldn’t want a good job, but that is more like a dream to me than traveling, which I find funny how those who are stuck in a grid seem to dream of traveling the country over working a job. If I can have fun playing folk songs on my guitar driving around seeing the world that I would have never seen otherwise I’ll take that for now.

I’ve been thinking of this from Good Will Hunting:

**Will**: See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.
**Clark**: Yeah, but I will have a degree, and you'll be serving my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.
**Will**: *[smiles]* Yeah, maybe. But at least I won't be unoriginal.
15

The problem is all the people whom think they would be happiest if everyone would do what they say :stuck_out_tongue: That’s the link between tyrants and happiness.

Just as the tyrant still believes he is free, even while he has made a slave of those around him.

What’s needed is a principled happiness which rejects aggression. Then the tyrant cannot take root, because no one will buy his argument that joining him in aggression will lead to their happiness.