[youtube:rAl6fMfuTxA]
What say ye?
I agree with it for the most part. The term ‘capitalism’ is an anti-concept, with little bearing in most peoples’ minds to how we use it (i.e. a free exchange economy predicated on private ownership of resources.) For some reason, a lot of people think by right-libertarianism that we mean thinkers like Dr Hoppe, Mises, Rothbard etc. However, although some of them tend to be culturally conservative in their orientation, they are radical in their advocacy of total privatization (and they seem to recognize this by the concepts they raise in their works, e.g. Hoppe’s rehabilitation of the classical liberal class theory.) In that sense, I am a right-libertarian. On the other hand, if the term is used to designate statist libertarians, e.g. most Catoites, then I think it fits perfectly and I want nothing to do with individuals of that sort. Unfortunately, outside the Austrian School and some other groups, most libertarians seem to be vulgar libertarians.
What’s that music?! It’s amazing.
Your content is interesting. Libertarians could distinguish themselves from conservatives perhaps by focussing on the ending of corporate welfare as a key issue. This would also attack the military industrial complex “where it lives”.
I liked the critique, but I’m not so sure that the proposed solutions were as good; property theory has come a long way since Locke, and I’m not so sure that his views are the best on the issue. You might be interested in taking a look at Hillel Steiner’s and Peter Vallentyne’s collection, Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (that is, if you have access to a library that has it; it’s probably not worth buying!). If you can’t get to that, I can probably suggest some other resources.
On the face of it, it seems more or less right but maybe a bit hysterical. The real problem is that this video–and this goes for many of those who employ the term “vulgar libertarianism”–aren’t keen on actually citing the works or books or articles with which they disagree. So how we anyone really see who is right here? The brush is so broad.
Now if you are talking about a Heritage-AEN-Cato-NatRev style support of a slightly more market-oriented status quo, that’s one thing. If you are talking about busting up all corporations, or smashing Microsoft because it sells to public schools, or expropriating the automotive industry on grounds that cars drive on public roads, that’s something else entirely. The goal might not be socialistic but the means are.
So far as I know, this phrase vulgar libertarianism comes from Kevin Carson, who is far from being a property-rights libertarian in the Misesian Rothbard sense. The JLS devoted an entire issue to his thought, and I found it quite devastating. If I were a socialist seeking to enlist libertarians in my cause, I hope I would be clever enough to manufacture a critique of capitalism along these lines. It toys with the brains of principled libertarians.
All issues of left and right aside, the plumb line on libertarianism of the most principled sort is still For A New Liberty by Rothbard.
If Rothbard is what makes libertarianism, then I’m out.
I’ll be willing to admit that I don’t know of a string of theory that justifies government-owned property versus Locke’s method (but I’m a new guy - still learning) And you could always argue that we aren’t being stringent enough with principle. But does that make it necessarily a bad thing? If we are trying to travel the path from A to B, is arguing that we move towards the middle point “selling out”? I don’t see the problem in doing that so long as we admit that we are freely moving to “B” even though that may be unachievable right now.
Clearly - somebody who advocates stopping at the midpoint must have a reason - and we can argue the principles associated with that. But until we get to that point - is the spooky music necessary?
I like the gist of the video, and I think J. Tucker’s critique is valid. The main part that I disagree with is the idea that market anarchists should ally with radical leftists for political progress. That’s like saying that you’ll be able to beat the Giants if only you manage to form an unbeatable team of leukemia patients and quadrapalegics. Yeah, alright, the state is trembling in its jackboots right now.
What’s wrong with Rothbard?
From chapter two of "For A New Liberty":
“…as we have seen, no producer really creates matter; he takes nature-given matter and transforms it by his labor energy in accordance with his labor energy in accordance with his ideas and vision. But this is precisely what the pioneer - the ‘home-steader’ - does when he brings previously unowned land into his own private ownership. Just as the man who makes steel out of iron ore transforms that ore out of his know-how and with his energy, and just as the man who takes iron out of the ground does the same, so does the homesteader who clears, fences, cultivates, or builds upon the land. The homesteader, too, has transformed the character of the nature-given soil by his labor and his personality. The homesteader is just as legitimately the owner of the property as the sculptor or the manufacturer; he is just as much a ‘producer’ as the others.”
If you accept this view, you essentially rule out the idea of dispossession altogether, and declare out of existence any reason for discussing property theory at all.
As far as the whole “left” thing goes, I think “left” is generally being used in a classical sense. So when I think of “returning libertarianism to its leftist roots”, state-socialism doesn’t come to mind. Benjamin Tucker does. I suppose it depends what one means by “left”. In this context I think of it as signifying anti-authoritarian radicalism, so I have no problem considering libertarianism “leftist”. But in either case, I’m really keen on the idea that the state is homesteadable (and possibly even certain corporations).
Ok, I thought more on this overnight. Jefferson was on the left, Paine on the Left, Bastiat on the left – fine. So why was the Old right on the right? Difference in views? No. it was because the left sold out completely, first with world war I (including the American anarchists of the late 19th century) and most especially with the New Deal. Hazlitt and Flynn and Garrett all thought they were left, until the New Deal when the left became the supporters of the corporate state. So of course they were considered to be on the right. Later the New Left sounded pretty much like the Old Right.
In any case, given all this history, I can’t imagine a less fruitful path than to endlessly assert, with hard dogmatism, that we are on the left as versus the right. I agree that right now, the right is a much greater danger to liberty than the left – Lew Rockwell said as much in a column three years ago. At the same time, you can’t just wipe out a century of political history and pretend that it didn’t happen.
I don’t get it. Libertarians are not a part of the left-right conflict as far as either the left or the right are concerned. Why should we try to inject ourselves into something we are not a part of.
Left-Right is only useful when describing people of similar world views. Trying to use left vs right to compare anarchists to statists is silly. It only becomes useful when, for example, comparing Noam Chomsky to Murray Rothbard.
There can be left wing and right wing libertarians, but libertarianism can not be so narrowly defined.
What do you think is a reasonable view on intellectual property?
I ask, because by using the performance of Honegger’s Pacific 231 without attribution either to the composer or to the performers you have, according to some, violated their rights, which is fairly ironic given the content of your video. Obviously a thorny issue in this day and age.
But I believe it would be common courtesy to give credit where credit is due. I spent a fair amount of time figuring out what the piece was, I would still like to know who the performers were.
Thanks.
I agree. The old libertarian left sold out and ideologically disintegrated. The same is true of the “old right” that is so romantisized by many libertarians. They sold out and ideologically disintegrated as well. Many of them ended up blending into the general conservative movement and losing their radical edge.
When the franchise is limited to aristocrats, being on the left only means that you’re a left-aristocrat.
First of all I must state that I am likely not well versed enough to make a comment, but if nothing else perhaps I can provoke some smarter than I to respond.
That said, I have come to a very similar conclusion to what Jeff Tucker says here. From what I have read (I think it was from the evil Cato VP David Boaz’s book Libertarianism - evil because most at LvMI see them as sell-outs - I actually really like the book, which pays homage to both Rothbard and Mises) the terms left and right referred to which side of the legislative assembly that Bastiat and his cohorts were seated. Bastiat being a liberal and sitting on the left, etc. Of course any time that an idea comes to be accepted as commonly understood it has been so disfigured and contorted that it no longer has anything to do with it’s original meaning. I can’t remember if it was Orwell or some socialist theorist who pointed out that a great thing for a politician to do is redefine words as their opposite so that any discussion of them becomes meaningless. I know that Orwell made great use of the idea in 1984, in which the “Ministry of Truth” destroyed all facts and disseminated propaganda, the “Ministry of Peace” made perpetual war, etc.
So it is only natural that the “left” would come to be the party of big government, social welfare, etc. because they were the original “progressives”, or “liberals” (progressive originally meaning progressing away from state oppression and toward liberty - see how it now means the opposite also?). So now that the "left’ were the New Dealers, the only thing you could be if you were opposed to the New Deal was “right”.
Tucker is absolutely correct that talking about left and right are meaningless and useless, but most people who think for themselves have know this for a very long time. But there are those who decide to be on either the Red team or the Blue team are going to close their ears and minds to any who disagree with the people who tell them what to think (like the girl that told me that “You have to listen to Sean Hanity EVERY DAY!”
And I agree with a Republican congress and Republican President the right is dangerous, but I bet the left would make up for lost time very, very quickly if they controlled both executive and legislative branches. Imagine the unprecedented growth in amazingly destructive social programs to finally make us all “equal” (whatever that means - and also I would like to know what “fair” means if we have any omnipotent commentators in the peanut gallery).
How so?
Rothbard is suggesting that people produce the value in natural objects when they mix their labor with them. If this is the way we look at it, then we’re practically committed to saying that dispossession isn’t a problem; people aren’t being deprived of anything by privatization; homesteading is Pareto improving. Does that make sense?
Danny, I think you are misinterpreting what Rothbard is saying. I have read the book a couple of times and the way I understand it is not that people produce value in natural object by mixing labor with them. Rather that they produce something more valuable than the object was originally and that once it has been improved that it is very hard to separate the labor from the original object and thus it should become their own private property. However he does talk about merely walking on land as using that land and thus it becoming the property of the first person to walk on it.
Rothbard’s objective with his book is to provide a truly consistent framework for a legal system based on the rights of private property and to be consistent with what the rights of private property are so that everyone, even the most simple person with no knowledge of the legal system will understand what is right, or wrong, allowed or disallowed, and to know these things intuitively. (Think about developing a legal system for a society of children who will only be able to follow consistent, logical rules)
Also there is a lot of context around the quote that you left out (understandably, because to really get the context I think one has to read the whole book). Rothbard’s purpose is to define rules that can be used as firm principles with no exceptions. Such as the example of yelling “FIRE” falsely in a crowded theatre being not an exception to the right of free speech, but a violation of an implied contract between movie patron, and theatre owner. Therefor, in this example Rothbard attempts to prove that there should be no exceptions to the right of free speech, but that the rights of private property and contractual agreement must also remain valid. So in the “fire” case, you have the right to say whatever you want, but the people who are harmed by your actions also have the right to be compensated for the damages done to them by you.
Property (or objects) can only be acquired in 1 of 3 ways. By purchase from another person, by gift from another person, or by homesteading of unowned property.
So back to your original statement, when Rothbard is talking about people taking possession of something which is unowned and mixing labor with it that it then becomes their own, he is trying to lay down a system by which unowned property could be allocated in a society based on the rights of private property. He also explains that for example, if one were to walk a huge perimeter that only the ground that was actually walked on would become his property and the area inside of it would still be unowned. His sole objective is to be consistent, which seems to be a theme with most Austrian Libertarian thought, because complex legal systems with myriad exceptions to every rule are nearly impossible for anyone to follow or understand without constant study and updating of all the new rules. Having to check legality for everything you do slows progress and only benefits lawyers. Layers and judges of some sort would still be necessary to determine the nuances of the law, but I imagine there would be much, much fewer of them.
Folowing his logic land can only be dispossessed in two of the three ways mentioned above, it can either be sold, or given away. And for the right price someone would probably sell their land. However they should never be forced to do so. Rothbard also talks about land once owned is always owned unless sold or given away, and never returns to being unowned even if it is not used (contrary to the Georgist proposition that land can be homesteaded if it has not been used in x number of years).