What's your beef with Roderick Long and "left-libertarianism"?

Economics Political Theory
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Freedom4Me73986:

@Charles Johnson: Do you call yourself a socialist?

Yes, in Tucker’s sense. Some reasons for doing so discussed here, and here, and also here.

And are you anti-boss like many others in the ALL seem to be?

Sure.

I think bossing and conventional employment are both (1) likely to be unstable, and economically unsustainable, in a fully freed market; and (2) kind of shitty ways to treat your fellow human beings.

John James:

You think that being pro-free market, and simultaneously against- private ownership of capital goods, [. . .] isn’t paradoxical?

I don’t know, man. I’m not against what you seem to think I’m against, so I don’t feel like I’m under much of an obligation to figure out whether that combination is paradoxical or not. My concerns have to do with the (politically-enabled) concentration and monopolization of control over capital goods, not with individual ownership of capital goods, much less with prices or production governed by market competition. Perhaps this will help; and perhaps this will.

But part of the reason that “free-market anti-capitalism” sounds paradoxical is because most people (both people who consider themselves anti-capitalists, and people who consider themselves pro-) tend to operate on a tacit or explicit assumption that, if an economic system allows for private investment in capital goods or individual ownership of capital goods, then to the extent it allows for that, it is naturally going to drive towards an equilibrium characterized by gigantic concentrations of capital ownership, mediated through top-down corporations on the one hand; and large masses of people with little or no ownership of the capital needed to sustain their own livelihoods, on the other. Part of the point of the whole FMAC gig is to highlight that assumption, and to challenge it – to provoke a conversation about whether capital ownership really tends towards top-down capital concentration, or whether (and this is what I believe) a freed market would tend to have a centrifugal effect on wealth, with more capital ownership much more widely dispersed, and much more often managed through small-scale, decentralized, informal, cooperative or purely individualized arrangements.

John James:

So…what’s wrong with using a term people in general better understand

I don’t know exactly who are the “people in general” that you have in mind. And I don’t know what “term” you think would be obviously better for their understanding. Maybe you could give me some examples of each.

Certainly, when I leave out the bit about “leftism” or about “markets” or about “anti-capitalism” and I just call myself a “libertarian” or an “Anarchist” (both of which I often do), most people that I talk to don’t really have much of an immediate idea what that means, either. If they think they do, they are usually pretty confident that I must believe in things that I definitely do not believe in – for example, most people who hear me call myself a “libertarian” tend to interpret that as meaning that I vote for Ron Paul, or that I think that Fortune 500 corporations should be given free reign to dominate social and economic life even more than they currently do; or that I spend my time publishing justifications for corporate health insurance, third-world sweatshops and right-to-work laws. (Now, let’s set aside, for the moment, the question of whether or not I ought to do any of these things. Because in any case I certainly do not, and when people conclude that I do, they are mistaken.) If I were to call myself a “laissez-faire capitalist” (which I do not), I am pretty confident that these kind of mistaken conclusions, and belligerent misunderstandings, would be even more firmly entrenched by that terminological choice. Now on the other hand when I call myself an Anarchist quite a few people think that means that I believe in abolishing society, or that I want mob rule, or that I am opposed to any sort of social organization, or a society without money, commerce or formal education. A person once asked me (I was living in Las Vegas at the time) how people in Las Vegas would survive without a government to pipe water to the city; as if being an Anarchist obviously meant being opposed to piping water from one point to another. People have all kinds of weird ideas about what all of these terms means (as they always will, when it comes to terms that describe views that are radically different from anything in the political or social mainstream). Now I could complain that people are misunderstanding what I mean when I call myself a libertarian, or an Anarchist. And no doubt they are. But it seems to me that the best way to deal with a situation like this is to be self-conscious about the fact that my positions are by and large positions that I’ve come to outside of most people’s horizons of political understanding. And any terms that I choose to describe them are necessarily terms that are going to need some significant further explanation, clarification, and engaging with the initial misunderstandings that people have. If anything, there is some positive use in choosing terms that provoke people to question their assumptions, and to realize that they can’t understand quite what’s going on just by pulling out the set of thoroughly conventional political categories that they have in their cookie-cutter drawer.

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Sure.

I think bossing and conventional employment are both (1) likely to be unstable, and economically unsustainable, in a fully freed market; and (2) kind of shitty ways to treat your fellow human beings.

So how does a “bossless” factory work if there’s over 100 workers? How can that many people all make decisions w/o a boss? How can 10 people make a decision w/o a boss? Bosses exist for a reason. There way more efficient. Without one nothing would get done.

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Technically, this sounds like an argument for socialism. What basic difference is there between a state central planner and a ‘boss’ central planner. (Beyond the obvious one that the ‘boss’ plans with his own money, which I would think is a pretty huge one.)

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Technically, this sounds like an argument for socialism. What basic difference is there between a state central planner and a ‘boss’ central planner. (Beyond the obvious one that the ‘boss’ plans with his own money, which I would think is a pretty huge one.)

Wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyfiDINmSvs

And: socialism = collectivism = statism. I can’t see why anyone with any knowledge of basic economics or philosophy would be a socialist over a capitalist. Tucker was a moron.

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Your latter assumption is wrong. :slight_smile:

(I do use the label ‘left-libertarian’ occassionaly, although I do not agree, for example, that the employee-employer structure is a ‘shitty’ way of dealing with people. The many advantages of being an employee in wage labor are very clear to me.)

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Yes, I agree with this. I use(d) the term ‘substantive’ in that way and you used it in a different.

Ow, and let me start of by saying: thank you for taking the time to patiently explain your pov and it’s relation to liberty.

I also agree that there is a lot of value in left-libertarianism and I, generally, are leaning towards it.

Well; the reason why I used ‘style’ and ‘signaling’ is, obviously, not to mean that there aren’t differences. As you said: it is a sort of libertarian analysis and politics. (Just like a paleo-conservative libertarian analysis/politics would be another one.) I called it a signaling devise because it signals something ‘within’ the libertarian movement. But obviously; it signals something - a (in your terms) substantive grounded analysis of social process, actual politics, etc.

Personally I find the NAP a pretty bad philosophical foundation; I treat it, at best, as the posterchild of a philosophy. But I used it because it is a pretty clear example of one of the foundations of liberty. But again: the fact that people disagree about wether or not the NAP is the foundation, is just an internal ‘in crowd’ discussion; an calling yourself a ‘left-libertarian’ usually signals that you have a thicker conception of libertarianism, just like calling yourself a ‘natural law libertarian’, ‘consequentialist libertarian’ etc. all signal something about some aspect of your libertarianism - which are all substantive differences, of course - but not, as you said, that they aren’t libertarians.

Let me (further) develop a framework we use at Students For Liberty.

At Students For Liberty we have a framework that uses (1) Foundations, (2) Principles, (3) Policies and (something I add) (4) Consequences. On all four of these levels we can have genuine discussions within the libertarian framework.

(1) At the foundational level you have neo-Aristotelean arguments, Humean-Smithean arguments, Natural Law, Argumentation ethics, consequentialism, I even know a guy who has a Nietzschean foundation etc. This is the level of why you support general libertarian conclusions. Genuine disagreements can happen, however; having a different foundation doesn’t necessarily make you not a libertarian.

(2) At the level of principles we have what kind of ‘principles’ follow from these foundations. Students For Liberty tries to organize everyone who can agree on the principles of a free society, i.e. individual liberty for all. (Understood, more or less, in the negative interpretation.) In addition: Students For Liberty, as an organization, only wishes to associate with people with an open, tolerant view towards society (no sexism, racism, etc. is tolerated within the organization.) This doesn’t mean we necessarily believe that racism and sexism should be prohibited in a free society, but we think it’s bad practice within our organization. So if you have principles associated with (mostly) negative liberty, limited political power, etc. than you are ‘welcome’ at SFL. Additionally; I would say that these principles are really what ‘make’ a libertarian (combined with the next level, i.e. policies.) Left libertarians believe in limited (political) power and (by and large) ‘negative liberty’ (not forcing people to do stuf). Hence; they are, obviously, part of the liberty movement.

(3) Policies: on the third level, we have the level of policies. Some people (still) favour such things as school vouchers, a state, IP, etc. All of these are fine and can also lead to genuine discussion.

(4) Consequences: this is what you think that (1) the actual world policies actually cause in the world and (2) what you think abolishing the state (or a lot of the state’s power) would cause in the world. Again; genuine discussion is possible. Some might believe it would be a somewhat more private convenant, strictly hierarchical (but voluntary) system, others think it would be less of that and more economically equal.

‘Left-libertarianism’, I take it, signals specific positions on all of these 4 levels. Calling oneself a ‘orthodox Randian’ signals different positions, saying you are a ‘Rothbardian’, ‘a Friedmanite’, etc. all signal certain ideas on these levels of differences. But there is a core (at the ‘principles’ level) that we all share. This doesn’t mean we all have the same principles. For example: Rothbard never considered tolerance for minorities a key stone of libertarianism. (As long as you don’t violate their NAP, it is nothing political philosophy can talk about. Friedman, however, did believe that tolerance was a part of libertarianism (or his liberalism in any case).

This doesn’t mean that there are no differences; but they are, as you said, differences within the same philosophy, not outside of it. In addition, I would say that even if one would say ‘libertarianism is just the thin conception of the NAP’, it doesn’t follow that left-libertarianism are not libertarians. All thick conceptions, obviously, necessarily involve a thin conception. This is not directed at you, more a general statement towards people who want to kick left-libertarians out or do not get where the ‘need’ for such a terminology comes from.

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I think you nailed it.

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aka, it’s not correct, coherent, or relevent, so I’m not going to go into it because it would make everything I just said irrelevant.

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So you mean like…If someone wants to work for me and be my employee, I shouldn’t hire them? Because employing them would be a shitty thing to do?

I find that hard to believe. You clearly seem to have spent a great deal of time thinking about this.

What do I think you are against? What are you against? I’m not clear on either of these points.

As for “obligation”, I don’t see how your obligated to anything in this matter. You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to post here. You made a statement, and I simply asked you a clarifying question. Of course you have no “obligation” to answer it. I mean if you can’t or won’t, I guess that’s fine. I just see no reason for it. It’s a very simple question.

Oh. Silly me. I thought people thought it was paradoxical because according to the dictionary definitions of all those words (free-market, anti, capitalism, paradoxical), it is paradoxical.

My mistake.

People who use dictionaries to determine the most commonly understood meanings of words.

Words that dictionaries define as meaning what you’re trying to say.

I’m sure they have a better idea than if you called yourself a “white black man woman” and then proceeded to try and explain how that’s not at all paradoxical.

So why not just make up your own term for “what you are”? Wouldn’t that achieve the goal you’re shooting for much more effectively and guarantee no one will have any preconceived notions?

I can help. We can call you…a…orplitaryist.

From now on, when anyone asks how you define your political philosophy, you just tell them you’re an orplitaryist. I guarantee no one will have any idea what you’re talking about, and will not be confident that they know anything about what you do or what you believe. (Other than perhaps a lot of unconformist things, which, I’m pretty confident we can assume is the case anyway when you spout paradoxical nonsense like “free-market anti-capitalist”.)

At most, they’ll assume you’re either a little crazy, or a little ridiculous, which, again, can easily be the case with terms you already use, and may very well be true anyway. But I’m confident that with this new term, it will be much less likely. I recommend you try it and see how it goes. I for one would be much more likely to ask someone what an “orplitaryist” is than for them to explain how they came to the conclusion that “free-market anti-capitalist” isn’t paradoxical, and why they felt the need to use such a term. In fact, if anyone ever told me they were a “free-market anti-capitalist”, or a “libertarian socialist” or something of that sort, I wouldn’t be confused to a point of asking them for clarification, I would feel like I had all the information about them I needed…and go talk to someone else.

I think you should try this new angle and see how you like it.

Charles Johnson. The orplitaryist.

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Freedom4Me73986:

So how does a “bossless” factory work if there’s over 100 workers? How can that many people all make decisions w/o a boss?

Well, I dunno. I guess if you really want to know the answer to this question, and don’t just intend it as an apriori “Gotcha!” about what you are already sure must be unworkable, then probably the best thing to do is to ask some of the people who already work in bossless factories with over 100 workers. There are a number of interviews in books like this one: <http://www.amazon.com/Sin-Patr%C3%B3n-Argentinas-Worker-Run-Factories/dp/1931859434>. My impression is that it is typically done with a combination of temporary, constantly-rotating responsibilities, a lot of local initiative on the shop floor, and regular big group meetings for making decisions as a group. Maybe this is an inefficient way to do things. On the other hand it seems to be working for the people who are doing it. In any case, I am quite sure that the claim that “Without [a boss] nothing would get done” is empirically falsifiable, and has in fact been falsified. Spontaneous orders are of course possible without central direction.

But in any case suppose that it turned out to be true – I’m not committed to this claim, but I don’t reject it out of hand either – that on the whole, in a maximally freed market, the complexity and the costs of keeping everyone communicating with everyone else would tend to hobble the workability of big factories without bosses. That might be a reason to think that there will be more bosses in a freed market than I think there will be. But it might just as well be a reason to think: Well, then there will be smaller factories. And if we turn out to have smaller factories, with their activities largely coordinated by trade and contract rather than by bureaucratic management, I don’t see how that would be a problem. Certainly there is no reason apriori why libertarian economics would have to be concerned with figuring out a way to run giant factories with hundreds of workers. If that turns out to be economically and socially sustainable under conditions of free-market competition, then people will do it. But I don’t take it for granted that it will be, and if it isn’t, then people won’t sustain it, and will find other market means of meeting their needs.

In fact I would say there are some strong reasons to think that that kind of business model – at least, nearly every example of that business model that we have available to us for inspection, from General Motors to Lockheed-Martin to GlaxoSmithKline to Foxconn – is not a product of freed market labor agreements, but rather of a pretty heavy-handed structure of government-financed lines of credit, government privileges, government subsidies, and government contracts to the employers, on the one hand, and on the other hand, political impoverishment, political dispossession, and political constraints on the employee’s options for alternative modes of making a living. My reasons for thinking that bossing will be unsustainable in fact have a lot to do with factors that will apply whether or not big factories tend to need bosses (e.g., they have to do with the changes which are more likely, ceteris paribus, to occur within labor markets when people’s fixed costs of living are radically lower, and their options for making a living outside of formalized employment relationships have radically expanded, as discussed briefly e.g. in “The Many Monopolies” and in “Scratching By” – all of which are changes that, if they are likely to come about, are likely to come about regardless of the organizational economics of trying to run a large factory.)

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John James:

I would feel like I had all the information about them I needed…and go talk to someone else.

I don’t doubt that you would, bro. Fortunately not everyone is as incurious as you are, or as willing to press on with invincible ignorance before making the minimal effort it would take to try to understand others on their own terms. In any case, while I’m happy to explain the reasons why I pick the names I pick, you may want to keep in mind that convincing you personally of the feasibility of anticapitalism on libetarian terms is not actually very high on my list of reasons. I’m largely concerned with convincing a rather different group of people of a rather different conclusion.

As for “dictionary definitions,” they don’t actually say what you seem to think that they say, and if they did, I would hardly take that as the end of the story (any more than I take their usually idiotic definitions of e.g. “anarchy” as the end of the story about whether or not I should call myself an Anarchist). Perhaps this here and this also will help, and perhaps this and that will. Or perhaps not.

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That doesn’t really address my point, which was about how Long’s definition of “justice” depends heavily on other words to which wildly disparate definitions have been given. Again, is that what you mean by saying his definition of “justice” won’t give me any real answers?

I was asking for your thoughts on the issue. Sorry if I wasn’t sufficiently clear about that.

I’m sorry but this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me in the context of philosophical reasoning (which is what I assume you meant by “philosophizing”). Could you please clarify?

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Welcome to the Mises Forum, Charles Johnson. I, for one, am glad that you came to this thread.

If I may, I’d like to present a hypothetical situation to you. Suppose that there’s a factory owned by a single individual. He then offers to pay some people from the surrounding area to use the machines in his factory to make things. Would you call the factory owner a “boss”?

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I can’t believe that anybody actually argues about whether bosses or no bosses is the “true” market situation or not. Maybe, in some circumstances, having a horizontal workers’ democracy type scenario would be optimal, and maybe in others a hierarchical arrangement would be economically efficient. This is an empirical question that we can’t decide from our arm chairs - what is optimal for each industry depends on the conditions of that industry. So why commit yourself to one over the other? Why can’t you let the market decide?

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I care for and focus on super duper important things like:

Kellog’s breakfast cereals, downloading free stuff on the intrnet, reality TV, Th BCS in college football, Dan Brown novels, cheap booze, cheap thrills, people driving slow in the fast lane, people cutting off ambulances, people talking on cell phones in the theater, the congestion on I-94, annoying elevator music, skinny dudes wearing skinny jeans, and waiting forever and going through a series of endless prompts on all these damn utility calls…

with a set of a totally awesome political points and such a socially important platform like that, a platform that I promise I will bitch and gripe about incessantly until kingdom come and insist that it is a legit social concern…can I call myself a left libertarian now, or do I have to learn some secret handshake?

Oh and I’ll call everyone who disagrees with me a petit bourgoise, fascist, or whatever it is you guys (or womyn) like now. Or is it now throwing a set of words around like Cartesian, postivist, and liberal scientism is that it?

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I didn’t think you would, brah.

I’d actually be willing to be they are less so, but then again, I wouldn’t consider myself very incurious. I simply wouldn’t have reason to inquire as to what a “free market anti-capitalist” is all about, because thanks to my experience with people who use such a term (and people who purposefully talk like that in general), as paradoxical and intentionally “confusing” as it is, the intended confusion ironically gives me all the information I need.

Alliteration aside, I think “invincible ignorance” is a very strong term, and one that is not accurate here. On the contrary, I wouldn’t be interested in hearing one attempt to explain how something paradoxical by definition isn’t paradoxical not because I’m incurious or insistent on ignorance, but rather because (as I said before) it makes the person quite clear enough.

Oh? And what conclusion is that? And who are these people you’re interested in convincing?

They don’t? Because I could have sworn the dictionary defined capitalism as: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market”

…which sounds remarkably similar to the definition I used when I asked you:

“You think that being pro-free market, and simultaneously against- private ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market…isn’t paradoxical?”

So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the dictionary doesn’t say what I think it says. Maybe my eyes see words that aren’t there. Maybe my computer takes me to a fake dictionary website. Could you please help me out and tell me what the dictionary “actually” says?

Maybe you don’t take it as the end of the story, but it might be wise for you to take into account that the vast majority of people in fact do. Indeed, is that not what you’re counting on when you tell some poor soul who doesn’t know what they’re in for that you’re a “free market anti-capitalist”? Is not essentially the whole reason you use such a term the fact that most people would see it as a paradox?..because according to the dictionaries that the vast majority of people turn to to check definitions of words, such a term is paradoxical?

Thanks brah. I’ll look into those.

In the mean time, perhaps you could answer my questions?

–If someone wants to work for me and be my employee, I shouldn’t hire them? Because employing them would be a shitty thing to do?

–What do I think you are against?

–What are you against?

–why not just make up your own term for “what you are”?

–Who are the people you are interested in convincing?

–What conclusion are you interested in these people reaching?

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Because bossing and conventional employment are both (1) likely to be unstable, and economically unsustainable, in a fully freed market; and (2) kind of shitty ways to treat your fellow human beings…of course.

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What I mean is that constantly asking for definitions won’t bring you any closer to understanding because every definition depends on words that need some further definition, ad infinitum. The way this is overcome is by reading things in their entirety, referencing how the terms are used by similar thinkers, and so on.

The problem with “justice,” specifically, is that any definition precise enough to meet your standards would probably be too specific – it would need all sorts of caveats and exceptions. In other words, we are dealing with something flexible here. That’s what I mean when I say his definition won’t give you real answers. The answers aren’t found in the definition, they are found in understanding.

I don’t have any thoughts on the issue because its not an issue – the virtues aren’t a mystery. I was trying to show that if you want to know what the virtues are, simply look them up. If you want to know my thoughts on Aristole, eudaimonism, and virtue ethics in general, I’m sorry; that’s just far too much information to cover and its completely off topic from this thread.

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Having now read Long’s speech in its entirety, I feel safe in saying that doesn’t even provide any context clues from which definitions for “moral” and “rights” can be inferred. Apparently by “virtue” he means “that which Aristotle called ‘virtue’”, which doesn’t really help me much either.

How can something be understood without being defined (at least implicitly)? I’m sorry but this is just confusing me even more.

That implies that virtues exist in external reality. How do they?

You mean if I want to know what Aristotle thought was a virtue, right?

Keep in mind that you were the one who claimed that a definition of “justice” could be constructed such that it has commitments to other concepts without violating the NAP. I’ve been asking you for a demonstration of that claim. After all, how do you know whether such a definition could be constructed if you’ve either never seen such a definition constructed by someone else or you’ve never constructed one yourself? In either case, that would mean your claim can only be logically understood as an assumption, which means I’m not logically bound to accept it whatsoever.

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I like long. I think the left libertarian label and paleoconservative labels are deterimental to libertarianism. Liberty is not left or right. It is the minimal ethical code to maintain peace and voluntary interaction. Nothing wrong with coops. As long as mutualists are okay with the NAP, I’m okay with them.