Crunchy cons & agrarians vs. libertarian

One problem with "Libertarianism" is that too many contradictory ideas claim the title. Many libertarians, perhaps most, are unaware of the fact that most of the pre-Marxist socialists were libertarian; they believed that the vast accumulations of property could only happen because of state guarantees to the property owners. Proudhon's "property is theft" really refers to more property than a man could personally use. But when libertarianism was taken over by Mises & Co., it became a defense of unlimited property. Capitalists are quite happy to use libertarian arguments to defend their power, and abandon those same arguments when they need a bailout, which they do on a fairly regular basis. Thus the libertarians serve as their "useful idiots" in the same way that the left-wing served that function for the communists.

Libertarians often put the role of gov't in "all-or-nothing" terms. But this reinforces the power of the gov't, since most people, faced with such a choice, choose the "all" rather than the nothing; there just aren't enough nihilists to make the other choice.

Libertarianism at its best is not about "no gov't" but about local gov't, about self-organizing, self-sustaining, and self-governing communities. It is about subsidiarity. Further, the original libertarians were concerned with communal values. Freedom and liberty had communal aspects. In the Misean version, the communal disappeared with Mises's "metholdological individualism," which reduced all social analysis to pure hedonism. The social disappeared completely. "The hangman, not state, executes a criminal," said Mises. Margaret Thatcher caught the Misean version perfectly when she said "There is no such thing as society."

But there is such a thing, and we owe our existence to it. We are all called into being by the ready-made society of the family, and we receive from that family certain gifts, physical ones like food and shelter, to be sure, but deeper ones, like language, social norms, love. Indeed, as Alastair MacIntyre notes, our lives consist not so much in the logic of exchange, but in the reception of gifts and the decision as to their use.

In short, there are two kinds of libertarianism, and they mean almost opposite things. There is the orginal, which is mutualist, local, social, and there is the Misean, which is individualistic,hedonist, and unrestrained. They may use the same terms, but they mean contradictory things.

Libertarians have the luxury of advocating something that never has, and never will, be implemented. Enjoying this luxury, they heave great sighs of regret: "Oh, if these benighted peoples would just let the Market solve the ills of the world....."

To me, libertarianism, the "free market" religion, and communism have something in common at their core. That is, they sound good on paper, but they don't take into account human nature. That's why I'm so often surprised that hard-core right wingers, those most associated with the "free market will regulate itself and solve all our problems" meme, are those most likely to brand liberal dissenters as "communists." It's a sign of how utterly bankrupt the Republican ideology is today, that the "commie" epithet is almost all they have left. Yet "free markets" and communism do share this idealized view of human behavior; the spectacular failure of communism and the ongoing spectacular failure of deregulated free markets have far more in common than either would like to admit. That is the genius of our founding fathers and American democracy -- human nature is accounted for in the Constitution, and checks and balances are instituted to keep them from running rampant. It is certainly no coincidence -- Bush-style right-wing extremism shunning checks and balances, and the current implosion of the markets and just about everything else.

Yet "free markets" and communism do share this idealized view of human behavior; the spectacular failure of communism and the ongoing spectacular failure of deregulated free markets have far more in common than either would like to admit.

You can't beat libertarianism with a straw man. The reason they have so much in common is because we have heavily regulated and government involved corporatized socialism in America, not anything approaching free markets. Yes, the neo-cons aren't traditional conservatives because they don't believe in flawed human nature. Bush thinks if we just have a democracy, people will live happily ever after. There are some libertarians with similar visions of human nature, but many are just old school conservatives who believe a truly free market would result in fewer and more clearly defined problems, not no problems.

I call myself a Christian libertarian, as it accurately describes my beliefs about community and culture while keeping my skepticism of government. I've run across quite a few people who use the same term, although they may not describe it the same way.

"Christian libertarian" is an oxymoron.

Don't be silly, one is a religion, the other a political philosophy, and there is nothing in essential Christianity that contradicts broad libertarian principles.

Corporations, by definition, are not public entities, Larry. They only become (somewhat) public when they offer stock for purchase.

Here's a challenge for ya:
Go open up a brick and mortar business. Not one run out of your home, basement, garage, etc., but a free-standing business with real overhead and real payroll with benefits for your real employees.

Now, make some net profit and report back with your findings.

"Daniel Larison jumped into the fray early. Excerpt:

I have been a bit slow to comment on Gordon's piece, partly out of frustration with the habit of labeling anything remotely "crunchy" or agrarian as socialist. Especially at the end of a week when we have seen a plainly socialistic program pass Congress in the service of central government and concentrated wealth, the very antithesis of everything that these people believe, I have to marvel at the idea that the socialists among us are the ones stressing localism, self-sufficiency and independence. "

Yeah, I get a little tired of that thinking too. Anyone who suggests that limits and natural balance and local is good, over and against Agribusiness and consumerism, gets labeled a socialist. We are so polarized that people aren't that both the two big political factions are blind to the consequences of the very system which favors factory farming chickens. They can't understand that, chickens aside, this KIND of thing is unsustainable, bad for small and local producers, bad for the environment, bad for our health, bad for our political transparency, our self-sufficiency, our very moral development. Cheap and easy is not without price.

"there is nothing in essential Christianity that contradicts broad libertarian principles."

...and love your neighbor as yourself.

Romans 13:1-7

Absolute sovereignty of God vs. absolute sovereignty of individual

Christian libertarian is only non-oxymoronic if the libertarian side wins out and the Christian conception of God's sovereignty is modified or the Christian side wins out and the libertarian conception of liberty (especially 'negative' liberty) is modified. When such happens, though, you're not left with a Christian libertarian but with either a "Christian" libertarian or a Christian "libertarian". In the case of the latter, though, it's easier to just call them a subsidiarist.

I have not read Von Mises, but I have read Hayek & The Road to Serfdom. Hayek talks about government providing a social safety net (i.e. no one in a civilized society should starve) and he concedes that some regulation is useful & necessary. Other Libertarians are Randians - of the Atlas Shrugged variety. These folks are the ones I tend to view as being more militantly anti-government - or to have some views that seem more like social darwinism. Part of the difficulty in finding a label to describe a philosophy of individualism is that the individuals will disagree about what the label means. . .

Personally, I tend to think any pure ideology - be it Libertarinism or Socialism - is dangerous and unrealistic. I usually self-identify as libertarianish.

I would add to John M. post that many libertarians are interested in the idea of federalism: what are the decision rights of the national government versus the local government? Taxation packages, local architectural aesthics, vice laws: these are often things that local communities can effectively manage without a heavy handed national bureaucracy. Zoning - for a local government to say a strip club can't be across from an elementary school - is compatible with libertarian thinking and local decision rights.

I would disagree with Jack that libertarianism has no connection to reality. Compare the standard of living of North Korea with South Korea. Eastern Europe versus Western Europe. Japan versus South East Asia. There is plenty of evidence that centralized control mechanisms like communism cannot effectively or humanely manage all apsects of society. And the genocidal atrocities to deal with dissent goes without saying. Countries that freely trade with each other are less likely to go to war. You cannot attack your neighbor without hurting your own economy.

We also cannot lump all regulation into one giant category. The Financial Markets and the Banking industry have been intertwined with the federal government for generations, so the current situation is neither an indictment of the free market or an example of its success. The goal is focus government regulation on things it can effectively manage (Hayek lists those, but I am at work and can't recall all of them). For our country, those responsibilities can be further delineated by whether the national, state, or local levels are best suited to make those calls. Just because some regulation is useful & pragmatic doesn't mean we should give the national government carte blanche to seize whatever it wants. . .

Thanks for this -- I badly needed a laugh!
That subversive Wendell Barry's at it again, eh?
He and the Ore-Ida potato farmers (many of them Mormon, but I digress...), anarchist beef ranchers in Central Oregon, hippie lettuce growers in Washington and Oregon... and those dangerously radical lentil growers in Washington, Idaho, and Montana...

Wow, up against Wall Street, those farmers sure an evil crew, eh?

Libertarians and Crunchy Cons are natural allies, both honor subsidiarity. I don't think we're antagonists, right, Rod?

The problem with our civil discource is that folks have lost the ability to "read" the "alphabet" in which political agents trade: the meaning we attach to our intentions, our philosophical worldview. Classical Wisdom doctrine -- upon which we found our concepts of civic virtue -- demands only one absolute (all others can be democratically negotiated between private parties)

Justice:
= ends do not justify means
or "you may not do evil that good may come of it"

Both right and left have contravened basic justice in their untoward haste to embrace "stability" via central command of the economy:

"Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower – in short, what men should believe and strive for." Friederick Hayek
H/T Western Confucian at orientem.blogspot.com/2008/10/friedrich-hayek-on-bailout.html

Corporatists, in particular those enterprises who operate in one of two favored sectors of the "managed" economy : banking, financial and underwriting services (incl. insurance of healthcare rationing) and military industrial complex, are indeed as dangerous as public ownership of resources, since their existence depends on monopoly privelege granted, unjustly, by municipal authorities via legislative protections.

Any dependency of "strings attached" from the public purse seriously undermines that ability of human persons to act freely (in the classical wisdom sense of choosing the good, and defeating the wicked) - we become infantilized, fearful and can be easily manipulated to follow "strong leadership" of the tyrannical variety.

Ron Paul predicted that the warfare/welfare corporatists would bankrupt us, its such a shame that even now so few on the right had the courage to back him up, and admit the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrongheaded. Now come November it looks like the natural law lovers amongst us may rue the day we gave the game plan away to the neoCons: Thomas Friedman wants us to be "China for One Day"? Heck with the Freedom of Choice Act we may see the abortion rate in the US approach that of China (1,000 developing citizens annihilated per hour) sooner than even he thought possible ! Onwards and upwards in the logical positivist scientism of perfectly planned outcomes!