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Allan Walstad wrote,"It would be nice to see such issues argued on their merits without some libertarians seeking to pin a scarlet"deviations" tag on their fellow travelers."
To which Roderick Long responded,"Hey, I'm the moderate here! Other people have been arguing that those who endorse serious deviations from libertarian purity no longer count as libertarians at all, and I've been arguing against that view.
"If you don't like 'deviation,' what term would you prefer as shorthand for 'view put forward as libertarian but actually (in the opinion of the speaker) inconsistent with libertarian principle'? (Because we need such a term, I think.)"
I agree, and I want to take this opportunity to clarify something: When I say someone can't be a prowar anarchist or libertarian, I am not saying that person cannot have a basically libertarian philosophy overall, or that that person has nothing to teach or offer (of course, that would be absurd – without learning from statists, we could learn practically nothing!), or that there isn't some sense in which it's useful to call such people libertarians or even anarchists. I consider them in error, to the point that calling someone a"pro-war libertarian" strikes me as oxymoronic, and yet I see some use in the label. But I do think it is a deviation.
What I don't agree with is the idea that there is something special about foreign policy that makes it more okay for so-called libertarians (or libertarians very broadly defined) to radically disagree on it than on other issues. In the sense that someone can be a pro-war libertarian, I think one can also be a pro-gun control libertarian, a pro-income tax libertarian, a pro-conscription libertarian or a libertarian thief. But all these are contradictory, and I tell those who I believe are making a bad error on war that, insofar as they make that error, they are clearly straying from libertarianism, because my purpose is to explain why, in my opinion, libertarianism, if it to be taken seriously as a political philosophy, must preclude government war, especially of the modern kind that has been typical of the last century and which the US has pretty much exclusively practiced.
Thus, I think there is some value in calling people libertarians, despite deviations on pretty much any issue, including taxation, gun restrictions, immigration controls or socialized medicine. (Most libertarians would draw the line here, but for one purpose of description, I would not.) But I also think there is another sense in which libertarianism precludes all this, as well as any and all advocacy for state power and activity. (Indeed, if there's any deviation that would disqualify someone from being a libertarian, I would say it's support for war, which is a greater violation of libertarian principle than nearly anything else government does – but I am willing to be big-tent about it to some degree. If you supported the invasion of Afhganistan or even were originally for the Iraq war, maybe you're a libertarian nevertheless. But if you are, then so is anyone who is generally pro-freedom to a sufficient extent, despite some serious deviations. Many people, however, who are very pro-war take it to a level that I find the description of them as libertarians to be totally unjustified.)
My recollection of Morale Économique is precisely the opposite -- that he explicitly says that aggressive warfare, domination, etc., were previously moral because previously socially useful. But I don't have a copy handy at present.
Anthony Gregory -
3/31/2008
I think there are cases, however, when the opposite is true. Most libertarians, no matter how hard core, if threatened with death, would be willing to steal a penny from a billionaire. I consider that performative deviation to be a violation of libertarian principle. But in this case, the person is a libertarian; it is his act that is not libertarian. In less extreme cases, perhaps someone can be a genuine libertarian while taking an unlibertarian position on a given issue.
Anthony Gregory -
3/31/2008
Well of course we cannot dissolve the nation-state without a shift in political culture. To take a radical, abolitionist position on the state is not to ignore this reality; is it simply to want to change the reality by leading the way toward a shift in public ideology.
Anthony Gregory -
3/31/2008
Jonathan, property rights emerge outside the state and do not need the state for their protection. See some of the great essays in Ed Stringham's Anarchy and the Law (Independent Institute: 2007). http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=67
Less Antman -
3/31/2008
You're right: anarchism provides no specific guidance on how to respond to a massive threat violence. Neither does minarchism. It only changes who gets to decide, and whether the entire group is forced to accept a single approach.
Americans were prohibited from responding to the threat of fascism in the 1930s because FDR chose not to respond, and required to respond in the 1940s only using the specific vehicle of unrestricted warfare because that is how FDR (and then Truman) chose to respond. Of course, Americans couldn't act against Stalin in either decade, because the US and Soviet Union were allies.
In anarchy, concerned people could have persuaded large numbers to organize, finance, and fight: we already know that a small group of Americans tried to do so against the Spanish Fascists, were persecuted by US authorities for the remainder of their lives, and failed because the neutrality laws kept them from obtaining the large amount of financing and talent needed to succeed. Jewish organizations were hindered in their attempt to rescue people from the Nazi menace by immigration laws.
Minarchy is actually far MORE likely to result in a do-nothing attitude toward tyrants, because the decision of one administration to do nothing is binding on all. Under anarchy, there will always be some percentage who perceive a threat as serious enough to act, so the chance of a do-nothing anarchist society in the face of evil tyrants is essentially zero. An anarchist America would simply be 300 million sovereign nations, each with its own foreign policy, which could and (if libertarian isn't baloney) would organize and cooperate without needing a central authority. My personal foreign policy is peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with my wife.
"The State" is simply the legitimized monopoly accepted by the vast majority of people. There is no difference between saying "The State" recognizes my property right and saying the bulk of the public accepts the legitimacy of my claim. The State is a fiction: there are only people.
Pacifism and anarchism are not the same: market anarchists only reject aggressive violence. You may be the first person ever to accuse anarchists of refusing to throw bombs. ;)
Finally, I share with you the pleasure that we are able to do battle in an atmosphere of mutual respect here. Liberty & Power is truly a special place.
Allan Walstad -
3/29/2008
It occurs to me that "libertarian" as an adjective lends itself to greater flexibility in matters of degree and of zeitgeist relativity than does "libertarian" as a noun. So, we might all agree that among active federal politicians, Ron Paul is remarkably, even uniquely libertarian, and some of his colleagues are vastly more libertarian than others--even though we may disagree on whether Paul or any of the others merits a "membership card" in the club of libertarians. Meanwhile, some card-carrying life members of the LP do hold prima facie nonlibertarian positions on one or more issues.
Roderick T. Long -
3/29/2008
Well, I didn't mean that the usage implied agnosticism about what the best version is. When I use the term "deviation" I mean, of course, deviation from what is on my view the most defensible version of libertarianism (which isn't a one-big-axiom version).
Jonathan J. Bean -
3/29/2008
PS: One of the better discussions between minarchists and anarchists that I have read in a long time. Good to air our differences without being disagreeable. Certainly doesn't happen in higher ed!
Jonathan J. Bean -
3/29/2008
Minarchists, yes (just war theory); anarchists, probably not (although one might conceive some voluntary collective association for defense?).
My point stands: MOST libertarians are not anarchists and can envision circumstances where war is justified. Those circumstances will likely be confined to self-defense, which could include counterattack.
Even pacifist Quakers took up arms during the revolution when their families were attacked from all sides. They found that once they took up arms, they had to choose sides or lose all their property rights and perhaps the lives of their family members. Those "Fighting Quakers" were expelled from the formal church but let in after the war. Bottom line: war makes for tough moral choices and "pure" anarchism provides no clear guidelines.
For that matter, why should those Quakers defend "their" property rights during war, left-wing anarchists argue. Who recognizes their property rights, the State? But I digress.
Craig J Bolton -
3/29/2008
"I would want to distinguish someone who is a libertarian with deviant views on XYZ and someone who is merely generally pro-freedom but not on XYZ. The difference is that the former will offer an argument (ex hypothesi a mistaken argument, but an argument nonetheless) for the claim that their position on XYZ isn't really inconsistent with libertarianism, while the latter will simply say that in this case some other issue takes precedence over liberty. So the former holds a libertarian principle but makes a mistake in applying it, while the latter doesn't hold the principle at all; to me that gives us a reason to call the first but not the second a libertarian, even if the two support the same policies."
How about the third alternative, that has already been suggested in this thread, the alternative of some one who believes that liberty is the most important social value, but that conditions currently aren't such that "we" can have a purely libertarian society? Say, for example, that I believe [as I in fact do believe] that nation states were a huge mistake and are the main enemies of liberty in the modern world. Does that imply that I want to immediately and unconditionally dissolve the nation state in which I am currently resident? I don't think so. If I don't do I fit in one of your two categories? I don't think so.
The reason is simple, there are collateral assumptions about how change occurs and what can be accomplished here and there without a compatible global change that have really little to do with libertarianism, no matter how "purist" one may be in one's libertarianism. Which gets us back to the issue of whether libertarism is or should be some sort of unified deductive system that explains just everything.
Craig J Bolton -
3/29/2008
Well, as the Red Queen and the rest of us know, we can use terms however we want. However, most people who want to talk about "deviations" have in mind a paradigm that is describable as something much more definite than "the best version, whatever that may be..." See, e.g., Leninism, Randianism, most fundamentalist versions of the Abrahamic religions, etc. brahatheetc.
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
"But maybe there's a way to reconcile it. How easy it is to avoid a mistake might be part of what determines whether a person who badly misapplies a principle still holds the principle, and such ease of avoidance can be relative to circumstance."
I think this is fair, which might have something to do with why I'm softer on libertarians who are wrong on wars in the past than wars going on now. If you think the American Revolution was a just war, I see that as an academic discussion, somewhat. If you were currently advocating a program that involved the raising of armies, the conquest of Canada and the crushing of Tory dissent, along with the confiscation of their property, I would point out what I saw as the contradictions, and if you still supported the war, I'd say it's a greater blemish on your libertarianism.
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
I was addressing two complementary questions: Can libertarians be prowar? Can anarchists?
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
Yes, I agree we are all classical liberals.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
Analogously, anyone who, several centuries ago, advocated that women have the right to vote, or to own property separate from their husbands, etc., we would probably call a feminist. But such views would be a damn slim basis now for calling someone a feminist.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
If someone in the early 19th century was nearly an anarchist, but a gradual emancipationist, he might, in historical context, be a libertarian. Today, I'd say he might not be considered a libertarian -- especially by a narrow understanding.
I do feel the pull of thinking that the case for not regarding such a person as a libertarian is stronger now than it was then. But I wonder whether I'm being influenced by a different belief of mine, namely that it would be less excusable to be a gradual emancipationist now than then. And I kinda want to treat assessments of praise and blame distinct from assessments of libertarianhood.
But maybe there's a way to reconcile it. How easy it is to avoid a mistake might be part of what determines whether a person who badly misapplies a principle still holds the principle, and such ease of avoidance can be relative to circumstance.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
In the original blog entry, the terms libertarian and anarchist were used somewhat interchangeably.
Well, since Anthony is an anarchist, he presumably regards minarchism as a deviation -- though as far as I know not a disqualifying one.
Jonathan J. Bean -
3/28/2008
This is one reason I hate the term libertarian -- it smacks of "sectarian," which Hayek noted in his own famous essay "Why I am not a conservative." He ended calling himself an "Old Whig," but that doesn't do it either.
I prefer classical liberal to cover the centuries and "deviations." It inspires, I hope, a bit of liberal_mindedness among we classical liberals!
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
Okay, Roderick, there's a lot of sense in that.
But what do you think of my dichotomy, between different kinds of libertarians? If someone in the early 19th century was nearly an anarchist, but a gradual emancipationist, he might, in historical context, be a libertarian. Today, I'd say he might not be considered a libertarian -- especially by a narrow understanding. Perhaps by a narrow understanding, Mises wasn't a libertarian, but by a broader understanding, of course he was, even one of the most important ones of all time. There might be tension here, but is there a contradiction? Perhaps "libertarian" has different shades of meaning, and so, on the one hand, we can call someone a "pro-conscription libertarian" while on the other hand saying, to be a real libertarian, you can't be for conscription?
Anthony Gregory -
3/28/2008
Aeon, I agree there are gradualist anarchists. I don't agree with them, but I think it's a tenable position. I also don't think it's immoral, in most cases, to drive on government roads – but this is a far cry from government war, which kills and commits aggression apart from its funding.
I don't think the existence of states should mean there are exceptions to how you would otherwise conceive of libertarianism. It would seem to me odd if libertarianism, as a principle, applied less so by the mere fact that we don't have a libertarian world. I believe that the most consistent belief in libertarianism would have to include the belief that it is correct regardless of circumstances (even if very extreme circumstances make certain violations of libertarian principle more understandable). The mere existence of aggressors shouldn't make the non-aggression principle less applicable; otherwise, what's the point of believing in the non-aggression principle? Presumably, a lot of people believe there should ideally be no aggression. It is the existence of aggression that in fact leads many people astray in accepting the state in the first place.
Jonathan J. Bean -
3/28/2008
In the original blog entry, the terms libertarian and anarchist were used somewhat interchangeably. Of course, most libertarians are not anarchist but minarchist. They would prefer a Night Watchman State with extremely limited policing role of the state.
When it comes to defense, I think anarchism has some serious questions to confront (see the exchange between Anthony and I at another blog, which I hope he continues: http://tinyurl.com/yv55mv )
And I'm not so sure "modern" war is qualitatively different from "pre-modern war." Even if it were, there will be those who attack civilians and if they use WMDs, how do private citizens defend themselves?
Anyway, that is the discussion elsewhere. I agree that war is generally inconsistent with libertarian principle of nonaggression but the libertarian creed began centuries ago with the proposition that government be limited to things like defense. Any philosophy that takes disarmament-as-defense policy is a nonstarter, particularly in this "modern" world of WMDs.
Bogdan Enache -
3/28/2008
Indeed, he gives a social-darwinistic account of the evolution of society and a positive economic explanation of the different stages in this evolution.
Thus, war was an unavoidable reality in the zero-sum game of hunter-gatherers economy and man basically acts to in accordance with his survival instinct and the law of economics. But with the emergence of agricultural-productive societies however, the economy becomes a positive sum game and war a destructive or parasitic activity taken over by the former warrior societies who subdue the productive agricultural societies and create the state, thus becoming the political class.
His account is entirely positive. He, like others back then, saw human history as an epic struggle between the principle of peace and the principle of war, both rooted in human nature, the later reflecting man's lower state of ignorance and savagery while the former reflects man's reason and his potential for perfectibility. In my reading of Molinari, I didn't have the feeling that he was making any normative assessment or justification in his account of the role of war in pre-agricultural societies. His views on ethics can be found in "Morale économique" and are quasi-Rothbardian with regard to the respect of voluntary action.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
Contradictory? Only if libertarianism is some sort of ONE BIG AXIOM dogma.
I don't think that follows. When I call something a deviation from libertarianism, I mean that it's a deviation from the best, most defensible version of libertarianism, whatever that best version may be -- whether one big principle or many small principles or whatever.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
Molinari also thought that aggressive warfare had been justified in the past; like Spencer and Proudhon, he held a social-evolutionary story according to which society is progressing from a militant mode which was genuinely necessary and appropriate to earlier conditions of society, toward a purely voluntary industrial mode in which all war will be obsolete. So the gradual course of evolution is from aggressive-warfare-okay to only-defensive-warfare-okay to all-war-abolished. (Bastiat, incidentally, was dead-set against all this and thought aggressive warfare had never been justified.)
I think all this makes Molinari a deviant on the issue -- but not a nonlibertarian.
Roderick T. Long -
3/28/2008
If you supported the invasion of Afhganistan or even were originally for the Iraq war, maybe you're a libertarian nevertheless. But if you are, then so is anyone who is generally pro-freedom to a sufficient extent, despite some serious deviations.
I would want to distinguish someone who is a libertarian with deviant views on XYZ and someone who is merely generally pro-freedom but not on XYZ. The difference is that the former will offer an argument (ex hypothesi a mistaken argument, but an argument nonetheless) for the claim that their position on XYZ isn't really inconsistent with libertarianism, while the latter will simply say that in this case some other issue takes precedence over liberty. So the former holds a libertarian principle but makes a mistake in applying it, while the latter doesn't hold the principle at all; to me that gives us a reason to call the first but not the second a libertarian, even if the two support the same policies.
Now I may be asked: does this mean that anyone, no matter how ghastly the policies they advocate and how absurd their attempts to square them with libertarian principle are, counts as libertarian so long as they give some half-assed argument for the position's being libertarian? I answer: no, of course not. I accept the Wittgenstein-Rand principle that you don't count as possessing a concept at all unless you're reasonably reliable in applying it. That means that there's a limit to how extreme your failures in application can get before you no longer count as holding the libertarian principle (even if you mouth the words).
But then of course the question is whether being pro-war (or, more precisely, being pro-some-war-sometime) is by itself so massive a deviation as to rule out the proponent's actually holding the principle. Maybe Anthony thinks that; I don't, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, many of the arguments offered by pro-some-war-sometime libertarians like Randy and Aeon strike me as understandable, rather than crazy, misapplications of libertarian principle. As I said, if one's misapplication of the principle is too crazy, it no longer counts as an attemped application of that principle at all (because one no longer counts as having any grasp of the principle at all). But does that really seem like a fair description of Randy's and Aeon's arguments. Not to me it don't. (I say more about this in my exchange with Bob Kaercher here.)
My other reason is the paradigm-case argument; since I think the reference of terms is determined not solely by associated description but also to some extent by resemblance to paradigm exemplars, it follows that it will make no sense to label a position as disqualifying its proponents from libertarianhood if some of the paradigm exemplars of libertarianism have held that deviation.
I would also want to resist, however, the assumption that I think both sides tend to make here, namely that if a deviation isn't such as to disqualify its proponent from being a libertarian, then it must be a mild rather than a serious deviation. Anthony thinks being pro-war is a serious deviation, and so concludes that the pro-war advocate is not a libertarian; Aeon doesn't think it's a deviation at all, but I gather his view is that if it were a deviation it would be a relatively mild one (and I suspect that he thinks being antiwar is a mild deviation and so does not regard antiwar libertarians as nonlibertarians). My own view is different from both: I think something can be a major, serious, massive, awful deviation, yet that a reasonable libertarian can sincerely reach such a deviation through understandable misapplication of principle (and so still count as a libertarian).
Bogdan Enache -
3/28/2008
Gustave de Molinari wrote a series of articles in the "Economiste belge" and "London Times", in the second half of the 19th century, on the question of how can lasting peace be best achieved and war avoided. The background was one of mounting tension leading to World War 1.
Here's a quote from on of this articles which was subsequently added to the appendix of his book, "Grandeur et Décadence de la Guerre", translation mine:
"Consequently, it is not by everywhere and always putting forward the principle of non-interventionism, as our not so enlightened friends of peace [members of peace societies of the time] want that we can insure more freedom in the world; on the contrary, until then, we can achieve this by generalizing the use of the right of intervention, by freeing the secondary states, these minority shareholders of the political community of Europe of the trusteeship of the great powers, by giving them their share of influence which is own to them in the high direction of the interests of the community. No doubt about it, by fortifying and completing in this way the preserving apparatus of war, we will not at all immediately achieve the dream of Abbot Saint-Pierre [eternal peace], but we will certainly make peace more durable even if we will not make it at all eternal."
Basically, in this case he embraced a more democratic, so to speak, balance of power theory, but normally he argued for the creation of something like an international defense agency of the "community of the civilised nations" which would have minimal means at its disposal since the threat of conflict between the "civilised nations" is no more once every state gave up his right to wage war and the external threats, on the hand, were almost non-existent. Often he combines this latter solution with a few remarks on how the security services might or should be offered in a voluntary and individualised manner. Finally, on two occasions he wrote about voluntary provision of security services through "competing governments".
Craig J Bolton -
3/28/2008
"What I don't agree with is the idea that there is something special about foreign policy that makes it more okay for so-called libertarians (or libertarians very broadly defined) to radically disagree on it than on other issues. In the sense that someone can be a pro-war libertarian, I think one can also be a pro-gun control libertarian, a pro-income tax libertarian, a pro-conscription libertarian or a libertarian thief. But all these are contradictory,..."
Contradictory? Only if libertarianism is some sort of ONE BIG AXIOM dogma. There are a number of libertarians, both historically and currently, who don't believe that libertarism is or even can be constructed on that model. Some of us would, in fact, argue that every attempt to construct libertarism [or any other political/economic view] on one big principle have failed miserably and end up covertly importing a variety of subordinate principles to derive the conclusions that the advocate of such view wants to arrive at.
Aeon J. Skoble -
3/28/2008
I guess I'd prefer "deviation" to "not a libertarian" or "oxymoron" if it comes to that.
Couple other things:
"What I don't agree with is the idea that there is something special about foreign policy that makes it more okay for so-called libertarians (or libertarians very broadly defined) to radically disagree on it than on other issues"
No, I think there are some good reasons for thinking that foreign policy is sui generis. For one thing, states exist. Many of them are not even remotely concerned with individualism or liberty. So a state like ours, which is at least a little bit invested in those things, may find itself obliged to deal with, say, nazis. When the Nazis are trying to take over the world, you can't just trot out the Bourne quote and hope they'll go away.
More fundamentally, and maybe this is another thing on which you and I will have to agree to disagree, one can be an incremental anarchist. In other words, one can work towards gradual reduction of the state's authority, bit by bit, rather than seeing it as an all-or-nothing affair. So we may be legitmate in using some aspects of the state even as we work towards the eradication of others (now) and all of them (eventually). For instance: I refuse to see myself as "immoral" because I drive to work on (gasp!) state-owned roads, a coercively funded monopoly enterprise. But I do see the wrongness of state ownership of roads, and will work to change it.
