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An odd gmail glitch just placed an Aug. 12, 2009 email from Tibor Machan at the top of my gmail inbox, with this note: “Hi, Stephan: Perhaps you would like to use the attached discussion note, ‘A Brief on Left-Libertarinaism,'” and containing his short article. This was sent to me around the time I started Libertarian Papers and was obviously meant as a submission to that journal. I vaguely recall seeing it and dismissing it as too light or poorly written for the journal. In any case, it appears not to be published online so here it is, with no edits (since I cannot ask Tibor to approve).
A Brief on Left Libertarianism—Is it an Oxymoron?
Tibor R. Machan*
[sent to Stephan Kinsella Aug. 12, 2009]
Let me begin by stating up front that I reject any division of libertarianism into left and right wing. I view this akin to dividing the school into high and low, yellow and blue or round and triangular versions. I know there are quite a few enthusiastic supporters of the division—indeed, reading them suggests that they have a lot invested in this effort—but I find what they are embarking upon incoherent and a waste of good energy that could be devoted to more important elements of the task to advance the cause of human liberty.
Combining libertarianism with elements of the Right or left defeats the purpose of conceptual clarity about a certain broad political topic. Historically neither the Right nor the Left have shown a sustained, uncompromising loyalty to individual human rights to life, liberty and property while classical liberalism and, especially, libertarianism is exactly about such unwavering loyalty, one that requires the proverbial eternal vigilance.
By its nature libertarianism is about political liberty for all individuals to do whatever that’s peaceful, non-aggressive. (One of my books, a collection of some of my columns, is titled Neither Left nor Right [Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2004]!) Claiming that libertarianism can include limits on the right to private property, as Left libertarianism does, simply renders the view indistinguishable from what social democrats and welfare statists propose. It reminds of market socialism, another oxymoron if you ask me! (For a very good discussion of the position, see Barbara H. Fried, “Left Libertarianism: A Review Essay,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 32, No. 1 [Winter, 2004].)
Of course, my rejection of this notion as an oxymoron hasn’t by any means been successful in countering various efforts to construct some kind of coherent notion labeled “Left-libertarianism” from the current political philosophical dialogue. Books and articles can be found discussing the position, some of them very prestigiously published. (For example, there is Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner’s two volume The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings [St. Martin’s Press, 2000] and their Left-libertarianism and its Critics: The Contemporary Debate [Palgrave, 2000]. See, also, Eric Mack, “Right-Wing Liberalism, Left-Wing Liberalism, and the Self-Ownership Proviso” in Liberal Institutions, Economic Constitutional rights, and the Role of Organizations, ed. Karl-Heinz Ladeur [Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997], 9-29, and his more recent “What is Left of Left-Libertarianism?” [unpublished].)
And in the blog sphere various sites feature more or less serious discussions of the position, for example, by Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long. (See, for example, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/leftlibertarian/.) Several well known philosophers whose politics is self-identified as libertarian would very likely dispute my claim that the label “left-libertarianism” is oxymoronic perhaps out of respect for those who employ it in much of their works. Nonetheless, strictly speaking what is meant by “left” in the discipline of political theory and by “libertarian” are conceptually incompatible if one accepts, as I would argue we must, that libertarianism is a theory that includes as one of its central features adherence to the more or less Lockean account of the right to private property.
So upon close examination it emerges with a certainty beyond reasonable doubt that Left-libertarianism belongs among efforts, like some others by some people on the Left and the Right, to appropriate a concept alien to its logical purpose. This includes such notions as positive rights and positive liberty, welfare rights, and social justice. Many invoke these notions but quite arguably they are conceptual corruptions, in the end, however much one twists and turns to attempt to render them distinctly meaningful. (Of course, it is not possible to say this with finality since, for example, tomorrow morning someone could well come up with a use of the idea that has merit.) These notions may not amount to an outright self-contradiction, such as square circle, but they come close, upon analysis. Thus while the Left aims to divorce people from their work, from their valued attributes, and from the products of their labor, libertarianism opposes this and sees one’s property as the extension of oneself into the world outside of oneself. So suppose that someone is very good looking but had little to do with this, the benefits the individual comes by in virtue of these looks are, according to Left libertarianism, to be treated apart from oneself and thus maybe taxed, for example, or simply confiscated by other people without doing violence to individual rights.
One of the ways that Left-libertarianism is being rendered palatable is to associate it with John Locke’s oft-discussed and troublesome idea of the proviso whereby Locke says that although the right to private property is a fundamental, natural right of human individuals, if the protection of this basic right were to result in a monopoly of vital goods, it would not be justified to regard it inviolate. As I have argued in a recent paper, however, the Lockean proviso is little more than a restatement of Locke’s concern that in certain dire circumstances or emergencies those rights are inapplicable. (See Tibor R. Machan, “Self-Ownership and the Lockean Proviso,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38 [September 2008].) Only “where peace is possible” can there be respect and protection for basic individual rights. And this makes sense once one realizes that such rights are what Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl call “metanormative” principles, ones that provide a framework for peaceful conduct within societies and are not action guiding principles such as those laid out in a system of ethics. (See their book Norms of Liberty [Penn State University Press, 2005].) Since such rights serve as the foundation of a just society or legal system, where no such society or system is possible, no such rights could be applicable. The Lockean proviso, then, is mainly a warning that we not expect justice to be possible everywhere (say, a back alley or a region of the world where natural disasters are virtually constant).
A central feature of Left-libertarianism is, of course, the challenge of the unqualified right to private property. That’s what makes it “Left,” since those on the Left generally want to control other people’s property and by denying that other people actually own their property they have achieved their goal. How do they propose to do this? By rejecting, as already alluded to, the connection between oneself and one’s attributes and works. So if one has the attribute of being very good looking or healthy and incurs benefit from it, these benefits are now supposed to be available to be confiscated even while outright conscription of the individual is rejected. Of course, then why protect one’s right to one’s life if the living of that life is subject to intervention? This is akin to the point sometimes made that while someone may be imprisoned, that’s only limiting his or her body not spirit, which remains free! More generally, the effort to distinguish between unalienable and alienable property—oneself versus one’s goods—is misguided. It is rights, not property itself, that’s identified as un- or inalienable in the libertarian (Lockean) position and this means that one’s right to one’s car or home or firm is not something anyone may violate but also that it’s no violation of one’s rights if one trades or gives away what one has a right to—e. g., one’s house or hours of labor.
A related matter might be worth taking a brief look at. One may wonder whether those on the Left, including so called Left libertarians, would apply their divorce of oneself from one’s works (or other valued attributes, say one’s good looks or health) to their own writings. Why, for example, should an author have full discretion as to what goes into one of his or her works—a book, a paper, and essay, etc.? These are not strictly speaking a feature of oneself, just as some argue that one’s home and car aren’t. So would these folks argue for limited censorship on the grounds that one has only a limited right to make use of one’s property, including the space in one’s written works? I would often like to have my writings featured in, say, The New Republic or The New Work Review of Books or, especially, Philosophy and Public Affairs but the publishers of these insist that they have an absolute right to determine who will appear in the pages of their publication. Would not Leftists and Left libertarians consider this wrong and argue that they have no such absolute right at all, in the spirit of their objection to absolute private property rights?
So it appears clear that libertarianism is to be dealt with apart from dealing with the Left or the Right in political theory and trying to fuse the Left or the Right with it just produces confusion or, putting it somewhat more formally, deploying the concept fails to distinguish or differentiate anything in the world of political theory.
* Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, Orange CA 92866.
