Latest notable terms from this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page). [continue reading…]
Cato’s David Boaz in recent weeks generated controversy in the libersphere when, in his Reason article Up from Slavery, he chastised conservatives and libertarians, such as Jacob Hornberger, for failing to condemn or acknowledge slavery when they celebrate aspects of antebellum America:
I am particularly struck by libertarians and conservatives who celebrate the freedom of early America, and deplore our decline from those halcyon days, without bothering to mention the existence of slavery. … Take a more recent example, from a libertarian. Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation writes about the decline of freedom in America: …
Hornberger replied, in Up from Serfdom, acknowledging that in his article, he had “failed to except American slavery from my reference to the freedom enjoyed by early Americans,” that he “made a mistake and neglected to include the slavery exception in my article”–although he notes that in the past, he has “always made a point of mentioning that tragic exception when discussing the history of American freedom. (See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)” Boaz replied with Up from Slavery, Continued.
Of course, as everyone knows, there was slavery, and it was horrible and unlibertarian. But in my view, it’s no great crime to fail to explicitly mention the existence of slavery every time one says something about early America, since it’s universally known, indisputed, and condemned. Likewise, it’s quite obvious to everyone that libertarians oppose slavery.
From my point of view, the main problem with glorifying the Founders, the Constitution, and so on and treating these as proto-libertarian is that they are not–because of slavery, and other reasons to boot (see Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power, The Declaration and Conscription, Revising the American Revolution, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army, Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!, Jeff Hummel’s “The Constitution as a Counter-Revolution”). It seems to me to be American chauvinism in equating early American institutions and practices with libertarianism (see my post Boaz on Libertarianism and “Government”). Be that as it may, certain aspects of early American society were undeniably more libertarian–for white males, at least–and there is no good reason to pretend otherwise. (By the way, I hereby acknowledge slavery existed and condemn it. I’m also not a neo-Confederate, in case anyone needs to know.)
Another piece by Boaz himself helps illustrate why his argument is flawed. Just a few days after Boaz’s initial piece in Reason, he posted Are Libertarians Anti-Government?, in which he wrote:
… how should we describe the libertarian position? To answer that question, we need to go back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
I don’t see the word “slavery” in this article. So Boaz seems to be “celebrat[ing] the freedom of early America, … without bothering to mention the existence of slavery.” He appears to be violating his own rule. Granted, this was a reprint of something written in 1998, but the introductory comments could have taken the time to denounce slavery. Boaz’s failure to denounce it here does not give anyone cause to think he denies there was slavery or to think he condones it. This leads me to think Boaz’s proposed rule is unwarranted.
And, in the words of Groundhog Day’s Ned Ryerson, “It’s a doosy”.
As noted previously (see Stop the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)), this treaty was being negotiated in secret and is an attempt to extend the reach of the west’s horrible and draconian IP (patent and copyright) regimes to other countries. As I noted, the
ACTA is also similar to another arcane law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, under the guise of protecting “property rights,” snuck in provisions that criminalize even the mere possession of technology that can be used to circumvent digital protection systems (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). Likewise, under the guise or protecting property rights in inventions and artistic works (patent and copyright), it “seeks to provide legal authority for the surveillance of Internet file transfers and searches of personal property”. As one group notes, “ACTA goes way, way beyond the TRIPS (the copyright/patent/trademark stuff in the World Trade Organization agreement), creating an entirely new realm of liability for people who provide services on the net”. More invasion of personal liberty and property rights in the name of false, artificial property rights.
The draft text has now been released, under pressure from the European Parliament (see Declan McCullagh’s post, ACTA treaty aims to deputize ISPs on copyrights; see aslo Michael Geist’s analysis of the draft text). As I suspected, the text (available here) reveals, as McCullagh notes, that ACTA “seek[s] to export controversial chunks of U.S. copyright law to the rest of the world,” such as the DMCA’s “‘anti-circumvention‘ section, which makes it illegal to bypass copy protection even to back up a Blu-Ray disc” (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). This is a horrible US law that was snuck in the DMCA that may now become part of other countries’ laws. It prohibits not only copyright infringement but also makes it illegal to sell devices that could be used to circumvent encryption of DRM’d information.
Now, the DMCA also contained a “safe harbor” for ISPs that probably would not pass now (since it gave ISPs an exemption for liability that turned out to be broader than initially realized when the DMCA was enacted in the 1990s). I was concerned that ACTA would contain the anti-circumvention provisions but not the ISP safe-harbor rules–but some version of this does, at least, seem to be contemplated in the ACTA text (see pp. 20-21).
In any case, this horrible treaty needs to be stopped.
The scholarly libertarian journal Reason Papers, founded by Tibor Machan and currently edited by Aeon Skoble, just put its most recent issue online. (It’s hosted on the Mises Institute’s servers and I help with the online aspect.) Contents listed below:
Issue No. 31 – Fall 2009 (Full Issue)
Articles: Business Ethics Symposium
- Rival Paradigms in Business Ethics —Nicholas Capaldi
- The Need for Realism in Business Ethics —Elaine Sternberg
- The Virtue of Prudence as the Moral Basis of Commerce —Tibor R. Machan
- Hume and Smith on the Moral Psychology of Market Relations, Practical Wisdom, and the Liberal Political Order —Jonathan Jacobs
- Ethics without Profits —Douglas Den Uyl
- Is a Market for Values a Value in Markets? —Alexei Marcoux
- The Sloppiness of Business Ethics —Marianne Jennings
- The Business Ethics of Incarceration: The Moral Implications of Treating Prisons Like Businesses —Daniel D’Amico & Joseph Butt
Review Essay
Book Reviews
- Paul Bloomfield, ed.’s Morality and Self-Interest —Jonathan Jacobs
- Robert Levy and William Mellor’s The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom —Timothy Sandefur
[Mises]
A new documentary is out, Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system:
Patent Absurdity explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy. The film is based on a series of interviews conducted during the Supreme Court’s review of in re Bilski — a case that could have profound implications for the patenting of software. The Court’s decision is due soon…
With interviews from Eben Moglen, Dan Bricklin, Karen Sandler, Richard Stallman and others…
I discuss Bilski in Supreme Skepticism Toward Method Patents and The Arbitrariness of Patent Law, and Moglen and Stallman in Leftist Attacks on the Google Book Settlement and Eben Moglen and Leftist Opposition to Intellectual Property. The film is worth watching.
But interestingly, the site for a film about patent absurdity contains this notice: “Movie copyright © 2010 Luca Lucarini.”
Consistency FAIL!
[AM]
I’ve posted recently about Net Neutrality–see Net Neutrality Developments and A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality. There’s an interesting discussion about this and related issues on the EconTalk podcast, between host Russ Roberts and Yochai Benkler of Harvard. Benkler really knows his stuff and it comes thru in this fascinating and informative discussion. As he explains, there is a debate about whether to impose “open access” as well as “net neutrality” regulations on the Internet-related companies. Open access means the state treats the physical communications infrastructure–fiber optic cables and so forth–that carry data signals for internet, cable TV, telephone communications, as a sort of regulated utility. Thus, it forces the owners of the physical “pipes” to sell capacity to competitors at regulated rates. This means the consumer can buy internet service from companies other than the owners of the physical networks. Net neutrality means that whoever whoever sells the service (whether it’s the fiber owner or some company that the fiber owner has to allow to use its networks to offer competing service) can’t discriminate between types of data packets, and can’t impose tiered pricing.
Now, as noted, Benkler knows his stuff, but he is clearly one of these mainstream interventionist types, talking about how “we” (the state) needs to intervene in the market to optimize outcomes, etc. etc. He is in favor of imposing open access, for example. As the podcast summary notes, “Benkler argues in favor of net neutrality and government support of broadband access.” The free market host, Russ Roberts (of Keynes-Hayek rap fame), is very diplomatic but pushes back one some of Benkler’s pro-regulatory assumptions (listen around 29:06-, 30:12-, 41:20-, where he makes the free-market case and argues against the pro-regulatory assumptions), but gets Benkler to admit explicitly that he favors the state intervening and forcing companies to use their property in certain ways (around 29:55-, ). Benkler’s paternalistic, state-trusting approach even carries through when it comes to the iPad and similar “closed” or proprietary products like the iPad (47:30-). As the summary notes, “He is skeptical of the virtues of new technology (such as the iPad) fearing that they will lead to less innovation.” He worries that consumers might like the iPad because it’s got a fantastic interface etc., but that this might be at the cost of the long-term value of “a more innovative platform” (open source) (49:50-). The typical omniscient planner mentality: there is market failure, and the state is needed to fix and tweak things, when the consumers get it wrong. Russ Roberts (48:10-) rightly interjects that all these products are great; he praises the first and second generation kindles; the progress of technology; the iPad; the diversity; the competition; Apple’s products; open-source; the Sony e-readers; the dynamism of the market.
Update: Peter Klein has some insightful comments on and criticisms of some of Benkler’s views in this review.
[Mises]
On his blog, the hapless and inept Gene Quinn calls me a liar. He says that’s why he banned me from his blog. He’s lucky I believe defamation law is unlibertarian or he might be facing another lawsuit–but he’s already got his hands full defending himself from in another lawsuit from charges of making false and misleading comments on his site. Poor guy. Anyway, I explain in excruciating detail here why he is himself plainly lying in his outrageous comments about. Quinn is a very sad person: he is obviously not very bright or well educated; he writes like a fifth grader; he argues like a seventh grader. He may be competent at prosecuting patent applications, since that is not that hard to do–it’s basically like preparing technical reports explaining an invention and then corresponding with the PTO according to its esoteric set of rules. He may also be good at marketing himself, which seems to be the primary purpose of his site and his blustery logorrhea. He’s sort of the patent equivalent of those car dealership owners who put on fruit hats and speak in weird voices in local, cheap TV commercials just to sell cars. His calling me a liar, when I am not and when he knows it, is dishonest, but to be expected from a pathetic joke like he has shown himself to be.
By the way, since he’s banned me from his site, I can’t reply to him there. It would not hurt if others in the libertarian community commented there and set Quinn straight.
On a couple of facebook discussions (here and here, if you are friends with the right people), several people had some interesting and vigorous discussion of David Boaz’s article Are Libertarians Anti-Government? An edited version of some of some of my comments is appended below:
Boaz’s piece implies that libertarians are all minarchists. This is simply wrong. It’s fine if he’s a minarchist but he’s wrong to imply that the standard or only libertarian view is minarchist. His piece also implies that early America was some kind of proto- or quasi-libertarian system, that the Constitution is legitimate and that a written constitution is necessary and a good idea. Nonsense. The Constitution was just a centralizing power grab of a coup d’etat (see Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power). It has predictably led to the centralizing tyranny we have now. To hold up the Constitution as some kind of libertarian-compatible document is a mistake. The Constitution is just PR used by the state to delude the people into thinking it’s limited and legitimate, so that it can get away with even more pillaging and plundering of the people–the sheeple who say “we are the government”.
Second, I think he’s equivocating in his use of “government.” Some minarchists, like Tibor Machan, start out like this: observing that libertarians, even anarchists, don’t oppose “government”–defined, as Boaz does, as “a set of institutions through which we adjudicate our disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs. It derives its authority, at some level and in some way, from the consent of the governed.” Note how Boaz carefully words this here so that it possibly includes non-state institutions. What he should have done next is say that some libertarians think these institutions have to be a (minarchist) state; while others think that it can/must be totally stateless. Then he could have argued that the minarchist version of this has to have certain constitutional limits, etc.
A third problem is his promotion of the Constitution as if that is libertarian. I’m getting tired of libertarians equating “early America” with proto-libertarianism. He says, “how should we describe the libertarian position? To answer that question, we need to go back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” But this implies the libertarian view is defined by the Constitution, and that we are pro-Constitution. Not true. (The case for the Declaration being quasi-libertarian is not as difficult to make. But the horrible Constitution?!)
He says: “the form of government and the limits on its powers should be specified in a constitution”. This is not a libertarian view. It is the American mentality of how to set up states. Britain has an unwritten constitution. They don’t need to be written.
On a more substantive issue, a commentator on the thread wrote, in defense of Boaz: “This suggests that unless you really have good reason to think most of your property is pretty safe from being taken, you don’t really have a private property economy.” I agree. And that’s why they say that no man’s property is safe while the legislature is in session. Of course, the existence of the state and legislation simply makes property rights less secure and increases uncertainty. See my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society, section III.B; Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization—From Monarchy to Democracy.
Update: I just came across a passage that supports the notion that the standard connotation of “government” is as a rough synonym for state, despite the somewhat tortured efforts of minarchists to sometimes argue that “government” is not necessarily compulsory/statist: Roderick Long, in his excellent Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism (ch. 9 of Long & Machan, eds., Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?):
A legal system is any institution or set of institutions in a given society that provides dispute resolution in a systematic and reasonably predictable way. it does so through the exercise of three functions: the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. The judicial function, the adjudication of disputes, is the core of any legal system; the other two are ancillary to this. The legislative function is to determine the rules that will govern the process of adjudication (this function may be merged with the judicial function, as when case law arises through precedents, or it may be exercised separately), while the executive function is to secure submission (through a variety of means, which may or may not include violence) to the adjudicative process and compliance with its verdicts. A government or state (for present purposes i shall use these terms interchangeably) is any organisation that claims, and in large part achieves, a forcibly maintained monopoly, within a given geographical territory, of these legal functions, and in particular of the use of force in the executive function.
Now the market anarchist objection to government is simply a logical extension of the standard libertarian objection to coercive monopolies in general. …
Facebook is cool. It helps bring back forgotten memories. A good example follows. I attended St. George Elementary in Baton Rouge for 8 years, and since joining facebook I’ve reconnected with several of my former classmates. Someone posted this picture of our sixth grade class (I’m sitting on the far right, front row). One of the girls, Rebecca Stewart, had the following (lightly edited) exchange with me today:
Rebecca: Hello SGS class of 1979 friends! Stephan – what r u doing? Do you remember when Julie Burroughs had you demonstrate the difference between LIE and LAY? I think of you every time I hear the stupid song with the lyrics that get it wrong.
Me: Rebeccca, god my memory is bad. I only vaguely recall that–who is Julie Burroughs… a teacher? I remember I think a Ms. Burroughs? What was the lie-lay incident? You have me curious now, do tell!
Rebecca: Yes Ms. Burroughs was a teacher, and I assume she taught English. She asked if anyone wanted to demonstrate the verbs lie and lay. Of course you know who volunteered. For LIE you stood in the front of the class and said, “Michelle Lorio has blue hair.” [She had red hair.] For LAY you laid (or lied?) down on the floor in the front of the classroom. That was right in front of my desk, and Ms. Burroughs was trying not to totally lose it so I guess that’s why it stuck in my memory. There were a few other Stephan Kinsella moments filed away with that memory. Mostly humorous!
Mises blog; archived comments below
Related:
- The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”
- Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?
There’s been a good deal of debate recently in libertarian circles about the word capitalism. Is it compatible with libertarianism? A synonym for it? Should we use it? For example:
- Voice of Radical Dissent podcast, Episode 109: “Capitalism; an interview with Walter Block and Brad Spangler”
- Walter Block: Say ‘Yes’ to Capitalism and ‘Capitalism’ Yesterday, ‘Capitalism’ Today, ‘Capitalism’ Tomorrow, ‘Capitalism’ Forever
- Sheldon Richman: Block Says Yes to Capitalism
- Alexander Benjamin Ramiresonty, Against Block Against ‘Libertarians Against Capitalism’
- Sheldon Richman at FFF: “Capitalism” vs. the Free Market (Youtube video)
- Kevin Carson, Socialism: A Perfectly Good Word Rehabilitated
- Bryan Caplan, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?
- Kinsella, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?; The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”; “Socialism,” the Tea Partiers, and Slate’s Political Gabfest
As some of my posts linked above indicate, I find this debate extremely frustrating because the nature of the debate is rarely made clear. In that respect it is reminiscent of the interminable debates over gay marriage and thick v. thin libertarianism. On the gay marriage issue, it’s often the case that the arguments of gay marriage opponents boils down to opposition to the word marriage being used by the state in the caption in the statute, though they usually won’t come clean and admit it. In my view (not shared by all my co-bloggers at TLS), the thick-thin paradigm adds nothing of substance and is used to equivocate–engaging in non-rigorous argument about what “libertarianism” “is” semantically and then using this to argue for one’s particular substantive positions; it’s like trying to prove that marriage implies slavery or wife-ownership because the word “my” is used in “my wife.”
The libertarian opponents of “capitalism” often engage in equivocation, I believe. If challenged they say they are just opposed to the word, as if this is a semantic or maybe tactical/strategic issue. But because of confused leftist beliefs, many of them are actually opposed to aspects of the underlying social order that we anarcho-libertarians refer to as (non-corporatist) “capitalism”–the modern industrial free market. They oppose “absentee ownership” (see my post A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy), favor localism and self-sufficiency, are leery of the division and specialization of labor, buy into Marxian ideas about “alienation” and “labor”; they accuse standard libertarians of putting undue stress on “capital” while they do the same with “labor” and “the workers”; some flirt with crankish Georgist ideas, and so on. Some of the opponents of the word “capitalism” seem to have genuine strategical or even semantic concerns, such as Sheldon Richman, instead preferring the term “free market.” But some of them seem to oppose even this term–preferring instead the bizarre and annoying term “freed market,” or outright opposing the word “market” in the phrase “free market” (see Markets vs Free Markets).
In my view we should separate the semantic and strategical debate from a debate about substance. Conflating these leads to dishonest argumentation, confusion, and equivocation. On the substantive issues, we can have that debate; I think “left-libertarianism” is a confused project. To the extent it is correct, it is just standard libertarianism and adds little new; see my post Wombatron’s “Why I Am A Left-Libertarian”, noting: “yes we need to be aware that modern day ‘big business’ is not pure; it’s too in bed with the state (as Rothbard, say, recognized long ago in criticizing Rand’s bemoaning of Big Business as being America’s most persecuted minority). Yes, corporatism is bad. Yes, “big business” is often in bed with the state. We know this. And to the extent left-libertarianism says things standard libertarians do not say qua libertarians, then it is either wrong, or incompatible with libertarianism, or, at best, compatible but completely orthogonal to it as much as one’s religious or recreational or cultural preferences are outside of libertarianism (see why the “thick-thin” debate can worm its way in here by unduly and unnecessarily expanding what libertarianism “is”?). In my view, we libertarians are neither left nor right; both left and right are confused, wicked doctrines. We are better than both of them. Which one is “more” evil is a question that may have no answer; from the libertarian point of view, both are wrong, which is why we have an original, fresh, consistent, and radical view focused on individual rights. But my point is not to debate this here. The point is that it’s a substantive debate. It won’t be solved one whit by pointing out that the word “capitalism” was originally attached to us by our enemies as a pejorative.
So to my mind, the only legitimate debate about using the word “capitalism” is a semantic one, or perhaps a strategical/tactical one. As for semantics, this is not really an interesting debate. As a semantical matter, “capitalism” technically means a system with private ownership of the means of production. This is true regardless of its origin, and regardless of whether corporatism is prevalent in the West. It is at least arguable that “a system of private ownership of the means of production” is an acceptable definition of “capitalism”. So much for the semantic issue. If this is what the word means, is it a synonym for libertarianism, as Rand, Friedman, and other founders of modern libertarianism used it; or at least for “free market”? Is it at least compatible with libertarianism? It seems to me that capitalism should not be used as a synonym for libertarianism. For this reason in the last few years I tend to refer to myself as an anarcho-libertarian instead of anarcho-capitalist. I believe capitalism–especially if it is made clear that it does not include corporatism–is closely associated with libertarianism in that it describes the free market in any libertarian society above a primitive level. That is, libertarianism supports property rights, which clearly imply a free market, so long as men engage in trade; and a free market is characterized by capitalism since the means of production (if there are any) are of course privately owned. This is true even of the left-libertarians’ kibbutzes, communes, and coops–such arrangements are simply voluntary coownership which is just one type or application of private ownershp rights.
What about tactical or strategical concerns? This one has more weight. The West is often referred to as “capitalist” because it allows a much higher degree of genuine capitalism than have other countries. Yet because the western states have never been fully libertarian, there has been a large and growing degree of corporatism or mercantalism. Thus in popular usage “capitalism” has some corporatist connotations. If we call ourselves capitalism we may mislead outsiders and open ourselves to unjust criticism. This is one reason I tend to say anarcho-libertarian instead. But so long as we are clear that we mean laissez-faire capitalism, or to condemn corporatism, mercantalism, and protectionism, I see nothing wrong with using the term capitalism to describe an important aspect of libertarian theory and society. Due to the constant drumbeat of the left-libertarians, there is a temptation to just give them this one. To stop using the word. To retreat. But we have to be careful in siding with them on their ostensibly “semantic” battle. In my view, we standard libertarians do not want to give the impression that we agree with the leftists’ substantive attacks on (laissez-faire, Lockean, private-property, modern, industrialized) capitalism. That debate should be a separate one, not mired in semantics.
Update: I posted the following comment to Sheldon Richman’s FEE blogpost Is Capitalism Something Good?:
It seems to me that a legitimate definition of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and that there is no doubt that any advanced economic order of a libertarian society would have capitalism so defined. Even if it has private-collective worker-owned firms, co-ops, kibbutzes, and the like existing in isolated pockets sort of like the Amish still do today. And in fact even such communalist enclaves are built on private ownership of capital–it’s just that the members of the co-op voluntarily co-own the property privately. So we can view the co-ops etc. of a free society to be a (probably marginal) subset of capitalism; and in any case they are certainly compatible with capitalism since the economic order of a free society can have a wide diversity. In my view there is little doubt that there will always be a dominant and significant role for corporations, firms, employment, mass production, the specialization and division of labor, international trade, and so on–though there well may also be more opportunities for self-sufficiency, localism, communalist experimentation, and so on.
It is also true that the word capitalism nowadays has non-libertarian connotations like corporatism and crony capitalism. So where does this leave us? Capitalism, defined carefully, is a significant aspect of the economic order of a libertarian society. Even if defined carefully capitalism does not fully describe libertarianism or a libertarian society, but only one aspect of its economy. So I do not think we should use capitalism as a strict synonym for libertarianism (for this reason I use the term “anarcho-libertarian” nowadays instead of “anarcho-capitalist”), and when we do use it, we obviously have to be careful that we do not give the misleading impression that we are condoning crony capitalism or corporatism–so we can add a modifier if necessary, like “laissez-faire” or we can make it clear that we favor capitalism but condemn corporatism, etc.
So: do not use capitalism as a synonym for libertarianism; keep the word around for use in describing an aspect of a libertarian social order; but use it carefully in a way that does not connote crony capitalism.
A final note: we should not bash capitalism since this will be taken by anti-libertarians as siding with their hostility to property rights and the free market. And we should definitely not employ the word socialist, either, to describe our views.
Another comment of mine on the FEE blog:
@Little Alex:
“@Carpio: Your “eternal-teen-rebel” rhetoric is making you look silly and evasive. Placing capital in a hierarchy above the liberty of self-management to define a social system is regression. (http://wp.me/pnWUd-2rW)”
Libertarians view property rights as the only rights. Liberty is defined in terms of property rights. The libertarian conception of property rights immediately implies that all property, including “capital,” is privately owned. Thus “capitalism,” defined as a system in which capital is privately owned, is compatible with libertarianism and indeed an important aspect of any reasonably advanced libertarian society. Conceptually identifying this feature of the economic order of a libertarian society and attaching a name to that concept is not “Placing capital in a hierarchy above the liberty of self-management.” To the contrary, it is simply rational and honest explication and conceptual analysis of social and economic systems. As such, I can understand why it may rankle some leftists given the left’s hostility to rationality and clear thinking (and by saying this I do not mean to vindicate the right; they are both dishonest, wicked, confused views. Thank God we standard libertarians have escaped the left-right straitjacket).
“I’d never read Clarence Carson’s article, but you continue to ignore this rationale that many have echoed: “linguistically, it does not stand for private property, free enterprise, and the free market. It is false labeling to make it appear to do so. Capitalism means either a system in which capital holds sway, which is largely what Marx apparently meant, or an ideology to justify such a system”.”
“a system in which capital holds sway”–such vague, amorphous phrases are often trotted out and used for equivocation. We libertarians believe in property rights. Qua libertarians we need have no Marxian type opinion on whether any given feature of a free society “holds sway.”
“@Kinsella: RE: “It seems to me that a legitimate definition of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production”
“Why? Assertion?”
This debate is at least partly about the meaning of terms–semantics. I think many leftists are reluctant to admit this because although in disingenuous fashion they at first seem to acknowledge this, this is quickly dismissed and substantive issues are smuggled in via equivocation. Well if someone says a word is inappropriate, then a semantical inquiry into what the meaning of the controversial term is, is warranted. Thus if I state that a legitimate definition of a word is X, this is not an “assertion”–it’s understood to be an appeal to standard methods of determining what definitions of given words are. That is, resorting to a dictionary or the like. And if you consult dictionaries, or encyclopedias, you’ll see that a very common definition of “capitalism” is “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”
Or similar. This is not “assertion.” It’s a reasonable way to find out what a word means in a language. Now given this technical definition, as I argued, it is of course NOT incompatible with libertarianism and individual rights, and in fact is a crucial feature of any reasonably advanced libertarian society. As I acknowledged, it is not a good synonym for libertarianism but rather describes on part of the economic order of a libertarian society. It is associated with libertarianism because you cannot have true capitalism without a libertarian order (because capitalism requires property rights to be respected, and only libertarianism consistently does this); and you cannot have any reasonably advanced, productive, modern, prosperous, libertarian society without capitalism. So, they imply each other–so it is no wonder some people use capitalism as a stand-in for libertarianism, perhaps as a form of metonymy, in which “a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept”.
I also acknowledged that “capitalism” has other connotations that are incompatible with libertarianism, namely what we libertarians who try to keep concepts and definitions straight would call “crony capitalism” or perhaps “corporatism” or “mercantilism.” And because of these connotations and because of ambiguities and confusions (some of them caused by leftists and left-libertarians, perhaps), we have to be careful when we use the word capitalism: we should use it not as a synonym for liberty, but for a critical feature of the economic order of a free society; and we should be clear to use it in a context or way that makes it clear to the audience that it is the libertarian, free-market, anti-corporatist, technical, and libertarian-compatible meaning of capitalism that we have in mind.
So what if we need to do this? Such caution is (perhaps unfortunately) necessary for many of the radical ideas we advocate, which turn off the masses and the malicious–when we use free market, profit, individualism, self-interest, property rights, rationality, reason, economics, welfare, government, and so on. We have to deal with such misanthropes and ignoramuses, unfortunately, but we do not have to join them.
“RE: “It is also true that the word capitalism nowadays has non-libertarian connotations like corporatism and crony capitalism.”
“Nowadays? No, sir. Always.”
So what? It still has a technical definition in economics that in fact accurately describes a crucial feature of any advanced economic order that will arise when property rights (liberty) are respected. And for anyone who seeks any economic understanding at all, we need a word that correlates with this concept. There is a word; it’s useful; there is no reason whatsoever not to use it–so long as one is careful as I have adumbrated above–and as most libertarians are, already–once again showing that the left has almost nothing to teach us libertarians. Where the left is correct, we libertarians already know it (as Rothbard, say, recognized long ago in criticizing Rand’s bemoaning of Big Business as being America’s most persecuted minority). And where the left is original, or non-libertarian, it is wrong (e.g., its crankish economics, silly views on alienation, etc.–not that every aspect of Marxism is incompatible with libertarianism–see Hoppe: Marx was “Essentially Correct”).
I must say I have about had it with left-leaning libertarians having the gall to tell standard libertarians to learn from leftism–we are better than leftists, far better. It is they–these economically illiterate, individivual-hating, totalitarian-supporting, murderous, collectivist cranks–who should learn from us. Leftism, sir, frankly, is rank evil. Libertarianism is good. I know which side I’m on. The only thing I want from the left is for them to drop their crankism and misanthropy, acquire some economic literacy, and join us in respecting individualism and property rights. Other than that, I have no use for leftism/socialism, and am reminded of a comment by Sudha Shenoy in this regard about what socialists are really good for (this is said tongue in cheek, mind you).
“The usage of “capitalism” in the Randian/Misesean sense wasn’t intellectually honest; whether or not they admit it, it was purely political, they got away with it for a bit, but the crisis of actually existing capitalism has come back to bite genuine free marketeers in the ass.”
We will have to disagree on this. As a libertarian who appreciates the critical role of Mises in the fight for economic understandng and for individual liberty and property rights–and I also appreciate Rand’s role in the beginnings of the modern libertarian movement–I find such accusations to be completely appalling. Mises defended the private property order–the free society, whether left-“libertarians” realize this or not–and defended it proudly, using terms adequate to convey ideas–using terms that are part of the language, yes, using terms hurled pejoratively against us. The left also “accuses” us of favoring economic inequality (we do!), individualism (we do!), property rights (we do), self-interest (we do), and so on. I think Mises et al. are to be commended and appreciated for having the courage to proudly stand up for the goodness of the property-rights order that libertarianism favors. Mises fought for your rights, sir, and you call him dishonest? Utterly appalling.
In any case: your argument here is yet another apparently attempt to pretend like your are making only a semantic point, while the underlying motive, the passion, etc. are clearly political and activist oriented. The origin of the term is irrelevant. A word acquires a certain meaning in a given time in a given community; this is what dictionaries are for. It is clear beyond cavil that one standard, accepted meaning of the word “capitalism” is a system with private, as opposed to state, ownership of the means of production. And it is clear also that such a system is an inextricably important and good aspect of a libertarian society. Yes, the word has other meanings and connotations, but this only means we have to be careful and vigilant.
April 16, 2010 at 1:19 pm-
Brilliant.I remarked to Wombatron a long time ago that left-libertarianism (and as you noted, its sympathies with Marxism and Georgism) is an anachronistic venture, worried about who sat on which side of the legislature, and what terms meant 200 years ago (see the recent Charles Johnson/Lee Doren debate snorefest). While it is interesting historical trivia, it has very little to do with the development or promulgation of ideas.
As I noted in another blog comment, ideologues make poor marketers. In the aforementioned debate, Johnson tried to explain that using what seem to be to counter-intuitive terms (to the listener) are useful for initiating a dialog. As someone who markets for a living, I can say with confidence that confusing the listener/reader may work some of the time (like a stopped clock being right twice a day), but will almost always will yield a poorer result than being clear and reinforcing.
Ron Paul has proven that these ideas are infectious, exciting and powerful. They don’t need a complicated or intricate delivery. They do not have to be delivered by demagogues and skilled oratory. They don’t require sophisticated arguments about historical context. They certainly benefit from the absence of obfuscation and rhetorical tricks of redirection.
The appeal of revising language appears to me to be, that it keeps everyone talking about the superficial and not talking about and acting on ideas.
April 16, 2010 at 2:32 pm-
Dixie,
I can appreciate your point. And in a way, that’s an element of libertarian philosophy that appeals to me intensely, it’s brilliant simplicity.
Libertarianism has the selling-point in its name: Liberty
And liberty functionally means only one thing: self-ownership
That’s it.
You’re a libertarian if you believe you-own-you and I-own-me. Period.
That’s a pretty simply sell, is it not? No historical context or understanding of economics necessary.
If you can convince someone of self-ownership, and they really buy it, then all else follows fairly easy for the rest of the philosophy is simply an exploration of the self-evident nature of liberty and the practical application of it. Of course, that’s where you encounter a lot of “buyer’s remorse” and the exposure of false “converts”. When a follow-the-idea-to-its-logical-conclusion investigation reveals that self-ownership is incompatible with theft, slavery, murder, and fraud, the true character of the person is laid bare. Which do they value more? Liberty, or what they can obtain by aggression against others?
April 16, 2010 at 1:45 pm-
What could be more anarchistic than language itself? It is the users of the language who decide what a word means. The best advice is the often-used phrase, “know your audience”. Are you talking to a friend, a co-worker, a stranger at a fair; are you speaking on the radio, posting on the internet, writing a letter to the editor? Different audiences will have a slightly different understanding of the terms you use.
- April 16, 2010 at 2:23 pm
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Michael,
This is an excellent point (language is the ultimate proof of anarchy). Language is not absolute, it’s a bunch of arbitrary noises and squiggles that we’ve collectively attached meaning to. Just as all value is subjective, ultimately, language is subjective. That there is a high-degree of commonality in our individual subjective evaluations of those arbitrary noises and squiggles doesn’t change the subjective nature of language. In fact, the high-degree of commonality is further proof that it is human nature to mold one’s values to be compatible with others out of a desire to exchange (supporting the fact that order is a spontaneous result of voluntary society).
So I definitely agree choosing words that communicate with the intended audience is more important than “sticking to our guns” over a certain semantic quibble.
The caveat is that this must swing both ways. As it is wise to choose words that truly communicate our ideas to a specific audience, it is dishonest to use one subjective understanding of a word to falsely accuse another for using that word though they define it differently.
If those on the “left” want to use capitalism to refer to corporatism and reject that, that’s fine. But when they then criticize libertarians for supporting corporatism because we use the word capitalism, knowing full well that by capitalism we mean “the ‘system’ of voluntary exchanges between self-owning individuals (knowing full well because we are not ambiguous in defining our terms) — something fully incompatible with corporatism, that’s just lying.
I think it was Voltaire who said “if you want to converse with me, define your terms”. As long as someone will honestly and consistently apply their definitions, I have no problem adapting to their vocabulary for at least the duration of a discussion. It’s the “bait-and-switch” people who really piss me off.
April 16, 2010 at 3:25 pm-
Well, I guess one up side to this is that in labeling their ideas LEFT-libertarian–which you hold to be confused and wrong–there’s no chance of yourself being confused with those ideas. At least they did you the courtesy of adopting a distinctive label that seperates them out from the rest of the libertarian movement.
I rather wish other libertarians would start doing this–I think it would help the rest of the world sort out all the different movement subsets there actually are, rather than just casually assuming that because Neal Boortz calls himself a libertarian, all libertarians agree with Neal Boortz (to use one extreme example).
April 16, 2010 at 4:34 pm-
The only problem with so-called “left-libertarianism” is that it isn’t libertarianism at all. It’s just a repackaging of the tired old “property is theft” variant of anarchism of 100+ years ago. Just because it’s anti-state, that doesn’t mean it’s libertarian.
I agree with SK on the idea that we shouldn’t retreat, and allow the leftists to frame and define the terms of the debate. In fact, when I am in a discussion that allows me to define my terms, I call myself a liberal, then explain that I mean a liberal in the classical Misesian sense of the word, in a possibly Quixotic attempt to take the word back.
- April 16, 2010 at 5:08 pm
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Who in the modern Libertarian Left says that “property is theft”?
- April 16, 2010 at 4:40 pm
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Actually, they don’t tend to call themselves “left-libertarian”, but anarchist or libertarian, and objecting to us “right-libertarians” or anarcho-capitalists for trying to appropriate their terms…
April 16, 2010 at 11:28 pm
April 16, 2010 at 3:36 pm-
“What could be more anarchistic than language itself?”
Great point, Michael. This idea follows closely with some insight a classmate of mine offered in a discussion a few days ago. We were discussing the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case, which effectively banned state legislatures from imposing anti-sodomy laws in their states (thank goodness, and finally), and she said, “This all seems so arbitrary. The laws are just words that a select few write down, and the Supreme Court is an even smaller group that decides our fate based on their opinions and interpretations.” Despite the State’s attempts to establish never-ending laws and regulations, people’s preferences for changing language will always trump their arbitrarily established rules. It’s a very ironic idea – the State has no option expect to try and establish its foundations using anarchistic devices.
I think it’s unfortunate that words like “liberal,” “liberty,” “freedom,” “capitalism,” and even to a certain extent “laissez-faire” no longer carry the same widely accepted definitions they did decades and centuries ago. Too often I hear highly educated, seemingly at-least-partially wise people proclaim the perils of our “free-market” system, and how the hands off approach of laissez-faire capitalism has proven itself to be an awful, innefficient, unfair system that breeds greed and egoism.
To me, people who have treated themselves to some Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt or any other Austrian by the time they hear such utterances should find very little difficulty in confronting the speaker and explaining his or her errors. But perhaps the most important task is to be comfortable using whatever words will work in the conversation. If one has to define self-ownership, the non-aggression principle and voluntary action as “Tallahassadoogyism,” so be it. Besides, that tends to lighten the mood.
April 16, 2010 at 3:56 pm-
The only reason I question the use of the term capitalism is that it has been too polluted – both by those we don’t like it all and those Statists who have co-opted the term to mean the corporo-fascistic economic model that we actually have (and meant to). Unfortunately in the sound-bite world we live in we don’t have time to explain that what we mean by Capitalism is x, y, and usually z, not the 1,2, and 3 that it is said to be – you have lost the audience’s attention span.
If it’s a debate between right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, absent the use of Force, it then really is just a matter of how an individual chooses to live their life and the voluntary associations they choose to make.
April 17, 2010 at 8:21 am-
“In my view, we libertarians are neither left nor right; both left and right are confused, wicked doctrines. We are better than both of them. Which one is “more” evil is a question that may have no answer; from the libertarian point of view, both are wrong, which is why we have an original, fresh, consistent, and radical view focused on individual rights.”
*Claps*
April 20, 2010 at 12:04 am-
Use of capital is not optional in any society, therefore it is the self-professed “socialists” who must abandon that ridiculous term to start using various forms of “capitalism” (e.g. State Capitalism, Minarchist Capitalism, Free Capitalism, etc.).
On today’s Slate Political Gabfest the hosts criticized Tea Partiers for misusing the word “socialism.” David Plotz said it’s “stunning” that Tea Partiers would say Obama is leading the country into socialism. After all, the Obamacare legislation benefited corporations such as insurance companies. The hosts accuse the Tea Partiers of basically engaging in equivocation: using the pejorative potency of “socialism” because of its traditional technical meaning but using the word in a looser sense to refer to “big government.”
But of course the Tea Partiers have a point. It is true that socialism in a technical sense has been used to denote economic or political systems in which the means of production are publicly owned–basically, the state owns land and factories, as under communism. But fascism and corporatism can be seen as variants of this basic idea: instead of directly and explicitly owning the means of production, the state indirectly controls such resources by its control and regulation of corporations, who nominally own capital. This was done under fascism in Hitler’s Germany, for example, which was of course socialistic–the word Nazi means “national socialist”. Thus, the Slate Political Gabfest pundits, while a bit condescendingly chastising the Tea Partiers for their naivety, are themselves a bit naive in contrasting fascism from socialism, as if they are totally distinct or opposed.
As I noted in What Libertarianism Is, Austrian economist and libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added). He goes on:
If … an action is performed that uninvitedly invades or changes the physical integrity of another person’s body and puts this body to a use that is not to this very person’s own liking, this action … is called aggression … Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter — aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism — are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism. [pp. 12, 7]
In other words, although the term socialism is usually narrowly restricted to public ownership of the means of production, from a political or ethical standpoint there is nothing special about “capital”; what is important about it is that it is a type of private property. Thus the essence of socialism is simply institutionalized aggression against private property. In this broader sense, any state action that infringes on property rights is socialistic. The Tea Partiers are right to sense the socialism of Obamacare, for it most certainly involves institutionalized, massive, and widespread interference with private property rights–e.g., the taxes that fund it are theft of private property; the economic regulations imposed on businesses and individuals are trespass. Where the Tea Partiers go wrong is in not realizing that Republican and conservative polices are also socialistic in this broader sense–from the drug war to the war in Iraq. (See also Friedman and Socialism.)
Yet again, we have an illustration of the fact that only libertarians oppose the state, aggression, slavery, and socialism in a principled, consistent way.
[TLS]
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