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a man slumped on his desk, from 'The Sleep of Reason Produces
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Oblomovka

Currently:

my much more shameful, and unfortunately less secret, secret shame

Actually, making people laugh is far less humiliating than having most people laugh at you, which has been the primary result of me coming out as a libertarian a few months ago. I could not have timed it better: while most of my friends (and me!) have been taking the piss out of libertarians for years, the recent downturn and the general narrative of What Went Wrong means that now that libertarians are about as popular as Marxists were in 1989. It doesn’t help that in the meltdown of the post-Bush Republican party, some of the remnants have seized upon sweet little shards of libertarian rhetoric as something to bind onto their crazy-cat-religion, conspiracy theories, and Obama Derangement Syndrome to make a comforting nest of denial.

My comfort during this time of tribulation has been Brian Doherty’s hilarious, moving, and, yes, often creepy Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, a broad look at the fall and rise of libertarianism in the United States (uh, and Austria, I guess) from the point of view of someone who adopted it almost literally for its punk rock value. Brian’s majestic and incredibly completist survey  covers everything from the mirror-Marxist machinations of Murray Rothbard, to the sex life of Ayn Rand, to my favorite libertarian of all, Andrew Galambos.

Galambos believed that not only was intellectual property identical to other forms of property (and thus inviolate in the libertarian tradition), so were individual ideas. He allegedly used to put a coin in a jar for the descendants of Tom Paine every time he used the word “liberty”, so that they could be refunded for his use of Paine’s term. Much more concretely, he required everyone who listened to his lectures to sign an NDA, agreeing not to reveal any of his “property” without first negotiating with him for their personal right to spread his ideas.

I have meant to use Galambosianism as an example of the dangers of too much IP protectionism for several years, but sadly his defence of his property was so complete that his ideas are utterly obscure and his name so unremembered that it’s been hard to be able to find anything to cite. Brian Doherty is to be commended for bringing his name back into currency, albeit by actively breaking the very principles Galambos espoused.

Anyway, Doherty made me realise that my take on libertarianism isn’t so far away from the mainstream of the tradition. I always assumed the anarchists were on the even-wackier side of the fence, whereas Doherty brings them center-forward, and argues that it was only in the 1970s that so-called libertarians even considered consorted with Their Enemy, The State. Before that, the libertarians were making the same kind of arguments that any other anarchist group worth their druthers was making: that this State business was a mistake from the start, and needed to wither away as soon as was logistically possible.

I like this position as a political stance to take, because I’ve always been emotionally close to anarchism as a theory, and rather comforted by its lack of any practical consequence. The closer libertarians get to being included in any government, the less I like them. I’m not a libertarian because I think they should in charge. I’m a libertarian because I don’t think anyone can be trusted with that much responsibility. I’d rather busy myself trying to think up institutions, tools, and cultural capital that can be created to prevent that from ever happening.

Actually, that’s close to a lie. The reason I’m a libertarian is an accident of timing, and of influences. Here’s an interesting (US) fact: Generation Xers, like myself, are more loyal to the Republican party than Boomers or Gen-Yers. I can imagine why that despicable fact is true. I grew up when the Left was indulging in a severe self-detonation, and laissez-faire ideas were briefly fashionably new and exciting. I read what I now realise were proto-libertarian tracts under the bed (I also read some awesome Marxist propaganda, but it didn’t really catch). In fact, I fall precisely into a distinct category in Brian Doherty’s taxonomy of libertarians, which he describes here:

[Robert Anton] Wilson’s libertarianism represents a unique strain within the modern movement, a libertarian house in which there are many more mansions than there were in the 1940s to 1970s. Libertarian scholar Chris Sciabarra believes libertarianism needs to become a more “dialectical” philosophy, subsuming more about human life and culture than just politics. He should appreciate the Wilsonian style of having libertrian values inform not just politics but a vision of a life entire. Wilson edited the School of Living’s journal, which had been called Balanced Living and which he renamed A Way Out — a way out of a way of life, state, church and culture that seemed a trap. He scandalized the more puritan among their vegetarian clean living readers in the early 1960s with articles celebrating Wilhelm Reich, sexual liberty, and Ezra Poun, and running poems by Norman Mailer.

Hippies. Anyway, this sounds much more like the scion I’m attached to, although it’s always sort of depressing to discover that your entire outlook is still determined by books you read when you were fifteen. I shall never laugh at geeks quoting The Moon is A Harsh Mistress again.

It also means that I think it perfectly understandable that a generation younger than me (and it’s amazing how many of my Gen-Xers are in denial that there could possibly be such a thing) is less enamored with the L-word. I think I came out as libertarian out of a desperate desire to become more radical as I grew older, rather than just settle into some genial liberal senility. As it is, I’m just playing exactly to type. There’s probably other more exciting philosophies than my warmed-up P.J. O’Rourkism right now. I’m not so old that I’m not fascinated to know what they are. Any ideas?

7 Responses to “my much more shameful, and unfortunately less secret, secret shame”

  1. Craig Hughes Says:

    Libertarianism is very attractive in many of its propositions, but my biggest problem with it is its failure to address coherently three main things, each of which I believe continues to be a valid purpose of a government, though in most current governments these are degraded by massive corruption:

    1. Large-scale infrastructure projects — what is the libertarian plan for law enforcement (who pays?); large-scale vaccination programs; sewers; sports stadiums; a hundred other categories?
    2. Defense of the common good and enforcement of personal rights (property and other rights). Are there communally funded armies and police forces in a libertarian system? Who governs those armies? Is the contract for the governance of those armies much different from *gasp* a constitution and system of laws?
    3. “Charity”, ie some form of redistribution of wealth from the comfortable propertied classes to those who through some circumstances perhaps beyond their control, perhaps not, cannot live a comfortable or enjoyable life. Regard for this last point will obviously depend on ones personal sense of morality and ethics, but even the most hard-hearted “you get what you deserve” asshole can likely be shown some circumstance where they’d agree that something needs to be done for some unfortunate; I am unconvinced that private voluntary charity can effectively address everything which needs addressing.

  2. nick s Says:

    This is going to sound harsher than I mean it, and picks up on what you say early on, but I suspect that it’s easier to migrate towards libertarianism (small-l or large) when you’re in a big-D Democratic company town like SF than, say, the rural American South, where “gubmint” is squeezed to begin with, and the libertarian types have large gun collections. I’m only half a generation younger, and I think I’ve drifted further left, though I’m not going to speculate on what ver yoof has gravitated towards.

  3. Danny O'Brien Says:

    @craighughes

    1. This one is actually covered in some detail in the anarcho-capitalist tradition. I think David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom is one of the easier to read and critique. Basically: law enforcement is performed by competing private enforcement groups, who negotiate and arbitrate between themselves. Sewers, vaccination programs, are created through voluntary funded works (because a) why wouldn’t you?, and b) such programs have been funded privately in the past. The question of how you cope with *universal* vaccination is trickier, but the suggestion would be that you would contractually require anyone doing trade with your community to vaccinate. You wouldn’t be able to vaccinate those who don’t want to vaccinate, but you make it far more worth their while to vaccinate than they would otherwise consider (which is pretty much what governments do).

    2. See above. Sure, you may end up with a constitutional system, but I think a system that’s similiar to today, but not dependent on a principle of a monopoly of violent coercion owned by a particular political group or class would be an improvement.

    3. I think that the reasons why it’s unconvincing need to be expanded upon; I think most of us have a gut instinct that it isn’t going to get done until we’re all forced to pay for it — but is that true? And if so, why is it true, when decentralised systems like markets have frequently been effective in allocating other resources effectively? If it’s true now, could we change and reinforce our cultural institutions so it wouldn’t be true in the future?

    I don’t think you could set up a happy libertarian state right now, but I think working out governance in a decentralized world is the future we face, so we should plunder ideas from where ever we can get them.

    @nicks

    Not harsh, but fair, although the libertarian counterculture here still likes their guns. Brian Doherty’s book before Radicals For Capitalism was about Burning Man, which makes me think of my friend’s reminiscence that BM lost its edge when you stopped being greeted at the gate with a guy in a dress with a gun and a flask of whiskey.

  4. Craig Hughes Says:

    “require anyone doing trade with your community to vaccinate”

    That sounds like you’re forming a community with laws that you’re imposing on others. What if some member of your community wants to trade with the un-vaccinated? Can you restrict them from doing so? Wait a minute, starting to sound like maybe what you have is Government, Laws, and maybe a Constitution here….

  5. Craig Hughes Says:

    Also, re: 1 & 2 — I know libertarian thinkers address these issues, cos they’re obviously in need of addressing. I’m just not convinced that there is a real libertarian solution to them which doesn’t involve hand-waving, and which doesn’t effectively result in communities “incorporating” and “electing representatives” to enact such rules on their behalf. No doubt entering into private “contracts” with these communities, which contracts no doubt will end up looking a whole lot like our constitution. There will need to be created (and funded) some sort of police/court/prison system to enforce the private “contract” relationship with the community. Are we starting to see the general direction this is going? Beyond the scale of a small village, how can you manage your relationship in the larger community, EXCEPT by representative government? I don’t have the time necessary to approve personally every contract amendment that’s going to be needed from me when some guy in my extended community in Arkansas needs to buy plastic widgets from some dude in the extended community of China. The most efficient way I can think of managing this is pretty much our current form of government, minus the corruption.

    Governance in a decentralized world *is* what we have now. Hierarchical organization is decentralized for those things which can be/need to be managed locally, and centrally managed when that makes more sense. There are obviously innefficiencies in the decision process of what is the level in the hierarchy which properly should deal with any particular issue; but those decisions are properly in the domain of constitutional contract negotiations and arbitrations. We have a Supreme Court in the US precisely to decide these sorts of issues. Really, if you think of the US constitution as a contract between and among the people, the system we’re in is basically already libertarian!

  6. Liz Says:

    @craighughes I think that magic technology nanoinfobot thingies wave their feelers at each other and go “Wait! Don’t buy this guy’s widgets, he doesn’t vaccinate!” Then you shoot him.

  7. Danny O'Brien Says:

    The primary difference is that there’s no competition in the laws are acceptable. For instance, SF just passed a law saying that I have to compost. Because SF city controls the garbage collection here, I *do* have to compost. But if there wasn’t a government-run system, I could choose not to compost; I’d just contract with a different garbage collection company.

    You implicitly point out the real variation in laws, which is I could just move to a country that has laws that I agree more with. But they are still a bundle of laws, and I have to choose to take them as a bundle. That, I feel, isn’t due to the process you describe (hey! it just works out better this way!), but because we’ve historically assumed the necessity of a central government, that central government was derived from governments that previously worked as sovereign owners of a large chunk of land, and that government due to its monopoly position, has accrued a lot of functions that we could actually do more effectively and justly in an unbundled fashion. It’s not like our idea of governance just popped out of nowhere.

    Incidentally, I once read a hilarious libertarian counter-argument to you point which said “well, if it’s all going to end up like constitutional government anyway, WHY DON’T WE JUST DISBAND THE GOVERNMENT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS? If you’re right, the worse that could happen is exactly the same as it is now, and if I’m right, we win!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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