Capitalist Ideology With A Mask

Monday, August 22, 2011

It has been months since this blog has been updated. The last post here was a brief, undetailed criticism of the fairly obscure portion of libertarianism that is known as "The Alliance of the Libertarian Left", which mostly exists as an online dialogue spearheaded by a handful of leading intellectual figures from the American libertarian movement. There is much more that can be said about this phenomenon.

I've become convinced that this group are mainly eclectic adherents of capitalist ideology who are either confused and spreading confusion in good faith on one hand, or (in the worst case) propagandists trying to recruit the left into the libertarian movement on the other hand. Many of them claim to be anti-capitalists, but often on the least substantive grounds possible, more or less reducing their anti-capitalism to anti-statism. And they do this while often espousing many of the common hallmarks of capitalist ideology: a commitment to a robust conception of private property rights, the extensive use of free market economics (especially Austrian economics) as a tool of analysis, and an atomistic form of individualism as an ethos.

To put it one way, this kind of "left libertarian" is like a capitalist chameleon in that they try to put on leftist shoes and relate themselves to the history of the radical left. But when one closely observes what they are saying, they are often filtering "leftist" ideas through the lens of capitalist ideology and then claiming them for their own. The notion of occupancy and use is reframed as a tendency on an abandonment continuum with all of the assumptions of a normal propertarian left intact. Mutualism is interpreted as the individualist Benjamin Tucker's position + Austrian economics. Socialism is understood to be a rosy prediction of the outcome of market forces after the fall of a state. Of course, this is all bogus stuff.

What lies beneath the chameleon's skin is often revealed when they enter into dialogue with the radical left and the actually existing (social) anarchist movement. When confronted with a substantively non-propertarian, anti-capitalist perspective, they often demonstrate a serious lack of understanding of it. In some contexts, they may try to synthesize the two views, but only by reducing things to their own terms in a way that makes the other the one who has to yield ground, while keeping their own fundamental principles intact. When the social anarchist doesn't bite, the clear incommensurability of perspectives at play becomes evident. When the facade of agreement crumbles, the "left libertarian" produces the same arguments that any anarcho-capitalist would. They are anarcho-capitalists in a pink suite (and let's not forget about the bowtie!).

Allow me to give some examples of what I'm talking about when it comes to "the libertarian left" still mainly being anarcho-capitalists and not comprehending the ideas of the radical left.

A few months ago, "left libertarian" Sheldon Richman wrote a piece favoring Murray Rothbard's notion of "the double inequality of value" (a common capitalist premise that is used to construe market exchange as inherently being beneficial to all parties), in contrast to Frederic Bastiat's somewhat more nuanced views on the matter. Mutualist Shawn Wilburwrote a response that brings Proudhon into the fold and questions "the assumption that individuals will only trade under circumstances in which they individually profit". Wilbur has expressed that it doesn't make sense to speak of "profit" in a context in which things look a lot like loss-cutting for one party. What came of this exchange? It basically didn't happen. Richman left a single, short comment amounting to "I don't agree" and after that it was crickets. No one else said a word.

In this particular case, what's notable is that people like Sheldon Richman are more or less espousing the same ideas that anyone at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute would. Perspectives such as that of Shawn Wilbur just aren't meaningfully part of the discourse. And objections such as the ones that immediately come to my mind - that people can engage in economic exchange purely out of pragmatic necessity and under duress, that the social context in which economic exchange takes place can threaten to falsify "the double inequality of value", and indeed the most common usage of the principle is as an apologetic for exploitation - are definitely not on the table. Most "left libertarians" either do not have a concept of exploitation or don't have a very robust one, because they are blinded by what "economics" has taught them.

Recently, Charles Johnson wrote a piece about libertarian anti-capitalism at the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog. In its main theme, this blogpost reiterates the main talking point that the "left libertarian" intellectuals have harped on for the past few years: that there are different senses in which the term capitalism is used, and they are "anti-capitalist" in the sense that they believe state intervention is responsible for the negative traits that people associate with capitalism such as an environment dominated by corporations and dependent on wage labor, while a "true free market" naturally brings about the opposite. This is basically what Kevin Carson says over and over in his articles at the Center For A Stateless Society.

Now, I certainly don't deny that state intervention plays an important role in the sustenance of modern capitalism. So why am I highlighting this as a point of criticism? Well, it's because of how narrow or unsubstantive this ends up being if that's the thrust of what constitutes the "anti-capitalism" and when one looks into all of the implicit and explicit assumptions made that are shared with your standard anarcho-capitalist. In its most narrow sense, the notion of "a truly free market" is not very substantive, since it just means "in the absence of state intervention". Beyond the fact that an absence of state intervention by itself doesn't necessarily equal freedom or point us to any particular useful norm for what constitutes freedom, the "truly free market" of the left libertarian is the same thing as the "capitalism" of the anarcho-capitalist. Their dispute is a semantic quibble at this level.

Let's look even deeper. Despite the vacuous talk of an absence of state intervention, the Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist typically does have something more substantive underlying their notion of capitalism, namely a commitment to neo-lockean property rights and a propertarian view in general, which colors their definition and understanding of "the state". A "left-Rothbardian" such as Roderick Long more or less holds the same view, but predicts a comparably egalitarian outcome of its application and makes a few modifications. In such a case, "left libertarianism" really is pretty much anarcho-capitalism with more of a social conscience, but the social conscience doesn't negate the fact that the principles are basically the same. It is precisely these principles that the radical left and social anarchists reject, because they uphold capitalism as an economic power arrangement and justify dubious authority.
  
In the comments section of the above mentioned article, Charles Johnson explicitly states:

"I agree with most of what Rothbard has to say about natural rights theory, about inalienability, about property ownership, about contracts, and about some economic issues".

See where I'm going with this? Substantive opponents of capitalism have never accepted anything like Rothbard's views on property. A significant portion of the reason why the anarchist tradition has been anti-capitalist is because it rejects the authoritarianism involved in such notions. The outcome of applying a political ideology based on such notions will amount to what social anarchists oppose: heirarchical systems of control based on accumulated property. This makes the fact that the left libertarian opposes the state meaningless, because if there's anything that the left has always understood better than libertarians, it's power relations. Left libertarians can argue that the state is the cause of bad things until they are blue in the face, but it is not a sufficient position from which to oppose capitalism.

There is a complex network of interlocking power relations that can't be reduced to the relationship between agents of the state and citizens. There are many forms of power, andeconomic power is one of them. This is something that Charles Johnson of all people should understand, since he's well known for being the guy to popularize the notion of "thick libertarianism", which implicitly recognizes a kind of holism or intersectionalism as he describes it. Indeed, he tends to be quite good about this when what are commonly considered "social" or "cultural" issues are on the table. And yet it seems like when the whole discourse about capitalism gets going, things come back to anti-statist reductionism anyways.

For the most part, when it comes to questions about economics and property, the furthest "left" that most left libertarians go is some variant of the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker's position. Indeed, Kevin Carson's brand of "mutualism" draws heavily from Tucker, mostly ignores Proudhon, and "modernizes" it by bringing Austrian economics into the fold. The thrust of this view is that various kinds of state intervention distort the market to produce inegalitarian results, and without such interventions the market would naturally tend toward a certain kind of equilibruim that would eliminate usury and open things up so that more cooperative buisiness structures can flourish.

What's missing from all this is the understanding that market dynamics and property rights systems themselves can produce massive power disparities. To take things to another level, I think that states form in large part from pre-existing power disparities. What we end up having to aknowledge is that capitalism is not just a problem of state intervention, that it is partly supported by certain ideas and norms, and that the power dynamics created by implimenting those ideas and norms are a pretext for state formation even in a "stateless society". The left libertarians are so focused on "a stateless society" in the abstract that they don't have the necessary tools with which to form and sustain one!

Until they make the leap in the direction of the kind of positions I've briefly outlined here or at least generally move further away from the residue of standard capitalist libertarianism in some meaningful way, "the libertarian left" will rightly be regarded with suspicion by most social anarchists, because to a significant extent they functionally are still capitalists. At their best, they are confused capitalists with good intentions. If they continue to fail to understand why the left opposes capitalism and always bring things back to the market vs. the state, I don't see much hope for them.          

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Why I'm Not A "Left-Libertarian"

"Left-libertarianism", as it is used by many of the people I've associated with, is a highly eccentric/idiosyncratic semantic clusterfuck clung to as a label by a fringe minority of a fringe minority (I.E. "market anarchism"). A good deal of the basis upon which this tries to distinguish itself from "normal market anarchism" and "right-libertarianism" is nothing but a semantic game based on a desire to be or at least appear "leftist". In the case of quite a few of the people involved, if they are prodded the substance of their positions don't end up deviating all that much from the "norm" of market anarchism and the libertarian right that they so strongly wish to distinguish themselves from. Just take anarcho-capitalism, perhaps tweak a few premises, change your semantics, and apparently you're a "left-libertarian"!

This particularly becomes a semantic clusterfuck when one considers that there is simultaneously a much more historically ingrained tradition (linked with the anarchist tradition in general) that uses the same terminology and would tend to deny that the group in question is particularly "leftist". In effect, a tiny faction of "market anarchists" are trying to appropriate terminology from traditional anarchism without actually commiting themselves to it. They use the term "left-libertarian" in a context that is largely confined to a marginal phenomenon that occured in the late 1960's in America, and somehow expect to be taken seriously by "the left" when they're effectively defining the bulk of its history out of existence in order to claim that they rightfully occupy such an ideological space.

Such an appropriation is sometimes done through the route of playing with language in a way that (perhaps disingenously) obscures substantive distinctions between political ideas, the function of which is to be able to (perhaps naively) say "we really believe just about the same thing". But this is only a veneer of agreement. Such a "left-libertarian" isn't content simply saying that distinct things overlap, which would perhaps be a reasonable thing to say. Instead, they want to pass clearly distinct things off as if they were purely synonamous. Brad Spangler's posts claiming that anarcho-capitalism is a form of libertarian socialism (see here and here) is a prime example of this kind of semantic game that understandably will only get a hostile reaction from traditional anarchists.

It's bad enough that capitalists and the political right have tried to appropriate the words "libertarian" and "anarchist" in general - now they're doing it with "the left"! What a recipe for confusion.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Do I Disagree With Kevin Carson?

I've generally been a fan of Kevin Carson in my journey into left-libertarianism. A big part of the value that he has provided has to do with his criticism of elements within libertarianism (especially the explicit libertarian right) for defending currently existing conditions in the economy as if it were the same thing as the ideal of a "free market", a phenomenon he has tagged as "vulgar libertarianism" and Roderick Long calls "right-conflationism". In conjunction with this, Carson has argued extensively that the cause of such conditions are tracable to state intervention in various ways, and hence they cannot genuinely reflect "the free market". The idea is that "capitalism" as we know it is not a "free market" because it depends on the state, while a "true free market" is constituted by a stateless society.

The flip side of the "vulgar libertarianism" coin that Carson talks about is what Roderick Long has called "left-conflationism", which refers to a tendency among leftists to attack "the free market" as if currently existing conditions in the economy are reflective of one. Most of Carson's commentary consists in attacking one side or the other of this coin, either critisizing a libertarian figure for defending questionable things in the name of "the free market" or critisizing some leftist for attacking "the free market" in the name of opposing questionable things. The commonality between the two apparent errors is the equation of "free market" with the status quo in some way.

While I do think that there is much of value that can be taken away from such an analysis, it strikes me that in the process Carson has ended up adopting a kind of anti-statist reductionism. The overaching theme is that any problem one is concerned with related to the economy can be chalked up to the state, and on the other hand in the absence of the state such problems largely can't arise. The former is made dubious by approaching things from any other level of analysis, while the latter faces a burden of proof that simply can't be put to the test of experience at the current time and has the status of a prediction that could be seen as kind of utopian.

It seems fairly clear that there are plenty of causes or explainations other than just the state for various economic issues. This isn't to say that the state is irrelevant or that the state is not a significant causal factor, but that there may be causes that are more psychological, sociological, cultural, or having to do with institutions other than the state and hence it would be an error to focus solely or too much within the limits of an analyis at the level of the state. It may be that while the state causes problems, problems also cause the state. Additionally, such problems could be approached in their own right, as problems in and of themselves irrespective of the question of the state.

The fall of a state in and of itself does not necessarily or automatically translate to a free society or the solution to social and economic problems. A state could concievably fall only for an authoritarian society to arise out of its ashes, or in conditions in which economic issues of poverty and wealth disparity persist. This is a big part of why anti-statism is understood as too narrow as a broad social/political philosophy. Even if the state is a huge factor, the issues are too complex for the state to be isolated as a cause or for its simple absence to address them, and there is nothing about even a "free market" (understood as being arbitrary relative to "demand") that necessarily represents a desirable goal.

Carson can leave one with the impression that his anti-capitalism is merely a consequence of his anti-statism, and thus not necessarily too substantive. For it forms a pattern of doing nothing more than pointing to the state, falling back on anti-statism, whenever an issue with capitalism is brought up, while the social anarchist tradition involves criticism of capitalism at additional levels or in and of itself. To put it bluntly, the formula of "that's capitalism, not a free market" isn't that different from the formula of "that's corporatism, not capitalism", which in turn isn't that different from the formula used by other ideologies that face a conflict between ideal and practical definitions for terms (such as is often the case with communism as well: "that's state-capitalism, not communism").

Hence, while Carson's critique of vulgar libertarianism may hopefully counter status quo apologetics from multiple directions, his overall narrative functions in much the same way as that of an explicit anarcho-capitalist. "The free market" is given an ideal definition, and criticism of one's views is met with a denial that events in "the real world" have anything to with what one is talking about. The left is critisized for skepticism toward markets and economic explainations of phenomena. Talk of social problems is met with a speech about the state's intervention, leaving the multi-faceted complexities of such problems to the side. Everything is fitted into the framework of a binary opposition between economy and state.

Consequently, it seems like the strategy adopted by Carson and C4SS is much more likely to appeal to right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. While it would be inaccurate and unfair to smear Carson as a defacto anarcho-capitalist (he has some positions that would make just about any strong anarcho-capitalist's blood boil), he contributes to a "market anarchist" tent that mostly consists in an echo chamber of talking points defending, romantisizing, or advocating markets. Social anarchists tend to view this with suspicion. Their concerns can't be adequately addressed by simply explaining them away through anti-statism and telling them that a "true free market" would take care of it.

This is part of why a number of people have ceased to consider themselves "market anarchists", because it starts to look like being a "market anarchist" means simply repeating "the state did it" and trying to convince people that "on the free market" everything would be swell. Carson's position is more interesting and nuanced than that of other market anarchists, but he is within that paradigm due to a tendency toward economic and anti-state reductionism that manifests itself in this way. Insofar as this is the case, I'm a little disenchanted.

Left-Libertarianism as Naivety

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Nick Ford has written a long response to both my last two posts at this blog and a recent post made by Scott Forster. I’d like to take a crack at addressing what Nick says.

I'd first like to clarify something that seems to be implied in one of Nick’s introductory paragraphs, when he talks about the ALL as being pluralistic:

“There’s problems with all sorts of movements, probably one of the biggest problems with left-libertarianism is that it’s still so disorganized. It’s decentralized, very pluralistic and sporadically organized and the people all have many differing opinions on many different things.

Is this completely out of the norm for a political movement, even a small one like the left-libertarian one is right now? I’d argue that such a case is only inevitable among interaction with people in such a complex mess that political discussion entails. It necessarily will become pretty complex as more people come in and have different opinions, ideas and different strategies and desired outcomes. So I’d say in my opinion that I don’t think that the Alliance of the LibertarianLeft and left-libertarians in general are so widely different sometimes is a big surprise or even a necessarily a bad thing. In my opinion it’s not a good thing to all be marching in a line all wearing the same colored arm bands chanting similar salutes etc. I’m interested in mobilizing a powerfully radical and consistent liberatory message to the people, not the borg.”

I get the impression that this is meant to counter a perceived complaint about “pluralism”. But I haven’t argued that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is too diverse. In a way, I've argued the exact opposite, that it dominantly inhabits an American-libertarian and individualist paradigm and is consequentially closed to the social anarchist movement for the most part. 

The sense in which I have criticized "pluralism" in the ALL (and more broadly as market anarchists tend to wield the term) is that it almost always seems to be illusory in that it's on free-market-libertarian terms, or on the other hand that it represents a kind of intellectual incoherency in which people try to let everyone have their cake and eat it too as a conflict-avoidance mechanism without grasping the deep reasons behind the conflict. It often seems like the only sense in which market anarchists can “reconcile” themselves with social anarchists is by not understanding their positions and offering a fig leaf to something more watered down that doesn’t contradict their own position.

But let’s move on to Nick’s commentary on my posts. He starts off by addressing my post titled “Why I am not a left-libertarian”: 

“I believe BP said explicitly that this was mostly a troll post and not a serious critique of it. However, for the sake of this blog I would like to say I do believe that there are a few somewhat critiques you can get out of this article that are worth addressing in of themselves, serious or otherwise.”

To be clear about this, it is not a troll post in the sense of me being insincere in what I stated. It is a troll post only in the sense that I deliberately use a provocative tone and personalize things.

Nick goes on to comment on me calling the ALL a highly eccentric fringe minority inside of a fringe minority:

“I’m unsure how this even matters; that is, whether it’s a fringe within a fringe, this doesn’t necessarily prove or disprove anything. Nor is anything really stated here to prove it’s a “semantic clusterfuck” so I don’t see what evidence I should debate here.”

The point expressed here has to do with just how much of an online echo chamber it is. It’s a criticism of the sociology of the movement, as something largely isolated from meaningful dialogue with the rest of the philosophical and political community. To someone on the outside, it’s likely to be seen as psychobabble, especially when its members deliberately play with language in the attempt to be provocative and eclectic. The sense in which I call it a semantic cluster-fuck has to do with how certain terms are appropriated from other political ideologies while being radically altered into their content and just how obsessed some left-libertarians can be about the use of certain words. More on that later. 

In response to me saying that the ALL’s usage of “left-libertarianism” is largely confined to the context of 1960’s American politics, Nick says:

“While some left-libertarians like agorists, left-Rothbardians tend to do this to an extent that others on the libertarian left may not this doesn’t necessitate that they’re wrong to. For instance a resurgence of a left and libertarian coalition came out of the “new left” coming.”

In my view, what we’re dealing with here is an error in which people try to construe what is Murray Rothbard briefly opportunistically exploiting the political climate of the times in the name of recruiting people to his ideology as if it was the formation of an actual synthesis position. The main issue that attracted Rothbard about the New Left was their anti-war sentiment. But Rothbard fled from the New Left like they were the plague the moment it became clear to him that they weren’t useful for his overall purposes. On the other side of the aisle, Murray Bookchin abandoned his earlier tolerance toward the libertarian right and developed his infamous critique of “lifestyle anarchism”, which is partly a critique of American individualist libertarianism. The “coalition” didn’t last.

Nick goes on:

“And it’s not “defining history out of existence” if we make constant references to those like Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, Lysander Spooner, Proudhon, means we’re remembering and moving forward with our history. Left-libertarians such as mutualists can’t even be considered targeted by this remark due to how far back mutualism goes, the same goes for the georgists, voluntary socialists, etc.”

There are a few points to make here. From what I see, the elements of the earlier anarchist tradition that the ALL refers to are dominantly American and individualist elements. You don’t particularly see ALL intellectuals referring to people like Bakunin, Kropotkin, or Malatesta. One could hold up references to Proudhon as an example, but it often seems like Proudhon is being grossly misinterpreted or appropriated through the lens of a more contemporary market-libertarian framework, making him a French version of Benjamin Tucker. The closest person I know of who can claim to be an expert on Proudhon is Shawn Wilbur, and he has expressed disagreement with much of how Proudhon has often been read by many ALL associates. Indeed, Wilbur seems quite disappointed with what many people are saying “mutualism” is these days.

In response to my commentary on how I think Brad Spangler in particular has a habit of playing obscurantist word games, such as claiming that anarcho-capitalism is a form of libertarian socialism, Nick says:

“Well for one thing Brad merely speaks for himself, I’m unsure how many left-libertarians really agree with such a diagnosis or whether Brad even still agrees with this. I know I recently (in the past few weeks or so) saw him say that he doesn’t refer to himself as an an-cap for both terminological and substantial reasons. However I could be wrong and in the end it’s best to ask him either way.”

I brought this up because it is one of the most clear-cut examples of ALL members disingenuously using semantics to try to erode substantive distinctions between political positions. As far as people ceasing to refer to themselves as anarcho-capitalists, this is quite a common maneuver that I myself engaged in at a much earlier stage. The initial motivation for doing this is often to simply avoid the stigma attached to the word capitalism while keeping one’s position the same.

However, I imagine that what Brad Spangler would cite as his “substantive” reason for not calling himself a capitalist is the largely semantic-based basis upon which many ALL associates call themselves “anti-capitalist”, I.E. by associating capitalism with statism and then concluding that they are anti-capitalists as an extension of their anti-statism. This is precisely what I’ve criticized as not substantive enough.

At this point Nick turns his attention to my latest post. He starts by responding to my claim that the ALL’s basis for claiming to be anti-capitalist tends to be on the least substantive grounds, tending to amount to anti-state reductionism.

“While I think relying on the state too much for the evils of the world is certainly a libertarian problem I’m unsure how widespread such a tendency is occurring within the left-libertarian movement. It was my understanding that it’s much less if not really present at all because we as left-libertarians also recognize that interconnecting systems of oppression can reinforce statism through such social phenomenons of racism, sexism, patriarchy and more.”

The reason I consider it wide-spread even within the ALL is that if you look at the bulk of material produced by its main intellectuals, the focus is always on blaming state intervention and for the most part nothing more beyond this is said. The Center for a Stateless Society is practically founded on producing articles that argue this same point over and over, and it’s also the same automatic response to concerns that many libertarians who don’t even associate with the ALL will often give.

When it comes to the whole thick libertarian thing, I have the impression that this is mostly used to focus on “social issues”. Notice that Nick himself mentions racism, sexism, and patriarchy, but nothing is said about economic oppression. What I see is a lot of people giving lip service to the notion of “interlocking systems of oppression”, but then when the discourse about economic questions gets going, everything always comes back to “the state did it”. There does not seem to be awareness of economic hierarchy as a problem in and of itself or how power can operate outside the context of state intervention.

The next maneuver that Nick makes is to respond to my characterization of the hallmarks of capitalist ideology. He makes three points:

“1. I’m unsure of what’s wrong with valuing a “robust conception of private property” exactly. From a quick Google search it just means well structured or healthy…so what’s the problem? Even if you mean that you nominally oppose private property and the tensions in individual liberty you see it necessarily cause why not explicitly state them instead of begging the question of what’s wrong with that? At least it’s begging the question for me since I’m not totally familiar with your position on the matter.”

My reasoning is that certain ingrained notions of private property are a significant part of what capitalism is based on, which is why the classical anarchists were skeptics about property. By “robust” I basically mean broad and deep. I happen to think that a robust conception of personal freedom inherently comes into conflict with at least the kind of property that American, individualist libertarians tend to support and that in realistic consequentialist terms such property systems enable authoritarianism even if a “left-libertarian” in good faith thinks that they lead to egalitarian results.

“2. Sure, Austrian economics is used quite a bit, though I don’t think it’s nearly universal and within left-libertarians I think a good portion of the insights come from them but it’s not as dogmatically or tightly held. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your interpretation of Austrian economics and since I haven’t read a lot of it I can’t comment much beyond that.”

The bulk of Austrian economists, from my observations, use it for capitalist apologetics. A good look through the material produced at Mises.org makes this quite clear. Now, I understand that people in the ALL may call this “vulgar libertarianism”, being of the mind that Austrian economics does not support the conclusions that the Misoids think it does. But the fact of the matter is that Austrian economics, perhaps with the exception of a few conclusions that happen to be correct (and are ironically shared by Marxists), is a dogmatic system of thought that does not work as a very accurate tool to describe social phenomena. And more often than not, the function of sticking to belief in what Austrians consider “economic laws” is as an automatic denial of the reality of economic power.

“3. I’m completely baffled by this third claim. How do left-libertarians in inherently recognizing interconnecting oppressive systems, cultural thickness, going past the NAP and property rights, seeing social relations of being more than just voluntary and there’s more to your actions than just yourself (for example cultural norms you reinforce, the environment you may damage, etc.) how is that possibly a somehow atomistic viewpoint of human relations? I don’t think BP knows what he’s talking about quite frankly and would love to hear what makes him think I’m wrong, I’m willing to listen.”

The question is if they sufficiently really recognize this, especially to the extent that they espouse economic reductionism. Market economics and “methodological individualism” (as something more than a valid rejection of the reification of society and social groups) is quite often wielded in a way that simply ignores the social context in which phenomena takes place in order to apply a presupposed “law” to explain it. Man is reduced to an egoistic economic utility calculator. There is a strong focus in much of economics on the subjective as opposed to the intersubjective. To the extent that ALL associates espouse much of the same economic ideology as anarcho-capitalists, the critique applies to them too.

Next, Nick comments on three examples I give of what I think are wrong-headed positions that float around the ALL. The first example I gave is the notion that “occupancy and use” is just a tendency on an abandonment continuum, within a commonly held propertarian framework. To this, Nick says:

“Ironically this is largely where I stand. But that’s only because I haven’t done enough reading on property theory for my own liking to come to any other conclusions. I fully and readily admit that Lockean ideas are difficult and have their conceptual holes but then use and occupancy seem to as well. Is there a good middle ground? I’m unsure. Some people like Gary Chartier and Brad Spangler and I think even Charles Johnson though I could be wrong (and I’ve largely adopted this view) is that a multitutde of property rights systems would emerge in an a truly freed society. Whichever one works best in a certain context would most likely be used the most.

Does this mean relativism insofar as property use and rights are concerned? Well I think to a certain extent that’s possible. But on the other hand I also think that emerging systems will come through people deciding what is just or more beneficial towards individuals and the larger communities. So it’s a sort of emerging and evolving relativsm that has some thickness to it. I’m unsure if this is the big answer to it but I think it’s at least a decent start.”

Firstly, not to be mean-spirited, but it starts to become really clear at this point that Nick hasn’t sufficiently looked into this stuff, and that this kind of relativism about property is often an easy way out of having to thinking deeply about it and come to a clear position. Nick doesn’t really say anything here that addresses why or why not occupancy and use is a quantitative position on an abandonment continuum. He jumps to the more general question of co-existing property systems, while I’m objecting to necessarily framing everything in terms of a property system and the trivialization of the notion of occupancy and use to neo-lockeanism with a personal preference for shorter abandonment time-scales.

Since Nick isn’t quite talking about the same thing that I was, I’ll reserve my objections to this characterization of occupancy and use. Rather, I’ll focus on the relativism, or more accurately, localist conventionalism. The problem I have with this is that it seems obvious that different positions on property have radically different levels of compatibility with person freedom and radically different implications for people’s lives in general. So it seems like if we really are concerned with personal freedom and people living the best possible lives, it doesn’t make sense to be have an indifferent attitude toward norms and structures that effect people. I also don’t think it’s true that whatever “emerges” is whatever is best or better. If we want to make an analogy to evolution, it definitely does not work that way.

Nick goes on to try to address my claim that mutualism is being propagated as Tuckerite individualism + Austrian economics:

“Is it now? I’ve heard Shawn P. Wlbur say that Tucker was hardly a mutualist to begin with and I don’t know many who think that it’s only these two. Then again Shawn wouldn’t call himself a left-libertarian anymore probably so take that for what it’s worth I suppose. Also Carson to my knowledge only takes some inclinations and such from Austrian Economics and while he’s certainly more influenced by Tucker it seems to me (I mean Tucker is on the front cover of his mutualist political studies so one would think anyways…) I doubt he hasn’t read Proudhon, Greene and the like and incorporated much more into his ideas than just Tucker and the Austrians. I think the same is for the mutualists I’ve talked to in the past.”

When it comes to some of the nitty gritty details, Shawn Wilbur can say a lot more about this than I can. In either case, my point is that there are a whole lot of people (especially people with a history as ancaps) crawling around the internet calling themselves mutualists who have either not read Proudhon or do not understand him very well, and that the crux of what they understand mutualism to be tends to be watered down to be pretty similar to standard free market libertarianism. If mutualism is just free market libertarianism with a personal preference for co-ops, or a propertarian position with a stricter abandonment convention than the one held by anarcho-capitalists, then it isn’t that substantive or distinct of a position. Fortunately, we have people like Shawn Wilbur around to establish that this isn’t the case.

“All of these criticisms seem to be rooted in some truth but then that little truth is amplified to the point that it really becomes a bigger deal than it really is or BP tries to make it seem so. Such is also the case here I fear. For instance, I don’t think left-libertarians just see predication of market forces going towards their favor but also social relations being grown and developed in certain ways towards certain ends. It’s not just about the market place for left-libertarians, I was fairly certain that was one of the points of being a left-libertarian to begin with come to think of it. So it’s not just “rosy predications” but prescriptions and descriptions of what will most likely happen as well as how to make it possible and so on.”

Yet a significant aspect of the Tuckerite-Carsonian position is precisely to avoid explicitly taking a normative stance on various questions and claim that the natural tendency of a free market is to diminish economic woes. The context in which those woes are supposed to be addressed is one in which good consequences simply emerge as a market phenomenon, which seems to be implicitly based on an equilibrium model. I’m then lead to wonder if one would take a more proactive, normative stance if it ended up being the case that things don’t turn out as they’ve been predicted after the fall of a state, or if everything that is considered a negative feature of capitalism would be accepted in the name of “the free market”.

Next, Nick Ford goes over what I said about Sheldon Richman’s Freeman piece about the double inequality of value and Shawn Wilbur’s commentary on it:

“The rest of this is just BP saying that somehow because Richman buys a certain premise of Austrian economics and didn’t give a long response to Shawn that he somehow a “capitalist in disguise”.”

More specifically, I highlighted the fact that Richman holds to a premise commonly held by anarcho-capitalists and free market libertarians, which adds to the case for doubting that such “left libertarians” can meaningfully distinguish themselves from that ideology. I was also taking note of the fact that on the rare occasion these days that someone like Shawn Wilbur does try to enter into dialogue with the main intellectuals of the ALL about certain things, he is mostly met with silence. This is meant to underscore that it has become a bubble.

In response to my objections to “the double inequality of value” and my claim that they’re not really on the table, Nick says:

“Really? I’m unsure of that. I know Roderick Long himself has explicitly stated that hierarchy is at best dangerous and should always be kept in check or under control if somehow possible. I certainly think there’s a tendency in the left-libertarian community to not be as specific as possible with what exploitation constitutes so I’d see that as a valid point in that light. But otherwise I’m unsure all of what you say is always completely off the table or that it should be. I definitely agree this is stuff worth discussing more in depth for the record.”

The point is that the very nature of “the double inequality of value” as it is presented by Austrian economists is an a priori denial of the possibility of economic exploitation, because it defines all parties as inherently benefiting or “profiting” from market phenomena. And in discussions about various things, I’ve seen it (and “the subjective theory of value” more generally) brought up mostly by anarcho-capitalists as a counter to claims of exploitation.  

Nick goes on to my comments about Charles Johnson’s piece, specifically when I say that the notion of a “truly free market” as an absence of state intervention is an insufficient basis upon which to oppose capitalism:

“I’m not sure how this is correct. Saying you support a “truly freed market” doesn’t just means a market place without government intervention. It also prescribes certain things such as more decentralism, horizontalism, equity in social relations, more evolving cultural and property based relativism and so on. At least, these seem to me to all be other things that left-libertarians favor. That and perhaps more inclinations towards communal property, keeping in place cultural freedom, reciprocity, and less disparity in wealth in a truly freed market.”

Yes, people’s notion of a “true free market” always has more to it ideologically than “whatever occurs in the absence of state intervention”. Indeed, I went on to say precisely that when I brought up Murray Rothbard in the next paragraph, because typically “a true free market” is conceptualized in the context of a property rights system that is part of a whole political theory. In either case, the fact remains that state intervention is the only thing that most associates of the ALL point to in order to explain capitalism, and this is what I’m taking issue with.

Nick goes on to produce this howler:

“So I think I get what BP is doing finally. He’s just cherry picking certain views of certain individuals within the left-libertarian movement, saying it’s somehow a bigger problem within it without really backing that hidden assertion up and then rinse, wash, repeat.”

You know what’s funny? What I did was choose to give some examples because I’ve been accused before of making general statements about the anarcho-capitalist and libertarian movement without exemplifying what I’m talking about. Then when I actually do give examples, all of which comes from the leading intellectuals of the ALL, I’m accused of cherry-picking. Excuse me while I laugh out loud!

Next, Nick quotes from the Roderick Long piece that I linked to as if it disproves what I’ve been saying, a quote to the effect that political legitimacy can’t be simply assumed, and says:

“So if he perceives better outcomes from similar principals perhaps he’s applying it in a better or more consistent/different way than you imagine. After all, if authority can’t be assumed as correct just because it exists then landlords, bosses and the like can’t just be assumed to be just.”

From the fact that Roderick Long quite correctly denies that political authority is justified a priori, it does not follow that his position does not have authoritarian consequences or is not compatible with authoritarianism. What matters is what people do in fact put forward as justification, and the Rothbardian framework that Roderick relies on does justify political authority on the basis of property rights. I’ve extensively argued before that it is logically consistent with Rothbard’s premises to justify an institution that functions exactly like a state on the grounds that its territory was achieved through homesteading or trade. Furthermore, if we want to talk specifically about Roderick Long’s position on land, to my knowledge he makes no distinctions about land property and doesn’t adhere to an occupancy and use position that would significantly question absentee landlordism.

Nick goes on to quote Roderick Long outlining a fairly standard neo-lockean position on property and libertarian conception of the non-aggression principle, and expresses:

“Briefly skimming over Professor Long’s property rights I don’t see any huge problems with it, the principles seem sound enough for me”

I’d have to start at square one with the problems with the neo-lockean position. I’ve argued about this elsewhere ad nauseum and a portion of my objections are on other posts at this blog. For now, I’ll simply say that there are problems with considering transgressions against external property as being the equivalent of initiating force against a person (this is a case of taking “property as an extension of the self” quite literally), and that the narrative of property originating from “labor mixing” isn’t particularly applicable to a modern industrial society and isn’t historically accurate as a description of the accumulation of property.

Nick returns to my commentary in reaction to Charles Johnson’s article, responding to my statement that substantive opponents of capitalism have never accepted anything like Rothbard’s views on property:

“Well so what? Why does tradition now matter so much to an anarchist? I don’t mean to say that no tradition is important to an anarchist being an anarchist but why does suddenly the fact that just because traditional anarchists (which is never really defined…anti-capitalist anarchists?) disagree with it doesn’t mean much if you don’t elaborate on why their opinion matters in the first place. This just sounds like a vague appeal to traditions to me. There are certain ways in which capitalism is tolerable to some and intolerable to others.”

It isn’t an arbitrary appeal to tradition, especially because it applies just as much today as it did in the past. I’m underscoring the fact strong private property rights of the sort that Rothbard favored is a basic foundation of capitalism, and this is why opponents of capitalism are property skeptics. The fact that classical anarchism is anti-capitalist is not important simply because that’s what the tradition is. There are good reasons why that is the tradition. And if we do want to talk about history, it formed partly as a reaction to the rise of liberalism in the 19th century. This isn’t something that can just be ignored. 

After this, Nick reacts to my statement that the application of Rothbard’s ideas to the world leads to hierarchical systems of control based on accumulated property:

“Left-libertarians seem to me to be at worst thinking that hierarchy is dangerous but acceptable in some places, perhaps that’s where I put myself. But regardless I think a lot of us also don’t think hierarchy is generally necessary for human relations to flourish like they should. And accumulated property? Well it’d be tough to finance such accumulation without slave labor, a state to reinforce it, a culture a lot less full of imbalances in social relations and more. And all of these things I see left-libertarians working towards.”

What left-libertarians think or intend is irrelevant. One can not want hierarchy or think it is necessary, but that doesn’t mean that one’s ideas and principles aren’t compatible with hierarchy. One can be against something and build a grand theory opposing it that actually enables or supports it when applied to the real world, because one’s theory is bad. When left-libertarians take Rothbardian, propertarian ideas and attach good intentions to them, that doesn’t change their nature.

Nick then quotes the ALL website’s mission statement (to the effect of “we’re united against this laundry list of social ills”) as if it proves my contention about its anti-state reductionism wrong, and asks:

“So what gives? Where’s the disconnect here? Am I just missing something?”

You’re missing the difference between intentions and realities. My conclusion has been that left-libertarians are people with good intentions around a core of mostly bad theory that is left over from standard capitalist libertarianism.

Nick continues by challenging my contention that the left-libertarians, even Charles Johnson in the cited article, still bring things back to anti-state reductionism:

“But how? Where? Where’s the evidence? I read his piece and I’ve read a lot of his other pieces and from his membership to the IWW, opposition to things like Walmart and the wage labor and pure skepticism of hierarchy in general I’m just not seeing it.”

Charles Johnson’s article in question reiterates the narrative that capitalism is to be explained by state intervention, and goes no further. I looked at the comments section, and the thrust of what he had to say in response to critical posters was to talk about how state intervention is responsible for what they decry and to try to get into the empirical evidence of this. What isn’t there to see?

Then Nick denies that the left-libertarians are missing the way in which market dynamics and property systems can produce massive power disparities:

“Wait…we’re missing this? Because I’m personally not. I understand the market place is perfect, that property rights can be fucked up as well…but how does the fact that some of us still have some sense of property rights mean we’re not “left” enough for you? I’m not interested in appeasing people per se’. I mean, I like good marketing and all and that’s a part of left-libertarianism but for me what the main thing is that it’s about consistency, radicalism and truly caring about others and trying to build the new society within the shell of the old.”

It’s funny that Nick made the error of not putting the word “not” before “perfect”. I’ll put that aside. Bracketing for the moment the more general problems with propertarianism, it isn’t that some of you still have some sense of property rights that means you’re not “left enough”. It’s that many of you adhere to doctrines that are just about as absolutist and strong as one can get in favor of property rights, while attaching egalitarian intentions to them. Behind the slogans (“building the new society within the shell of the old”) is bad theory with dangerous consequences.  

Nick then tries to quote Charles Johnson as an example of agreement with my claim that states form from pre-existing power disparities, but the quote says nothing about state formation. He continues to try to act as if the positive premises behind my criticisms are actually supported by the very people I am criticizing:

“The trouble is that BP doesn’t realize that left-libertarians largely do recognize this already. Ironically it seems to be in the very thinkers he’s only criticizing through cherry picking however.”

My point is that their theories do not sufficiently account for the factors that I bring up, even if they explicitly put forward the intention to do so, and indeed the content of their theories contradict those intentions. It’s all well and good to say that one wants a world devoid of authoritarianism and without capitalism, but there is tension within one’s ideology if one wants to join that with theories derived from capitalism and norms that justify authority.

Nick starts to conclude things thusly:

“I guess this last paragraph really sums up BP’s biggest problems: confused criticisms, priorities, mis-identifications, artificially enlarging minor problems in the left-libertarian problems out of basic problems that stand better on their own and trying to make the left-libertarian movement what he personally wants to see. Now to be fair, all of us want that to some extent or another, but the way BP puts it out here he makes it (and this apples to Mr. Forester as well) that it’s somehow nowhere near what’s going on with what they want to see. I just think that if BP and Mr. Forester looked a bit deeper into the people and material they seem to like to criticize so much (and that I like to try to defend) that they’d find themselves making better arguments. Because left-libertarianism and the people who subscribe to such an idea have flaws, no doubt, but not to the level or sometimes not even how both BP and Mr. Forester frame it.”

In truth, it is Nick Ford who largely comes off as someone who has not looked very deeply into the material on these matters. He often speaks from a position of unfamiliarity with the points of contention that are being talked about and responds with naivety when people are critical. He defends figures while simultaneously admitting to not being sure what their positions are, and bases some of his views on 2nd hand opinions about thinkers that he has not read yet. I don’t think that Nick Ford is stupid, but he certainly does not seem properly equipped to form a strong opposition to what I’m presenting. Honestly, at various points it doesn’t seem like he has a strong sense of what his own position is. If my wit has in some way wounded him over the course of this post, this is the unfortunate price to pay for stepping into the ring this extensively. I wish him luck on his ideological journey.    

Limits of Libertarian Synthesis

Sunday, August 28, 2011

This blog has recently been concentrated on criticism of the mainstream of "The Alliance of the Libertarian Left". I'm of the view that most of the people associated with this movement are still too closely tied to anarcho-capitalism and the general American libertarian movement in both the substance of their political theory and their alliances. Consequently, it has not been able to achieve a very meaningful synthesis because it is still largely working from a capitalist framework. An important premise underlying my criticism is that there is a very clear point at which the perspectives in the discourse on these matters are simply incommensurable. Allow me to explain what I mean.

I have the impression that many of the intellectuals associated with the ALL have the pretense of forming a kind of theoretical synthesis of libertarianism and "the left" that can provide the basis for a big tent alliance. As Roderick Long expresses in the concluding remarks of his speech "Rothbard's 'Left and Right': 40 Years Later", libertarians should both reach out to "the left" and become "the left" in some important sense. Earlier in the speech, Roderick attempts to show that, at least for libertarians, the oppositions between capitalism and socialism are basically semantic, with the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker being used as the main example to bust up the dichotomy.

At this stage, there are a number of things I'd like to point out. As far as the practicalities of forming a real alliance between libertarians and "the left", it seems highly unrealistic that most libertarians will embrace "the left", because they are knee-jerk anti-leftists. Their ideology is built around a rejection of just about any kind of egalitarianism and contains bad leftovers from cold war politics. My personal experience in the past as a "left-libertarian" trying to engage the dominant culture in radical libertarian circles such as the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, and with libertarian discourse online in general, has largely been an encounter with hostility. I'm convinced that this is an impossible uphill battle.

On the flip side, to the vast majority of people "on the left", libertarianism is a laughing stock. Most people tend to view libertarians as simple-minded right-wing radicals that make pet peeves out of things like obcessing over the gold standard, defending institutional segregation, and engaging in civil war revisionism. And this perception is not entirely wrong. To one extent or another, your average libertarian actually is a tinfoil hat wearing ideologue who is detached from what most people would consider common sense and decency. "The left" will never meaningfully ally with libertarians outside the context of some single-issue stuff such as the war in Iraq or the legalization of drugs.

Of course, "left-libertarians" most likely are more interested in "the left" in the context of anarchism. At a minimum, it is probably assumed that "anti-statism" is a big point of convergence, if not the determining factor for an alliance. Many of those who call themselves "pluralists" express the sentiment that self-labeled anarchists should stop argueing and band together against their common enemy, the state, while the positive and normative content of their political theories is "just a personal preference" for what tribe they will separate themselves into "after the revolution". This kind of "pluralism" is something that one can find outside the ALL, but it also creeps its way into it.

There are problems with this view. For many anarchists, anarchism is much more than anti-statism (for social anarchists, social heirarchy and authoritarianism are the more fundamental problems), so this is an insufficient basis upon which to form a political movement. The downfall of a nation-state by itself doesn't indicate any particular kind of social relations (other than the obvious practical ones entailed in a former structure being gone), and anarchists advocate some kind of context for what "a free society" might mean. A "purely negative" position is practically useless for those that are really interested in norms of freedom and improving the condition of humanity in some way. Indeed, it doesn't count as a political position at all. It's a reset button that leaves us with a blank canvas that can be filled with anything, including everything that anarchists tend to oppose.

The tribalism involved in this kind of "pluralism" is objectionable on theoretical and practical grounds. Relative to norms of personal freedom, it is a green light to authoritarian systems existing on local scales. This will never be acceptable as "compatible" to a strong anti-authoritarian. Even if such systems do not affect people outside of them, they would have to be considered internally unfree and would be subject to problems of intergenerationality for people born into the tribe. But to take things one step further, there are good reasons for thinking that it would not be realistic to assume that such systems would not affect others. Human relations are such that in some ways it is practically impossible to keep something "purely personal" in the sense of just affecting an individual.

Putting this aside, I'm willing to grant that many "left-libertarians" have something more substantive than this in mind, that they do have some normative limitations to what they consider compatible with anarchism. I take issue with much of what the normative content of their political theories happens to be, particularly in terms of their fundamental principles. But instead of explaining why I think that the theories are wrong, my purpose here is to argue that such a body of theory can't be easily synthesized with that of "the left", especially the political theories within social anarchism. When push comes to shove, free market libertarianism and social anarchism are fundamentally irreconcilable.

Radical contemporary Anglo-American libertarians are mainly working within a framework inherited from classical liberalism. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism was thought of by Rothbard, its founder, as essentially being the logical conclusion of liberal ideas formed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Internal conflict exists because, from the radical perspective, various earlier thinkers and contemporary libertarians with positions along the lines of minarchism are "inconsistent" liberals. Especially in Rothbard's thought, there is a strong emphasis on linearly deducing positions from axioms and simply forming one's theory by building from a set-in-stone framework. That framework is propertarian and economistic in nature. It uses (arguably a simplified version of) John Locke for its ethical theory and aprioristic Austrian economics for its economic theory (I'm leaving aside David Friedman and utilitarian libertarians for the moment), and economic theory basically is its social theory. Rothbard was also goo-goo-gah-gah for anglo-american history.

There's a glaring problem for trying to synthesize such a framework with the anarchist tradition: the fact that anarchist and socialist theory was initially formed in part as a criticism of liberalism. I can anticipate that some people may be inclined to immediately object by saying that the early anarchists were influenced by liberalism. While this has some truth to it, it doesn't negate the fact that they went in a completely different direction and turned against it to a significant extent. There is a difference between being influenced by something and building one's ideas as nothing but an extension of its foundations. The classical anarchists all challenged the foundations of liberalism to one extent or another. Since the 19th century, anarchist theory has mostly only gone further away from liberalism.

The strongest historical linkage that contemporary libertarians can point to as evidence of anarchism being linked to liberalism is Benjamin Tucker and some of the individualist anarchists that were a part of his circle in the late 19th century. There are a number of things to point out that limits the weight of this. Firstly, it's notable that Tucker was American. It makes some sense that existing in an American context may have colored his views toward largely Anglo-influenced liberalism. Then there's the fact that Tucker's thought developed in an egoist direction that does not jibe with liberalism's ethico-political theories. And Tucker is not the best person to point to as a figure to use for synthesis, since he expressed a rather hostile attitude toward the rising social anarchist movement.

History is against the interpretation of anarchism-as-liberalism in other ways. Regaurdless of how one interprets Proudhon, his work on property sparked what quickly became property skepticism as an important part of anarchist theory. Liberalism tends to define freedom in terms of property rights. To the early anarchists, the property rights that liberalism was founded upon was creating serious social problems and had inherent tensions with personal freedom. Propertarian views function as a justification for authority and their implimentation enables social heirarchies. To the extent that property is seen as being placed above human wellbeing in liberal theory, anarchists reject it. This is not a conflict that can be defined away semantically.

Another area in which there is tension has to with how liberalism is very focused on economic theory. While I wouldn't necessarily say that "the left" does not dabble in economics (Marx was, afterall, an economic reductionist), I think that it's a pretty accurate generalization to say that "the left" is much more focused on things like sociology, ecology, and general cultural studies. Even as far back as Kropotkin, we have theories being built that have more to do with anthropology than economics. Liberalism relies heavily on a models of human behavior that come from economic theory. The contemporary "left" tends to reject this. It does not work very well to describe human relations in terms of "the market", and this is not merely an aesthetic dislike.

At best, liberalism could be seen as somewhat of a necessary step in terms of its own critique of its precedessors, the erosion of fuedalism and monarchy, and the establishment of "political freedom" within a certain narrow sphere. But for various radical thinkers in the 19th century, this sphere of freedom was insufficient, and political theory needed to do a lot more than just consistently apply or universalize liberal ideas. Anarchists have always aimed for some kind of social freedom, not the legal right to obtain/maintain property while doing what one pleases without respect to how it affects others. As long as libertarians are just radical liberals, they will struggle to find common ground with the anarchist movement as it actually exists.    

If one takes the reasons outlined above into account, it seems tempting to state: to the extent that one substantively embraces "the left", they are effectively abandoning libertarianism. Libertarianism, in the sense that most people understand it today, is its own animal (although significantly tied to the American conservative movement) that is largely confined to the U.S. and U.K., and is met with skepticism and hostility by just about everyone in the anarchist movement and the broader radical left. Synthesis can only occur in ambiguous places on the edges of these opposing dispositions, not in any sense that can lead to reconciliation of ideologies. To the extent that synthesis is what the ALL seeks, I believe that it is unfortunately build on a pipe dream.