Why Not Libertarianism?

Laconics of Liberty Now Back in Print

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A few words about a little project I’ve been working on lately, which has now come to fruition and yielded a little book.

If you’ve ever looked into the origins of libertarianism you may have come across Charles Sprading’s 1913  Liberty and the Great Libertarians.  This was an anthology of pro-liberty texts, mainly chapter length excerpts from various writers, from various perspectives, e.g.,  labor activists, mutualists, voluntaryists, Georgists, syndicalists, free thinkers, free speech activists, abolitionists, liberals, social reformers, secularists, anti-imperialists, and so on.  By no means would you call this all libertarian by today’s use of the term, but there is a good amount of material here that is exceedingly relevant, and yet nearly forgotten.

Among the multi-page passages, Sprading also included a bunch of short, pithy quotations, from one sentence to a paragraph or two, which he called “Laconics.”   For example:

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that “freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license;” and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man’s determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.—Voltairine De Cleyre

This is good stuff, I think, and worth reintroducing to a modern audience.  To that end, I’ve extracted all the laconics that Sprading collected and lightly annotated them, generally with a brief biographical note.  I also attempted to trace each quotation back to its original source.  For example, for the above, I provided the following footnote:

Voltairine De Cleyre (1866-1912), an American free-thinker and proponent of “anarchism without adjectives.” In 2018 the New York Times published a belated obituary, calling her “America’s Greatest Woman Anarchist.” Her essay, “Anarchism and American Traditions” is the source of the above quotation.

Additionally, I provided a brief foreword to introduce the collection.   It is a brief work, 80 pages in total, and priced accordingly.  If you are interested, it is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Income Tax: The Root of All Evil

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Before there was a libertarian movement of that name there was, in the United States, the Old Right.  These were anti-Progressive, anti-interventionist Republicans and conservative Democrats (remember them?) opposed to the New Deal.  They were staunchly individualist.  During the war hysteria that came in the 1940s, the the following Cold War hysteria, the Old Right was pretty much swept off the stage of public discourse.  But you probably know some of their names:  Albert Jay Nock, Senator Robert Taft, Gov. Al Smith,  H.L Mencken, and Frank Chodorov (1887-1966).

Frank Chodorov was involved in a variety of magazines, through the 1940s and 1950s, including his own journal, analysis,  and the Foundation for Economic Educations’s The Freeman, which he edited.

Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.

That Rothbard Race Quote

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WHY TALK ABOUT RACE AT ALL?
If, then, the Race Question is really a problem for statists and not for paleos, why should we talk about the race matter at all? Why should it be a political concern for us; why not leave the issue entirely to the scientists?

Two reasons we have already mentioned; to celebrate the victory of freedom of inquiry and of truth for its own sake; and a bullet through the heart of the egalitarian-socialist project. But there is a third reason as well: as a powerful defense of the results of the free market. If and when we as populists and libertarians abolish the welfare state in all of its aspects, and property rights and the free market shall be triumphant once more, many individuals and groups will predictably not like the end result. In that case, those ethnic and other groups who might be concentrated in lower-income or less prestigious occupations, guided by their socialistic mentors, will predictably raise the cry that free-market capitalism is evil and “discriminatory” and that therefore collectivism is needed to redress the balance. In that case, the intelligence argument will become useful to defend the market economy and the free society from ignorant or self-serving attacks. In short; racialist science is properly not an act of aggression or a cover for oppression of one group over another, but, on the contrary, an operation in defense of private property against assaults by aggressors.—Murray Rothbard (1994).

This quotation is from the December 1994 issue of a newsletter, the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, that came out three months after Herrnstein/Muray’s book, The Bell Curve, was published. As many did at the time (the book got a warm review in the New York Times Sunday Review of Books, for example), Rothbard took the findings of the book, about the heritiability of intelligence, and the racial correlations, at face value.

Rothbard saw this as having two implications, depending on whether you were a statist or a libertarian (or “paleo,” the term he promoting at the time).

A statist would see this as reaffirming the necessity of a paternalistic, technocratic state, a justification for the need of a ruling elite:

Liberals neocons are “sorters,” they aim to sort people out, to subsidize here, to control and restrict there. So, to the neocon or liberal power elite, ethnic or racial science is a big thing because it tells these sorters who exactly they should subsidize, who they should control, who they should restrict and limit.

Rothbard, argued, on the contrary, that even if the The Bell Curve was correct in its science:

Paleos believe in liberty; paleos believe in the rights of person and property; paleos want no government subsidizers or controllers. Paleos want Big Government off all of our backs, be we smart or dumb, black, brown or white.

It is truly fascinating that, while liberals and neocons have been deriding paleos for years as notorious “racists,” “fascists,” “sexists,” and all the rest, that actually we, as libertarians, are the last group who deserve such a label: that, in fact, liberals and neocons, as people who all stand with the power elite over the ordinary Americans, are far more deserving of the statist-racist-fascist label.

Of course, in the months and years following the publication of The Bell Curve, critiques of the science emerged. But Rothbard died the next month, just weeks after the above quoted article went to print, so we will never know if or how he would have adjusted his views based on those challenges.

At the time, in late 1994, however, it was certainly in the mainstream of debate, in American, to discuss studies of race, IQ and genetics, and the ramifications of it. It was no longer a taboo subject.  If doing so was racist, then every newspaper and magazine of record was racist, every public intellectual was racist, every Sunday news show was racist, and every college had racist tenured professors.

Of course, quoting Rothbard out-of-context, is easier than trying to understand or refute what he actually said.

Misquoting Mises

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“Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.”— Ludwig Von Mises, Liberalism, p. 28.

This sentence has floated around the web for a few years now, in libertarian-bashing articles and comment threads, purporting to show Mises as a vile, racist person. (You are free  to search for the uses, in context, yourself. I won’t reward them with a link.)

It is, in fact, and as you would expect, an out-of-context quotation, one which means exactly the opposite of what, in isolation, it might appear to be saying.

The full passage, from Ralph Raico’s translation, pp 27-29, with the line-in-question bolded, is:

Nowhere is the difference between the reasoning of the older liberalism and that of neoliberalism clearer and easier to demonstrate than in their treatment of the problem of equality. The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are equal. God created all men equal, endowing them with fundamentally the same capabilities and talents breathing into all of them the breath of His spirit. All distinctions between men are only artificial, the product of social, human—that is to say, transitory—institutions. What is imperishable in man—his spirit—is undoubtedly the same in rich and poor, noble and commoner, white and colored.

Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race. Men are altogether unequal. Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. Nature never repeats itself in its creations; it produces nothing by the dozen, nor are its products standardized. Each man who leaves her workshop bears the imprint of the individual, the unique, the never-to-recur. Men are not equal, and the demand for equality under the law can by no means be grounded in the contention that equal treatment is due to equals.

There are two distinct reasons why all men should receive equal treatment under the law. One was already mentioned when we analyzed the objections to involuntary servitude. In order for human labor to realize its highest attainable productivity, the worker must be free, because only the free worker, enjoying in the form of wages the fruits of his own industry, will exert himself to the full. The second consideration in favor of the equality of all men under the law is the maintenance of social peace. It has already been pointed out that every disturbance of the peaceful development of the division of labor must be avoided. But it is wellnigh impossible to preserve lasting peace in a society in which the rights and duties of the respective classes are different. Whoever denies rights to a part of the population must always be prepared for a united attack by the disenfranchised on the privileged. Class privileges must disappear so that the conflict over them may cease.

It is therefore quite unjustifiable to find fault with the manner in which liberalism put into effect its postulate of equality, on the ground that what it created was only equality before the law, and not real equality. All human power would be insufficient to make men really equal. Men are and will always remain unequal. It is sober considerations of utility such as those we have here presented that constitute the argument in favor of the equality of all men under the law. Liberalism never aimed at anything more than this, nor could it ask for anything more. It is beyond human power to make a Negro white. But the Negro can be granted the same rights as the white man and thereby offered the possibility of earning as much if he produces as much.

 

In other words, Mises note that classical liberals spoke of equality of rights among all men.  However, all men are, in fact, not identical in “physical and mental attributes.” Therefore, the equality of rights must have some other basis.  He then suggested two reasons for nevertheless recognizing equality of rights: 1) that equality of rights leads to a more productive society, and 2) that it preserves social peace.  Mises finally then states his unequivocal support for equal rights on this basis.

Quoting an out-of-context portion of this passage, and suggesting Mises was saying something illiberal (in a book called Liberalism), is intellectually shallow and mendacious. 

 

Granite Republic

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I’m not a frequent reader of fiction.  As I see it, there is enough real in this world to marvel at.  But I will, on occasion, pick up an alternative history novel.  It helps limber the imagination, broaden one’s view of the possible.  So, when J.P. Medved’s short story, Granite Republic, popped up on my Kindle recommended list, I gave it a try.  As a New Hampshire resident and a Free State Project participant, how could I not, given it portrays a libertarian revolution in New Hampshire?

Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.

Actually, Yes, You Did Build That

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“You didn’t build that!”  Elizabeth Warren used that line first, addressing it (rhetorically) to business owner who thinks that he built a business.   Warren the gives a litany of various things like roads, police protection, schools that educated his employees, and so on. Since the businessman benefits from these things, the argument goes, he woes compensation back to society, i.e., more taxes.

How should we think of such an argument?  Let’s imagine a pure libertarian society. Here road maintenance, security, and education are private functions, provided by private businesses and non-profits. It is still the case that the business owner does not provide these services directly himself. He needs to pay someone else for them. For example, he would need to pay tolls on a private road to fund road construction and maintenance.

So, in this libertarian society, can we wag our finger at the businessman and scold, “You didn’t build that”? No, not really. Of course, the businessman depends on suppliers and clients, etc. We cannot argue against that obvious fact. The libertarian merely argues that such relationships ought to be consensual, not coerced.

So, back to the Warren argument. I think the same logic applies there. It is well known that, in our progressive tax regime, most of the taxes are paid by a small fraction of taxpayers. The top 3% of taxpayers pay over half of income taxes, while the bottom 50% pay only 5%.  So, in a very real way, the roads that the businessman used, the schools that educated his employees, the police presence that protects him, these are all things he, and other high-income persons, already paid for. And not only that, he paid for these not only for his own business, but for numerous others in society who paid nothing.

Warren are is trying to double-charge the wealthy, taxing them initially to build the roads, fund the police, etc., and then, noting that they benefited from the roads they paid for, goes back and claims they owe another debt, to society, for the roads the exact same roads they already paid for.

Again, the libertarian argument is not that the businessman does not benefit from roads, police, etc., but that the businessman, who in a very real way is already paying for the roads, would be better off buying such services in a competitive market than from a monopoly supplier. Libertarians would rather have these relationships be consensual than coerced.

The Dirty Dozen

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A brief note on The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom.

I really had high expectations for this book, written as it was by a dream team of Cato (Robert A. Levy) and Institute for Justice (Wiliam H. Mellor) authors.  Add in a forward by Richard A. Epstein, and this book should be great.

The basic format is to take 12 issues, and for each one to examine the relevant Supreme Court decisions, asking for each one:

  • What is the Constitutional issue?
  • What were the facts?
  • Where did the Court go wrong?
  • What are the implications?

The general theme is to show how things went off the rails, how a particular Supreme Court decision, as the title suggests, “radically expanded government” or “eroded freedom.”

Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.

Fake History

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Hans Hermann-Hoppe has interesting essay out, The Libertarian Quest for a Grand Historical Narrative which explores a quote from Hayek:

While the events of the past are the source of the experience of the human race, their opinions are determined not by the objective facts but by the records and interpretations to which they have access. … Historical myths have perhaps played nearly as great a role in shaping opinion as historical facts. … The influence which the writers of history thus exercise on public opinion is probably more immediate and extensive than that of the political theorists who launch new ideas. It seems as though even such new ideas reach wider circles usually not in their abstract form but as the interpretations of particular events. The historian is in this respect at least one step nearer to direct power over public opinion than is the theorist. … Most people, when being told that their political convictions have been affected by particular views on economic history, will answer that they never have been interested in it and never have read a book on the subject. This, however, does not mean that they do not, with the rest, regard as established facts many of the legends which at one time or another have been given currency by writers on economic history.

This, in a way, is a companion quote to the quip by Lord Keynes, “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

The practical lesson, for libertarians, is that arguing logic, facts, morals, can only take you so far, if the listener has preconceived notions, based on how they were taught history.

Teachers, good ones at least, know this as well. They know that their students do not arrive with empty heads, ready to be filled with knowledge. They come with full heads, but much of it is wrong.  The role of the teacher is not just to pump information in, but also to weed out the false narrative. Otherwise, there is a tendency to merely integrate the new facts with the existing false narrative.

Or, as the quote, attributed to all the usual suspects, goes:  “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

What are some of the false historical narratives that are commonly believed, and which form the background against which any libertarian proposals are evaluated?  Ten examples, off the top of my head:

  1. The Robber Barons.
  2. Standard Oil’s “monopoly.”
  3. Upton Sinclair and The Jungle.
  4. Working conditions and labor unions.
  5. The end of child labor.
  6. The Great Depression/New Deal.
  7. The 2008 bail outs.
  8. Pre-FDA era and “snake oil salesman.”
  9. The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.
  10. The American Civil War.

There are probably many others.  Feel free to suggest additions.

Pictures of the Socialistic Future

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Eugen Richter (1838-1906) is not a name that prompts immediate recognition, at least not in the English-speaking world.  He was, in the late 19th century, the preeminent advocate for free markets and institutions in German politics.  He took a stance, as libertarians do today, criticizing both left and right.  He was outspoken both against the socialists (Marxists) as well as against the conservative, Bismarck, especially opposing his tariffs.  He did this as a journalist, but also in the arena, with a seat in the Reichstag, as leader of various short-lived political parties, such as the Freisinnige Partei (Free-minded Party).

In 1891 Richter wrote a popular work, Sozialdemokratische Zukunftsbilder: Frei nach Bebel, literally “Social-democratic future pictures, freely adapted from Bebel.”  August Bebel (1840-1913) was a near-contemporary of Richter, and founder of the German Social Democrats.  Social Democrats back then were pretty much hard-core Marxists and remained so until after WWII.   So, to avoid confusion, the English translation of Richter’s book is titled, Pictures of the Socialistic Future.

Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.

Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care

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I must confess.  I’m not a frequent reader of Cato Institute publications.  Many of them come off as overly-wonkish, Chamber of Commerce-approved reports.   But I had heard good things about Charles Silver’s and David A. Hyman’s new book, Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care, and decided to give it a good cover-to-cover read.   I’m glad I did.

It is easy to get angry reading this book.  I’m sure my blood pressure increased a few points as they went through their litany of examples of fraud, waste and abuse, across both public (Medicare, Medicaid ) and private insurance systems.  But it is an argument that must be made and that everyone should hear: Our system of 3rd party payers desensitizes healthcare consumers to costs and encourages over-consumption.  This is encouraged by political control over the public programs, which is captured by the healthcare industry, to maximize the amount of taxpayers dollars transferred to this sector.  The end result is the overly-costly system we have today.  It is working by design.

Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.