Libertarianism fails to attract most free spirits? Here's why. by C.S. Milsted, Jr.
(libertarian)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Why is the libertarian movement so small? Freedom is popular! Freedom is ingrained in the roots of our culture. Free spirits are everywhere. Why aren’t they in the Libertarian Party? OK, maybe the last question was a bad one. Libertarians can have many reasons for not joining the LP: the party is too radical, not radical enough, too ineffective, too bureaucratic, etc. But why aren’t these free spirits libertarians in the broader sense of the word? Why are so many of them liberals, advocates of bureaucracy and the nanny state? Why do some free spirits wear Capitalism Kills T-shirts?
Answer: capitalism does kill…the spirit, for many. If you work on an assembly line or in some other repetitive job, capitalism means regimentation, boredom, and a stifling of the spirit. Study the works of Fredrick Taylor. Yevgeny Zamyatin based his dystopian novel We on the management theories of Fredrick Taylor – who developed said theories for capitalists. When we libertarians think of young adults put in uniforms and under orders, we think of the military. But guess who else is putting thousands of young people into uniform? McDonalds! I leave it to the reader to decide which uniformed service is more regimented.
Libertarians call for liberty, or, in particular: freedom from the initiation of force by government. This is a freedom, and a very important freedom at that. But freedom is a bigger concept. Some years ago I wrote several chapters on "What is Freedom?" and came up with three broad categories of freedom: freedom from the government, freedom from the boss, and freedom from everyone else. Most libertarians focus on the first and downplay the other two, and lose the hearts of most freedom lovers in the process.
Freedom is about having options in life – good options. Who is more free: the single mom in a capitalist country who has to work double shifts at the barbecue restaurant in order to pay her childrens’ medical bills, or her well-cared-for counterpart in a European welfare state?
When young free spirits see libertarians celebrating capitalism, they see authoritarians celebrating wage serfdom. When they see libertarians call for selling off federal lands, they see more No Tresspassing signs and the Disneyfication of the nicer national parks. They see their world shrinking.
The Ron Paul Revolution attracted many more free spirited young adults than the explicit libertarian movement ever did. In part this is because Ron Paul was a proven anti-war politician at a time of unpopular war. But the other part is just as important: Ron Paul is part of the old conspiracy-oriented anti-capitalist Right. This Old Right looks back to smaller government and smaller private enterprises: family farms, locally owned businesses, smaller scale manufacturers where brand name equals the company producing the product. The Old Right’s conspiracy theories revolve around international bankers, robber barons, and super rich families weaving a web of wealth and power to centralize all.
I don’t buy these Bircher style conspiracy theories. Sure, some robber barons and their old money scions may conspire from time to time for special priviledges, as do all other societal factions. But the idea of a secret unified New World Order plot hatched behind closed doors by a hierarchical elite defies the data. Second generation money is not that disciplined! The Paris Hiltons of the world are not behind the growth of big government.
Government is secretly subsidizing the super rich , however. But it’s an open secret, a purloined letter . Keynesian economics is the economics of ensuring that investors have enough return on their investments so they don’t store extra money in the cookie jar. Keynesian economics is about subsidizing the rich! We who like our government small need to shout this from the rooftops. There is no need for a conspiracy backstory; in this enlightened age, such backstories dilute credibility and associate liberty with racism and anti-Semitism. Not good.
Once upon a time, freedom and liberty were tied together politically. The classical liberals worked for smaller government and a smaller wealth gap. Adam Smith called for higher wages and lower profits. If we want government small with democracy at the same time, we need to recreate the old alliance. Otherwise, the young free spirits will worship Obama and turn the U.S. into a European style welfare state.
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"Who is more free: the single mom in a capitalist country who has to work double shifts at the barbecue restaurant in order to pay her childrens’ medical bills, or her well-cared-for counterpart in a European welfare state?"
Posted By: Michael R Stoddard
Date: 2009-09-13 19:15:34
Pathetic. It is economic ignorance that spawns this anti-capitalist mentality. Catering to it won't work. And yes the libertarian party is not inspiring. The LP sounds like warmed over conservatism. Less govt, lowere taxes blah blah blah.
Interesting article. I think you might also develop the idea that "freedom from other people" also includes the idea of control over people whose activities, beliefs, and appearace are different from ours: that is, the freedom to control others, which is certainly not the meaning of liberty
Excellent. In two short sentences, you proved you understood not a single thing from his article.
Why the LP fails to become a force for change is because they glamorize only ONE kind of freedom- freedom from government. Liberals offer \"freedom from responsibility\", but also offers freedom from stress and other issues as well. Look at it from their perspective: that\'s what a safety net is.
Libertarians want to burn that net and piss on the ashes. This scares people. He\'s not saying let\'s abandon that, but address liberal concerns, and I wholeheartedly agree.
nice article and good insight. you are right in that indentured servitude is alive and well and many "royal" Libertarians are loathe to admit it. But, I think this has more to do with many claiming to be "Libertarian", who really aren't.
@Maria: the single mom in question may have freely chosen the acts which led to her loss of freedom, but that doesn't change the loss. Ancient Germans would sometimes put their freedom up on the roll of the dice -- so addicted to gambling were they. Those who lost at dice lost much freedom; that's what made the stakes interesting.
@Michael: libertarians can be economically ignorant as well -- the a priori anarchists especially so. While as a whole libertarians are better versed in economics than the general populace, it does not follow that glib slogans = economic insight.
@rtbohan: Freedom from everyone else is an important freedom, but one that gets in the way of the other freedoms. Your right to play loud music at 2AM gets in they way of my freedom to sleep. Conversely, my enforcement of quiet time gets in the way of your freedom to party. Limits of space lead to such losses of freedom no matter the ideology. Grouping people with similar lifestyles together reduces these collisions, but taken to the extreme such grouping leads to other problems (racism, etc.). Heinlein considered a frontier to be essential to preservation of freedom. Alas, I fear he was right.
@gene: you hit on an important subject -- worthy of a post in and of itself. In this article I wanted to broadly point out the broader issue. Your issue, the Keynsian economics issue, IJ type issues, are examples which increase liberty and freedom at the same time. I just wanted to make it clear that at times some liberty losses can result in huge freedom gains for many. Until libertarians grasp this and address it, we will continue to lose liberty.
Adrian, you tinfoil-clad fool, learn the difference between theory and conspiracy. You're probably one of those fools who also doesn't believe in evolution or dinosaurs. Honestly, read a book on logic.
A theory is a supposition backed up by facts. So referring to "conspiracy theories" is not a slur, per se. Conspiracies do happen; I've seen them happen. The Council on Foreign Relations does exist, and there is a movement to coordinate British and American affairs. Just read Paul Johnson's columns in Forbes for examples of this sort of thinking. It is far less nefarious than advertised. It is not a conspiracy to set up a world socialist state. As a matter of fact, a member of said Council has a new book out attacking the New Deal.
What I dispute is the idea of a grand unified conspiracy, whether it be headed by Jewish bankers, Rockefeller scions or whatnot. I also dispute the feasibility of a web of invisible strings of power or the idea that having a second cousin owning 5% of an old corporation constitutes a strand in a web of control. Real conspiracies leave pretty visible footprints.
Many so-called conspiracy connections are simply people of like mind doing similar things and sometimes working together. The Ron Paul Revolution was a perfect example. There was no top down organization to trigger the massive upwelling of support. There was a great deal of communication, however. A statist conspiracy theorist would have a great deal of material available to set up termite charts describing the Love Revolution.
@Doug: some steps towards more freedom entail less stealing. Others might entail stealing. I don't expect hardcore libertarians to advocate more stealing in order to buy votes. However, it might be productive to emphasize where less stealing also improves freedom among the lower classes. And where the government does steal for good causes, they ought to spend the money better. See the works of Charles Murray, for example.
I get a headache just reading the comments on this article. In fact I got a headache applying to write in the Nolan Chart, when My test put me as a, "Libertarian" I always thought of myself as a Conservative generally. I guess generally threw them off. Liberty and freedom are synonymous in my mind, which way you lean is unimportant. Capitalism rules if you wish to be free and liberated!
What do you make of the free-spirited approach to capitalism put forth by e.g. Vi Postrel? An intellectual dead-end, a nonstarter with the kids, or something that has merely been undersold?
@Ben: If you mean Postrel's musing on style, I'd say nonstarter. At least, Postrel's writings leave me cold.
Capitalism has produced lots of stuff. This is acknowledged by the capitalism kills crowd. People like stuff. But the marginal utility of more stuff to stick into our overfilled garages and closets is rather low compared to the opportunities elsewhere for living the good life: access to nature, jobs that inspire, time to be with the kids, safe walkable downtowns, etc.
Listen to Tim Slagle on how immensely rich we are today compared to most of human history, combine this with the idea of marginal utility, and you will see why the Objectivist celebration of production falls on deaf ears.
There are plenty of bits of the libertarian programme which lead towards these ends, but some that lead in the other direction. Almost as important are the rhetoric, the attitude, and the priorities, the order of operations.
The movement is growing, but the LP can't organize it thanks to hypocrites like Milsted and his pals on LNC.
The LP activists created a strategic plan the LNC won't follow. Simple things like systematic calling and web training have been dismantled, while activists are harrassed by Milsted's and his LRC's goons.
Posted By: Daniel Memenode
Date: 2009-09-18 07:02:58
You're arguing for so called positive liberty, which is essentially about being entitled benefits and options which is precisely the trap pretty much all "free spirited" socialists fall into. But that's not what libertarianism, anarchism or voluntaryism are supposed to be about.
Positive liberty, or rights to options is a fraud. It's not about freedom at all. It's just asking for hand outs, by force if necessary. I hate when this is equated to actual liberty which is the ability to choose all your acts for yourself without being coerced.
So many of the people you call "free spirited" don't know squat what "free" in there means or they think it means something that has nothing to do with liberty. Just think about all those "free healthcare" people. Also, I was one of those "free spirited" guys and the way I expressed it was by thinking it's a good idea for government to provide just about anything for free. My ignorant responses to such proposals were basically "Oh why not??" What a fool I was.
We shouldn't cater to those types. Suggesting so is suggesting further corruption of the movement, as if the LP disaster wasn't enough.
@Daniel: My sentiments used to be exactly the same as yours. What a fool I was.
Let me be more clear: I am not advocating a French style welfare state. I do want more liberty. But I also like freedom in general. The synergy is: to get more liberty requires pushing for more freedom.
Many steps towards liberty also advance freedom for the masses. If you want to only advocate more liberty, at least advocate those steps towards liberty first, vs. getting all worked up about the taxes paid by the jet-set rich. That is, unless you enjoy seeing Obamas elected so you can have something to grumble about. Or, if you look forward to the day when the lights go out so Atlas can shrug.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-09-21 16:32:49
Hi Carl, You asked a lot of questions and made some assertions so I'm just going to address them in order: (I cut out parts I don't specifically address, not to change the context of your article but to focus on the points I'm addressing.) My comments are prefaced by JFE. Your original words are prefaced with CSMJr. I usually talk about liberty rather than freedom as a matter of preference. In this reply readers may consider the words interchangeable.
CSMJr. - Why is the libertarian movement so small? JFE - Not many folks fit the mold and those who are not an exact fit are shunned, evangelized and constantly harangued. Libertarians and libertarians are both defined by the common denominator of folks who deliberately self-marginalize in very specific ways. Liberals and anti-Capitalists and other groups self-marginalize in different ways.
CSMJr. - Freedom is popular! CSMJr. - Freedom is ingrained in the roots of our culture. CSMJr. - Free spirits are everywhere. JFE - Not the way I see it. I'll grant that talking about freedom is popular but acting to defend it much less so. The subtly is important. The defense of freedom is ingrained in our culture...as is the pursuit of centralization. These are not absolutes, they are not stable positions to be secured, they are goals, they are struggles. They are opposing paradigms that can never be eliminated no matter how vigorous and sustained the oppressor...on either side. Libertarians act as if they believe society can be re-made in such a way so as to eliminate the opposition. This is an irrational assumption and a futile effort. Whether any one particular libertarian actually believes that is irrelevant. The sum effect, the human action of libertarian political behavior is perceived by nearly everyone outside the herd as dogmatic, irrational religious behavior. That is why the movement is so small.
Do a web-search with these three unqualified words: freedom provides communism. You'll soon realize that talking about freedom and acting to defend it are very different things. Words are only words; not actions. The consequences of using the word "freedom" are not the same consequences resulting from acting to defend freedom. The consequences of using the word "freedom" is to form herds who all agree with the context in which the word is used...not on the meaning of "freedom." Expecting everyone who uses the same words to exhibit the same behavior is a pretty big leap of faith in my book.
CSMJr. - Why aren’t they in the Libertarian Party? JFE - The LP is a tool for a very specific purpose, to elect LP candidates. The fact is that it is a very poor tool for doing this. So, only people who define "freedom" in a very specific context and who place a higher priority on their candidates sharing that incredibly specific definition than they do on their candidates being elected would join the LP.
CSMJr. - Why are so many of them liberals, advocates of bureaucracy and the nanny state? JFE - Again, search for: freedom provides communism and start reading.
CSMJr. - Why do some free spirits wear Capitalism Kills T-shirts? JFE - Is "free spirit" defined by their words or their actions. I have no idea what you mean by this...so I have no comment. I just left it as context for my comment about your answer below.
CSMJr. - Answer: capitalism does kill…the spirit, for many. If you work on an assembly line or in some other repetitive job, capitalism means regimentation, boredom, and a stifling of the spirit. Study the works of Fredrick Taylor. Yevgeny Zamyatin based his dystopian novel We on the management theories of Fredrick Taylor – who developed said theories for capitalists. When we libertarians think of young adults put in uniforms and under orders, we think of the military. But guess who else is putting thousands of young people into uniform? McDonalds! I leave it to the reader to decide which uniformed service is more regimented. JFE - Never mind that capitalism is not defined nor in any way dependent on a specific management style. I'm not interested in that red herring. The thing I can't abide is your example of a person in a less-than-desirable job. You used what I call snapshot reasoning. I call it that because it assumes that time doesn't exist and that nothing changes. Specifically, that nothing ever changes for the better. Under capitalism and communism and every other 'ism' you might want to compare, there are boring, repetitive jobs that must be done. There exists nasty, vile, unrewarding, uncomfortable, awful jobs that must be done. Capitalism is the only system that is structured around mechanisms for any given individual to have the most options available for obtaining a better job. The fallacy of snapshot reasoning assumes that the individuals in the snapshot you took today are the same individuals as those in the snapshot taken last year. For the most part, they are not. The worse the job the less likely that any given individual remains doing it over time. Yes, there are some individuals who can never manage to find better work even in an unmanipulated capitalist system rife with wonderfully diverse management paradigms. Capitalism exists because if its ability to reduce the numbers of folks in that circumstance to the very lowest possible. 'Isms' other than capitalism ALL are designed to increase the number of people who have no options to the highest possible. In those systems no one has the opportunity to find better work unless it involves becoming part of the elite who prey on those who cannot escape their lot in life. In the end the wealth is in the hands of the few anyway. Only capitalism ensures that every individual has the ability to seek out and then refine their highest value work or craft.
CSMJr. - Libertarians call for liberty, or, in particular: freedom from the initiation of force by government. This is a freedom, and a very important freedom at that. But freedom is a bigger concept. Some years ago I wrote several chapters on "What is Freedom?" and came up with three broad categories of freedom: freedom from the government, freedom from the boss, and freedom from everyone else. Most libertarians focus on the first and downplay the other two, and lose the hearts of most freedom lovers in the process. JFE - This pretty well sums up the difference in our views, I think. I don't believe in "freedom from" anything. That implies force to control the behavior of others to shield the freedom claimant. I find any notion of "freedom from" to be an illogical and irrational expectation. Instead, I believe in "freedom to," where you have the freedom to act in the real world and face real consequences and shoulder real responsibilities. "Freedom from" implies you can somehow alter the real world to your liking. Many people like to debate these misguided ideas as if they were real possibilities but anyone who attempts to put "freedom from" into action in the real world will find out rather quickly they have been set up for disappointment. Sadly, many of these folks then express outrage at their inability to alter the physical world with their passion and faith. That reaction is just one more step in the specific self-marginalization pattern of the LP membership. The herd grows smaller through this filter of unrealistic expectations.
CSMJr. - Freedom is about having options in life – good options. Who is more free: the single mom in a capitalist country who has to work double shifts at the barbecue restaurant in order to pay her childrens’ medical bills, or her well-cared-for counterpart in a European welfare state? JFE - Did you just add two more broad categories to the original three? Correct me if I've misunderstood but it sounds like you've just declared freedom from ever having only bad options and freedom from responsibility for one's choices and consequences. You pose a false dilemma as if any medical problem will be covered under a socialist regime. It is just as likely that the same child would not be covered nor would treatment even be available at any price under socialism. Capitalism again provides the option, the opportunity, not the outcome. The "freedom from" position you have chosen has no validity in the real world.
CSMJr. - When young free spirits see libertarians celebrating capitalism, they see authoritarians celebrating wage serfdom. When they see libertarians call for selling off federal lands, they see more No Tresspassing signs and the Disneyfication of the nicer national parks. They see their world shrinking. JFE - Since I still don't know how to identify a "young free spirits" (I'm not even sure which of these three words is key in the identification criteria) I'll just assume "young free spirit" means anyone who holds the notion of "freedom from" and especially embraces the last new one, "Freedom From Responsibility." The best place to see these folks is at the airport. They are usually accompanied by apprentice free spirits who are under 3' tall who have no clue of the concept of waiting their turn or following instructions. The taller free spirits often express wonder, then anger, that the short free spirits don't know when to toe-the-line. Can't they tell by tone of voice that now isn't the time to act like a three year old? Instant results and instant gratification with no input on their part, that is what young free spirits apparently want from politics also. Well it doesn't work with kids and it doesn't work in politics. In fact, there is no place in the entire universe outside the heads of "young free spirits" that this notion makes any sense at all.
CSMJr. - The Ron Paul Revolution attracted many more free spirited young adults than the explicit libertarian movement ever did. In part this is because Ron Paul was a proven anti-war politician at a time of unpopular war. But the other part is just as important: Ron Paul is part of the old conspiracy-oriented anti-capitalist Right. This Old Right looks back to smaller government and smaller private enterprises: family farms, locally owned businesses, smaller scale manufacturers where brand name equals the company producing the product. The Old Right’s conspiracy theories revolve around international bankers, robber barons, and super rich families weaving a web of wealth and power to centralize all.
I don’t buy these Bircher style conspiracy theories. Sure, some robber barons and their old money scions may conspire from time to time for special priviledges, as do all other societal factions. But the idea of a secret unified New World Order plot hatched behind closed doors by a hierarchical elite defies the data. Second generation money is not that disciplined! The Paris Hiltons of the world are not behind the growth of big government.
Government is secretly subsidizing the super rich , however. But it’s an open secret, a purloined letter . Keynesian economics is the economics of ensuring that investors have enough return on their investments so they don’t store extra money in the cookie jar. Keynesian economics is about subsidizing the rich! We who like our government small need to shout this from the rooftops. There is no need for a conspiracy backstory; in this enlightened age, such backstories dilute credibility and associate liberty with racism and anti-Semitism. Not good.
Once upon a time, freedom and liberty were tied together politically. The classical liberals worked for smaller government and a smaller wealth gap. Adam Smith called for higher wages and lower profits. If we want government small with democracy at the same time, we need to recreate the old alliance. Otherwise, the young free spirits will worship Obama and turn the U.S. into a European style welfare state. JFE - Please clarify, are the "free spirited young adults" who talked about Ron Paul and chanted for stuff during his campaign (but didn't do anything constructive to help him win the primary election) a different group than the "young free spirits" who worship Obama? Just kidding, I don't need the clarification. As far as I'm concerned they undermine the struggle for the defense of liberty with all their demands for freedom from the struggle. Not a single one of them can help my cause today. However, the reason I bother to comment on articles like this is the fact that there are folks reading this who will suddenly realize they have been fed a progressive sandwich all their lives and been led to think they were defenders of liberty while eating it up. Once they spit out the progressive agenda they can never go back to the herd. P.S. A LOT of constructive young activists joined the GOP and did everything they could to turn out the primary vote for Ron Paul. Many of these fine young people are still actively engaged in the day-to-day struggle. I recognize the difference like night and day but I didn't want anyone to wonder.
JFE - Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comment, freedom and liberty are the same thing. It is only when "freedom" is combined with "from" that it diverges from the notion of liberty and becomes a rallying cry for oppressive political forces; these forces drive the Democratic Party and the GOP and drive the LP because "freedom from" paints a utopian vision of an opposition-less future. A fallacy, no matter which party is using the F-Word. It is for this reason I prefer the word "liberty" in my writing. It has not been perverted with the word "from" in common discourse...yet.
Jafire: granted the words liberty and freedom are often used interchangeably. I gave them specialized meaning for the purpose of the essay -- specialized meanings which do correspond to some common usages. Freedom is more general than what libertarians call liberty. Look it up on the dictionary. The narrow definition of liberty that libertarians use is the non-standard jargon.
You can pooh-pooh freedom in general all you like, and the world can pooh-pooh liberty. Or, we can work for both.
Consider this thought experiment: suppose government shrinks down to a bare minimum, but:
* Private companies like google snoop on you to take away your privacy
* Electronic toll companies track your movements
* Proprietary communities take up all the choice real estate -- leading to more restrictions on land use than the town governments that preceded them
* Arab millionaires have bought up most of the beachfront and impose sharia dress codes thereon
* Most of the privatized streets, malls, and communities have banned private firearms save for their own guards
Posted By: Daniel Memenode
Date: 2009-09-22 05:36:30
Yes Carl, it is freedom. Things like what dress codes will be imposed on private property are a reflection of what a society believes. If too many opposed such dress codes and went to boycott these property owners things would be different. You somehow assume this "freedom" as you define it can be achieved at the expense of liberty which is precisely the flawed reasoning that got us where we are.
You're just running within the same circle every other statist is and you'll change nothing fundamental this way.
I am at a loss for words to state my feelings about aoo this back and forth. So, I am not going to make a comment. But I do have a question for the author. What in hell do you think the "anti-capatilist right" is? You can send your answer directly to chuckest@aol.com.
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