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Tuesday, March 08, 20051110291900
Economist Leftists with Fascist Tendencies of the Right
"Marxism of the Right," by Robert Locke, American Conservative, 14 March 2005, http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html (from Right Wing News).
Probably Not the Same Robert Locke
Robert Locke calls Libertarians "the Marxists of the Right"
This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.
Calling libertarians "Marxist" is just as useless as calling writers for the American Conservative "economist leftists with fascist tendencies." It is just a name that does not move the debate forward. The only point is to demagog. I want comment on Locke's claim that libertarianism reduces life to economics, but on his deeper confusion:
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.
Locke conflates two different kinds of freedom. When most people say "freedom," they mean "vertical freedom." Vertical freedom is "freedom from those above you." Put another way, it is freedom from state (vertical) power. Most American conservatives care most about vertical freedom.
Horizontal freedom is "freedom from those beside you." This is freedom from those at the same level as you are -- freedom from peers. It is the freedom from the expectations of society and opinions of your fellows. This definition of freedom is often popular with social Marxists.
Visually,
Axes of Freedom and Their Consequences
(Apologies for the Polemical Examples)
- Radical libertarians wish to live in the upper-left quadrant: vertical freedom and social freedom. For them a failed state is the objective. I agree with Locke that they are dangerous.
- Juding by his rhetoric, I assume that Locke himself wants to live in the bottom-right corner: a world where individuals are "protected" from making mistakes. Hence the title of this post.
- Our common enemy the leftist prefers the bottom left of the chart. The ACLU, for example, constantly tries to cut the chord of cultural and political control.
- I'll stick with Adam Smith and Natural Liberty in the top-right.
08:25 Posted in Natural Liberty | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this | Tags: libertarians
Trackbacks
Aaron on Everything
"I'm Quite Left...," by Aaron, tdaxp, 22 March 2005, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/03/18/rounds_south_dakota_s_abraham_lincoln.html.
Aaron provides us with an airchair view of the world. He's right on a lot of things, so as a true fr...
Trackback by: tdaxp | Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Rolling Back Vertical Controls (Control Sustainability)
"Judge: Ohio Gay Marriage Ban Affects Law," by Connie Mabin, Associated Press, 23 March 2005, http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=608847 (from Democratic Underground).
I've blogged before on vertical control and horizontol control.
Of the ...
Trackback by: tdaxp | Thursday, March 24, 2005
Libertarian Antihomosexualism
"Marriage and the Limits of Contract," by Jennifer Roback Morse, Policy Review, April 2005, http://www.policyreview.org/apr05/morse.html (from Stanley Kurtz on the Corner).
Yesterday, National Review linked to a libertarian attack on legal recogn...
Trackback by: tdaxp | Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Ellen Goodman's Incoherence on Freedom of Conscience
"Whose Conscience Rules?," by Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, 10 April 2005, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/whose_conscience_rules/.
Collounsbury seems to be alone in being able to sensible defend forcing ...
Trackback by: tdaxp | Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Buchanan Right on Federalism
"Fighting and Winning the Judges War," by Patrick Buchanan, World Net Daily, 13 April 2005, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43772 (from Free Republic).
Buchanan's clique may be economist leftists with fascist tendencies, ...
Trackback by: tdaxp | Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Comments
hi Dan,
The similarity that Locke is grasping at - and gets completely wrong as you pointed out with his muddled conceptualization of freedom - is that both Marxists and Libertarians gravitate toward dialectical argument. Ayn Rand-Objectivist libertarians in particular, as Chris Sciabarra noted in his book _Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical_.
That does not make Marxists and Libertarians mirror images however in substance, only style.
Posted by: mark safranski | Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Yeesh, the "Marxism of the Right" phrase is just a sly reference to the fact that libertarianism, like Marxism, is an ideology founded upon belief in a system of utopianism that could be attained if only everyone just played along. He's not implying anything beyond that.
As for where Locke himelf fits on the "diagram," he is not a frothing-at-the-mouth capitalist on every issue; he rightly observes that capitalism that only helps a small portion of the population is pointless. Opposition to immigration and unrestrained trade with foreign competitors that pay their workers a pittance hardly makes one a statist.
Posted by: Sean W | Monday, August 01, 2005
Sean,
Ayn Rand's Objectivism might be a "utopian libertarianism," but American libertarianism (or "liberalism" in the old meaning of the word) was not utopian. Madison and Jefferson saw the structural benefits of such freedom outweighing the costs.
Traditionalist or "taoist" libertarians would not see liberty as a utopia -- only a place of less pain and conflict than in more government-heavy societies.
Foreign trade helps almost all Americans. However, it profoundly hurts a small minority (textile workers, etc). For instane, under current laws society pays a million dollars per year for every sugar industry job saved because of high tarrifs. That is unjust for almost everybody, but it certainly is a "non-capitalism" that helps a small minority!
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Monday, August 01, 2005