Marxism of the Right?
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 5 April 2005 | 14 responses
Blogger John Coleman tips me off to a new artice of his in Liberty magazine on libertarianism, Marxism, and the Arab Spring titled “Marxism of the Right?” The essay is a response to this Robert Locke essay in the American Conservative, and comes on the heels of a Max Borders TCS response of the same name. For a short blog post on the subject from Coleman, click here.
14 Responses to “Marxism of the Right?”
Very good response on Coleman’s part.
He does, however, pick up an interesting counterpoint when he characterizes the libertarian ideal as one in which “societies work best when communities, families, businesses, and individuals are free to run themselves within the confines of civility.”
Problem is that most libertarian arguments I encounter leave off the part about communities and families. When discussing businesses and individuals there is passionate argument. But when communities and families enter the picture the passion becomes muted by a laissez-faire, let ‘em-fight-it-out-and-may-the-best-one-win kind of detachment.
Those of us who listen to Neal Boortz, one of the most intemperate of Libertarian voices, have been drilled ad nauseum to understand that responsible individual decision-making is the bedrock of his libertarian philosophy. He has never said, however, at what age an infant born into a despicable environment is expected to distance itself from those influences and commence making responsible, life-changing personal decisions.
The role of the community in its efforts to ameliorate social problems is routinely excoriated because local leaders, particularly from poor and illiterate constituencies, are more often demagogic than idealistic. I am still waiting to hear libertarian praise for any kind of social program aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty and family disintegration that has been tearing at the fabric of our society during my lifetime.
Public schools, for example, are a favorite whipping boy. Refering to them as “government schools,” he offers no remedy aimed at imporving them while extolling the merits of private- and home-school education, both of which skim away the most promising of students (i.e. those whose family support systems are enlightened enough to insure good education), leaving public schools with only the most intractible social problems (being indoctrinated, if you can believe what he says, by a shallow, lazy, selfish cadre of educators whose only misfortune is that they have not been able to find employment in the educational private sector).
From the libertarian pulpit I hear a cold-blooded flaunting of “insensitivity,” (proudly worn) coupled with a sarcastic disdain for any impulse toward compassion. A twisted distortion of scripture regular promos brag “You shall hear the truth, and the truth shall make you mad” while Boortz regularly refers to himself as “the high priest of teh Church of the Painful Truth.” Anyone who imagines that he is simply trying to be cute has not listened to his program.
I suspect that the original charge that Libertarianism is the Marxism of the right derived from the more doctrinaire expressions of the faith that I have described here. Those who have bought into the objectivism of Ayn Rand without allowing for the spiritual degradation which is sure to follow have brought these charges upon themselves.
I agree it was a good response. The reason that libertarians are suspicious when politicians talk of families, communities, and children, though, is that usually such talk translates into ever-larger social welfare programs and the ever-more-invasive social engineering that comes with them. As we have seen of late, the “family” talk from both left and right ends up amounting to the same thing. Libertarians trust you to run your own family, and they do not presume to run it for you.
I can’t resist also commenting on the “sexual eccentrics” mention in Robert Locke’s piece: Assume an even distribution on the continuum between “more government” and “less government” among gays and lesbians. When the nominally “less government” major party so clearly rejects us, is it any wonder that the “less government” gays will end up in a minor party?
Thanks, gentlemen. Really good comments. I sympathize with you, John; and I think it is precisely that sympathy that spurs me to write of a more expansive libertarianism. To allow a small group to narrow the definition and essentially highjack what is a broad and sincere appreciation for liberty and human dignity in religious and non-religious circles would be a crime. So many people think that the decentralization of authority to the family level is important. We should emphasize that.
As for the “Sexual eccentrics” stuff, I joke about this (there are a lot of weird libertarians) but, to me, this was what sealed the disreputability of Locke’s argument. He had to resort to scaremongering to peg classical liberals as freaks before he could make a “principled” assault. Really, Mr. Locke.
Okay, I really need to dive in and read all these articles. John Coleman makes some interesting points, and I have to read the essay he is responding to, which I’d heard referenced but still haven’t read. Why did you have to write something so fascinating when I have so many projects going? Coleman earned my instant respect a couple months ago when I wrote something critical of an article he wrote and he immediately changed the article to be more accurate and thanked me for the criticism, in contrast to his colleague at Crux, Bobby Maddex, who responded to the same criticism with a barrage of defensive whining. Given my interests in libertarianism, religion and science, and politics, this should be a very interesting subject to see the various views on.
These philosphical waters are on the verge of being too deep for me to navigate over a single lunch hour, but I think I agree with Coleman that libertarianism is not comparable to Marxism when dealing with small things like recreational drugs or gay marriage, but when it comes to utopian ideas like privatizing all roads, the banking system, etc., the comparison becomes much more apt.
Wow, I agree with Eric for once. The libertarian arguments for privatization of basically all government funded infrastructure are amazingly weak, especially when it comes to education. I have yet to see any explanation that seems rational for how the poor and lower middle class could afford these things. When confronted with questions concerning how things could change so drastically to allow this to happen they make claims that they just can’t back up about how if only their privatization ideas were implemented even the lower end of the economic ladder could afford these things or the price for them would drop low enough to make them affordable.
Another flaw in the defense of libertarianism presented is its proud claim of the promotion of market based solutions to the problem of air pollution. While I don’t dispute that libertarians might have been the first ones to propose this, it is an inherently flawed solution since many particulate pollutants aren’t, in fact, amenable to the trade and cap solutions that are (so far as I know) the best idea that the anti-regulation people have come up with. They are a local phenomenon that can’t be alleviated in any way by one producer buying the rights to pollute from someone hundreds or thousands of miles away since the pollution they generate generally begins to precipitate from the atmosphere onto the surrounding terrain .
I have yet to see any explanation that seems rational for how the poor and lower middle class could afford these things.
I don’t think you’ll find many libertarians arguing that the poor and lower middle class should pay for these things on their own. Instead, libertarians argue for reliance on community-based and church-based institutions, along with other non profit groups.
promotion of market based solutions to the problem of air pollution
Jim, don’t forget that really hard-core libertarians don’t like “pollution credit” systems because they involve the government setting a cap. They’d rather let the problems of pollution be settled by lawsuits.
I myself really like emissions trading although I’m sure they’re not the be-all, end-all of environmental protection.
Joshua, the problem I have with the belief that community and church based solutions would be adequate is the number of times that I see these groups stating that they often don’t have enough money to cover their current needs. I don’t blame them for this, I just think that it’s a fact of life that they don’t have the resources. I know the libertarians claim that they would be the solution but I don’t see anything backing up the idea that suddenly they’d have the massive resources that would be needed.
Eric, cap and trade would work for gaseous pollutants that stay in the atmosphere and have a more global effect such as CO2. They just don’t work for particulates that have more localized effects.
Joshua, the problem I have with the belief that community and church based solutions would be adequate is the number of times that I see these groups stating that they often don’t have enough money to cover their current needs.
The libertarian would respond that if taxes allocated for these projects were reduced or eliminated, it would open up more funds for people to donate on their. In the process, libertarians argue, they’re accomplishing the same process through much more efficient organizations.
For what it’s worth, I agree with the criticism of cap and trade policies for pollutants that have a localized effect.
Joshua,
I know that’s the argument they make. I find it extremely unpersuasive. Do they realize how much of school funding comes from property taxes in most places? Do they realize that these taxes are paid not only by individuals but by businesses, many of which are publicly held? Do they realize how much publicly held businesses have been cutting back on charitable giving recently? No, the libertarian arguments about how if only those evil taxes would go away all that money (or at least enough of it to do the job) would go to the same place is extremely unpersuasive to non-believers.
Schools seem to be a hang-up / talking point for a lot of people. Inherently, there is a different space carved in any society for children because they are not held rationally accountable like adults and there is a greater burden to provide them with equality of opportunity. I think schools would probably be widely funded in the absence of state involvement. You are right, the money would not go to the same place. The theory is that the market would actually channel funds more effectively than bureacracy (observe the cars, yachts, trips of my wonderful D.C. city school board).
But, fine, say libertarians ceded the necessity of collective action in relation to funding the educations, health needs, and basic necessities of children–treating them as a special case. Would this remedy most objections to libertarianism / classical liberalism? No way. The problem is that more people are utopiann than would like to admit it. They see problems (undereducation, poverty, etc) and think “If only the government would do something!” I think the real key is that these problems don’t arise from government inaction, they arise from the scarcity of resources in our natural environment and from the flaws of human nature. Non-utopians might just look around and see that despite claims to the contrary, freer societies produce more resources and more wealth–the real necessities for education, etc. Nothing is perfect, but if you unleash human potential by breaking the chains of one-size-fits-all government constraints on individual behavior, you produce a better material world for everyone.
Does this make people better people? No. But on average, who do you trust to make people better people: pastors and mothers or Barney Frank and Tom DeLay?
John, your post is precisely why I think of libertarianism as the First Church of Free Market. Absolute, blind faith in the inerrancy of the free market. It never makes mistakes. It works for everyone, irregardless of their wealth or lack of same. Any time it looks like the market is failing to do something right it’s the fault of the evil government. What crap.
Absolute, blind faith in the inerrancy of the free market. It never makes mistakes. It works for everyone, irregardless of their wealth or lack of same.
I didn’t get that from John’s comments, nor have I heard that from many other libertarians.