The Taxonomy of libertarians

Like liberals and conservatives, there’s not just one kind of libertarian, and it would help in public discourse to be more precise about small-government types. In a post two years ago, Virginia Postrel laid out a taxonomy of libertarians:

• Cultural libertarians
  • Natural liberty
  • Fig-tree pluralism
• Intellectual libertarians
  • Deductive dogmatism
  • Empiricism, or Consequentialism

Cultural libertarianism is the small government philosophy at its most abstract. Postrel also calls them the “leave us alone coalition.” It springs from two attitudes, one ornery and one nice. Natural libertarians adopt,

the get-out-of-my-face-and-off-my-land attitude . . . a visceral, sometimes violent defense of self and clan. Think ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ and gun rights.

Fig-tree pluralists (I wish Postrel had come up with a better name) adopt,

the live-and-let-live ideal expressed by the biblical prophecy ‘they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.’ Think ‘Follow Your Bliss’ and gay marriage.

Like dispositional conservatism, these attitudes probably transcend political stripes to varying degrees; only the most strident will identify themselves as “libertarians.” And also like dispositional conservatives, these libertarians are not likely to articulate the reasoning behind their stances — indeed, when pressed for intellectual underpinnings, both groups bristle, for the righteousness of their positions is seemingly self-evident. To extend the parallels even further, Postrel notes that simple, abstract attitudes are no match for modern political arguments. More potent libertarianism requires some intellectual heft.

Intellectual libertarianism became distinct in the 20th-Century, even thought its roots extend further back into the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment (or further). Deductive libertarians simplified political philosophy into dogma, that is, the entire nature of libertarian government could be derived from simple moral principles. Two prominent ones are self-ownership or non-aggression. These are the philosophies of libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand (and pretty much the Libertarian Party). Besides being exposed to attacks on their founding principles, deductive libertarians also tend to be absolutists, purists. Philosophically, this makes them internally-consistent, which is especially appealing to the young. Practically, their immunity to counter-argument and hostility to compromise and incrementalism make them impotent. Instead, Postrel claims (quite credibly) that libertarian goals have been achieved by the empiricist libertarians:

Libertarianism need not be formulaic. There has long been a lively, open-ended libertarianism for inquiring minds, whether curious about the results of trucking deregulation, the consequences of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the incentives that shape bureaucratic action, the neurological basis of interpersonal trust, the causes of the Islamic world’s economic decline, or the predictive potential of idea futures markets. Not all this work has been empirical. The tradition has produced great theorists, including Hayek, Coase, James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, and Richard Epstein, to name just a few. But their theories are informed, tested, and revised by empirical observation, just as Adam Smith’s were. Most of the libertarian movement’s persuasive and policy triumphs have come from this non-utopian, empiricist approach.

Instead of the Continental quest for certainty, this second intellectual tradition is inspired by the Anglo-Scottish heritage of skeptical inquiry. It is the tradition of Smith and Hume, animated by a love not only of liberty but of the learning, prosperity, and cosmopolitan sociability made possible by a society in which ideas and goods can be freely exchanged. It looks for understanding, for facts, and for solutions to specific problems. Its distrust of grand plans and refusal to embrace the one best way — even the one best libertarian way — made it out of place in the 20th century. They make it essential for the 21st.

She goes on to identify the modern threats to liberty and how empiricist- or consequentialist-libertarians are best prepared to meet them.

Obviously, libertarianism is not monolithic. There are countless sub-categories, but Postrel’s taxonomy is useful for most practical purposes. I would also add that her categories are not discrete; libertarians may draw upon a number of attitudes or traditions as they see fit. Critics are free to engage libertarians on any of those terms, but imprecise criticism fails to engage them in substantial arguments. Worse, attacks on some of the less-defensible positions are too often generalized into attacks on the label as a whole (a problem unconfined to libertarianism). To the extent that, as Postrel claims, only one kind of libertarianism has anything very much useful to say about modern challenges, this is regrettable. The problem is compounded when critics are not only imprecise but inaccurate.