Radical Capitalists
An interview from CSpan BookTV with Brian Doherty author of the new biography of modern libertarianism Radicals for Capitalism. Fascinating interview and fills a vacuum in the literature. Whatever one's views on the subject matter, he does a very good job of informing--Doherty himself is a libertarian so his views are shaded in that direction. But overall I think he does a fair job--I definitely want to give the book a read.
No way to cover all of libertarianism, but just a few thoughts. I come at this topic more from the political philosophy than economics side, but with libertarians the two are always mixed. They certainly are an interesting bred, given that they don't fit very well into either established political party. The recent argument for Liberal-tarians I think is not going much of anywhere, but major new right conservatism is not all libertarian either.
Doherty begins by stating that libertarianism is the foundation of the American way. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, always pursuing happiness is from the spiritual point of view meditation upon the fact that one is unhappy. As long as one is pursuing happiness, one will never actually be happy. Sadly, says a lot about our country.
But anyway, I would basically agree with Doherty's point. His reading of everything following from New Deal to Bush Republicanism then is a move away from the foundation. I think that some such evolution is inevitable, bringing both positive and negative consequences. Libertarianism then for me as a political philosophy is more a tonic to cleanse the mind from falling into the traps of reliance on institutions. But given human nature (and here I'm more a traditional conservative than libertarian I suppose) there is a need for these necessary evil beasts known as governments, particularly after the rise of modern technological and human population expansion.
That is not to say I agree with any and all such government oversight. I didn't go to public school (not until college anyway), so I don' t support teachers unions, public schools as they currently exist. I've talked numerous times about a middle way on prayer in school, etc. I'm for getting a check and forced to have health insurance (definitely not a libertarian there) a la Charles Murray. I'm for consumption-only taxation or flat tax.
Where I start to get concerned is things like the outsourcing of prisons to private industry as is occurring in spades in the US. I think government has some role in such oversight--common interest--and not just defending private property and the free market.
The American experiment and Founding doctrines could be libertarian (by our standards that is) because it was an elitist project. Elitist is not necessarily bad in my book, but an elites project it was. Concomitant with the libertarian founding is another American mythic dream, world power. Libertarianism sides with only one side of the American mytheme over the other. The other, the world power theme, brings with it aggregation of power. Period.
And as a return to the American foundation, libertarianism is an individualist modern venture. As someone who believes individuality only arises in intersubjectivity (not from) then this view is handicapped though in ways very valuable.
Take the school example--let's say private schooling or business-sponsored schools take off. I'm not necessarily opposed to that. But what about the protection of the children? Is a business economics model the proper lens through which to see these issues? The working assumption, and I would question it, of libertarianism is that such issues would be taken care of better than by government regulation.
As Doherty points out we have grocery stores that work without government boards why not schools? But are grocery stores and storeowners have the sufficient power to stop say child abuse? I say this as someone who went to Catholic school and knows the Catholic Church used it position of social respectability and government non-interference to hide its sins under the rug. Why would charter schools be any different? Why would the grocers not protect their own? Again this is my conservative side and working thesis of evil in humanity promoting me to some more show of strength.
In other words, libertarianism as Doherty points out grows out of the fields of economics. I think the automatic linkage of economic market theory to how governments should run (key on should, value judgment) is problematic. I'm not saying there aren't ways in which the two do line up, but the radical-ness (or I would say absolute-ness) of that linkage for a libertarian is what I find wrongheaded. Because every step then is one slippery slope closer to totalitarianism. Trans-fat bans (which I really could care less about) becomes as one libertarian wrote the jack-boot on the throat. Really? In a world where our government is sending people to Egypt and prisons in Eastern Europe to be tortured outside government regulation (there's a piece of evidence against libertarianism) people who want to eat trans-fats are co-martyrs with innocent people tortured?
When the ideological element of that is cut away, the movement can claim some major social achievements. e.g. Milton Friedman was a major force behind ending the military draft and moving to an all volunteer army. Note the emphasis on individualism.
Again my position is of the middle. I believe in a compulsory draft but not to the military. I believe in 1-3 years post college graduation commitments to things like Peace Corps, humanitarian reconstruction, inner-city education if one is not inclined to military armed combat. And I mean only if that safeguard were actually meant. Currently I do not trust this administration to be able to abide by that safeguard so I can't advocate for at the current time.
--Other random notes I took while listening to the interview:
Hayek: Ignorance. Hence no Central Planning. Socialism/centralization of Western democracy. In this regard, they actually link up with the Frankfurt School in their criticism of both Soviet and Western totalitarianisms.
Misses: without free market, no state socialism. Libertarians did not support the right-wing McCarthyite, National Review Buckley, domestic repression of marxism with massive military-industrial complex buildup and mythicization of Communism.
Hayek-Misses: utilitarians not libertarian rights (non-Americans). prove from economics.
posted by CJ Smith @ 9:37 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hey Chris,
Couple of things.
1) With regard to your statement:
Doherty begins by stating that libertarianism is the foundation of the American way. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, always pursuing happiness is from the spiritual point of view meditation upon the fact that one is unhappy. As long as one is pursuing happiness, one will never actually be happy. Sadly, says a lot about our country.
I fear you are being simplistic here with your premise about what "happiness" refers to. Here's a brutally short rejoinder. The founding fathers were well-versed in Greek thought. America's founding documents express, philosophically, the "dream of Europe". The dream of Europe, philosophically, was freedom from State-sponsered coercion.
In European philosophy, "happiness" is an idea with a long history. In ancient Greek, the word for happiness, "eudaimonia", refers to "the excellence of a fully realized human life, through both practical wisdom and ethical wisdom".
(Notice how "daimon" is part of that.)
So I think your attempt at a point about the sad reflection upon America is misguided. Because you are taking "pursuing" way too literally.
2) America's is a "do it yourself" ethic. Jefferson instructed people not to expect others do what you can do for yourself. How this impacts "libertarianism" is a question to explore. But realize it can all fade to symmetry once one understands that the real impact of America was to create a country around what we now refer to as "classical liberal" philosophy.
And in classical liberal philosophy, what many people (especially in Wilberland) seem to not grok is that is is holonic to the core. There is the autonomy, of course, from a non-coercive and limited State; but there is the responsibility, which is overlooked, which calls for the citizenry to adopt the DIY ethic. An ethic which is NOT MERELY individualistic, nor exclusively collective. No, the ethic is basically to "do what must be done" whether it requires individual or the efforts of some civic association.
What a non-limited Government inevitably leads to is the temptation of people to "pass the buck". Which is precisely counter to DIY. And precisely counter to the philosophical heart of America.
I think the widest-held misconception about America is that its key tenet is "democracy" when in truth it is not democracy at all, but rather "liberty". There was a conscious choice to NOT form America as a democracy.
md
md,
that's a fair point about responsibility. At least as regards classical liberalism. I think the individualism still holds vis a vis libertarianism. With the economic free market analogy to government.
I think we agree about the need for more responsibility.
I don't disagree with the negative freedom aspect of happiness, freedom from coercion. I think (not sure) that we would disagree more around positive freedom, freedom for.
The criticism of the pursuit of happiness is that eudaemonia which is good as far as it goes and better than being unethical or not having practical wisdom, is still from a deeper spiritual point of view part of the problem. It assumes a self-referential identity which it has been argued is the source of the existential problem.
And further from a relative point of view, I add a need for a questioning of how our definitions of happiness, eudaemonia, responsibility are shaped by our own traditions. This can be learned in part by studying very different traditions. Not reduced to the historicity/relativity of the Western traditions but not without it either.
peace.
Post a Comment
<< Home