Sheldon Richman, one of the best libertarian writers of the last decade and an all around excellent human being (I’m a grateful person and as my teacher at FEE in 2003, I must say he was by far the most fun and persuasive of the lecturers in an already very good set of speakers) has jumped on the wagon of the Left-‘libertarians’ latest initiative to decry and abandon the use of “Capitalism” as a term by our movement.
Hereby I would like to address his post at The Freeman but also his subsequent retorts on Facebook to my objections on such a linguistic and strategic initiative, by asking him and others including Gary Chartier, Roderick Long and Kevin Carson these four questions:
Since words are not doomed to be deformed when born deformed in the same way they are not free from bad usage even if their origin is noble (see “Liberalism”).
- Well then, what do we want it to mean from now on?
- Is there another word that describes the full and complex system that is the real promise (and hope) behind a free society?
- Yet another unanswered question is: why won´t the next term be hijacked or deformed by the (socialist/statist/authentic) Left?
- And the last question Sheldon, Chartier, Carson and others haven’t addressed is: how will be keep a word pure when no social system is pure nowadays (if ever) unless we coin a term only when we have a pure system so it corresponds to a pure reality and cannot be misconstrued? Of course we need a term for an ideal so we walk towards it, unless I’m missing something here.
Stephan Kinsella keenly added to the discussion:
“What some left-“libertarians” oppose is the economic order most standard libertarians favor and expect to accompany an advanced free society–whatever word you slap on it. Thus they go on about mutual aid, wildcat strikes, the workers, localism, self-sufficiency, they condemn the division of labor, mass production, factories,employment, firms, corporations, “hierarchy,” international trade, not to mention “distant” ownership, landlordism, “alienation,” industrialism, and the like. Their agenda is not required by libertarianism–most of it is not even compatible with it, I’d say, so is unlibertarian. But this is a debate we can have–it’s on substance. I think this is a large motivation for their hostility to the word “capitalism”–they mean capitalism like we do, and dislike it. I don’t mean crony capitalism–but actual libertarian-compatible laissez-faire capitalism. They want libertarians to stop saying capitalism because they want us to adopt their substantive unlibertarian, Marxian agenda. Yet they pretend it’s just for strategical or lexical concerns–which it’s not. This is yet another reason I think we should dig our heels in and not give in: they will then count it as a substantive victory for unlibertarian, leftist ideas.”
This bit of course is completely relevant when an attempt (some bona fide would be a requisite for it) to answer these four questions is made.
Anti-capitalists: the ball is now on your side of the court.
Juan, see also my update at the end of Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism, and other comments from Sheldon s FEE blogpost Is Capitalism Something Good? and also from the facebook page:
Another comment of mine on the FEE blog:
Another commentator on fcebook has a good comment too:
Well then, what do we want it to mean from now on?
Well, there are a few options:
a. Use it to mean capitalism-2.
b. Use it to mean capitalism-3.
c. Use it to mean the amalgamation of capitalism-2 and capitalism-3.
d. Reject the term as unusable (unless qualifying adjectives are attached).
I’m not sure why this problem has to be solved in order to accept the critique of the tern “capitalism,” though.
Is there another word that describes the full and complex system that is the real promise (and hope) behind a free society?
Almost anything would be better than “capitalism.”
There used to be a”National Socialist Party” in what is now Czechoslovakia, back in the 1910s. (Jaroslav Hasek, of all people, was a member!) They called themselves that because they were nationalists (they wanted to secede from the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and they were socialists. Suppose they were still around — wouldn’t there be good reason for them to call themselves “National Socialists” today?
Yet another unanswered question is: why won’t the next term be hijacked or deformed by the (socialist/statist/authentic) Left?
The implied contrast in “next” makes it sound as though “capitalism” was hijacked or deformed by the left. But “capitalism” has had the implications we’re complaining about since the early 19th century.
And the last question Sheldon, Chartier, Carson and others haven’t addressed is: how will be keep a word pure when no social system is pure nowadays
I don’t know why we should be expected to address this, since we’ve never promised or imagined that any word can be kept pure. When someone points out that you’re eating tainted meat, “how can you guarantee that I won’t encounter some impure food in the future?” is a puzzling response.
It seems to me that a legitimate definition of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production
On this, see POOTMOP and POOTMOP Redux.
I have about had it with left-leaning libertarians having the gall to tell standard libertarians to learn from leftism–we are better than leftists
We’ve said, over and over, that libertarians and leftists need to learn from EACH OTHER. Each is better on some range of issues where the other is worse.
Berserkrl,
I’ll let Juan reply as to his part; I’d be curious if you agree w/ my own proposals about “capitalism” and its use.
It’s not symmetrical. We are basically right; the left is basically confused at best, evil at worst. I would not mind a quick summary of 3 or 5 things we libertarians can learn from the left–things they know, that are important for libertarianism, that we do not know, or that we are wrong on.
Some anonymous left-lib replied here (why are they so often anymous or nyms?). A few replies. First, they point out that:
I asked what can we learn from leftism? My view they can learn from us. But what can we learn from them? This paragraph argues that our origins are in the left. But so what? And that we can learn from our predecessors. Oh? Like what? This is not an answer. Plus it assumes too much and is too vague. We have lots of “predecessors”. And it’s not clear we are “from” the “left” especially the modern left. Or not only from the left. And if we came from them maybe we evolved, took the best parts, abandoned the nonsense. This is really weak, IMO.
But we libertarians already care about the poor and vulnerable minorities and everyone else. This is not a leftist concern. Or if it is, we libertarians already have it. Still waiting to hear what we have to learn from the left. In fact we care more about the poor and minorities since we oppose policies that harm them, while the g*ddamned left does not. Yeah, we have something to learn from the left: don’t callously advocate policies that harm the very people you pretend to care about (see, e.g., Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy).
So the second point has also not shown that we can learn anything from the left.
Libertarians understand perfectly well the benefits of mutual cooperation an exchange. Businessmen, entrepreneurs, etc. can become experts at setting up particular institutions in a free society. But I’ll grant that left-libs seem more interested in living in coops, etc., so maybe they will explore this as a viable model. But I am not sure why this is a libertarian concern. We libertarians favor the conditions that give freedom and recognize property rights, that are necessary for leftists to attempt their social experiments. What they do with their freedom is up to them.
We don’t need leftists to tell us this. We oppose all forms of aggression: institutionalized; private; and we also oppose and are quite aware of the intermingling of the state and business (and other interest groups like unions and so on).
This is a caricature. Libertarians do not say this. They have never been only about the state itself. We are aware of various forms of statism (what we may call “socialism”). E.g., Rothbard’s criticism of Rand’s bemoaning of Big Business as being America’s most persecuted minority; and Hoppe’s discussion of various forms of socialism as described i nthis post, from Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering.
Libertarians have never focused only on for-profit institutions and behavior. The Chicago school might but we do not. We have highlighted the benefits of freedom for one’s spirit, civil liberties, private life; we have explained over and over again how there would be more peace, cooperation, charity, brotherhood, civility, prosperity, achievement, progress, women’s rights, minority rights, and so on, under conditions of freedom. Just part of this is concerned with catallactics. Again, we have no gaps that need filling.
I asked a simple question for someone to give me a few things we can learn from the left. I hear “well we can learn from our predecessors” (general and without specificity), “we need to care about the poor” (we do), “we should care not only about profit” (we know); “we should realize direct state action is not the only way to commit aggression” (again, got it); “there are ways of setting up communities along coop lines and those details are interesting” (to libertarians qua libertarians?).
Thanks for the response. First things first,
You only had to ask, my name is James Briggs
My point was we already have picked up lots of useful concepts from the left. I should hope we have taken the best parts and abandoned the nonsense; we do this with libertarianism too, like you said, so what? We’re still making use of leftist ideas. As for what we can specifically learn from our predecessors I think one of the things they, the leftists, got right but modern libertarians seem quite weak on is to stress more than rights violations as libertarian qua libertarian issues. To avoid repeating myself I’m going to argue for why this is the case in the third point but basically it’s thick libertarianism I’m advocating.
I’m well aware of the fact this point is a little general and unspecified but so is your question. What can “libertarianism” learn from “leftism”? Do you want a comprehensive list of every leftist ideology, every libertarian ideology and every relevant concept each one has to the others or can we agree that some generalised concepts can still have validity?
This is, in a word, nonsense. Not a leftist concern!? Why don’t you ask some leftists whether they agree with that statement? I agree completely with your argument that what most leftists advocate is very ineffective, even harmful, but I refuse to believe you don’t understand the difference between ends and means. What I’m saying is libertarians ought to take these ends more seriously. Some do, this I’m not disputing, but being insensitive to the poor is such a common argument against us and willful ignorance can only go so far. The uglier elements of actually existing capitalism are too often defended via free market principles; here is a great example from Gary Chartier’s blog. Stossel’s Myths. More importantly why are we so frequently labeled “Marxian” (another generalised term?) for pointing this out? What we end up with is some libertarians do care about the vulnerable and you agree that’s a positive trait. Caring about the vulnerable as an end is generally considered leftist. Therefore being a good libertarian involves some accepting some leftist ends.
You’ve completely misunderstood argument #3. It has nothing to do with co-operatives or profit-making. This is about values that libertarians should support other than the non-aggression principle (thick libertarianism). Unfortunately this is the argument I’m most interested in too, being the most controversial one.
Yeah, like I was trying to argue libertarians don’t oppose aggression. Talk about a caricature! I was arguing there are other ways to oppress someone than aggression and libertarians should pay attention to this. I was quite careful to avoid describing this as aggression and the fact you haven’t differentiated between “oppress” and “aggress” proves my point exactly. This is definitely not something present in some strains of modern libertarianism and maybe it should be. Two quick reasons why. The NAP is derived from a moral system that says “self-direction” is worth protecting so we should look at other ways it’s compromised than aggression. There is likely to be instrumental value in promoting some values over others as a means of maintaining liberty.
Finally I noticed on my blog a link to an article called “against libertarian sectarianism” and apparently I’m mentioned in it. The link appears broken so perhaps it’s been deleted but I want to make this clear, I’m not trying to promote any kind of sectarianism this is just a debate. That’s why I called the post “challenge accepted” not “war declared”.
owelcome/James:
“‘why are they so often anymous or nyms?’
“You only had to ask, my name is James Briggs”
The question remains. There is something odd and juvenile about it.
“My point was we already have picked up lots of useful concepts from the left.”
Sure, and from other disciplines and ideologies as well.
“I’m well aware of the fact this point is a little general and unspecified but so is your question. What can “libertarianism” learn from “leftism”? Do you want a comprehensive list of every leftist ideology, every libertarian ideology and every relevant concept each one has to the others or can we agree that some generalised concepts can still have validity?”
Well, by my quesiton I was trying to elicit a response which would demonstrate my contention that there are virtually no things you can mention that we need to learn from the left, that are uncontroversial. And you provided such a response.
“‘But we libertarians already care about the poor and vulnerable minorities and everyone else. This is not a leftist concern. Or if it is, we libertarians already have it.’
“This is, in a word, nonsense. Not a leftist concern!? Why don’t you ask some leftists whether they agree with that statement? I agree completely with your argument that what most leftists advocate is very ineffective, even harmful, but I refuse to believe you don’t understand the difference between ends and means. What I’m saying is libertarians ought to take these ends more seriously.”
Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t. In any case the left, who harms the poor, have no place to tell us this. And no, it’s not a “leftist” concern to care about the poor. Libertarians qua libertarians of course care about the poor.
” Some do, this I’m not disputing, but being insensitive to the poor is such a common argument against us and willful ignorance can only go so far.”
It’s a common–and dishonest–argument from the left. They are the problem, not the solution.
“The uglier elements of actually existing capitalism are too often defended via free market principles;”
True; and a principled libertarian ought to condemn the intermingling of the state and business. … As we do.
“I was arguing there are other ways to oppress someone than aggression and libertarians should pay attention to this.”
This is the problem. This is where leftists get into an a-libertarian opposition to “hierarchy,” “bossism,” etc. which borders on crankish. Libertarians are opposed to aggression, not vague, amorphous “oppression.” If oppression is aggression, we are already opposed to it. If oppression is not aggresion, then we, qua libertarians, are not opposed to it.
It is similar re the concept of “harm.” It’s a vague word. We are not against harming people. If you steal my girlfriend or build a Wal-mart next to my mom and pop store, you are “harming” me, but it is your right. Only some types of harm count as rights violations that libertairnas oppose–namely, aggression. Which we already oppose.
“I was quite careful to avoid describing this as aggression and the fact you haven’t differentiated between “oppress” and “aggress” proves my point exactly. This is definitely not something present in some strains of modern libertarianism and maybe it should be. Two quick reasons why. The NAP is derived from a moral system that says “self-direction” is worth protecting so we should look at other ways it’s compromised than aggression. There is likely to be instrumental value in promoting some values over others as a means of maintaining liberty.
”
I find this thickish project to be misguided and confused. In any event particularly leftist to argue that there are strong interrelationships between libertarian ideas and others.
“Finally I noticed on my blog a link to an article called “against libertarian sectarianism” and apparently I’m mentioned in it. The link appears broken so perhaps it’s been deleted but I want to make this clear, I’m not trying to promote any kind of sectarianism this is just a debate. That’s why I called the post “challenge accepted” not “war declared”.”
Thanks.
Oops – When I wrote “wouldn’t there be good reason for them to call themselves” I meant “wouldn’t there be good reason for them NOT to call themselves.”
This comes across as a bit ad hominem. So what if I’m being odd and juvenile, I’m still right (about being left).
These aren’t mutually exclusive statements and you didn’t ask anyone to prove leftism is the only thing relevant to libertarianism.
A response which you called a-libertarian and crankish, yet contains nothing controversial?
Also what does this have to do with slightly vague statements and whether they are acceptable or not?
Well it’s certainly closer to a leftist concern than a rightist one and I’m not convinced you could find many leftists who would agree they aren’t concerned about poor people, even if their solution is stupid. Again, it’s the difference between ends and means that’s important here. I don’t think I ever implied we should take their advice on the subject.
An excessively broad and sweeping statement. Are you denying the possibility that any of them are genuine but just don’t understand the conclusions of what they advocate?
Yes exactly, those of us who are principled are “left-er”, on this issue at least, than those who aren’t.
But a term being vague is a reason to start defining it not to throw it away. Doesn’t assuming libertarianism should only concern the use of force kinda beg the question?
Actually the problem with a harm principle is it would be weird to oppose harm. Criminals for example can be harmed within reason in order to help or protect their victims. Oppression implies initiating some kind of harm, that the harm is systematic and that it’s related to the victim’s self-direction in some way that doesn’t necessarily involve violence. That’s something we can rationally take an opposition to and bother defining more carefully. I posted a link earlier that was pretty specific about what it defined as autonomy and how it could be violated.
You’re correct that only certain things count as rights violations, the initiation of force, but since I don’t claim this is an issue of rights I don’t see that as relevant. Just because someone has the right to do something doesn’t mean we should endorse it or refrain from opposing it via non-violent means.
I find it well thought out and insightful. Now we have two assertions, I backed mine up with a couple of arguments though and I’d like to hear your thoughts on those. Granted we aren’t the only ones with ideas on what the rest of a libertarian morality (outside of rights) should look like but I don’t remember saying we were. I said our version makes more sense from a libertarian perspective.
“Well it’s certainly closer to a leftist concern than a rightist one and I’m not convinced you could find many leftists who would agree they aren’t concerned about poor people, even if their solution is stupid. Again, it’s the difference between ends and means that’s important here. I don’t think I ever implied we should take their advice on the subject.”
Libertarians already have welfare of the poor as an end, and have the proper means to boot.
“An excessively broad and sweeping statement. Are you denying the possibility that any of them are genuine but just don’t understand the conclusions of what they advocate?”
Some of them are genuine but just stupid or dishonest or ignorant. Yes.
“‘True; and a principled libertarian ought to condemn the intermingling of the state and business. … As we do.’
“Yes exactly, those of us who are principled are “left-er”, on this issue at least, than those who aren’t.”
We just disagree on this. The left is not against the intermingling of state and the economy. We are.
“But a term being vague is a reason to start defining it not to throw it away. Doesn’t assuming libertarianism should only concern the use of force kinda beg the question?”
No, it’s a reasonable definition of what this political philosophy is.
I agree we should not throw “oppression” away. It’s got its uses.
“Oppression implies initiating some kind of harm, that the harm is systematic and that it’s related to the victim’s self-direction in some way that doesn’t necessarily involve violence. That’s something we can rationally take an opposition to and bother defining more carefully. I posted a link earlier that was pretty specific about what it defined as autonomy and how it could be violated.
You’re correct that only certain things count as rights violations, the initiation of force, but since I don’t claim this is an issue of rights I don’t see that as relevant. Just because someone has the right to do something doesn’t mean we should endorse it or refrain from opposing it via non-violent means.”
I agree. And as decent people, we ought to oppose “genuine” oppression. It’s just that I don’t agree that all the typical examples of oppression given by the left are really oppression. Employment, hierarchies, “bossism.” If you can make a coherent argument that a given behavior is immoral, because it is a type of real oppression, sure, I’d oppose it too. At least morally.
Some do, some don’t. There’s nothing in the NAP saying we should worry about it which makes it external t0 what the “libertarian qua libertarian” would know. Obviously I agree the libertarians who “get it” are more correct than those on the mainstream left.
They’re definitely selective about it but some very insightful work on government/business collusion has come from the Left. Gabriel Kolko for example, cited by Rothbard in the link you posted.
I was referring to having they end of helping people out of poverty though.
It is, though arguably an incomplete one.
With employment and hierarchies it’s a little more complicated than either side of the debate wants to make it. On the one hand it’s just another mutually beneficial exchange but as the same time we should perhaps be vary of one group having too much decision over the actions of another. I think a much better example would be opposition to tradition for the sake of tradition. A culture that places little value on reflection will be more likely to succumb to some kind of intolerance and less likely to accept rational ethics (ie. libertarianism).