Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism

Statism, The Basics
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There’s been a good deal of debate recently in libertarian circles about the word capitalism. Is it compatible with libertarianism? A synonym for it? Should we use it? For example:

As some of my posts linked above indicate, I find this debate extremely frustrating because the nature of the debate is rarely made clear. In that respect it is reminiscent of the interminable debates over gay marriage and thick v. thin libertarianism. On the gay marriage issue, it’s often the case that the arguments of gay marriage opponents boils down to opposition to the word marriage being used by the state in the caption in the statute, though they usually won’t come clean and admit it. In my view (not shared by all my co-bloggers at TLS), the thick-thin paradigm adds nothing of substance and is used to equivocate–engaging in non-rigorous argument about what “libertarianism” “is” semantically and then using this to argue for one’s particular substantive positions; it’s like trying to prove that marriage implies slavery or wife-ownership because the word “my” is used in “my wife.”

The libertarian opponents of “capitalism” often engage in equivocation, I believe. If challenged they say they are just opposed to the word, as if this is a semantic or maybe tactical/strategic issue. But because of confused leftist beliefs, many of them are actually opposed to aspects of the underlying social order that we anarcho-libertarians refer to as (non-corporatist) “capitalism”–the modern industrial free market. They oppose “absentee ownership” (see my post A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy), favor localism and self-sufficiency, are leery of the division and specialization of labor, buy into Marxian ideas about “alienation” and “labor”; they accuse standard libertarians of putting undue stress on “capital” while they do the same with “labor” and “the workers”; some flirt with crankish Georgist ideas, and so on. Some of the opponents of the word “capitalism” seem to have genuine strategical or even semantic concerns, such as Sheldon Richman, instead preferring the term “free market.” But some of them seem to oppose even this term–preferring instead the bizarre and annoying term “freed market,” or outright opposing the word “market” in the phrase “free market” (see Markets vs Free Markets). …

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Anti-immigration libertarians are treading in dangerous waters

(Austrian) Economics, Immigration, Police Statism, Totalitarianism
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There's only one way for government to effectively secure its borders.

In a perfect world (Ancapistan/Libertopia), say libertarians who want to restrict immigration, we could have open borders. For one thing, they say, all property would be privatized, so it would be up to individuals to decide who will be allowed to traverse their land, roads, and waterways. Furthermore, they explain, there would be no massive welfare state encouraging the neighboring country’s proletariat to immigrate for all the freebies. There would be no arbitrary government rules about “natural born citizenry” which encourage pregnant mothers to try to birth their babies on American (that’s the country we’re talking about here, after all) soil thus securing the right to live in America for their child, and by extension (since it’s inhumane to break up the mother-child family unit) their right to live there as well.

Now, I’ve seen libertarians argue that the Mexicans (let’s face it, that’s really whom we’re talking about) who cross the border illegally are mostly looking for the freebies, and I’ve seen libertarians argue that the Mexicans who cross the border illegally are mostly looking for work which Americans don’t want to do themselves (like picking lettuce all day in fields of pesticide). Who’s right? I haven’t a clue. I’m sure the American welfare state is very enticing to the neighboring poor. I’m sure without it, there’d be less immigration from Mexico. But none of this matters to me. I’m not even going to make the pro-liberty argument which by definition is against government controlled borders.

What I want to do is concede all of the above arguments to the anti-immigration libertarians. Let’s assume that an enormous welfare state requires heavily regulated or possibly even closed borders. I don’t believe this to be the case, but let’s stipulate that it is. Now what? What are these libertarians implicitly assuming?

That the government can efficiently and effectively manage the borders. If there is one thing every libertarian should know about government it’s that government cannot efficiently or effectively perform any “service” without resorting to totalitarian police-statism. When the government minimizes costs (don’t laugh), it performs at woefully substandard levels. Think of the levees around New Orleans which failed during Hurricane Katrina, for instance. For adequate quality of service, for instance the Hoover Dam or those stretches of elevated interstate cutting through the marshes and swamps of Louisiana (very fine work), the government has to overpay enormously. The systemic defects inherent in government bureaucracy cannot be overcome, as they are due (mostly) to the absence of a profit motive. The government simply cannot provide quality services at market prices; often, the government cannot provide quality service at any price. What the government can do, however, is provide brutality very cheaply, for a while.

So, while the government won’t be able to build proper border walls at a reasonable price, what it can do is man whatever type of walls it does build (cheap, low quality walls, or massively overpriced, high quality walls) with soldiers who have orders to shoot-on-sight and ask questions later, if at all. Tossing several thousand mines outside those walls wouldn’t cost much either — we could describe it as brutally efficient. Why not require every citizen to carry government identification cards and make the penalty for failure to comply (accidental or intentional) very severe? We have examples of countries which have managed to secure their borders effectively (for the most part). I’ll name three: The former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba. Governments which haven’t degenerated into police states just cannot accomplish it.

So I pose this question to those libertarians who claim that as long as we have a colossal welfare state, we must have strict immigration controls: what’s your libertarian plan for accomplishing this?

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“Socialism,” the Tea Partiers, and Slate’s Political Gabfest

Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory, Statism, The Left, The Right
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On today’s Slate Political Gabfest the hosts criticized Tea Partiers for misusing the word “socialism.” David Plotz said it’s “stunning” that Tea Partiers would say Obama is leading the country into socialism. After all, the Obamacare legislation benefited corporations such as insurance companies. The hosts accuse the Tea Partiers of basically engaging in equivocation: using the pejorative potency of “socialism” because of its traditional technical meaning but using the word in a looser sense to refer to “big government.”

But of course the Tea Partiers have a point. It is true that socialism in a technical sense has been used to denote economic or political systems in which the means of production are publicly owned–basically, the state owns land and factories, as under communism. But fascism and corporatism can be seen as variants of this basic idea: instead of directly and explicitly owning the means of production, the state indirectly controls such resources by its control and regulation of corporations, who nominally own capital. This was done under fascism in Hitler’s Germany, for example, which was of course socialistic–the word Nazi means “national socialist”. Thus, the Slate Political Gabfest pundits, while a bit condescendingly chastising the Tea Partiers for their naivety, are themselves a bit naive in contrasting fascism from socialism, as if they are totally distinct or opposed.

As I noted in What Libertarianism Is, Austrian economist and libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added). He goes on:

If … an action is performed that uninvitedly invades or changes the physical integrity of another person’s body and puts this body to a use that is not to this very person’s own liking, this action … is called aggression … Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter — aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism — are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism. [pp. 12, 7]

In other words, although the term socialism is usually narrowly restricted to public ownership of the means of production, from a political or ethical standpoint there is nothing special about “capital”; what is important about it is that it is a type of private property. Thus the essence of socialism is simply institutionalized aggression against private property. In this broader sense, any state action that infringes on property rights is socialistic. The Tea Partiers are right to sense the socialism of Obamacare, for it most certainly involves institutionalized, massive, and widespread interference with private property rights–e.g., the taxes that fund it are theft of private property; the economic regulations imposed on businesses and individuals are trespass. Where the Tea Partiers go wrong is in not realizing that Republican and conservative polices are also socialistic in this broader sense–from the drug war to the war in Iraq. (See also Friedman and Socialism.)

Yet again, we have an illustration of the fact that only libertarians oppose the state, aggression, slavery, and socialism in a principled, consistent way.

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Our Generous President

Taxation, The Left
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The President and his wife made about $5.5 million and paid $1.8 million in federal taxes in 2009. This does not include an estimated $59,639,899 in benefits that he receives annually for being president. Being the generous couple that they are, they gave $329,100 to 40 charities. That’s an average of $8,227.50 per charity. Moreover, $329,100 is also about 6% of their total income for 2009. He did donate the $1.4 million he won for the Nobel Peace prize, although it’s debatable whether he really earned that reward. Nevertheless, Obama had no problem pledging $100 million of taxpayer money to help Haiti. He also pledged $475 million of taxpayer money to rescue the Great Lakes; $3.5 billion of taxpayer money to help Africa; $1.5 billion of taxpayer money to help underwater homeowners and the unemployed; $900 million for schools; $8 billion of taxpayer money on high speed rail; and as much as 3% of GDP, which is about $415 billion of taxpayer money, on scientific research. Perhaps this is why he only donates 6% of his own income. Why be generous with your own money when you can be magnanimous with other people’s money?

Remember when President Obama told Joe the Plumber: ”I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”? The President was not talking about his wealth.

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That vaunted liberal tolerance

Anti-Statism, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, Taxation, The Left
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Pro-Tax = Pro-War + Pro-Prison

First things first: Happy Tax Day to all my friends still living in the United States! And for those of you upset or angry about paying “your fair share” (which, incidentally, is only 43% of you), I’d like to remind you that thousands of Wall Street bankers, UAW “workers”, mortgage defaulters, and other welfare recipients are relying on you to pay their way. If that’s not enough to put a smile on your face, remember that you’re also financing the American Empire’s military adventures in the Middle East which make you safer and could not possible result in blowback (according to Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani). So, there’s that.

Speaking of taxes, here’s a left-wing career tax leech (public “school” teacher) demonstrating how tolerant liberals are of varying view points:

[Jason] Levin, the media teacher at Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton, is the leader of a group that says it wants to infiltrate and bring down the loosely organized anti-big-government Tea Party movement.

He has said he would seek to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist and anti-gay epithets, and acting as offensively as possible — anything short of throwing punches.

In a now deleted post on his “Crash the Tea Party” Web site, Levin called on his supporters to collect the Social Security numbers — among other personal identifying information — about as many Tea Party supporters as possible at the numerous rallies scheduled to take place on Thursday – Tax Day.

“Some other thoughts are to ask people at the rally to sign a petition renouncing socialism. See just how much info you can get from these folks (name address, DOB, Social Security #). The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!” he wrote.

If you want smaller government and lower taxes, you are this avowed statist’s archnemesis — he really hates you. Shouldn’t liberals oppose the Empire’s wars in the Middle East, the bailouts and wealth transfers to Wall Street, the domestic spying programs, and the world’s largest prison system (population measured either way: in total and per capita), all of which are funded by taxes (either current or “borrowed” against future generations)? Sure, it’s possible this guy just lacks discernment, but that doesn’t justify his slimy scheme.

The silver lining here is that the Tea Party contingent can use this as evidence that their ranks are being infiltrated by pro-tax, pro-war, pro-prison leftists as the media continue to paint them as racists, bigots, and homophobes.

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