Stephen Metcalf’s “The Liberty Scam” is a must-read, even though a number of critics have found some factual errors — Brad DeLong, for example, questions a quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes.
And a central conceit of the article — that a fellow who helped build the philosophical foundations of today’s libertarianism eventually disavowed libertarianism — is overstated, it seems. Robert Nozick’s views became more moderate, but I believe he continued to call himself a libertarian to the end of his days.
Nevertheless, I think Metcalf’s larger argument is spot on: The “liberty” promoted by libertarians is a scam. It’s a utopian fantasy that assumes individuals acting in rational self-interest will create an economically just society in which people are rewarded according to what they contribute, and a free market naturally will generate and distribute what goods and services people need.
The fly in the ointment is that humans rarely act according to rational self-interest. Indeed, consumerist capitalism depends on our not being all that rational and buying a lot of stuff we don’t actually need. And the accumulation of wealth so vast one has to contrive things to spend it on also has nothing to do with rational self-interest. Most of us are a twitching mass of desire, insecurity, and social programming, irrationally reaching out to whatever we think will soothe our existential angst.
But libertarians are people irrationally in love with a grand idea, and they refuse to see that their beloved not only doesn’t love them back, but is using them and probably turning tricks on the side. Predictably, true believers at Cato and Reason reacted to Metcalf with a petulant defense of their beloved’s charms while ignoring the core of his arguments. The Reason reactor, Matt Welch, asserts that libertarians do not approve of grossly overcompensated bankers being propped up by guarantees by the Federal Reserve, while being oblivious to the fact that such bankers are the inevitable result of cockamamie libertarian ideas about deregulating everything.
Nozick’s role in libertarian history was to write a book titled Anarchy, State, and Utopia. “Prior to Anarchy,” Metcalf writes, “‘liberty’ was a virtual synonym for rolling back labor unions and progressive taxation, a fig leaf for the class interests of the Du Ponts and the B.F. Goodriches. After Anarchy, ‘liberty’ was a concept as worthy of academic dignity as the categorical imperative.”
Nozick wrote his book in the early 1970s, the point at which regulations and progressive taxation had made the distribution of wealth in the U.S. as flat as it has ever been, before or since. And academics like Nozick were at the peak of their incomes, before or since.
Buccaneering entrepreneurs, boom-and-bust markets, risk capital–these conveniently disappeared from Nozick’s argument because they’d all but disappeared from capitalism. In a world in which J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt have been rendered obsolete, reduced to historical curios, to a funny old-style man, imprisoned in gilt frames, the professionals–the scientists, engineers, professors, lawyers and doctors–correspondingly rise in both power and esteem. And in a world in which the professions are gatekept by universities, which in turn select students based on their measured intelligence, the idea that talent is mental talent, and mental talent is, not only capital, but the only capital, becomes easier and easier for a humanities professor to put across. Hence the terminal irony of Anarchy: Its author’s audible smugness in favor of libertarianism was underwritten by a most un-libertarian arrangement–i.e., the postwar social compact of high marginal taxation and massive transfers of private wealth in the name of the very “public good” Nozick decried as nonexistent.
And the screw takes one last turn: By allowing for the enormous rise in (relative) income and prestige of the upper white collar professions, Keynesianism created the very blind spot by which professionals turned against Keynesianism. Charging high fees as defended by their cartels, cartels defended in turn by universities, universities in turn made powerful by the military state, many upper-white-collar professionals convinced themselves their pre-eminence was not an accident of history or the product of negotiated protections from the marketplace but the result of their own unique mental talents fetching high prices in a free market for labor. Just this cocktail of vanity and delusion helped Nozick edge out Rawls in the marketplace of ideas, making Anarchy a surprise best-seller, it helped make Ronald Reagan president five years later. So it was the public good that killed off the public good.
Metcalf also points out,
I like to think that when Nozick published Anarchy, the levee broke, the polite Fabian consensus collapsed, and hence, in rapid succession: Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, followed by Milton Friedman in ‘75 [1976], the same year Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition, followed by the California and Massachusetts tax revolts, culminating in the election of Reagan, and … well, where it stops, nobody knows.
Thus began the long, slow slide downward in the quality of life and real income of the American middle class.
But because the libertarian definition of “liberty” really is the fig leaf for class interests of the very wealthy, who these days can use their wealth to manipulate public opinion through mass media, the phantom promises of libertarianism are turning us all into the serfs of corporatism.
When Hayek insists welfare is the road is to serfdom, when Nozick insists that progressive taxation is coercion, they take liberty hostage in order to prevent a reasoned discussion about public goods from ever taking place. “According to them, any intervention of the state in economic life,” a prominent conservative economist once observed of the early neoliberals, “would be likely to lead, and even lead inevitably to a completely collectivist Society, Gestapo and gas chamber included.” Thus we are hectored into silence, and by the very people who purport to leave us most alone.
See also “The Failure of Rational Choice Philosophy.”
“But libertarians are people irrationally in love with a grand idea…”
Ideologues.
A long time ago I proposed the ideology of avoiding ideologies. It didn’t seem to get off the ground, though.
Brava!
I can’t take credit. The Buddha noticed this before I did.
I always wondered where the crazy started, the point in time when we changed from a reasonable society that understood taxes support public works and infrastructure; and understood that a capitalist economy requires a minimum unemployment rate (see: too-low unemployment under Clinton), thus creating a “write-off” class that requires society’s help to survive and improve itself. The early 1970s sounds about right, now that I think about it. Gosh, what a socialist Nixon was.
To me, the failure to realistically acknowledge human behavior is a hallmark of libertarianism. Most libertarians are blissfully ignorant of their hero Ayn Rand’s lifelong hypocrisy as a needy user who expected everyone around her to sacrifice for her good. Also, libertarians are quick to point out that their darling Rand did not advocate “anarchy,” failing to understand the distinction between “anarchy” and the chaos that would result in a society where nobody wants to be a schoolteacher, cop, miner, or nurse, because the work is hard and often dangerous, and the rewards are low.
But then, Rand and her followers believe that is the purpose of a permanent underclass– the drones so inferior to their glorious selves will do those nasty jobs for crap pay, existing to serve the (actually completely non)self-reliant alpha dogs.
From personal observation (not enough data points to be significant) I have decided that libertarians are those who are stuck in adolescence. Most of us went through a libertarian-like phase in adolescence (if they’d just leave me alone, I’d be OK) as we were breaking from the yoke of our parents’ control. Libertarians seems to have never outgrown, or were denied, this normal developmental phase in youth.
YMMV.
I just came from my first hearing at the SSI Disablitiy Office.
I should know in 2 to 6 months whether I’ll be eligible to collect the grand sum of $1700 a month for the rest of my life. And it’s NOT because I don’t WANT to work, it’s that there are no jobs that I can physically do that are available in my area – and so I have to see if ‘society’ can help me ‘live’ (read – survive) on that amount, which will be fixed from age 53 until I get buried in a paupers grave, or cremated, excluding any COLA increases.
So, to any Libertarians out there – GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!
P. J. O’Rourke had it right – “Eat the Rich.”
If your precious markets worked so well, WHERE ARE THE FUCKING JOBS???
I, too, when I was in HS and college read about Libertarianism, and it sounded interesting. But I never bought the program. You see, I had to work a few jobs while in college to put myself through. Add that to the fact that I came out of college during the Reagan Recession, and I quickly saw how the world really worked.
Libertarianism is the perfect philosophy if you’re in your ‘terrible twos’ and never emotionally matured from there, or are rich and/or privledged.
To the rest of us, you are self-centered, selfish assholes who use plenty of what government makes available and does well – like drink municipal or town water, drive on public roads, use electricity, get mail, eat relatively safe food, etc., etc., etc., all while bitching about others sucking on the public teat.
Believe me, if we could get your lips unlocked off those teats, sucking up gallons, maybe we could get an ounce. But, you, if you’re rich, use even more resources than people like me who have to keep a low carbon footprint because we can’t afford to drive whenever and wherever we want, get more mail than we send, and have multi-layer showers to bathe in for 1/2 an hour or more.
But you’re too busy in your self-absorbed cacoons to notice that tens of millions of people in this country, and billions around the world, are suffering. All while you count your cash and whine and bitch about not getting the last fucking penny you feel is due your wonderful, self-reliant self. Again – GO FUCK YOURSELVES! You know you want to. Who’s ever going to be a beautiful and great a fuck as YOU, your fucking selves.
Precisely. Who cares what they approve of? They’re against any and all efforts to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth, but they think they can wash their hands by sternly noting that they don’t approve of certain results of their philosophy.
The other massive gigantic blind spot in libertarianism is this bizarre idea that government is the only source of power and coercion. They’re so stuck on this idea that liberty is just the opposite of government that they’d probably be hard-pressed to even think of any ways in which corporate actions might limit their freedom. They don’t want government bureaucrats running the health care system, but they’re just fine with the current arrangement in which insurance company bureaucrats run the health care system.
joanr wrote: I always wondered where the crazy started, the point in time when we changed from a reasonable society that understood taxes support public works and infrastructure; and understood that a capitalist economy requires a minimum unemployment rate (see: too-low unemployment under Clinton), thus creating a “write-off†class that requires society’s help to survive and improve itself. The early 1970s sounds about right, now that I think about it…
I remember that by about the late 70s, it was termed “the Me decade”. I had no idea then how disastrous this self-absorbed philosophy, embraced by millions would turn out.
I haven’t yet read the article, but I want to talk about my biggest beef with libertarianism, and it’s nothing to do with the fallacy of “rational self-interest”. It’s best explained by the Tragedy of the Commons parable. There is absolutely no incentive in libertarianism to protect the commons that sustains us, in fact there’s every incentive to exploit and destroy it. Wingnuts go to great lengths to deny the existence of a commons of any kind, to wit Margaret Thatcher’s statement that there is no society, only individuals. This is willful ignorance of the highest order.
I would argue that there are no individuals without society, since our identities are forged entirely from our relationships. We identify ourselves through interaction with others, beginning with our families and continuing through changes of status as adults (single, married, a parent) and through our positions in the social and economic order. Without other people, we have no identities. Without society, we’d be rather pathetic organisms scratching around for food and shelter and trying to avoid bears.
Oh –
Then –
Bravo!
Well, of course the word idiot is derived from the Greek idios, meaning private or one’s own. While I was looking that up on Wikipedia I came across the article on the concept of idiocy in Athenian democracy:
So they had the libertarians’ number over 2,000 years ago.
Stephen, I did not know that about the word “idiot.” Interesting.
Gulag, I think you’ve nailed it, libertarianism is the ultimate expression of narcissism. Ayn Rand likely had narcissistic personality disorder. She had to have a circle of acolytes who told her how wonderful she was. To me, the shortage of compassion and rampant libertarianism just underscores how much our society has lost the concept of the common good. It is glaringly obvious when one looks at the current leadership of the GOP Party.
I love Glibertarian arguments like replacing any consumer protection with a policy of Caveat Emptor – “Let the buyer beware”.
OK – I’m flying domestic tomorrow. Before we taxi I’d like to tour the airframe and engines with a senior mechanic, interview the pilot and give him a breathalyzer, check the Traffic Controllers credentials and, oh yeah… The other 283 passengers would like to do the same after me.
3 months later…
Some years ago I read a piece by Arianna Huffington (who is Greek after all), who explained that an idiot was, according to the Greek, someone who was naive about politics. While this fits with Stephen’s comment, I suspect his definition is more to the core of the word’s meaning.
Without society, we’d be rather pathetic organisms scratching around for
food and shelterCheetos and clean underpants and trying to avoidbearsMom coming down to do laundry.There: the perfect description of a libertarian.
See, I was correct in calling all the GOP Presidential candidates a bunch of idiots..And Newt is the biggest idiot of all.
Great comments everyone! Gulag..I especially enjoyed your comment… I guess there’s no point in mincing words, and leaving people guessing as to what you are trying to say. 🙂 I ‘ll be hoping that your disability claim comes through for you..
One of the interesting things about libertarianism is that they start with a notion of property.
Property is a *very* useful concept. If I can’t “own” the plants that grow on a farm, then we’ll never have farms, and we’ll never get past the hunter/gatherer stage of civilization.
But if you start thinking about it more in depth, all property is, is a statement that “if you take this, and use it without my agreement, I have someone who will hurt you.” It’s a continuing contract between the government (whatever government there is) and the property owner.
For this reason, libertarianism strikes me as a bit of an intellectual shell game. They want you to accept property rights as a given but they don’t want you to notice that property isn’t a permanent attribute of a thing… it’s a continuous, on-going agreement.
It can get even more complicated, when looked at from a philosophical perspective. If a farmer couldn’t keep the crops from farming, then farming would be a waste of time, and we’d still be hunting and gathering (and raiding). On the other hand, there’s a subtle difference between being able to own the crops, and being able to own the farm. And, in today’s day and age, there’s yet another concern: if you divert the water to irrigate your crops, that might be removing another person’s ability to water their own crops.
The libertarian view of property is too simplistic. It ignores reality. It’s only of benefit to big property holders. But then, that’s the point.
Maha said:
A long time ago I proposed the ideology of avoiding ideologies.
One of the wisest sentences you’ve ever posted. I think we’d all be better off if we didn’t have to fit into a narrow set of beliefs defined by a mysterious somebody. You hear examples of it every day on AM talk radio, Fox News and the blogs – some wacko trying to tell us what “liberals” believe. If you’re liberal, you must be against the death penalty, you must support cap-and-trade, you must be against nuclear power, you must be for gun control, you must want tobacco to be illegal, you must be pro-abortion, you must be for Big Government, you must be for high taxes and deficit spending, and so on.
And if you’re conservative, you must take the opposite position on every one of those issues.
There can be no shades of gray – you must be one or the other. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. So you can’t, for example, support the death penalty but want abortion to be legal. Or believe in global warming and support nuclear power while opposing cap-and-trade. That does not compute. Being liberal or conservative – those are supposed to be like religions, either you accept the whole or you’re accused of blasphemy. On individual issues, there is no room for discussion, no compromise possible.
Being libertarian is a bit of a wild card. Its economics fit the conservative theme – no taxes, no social welfare for the poor, no regulation. The conservatives have to bend the rules to get their police state/war machine and corporate subsidies to fit libertarian philosophy. That’s why they rarely use the word “libertarian” when defining their narrow tribal belief system.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to the oldest “ism” of all – tribalism. And that is the root of most of the world’s conflicts. And I have little hope that will ever change.
“It can get even more complicated, when looked at from a philosophical perspective”
I’ve only met a few folks that claimed to be libertarian, looking at things philosophically was not normal behavior for any of them. What I notice about the ones that I’ve met is that they are really conservative right wing republicans who just don’t believe in law enforcement. Or as Thom Hartman radio dude says “they are republicans who like to smoke pot and get laid!â€
“To a libertarian, price is, in effect, the conscience of society finding its highest expression in every swipe of the debit card.”
I looked at libertaranism real hard several years ago, growing frustrated with the bad governance under Bush, having stumbled into sites like Lewrockwell and Antiwar.com.
I like the antiwar / anti entanglement ideas, but beyond that, libertarian ideas depend too much on the likelyhood that people will do the right thing; the recent financial fiasco is a great example that most people will do what is good for themselves at the moment, especially when there is a feeding frenzy in progress, and others are saying you’d better jump in and get what you can before its all gone.
My perspective about government vs the private sector was shaped in the 80’s when I worked at the Port of Los Angles, first as a City employee, then as a contractor.
The dynamics are completely different.
As a City employee, I was shown that I’d have a certain amount of work to do on a daily basis. This is called maintenance. When something big needed fixing, the estimators would come in and create a bid package for contractors.
The perception among contractors is (was) that the City employees are on the lazy side because they don’t go out and “turn ‘n burn” on a daily basis. But if you go out and all your week’s work by Tuesday, the rest of the week you have to “look busy”, which is harder to do and really makes the minutes seem like hours.
The perception of contractors by the city workers was one of greed and over achievement. The contractors would bid low to get the job, cheat like hell to get around the specs, then try to weasel “extras” and change orders.
Most of the guys I worked with at the Port (city employees), were older men who had done their time on the “outside” busting their asses. They took a cut in pay to work for the city, trading making money for security, and the possibility of retirement instead of the bone yard after driving piles until they were broken and disabled.
I took the contractor route. The money was great, but here I sit 30 years later with the possibility of retirement grim, most of the money gone, and 2 bad knees.
Several of my former co workers put in their time, retired at 50, and are now into doing what they want to do every day.
I think what it boils down to is do you want to be the star of the show who is only as good as his / her last performance, or do you want to be the stage crew who nobody cares about, but with out whom the show would be a flop?
Oh well…
At least I discovered the writings of Fred Reed, Karen Kwaitkowski, and Butler Shaffer at Lewrockwell. While I don’t agree with most libertarian doctrine, I enjoy those people and their writing.I fully agree tha Ayn Rand was a selfish bitch, and her followers most likely never had a chance to stand on the other side of the fence.
Sorry this got a bit long and rambling.
Did you ever meet a poor Libertarian?
I rest my case, Your Honor…
PS: Thanks, Swami.
I do apologize for the language in my comment, though.
If you want to challenge your thinking on libertarian philosophies consider the fact that George Bush was paid 15 million dollars last year for speaking engagements…
Note: the critical component in that statement is…George Bush. “It’s hard”
Just checked the blog this morning and saw the number of comments and thought, “Awright, some libertarian has gotten into the hen house”, but I was wrong, the Mahablog all-stars were out in force, great comment thread. Great definition of society Maha, and of our intrinsic motivations not really being individualistic, but put in there by society. Couldn’t agree more. And what a great definition of idiot, love it and will use it. C U N D, really hope you get what’s coming to you, meaning the disability checks. erinyes, I’ll try to remember that when my plumber looks me in the eye and tells me that he works time and materials. And time costs $120 an hour. My guess is these guys aren’t getting 40 hrs a week, and have to pay for health insurance and save for retirement, $120 seems about right. I believe the ‘Liberty’ that gets bandied about almost always leads to enslavement. Either enslavement because you ended up on the bottom of the pile and life is just going to suck for you. Or enslavement because you ended up on the top of the pile and to either keep it you have to burn everyone, and keep burning everyone out of self preservation. Are those friends you have really friends or are they just hanging on looking for the opening. Society, as Maha defined it, really is what makes life worth living, the relationships we have and the sense of community we instill in our kids. The selfish bastards I know who are only looking out for themselves are the most miserable people around; those that see themselves fitting into a larger community in some manner are the happiest.
Thanks, buckyblue, for your kind thoughts.
But I’d still rather have a meaningful job until I’m about 70…
And that’s an interesting thing. There *is* no market for good paying jobs, so nothing will come about to fill it. There’s an underlying assumption that there will be so many people, coming up with so many business ideas, that there will always be new jobs opening up, but as technology advances, that becomes less and less true.
(There is certainly a desire for good paying jobs, but no *market*. If you wanted me to give you a job paying $50,000 a year, you can’t expect to get it for less than $50,000 a year, plus something for me to make it worth my while. And if you had that money already, you wouldn’t be giving it to me in return for a job.)
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What is the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist?
About 100,000 dollars per year.
I call the ideology of avoiding ideologies “anti-ism-ism”. The trouble with anti-ism-ism is that you can believe in it only to the extent that you don’t.
Libertarianism was underwritten by the Cold War welfare state; but I think that it was motivated (at least in part) by the example of the Cold War warfare state. I know that for me at least, Vietnam, the drug war, and above all the Bomb, were and remain powerful arguments against the legitimacy of the State.