Libertarian Left Free-Market Anti-Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal
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TAC March 2011-1800.qxd 1/13/11 6:29 PM Page 28 Ideas Libertarian Left Free-market anti-capitalism, the unknown ideal By Sheldon Richman RON PAUL’S 2008 presidential cam- working class and not just union mem- doubt that Third World sweatshops paign introduced many people to the bers, and interested in worker auton- would be the “best alternative” in the word “libertarian.” Since Paul is a omy, not government patronage.” absence of government manipulation. Republican and Republicans, like liber- These passages—the first by inde- Left-libertarians tend to eschew elec- tarians, use the rhetoric of free markets pendent scholar Kevin Carson, the toral politics, having little confidence in and private enterprise, people naturally second by Auburn University philoso- strategies that work through the govern- assume that libertarians are some kind phy professor Roderick Long—read as ment. They prefer to develop alternative of quirky offshoot of the American right though they come not from libertarians institutions and methods of working wing. To be sure, some libertarian posi- but from radical leftists, even Marxists. around the state. The Alliance of the Lib- tions fit uneasily with the mainstream That conclusion would be only half ertarian Left encourages the formation conservatism—complete drug decrimi- wrong: these words were written by pro- of local activist and mutual-aid organiza- nalization, legal same-sex marriage, and free-market left-libertarians. (The pre- tions, while its website promotes kin- the critique of the national-security state ferred term for their economic ideal is dred groups and posts articles elaborat- alienate many on the right from libertar- “freed market,” coined by William ing its philosophy. The new Center for a ianism. Gillis.) Stateless Society (C4SS) encourages But the dominant strain of libertarian- These authors—and a growing group left-libertarians to bring their analysis of ism still seems at home on that side of of colleagues—see themselves as both current events to the general public the political spectrum. Paeans to prop- libertarians and leftists. They are stan- through op-eds. erty rights and free enterprise—the dard libertarians in that they believe in These laissez-faire left-libertarians mainstream libertarian conviction that the moral legitimacy of private owner- are not to be confused with other vari- the American capitalist system, despite ship and free exchange and oppose all eties of left-wing libertarians, such as government intervention, fundamen- government interference in personal Noam Chomsky or Hillel Steiner, who tally embodies those values—appear to and economic affairs—a groundless, each in his own way objects to individu- justify that conclusion. pernicious dichotomy. Yet they are left- alistic appropriation of unowned natural But then one runs across passages ists in that they share traditional left- resources and the economic inequality like this: “Capitalism, arising as a new wing concerns, about exploitation and that freed markets can produce. The class society directly from the old class inequality for example, that are largely left-libertarians under consideration society of the Middle Ages, was founded ignored, if not dismissed, by other liber- here have been called “market-oriented on an act of robbery as massive as the tarians. Left-libertarians favor worker left-libertarians” or “market anarchists,” earlier feudal conquest of the land. It has solidarity vis-à-vis bosses, support poor though not everyone in this camp is an been sustained to the present by contin- people’s squatting on government or anarchist. ual state intervention to protect its abandoned property, and prefer that There are historical grounds for plac- system of privilege without which its corporate privileges be repealed before ing pro-market libertarianism on the survival is unimaginable.” And this: the regulatory restrictions on how those left. In the first half of the 19th century, “build worker solidarity. On the one privileges may be exercised. They see the laissez-faire liberal economist Fred- hand, this means formal organisation, Walmart as a symbol of corporate eric Bastiat sat on the left side of the including unionization—but I’m not favoritism—supported by highway sub- French National Assembly with other talking about the prevailing model of sidies and eminent domain—view the radical opponents of the ancien régime, ‘business unions’ … but real unions, the fictive personhood of the limited-liabil- including a variety of socialists. The old-fashioned kind, committed to the ity corporation with suspicion, and right side was reserved for reactionary 28 The American Conservative March 2011 TAC March 2011-1800.qxd 1/13/11 6:29 PM Page 29 defenders of absolute monarchy and understood libertarianism’s left-wing Hess wrote, “On the far right, law and plutocracy. For a long time “left” signi- roots. order means the law of the ruler and the fied radical, even revolutionary, opposi- In his 1965 classic and sweeping order that serves the interest of that tion to political authority, fired by hope essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for ruler, usually the orderliness of drone and optimism, while “right” signified Liberty,” Rothbard identified “liberal- workers, submissive students, elders sympathy for a status quo of privilege or ism”—what is today called libertarian- either totally cowed into loyalty or a return to an authoritarian order. These ism—with the left as “the party of hope, totally indoctrinated and trained into terms applied even in the United States of radicalism, of liberty, of the Industrial that loyalty,” while the left “has been the well into the 20th century and only Revolution, of progress, of humanity.” side of politics and economics that began to change during the New Deal, The other great ideology to emerge after opposes the concentration of power and which prompted regrettable alliances of the French revolution “was conser- wealth and, instead, advocates and convenience that carried over into the vatism, the party of reaction, the party works toward the distribution of power Cold War era and beyond. that longed to restore the hierarchy, sta- into the maximum number of hands.” At the risk of oversimplifying, there tism, theocracy, serfdom, and class Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939) was the are two wellsprings of modern pro- exploitation of the Old Order.” editor of Liberty, the leading publica- market left-libertarianism: the theory of When the New Left arose in the 1960s tion of American individualist anar- political economy formulated by Murray to oppose the Vietnam War, the military- chism. As a Mutualist, Tucker rigorously N. Rothbard and the philosophy known industrial complex, and bureaucratic embraced free markets and voluntary as “Mutualism” associated with the pro- centralization, Rothbard easily made exchange void of all government privi- market anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proud- common cause with it. “The Left has lege and regulation. Indeed, he called hon—who sat with Bastiat on the left changed greatly, and it is incumbent himself a “consistent Manchester man,” side of the assembly while arguing with upon everyone interested in ideology to a reference to the economic philosophy him incessantly about economic understand the change… . [T]he change of the English free-traders Richard theory—and the American individualist marks a striking and splendid infusion Cobden and John Bright. Tucker dis- anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker. of libertarianism into the ranks of the dained defenders of the American status quo who, while favoring free competi- tion among workers for jobs, supported “LEFT” SIGNIFIED RADICAL OPPOSITION TO POLITICAL AUTHORITY, FIRED BY capitalist suppression of competition among employers through government’s HOPE AND OPTIMISM, WHILE “RIGHT” SIGNIFIED SYMPATHY FOR A STATUS QUO “four monopolies”: land, the tariff, OF PRIVILEGE OR A RETURN TO AN AUTHORITARIAN ORDER. patents, and money. “What causes the inequitable distri- bution of wealth?” Tucker asked in 1892. Rothbard (1926-1995) was the leading Left,” he wrote in “Liberty and the New “It is not competition, but monopoly, theorist of radical Lockean libertarian- Left.” His left-radicalism was clear in his that deprives labor of its product. ... ism combined with Austrian economics, interest in decentralization and partici- Destroy the banking monopoly, estab- which demonstrates that free markets patory democracy, pro-peasant land lish freedom in finance, and down will produce widespread prosperity, social reform in the feudal Third World, “black go interest on money through the benef- cooperation, and economic coordina- power,” and worker “homesteading” of icent influence of competition. Capital tion without monopoly, depression, or American corporations whose profits will be set free, business will flourish, inflation—evils whose roots are to be came mainly from government con- new enterprises will start, labor will be found in government intervention. Roth- tracts. in demand, and gradually the wages of bard, who called himself an “anarcho- But with the fading of New Left, Roth- labor will rise to a level with its prod- capitalist,” first saw himself as a man of bard deemphasized these positions and uct.” the “Old Right,” the loose collection of moved strategically toward right-wing The Rothbardians and Mutualists opponents of the New Deal and Ameri- paleoconservatism. His left-libertarian have some disagreements over land can Empire epitomized by Sen. Robert colleague, the former Goldwater ownership and theories of value, but Taft, journalist John T. Flynn, and more speechwriter Karl Hess (1923-1994), their intellectual cross-pollination has radically, Albert Jay Nock. Yet Rothbard kept the torch burning. In Dear America brought the groups closer philosophi- March 2011 The American Conservative 29 TAC March 2011-1800.qxd 1/13/11 6:29 PM Page 30 Ideas cally. What unites them, and distin- tion (for and by railroads, for example), ated Tucker’s Liberty, and the identifica- guishes them from other market liber- voting restrictions, tariffs, patents, and tion of worker exploitation harked back tarians, is their embrace of traditional control of money and banking.