Libertarianism is a strange creature. It originated as part of the European workers movement, alongside Marxism, communism, and anarchism. But in mainstream American thought, this history has been forgotten and, in the public mind, it’s become entirely associated with right-wing ideology. Most American libertarians, sadly, don’t know this history either.
Typically, this idealized socipolitical order, too often entwined within the neo-feudalism of social Darwinian pseudo-meritocracy and plutocratic capitalist realism, is portrayed as being the polar opposite of authoritarianism, such as shown on the popular political compass. And many right-libertarians like to portray progressive-minded liberals as among the worst and most dangerous of authoritarians, in the accusation of their being covert fellow-travelers of communists and Marxists, Stalinists and Maoists. This is the propaganda of the Cold War and the conspiracy theory of Cultural Marxism, with its origins in ant-leftist (and anti-semitic) fascism.
In any meaningful sense, is that distinction true, the proclaimed opposition between libertarianism and authoritarianism, as either theory or practice? It depends on how one defines libertarianism, and also if it is libertarianism as means or end, the reason many leading libertarian thinkers and advocates can be accused of hypocrsy in sometimes appearing to be inconsistent between their principles and the application or rather enforcement of their principles. A shocking number of right-libertarians openly oppose democracy, sometimes even when it seems to mean betraying the moral standard of liberty itself. Yet, without democracy or some other egalitarian system akin to democracy, authoritarianism would be inevitable. It often comes down do libertarian rhetoric as another way of talking about power and privilege, that is rights for me but not for thee.
Some libertarians claim to be fine with this, as they see it as a necessary evil. For example, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek supported Augusto Pinochet’s regime that killed thousands and tortured tens of thousands. Likewise, Ludwig von Mises praised Benito Mussolini as the savior of European civilization. Why? Because these self-identified libertarians argued that it was necessary to temporarily and violently force liberty in defense against oppressive majoritarian democracy and and public mandate, popular will and populist demand. The people must be saved from themselves — only a paternalistic ruling elite and enlightened aristocracy could step in to establish freedom, specifically the freedom of markets and capitalists, not necessarily anyone else’s freedom.
That demonstrates a key difference and division. Liberty can be forced. Freedom cannot. So, what kind of libertarianism is it that, temporarily or permanently, results in authoritarianism and other forms of oppression and unfreedom? And, if we are to give legitimacy to this ideological ideal of libertarianism, upon what basis is it portrayed as inherently, fundamentally, and absolutely opposite of and opposed to authoritarianism when, in the repeated actions of numerous self-avowed libertarians, this obviously is not always true? What is the relationship or distinction between freedom and liberty? How did our political tradition of ideological rhetoric develop?
In American thought, going back to the colonial era, freedom and liberty became mixed and sometimes conflated, allowing for a slippage of meaning. This is because the English language and Anglo-American politics was shaped by two separate linguistic cultures. Knowing the details of history and etymology would help. The word ‘liberty’ comes from Latin, whereas the world ‘freedom’ comes from German, with the same root as ‘friend’. The latter means to be a free member of a free society, but the former does not require this larger social context of meaning. In the Roman Empire built on slavery, to have liberty simply meant the legal status of not being a slave while others were enslaved. So, freedom is about the relationship between people (i.e., a free people) while liberty is about the relationship of the individual to the state (i.e., civil liberties).
The Romans upheld liberty but not freedom or democracy and so Roman Emperors could be described as libertarian dictators. Libertarianism simply requires the bare minimum potential or maybe just the theoretical possibility of not being a slave and of having full rights protected by the state, though not guaranteeing it. So, by that definition, many dictators like Pinochet could be called libertarian in this broad sense. There is no doubt that there have been many infamous examples of leading libertarians supporting or praising dictators. There are also some that make the case for libertarian monarchism, which would mean an anti-republican libertarianism, although a constitutional monarchy could be democratic like the United Kingdom.
All of this seeming strangeness can make sense within the conventional discourse of American right-libertarianism. There is the typical distinction between freedom and liberty, although the terms get conflated in American English. So, right-libertarians will often condemn the positive freedom (real world results of lived experience, civil rights, political power, and economic freedom) of progressive liberalism and the radical’s rebellion to gain it, while praising the supposed negative ‘freedom’ (theoretical opportunity as abstract ideal) of classical liberalism, as first articulated in Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
Of course, there were early progressive and egalitarian liberals like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine or even Adam Smith, all of whom criticized high inequality as being contradictory and destructive to a free society, all of whom opposed slavery (although by law, because Jefferson was in debt, he could not free his slaves even if he wanted to for any attempt to do so would have meant his slaves would have been immediately seized as payment to his debtors; maybe part of the reason Jefferson worked so hard to legally dismantle the binding and oppressive aristocratic order that he, along with the slaves he inherited, was born into). But that is not the kind of person right-wing libertarians are referring to. Instead, they mean those like John Locke who obsessed over property rights, to the point of defending the ownership of humans in formulating a justification for slavery in writing the Carolina constitution.
That brings us back to the origins of liberty in Roman slave society. There is a reason slaveholding aristocrats looked back to Rome for inspiration in declaring liberty. This sense of narrow and selective legalistic liberty was emphasized in contrast to the British Empire, in their fight against the American colonists, having promised freedom to slaves. The slaveholders were advocating negative freedom, the potential of freedom in that slaves theoretically could be released or buy their freedom, as was also true in the Roman Empire. The British Empire, on the other hand, was offering American slaves a guarantee of positive freedom in the living present, not merely a theoretical opportunity of a future possibility of freedom, although it would take a while for abolition to be enacted in British politics.
At the same time the British Empire threatened freedom for all in the colonies, while radicalism and revolution was in the air, the American slaveholders wrote beautiful words of liberty in defense of their way of life. But liberty had long been an inspiraton of high-minded rhetoric. In Rome, the Stoics reinterpreted libertas as a spiritual state, that one could be enslaved in body but that, in mind and soul, one could never be chained and oppressed, forced and commanded. The Christians inherited this understanding, which rationalized their acceptance of outward forms of enslavement because of spiritual promises.
This might relate to why Friedrich Nietzsche called Christianity a slave religion. Indeed, Christian tradition, theology, and text formed a strong wall buttressing the institution of slavery in early America. There was never a contradiction, in principle or in practice, between liberty and slavery — they were two sides of the same coin. In the rhetoric of Stoicism and Christianity, such spiritual liberty, disembodied as it was ungrounded and unworldly, is basically the same as the secularized abstract liberty modern libertarians have since proclaimed as negative freedom, a strange freedom that never has to prove itself by the evidence of results, never has to guarantee that all are actually free in practice.
Liberty always has been just another noble ideal, as pretense and fantasy, to be trotted out by the the comfortable classes of the privileged and respectable. There is a reason that libertarians are the wealthiest ideological demographic in the country. It’s a belief system of the monied elite and those who aspire to elitism, along with the temporarily embarassed millionaires, as true today as it was in the past. Libertarianism, like Stoicism, was never constructed for the poor and oppressed, the landless peasants and the slaves, the dirty masses and the working poor, the proletariat and the permanent underclass.
Unlike freedom that is a right of all, liberty is a privilege of the few for, otherwise, it would lose it’s value within the libertarian worldview, within the moral imagination of capitalist realism. Within the rigid hierarchy of power and privilege, liberty is a precious comodity because of its violently enforced scarcity, constrained and delimited by a faith-based ideological determinism. There is no such thing as a universal promise and guarantee, full enactment and implementation of liberty. Without slavery or other forms of unfreedom, liberty would not hold such value in the eyes of those who exclusively possess it in being able to deny it to others.
Consider the great Stoic Marcus Aurelius who wrote of “true liberty.” His words on life and society have inspired many libertarians and similar thinkers, not to mention having been a favorite philosopher of many an American slaveholder. As emperor, Aurelius had the power to end slavery but chose not to do so. He did protect the rights of slaves, for whatever that’s worth, but not the right to not to be a slave. To be fair, the Stoic Epictetus, having gained his own liberty from his former enslavement, did recommend against enslaving others and yet never argued for manumission of all slaves.
That is largely because, in the philosopy of Stoicism, liberty as a spiritual state was not a birthright but something individually earned or achieved, such that the Stoic’s liberty was assumed to be the result and expression of spiritual worthiness, not entirely unlike how outward good fortune proved and demonstrated one was of the Calvinist elect or enlightened aristocracy, not to be obtained by most because of their presumed low moral character and weakness of mind. That is to say, only good and wise men, a spiritual elite, could be spiritually free in holding to a harsh, narrow, and demanding vision of liberty that few could ever hope for. This rarified state was a prize to be won through hardship and struggle, not something to be freely given as civil right, much less birthright.
This was a view that would resonate with Christian original sin that justified submission to a divine-mandated social hierarchy of clergy and theocracy, even as it posed the blind faith in the otheworldly principle and delayed promise of equality before God in the afterlife. Later in the Middle Ages, following the Black Death and the beginning of the enclosure movement, some peasants and serfs began to question this theology for, if they were truly born equal in the sight of the Creator of the world, why was inequality of power and wealth enforced by a worldy ruling elite whose behavior contradicted any moral justification. This led to the English Peasants’ Revolt, what some consider the first modern political revolution and class war, although it would require later Enlightenment thought to bring this moral impulse to its fullest form.
The ancient Stoics, obviously, did not envision that a free and democratic society was possible; as their view on slavery was philosophical, not political. Choosing for or against slavery, even in Epictetus’ slightly more generous version of liberty that morally condemned the enslaver to be wrong and unjustified, was still left to the personal choice of the enslaver with the enslaved having no legal right or moral standing to an effective opinion and empowered action on behalf of himself or herself, beyond the confines of his or her own isolated mind. The slave-based order itself, as legal system and social institution, remained safely in place without any principled position and moral claim to challenge it. Natural law, as such, would remain impotent as a rhetorical and political force to threaten unjust power until being reinvisioned by post-Enlightenment radicals and revolutionaries who articulated an entirely new deistic natural law of secular self-governance that opposed and undermined the traditional theocratic divine law of the Church and state.
To the Stoics, liberty went hand in hand with fatalistic resignation and acceptance, not to fight for freedom or against oppression but to find peace of mind and contentment of soul by not resisting, like a possum playing dead in the hope that the predatory class and the powers that be would leave one alone. As opposed to invoking the archetype of the rebel and radical, Stoicism was the origin of the tradition of martyrdom as romanticized victimization and noble victimhood, a mythologized narrative of victory in defeat and liberty in oppression only later adopted and popularied by early Christians. The supposed freedom from oppression, as in negative freedom, is in reality a freedom within oppressive order in that, according to ancient Stoics and right-wing libertarians, one has no presumed freedom toward any actionable guarantee, socially supported and legally defended, of freedom’s result in lived experience of private rights and collective expression of public good as part of a free and democratic society as upheld by social norms and culture of trust, mutual respect and common vision.
The inner liberty that was articulated did not even include free will but instead a love of fate and so there was no point in hope of progress and betterment, much less personal freedom as member of a free people in a free society. The physical and legal, economic and political condition of slavery was taken as an irrefutable ideological realism of the social order, if not a natural state by natural law, such that liberty as a rare privilege meant acceptance of enslavement for the masses, although theoretically any individual might gain the wise libertas of the Stoic philosopher in the way the hope of ending bondage and servitude was dangled before the slave as a solace for their suffering, a salve for the chafing wounds of their chains. For all of its vaunted idealism and noble wisdom, the Stoic’s individualistic liberty has never inspired a slave revolt and universal suffrage, a civil rights movement or democratic reform.
There are those on the right that declare the United States is a republic, not a democracy. This is ideological trolling, of course, and can be dismissed on that level. On the other hand, there is a genuine point that can be made along these lines. Although many Americans have sought democracy since the American Revolution, it’s questionable if we actually have a democracy even now. Full suffrage only happened about a half century ago and yet voting rights remain constantly under attack. Combined with an anti-democratic ruling elite that controls the electoral process, it’s easy to conclude we now live in a banana republic.
Yet, going by the original meaning of liberty, this country could fairly be called libertarian. It may be true that some have more liberties than others based on wealth, but anyone might get rich and gain such privileges. That has long been the argument of meritocracy in its social Darwinian form. American right-wing libertarianism has never promised equal rights and freedom in practice and in results. This kind of liberty, as with wealth in capitalism, has to be earned. No one is born deserving it. That is what distinguishes libertarianism from democracy, and liberty from freedom. They are two very different worldviews that sit uncomfortably together within American thought.
Marmalade 
I sort of think alot about ‘left wing authoritarianism’. My area has alot of ‘radicals’ who tend to be ‘single issue ‘ people—eg on race, poverty, environment, socialism, gender issues, immigration, etc.—and generally take somewhat ‘extremist’ views. e.g. they view Biden and co. as the same as Trump. m0ost of them seem to have more money than brains–apart from brains for getting money.
There are all kinds of authoritarians in the world. I considern DNC elite (Biden, Obama, and the Clintons) to be authoritarians, if of a more ‘moderate’ and ‘respectable’ variety (i.e., friendly fascism). But there is a difference. The DNC elite don’t sell themselves as anti-authortarians nor really claim any specific ideology, instead claiming to be ‘centrist’ or ascribing to third way politics, which in practice simply means they are cynical opportuniists, professional politicians, and old school oligarchs.
The issue with libertarians is that they specifically claim to be anti-authoritarian. Peter Thiel is one such figure who, like Hayek, promotes an anti-democratic libertarianism that has to be forced onto the population through the authoritarian measures of an enlightened aristocracy. Basically, such people are merely reactionaries, as defined more by what they are against than what they are for. That is to say their libertarianism is superficial or incidental or mere rhetoric, although as I suggest such plutocratic and privileged libertarianism is not in conflict with the core etymological meaning and historical context of the principle of ‘liberty’.
As for ideological dogmatists and one-issue extremists, that is a whole other issue to my mind. Those people may or may not drift or dive into authoritarianism, depending on their predilections. In this reactionary age, we are all prone to fall into reactionary thought by betraying what we claim to believe and uphold. That is how conspiracy theorists can rant about others trying to take over the government as a justification for their taking over the government, which is how a swamp monster like Trump can be elected to “drain the swamp.”
We live in crazy times and the craziness has a way of seeping into all of our minds, if we aren’t careful. We need to be extremely self-aware, not obsessing over all those other people who are ‘deplorables’. In focusing elsewehere, we might become deplorables ourselves without realizing it. We have met the enemy and he is us.
As someone who used to consider themselves a libertarian, and who spent time reading the literature and talking to other libertarians, I think a useful distinction is between deontological libertarianism and consequentialist libertarianism.
People like Thiel and Hayek (as well as Friedman Mises) were consequentialist libertarians. To them, what matters is the results that policies (or lack thereof) bring about. This could be things like increased GDP or opening up trade regulations. Those in the antebellum south who would argue for maintaining slavery as a form of liberty would also be consequentialists, because they were concerned with how the abolition of slavery would affect their bottom line (as well as what all the newly freed people would mean for their traditional culture). It’s among this flavor of libertarian that you will find almost all of the libertarian authoritarian types.
Deontological libertarianism would be the denouncement of all forms of slavery on the basis of universal natural rights. A deontological libertarian would not countenance the existence of slavery and would call for its immediate abolition regardless of what disastrous affect it might have on the economy. It’s usually the deontological libertarians where you find anarcho-capitalists and minarchists – in other words, where you find the radical libertarians.
I would say that at least 50% of Americans calling themselves libertarian are just Republicans. The rapidity with which many so-called libertarians abandoned any ideological consistency and jumped on the Trump train was enough to make a person’s head spin.
Of the remaining 50% of Americans calling themselves libertarians, I would say the majority are consequentialist libertarians. Deontological libertarians, being much more radical, can often times come off as irrational to other libertarians due to the deontological libertarian adherence to ideological consistency. For instance, deontological libertarians are proponents of open borders, because according to this line of thinking, a border is an arbitrary marker put on a map by a government to indicate which people the government rules over, and so is therefore tantamount to a form of slavery. Many consequentialist libertarians are NOT in favor of open borders, because (the arguments go) that it means more people coming over and taking government handouts, or disrupting the job market, or changing the culture, or whatever other consequentialist argument they may employ.
Libertarianism certainly has many flaws, but I don’t think it is inherently authoritarian. I give a breakdown of libertarian philosophy in a post I made about why I’m no longer a libertarian: https://authortomharper.com/2021/07/14/leaving-libertarianism/
We sometimes identify as a libertarian, as it was originally defined: an anarcho-socialist (albeit we hold such labels lightly and non-dogmatically). Our second cousin has for decades identified as a libertarian, of the right-libertarian persuasion. He asked us how we could be a left-libertarian, as it was beyond his imagination. Later on in thinking about it, the reason we lean toward left-libertarianism is because we are principled, consistent, and not hypocritical; that is to say deontological. Even if given power, we would not support it’s abuse in oppressing others. We find Machiavellian realpolitik to be sickening.
Our second cousin is a nice guy on a personal level, but to his mind libertarianism is just convenient rhetoric, to be thrown aside when necessary. He is a consequentialist who, like us, grew up with Cold War rhetoric. In response to the BLM protests, he basically said he’d become a Nazi in an instant if it meant that there would be law and order. He also supported Trump, as anti-libertarian as they come. Interestingly, he nonetheless is of the same generation as we and is likewise inspired by the socialist portrayal in Star Trek: The Next Generation that he also watched growing up.
Right-libertarians aren’t actually libertarian in any sense. Calling them consequentialist libertarians is a misnomer. They are simply consequentialists, but the consequence they are seeking is wealth and power, inequality and hierarchy. That is because they aren’t for liberty and against authoritarianism in all cases. They want liberty for themselves, not for everyone else, and they are fine with authoritarianism, as long as it’s enforced by those they identify with such as plutocrats, corporatists, fascists, and capitalist-friendly dictators.
This is an example of how reactionaries are able to co-opt almost anything, often from the left. This is how they’ve refashioned numerous other labels, from classical liberal to human biodiversity. The latter was formulated as an anti-racist theory, but was taken over by racists and race realists. Reactionaries turn meaning on its head, as a way of attacking and weakening their opponents. Sometimes, they even openly admit this, as if they think no one will notice or they simply don’t care about their duplicitousness.
Murray Rothbard stated that, “One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy. ‘Libertarians’ had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over.” (The Betrayal of the American Right, p. 83). It’s simply a battle of rhetoric to the reactionary mind, irrespective of any meaningful definition of words.
To give it further context, Rothbard coined the term ‘anarcho-capitalist’ and claimed it was the only true form of anarchism. Yet he concluded that anarcho-capitalists weren’t actually anarchists, going by the ideological history of anarchism. One of his reasons was that his redefining of the co-opted label of libertarianism was inconsistent with actual anarchist views. Well, duh! A right-winger, by definition, can never actually be a libertarian or anarchist. Here is his argument:
“We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines . . . we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists . . . We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.”
The issue of what is realistic is another issue. If one goes back far enough in history, things that once were considered unimaginable or impossible include nation-states, democracy, civil rights, universal suffrage, public utilities guaranteeing clean water, treatment of infectious diseases, public education, mass literacy, etc. That is the context to understand ‘open borders’. Even empires would’ve been considered impossible to the members of tribes and early small city-states, as an empire would’ve meant the elimination of certain borders (e.g., tribal territories).
It’s always a change in the moral imagination, as radical imagination becomes normative imagination. Everything was invented at some time and so was impossible until it wasn’t. The first step toward the perceived impossible is simply imagining it. That is what science fiction has allowed, such as with the example of the Star Trek Federation that even right/pseudo-libertarians can be inspired by.
The American colonies had separate boundaries and, under the Articles of Confederation, were considered separate nation-states, based on fundamental differences of laws and culture that seemed insurmountable beyond a temporary alliance in fighting a common enemy. That is until they were reimagined as a singular nation-state falsely called ‘Federalism’. They no longer were a confederation, freely chosen. Centuries later, now most Americans, identifying simply as ‘Americans’ (as was not common prior to world war propaganda), can’t imagine the states being independent nation-states.
So, what is real and realistic? Whatever we imagine so intensely that it becomes ideological realism. This is where it’s useful to understand Julian Jaynes’ theory of archaic authorization as it relates to social constructionism, social constructivism, and Louis Althusser’s notion of ideological interpellation. Whether or not we support libertarianism, and specifically what kind of libertarianism, depends on what we are able to imagine. That is a tricky thing as all of this tends to operate unconsciously.
We seem similar to you in certain ways. For example, we no longer imagine free will and natural law as fundamental principles of reality. But where we differ is that we don’t see free will, specifically as the propertied self, as necessary to actual libertarianism in its original meaning of anarcho-socialism. That is because communitarianism and communalism would more naturally fall in line with the bundle theory of mind. In your post, you explain your conclusion in turning away from libertarianism:
“There are four reasons that have caused me to rethink my position on the libertarian philosophy. The first is the assumption that humans are rational agents, the second is what happens in the absence of institutions, the third is that it is impossible to consider an individual human being outside the context of the individual’s geographical, temporal, and social environment, and the fourth is that humans are by our very nature hierarchical creatures.”
We don’t believe humans are rational agents or even individual agents. That is because, as you suggest, humans can’t be removed from the concrete context in which they live. Such a belief in rational agents is rare among humans, mostly typical among WEIRDos, based on WEIRD conditions. Nonetheless, the conditions of our experience can be drastically changed and, according to the structural theory of psyche, identity and mentality is plastic. Where we would particularly disagree with you is that, going by the ethnographic record, we’d point to examples of the absence of institutions and non-hierarchy, such as the Amazonian Piraha. Those are probably the conditions under which human nature evolved.
Interestingly, the Piraha also lack an honor culture. They don’t punish or kill, but neither is there any hierarchical authority to stop anyone from doing so. They have such a strong sense of tribal identity that conventionalism and conformism alone maintains social order. There are simply things that Piraha do and don’t do. To be Piraha, means not being able to imagine being otherwise. It should be noted that the Piraha live in an environment with of abundance and little disease, and so competition is largely irrelevant. The honor culture of a failed state or of border people oppressed by a successful state is not the same thing as an autonomous egalitarian tribe operating according to an animistic bundled mind.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Allow me to respond to some of your points.
“Right-libertarians aren’t actually libertarian in any sense. Calling them consequentialist libertarians is a misnomer. They are simply consequentialists, but the consequence they are seeking is wealth and power, inequality and hierarchy. That is because they aren’t for liberty and against authoritarianism in all cases. They want liberty for themselves, not for everyone else, and they are fine with authoritarianism, as long as it’s enforced by those they identify with such as plutocrats, corporatists, fascists, and capitalist-friendly dictators.”
Consequentialist libertarian is a broad category. A person being a consequentialist libertarian does not make them automatically authoritarian or plutocratic. One can come up with consequentialist arguments to favor greater universal liberty, for instance, that imposing a “benevolent” libertarian dictator would lead to worse outcomes for more people (i.e., if the person making the argument held other ethical commitments aside from just libertarianism), or even an ethical egoist argument such as the installation of such a dictator would likely lead to worse outcomes for oneself. My point was that it is within the broader realm of libertarian consequentialism that one will find the authoritarian ilk.
Indeed, Rothbard himself said:
‘Turning from these men of narrow vision, we must also see that utilitarianism—the common ground of free-market economists—is unsatisfactory for developing a flourishing libertarian movement. While it is true and valuable to know that a free market would bring far greater abundance and a healthier economy to everyone, rich and poor alike, a critical problem is whether this knowledge is enough to bring many people to a lifelong dedication to liberty. In short, how many people will man the barricades and endure the many sacrifices that a consistent devotion to liberty entails, merely so that umpteen percent more people will have better bathtubs? Will they not rather set up for an easy life and forget the umpteen percent bathtubs? Ultimately, then, utilitarian economics, while indispensable in the developed structure of libertarian thought and action, is almost as unsatisfactory a basic groundwork for the movement as those opportunists who simply seek a short-range profit.’
Source: https://mises.org/library/rothbard-reader/html/c/407
. . .
To give it further context, Rothbard coined the term ‘anarcho-capitalist’ and claimed it was the only true form of anarchism. Yet he concluded that anarcho-capitalists weren’t actually anarchists, going by the ideological history of anarchism. One of his reasons was that his redefining of the co-opted label of libertarianism was inconsistent with actual anarchist views. Well, duh! A right-winger, by definition, can never actually be a libertarian or anarchist. Here is his argument:
‘We must therefore turn to history for enlightenment; here we find that none of the proclaimed anarchist groups correspond to the libertarian position, that even the best of them have unrealistic and socialistic elements in their doctrines . . . we find that all of the current anarchists are irrational collectivists . . . We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical.’
Given that anarchists, particularly in the 19th and 20th century, were associated with acts of violence and destruction, it was a canny move for Rothbard to try distancing his own ideology from how most people would think of anarchists.
. . .
“The issue of what is realistic is another issue. If one goes back far enough in history, things that once were considered unimaginable or impossible include nation-states, democracy, civil rights, universal suffrage, public utilities guaranteeing clean water, treatment of infectious diseases, public education, mass literacy, etc. That is the context to understand ‘open borders’. Even empires would’ve been considered impossible to the members of tribes and early small city-states, as an empire would’ve meant the elimination of certain borders (e.g., tribal territories).
It’s always a change in the moral imagination, as radical imagination becomes normative imagination. Everything was invented at some time and so was impossible until it wasn’t. The first step toward the perceived impossible is simply imagining it. That is what science fiction has allowed, such as with the example of the Star Trek Federation that even right/pseudo-libertarians can be inspired by.
The American colonies had separate boundaries and, under the Articles of Confederation, were considered separate nation-states, based on fundamental differences of laws and culture that seemed insurmountable beyond a temporary alliance in fighting a common enemy. That is until they were reimagined as a singular nation-state falsely called ‘Federalism’. They no longer were a confederation, freely chosen. Centuries later, now most Americans, identifying simply as ‘Americans’ (as was not common prior to world war propaganda), can’t imagine the states being independent nation-states.
So, what is real and realistic? Whatever we imagine so intensely that it becomes ideological realism. This is where it’s useful to understand Julian Jaynes’ theory of archaic authorization as it relates to social constructionism, social constructivism, and Louis Althusser’s notion of ideological interpellation. Whether or not we support libertarianism, and specifically what kind of libertarianism, depends on what we are able to imagine. That is a tricky thing as all of this tends to operate unconsciously.”
There is a difference between practical feasibility, ideological bias, and internal incoherence. Things like public utilities and treatment of disease were thought impossible because the practical means of addressing them had not been thought up. Universal suffrage and civil rights were dismissed out of ideological bias, though I’m sure most people even in the 17th century could have conceived of such ideas as practically feasible. But none of the things you listed are internally incoherent.
An issue I take with left-libertarianism is that it posits both the eradication of the state and of private property. If the state is gone, then who will enforce the sharing of private property? One of the reasons that right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists take gun rights so seriously is because in the absence of the state the individual is responsible for safeguarding their own private property. If the state were eradicated, what would prevent someone from safeguarding their own private property? The answer is likely to be the collective, but then what distinguishes the collective from a government?
In other words, as far as I can see, left-libertarianism contains an internal incoherence, where the abolishing of the state and of private property would quickly lead to one, the other, or both being re-inaugurated. And, just like with right-libertarianism, it is utopian in the sense that it could only work if human nature itself changed, and as such lacks coherence with human nature.
. . .
We seem similar to you in certain ways. For example, we no longer imagine free will and natural law as fundamental principles of reality. But where we differ is that we don’t see free will, specifically as the propertied self, as necessary to actual libertarianism in its original meaning of anarcho-socialism. That is because communitarianism and communalism would more naturally fall in line with the bundle theory of mind. In your post, you explain your conclusion in turning away from libertarianism:
‘There are four reasons that have caused me to rethink my position on the libertarian philosophy. The first is the assumption that humans are rational agents, the second is what happens in the absence of institutions, the third is that it is impossible to consider an individual human being outside the context of the individual’s geographical, temporal, and social environment, and the fourth is that humans are by our very nature hierarchical creatures.’
We don’t believe humans are rational agents or even individual agents. That is because, as you suggest, humans can’t be removed from the concrete context in which they live. Such a belief in rational agents is rare among humans, mostly typical among WEIRDos, based on WEIRD conditions. Nonetheless, the conditions of our experience can be drastically changed and, according to the structural theory of psyche, identity and mentality is plastic. Where we would particularly disagree with you is that, going by the ethnographic record, we’d point to examples of the absence of institutions and non-hierarchy, such as the Amazonian Piraha. Those are probably the conditions under which human nature evolved.
Interestingly, the Piraha also lack an honor culture. They don’t punish or kill, but neither is there any hierarchical authority to stop anyone from doing so. They have such a strong sense of tribal identity that conventionalism and conformism alone maintains social order. There are simply things that Piraha do and don’t do. To be Piraha, means not being able to imagine being otherwise. It should be noted that the Piraha live in an environment with of abundance and little disease, and so competition is largely irrelevant. The honor culture of a failed state or of border people oppressed by a successful state is not the same thing as an autonomous egalitarian tribe operating according to an animistic bundled mind.”
I mentioned in my post that I don’t think the lack of libertarian free will is a defeater for libertarianism. And as far as honor culture, I think that comes about when there is greater densities of people, since honor culture is a means for conflict resolution in the absence of institutions. Within a small band of people, a means of conflict resolution will be instituted (such as the conventionalism and conformism you mentioned). I wager that the Piraha, should they bump up against another tribe (perhaps due to the slash-and-burn of the Amazon rain forest depleting their territory and resources) that something akin to honor culture would arise for inter-tribral conflict resolution. We humans, especially us WEIRDos, live in societies of high population density (as well as greater specialization and dependence on large scale logistics for resources) and so in the absence of institutions (or trust in institutions, as is observed in places like gangland Chicago), we would experience the return of honor culture.
Hierarchical thinking is something all humans do by virtue of categorization. Indeed, the structure of a proposition “S is P” is subsuming a species (the subject) under a genus (a predicate). Even the Piraha will subsume some plants and animals under the genus “food” and others under “not food”, or some under the genus “dangerous” and others “not dangerous”, or some objects as “useful” and others as “not useful”, and so on. The same will be done for fellow tribespeople: “person A is wise” and “person B is foolish”, which will give person A more authority (at least in particular situations) than person B. Now, I don’t know much about the Piraha, but I would wager that some individuals in their tribe hold more authority on some issues than others; those people I wager, at least in certain situations, will effectively be placed higher in a hierarchy, even if only temporarily.