The US Constitution came into operation due to two voluntary acts. First the Convention had to agree that a stronger union was in everyone’s ultimate interest, and they had to agree enough on its terms that even when some disliked some provisions, on balance all decided the whole was better than any attainable alternative. No threats of force were involved.
Then it had to be adopted by a majority in every state that would join the union. One could say the franchise was not universal, but by the standards of the times it was. Thinking in terms of abstract Lockean theory- at the time of the vote a ‘state of nature’ was established and people could choose a new national and state government or stick with the old one.
Consequently the new governments- state and national – were established by voluntary agreement by at least White male property holders and those who voted ‘no’ could easily leave for new lands. No one argued for anarchy. Except for slavery the Constitution, like the marker, was a purely procedural document for determining values- not for individuals, but for the community. Significantly, expanding the franchise required no modification of Constitutional provisions beyond eliminating restrictions such as race and sex. The Constitution had no limitations on citizenship or voting based on property.
-------------
A simple thought experiment on an imaginary libertarian island leads to a remarkably similar outcome.
Libertarians settle an island, each claiming his or her piece of land. In time the population has grown enough that there is a need for roads and such. A co-op is established to build them. Those choosing not to join pay tolls when they use them.
The island prospers and as population increases more and more ‘externalities,’ such as air pollution, need to be addressed. The co-op is a logical institution to set new needed rules. (This was one of Rothbard’s many blind spots- what constituted trespass depended on contexts that could change.) Over time as linkages between residents become more and more tightly bound – noise, pollution, speed limits, etc., some institution is needed to address the issues.
To address them the possibility of modifying property rights arises. Cabins miles away from one another have no issues with one another’s noise, but when right next door that 3am party can lead to trouble. Trespass needs to be redefined. Or not. Some body needs to make those decisions.
Given its control of the roads and openness to anyone joining, the co-op gets the job- subject to popular approval. It does not take much imagination to see how this develops into a co-op providing many public services to the community as a whole with a decreasing number of nonmembers paying a premium for them because they do not pay dues.
One can also always leave- as is the case today. Were I younger I would immigrate to Canada and I can still immigrate to Portugal if I choose. Ditto for cities. Ayn Rand chose to live in highly taxed NYC because for her it was preferable to lightly taxed and regulated Bird City, KS, population 450 where she would be ‘freer.’
Like you I was once a libertarian- I organized bringing Mises to speak at Kansas University and knew Rothbard personally back in the day. Like you, I got better.
Another interesting point about Libertarian principles is that they are heavily indebted to Kant. (Ironic considering how passionately Rand and other Libertarians say they hate Kant) Kant claimed that all immoral behavior was incapable of being made a universal law because it was self-contradictory. If people are allowed to steal property, there is no such thing as property. If people are allowed to break contracts and other promises, there are no such things as promises. Unfortunately, for Kant, these are the only two examples that really work effectively. The Libertarians dealt with that problem by saying that they were the sum total of ethics, and throwing out everything else.
I've long held that libertarianism is the apotheosis of solipsism. It is the political philosophy of middle school boys. Your essay confirms me in those beliefs.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
Joining a nest of libertarians in the 60s I quickly saw through them. Decades later the Libertarians went hard right, which is what selfish people have to do. I should have read the first chapters of Atlas Shrugged and saved myself some the time. This piece lays it out that allows me to put a lot into perspective. My buddy and I in the 50s looked into Technocracy, ideal for 15 years old who can't figure out why adults never get anything right. The Tech Bros seem to have got stuck at 14.
Thank you. I cannot add to your excellent analysis, but I can offer a bit of history that backs you up, because we can know prudence by the person who has prudence.
In his 1859 letter to Henry Pierce and others, Lincoln both illustrated your point about the foolishness of equating words and things, the distinction between property and human right, and his position in the liberal tradition and pointedly outside the Rothbardian commitment to “paperwork.”
First, he makes a joke about Democrats and their opponents having switched ideological poles since Jefferson’s day (he compares the parties to two drunken veterans who harmlessly brawl and switch until “each finds himself out of his own coat, and into the others.” That’s not relativism, it’s just the normal fact that labels of social institutions are not essences. That’s why he notes that their brawl hurt neither. Words change referents: no biggie, just don’t confuse a horse chestnut for a chestnut horse.
This leads to Lincoln’s second point relevant to your discussion, which is that both Republicans and Democrats are for the rights of man and for the dollar, but in a conflict between the two, Lincoln’s party prefers human rights, while the opposing party favors the dollar over human rights. Specifically, he sees slavery as a property right that conflicts with human right. There are lots of specious reasons to defend the peculiar institution, but none of them were ever load-bearing.
Finally, of course, Lincoln only defended property rights insofar as they served the truly inalienable rights of men. For this reason, the same letter says “all hail to Jefferson who, in the midst of a merely revolutionary document, inserted an eternal truth, that it would forever remain an obstacle to would be tyrants.”
From my point of view your reply skips some important history. There was no “state of nature”. The colonies enforced property rights and other laws.The constitution made sure that property of the relatively large land owners would be protected by force.
According to the natural law theory of property rights there was not plenty of land available.The land was already occupied.There was virtually no voluntary means to acquire land. Force was the almost universal means.The government grew by force in order to make space for enforceable property rights. The enforceability of contracts and financial transactions, investments etc all needed the power of government. And they had it.
The revolutionary war was not supported by a majority. That the constitution was accepted by a minority of the people is accurate history that can’t be changed by writing off the disenfranchisement that governed at the time.
Keep in mind how hard “leaving” would have been at the time. People were aware of the great insecurity accompanied the settling of already occupied lands.
Locke’s theory is myth. History shows almost all property rights are enforced by violence organized by government or ruled over by an elite powerful enough to enforce their will. And historically individual property rights were granted and enforced by governments.
The most popular homesteading in the US was enabled by the government under an act of congress.
I don’t mean to say by this that formation of the US is especially ethically deficient but rather that it was the product of a long history of seizing and defending property by force and that although the constitution was an exceptional radical document in its time rather that one of its serious failures was to allow people to continue to be held as property. It’s defects although somewhat remedied after great tragedy, continue to cause us serious political and social problems
The way we treat property today, in my view, has a complex evolutionary history preceded by a longer egalitarian history. It seems to me that glossing history in order to valorize our founding document leads us to miss its incompleteness and makes it harder to address ongoing problems. Our current view of property accumulation as a virtually inviolable right should at the least be
One fundamental problem with the Libertarian view is that history doesn’t support it.
Early hunter and gatherer bands never developed private property concepts. They were on the whole nomadic.Even early agricultural development existed with a communal arrangement of property rights.
The libertarian view of the formation of property rights is generally traced to Locke who found a natural right to private property. This is a myth. There is no historical basis for this conclusion.
The modern version of property rights that libertarians embrace most likely arose in the Middle Ages with the development of towns and cities.Most towns and cities were chartered by a noble/ king . Each town or city had a complex government
The aristocratic landholders acquired and defended their property force not voluntary natural rights.And the development of individual property rights were protected by the town or city government.
The above discussion points out the fundamental absurdity of the libertarian view.
In my view it is a post hoc view invented to support the intense accumulation of property under capitalism.Locke’s myth was perhaps not an unreasonable intuition at the time. However a formidable collection of historical evidence has been assembled by historians,anthropologists and archaeologists since Locke’s time.
All individual property rights issue from and are protected by governments.
“His comfort rested on the belief that a genuinely libertarian world would make the outcome highly improbable.”
So the problem isn’t that the idea is wrong, I t’s that the world is so twisted from the Purity of Libertarian that this makes the “unlikely” plausible.
So would say the COMMUNIST.
Under pure Marxism there is no need for the State. It is the poison of Capitalism, Colonialism and Religion that forces the need for “re-education” so that people can see the virtues of Socialism. Even Mussolini’s Fascism, on paper, has its merits.
The quickest defense of Liberalism is that you shouldn’t judge a system by its ideological Purity but, instead, by how it responds to being WRONG. In Liberalism, you have another election, the other side gets to give it a go.
That is a better alternative any day to the Gulag, the Concentration Camp or (as Curtis Yarvin suggests) converting people into BIODIESEL.
It works in reverse as well.
The US Constitution came into operation due to two voluntary acts. First the Convention had to agree that a stronger union was in everyone’s ultimate interest, and they had to agree enough on its terms that even when some disliked some provisions, on balance all decided the whole was better than any attainable alternative. No threats of force were involved.
Then it had to be adopted by a majority in every state that would join the union. One could say the franchise was not universal, but by the standards of the times it was. Thinking in terms of abstract Lockean theory- at the time of the vote a ‘state of nature’ was established and people could choose a new national and state government or stick with the old one.
Consequently the new governments- state and national – were established by voluntary agreement by at least White male property holders and those who voted ‘no’ could easily leave for new lands. No one argued for anarchy. Except for slavery the Constitution, like the marker, was a purely procedural document for determining values- not for individuals, but for the community. Significantly, expanding the franchise required no modification of Constitutional provisions beyond eliminating restrictions such as race and sex. The Constitution had no limitations on citizenship or voting based on property.
-------------
A simple thought experiment on an imaginary libertarian island leads to a remarkably similar outcome.
Libertarians settle an island, each claiming his or her piece of land. In time the population has grown enough that there is a need for roads and such. A co-op is established to build them. Those choosing not to join pay tolls when they use them.
The island prospers and as population increases more and more ‘externalities,’ such as air pollution, need to be addressed. The co-op is a logical institution to set new needed rules. (This was one of Rothbard’s many blind spots- what constituted trespass depended on contexts that could change.) Over time as linkages between residents become more and more tightly bound – noise, pollution, speed limits, etc., some institution is needed to address the issues.
To address them the possibility of modifying property rights arises. Cabins miles away from one another have no issues with one another’s noise, but when right next door that 3am party can lead to trouble. Trespass needs to be redefined. Or not. Some body needs to make those decisions.
Given its control of the roads and openness to anyone joining, the co-op gets the job- subject to popular approval. It does not take much imagination to see how this develops into a co-op providing many public services to the community as a whole with a decreasing number of nonmembers paying a premium for them because they do not pay dues.
One can also always leave- as is the case today. Were I younger I would immigrate to Canada and I can still immigrate to Portugal if I choose. Ditto for cities. Ayn Rand chose to live in highly taxed NYC because for her it was preferable to lightly taxed and regulated Bird City, KS, population 450 where she would be ‘freer.’
Like you I was once a libertarian- I organized bringing Mises to speak at Kansas University and knew Rothbard personally back in the day. Like you, I got better.
It's nice to find someone else who knows enough about Libertarianism to hate it intelligently.
Here's a lecture I gave on this topic a few years ago you might find interesting
https://www.academia.edu/5393180/A_Critique_of_Libertarianism
Another interesting point about Libertarian principles is that they are heavily indebted to Kant. (Ironic considering how passionately Rand and other Libertarians say they hate Kant) Kant claimed that all immoral behavior was incapable of being made a universal law because it was self-contradictory. If people are allowed to steal property, there is no such thing as property. If people are allowed to break contracts and other promises, there are no such things as promises. Unfortunately, for Kant, these are the only two examples that really work effectively. The Libertarians dealt with that problem by saying that they were the sum total of ethics, and throwing out everything else.
Another good, if overlong, essay.
I've long held that libertarianism is the apotheosis of solipsism. It is the political philosophy of middle school boys. Your essay confirms me in those beliefs.
This quote is my favorite on the subject:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]
Joining a nest of libertarians in the 60s I quickly saw through them. Decades later the Libertarians went hard right, which is what selfish people have to do. I should have read the first chapters of Atlas Shrugged and saved myself some the time. This piece lays it out that allows me to put a lot into perspective. My buddy and I in the 50s looked into Technocracy, ideal for 15 years old who can't figure out why adults never get anything right. The Tech Bros seem to have got stuck at 14.
Thank you. I cannot add to your excellent analysis, but I can offer a bit of history that backs you up, because we can know prudence by the person who has prudence.
In his 1859 letter to Henry Pierce and others, Lincoln both illustrated your point about the foolishness of equating words and things, the distinction between property and human right, and his position in the liberal tradition and pointedly outside the Rothbardian commitment to “paperwork.”
First, he makes a joke about Democrats and their opponents having switched ideological poles since Jefferson’s day (he compares the parties to two drunken veterans who harmlessly brawl and switch until “each finds himself out of his own coat, and into the others.” That’s not relativism, it’s just the normal fact that labels of social institutions are not essences. That’s why he notes that their brawl hurt neither. Words change referents: no biggie, just don’t confuse a horse chestnut for a chestnut horse.
This leads to Lincoln’s second point relevant to your discussion, which is that both Republicans and Democrats are for the rights of man and for the dollar, but in a conflict between the two, Lincoln’s party prefers human rights, while the opposing party favors the dollar over human rights. Specifically, he sees slavery as a property right that conflicts with human right. There are lots of specious reasons to defend the peculiar institution, but none of them were ever load-bearing.
Finally, of course, Lincoln only defended property rights insofar as they served the truly inalienable rights of men. For this reason, the same letter says “all hail to Jefferson who, in the midst of a merely revolutionary document, inserted an eternal truth, that it would forever remain an obstacle to would be tyrants.”
“Could easily leave for new lands “
“ State of Nature”
From my point of view your reply skips some important history. There was no “state of nature”. The colonies enforced property rights and other laws.The constitution made sure that property of the relatively large land owners would be protected by force.
According to the natural law theory of property rights there was not plenty of land available.The land was already occupied.There was virtually no voluntary means to acquire land. Force was the almost universal means.The government grew by force in order to make space for enforceable property rights. The enforceability of contracts and financial transactions, investments etc all needed the power of government. And they had it.
The revolutionary war was not supported by a majority. That the constitution was accepted by a minority of the people is accurate history that can’t be changed by writing off the disenfranchisement that governed at the time.
Keep in mind how hard “leaving” would have been at the time. People were aware of the great insecurity accompanied the settling of already occupied lands.
Locke’s theory is myth. History shows almost all property rights are enforced by violence organized by government or ruled over by an elite powerful enough to enforce their will. And historically individual property rights were granted and enforced by governments.
The most popular homesteading in the US was enabled by the government under an act of congress.
I don’t mean to say by this that formation of the US is especially ethically deficient but rather that it was the product of a long history of seizing and defending property by force and that although the constitution was an exceptional radical document in its time rather that one of its serious failures was to allow people to continue to be held as property. It’s defects although somewhat remedied after great tragedy, continue to cause us serious political and social problems
The way we treat property today, in my view, has a complex evolutionary history preceded by a longer egalitarian history. It seems to me that glossing history in order to valorize our founding document leads us to miss its incompleteness and makes it harder to address ongoing problems. Our current view of property accumulation as a virtually inviolable right should at the least be
open to examination.
One fundamental problem with the Libertarian view is that history doesn’t support it.
Early hunter and gatherer bands never developed private property concepts. They were on the whole nomadic.Even early agricultural development existed with a communal arrangement of property rights.
The libertarian view of the formation of property rights is generally traced to Locke who found a natural right to private property. This is a myth. There is no historical basis for this conclusion.
The modern version of property rights that libertarians embrace most likely arose in the Middle Ages with the development of towns and cities.Most towns and cities were chartered by a noble/ king . Each town or city had a complex government
The aristocratic landholders acquired and defended their property force not voluntary natural rights.And the development of individual property rights were protected by the town or city government.
The above discussion points out the fundamental absurdity of the libertarian view.
In my view it is a post hoc view invented to support the intense accumulation of property under capitalism.Locke’s myth was perhaps not an unreasonable intuition at the time. However a formidable collection of historical evidence has been assembled by historians,anthropologists and archaeologists since Locke’s time.
All individual property rights issue from and are protected by governments.
“His comfort rested on the belief that a genuinely libertarian world would make the outcome highly improbable.”
So the problem isn’t that the idea is wrong, I t’s that the world is so twisted from the Purity of Libertarian that this makes the “unlikely” plausible.
So would say the COMMUNIST.
Under pure Marxism there is no need for the State. It is the poison of Capitalism, Colonialism and Religion that forces the need for “re-education” so that people can see the virtues of Socialism. Even Mussolini’s Fascism, on paper, has its merits.
The quickest defense of Liberalism is that you shouldn’t judge a system by its ideological Purity but, instead, by how it responds to being WRONG. In Liberalism, you have another election, the other side gets to give it a go.
That is a better alternative any day to the Gulag, the Concentration Camp or (as Curtis Yarvin suggests) converting people into BIODIESEL.
“Could easily leave for new lands “
“ State of Nature”