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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Libertarianism as ideology
Message-ID: <342@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Feb-85 14:49:58 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.342
Posted: Wed Feb 20 14:49:58 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Feb-85 20:26:18 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 65

Tim Maroney writes:
>Is there anyone else out there who finds it more than a little suspicious
>that the main preoccupation of most Libertarians seems to be finding reasons
>they don't have to pay taxes?  By "suspicious" I mean casting doubt on the
>idea that Libertarianism proceeds from well-defined premises to conclusions
>unobvious from those premises, and suggesting that perhaps a significant
>number of Libertarians are motivated by a desire to increase their personal
>wealth regardless of social consequences.  

As a confessed socialist, I don't believe that most libertarians are
motivated primarily by a desire to increase their personal wealth,
although this might be the practical effect of libertarian policies.
Rather, the motivation is to justify the existing order of society,
characterized by class domination.  The power of government to tax is
a threat to this social order, since it threatens its basis, the
"rights" (really privileges) of property.  Hence libertarians attempt
to establish property rights as sacred and absolute, and from this it
follows that taxation is an unjust violation of property rights, or
"theft."  

This also answers Wayne's question as to why coercion, or more
precisely the initiation of coercion, is an absolute evil for
libertarians, since this principle also defends property.  It ignores
the fact that the existing distribution of wealth was arrived at via
a colossal amount of coercion in the past, and assumes that there is
some way of knowing what counts as an "initiation" of coercion.  

Another way of seeing the ideological character of libertarianism is
to consider the fact that libertarians nowhere give a clear
demarcation of the proper limits of legitimate state action.  The
closest Nozick comes, as far as I know, is to say that the state is
properly limited "to the functions of protecting all its citizens
against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of
contracts, and so on."  But a mere list followed by "and so on" does
not give us a principle by which we can determine if a given action
by the state is justifiable.  Many libertarians say that national
defense, the protection of national security, is one of the few
legitimate functions of the state.  Sounds good until you try to
determine whether a given policy fits under the heading of "national
defense."  For example, libertarians like to say that roads should be
privately owned -- are they not aware that the Interstate Highway
System was established by the National Defense Highway Act?  There is
hardly any activity or industry that is not somehow related to
national security.  In particular, I think that welfare state
policies and government regulation of business may promote our
national security in at least one way, by giving the lower classes a
stake in the protection of our society.  If I'm not mistaken, such
policies have been justified in wartime on these grounds.  But I
think libertarians would draw the line at promoting the welfare state
in order to protect national security.  And this shows why they have
to fudge when it comes to defining the proper limits of state action:
the real principle to which they adhere is a hidden one, namely, the
actions which are forbidden to the state are THOSE TAKEN IN THE NAME
OF SOCIAL JUSTICE.

I would describe libertarians as well-intentioned but naive.  One of
the appeals of libertarianism is that it is basically a simple
philosophy, hence ideal for simple minds.  Once libertarianism is
accepted, you do not have to think very hard about the tough
questions of society and politics.  Look at the Libertarian Party
platform.  Whatever the social problem, the solution is the same:
the government should stop trying to solve it, and everything will be
fine.  

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes