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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Property, justice, freedom
Message-ID: <263@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Dec-85 18:52:18 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.263
Posted: Mon Dec  2 18:52:18 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Dec-85 04:50:16 EST
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 62
Summary: 

Excerpted from Nat Howard's characteristically brief response to my
claim that libertarians misuse the concept of liberty, and thus that
one of the central philosophical positions of libertarianism is
untenable:

>Ho-hum.  Not a very impressive claim, I think.  Libertarian
>society includes obligations and prohibitions having to do with
>your relationships with other people.  It is *possible* in a 
>libertarian society to put yourself in a situation in which you've
>ceded a dangerous amount of your freedom of movement to others,
>just as it's possible for people in any society to 
>open their own veins and bleed to death.  

Libertarians rightly believe that the liberty (= freedom) of East
Berliners is diminished by the fact that they are not permitted to
cross the Wall.  So libertarians owe us an answer to the following
question:  Why is it a restriction on liberty to wall people in, but
not a restriction on liberty to wall people out?  (And how do you
tell the difference between walling in and walling out, on a round
planet?)  The point of my island story is to show that if, as
libertarians believe, walling out does not diminish liberty, then
someone who would ordinarily be considered imprisoned has not had his
liberty diminished, and since this is absurd, libertarians misuse the
concept of liberty.

Lest anyone think I am setting up a straw man, let me quote the
distinguished libertarian philosopher Antony Flew, certainly not a
Brain-Damaged Libertarian, in the Fontana *Dictionary of Philosophy*.
He defines libertarianism as "wholehearted political and economic
liberalism, opposed to any social and legal constraints on individual
freedom."  But if this is true, and if private property is a basic
principle of libertarianism, it follows that libertarians believe
that the existence of private property does not entail any social or
legal constraints on individual liberty.  This is clearly absurd:  in
Libertaria, if I tried to "borrow" Nat Howard's car without his
permission, the state or the local Rent-A-Cop would intervene to
prevent me.  If the roads were privately owned, I could not use them
except by cutting a deal with the owners.  (I should mention that my
considerable freedom of movement in the city of Chicago is mostly due
to the existence of publicly owned thoroughfares, as well as public
transit.)  I would not be free to sleep in someone's backyard, even
if I had nowhere else to go -- the cops would come and get me.  The
only objects I could freely use would be that tiny fraction that I
owned privately.  This isn't a legal constraint on my freedom??  Get
serious.

The quote from Flew isn't just a momentary lapse, as is shown by the
term "libertarianism" itself, which seems to imply that this
political philosophy has an especially close relation to liberty.  It
does not, and the term is a gross misnomer.  In addition, "liberty,"
"freedom," and "free" are staples of libertarian rhetoric, as one may
see from a casual glance at the 1984 LP platform.  In fact, a term
often used by libertarians to denote their ideal is a "Free Economy"
or "Free Society," which again seems to imply that this type of
society is characterized by an absence of "any social or legal
constraints on individual liberty."  But this is blatantly false, as
I have shown.  It is also false that Libertaria necessarily offers
*more* freedom than any socialist society, contrary to standard
libertarian claims.  Libertarians can make this claim only because
they have not thought carefully enough about the concept of freedom.
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes