Radicals define the moderate position
Among the variety of political labels I claim for myself is “Left Libertarian”. That should, however, be a redundancy and I believe that it will come to be regarded as such. Genuine libertarianism is very much left wing. It’s revolutionary. The long and tragic alliance of libertarians with the right against the spectre of state socialism is coming to a close, as it served no purpose after the fall of the Soviet Union and so-called “conservatives” have subsequently taken to letting their true big-government-on-steroids colors fly.
I believe that in the period since the demise of the Soviet Union, both the radicals and moderates among the left have been subconsciously seeking a new radical creed to orient themselves upon to replace Marxism.
I’m a radical libertarian, an anarchist specifically and most specifically an Agorist. I believe that radical libertarians, such as myself, will be most effective when they overcome any lingering right wing cultural contamination of their libertarian views and embrace their inherent radicalism — which is most at home on the left. For as the radicals go, so do the moderates grudgingly follow in small steps. As an example, let me direct your attention to the following post on Daily Kos — Democrats: the Party of Jefferson. Also, please check out the Freedom Democrats web site.
It’s time for libertarians to stop fighting the left and take up the challenge of leading the left.
Update: Roderick Long adds some important words very much in line with my own views and that I include here for purposes of clarification:
“…the proper aim of the left-libertarian movement is both to lead the left back to its libertarian roots, and to lead libertarians back to their leftist roots. We might call this “left-libertarian reunification.â€
Very much the case. I want to emphasize that many if not most libertarians today are unworthy of leading the left, largely due to their own failure to correctly apply libertarian principles — a tendency Kevin Carson refers to as “vulgar libertarianism“. It is a challenge that libertarians need to take up, humbly and with an eye toward developing depth and sophistication in their own views.
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[...] From Brad Spangler: Genuine libertarianism is very much left wing. It’s revolutionary. The long and tragic alliance of libertarians with the right against the spectre of state socialism is coming to a close, as it served no purpose after the fall of the Soviet Union and so-called “conservatives†have subsequently taken to letting their true big-government-on-steroids colors fly. [...]
Your main problem, from a practical POV, is that the current left is doing great without you and they have their own agenda, pretty much centered on things you technically don’t like.
You can’t just go and say, “but see, I have this argument that `left` should mean what I mean by it not what you mean by it, because look, we have this history and these texts and on and on and on”… no one will fall for that even if you turn out to be technically right.
You can’t seriously think that “the left” will just give up their idea about how private property, in the libertarian sense, is the root of all evil and suffering in the world and how private enterprise produces a class of exploiters and so on.
Simply because you care about some things and you share a few concerns with them it doesn’t mean that “left libertarian” has any future as a term with a wider circulation that it has now. Sorry.
The essential thrust of my argument is that Marxism (of the state socialist variety, anyway) has intellectually run out of steam. You may disagree, but then I would expect you to be a Marxist if that was the case.
Thge next great challenge to the prevailing social order will come from the ideas of radical libertarian thinkers. I have no illusions that the statist faux-left will give up their preconceived notions. Rather, I suspect they will likely become irrelevant in a generation or two — provided radical libertarians lose their own illusions about how radical their ideas are and present them in a proudly confrontational manner that emphasizes the needs and interests of those lowest in society, as opposed to the beneficiaries of statism.
I’ve posted a comment on Brad’s post here.
Concerning the prospects for success in libertarian outreach to the left, Joel Schlosberg offers reasons for optimism here.
I would add that one reason (of course not the only reason) that so many leftists are anti-market is that we pro-market folks haven’t tried hard enough to distinguish genuine markets from pro-corporate mercantilist arrangements. If leftists dismiss libertarians as pro-corporate apologists, that’s partly because some of us sometimes sound like pro-corporate apologists. Cleaning up our act isn’t going to bring all the leftists over, but it’ll bring some.
“Cleaning up our act isn’t going to bring all the leftists over, but it’ll bring some.”
Exactly, or as I just got done saying:
“…most libertarians today are unworthy of leading the left, largely due to their own failure to correctly apply libertarian principles”.
Furthermore, it will bring more over in the next generation, and still more in the generation after that.
I do think that Marxism has much steam left in it (maybe more than what it had during the Cold War when closet Marxists couldn’t speak out because of fear of being seen as unpatriotic) but I’m not a Marxist, as you assume, but rather a radical libertarian (”anarcho-capitalist” in some circles) for a few years now.
Re: the next big challenge… you think it will come from your people, they think it will come from their people, primitivists think it will come from them, and so on. The game of forecasting the political zeitgeist is almost impossible to beat (Who would have thought that Friedman’s and Stigler’s work on State regulations would provide the arguments for the economic liberalisation of the US during the ’80s?)
Also, you don’t tell us how much time counts as a generation. If by a generation you mean 5 years (time to graduation) then that’s one claim, if you mean 25 years (time to parenting) then that’s another. The more time it takes for your predictions to come true the less likely they are, in my opinion.
Re: corporatism… I think that genuine, full-on libertarians are mostly silent on that issue because of good reasons. You can’t really predict if a free society of property owners and free traders and so on won’t go corporate. It certainly seems that corporations can get a competitive advantage from several of their characteristics. In certain industries, at least, we could expect sustainable oligopoly behavior.
My initial thought on the “outreach to the left” was negative and it still is that way, mostly because daily interactions with leftists (in a much more leftist country than yours) show me the kind of dept (lack thereof) and scope they’re capable of.
@gabriel:
I said “intellectually run out of steam”, and that ought not be confused with lacking current political influence. I didn’t assume you were a Marxist, as I gave your web site a glance first. When I said: “You may disagree, but then I would expect you to be a Marxist if that was the case..” I was trying to be polite in pointing out that you clearly don’t believe that Marxism doesn’t currently have the most rigorous intellectual backing (as I was giving you the benefit of the doubt — that you would subscribe to the ideological views you deem most rational).
While I freely admit that any attempts I make at prediction may wind up being wrong, in this case it is equally an attempt to enunciate a goal — a vibrant and influential radical libertarian / anarcho-capitalist / market anarchist movement comparable in influence to, or greater than, what Marxism has previously shown. As an anarcho-capitalist, I would presume you share that goal even if you don’t care for the way I present it.
Also, you don’t tell us how much time counts as a generation.
Good point. Typically, but perhaps not always, when I refer to a human generation I am referring to the 20-25 year “turnings” of an 80-100 year saeculum as described in Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning.
I base the assertion of “one or two generations” roughly on a comparison between, on the one hand, the 69 year interval between the publication of The Communist Manifesto and the Russian Revolution of 1917 and, on the other hand, the current status of the libertarian movement. The more fragmented and not quite as wholly complete nature of radical libertarian works such as Rothbard’s For a New Liberty and Konkin’s New Libertarian Manifesto is a negative, but I believe the nature of modern communications and open publishing on blogs in particular can outweigh that. I freely admit this is guesswork on my part, but it is not unreasonable guesswork.
Re:
I think that genuine, full-on libertarians are mostly silent on that issue because of good reasons. You can’t really predict if a free society of property owners and free traders and so on won’t go corporate.
And will never know that as long as certain corporations are propped up by state violence. Clearly, no form of social organoization voluntarily chosen by participants would or even could be prohibited in a stateless society. Rather, criticisms of corporatism on my part and by Long and other Left Libertarians are based on the status of currently existing corporations as beneficiaries of statism. To ignore that is to distort what we’re saying.
My initial thought on the “outreach to the left†was negative and it still is that way, mostly because daily interactions with leftists (in a much more leftist country than yours) show me the kind of dept (lack thereof) and scope they’re capable of.
You’re a radical libertarian, an anarcho-capitalist like myself. What I propose for people like us is to primarily look for common ground and attempt to overcome differences in terminology with left anarchists. When you get past the differences in terminology, the substantive differences are actually quite few and perhaps more open than either most anarcho-capitalists or traditional left anarchists would typically admit — a topic I write about somewhat frequently. I believe that such feuding is often merely a sort of intellectual tribalism rather than a rational approach to ideology.
Essentially, an anarcho-capitalist favors “anything that’s voluntary”. To the extent traditional left anarchists hold essentially the same view (often but admittedly not always the case, as views vary between individuals), they are our long lost comrades that we need to work to reunite with. If the radicals succeed at that, the moderates will ultimately follow.
Good post Brad. Althought I disagree with your idea that Marx has “intelectually go out of steam”. I think what has gone out of steam is the statists positions of marxism, and the worst interprtations of it (Lenin and co), but I think Marx -with all its errors- has still a lot to tell (including libertarians) us about the world.
Eugene Plawiuk has hinted similarly. I confess to not having enough information on the matter to form an informed opinion, but I’ve noticed also that a few people seem to be of the opinion that most of the statist implications of “Marxism” actually came from Engels.
I would at the very least be interested in an overtly anti-statist interpretation of Marx that’s amenable to free markets (in the deep, rather than statist sense) and genuine private property (as opposed to state granted awards of title to stolen property falsely labelled as “private property”). I’m very skeptical of that being completely possible, but I’m willing to give it an honest appraisal — as much as I can with my short attention span, anyway. :)
I should note that I do accept Marx’s description of primitive accumulation, as it’s very compatible with my own views. Also, I have a high regard for Kevin Carson’s “Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis”
gabriel: Your main problem, from a practical POV, is that the current left is doing great without you and they have their own agenda, pretty much centered on things you technically don’t like.
What is the statist Left currently doing great at? Nothing in the United States comes to mind. The dominant tone of every orthodox Leftist publication and organization at the moment seems to be a combination of outrage and despair. Even hand-wringing lefty Democrats seem to be pretty firmly convinced that the project of the Left is in a state of debilitating crisis.
On a global scale, they’ve won some a series of recent elections in South America. But in Brazil (for example) the victory has already led to a great deal of tension between the governing Left, the grassroots state socialists, and the autonomists (whose relationship to the State is ambiguous at the most, and often straightforwardly hostile) who laid much of the organizational and ideological groundwork for recent electoral wins.
That’s about the beginning and the end of what comes to mind in terms of Leftists “doing fine.” Maybe you could explain what it is that you had in mind?
It’s also worth noting that, while I can’t speak for Brad, I can say that my dialectical goals in advancing “Left Libertarianism” (and related notions) have as much to do with convincing libertarians to stop being corporate (patriarchal, etc.) tools as it does with convincing leftists to stop being state socialist tools. Whatever my opinions about the various departments of the left (and my hopes vary a lot depending on the departments in question), I am quite sure that the goal with regard to libertarians is achievable and that it will (1) get libertarians closer to the truth of matters, and (2) improve their ability to work substantial changes as libertarians, quite independently of whether the established left cooperates or not.
[...] I’ve said it before and more than once — and others have both alluded to it and magnificently expounded upon the underlying ideas in scholarly terms… We’re the Libertarian Left, and we’re the new Reds. [...]