"Socialism is Theft!"

When will the Libertarians learn?

At the national demonstration on Saturday I encountered a man wearing a V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask and was on a one-man counter-march, who was carrying a sign that read "Socialism is Theft". At first we thought it was a joke, or some kind of ingenious troll, it turned out the slogan was intended in the same sense as "Tax is Theft". In reference to himself as a libertarian, though he soon informed us that all forms of government are "socialist" because a state taxes and the tax on the income earned by free individuals is theft. The definitive means of socialism are forceful. So we might describe him as a right-wing anarchist, who are opposed to the existence of the state but not capitalism and would like to see everything privatised. After we had our talk, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party confronted this proponent of the free-market. The sign and the mask soon disappeared, and the little Rothbard moved on claiming to have been spat on. I doubt he was among the "black bloc" who passed through Trafalgar and onwards to Oxford Street for a spot of anti-establishment vandalism.

The view of the world held by the little Rothbard entails a particular interpretation of history, into which a tacit consent remains and onto which all assumptions about the actions of individuals can be made. Each individual is responsible for their own lot in life and must act accordingly, by working the individual earns a living and can become prosperous. So taxation is just a form of theft, which deprives people of a chunk of what they have earned. This sees the individual as living on an island and the tax-collector as a force from another world looking to rob him. It is absurd. Not even Bill Gates is a self-made man. At the same time, the debt of liberalism is quietly kicked under the rug. I refer to the debt owed to slavery and feudalism, without which there would be no material pre-conditions on which liberalism could be built. Prosperity under capitalism would not be possible without slavery, this is the reason that reparations are overdue. Without capitalism there could not be socialism, but the historic break with exploitation is not theft and no reparation is owed to the beneficiaries of slavery.

Rothbardian anarchism could be best summed up as a radical interpretation of classical liberal ideas going back to John Locke. The origins of this form of anarchism are pre-capitalist, which might explain why it is ignorant of authoritarianism in the marketplace whilst also opposing any form of government. The anarcho-capitalists of this world want to see all forms of government and public property torn down and handed over the market. In a essence to replace all forms of state-power with private-power and unaccountable tyrannies which are not democratic in any sense. Though to the libertarians and anarchists, of the free-market persuasion, the democratic process is flawed compared to the forces of the market, according to which the strong will rise and the weak will fall. In that sense we vote whenever we buy a product and a successful business will be elevated over failing competitors. Of course it fails to provide an account of how a business leader can be held to account and forced to give up his position in the same way that an elected official can be.

For the right-wing anarchists and libertarians the state seems more tyrannical and oppressive than businesses, big or small. Not only is this overlooked, the efficiency of markets is a major assumption. Theoretically, a park would be better run if it was privatised because there would be invested interests in it remaining clean and safe. Of course in reality it might be more profitable to tear up the park and build a shopping centre over it. Not that the little Rothbard would disapprove of this, he might even cheer it on as providing opportunities for jobseekers and small-business owners. The market is not efficient, as supply and demand are in near constant change there can never be an equilibrium. This is the fallacious assumption underpinning the utopian idea of laissez-faire capitalism, which holds that there can be endless economic growth. It also adheres to a negative conception of freedom so limited that it is realised in the free choice of 285 varieties of cookies at a supermarket. As bourgeois democracy leaves the citizen with a limited range of political choices, bourgeois anarchism leaves the citizen with no political choices at all.

In selling off a state-owned industry, the inefficiencies and bureaucratic systems in place are merely dismantled to be replaced by a private-sector bureaucracy with it's own array of inefficiencies. The difference is a state-managed system can be changed via public policy, which can be influenced by the people, a private company can't be influenced as easily and can lie about it's inefficiencies. To end the state's monopoly over economic planning through such means would leave planning to the decentralised forces of the market. There is a great deal of planning that goes on internal to business. In both instances this transference of power, not the abolition of power, it can't be influenced by the population. A society without a government in which the capitalist system remains intact would quickly become an extreme tyranny. It would be a society in which corporations have the power to crush trade unions and eliminate unruly citizens with a privately owned police force. Effectively the government would still exist in the form of various private companies and the problems of government would be exacerbated in a world without any kind of democracy and accountability.

The argument that an enlightened self-interest among business leaders would prevent such a thing from happening. We should separate a person from the institutional role they role in society, which could range from a missionary to a slave-owner and is distinct from what makes them human. A business is not a moral agent, in that it has no consciousness or rationality, it has no long-term goal and in the short-term only profit matters. The energy industry has consistently supported candidates in US elections who are sceptical about climate change and suspicious of "Big Government". A perfect instance being George W Bush who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and then later came out as a "believer" in global warming. The rationale here is that once the ice-caps melt oil companies can have easy access to the enormous oil fields, which may or may not exist, beneath the seabed. The pursuit of short-term profit is actively opposed to the common good of the environment and humanity, though it's easier to swallow if you tell yourself climate change is just a liberal hoax.

Generation GTA?

The Grand Theft Auto is by far one of the most popular, if not the most popular, series of video games produced over the last 15 years. The games typically follow a male anti-hero on his journey through the underworld of an American city. Character motivation varies from revenge to greed. Common motifs include narcotics, prostitution, murder and car theft. The setting is usually a satire of a major American city like Miami, New York or Los Angeles. Of course, the games are a conservative's wet dream as the player is placed in a semi-autonomous environment where they can indulge indulge in various acts of crime, ultra-violence and general depravity. Though conservatives focus in on the violence as training children to be cold-hearted murderers. Despite the fact that 500 million copies of GTA 4 were sold in the first week of it's release and very few violent incidents have been linked to the game since it's release 2 years ago.

The self-proclaimed "culture warriors" of the United States are ignoring the exploitative aspect of the character's criminal career in relation to capitalism. This should be expected from modern conservatives in a way, as they are typically conservative on social issues. So economic exploitation and devastation would not interest the majority of them. The fact that the player takes on the role of the Randian hero, an exceptional and creative individual who will rise above the passive conformist masses. This is so because the player is more intelligent than the game and can pass the missions using their capacity to thrive in a predictable and controlled world. The player-character has an advantage over the "herds" around him, as he is not held back by simulated emotions and can plan how to dispatch pedestrians at random. This is even more true if the player has access to cheat codes, in which case not even the game's police can interfere.

The game play is characterised by a degree of "freedom" not available in most games. But this should not be mistaken for true liberty, as the freedom accessible to players is merely the ability to act autonomously in constructed environments and situations. Like with the freedom to choose, the options have already been made for you and all you have to do is take your pick. So the universe of Grand Theft Auto is one in which you can act in ways which you cannot in reality, but only as far as the game allows as part of a constructed scenario. It should be noted out that games are an unusual medium of entertainment as they actually deprive the consumer of content. This functions to keep the consumer playing for longer, in order to complete the game and acquire the desired abilities. Though once the consumer has completed they often don't want to play the game any more, as it was the competitiveness built into the game that was truly thrilling and not the "carrot" they were chasing.

After all, once the game is completed the character has gained millions of dollars, and participated in a few thousand murders, but has nothing much to spend it on except guns, prostitutes, alcohol, food etc. In a sense, the game play reveals the limits of negative liberty - the freedom from constraint - by leaving a player with meaningless choices. The consumer choices a player is confronted with are even more meaningless in a gaming environment, where one is engaging in a simulation of consumption. In many ways the games are libertarian, you are free to make choices and indulge. Ultimately, the games do not judge the player in a strictly neutral and permissive manner. But if you violate the Harm Principle - you can do what you want, so long as you harm no one - the police might come after you. In some of the later games, like GTA 4, the police even go after pedestrians and petty criminals who have attacked you. This notable advance in technology is only the step forward made by classical liberal thinkers in the 19th Century.

Despite the barrage of satirical messages in the games, the specifically political messages are often ignored by critics and reviewers. Even the "culture warriors" of America have failed to notice the "anti-American" sentiments embedded in the games. Because it is easier to accuse a game of "corrupting" the youth and instigating violence than it is to analyse its political idiosyncrasies. That takes work and may not be easily "linked" to extreme violence. It could also easily turn into a debate on American politics with liberals and conservatives engaging in the acceptable dialogue over whether or not the game is "anti-American". A debate which would not amount to much even in the likely outcome of a victory for conservatives. It would be difficult to ban a game on the grounds that it is "anti-American", whereas if the game is overly violent and sexually deviant a case can be made. The video games are works of satire in a way.

In the games American politicians are presented as sleazy, corrupt, opportunistic and cynical figures. Like all satire it carries a greater truth about politics than we can see in our day-to-day lives. It highlights what we see in politicians at the most basic level, they are all the same, liars, thieves and murderers etc. There are references to a "Jingoism act" being rammed through Congress by the government, which is an obvious allusion to the USA Patriot act. Early on in GTA 4 the bridges of Liberty City are closed off to combat terrorism. Passing pedestrians can be heard calling the government "fascist". The games even include parodies of it's critics, in GTA 4 the "culture warriors" are amalgamated into an extreme right-wing radio-show host named Richard Bastion while Jack Thompson is turned into a do-gooder lawyer who expresses a disdain for computer games claiming that "Guns don't kill people, video games do" - before being murdered by the protagonist.

The criminal world is not so far from capitalism in its most unconstrained version, there are no regulations and no taxation of illicit profits. In the underworld there are merely costs and revenue, supply and demand - the "invisible hand" - with the state looming over them seeking to deprive the people of their freedoms. The gangs are competing firms in a dog-eat-dog world where the most brutal and ruthless thrive. These organisations are hierarchical and tyrannical as the individuals belonging to them have no say in the decisions made, they are there to follow orders. Of course, this generalises to the real world and not just virtual reality. Organised crime is not that far from the functions of the market, it differs in that it is illegal and viewed as immoral. In the Grand Theft Auto series, the player is selling his labour to various bosses in completing missions for pay which is far less than he could be paid. Eventually the player ascends the ladder, usually by killing a boss and usurping his position. This is the brutal underbelly of meritocracy.

In real life meritocracy is a farce, people do not rise according to merit and nor should they as it is the hierarchy which is fundamentally wrong. We should not seek to rise to the top of the pyramid but seek to level that structure. So the vehement attacks of the games on the American establishment are irrelevant as the games celebrate the essence of what they are mocking. It's as ironic as it is almost self-parodic.

Red Liberty - A Freedom for All.

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman
 

It is commonly believed that libertarianism and socialism are totally incompatible as the former is ideologically disposition to individualism clashes with the collectivism of the latter. The philosophy of libertarians is dedicated to small government and the freedom of the individual, whereas socialism is devoted to the democratic control of the means of production and distribution. Democracy was feared by classical liberals, and many modern day libertarians, as potentially tyrannical to the freedom of the individual - the tyranny of the majority. The democratic control, or state control, of the means of production have typically troubled libertarians who take the view of taxation as theft and the state as the enemy of freedom. Many libertarians regard freedom and equality as being in opposition, it's one or the other being a pragmatic defence of the free-market. But it could be argued that equality is not opposed to freedom and a radically egalitarian approach to freedom is possible. A major issue in relation to this is distributive justice, as it is where major differences between libertarians and socialists are drawn.


Distributive justice, as a political goal, could be described as a way of resolving political and economic injustices. However, there are competing views as to how the distribution should be accomplished along the lines of desert, merit, human rights, needs and utility. For instance, the provision of health-care by the state paid for with public money could improve the standard of living for millions of people, who may not have been able to afford sufficient health treatment in the past. But this is one view of the issue of health-care, the principle being applied in relation to distributive justice is that of needs. People need health-care and therefore it should be a priority to have universal health-care funded by taxes. Another view, is that the distribution of wealth and property should be determined according to the merit of individuals. Thus, health-care should be distributed according to the merit of individuals and not on the basis of need. This is the view typically taken by free-market libertarians.

Free-market libertarians, the ilk of Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand, might argue that taxing the income of individuals to fund such a public service diminishes the freedom of the individual. As the income and wealth of most people is derived from the individual's merit and is indicative of their character and talents. Therefore, taxing the income and wealth of individuals is in effect depriving them of their desert, which they earned through sheer hard-work. This undermines the freedom of the individual as it diminishes the ability of the individual to enjoy and to flourish to the extent that their hard-work allows them to do so. Thus, some libertarians have gone as far as to claim that taxation is a form of theft. But in regards to individual rights they might argue that the version of justice, which is preoccupied with needs, is contrary to the right to private property. Because the private ownership of property could be seen as an inalienable right, libertarians have argued that distributing land and wealth is against the rights of individuals to accumulate private property.

From this point-of-view, it could be argued that the inequality that might arise in a  libertarian society would be natural as it would reflect the natural talents of individuals and the level of self-determination there is in that society. Conservatives might argue that distributive justice, of a needs-based variety, could lead to a culture of dependency amongst the lower classes which could undermine the natural hierarchy and threaten the "fabric" of communities that make up society as a whole. Whereas, socialists are focused on the idea of distributive justice as centred around needs as a way of distributing wealth and property in the long-term pursuit of an egalitarian society. It is not that libertarians and conservatives do not adhere to a kind of distributive justice, it is that their view of justice differs greatly from the needs-based formula of socialism. The idea that wealth and property should be allocated according to merit is the kind of distributive justice that libertarians and conservatives tend to believe in. In a sense, one man's justice is another woman's oppression.


 

The view that individual rights and a needs-based idea of distributive justice are incompatible seems to have some ground. Though it could be argued that this kind of distributive justice diminishes individual freedom is too simplistic. The view could be overly simplistic as it depends on the conception of freedom that we're talking about. In regards to the freedom of the individual from constraint, also known as negative liberty, taxation is an infringement on freedom as it functions as a constraint on the individual by decreasing their disposable income. But in relation to positive liberty, which is not just about the freedom from constraint and is more about enabling individuals with the capacity to act freely, it could be that individual freedom is enhanced by a needs-focused distributive justice. This is because the state provision of education and health-care empower individuals to flourish, as the obstacles of insurance payments and tuition fees are removed at the expense of a wealthy few.


The view that wealth and property should be distributed according to the merit of individuals assumes that the gap between rich and poor is a result of a natural difference between individuals. This fails to take into account the way wealth and property is often handed down from one generation to the next further perpetuating privilege and power. The ignorance of free-marketeers to inheritance and the ways wealth can be concentrated in a minority goes beyond innocent naivity. As Rand acknowledged by revelling in inequality, she viewed the poor as "mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned." To Rand it was deeply immoral to show these "lice" compassion, who are feeding off of the success of the "Masters of the Universe", as selfishness is the only virtue. Inequality is justice. This merit-based variety of distributive justice that free-market libertarians adhere to is a narrow and simplistic kind of justice. The conception of liberty that they so adore and actively promote is equally narrow, as it abandons the individual with a set of choices to make and nothing but autonomy as a means to flourish.


It could be said that the free-market brand of libertarianism is liberalism for the ultra-rich, as in that kind of society they would have the greatest freedom and the least amount of "constraints" on that freedom. But for the rest of society, the "maximised" freedom for the individual would mean a life of total subservience to the most tyrannical. This is an absolute truism in regard to the "Greed is Good" variant that Ayn Rand espoused. Whereas, at the limitation of the disposable income and economic freedom of a small few, the rest of society could derive a far greater freedom that enables choices and not just permits them. The kind of individual freedom that right-wing libertarians are pursuing is only for the opulent few and is derived at the expense of the many. And the liberty which socialists and anarchists are pursuing is for all, not only as individuals but as communities as well.


Significant Links:
Two Biographies of Ayn Rand
Responsibility to the Poor
Ayn Rand Interview
Milton Friedman on Libertarianism
Ron Paul on the American power structure
Noam Chomsky on libertarian socialism

The Tyranny of the Individual.

In JS Mill's 1859 piece On Liberty, which is essential reading for any liberal today,  Mill presents and explores the concept of the "tyranny of the majority". The gist of this concept is that democratic procedures can lead to tyranny over minorities, who disagree with the majority but cannot oppose them as they lack the sufficient voting power. As a concept, the "tyranny of the majority" reflects the individualistic tendency of Classical Liberalism. To liberals of Mill's ilk, it is the rights and freedoms of the individual that face potential threats from society, as a collective, in a democracy. The concept itself predates On Liberty and was probably borrowed from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which Mill reviewed. Though, de Tocqueville called it by another name, the despotism of the majority. Regardless, it remains a popular concept with right-wing intellectuals, the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand and her followers being a typical example. Whereas, the majority of liberals today, who are social democrats or at least have social democratic leanings, are not so fond of the concept.

Mostly due to the Chicago School of Economics as well as the Austrian School, who have influenced right-wing politics in the West, there has been a resurgence of Classical Liberal ideas. Though, the return of laissez-faire politique over the last 30 years has been in relation to the global economy and has come in the form of neoliberalism. Even as Thatcher and Reagan "rolled back" the state and "liberated" the markets they still kept to "moralising" social policies that restricted gay rights. These reactionary social policies clashed with the permissive economic theories they preached. The economic theories that came out of the Chicago School and the Austrian School were laissez-faire - in the sense of libertarian and even anarcho-capitalist in some cases - in content. These theories were characterised by an overwhelming trust in private-power and distrust of state-power. But within these theories there is also a deeply cynical view of human nature, that we are fundamentally selfish and ego-driven creatures. This is why the trust of private-power only makes sense if one assumes that private vices reap public benefits. It's easy to see how such a permissive attitude to economics can clash with the repressive vision of a "good way" to live.

This assumption originates in Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees, in which he argues that private vices reap public benefits in the sense that even a libertine's indulgent behaviour has the potential to employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks and prostitutes. The spending of these individuals in turn employs more people like bakers and carpenters. In this sense, private vices are publicly beneficial as a whole. Though, JS Mill's writings on the economy became more left-wing, than anything Chicago School ever produced, it was On Liberty that would be his most influential work. Nevertheless, this assumption has been combined with the simple idea of individual liberty, as laid out by JS Mill, without any regard of the corrosive effects on society. The idea that we can all contribute to society by living life to the full, while at the same time assuming that the market functions best when left to it's own devices, is naive. For one thing, it fails to take into account externalities, which is when the true cost of an act is left for others to pay for. Like pollution, the true cost is being externalised for our descendents to pay for.


Thus, the ideal of individual freedom, of the untrammeled variety pursued by Friedman and Hayek, may be more suitable to an environment of isolation and desperation. A desert island, perhaps, on which one man is stranded and has to fend for himself. He must pursue his own self-interest in order to survive against all odds, the perils posed by the local wildlife and the forces of 'Mother Nature'. It is imperative that he build something that can shelter him, he must also find food and drinkable water. There is no nanny state to coddle him and no society for him to consider. His needs are the only needs that matter and his desires are the only desires that matter. Under these circumstances, greed is good and the alternative may mean death. But Western civilisation is not a network of isolated islands with desperate individuals stranded on them. We all know, our civilisation is more than that. It is an collection of complex and diverse societies, in which there is an intermingling of individual wants and desires. Worryingly, this may mean that the most primal view of humanity may rest at the centre of neoliberal ideology.

There is a tendency in liberal thought to view society as a mass of atoms, an arrangement between individuals, all of which are pursuing their own separate needs and wants. This is ignorant of the importance of society and that individuals play roles in society. Society is not subject to the whims of individuals, it is made up of individuals that interact with one another constantly. Since all actions concern oneself and others in society, it seems far too simplistic to view individual liberty as the paramount ideal of our civilisation. According to the concept the "tyranny of the majority", this ideal should even be placed above the ideal of democracy in our civilisation. Because democracy may threaten the freedom of the individual it should be restricted, so that democracy is extended to the things that don't really matter. Milton Friedman once lambasted democracy with a "straw man", in which 49% of the population are shot just because 51% of the population voted for it, to support his argument that individual freedom ought to be put above liberal democracy. Though, there appears to be something more being said here.

It could be that the concept presented in Mill's work is a "straw man" argument, used to attack what could be influenced through democratic procedures e.g. private property. We would all agree that Mill is right to argue democracy should not be extended to the personal tastes of individuals, a point he made using the example of the banning of pork in Islamic states, or the lives of individuals as Friedman argued. But these are ridiculous points, as no rational human being would extend democracy to such vital aspects of human life. Even with the example of banning pork, politicians may enact legislation to outlaw certain products and services, but they are usually not acting as representative of the majority of people in society. So it does seem logical, that the "tyranny of the majority" is really about protecting the wealthy minority from the kind of policies the poor majority would enact. Of course, this refers to the redistribution of wealth and the construction of the welfare state, which would benefit the poor majority. In this sense, the individual liberty that Mill and de Tocqueville wrote of is a bourgeois freedom - conceived of for the wealthy few.


This individual freedom, that liberals have fixated upon for centuries, could also be referred to as negative liberty. As negative liberty is the freedom of the individual from constraint, to live and act as one chooses. Though, liberals would propose the limits of negative freedom should be at the harm of others. It is this robust freedom for the individual, including a variety of rights such as the right to private property and the right to vote, which has made liberalism a prevalent political philosophy today. But it could be that this is an outdated political philosophy that panders to bourgeois needs, such as the right to private property, and is based on a atomistic and primal vision of mankind. In it's place, what may be needed is a positive liberty that encompasses the values equality and solidarity within society, as well as leaving room for the freedom of the individual on a social level. This would involve constraining the destructive capacities of individual freedom, which may lead to massive inequality and environmental disaster, while leaving room for the individual to live autonomously.