Facebook exchanges, with permission

I spend a lot of time chatting about politics and economics on Facebbok. Instead of forgetting about these conversation threads once they’re through, I thought I’d start sharing a few of them with you. Here’s the first in what will be several FB chats I will serve up, this one with one of my favorite lefty professors.

Professor Daniel Skidmore-Hess, author of U.S. Politics and the Global Economy: Corporate Power, Conservative Shift

Matt,

I’d like to get your take on a research project of mine. I’m currently looking at the electoral history of the US Left. I’m starting with the abolitionist Liberty party (1840) and plan to take the narrative up to the Nader campaign in 2000. But I’m wondering if I should include the Libertarian party, which as you may know originated in the anti-Vietnam war period & is “left” still on social issues and perhaps more importantly anti-imperialist.

I actually see a historic parallel between today’s libertarians and the socialists of the Debs era. Both are electorally on the margin, but have influenced the mainstream beyond their voting numbers. More to the point both are principled oppositional movements that attract bright people in their respective eras. The socialists of the early 20th cent worked in a pre welfare state environment so monopoly was the “great satan” of the day in the public’s mind, today of course it is big government.

The term left is obviously loose, my working definition is a radical oppositional movement that seeks structural transformation in the direction of egalitarianism & against something they perceive as a social evil, ex. slavery, monopoly, capitalism … & perhaps the bureaucrat state? What do you think?

You might say that libertarians value liberty above equality, but in classic liberal thought you can’t separate liberty from legal equality, which libertarians often argue is violated by the interventionist state.

Your take?

Your faithful bog host, founder of thelibertyunderground

I think dichotomizing the political spectrum can be treacherous. What does it mean to be left? To be right? To be green or libertarian?

I usually try to divide political philosophies as collectivist or individualist, state centered or non-state centered. While the roots of the libertarian movement in American could be classified as a species in the genus of what could be loosely be called the “left”, it has definately taken on a more conservative undertone in the past 20 years.

I attribute this turn to the prominence of economic thought among libertarians, who tend to view battles over social issues as important, but not as the main theatre of operations in the fight against “tyranny” (such a misused word!). The view tends to be, as Marx understood, that economics determines much besides who has capital in society, because it is capital which allows those with it to shape policy. Our greater freedom is not threatened by a possible overturning of Roe v Wade, but the bailouts have empowered the state in a frightening way.

On your comparison of libertarians and socialists of the Debs era, I agree. I think classical liberals (ugh! How did we allow that word to be hijacked?) recognize that our skepticism of both state and religious power puts us in a tiny minority. However, we also believe that our ideas can shift public opinion over time, because our ideas are powerful and have been largely borne out by history. The difference between libertarians and socialists is that the former are not ideological in the sense of seeing the evils of the world as being a result of a system. Libertarians are what I like to call practical, in the sense that they recognize that human nature is largely fixed, and that the state exacerbates some of the darker elements of that nature, but also that “fixing” the system will not “fix” humanity. Libertarians do not see the state apparatus as a bogeyman, so to speak. And of course, Debs era socialists wanted to empower government to liberate the oppressed, while libertarians want to weaken the state because they believe it oppresses as it is necessarily in the hands of flawed men and women. On your larger point, though, I think you are right.

I’m not sure you can fit American libertarians into your left paradigm. A singular problem already mentioned arises: there is no desire to erect new structure, or as you say, for structural transformation. There is only a desire for structural erosion, of sorts. The best state for libertarians is one which is just strong enough to limit itself, as they tend to view the state as emergent (inevitable), and a state of anarchy will only give a demogogue a chance to show his stuff. The state is not the oppressor, it is merely a tool that people use to oppress, but the state is also necessary to keep worse forms of itself from coming into being.

Yes, libertarians define equality as legal, not as results oriented. That having been said, I think libertarians are fringe enough to fit into your collection. It would be fun to read, regardless.

Hope this was a bit helpful. I really do love these chats, professor. I hope you can learn from me a fraction of what I have learned from you. I still struggle with Hobbes. Still. The bastard.

Best,
Matt

Professor Skidmore-Hess:

Yes, you have my permission to put my FB comments on your blog.

& wow! thanks for the thoughtful response. As you know the left/right dichotomy is the dominant convention albeit flawed. But I’m not convinced that statist/individualist makes a good dichotomy either. That would put Pat Buchanan on the same side of the divide as a social democrat, which may seem agreeable to you but would obfuscate the importance of cultural issues, which I see as of equal importance as economics. A good model of ideology needs to have 3 dimensions in my view;

1. modern/tradtional on cultural norms
2. egalitarian/individualist on economics
3. dove/hawk on foreign policy

My sense is that the Libertarians (as a party) do give relatively more import to economics than perhaps they did in the early 1970s (when personal freedom of expression was perhaps a higher priority.

But on the other hand, foreign policy still places Libertarians more to the left; consider how far Ron Paul’s views on foreign policy are from the rest of the 2008 candidates for example.

On the socialists, it is of interest to note that they actually thought they could create a society of “freely associated producers” (Marx’s phrase)with a smaller state or even no state in the case of the collectivist anarchists (Kropotkin et.al) … they were wrong imho, but they did have the insight that accumulated property is a political institution, something libertarian thinkers also fail to acknowledge …a common enough error… a mistake that a Hobbesian would never make!

At any rate, thanks again for the thoughtful reply.

~ by The Triumphant Will on July 30, 2009.