Finding Wholes: Part 2
How I Stopped Being a Libertarian and Became a…Not Libertarian
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30 minutes
It is difficult to think one’s way out of an ideology. Like wisdom, ideology gives logical and narrative coherence to a lot of disparate experiential data. And ideologies are paradigmatic, so that one feels a kind of intellectual obligation not to discard his scheme without adopting another. When faced with mounting anomalies, data that doesn’t fit the narrative, the ideologue can always resort to, “Well...what’s your alternative?” And if he doesn’t get an answer as explanatory as his own system, it’s easy to go on ignoring the gaps in it.
In this long (but far too short) rebuttal to libertarianism, I don’t intend to provide an alternative, all-encompassing theory of political economy. It’s enough to establish some truths that libertarianism ignores or downplays, and to highlight some places where it seems to be in error. Let me start by listing a few of the anomalies that proved the need to untangle myself from Austro-Libertarianism, and then I will attempt to rebut some of its theoretical claims, more or less in the order they were presented in the last post.
Part 1: Glitches in the Matrix
General Points About Libertarians and the Market
Libertarians tend to reify the market. This tendency is so pronounced that it would be tedious to document. For our purposes, it’s sufficient to note that in reality “the market” is not some kind of omniscient system, but an abstraction for what people choose to do or not do with their money and material goods. While it’s true that intelligible order emerges from intersecting supply and demand curves, the market isn’t a meta-mind that anticipates and responds to every actionable need (demand.) This should be obvious, when we consider that every entrepreneur is hoping to respond to a demand that he notices, but which “the market” has not yet satisfied. Since the market is nothing but the individual actors within it, it cannot “see” anything those actors do not see. Furthermore, there may well be strong demand for goods that cannot be bought and sold. Case in point: political authority. What if government itself is one such good?
Market vs. “The Free Market”
Libertarians tend to conflate the terms “market” and “free market,” where “free” means unregulated, and undirected. This accidental equivocation allows libertarians to claim the success of any historical market activity as evidence of the success of the free market generally. Yet there has essentially never been a market that is free in the way that libertarian theory uses the term. Now consider the implications of that. If no economy has ever been totally free of regulatory “interference,” special interests, legal impositions, etc., then the successes of a market system cannot automatically be attributed to the “free market.” Markets, by their nature, require some degree of personal ownership, and the freedom to engage in trade. Libertarians, because of a prior theoretical commitment, interpret the success of the market system as evidence of the truth/preferability of a totally free market, and of their idea of absolute ownership, both of which are only theoretical constructs from aprioristic reasoning about the logic of choice. But this does not really work. It may be that markets are successful only within certain limits of freedom, but not beyond those limits. Life is full of phenomena that are healthy within a certain range, but not beyond it. But Austro-Libertarian market theory, derived as it is from necessary logical truths about the ordinal nature of choice, is aprioristic, so that it “floats above” the world of sense data. Meanwhile, real choices happen within that muddy world. The strange result is that every bit of historical economic data can be reconciled with the “apodictically true” Mises/Rothbard system, since nothing economic can be properly interpreted apart from it. Meanwhile, apparent contrary historical data can be dismissed as improperly interpreted.
Claims about Prices and Wages
One thing that shocked me when I looked into it was the divergence between the libertarian theoretical account of prices and wages, and what is actually suggested by numerous historical examples. According to theory, market actors with resources (capitalists) and those with fewer resources but the capacity to work (laborers) engage in voluntary negotiation, resulting in a certain price for labor; that is, a wage. To attempt to impose a minimum wage or living wage is to arbitrarily raise the price of labor above its actual market price. If the market wage were somehow too low, the market would self-correct it without the need for “interference” from the State, which is not a party to the intersecting supply and demand curves that generated the wage price. The price of labor, having been generated by market actors who know their own circumstances and both of whom were trying to maximize their psychic gain, will settle at a level that clears the market, and therefore reflects the actual resources available. (Since wages are simply prices, and prices are merely the intersection of voluntary agreements). All of this sounds perfectly logical, but it appears not to be perfectly true.
One problem is the assumption that a wage is necessarily the product of a negotiation between equal parties. To give a concrete example, a would-be employee of Sam’s Club is not in the same position relative to that institution, as is Sam’s Club when negotiating a price with some other corporation. To say that he is not only contradicts all human experience of unequal bargaining positions, but is belied by the fact that another company, Costco, pays its employees a much higher wage for very similar work, while outcompeting Sam’s in the marketplace. How does this make sense if the wage rate is necessarily fixed by inexorable economic laws which reflect real financial realities? We may also consider here the behavior of companies forced by circumstances (or law) to pay a higher wage than they’d normally offer. For example, after a large-scale social disaster, firms are often forced to offer higher wages than they would have before said disaster. This is happening at this moment with companies post-pandemic, and it happened after the Black Plague swept Europe. And are we to assume that these firms now have more expendable capital than before disaster struck? A much more reasonable explanation is that their bargaining position has changed, so that their internal incentive structures have as well. But in that case, they might have paid a higher wage earlier without going bankrupt. The real question is about what internal and external incentives might exist that would create this different ordinal value scale.
Not only are there companies that voluntarily organize themselves so as to permit the payment of a living wage, there are also countries, like Australia, where a high minimum wage is the condition of doing business at all. So I suppose it must be the case that there is no business and no accumulated wealth in Australia, or in other such countries? Hardly.
The truth is that while wages cannot be just anything, they can often be higher than businesses would voluntarily offer without either external incentives, or different internal value systems. Costco pays a living wage because it has a philosophical commitment to a different set of priorities and values, which in turn dictates a different internal distribution of its resources. Here’s another example, from a completely different sort of business. That this business model can work shows that the “market wage” is the not the mechanical byproduct of inexorable forces. Within the limits, it is possible for at least some businesses to defy these so-called forces. In much the same way that a good father may choose to forgo the Dodge Viper in order to send his children to college, a good CEO may forgo the maximum possible salary for a very good salary that permits him to pay a living wage. In that case, we may ask if there are any objective purposes of wages and money besides the mere subjective wants of market actors. Does the market have ends?
Does the Market Have Objective Ends?
A strict free marketer with his Market is a bit like a strict Darwinian with his Evolution. He thinks both too highly of it, and not highly enough. The Darwinian can find himself rhapsodizing about the creative powers of evolution, before remembering it is not supposed to have any, properly speaking. In a similar way, the free marketer wants the market to be all-wise, and at the same time, senseless. Thus, when speaking about the power of the market to anticipate, respond to, and solve problems, he speaks as if it thought of practically everything. However, when it’s argued that the market's main purpose is to provide for a decent human life, he is quick to insist that this isn’t the way it works.
We shall argue below that human rights only make sense if human nature is ordered towards ends. We shall also try to show that human nature is ordered toward community life, which is precisely why it constantly tends to produce legal communities, or states. But human nature also depends upon economic activity, which activity is necessary to provide for man’s material needs. Since a market that provides for human needs is essential to man’s thriving, it seems reasonable to regard this descriptive fact as indicating a normative condition.
Now if the purpose of economic activity were to provide for human needs, then it would seem to follow that at least some elements of the market would be ordered toward this end. In the relationship between capital and labor, capital provides the lump of resources, and labor employs those resources to render them profitable. The relationship is mutualistic, both parties benefitting from each other. It’s true that individually speaking, the capitalist contributes more than any individual laborer. Yet it is equally true that capital without labor is useless. Since both parties contribute to the production of goods and their resultant profits, if any, then it’s a matter of justice that both have a stake in the goods generated. The free marketer does not actually admit this point though.
What the capitalist wants to say is that the laborer himself is part of the means of production, one of the things that the capitalist himself makes use of to produce his product. At the point of distribution of the proceeds of those goods, the laborer's contribution is accounted for entirely in terms of the agreed upon wage, which wage is simply one the capitalist's costs of doing business. The capitalist himself, or the corporation conceived of as a legal person, owns the total product of the combined coordinated efforts of capital and labor, and the cost of paying the latter is not unlike the cost of paying for a new machine, or for raw materials. But this theory of ownership — which is not the only way of conceiving of private property — does not seem to reflect justice. What should have been a mutualistic relationship has been transformed into something more parasitic.
A thought experiment helps to illustrate the point: Suppose five friends pool their resources to form a roofing company. Suppose they charge $15,000 for a roofing job. It costs $10,000 per job for materials, business fees, and general overhead. At the end of each job, each receives $1000 from the profits. Things continue this way for some time, with each man making $1000 per job. However, one of their members, Wily, recognizing the need for a full time business manager, appoints himself to the task. Wily continues to draw the same wage per job as the other four roofers, who judge that it’s worth working a bit harder in order to gain the benefits that come from one of their members specializing in doing all the managing, obtaining new contracts, advertising, etc. At this point, everyone is happy with the arrangement, but over time Wily’s ambitions for expanding the company beyond the reach of its current manpower results in taking on more jobs than the company can actually manage. To this end, more laborers are hired, but now at a lower wage. Eventually a business structure emerges in which Wily and the four roofers do none of the actual roofing, but are occupied with overseeing the hired laborers and managing the company generally. In the end, the lions’ share of income available for wages, say 90%, goes to the five original roofers, while the remaining 10% pays the wages of the hired laborers, who, being individually more expendable, are in a weak position to ask for more. After all, there are always more laborers. If this pattern were repeated on a society-wide scale, the average individual laborer would be in a poor bargaining position, despite his labors being essential to the production of the product in question.
Now something like this is true of many large corporations. It’s not uncommon for an executive at a large corporation to make five hundred to a thousand times more per year than an employee. That the executive draws a much higher salary is not in-itself objectionable, because justice would dictate that those bearing far more responsibility and taking on more risk also reap a greater reward. The question is whether economic “law” is the only driving force here, or whether principles of justice also come into play. One thing is clear: it is possible to run a very profitable business in which the disparity in income is great, but not nearly so great. The CEO of Costco voluntarily draws a salary far, far lower than the CEO of Sam’s Club, with the result that Costco employees are paid far better, and have much better benefits, than employees in parallel positions at Sam’s Club. And yet Costco does better in the market than Sam’s Club. Likewise, as was mentioned, in countries where the law dictates a living wage, companies are still able to do business and to accumulate capital. That is the point of such legislation; to create a common set of conditions which forces a common change in the internal incentive structures of all businesses, one that would otherwise require moral heroism and great creativity on the part of executives. This makes sense if the market, in addition to its “spontaneous” order, also has ends. It makes no sense if the market, left to itself, “spontaneously” arrives at the perfect wage, which is just the wage agreed upon by the capitalist and the laborer.
Costco and companies like it who follow a different internal philosophy (and are, therefore. annoyances to Wall Street,) ought to go broke. That they do not, suggests that “the Market” is not the perfect self-organizing system that free-marketers say it is. It’s more malleable than that, and it seems to benefit from direction and oversight.
Libertarian Use of Historical Data
A good libertarian reading the above has already stored up several theoretical responses. Because the laws of supply and demand are thus and such, the market wage must be the correct wage; for there simply is no other wage that will clear the market. If facts and experience seem to contradict theory, just wait: sooner or later the truth will emerge, and the all-seeing market will destroy all those companies that are paying too high a wage, and wreck those “socialistic” economies that enforce living wages. Austro-libertarians in particular reject empiricism in economics.
But in spite of this, Austro-libertarians lapse into empiricism when it suits their purposes. Thus, every libertarian has heard of the tale of Lenin and the New Economic Plan, and how the Soviets introduced some private ownership and free trade in order to shore up their failing system. From this it is concluded that the “free market” works, because a little bit of private ownership and trade was better than the Soviet command economy. Yet this example, besides contradicting the Austrian idea that mere facts, apart from theory, prove nothing, also does not demonstrate the efficacy of a “free market,” but only of a market. That a certain amount of market is better than no market at all does not prove that a completely unfettered market would be better still. That is like saying since a certain amount of iron is necessary for the body, an unlimited amount of iron would be.
And libertarians take a similar approach with history in general. Spend any amount of time on Lewrockwell.com and you will read enough stories about Roman inflation and the medieval Icelandic commonwealth, that it will be almost as if you’d studied the actual histories of those places. But study history for its own sake, and it becomes clear that the data is being cherry-picked to support the libertarian thesis. We are supposed to be very impressed that Iceland went three hundred years without a state, but we’re not supposed to notice that this led to such chaos, and constant feuding, that the Icelanders eventually submitted themselves to a foreign king. We are supposed to notice the incredible rise in production that took place during the Industrial Revolution, but don’t expect to hear much about the Enclosure Acts, and other nefarious means by which “free market capitalists” used the State to both take possession of lands once the common property of peasants, and then to force the peasants into factories, on whose grounds they were housed and legally bound to stay without special permission from the capitalist (while at the same time homelessness was criminalized.) The actual history of capitalism and of the State is far muddier than libertarians want to acknowledge. In practice, there has often been an “iron fist behind the invisible hand.”
A big change in my own thinking came when I realized that what we libertarians called “crony capitalism” was really just historical capitalism. It’s not really an exception to the rule. Historically speaking, it is the rule. And that is why society has tended to look somewhat askance at men whose primary business is making money, and has historically tried to keep them in check; because the lust for material wealth easily bleeds over into a lust for power, and a desire to influence public policy.
The libertarian attitude toward history and toward empirical facts and experience generally, is the reason that libertarians can, with equal facility, praise Wal-Mart as a success of the free market, and attack it as an example of “corporatism,” depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment. Its apriorism lends libertarianism a chimerical quality, allowing it to select data that proves its principles, while dismissing data that seems to contradict those principles.
Defending the Indefensible
One of the consequences of extended exposure to libertarianism is the warping of personal values. If the State’s monopoly on force is the primary social evil, all other social evils pale by comparison. If voluntarism is the main criteria for virtue, it soon becomes the only criteria. In practice this means that the libertarian finds himself defending as “legitimate” any voluntary activity. Prostitution, blackmail, meth dealing, and pornography, while not actual positive rights on libertarian principles, are all effective “rights” on this view, though they may go against the “personal values” of the libertarian (who is often more conservative in his personal habits.) This becomes psychologically possible, because he is in such a state of reaction against the constant abuses of the State, that mere voluntary vices seem to pale by comparison. That two people choose to “contract their services” to do something wrong seems far less important than that men and women in authority use that authority to do evil that affects everyone. And, in a way, this may be so. Christ showed firm tenderness toward prostitutes, while the Pharisees and temple con-artists saw his righteous anger.
But the net result of such thinking is that one begins to see any “entrepreneur” as a good guy (by comparison with the State), and any attempt to restrain vice as “tyranny.” I distinctly remember a loud argument in which I defended the “right” of French settlers to sell whisky to Native Americans. Yes, it’s true; the Indians clearly couldn’t handle their liquor, and that was very sad and unfortunate, but if one were to disallow such voluntary trade, then the principle of ownership would be at stake! Should one man’s lack of self-control be a sufficient reason for “sacrificing” the principle of private property, and the trade that results from it!?
“Legitimacy”
All of libertarian political theory turns on this single word. According to that theory, rights are rooted in self-ownership, and human actions are permissible (and laws valid) to the extent that they’re voluntary. But if this is so, then anything voluntary becomes legal, and its practice falls under the aegis of moral right (without being a positive right as such.) Libertarians want to defend the idea that laws cannot just be anything, but must reflect something true about human nature. Something actually fair. That is all to the good. However, the principle offered for this defense of true law also necessitates admitting personal behaviors that even many libertarians consider wrong under the protection of general self-ownership. That does not mean that libertarians assert positive rights to do X, Y, and Z immoral behaviors. Yet, in practice, it amounts to the same thing.
Perhaps detecting that there’s something absurd about asserting a virtual right to do wrong, libertarians prefer to speak of “legitimacy” — meaning valid legal action. Thus, the attempt by the State to use force to achieve a good end is “illegitimate,” while the behavior of a prostitute with her John is “legitimate” even though it may be immoral. And since it’s easy to think of examples of state do-goodery going south, and having unexpected negative consequences, this principle of legitimacy seems to reflect something true. At least voluntary vices are restricted to the individuals committing them, while state impositions affect everyone. The principle of legitimacy and voluntarism seems to offer a simple rule distinguishing what sorts of behaviors should be legal, and what sort of behaviors should be illegal (since obviously not every sin should be a crime.) This was certainly its appeal for me.
But there are several problems with this principle. First, if true legality is supposed to reflect an actual moral principle in a civic context as opposed to just the positive pronouncements of the State, don’t we now have a situation where one moral truth is set at odds with another? How can this be if morality is part of reality? Second, “private” vices can have enormous social costs. Pornography and narcotics destroy families and vulgarize society, rendering it far less capable of sustaining the very freedom that libertarians value. Thirdly, there are many cases in human life where a demonstrably good outcome can only be achieved by one man or woman taking charge, and imposing his or her will on others. Suppose Charles Martel had subscribed to the principle of voluntarism, and, not wishing to whip his fellow Frenchmen into shape, had allowed the Moorish hoards to simply conquer France? Ask any teacher in a classroom, or, for that matter, any executive in a company, what the result would be of simply allowing everyone to do what he felt like, without the imposition of a general plan. But if the imposition of the good is necessary in many small-scale circumstances, and if man tends naturally to form larger communities, why wouldn’t the occasion arise for its use on a much larger, society-wide scale?
A Thought Experiment
Suppose Rothbard is a leading man in the peaceful town of Ruritania, where a stateless, voluntary society has finally been achieved. Things are going well and prosperously, until a new man, whom we’ll call the Prophet, arrives in town. Observing the ordinary tensions that come with freedom, the Prophet begins to argue effectively (if not persuasively) for state socialism. While his efforts yield few converts from the upper reaches of society, he is able to convince many of the poor and middling people, particularly since there’s been a drought, and a bad harvest that year. Even some of the craftier industrialists join in, seeing the opportunity for acquiring power while flying the banner of equality, fraternity, kindness, and other weasel words. Rothbard sees the writing on the wall, but in the end, his superior reasoning can do nothing to forestall the coming death of his precious free society, even though he can see clearly that the Prophet is a demagogue leading the people astray. An opportunity presents itself to drive the Prophet out of town, and keep him out, but that will mean using force, both in the driving, and in the subsequent enforcement of town borders. Should Rothbard do it, and save Ruritania, or should he allow the Prophet to go on exploiting the ignorance of some of the people, and the conniving of the elites?
It’s a nice liberal truism that the truth would win out in this situation, sparing Rothbard the necessity of compromising his principles, but I have serious doubts.
Does Greed Mean Anything?
Libertarians rightly defend the profit motive, pointing out that profits inform entrepreneurs that they’re using their resources in a way that actually serves customers’ wants. After all, why would anyone undertake the risk of business if he were planning to lose money? But does this automatically support the idea that maximizing profits maximizes the servicing of customer wants? Anecdotally, it would appear the answer is no, because there are many circumstances where the leadership of a company (or even of a country) has maximized its own income at the expense of its employees, customers, or constituents. A separate but related problem is the matter of greed.
Greed is not the desire for material gain, but the inordinate desire of it. But what makes a desire ordered? What makes it disordered? If profit maximization is the very criteria of good economic behavior, then it would seem that good business just means maximally profitable business. If that is so, the word “greed” has no referent. It’s merely a weasel word that market losers invoke to attack their betters. It’s hard to read certain libertarian writers without concluding that this is exactly what they think. But the deeper problem is that if greed is inordinate desire for material gain, there must be such a thing as an ordered desire for gain. But ordered by what?
The very notion of a well-ordered desire for gain implies some notion of the ends and purposes of economic activity. Now those ends cannot simply be the maximization of the activity in question. In a similar way, lust does not mean “sexual desire”, but disordered or inordinate sexual desire. If one asks the question, “What is good sexual behavior?” the answer — to the disappointment of many — cannot simply be, “Lots and lots of it!” for that does not address the end of the activity in question; what it’s for. Likewise, if one asks, “What makes for healthy economic activity?” then the answer cannot simply be, “The more, the better!” In both cases, we need some idea of the purpose of this good in a human life. But if material goods have a purpose, why shouldn’t that purpose play a certain role in influencing wages, benefits, and even the structure of business?
Yet if our libertarian wants to insist that good business is one thing, and being a good person another (and, sometimes contradictory) thing, then I will only note that he should make no objection when today’s principled free market entrepreneur suddenly decides to maximize his profits through rent-seeking, creating legal barriers to entry, and good old-fashioned lobbying for state subsidies. After all, everyone is just trying to maximize his profits!
Part 2: Self-Ownership, Rights, and the State
Self-Ownership and the Human Person
All libertarian accounts start by establishing the principle of self-ownership, before proceeding to derive the non-aggression axiom from it. Rights are then derived from the primal right of self-ownership, and differentiated from the plethora of positive “rights” insisted on by the left, or granted by the State. Americans will see something very familiar here, for this is very similar to Jeffersonian/Lockean thought, boiled down to its essence. The rights to “life, liberty, and property” are at the heart of the Liberal tradition, of which anarcho-capitalism is, in my opinion, the most developed example. But at the heart of that tradition lies a serious error. While it may admit in principle that man is a created being, it proceeds to treat him as if he were an independent atom, a blank state upon which he writes with his own free will, effectively creating himself. Before we can discuss self-ownership, we must first have a proper anthropology of man. And If we attend to this creature, we shall find that he is not, by nature, completely independent.
The “natural man” of Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes was “born free, but everywhere he is in chains!” This being appears in the world as an independent, thinking, choosing entity, but is forced to limit his freedom in order to avoid chaos, forming the social contract that makes for the least offensive kind of State. The State is treated as an unnatural but unavoidable imposition on the freedom of the individual; consequently, limiting it with checks, balances, and amendments becomes the main political task of the otherwise free man. Now the anarcho-capitalist, to his credit, rejects this compromise. If man is naturally independent, why should he make a deal with Leviathan? Dragons should not be appeased. They should be slain! So it is that the Rothbardian starts with the same anthropological premises as Locke, but takes them to a more logical and heroic conclusion. But these premises are wrong.
There never was a “natural man” born into the world in a state of total independence. Every human being comes into existence as part of a family. He passes through a stage of relative helplessness, before achieving a level of mastery and independence befitting his dignity, only to return, by degrees, to dependence. Yet even in his prime, when he is most like the totally free being liberalism assumes, he is still quite dependent. His very existence is an unpayable debt that he owes to his parents, his ancestors, and to the larger community of which he’s a member. His continued existence depends on an endless matrix of social, legal, cultural, and economic effort and creativity, without which network his circumstances would be rendered quite stark. Even as an adult, his personal flourishing is inherently relational, so that a man cannot discover who he is except in a context of friendship, family, and duty. The paradox of man is that he’s most himself when he is free, and self-moving; and yet he can only develop his identity through relationship.
With these considerations in mind, we are now in a position to offer a better anthropology. Man is an essentially personal being, whose freedom is ordered toward relationship, because his being is other-oriented. “It is not good for man to be alone.” The proper myth of man’s origins is not Robinson Crusoe hacking it out on an island wilderness, but Adam and Eve cultivating a garden together. Man’s natural condition — as demonstrated by every single historical and prehistoric human community ever known — is membership in family and tribe. If we are to reason properly about man, then we must not start by isolating one aspect of him — his capacity for choice — and spinning out all other truths from that one. Instead, we should start, like Aristotle, with a good descriptive account of man, and, attending to what makes for his thriving, derive a normative account of the good life.
If we do this, we will find that at no point does man “own himself” in the way that he owns a piece of property. He did not “stumble across” himself as one might a choice piece of unclaimed land. He did not “mix his labor” with himself until he came into being. His very existence is a gift. He has a right to life, but he has no right to exist. His very rights are embedded in a prior gift of existence; both his own, and the world’s. The same dynamic holds true, even on a natural level, of all that he may achieve through hard labor, for the efficacy of that labor depends not only on him, but on the network of relationships and interdependencies that make it possible. And this is the backdrop against which we shall proceed to address the others claims of libertarianism.
Self-Ownership is Not Absolute
The libertarian wants to argue that a man owns himself because no other human can make a better claim to owning him. But why should we accept this binary? It may be that a man neither owns himself outright, nor is owned by another outright. It is not clear that being responsible for one’s life is the same thing as owning oneself completely (in the way that a man owns say, a cheeseburger.) And if a man fully owns his life, would it not follow that he has the right to abandon his family, the right to betray his friends, the right to commit adultery? Granting that there’s a distinction between morality generally and the species of morality that pertains to civil law, law is still a kind of morality. But if self-ownership is its basis, then it seems one has a kind of civil right to do whatever he wants, provided no coercion is involved. And that just means he has a civil right to do wrong. Which is absurd, if there is any ontological correspondence between “rights” and right.
Rather than basing rights on self-ownership, we must root them in man’s nature, in the nature of the world, and in the ends of man.
Human Rights Are Real, But Not Absolute
Now if man has a nature, that nature necessarily has ends. Since his nature includes the power to choose, it seems to follow that he can choose to act or not act in accordance with his nature’s ends. Acting in accordance with those ends would conform his nature to the greater ontological order, and would at the same time tend toward perfecting him. Such action would therefore be right; that is, true and necessary for his being. Acting against those ends would tend to divorce him from the greater order, and would tend to harm him (and others, since he is a social being.)
Now if there are actions which man must be able to perform in order to perfect himself and others in a social context, then those things can properly be called rights. We can see then why a man would need to have a right to his life, to security in his property, to some degree of privacy befitting his dignity, etc., if those things are rooted in the kind of being he is. However, being the consequences of the specific ends of his nature, these rights would also have natural limits corresponding to those same ends. A right to acquire property would not necessarily be a right to acquire as much property as he desires. A right to his land would not necessarily be a right to treat it wantonly. His rights would extend as far as was in conformity with the ends of his nature, but beyond those limits they would not be rights at all. This way of thinking preserves the reality of rights, without necessitating the idea that these rights are suddenly compromised when two absolute rights bump up against each other.
Libertarians must construe rights as absolute because they can see no other way of defending them as real. It is felt that the smallest compromise on any right would open the door to all rights being mere state-granted privileges. But this is because Liberalism includes a kind of reductionism; it starts with an impoverished view of man as primarily actor and chooser. For the same reason, libertarianism is hyper-focused on man as a market-actor, as if relationships of utility and contract were his primary mode of freedom.
Human Life Requires a Martial Defense
As peacefully inclined as any individual, tribe, or society wishes to be, there are others who will not be peaceful. But in that case, even peaceful human life requires some kind of trained body of warriors. Even under a militia system, and/or in a region where the entire population is armed, mounting any resistance to incursion requires knowledge of military tactics, the maintenance of supply lines, the construction of bases, persons of rank to implement these things, and some kind of enduring military culture to instill the values and traditions necessary to prepare and deploy a force when needed. The fact that even politically neutral countries like Switzerland have such an apparatus is more proof of its unavoidability. But why shouldn’t all “military” forces just be mercenaries, paid and maintained by various private security and insurance firms?
One big reason is the “incentive structures” that libertarians know so well. A man who fights for hire has no particular reason for loyalty to his community or region; nor, for that matter, to the firm that employs him. His relationships to them are based on utility, and can easily change depending on where money is flowing. And, given the prospect of acquiring new property by force rather than by voluntary exchange, why shouldn’t large private firms wielding large mercenary forces simply take what they want? Are we to imagine that private defense firms wouldn’t manufacture justifications for avarice just as easily as do states? And what would become then of poor and middling peoples who are not in a position to subscribe to the best security plans?
It is better that the military be a common institution, the property in some sense of an entire people, so that the terrible force it wields can be explicitly connected to the common good. In that way, there is some basis for objecting when this force is misused, and some creditable reason for fighting (or not fighting) other than the prospect of a paycheck.
The Exercise of Freedom Depends Upon Duty
Even if we were to grant the principle of self-ownership, why should it extend to another? Suppose I have a right to serve my own interests, and you have a right to serve yours: why should I include your well-being in my self-interest? The question is not, “Do many libertarians care about other peoples’ rights?” Of course they do. The question is, “Is there anything about the principle of self-ownership that necessitates respect for another’s self-ownership?” And the answer is no. There is no necessary connection between self-ownership and respect for another’s rights; (whereas libertarians are able to show the necessary connection between self-ownership and one’s personal rights.)
At best, one can argue that respecting self-ownership will make for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. But that is an argument from utility, not principle. And in that case, suppose it serves my immediate needs and wants to exploit or double-cross someone else without outright coercion. If self-ownership makes every man lord of himself, doesn’t that just mean suckers deserve whatever chicanery comes their way? After all, they are responsible for themselves, and should know not be so naïve!
Libertarians try to get around this by appealing to the majority: “Most people want a more peaceful, prosperous world,” is a typical libertarian assertion. Even if true, it’s irrelevant if libertarian principles provide no actual reason why I shouldn’t exploit others. Suppose I don’t care about the greatest good for the greatest number of people? “Because you will lose business in the long run,” is the sort of thing only said by people who have never been in want.
But there is a way to connect personal rights to the rights of my neighbor: by rooting them in the moral order; that is, in each man’s personal duty to act in accordance with the laws of his being, and the laws of being generally. I must tell the truth because my intellect is ordered toward truth. I must not abuse or trick people because people are valuable in-and-of-themselves, and I have an obligation toward truth that includes valuing things in accordance with their natures. My rational nature allows me to perceive the good, and my freedom permits me to choose it. But “good” here means what is right generally; not just what serves myself. Without an appeal to a general moral order, and without making duty toward that order primary, self-interest and self-preservation become the principal arbiters of what is good.
You have a choice then, either to embrace a moral order that includes legal duties that go beyond the self (and are therefore incompatible with the principle of total self-ownership,) or to make self-service the highest moral good (which the Randians explicitly do.) Else you can dispense with moral rights altogether.
Human Life is Ordered Toward a Polis
Give any human community enough time, and it will begin to form a little state. You can see this in businesses, in private schools, in sports teams, in clubs, and in many other contexts. Libertarians rightly insist that common interest and the opportunity to respond to demand are sufficient causes for the formation of various human institutions. Well, they explain why these institutions get started, but actual human beings must still choose to bring them into being, as “demand” is not a force, and causes nothing on its own. In any event, all kinds of institutions emerge through actual, decisive choices (not “spontaneously,” as libertarians like to say,) but what do they do after they emerge? The answer is that they either organize themselves into bodies, or they dissolve.
Within these bodies, there will be some degree of specialization and some degree of hierarchy. Where there is hierarchy, there is authority. When an organization reaches sufficient complexity, it requires rules, or at least a ruler. Even if the head of the body is only a revolving position, there must be some established principle of continuity between one head and the next. Even if everything is put to a vote, someone must decide what to vote on. In short, there is no way around this basic pseudo-familial structure — the common authority.
Now libertarians know this, but insist that there is a difference between private organizations and the State. You can leave an abusive family. You can stop paying club dues. But you cannot leave a state without physically escaping its geographical region.
Fair enough. But human beings live in geographical regions, so, naturally, the political bodies they form extend over those same regions. We are not angels, or floating wills. This does not mean that states should claim the kind of absolute ownership of the land that they often do, for such claims do not reflect their purpose. But the empirical fact is that human beings throughout history have organized themselves into hierarchical bodies, with rules, in particular places. It is reasonable to try to limit the common governing authority to only those actions that fall within its purview. It is not reasonable to expect either that people will suddenly stop demanding a common authority, or that such an authority will emerge without the imposition of will; that is, by coercion.
And there’s good reason for this coercion. One might sustain his life at subsistence level by living off the forest, but any large group of people must specialize and organize itself. Within and above the set of those who choose to live in common, there must be an established common authority. I completely agree with the libertarian that the State has no automatic claim to the whole land, for such a claim does not arise from the conditions that necessitate government. If a person or group wants to go off and make their own society in unoccupied land, the State should have no say in the matter. Neither should it be in a position to make arbitrary claims to whatever it sets eyes on, for nature is a gift to the whole human race, and the land does not belong to the State. At the same time, the vast majority of people do organize themselves into large communities.
The very fact that they do so means there is something wrong with the libertarian method of analysis, which is called methodological individualism. This approach does not to see groups and communities as real or basic facts, but sees individuals as the proper units of analysis, units that often find it useful to form contractual associations, but which require no public bonds beyond these.
But if man everywhere and at every time forms hierarchical and differentiated communities, it is obviously unreasonable to think of him as a kind of economic hermit forming loose alliances to better his personal interests. It appears rather that man’s individuality is ordered toward inter-relationship. And this only stands to reason, since a human being comes into existence through a union of bodies, and as part of an existing human community, the family. How then does it make sense to treat him as if he were naturally a kind of island reality? And if he is not an island reality, then human communities stand or fall together, which makes it a matter of justice to impose the order that makes them stand. Such imposition is not “aggression”. It is a defense of the weak and easily abused masses against the designs of the clever and unscrupulous. For the same reason, it is not “tragic” that certain wicked historical governments have been conquered and supplanted by force.
Taxes Are Not (Necessarily) Theft
We have mentioned several times that there are goods in demand that no market actor is in a position to provide. Specifically, these are common goods such as law, defense, drinkable water, general care of the land, contract enforcement, and the basic moral health necessary to maintain a free society. These create the basic conditions without which persons, families, and even businesses would not be able to act with confidence on anything like a large scale. People who provide for these conditions are set apart from the community precisely so that they can be outside the network of personal interest which characterizes that community. Offices of state are necessary to the flourishing of the community as a whole, so that it can enjoy internal amity. For the same reason, abuse of such offices for personal gain is particularly wicked, and merits far greater punishment than even the worst “ordinary” crimes of theft, murder, etc. We shall address in a moment the execrable fact that this is far from being the case in our own system, in which politicians and bureaucrats who ought to have been shamed out of public life are not only not punished, but are treated as untouchables. Nevertheless, the abuse of an office does not invalidate the office. Rather, it precisely because the office is sacred that its abuse is so inexcusable.
If such offices are necessary, then someone must pay for them. But it is a common experience that there are certain goods which everyone desires in a general way, but which most people are unwilling or unable to bring about. Contrary to what libertarians want to assert, human beings often actively resist things that they know they need, and really want. To take a mundane but instructive example, students in the classroom want order, regularity, and even education, but they will not spontaneously provide the conditions for the above. A common authority must carefully maintain order within the classroom, provide a structure in which learning can take place, and require of students more than they feel like giving. He must also meet out consequences to offenders against that order. If he does the above things justly and carefully, with an attitude of humble service, his students will respect and love him more, not less, even if, individually, they’d not have voluntarily behaved in such a way as to achieve those outcomes. Parenting, coaching, and military training provide parallel examples of the strange fact that human beings have needs and wants, even demands, that they will not voluntarily realize, but without which they cannot thrive.
Now the common goods provided by the government of a state are like these. While it would be imprudent for a government to try to enforce every kind of virtue that could be construed as contributing to the common good, at least some goods form the necessary conditions for common life. As in the classroom or the family, the mass of people will not just do these things without direction. We all know what it is to say, “Someone really ought to do X,” and to really mean it, but to nevertheless do nothing ourselves to bring X about. On a society-wide scale, that is, within and above the organic state, there must be an authority empowered to do those things.
Such provision has material costs, and these are no more likely to be handed over voluntarily than is a boy of ten to voluntarily clean his own room. The government of a state is therefore not stealing when it levies taxes — involuntary fees — which are necessary for the maintenance of law, order, and liberty, provided that it does so justly. Now there are several criteria that must be met for taxes to be just. First, they must be for the provision of goods that fall clearly within its mandate; second, they must not be some kind of indiscriminate tribute, a cost merely for the right to live in space and time (as if people rented their life and property from the government); third, they must not be injurious to the maintenance of the organic state they are supposed to serve, nor to the individual property owner; fourth, they must be proportional to the needs and statuses of the people paying them.
Note that I did not include “consent of the governed,” because it is actually irrelevant. As already noted, the governed almost never actually consent on an individual basis to being ruled, so it is a sham to pretend that they consent because some body of past or present representatives has mystically funneled their collective will, once and for all. Also, and more importantly, the principle of taxation with representation, though it may be a good check on power when government is small and close to the people, does nothing to actually direct taxation toward its proper, limited ends. A good king may tax far more justly than a bad congress. The idea that one can escape the necessity of having prudent and wise leaders by substituting some perfect system of checks and balances is yet another of the follies of Classical Liberalism, whose modus operandi has always been to create systems so perfect that no one need be good. All of its intellectual descendants, from libertarianism to communism, share the same fatal flaw. So much then for good government, but what about our government?
There Is Something Seriously Wrong with the Modern State
It would be tedious to list all the ways that the modern western state appears to be a threat to liberty, and one now armed with a vast and ever-growing surveillance apparatus. That western states, for the time being, still permit a large amount of nominal freedom of religion, speech, property, trade, and education, does not mean that things are just dandy. Every day we see signs of the fragility of these liberties, and of a discouraging and widespread loss of popular appreciation for them. Far from being an institution ordered toward service to society, the modern state seems self-oriented, as if it existed to multiply and aggrandize itself, and viewed its constituents as cattle, easily manipulated, frequently milked, and too cheaply led to slaughter. And many of its flock seem only too happy to be so regarded. That all of this is wrapped in the language of patriotism, democracy, and equality just rubs salt in the wounds. I think anarcho-capitalist libertarians are correct that something is seriously wrong with the modern mega-state in particular, even apart from general effects of Original Sin that must plague every human institution
The State Isn’t Going Away...So Now What?
Nevertheless, all of human history, and all ordinary human experience convinces me that men will be governed, and not just by their permission. Even if we were to grant all of the anarchist’s claims about self-ownership, and to grant the injustice of a monopoly on force, man would continue to build such institutions. I have argued that this is only to be expected, given man’s social and personal nature, and the fact that there are human demands above the level of utility that cannot be satisfied in any market place, no matter how free. Since this is the case, a person who wishes to see a more just social order should focus on what lies in his power, and should do whatever he can to help form wiser and more virtuous rulers.
What is most lacking in our political class is not insufficient theory, but rather insufficient prudence. By prudence I do not mean “caution,” but rather the capacity to identify the wisest course of action in a particular situation. Political prudence means balancing the goods possible in a given situation. Prudence cannot be gained entirely from books, nor spun out from the premises of an ideology. It is a virtue, and therefore, its practitioner must be virtuous. Still, the natural elements which contribute to form prudence will more readily be acquired from an education in wisdom, and a good upbringing.
Since rulers must be virtuous, they must also be men and women who fear God. I do not mean that they must be profoundly religious, though that would be extremely helpful. I mean that they must have an abject terror of doing evil, of giving scandal, of abusing their offices; a fear that haunts them even apart from whatever temporal consequences such actions might bring. They must be people who attach a profound weight to their word.
It is quite evident that many members of the American ruling class do not think they will ever have to pay for their actions. Some of our Founding Fathers, privately skeptical about organized religion, still believed that republics depended on it to form the people. True, but I think they aimed too low. The people whom we most want to fear hell are the people with the power to create hell on earth.
A Solution?
I have argued in this essay that the State is natural to man, because he is a personal being, who lives in community, and who desires lawgivers who stand apart from the market of personal interest. I have stated that the market is a powerful and necessary force, but one which must be directed toward its natural ends, for these ends are not spontaneously achieved. I’ve further argued that rights and duties are rooted in man’s nature, and that they are real but limited entitlements and obligations of the same nature, with its particular ends and purposes. I’ve rejected the claims of the libertarians that any or all of the above can be accounted for by self-ownership, the non-aggression axiom, or by an undirected market. What I have not done is suggested a way forward.
I will not do so now, except to repeat that a more just state requires more just rulers. The system will not be fixed by some better system, but by better men and women. This is a long-term project, one that involves conscious formation of the leadership class, and attention to one’s own family and community. The good news is that the human race is not a mass of isolated individuals, but a network of families. Like the nuclear family, political families are hierarchical. This means that highly capable, and service-oriented people can have profound effects on the many who look up to them. Meanwhile, an ordinary good man or woman sends out ripples of justice in his local village. Ultimately, the fate of society as a whole is not in our hands, but we do have the power to create little kingdoms of civility; platoons of normality; the little gardens of goodness from which, in time, a great forest may grow.
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