On the Illusions of Libertarianism

Richard Koubeck commented suggestively on my critique of those who might consider voting for the Green candidate for President, that I should have included in my critique those who were considering voting for the Libertarian candidate. They, too, ought to realize how ill-informed and destructive their action would be. And Dick is, of course, correct, but not for the same reasons.

Libertarians act as if we are all isolated individuals, who come with a more or less inherently fixed nature, and are basically in complete control of our choices, and fully responsible of what we make of our lives. And they tend to see the government — almost always the national government — as the primary threat to our individual liberty: Taking through taxes the money that we have earned through our initiative and hard work and re-distributing it to undeserving others; or telling us how we should live our lives, thus constraining our individual freedom of choice. Gary Johnson, Libertarian Presidential candidate gives voice to these views by opposing, among others, a minimum wage, government mandated health insurance, practically all environmental regulations, and the government operated safety net, including Social Security.

But the entire Libertarian enterprise is misconceived, from the bottom up. It begins with a world view that makes no sense. It completely fails to appreciate the extent to which the human being is by nature a social being, whose basic feelings, thoughts, values, and actions are shaped by the moral and institutional contours of the wider society. Libertarians act as if government is the only significant institution that constrains the actions of the autonomous individual, but that is absurd. We are constrained, shaped, supported, sustained, and guided by institutions — formally and officially organized or informally enforcing rules and guidelines of “normal” behavior, and even of thought — practically every moment of our lives. Even more, there are numerous legally established institutions, such as corporations, as well as the conditions for the obtaining, maintaining, using, and transferring private property, that shape our social status, wealth, power, and life’s resources and opportunities at least as pervasively as do the official actions of government.

In fact, the so-called and celebrated “free market” is a giant illusion, and con game. There is no such thing as a “free market.” All markets are CONSTRUCTED, the result of numerous actions of society and government, as to how property can be obtained, maintained, transferred, taxed, and protected.

Even more, there is a very good reason why internationally we are so concerned about “failed states”. Not only can they become the breeding ground of piracy and terror, but, as Thomas Hobbes made so patently clear already in the 17th Century, without effective government, all human relations tend to degenerate into a “war of all against all” in which the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” What Libertarians have done is confuse the completely legitimate and defensible moral concern for, and even celebration of, the value of individuality, with the completely non-sensical “metaphysical” claim of the unbridgeable freedom of the so-called autonomous individual celebrated by the perverse doctrine of Individualism. But of that, more at another time — though one can check out Chapter 7 of my “Critique of Western Philosophy and Social Theory,” which addresses these issues in detail.