On Libertarianism: Breht's Paper for Class

Hey everyone, I am just finishing up a class for my masters program called "Intro to Political Thought", and just finished a paper on Libertarianism/Classical Liberalism. Ive aced all my papers so far and assume I will on this one as well, but I very much make my own arguments and connections beyond what is asked for by the professor haha. Maybe some of you will enjoy it. The question was " Describe the role of government within classical liberalism/libertarianism (Friedman...Hayek...Nozick); Are there roles the government should NOT play within classical liberalism?". Needless to say, I didnt need to study for this one, this whole paper was straight off the dome XD:

In modern political discourse, particularly in the United States, we often think of the dominant political forces as being liberalism vs. conservatism, both of which are liberal in the philosophical (and not the colloquial) sense. But there is a third major strain of philosophical liberalism known as libertarianism (sometimes called classical liberalism), which rejects the governmental intervention in the economy and in people’s personal lives that both social liberalism and traditional conservatism can sometimes advocate for (liberals advocating for government intervention in the economy, and conservatives often advocating for government intervention in peoples personal lives to restrict behaviors they view as immoral). Libertarians emphasize negative rights, or natural freedoms that are not to be infringed upon by government. Within libertarianism itself there is a wide political spectrum, ranging from social libertarianism on the left to classical liberalism in the center to anarcho-capitalism (where the state itself doesn’t exist at all) on the far right.  Within this spectrum, we can place many essential libertarian thinkers, economists, and philosophers. Reflecting back on the course as a whole, and following a line of argumentation I made in my paper on Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, we can pinpoint John Locke as a forerunner of modern libertarianism in many ways, as well as famous early economists that Karl Marx wrestled with in his work “Das Kapital”, like Adam Smith and David Ricardo.[1] Moreover, elements from the work of Thomas Hobbes are also relevant here, not in terms of Hobbes’ authoritarianism, but rather in Hobbes’ core notion that government is formed by individuals to protect themselves from other individuals. In general, we can see an intellectual genealogy as it were stretching back to the foundations of liberalism that has produced modern libertarian thought.

                Having this background established, we can now address the question of the role of government within this part of the political spectrum, itself having its own spectrum. On the slightly softer and more mainstream side of libertarian thought are figures like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, the former a representative of the “Chicago School” and the latter a representative of the “Austrian school”. While differences between these schools and these thinkers exist, they are relatively marginal and obscure for our purposes here. Suffice it to say that both are classical liberals and as such both advocated for a limited role for the government, but in ways that were not as radical as other thinkers like Robert Nozick, who we will come to soon.

                One point I would like to make before moving forward is that this strain of classical liberalism as advocated by Hayek and especially Friedman became the dominant strain in American politics and many western governments of the last 40 or so years. What we today call (derisively) neoliberalism is, in my opinion, a direct (if impure) application of these ideas. The hallmarks of neoliberalism, which got its most full-throated mainstream ideological articulation under the Ronald Reagan government in the US and under Thatcher in the UK, is a deep-seated suspicion of the government, a disdain of labor movements and unions that interfered with the profit goals of business owners, an emphasis on negative rights coupled with a dismissal of any positive rights, a strong tendency toward privatization in all realms of the economy, advocacy of low taxes and regulations on corporations and the rich, and a foreign policy murderously hostile of anything that even approaches socialism or communism.[2] I pull no punches when I say I think these policies have been devastating for our country, resulting in massive inequality, a homelessness crisis, alienation and atomization, an opioid and mental health crisis, a full-on capture of our government by monied interests, huge amounts of debt for working class people and families just trying to access healthcare, higher education and housing, and a gutting of any semblance of community or shared vision for a future. We are living through the crises that neoliberalism has wrought, and the transition out of it seems destined to be one of great suffering and confusion and polarization. But, again, I digress. The crucial thing is that classical liberals advocate for a very limited government, while still allowing for some degree of taxation, social spending, and mild redistribution in order to maintain the basic functioning of society. Classical liberals would oppose big interventions in the economy, though. They oppose universal healthcare and the nationalization of industry, they are skeptical (to differing degrees) of public education, they would oppose modern policy ideas like student debt relief, most forms of welfare, high taxes on property or capital gains, regulations meant to address climate change that put regulatory or tax burdens on private fossil fuel companies, and would probably oppose policies like publicly funded elections. Whatever Fox News and the GOP deride as “socialism” or “big government” is probably a good approximation for things that libertarians in general would oppose.

                In any case, the modest allowances deemed acceptable by the classical liberals, however, become anathema as we move rightward on the libertarian political spectrum and encounter one Robert Nozick, who’s seminal work “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” I read in graduate school for philosophy (before being forced to drop out for financial reasons, which again connects up to the privatization of higher education).[3] In his book, Nozick interestingly wrestles with and critiques a position even further to his right (if you can believe it) called anarcho-capitalism (gestures disparagingly toward Argentina) wherein the libertarian critique of the state is taken so far as to advocate for its total abolition. Nozick is not prepared to go that far and offers some ammunition to any and all opponents of anarcho-capitalism, including those on the left, that are indeed valuable. In contrast to anarcho-capitalism, Nozick’s minarchism (minimal state) argues that the state does have some role to play in society, albeit a very limited one. He calls this state a “nightwatchman state” in which its only real role is the protection of basic individual rights to – following Locke here – life, liberty and property. This requires a centralized and publicly funded police force (lest policing become privatized and thus an exclusive privilege for the rich, which would just be warlordism), the enforcement of contracts and thus a legal system (necessary for property rights), and protecting the country from external threats in the form of a publicly funded military.[4]  Beyond these basic roles, Nozick opposes virtually all other interventions, including of course everything the classical liberals and softer libertarians would oppose (as described above).

                One relatively open question when it comes to the libertarian view of the state is the role that the military is to play. Almost every libertarian allows for the state to fund a military for national defense, and then the question becomes what constitutes “defending national interests”. This question is important because the US has what I would argue is an empire built on a total hegemonic domination of the world that it has enjoyed to some extent since the end of WW2 and which it has enjoyed to the full extent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90’s. This unchallenged hegemonic empire has spent trillions and trillions of tax payer dollars and gone deep into debt fighting proxy wars and overt wars around the world, and still is to this day. The advocates of this position (which we can call neo-conservativism) argue this is necessary for the defense of national interests. I think here we can apply some pressure to the libertarian position and perhaps see splits within the libertarian bloc occur. If libertarians believe the government has a role to play in national defense, and an empire spanning the globe is the best assurance of that national defense, then perhaps there is a libertarian argument in favor of it. But more likely, it seems this domineering, wasteful, violent empire would conflict with some basic libertarian principles if such principles are applied universally. What are we to make of an empire, funded by debt and tax payers, that actively destroys the life, liberty, and property of innocent peoples abroad? We spent trillions of dollars, countless lives, and 20 years replacing the Taliban in Afghanistan with… the Taliban. We are currently spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon-fodder and funding, arming, and defending a far-right wing government in Israel as it conducts a mass murder campaign on Palestinians and escalates wildly against all of its neighbors, actively trying to pull the US into a regional war. I need not even go into the details of Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Libya, or Iraq, as my point should be clear. Yet, I have not seen much of a libertarian response proportionate to the intensity with which it adheres to its ostensibly core principles.[5]

                In conclusion, libertarianism is rooted in philosophical liberalism and historic thinkers like John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and to some extent Thomas Hobbes. It has a spectrum of its own running from classical liberalism through Nozickian minarchism all the way to anarcho-capitalism. It has its modern roots in the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics and modern thinkers like Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. It advocates for severely limited, small government in general and is largely opposed to government intervention in the economy and in people’s personal lives for any reason, with some small exceptions. Its modern applied political expression is what we now refer to as neoliberalism, advanced politically by figures like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and adopted by “Third Way” Democrats under Bill Clinton making it the bipartisan consensus) largely in response to the falling rates of profit experienced in the late 60’s and 1970s and on behalf of the owning class. This period of ideological hegemony[6] has, in my opinion, created a multi-faceted and deep-seated socio-politico-economic crisis across the western world and especially in the United States of America and the United Kingdom which are indications that it has ran its course and is in the protracted process of being abandoned or transcended. What we will transition into is uncertain, but I would argue it will be marked geopolitically by the rise of multipolarity, the end of the US empire as such, and a growing desire for isolationism on behalf of voters. It will be marked domestically in the form of political realignment with massive implications for the dominant political parties, a right-left consensus advocating for a more robust role for the government to intervene in domestic and global markets on behalf of the working and middle classes, economic redistribution, perhaps a rethinking of mass immigration and free trade agreements like NAFTA, the re-shoring of manufacturing and industry in the face of fragile international supply chains and growing geopolitical turmoil, robust industrial policy, and more. In other words, Libertarianism is dead… for now.

[1] Marx, Karl. Capital: Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin Books, 1990. (Originally published in 1867)

[2] Ronald Reagans brutal support for the contras in South America, wherein he supplied money and arms to deeply reactionary and fascistic forces to attack and slaughter union organizers, socialists, communists, etc. was one example of this. The Iran-Contra scandal was of course a way of funding this incredibly violent proxy war during the broader Cold War. Friedman traveled to Chile after the US-backed fascist coup of 1973 to help advocate his ideas to the brutal Pinochet dictatorship, many of which they implemented; an interesting irony of libertarians and fascist authoritarians working together, though not a surprising one (to me). Hayek was also a fan of what was called “The Miracle of Chile” by Friedman. Arguably, neoliberalism was implemented for the first time in post-coup Chile, and then adopted by the US and UK in the following years.

[3] As an amusing aside, one of my favorite television shows is the Sopranos, and in episode 23 (S2,E10) an eyewitness to one of Tony’s crimes can briefly be seen reading a copy of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”. The message from the creators seem to be one of criticizing these ideas, making a connection between the minarchist state advocated for in the book with a deterioration of society into organized crime in the economic realm.

[4] Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974

[5] Though, I allow for the possibility that I have not looked hard enough. Surely there are many libertarian isolationists and anti-war advocates. Still, disagreement between various libertarians on this point does exist.

[6] Some unholy combination of neo-liberalism at home (applied libertarian economics) and neo-conservatism abroad (brutal imperial authoritarianism), though that latter cannot necessarily be laid at the feet of libertarians, to be sure!