A functional anarchist, libertarian, or anti-state movement must first and foremost reclaim the liberal tradition of authentic tolerance of the kind that insists that decent regard for other people and a fair hearing for contending points of view on which no one ultimately has the last word must be balanced with the promulgation of ideological principles no matter how much one believes these principles to be “true.” A functional and productive anarchist movement must recognize and give a seat at the table to all of the contending schools of anarchism, including non-leftist ones, and embrace those from overlapping ideologies where there is common ground. A serious anarchist movement must address points of view offered by the opposition in an objective manner that recognizes and concedes valid issues others may raise even in the face of ideological disagreement. Lastly, a genuine anarchist movement must realize that there is no issue that is so taboo that is should be taken off the table as a fitting subject for discussion and debate. Only when anarchists embrace these values will they be worthy of the name.
4
Should Libertarianism be Cultural Leftism Minus the State?
In recent years, an idea commonly described as thick libertarianism has emerged among some libertarians. This perspective holds that libertarianism requires a commitment to a broader set of values beyond that of mere individual liberty, or the “non-aggression principle,” in order to be substantive or sustainable. The “left-libertarian” writer and philosopher Charles Johnson is arguably the most prolific and articulate proponent of “thick libertarianism.” In a recently published and important article on this question, Johnson begins by asking the central questions that thick libertarians wish to address:
To what extent should libertarians concern themselves with social commitments, practices, projects or movements that seek social outcomes beyond, or other than, the standard libertarian commitment to expanding the scope of freedom from government coercion? Clearly, a consistent and principled libertarian cannot support efforts or beliefs that are contrary to libertarian principles–such as efforts to engineer social outcomes by means of government intervention. But if coercive laws have been taken off the table, what should libertarians say about other religious, philosophical, social, or cultural commitments that pursue their ends through non-coercive means, such as targeted moral agitation, mass education, artistic or literary propaganda, charity, mutual aid, public praise, ridicule, social ostracism, targeted boycotts, social investing, slow-downs and strikes in a particular shop, general strikes, or other forms of solidarity and coordinated action? Which social movements should they oppose, which should they support, and towards which should they counsel indifference? And how do we tell the difference? 1
A survey of the writings of the leading proponents of thick libertarianism and those with similar or overlapping views makes it rather clear that, for most of these thinkers, “thick libertarianism” amounts to an effort to synthesize free-market, anarcho-individualism with a far-reaching leftist outlook on cultural questions. The following comments from Roderick Long are fairly representative of this perspective:
In short, I’m arguing for a combination of generic universalism with specific pluralism. That is, any anarchist society, to be viable, needs to draw its dominant economic and cultural forms from the same general set, but specific selections within that set are optional. Hence the anarchist must walk a delicate line between the Scylla of excessive pluralism and the Charybdis of excessive monism. After all, …no politico-legal framework – whether statist or anarchist – exists independently of the behavior it constrains. And as Gustav Landauer is reported to have said: The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently. Since the presence or absence of the State is determined by the way people behave, and that in turn is heavily influenced by economic and cultural structures, the notion that anarchy can be entirely neutral among such structures seems hard to defend. (Of course, anarchy will be neutral in the sense that no one will be compelled to abandon the wrong economic and cultural forms, so long as they’re peaceful; getting rid of such compulsion is the whole point of anarchy. But unless better forms prevail, by peaceful means, the survival of anarchy is imperiled.) Of course we can make mistakes about which economic and cultural models do or don’t fit with anarchy. But then, we can make mistakes about anything. I don’t see any reason for greater epistemic caution on economic and cultural matters than on political ones. Moreover, it’s not as though the only reason to combat a particular economic or cultural form is that it reinforces or is reinforced by statism. Statism isn’t the only bad thing in the world, after all; call me sentimental, but I think patriarchy, racism, fundamentalism, and corporate power would be worth combating even if they had no connection whatever to statism. 2
These comments provide an apt summary of the essence of thick libertarianism. As Charles Johnson notes, the matter of thick libertarianism “has often arisen in the context of debates over whether or not libertarianism should be integrated into a broader commitment to some of the social concerns traditionally associated with the anti-authoritarian Left, such as feminism, anti-racism, gay liberation, counterculturalism, labor organizing, mutual aid, and environmentalism.” 3 Presumably, for “left-libertarian” proponents of thick libertarianism such as Long and Johnson, a libertarian political and economic order is more or less a natural corollary to the values of modern cultural leftism as it has emerged in the Western countries since the 1960s.
Before I critique thick libertarian arguments of this type, I wish to begin by giving due recognition to the claims of thick libertarianism that I believe to be correct. I would concur with thick libertarians that there is more to life than politics, that there are values beyond the political, that while liberty may be the highest political value it is not the only value, and that a libertarian political order is more compatible with some intellectual systems, philosophical beliefs and cultural foundations than others.
Thick libertarians have also been important participants in the effort to challenge much conventional libertarian economic dogma. Too many modern libertarians have allowed their opposition to state-socialism and the welfare-state to cloud their thinking on economic matters and many of these libertarians have become outright apologists for the corporate plutocracy, or “Republicans who take drugs” as Bob Black referred to them. 4 Libertarians would do well to study, and perhaps even incorporate into their own ideological and strategic framework, the examples provided by the classical anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of anti-statist radicals who saw class-based politics as the natural complement to their libertarianism. 5 Indeed, many of those who identify with thick libertarianism to some degree or another have been at the forefront of recent efforts to move libertarianism away from its conservative image on economic matters and back to its radical roots. 6
On many social questions, I would share ground with thick libertarians as well. Many of the conventionally “left-wing” or left-libertarian positions held by most proponents of thick libertarianism are also my positions. I am pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, anti-death penalty (though not for the usual reasons), pro-drug legalization, pro-gay rights and pro-sex worker rights (in the sense of opposing persecution of these groups by the state), and pro-prison abolition. I’m also pro-homeless, pro-disabled people, and pro-mentally ill, in the sense of favoring abolition of state policies impeding the self-advancement of these groups or furthering their persecution (through such measures as loitering and vagrancy laws, zoning and other laws restricting the supply of low-income housing, involuntary civil commitment, regulations restricting the activities of shelters and relief organizations and others too numerous to mention). I am also anti-drinking age, anti-compulsory schooling, anti-censorship and I would put more strident limits on the powers of the police than the ACLU would. I am also interested in anarcho-syndicalist, mutualist, distributist or “libertari
an socialist” economics. These positions are well to the left of the Democratic Party, far more left than most liberals and even many hard leftists.
In terms of offering positive alternatives to the welfare state, I am very much for the development of non-state charities, relief agencies, orphanages, youth hostels, squats, shelters for battered women, the homeless or the mentally ill, self-improvement programs for drug addicts and alcoholics, assistance services for the disabled or the elderly, wildlife and environmental preserves, means of food and drug testing independent of the state bureaucracy, home schools, neighborhood schools, private schools, tenants organizations, mutual banks, credit unions, consumers unions, anarcho-syndicalist labor unions and other worker organizations, cooperatives, communes, collectives, kibbutzim and other alternative models of organizing production. I am in favor of free clinics, alternative medicine, self-diagnostic services, midwifery, the abolition of medical licensure, the repeal of prescription laws and anything else that could potentially reduce the cost of health care for the average person and diminish dependency on the medical-industrial complex and the white coat priesthood. Indeed, I would argue that the eventual success of libertarianism depends to a large degree on the ability of libertarians to develop workable alternatives to both the corporation-dominated economy and the state-dominated welfare and social service system. To the degree that libertarians fail to do so will be the degree to which we continue to be regarded as plutocratic apologists without concern for the unfortunate or downtrodden on the right end 7 or as just another species of Chomskyite anarcho-social democrats on the left end. 8
I mention all of this for the sake of firmly establishing that I am neither an economic conservative nor a conventional cultural conservative of the kind found in some conservative-libertarian or paleolibertarian circles. 9 I suspect that at this point in the discussion thick libertarians and I would still be on the same page. However, where a potential problem arises involves the possible implications of statement such as this one from Johnson that I have previously referred to:
Recently, this question has often arisen in the context of debates over whether or not libertarianism should be integrated into a broader commitment to some of the social concerns traditionally associated with anti-authoritarian Left, such as feminism, anti-racism, gay liberation, counterculturalism, labor organizing, mutual aid, and environmentalism. Chris Sciabarra has called for a dialectical libertarianism which recognizes that Just as relations of power operate through ethical, psychological, cultural, political, and economic dimensions, so too the struggle for freedom and individualism depends upon a certain constellation of moral, psychological, and cultural factors, and in which the struggle for liberty is integrated into a comprehensive struggle for human liberation, incorporating (among other things) a commitment to gay liberation and opposition to racism. 10
Implicit in this statement is the view that libertarians should simply align themselves with the conventional Left on social and cultural matters, essentially taking the position of me-tooing the Left on most issues with the qualification of oh, and by the way, we’re also against the state, and prefer voluntary charity over government welfare. If this approach is to be followed, then libertarians will end up positioning themselves as just another branch of the radical Left right alongside Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Greens, social democrats, welfare-liberals, Marxists, anarcho-communists and the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
Libertarians would do well to learn from the lessons to be drawn from past instances where libertarians have come to regard one or another faction of the Left or Right as kindred spirits only to be eventually stabbed in the back. It has been mentioned how libertarian opponents of the welfare state have frequently been co-opted by the apologists for plutocratic conservatism. Indeed, past efforts to ally libertarianism with traditionalist conservatism have proven to be a disaster. One need only take a look at the results of William F. Buckley’s New Right or Frank Meyer’s fusionism from the 1950s and 1960s. 11 Within the context of so-called movement conservatism, we have the edifying spectacle of libertarians, proponents of limited government and free-market economists acting as dupes and shills for the military-industrial-complex, the right-wing of the corporate ruling class and the American empire, only to see their movement taken over eventually by the warmed-over Cold War liberals and right-wing Trotskyites that fill the ranks of the neoconservatives. 12 Not exactly a model of success, to say the least. From the other end of the political spectrum there is the experience of traditional anarchists at the hands of the Marxists since the time of the First International, including their repression by the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution and the treachery they encountered from the Communists during the Spanish Civil War. 13
A similar analysis could be made regarding the relationship between libertarians and the cultural Left. Most contemporary libertarians are to some degree an outgrowth of 1960s era political and social radicalism. Libertarianism, whether in its right or left variations, really did not begin to coalesce as an organized movement until that time. 14 Previous libertarian movements had either died out or stagnated to the point of severe inertia. For this and other reasons, it should not be surprising that many libertarians continue to identify strongly with the values of sixties radicalism, including anti-racism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, counterculturalism and multiculturalism. This may be fine by itself. For instance, some libertarians may believe that anti-racism, feminism or gay liberation, among other things, are important values unto themselves, irrespective of wider politico-economic questions, just as other libertarians may believe that religious devotion, maintaining the cohesiveness of the family unit, or preserving the ethno-genetic lineage of Caucasian people (or some other people) are values of immense importance, and still other libertarians may be more concerned with the advancement of medical research, the preservation of historic architecture, bird watching, stamp collecting, soccer or rap music. So be it. I have already conceded that there may be other values of importance besides political libertarianism per se, and that such values could have meaning in their own right, irrespective of their relationship to libertarianism.
But what does any of this have to do with the struggle against the state? It should go without saying that any sort of political libertarianism worthy of the name should identify the state and its emanations such as state-privileged elites, central banking, corporatism, imperialism, militarism, police powers, penal institutions and the apparatus of statist propaganda (e.g. state-licensed media and state-run or financed education) as the primary political enemy. As a natural extension of this principle, it should likewise be recognized that the primary constituencies for libertarianism at any one time would be those individuals and social groups most under attack by the presently existing state and who are consequently most likely to take action against the state, and have the least to lose and the most to gain from the demise of the state. Still wider implications can be drawn from this observation. For instance, a serious anti-state movement will have a natural bias towards the lower socioeconomic orders, given that these bear the brunt of the state’s wrath and predations under virtually any kind of political arrangements. Additionally, a serious libertarian will look very askance at war and military offensiveness given the historic role of this in strengthening and glorifying the state and inflicting still greater oppression, hardship, suffering and death on those already most under the iron heel of the state.
When discussing the relationship between libertarianism and cultural leftism, it is necessary to make an honest attempt to establish a definition of the cultural Left in the first place. Reduced to its lowest common denominator, the cultural Left is a movement that is inclined to favor some demographic groups over others, on the grounds that these groups are somehow more oppressed, victimized or deserving of sympathy than their competitors, along with a wider set of values that tends to favor egalitarianism over elitism, universalism over the particular, internationalism ov
er nationalism, secularism over religion, and cosmopolitanism over traditionalism. Within the context of domestic American or European politics, the cultural Left indicates a bias towards racial and ethnic minorities, feminist women (the position of non-feminist women in the eyes of the Left is more tenuous), homosexuals (and, by extension, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgendered persons), and immigrants (or at least those immigrants originating from the Third World). These are the most obvious examples. Others include atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, proponents of religious ecumenicalism, and religious minorities, or at least those with left-wing political views or comprised to a significant degree of persons of non-European ethnicity. Still others are cultural minorities that might be considered non-traditional, with a bias towards those like hippies and punk rockers (who generally hold left-wing political views) as opposed to those like bikers and skinheads who are just as likely to identify with the political Right. In a wider socioeconomic sense, there is a cultural bias among leftists towards educated urban professionals over the traditional working class and rural people (particularly white people from these classes), labor unions over business interests, environmentalists over property owners and the public, i.e., state sector over the private sector.
The Tyranny of the Politically Correct Page 4