Brad Spangler’s blog is one of the most articulate voices for left/libertarian reunification. I’d like to draw your attention to several recent posts in particular: one on how disagreements between libertarians and leftists often turn on both sides’s conflating social context with social causation; another on how Proudhon’s views on police and courts were closer to mainline market anarchism than is often realised; and a couple (here and here) debunking the “private-enterprise character” of corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart.
Interestingly, Proudhon explicitly viewed the notion of contract as reflecting the idea of exchange, “commutative justice.” He also explicitly said that the idea of society by contract was gradually replacing the society of status. Well, I’ll let him say it:
Great stuff, but now compare this dichotomy of an industrial, contractual society replacing an older military model, with Herbet Spencer’s “The New Toryism”:
Is this not the same vision?
And then, oddly, there is Milton Friedman,
I think it is plain that Proudhon, and later libertarians wanted to make society fully contractual. The only difference is that later libertarians better understood the nature of contractual relations.
A lot of these ideas go back to these guys.
hmmmm, although it sounds nice, I feel dubious. Looking at the paper Brad Spangler cites showing Wal-Mart’s corporate welfarism, one sees that it makes the classic leftish error of conflating government hand-outs with tax savings. Without information on the cost that Wal-Mart pays out in terms of taxes and defensive bribes to the political class, it’s impossible to say whether Wal-Mart is better off with or without the current system.
Also, I agree that the IWW sounds nicer than the dominant crop of state-sponsored unions, but I can’t say that I really understand quite what they would do if they had power that would be any good. I notice on their website that one of their achievements has been “needling union officials into demanding and gaining higher wages” — i.e., they got the state-sponsored unions to mess with the price system more vigorously. Although most of their goals seem pretty vague, I haven’t seen anything on their website which gives the impression that they actually understand anything about economics.
Otto:
Sorry, but the paper clearly distinguish between tax breaks and goverment direct hands outs. And it seems to me as a silly idea to think that the few possible “defensive” (since it is defensive to pay bribes to STEAL TAX PAYER MONEY) bribes walmart pays to goverment official is in any way closer to the money recieved/saved by goverment grants and tax exemptions.
Well, I’m sure they do distinguish between different types of benefits to Walmart, but my point is that tax breaks have no business being in a paper about subsidies at all. A tax break is just plain not a subsidy.
Also, when I say “defensive bribe”, I’m talking about bribes payed by Walmart to prevent the government from harming it. The difference between that and bribes paid to steal taxpayer money is exactly what I was trying to point out by saying “defensive”. However, I will agree that, in practice, it’s probably difficult to tell whether a given bribe is defensive or not. It might be the difference between getting harmed on the one hand and receiving taxpayer loot on the other.
Well, I think tax breaks are not always unproblematic. If companies X and Y are competing, and the government then gives a tax break to X but not to Y, it’s pretty clear that the government is thereby intervening in the economy to give X an unfair advantage over Y. (Of course that’s not per se a reason for opposing tax breaks. But it does mean that the benefits X reaps from its tax breaks are in part suspect, won at Y’s expense.)
When a robber gang assaults or harasses one individual and not another, we do not refer to it as subsidizing that second individual. This may have an effect of bringing about the flourishing of the latter over the former in fact, but I nonetheless think it wrong to refer to this as a subsidy due to the lack of intent on the part of the “subsidizer”.
However, this situation changes if they (the gang) are doing it at the behest of the second individual. It also may change if they are doing it without the other’s blessing, but with the intent of subsidizing his enterprise nonetheless.
If this is so, it seems we cannot rightly adjudge the character of the act until we know the motivations behind the State actors.
My concern with allying with the left is:
I think their natural response is to want to tax both actors, regardless of whether or not either was party to the extortion. My inclination is, if there is no wrongdoing, stop the State from attacking the one they are attacking and put them on an even footing that way, and if there is wrongdoing, make it stop and force the bad actor (and the State!) to pay restitution.
I honestly have never met a leftist who is both against the State and in favor of allowing people to engage in commerce freely. Those few whom I have encountered who seem to be anti-state seem to see wages as inherently unjust and a form of slavery at worst, or robbery at best. Alternately, they might theoretically allow for those things, but say that they are unjust in our world due to the “subsidy of history”.
If it were a matter of disagreeing on the aesthetics or the efficiency of certain economic organizations, I would say to them, go with my blessing. Let them organize as Proudhonian Anarchists or any kind of voluntary socialism that they so wish. They go their way, and I mine. I am concerned, however, that they are ideologically committed to seeing the liberal economic order as inherently unjust, and see it as their duty to destroy it.
I am no fan of the corporate hierarchical structure, but I do not see it as an inherent evil, nor is the concentration of great wealth or property ownership automatically wrong, nor is the arbitrage of great profits due to cleverness or industry somehow cheating one’s customers or exploiting one’s employees. Let me make it absolutely clear that I think either of those things CAN and DOES happen- just that it is not somehow automatically the case.
I sympathize with the left. As time goes on, I have become more and more disgusted with the corporatism of the American state, and hence I naturally gravitate towards their camp.
But Roderick, how can libertarians and the left be friends? Their answer to “bigness”, to “success” appears to be violence and the desire to create an enforced equality, regardless of how someone got that way. Unless they make the case that such success requires evil in order to be reached, we can’t be dance partners.
Mark:
You write:
“I am no fan of the corporate hierarchical structure, but I do not see it as an inherent evil, nor is the concentration of great wealth or property ownership automatically wrong, nor is the arbitrage of great profits due to cleverness or industry somehow cheating one’s customers or exploiting one’s employees.”
Well, what most leftist libertarians -and even non libertarian leftists- claim, is that “corporate hierachical structures” or “concentration of great wealth or property ownership” is USUALLY caused by the intervention of the state in favor of small elite of buisnessmen or landlords. And most libertarians I know -not of the leftist variety- tend to: ignore or simply downplay the role of the state in creating those structures or wealth accumulation. They pretend to tell us that is the work of “liberal economic order”, and well, the liberal economic order you defend appears to be that one of “state favoritism to plutocrats”.
So if you are supicious of the left, do you understand why the left is so suspicious of libertarians? And of course, you end in a vicious circle: the left concludes that “free market” and “liberal economic order” is equal to our current system of state favoritism for big buisness, and the left then considers that the solution is to destroy or limit the supposed “free markets” or “liberal economic order”, opposing the idea in principle; and then libertarians get more suspicious on the left and increase their rethoric supporting the actual capitalist system in the name of “free markets” or “liberal economic order” etc…
@Mark L.,
As to this comment: They go their way, and I mine. I am concerned, however, that they are ideologically committed to seeing the liberal economic order as inherently unjust, and see it as their duty to destroy it.
Sergio Méndez does a good job of explaining a fundamental reason, as I see it, as to why leftists are critical of markets. Indeed, as someone who voted a straight Green ticket as recently as 2000, I can affirm this since I too used to equate free trade and free market economics with the corporate statist status quo. It’s all too easy to do so, with politicans and economists pretending as if it were a free market, and so many libertarians buying into and promoting an understanding of things twisted by the vulgar brand of libertarianism.
Of those who identify with left-libertarian thought, I’d like to think that some are growing increasingly committed to challenging the inconsistencies and misapplications of free market advocacy while others seek to correct the mistaken assumption held by leftists that markets are to blame for societal problems.
Whether or not libertarians and leftists can be friends is all a matter of perspective. Most libertarians seem to have either firm right-wing roots or have merely adopted the prevailing understanding of things, one also heavily influenced by values typically associated with the right. I personally think that such a friendship makes a great deal of sense, while a libertarian/right-wing friendship makes little sense. Then again, my perspective has been greatly shaped by leftist thought over the years, and many of my values and goals more closely align with theirs.
Regarding the “subsidy of history”, I’d suggest checking out Kevin Carson’s writings on the subject, along with Joseph Stromberg’s “English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization: Two Instances of an Anti-Peasant Mode of Development”. The “subsidy of history” continues to this day in many forms, with intellectual property laws being one example of many.
Gentlemen,
I generally agree with both of you. We may disagree on the question of extent- for example, I am against most forms of intellectual property, but I tend to be skeptical of the scope of Kevin Carson’s subsidy of history- but we do indeed share many points of agreement.
This does not answer my concerns, however. Is the acquisition of significant wealth in of itself a wrong that must be righted by force? Although it is surely aided and abetted by the State today, do you believe that without State intervention, no one would become wealthy, and no companies would become large? Are wages slavery and/or theft? These are the sticking points which are important to me. I will not be friends with people who regard me as a thief, exploiter, and slavemaster. I believe that the left, in particular the radical left, believes all of these things.
Please let me make it clear that of course it is not your obligation to answer my objections and concerns. I voice them here not because I am somehow entitled to have you prove things for me, but because this seems to be a place that has willing voices to explain my questions about this position.
Sergio- regarding the left’s perception of libertarians as tools. Of course I quite agree. I do believe many libertarians have a view of Big Business as being “America’s most persecuted minority”, when even a casual glance at what Congress does should be more than enough to demonstrate that the opposite is true.
freeman- For the life of me, I cannot tell the difference between Mr. Carson’s (Prof. Carson’s?) mutualism and syndicalism. I believe that his system is both radically inefficient (which does not create a bone of contention between us) and that it must presume that many economic forms of organization that I see as perfectly legitimate are actually stories about slaves and masters (which does).
As I said before, I have no inherent problem with people who organize themselves as Proudonians or Mutualists or what have you. My concern is that these “allies” are ideologically committed to seeing me as a monster for favoring what I see as legitimate business exchanges. If that is correct, then any alliance against the State with them is nothing more than an alliance of convenience for them, with me and mine next on the menu.
Mark:
Well, left libertarians don´t claim their won´t be wages or that there won´t be any wealth accumulation in true libertarian society. We rather think that most of the corporate buisness model, hierarchical and with massive accumulation of wealth in so few hands, will be greatly diminished, since it will lack of the crucial support of the state.
Now, I think in a true libertarian society will not be free of conflicts between workers and bosses. And probably there will be a right and left side who support either side, but none will require the coercitive power of the state. But I also think it will offer the chance to more people to be their own bosses or bosses in small private enterprises instead of the giant corporate oligopolies that run free today in the name of “free markets” and have so little to do with it.
Mark,
Check out Kevin’s more recent posting on the subject. He even channels Rothbard and Hess to back up the position.
“My concern is that these “allies” are ideologically committed to seeing me as a monster for favoring what I see as legitimate business exchanges.”
But I think the point of Brad’s post was that this is not necessarily so. They are mistaken for seeing you as a monster as you are mistaken for not seeing that sometimes (many times these days) that wage relationships can be seen in a “slave-master” manner. Brad is trying to bridge that gap so that the left side of the libertarian movement does not consider you “as a thief, exploiter, and slavemaster”, a process started by Rothbard himself with ‘Left And Right’.
Bottom line is we are all libertarians – we all agree on using the free market and voluntary association and interactions. We agree about choice, meaning some may decide to arrange as Mutualists or as wage workers, in coops, syndicates or as individuals and can still co-exist. I anyone thinks that working for wages is exploitation, they should, in an anarchist society, simply choose not to work that way.
But give Brad a chance, I think he is really onto something.
Mike, you said:
“But I think the point of Brad’s post was that this is not necessarily so. *They* are mistaken for seeing you as a monster as *you* are mistaken for not seeing that sometimes (many times these days) that wage relationships can be seen in a “slave-master” manner.” (emphasis mine)
No, *I* definitely see that wage relationships can be a slave-master relationship. Indeed, I registered at his blog specifically to express my agreement with that sentiment. What I do not see, however, is any evidence of leftists, particularly radical leftists, seeing *me* as less of a monster. Immediately after I posted my agreement, I added that I was extremely skeptical of his idea of alliance with the IWW. They wish to abolish the wage system. That doesn’t mean “only the bad ones that use government to strengthen their power” or even the more generous “businesses that benefit unfairly from the status quo”, but rather all wages everywhere.
When I read Mr. Carson’s work, I cannot possibly imagine how he would find it acceptable that I would, say, want to start a business, hire people, and that I might profit more than those whom I employ. I do not believe that we “agree about choice”, as you say- rather I think that I tolerate their choices, but they see mine as pure evil. I see no mention of “legitimate” employers in Carson’s world- it seems one must be an independent worker or part of a worker’s collective of some sort to have any claim to an ethical business arrangement.
Now, if Mr. Carson is actually saying that in a truly free market world there will be few or none employer-employee relationships (and they would instead be entirely replaced by worker’s collectives, etc) well, I disagree, but that is a matter of divining people’s choices and not the inherent condemnation of either system. I do not, however, think that is what he is saying at all. It seems to me that he is openly condemning any such system as being inherently oppressive. Do I misunderstand him? I’m not being sarcastic, I honestly want to know. Additionally, how does he differ from anarcho-syndicalism?
I generally agree with most everything both you and Sergio have said. You are what I would term “left-libertarians”. Where we differ is in wondering what alliance can be had between left-libertarians and “true” (for lack of a better term) leftists.
Mark,
Regarding mutualism vs. syndicalism, here is a snippet from one of Kevin’s entries on labor issues:
As an individualist anarchist, I should add that I see unions useful mainly as revolutionary weapons against the state capitalist enemy. They are a form of defensive force against organized capital and its state, which have initiated aggression by invading the peaceful sphere of market relations. The need for direct action will disappear as soon as the state ceases to intervene in the market on behalf of landlords and capitalists. Although I am a proud Wobbly, I do not see the free market as something to be transcended by militant unions–but rather, something for them to fight for. “Abolition of the wage system,” for me, does not mean an end to the sale of labor (after all, according to Tucker, that labor should be paid is the whole point of socialism); it means an end to state-enforced separation of labor from ownership, and labor’s resulting tribute to the owning classes in the form of a wage less than its full product.
I think you should spend more time reading Kevin’s writings before jumping to conclusions. I think you’re misunderstanding him quite a bit. Your understanding of him seems to paint him almost as a statist, or at least someone openly hostile to free enterprise, which he certainly isn’t.
Regarding this: What I do not see, however, is any evidence of leftists, particularly radical leftists, seeing *me* as less of a monster.
Libertarianism’s woeful wedding with plutocratic interests has been an over century-long blemish, along with the continued propagation of court historian mythology about state regulation being necessary to protect people from the market. Do you honestly expect these established phenomena to be fatally wounded and disappear overnight due to a few obscure anarchist blog entries here and there?
It’s gonna take time. Patience is a virtue here.
“…state-enforced separation of labor from ownership, and labor’s resulting tribute to the owning classes in the form of a wage less than its full product.”
As I understand it, his point here is that anyone who pays someone for their labor and makes a profit upon the worker’s labor is stealing from the worker. Is this true, or false?
I am sorry, but from what I have read of Mr. Carson, he is playing fast and loose with the term “free market”. He *seems* (I could be wrong) to think that a free market can consist solely of collectives or individuals, and terms anyone who believes in the legitimacy of the employer-employee relationship as a “state capitalist” whose business form is either criminal in of itself or (less problematic) only sustained by a criminal state. I think it’s the former, though. Can you cite any mentions he makes of legitimate business arrangements that are nonetheless hierarchical?
“Libertarianism’s woeful wedding with plutocratic interests has been an over century-long blemish, along with the continued propagation of court historian mythology about state regulation being necessary to protect people from the market. Do you honestly expect these established phenomena to be fatally wounded and disappear overnight due to a few obscure anarchist blog entries here and there?
It’s gonna take time. Patience is a virtue here. ”
Point taken. However, even if I have sympathies towards them, I guess I find it difficult to imagine they having any sympathies towards me.
Mark:
You write:
““…state-enforced separation of labor from ownership, and labor’s resulting tribute to the owning classes in the form of a wage less than its full product.”
As I understand it, his point here is that anyone who pays someone for their labor and makes a profit upon the worker’s labor is stealing from the worker. Is this true, or false?”
But the quote of carson that freeman posted says explicitly:
“Abolition of the wage system,” for me, does not mean an end to the sale of labor (after all, according to Tucker, that labor should be paid is the whole point of socialism); it means an end to state-enforced separation of labor from ownership, and labor’s resulting tribute to the owning classes in the form of a wage less than its full product.”
I do not know how to use bold letters and Italics but please note that Carson says:
1- That “Abolition of the wage system,” for me, does not mean an end to the sale of labor”
2- It specifically speaks of STATE ENFORCED separation from ownership
So why do you insisit in misreading him?
Sergio,
I am sorry if we cannot continue a polite discussion about this. With respect, I did indeed read those passages. I just assumed, and still do, that Carson *only *allows labor to be sold when outside a hierarchical structure. If memory serves, his mutualist labor theory of economics specifically refers to the employer-employee relationship as being one that intrinsically involves theft.
He DOES allow labor to be sold, indeed, but from what I can tell, only at it’s “fair” price, which automatically rules out employer-employee relationships as they are inherently (on his account) exploitative. Therefore, it can indeed be sold, but only by a laborer or labor collective of equal partners to a consumer or another laborer/collective. Which is the very point I was making.
I can tell that I am making you angry, so I will stop now. Thank you for the chat, I can see that this really isn’t for me.
Best Regards,
Mark
Mark:
I am sorry if I sounded unpolite, which was never my intention. You are not making me angry and I hope you don´t leave the discusion. My tone was more of amazment than of anger, or at least it was intended -as unsucesfull it was-. So I apologize if you felt I was unpolite.
The point I am trying to ilustrate you is that Carson preocupation is only with a wage system created and sustained by the state. Carson thinks -and so do many in the libertarian left, myself included- that once you get rid of state intervention on markets the ACTUAL system of wages -one that is favorable to bosses and unfavorable to workers- will fall appart.
So is not that Carson opposes you for trying to pay wages in an “inherently exploitative system”. Is that Carson thinks that in a true free market society you will not simply be able to DO SO. You are welcome to try, but it will simply not work. Not only cause state intervention in favor of bosses will not be there, but also, cause in a true free market workers will have more economic oportunities to be their own bosses or will have better chances of negotiating contracts with their bosses if they happen to work for a wage in any enterprise.
So the point, to be more specific, is that contrary to what you claim, we do not think that a system of wages in a true free market society will be “inherently exploitative”. That is a claim subjet to empirical verification, not an irreconciliable difference of principles you see between you and left leanning libertarians.
Mark said:
He DOES allow labor to be sold, indeed, but from what I can tell, only at it’s “fair” price…
No. Carson, as I understand him, contends that the behavior of markets, when completely free, will tend to drive towards a “fair” price — although that’s probably an oversimplification. Your use of the word “allow” above would seem to imply quite the opposite — a sort of confusion of prediction with (coercive) prescription.
Gentlemen,
Thank you for clarifying that point. I will have to read Carson closer, so as to avoid misunderstanding him further. Even though I do disagree with his predictions of peoples’ behavior in a free market, that in of itself need not be a bone of contention between us.
Thank you for your patience!
Chiming in a bit late here (sorry, been especially busy lately), but yes, Brad is right: Carson does not propose to forbid wage labour or employer-employee arrangements; rather, he thinks that were it not for government intervention, such situations would naturally tend to disappear.
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that Carson is right to think that the wage system would be much less prevalent without governemnt intervention. I think he overstates his case in thinking that it would disappear entirely (or almost entirely) — though I do think that to the extent it persisted, it would do so on terms much more favourable to the employee than at present.
But in any case this is a disagreement about prediction, not prescription — though one reason Carson’s claim can seem prescriptive is that he also thinks it would be a good thing if wage labour ceased to exist. Nevertheless, Carson’s position, as I understand is, is that if he turned out to be wrong and wage labour persisted in some forms in a free market, he would still favour a free market. (Certainly this was Tucker’s position — just as Rothbard held for his part that if he were wrong and wage labour did vanish in a free market, he would still favour a free market.)
Another ground of possible misunderstanding here is that Carson’s view on wage labour is sometimes confused with his view on rent and absentee landlordship. With wage labour Carson has (mostly, anyway) the same view as Rothbardians as to the rights involved; only the economic predictions differ. In the case of rent, by contrast, Carson thinks absentee landlorship is actually unjust; that’s a difference in rights theory, not just in prediction.
That said, it’s a less sharp difference than it might initially appear, since Carson has frequently said that the free society he envisions is one that is likely to have a variety of different local property arrangements, including both mutualist and Rothbardian varieties; that if local residents prefer a Rothbardian system that recognises absentee landlordism then that’s fine with him; and that resolution of conflicts among different property regimes via arbitration rather than violence is both likely and desirable. So I don’t think there really needs to be any great conflict between Rothbardians and mutualists (at least Carson-style or Tucker-style mutualists; Proudhon himself is a more complicated case).
Sorry to have joined in this so late. Roderick, Brad, Freeman and Sergio seem to have already addressed Mark L.’s specific concerns about wage labor, and about the causality behind wealth concentration and bigness, better and more thoroughly than I would have. A few supplemental remarks:
Otto Kerner:
I can’t speak for anybody else on the conflation of subsidies and tax savings, but I think it’s legitimate to an extent. You don’t have to presuppose that the income rightfully belongs to the state to view tax expenditures as a form of favortism. Targeted tax breaks, like subsidies, have the practical effect of providing differential competitive benefits against those engaged in other forms of economic activity. Rather than close loopholes, I would prefer to eliminate the corporate income tax altogether. But so long as the corporate income tax exists, one of its primary effects is to heighten the respective competitive advantages and disabilities of different degrees of state favor. To the extent that the oligopoly sector is cartelized and can pass costs on to the consumer, the corporation tax is already a tax on the competitive sector of the economy. In addition, when you figure in tax breaks that promote capital accumulation, concentration, and capital- and tech-intensive forms of production, you wind up with specific sectors of the corporate economy that pay little or no taxes. The effect is exactly the same as if you started with a corporate tax rate of zero and then imposed a punitive tax disability only on those firms engaged in low-tech, labor-intensive forms of production.
On whether bribes are “defensive,” that’s a political question that can be answered pretty easily by simply observing the political role that Wal-Mart plays in local government. In my own experience, in NW Arkansas, the local government *is* Wal-Mart, along with the local real estate and trucking industries. More generally, on a national scale, the rotation of personnel between the state and the management of large corporations means that in practical terms the state-corporate nexus is a single entity, rather than a state “acting on” corporations. Or in Mark L.’s terms, the “robber gang” is not a separate entity from the favored individuals, but is an executive committee made up largely of those individuals themselves. Disclaimer: I tend to be heavily influenced by Mills’ elite theory on such matters.
Mark L.:
I agree that many on the left see the liberal economic order as inherently unjust. Their view is incorrect, but quite understandable. The problem is that the statist left, as well as centrist liberals like Thomas Frank, take the neoliberal use of “free market” at face value. If the “free market” really meant what corporate interests and their political and journalistic lackeys meant by the term, I’d hate it myself.
Those on the left who hate the current power of big business (and associated evils like polarized wealth, economic exploitation, and pollution) do so for good reason. Unfortunately, their understanding of the causality behind these things is flawed. But again, it’s quite understandable. They grow up in a universe of discourse where both right-wing apologists for big business, and adherents of the “liberal” regulatory-welfare state, share the same mirror-imaged version of reality. Whether it’s a corporate propagandist of the right, or Art Schlesinger, Jr. on the “left,” their common assumption is that corporate power and plutocracy emerged from a system of “laissez-faire,” and that the regulatory-welfare state came about to restrain the power of big business. Again, if “free market” meant what Bill Gates, Dick Armey and Tom Friedman all agree it means, I’d hate it myself. The “vulgar libertarians” probably bear most of the blame for the left’s ingrained hostility to what they understand as “markets.”
Roderick:
Actually, I don’t necessarily believe wage labor would “disappear almost entirely” with the elimination of privilege. Your statement that it would be much less prevalent, and that what remained would be qualitatively different, is probably closer to my own position. Among other things, I share Tucker’s belief that a lot of nominal capitalist ownership and wage labor would persist. But even when nominal “residual claimancy” of the firm remained with a capitalist owner who hired wage labor, the increased bargaining power of labor would result in drastically reduced rates of profit on capital as such. At the same time, the increased bargaining power of labor would cause the organization of work and the firm’s decisionmaking to take on, increasingly, the character of a partnership. So a firm under nominally capitalist ownership would, de facto, resemble a producers’ cooperative, and the profit would fall to levels approaching that just necessary to amortize the owner’s original investment and compensate him for the “wages of superintendence.”