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A Question for Critics of Ron Paul’s Critics

By on December 4, 2007 42

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Most of my libertarian comrades seem to think that Ron Paul is either a) the Second Coming, or b) the Apocalypse. (The former viewpoint dominates at LewRockwell.com, while the latter dominates, with some exceptions, at LeftLibertarian.org. See also, of course, the L & P exchange – 86 posts and counting – here.) I’m somewhere in between: I have a lot of serious problems with his candidacy, but I admit I’m also gratified every time I see his poll numbers rising.

But there’s one argument that the (a) group offers the (b) group that I find very puzzling. This is an argument directed primarily to those members of group B who oppose Paul’s candidacy because of his stands on some particular issues (e.g., immigration, abortion, gay rights, constitutionalism), as opposed to those who oppose his candidacy on the basis of a rejection of electoral politics in general – i.e., it’s directed toward those who would be open in principle to supporting a political candidate and just have problems with this one.

Paris Hilton wants you dead The argument goes like this: “Even if you think Paul is wrong on some particular issues, he’s still far, far more libertarian than any of the other candidates, so why not support him?”

The reason I find this argument puzzling is that those who make it would not, I suspect, find it plausible in most other contexts.

Imagine, for example, that instead of Ron Paul it’s Randy Barnett who’s running for President. Paul and Barnett have a lot in common; they’re both fairly thoroughgoing libertarians, they’re both enthusiasts for the Constitution, and they both take some positions that many libertarians regard as deviations.

I suspect that a Barnett candidacy would be far less popular among Group A folks than a Paul candidacy. Barnett’s two major deviations, from their point of view (and mine too, for that matter), would be his support for the war and his insufficiently decentralist approach to federalism. Yet the argument that they have offered on behalf of Paul would seem to apply equally well to Barnett: “Even if you think Barnett is wrong on some particular issues, he’s still far, far more libertarian than any of the other candidates, so why not support him?”

Now maybe that would be a good argument and maybe it would be a bad argument, but whichever it is, it seems like an exactly analogous argument. So if, as I bet, most members of Group A would resist the pro-Barnett argument (I base my guess on Group A’s furious reaction to Barnett’s Wall Street Journal article), why should they expect Group B folks to accept the analogous pro-Paul argument?

Perhaps the reply will be that Paul’s deviations, if such they be, are still consistent with libertarianism, while Barnett’s are not. But if “consistent with libertarianism” means “consistent with libertarian principle properly understood,” then to call something a deviation is precisely to say that it is not consistent with libertarianism. On the other hand, if “consistent with libertarianism” means “consistent with the proponent’s still counting as a libertarian,” then it seems to me that both Paul’s and Barnett’s deviations are consistent with libertarianism in that sense. (If Ludwig von Mises – advocate of conscription and the Cold War, and admirer of Abraham Lincoln – counts as a libertarian, how could Barnett fail to do so?)

Or perhaps the reply will be that Barnett’s deviations are important and fundamental, while Paul’s, if any, are minor and peripheral. But of course Group B folks are not likely to agree that Paul’s deviations are minor and peripheral. Consider the case of immigration (since that’s an area where Paul explicitly favours federal enforcement rather than merely turning things back to the states). Now libertarians disagree over immigration; some see a difference between keeping people inside one’s borders and keeping them out, while for others there’s no difference. I think the second position is the right one (if the party doing the enforcing doesn’t own the land on either side of the border, then it doesn’t make much moral difference whether the enforcing party itself is located on the territory being migrated to or the territory being migrated from); but whether it’s the right one or whether it isn’t, it at least seems clear that it’s no surprise that those who do find the two policies precisely analogous are going to find Paul’s immigration policy non-trivially objectionable, since they’ll see it as on a par with supporting the Berlin Wall. Now maybe there’s still a good case for supporting generally libertarian candidates whose stands on some particular issues you find horrifically anti-liberty; I can see arguments pro and con on that. But those in group A who would not support a Barnett candidacy owe Group B an explanation of why the two cases differ. (Of course any member of Group A who would support a Barnett candidacy is exempt from the charge of inconsistency.)

Workers For Rent?

By on November 18, 2007 9

Thanks to Anon2 for pointing me to David Ellerman’s online book Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy. Thus far I’ve only looked at (really just skimmed) the first 40 or so pages out of 184, so I can’t yet say how much of it I’ll end up agreeing or disagreeing with, but I can see already that this is an important book that left-libertarians should be reading.

the separation of labour from management Briefly, here’s what I’ve gotten out of it so far. Both defenders and critics of capitalism (where by “capitalism” Ellerman seems to mean not the market economy per se but the separation of labour from management) assume that the ownership of the means of production automatically brings with it presumptive ownership of the product. Hence defenders of capitalism tend to infer the legitimacy of the capitalists’ ownership of the product from the presumed legitimacy of their ownership of the means of production, while critics of capitalism tend to infer the illegitimacy of capitalists’ ownership of the means of production from the presumed illegitimacy of their ownership of the product. But as Ellerman (who, ironically enough, looks like Uncle Sam and has worked for the World Bank) points out, ownership of the product of, say, a factory is determined by a contract between the factory owners and the workers, not by the mere fact of who owns the factory. (After all the workers own a crucial means of production too – namely themselves.) If we think in terms of the factory owner hiring workers, then it will seem natural to regard the factory owner as having first claim on the product, minus whatever he agrees to pay the workers. But if we think instead in terms of the workers renting a factory, then it will seem natural to regard the workers as having first claim on the product, minus whatever they agree to pay the factory owner.

All of the above is absolutely right, and shows that “capitalism” in the sense of free markets and private ownership of the means of production doesn’t necessarily entail “capitalism” in the sense of managerial hierarchy and the wage system. This is welcome news for those, like me, who seek lefty-style worker empowerment within the context of libertarian economic laissez-faire – and it raises natural questions about what, exactly, determines the relative strengths in bargaining power between owners of labour and owners of capital, and whether the prevailing balance is mainly the result of free markets, government intervention, or other. (As my regular readers will know, I think capital’s dominance stems primarily not from free markets but from government intervention plus “other,” the other being socio-cultural stuff.) Ellerman’s points also lend support to Kevin Carson’s critique of the presumption that labour contracts must be interpreted in term favourable to the owners of capital.

Now from what Ellerman has said so far, my impression – which may or may not turn out to be right – is that he is about to go on to argue that because self-ownership is inalienable and indivisible, contracts to rent oneself out (which is how Ellerman describes labour contracts) are not legitimate even though contracts to rent out inanimate objects like property are perfectly fine – so that contracts whereby labour hires capital are permissible while contracts whereby capital hires labour are not. Thus capitalism conflicts with self-ownership, and workers are after all entitled to their “whole product” – though they may legitimately have to pay the owners of capital out of it.

Anyway, whether or not this is what Ellerman is going to argue, it’s something that somebody might argue, and indeed arguably something that various folks historically have argued (isn’t this after all more or less what William Godwin means when he distinguishes the legitimate “empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own industry, even that part of it the use of which ought not to be appropriated to himself” (emphasis added) from the illegitimate “faculty of disposing of the produce of another man’s industry”), so let me say what initially strikes me as right and wrong about it.

Libertarians are divided over the precise nature of service contracts. For some libertarian theorists, when I make a contract with you to perform some service, you thereby acquire a right to my service, and may legitimately compel its performance. This position, taken to its logical extreme, implies the possibility of my conferring upon you a right to any and all of my future services – a slavery contract – and a number of libertarian thinkers, most notably Robert Nozick and Walter Block, have indeed drawn that conclusion and defended the libertarian legitimacy of voluntary (that is, initially voluntary) slavery.

Other libertarian theorists – including Murray Rothbard, Randy Barnett, and your humble correspondent – regard moral autonomy as inseparable from moral personality, and so hold that I have no power to grant you any right to compel my services. On this view, contracts over inalienable services, in order to be legitimately enforceable, must be founded on or translatable into contracts over alienable goods. Thus if you pay me $50 to weed your garden, what you acquire is not a right to compel me to weed your garden, but rather a right to get your $50 back, plus damages, if I don’t weed your garden.

On this interpretation, it will be quite true that contracts to “rent oneself out” or “rent out one’s labour” will not be legitimate, at least if understood as granting to the employer an unconditional right to direct the employee’s labour.

But it doesn’t seem to follow that employment contracts per se are illegitimate; for can’t the factory owner (assuming, as Ellerman is willing to do, that the owner’s claim to the factory is legitimate) reason as follows?

The Capitalist Speaks “This factory, and the raw materials in it, are my property, and I allow the workers to use it only on certain conditions, which are spelled out in the contract. The workers are taking stuff that I own and rearranging it to make new stuff; I agree to allow them to do this, on condition that I get to keep what they make – and they agree to this stipulation, on condition that I pay them an agreed-upon amount. So the contract concerns only alienable goods; the employment contract doesn’t involve renting people or renting people’s labour, it merely concerns conditional transfers of inanimate objects. Now just as the money I pay them is theirs only on condition that they do what they agreed to – for otherwise I acquire a right, not to compel their service, but to reclaim my money – so the factory equipment and raw materials are theirs to use only on condition that they again do what the agreed to, namely, turning over the products to me. If they don’t, my claim to the equipment and materials reverts back to full force, and they have in effect been using my property without my permission. You don’t get a right to the improvements you made in something if it was someone else’s property at the time.”

Hence while I agree that the prevailing system of wage contracts is both undesirable in itself and unlibertarian for “thickness” reasons (e.g. it draws support from statism logistically, props up statism psychologically, and is wrong for some of the same reasons that statism is wrong), I can’t see that wage contracts in their current form are per se a violation of libertarian rights.

Those, anyway, are my preliminary reactions – to a work I’ve only read the first bit of, and that in a cursory fashion – so I’m not sure how applicable my remarks are to Ellerman’s position or, if they are, what responses he might already have developed. I definitely plan to read further and more thoroughly, but I wanted to alert my readers to this fascinating book (I’m sure some of you know about it already, but I reckon many won’t), share some initial thoughts, and invite my readers into the conversation.

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In related news, Kevin Carson has posted some more chapters (see here and here) of his book on the managerial irrationality of statism-dependent hierarchically structured firms. Enjoy!

Hold-fast Is the Only Dodd

By on November 15, 2007 1

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

In tonight’s Democratic debate, when asked which should take priority, national security or human rights, Chris Dodd said something like the following: “National security, of course. When the President takes the oath of office, he swears to do two things: to protect the Constitution, and to protect our national security. So clearly national security is number one.” Later on in the debate he repeated the first half of this odd claim, saying something like: “The President doesn’t swear to protect the country or protect the Constitution, he swears to do both.”

Chris Dodd Now even if it were true that the President swears to do both those things, it’s hard to see what would entitle Dodd to conclude that the second one must take precedence over the first. But in fact there’s nothing about national security in the presidential oath of office:

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now perhaps someone might argue that protecting national security is involved in “faithfully execut[ing] the Office of President of the United States.” But in the Constitution’s listing of presidential duties, the only presidential function that has anything to do with national security is serving as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States.” And who determines when or whether the army, navy, and/or militia are to be “called into the actual service of the United States”? The Congress. The President is not supposed to be proactive in military policy; he’s supposed to lead the troops against enemies of Congress’s choosing, at a time of Congress’s choosing, for a duration of Congress’s choosing. There’s no way of construing this modest assignment into some sort of sweeping license to suspend constitutional rights in the interest of national security.

So either a) Dodd is lying, or b) he doesn’t know what’s in the oath he’s so desperate to take or the Constitution he’s so eager, or c) he thinks protecting the Constitution just means protecting “it” from foreign invasion and not, say, protecting the rights enumerated in its text.

Now I, obviously, don’t think that protecting the Constitution and protecting human rights amount to the same thing, and I don’t much care about presidential oaths one way or another. Still, it’s clear enough that the function of Dodd’s surreptitiously slipping the presidential oath’s actual requirement (protecting the Constitution) into second place behind its invented requirement (protecting national security) was to downplay the importance of rights, and to lend colour of law – or colour of presidential oath, anyway – to such downplaying. So, for the record: the presidential oath clearly places constitutional rights above national security. If you don’t like those priorities, then for God’s sake stop running for the job that requires you to swear to uphold them.

Playing With Fire

By on November 13, 2007 24

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Because Ron Paul sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, some critics have inferred (not unreasonably) that he supports bans on flag-burning. In fact he doesn’t; he was simply trying to make the point that such bans would presently be unconstitutional, and so that those who do favour making flag-burning illegal are obligated to amend the Constitution.

It was for similar reasons that Paul introduced a declaration of war against Iraq – not because he supports such a war (nobody who’s followed his campaign even slightly could suppose that), but because he wanted to make the point that a war is unconstitutional unless Congress declares it – so that if his colleagues take the Constitution seriously they should show it by, um, doing their wrong deeds the right way.

Okay, I get it; but I don’t much care for the strategy.

burning flag What’s my objection? Well, I’m not making the criticism that his introducing these proposals is risky because Congress might actually vote for them; if the mood of the Congress were such that they had a chance of passing, someone else would already have introduced them, so I don’t think it was especially risky (though it is disconcerting to see a loaded gun being tossed around to make a political point, even if the safety is on).

No, my complaint is that this strategy focuses unduly on the unconstitutionality of Congress’s misdeeds rather than their wrongness. Paul clearly doesn’t think that aggressive wars and flag-burning bans would be unobjectionable if only they were constitutional; but his strategy could encourage that belief.

Of course as an anarchist I don’t regard the Constitution as having any authority; but I don’t think my criticism depends on that point. Assume the truth of minarchism; or assume the correctness of Barnett’s case for the anarcho-compatibility of the Constitution; or even just assume (and this much is definitely true) that a federal government that kept itself within constitutional bounds would be enormously, staggeringly preferable to the one we have now – and I still think my criticism holds. However objectionable a law’s unconstitutionality is (and I do think, as things stand, that a law’s being unconstitutional is a serious ceteris paribus objection to it), such a law’s being inherently unjust is surely a more serious objection to it. As a political strategy, introducing resolutions encouraging Congress to pass unjust constitutional amendments in order to render other unjust actions constitutional (thus making the Constitution more unjust – as though whatever legitimacy the Constitution possesses could be independent of its content!) can only foster the misleading impression that unconstitutionality is a more serious problem than injustice. I’m not saying that Paul believes that; I don’t think he does. But I do think he has been trying to serve two masters – constitutionality and natural justice – and this particular strategy I fear serves the lesser master at the expense of the greater.

Incidentally, on a tangentially related subject, can anyone tell me precisely what Ron Paul’s views on abortion are? Because I know he recently supported legislation declaring human life protected from the point of conception; but I seem to remember that back in the 90s he was supporting RU 486 (the “morning-after pill”) as a desirable alternative to abortion, which would imply that he thinks protected status begins at some point later than conception. (Didn’t he have an article in Liberty in this subject? Unfortunately my back issues are packed away.) So has he changed his mind, or is there some nuance I’m missing? Does anyone out there know more?

Rage for the Machine

By on November 9, 2007 0

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Thanks to the Mises Institute, Isabel Paterson’s 1943 classic The God of the Machine is now online (as a honking big PDF file). The book’s central thesis is that there are systematic analogies between political structure and engineering structure, and that the freest and most prosperous societies historically have been those which adopted the appropriate structure. But such a bald description of its thesis falls short of conveying the brilliant, fascinating, witty, eloquent, insightful and sometimes frustrating character of this libertarian masterpiece.

Isabel Paterson and the glowing ovoid When I first read this book, probably around 1982, I thought it was one of the most exciting books I’d ever read, and it had an enormous influence on me – for better or worse! Paterson’s arguments were in fact one of the reasons it took me so long to convert to anarchism (not till 1991, from having first become a libertarian in 1979); she’d convinced me that a free society requires the right political structure. She was perfectly right, of course; her mistake, and mine, was thinking of political structure solely in terms of state structure, and so failing to see that an anarchy has political structure too. I have plenty of other beefs with the book (her analysis of the role of big business in American history, for instance, is sometimes too right-libertarian, albeit not consistently so), and I still don’t know quite what to make of her engineering analogies (which she denied were analogies!). For some of my skirmishes with Paterson’s ideas see here, here, and here. But the book still rocks.

Earrings, Abortions, and A Fortiori Arguments

By on November 6, 2007 7

Tonight on the news I heard this same old argument again: “If minors need parental permission to have their ears pierced, shouldn’t they have to get parental permission in order to have an abortion?”

foetus earrings? The assumption underlying this argument is clearly that if it’s okay to require parental permission in the case of something as relatively insignificant as ear piercing, it must be even more justified to require such permission in the case of abortion – as though the case for requiring parental consent were stronger for abortion than for ear piercing.

But surely the asymmetry goes precisely the other way. I don’t know what I think about requiring parental consent for ear-piercing – I haven’t given it much thought – but clearly no great harm is done to a child when parents refuse to allow ear-piercing, and so requiring parental consent in that instance, whether justified or not, is not especially burdensome to the child. But to force an underage girl to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term can ruin her life – to say nothing of the “merely” physical pain and danger involved. In brief: preventing one’s daughter from having an abortion counts as child abuse; preventing her from getting her ears pierced does not. Hence even if requiring paternal permission in the case of ear-piercing is legitimate, requiring parental permission in the case of abortion is not.

(Of course there’s the further nasty fact that in all too many instances the father of the pregnant girl is also the father, by incestuous rape, of her foetus, in which case requiring her to get her father’s consent is especially obscene. Anti-abortion websites dismiss this argument, trumpeting the statistic that incest results in pregnancy in only about one percent of cases. Some pro-choice websites list a much higher statistic, but suppose the lower figure is correct; it seems to show an astonishing callousness to dismiss that “one percent” as a small number. If one percent of all anti-abortion activists were being thrown off Beachy Head into the English Channel and then buried, I reckon it would seem like a large enough percentage then.)

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