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Celebrity Death Match: Bastiat vs. Proudhon

By on March 12, 2008 6

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

In 1849, France’s leading spokesman for libertarian “capitalism” (Frédéric Bastiat) and France’s leading spokesman for libertarian “socialism” (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) exchanged a series of public letters debating the nature and legitimacy of charging interest on loans.

Bastiat and Proudhon In 1879, American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker translated most of the letters, which were then published serially in the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator – whereupon, apart from a few excerpts, they vanished henceforth from human sight.

I’ve managed to track down a copy of the Irish World in microform and transcribe Tucker’s translation. Where the microform was too dark to read (it was really a lousy copy) I made educated guesses based on the French original, marking my conjectures in brackets. I’ve also translated two additional letters not included in Tucker’s translation, and thrown in an anonymous public-domain translation of Bastiat’s earlier criticism of Proudhon (which was what sparked off the debate to begin with). As of today, the whole thing is now, finally, online as The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest.

Most of this debate has not been widely available in English since 1879; and parts of it (including Bastiat’s final reply to Proudhon) have never been translated into English until now.

So who wins? Well, in my view, neither one – the two thinkers persistently talk past each other. I’ve posted a fuller analysis here; I’ll also be presenting this material at the Austrian Scholars Conference later this week.

Roger Lee

By on March 12, 2008 3

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’m saddened to learn (from Tibor Machan) that libertarian philosopher J. Roger Lee has died.

Roger was one of the commentators at my very first APA presentation (Pacific Division, Los Angeles, 29 March 1990). More recently Roger contributed an essay to Tibor’s and my Anarchism/Minarchism anthology.

Dyer Straits

By on March 11, 2008 6

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’ve put the first half of Dyer Lum’s 1890 The Economics of Anarchy online. More to follow!

Dyer Lum I first heard of Dyer Lum from Frank Brooks, best known in libertarian circles today for his 1994 anthology of selections from Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty. When I met Frank, around 1986, we were both grad students at Cornell (he in political science, I in philosophy), and we carpooled together down to my first IHS conference as he told me about this oddly named fellow he was writing his dissertation on. (Though in a movement that includes Lysander Spooner, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Anselme Bellegarrigue, and Voltairine de Cleyre, perhaps “Dyer Lum” isn’t such an odd name.)

Lum was a mutualist anarchist along lines broadly similar to Tucker’s, a kind of fusion of Spencer and Proudhon, though Lum had a more optimistic view of the prospects for unions as vehicles of the labour movement. (He also preferred Buddhism to Stirnerism – the Absence-of-Ego and Its Own? – but that aspect of his thought doesn’t come out in this work.) Apparently Lum and de Cleyre collaborated on a long anarchist novel, the manuscript for which has been maddeningly lost. Judging from The Economics of Anarchy, I find Lum a less clear writer than either Tucker or deCleyre – but still a fun read.

Coming tomorrow: the Bastiat-Proudhon debate!

Fifth Business

By on March 7, 2008 11

What is neoliberalism?

1. Sometimes the term is used to mean the revival of classical liberalism, and so is roughly equivalent to a broad sense of “libertarianism.”

2. Sometimes the term is used to mean the contemporary, welfare-state liberalism that displaced classical liberalism.

3. Sometimes the term is used to mean a corporatist strategy of government intervention on behalf of big business but cloaked in deceptive free-market rhetoric.

4. Most often, it’s used for a confused amalgamation of (1) and (3), despite the fact that (1) and (3) are of course deeply incompatible. (This is a sign that the free-market rhetoric in (3) is successful; thus those who might like (1) are tricked into supporting (3) [result: “vulgar libertarianism”], while those who might wish to oppose (3) are tricked into opposing (1) [result: “vulgar liberalism”].)

I now learn of a fifth definition: neoliberalism is “the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action.”

It looks like this guy is one of those who confusedly glops (1) and (3) together into (4) and then attacks this nonexistent construct. But he seems to have added a new chimera on top of the old one. Even among the most wild-eyed fans of markets I have yet to meet anyone who actually thinks market exchange is “capable of acting as a guide for all human action.” (Not even Walter Block!)

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