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Cato Institute Publishes Leftist Screed!

By on November 10, 2008 20

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Mine, that is. There’ll also be a round of responses and counter-responses over the next week or so (the “Cato Unbound” format).

Cato Institute building with Alliance of the Libertarian Left logo superimposed Here’s Cato’s summary of my essay:

In this month’s lead essay, philosopher and libertarian theorist Roderick Long draws a sharp contrast between corporatism and libertarianism properly understood. He argues that liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians have all been guilty to some degree of obscuring this difference, and that the quality of our political discourse has suffered accordingly. He suggests that libertarians should guard themselves against falling into the trap of “vulgar libertarianism,” in which all things good spring from business, and particularly from business as usual. Corporations, he argues, should be no more free of scrutiny than any other institution in a free society, and often businesses have done more than their share to hamper free economic relations in the industrialized world.

One implication of all of this is that the truly free market is farther away than we imagine. Long suggests several ways in which a freed market might look different from what we see around us today. Notably, nearly all of these differences are to the benefit of the consumer and the small or start-up business. These likely outcomes of laissez faire suggest new grounds for left-liberals and libertarians to revise their thinking on economic issues and on politics more generally.

And here’s Cato’s introduction to the whole exchange:

This issue tackles a grave misconception: the idea that corporations and markets are synonymous, and that what’s good for the one is good for the other.

Astute economists have noted that far too often, corporations act to restrict the free operation of the market. Corporations that have become successful in a free or quasi-free market don’t like to face competition any more than any other entity, and their success gives them the resources, unfortunately, to stifle would-be competitors. In these cases, corporations and governments can often find themselves in an unholy alliance against consumers, other firms, and liberty itself. Corporatism, in other words – a system that seems to value corporations as an end in themselves.

And after that – what’s an advocate of the free market to do?

lying thieving mutualist conquers all In this month’s lead essay, philosopher and libertarian theorist Roderick Long examines the often tangled relationship between governments, corporations, and those who argue both for and against laissez-faire capitalism. Is a truly libertarian politics possible? Or do libertarians always run the risk – despite their best intentions – of sounding like, or acting like, apologists for an alliance between the state and corporations?

In the rest of the issue, we will hear from three authors with different takes on corporatism and its relationship to free-market advocacy. Political analyst Matthew Yglesias has expressed skepticism about libertarian and free-market advocacy in the past, owing to corporate entanglements. Economist Steven Horwitz has argued that many of our current economic troubles owe precisely to corporate entanglements with the state, and has urged liberals and libertarians to recognize the many potential points of agreement they might find on these issues. And economist Dean Baker has criticized what he refers to as the “conservative nanny state,” or the ways in which the wealthy use their resources to harness government power to their own advantage. Be sure to stop by through the week as our contributors debate these very important issues for the future of a free economy.

Needless to say, I’m excited to have such a prominent forum for the promotion of the cause, and I’m particularly happy to express my gratitude to Jason Kuznicki for offering me this opportunity, as well as to my various left-libertarian comrades on whose ideas I have freely drawn in my essay. Our quest for world domination continues ….

A Heap of Slavery

By on November 9, 2008 6

Nozick’s Tale of the Slave is online. You should go read it (it’s short) before continuing this post.

 

 

heap of slaves Okay, welcome back. Although the story ends with a question I think it’s clear that the intended answer is “none of them,” and that the sequence of cases is meant to be a kind of argument for that conclusion.

It’s important to see, then, that Nozick’s argument is not merely a Sorites argument.

A Sorites argument has the structure “A isn’t different enough from B to belong to a different category; B isn’t different enough from C to belong to a different category … and so on … so all the instances A through Z must belong to the same category.” Thus a pile of three pebbles isn’t a heap; a pile of four pebbles isn’t different enough from a pile of three pebbles to be categorised differently – so no number of pebbles can ever be large enough to count as a heap.

Although there’s philosophical disagreement as to how to describe exactly what’s gone wrong, that kind of argument is clearly fallacious; so if that’s all that Nozick’s argument were doing it wouldn’t be very impressive. But I think there’s a more charitable way of understanding the argument – namely that in each transition from one case to the next we are meant to recognise that the essence of slavery has not been affected – that slavery isn’t at all about how kindly or cruelly one is treated, for example. In a Sorites, each stage is a bit more heaplike than the next, whether it gets all the way to heaphood or not; but – Nozick wants us to see – each stage of his story is not any more freedomlike.

Class Struggle, Libertarian Style

By on November 5, 2008 6

some people protesting something Here at last (in PDF format – HTML versions to follow in futuro) are two broadly left-libertarian articles I wrote in the 90s that I’ve been promising for some time to post here. (The second one is broken into two parts because I can’t upload files greater than 5 MB.)

1. Immanent Liberalism: The Politics of Mutual Consent

2. Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class, Parts One and Two

[Originally published in Social Philosophy & Policy 12.2 (Summer 1995) and 15.1 (Summer 1998), respectively; © 1995 and 1998, Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation; posted by permission of the Foundation.]

The first article critiques mainstream liberalism for privileging indirect and hypothetical forms of consent over direct, actual consent; the second explores the relation between big government and big business and argues that the malign power of the latter depends mostly though not entirely on that of the former. Both articles attempt to overcome the dichotomy between “capitalist” and “socialist” versions of antistatist radicalism.

Blogging the Encyclopedia, Part 1: Who Wrote What

By on October 28, 2008 13

The Cato Institute’s Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, forthcoming for lo these many years, has finally forthcome; I received my copy in the mail yesterday. (Cato offers it for $125, and Amazon (as of this writing) for $90; I could have gotten it from the publisher at an author discount for $75, but I managed to find a copy online at the Strand for only $60.)

Encyclopedia of Libertarianism My comrades in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left will be wondering how our perspective fares in the book. At first glance, not terribly well; there are no entries for Konkin, agorism, or mutualism, and the entry on left-libertarianism is devoted exclusively to the Vallentyne/Steiner position and ignores our variety of left-libertarianism entirely. On the other hand, though, there are entries for Proudhon, Spooner, Tucker, and Hess.

Surprisingly, there is no entry for the Libertarian Party or for any libertarian think tank.

I noticed a couple of errors concerning contributors: Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad’s last name is misspelled “Ahmed,” while the entry on José Ortega y Gasset is misattributed to David Fitzsimons (DMF) when it should actually be Dario Fernández-Morera (DFM). (I also would rather have been listed as Roderick T. Long instead of Roderick Long, but that’s fairly trivial.)

More annoyingly (from my point of view), some editorial infelicities seem to have crept into my own entries, in a number of cases transforming my true sentences into false ones. I’ve put my original drafts online with the more egregious alterations marked.

Still, all such quibbles aside, it looks pretty good, and I’m very much looking forward to diving into it. To be sure, anything called an encyclopedia of libertarianism is bound to be filled with much I agree with and much I disagree with, but I don’t know yet which is which; so I propose to read through it from A to Z (actually A to W – Abolitionism to Wollstonecraft), blogging as I go. (Hence my new blog category, “Cato Encyclopedia.”) I’ll begin that process with my next post; but first, I thought readers would be interested in which contributors wrote which articles, and the book doesn’t bring that information together clearly in one place, so I’ve compiled a list:

Richard Adelstein: Progressive Era
Jonathan Adler: Environment
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad: Islam
Paul Dragos Aligica: Black Markets, Bureaucracy, Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, State, Gordon Tullock
Nigel Ashford: Subsidiarity
Ralf Bader: Immanuel Kant, Natural Harmony of Interests
Charles Baird: Labor Unions, Mont Pelerin Society
Doug Bandow: Conscription
Robert Bannister: William Graham Sumner
Randy Barnett: U.S. Bill of Rights, Lysander Spooner
Norman Barry: Rule of Law, Spontaneous Order
Patrick Basham: Political Parties
David T. Beito: Charity/Friendly Societies
Bruce Benson: Illicit Drugs, Robert LeFevre, Restitution for Crime
Tom Bethell: Private Property
Colin Bird: Liberal Critique of Libertarianism
David Boaz: Ed Clark, John Hospers, Roger MacBride, Tonie Nathan, Ron Paul
Peter Boettke: Austrian School of Economics
Clint Bolick: Affirmative Action, Racism
Donald Boudreaux: Antitrust, Free-market Economy, Material Progress, Price Controls, Leonard Read [with Nick Slepko], Julian Simon
Karol Boudreaux: Eminent Domain/Takings
Richard Boyd: Frank Knight
John Mark Brady: Richard Cobden
James Buchanan: Italian Fiscal Theorists
T. Patrick Burke: Jeremy Bentham
Guy Calvert: Gambling
Michael Cannon: Health Care
Bryan Caplan: Anarchism, Fascism, David Friedman, Laissez-Faire Policy
George W. Carey: Conservatism, Fusionism, Henry Sumner Maine
Ted Galen Carpenter: Foreign Policy [with Malou Innocent]
Alejandro Chafuen: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Scholastics/School of Salamanca
Michael Chapman: Communism
David Conway: Classical Liberalism
Leda Cosmides: Evolutionary Psychology [with John Tooby]
Anthony Coulson: Education
Tyler Cowen: Division of Labor, Market Failure
Stephen Cox: Isabel Paterson
Christie Davies: Sociology and Libertarianism
Stephen Davies: General Introduction, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Capitalism, Cities, Civil Society, Imperialism, Limited Government, Magna Carta, World Slavery
Jarett Decker: Capital Punishment
Anthony de Jasay: Presumption of Liberty
Douglas Den Uyl: Virtue
Detmar Doering: Wilhelm von Humboldt
Brian Doherty: Karl Hess, Israel Kirzner, Charles Murray, Murray Rothbard
James A. Dorn: Peter Bauer, Lao Tzu
Wayne Dynes: Sexuality
Lee Edwards: Barry Goldwater
Hans Eicholz: Puritanism, Pursuit of Happiness
Richard Epstein: Liability
Rod L. Evans: H. L. Mencken, Responsibility, Thomas Szasz
Dario Fernández-Morera: José Ortega y Gasset [with Lester Hunt]
Edward C. Feser: Conservative Critique of Libertarianism
David Fitzsimons: Thomas Paine
Antony Flew: Humanism, John Milton
Sigrid Fry-Revere: Bioethics, Euthanasia
David Gordon: Minimal State
Bettina Bien Greaves: Henry Hazlitt
Dan Griswold: Free Trade, Immigration
Gregory Gronbacher: Lord Acton
Charles Hamilton: Albert J. Nock
Ron Hamowy: Editor’s Introduction, Cato’s Letters, Chicago School of Economics, English Civil Wars, Adam Ferguson, Glorious Revolution, Friedrich A. Hayek, Adam Smith, Whiggism
David Harper: Entrepreneur
Jim Harper: Internet
David M. Hart: Charles Comte, Marquis de Condorcet, Benjamin Constant, Charles Dunoyer, French Revolution, Gustave de Molinari, Jean-Baptiste Say, Destutt de Tracy, A. R. J. Turgot
John Hasnas: Utilitarianism
Gene Healy: Drug Prohibition, War Powers
Stephen Hicks: Enlightenment
Robert Higgs: Peace and Pacifism, War
Randall Holcombe: Democracy
Steven Horwitz: Family
Guido Hülsmann: Austrian Theory of Banking, Frédéric Bastiat
Jeff R. Hummel: U.S. Civil War, Federalists versus Anti-federalists, William Lloyd Garrison
Thomas M. Humphrey: Joseph Schumpeter
Lester Hunt: Friedrich Nietzsche, José Ortega y Gasset [with Dario Fernández-Morera], Self-interest
Sanford Ikeda: Interventionism, Jane Jacobs, Rent-seeking
Malou Innocent: Foreign Policy [with Ted Galen Carpenter]
Bill Kauffman: Decentralism
David Kelley: Objectivism
Maureen Kelley: Children
Israel Kirzner: Socialist Calculation Debate
Daniel B. Klein: Assurance and Trust
Alan Kors: Freedom of Speech
Jackson Kuhl: Prohibition of Alcohol
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard: Levellers
Jason T. Kuznicki: Denis Diderot, Dutch Republic, Michel Foucault, Marxism, Michel de Montaigne, Charles de Montesquieu, Nationalism, Classical Republicanism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Separation of Church and State, Alexis de Tocqueville
Jo Kwong: Antony Fisher, Thomas Sowell
Dwight R. Lee: Wealth and Poverty
Peter Leeson: James Buchanan
Leonard Liggio: Robert Taft
Brink Lindsey: Social Security
Roderick Long: John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Epicureanism, Liberty in the Ancient World, Nonaggression Axiom, Stoicism
Nelson Lund: Right to Bear Arms
Tibor Machan: Kleptocracy, Positive Liberty
Eric Mack: Auberon Herbert, Individual Rights, John Locke, Retribution for Crime
Douglas MacKenzie: Ronald Coase, Competition, Keynesian Economics
Daniel J. Mahoney: Bertrand de Jouvenel
David N. Mayer: U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson
Deirdre McCloskey: Industrial Revolution
Robert McDonald: American Revolution, George Mason, Right of Revolution
Wendy McElroy: Abortion, Feminism and Women’s Rights, William Godwin, Pornography, Richard Price, Voltaire, Voluntarism, Mary Wollstonecraft
Fred Miller: Aristotle, Natural Law, Natural Rights
Daniel Mitchell: Tax Competition
Andrew Morriss: Anarcho-capitalism, Common Law, Law and Economics
John Mueller: War on Terror
Michael Munger: Regulation
Jan Narveson: Contractarianism/Social Contract [with David Trenchard], Government [with David Trenchard], Thomas Hobbes [with David Trenchard], David Hume [with David Trenchard], Left Libertarianism [with David Trenchard]
William A. Niskanen: Public-choice Economics
Johan Norberg: Globalization
Eric O’Keefe: Term Limits
Walter Olson: Thomas B. Macaulay
Tom G. Palmer: Cicero , Cosmopolitanism
Allen Parkman: Marriage
Ellen Frankel Paul: Robert Nozick
Mark Pennington: Urban Planning
Robert W. Poole: Privatization
Benjamin Powell: Voluntary Contract Enforcement [with Edward Stringham]
Christopher Preble: Frank S. Meyer, Military-Industrial Complex
Sharon Presley: Étienne de la Bo&eaute;tie
Stephen B. Presser: Roscoe Pound
Terry Price: Coercion, Consequentialism, Freedom
David Prychitko: Socialism
Douglas B. Rasmussen: Theories of Rights
Lawrence W. Reed: William Wilberforce
Matt Ridley: Genetics
Jeff Riggenbach: Henry David Thoreau
Gabriel Roth: Transportation
Jonathan Rowe: George Washington
John Samples: Corruption, Federalism
Timothy M. Sandefur: Censorship, Constitutionalism, Frederick Douglass, Political and Ethical Individualism, Judiciary
Jeffrey A. Schaler: Psychiatry
David Schoenbrod: Delegation
M. L. Schut: William Gladstone
Chris M. Sciabarra: Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand
Jeremy Shearmur: Collectivism, Karl Popper
Stephen M. Sheppard: Edward Coke, Albert Venn Dicey
Aeon Skoble: Individualist Anarchism, John Stuart Mill
Mark Skousen: Classical Economics, David Ricardo
Nick Slepko: Leonard Read [with Donald Boudreaux]
Bradley Smith: Campaign Finance
George H. Smith: Abolitionism, Thomas Aquinas, Henry Thomas Buckle, Richard Cantillon, Conscience, Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Equality, Existentialism, Freedom of Thought, Thomas Hodgskin, Francis Hutcheson, Methodological Individualism, Bernard Mandeville, Mercantilism, Franz Oppenheimer, Philosophic Radicals, Physiocracy, Praxeology, Progress, Religion and Liberty, William Nassau Senior, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer
Solveig Singleton: Privacy
Vernon L. Smith: Experimental Economics [with Bart Wilson]
Jason Sorens: Secessionism
David Ramsay Steele: George Orwell
Aaron Steelman: Anti-Corn-Law League, Gary Becker, John Bright, Frank Chodorov, Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman, Intellectual Property [mentions me!], Richard Posner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wilhelm Röpke, Algernon Sidney, George Stigler, Benjamin Tucker
Edward Stringham: Voluntary Contract Enforcement [with Benjamin Powell]
Amy Sturgis: Robert Heinlein, Rose Wilder Lane
Michael Tanner: Welfare State
Joan Kennedy Taylor: Roy Childs
John Tooby: Evolutionary Psychology [with Leda Cosmides]
David Trenchard: Contractarianism/Social Contract [with Jan Narveson], Government [with Jan Narveson], Thomas Hobbes [with Jan Narveson], David Hume [with Jan Narveson], Left Libertarianism [with Jan Narveson], Slavery in America
Louis Torres: Arts and Public Support
Ian Vásquez: Economic Development
Michiel Visser: John Adams, Edmund Burke
Alexander Volokh: Externalities
Richard Wagner: Taxation, Knut Wicksell
Robert Whaples: Great Depression, New Deal
Lawrence H. White: Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, William Leggett, Carl Menger, Money and Banking
Will Wilkison: F. A. Harper, Paternalism, John Rawls, Max Stirner
Bart Wilson: Experimental Economics [with Vernon Smith]
Leland Yeager: Ludwig von Mises
Kate Zhou: Culture
Michael Zuckert: James Madison

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