One “BrainPolice” provides a fairly thoughtful commentary on my article What Libertarianism Is in The Definition and Scope of Libertarianism. The main thrust of his post seems to be it’s unfair to call Mises and Nock non-libertarians; and that my paper is not a full-length treatise (it doesn’t deal with everything); and that well, I can’t say what libertarianism is or says, since libertarians disagree. Well. But let me reply to a few comments.
The first issue is that it is not at all clear that “capitalism” (or at least, the particular norms that tend to be associated with “capitalism”) inherently arises as the only economic system or forms of economic organization that can coherently be derived from libertarianism. Of course, this also depends on how “capitalism” is defined. If “capitalism” is merely being used to mean “whatever results from voluntary interaction”, then there is no reason why the norms of libertaran socialism couldn’t concievably arise as a particular manifestation of “capitalism” – which is confusing language. Presumably, these things (such as worker’s cooperatives and mutual aid organizations) are technically “permitted” in a libertarian society.
However, the use of the term “capitalism” among many libertarians tends to conceal the implicit assumption that a certain specific set of modes of economic organization are inherent to it (such as the corporation, traditional wage labor, and so on). This is a conflation of voluntary interaction in general with a particular type of organization or interaction. What’s more, various libertarians have put foreward a criticism of them on the grounds that their relative dominance is within the context of an already-existing non-libertarian social order or political system, and that there are certain reasons for postulating that people would have an incentive to choose alternatives to them in a libertarian social order.
Well. I specifically excluded “capitalism” as being the best way to define libertarianism, so this criticism seems wasted. And in context, I think it was clear what I meant: “Capitalism and the free market describe the catallactic conditions that arise or are permitted in a libertarian society“–meaning I’m referring to the market. “Capitalism” to refer to the common way of describing an advanced market economy in which capital is privately owned, instead of collectively owned. As the dictionary defines it, capitalism is “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”I must say it drives me bonkers when pointless arguments about substantive matters are derailed by dwelling on (a) semantics, or (b) strategy (see my The Trouble with Libertarian Activism). (Re point (b): It also irks me when people derail substantive arguments and discussions by focusing on irrelevant issues such as whether it’s “fair” to have an opinion on what libertarianism is, or that it might imply that a Georgist is not a libertarian. For goodness sake, let’s get on with it, shall we?)
For this reason I reject the left-libertarians equation of capitalism with corporatism and socialism with … anything good (see my posts comment on Kevin Carson’s post “Socialism: A Perfectly Good Word Rehabilitated” and Wladimir Kraus: “Yes, Socialism is Collectivism and Capitalism is “Wage System”!”). But I will say that I have begun to use the term “anarcho-libertarian” in preference to “anarcho-capitalist,” despite the fact that I don’t see too much wrong with “capitalism” as a term and concept, other than, as noted in my article, it’s too narrow to equate to libertarianism itself.
If we don’t accept Kinsella’s particular formulation of libertarianism, we could concievably accuse it of condoning aggression.
So what? I suppose a Marxist views the libertarian property rights scheme as implying (what he implicitly views as) aggression. In other words, everyone who has a political opinion necessarily thinks others who disagree with him are… wrong. I don’t see a newsflash here.
As an additional note that may be worth considering, on the flip side of the matter, there is a sense in which would could say that property rights are dependant on the non-aggression principle, in that not aggressing against others is a norm with respect to the process of aquiring property. The very nature of trading and gift-giving is that of a non-aggressive process of action. One could therefore coherantly say that this works in both directions: there is a sense in which what constitutes aggression with respect to property is dependant on how property rights are defined to begin with, and there is a sense in which how property rights are defined to begin with is dependant on a question about aggression. This isn’t as simple as it may initially appear to be.
Well, it was a short Mises Daily article. Not a full length treatise.
Kinsella proceeds to talk about “self-ownership”:
A system of property rights assigns a particular owner to every scarce resource. These resources obviously include natural resources such as land, fruits of trees, and so on. Objects found in nature are not the only scarce resources, however. Each human actor has, controls, and is identified and associated with a unique human body, which is also a scarce resource. Both human bodies and nonhuman, scarce resources are desired for use as means by actors in the pursuit of various goals.
Accordingly, any political theory or system must assign ownership rights in human bodies as well as in external things. Let us consider first the libertarian property assignment rules with respect to human bodies, and the corresponding notion of aggression as it pertains to bodies. Libertarians often vigorously assert the “nonaggression principle.” As Ayn Rand said, “So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate — do you hear me? No man may start — the use of physical force against others.”
I highlighted the statement about any political theory having to assign ownership rights in bodies as well as in external things because I think part of the problem is that libertarians often do not make it clear that their notion of “self-ownership” does not function exactly the same as property rights in external objects. That is, when we think of ownership over external objects, we normally think of them as exchangable (or givable) commodities. However, this is not the same sense of “ownership” that most libertarians mean by “self-ownership” in that it is not concieving of one’s body as an exchangable commodity, it is inalienable. It is a claim of autonomy or individual sovereignty. The problem with murdering and assaulting people need not be concieved of in a propertarian manner or using propertarian language.
I am not clear on the point of this comment, or why it is supposed to be a criticism of me. Okay, so let’s grant that “libertarians often do not make it clear that their notion of “self-ownership” does not function exactly the same as property rights in external objects”. I was explicit as I could be about the distinction, and have been before in papers linked in the notes, e.g. “How We Come To Own Ourselves” and “A Libertarian Theory of Contract.”
I have also argued in excruciating detail about exactly why body-rights are inalienable and why ownership does not in and of itself imply the right to sell or exchange–but only happens to, in the case of homesteaded property, precisely because of the way that acquisition of rights in such unowned things differs from the basis for rights in one’s body. (See “A Libertarian Theory of Contract,” pp. 26-30; Inalienability and Punishment, pp. 91-92.)
Kinsella goes on to talk about the relation between “self-ownership” and non-aggression.
In other words, libertarians maintain that the only way to violate rights is by initiating force — that is, by committing aggression. (Libertarianism also holds that, while the initiation of force against another person’s body is impermissible, force used in response to aggression — such as defensive, restitutive, or retaliatory/punitive force — is justified.)
Now in the case of the body, it is clear what aggression is: invading the borders of someone’s body, commonly called battery, or, more generally, using the body of another without his or her consent. The very notion of interpersonal aggression presupposes property rights in bodies — more particularly, that each person is, at least prima facie, the owner of his own body.
The highlighted qualifier about defense and retaliation is not as cut and dry as it may initially seem. Libertarians have all sorts of internal disputes about precisely what constitutes defense, and most libertarians have a different view on “retaliation” than ARI Objectivists do. ARI Objectivists tend to justify many wars on the grounds of “retaliation” that most libertarians would object to as initiations of force. Furthermore, it is not at all clear that pacifists don’t qualify as libertarians. If a commitment to the non-initiation of force is a prequisite to being a libertarian, then pacifists not only qualify as libertarians, they exceed the qualification. I therefore think it makes sense to maintain that pacifists are actually defacto libertarians.
Libertarians, even those who are not absolute pacifists, also have internal disputes about violent punishment. Some libertarians take a “maximalist position” in which physical violence is supposed to be justified in response to minor property transgressions, some libertarians take a “proportionality” position in which “maximalism” is ruled out as an unproportionate response to the initial crime, and some libertarians categorically reject all violent punishment as an inherent violation of the non-aggression principle. Libertarians are also split on the death penalty. Rothbard restricted the death penalty to cases of murder, but some libertarians support either a broader death penalty or no death penalty at all.
My comment was simply recognizing that as we are against initiated force, this implies that there is some other type of force that we do not oppose as illegitimate. I refer to it as “responsive” force to distinguish from initiated force: there is force that is initiated, and then force in response to this initiated force. Sure, there is disagreement about what constitutes responsive force. But I have my own views about what libertarianism requires.
Considerations like this demonstrate that libertarianism cannot be so easily simplified and that the non-aggression principle cannot merely be stated as some sort of single-line maxim without begging a whole host of important questions with respect to how aggression is defined and the context that the non-aggression principle can be said to have. Libertarians don’t even all agree with eachother on whether or not the non-aggression principle genuinely can be said to have axoimatic status (indeed, while Kinsella quotes Rand, she did not consider it to be a contextless axoim) and there are endless disagreements about what its foundations and implications are.
She did not “consider” it to be contextless but it is stated by Galt as something that is easy to understand on its own terms, primary, and simple.
He quotes me as saying:
The libertarian says that each person is the full owner of his body: he has the right to control his body, to decide whether or not he ingests narcotics, joins an army, and so on. Those various nonlibertarians who endorse any such state prohibitions, however, necessarily maintain that the state, or society, is at least a partial owner of the body of those subject to such laws — or even a complete owner in the case of conscriptees or nonaggressor “criminals” incarcerated for life. Libertarians believe in self-ownership. Nonlibertarians — statists — of all stripes advocate some form of slavery.
His response:
There are two main issues with the implication of the part in italics. The first issue is that it seems unfair and oversimplistic to claim that minarchists are not libertarians.
Well, if it’s unfair to charge someone who advocates even partial slavery as a non-libertarian; if it’s “unfair” to charge someone who advocates the initiation of force against innocents as a non-libertarian (at least to that extent), I stand, proudly, guilty as charged.
The very person who the site that this article was written for is named after was a minarchist: is Kinsella going to claim that Mises was not a libertarian?
Mises was about as close to anarchist as you can get without being one (see Was Mises an Anarchist?). But to the extent he advocated the state and the aggression it employs, to that extent he deviated from libertarian principle.
He quotes my:
Unlike human bodies, however, external objects are not parts of one’s identity, are not directly controlled by one’s will, and — significantly — they are initially unowned. Here, the libertarian realizes that the relevant objective link is appropriation — the transformation or embordering of a previously unowned resource, Lockean homesteading, the first use or possession of the thing.[19] Under this approach, the first (prior) user of a previously unowned thing has a prima facie better claim than a second (later) claimant, solely by virtue of his being earlier.
His reply:
I must repeat that it is not at all fair for Kinsella to be defining non-proviso lockeanism as a rigid requirement for one to be a libertarian. Geolibertarians and proviso lockeans are not non-libertarians for not accepting the anarcho-capitalist hardline on land property – unless Kinsella wishes to denounce sacred cows such as Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov for the sin of geoism.
“Fair”? Well, it’s my view, sorry. I’ve provided reasons for it (see Down with the Lockean Proviso). As for Georgists: yes, I believe this is an utterly ridiculous and completely unlibertarian view (see Egads, I hate Georgism).
Furthermore, even if we agree with the general notion of original appropriation, we do not necessarily have to agree that the original appropriator legitimately maintains ownership forever and ever from that point onwards (or until they die). Hence the notion of abandonment (and abandonment is not based on the mere “intent” to abandon), which is really what the “occupancy and use” qualification that some people have for property reduces to: a more stringent notion of abandonment than that which is commonly held by anarcho-capitalists and non-proviso lockeans. And both the notion of “occupancy and use” and property “returning to the commons” is not a quantative timeline that functions as some sort of arbitrary regulation, it is a qualatative matter.
I have explained in detail why it is inappropriate to consider mutualism’s occupancy requirement as a type of abandonment rule similar to those of Lockean systems. Instead, it is a use-requirement. (See A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy; Left-Libertarians on Rothbardian Abandonment.) Even worse, as noted in Left-Libertarians on Rothbardian Abandonment, is that even if you agree that leaving property unused means the owner gives up title, there is no justification whatsoever for the paternalistic, socialistic evisceration of the right to contract implied in the case where the owner uses another person as an agent (such as a tenant or employee). The mutualist project depends, as far as I can tell, on the right of “workers,” say, to seize the factories–after all the owner is “distant” and is not himself “occupying” or using the property. So he has abandoned it. This is ridiculous and unlibertarian, in my view.
What I would like for Kinsella to entertain is the possibility that the claim of the “latecomer” is not always wrong by definition, that there can be circumstances in which the “prior comer” has become so disconnected from the property and that the “latecomer” has established a significant connection to the property that the “prior comer’s” claim is actually the one that is nullified. There may be at least some cases in which the “first owner” actually doesn’t have a “better claim”, and is indeed nothing but a “possessor” without a legitimate claim to the property anymore.
Of course. The very idea of an act of crime upsetting the prima facie set of rules implies this. And the idea of some form of “acquisitive prescription” (which I specifically noted in “A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy,” linked in note 23 of my paper) does too. But I explained there why this idea cannot be stretched to get you a use or occupancy requirement, especially not one that would eviscerate the contract between owner and agent (e.g., employee or tenant).
I would also like to point out that if we adopt as an absolute rule that the “late comer” is always in the wrong and the prior possessor is always the legitimate owner, then this justifies the state, because the state is the defacto prior owner of the land in the societies that we are simply born into. In fact, this is a huge hole in anarcho-capitalism, in which the very arguent that anarcho-capitalists give in favor of land owners can just as easily be applied as a defense of any state and as an explaination for state formation.
Well, sure, the rule is a prima facie or ceteris paribus one. The state’s homesteading of property can be viewed any number of ways. Some view it as illegitimate and view the property “as unowned.” I find this fiction to be confusing and dishonest. It’s not unowned, and not un-homesteaded. In my view, the state can be viewed as the agent for its claimant-victims, or as holding their property since they have claims on it. So the second the state homesteads property, the owner is people who are owed restitution by the state.
Update: BrainPolice also says this in his comments: “The second issue is that it is not at all clear that all libertarians agree with Murray Rothbard that “all rights are property rights”, or that this view is a necessary component of being a libertarian.”
In response to this, I wanted merely, for now, to quote part of Hoppe’s withering retort to Loren Lomasky’s attack, which can be found at p. 411 of Economics and Ethics of Private Property:
Like most contemporary philosophers, Lomasky gives no indication that he has grasped the elementary yet fundamental point that any political philosophy which is not construed as a theory of property rights fails entirely in its own objective and thus must be discarded from the outset as praxeologically meaningless moonshine.
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Stephan, I think you’re pretty much spot on addressing BP’s critique. However…
“So the second the state homesteads property, the owner is people who are owed restitution by the state.”
I see what you’re saying here, but I think this begs the question of how such property should be used–according to a properly libertarian standard–until such time as restitution has taken place.
Bob,
Do you mean question-begging, literally, as in circular argumentation, or do you mean “raises the question”? As for how the property shoudl be used, I am not sure there is a decisive libertarian answer to such second-bestisms; for a sketch of one approach along these lines see my A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders.
Yes, I suppose I meant “raises the question”, not “begging”. Thanks.
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