Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:27 — 15.4MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 152.
This is my speech “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?” delivered at the NYC LibertyFest (Brooklyn, NY, October 11, 2014). The original title was “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: A Reassessment and Reappraisal” but I was allotted only about 15-20 minutes so condensed the scope and could only touch briefly on many of the matters discussed.
This audio was recorded by me from my iphone in my pocket; video and a higher-quality audio should be available shortly.
The outline and notes used for the speech is appended below, which includes extensive links to further material pertaining to matters discussed in the speech. An edited transcript is available here.
Speech Notes/Outline
Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?
Stephan Kinsella
NYC LibertyFest, Brooklyn, NY
October 11, 2014
Introduction
- Modern libertarianism is about 50 years old. Main figures: Rand and Rothbard.
- “three furies of libertarianism” (Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism): Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, and Isabel Patterson (1943)
- Mises, Hayek, Read, Friedman
- Rand Atlas, 1957; Rothbard, MES, 1962
- From a Foreword I wrote for a forthcoming libertarian book:
Modern libertarian theory is only about five decades old. The ideas that have influenced our greatest thinkers can be traced back centuries, of course,[1] to luminaries such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill, and to more recent and largely even more radical thinkers such as Gustave de Molinari, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Bertrand de Jouvenal, Franz Oppenheimer, and Albert Jay Nock.[2]
The beginnings of the modern movement can be detected in the works of the “three furies of libertarianism,” as Brian Doherty calls them: Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, and Isabel Patterson, whose respective books The Discovery of Freedom, The Fountainhead, and The God of the Machine were all published, rather remarkably, in the same year: 1943.[3] But in its more modern form, libertarianism originated in the 1960s and 1970s from thinkers based primarily in the United States, notably Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. Other significant influences on the nascent libertarian movement include Ludwig von Mises, author of Liberalism (1927) and Human Action (1949, with a predecessor version published in German in 1940); Nobel laureate F.A. von Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom (1944); Leonard Read, head of the Foundation for Economic Education (founded 1946); and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, author of the influential Capitalism and Freedom (1962).
The most prominent and influential of modern libertarian figures, however, were the aforementioned novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, the founder of “Objectivism” and a “radical for capitalism,” and Murray Rothbard, the Mises-influenced libertarian anarcho-capitalist economist and political theorist. Rothbard’s seminal role is widely recognized, even by non-Rothbardians. Objectivist John McCaskey, for example, has observed, that out of the debates in the mid-1900s about what rights citizens ought to have,
“grew the main sort of libertarianism of the last fifty years. It was based on a principle articulated by Murray Rothbard in the 1970s this way: No one may initiate the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. The idea had roots in John Locke, America’s founders, and more immediately Ayn Rand, but it was Rothbard’s formulation that became standard. It became known as the non-aggression principle or—since Rothbard took it as the starting point of political theory and not the conclusion of philosophical justification—the non-aggression axiom. In the late twentieth century, anyone who accepted this principle could call himself, or could find himself called, a libertarian, even if he disagreed with Rothbard’s own insistence that rights are best protected when there is no government at all.”[4]
We can date the dawn of today’s libertarianism to the works of Rand and Rothbard: to Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957); and, especially, to Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (1962), Power and Market (1970), and For A New Liberty (1973), plus his journal The Libertarian Forum (1969–1984). For A New Liberty stands today as a brilliant, and early, bold statement of the radical libertarian vision. By the mid-60s, the modern libertarian movement was coalescing, primarily behind the non-initiation of force principle and the “radical capitalism” of Ayn Rand, and Rothbard’s systematic libertarian corpus based upon the non-aggression principle or axiom. It is no surprise that the Libertarian Party was founded in 1971, as these ideas, and the liberty movement, were gaining steam.
In the ensuing decades many other influential works appeared expounding on the libertarian idea, such as Linda and Morris Tannehill, The Market for Liberty (1970), John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971), David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom (1973), Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Henri Lepage, Tomorrow, Capitalism (1978), Samuel Edward Konkin III, New Libertarian Manifesto (1980), Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea (1988), Anthony De Jasay, Choice, Contract, Consent: A Restatement of Liberalism (1991), Richard Epstein, Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995), Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (1996), David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer (1998), Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty (1998), and, more recently, Jeffrey A. Miron’s Libertarianism, From A to Z (2010), Jacob Huebert’s Libertarianism Today (2010), Gary Chartier’s The Conscience of an Anarchist (2011), and Gerard Casey’s Libertarian Anarchism (2012).
[1] For more on this, see Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (2008), and David Boaz, The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to Milton Friedman (1998).
[2] See Boaz, The Libertarian Reader, id.
[3] See Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism, id.
[4] John P. McCaskey, “New Libertarians: New Promoters of a Welfare State” (April 14, 2014), http://www.johnmccaskey.com/joomla/index.php/blog/71-new-libertarians, See also Wendy McElroy, “Murray N. Rothbard: Mr. Libertarian,” LewRockwell.com (July 6, 2000).
- Still have our disagreements over issues issues like abortion, etc.
- But libertarian theory has developed and grown over the last five decades.
- At this stage in our history it is time to take stock of where we are:
- what we have learned, especially in light of the criticism from outsiders and criticism and debate by and among fellow libertarians.
- These debates and growing theoretical work in recent decades by growing numbers of scholars have highlighted some areas of progress and ways we can develop and refine going forward.
First, what has become clearer:
- Political activism as a primary means of progress is limited at best
- Principled libertarianism is preferred over ad hoc, single-issue or utilitarian libertarianism
- Love of liberty; believe that aggression is wrong not just impractical
- Libertarianism is anti-war
- Not just “most” wars are bad, but all wars
- Libertarianism is anti-state (increasingly)
- Libertarianism is radical, not incremental
- It is unique, radical, and different from and superior to the left and the right.
- Libertarianism is now overwhelmingly anti-intellectual property (patent and copyright), which upsets the old guard, which consists of a disproportionately large number of Randians and minarchists
- Legislation is not the way to make law
- [KOL001 | “The (State’s) Corruption of (Private) Law” (PFS 2012); Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society; summary version: Legislation and Law in a Free Society; Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes; KOL129 | Speech to Montessori Students: “The Story of Law: What Is Law, and Where Does it Come From?”; KOL020 | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society: Lecture 3: Applications I: Legal Systems, Contract, Fraud” (Mises Academy, 2011)]
- Modern liberal democracy is not “closer” on the road to libertarianism
- [Hoppe, Democracy: God that Failed, and Introduction]
- America was not a proto-libertarian utopia, the Constitution was not libertarian, the Founders were not libertarian
- War, corruption, slavery, sexism
- [On Constitutional Sentimentalism; Black Armbands for “Constitution Day”; The Bad Bill of Rights, Goodbye 1776, 1789, Tom, Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power; Richman on the 4th of July and American Independence, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army, Napolitano on Health-Care Reform and the Constitution: Is the Commerce Clause Really Limited?; Was the American Revolution Really about Taxes?; Bill Marina (R.I.P.) on American Imperialism from the Beginning; Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!; Revising the American Revolution; The Declaration and Conscription; ‘Untold Truths About the American Revolution’; Jeff Hummel’s “The Constitution as a Counter-Revolution”; Bill Marina (R.I.P.) on American Imperialism from the Beginning;Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day!; Revising the American Revolution]
- Importance of re-examining traditional methods for child discipline and education
- Rise of “peaceful parenting” and homeschooling/unschooling [Montessori, Peace, and Libertarianism]
- The importance of a solid economic foundation to understand, analyze, advance the cause of liberty
- In particular, Austrian economics
- In particular, Misesian praxeology, and the subsequent work by Rothbard and Hoppe
- [“Afterword,” in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline;“Foreword,” in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism]
- In particular, Misesian praxeology, and the subsequent work by Rothbard and Hoppe
- Libertarianism is essentially about property rights (I’ll return to this)
- In particular, Austrian economics
Issues that divide or confuse
- Left v. right, thick v. thin
- Activism versus other forms of work for liberty [The Trouble with Libertarian Activism]
- Voluntary slavery (alienability)
- Responsibility for acts of others (Generals, Presidents, Mafia bosses)
- Intellectual Property
- Basis and nature of property rights
- [Hoppe, A Realistic Libertarianism]
Danger of Unclear language and metaphors
- [On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse; KOL 044 | “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” (PFS 2011); KOL 045 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 1″ (Mises Academy, 2011); KOL118 | Tom Woods Show: Against Fuzzy Thinking]
- “government” and equivocation
- Government schools/Public schools
- Update: see also The State is not the government; we don’t own property; scarcity doesn’t mean rare; coercion is not aggression.
- “Aggression” to mean any use of force
- “initiation of aggression”
- defense as “aggression”
- “coercion” [The Problem with “Coercion”]
- Labor theory of property
- Origin of property rights
- Libertarian Creationism
- [“Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors; The Intellectual Property Quagmire, or, The Perils of Libertarian Creationism; Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor”; Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value]
- Self-ownership versus body-ownership
- Contract
- Fraud
- Alienability and IP:
- Alienability
- If you own something, you can sell it
- [Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith; A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability]
- IP
- If you sell something, you own it
- Also, contract
- Also, fraud
- Also, “plagiarism”
- Also, “attribution”/honesty
- Both based on similar errors and confusion
- [KOL092 | Triple-V: Voluntary Virtues Vodcast, with Michael Shanklin: Can You Trade Something You Don’t Own?; KOL 044 | “Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions” (PFS 2011) (see slide 7); ]KOL 049 | “Libertarian Controversies Lecture 5″ (Mises Academy, 2011) (see slide 15)]
- If you sell something, you own it
- “Original sin” in property titles; “taint”
- The “problem” of tracing title back to “Adam” or homesteader
- Used to attack libertarian/Lockean conception of property rights
- Used to argue for redistribution
- [Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe on the “Original Sin” in the Distribution of Property Rights; Hoppe, A Realistic Libertarianism]
- The “problem” stemming from the conflict between “aggression” and “property rights”
- Some say it’s not aggression to use someone’s property, and abandon property rights (and refer to those who want to enforce property rights as “aggressors”)
- Alienability
- Origin of property rights
Moving Forward
- Libertarianism is essentially about property rights
- [What Libertarianism Is; Selected Supplementary Material for Law in a Libertarian World: Legal Foundations of a Free Society]
- Scarcity, the possibility of conflict, is the basis of the need for property rights, its social precondition
- All rights are property rights, all laws are about property rights, all disputes are about conflicting uses of property (scarce resources, means)
- The libertarian view is that when there is a contest or dispute over a resource, we determine an owner by resort to three principles: original appropriation (homesteading), contract (consent), and rectification/restitution.
- The dispute always concerns: who should be legally recognized as the owner of a given resource
- The “problem” stemming from the conflict between “aggression” and “property rights”
- Libertarians have long recognized that aggression is a dependent concept
- We must recognize this and be clear on it
- [What Libertarianism Is]
- Contract (Rothbard/Evers)
- Fraud
- IP
- Solution to the “Original Sin” idea
- Libertarians have long recognized that aggression is a dependent concept
Other areas of clarification/equivocation avoidance
- What it means to be an anarchist
