On a recent piece between a libertarian and a “socialist
And a simple critique of the positive/negative liberty distinction.
A small-scale argument erupted recently that has caught my eye between a “Anarkiwi” and a right-wing writer who published a critique of freedom titled “The Modern Definition of Freedom Is Wrong”1. In it he spells out why negative liberty (we’ll use freedom/liberty interchangeably here) leads to the societal illness we experience today. In it, live and let be leads to specific structures that incentivize addiction, group conflict and finally claims that people don’t know best for themselves (I tend to cautiously agree). Instead, we need to have a freedom that allows one to achieve their potential, positive liberty. The way we do this is through a “strong and positive homogeneous culture; a bedrock to the nation”. The disagreement led to a harsh response from the good Anarkiwi, which in a nutshell was an accusation that the author is a collectivist and that we all need to live freely a voluntarist society. In the following, I’ll lay out why both these views are wrong, with the focus on Anarkiwi’s response which was I had the most contention with.
Firstly, on definitions and baggage. A label that I’d feel comfortable with is ‘conservative arch-liberal’, a fantastic label a little-known Austrian political scientist Erik von Kuehnelt-Luddihn described himself as.2 Liberal tendencies – a state where freedom is granted in a practical, though not absolute manner is upheld by a conservative culture of preserving what is culturally and politically significant. Ideally, we’d have a political structure in which politics is centralized to a monarch and free from the masses who tend to be irrational at least and destructive at most. Instead, leave people to what they know best. This isn’t a Tsarist conception of politics, but rather an acknowledgement of the role a monarch or ruler knows best, managing statecraft, and the role normal people have in managing their own lives.
Liberty is the practical freedom one has to engage in his responsibilities. This works in conjunction with Hayek (and Burke for that matter) conceived of individualism (intimately tied with conceptions of freedom/liberty), man’s ability to act towards his immediate responsibilities,3 leading to mutual interdependence, as opposed to a radical rationalist conception of individualism which is the primacy of individual wants and reason. The latter conception can apply to both positive and negative liberties for one can still believe in negative liberty but drop the responsibility of the shared inheritance of his culture, language or family. Simultaneously an individualist in the latter sense can demand resources to be provided by the state to maximize happiness or human flourishing (in short, positive liberty). In the opposing view of individualism, man has an inherent membership to his community, an obligation to the past, present and future to maintain and defend what is good and true, to defend that which he cares deeply about. Man can break this informal contract; he can abandon his family or his community. People do this all the time when movies countries or cities, but rarely renounce their social memberships. Liberty is therefore that granted to carry out responsibilities of the individual. Man is to make means match ends. Communitarianism or the family model is therefore not antithetical to individualism, there is no centrally imposed relationship such would be the case under serfdom or communism.
Giles’s folly
Contrary to Giles’s claim, we as individuals are moulded by our culture. We of course have natural constraints and inclinations, deviations and so on but to equate this with collectivism as he has is nothing more than a non-sequitur. The following syllogism demonstrates this clearly:
If premise A consists of: “culture exists” and premise B consists of “it is the moulding tool of an individual” then logically you can’t deduce Davidson’s statement as “rank collectivism”. This is faulty logic and a feature throughout the Giles’s response piece.
Society has always instilled values into its members and its members have therefore done their best to protect their society. In anthropological terms, we do so to protect the in-group. Traditions are the result of experimentation to solve problems a society faces, whether an environmental or man-made. Society does mould man against his sinful will, usually through religion as a means of preventing group infighting. Man is a social animal but not a collectivist, by necessity he must interact with other members of a given group. Natural behaviours and instincts that threaten this cohesion and lead to violence must necessarily have been smoothed over, a notable example has been the institution of monogamy to prevent violence in many Western societies. Many cultural values occur spontaneously, whether through common-law or more recently as with the rise of the Chinese market economy, through informal arrangements that are institutionalized. The values of aestheticism, ascetism, humility and so on have significance as they developed from the needs of individuals to solve societal challenges.
The difference between the “live and let be” society of present and a duty-based society of the past is a matter of positioning. Whether one likes it or not, the apparatchiks today are mostly located on Madison Avenue, Hollywood and in the Universities and their interests are politically progressive. “Live and let be”, as explained later, is selective always, it is not a politically achievable reality, but just another worthless platitude.
It’s ridiculous to derive from Davidson’s initial axioms that he is in favour of some benevolent philosopher king to replace the managerial elite in directing people’s lives. Furthermore, it’s false to use his critique to place him among the left by defining the left as pushers of tyranny and collectivism and the right as torch-bearers of liberty and individualism. By this arbitrary set of rules Ted Kaczynski would be much further to the right than John Locke. And what about Noam Chomsky, is he dangerously far-right despite his syndicalist views?
To think culture has no part in man’s tendency towards achieving self-actualization is feckless idealism. The unmentioned drug that Davidson would’ve done well mentioning is pornography4. Given our culture’s very liberal views on sexual freedom and experimentation pornography isn’t shunned, it’s praised. This is perhaps the deadliest killer of male motivation in human history, a pump can get you that sweet, sweet dopamine, an immediate and unwarranted award, so why achieve anything?
“We are not born deficient and in need of the installation of a ‘potential’ that we, as useless husks, need to be provided. Everyone already has the Self-Actualising Tendency.”
The inverse is a far truer statement: our culture of cheap thrills, of rewarding mediocrity with praise is reducing those with natural drive to a state of meaningless pleasure. This is what Davidson rallies criticizes “live and let be” freedom for first and foremost for the modern liberal state in all its utilitarian glory for many only leads to nothing but another cheap cumshot. You don’t require philosopher kings to create a one-size-fits-all program for the modern ubermensch and Davidson certainly doesn’t claim to sell a one stop shop self-improvement course and neither do I.
Confusion between culture and the state is rife through Giles’s response. To clarify, the state need not create the dominant culture, culture is spontaneous and the brainchild of individuals in that society. Lysenkoism didn’t develop from state diktat, it was institutionalized by the state though. There are those in our culture, individuals and institutions that keep people on the “straight and narrow”. The church historically has given meaning to many, to think that people are naturally born towards achieving potential, that people aren’t born with different temperaments is to deny the individual differences among people. Some people are psychopaths, some are neurotics, some are charlatans, some are geniuses. These institutions and cultural values attempt to iron people out. Churches exist (from a neutral secular point of view) to give meaning and hope to those who have none. Even in Ancapistan, McDonalds will no doubt have control over your kids with the abominable Happy Meal. The current loss of cultural harmony due in part to the “live and let live” philosophy has for most people (myself included) led to a reduction in social intercourse as people forgo the clubs, habits and responsibilities of generations past.5
Shooting yourself in the foot
From the brief description of the two individualisms, I can sympathize with the critique of modern freedom laid out. Libertarians are politically retarded, useful idiots, for many reasons and while I sympathize too with a minimal state, their political model constantly leads to defeat. And the problem is they’re a broad coalition who push for ideals without thinking of practical consequences. A case in point is academic freedom in the 1950s. A common talking point for conservatives is that we need to return to having academic freedom, conservative voices at Universities are being stifled by a “woke cancel culture”. This is no different to what social liberals argued in the 1950s and early 1960s to allow fellow travellers (a gentle euphemism for communists) to retain or regain their jobs in academia at a time when McCarthyism and the red scare was at it’s prime. Granted they actually made eloquent arguments for academic freedom to advance human reason and the “democratic” need for what is today called the “marketplace of ideas”, in reality this was a means of allowing their intellectual allies (albeit more rabid and far-thinking) to gain power and influence at the expense of the dinosaurs. Of course, history is a cruel mistress and had someone looked back, they’d quickly realize this was entryism at it’s finest. The losing side got their way and the long march through the institutions has led to the hellscape at modern universities we see today. This is not a case against free speech, more that today’s left know full well they have the high ground and that the conservative cry for freedom is just a loser demanding the opposition shoot themselves in the foot. In all, it’s been a net loss for freedom, especially for the liberals back then which would be today’s ardent conservatives.
Now how is this relevant to libertarianism? Because many arguments libertarians make empower the same people who would threaten to take their guns. No better case can be made than by a recent Cato post:
“Vaccine ‘Passports’ Could Be Useful – but only if the Government Gets Out of the Way.”
Will they get out of the way? Maybe, probably not. Like the insidious relationship between social media and government regulation, the sword of damocles over the head of big tech is everpresent. As in China, it may not be illegal to neglect visiting your elderly parents, but it will impact your social credit score.6 Why do something yourself when you can get others to do it for you? What they will do or won’t do is beside the point, support of seemingly liberal or libertarian policies tends to empower just those groups who will stifle your freedoms.
To become spicier, one must swing to replacement migration. A libertarian policy towards borders is to have none. That all things being equal free migration is fundamentally a human right and a net benefit. Stop to think of which way these people tend to vote. Who supported this policy? Our favourite statist wing of the US government – the Democratic party. Why? It’s obvious, these people are brand new voters. Given the easing of voter registration (another occasional libertarian talking point) that is on the agenda of all good Democrats, we may well see instead of a net gain in freedom, a net loss. Why would these people vote Democrat? Most come for economic migration surely, many come from religious backgrounds, the Democratic party is surely their enemy. Except it’s not, without them, these migrants would be nothing. They’d be shitting is plastic buckets, donned in rags. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but their kids wouldn’t be getting that sweet US education. What’s healthcare like in Nicaragua? They certainly wouldn’t have the same income mobility that the US offers. A libertarian would say that open borders are fantastic without a welfare state – but what is politically convenient, no welfare state and open borders or open borders and a welfare state? Freedom 0, Statism 2.
Ultimately the point here has been the oft made talking point by those on the right that libertarians are politically retarded. What they do manage to achieve leads to that which is antithetical to their ideal state which holds human freedom as an absolute necessity.
A possible strawman; a reply to Davidson
The “correct” definition of freedom is no different to what an enlightenment rationalist such as Rousseau or a proto-socialists such as Fourier would’ve advocated for. This definition of freedom wouldn’t radically change our culture from one that is degenerate to one that is not. That belief in granting the freedom to maximize human potential has led to the welfare state we live under now, which, for the most part simultaneously has led to our degeneracy. If to reach one’s potential is to align with a positive rights framework, who’s to say the solo mother, BLACKED one too many times should not have the opportunity to reach her potential by state means. Does that mean she should have an abortion? Perhaps she should be paid for by the state to raise her child while she organizes the resources required to reach that potential? It’s important to remember that whatever is subsidized is incentivized. Solo mothers included. Therefore, this conception of freedom is unbound from constraints that would limit its abuses. This is not the intended effect of course, indeed, many of the talking points made in that piece could be heard from progressives 70 years ago in a (relatively) culturally homogenous society when they were building the foundations for today’s immense social issues. The incentive structure that can be set up on the idea that freedom’s aims are to maximize the potential of any given individual doesn’t lead to perfection but a whittling away of the social fabric. In all fairness this is not what Davidson intends and it’s hard not to be sympathetic to the goal of the maximizing of human potential. I appreciate Aristotlian ethics as much as anyone else. However, this is an individual pursuit, not a societal aim. As a definition of freedom and a core societal value, maximizing human potential is equally dangerous as the negative conception of “liberty”.
A full reading of the original pieces is recommended. James Davidson, “The Modern Definition of Freedom is Wrong,” The BFD, 8 May, 2021, https://thebfd.co.nz/2021/05/08/the-modern-definition-of-freedom-is-wrong/
For Giles’s response, see Rick Giles, “The Modern Definition of Freedom is Wrong” NZB3 (blog), May 9, 2021. http://nzb3.anarkiwi.co.nz/2021/05/09/the-modern-definition-of-freedom-is-wrong/
For this and a brief history on liberalism, see Erik von Kuehnelt-Luddihn, “Christianity, the Foundation and Conservator of Freedom,” interview by Religion and Liberty, Religion & Liberty, vol. 7 no. 6, (November/December 1997), 1.
For more on true and false individualism, see F.A. Hayek, “Individualism: True and False,” in Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958), 1.
For more, a slightly dated but well researched book on the subject: Gary A. Wilson, Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction (Commonwealth Publishing, 2014)
For more on the disintegration of social capital and its causes, see Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Touchstone Books, 2001)
To my knowledge this only applies to Shanghai, but when the national social credit system roles out will no doubt be added to their list of “punishable offenses”. Rishi Iyengar, “Shanghai Citizens May Soon Have Their Credit Scores Lowered for Not Visiting Their Parents,” Time, April 12, 2016, https://time.com/4290234/china-shanghai-parents-visit-credit-score-lower/