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54 sats \ 24 replies \ @kepford 16 Jun \ parent \ on: The Libertarian-to-Fascist Pipeline libertarian
How? This sounds like a very poor refutation of libertarian and anarco capitalist principles. Am I missing something?
It’s not a refutation. It’s written by a libertarian.
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This is the problem with labels as you said in your OP. We all have ideas in our heads about what a label is or isn't. This reads as a refutation to me. If he uses the libertarian label that's fine. I'm not the arbitrator of that. It just doesn't align with what I think a libertarian is. I don't align with what I think a libertarian is but I think I am much closer than this guy.
Obviously I'm not saying that's a bad thing in and of itself. I have many friends that I love and respect that do not see the world like I do And I don't agree with many libertarians but his post actually seems to miss the point of many of ideals of libertarians and freedom loving people. It seems to connect hatred with these ideals in a way that I cannot for the life of me find. I see hate in all political stripes. All of them that I'm aware of. It comes from the heart. It comes from culture and any system can be warped into a tool for your own bigotry. This include libertarianism of all stripes, conservatism, liberalism, progressivism, fascism, and communism.
Its a big clue to me that he never defines fascism but by inference it seems to be all about morality and hate. IMO morality infects all political systems. I say infect because it is most often used to justify violence and destruction.
Wikipedia actually surprised me with its definition of fascism.
authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
This is about as anti-libertarian as you can get. I do not question that people can move from libertarianism to fascism but it is hardly a pipeline. He really never even makes that point with examples. I have heard others do a far better job of that.
OK, I need to drop this though. I'm feeling like I have Jordan vibes here.
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Sure he is
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I respect your opinion, so I read it again this morning. I think it's worth talking about, since I personally haven't wrestled with some of these issues for years. For me, I believe the author goes too far in conclusion with language like this:
The libertarian-to-fascist pipeline is revealed, and its desire to deny the common good seen for what it is, a project focused on the maximization of ones own ego and values to the exclusion of others. It is fundamentally always asking itself the question: who can I exclude?
I certainly can see why you would assume this guy isn't a libertarian. I would really like @k00b, @Undisciplined, and @grayruby's take.
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I think the author could have created an interesting argument comparing classic liberalism and libertarianism and the role of some sort of "social good" but the implication of veering towards fascism is just silly. If you own a farm and I own a farm across the road and you want to protect your farm with 100 armed guards and I protect mine with 10 you are not impairing my individual interest by having 10x the might unless you are using your guards to attack my farm or threatening people who wish to patronize it.
If the argument is more about human nature and the fact that imbalances in might will always devolve into at very least intimidation if not aggression then it probably should have been framed that way.
I quit reading it, because stuff like what you've excerpted comes up frequently. I've never found the cases to be difficult to refute at all and I'm not that interested in refuting people who argue disingenuously.
Smearing people who categorically reject initiating aggression for political purposes as "fascistic" is as radical of a misunderstanding of both libertarianism and fascism as one could make.
If someone misunderstands what libertarianism is that badly, then I agree with @kepford that whatever they call themselves they are not a libertarian.
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I stopped reading it about three times. I didn't mention the lack of definition of racism but that's a red flag as well. If I were not familiar with fascism from his writing I'd assume fascisms key attributes would all be related to race and sex. When your read the current popular definition of fascism it is far away from libertarian ideas he counters in this post. The use of the term is the biggest mistake in this post
It is fair to say the libertarian ideas do not fix human hate. That they are not an answer for the ills of discrimination. I haven't heard an argument that they are. What I have heard is that decentralized society would lead to more diversity and less violence.
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I have seen arguments that libertarian societies might alleviate racial tensions, to a degree, but we aren't generally utopian and wouldn't argue that ugly human traits will just disappear.
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"Fascism" = "Bad thing"
I took him at his word here, that he was making the usual definitions of things a little squishy to make a point, and that he was trying to reveal something about some libertarians that he disagrees with:
So I want to get ahead of this now: I am actually trying to push on the definitions of what libertarianism and fascism are here a little bit. And I think it’s necessary, because I think we might need some better categories in order to make sense of some of the apparent contradictions we see.
I also believed what he said the paragraph before, that he isn't describing libertarians as fascistic generically, and instead attempting to reveal that some libertarians are more motivated by taking away positive rights from people they don't like, and gaining new non-violent but anti-social powers, than they are interested in securing negative rights for us all:
And I want to disabuse you of some potential worries up-front, and clarify that I am not saying that if you are a libertarian that you are fascist, or that you are on your way to becoming a fascist.
It's been a long time since I've spent time in these political boundary setting exercises. (I find them exhausting and myself ineffective at moving political boundaries.) I don't think he's arguing in bad faith even if I'd agree he's being somewhat inconsiderate to make a point. I do think some libertarians are libertarians for anti-social reasons and are mostly looking to protect their anti-sociality. It's their right to be anti-social, or fascistic, non-violently, but I wouldn't mind partitioning them out of my political tribe wherever they are.
I find myself wanting libertarianism to be concerned with the common good indirectly at the very least. I think the only thing he attacked in this article was an attitude that some libertarian bitcoiners have.
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Thanks @k00b. I see what you are saying. I believe your would have written a better article FWIW. I don't disagree with your points here. I don't think these are unique to libertarians. People of all political stripes bring their morality to politics and claim they are Democratic or conservative for the greater good when that isn't true.
To me politics is about figuring out how to resolve conflict first and if your system requires everyone to be nice it is doomed to fail. Hoppe is trying to solve for a very real issue. Maybe his heart is filled with hate. But the point remains, if you have groups of people at moral odds I believe it is better to separate peacefully and try to win people over voluntary vs by force. He seems to gloss over that.
Thanks for your reply.
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I don't think these are unique to libertarians.
Agreed. Political labels are camouflage as much as they are jerseys our teammates wear.
But the point remains, if you have groups of people at moral odds I believe it is better to separate peacefully and try to win people over voluntary vs by force.
100%
He seems to gloss over that.
I like to read and listen to people accepting they'll gloss over nearly everything, whether I agree with them or not, but I might just be exhausted to the point of having low standards. These days, I find myself mostly wanting to hunt for their point with them, friend or well-intended foe.
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No true Scotsman is a disappointing response to get from you.
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Here is why I find it surprising to hear he's a libertarian. The fact that people say they are libertarian and do not align on these topics is one reason I don't call myself one any more.
- Seems to embrace positive rights and completely misunderstand negative rights
- Seems to reject the none aggression principle
- Seems to reject the abolition of the monopoly on violence by the state
- Seems to confuse moral beliefs with political systems
- Seems to not understand the fundamental importance of property rights
- Seems to not understand the importance of the right of freedom of association
I could speculate on the type of libertarian he is but that's not fair. I will stick to the context of the article.
I don't call myself a libertarian or anarchist any more because I don't think I align with enough of the principles myself. So if it makes you feel any better I'm not a true Scotsman either. My issues with this aren't that he is or isn't a libertarian. Its that I find his arguments illogical and frankly unoriginal. This sounds like progressive arguments I've heard for many years from people that do not really even understand the principles of the ideology.
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I appreciate your elaboration. I have a plane to catch and can't engage with this as it merits, but a couple things. Caveat is that I only read this once.
Seems to reject the none aggression principle
My sense wasn't that he rejected it; and in fact, that he embraced it. What he rejected was the idea that the NAP is anything close to sufficient to building society around at scale. (See below wrt property rights.)
Seems to reject the abolition of the monopoly on violence by the state
I could read this two ways: he rejects the assertion that there should be no monopoly on violence (e.g., anyone should be able to do violence, and suffer the consequences of however the world reacts), or else he rejects the assertion that nobody, including the state, should be able to do violence. My sense is that he does the latter as a matter of pragmatism -- you can't have 100k + humans living together without coercion being applied. The question is who applies it and what are the consequences of that.
Seems to not understand the fundamental importance of property rights
I got nothing like this from the article; although if you re-state as: he rejects the idea that property rights alone form a coherent political methodology, then I would agree, he does that. And I also do that, but that's not the issue under discussion I guess.
Seems to embrace positive rights and completely misunderstand negative rights
I'd be interested to know what misunderstanding you're referring to.
Note that I have no dog in this fight other than not being Libertarian myself, for reasons you can probably infer from this and from everything I've ever said on SN. But I would like to understand what's so triggering about this post, since when I read it it all seems pretty uncontroversial.
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Also, I've written and thought more about this than I should have really. If this article hadn't been praised so much I wouldn't have even read it based on the title. I cover my issues with it in other comments. I have heard all this before. Really started coming up around 2016.
On positive / negative rights specifically the issue libertarians have with positive rights is that they require some sort of action from others. If rights are to be protected (that seems to insinuate negative rights btw) and the right requires resources to provide, then how do you get those resources? Well, if people choose to give that fixes that. But that is hardly a right if it is voluntary. A positive right in my view requires a state or entity to use the threat of force to provide it.
We could get into consent and contracts but I don't want to spend all day thinking and writing about this. I'll just say there is a lot written about this. The curious libertarian can go read on these topics and they mostly predate the libertarian movement.