Social Individualism or Nihilistic Orgies?

I recently read "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgable Chasm" by Murray Bookchin. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the position carved out in it. On one hand, Bookchin critisizes nihilistic and irrationalist elements that have popped up in contemporary anarchist thought that I think are definitely problematic. On the other hand, he seems to want to paint the entirety of individualist anarchism with this brush, even going so far as to attack Proudhon, while digging in to a sectarian position in favor of syndicalism and communism. He mocks the idea of personal autonomy as the subjective lashing out of blind rebellion, contrasting it with "social freedom".

To be sure, part of what Bookchin attacks is the sort of raw atomistic and nihilistic sense of individualism associated with Max Stirner, which is all about the individual ego in an asocial and amoral sense. I do think that this is not a particularly sensible view, especially if one wants to favor interpersonal goals and advance a workable strategy that requires people to meaningfully cooperate. But it seems as if Bookchin makes a non-sequitor and an overgeneralization by condemning individualist anarchism as such. He lambasts individualism in the most perjorative sense of the term without taking the social and moral elements that are at play at least within elements of individualist anarchism.

In essence, I think that Bookchin presents us with a false choice between being atomists and absolute communalists. The "unbridgable chasm" that he talks about, if anything, is precisely what most anarchists have attempted to do from the beginning, I.E. there is a conceptual balance between individualism and sociality or an attempt to make some sort of synthesis between personal freedom and society. I basically see no reason why one could not be a "social individualist" or an "individualist socialist". It also seems as if, in his zeal to oppose short-sighted whimsicality, Bookchin overlooks the particular dangers of the subordination of people to community pressures that is part of what may cause people to be attracted to individualism in the first place.

Part of what Bookchin is reacting against is the influence of existentialist and postmodern thought on contemporary anarchism. I can sympathize with this concern to a certain extent, insofar as it may function to negate any sense of unity or genuine solidary that goes along with social revolution, while celebrating contradiction or ambiguity in a way that at least appears to erode rational underpinnings of libertarian ideas. On the other hand, Bookchin may have been acting naively about the problems with enlightenment universalism. He seems to take some sort of rationalism for granted, without much of an explaination for it. While talking about philosophical positions, he mostly appears to be engaging in heated polemics.

Another target of Bookchin's criticism, which he associates with individualism, are the primitivists and the anti-civilization crowd. I must admit that I cannot particularly think of anything to say in defense of these ideas, since I essentially find them to be ridiculous. There is one perjorative sense of individualism that does accurately describe such views, which is the notion of pure individual (or extremely small-scale) "self-sufficiency" taken to the point of opposing any meaningful social structure that we could comprehend in a modern context. But it hardly seems as if primitivists particularly pose a significant threat to anyone. They are minority within a minority within a minority. Their voice within the anarchist movement is rather marginal.

It seems as if part of what Bookchin means by "lifestyle anarchism" is the fragmented proliferation of a multitude of personal causes, a cambrian explosition of identity politics inside of anarchism. This bothers him in that it rubs up against his notion of a large-scale cohesive or participatory movement that is unified towards certain universal goals. I suppose Bookchin's concern is understandable at a certain level, in terms of maintaining at least some ground norms that unify anarchism and provide a framework for something strategically significant. On the other hand, if this is taken too far it could be seen as the total elimination of pluralism or an overly narrow view that opposes the particular ways in which people want to express their freedom.

Ultimately, while I sympathize with some of the concerns that Bookchin brings up, it seems like he was being too much of a partisan in "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism". I feel like he frames the question in a way that is designed to force us to choose between blind individual self-expression and lockstep dedication to a particular universalist creed, with him trying to persuade us to "get with the program" through his polemics against certain groups. Still, some of the issues that he touches on resonate with me in terms of the problems that I see with too nihilistic of a philosophy being embraced by anarchists. The problem is that he doesn't do the best job of showing why this is a problem, and I don't fully buy into the alternative that he presents.

Propertarianism, Voluntaryism and Freedom

I'd like to once again clarify my own views, put in contrast to some views that I have rejected. Hopefully this may help illuminate exactly what is at stake in the conflicts that take place within libertarianism and anarchism.

Propertarianism

One of the major issues at stake is how one treats the concept of property. I use the term propertarianism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat property as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or the basis for defining everything. For example, Murray Rothbard's declaration that all rights are property rights is an example of a form of propertarianism. More generally, propertarians tends to view freedom as reducible to a question of property and have a deontological view of property rights.

I reject propertarianism. To be clear, rejecting propertarianism does not necessarily mean that one rejects property or property rights outright. In my case, what it means is that freedom is not reducible to property because life and liberty are prior concepts, and that property rights are not absolute in that they may have contextual side-constraints. I reject any framing of the question which assumes that we must either be pro-property or anti-property in some absolute sense, and I do not think that freedom and property can be absolutely equated.

There are reasons for this. There are contexts in which a default defense of property amounts to a rationalization for infringing on someone's freedom or unnecessarily taking their life. I don't think that ownership legitimately grants absolute authority, regardless of how it is acquired. I think that ownership alone may be necessary but insufficient for legitimacy. I think that freedom is more fundamentally a matter of the concrete interpersonal relations of individuals, while property is a secondary question in relation to it.

In my understanding, property in the most general and disambiguated sense is a multi-faceted concept that cannot reasonably be simplified or reduced to a particular aspect or manifestation of it. It depends on the context. In one context, property could be linked to freedom. In another context, property could be linked to aggression and tyranny. Propertarianism attempts to reduce property to its positive aspects while ignoring or denying its negative aspects, and in the process it may end up effectively legitimizing the negative aspects, even if some propertarians do not explicitly intend to rationalize or endorse infringing on anyone's freedom.

If freedom entails not unnecessarily being coerced or bossed around on the basis of other people's whims and not being physically aggressed against in a clearly non-defensive context, then propertarianism has tension with freedom to the extent that this can be justified in its framework. To take this to the institutional and territorial level, if a territorial monopoly on ultimate decision-making power and force is a state and a propertarian framework establishes a standard for legitimacy in which a qualitatively identical institution can be justified depending on nothing more than property acquisition norms, then propertarianism can logically entail and consequently lead to a state. Hence, anti-statists have a reason to be skeptical of propertarianism.

A purely deontological or absolutist conception of property rights also leads to blatant absurdities on practical grounds, particularly because it commits the propertarian to dismiss all life-boat scenarios out of hand or simply default to whatever a property owner decides as an answer. From the point of view of the person in a sticky situation, this implies that they have a moral obligation to let themselves die or at least suffer a significant amount of unecessary harm in the name of respecting property. Hence, property is effectively placed above life. This gives one consequentialist grounds for rejecting propertarianism.

At each step of the way so far, we have pointed out various ways in which property can conflict with both freedom and life. I think that it is important to emphasize that to the extent that one wants to uphold the value of freedom and life in these contexts, one has necessarily placed limits on the concept of property and its practical applications. On the flip side, to the extent that one upholds a propertarian theory one is committed to some sort of negation of freedom and life. I think that there are well-meaning propertarians who hold positions that are a bit fuzzy on these matters, so I wouldn't want to lump them in with a more extreme position. However, I think they have reason for cognitive dissonance.

These questions can invoke a lot of hostility among libertarians and anarchists. Some propertarians are absolutist to the point where the more nuanced positions that I have hinted at are considered to be diametrically opposed to everything they favor and as a total negation of property. I believe that this is false because it is based on a misleading framing of the question that smuggles in the assumption of certain absolute dichotomies. Those propertarians who think that the choice is essentially between their position and communism, or who act as if any alternative position necessarily equates to statism, are being dogmatic and making non-sequitors.

This should constitute a decent overview of the problems that I have with propertarianism. While I don't necessarily condemn property and property rights outright, I do not consider property to be the right framework to conceptualize everything in. I view these concepts as inherently being contingent and necessary but insufficient. There are great dangers to focusing so much or so narrowly on property that all common sense and decency goes out the window and the pretense of freedom begins to become suspect. It would be wise not to think in such simplistic and axiomatic terms about the question of property.

Voluntaryism

I use the term voluntaryism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat the notion of voluntary interaction as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or basis for defining everything -- in a way that does not particularly disambiguate what constitutes "voluntary" and "involuntary" relations. Generally, voluntaryism is presented in a way that makes it seem more pluralistic than propertarianism, as a sort of all-inclusive umbrella "so long as it's voluntary". I am using the term voluntaryism to refer to views that tend to consider the question of interpersonal relations as being reducible to a question of voluntary-ness, beyond which point "anything goes" or is "just a preference".

To be sure, I think that some ideas going by the name of "voluntaryism" are actually hardly distinguishable from propertarianism because the concept of "voluntary" and "involuntary" are disambiguated in explicitly propertarian terms, which can make it rather misleading. But as I am using the term here, it involves at least the intent of being more pluralistic than that. Voluntaryism contrasts with propertarianism insofar as propertarians act as if their particular models are the only ones that can possibly be compatible with freedom, while voluntaryists function on the pretext that essentially all norms other than "is it voluntary or not?" are compatible with freedom.

As I have already hinted at, I think that voluntaryism suffers from ambiguity. There are a multitude of normative concepts of exactly what is and isn't voluntary, so a meta-debate is almost inevitably begged. What one voluntaryist considers voluntary may be considered involuntary by another depending on normative assumptions, so it seems hard to think that the concept of voluntaryism can be separate from such questions. I think that voluntaryism collapses into meaninglessness if it is taken at face value, divorced from any particular norm. This kind of pluralism is just nihilism by another name, a nihilism that clings to one norm: noone's views can apply to anyone else. To put it another way, it is a form of nihilism that at least puts on the front of valueing tolerance as some sort of end in and of itself.

Perhaps the closest that voluntaryist pluralism can come to providing a neutral definition of "voluntary" that isn't packaged with additional norms is a definition that effectively reduces to "agreement". But it is hard to see how this is particularly useful. The very nature of any society contains various degrees of disagreement. A stalinist, a monarchist, or a neo-nazi aren't going to agree with libertarians and anarchists, but surely libertarians and anarchists aren't inherently imposing an "involuntary" relationship by opposing those ideas and systems. A murderer may disagree with being defended against or shunned, or they may disagree with the idea that they've done something wrong, but surely their rights aren't violated by this. Something is very fishy about this.

Some voluntaryists essentially do take a meta-view that is inclusive towards all norms and systems. Monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, whatever it may be, is fine and dandy with them "so long as it's voluntary" (or contingent on these systems isolating into enclaves or tribes). The problem is that this completely collapses the notion of "voluntary" and "involuntary". At best, it means that each system is voluntary relative to other systems, but a given system inside of this framework could be internally involuntary. Indeed, one could have a totalitarian dictatorship, and it would be okay by these standards so long as it does not cross over into the nation next door.

To be fair, not all those who call themselves voluntaryists take it to this level. Rather, what they are more likely to promote is effectively what's been called "thin libertarianism", the view that freedom or libertarianism is purely reducible to something like the non-aggression principle, beyond which point everything is a matter of subjective personal preferences. That is, it's the idea that non-aggression (which is almost always defined through the lens of some kind of property norm) is sufficient to produce a free society. Thick libertarians, such as myself, disagree with this on the grounds that this is insufficient (although perhaps necessary), that additional considerations matter.

So in this sense "voluntaryism is more or less the same thing as thin libertarianism. A big part of the problem with thin libertarianism is that it seems obvious that political outcomes are in some way dependant on cultural atmospheres and that not all cultural atmospheres are equally good breeding grounds for the goals of political freedom. Hence, this sort of total cultural and moral relativism can be a dangerous attitude to attempt to start a free society with. It is arguable that certain cultural and moral norms are likely to lead to aggression and statism, while others are a healthy precondition for realizing libertarian goals. Without getting into the details of the normative debate, I don't think it should particularly be hard to see the general point being made about this.

Some voluntaryists may be tempted to engage in a non-sequitor in reaction to such objections by accusing the critic of necessarily supporting aggression or "involuntary" relations. This is based a false framing of the discussion and it also likely involves the voluntaryist having hidden or unspoken normative assumptions. The fact of the matter is that noone has a concept of non-aggression or "voluntary" that is completely detached from particular normative premises, and in this sense "thin libertarianism" is inherently misleading, I.E. it is a front of value neutrality or a hypocritically applied relativity.

This should function as a sufficient general overview of my problems with voluntaryism. While I do think that pluralism is an important value, I don't think that it is an acontextual value or some sort of absolute. There are good reasons for being concerned about people being too open-ended with their pluralism, taken to the point of rationalizing blatant contradictions and leaving the door wide open for any old authoritarian ideology and system. And it is wise not to focus so much or so narrowly on "political justice" that a good deal of the social questions that effect people in their everyday lives are dismissed as irrelevant, while being naive about the preconditions necessary for practical achievement of political goals.

Conclusion

For the most part, this was a reiteration and clarification of positions that I've already taken ad naseum elsewhere and talked about in older posts. The two ideological tendencies that I've critisized can be viewed as representive of two extremes in a more general conflict between ideas that are too closed and absolute on one hand and ideas that are too open and ambiguous on the other hand. I would suggest that the most coherant positions can be found somewhere in between such extremes. What I've said here only scratches the surface of a multitude of much more particular discussions that could be had, but I think that I've set up the general foundation for such a discussion.

The Substance of Capitalism and Libertarianism

Capitalism is a particular economic model, an organizational mode or structure of production, which is not in and of itself the same thing as the comparably general meta-concept of a "free market". Further, the codification or standardization of this organizational mode at the legal level makes it a particular legal code (a legal code entrenching particular arrangements of ownership titles), which is not in and of itself the same thing as the comparably general meta-concept of "libertarian law". When certain left-libertarians say that they are opposed to capitalism in substance, they are opposing this particular organizational mode and legal code, not necessarily the meta-level of free markets and libertarian law. It is conceivable for one to oppose this without supporting proactive aggression.

This is part of the reason why Stephan Kinsella and others are not justified in dismissing substantive opponents of capitalism as necessarily being outside of the scope of libertarianism. The only way that this can be gotten away with is by conflating the general with the particular, I.E. putting forward something rather specific as if it was the essential component of a much more general concept. This presents people with a convoluted framing of the discourse in which there is a false set of choices between accepting the economic and legal organizational scheme that is "capitalism" and not being a libertarian. But that just begs the question as to whether or not these particular modes are necessarily logically implied by the meta-level concepts or even alone the one and only compatible implication of them.

Of course, the substance of the meta-level concepts and the relationship or ordering of such concepts could be in question as well. It is not exactly clear why the meta-concept of "liberty" necessarily has to be defined through the lens of ownership, rather than the other way around. It is not clear why there could not possibly be some tension between strong and absolutist notions of land ownership and the meta-concept of liberty. It isn't clear why non-aggression necessarily must be conceived of as an axoim or a categorical imperative that isn't a bit fuzzy. It isn't clear why a systematic application of non-proviso lockean property norms could not be called into question on consequentialist grounds, as not leading to the intended result of a genuinely free society. Nor is it clear why such political ideals are realizable in an inegalitarian cultural context.

These are the kind of begged questions that are glossed over or in which certain answers are taken for granted and treated as essential parts of the definition of meta-concepts. What sense does it make to act as if Murray Rothbard's particular formulation of property theory is essential to the general notion of political freedom? It isn't. It's a particular disambiguation that libertarians may or may not fully accept. If such a property theory represents "capitalism", and one has reason to be skeptical of such a property theory while also aiming at the general goal of political freedom and a stateless society, one could conceivably reject "capitalism" as a libertarian. One could believe that it devolves into a state in spite of the intentions of its proponents, or that it contains ambiguity that can be used to justify trampling on people's freedom in a certain context, and be a libertarian.

The substance of libertarianism, at a sort of meta-level, is more general than the substance of capitalism. Stephan Kinsella and his ilk will have none of this: he equates the substance of capitalism and libertarianism as constituting one and the same thing. But, once again, this is just begging the question. Why is libertarian capitalism the same thing as libertarianism in general? This seems somewhat analogous to claiming that a particular normative position is the same thing as a general meta-ethical position (such as moral realism). I don't claim that libertarian capitalism isn't libertarian, I would say that it's a form of libertarianism that I think gets it wrong. The same standard is not reciprocated, however: if I don't accept a particular form of libertarianism, I'm suddenly put outside of the general category of libertarianism.

On top of this, quite paradoxically, we are told (particularly by Walter Block and those mimicking his notion of "the plumbline") that libertarianism in general is neutral to preferences, I.E. it is sold as a sort of all-inclusive relativism. This is claimed by some of the very same people that insist on particular norms as essential to libertarianism, ruling out everything to "the left" of anarcho-capitalism in terms of property norms and economic organization. The begged question is where the line is drawn between necessary norms and open-ended preference neutrality. On one hand, one could skeptically ask, "Why aren't your property norms just preferences too?". On the other hand, one could wonder if this (at least superficially) relativist proclamation is ambiguous and misleading, and ask whether there may actually be stronger, additional, or even alternative norms necessary for a particularly workable form of libertarianism to be made (even if one simultaneously still grants the term "libertarian" to people that don't accept those norms).

As we can see, those who are trying to monopolize libertarianism on the behalf of capitalism beg a whole host of questions. It begs the questions of rights theory, property theory, the thick and thin libertarianism discussion, and so on. But what seems most fair to me, in terms of the question of "who is a libertarian?", is that it is fundamentally constituted by an attitude that seeks to obtain or maximize political freedom as a meta-concept (and yes, this is distinguishable from the umbrella of welfare-liberalism). Anything beyond that is working out the details inside of libertarianism, which inevitably leads to subdivisions. One may think that particular subdivisions have it wrong and yet still acknowledge their status as libertarians. It is hard to look at the opposite route and not see it as dogmatism.

In a sense, yes, I am openly what some might call a "left-sectarian" in the sense that I philosophically reject a notable portion of the ideas of what I consider to be the general paradigm of the libertarian right (such as the ideas of folks such as Hans Hoppe, Walter Block, Stephan Kinsella, and even Murray Rothbard) and I do not particularly buy into the claims made by some such people that they are really in a neutral zone with respect to "left" and "right" ideological trends (when the virulently anti-leftist fangs come out, "plumbline" claims are particularly misleading). At the same time, I view libertarianism in the most general sense to be an umbrella that includes these people and their ideas, and that in spite of some rather strong disagreements there still are internal libertarians relations of a sort. But the substance of ideas is more fundamental than general labels, so I'm content reciprocally considering them ideological enemies *inside of libertarianism* to the extent that we disagree on fundamental points and when I am systematically attacked on the basis of prejudice by the people in such a paradigm. Yes, I do oppose (at least part of) the substance of your position, and I oppose it precisely because I think libertarianism could be improved.

Kinsella's Closed System

Over at "Instead of a Blog", Roman Pearah made a response to a statement by Stephan Kinsella about left-libertarians. I'd like to add the thoughts that this invokes for me on top of this.

Firstly, it seems very obvious that Kinsella is engaging in some serious package-dealing, which I can only assume is based on misunderstanding and ideological blinders. Kinsella throws around the term "Marxian" as if it accurately applies to just about any leftist variety of libertarianism and anarchism. This betrays a severe lack of understanding of the historical and ideological distinctions between statist and libertarian socialism. It seems evident that Kinsella makes knee-jerk reactions to left-libertarian ideas simply based on reading things into terms that he has been ideologically predisposed to dislike.

The main package deal that is set up is that certain concepts and terms are deemed to be "inherently statist" a priori, without any open and honest engagement with it, while certain normative positions that are really the positions of a particular subset of libertarians (LVMI-style Rothbardians in particular) are portrayed as essential to the definition of libertarianism, to the exclusion of other positions (geo-libertarianism, mutualism, libertarian socialism, etc.) that have long-since been part of libertarian discourse. To simply say that alternative positions "aren't libertarian", aside from implying a backwards kind of linguistic essentialism, is to close the notion of "internal debate" and frame everything in strictly binary oppositional terms.

What Kinsella is effectively doing is putting libertarianism foreward as a completely closed system of thought in which a particular set of positions down to the last detail are immutable and essential, in very much the same way that ARI Objectivists treat Ayn Rand's Objectivism. But the reality of the matter is that libertarianism, in its most general sense, is constituted by a multitude of different criss-crossing positions. Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists do not have a monopoly on libertarianism, they are a subdivision of it. And while I may have disagreements with it, I don't exclude it from being "libertarian". The same cannot be said for the kind of dogmatist attitude that Kinsella is promoting.

It is entirely concievable for people to more or less agree on some basic premises and draw different conclusions from them, while still being a part of a broad ideological umbrella. It is also concievable for people to have similar conclusions while reaching them from radically different premises, while still being part of a broad ideological umbrella. But Kinsella doesn't grant such leeway for "internal debate": one must effectively accept the LVMI "platform" wholesale or one is not a libertarian. At best, the most leeway that he grants is for people who essentially accept the platform but do it on consequentialist grounds rather than on the basis of "natural rights" or deontology. But adding more to the system or tweaking it in any significant way is heresy.

The main reason for this seems to be that Kinsella has misconceptions about other points of view, having already ruled them out in the name of maintaining an "austro-libertarian" and "rothbardian" orthodoxy. He hears a more limited view of property rights and immediately jumps to the non-sequitors of mass-violence and state control. He hears the words "worker's self-management" and cries "Marxist!". He's attacking a caricature of "the left", a boogeyman that he has conjured inside of his head. Alternative ideas are dismissed through conjuring the image of the rabble-rouser, the bomb-thrower, the window smasher.

It is pain-stakingly obvious that Kinsella is militantly anti-leftist. But this anti-leftism is joined with a misleading proclaimation that one is at some sort of neutral "plumbline" in which one is "neither left or right". This is a lie: Kinsella blatantly brings along certain baggage or commitments that are ideologically "right-wing" (at least in comparison to other positions) and proclaims them to be essential to libertarianism, and proceeds to attack people who do not (at least fully) accept those commitments to be non-libertarian. He pushes certain specific normative positions (both economic and cultural) as an inherent part of libertarianism, while playing the disingenous "thin libertarian" game of putting on a front of neutrality.

Kinsella is right about one thing: the conflict over "capitalism" is not purely linguistic. My own main disagreement with folks such as Brad Spangler, while I do sympathize with their position in comparison to someone like Kinsella, is that their rejection of "capitalism" is largely confined to a semantic-historical context in which one seems to mostly be just engaging in a salesmanship strategy. Some of these people mostly are in line with fairly standard anarcho-capitalist views, but wish to drop the term "capitalism" for public relations purposes. But to the extent that this is the case (and it certainly is not entirely the case, as I will proceed to get into), Kinsella cannot denounce these people as "unlibertarian" on his own terms.

The much more explicit currents of left-libertarianism do have substantive problems with "capitalism". But this, in and of itself, does not necessarily rule them out from being libertarians or anarchists. For some, to one extent or another, most of the fundamental premises that himself Kinsella supports (which they tend to be in line with themselves) simply does not logically lead to "capitalism". Instead of knee-jerkedly reacting by labeling them Marxists and saying that they aren't libertarians, it is Kinsella's responsibility to actually address the content of their position. But what he has mostly done is continue to insist on the orthodoxy that he promotes.

Of course, things can get even more substantive than this. Some left-libertarians don't accept the fundamental premises that Kinsella considers to be essential to libertarianism, and proceed to reject "capitalism" on the grounds of rejecting such underlying premises. But I would insist that even this, in and of itself, does not constitute sufficient grounds for claiming that such people are not libertarians. It is Kinsella's responsibility to honestly engage those ideas. But he barely scratches the surface of doing this. Since they reject his foundational premises, they are branded as enemies, strawmanned, and then the "base" is rallied in the defense of "capitalism".

Based on his sweeping condemnations of the libertarian left, it is really hard to tell if Kinsella would understand the distinction between, say, a council communist and a mutualist anarchist. By Kinsella's standards, even contemporary mutualists, who to a significant extent don't even function strictly within boundaries of traditional libertarian socialism, are lumped into the nebulous category of "not libertarian" along with any old variety of state-socialism. It's as if he considers "the left" to be this amorphous body that must inherently coalesce into aggression and statism, without him having the slightest understanding of the wide variety of positions within it.

If anything, Kinsella proves the contention that paradigmatic American libertarianism (including its anarcho-capitalist subdivision) carries a notable amount of right-wing baggage. Calling it a "plumbline" that is neutral to the contemporary American senses of "left" and "right" is misleading when it blatantly converges more with the normative positions of the political right. If one wants to understand where the heck left-libertarians are coming from in an American context, it would behoove one to understand it as partially being constituted by the phenomenon of people passing through the paradigmatic libertarian right and transcending its boundaries, getting rid of the right-wing baggage that comes with it and radicalizing oneself beyond it.

For some in the libertarian left, the position held by someone like Kinsella is something they used to hold on to themselves, but they've grown past it. That may be hard for someone who currently holds to such a position to wrap their head around, but it is the case. Some of us had well-thought out reasons for rejecting it, or at least parts of it. Dismissing us as some sort of completely alien ideology coming out of nowhere, or as some sort of child of Marxism, severely misunderstands where quite a few left-libertarians are coming from (I.E. as post-ancaps or ex-ancaps). From their perspective, it's an improvement of libertarianism, not an abandonment. This may be constituted by a combination of adding things, taking some things away, and modifying things. But Kinsella seems to be largely incapable of dealing with people on their own terms.

I don't speak for all left-libertarians when I say this, but Kinsella is a paradigmatic case of most of what is wrong with "standard libertarians". It is lacking in internal criticism and room for growth. It is becoming a stagnant intellectual climate or an echo chamber. If this is what "standard libertarianism" is, then good riddance to "standard libertarianism". It needs a new standard, and it is precisely the libertarian left that has spawned developements for refining libertarianism rather than simply going along with what reduces to a dogmatic party line. Those who cannot deal with that are doomed to the dustbins of libertarian history.

In Defense of Egalitarianism

Part of the baggage that tends to come along with contemporary libertarian politics is a rejection of egalitarianism. The notions of liberty and equality are conceived of as being in an antagonistic relationship, with egalitarian ideas being equated to a forced plan that attempts to circumvent "the natural order" or as a rosy description of the abilities or merits of humans as being flat. This generally functions as the background assumption for a rather convoluted discourse on the matter.

One of the common ways in which this plays out is when someone says that egalitarianism makes no sense because it is obvious that people have different levels of intelligence, different physical attributes, different abilities and specializations, and so on. In other words, egalitarians are characterized as proposing that everyone is inherently equal in such a literal sense. But, to my knowledge, no one actually claims this, and hence it is a gigantic straw man. So when egalitarianism is attacked as if it claims that there are no differences between individuals, the ideas of actual egalitarians haven't been touched.

A related route that the opponent of egalitarianism may take is to act as if egalitarianism aims at making everyone equal in such a sense, that the elimination of natural differences between individuals is its prescriptive purpose. But perhaps with some rare exceptions on the fringes, this is also a straw man. Not even communists actually propose, for example, that everyone should have the exact same quantity of wealth. Feminists don't generally advocate that we turn mankind into a unisexual species, anti-racists don't generally advocate that we morph mankind into a single "race". At best, these are bizarre exaggerations stemming from misunderstandings. At worst, it's a scare tactic.

Of course, the opponent of egalitarianism usually ends up falling back on an equation between current conditions that egalitarians seek to address and an appeal to nature or meritocracy. For example, it is just taken for granted that someone is wealthy because they earned it on the basis of their merits or hard work, and hence the egalitarian is characterized as attacking merit. On the flip side, it is taken for granted that someone is poor or in negative economic conditions because they simply didn't take advantage of their opportunities or they simply lack the merit necessary to produce and improve their condition. This is classic vulgar libertarianism, I.E. it ignores the systematic or social context in order to engage in status quo apologetics, as if the conditions in question must necessarily be a reflection of meritocratic forces.

The problem is that when we are talking about social and economic conditions in the context of systems, we are not dealing with a natural meritocracy. The conditions in question are partially determined by institutions, laws, customs, social norms, circumstances, and hence they cannot be completely reduced to a reflection of biology or some sort of inherent pecking order of virtue. Responding to a feminist by appealing to the biological categories of sex, while they are speaking of social conditions in relation to gender, doesn't address their concern. Appealing to race and I.Q. statistics to an anti-racist, while they are speaking of social conditions that are largely determined by legal and social norms, is just vulgar nonsense.

What this boils down to is that anti-egalitarians seem to think that economic, social, and political disparities can be reduced to "nature", while egalitarians are more likely to see such disparities as largely being a consequence of something much more "nurtured" or "socially constructed" rather than a simple reflection of some inherent law of nature. What the anti-egalitarian sees as "just how it is" or some sort of representation of superiority, the egalitarian sees as a "privilege" within a systematic context, whether it be legal in nature or something more general than that. What the opponents of egalitarianism tend to do is engage in a rationalization for the power relations that egalitarians question by making out-of-context appeals to nature or science.

As far as this relates to politics, what goes on is some severe package dealing. Support for liberty is package-dealed with opposition to notions of "social justice", while support for notions of "social justice" are package-dealed with opposition to political liberty or some sort of statist political ideology. But there seems to be no good reason to consider these two spheres to be diametric opposites or completely separate from each other. On one hand, political structures play a role in determining social conditions. On the other hand, social conditions play a role in determining political structures. If one takes such considerations into account, there is no reason why one cannot be a libertarian and simultaneously be a proponent of "social justice".

Insofar as the state can be shown to play a role in creating or exacerbating power disparities and the socio-economic conditions that egalitarians dislike, this creates a case for egalitarians to be anti-statist. Insofar as certain power disparities and socio-economic conditions that egalitarians dislike can be shown to lead to or fuel the power of states, this creates a case for anti-statists to be egalitarians. To put the matter in more positive terms, it may be that certain egalitarian conditions or ideas function as a healthier precondition to the attainability and sustainability of a free society, and that a free society presents the most effective long-term means for achieving egalitarian goals. This is basically a two-pronged "thick libertarian" analysis of egalitarianism.

I must admit that so far I haven't particularly defined egalitarianism, although I think some part of it can be implied from what has been said. By egalitarianism I don't simply mean equal liberty, although that can be understood to be a part of it. I mean "social justice": a respect for "the other", an opposition to extreme power disparities between social groups, generally favoring a more equitable distribution of wealth rather than the concentration of wealth in the hands of a class, and so on. By "egalitarianism" I basically mean "equity", in contrast with extreme social and economic hierarchy. This doesn't necessarily mean a purely flat structure, but a structure that minimizes extreme concentrations of power at any particular point. It signifies the goal of "fair outcomes", or at least a comparative sense of equality.

I think that the marginalization of certain social groups from the benefits of society and the concentration of economic benefits in the hands of an elite is something to oppose. I oppose the oppression of people by virtue of belonging to a particular ethnicity or gender, even if it isn't strictly a matter of physical aggression. I think that this is not simply describable as a consequence of state intervention (although it partly is), but rather it is a social problem in and of itself that requires a deeper level of analysis. Free market libertarians, when not vulgar, tend to be pretty good at the former, but I think that the latter tends to be neglected in comparison. In a sense, yes, "social justice" depends on "political justice", but I also think that "political justice" ultimately depends on "social justice" at a deeper level.

I do not think that a society with extreme social and economic hierarchy would be healthy, even if it nominally had "political justice", and I don't think that it could sustainably have "political justice" in such conditions, which is why I think that the inverse approach to "the state caused it" is just as important if not more important than looking at state intervention as a cause of problems. A society with hierarchical distributions of wealth and power seems like the perfect atmosphere for a state to arise out of, so it seems like there are strong reasons for at least favoring some sense of economic egalitarianism. And in spite of certain dogmas, there is nothing about this that presents dissonance for libertarianism. In fact, it is very consonant with libertarian tradition. In light of this, I am suggesting that libertarians reclaim their egalitarian roots.

Cutting Your Epistemic Ground Out From Under Yourself

A recent trend in some market anarchist circles is to advocate abandoning explicitly normative arguments for freedom and rely strictly on an appeal to personal preferences and value-free economics instead. Generally, this view is advanced through the lense of some form of moral skepticism or moral nihilism. At the same time, such people continue to make arguments along the lines of saying that the state is violent, a territorial monopoly on force, that taxation is theft, and so on. Out of the other side of their mouths, they will say that they cannot epistemically justify the wrongness of it.

I find this to be philosophically problematic. In the context of discussion and debate using basic norms of reasoning, noone can possibly be convinced of another person's position if a person cannot actually establish the truth value of their propositions. An individual cannot claim to be justified in their belief if they don't have an epistemic grounding for it. This is analogous to saying that you don't think that the concept of a god contains any truth value and then trying to argue for the belief that a god exists anyways (and as much as I have a certain kind of respect for Kirkegaurdian style approaches to the question, it inherently puts itself outside of the realm of epistemically grounded discourse).

Repeating the meme that taxation is theft is devoid of significance if one does not believe and cannot prove that theft is actually wrong (and to make matters more complicated, what counts as "theft" to a person will depend on what their property norms are in the first place and who they think is a rightful owner). At best, within such constraints, one can appeal to other people's pre-existing beliefs that you already share in common with them and make a deduction in the attempt to show an inconsistency in their application of that belief. But if one is consistently keeping normativity outside of the realm of knowledge, such a deduction and the premises it is based on could not be said to have any truth value.

Using "value-free" economics, one can possibly show that certain means most efficiently lead to certain ends or values that people have. But if a particular individual has certain norms that one's economic analysis doesn't support, in one's role as an economist one cannot do anything to prove that their beliefs are wrong or illegitimate. In such a context, one has no means by which to show that any particular normative standard is better than another. What one wishes to oppose can only be shown to be "inefficient" relative to certain values, but if someone doesn't hold those values then it does nothing to debunk their beliefs. And in such a context economics alone cannot be used justify one's own beliefs, since it cannot do anything to epistemically validate the implicit normative values of those beliefs.

As a consequence of this, a moral nihilist market anarchist that wields the tool of economics has no epistemic ground to stand on. The moment that they advocate their political position, they are at least implicitly invoking norms, and yet their own meta-ethical position prevents them from any warranted assertability of those norms. If they are intellectually honest, they must admit that this leaves them in a perpetual stalemate when debating people with opposing political positions. They have no grounds for asserting that, say, a neo-nazi or a Stalinist is wrong. Other than simple descriptions and historical analysis, they've placed the entirety of political discourse outside of the realm of truth value.

At such a point, one may be tempted to fall back on a sort of hyper-pluralist or individual-subjectivist position that opposes the application of norms onto anyone that doesn't agree with them. Of course, this itself contains an implicit norm: don't apply your views to others. In the name of opposing every other particular norm, one has reduced everything to the norm of "don't force your views on anyone else". But if someone responds by saying "what's wrong with forcing your views on others?", if someone argues that they are justified in applying their views beyond themselves, there is nothing that the amoralist can do to argumentatively dispell this. They cannot say that they are epistemically justified in holding the belief that it is wrong to force your views on others.

There is a sense in which such a position reduces to complete atomism: each individual's beliefs apply only to them. In another sense, it could be said to make a behemoth out of the principle of "agreement". In a social context, the implication of consistently applying this would seem be that everyone in society separates into enclaves on the basis of their agreements and disagreements. However, if one wishes to still keep people with differing views in the same society, then all of the problems of individual-subjectivism arise: there are conflicts between the norms of individuals and groups, and if they exist in the same society it is impossible to keep norms purely "internal" to those that agree with them. People inevitably effect others to one degree or another. There is no such thing as a purely isolated "intersubjective consensus" that doesn't overlap with other ones.

Of course, one could propose some kind of neutral 3rd party arbitration to attempt to address conflicts between different "intersubjective consensuses". But beyond the fact that we have essentially just turned the concept of "freedom" into "whatever people do that they agree with" or a total competition between any and all norms, anyone that takes their particular norms seriously enough isn't going to have a completely open-ended tolerance for what they believe to be a violation of freedom in a social context. It isn't necessarily the case that anyone would agree to the matter being compromised. And, of course, any 3rd party arbiter is going to have to decide on the basis of *some* particular normative standard.

Then one must face the fact that power dynamics don't work purely on the basis of agreement or consensus. For one thing, there is the matter of inherited power structures: intergenerationally, what may have originally been an agreement is simply what people are born into. Any genuine consent is precluded. But even within the context of a single generation, there can be social circumstances beyond someone's control that they simply asqueiscence to, which would only be agreement in a very superficial sense. The relative positions of power that people are in can be sufficient to generate an authoritarian relation, and this is more of a threat in the context of some modes of organization than others.

All norms are not completely equal in their practical consequences, even if the people that believe in and implement such norms genuinely do not desire such consequences. This by itself is a good reason to consider certain norms over others. Certain norms have practical consequences that would not be supported by those effected by them, including those that believe in them. The result of indifference to such questions at some meta-level is simply an enabling of those consequences. One will not end up with a free society, even relative to one's own implicit norms for freedom, by having a cultural attitude or atmosphere that does not concern itself with this. It is societal suicide.

We have just watched any possibly coherant notion of "freedom" completely crumble. If one really wants to see why thick libertarianism is a vital thing to emphasize, the consequences of extremely going in the opposite direction are telling: "anarchy" in its most perjorative sense, which is basically anomie.

CATO/Reason vs. LRC/LVMI

For quite a number of years now, there has been an on-going ideological clash between two poles and organizational co-minglings of the modern American libertarian movement. One side of the this conflict is represented by the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine, while the other side is represented by LewRockwell.com and the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Various figures from these institutions have attacked each other back and forth, and it has made it to the level of all-out polemics against the other institution.

Generally speaking, I view both sides of this conflict as different segments of paradigmatic right-libertarianism (although there are some exceptions, such as Roderick Long, who has made some comparatively left-libertarian publications for both Cato and LVMI). By paradigmatic right-libertarianism, I refer to libertarianism as it has entered into the American conciousness since around the 1960's, which was in a historical context largely congruent with people fleeing from the conservative movement, and represented by figures such as Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. This historical context obviously has colored the notion of where libertarianism stands relative to other political ideas (I.E. as in relation to the political right).

The split in question roughly tends to conform to the subcategories of "paleo-libertarianism" and "neo-libertarianism". The Cato Institute and Reason has "neo-libertarian" tendencies: more likely to embrace minarchism, interventionist foreign policy, objectivism and post-objectivism, and culturally or socially liberal views. The Ludwig Von Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com has more "paleo-libertarian" tedencies: more likely to embrace anarcho-capitalism, isolationist foreign policy, Murray Rothbard's ideas, and culturally or socially conservative views. Of course, these are generalizations that don't uniformly apply to everyone associated with these institutions (for example, there are minarchists at LVMI and anti-war people at Cato), but they are distinct tendencies.

Since I tend to consider myself outside of the paradigm that these are two poles of, I don't strictly ideologically favor any particular side of the conflict. To a certain extent, I find the conflict amusing because it's a case where neither side is right on the whole and I disagree with some of the premises that they share in common and don't conflict over. Relative to my own views, however, I do have certain identifications of where I think that each side comparatively tends to have it right or wrong on particular questions.

Generally, the Cato/Reason crowd is weaker on the issue of anti-statism. The Ludwig Von Mises institute, on the other hand, may as well be called the Murray Rothbard Institute, since it's overwhelmingly dominated by anarcho-capitalists (and Mises himself was a minarchist who rejected the doctrine of natural rights that Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists favor). In the context of the Objectivist influences, Cato/Reason are more likely to have neoconservative views on war. The paleo-libertarians rightly dislike this. Their tendency to oppose the military wing of the state is a comparative virtue. They hate neoconservatism with a passion, although I think that this hatred is based partly on the wrong reasons.

Perhaps the most significant portion of the conflict between these groups, however, has primarily been based on social or cultural questions (although with some implications for politics). A look into the company that various LewRockwell and LVMI associates keep reveals that they are in bed with some of the most extreme right-wing groups out there (nationalists, racialists, neo-confederates, john birchers, theocrats, monarchists, and assorted ugliness from the paleoconservative movement that overlaps with these things). Furthermore, some of them have explicitly tried to synthesize these things with libertarianism. This has been what some people at Cato and Reason have so strongly attacked, and I think that they are justified in attacking it.

One of the issues that pops up in this context is the move towards a vehement anti-immigration/closed-borders position among certain associates of LVMI/LRC, primarily spearheaded by the work of Hans Herman Hoppe on the matter (there of course are dissenters from this view within those ranks, although some of them simultaneously engage in apologetics or whitewashing for their anti-immigration comrades). In contrast, Objectivism and people influenced by it maintain a strict open borders position, and Cato is more likely to maintain the "plumbline" position of open borders as well. The paleo-libertarian reaction to this is very telling: they attack open borders advocates as "cosmotarians". They resent the cosmopolitanism and anti-nationalism of open borders proponents, who are portrayed new age hipsters.

In fact, Cato/Reason is smeared as "PC" simply for being critical of nationalism and ethnocentrism and calling a spade a spade when it pops up in paleo-libertarian circles. In the name of being "anti-PC", paleo-libertarians tend to engage in apologetics for some of the most authoritarian segments of the political right. It doesn't occur to them that there may be rational reasons, something beyond knee-jerk political correctness, for taking a stand against racism, nationalism, and assorted bigoted reactionaries. Their reaction is a combination of denial and apologia. When Hans Hoppe wrote in plain english that "They-the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.", it seems hard to deny that there's something messed up going on right in front of everyone's faces.

In light of such considerations, it should be no surprise that I ultimately don't think that paleo-libertarians are necessarily better than neo-libertarians, even if paleo-libertarians are more likely to be anti-statist on the surface. A superficial opposition to the modern democratic state gets nullified in significance if it amounts to a rationalization for people's alternative pet authoritarianisms that are below the surface (and sometimes right out in the open for all to see). What paleo-libertarians seem to oppose is primarily modern liberal statism, set in contrast with a romantisized picture of the 19th century -- the "good old days" when there was no welfare state or affirmative action, and yet a whole slew of socially authoritarian policies and negligible freedom for those outside of particular classes or social groups.

But I shouldn't give the impression that I am sympathetic to neo-libertarians either. Afterall, they are basically a neoconservative-libertarian hybrid: neo-liberal on economics, imperialist on foreign relations, and minarchist and representative-democratic on political structure. They're still cozy with the Republican establishment and proponents of state-capitalism. While they might not be socially conservative throwbacks, they still roughly conform to modern conservatism in their political assumptions. Their anti-statism, to the extent that it exists, is a wishy-washy doctrine that keeps many of the most fundamentally objectionable aspects of the state in place. Their main merit is simply being on the more sane side of a culture war.

What both groups represent in unison, in spite of various contributions to politics that could be considered correct, is the philosophical and cultural bankrupcy of the modern American libertarian movement. It has no coherant identity beyond some vague platitudes inherited from the right's anti-government streak and an affinity with free market economics. It is an ambiguous mish-mash of contradictary ideas under the umbrella of the same label, and in this respect I'm saddened to say that Ayn Rand had a point in her criticisms of libertarianism, even though it was partially a consequence of her own errors. Good riddance to paradigmatic libertarianism.

The Nature and Scope of Economics

I've developed some fairly critical views of the scope and applicability of economics. Here are the main issues that keep reoccuring to me:

1. Economics is not a totalistic description of human action. While praxeology is said to be "the science of human action", it seems to me that at best it only deals with particular aspects of human action, and Austrian economists often end up making questionable statements based on the tendency to reduce social philosophy to nothing more than an economic analysis. As far as I understand it, the study of human action in general is what "social science" is. If people claim that economics is the totality of the study of human action, then they are effectively granting economics a disciplinary monopoly on social science. This would inherently exclude disciplines such as sociology and psychology, or at least entail that economics absorbs them. But, as a general rule, I reject any particular discipline claiming totality.

The main problem arise with this tendency in the context of economics is the treatment of people as homo economicus, I.E. using the framework of utility-maximization and descriptive value subjectivism as if this explains the entire picture, as if human interaction can be reduced to rational agents making decisions on the basis of economic incentives. Hence, the economist reacts to discourse on social issues by assuming that everyone is motivated by economic utility. For example, addressing the issue of racial discrimination simply by declaring that it is not profitable in the longrun. But this seems like an evasion of actually addressing the issue. A hardcore bigot isn't going to back off from discrimination by making an economic calculation because there are psychological factors at play other than what can be accounted for by economics. The tendency to essentially cut off the "social" end of things in the name of economics is questionable.

Another example is the general idea that everyone in a voluntary exchange inherently benefits by virtue of the exchange being voluntary. But from a normative perspective, there may be plenty of reasons why a particular exchange could be viewed as non-beneficial to a particular party. In particular social circumstances, party of an exchange may engage in it essentially out of asquiescance because they have no meaningful alternatives. And a particular exchange could be normatively evaluated as a bad decision on the basis of what it is that is obtained (for example, wreckless pursuit and consumption of petty and non-essential goods). It seems silly to me to declare, by simply appealing to value subjectivism, that someone who buys a bunch of tickle-me-elmos "benefits by definition". The tendency to default to the whims of the consumer in economics seems like a basis for justifying consumerism.

More generally speaking, it seems obvious to me that economics cannot account for the myriad of factors beyond its scope that are relevant to the human condition. If we agree with Mises that economics does not evaluate ends, that it is not normative, and if we proceed to act as if economics constitutes the crux or whole of our social philosophy, then the entire field of ethics has just been done away with so long as we are forced to keep our economics caps on. But beyond this, it doesn't seem like economics totally describes human action. Can people's decisions and relations really be reduced to the categories of economics? Can people's religious, social, and political activities be described strictly in terms of utility maximization or in the language of "markets"? That seems like abusing economic language as a metaphor for everything. Human relations aren't a simple matter of market interaction. My relationship with my girlfriend, my parents, and so on, isn't a matter of market exchanges.

2. There is no such thing as a value-free science. This has implications for science in general, but in this context I am speaking about economics. I am of the view that all sciences are inherently embedded with norms, and that a scientist cannot reasonably claim to be "purely objective" in the sense of lacking any personal motivation, bias, and values in the process of their developement of theories. That would be a disinterested "view from nowhere". It seems to me that the very nature of being a human being engaging in a formal discipline, one inherently views things through the lense of values and makes use of normativity ("epistemic norms", as Putnam calls them). To be clear, I do not intend this to be an arguement trying to debunk the legitimacy of science, but it does aim to reduce the pretentiousness that some people attach to science. It does inject some humility or humbleness into science.

With this in mind, there is a sense in which I view the claim that Austrian economics is "value-free" to be somewhat misleading. Austrian economics functions within the framework of certain norms, and essentially all Austrian economists are motivated to defend and oppose particular things that are inherently value-laden. As a matter of simple fact, plenty of Austrian economists are capitalist-apologists that use the theories of Austrian economics in order to defend the things that they are biased towards in the first place. There is a certain tendency to explicitly put foreward normative positions and then shrink back into claiming value-neutrality when it is suitable to do so, as a sort of protective measure. Value-neutrality sometimes functions as a sort of pedestal from which to critisize other people's normative positions while simultaneously protecting one's own normative positions from scrutinity. This is a form of oppurtunism.

While economics may seem at face value to be a disinterested, cold analysis of phenomena, it is very hard to separate any particular school of economics from an obviously value-laden agenda. This includes Austrian economics. While austrian economists may claim to be giving a purely dry description of how things are, their analysis is tempered by normative assumptions, while being instrumental towards particular goals. Indeed, the articles at Mises.org tend to be highly ideologically driven, often functioning to defend certain cultural, ethical, and political values in the name of a value-free science of human action. The Austrian school wouldn't be necessary to single out for this criticism if it weren't for the fact that it so strongly claimed a value-free status in the first place.

3. A subjective theory of economic value has no implications outside of the scope of economics. One of the tendencies that has arisen in certain circles is to essentially make use of Austrian economics to conclude in favor of rejecting any explicitly normative discussion of politics and society, a position that essentially reduces to an absolute kind of relativism about ethics or even a hardcore form of moral nihilism. It's as if people think that the subjective theory of economic value, which is simply a descriptive theory that deals with economic value (I.E. market prices), implies normative subjectivism. I think that this is an abuse of economics outside of its proper scope that effectively dissolves libertarianism (by libertarianism I mean an explicitly normative political philosophy of freedom). In conjunction with this trend, people advance the idea that economics is all that matters, in contrast with ethics.

Aside with the problems or disingenousness of claiming to be value-free in the first place, if one takes such an approach at face value it inherently must be completely incapable of providing anything meaningful to a political philosophy seeking the goal of freedom. The goal of freedom itself becomes an uresolvable mish-mash of conflicting norms, none of which are supposed to be able to be evaluated on their merits. If economics is supposed to be non-normative, if it suppose to have nothing to do with evaluating ends, and it is thought of as a context one isn't supposed to step outside of, then there is no way to build a comprehensive social philosophy of freedom. All that one can do is say that "this works" or "this doesn't work" relative to assumed norms that cannot be discussed as valid or invalid. But if one is interested in comprehensively establishing a political theory, this is useless.

This is what caused Murray Rothbard to say that utilitarian economics is insufficient to establish libertarianism. He argued that utilitarian economists can only take the norms of a society (particularly its property norms) for granted and analize from there, which has the danger of asquiescing to the status quo and completely avoiding actually taking a normative stance that would lead to the goals of libertarianism. In terms of this general point, I think that Rothbard was right. Nothing of significance is achieved for libertarianism by simply relying on economics in a vacuum, because it tells us nothing about the question of justice. It is philosophically defenseless against any normative position that would threaten justice.