Key ideas: “The following is a highly condensed version of an article published in The Intellectual Activist, May—June and December 1985.”
The Libertarian movement has acquired an unwarranted reputation. It has come under attack in various quarters for holding the value of liberty as an absolute. It has been condemned by conservatives for elevating liberty above tradition and authority, and by liberals for elevating liberty above equality and humanitarianism.
Both camps are mistaken. Libertarianism deserves only one fundamental criticism: it does not value liberty. If it were ever successful, it would destroy the remnants of freedom that still exist in this country far faster than any of the more explicit enemies of liberty.
Libertarianism has no philosophy. To put this more accurately: it renounces the need for any intellectual basis for its beliefs. The volumes of scholarly material defending Libertarianism are self-admittedly pointless, since the true Libertarian position is that no defense is necessary. Murray Rothbard, widely viewed as the father of the movement, expresses this clearly in presenting his central argument for liberty.
“Should virtuous action (however we define it) be compelled, or should it be left up to the free and voluntary choice of the individual?” he asks. And he answers: “To be virtuous in any meaningful sense, a man’s actions must be free…. The point is more forceful: no action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.” Freedom, therefore, is a prerequisite of any virtue, and thus can be validated with no knowledge of virtue at all. Morality, in other words, is irrelevant to the issue of liberty. “Freedom is necessary to, and integral with, the achievement of any of man’s ends,” Rothbard insists.
How can a man identify the requirements of virtue without first knowing what virtue is? Yet Rothbard does not ask why the very concept of virtue is necessary, what it consists of, or how it is justified. Without understanding anything about the nature of virtue, he proceeds to declare that liberty is its sine qua non. His reasoning is an effort to subvert—indeed, to invert—the logical hierarchy of ethics and politics by claiming that one need know nothing about the first in order to establish the principles of the second.
But since the fundamental question of ethics is how to define the good, it is ethics itself which must determine the propriety or impropriety of force. If, for example, the good is—as many believe—a world that heeds God’s will, then it is virtuous to prevent, by force if necessary, the distribution of pornography or the drinking of alcohol or the preaching of atheism. If prayer is a duty one is obliged to perform—if the act of praying is intrinsically good, regardless of one’s knowledge or rational interests—why shouldn’t one be compelled to go through the motions of prayer, if that is supposed to bring greater glory to God? How many “sinners” throughout history have been tortured and killed in order to save their souls and thereby please God? Of what logical relevance is the victim’s lack of consent, if one accepts this concept of the good?
One cannot exhort people to have faith in a being beyond their comprehension, and then insist that freedom—which means the right to act on the judgment of one’s mind—is a prerequisite of virtue. A moral code that urges man to surrender his mind to a higher authority is irreconcilable with the principle that man ought to live his life guided by his own thinking. If obedience is a virtue, freedom of thought and action cannot be a right. …
The evil of the initiation of force lies in the fact that force is the negation of the mind. It makes the victim act not by the guidance of his independent perception, but by the dictates of a gun. Only if reason is a virtue, therefore, can force be a vice.
But to uphold reason as a virtue requires a specific code of morality. It requires a morality the standard of which is man’s life, and which recognizes that human survival depends on human rationality. With that as an ethical base, one can demonstrate that the initiation of physical force is anti-life and thus immoral. In this approach, liberty is indeed a prerequisite of virtue.
But if reason is not a moral value, if virtue is based on dogmatically asserted duties or on subjectively asserted desires, then human understanding of right and wrong is irrelevant—is, in fact, an obstacle— to morality. In this view, there are no grounds for barring force in human relations, and more: force becomes indispensable in obtaining compliance with unprovable moral imperatives. Without reason, no resolution of disagreements can take place, except by resort to fists and bullets.
In defiance of all fact, Libertarianism declares that there is no need for any concept such as individual rights, there is no need for any code of ethics, there is no need for any philosophical ideas at all—other than the Libertarian axiom that no matter how irrational one’s values, “liberty” is the prerequisite of achieving them. …
Libertarianism is a version of moral subjectivism. It is the view that all values are equally valid, and therefore equally irrelevant to the issue of political liberty. Consequently, all of ethics must be expunged from Libertarian doctrine. There must be no hint of any position being taken in regard to moral values.
For example, a statement on racial discrimination in the 1978 Libertarian Party platform said: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” It was subsequently eliminated for being incompatible with Libertarianism. “Such a moralism simply has no business in a Libertarian platform,” a former state party chairman explains. “Bigotry does not contradict basic Libertarian principle…. To condemn it is to make an ethical value judgment, not a Libertarian political statement.” …
A leading Libertarian writer and speaker, Walter Block, states this antipathy toward moral principles even more baldly. He asks whether Libertarianism “must be honest and truthful,” and whether it ought to involve not just a “disembodied ideology” but some “animating ideal or spirit to give the movement a sense of purpose.” And he answers with an unequivocal no. “There must not be more to our Libertarian movement than its disembodied ideology—its nonaggression principle. Any sort of additional ‘animating ideal’ or ’spirit’ will only needlessly, and unjustly, force true Libertarians to leave; although they may agree with the noninitiation of force, they may not be in tune with this undefined, ineffable ‘spirit.’” As to the issue of honesty: “Lying violates no Libertarian principle…. You don’t owe [anyone] the truth unless he’s paid you for it.”
Block is correct: Libertarianism is incompatible with values as such. If no morality is unacceptable to Libertarianism, then no morality can be acceptable, either. There can be no endorsement of scientific progress, or of honesty; there can be no criticism of irrationality. What Block fails to grasp, however, is that once ethics is abandoned, all values become groundless and must be repudiated—including the value of liberty.
Libertarianism cannot argue, for instance, that socialized medicine destroys medical care—why is health necessarily a value? It cannot condemn the public school system for making true education impossible —why should education be a value? It cannot claim that price controls destroy an economy’s productivity—why is production or prosperity a value? Does justice demand that the individual be free? What about those Libertarians who believe that justice is heartless and that mercy is morally superior? Is coercion wrong because it interferes with people’s pursuit of happiness? What about those Libertarians who regard happiness as a vice? Is liberty to be upheld because it is allegedly the means of achieving whatever it is one happens to value? What about the Libertarian who preaches a life of suffering and frustration, who considers the renunciation, rather than the achievement, of values to be a virtue?
If Libertarianism were consistent in its avowed rejection of the realm of morality, if it stopped smuggling in implicit value judgments to give its statements a deceptive veneer of coherence, it could say nothing in favor of liberty.
This contempt for ideas extends far beyond the field of ethics. It is not only moral principles that Libertarianism repudiates, but all philosophic ideas. Murray Rothbard claims to hold a philosophy but predictably regards it, too, as inconsequential. He writes:
As a political theory, Libertarianism is a coalition of adherents from all manner of philosophic (or nonphilosophic) positions, including emotivism, hedonism, Kantian a priorism, and many others. My own position grounds Libertarianism on a natural rights theory embedded in a wider system of Aristotelian-Lockean natural law and a realist ontology and metaphysics. But although those of us taking this position believe that only it provides a satisfactory groundwork and basis for individual liberty, this is an argument within the Libertarian camp about the proper basis and grounding of Libertarianism rather than about the doctrine itself. [Emphasis added.]7
This reflects Rothbard’s utter scorn for ideas—even his own. If he claims to believe that only an Aristotelian system can “ground” Libertarianism, how can he call the adherents of “emotivism, hedonism, and Kantian a priorism” members of the same camp? If these proponents are presenting false arguments based on false premises, why does he not see this as undercutting his own case for liberty? If an investment adviser tells people to buy gold because he believes that the price will rise and they will get rich, while a devout Hindu, who believes that wealth is evil, tells people to buy gold because he believes the price will plummet and they will become impoverished, the two advisers are not reaching the same conclusion, even though both say: “Buy gold.” And neither are the Aristotelian and the Kantian, even though both may proclaim the words: “Liberty is good.” Only a total disregard for the context and the meaning of concepts could allow anyone to equate the two viewpoints.
Rothbard is saying simultaneously that only one philosophic foundation can justify liberty—and that Libertarianism is comfortable with any foundation, or with no foundation. This can only mean that liberty needs no justification, and that he regards all discussion, including his own copious contributions, about its proper “grounding” as pointless pedanticism.
Imagine a pro-capitalist who joins with socialists in a demonstration against the Reagan Administration. Should he overlook, as a mere detail, the fact that he believes Reagan is too appeasing of Russia and too tolerant of social-welfare spending, while the socialists believe that Reagan is too harsh toward the Soviets and too draconian in his budget cuts? Would any sane person dismiss this disagreement as just an intra- camp argument about “grounding,” but not about the crucial point itself of Reagan’s undesirability? Yet this is exactly the attitude taken by Libertarians toward the question of the desirability of liberty.
In logic, there is no way to comprehend the meaning of the principle of the noninitiation of force without a philosophical foundation. And there is no way to apply the principle in a political context without formulating a code of rights, particularly property rights. Without such a base, liberty could mean anything from socialism, which offers “freedom” from the law of supply and demand, to Zen Buddhism, which offers “freedom” from the law of noncontradiction.
But a code of rights cannot be established except by reference to a code of ethics. Rights pertain to freedom of action in a social context, and one cannot know how man should act as a member of society before knowing how man should act as man.
Ethics itself, moreover, is the product of a view of man and of reality. In other words, to arrive at a proper understanding and an objective validation of liberty, philosophy is inescapable.
One has to begin with a view of reality as comprehensible, and of man as a rational being who relies upon reason as his sole means of valid knowledge and as his basic tool of survival.
One must then identify man’s life as the proper standard of value, and morality as the principles defining the actions necessary to maintain man’s life.
Since life is sustained through thought and action, one then concludes that the individual must have the right to think and to act, and to keep the product of that thinking and acting—which means: the right to life, liberty, and property.
Because the initiation of force is the means by which a mind is paralyzed, such force is evil.
Because force is the means by which one’s rights are violated, it must be outlawed.
Thus the conclusion that liberty is a fundamental social good.
Without such a philosophic base, the concept of liberty cannot be defended. At the core of Libertarianism, however, is the denial of this basic connection. Libertarians display nothing but disdain for fundamental ideas. They disparage the very idea of a fundamental idea. Libertarianism wishes to espouse an end product: liberty—while remaining oblivious to its source: philosophy. It sees no logical, ordered structure of ideas, but only a haphazard smorgasbord of notions, and feels entitled to help itself to any one, at any time, in any sequence, as the mood strikes.
What must this imply about the effort to achieve liberty in practice? If liberty poses no threat to the dominant ideas of our culture today, where is the resistance to it emanating from? If the ideal of freedom is so devoid of intellectual content and controversy—if it is compatible with all philosophies and all values—if it is, as Rothbard puts it, “necessary to, and integral with, the achievement of any of man’s ends”—what ideas do people need to be convinced of in order for the ideal of liberty to gain wide acceptance? The Libertarian answer has to be: none.
According to the basic premise of Libertarianism, no ideological education is possible. Can Libertarians persuade people of the truth of some particular philosophy? One philosophy is as good as any other. Can they point out the errors of various philosophies? Even false philosophies are compatible with liberty. Can they show how certain moral values are in conflict with liberty? None are. But if wrong ideas are not the problem, and correct ideas are not the solution, what explains our steady drift toward statism, and what could reverse it?
The answer indicates the next development in Libertarian thinking: its version of the Marxist theory of class struggle.
“American society is divided into a government-oppressed class and a government-privileged class, and is ruled by a power elite,” says the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus.8 Therefore,
A Libertarian class analysis is the key theoretical tool, the one indispensable method of unraveling complex strategic and tactical questions. Crucial to any Libertarian theory of social change is the clear moral and political distinction to be made between those who hold state power and those who do not—between those who rule and those who are ruled…. Our Libertarian worldview comes ever more clearly into focus as we draw the line politically between two opposing classes with mutually exclusive relations to the state. Which side are you on? Do you defend the state—or do you side with the people?9
There is no intellectual conflict in regard to liberty, this view declares. The people are simply kept in chains by a privileged elite, which has somehow managed to take control of the coercive machinery of the state. Each group is drawn to pursue its innate “class interests.” The masses for some reason are driven to seek freedom; the ruling bureaucrats, power.
What weapons do Libertarians intend to use in this type of battle, since education is pointless? The abandonment of reason necessitates the endorsement of force. In Libertarianism’s pursuit of social change, therefore, it is left with only one recourse: violence.
Libertarians want to transform the present system not by force of argument, but by plain force. And some of them broadcast this openly. “The fact is that no ruling class has ever given up its power voluntarily— and any movement for radical social change which fails to realize this will never achieve its goals,” says Libertarian Vanguard, a “radical” newspaper within the Libertarian movement. America’s “present system cannot be reformed or wished away—extra-parliamentary action is, ultimately, the prospect awaiting us.”10 …
The Libertarian campaign for “liberty” is a war against the state, not against statism. It is not the ideas behind statism that Libertarians attack —there are no such ideas, they believe; the target of their attack is the state itself, even the state as defined and established by America’s founding fathers. It is the state, in any form, that represents a restriction upon their “liberty,” and therefore deserves to be crushed. This is the anarchism inherent in the movement.
“Libertarian principle and the dynamics of social change dictate that we be perpetual state-haters,” says a former vice chairman of the Libertarian Party.12 Not haters of slavery or of tyranny—but of the state as such. …
The goals of achieving liberty and destroying the state are incompatible—yet Libertarians choose the latter. A properly functioning government, one whose purpose is to protect individual rights against attack, is essential to the preservation of liberty; but this is of no concern to Libertarians—all states are the enemy.
Libertarians do not believe that by crippling the state they are helping the cause of freedom. The dissolution of the state is an end of itself. To Libertarians, whatever harms the state is categorically good; whatever helps the state is categorically bad—regardless of the effect on human liberty.
For example, when South Vietnam was conquered by North Vietnam in 1975, Murray Rothbard found it an occasion for celebration: “What is inspiring to Libertarians is to actually see the final and swift disintegration of a State…. None of [America‘s] superior might and firepower could in the end prevail against the will and determination of the mass of Vietnamese (and Cambodians) bent against seemingly impossible odds to dislodge dictatorial governments.” The death of a state, he writes,
vindicates once again the insights of the theorists of mass guerrilla warfare … that after a slow, patient, protracted struggle, in which the guerrilla armies (backed by the populace) whittle and wear down the massively superior firepower of the state armies (generally backed by other, imperialist governments), the final blow occurs in which the state dissolves and disintegrates with remarkable speed.16
It is immaterial to Rothbard that communism had triumphed and that the freedom of the South Vietnamese people had been reduced from minuscule to nonexistent. All that matters to “perpetual state-haters” is that for one brief moment they experience the exhilaration of seeing a government ground into dust. And the number one target of this hostility is the government not of some totalitarian dictatorship, but of the United States. …
According to Libertarians, America is far more contemptible than even the Soviet Union. Murray Rothbard writes,
Taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most war-like, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States…. Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks adopted the theory of “peaceful coexistence” as the basic foreign policy for a communist state. The idea was this: as the first successful communist movement, Soviet Russia would serve as a beacon for and supporter of other communist parties throughout the world. But the Soviet state qua state would devote itself to peaceful relations with all the other countries, and would not attempt to export communism through interstate warfare…. Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own, the Soviets arrived early at what Libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy…. Increasing conservatism under Stalin and his successors strengthened and reinforced the nonaggressive, “peaceful coexistence” policy. [Emphasis added]18
…
What emerges from Libertarianism—the alleged advocate of absolute liberty—is a standard leftist worldview. The poor and the weak are oppressed by a Corporate State—America is an imperialist oligarchy— Moscow wants peace and participates in an arms race only in order to keep up with our power-mad Pentagon planners—the Third World is being denied freedom and prosperity by America’s ruling elite—all U.S. foreign policy, from Southeast Asia to Central America, is designed to achieve world domination—class struggle is the key to understanding the state of the world. …
But what is Libertarianism’s goal? If it is anti-philosophy, anti-reason, anti-morality, anti-state, and anti-liberty-what is it for? A movement that is neutral about or indifferent to moral values does not launch a political crusade. Why would anyone who has renounced all values undertake a campaign to bring about radical social change?
The answer is that Libertarianism rests not on neutrality or apathy, but on hostility. The source of Libertarianism—the animating force behind its assaults on philosophy, on ethics, on ideas, on the institution of government, on the United States—is the desire not to neglect values, or even to evade their existence, but to eradicate them.
Walter Block, in Defending the Undefendable, argues that prostitution is no different from any business transaction and should not be viewed as demeaning. “We have to offer something to our prospective partners before they will consent to have sex with us,” he says, such as the arrangement by which
the male is expected to pay for the movies, dinners, flowers, etc., and the female is expected to reciprocate with sexual services. The marriages in which the husband provides the financial elements, and the wife the sexual and housekeeping functions, also conform clearly enough to the [prostitution] model…. All relationships where trade takes place, those which include sex as well as those which do not, are a form of prostitution. Instead of condemning all such relationships because of their similarity to prostitution, prostitution should be viewed as just one kind of interaction in which all human beings participate. Objections should not be raised to any of them—not to marriage, not to friendship, not to prostitution.28
Even pimps elicit moral praise from Block: “The pimp serves the function of bringing together two parties to a transaction at less cost than it would take to bring them together without his good offices.” In doing so, the pimp “is, if anything, more honorable than many other brokers, such as [those in] banking, insurance and the stock market. They rely on restrictive state and federal laws to discourage their competition, whereas the pimp can never use the law to safeguard his position.”29
This is not a demand for the repeal of laws against victimless crimes (laws that should be repealed). It is a blatant call for the repudiation of moral standards. Block is not defending an individual’s right to engage in sordid behavior—he is denouncing the very idea of evaluating any behavior as sordid. He is insisting that pimps are actually honorable men, deserving of more respect than the typical businessman. ….
Libertarianism rests upon a pervasive desire to annihilate. There is to be no state, no ethics, no values, no standards, no ideas, no reason, no reality. No state—because it defines the use of force; no ethics—because it identifies proper behavior; no values—because they demand that actions have a purpose; no standards—because they establish right and wrong; no ideas—because they deny primacy to feelings; no reason—because it excludes the irrational; no reality— because it decrees that whims do not work. …
Objectivism is incompatible with Libertarianism on every philosophical issue. Objectivism says: live by reason, follow a rational code of morality, practice self-interest as a virtue, establish the principles of limited government to define the appropriate use of retaliatory force. As its name implies, Ayn Rand’s philosophy upholds an objective reality, objective cognition, objective values, and objective law.
Libertarianism’s relationship to Objectivism is not merely that of an enemy, but of a parasite. Without Objectivism there would, ironically, be no Libertarian movement today. It is Objectivism that has offered a moral defense of liberty—which Libertarianism has stolen and mutilated. It is Objectivism that has imbued so many young people with a deep commitment to capitalism—which Libertarianism has seized on and corrupted.
Libertarianism seeks to appropriate some of the fruits of Objectivism while trying to uproot the tree. Its anti-conceptual nature makes it consistently desire effects without causes—politics without ethics, liberty without reason, social change without philosophy. It wants to use the words of Objectivism’s noninitiation-of-force principle, but not the ideas that give them meaning. It wishes to feed off the by-products of Objectivism’s defense of capitalism, while repudiating the nature and roots of that defense.
But the law of causality, like any metaphysical fact, cannot be circumvented. The attempt to do so can result only in that perversion of liberty which is the essence of Libertarianism.