Paul Marks
Nobody I know regards 19th century Britain or the United States as libertarian. But we do look at the facts – for example the British government (local as well as central) was well under 10% of the economy around 1870 (just about the low point).
And those people who think that economies of scale (i.e. an individual or company employing thousands of people) on “state intervention” are just wrong, flat wrong (they do not know what they are talking about).
As for the United States – slavery can not be ignored and slavery (NOT capitalism) did depend on statism.
As Salmon P. Chase was fond of pointing out – slavery is actually a series of common law offenses (false imprisonment, assault and so on) “legalised” by state statutes and corrupt court judgement.
People in “Bleeding Kansas” (where the killing between the free and slave sides started long before Lincoln was elected President of the United States) knew the two social and legal systems could not live side by side – and that both sides wanted to expand into the West.
This does not mean that Lincoln’s tactics in the Civil War were any good (the North won because it was much bigger and more powerful – not because of his supposedly great leadership) – or that his Henry Clay Whig economic ideas were any good either.
Leaving slavery aside – could America have been a freer society in the 19th century? Of course it could – anything can be improved.
However, government (the Civil War aside) was quite small – to claim that it shaped the economy (as some people do) is nonsense.
By the way I am not even sure what the term “feudal society” is supposed to mean. After all one can have feudalism without serfdom (it had basically died out in both Britain and France by the 1400s) and one can have serfdom without feudalism (for example the Emperor Diocletian bound peasants to the soil – made them serfs).
Feudalism is a legal and political system (whether it is a good or bad one is a debate for another time) it is NOT an economic system – the idea that it is an economic system is an error.
As for the “cultural libertarian left”.
Yes – I do not really see why they feel the need to ape the Frankfurt School Marxists. After all the modern “Critical Theory” (if we are not allowed to say “P.C.” any more) do not really believe their own rubbish. They would not ally with the Islamists (which they have – in many Western countries) if they were actually sincere about all this “rights of women” and “Gay rights” and on and on.
It is just “victim group” tactics – to get people to blame all their problems (real or fantasy problems) on “capitalist society” – “the rich” – “the corporations”. And to make people support a wonderful new society where the state (sorry – not the state “the people”) will control everything.
I find it hard to take the “cultural” stuff seriously – as the people who push it clearly do not believe in it themselves (see above), so back to the economic stuff.
People who really think that, for example, J. Wedgewood was some illegitimate creation of the state in the 18th century, or that Jon Huntsman (senior) or “boo-hiss” “the Koch brothers” are now – are just wrong, and there is an end to it.
If the “libertarian left” are peaceful in their wrongness – i.e. just shout “their land and other property should not be theirs” then they should be treated peacefully (i.e. ignored), if they are violent in their wrongness, try and actually take the land and other property by force, then they should be shot.
There really is nothing else to say to people who think that “inequality is the creation of the state” and so on. There was nothing else to say to Rousseau and his followers in the 1700s – and the fundamental position remains the same.
This does not mean that credit money expansion does not cause artificial inequality – of course it does – but as the “libertarian left” tend to be in favour (not against) “cheap money” credit money expansion (against funding loans solely from REAL SAVINGS) there is no common ground even on this point.
Still with government now about half the entire economy with out of control Welfare States destroying every major Western country, and the financial system being a demented credit bubble, this society will soon pass away anyway.
So, in a way, the “libertarian left” will get their wish – a blank sheet to start again.
Pity about the future starvation and cannibalism though.
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On “feudalism” one does not have to be a total nerd (like that fat and bald man who, for no reason I can work out, looks back at me when I look in the mirror) who reads works such as that of John Dundas (1710) on what “feudal law” actually was and how it differed from the Scots Law of his day – for example that under “feudal” law land could not be taken (without the consent of the land holder) to build a new road.
One can just read standard works such as M.M. Poston “Medieval Economy and Society” (1972 – if the memory of my schooldays does not play me false) or Alan MacFarlane’s “The Origins of English Individualism” (1978). The idea that there was a “feudal mode of production” or a “feudal moral economy” (as opposed to “capitalism”) is nonsense.
On Kansas – the enemies of the Free State Republicans in the 1850s called them religious fanatics and tools of big business (just like that do now).
However, “tools of the Koch Brothers” is at least a new attack on Kansas Republicans – as the brothers Koch were not around in the 1850s.
By the way I have never claimed the anti slavery side were always nice – they certainly were not.
For example three men from Alabama boasted that they were going to impose slavery in Kansas – and they boasted in the wrong bar.
They were tied to posts and killed “indian style” – it took them all night to die.
Nice people do not kill like that.
The “Scots Irish” (Ulster Scots – as opposed to Scot-Scots) were always forward in killing – on both sides in the Civil War.
Just as they had been in the American War of Independence – and the various indian wars.
Having to kill your neighbours (or have them kill you) was a continuation of the culture they knew from home.
Although they were often happy to make friends (indeed intermarry) with people they been fighting only a little while previously – which baffles simple minded academics who think that the word “racism” explains anything.
Hatfields and McCoys – although I do not think the popular view of that conflict is correct.
After all a McCoy was first to die – a returning Union soldier, who had done nothing but fight on the “wrong” side during the Civil War (Kentucky did not secede – indeed when the Confederate Army entered Kentucky without permission, the Commonwealth of Kentucky declared for the Union), and the Hatfields killed women and children, the McCoys did not.
So it was not “six of one and half a dozen of the other” – as the conflict is remembered.
Paul,
I’ve given you 5 stars. Not for anything in particular that you say in the essay – I, probably among others, am struggling to understand your point. But for the fact that you’ve come out of the closet and written something off your own bat. Welcome to the club, Paul!
If I may offer a suggestion intended to be helpful, you might write a bit better if you aimed to make your work intelligible to people of differing viewpoints within the liberty movement. You might want to consider how Sean who represents the conservative side, or I on the opposite tack, would interpret what you write. You might even think about two even harder nutcases to crack – Ian B who has, as far as I can tell, the best intellect around these parts right now, and Keir whose mind is, to quote Tolkien’s words about the eagle Meneldor, “young and swift.”
But all I will say right now is: Well done. Keep on trying.
Neil
Neil – you should, therefore, withdraw your five stars as I did not write this as a post.
It is just a comment – which I did not check for typos and so on.
As for making what I write “intelligible” – apart from historical details, and other such, I do not tell people what they do not already know (although they may pretend not to know it).
Human beings can, with effort, tell moral right from wrong.
Human beings can, also with effort, choose to do moral right – against the desire to do evil.
Moral responsibility (free will) is a fact.
And, for example, Thomas Hobbes was wrong in assuming that there is no right to defend others from attack. And Rousseau was wrong in assuming the “Lawgiver” knows what people really want (the “General Will”) better than individual people know themselves.
Efforts to lend out “money” that no one really saved (credit expansion) lead to a boom-bust. No one, deep down, really believes otherwise – although many pretend to do so. Otherwise people would sincerely believe “print more money and we will be rich” – and who, really, believes that? And it makes no odds if it is “print” or “play games with banking”.
There is nothing, in-its-self wrong with material inequality of income or wealth (although some methods of getting rich, such as the government printing press, are wrong), not is there anything in-its-self wrong with one person (or a private organisation) employing thousands of people.
Bodies corporate (such as churches, or trading company) were not the invention of the state. And Canon Law and Law Merchant (with the ideas of limited liability) were not the creations of the state either.
Economies of scale are not, mostly, the creation of the state. Nor is large scale transport impossible without the state.
That land was stolen by violence centuries ago does NOT invalidate the ownership of those who own the land now.
The share of the economy taken by the military has been in DECLINE in most Western nations for many decades. Out of control government spending is a matter of the Welfare States – which were NOT created in response to problems caused by “capitalism” (they were created for ideological reasons – and then grew out of control, partly because of Cloward and Piven stuff, but also partly because this is the nature-of-the-beast).
And on and on.
Again I do not, for the most part, tell people what they do not already know.
I am disliked because I remind people of what they would rather pretend they did not know.
I do this quite deliberately.
Well Paul, it looks as if you’ve already taken my advice with your comment at 27 February, 2015 at 12:51 pm . Apart from two sudden lurches, the first when you moved without warning from Hobbes and Rousseau to economics, and the second from there to land, I could read it in one go without feeling queasy. And I actually agreed with quite a bit of it.
The “Lawgiver” of Rousseau is the tyrant of Thomas Hobbes – with a false smiling face and lying cant about the “General Will” coming out of his mouth. At least Hobbes spares us the pretence that he supports liberty.
Nor was land a lurch – it was another example of what people already know but pretend that they do not. Who really believes that “1066 and all that” justifies taking land now? But plenty of people imply they believe that – even though they do not really believe it. All I am asking is for them to stop implying things they do not actually believe.
And, by the way, both Hobbes and Rousseau would hold that the state has the right to take land if it wants to (although Rousseau would add in some cant about if it is the “General Will”), i.e. they both REJECT the central difference between Western law and Islamic law (and other Oriental Despotism) since at least the Edict of Q in 877 A.D.
I cut Hobbes some slack. He was writing in the aftermath of the Civil War, and took the view that the breakdown of government is a catastrophe as a result. Not the right conclusion to draw, but somewhat understandable. It must have seemed like a “war of all against all”.
Ian you are in good company in cutting Hobbes some slack – M.J. Oakeshott did the same. I do not cut him any slack at all – but then I am not the most sweet natured person in the universe.
You are not disliked Paul. At least not by me. I’m the one who does the trick of getting so disliked I get kicked out of websites, remember 🙂
I agree with you generally about the Libertarian “Left”, though it depends to some extent what one means by the Libertarian Left. There are various kinds of mutualists with useful contributions to make, I think. And arguably I could be put on the “left” because I try to take a “populist” libertarian view (i.e. how it can best help those at the lower end of society socially and economically) though my argument is pretty much pure Austrian as you know.
Needless to say perhaps, Critical Theory and the social theories and analyses derived from it are pure unmitigated garbage.
I did not understand why you got kicked out of Samizdata or Counting Cats Nick.
You did not attack Perry’s wife (as he thought) – you attacked the Oxford PPE class (I have done the same – and I [many decades ago] actually applied to go to Oxford and study the course, so perhaps my attacks are “sour grapes”). In Counting Cats – I did not agree with what you said about physics and free will (we have had long arguments about these matters), but I do not see why that means you should be asked to leave.
I am a hot tempered and intolerant man – but I do not see what the problem people have with you is.
The “mutualists” and so on.
Well it is a matter of whether they are peaceful or not. If they are peaceful I have no problem with them.
After all Dallas was partly founded by people from a, failed, Robert Owen community – but I would not have minded had the community not failed.
These communal experiments do not bother me (no more than monastic communities, monks and nuns, do) – as long as they do not bother anyone else.
The “Critical Theory” types are indeed different – they are not trying to opt out and form a commune anywhere. They are trying to destroy Civil Society (“capitalism”) – they are vermin.
I think my days at Samizdata were already numbered before I inadvertently criticised Perry’s wife when having a go at the PPE degree. I remember not long before- a few days- a thread suddenly turned extremely nasty on me, such that at one point I posted “What is going on here?” or words to that effect. Not in an angry argument kind of way (as you and I sometimes do) but a genuinely personal kind of way that took me quite by surprise. I think I’d posted on too many long, contrary and forthright comments for the tastes of certain regulars there.
As to Cats, it was clear that after I’d (yes, again) apparently insulted his wife, either NIck or I would have to go, and I did the honourable thing and voluntarily left. It wasn’t about physics and free will, it was about his wife’s charity running supporting the progressivists, which I thought was a valid point to make but apparently it wasn’t.
And perhaps Keir would like to chair a YouTube round table discussion about critical theory and the other drivers of the current enemies of liberty 😉
I did not know that Nick’s wife. There seems to be a theme here – avoid any comment that might be interpreted (in any way – even falsely) as an attack on someone’s wife.
I also remember that Jewish lad from Oxford, he seemed just a bit eccentric to me – but a lot of people at Samizdata took a real dislike to him (oddly enough for his defence of Christianity).
A discussion about Critical Theory….. – I could I just eat my own liver instead?
If government can, after generations of ownership, demand that the Duke of Portland produce written evidence that his ancestors justly-acquired certain lands – then government can do ANYTHING. In England written records proving “just ownership” have never been the norm, there was no “land register” and so on.
Edmund Burke was correct – the people whispering into the ear of the confused George III were not just aiming to destroy the liberty of the American colonists.