Egalitarianism & Libertarianism

From the neolibertarian QandO blog:

It cuts to the core difference between libertarians and liberals. Yglesias and Kos are liberals which means their base philosophy is founded in egalitarianism. The core precept of the French revolution. Libertarianism is based in the concept of liberty, found in the American Revolution. The two are as far apart as two principles can be despite Kos's valiant effort to meld them.

Egalitarianism sounds wonderful: promoting equality in political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

But it never quite works as well as it sounds. Egalitarianism is something which must be forced on people in the economic and social realm (as well as in the realm of "civil rights" when pseudo rights are introduced into the game).

I've always found the proclaimed differences between the American and French Revolution to be a Burkean construction, an accident of history. You can find very radical factions within the American Revolution and the early republic; check out Andrew Shankman's "Crucible of Democracy."

More importantly, I question the claim about the relationship, or lack thereof, between libertarianism and egalitarianism. Murray Rothbard aside, some forms of libertarianism argue that egalitarianism, or something near to it, is a natural product of a true free market. This was once an early belief of American radicals, but the rise of inequalities of wealth and concentration of capital were taken as a refutation of this belief. But with the insight offered by revisionist historians like Gabriel Kolko, I believe there may be reason to return to these fundamentally American ideals.

Logan, I agree with you. To say that egalitarianism and libertarianism are "as far apart as two principles can be" is ridiculous. On the Freedom Democrats site it's worth remembering that Jefferson was a vigorous advocate of both! That's why he wrote that all men are created equal and supported as much democracy as possible within a republican framework while at the same time he believed in laissez-faire economics and decentralized government.

Equality is linked to democracy because the two other traditional forms of government--monarchy and aristocracy--are grounded in inequality. Equality and liberty are BOTH basic American values. Yes, sometimes they clash and we have to choose one over the other but for the most part they are compatible and go hand-in-hand. Show me a statist and you'll also be showing me an elitist. In today's context, it's true of both Clinton & the DLC and Bush & the neocons. Such centrist politicians support neither equality nor liberty. Friends of corporate monopoly (anti-equality) are usually friends of paternalistic government (anti-liberty). It's the old big business/big government axis.

I agree with you also that it's a bad idea for Democrats to ignore the South. Whistling Past Dixie sounds like an interesting book but it's self-defeating and just plain wrong to think that Democrats have to write off the southern states in national elections. As an admirer of William Jennings Bryan, I'm partial to his Midwest-West-South coalition.

I do think that national Democrats will have to be more tolerant of culturally conservative Americans in order to play well in the South and other portions of the country that have been lost during recent decades. I'm a libertarian in most ways, but I'd prefer to see Democrats stand up for marriage (as it's always been defined by western civilization and probably every other civilization) and for the protection of innocent life (i.e., against abortion). Those are popular positions, Christian positions, and "natural" positions if you don't want to bring religion into the analysis. But, as I say, if Democrats can't swallow opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion, they should at least be smart enough and tolerant enough to stop dismissing those on the other side of these issues with smears and insults. You know what I mean...the self-righteous, judgemental epithets that are thrown around so casually. Words like "homophobic," "bigot," "hate," "fascist," "anti-choice." The words are usually inaccurate and they turn off many potential allies for other, more pressing political issues.

Finally, if Democrats can't see their way to even be tolerant--which is ironic since that buzzword is a cornerstone of the whole political correctness movement that has done so much to alienate post-1980s Democrats from Middle America--they could at the very least embrace populism on economic and foreign policy issues. In many cases, that's enough to trump the social populism of the GOP. Witness Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, or Ross Perot in the '90s. All of these things might help the Dems to recover the South in presidential elections. It would be a serious mistake to permanently hand over the entire region to a bunch of Republicans who woo cultural populists while making fun of them behind their backs (and personally betray the values they claim to champion).

I'd be interested in hearing what you thought of my book now that you're more-or-less finished. If you don't want to post your thoughts here, feel free to e-mail me: wherego@aol.com . Thanks.

thomas jefferson believed in "laissez-faire economics"? i think you'd have a very hard time making that case. just start with his creation of the publically funded university of virginia. his main goal was to create a university that offered the whole range of intellectual disciplines, and to get religion out of universities--he outlawed theology at UoV.

I think it's clear in Jefferson's work that while tending to support what we could call a free market, he valued state support of education as necessary for the maintenance of a republican form of government. It was in the state's own interest to support education.

To say what you said would mean that it's not possible for someone to believe in free markets and publically funded education at the same time. Things don't have to be black and white like that.

Personally, as far as education goes, I like having a publically funded education "option" but I also believe the private sector should be able to compete for enrollment.

As a disclaimer, I am a Virginian and I would consider myself a Southerner. I have strong sympathies with the "southern conservative" tradition, which is not the same as what passes for a conservative in the South today.

My major concern is that activists in the culture war are generally going to be partisan no matter what. That's a given, for the most part. What is left are the swing voters in the middle, who are more likely to decide their vote based on other concerns, like economic issues. Which is an issue for the Democrats to deal with, since right now I don't think their economic platform is appealing to the majority of Americans.

Oops, I see now that I was agreeing with the views of "demfreedomcaucus" on the South, not your's. Your response is insightful but I don't think evangelicals have to be ceded to the GOP. It's a choice that the national party has made but it could be changed. Btw, Gabriel Kolko is great!

I'm constantly frustrated by how this simple-minded dichotomy persists, despite all of the refutations of it. This dichotomy seems to rely on making a fetish out of "freedom" and "equality"--of course if you take one value and raise it above all others, you will have to sacrifice other values, but you will also twist the meaning of the value beyond recognition by regular (sane) people.

The dichotomy depends on using particular definitions of "freedom" and "equality" which are rather restraining and do not match our everyday notions of freedom and equality...for example, in this dichotomy, "equality" is generally defined as the idea that every person should have exactly the same amount of material wealth. In real life, people generally focus on social and political equality...or equality in POWER.

Furthermore, this twisted notion of equality seems fundamentally inegalitarian to me: it divides society in the the rulers and the ruled. It divides society into the majority and the minority (and some people are in the minority for the vast majority of issues).

Meaningful liberty and meaningful equality are one and the same. I believe that plato thought that the two were intimitely linked (democracy is the best protector of freedom).

I like how the PA Constitution addresses these values:
"all men are by nature equally free and independent"

All libertarians should be in favor of is reducing coercion, confident that the results of that policy will play to the natural benefit of humans. Insofar as the state is used to promote equality, we can safely attack it as ridiculous.

But to attack equality itself - outside state supports - is stupid. That's not the heart of the matter. Maybe all people are equal, maybe not, maybe it's more nuanced - who knows. The bottom line is that as long as there are rulers and the ruled, as you state, we'll never realize the core of human interests to which concepts like perfect equality speak to.

It has to be about attacking coercion, paring down the State, and promoting liberty to pursue one's own beliefs - period. I'll accept anything that flows from that because only civil society and the market can articulate the true costs involved without hiding or offloading them on others. If people want equality, and want to voluntarily pay for it, I'm fine with that!

The key here is that we HAVE to stop forcing value-judgements on people through the vehicle of libertarian philosophy. We want freedom, and whatever follows naturally from freedom. I happen to believe that in a natural, uncoerced state, society will tend towards more evenly distributed holdings, because the State will no longer subsidize the costs of concentrated wealth. But I don't know that for certain: it's just my best guess about the dynamics of human society. There are alternative understandings.

If these "neo" libertarians really believe that freedom would NOT result in egalitarianism, they wouldn't rally against this liberal ideal - they'd either ignore it completely (since freedom poses no danger in this regard) or they'd be trying to convince Democrats of the benefits of pursuing egalitarianism for themselves in a free society. The fact that they're scared of it means they want to use libertarianism to push conservative economic hegemony, which is disconcerting to say the least. They are afraid of truly free, liberal society - indeed, they are afraid that a completely free society would result in something they can't abide. That undercuts everything they preach about liberty.

We have got to transcend this goddamn culture war. It is a wedge that serves elite interests alone.

I do not agree with the autor's assertion. I think others have already made that case for me. A very simplistic notion from Quando.

Quando has picked an important socio-historic question: Are there aspects of the American and French revolutions that influenced the relative institutional paths that each resulting government have taken over the years. Seems like an interesting comparison, both were democratic revolutions at about the same time period with the same technology level. The most of the intellectual framework that underpinned each revolution also came from the same general pool of philosophers.

The problem is that Quando's thesis doesn't go deep enough. Libertarianism and egalitarianism are day-to-day political forms born from and popularized by each revolution. He needs to go a step deeper and compare the values that each set of revolutionaries emphasized. My counterthesis is that the relative importance of individual liberty and the individualist nature of the American revolution shaped what we refer to today as American libertarianism. The French revolution and its emphasis on egalitarianism emerged from an environment that focused on liberty with the context of the nation nationalism (which makes egalitarianism inherently nationalistic).

I know I beat the drum of individualism hard and often, but I really think it is a core element to the nature of libertarianism.

As I understand, both "liberty" and "equalty" were stressed by BOTH revolutions.

The American "revolution" had the advantage of starting as a much more free and equal society (at least regarding those who were involved in the revolution). The American colonies also benefited from a pre-existing structure (the colonial governments) that was able to take the reigns after the king was kicked out. In that sense, the American revolution was extremely conservative relative to the French revolution--which is why it is hard to call it a "revolution".

The French, on the other hand, were dealing with a absolute monarch, many of the French were wretchedly poor, and they had no democratic institutions to turn to. To top it all off, the main religious institution of the country (the Catholic church) was a major participant in their oppression, and they were surrounded by powerful, aggressive, monarchies (England, Spain, and other Europeans). They also had a higher population density.