All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 4, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:09
2025 Libertarians Are Marxists of the Right! An Article Review

An article deconstruction from Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio -- http://www.freedomainradio.com.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody, it's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
This is just a bit of an article deconstruction.
You can Google the terms if you want.
It doesn't really matter who wrote it, but I think it's an interesting article to look at from a philosophical standpoint.
So it says here, Free Spirits, the ambitious ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics.
Oh good, at least I'm not one of those.
I often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government.
Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs.
It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society.
But while it contains substantial grains of truth, it is as a whole a seductive mistake.
There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural law libertarianism, the least crazy, to anarcho-capitalism, the most, and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below, but many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is liberalism enter a grey area where it is not really clear that there are libertarians at all.
But because 95% of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties on editorial pages and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace street libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically.
We've seen Marxists pull that before.
So, it's very interesting.
I don't believe...
that there's anything true in that but it's really well written and that's one of the challenges of really good writers is they catch you kind of on a roll, on a wave and things seem to make sense that don't actually make sense so they often find an attractive political philosophy and It's believers and so on.
You will always see with this kind of sophistry an attempt to turn philosophy into aesthetics.
Philosophy into aesthetics.
One of the most amazing tricks of the sophists is to turn philosophy into aesthetics.
So, in other words, people find this philosophy attractive, like you would find a Ming vase or a Modigliani attractive.
Do you see? It's brilliant.
It's beautiful. And you say libertarianism offers its believers.
So it's just something you believe in, something you prefer, something you like, something that appeals to you.
And I'm sure that's true of anybody, a bunch of people in any bunches of movements, but he's not addressing the truth or falsehood.
The idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government.
Well, I don't think that individual freedom is the sole rule of ethics.
Now, you could say the idea that people should not initiate force against each other is a morally valid position.
Do you see how that sounds very different than individual freedom?
Freedom is one of these words that is like an empty vessel.
It's like a god. You can project Whatever you want into it.
If people say this about liberty and about society and democracy and the social good and what is practical and what is commonsensical, these are just empty words.
They're vacuum words.
They sit there as a big gas giant of emptiness waiting for you to project whatever you want into the word.
And so it seems like people are making sense when When they're really not, right?
But individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government.
But individual freedom doesn't mean much to people.
And he immediately switches Right?
Because he switches the definition of freedom without explicitly saying so.
So it certainly is true that a lot of libertarians will talk about individual freedom.
What they mean is freedom from coercion.
Freedom from. Fundamentally what libertarianism is about.
Property rights and the non-initiation.
Of course, the non-aggression principle of the NAP. But then he says, it's brilliant the way he does it.
It's not planned. This is just the way people's minds work.
It's wonderful though. He says, Individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics in government.
And he says, libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs.
So now, it's the freedom to make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs.
That's what individual freedom has been redefined as.
And that's wonderful.
I mean, that's just brilliant.
A seductive mistake.
Well, I think that does actually accurately describe something to do with this.
So then he wants to differentiate between libertarianism and vulgar libertarianism, which is what Marxists do as well.
It doesn't really matter. It's so important.
So he says to the next paragraph says, This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the right.
Isn't that great? That seems to have like a click, like a framework, like a mechano model goes into place.
If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism.
That's wonderful. So, I don't...
I don't think he's read anything about Marxism, and I don't think he's read anything serious about libertarianism.
Marx and Lenin wrote a lot.
Marxist theoreticians fill I don't think that Marx ever said that society should be run purely on altruism and collectivism.
Unless by collectivism you mean a tyrannical state that seizes control of the means of production and holds them in trust for the Workers.
Workers control the means of production.
That's, I mean, altruism, collectivism.
I don't think he ever talked about altruism.
And this is, I mean, you don't even have to go outside of Marx to understand this.
I mean, if Marx thought that society could be run on altruism, then he would have to explain why the society of his time he considered so evil, if it were possible.
And libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism.
Well... I don't know what libertarianism has to do with selfishness and I certainly don't know what it has to do with individualism.
Libertarianism says we should not initiate the use of force against each other and we should respect property rights.
I don't know how that has anything to do with what is called selfish or what is called individualistic because it applies to everyone universally and it seems to me That libertarianism is the opposite of individualism because there can't be any groups in society that have any kind of validity if those groups are not constituted or composed of voluntary members.
I mean, I can't call a bunch of people I kidnap and lock in my basement my family and have anyone really believe it.
I can't call a woman currently screaming in the trunk of my car all bound up in duct tape my girlfriend, right?
The terms that we have for society, the terms that we have for groups, They only make any kind of sense if these things are not voluntary.
This is why the government forced redistribution of income is not charity, just like rape is not lovemaking, just like theft is not loaning, because it's the element of force.
Once you put the element of force into human relationships, you can't call them by anything voluntary.
So, in terms of society, there really only can be such a thing as society when all relationships Or voluntary, at least under the rule of law.
And so I don't know what selfishness has to do with it or individualism versus collectivism or anything like that.
I mean, libertarians can form themselves into group and consistently do.
And libertarians will do that group forming and have been shown to do it in the past, or maybe not libertarians, but society, when you take away forced or Enforced relationships like you and your public school.
When you take away enforced relationships, spontaneous, voluntary, productive relationships automatically Rise to fill the gap.
So, you know, people, it's just labels.
It's argument by adjective.
Well, Marxism is about altruism and libertarianism is about selfishness and individualism.
No, libertarianism is just about put down the guns and let's talk.
Let's reason with each other.
Let's trade with each other. Let's negotiate with each other.
Let's disagree with each other.
Let's just not fucking shoot each other.
I mean, that's really all libertarianism is about.
Let's just put down the weapons and start dealing with each other like civilized human beings.
Anyway, so he says society, in fact, requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism to function.
Well, I mean, again, it's a false dichotomy, right?
This is the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
You know, the idea that one group puts forward collectivism, and that's the Marxists, and then another group puts forward radical individualism, and that's the libertarians, and the truth is somewhere in between.
There's a mixture of both things.
Yeah, you know, I'm sure most Hegelians say, someone comes up to them and says, listen, I want to cut both your arms off.
And the Hegelian would say, listen, I know where this is going.
I'm not even going to debate that we should have none of my arms cut off.
Let's just settle on one arm, because that's in the middle.
And it's a distortion of the Aristotelian mean, right?
The old idea that to be too angry is to be is to be choleric or to be irascible or whatever and to not be angry enough is to be lily-livered, yellow-backed, cowardly or whatever but finding the right amount of anger you know If you're too brave, you're foolhardy. If you're not brave enough, you're a coward.
Finding the right amount of bravery is tough.
And this idea has been taken over, so this idea, there's this mean, there's this thing in the middle, you know, you need a blend, and it's been advanced, of course, by a lot of psychology, where you're not supposed to reject any parts of yourself, and accept all parts of yourself, which I think is a great idea.
Society is not a part of yourself.
But it's a misreading.
I mean, Aristotle never meant that you should have a medium amount or a mean amount of axe murdering.
That wasn't the plan of the Aristotelian idea.
But... Society, in fact...
And of course, sorry, the other thing I wanted to say was that he says that one can run society based purely on selfishness and individualism.
Well, the purpose of not...
The purpose of libertarianism is not to run society.
It's a fundamental recognition that you cannot do something called run society without violence, without initiating the use of force.
And so you can't run society.
It's like you actually say that...
Well, hitting your wife, that's really bad.
Not hitting your wife is really bad.
You need to both hit her and not hit her at various times.
Because you can't run your women without a mixture of hitting and not hitting.
I mean, there'd be so much that would be offensive in that, right?
So much that would be offensive in that to everyone.
You can't run your women and you can't run society.
It's not a train. It's...
It's billions of human beings making tens of thousands of decisions a day.
You can't run that except into the ground.
So he says, like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation.
Like Marxism, it aspires overtly or covertly.
To reduce social life to economics.
And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.
Well, the idea that libertarians, and particularly libertarian economists, and particularly the Austrian school, that they have not done empirical research.
I mean, just read Rothbard on the Great Depression.
I mean, huge amounts of empirical research have been done.
In fact, libertarianism is responsible for a lot of the historical re-evaluation of things like the Industrial Revolution and the stock market rise in the 1920s and the Great Depression.
So, again, I don't know what that means to say...
It doesn't have the effort of empirical...
And most libertarians that I have ever talked to have done a huge amount of empirical research into the history of alternatives to government roads and how the FCC distributes airwaves.
I mean, it's crazy, right?
So, yeah, anyway, what can you say?
And, unbound by the moral rules of their society, I mean, libertarians are very interested in moral rules, there's no question of that.
Alright, the most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple.
Freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life.
Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it.
Prosperity is connected to freedom in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich, but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife.
A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice, or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice.
But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.
Again, we're talking about freedom from violence, not freedom to do some Nietzschean, ubermensch leap over the moral rules of your society.
It's nothing complicated.
And, of course, you have to avoid that basic fact, because then the whole construct falls apart.
But it's just freedom from the initiation of force.
I mean, can you imagine this, right?
So you go to a woman and you say, listen, I mean, not getting raped is a good thing.
For sure, okay. But it's not the only good thing in life.
And there are other things, you know, wherein rape is necessary and good.
I mean, it would be ridiculous.
But rape is being subject to the initiation of force, which is what libertarianism opposes.
It's not that complicated. But you have to complicate it.
Turn it into aesthetics.
Turn it into a balance of humorous kind of nonsense.
And, yeah, I mean, bonding with the family.
Yeah, my daughter did not choose to have me as a father.
My wife chose to have me as a husband.
My daughter did not choose to have me as a father.
So it's incumbent upon me to act in such a way that if, when she's older, she could choose any father in the world, that she would choose me.
Just as I think about those in terms of my wife.
If she could, at any time in our marriage, choose to swap me out for somebody else, then how would I act if that were a possibility?
That's the freedom called love, if we're going to really start misusing the word freedom.
Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it.
Therefore, freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods.
I've never heard that argument.
Maybe he's been talking to other libertarians than I have over the past 25 or, oh my god, it's 30 years, almost 30 years.
No, freedom is necessary because freedom from violence is essential.
Because violence is immoral.
The initiation of force is immoral.
I mean, that's... It's not just because I get to choose things when somebody doesn't have a gun to my head.
It's that somebody has a gun to my head.
That is the problem. So let's hear.
In many ways you could argue that...
I mean...
He'd lived a better life, because at least he wasn't out there killing people.
Anyway, the fact that I get to choose things doesn't mean that all choices are equal, and I've never heard any libertarian argue that, so it's just a straw man.
Anyway, I sort of don't want to keep going, but I want to point out that there are a couple of interesting things in this essay, which is that...
People will very often try to take that which is the good, which is moral, and turn it into a kind of aesthetics, and then say that the moment that you're rigid or absolute about your morality, this is the equivalent of being rigid or absolute about morality.
Aesthetics. And, I mean, Ayn Rand and so on, other people have fallen into this trap by arguing that Beethoven is inherently anti-life or, you know, morbid or whatever, Mendelssohn is great and all that sort of stuff.
And you've got to watch for that trick.
It's a creepy and dangerous trick, but it's very often put into place.
You have to be really careful of it.
So people will try to make it an aesthetic and try to reframe a rational philosophical argument like morality as universally preferable behavior, as I've argued.
And they'll say, well, you just have a fetish for freedom, or you just have a fetish for doing whatever you want, or you are averse to any kind of authority over you.
They'll start to use words to do with aesthetics or emotions or subjective states.
In order to frame your adherence to 2 and 2 making 4 as some peculiar emotional attachment to some irrational thing.
And that's a way to get you to back off from your position.
And it's an old, old, old trick.
It was being used thousands of years ago.
It's amazingly still common today.
I guess not that amazing given how...
Tremulous philosophy is, but it's really something to keep an eye on.
Don't let ethics be reframed as aesthetics, as things like choice and preference and sex and drugs and art.
Scientists don't let them do this, right?
If somebody says E equals MC squared, there's not a lot of people who would publicly say that whoever says that just has a A fetish for leaking Einstein's equations.
Remember, just stay on the sunny side of rational empiricism and focus back on the arguments.
It doesn't matter whether I like it or not.
It doesn't matter whether I prefer it or not.
It only matters whether it's true or not.
▲
Export Selection