Left, left, left, right, left-libertarianism

Okay, so I am a bit of a late comer to what started as a Twitter discussion between @Obotheclown, @Bellagerens, and @John_Demetriou.  They were having a bit of a "one hour blog race" to post their impressions of what they called "left-libertarianism".  I have the advantage of having seen (two anyway so far of) their results and therefore can take issue, if I want, with some of their arguments.

Like any discussion, it seems, that involves the use of the "l" and "r" words, except where it relates to what nanny painted on my first pair of Hunters to get me to put them on the correct feet, it rests on impressions and ideas of terms that are apparently subjectively very flexible.  I tweeted, for example, to Obo, that I thought the definition of "left-libertarianism" he used wasn't right.  Here it is, from Wikipedia, via his post:

Left-libertarianism, as defended by contemporary theorists such as Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka, is a doctrine that has a strong commitment to personal liberty and has an egalitarian view concerning natural resources, believing that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of resources to the detriment of others. Some left-libertarians of this type support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources.

...and I take back my instant reaction to that.  It is an okay definition, as far as it goes.  But it seems to me that the crucial sentence in it is the last one, and both Obo's and Bella's blog-post to a certain extent focus on the question of whether, and by how much, people who define as "left-libertarian" advocate some kind of coercive "redistribution" and if so, does it make them any less a "libertarian".

Now, I know nothing of the work of  Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka whom the hive-mind of Wikipedia seems to think are somehow definitive of "left-libertarianism".  I tend to think of myself as "left-libertarian" as defined by the work of the sort of people involved in and cited at the Alliance of the Libertarian Left or the Centre for a Stateless Society.  And while Vallentyne, Steiner and Otsuka may very well advocate some kind of coercive redistribution for all I know, I feel that puts them out of step with most of the folks in the ALL circle, who seem to me to be pretty well "pure" anarchists - for whom the state and therefore the ability to pursue coercive redistribution is not an option.  And for at least historical accuracy, it should be said that the undifferentiated word "libertarian" was coined for an altogether different group of ideas that still has a following today, but whom today we might call "libertarian-socialists" or "anarcho-syndicalists" - i.e. "collectivist" rather than "indivudlaist" anarchists in the nineteenth century: nevertheless some of this group today claim that all other forms of libertarianism or anarchism are falsely named - but this is not the group that either I, nor I suspect Obo and Bella, are talking about.

So what does differentiate, if such a distinction is needed, "left-libertarian" from "right-libertarian"?

Well, there are a number of issues which might distinguish one from the other, but I very much doubt that everyone who defines as "left-lib" would hold to all of them:

• Some of us, including myself, tend toward a cost/labour theory of value, whereas most who define as right would believe in the subjectivist/marginalist theory of value as promoted by the Austrian economists.  For myself, I tend to agree with Kevin Carson that we can modify the labour theory in order to incorporate some of the ideas of the marginalists, but that ultimately, cost rules in the long run.
• Many, drawing on that cost theory, again including myself, would say that "rent" and "interest", as returns to the "land" and "capital" factors of production, are usually evidence of exploitation of the "labour" factor of production, that such exploitation depresses "wages" and therefore robs labour of some of the "fruits of their labour" and so "self-ownership".  In this respect I think we go further than, say, "anarcho-capitalists" in that, in theory at least, we say it is not merely the state that is coercive, but that wage labour for corporate hierarchies is also often coercive, especially if other issues make it a Hobson's choice to take such work.
• Some would characterise themselves as "left" because they hold more socially liberal views on such issues as immigration or sexuality than those they see with more "right" wing views on such issues like Hans-Herman Hoppe.
• And some, again including myself, do take a slightly different view of private property.  Mostly this is in respect of "land" in the economic sense - the natural resources that are just "there" for our appropriation.  Certainly I only worry about economic land - not capital or manufactured goods - just the "original" resources of nature that are the start of the productive process of creating new wealth.

Now, in this last issue, I would say that probably all libertarian political-economists agree that there are differences between different types of economic goods: in particular, that the free market is at least not completely free in the case of what are called "unreproduceable goods" or goods that are difficult to reproduce economically, or within a time-scale that allows the market to be satisfied without harm or coercion.  This problem is usually understood as one of "scarcity rent" which is a return to land or capital based at least partly on monopoly - either natural or legislative.  I won't go into this any further here - there is a lot of disputation about the extent and seriousness of such monopoly and it would take a book to deal with them here, and it is not necessary to do so.

It is not necessary in the context of what Obo and Bella "accuse" left-libertarians of because if we do not advocate any kind of state or quasi state coercive system for addressing this problem it does not affect the "genuineness" or "purity" of our libertarianism/anarchism.  We are not proposing to coerce you out of any of your property.  But we may believe, as I do, that a freed market will find ways of addressing the problem without coercion (I should link to the original I guess for good karma).

Most, on both left- and right- libertarianism would accept that in the condition we have at the moment, there is deep inequity in society, and that much of this arises from actions of the state - supporting its crony capitalist friends, creating and protecting privilege such as granting monopoly ownership of unreproduceable goods to its friends and so on.  Indeed, Murray Rothbard, who, despite him appearing in the "gallery" of heros along the top of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left site, most people would not usually regard as being left-libertarian, goes into great detail in his "Ethics of Liberty" in exploring ways in which such "unjust" property might be released to be re-homesteaded and so achieve an initial "just" distribution of property at the start of an anarchist society.

This is particularly important in a UK context.  Obo, I believe, glosses over this too easily when he says that redistributing unjustly acquired property would be too difficult to bother with.  Rothbard believes that, aside from actually state-owned property and that owned by privileged clients of the state, such as industries who rely predominantly or solely on state distributed largesse, there would not be much need for such redistribution of private property in the US, but acknowledges that the situation is different in countries with a long history of feudalistic ownership, which would, in my opinion, include the UK.

So, yes, I do believe in some redistribution, at least at the point we begin an anarchist society, in order to redress historical inequities that have resulted in a great deal of unjustly acquired property, but I don't believe that that necessarily makes me a "left-libertarian".  I do believe that unreproduceable goods that can be monopolised pose a problem in any system of social order (if anarchism can be described as a "system"!) but that in a genuinely freed market ways will be found through economic incentives to address these problems.

But, in summary, the central "bogey-man" levelled at "left-libertarianism" at least by Bella and Obo, that we necessarily support some kind of coercive action, and usually against private property, does not hold.  As much as anything else, I think the characteristic of "left-libertarianism" as I subscribe to it is that it presents a pretty well purely "market-anarchist" narrative in a way that would attract those "lefties" who believe the coercive state is the solution to their social justice aims.  As Kevin Carson, prominent left-libertarian "mutualist" has said, the various flavours of anarchism do appear to me to be much more "porous" than the habit of giving them all different labels seems to imply.  Enough, for now!  No sign of a post from B&D yet, but if when it comes it raises other issues, I'll probably revisit this.

UPDATE: Well, now we have seen John Demetriou's piece, I would say that he too conflates two almost entirely different "left-libertarianisms", albeit in a less partisan fashion.  He cites, as I have, Kevin Carson, but makes what I think is a mistake in suggesting that "mutualism" to which I ascribe myself, is a "collectivist" ideology.  It is not.  It explicitly bases itself upon the c19th left wing, yes, but it is the left of the Individualist Anarchists of the nineteenth century United States, like Benjamin Tucker (one of whose classic works explicitly laid into collectivist socialism), William Batchelder Greene and Josiah Warren.

It is true that where we believe that voluntary collective action is required, for economic endeavours that are bigger than one producer's abilities - then democratic co-operation between individual producers is a better way than by hierarchical and coercive corporations but we are not inherently collectivist, rather explicitly individualist  Perhaps it would be instructive to have a read, if not of the original book, then of Sean Gabb's review of Carson's second major work, "Organizational Theory; a Libertarian Perspective" to get an idea of how close the philosophies actually are.

Overall, as one who self-identifies as a left-libertarian, albeit of the "Carson" type, alongside many of the folk at C4SS and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, rather than the Vallentynes and Steiner's of this world, it seems to me that all three of these bloggers appear to be erecting barriers between nuances of libertarianism that scarcely exist.  Most of the folk at C4SS, Molinari Institute and the ALL are pure market anarchists for whom no state or state like coercion is acceptable.  Our only differences then appear to be that we believe that certain structures are coercive even in the absence of a state and that those freed markets are more likely to resolve those issues in slightly different ways than those who might call themselves "right-libertarians" believe.  Big deal.  If a difference of opinion as to how markets will work out in practice makes a different or separate "movement" then I think we're all in some trouble.

I will leave you with a quote from Carson I often use, from the Preface of "Mutualist Political Economy":

The classical individualist anarchism of Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner was both a socialist movement and a subcurrent of classical liberalism. It agreed with the rest of the socialist movement that labor was the source of exchange-value, and that labor was entitled to its full product. Unlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an alternative both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the power of big business.

...and, later, that...

  coercive state policies are not necessary to remedy the evils of present-day capitalism. All these evils--exploitation of labor, monopoly and concentration, the energy crisis, pollution, waste--result from government intervention in the market on behalf of capitalists. The solution is not more government intervention, but to eliminate the existing government intervention from which the problems derive. A genuine free market society, in which all transactions are voluntary and all costs are internalized in price, would be a decentralized society of human-scale production, in which all of labor's product went to labor, instead of to capitalists, landlords and government bureaucrats. _{[Carson, Kevin A: "Studies in Mutualist Political Economy", Preface]}

If these indicate some kind of coercive collectivism, I'd like to know where.  It seems that all three bloggers are making something up somewhere!  Why, I am not sure.  I am sure, though, that we are even less likely to achieve anarchism as we want whilst we are erecting what feel like artificial barriers within the sisterhood!