Well Mong made a good start stealing the word anarchy but cheats never prosper.
29. Perry de Havilland, Giving Libertarianism a Left Hook: How to Make the
Traditions of the Left Our Own, 2002, 2pp.
ISBN 1 85637 542 0
(html) - (pdf)
http://www.libertarian.co.uk/
23. David Kirsch Carr, The Child-Bomb: How 'What About the Children' Can
Turn an Argument Around, 1998, 2pp.
ISBN: 1 85637 436 X
(html) - (pdf)
07. Brian Micklethwait, The Tyranny of Facts, 1990, 4pp.
ISBN: 1 870614 95 X
(html) - (pdf)
Perry de Havilland (London) Best of Samizdata.net|Libertarian views|
Giving libertarianism a 'left hook'
or how to make the traditions of the left our own
Libertarians come in many hyphenated flavours, but very few genuine
libertarians see themselves as being on the political left. So called
'Socialist' libertarians are not libertarians at all. They are as
oxymoronic as meat eating vegetarians: any value set that would deny
economic free association and true several property, denies personal
liberty, and you are not a libertarian unless you advocate personal liberty
as first amongst civil virtues.
Thus from this fairly self-evident proposition, most libertarians see
themselves as either being on the 'right' or at least they do not see
themselves as being on the 'left'. However just what does left and right
really mean in this post-cold war era? I would contend that within the
context of libertarianism, left and right are actually meaningless
ideologically speaking. Conservatives and socialists ascribe various
meanings to these terms based on their respective statist perspectives.
However as we do not share those views, we can safely look beyond their
definitions and see rather different essential differences and similarities
for ourselves. Whilst conservatives and socialists see what differentiates
them, as libertarians our perspectives allow us to see the shared statist
axioms that in fact make them so similar in modern western societies. This
sort of observation is hardly ground breaking. In the 1940's Hayek pointed
out in 'The Road to Serfdom' the truism (to us) that far from being the
antithesis of the left, the Nazis were just another form of socialism.
Similarly early 21st Century libertarians can see that there is actually
little to choose between Tory 'Conservatism' and Blairite Labour
'Socialism' circa 2001 in real terms of policy and underpinning assumptions
as to the role of the state.
What libertarians need to understand is that there are indeed important
differences between the 'left' and 'right', but they are meta-contextual
rather than ideological now that we no longer live in a simpler bipolar
world. That is to say, the left and right come from very different
traditions that strongly colour their respective views of how the world
really works and thus how they interpret any ideological issue presented to
them.
Bearing this in mind, libertarians need to realise that by mentally allying
themselves to the 'right', they are actually not making a useful
ideological distinction at all. In fact, by doing so, they run the risk of
clothing themselves in cultural meta-contextual baggage that is often
profoundly unhelpful. What is needed is a more dispassionate analysis as to
what other people understand by 'left' and 'right' and a more pragmatic, or
dare I say, even cynical use of that meta-contextual baggage for our own
purposes.
For example, a key 'vibe' of the 'left' tradition is the view of the world
as a struggle from the bottom against forces of hierarchy. Thus an
anti-business proposition that portrays the corporate boardroom as an
essentially hostile power centre to the 'common man' employee is an 'easy
sell' when presented to someone who views the world from within that
meta-context.
However, a meta-context is just a tradition of thought, not a philosophy
per se. Let us take the fact that as the airline industries across the
world are said to be in dire troubles, various interventionist governments
are pouring tax monies into flag carriers to prop them up. This is not
really the sort of issue to greatly exercise people on the traditional
'left', who view economic intervention as perfectly normal or the 'right',
who view 'helping' companies as perfectly normal, provided they are big
companies. However, this issue can indeed be made to resonate with the
'left' by framing it precisely in the terms that fit their traditions of
thought:
"Yet again the boardroom is using its corrupting influence with politicians
to screw the common man and take our tax money to reward poor management by
the board and bale out some fat cat shareholders. It is hard to say who is
worse, the incompetent directors who did not plan for unforeseen problems,
the greedy shareholders or the money-for-the-boys politicians doling out
our tax money."
What have we just done? We have just made a seemingly "anti-business"
argument designed to fit within the meta-contextual world view of the left.
We have also just made an argument in favour of laissez-faire.
Many on the 'left' are actually natural allies of the libertarian view on
civil liberties, yet they cannot extend the same logic to economic
liberties. Part of the problem is the fact that libertarians, largely
speaking from the meta-context of the 'right', frame economic issues in
such a manner as to predispose opposition from the 'left'. If we are to
rescue the 'left' from collectivism, we must learn to speak the language of
the left and tap into deep traditions of resistance and non-deferential
social values that could serve us well. It is not just a case of picking
the issues to attract people from the left but how we present them.
Hostility to business regulation is almost invariably presented as a
'right' issue and framed in the language and meta-contextual frames of
reference of the 'right'. Yet why not pitch this very issue to the left in
terms that resonate for them as well?
"See how entrenched businesses work with their political stooges in
government to keep under capitalised common people from competing with
them? They raise regulatory barriers to keep the working class would-be
entrepreneurs out by raising the cost of establishing a new business,
thereby keeping the market safe for the forces of oligopoly and faceless
chain stores."
Rather than the usual 'right' arguments involving imposed costs to the
established business being regulated, we take an equally true consequence
of regulatory imposition and serve it up with a left spin. Whilst the use
of language may be cynical, no ideological compromise is required and there
is nothing dishonest about the argument being made. Once we realise that
'left' and 'right' are just traditional meta-contextual frames of reference
and do not have any real objective political content in and of themselves,
we can effectively inject our libertarian memes into both the 'left' and
'right' world views. By doing this, we broaden our ability to communicate
with people who might otherwise see us as being 'one of them' rather than
'one of us'. When in the ring and fighting the good fight, do not deny
yourself a good left hook.
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/001563.html
