NOT COMPREHENSIVE, BARELY COMPREHENSIBLE:

The Trouble with Libertarianism (Edward Feser, 07/20/2004, Tech Central Station)

"Libertarianism" is usually defined as the view in political philosophy that the only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens' dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous. Most libertarian theorists emphasize that their position is not intended to be a complete system of ethics, but merely a doctrine about the proper scope of state power: their claim is not that either egalitarian views about the distribution of wealth or traditional attitudes about sexuality, drug use, and the like are necessarily incorrect, but only that such moral views ought not to guide public policy. A libertarian society is in their view compatible with any particular moral or religious outlook one might be committed to, and this is taken to be one of its great strengths: people of all persuasions in a pluralistic society can have reason to support a libertarian polity, precisely because it does not favor any particular persuasion over another. A libertarian society is, it is claimed, genuinely neutral between diverse moral and religious worldviews.

In this respect, as in others, libertarians take their creed to be superior to that political philosophy that most prides itself on its purported tolerance and neutrality, namely egalitarian liberalism. The liberal philosopher John Rawls characterized the various moral and religious worldviews represented in modern pluralistic societies as "comprehensive doctrines," and he argued that his own brand of liberalism was compatible with all reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Libertarians have objected that the details of Rawls's theory so incorporate his social and economic egalitarianism into what he counts as "reasonable" that his claim to neutrality between actually existing worldviews is disingenuous; for Rawlsians are ultimately prepared to apply that honorific only to those comprehensive doctrines compatible with an extensive regime of anti-discrimination laws, forced income redistribution, and whatever other consequences are taken to follow from Rawls's famous "difference principle" (which holds that no inequalities can be permitted in a just society unless they benefit its least well-off members). The "comprehensive doctrines" of moral traditionalists and individualist free spirits alike, doctrines having millions of adherents, end up being effectively written off as "unreasonable" from the egalitarian liberal point of view. Libertarianism is truly neutral where Rawls and other liberals only pretend to be.

Or so it seems. I want to suggest, however, that many libertarians are - no doubt unwittingly - guilty of the very same sort of disingenuousness as Rawls. For it simply isn't true that libertarianism is neutral between various moral and religious worldviews, notwithstanding that most libertarians would like to believe (indeed do believe) that it is. The reason, as it turns out, is that there is no such thing as "libertarianism" in the first place: it would be more accurate to speak in the plural of "libertarianisms," a variety of doctrines each often described as "libertarian," but having no common core, and each of which tends in either theory or practice to favor some moral worldviews to the exclusion of others. It also turns out that the illusion that there is such a thing as "libertarianism" - a basic set of beliefs and values that all so-called "libertarians" have in common - is the source of the illusion that a libertarian society would be a truly neutral one. When one gets clear on exactly which version of libertarianism one is talking about, it will be seen that what one is talking about is a doctrine with substantial moral commitments, commitments which cannot fail to promote some worldviews and to push others into the margins of social life.

To see that this is so, we need only look at some specific and paradigmatic examples of libertarian political theories, and there is no more appropriate place to start than at the beginning, with the early classical liberal (as opposed to modern, egalitarian liberal) political thinkers whom libertarians typically regard as their intellectual forebears. Take John Locke (1632-1704), who famously argued that the primary function of a government was to protect the property rights of its citizens, with the most fundamental property right being that of self-ownership. That we own ourselves entails, in Locke's view, that we own our labor and its fruits, and this in turn entails that we can (with certain qualifications) come to own whatever previously unowned natural resources we "mix" our labor with. Self-ownership thus grounds the right to private property, and with it the basic rights that determine the proper scope and functions of state power.

But what grounds the right of self-ownership itself? The answer, according to Locke, was that it derives from God. [...]

This commitment to a particular moral view of the world was typical of the early classical liberals. Adam Smith (1723-1790) favored modern liberal capitalist society precisely because of what he took to be its moral advantages: it provided an unprecedented degree of material well-being for the masses, and it promoted such bourgeois virtues as sobriety, moderation, and diligence. Moreover, because in Smith's view capitalist society failed to promote certain other virtues (namely martial and aristocratic ones), and even tended positively to undermine some of them (insofar as consumerism and the hyper-specialization entailed by the division of labor oriented men's minds away from learning), there was an urgent need for government to foster institutions outside the market - a professional military and publicly financed education, for example - that would make up for its deficiencies.

Damned inconvenient that the very value--liberty--that libertarianism purports to celebrate is derived from and dependent on religious faith, but, as Robert Kraynak has said:

We must face the disturbing dilemma that modern liberal democracy needs God, but God is not as liberal or as democratic as we would like Him to be.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2004 8:53 AM