Is a libertarian the same as a classical liberal?

[Mark Hornshaw]

This is excellent, highly recommended if you want to understand what the words Libertarian and Liberal mean.

Short version: If you study the classical liberals who were representative of liberal thought in their day eg - Locke, Jefferson, Cobden, Bastiat, De Molinari - there is a direct line through the thought of Mises, Rothbard down to modern day Ron Paul. I.E. classical liberalism = libertarianism. It was and is a political philosophy based on private property, natural rights, non-aggression, and telling the state/King/ruler to back off.

So why is the word liberalism sometimes used to mean a moderate form of leftism? How can Hilary Clinton or Malcolm Turnbull be called a 'liberal'? This is because political science textbooks wrongly hold up John Stewart Mill as the quintessential classical liberal. Mill clouded the term with his own personal fetishes, like hating any social pressure to be faithful in marriage (including hating religion) and seeking 'personal fulfilment'. This was NOT representative of other liberals back in the day. To them it was a political philosophy, not a 'lifestyle choice'. But this emphasis on breaking all social norms could then include other illiberal collectivists like Rousseau, down through Keynes, to a modern-day social democrat. Their politics ends up the opposite of the classical liberals, but they don't care.

Have a listen for yourself via any podcast app. https://mises.org/library/problem-classical-liberals

 

[Rob]

This is excellent, highly recommended if you want to understand what the words Libertarian and Liberal mean.

Short version: If you study the classical liberals who were representative of liberal thought in their day eg - Locke, Jefferson, Cobden, Bastiat, De Molinari - there is a direct line through the thought of Mises, Rothbard down to modern day Ron Paul. I.E. classical liberalism = libertarianism. It was and is a political philosophy based on private property, natural rights, non-aggression, and telling the state/King/ruler to back off.

So why is the word liberalism sometimes used to mean a moderate form of leftism? How can Hilary Clinton or Malcolm Turnbull be called a 'liberal'? This is because political science textbooks wrongly hold up John Stewart Mill as the quintessential classical liberal. Mill clouded the term with his own personal fetishes, like hating any social pressure to be faithful in marriage (including hating religion) and seeking 'personal fulfilment'. This was NOT representative of other liberals back in the day. To them it was a political philosophy, not a 'lifestyle choice'. But this emphasis on breaking all social norms could then include other illiberal collectivists like Rousseau, down through Keynes, to a modern-day social democrat. Their politics ends up the opposite of the classical liberals, but they don't care.

Have a listen for yourself via any podcast app. https://mises.org/library/problem-classical-liberals

Thanks Mark, an interesting post but I don't agree.

Classical liberalism is a philosophy which has the State at its centre and a key point of debate is the scope of the State. Classical liberals (the exceptions prove the rule) saw the State as essential for maintaining law and order. Recognizing that the State is potentially very dangerous they attempted to ring fence it with the rule of law, written constitutions, seperation of powers, republican government etc.
Classical liberalism was effectively dead by WW1 and even the writing of perhaps the greatest of them (Mises) was unable to revive it.
Libertarianism (based on the NAP) can be seen as a response to the failure of classical liberalism and an attempt to reconstruct the philosophy of liberty without its fatal flaws.
Rothbard (the father of libertarianism) and Mill (the father of modern liberalism) are the two key figures.
Classical liberals are fellow travellers and classical liberalism is a progenitor of libertarianism but in my view they are not the same.
I don't know whether you have read Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism. It is a fun read and I am happy to recommend it. Brian works for Reason magazine and is not totally unsympathetic to libertarianism (he hates Rothbard) but it shows the incoherent babble that one can produce if the definition of concepts is not clear.

 

[Mark Hornshaw]

Hi Rob,
Did you listen to the podcast? The view you expressed (eg Rothbard as the father of libertarianism and Mill as the father of modern liberalism) is the very one they are trying to debunk.
They argue that there is a natural progression from Locke to Rothbard, with Mill sitting outside on his own, as the founder of nothing.

 

[Rob]

Hi Rob,
Did you listen to the podcast? The view you expressed (eg Rothbard as the father of libertarianism and Mill as the father of modern liberalism) is the very one they are trying to debunk.
They argue that there is a natural progression from Locke to Rothbard, with Mill sitting outside on his own, as the founder of nothing.

Hi Mark. No I haven't listened to the podcast. This is an issue of particular interest to the yanks because the word liberal in the US has a meaning very different to the original meaning we are discussing. I understand that Europeans still use the term to mean classical liberal. Mill was very influential in shifting the term to its current modern meaning, I agree that he was not a liberal in the classical sense and was more concerned with self expression and self actualisation than liberty in the libertarian sense of the word but many current day liberals (self described) do see Mill as an important historical figure. I think it is a mistake to dismiss his influence. I have not read his economic works but I gather they were pretty hopeless from a free market perspective and were enormously influential in England and the US.
My key point though is that whilst classical liberalism and libertarian share many common features and libertarianism is a development of the work of the classical liberals it deserves to be treated as a distinct philosophical world view. I am happy to accept that my view is iconoclastic and idiosyncratic but I am sticking to my view that libertarianism is not the same as classical liberalism.

Thanks for the response, Rob

 

[Mark Hornshaw]

Hi Rob,
The view you take is the common view. They are not downplaying Mill's influence, only his relevance to other liberal thinkers. His ramblings, and the weight they are given by modern political science courses, are what allowed the word liberal to be stolen in the 20th century. They don't say whether listeners should try to resuscitate the word or not. But all the actual liberal thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries would be aghast at what happened to their movement.

 

[Rob]

Hi Rob,
The view you take is the common view. They are not downplaying Mill's influence, only his relevance to other liberal thinkers. His ramblings, and the weight they are given by modern political science courses, are what allowed the word liberal to be stolen in the 20th century. They don't say whether listeners should try to resuscitate the word or not. But all the actual liberal thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries would be aghast at what happened to their movement.

I agree with your last sentence, cheers

 

[Conza]

Definitely agree; but have long ago let ago any desire to try salvage the term. Especially locally.

Stephan Kinsella has the best overall take I've come across:

Using clear and consistent terminology is essential to understanding. As noted by Böhm-Bawerk,

“For it would be an absurd undertaking to banish from the language of economic theory every manner of speaking that is not literally correct; it would be sheer pedantry to proscribe every figure of speech, particularly since we could not say the hundredth part of what we have to say, if we refused ever to take recourse to a metaphor. One requirement is essential, that economic theory avoid the error of confusing a practical habit, indulged in for the sake of expediency, with scientific truth.”

And as Guido Hülsmann has observed,

“It is not prices that coordinate the actions of sellers and buyers of tin; prices are the outcome of (coordinated) action, not its coordinators. It is property, rather than knowledge, that coordinates the separate actions of different people. The terms coordination and communication rather obfuscate than adequately express this fact. This is another example of the dangers linked to the use of metaphors in scientific discourse.”[*]

We see the danger of conflicting definitions in the description of libertarians by various types of libertarians and fellow-travelers. It’s bad enough that mainstream media often refer to us as “conservatives.”

So, to try to clarify matters as to the difference between libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, and classical liberals, as seen by… 1. Plumbline libertarians. 2. Some minarchists, and 3. Budding libertarians/classical liberals to plumbline libertarians…

First: plumbline libertarians are anarchists (sometimes called anarcho-capitalists or libertarian anarchists) and we believe all true anarchists must be libertarian. Likewise, as noted by Hans-Hermann Hoppe,

“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”

That is, socialism requires a state, i.e. is always statist, and any state implies socialism (defined broadly as Hoppe does as the institutionalized aggression against private property rights). A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.[*]

And Hoppe recognizes that while socialism typically refers to state or collective ownership of the means of production, its essence is the “institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims” (TSC, 2). In other words, any public or institutionalized aggression is inherently socialistic, and gives rise to the problems that accompany standard central planning. Indeed, as Hoppe elsewhere notes,

“Societies are not simply capitalist or socialist. Indeed, all existing societies are socialist to some extent.” (TSC, 10) The state is always socialistic, and socialism always implies a state. [*]

So: we libertarians use the term “libertarian” broadly to refer to (a) anarcho-libertarians, (b) minarchist libertarians [sometimes we call them mini-statists though to tweak them], © possibly the term can encompass “classical liberals”, a watered down version of minarchism. We refer to members of the LP as capital-L Libertarians, and most Libertarians tend to be libertarians of one type or another. But not all libertarians are Libertarians, though don’t try explaining that to the mainstream media, who usually call all libertarians “Libertarians” when they are not calling us conservatives.

Some minarchist libertarians think anarchism is not libertarian at all, and thus for them the term libertarian refers only to minarchists. For example, soi-disant libertarian Jeffrey A. Miron states: “libertarianism accepts a role for government in a few, limited areas: small government, not anarchy”. Libertarianism, From A to Z (2010), Kindle Locations 198–99. What he means by libertarian is minarchist. What we mean by libertarian is minarchist and anarchist. The minarchists don’t want to be thought of as anarchists when they are called libertarian, so they try to exclude “anarchist” from the definition of libertarian.

And some of the budding libertarians/self-proclaimed “classical liberals”, conversely, seem to think “libertarian” mean “anarchist” (no rules) while “classical liberal” means what we think of as minarchist. Dave Rubin is an example of someone who uses such terminology. (going by memory). He’s wrong in several respects.

1. Classical liberals are not minarchists. They’re more like watered down minarchists. They’re barely minarchist, and barely libertarian, if that.
2. libertarians are not all anarchists. Only some are. Many libertarians are in fact minarchists. Burn is neither a minarchist nor anarchist libertarian; he is a classical liberal who seems to want to define it the way libertarians define minarchism (even though Rubin is not a minarchist) so as to leave libertarianism as meaning nothing but anarchism. Like the minarchists noted above, the classical liberals also don’t want to be seen as anarchist, but they mistakenly then “libertarians” means “anarchist” and therefore they shun the word libertarian.

So, to sum up:

When we say libertarian: we mean anarchist and minarchist libertarians and maybe classical liberals: but some minarchists say “minarchist”, and classical liberals say “anarchist”. And the media calls us Libertarians or conservatives.

When we say anarchist, we just mean consistent libertarianism, i.e. anarcho-libertarianism; minarchists call this non-libertarian; classical liberals call this libertarian.

When we say minarchist, we mean one subset of libertarianism; minarchists say this is all of libertarianism; classical liberals think this is about the same as classical liberalism.

The classical liberals, the minarchists, and the media need to adopt my terminology going forward. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.
— Stephan Kinsella

The above is what I have always understood. Though I prefer to eschew the anarchist label entirely. I prefer to use private law, voluntarist, Austro-Libertarian, or just libertarian.

 

[dmvianna]

Conza’s post is very enlightening in that it separates exonyms (what others call a group) from endonyms (what a group calls itself). That’s always a source of confusion. Let me add more:

Most of the above applies to people coming to libertarianism from the Right. But if you accept people coming from the Left (I’m an example), then they’ll bring Libertarian Socialist (endonym) jargon into it. Because even if you postulate that their political beliefs are misguided (and I do), you cannot (without a state violence) prevent them from using their jargon.

My own use is to define “libertarian” the same way anarchists (whether fond or not of private property) do. Which is, “we do not like government”. Whether you think government is a necessary evil or not is a further refinement; and whether you think governments defend or attack private property is also a further refinement.

While I dislike referring to Left and Right in political discourse, referring to Left and Right libertarianism/anarchism seems to me quite unambiguous.

 

[Rob]

Conza’s post is very enlightening in that it separates exonyms (what others call a group) from endonyms (what a group calls itself). That’s always a source of confusion. Let me add more:

Most of the above applies to people coming to libertarianism from the Right. But if you accept people coming from the Left (I’m an example), then they’ll bring Libertarian Socialist (endonym) jargon into it. Because even if you postulate that their political beliefs are misguided (and I do), you cannot (without a state violence) prevent them from using their jargon.

My own use is to define “libertarian” the same way anarchists (whether fond or not of private property) do. Which is, “we do not like government”. Whether you think government is a necessary evil or not is a further refinement; and whether you think governments defend or attack private property is also a further refinement.

While I dislike referring to Left and Right in political discourse, referring to Left and Right libertarianism/anarchism seems to me quite unambiguous.

Conza’s post is very enlightening in that it separates exonyms (what others call a group) from endonyms (what a group calls itself). That’s always a source of confusion. Let me add more:

Most of the above applies to people coming to libertarianism from the Right. But if you accept people coming from the Left (I’m an example), then they’ll bring Libertarian Socialist (endonym) jargon into it. Because even if you postulate that their political beliefs are misguided (and I do), you cannot (without a state violence) prevent them from using their jargon.

My own use is to define “libertarian” the same way anarchists (whether fond or not of private property) do. Which is, “we do not like government”. Whether you think government is a necessary evil or not is a further refinement; and whether you think governments defend or attack private property is also a further refinement.

While I dislike referring to Left and Right in political discourse, referring to Left and Right libertarianism/anarchism seems to me quite unambiguous.

Fair enough. This reminds me of a response of Rothbard's that a libertarian is defined as someone who hates the State.

I also agree with you that libertarian socialists have a stronger historical claim to the term but happy socialists are not my concern. My main issue though is the claim that CL and libertarianism are the same, they are not. The problem is that there is no real alternative to the word libertarian, the term private-law perhaps comes closest?

 

[dmvianna]

happy socialists are not my concern.

Debating with unambiguous terms should be. Not necessarily for the socialists’ sake, but definitely for the onlookers’ sake.

Given my background, I would have liked to find Rothbard before Bakunin after being prompted by Johnny Rotten.

 

[Conza]

An additional point — we're not against government. We're against the state.

”Government is not the state any more than roads or education are the state. The state coopts institutions but this does not make them inherently or necessarily part of the state. Libertarians are against the state–the institutionalized monopoly on law and force–but not against the governing institutions of society, i.e. law.​

​

The reason this matters: supporters of the state (such as minarchists) will use equivocation to try to trap you – they assume there must be a state, in order for there to be law and order (“government”), just like mainstreamers think there must be a state, in order for there to be education or roads. And so they equate law and order with the state. They ask you if you support law and order, and you say “yes”; they then say “okay well then you believe in government.” Which means state. To them. I’ve seen this trick thousands of times.​

​

The solution is to make clear what you mean by the state, and by government. By state we mean a territorial monopolist of law and violence. We libertarians oppose this *because we oppose aggression*—and states must commit aggression to either tax and/or to outlaw competing agencies.​

​

Now if by government you mean “state"—then we oppose that too, and for the same reasons. But if by government you mean governing institutions of society — law and order, courts, security etc. — then no, we don’t oppose this. In fact we count on this. We think the state undermines "government” in this conception. (Left-libertarians may differ, since they seem to hate “authority” and “hierarchies” of all kinds, but this is not normal libertarianism, if it is libertarianism at all.)​

​

Nock saw this long ago:​

​

“As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other a higher; they are commonly so taken, but erroneously. Still less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus — to classify both under the generic name of "government,” though this also, until very lately, has been done, and has always led to confusion and misunderstanding.

[…]

It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government, as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the State. … The nature and intention of government … are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.“​

— Stephan Kinsella​

 

[dmvianna]

Left-libertarians may differ, since they seem to hate “authority” and “hierarchies” of all kinds

Bakunin, if he could be taken as an example of Left libertarian, was explicitly against imposed authority and in favour of freely accepted authority. An apprentice freely recognises the authority of his teacher. A slave is forced to accept the authority of his owner.

By state we mean a territorial monopolist of law and violence

I would be curious about examples of government that is not a territorial monopolist of violence. I know of the theory about overlapping security providers, but could you point to existing ones? I’m most familiar with competing protection rackets in Brazil specifically. They exist in areas taken away from the Brazilian State, the size of suburbs, they are relatively fluid, but they don’t overlap. Boundaries are fought violently over. Coalitions and even temporary service between them can happen though.

​

 

[Rob]

Bakunin, if he could be taken as an example of Left libertarian, was explicitly against imposed authority and in favour of freely accepted authority. An apprentice freely recognises the authority of his teacher. A slave is forced to accept the authority of his owner.

I would be curious about examples of government that is not a territorial monopolist of violence. I know of the theory about overlapping security providers, but could you point to existing ones? I’m most familiar with competing protection rackets in Brazil specifically. They exist in areas taken away from the Brazilian State, the size of suburbs, they are relatively fluid, but they don’t overlap. Boundaries are fought violently over. Coalitions and even temporary service between them can happen though.

​

Two good books that give a sense of this are Private Governance (Stringham) and Anarchy Unbound (Leeson). There are plenty of others.

 

[Conza]

I would be curious about examples of government that is not a territorial monopolist of violence. I know of the theory about overlapping security providers, but could you point to existing ones? I’m most familiar with competing protection rackets in Brazil specifically. They exist in areas taken away from the Brazilian State, the size of suburbs, they are relatively fluid, but they don’t overlap. Boundaries are fought violently over. Coalitions and even temporary service between them can happen though.

​

Private governance, self-government, voluntary governance, private law, private arbitration, action-based jurisprudence etc.

This tends to be the best response though for historical requests:

“Hey, Mr Anarchocapitalist, show me a society without government”.

From the article [more gems above] “…So we see that the common request to be shown a society without government is not actually a request for historical examples, but an indirect way of saying that they object to anarchocapitalism because they think it is unlikely to happen.

The moral is, when we are asked this question, we need not bring historical knowledge into an argument, and doing so will often be disadvantageous.
Disadvantages of bringing historical knowledge into an argument include: it will tend to mean a listing of references which people can always say they don’t have time to read; and if they do have time to read, it usually only means enough time to nitpick, and find an alleged counterexample, and so it just increases the length of the argument, without bringing it any closer to a showdown.

To recap, next time someone asks for an example of anarchocapitalism in the modern Western world, try asking them in response, “You are impractical in opposing theft and murder, yet show me a modern Western society where theft and murder is absent? So, why is it okay for you to maintain that theft and murder is wrong, and not for me to maintain my impractical opinions?”
via Conza.

 

[dmvianna]

Both @Rob and @Conza's replies have good suggestions -- thank you.

I disagree though with answering defensively. Like "Oh, but the State didn't do better". This doesn't inform about where to go from here, and neither it does convince that our approach is feasible at all.

Again, I'm sharing my experience in two countries. In one the state does a better job than in the other. This is a ground truth that is lost in the principled, radical, defensive response.

The most convincing argument in the video above is that there are remnants, like security in a shopping mall, that suggests the private initiative approach would be superior. However a shopping mall has security defending a territory, and a government making sure the private business protecting the shopping mall will not kill me if I shop in another mall. Again, I come from a place where this happens. Protection rackets in Rio will kill me if I live in their territory and buy gas bottles from another seller.

Please keep in mind that I'm not telling you I disagree. I'm a devil's advocate. I want a better answer.

Currently I'm leaning more and more towards a frank answer: I don't know, this is a hard problem, and we're a long way from choosing this path as a society. As we move towards more freedom, more people will be contributing to this debate and coming up with better solutions, iterating along the way. Just like our constitutional governments did, and possibly through similar processes.

Shock horror, huh? But from my point of view much more honest, and convincing. Not only to me but for a much wider audience.