Libertarians and Fascists

by Martin Willett

The Civilized States of America and Jesusland

Only the arrogant

How can you fight fascism and other forms of state tyranny? How about through libertarianism?

It seems superficially a good idea. You stop the state being big and powerful and so it can never become a tyranny. But how does that actually work? How can you invent a constitution that prevents the people pooling and using their power? How can a constitution stop a Nazi who doesn't care for your constitution or checks and balances?

Do you imagine that Hitler asked to see a copy of the constitution of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg before deciding to invade the low countries? Do you really think he gave a shit what the constitution said in Luxembourg or Belgium? Of course not. He wasn't attracted to invade those countries by reading of those states' laws on martial law or suppression of citizens rights. Despite what the libertarians make out Nazis don't send their tanks rolling down slippery slopes erected by democratic politicians. Nazis are quite capable of being all draconian all at once with no precedents. They don't need to inherit powers from legitimate democratic states.

The “but what if a nasty government came along and misused this power” argument is bogus: a nasty government doesn't need any help to be nasty and can quite easily grab any power it wants when it wants it. Slippery slope arguments are almost always the refuge of people without a strong case, they can't think up a good reason why to oppose the measure proposed so they pretend it is another measure which somehow must logically follow on later, e.g. They're asking for gay marriage this year, next year they'll make straight marriage illegal and pull down all the churches! Utter nonsense.

Libertarians of the pro capitalist flavour (what in the last millennium when left and right seemed to have a meaning we might have called right wing libertarians) are strongly in favour of decentralization of power. They make out that this is about empowering the people and enhancing democracy but it is a lie. Local government is boring and dull, the preserve of retired nobodies, corruptible party placemen and property speculators, and not something that most people care much about. Libertarians don't actually want these people to have more power what they want to do is take power away from people who might actually use it.

Many powers that a people can give to their elected representatives can only effectively be used well at a high level. Many powers will only actually work at all if exercised at a global level, such as a thoroughly redistributive taxation system. If the whole planet institutes an income tax rate of 100% for income over ten times the median level (a measure which would reduce inequality, increase social cohesion and remove large amounts of envy and negative emotion from billions of lives) it would stand a chance of working. If North West Florida had a high income tax all that would happen is rich people would leave North West Florida or stop doing business there in a way which would make them liable to the tax. If the whole world taxes highly you can't run away so you might as well live where you actually want to live or near where you do the bulk of your business rather than where your accountant tells you that you should live. Why should business (other than sugar and rum business) be done in the Cayman Islands?

Right wing libertarians see handing powers down to lower levels of government as a way to ensure that they don't get used. For the right wing libertarians the ideal level at which to decide a particular policy is one step down from the minimum level at which using that power stands any chance of changing anybody's behaviour. The rabid libertarian right hate the idea of the United Nations because action taken on a global level might work to stop pollution, end war, address inequality, redistribute power from the rich to the poor and a whole host of other issues. No, the power to stop pollution and end global warming has to be given to a level of government too small to address the issue and implement any worthwhile change, take it out of the hands of the US federal government and give it to the states, and if the states look like they'll consider using it give it to the counties instead.

The power to decide what can and can't be sold has to be taken off the federal government because at that level it could be useful (to a libertarian read dangerous). If the federal government decides that you can't sell eggs laid by chickens kept in small cages such a law has a chance to actually change agriculture and retailing, even more so if such a measure could be implemented at a global level. If on the other hand this power was “delegated” to the counties it would be unworkable as any county that decided to impose such a ban would get sued for restraint of trade, farmers in the county would complain about loss of sales and increased costs and supermarkets near the county line would complain their sales will decline as a minority of people feeling aggrieved at “being picked on because of where they live” go and shop in another county instead. Delegating powers down to units too small to use those powers is an underhand way of ensuring that things don't change and the people's will is thwarted.

Whenever a right wing politician talks about decentralizing power always be extremely suspicious of his motives.

Libertarianism is a way to make obnoxious selfishness appear virtuous.

Overtly racist political parties or candidates stand little or no chance of ever being elected these days so as a result many racists have rebranded themselves as libertarians. If you despise blacks and think they are inferior then the best way to keep them down is to let the market do it for you, it achieves your ends and at the same time leaves you looking blameless and virtuous, whiter than a klansman's hood. Blacks can be kept down easily by maintaining class divisions through education and ensuring that public education is always second rate, good enough only for turning out factory-fodder, people suitable for vocational education (everybody needs plumbers, right?) and a pathetic apology for education in the liberal arts. Decent education is available to those who can pay, thus ensuring that class distinctions can be maintained across the generations. As long as the current class system favours your race over theirs and your family can afford it why would you ever want to change the system? Public education can be kept second rate or worse through the simple expedient of under-funding, hey, lower taxes and less competition for your own not exactly brilliant children, it's a win-win situation isn't it?

As long as you are rich enough to afford health insurance there's a chance that you will be better off by having the state do less, having minimal taxes funding minimal welfare (or less) and you can sell this selfishness and this kicking away the ladder of opportunity now you are comfortably above the lowest level as being some kind of virtue rather than the crudest and nastiest form of positively vindictive selfishness.

For many years in American politics “law and order” has been code for racism. Bang them up and throw away the key, fry them in the electric chair, put them down like dogs. They of course being criminals who “coincidentally” were low class blacks and rednecks rather than middle class white employers of illegal migrant labour or tax evaders (hard working people who make America great in libertarianspeak).

Gun ownership and “Second amendment rights” activism has also been about racism too. Just look at South Africa, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Israel and the Wild West and you will see the pattern, when a race in a dominant position in a mixed community feels threatened they seek refuge in going about armed for “protection against criminals”. In Europe this isn't happening because the middle classes don't feel afraid of immigrants, if that changes then expect to see a sudden interest in the long ignored right to self defence. The last time the middle classes of Britain took an interest in guns for personal protection or home defence was way back in the nineteenth century when they felt threatened by the urban poor. That fear went away and they stopped caring about the right to protect private property with deadly violence. The desire to own guns is not regarded as legitimate in Britain and there simply is no clamour for citizens to be given the right to carry guns in any mainstream media. Somebody expressing the sentiment that people should be allowed to carry weapons in Britain would be given the same sort of reception as somebody who advocated taking the vote off women or establishing a right to own and trade slaves. If you are American and don't believe that please come here and see for yourself.

Right wing libertarians appeal to the rich by making out that their fears are justified and their ugliest selfish motives are the highest form of virtue. Adam Smith showed how it was self interest which made the economy work and provided the basis of the wealth of nations. The right wing libertarians have taken this lesson to heart and developed it further into an entire philosophy in which selfishness is the only way to avoid being evil and doing positive harm. They make out that each and every attempt to make things better motivated by anything other than crude self interest is doomed not only to fail but to do real harm: don't try to do anything good through government action because that is in effect the root of all evil. There is simply no evidence whatsoever to back up this idea. (At this point the typical libertarian is probably free-form babbling about gulags and kulaks).

Why is coercion by government different to coercion by the market, nature, random chance or the laws of physics? Why is it harder to come to terms with? You can't do that because of X. How does knowing that X is the will of the people expressed through government make that an unbearable imposition when any other cause is something you just accept, live with, get over, pull yourself together and stop belly-aching like a spoilt child? My freedom to act is circumscribed by many things that I cannot control why should I feel that government action is in the same category as being the victim of a crime, being positively and maliciously cheated rather than the victim of circumstance? Why can't people just get over it and get on with their lives? There is an almost infinite number of things that I can't do for various reasons how can it possibly be good for my mental health to become obsessed with those things which are prevented by the actions of the government? Those who feel oppressed by the impartial actions of a reasonable and benign democratic government do not deserve to be treated as victims of a monstrous injustice. Get over yourselves and stop whinging like a child who moans that it's raining. Nobody would applaud a man who stood up and gave a five minute speech about why it was unbearable that he couldn't take the direct route to work because people had unthinkingly built houses shops and factories in his way so why should we be sympathetic to people who find their ability to act exactly as they would like circumscribed by the reasonable and legal actions of a democratically accountable government agency? Why? What's the difference? In both cases other people acting both reasonably and legally had an impact on his freedom of action. Get over yourselves and grow up.

Taxation grew out of tribute, a respectable term for protection money. But it has come a very long way since those times. For the vast majority of people the implied social contract is extremely beneficial. We get peace and stability which allow us to exercise freedoms and we get the benefit of prosperity. Our lives today are much better than those in the days before the Leviathan came into existence, when most lives really were nasty, brutish and short. No individual deserves to be rich or could be rich without the efforts of other people. Left to themselves people can make a living as farmers and fishermen or hunter gatherers, nobody on his own can ever be meaningfully rich. Being really rich requires other people to trade with (or co-operate with). It follows that nobody is really entitled to say that everything they have is all down to themselves and their own actions. It is not. We all owe a moral debt to the people around us who enable us to live the lifestyle we do. We need customers to buy our products and services, without trade, without other people, nobody can be rich.

Young men used to go to make their fortune in the big city. The poor boy wasn't rich until he went to the big bustling city. There was no gold in any of those bundles the poor boys carried. It was the city that made the riches, wasn't it? Trade makes people rich, not personal effort. Those poor boys left for the city because they didn't like the prospect of working hard to remain in poverty.

For many of the richest people it is clear that it is the contribution of other people that make them rich. The world's greatest artist, footballer, entrepreneur, boxer, landowner, investment banker, teacher, plumber, economics professor, mortgage adviser, hairdresser, arbitrager, gold miner, engineer or merchant on his own is a hunter gatherer or crofter. The lion's share of everybody's wealth (even farmers these days) is derived from other people not from their own abilities alone. Making out that anybody has an absolute and unassailable moral right to every penny they earn is unreasonable, it doesn't match the reality of the situation. All wealth and income has a social component and the richer people are the bigger that social component is. Riches and wealth are generated by the economy, the commonwealth, and are therefore rightly subject to taxation.

Those who benefit most from not being alone on an uninhabited planet are those who should be expected to make the biggest contribution to the goals of humanity via taxation. Libertarians take a firm grasp of the opposite end of the telescope and insist that in a free market anything you earn is rightfully yours because it was voluntarily given to you by the effects of trading. But profit isn't a tip from God. You get what you can bargain for. The concept of deserving doesn't come into it. Just desserts is a moral issue, it has nothing to do with the free market. People get what they can for the goods and services they trade. There are people who make a living selling quackery and things they have no real moral right to own let alone sell.

In what way does a person get to deserve the money they inherit and the education and contacts that their rich and powerful parents can buy them? Think about George W Bush. The man has the charisma and intellect to be a good second hand car salesman. In a fair world that is probably what he would be. He's not smart enough to make it in any business that demands a finer brain. He's not smart enough to teach. If he had been born to parents in a trailer park George with his poor sense of social responsibility and liking for alcohol and cocaine would have had great difficulty in staying out of jail. He certainly would not have received any higher education or had any breaks. With his lack of curiosity about foreign parts I can see him clearly settling down in his forties to a life as a small businessman in a small town, if he was lucky.

Is there really any kind of a right to buy privilege and advantage for your children? I say no. All children deserve opportunity no children deserve advantage. It is in the interests of the entire community that all children are given opportunity. In whose interests is it that any child receives advantage? The answer is clear, advantage only benefits those who receive it. Why should the majority be sanguine about the rich continually buying advantage for their children? What is in it for me to allow rich people to buy advantage for their children so they receive a better chance of achieving success at life than my children? Nothing! Less than nothing. Refusing to stand up against privilege and the buying of advantage is betraying the interests of my children. Private education maintains privilege and entrenches class divisions, making it harder for those with ability to get where they should get to because those opportunities are taken by those with connections. In a fair world Condoleezza Rice (an Alpha double plus black female) wouldn't be reporting to George W Bush (a Gamma plus white male with a rich and well-connected daddy).

The instinct of the libertarian is to have government do nothing and let the market do it instead. This is fine for winners. If you are already winning then the market holds no terrors and you can see a shrinking state as an opportunity simply to pay less tax. All winners are inclined to over-estimate their own ability and the extent to which their success is down to their wonderfulness rather than dumb luck. When a rich man makes a good decision it is down to his ability, hard work and cunning. Of course when he sees his neighbour do the same he can see the way luck plays a part.

One thing that libertarians don't seem to be able to understand is that government is a process not an event. You can't just trim back the power of the state and then go back to selling oil futures or growing weed. If you want to stop state power being used in the wrong way you have to sit on it. You then have to keep telling the people that their aspirations for change are not legitimate. You have to be The Man. You can't be the knight on the white charger promising to come in and change things for the better if you get elected, you have to be the fool on the hill who does nothing and tells everybody that he's right to do it.

Libertarian government means doing nothing and making sure nobody else does anything in your place: replacing government departments with a recorded telephone message saying nobody promises to get back to them or do anything else either. What you can't do is change the rules of the game or make your ideology into the rules. Nobody has to agree with your idea that doing nothing is the best policy. I can guarantee that the people won't simply give up the idea of doing things collectively and using politics to get things done rather than stopping things getting done. Libertarians want to come in and take government apart and then go away again. That won't work. The people will put it all back together again and they won't take kindly to the government telling them that governing is a bad thing and they don't care what the people want to do because they (who happen to be the government) think that governments should always do nothing.

You can't be the people's champion when you are standing in the way of the people doing what they want to do in the name of your (suspiciously intellectual) ideology. Even if you manage to take some of the apparatus of the state apart you cannot stop another government coming in later and building it all back up again and rightly blaming the cost of doing so on your idiotic ideology.

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