Libertarianism, socialism, and differing views of reality

[aneeshm]

While reading through many threads on communism and libertarianism, I realised one fundamental difference between the way the libertarians and socialists view the world.

In one thread, it was being argued that a choice in which a person has to either work or starve is not a choice. The libertarians were insisting that it was, and that socialists that it wasn't "really" a choice. The socialists also argued that no employer should have this power over someone else - that nobody should have the capacity/power to offer a person work when his other option was starvation.

This probably stems from the two ways they have of looking at the world.

Once, man had to hunt or starve. It was a simple choice. Later, it was farm or starve. I'll use this to illustrate the key difference.

The libertarian sees this choice as something inherent to reality - a law of human nature and of the tragedy of the human condition, if you will. He is of the opinion that any system of politico-economic organisation is not capable of abolishing this choice, that it is inherent, and man will be faced with it again and again. He sees it a bit like the law of the conservation of energy, or, in the words of a famous libertarian, TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The libertarian also has no belief in the concept of "cosmic justice" - he does not believe that the universe or humanity is inherently just. He also tends to see large-scale things in terms of non-intentional systems, rather than intention-directed action by individuals.

The socialist, on the other hand, gives primacy to intention in causality, and believes that "work or starve" is not an unalterable natural imperative, but only a phase of human society, or an artificial choice, not inherent to the human condition, and therefore something which can be abolished if some key things in society are changed. It isn't a natural law, merely a perversion created by the systems currently in place. The socialist also (generally) believes in cosmic justice, or, barring that, in the achievement of cosmic-like justice - the much-loved "absolute fairness" - as much as possible in reality. He also sees intentional causality behind the behaviour of large-scale systems, such as the explanation of society in terms of "classes" and their "struggle" who are more akin to classical nations in their own right than classes of a single one.

There are many more differences, but these were the ones pertinent to the discussion, so I took them up here.

Right now, I'm not making any comments on which is the correct view, because I don't want to tilt or derail the discussion.

Thoughts?

[GePap]

My thought is that you need to do a lot more reading on both issues.

Most Liberterians I have met have a very storng sense of "cosmic justice." It has to do not with outcomes, but in believing that they as individuals have rights that can't morally be infringed upon.

As for socialism, the critique about capitalism has less to do with outcomes than with control. The critique of the capitalist economy (as I understand it) is that given how capital intensive production has become, individuals have gone from small producers themselves (having some level of control over individual means of production) to being essentially wage slaves. The average person does not have access to the means to be able to feed, clothe, or house themselves solely through their own labor, because at the minimum, most could not get access to sufficient land to do it. All they have is the ability to trade their labor to someone who controls the means of production, not for a share in what is produced, but a wage, which might not even be enough to purchase what it is they produce, or enough to feed, clothe, and house themselves as they might be able to, if given the ability to control their own means of production.

[chequita guevara]

GePap has a better handle on it than you, ansheem, but this isn't really surprising as he's older and has been around the arguments longer.

The fundamental difference between socialism and libertarianism is that libertarianism flows from the school of philosophical idealism and socialism flows from philosophical materialism. Which is ironic as that socialists tend to be idealistic and libertarians materialistic, but that has more to do with the peculiarities of the English language than actual irony.

The philosophical basis of libertarianism is the world of ideas: justice, rights, freedom, logic. The positions of libertarianism are not arrived at through study or the scientific process. Instead, it starts with a few basic premises, and makes logical deductions from there.

For example, libertarians tend to believe that human beings have rights simply because they were born human beings, it is an intrinsic quality of humanity. The first right is the right to one's own body. From this right flows every other right. Since I own my body, no one else has the right to damage it or kill it. Since I own my body, I own the products of the labor it is capable of, etc.

The main type of socialism in the world is Marxist socialism, so I'll just deal with it. Marxism starts from the premise that human beings are animals, and as such, have animal needs: food, shelter, mates, etc. The species life of humanity is that we exist only in and with the help of social groups. Humans can only be individuals in groups, because humans don't last very long out side of groups. Aside from various mental problems that crop up from isolation, we're considerably more vulnerable to critters, accidents, etc.

Since humans live in groups and must meet their animal needs, understanding human beings means we need to understand how particular groups under particular circumstances organize themselves to meet those needs. In other words, Marxism starts from analyzing the material reality of humanity, and proceeds from there.

Libertarians tend to view the human condition as natural, universal, and therefore unalterable. Thus, it is futile to try and change the world. We've always been this way, we'll always be this way. You can't fight human nature.

Marxists look back through history and see that humans have changed and responded differently under different conditions. That rather than human nature being universal and unalterable, it not only changed from place to place and era to era, but groups and individuals can change their character if they need to.

Libertarianism accepts the existing conditions today and does question how we got here. Some people worked hard, made more than others, etc. Marxism looks at history and say, we got here because of, to use the libertarian term, coercion. Not coercion of the choice used in the OP, work for me or starve to death. It was coercion of, I have a sword, you don't. So this land now belongs to me, you can work on it and live or I can kill you.

Much later, when the decedents of the original thieves discovered they were in a position to make more money by raising sheep than raising peasants, they kicked the peasants off the land. Not only did they do that, but they even confiscated the common land the peasants shared. In America, the theft is even less hidden, as we simply exterminated the people who were living on it and using it and claimed it for ourselves.

So the reason we have today the choice of "work or starve" has less to do with nature and more to do with theft and coercion. We were disposed of the means to work for ourselves, and thus forced to work for someone else if we wanted to live.

We will always have to work to produce the things we need to meet our animal needs. The question is, under what social conditions will that work take place, who is the work decided upon, and how will the proceeds of that work be distributed. Up until very recently, it was necessary to have an owner class of people directing production and distribution. Nowadays, that class is no longer necessary. We have the tools and methods to do this for ourselves. Thus, an owner class is a burden, and we would be better off without it.

[Fake Boris]

What GePap said.

Libertarians -originally at least- believe in natural and inalterable human rights much more so than socialists.

Lately though, orthodox socialism has been 'perverted' by the concepts of bourgeois liberalism. Their arguments use the same structure as libertarianism uses, but add to the list of 'natural' rights things like healthcare, lodging, food, etc.

As such, many socialists today are more like Rousseau than Marx (when it comes to 'rights' at least - I'm not talking about the political system here).

edit: wrote 'Locke' instead of 'Marx'

[snoopy369]

I agree with Che (/Gepap) as well, though I have my own way of seeing it I suppose. In a lot of ways, though, Che's description makes more sense to me than what I'd have written before reading his description. Thanks, Che

Aneeshm, I think from a mostly-libertarian's point of view (I'm not a Libertarian party member or anything, but my basic worldview is most similar to that of a libertarian), the distinction is:
A libertarian believes that the Individual is supreme, and that society is in a very important sense a collection of individuals. A 'pure' libertarian probably would believe this to the exclusion of all else; I am not such, as I view certain important exceptions. In any event, a libertarian begins with the individual, and then says, "When you put more than one individual together, you necessarily have some difficulty, as caused by the possibility of one individual's rights conflicting with another's; as such, we must have some way of adjudicating whose rights have priority, or how we can avoid a conflict of rights". As such, we have a Government, whose responsibility is to ensure my rights are not violated by you or anyone else, except where it is necessary to make a compromise in order to avoid me violating YOUR rights.

So, in the purest sense, a libertarian views the Government as simply a court, which chooses (in a consistent and fair fashion) whose rights are superior to whose in each case. Now, in some cases it makes sense to plan ahead, and do things that will avoid rights conflicts (say, traffic lights). However, generally anything else is not kosher for a libertarian (say, mandatory public schools). These infringe on my rights unnecessarily, and therefore are not acceptable (note I don't think this, but it could be justified from this point of view). Public education and such should be voluntary - individuals contributing to it voluntarily, and because it is in their own best interest to do so. (I do think this could be an interesting experiment, though - if people had the choice to contribute to education or not, would as much, less, or more money be given to it?)

A socialist, on the other hand, views people as a society fundamentally differently than a group of individuals. Social dynamics exist that mean people will not behave the same in a society as they would as individuals, and there is an optimal solution for the society that does not appear to be valid for the individual. Thus, you have a government, which is responsible for not only adjudicating disputes but also accomplishing those things that are not done by the individual; in an industrial society, this includes taking care of individuals who are unable to take care of themselves due to the economic conditions in the society. It also might include running or regulating various businesses who are needed for social functioning but do not adequately perform their function in an open market (we often call these 'utilities', ie electric companies, phone companies, etc.). Basically, a socialist would aim for the best benefit for the whole of society, while not aiming for any one individual's benefit. (The irony from my point of view, of course, is this sounds an awful lot like trickle-down economics, from a certain point of view...)

My personal view is that both have some merit, of course. I tend to be mostly on the libertarian side, believing that we should value the individual's rights over the social good. I believe that not because I believe we should not have the Vulcan credo - the good of the many over the good of the one - but simply because I think that, again due to social dynamics, the government is usually terrible at making decisions, and so it will often do more harm than good, even if there appears to be a way to improve the overall social good. I think there are situations where the government is not so bad at things, ie there are situations where there is significant benefit and little detriment to governmental control; and there are situations that have a huge downside to not having governmental control; in both of those situations (really the same situation!) the government should intervene. However, in other situations the government should not. In particular, there is a huge problem in that governments tend to accumulate power and not give it up; even a staunch libertarian, when seated with power, will have a difficult time actually reducing his own power (often preferring to accumulate power in one direction while decreasing it in another that bothers him more; e.g. the US Republican party, accumulating military and police power while reducing social programs.

But, as I said, Che puts it much more concisely

[MrFun]

At first, I read the thread title as "Retardation, justifiable idealism, and differing delusional and realistic views."

[Seedle]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles
/QUOTE]

No need to repost the whole thing, but

[Berzerker]

libertarianism - you own yerself

socialism - society owns you

[MrFun]

Berz is The Awesome in summarization.

[Berzerker]

ty, I tried to be fair

[OzzyKP]

To add to the stuff Che and others said, in my opinion the main difference between libertarianism and communism/socialism is property. Most arguments I've seen between the two sides end up arguing past each other because of a mutual lack of understanding on this point.

Libertarians view all taxation as a form of theft. Money, land, things, etc are all owned by someone and to take a percentage of it, through the force of law, is coercion and a violation of that individual's fundamental rights.

Socialists/communists believe that ownership of property is itself coercion and theft. The planet is not owned by anyone, and those making such a claim can only back it up through use of coercion.

A crappy summation, but I'm groggy at the moment. Che can flesh out the point. (though I'm surprised he didn't mention it already)

[Theben]

Christopher Hitchens said libertarianism and socialism are two sides of the same coin.

[Berzerker]

the theory is that the state would wither away under socialism as people were equal(ized) thereby achieving a libertarian-esque system. What happens when wealth disparities show up again is another matter

[Imran Siddiqui]

My personal view is that both have some merit, of course.

Same here. I tend to vaciliate in my beliefs of society vs. the individual as I do tend to agree that most of what people think of as individual success comes from societal underpinnigs (and yes, I definitely do have to read Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Outliers"), but I'm very protective of individual rights. Not because of any natural rights reasons (I don't believe in the existance of natural rights), but because I believe that freedom of the individual is best for the society as a whole (to a point).

So I, as well as I think most people, bridge the gap. I do completely agree with GePap, Che, and snoopy in their arguments about the differences between the two credos (or at least their underpinnings).

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
To add to the stuff Che and others said, in my opinion the main difference between libertarianism and communism/socialism is property. Most arguments I've seen between the two sides end up arguing past each other because of a mutual lack of understanding on this point.

I think you're wrong, or at least wrong in the first principles. Property is one thing that Libs and Socialists might disagree on, and certainly a big thing, because property is a big thing. It is not core to either belief philosophically, and I would argue that either side can sometimes be in favor of quite different things related to property. It is true that libertarians prefer less or no taxation, but that is because they believe the government should not need very much money to perform its functions - it is an arbiter of conflicts. There is no inherent bias towards property, nor is there a bias against property in socialism, other than the reflection of the core ideals of both - namely, individual good versus societal good.