An economic crash spurred on by a weakness for profit and a blindness to risk; but efforts at reform are resisted in the name of the “free market.” A healthcare system that is more costly and less effective than many others in the developed world; but efforts to change it run aground on the reluctance of some to pay for the benefits of others. Federal coffers drained by unaffordable handouts to the largest corporations, highest income-earners, and wealthiest estate-holders; but efforts to roll back these mistakes are met by an astro-turf tax revolt that smacks more of class warfare than the progressive tax system itself.
We could see these as the same old battles between left and right, the same tired pantomime that ends in stalemate. But it seems to many that something is different this time around, that change in our political system is inevitable. New regulations will be issued for Wall Street and corporations. A new national plan for healthcare will emerge. And changes in our tax laws will have to occur to reverse the deficit and arrest the debt. No doubt each of these will be resisted by those who still cling to a retrograde American “libertarianism.” But it may finally be the case that their outsized and undeserved influence on the politics of the past 30 years is ending. It is time for us to reflect on this free market ideology, and ask whether American libertarianism is (or ought to be) dead.
The distinctive American version of libertarianism focuses almost solely on the value of freedom, and makes freedom synonymous with non-interference at the hands of government. In more sophisticated variants, libertarianism focuses on the dignified human, makes freedom the most important (but not the only) political precondition for the achievement of dignity, and seeks to ensure that dignity is achievable by all. But the American version dispenses with any complicated talk of the many-sided human personality, or the connections that might tie us together (what we owe to each other), and pursues with single-minded zeal the idol freedom.
In its rough-and-ready, campaign-tested variant, this ideology appeals to Americans’ philosophical commitment to self-reliance, historical commitment to ideals of liberty, and practical commitment to the system of capitalism. All of these things are supremely praiseworthy; they make us what and who we are. But Americans have been led astray by the free market, libertarian ideology into misinterpreting their own philosophy, history and practice.
Philosophically, the libertarian focus on the freestanding individual leads us into a sort of solipsism, breaking down the human ties that give us our real identities and make life worth living. Historically, we’ve been led to misunderstand our own Founders’ ideals, and to read into their words a form of liberty they explicitly rejected. And practically, we’ve been asked to ignore the beneficial relationship that existed between government and enterprise as our country became economically strong, and to try a radical new experiment with an untested theory of unfettered markets.
In my next few days as a guest blogger on the Monkey Cage, I want to reflect on these questions. Although I am a political theorist, I’ll do so in a ways that is freed from the academic apparatus that sometimes makes theory inaccessible. Tomorrow I’ll talk about some of the reasons that times of change call us to rethink our ideals, and how the specific changes we’re facing now should cause us to see the philosophical hollowness of American libertarianism. On Wednesday I’ll suggest that the American Founders’ ideals were in many ways the opposite of what free market ideologists would have us believe. And on Thursday I’ll discuss a bit about the American vision of capitalist economic development moving forward from the Founders, in order to show the ways in which that vision is not as starkly anti-government as free-marketers would have us believe.
A few blog entries certainly won’t drive the nails in the coffin of American libertarianism. But I suspect that events have already begun that process, and it is worthwhile engaging in a dialogue about what those events mean and how we should understand our American ideology in a deeply changed world.