The following is a guest post by SFL Campus Coordinator Levi Gourdie.
Earlier today, my colleague Jason Byas published a piece on left-libertarianism to help promote one of SFL’s two virtual reading groups, which will explore Markets Not Capitalism, a collection of left-libertarian writings edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson. To balance the scale, I will give a brief overview of right libertarianism, the dominant form of libertarianism that first came out of the classical liberal tradition. Murray Rothbard, the subject of the other virtual reading group, could arguably be considered a right libertarian. There are several distinct ideas that are included in the right-libertarian tradition, but here I will focus on just one: The view of liberty as an end in itself.
A distinguishing view of many left-libertarians is the notion that liberty is the means by which they can achieve their ideal social hierarchy (or more accurately, lack thereof). To explore this, let’s look at one typical left-libertarian tradition, anarcha-feminism. Anarcha-feminists view the state as an inherently partiarchal system that must be abolished because it perpetuates an unequal society. While the equal treatment of men and women is a noble goal worthy of pursuit, right-libertarians do not support liberty because it is a means to that end (or any other, for that matter). Rather, liberty of the human condition is an end in its own right and should not be considered just a means to socially engineer society to fit one’s personal preferences. To view liberty as a means to an end is the same logic many use to advocate for a powerful state.
One way to illustrate these different justifications for liberty is to consider left and libertarian views of capitalism vs. free markets. The left-libertarian view tends to see modern-day, existing capitalism as corrupt because it puts capital and owners before workers. Right libertarians, on the other hand, because of their support for the non-aggression principle, hold that capitalism is the most moral system on earth. The system of capitalism advocated for by most right-libertarians is much more in line with Ayn Rand’s definition in “What is Capitalism?” In addition, even if one views capitalism as putting capital and profit before laborers, right libertarians argue that this is not necessarily a reason to dislike the system in and of itself. In regards to the common critique that capitalism places “profits over people,” what many people fail to realize is that profit signals our comparative advantage in how we can best serve people, as outlined by Ludwig von Mises in his classic work “profit and loss.”
One of the greatest strengths of the right-libertarian tradition is its flexibility and big-tent approach. Anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, Objectivists, constitutionalists, federalists, and others are all welcome in the right-libertarian tradition and will not be ostracized for their personal preferences or for their support of a minimal state so long as they adhere to free market principles and respect individual rights. Left-libertarianism tends to naturally skew towards only including various forms of “market-anarchy” and, as such, it pitches a much smaller tent for those that are interested in liberty, making it a much less viable starter for people to get into the philosophy of liberty.
