Talk:Libertarianism/Archive 3

message: I'm looking at a revert war between IP addresses here.  What gives?  Create an account for what you're doing; show us which if either of you intends to stick around. Jdavidb 19:39, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Log in 

message: For sake of argument, here are the problems that I see in Political Nerd's proposed version of the article.  There might be a few points I'm missing, and I'm not sure if time will allow me to continue debating the fine points of the article in detail.
*"Market Libertarianism is the form most commonly known in the United States. Its adherents can also be described as right-wing libertarians, or libertarian capitalists.''
I think that the pro-market libertarianism is the mostly widely used expression not just in the US but throughout the English-speaking world.  Furthermore, the example of the Libertarian Movement Party in Costa Rica indicates that it is also making inroads into other languages.
*Libertarian Socialism, or Classical Libertarianism, is a much older libertarian ideology
This assumes your conspiracy-theory account of the history of libertarianism is correct.  If we trace libertarianism back to the classical liberals, which is the traditional interpretation of history, then it is older than libertarian socialism.
*The paragraph beginning "The term libertarian, in the capitalist sense, first came into use in the United States, where," is incoherent.
*These thinkers therefore came to call themselves libertarians.
By saying "these thinkers", you render it unclear whether you are talking about the sui dissant modern classical liberals or about the modern welfare state liberals.
*Market libertarianism places a strong emphasis on private property, free trade, and the economic free market. Its origins may be traced to the mid-19th century school of economic thought known as marginalism, which held that all economic value came from the "utility at the margins" to the owner of the object of value. At that point in time, the marginalist school was considered a conservative ideology.
This is an unsupported and controversial assumption.  Many libertarians argue that they had been considered a left-wing school of thought in previous centuries.  Moreover, it presupposes that marginalism itself came out of nowhere, instead of having its roots in classical liberal economic theory (although I will agree to stipulate that most of the major English-speaking classical economists, including Adam Smith, supported the labor theory of value).  Moreover, it presupposes that the roots of modern libertarianism come exclusively from a school of economics.
*It has been noted by some political analysts such as the Political Compass that market libertarianism is not as incredibly libertarian, in the sense of anti-authoritarian, as it is incredibly economically right-wing. Most right-wing libertarians would argue, in opposition to classical left-wing libertarians, that this is only natural since most human societies have some forms of authority. The question for a right-wing libertarian is if one is able to freely choose which authority one submits too.
The first sentence here is sneaky POV of the "it has been noted" variety, and is poorly worded to boot.  The rest of the paragraph is a little misleading.  Some libertarians would agree with this wording, but many would quibble with the phrasing.  Personally, I don't think it's accurate to say libertarianism involve "submission" to anything (although it allows for religion, of course), but I know what you mean.
*For example, the classical liberal thinker John Stuart Mill was not opposed to the state and saw a role for the state in the delivery of education, maintenance and expansion of public utilities and even in the provision of assistance to the poor; libertarians are often hostile to the state and think its role should be severely restricted or even eliminated. Libertarians also argue that the market can be used to organize all or most aspects of society and have developed rational choice theory accordingly, while classical liberals such as Adam Smith argued there were limitations to the market's utility as a means of social organization. /paragraph/ There are also many important differences in the understanding of authority, class, politics, and the political economy between classical liberals and libertarians. Critics of libertarianism point out that modern libertarians tend to be very pro-business and believe that the rich have earned their place, while the classical liberals were often skeptical of the rich, businessmen, and corporations seeing them as aristocrats with desires to tyranize the people. Perhaps the most important classical liberal of this strain was Thomas Jefferson who advocated for progressive taxation, writing in an 1787 letter, "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." Jefferson also stated in a letter to James Madison, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations which already dare to challenge our Government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." He was also very mistrustful of the rich saying, "Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government...I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom."
This, along with what follows, simply goes into too much detail on a subject which is tangential to the main article.  As Chuck F noted, the purpose of this article is not to debate the ties of modern libertarians to Jefferson, Smith, and Rousseau.
*Critics will also make the claim that the modern understanding of private property by libertarians is much different than the way classical liberals understood it. In the classical times, the right to private property was a means by which farming peasents freed themselves from oppressive feudal landlords, and not to justify very large accumulations of private property in a few hands.
The second sentence is clearly POV.  Ubernetizen pointed this out before, but you made no significant changes.
*In addition, much of Adam Smith's theory of economic liberalism is inconsistant with the claims of modern libertarians. Rather than viewing the business-based economic market as a positive thing, Smith merely viewed it as the least of possible evils. Smith also viewed businessmen with much suspicion. His most famous quote in regards to this is in The Wealth of Nations, where Smith claimed that businessmen are "an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
The first two sentences make rather sweeping claims that are supported only by a couple of quotes from The Wealth of Nations.
*Smith also saw little useful purpose for corporations in a market economy, having stated in The Wealth of Nations that, "The pretense that corporations are necessary to the better government of the trade is without foundation."
As you have noted, corporations in the 18th century were a different animal than corporations today.  Although it is worth noting, as you do in the following passage, that Smith advocated the labor theory of value, while few modern libertarians do.
* Classical libertarians (libertarian socialists) also point out that the Nolan Chart totally fails to account for their ideology. / paragraph / These critics point out that the Nolan chart fails to account for varying degrees of authoritarianism and libertarianism that are exclusively on the left or right. One such example is the difference between Augusto Pinochet who led a brutal fascist dictatorship that was intent on absolute free-market policies, Hitler whose fascist regime used Keynsian policies (government fiscal stimulation of the marketplace) to build Germany's industrial capacity, and George W. Bush whose fiscal policies are closer to Pinochet's than Hitler's but does not practice nearly as authoritarian of social policies as either. On the libertarian end, the Nolan chart would fail to draw a distinction between liberal Social Democracy as practiced in Scandinavia, and classical libertarianism (libertarian socialism)- both would simply appear as a hard left. / paragraph / These critics would argue that a more accurate and scientific chart is the political compass which places left and right on a single axis measuring economics, and authoritarian/libertarian on another. On this scale, classical libertarianism (libertarian socialism) is on the hard left and very bottom corner, while Scandinavian Social Democracy would appear as center-left and somewhat libertarian. Libertarian capitalism as advocated by Nolan is on the hard right and somewhat libertarian position. Hitler would appear as a hard authoritarian and slightly right of center, Pinochet as a hard authoritarian and hard right, and Bush as a soft authoritarian and almost as right as the market libertarians on the economic scale.
I don't really follow this at all.  For one thing, this is way too much discussion of the Nolan chart for the libertarianism page; it's just not that important.  It should go on the Nolan chart page if anywhere.  Further, the only difference I can see between the political compass chart and the Nolan chart is that the former is tipped on its side; both have a social freedom/authority vs. left/right economics axis.  Hitler, Pinochet, etc. would appear at approximately the same place on both charts.  Also, you attempted to NPOV "the Nolan chart fails to account for varying degrees of authoritarianism and libertarianism that are exclusively on the left or right" by added "these critics point out that", but "point out" is a weasel term for introducing a POV statement.  Finally, do you really think that "these critics" of the Nolan chart generally endorse the political compass (especially considering their similarities)?  Or even know what it is?
*Both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists differ in their beliefs from the anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-socialists and libertarian socialists, who are usually considered not to be libertarians at all (the feeling is mutual; anarcho-socialists and libertarian socialists claim that capitalism is incompatible with freedom, and thus libertarian/anarcho-capitalists cannot be considered libertarians at all).
This is a needless and distracting redundancy.  It's fine to remind the reader of unrelated and opposing viewpoints, but it need not be done at such length.
*The How to become a libertarian essay link that want to add to the page has little substantial value and is no more than a broad parody.
- Nat Krause 14:24, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there is a UK Libertarian Alliance, although I'm not sure how active it is currently.  However, this is not necessarily relevant, because Britain represents less than a fifth of the world's population of native English speakers. - Nat Krause 16:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: That's odd.  What historians can you cite to that effect?  It may be that they have somewhat limited knowledge of the matter, if it is the case, as you suggest, that libertarianism is based solely in the new world. - Nat Krause 16:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: The page is already disambiguated.  We have been discussing how to disambiguate. - Nat Krause 16:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I can say (for sure) that in finland and (most possibly) in other fenno-ugric languages (hungary) as well as other nordic countries (sweden, norway..) the term libertarian means exactly what it means here ("right" libertarianism). The term libertarian socialism is in the finnish wikipedia mainly as an "this is one strange ideology known somewhere in the continent". --Tmh 22:23, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critique of the version proposed by Political Nerd