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LibUK Articles

Genesis of LibertarianUK.net
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Dec 04 2007 at 7:22 AM
LibUK Articles >> General

Oh, for heaven's sake! Do we really need yet another website spouting this stupid libertarian nonsense?

That, I am sure, will be the attitude of many people who misunderstand what libertarianism is about. So, indulge me whilst I elaborate on the philosophy of LibertarianUK.net.

Over at my normal writing place, an Anonymous poster left the following comment.

... the fact is that it's your brand of neo-fascist, every man for himself brand of politics that this country has rejected so completely... may be you should think of emigrating, I hear that they still like your way of thinking in Austria...

The most bizarre part of this is the conflation of libertarianism with fascism when it is precisely the opposite: where fascism seeks to subsume the individual's wants within the state's preferences, libertarianism takes entirely the opposite view. Above all, libertarianism is entirely based on the premise that the individual is responsible for their own life.

As my colleague has already pointed out, however, there are shades of libertarianism.

It is my opinion (expounded on here) that libertarianism is less a religion than a tendency. Whereas one is a socialist (say) one has libertarian leanings, more or less pronounced.

The anonymous commenter was correct that the most hardcore libertarians do, indeed, believe that the best society is one based on "every man for himself". However, that does not necessarily mean that there should be no help for those who have made bad decisions, or who have been unlucky.

However, libertarians believe that the state is the servant of the individuals who installed it; the state has been loaned power to act on behalf of the people and absolutely does not exist to tell individuals what they may or may not do.

Most libertarians believe that there should be some sort of state, but it should only be mandated to do those things that we, as individuals, cannot do for ourselves. Most seem to agree that, in an ideal world, this state should handle only defence, foreign policy and criminal justice (this last being the most important: a free society is founded on strong property rights).

The Scottish blogger, Shuggy, put it rather well (although he was, in this case disparaging the libertarian ideal).

Rather, [libertarians] give the impression—to me, anyway—of people who have surrendered the anarchist position very grudgingly and whose default position with regards to the state is that the validity of its very existence is something that requires continual justification.

Further, the broad church of liberalism has historically allowed for the possibility—indeed the certitude—that there are occasions where we can achieve more collectively than we could as individuals. Libertarians, in contrast, are at their most generous when they treat this idea with extreme scepticism.

Actually, libertarians accept that we can act more effectively as a collective all the time; it is the vehicle through which that happens that is in dispute. And surely history has shown us that the state is not the most efficient method of delivery?

As far as the majority of people on the Left are concerned, the only method for collective action is the state. But libertarians acknowledge that we act collectively all the time, as a commercial company for instance, but we do so through voluntary agreements rather than coercion.

What libertarianism does is to recognise the quintessential self-interest of humanity, programmed in at a genetic level, and understand that humans are most productive when they are acting in their own interest. This is why we see the success of the "invisible hand" all around us every day, and then rail against the inefficiencies and iniquities of the socialist state every night. People are selfish and so the best way to get them to work together is to appeal to their self-interest.

So there is the theory. But, unfortunately, we live in a world where politics is bound by the art of the possible. Pure libertarian theory, as shown by our anonymous friend above, is simply not acceptable to the vast majority of our pampered population.

So, we need to imagine a state where there is a welfare system of some kind, where there is some kind of organised health infrastructure, where there is an educational system.

However, what LibertarianUK.net aims to do is to envisage solutions based on libertarian principles. In practical terms, this will often mean that the state does provide funding for certain activities; the important thing to ensure is that it has an absolute minimum of input into how those systems are run.

Whilst this approach may be decried by the "pure" libertarians, I am a "consequentialist": I am a libertarian primarily because the last century has shown just how bad the state is at achieving its stated aims.

What we need to do, then, is to devise practical solutions to the problems that face our country, solutions that cannot be said to abandon the weakest but that reduce the state's interference in each individual's day-to-day life.

So, welcome to LibertarianUK.net and we all hope that we shall give you something to think about.

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