Criticism of libertarianism

Conservative criticism

Conservatives often argue that government is needed to maintain social order and morality. They may argue that excessive personal freedoms encourage dangerous and irresponsible behaviour. Some of the most commonly debated issues here are sexual norms, the drug war, and public education. Libertarians feel that the state has no business being involved in what they see as victimless crimes, but these conservatives view some of these same issues as threats to society. Some, such as the conservative Jonah Goldberg of National Review consider libertarianism "a form of arrogant nihilism" that is both overly tolerant of nontraditional lifestyles (like drug addiction) and intolerant towards other political views. In the same article, he writes "You don't turn children into responsible adults by giving them absolute freedom. You foster good character by limiting freedom, and by channeling energies into the most productive avenues. That's what all good schools, good families, and good societies do. The Boy Scouts don't throw a pocketknife to a kid and say, 'Knock yourself out, kid. I'll be back in a couple hours.' The cultural libertarians want to do precisely that... pluralism [should not be]... a suicide pact."^[1] Goldberg has also had repeated spats with Lew Rockwell and his followers (whom he calls "angry libertarians") over what they see as conservatism's concessions to socialism ^[2] and its support for the war in Iraq. Goldberg argues that modern conservatism incorporates the best features of libertarianism without its flaws through what he calls fusionism:

Hayek says that in the United States you can 'still' be a defender of liberty by defending long-standing institutions that were designed to preserve freedom. In other words, 'conservatives' in America are — or can be — classical liberals... traditionalist conservatives and free-market libertarians agree on about 85% of all public-policy issues... When [libertarians] try to break ranks entirely the most common result is that they throw a party to which nobody shows up.^[3]

Liberal criticism

Many criticisms of libertarianism question the definition of "freedom" upheld by libertarians. For example, liberals and socialists sometimes argue that the economic practices defended by libertarians result in privileges for a wealthy elite, and that even people that have not been coerced (according to the libertarian definition) may not be free because they lack the power or wealth to act as they choose.

Some, such as John Rawls and Ernest Partridge, argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that harm some individuals so long as they are beneficial overall. They may further argue that rights and markets can only function among "a well-knit community of citizens... with an active understanding that every citizen, without exception and whatever his accomplishment, bears an enormous burden of moral debt to both predecessors and contemporaries". If these prerequisites for a libertarian society depend on paying this debt, these critics argue, the libertarian form of government will either fail or be expanded beyond recognition.^[4] Further, Rawls argued that rational people without knowledge of their current status (behind what he called a veil of ignorance) would want society to provide a safety net for the least advantaged because of the possibility that they would need it themselves. Libertarians like Robert Nozick argue the desires of hypothetical individuals cannot override an individual's moral right to his or her life and its products (property), and argue that a "well ordered society" can be maintained without government coercion. It should be noted that minarchists consider such a society to require more government than anarcho-capitalists do.

Other critics argue that a democracy can legitimately override the rights of its own constituents, though libertarians like Hayek and Friedman respond that independent decisions of noncoerced buyers and sellers represent the "will of the people" more effectively than ballots do.

Radical criticism

Some critiques center on the notion of property (on which much of libertarian theory rests) and argue that property in general is illegitimate. The argument that property itself is theft, promoted by many anarchists, would undermine almost all of capitalist libertarian theory if successfully argued. Noam Chomsky, for one, argues that property rights are authoritarian restrictions on others' actions. Others argue that current property owners obtained their property unfairly, justifying its redistribution. This is especially true in the United States where, they argue, land was initially stolen from the Native Americans that held it previously.

Classical Marxists and many modern socialists subscribe to the Lockean notion that production implies ownership, but argue that modern production makes it impossible to divide ownership of most goods amongst the individual laborers involved, for too many people participate in the complex process of extracting raw materials and in the manufacture of the end product (see labor theory of value). As such, they believe that property must be held in common for all, in trust, as it were, by the state. Moreover, they contend that the capitalist himself adds nothing to the equation in the way of labor, that which creates ownership, and that the profit or surplus value is therefore essentially unearned. Libertarians counter that this analysis ignores the complex labor of arranging for and managing production, the various investment risks, and the lost opportunity costs involved in deferring consumption until sufficient capital can be amassed to build a factory or hire workers and then spending it on these factors of production.

Libertarians contend that an agreement between laborers and employers to perform work is simply a contractual agreement of exchanging the use of one form of property (labor) for another (wages), and there is no particular need to tie production to ownership. Critics sometimes respond that neglecting to tie production to ownership often results in situations in which the producers (workers) do not receive the full benefit of their own labor, or that impoverished laborers cannot "voluntarily" make agreements with someone because the capitalist's control of the means of production is coercive. This last argument depends on the criticism of property outlined above. Libertarians also counter that in modern market economies laborers may participate in ownership by purchasing stock, however, this requires excess funds which many laborers find difficult to accumulate.

Economic criticism

Critics of the economic system favored by libertarians, laissez-faire capitalism, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifle innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that advances in economics since Adam Smith show that people's actions are not always rational, that markets do not always produce the most efficient outcome, and that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health.

Other economic criticism concerns the transition to a libertarian society. They may argue, for example, that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long term.^[5]

Another criticism is of the handling of Latin American economies by libertarian economists:

Between 1973 and 1989, a government team of economists trained at the University of Chicago dismantled or decentralized the Chilean state as far as was humanly possible. Their program included privatizing welfare and social programs, deregulating the market, liberalizing trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its constitution and laws... Chile's economy became more unstable than any other in Latin America... growth during this 16-year period was one of the slowest of any Latin American country. Worse, income inequality grew severe. The majority of workers actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after adjusting for inflation), while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the absence of market regulations, Chile also became one of the most polluted countries in Latin America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only possible by suppressing political opposition and labor unions under a reign of terror and widespread human rights abuses.^[6]

Many libertarians disagree with this assessment, claiming that the "miracle of Chile" vindicated their theories. Still, libertarianism's critics argue that the results in Chile and elsewhere show that libertarian economic ideas threaten freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth.

Lastly, free trade has many critics, who argue that trade barriers are necessary for economic growth in some (or all) situations. Many economists, who tend to be in favor of international free trade, reject this argument.

Methodological criticism

Many people criticize libertarianism (especially natural law libertarianism) for what they consider to be questionable premises (especially about human nature) and its heavy reliance on deductive reasoning. If libertarianism's premises could be proved false, the whole theory would collapse.

Libertarianism is also seen as utopian by some of its critics, with little relevance to the current political situation. The following example is from National Review's Jonah Goldberg:

Ask a libertarian (no, not all libertarians...) what the Department of Education should do, and he will say 'Well, the Department of Education shouldn't exist.' Now of course he's right... But it does. I've seen it. It's practically brimming with bureaucrats who aren't going away and they're awaiting orders from somebody to do something... I always compared libertarians to the Celtic warrior-tribes often employed by British kings. They are incredibly useful as allies in battle, but you wouldn't want them to actually run things.^[7]

Others such as Jeffrey Friedman, editor of Critical Review magazine, argue that libertarianism relies on unproved assumptions such as that “economic growth and affluence” automatically result in happiness, and shift the burden of proof to their opponents without justification, when in fact "It is the libertarian who is committed to the grand claim that, for some reason, intervention must always be avoided."Friedman also argues that natural law libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent: "if (as [David] Boaz maintains) the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights (62), the liberty to own large amounts of property [at the expense of others] should... also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism... The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's 'right to do wrong.'"^[8]

Lastly, some people criticize the motives of libertarians, saying that they only support libertarian ideas because they serve as a means of justifing and maintaining what these critics perceive to be their position near the top of existing social hierarchies.

Environmental criticism

Critics like Jeffrey Friedman argue that libertarians have no method of dealing with collective problems like environmental destruction: "The environment is the libertarian Waterloo: it reveals the flaws of the doctrine in a way that seems to ensure that no 'answer' is forthcoming."^[9] These critics find libertarian attempts to protect the environment through property rights lacking. They see natural resources (like whales or the atmosphere) as too hard to privatize and legal responsibility for damage (from pollution or wild animals) as too hard to trace^[10]

Notes

^  Callahan, Gene. Winning the Neocon Way, Lew Rockwell's webpage, February 6, 2001[11] ^  Chait, Jonathan. Blocking Move, The New Republic, March 21, 2005 [12] ^  Friedman, Jeffrey. What's Wrong With Libertarianism, Critical Review Vol. 11, No. 3. Summer 1997[13] (large PDF file) ^  Friedman, Jeffrey, "Politics or Scholarship?", Critical Review, Vol. 6, No. 2–3, 1993. Pp 429–45. ^  Goldberg, Jonah. Libertarians, in Theory. National Review Online, August 6, 1999.[14] ^  Goldberg, Jonah. Freedom Kills. National Review Online, December 12, 2001.[15] ^  Goldberg, Jonah. Libertarians Under My Skin. National Review Online, March 2, 2001.[16] ^  Kangas, Steve. Chile: the Laboratory Test. Liberalism Resurgent, [17] ^  Partridge, Ernest. "With Liberty and Justice for Some." Environmental Philosophy edited by Michael Zimmerman, Baird Callicott, Karen Warren, Irene Klaver, and John Clark, 2004.[18]