The Social Production of Libertarians

A similar point has been made by Conservative thinker John Gray in his book _False Dawn_, in which he argues that a free market, far from arising naturally, has to created by conscious governmental action. According to him, it is natural for people to repair the deficiencies of the free market by restricting it in some way.

Most of the self-proclaimed anarchists I have met are not very cooperative. I have always wondered if they noticed the contradiction.

Similarly, the libertarians I run into outside of academic context invariably seem to be screeching at top volume about the unfairness of some commercial fiasco which is victimizing them.

When I realized that John Dewey tried to address these questions, I realized he was smarter than I’d given him credit for, but the only practical result was the public relations industry.

“The individual cannot be the datum for the purposes of social policy, because he is largely formed by the social process, and the nature of the individual must be affected by social action.”

This is a Social Constructivist view of human nature which is pretty close to that of Marx and has very little empirical evidence to support it.

Individuals are not merely the product of Culture. Such statements as:

“If millions of kids grow up in communities that are wealthy but intolerant of public speech, they are likely to draw the conclusion that speech is detrimental to order and prosperity.”

imply a theory of how the human mind works that is not supported by the evidence. Totalitarian governments, no matter how hard they tried, did not produce children with no appreciation for free speech. It was fear and repression that kept people in line not some remoulding of the human condition.

Like most sociolgy there is much theorising and little data.

This is a Social Constructivist view of human nature which is pretty close to that of Marx

Marx “did not have a social constructivist view of human nature.”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000092.html

Individuals are not merely the product of Culture

Nobody round here said they were.

Like most sociolgy there is much theorising and little data.

Like most blog comments there is much tendentiousness and little engagement with the topic at hand.

To claim that people are “largely formed by the social process” is to put forward a social constructivist argument, it is to claim that people are “largely” the product of Culture.

The arguement is not that Marx denied that there was such a such a thing as human nature but that that nature could be radically altered by the social enivronment. That human nature could be constructed.

I would have thought that asking that evidence should be produced for such claims as

“If millions of kids grow up in communities that are wealthy but intolerant of public speech, they are likely to draw the conclusion that speech is detrimental to order and prosperity.”

was only sensible. Have their been any studies that support this?

“the social milieu of public schools (and most private schools for that matter) is a significant obstacle.”

Should I expand on the above note? An interesting novel, whether or not dystopic depends on what you think a society is for. A fairly brutal idea, but if you want to generate good anarcho-libertarians, having 1 six-yr-old watch another six-yr-old die for stealing food is pretty good training in property rights.

The real problem with economic Libertarianism (I’m capitalizing it to set it off from left-leaning positions variously described as anarchism and libertarian socialism) is that the economic theories espoused by Libertarians, if actually implemented (which they never have been, always an advantage to abstract argument)would alsmost certainly work to undermine their stated goal of maximizing individual liberty.

For example, my gandmother died of complications of diabetes after a lifetime of failed attempts to make it as an independent businesswoman. At the end she died reasonably comfortably in a subsidized apartment with her doctor’s bills and medicines mostly paid for by the government. Who wants to argue that my grandmother would have been more free had it been accepted wisdom then that government cannot do anything right or even half-way useful?

Or take elections. Even an anarchist can’t wholely dispense with them. Now if Libertarianism inevitably tends toward inequality of economic resources (a point made in previous posts in this thread) and getting elected, at least in a country as large as ours, typically costs a shitload of money, who wants to argue that Libertarianism does not inevitably tend toward oligarchy? Having traveled in Central America, am always amused when I hear, for example, that tarrifs, taxes, restrictions on investments and encoragement of labor unions are “The Road to Sefdom.” I invite anyone who wants to observe how the 20th Century serf lives to visit El Salvador, which on paper, at least, ought to be a Libertarian paradise.

Finally, Libertarianism has never come to terms with the fact that most property and wealth are, if not actually held in the form of land, are derived ultimately from the uses to which land has been put by certain people who have claimed to own it. And at bottom, no one really owns land. You can claim (steal) it, sure. You can then pay or overthrow or, like the Texans, simply declare yourself to be, the governemt, and then develop all kinds of elaborate legal structures to protect your “propery rights.” But at bottom, you still don’t own it, you never did, how could you when, in the absence of some kind of world governing authority, all your legal theories are just wind when someone stronger than you, comes along to invalidate your claim.

Here in America–but elsewhere, too, I’ve no doubt, America being bigger and stronger but otherwise not all that different from any other place–the claim to property and wealth is complicated by the fact that most wealth, North and South, was originally created literally out of the blood and flesh of indigenous tribesmen and African slaves. You can’t tke two steps in America before the blood starts to stain your shoes and pucker your nostrils. Of course, those who believe that only the unexamined life is worth living don’t see it or smell it, but that’s not the people who write on this blog, right?

So does anyone want to argue that at a deep level the word “property” has any meaning at all?

Neil,

I think there’s a difference of opinion on what ‘social construction’ is. Berger & Luckmann would say something like: ‘the sociological method of social constructionism is to look at the ways a social phenomenon is created, institutionalized and made into tradition by humans.’ You’re definition is that social construction is the shaping of humans by society/culture. That’s not the standard sociological definition.

You first said ‘merely,’ then you said ‘largely.’ There’s quite a difference there. To hold that individuals are shaped (to some degree) by society/culture is perhaps the fundamental tenet of sociology and anthropology. I’m not sure how this generalization can be disputed.

The empirical claim at hand certainly could though, but that’s a different thing altogether.

And a pony. Just thought I’d mention that.

Of course Jeffrey Bogdan’s correct; but of course I’d say that, wouldn’t I?
How much of this debate would crystallize in the urgency of disaster, or post-disaster? If we had to create workable systems, now.
And isn’t that the more accurate view? More accurate than this tacit assumption of a slightly less ignorant slightly less enlightened prior world? And especially the unspoken but felt prognosis of virtually permanent stability and social cohesion.
We’re crawling naked out of a swamp of miasmic ignorance into a jungle of shrieking predatory madness.
And that’s just 19th century American capitalism.
–
Are the institutions we live at the whim of capable of weathering turbulent chaotic change?
So much of this debate seems centered in a given world of relative prosperity and mild controllable cultural flux.
That was the real threat behind the so-called hippies. Who were a media creation – the successful attempt to control that bright and joyous anarchy begun with a derogatory naming. What was there before that name was shackled to it was even more vibrant, and free, and thus more threatening still. To what now only begins to see itself, mirrored in the colorless lens of its security cameras.
–
Libertarians are the osteopaths of social theory.

The real reason public schools are anathema to libertarianism is because they are dedicated to what libertarians call a positive right: to publicly financed education for all.

The great fault of libertarianism is the assumption that independent, empowered, rational, free agents are all that’s required for justice. Sorry, kids don’t qualify as those sorts of agents. Nor do we qualify in debility. Nor do people think that’s all there is to justice. When you can’t get a basic assumption to align with reality, you’ve got a pretty serious problem.

ah yes, mike huben and his pathological hatred of libertarianism show up again.

government is nothing more than a group of such agents (but hardly rational), and with much more power than ordinary citizens. a power that should be limited as much as possible.

why is government necessary for people to collectively decide on justice?

I agree that it is “sensible” (as Neil says) to ask for evidence that zones without public free speech will produce illiberal children. It’s possible that kids who grow up in anti-free-speech zones will rebel and strongly embrace freedom. No specifically relevant evidence has been collected (to my knowledge). In fact, there is a serious lack of basic data about homeowner asociations and their residents–even the total number is unknown.

However, there is a vast amount of evidence about the effects on family environments on political beliefs and attitudes. This evidence does not come from sociology but rather from political science and psychology. Tell me the political profile of someone’s parents and I can predict his or her political beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes 40 years later, with only a modest degree of statistical variance. Tell me the degree of political competition in a child’s congressional district and I can predict his or her likelihood to vote much later in life. (More competition creates more interest in politics.)

The bigger point is that political socialization ought to concern libertarians because something is keeping most of their fellow citizens from embracing the liberties that they favor. I agree that it’s very difficult to predict the pyschological effects of new social arrangements. Social engineering is generally unwise– for this reason and others. But it IS wise to worry about the political/pyschological impact of family arrangements. This is a consistent theme in political thought from Plato through Tocqueville, but it is relatively undeveloped in modern libertarian thought.

Is this the right room for an argument?

The “followup” comment from _pedantry_ about the fair-to-middling worthlessness of the discussion is depressingly accurate. Didn’t Plato’s Socrates explain a cycle of governmental forms, each one mechanically producing the other within a few generations as a result of the effect upon the populace? Wouldn’t that be a more sensible example of follow-up discussion than the transposition into standing arguments that contain the word “libertarian”?

Does history provide empirical data to look at, or do we have to generate all our political ideas logically from first principles? A first approximation of history seems to show that oligarchical empire is best at perpetuating itself (Rome, China, etc.) since the political identity of leading citizens involves devotion to the state’s high “culture”, the compelling beauty of which is an existence proof of the justice of whatever arrangements provide political stability. Or has culture been deconstructed, and though the Romans, Chinese etc. thought they were motivated by it, we have since discovered they were mistaken?