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libertarianism: the music of a people who will not be slaves again?
Starchild recently posted the following words by Roger Kulp to the Libertarian Party of San Francisco discussion list:
"The modern history of Libertarianism seems to be one of trying to adapt [to] the modern political system of parties and fundraising. It's all about money, which is why they have gone after the 'privileged conformists' ...This is a big reason they have failed to accomplish anything. They don't seem to realize you can accomplish more with a populist movement... organizing massive numbers of the disaffected poor and lower middle class against an authoritative and oppressive state."
One Ron Getty responded with some skepticism:
"Okay - so how can this be done? What message would you say to these people - tens of thousands of whom are unfortunately reliant on state or federal largesse (at the taxpayers expense I may add) in one way or another - which would attract their support and how would they be organized so they would realize by their actions - if successful -
they would lose the largesse they receive in various welfare - housing - medical programs etc etc etc and realize by so doing it would be for their betterment?"
My own thoughts, somewhat edited and revised:
* * *
If I may interject-
I know plenty of people dependent in one way or another on the state. None of them like the system, and most resent its control over and its indifference to their lives. They support the system, tepidly, because they know of no other practical alternative- and because they know the Republicans who represent the 'free market' in their eyes would gladly leave them to die. Some of them take benefits from the system more or less for granted, true. But this is because because they've given up hope functioning as individuals, and this is turn is usually only because various systems of oppression (statism included) have painted them into a psychic and economic corner.
Tell them they can be free. Shut up about how Teh Welfare State steals from innocent middle class taxpayers, whom the poor rightly see as winners in a rigged game. Tell them instead how the welfare
state enriches bureaucrats and steals the opportunities that would permit them a chance of independence. Describe to them how life would be if they could start their own businesses. Support plans for non-state community actions such as (in passim) those of the Los Angeles South Central farmers. Stop acting like anyone who cares deeply about social injustice is about to summon a socialist bogeyman and learn, dammit, to care yourself. Don't sneer down your nose at the culture, experiences, or values of the poor. Listen to them, and assume they will be right about at least some things they know more about than you do. And don't you dare blame them for using a welfare
system to stay alive.
Poor people deal with hateful, indifferent, and manipulative bureaucrats every week. They don't have to be told what the welfare state is like- but Republcans and Democrats alike tell them their
choice is between the welfare state and being thrown to the wolves. Show them the market isn't a den of wolves but instead that welfare statists are playing a terrible con game and keeping them in a
cruelly unnecessary captivity. Show them what freedom feels like.
Protest first not wealth transfers but the controls the welfare state enforces on people. Libertarians should rise in anger when government largesse is used to control peoples' lives or serf-farm them out to corporations as 'workfare'. Don't tell the poor that they are lazy if they don't want to work in humiliating jobs at starvation wages- show how our crony capitalist system is at fault for offering them nothing but humiliation and starvation wages. Show how the spirit of liberty is the same spirit which could empower them against everyone who wants to run their lives- whether that be the state, corporate bosses, welfare bureaucrats, criminal gangs, or abusive parents and husbands.
Don't act like the poor are your natural enemies and the rich are your natural friends. Don't act like corporatism, rife with privilege and racism, in equivalent to your ideal. Don't act like the middle class or 'productive citizens' are better than the poor, are your first priority, or retain their positions because of merit or special virtue in a state capitalist world where the real mechanism of a free market has marginal play. Talk to people. Invite them your meetings. Reach out and understand their concerns and show that libertarianism will help them, not how morality shows that they should help you.
Trust people to want a life of their own. My own circumstances are hardly luxurious, and my life has been no stranger to social injustice. Yet I do not feel a victim of this system, because my first feeling is a fierce pride in my independence from state and bosses both. Admittedly the nature of my profession and my single existence makes my situation much easier. But I believe the sharp
joy I feel every time I remember that I am FREE is not uniquely my own but something common to the human spirit.
Libertarianism was once a pro-labour, pro-working class philosophy. The orginal classical economists such as Smith and Ricardo turned their fire on mercantilism precisely with an eye to corporate
statism's institutional exploitation of the poor. The most radical libertarians- such as Benjamin Tucker who edited the orginal liberty, were anarchists who called themselves socialists- socialists because they stood against the exploitation of labour which they saw as made
possible my the state. Libertarianism contains a strain of theorists, from Alfred J. Nock to Karl Hess to Roy Childs and Sam Konkin, who protested social injustice no less than state coercion. And the left itself has long had a libertarian wing, comprising anarchists such as Emma Goldman and countercultural writers such as Paul Goodman and Ellen Willis, whom libertarians have largely chosen
to ignore.
Reach out. Act like you believe liberty will improve the life of the living person you are talking too. Act like they want to be free. If they believe a free market will not give them a better life, make sure that you really care about their llfe being better. If you catch yourself thinking their worse life is a price you are willing to pay for the free market then the problem is yours, not theirs. Make sure YOU don't really believe your philosophy will benefit you and not them. If you think that virtue requires their sacrifices, do not be surprised if they reject your conception of virtue.
Extend your notion of liberty to something more than formal noncoercion. When someone speaks of the tyranny of their boss or workplace, don't tell them the relationship is 'voluntary' and thus the tyranny isn't real- tell them instead how statism makes possible social and economic relations that always feel like heirarchy and tyranny. If you don't feel this, maybe you need to learn to rebel
against the boss yourslef. And it just might be the reason you don't feel this, and they do, is because you are bribed well for your corporate serfdom and they are bribed poorly. In which case it is your love of freedom for its own sake that has been dampened, and theirs which still flares. In a certain sense a poor person who reaches for the state to fight corporate tyranny deeply resented is
more libertarian than the libertarian with perfect theory who meekly submits to the 'just' control of bosses micromanaging their lives.
Above all- understand, identify, *care*. Yes, keep your linear theories of libertarian justice. You are, I suspect, right about them. But your correct theories do not reach the underprivileged. It is time you stop blaming the underprvilieged for this and asked yourself 'why?'
Can libertarians listen to Les Mis in good conscience?
Do you hear the people sing,
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people,
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
 
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