Review: Angus Sibley's "The 'Poisoned Spring' of Economic Libertarianism

Adding to Mr. Winters' comments about matters getting "exceedingly complicated" (and I would add, apparently impossible to reconcile) when one compares the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Religious Liberty, to the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church since Her earliest times, see a thorough historical comparison at http://www.scribd.com/doc/46116957

Considering how badly the poor are going to do under a bankrupt Federal government, there's a lot to be said for economic libertarianism. And yes, our present predicament shows it is either/or. Welfare statism induces economic dislocations that grow, leading to an inability to pay the bills. Economic liberty is needed for the same reason as spiritual liberty.

Thanks for the article.

For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see http://www.Libertarian-International.org , the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization.

I am a practicing Catholic, and an active libertarian philosopher. And I would offer an alternative view of libertarianism.

Austrian economics and libertarianism that rises from it, are explicitly, and somewhat intentionally comprised of catholic, protestant, and jewish teachings because libertarians rely expressly on the teachings of natural law. However, they also the French (catholic) rational philosophical program as a conceptual error that gave rise to Marxism's murderous and economically destructive philosophy. Instead, the anglo empirical program was morally christian at it's core, and modern in the sense that it adopted the protestant innovations that rule of law, competition, science, and hard work would create a better world, and therefore they were doing god's work.

Libertarian philosophy consists of two wings:

1) Classical Liberal (Protestant Empirical) – Hayek/Jefferson
a) Constitutionalism and Rule of law, b) Small State, c) Cautious Redistribution that does not create a dependency d) conservative monetary policy. e) Privatization f) a dependence on empirical institutions. (This is the important part that is lost on everyone – libertarians included. It is an empirical system of government.) and g) Meritocratic rotation of elites through demonstrated service to consumers in the market (rather than politics) and h) Multiple houses of government that reflect the class structure of society.
The Classical Liberal wing of Libertarianism advocates an empirical method of government whose purpose is to prevent the rise of bureaucracy and systemic risk. It is effectively a restatement of european post-aristocratic philosophy in contemporary terms. ie: it has the structure of formal institutions we call government.

The classical liberal christian program is a moral social program for the INDUSTRIAL and post-feudal, commercial age. It acknowledges a post-agrarian, dynamic economy where constant adaptation is necessary to create prosperity for all members of a society.

2) Anarchist (Jewish Moral) – Rothbard/Rand
a) No state. b) No redistribution c) No community d) Ideological Individualism. e) gold standard f) Absolute propertarianism.
Anarchism is a form of rebellion against the status quo. It is effectively a restatement of the jewish moral code in modern economic terms. In that sense it is a non-empirical, moral, non-institutional form of government. ie: it has the structure of a religion.

The jewish wing is indeed anti-social from the church's perspective, and the source of most anti-christian doctrine. It is hyper individualist and morally absolutist. The christian wing by contrast simply states that economic productivity requires individual control of property in order to provide the greatest opportunity for prosperity to all members of society. The jewish wing is a system of rebellion against government - a continuation of ancient jewish philosophy. The Christian is not. It simply states that economically we must act individually in order to achieve the optimum ends, and that we must not allow a totalitarian (feudal) regime to take over the government. That is the difference between the two wings of libertarianism. A difference that is not distinguishable by people outside of the movement.

The Christian Classical Liberal wing has adopted many of the Jewish Anarchist wing's strategies simply because the secular progressive program has succeeded in destroying the christian moral code, and religion in general, in an attempt to create a secular 'religion' that we in Libertarianism call "Democratic Socialist, Secular, Humanism" in which people place faith in the abstract entity called 'the state' rather than in the abstract entity that we call 'god'. Libertarians see this as an attempt to recreate the authoritarian feudal social and economic system because it is simply easier to understand, and conforms to ancient doctrines. Libertarians see Marxism and Secularism as 'luddite' aspirations that would be easier to understand, but materially worse for human beings to live under.

Personally, I think the unconscious program that is at play, is that Catholics cannot understand the post-feudal world because their doctrine does not incorporate it - and therefore Catholics are blind to the threat of socialism, and blind to the innovations of libertarianism.

It may help if one understands Libertarian Strategy:

1) Natural law: Libertarians have modernized Natural Law and rely upon the teachings of natural law. They see themselves attempting to restore natural law as the underlying philosophical doctrine for political decisions. (Rothbard's History)

2) Empirical first, then Moral Second: Libertarians are economically empirical first, and moral second. This means that we cannot know what moral decisions to make unless we understand what actually happens in society by measuring economic activity. The strategy is to first identify the mechanical processes by which economies operate, and then make use of that for the common good. THis is counter to the church's teachings of absolute adherence to doctrines that were developed in the agrarian, pre-industrial age.

It is perhaps important to understand that a feudal agrarian economy is fairly simple to understand. But that the modern industrial economy includes such a vast division of labor and such constantly changing price signals that tell us what we need to do, that it cannot be 'perceived' and understood directly by our senses, and that we must rely on measurements and tools and mathematics to understand the economic world around us. The primary focus of libertarian thought is in the 'rules needed to cooperate in vast numbers under a division of labor'. Not the "rules needed to prevent abuse of the lower classes by the feudal landlords." So, the church has not seen and incorporated these new rules, or the new objective of moral rules.

This is the lesson of the Anglo Empirical Classical Liberal political movement: as the world became faster and more complex it needed to rely upon empirical perceptions of the world instead of sensory perceptions of the world, and the church did not accomodate that change in need. The church doctrines are moral, spiritual, narrative and analogistic. ANd this structure of knowledge is valuable when there is little change to society over millennia, and especially when the masses are illiterate and uninformed. But empirical doctrines are easier to change on a momentary basis because they can be rationally rather than analogistically articulated. That means that they can be rearranged more easily and quickly.

3) Selective Discourse: Libertarians simply do not DISCUSS the service of the poor just as progressives do not discuss the needs of the middle class, or the military class. It only serves to justify the opposition's position. That does not mean that libertarians do not consider the poor. They simply choose different MEANS by which to serve them. In particular, they believe (rightly) that the poor's votes can be sold to the highest bidder so that the state may obtain political power with which to enslave the productive middle classes. This is simply true.

4) Libertarians understand that economically, the poor are best served by living in a productive economy. This has been born out by the data in incontrovertible terms. It is simply true that a productive economy does more for the poor than any other doctrine. The poor are best served indirectly.

5) Abandonment by the church: The church has abandoned it's role as educator, so there is no longer a vehicle for teaching the poor how to be good christians in sufficient numbers to counter the appeal of secular communism and secular democratic socialism, both of which seek to eliminate the church from society - an arguably have done so. LIbertarians are trying to create a body of thought that reinstates the moral structure of society without having to rely on a church that has abandoned the civilization.

6) The Dynamic Versus Static Economy: The church's doctrines were developed in the agrarian period and matured under feudalism. Under that form of economy, the lower classes need political representation, as well as moral teaching. it is a fairly static, and slow moving economy. In the industrial economy, the opposite is true: there is no 'static form of production' to compete against. This is simply true, and is universal in the data. reallocation of control, capital and land is rapid and constant even for the most large and powerful companies.

7) Filling the Vacuum. Since the industrial and darwinian revolutions, the church has abandoned european civilization by abandoning it's role as the cult of european civilization. It has remained mired in it's mystical agrarian past, rather than reform itself, it has become the church of the oppressed poor in the developing world at the expense of the european and anglo modern world.

8) It is all well and good that Catholicism represent the needs of the poor when the church is effectively a competitor to the aristocracy. It is not all well and good that Catholicism fail to incorporate the needs of the productive middle classes in competition against the totalitarian programs of socialism and communism, which would not only seek to undermine the economy, but to undermine the christian moral code, and institute the totalitarianism that the church defended the people against in antiquity.

This is the church's failing. It has failed our civilization which is why it is being abandoned in the developed world. Not because it is necessarily wrong. but because the church has become irrelevant by not understanding that the feudal aristocracy has ceased to exist, and with it, the purpose of the CAtholic church's function as the teacher of moral social doctrine.

So, from this point of view libertarians see themselves as compensating for the failure of the church to modernize, and the consequential abandonment of modern civilization by the church, and it's focus on the developing world that maintains feudal property relationships - especially south american and africa - rather than modernizing so that it serves the needs of post feudal, democratic and industrial civilization.

If anything, Libertarians are trying to rescue the church and society from it's failure to acknowledge the change in the structure of society in the developed world.

This topic is worthy of a book length treatment, but I do not have time for it.