Libertarianism in action: violence in Chile

From the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

“It’s well known how right-wing economists have long seen Chile as their personal playground to play out their fantasies of austerity politics backed by authoritarian violence. The Chicago Boys were the famed University of Chicago-trained economists who advised Augusto Pinochet during and after the 1973 coup.
[…]
The center of that shifted from Chicago to George Mason, which has become synonymous with bought academia of the New Gilded Age, funded by the Koch Brothers and other far-right extremists.”
[…]
When the histories of the New Gilded Age are written, the horrific impact of right-libertarians taking over various parts of George Mason is going to be a major part of those books.”

This is all spot on, of course. But what prompted this particular post at LGM was this incident involving an American libertarian, John Corbin, now living and championing 'neo-liberalism' in Chile. As the Washington Post explains:

“John Cobin, a U.S.-born economist and former member of a neo-Confederate group, is so passionate about a free market — and about Chile — that he has devoted the past two decades to marrying the two.
But Cobin’s unusual story took a violent turn this weekend, when he drove through one of the many crowds that have paralyzed Chile in recent weeks as they protest income inequality and a high cost of living.
The 56-year-old was arrested Sunday, police said, after he repeatedly fired a gun into a crowd in the beachside town of Reñaca, seriously injuring at least one person.
[…]
The shocking incident underscores the violence that Chilean protesters have been facing at the hands of their government, and occasionally other civilians. As of Friday, at least 20 people have been killed and about 1,600 have been injured, according to human rights observers, as crowds face water cannons and tear gas and pellets are shot in close range.
The protests erupted in mid-October, when student-led strikes against a metro fare increase quickly widened into massive anti-government demonstrations that blocked off streets and set subway stations aflame. Even as the Chilean government reshuffled its cabinet and increased taxes on the wealthy, crowds have continued to rail against decades of neoliberal economic policies, including the privatization of water, highways and the pension system.
It was those policies that first made Chile such an attractive destination for staunch free-market Americans like Cobin.
[…]
In countless interviews and letters to the editor, he also expressed a particular admiration for the anti-communist policies of Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s disgraced former military dictator.”

This lovely John Cobin fellow is like the Platonic form of a libertarian nutjob (but I repeat myself). It’s as though a caricature of a libertarian economist from a left-wing comic came alive and moved to Chile.

To paraphrase Nietzsche: “‘Libertarianism’ and ‘authoritarianism’—those rhyme, those more than rhyme.”

Elizabeth Anderson: champion of relational egalitarianism

Looking for a stimulating article with which to start the new year? Try this New Yorker piece on the work and life of Elizabeth Anderson (the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan) by Nathan Heller.

I’ve mentioned Anderson’s important work here before. Her influence on my own research—especially her account of ‘relational equality’—has been enormous. Strangely, though, while Anderson was the Co-Chair of my dissertation committee at the University of Michigan, I have been far more influenced by her work post-PhD than I was while a graduate student. (The reason for this, I think, is that I only felt free to engage critically with her views once I had left the 'student-supervisor' relationship. This was my fault, I should emphasize, as she no doubt would’ve welcomed critical engagement with her work by graduate students.)

I do disagree with Anderson on some points. For instance, I remain critical of what I take to be her uncharitable characterization—and hence unfair criticism—of ‘ideal theory’ (as I explain in my chapter “Why Public Reasoning Involves Ideal Theorizing”.) But whatever disagreements I have with her are, so to speak, ‘minor quibbles’.

I’ve taught her criticisms of ‘luck egalitarianism’ and her arguments in favour of relational egalitarianism in many of my political philosophy courses over the years. And in my ‘political autonomy’ seminar last year I taught her book Private Government (which is mentioned towards the end of the article). Of all the works we discussed—including those by Rousseau and Rawls—this one generated the most intense discussions. No doubt part of the reason for this was that many of the students worked part-time—and hence were regularly subject to the arbitrary power of employers themselves.

Libertarianism = feudalism

Existential comics helpfully explains why libertarianism (of the sort endorsed by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia) leads to (a kind of) feudalism...

[For a more academic explanation, read Samuel Freeman’s article “Why Libertarianism Is Not a Liberal View” (Philosophy and Public Affairs 30(2):105-151 (2001)).]

Libertarian misogyny

So ... a 'libertarian thinker’ tries to attack a straw man caricature of ‘distributive justice’ (some implausible version of ‘luck egalitarianism’, as far as I can tell), but instead reveals himself to be a grotesque misogynist.

(For the record, I think that the ‘argument’ fails miserably against any plausible version of luck egalitarianism. But even if I were wrong about that, I would be untroubled, as I belong to the ‘relational egalitarian’ camp—along with thinkers like Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Joshua Cohen, among others—for reasons explained here.)

And as for libertarianism’s claim to be concerned with ‘liberty’, I found this recent post from Existential Comics rather amusing.

UPDATE: for a clearer explanation of this brouhaha, see "Own Troll" by John Holbo at the Crooked Timber blog.

UPDATE 2: Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo weighs in on the matter.

On the ‘anti-conservative bias’ of academia

Wisconsin Republicans like to whine about the ‘anti-conservative bias’ of contemporary universities. Such complaints have been used to help justify their ongoing destruction of the University of Wisconsin system (including: the recent de facto prohibition of student protests by the [Scott Walker-appointed] Regents of the UW system; the attack on academic freedom through the evisceration of tenure two years ago; the massive budget cuts to the system over the course of Walker’s time as governor; etc.).

For a helpful explanation for why this ‘bias’ exists in academia, read this post by Joe Heath (a philosopher at the University of Toronto).

One of Heath’s key points is something that I’ve long held to be obviously true—viz., universities are inherently ‘pro-reason’ (broadly understood to mean an overall pro-evidence, pro-argument, pro-logic, etc., outlook). So insofar as much of political and social conservatism is anti-reason (anti-evidence, etc.), then academia inevitably is going to be a hostile environment for most political and social conservatives. And to the extent that anti-reason conservatives go to university and become less conservative as a consequence, this is not (or at least not primarily) due to ‘brainwashing’ by Marxist profs, but rather because they become acclimated to a rationalist way of seeing the world. (In contrast to anti-reason conservatives, libertarians are massively overrepresented in academia, especially in the US. But of course libertarians think that they have arguments for their positions; they’re ‘pro-reason’, like their liberal and left-wing interlocutors.)

Another thing that I like about this post is Heath’s take down of the irritatingly influential Jonathan Haidt. What I find most grating in much of Haidt’s work is its unargued premise of moral non-cognitivism. (Heath also criticizes Haidt’s ‘political moralism,’ which strikes me as fair, but is not something that causes me to tear my hair out in annoyance.)

Interview with Elizabeth Anderson on Private Government

There is an interesting interview at Jacobin with Elizabeth Anderson on her new book, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about it). 

I especially liked these passages:

Fundamentally, egalitarians care about eliminating oppressive social hierarchy, including relations of domination and subordination under which subordinates can be arbitrarily subject to humiliating and oppressive conditions, and arbitrary restraints on their freedom.

...

[L]ibertarians and the politicians associated with them, such as those in the House Freedom Caucus, blindly repeat ideas from Smith, Paine, and Lincoln, not recognizing that they thought markets would liberate workers precisely by liberating them from the oppressive authority of employers. They continue to advance Paine’s and Lincoln’s promise of self-employment to any enterprising worker, but without being willing to give away the capital needed to realize that promise.
By contrast, Paine and Lincoln were rooted enough in reality to recognize that self-employment for the typical worker would be impossible if the state did not figure out ways to distribute capital to workers.

...

We are used to rhetoric that casts “government” as a threat to our liberties. By making it clear that the workplace is a form of government (that the state is not the only government that rules us), we can make clear how the authority that employers have over workers threatens their dignity and autonomy. By naming that government as “private” — that is, as kept private from the workers, as something employers claim is none of the workers’ business — we can make more vivid the fact that workers are laboring under arbitrary, unaccountable dictatorships.

I'm really looking forward to reading Liz's book!

(Disclosure: Prof. Anderson co-supervised my dissertation at the University of Michigan many years ago.)

The anti-freedom Kochtopus

[Cartoon from here.] 

Ah the Koch brothers, America’s most famous plutocrats. They claim to love individual freedom and be ‘libertarians.’ But in addition to the usual right-wing economic causes to which they give millions of dollars (and which really are concerned only with the freedom of the wealthy, not the freedom of most citizens), are some distinctly anti-freedom organizations. Among them are organizations that oppose gay marriage and abortion rights (according to recent reports at the HuffPost and Politico). The Kochs’ ‘Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce’ also gave millions to the National Rifle Association, which champions turning the United States into a hellish Hobbesian state of nature.

Not content with pouring money into various right-wing political causes and politicians, the Kochs also have their own spy agency. Yes, a spy agency – because nothing says “I love individual freedom” quite like spying on people!

And for years now the Kochtopus has been spreading its tentacles into academia. (At least there is now a counter-movement called “UnKoch My Campus.”)

Whenever I read or hear libertarians praising the Kochs for their ‘virtuous’ commitment to liberty and their ‘enlightened social views,’ I invariably think of all the millions of dollars that they give to right-wing Republican politicians like Scott Walker. Whatever the Kochs may say about how much they love individual freedom, the fact of the matter is that they financially support causes and politicians that are anti-refugee, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-education, anti-environment, anti-voting, and so forth. Hence my loathing for them – and the headache that I invariably acquire whenever I encounter a libertarian ‘scholar’ trying to defend them. (But I’m sure that such defences have absolutely nothing to do with the money that so many of them receive form the Kochs. Oh no, nothing at all…)

[Cartoon from here.]