Libertarianism and Communism

[chris_gerrib]

I keep planning to write a lengthy essay about why otherwise intelligent people believe in and advocate for libertarian or communism.

Then a commenter named "Albatross" over on Making Light wrote a very insightful comment about people misunderstanding the model of a complex system for the reality of the system. Teresa Nielson Hayden very kindly bumped it to a full post. It's brief, but well worth a full reading. Go check it out and come on back.

So, Part One of the post is done. Paraphrasing from the post, Albatross says that some models are "rhetorically strong." They sound good, and it's easy to make compelling arguments with the model. The problem is, the models are lousy predictors of what will actually happen if the called-for changes are made. This is the fundamental failure of libertarianism and communism. One does what the ideology says, but the desired results fail to appear.

Part Two of the essay was going to be why certain types of people are advocates for one or the other of these ideologies. I may still write that one of these days.

Comments

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

Libertarianism is a journey not a destination. We don't want to GET there but those guys serve a useful function; keeping a watch out for Statist excess.

Also - the only problem with Libertarians are Libertarians. A fellow on a Libertarian mail list was bitching 'cause he wanted to camp in a park, and the cops wouldn't let him.

I pointed out that they were only enforcing the law and while HE might be a good steward of the land John Law can't just make exceptions like that. I also pointed out that if I saw him camping in the park I'd call the cops to kick his hobo ass out of there as well - it's my park too and I don't want him setting up house there.

Fellow got jacked up and called me a fascist and told me to get off the mail list. For - really - disagreeing with him.

For every reasonable Lib there are a dozen who are off the rails like that. Or so says my experience with them.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Some libertarians don't want to get there - others do. Which is probably another way of saying we both agree.

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

The modern world is this strange dichotomy, between the accelerating progress of our civilization and the fact that we exactly the same as we've always been. The Twentieth Century perfectly encapsulates this dichotomy, fitting neatly into a hundred year span. Steamships to space shuttles, and the largest wars in history sandwiched between. And that century saw the great ideologies fully realized, corresponding with the lowest point in modern history.

What makes otherwise intelligent people mouthpieces for horrible systems? Ideology is seductive. It offers a comprehensive vision of the world apart from religion (although it is very closely related to religion) that is self-consciously modern. That through ourselves and our technology, we can build not only a better society, but the best society. Above all it borrows the concept of science, that human societies can be reduced to fundamental principles as elegant as gravity. Ideology is literally the “science of ideas.”

Above all, ideologies are doctrinaire. They propose an absolute model of human affairs, very much like a religion does. And this is the dangerous part. Your opponent isn't just wrong, he is so wrong that expressing his point of view could lead the whole utopia train off the tracks. So he's got to die. Him and all those like him. Hell, everyone who believes differently and many who don't. Can't have heretics Trotskyites lurking about.

Of course, human civilization is a whole bunch of individuals making decisions together. No man is an island and we're not just a cell in one great social organism. This is what makes human affairs so squishy, that we each have our own interests, yet still act as groups. Since we are not all the same and it is virtual impossible to accumulate the necessary data for every individual alive, no reliable model of human society can ever be produced.

And of course that human society can even be understood as a “system” is ludicrous. At best, it is a veritable fabric of ad hoc institutions, some even stretching right back to the evolution of our species. These ad hoc creations come in many colours: political, economic, religious, military, culutral, etc; each one completely unique that needs to be understood as such. Every event in history is completely unique. Similarities abound, but sameness does not. With that in hand and neuroscience to boot, we have some hope of understanding what makes human civilization tick as long as we can accept how inutterably complex and ever changing it is. And the explanation is not going to fit into a pat, little manifesto.

In the end, any political system that lead to the death of millions of people, even “unintentionally” is not a system that should be practiced. We have to stick to political systems that have not gone off the deep end, have come about relatively naturally, any proposed change that advocates a complete break with the past should be eyed with extreme caution, and above all stick with what works, but don't be doctrinaire about it. Free-market democracies fulfill these criteria rather well, even though they are not perfect.