Libertarians as "Reverse Marxists"

This is one big ole work in progress, folks!

One could argue that Satanism (not to be confused with "statism" (or maybe it could be...?)) is just a very exotic Christian heresy. In other words, Satanists believe in all the same "spiritual things" as mainstream Christians, they simply disagree on who the good guys and the bad guys are. This article is about a conceptually similar strange correspondence between what would seem to be opposite views: American-style laissez faire libertarianism and Marxism.

In some cases, one could argue that simple horseshoe theory accounts for this. It's often not so clear cut, though. Horseshoe theory tends to focus on a similarity of means, regardless of the stated goals, that one finds at the "extreme" ends of the political spectrum. The correspondences between these two often are found in the nitty-gritty details of theory. Still, it's worth keeping in mind how much any heterodox ideology will tend to resemble others simply by virtue of existing outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

This article also plays a bit fast and loose with the meaning of "Marxist." If it makes a comparison between something libertarians say on the one hand and on the other, some kind of socialism not technically derived from Marxian analysis, well, that's OK. Part of the fun here is pointing out where libertarians sound startlingly like their opposite number which includes more leftists than just Marxists.

Does this reflect back on Marxists as well? Well, often times is seems that the libertarian version of an idea comes across as something of a slapdash imitation. This makes a certain amount of sense in that one of them did come first, after all, and has had a lot longer to articulate its ideas.

What's in a name?
Speaking of which: Historically, the word "libertarian" itself has meant something very different than what it does in the context of modern U.S. American politics. This is related to how "anarcho-capitalism" is a strange ideological formulation: originally, libertarians were anarchists, who were all socialists. This can lead to some tragicomic misunderstandings when American "anarchists" travel overseas.

Is this what set the stage for the whole topic of this article? The original intellectual expropriation? That is a story for another time (probably never).

Theories of History
This section requires a little background info, so if you don't feel you have a good grasp on the Marxist theory of history, get over to that other Wiki and do some homework. Here's a brief summary though:

Marxian stage theory of history is a periodization system that segments the history of human social development according to the dominant "mode of production," or the way in which society organizes itself in order to produce its material needs using the dominant "means of production." Since "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," these modes are not typically very fair systems in his view! A brief rundown: There are also two basic ways of transitioning from one stage to another: collapse and revolution. Ancient slavery, for example, collapsed due to its contradictions and feudalism rose from its ashes. Revolution, in which the subservient class seizes control from the ruling class by force, is more interesting. It happens when the dominant means of production have changed, and the mode of production is beginning to change to accommodate it, but the laws and customs of society haven't caught up to the new socioeconomic reality. There's two major kinds, one which has happened and one which Marx had the goal of getting started: All this in mind, let's consider the strangely Marxian aspects of some libertarians' historical worldview.
 * 1) Primitive Communism: In The Beginning, there was no surplus production. What human societies produced by hunting and gathering was sufficient to their needs and they did not produce much beyond that, nor could a surplus really be stored. So, there were no social classes nor any formal state structure to enforce one class's rule.
 * 2) Ancient Slavery: Once people settle down and engage in agriculture, a surplus develops that can be stored and traded and provide a basis for social inequality. This leads to the development of the first classes, masters and slaves, based on who works to produce a surplus (the latter) and who benefits from it (the former), and thus the first state to maintain the power of the masters. States, then, are simply the institutions that maintain one class's rule over another. The rulers of this society by various means enslave the lower classes to toil for their benefit, freeing the masters up to develop specialized occupations like "philosopher," i.e., people who develop all sorts of interesting ideas about politics and, without any irony, liberty and equality and rights of citizenship.
 * 3) Feudalism: Society is no longer organized on the basis of out-and-out slavery but rather on semi-contractual ties between serfs and landlords. This organizes the use of land, which is the source of this social configuration's wealth. Landlords, by virtue of owning the land, are in charge. They form a military aristocracy that justifies its rule by right of conquest and uses naked force to extract taxes from the serfs.
 * 4) Capitalism: Here we have left behind land as the source of wealth and moved to industrial production as the source of wealth: factories and machines. These are the means of production which, owned by capitalists, ensure their dominance of society. Whatever form of government exists, even a representative government, is simply the administration of their affairs, a bourgeois dictatorship. Unlike the lords of feudalism, capitalists extract wealth from workers in the form of profit, which is the difference between the price at which a commodity is sold and the wages paid to the worker who made it. It is not as obvious here where the exploitation operates because wage payment is specified by a free contract between worker and capitalist.
 * 5) Socialism: This is, in some sense, capitalism "turned upside-down." The workers, who were the oppressed and exploited class under capitalism, have taken control of the means of production and turned them to their benefit. They operate a new form of government, a proletarian dictatorship, which manages the affairs and disputes of the working class and keeps capitalists serving the people rather than organizing to regain their property and power. This is not really the goal, though, just a transitional phase to...
 * 6) Industrial Communism: Whereas primitive communism had no surplus, this society can generate all the surplus of an advanced industrial economy. Society in the socialist phase has organized the production of this surplus in such a way that everyone has a stake and thus part-management of the means of production and gets an equal, and more than sufficient, share of this production. Since everyone jointly owns the means of production and benefits from them, there is no class division. Since there is no class division, there is no state, which has "withered away" under socialism the more all people, worker or capitalist, gain an equal share of and stake in the means of production. Marxism, ironically given this page's subject matter, aims at a stateless and classless utopia.
 * Bourgeois Revolution: This is basically the revolution that establishes capitalism. Under feudalism, cities had an economic niche outside the dominant structures of lords-and-serfs engaged in agriculture. Their inhabitants maintained ideals of ancient liberty and insisted on some formal independence from feudal rule. Here, the future capitalist class, called the bourgeoisie in reference to their city (think "burg" or "burrough") origins, began developing a different mode of economic production based on crafts and trade. As the economy becomes increasingly based in trade and crafts, the power of the bourgeoisie grows to the expense of the nobility, but feudal structures of law and rank recognize the bourgeoisie as commoners just like serfs and deny them power. Due to this, the bourgeoisie fights for control in the name of ancient liberties, establishing republics and effectively merging with the aristocracy to create the new capitalist class. They enlist the workers and peasants in their struggle, but betray them to control their labor as the new proletarian class (referring to an ancient Roman census designation for citizens so poor their only property is effectively their children, proles). The big deal late 18th century revolutions, like the American Revolution and the French Revolution, qualify, as does the earlier English Civil War. Interestingly, none of these conflicts were self-consciously thought of as "bourgeois revolutions" by their leaders.
 * Socialist Revolution: This is what Marx hoped to see in his lifetime or at least get the ball rolling on. Whether any of the communist revolutions of the 20th century qualify is a matter for debate. But, the basis for this revolution is similar to the prior: under capitalism, the workers are organized into cooperative workforces to operate factories for commodity production. In these conditions, they effectively are forced to learn to work together, and from there they organize themselves for their common interests (as labor unions), much like the medieval bourgeoisie struggled for the freedom of the cities. This organization enables the workers to operate the means of production without oversight, setting the stage for them to take more and more control of actual production while the capitalist owners simply collect profit as a kind of rent on the use their property (i.e., machines and such). Eventually, though, the workers will become effectively powerful enough to demand real control and this will start the next revolution which puts them in power.

Ayn Rand, product of the Soviet education system
Ayn Rand was an immigrant from Soviet Russia to the United States who developed much of her pro-capitalist ideology in reaction to the Soviet system that seized her family's business and basically messed everything up for them. But she emigrated as an adult after growing up in the Soviet Union. She earned a degree at a Soviet university in social pedagogy, a discipline which has much of its basis in theories on the organization of society. Given this, it's honestly not that surprising that more than a few points of Marxist theory rubbed off on her. The extent of this, though, and the depth of Marxian influence on her philosophy and worldview might be very surprising. The plots of Atlas Shrugged and the Marxist narrative of history have more than a few beats in common.

Something else that might be more than a bit surprising, though, is the attitude Marx himself had towards the bourgeoisie. He saw them as oppressors in his own time, sure, but historically, he saw them as a progressive force, even an admirable and at least awe-inspiring one. Check it out:


 * The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part... wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation... The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind... The bourgeoisie... compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

Wow, these guys are badass! It's like the plot of a novel about capitalist supermen remaking the world once it collapses after being denied their benign rule almost writes itself.

There is, however, another plot that matters here: the story of the bourgeoisie as a class, which follows from a few "worldbuilding" details. The world of the story of bourgeois revolution is a materialist world, because Marx was a materialist thinker. For Marx, society is organized according to how humans understand and use the material world to meet their needs. Due to this, the keys to advancing and transforming society are scientific discoveries and their application to technology which improves productivity.

Here, our protagonist enters: the capitalist class takes control of this process and continually drives it forward, seeking new methods and improvements and unleashing amazing forces of production, which allow for improvements in standard of living and human enjoyment. Capitalists' fierce support for what they call freedom shatters all oppressive feudal bonds. Science and technology render the old mysticism obsolete, destroying superstition in the name of progress and rationality. But their core motive in doing all this is not humanitarian but fundamentally selfish: they seek profit by this constant process of improvement. In so doing, they remake the world in their image, creating a society mediated by market exchange and money. In this society there are basically two kinds of people, roughly: entrepreneurs and workers.

At this point I'd like to note that there is nothing whatsoever about any of this that Ayn Rand disagrees with. In fact most of it is central to her worldview and her conception of history. Sure, Marx describes some of these points in rather negative terms, but they are both very impressed by the historical accomplishments of capitalists and conceive of them as having acted out roughly the same historical narrative. You can, if you have sufficient time, patience, and self-hatred, verify this yourself by reference to the Galt Speech, an entire chapter of the novel Atlas Shrugged in which a man delivers a three hour radio address on tedious and convoluted philosophy that we're meant to believe people just sat around and listened to in continual awe of how massively they were getting owned.

After this point in the story of capitalism, though, there is a subtle difference. Once we have a society divided into entrepreneurs and workers, there comes an antagonism between them. One of these groups gains the upper hand by mystifying the other with an ideology that convinces the oppressed of the rightness of their oppression. This blinds them to their real interests and perpetuates a system that would be overthrown if only the oppressed would realize their situation and fight to reverse it.

The subtle difference is that for Marx, it was the proletariat being bamboozled by the bourgeoisie with their empty patter about freedom of contract and meritocracy. For Rand, the "moochers and looters" who ought to be the grateful serfs of capitalist overmen instead mystify the heroic, creative, industrious entrepreneurs with the lies of altruism and charity. Rand claimed to have been inspired by no other thinker than Aristotle, but here we see a huge heaping helping of Marx with a few tablespoons of Nietzsche for flavor.

What's perhaps even more striking is her revolutionary ideal. The plot of Atlas Shrugged treats it as a good thing for a bunch of accelerationist capitalist supermen to orchestrate the downfall of civilization so that they can conquer it in the chaos and remake the world in their image. Historians today have a lot of doubts about the Marxist conception of bourgeois revolution, but Rand wanted to make it happen. In her description of the forces at play, you get the unsettling impression that Rand's revolution would go off the rails into authoritarian oppression rather like the one she fled.

See, the original title for the novel was The Strike, with the premise of presenting what would happen if the "men of the mind" (i.e., mostly capitalists; a bunch of other people Rand considered "critical" like artists and intellectuals who agree with her come along too, but more on this later) went on strike instead of a bunch of dumbass workers. You could say, if it's OK for workers to withhold their labor in order to force an outcome in their favor, why can't capitalists? The thing is that a strike is a negotiation tactic. You do it to bring your opponent to the bargaining table. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged do not believe that their opponents are capable of enough reason for negotiation to be possible. This is a fairly disturbing and revealing aspect of her philosophy: she considered opposition to it to be inherently unreasonable and in bad faith. Thus the "strike of the men of the mind" could have no other goal but the destruction of Old Regime (of creeping socialism) and its reconquest by the rightful aristocracy of the Earth. A common element of many of revolutions we observe turning authoritarian, without going into much depth about the causes involved, is exactly this unwillingness or inability to treat dissent as anything other than evidence of bad intentions.

This unwillingness to credit an opposition would be disturbing enough if it were limited to questions like "should capitalists have any limit on their business practices?" but Rand has a much more "total vision" for humanity. The businesswoman protagonist Dagny Taggart's journey in Atlas Shrugged takes her through a world collapsing into socialism, with a brief tour of the wonders of Galt's Gulch (the hideaway commune of capitalists in revolt), and then a return to the chaos outside. Her time within the Gulch is quite revealing, though. If we can call totalitarianism a cult of personality write large, we can fairly call the Gulch the seed of a totalitarian order in the form of a cult of the person of John Galt. Again, note that it's not really just captains of industry going on strike: it's also artists, musicians, teachers, philosophers, and basically representatives of every creative or intellectual profession. All of them are necessary for the proper function of the world because, essentially, they agree with Rand. The tour through the Gulch is just a series of people explaining why their way of doing things - their poetry, their acting, their theories of society - were spurned by the outside world that needed them because they were right, and their "inconvenient truth" was that the mass of humanity is composed of unworthy second-rate incompetents who should be happy to serve the aristocracy of wealth. The world's rejection of these ideas is why it's acceptable for it to burn and for the overmen of the mind to remake it, and the "best" part is, the moochers and looters outside did it to themselves.

We can fairly read the novel as describing a cult of John Galt in the Gulch because of its name and because he's an inconsistent source of authority, claiming both that there are no rules but also a series of convenient rules he seems to spin up as needed. His symbolism is also everywhere, stamped on everything. He is the Dear Leader who started this little cult and drew all his adherents away from their old lives. But the missing totalitarian element is his personal vision of the world being enforced on everyone else. This is because everyone else there is only there because they already agree with him. The real personality cult (as incipient totalitarian state) here is of Rand herself by proxy, because it's her vision for all aspects of human society - from industry to art, from science to philosophy - that is both 100% correct and 100% necessary for the world to function.

This puts a lot we already know about Rand's real-life personality cult in a more disturbing light. It isn't just a central dogmatic assertion that Rand was always right, it's the number of things she was right about, the number of things she considered both correct and mandatory in her ideal world, that suggests that the only thing that stopped her from building a totalitarian regime rivaling the one she fled is lack of opportunity.

Triple-H and "primitive anarchocapitalism"
TBD

Walter Block's Revolutionary Tribunals
TBD

Social Organization
TBD: "barracks communism" vs. DROs.

The Road Not Traveled
Often times it seems as if libertarianism cannot fail, only be failed. If, say, the United States does anything particularly well, that's because of its robust defense of individual liberty and free enterprise. If it does anything poorly, that's because it's nonetheless burdened by a massive State apparatus sucking the producers dry like a great bureaucratic tick. If it does anything really poorly compared to other countries with even more government involvement in that area, well, we can't fairly make conclusions about how this reflects on the ideal libertarian society since it's never been tried, really, and would probably be better than any of them (we promise).

The key term to look out for here is "crony capitalism," the supposedly corrupted version of the real thing that prevails in most nominally "capitalist" countries, where the blessings of the free market have been profaned by an over-abundance of State interference picking winners and losers, where elite business interests use the power of the State to keep the little guy down. In fairness, it's not like elite business interests don't use political influence to get their way and suppress competition. In an Inception-like parallel-within-a-parallel, Marxists and other socialists make exactly this criticism of capitalism, but they argue that this problem is inherent to the system. Not so libertarians: by calling all that mere "crony" capitalism, they can deflect any of the flaws of actually existing capitalism onto its supposed "deformed" version and preserve the real, pure version as presumably perfect, regardless of whether that perfect vision has ever or could ever come to be.

The use of the word "deformed" there was not coincidental, by the by. Compare with the Trotskyist concepts of the deformed worker's state and the degenerated worker's state. Both are essentially terms used to discount a trend of Marxist politics that prevailed in the Soviet Union and whose standard-bearers exiled Trotsky himself. But the general idea is pretty familiar to anyone who's argued the merits of actually existing socialism: against attacks based on criticisms of 20th century Communist regimes, an apologist will claim that they somehow went awry from what socialism actually ought to be and do not count.

This should not be taken as a blanket criticism of this kind of defense. It could be true. Making it, though, means effectively admitting that one is arguing for a speculative form of society, one without any actual precedent or example to guide us. That's fine in itself, but to be compelling it really needs to make a strong case that the status quo is completely fucked in exactly the ways that one's preferred vision for a better future can address. Making it while also supporting one's ideal with reference to real-world partial successes and remaining coherent takes a great deal of nuance and effort. More often than not these are just excuses which have never been correlated to each other to expose the contradiction. Asking libertarians whether they think it's fair to say that "real socialism" has never been tried either might help make the connection.

(Note that there is a variant of this: the interesting ploy of saying that libertopia is real, you can go there, and it works! Since the example here is usually somewhere like Somalia, this is rather like a socialist upholding North Korea.)