On Liberty and Its Philosophy
Throughout history and social evolution, there has always been the recurring event of revolution. And in every revolution, the populace have become more free, either from nature, from other men, or from ignorance. Thus, with all aspects and forms of revolution, freedom is a defining principle.
It is only in relatively recent times that a philosophy using freedom as a focal point has been created. Emanating from the works of Locke, Proudhon, Bakunin, etc., and culminating in modern times from the works of Rothbard, Chomsky, Konkin, Goldman, and many others. And, as can be seen from those examples, the philosophy of liberty is greatly varied.
However, there are certain qualities and principles which all have in common. These axioms make up the foundation of all libertarian theory; it is also the boundary that defines whether one is truly a libertarian, or is merely co-opting the name.
Rejection of Authority
The first of such axioms is a rejection of authority: most commonly, it is the rejection of the authority of the State, but it is also rejection of the authority of established institutions or systems.
Such rejections go back to the Enlightenment, in which the authority of the monarchy and of the Church were put into question. With reason becoming as highly valued a tool for acquiring knowledge, if not more so, than the revelations and teachings of organized religion, the Church went under fire. Replaced with a new view of God in the form of Deism, the Church’s authority on religious truth was challenged, and ultimately rejected, by the empiricism of Locke, the rationalism of Wolff, and the transcendentalism of Kant, leading into a more scientific and logical era, a revolution of reason. And with such a revolution of reason, came the political revolutions of America and France, rejecting the past monarchical states in favor of a more individual and free people deciding for themselves the laws and running of government.
The rejection continues on into the nineteenth century. Karl Marx, with his Critique of Political Economy and other political writings, rejected the system of Capitalism we know today, and inspired a new movement of Socialist thinking. With this came as well a further rejection of the state in its totality, with the works of Proudhon inspiring the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin in Europe and Russia, and Tucker and Spooner in America. Modern Anarchism and Libertarianism began to form, alongside a new era of rejection and negation of the status quo and powers-that-be.
And it goes on into the twentieth and twenty-first century, with a new counterculture forming. The original taboos surrounding sexuality, drugs, and other social values were abandoned, for a new spirituality and a new free love. Even science and the idea of all encompassing ideals and systems were put into question, with the rise of Postmodernism seeing also the rise of a more pure skepticism. The works of Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, and others created an ultimate rejection of authority, by rejecting ultimate truths. Everything must then be questioned and analyzed, to see what powers are behind it.
And the state is still further questioned. Murray Bookchin and Noam Chomsky rose to prominence in anarchist and left-libertarian circles during the mid 1900s, advocating for a more libertarian socialism in contrast with the mainstream Marxist thinking in socialist circles at the time, and critiquing and rejecting the USSR for its authoritarianism. And the likes of Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess helped to spread libertarian ideas in the right side of the aisle, wedding free market capitalism with a fervent individualism, and fighting against the more tyrannical strain of conservative fundamentalism that acted as the status quo at that time.
Why is this rejection of authority pertinent for libertarianism? Simply put, libertarianism requires the rejection of authority in order to exist in the first place. Libertarianism asks, “Why should another rule over me?” If it did not ask that question, and if it did not see afterwards that there is no reason for why one should rule over another, it would not have come to fruition in the first place. By rejecting authority, libertarianism as a thought, as a philosophy, is born.
Individualism
Building on the rejection of authority is the utmost respect of the individual. Since an external force has no say as to what should be valued, then we must look internally; if we cannot trust an outside arbitrator, then we must trust ourselves to know what we value, and others as to what they value. It is the individual that decides what he values; it is the individual and their actions that determine their value. It is the individual who can act justly of his own accord, and can commit evil on his own accord: a group is forced to do one action or another by a leader, and has no say; the individual who controls themself has their own say, and is thus the ultimate determinant for the goodness and evilness of a person.
Because it is the individual who is the center of determining whether an action is moral or immoral, we must then, for the sake of morality, respect the individual to the highest degree. The autonomy of the individual must be respected; that which establishes their autonomy can thus be considered the rights of such an individual. Any action thus cannot harm or go against such rights, as they would be immoral.
Thus, also, we must judge the individual on his own actions, on his own ideas, and whether he respects the autonomy of others and judges others based on those individuals’ own merit; to judge an individual based merely on external characteristics and attributes, or to judge an individual merely by what group he belongs to, with no review of the individual character, ideas, and actions of that person, would be an immoral judgement, based off prejudice and group identity, ideas inherently antithetical to individualism.
This ardent individualism traces back to ancient philosophy, with Socrates and Plato determining virtue and morality based on the actions of the individual, and Aristotle arguing that such virtue can be achieved by ordinary people. What is good and right is no longer based on the whims of gods or on the loyalties between certain groups; it is the individual that morality becomes based in.
This reasoning follows along with the teachings of Jesus. Before, salvation was only given to God’s chosen people, Israel; now, it was open to all who would believe in Christ. No longer was moral worth determined by group, no longer was redemption only for certain people. The gates of Heaven were opened to all; it is now only the moral actions of the individual that determines whether he would be saved.
And such thinking is not restrained to the ancient past or to the Middle East. In Africa, the Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob developed a philosophy similar to but predating the Enlightenment thinkers by decades, arguing universally against discrimination and slavery, and arguing for using one’s natural reasoning instead of merely listening to others. The beginnings of a truly individualistic philosophy. It is later that, in Europe, Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke would discover such truths for themselves, adding on to it the idea of property ownership.
In the next few centuries, more progress would be made for individualist ideas. Primarily, anarchists and libertarian socialists would advocate for such individualism, from the likes of Proudhon, Bakunin, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, etc., etc., and later by the likes of Dorothy Day, Bookchin, Chomsky, the Situationists, etc., etc., etc. Even in the depths of Marxism and scientific socialism, individualism was taking root, shown especially in the Frankfurt School’s Herbert Marcuse, whose studies in both Marxism and psychoanalysis led him to embrace an anti-authoritarian stance and a more individualist perspective.
Along with this growth in left-individualism would be the rise of right-individualism, primarily concerned with economic theory. The teachings of Hayek and von Mises, advocating for a laissez faire market economy and a praxeological study of human social interaction, have inspired the likes of Murray Rothbard and Samuel Edward Konkin III, creating a new wave of anarchists and libertarians with a valuing and a perspective of society through individual social interaction. Ayn Rand helped further, creating fiction to inspire one to rise above oneself, and advocate for the valuing of the individual and the rights of such an individual. Her influence created another wave of libertarians. All of these influences culminated in the founding of the Libertarian Party of the United State of America, a party who at its founding has valued the individual and the freedoms guaranteed for them above all else.
Individualism is the second pillar of libertarian philosophy. Without it, there is no basis for how one should act; we have no center with which to align ourselves without betraying liberty and submitting to authority. Rejection of authority and Individualism go hand in hand: you cannot have one without the other. However, a chair needs more than two legs to stand, and thus so does our philosophy need a third pillar.
Voluntary Interaction
The previous two principles determined ideas and beliefs; voluntary inter-action is those beliefs put into motion.
For an action to be morally just, it must not harm another or force another to do someone’s will. If it does either/or, it would both conflict with the rejection of authority by creating a new authority and the rights of the individual by infringing on those rights. Thus, in order for actions to be just, the actions must be made with respect of the individual parties and their freedoms, and the action must have both parties be of equal footing or power, not forcing any one or the other into submission. The actions must also not use or abuse any difference in the power dynamic between parties, if there are any. In essence, the actions between people must be voluntary.
The idea can trace back to Locke and the other Enlightenment thinkers, but it is in the nineteenth century that voluntary interaction was really put into focus. The works of Proudhon, especially his General Idea of The Revolution In The Nineteenth Century, laid out how actions based on principles of liberty must be contractual or voluntary. Such ideas continued on with Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, who elaborated more on those ideas through the advocacy of a more free market system, while Bakunin and Kropotkin advocated for a voluntary socialism, based on each individual coming together with others to form a communistic society.
Further focus on voluntary interaction became central in anarchist praxis. Libertarian socialist thinkers use such ideas of voluntary interaction to critique capitalism, saying how, because capitalism creates a power dynamic that is often abused by the powerful, that capitalism cannot exist in a society based on voluntary interaction. Other libertarian thinkers on the right used it to justify capitalism, in that capitalism must base itself on contractual interactions and trade in order for it to work in the first place, and that socialism, with its redistribution of wealth, bases itself on coercion and the rejection of voluntary interaction. However, for both, the state is an ultimate rejection of voluntary interaction, forcing its will onto individuals and violating their rights. In essence, then, the state is an ultimate antithesis for liberty.
In this trinity of precepts lies the cornerstones of all libertarian and anarchist thought. They are not precepts alien to humanity: indeed, they seem to be perfectly human, a statement of the spirit of goodness in all people. Thus should we keep these ideas as the basis of our thinking; if we stray from such ideas, we face the risk of betraying the values of liberty for some other set of beliefs. Thus we must act not only as philosophers, thinkers, activists, writers, etc., but also as watchmen. We must stand our guard against enemies both foreign and domestic; but these enemies are not people, it is an attitude of tyranny and bigotry to believe that people are our enemies. No, our enemies are ideas: ideas of tyranny, of dictatorship, totalitarianism. It is these ideas we must fight against, for they are antithetical to the doctrine of liberty and freedom. Thus must we become not only lights of liberty, but also defenders of freedom, for all people, and for the preservation of Truth and Justice through the ideas of Liberation.
