Either or both of leftists and conservatives have mistaken ideas of what human liberty is all about -- it's hard to imagine how they can both be right on all the specifics -- but establishing this to be so may well be a monumental task. One can say over and over how leftists either don't get, or are tone-deaf to, or otherwise don't appreciate the libertarian principle that the individual's life belongs to him only and not to the state, the point of which is to protect rights and not become an agent of its violation under the heading of "democracy," "fairness," and even "rights." One can repeat this mantra but leftists have reinforced their worldview with more-clever-than-wise responses to such a basic principle that one's life isn't others' to dispose of. One such clever move is to reconstrue the meaning of "dispose of one's life" so that an employer can be said to have control or disposal over the life of an employee, and so this relationship is properly subject to public regulations. Another such clever move is to construe libertarian ideas as having disparate racial impact, and leftists/"progressives" these days make vast allowances for what comes under the heading of racism. (I mean, is there any institution or event within American society that isn't tainted in some way by racism, thereby making America "a racist society"? You have to think like a leftist in order to think in such slippery-slope terms as somehow a normal and responsible extension of critical thought about our conceptions of the world.)
For a leftist it seems either naive or bizarre to hear the libertarian phrase about one's life being one's own to dispose of, and to think of a capitalist exchange. The libertarians must have just missed out on something crucial here, to apparently ignore or downplay the importance of an asymmetry of bargaining power between employer and employee (in a lot of cases, anyway). In fact, I think you can generalize this to the way leftists/"progressives" react to libertarian ideas as a matter of habit: the libertarians are essentially Other intellectually; they occupy some different conceptual plane or mapping that somehow misses out on key essential moral and social realities. Aren't we our brother's keeper (and therefore the state must be the agency of such keeping . . . as if that implication somehow isn't itself supposed to strike anyone as bizarre or naive; the leftist/"prog" worldview seems to take it for granted). They see Ayn Rand, a laissez-faire capitalist, touting the virtue of selfishness, and it doesn't matter what Rand means by that phrase (and explicitly under the sub-heading, A New Concept of Egoism), it's enough for the "progressive" to draw a connection between uncontroversially-false selfishness and laissez-faire capitalism as its political expression. Rand is thereby effectively Otherized as a kook who overlooks key realities, the nuances of her position be damned. (I am not caricaturing the way leftists attack Rand; their attacks are really this weak and lazy.)
So unless you're talking about really exceptional, dialectically-advanced cases, "progressives" and libertarians might hear one another make arguments for this or that political principle, but whether there is a real exchange of ideas going on is another question. (What's the most dialectically advanced response to the Randian point that an employer might well have greater intellectual powers than an employee, and their bargaining positions are reflected by that, but that individuals rightly own their own intellectual powers and their consequences (and their exchange is thereby usually win-win rather than zero-sum)? It seems to be something along the lines that Rawls advanced in an earlier version of A Theory of Justice, p. 102 or therebouts: individuals may be said to be naturally connected with their talents and powers, but the "distribution" of such talents is morally arbitrary whereas what's not morally arbitrary is how people and societies manage the consequences of such inequalities. So the talented individual's life is morally at the disposal of societies after all? Well, we'd like to avoid such conclusions, at least we would hope. But how? Perhaps Nozick would or should have been able to anticipate where it goes from there, but I don't know an acceptable resolution that isn't libertarian. Rawls' later criticism of libertarianism doesn't directly deal with this problem, instead pointing to an apparent weak spot in libertarianism (that it doesn't adequately reflect the structure of moral justification, and doesn't adequately recognize the distinction between being a private actor and a citizen and the moral powers that go with the latter designation, and presumably that it is only one conception of justice among many competing for consideration for an overlapping consensus of reasonable citizens). (I'm not clear on how pointing to a supposed weak spot in a position amounts to a satisfactory response to the position taken as a whole with all strong and weak points accounted for, in the spirit of the Rapoport Rules. How about this strong point within libertarianism: if there's a role or function for the state in human life, it's limited pretty narrowly, while community or social life as a whole can still flourish. A Rawlsian liberal can invoke background institutions or 'basic structure' but I don't see how that affects the basic idea. There is justice outside of politics, correct? . . . )
I point all this out in order to try to set the cognitive context of a left-leaning history professor setting out to show how the modern libertarian movement is heavily influenced by thinkers whose arguments are used to undermine "democracy." To such a professor, the libertarian mindset - its worldview, ideological infrastructure, its conceptual associations - is alien or other, something basically erroneous, mistaken, naive, or otherwise intellectually deficient. It's leftists who predominate in the humanities and social sciences, after all. (And the intelligence involved in business is of a lesser sort, concerned as it is with satisfying lower impulses rather than striving for lofty Truth.)
Prof. Nancy MacLean of Duke published a book in 2017, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. I encourage a reading of the essential blurb about this book at the link; in essence it makes the claim that the Koch brothers -- with the aid of the ideas of economist James Buchanan -- have engineered a plan to undermine democracy for the sake of corporate power ("for the few," of course, since obviously that's the stimulus-and-response association that the phrase "corporate power" might well induce in a leftist mindset).
Now, I haven't looked into much of the details of the controversy that this book has generated, but I have made note of certain facts that I'll term meta-level to the substance of the debate, namely about how the actors involved in this controversy (including most importantly in this case, Prof. MacLean) behave. What sorts of works do they cite (i.e., acknowledge) in presenting a portrait of a political movement? Do they respond in good faith to criticism? Do they demonstrate a required minimum of familiarity with the ideas/thinkers they talk about? (Leftists invariably fail, and fail badly, at even establishing a minimum of credibility in these regards when attacking Ayn Rand. They never mention Peikoff, for instance, but will mention a third-rate critic of Rand. They've never taken on any fundamental thesis in the Galt speech and purported to refute it directly and in context; assuredly had this ever happened we'd have all heard about it by now. That kind of behavior by which their credibility can be assessed just on its face.)
One thing that jumps right out at me about MacLean's thesis is this notion that James Buchanan exercised enormous influence (whether by stealth or otherwise) over libertarian thought. His main claim to fame is that he is a Nobel Laureate (1986) in Economics, but he's not the only libertarian of such distinction (the obvious two big names associated with 'libertarianism' in economic policy being Hayek and Friedman). I've studied libertarian thought off and on for decades now, enough to know such minutiae as Buchanan having favorably reviewed David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom in an economics journal. Lots and lots of such minutiae that only students of libertarian thought would know about them (and then lots of other minutiae I don't know about, preferring to focus a lot more on the Rand-related minutaie, like the report by Peikoff that she referred to her smart-looking cat as "professor of epistemology," or that Prof. Hospers spent hours with Rand being edified in laissez-faire political philosophy; I might not know much about Rothbard- or Hoppe-related minutaie). I can rattle off a bunch of names of top-notch libertarian thinkers, starting with Bastiat and Spencer and going up through Huemer, Caplan and Sciabarra. In between are Mises, Hayek, Paterson, Rothbard, Reisman, Kirzner, Den Uyl and Rasmussen, Mack, Machan, and on and on. And in that bunch there's also James Buchanan.
In terms of total impact on libertarian or laissez-faire or pro-capitalism thought in America, Buchanan might rank up there but the key names that typically come to mind are Rand, Mises, Hayek, Friedman (the elder), Rothbard and Nozick. I guess Buchanan by virtue of his Nobel prize might well belong up there, but he would be just one of a half-dozen or so even in that case. Does MacLean discuss them? I know that in an interview, Charles Koch cited Hayek and also Aristotle, but he didn't mention Buchanan. Anyway, to boil it down to the essential: Buchanan's ideas contributed to a stream of libertarian thought populated heavily by a number of other influential libertarian thinkers.
So either Prof. MacLean knows quite a bit more about the history of libertarian thought than I do, or her credibility as to that history is properly called into question.
If her emphasis is on intellectual influence on present-day libertarian politics (supposedly headlined by the Koch brothers, as if a heavily-fortified libertarian presence in academia or elsewhere is unthinkable), then why wouldn't she also look at the influence of Hayek and Friedman? That alone is cause for suspicion that MacLean is cherry-picking evidence to support a thesis.
What MacLean "accomplished" with her book is a portrayal of a "libertarian movement" that isn't recognizable to libertarians themselves. This is a history professor at Duke, mind you.
It's hard not to proceed or interpret MacLean's pattern of behavior along any other lines than: she doesn't think the way libertarians do, and is convinced of the intellectual and moral superiority of some political position well to the left of libertarianism, and so it would be unthinkable to her that there is a highly-fortified libertarian position that can appeal to large segments of duly-informed audiences.
The alternative to such an interpretation is that MacLean's attack on libertarianism is disingenuous, bad-faith, or malicious.
But that alternative also begins to look plausible when you look at the behavior of MacLean in the face of well-supported criticisms from libertarian scholars. Does she respond to criticism, just as she would rightly expect of someone in response to a criticism from her -- you know, two-way-street-like? If there's evidence of such responsiveness on her part, it isn't easy to come by. One of the leading criticisms of MacLean was from Michael Munger, fellow Duke professor (in Econ -- you know, Buchanan's specialty). Just google "michael munger nancy maclean" and you readily find Munger's critique of MacLean, but what about a response from MacLean to Munger? This is an important question that is meta-level to the debate itself. Does MacLean operate on the up-and-up or is her MO so deeply corrupted that her "scholarship" "exposing" "the libertarian movement" should be treated as unreliable if not useless? (Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek appeared to have lost patience with MacLean's sophistry-as-pseudo-scholarship. I mean, doesn't it seem on its face intellectually negligent for MacLean not to interview multiple public-choice scholars at her own university who knew Buchanan - you know, to maybe double check that she got things right, or to get more perspectives in the name of diversity of thought? Why the fuck is it that every indication I've encountered about this book is that it's a leftist hatchet-job disguised as academic historical scholarship? And why would I not find that the least bit surprising given the long-standing history and pattern of behavior of non- and anti-libertarians?)
What would not be a surprise in the slightest to me is if MacLean makes produces worthwhile scholarship and history elsewhere, but that when it comes to politically-charged history like the subject of Democracy in Chains, she turns into a typically nasty leftist lowlife in academic garb. (Also, would an intellectual heavyweight of, say, Randian caliber work on a book about democracy under attack, as if (a) politics were the biggest issue in life, or (b) democracy per se is especially important to write about in the context of the political essential, individual rights, which rightly don't yield under democratic demands.)
What I did find in searching re: responsiveness from MacLean to the strongest criticisms is not promising. In one interview, she doesn't respond directly to criticisms of her book but refers instead to (unnamed) "people who’ve actually read it." This is an interview in 10/2017 but Munger criticized her book in 6/2017. Is Munger not among the "people who’ve actually read it"? Then there's the MacLean-book saga as it has been relayed by Steven Horwitz. As if right out of the MacLean playbook, economist Brad DeLong responds to Horwitz one one point only, and to cherry pick a quote from Buchanan and his co-author (out of the entire context of Buchanan's output, it has to be stressed) that anti-discrimination laws applied to private parties violates freedom of association. (Note that "freedom of association" is a phrase ripe for abuse from either leftists who want to revise its meaning, or from supposed rightists who would use it as a racist dog whistle.) Here's DeLong's bad-taste-in-mouth-leaving take on Buchanan:
Actually, we do know Buchanan and Nutter's intentions:Now, if one isn't an intellectual lowlife, one should take care to construe someone's positions in the most charitable light possible, short of a good reason to do otherwise.
[embedded quote] "...but Buchanan and Nutter’s argument for school privatization gave intellectual validation to whites who wanted to exclude blacks from their schools..."
As they intended it should.
Say that I support a right of free association for private parties and that one (not always fortunate) implication of this is that one could refuse to associate with someone of a certain race. Is that a foreseen or intended consequence of (this interpretation of) the free-association position? Absent a good reason to think it is intended, one can only treat it as foreseen. Maybe -- and this could actually be the case outside of the ideological echo chambers in academia and left-land -- the freedom of association trumps other values, in the political realm. Bottom line, what business is it of the state's whom I choose to associate with? That has to be argued out in good faith and not simply assumed to be, say, a racist dog-whistle. Politics has very specific functions (as much as leftists/"progs" would pervert this point), and it's not clear that making people nice and not-racist is among them. Social and cultural pressure is not the same as political coercion, etc. etc. Then, we have the slippery word-twisting above about "intellectual validation" to whites who wanted to exclude blacks from their schools. Intellectual validation to what - their desire to discriminate, or their right to do so? Are racist whites intellectually sophisticated enough to make a rights-based defense of their discriminatory practices? If not - and they are not - it sounds bizarre for Buchanan and his co-author to be making some kind of coded appeal to them. But let's say it's a view commonly expressed on the basis of a foundational moral-political principle typically expressed by libertarians - freedom of association for private parties. It then leaves a very bad taste in the mouth of a scholar or student of libertarianism to then see that interpreted as a racist dog whistle by default, rather than be debated directly on its merits. (Is it that difficult to grasp that one can be a perfectionist in ethics without being one in politics?)
MacLean does her credibility no favors in her Salon interview when she basically smears George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen as a stooge for the Kochs: "Tyler Cowen of George Mason University is one. Charles Koch has been directing an academic operation at George Mason called the Mercatus Center." She seems to be under the distinct impression that this way of characterizing an opposition figure is well within the scholarly and academic pale. I do not share that impression. Maybe it's because I don't share the leftist frame of thought, or maybe it's because I find leftist attacks on libertarianism almost invariably piss-poor and leftists almost unbelievably arrogant and smug. As it is, I don't find her comments on Cowen acceptable, informative, useful, or enlightening; if anything, it obscures and deflects from the issue of libertarianism's intellectual merits. (Yeah, sure, the main thing I ever gleaned from reading Cowen's blog was that he is part of an "extreme right-wing effort to subvert American democracy." And the only thing I ever need to know about Nancy MacLean is that she thinks libertarians are bad guys and is probably a lightweight in fields outside of history proper. Right?)
Speaking of Brad DeLong and leaving a very, very bad taste in one's mouth, I had seen this otherwise astonishing piece of intellectual dishonesty -- I say "otherwise," because it's now par for the course at Salon.com -- and read the comments, one of which referenced the MacLean book, and that set me on the course to writing this blog entry. (Salon used to be a reputable outlet, but certainly not since the days that Glenn Greenwald had a column there, and how long ago was that, 2011 at the latest?)
Just keep in mind that in the leftist frame of thought, these kinds of discreditable smear tactics are normal, in accordance with standard scholarly examination, or otherwise inoffensive to people of common sense. In a more blatant and obvious example, this leftist-mindset abnormality reared its head during the Kavanaugh hearings. Heck, Nate Silver considers it normal to smear "certain" (unnamed) Republican critics of Ocasio-Cortez as being "driven crazy by her race and gender."
The rest of us are going, "What the fuck is wrong with these people?" (Heck, Alan Dershowitz has had to be a voice of sanity against this blatant and expanding leftist abnormality as of late.) If they display such bad habits of thought as they do in politics generally (the coercive state is there to serve people's needs, respond to economic inequality as such, etc.) or in their attacks on libertarians specifically (libertarians are too heartless to care about people's needs or other important moral values, and/or too intellectually inferior to keep up with the likes of Keynes, Rawls and Chomsky), in what other areas might they display terrible and destructive habits of thought?
An alternative explanation to consider: libertarians (and many conservatives) do in fact have an upper hand over leftists and "liberals," or at the very least are way more intellectually fortified than leftists and "liberals" believe to be the case. (Much as with their delusions about Hillary Clinton being a no-brainer choice over Trump, their behavior indicates their belief in the no-brainer superiority of leftism over libertarianism or conservatism as well. Common sense says that it cannot be such a no-brainer given the vast array of entities to take into consideration here; not even I would say that the libertarian position is a no-brainer superior alternative to leftism or conservatism.) Those who are genuinely intellectually progressive will take the time to thoroughly consider the evidence for such an explanation. In that duly informed, homework-doing light, one can see how MacLean's book shouldn't on its face be considered credible, hard-hitting, or anything of the sort, but one of a long line of not-so-impressive attacks on what turns out to be a superior political philosophy. If it is indeed a superior political philosophy, or one much stronger than today's "progressives" make it out to be, then that would upset the leftist mindset and lead to some cognitive dissonance. How can be it be so that libertarianism beats out leftism, especially when so many of the academics favor leftism? How is that even thinkable? How does a leftist keep up the pretense of superiority, when an academic like Nozick, a former leftist, does his homework thoroughly and comes out decisively against leftism? The cognitive-dissonance and denial route would lead naturally and unsurprisingly to the discovery and acknowledgment of items like this (written in 2011) but somehow not this (information available since 2002 which runs directly counter to the first item).
I also cannot emphasize too much that one Ayn Rand is where the leftists fall completely apart in terms of their ability to even characterize an opponent's ideas correctly. Get a highly-opinionated Rand-hater to explain what she means by "selfishness" and watch the intellectual collapse right in front of your eyes. (It's one thing to hold an opinion, and another to be able to support that opinion; a worthy philosopher will withhold opinion until it is duly and thoroughly-enough informed. One reliable prerequisite for holding such an informed opinion is due engagement with an opposing idea's advocates, preferably the strongest or most prominent advocates among them. Without exception, ever, given the natures of the entities involved, Rand-haters don't do this engagement with Randians. Whatever engagement is done by non-Randians with Randians, it's been done by intellectually serious, honest, respectful critics, not by the haters, who are intellectual lowlifes.) This is to say that as bad as MacLean's book might be as a representation of main streams of libertarian thought, it's probably like the high end, at best, of the range of leftist treatments of Rand. One thing's for sure: I would not expect any Nancy MacLean book on Ayn Rand or her intellectual influence to be reliable or credible (unless the nature of the entity that is Nancy MacLean changed to that of a non-leftist who can engage properly with opposition ideas, in which case she would be more like a Hospers than like the typical smug academic leftist so loathed by mainstream America). If there is to be a credible critique of Rand it would have to come from the likes of Ari Armstrong, a longtime student of Rand. Or at least Rand-critic Scott Ryan, who doesn't go out of his way to misrepresent Rand the way leftists typically do, even though Ryan's book and Peikoff's courses -- such as Objectivism Through Induction, which I'm currently going through for a second time -- focus on such different facets of Rand (and Peikoff would have better insights into which facets are of most fundamental importance) that one cannot properly treat Ryan's critique as comprehensive. So there, I can acknowledge fairly when and where someone is credible even as a Rand-critic. But why, at this point, should I spend any more of my time reading or thinking about what Prof. MacLean might have to say about libertarianism?
