“Criticism of libertarianism”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Criticism of libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental and pragmatic concerns, though most of them are mainly related to right-libertarianism.^[1] For instance, it has been argued that laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome,^[2] nor does its philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation prevent the abuse of natural resources.^[3] Criticisms of left-libertarianism are instead mainly related to anarchism and include allegations of utopianism, tacit authoritarianism and vandalism towards feats of civilization. Furthermore, some criticisms include left-libertarians critiques of right-libertarianism and viceversa.

Ethical criticisms

The validity of right-libertarian notions of liberty and economic freedom have been questioned by critics such as Robert Lee Hale, who posits that laissez-faire capitalism is a system of aggressive coercion and restriction by property owners against others:

Other critics, including John Rawls in Justice as Fairness, argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that violate the rights of some individuals as they are beneficial for society overall. This concept is related to philosophical collectivism as opposed to individualism.^[5] However, libertarian philosophers such as Michael Huemer have raised criticisms targeted at the social contract theory.^[6]

Critics such as Corey Robin describe right-libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionary conservative ideology united with more traditional conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations:^[7]

In his essay "From Liberty to Welfare", philosopher James P. Sterba argues that a morally consistent application of right-libertarian premises, including that of negative liberty, requires that a libertarian must endorse "the equality in the distribution of goods and resources required by a socialist state". Sterba presents the example of a typical conflict situation between the rich and poor "in order to see why libertarians are mistaken about what their ideal requires". He argues that such a situation is correctly seen as a conflict of negative liberties, saying that the right of the rich not to be interfered with in the satisfaction of their luxury needs is morally trumped by the right of the poor "not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs".

According to Sterba, the liberty of the poor should be morally prioritized in light of the fundamental ethical principle "ought implies can" from which it follows that it would be unreasonable to ask the poor to relinquish their liberty not be interfered with, noting that "in the extreme case it would involve asking or requiring the poor to sit back and starve to death" and that "by contrast it would not be unreasonable to ask and require the rich to sacrifice their liberty to meet some of their needs so that the poor can have the liberty to meet their basic needs". Having argued that "ought implies can" establishes the reasonability of asking the rich to sacrifice their luxuries for the basic needs of the poor, Sterba invokes a second fundamental principle, "The Conflict Resolution Principle", to argue that it is reasonable to make it an ethical requirement. He concludes by arguing that the application of these principles to the international context makes a compelling case for socialist distribution on a world scale.^[8]

Jeffrey Friedman argues that natural-rights libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent: {{quote|[W]e can press on from [the observation that libertarianism is egalitarian] to ask why, if [...] the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights, the liberty to own large amounts of property [at the expense of others] should not also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism. [...] The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's "right to do wrong."^[9]}}

Philosopher Jonathan Wolff criticizes deontological libertarianism as incoherent, writing that it is incapable of explaining why harm suffered by the losers in economic competition does not violate the principle of self-ownership and that its advocates must "dishonestly smuggle" consequentialist arguments into their reasoning to justify the institution of the free market.^[10]

Economic criticisms

Right-libertarians are accused of ignoring market failures, although not all proponents are market zealots.^[13] Critics of laissez-faire capitalism, the economic system favored by right-libertarians, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifled innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that markets do not always produce the best or most efficient outcome, that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health and that humans involved in markets do not always act rationally.^[14]^[15]

Other economic criticisms concern the transition to a right-libertarian society. Jonathan Chait argues that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short-term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long-term.^[16]

Environmental criticisms

Reconciliation of individual rights and the advances of a free market economy with the environmental degradation is a problem that few right-libertarians have addressed.^[17] Political scientist and author Charles Murray has written that stewardship is what private property owners do best.^[17] Environmentalists on the left who support regulations designed to reduce carbon emissions, such as cap and trade, argue that many right-libertarians currently have no method of dealing with problems like environmental degradation and natural resource depletion because of their rejection of regulation and collective control.^[12] They see natural resources as too difficult to privatize as well as legal responsibility for pollution or degrading biodiversity as too difficult to trace.^[5] As a result, some see the rise of right-libertarianism as popular political philosophy as partially responsible for climate change.^[18]

Right-libertarians are also criticised for ignoring observation and historical fact and instead focusing on an abstract ideal.^[19] Imperfection is not accounted for and they are axiomatically opposed to government initiatives to counter the effects of climate change.

Pragmatic criticisms

In his essay On Authority, Friedrich Engels claimed that radical decentralization promoted by anarchists would destroy modern industrial civilization, citing an example of railways:^[23] {{quote|Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?}}

In the end, it is argued that authority in any form is a natural occurrence which should not be abolished.^[24]

John Donahue also argues that if political power were radically shifted to local authorities, parochial local interests would predominate at the expense of the whole and that this would exacerbate current problems with collective action.^[25]

In 2013, Michael Lind observed that of the 195 countries in the world, none have fully actualized a society as advocated by right-libertarians: {{quote|If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn't at least one country have tried it? Wouldn't there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?^[26]}}

Furthermore, Lind has criticized right-libertarianism as being incompatible with democracy and apologetic towards autocracy.^[27] In response, right-libertarian Warren Redlich argues that the United States "was extremely libertarian from the founding until 1860, and still very libertarian until roughly 1930".^[28]

The anarchist tendency known as platformism has been criticized by Situationists,^[29] insurrectionaries, synthesis anarchists^[30]^[31] and others of preserving tacitly statist, authoritarian or bureaucratic tendencies.

See also

References

1. ^This includes the view that right-libertarianism has no explicit theory of liberty. See for instance [https://philpapers.org/rec/INDNLA "New-Paradigm Libertarianism: a Very Brief Explanation"].
2. ^"Complexity Economics Shows Us Why Laissez-Faire Economics Always Fails".
3. ^{{cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/922640625|title=Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture|last=Matthew|first=Schneider-Mayerson|isbn=9780226285573|location=Chicago|oclc=922640625}}
4. ^{{cite book|title=The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the first law and economics movement|last=Fried|first=Barbara|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2009|isbn=9780674037304|pages=50}}
5. ^¹Partridge, Ernest (2004). "With Liberty and Justice for Some". Michael Zimmerman, Baird Callicott, Karen Warren, Irene Klaver and John Clark. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4th Edition). {{ISBN|978-0-1311-2695-4}}.
6. ^{{cite book|last=Huemer|first=Michael|authorlink=Michael Huemer|year=2013|title=The Problem of Political Authority}}
7. ^{{cite book|title=The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin|last=Robin|first=Corey|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2011|isbn=0199793743|location=|pages=15–16|via=}}
8. ^Sterba, James P. (October 1994). "From Liberty to Welfare." Ethics (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell). 105 (1). pp. 237–241.
9. ^Friedman, Jeffrey (1993). "What's Wrong with Libertarianism". Critical Review. 11 (3). p. 427.
10. ^{{cite journal|url=http://www.virginialawreview.org/content/pdfs/92/1605.pdf|last=Wolff|first=Jonathan|title=Libertarianism, Utility, and Economic Competition|publisher=Virginia Law Review|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130112210848/http://www.virginialawreview.org/content/pdfs/92/1605.pdf|archivedate=12 January 2013|df=}}
11. ^Bruenig, Matt (28 October 2013). "Libertarians Are Huge Fans of Economic Coercion".
12. ^¹Friedman, Jeffrey (1993). "Politics or Scholarship?". Critical Review. 6 (2-3). pp. 429–445.
13. ^{{cite book|title=Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know|last=Brennan|first=Jason|year=2012|publisher=OUP USA|isbn=019993391X|page=63|url=https://books.google.com.au/books?id=7QuzSDXsKQQC|accessdate=23 September 2017}}
14. ^"They established, among other things, that losses loom larger than gains, that first impressions shape subsequent judgements, that vivid examples carry more weight in decision making than more abstract__but more accurate__ information" — 2002 Nobel Prize winner about economic decision making.
15. ^Erica Goode (5 November 2010). [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/health/a-conversation-with-daniel-kahneman-on-profit-loss-and-the-mysteries-of-the-mind.html "A conversations with Daniel Kahneman; On Profit, Loss and the Mysteries of the Mind"]. The New York Times.
16. ^Chait, Jonathan (21 March 2005). [https://newrepublic.com/article/blocking-move "Blocking Move"]. The New Republic. Retrieved on 23 September 2017.
17. ^¹{{cite book|title=Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation|last=Bowers|first=C. A.|year=2005|publisher=Lexington Books|chapter=Understanding the Commons within the Context of Contemporary Ideologies|isbn=9782511001516|page=135|url=https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=v2UUS8zB-hAC|accessdate=20 September 2017}}
18. ^{{cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/922640625|title=Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture|last=Matthew|first=Schneider-Mayerson|isbn=9780226285573|location=Chicago|oclc=922640625}}
19. ^{{cite book|title=Anti-libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth|last=Haworth|first=Alan|year=1994|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=0415082544|page=14|url=https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8HNpk77KLnAC|accessdate=23 September 2017}}
20. ^Landauer, Carl (1959). European Socialism: A History of Ideas and Movements.
21. ^An Anarchist FAQ. "Does anarchism require "perfect people" to work?".
22. ^An Anarchist FAQ. "What about crime?".
23. ^Engels, Friedrich (1872). On Authority. Marxists Internet Archive.
24. ^Goodwin, Barbara. (2014). Using Political Ideas. Sixth edition. ed. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Hoboken, New Jersey.
25. ^Donahue, John (1 May 1997). [https://web.archive.org/web/20070414205533/http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/32/donahue-j.html "The Devil in Devolution"]. American Prospect. 8 (32).
26. ^Lind, Michael (4 June 2013). "The Question Libertarians Just Can't Answer". Salon.
27. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim/|title=Why libertarians apologize for autocracy|first=Michael|last=Lind|publisher=}}
28. ^{{cite news|url=http://independentpoliticalreport.com/2017/04/was-america-ever-libertarian/|title=Was America Ever Libertarian|date=25 April 2017|work=Independent Political Report|accessdate=6 October 2018}}
29. ^{{cite book|last=Debord|first=Guy|authorlink=Guy Debord|translator=Ken Knabb|title=Society of the Spectacle|publisher=Rebel Press|location=London|isbn=978-0-946061-12-9|chapter=Paragraph 91|title-link=Society of the Spectacle|year=1983}}
30. ^"Reply by Several Russian Anarchists to the 'Platform'".
31. ^Garner, Jason. "La búsqueda de la unidad anarquista: la Federación Anarquista Ibérica antes de la II República". {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121031042738/http://www.acracia.org/Acracia/La_busqueda_de_la_unidad_anarquista.html|date=31 October 2012}}. "Tras la victoria de los plataformistas en el Congreso de París de 1929, una sección de los que consideraron que las ideas tradicionales del anarquismo estaban siendo atacadas se separó de la UACR para formar la Asociación de los Federalistas Anarquistas a comienzos de 192821. La principal figura de la AFA fue Sébastien Faure que, como respuesta a la Plataforma, expuso sus propuestas para un movimiento anarquista unificado en La síntesis anarquista, que apareció primero como un suplemento del informe de la AFA de febrero de 1928 titulado Le Trait d'Union Libertaire".