So, recently I posited the idea that I don't fit in anywhere. I'm, to sum things up, too radical for liberals, and too liberal for socialists. And considering how the political landscape on the left seems increasingly polarized into the two camps, at least in online discussion, where most people are either a neoliberal biden loving shill, or they're so far left bernie starts looking like a compromise, I really have trouble fitting in. I really don't feel like my views have changed much since 2015, which is part of the problem. Back then, people like me were the vanguard of the progressive left. We wanted social democracy and we wanted it now. And Bernie seemed like a good candidate for that at the time. But as the 2016 and later 2020 elections unfolded, people split into two groups. Either you loved the establishment and would compromise all ideals to vote blue no matter who, or you ended up radicalizing. Most people ended up radicalizing and being introduced to political theories like marxism. I had already had exposure and grappled with such ideas, but insisted on a more moderate approach. While I have integrated some of the more positive aspects of marxism and anti capitalist thought into my views, I did it in a more controlled way, where I was able to formulate my own ideology before the modern crapshow of politics began. That said, let's look at my views.
My views in a nutshell
To summarize years of blogging on here, I'd describe my views as left libertarian. Now, as you can tell, left libertarian is a very broad ideology. It ranges from anarchism, to georgism, to forms of social democracy. I'm basically among the "UBI left", for lack of a better term. This can be summed up best by thinkers like Phillippe Van Parijs and his "real freedom" or Karl Widerquist and his "indepentarianism". That said, I would actually say a big basis of my views is Karl Widerquist's book "Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom and the Power to Say No."While I won't profess every single doctrine of any thinker as I'm my own thinker and merely incorporate ideas from others into my perspective, these lines of thought represent my views well.
My views start with a state of nature. Much like Hobbes, I view a state of nature as "nasty, brutish, and short". I don't have a positive view of anarchy. So I believe that we come together to form societies for mutual benefit. However, the social contract cannot adequately represent everyone, and much like Widerquist with his justice as pursuit of accord, I believe that the state has the obligation to stay out of peoples' lives and preserve their freedom as much as possible. However, not being an anarchist and seeing the benefit to certain rules and social structures, I believe that rules are necessary at times and if implemented to serve the public good and improve their well being, or ironically, increase their freedom, these rules can be justified. That said, my left libertarianism isn't necessarily anti state, but rather seeks a balance between the benefits of state action and the inherent benefits of freedom. I also believe governments can create rules to ironically increase freedom. To me, that's what the purpose of rights is, to put rules on how we make rules so that we preserve peoples' freedoms. I don't believe natural rights exist. Rather, rights are a special form of rule intended to further well being, with freedom to act as one wants without harming others being a form of well being. For example, people don't have a right to free speech in nature. In nature, if you offend the wrong person, they can kill you. You don't have a right to anything in nature. Because to me the opposite of society is darwinism, where you live a life that is nasty, brutish, and short. All actual protections and the like actually come from society.
I also believe social programs like basic income and medicare for all increase economic security of people, while preserving their freedom. Property rights are, in my mind, a coercive social construct of the state, not a natural right. However, property is necessary as a concept for the governance of the use of resources within civil society, so I believe property rights are functional. However, property rights also create excesses that can negatively impact others. If you get one guy own all the land, for example, he can just hold it hostage to force others into servitude to gain access to it. That said, the right to own land should be curtailed enough, so that everyone has access to what they need to survive. Ultimately, I believe ideas like UBI and medicare for all, as well as other social democratic ideas, are necessary ultimately to the economic security and well being of people in society. And I believe that using taxation as a curb on property rights, or in some cases modifying the social contract to be more "socialist" (as in collectively owned property) can actually be in the public interest there, to maximize freedom and well being.
As you can see I differ from right libertarianism a lot. Right libertarians believe in natural rights as per Locke's theory. I don't accept Locke's theory. As I said, rights don't exist in nature, they come from society and are social constructs. I especially believe the right to property is contentious. While right libertarians believe in it as a god given natural right...I see it as a social construct with a lot of negative consequences. And I kind of believe the state needs to implement rules and further constructs on it in order to iron out the problems with it in the first place. That said, I don't see taxation as evil, at least no more evil than the existence of property to begin with. Rather, taxation, with the intention to fund government programs, can sometimes be the necessary evil to accomplish a result. A small imposition (in terms of freedom, when implemented correctly) on a person that evens the playing field and makes the "game" of economics more balanced and fair to everyone. The moral costs of taxation can easily be paid back with benefits that make the populace more free and economically prosperous and secure.
At the same time, as far as capitalism vs socialism goes, I'm fairly agnostic on the matter. Capitalism has arguably improved the lives of many, and the concept of markets seem to be the way, in most economic domains, to provide a diversity of products of people while also preserving their freedom. In a lot of cases, markets do a better job than a one size fits all government program imposed on people. Capitalism and markets are, to me, the default position in our society. At the same time, I believe some industries, like healthcare and education are terrible when left to markets and sometimes they should be left in control of governments. Privatized everything isn't a good thing. Some things don't work when left to for profit industries, as they devolve into power relationships that exploit people. That said sometimes government run programs create more freedom than the natural state of capitalism. At the same time I don't support a centralized economy where the government does everything. As I said, markets are the default, whereas government controlled industries are a solution to industries with market failures.
As far as the ownership question of capitalism and socialism, I think socialism, insofar as it's market socialism, is ideal. However, I don't believe worker cooperatives and the like would magically free people from the tyrannies of the market or aspects of our culture such as the protestant work ethic. Just because businesses are owned and controlled democratically doesn't mean people are free. It just ensures a tyranny by majority rather than a tyranny of one. And while that is an improvement, much like governments should create rights to regulate themselves, people need a right to say no and not participate in the system at all, and that can only be provided by UBI and other government programs as market failures occur. Socialism does not guarantee that and is sometimes just as crappy and tyrannical as capitalism is. As Karl Widerquist would point out, it just replaces the unavoidable big casino with the unavoidable big collective, where you still got an oppressive system that doesn't allow people to minimize their participation, it's just operated under different principles.
I could go on and on, but these are what I think are the most relevant points of my ideology. To summarize.
1) Humans live naturally in a state of nature, where they are guaranteed nothing, not even life, and live lives that are nasty brutish and short.
2) Humans come together in social contract theory to make rules to improve their well being and standards of living. Freedom is, in my opinion, an inherent part of this.
3) Governments make rules to improve peoples' lives, as well as create rights to limit their own power to avoid dictatorship.
4) Some rights such as property rights can actually be oppressive in excess, in order to balance these rights, government action which right libertarians might have an issue with is needed.
5) While socialism (as in worker ownership of the means of production) is a noble goal, I believe that it is not necessary to accomplish these goals and too much emphasis is placed on it.
That said, let's look at how my ideas are both radical and moderate.
Why I'm too radical for most liberals
Liberalism in the US generally refers to the ideological tradition associated with the democratic party. It is shaped by the historical factors that have made the democratic party what it is today, and is inherently tied to the party. Because the democratic party suffered setbacks in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to the rise of Reaganism, it has moderated its ideas significantly on economics, often seeking to compromise with the right and its capitalist purism. Being constantly afraid of moving too far left and offending the right wingers it tries to appeal to, American liberals embrace corporate neoliberalism. This ideology tries to triangulate between the social democratic position of FDR, and the right wing economic position of capitalist purism. This leads to a center right ideology, as FDR's social democracy was intended as a compromise between capitalism and socialism. This "third way of a third way" tends to largely accept the right wing capitalist consensus on economics with some zeal, while recognizing that some moderation is needed at times. Corporate neoliberals might recognize maybe we should have SOME safety nets, but ultimately, because the terms of debate are framed by the right and they sell out to the right on an ideological level, they often only propose mild safety nets with the effort of forcing people into the work force, because that's what the right wants. Instead of guaranteeing a standard of living to people regardless of effort or position in society, they simply want the barebones minimum to prevent the people they deem worthy of avoiding poverty to barely avoid it, temporarily.
And this is where I have problems with them. My views, when I think about it more recently, are actually quite radical. Like I'm clearly on the left, the actual left, and my position on institutions like work sound a lot like what anarchists say. Liberals do not question the regime of property rights in this system, they largely support the right wing consensus. They do not question the value of work. Much like a leftist, I do. I'm willing to get in there and ask the hard questions about whether these systems are just.
That said, while I might perceive the capitalist system as is, as inherently unjust, as it deprives people of a minimalistic living standard and coerces them into participation in markets, much against their own benefit, and I support solutions intended to fix that, mainstream liberals don't see anything wrong with the current regime. At best they'll understand it's cold and heartless to have total social darwinism so they'll propose some out of touch band aid solution, but they won't actually see the full extent of the injustice of society as I see it. They don't propose grand solutions to problems, because much like right wingers, they don't recognize those problems exist.
In some ways I actually do have more in common with the radical left on a pure ideological level than I do with liberals. Which is why I tend to find a lot of outright anti capitalist content entertaining. I agree with it. Capitalism, at least in its raw forms, as fundamentally evil in some ways. It exploits the vast majority of people, leads to insane wealth and income inequalities, and reduces most people to de facto slaves who can't say no to the system because they need to participate on the terms of the rich just to survive.
At the same time though...I don't agree with the radical left either.
Why I'm not a radical leftist either
While it's hard to sum up the radical left in its entirety as there are so many different schools of thought, most radical leftists seek to abolish the system as it is. They may seek to abolish the state, they may seek to abolish the current state, they may seek to abolish capitalism. They might look at capitalism and the liberal democracy captured by capitalist interests and see the only solution to tear it all down. This is dangerous.
For as radical as my ideas are, I am, in essence, a pragmatist. Not in the way liberals are. Liberals treat pragmatism in the form of selling out to the right and talking down any reasonably progressive proposal to nothingness as a way of life. I treat pragmatism as actually getting in the trenches and making change. How do we get from point A to point B? Burning it down does not compute. I see things via the public policy model. Basically, you have a problem, you solve it. You generally do this without abolishing the system. The system does a lot of functional things. I might not like how many rules politics, but I wouldn't support abolishing the constitution to fix that. You do that and there go all of those nice "rights" we have and everything is fair game. We might end up with a new system that doesn't even have elections. We might not have free speech and you might be thrown in jail for speaking ill of the government. These things have happened in revolutionary leftist states before, like Cuba or Russia or China. I see many many flaws with our system, but I support changing it in incremental ways from within, not just throwing the entire thing out and hoping for the best.
Same with economics. Capitalism, ie, markets, are functional. I believe they produce the best results for most industries and that the solution is giving people money and other social programs. Socialists see UBI and similar solutions as preserving the capitalism they hate. They want to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism. Whatever that means, it varies depending on the socialist. They put all their eggs in one basket and seem to want government run everything. They want massive jobs programs with an obligation to work and contribute attached to them. Or, if they're anarchist, they might want nothing at all where we all live in communes like the anti capitalist factions of "The Outer Worlds" video game. All of these ideas have tradeoffs. Lower standards of living, less freedom, replacing one form of tyranny with another, etc. Even market socialists tend to get too gung ho about it. I support market socialism in theory too but I don't treat it like an end all. It's just one piece of a much larger progressive package.
That said I end up not agreeing with the radical left because I'm not radical enough. I might agree with them vaguely insofar as anti capitalist sentiment goes, but when it comes to solutions I ultimately start sounding like a liberal compared to them, wanting change from within a system rather than a full on abolishment of said system. I support reasonable paths from point A to point B without being like "let's throw everything out." I'm even willing to compromise my ideas as practically necessary. For example, some people might wonder with my anti work stance, well, if people weren't forced to work, would everyone work? Well, if no one worked, we would need to arguably force people as a necessary evil to do so, but we should take the least coercive path to doing so. Thankfully I believe we can have a UBI and a basic minimum standard while arguably having enough of a work incentive to survive. But say it doesn't work out, well, I would reduce the generousness of my programs until we had enough workers to do what needs to be done. Not that I think we need a ton done. Certainly less than "full employment" levels. Look at COVID and this recession. We just decided 1/3 of our work force is "nonessential" and are forcing many of them to stay home. The more enlightened of us even wanna give them checks. And you know what? Society still functions, mostly. So I believe that it is possible to balance freedom with our societal needs. Just bringing that up to show that I believe my views are functionally feasible. As far as how to pay for it...well...I've written articles about that. Look them up.
That said, where does this leave me?
Well, as I said, it leaves me in an awkward spot politically. I'm too extreme for most people who like the democratic party, who seem insistent on incremental change and band aid fixes while largely being diet republicans ideologically. I question the system and insist on large scale changes to make society more just and free as I define justice and freedom. Many people might think I'm a radical leftist.
At the same time radical leftists hate me because despite my ideological extremeness and willing to question aspects of the social contract, I still largely support large portions of said social contract. My ideal society would be a liberal democracy similar to our own, maybe just with some different voting and representation mechanisms. Economically it would support ideas closer to social democracy or market socialism rather than full on socialism, communism, or anarchism. I still insist on working within the system and don't want to burn things down or think all problems can be solved by socialism.
Because the left is increasingly finding itself in these two camps, I'm being left in an awkward spot.
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