Hi everyone,
I am a new member on these forums and I registered because I am very curious to get your reaction to my opinion that modern liberalism has completely betrayed the best interests of their constituents. I am a liberal in the classical sense and a progressive as defined by a desire to unshackle human kind from the chains of tradition and fealty to outmoded conservative ideas. The goal of political action should be to overthrow the oligarchy and established order that has variously oppressed all stripes of vulnerable groups, including women, racial minorities, religious groups, the poor and the masses of the people throughout much of recorded history. Though certainly not comprised of the exact same people, the same ideology and fallacies and essential structure of leverage and coercion have been employed by the rich and powerful throughout history as a means of enriching themselves and exploiting and expropriating the vulnerable. Though the condition for the average person has certainly improved in the last couple of centuries, at least regarding the material well-being of individuals living in industrialized nations, this is primarily due to victories such as the civil rights movement and women’s suffrage movement in which enough agitated and brave citizens are able to push back against the centers of economic and political power and demand their rights and their dignity as human beings. Secondarily, the progress we have achieved has been possible in large part due to the liberal economic reforms which swept much of Europe and the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries which brought the industrialization and mechanization of the chain of production which allowed workers to become far more productive creating a rising tide of prosperity and abundance which created the conditions where starvation and abject destitute poverty have mostly been eliminated in industrialized nations whereas these conditions were commonplace among the common man in previous times. The fundamental problem is that without a complete demolition, both intellectually and physically, of the grossly immoral conservative institutions and organizations of economic and political power we observe in the United States and in many nations around the world, these progressive “victories” are forever tenuous. This is abundantly clear as we are witness to the evaporation of the middle class and the widening income inequality with Wall Street firms and their government stooges breaking their own laws and getting away with it.
The modern liberal all too frequently misunderstands the cause of the desirable gains in human happiness and prosperity that we witnessed in the 20th century and this confusion tragically leads him to support the economic and political oligarchy. Betraying the liberal tradition, the modern liberal attempts to use conservative means to achieve desired liberal ends. But conservatism and liberalism are fundamentally incompatible and the use of conservative means will only hurt the vulnerable, the poor and middle classes.
To clarify what I mean by “liberal ends” and “conservative means” I have to define the terms. First of all the goals that I believe are fundamentally liberal, and these are routinely articulated by nearly all progressive commentators today, are the follows: An effective check (“regulation”) on corporate and banking power to prevent environmental degradation and the abuse of people’s rights through collusion, abuse of workers, the formation of monopolies, etc. A strong and robust middle class that is secure so that people can have the necessities to pursue happiness and live well. A tolerant attitude towards different lifestyles and protections against racism, homophobia and other types of thoughts and actions singling out minorities and the vulnerable. An antiwar and anti-empire attitude that sees militarism and war as primarily tools of economic exploitation and profiteering. Surely some progressives might argue with these definitions slightly, but in a nutshell the policies of the modern liberal are supposedly aligned with the interests of the “common man” and not with the rich and powerful.
Those are the goals (or “ends”) that I, as a classical liberal, want to achieve or move towards in the most rapid possible manner. Like I have said, liberals today use conservative means to try to achieve these goals, means that only exacerbate the problems they seek to alleviate. To clarify what I mean by that, it is important to understand the history of the political spectrum, as words like “left” and “right”, “conservative” and “liberal” are always changing and without a proper historical context it is impossible to make sense of this. Prior to President Woodrow Wilson, liberals and progressives were influenced by the Enlightenment era philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Paine, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and Frederic Bastiat. Individuals like Lysander Spooner were a driving force behind the abolitionist movement. These liberals abhorred concentrations of economic power and they were ever vigilant against scheming businessmen and bankers. They were revolting against the oligarchy of history, the money changers and bourgeois, privileged class that attained their position by chance of birth or by force, fraud and intimidation rather than individual initiative and achievement. They stood up for the little guy and they wanted to progress humanity out of the dark ages through Natural Rights theory, equality, property rights and human dignity that we are all entitled to as our birthright. However, contrary to modern liberals, the liberals of that day did not see government as a tool of social progress, but as a means by which the conservative establishment gained their advantage, expropriated the poor, gained monopolies and exploited the masses. They did not fear the market nor did they endorse the nonsensical notion that government should “regulate” the private economy to protect the consumer and the worker. Liberals of the day saw laissez faire economy as the only ethical and fair way to organize economic life.
People like Bastiat were considered far Left. The established order, the State, corporations and banks that had colluded and formed a monopoly on the use of force and coercion in a given geographical area, were right wing, conservative and vehemently anti progressive. This is, and always should be, the correct political spectrum that we should refer to. The Liberal, in his desire for equality and his suspicion of economic power and corporations, must desire to wither away the State and get rid of its predations and assaults it routinely commits on peaceful individuals. Humanity is capable of immense progress only once we put down the guns and reject, once and for all, the fallacious notion that it is anything but intolerable that concentrated units of economic and political power have the right to initiated force and violence against peaceful individuals. THAT is progressivism. That is liberalism.
So how did liberals get so confused and turn to supporting the predacious and un-progressive State as a means to achieve liberal ends? Modern commentators and political observers have been propagandized as to the vital necessity of the State through an education system which, at least as far as US history and political science is concerned, has become nothing more than indoctrination with revisionist history. Most people today just don’t know any better.
A lot of the problem started, however, with the emergence of the Communist and Socialist ideology around the turn of the 20th century. Socialism, far from being a far left ideology, is really a confused, middle of the road economic theory whereby proponents seek to use the modern democratic State to redistribute wealth in order to achieve the progress and desired liberal ends that I outlined above. The problem is that the growth of the State that is facilitated by a public that learns they can loot their neighbors through the political process eventually dries up the prosperity in a society and the entire economy becomes far less prosperous. Not to mention the fiat money creation that is needed to fund a far reaching welfare State actually pernitiously and continuously devalues the currency in circulation and hurts those that are most vulnerable. The result in the latter stages of such a society is that, instead of a “safety net” helping the poor to move up to the middle class, it becomes the only means of subsistence for large numbers of vulnerable people. Fiat money creation causes massive dislocations in the economy, malinvestment that leads to a series of bubbles and eventually in the collapse of the society. Furthermore, it makes “peace” in a way with the oligarchy in that it doesn’t systematically seek to tear down and dismantle a predatory and exploitative power structure but rather just allows a democratic process to “redistribute” some money to some groups thought to be deserving.
If liberalism is on the far Left of the political spectrum and conservatism on the far Right, socialism is in the middle. It essentially validates the existence of the State and the banking system that funds it but seeks to use these conservative tools to move towards egalitarian ends. But like I said, these are fundamentally incompatible and the effort is bound to fail. Communism, at least of the Marxist and Leninist schools of thought, is far more leftist than democratic socialism. Communism has inner contradictions of its own, but Karl Marx actually did a reasonable job in explaining the history of exploitation of workers and the poor by the rich and powerful: the State and vested economic interests that control it. (I highly recommend the essay “Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis” by Hans Hermann Hoppe that elaborates and deconstructs the Marxist analysis of history and class structure.) Communism is not interested in “making peace” with the oligarchy but instead dismantling it entirely. Marx and Lenin also wanted to see the withering away of the State, as they correctly saw it as a tool of businessmen, bankers and others to exploit the workers. Where they failed in their theory was that they then rejected the private ownership of the means of production, which essentially renders property rights meaningless in a Communist society. An inner contradiction in the Communist theory is this: If there is no private property in the means of production how are the workers to collectively run their property and affairs without essentially becoming a State themselves? Without a strict understanding of property rights, a State-less society CANNOT function.
That is why I posit that the true leftist tradition is liberalism as it was understood before the fascist Woodrow Wilson ascended to the presidency. Wilson’s campaign, as it happens, was funded almost entirely by corporate bankers and corrupt politicians like Nelson Aldrich, Cornelius Vanderbilt, JP Morgan, William Rockefeller, and many others. Powerful banking and corporate leaders had been agitating to create a method of isolating themselves from market discipline throughout the latter part of the 19th century. The idea of creating a “lender of last resort”, a central bank that could bail out the large financial institutions if they got into trouble, was routinely condemned by a public and intellectual class that was keenly aware of the admonitions by the founders against central banking and its enabling of inflation and corruption.
So the question that modern liberals must face is this: How can you justify supporting an institution which has historically enabled corporate fascism, corruption, inflation and immense harm being done to societies most vulnerable, the poor and weak?
It is a horrendous tragedy that fiat money, fractional reserve banking and State power have been seen as engines of “progress” for humankind. The banking and corporate interests that took over control of our country’s financial system and government in the early 20th century did an impressive job in promoting the propaganda that its actions were in the interests of the American people, instead of in their own selfish interests to protect themselves against the possibility of bankruptcy and would be competitors in the market.
Another disturbing effect of the revisionism of the history of the early 20th century is the immense distrust that it has stirred on the Left about the free market. The government, we are told, needed to step in to regulate the economy, run the money supply, and intervene into the affairs of private citizens to protect us from the pernicious and rapacious capitalists that would otherwise abuse the average citizens in all sorts of ways. The truth is almost entirely the other way around. It is the large corporate interests and bankers who wanted to escape the free market as it was not serving their interests. The competition was so fierce that the position of a businessman in the market was always tenuous and businessmen do not want to risk bankruptcy. A “partnership” with government is the only way to form a stable monopoly and prevent bankruptcy. The modern regulatory apparatus was pushed by the corporations it purported to police and hold in check. It was regulatory capture from the very outset.
For the average citizens and consumers, this crippled their ability to have a say in which businesses succeed and which fail. A new fascist economy was immune from market pressures and the average citizen has very little ability to resist or fight back against a corporation that is abusing his rights. The modern left might argue, “That is what elections are for. You must elect a new Congress or Senate who will enact tougher regulations to protect the consumers”. The problem of course is that the politicians will inevitably be bought off by the large corporate donors and any forthcoming regulations will be impotent and ineffective at best or coopted to further complicate a labyrinthine regulatory code which hurts small businesses and protects the entrenched interests at worst.
The true liberal will understand that government and corporate interests are not at odds with one another but will always be mutually beneficial to each other. Such a system of fiat money, an expansive State and regulatory apparatus will always reward corrupt business practices and punish honest businessmen. If the only way to compete with a large firm is to immorally take government subsidies and low interest loans from the Federal Reserve, why would you go it alone and sink or swim on your own merits? Early philosophers saw a system of “laissez faire” as the most egalitarian and just way to organize economic life because it became easy for the consumer to single out the business with bad practices and “kick their ass” with the market as opposed to waiting for ethical people in government to vote against their own interests and punish the immoral corporations and banks on your behalf. If you are waiting for a Congress of ethical, selfless and honest individuals who will truly act in the interests of the masses of the people, not just to buy their votes, you will be waiting a very long time. Without the crutch of government support, corrupt and monopolistic businesses could be done away with through consumer action in the market in short order.
So, as a conclusion to the piece, how can you square your goals as a modern progressive with the pernicious and harmful effects of central banking, fiat money, and an expansive government on the most vulnerable, groups that progressives have pandered to for decades as having their best interests at heart? It would seem to me that we should hark back to liberalism as the true revolutionary radical leftism that it once was, and oppose central banking, fiat money, corporate fascism and work to wither away to State and institute a moral and just society based on the non-aggression principle, private property rights, sound money, and tolerance and equality based on Natural Law theory.
What are your reactions to my analysis?