Solidarity Between Libertarians and Socialists: Achieving Freedom and Equality Through Bottom Unity

     We can distribute resources equitably, without resorting to hierarchy or violence, as long as people know how much they're entitled to, as a share of the Earth's resources.
     Each one of us is entitled to our share of Earth's resources - as a fraction of the human population - as property; plus whatever we can produce, through using and developing that share, plus our use and development of our own talent, skills, and intellects.


     In order to distribute resources equitably, and to understand "whose is what", we need to stop thinking in terms of "private or public" and realize that there are more sectors of the economy, and more types of property ownership, than just these two categories.
     Club goods are being neglected. So is the voluntary third sector, the sector of charity and social purpose enterprises. So is the commons; which comprises nearly the entire category of the factor of production which we call "land" (the others being labor and capital).
     Private-public partnerships exist as well, as do N.G.O.s (non-governmental organizations), and Q.U.A.N.G.O.s (quasi-nongovernmental organizations).
     We must expand our knowledge about rivalry and excludability of resources, economic sectors, types of ownership, and forms of mixed economies and economic systems aside from capitalism and socialism, if we want to achieve anything resembling economic mobility in the future.

     The United Kingdom has depoliticized its environmental affairs through having quasi-non-governmental agencies decide on environmental regulation instead of voting. It has also depoliticized other scientific, financial, and juridical duties.
     As long as depoliticization can be done without succumbing to the evils of privatization, we can have science-based policies that establish health and safety standards which cannot be voted away. These policies should be added to the Constitution via amendments, so that they can be permanent rather than temporary, and cannot be tampered with without the overwhelming agreement of the supermajority.

     I support depoliticization of land and environment and resource related issues - basically having panels of scientists determine scientific and environmental policy through consensus-building - and bioregionalism, as ways to achieve more balanced distribution of natural resources.

     Private property does not exist at the mercy of the community; nor should the community be viewed as merely a private club made up of, and serving only, those who own property. Instead, the community and private owners recognize one another's legitimacy when they come to mutually beneficial agreements about whose is what.

     As such, anything that is unfairly monopolized, or owned and leveraged to the detriment of the community, should be occupied by the people who can rightfully claim that they are harmed by the continued ownership of any firms which may be unfairly exploiting labor, land, and natural resources. This occupation should always be done through the use of non-violent resistance.

     The notion that the Earth is common to all men, and can be shared equitably, can be realized and revived, as long as the spirit of giving and sharing does not die in the hearts of private owners.

     World land area divided by human population comes out to 4.8 acres per person. Which means that a four-person family can own 19.2 acres. But room must be left over for animals and plants, and future human population (which will increase, so the number of acres per person will decrease accordingly).
     This 4.8 acre per person rule tells us that any one person with 20 acres should allow at least three people to live on his property. Until then, he should either have a family, give up some of his land, let people forage and glean on his property, or compensate the community for monopolizing more resources than he needs.

     Libertarianism and socialism - or private property and community, or production and environmentalism - are not antithetical to one another. Furthermore, the mere fact that people associate with one another, does not make them "socialists".

     Libertarian socialists - and non-socialistic libertarians, too - want the same thing. We all want voluntary association and voluntary cooperation. We want cooperation to occur solely on totally voluntary terms. And those terms must be mutually beneficial to all parties involved.

     This is why Mutualist economics will guide libertarians and socialists to the right economic ethics. Mutualist economics do not reject private property, nor do they reject markets. But Mutualists still realize that not all property which exists, and is claimed, was rightfully earned. When a market is rigged, Mutualists will criticize this fact, and note that freedom and fairness of markets (and money) lie in their transparency and accessibility.

     Libertarian free-marketers and libertarian socialists have a reason to work together, because of people like Barry Goldwater and his speechwriter Karl Hess, who agreed that voluntarism is the prerequisite for cooperation. They agreed that no barriers should be raised against the freedom not to associate (libertarianism), and also that no barriers should be raised against the freedom to associate (voluntary cooperation / voluntary "socialism").

     We must oppose redistribution by the state, but that does not mean we must oppose all activity by all cooperatives and communes and collectives. The individual and collective drive for self-improvement results in a distribution, but not a redistribution. The economic system of distributism calls for everyone to be capitalists; this is what libertarians must want, for everyone to share in the American dream of owning property outright, and being wealthy enough to create jobs, if they wish to do so.

     Autonomous communes maximize decentralization, which brings governance closer to the individual. Collective enterprises reduce risk and reinvest profits, thus reducing the need for taxation, making it easier for the collective enterprise to self-govern. There is no reason why collectivists and libertarians should be arguing about the ability of an enterprise to govern itself; some forms of communism are based on the idea that a collective can be partially self-governing (as long as it coordinates with other collectives). If this coordination is done voluntarily, and markets are not prohibited, then markets and communism would exist side by side with little conflict.

     Through decentralizing property, and decentralizing governance, we can maximize productivity, and minimize the punishments and fees and fines which are levied in exchange for the privilege to produce.

     For libertarians to oppose redistribution, means that we oppose the legalized theft from the taxpayers, to give to either the wealthy or the poor. But at the same time, we must consider that much more taxpayer money has been wasted propping-up the military and large corporations, in comparison to how much has been spent on lifting the poor out of poverty.

     That is why the Libertarian Party must agree with Rand Paul that not a dime should be cut from the social safety net until all corporate welfare is eliminated. Or else the party must doom itself to being labeled "to the right of the Republican Party".

     We must not pretend that the poor don't share an inordinate burden of the sales taxes. The poor bear an inordinate burden of taxes overall, due to their sales tax burden.

     Opposing redistribution also means that we cannot allow companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, to keep the wealth they extracted from the pockets of the poor with the state's help.

     These companies are monopolies, they receive taxpayer subsidies and tons of favors, and the fact that they receive taxpayer money is not constitutional. Wealthy companies "redistribute" wealth upwards, away from the poor. But the fact that it is redistribution, should not lead us to believe that this "socialism for the rich" resembles actual socialism in any way. If the state is performing the redistribution, rather than society, then it is statism, not socialism.

     The point being: If not for public charters, these monopolistic companies would not even formally exist, as far as the government (a private corporation, for financial purposes) is concerned. Americans could easily do away with the problem of military-industrial complex monopolies by prohibiting the Department of Defense from making a contract with any military components producing firm which wields more than 5% of the market share. That would not be a limitation on the market, but rather a limitation upon our monopolistic, violent, corrupt government.

     Communities have every right to require companies to perform some stated, transparent social purpose - or else a fee, or allowing the community to hold stock in the company, setting up mutual funds in the company, or something - in exchange for the public assistance and property protection they receive. This is not communism; it is a user fee based system.

     That's why Land Value Taxation, bolstered by user fees and voluntary contributions, are the way to go. No more tinkering around with income, consumption, or sales taxes. Eliminate investment taxes as soon as the stock markets are no longer rigged.

     The conditions necessary for total equality and total liberty are the same. We must either embrace the law and achieve equal protection under the law, or else we must become so totally free that we are equal in that freedom. The equality of opportunity must be so great that we no longer argue over how to distribute resources because each individual person's productive potential would be so great.

     We must put aside our differences, and oppose fascism, centralization, and monopoly. We will not fight each other after they are defeated; but rather we will build our own communities as we please, whether together or separately, but always in peace.

     Bottom Unity now.

Written as two Facebook posts on February 22nd, 2021

Edited and Expanded on February 22nd, 2021

Published on February 22nd, 2021