Instead of Fighting, Libertarians and Communists Should Be Working Together

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Misconceptions
     I. Markets and Monopolies

     II. The State and Centralism

     III. Economics

     IV. Politics
     V. Environment and Borders

     VI. Self-Regulation of Firms

3. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction

     Why are libertarians and communists fighting each other instead of working together?

     Karl Marx said that "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". These are not words which you might expect would come out of the mouth of a communist. The quote seems to imply that the collective has a duty to satisfy the individual's needs, and perhaps even his wants. But Marx did say it (in Chapter 2 of The Communist Manifesto).
     It's easy to imagine why individualist anarchist Max Stirner might have agreed with this sentiment. After all, Stirner said "If it is said socialistically, society gives me what I require - then the egoist says, I take what I require."
     Despite Stirner's association with the mostly left-wing Young Hegelians, he has become somewhat of a hero to anarcho-capitalists (possibly owing somewhat to his financially disastrous ownership of a milk shop).
     Marx's pro-individualist statement, and Stirner's popularity among right-libertarians, should cause us to wonder whether libertarians and communists can get along after all, and whether their relationship can be salvaged, and their differences resolved.
     I believe that they can. But first, students of these schools of thought must continue their education, increase their level of discourse with rival schools, and resolve and clarify long-standing misconceptions about the supposed irreconcilability of libertarian and communist thinking on economic and political matters.

2. Misconceptions

     Among those misconceptions are the following.

I. Markets and Monopolies

     Communists shouldn't worry about truly free markets.

     Free markets don't have to result in super-profits or monopolies. The rewards of competition are only permanent when there is a monopoly on the recognition of legitimate property claims (i.e., a state). When the state registers property claims, it promises the legitimate use of force against people who contest other people's property claims. Otherwise, the rewards for competition are permanent and markets are free, all resources would be capable of being competed for, and contested.

     Unnatural monopolies cannot be sustained without willingness to use violence. Without the use of the state as a violent tool of repression, the private sector would have to protect itself, and work to support itself and maintain its own properties. Instead, the private sector colludes with the state to subtly deprive and impoverish people into being "willing" to perform that labor for reduced wages.

     But this "will" is not truly voluntary; it is acceding and begrudging acceptance, when enthusiastic consent should be the standard. Make no mistake, libertarians: wage-theft and wage-slavery are real, and the augmentation of the economic pressure felt by the poor is undeniably coercive - and therefore in violation of the Non-Aggression Principle - because it is being done with the help of the state.

     But not all private-sector entities reap profits. The non-profit sector, and workers' cooperatives, do not reap profits, are largely outside the realms of both the public state sector and the for-profit private sector. Non-profits and workers' cooperatives are thus "private" in the sense that they are not state actors, but they could also be described as not private, but only to the extent that "private" implies being in business for profit (which it does not necessarily imply).



II. The State and Centralism

     Lenin clarified in The State and Revolution that Engels was more consistent than Marx about wanting community control rather than state control. Marxists do oppose the state, at least as we now know it (i.e., the bourgeois-controlled ultra-nationalist state). The "state" which the Marxists and Leninists support - and want to replace the current state, and then gradually wither away after revolution - is arguably not a state at all, since it would be comprised of the masses of people acting in voluntary cooperation with one another. This "proletarian state" - a state of affairs in which the people have the power and proliferate freely without fear that their children will become slaves - could hardly be described as either a state, or as any sort of monopoly.

     So communists and libertarians both oppose the state, and centralization, and fascism. Moreover, Lenin also let people trade in markets temporarily during economic crises (i.e., Lenin's New Economic Policy of 1922). Libertarians and communists both support decentralization, as well as geographical political autonomy. The voluntary building of intentional communities, and their secession from larger units of government, therefore furthers both libertarian and communist goals.

III. Economics

     Redistribution doesn't have to be done by the state, and it doesn't have to harm workers or the poor. Redistribution can and should be done through the community, whether it expresses itself as a public sector entity or market entity. But only the ill-gotten wealth of government contractors and artificial monopolies - and what has been legally or illegally stolen from the public or the commons - should be redistributed back to the people.

     Both the communist and libertarian schools of thought are equally tolerant of libertarian Marxism, Murray Bookchin's libertarian communalism, Georgism, geo-libertarianism, Mutualism, voluntary syndicalism, physiocracy, left-wing market-anarchism, platformist anarchism, free-market anti-capitalism, and post-scarcity economics. The Alliance of the Libertarian Left, must take shape, but also heed criticism coming from the libertarian right; while the right heeds the criticism of the Left.

IV. Politics

     Austrian economics and Austromarxism should be taught side by side, because total freedom of choice includes political and economic freedom. Also, market-anarchists like Molinari and Marxist Otto Bauer both promoted panarchism, the freedom to choose your political association without changing your location.

     Libertarians and far-leftists should talk about how the Constitution can be amended. If that doesn't happen, then leftists will scream demands to vote away everyone's right to have guns and private health insurance, without caring whether it's even legal to "force the vote" on a given topic in the first place. Until leftists receive constitutional education from the libertarian right, permanent national reform on health, retirement, education, environment, land management, housing, and energy will be all but impossible.

V. Environment and Borders

     Once libertarians and communists educate one another, they should support the abolition of states and the U.S. Senate, and their replacement with bioregionalist states (such as Cascadia). This will reduce competition over water resources and water regulation, and reduce the need for (and expense involved in maintaining) artificial borders.

     This will in turn reduce interruptions in the flow of commerce, making goods less expensive. A Georgist or Mutualist economy will also drastically reduce taxes on income and sales, decreasing prices even further. Automation, overproduction, and cessation of government hoarding of land and resources, will accelerate this process. Carl Menger’s writing on how abundance results in low prices, makes him essential reading for both left-libertarians and students of Austrian economics.

VI. Self-Regulation of Firms

     “Free market” does not have to mean “not regulated at all”. Consumers are not being allowed to do their part to help keep the markets free, because consumers are not fully free to boycott without government permission.
     Markets regulated through consumers' freedom to refuse to buy a product, would regulate monopolies out of existence, especially in the absence of a state. We currently don't have the freedom to refuse to buy some products, though (namely, identification, and everything that the government bails out and subsidizes, like health insurance).
     This means that our right to boycott is being inhibited unfairly, through the threat of violent enforcement of the law (i.e., of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947), and through the process of taxation and subsidization (i.e., extorting working people for money, and handing their income over to companies they might wish to withhold their money from).
     This must end; Taft-Hartley must be repealed, and subsidies to all for-profit agencies (and possibly some non-profit agencies as well) should cease as soon as possible.
     Self-regulation exists as well; for example, in the form of voluntary recalls.

     The libertarians want society and the economy to be self-regulated, and they want firms to be self-regulating too, if possible. Is that so absurd, communists? When you believe workers' cooperatives can manage themselves just the same?

     Socializing workplaces without the help of the state, and organizing large numbers of individuals to unionize together into a union of private contractors - while demanding the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, and insisting on the irrelevance of the National Labor Relations Board in permitting or denying strikes - would drastically increase union participation, and recognize the right to boycott again, but without empowering the state. Additionally, it would achieve mass ownership of the means of production which would be held by collectives and cooperatives, while at the same time, that ownership could also be described as "private" (in the sense that those means would not be state-owned).




3. Conclusion

     Without the state, markets would be free from monopolies, and the commons would not be eroded by the public sector inviting-in statism, monopoly, and hoarding of natural resources by "public" politicians and bureaucrats secretly serving private interests which are a mix of their own and their cronies and beneficiaries. Less state interference in society, the market, and the environment will result in a clearer separation of the public and private sectors, and in the growth of additional sectors of which most people are scarcely aware (i.e., the commons, the club sector, and the voluntary / charity / third sector).

     While the Georgists say "Tax land, not man" and "Tax bads, not goods", Lenin's advice is to regulate goods but not people. Although this may seem like the opposite of Georgism, it at least fulfills the libertarians' desire that society go unregulated by external means. And despite these little differences, at least now, we can all agree that something must be taxed and regulated less, but that the centralized state shouldn't do it. We just can't exactly agree on which things should be taxed and regulated less.

     Once society and economic production become uncontrolled by violent state monopolies, "external political governance" (as Lenin put it) will become unnecessary.

     This "withering away of the state" should be our long-term goal, after an era of political upheaval which can either be described as revolutionary, or at least drastic and radical in its degree of reform. Such reform must wholly abolish the monopolistic, territorial, and violent nature of the governing bodies, however, in order to be said to have truly achieved the abolition of the state (inasmuch as it is a local monopoly on the legitimate use of force).

     Disarming and demilitarizing the police (or at least empowering the people to defend themselves and police their own communities in some manner) - in addition to decentralizing political organization, ending unnatural and artificial borders, and ending or reforming illegitimate state governments - will do wonders to start us on the path of abolishing the most egregious abuses which are characteristic of the modern bourgeois nation-state.

     But all of this is only possible - according to the beliefs of both libertarians and communists - once the people become educated enough to regulate themselves and make wiser decisions. We need political, economic, social, and productive technical education. Free development of the individual and the community - and the free development and exchange of libertarian and communist thought - are impossible without them.

Written on April 27th, 2021

Originally posted to the Facebook group
"Communists vs. Libertarians Debate Group"
on April 27th, 2021

Edited and Expanded on April 28th and 30th, 2021