By Cake Boy

The Libertarian Party in this country campaigns on an anti-bureaucracy slogan. They want to get a saw through the government and cut costs.

Some things to say about this. Often, libertarians say they are against the government, but in reality, they don’t really act like they are. They just want a smaller government. This is a bit confusing. In their statements, sometimes it looks like they are anarchists, and other times they seem like basic neoliberals or classical liberals.

The libertarian movement has a state wing and an anarchist wing—the latter in its Rothbardian form. To most people, this Rothbard story is a bit too much and a bit too far-fetched. So, it’s understandable that people go for the ‘minarchist’ wing of libertarianism. But this ‘minarchism’ is, in practice, not that different from neoliberalism. People don’t see the difference between basic neoliberalism. So, their anarchism doesn’t work, and their liberalism just gets absorbed by republicanism/neoliberalism/populism.

So, the libertarians now say there are too many bureaucrats. They are actually right with this, in my view. I would say most bureaucrats could go home, and nothing would change.

Governments tend to grow larger on their own. Because it gets free money by taking taxes, everyone wants to be part of the institution that receives this pile of cash. Bureaucrats hire bureaucrats, who hire bureaucrats. They make sure they get the good jobs and join the right circles. In a way, this libertarian critique of bureaucracy was also formulated in a leftist form by someone like David Graeber. Graeber talked about bullshit jobs. Libertarians and Graeber are right that a lot of jobs are bullshit jobs. A country really needs farmers, nurses, soldiers, and teachers. But it doesn’t require an endless number of bureaucratic departments. And the infinite layers of overpaid, useless managers.

In this country, people want to be part of the financial or government sectors. Nobody wants to be a producer. Because the money is not in the producing class. The money is always there where people do not produce, do nothing. These were people who took, not made. The government takes, the banks take, from the working and middle classes. This is a paradox in the heart of neoliberalism.

Strangely, only the libertarians have this critique of bureaucracy. I mean, you can also imagine that socialists would be critical about it. A socialist/progressive state could also be a minarchist state. The problem of a too-big government is something both the left and the right have to deal with. It’s not just a rightwing issue. A social democracy can also lead to a state that becomes too big. And the neoliberalists in the 80s were somewhat right that the social democratic state could become too big. But the same goes for the states they made. So, it’s an issue that’s deeper than the right or the left. And an issue that’s tough to deal with.

Libertarians here don’t really get much support. Anarchists don’t vote, and neoliberals/rightwingers vote for the kind of MAGA parties. So, libertarians fall between a rock and a hard place. The libertarian movement turned into a sort of vague, quasi-business, quasi-anarchist kind of party.

Libertarians see a problem with government, but not with usury. It’s ok when landlords create rent economies. Libertarians say: there is no free lunch. But they are ok with a landlord class taking all the money people make, without doing anything for it. When you say you think it’s not just that people pay these enormous rents in this period of time, then they say that you are ‘lazy’ and you’re just jealous. They are always on the side of landlords and speculators, because, to them, these people are ‘productive’ —even though they don’t produce anything (they withhold).

Libertarian economic theories are often a bit vulgar. They make simplistic statements about ‘free choice’. And ‘free markets’.They tend not to see the bigger picture. They forget about the context in which human relations take place. Without this structural analysis, their theories remain idealistic. They say things like, “You own yourself and your property.” To many people in this culture, this sounds very good. But it doesn’t get to the core of social issues.

Libertarians function as a sort of propaganda for Friedman-style neoliberal conditions. The neocons and democrats tell us about ‘free choice and property’, and the so-called ‘rebellious’ libertarians tell us the same story.

Still, some of the libertarian talking points are right, and other parties could integrate some of these issues—for example, their critique of a government that gets too big, and their ideas around cryptocurrencies.

I think it would be good if there were a party that synthesized socialist and libertarian sentiments.

Both socialists and libertarians are sometimes right, in different ways, for various reasons. You want the capitalist/monopoly critique of socialism and the libertarians’ skepticism towards big government. Yes, monopoly/landlordism/rent economy is a problem (as socialists say), and yes, government/bureaucracy tends to become too big (as libertarians say).

Socialism is right that capitalism/landlordism expropriates the masses, and libertarianism is right that governments often corrupt. So if you create a socialist state, it needs to be a state in which the government is as small as possible. It only does the basic things that people really need. It’s, of course, very hard to actually create such a state. As I already said, states tend to grow larger on their own. It has its own mechanism, separate from any ideology.

Maybe in the future, there could be some synthesis between libertarianism and the left, like in a Hegelian manner.

Liberalism/capitalism was the thesis, socialism was the antithesis, and the synthesis could be something in between.

Maybe the tensions and frictions we notice these days stem from the fact that this synthesis hasn’t been born yet.

Capitalism was the thesis, Marxism/Leninism was the antithesis. Both are outdated, both are bankrupt. We don’t believe in Wall Street/American imperialism, but we also don’t think so in Lenin. The synthesis isn’t born yet.

I think thinkers like Proudhon, George, and Sorel were thinking in this synthesis direction. What they wrote about was neither socialism nor capitalism. Their systems have the freedom of liberalism, but the anti-capitalism of socialism.

I think these kinds of thinkers are underrated. I guess they were thinking in the right direction. In a way, they were the ‘radical middle’. A position in politics that people tend to forget.  And a position that could maybe formulate new political fundamentals?

These are my philosophical speculations for today.