Can leftists and libertarians find common ground in opposition to exploitation?
This essay proposes that a model for such common ground is the 19th-century Individualist Anarchism of Benjamin Tucker.
Individualist Anarchism sees the exploitation of certain groups or classes as the visible symptom of a deeper problem whose root cause is coercive monopoly. The individualist does not sanction the use of force to fight the symptom, but only to fight the coercive root cause itself. Non-coercive monopolies are to be opposed only through peaceful and cooperative means, such as innovation and education.
Even if we could all agree that individual liberty is the most important liberty, and that we are going to define this individual liberty negatively, as freedom from something -- we can still disagree on what it is that liberty is individual freedom from.
While individualist libertarians have been clear for over a century that liberty must mean freedom from coercion, they have not always been successful in demonstrating the critical distinction between coercion and exploitation, which can be seen as the central evil for all stripes of leftists.
In its value-neutral sense, 'exploitation' just means to use, as in "exploiting resources" or "exploiting information". But in political and moral dialog, 'exploitation' is never value-neutral, and means something like "taking advantage of a person".
The words 'advantage' and 'person' are critical here.
While leftists may not define the concept of 'rights' the same way libertarians do, they still maintain a distinction between those entities that do have rights and those that don't. A "person" then is someone with rights. Exploiting a house or a rock or a plot of land is not at issue. What we object to is the exploitation of persons.
Simply put, exploitation should be impossible between equals. To exploit persons is to use an advantage over them -- to their disadvantage.
People will disagree about what is and isn't exploitation, even after an attempt to define the term precisely. Who is a person? What counts as an advantage? What counts as a disadvantage?
It's a safe bet that we won't come to universal agreement on these questions -- and contemporary libertarian individualists don't mind that, since the only question they generally ask in each of the above cases is, "Was the exchange entered into under voluntary contract, or was it the result of coercion?"
This principled position rings hollow in the ears of those who want to champion the exploited.
There is, however, an approach to the question of exploitation that should count as common cause for leftists and libertarians alike. It is the approach that the Individualist Anarchists took at the end of the 19th century. Specifically, Benjamin Tucker's campaign against Interest and Usury can serve as a model for how to address questions of exploitation in general -- and how to distinguish them from more obvious examples of coercion.
Benjamin Tucker was the central figure among the individualist anarchists of the United States -- recognized both by the "American Proudhonians" themselves, and by European anarcho-communists, such as Peter Kropotkin.
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The position taken in Tucker's journal, Liberty, was that anarchists were socialists who rejected the State (as is still the contention of contemporary social anarchists) and that Landlordism and Usury (profit from charging interest) were exploitations of the working class.
State socialism (e.g., Marxism) was, Tucker argued, the contradictory position that coercive monopolies could only be defeated by the creation of "one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly," (i.e., the State) whereas anarchistic or anti-State socialism was simply the position "that labor should be put in possession of its own."
The anarchist position, according to Tucker, was the abolition of both "invasion" (i.e. coercion) and exploitation (e.g. profit from interest) by maximizing equal liberty for individuals -- where "liberty" is understood to mean the negative freedom of classical liberalism: freedom from coercion.
Contemporaries -- both opponents and sympathizers -- pointed out that Tucker's conception of anarchism was the logical conclusion of liberalism and the only fully consistent philosophy of individualism. (Half a century earlier, Henry David Thoreau had come to the same conclusion.)
The socialist culture of the left, both statist and anarchist, tends toward collectivism in both philosophy and economics: classes are seen as the relevant entities for ethical and political consideration. Tucker was a plumb-line individualist, believing that rights and responsibilities could belong only to individual persons.
Libertarian individualists will never join the ideological battle to liberate collective entities whose existence they see as fictional, but leftists should be willing to join the libertarians in a fight against the exploitation of individuals -- assuming that libertarians, as a movement, can be convinced to take the issue of exploitation seriously.
But if the left is somewhat suspicious of individualism, they are actively and ardently against talk of "free markets" and derisive of suggestions that economic liberalism can ever be in the best interest of the laboring classes.
Meanwhile, libertarians -- who frequently adopt the term 'capitalist' as if it were an ideological category -- are repelled by Tucker's attacks on capitalism. How then, can Benjamin Tucker's philosophy ever serve as common ground for two groups who both reject his rhetoric?
Neither leftists nor libertarians are in the habit of distinguishing the terms 'free market' and 'capitalism'. One is seen as synonymous for the other. And yet Tucker advocated free markets and opposed capitalism. Understanding his distinction is the key to uniting against the evils of exploitation.
The contemporary individualist anarchist, Robert Anton Wilson, has claimed that the Libertarian Party has embraced 75% of Tucker's philosophy.
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The remaining 25% would presumably consist of the anarchist opposition to the "the ballot-box" and Tucker's lifelong attacks against Capitalism and Interest.
In a talk delivered at the library of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, November 20, 2000, Wendy McElroy argued for the inclusion of American Anarchism in the historical legacy of modern libertarianism:
Individualist anarchism doesn't seem to be a good fit with the other building blocks of libertarianism for the simple reason that its proponents -- like most 19th century radicals -- embraced a labor theory of value and rejected capitalism.
By this, I don't mean merely that they stood against State capitalism -- the alliance between government and business. They rejected actual capitalism, the making of profit through capital in practices such as charging interest on loans. And, yet, one of the points I want to drive home today is that individualist anarchism was profoundly free market and that its anti-capitalism is not the ideological barrier it is usually considered to be.
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/talks/americananarchism.html
Evidence for McElroy's claim "that individualist anarchism was profoundly free market" can be found in Tucker's most famous and influential essay, State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ:
For these and other reasons Proudhon and Warren found themselves unable to sanction any such plan as the seizure of capital by society. But, though opposed to socializing the ownership of capital, they aimed nevertheless to socialize its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of impoverishing the many to enrich the few. And when the light burst in upon them, they saw that this could be done by subjecting capital to the natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down to cost, - that is, to nothing beyond the expenses incidental to handling and transferring it. So they raised the banner of Absolute Free Trade; free trade at home, as well as with foreign countries; the logical carrying out of the Manchester doctrine; laissez faire the universal rule.
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This paragraph from Tucker shows Josiah Warren, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Tucker himself as "free market socialists" -- who believe that "laissez faire the universal rule" will, in effect, socialize not ownership of capital, but the effects of such ownership, by matching the traditional competition in labor with a truly libertarian competition in capital, currency and credit.
McElroy is right to focus on both Tucker's self-professed socialism and on his opposition to capitalism, but I believe the distinction she makes between "State capitalism" and "actual capitalism" is overstated, and not one that Tucker himself would have recognized.
(It is Ms. McElroy's powerful rhetorical habit to argue against a statement such as "X causes Y" by granting strong versions of X and showing that Y still does not follow, thus Even though Tucker et al. were opponents to true capitalism, we must nevertheless recognize them as staunch supporters of a true free market and therefore as forebears of the modern libertarian movement.)
The claim that Tucker opposed capitalism seems to rest on two arguments:
In response to argument 1 -- which seems at first to be the only argument necessary -- I will simply point out that the 19th-century individualist anarchist definition of 'capitalism' was a monopoly on capital in the context of competition in labor. For Tucker, not only was capitalism defined without the term 'free market' but it was defined in such a way as to stand in opposition to a true free market. As for "State capitalism," if Tucker hadn't considered the term redundant, he might well have seen the emphasis of the word "State" as describing only Who it is that's maintaining the coercive monopoly.
In response to argument 2, we must return to the term 'exploitation' and see how, precisely, the individualist anarchists saw it in relation to coercion and "invasion".
Tucker did consider profit from interest to be illegitimate -- a form of parasitism by bankers on workers -- but he did not see interest itself as coercive. Instead he saw the status quo of profit on interest in 19th century America to be the result of the coercive monopolies sponsored and maintained by the State. Tucker makes this distinction clear in his essay, The Abolition of Interest, in which he replies to a letter stating the writer's apprehension to the anarchists' call for an abolition of interest.
My enquiring friend [...] supposes the Anarchists to condemn the contract between the borrower and the lender, per se; whereas the truth is that they condemn, not the contract, but the conditions of compulsory restriction and limitation under which such contract is now necessarily made if made at all, and in the absence of which it would be prevented, not by law or by invasion of any kind, but by simple competition, from embodying the element of interest on capital.
Take the case which she cites [of a cook 'loaning her savings to a young man who needed some ready cash']. No Anarchist disputes that it is perfectly legitimate for the young man in question to borrow either of the cook or of the bank upon such terms as may be agreed upon in a free market. The complaint of Anarchism is that the market is not free, and that the transactions effected therein are necessarily tainted with injustice. At present, if the young man borrows, whether of the cook or of the bank, the terms of contract are dictated to his disadvantage, by means of a legal privilege or monopoly enjoyed by the bank.
[Emphasis added]
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In other words, individuals should be free to enter any voluntary arrangement they choose, but we need to recognize when outside coercive forces (e.g. the State) are limiting the options available to those individuals. Even absent direct coercion, we would say that individuals are exploited because of the lack of options available to them. The belief of the Individualist Anarchists was that a true free market -- a system of open competition in capital, currency and credit as well as in labor and services -- would maximize the options for everyone, whereas State-sponsored monopolies were creating artificial scarcity to the advantage of the money-lenders.
Tucker's concept of "transactions ... tainted with injustice" is as good a definition of 'exploitation' as any offered earlier in this essay.
He makes clear, across decades of his career, that his aim is the abolition of exploitation, but he does not see the exploitation itself as the injustice -- he sees it as a symptom of the deeper injustice whose root cause is the institutionalized coercion of the State.
'Justice' for the individualist anarchists is defined as equal liberty -- "the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with the equality of liberty" [Tucker] -- and the deeper injustice is whatever use of force denies that equal liberty.
In conclusion, then, let us return to our list of candidates for exploitation. Let us assume that the prostitute is not a slave, that the gambler is not a literal prisoner of the casino, etc. Let us, in other words, study only those candidates for exploitation that are not also victims of direct coercion.
Is the prostitute's situation "tainted with injustice"?
Only if, as Tucker would say, "the terms of contract are dictated to [her] disadvantage".
The question becomes,
Does a coercive context force her to negotiate on unequal footing?
A woman in the 19th century may have had few alternatives for decent income. The woman of the 21st century, we hope, has fewer obstacles and more options. And if she doesn't, then the question must be how to maximize her options -- not how to limit her yet further.
If anyone is reducing the prostitute's options, it's the coercive cops, not her contractual clients.
(For more on this particular issue, see McElroy's excellent talk on "Selling Sexuality".)
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/talks/
Do drug dealers exploit their customers?
In the context of the current legal prohibition, the answer is certainly Yes -- in exactly the same way that the bootleggers of a previous prohibition were able to exploit their customers. Without the coercive presence of the State, the consumers of drugs are no more exploited than are the current consumers of alcohol -- or the current consumers of any freely available product that may once have been banned by the State.
And finally:
Does the banker exploit his customers?
To the degree that the borrower's options have been limited by an un-free market in credit and currency, the borrower of today is as much the victim of exploitation as was the borrower of Tucker's era.
In each case, we come to see that the apparent exploitation -- of the seller, buyer, and borrower, respectively -- are not the fault of their corresponding buyer, seller, or lender, but of the intervening third party who restrictively limits the conditions of contract by coercing one side to the advantage of the other.
The level of exploitation is inversely proportional to the number of viable options available, assuming the missing options would be available in a robust and diverse system of voluntary exchange -- i.e., a free market!
(A full exploration of the other candidates -- pornography, gambling, tobacco, bosses, landlords -- I leave as an exercise for the reader.)
Conclusion:
The modern libertarian is obliged to recognize the evils of exploitation wherever they result from the coercive monopolies that the libertarian already opposes. The contemporary leftist would be wise to study the distinctions between root causes and symptoms, and to battle symptomatic exploitation only through the championing and education of its potential victims, through work toward an increase in the diversity of their options, and through strong opposition to the coercive monopolies at the center of the injustice.
