Reconciling Libertarianism and Reformism

Libertarianism needs practicality and credibility, which is what reformism is good at

Today, I am going to talk about my project to reconcile libertarianism and reformism.

On one hand, I have been sympathetic to libertarian thinking for more than 20 years, even though I have to acknowledge that libertarian immediatism is not realistic at all, and the dominance of immediatists have seriously harmed the popularity of libertarianism. I first became interested in libertarianism during the 2003 Iraq War, when the right was trying to silence anti-war and anti-Bush speech, including the infamous cancellation of the Dixie Chicks. Given that we live in a moment where the postmodern left practices cancel culture regularly, and the populist right thrives on banning books, drag queens, abortion and even masks, it is clear that society needs a big dose of libertarianism ASAP. We need to make libertarianism credible and popular again for this to happen.

On the other hand, over my observation and involvement in the Western political landscape of the past 21 years, I have gradually come to develop an appreciation of reformism. I believe the heart and soul of reformism is basically the classical liberal belief that society and people's lives can be made better via empiricism and rationality, tempered by the Burkean conservative view that any change should be based on practical needs rather than abstract ideas, and should be gradualist and consistent with a given society's traditions rather than revolutionary and abrupt. Note that genuine Burkean conservative philosophy, developed in response to the events of the French Revolution, is very different from what so-called conservative political parties represent today. I have stated this point many times in the past, but it bears repeating, because this is very important to understand. Anyway, over the years I have come to the firm conclusion that only a reformist politics can provided sustainable progress for society, by avoiding both misguided radicalism and reactionary backlash.

The first problem we have here is that most libertarian thinking that has been developed over the past few decades, especially the so-called libertarianism of the 2010s, is fundamentally faulty on some level, which makes it support the opposite of liberty some point down the line. In the 1980s-90s the beltway libertarians and their obsession with cutting government dominated. These people ended up doing nothing to advance individual liberty per se, and some even sided with the Bush administration's 2003 Iraq War, which was a total sellout of libertarian values. On the other side were the paleolibertarians, a faction that were steadfast in their anti-war beliefs but sided with far-right paleoconservatives on most other issues. This paleolibertarianism was the precursor to what became known as the 'libertarian to alt-right' pipeline in the 2010s, and was arguably the precursor to neoreaction thinking, which is clearly not libertarian at all. Later on, there was 'anarcho-capitalism', which is a very extreme form of libertarianism that opposes government in all its forms, and fantasizes about things like private police and fire departments. I think it is this kind of extremism that eventually gave rise to the conspiracy thinking that ultimately discredited libertarianism by around 2020.

The second problem we have is that most of the libertarian thinking that has been developed over the past few decades is simply incompatible with reformism. They all want government gone, and right now. This, I think, is the reason for both the unprincipledness and the tendency towards extremism. Therefore, to make libertarianism credible again, it needs to be realigned towards the reformist philosophy. And it's not as difficult as some might think. As I said before, reformism is basically liberal rationality plus conservative cautiousness and gradualism. Both the classical liberal emphasis of rationality, and the conservative emphasis that reform should be based on practical needs rather than abstract ideas, can modify libertarianism to make it more reformist and practical. This, in turn, would make it more credible, and hopefully more popular. By making libertarianism credible and popular again, we can build a strong bulwark to prevent both the illiberal left and the illiberal right from crushing individual freedom with their culture war agendas.

To reconcile libertarianism and reformism, I believe we need to further develop the philosophy of both traditions more fully. In particular, we need to separate the core strands of thinking of both traditions from what has been happening in the crazy politics of the past 10-15 years. From there, we need to identify the common ground between the two traditions, and the areas  where they might be able to supplement each other. Right now, I can think of attention to the complexities of reality, respect for different opinions, and compassion as a few areas of common ground between libertarians and reformists. I'm sure there are more to discover. This will be a major focus of my work going forward.

Towards a Politics of Meaning and Hope

We need to start by acknowledging the limitations and opportunities of life

Recently, I've been focusing on the fact that a lot of the politics out there, from both the left and the right, are deeply negative. On the left, it is mainly caused by postmodern critical theory and its oppressor vs oppressed, power is everywhere narrative. On the right, it is the endless moral panics, outrage-based populism and conspiracy theories. Both sides paint a bleak future, and radicalize their followers towards a destructive extremism using fear. I think the only thing that can save us from all this is a positive vision. what we need is a politics of meaning and hope.

So how can we have a politics of meaning and hope? First of all, we need to have meaningful, achievable goals. One of the biggest problems with the left right now is that it is basically living in fantasy land. It wants to build a utopia that simply can't exist, and wouldn't mind heightening conflict and deconstructing everything we have to get there. The repeated failures of this project has brought about a well-known phenomenon of left melancholy. The lesson is that setting unachievable goals based primarily on theoretical philosophy is not a constructive way to move forward.

Instead, we have to start with reality as it exists. And part of that reality is that life is suffering, at least to some degree. This has been true throughout history. Suffering is part of life, and it can't be extinguished by politics, as history has clearly shown. Trying to do so would only bring about more unnecessary suffering. This is the reason why utopian dreams are so scary. On the other hand, although life is suffering, we can lessen the suffering, both for people alive right now, and for generations of people to come. Objectively speaking, life consists of less suffering right now compared with back in the middle ages, and we have the hard work of many people across the generations to thank for this.

Therefore, to put it simply, the limitation of life is that we can't escape the fact that life is suffering, but the opportunity here is that we can lessen the suffering, both in the here and now, and for the future of humanity too. This, I think, provides us with the meaning of life. Even though we can't make things perfect, the fact that we can lessen the suffering of people, and the fact that this can benefit many generations still to come, provides us with more than enough meaning for this life. It is the hope that things can get better that provides meaning for life, and the will to think and act to make it happen. It is also the realization that things can't be perfect, but can be improved, that makes every incremental improvement a cause for celebration, and prevents the kind of utopia-dystopia bipolar thinking that is the root cause of left melancholy and paralysis. I believe that having a positive vision people can believe in also prevents them from falling into the perpetual panic, outrage and conspiracy thinking that characterizes the populist right.

When we start from a positive thinking mindset, rooted in a practical and realistic belief that things can get incrementally better, we can be truly constructive in both thought and action. There would be no more us-vs-them tribalism, no more need to 'own' the other side, and no more victim mentality. There will only be a rational desire to make things better, which logically leads to the rational thinking and discussion required to make it happen. This is the kind of positive politics that I want to help bring about, to replace the kind of negative politics we have right now.
 

Why The Left Keeps On Failing

It simply can't face the reality

Let's just say it out loud: the Western Left reeks of more than a century of failure. Their entirely theory-driven experiments have been repeatedly tried, and led to disappointment and failure every single time. And every single time, what followed was the rise of right-wing reactionary politics of some kind. This was true of the 1930s, the 1960s and 70s, and it looks more and more like history is repeating again right now.

The left knows its defeats well. There's even a very well described phenomenon of left melancholy. Yet, after every single defeat, it just digs in deeper. It takes no responsibility for leaving people disappointed, and making a mess of society in the process. It is able to do that by avoiding facing reality. Again, right now, it looks like history is repeating, with works coming out of the left, spinning the defeats of their recent past as somehow heroic, worthwhile, or at least not of their own fault. We're seeing in real time how the left avoids learning the lessons it should be learning.

The left is able to avoid reality via the use of philosophy, sophistry and echo chambers. It's sort of like the Emperor's New Clothes, played over and over again in slightly different forms, over the centuries. In fact, that's how postmodern critical theory started. It was a rationalization of the post-war Western left's inability to attract the support of the working class, which was basically fatal to its then-assumptions. But instead of learning how to make themselves relevant to the working class again, they rationalized the problem away, and began imagining a future revolution led by philosophers, student radicals and marginalized minorities. Who needs the workers when you could build this radical coalition instead? Of course, this overlooks the fact that workers are the majority, and the New Left have always been a small minority. But in the New Left echo chamber, this never seems to be a problem.

Today, the leftist echo chamber continues to ignore the fact that someone like Bernie Sanders simply can't win in a climate where we have an ongoing culture war, where the New Left is pit against the working class, not because of some kind of conspiracy, but because of a genuine incompatibility of values, caused by the rise of postmodern critical theory itself. In fact, to raise this fact in some left wing circles would get you banished. Instead, they continue to blame Bernie's 2020 defeat on various non-factors, like the campaign of Pete Buttigieg, who didn't even make the top three, or the fact that the Democrats were focused on defeating Trump, which was just the way political parties work, to be honest. A left that behaves this way is simply hopelessly out of touch. Its only impact on the political scene would be to make a mess of everything, and allow an opening for the reactionaries to gain power.
 

The Problem With... 'New Left' Theory

The key point is, much of the Western Left today takes a theory-based approach to everything, and base their so-called progressivism on achieving the goals of their theory. They decide what is a good course of action, or what counts as success, not based on objective reality, not based on if the lives of people have actually been made better, but on their theoretical concerns. This, I think, is essentially being a slave to theory. Hence theory has actually become slavery, in the context of the 21st century Western Left.

Besides being unable to improve people's lives, what I'm most concerned with the theory-Left is that it effectively discourages independent thinking, which I value very much as a Moral Libertarian. Through building a movement that is enslaved to a whole suite of critical theories, which explain every social issue and cultural conflict with its particular philosophy, New Left activism actually creates a mass of people who think in lockstep on every issue, because they are informed by theory rather than their own observation of reality and their own independent thinking. In turn, this actually divides society into two sides, one side which thinks in lockstep with theory on every issue, and another side which comes together simply to fight what they correctly see as an illogical and contradictory coalition. I think this is a major reason behind the polarization we are seeing in the West today.

What is Conservatism?

Now, we need to answer the question, 'what is conservatism'. Again, contrary to popular belief, conservatism isn't everything that is considered politically right-wing. It isn't everything supported by so-called 'conservative' political parties like the Republicans in America or the British Conservative Party. It is actually a political philosophy, a way to approach social and political issues.

British philosopher Edmund Burke is often considered the father of conservatism. His most famous thoughts pertained to the French Revolution, which he lived through. He was very skeptical of the radical, 'tear everything down' approach of the French revolutionaries, as well as their over-commitment to abstract ideas as the way to progress society. What we need to remember is that, Burke was not against all change and progress, he actually supported relatively progressive positions during his lifetime. He was just against radical change that was rooted in abstract ideas rather than practical reality, and a total rejection of a given nation's traditions.

Hence, conservatism, as properly understood, is a philosophy that opposes radical change that is rooted in abstract ideas, and alien to a given nation's traditions. Change that is rooted in practical needs, and especially change that is rooted in a society's long-standing values, is not inherently opposed by conservative philosophy. Conservatism is therefore not reactionary! Instead, it is a philosophy that seeks to ground progress in practical reality, and in the long-standing traditions of society.

At least in the English-speaking West, liberal values like free speech, freedom of conscience and 'live and let live' are indeed a long-standing part of our society. Therefore, conservatism, as properly understood, would aim to conserve these values too. Change and reform that arise out of liberal processes should also be favored over those that oppose liberal values and processes. Therefore, reactionary culture warriors, who oppose any and all change, and even resort to illiberal means to stop that change, are not really conservatives, properly understood.