To many observers of contemporary politics, the very idea of a libertarian Democrat is oxymoronic. The Democratic Party is widely thought to be the party of big government intrusion, tax hikes, welfarism, gun control, nationalized healthcare and what for libertarians are a panoply of additional political sins. Libertarians are normally thought to be socially liberal Republicans, fiercely laissez-faire on principle, yet lacking the unique compulsion of the religious right to legislate personal morality.
As a matter of fact, most of the influence that libertarian lobbyists and think tanks have had in recent politics has been concentrated in their efforts promote a more laissez-faire economic policy. They are simply known for being the economics-oriented wing of the great conservative "fusion" of the Christian Right, traditionalists, and, yes, libertarians. So, the popular perception of libertarians being closely associated with the Republican Party is not without basis. As a consequence of the role that libertarians have played in the contemporary Republican coalition, their social liberalism has typically been underemphasized so as not to offend the religious right. In the meantime, partly attributable to their theoretical rigor, libertarian economic arguments have taken center stage.
Ideally, there should be no need to append "libertarian" with "Democrat." But given that in practice libertarianism has come to have associations with a particular brand of Republican politics and that its meaning has been narrowed in order to "mainstream" it, usage of the term "libertarian Democrat" is useful for delineating with greater specificity the type of politics being advocated. That said, there are some points of disagreement between the politics advocated here and some of the organizations of libertarian Democrats (such as the Democratic Freedom Caucus) and left-libertarians.
Nevertheless, the only point on which this site is in unyielding disagreement with the DFC's Platform is on the issue of property rights. The DFC commits a Georgist fallacy in singling out land (real property) as being fundamentally different from other forms of property that are the result of human labor. To quote from the Platform at length:
- There should be the least taxes possible on labor, because taxes on labor take the fruits of labor. Such taxes are not only unjust, but also lower the incentive to be productive. Taxes on income, sales, or buildings all take away the rewards of labor and productivity, so they are the most harmful kinds of taxes. The least harmful tax is a tax on land location value or on extraction of natural resources, because those are not products of labor, but are fixed resources. [http://www.democraticfreedomcaucus.org/dfc-platform/]
In actuality, all taxation lowers the incentive to be productive. Llewellyn Rockwell makes this point in an article concerning tax reform:
- The [residential property] tax is figured into the price of the home, and the judgment of what size house to buy in what neighborhood is made via a calculus that includes everything that goes into the price. The tax is not easily passed on. An increase in the property tax is a tax on the production of houses. There is no such thing as tax shifting. [https://www.mises.org/story/1727]
As a libertarian, the principle of separation of state and economy should be axiomatic. Both Georgism and the left-libertarianism of thinkers such as Benjamin Tucker violate this principle. The Tuckerites, basing their political prescriptions on the now discredited labor theory of value, suggest that property rights as traditionally conceived should be replaced with usufruct rights, wherein one can lay tentative claim to property so long as they are occupying and/or making active use of it, but must relinquish any claim once the property in question has been abandoned. There is no absentee ownership, claimed to be the source of exploitation.
Usufruct was originally a legal arrangement in civil law jurisdictions defined as "the right to use and enjoyment of another's property and its profits" [Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, p.519] . The fundamental recognition of what property rights in their fullest sense entail still exists. They are merely overlaid by a temporary arrangement akin to what, in common law, is called adverse possession. Since no private individual under a Tucker-esque system has property rights, but only usufruct rights, it can only mean that those property rights ultimately revert to the state (albeit usually conceived in a direct democratic way, expressive of the will of the community). Absentee ownership has thus not been abolished, but merely moved from the private to the public sphere.
The nationalization (or "socialization") of all land is therefore implicit in this kind of usufruct system. But we have no reason to assume that a state monopoly on land is better than any other type of government-imposed monopoly. Given the contrived way in which property rights are denuded to become usufruct rights in the first instance, there is no reason to conclude that a state monopoly on land is a "natural monopoly" in the sense that this term is usually invoked (notwithstanding doubt as to whether natural monopolies truly exist anyway). No, we should simply conclude, rather, that the usufruct system arbitrarily infringes upon a free market in land and reject it for that reason. (A more extensive critique of traditional left-libertarian positions is forthcoming.)
A hallmark of libertarian Democratic political advocacy should be raising attention to those threats to economic liberty largely ignored by many right-libertarians. Corporate subsidies should be removed, and defense spending should be considerably cut. While absolute commitment to an unhampered free market is asserted, this is not meant to denigrate organizations in civil society other than for-profit corporations. Libertarianism is sympathetic to the existence of producer cooperatives, charities, and other non-profits of all stripes. The key principle is that of freedom of association. It has the utmost confidence in the ability of individuals to form associations that will be beneficial to them when given the maximum latitude in which to do so.
Nevertheless, what will be advocated here is a pragmatic libertarianism. To the extent that the material welfare of the population cannot be addressed solely by private charities and like organizations, state aid shall be considered as a response. To the extent that areas of the world are not safe for classical liberal and libertarian institutions, the building and maintenance of military forces to combat threats to liberty will be considered. Even as we stand on principle, we must not fail to recognize the real world obstacles to a libertarian vision of society.
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