CONTRA HIGGS’ CRITICISM OF LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY
(important piece)
The most effective form of resistance to the state is organized mystical RELIGION, predicated upon FAITH. Religions determine the moral limits of what a state can impose on its people. That is the POLITICAL PURPOSE of religion. Americans have succeeded in resisting government intrusion more so than europeans precisely because americans have retained religiosity as a means of fortifying the family and the civic society against the expansionary state.
The most important property of IDEOLOGY is that it NOT be open to critical argument, while at the same time it must be “activating’ to the base. Because the purpose of IDEOLOGY is the accumulation of power, by means that are unassailable by critics. Ideology is just post-monarchial, democratic religion.
The most important property of PHILOSOPHY is explanatory power: the ability to reorder the values of objects and relations in order to provide us with utility in response to the accumulation of new knowledge. Philosophy is a high barrier, and must be converted by public intellectuals into ideology to function as a means of transferring power.
The most important property of SCIENCE is an increase in the inventory of facts that can describe causal relations as they factually correspond with reality. Science has been notoriously INEFFECTIVE at resisting the state, and in most cases, has accomplished the opposite: to replace the church and the previous status held by the church in the determination of the moral code, with academia. Except where the church and the state were competitors in the past, academia and the state are now dependent allies.
It is a mistake for academics, intellectuals, scientists, and often philosophers (although not this one), to attribute to religion and ideology those properties which render them useless as a means of obtaining or resisting POWER.
The MI crew, unfortunately, with full intent, took the strategy of the marxists and used the internet to promote rothbardian IDEOLOGY. This was so successful that Cato had to reverse its prior insularity, and GMU has had consider searching for new terminology for both libertarianism and Austrian Economics.
This ideology was unsuccessful in obtaining sufficient power to enact change, because the moral content of Rothbard’s liberty was regressive compared to that of the aristocratic ethics of the high trust society that we call the christian west. Something which I feel I have largely corrected. so the Mises Institute program was unsuccessful because it was predicated on DEMONSTRABLY IMMORAL PRINCIPLES.
Meanwhile no one has advanced the question of the business cycle sufficiently, (although PSST could have), and no one has advanced political or moral theory in the libertarian/Austrian community AT ALL other than Hoppe, and Hoppe’s arguments are buried in layers of unnecessary rationality and loadings that likewise hide his genius.
As such, I’m glad Robert Higgs can make so many errors in less than 300 words.
1- religion, ideology, philosophy, science and prescriptions for institutional models are all very different forms of advocacy for different people, with different knowledge and abilities. It is unwise to criticize them.
2 – Ideology IS MORE IMPORTANT than anything other than religion. Because of the number of people it influences. TO fail to understand this, and to attack one’s religious or ideological or philosophical, wing is to confuse facts with POWER. And politics is POWER.
3 – The correct response is to ask:
(a) is that religious argument holding the state at bay and setting the moral terms of political discourse?
(b) is that ideological argument succeeding in obtaining further acolytes, attention, publicity and political power?
(c) Does that philosophical argument advance our argumentative ability against other philosophers, and the ideologies that develop as a result of their works?
(d) Does this scientific explanation provide us with new knowledge that we can incorporate into our theory of action, which we call ‘philosophy’, or it’s means of propagation ‘ideology’, or its means of resistance ‘religion’?
(e) If not, then one has nothing intelligent to say.
Internecine warfare in the libertarian movement is the result of the tragic failure of anyone who seeks liberty to solve the problem of the social sciences, or articulate the cumulative effects of state intervention on long term assets we call ‘social and human capital’, and the ability of people to maintain innovation and therefore an expanding quality of life.
The only advancement in liberty has come from the propagation of ideology on the one hand, and the resistance of the state by religion. In all other aspects, except those few that PeterB seems to regularly mention such as Olstrom’s; and a few contributions by Bryan and Tyler; or the insight into the structure of political incentives by Hoppe, the libertarian scholarly, and intellectual program has been a demonstrable failure.
Instead, the only success we can claim has been achieved by conservatives who have set the terms of moral debate, and by that moral debate brought our government to a standstill; and the various anthropological and biological and neurological sciences have demonstrated that the conservative vision of man is and was accurate. Otherwise political science, and economics have done nothing for us at all in holding or obtaining liberty.
Only a fool thinks politics is run by science. It is run by wealth, power, morals and argument, and science is but a convenient pawn for the furtherance of the same.
That’s just how it is. Stating otherwise would be UNSCIENTIFIC.
I’ll debate anyone in the community on these issues in an attempt to fix the current state of libertarian philosophy, and in an effort to, in political science, advance liberty, but I suspect vested interests are more preciously held than new truths are desired.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev
Source date (UTC): 2013-12-28 12:46:00 UTC