Occasionally, I notice that something I wrote a long time ago is either hard to find, or just no longer available, in the place where it was published. This piece was originally published in 2001 by a now seemingly defunct New Zealand Objectivist magazine, The Free Radical. Later, I hosted a copy of it myself at one of those "make your own free web site" places, which has seemed to be on its way out of business for years and where it's still technically available but pretty difficult to find. So I'm re-publishing it here. Blogspot being Google, and Google being likely to last for a long time, I'll consider it reasonably well-preserved. Whether its of any value or not is your judgment to make.
Non-Coercion: Concept and Context
Every so often, the debate between philosophical Objectivists and political libertarians kicks up. This seems to be one of those periods -- perhaps inspired by the recent publication of David Kelley's The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand -- and "Libertarianism and Moral Disintegration" (Joseph Rowlands, Free Radical #46) incorporates a fairly standard orthodox Objectivist line of attack on libertarianism.
The point at which bayonet meets barbed wire is, of course, on the principle of non-coercion. This is the area where libertarian politics and Objectivist philosophical tenets intersect.
To the Objectivist, non-coercion is a principle derived from a specific set of underlying standards, applicable to politics in the philosophical sense, i.e. to relationships between multiple individuals.
To the libertarian, it may be that as well -- but not necessarily, and if so, not necessarily derived from the same set of underlying standards.
The problem, of course, is that Objectivism is an all-encompassing philosophy, a set of ideas ranging in application and scope from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics and esthetics and, yes, politics. Libertarianism, on the other hand, is a specifically political movement.
This distinction is of the utmost importance, because within it lies the proper resolution of the debate.
"Although properly founded in morality," says Rowlands, "the non-coercion principle is not a moral code. It is a political principle derived from a moral standard. By treating this moral principle as a complete moral system, the libertarians create a number of problems for themselves."
And that is where Rowlands begins his fall into error. For libertarians, as such, don't treat non-coercion as a moral code. They treat it exactly as Rowlands or any other Objectivist does: as a political principle.
Let me say this again, for emphasis: non-coercion is a political principle, not a moral code. Libertarianism is a political movement, and as such seeks the adoption of its binding political principle -- non-coercion -- as the standard of political behavior.
Concept formation is key to understanding. A concept is defined in terms of its essentials, not by any stray factors that may be found in various examples of the concept in reality, but not in others. While some tables are square, "square" is not an essential element of the concept "table." There are round tables, oval tables and octagonal tables.
Libertarianism, in its essentials, is a political movement, based on non-coercion as a political principle. Are there some libertarians who also adopt non-coercion as their root moral principle? Yes. There are also libertarians who don't. There are libertarians who derive their moral principles from the ideas of Kant, Mill, Rothbard and, yes, Rand.
Libertarianism is not defined by the non-essentials, i.e. the differing moral bases of those who call themselves "libertarian," any more than "grocers" are defined as a concept by whether this cashier attends church or that produce clerk admires modern art. Grocers are those who work in the grocery trade. That is their essential defining characteristic. Non-coercion as the common political principle is the essential characteristic of libertarianism.
But how can this work? Does not a principle require a rational underlying framework of support from which that principle is derived?
In a word, no -- at least not on the level that we speak of here.
Humans eat, and they rely substantially on a class of persons mentioned above -- grocers -- to provide food in trade for their consumption. The Objectivist does not ask (at least most don't) if the produce clerk likes modern art or if the cashier attends church. The Objectivist does not storm out of the store after catching the store manager browsing Sartre in the toilet stall.
The Objectivist recognizes that all he has any right to expect of the grocers is that they provide groceries of acceptable quality and price pursuant to voluntary agreement. As for anything else, he rightly accepts them as autonomous and not only entitled, but required, to exercise their independent, unforced judgment and arrive at the answers to other issues as best they can.
Libertarianism provides political activism and work on the same basis as grocers provide sausage and cauliflower. Unless the libertarian movement as such becomes engaged in philosophical debate ranging outside the political, Objectivists have no legitimate grounds to identify the non-political philosophical beliefs of particular libertarians with the concept of libertarianism.
Which brings us back to another problem with Mr. Rowlands's examination: "Some libertarians believe they can use the fact that libertarianism is practical as their moral justification. This is untenable without a moral foundation. Why is practicality good? Only morality can decide. Only a morality based on life can translate to the practical being good."
On the contrary, Objectivism holds that practicality and morality are ultimately one and the same: that context and long-term analysis will always reveal the practical and the moral as dictating identical courses of action. In the case of Objectivism versus libertarianism, the unification of practicality and morality is evident:
Libertarianism and Objectivism share a degree of common ground -- agreement on political principle. This common ground offers a practical basis for Objectivists to introduce their ideas to individuals who are already in partial agreement with those ideas. The introduction of Objectivist ideas to others is a moral goal, based on long term self-interest in creating a larger community of rational individuals.
So why has this opportunity been perpetually scorned, wasted and even evaded, ever since Ayn Rand's initial, irrational tantrum on the subject?
Irrationality -- the failure to properly apply reason to the facts -- becomes immorality when it is volitional (i.e. when it is based on a refusal to apply reason to the facts, often even a refusal to acknowledge the facts). The only question remaining is whether Objectivists fail to make common cause with libertarians through error -- or through evil. I have too much respect for too many Objectivists to immediately assume the latter, but decades of irrationality demand either correction or repudiation.
