Voices In The Wilderness
Posted on October 6th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Perhaps Mr. Gordon was a bit hasty in his reading of my complaint about his article. I may not have been sufficiently clear in my post, in which case I would like to explain what I meant. I did express my frustration with labeling “crunchy” and agrarian arguments as socialist, as I have seen done countless times before, which at the very least the article’s title (which Mr. Gordon may not have selected) suggested that he was doing. If he merely wants to call them statist, I will restate my objection more precisely–I am weary of the tendency to label as statism whatever does not suit libertarians. This framing of all political questions as scarcely anything more than a struggle of the state against the individual does not take account of other institutions and more local forms of public authority, and it wrongly identifies conservatives and communitarians of various kinds as part of the statist camp.
The heart of the indictment against the two men rests on evidence that Berry opposes trusts and Rod thinks that zoning regulations should ”protect old buildings of historical value.” These are grave and terrible things indeed! This assumes that any public authority, no matter how local and no matter its interest in preserving community standards, that infringes on aimless development is practicing “statism.” I would suggest that it takes an extremely expansive definition of statism to make this charge stick, and it seems clear to me that you could find no better example of enemies of statism in its original form of etatisme than “crunchy” cons and agrarians who are hostile to the alliance of corporations and government. Moreover, if it is statist to believe that the market should be subject to regulation and that there is something fundamentally misguided about untrammeled commercial development, you will not find many people who are not statists, least of all among conservatives who think that there is an obligation to protect the commons and pursue the common good.
P.S. This would not be the first time that Mr. Gordon has belittled someone with less than charitable arguments, since he also quite unfairly derided John Lukacs for his “characteristic ineptness in logic.” More analysis and fewer dismissive pronouncements would be desirable.
Wendell Berry favors a progressive income tax, parity pricing, and protective tariffs, measures not usually applied at the local level.
In my review of Lukacs, I didn’t confine myself to dismissive pronouncements but gave examples to show that he was inept in logic. If Mr. Larison thinks that my criticisms were mistaken, I’d be most interested in learning why. Perhaps he thinks that the meaning of Goedel’s Theorem should be determined by the local community.
I don’t rule out that Berry supports some measures that would be undesirable, but I would be interested to know what you think statism is such that the label would apply in these cases. As I read your article, *any* kind of coercion or regulation seems to count as evidence of statism. If that isn’t what you mean, I’ll be glad to hear it.
As for your remarks on Lukacs, you said “characteristic ineptness in logic,” which I assume would apply to more than the one review. I happen to agree with parts of Tom’s critique of the Lukacs review, and I don’t think your remarks about the review itself were that far off as far as they go. But to generalize from that one review about Lukacs’ capacity for logic was dismissive and was intended to be so.
Sorry: I thought that Mr. Larison was referring to a review of Lukacs that I wrote: http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=279 rather than to the TAC blog post. Even there, though, I give an example of a mistake; I don’t just dismiss Lukacs.
Well, technically you don’t “just dismiss” Berry, either, but you call him an ideologue (not at all fair) and a statist (at best very debatable). You don’t “just dismiss” Lukacs, but you find some mistakes he has made and then say that this is characteristic of him, which I assume is not intended to be taken as a recommendation of his work. It is intended to be a very harsh judgement on him, and to my mind one that is not at all fair. I’ve read the review you’ve linked, and I should add that I have made some of the same critiques of his interpretations of American history. It seems to me that one can find fault with certain arguments that Lukacs has made without making an overblown claim about allegedly characteristic illogicality.
That is a very good question; I’d take favoring measures that forcibly interfere with the free market at the national level to be evidence of statism, although one would have to favor a substantial number of them, I think, to count as a full-fledged statist. Someone who wanted to restrict the market only through local communities wouldn’t count as a statist, on this view.
In my TAC post of Lukacs, I should have included a link to my review. It does sound unfairly dismissive without this background.
That seems fair. Would you also agree that opposition to trusts (which are arrangements designed specifically to thwart open competition) is not at odds with your own understanding of the merits of competition?
I’m afraid that this will confirm your view that I’m an ideologue, but I don’t support anti-trust laws. Chapter 10 of Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, “Monopoly and Competition” is the best defense of the position I support.
I wasn’t assuming that you were necessarily an ideologue, and I’m not sure that I would say so now. That is quite a charge to make.
As for trusts, I suppose collusion among firms with the goal of preventing competition is a kind of cooperation, to borrow from your article, but I don’t see how it is the sort of cooperation that can be squared with a free market. We would agree, though, that government subsidies and supports for corporations are undesirable and would represent a clear case of statism, wouldn’t we?
There is a surreal quality to this argument, in that, from Gordan’s perspective (and, increasingly, mine) virtually everyone in the United States is a statist. Using that perspective, as accurate as it may be, to call Berry a statist, it isn’t particularly illuminating. Especially since, given the real range of opinion ion the United States, Berry is probably less of a statist than 95% of his countrymen.
Well, that was part of my frustration in the first place. Perhaps I am dwelling on the point too much, but ever since I was lectured on some newsgroup over a decade ago that I was a “statist” for favoring a strict construction reading of the Constitution I have been wary of throwing the term around too freely.
Yes, all government subsidies for corporations are wrong and libertarians condemn them. Monopolies come about through government grants of privilege.
Then I think we, as well as Rod and Berry, are more in agreement about things than it seemed at first. Glad to hear it.