Libertarians do not belong with either conservatives or liberals

A couple of days ago Peter Jaworski published a post explaining why he felt that libertarians should abandon the “old fusionism” and alliance with conservatives and embrace a “new fusionism” with liberals. I agree with the first part but I disagree with the second part. A fusion with what statist-liberals would not work any better than a fusion with conservatives.

My experience with writing at the Western Standard was very similar to Peter’s. It got to the point that I hesitated to post because it was not worth the hassle of hostility that would fill my in-box. I have also noticed that at many political events or parties the room automatically splits between libertarians and conservatives. There is a hostility that stem from having antagonistic values and the last decade has shown that it is impossible to adequately bridge that difference.

Peter goes on to say that the values espoused by liberals are basically the same as his values. Peter Jaworski is a liberal and for most purposes so am I. But we belong to one side of two warring tribes of liberals. I think we can broadly define the two sides as market-liberals and statist-liberals.

It would seem that reuniting the liberal family would be a much easier alliance than the declining fusionism between libertarians and conservatives. Peter suggests that the main difference is an empirical one. Which is better at achieving the desired results? Is it the market or is it the state?

There are problems inherent in bridging an empirical gap. For one thing, evidence offered by the social sciences is never completely concrete and is almost always open to interpretation. Some say that the recent “stimulus” packages have debunked the concept of a government stimulus. Others say that there merely wasn’t enough of a stimulus or that the economy would have suffered more without it. You can spend years of your life having this debate without ever being able to convince even the most reasonable critic. (Look here and here for a discussion on the problems with bridging the empirical gap).

Unfortunately the difference between market-liberals and statist-liberals goes beyond the empirical debate. I agree and admit that they have the same values but they clearly order them differently. A market-liberal puts more importance on individuality than a statist-liberal even though they both value it. This difference means that often they frame a policy question differently. A market-liberal would ask, “Is the state effective at achieving this goal (demanding proof that state interference is justified)?” and a statist-liberal would ask, “Is the market effective at achieving this goal (demanding proof that state interference is not needed)?” The goal may be the same but the burden of proof is shifted the other way around.

The outcome of this burden shift is that statist-liberals will interpret empirical data with a fundamentally different value assumption. They will look at the results of the “stimulus” spending and assume that things would have been worse without it. A market-liberal will look at the exact same data and assume the opposite. An empirical argument alone is not enough to convince either side.

The reality is that market-liberals (or libertarians) would be wiser to avoid entangling alliances with either conservatives or statist-liberals. On particular issues we may find common ground with either but cooperation should be more ad hoc. There is no reason why libertarians should be forced to sacrifice some of our goals to work with ideological groups that are bound to be hostile to us.