Practical, Marginal Revolution

It's commonly aphorized that socialism is good in theory, but not in practice. Socialists consider this is a sad joke, because they have seen socialism work in practice, never mind the theory. We have public libraries, collectively owned roads, medicine, public schools, public welfare, etc. And though there are often attendant problems, there are some cities in the world in which these socialistic models thrive. More primordially, the family is evidence that spontaneous cooperation and collective pooling of resources independent of market mechanisms is not only viable, but optimal in diverse contexts. It works. Mises' classic argument about the impossibility of economic calculation in socialism is an overstatement. It is a difficulty inherent in socialistic planning, perhaps, but not an impossibility. The state of theoretical investigations seems irrelevant and distracting to tried and true paths developed by trial and error. There is a tendency in libertarian and conservative circles to deride socialism, but there is a pressing need to respect our differences and work past political ideologies when possible.

My own attitude toward politics began to form in junior high school. A recent convert to the fortress of atheism, deciding that the best we hairless apes could do was to help each other out and give justice on Earth to those with none, I naturally gravitated to socialism. There may have been no Heavenly Father, but we could still act as brothers and sisters to those in need, doing our best to create a heaven in this life. A cursory look at all the various political postures suggested that all those who championed similar causes were leftists. UNICEF, the Peace Corps, local charities-- filled with leftists. Sincere leftists want to relieve suffering and misery in a world where suffering and misery are ubiquitous. But for those that seek rational causes of the economic and social ills that plague society and gravitate toward economics and political science, government itself is eventually seen to be the destructive Golem churning civil society for its own sake. Thusly paved is the path from socialism to libertarianism. Centralized socialism doesn't work well, while free markets are organic, spontaneous networks of cooperation that benefit all actors at any level of society.

Still, there seem to be considerable gaps for those maintaining a steady eye on social justice. Market failures occur. Poverty cannot be solved by markets alone; there will be uninsured, addicts, children born in conditions difficult to escape from. There are many elegant arguments for why these problems can often be traced to government intervention, or why private mechanisms will naturally, of their own accord, help those at the margins that don't succeed. But this remains an obscure gray region in the typical libertarian orthodoxy, and a glaring chasm to leftists. Realizing that markets work doesn't mean we suddenly have a free society in which there are no losers. There are people on the bottom, people suffering at this very moment who need help. There is a tendency among libertarians who have gone through a bleeding heart progressive phase to be eviscerated by the libertarian vision, just as a Rapture Christian sees no need to improve the world when the eschaton is just around the corner. There is a pervasive tendency to armchair activism. Those suffering under the current system want to better themselves before they care to understand the economic causes of poverty. That in the long run people will be better off with less government does not relieve present suffering and doesn't, in itself, provide a vision of what will replace the safety net.

Though there are some Randroids libertarians who won't admit it, humans are responsible for one another. If someone can't afford to feed their children, it affects me. If someone can't afford to pay for a vital medical operation, it affects me. No man is an island. Rare is the individual whose utopia is an egoistic society. What is the state of the libertarian movement when government is growing by leaps and bounds, wars are being fought and new ones being dreamed up, local governments are mimicking national models and a police state is cropping up like an alien species in our heartland. There's a lot of cause to be pessimistic about the supposed victories of the ideological dialectic. On the other hand, the surprising grassroots support for Ron Paul suggests that there may yet be a political revolution. But deep down most libertarians know this can't be counted on. Voters are irrational and political activism is rarely efficacious. Centralized government has an incredible inertia and dark gravity. It's easier to imagine Ron Paul being assassinated than the IRS, CIA and most government departments being shut down. It's much more likely that Ron Paul will soon be forgotten, like Barry Goldwater was forgotten and many more before him.

Instead of waiting for people to "wake up", it is time to realize it will not happen. There will not be an ideological revolution divorced from practical considerations. Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing; political theorizing and arcane moral deontologies don't resonate with the masses. People want to see local, tangible improvement in their lives and in the lives of others. What is needed is a practical revolution. If people have not tasted a voluntary society for themselves, how can they hunger for it?

A free society must grow from the ground up. Rather than an ideological crusade, a practical, concrete activism needs to be nurtured. This means working in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, creating voluntary mutual aid networks, supporting charter school movements locally, delivering groceries to poor families, cleaning up the dirty parts of the city. This means getting your hands dirty and giving practical freedom to other people. Sometimes it may mean going to a city council meeting or supporting a political cause or even voting in local elections. It will mean working with leftists, the religious right and people of various ideologies on voluntary solutions to tangible problems. The hell of government interference will only be rejected when there is at least a practical, malleable purgatory available as a substitute.

Addendum: In response to a commentator, this site has not been hacked. The point is not that the socialist critique of the free market model is correct per se, nor that families prove socialism could work on a large scale. My overall suggestion is that not only is ecumenicism theoretically possible between libertarians and leftists, but that it is practically possible right now. Many socialist visions do not strictly contradict a free market society and in fact are assumed by most libertarians as necessary organizational models on local levels to "fill the gaps" where markets are not desirable or practicable. The challenge then, is to acknowledge that there are gaps right now that need attention by volunteers, especially those conscious that it is better to create a voluntary, responsive system than to depend on government. There are a great many practical steps toward a free society that might be taken independent of the current level of government interference, including the most simple volunteering and working for the poor on local levels. This is work that needs to be done in a libertarian society as much as the current one and should be considered by the libertarian as a pure free market activity.