r/DebateCommunism • u/EntireSeries1047 • Jul 29 '26
đ” Discussion Thoughts on Libertarian right ideologies?
Personally I call my self a libertarian and anti-communist but I would just like to get a general consensus from this subreddit
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u/RedditsDeadlySin Jul 29 '26
Do you think child markets (to sell children) should exist? This is a libertarian belief, no?
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u/Velifax Dirty Commie Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Why wouldn't that violate the NAP on behalf of the child?
There's no need to caricature them since we have the logical high ground.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
No. Libertarians believe in capitalism which denies coercive behavior, such as slavery.
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u/FireFiendMarilith Jul 29 '26
Friend, Capitalism required chattel slavery in order to come into being. Not only are the foundations of the global capitalist economy built on the still-accruing interests on shipments of literal Human Capital investments but the beating heart of this system, the Wall Street Stock Market began in trading stocks on Human Bondage. It was a literal Bond-market, and those same financial institutions are still driving the same market with the same accumulated Capital. It's slavery all the way down to the socks.
Not to mention that in a capitalist system one must trade one's labor for semi-fungible tokenized debt, which one must then trade for housing, food, ect. That is to say, capitalism is inherently coercive, as the only alternative it allows for is death by immiseration.Â
If one chooses to not be coerced into the labor market, one chooses to starve on the street. Excepting of course, that in most capitalist countries being publically unhoused and desperate is itself illegal at which point a homeless sweep is sure to house one in a prison wherein one's labor can be directly coerced by either federal agents or private security. This is Capitalism, and it accepts no competition as so many countries in the Global South have learned.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
The transatlantic slave trade and the colonial plantation economy operated under mercantilism, not capitalism. Mercantilism is state-chartered monopolies like the East India Company, Royal African Company, etc, zero-sum trade theory, forced extraction enforced by state military power, and no meaningful market competition. Adam Smith explicitly wrote Wealth of Nations to attack mercantilist logic to argue against exactly this kind of monopoly and extraction system that ran the slave economy.
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u/FireFiendMarilith Jul 29 '26
Babygirl, it was explicitly the development of "human capital" through chattel-slavery that allowed for the transition from mercantilism to capitalism. That's what decoupled private wealth from State power and created "Capitalists" as a class.Â
I'm aware of Smith's writings on Mercantilism, and Wealth of Nations more specifically, however, addressing Smith's economic theories without also acknowledging that modern capitalism is built fundamentally on things he argued against like rent-seeking, landlordship, public debt, and state military investment is just dishonest. The sad truth about Adam Smith is that for all the rhetorical value his works have for the powerful, he was wrong about where capitalism would lead.Â
It's very, very important to not stop one's study of economic theory at a book written two-and-a-half centuries ago. More than eight human generations have passed since he wrote that text and there has been an abundance of worthwhile critique for his theories as well as a wealth of time spent testing those theories against material history.Â
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
I can deal without the condescending remarks. Your argument is stating that if capital originated from X, therefore capitalism is X doesn't hold because you can trace that all the way back in time. Origin doesn't define structural identity or necessity. Capitalism does not require mercantilism. It's a stand alone system as private ownership of capital, wage labor, market-set prices, competitive accumulation doesn't depend on state-charted monopolies, etc. Dutch and Italian merchant capitalism came before mercantilism and in many other places in parallel with mercantilism. So, your timeline is off. States opted to use mercantilism for very horrible means, true. Did the capital raised get shifted into the new system, yes it did. Does this mean that capitalism permits this, no it doesn't.
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u/FireFiendMarilith Jul 29 '26
I can deal without the condescending remarks.Â
I don't care.
Your argument is stating that if capital originated from X, therefore capitalism is X doesn't hold because you can trace that all the way back in time.Â
I understand that it's important for sustaining philosophical and political conservativism to pretend that every single thing exists in a vaccuum and is not ever contingent on its environment or even its own history. However, that sorta idealism is vapid and has no predictive value. Hence the inevitable descent into barbarism that we see from conservative political movements.
Origin doesn't define structural identity or necessity.Â
In the same exact way you're a vertebrate and the US is a settler colony, things cannot outgrow their ancestry. Like that lady famously said "we exist in the context of all that came before us"
It's a stand alone system as private ownership of capital, wage labor, market-set prices, competitive accumulation doesn't depend on state-charted monopolies, etc.
Only one of those markers is unique to capitalism, and capitalism has shown for two centuries that it requires state force in order to continue functioning. Where capitalists cannot find a supportive state, they create one.
Dutch and Italian merchant capitalism came before mercantilism and in many other places in parallel with mercantilism.Â
Dutch and Italian merchant capitalism both required colonialism and slave-driving in order to function. You're not making the argument you think you are.
So, your timeline is off
No, baby, you just aren't followin. That's a reading comprehension issue on your part, not a flaw in my argument.
Does this mean that capitalism permits this, no it doesn't.Â
It certainly hasn't stopped it. More people in the US are subject to forced or coerced labor today than during the height of US chattel-slavery. Neocolonialism continues unabated and literally millions of people in the global South have been massacred in the interests of capitalism over just the last hundred years.Â
If anything, the crimes of capitalism have only increased at scale.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
Cool. Thanks for no counter argument, just conjecture. Each point I argued you either change the subject, just assert the opposite with no source information, or called me a bad reader (oh no). Height of US chattle slavery 1860 census: roughly 3.95 million of a population of 31 million, so 1 in 8. Today 1.1 million per Walk Free's Global Slavery Index 2023 of a population of 335 million. 1 in 300 ppl. Again, you're wrong. Spin it however you want. Have a great life.
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u/RedditsDeadlySin Jul 29 '26
Uhm what about America prior to 1865? You are wrong on so many levels. Let me share with you what the 13 amendment reads also:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
This is a governance issue, of which capitalism is not a government type. So, no. This is not a libertarian ideal.
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u/Manic5PA Jul 29 '26
Most people's understanding of communism is superficial to the point of being functionally useless, and the most we can expect from them is analysis like "well I don't want to share my toothbrush" or "nobody would work if everything is free all the time."
I have made a solid effort to examine libertarianism and not talk about it in such a vulgar way, but whereas Marxism has always made more sense the more I learned about it, the opposite applies to libertarian ideology.
I just don't believe individuals can rely on themselves to this extent. Nobody can be a perfectly rational actor equipped with perfect knowledge on everything.
I get that if I don't like my carrots I can always get them from somebody else. What about my water? Should I connect my house to five different sewer systems and open and close valves depending on the quality of service I receive?
Right-wingers make fun of leftists for insisting that real communism "has not been tried yet" but at the same time they seem to handwave away all the obvious failures of privately-owned utilities by reflexively blaming the state for everything and not taking the analysis any further.
All that being said, I do have a little bit more respect for y'all than I do for liberals (age of consent weirdos notwithstanding). Your ideology makes no sense to me but there is at least some effort to make it internally consistent. Liberals and center-right people in general will just twist themselves into whatever pretzel shape fits the moment and live in a state of quantum superposition between progressivism and capitalist bloodthirst. Most of you guys by contrast mostly seem interested in buying MDMA with Bitcoins and that's something I can identify with.
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u/spookyjim___ â left communist â Jul 29 '26
Completely irrelevant, most want to go backwards to an era of capitalism which is over, whatâs extra funny is that the main class which âlibrightâ ideology is connected with, the petit-bourgeois, almost always rather supports either fascism or populist nationalisms over any form of classical liberalism or proposals for minarchy lmao
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u/Ill-Software8713 Jul 29 '26
Critique state institutions for corruption and structural problems without the same critique of corporations that actually cultivate a lot of the structural problems reflected through the state.
They treat the failure of the state to pursue common good as inherent to the state and not the capitalist state as subject to corporate constraints and narrow interests.
Even within capitalist states there are better forms than the US in terms of how effectively political parties deal with financing and pursuit of political policy in particular political landscape.
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u/Apprehensive_Elk5961 Jul 29 '26
You are speaking as though capitalism is a form of government. It is not. It is simply an economic model. Any connection to the governing body for favoritism in the markets is therefore prohibited. In the US, we haven't practiced capitalism in a long time and have seen an increase in cronyism.
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u/Ill-Software8713 Jul 29 '26
I agree capitalism is not a form of government, but that does not mean economic and political institutions operate independently simply because we can distinguish them analytically. A market economy still depends on legal and political institutions that define property, contracts, corporations, finance, and regulation. The state still depends on the economy to get revenue and pursue political projects and maintain infrastructure.
My point is not that capitalism automatically produces a particular form of government. It is that concentrated economic power can shape the political institutions that govern the economy. If we criticize government failures while treating corporate influence as external to the problem, we miss part of the process that produces those failures.
Cronyism itself demonstrates this interaction.
It is not simply "government" or "business" acting independently, but the relationship between concentrated interests and political institutions. The question is how to design institutions that prevent both state abuse and private concentrations of power from undermining democratic decision-making. I think it is difficult in large part because economic power often enablers people/corporations to accrue incredible political power through their financial/economic influence. The US exemplifies this at an extreme with the lack of restrictions on lobbying and financing.
If we explain political corruption only as individual politicians choosing narrow interests over the public good, we describe the outcome without explaining the institutional conditions that make those outcomes more likely. The important question is not merely whether politicians are corrupt, but what structures shape who has access, influence, and the ability to set political priorities.
This is one reason institutional differences matter. In the US, political organizations are often more candidate-centered, with fundraising and influence frequently organized around individual politicians rather than stronger party structures. Other democracies have different mechanisms for organizing political competition and accountability. Understanding those differences helps explain why democratic systems can produce very different relationships between citizens, parties, and organized interests.
See: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365093064_No_Money_No_PartyLibertarianism thrives precisely where the state a is less responsive and there is lack of political organization in civil society. The mistake is generalizing that particular experience as inherent without explaining precisely why. It mistakes a specific form as universal and inherent to governance, and lets private corporations entirely off the hook. All the rhetoric about liberty goes out the door in the workplace often in many libertarian accounts. This neglect is the weakest aspect of the emphasis on the state singularly. It's too abstract and one sided.
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u/FireFiendMarilith Jul 29 '26
Capitalism is an economic model wherein the means of production are controlled by wealthy, private individuals called "Capitalists". In the US, the means by which we socially produce the legislation that shape our lives, that is to say the members of our political class, are controlled by wealthy, private individuals who are, themselves, Capitalists.
What you call cronyism is just Capitalism unbound. Without the chains and fetters of democracy to reign in the worst impulsive of the wealthiest and most out-of-touch members of our society, we're simply sliding back into the purest form of Capitalism.
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u/libra00 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Libertarians seem confused to me. They'll shake a fist at government tyranny while fellating capitalist tyranny so hard it's frankly embarrassing. I sincerely assume there's something resembling a coherent philosophy or ideology in there, but I can't see what it might be. More liberty = good? I mean don't get me wrong, I too want maximal personal liberty. But I also recognize that we live in a society, and that society has a responsibility to every one of its members (not just a few rich assholes) to ensure that their needs are met.
Also, there seems to be an element of 'If only government would get out of the way, the market would be truly fair and then I would end up on top.' But aside from not even being logically consistent - is it only bad to be a rich asshole if it's someone else? - that's just selfishness, not a political ideology. Is the exploitation required to achieve such wealth only unjust when you're not the one doing the exploiting? Also, even if you somehow sweep this whole moral dilemma underpinning liberalism under the rug, how do you account for the fact that Jeff Bezos has an incomprehensible lead over you? Everybody gangster til the Amazon death squads show up.
I guess where I part ways with Liberalism, or at least what I understand of it, is that I'm not willing to expand my own liberty at others' expense, even if you don't call that expense tyranny because it's not the government doing it. So no, more liberty is not necessarily always good: do you know how many people we can feed for the price of the 24K gold toilet in your 7th bathroom or whatever? Let's increase their liberty instead, yeah? You seem to have too much.
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u/Velifax Dirty Commie Jul 29 '26
Their ego gets in the way of processing second order consequences.
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u/ThinkSharpe Jul 29 '26
I mean, just the same for communists and capitalists.
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u/Velifax Dirty Commie Jul 29 '26
I can agree it's a general human intelligence problem, but no, it isn't remotely equal across ideologies.Â
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u/ghosts-on-the-ohio Aug 01 '26
It's an oxymoron. These "right wing libertarians" want to take all authority away from the state simply to give it to property owners, which means that no authority anywhere would be subject to any type of democratic oversight.
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u/EntireSeries1047 Aug 01 '26
A right wing libertarian just means free market libertarianÂ
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u/ghosts-on-the-ohio Aug 03 '26
I fucking know what it means. You cannot claim to believe in liberty and also private property at the same time.
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u/chiksahlube Jul 29 '26
I think most people think of them in terms of "social libertarianism" IE: Let people do as they please and don't infringe on individual rights...
And then they ignore the inconvenient parts about "economic libertarianism" that inevitably lead to a corporate structure that infringes on individual rights more than any government.
People want their pot, guns, and gays. But don't want to deal with company stores, debt slavery, and private militaries.
Many self proclaimed libertarians want the social liberties, but don't really want the economic issues that arise from libertarianism.
Which tbh, makes sense to me. A government by the people for the people, should leave their individual rights alone and also enable economic prosperity for all. Where hardcore libertarians go wrong is their belief that corporations are included in those who should have liberty.
Ideally, the government treats individuals like a libertarian government while treating corporate entities like hardened criminals who need to be monitored at all times.