Greens and Libertarians - The Yin and Yang of our Political Future
by Dan Sullivan
Over the past three decades, people have become dissatisfied with
both major parties, and two new minor parties are showing promise
of growth and success. They are the Libertarian Party and the
Green Party. These are not the only new parties, but they are
the only ones that promise to attract people from across the
political spectrum. Most other small parties are either clearly
to the left of the Democrats or to the right of the Republicans.
Such parties would have a place in a system that accommodates
multiple parties, but are doomed to failure in a two-party
system.
The Libertarian Party is made up mostly of former conservatives
who object to the Republican Party's penchant for militarism and
its use of government to entrench powerful interests and shield
them from market forces. The Green Party is made up mostly of
former liberals who object to the Democratic Party's penchant for
centralized bureaucracy and its frequent hypocritical disregard
for natural systems of ecological balance, ranging from the human
metabolism and the family unit to the ecology of the planet.
Both minor parties attempt to adhere to guidelines that are much
clearer than those of either major party. Libertarians focus on
rights of individuals to control their own lives, limited only by
the prohibition against interference with the rights of others.
These rights include their right to the fruits of their labor and
the right to freely associate and form contracts. They advocate
limiting government to protecting those basic rights.
Greens advocate ten key values (ecological wisdom, grass roots
democracy, social justice, non-violence, decentralization,
community-based economics, post-patriarchal values, respect for
diversity, personal and global responsibility, and sustainable
future focus as a guide for government as well as for their own
party organization.)
These different guidelines underscore basic differences between
the approaches of the two parties and their members.
Libertarians tend to be logical and analytical. They are
confident that their principles will create an ideal society,
even though they have no consensus of what that society would be
like. Greens, on the other hand, tend to be more intuitive and
imaginative. They have clear images of what kind of society they
want, but are fuzzy about the principles on which that society
would be based.
Ironically, Libertarians tend to be more Utopian and
uncompromising about their political positions, and are often
unable to focus on politically winnable proposals to make the
system more consistent with their overall goals. Greens on the
other hand, embrace immediate proposals with ease, but are often
unable to show how those proposals fit in to their ultimate
goals.
The most difficult differences to reconcile, however, stem from
baggage that members of each party have brought with them from
their former political affiliations. Most Libertarians are
overly hostile to government and cling to the fiction that
virtually all private fortunes are legitimately earned. Most
Greens are overly hostile to free enterprise and cling to the
fiction that harmony and balance can be achieved through
increased government intervention.
Republicans and Democrats will never reconcile these differences,
for whatever philosophical underpinnings they have are
overwhelmed by vested interests that dominate their internal
political processes. These vested interests thrive on keeping
the distorted hostilities alive and suppressing any philosophical
perspectives that might lead to rational resolution of conflict.
But because minor parties have no real power, they are still
primarily guided by values and principles. Committed to pursuing
truth above power, they should be more willing to challenge
prejudices and expose flaws in their current positions.
There is nothing mutually exclusive between the ten key values of
the Greens and the principals of the Libertarians. By
reconciling these values and principles, we can bring together
people whose allegiance to truth is stronger than their biases.
This could be of great value to both parties, partly because any
new party that wants to break into a two-party system has to
appeal to a broad spectrum of voters. But even more importantly,
each party needs attributes the other has to offer. Libertarians
need the intuitive awareness of the Greens to keep them from
losing touch with people's real values, and Greens need the
analytical prowess of the Libertarians to keep them from
indulging in emotional self-deception. Libertarians can teach
Greens about the spirit of enterprise and the wonders of economic
freedom, and Greens can teach Libertarians about the spirit of
compassion and the wonders of community cohesion.
Reconciliation is absolutely necessary. Even if one of the
parties could rise to power, it could do great harm by
implementing its current agenda in disregard for the perspective
of the other. Moreover, proposals that violate values and
principles of one party often violate those of the other. If
members of both groups come together to discuss each other's
proposals, they are likely not only to find areas of agreement,
but to find conflicts between each group's proposals and its own
principals. If this happens, and the two parties work in
concert, they stand a real chance of overtaking one of the major
parties and drastically altering the political power structure.
Many third parties have had important impacts on American
politics, but the last time a political party was dislodged was
when the Republicans knocked the ailing Whig party out of
contention over 130 years ago. It should be noted that the
Republicans were a coalition of several minor parties with
seemingly differing agendas, including the Abolitionist Party,
the Free-Soil Party, the American (or Know-Nothing) Party,
disaffected northern Democrats, and most of the members of the
dying Whig Party. A similar coalition of parties has a much
better chance of repeating this success today.
Anyone who looks at current national platforms of Greens and
Libertarians will conclude that bringing these groups together is
no easy task. For example, the Libertarian platform states
dogmatically that they "oppose any and all increases in the rate
of taxation or categories of taxpayers, including the elimination
of deductions, exemptions, or credits in the name of 'fairness,'
'simplicity,' or 'neutrality to the free market.' No tax can
ever be fair, simple, or neutral to the free market." On the
other hand, the national platform of the Greens leaves one with
the impression that they never met a tax they didn't like.
Yet the historical roots of the Greens and the Libertarians are
quite similar. That is, early movements for alternative,
intentional communities that live in harmony with nature greatly
influenced, and were influenced by, anarcho-syndicalists who
advanced principals now embraced by the Libertarian Party. This
essay will attempt to show that the differences that have emerged
are due less to stated principals and values of either group than
to the baggage members have brought to each party from their
liberal and conservative backgrounds.
<bold>On Conservatism and Liberalism<bold>
It is said that Libertarians have a conservative philosophy and
Greens have a liberal philosophy. In reality, conservatism and
liberalism are mere proclivities, and do not deserve to have the
name "philosophy" attached to them. People who have more power
than others are inclined to conserve it, and people who have less
are inclined to liberate it. In Russia, as in feudal England,
conservatives wanted more government control, as government was
at the root of their power. Liberals wanted more private
discretion.
In the United States today, where power has been vested in
private institutions, conservatives want less government and
liberals want more. What passes for conservative and liberal
"philosophies" is merely a set of rationalizations that power-
mongers hide behind.
Conservative support for traditional approaches and liberal
support for new ways of doing things also follows from the desire
for power. Traditional approaches have supported those now in
power, and change threatens to disrupt their power. Changes are
often embraced by conservatives once they prove unable to disrupt
the underpinnings of power.
For Greens and Libertarians to rise above the power-based
proclivities of liberalism and conservatism, they must focus on
their roots and reconcile their positions with their
philosophical underpinnings.
<bold>On the Roots of the Greens<bold>
In <ital>The Green Alternative<ital>, a popular book among American Greens,
author Brian Tokar states that "the real origin of the Green
movement is the great social and political upheavals that swept
the United States and the entire Western world during the
1960's." As part of that upheaval, I remember the charge by
elders that we acted as though "we had invented sex." Mr. Tokar
acts as though we had invented Green values.
Actually, all the innovative and vital features of the Greens
stem from an earlier Green movement. The influx of disaffected
liberals to the movement since the sixties has actually imbued
that movement with many features early Greens would find
offensive.
This periodical, for example, has been published more or less
regularly since 1943, calling for intentional communities based
on holistic living, decentralism, sharing natural bounty, freedom
of trade, government by consensus, privately-generated honest
monetary systems and a host of other societal reforms. Yet the
founder, Ralph Borsodi, wrote extensively about the evils of the
state, and would clearly oppose most of the interventionist
policies brought to the Green Party by disaffected liberals and
socialists. The same can be said of more famous proponents of
Green values, such as Emerson and Thoreau.
The Green movement grew slowly and steadily and quite apart from
mainstream liberalism throughout the sixties and seventies. In
the eighties, however, it became clear that the liberal ship, and
even more clear that the socialist ship, was headed for the
political rocks. The left had simply lost credibility, even
among those who felt oppressed by the current system. Gradually
at first, discouraged leftists discovered the Green movement
provided a more credible platform their positions.
Because of their excellent communications network, additional
members of the left quickly discovered the Greens, embraced their
values (at least superficially), joined their ranks and proceeded
to drastically alter the Green agenda. For example, early Greens
pushed for keeping economies more diverse and decentralized by
promoting alternative, voluntary systems, and by criticizing
lavish government expenditures on interstate highways,
international airports, irrigation projects, and centralized
bureaucracies that discriminated against small, independent
entrepreneurs. Today the National Platform of the Green Party
calls for "municipalization" of industry (that is, decentralized
socialism), limits on foreign trade to save American jobs (which
they insist is not protectionism), and other devices to create
artificial decentralization under the guiding hand of some
benevolent central authority.
The influence of Greens who are fond of government intervention
(referred to as Watermelons by more libertarian Greens) seems to
be strongest at the national level and weakest within most Green
local organizations. Despite the National Green Platform's
resemblance to a new face on the old left, many people who are
genuinely attracted to Green principles are either undermining or
abandoning the left-dominated Green Party USA. Specifically, the
principal of decentralism is being used to challenge the right of
a national committee to dictate positions to local Greens. This
is fortunate for those of us interested in a coalition of Greens
and Libertarians, as reconciliation between the Green Left and
libertarianism is clearly impossible.
<bold>On the Roots of the Libertarianism<bold>
The Libertarian Party was born in 1970. Like the Green Party, it
has philosophical roots that extend far back into history. It
emerged, however, at a time when conservatism was in decline.
Just as Greens attract liberals today and are strongly influenced
by the liberal agenda, Libertarians attracted conservatives and
were influenced by their agenda. However, as Libertarians are
more analytically rigorous, there are fewer blatant
inconsistencies between their positions and their principles.
Libertarian bias tends to show up more in prioritization of
issues than in any particular issue. For example, Libertarians
are far more prone to complain about the capital gains tax than
about many other taxes, even though there is nothing uniquely un-
libertarian about that particular tax.
Many Libertarians ignore classic libertarian writings and dwell
on the works of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises.
The classical libertarians get mere superficial attention. For
example, few have read <ital>Tragedy of the Commons<ital>, but many quote the
title. Specifically, they are unwilling to recognize that the
ecological mishaps like those referred to in that work had been
absent for centuries when almost all land was common. As with
the tragedy of the reservations, commons were abused because so
many people had to share access to so little land. All this was
a result of government sanction, allowing vast tracts of commonly
held land to be appropriated by individuals without proper
compensation to those who were dispossessed of access to the
earth. These facts are ignored because they cannot be reconciled
with pseudo-libertarian conservatism.
Just as contemporary Greens have fondness for government and
contempt for private property that their forebears did not share,
Libertarians take an extreme position on private property and
have hostility to all forms of government that their
philosophical predecessors did not share.
Their refusal to acknowledge natural limits to private property
and their insistence of unlimited protection of property by the
state is their one great departure from their predecessors and
their principles. For example, they dismiss the following
statement by John Locke, known as the father of private property:
God gave the world in common to all mankind. Whenever, in
any country, the proprietor ceases to be the improver,
political economy has nothing to say in defense of landed
property. When the "sacredness" of property is talked of, it
should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong
in the same degree to landed property.
They similarly ignore Adam Smith's statement that:
Ground rents [land values] are a species of revenue which
the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or
attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a
species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax
imposed upon them.
Private ownership of the earth and its resources is the one
area where Libertarians depart from their own philosophy. After
all, their justification of property is in the right of
individuals to the fruits of their labor. Because the earth is
not a labor product, land value is not the fruit of its owner's
labor. Indeed, all land titles are state-granted privileges, and
Libertarians deny the right of the state to grant privileges.
Even here, Libertarians are on solid ground when they argue
that freedom could not survive in a society where land tenure
depended on bureaucratic discretion. They are split, however,
over devices like land value taxation that would, with a minimum
of bureaucracy, put the landless in a more tenable position with
respect to land monopolists. Just as liberals dominate the
National Greens, conservatives dominate the Libertarian position
on this issue, though many Libertarians, including Karl Hess,
former editor of the Libertarian Times, do not share that
conservative position.
Again, this is a key issue for reconciliation. The Green
tradition cannot be reconciled with pseudo-libertarian claims
that a subset of the people can claim unlimited title to the
planet.
<bold>The Magic of Honest Compromise<bold>
Compromise is too often a process whereby people on each side
give up what they know to be right in order to gain a supposed
advantage for their interest group. What I am proposing is that
each side give up supposed advantages in order to harmonize with
what is right. It takes an open mind and a great deal of
courage, but the results can be magnificent.
If the Libertarians accept that ownership of land is a
privilege, and agree to pay a fair rent (or land value tax) for
that privilege, they will hold the key to getting rid of property
(building) tax, income tax, sales tax, amusement tax, and a host
of other taxes.
Furthermore, statistical evidence indicates that land value tax
promotes compact, harmonious use of land and eliminates a root
cause of poverty. In this case, adopting land tax can reduce the
need for zoning and protection of rural land, and for housing
projects, welfare, and a host of bureaucratic services for the
poor.
Greens who study this issue will find that small and simple
combination taxes that are essentially payments for exclusive
access to common resources will address most of their interests
without complicated and intrusive bureaucracies. Land tax itself
will eliminate land speculation and land monopoly, and will
promote orderly development of land in cities and towns, taking
developmental pressure off suburban and rural land.
Severance taxes on our common heritage of non-renewable
resources can even-handedly reduce the rate of exploitation of
these resources, conserving them for future generations.
Finally, taxes on pollution are really payments for exclusive
use of our common rights to clean air and water. It reflects
that the air and water is less valuable to the rest of us when it
is polluted, and those who pollute literally owe us for the right
to trespass on our air and water.
Of course land monopoly will not solve all the problems by
itself, but it is the key area where Greens and Libertarians are
separated from each other as well as from their own principles.
Once this is reconciled, we can more readily work together on
other issues where we are in agreement, such as liberating our
monetary system the banking monopoly, ending military domination
of foreign peoples, and ending government interference against
people who commit victimless "crimes."
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