"What sets Andrew Koppelman’s book apart from most critiques of libertarianism," says reviewer Marco den Ouden, "is that he actually knows what he’s talking about."
Libertarian Limitations | Quillete | Marco den Ouden:
A review of Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed by Andrew Koppelman, 320 pages, Macmillan (Oct 2022)
September 12, 2023 - "Andrew Koppelman ... is a Professor of Law and of Political Science at Northwestern University, a civil libertarian, and the author of books on antidiscrimination law, gay rights, same-sex marriage, healthcare reform, and religious liberty. He declares himself to be 'a pro-capitalist leftist' and acknowledges that his 'embrace of that position here will make many of my friends on the left feel betrayed.' The thing that turns Koppelman’s crank is what he regards as a heartless, narrow, and blinkered understanding of liberty on the part of many libertarians....
"What sets Koppelman’s book apart from most critiques of libertarianism is that he actually knows what he’s talking about. He’s clearly read and researched libertarianism in considerable detail. And while he is sometimes harsh in his criticism, he clearly sees the value in many libertarian positions. His background in law and political science, as well as his writing on civil liberties, allows him to bring some fascinating insights to bear in his analysis. And he sometimes turns libertarian ideas on their head, using libertarian ideas to argue against what he sees as a perversion of libertarian ideas in the works of Rothbard, Nozick, and Rand. 'You ought to be a libertarian—of a certain kind, and only up to a point,' he writes. 'This book is not only a critical description of libertarianism. It aims to marry what is best about libertarianism with the agenda of the left'....
"Koppelman notes that the modern political Left is often more concerned with identity politics than with alleviating poverty. 'A right to be different,' he continues, 'pushes toward localization of power and away from central planning.' The people on the Left, who continue to malign capitalism, 'don’t grasp the anti-socialist logic of their present views.' And because Hayek was not a doctrinaire absolutist in his opposition to a role for the state in the economy, he 'thought redistribution to provide basic needs was an appropriate supplement to a free market. Such a supplement was not central planning, because it left the recipients free to make their own decisions'.... Ronald Reagan, Koppelman suggests, 'succeeded in shifting American politics—and American understandings of liberty—in a Hayekian direction.' Bill Clinton’s Democrats adopted these views and implemented some of the things Reagan could not....
"But while Democrats since Clinton have adopted a Hayekian approach to markets and regulation, Republicans have moved steadily in a more radical and fundamentalist libertarian direction, distilled from the later views of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand. Before considering those views, Koppelman digresses with a chapter on the Lockean theory of natural rights. Hayek was lukewarm at best on rights theory, but it is the centerpiece of the Rothbard/Nozick/Rand approach. And of course, it holds a key place in the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The fundamentalist view of property rights holds that people work and the fruits of their labor is their property. They have a right to it. Such rights are absolute. And, as per the Declaration of Independence, 'to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' This does not give government carte blanche to do what it wants.... 'You must not spend money that’s not yours.' But, Koppelman notes, if this view is correct, 'it straightaway entails that most of what government does is illegitimate.' This, he continues, 'is the moral core of much modern libertarianism'....
"Koppelman identifies Rothbard’s 'core moral principle' as nonaggression, as expressed in For a New Liberty: 'No man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.' Koppelman says that Rothbard adopts this principle because 'each man may only live and prosper as he exercises his natural freedom of choice,' thus 'if someone aggresses against him to change his freely-selected course, this violates his nature; it violates the way he must function.' Koppelman agrees that this 'axiom entails anarchism'. So how will justice be administered in an anarchist world? By private contractors—“multiple private police forces, with no central authority over them.” Koppelman compares this to a society of warlords, each trying to gain dominance. 'What actually emerges from networks of protective associations, all over the world, is some variety of hereditary aristocracy.' In other words, feudalism.... .
"Koppelman brushes Nozick off in a few paragraphs and moves on to consider the influence of Ayn Rand.... Koppelman seems to have mixed feelings about Rand. He clearly admires some of her writing and philosophy, and he appreciates her support for charity as expressed in her essay 'The Ethics of Emergencies'.... Elsewhere, he writes that, 'the most attractive aspiration in Rand is the independence of judgment, and faith in oneself, displayed by Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead. The book has surely helped many young people with its message that they should pursue their own deepest aspirations, and not care about impressing others'.... But in Atlas Shrugged, Rand 'offers a far cruder picture.' She argued that under capitalism, 'it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.'This leads to the view that 'markets give people exactly what they deserve and any redistribution is unjust'....
"In Rand’s opposition to any relief by the state, she shared Rothbard’s position. But while she did argue in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal that 'without property rights, no other rights are possible,” Koppelman suggests that “at Rand’s core is, not a theory of property rights, but an ideal of reciprocity. That ideal is attractive. It is, I suspect, the source of her rhetorical power.” According to the Oxford dictionary, reciprocity is 'the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit'.... 'She has in fact captured an important ethical ideal,' Koppelman continues, 'the value of interpersonal respect between "men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value"'....
"Koppelman concludes with chapters on paternalism, discrimination, and how the lack of appropriate regulation has led to the aggrandizement of modern day moochers and looters....
|I was a doctrinaire libertarian/Objectivist from 1969 to 2000, and I came to my libertarianism through Ayn Rand. The first libertarian book I ever read was Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. I was hooked and read everything Rand ever published during her lifetime and much of what was published posthumously. My drift away from orthodox libertarianism accelerated after I retired in 2014, started blogging, and returned to university. I became an admirer of Isaiah Berlin's value-pluralism—the view that genuine values can conflict, which is anathema to libertarians. Although I have read very little of Hayek, Koppelman's book makes me want to explore his thought in more detail. Koppelman presents a good case for taking the Hayekian approach with a work that is rich in detail and full of thought-provoking ideas. It is well worth the read, whether you ultimately agree with him or not."
Read more: https://quillette.com/2023/09/12/libertarian-limitations/
Are libertarians greedy and delusional? A Soho Forum debate [Andrew Koppelman vs. Gene Eptein] | ReasonTV | May 22, 2023:
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