The Libertarian Party published their 2012 platform last month. They still don’t understand what “property rights” are. (More)
Libertarians talk and write about property rights. Clarence Carson argued that property is the basis for all other rights, including life and liberty. Property is, he claimed, a “natural right” that preexists government, and concludes:
The law may be stated in this way. All rights are dependent upon property. They are dependent upon property for their conception, their delineation, and their exercise. It follows from this that the system of property ownership will determine what rights can be effectively established within a society. Since a right cannot be firmly established unless it is tied to a property base, changes in the property system will tend to be reflected in the rights that can be exercised. And, the right of the individual to the ownership of private property is essential to the establishment of individual rights.
Such is the theoretical wellspring for the Libertarian Party’s 2012 Platform statement on Property and Contract:
Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights. The owners of property have the full right to control, use, dispose of, or in any manner enjoy, their property without interference, until and unless the exercise of their control infringes the valid rights of others. We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade. The right to trade includes the right not to trade – for any reasons whatsoever. Where property, including land, has been taken from its rightful owners by the government or private action in violation of individual rights, we favor restitution to the rightful owners. [Emphasis added.]
The italicized text is the boilerplate libertarian rejection of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Back in January, then-Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said the Civil Rights Act “undermined the concept of liberty.” In reader comments to that article, many apparent libertarians argue that business owners have a right to discriminate against persons of color, women, or other groups. The business is the owner’s private property, they claim, and government has no right to intervene.
Except, one presumes, if the business owner wants Those People removed from his property. Then, one presumes, government has not only the right but the duty to enforce the owner’s property rights by ordering Those People to leave and arresting them for trespass if they refuse. Or, if the business owner does not order Those People to leave but simply refuses to hire or serve them, government has the duty to resolve any resulting lawsuit in favor of the business owner.
Ponder these two sentences:
- Government may not legitimately restrict property rights, including a business owner’s right to discriminate.
- Government may not legitimately restrict government’s duty to enforce property rights, including a business owner’s right to discriminate.
The first is libertarian property rights doctrine. The second is what that libertarian doctrine means in Realworldia … and the italicized phrase exposes the conceptual fallacy of that doctrine.
In Realworldia, law is not about theory or philosophy. Law is a tool for resolving disputes, and a “right” is a duty of government to resolve This kind of dispute, given These facts, in favor of That party, and by providing Those remedies. To argue that government may not legitimately restrict property rights is to argue that government may not legitimately restrict the duties of government.
The Libertarian Party’s property rights platform is not about what a business owner may do, but about what government officials must do, namely, take the business owner’s side in any dispute over the business owner’s bigotry. They insist that government officials – acting as agents of We the People – may not heed the voice of We the People. In that view, property owners have whatever ‘rights’ they demand, and our only recourse is to refuse to do business with them and hope the “free market” will sort it out.
That is not “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is “government of the property owners, by the property owners, for the property owners.” That is … plutocracy.
+++++
Plutocracy is exactly what this is. But where I keep getting hung up is the notion that a government is needed to enforce all these rights they demand. They want plenty of one-way government.
Considering how strongly overall the government already protects property rights, maybe they should just shut up. Every contract, every property, is protected by courts and law enforcement, which exist by law. They may not like not being allowed to discriminate according their various bigotries, but they sure like it when a starving man can go to jail for stealing a loaf of bread.
The irony is, business owners may still discriminate against Those People if they want to. The difference, since the Civil Rights Act and related laws, is that government won’t take the business owner’s side of that dispute. They aren’t insisting on the right to an opinion about Those People. They are insisting on government support for that opinion … while telling government to stay out of their lives…. 🙄
This gives me a headache. 😯 There is no sense of community in the libertarians. I sometimes run into Freds who have fallen for the individual freedoms they perceive in the Libertarians and haven’t followed the process through to realize how they might be ‘free’ but they would be screwed in the bargain.
Individual freedoms sound really good until you find out what these folks mean by them. 🙁
I’m sorry it gave you a headache, addisnana. I decided to write about this precisely because some Freds have been taken in by libertarian rhetoric, although not as many as libertarians would have us believe. Almost as many have a negative as a positive reaction to the word “libertarian.” The word “progressive” elicits far more positive reactions.
That said, as progressive activists we need to know how to unpack libertarian arguments. If you explain that a “right” is “a duty of government” – to resolve disputes in favor of the person having that “right” – the holes in libertarian arguments become very obvious, very quickly.
They talk about land being returned to the original owners. I wonder how they would feel when their land is taken and returned to Native Americans?
Now I’m all for that. Who has prior claim? Certainly not Ron Paul and his friends. Libertarianism is for white males only. Funny, that.
Libertarian arguments about property rights only hold up if you ignore those inconvenient disputes. Indeed the Libertarian Party platform presumes that government should only intervene to stop or punish violence against persons or property. Many Native American lands were taken through treaties and contracts that would now be void for fraud. Note that this …
… and would permit such fraud. In the libertarian moral worldview, if your property is taken by fraud then you failed in your duty of due diligence.