Libertarianism is Basically Conservatism

Given that they seem incompatible in policy and principle, it is prima facie puzzling why conservatism and libertarianism sleep together. This post motivates the puzzle, and suggests a solution. (Related on the same topic, see this post.)

As Corey Robin persuasively argues, conservatism's core commitment is to the preservation of pre-existing social hierarchies: the patriarchal family; heteronormativity; white supremacy; and a mighty economic elite. This is not, needless to say, conservatism's self-image (white supremacy, in particular, is in bad odor nowadays), but it best explains the disparate set of outcomes and policies that conservatives support: the regulation or abolition of abortion, the abolition of affirmative action ("racial preferences"), the repudiation of reparations (. . . how dated do I sound?), and the celebration of "Southern Heritage" (see, for example, item 37 here); the preservation of inequality among people with different sexual orientations; and a tax and regulatory structure that minimizes consumer protection and egalitarian wealth-transfers. Conservatism's policies toward penality --- tough on crime that is perpetrated by the poor; lenient on economic malfeasance --- also evince a univocal commitment to the preservation of social hierarchy.


True, conservatives propound a competing set of principles and understandings to explain this melange of policy preferences: (1) life begins at conception; (2) marriage is (in some more or less attenuated sense) for procreation; (3) affirmative action and reparations unfairly disadvantage whites who played no role in the subordination of minorities; (4) taxes diminish productivity and wrongly deprive the industrious of the fruits of their labor; and (5) harsh criminal penalties are both fitting and effective deterrents. But not only do these explanations, particularly regarding penality, fail to measure up, more importantly the conjunction of (1)-(5) is ad hoc; there is no necessary connection between, for example, believing that life begins at conception and also that murderers should get the death penalty, or that supply-sider interpretations of the Laffer Curve accurately describe taxation's effect. Positing that conservatism is committed to (1)-(5) --- and that this is what explains its policy preferences --- therefore raises more questions than it answers; it is an inadequate explanation. By comparison, if conservatism is committed to the preservation of pre-existing hierarchies then it is entirely understandable, and predictable, why it promotes the policies it does.

Whereas conservatism is committed to the preservation of social hierarchy, libertarianism espouses a commitment to the preservation of "negative liberty" (i.e. the absence of coercive constraints imposed by the state --- query why care about negative liberty in particular?). Whether this commitment is sincere, there is some pro tanto evidence that libertarianism is not just conservatism with a universalist patina. A number of libertarianism's policy concerns clash with conservatism, cf. privatizing marriage, legalizing drugs (and, generally, decriminalizing "victimless conduct"), and, though the movement has made a strategic decision to remain neutral on abortion (it is supposed to be a hard question because it could potentially violate the negative liberty of the unborn), sotto voce preserving the right to choose.

Though libertarianism and conservatism share a preference for lower taxes and regulatory roll-back, it is not, on its face, clearly foreordained that libertarians would ally strategically with conservatives instead of the left. It is, at the very least, unclear why libertarians should perceive economic regulation as a more pressing infringement of negative liberty than over-criminalization, the ever-bushier thicket of abortion regulations, and the outright prohibition of gay marriage --- all, at least arguably, more harmful deprivations of freedom than licensing laws. By the same token, it is difficult to see why conservatives would not follow Ayn Rand in decrying libertarianism as a hotbed of "anarchist hippies," a "monstrous, disgusting bunch of people," "lower than pragmatists" who, in the Objectivist Peter Schwartz's words, embrace "the advocates of child-molesting, the proponents of unilateral U.S. disarmament, the LSD-taking and bomb-throwing members of the New Left, the communist guerrillas in Central America and the baby-killing followers of Yassir Arafat."

Yet libertarianism and conservatism are bedfellows. Two years ago the Cato Institute purged its "liberaltarians" (the description those beleaguered libertarians who would join hands with the left self-apply), and the second-most prominent libertarian think tank, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is notorious for its founders' efforts to align the movement with the "paleo-conservative," Buchananite wing of the Republican Party (see Lew Rockwell's "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism" [p. 34]). Likewise, that conservatism is basically friendly to libertarianism is manifest.

Here's an explanation. Libertarianism is an offshoot of conservatism --- it is committed to the preservation of one kind of social hierarchy (the hierarchy of economic class). Because it is not committed to the preservation of all social hierarchy it can take any number of different (more or less strong) stands toward non-economic hierarchies (such as the patriarchal family, heteronormativity, drug crime). On these issues, how it reacts depends on strategic, political calculations. When libertarianism takes unconservative stands, then, it does so for various reasons including (1) that some of the positions (e.g. decriminalizing drugs) help substantiate libertarianism's commitment to the liberal-proceduralist rhetoric on which libertarianism draws for its legitimacy,* and (2) that others (tolerating abortion, tolerating gay people) are popular among the wealthier demographic to which libertarianism (understandably, given my hypothesis) appeals. [To "test," in the social scientific sense of test, this theory: map the libertarian response to an issue that was once unpopular among the wealthy, but is now accepted. Prediction: libertarians become more vocal as the popularity augments.]

In short, libertarians and conservatives can sleep together because each can overlook the others' sins. Conservatives can deplore libertarianism's unconservative commitments with impunity because libertarianism only bares its teeth at those who would disrupt economic hierarchy. And libertarians can tolerate conservatism because where it truly counts they stand united.

Assuming I'm right, what's interesting is that libertarians and conservatives are largely unaware of this dynamic, and would reject my account deeply and sincerely. If true, the real casualty of this post (which, treating, as it does, "libertarianism" and "conservatism" as independent agents in the world, libertarians would reject out-of-hand as violative of the principle of "methodological individualism") is not libertarianism but Descartes. Contra the Cartesian method, we suck at introspection.

* On the power of liberal-proceduralist rhetoric in America see this excerpt from Louis Seideman's "Should We Have a Liberal Constitution?".