Politics (17) - Discovery Instead of Axiomatics & No Democracy, No Freedom - (17) November 2013 - Literature Review of My Work on Politics and Freedom

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Continued from here.

In my posts of November 2013, I am vigorously engaged in rebuttals of libertarianism. I am still working on the assumption that liberty is some sort of predetermined standard, some Platonic structure of perfection hovering in the background of our messy world, but this view is increasingly being superimposed by insights into the procedural, open-ended, and indeterminate nature of liberty. 

Libertarians like Richman might be called "inactive or ineffective totalitarians" as they refuse to assert their beliefs in the only consequential way - that is: by political means and state enforcement. With unparalleled lucidity Richman lays bear the totalitarian core of libertarianism - the idea that everyone must think alike, if they are honest.

What his justification of "liberty" shows is the utter failure of any attempt to ground libertarian demands in a set of basic principles from which unique and incontestably correct conclusions can be derived. It turns out that all the axioms leave more questions open than answered.  

Again, the impossibility of an "axiomatic" derivation of rights demonstrates the importance of political competition as a means of discovering and legitimately establishing the basic rules by which people are expected to live.

P027 Richman's Credo from 11/20/2013

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Some regard democracy as a deceptive political game that usurps the place of a depoliticised liberal society. That is one view of democracy.

In the below post,

P028 Two Views of Democracy from 11/24/2013,

I argue in favour of the second view, namely that liberty is an eminently political enterprise. Actually, the defining characteristic of liberty is the need inhering in her to invite an entire population to openly debate and decide what her meaning is. Liberty is thoroughly democratic in that she cannot exist unless all mature members of the community are given the opportunity to participate in political competition - hopes of substituting principles for the processes of politics are misconceived, betraying a lack of understanding the essence of freedom:

A certain streak of libertarians insinuates that all human arrangements and interactions can be brought about in the fashion of market transactions. This assumption is patently false. Social order cannot exist unless a large number of precepts achieve general recognition in society, many of which can gain their functionally requisite social preponderance only in spite of the lack of unanimous support and understanding. Politics is the business of championing universal efficaciousness for ideas and corresponding practices that cannot be expected to ever attain unanimous acceptance and conviction. In large measure, politics is the hard and difficult business of finding tolerable compromises in the face of decisions that need to be taken in the absence of bilateral or unilateral unanimity.

Of course, there is bad and even evil politics, and yes, politicisation ought to be avoided, where it is unnecessary and defective, i.e. where it crowds out civil society, but it is a misconception to conclude from this that politics is fundamentally and exclusively evil, and that it ought to and can be eliminated and replaced by a world void of the state - the most powerful instrument of turning politics into reality.

Politics is everywhere, not only in politics. It is an eradicable and indispensable part of human life. He who does not understand this, does not understand the requirements of liberty either.

Imagine a world peopled only by libertarians sharing the same fundamental convictions; being individuals, in no time will they develop divergent views as to what liberty is and requires, what state she is in and what her prospects are; in fact, liberty is one big effort to allow people to develop divergent views and aspirations. Reconciling these different views and aspirations requires political expression, political mediation and ultimately politically determined and controlled enforcement.

Liberty is a state of affairs characteristic of a civilization with the highest degree of specialisation and division of labour ever attained in the history of mankind. It would be preposterous to rule out political participation for free individuals in a society where the management of violence, power and politics have naturally and sensibly become specialised nodes in the division of labour.

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Continued here.