Introduction #

This book Building Blocks for Liberty: Critical Essays by Walter Block is dedicated to the notion that libertarianism is not only a political economic philosophy that is powerful and insightful, but it is also unique; it is neither of the right nor of the left (Walter Block, “Libertarianism is Unique; It Belongs Neither to the Right Nor the Left; A Critique of the Views of Long, Holcombe, and Baden on the left, Hoppe, Feser and Paul on the right,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 2010).

According to the view of most people, conservatism, or the right-wing philosophy champions economic liberty, but not personal freedom. And, similarly, socialism, or the left-wing perspective, favors personal liberty, but not that pertaining to buying and selling, trading, and other commercial endeavors.

Neither of these claims is exactly true. The adherence to the principles of free enterprise of Republicans on the right is easy to exaggerate. Many of them favor free trade, except when an industry they favor is facing foreign competition. At the time of this writing, President Bush is snarling at the oil industry for of all things price gouging; it is difficult to reconcile this with any adherence to a free economy. Similarly, Democrats on the left supposedly favor keeping the state out of the bedroom and the bathroom, but when they are in power, drugs, prostitution and pornography are virtually always illegal.

However, there is enough of a grain of truth in the standard view to make its inversion even more ludicrous. That is, it is just plain silly to assert that leftists favor economic freedom and rightists defend personal liberties. If anything is clear, it is that neither at all defends the freedom popularly ascribed to the opposite perspective. A socialist favoring free markets is as much of a contradiction in terms as a conservative who looks with favor upon liberties of the individual to ingest into his body what he pleases, or to do with his body anything other adults will permit him to do.

Nozick (1974, p. 163) put his finger squarely on the matter when he characterized libertarianism as favoring “capitalist acts between consenting adults.” Here, in one fell swoop, this author exposes the weaknesses of both sides. The leftists, at least according to the received doctrine, are in favor of legalizing anything between consenting adults; similarly, the rightists are supposed to support capitalism. Neither really does. Certainly, no mainstream view is compatible with both kinds of freedom.

In order to find a political economic philosophy that espouses this vision, one must necessarily embrace libertarianism, the subject of the present book. It is only this perspective that travels to the furthest reaches of human endeavor, and consistently upholds the rights of people to do exactly as they please with their persons and property, so long as doing so respects the equal rights of everyone else to do the same.

The first section of Building Blocks for Liberty: Critical Essays by Walter Block is devoted to an exploration of economic liberty: what it is, how it helps promote the good life, why it is critically important if we are to keep whatever remnants of civilization we now enjoy, and put off our present descent into barbarism.

In the first essay, my co-author and I attempt to demonstrate that private property rights are the last, best, and only way to defend against exploitation, or rights violations. We make the point that one can only own the rights to physical property, not the value thereof. Chapter two is my and my second co-author’s attempt to, among other things, answer the question of whether and under what conditions the possession of nuclear weapons, a per se invasive implement, may nevertheless legitimately be built and kept in a manner compatible with libertarian law. The burden of the third chapter is to show that, contrary to the views of many, “free market environmentalism” is not a contradiction in terms; that, indeed, our ecological systems can be best protected by a strict adherence to private property rights, not their denigration. In the fourth essay I and yet another co-author make the case that the last best hope for an educated public is the complete privatization of all schools. It is only under a regime of full private property in education that knowledge may properly be transmitted to the next generation. Chapters five and six address the complex issue of unionization in the free society. On the one hand, workers should have the right to quit their jobs; if they cannot do so, they are in a relation of slavery with regard to their employers. On the other hand, a strike encompasses far more than a quit, even a mass quit of all workers at the same time; it necessarily includes the initiation of violence against those (“scabs”) potentially competing for the very jobs spurned by organized labor. The seventh article makes the claim that the most just and the most efficacious way to organize roads, tunnels, bridges, streets, and other thoroughfares is to, wait for it, privatize them. It is only under a regime of full private property in this sector of the economy that consumer welfare can be maximized. Chapter eight criticizes the public goods argument with application to the case of roads. The last contribution to this section evaluates the contributions of different distinguished economists to monetary theory and the gold standard. It makes and defends the claim that the gold standard is the only monetary system compatible with the free market philosophy.

Section two addresses issues of human rights and personal liberties. This is the opposite side of the coin from economic freedom for libertarians. In our view, liberty is all of a piece, inviolable, interconnected, inseparable. Left and right each have a very small bit of the answer to civilized living; both economic and personal liberties are required in the good society. What are the specifics?

In Chapter ten we examine the nonaggression axiom of libertarianism, the bedrock, along with private property rights based on homesteading, of the entire philosophy. Chapter eleven applies this insight to children’s rights, while rejecting positive obligations. Read it and see the libertarian answer to the question of how youngsters can be protected without violating parental rights to ignore them if they wish. The twelfth essay in this compilation tackles head-on the issue of “social justice.” Were this concept to depict “justice” in “social situations” whatever is meant by the former, it would, perhaps, be unobjectionable. Instead, however, it is a disguised attempt to smuggle into the conversation an unwarranted defense of compulsory egalitarianism, and must be rejected by libertarians out of hand.

Do people have a right to discriminate on the basis of race, or sex, or sexual preference, or beauty, or strength, or any other criteria they chose? The answer given in Chapter thirteen is an unqualified “Yes.” Does this violate the rights of “victim” groups? Not a bit of it. Immigration is an issue that is widely debated within libertarian circles, and, of course, in the wider society as well. Chapter fourteen takes the side of open borders. In essay fifteen we tackle the issue of government. Is it a legitimate institution? Does it derive its just power from the consent of the governed? Do people have the right to withdraw that consent, on the (erroneous) assumption that they have first given it? Read this chapter and see. Chapter sixteen analyses the proper legal status of addictive drugs. For the libertarian, there can be no question: all adults have the right to place in their bodies whatever they wish. But will not legalization lead to crime, disarray, graft? No; these are the results of prohibition, just as in the case of alcohol. Decriminalization of addictive substances will eradicate these problems, placing them in a status similar to the one now occupied by beer, wine and liquor. Section two concludes with an essay addressing the confusion between libertarianism and libertinism.

Section three constitutes a short but very important contribution to libertarian theory. It is addressed to the very language in which we make our case for liberty. If we are constrained in this regard by considerations of political correctness, if we cannot use words fully, freely and correctly, then it will become difficult or even impossible to even articulate the libertarian message. The enemies of freedom have done yeoman work in eliminating crucial words from the “accepted” vocabulary. Even libertarians who ought to know better are in thrall to these linguistic conventions, and have thereby been weakened in their attempts to defend this philosophy. Words under dispute include: ms., developing countries, rent-seeking, social justice, tax subsidies, property rights, filthy rich, privileged, unearned income, freeman, ultra, profiteer, book burning, stakeholder, get something for nothing, free rider, fair trade, opportunistic, red states, blue states, liberal, and, last but certainly not least, libertarian.

Walter Block