Libertarian, Liberal, Progressive

Most of the debate between different political ideologies (as opposed to “our guy is better than your guy” debates) occurs between liberals and libertarians. The ideological debates that pit conservatives versus liberals or libertarians come in a weak second.

Why is it that the fiercest debates occur between liberals and libertarians? It is not out of any leanings towards conservatives that these debates occur. Conservatives allege they share economics with libertarians but a closer examination proves otherwise. Conservatives are quick to steal libertarian rhetoric but fail to follow through on it. The real reason there is so little debate is because there is so little to conservatism. Mercantilism isn’t a school of economics as much as it is a way for people to use the government to line their own pockets and the rest of what is commonly called “conservatism” is a morality platform based loosely on religious concepts. That is why Jerry Pournelle listed conservatism as irrationalist, while he listed both liberalism and libertarianism as rationalist.

Liberalism and libertarianism spring from the same root, classical liberalism. One side emphasizes liberty, and the other equality. Both see the other as essentially missing the point, which is somewhat ironic given that essentially the two are trying to achieve the same thing but by entirely different methods. The programs suggested, the laws sponsored, are opposed to each other to achieve what is ultimately the same goal. Liberals and libertarians both have their root in the enlightenment and try, in different ways, to seek justice. One seeks it through equality, the other through egalitarianism.

That is why there is plenty of room for debate. But that is not a full analysis of why there is such fierce debate between liberalism and libertarianism. Another reason is that many who would be called liberal are instead progressive. Libertarians and liberals pursue opposite policies for identical goals. Liberals and progressives pursue identical policies for opposite goals. Progressivism doesn’t share the Classic Liberal root of both libertarianism and liberalism, but instead uses the tools of liberals for their own ends. Since they advocate the same policies they seem to be the same.

There is no common ground between progressives and libertarians, other than also both being listed as "rationalist" by Jerry Pournelle. One seeks justice through liberty. The other seeks control through dependence on the government. The programs advocated by liberals are precisely the tools progressives can use because the argument can be easily made that the programs are there to help the recipient. And in being helped, they become dependent until the progressive achieves his goal: everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

One argument is a civil war. The other is oil and water. In both cases, unlike the conservative, there actually is substance though. And the progressives do worry every time the phrase "liberaltarian" comes up or liberals and libertarians find common ground, because if the two children of classical liberalism were to ever rejoin the progressives would be through.

Tribesman, Barbarian, Citizen … and Libertarian

It is always risky to take a work developed by someone else and try to discover something the original author has not yet developed. William Lind developed the theory about the four generations of warfare, and has since received emails describing a tentative fifth stage of warfare that he reports isn’t actually a fifth stage. But then there are times when building up on the existing framework does indeed add something new, such as when William Lind discovered the fourth generation in the first place.

Jerry Pournelle created a theoretical framework to describe three different stages of cultural advancement. He left open the possibility of discovering what might be the fourth stage of cultural development based upon how the different stages react to each other when the come into contact.

The first described is the interaction between the Tribesman and the Barbarian.

When Barbarism first arises in any area, Tribalism is doomed. The two are mutually exclusive, and there is no possible "peaceful coexistence" between them. To the Tribesman, the Barbarian is Evil Incarnate; the Barbarian has utterly rejected all Good, Moral, and Ethical values. He has rejected the Sacred Traditions, and glories in his absolute defiance of them. He blasphemes not casually, but as a way of life.

To the Barbarians, the Tribesman is a slave, a spineless, gutless coward, a disgrace to human shape. He has no self-respect, no courage to take a risk, no faith in himself. He doesn't respect himself, or any man. He won't fight for any reward, no matter how great and shining! He's a stupid, lazy slug, a disgrace to humanity.

The Tribesman won't fight for reward, he won't take a risk for great gain--because that is not in the Traditions. A Tribesman can't fight an enemy tribe for that enemy tribe's land; his tribal traditions refer to his tribe's land. If he did take the neighboring tribe's land . . . there would be no traditions to tell what to do with it. It would, in fact, be a Change, and therefore Evil.

The "battles" between two ritual-taboo tribes, anthropologists have long since observed, are practically pure rituals, and actually have a vanishingly small casualty rate. Not greatly different--for all the use of spears!--than in modern college football clashes. The spears are hurled while at a range so extreme that it's sheer accident if someone gets hurt.

When Barbarism appears--that situation changes in a hurry. The Barbarian army isn't going through a ritual; they're out for blood and loot. They don't have traditions as guides, nor as limiting fences about them.

The next thing he describes is what happens when a Barbarian meets a Citizen.

When the Barbarian encounters Civilization, therefore, he is going to be enormously confused and baffled. The Barbarians of North Europe, meeting the Citizens of the Roman Republic, were meeting men who allowed others to order them about, to tell them what to do and when to do it. Who obeyed commands they didn't, themselves, agree with. Obviously, a pack of servile slaves!

But these cowardly Roman Legionnaires, for some incomprehensible reason, did not collapse in battle. These Legionnaires, who had no self-respect, who did not fight man-to-man, but used short swords so that no one of them could say, when he returned home, "I killed Urhtoth!" but only, "I am a member of the Fourth Legion,"--these Romans strangely didn't flee before the fiercest Barbarian charges.

To the Barbarians, the Citizen shows the symptoms of all the things the Barbarian rejects as vile and degrading--the essence of cowardice. The Citizen yields his will to the demands of others. He allows himself to be limited, and allows himself to be compelled against his own desires.

To the Barbarian, the Citizen shows the same loathsome abnegation that the Tribesman does.

Which makes it all the more incomprehensible that these sniveling Citizens win battle after battle. They who have sacrificed their Manhood, have given up their right to individual dignity, somehow prove able to fight like maddened demons!

Finally, almost as an afterthought, he describes what happens when Tribesmen meet Citizens.

Notice that the root philosophy of the ritual-taboo tribesman is such that it is inherently impossible to cooperate with him in establishing a colony. So long as the natives are true Tribesmen, Change is Evil--and the colonists are introducing change. There is no such thing as "a good change" in a pure-tradition system: "Change is Evil; Evil is Change."

More immediately, the Tribesman's sense of security stems entirely from having a sure source of Answers. The Tribesman has no answers himself, and has no sense that he can be a source of answers. His sense of security, his defense against the Unknown, is a Source of Answers. He expects to be told what to do, when, and how; if his Tribal Traditions don't do so, then some other source of Answers must. He has no expectation or desire to be responsible for his own acts; that way lies the terror of the Unknown.

If some colonist comes in and overthrows the Tribal Traditions--then the Colonist must be the Source of Answers. The Tribesman cannot cooperate on a man-to-man basis with the colonist, no matter how the colonist may seek to establish such a system. The Tribesman doesn't know he's a man; he knows only that he's a Unit of the System--that he has to be a unit of some system.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. And you can lead a Tribesman to Liberty . . . but you can't make him free.

He includes two references to describe what the next phase of cultural development would be within the framework of Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen.

At each stage of cultural evolution, the preceding stage appears loathsome . . . and the succeeding stage appears to partake of those same loathsome characteristics.

As a rough guess, it's highly probable that the next stage of cultural evolution will appear, to us, to be Barbarism, and be a horrible, degenerate, loathsome system indeed.

Just as the Civil system appears, to the Barbarian, to be the Tribal system, in which the individual has no dignity, and a man is not a Man, for he lacks the courage to express his individual worth and will.

. . .

It's also interesting to wonder what will happen if we go in to some planet, and find what seems to be a Barbarian culture ... which isn't. It would certainly be baffling, and almost certainly be disastrous in a way we cannot dimly imagine.

It would mean the destruction of our very souls. Just as Civilization, by merely contacting Barbarians repeatedly, brings about the corruption and degradation of their dignity, their self-respect--their very souls. And turns them into cowardly, weakened, crawling things that actually cooperate with another human being.

We can't, of course, guess just what form of loathsome corruption of our selves, our dignity, looms before us.

It doesn't really matter; we're going to get it anyway, whether from outside, or from our own unwanted, yet inescapable, evolution.

But we won't like it. Any more than a Tribesman likes becoming that essence of corruption and evil, a Barbarian. Or a Barbarian likes becoming that sniveling thing, a Citizen.

The key point to notice is that in any given stage, the immediately later stage will look distressingly like the immediately previous stage. To the Barbarian, the Citizen appears distressingly like the Tribesman. The relationship is superficial, as the citizen takes orders not because he is "not a man" but because after having discovered individualism (and immediately overdoing it as the Barbarian does) they have discovered cooperation. The fact that Tribesmen and Citizens are alien to each other is revealed in the way they interact in the description provided by Mr. Pournelle.

So, to a Citizen, the next stage will resemble all of the features of Barbarism that the Citizen has outgrown and now finds repulsive. The Citizen views the Barbarian as a criminal who has no respect for other individuals. The extreme individualism of the Barbarian would never respect a contract, would never take orders that he feels contradicts his own desires.

That is how a Citizen would view the next stage. He would view the next stage as criminal, and those in it as individuals who have no respect for social order. And, just as the Citizen superficially resembles the Tribesman, the Citizen’s view of the next stage would be superficially accurate.

Which is why it baffles the Citizen that the Libertarian is stricter in upholding the rights of others and the sanctity of the contract than even the Citizen is, that the Libertarian isn’t a criminal the way a Barbarian is. The Citizen is as baffled by the Libertarian as the Barbarian is baffled by the Citizen.

It should be noted here that "Libertarian" in this context has a much broader definition than agreeing with the platform of the Libertarian Party of the United States. In this context it encompasses many different movements with many different ideas. The common ground in this context is the social outlook that differentiates it from Citizen, Barbarian, or Tribesman.

Just as the Citizen took the lessons of individualism learned by the Barbarian and tempered them with cross-linked cooperation, the Libertarian took the lessons of cooperation and tempered them with a respect for, not just the individual, but each other as individuals. This is fundamentally different from the individualism of the Barbarian, as it respects other individuals as individuals. It is cross-linked cooperative individualism, to stretch the descriptions first described by Mr. Pournelle.

That only leaves, if Libertarianism is indeed the fourth stage of development thus far advanced to by mankind, how Libertarianism views prior stages.

Although the Citizen views the Libertarian as similar to the Barbarian, the Libertarian and the Barbarian do not view each other that way. Just as the Tribesman does not understand the Citizen, the Barbarian does not understand the Libertarian. The Libertarian, completely unorganized, is capable of spontaneous cross-linked cooperation to form an organized defense that strongly resembles that of the Citizen. The Libertarian doesn’t simply take what he wants, but fights fiercely against those who would simply take – and eventually even fights against the Citizen on those same grounds. When the Libertarian does fight the Citizen, it is not for the purpose of looting but to stop looting.

The Libertarian would basically ignore the Tribesman. While a Citizen, having discovered cooperation is eager to share it with everyone whether or not they want it shared, the Libertarian, having discovered that people have a right to be left alone is eager to leave people alone. Since the Tribesman is not a looter the way a Barbarian is, or even the more subtle way the Citizen is, the Libertarian has no reason for conflict.

However, the Tribesman will see the Libertarian as completely and utterly alien, even more so than Barbarians (who merely represent absolute evil) or the Citizen (who represents new replacement traditions). The Libertarian could potentially be new traditions, except that he consistently refuses to take that burden. The Tribesman can try to return the favor and politely ignore the Libertarian, but eventually is forced to adapt and move forward to a new stage whether he likes it or not. The Libertarian would try to treat individual Tribesmen as equals, but just as with the Citizen and the Tribesman not knowing he's a man, the Tribesman doesn't know he's an individual.

Fortunately for the Libertarian, according to Jerry Pournelle, any time a later stage encounters an earlier stage, it spells doom for the earlier stage. Libertarianism was birthed with John Locke, midwifed by Thomas Jefferson, and then brought to maturity by Lysander Spooner, Friedrich von Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and other libertarian philosophers. And by their work the idea that people should belong to each other is doomed.

Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen

In the anthology "The Stars At War, Volume 1, Imperial Stars", assembled in 1986 by Jerry Pournelle, he included an original essay “Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen”. It can be read here and it includes some very useful concepts.

The essay's value as a piece of anthropology is as useful as the Social Contract written about by Hobbes and Locke, but just as with the Social Contract it is not in anthropology that it has uses. Like the Social Contract, it is a "useful myth" in which Mr. Pournelle describes three levels of social development that a people go through.

The first is the Tribesman:

The Tribal culture--in its never-actually-existent theoretical pure state--is a system of pure ritual and taboo. "Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory." The objectively observable system stems from an unstated philosophy--which is unstated because the Tribesman doesn't know philosophy exists, any more than a dog knows logic exists, or a fish knows that biochemistry exists. The philosophy is, essentially precisely that of the Absolute Totalitarian state . . . minus the familiar dictator. That is, in the Tribe, the individual exists for the service of the state. The individual has no value whatever, save as a replaceable plug-in unit in the immortal, ever-existent machinery-organism of the Tribe. No individual exists as an individual--neither Tribal king nor Tribal slave; each is a unit plugged in--temporarily, for all these units wear out and are discarded in a score or two of years--to the eternal Traditional System of the Tribe. The cells in a living organism wear out and are discarded; the organism is, relatively speaking, immortal. So, in the Tribe, the individual is nothing; the Tribe is eternal.

In return for a practically absolute loss of self-identity, the Tribesman is rewarded with security and peace of mind. The Tribal Traditions have The Answers to all possible real problems; nothing can happen that the Tribal Traditions, in their ancient and time-tested wisdom, have not already solved. There are no doubts; there are answers which involve "these tribesmen must die," but Death is not intolerable. Uncertainty--Doubt--these are the Terrors that live in the Unknown. And against those horrors, the ancient wisdom of the Tribal Traditions stand a strong, sure defense.

The Tribesman has an exact, clear-cut, and perfectly understandable definition of Evil. Evil is Change. Any Change whatever is Evil. The correlation is absolute--perfect one-to-one.

The next stage above Tribesman is Barbarian.

The Barbarian represents the Ultimate Horror from the viewpoint of the Tribesman; he is the Pure Individual. The Barbarian does not put his faith, his sense of security, in the ancient wisdom of the Traditions--but in the wisdom and strength of a Hero, a living demigod-man, a Leader who solves all problems.

Barbarism, in other words, is the Dictator, without the Totalitarian State. There is a Hero, who is a strong, and unusually clever leader--an individual who stands out above the men around him.

Tribalism is "a government of laws, not of men," with the minor change that "traditions" replace "laws."

Barbarism becomes a government of Men, not of traditions.

It is the first development of human culture which recognizes the value of the individual. It is not true that only civilized people respect the dignity of the individual; any Barbarian will assure you that Citizens have no dignity, that Civilization does not respect the individual. That only Barbarians understand what it means to be an individual.

The Barbarian, in essence, "has too much Ego in his Cosmos."

It's perfectly true that all men seek security--but necessarily, that means they seek what they believe is security. A superstitious Tribesman, fleeing a ghost, would happily climb a 100,000 volt power-line tower because he knows that ghosts can't climb.

The Tribesman's security is his conviction that the Tribal Traditions have sure answers to all real problems.

The Barbarian's security is in his absolute conviction that he can handle any problem--and if he can't, why, of course his Leader-Hero can, and will.

...

Barbarism is one of the great breakthroughs in cultural evolution; for the first time, it establishes that the individual has great value, that the individual must be respected.

He also describes the relationship between Barbarians and Tribesmen. Tribesmen, who view change as violating the traditions and therefore evil, see the Barbarian as evil. Barbarians, who view obeying orders with which one disagrees as spineless and sub-human, sees Tribesmen as being fit only for slavery as they are not human. A Barbarian thinks it pitiful is someone obeys an order with which he disagrees.

Advancing beyond Barbarism, the third stage so far is Civilization.

When the Barbarian encounters Civilization, therefore, he is going to be enormously confused and baffled. The Barbarians of North Europe, meeting the Citizens of the Roman Republic, were meeting men who allowed others to order them about, to tell them what to do and when to do it. Who obeyed commands they didn't, themselves, agree with. Obviously, a pack of servile slaves!

But these cowardly Roman Legionnaires, for some incomprehensible reason, did not collapse in battle. These Legionnaires, who had no self-respect, who did not fight man-to-man, but used short swords so that no one of them could say, when he returned home, "I killed Urhtoth!" but only, "I am a member of the Fourth Legion,"--these Romans strangely didn't flee before the fiercest Barbarian charges.

To the Barbarians, the Citizen shows the symptoms of all the things the Barbarian rejects as vile and degrading--the essence of cowardice. The Citizen yields his will to the demands of others. He allows himself to be limited, and allows himself to be compelled against his own desires.

To the Barbarian, the Citizen shows the same loathsome abnegation that the Tribesman does.

Which makes it all the more incomprehensible that these sniveling Citizens win battle after battle. They who have sacrificed their Manhood, have given up their right to individual dignity, somehow prove able to fight like maddened demons!

He spends little time describing the Civil system, and given that it is the current system in the western world there should theoretically be little need to describe it. What he does describe is interactions between Barbarians and Citizens and between Tribesmen and Citizens. In both cases, as with Barbarian and Tribesmen, interaction between a later stage and an earlier stage dooms the earlier stage.

The key question then becomes what happens to a Barbarian who discovers he cannot beat a Civil System from the outside? Doing so from the outside turns the Barbarian into a criminal, as can be discovered from a cursory examination of most true criminals. At one point there was a belief that criminals had insufficient self esteem, but further examination found that many real criminals had excessive self esteem.

A smarter Barbarian would find the Civil system useful, to do from the inside what cannot be done from the outside, to use the system for looting by proxy. The first advantage of this is that it saves the Barbarian from the consequences of criminal activity. The second advantage is that Citizens are conditioned to have a basic respect for order, and thus are much less likely to defend themselves from crimes when committed by the government.

This actually solves one of the biggest riddles of the twentieth century: why did not the German people do more to assassinate Hitler or overthrow his regime? It is because the Germans were a civilized people, raised to have a basic respect for order. Even though they did not like it, the Barbarian Hitler achieved power working inside the system.

If faced with a Barbarian in an alley, a Citizen will fight back. If faced with a Barbarian with a government form, a Citizen is likely to give in and try to work within the system to stop the Barbarian. A stupid Barbarian becomes a criminal; a smart Barbarian becomes a politician.

A Combined Chart

Recently the Pournelle Chart was analyzed. It has both its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the Nolan Chart, but overall is a good way to represent the political spectrum.

That leads to the question of what the result would be if the two charts were combined. Given that the liberty axis of the Pournelle Chart is basically the vertical cross axis of the Nolan Chart, it would simply be a matter of substituting the one axis with the two axes to create a cube. The three axes would be Economic Liberty, Civil Liberty, and Rationality.

To view it directly on the Rationality axis it would look exactly like the Nolan Chart, which means that the only thing to describe is the high and low rationality end of each of the four corners.

Starting with the corner of high economic liberty and high civil liberty, the high rationality aspect is libertarianism, including anarcho-capitalism and objectivism. The low rationality aspect is counter-cultural anarchism.

In the corner of high economic liberty and low civil liberty, the high rationality aspect should be considered conservatism excepting the fact that conservatives do not embrace economic liberty. Either the theoretical model needs a new name, or the modern conservative needs to embrace a new name. A low rationality equivalent would be the Theocrat. The difference is that one is the security conservative and the other the moral conservative. The theocrat, the moral conservative, is technically an authoritarian but as Ayn Rand pointed out they consider economics to be less important than civil matters and are willing to not regulate it because other matters are more important.

In the corner of low economic liberty and high civil liberty, the high rationality aspect is the welfare liberal. These are the ones that support welfare due to the belief that government can solve economic problems. Their low rationality counterpart is the libertine who relies on government to support. There is no overarching philosophy behind this position other than a feeling of entitlement.

In the final corner of statism, the high rationality aspect is communism, in which there is a belief in government planning of all aspect of society, while the low rationality aspect is fascism.

Perhaps there could be further refinements, especially further examination how to effectively measure the rationality axis, but this could also be considered a more descriptive model than either of the parent models when considered alone.

Another political spectrum

While libertarians are quite familiar with the Nolan Political Science Chart, it isn't the only attempt to more accurately graph the political map. Moreover, as shown in Conservatives Versus the Nolan Chart it doesn't depict the political landscape as accurately as it could, given that modern American conservatism isn't synonymous with Nolan conservatism.

Another chart that is slowly making waves is the Pournelle Chart, another two dimensional representation. He starts his essay with the standard attack on the inconsistencies of the standard one-dimensional spectrum, but proceeds from there to describe his own alternative model.

The first axis of his chart is "liberty", which could be considered the cross-axis of the Nolan chart ranging from statist to libertarian. That is common to many attempts to rectify the political spectrum, but Jerry Pournelle felt that was inadequate. The reason is that it groups fascists and communists on one end as if they are the same, and it groups anarchists and libertarians at the other end as if they are the same. He felt a second axist was necessary to separate out these ideologies.

The axis he came up with is called "attitude towards planned social progress" or "rationalism", the belief that society's problems can be solved by reasoned solutions. After adding this axis he was able to differentiat the communist from the fascist and the libertarian from the anarchist.

On the corner of statist and rationalist one finds Communists and Socialists. The corner of statist and irrationalist one finds Fascists and Theocrats. The corner of rationalist and anti-statist is occupied by the libertarians and objectivists. Finally the corner of irrationalist and anti-statist is Anarcism and counter-culturalism. Conservatives and Liberals are both near the center by having midway opinions of both the state and the ability of planning to achieve social goals.