The Future is Green Libertarianism

When I wrote this in 2004, the year of re-electing Bush et. al., it was directed mainly at Republicans.  This time, it must be directed at Democrats, as well.  - PHS

Green Libertarianism
From Montana Green Bulletin, March 8, 2004
Commentary by Paul Stephens, Secretary MGP

[How Libertarians go bad. The "property rights" conundrum. A genuine libertarian would never put "private property" (especially vast accumulations of unaccountable corporate property) ahead of civil liberties. How the Libertarian Party has destroyed the very concept of liberty for the sake of corporate and personal wealth and power.]

For me, the most obvious political position to take can best be described as "green libertarianism." By "libertarianism," I mean something close to the anarchist tradition, not the corporate "Libertarianism" of the contemporary American Libertarian Party. For a long time, it was necessary to distinguish my views as "left libertarianism," "libertarian socialism," "social libertarianism," or even "anti-corporate libertarianism." And prior to the 1970's, such "anti-corporate libertarianism" was what most libertarians stood for -- a tradition which actually predominated even in "Individualist" or "individualist anarchism" circles which were active up to the 1960's and 70's, when I first discovered them. Ayn Rand was also "anti-corporate" in this sense, correctly identifying "corporate capitalism" with Fascism. (Don't ask me how all the fascist "Objectivists" running around today could have missed that!) 

The phenomenon of "corporate Libertarianism" was best exemplified by the Ed Clark candidacy for President. While I gladly voted for Ron Paul's Libertarian candidacy (against GHW Bush and Dukakis in '88), I could not bring myself to even consider voting for Clark, an ARCO lawyer, of all things -- an especially unsavory breed to Montana environmentalists. That was when I first began voting for environmentalists like Barry Commoner and later, Ralph Nader. Congressman Paul, a populist Texan M.D., has been elected as a Republican for more than 2 decades, and gave some great speeches, widely reprinted in the anti-war press, against attacking Iraq last year. He's no friend of the oil industry and other mainstays of Texas imperialism, either, but a hang-up for Green support would be his opposition to abortion -- necessitated, in his view, by the Hippocratic Oath. 

So, populism is important to Green values as well. In rural states, we become distinctly green populist libertarians, with much greater feeling for the American constitutional tradition based on small, agrarian communities (what is called "Jeffersonian Democracy") than most urban Greens (or Libertarians) seem to maintain. Because of our experience of the frontier and being food providers, we have a strong sense of individual achievement, and the right to keep and maintain the honest fruits of our labor. But this in no way extends to the corporate "property rights" economics, originally developed at the University of Chicago, which has been further elaborated at UCLA and MSU Bozeman. 

The kind of socialism we maintain is often derided as "agrarian socialism" by more sophisticated Marxist or Realpolitik apparatchiks of the cities. But we cannot afford to split our ranks even further by rising to the bait of divisive critics (and I really don't have anyone in particular in mind. It's a constant in political organizing, as far as I can tell.) At this stage of the game, our common purpose in preventing nuclear war and saving the planet and human civilization from all manner of destruction overrides all other considerations. 

You are either with us on that one, or you are against us. No sane person of good will can advocate a continuation of the nuclear arms race, just as no person of good will can countenance waging wars of imperialistic aggression and conquest. But if you know anyone who would even consider voting for George W. Bush, you've got your work cut out for you. You must convince this person before November that such a course is absolutely genocidal and suicidal. No one claiming the Christian or any other recognizable faith or system of ethics should be allowed to maintain such egregious errors of perception and judgment. 

--Paul Stephens