On LRB yesterday, Wendy McElroy wrote,

Capitalism v. the free market

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 02:13 PM

I had occasion to explain myself yesterday. Specifically, I explained why I do not argue wholesale for capitalism but I argue, instead, for adopting the free market system. Where do I draw the line between the two concepts?

[read the rest]

I agree with everything she says, which shouldn’t be too surprising, since my libertarian education started with Wendy McElroy and, through her (and Robert Anton Wilson and Ken MacLeod), Benjamin Tucker.

(And I especially appreciate that she doesn’t pull the semantic legerdemain of conflating capitalism and corporatism.)

But while I distinguish between the formally negative category of the free market and the positive economic program of capitalism, I no longer share McElroy’s emphasis: she writes, “My choice is laissez-faire capitalism. … But I don’t feel even an impulse to convince those who embrace other systems of their error.”

I very much do feel that impulse.

No, it’s not part of a libertarian agenda, per se. That agenda is only about freedom from the institutions of coercion, and whatever economic arrangements people want to make voluntarily is, strictly speaking, none of my business.

But recognition of people’s fundamental right to choose does not require us to forgo efforts to dissuade people from bad thinking, neither does it obviate the the practically minded promotion of prosperity.

To quote McElroy’s intellectual hero, and mine:

[…] libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” — not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.

There is no question about the fact, however, that the subset of libertarians who are free-market economists tends to be delighted when the free market leads to a wider range of choices for consumers, and thereby raises their standard of living. Unquestionably, the idea that prosperity is better than grinding poverty is a moral proposition, and it ventures into the realm of general moral theory, but it is still not a proposition for which I should wish to apologize.

Murray Rothbard, “Myth and Truth About Libertarianism”