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Tim Lee

The Reluctant Libertarian

I’m reading Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks. I’m only a few pages in, but I thought this quote, on page 16, was interesting:

My approach heavily emphasizes individual action in nonmarket relations. Much of the discussion revolves around the choice between markets and nonmarket social behavior. In much of it, the state plays no role, or is perceived as playing a primarily negative role, in a way that is alien to the progressive branches of liberal political thought. In this, it seems more of a libertarian or an anarchistic thesis than a liberal one. I do not completely discount the state, as I will explain. But I do suggest that what is special about our moment is the rising efficacy of individuals and loose, nonmarket affiliations as agents of political economy. Just like the market, the state will have to adjust to this new emerging modality of human action. Liberal political theory must first recognize and understand it before it can begin to renegotiate its agenda for the liberal state, progressive or otherwise.

Now, from Benkler’s language, here and elsewhere in the book, it seems quite clear that his basic sympathies are with the “progressive branches of liberal political thought.” Yet Benkler is smart enough to recognize that the story he’s trying to tell doesn’t fit naturally within the progressive narrative. The emerging economy of peer production isn’t being created by democratic deliberation under the wise guidance of state regulation. No government programs are required or especially helpful to the process. Liberals can be excited about it to the extent that it’s an alternative to having the big, evil corporations do stuff, but it doesn’t leave much room for their political program.

In contrast, Benkler’s thesis dovetails nicely with the standard libertarian narrative–at least if libertarianism is understood as an ideology that defends individualism and voluntary cooperation in all its forms, rather than an ideology narrowly focused on promoting markets as the only legitimate form of economic organization. It’s a little bit unfortunate that left-wingers like Benkler and Larry Lessig are the most visible evangelists for the economics of peer production, because this is really a libertarian story: public goods being produced by the voluntary cooperation of individuals without a government program in sight.

October 4, 2006 | Comments |

  • I just started reading the same book and my take is slightly different (being someone who is not especially shy about having certain leftish inclinations.)


    My insight is this: to perceive markets as a means rather than an ends gives a different, and fundamentally more pragmatic, outlook than most libertarians seem to have.

  • My main disappointment with Benkler's book (unjustified, I simply want a different book than the one he wrote) is that it isn't much about the economics of peer production. The subject badly needs treatment from economists in addition to legal scholars, ideology aside.
  • Tim
    Enigma, I don't think very many libertarians (at least the ones who have thought about it carefully) conceive as markets as an end in themselves. The whole point of markets is that they are a means to the individual ends of consumers.
  • analoghole
    I'm curious why you label Lessig a "liberal." Has he expressed political preferences (outside the realm of copyright, DRM, etc.) that you find particularly "liberal"? You may well be correct, but I'm curious if the impression of him as liberal derives from his stance on IP, or on other issues. (Lessig is, after all, a former U of Chicago law prof and Scalia clerk, neither of which trait correlates strongly with political liberalism).
  • PLN
    Tim (re: post),
    Exactly! That's a large part of why I loved the book. Although concerning your doubts that many of our fellow-travellers think of markets as "ends in themselves", I'd have to sadly dissent. The other day I spent a solid forty-five minutes looking at the PFF blog and just wanted to cry by the end.
  • Tim
    Analoghole, I think Code has a strong lefty flavor to it. He spends an entire chapter upbraiding Declan McCullagh for his libertarian streak. He's defintely on the leftish side of network neutrality, one of the biggest tech issues. I don't know what Lessig's particular views on political issues outside of tech policy are, but his rhetoric indicates a generally left-of-center view of the world.
  • Law Student

    Good post. I would recharacterize Benkler's book as an emphasis on the virtues of electronic civil society. Traditional civil society is a theme that libertarians love to explore. Just as it would be absurd for free-marketeers to disrespect traditional civil society because of non-monetary incentives, I find it similarly incoherent for putative free-marketeers (e.g., PFF) to do the same with electronic civil society.


    For example, before the growth of the welfare state, fraternal communities played an enormous role in assisting the poor. I would argue that paradigmatic cases of electronic civil society, like open-source or youtube, operate in a similar fashion. I believe this is an underemphasized topic ripe for some robust classical liberal research and writing.


    Benkler does not take the parallel between traditional and electronic civil society to its logical conclusion. We saw a decline in fraternal communities because the welfare state crowded them out. We should similarly be wary of state-sponsored "solutions" (DMCA?) to digital problems, for government intervention may end up crowding out electronic civil society in a completely different way. I believe this is a topic in which libertarian researchers can make valuable contributions

  • Tim: while I do agree that Lessig is fairly lefty, his upbraiding of Declan was not for being a libertarian per se, but for believing in the delusion that the net was ungoverned/ungovernable. The whole point of Code, after all, is that even if governments stay out of the space, architecture still governs. Hell, Lessig's central thesis on net neutrality is essentially libertarian, if you look at it the right way- in his mind the telcos would like to govern the nature of traffic on the net, and he opposes any governance on internet traffic.

    [And Tim, I'm not running away from your voting posts, I'm just swamped and don't have time to do Serious Thinking right now, nor respond to same. Sorry about that.]
  • Yet Benkler is smart enough to recognize that the story he's trying to tell doesn't fit naturally within the progressive narrative. The emerging economy of peer production isn't being created by democratic deliberation under the wise guidance of state regulation.

    Hmmm...slightly preconceived of what constitutes a so-called 'progressive narrative'. Many of the left reluctantly accepted the role of the state as a necessary evil, to step in where necessary. And they almost always sought out other solutions, where they were available, and when they were convinced they would work.

    In my mind Benkler's story fits in exactly with the progressive narrative, as it has evolved thorough thinkers such as George Orwell.
  • Tim
    Luis, I don't have my copy of Code on me right now, so forgive me if I'm misremembering, but as I recall, Lessig was criticizing Declan for being too critical of the regulatory process and too trusting of the market. It seems to me that describing this sort of argument as libertarian robs the term of most of its meaning. If you define "governance" broadly enough, all strands of liberal thought are concerned with limiting "governance" of some by others. What distinguishes the libertarian strand is that libertarians are far more worried about power in the hands of government than they are about power in the hands of private entity. Those in the "progressive branches of liberal political thought" tend to lean in the opposite direction: more trusting of the state (or "democratic deliberation") and more concerned with the power of private entities. Lessig's position on network neutrality, in a nutshell, is that we should expand the power of the state in order to reduce the power of private companies over the Internet. That may or may not be good policy, but I think it's a stretch to describe it as libertarian.
  • Tim
    enigma: Libertarians also reluctantly accept the role of the state as a necessary evil, to step in where necessary. What distinguishes libertarians from left-liberals is that we have a stricter definition of "necessary." I think Lessig's standard of "necessary" is clearly far less restrictive than the average libertarian.
  • It really helps to understand the context Lessig wrote that. My own essay, Libertarianism Makes You Stupid came out of the same background.

    The problem was there was a certain ideology that held that The Internet was some sort of otherworldy place, where the State was an anachronism. So for every issue, what you were supposed to do was to rant, very loudly "Government BAD! Business GOOD!". And that was the height of social analysis (I know people are going to think I'm exaggerating, but you had to have been there). The last chapter of Code is basically devoted to saying this is utter BS, and harmful BS.

    Benkler's book has some of the old otherworldly argument in it, so that's why it's appealing to Libertarians, among others. And it's being taken by the marketers as intellectual backing. But, in my view, it's a deeply flawed argument, just the New Era hype in more academic clothes. So it ends up as merely another item in the dispute between blog-evangelists (both Libertarian and Liberal) and the skeptics.
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