Racist Progressives, Meet Hard-Hearted Libertarians

Brian Tamanaha

With the resurgence of the use of the term “progressive” by liberals, libertarians have taken to reminding liberals that their turn-of-the-century progressive forebears were virulent racists. According to libertarians, when the social reformist impulse of progressivism mixed with the personal racism of progressives, a toxic brew resulted that led to the legal oppression of blacks and other racial minorities. “The ideas of race and color were powerful, controlling elements in progressive social and political thinking,” [David Southern] argues. “And this fixation on race explains how democratic reform and racism went hand-in-hand.” Libertarians even blame progressives for Jim Crow laws.

There is much truth in this charge. As Michael McGerr’s excellent history of the progressive movement explains, in the late nineteenth century “science increasingly endorsed many Americans’ belief that some races were better than others and that racial characteristics were hereditary and therefore quite possibly unalterable.” Progressives who supported Jim Crow apparently rationalized that blacks were better off if kept segregated from whites.

Contemporary libertarians take satisfaction in asserting that libertarians, even those who hold racist views, would never countenance legal oppression of blacks because they are opposed in principle to government coercion.

That indeed counts in their favor.

But classical liberals have their own embarrassing grandparents. Herbert Spencer, the most influential advocate of laissez faire in nineteenth century America, opposed all government aid to the poor and infirm because it thwarted the biological law that the weakest should die. (He coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.”) Although this seems heartless, Spencer asserted to the contrary that it is benevolent:

The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many ‘in shallows and in miseries’ are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. It seems hard that an unskilfullness which with all his efforts he cannot overcome should entail hunger upon the artisan. It seems hard that a laborer incapacitated by sickness from competing with his stronger fellows should have to bear the resulting privations. It seems hard that widows and orphans should be left to struggle for life or death. Nevertheless, when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence—the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents and singles out the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated as the victims of an epidemic.

That’s cold.

Now, just as progressives can protest that racism is not inherent to progressivism, libertarians can protest that heartless social Darwinism is not inherent to libertarianism. We could call a truce and stop trying to smear contemporary versions of these ideas with the ignorance and sins of their forebears.

That would be nice and neighborly, but it’s not quite right. While racism can be severed without loss from progressivism (and indeed has been), the doctrine that government activities should be strictly limited to protecting property, enforcing contracts, and maintaining order is built into libertarianism. Ludwig von Mises, the leading classical liberal of the early twentieth century (not a social Darwinist), opposed public education as beyond the proper scope of government, and he was against any unemployment benefits (because it encourages indolence). Von Mises recognized that the unemployed would suffer, but he felt this was justified because it would increase overall material wealth. Clear echoes of this argument are still made in libertarian circles today.
Posted 10:49 AM by Brian Tamanaha [link]