Carol Wilcox of the Labour Land Campaign wrote a comment on the blog on Saturday that I thought worth sharing more widely:
I know lots of libertarians through my association with the land value taxation campaign. I have observed that none of them are mothers.
That's unsurprising. I am not sure how anyone could mix the roles of parenthood and being a right-wing libertarian.
I note Ayn Rand did not.
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Mind you, I don’t know any seriously rich mothers (the only rich woman I know is childless and definitely not left-wing), so there could be some.
It is not only unsurprising, it is intrinsic to the neoliberal position, in my view
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=49310661&p=343020582
I’m struggling to understand what message you are trying to get across in this post other than blatant misogyny?
I’m not sure where the misogyny is
That would be an absurd comment to make of Carol
And I make clear it extends to all parents
It’s about libertarians and caring for others
Indeed-one result of the great, libertarian USA is that it has the second worst levels of childhood poverty in the developed world-fantastic evidence that libertarianism diffuses wealth! (http://www.ibtimes.com/us-has-second-highest-rate-childhood-poverty-developed-world-only-romania-worse-700758)
Of course a libertarian would say that ‘they just didn’t work hard enough’ (the parents) or offer a quasi eugenicist theory about the poor; or say that the Government needs to be shrunk even more. One thing it does say is that Libertarians are not that generous as charitable giving amongst the top 1% of earners actually decreased MORE than that of lower earners after the financial collapse.
Speaking as a libertarian myself, there are a fair number who are mothers (I know one who wrote a book on libertarian child rearing and another who had a children’s rights organisation). So there are some. I have to say there is a preponderance of men over women among libertarians although this has been diminishing markedly over the last ten years or so. I do think there is a connection between one’s view of the family and parent-child relations and one’s views about social relations in general but also there’s the big question of whether familial relations scale up to the level of even quite a small cociety.
I guess there is a particular strand of right-wing thought that is all based around the nuclear family… a “my family is all that matters” attitude, bordering on the pyschopathic. That’s usually associated more with authoritarian right-wing thought but it could be that there are “libertarian” mothers out there with those views as well. In many (not all!) cases I find that when you scratch the surface of a libertarian there’s an authoritarian hiding behind the facade anyway. For example, the far-right blogger Paul Staines claims to be libertarian but supports the ConDem benefit cuts (which are a form of scapegoating amounting to fascism in my view) and the use of water cannon on protesters. Many of these people strike me as fascists – that’s what I think of Nigel Farage (another self-styled “libertarian” BTW). He’s simply Hitler with a pint glass.
Mark Crown -thanks for your comments which is a helpful broadening of the debate and allows my comment above to be seen in a better context -your synchretist approach, I think, is reflected in today’s strange bedfellows in politics where the Libertarian (Austrian?) ‘right’ is now intersecting with aspects of the left (banking reform, anti-monopoly/cartel). I’m thinking of how we get overlaps between MP’s like Steve Baker (Austrian school) and Carswell and the left’s call for banking reform. Even Le Penn’s Front National have expressed support for Syriza! (http://www.france24.com/en/20150120-france-far-right-syriza-greece-poll/)
The only way I can see Libertarianism ‘working’ is if it were shot through with a strong spiritual sensibility that expressed itself in giving and supporting. The likelihood of this happening in our present culture is slim and so libertarianism could plunge us back into the worst of the 19th Century. In a way, charities are an expression of libertarianism but fail to really expose the financial structure and myths about money that the populace need to understand.
I think we can only have ‘idiographic’ behaviour as long as there is a spiritual ‘nomothetic’ underpinning (just looked those words up).
I can’t speak for other libertarians but I was making that point because of my disrupted education and leaving school at 15.
Well, I am biologically incapable of being a mother, as I am a bloke 🙂
But I have got four kids and would consider myself ‘libertarian’ albeit ‘left-libertarian’ and not what passes for ‘libertarian’ in well funded right wing protectionist circles (these people are not libertarian at all as they believe that there is a born überclass of landowners to whom we must pay our dues in eternity. Doesn’t sound like liberty to me).
The significance of being a mother is that at times you are vulnerable and have to rely on others. Men, even fathers, may feel themselves strong and able to look after themselves and their loved ones without any help from the state or anyone else. Socialists tend to want the best for all children, not just their own.