Academic Agent is a state-socialist author and YouTuber whose channel includes some excellent explanations of Austrian school economics. However, it also includes an entire series of ten videos entitled “Issues with Libertarianism,” in which he claims to address fallacies in those same Austrian positions which lead him to decidedly anti-libertarian, statist conclusions.
These videos demonstrate that he does not at all understand the concepts he has so competently taught elsewhere, as all of the ostensible “issues” he addresses are specious and have long been thoroughly debunked within Austrian literature. In the following, we will review this fallacy-ridden series, while leaving it to the reader to draw his own conclusions on whether and in which cases the errors result from an unfamiliarity with the relevant literature or downright dishonesty.
In the first video of the series, Academica Agent (AA) lays out, as logical syllogisms, his conception of the basic stances of socialism and juxtaposes them to those of Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard, respectively. He then deduces, based on this framing, that the three all accept some tenet of the socialist claims and that, therefore, the conflict between socialism and each of these schools of libertarianism ultimately boils down to a disagreement on means, not ends. Given that libertarianism and socialism share the same ends, he argues, it should not surprise us that libertarian arguments have failed to make substantial headway against socialism in the last century; the defeat of socialism “must come from a deeper place.”
What are these shared ends? AA argues that Friedman would agree with socialists that the sought-after end is maximum equality, but believes that socialism always increases inequality; that Mises would agree with socialists that it is material prosperity, but believes that the free market is the best means of attaining it; and that Rothbard would agree with socialists that it is maximum freedom, but believes that the free market is the best way of achieving it.
Now, it should be immediately obvious that AA attributes to socialists three incompatible views: either the sought-after end is equality, material prosperity, or freedom, but not all three at the same time. His glossing over the fact that the three distinct libertarian positions are each in partial agreement with one of the three separate and distinct socialist positions, respectively, makes it appear, as he implies, that libertarian arguments—regardless of the kind of libertarianism from which they spring—merely constitute a technical disagreement on one aspect of a monolithic socialist position. This allows him to aggregate all these claims together and state that “libertarians and socialists ultimately share the same goals,” since they share the same “metaphysical and even moral assumptions,” when, in truth, neither the libertarians nor the socialists share the same moral assumptions within their own respective camps.
By parsing both the libertarian and socialist counter-arguments, we see the simple truth underlying AA’s convoluted treatment: the free market and the state are the only two methods of achieving social goals. They are opposites in a functional sense, and thus, mutually negating. (This was insightfully pointed out by Mises in his essay “The Middle of the Road leads to Socialism”.)
The essence of the one is voluntary cooperation, and that of the other is coercion. For any social end sought—be it an increase in equality, material prosperity, freedom (however defined), or anything else—a means for its attainment must be chosen, and that means must either be the market or the state. AA’s core claim is nothing other than the banal observation that there is no agreement between socialists and libertarians on the question of which means best serve the ends of equality, material prosperity, and freedom.
This, however, does lead us to an important insight, namely, that what fundamentally makes someone a libertarian or a socialist is not the end he finds most important, but the means he believes to be the best way of achieving it. In other words, everyone is a libertarian or a socialist on some issues and there does not exist any third option (what AA terms a “deeper place”).
Of course, there are other conceivable ends on which presumably all parties agree, but the ultimate question is whether they are to be achieved through cooperation or force, the economic means or the political means. In summary, the state and the market are the two means of achieving social ends, those who favor the first for a given end are socialists in that regard and those who favor the second libertarians, and there is no third option from which socialism might be “defeated.”