Ben Shapiro on Libertarianism

Part 2: "Families are Communist"

Recently, Ben Shapiro interviewed Vivek Ramaswamy on his show The Search. While the whole interview sits behind the DailyWire+ paywall, an eleven minute clip was posted to Mr. Shapiro’s YouTube channel, titled “Where Libertarianism Fails”. In part one, we discussed Mr. Shapiro’s misunderstanding of the “libertarian ideal”, as he put it. Here, we will tackle another claim he made — one that, though equally wrong, is much more common. Let’s dive into part two…

Families are Communist

This claim betrays a confusion regarding the differences between economic structures. Now, it becomes difficult to directly address Mr. Shapiro’s position since words like capitalism, socialism, and communism are defined in various ways. It is not clear from the video clip precisely how he would divide up these terms. The only point of clarification we receive is, after asserting that families are communist, he states that “you have a joint bank account with your wife”. From this, for the sake of this post, we will assume that for him, communism means sharing resources in common. 

For someone as seemingly well read in history and economics as he is, this is an odd move, especially when meant to be juxtaposed with libertarianism. Is it his position that libertarianism and sharing are incompatible? If so, this is absurd. As we discussed in the previous part, libertarianism is about the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The entire issue is the illegitimate use of force against peaceful people. There is nothing about a family sharing food from the fridge that goes against this idea. There is nothing anti-libertarian about pooling your income with your wife to share in common. 

This assertion brings to mind the following question: does Mr. Shapiro view libertarianism and support for capitalism as strictly synonymous? That to speak of the libertarian ideal is to speak of the capitalist ideal? It is, of course, no mistake that the two are tied together. It is only by embracing the capitalist system that you can fully adhere to the NAP, but the two ideas are not the same. The fact that you do not make your children work for their food is not in opposition to libertarianism. But, as we’ll see, it’s not even in opposition to capitalism.

Economic Terms Matter

While defining communism as simply sharing does not lead to a rejection of libertarianism as Mr. Shapiro seems to suggest, this odd definition leads me to clarify what these terms mean, at least in the economic sense. There is much debate over whether communism and socialism are the same thing or not. The words seem to be colloquial synonyms; objectives seem, at times, to be the same; yet, Marx viewed communism as the anarchic final stage that followed socialism. To attempt to keep terms separate, we will use the following definitions:

• Capitalism: private ownership of the means of production

• Socialism: state ownership of the means of production

• Communism: communal ownership of the means of production

As you may be able to see, the distinguishing characteristic is how the means of production are handled in the given system, not the level of sharing going on with respect to consumer goods. The economic debate is how to use our scarce resources to satisfy our ends. This is a question over efficient utilization of producer goods. 

Mr. Shapiro confuses the managerial question with the production question. Given how many pieces of corn are in his fridge, how shall he distribute them amongst his family members? This is not the same question as, “should resources be directed towards the production of corn?” Communal allocation post-production is not communism. Collectively determining what will be produced and how is communism. So long as the inputs that filled your fridge were privately owned, we are still talking about capitalism. It is no less capitalistic nor libertarian that the family shares resources. 

In fact, plenty of sharing goes on in the market. Publicly traded companies share ownership between a myriad of people. You may say that this is different because access to ownership is restricted to those who own shares, thus the company maintains its private status. Yet the same is true for Mr. Shapiro’s family. I doubt he would argue that I have an equally legitimate claim to his fridge as his children. So, the fact that there are multiple people with an ownership claim in no way renders the resources communal en bloc, nor does it indicate that the means of production are collectively owned.

Conclusion

Communism, when understood as simple sharing, does not stand against libertarianism. This framing, however, of family, communism, and sharing, is not appropriate nor accurate. Communism refers to an economic system attempting to allocate production communally, not the sharing in common of already produced consumer goods. It is misleading to speak of the family as communist. Doing so is a disservice to the beautiful nature of the family, as well as a de-clawing of a fundamentally dangerous economic system by purporting it to be more rational than it actually is.

Communism and socialism are economically irrational. The family, on the other hand, is the cornerstone of civilization. There is nothing to gain in pretending these are the same. 

Part 3 Preview

In the next post, we will discuss whether liberty is inherently, or merely consequentially, good.