#Lockeanism

[gravitascivics]

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, VII

Currently, this blog is describing and explaining its favored view of governance and politics – a view this blog suggests should guide the nation’s efforts in civics education.  It is a mental construct this blogger calls liberated federalism.  To date, the blog has reviewed a couple of its elements, that being covenant or compact[1] and equality.  Readers are invited to visit previous postings to see what has been described.  

The next element is communal democracy.  As with the other related postings, those dedicated to this construct, this account of communal democracy will rely heavily on the ideas of Philip Selznick.[2]  It includes the idea of the “consent of the governed” which is derived from the principle of rule by the governed.  This association was made early by the nation’s republican leaning founders.  

What the liberated federalist perspective stresses is that the rule and consent must be viewed as that emanating from a functioning community, instead of from an aggregate of individuals (as assumed in the natural rights perspective described earlier in this blog).  This other view – this shift – to a communal democracy entails four principles:  “the protection and integration of minorities, the moral primacy of the community over the state, the responsibility of government for communal well-being, and the social basis of political participation.”[3]  

And in that vein, in terms of the protection and integration of minorities, the decision-making process in a communal democracy respects the foundational notion that the process is a reflection of “the people as a whole.”  This notion stands in counter distinction to unrestrained majority rule, in which the majority has the right to do whatever it desires.[4]  

The more communal position identifies that there are individual rights, and that the system must guarantee the integrity of each person’s fundamental needs and interests.  Therefore, the majority is limited in its ability to legally acquire what it wants. Hence, the idea that rights protecting individuals that is found in the Bill of Rights has its origins with this view of limited democracy or a communal democracy.

         In addition, the communal position is one of inclusion in terms of fundamental law, the formulating of constitutional provisions, and in the United States, overriding a presidential veto, for which a consensus must be expressed through representative bodies. Those incidences of consensus demand the agreement of diverse groups by insisting on 60 percent, two-thirds or three-quarter majorities.  

In addition, there is no permanent majority.  Minorities in one issue can become part of a new majority in another issue.  And upon losing on some issue, minorities can exercise their rights to associate and rights of speech to convince others to join them to form a new majority.  Of course, such an environment invigorates a polity and promotes engagement and activity – hopefully for the better.

The covenantal or compact-al, federalist view is that majority rule is a form of representation, while sovereignty is best held by a people-in-community.  That is, the community, through the institution of majority rule as expressed in representative forms and limited as indicated above, will follow in the direction of the will of the people.  A majority, no matter how large, that is cohesive enough to bar the minority from meaningfully participating, acts to serve as a threat to communal democracy and as such, represents an impoverished form of the democratic ideal.

The second aspect of a communal democracy is the position of the moral primacy of the community over the state.  This tends to be downplayed by civics instruction under the reign of natural rights thinking.  Even though many descriptions of the social contract concept are often misrepresented in current secondary school materials, federalists prefer the term social compact, and a more communal view should be emphasized.  That would portray the continual character of such agreements beyond immediate conditions and render any transactional character as being case-specific, i.e., being attributes of a specific political contest.  

For example, in using a popular textbook – as a teacher is apt to do – it is likely to employ Thomas Hobbes’ description of the state of nature to represent all the views of that concept, including that of John Locke.  The state, according to Lockean theory, originates from preexisting communities, not from autonomous and endangered individuals.  By adopting Hobbesian language, it minimizes the essential role communities play in the formulation of societal origins.

“Whatever may be said of other aspects of his thoughts, this Lockean premise [the protection of fundamental rights of life, liberty, and property] does not entail a radical individualism”[5] as Hobbes’ account tends to do.  Instead, it is based on a view of a person entangled or enmeshed in a social context with relationships of family, friends, and commitments.  

The creation of law in generating a regime helps to perfect (and protect) the community; it does not create it.  The community already has its foundation to be moral through its kinships and resulting traditions that bolster its cohesion.  Morality is allowed to transcend the public and the private spheres of the community. It also provides the way for the community to be “civilized.”

What results is a give and take between the rights and the moral claims of the community.  There are times when the moral claims preempt private rights, as in the time of war in which involuntary conscription is necessary and permitted.  In more ordinary times, compulsory education falls under this condition.  

On the other hand, there are rights that can be protected only with narrowly constructed laws; for example, laws that regulate the search and seizure of private property in the search for criminal evidence.  This balancing between rights and the prerogatives of government demands interpretation:

 … the identification of fundamental rights is an aspect of constitution-making; and constitutions, whether tacitly accepted or explicitly adopted, must be interpreted.  Interpretation brings to bear prudential judgment, which requires appreciation for the diverse interests and values at stake in the life of a community. Constitutional or common-law rights to life, liberty, and justice are authoritative premises for decision; they demand vindication; but their reach is not predetermined.  There is room for enlargement of rights as well as for their limitations.[6]

 A communal democracy is also concerned with the responsibility of government in maintaining the democracy’s well-being.  All but anarchists believe government has the responsibility for providing services for the betterment of society, even if that expectation is limited to concerns dealing with the maintenance of the society in question.  The argument is not whether the government should provide services, but to what extent.

Historically, there is a tendency for empowered democracy to create a social democracy in which the expectation for governmental services rises significantly.  A social democracy is not synonymous with a communal democracy.  Experience has offered or demonstrated a number of cases where social democracies pursue policies that are extremely individualistic, as even some welfare programs have been, and, in turn, undermine the health of the community.  

For example, Selznick points out that in the United States, a centralized welfare state has diminished the viability of local welfare resources and has debased a sense of moral obligation in meeting the challenges of the impoverished.  Instead of vibrant efforts to deal with these problems, bureaucratic responses have deadened any spirit of liberation among the general populace.

This theme will be continued in the next posting by addressing how communal responses can address these challenges and maintain a vibrant sense for a communal democracy.

[1] Covenants and compacts are sacred agreements.  Compact is the broader classification of which covenant is a subtype.  While compacts are sacred in the minds of those participating, covenants, in addition, call on God to witness the agreement.  The Declaration of Independence is a covenant while the US Constitution is a compact.  Of interest, the term, federal, is derived from the Latin word for covenant, that being foedus.

[2] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).

[3] Ibid., 503.

[4] For a cautionary argument lodged against unincumbered majority rule for the founding generation, see John Adams, “The Revolutionary as Conservative,” in Great American Thinkers Volume I:  Creating America from Settlement to Mass Democracy, edited by Bernard E. Brown (New York, NY:  Avon Books, 1983), 156-207.

[5] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth., 507, emphasis in the original.

[6] Ibid., 510.

[transmutationisms]

at least some response to r/malelivingspaces type rooms has gotta be guilt about having so much in comparison. if people in their "right mind" don't need a lot of furniture and doodads, they think, then maybe they're the crazy one - because SOMEone needs to be pathologized. and not to touch the comfy-cozy discourse but... *gestures* ya feel?

i mean people will say the same things about rooms that are cluttered or disorganised even when there's no actual health concern like dust or mould or whatever. there are just really specific ideas about how you're supposed to cultivate your space in order to be mentally healthy and a weird number of people will literally just presume you're secretly miserable if you don't lmao. i actually think this has a lot more to do with the legacy of 18th and early 19th century attempts to quash political unrest and enact social discipline by managing the sensory environment according to what were presented as universal scientifically-backed principles about what sorts of stimuli were healthiest and morally protective---see garden design, architectural biopolitics, natural-historical taxonomy -> the organisation of curiosity cabinets, censorship of reading material, etc etc etc. a lot of this was historically justified by appeals to lockean empiricism and cabanisian sensationalism, but the underlying issue isn't a philosophical discourse but the attempt to reshape and reform the citizenry by what is essentially a form of environmental engineering.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Reblogging txttletale talking about copyright being stolen from her after reblogging "it's a little funny to be an internet communist/anarchist or whatever and the second you mix your labor with something you switch over to be like "the Lockean proviso is the most real thing in the world, the sacred charge of the state is to defend my private property"

Like do you want the state to defend your private property and have private property or are you a communist?

She wasn't talking about having actual IP being taken from her by a corporation, she was making a hypothetical to point out how copyright law only serves capitalists.

Either way, you can be both against private property and against capitalist exploitation of the working class. You actually have to be against both. Private property isn't a protection against exploitation, it's a guarantee that someone is going to be exploited. It is an essential component of the class divide under capitalism. Some people have capital. Most don't. The private ownership of capital ensures that the few who do have it are legally protected from having it taken away from them by the masses.

As Healed was pointing out, by and large the actual creators of billion-dollar Marvel properties (and many other valuable IPs in many other corporations) were employees who never received ownership of their creations. Even when a corporation is buying the rights to produce and market someone else's IP, it is usually the corporation making most of the money, with the actual creators making very little. There are a lot more creators who end up like Siegel and Shuster than there are who end up like Walt Disney.

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.4.1 What is wrong with a “homesteading” theory of property?

So how do “anarcho”-capitalists justify property? Looking at Murray Rothbard, we find that he proposes a “homesteading theory of property”. In this theory it is argued that property comes from occupancy and mixing labour with natural resources (which are assumed to be unowned). Thus the world is transformed into private property, for “title to an unowned resource (such as land) comes properly only from the expenditure of labour to transform that resource into use.” [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 63]

His theory, it should be stressed, has its roots in the same Lockean tradition as Robert Nozick’s (which we critiqued in section B.3.4). Like Locke, Rothbard paints a conceptual history of individuals and families forging a home in the wilderness by the sweat of their labour (it is tempting to rename his theory the “immaculate conception of property” as his conceptual theory is so at odds with actual historical fact). His one innovation (if it can be called that) was to deny even the rhetorical importance of what is often termed the Lockean Proviso, namely the notion that common resources can be appropriated only if there is enough for others to do likewise. As we noted in section E.4.2 this was because it could lead (horror of horrors!) to the outlawry of all private property.

Sadly for Rothbard, his “homesteading” theory of property was refuted by Proudhon in What is Property? in 1840 (along with many other justifications of property). Proudhon rightly argued that “if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all … Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another … from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can he prevent individuals to come.” And if all the available resources are appropriated, and the owner “draws boundaries, fences himself in … Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends … Let [this]… multiply, and soon the people … will have nowhere to rest, no place to shelter, no ground to till. They will die at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright.” [What is Property?, pp. 84–85 and p. 118]

Proudhon’s genius lay in turning apologies for private property against it by treating them as absolute and universal as its apologists treated property itself. To claims like Rothbard’s that property was a natural right, he explained that the essence of such rights was their universality and that private property ensured that this right could not be extended to all. To claims that labour created property, he simply noted that private property ensured that most people have no property to labour on and so the outcome of that labour was owned by those who did. As for occupancy, he simply noted that most owners do not occupancy all the property they own while those who do use it do not own it. In such circumstances, how can occupancy justify property when property excludes occupancy? Proudhon showed that the defenders of property had to choose between self-interest and principle, between hypocrisy and logic.

Rothbard picks the former over the latter and his theory is simply a rationale for a specific class based property rights system (”[w]e who belong to the proletaire class, property excommunicates us!” [P-J Proudhon, Op. Cit., p. 105]). As Rothbard himself admitted in respect to the aftermath of slavery and serfdom, not having access to the means of life places one the position of unjust dependency on those who do and so private property creates economic power as much under his beloved capitalism as it did in post-serfdom (see section F.1). Thus, Rothbard’s account, for all its intuitive appeal, ends up justifying capitalist and landlord domination and ensures that the vast majority of the population experience property as theft and despotism rather than as a source of liberty and empowerment (which possession gives).

It also seems strange that while (correctly) attacking social contract theories of the state as invalid (because “no past generation can bind later generations” [Op. Cit., p. 145]) he fails to see he is doing exactly that with his support of private property (similarly, Ayn Rand argued that ”[a]ny alleged ‘right’ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the right of another, is not and cannot be a right” but, obviously, appropriating land does violate the rights of others to walk, use or appropriate that land [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 325]). Due to his support for appropriation and inheritance, Rothbard is clearly ensuring that future generations are not born as free as the first settlers were (after all, they cannot appropriate any land, it is all taken!). If future generations cannot be bound by past ones, this applies equally to resources and property rights. Something anarchists have long realised — there is no defensible reason why those who first acquired property should control its use and exclude future generations.

Even if we take Rothbard’s theory at face value we find numerous problems with it. If title to unowned resources comes via the “expenditure of labour” on it, how can rivers, lakes and the oceans be appropriated? The banks of the rivers can be transformed, but can the river itself? How can you mix your labour with water? “Anarcho”-capitalists usually blame pollution on the fact that rivers, oceans, and so forth are unowned but as we discussed in section E.4, Rothbard provided no coherent argument for resolving this problem nor the issue of environmental externalities like pollution it was meant to solve (in fact, he ended up providing polluters with sufficient apologetics to allow them to continue destroying the planet).

Then there is the question of what equates to “mixing” labour. Does fencing in land mean you have “mixed labour” with it? Rothbard argues that this is not the case (he expresses opposition to “arbitrary claims”). He notes that it is not the case that “the first discoverer … could properly lay claim to” a piece of land by “laying out a boundary for the area.” He thinks that “their claim would still be no more than the boundary itself, and not to any of the land within, for only the boundary will have been transformed and used by men” However, if the boundary is private property and the owner refuses others permission to cross it, then the enclosed land is inaccessible to others! If an “enterprising” right-“libertarian” builds a fence around the only oasis in a desert and refuses permission to cross it to travellers unless they pay his price (which is everything they own) then the person has appropriated the oasis without “transforming” it by his labour. The travellers have the choice of paying the price or dying (and any oasis owner is well within his rights letting them die). Given Rothbard’s comments, it is probable that he could claim that such a boundary is null and void as it allows “arbitrary” claims — although this position is not at all clear. After all, the fence builder has transformed the boundary and “unrestricted” property rights is what the right-“libertarian” is all about. One thing is true, if the oasis became private property by some means then refusing water to travellers would be fine as “the owner is scarcely being ‘coercive’; in fact he is supplying a vital service, and should have the right to refuse a sale or charge whatever the customers will pay. The situation may be unfortunate for the customers, as are many situations in life.” [Op. Cit., p. 50f and p. 221] That the owner is providing “a vital service” only because he has expropriated the common heritage of humanity is as lost on Rothbard as is the obvious economic power that this situation creates.

And, of course, Rothbard ignores the fact of economic power — a transnational corporation can “transform” far more virgin resources in a day by hiring workers than a family could in a year. A transnational “mixing” the labour it has bought from its wage slaves with the land does not spring into mind reading Rothbard’s account of property but in the real world that is what happens. This is, perhaps, unsurprising as the whole point of Locke’s theory was to justify the appropriation of the product of other people’s labour by their employer.

Which is another problem with Rothbard’s account. It is completely ahistoric (and so, as we noted above, is more like an “immaculate conception of property”). He has transported “capitalist man” into the dawn of time and constructed a history of property based upon what he is trying to justify. He ignores the awkward historic fact that land was held in common for millennium and that the notion of “mixing” labour to enclose it was basically invented to justify the expropriation of land from the general population (and from native populations) by the rich. What is interesting to note, though, is that the actual experience of life on the US frontier (the historic example Rothbard seems to want to claim) was far from the individualistic framework he builds upon it and (ironically enough) it was destroyed by the development of capitalism.

As Murray Bookchin notes, in rural areas there “developed a modest subsistence agriculture that allowed them to be almost wholly self-sufficient and required little, if any, currency.” The economy was rooted in barter, with farmers trading surpluses with nearby artisans. This pre-capitalist economy meant people enjoyed “freedom from servitude to others” and “fostered” a “sturdy willingness to defend [their] independence from outside commercial interlopers. This condition of near-autarchy, however, was not individualistic; rather it made for strong community interdependence … In fact, the independence that the New England yeomanry enjoyed was itself a function of the co-operative social base from which it emerged. To barter home-grown goods and objects, to share tools and implements, to engage in common labour during harvesting time in a system of mutual aid, indeed, to help new-comers in barn-raising, corn-husking, log-rolling, and the like, was the indispensable cement that bound scattered farmsteads into a united community.” Bookchin quotes David P. Szatmary (author of a book on Shay’ Rebellion) stating that it was a society based upon “co-operative, community orientated interchanges” and not a “basically competitive society.” [The Third Revolution, vol. 1, p. 233]

Into this non-capitalist society came capitalist elements. Market forces and economic power soon resulted in the transformation of this society. Merchants asked for payment in specie (gold or silver coin), which the farmers did not have. In addition, money was required to pay taxes (taxation has always been a key way in which the state encouraged a transformation towards capitalism as money could only be made by hiring oneself to those who had it). The farmers “were now cajoled by local shopkeepers” to “make all their payments and meet all their debts in money rather than barter. Since the farmers lacked money, the shopkeepers granted them short-term credit for their purchases. In time, many farmers became significantly indebted and could not pay off what they owed, least of all in specie.” The creditors turned to the courts and many the homesteaders were dispossessed of their land and goods to pay their debts. In response Shay’s rebellion started as the “urban commercial elites adamantly resisted [all] peaceful petitions” while the “state legislators also turned a deaf ear” as they were heavily influenced by these same elites. This rebellion was an important factor in the centralisation of state power in America to ensure that popular input and control over government were marginalised and that the wealthy elite and their property rights were protected against the many (“Elite and well-to-do sectors of the population mobilised in great force to support an instrument that clearly benefited them at the expense of the backcountry agrarians and urban poor.”) [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 234, p. 235 and p. 243]). Thus the homestead system was, ironically, undermined and destroyed by the rise of capitalism (aided, as usual, by a state run by and for the rich).

So while Rothbard’s theory as a certain appeal (reinforced by watching too many Westerns, we imagine) it fails to justify the “unrestricted” property rights theory (and the theory of freedom Rothbard derives from it). All it does is to end up justifying capitalist and landlord domination (which is what it was intended to do).

[roguesart-blog]

Cara mia~ 🌹

Just my take on a classic Morticia and Gomez Addams moment that exudes BIG Lockean energy. I love them your honor! 🥵😍 (OC's from left to right- Vaean and Locke)

[onecornerface]

Are libertarian scholars shills and useful idiots for the rich?

Are libertarian scholars shills and useful idiots for the interests of the rich? Many people are saying this. My take:

Big financial interests, such as Koch funding, are responsible for some growing hazards to the integrity and quality of some academic professions such as philosophy. My own academic philosophy department (BGSU) received Koch funding several years ago, which has been a catalyst for endless insanely complex controversies.

There is some scholarly work which is bad or flawed, but which financial interests cause to either (A) wrongly come into existence in the first place, or (B) attain a degree of high status and influence disproportionate to its objective value.

This adds to an already considerable pile of non-value-tracking biases which wrongly influence the status of many scholarly works—such as the Matthew Effect, various careerist biases, barriers to access stemming from systemic oppressions such as classism, ableism, sexism, racism, and transphobia, as well as social trend feedback cycles (e.g. many philosophers write about X because a bunch of *other* philosophers are writing about it, even if X’s objective importance is questionable), and the fact that many philosophers believe X or work on X because their department mentors or peers do, etc.

As one possible example: Why are there so many capitalist libertarian philosophers? Sometimes philosophers disproportionately support a minority viewpoint because the viewpoint has serious intellectual merit which the general public irrationally fails to recognize. For instance, I think there are a lot of philosophers who support ethical vegetarianism because the arguments for ethical vegetarianism are objectively very strong-- despite widespread popular disagreement by people who irrationally fail to recognize the strength of the case for vegetarianism. Is libertarianism like this? No, I think it is questionable whether libertarianism is objectively strong enough to merit this degree of philosopher support on intellectual grounds.

On the one hand, I think a lot of libertarian scholars have done good work—often they have noticed many flaws in popular and scholarly pro-redistribution (and pro-regulation) arguments, and a lot of them have made important contributions to critiquing drug prohibition, immigration restrictions, and anti-sex-work laws, and they’ve advocated for Universal Basic Income. Sometimes they have noticed evidence for significant downsides to economic and business regulations, which progressives ignored. Robert Nozick, Michael Huemer, and other right-libertarians have shown that redistributionist arguments tend to be sloppy and badly oversimplified. Bleeding heart libertarians of the Steiner-Vallentyne school have made powerful contributions to the case for Universal Basic Income and other good ideas, and have built on the legacy of classical liberalism e.g. by exploring the implications of the "Lockean proviso" (which sets limits on traditional capitalist assumptions). Many progressives have failed to give credit to the diversity and sophistication of the capitalist libertarian tradition.

Rightwing and leftwing capitalist libertarians have also inspired progressive scholars such as GA Cohen (analytical Marxist) to develop improved arguments for redistribution. I want to give serious credit for this, similarly to how I give some gender critical feminists serious credit (despite the evils of their ideas) for inspiring trans rights advocates to improve their arguments for pro-trans advocacy.

On the other hand, libertarianism is a weird and sectarian school of thought, in some ways quite fringe, with a strong connection to insane beliefs like “taxation is wrongful theft.” In fact, it is very obvious that the horrors of poverty are much more severe and vastly more important than the mild badness of stealing from the rich.

...No, seriously, give me a break. Why does the stupid contrary view hold so much influence despite its being manifestly stupid? Overall, stealing from the rich to give to the poor is blatantly good, cool, and based. Who could disagree?

It is highly plausible that libertarianism is so high-profile in large part because a lot of rich people see it as supporting their interests.

Now, are all libertarian ideas pro-rich? Are they all anti-poor? No, that is a common uncharitable misperception. Some libertarian scholars, even some right-libertarians, have been at pains to show that many of their ideas would support the poor and not the rich. I think libertarians support a cluster of policies--some of which would benefit the rich, and some of which would harm the rich.

If libertarians were to win totally (i.e. make all their policy ideas into a reality), it might or might not overall benefit the rich, and it may even harm them—such as by allowing more small businesses to fairly compete in the market, and by ending government subsidies (corporate welfare) for (or deals with) vicious and mass murderous industries like coal companies, the war profiteering industry, the various prison profiteering industries, some surveillance industries, and animal factory farms.

Total libertarianism would also plausibly benefit the poor in many ways, such as by drastically curtailing the power of police over marginalized poor people, cutting off support to various prison industries, combating conservative and progressive forms of puritanism and paternalism, and ending the terror of deportation and associated abuses that hang over the heads of many migrants. It may also end some forms of day-to-day terror against homeless people, sex workers, and some other groups.

However, this may depend on how much power it hands to big business, and on how much of an interest big businesses have in screwing over marginalized people. Such matters could be highly context-sensitive. For instance, some "hostile architecture" (e.g anti-homeless spikes on places to potentially rest in public) are created by private industry, some by government. If libertarianism wins, will there be more or fewer anti-homeless spikes than before? Well, I don't know. Still, there is a good chance that libertarian polices would overall help the poor a lot.

There is also the problem of many, many high-profile libertarian crackpots—such as Walter Block (of the Mises Institute) who has argued in favor of legalizing workplace sexual assault, and Murray Rothbard who has argued in favor of legalizing the right of parents to starve their children to death (although his views on adoption rights may complicate this reading of his view).

Moreover, many lay non-scholarly libertarians are also insane crackpots, such as the “Mises Caucus” people who have apparently taken over the US Libertarian Party (although most libertarian scholars condemn them). The one anarcho-capitalist who has gained power, Javier Milei, is also probably a crackpot who seems on track to reinforce authoritarianism e.g. by strengthening the power of police to crack down on protestors (despite this move’s obvious incompatibility with libertarian principles). Such issues present a serious black mark on the record of libertarianism as a movement, and strengthen the case for thinking that libertarianism as a movement is unable to improve the world (despite the fact that many individual libertarians have good intentions and actively promote good ideas).

Nevertheless, many libertarians are immensely more principled and clear-cut in their stances on immigration, drugs, and sex work than are many liberals and progressives, and they should be praised for this. For instance, many libertarians explicitly support open borders, while many liberals waffle on whether to condemn the Biden administration’s treatment of immigrants. There may also be some underappreciated convergence between libertarians and leftists in critiquing the corporate capture of government. For instance, I wonder if there’s room for more cooperation between Marxian ideological critics and public choice theorists.

All that said, plausibly some rich people see the advocacy of libertarianism as overall beneficial to themselves and their financial interests in actual practice—perhaps because they think that libertarians tend to succeed in implementing their helpful-to-the-rich ideas but fail to implement their harmful-to-the-rich ideas. This may explain why rich people tend to support libertarianism. And there may be some evidence for this combination of trends.

For instance, over the last few decades, libertarians & libertarian-adjacent scholars (such as Milton Friedman) succeeded in advocating some kinds of big business deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and welfare-cuts (which helped the rich and hurt the poor), but failed in their advocacy of open immigration, medication patent reform (to lower drug prices), residential zoning reform (to lower housing prices), and the legalization of drugs and sex work—all of which would help the poor, and harm at least some of the rich, helping fewer of the rich. Much of this combination of libertarian success and libertarian failure constitutes what is commonly called "neoliberalism," which in practice consistently benefits (most of) the rich while hurting (at least many of) the poor.

Many of the global poor have also benefited from neoliberal globalization. If this is their best option, then it's a good thing overall, since we should aim to help the global poor the most. However, I wonder if better options (such as international unions, raising the floor of the race the bottom) may have been unduly closed off, to the benefit of the rich. Some comparatively good-for-the-poor deals may also have been implemented alongside bad-for-the-poor deal such as international debt traps. I'm not sure of the best empirical evidence on a lot of this and need to research it more.

I’m oversimplifying, but something like this overall view does seem likely to be a common pattern and plausible hypothesis. Libertarians have also failed in their mild advocacy for polyamorous marriage or civil unions (despite some version of this being obviously the correct position—anti-polyamory views are blatant bigotry), possibly because there aren't enough rich people who’d benefit from it.

Progressives have been uncharitable and mistaken in their view of libertarianism as a whole. However, progressives have been largely correct in their view of what effects libertarianism as a movement has caused. And, in some ways, this is more important than the nature of libertarianism as a whole. If libertarians resent being so negatively and unfairly judged, they should aim to improve the actual effects of their movement.

Here's what I suspect is really happening: Libertarians promote a combination of good ideas and bad ideas. In the real world, their bad ideas (the ones which only help the rich) are the ones that win—and the rich know this, and this is why the rich support libertarians. The rich have little to fear from libertarians’ harmful-to-the-rich ideas, because they can ensure these ideas won’t win. The rich can happily fund libertarian scholars to promote welfare cuts & deregulation and zoning reform & cutting subsidies to evil industries—perfectly content in the knowledge that the welfare cuts & deregulation will win, and that the zoning reforms & subsidy-cuts will lose.

(The zoning reforms, or immigration reforms, or whatever, may win if the economic situation changes so that these reforms will help the rich enough, but not otherwise—unless the poor can overcome their collective action problems and successfully fight for their interests and rights, which the rich want to use their power to prevent.)

In fairness, a similar pattern may apply elsewhere too. For instance, maybe bad (authoritarian) leftisms tend to win and defeat the good (non-authoritarian) leftisms, because e.g. (1) authoritarian leftists tend to be willing to screw over the non-authoritarian leftists (their former allies) after the Revolution (e.g. in the USSR), and (2) authoritarian leftist leaders may tend to more successfully prevent counterrevolution and/or imperialist regime-change, compared to non-authoritarian leftist leaders, via repression or suchlike. So maybe leftists, like libertarians, may also face a serious puzzle of how to raise the probability that their *good* versions, rather than *bad* versions, are the ones that will win—yet find that the bad versions have distinctive features which give them strategic advantages over the good versions.

I should also note that not all Koch-funded projects benefit the rich, some leftwing projects are also funded by billionaires (whether Koch or others, such as Soros), and it is disputable whether people should always turn down Koch or billionaire money when it is on offer, especially when other funding sources are scarce. Some people erroneously accuse Koch-funded projects of being objectionable even when they aren’t. For instance, Mich Ciurria insinuated that the Koch-funded project on “Grandstanding” (aka virtue-signaling) by Brandon Warmke and Justin Tosi was biased against leftwing radicals, and I argue she is badly mistaken. In several ways, Ciurria’s description of the “Grandstanding” book is misleading. I defend the Warmke-Tosi “Grandstanding” work as important, even valuable for progressive advocacy.

However, the broader system of funding by rich people in general is an enormous hazard. Rich people have the morally least important needs, and they are the fewest in number. For this reason, their interests are objectively the least important. But they are immensely more powerful than all the non-rich people combined, in most cases. This situation is egregiously unjust. The rich people fund scholarship, in philosophy and elsewhere, largely in order to serve their financial interests—even if not all these projects in fact serve their financial interests.

The rich diversify their investments, and presumably some of their investments don’t pay off for them. The rich may also finance some projects which aren't expected to serve their financial interests, for reasons such as to improve their public image. In light of such facts, I say not all recipients of rich people (e.g. Koch or Soros) funding should be assumed to be shills or useful idiots. Also, on the grounds of my actual engagement with the relevant scholarship, I assert that Brandon Warmke & Justin Tosi’s “Grandstanding” work will not likely function to discredit the viewpoints and advocacy of marginalized people or their allies (even though Brandon and Justin are conservatives), contrary to common allegations. Again, some leftwing scholarship is also funded by billionaires such as Soros, but this does not necessarily discredit it.

All that said, on the whole and in general, the rich are our enemy and we must fight against them. We should take a critical eye toward scholarship that they have an interest in funding.

[olreid]

[ID 1: The connection between childhood and innocence is not essential but is instead historically located. During the colonial period, Calvinists did not believe that children were innocent; to the contrary, they lived with the terrifying idea that children, who were born with original sin, could die before they experienced Christian salvation, in which case they would endure eternal damnation. According to this “doctrine of infant depravity,” children were inherently sinful and sexual — even more so, potentially, than adults, who had learned, through rationality and self-discipline, how to control their damnable impulses. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, however, a competing doctrine entered popular consciousness. In this emergent view, children were innocent: that is, sinless, absent of sexual feelings, and oblivious to worldly concerns. This view of the innocent child assumed a variety of complex and ever-shifting forms, including the Lockean tabula rasa and the Rousseauian youth who was at essence an uncorrupted element of nature. American sermons and child-rearing manuals widely quoted and thus circulated William Wordsworth’s representations of children as innocent, holy, and able to redeem adults. By the mid-nineteenth century, prevailing beliefs about childhood inverted the doctrine of infant depravity: children were not sinful but innocent, not depraved souls risking hellfire but holy angels leading adults to heaven. By the mid-nineteenth century, sentimental culture had woven childhood and innocence together wholly. Childhood was then understood not as innocent but as innocence itself; not as a symbol of innocence but as its embodiment. The doctrine of original sin receded, replaced by a doctrine of original innocence. 

ID 2: To be innocent was to be innocent of something, to achieve obliviousness. This obliviousness was not merely an absence of knowledge, but an active state of repelling knowledge — the child’s “holy ignorance,” in the phrase of an 1822 article in Blackwood’s Magazine. James Kincaid echoes that idea in his characterization of Victorian childhood as a “wonderfully hollow category” in which “purity” is “figured as negation,” a “ruthless distribution of eviction notices.” Individual nineteenth-century children, like all people, forgot and remembered, but to be legibly childlike — to perform “childhood innocence” — was to manifest a state of holy ignorance. However, not just any obliviousness constituted innocence: to be childlike was not to forget one’s name or one’s manners, and was certainly not to forget hymns or Him. Rather, sentimental childlike innocence manifested through the performed transcendence of social categories of class, gender, and, most importantly for this book, race. Of course, no nineteenth century children existed outside race (or gender or class), nor were any children perceived as unraced. Innocence was not a literal state of being unraced but was, rather, the performance of not-noticing, a performed claim of slipping beyond social categories. 

ID 3: Childhood innocence — itself raced white, itself characterized by the ability to retain racial meanings but hide them under claims of holy obliviousness — secured the unmarked status of whiteness, and the power derived from that status, in the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries. Childhood innocence provided a perfect alibi: not only the ability to remember while appearing to forget, but even more powerfully, the production of racial memory through the performance of forgetting. What childhood innocence help Americans to assert by forgetting, to think about by performing obliviousness, was not only whiteness but also racial difference constructed against whiteness. Racial binarism — understanding race in terms of white and nonwhite, or a “black and white” polarization that erases nonblack people of color — gained legibility through nineteenth-century childhood. end ID]

robin bernstein, from racial innocence: performing american childhood from slavery to civil rights

[edwad]

i find it cringe that so much anti-capitalism poses itself in a lockean ethos, i.e. that which workers produce "rightfully" belongs to workers or whatever. nor only is it propertarian, which should be a foreign ethos to socialists, but it also implies productivist norms according to which those who don't work (usually this is aimed at capitalists and landlords, but it could be and sometimes is aimed at the unemployed and disabled) are performing some sort of wrong by virtue of not working

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[wavecorewave]

Colonial appropriation of indigenous lands often began with some blanket assertion that foraging peoples really were living in a State of Nature – which meant that they were deemed to be part of the land but had no legal claims to own it. The entire basis for dispossession, in turn, was premised on the idea that the current inhabitants of those lands weren’t really working. The argument goes back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690), in which he argued that property rights are necessarily derived from labour. In working the land, one ‘mixes one’s labour’ with it; in this way it becomes, in a sense, an extension of oneself. Lazy natives, according to Locke’s disciples, didn’t do that. They were not, Lockeans claimed, ‘improving landlords’ but simply made use of the land to satisfy their basic needs with the minimum of effort. James Tully, an authority on indigenous rights, spells out the historical implications: land used for hunting and gathering was considered vacant, and ‘if the Aboriginal peoples attempt to subject the Europeans to their laws and customs or to defend the territories that they have mistakenly believed to be their property for thousands of years, then it is they who violate natural law and may be punished or “destroyed” like savage beasts.’ In a similar way, the stereotype of the carefree, lazy native, coasting through a life free from material ambition, was deployed by thousands of European conquerors, plantation overseers and colonial officials in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania as a pretext for the use of bureaucratic terror to force local people into work: everything from outright enslavement to punitive tax regimes, corvée labour and debt peonage.

From The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow

[sophieinwonderland]

DID doesn’t necessarily equal plurality. The problem with this narrative is it could hinder a proper diagnosis if the person isn’t comfortable with a plural identity, thereby also potentially hindering proper treatment and just a better understanding of oneself. Experiencing different personality/dissociative states is not necessarily experiencing different personalities, hence the name change from MPD to DID. MPD was misleading. This isn’t to say DID can’t contain plurality. Plurality can exist on its own. It’s identity versus a clinical diagnosis.

Isn't this mostly semantics?

A year before The Haunted Self was published in 2005, its creators wrote another paper outlining the theory of structural dissociation where they kind of outline why one could argue that these "parts of the personality" could fit common definitions of personalities in their own right.

The reason for the change is ultimately that is was decided that there is only one person per body, and therefore one personality.

But at the same time, the "parts of the personality" exhibit the traits that commonly define a personality. If you look at how the American Psychological Association defines personality, it would be hard to argue that each alter couldn't meet that definition.

And as I've previously discussed, you can also easily make a case that each alter could meet a Lockean definition personhood.

While definitions of plurality vary a lot, I personally say that plurality is an experience of multiple self-conscious agents sharing a body. And as far as that goes, I think DID systems fit the bill. That most alters in DID possess at least a rudimentary form of self-awareness, and that they possess agency of some sort.

Whether you identify those agents as parts, people, personalities, fragments or whatever else, that's still plurality.

[miochimochi]

The Self as a Whole: My Work, My Property

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Index

I'm no great writer, I'm not great at explaining things. Blame the autism, blame stupidity, whatever. This is just the first writing in a series of writings that I'll be publishing on this platform about my beliefs. If you care to listen, then read on. If not, no one's forcing you to.

Anarchists young and old have always touted a famous line written by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his introductory work "What Is Property?": Property is theft. An oft misunderstood phrase, of which I'm inclined to agree with Karl Marx's criticism of. Of course, Proudhon is speaking of land ownership, but even in his own time the term "property" was used for more than simple land ownership. Marx and Stirner both had made one lasting critique of this phrase: theft presupposes the existence of property, one cannot steal what another does not possess.

The Marxist distinction of property is that of private and personal property, a distinction I oft find to be unhelpful and, at times, arbitrary - a criticism I often have of Marxist propositions. Private and personal property are distinguished by one thing: production. Private property is used for production for profit - and perhaps another time I'll write on "profit" itself -, personal property is not. Often the example I see used is a toothbrush is not a factory. The criticism of this distinction is where the line of private and personal blurs, though. Somewhere between a home and small scale production line, the parsing of such property distinctions is arbitrary at best.

The Proudhonian and Marxist phrases and propositions both fail to impress me. A theory of property should be more easily understandable and have clearer divisions. The labor theory of property is such a theory. The Lockean proposal is a fair and decent groundwork, and one that is easy to conclude without ever hearing of the original theory. I myself had never heard of the theory before coming up with my distinction, definition, and theory of property. But Locke believed in land ownership as legitimate, so long as it left enough in common for others. I do not.

Labor as a legitimizing factor in property ownership I find to be an adequate proposal. Is a man not owed that which he labored? To deny a man the fruits of his labor is to place another - often oneself - above that man, having more say over his labor than he does. Marxists begin to recognize this when that labor is done on a production line, but they often fail to apply the same reasoning beyond there. It becomes clear, once one applies consistent reasoning, that labor is the legitimizing factor of all property.

That which one labors to produce is his to possess and dictate the use of. This extends to whether and how he gives it up. Should he refuse to labor it for its upkeep and use, then it can be said to be abandoned - although I do not like arbitrary distinctions, an arbitrator may be necessary here, bar some better more precise determiner some other anarcho-blogger could write. This would extend to what some anarchists of certain persuasions would balk at: food, housing, and medicine. In order to ensure that everyone at all times has access to these things in every situation, one would require the use of initiatory violence to seize the fruits of another's labor. Thus it would be to act the role of the State.

It's an uncomfortable truth for some to recognize that a farmer need not give up his product to anyone. It's also an uncomfortable truth for some to recognize that voluntary association extends to that farmer picking and choosing who to give his product to. It's further an uncomfortable truth for some that the farmer may choose to only give to those who give something in turn. To deny a man his right to use his labor and the fruits thereof as he sees fit is to make him a slave. Slavery is antithetical to liberty.

One might balk at my equating such to slavery. Perhaps you can even address this through an analysis of class conflict, Marxist class theory or otherwise. But I do not make such a comparison without reason. Slavery is that state of existence in which another exerts absolute dominance over another. In other words, it's a claim of ownership over another human being. To assert ownership over another human being is to assert ownership over his labor and the fruits thereof. For if one has full dominance over something, why would it not extend to what is produced by it? It's for that reason that I make such a comparison.

Even so, I have seen the argument that the needs of another gives them such dominance. Those who would make such an argument would rarely agree to such crude language to describe it, it would make them sound evil in their proclaimed compassion. Understanding that such is slavery, one can understand why it would still be slavery to claim dominance over food or medicine that another produces. The reason it's uncomfortable to accept this is because of how some believe we see it play out under a statist economic system - traditionally referred to as "capitalism". But such a system is among that which facilitates such slavery, not what is the realization of legitimate ownership.

It is the State that claims dominance over the individual. It is the State that has given permission to its chosen few to dominate the individual. It is the State that has determined that it holds complete power over the fruits of the workers' labor. Through fiat and taxation, the State places those it holds under it as its slaves, and anarchism its slave revolt.

The State holds no legitimate property. A slave master wrongfully takes the fruits of his slave's labor, such is theft. Theft can only exist as a concept of property and its forceful acquisition from its rightful owner. The slave is the rightful owner, the slave master the thief who stole it. The slave became the rightful owner of that property the moment he produced it, performing an act of original appropriation. This may have been done under his own free will or by the slave master's whip. Either way, it was the slave that labored it, it was the slave that produced it, and thus the slave is the legitimate owner.

Legitimate property can thusly be described: the fruits of a man's labor. The opposite being illegitimate property - that is, a false claim of rightful ownership over that which another labored that they did not consent to transfer. To me, I can see no fault in defining legitimate property by way of labor. I can see no fault in considering it akin to slavery to forcibly take the fruits of a man's labor.

Land, on the other hand, is common property. To claim ownership of it is to claim to have labored that which is unlabored. It is theft by way of deprivation, by way of taking what is rightly owned in common by all life. If one labors the land, it is only that which they labor that they own, not the land itself under or around it.

Thus, I would say it's incorrect to say "property is theft" and mean it the way I have noted a number of Marxists to mean. I would say it's unhelpful to say "property is theft" and mean it the way Proudhon proposed it. While it is catchy, it obfuscates its own meaning such that it would be appropriated in such ways that would deviate from its intent. "Theft is slavery" and "labor makes property" might be slogans I could see arising from my thoughts, were I to be someone of importance - of which I would be foolish to say I am - that people would seek to make a slogan of my words.

Property is not, in and of itself, theft. Land ownership is theft, forceful redistribution of the fruits of a man's labor is theft, one's ownership of the fruits of their own labor is not theft and they hold the right to exclusivity of said fruits. Property is theft when it is land ownership, property is theft when it is obtained under duress, property is theft when it is built upon stolen labor. Property is not theft when it is the result of the holder's labor, property is not theft when it is obtained through voluntary trade, property is not theft when its exclusivity is defensive alone. One has no right to the labor of another regardless the circumstance. One has only a right to his own labor even if his neighbor produces more through his labor than he needs.

This is also why I refuse to use the State as a means towards my ends, as some other anarchists propose doing. The State does nothing without theft at some point in the process of doing. The State is an entity built upon theft and for the purpose of theft to the benefit of those deemed worthy. The State owns nothing, those it subjugates are the legitimate owners of the State claimed property. Even then, it's difficult to say who specifically each individual piece of property belongs to. As such, it might be more wise to consider such to be common property.

In my conclusion, to reiterate, legitimate property is that which is labored by the possessor or gained in exchange with - or even gifted by - the legitimate owner. Common property is that which exists but is unlabored, it is free for anyone to labor to create property through an act of original appropriation. Illegitimate property is that which is falsely claimed by an illegitimate owner as a result of theft being enacted at some stage of its seizure. This is that theory of property which I prescribe to.

[fuchsiaswingsong]

"The Palestinian, according to the Zionist, is simply a very bad capitalist. The Palestinian failed to turn Gaza into a Westernized tourist destination akin to Abu Dhabi, a recent Israeli advertisement on American streaming services stated (“failed entrepreneur” being a charge specifically designed to penetrate the American psyche). And because of this political-economic failure, they can be, according to market logic, eliminated. Unable to claim that Palestinian land is literally unowned or unoccupied (because ownership and occupation are the issues at stake), the Zionist reverts to a quasi-Lockean theory of property: the Palestinian has not sufficiently mixed their labor with the land, and so the land can, even must, be seized."

[transmutationisms]

do you think the subconscious/unconscious ‘mind’ is a qualifiable mechanism (like, ‘is it real’ lol)? i’m curious about its origins and whether it started as some kind of para-psychological metaphor (a la Jung) that kind of took on a life of its own within a more medical context.

sooo there are a couple different ways i would approach this.

one is, like you suggest, the idea of 'subconscious' or 'unconscious' phenomena (i believe these terms first appeared around the same time, the early 18th century, and have always had a lot of overlap with one another) certainly made early appearances in psychological discourses that were not (overtly) medical. in these contexts, afaik, people weren't really talking about an unconscious or a subconscious—distinct entities with some kind of biological or metaphysical demarcation from other aspects of mental life—they were more talking about thoughts, ideas, or cognitive processes that occur without deliberate direction or even knowledge. so, an object that's making an impression on my sensory organs right now is most likely something i'm conscious of; a memory of an entirely different object i perceived three months ago is probably being 'preserved' (more metaphorical language lol... psychology is lousy with it) without my conscious intent, hence subconsciously or unconsciously. but this category would also include things like my knowledge of how to direct my muscles, language i've acquired, other skills, memories, bodily functions that are related to my nervous system, and so forth. there is more than a whiff of faculty psychology embedded in here, but it's not an overtly medical construction the way psychiatry becomes later.

two, even just pointing out a shift from non-medical psychology to medical psychology is still not quite capturing the full weirdness of what happened during the 18th to mid 20th centuries, because the medicalisation of psychology took a while and started relatively early (certainly by the late 18th century it was underway) but medicine itself was also undergoing some critical changes at the time. i would argue that, despite a clear lockean influence, those very early formulations of subconscious and unconscious processes also have certain roots in vitalist discourses, maybe especially in the french and german contexts, and as we start to see the shift to medical discourse about the unconscious as a kind of sub-entity of the mind-or-brain, we're also seeing much more flagrant mechanistic metaphors. so in some sense, already there's a break here that's being obscured by the language-game of hanging onto an existing term but deploying it in a pretty critically different way. i am not totally confident about this but my sense is that a lot of very early users of the terms 'unconscious'/'subconscious' would have had pretty strenuous objections to some of this later discursive reification of the subconscious or unconscious entity.

three, although medicine is a critical piece of this puzzle, the other major one i would say is evolutionary theory. by the turn of the 20th century, and certainly into the early 20th century, the idea of an unconscious or subconscious mind was very frequently and even explicitly invoked as not just a distinct mental apparatus, but specifically one considered to be 'primitive', like a kind of ancient or primordial part of the mind/brain. (this is i think in some tension with freud's use of the concept of repression as generally accompanying and arising as a result of civilisation and social mores... but freud and evolutionary thinking is a whole other topic, lol). in its most extreme form this type of claim ends up feeding into things like evo-psych claims about the so-called 'lizard brain' (i am looking at bessel van der kolk unblinking) or generally the particular narrativisations around the limbic system as a kind of 'primal' interior brain, responsible for certain bodily processes, involuntary atavistic fear-responses, &c, contrasted to the more recently evolved outer gray matter. the valences attributed to certain neurological structures and processes justified with an evolutionary story (virtually always a teleological one) is, i think, really critical to unpack how the concept of the unconscious/subconscious has come to be used. and, again, this is all just fundamentally different to the earliest usages (that i know of) of these terms, not least because evolutionary hypotheses really were not taken seriously until the mid-late 18th century (and then sporadically, locally, and with difficulty), and certainly were not foundational elements of the kinds of psychological discourses that posited unconscious or subconscious activities.

of course none of this inherently discredits the idea that the unconscious is (a) 'real' (mechanism). but if someone wanted to defend that hypothesis they would probably want to come up with some anatomical propositions that just... haven't really materialised (surprise) and i do think it bears on this discussion that historically, unconsciousness and subconsciousness have really been largely narrative inventions or metaphors used to make sense of mental life, to the point where the terms really have meant numerous different things since their inception and have never had any serious correlation with anatomical structures, organs, tissues, &c.

i would also say that like... whether or not the subconscious or unconscious are 'real' in this mechanical sense isn't necessarily the same as whether the concepts have utility; an awful lot of science runs on exploiting a metaphor or model until for various reasons it's replaced by a different one. i would say though that it is a hindrance to scientific study if these metaphors are presented as being something other than metaphorical—like for instance if the mechanical reality of the unconscious is presumed because expressed in suitably scientific language, and then justified with post hoc circular logic.

so i suppose the short version of my answer is: i don't think the unconscious/subconscious have a historically stable meaning; to the extent that they have a contemporary stable meaning, i don't think they have a corresponding 'real' mechanical cause or instantiation; and although i'm sceptical of their utility in psychological study on these grounds, i'm not categorically opposed and would leave that to other people to sort out.

[omnipol]

Under the hegemonic imperative to pursue happiness by way of the “excess intake” of endless consumption, the sovereign, immune, “Western” self becomes autoimmune and dissolves in the very enjoyment of its “pursuit of happiness,” which, as Antonia Majaca writes, is nothing but a US liberal, Jeffersonian nickname for the Lockean “pursuit of property.”35 The self-destruction evidenced by such self-interested pursuit reveals autoimmunity as the very “illogical logic” of immunity, as Derrida suggested.36 But the slippage of immunity into autoimmunity can also be seen as a historical succession. If immunity is understood as the social and political logic of sovereignty grounded in the nineteenth-century redefinition of healing as war by other means (the Hobbseian natural right to self-defense), then both the Freudian death drive and autoimmunity suggested the dark side of immunity at two historical moments starkly marked by death and catastrophe. The Freudian death drive signaled the final blow to the aggressive libido of the modern, bourgeois, rationalist cogito of European capitalist coloniality following World War I and the end of the “age of empire.”37 Following World War II, and the devastating seek-and-destroy immunitarian logic of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the discovery of autoimmunity extended this beyond-pleasurable hit to this cogito’s surviving body, which then dissolved in the “excess intake” of “pleasure” over the course of the global capitalist expansion. In contrast to this suicidal, (auto)immunitarian logic, international socialist and decolonial movements, as twentieth-century alternatives to global capitalism, have proposed and practiced more constructive ways for the dissolution of the prison of the liberal-capitalist self and its key tenet, private property. But by 1989, “Western affluence,” meaning capitalist scarcity disguised as abundance, was everywhere, and the riddle of the autoimmune condition now a global problem.

This slippage of immunity into autoimmunity is more immediately obvious in concrete examples that mark contemporary reality in the social and geopolitical peripheries of global capital. The devastating story that Sharmila Rudrappa tells of southern Indian farmers who committed suicide by poisoning themselves with the same pesticide used to protect their sugarcane crops speaks to the autoimmune logic of capital, which forced farmers to kill themselves so as not to suffer the even worse consequences of not being able to pay off their high-interest loans once their crops remained unpaid-for or unsold.

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.7.3 Can there be a “right-wing” anarchism?

In a word, no. This can be seen from “anarcho”-capitalism itself as well as its attempts to co-opt the US individualist anarchists into its family tree.

Hart mentions the individualist anarchists, calling Tucker’s ideas ”laissez faire liberalism.” [Op. Cit., p. 87] However, Tucker called his ideas “socialism” and presented a left-wing critique of most aspects of liberalism, particularly its Lockean based private property rights. Tucker based much of his ideas on property on Proudhon, so if Hart dismisses the latter as a socialist then this must apply to Tucker as well. Given that he notes that there are “two main kinds of anarchist thought,” namely “communist anarchism which denies the right of an individual to seek profit, charge rent or interest and to own property” and a ”‘right-wing’ proprietary anarchism, which vigorously defends these rights” then Tucker, like Godwin, would have to be placed in the “left-wing” camp. [“Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition: Part II”, Op. Cit., p. 427] Tucker, after all, argued that he aimed for the end of profit, interest and rent and attacked private property in land and housing beyond “occupancy and use.” It is a shame that Hart was so ignorant of anarchism to ignore all the other forms of anarchism which, while anti-capitalist, were not communist.

As has been seen, Hart’s account of the history of “anti-state” liberalism is flawed. Godwin is included only by ignoring his views on property, views which in many ways reflects the later “socialist” (i.e. anarchist) analysis of Proudhon. He then discusses a few individuals who were alone in their opinions even within the extreme free market right and all of whom knew of anarchism and explicitly rejected that name for their respective ideologies. In fact, they preferred the term “government” or “state” to describe their systems which, on the face of it, would be hard to reconcile with the usual “anarcho”-capitalist definition of anarchism as being “no government” or simply “anti-statism.” Hart’s discussion of individualist anarchism is equally flawed, failing to discuss their economic views (just as well, as its links to “left-wing” anarchism would be obvious).

However, the similarities of Molinari’s views with what later became known as “anarcho”-capitalism are clear. Hart notes that with Molinari’s death in 1912, “liberal anti-statism virtually disappeared until it was rediscovered by the economist Murray Rothbard in the late 1950’s” [“Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition: Part III”, Op. Cit., p. 88] While this fringe is somewhat bigger than previously, the fact remains that the ideas expounded by Rothbard are just as alien to the anarchist tradition as Molinari’s. It is a shame that Rothbard, like his predecessors, did not call his ideology something other than anarchism. Not only would it have been more accurate, it would also have lead to much less confusion and no need to write this section of the FAQ! It is a testament to their lack of common sense that Rothbard and other “anarcho”-capitalists failed to recognise that, given a long-existing socio-political theory and movement called anarchism, they could not possibly call themselves “anarchists” without conflating of their own views with those of the existing tradition. Yet rather than introducing a new term into political vocabulary (or using Molinari’s terminology) they preferred to try fruitlessly to appropriate a term used by others. They seemed to have forgotten that political vocabulary and usage are path dependent. Hence we get subjected to articles which talk about the new “anarchism” while trying to disassociate “anarcho”-capitalism from the genuine anarchism found in media reports and history books. As it stands, the only reason why “anarcho”-capitalism is considered a form of “anarchism” by some is because one person (Rothbard) decided to steal the name of a well established and widespread political and social theory and movement in the 1950s and apply it to an ideology with little, if anything, in common with it.

As Hart inadvertently shows, it is not a firm base to build a claim. That anyone can consider “anarcho”-capitalism as anarchist simply flows from a lack of knowledge about anarchism — as numerous anarchists have argued. For example, “Rothbard’s conjunction of anarchism with capitalism,” according to David Wieck, “results in a conception that is entirely outside the mainstream of anarchist theoretical writings or social movements … this conjunction is a self-contradiction.” He stressed that “the main traditions of anarchism are entirely different. These traditions, and theoretical writings associated with them, express the perspectives and the aspirations, and also, sometimes, the rage, of the oppressed people in human society: not only those economically oppressed, although the major anarchist movements have been mainly movements of workers and peasants, but also those oppressed by power in all those social dimensions … including of course that of political power expressed in the state.” In other words, anarchism represents “a moral commitment” which Rothbard’s position is “diametrically opposite” to. [Anarchist Justice, p. 215, p. 229 and p. 234]

It is a shame that some academics consider only the word Rothbard uses as relevant rather than the content and its relation to anarchist theory and history. If they did, they would soon realise that the expressed opposition of so many anarchists to “anarcho”-capitalism is something which cannot be ignored or dismissed. In other words, a “right-wing” anarchist cannot and does not exist, no matter how often sections of the right try to use that word to describe their ideology.

The reason is simple. Anarchist economics and politics cannot be artificially separated. They are intrinsically linked. Godwin and Proudhon did not stop their analysis at the state. They extended it the social relationships produced by inequality of wealth, i.e. economic power as well as political power. To see why, we need only consult Rothbard’s work. As noted in the last section, for Rothbard the key issue with the “voluntary taxationists” was not who determined the “body of absolute law” but rather who enforced it. In his discussion, he argued that a democratic “defence agency” is at a disadvantage in his “free market” system. As he put it:

“It would, in fact, be competing at a severe disadvantage, having been established on the principle of ‘democratic voting.’ Looked at as a market phenomenon, ‘democratic voting’ (one vote per person) is simply the method of the consumer ‘co-operative.’ Empirically, it has been demonstrated time and again that co-operatives cannot compete successfully against stock-owned companies, especially when both are equal before the law. There is no reason to believe that co-operatives for defence would be any more efficient. Hence, we may expect the old co-operative government to ‘wither away’ through loss of customers on the market, while joint-stock (i.e., corporate) defence agencies would become the prevailing market form.” [Power and Market, p. 125]

Notice how he assumes that both a co-operative and corporation would be “equal before the law.” But who determines that law? Obviously not a democratically elected government, as the idea of “one person, one vote” in determining the common law all are subject to is “inefficient.” Nor does he think, like the individualist anarchists, that the law would be judged by juries along with the facts. As we note in section F.6.1, he rejected that in favour of it being determined by “Libertarian lawyers and jurists.” Thus the law is unchangeable by ordinary people and enforced by private defence agencies hired to protect the liberty and property of the owning class. In the case of a capitalist economy, this means defending the power of landlords and capitalists against rebel tenants and workers.

This means that Rothbard’s “common Law Code” will be determined, interpreted, enforced and amended by corporations based on the will of the majority of shareholders, i.e. the rich. That hardly seems likely to produce equality before the law. As he argues in a footnote:

“There is a strong a priori reason for believing that corporations will be superior to co-operatives in any given situation. For if each owner receives only one vote regardless of how much money he has invested in a project (and earnings are divided in the same way), there is no incentive to invest more than the next man; in fact, every incentive is the other way. This hampering of investment militates strongly against the co-operative form.” [Op. Cit., p. 125]

So if the law is determined and interpreted by defence agencies and courts then it will be done so by those who have invested most in these companies. As it is unlikely that the rich will invest in defence firms which do not support their property rights, power, profits and definition of property, it is clear that agencies which favour the wealthy will survive on the market. The idea that market demand will counter this class rule seems unlikely, given Rothbard’s own argument. In order to compete successfully you need more than demand, you need sources of investment. If co-operative defence agencies do form, they will be at a market disadvantage due to lack of investment. As argued in section J.5.12, even though co-operatives are more efficient than capitalist firms lack of investment (caused by the lack of control by capitalists Rothbard notes) stops them replacing wage slavery. Thus capitalist wealth and power inhibits the spread of freedom in production. If we apply Rothbard’s argument to his own system, we suggest that the market in “defence” will also stop the spread of more libertarian associations thanks to capitalist power and wealth. In other words, like any market, Rothbard’s “defence” market will simply reflect the interests of the elite, not the masses.

Moreover, we can expect any democratic defence agency (like a union) to support, say, striking workers or squatting tenants, to be crushed. This is because, as Rothbard stresses, all “defence” firms would be expected to apply the “common” law, as written by “Libertarian lawyers and jurists.” If they did not they would quickly be labelled “outlaw” agencies and crushed by the others. Ironically, Tucker would join Bakunin and Kropotkin in an “anarchist” court accused to violating “anarchist” law by practising and advocating “occupancy and use” rather than the approved Rothbardian property rights. Even if these democratic “defence” agencies could survive and not be driven out of the market by a combination of lack of investment and violence due to their “outlaw” status, there is another problem. As we discussed in section F.1, landlords and capitalists have a monopoly of decision making power over their property. As such, they can simply refuse to recognise any democratic agency as a legitimate defence association and use the same tactics perfected against unions to ensure that it does not gain a foothold in their domain.

Clearly, then, a “right-wing” anarchism is impossible as any system based on capitalist property rights will simply be an oligarchy run by and for the wealthy. As Rothbard notes, any defence agency based on democratic principles will not survive in the “market” for defence simply because it does not allow the wealthy to control it and its decisions. Little wonder Proudhon argued that laissez-faire capitalism meant “the victory of the strong over the weak, of those who own property over those who own nothing.” [quoted by Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, p. 259]

[sivavakkiyar]

obviously it’s always difficult to argue with people who don’t keep up w/ things / don’t know their history (trust me, as some of you know, I can sound more pompous. See?) but one of the central issues of our time that I have the *most* difficulty getting across is the concept of indigeneity. Because people generally *do* assume that it has primarily to do with ‘how long have people had ancestors there and how far can we trace them’, with all the racist Lockean baggage that conception contains. They regard the working definition as being something like a strange redefinition from the past ten years, the result of neoliberal idpol (or ‘cultural Marxism’ or something, they don’t use that term but the markers are there). But it’s been the dominant understanding for decades! You can see this in even all the Indian independence debates!