#and just reach abolition of those limited concepts

[adamnablelittledevil]

Even worst than the incest itself is Gabrielle having a relationship with a man*

[reasonsilovemywife]

I’m not done

Many opponents of gun control argue that limits on gun ownership are unconstitutional because they violate the Second Amendment, which includes the phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Opponents often emphasize the “shall not be infringed” part while ignoring the other clause about the right being connected to a “well regulated Militia,” but nobody’s perfect. Even emphasizing the “right” component, however, if we slow down and think about what an absolute right to bear arms would look like, it’s clear that even the people making the argument don’t believe in it.  People already agree on a lot of limits to the Second Amendment, too - If the right to bear arms cannot be infringed, mentally ill felons can own nuclear weapons. Children can own machine guns. Terrorists can bring hand grenades on airplanes, right? Because the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Since nobody who buys into the concept of society actually believes that, it’s clear that everybody believes in some level of gun control, including conservative courts that have allowed assault weapons bans, background checks, and other limits on gun ownership to stand for years. So the clear consensus among ordinary Americans and constitutional law scholars is that the type of gun control being proposed today does not violate the Second Amendment. Slightly more reasonable people may concede that point and argue that Americans at least have a right to own military grade weapons, claiming that the Founding Fathers intended as much. But the truth is that we have no way of knowing what men who lived in the era of muskets would think of assault rifles. Anyone who says otherwise is some combination of insincere or foolish. The two primary prongs of the “gun control doesn’t work�� argument are that: 1) gun control does not reduce gun deaths largely because 2) it does not actually make it more difficult for people to obtain guns. One fundamental problem with this argument is that gun control can mean a number of different things: more stringent background checks, bans on high capacity magazines, licensing requirements, etc. So making the general statement “gun control doesn’t work” without referencing a specific proposal is kind of like saying “this food tastes bad” before we know what’s on the menu. To be fair, both sides of this argument can always find evidence to support their position. Gun control advocates can point to Australia, where both suicide and murder rates plummeted after a national gun buyback of over 650,000 guns in 1996 and 1997. On the other hand, opponents can correctly state that Chicago has strict gun laws but an alarmingly high rate of firearm related deaths. Anyone can cherry-pick a city, state, or country to support their argument, which is why we need a larger sample size. Luckily, we have a few large samples. One is called the United States. Another is called Earth. And both large samples establish a consistent correlation: places with more guns generally have more gun deaths than places with fewer guns. It’s not always true. But it’s usually true. And if something usually works, it seems foolish not to try it in this country, especially in light of our absurd level of gun ownership—we have 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but 42 percent of civilian owned guns. As for the argument that gun control won’t make it more difficult for people to obtain guns, Ronald Reagan addresses that pretty well in the letter he signed supporting an assault weapons ban, stating that, “While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.” In my opinion, it’s a reflection of poor parenting or a subpar education system, but an alarming number of Americans actually argue that banning assault weapons is pointless because without them, criminals would just use knives or cars—as if a society without weapons of any kind would be equally dangerous to ours. For those who do think that, let’s concede that people killed people before guns and will continue to do so even if the supply of guns diminishes. Everyone agrees. But the key element here is that guns make it a lot easier to kill someone - more importantly kill LOTS of someones at one time - than knives or cars. And it seems fairly obvious that making it more difficult to kill someone is a good thing since it may lead to some life-saving contemplation or a victim who has time to escape unscathed or with less severe injuries. Lastly, gun control doesn’t have to eliminate violence to be successful. A reduction in violence is still a success Contrary to what the NRA has led many to believe, gun control does not mean abolishing the Second Amendment or taking away all guns. Doing so would not only be unpopular, but politically and logistically impossible. We are talking about limits, not abolition. So the relevant question is not whether guns can be used for protection because of course they can. What matters is whether we can place some limits on gun ownership—like on certain types of guns or a total number of guns—while allowing Americans to protect themselves against criminals. The evidence indicates that we can. Take assault weapons for starters. Despite the attention they get due to mass shootings, assault weapons are not a leading killer of innocent Americans. They account for only a small fraction of gun-related deaths—about one or two hundred a year out of over 10,000. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that every year people are killed by assault weapons who would not have died if the perpetrator had a gun without “military style” features. By contrast, there is little evidence that assault weapons are ever essential for self-defense. Don’t get me wrong, assault weapons can be used for self-defense and they occasionally are. But it is difficult to find documented incidents in which an assault weapon was successfully used for self-defense by a civilian when a lesser gun would not have sufficed. On balance, it appears that assault weapons are far more frequently used for assault than for protection. There is a similar lack of evidence that owing, say, eight guns, is necessary for protection. If that number sounds absurdly high, it isn’t—the average gun owning household in American has more than eight guns. If that many guns are essential for protection, we should be able to find studies or verified stories that prove it—“My first seven guns jammed but I was able to shoot the intruder with my eighth. Thank God I had eight guns!” Without such cases, it seems as though limiting individuals to say, three guns per person, would still give Americans the same level of “protection” they have today.   Lastly, as to the argument that guns are necessary to for protection from government tyranny, as noted above, gun control does not mean taking away all guns. But more importantly, if there were some unprecedented battle of government versus civilians, what good would guns, even assault weapons do, against the United states military? The military has tanks, drones, aircraft carriers, missiles, cyber warfare capabilities, far-reaching surveillance, and more. In the arms race between government and civilians, civilians lost years ago. Background checks, a federal database tracking gun sales, or a ban on high capacity magazines are not going to change the equation. "Well the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun..." Yes, you're Goddam right. There is no dispute that law enforcement officers and many times even civilians use guns to stop bad people with guns. But once again, the question is not whether a gun can be used for good; the question is whether the protection guns provide equals or outweighs the danger. Polls show that a majority of people believe owning a gun makes them safer, but the available evidence indicates otherwise. FBI data as recently as 2014 showed that almost eight times as many people were killed by guns in arguments than by civilians using a gun in self-defense. Multiple surveys, including the National Crime Victimization Survey, show that guns are used to commit crimes about ten times more often than they are used to stop a crime. And an analysis of hundreds of shootings in Philadelphia found that people carrying firearms were about 4.5 times more likely to be shot than those not carrying, likely due to unnecessary conflict escalation. So on balance, guns make situations more dangerous, not less. When broken down in detail, the most common arguments against gun control share similar traits. They are based on cherry picked evidence, hypothetical situations that don’t happen in reality, or flawed reasoning. Facts and logic both support the idea that limiting the supply of guns and access to them generally makes people safer. Facts and the logic may not gain you much ground with opponents these days, but just like sensible limits on gun ownership, it’s worth a try. Sorry for the long post... Peace out - much love to everyone.

[marymosley]

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN RELATION TO LAND LAW

INTRODUCTION

          Property was classified as movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal, real and personal. It may mean a thing or a right which a person has in relation to that thing. The expression “property” in the Indian Constitution was given this wide meaning.

           It will be seen from the said definition that the right to property consists of three elements (1) to acquire (2) to own and possess and (3) to dispose of the same. This apparently unrestricted right to property is subject to the laws of social control reflected in the State’s right of “taxation”, its “police power”, and its power of “eminent domain”.

          There is some misapprehension on the scope of the right to property conferred under our Constitution. An assumption by constant repetition has become a conviction in some minds that the right to property has been so entrenched in our Constitution that it is not possible without amendment to enforce the directive principles. A scrutiny of the relevant provisions of the Indian Constitution as they stood on 26-1-1950 will dispel this assumption. They are Articles 14, 19(1)(f), 19(5), 31, 32, 39(b) and (c), 226 and 265.

In India, no fundamental right has given rise to so much of litigation than property right between state and individuals. Through the Supreme Court of India sought to expend the scope and ambit of right of property, but it has been progressively curtailed through constitutional amendments. The Indian version of eminent domain has found in entry 42 List III, which says “acquisition or requisition of property”. Under the original Constitution Article 19(1)(f) and 31 provides for protection of property right and later they were repealed and Article 300A was inserted. Accordingly no person shall be deprived of his property save by the authority of law. However, regarding right to property what is the protection given by the US Constitution under Article 300A. Article 31(2) of the constitution provides for compulsory Acquisition of land. The power of eminent domain is essential to the sovereign government.

The provision of the Fifth Amendment to the constitution of the United States is that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. The principle of compulsory acquisition of property is founded on superior claims of the whole community over an individual citizen, is applicable only in those cases where private property is wanted for public use or demanded for the public welfare. Accordingly, the right of eminent domain does not imply a right in the sovereign power to take the property of one citizen and transfer it to another, even for a full compensation where the public interest will be in no way promoted by such transfer. The limitation on the power of eminent domain is that the acquisition or taking possession of property must be for a public purpose has been expressly engrafted in clause (2) of Article 31 of the constitution of India.

The gist of the said provisions may be briefly stated thus: Every citizen has the individual right to acquire, to hold and dispose of property. A duty is implicit in this right, namely that it should be so reasonably exercised as not to interfere with similar rights of other citizens. The exercise of it, therefore, should be reasonable and in accordance with public interest. The directive principles of State Policy lay down the fundamental principles of State policy, lay down the fundamental principles for the governance of the country, and under the relevant principles for the governance of the country, and under the relevant principles, the State is directed to secure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to sub serve the common good.

The conflict between the citizen’s right and the State’s power to implement the said principles is reconciled by putting limitations both on the right and the power. The said fundamental right is not absolute. It is subject to the law of reasonable restrictions in the interest of the general public. The State’s power is also subject to the condition that the law made by it in so far it infringes the said fundamental right should stand the double test of reasonableness and public interest. The State also has the power to acquire land of a citizen for a public purpose after paying compensation.

It has the further power to impose taxation on a person in respect of his property. All the laws made in exercise of the said powers are governed by the doctrine of equality subject to the principle of classification. But the question of the validity of the said laws of social control, taxation and acquisition is a justiciable issue. Shortly stated, under the said provisions, the right to property is subject to justiciable laws of social control.

The right to property was initially present in Indian constitution under Part III: Fundamental right, Article 31 but it was abolished by 44th Amendment Act, 1978. Initially it was made a fundamental right so as to provide protection of property and give legality of land to the people living in newly independent India.

But afterwards it was abolished because the Indian government wanted to bring land reforms and encourage social justice (by taking land from landowners who have surplus land and then distributing it to landless farmers). It also aimed to establish equal distribution of resources.

Furthermore it was important for the development of India to abolish it .For example- if Indian government wanted to build a dam or construct a road it had to acquire the people’s property and in return people used to revolt and approach judiciary even though the government compensate them by giving money or land somewhere else for taking their property hence this created problem to the development functions of the government, hence it was abolished. Now it is made a constitutional right under Article 300A which states that no person can be deprived of his / her property except by authority of law.\

Kesavananda Bharti case[1] was decided; its subsequent abolition by the Forty Fourth amendment violated the “basic structure” of the Constitution, and was therefore unconstitutional. In 2010, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition without reaching the merits on grounds that the petitioner was a public interest litigant, not directly affected by the abolition of the fundamental right to property, and that entertaining the petition would lead them to reopening settled constitutional case law on property. In a recent interview with the author, the petitioner indicated that he was considering reviving the petition.

At the same time Article 21 cannot be applied to the acquisition proceedings because objective of the forty fourth amendment shift the concept of property from fundamental right status to legal right status. Therefore, if you say proceedings of acquisition hit Article 21, property right again through back door entry make the property right as a fundamental right, the object of the forty fourth amendment will be defeated.

The topic on property will not be complete without reference to the right to do business. The relevant articles are few in number. Under Article 19(1) (g) all citizens have the right to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.[2] Under Article 19(6), nothing in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) prevents the State from making any law imposing in the interests of the general public reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the said right or from making any law relating to the professional or technical qualifications necessary for practising any profession or carrying on any occupation, trade or business or the carrying by the State or by a Corporation owned or controlled by the State, or any trade, business, industries, or service whether to the exclusion, complete or partial of citizens or otherwise. The latter two exceptions were added to clause (6) by the Constitution First Amendment Act, 1951. Articles 301 to 307 deal with freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse within the territory of India subject to certain limitations. Article 305 saves existing laws and laws providing for State monopolies from the provisions of Articles 301 and 303.

It is a complete answer to any challenge under Articles 14 and 19. It protects a law even if it is confiscatory or discriminatory or compensation payable under it is illusory. Thus, tenancy legislation, howsoever drastic, is protected under Article 31-A(l)(a).59 Prima facie, Article 31-A(l)(a) appears to be applicable to all kinds of ‘extinguishment’ or ‘modification’ of estates for whatever purpose. But in Kavalappara Kottaraothil Kochunini v. State of Madras[3] the Supreme Court read down this provision and held that its purpose was to facilitate ‘agrarian reforms’ and, therefore, it would protect only such legislation as had reference to agrarian reform.

The Court held that the justification for conferring protection (not blanket protection) on the IXth Schedule shall be a matter of adjudication, examining the nature and extent of infraction of fundamental right by a statute and such statute sought to be constitutionally protected on the touchstone of the basic structure doctrine as reflected in Article 21 read with Articles 14 and 19. The Court held that Articles 14, 19 and 21 are the basic structure of the Constitution therefore; basic essence of the right cannot be taken away. Essence of the human right (which according to the recent judgments include property rights) would necessarily mean full compensation for acquisition of property right. If the laws affects the basic structure could not be protected even though included in the IXth Schedule.

In Minerva Mills Ltd. & Ors. v. Union of India[4], a Minerva mills was nationalized and taken over by the Central Government under the provisions of the Sick Textile Undertakings (Nationalization) Act, 1974. The petitioners (shareholders and creditors of Minerva Mills Ltd.) challenged the Nationalisation Act on the ground of infraction of Articles 14, 19(1) (f) and (g) and Article 31(2). The Government contended that legislation was protected by amended (scope of Article 31-C was father enlarged by forty second amendment). Article 31-C gives absolute primacy to Directive Principles over Fundamental Rights. “The harmony & balance between fundamental rights and directive principles is an essential feature of the basic structure of the Constitution. However, this harmony (basic structure of the Constitution) is discarded by forty second amendment and accordingly the scope of Article 31-C was enlarged by forty second amendment was declared as unconstitutional.

Referring to Jethmalani’s observations, Bhushan said that “he heard for the first time that Article 19(1) (f) was a charter of the poor”. In Chiranjit Lal’s case[5] it was held that Article 19(1) (f) would continue until the owner deprived of such property by authority of law under Article 31. If there was ‘deprivation’ of property under clause (1) if Article 31 by law, the citizen was not entitled to compensate at all, while he was entitled to compensation if property was acquired or requisitioned under clause (2) upon the point as to what is ‘deprivation’ there was conflict. In Kochunni’s case court made it clear that clause (1) dealt with deprivation of property other than acquisition or requisition as mentioned in the clause (2) and other could be no acquisition or requisition unless there was transfer of ownership or a right to possession to the state or its nominee.

THE IDEOLOGY OF PUBLIC PURPOSE

  Under Article 31(2), the state could acquire or requisition property for public purpose only. The concept of ‘public purpose’ connotes public welfare. With the onward march of the concept of socio-economic welfare of the people, notions as to the scope of general interest of the community are fast changing and expanding. The concept of ‘public interest’ is thus elastic and not static, and varies with time and needs of the society. Whatever furthers the general interest of the community as opposed to particular interest of the individuals may be regarded as public purpose. Whether a public purpose existed or not was a justiciable matter as stated by Supreme Court in State of Bombay v. R.S. Nanji[6]. A provision excluding the jurisdiction of the courts from this area, and making decisions of either the executive or the legislature as to the public purpose final and conclusive was held ultravires Article 13(2).

A few example of what held judiciary as ‘public purpose’ for which land could validly be acquired under Article 31 (2) are:

Finding accommodation for an individual having no housing accommodation.

Housing a staff member of a foreign consulate;

Accommodating an employee of a road transport corporation – a statutory

         body

Accommodating a government servant

Nationalization of land

Agrarian reform abolishing intermediaries between government and tillers of

         the soil

Establishing an institution of technical education

Constructing houses for industrial labour by a company

Promoting co-operative housing societies in Delhi to relieve housing shortage

Planned development of Delhi

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARTICLE 19(1) (f) AND ARTICLE 31(1)

  Under Article 19(1) only citizens of India are entitled to claim the right, whereas under Article 31(1) any person irrespective of citizenship not to be deprived of his property without authority of law. Article 19(1) relates to the rights of citizen to acquire, hold and dispose of property though they are not in immediate possession thereof, but under Article 31(1) the person is already in possession of property and then the deprivation is caused by the state. Both these Articles were repealed by the Forty Fourth Amendment Act, 1978.

Reasonableness of Restrictions Article 19(1)(f) guaranteed to the citizens of India a right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. Article 19(5) however, permitted the state to imposed reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of general public or for the protection of the interests of any scheduled tribe. The[7] expression ‘interest of general public’ in Article 19(5) was held synonymous with ‘public interest’[8]. It did not mean that the interest of the public of the whole of India; it meant interest of a ‘section of the public’. The term ‘public interest’ very broad and it includes public order, public health, morality etc. Whether a piece of legislation was in public interest or not was a justifiable matter. A law designed to abate a grave nuisance and thus protect public health 113 or a law to protect the weaker sections of the public, especially members of low castes 114 was held to be in public interest.

  PRINCIPLES LAID DOWN UNDER ARTICLE 300-A

  The Constitution (after 44th amendment) does not expressly confer the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. But if a person has acquired and hold the property he cannot be deprived of it without the authority of law. A person cannot be deprived of his property by an executive action or by any other similar device.

The protection given to private property under Article 300-A is available to all persons who hold property in India, citizens as well as aliens and natural persons as well as legal persons such as corporate bodies etc.

The law authorizing deprivation of property must be passed by the proper authority i.e. by parliament or state legislature.

The law empowering deprivation of property must be consistent with all the provisions of the constitution. This means (a) the law must be passed by a competent legislature, and (b) it must not affect adversely any of the rights, fundamental or constitutional – in a manner not warranted by the Constitution. In this behalf, the validity of such law will be examined in the light of the earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.[9]

The law authorizing deprivation of property must be fair and just. The approach of the Supreme Court in Maneka Gandhi’s case the term ‘law’ in Article 21 will be the guiding star to the Supreme Court for determining the validity of a law under Article 300A.

Such legislation may be challenged as violative of Articles 14, 19, 26 or 30 etc. or other appropriate fundamental rights. It deserves to be noted in this behalf that Article 31-C which is the present form was inserted by twenty fifth amendment specifically confers superiority on directive principles of state policy over fundamental rights conferred by Articles 14, 19 and 31.

NINTH SCHEDULE – A PROTECTIVE UMBRELLA

Article 31-B, does not by itself gives any fundamental right. The Acts and regulations placed under ninth schedule shall not be deemed to be void or ever to have become void on the ground of its inconsistency with any fundamental right.

In Kameshwar Singh case[10], the Supreme Court said that no Act brought under the ninth schedule could be invalidated on the ground of violation of any fundamental rights. With the introduction of the above amendment, it became very easy for the Government to acquire property and to carryout different agrarian reforms. Firstly the acquisition laws under the fear of being challenged were inserted in the ninth schedule by the constitutional amendments and thereby the concerned laws were made immune from challenge against any of the fundamental rights guaranteed under part III of the Constitution. Thus, it was not possible for a citizen to challenge the constitutionality of any acquisition law by which his land has been acquired because, it placed under ninth schedule. Means Article 31-B protected every legislation within the umbrella of the ninth schedule.[11]

Another significant characteristic feature of the Article 31-B is that it is having retrospective effect. As a result of this any legislation earlier declared as void by the Supreme Court on the ground that it violated any of the fundamental rights, revives of such void legislation by inserting the legislation under ninth schedule by constitutional amendment. Supreme Court in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Brijendra Singh[12] held that with this characteristic feature of Article 31-B it became very easy for the parliament to validate any Act already declared as unconstitutional, simply by constitutional amendment putting such unconstitutional Act under the ninth schedule. Once legislation enters into the protective umbrella of the Ninth Schedule its constitutionality cannot be challenged, this position was maintained till the decision of the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati case.

The result of the brief survey of the provisions of the Constitution and the case-law thereon may now be stated in the form of the following propositions:

(1) Every citizen has a fundamental right to acquire, hold and dispose of the property.

(2) The State can make a law imposing reasonable restrictions on the said right in public interest. The said restrictions, under certain circumstances, may amount to deprivation of the said right.

(3) Whether a restriction imposed by law on a fundamental right is reasonable and in public interest or not, is a justiciable issue.

(4) The State can by law, deprive a person of his property if the said law of deprivation amounts to a reasonable restriction in public interest within the meaning of Article 19(5).

(5) The State can acquire or requisition the property of a person for a public purpose after paying compensation.

(6) The adequacy of the compensation is not justiciable.

(7) If the compensation fixed by law is illusory or is contrary to the principles relevant to the fixation of compensation, it would be a fraud on power and therefore the validity of such a law becomes justiciable.

(8) Laws of agrarian reform depriving or restricting the rights in an “estate”—the said expression has been defined to include practically every agricultural land in a village—Cannot be questioned on the ground that they have infringed fundamental rights.

The action of the state to assert the Eminent Domain over http subsidiary claims on property and the clash which resulted there from Singur, Nandigram and other parts of India is precisely a manifestation of a clash of cultures. That right to property are basic civil rights has long been recognised. This again would show that if the fundamental right to freedom of speech or personal liberty pertains to basic structure, there is every reason that the fundamental right to property should also pertain to it, as the former set of rights could have no meaning without the latter. Protection of freedom depends ultimately upon the protection of Independence, which can only be secured, if property is made secure.

                CONCLUSION

  Property, as a legal social institution, has different forms in different cultures and legal systems. However, only a definition of constitutional property is common in all democratic countries. Since the state exercises eminent domain power against private property, it is pertinent to discuss the concept of private property in brief. The institution of private property has been a controversial issue with conflicting views, one completely denying the right to own private property and the other supports the holding of the private property.

However, the right to property is a natural and inherent right of an individual. Most of the modern constitutions, except those of communist countries have recognised the right of private property. Therefore, citizens have right to own and possess the property. A person has a right not to be deprived of his property except through due process of law.

[1] Kesavananda Bharti v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461

[2] https://www.99acres.com/articles/constitutional-provisions-related-to-land-and-property.html

[3] AIR 1960 SC 1080

[4] AIR 1980 SC 1789

[5] Chiranjit Lal Chowdhuri v. UOI And Ors. AIR 1951 SC 41

[6] AIR 1956 SCR 18

[7] https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/constitutional-battles-on-right-to-property-in-india-2169-0170.1000124.php?aid=26755

[8] http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/property/property_rights.html

[9]https://cprindia.org/sites/default/files/chapters/The%20Fundamental%20Right%20to%20Property%20in%20the%20Indian%20Constitution.pdf

[10] Kameshwar Singh v. State of Bihar AIR 1951 SC 246

[11] https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/48090/9/09_chapter%202.pdf

[12] AIR 1981 SC 636

ANANTA AGGARWAL

Student of Law, Amity Law School, Noida, Amity University Uttar Pradesh

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FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN RELATION TO LAND LAW published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[shirlleycoyle]

What Is Mutual Aid, and How Can It Help With Coronavirus?

More than any crisis in recent memory, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted deep structural problems that prevent our government from properly handling a public health emergency.

Our healthcare system is strapped and unable to provide testing and medical treatment to the people that rely on it. We haven't effectively implemented social distancing because even during a pandemic, the needs of capitalism supersede those of actual people, forcing underpaid workers to put themselves at risk so that companies can continue business as usual.

Rather than waiting for the government to fix things, people have created Google Docs and Forms to organize mutual aid efforts across the country. There’s a mutual aid coordinator Slack channel. Even New York House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has encouraged people to get involved, co-hosting a webinar on mutual aid on Wednesday evening with prison abolition activist Mariame Kaba.

“COVID-19 is just pulling back the curtain on how unbelievably flawed our political and social structures are, and our economic system, not to mention our healthcare system,” Kendall Mayhew, an organizer with Ground Game Los Angeles, which is organizing a mutual aid system, told Motherboard. “We’re only as safe as the person who has the least among us, so we have to pull together to lift everybody up, and that means systemic change.”

But what is mutual aid, and why do so many people turn to its methods in times of crisis? We spoke to some of the people on the ground—college students, organizers, parents—about how individuals and community organizations are creating online mutual aid systems to make up for the lack of governmental support. Of course, we shouldn't have to be doing this. But as we acknowledge the structural failures of our systems, standing in solidarity with one another is one way to compensate for how screwed up everything is—and hopefully, save lives.

What is mutual aid?

In systems of mutual aid, communities take on the responsibility for caring for one another, rather than forcing individuals to fend for themselves.

Mutual aid is also not charity: rather than creating a centralized organization where one person is giving to someone else, forcing them to become dependent on yet another relationship negotiating their access to material resources, mutual aid creates a symbiotic relationship, where all people offer material goods or assistance to one another. Mutual aid organizing is volunteer-run, transparent, and driven by the needs articulated by community members.

Mutual aid as a principle is attributed to Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, who defined the term in his 1902 missive Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution:

“[M]an is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love […] but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle — has had the leading part.”

Mutual aid played an important role during community organizing in the sixties and seventies. Some famous examples include the Black Panther Party’s Breakfast Program, which provided free meals to kids in impoverished urban areas, and the 1970 takeover of a Bronx hospital by New York City’s Young Lords Party. More recently, activists with Occupy Sandy organized direct relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy after the superstorm made landfall in 2012. Thousands of volunteers provided necessary goods that were otherwise unavailable because of shuttered stores and damaged infrastructure, like bottled water and food, and set up community hubs where those in need of help could seek resources and support.

What are people offering?

Neerja Garikipati, a junior at the University of Pittsburgh, is a member of several on-campus organizations, but hadn’t been involved directly with mutual aid work until this past week. They noticed online mutual aid efforts cropping up at other universities and colleges across the country.

“[At University of Pittsburgh] there are a lot of first generation, low income students, a lot of students of color and students in the LGBTQ community, who I knew when this happened” would be disproportionately impacted, says Garikipati. They reached out to their personal network of student members of on-campus organizations, and suggested they begin preparing for the university's shutdown by copying other schools’ mutual aid plans.

Immediately, Garikipati heard back from about 15 students, and since then the number of involved students has more than doubled. They’ve built out a resource sheet to help people offer and receive aid. Many campuses, including University of Pittsburgh, have closed and pushed out students from the dorms, leading to students being stranded—some far from home and without resources to travel. Garikipati says the main requests have been for temporary housing for those who cannot make it home, storage for their belongings that they were unable to transport, funds to support them getting back to their homes, or getting material resources like prescriptions or groceries.

Motherboard spoke to one member of a mutual aid network in New Hampshire who helped create a local rapid response spreadsheet, and who asked to remain anonymous, fearing police retaliation against himself and other mutual aid organizers. In the months before the COVID-19 outbreak, he and other volunteers were on the streets in the city of Manchester distributing products like toothbrushes, toothpaste, and Narcan to the city’s homeless and those struggling with addictions. As the coronavirus pandemic hits the state, their biggest challenge has been accessing their usual resources.

“What we need people to understand is that it is direct outreach and mutual aid that is going to keep you safe,” the organizer said. “The best way to not get this virus is to make sure that people around you don’t get it, and that they’re taken care of if they do. That means the opposite of hoarding.”

While the organizer’s fellow volunteers are taking the necessary precautions to keep each other safe, such as reduced volunteer hours and keeping their spaces especially clean, he said it is essential for aid workers to continue helping these vulnerable populations.

“People will literally die if we don’t do this outreach, so we need to do it, and we’re going to just do it in the most practical and safe way possible,” he said.

In Los Angeles, Ground Game modeled its organizing after a similar effort in Seattle, which was hit earlier in the pandemic; it later helped organizers in D.C. and northern Nevada set up online forms and coordinate.

“People are just offering their experience and being really generous and spreading the knowledge, and that’s all based in mutual aid principles,” Kendall Mayhew, the Ground Game LA organizer, said.

The group’s form, which is in both English and Spanish and currently being translated into several other languages, hopes to accommodate different types of requests for Los Angeles residents in need. Ground Game has simultaneously raised over $40,000 to distribute to those seeking financial assistance. Mayhew said the main requests have been for things like groceries and hygienic supplies, as well as monetary support.

Taking it offline

While having access to the internet has been a useful support system for organizers struggling with self-isolation and social distancing, it’s an imperfect solution to a long-term problem.

On Tuesday night, Facebook began marking posts about the coronavirus as spam, causing concern from users that mutual aid groups were being targeted. After our interview, Kendall from L.A. sent me screenshots of members of her organization having mutual aid-related posts marked as spam. According to Facebook, a bug in their software was marking coronavirus-related posts as spam, and because they had sent home their content moderators due to the coronavirus, there was no one to clarify the issue or verify the posts at the time.

“Technology has a limit,” said the mutual aid organizer from New Hampshire. “People struggling with houselessness, the elderly, children, are not going to hop on a Google spreadsheet and fill in their needs and their phone number and address and all that stuff. It’s not going to happen.”

Mayhew noticed the same thing. “A lot of us are really connected digitally, but in the US, 25 percent of [rural] households don’t have broadband.” Overall, 8 percent of Americans lack access to broadband, according to the FEC. “It’s obviously a lot more pressing in rural communities, but even in L.A. we have a lot of people who don’t have internet in their own home, or elders in our community that don’t know how to interact with these things.”

The organizer from New Hampshire added that this is tied into the greater history of mutual aid. “People who do mutual aid and direct outreach, and have been doing it for a long time, are extremely used to operating in a hostile environment,” he said. “Even before the rise of the internet, existing institutions have always been hostile to mutual aid,” he said, noting that there are laws in many areas of the country that prohibit people from giving food or money to the homeless. “We see that the policing of individual behavior is really focused on trying to make people dependent on institutions, rather than dependent on each other, so going forward what we need to be doing is thinking creatively.”

All three of the organizers that spoke to Motherboard were hopeful that this desperate moment would lead to a longer-term vision for interconnectedness—and more people acknowledging the failings of our political system.

“I really hope this is the start of something bigger and the start of something more permanent, because there's always going to be people who need help,” said Neerja Garikipati, from Pittsburgh. “And I think we've seen just in the last week or so that there are people who are willing to provide that help, and it's just a matter of connecting them.”

What Is Mutual Aid, and How Can It Help With Coronavirus? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[benrleeusa]

[Justin Driver] “The Schoolhouse Gate”: SCOTUS Strikes a Mighty Blow to Student Rights

A 1977 opinion allowed public school educators to strike students as punishment for infractions, and the archaic practice persists today.

This post is the third in a series of edited excerpts from my new book, "The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind." Of the many areas where the Supreme Court has played a role in American public education, none is so disconcerting as its refusal to rein in corporal punishment. The story of Ingraham v. Wright is oft-overlooked in constitutional law circles, but its impact remains significant.

On October 6, 1970, Charles R. Drew Junior High School student James Ingraham was one of several students who, when instructed to depart the auditorium's stage, responded with insufficient urgency. At Drew, this typical adolescent behavior amounted to flagrant insubordination. Principal Willie J. Wright informed the wayward students that he would deliver five blows to their backsides with a wooden paddle. When Ingraham protested, Wright summoned two colleagues to restrain him and struck Ingraham more than twenty times.

The force of these accumulated blows left Ingraham with injuries that required medical attention. The examining physician diagnosed Ingraham as suffering from a hematoma (an abnormal buildup of blood in human tissue), directed Ingraham to recover at home for at least a week, and prescribed a battery of painkillers, laxatives, cold compresses, and sleeping pills. Ingraham made two more hospital visits in the following days, eventually returning to school after missing nearly two weeks.

Ingraham's subsequent lawsuit challenging the infliction of corporal punishment in public schools brought the issue to the national fore. Clear-eyed appraisals provided ample reason to believe that Ingraham's arguments would prevail in the Supreme Court. Judicial decisions had recently eliminated the use of corporal punishment in prisons, and observers deemed it unfathomable that the constitutional safeguards afforded to convicted criminals would not also be afforded to public school students.

Corporal punishment's opponents could also draw solace from the Court's recent sensitivity to the constitutional claims of students. Decisions vindicating the free speech rights of student protesters and affording suspended students procedural rights combined to suggest that corporal punishment would soon be tamed. If due process required that students who were suspended receive notice and an opportunity to be heard, logic suggested that those protections should also be extended to students who were going to be struck with foreign objects.

It would have been difficult to concoct a ghastlier portrayal of corporal punishment, so Ingraham v. Wright appeared to call out for the Supreme Court's intervention. But in a 5–4 decision, the Court resisted that call. Justice Powell, writing for the majority, quickly dispatched Ingraham's first claim for relief, which suggested that extreme forms of corporal punishment violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Given that only two states then prohibited the practice, Powell explained that he could discern no legislative trend toward abolition.

He then asserted that, when educators dispense corporal punishment, those actions do not even constitute "punishment" for purposes of the Eighth Amendment. In order to fall within the Eighth Amendment's scope, the punishment in question must stem from some connection to a criminal conviction. Justice Powell acknowledged that this construction meant students could receive treatment that even prison inmates are spared but brushed aside that concern. "The schoolchild has little need for the protection of the Eighth Amendment," he wrote. "Though attendance may not always be voluntary, the public school remains an open institution."

Ingraham's second constitutional claim asserted that the absence of procedural protections afforded students before they were paddled violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Justice Powell rejected the notion that due process required any type of even informal hearing to occur before school authorities imposed corporal punishment. In Powell's view, requiring such hearings could harm the ability of teachers to maintain order in the nation's classrooms. "Elimination or curtailment of corporal punishment would be welcomed by many as a societal advance," Powell wrote. "But when such a policy choice may result from this Court's determination of an asserted right to due process, rather than from the normal processes of community debate and legislative action, the societal costs cannot be dismissed as insubstantial."

Justice Byron White, joined by three other justices, wrote a dissenting opinion that parted company with the majority on both constitutional claims. Justice White contended that the majority in effect improperly inserted the word "criminal" into the relevant constitutional text so that it prohibited only "cruel and unusual criminal punishments"—a limitation that the Constitution's framers had declined to make. As to the due process claim, Justice White skewered the majority opinion for requiring a student who had already been paddled to seek redress only after the fact: "The infliction of physical pain is final and irreparable; it cannot be undone in a subsequent proceeding."

Scholars and journalists alike excoriated Ingraham. Powell's opinion, critics charged, offered a parsimonious conception of the Eighth Amendment, one that was in no way compelled by precedent. The Chicago Tribune complained that it "makes no ethical, legal, or common sense to tolerate corporal punishment against children when it is not permitted against any other group of people in our society." The New York Times featured an even harsher assessment: "Each member of the majority deserves at least five whacks."

The outcome of the Supreme Court opinion that bore his name reached James Ingraham, then twenty-one years old, in a Florida jail cell, where he was serving a one-year sentence for resisting arrest. Not surprisingly, Ingraham declared the decision "a big letdown." It seems plausible to maintain that Ingraham's receipt of corporal punishment in 1970—even if it played no causal role in his jail stint—signaled his membership among society's marginalized citizens who account for an overwhelming portion of the nation's incarcerated population.

That story remains familiar today. Critics of corporal punishment frequently assail the practice by observing that the percentage of black students who receive the paddle is dramatically higher than their percentage of the overall student population. According to the most recent set of statistics compiled by the Department of Education, black students make up about 16 percent of the nation's public school students but receive about 35 percent of the nation's corporal punishment.

Today, a large majority of the nation's corporal punishment occurs in just a handful of southern states. But while recent data reveal a decrease in corporal punishment, they do not support the blithe assumption that educators must be on the verge of voluntarily relinquishing their paddles. In 2006, more than 223,000 students received corporal punishment in public schools during the preceding school year. In 2012, nearly 167,000 students still received corporal punishment in schools.

That students in American public schools continue to be paddled today is an atrocity. No legal issue sits higher atop the long list of needed educational reforms than eliminating corporal punishment against students—the sole remaining group that governmental actors are permitted to strike with impunity.

[legit-scam-review]

Left, Right and Center: Crypto Isn’t Just for Libertarians Anymore

While some say crypto is apolitical, others argue a technology that takes direct aim at central bank-driven monetary policy can’t be anything otherwise.

Indeed, many early adopters were drawn to bitcoin’s revolutionary potential and there has long been a close association between libertarianism and cryptocurrency.

CoinDesk Research took the opportunity to test this association in our Q2 State of Blockchain Sentiment Survey. Among a wide range of questions, some were aimed at discovering the political leanings of the crypto community as they relate to the technology in general, as well as to specific coins.

And the findings were surprising.

The more than 1,200 crypto community respondents broke down to 8 percent anarcho-capitalists, 24 percent libertarians, 21 percent conservatives, 9 percent centrists, 27 percent liberals, 9 percent socialists and 3 percent nihilists. While liberal came out as the largest single category, if you combine libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, they outnumbered the liberals by 5 percentage points.

These identifications were chosen to best capture distinctive world views.

For example, libertarians can be statists (i.e., they may advocate limited government, but not necessarily the abolition of all government) whereas the anarcho-capitalists want to end the state outright. 

After combining categories into our composite of the left vs. right spectrum, we observe that 52 percent of the crypto community are right-wing and 45 percent identify as being on the left. While ideologies on the right appear to make up the majority, it’s not as wide a majority as you might expect.

Considering crypto’s origins and reputation, it’s fascinating that the left makes up such a substantial minority. Two factors could explain why these results deviate from commonly-held conceptions: time and crypto partisanship by coin (or coin tribalism).

Time:

Anecdotally, libertarians made up the overwhelming majority of early crypto advocates and thus the archetype stuck with the general movement. Since then, many more people have come into the crypto world drawn by rising prices and without such strong political views. 55 percent of our Q1 survey respondents started actively following crypto in 2017. These people could be motivated by politics, but more likely came in to make money and thus held views closer to that of the general population.

Coin Tribalism:

Ideology across cryptocurrencies shows incredible variety. Our survey results found that certain political ideologies clustered around particular coins. Bitcoin most closely resembles the general population, while other cryptos take their own unique  formations. Ethereum seems to have the highest percentage (55%) on the left while dash contains the highest concentration on the right (78%). XRP clusters towards the center, while monero inversely nurtures the extremes at both ends of the spectrum while also taking the mantle for highest percentage of anarcho-capitalists (36%).

Interpreting the data

We reached out to a few crypto thought leaders for reactions to these findings.

On the left, Santiago Siri, Founder of DemocracyEarth, remarked, “it’s interesting to confirm the ideological biases of the communities behind the leading cryptocurrencies of our time, although probably in crypto we might need a different spectrum: one-coin-to-rule-them-all maximalists versus free market multi-token holders.”

In the center, developer and host of Ivan on Tech, Ivan Liljeqvist, suggested that, “the people who were involved in crypto from the beginning were mostly leaning towards anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism, however that changed last year when the hype around Bitcoin and the entire crypto market attracted many other people with different backgrounds”.

On the right, the Bitcoin Sign Guy said it’s “not a surprise that the coins with highly centralized leadership and governance rank highly on leftism and socialism.”

Chris Derose, a longtime crypto personality and host of the podcast “Bitcoin Uncensored,” has been raising many questions around this topic.

After reviewing our results he commented:

“The 2016 election had major impacts on the demographics of blockchain. Bitcoin was principally a conservative movement of goldbugs and libertarians in its early years. And an unheralded accomplishment of the ethereum blockchain might be in its ability to reach progressive blockchain investors. The 2016 election forced a divide in the community, with libertarian pursuits of independence and conservative principles finding ground in the dash, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash camps – and with collectivist interests of the left finding solutions in crowdfunding and governance structures.”

The right-leaning pioneers of pre-2017 crypto are faced with leftist migrants to their tech territory. As adoption grows, this trend will most likely continue and decrease the representation of right-wingers in crypto, especially of those at the far end.

If so, the original intention of a decentralized sound money could be sidelined for Silicon Valley’s next consumerist app, Wall Street’s next derivative database, or Washington’s facelift on monetary policy.

Check out these insights and more in the latest CoinDesk Q2 State of Blockchain report.

Guy Fawkes image via Unsplash.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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[djgblogger-blog]

EU's antitrust 'war' on Google and Facebook uses abandoned American playbook

http://bit.ly/2vFHjXS

European Union Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager has followed an antitrust enforcement strategy pioneered in the U.S. AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that European antitrust regulators have declared war on American tech giants.

On June 27, the European Union imposed a €2.4 billion (US$2.75 billion) fine on Google for giving favorable treatment in its search engine results to its own comparison shopping service. And Germany’s antitrust enforcer is investigating Facebook for asking users to sign away control over personal information.

In contrast, American antitrust enforcers have shown little interest in these companies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did open an investigation into whether Google has a search bias, but closed it in 2013, despite recognizing that it “may have had the effect of harming individual competitors.”

Anti-Americanism, however, does not explain these starkly different approaches. Europe targets homegrown companies with the same ferocity. Last summer, for example, the EU fined a cartel of European truck-makers even more than it did Google.

Instead, the divergence is explained by America’s abandonment in the 1980s of the theory that competition promotes innovation, which is still embraced by Europe today. America now seems to operate under the theory that competition threatens innovation by denying companies that develop a superior product the rewards of monopoly.

My research suggests that embrace of this new theory has led to under-enforcement of America’s antitrust laws, which may in turn have actually held back innovation.

Google’s innovative search engine emerged from competition, not monopoly. AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

Betting on competition

The mission of antitrust law, first articulated by the framers of the Sherman Act in 1890, is to ensure that markets contain large numbers of equally matched competitors. That’s why Europe calls its own antitrust rules “competition law.”

The Sherman Act implemented this goal by prohibiting two things: “restraint of trade,” such as price fixing, and monopolization, the attempt of a powerful company to keep competitors out of its markets. European competition laws have a similar bipartite structure.

The EU case against Google falls under the second category, monopolization, or as Europeans dub it “abuse of dominance.”

One of the most important and difficult areas of the law of monopolization involves infrastructure, which can be anything from the roads that crisscross America to the engineering standards that mobile phones use to communicate. Great innovations, such as Google’s search engine, often become the infrastructure that the next generation of competitors need to access in order to create their own, innovative products. But the infrastructure owner will often shut those competitors out, to maximize profits.

The goal of antitrust law would seem to require that its enforcers – the Department of Justice and the FTC in the U.S. – sue to force owners to share their infrastructure on reasonable terms with competitors.

Skeptics emerge

But in the 1960s, skeptics – particularly antitrust economists and lawyers associated with the University of Chicago and led by Robert Bork – started to argue that forcing a business to share its infrastructure on an equal basis with competitors reduces the rewards a company can expect to generate from innovation, potentially discouraging technological progress.

If Google cannot earn monopoly profits on product search and sponsored links, will it stop investing in improving its search engine?

Getting the answer right is hugely important. Access to infrastructure may well have triggered the Industrial Revolution. A recent study shows that the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861 – which broke up the monopoly of feudal lords over a very important type of infrastructure, land – greatly increased the growth of the Russian economy. The authors concluded that Western Europe’s abolition of serfdom at least a century earlier probably explains its subsequent economic dominance.

Until the 1980s, American antitrust enforcers followed this example by breaking up “feudal estates” when they got too big. In 1912, for instance, the Justice Department won a case that forced the owners of the only two railroad bridges crossing the Mississippi river at St. Louis – which connected numerous eastern and western railroad systems – to allow access to competing companies.

The bridges were a superior product, relative to railroad ferries, and the sharing requirement no doubt reduced the owners’ profits. But the Justice Department was willing to bet that intervention would not chill incentives to innovate. America has done OK since.

The Justice Department made the same bet when it filed its last successful monopolization case in 1974, making AT&T give up the local telephone networks that once ran copper wires into most homes in America. That allowed an innovative competitor, MCI, to use those wires to connect home and office telephones to the company’s pioneering microwave and satellite transmission systems, halving long distance calling rates by 1990.

The last major monopolization case was filed in 1998 against Bill Gates’ Microsoft and its then ubiquitous operating system Windows. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

Betting against competition

The view of the Chicago skeptics who opposed enforcement grew in power during the 1970s, reaching a tipping point in 1981 with the election of Ronald Reagan, who appointed its advocates to federal judgeships and leadership roles in the enforcement agencies. That view has proven resilient to changes in administration ever since.

The courts implemented the Chicago view by embracing a rule, known optimistically as the “rule of reason,” that enforcement of antitrust law is warranted only if there is no danger of chilling innovation. As the Supreme Court put it, intervention should take place only after “elaborate study.”

I argue in a recent paper that when enforcer budgets are limited, the rule of reason is just a polite way of partially repealing the antitrust laws, because the rule makes infrastructure cases, among others, too expensive for enforcers to litigate. And enforcement budgets are limited. Although budgets have increased in real terms since the 1970s, they have declined relative to the size of economy.

Antitrust enforcement has, in fact, suffered. Apart from the Microsoft case 20 years ago, in which the goal of breaking up the company wasn’t achieved, no other major monopolization cases have been filed since AT&T in 1974.

And even when cases are brought, usually by private individuals, the rule of reason has proven a virtually insurmountable obstacle to success.

Has all this at least led to an uptick in innovation? You might think that the answer is ��yes,” given that Google and Facebook were both launched in the U.S. in recent years.

But both – as well as their incredible innovations – are the products not of monopoly but of competition. Google won the search wars by creating algorithms that beat those of rivals, including AltaVista and Yahoo. Facebook innovated by improving on the social network concept that erstwhile rival MySpace helped create. Both companies flourished thanks to equal access to the internet – in other words, net neutrality.

Measures of innovation for the economy as a whole, rather than individual success stories, provide a more reliable, and less encouraging, picture. The talk of the economics profession these days is the current combination of soaring corporate profits with the absence of an accompanying uptick in one measure of economy-wide expenditure on innovation – business investment.

This outcome is exactly what you’d expect in an economy of large companies that generate profits from their monopoly positions, rather than by offering better products.

The road not taken

Europe has not followed this path.

In the 1950s and ‘60’s, when the foundations for current European antitrust law were being laid, American enforcers still believed that competition promotes innovation. The American emphasis on protecting upstarts resonated with a continent still recovering from Nazism, which used state-sponsored monopolies to maintain control. The EU case against Google is firmly in that tradition, as is the investigation of Facebook, which dominates another new economy infrastructure, social media.

Although the European enforcement actions will only directly benefit Europeans, they are a reminder to Americans of the road not taken.

Ramsi Woodcock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Fighting over the definitions of words can sometimes seem like a futile and irrelevant undertaking. However it’s important to note that whatever language gets standardized in our communities shapes what we can talk and think about. So much of radical politics often boils down to acrimonious dictionary-pounding over words like “capitalism,” “markets,” “socialism,” “communism,” “nihilism,” etc. Each side is usually engaged in bravado rather than substance. Radical debates turn into preemptive declarations of “everyone knows X” or “surely Y,” backed by nothing more than the social pressure we can bring to bear against one another. And yet — to some degree — we’re trapped in this game because acquiescing to the supposed authority of our adversaries’ definitions would put us at an unspeakable disadvantage. The stakes of debates over “mere semantics” can be quite high, determining what’s easy to describe and what’s awkward or laborious. Thus the partisan impulse is usually to define our adversaries out of existence: muddying their analytic waters, emphasizing any and all negative associations, and painting their conclusions as insane, verboten, or outgroup. At the same time we leap on any and all positive associations we can twist to serve our own ends. Debate over definitions is so often merely a game of social positioning: every word reverberating with the different associations of different audiences and thus what alliances you’re declaring or managing to ascribe to your interlocutor. Language is a messy, complicated, and nebulous place where fallacious arguments are not only par for the course but often thought to be how the whole thing hangs together. In the worst corners of academia and “radical” politics this is embraced wholesale, where philosophy is reduced to mere poetry and cheap ploys of emotive resonance: batted back and forth with an underlying smug derision at the entire affair. “Have you ever noticed that we use the same word for your job — your occupation — as we do for the occupation of Iraq?” and this is somehow treated as insightful rather than doing violence to clarity and honesty. Obviously my biases here — and social affiliations — are quite apparent. While there can be a place for rhetoric to convey emphasis and it is sometimes necessary to counter fire with fire, in general I find these opportunistic language games detestable. Whenever possible I prefer a subversive linguistic pluralism, happy to adopt the language of those I’m speaking to, declaring myself, for example, pro-“capitalism” or pro-“communism” in some contexts and against “capitalism” or against “communism” in others. If by “capitalism” some poor soul means nothing more than economic freedom then I’m fine adopting his tribe’s language to reach him — the same holds true with “communism”. Yet opportunities for such ecumenism are few and far between; even in those situations where we can escape tribal jockeying and arguments from popularity, such words almost always carry hidden baggage through their broader associations, with the explicit definition hiding the implicit conclusions of its wider use. When it comes to semantics, I’m of the opinion that our first step should always be to discard popular associations as much as possible and decipher what are the most illuminating or fundamental dynamics at play, only then attempting to realign or reserve our most basic words for the most rooted concepts. If our final mapping of concepts to terms is idiosyncratic or provocative, or if it strips away the full array of associations found in common use, then perhaps all the better. While such an approach is often contentious, I believe that it offers a relatively nonpartisan compromise and starting point in definition debates. Let us hold off as much as possible on barraging each other with claims about what’s more “authoritative,” much less what can be leveraged as proof of such, and likewise abandon the negative and positive association-judo. We can always return to this after we’ve sorted out what sort of realities are even before us to map our vocabulary to. This offers us a certain efficiency, handling some quite heavy work at the start, but at least offering us something other than an endless quagmire going forward. More important though is the danger that jumbled interpretive networks or misaligned concepts pose when normalized. Terms that fail to cut reality at the joints can mislead and obscure, make some basic realities incredibly hard to state or address. In language we should seek depth, generality, and accuracy first and foremost, not mere rhetorical expedience. There is a place for the play of “interestingly” open interpretations but such hunger should not consume us and sever our capacity to act. Democracy and Anarchy In many contemporary western societies “democracy” retains positive (if nebulous) associations. Naturally, many activists have therefore repeatedly tried to latch onto that term and redirect it in narratives or analysis that line up with their own political aspirations. “You like chocolate, right? Well anarchism is basically extra chocolately chocolate. It’s more chocolate than chocolate. It’s like direct chocolate.” This opportunistic wordplay is at least self-aware, and such maneuverings seems fair game to many. After all, isn’t “anarchy” a similarly nebulous word — a site of contention and redefinition? Yet I’d argue that the situations are quite different. The fight over “anarchy” is an inescapable one for anarchists because the world we want will never be obtainable as long as the term’s historical definition goes unchallenged. In every language that touched ancient Greek, “anarchy” bundles together the explicit definition of “without rulership” with the implicit definition of “fractured rulership” (what should really be called ‘spasarchy’) in a nasty Orwellianism that makes the concept of a world without domination unspeakable and often unthinkable. We have a term for the abolition of power relations and we use it instead to refer to chaotic, violent, dog-eat-dog situations of strong (albeit decentralized) power relations. In short, the fight over the definition of “anarchy” is a battle to untangle an existing knot. On the other hand, “democracy” tends to stand for majority rule and etymologically for the rule of all over all. If there is an Orwellianism at play it is seems to me one of being too charitable to the term, sneaking in associations of freedom when one is in fact describing a particular flavor of tyranny. A situation more akin to “war is peace” than the “freedom is slavery” is at play with “anarchy.” Honest proponents of democracy can of course contend that such an “ideal” would look nothing like our contemporary world and so the characterization of our nation states as “democracies” misrepresents what true democracy would actually be. But it would still be a dystopia to anarchists. “Rulership by the populace” is clearly a concept irreconcilable with “without rulership” unless one has atrophied to the point of accepting the nihilism of liberalism and its mewling belief in the inescapability of rulership. Or perhaps even going so far as to join with fascists and other authoritarians who silence their conscience with the ideological assertion that one cannot even limit power relations, only rearrange them. Etymology isn’t destiny but it does carry a strong momentum and corrective force. I’m not sure why we should feel obliged to fight an uphill battle to redefine “democracy” in a direction consistent with anarchist aspirations. And in any case, from an abstract distance it seems wasteful to assign two terms to the same concept. Those claiming that democracy and anarchy can be reconciled seem to either be rhetorical opportunists — gravely mistaken about what they can and should leverage — or else they seem gravely out of alignment with anarchism’s aspirations, treating “without rulership” not as a guiding star but a noncommittal handwave. Perhaps this is today the regrettable consequence of a few decades of anarchist recruitment from activist ranks, a conveyor belt that has sadly often resulted in the most shallow of conversions. Rather than a fervent ethical opposition to rulership, we’ve often settled for merely instilling a mild distaste for collaboration with the existing state on leftists, sometimes going no deeper than “you want to accomplish X with your activism but have you noticed that the state is in your way?” This has led to generations of activists — many I count as close friends — who have never considered how they might achieve their standard collection of leftist desires like universal health care in the absence of a state. When pressed they invariably describe a state apparatus, squirming in recognition and cognitive dissonance. “Oh, sure I’m describing a centralized body wielding coercive force and issuing edicts, but it wouldn’t be, you know, The State… because, like, well it wouldn’t systematically kill black people at the hands of the police.” Such an anemic analysis of the state’s crimes never ceases to be shocking. Just as the gutless defanging of anarchism’s radical ethical hunger and dismemberment of its philosophical roots to a mere political platform is invariably depressing. Let us be clear; if anarchy means anything of substance then many of these people are not really anarchists. At least not yet! They do not believe anarchy is achievable or even thinkable. And this is reflected in their own frequent aversion and/or equivocation in relation to the term “anarchy,” gravitating more to some positive associations they have seen made with it than the underlying concept of a world truly without rulership. Compared to our present society they want the things often associated with anarchism without the core that draws them. I was — for a time — hopeful that such individuals would move to the much more open term “horizontalist.” In truth they’d be better described as minarchist social democrats, who want a cuddlier, friendlier, flatter, more local and responsive state that makes people feel like happy participants and doesn’t engage in world historic atrocities. Yet for those of us who have tasted the prospect of a world without rulership, this is simply a difference in degree of dystopia. If it truly were possible to achieve some kind of enlightened social democracy without wealth inequality, systematic disenfranchisement of minorities, and with some decentralization of state function, anarchists would still go to the barricades because this is not enough. If anarchism is to mean anything of substance, it is surely not merely an opening bid from which you are happy to settle. Anarchy doesn’t stand for small amounts of domination: it stands for no domination. Although our approach to that ideal will surely be asymptotic, the whole point of anarchism is to actually pursue it rather than give up and settle for some arbitrary “good enough” half-measure. Such tepid aspirations is what has historically defined liberals and social democrats in contrast to us. But it’s important to go further, because “democracy” doesn’t solely pose a danger of half-measures but also of a unique dimension of authoritarianism. A pure expression of “the rule of all over all” could be a hell of a lot worse than “Sweden with Neighborhood Assemblies.” The etymology itself seems to best reflect a nightmare scenario in which everyone constrains and dominates everyone else. If we seek to match words to the most distinct and coherent concepts then perhaps the truest expression of “demo-cracy” would be a world where everyone is chained down by everyone else, tightening our grip on our neighbors just as they in turn choke the freedom from our lungs. To be sure few proponents of “democracy” specifically define it as “the rule of all over all.” There are many distinct dynamics that folks single out and focus on, but none of these definitions directly address the problem of rulership itself. Democracy as Majority Rule The most conventional definition of democracy among the wider populace is today quite rare in anarchist circles. At this point “majority rules” is rarely advocated by anyone in my experience outside some old fogies in the underdeveloped backwaters of the anarchist world like the British Isles, and its use in ostensibly anarchist meetings or organizations now rises to moderately scandalous. But it’s maybe worth reiterating that majority rule can be deeply oppressive to minorities. If 51% of your neighborhood committee votes to eat the other 49% alive, that’s a hell of a lot worse than a situation without majority rules where one person refuses to mow their lawn and thus unilaterally inflicts their malaesthetic on the rest of the neighborhood. Proponents of such tyranny by the majority love to pretend that the only alternative is “tyranny by the minority.” But anarchist theory is all about removing the structures and means by which rulership can be asserted or expressed by anyone, majority or minority. This is probably not the place to list them all like some kind of 101 course, but one example is superempowering technologies like guns that asymmetrically make resistance more efficient than domination. Such technologies are directly responsible for the increase of liberty over recent history. In an era where capital intensive undertakings like trained knights on horseback trumped anything else, you got rulership by elites; when the best weapons are one-kill-averaging soldiers, you just line up your troops and the one with the biggest count can be expected to win. But high-ammunition guns give every individual a veto against the lynch mob outside their door, allowing guerrillas to impede empires that vastly outscale them in capital. Technologies like the printing press and internet function similarly. And on the other side of the coin, the infrastructural extent and dependent nature of modern technologies of control or domination makes them brittle against resistance, easily prey to acts of disruption and sabotage. These tools — along with technologies of resilience and self-sufficiency — allow individuals to reject the capricious edicts of anyone, be they a minority or a majority. Ideally anarchists seek to highlight and strengthen such dynamics with the political approaches we take, treating everyone like they have the most powerful of vetoes, capable of destroying everything, of grinding everything to a halt if they are truly intolerably imposed upon. This focus on individuals stops “the community” or other beasts from running rampant, forcing a detente tolerable for all parties. Such truces are far more likely to be attentive to the severity of individual desires, because “one vote per person” is incapable of reflecting just how much a person has at stake: something we could never hope to make objective and would be laughable to try to have a collective body legislate. What norms fall out of such an assumption of veto powers are complex (and I’ve argued left market property norms are likely to be one) but at the center is always freedom of association. The consensus society is one primarily comprised of autonomous realms so that individuals can minimize conflict between their swinging fists and maximize the positive freedoms provided by collaboration. But note also the psychological norms. Majority rule treats people as means to whatever ends you want (rallying a large enough army at the polls), whereas a consensus detente can never lose sight of the fact that people are agents with their own particular desires. There is no subsumption of one’s subjective desires into merely being “one of the vote-losers”, a bloc rendered homogeneous and dehumanized by such democracy. Okay agree some, but maybe we can say that consensus itself is democracy? Democracy as Consensus This is probably the most charitable way of framing “democracy” but here too are deep problems. There’s a massive difference between consensus that’s arrived at through free association, and consensus that’s arrived because people are locked into some collective body to some degree. Often what passes for “consensus” within anarchist activist projects is merely consensus within the prison of a reified organization. Modern anarchists are still quite bad at embracing the fluidity of truly free association, and we cling to familiar edifices. Our organizations reassure us insofar as they function like the state, simplistic monoliths that exist outside of time and beyond the changing desires and relations of their constituent members. Truly anarchist approaches to consensus would prioritize making the collectivity organic and ad hoc, an arrangement that prioritizes individual choice in every respect. Not just the prospect or potential of choice but the active use of it. This would mean adopting an unterrified attitude about dissolution and reformation, learning new habits and growing new muscles that have atrophied in the totalitarian reference frame of our statist world. As it now stands, the prospect of going separate ways on a thing if we can’t reach consensus on a single collectively unified path strikes absolute fear into the hearts of most. For consensus to be truly anarchistic we must be willing to consense upon autonomy, to shed off our reactionary hunger for established perpetual collective entities. Otherwise consensus will erode back in the direction of majority rules, individuals feeling obliged to tolerate decisions lest they break the uniformity of the established collective. Almost everyone of this generation is quite familiar with the general assemblies of Occupy that endlessly and fruitlessly fought over essentially just what actions would be formally endorsed under a local Occupy’s brand. Clearly in many cases we should have just gone our separate ways, working out not a single blueprint but a tolerable treaty to allow us to undertake separate projects or actions. The brand provided by The General Assembly was a centralization too far, creating such a high value real estate that everyone was obliged to fight to seize it. Surely anarchists should resist the formation of such black holes. Okay, but regardless of the size and permanence of the collectives involved, maybe democracy is just collective decision-making itself? Democracy as Collective Decision-making While there are unfortunately many pragmatic contexts on Earth that oblige a degree of collective decision-making, it’s dangerous to fetishize collective decision-making itself. Many young leftist activists get caught with a bug that suggests the core problems with our world are those of “individualism” by which they mean a kind of psychopathic self-interest that is inattentive to others. The solution, this bug tells them, is to do everything collectively. To stomp out anti-social perspectives by obliging social participation. If we all go to meetings together then we’ll become more or less friends. The unspoken transmutation they appeal to is one where extraversion and being enmeshed in social interactions will somehow suppress selfish desires. Of course in reality the opposite is often true. The most altruistic people in the world are often introverted individuals who prefer to act alone and the most psychopathic predators are often those most at home manipulating a web of social relations. Many leftists are scarred by the alienating social dynamics of our society and seek meetings as a kind of structured socializing time to make friends and conjure a sense of belonging to a community, but this is absolutely not the same thing as engendering a sense of altruism or empathy. If anything collective meetings are horrible draining experiences that scar everyone involved and only partially satiate the most isolated and socially desperate. Like a starving person eating grass, the nutrition is never good enough and so the activist becomes trapped in endless performative communities, going to endless group meetings to imperfectly reassure base psychological needs rather than efficaciously change the world for the better. (I say such cutting words with all the love and sympathy of someone who’s nevertheless persisted as an activist and organizer attempting to do shit for almost two decades.) Collective decision-making itself is no balm or salve to the horrors that plague this world. But that’s not even the worst of it. Collective decision-making is itself fundamentally constraining. It frequently makes situations worse in its attempt to make decisions as a collective rather than autonomously as networked individuals. The processing of information is the most important dynamic to how our societies are structured. A boss in a large firm for example appoints middle managers to filter and process information because a raw stream of reports from the shop floor would be too overwhelming for his brain to analyze. There are many ways in which aspects of the flow of information constrain social organizations, but when it comes to collective decision-making the most relevant thing is the vast difference between the complexity our brains are capable of holding and the small trickle of that complexity we are capable of expressing in language. As a rule, individuals are better off with the autonomy to just act in pursuit of their desires rather than trying to convey them in their full unknowable complexity. But when communication is called for it’s far far more efficient to speak in pairs one-on-one, and let conclusions percolate organically into generality. “Collective” decision-making almost always assumes a discussion with more than two people — a collective — in an often incredibly inefficient arrangement where everyone has to put their internal life in stasis and listen to piles of other people speak one at a time. The information theoretic constraints are profound. If collective decision-making is supposed to provide us with the positive freedoms possible through collaboration, it offers only the tiniest fraction of what is usually actually possible. That there are occasionally situations so shitty that collective decisionmaking is requisite does not mean anarchists should worship or applaud it. And one would be hardpressed to classify something far more general like collaboration itself as “democracy”. Okay, but maybe we can reframe democracy as an ethics? Democracy As “Getting a Say in the Things That Affect You” It got particularly popular in the 90s to frame anarchy as a world where everyone gets a say in the things that affect them. And for a time this seemed to nicely establish anarchism as a kind of unterrified feminism. But let’s be real: there are plenty of things that massively affect you that you should have no vote over. Whether or not your crush goes out with you should entirely be at their own discretion. Freedom of association is quite often sharply at odds with “getting a say over things that affect you.” This may seem in conflict with the moral we drew from our discussion of consensus and the necessity to create a detente grounded in a respect for individual vetoes, but it’s important to remember that we weren’t settling for the naive first-order resolution where anyone strongly affected by something sets off a nuke. There’s a kind of meta-structure that emerges in any network of people upon consideration. The detentes we ultimately gravitate to involve certain more abstract norms, that are more generally useful to all than their violation in specific instances. Respect for freedom of association is one such very strongly emergent norm. And in any case the goal of anarchists is freedom, we champion a decentralized world — among other conditions — precisely so that it might dramatically increase our freedom, not chain us down. This means at the very least cultivating a culture of live and let live when someone blocks you on Twitter rather than setting the world ablaze because you feel entitled to their attention. Similarly if everyone in your generation starts using Snapchat — which you dislike — that puts you at a disadvantage: such an emergent norm clearly affects you in a negative way. But this doesn’t and shouldn’t give you cause to bring your peers before the city council and demand that Snapchat be outlawed. The norms of freedom of association, freedom of information, and bodily autonomy cleave out distinct realms of action that can affect third parties immensely yet should not — barring absolutely extreme situations — be dictated or constrained by them. Every invention and discovery changes the world but you don’t get to vote against the propagation of truth, however disruptive it might be to your life. Okay, but maybe we can reframe democracy as not as any kind of system but as a demographic? Democracy as “The Rabble” In recent times David Graeber has re-popularized the historical association of “democracy” with large underclasses. And it’s true that in certain points in history “democracy” served alongside “anarchy” as a boogeyman of the horrors they were claimed would arise if the ruling elites lost their stranglehold on the populace. Certainly we anarchists leap to defend the unwashed masses from those sneering elites. The prospect that the rabble would demolish the elites’ positions of power or get up to dirty and uncouth things with their freedom is something we embrace. But just because we despise those who despise “the rabble” doesn’t mean we should embrace any and all mobs or the concept of “the mob” itself. The positives that can be wrestled from this use of the term surely aren’t worth explicitly opening the door to “mobocracy”. This archaic use of “democracy” has obvious subversive potential in our present world, flipping the positive affect built around “democracy” by our current rulers and returning it to those in conflict with them. But anarchists are not blind proponents of “the masses” in any and all situations, something this rhetorical opportunism would lock us into. The masses can be horrifically wrong, and what is popularly desired can be quite unethical. It’s not vanguardism to resist pogroms or work to thwart the genocidal ambitions of majorities like in Rwanda. There are endless examples of “the masses” seeking to dominate, and our goal as anarchists is not to pick sides but to make such rulership impossible or at the very least costly. Anarchists aren’t engaged in team sports; while we often defend underdogs in specific contexts, we’re not out to back one demographic against another in any kind of fundamental way. Okay, but does “democracy” still have a role as a transitory state? Democracy as a Transitory State This is a complicated issue because obviously it depends on a host of abstract and practical particulars. We’ve covered a lot of different definitions one encounters among apologists for “democracy” in anarchist circles, and what I’ve tried to highlight among all of them is both a lack of any explicit anti-authoritarianism as well as a series of lurking problems that risk warping things in an authoritarian direction. In some situations, certain things going by the name “democracy” would likely pose half-steps in the direction of anarchism. The replacement of a feudal lord with a village assembly would almost certainly be an improvement. We can get distracted with concerns about possible failure modes and lose sight of what’s actually happening on the ground. Just because the democratic processes of Rojava could theoretically bend in a more sharply nationalistic or racially oppressive direction doesn’t mean that they actually are. There are many situations where participatory democracy represents a major step forward, even something anarchists should fight for with our lives. But when democracy is idealized — when it’s generalized or elevated as an ideology rather than as a pragmatic strategy in a specific context — things gets dangerous. The risk of such idealization is inherent to its use. And oftentimes democracy serves as a half-measure that actually impedes further progress. The Chomskyian strategy of compromise and “incremental steps” that secure bread today can actually further entrench power structures while providing minor ameliorations. Democracy is in almost every definition a kind of centralization and such centralization pulls everything under its control. Just as with other types of states, once you establish a centralized system with far-reaching capacity it starts to become more efficient for individual agents to try to do everything through the state: to capture it for your ends rather than working to build solutions from the roots up outside of it. Even those with sharp anarchist ideals start feeling the pressure to go to the General Assembly rather than doing things outside of it as actual agents. Like shooting people, in our messy and deeply dystopian world democracy may sometimes be necessary and strategic, but as anarchists our every inclination and instinct should be to avoid such means by default, to only cede to them kicking and screaming, and never cease feeling distaste. We must not lose sight of our ideals and even as we can only asymptotically approach them we must still attempt to asymptotically approach them rather than asymptotically approaching some halfway point. And of course let us not forget that a world where say a social democrat like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn gets their way might even actually end up worse than our present horrorshow. Liberal and socialist policies have a long history of making worse the things they were supposedly out to fix. Okay, but isn’t that unfair since the whole point is direct democracy? A Note About “Directness” It’s annoying how often young activists attempt to create a spectrum of democracy with varying levels of mediation or representation that places anarchy as synonymous with the most direct democracy. It’s true that depending upon a representative to speak on your behalf is an insanely inefficient approach — anyone who’s dealt even just with spokescouncils pooling few dozen people knows this. We know that due to the shallow bandwidth of human language, conversation itself is ridiculously inefficient at a means of conveying the fullness of our internal desires and perspectives, so delegating to someone else with only the vaguest of outlines of what you want is surely much worse. But what I find particularly pernicious about the reduction of anarchism to a mere “direct” qualifier on “democracy” is that it plays into a fetishization of immediacy that has already ideologically metastasized among anarchists, indeed often among those more insurrectionary or individualist figures on the other side of the debate over “democracy”. The issue with representation in my mind isn’t the lack of immediacy but a matter of limits to the flow of information. It’s a subtle but crucial difference. A number of anarchists or former anarchists have in recent years increasingly grown to treat immediacy as the secret sauce — the very definition of freedom. This stems from a philosophical confusion over what freedom is and a very continental or psychological focus upon emotional affect, focusing on a phenomenological experience they associate with “freedom” — that is to say a kind of spontaneity or impulsive reaction rather than reflection (since in our present world reflection often brings to attention just how constrained we actually are). To consider an action is precisely to chain it through a series of mediations, to filter and parse it. It’s important to note that the reactionary approach smothers one’s internal complexity, ultimately reducing an agent to a mere billiard ball. When treated as an ideal, immediacy necessarily involves the suppression of consciousness and thus of choice. The problem with collective decisionmaking isn’t that the discrete deliberative bodies involved process information or ponder choices, but that such arrangements are ridiculously inefficient at it compared to individual autonomy: an embrace of the full agency of their constituents. A more organic network of reflective individuals would provide more choice — that is to say more freedom. Against All Rulership, Always To people in the trenches just trying to grab whatever weapons they find useful, all this philosophical criticism of “democracy” no doubt appears to be an ungainly impediment. But anarchism is not a pragmatic project myopically concerned only with what can be won here and now. Our most famous triumphs have been our foresight — often our predictions of dangers to come from various stripes of “pragmatism” and “immediacy.” Anarchism is a philosophy of infinite horizons, taking the longest and widest possible scope. An ethical philosophy of stunning and timeless audacity, not some historical artifact trapped in a limited set of concerns. This sweeping consideration is what enabled us to correctly predict the failures of Marxism, and it’s a tradition worth maintaining. Bakunin’s denouncement of Marx took place in a context long before Kronstadt and all the atrocities that would eventually become popularly synonymous with Marxism. Such “abstract philosophy” and non-immediacy split the ranks of those fighting against the capitalist order, weakening what they could bring to bear in the service of workers’ lives that very minute. And yet the world is clearly all the better for it. Thanks to the anarchist schism with Marxism, the struggle for freedom was able to survive. I’m not saying that a system of direct democratic town councils are going to be set up somewhere in the world tomorrow under the banner of “direct democracy” and turn genocidal or into some kind of totalitarian small town nightmare, but every take on “democracy” is nevertheless pretty distant from anarchy and thus unlikely to stay true. When your ideal isn’t pointed at freedom itself it’s only a matter of time before the runaway compounding processes of domination warp its path. I am, at the end of the day, happy to grimace slightly and move along when some comrade I’m working with spouts something about “more democratic than democracy!” just as I’m capable of biting my tongue with the sincere but confused trapped in Marxist or anarcho-capitalist languages. Semantic battles are not the be-all and end-all, but attempts to appropriate the general goodwill towards “democracy” have yet to latch onto any underlying concepts worth validating. It seems to me that a far better practice is to stick somewhere close to the etymology of the word (the rule of all over all) and its near universal associations (majority rule). One might object on the semantic grounds that it’s better to assign our words to their most positive possible interpretations, but I do think it’s important to have words for bad things, to be able to describe the array of possibilities we oppose with any sort of detail. It’s important to be able to see and comprehend the various flavors oppressive systems can take. Even if we don’t presently live in a full-blown democracy with all the horrors of a true domination of all over all, it’s still an illuminating extreme and one that I think warrants highlighting. Anarchism’s uniqueness is that it doesn’t seek to equalize rulership but to demolish it, a radical aspiration that cuts through the assumptions of our dystopian world. Anarchism isn’t about achieving a balance of domination — assuring that each person gets 5.2 milliHitlers of oppression each — but about abolishing it altogether. --- Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to C4SS’s audience. Online symposiums will include essays by a diverse range of writers presenting and debating their views on a variety of interrelated and overlapping topics, tied together by the overarching monthly theme. C4SS is extremely interested in feedback from our readers. Suggestions and comments are enthusiastically encouraged. If you’re interested in proposing topics and/or authors for our program to pursue, or if you’re interested in participating yourself, please email C4SS’s Mutual Exchange Coordinator, Cory Massimino, at cory.massimino@c4ss.org. http://clubof.info/

[teachanarchy]

A few weeks ago, I got there. Peak liberalism. The moment I accepted that contemporary liberal politics are anathema to progress, social change, or, heaven forbid, economic change. Not just in terms of my own personal politics (that peak was reached years ago), but in terms of any political movement. This realization was a long-time coming. I never believed in Obama’s smiling message of hope, nor in Clinton’s starch-stiff entitlement to my support at the tail end of a career built on allowing the Right to dictate the parameters of American values. I still remember NAFTA and still work in a post-Clintonian era of neoliberal capitalism. And while I have inherited an inter-generational distrust of Democrats and liberal organizations, the peak liberalism I have reached lately is a rejection of the horizontal in-fighting popular of the center-leftish base.

I’ve gone through my own personal experimentation with liberalism’s identity-centered calling cards. When you’re trans, Queer, disabled, breaking free of public school indoctrination, and just beginning to understand class relations in the world around you, liberal identity politics offer power–the power to demand attention, to shut down conversation, to center yourself, and to be untouchable in your politics, along the same identity criminal code used to reduce Obama’s critics to “racists,” and Clinton’s to “sexists.”

I did my fair share of seizing power from those around me. At times, perhaps I was justified. But over time it became abundantly clear that these politics are a dead end. The decline in my health forced me to realize that solidarity is necessary. Allies are necessary. If I intend to survive, I cannot be too rich for good intentions and people unlike me who want to help. And in the eggshell world of identity politics, I’m one mistake, or one incorrect visual assumption about who I am away from losing whatever security this “community” purports to offer.

Reading Audre Lorde further helped contextualize liberal identity politics. Her speech Learning from the 60s isn’t the only analysis of early liberal identity sectarianism that should give pause to anyone serious about changing the world, rather than just pointing out its flaws.

My experience of peak liberalism however, comes at a time when my return to the public university system has led me to witness a new generation of angry young Queers repeating the same tired politics I engaged in a decade ago, which are in fact the same tired politics Lorde and others have been critiquing since before I was born. Somewhere along an infectious and arguably ableist resistance to understanding the necessity of solidarity politics, a moral myopia developed.

And when I stumbled upon a self-righteous Facebook argument about whether white cis gays or trans women of color have it “worse” in Chechnya’s death camps, I realized I’d had enough. The original poster called out the media for failing to center the voices of the most marginalized being tortured and executed in the camps, because apparently barely escaping with your life alone isn’t enough to raise the otherwise notably cautious ire of American college students.

It got worse. Others commented to decry that the media even covered the story while non-incarcerated Black trans women in the U.S. (who aren’t being directly murdered by their families) face violence everyday. Another rushed to post clapping emojis in response, adding that their professors don’t even ask for everyone’s pronouns before class–an act that was literally described as “violence.” The media was decried for not treating these topics equally. One, the rounding up, imprisonment, torture, and murder of Queer people. Two, the obliviousness or apathy of U.S. academia to some of its students’ desire to vocalize the pronouns they use before class. Both, under liberalism, acts of violence that require equal media time.

I tried typing out several responses, but ultimately gave up because, I mean, my god, the problem is the existence of death camps, not who is in them. And how do we even weight different experiences? Why do we even need to? Can we not oppose one state’s death camps and another’s structural injustices all at the same time? Is it okay for gay men to be rounded up, imprisoned by the state, shocked, starved, and murdered by their families just because someone else by some standard may have it worse somewhere else in the world? Or, more bluntly, is it okay for gays to be murdered since on the other side of the world an American student is experiencing the inconvenience of being misgendered in a private liberal arts college classroom? Even if the media is distorting the demographics of people in the camps, what does arguing that point or correcting that misinformation even accomplish? What did derailing reports on gay death camps accomplish for trans students or Black trans women in the U.S., or anywhere at all?

Where antiracist efforts in the U.S. were galvanized by U.S. fights against Nazis abroad following WWII (Taylor, 2016, p. 32), contemporary U.S. liberals can’t even muster a negative fuck to give about concentration camps without first ranking the prisoners by worth to a gaggle of college students halfway around the world, delighting in the privileges afforded them by Western imperialism.

Reeling from this gay-hating Holocaust denialism, I found myself asking how did we get here? Surely, at some point, these politics made sense. But somewhere along the way, whatever radicalism these politics held has become ensnared in the quagmire of endless one-upping privilege checks and ah-ha! call-outs, the intersectionality of indivisible identity narratives, and a campus-centering, politic-esque performance of activism thoroughly neutered by lack of discernible strategy, goals, or even radical values.

Concerns over “disproportionate” incarceration have replaced prison abolition, just as the “right” to military service replaced disarmament. In the course of editing this piece, the sheer toxicity of this culture I once actively contributed to hit me again and again. I encountered a feminist advocating the sexual assault of men to “level the playing field.” When it was brought to her attention that men are already raped, her concern was exposed to not really be sexualized violence but the fact that women are “winning” with regard to being raped. I think her choice of words is apt. For all the denials to the contrary, these are oppression Olympics. Rape, death camps, and other atrocities don’t matter. Who is winning does. The recognition that identity essentialism fails to capture lived experience or challenge the indiscriminate maw of society is rebuked in favor of an unspoken, unassailable, and frankly insane sectarian rule book we’re all already too late in learning.

And what can we show for it? The persistent fear of reporting violence and a reliable lack of community support because one is the wrong identity to be on the receiving end? Another ten years of crowd-sourcing survival expenses, no closer to revolutionary change than Sylvia Rivera clawing her way to that stage in 1973, and still shouting the same things? Is anyone listening? Is anyone benefiting?

How many years of the same mantras about centering must we endure, how many Queer people must revert to the closet, how many must die from violence and preventable disease, and how long must we ignore the plight of us all exploited in this global cancer called capitalism before we name the failures of liberal politics and try something different instead? It is not enough to simply outgrow these politics and hope others do as well. If leftists are to engage with liberals, we must be willing to name and challenge the toxicity, absurdity, and de-radical nature of their politics.

I write with around twelve years of experience in student, community, and workplace activism, including various supporting organizer roles. And the following essay explores the problems I see with liberal and identity-centered politics.

Intersectionality creates new identity classes.

Kimberlé Crenshaw is credited with conceptualizing intersectionality in her 1989 essay Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics to highlight the limits of civil rights legislation based on sex and race.

Essentially, Crenshaw asks us to imagine the intersection of two streets. For the purposes of her metaphor, they can be abstractly thought of as racial discrimination and sexual discrimination. Black women, positioned in the intersection, may experience injustice from all directions, but it is difficult if not entirely impossible to place responsibility on a single street for the harm done to them. Rather, their position within the intersection is the critical context for understanding the injustices they face.

To illustrate this metaphor, Crenshaw wrote on the 1976 case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors where five Black women sued General Motors over employment discrimination, yet were unable to effectively argue their case since the discrimination they faced did not occur clearly on the basis of race (i.e. affecting Black men too) or sex (i.e. affecting white women as well). Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality gave a name to this type of experience which Black women had already been describing for generations.

In her article, Black Feminism and Intersectionality, Sharon Smith writes:

“After Crenshaw introduced the term intersectionality in 1989, it was widely adopted because it managed to encompass in a single word the simultaneous experience of the multiple oppressions faced by Black women. But the concept was not a new one. Since the times of slavery, Black women have eloquently described the multiple oppressions of race, class, and gender—referring to this concept as ‘interlocking oppressions,’ ‘simultaneous oppressions,’ ‘double jeopardy,’ ‘triple jeopardy’ or any number of descriptive terms.” (source)

The April 1977 statement by the Combahee River Collective demonstrates that what could retroactively be described as intersectional politics pre-dates Crenshaw’s essay. In it, a Marxist politic is identified as informing intersectional and identity-oriented work.

“We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.” (source)

Has an intersectional analysis succeeded in confronting or dismantling either “the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism,” “patriarchy,” or any number of other targets identified by subsequent social justice movements?

In 1982, Audre Lorde presented her talk Learning from the 60s at a Harvard University celebration of Malcolm X, in which she highlighted a misplaced horizontal anger arising in activist movements:

“In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those closest to us who mirrored our own impotence.

Similarly, in her article The Politics of Identity, Sharon Smith writes:

“As the experience of the 1960s shows, it is not necessary to personally experience a form of oppression to become committed to opposing it. Yet the central premise of the theory of identity politics is based on precisely the opposite conclusion: Only those who actually experience a particular form of oppression are capable of fighting against it. Everyone else is considered to be part of the problem and cannot become part of the solution by joining the fight against oppression. The underlying assumption is that all men benefit from women’s oppression, all straight people benefit from the oppression of the LGBT community, and all whites benefit from racism.” (source)

And in his article The Limits of Antiracism, Adolph Reed Jr. comments on a shift in the targets of antiracist activism between the Civil Rights Movement and later waves of identity-oriented work, including those that inspired and followed Crenshaw’s conceptualization of intersectionality:

“Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of ‘prejudice’ or ‘intolerance.’ (No doubt this shift was partly aided by political imperatives associated with the Cold War and domestic anticommunism.)” (source)

In comparison to the Combahee River Collective’s statement (above), later movements are notably hostile to Marxism. Reed Jr. continues:

“I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics. It’s not clear to me what drives it because it takes the form of snide dismissals than direct arguments. Moreover, the dismissals typically include empty acknowledgment that ‘of course we should oppose capitalism,’ whatever that might mean. In any event, the tenor of this anti-Marxism is reminiscent of those right-wing discourses, many of which masqueraded as liberal, in which only invoking the word ‘Marxism’ was sufficient to dismiss an opposing argument or position. […].

This sort of thing only deepens my suspicions about antiracism’s status within the comfort zone of neoliberalism’s discourses of ‘reform.’ More to the point, I suspect as well that this vitriol toward radicalism is rooted partly in the conviction that a left politics based on class analysis and one focused on racial injustice are Manichean alternatives.” (source)

And Asad Haider likewise notes the erasure of communists of color from liberal identity sectarian framing of Marxism as “white”:

“Obviously it offends me if someone includes me in a list of white socialists who don’t care about race or something like that. These people who accuse me of being white, I want to know where they were when I was detained at the airport or harassed after 9/11. It would’ve been nice to have them there to say ‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s a Marxist so we consider him white.’ But that didn’t happen. Despite the fact that identity politics is supposed to be about everyone’s experiences, it completely erases my own experiences of racism and it distorts the views I’ve formed to understand those experiences.

But what I really think is offensive is the erasure of all these figures from history—people of color—who took up Marxism and were engaged in a struggle for the freedom of every person. It’s just unacceptable to wipe them out of history the way white supremacy did and the way the mainstream political discourse tries to do. You know, a lot of people perpetuating identity politics are wearing sweatshirts about Assata Shakur and invoking the Black Panthers—but all of these people were communists. To now wear a shirt that says ‘Assata Taught Me’ and then talk about how all socialists are white—it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.” (source)

The erasure Haider describes is informed by the impotence of liberal identity sectarianism. Despite an oft-cited inspiration in the intersectional analysis articulated by Crenshaw, the Combahee River Collective, and others, in practice, intersectional activists have been unable to escape inviolable and discrete hierarchies of identities. As such, Karl Marx’ maleness and whiteness are all that is necessary for anticommunist liberals to reduce the collaborative efforts of people across identity groupings into the most egregious sin an activist can make. These politics serve imperialism, and are not the allies of any leftist movement.

In discussing Betty Friedan and bell hooks’ theories on intersectionality, Eve Mitchell writes on the preponderance of sub-identities these politics have produced in her essay I am a Woman and a Human: a Marxist Critique of Intersectionality Theory:

“hooks is correct to say that basing an entire politics on one particular experience, or a set of particular differences, under capitalism is problematic. However, intersectionality theory replicates this problem by simply adding particular moments, or determinant points; hooks goes on to argue for race and class inclusion in a feminist analysis. Similarly, theories of an ‘interlocking matrix of oppressions,’ simply create a list of naturalized identities, abstracted from their material and historical context. This methodology is just as ahistorical and antisocial as Betty Friedan’s.” (source)

The separatism so hated when engaged in by second-wave women’s libbers and TERFs is the essential structure of intersectional liberal identity politics. Now instead of being limited to white or cis women’s womanhood, liberalism proposes a cornucopia of womanhoods (“identity politics on steroids” in the words of Crenshaw), discrete and destined to individualism, unable to cooperate or even understand one another across an ocean of perpetually unexamined oppressive matrices. Intersectionality, though originally a critique of the limits of identity politics, can now be widely observed as a justification for identity politics, having been thoroughly appropriated (or perhaps a better word is colonized?) by liberalism (Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics?).

We remain trapped by intersections, unwilling or unable to examine the geographic bounds of the society they exist in–the whys, or any how regarding an escape–instead devoted to the micro-analysis of identity. In this sense, (neo-?)intersectionality is a fractal phenomenon. It is useful for identifying the particulars of the structures that oppress us, yet in practice, so far seems unable to direct our movement against these structures.

The dimensions of these identities are arbitrary.

Liberal identity politics are premised on false dichotomies–cis or trans, straight or gay, white or Black, man or woman, etc. One category is deemed privileged and innately discriminatory or even “violent” towards the category opposite it, if not out of biological necessity than by passively benefiting from society’s structural barriers. In this theory, interpersonal violence and social oppression happen because we are these marginalized categories and others are oppressive identities, and not due to the powerlessness of either’s material conditions expressed in convenient channels availed by capitalism (Wolf, 2009, p. 238-239).

But between those binaries of identity are a multitude of others not even best thought of as existing in the middle of a spectrum between the two false poles liberal identity politics name. In regards to sexuality for instance, would bisexuals or pansexuals be the middle of the spectrum between heterosexuals and homosexuals? And what about asexuals? Furthermore, as experienced expressly by trans people and people who become disabled later in life, these categories are not static, but are moved to or even through during the course of one’s life. Does one’s status as oppressor or oppressed move with these transitions? And if so, can momentary identity truly serve as an indicator of whether one is oppressed or oppressor? Reality complicates these politics.

Consider the idea of “white Hispanic” or “white Latinx” people. Among Latinx people, it is not even clear what “white Hispanic” means (Saenz-Alcántara, Who and What the Hell is a White Hispanic?). The use of whiteness vs. other racial categories also varies geographically, which Hector R. Cordero-Guzman suggests is due to the social constructiveness of race as encountered culturally:

“Race is important, and racism and colorism are pernicious. They negatively impact the lives of many. As a biological concept, race is meaningless, but as a sociological concept it is extremely powerful. Since it is a sociological construction, however, race is a contextual and situational concept that can also be fluid and dynamic for many populations. People’s biological make-up does not change over time but their conceptions of themselves and where and how they fit in evolving racial classification schemas can be influenced by many factors and can change depending on context and reference point.” (source)

Liberalism has no capacity for identities to be read conditionally or situationally. If one’s “whiteness” varies sociologically over geographic and cultural bounds, how can one’s experience be classified across the strictness of liberal identity hierarchies?

Furthermore, who benefits from creating this cultural phenomenon of a “white Latinx” class (while giving no similar focus to Afro-Latinx or other Latinx people)? To some, simply being “white Latinx” (whatever that means) is to be part of racist oppression. For instance, non-Black Latinx people acknowledging police violence against Latinx people is sometimes called “anti-Black violence” and a “distraction” from the movement for Black lives, rather than fertile ground for a larger movement against the police state. I have also experienced discussion of the ethnic white-washing of mixed race or Latinx people described as a “derail” from “real” racism, which presumably is only experienced by certain people of color, or people of a certain degree of color. These discussions mirror the racial essentialism of the Civil Rights era (noted by William García in his article White Latino Racism on the Rise), but with a more focused hierarchy within the diversity of Latinx people alone.

Again, who benefits? Given the rising growth of Latinx people as a whole, dividing the largest non-white voting bloc in the U.S., and arbitrarily conferring a status of quasi-white on some of these populations ensures continued racialized frustrations that may well serve to prevent more unified political resistance against U.S. imperialism. This surplus value of whiteness arbitrarily assigned to some Latinx people mirrors the larger function of white privilege W.E.B. Du Bois wrote on in Black Reconstruction. Essentially, white privilege works to create a false consciousness of superiority in difference, dissuading “white” workers from working class unity. Today it seems likewise accurate to observe that “white privilege” shuts down dialogue of antiracist or other identity sectarian movements including or even working with white-passing and some mixed race folks.

In A Marxist Critiques Identity Politics, Asad Haider also describes this:

“The idea was that white skin privilege was actually harmful to white people, because despite the fact that they were granted some advantages over black people, they ended up even more entrenched in their condition of exploitation precisely by accepting these advantages. As a result, they did not build a movement across racial boundaries to fight their common oppression. The fact that the idea of white privilege is used today to show why we can’t possibly unify—that’s a reversal of the core idea.” (source)

Similarly, consider the Spanish government’s sudden romanticization of Sephardic Jews, expelled from the country in the 15th century yet still speaking Spanish or Ladino because of a love for the people who threatened them with death if they didn’t convert or leave. The Spanish state’s decision to extend citizenship rights to Sephardic Jews (who can prove their ancestry and love of Spanish culture), but not Muslims expelled from Al-Andalus serves to undermine global solidarity between diasporic Muslim and Jewish communities whose common treatment over the last several centuries is a potential source of unity threatening the imperial powers that be who gain more from perpetuating the occupation of the Middle East, fragilizing Jewish survival, and turning Muslim autonomy into a monstrosity to be warred against.

Both Jews and Muslims occupy simultaneous positions in imperial society as “white” and “not-white.” For instance, Middle Easterners in the U.S. are considered “white” on official census data, but rhetoric around the occupation of the Middle East and “threat” of Islam emphasizes their Brownness to justify imperial expansion and interpersonal violence. Jews likewise are generally considered “white” by default to liberals, but “not-white” by white supremacists. Liberal racial dynamics are insufficient to understand the nuance of how whiteness, Brownness, religion, and otherness are manipulated by the state to exploit and colonize both peoples, and perceived interpersonally as justification for conflict. To liberals, Jewish people, defaulted to white for convenience, are the victims of anti-Semitic hate crimes because of their religion, even when white supremacists target them because of their race. What informs anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic prejudice? Is it racism? Are “white” Muslims and Jews, Hispanics and Middle Easterners, victims of racism, or its perpetrators? The conditional context of race eludes the severity demanded by liberal identity analyses where one is either-or, oppressor or oppressed, oppressed by race or religion, but not in an intersectional way permitted to cross-over the boundaries of either. As such, these politics objectify Brown, multi-ethnic, mixed race, Muslim, Jewish, and other non-white/non-Black people whose experiences of racism are conjured for the illusion of solidarity but white-washed upon specificity to experience.

So too, consider the false dichotomy between cis and trans. If we accept the basic premise that cis people identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and trans people do not, where do feminists fit into this equation? Where does any man or woman rejecting any part of the gender roles assigned to them? What amount of resistance or questioning qualifies one as trans? Is simply existing as a gender outside a Western binary dynamic enough?

People whose experiences of gender thrive outside of the capitalist binary or a clear-cut transition between binary options also undermine an easy identity division of cis from trans. Plenty of straight people along with tons of gays and lesbians who wouldn’t consider themselves trans could all be understood to reject parts of the gender assigned to them. Gender policing affects everyone who visibly falls out of the expected conventions–not just people who identify as trans. Interestingly, while activists frequently read me to be a cis man, my femme-of-center Queerness never seems to escape the notice of straight people I encounter outside activist circles.

I first vocalized my objection to the gender I was assigned at birth in 1992. The 25 years that have so far followed that coming out have involved a lot of experimentation, trauma, power, self-actualization, and dramatic changes. Yet as often as I hear intersectional activists insist that no trans person ever has cis privilege or is ever a gender other than what they say they are, these are precisely terms applied to me when my transness is summarily erased, misgendered, or displaced by the cursory assumptions of “people-centered” intersectional activists. When these folks insist for example all trans women have always been women, the implication is that either my experience as a trans woman or as a cis man or as an agender person is irrelevant or false. It’s pushing the fake gender trope further down the line to people whose trans experiences fall outside more mainstream narratives. I have been a trans woman, a cis man, an agender adult, and a genderqueer child.

What matters more though than narrative inclusion is that a constructed capitalist norm of gender permeates the Western imperial world. How we relate to gender is a secondary concern at best to the fact that a system constructs the way we are permitted to relate to it and the difference of experience we live through because of how we relate to gender. Building on Andrea Dworkin’s analysis in Woman Hating, on the other side of capitalism, trans self-actualization is possible. Under capitalism, our abilities to express ourselves, identify, and change are limited by profit-maximizing culture.

Despite constant proclamations (often based on fictional statistics about average trans lifespans) that trans femmes face transphobic and misogynist violence in addition to more structural obstructions, there is an unacknowledged expectation that trans femmes must perform gender in a certain way before they are permitted recognition on those terms. I don’t wear makeup and I like my beard, but as “cis-passing” as identity police would like to rank me, neither how I choose to identify or how they assess my identity has the power to cis-pass me through the interpersonal violence and structural bullshit life in this capitalist system affords me.

And when does any Queer-basher ever stop to inquire about preferred pronouns or to clarify whether we self-identify as white or multi-ethnic, gay or Queer, trans or gender non-compliant before threatening or actually attacking us? Are they that polite to you? They have never been that polite to me or anyone I know. So are we attacked for the jobs we work? Our immigration status? Our sexual orientation? Our gender identity? Or maybe our gender expression?

If the answer is that we exist in the intersections of all of those identities, then logically can we conclude that some shifting along those identity spectrums still results in similar experiences? And if that’s the case, does ending this violence or ending structural oppression necessitate a hyper focus on specific identity sub-groupings, or does broader solidarity make more sense? For instance, if Queer-hating murderers in Chechnya don’t give a fuck if we’re trans or gay or pansexual and genderfluid, should it matter to us? If Christians in North Carolina don’t give a fuck if we’re trans or gay or pansexual and genderfluid, should it matter to us?

Likewise, the structural obstructions we encounter: lack of adequate healthcare, a work or school day and environment structured around an assumed able-bodied norm, coerced gendering by the state, inability to acquire goods and service where workers are paid fairly for their labor, etc. occur in more material terms than our intellectual identity or dis-identity as disabled, trans, or whatever else. Identity is rendered irrelevant to vigilantism against non-conformity and failure to be subsumed within the available social parameters. Yet we’re conditioned to believe dismantling capitalism, which defines these parameters, is either irrelevant or at best a secondary concern to ending our identity-based oppressions.

The cultural capital assigned to these identities is hierarchical, and totally absurd.

Visit any college campus protest, and the local activist performance troupe will inevitably feature at least one speaker leading crowds in a rousing recitation of their favorite mantra: especially trans women of color. When not the lyric of a pop song stuck on generational repeat and regurgitated by every non-trans women of color to demonstrate their profound goodness, this mantra gets translated into an act of centering, that is, at best passing the speakers’ mic to actual trans women of color, or at worst, derailing any other discussion of oppression to prioritize their specific experience and criticize movements and community organizing for failing to do this already. This line has been used so frequently, and in terms of actual practice, been made so goddamn meaningless, I know at least one group of trans women of color who made it into a drinking game nearly a decade ago.

The mantra is meaningless because in at least a decade of trans-centering, it is yet to end interpersonal violence against trans women or structural oppression faced by any trans person. We continue to crowd-source our healthcare and other survival expenses–no closer to a sustainable solution than we were in the Bush years (either of them), yet perpetually damselled by the same activist performers reflexively quick to accuse everyone else of seeking “ally points.”

Additionally, the factors that comprise especially trans women of color–gender identity, gender, and race–are arbitrarily limiting. Why are these three factors alone mentioned? Ask and you will probably be told that it is because trans women of color are the most marginalized people (or voices, or bodies–it seems like we rarely get to be people anymore).

This logic side-steps a few considerations. First, it speaks to economic conditions only indirectly. The city I live in for instance, sits in the county with one of the worst child hunger rates in the country. Layoffs and retail closure have created a perpetual cycle of unemployment and poverty here as long as I have been alive. Yet these conditions elude the liberal understanding of most marginalized. Do trans women of color deal with unemployment, homelessness, and hunger? I’m trans, I have, and I think it’s obvious that most of us do at least for some part of our lives. But centering any trans person neither centers these conditions nor proposes a solution directly related to them. This is not the failure of the individual. Ask me to speak as a trans person, and I probably won’t speak about hunger, homelessness, or unemployment either. These are the failures of selective identity-centering politics. And when the trans people being centered are 18-22 year old American college students with campus meal plans, an inability to qualify for need-based financial aid, and the economic confidence to pursue a private school’s liberal arts degree, is it really fair to say we’re talking about the most marginalized people?

What about being disabled? A sex worker? A minimum wage worker? An immigrant? A single parent? A trafficked worker? Anyone down supply chain from Western imperial markets? Who benefits from the silent hierarchy of centered identities? Is this ranking system useful to dismantling structural oppression off-campus or around the world?

It is virtually impossible to live a Western life not buttressed in some way by the economic exploitation of workers both here and abroad. And given the way race and sex are not clear indicators of oppressed vs. oppressor in light of this system of exploitation, is it not our capitalist class relations more broadly than our skin color or sex specifically that define this power dynamic?

Sweatshops routinely abuse and exploit the labor of children (along with lax environmental regulations) to produce a variety of goods we enjoy across the world. Interpersonal dynamics of race, gender, etc. are obscured by the drama between exploited and benefactor in the imperialist marketplace, bloodying us all in the dirty work of capitalism. If we choose not to do everything in our power to dismantle this economic system, if we choose to place our own oppressions ahead of or in place of those workers and communities directly exploited by this arrangement, are we not guilty of oppressing them, even if we are not the architects of capitalism, stockholders in international businesses, or necessarily enthusiastic consumers of sweatshop products?

I remember one night during the Charlotte Uprising when a march of protesters disturbed a Black man attempting to sleep on the streets. He spit in the direction of those marching and shouted something along the lines of: “I’m alive right here [or maybe: I live right here], when will my life matter?”

At another rally, speaker after speaker talked about the need for churches, teachers, and communities to open their doors to refugees and immigrants in need of protection from the threat of deportation. A group of people sleeping in a bus stop were awakened by our chants and drumming, yet few of us stopped to talk with them, and to my knowledge no doors in the community were opened to them although it was the coldest night of this past winter.

When will “trickle-down social justice” reach these folks? If not now, why? When? How can any of us with a roof over our heads, a meal today, running water, along with the freedom to voice our opinions, conceptualize ourselves as among the most marginalized either around the world or even in our own communities?

What makes gender identity, gender, and race the sole factors worth centering? And why do we have to frame our struggles against oppression on those terms rather than in economics terms? Furthermore, if we can understand that homelessness, hunger, and unemployment are all constructed material conditions borne of profit-maximizing capitalist interests and not actual deficit without necessarily experiencing them personally, why do identity politics put so much burden on those who directly experience oppression to lead movements dismantling it?

These hierarchies are often verbalized in individualist languages–one person becomes the monolithic voice for all within their identity category (see also: this phenomenon of recently out trans people appointing themselves “trans community leaders”). The concept of allies is summarily rejected. Innately, these politics benefit ableism and cissexism, pushing out solidarity in favor of a bootstraps rugged individualism disabled and trans people physically and statistically cannot survive through.

As an example, let’s assume that tomorrow the new mantra of the most cutting edge activist groups becomes especially disabled trans women of color. How many people even is that?

A recent study by the Williams Institute numbers transgender people in the U.S. at about 1.4 million, or roughly around 0.6% of the overall population. Momentarily assuming an unlikely even distribution across the 50 states (the actual study shows variance), that’s 28,000 people per state. And then assuming another unlikely even distribution across all 100 counties in North Carolina for instance, that puts about 280 transgender people in each county.

Now, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we can estimate that 13.3% are Black or African-American, 1.2% are American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5.6% are Asian, 0.2% are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 2.6% are two or more, and 17.6% are Hispanic or Latinx (although this is not considered a separate race category, so it overlaps with “white” and other categories). Together, that totals at 40.5% (included people who identify as or will be “read” as white). When applied to our 280 transgender people per county in North Carolina, that comes to about 114 people.

Next, using another study by the Williams Institute, we can estimate that 41% of transgender people primarily identify their gender as female–although the study sampling is only a few thousand people and gender is widely varied in the data. This means that if we are looking specifically for transgender women of color, we can guess there are around 47 per county in North Carolina.

Lastly, if we were to include disability in this analysis–so, only looking at disabled trans women of color–we would be down to around 4 people per county in North Carolina, using the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of 8.5% of people having disabilities.

If we accept that structural discrimination affects our politics and ability to engage in politics, who can even say if these 4 people will have the economic liberty to engage in activism, let alone be the visible “center” of a political movement? And perhaps more importantly, is the experience of oppression even an indicator of political insight, leadership skills, charisma, or strategy?

This does not mean that there are not badass disabled trans women of color out there doing critical work in the community. Nor does it mean that issues unique to disabled people, trans people, people of color, etc. are not critical to address in dismantling oppressive structures. Instead, it more vitally demonstrates that without solidarity our communities are too small to affect social change, particularly as modeled on larger civil rights movements.

In the words of the Combahee River Collective:

“Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.” (source)

Identity sectarianism under the guise of intersectionality simply relocates the hierarchies of the dominant culture, leaving us no closer to revolution or resolution.

Positive thinking does not directly address structural problems.

The obsession with identity is what made DADT repeal the LGBT+ civil rights movement’s priority in 2010. I was there when this bizarre effort became cause célèbre with the audacity to connect itself to broader worker struggles and to assert its connection somehow to reducing violence against LGBT+ people. I’m not the only total fool who swallowed the party line that we could end homophobic violence in the workplace and in the U.S. more broadly by bestowing American gays with the “right” to commit genocide for the empire.

Identity politics stranded trans people. I remember the shouts of especially trans women of color back then, but there was no politic behind it. There was no direction offered. I know that a muddled intersection of Queer people were targets of violence, but neither gasp of liberalism offered immediate aid. One side offered protest performance–young white collegiate activist after young white collegiate activist proclaimed the need for more marginalized voices to be centered and paternally protected, and critiqued everyone else for not doing so (perhaps inspiring the Democrat’s new crime bill: the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act). The other side swept in and announced that DADT repeal would be the next big issue. That was followed shortly by the campaign for marriage equality. In every direction, liberalism was convinced of its devotion to trans people, but not a goddamn face of it all offered more than words and magical thinking.

Magic words like especially, center, inclusion, and full equality diffused the material reality of a world more criminalized and more colonized. For all the civil rights advances gained, the movement still rejected a focus on the voter ID law and was unable to fend off HB2 or even depend on Democrats and national gay rights orgs to broker an actual repeal of it. The serpentine wit of capitalism still evades liberal politics. HB2 was fake-repealed over neoliberal concerns about money. DADT repeal put a fabulous progressive face on Obama’s drone genocide. The notion of “hate crimes” reoriented the police state and criminal injustice system as our friend, even as police outfitted themselves in preparation for the terror it is now commonplace to protest, and even as police and ICE colluded to deport millions.

Intersectionality failed to do more than congratulate a scholarly activist class on doing their assigned readings. And the more structural-leaning liberal side failed to offer any social change whose parameters are not dictated at the end of the day by capitalist conformity and use to the empire. Normalization and assimilation are preferred.

Intersectional activists seem to believe themselves to be more radical or outside the liberal fold, yet their politics mandate a focus solely on the identity one represents (or can position oneself as an acceptable ally to), so rather than form a broader coalition for something like universal healthcare (which is indeed outside the liberal norm), these politics narrow the LGBT+ focus to issues readily identifiable as LGBT+, for instance: the “right” to murder people for U.S. imperialism. Intersectional activists need not even name any goal–other liberals are already working to fill that void at every turn.

Identity politics, in fact, make it the responsibility of the marginalized to speak for all people like them, and to bring attention to issues relevant to their identity. So where geography or economic liberty make it impossible for one to contribute to their own liberation in this way, the movement is paralyzed between one side demanding that the marginalized lead and the other pushing for neoliberal concessions. Any work towards solidarity or on issues that de-center whatever identity class(es) is en vogue are promptly dismissed as de facto prioritization of the over-privileged, and a re-centering on cis feelings, het feelings, white feelings, etc.

Adolph Reed Jr. describes the failure of identity politics to do more than “center” certain groups of people:

“And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize.” (source)

What is anyone to do? Answer: no one knows. If you don’t show up to every poorly planned collegiate protest, your silence is violence. If you show up and dare to speak to the media or any of the other attendees scowling at you from a safe space away, your privilege is showing. Privilege is critical. We’re supposed to be analyzing it, coming to terms with it, learning about it, really, really thinking especially about it.

We’re supposed to be more inclusive, but not in a way that demographically restructures the leadership of our group specifically to be inclusive, because that’s tokenizing. We need to be in community with marginalized groups, but not in a way that seems like we’re eager to work with them just to be in community with them. We need to check in with local trans leadership on everything, but not in a way that asks them to help effectively direct everything we do. Side note: the same trans feminists who devised the aforementioned drinking game also came up with a translation for “local trans leadership.” It means: “In a few months from now, I’ll have almost been out as trans for a whole year.” Also, the trans community has never consented to leadership or appointed anyone to be our leader. Repeat for every LGBT+ organization negotiating our lives without us in the room.

Neither intersectional activists nor liberal reformists dare attack the structure of capitalism. Even when the coveted voices of trans women of color spell it out. Alyssa Pariah writes in her post The Elusive TWOC:

“I, TWOC in the flesh, do not feel the pangs of interpersonal bias or microaggressions. I’ve endured immense abuse and trauma in my past. What facilitated my healing and resilience was a materialist analysis of the world that relocated my anxiety from individuals to institutions. Namely our economic system, capitalism, and its necessity to perpetuate poverty stricken conditions and perceived scarcity that give rise any number of antagonisms I’m faced with.” (source)

Instead liberalism devotes itself to magical and positive thinking: Getting state recognition of same-sex monogamy will end violence against Queer people. Saying especially trans women of color will actually change things, just like shouting I believe in full equality transformed GetEQUAL from the group that derailed trans-inclusive civil rights goals for DADT repeal into a group that young activists sincerely believe is an “antiracist and trans-centering” national org.

Both sides are partially there. We need structural targets and goals. We need recognition of marginalized communities. The key that is missing is the connection between these two. Capitalism is the power structure that defines our oppression and that enchants the society that marginalizes us.

Vampirism in lieu of a united front is ineffective.

In his essay What Makes Call-Out Culture So Toxic, Asam Ahmad writes:

“In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.” (source)

Ahmad’s observation connecting call-out culture to the prison industrial complex is so critical because by nature, the individualist punishment inherent to these politics fails to propose radical change, such as prison abolition, preferring instead to raise concern over disproportionate treatment. In essence, disproportionate treatment rather than structural oppression becomes the key to the call-out analysis, just as the activists whose Holocaust denialism inspired this essay asserted. Liberals purport that someone is privileged or a worthy target of being called out because they unfairly receive some socioeconomic surplus value. This is the turning on each other that Lorde noted in the 60s, and the distance Reed Jr. critiques.

To leftists however, the issue must be the structural world–the prisons, the death camps, the rape culture, the criminal injustice system, imperialism, state-validated family structures, capitalism, etc.–not merely the observation that some people are affected by these structures more or less than others. That liberal identity politics and call-out culture both focus on disproportionate treatment rather than structural oppression exposes the policing and reformism at their root. Call-out culture mirrors the cultural of criminal punishment it has not yet escaped from.

Pariah continues:

“Focusing our ire on people who receive privilege instead of people who dole it out is a losing strategy for ending oppression. This idea flows from post-structuralist academic theory that sees collective struggle against domination as largely misguided; That locates interpersonal interactions as primary sites for transformation. Smells like rugged individualism to me. Tumblr has taken this heady theory, and parsed it out for disaffected users to reblog. How convenient for people in power. I imagine Goldman Sachs loves this garbage. […]. I actually want to fucking win. The TWOC you love and adore in the abstract does not think that collectively shit talking problematic individuals constitutes radical community. Concerted actions and campaigns against the power structure does. But will you help me do it?” (source)

That question sticks with me because I feel it, and I wonder the same thing. Does today’s young trans community, with all its cissexist-sumptions that erase right over who I am and who I have been since before they were born, have the good sense to learn from the mistakes myself and older generations have made, and put in the work to change things now with us? The instant gratification offered by social media–where so much of call-out culture and identity sectarianism is born and stays–is alluring. But angry Facebook posts haven’t yet in thirteen years changed the economic system that forces young trans women into survival trades or crowd-sourcing fundraisers for medical needs. Everything being taught right now as common wisdom on the performance of politics–the idea that it isn’t our responsibility to educate cis people, that we don’t need allies, that we must be centered at all times, that emotional outbursts directed at other activists are okay–who benefits from this? Step back and look. Who benefits from this complete toxicity?

I’m tired of us dying, and self-destructing, and repeating the same politics that have failed us for decades now. Are you? Will you help me do something different?

In his controversial 2013 essay, Exiting the Vampires’ Castle, late economist Mark Fisher explained his concept of the Vampires’ Castle to describe liberal identity sectarian politics:

“The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.” (source)

For the longest time, vampirism was my go to political strategy. It was a way to taste power as a trans person in particular. It was also largely a function of age. We come out of the public school system (and into a world where we have more freedom to explore transness, Queerness, and other identities) with so much conditioning about the select civil rights narratives approved by the state. And if we wind up in college or organizing with other young people, we are further subjected to liberal academia’s cultural focus.

The alienation of capitalism is at work here. But unless we question and study power, unless we study theory and history, we would never know it. Liberalism traps itself in identity–in identifying the problem, but offering no solution out of it. The result is the vampirism Fisher and so many others encounter. The vampires are different identity classes competing to be centered, to be recognized–by the state and by others. By nature, this is a reformist politic that appeals to the state and the community for aid, while offering venom and the vague promise of general social good in return.

Vampirism requires a constant outing, or constant undressing not unlike capitalist demands in the West and now in China as well, that Muslim women uncover themselves for the visual gluttony of the population. If we wish to talk on gay issues, we must constantly out ourselves as gay. If we wish to express an opinion on trans issues, we must constantly out ourselves as trans. Our identities are fragile and constantly under suspicion, especially if our politics or lived experienced de-center them.

Over the last decade, I have observed how this has materially translated to endless fundraisers for individual trans people’s living and medical expenses, but never the political follow-through to attack the economic system that necessitates either trans struggles or the more or less same struggles of other people to begin with. The imperative question is not what have you done for trans women today? but what are you doing so that ten years from now we won’t be fruitlessly asking the same question?

Perhaps there is a radicalism in collaboration as trans people, but over time that radicalism looks to me more like naming and fighting the economic system that defines the social parameters of gender in such a way that our lives are slowly extinguished in punishment for transgression. Capitalism and state regulation of gender are my issues, not cis people. And these issues additionally connect us to international feminist and men’s struggles for liberation from gendered exploitation as well.

In Sylvia Rivera’s 1973 speech at a Gay Liberation rally in New York, she even emphasizes that she is assisting imprisoned gay and lesbian people who presumably are not trans as well. Her underlying message then should be understood as one of solidarity across rather than segregated by identity. Contrary to this, in the last 13+ years I’ve observed and participated in so much horizontal vitriol directed at cis people rather than the structural locations of our oppression. This fight continues to be so personal and so embodied, with some activists even asserting transphobia is an innate, as if biological, feature of being cis. Yet the trans women of color these activists especially tokenize and objectify into a rallying cry continue to be murdered. Anti-Queer, misogynist, and racist violence persists. A binary sex system is still physically coerced by the state. We are still gendered by the state and capitalism. So many populations are affected by these issues, and here we are so warped by identity sectarianism that we would rather keep reviving a failed individualist call-out culture and TERF-esque micro-separatism than de-center ourselves long enough to build an effective coalition to achieve our mutual interests.

In the off-campus workforce, these politics are readily identified as utterly absurd. Want to know why the “white working class” doesn’t support shitty neoliberal candidates? Want to know why janitors don’t show up en masse to hear college kids bemoan the “violence” of not being asked about their pronouns before class or the difficulty of finding a “living wage” job that allows them to “follow your dreams”? Want to know why I roll my eyes and stop listening when you complain about having to work as a server because no one is hiring in your made-up interdisciplinary liberal arts field?

The answers are in the self-elevating alienation, hubris, and class denialism characteristic of liberal politics. And no, the solution is not for the working class to pay you a living wage (no less) to deliver a privilege-checking sermon on gender concepts or how all white people are racist, rendered devoid of any discernible class analysis or relationship to the economic source of exploitation faced by all workers.

With exceptions for ignorant individuals and geographic outliers that distort a wider demographic selection, the workforce is a naturally diverse climate where we work (and are exploited for the surplus value that can be derived from our labor) across bounds of ethnicity, sex, sexuality, ability, etc. Likewise, the flow of production along the supply chain carries capital across boundaries of nation and cultural identity. As such, a worker-owned world is by necessity one of solidarity across the arbitrary categories of identity and capitalist-state, rather than one where working class sub-identities are pitted against one another. Undeniably, our experiences are different in these terms, but the nature of that difference is economic, and not merely interpersonal.

As Taylor writes in Race, Class, and Marxism:

“Marxists do not deny that these differences exist, nor do we deny that oppression means the lives of some workers are actually worse than others. For Marxists, the question is the cause of the differences.” (source)

Speaking specifically as a working class disabled transqueer person, I don’t have the luxury of driving away would-be allies, being visibly femme or trans all the time, or restricting my activism to solely working on trans-specific issues. Before I get to be trans in the world, I am already disabled and dependent on medication to live. I must work to pay for that medication and for food. Most people also must work for shelter. And all of these conditions determined by capitalist class relations take place before we even get to interpersonal or structural conflicts around race, gender, gender identity, sexuality, ability, etc. My intention is not to say that race, gender, etc. are irrelevant, but rather that our class conditions precede them and are fertile soil for a solidarity that could also address identity-specific issues.

A leftist politic must seek to do more than simply identify difference where it exists. For instance, while slavery and other forms of wage theft through capitalism continue to disproportionately affect people of color and women around the world, our imaginations are weak if we stop ourselves at the goal to create more equitable exploitation. Rather, we all stand to benefit from ridding ourselves of the exploitative system all together. This goal post necessitates an analysis that goes beyond reductive analyses of workers based on identity groupings like race or sex.

By my reckoning, for too long we have embraced a timidity regarding opposition to capitalism. Leftists have embraced a limited tactic of lessening commitment to Marxist-Leninist values in exchange for appealing to burned out and exploited liberals. Potential camaraderie with isolationist or working class conservatives is abandoned in favor of the toxicity of liberal identity bickering. And those on the left who hold to an anticapitalist analysis are paradoxically the ones accused of sectarianism. The amount of political leeway granted these liberals is an essential endorsement of their capitalist denialism.

And while some choose pessimism, I choose faith that exorcising our global capitalist demons will lead to a more equitable society–post-racist, post-sexist, post-ableist, post-all the poisons capitalism has indoctrinated us with. Beyond the shadow of profit maximization, worker micro-management, resource theft, manufactured competition, and inane commodity differences, another world is possible. This world necessitates centering the working class, unity, not separatism, and an ethic of patience towards solidarity, not vampirism towards correctness. It is the most intersectional yet tangible goal post I can conceptualize, and the only way I believe it is possible to exit the mire of both liberal identity sectarianism and the structural world identity politics fail to dismantle.

I’m learning and adapting. I hope you are too.

(Re-)Sources

Lorde, A. (1982). Learning from the 60s. Reynolds, D. (2017). Chechen Authorities Tell Families: Kill Your Gay Sons or We Will. Taylor, K-Y. (2016). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Fischl, J. (2014). There’s a Rape Epidemic Happening in America That No One is Talking About Rivera, S. (1973). Y’all Better Quiet Down. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. Smith, S. Black Feminism and Intersectionality. Combahee River Collective. 1977 statement. Smith, S. The Politics of Identity. Reed Jr., A. (2009). The Limits of Antiracism. Sears, K. (2017). A Marxist Critiques Identity Politics. Mitchell, E. (2013). I am a Woman and a Human: a Marxist Critique of Intersectionality Theory. Flanders, L. (2017). No Single-Issue Politics, Only Intersectionality: An Interview with Kimberlé Crenshaw. Wolf, S. (2009). Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Saenz-Alcántara, C. (2014). Who and What the Hell is a White Hispanic? Cordero-Guzman, H. R. (2014). When Latin American Racial Hierarchies Meet North American Racial Classification Schemas. Moreno, N. (2016). To All Non-Black Latinx: Distracting People from BLM is Anti-Black Violence. Garcia, W. (2015). White Latino Racism on the Rise: It’s Time for a Serious Conversation on Euro-Diasporic Whiteness. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Gomez, A. (2016). Hispanic Vote Will Reach Record High in 2016. Bedar, R. (2015). Sephardic Places: Loss & Memory Chow, K. (2017). For Some Americans of MENA Descent, Checking A Census Box is Complicated Dworkin, A. (1974). Woman Hating. New York, New York: Penguin Books Quora. What is the Life Expectancy of Trans People? Gutierrez, B.M. (2011). Hunger Study Calls Area Worst in U.S. Williams Institute. (2016) How Many Adults Identify as Transgender in the United States? U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts Williams Institute. (2014). Suicide Attempts Among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults. Forbes, D. (2010). Not Bashful in Asheville Williams Institute. (2013). The Potential Impact of a Strict Voter Identification Law on Transgender Voters in North Carolina Pariah, A. (2016). The Elusive TWOC Ahmad, A. (2015). What Makes Call-Out Culture So Toxic. Fisher, M. (2013). Exiting the Vampires’ Castle. Hunt, K. (2017). Why China is Banning Beards and Veils in Xinjiang. Taylor, K-Y. (2011). Race, Class, and Marxism. Wolf, S. Unite and Fight? Nair, Y. (2013). Undocumented: How an Identity Ended a Movement. Haider, A. (2016). Passing for Politics. Dragonowl, L. (2015). Against Identity Politics. Volcano, A and Rogue, J. (2013). Insurrections at the Intersections: Feminism, Intersectionality and Anarchism. Smith, S. (2015). Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Feminist Fightback: Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics? Myerson, J. (2017). Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs. Emperor Saturn. (2017). Intersectionality is Impossible Under Capitalism. Emperor Saturn. (2017). The Left Needs MORE White Men, More Everyone–Millions More. Emperor Saturn. (2017). Class and Identity Must Become Identical. Emperor Saturn. (2016). The Intersectional Working Class. Emperor Saturn. (2016). Class is More Intersectional Than Intersectionality. Emperor Saturn. (2016). Yes, I Can Debate You: Workers Aren’t Just “Allies.” Smith, S. (1994). Mistaken Identity: Can Identity Politics Liberate the Oppressed? NPR. (2017). Anti-Semitic Incidents Up 86% Compared with Same Time Last Year Kivel, P. (1998). I’m Not White, I’m Jewish, BUT I’m White. Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You Walters, S. D. (2017) Academe’s Poisonous Call-Out Culture. Hetti, T. (2017) Call-Out Culture is Toxic and Problematic. Nichols, J. (2015). Latinos and Black Americans Have an Enemy–And it’s Not Each Other. Wildermuth, R. (2017). Against Liberals. Dr. Bones. (2016). I Apologize in Advance. Mohandesi, S. (2017). Identity Crisis.

[marymosley]

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN RELATION TO LAND LAW

INTRODUCTION

          Property was classified as movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal, real and personal. It may mean a thing or a right which a person has in relation to that thing. The expression “property” in the Indian Constitution was given this wide meaning.

           It will be seen from the said definition that the right to property consists of three elements (1) to acquire (2) to own and possess and (3) to dispose of the same. This apparently unrestricted right to property is subject to the laws of social control reflected in the State’s right of “taxation”, its “police power”, and its power of “eminent domain”.

          There is some misapprehension on the scope of the right to property conferred under our Constitution. An assumption by constant repetition has become a conviction in some minds that the right to property has been so entrenched in our Constitution that it is not possible without amendment to enforce the directive principles. A scrutiny of the relevant provisions of the Indian Constitution as they stood on 26-1-1950 will dispel this assumption. They are Articles 14, 19(1)(f), 19(5), 31, 32, 39(b) and (c), 226 and 265.

In India, no fundamental right has given rise to so much of litigation than property right between state and individuals. Through the Supreme Court of India sought to expend the scope and ambit of right of property, but it has been progressively curtailed through constitutional amendments. The Indian version of eminent domain has found in entry 42 List III, which says “acquisition or requisition of property”. Under the original Constitution Article 19(1)(f) and 31 provides for protection of property right and later they were repealed and Article 300A was inserted. Accordingly no person shall be deprived of his property save by the authority of law. However, regarding right to property what is the protection given by the US Constitution under Article 300A. Article 31(2) of the constitution provides for compulsory Acquisition of land. The power of eminent domain is essential to the sovereign government.

The provision of the Fifth Amendment to the constitution of the United States is that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. The principle of compulsory acquisition of property is founded on superior claims of the whole community over an individual citizen, is applicable only in those cases where private property is wanted for public use or demanded for the public welfare. Accordingly, the right of eminent domain does not imply a right in the sovereign power to take the property of one citizen and transfer it to another, even for a full compensation where the public interest will be in no way promoted by such transfer. The limitation on the power of eminent domain is that the acquisition or taking possession of property must be for a public purpose has been expressly engrafted in clause (2) of Article 31 of the constitution of India.

The gist of the said provisions may be briefly stated thus: Every citizen has the individual right to acquire, to hold and dispose of property. A duty is implicit in this right, namely that it should be so reasonably exercised as not to interfere with similar rights of other citizens. The exercise of it, therefore, should be reasonable and in accordance with public interest. The directive principles of State Policy lay down the fundamental principles of State policy, lay down the fundamental principles for the governance of the country, and under the relevant principles for the governance of the country, and under the relevant principles, the State is directed to secure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to sub serve the common good.

The conflict between the citizen’s right and the State’s power to implement the said principles is reconciled by putting limitations both on the right and the power. The said fundamental right is not absolute. It is subject to the law of reasonable restrictions in the interest of the general public. The State’s power is also subject to the condition that the law made by it in so far it infringes the said fundamental right should stand the double test of reasonableness and public interest. The State also has the power to acquire land of a citizen for a public purpose after paying compensation.

It has the further power to impose taxation on a person in respect of his property. All the laws made in exercise of the said powers are governed by the doctrine of equality subject to the principle of classification. But the question of the validity of the said laws of social control, taxation and acquisition is a justiciable issue. Shortly stated, under the said provisions, the right to property is subject to justiciable laws of social control.

The right to property was initially present in Indian constitution under Part III: Fundamental right, Article 31 but it was abolished by 44th Amendment Act, 1978. Initially it was made a fundamental right so as to provide protection of property and give legality of land to the people living in newly independent India.

But afterwards it was abolished because the Indian government wanted to bring land reforms and encourage social justice (by taking land from landowners who have surplus land and then distributing it to landless farmers). It also aimed to establish equal distribution of resources.

Furthermore it was important for the development of India to abolish it .For example- if Indian government wanted to build a dam or construct a road it had to acquire the people’s property and in return people used to revolt and approach judiciary even though the government compensate them by giving money or land somewhere else for taking their property hence this created problem to the development functions of the government, hence it was abolished. Now it is made a constitutional right under Article 300A which states that no person can be deprived of his / her property except by authority of law.\

Kesavananda Bharti case[1] was decided; its subsequent abolition by the Forty Fourth amendment violated the “basic structure” of the Constitution, and was therefore unconstitutional. In 2010, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition without reaching the merits on grounds that the petitioner was a public interest litigant, not directly affected by the abolition of the fundamental right to property, and that entertaining the petition would lead them to reopening settled constitutional case law on property. In a recent interview with the author, the petitioner indicated that he was considering reviving the petition.

At the same time Article 21 cannot be applied to the acquisition proceedings because objective of the forty fourth amendment shift the concept of property from fundamental right status to legal right status. Therefore, if you say proceedings of acquisition hit Article 21, property right again through back door entry make the property right as a fundamental right, the object of the forty fourth amendment will be defeated.

The topic on property will not be complete without reference to the right to do business. The relevant articles are few in number. Under Article 19(1) (g) all citizens have the right to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.[2] Under Article 19(6), nothing in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) prevents the State from making any law imposing in the interests of the general public reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the said right or from making any law relating to the professional or technical qualifications necessary for practising any profession or carrying on any occupation, trade or business or the carrying by the State or by a Corporation owned or controlled by the State, or any trade, business, industries, or service whether to the exclusion, complete or partial of citizens or otherwise. The latter two exceptions were added to clause (6) by the Constitution First Amendment Act, 1951. Articles 301 to 307 deal with freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse within the territory of India subject to certain limitations. Article 305 saves existing laws and laws providing for State monopolies from the provisions of Articles 301 and 303.

It is a complete answer to any challenge under Articles 14 and 19. It protects a law even if it is confiscatory or discriminatory or compensation payable under it is illusory. Thus, tenancy legislation, howsoever drastic, is protected under Article 31-A(l)(a).59 Prima facie, Article 31-A(l)(a) appears to be applicable to all kinds of ‘extinguishment’ or ‘modification’ of estates for whatever purpose. But in Kavalappara Kottaraothil Kochunini v. State of Madras[3] the Supreme Court read down this provision and held that its purpose was to facilitate ‘agrarian reforms’ and, therefore, it would protect only such legislation as had reference to agrarian reform.

The Court held that the justification for conferring protection (not blanket protection) on the IXth Schedule shall be a matter of adjudication, examining the nature and extent of infraction of fundamental right by a statute and such statute sought to be constitutionally protected on the touchstone of the basic structure doctrine as reflected in Article 21 read with Articles 14 and 19. The Court held that Articles 14, 19 and 21 are the basic structure of the Constitution therefore; basic essence of the right cannot be taken away. Essence of the human right (which according to the recent judgments include property rights) would necessarily mean full compensation for acquisition of property right. If the laws affects the basic structure could not be protected even though included in the IXth Schedule.

In Minerva Mills Ltd. & Ors. v. Union of India[4], a Minerva mills was nationalized and taken over by the Central Government under the provisions of the Sick Textile Undertakings (Nationalization) Act, 1974. The petitioners (shareholders and creditors of Minerva Mills Ltd.) challenged the Nationalisation Act on the ground of infraction of Articles 14, 19(1) (f) and (g) and Article 31(2). The Government contended that legislation was protected by amended (scope of Article 31-C was father enlarged by forty second amendment). Article 31-C gives absolute primacy to Directive Principles over Fundamental Rights. “The harmony & balance between fundamental rights and directive principles is an essential feature of the basic structure of the Constitution. However, this harmony (basic structure of the Constitution) is discarded by forty second amendment and accordingly the scope of Article 31-C was enlarged by forty second amendment was declared as unconstitutional.

Referring to Jethmalani’s observations, Bhushan said that “he heard for the first time that Article 19(1) (f) was a charter of the poor”. In Chiranjit Lal’s case[5] it was held that Article 19(1) (f) would continue until the owner deprived of such property by authority of law under Article 31. If there was ‘deprivation’ of property under clause (1) if Article 31 by law, the citizen was not entitled to compensate at all, while he was entitled to compensation if property was acquired or requisitioned under clause (2) upon the point as to what is ‘deprivation’ there was conflict. In Kochunni’s case court made it clear that clause (1) dealt with deprivation of property other than acquisition or requisition as mentioned in the clause (2) and other could be no acquisition or requisition unless there was transfer of ownership or a right to possession to the state or its nominee.

THE IDEOLOGY OF PUBLIC PURPOSE

  Under Article 31(2), the state could acquire or requisition property for public purpose only. The concept of ‘public purpose’ connotes public welfare. With the onward march of the concept of socio-economic welfare of the people, notions as to the scope of general interest of the community are fast changing and expanding. The concept of ‘public interest’ is thus elastic and not static, and varies with time and needs of the society. Whatever furthers the general interest of the community as opposed to particular interest of the individuals may be regarded as public purpose. Whether a public purpose existed or not was a justiciable matter as stated by Supreme Court in State of Bombay v. R.S. Nanji[6]. A provision excluding the jurisdiction of the courts from this area, and making decisions of either the executive or the legislature as to the public purpose final and conclusive was held ultravires Article 13(2).

A few example of what held judiciary as ‘public purpose’ for which land could validly be acquired under Article 31 (2) are:

Finding accommodation for an individual having no housing accommodation.

Housing a staff member of a foreign consulate;

Accommodating an employee of a road transport corporation – a statutory

         body

Accommodating a government servant

Nationalization of land

Agrarian reform abolishing intermediaries between government and tillers of

         the soil

Establishing an institution of technical education

Constructing houses for industrial labour by a company

Promoting co-operative housing societies in Delhi to relieve housing shortage

Planned development of Delhi

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARTICLE 19(1) (f) AND ARTICLE 31(1)

  Under Article 19(1) only citizens of India are entitled to claim the right, whereas under Article 31(1) any person irrespective of citizenship not to be deprived of his property without authority of law. Article 19(1) relates to the rights of citizen to acquire, hold and dispose of property though they are not in immediate possession thereof, but under Article 31(1) the person is already in possession of property and then the deprivation is caused by the state. Both these Articles were repealed by the Forty Fourth Amendment Act, 1978.

Reasonableness of Restrictions Article 19(1)(f) guaranteed to the citizens of India a right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. Article 19(5) however, permitted the state to imposed reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of general public or for the protection of the interests of any scheduled tribe. The[7] expression ‘interest of general public’ in Article 19(5) was held synonymous with ‘public interest’[8]. It did not mean that the interest of the public of the whole of India; it meant interest of a ‘section of the public’. The term ‘public interest’ very broad and it includes public order, public health, morality etc. Whether a piece of legislation was in public interest or not was a justifiable matter. A law designed to abate a grave nuisance and thus protect public health 113 or a law to protect the weaker sections of the public, especially members of low castes 114 was held to be in public interest.

  PRINCIPLES LAID DOWN UNDER ARTICLE 300-A

  The Constitution (after 44th amendment) does not expressly confer the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. But if a person has acquired and hold the property he cannot be deprived of it without the authority of law. A person cannot be deprived of his property by an executive action or by any other similar device.

The protection given to private property under Article 300-A is available to all persons who hold property in India, citizens as well as aliens and natural persons as well as legal persons such as corporate bodies etc.

The law authorizing deprivation of property must be passed by the proper authority i.e. by parliament or state legislature.

The law empowering deprivation of property must be consistent with all the provisions of the constitution. This means (a) the law must be passed by a competent legislature, and (b) it must not affect adversely any of the rights, fundamental or constitutional – in a manner not warranted by the Constitution. In this behalf, the validity of such law will be examined in the light of the earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.[9]

The law authorizing deprivation of property must be fair and just. The approach of the Supreme Court in Maneka Gandhi’s case the term ‘law’ in Article 21 will be the guiding star to the Supreme Court for determining the validity of a law under Article 300A.

Such legislation may be challenged as violative of Articles 14, 19, 26 or 30 etc. or other appropriate fundamental rights. It deserves to be noted in this behalf that Article 31-C which is the present form was inserted by twenty fifth amendment specifically confers superiority on directive principles of state policy over fundamental rights conferred by Articles 14, 19 and 31.

NINTH SCHEDULE – A PROTECTIVE UMBRELLA

Article 31-B, does not by itself gives any fundamental right. The Acts and regulations placed under ninth schedule shall not be deemed to be void or ever to have become void on the ground of its inconsistency with any fundamental right.

In Kameshwar Singh case[10], the Supreme Court said that no Act brought under the ninth schedule could be invalidated on the ground of violation of any fundamental rights. With the introduction of the above amendment, it became very easy for the Government to acquire property and to carryout different agrarian reforms. Firstly the acquisition laws under the fear of being challenged were inserted in the ninth schedule by the constitutional amendments and thereby the concerned laws were made immune from challenge against any of the fundamental rights guaranteed under part III of the Constitution. Thus, it was not possible for a citizen to challenge the constitutionality of any acquisition law by which his land has been acquired because, it placed under ninth schedule. Means Article 31-B protected every legislation within the umbrella of the ninth schedule.[11]

Another significant characteristic feature of the Article 31-B is that it is having retrospective effect. As a result of this any legislation earlier declared as void by the Supreme Court on the ground that it violated any of the fundamental rights, revives of such void legislation by inserting the legislation under ninth schedule by constitutional amendment. Supreme Court in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Brijendra Singh[12] held that with this characteristic feature of Article 31-B it became very easy for the parliament to validate any Act already declared as unconstitutional, simply by constitutional amendment putting such unconstitutional Act under the ninth schedule. Once legislation enters into the protective umbrella of the Ninth Schedule its constitutionality cannot be challenged, this position was maintained till the decision of the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati case.

The result of the brief survey of the provisions of the Constitution and the case-law thereon may now be stated in the form of the following propositions:

(1) Every citizen has a fundamental right to acquire, hold and dispose of the property.

(2) The State can make a law imposing reasonable restrictions on the said right in public interest. The said restrictions, under certain circumstances, may amount to deprivation of the said right.

(3) Whether a restriction imposed by law on a fundamental right is reasonable and in public interest or not, is a justiciable issue.

(4) The State can by law, deprive a person of his property if the said law of deprivation amounts to a reasonable restriction in public interest within the meaning of Article 19(5).

(5) The State can acquire or requisition the property of a person for a public purpose after paying compensation.

(6) The adequacy of the compensation is not justiciable.

(7) If the compensation fixed by law is illusory or is contrary to the principles relevant to the fixation of compensation, it would be a fraud on power and therefore the validity of such a law becomes justiciable.

(8) Laws of agrarian reform depriving or restricting the rights in an “estate”—the said expression has been defined to include practically every agricultural land in a village—Cannot be questioned on the ground that they have infringed fundamental rights.

The action of the state to assert the Eminent Domain over http subsidiary claims on property and the clash which resulted there from Singur, Nandigram and other parts of India is precisely a manifestation of a clash of cultures. That right to property are basic civil rights has long been recognised. This again would show that if the fundamental right to freedom of speech or personal liberty pertains to basic structure, there is every reason that the fundamental right to property should also pertain to it, as the former set of rights could have no meaning without the latter. Protection of freedom depends ultimately upon the protection of Independence, which can only be secured, if property is made secure.

                CONCLUSION

  Property, as a legal social institution, has different forms in different cultures and legal systems. However, only a definition of constitutional property is common in all democratic countries. Since the state exercises eminent domain power against private property, it is pertinent to discuss the concept of private property in brief. The institution of private property has been a controversial issue with conflicting views, one completely denying the right to own private property and the other supports the holding of the private property.

However, the right to property is a natural and inherent right of an individual. Most of the modern constitutions, except those of communist countries have recognised the right of private property. Therefore, citizens have right to own and possess the property. A person has a right not to be deprived of his property except through due process of law.

[1] Kesavananda Bharti v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461

[2] https://www.99acres.com/articles/constitutional-provisions-related-to-land-and-property.html

[3] AIR 1960 SC 1080

[4] AIR 1980 SC 1789

[5] Chiranjit Lal Chowdhuri v. UOI And Ors. AIR 1951 SC 41

[6] AIR 1956 SCR 18

[7] https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/constitutional-battles-on-right-to-property-in-india-2169-0170.1000124.php?aid=26755

[8] http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/property/property_rights.html

[9]https://cprindia.org/sites/default/files/chapters/The%20Fundamental%20Right%20to%20Property%20in%20the%20Indian%20Constitution.pdf

[10] Kameshwar Singh v. State of Bihar AIR 1951 SC 246

[11] https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/48090/9/09_chapter%202.pdf

[12] AIR 1981 SC 636

ANANTA AGGARWAL

Student of Law, Amity Law School, Noida, Amity University Uttar Pradesh

The post FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN RELATION TO LAND LAW appeared first on Legal Desire.

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN RELATION TO LAND LAW published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[legit-scam-review]

Left, Right and Center: Crypto Isn’t Just for Libertarians Anymore

While some say crypto is apolitical, others argue a technology that takes direct aim at central bank-driven monetary policy can’t be anything otherwise.

Indeed, many early adopters were drawn to bitcoin’s revolutionary potential and there has long been a close association between libertarianism and cryptocurrency.

CoinDesk Research took the opportunity to test this association in our Q2 State of Blockchain Sentiment Survey. Among a wide range of questions, some were aimed at discovering the political leanings of the crypto community as they relate to the technology in general, as well as to specific coins.

And the findings were surprising.

The more than 1,200 crypto community respondents broke down to 8 percent anarcho-capitalists, 24 percent libertarians, 21 percent conservatives, 9 percent centrists, 27 percent liberals, 9 percent socialists and 3 percent nihilists. While liberal came out as the largest single category, if you combine libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, they outnumbered the liberals by 5 percentage points.

These identifications were chosen to best capture distinctive world views.

For example, libertarians can be statists (i.e., they may advocate limited government, but not necessarily the abolition of all government) whereas the anarcho-capitalists want to end the state outright. 

After combining categories into our composite of the left vs. right spectrum, we observe that 52 percent of the crypto community are right-wing and 45 percent identify as being on the left. While ideologies on the right appear to make up the majority, it’s not as wide a majority as you might expect.

Considering crypto’s origins and reputation, it’s fascinating that the left makes up such a substantial minority. Two factors could explain why these results deviate from commonly-held conceptions: time and crypto partisanship by coin (or coin tribalism).

Time:

Anecdotally, libertarians made up the overwhelming majority of early crypto advocates and thus the archetype stuck with the general movement. Since then, many more people have come into the crypto world drawn by rising prices and without such strong political views. 55 percent of our Q1 survey respondents started actively following crypto in 2017. These people could be motivated by politics, but more likely came in to make money and thus held views closer to that of the general population.

Coin Tribalism:

Ideology across cryptocurrencies shows incredible variety. Our survey results found that certain political ideologies clustered around particular coins. Bitcoin most closely resembles the general population, while other cryptos take their own unique  formations. Ethereum seems to have the highest percentage (55%) on the left while dash contains the highest concentration on the right (78%). XRP clusters towards the center, while monero inversely nurtures the extremes at both ends of the spectrum while also taking the mantle for highest percentage of anarcho-capitalists (36%).

Interpreting the data

We reached out to a few crypto thought leaders for reactions to these findings.

On the left, Santiago Siri, Founder of DemocracyEarth, remarked, “it’s interesting to confirm the ideological biases of the communities behind the leading cryptocurrencies of our time, although probably in crypto we might need a different spectrum: one-coin-to-rule-them-all maximalists versus free market multi-token holders.”

In the center, developer and host of Ivan on Tech, Ivan Liljeqvist, suggested that, “the people who were involved in crypto from the beginning were mostly leaning towards anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism, however that changed last year when the hype around Bitcoin and the entire crypto market attracted many other people with different backgrounds”.

On the right, the Bitcoin Sign Guy said it’s “not a surprise that the coins with highly centralized leadership and governance rank highly on leftism and socialism.”

Chris Derose, a longtime crypto personality and host of the podcast “Bitcoin Uncensored,” has been raising many questions around this topic.

After reviewing our results he commented:

“The 2016 election had major impacts on the demographics of blockchain. Bitcoin was principally a conservative movement of goldbugs and libertarians in its early years. And an unheralded accomplishment of the ethereum blockchain might be in its ability to reach progressive blockchain investors. The 2016 election forced a divide in the community, with libertarian pursuits of independence and conservative principles finding ground in the dash, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash camps – and with collectivist interests of the left finding solutions in crowdfunding and governance structures.”

The right-leaning pioneers of pre-2017 crypto are faced with leftist migrants to their tech territory. As adoption grows, this trend will most likely continue and decrease the representation of right-wingers in crypto, especially of those at the far end.

If so, the original intention of a decentralized sound money could be sidelined for Silicon Valley’s next consumerist app, Wall Street’s next derivative database, or Washington’s facelift on monetary policy.

Check out these insights and more in the latest CoinDesk Q2 State of Blockchain report.

Guy Fawkes image via Unsplash.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/left-right-and-center-crypto-isnt-just-for-libertarians-anymore-2

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No, Crypto Isn’t Just for Libertarians Anymore

While some say crypto is apolitical, others argue a technology that takes direct aim at central bank-driven monetary policy can’t be anything otherwise.

Indeed, many early adopters were drawn to bitcoin’s revolutionary potential and there has long been a close association between libertarianism and cryptocurrency.

CoinDesk Research took the opportunity to test this association in our Q2 State of Blockchain Sentiment Survey. Among a wide range of questions, some were aimed at discovering the political leanings of the crypto community as they relate to the technology in general, as well as to specific coins.

And the findings were surprising.

The more than 1,200 crypto community respondents broke down to 8 percent anarcho-capitalists, 24 percent libertarians, 21 percent conservatives, 9 percent centrists, 27 percent liberals, 9 percent socialists and 3 percent nihilists. While liberal came out as the largest single category, if you combine libertarian and anarcho-capitalist, they outnumbered the liberals by 5 percentage points.

These identifications were chosen to best capture distinctive world views.

For example, libertarians can be statists (i.e., they may advocate limited government, but not necessarily the abolition of all government) whereas the anarcho-capitalists want to end the state outright. 

After combining categories into our composite of the left vs. right spectrum, we observe that 52 percent of the crypto community are right-wing and 45 percent identify as being on the left. While ideologies on the right appear to make up the majority, it’s not as wide a majority as you might expect.

Considering crypto’s origins and reputation, it’s fascinating that the left makes up such a substantial minority. Two factors could explain why these results deviate from commonly-held conceptions: time and crypto partisanship by coin (or coin tribalism).

Time:

Anecdotally, libertarians made up the overwhelming majority of early crypto advocates and thus the archetype stuck with the general movement. Since then, many more people have come into the crypto world drawn by rising prices and without such strong political views. 55 percent of our Q1 survey respondents started actively following crypto in 2017. These people could be motivated by politics, but more likely came in to make money and thus held views closer to that of the general population.

Coin Tribalism:

Ideology across cryptocurrencies shows incredible variety. Our survey results found that certain political ideologies clustered around particular coins. Bitcoin most closely resembles the general population, while other cryptos take their own unique  formations. Ethereum seems to have the highest percentage (55%) on the left while dash contains the highest concentration on the right (78%). XRP clusters towards the center, while monero inversely nurtures the extremes at both ends of the spectrum while also taking the mantle for highest percentage of anarcho-capitalists (36%).

Interpreting the data

We reached out to a few crypto thought leaders for reactions to these findings.

On the left, Santiago Siri, Founder of DemocracyEarth, remarked, “it’s interesting to confirm the ideological biases of the communities behind the leading cryptocurrencies of our time, although probably in crypto we might need a different spectrum: one-coin-to-rule-them-all maximalists versus free market multi-token holders.”

In the center, developer and host of Ivan on Tech, Ivan Liljeqvist, suggested that, “the people who were involved in crypto from the beginning were mostly leaning towards anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism, however that changed last year when the hype around Bitcoin and the entire crypto market attracted many other people with different backgrounds”.

On the right, the Bitcoin Sign Guy said it’s “not a surprise that the coins with highly centralized leadership and governance rank highly on leftism and socialism.”

Chris Derose, a longtime crypto personality and host of the podcast “Bitcoin Uncensored,” has been raising many questions around this topic.

After reviewing our results he commented:

“The 2016 election had major impacts on the demographics of blockchain. Bitcoin was principally a conservative movement of goldbugs and libertarians in its early years. And an unheralded accomplishment of the ethereum blockchain might be in its ability to reach progressive blockchain investors. The 2016 election forced a divide in the community, with libertarian pursuits of independence and conservative principles finding ground in the dash, bitcoin, and bitcoin cash camps – and with collectivist interests of the left finding solutions in crowdfunding and governance structures.”

The right-leaning pioneers of pre-2017 crypto are faced with leftist migrants to their tech territory. As adoption grows, this trend will most likely continue and decrease the representation of right-wingers in crypto, especially of those at the far end.

If so, the original intention of a decentralized sound money could be sidelined for Silicon Valley’s next consumerist app, Wall Street’s next derivative database, or Washington’s facelift on monetary policy.

Check out these insights and more in the latest CoinDesk Q2 State of Blockchain report.

Guy Fawkes image via Unsplash.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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fbq('init', '472218139648482'); fbq('track', "PageView"); This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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The post No, Crypto Isn’t Just for Libertarians Anymore appeared first on Legit or Scam.

Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/no-crypto-isnt-just-for-libertarians-anymore