As I said many times before, I prefer not to call myself an anarchist unless I'm in a friendly crowd. My anarchism is not of a typical kind (if there can be such a thing as a "typical" anarchist). I am not a revolutionary Lefty. My anarchist feelings come rather from an aversion to state-compulsion and aggression of any kind (in this way I am a Libertarian anarchist) and from my ardent uncompromising individualism. Nonetheless I am aware that most people who label themselves anarchists nowadays are various shades of Red. After all even evil monsters like Marx and Lenin said they have anarchist aims (which proved to be one of history's greatest lies). Here in the US I have a hard time finding anarchists of any mold, however! Back in England I belonged to a little anarchist clique where I was the only right winger and where people looked at me funny, but at least we all had similar conversation topics. I even managed to convert some of them from pure Communism into something more "pink and vague". In the US the term anarchist seems to be tabu (which is why I always call myself a Libertarian). I would really like to see a stronger movement of anti-government radicals emerge here. After all some of the very founders of the anarchist movement were Americans! Look at Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Murray Rothbard on the Right side! And how about Johann Most, Emma Goldman, Murray Bookchin, and Noam Chomsky on the Left! It is arguable whether socialist anarchism is anarchism at all, I have not read enough to be a reliable source on this matter, but let us all at least acknowledge that anti-statism should be promoted across the spectrum. If more and more people acknowledge the evil of the state maybe we can finally get some meaningful dialogue started - just as I did among my anarchist friends back in Britain. Once this anti-statist common premise is established the rest will be just using logic and rhetoric - the arts of persuasion.
In a strict sense the anarchist Lefties and I are not enemies on this, we believe in the same principle - the principle of freedom for all. As
Benjamin Tucker said:
"Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else." This is why I will never condemn any voluntary activity, be it socialist or Left as they come. I might not approve of it for myself, but who am I to tell others how to act? If I did that, I would become the very thing I oppose!
If we all work for freedom together, we will achieve it.
Governments cannot give rights, they can only take them away. But few Americans are willing to follow either the European model or the libertarian model. Americans view the two party system to be the natural competitive equilibrium. Few say that it is a bad idea to reduce aspects of the government, as 40% of the nation is conservative compared to 20% being liberal, but few on any spectrum would concede to no government. A democratic republic is naturally flawed in that it can allow for the tyranny of the majority, or in 2000 in the case of the presidential election, the tyranny of the minority, to take hold, but as many basic, fundamental human rights that precede others (such as the right to live as an adult with certain laws over the right to have a vasectomy)are preserved in the Bill of Rights and other enumerated laws. Few embrace pure liberty, like pure laissez faire economics, because of the risks associated with it. Human nature is not, arguably, naturally predisposed to any one political, economic, or social model. Therefore, it is always a matter of the lesser of two evils. Democracy over sharia, or over communism etc. Most Americans would agree on direct democracy via referendum, granted that there are certain rights that are non-negotiable and preserved. Human beings are not all predisposed to the ideals of liberty. If they were then we would not have this discussion. And because human nature is not predisposed to liberty, it would be very hard to preserve it without some form of coercion, whether it be through direct democracy or constitutionalism. If no one person can completely agree on libertarian anarchism and what it would constitute, how could it possibly be sustained in the long term? If three individuals lived on a piece of private property and one of them refused to agree on an issue, then the other two, according to the non aggression axiom, could not take any measure in favor or against the issue without violating the third person's rights. However, with a majority vote, the decision would be made for better or worse. With certain universal truths, though arbitrary, declared as moral laws, regardless of individual bias, that decision would be more likely moral than not. There is no one place on Earth that is purely free in terms of economic, political, and social rights. Democracy is arbitrary and flawed, but it also allows for room to evolve and reform, as well as to regress, and as Franklin once said in response to being asked what sort of government he would live under if possible: "A Republic, if you can keep it."
ReplyDeleteBeing arbitrary is also not evil. If a doctor states that no one under 13 can not have a drug, even if the patient who is 12 is in the body of a 14 year old and could theoretically handle the drug, he is not committing an evil (as it happened to me). It is a regulation that the drug company has imposed on itself that is arbitrary, because they view that as the best course of action.
My issue with libertarianism is the libertarian claim, that freedom from coercion is the supreme social value, is simply wrong. Non-coercion is not the absolute good: other values override it. For instance, other things being equal, it is not wrong to secure justice by coercion. And when the alternative to coercion is non-innovation, then coercion to secure innovation is also legitimate.
ReplyDeleteAlso libertarianism enforces conforming to free market values. A free market exercises social forces. It is true that individuals can offer some resistance to social forces, but absolute rejection of all values and trends in the surrounding society is impossible. So there is always some reduction in individual freedom through its effects. For example, people choose to buy one brand over another. Fast food A gets more customers then Fast food B, and B goes out of business. Those consumers whose choice coincides with the outcome of market forces, are rewarded. Fast food B customers, though they existed, did not matter because the market dictated they did not matter. Fast food B customers are not only the losers on the market, but then also face market pressure to adapt their choice, or else be punished. Either they eat at the more expensive A place or eat somewhere else which would accommodate them. Libertarians would say that the means justify the ends, so that punishment for a person's freedom to choose is justified. The libertarian logic is contradictory. Fast food B customers are still coerced to choosing Fast Food A or something else because of the free market forces or they are coerced to die off because the market dictated they were not necessary for its own survival. Thus, free markets are in it of itself a form of coercion.
Some libertarians, not all and this does not include you, have a specific world view that human nature is predisposed to their vales and if only they would discuss it, human beings would follow. And indeed for them there is no defect in purely free market forces: but for non-libertarians it is.
That is why Americans are reluctant to embrace them.
Have a happy Thanksgiving break!!!
The last issue I have with pure libertarianism, for your book so you can correct me later, is that it does not legislate morality. While that can be good, I can already see the negative consequences. If someone violates my property, lets say an illegal immigrant women, to steal my mailbox, theoretically I would have whatever right to defend my property. I could beat her, rape her, and take whatever was on her because she was unwelcomed on my property. Why would I stop? Under private property laws, I would not have any incentive to if that was my human nature. So if I was purely evil, why would I stop if she gave up all of her human rights by first violating mine?
ReplyDeleteThough arbitrary, there would be certain laws that would lessen the severity of my action. Laws that, though arbitrary, would still serve justice without sacrificing the private property laws. The severity of the punishment would be limited to the severity of the crime, not the severity of penetrating my land. That is what democracy attempts to do, while still preserving private property to its individual owners who pay taxes.
Also, in relation to taxes, labor creates no entitlement to property. A person who in a factory manually screws in equipment for a car in no way owns the actual car or equipment. The claim that labor does create entitlement to property is merely a culturally specific preference: the labor theory of value, that Marx helped develop (if you don't believe me look it up on Wikipedia). Other cultures might claim that God's grace, or patrilineal descent, or status, create the entitlement to property and wealth. There is no objective standard by which these claims can be ranked. It is arbitrary. On this issue, you say what you choose to believe. I say the state should tax those with more than an acceptable minimum income. For a particular group to claim that they are the 'creators of wealth' is absurd in both economical and social claims. In all probability, not much will happen economically to the GDP, if the self-styled 'creators of wealth' lose their privileges to yachts as opposed to Ferraris. And those items are privileges, and no one except for libertarians would view them as rights. The interpretation of what constitutes human rights differ between libertarians and non-libertarians, and thus can not be agreed upon to be 'universal.'