What are Communist States?

I recently read a short blog post by a good friend and fellow libertarian (can be found here) about Communist States. Now let me just say that any anti-Communist and anti-Socialist rhetoric is greatly appreciated, but I have to do a bit of clearing up here. The term "Communist State" is actually a misnomer and if we, the liberals and libertarians, can clear it up for everyone, I believe we will be much more successful in converting others to our cause. So what is the problem with this phrase? I mean, hasn't everyone been using it for decades? Yes, but they have been using it erroneously. There can never be such a thing as a Communist State by definition, because Communism is a stateless ideology. Now this may sound like I am exonerating Communism - this could not be further from the truth. I consider Communism to be collectivist, deadly, and most importantly of all - unnatural. What we have to start speaking about are SOCIALIST STATES. Marx's point (a very stupid and ridiculous claim on the face of it) was that Communism will come only after the state withers away. This process could take hundreds of years. We had live under the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. in a totalitarian collectivist socialist state) until all people who bear the birthmark of capitalism are dead. Communism was only good for the "new socialist man of tomorrow". Modern man could not live under Communism, that much Marx was correct about. So let me say here again for emphasis: States like the Soviet Union or modern Cuba are Socialist States, not Communist States. The concept of Communism in itself is not bad, just Utopian. It is impossible. And trying actively to achieve it can only lead to mass murder and death of billions.
Now why should we argue this way? Most people would actually say that labeling certain states "communist" is a good strategy because communism is still such a hated ideology in the West. But think of it this way: Is it a good idea to call someone a murderer just because you personally don't like them and want others not to like them also? Of course not. This is the kind of emotional rhetoric militant NeoConservatives engage in. It is disturbing and irrational. Also there is another problem with it. If we label communism and communist states as evil, we open the field for socialists of all kinds to proclaim their ideology as good. After all they can say: "Hey, communism was bad back in Russia, but socialism is good, look at Sweden". This is why we must let people know that the Soviet Union was in fact socialist. Socialists of every kind, even social-democrats, are actually in line with the Soviet Leninists. They are Marxist Utopians and must be perceived and treated as such.

The problem of socialists and communists was never their sincerity or their morality, rather it was their religious ignorance of the world around them. They continued plowing through the masses with their ideology, killing millions, without regard for how life works. I have written multiple times that I myself am a Utopian to some extent - every Spencerian Social Darwinist is. But there are many kinds of Utopianism, one that sees a world as it is, and another (the leftist) which does not see the world at all. As Vladimir Ulyanov (Comrade Lenin) himself wrote: "man’s consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it". Such men as him are not born monsters, it is the cruel and twisted logic of socialism that makes them into mass murdering beasts...

Friedman and Hayek - Liberals, not Libertarians

I love reading the works of Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. They are both defenders of liberty and Nobel prize laureates in economics. In fact, they are both economists who became celebrities in the liberty movement (this is especially true of Friedman who was much more "mainstream"). If I was to describe my impression of their respective philosophies I would say it is of Old British Whig origin. Herbert Spencer would probably be more than happy to endorse their ideas. But there is nonetheless one critique which really should turn libertarians off of their ideas. Namely - they are Statists. Hayek, in fact, is a lot more problematic in this regard. This is because his analysis of society is simply hypocritical. He was a student of Mises, and came out with amazing theories about spontaneous order and yet he still advocated statism. In simple terms, Hayek is a heretic. The real ideas of Austro-Libertarianism as developed by Mises were carried on, preserved, and advanced by one of his later students, Murray Rothbard.
So what is dangerous about the philosophy or Friedman and Hayek? Obviously, the danger is the way they very persuasively fused statism with liberal ethics. I know a lot of people, like many modern conservatives, who were influenced in their thinking mainly by Friedman and Hayek just because these two men were so popular. Margaret Thatcher in particular was famous for carrying around a copy of Hayek's Constitution of Liberty. I would argue that Hayek and Friedman are actually more dangerous than other statists such as Ayn Rand. Rand considered taxation an evil equivalent to theft - something which we will not find in the Old Whig tradition. There is also little mention in their philosophies about rights of people to ignore the state and secede from it. In this Hayek and Friedman are iron-fisted statists. In this I also fault Hayek more - he is a student of Mises who was a great proponent of freedom in this regard!
Another problem with liberal philosophies is that they rarely mention human rights. Emphasis is always on freedom and the notion of liberty. This has actually been a very negative tendency because the concept of freedom has been misconstrued. The whole idea of negative versus positive liberty has virtually destroyed liberalism from the inside out (I think the best example of this can be found in the writings of John Stuart Mill and Isiah Berlin). What has been amazing in the modern libertarian movement is the emphasis on rights. Expressed simply - we are only free to do that what we have the right to do. Rights define the scope of our freedom. And this is not (sadly) the point of view usually espoused by Friedman and Hayek.

Notheless, Friedman and Hayek's books are great to read and they certainly offer many valuable insights into the world at large. They are also always filled with great quips, such as this one by Milton Friedman: "I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater."

What is Pity for?

Pity is a rather confusing emotion. On the one hand it seems good - but it can surely have bad results. I would venture as far as to say that most problems of the welfare state and socialism are created by people feeling pity for others. Herbert Spencer, in his essay "The Coming Slavery", put it this way:

"The kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling which vents itself in “poor fellow!” on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought of “bad fellow,” which might at another time arise. Naturally, then, if the wretched are unknown or but vaguely known, all the demerits they may have are ignored; and thus it happens that when the miseries of the poor are dilated upon, they are thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought of as the miseries of the undeserving poor, which in large measure they should be. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds."

But I would argue that pity is a good emotion. The problem is, as Spencer suggests, the misdirection of it. What the problem has always been is the lack of reasonability the average person displays. This blog is all about just that - reason. We libertarians have been, along with conservatives, often labeled as callous. Supposedly because we don't favor government welfare, we don't favor charity. We don't like "helping people". This is absolutely absurd. As studies have shown, conservatives give multiple times the amount of money (on average) to charity as compared to social-democrats and other leftists.
The emotion we call pity is an instinctual "red light" that may show us something bad is happening. If I see an old woman begging for change on the street, the "light" comes on - I pity her. The problem is not charity itself (fueled by pity!), but the way the charity is administered. Government welfare is a gigantic loss of money, time, and effort. Statistics show that for every dollar destined for welfare the poor recipients only receive 25 cents! That is a tragic result! Common rhetoric of the leftists and statists is "we need to eliminate government waste" or "there is no use in cutting programs, we just need to streamline them and fix them". This is not the case. Government welfare programs end up being welfare for the government employees (who in most cases are half-wits who would not be able to get a decent job in a free economy).
Furthermore I would like to say that these people (pro-government statists) do not actually feel real pity. Pity is a feeling that inspires you to help, not defer the responsibility to other people (through coercive government means). The statists say that private charity is discriminatory and small. I say that their charity is just a dirty callous machine. It is emotionless and truly an evil Behemoth. It breeds poverty instead of eliminating it. It is un-Darwinist, unnatural, and cold. It is devoid of all pity instead of being filled with it.

Under regular circumstances people can apply charity where it is necessary - where pity really directs them. Such a process of helping the deserving poor rather than the welfare addicts is Darwinistic, moral, and does not require government coercion. What did Gandalf say when Frodo suggested it was a pity Bilbo had not killed the poor creature, Gollum? Did the evil little wretch deserve death?
"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least."
Professor Tolkien was a very wise man.

Anarcho-Monarchism - the Details

What is Anarcho-Monarchism? It happens to be the political system which evolves out of the ethical beliefs I hold. Here are some common questions I get asked about it.
1. Isn't Anarcho-Monarchism an oxymoron? Monarchy is absolute rule of a King and anarchy is no rule at all!
In a word - No. The important aspect here is the correct definition of terms. "Anarcho" is used as defined by Murray N. Rothbard: "anarchist society [is] one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual". And "Monarchism" is the doctrine which allows for and emphasizes extreme despotic right of individuals over their property (allodial property). Furthermore, Monarchism advocates a hierarchical structure in society in which the natural elite are able to, without any use of coercion of aggression, guide people in the most favorable direction of development. Used in this sense, the term "Monarchy" may be associated with medieval feudal relations or perhaps even modern trends toward Direct Democracy.
2. Anarcho-Monarchism seems uneforcable and is therefore not functional. Who could enforce such a subjectivist system?
This critique is answered, in my opinion, by entire hosts of Anarcho-Capitalism literature. To put it simply, Anarcho-Monarchism relies on self-defense and voluntary collective defense. It does not oppose states as such - it opposes states as compulsory monopolies of law-making and law-enforcement. According to my mode of thinking medieval "states" were not really states. Modern states are artificial creations of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
3. Isn't Anarcho-Monarchism based on virtue ethics rather than "objective (libertarian) ethics"?
This criticism is to some extent correct. The purely objective ethic, however, does not really exist. Anarcho-capitalism may indeed be as value free as ethics can get - it implies only the non-agression axiom - but it does not say anything about organization of society beyond the existence of spontanious order (as developed by the market). I do not disagree with any anarcho-capitalist theories. I do, however, think of what facilitates the most overall human efficiency as well as preserving human freedom. Anarcho-Monarchism is a fusion of anarcho-capitalism with Spencerian social-darwinist thought.

Anarcho-Monarchism in The War of the Ring

I have always maintained that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a man of great and visionary mind as well as honorable and chivalrous disposition. A rare breed in today's times of leftist propaganda. I remember a few weeks ago I spoke about the concept of Honor with a few friends at a debate club. What I got as an answer was a chuckle and snickering remark that in today's world there is no such thing as honor. And indeed this is true. Honor has become something antiquated - something to be laughed at and mocked. This is the result of leftist propaganda which we have been subjected to for decades if not centuries...
But back to Mr. Tolkien. He accurately described what I would consider a war of Anarcho-Monarchists against Socialist-Statists.
There is no doubt in my mind that Sauron, the Dark Lord, is the abuser of power. He is a socialist. His armies are his mere slaves. In fact, the greater his warriors and generals are, the more slavish they are in their nature. Note: The Nazgul (Ring-wraiths) are his greatest lieutenants and yet they are mere shadows of men bound to his will. He gives them power, but they can only use it to serve him, to obey his every command. Sauron rules by fear. His soldiers are afraid of battle with his enemies, but they are more afraid of him and therefore must obey. This is statism at its worst. The state has only one weapon - fear. It punishes as opposed to the capitalist free market, which rewards. It is the stick, not the carrot.
And what about the other side? These are the men who serve their lords freely. They are fighting for bonds of kinship and friendship. They are honorbound. Theoden, Aragorn, Gandalf - these are not tyrants who rule. They are Kings who lead. They inspire their men, not threaten them.
This is what I call Anarcho-Monarchism. A system of allodial property rights and voluntary feudal relationships. It does not do what leftists want, it does not support equality, egalitarianism, or destroy hierarchy. If the left want equality, what could be more equal than the slaves of Sauron, writhing together in the dirt under his feet? And make no mistake, Sauron need not be a man. He is the personification of collective power, of abuse, of force and mutual aggression.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Currently the Dark Lord resides on his throne in the White House. Sad truth.

Structure of Moral Principles

Alas, I have been called a MORAL RELATIVIST! By another anarchist too! Here is our debate (comments on his blog post). And what did this come out of? Well, I simply stated that individual moral values cannot be considered more than mere opinions of the individuals themselves. This is because they are nonenforceable. If I cannot go and correct something in my neighbour's behaviour then he officially has the right to do it, and something you have the right to do cannot be immoral. The logic is simple. If this was not the case, rights wouldn't make any sense. How could someone have a right to do something immoral? That contradicts the very definition of rights. After all there is "right" and there is "wrong". Right being moral is a tautology.

"So how can we oppose things like unfairness, or exploitation on moral grounds?" asks the leftist. Firstly, I judge unfairness or exploitation through the prism of the non-aggression axiom. If someone has agreed to be treated in a certain way, then the action cannot be aggression. And if someone breaks my property rights and I punish them, that is not aggression either. Leftists would disagree, but that is because they do not respect the non-aggression axiom enough. They hold other beliefs which are contradictory to it.

What about the case of animal cruelty? Clearly I have written multiple times that it is evil, but does not break the non-aggression axiom. The answer is simple: In my viewpoint animal cruelty is evil. This is just a personal opinion I hold. And this, though it might seem weak, is actually not weak at all. What we call my mere opinion is LAW on my private property just like non-aggression is the LAW in the world at large. Yes, my house is my Kingdom (Monarchism!). My word is Law on my property. In a leftist world this would be impossible because we do not really "own" land or space as property. No one can present a good enough explanation why not, of course, but they still claim so (even Herbert Spencer was on their side here!). I usually see this anti-land-ownership fetish as an old vestige of religious dogma as introduced into modern ethics by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith.

Anarcho-capitalists are voluntaryists in the sense that we believe voluntary exchanges to be always mutually beneficial ex ante. If this makes me a moral relativist, then people like leftist anarchists are MORAL ILLUSIONISTS. Their morality cannot work. We cannot have an ideal utopia of mutually beneficial relations ex post facto because we do not know what effect our actions will have on both parties. Let me illustrate this with an example. If I give someone a million dollars, then in the voluntaryist morality I am perfectly entitled to do so and I am moral. So is the receiver of the money, he did nothing wrong. But now let's assume the next day he buys a Ferrari and accidentally runs it off of a huge cliff while his wife is in the car. Nobody can accuse me of wrongdoing, despite the fact that ex post facto my action of giving the man the money is what actually caused the car-accident. The accident would never have taken place if not for me! But I think we can all see how silly such thinking is. We cannot interrelate all actions in the world this way or else everyone would be guilty of everything. But to some people this is not so absurd. We can actually see leftists argue this way in socialist states where prisons are built for resocilization programs rather than punishments. After all, the individuals in the prisons are just a product of their society, the lefties say. The rapist and the thief were helpless! The society is guilty! We just put them in a comfy hotel for 5 years and let them out if they cry in front of a psychologist...