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Remarks on Jan Narveson’s “Libertarianism: the Thick and the Thin”

Read as comments in reply to Jan Narveson’s presentation at the second annual meeting of the Molinari Society (28 December 2005), during the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division conference in New York City.

Jan Narveson ably defends a conception of libertarianism as what he describes as a thinly moral doctrine. In order to do so he clears the ground with a hefty bundle of clarificatory remarks about thinness, thickness, morality, politics, culture, and where libertarianism properly locates itself within the conceptual regions marked out by these signposts. …

May Day: An American — And Libertarian! — Holiday

Americans have been conditioned to think of May Day as a “commie holiday,” one associated until recently with military parades in Red Square and leaders of Marxist-Leninist regimes exchanging “fraternal greetings” in the names of their respective peoples. They might be surprised to learn it was originally an American holiday, created by Chicago workers in commemoration of the eight-hour day campaign and the Haymarket Martyrs.

Perhaps even more surprising — as much so to modern American libertarians as anyone else — is the fact that May Day is part of the free market libertarian movement’s heritage. That’s counter-intuitive for obvious reasons. Since the time of Mises and Rand, American libertarianism has generally been identified — often justifiably — with a reflexive defense of capitalism and big business. But despite the rightward political shift of the free market movement in the 20th century, there was a very large free market Left in the 19th century, frequently with close ties to the labor and socialist movements.

Classical liberalism had common Enlightenment roots, overlapping considerably in its origins with the early socialist movement. A broad current of thinkers, like the British Thomas Hodgskin and the American individualist anarchists (or Boston anarchists) around Benjamin Tucker and Liberty magazine, belonged within both the free market libertarian and libertarian socialist camps. In their view capitalism was a system in which the state intervened in the market on behalf of landlords and other rentiers, enforcing the artificial property rights, monopolies and artificial scarcities from which profit, interest and rent derived. They saw the proper goal of socialism as abolition of these monopolies, allowing market competition in the supply of capital and land to drive the assorted rents derived from them down to zero, so that the natural market wage of labor would be its full product. …

Kurdistan as an Anarchist Society

When looking at history for examples of the establishment of anarchist societies we often think of the Spanish anarchists in Catalonia or the efforts of the Zapatista army in Mexico. These are both examples of groups using tactics of revolutionary armed conflict against the state and capitalism in an attempt to establish an autonomous stateless society in the here and now. And while anarchist Catalonia was eventually quashed by outside forces, the Zapatistas are still fighting on, albeit using different methods than before.

And then there’s the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê‎ (the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK). Formally a Marxist-Leninist political party which fought to establish an independent Kurdish state called Kurdistan. However, under the guidance of their leader Abdullah Öcalan, the party changed its platform and strategy. After Öcalan‘s imprisonment during which he corresponded with American anarchist Murray Bookchin and was deeply influenced by his philosophy of libertarian communalism, he called for the PKK to adopt a platform of democratic confederalism and dropped its demand for the establishment of a Kurdish state, instead advocating complete statelessness. …

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A lost classic recovered from the pages of Liberty, this essay — never before collected in pamphlet form since its original serialization — is one of the most ambitious attempts to define the Individualist theory of property, and to provide both an Anarchistic defense of private property and market competition, and an attack on the regime of structural violence and legal privilege that sustains capitalism and subjugates the working class.

Modern industry and the accompanying economic conditions have arisen under the régime of status, — that is, under arbitrary conditions in which equal liberty had no place and law-made privileges held unbounded sway, — it is only to be expected that an equally arbitrary and unjust system of property should prevail. On one side a dependent industrial class of wage-workers and on the other a privileged class of wealth-monopolizers each becoming more and more distinct from the other as capitalism advances, has resulted in a grouping and consolidation of wealth which grows apace by attracting all property, no matter by whom produced, into the hands of the privileged, and hence property becomes a social power, an economic force destructive of rights, a fertile source of injustice, a means of enslaving the dispossessed. Under this system equal liberty cannot obtain… .

Can the millionaire capitalist, the labor-robbing idler who lives on interest, the rich thugs of today and their army of parasites, be taken as the outcome of private property? Surely not. They are the direct result of restrictions and privileges, of legal and governmental origin, — causes that render impossible the growth and diffusion of individual property among the mass of wealth-producers. Inequalities in possession exist not so much because of inequalities in the power of individuals to acquire wealth under free conditions, but because political, social, and economic arrangements have always tended to create artificial inequality, to foster and increase whatever natural inequality did exist … .

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If you want to take direct action against the warfare State by resisting taxes, the next question is how you go about doing that. For those who want to avoid a potentially disastrous confrontation with the IRS, anti-war tax-resistance David Gross (of The Picket Line blog) offers this practical how-to guide on eliminating your tax liability by living simply, reducing your reported income, and taking advantage of tax credits available to low-income filers.

Support C4SS with David Gross’s “Don’t Owe Nothin'”

Vulgar Liberalism: Big Business and Its Useful Idiots

Logan Ferree, in “The Role of the State in the Rise of the Corporation,” links to a debate he’s engaged in on that topic. Markos Moulitsas, in a widely read post proposing a libertarian-Democratic alliance, suggested that the power of large corporations had arisen from the free market, and that the twentieth century regulatory state had been imposed on big business to restrain it against its will.

In his own post at Daily Kos, Ferree linked to this challenge at Catallarchy blog:

Persuade me that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation.

Ferree comments on liberals’ failure

to offer up a response to [the libertarian] critique of the assumption that government protects us from corporations, instead of enabling them….

…If you can’t defeat libertarianism on this issue, perhaps it’s time to switch sides.

The worst historical idiocy in response, hands down, was this comment by massive not passive:

The only time Government empowers corporations at the expense of the people is when it allows them to avoid compliance of the laws put into place to protect us from the corporations. Also when the governments provide financial favors to certain companies. Only by ignoring the laws do governments aid the corps.

The truth – only under conservative governments are laws created to benefit corps – under an integrty-based progressive administration, laws will help people from the overreach of corporate power. If you want it done right, elect Democrats.

When corporations threatened our safety at work, government stepped in to create worker safety provisions, rights to collectively bargain and the ability to receive overtime pay after 40 hours of labor.

Government knew that the free market would not offer these protections.

When corporations sold unsafe products, such as meat (read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” for details), government intervened to assure that corporations could not fool the consumer with lies to push unhealthy and possibly toxic consumables.

Once again, the free market was little help here.

When corporations threatened the cleanliness of our air and water, government stepped in to preserve the integrity of our natural resources. Because the free market was not going to do so.

Governments, largely under conservative administrations, have been manipulated into providing favors for certain corporations, via tax abatements, or the “look the other way” approach in regards to disobeying safety/pollution/labor laws. But the reality is a removal of government oversight from corporations would leave this country in far worse shape than the current state.

Sigh. There you have it. Just about every single cliche from the Art Schlesinger historical mythology, condensed into one short passage for your convenience.

Ahem. The problem is not unequal enforcement of the laws. …

Dozens Killed, Hospital Hit in Airstrike as Aleppo Attacks Rage

Syria’s military and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front continued to trade fire in districts of the northern city of Aleppo today, and as has been the case in previous days the bulk of the casualties were civilians, with at least 20 civilians reported killed and scores of others wounded.

Syrian military airstrikes centered on the Sukkari neighborhood, in eastern Aleppo, with one of the strikes hitting a hospital and a neighboring civilian complex. 9 were killed, including one doctor, and a pair of young children. Six other civilians were reported slain in the area as well.

Al-Qaeda’s own firing targeted the western part of the city, with reports of at least 11 civilians killed in rocket and artillery fire. These attacks were initially reported by Syria’s state media, and confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. …

Letter Details FBI Plan for Secretive Anti-Radicalization Committees

OF THE PLANS put forward by the federal government to identify and stop budding terrorists, among the least understood are the FBI’s “Shared Responsibility Committees.”

The idea of the committees is to enlist counselors, social workers, religious figures, and other community members to intervene with people the FBI thinks are in danger of radicalizing — the sort of alternative to prosecution and jail time many experts have been clamoring for. But civil liberties groups worry the committees could become just a ruse to expand the FBI’s network of informants, and the government has refused to provide details about the program.

The Intercept has obtained a letter addressed to potential committee members from the FBI, outlining how the process would work. While the letter claims that committees will not be used “as a means to gather intelligence,” it also makes clear that information from the committees may be shared widely by the FBI, including with spy agencies and foreign governments, and that committee members can be subpoenaed for documents or called to testify in cases against the people they are trying to help. At the same time, committee members are forbidden even from seeking advice from outside experts without permission from the FBI. …

New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship

A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post this morningdescribed this phenomenon: “If we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.”

The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al-Qaeda,’ “car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.‘” People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: “If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.” …

OK trooper tells local news: Best way not to get raped by cops is to ‘follow the law’

An Oklahoma Highway Patrol official reportedly told women that the best way not to get raped by an officer was to “follow the law.”

In recent months, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer and an Oklahoma City Police officer have been accused of repeatedly raping women, often during traffic stops.

After a Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy was arrested last week for sexually assaulting a woman while responding to a 911 call, Tulsa NBC News affiliate KJRH decided to ask the Oklahoma Highway Patrol how to stay safe during a traffic stop.

The department noted that troopers should always be in uniform, and that women were allowed to keep their car door locked, and to speak with officers through a cracked window. A trooper should rarely ask a person to come back to the patrol car, OHP advised. …