Libertariansim and Anarchism; Delusional and Utopian

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The idea that we can suddenly 'speak' a new and fairer form of society into being without any serious and scientific political agenda is complete and utter nonsense.

I believe in the revolutionary principles of Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. They analysed social interactions throughout history and extrapolated the outcomes to predict how change may come about. Anarchists and Libetarians have no where near the same depth of explanation for their beliefs, from my understanding they are just a bunch of philosophical musings with little substance from a diverse bunch of people

After changing my opinion on freedom of speech, Orwell quipped that for his next trick he would turn me into a Libertarian.

So come on, take up Orwells challenge and show me the error of my Socialist ways; demonstrate how either anarcho/communism or libertarianism have a legitimate and scientific explanation for how they will come about.

To put Lenin and Marx into one line is common, but also a great misunderstanding of Marx. Lenin put himself in the Tradition of Marx, but a closer analysis of Lenin's theories shows that Lenin build up his own system. For details you refer to the writing of Karl Kautsky of the 1920.

Further: None of the four named had a real concept how the human mind works. Serious research started in 1910s and later with Sigmund Freud and our theory is still patchy. But to understand human interaction fully such a theory is essential. Marx was right when he put Hegel "from his head on the feeds" and showed that economic interest and technology are main motors of human history, but this motor does not fully explain human interactions.

I can't therefore follow Marx' assumption that if humans would live in society of equals acting altruistic no crime etc. could happen. Marx follows here a blank-slate-theory which is in the meanwhile proven wrong.



No - the main difference between Anarchists and Marxist is not in the final goal of society of free association of equal people, but in the way to archive such a society. The Marxist way is to get control of the state and to transform the society with the means of the state, whilst the Anarchistic theory postulates that the state as the main instrument of the capitalist society had to be destroyed. You may have some reading in the articles Bakuain and Marx did a totally different analysis of the Comune de Paris.

The Libertarians do support as a goal a society with a state (which Marx and the Anarchist do not), in which egoistic people interact and with a state only imposing basic rules of contract. This is an absolute different world view.

I'm a bit busy at them moment with exams and papers, but I will come back to this thread later.

But I'm not going to advocate any form of anarchism. That's AG's territory.

If it be not harmful to others, do as you will. That is the essence of liberty. No one is under any obligation to be supportive of others except for children he has brought into the world, or where he has contracted to support others in exchange for something of value.

The contract is everything.

ruveyn

You are talking about men doing analyses using problematic theoretical frameworks(A variant of the Hegelian dialectic, the labor theory of value, and the dead parts of classical economics?) for a conclusion that just cannot be falsified.

As compared to that, libertarians and anarchists have their own arguments for their beliefs, the only one that is relatively absolutist is the argument that a patch-work system will gradually self-destruct, which is made by Mises based upon the nature of government to continually grow to patch up it's failings, and further built upon the socialism calculation problem, which argues that socialist governments will fail.

As for legitimate scientific explanation, I think this group recognizes that it is an ideology rather than a historical necessity, the latter being considered absurd coming from any person.

Not really: The state does by its nature do not need a contract to rule. The subject, today called euphemistic citizen, must obey the state's orders even he does not agree. The legal systems based on the Roman Law still distinguish very exactly between "Private Law" (ius privatum) between formally equal in which the contract is normal form of creating obligations and the "Public Law" (ius publicum) in which the state gives orders to obey in which the state on itself is not bonded by the law ("princeps legibus solutus est"). The later rule is weaken by more recent developments like the ideas of a constitution, but given a constitution (executing the "pouvoir constituant originaire") still needs even for a moment the unlimited and not legally bonded power.

The law of the contract is created by the power of the state: The state defines the nature and execution of contracts with his legal system.

So not the contract is everything, because the contact need a state to enable his subjects to make contracts: No state - no private law - no contract.

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For all Common Law thinker: I know that the Common Law does use this terms differently, but using it with meaning of the Roman Law makes thinks just clearer.

Several issues...

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor will a libertarian advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else.

Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.

To say that libertarian thought has no depth shows a vast lack of education on the subject.

Modern libertarian thought is most clearly and deeply explained in the works of Murry Rothbard in "For a New Liberty" and "The Ethics of Liberty". These are the "libertarian manefesto(s)", if you will.

Rothbard was a pacifist econimist of the Austrian school who developed a fully realized working thory of anarcho-capitalisim.

Now, whatever disagreements one may have with the writings or Rothbard, it cannot be said that that his work is any less "deep" than that of Marx or Engles.

I find the Labour theory of value to be holding up quite well, given the recent events brought about by a disregard of value based upon production and the heralding of fictitious capital



I don't think any of our ideologies are a historical necessity, however what has been shown time and again are the flaws within capitalism, what Marx and those that have followed him have tried to do is predict the outcome of these flaws and build a political consciousness to deal with it.



I could not agree more. I doubt that Communism as conceived by Marx can come into existence, I believe in a world guided by a Socialist state, this of course has the potential to evolve into Communism but I doubt it. The idea that Anarcho-communism can form out of the chaos of the destruction of the state apparatus without any form of political structure I find absurd.

As for Libertarism again how the heck can this utopian world come into existence within the confines of a controlling state. As far as I understand it there is no revolutionary or political construct to bring this into being

When I took an intro class in political philosophy (largely centered on contract theory), pretty much the only philosophies of the last 50 years we looked at were liberalism and libertarianism. To think that libertarianism isn't a serious philosophy displays a complete lack of knowledge about the subject.

It cannot. Any "State" in a Libertarian Utopia would have about as much "real" power and authority as the Windsors...



The revolutionary construct to bring this in to being would be allowing an existing state to implode & or intentionallly whither and replacing it with.... nothing.

To see a fully realized (with sources), fictional depiction of such a system AND some of the problems it encounters, and how those problems are/can be dealt with I suggest:

The Probablity Broach (http://lneilsmith.org/lns_tpb.html)
The American Zone (http://lneilsmith.org/americanzone.html) and
The Gallatin Divergence (http://lneilsmith.org/lns_tgd.html)

If you don't have the stamina to read the whole book, The Probability Broach can be read online in WebComic format: http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1

Another "Libertarian/AnarchoCapitalist Government" is depicted in a significantly shorter graphic novel (still being seralized) called "Escape from Terra": http://www.bigheadpress.com/eft?page=1

Those should at least give you a feel for it.

And THIS panel mor aptly explains the difference between what Governments TELL YOU "Anarchy means, and what it REALLY means...



Rules are nothing more than commonly accepted norms of behavior. You don't need a "Ruler" to make them up for society OR to use brute force to enforce compliance with them.

Last edited by MrMisanthrope on 04 Mar 2009, 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It might have a philosophy for how it may work, but how do its proponents intend to bring it into being.

From what I understand of it, Libertarism is still based on a market driven economy and to think that such a system can be benevolent is absurd

So you agree that Marxism is foolish?


Marx adhered to crappy economic theories that have since been refuted (AG already mentioned labour theory of value). His class warfare view of history is also highly questionable, and seems to be reinterpreting the past to try to make it fit his own biased view of the present. Marx pretty much sucked as a historian. Engels was a bourgeois capitalist and a therefore a hypocrite. Lenin was supported by the Germans to help take Russia out of the war, and besides that I wouldn't regard him as such a brilliant theorist. He was just another revolutionary, at first a completely irrational hard-liner. Lenin also introduced elements of capitalism into the Soviet economy through his New Economic Plan. Finally, Trotsky was at first a Menshevik, but switched to the Bolshevik side when it became convenient to do so, and wanted to continue many of the policies of the old Tsarist regime, ie continue fighting the war, honor all of Imperial Russia's debts and treaty obligations, etc. And many other Communist leaders rightly feared that Trotsky, if left unchecked, could well become their Napoleon and subvert the revolution. In short, you've picked crappy role models here.


And their predictions were almost invariably wrong, which would indicate that any analysis they conducted was from within as flawed framework. Hence, such a framework should be abandoned in favour of a more reliable one.


I'm not up on anarchist theory (I'm a minarchist rather than an anarchist) but Libertarian theory has been quite well developed by a number of people. Really, Libertarianism is a bit of a broad category, and can borrow from various intellectual ideas depending on what particular issue is being debated. The fact that, as you noted, libertarian ideals have been supported by such a diverse group of people should indicate that there is some underlying reason why these people should be attracted to such ideas.


You don't even have to be a Libertarian. You could be a moderate limited-government republican (small "r," not the political party)


Screw anarcho-communism, it strikes me as idiotic.

Socialism is easy enough to refute. Problem of information, socialist calculation debate, tragedy of the commons, free-loader problem, etc ad nauseam. People simply do not take care of property that is not theirs. The rationality assumption of economics holds. People on average are utility maximizers. The reason capitalism/libertarianism works is because it uses man's selfish impulses for good, rather than socialism's misguided attempts to change the human race. You will not change people, you have to work with what you've got. And what you've got are six billion selfish bastards. Libertarianism brings the interests of any given selfish bastard roughly in line with the interests of society as a whole, so people benefit society while only caring for themselves.

Explanation for how it will come about? I don't know what you mean by scientific here, but I suspect you are simply abusing a buzzword. The Heritage Foundation has, I believe, found overall increases in economic liberty over time in most places. Also, societies with greater economic freedom tend to be better-off, and this would provide an impetus to increase economic liberty where it does not currently predominate. As society gets generally more liberal, there seems to be greater allowance for personal liberty in a number of areas, so long as the people are vigilant to defend their civil liberties (such as freedom of speech) and encourage others to do so as well. So, with both economic and personal liberty tending to increase, libertarianism is reached at the end point of both of these trends. The main things I see standing in the way are increased state surveillance in the name of counter-terrorism and the rise of the welfare state. However, some views of Libertarianism can be made compatible with some form of a welfare state. Milton Friedman would be considered a Libertarian (at least a moderate libertarian) and he once advocated a tax scheme whereby the government would send everyone a check for $10,000 each year, which clearly functions as a form of minimal welfare. (And $10,000 was considerably more then than it is now)

Can't generalize the whole movement, but for the most part libertarians intend to work within existing political structures for gradual change.


Yes, a market driven economy is the basis of libertarianism. To think that any other system would be even remotely viable is absurd. The market itself is of course not benevolent, for it is not conscious and has no emotion. But Smith's "Invisible Hand" will guide it well enough.

To think that any SYSTEM of bureaucracy can be benevolent is irrational.

Benevolence is a trait of individuals. Benevolence requires an INDIVIDUAL to be benevolent.

Now, if you want to suggest that you can have a benevolent dictatorship headed by a single individual, I won't argue. I will argue that such a system will inevetibly devolve into a tyrannical dictatorship at some point, but a benevolent dictatorship is certainly as possible as the existence of a benevolent person.

Here's a nice propaganda video for anyone who's interested.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z1buym2xUM[/youtube]

You mean, some Marxist can retch up an interpretation that you like? Well, that's all fine and dandy, but the problem I would have with the labor theory of value is that it is simply wrong. There is nothing correct about it, as value only related to labor through a market mechanism, otherwise there is no necessary connection.


Um.... what has been shown time and time again is that all systems are flawed. I mean, a number of people have made a number of predictions about how the system will end up being. Schumpeter thought that we would descend into a sick socialism. Fukuyama thinks that capitalistic democracy is the end of history. And the ideas go on and on. Marx just becomes an additional person. Honestly, one could argue that libertarians have considered their market system to be a necessity for the economy, and that even if it were abolished, it would have to be recreated, but that isn't the exact same thing as the Marxian prediction.


Umm.... there are a few ideas. There is the notion of political action and political awareness(libertarian party and CATO think-tank), there is the notion of subversion(agorism), and there is the notion of splitting away(seasteading). None of those mechanisms posits an inevitability, but instead, they are all directions that libertarians consider.