What the Tea Party Needs to Hear

The Tea- Party has finally come to Comanche County. And so I suppose this is my cue to finally get involved. But before I do I would like to address a few things.

In the first place its important to recognize that not all of the “founding fathers” were patriots. There was quite a large contingency of men during those formative years that were not in favor of liberty for mankind, nor for low taxation, nor for a limited government. Ben Franklin at one point put fourth the idea of doing away with the states entirely and having a single central government to rule the entire country. Hamilton envisioned an American empire based off the British Empire. And George Washington after Fighting a war over taxes on tea, was ready to fight a war against his own people who were rebelling over his unjust tax on whiskey. On the other side there were principled men, who were of the opinion that what London was doing wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t be right even if it were our government that did it. George Mason, and Patrick Henry, chief among them, campaigned against the Ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, and were instrumental in the drafting of the Bill of Rights, without which, the constitution would be clearly seen for what it is, the Charter of a centralized, overbearing, intrusive and unjust centralized government.

The Constitution is not holy, it was not written by the finger of God on stone tablets and brought down from Mount Sini by Washington! the men who voted for it, were not founding fathers, but traitors to the revolution. Its justification, the very excuse for a stronger centralized government was to beat the british and gain our independence, they said the Articles were not strong enough. And if we lived in Ray Bradbury’s novel, we might accept this as truth, but the fact is that the King signed a peace treaty with the 13 colonies and Vermont four years before the constitution was ratified. Turns out the constitution was entirely unnecessary. Yet there was a silver lining, in that dark our. The Anti Federalist, those against a strong centralized government gave us the bill of rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution.

They were not the founding fathers, that is they had very little to do with establishing the government that we know today, instead I like to call them Revolutionaries. The Washington’s and the Hamilton’s wanted freedom from the british only to Found their own British system here in America, The Revolutionaries, wanted a real Revolution, to get out from under the yoke of the centralized government of England and to live free, not to “found” anything!

Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots would be shocked to know that millions of school children across this land pledge allegiance to the federal government. His idea of our republic was one of men, not of government. Imagine, that in those days, even eighty years later, a fellow living in a relatively rural area such as ours would likely live his entire life without seeing a federal employee except the USPS worker who brought his mail. (the USPS owes its origins to Franklin who again wanted the british system transplanted into America, the British established a government post office for the sole task of reading private letters of its subjects in order to sniff out sedition.) What has the federal government got to do with me?

The federal government is the servant of the states and of the people, thus it seems backwards, even Orwellian that the servant should demand allegiance from its master! How is it conceivable that a sovereign should pledge allegiance to his servant? It was only in the warped and twisted mind of a socialist named Francis Bellemy that this would be the case. He Authored the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. His cousin wrote a socialist utopia novel entitled Looking backwards, assuming that shortly after 1888 America became socialists and imagining what the world would look like in the year 2000. Of course he and his cousin knew that socialism could never be realized until the State were supreme, and to that end Francis wrote the Pledge in order to reinforce that idea, that the central government demanded our allegiance over all other things and in all areas of life, the phrase liberty and justice was either meant as in “social liberty and justice” or just as ploy to make it more palatable to the masses.

I’ve seen on t.v., not on my own mind you, since I don’t have enough loose money to spend on FCC filtered media, that the United States flag is waved at Tea Party rallies across America. I promise you this, I will never be seen doing so. I am told that that is my flag and that I should love it. I can not muster this love. That is the flag flown outside the IRS building, where they count my hard earned money I’ve worked for. That is the flag flown outside of the FCC building where they do everything they can to filter the information that I am able to take in. That is the flag flown outside the Human Services building where they redistribute our money to those unwilling to work, and in the case where the individual is unable to work, they usurp one of the roles of the Church and the community. The flag flown outside the Social Security Administration building that takes your money for old age, but that you will most likely not see. It is the flag that is flown outside the Federal Education Department that tries to teach our children that the states are mere provinces of the federal government and that Lincoln saved the country.

He did not save the country, he saved the federal government, the country is the church houses, neighbors, businesses, friends and family, and even the landscape that you see everyday. The government is the monopoly apparatus of compulsion and violence that rules over the country. Thus I elect to fly the Gadsden Flag, the true American Flag, not the United States Government flag.

But let me touch more on Lincoln. You were taught in school that he saved the country, as I mentioned what he really did was save the American Empire. He a hero not just to the likes of George W. Bush and Obama, but was first the hero of Bismarck, Hitler, Karl Marx, and Stalin. Why? Because he did everything in his power, and even things outside of his power to retain control over people who wished to have their own government, be self ruling, and be left alone. He instituted a central bank, which created money out of thin air, the forerunner to the Federal Reserve today. It was under him that the income tax was first levied on Americans, a tax so vile it would make Patrick Henry cry out for british rule again, if not lead him to suicide. When a man named Vandingham in Ohio, a former congressman, at a rally spoke out against the income tax, Lincoln had him arrested without a warrant and deported to the South. Upon hearing this Chief Justice Tanney wrote the president a letter, rebuking him, Lincoln’s response was to issue an arrest warrant for Tanney himself (no one executed the warrant). He shutdown hundreds of newspapers in New York City and across the North. He forcibly kept the Maryland state legislature from convening. He did nothing to reign in his generals who stole from southerners, even those who wanted nothing to do with the war one way or another, or when they burned civilian homes and businesses, even churches across the South. Prior to lincoln the states had on occasion instituted drafts, but Lincoln was the first to successfully institute a national draft. denying men of their liberty, and in many cases ultimately their lives in order to deny other men their freedom. And while we are on the topic of freedom, the most famous and least read document must be the Emancipation Proclamation. The government schools teach us that Lincoln freed the slaves, in fact it freed not a one. The document only had effect, or only claimed to have effect, where the federal government had no control. Whole states were exempted, those that remained loyal to the federal government, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, the capitol city itself, Delaware along with the 67 counties of Virginia that later became West Virginia. Even the places where the federal army had taken control of like parts of Tennessee were purposefully omitted from the Emancipation Proclamation. It was nothing more than a cheap political trick, the document was sent out across Europe in the hopes of casting the war as one over slavery in order to keep European powers from intervening on the side of self determination.

I mention this history to bring to light whats real, what is true. If we were a football team playing a game perhaps we could afford to aspire to a fictional hero. But the stakes are far to high here. Know your history. He who controls the past controls the present, and right now the past and the present is controlled by those who see the government not as the servant of the people, but the other way around.

And now we are left with three topics that, were it not for Lincoln, we might not have to discuss, taxation, the military, and the federal reserve.

If prostitution is the oldest profession known to the world, taxation is without a doubt the second oldest. Taxation is the extortion of money through the threat, or actual use of violence. when it is done by a gang, or by a common criminal, it is known as theft, or extortion, but when it is done by the most powerful gang in the land, and the strongest criminals it is called taxation. Go. Read Common Sense by Thomas Paine. He articulates far better than I ever could how the King traces his lineage not to some saint appointed by God, but to William the Bastard, a Norman leading a band of criminals onto the British Isle to subjugate the Anglo-Saxons to his own rule, to kill their men, ravage their women, enslave their children, and deprive their remaining descendants of their land, and their money. But for the Thomas Paines of today, there is no king, instead, we have democracy. where there is not one man, that might be poisoned beheaded or overthrown, but where there are 150 million men and women who subject the other half to their rule. I implore you, love liberty, and do not let your loyalty to liberty be subdued because it is a whole population that taxes you rather than a solitary king. Hold the democracy to the same standard that you would apply to the monarchy. If we were under a king today with the laws and regulations and restrictions, not to mention taxes that are imposed on us, there would be revolution. but because it is a democracy and not a king, this humble gathering reflects all of the outrage present in Comanche County! Taxation is theft. This is what Henry Lightfoot Lee referred to when he said “Government is a necessary evil.” he said that it was evil. evil is the chief adjective in the sentence, necessary only modifies evil. And let me add that he said necessary because he did not have sufficient faith in the free market to leave necessary out. But I will save this topic for another time. my complaint is not that we are taxed to Heavily by D.C., but that we are taxed at all! Let me digress back to the founders and the revolutionaries once again, Ben Franklin suggested that, since we were being taxed without representation, that we send representatives to London, to the house of Commons that we would be represented. Had his advice been followed we would never have gained our independence, nor thrown off England’s oppressive taxes. But the taxes weren’t only oppressive they were unjust, and even if we had sent men to London, they would have remained unjust, for what the Revolutionaries meant when they cried out against “taxation without representation” was not that we should be represented in the central government thousands of miles away, but that the assembly in Massachusetts had not approved the taxes that were levied on them. That the house of Burgesses had not approved the tax. The revolutionaries saw their own local body as their representatives, not some would be out of touch politician sent to the capital of the central government, as likely as not to get caught up in all kinds of scandals and self gratifying political deals. Now you may ask, without taxes how would we fund the government? This we can save for another time, but for now let me just ask just how much government exactly do you want to have? The fact is, if we were to eliminate the entire tax code, and to only allow our tariffs to stay in force, we would still be able to fund a government of the size that we had when Clinton left office. And even then, for those of you who remember, wasn’t the government then to big to bear?

Again let me turn back to history, we know why the patriots resorted to arms, over taxation, but what was it that sparked the taxation of the American colonies in the late 1760’s and early 1770’s? What caused the British government to resort to the Townsend Acts, the Stamp Act, the Navigation Acts? It was nothing else but the expenses incurred by the British Military and the recent war with the French. Understand I am not unsympathetic to those who have loved ones in the military, or those who have made sacrifices for what they thought was liberty. But the same case then is before us now. The British started a war, and sent soldiers to North America in order to “protect us from the French and the” allegedly “savage indians.” But did we need protecting? it seems that we had been doing quite well on our own for the previous century. but they started a war again for our defense and then want us to pay for it. The patriots knew it was nonsense, We didn’t need defending from the central government, we could defend ourselves just fine. In fact the war was quite unnecessary and caused great hardships the the families and the commerce of the colonies. To add insult to injury, they decided to tax us for it. Things are not so different today. The federal government has instigated revolutions, helped to put down other revolutions, and performed coups all over the world until finally someone attacked us, they use this to start a war, and then tax us in order to pay for it. We spend more on our military today than the next 25 countries combined. Now where does this money come from except from taxes? Any one who is truly against large government must also be against a large standing army. Remember that the Military is also part of the government and a very expensive branch of it.

Continuing on the military thread I have 2 points to make one historical, the other economical. For those interested in history, in Roman history in particular, no question draws more debate than that of “When did Rome begin to fall?” Some say with the Rise of Caesar, I say that was the end. I say the beginning came in 396 B.C. during an otherwise forgotten battle only 12 miles from Rome. The Siege of Veii was taking longer than expected, and the men were anxious to go back home to their farms, their jobs, and their families. They could not afford to fight through the harvest and into winter. So the Senate decided to pay the soldiers. From that point on, Roman men no longer fought solely for their home, or for “The Gory of Rome” as flawed as that cause was, but also for a paycheck. Finally the time came when the soldiers didn’t fight at all for Rome, but only for a paycheck. This should bother you. And my response to the question, how then will the soldiers be provided for, I say, that if you require a paycheck to defend your home and your family, you are not a man! Of course fighting on another continent isn’t exactly defending your family, and so I suppose we wouldn’t be in the wars we are in today.

On to the economic aspect. We currently view welfare as a person getting a check to buy food and pay the rent while he sits at home with the A/C running and watches Jerry Springer. This is certainly welfare, but it would be no less welfare if we gave him a check for digging a hole on the odd days of the month and filling it back in on the even days. A job is not just something to do, but something that needs to be done. Whether or not it is something that needs to be done is determined by the free will of people as reflected in the free market. Clearly no one will pay any amount of money to have a hole dug one day only to have it filled back in the next, and so this is welfare. The truth of the matter is, unless a job is done, and the wages for that job are agreed upon in the open and free market, it is nothing short of welfare. Given that the military is not hired on the free market, it must be concluded then that those in the military, and indeed all government employees are welfare recipients. Now you know how much of a drain on the economy and on your own pockets the welfare system is, but the same is true of our military system. instead of holding jobs that contribute to the betterment of the lives of others, we have over a million men and women receiving checks to fight wars and stir up even more trouble for ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, or at best sitting in motor pools smoking cigarettes in over 50 other countries around the world. How much richer would we be, how much better off would we be, how much freeer would we be if those million men and women were working at jobs contributing to the economy rather than being paid out of stolen money? Jefferson said that A standing army was one of the greatest threats to a free people. most people take that to mean that the army would come under the control of some tyrant like Caesar or Lincoln, but even without this occurring our liberty is put in peril by its economic implications.

Finally we come to the central bank, or the Federal Reserve as it is known today. You see if taxes were the sole means in which to pay for the military, everyone here, infact everyone across the country would be as opposed to the government military as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were. but the Federal Government came up with a trick, they would create a central bank that could just print money out of thin air. This way taxes could stay low (relative to what they would be if taxes were the only way to pay for things) which is good for getting votes, but they could still fund the military, and whatever projects, schools, roads, bridges, everything from NASA to the Navy, and Welfare to Warfare. But of course printing money is in fact a tax, it is a hidden tax. You all have heard of supply and demand, when there is a greater supply of a commodity then the price for it goes down, from cars to cereal this is the case. But few stop to ponder its validity when its applied to money itself. Turns out it still holds. the more dollars their are, the less purchasing power each dollar has. Economists on t.v. talk as if rising prices are inflation, but the fact is that inflation refers to the inflation of the money supply. Meaning that more dollars have been printed. This, as I’ve said leads to prices going up. Many complain that we are taxed when we earn money, and taxed when we spend it, but because of the Federal Reserve, we are also taxed if we save it! Because for every dollar printed, the dollars you have in the bank, and even the ones under your mattress loose in value. you will be able to afford less, to buy less with a dollar 5 years from now as you can today. Democrats respond to this problem with minimum wage laws, and Republicans ignore it. but the fact is that rising prices are only a symptom of a greater problem. The Fed! Were we to be on a gold standard, if gold were money today, You wouldn’t have to hire a wall street genius to invest your money. Instead of money loosing its value because its constantly being printed, your money would gain value, because the amount of gold in circulation would rise, due to mining, but only marginally so, since mining cost much more than a printing press, and relative to the population and increase in both capital and consumable goods it would actually decline. Supply and demand, the supply increasing slightly while demand increasing significantly over time, would cause the purchasing price of your money to increase over time, you would only need to have a secure safe in your own home to have a reliable retirement account. And even those getting paid the minimum wage, wouldn’t need a real raise, since the dollar as defined (today as 1/1250th of an ounce of gold) would increase in value slowly over time. giving the person at $7.25 an hour a slight real raise gradually over time.

This concludes every topic I wish to cover insofar as an outline of my core goals and values are concerned. Now let me turn to the area of strategy. Its said that Socialists concern themselves 90% with how to implement their programs and only 10% with how their ideas will actually work. While Libertarians spend 90% of their time thinking of how a libertarian society would work and what is wrong with the state, and only 10% of their time thinking about how to implement their programs. If there were a 12 step program on how to implement Libertarian policies, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what steps 2 through 12 would be. but I can tell you what step one would be. To work on Theory. What do we stand for? (if I haven’t said it explicitly yet, Life, Liberty, and Property. What does and what does not warrant violence? For this movement to be successful, we must be well read. and be educated. We had a revolution here, and it was successful, I attribute that success to the level of education and the ideological purity of the revolutionaries. Shortly thereafter, the French had a revolution, it started off strong, and it looked like it would be successful. but the French were just upset with the king. they had not read John Locke, nor John Trenchard, nor Thomas Gordon, nor John Wilkes, nor John Lillburne. And at the end of the day the French Revolution failed. They ended up with blood running in the street, starvation, conscription, the reign of terror, and an Emperor even worse than the king they had killed.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the vanguard, the elite, the best of the best when it comes to resisting governmental tyranny. It is primarily an economic institution, which I can not over emphasize the importance of understanding economics. As easy as it is for you and I to understand the depravation of Liberty under Socialism, many will only understand the unfeasibility of Socialism as an economic system. Ludwig von Mises, Systematically refuted Socialism as a system of production in 1927 in a time when everyone thought it was the wave of the future. The institute is named in his honor. His best student Murray N. Rothbard was the founder, he was also the founder of the Cato Institute, but it of course what hijacked out from under him. Rothbard wrote many books, What has the Government Done to Our Money? and The Case against the Fed are both must reads dealing with... Money. He also wrote Conceived in Liberty a history of the colonies from their planting until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. and the single work that needs to be read by everyone here before you read anything else. The Ethics of Liberty. the first 4 or 5 chapters being crucial to establishing a solid basis for a philosophy of Liberty.

The Mises institute, online at www.mises.org has over 6 TBs of data dedicated to accurate history, sound economics, and Liberty available for free. They have hundreds of books for sale, and dozens for free in PDF, .epub, and on audio that you can download for free either on their site or on itunes, under mises university along with plenty of speeches, covering everything from anti trust laws, to intellectual property laws, and the history of Rome, to the history of WWII.

Being in the moment, it is to soon to tell, but I can tell this much, unless we dedicate ourselves to liberty, and to being educated, this movement will at best fizzle, and at worst end up like the French Revolution.
Thank you for your time.

Why the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is "Centrist"

I was recently cited as claiming that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a "centrist" organization. This can be portrayed as either a good or bad thing depending on the context. I don't recall any particular writing in which I explicitly said this, but I have made statements to this effect before. Well, I stand by such a statement and would like to explain what I mean by it. This requires me to unpack what the term "centrist" brings to mind for me.

The term "centrist" has the following possible connotations for me:

1. Fusionism. By fusionism I refer to eclectic philosophies that engage in a synthesis of a variety of elements, some of which may be commonly thought of as being in opposition to each other. Fusionism is ideological integration. Various people within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left definitely have certain fusionist tendencies, which involves attempts at reconciling advocacy for free markets with the concerns often associated with social anarchism. In short, the fusionism within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a matter of reconciliation between the ideas of "market anarchism" and "libertarian socialism". Relative to hardcore adherants of either side of that divide, such reconciliation is "somewhere in between".

2. Pluralism. By pluralism I refer to a certain sense of tolerance or inclusiveness towards a wide scope of different flavors and models. While fusionism is a deliberate mixing of different elements into one thing, pluralism is simply an open attitude towards the co-existence of different elements. Pluralism may be thought of as anti-monistic, I.E. opposed to the idea of a singular system. Certain people within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left seem to have pluralist tendencies. This may involve envisioning different libertarian ideologies on a spectrum of preferences that are all capable of co-existing in a broad framework of freedom.

3. Opportunism. Centrism also can have certain associations with opportunism. In the cliche context of electoral politics, this may be manifested as politicians who "blow in the wind" with no real consistency, changing positions whenever it benefits them the most or happens to be what is popular at the moment. It can also take the form of the exploitation of semantic ambiguity for the purpose of selling certain ideas in a more favorable way to people. While I definitely would not attack the Alliance of the Libertarian Left as being dishonest, there are certain people or at least some things that certain people have written that come off as oppurtunistic to me. This may involve trying to sell anarcho-capitalism with leftist rhetoric.

When the matter is put in these terms, I definitely think that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left tends to be "centrist", although this means that it is diverse precisely because of the more pluralist and fusionist tendencies. It cannot be pinned down to any particular libertarian or anarchist philosophy. It contains people who have positions that could be considered ambiguous or eclectic relative to the "partisan" options usually presented and people who are open to a fairly wide variety of views. Other than a website with a statement that lists off a variety of sub-categories and amounts to the advocacy of opposition to cultural authoritarianism, it really has no official platform.

Relative to the standards of your typical social anarchist, especially anarcho-communists, many of the people in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left are not likely to be viewed as "hard left", and this is probably because of its overlap with free market libertarian philosophy. And when it comes to contentions over things like property, it seems to be split or at least have a multitude of positions on the matter. There are some people in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left who, in my view, are largely still clinging to the ideas of the libertarian right or at least are still in what could be considered a transitory stage in which they are exploring the anarchist left. Hence, by certain standards, at least certain elements within the ALLiance could be considered kind of "soft" or lacking much leftist substance.

On the other hand, it could be said that many of the members of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left are heretics from the anarcho-capitalist movement, ex-anarcho-capitalists or post-anarcho-capitalists who have moved "leftward" in some way. Also, the emphasis on "thick libertarianism" with a left-wing flavor, particularly as introduced by Charles Johnson, definitely strengthens its leftist credentials. The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is not only reconciliationist in character, but also deviationist. Many of its members are deviants from standard American libertarianism, some of whom have substantive objections to anarcho-capitalism.

I hope that this justifies my claim that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is "centrist", both in positive and negative terms. I think that synthesis views can be a good thing and consider myself to have one, and pluralism is something that I think is a good thing when in its proper context. At the same time, I reject the attempt to obfuscate fundamental irreconcilable differences through the use of rhetoric and I have some trouble with ideilogies that may be too eclectic in some ways. In either case, this is my honest accessment of the group as one who considers myself to be a member of it.

Does Freedom Have A Social Context?

Is it really the case that freedom is a separable factor from the kind of social atmosphere in which people exist? I think not. The particular conditions within a society is linked with people's capacity to independently make decisions about their own lives. This includes the possibility of mobility and the structural landscape of power. A social context in which there is a significant disparity of power, including the kind of power that comes with ownership and wealth, functions as a limit on freedom in that it is more susceptible to certain consequences.

A social hierarchy is what occurs when disparities of power are institutionalized and used to limit the freedom of certain people. What this entails, in effect, is that those in positions of power have the most freedom, while those who are in a subordinate or dependant position relative to such power structures have the least freedom. While freedom might not be something that is quantifiable in the sense of mathematical exactitude, it is relative to the particular circumstances that would allow an individual to exercise their faculties and live without appeal to a command structure. When power is centralized or densely concentrated, a breeding ground for authoritarianism is in place.

When the alternative to subordination to authority requires a mobile maneuver and a sacrifice of well-being, to the point where there really is no viable alternative at all or the only alternatives are just subordination to another authority, people aren't really free in the social context. They are systematically prevented from being free by the circumstances of the environment. The possibility of full consent is precluded. At best, they acquiesce for practical reasons. And it is most definitely not simply "nature", some sort of inherent necessity at the level of a law of physics, that causes them to be unfree. The kind of environment in question is a social one having to do with the particular distribution of power.

It is true that a position of power is not absolutely or inherently authoritarian, in the sense that someone can refrain from exercising it or using it to impose an institutional monopoly. But it is also true that the circumstance opens up the possibility of this and that authoritarian consequences are ultimately more likely to occur when power is concentrated. For example, a society in which the economic structure of power is plutocratic or one in which the distribution of land is feudal, is logically compatible with and an apt atmosphere for authoritarianism. The people who exclusively hold such massive amounts of power are in a better-suited position to control other people.

This is part of why I really don't understand certain proclamations that some people make to the effect of saying that particular socio-economic and cultural circumstances are effectively irrelevant "so long as everyone is free", or worse, "so long as I'm free". This has also been expressed in the form of a "consequences be damned" mentality. But the problem is that this presumes the two to be absolutely separable. To be sure, perhaps it is possible for a society to at least nominally be free and yet have a sick culture or be stricken with poverty. But aside from the fact that there would still be a reason for opposing a sick culture and mass-poverty in and of themselves, the idea that such an atmosphere can last without internal tensions causing it to be unfree strikes me as ridiculous.

I would say that this kind of "freedom" doesn't amount to much if it ultimately just means that most people live in a horrible socio-economic atmosphere or that society ghettoizes itself into fiefdoms. Such conditions are undesirable regardless of any nominal "freedom" that comes along with them. To have no real concern about the actual condition of people's lives in the name of "freedom" seems to turn freedom into a fairly useless abstraction, while reflecting what could frankly be called psychological bankruptcy and a low moral character. I would question the character of anyone that just said "screw society, as long as I'm left alone" and meant that plainly. It seems like more of an anti-social streak than a well thought out philosophy of freedom.

Healthy social atmospheres are desirable both for their own sake and in the sense that they integrate with freedom. It could be said that freedom is a prerequisite for a healthy social atmosphere and it could also be said that a healthy social atmosphere is a prerequisite for freedom. They are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are robbed of substance without each other. This is a more holistic view. It is also a more society-based view, because I'm insisting on freedom and society as being reconcilable and mutually dependant. A philosophy that openly (although sometimes not-so-openly) says "down with society" in its one-eyed zeal to respect some narrow set of principles such as property rights is doomed from the start.

Libertarianism and Segregation

Recently there has been some uproar over some statements from Ron Paul's son Rand Paul (who, IMO, is a fairly wishy-washy conservative Republican that isn't as radical as his father) to the effect of a defense of segregation. This has sparked a little bit of resurging talk among libertarians about the question. I'd like to share some of my thoughts about this in general rather than specifically in reference to Rand Paul and his controversy.

For libertarians, to the extent that there is something that can be called a defense of segregation, it is generally argued for on the more "impartial" grounds of property rights. The arguement generally goes something like this: despite the fact that we may be personally opposed to segregation, it is justified insofar as it is a manifestation of the right of property owners to exclude who they want from their property. Thus, in principle, it is legally permissible for both home owners and buisiness owners to adopt a policy of segregation (whether it be racial, religious, or whatever). The alternative is "forced association", which is unlibertarian.

At least at the surface level, it appears impossible for any libertarian to disagree with this. By the very least, a libertarian qua libertarian cannot condone politically institutionalized integration in the sense of a universalized legal obligation to be inclusive towards certain groups. But I think that once one gets more specific about what we are really talking about, complications emerge. For one thing, the libertarian qua libertarian must at a minimum be equally opposed to politically institutionalized segregation, and the kind of segregation that existed en mass before the civil rights movement most certainly wasn't simply a matter of the property rights of citizens. It was a matter of state law and land.

One route in which certain claims to legitimate segregation can be questioned is from the perspective of justified property titles in the first place. We could start with the most obvious case. If one doesn't recognize the state itself as having a legitimate title, then the state can not have a right to discriminate. This delegitimizes all segregation relative to state-controlled land. We could go further than this too. To the extent that the state upholds "private" titles that aren't legitimate, then a right to discriminate is delegitimized in those cases as well. This level of analysis (justified title) by itself already begins to whittle away at the tenability of certain property-based justifications for segregation, although it does not cover all bases.

There is also some ambiguity more generally in the position supporting property rights. The home is often used as an analogy to demonstrate the normalcy of such levels of exclusion, but this feels like a false analogy when we are talking about something much more systematic or at larger scales such as an entire community. The larger the land mass that is being talked about is, and the more disconnected the property claim in question is from use, the more that this defense seems ridiculous and devolves into institutional segregation anyways. It becomes a defense of "covenants" (which, in this case, is little more than a code word for community-wide laws) that require every owner in a community to be exclusive in a particular way. In short, we end up with something rather state-like.

We could go further than this. Why is "free association" necessarily relative to something territorial? Indeed, there seems to be some tension here between the restrictions of absolutely respecting territorial boundaries and upholding people's personal freedom. In theory, territorialist notions of property rights (coupled with the expansion of territorial claims in a scarce world) can amount to a defense of excluding someone from the possibility of having any rights at all, since you effectively have to either own land or be invited on to someone else's land in order to occupy a given space and associate freely. This gets us into much more general questions, but it does relate to segregation: there is good reason for believing that a rigidly territorially segregated society is inherently unfree.

One of the last ditch efforts that some libertarians make to defend segregation is essentially to proclaim that it is the natural order for people to separate, as something that will inherently happen to a significant degree due to the innate tendencies of groups. I believe this position to be philosophically indefensible. Not only does it begin to cross over into the positive beliefs of certain types of racists, but it is based on bankrupt notion of "human nature" and a tunnel-visioned level of analysis that is only capable of seeing the matter through the lens of things like biology and biological metaphors. It is essentially "innatism" applied to a particular segment of human experience and then extrapolated to the level of a general natural law.

There is more that I can say about this, but this functions as a rough outline of some of the reasons I have for thinking that libertarians should be anti-segregation, not just as an optional personal preference on the side but as a logically connected part of a libertarian social philosophy.

The Usefulness of a Left/Right Distinction

I'd like to defend the proposition that a left/right distinction is useful even for libertarians, although the proposition does have some qualifications.

There is a sense in which it may make sense to say that libertarians transcend the left/right dichotomy at least in the more mainstream and common way that it is presented, in terms of the over simplistic choice between contemporary liberalism and conservatism. Libertarians do not fall neatly into such boxes. Libertarianism could be presented as either synthesizing elements that are typically associated with both or as falling outside of the paradigm because it represents two sides of the same statist coin that libertarians oppose. When the dichotomy is presented in such terms, then perhaps libertarians can claim to be unique.

But it may also be the case that reducing everything to a new dichotomy of statist vs. non-statist or anti-statist can obfuscate the details of political ideologies. One reason for this is that precisely what counts as statist and non-statist may be defined in a way that is contingent on certain norms that are in dispute. Precisely what norms are sufficient for a stateless society to arise and sustainably function is debatable at least on consequentialist grounds. Libertarians sometimes draw different conclusions about what common principles imply. Simply saying that it's about aggression, while doing this in a way that presumes ones own particular take on things, doesn't seem to take the multitude of positions at play into account.

It also isn't clear by any means that all libertarians have completely done away with baggage that can be traced back to the more common left/right dichotomy. People come into libertarianism from different angles, and this may influence what libertarianism means to them. Libertarians do not exist in a vacuum with respect to historical context and contemporary political ideologies. There are distinctions as to how various libertarians align themselves relative to other political groups and what they distinguish as being compatible and incompatible with the core philosophy. This alone is part of precisely why there is inter-libertarian factionalism.

Once one digs into the meat of political philosophy at a broader level, a vast multitude of particular positions on multiple spectrums can emerge. This includes views on social authority, property, the distribution of resources, organizational structure, cultural norms, and so on. In light of more detailed questions such as this, the simple and perhaps vague reduction of political philosophy to "aggression" and "government" doesn't seem to tell us very much by itself, especially when one takes into account the ways in which these different spectrums may overlap or be integrated by people. I suspect that a "plumbline", in the sense of a political philosophy that is genuinely consistently "thin", simply doesn't exist.

A left/right distinction, although things obviously get much more specific than these two terms, is useful insofar as the integrated social philosophies of particular libertarians are inevitably colored by different values or norms in a way that forms distinct views that simply cannot be reduced to a vaguely defined opposition to aggression or the state. Once one begins to disambiguate that, "thickness" of some sort is already at least implicitly entering the picture. The moment that one forms a libertarian philosophy that excludes certain norms from compatibility or defines freedom in specific terms, the alleged "neutrality" of libertarianism begins to dissolve. No libertarian sincerely maintains a neutral standpoint in practise. At best, this is a self-deception.

What a left/right distinction in a libertarian context may signify are varieties of gradiation in terms of how things like more general social views, property norms, and economic goals interlock in an overall ideological system. On a property spectrum, for example, hardcore propertarians are on the far right and communists are on the far left. On an economics spectrum, people who explicitly favor hierarchical and oligarchic structures are to the right of people who put an emphasis on a more equitable distribution of resources and flatter organizational structures. On a social spectrum, people who strongly question traditional social authority could be said to be to the left of those that are indifferent or supportive of it. These are real tendencies, and "left" and "right" are the most convenient and most-likely-to-be-understood terms for them.

The claim that these views are irrelevant seems to obfuscate the way in which "libertarianism" is effected by them. It is necessary to take such things into account if one wants to accurately consider the various ideas that float in and out of "libertarian" circles. While the desire for libertarianism to be unique is understandable at a certain level, it is not unique in a sense that is completely detached from relations with "other" ideas. Once such ideas are considered, this is the context in which a left/right distinction understandably continues to be a question for libertarians, even if some people want to avoid the terminology.

What Is Mutualism?

To be honest, while mutualism is a term that I've come to adopt for myself, it isn't entirely clear to me what mutualism is. What I mean by this is that it seems hard to identify an essential feature that all of the people who call themselves mutualists share in common. The positions currently being advocated under the title of mutualism seem to run the gamut from modified or modernized individualist anarchism (Kevin Carson) to a subtle neo-Proudhonian notion and "the anarchism of approximations" (Shawn Wilbur) to a more hardcore kind of libertarian socialism that thinks the other mutualists largely sound like anarcho-capitalists or make too many concessions to property (Francios Tremblay).

There certainly is a history of mutualism going back to classic thinkers such as P.J. Proudhon and W.B. Greene, but no self-proclaimed mutualist that I know of really is a strict adherent to the ideas of such people (and I don't mean to imply that one necessarily should be). The meaning attached to mutualism seems to be at least somewhat different for many people in a contemporary context, in contrast with its 19th century roots. This may partially be due to changes in economic theory. It also may be a matter of the ideological background or history of the people that have become interested in mutualism, which causes there to be market and social anarchist spins on mutualism and interpretations of Proudhon.

It is true that there are certain reoccurring themes that tend to be associated with mutualism, such as an occupation and use standard of ownership, the cost principle, reciprocity, a focus on synthesizing equality and liberty, the antinomy of the individual and society, and so on. Yet some of these themes seem to fall under the general umbrella of the libertarian left, and one would think that mutualism is more specific than that. Is mutualism "free market anti-capitalism"? Well, there seems to be a spectrum of positions among the people adopting that kind of rhetoric, some of which are more substantive than others. Is mutualism a form of libertarian socialism? Well, some of the libertarian socialists I've encountered would scoff at the more market-oriented ideas that are called mutualism.

One thing that does seem to at least vaguely be common to people that consider themselves mutualists is that they have a sort of nuanced position or even a synthesis that has the feeling of being neither anarcho-capitalism or something that would be acceptable in the more hardcore platforms of social anarchism, as a sort of middle ground that doesn't fit neatly into the boxes of various party lines or dogmas. There does appear to be certain themes of irreducible complexity and plays of apparent opposites that resolve or dissolve at some point in the play of concepts. The term mutualism itself seems to suggest synthesis, although this may be a superficial mental association on my part.

I suppose part of the confusion revolves around conflict between different interpretations. Mutualism has been portrayed as anything from fairly standard free market libertarianism with somewhat softened property norms and a different take on the implications of Austrian economics to an explicitly libertarian socialist creed with a prescriptive labor theory of value that calls for the absolute abolition of all profit, rent, and interest. This gets into tensions between descriptive and prescriptive formulations, different ideas on property, and varying degrees of emphasis on markets. With such considerations in mind, it should be no wonder that mutualism doesn't necessarily have a completely clear identity.

When I advocate my own ideas, I generally do not express them as being "the mutualist creed". They are the ideas of me as an individual, and they may or may not have anything explicitly to do with mutualism qua mutualism. But what does tend to bind me to the term, to the extent that could be said to be bound by it, is simply the extent to which I have ideas in common with other people who are called mutualists. I also adopt the term in the context of resonations with P.J. Proudhon. I have no particular problem using the term for myself, despite what seems to be the somewhat fragmented and approximate meanings that it conjures. I would just avoid reducing myself to it, which meshes with my opposition to reductionism in general.

Ultimately, I guess I would like to highlight the ambiguity that sometimes lurks behind rather obscure political labels such as "mutualism". From a certain perspective, this could be portrayed as a good thing in the sense that it stops it from hardening into a dogma. At the same time, the desire for clarity is understandable and perhaps contemporary mutualists should do a better job of hashing out exactly what it is that makes mutualism unique. Mutualism certainly seems to be unique, and that's part of the value I see in it. I'd be interested to see what various self-proclaimed mutualists have to say about this.

The Public Face of Libertarianism

The public face of libertarianism, particularly in America, is essentially paleoconservatism or something along those lines. The recent phenomenon of the Tea Party Movement has apparently reinforced this, with libertarian symbolism and rhetoric being mixed and associated with what seems to dominantly be angry reactionary conservatism that occurs whenever a Democrat becomes the president, with very little libertarian sentiment beyond a rather superficial desire for less taxes and an opposition to social welfare programs.

Radical libertarians, especially libertarian anarchists, have long since noted that the libertarian movement in America has been co-opted by the conservative establishment in various ways. But at another level it could be argued that this association isn't reducible to a co-option, that it was there all along when libertarianism was given a new meaning in the 1960's and formed by people who were originally fleeing from the conservative establishment while taking some of its ideological baggage along with them. In other words, it's partly the fault of at least a notable segment of libertarians themselves, who romantisized and aligned themselves with the political right from the beginning.

Libertarianism is put foreward by many libertarians as being "neither left or right", but it is often hard for them to maintain this claim when the ideological baggage comes out. Sometimes the ideological baggage that comes out is basically American conservatism as it was during the 1st half of the 20th century, repackaged for a new generation. And due to the pet peeve issues that standard libertarians often emphasize, which largely are anti-leftist sentiments, it is no surprise that the public often percieves libertarianism as a sort of frankenstein of the right. Being "anti-government" is framed in superficial, narrow terms.

This is partially a matter of rhetoric. American libertarians have inherited the rhetoric of the old right, rhetoric that stems from a cold war mentality and a romantic conception of early America. But I do not mean to suggest that standard and mainstream libertarians should change their rhetoric in order to better sell themselves to the left while keeping their positions substantively identical. This is because some substance was also inherited along with the rhetoric, and that substance is questionable. The substantance is a ridiculous narrative of American capitalism as a glorious bastion of freedom that is being eroded by the alien forces of communism, multiculturalism, and assorted bugaboos.

It is sometimes rather revealing and disillusioning to see the kinds of issues that some libertarians choose to prioritize: complaining about the civil rights act, doing Lincoln and civil war revisionism, attacking minimum wage laws, argueing that monarchy is better than democracy, and things of this nature. This isn't to say that they are necessarily wrong about these issues (although I beg to differ with Hoppe about monarchy), but their motivations may be wrong. They give the impression that they are mainly anti-state because of its egalitarian face, out of a desire to defend some past tradition or circumstance, or because they favor some special interest or power structure. This is precisely what gives libertarians the reputation of being "wingnuts".

As a result of this, libertarians are largely the laughingstock of most political discourse, and that's unfortunate. But in spite of this libertarianism has internally spawned a revival of more coherant radicalism at its own margins, which is slowly growing and gaining a voice in opposition to the bastardized libertarianism that gets the most press and is marginalizing itself out of existence. This has the potential to change the public face of libertarianism, and I think it's important for libertarian radicals to emphasize the difference between themselves and the right-wing frankenstein that mainstream libertarianism seems to be.

Social Individualism or Nihilistic Orgies?

I recently read "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgable Chasm" by Murray Bookchin. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the position carved out in it. On one hand, Bookchin critisizes nihilistic and irrationalist elements that have popped up in contemporary anarchist thought that I think are definitely problematic. On the other hand, he seems to want to paint the entirety of individualist anarchism with this brush, even going so far as to attack Proudhon, while digging in to a sectarian position in favor of syndicalism and communism. He mocks the idea of personal autonomy as the subjective lashing out of blind rebellion, contrasting it with "social freedom".

To be sure, part of what Bookchin attacks is the sort of raw atomistic and nihilistic sense of individualism associated with Max Stirner, which is all about the individual ego in an asocial and amoral sense. I do think that this is not a particularly sensible view, especially if one wants to favor interpersonal goals and advance a workable strategy that requires people to meaningfully cooperate. But it seems as if Bookchin makes a non-sequitor and an overgeneralization by condemning individualist anarchism as such. He lambasts individualism in the most perjorative sense of the term without taking the social and moral elements that are at play at least within elements of individualist anarchism.

In essence, I think that Bookchin presents us with a false choice between being atomists and absolute communalists. The "unbridgable chasm" that he talks about, if anything, is precisely what most anarchists have attempted to do from the beginning, I.E. there is a conceptual balance between individualism and sociality or an attempt to make some sort of synthesis between personal freedom and society. I basically see no reason why one could not be a "social individualist" or an "individualist socialist". It also seems as if, in his zeal to oppose short-sighted whimsicality, Bookchin overlooks the particular dangers of the subordination of people to community pressures that is part of what may cause people to be attracted to individualism in the first place.

Part of what Bookchin is reacting against is the influence of existentialist and postmodern thought on contemporary anarchism. I can sympathize with this concern to a certain extent, insofar as it may function to negate any sense of unity or genuine solidary that goes along with social revolution, while celebrating contradiction or ambiguity in a way that at least appears to erode rational underpinnings of libertarian ideas. On the other hand, Bookchin may have been acting naively about the problems with enlightenment universalism. He seems to take some sort of rationalism for granted, without much of an explaination for it. While talking about philosophical positions, he mostly appears to be engaging in heated polemics.

Another target of Bookchin's criticism, which he associates with individualism, are the primitivists and the anti-civilization crowd. I must admit that I cannot particularly think of anything to say in defense of these ideas, since I essentially find them to be ridiculous. There is one perjorative sense of individualism that does accurately describe such views, which is the notion of pure individual (or extremely small-scale) "self-sufficiency" taken to the point of opposing any meaningful social structure that we could comprehend in a modern context. But it hardly seems as if primitivists particularly pose a significant threat to anyone. They are minority within a minority within a minority. Their voice within the anarchist movement is rather marginal.

It seems as if part of what Bookchin means by "lifestyle anarchism" is the fragmented proliferation of a multitude of personal causes, a cambrian explosition of identity politics inside of anarchism. This bothers him in that it rubs up against his notion of a large-scale cohesive or participatory movement that is unified towards certain universal goals. I suppose Bookchin's concern is understandable at a certain level, in terms of maintaining at least some ground norms that unify anarchism and provide a framework for something strategically significant. On the other hand, if this is taken too far it could be seen as the total elimination of pluralism or an overly narrow view that opposes the particular ways in which people want to express their freedom.

Ultimately, while I sympathize with some of the concerns that Bookchin brings up, it seems like he was being too much of a partisan in "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism". I feel like he frames the question in a way that is designed to force us to choose between blind individual self-expression and lockstep dedication to a particular universalist creed, with him trying to persuade us to "get with the program" through his polemics against certain groups. Still, some of the issues that he touches on resonate with me in terms of the problems that I see with too nihilistic of a philosophy being embraced by anarchists. The problem is that he doesn't do the best job of showing why this is a problem, and I don't fully buy into the alternative that he presents.

Propertarianism, Voluntaryism and Freedom

I'd like to once again clarify my own views, put in contrast to some views that I have rejected. Hopefully this may help illuminate exactly what is at stake in the conflicts that take place within libertarianism and anarchism.

Propertarianism

One of the major issues at stake is how one treats the concept of property. I use the term propertarianism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat property as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or the basis for defining everything. For example, Murray Rothbard's declaration that all rights are property rights is an example of a form of propertarianism. More generally, propertarians tends to view freedom as reducible to a question of property and have a deontological view of property rights.

I reject propertarianism. To be clear, rejecting propertarianism does not necessarily mean that one rejects property or property rights outright. In my case, what it means is that freedom is not reducible to property because life and liberty are prior concepts, and that property rights are not absolute in that they may have contextual side-constraints. I reject any framing of the question which assumes that we must either be pro-property or anti-property in some absolute sense, and I do not think that freedom and property can be absolutely equated.

There are reasons for this. There are contexts in which a default defense of property amounts to a rationalization for infringing on someone's freedom or unnecessarily taking their life. I don't think that ownership legitimately grants absolute authority, regardless of how it is acquired. I think that ownership alone may be necessary but insufficient for legitimacy. I think that freedom is more fundamentally a matter of the concrete interpersonal relations of individuals, while property is a secondary question in relation to it.

In my understanding, property in the most general and disambiguated sense is a multi-faceted concept that cannot reasonably be simplified or reduced to a particular aspect or manifestation of it. It depends on the context. In one context, property could be linked to freedom. In another context, property could be linked to aggression and tyranny. Propertarianism attempts to reduce property to its positive aspects while ignoring or denying its negative aspects, and in the process it may end up effectively legitimizing the negative aspects, even if some propertarians do not explicitly intend to rationalize or endorse infringing on anyone's freedom.

If freedom entails not unnecessarily being coerced or bossed around on the basis of other people's whims and not being physically aggressed against in a clearly non-defensive context, then propertarianism has tension with freedom to the extent that this can be justified in its framework. To take this to the institutional and territorial level, if a territorial monopoly on ultimate decision-making power and force is a state and a propertarian framework establishes a standard for legitimacy in which a qualitatively identical institution can be justified depending on nothing more than property acquisition norms, then propertarianism can logically entail and consequently lead to a state. Hence, anti-statists have a reason to be skeptical of propertarianism.

A purely deontological or absolutist conception of property rights also leads to blatant absurdities on practical grounds, particularly because it commits the propertarian to dismiss all life-boat scenarios out of hand or simply default to whatever a property owner decides as an answer. From the point of view of the person in a sticky situation, this implies that they have a moral obligation to let themselves die or at least suffer a significant amount of unecessary harm in the name of respecting property. Hence, property is effectively placed above life. This gives one consequentialist grounds for rejecting propertarianism.

At each step of the way so far, we have pointed out various ways in which property can conflict with both freedom and life. I think that it is important to emphasize that to the extent that one wants to uphold the value of freedom and life in these contexts, one has necessarily placed limits on the concept of property and its practical applications. On the flip side, to the extent that one upholds a propertarian theory one is committed to some sort of negation of freedom and life. I think that there are well-meaning propertarians who hold positions that are a bit fuzzy on these matters, so I wouldn't want to lump them in with a more extreme position. However, I think they have reason for cognitive dissonance.

These questions can invoke a lot of hostility among libertarians and anarchists. Some propertarians are absolutist to the point where the more nuanced positions that I have hinted at are considered to be diametrically opposed to everything they favor and as a total negation of property. I believe that this is false because it is based on a misleading framing of the question that smuggles in the assumption of certain absolute dichotomies. Those propertarians who think that the choice is essentially between their position and communism, or who act as if any alternative position necessarily equates to statism, are being dogmatic and making non-sequitors.

This should constitute a decent overview of the problems that I have with propertarianism. While I don't necessarily condemn property and property rights outright, I do not consider property to be the right framework to conceptualize everything in. I view these concepts as inherently being contingent and necessary but insufficient. There are great dangers to focusing so much or so narrowly on property that all common sense and decency goes out the window and the pretense of freedom begins to become suspect. It would be wise not to think in such simplistic and axiomatic terms about the question of property.

Voluntaryism

I use the term voluntaryism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat the notion of voluntary interaction as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or basis for defining everything -- in a way that does not particularly disambiguate what constitutes "voluntary" and "involuntary" relations. Generally, voluntaryism is presented in a way that makes it seem more pluralistic than propertarianism, as a sort of all-inclusive umbrella "so long as it's voluntary". I am using the term voluntaryism to refer to views that tend to consider the question of interpersonal relations as being reducible to a question of voluntary-ness, beyond which point "anything goes" or is "just a preference".

To be sure, I think that some ideas going by the name of "voluntaryism" are actually hardly distinguishable from propertarianism because the concept of "voluntary" and "involuntary" are disambiguated in explicitly propertarian terms, which can make it rather misleading. But as I am using the term here, it involves at least the intent of being more pluralistic than that. Voluntaryism contrasts with propertarianism insofar as propertarians act as if their particular models are the only ones that can possibly be compatible with freedom, while voluntaryists function on the pretext that essentially all norms other than "is it voluntary or not?" are compatible with freedom.

As I have already hinted at, I think that voluntaryism suffers from ambiguity. There are a multitude of normative concepts of exactly what is and isn't voluntary, so a meta-debate is almost inevitably begged. What one voluntaryist considers voluntary may be considered involuntary by another depending on normative assumptions, so it seems hard to think that the concept of voluntaryism can be separate from such questions. I think that voluntaryism collapses into meaninglessness if it is taken at face value, divorced from any particular norm. This kind of pluralism is just nihilism by another name, a nihilism that clings to one norm: noone's views can apply to anyone else. To put it another way, it is a form of nihilism that at least puts on the front of valueing tolerance as some sort of end in and of itself.

Perhaps the closest that voluntaryist pluralism can come to providing a neutral definition of "voluntary" that isn't packaged with additional norms is a definition that effectively reduces to "agreement". But it is hard to see how this is particularly useful. The very nature of any society contains various degrees of disagreement. A stalinist, a monarchist, or a neo-nazi aren't going to agree with libertarians and anarchists, but surely libertarians and anarchists aren't inherently imposing an "involuntary" relationship by opposing those ideas and systems. A murderer may disagree with being defended against or shunned, or they may disagree with the idea that they've done something wrong, but surely their rights aren't violated by this. Something is very fishy about this.

Some voluntaryists essentially do take a meta-view that is inclusive towards all norms and systems. Monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, whatever it may be, is fine and dandy with them "so long as it's voluntary" (or contingent on these systems isolating into enclaves or tribes). The problem is that this completely collapses the notion of "voluntary" and "involuntary". At best, it means that each system is voluntary relative to other systems, but a given system inside of this framework could be internally involuntary. Indeed, one could have a totalitarian dictatorship, and it would be okay by these standards so long as it does not cross over into the nation next door.

To be fair, not all those who call themselves voluntaryists take it to this level. Rather, what they are more likely to promote is effectively what's been called "thin libertarianism", the view that freedom or libertarianism is purely reducible to something like the non-aggression principle, beyond which point everything is a matter of subjective personal preferences. That is, it's the idea that non-aggression (which is almost always defined through the lens of some kind of property norm) is sufficient to produce a free society. Thick libertarians, such as myself, disagree with this on the grounds that this is insufficient (although perhaps necessary), that additional considerations matter.

So in this sense "voluntaryism is more or less the same thing as thin libertarianism. A big part of the problem with thin libertarianism is that it seems obvious that political outcomes are in some way dependant on cultural atmospheres and that not all cultural atmospheres are equally good breeding grounds for the goals of political freedom. Hence, this sort of total cultural and moral relativism can be a dangerous attitude to attempt to start a free society with. It is arguable that certain cultural and moral norms are likely to lead to aggression and statism, while others are a healthy precondition for realizing libertarian goals. Without getting into the details of the normative debate, I don't think it should particularly be hard to see the general point being made about this.

Some voluntaryists may be tempted to engage in a non-sequitor in reaction to such objections by accusing the critic of necessarily supporting aggression or "involuntary" relations. This is based a false framing of the discussion and it also likely involves the voluntaryist having hidden or unspoken normative assumptions. The fact of the matter is that noone has a concept of non-aggression or "voluntary" that is completely detached from particular normative premises, and in this sense "thin libertarianism" is inherently misleading, I.E. it is a front of value neutrality or a hypocritically applied relativity.

This should function as a sufficient general overview of my problems with voluntaryism. While I do think that pluralism is an important value, I don't think that it is an acontextual value or some sort of absolute. There are good reasons for being concerned about people being too open-ended with their pluralism, taken to the point of rationalizing blatant contradictions and leaving the door wide open for any old authoritarian ideology and system. And it is wise not to focus so much or so narrowly on "political justice" that a good deal of the social questions that effect people in their everyday lives are dismissed as irrelevant, while being naive about the preconditions necessary for practical achievement of political goals.

Conclusion

For the most part, this was a reiteration and clarification of positions that I've already taken ad naseum elsewhere and talked about in older posts. The two ideological tendencies that I've critisized can be viewed as representive of two extremes in a more general conflict between ideas that are too closed and absolute on one hand and ideas that are too open and ambiguous on the other hand. I would suggest that the most coherant positions can be found somewhere in between such extremes. What I've said here only scratches the surface of a multitude of much more particular discussions that could be had, but I think that I've set up the general foundation for such a discussion.

The Substance of Capitalism and Libertarianism

Capitalism is a particular economic model, an organizational mode or structure of production, which is not in and of itself the same thing as the comparably general meta-concept of a "free market". Further, the codification or standardization of this organizational mode at the legal level makes it a particular legal code (a legal code entrenching particular arrangements of ownership titles), which is not in and of itself the same thing as the comparably general meta-concept of "libertarian law". When certain left-libertarians say that they are opposed to capitalism in substance, they are opposing this particular organizational mode and legal code, not necessarily the meta-level of free markets and libertarian law. It is conceivable for one to oppose this without supporting proactive aggression.

This is part of the reason why Stephan Kinsella and others are not justified in dismissing substantive opponents of capitalism as necessarily being outside of the scope of libertarianism. The only way that this can be gotten away with is by conflating the general with the particular, I.E. putting forward something rather specific as if it was the essential component of a much more general concept. This presents people with a convoluted framing of the discourse in which there is a false set of choices between accepting the economic and legal organizational scheme that is "capitalism" and not being a libertarian. But that just begs the question as to whether or not these particular modes are necessarily logically implied by the meta-level concepts or even alone the one and only compatible implication of them.

Of course, the substance of the meta-level concepts and the relationship or ordering of such concepts could be in question as well. It is not exactly clear why the meta-concept of "liberty" necessarily has to be defined through the lens of ownership, rather than the other way around. It is not clear why there could not possibly be some tension between strong and absolutist notions of land ownership and the meta-concept of liberty. It isn't clear why non-aggression necessarily must be conceived of as an axoim or a categorical imperative that isn't a bit fuzzy. It isn't clear why a systematic application of non-proviso lockean property norms could not be called into question on consequentialist grounds, as not leading to the intended result of a genuinely free society. Nor is it clear why such political ideals are realizable in an inegalitarian cultural context.

These are the kind of begged questions that are glossed over or in which certain answers are taken for granted and treated as essential parts of the definition of meta-concepts. What sense does it make to act as if Murray Rothbard's particular formulation of property theory is essential to the general notion of political freedom? It isn't. It's a particular disambiguation that libertarians may or may not fully accept. If such a property theory represents "capitalism", and one has reason to be skeptical of such a property theory while also aiming at the general goal of political freedom and a stateless society, one could conceivably reject "capitalism" as a libertarian. One could believe that it devolves into a state in spite of the intentions of its proponents, or that it contains ambiguity that can be used to justify trampling on people's freedom in a certain context, and be a libertarian.

The substance of libertarianism, at a sort of meta-level, is more general than the substance of capitalism. Stephan Kinsella and his ilk will have none of this: he equates the substance of capitalism and libertarianism as constituting one and the same thing. But, once again, this is just begging the question. Why is libertarian capitalism the same thing as libertarianism in general? This seems somewhat analogous to claiming that a particular normative position is the same thing as a general meta-ethical position (such as moral realism). I don't claim that libertarian capitalism isn't libertarian, I would say that it's a form of libertarianism that I think gets it wrong. The same standard is not reciprocated, however: if I don't accept a particular form of libertarianism, I'm suddenly put outside of the general category of libertarianism.

On top of this, quite paradoxically, we are told (particularly by Walter Block and those mimicking his notion of "the plumbline") that libertarianism in general is neutral to preferences, I.E. it is sold as a sort of all-inclusive relativism. This is claimed by some of the very same people that insist on particular norms as essential to libertarianism, ruling out everything to "the left" of anarcho-capitalism in terms of property norms and economic organization. The begged question is where the line is drawn between necessary norms and open-ended preference neutrality. On one hand, one could skeptically ask, "Why aren't your property norms just preferences too?". On the other hand, one could wonder if this (at least superficially) relativist proclamation is ambiguous and misleading, and ask whether there may actually be stronger, additional, or even alternative norms necessary for a particularly workable form of libertarianism to be made (even if one simultaneously still grants the term "libertarian" to people that don't accept those norms).

As we can see, those who are trying to monopolize libertarianism on the behalf of capitalism beg a whole host of questions. It begs the questions of rights theory, property theory, the thick and thin libertarianism discussion, and so on. But what seems most fair to me, in terms of the question of "who is a libertarian?", is that it is fundamentally constituted by an attitude that seeks to obtain or maximize political freedom as a meta-concept (and yes, this is distinguishable from the umbrella of welfare-liberalism). Anything beyond that is working out the details inside of libertarianism, which inevitably leads to subdivisions. One may think that particular subdivisions have it wrong and yet still acknowledge their status as libertarians. It is hard to look at the opposite route and not see it as dogmatism.

In a sense, yes, I am openly what some might call a "left-sectarian" in the sense that I philosophically reject a notable portion of the ideas of what I consider to be the general paradigm of the libertarian right (such as the ideas of folks such as Hans Hoppe, Walter Block, Stephan Kinsella, and even Murray Rothbard) and I do not particularly buy into the claims made by some such people that they are really in a neutral zone with respect to "left" and "right" ideological trends (when the virulently anti-leftist fangs come out, "plumbline" claims are particularly misleading). At the same time, I view libertarianism in the most general sense to be an umbrella that includes these people and their ideas, and that in spite of some rather strong disagreements there still are internal libertarians relations of a sort. But the substance of ideas is more fundamental than general labels, so I'm content reciprocally considering them ideological enemies *inside of libertarianism* to the extent that we disagree on fundamental points and when I am systematically attacked on the basis of prejudice by the people in such a paradigm. Yes, I do oppose (at least part of) the substance of your position, and I oppose it precisely because I think libertarianism could be improved.