Why I Reject "Self-ownership" Redux

I've already written and made numerous videos on this, but I don't think I've put all of the objections together in one place. There are three major reasons that have lead me to reject the concept of "self-ownership", or at least it has lead me to reject the way that it is often used in libertarian discourse. So I'd like to summarize what the three main concerns are. However, I'd like to clarify at the get-go that I do not reject the premise or right's claim that one's person should not be infringed upon, I just no longer rely on "self-ownership" to argue for it. So my rejection of "self-ownership" should not be misconstrued as a rejection of personal sovereignty. In fact, my view is that the language of self-ownership sometimes undermines the argument for personal sovereignty.

The Dualism and Internality vs. Externality Problem

Self-ownership seems to imply an unsolvable dualism between yourself and yourself; I.E. if you are the owner, then you aren’t it and if you are owned, then you aren’t the owner. If you’re owned by others, then you’re a slave. If you’re not owned by others, it doesn’t necessarily follow that "you own yourself". You can’t be both the owned and the owner at once, and consequentially "self-ownership" must warp the definition of ownership (which normally implies a relation between subject and object, not an internal relation within a subject) in order to even remotely make sense. The way that I define and understand the concept of "ownership" in general, you can only own things that are external to you; that is, as an "owner" you are categorically distinguished from "the owned".

A special note: it turns out that Francious Tremblay independantly came to a similar conclusion while thinking along similar lines as me here a few years ago, and he did it prior to me taking this stance. So I feel that I should credit Tremblay for moving in this direction before me, even though I did not come to this conclusion by his direct influence and the way that we approach the question is not absolutely identical. I came to this conclusion more as a consequence of my own little thoughts and tinkerings about philosophy of mind (particularly the classic "mind/body problem"), which resulted in a rejection of dualism (although I also reject some of the more absurd forms of monism). Nonetheless, Tremblay deserves credit for rejecting self-ownership on similar grounds before me.

The Chicken/Egg Issue

Self-ownership tends to be a manifestation of a theory that places property rights first and then defines self-ownership on the basis of a property rights concept. This leads to a problem of circularity in which one has to presuppose a theory of property rights in "self-ownership" while simultaneously argueing as if "self-ownership" is the foundation. If property truly is the first principle, then "self-ownership" is sort of reduced to a mere entailment of property theory, and people are regarded as property (leading to obvious slavery concerns). On the other hand, if "self-ownership" truly is the first principle, it collapses as soon as you try to justify it via appeal to a property rights concept that presumably comes after it. This is a serious logical problem.

It is also important to stress a related problem that tends to arise as a consequence of this one, which is that some libertarians essentially use "self-ownership" as a basis to justify notions of "voluntary slavery" that rub up against inalienable conceptions of rights. There is a tendency to treat "the self" as if it is just like any piece of property, I.E. as something to be bought and sold. I think that this is a negative consequence of treating property as an ungrounded first principle or axoim, which potentially leads to very serious slavery concerns precisely because one has not categorically distinguished people from property in an ethical sense.

Self-ownership as a Fact vs. Self-ownership as a Right

Self-ownership tends to be used in blatant contradiction to the most obvious sense of the is/ought dichotomy. That is, some libertarians tend to switch back and forth between defining "self-ownership" as a physiological fact that you control your body and a rights claim to not have one’s person infringed upon. The latter cannot directly be derived from the former and they cannot reasonably be categorically conflated. Self-ownership arguments sometimes devolve into absurdity when the proponent is argueing for self-ownership as if it is a simple inherent and unavoidable fact of human existance. If that’s the case, then it makes no sense as an imperative or rights claim, since it simply is what it is. This was what came up in my debate with Stefan Molyneux, since he apparently insists on using a purely physiological definition of "self-ownership".

This use of "self-ownership" can potentially be open to a lot of abuse in discourse. For the most explicit example that I have experienced and witnessed, Stefan Molyneux tends to act as if people are argueing against the fact that they have physiological autonomy when they argue against self-ownership, and based on this assumption he makes the misleading argument that anyone who argues against "self-ownership" is implicitly proving it by the act of argumentation itself and therefore their argument self-detonates; his entire "UPB" is based on this form. Hans Hoppe also makes a similar misleading argument with his "argumentation ethics", and Stephan Kinsella's "estoppel argument" takes a similar form in the context of the issue of punishment. All of these arguments and theories fail to justify libertarian ethics for the same basic reasons.

My Argument Against Voting and Political Activism Redux

The most obvious problem with traditional conceptions of "democracy" is of course the problem of majoritarianism; it reduces to "might makes right" or "superior numbers make right" and inherently is prone to oppress minorities. So proponents of the principle of majoritarian democracy inevitably bump into the problem of having to justify communitarian transgressions against individual rights. And one important thing to point out about this kind of "democracy" is that it is completely open-ended in terms of what it can potentially justify; any form of authoritarianism can theoretically be justified on the basis of majoritarianism. It follows that if one is concerned about individual rights, it doesn't make much sense to endorse or participate in a process that tends to rub up against them at the whim of majorities. Whether or not one is in a majority of minority is irrelevant in this sense.

But one important fact to consider is that "the democratic process" actually isn't purely majoritarian - it's a matter of "numerical majorities" (and there's a territorial element), which need not be an actual majority and excludes all those who do not participate in the voting process (who are nonetheless effected anyways). Everyone is effected regaurdless of whether or not they vote or who/what they vote for. Before such voting takes place, one's options are limited through a primary process and whittled down to two canidates from two parties that already are in power and linked together in the same institution. Moreover, so-called "representation" is incredibly indirect, and in actual fact the state is still an oligarchy in "democracies". So the reality is that "numerical majorities" sway the outcome of which narrow group controls an oligarchy. Hence, so-called "democratic" change is not systematic change, it is only a game of musical chairs within an oligarchy.

Taking all of this into account reveals voting as the rather meaningless mechanism that it is. The oppurtunity cost of voting and political activism is the time and resources that could have been used to directly address the issues oneself. The power that a single vote has is negligable when one takes into account all of the preceding "rules of the game" and active power strucutres before one even gets a chance to play. The voter and non-voter alike are alienated from the decision-making process itself when it comes down to it. The institutional structure of the state and its incentives are self-perpetuating and the democratic process functions to counteract the forces of individual initiative and any sort of competition with the institution itself. Political democracy is a means of transitioning decision-making power within an oligarchy through a process that is only nominally inclusive, which serves the function of providing the illusion of legitimacy by consent.

This is all basically a review or summary (with a little bit of elaboration) of the position that I took in my old essay from last year on this issue and other blogposts that I've written along similar lines. I basically don't think that it's possible to use the democratic process to create systematic change precisely because it is the system. I don't think that elections and voting really address fundamental issues or ever result in meaningful overall structural reductions, and that it tends to distract people away from more personal initiatives and prospects. The deck is fairly stacked and exclusive before the democratic process even takes place and everyone is presented with package deals and false dichotomies to "choose" from. And radical movements are prone to get watered down or even co-opted the more that they entrench themselves in party politics and media-driven politics. In fact, my view is essentially that the Libertarian Party is already fairly co-opted by the American conservative movement.

I suppose that for me, rather than providing an argument along the lines of "the act of voting violates the non-aggression principle", the emphasis is on the impractical nature of the political process and pointing out the sense in which "democracy" is a lie or illusion; a mere tool of ideological legitimacy. My emphasis is on the fact that what's called "democracy" is a joke in light of the more anarchist definition of "democracy" in terms of voluntary consensus as a principle of decision-making. As soon as an institution becomes "truly democratic" in this sense, it ceases to be a state; at the same time, a state qua state cannot possibly be "truly democratic" in this sense precisely because of the monopolistic, heirarchical nature of the state (particularly if we use something along the lines of Max Weber's definition of the state). In my view, no state qua state has ever consistently been established and sustained on the basis of voluntary consensus - voluntary consensus internal to the oligarchy perhaps, but not in terms of the average person.

Manifestations of Property

Negative Manifestations

Property as intergenerationally founded on theft
Property as a legal title in the absence of use
Property as a claim of dominion over the occupant
Property as exclusivity
Property as a tool of murder
Property as a keystone of the state

Positive Manifestations

Property as the product of labor
Property as qualified by use
Property as intertwined with liberty
Property as a social lubricant
Property as necessary for life
Property as a bulwark against the state

Proposition

Despite what superficially appears to be a bunch of contradictions, all of these manifestations are simultaneously true and useful or functional as contextual definitions of property. They represent different functions and types of property. A good deal of the political conflict over property is partially based on the problem of taking too narrow of a viewpoint in which one only aknowledges a portion of the different manifestations of property, as well as a tendency to fail to adequately distinguish between positive and negative types.

What the hell is Agorism?

Agorism seems to be used in two manners:

The first way is a left-libertarian, left or radical Rothbardian vision of what a free society is. A radical Rothbardian world.

And the other sense is the CE means to reach this goal. Using agorism as synonymous with counter economic means. The later definition or usage being more dominant in my experience.

But I think using it in ONLY this later manner is an error.

Samuel Edwin Konkin III in the New Libertarian Manifesto titles his second and third sections respectively: "Agorism: Our Goal" and "Counter Economics: our means". These titles alone seem to give credence to the first definition of agorism and not the later. Agorism as a goal and counter economics a means to obtain this goal clearly seems to differentiate the ends form the means. Within "Agorism: Our Goal" Konkin goes on to briefly describe a free market libertarian society based largely on restoration and restitution. He briefly refers to the "New Libertarain" followed immediately by "(agorism)". It seems his usage of the word agorism is synonymous here with what it means to be a New libertarian. As is pointed out at agorism.info under a section of the wiki named: "Konkinite terms", a New Libertarian "implies one is in the process of transition between old (1969) Murray Rothbard Libertarian ideology to the post 1974 integrated agorist position". Again within "Counter economics: Our Means" SEK3 states: "Going from an agorist society to a statist one should be uphill work". Here it seems clear he is using "agorist" to be something that exists as a practice of the agorist philosophy. Konkin has stated elsewhere in an interview, when asked what is the difference between agorists and anarcho-capitalists: "Agorists are strict Rothbardians, and, I would argue in this case, even more Rothbardian than Rothbard" (referring to the agorist emphasis on the Misean distinction between mere capital holders and true entrepreneurship). It seems that agorists are still Rothbardians. He starts the answer to this question in the interview with the statement that anarcho-capitalists "do not differ drastically from agorists". This seems to give me evidence that Agorism is a political philosophy, one similar to Rothbards. These instances seem all to refer to agorism as a goal to be achieved and not simply a means to an open end.

Within "Counter economics: Our Means" Konkin states: "If a political party or revolutionary army is inappropriate and self-defeating for libertarian goals, what collective action works? The answer is agorism." Here it seems that SEK3 is using the word in the later context - one of means. And it is true that elsewhere he uses the term "agorist" in contexts which imply a ideologically driven conscious counter-economic actor. In the interview mentioned earlier, Konkin says that "the statist White Market shrinks and chokes on its own dysfunctional regulation" and that in "the East... with limited understanding, the people themselves brought down the worst tyranny known to man through almost unconscious agorism". Here it seems Konkin switches usage himself again. Indeed even the aforementioned stress upon the conscious agorist entrepreneur as the means of social change in agorism seems to put emphasis on the means and not the ends. Not the Rothbardian aspects I myself associate with agorism the philosphy.

However when speaking of Konkin and his writing we have to remember who Konkin was or what he believed in. Konkin described himself as a "strict Rothbardian" and made constant reference to Austrian economic theory and its impact upon his thought. Of praxeology. And if there is one thing we all should have picked up form Austrian economic thinking is the term "human action". A man's actions are not separate from a mans thought. They are tied. So perhaps this switching of usages is not so surprising or nto a switch at all. Perhaps the question of which of the meanings is correct is a false dichotomy. Perhaps Agorism, as I believe, is a package anot not a question of means or ends but of a more complete Rothbardian philosophy. An integrated whole. Again in the New Libertarian Manifesto Konkin places much emphasis on means and ends. And consistency in means and ends. To quote sir Konkin again, "the consistent application of the theory of libertarianism to every action the individual libertarian takes creates the libertarian society". Within "Revolution: our Strategy" he states: "All "Library ibertarians" you know, those who profess some theoretical variant of libertarianism but eschew practice, should be encouraged to practice what they preach." It is accepting Left Rothbardian application thoroughly and consistently, applying it to our actions which are the only judgments of men and women. One is not libertarian if ones actions are not also reflective of the theory. The goal then, agorism, is demanding of the means, counter-economics, and so must be apart of the philosophy of a libertarian society. Agorism is action (the CE) and ideal (his super Rothbardian vision of a free market world).

Agorism, then, is all such libertarian human action as action is not separate from the ideal.

Terminology In Moral Discourse

I've found the way that certain terms are sometimes used in moral discourse to be interesting and sometimes frustrating. The two most common cases of this that I've run into revolves around the terms "happiness" and "selfishness". What I've found is that there is a confusion in moral discourse surrounding these terms because there are at least two separate meanings attached to them; in particular, a psychological-subjective meaning and a less common and much more specific meaning assigned to them by certain moral philosophies.

Let's take a look at "happiness". Virtue ethicists in particular have tended to use "happiness" as a central component of ethics. The reoccuring objection that always comes up, one which I have expressed myself before, is that "happiness" refers to a subjective psychological state, and it is precisely for this reason that I don't favor using "happiness". The issue that arises is that the virtue ethicist is not using the term "happiness" as it is commonly used, they are using the term to refer to something other than a mere psychological state. "Flourishing" encapsulates what is meant by virtue ethicists much better than "happiness".

When virtue ethicists invoke "happiness", they are inevitably going to bump into the objection that "happiness" is incredibly vague and that it is subjective. And, given the common understanding of what "happiness" means, this objection is perfectly understandable. This forces the virtue ethicist to clarify that that is not what they mean by the term "happiness" in this context. What they tend to actually mean is something more along the lines of "well-being" and "flourishing", irrespective of mere feelings. In this context, "happiness" does not refer to a feeling of pleasure.

This dual meaning of "happiness" is at the heart of some of the confusion that arises in ethical discourse with virtue ethicists. For the opponent of the virtue ethicist can always argue something like this: "A murderer can concievably obtain happiness by murdering, especially in the case of the pathological. Thus, if you are using happiness as the criteria for ethics, I don't see why plenty of actions that would normally be considered immoral could be justified based on such a criteria. There are plenty of people in the world who obtain happiness via immoral means". At this point, the virtue ethicist has to either clarify a different meaning of "happiness" or invoke something else.

Alternatively, the virtue ethicist can argue from an absurd psychological premise: that there is an absolute correlation between morality and happiness, to the point of claiming that a murderer or thief is actually inherently unhappy. This premise is demonstrably false based on common experience and known facts: there are people who are "moral" who are unhappy and there are people who are "immoral" who seem to be quite content. Especially in the case of the pathological, it is possible to engage in "immoral" behavior without experiencing any negative psychological fallout. It simply would be absurd to propose that "nature" inherently punishes all "immoral" behavior with unhappiness and unsuccess (otherwise it would be impossible for "immoral" people to survive and succeed in life - and they clearly do).

Fortunately, I haven't ever seen any virtue ethicist argue from such a premise (however, I have seen various Objectivists do so). To avoid this trap, it would probably be wise for the virtue ethicist to say that morality is necessary but not entirely sufficient for happiness, I.E. it does not necessarily absolutely gaurantee happiness. Likewise, one could propose that liberty is necessary but not sufficient for survival and flourishing; liberty does not necessarily gaurantee that one will survive or even have a good quality of life (one could concievably be free yet miserable). Liberty doesn't mean "freedom from the constraints of reality itself". So while one may propose that there is some correlation between happiness and moral behavior (and between survival and moral behavior, to use Rand's criteria instead of that of the virtue ethicist), such a correlation is not absolute or purely causal.

A similar confusion plagues the concept of "selfishness". While I actually agree with Rand that the cliche concept of selfishness as being synonomous with immorality is nonsensical (I.E. the tendency in moral philosophy to completely divorce ethics from self-interest is a grave error), I think that her own pet definition of "selfishness" merely makes the opposite error by completely and absolutely conflating selfishness with morality. Rand essentially redefines "selfishness" to be the very essence of morality. In her view, to be selfish is to be moral, to be moral is to be selfish, to be rational is to be moral, to be moral is to be rational, to be selfish is to be rational, to be rational is to be selfish.

In other words, selfishness, rationality and morality are all absolutely conflated into the same thing by Rand. To be immoral is inherenty to not be selfish, using her definitions. This is highly problematic in light of the more psychological understanding of selfishness. It seems absurd to say that a thief is not being selfish; the very act of stealing is presumably motivated by the desire of the thief to obtain the thing that they are stealing. It is highly counter-intuitive to claim that people who forcibly dominate others are not being selfish, or even to imply that they are inherently altruistic. Is a man who rapes a woman because he wants to appease his sexual desires "not being truly selfish"? This seems incredibly silly. The only way that Rand can get away with this is by essentially divorcing "selfishness" from motivation and emotion altogether. This is an incredibly rare and narrow definition of "selfishness".

Hence, one of the most common objections that Objectivists are going to run into, besides the altruist definition of selfishness, is the psychological egoist or subjectivist definition of selfishness (I.E. that, in some sense, everyone already inherently is selfish). This definition of selfishness is psychological: it defines selfishness as being inherent to motivation itself, and in this sense it is impossible to not be selfish, since all motiviations derive from the subject. From a broad psychological egoist perspective, behavior that we would normally consider both "rational" and "irrational", and both "moral" and "immoral", are all "selfish" in some sense. There is nothing about "selfishness" that inherently means "moral" or "rational" - it could go either way depending on the context.

So we see that in the case of both "selfishness" and "happiness", there is an inevitable conflict between the psychological definitions of these terms and esoteric definitions in particular moral philosophies. Since the common understanding of the meaning of these terms is not likely to change any time soon, it seems counterproductive for proponents of these moral philosophies to continue insisting on using such terms in this way. It will always lead to a need for clarification. Either one must establish that there is a dual definition of such terms, concede to the psychological definition of the terms, or continue to brashly insist that these esoteric definitions are the "true" meanings (to the likely result of continueing the confusion). It probably would be wise to at least make one's context clear before even using such terms in such ways; otherwise, I'm tempted to suggest dropping them altogether.

Commentary On Confederalsocialist (Stodles)

Confederalsocialist is a prominent member of youtube who I have know for a while now. He was a white natinalist a bit less than a year ago, then suddenly switched to anarchism. After that point, he was promoting national anarchism and I had numerous video quibbles with him about that issue. The most recent fall-out between us was that he has started preaching moral nihilism and is spear-heading a trend in that direction among the youtube anarchists. He has become my arch-enemy on youtube for numerous reasons (particularly because I think that he is confusing people about anarchism and has misrepresented both me and the views of a sizable chunk of the anarchist movement, and he has disingenously misrepresented me as the leader of "the modals").

I personally consider him to be a crass manipulator at this point. My reasons for this are plentiful: he has made a bajillion different accounts with commentary on people behind their backs, he has repeatedly lied about people, he has an obcession with popularity statistics (to the point of keeping statistics on the activity of my blog vs. his website!), he is constantly inviting people to his channel (as if he is desperate to be "on top") and he has totally manipulated the meaning of words in order to get people to accept his positions (even to the point of rendering the word "anarchism" undefinable and calling you an "archon of words" if you attempt to provide a even a loose basic definition for anarchism as a political philosophy). Why am I making this commentary here and not directly towards him? Well, he blocked me from his youtube channel a few months ago, so it's impossible for me to comment on his videos or his channel. So I'm stuck making "outside commentary" in response to claims that have been made that I am unable to directly respond to.

Most recently, he made a video attacking the left-libertarian movement. Most of his arguments are outright misrepresentations. The biggest bone I can give him is that he simply does not understand the libertarian left. But barring that, he's simply engaging in misrepresentation. He also made a video a few weeks prior to that in which he argued that libertarian socialism is nothing more than an irrational reaction to the industrial revolution. However, I don't intend to do a refutation of those videos. Perhaps I should run over a summary of the conflict between me and him, which might shed some light on his motivation and understanding that behind such videos. He considers me to be a "modal libertarian" (a term that he is taking from Rothbard out of context) and despises me because:

(1) I challenged him on his Hoppean notion of "restrictive covenants" for *entire communities*, noting that his model is indistinguishable from a statist social contract, especially intergenerationally. Laughingman0X added to that debate with a video demonstrating how the nationalist "restrictive covenant" becomes coercive as soon as a female member of the all-white community gets impregnated by a black man out of town and has the baby within the area of the "restrictive covenant", at which point Stodles had no problem with the idea of the woman and child being forcibly expelled from the community (at which point he has very little leeway to deny the authoritarian implications of his viewpoint). He never responded directly to Laughingman's arguments, although he did make a video response in which he critisizes Laughingman for suggesting that there may be "core anarchist principles".

(2) I have maintained the premise that national anarchism is mostly a ruse and that the ideology of nationalism is inherently authoritarian and collectivist (in the most negative sense of the term).

(3) I have repeatedly called him out for his crack-pot realist views on race, in which he constantly is making apologetics for white nationalism via appeal to science and statistics; he has flip flopped endlessly between denying that he is a nationalist and making statements that more than suggest it. He dislikes the fact that I continued to bring it up, because he generally prefers to function covertly and to not have people have negative associations toward him. But I didn't initially bring it up - everytime I got into the subject it was in reaction to commentary or videos of his in which he was essentially defending ethnic nationalism with a psuedo-scientific veneer. He also seems to consider anyone who disagrees with his "scientific racism" to essentially be a marxist. Of course, that is simply false. Anti-racism is not inherently marxist in nature, and I've made no bones in the past about being unapologetically against marxism.

(4) I have insisted that anarchism is meaningless if your conception of anarchism is merely "pluralism for the sake of pluralism", since this devolves into any form of authoritarianism imaginable, only perhaps its more decentralized authoritarianism. My white nationalism debate with him somehow devolved into a debate about meta-ethics, with me defending moral anarchism and him excusing anarcho-authoritarianism via appeal to moral nihilism. Hence, the youtube anarchists have split into two basic camps: the moral nihilists and the libertarian anarchists (by libertarian anarchist I generally mean anarchism that at least nominally is concerned with morality). Confederalsocialist and D4Shawn are the "leaders" of this new trend towards moral nihilism. At least in the case of confederalsocialist, I view this move towards moral nihilism as nothing more than an obfuscation of his rather narrow and biased value judgements (all of which are sympathetic to a conservative view).

(5) I oppose the ideology of "property above life", which is to say that I don't believe that owning something inherently grants someone absolute decision-making power or any absolute right to use violence just because it's on their property. To use the most absurd example, I don't think that just because a child is standing on your lawn it is okay for you to shoot them. This seems pretty obvious to me, and even a Rothbardian conception of justice at least introduces a notion of proportionality to avoid such scenarios, and consequentially Rothbard rejected what he called "the maximalist position". Confederalsocialist would like to insinuate that my position is the rejection of all private property, when that is simply a strawman or misunderstanding. What's being rejected isn't private property as such, what's being rejected is institutionalized violence (that clearly is not in self-defense) in the name of defending property titles. My objection to his "restrictive covenant" proposals is partially for this very reason, since they are basically involuntary social contracts that are violently enforced based on land claims.

His main defenses run roughly as follows:

(1) He equates "the restrictive covenant" with any sort of voluntary agreement; virtually all voluntary agreements are "restrictive covenants" in his view. Property inherently equates to extreme levels of exclusion in his view; wait, he's getting this almost verbatum from Hoppe, so I may as well be saying "in Hoppe's view". Of course, this view is incorrect. Property does not inherently involve the level of exclusivity that him or Hoppe advocate, and it is my contention that this is a conflation of their preferances with the nature of property in general. He may prefer that property conventions be hyper-exclusive, but there is nothing inherent to property that makes it hyper-exclusive. Someone could concievably be hyper-inclusive about property. The notion that "the natural order" is hyper-exclusivity is simply a statement of bias, not a fact.

(2) In a video from about a week ago, he claims that everyone is a nationalist by default, and he gets away with it by redefining nationalism to essentially mean "any group with a cause"; it shouldn't be hard to see why this is a horrible manipulation of language. Indeed, just as he has done with the word "anarchism", with "nationalism" he is blowing up the word to meaninglessness by essentially rendering it undefinable and by acting as if it describes everyone by default. This is nothing but crass manipulation of language to fool people into agreeing with him. Clearly, nationalism is more specific than that and generally is understood to be territorial in nature. Merely having an ideology or principle in common with other people does not make someone a nationalist, and no word games can get around that. It surprises me that anyone would fall for such a cheap trick.

(3) His main talking point is that "evolution didn't stop at the neck" and he equates anyone who doesn't buy into his racism-with-a-scientific-veneer as being irrational, and he equates all anti-racists with antifa types (this makes sense, given his past as a white nationalist). He expresses the viewpoint that most ethnic nationalists are mostly reasonable people, while he tends to think that "anti-racists" are mostly irrational. With respect to the relative merits of anti-racists vs. ethnic nationalists, all he can really do here is appeal to his personal bias as an allegedly "former" white nationalist. And as a "former" white nationalist, OF COURSE his image of anti-racism is going to be constituted by the image of irrational and violent antifas. What else would one expect?

(4) Since I reject his amoralism and his "pluralistic" facade, he accuses me of being dogmatic and rejecting pluralism (which is hypocritical of him, since he's been attacking the entire classical anarchist tradition and "left" end of libertarianism while being either silent about or apologetic with regard to the libertarian right; he plays amoralist while simultaneously taking explicitly right-libertarian/Hoppean positions). However, in actual fact I was one of the first anarchists on youtube to meaningfully advance the idea of pluralism or anarchism without adjectives, and my rejection is not of anarchist pluralism but of what might be called poly-authoritarianism that sells itself with the rhetoric of pluralism. Overall, my position as an anarchist on youtube has been quite neutral, with me critisizing elements from both the social and market anarchist camps while encouraging a healthy middle ground. However, confederalsocialist seems to want to disingenously lump me (as well as the rest of the left-libertarian movement) in with vulgar socialists such as mr1001nights, despite the clear differences between the over-arching left-libertarian movement (which has no platform and therefore he will have trouble making a general critique of the whole movement) and vulgar socialism.

(5) In response to my views on property, he has strawmanned me as a pacifist. Either he is purposefully being disingenous or he simply does not understand the difference between rejecting abhorently violent property claims and being a pacifist. In fact, I am not a pacifist; I simply have a tighter view of what constitutes self-defense than most libertarians. I simply do not consider defense of property to exactly be in the same category as defense of persons (and I consider it an error to equate personhood with property, hence my questioning of the premise of self-ownership). I don't think he really fully comprehends the libertarian arguments behind this question. In either case, as an alleged amoralist, it is somewhat confusing as to why he is actually defending a hardline moral view in favor of violence in the name of property claims. I sense one-sidedness and hypocrisy: confederalsocialist suddenly gets all huffy puffy in favor of a particular moral conception of private property while simultaneously putting on a facade of neutrality and amoralism. This is part of why I have trouble completely taking him seriously, since he preaches moral nihilism while simultaneously falling back on conservative-libertarian norms.

Some Fun With Definitions

Constitutionalism - The belief that a piece of paper drafted and signed by a tiny aristocracy of men is a legitimate perpetual contract that makes the government voluntary on the part of those within a society that did not sign the document and limits the powers of governmental agents for all of eternity.

Minarchism - The belief that there can be a government limited to the protection of rights without violating rights in and of itself; the belief that all goods and services should be provided by the free market yet somehow the principle magically doesn't apply to the defense and arbitration industry.

Democracy - The belief that the government is controled by the people simply because every few years they get to punch a hole in a piece of paper with the names of a few rich and powerful men on it.

Nationalism - The belief that imaginary lines on a map constitute real and meaningful property boundaries; the belief that territories have human traits or personalities of their own; the belief that immigration is the spawn of satan.

Objectivism - The belief that the initation of force is wrong yet somehow it is permissible to arbitrarily invade Iran and Venezuela because "we" have oil interests there; the belief that only romanticism is real art; the belief that you can eliminate taxation and still have a "government".

Political Libertarianism - The belief that the state is inefficient and immoral yet for some strange reason the state is the only viable means by which we can bring about liberty; the belief that democracy is tyrannical yet we must use it to our advantage.

Paleoconservatism - The belief that conservatism was hijacked by leftists and communists and that the "true conservatives" are those who support protectionism and white nationalism; the belief that you're more conservative than those creepy neocons yet somehow you support just about as powerful of a government as they do.

Christianity - The belief that the path to salvation lies with devotion of one's life to a Jewish zombie hippie who is his own father.

Satanism (Laveyan) - The belief in the writtings of a former carnie con artist who haphazardly threw together the ideas of Ayn Rand and Aleister Crowley, incoherant ramblings on the Enochian key and rhetoric to drawn in rebelious teenagers.

Zionism - The belief that because your people were nearly liquidated once, you have an inherent right to liquidate others and forcibly remove them from their own territory.

Religion - The belief that fairy tales from centuries or millenia ago passed down through shaky oral tradition and written down by fallable men are actually absolutely true and codes to live one's life by.

Collectivism - The strange belief that groups have a mind of their own yet their component parts don't.

Altruism - The belief that self-destructive servitude for the sake of others is the greatest virtue; the belief that everyone should mutually be slaves to eachother.

Statism - The belief that it is not only moral but necessary for a particular group of individuals to do that which is openly aknowledged as being immoral and not necessary for everyone else to do; moral hypocrisy at the institutional level.

Welfarism - The belief that the poor can be helped by giving them back a tiny chunk of what was originally stolen from them and keeping them in a state of dependancy on the government; the bribery of the lower classes.

Hobbesianism - The belief that a highly pessemistic view of human nature that entails war of all against all justifies absolute control by the state, despite the fact that the state is made up of *gasp* human beings.

Racism - The strange belief that a particular roll of the genetic dice entitles and requires one to separate themselves from others with another particular roll of the genetic dice; the collectivism of bubble-headed bigots.

Back To The Jungle or Foreward Into The Cosmopolis?

I have long since admitted to my anarchist peers that anarcho-primitivism is my least favorite form of anarchism. I admit it: I'm openly "cosmopolitan", which is to say that I'm pro-technology, I'm pro-city and I favor the general integration of society. The cliche of the primitivist who tries to argue with you on the internet is a classic by now - it certainly is an obvious type of performative contradiction (although, as has been brought to light in my overview of Stefan Molyneux's and Hans Hoppe's approach to libertarianism, I do not think that such performative contradictions constitute a proof or disproof in and of themselves). In a sense, anarcho-primitivism is the most radical position on the "anarchist spectrum" because it goes the furthest in terms of what it opposes, to the point of opposing the very notion of cities, agriculture, a large chunk if not the entirety of modern technology and the importation of resources in general.

I do recognize that there is somewhat of a distinction between primitivism and the movement known as "anti-civ", although the two also overlap for obvious reasons (and I've always found the "anti-civ" definition of civilization to be a semantic misnomer, but that's beside the point). I also recognize both an overlap and distinction between anarcho-primitivism and "green anarchism". When I attack primitivism, I'm not necessarily attacking the "green" paradigm. This clarification is necessary so that I am not misconstrued as attacking something that I'm not. My issue of contention is specifically with primitivism, not comparatively moderate "green" and "self-sufficiency" movements. I am not defining primitivism here as a mere tendency to favor agrarianism or localist self-sufficiency per se, although the extent of overlap should be kept in mind.

One of the obvious hallmarks of primitivism, in my view, is that it tends to assume a romantic view of older societies, which is a trait that I associate with conservatism (except the primitivists seem to want to "turn back the clock" much further than political conservatives). This is basically derived from Rousseau's myth of "the noble savage", which could be thought of as a sort of secular garden of eden notion. Primitivists tend to portray tribal societies as peaceful, egalitarian utopias when in reality they often were rife with violence and living standards were generally horrible compared to that of the average modern man. To be clear, I do not think it makes sense to jump to the opposite extreme of apologizing for colonialism and to assume that "the west" is somehow magically uber-superior, but the primitivist line tends to be equally absurd in the other direction. Both the romanticization of nature and the Hobbesian "war of all against all" are nonsensical.

In contrast to the backward-looking (and hence conservative) nature of primitivism, I like to emphasize what I have called "a progressive view of history", which essentially calls for a low time preferance view of history that emphasizes dynamism and social evolution and is opposed to traditionalism and the romantisization of the past (and present). This view simultaneously tries to avoid collapsing into futurist-utopianism, while emphasizing that "turning back the clock" is either impossible or undesirable (or both). While the future should not be predicted as a utopia, neither should the past or present be portrayed as a utopia. This is one of the fairly important senses in which I am opposed to conservatism of any kind, and primitivism actually seems to have some potential conservative traits in this respect due to its backward-looking tendencies.

On the flip side of the primitivist coin tends to be an all-out demonization of modern technology. This may be manifested in a sort of "alienation theory of technology". I actually see a certain valid point in an "alienation theory of technology", which is to say that it is a valid point to bring up the fact that technology can have certain alienating effects that disincentivizes more personal and direct social interaction. There is a sense in which the "internet generation" has ushered in a phenomenon of "technological hermitism" (I can say this with full confidence because, to an extent, I am a technological hermit of this sort myself). One can also point out certain negative manifestations of technology, such as weapons of mass destruction. This certainly should be taken seriously, although I don't think it constitutes an argument for a problem with technology itself.

While there is something to be said for an alienating effect of certain technologies, it is an equally valid point to point out that technology can have the opposite of an alienating effect, that it makes communication and travel easier so that social interaction across long distances is increased. Technology can actually have the effect of "integrating" society. Furthermore, there is also the fact that technology has been absolutely indispensible as a factor increasing our general standard of living and the oppurtunties that we have as individuals to live our lives in many different ways. Ultimately, I think that the benefits of technology very obviously outweigh its drawbacks. And for some reason primitivism just doesn't see it that way - technology (or at least a certain stage of the developement of technology) must be inherently evil from this perspective.

One important point that I like to consider when one encounters this anti-technology sentiment is that objects are morally neutral (for objects lack volition and it is fallacious to anthropromorphize them). What matters is what people do with tools, not some sort of intrinsic good or evil to the tools themselves. Of course, certain tools can be specifically designed for doing harm, but then those very same tools can serve a defensive function. The moral emphasis on objects doesn't make much practical sense when one considers morality from the standpoint of human actions. It also seems arbitrary to draw some line for the point at which the developement of tools has "gone too far". Is using metal tips for spears "too much technology"? For god's sake! This really seems like a ridiculous question to ponder in the first place.

Exactly how far one goes in their opposition to the developement of technology basically never actually makes it to the point of actually opposing all technology, even for primitivists. Primitivism is simply the most limited/conservative view of where the cut-off-point is. Even something as simple as the production of clothing, hunting weapons, dwellings and other such basics of survival involves some level of technology. Indeed, the developement of the use of tools in place of purely "natural" functions is one of the defining features of humans. It seems to me that where primitivists choose to make the cut-off-point for technology is not only arbitrary, but incredibly limiting on human potential. Why would it be in anyone's interest to aschew the benefits of technology? When it comes down to it, the vast majority of people are not going to give it up - and for good reasons.

There's also the issue of the importation of resources. This is where primitivism is actually a crude form of protectionism and isolationism. Of course, no primitivist actually completely opposes the importation of resources on an individual level, but they tend to oppose the importation of resources on any scale much beyond that level. If one were to think of it as an absolute, it would imply the ideal that each individual is purely self-sufficient. But not only is this practically impossible once one has a decent grasp of economics, it is anti-social in the sense of reducing everyone to an economic hermit. Of course, primitivists may not exactly espouse absolute individual self-sufficiency, but they seem to tend to oppose social organization of any size beyond a small tribe - beyond which point the importation of resources is supposed to be essentially cut off.

In my view, this is an arbitrary limit on cooperation that is impossible to sustain in light of economic incentives. Furthermore, while there is a sense in which it is decentralized, it is not necessary a positive type of decentralization because it may tend to strictly bind people to a small territory or serve the function of an enclave. Not only is it potentially rife with micro-authoritarianism, but it is economically impractical when resources are needed or demanded that are not (at least adequately or fully) provided by a given enclave. At the level of "the tribe", the individual is potentially assumed to have arbitrary unchosen positive obligations, while at the level of inter-tribal relations matters are "isolationist" in the sense of radically restricting the division of labor. If I may be so bold, I'd suggest that certain elements of primitivism are actually quite conductive to the cause of ethnic nationalists with the notion of "local altruism, inter-tribal isolationism". This essentially reduces to the formula: inwardly socially compulsory and outwardly anti-social. By the term "anti-social" I generally refer to the opposition to cooperation and social integration.

My mind also makes an interesting association between primitivism and communism in a certain sense. Part of this association is actually linguistic in nature. The term "burgeousie" stems from the root "burg", which essentially means "town" or "city". In historical context, it is a referance to the medieval cities. Hence, opposition to "the burgeousie" may actually have a quasi-primitivist or proto-primitivist connotation as the opposition to the formation of cities (as a sort of concentration of commerce that goes beyond the cut-off-point favored by primitivists). The classic dichotomy between "pagans" and "villains" also works in this context, as the root of "villain" is "village" and the term "pagan" initially refered to agarians and back-woodsers. With this linguistic matter aside, however, there is also the fact that anarcho-communism and primitivism may overlap in terms of their opposition to money and the division of labor.

When push comes to shove, the problem that primitivism boils down to is the fact that it would be impossible to implement on a large scale without drastically reducing the human population and life expectancy. This is the sense in which primitivism seems to very obviously be practically absurd and undesirable. Many primitivists actually more or less admit this fact and see no problem with it. From a radically "overpopulationist" perspective, it is allegedly necessary and good. Sorry, but I'm not going to except a philosophy that potentially logically entails support for mass-genocide in order to usher in "the good society". For anarcho-primitivists in particular, however, presumably their anarchism would hold them back from forcing a primitivist scheme on the world (let alone a nation). The fact that the vast majority of people don't take primitivism seriously also holds back the possibility of it ever being implemented on a large scale.

While I am very critical of primitivism, of course I recognize the liberty of primitivists to take the initiative to live as primitivists. However, considering the historical reality of the present, it seems as if the primitivists are more or less stuck living in modern society (short of some sort of live-off-the-grid scheme in which they meaningfully isolate themselves from what they oppose). This is particularly the case since the total collapse of modern technology doesn't appear to be taking place any time soon (if at all), and the primitivists can't expect the vast majority of everyone else in the world to voluntarily give up the use of modern technology and the organized importation of resources. While this does not justify a "love it or leave it" argument, it does make primitivism highly impractical to implement, especially from the standpoint of where we are at today.

Reply to Danny Shahar on Methodological Individualism

About a week ago Danny Shahar wrote an interesting blog post about collective responsibility and methodological individualism. However, I'm not going to directly respond to the post itself, but to a comment that he left on the post clarifying his position to another commentator:

"I'm not denying that properties of collectives "arise" or "emerge" from the properties and interactions of their constituent parts. It seems rather uncontroversial that there is no "the group" apart from the components of the group. I don't think anyone would want to maintain the existence of some disembodied "The Tennis Club" that has its own separate existence and nature.

But that recognition is not the same as methodological individualism, which denies that there can be meaningful statements about collectives that aren't reducible to statements about individuals. Obviously, these will be concept-laden statements. But my point is only that they are statements that we are very comfortable making, and which would be unreasonable to cast aside as meaningless (like "The team qualified for the playoffs" or "The corporation earned a profit last quarter") -- even in the realm of ethical reasoning, where we typically are focusing on individuals' actions and choices."

If this is the case, then it seems to me that the problem is not with methodological individualism but with a misuse of it to disqualify any statement about groups or collections altogether or when it morphs into a crude form of atomistic reductionism. In my understanding, methodological individualism is more fundamentally about what Danny mentions in the former paragraph, I.E. identifying properties. It simply means that the properties of a collection cannot accurately be described as if they are independant of the collection's component parts. There is a difference between that and the "reductionism gone too far" position that "groups do not exist" (which is manifested by Stefan Molyneux's claims such as "forests don't exist, trees exist" and "governments don't exist, people exist"). Clearly, "governments" exist so long as we understand that "government" is a conventional word that is supposed to refer to a specific institution.

It also seems fairly clear that the question of what exists and the more linguistic question involved here are somewhat separate questions. I do not think that methodological individualism necessarily means that statements that make reference to groups or institutions such as "corporations" and "governments" are inherently disqualified. Clearly, these are useful terms that we normally use in our language. What methodological individualism implies, in my understanding, is not that any statement using such terms (such as Danny's example, "the corporation made a profit last quarter") is inherently disqualified, but the fact that such statements need to be more specifically clarified in terms of what they refer to. This essentially merely means the establishment of context and specification for statements. The example of "the corporation" is especially a case in which there may be vagueness in terms of who owns or "is" the corporation.

There definitely can be a lot of ambiguity in certain statements about groups, and I think it's important to be on gaurd about that because it is certainly possible for certain terms to be used as "floating abstractions" (which is to say that the intentionality and concept behind the statement in the particular context is divorced from any "real" derivative). Furthermore, what a methodological individualist would tend to want to avoid is the implication that the subject of the statement (such as "the government" or "the corporation") is treated as if it is independant of the specific context or a volitional entity in and of itself. The issue of contention, consequentially, is not necessarily with the language itself so much as the intent behind the language. And sometimes the intention that people have behind their statements about collections or organizations do make such assumptions.

For example, statements about what "nations" such as "America" do can imply all sorts of strange ambiguities if they are not clarified. The statement "America invaded Iraq" could be suffused with the idea that all of the people who happen to live in the geographical territory that is called "America" are personally responsible for the actions of their government invading Iraq. The problem with such a statement, in this context, is not with the word "America" but the way in which it is being used - to imply a collective responsibility that is divorced from the volitional actors in question (which in this case is the generals, soldiers, military planners and assorted people in the government). I'm particularly using the term "responsibility" here in the sense of volitional causality, as in people choosing to engage in an action that causes the result in question.

I see no inherent problem with notions of collective responsibility if they are kept contextual to volitional causality, and hence there is no necessary conflict between methodological individualism and collective responsibility per se. On the other hand, I completely reject any notion of ancestral guilt (holding people responsible for the actions or alleged actions of their ancestors) or any notion of responsibility that is assigned merely by virtue of belonging to or being associated with a particular sub-category of humans (such as race, nationality, class, gender, etc.) without regard for people's actual actions. I don't really see this as a linguistic issue. There is nothing inherently wrong with the use of such words. What I take issue with is when such words are used either (1) too broadly or (2) as floating abstractions, leading to a general dropping of context. The problem isn't with the words themselves but the misalignment between the intentionality and concepts that people have behind the words and the phenomenon that occurs in the world, which can lead to many absurdities.