Have you ever seen a marxist turned to libertarian?

Economics Political Theory
41

Well, aside from the fact that cattle are typically slaughtered, while a government doesn’t gain monetarily from slaughtering its own subjects, yes, that’s pretty much the idea. Provide milk, be protected from rustlers, and chill out and eat some grass. I wouldn’t want to live on a cattle farm where all the cows vote about how much grass each of us can eat, though. You get freedom up until you step on someone else’s property, or mess with the guy in charge.

It’s basically what Singapore is like. The people there seem pretty happy, even though rules about what you can do in public are pretty strict. They aren’t killing each other like we are in the US. I don’t think they can have guns, although a sufficiently secure state wouldn’t care if its law-abiding citizens had guns or not. You can teach them to hate the State, but is that really doing them a service?

Keep in mind that most of the governments that we live under are extremely poorly run. It goes hand in hand with democracy. For any sort of organization beyond the very smallest, humans do best in a hierarchy. Even open source projects like Linux or the Python programming language have “Benevolent Dictators” at the head.

42

What… you mean like Monarchy?

I’m guessing you haven’t read any Hoppe, have you?

No-one here does. So why bring it up? That isn’t anarcho-capitalism.

What gave you the idea that they were ever trying to run the state well? The parasites take their loot & continue to live off the backs of producers. When they fail, they create a crisis & take even more.

Who is against hierarchy?

I’m against monopolies. Why aren’t you?

43

I was a non-classical liberal a few years ago, but a few Austrian economist minarchists converted me to minarchy, and then Laughing Man converted me to ancap.

44

Yes, like monarchy. Monarchy has that nasty little issue where the rulers are chosen by bloodline rather than by being appointed by shareholders, like in MM’s neo-cameralism.

I have read Democracy: The God that Failed.

I was mentioning it as contrast to the idea of a well-run farm, to illustrate the danger of using Democracies to illustrate the problems with States in general.

Nothing. I feel that we agree on this. “Parasites” also accurately implies that they are working independently – bureaucrats all squabbling over whatever they can get, numbering in the millions. Whereas a word like “masters”, as in a stronger and more centralized but smaller government, implies a coordinated team. Yes, we are slaves. Perhaps subjects is a better word, without all those negative connotations.

I don’t expect rulers to rule well because they care. I expect them to rule well because they are rewarded for doing so, by the amount of wealth they can extract from their subjects.

I am, in almost all cases, probably for the same reasons you are. If I believed that an-cap was the most stable form of government, I would be against all monopolies. But I think that neo-cameralism is a good bit more stable, while keeping some of the best features of an-cap – smaller states, strongly enforced property rights, and mostly free markets. In a sense, I think that ownership of land is OK, and that owning a whole bunch of land that you rent out to people in exchange for letting them use it, trade plots of it, while you protect them from external threats and each other, is also OK. Yes, there is a high barrier to entry, and if Seasteading ever takes off that will go away to some degree. But for now, ownership of land is monopolistic whether you like it or not. Hoppe himself said that monopolies have less to do with market share and more to do with barrier to entry.

45

No thanks.

46

" Interesting. Did Hoppe ever write about his conversion experience? I would be interested to read it."

http://mises.org/daily/1455

he doesn’t give away much but you can see why he now hates marxism and democracy so much because he used to believe in it!

does anyone else find that? ,you argue most strongly against that which you used to believe in.

47

Few Marxists have ever read Marx. It isn’t exactly a bestseller flying out of the printing presses.

I was a hardcore central planner for a few years in my teens and I held a place in my heart for icons such as Marx. Had I known the insane, less known things about Marx, I would have hated him, but still idealized central planning, which is essentially the case of all communists.

However, my case is very different from most because I always loved markets since I was little. I always had an understanding and respect for successful entrepreneurs. There’s nothing contradicting at all about that. It just seems so if you use most communists as a reference because most of them had personal experiences in childhood that filled them with hate.

48

I convinced my step-brother towards anarcho-capitalism and he was a supporter of communism.

Although he didn’t know much about capitalism and government in general, so it wasn’t like converting some hardcore communist.

It’s not very hard at all if you find someone that has an open mind (that’s the hard part), I’ve convinced two of my liberal friends as well.

49

Not a Marxist, but my girlfriend used to be a national socialist and she’s now a libertarian/Plutocratian.

50

I actually used to be a Democrat, largely because I thought Republicans were racist and that minorities needed a greater chance. I’m not a minority (other than being an individual), but I hadn’t really completely come to individualism until the first Republican Presidential debates in 2007. I had gradually changed shortly after high school; I had come to reevaluate the Clintons when I saw that Hillary tried to censor my favorite hobby (video games), but 2 years after I had a graduated in 2005, I saw Ron Paul and became a full-fledged paleo-conservative/libertarian.

51

Anarcho-capitalism isn’t a form of government, lol. That’s probably the first issue you need to tackle.

0 state is anarcho-capitalism.

52

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:wink:

And Block was a state-socialist until he had a debate with a prominent Objectivist (I want to say Nathaniel Branden, before his split with Rand) and was convinced to a laissez-faire position.

53

it serves us no good purpose to mock contributers that have different ideas, or in other words, don’t subscribe to anarcho-capitalism. i personally am an anarcho-capitalist because i believe in the sovereignty of the individual, but asokoloski makes a valid argument that cannot be dismissed with mockery or some lolz.

the question is really whether people, if given the choice, would value freedom over comfort, or comfort over freedom. most of the people i know don’t even have a clue what freedom is, but they know when they are uncomfortable.

i personally don’t want to be a silk worm, but i fear that given the choice, most people would embrace a system where their 'betters" made decisions for them if they really were, to some extent, in their best interests.

when i try to visualize a true anarcho-capitalistic society, i cannot help but imagine a committee of townspeople getting together to elect a board or a commissioner to act as their agent for some purpose. anarcho-capitalism would always ride along the edge of that slippery slope into statism, with the only thing protecting it being the awareness of the sovereignty, and resulting responsibility, of the individual, which i fear would be set aside by many in favor of the warm embrace of comfort.

so if all you can do is mock someone who suggests an end result that is the likely end result of your (and my) beloved theoretical utopia, then do you (or I) really have a leg to stand on?

54

Only if they are in fact contributing, but I agree - which is why I haven’t.

Oh you can be ignorant, but when you know all the arguments and still dismiss it for Archy I have an issue with that.

Thank the state education system / indoctrination schools & MSM for that. Just another reason to get rid of the state completely.

People have been conditioned. What do you expect? Take it back to a time where there was no state, i.e the true nature of humanity and the individual was clear.

"The contemporary Irish historian, Kathleen Hughes, has remarked that one reason why the English conquest, begun in the 12th century under Henry II and completed only under William III in the late 17th century, was so long in being achieved was the lack of a well organized State in Celtic Ireland. A people not habituated to a Statist conception of authority are incapable of considering a defeat in war as anything more than a temporary limitation upon their liberty. Submission to the enemy is viewed as no more than a necessary and temporary expedient to preserve one’s life until opportunity for revolt and recovery of liberty presents itself.

The English, of course, considered the Irish notorious in their faithlessness (they repeatedly repudiated oaths of submission and allegiance to their English conquerors); they were repeatedly characterized by English commentators as natural-born, incorrigible rebels, barbarians, savages who refused to submit to the kind of law and order offered by the English State. The Irish, unfettered by the slave mentality of people accustomed to the tyranny of the State, simply refused to surrender their liberty and libertarian ways."

I didn’t mock anyone, but no wonder you responded like this, I gather you seem to think I was mocking you - since you hold the same position? How amusing.

Utopia is literally defined as requiring a change in human nature. Anarcho-capitalism requires the exact opposite, that people realise and follow their self interests. Having overlords isn’t one of them. If comfort is what they seek, a government will not provide it - the exact opposite in fact, in terms of markets, justice and everything under the sun.

I have four limbs, two of those I use to walk with. I don’t know about you…

55

The zeal of the convert you mean? Maybe you just find the best arguments to argue against a position you used to held, because it can give you a better, more complete, perspective. Makes you know where to hit so to say.

56

Do you see an inconsistency in the above quotes?

57

I hadn’t mocked anyone, but then I was accused of it, so I obliged against the accuser. Not inconsistency, just a change of heart.

Is there a reason why you ignored the rest of the post that contained the most substantive arguments and focused instead on the semantics of the least?

Wait, don’t answer that - respond to my previous post points instead if you still disagree with them. Cheers [:)]

58

The reason is that I agree with your arguments. What I was criticizing was your tone. However, having seen your posts in many other threads I realize now that this is just your style. So I can see that my appeal to have you reply to asokoloski with reasonable and respectful replies rather than dismissive one liners like “No-one here does. So why bring it up? That isn’t anarcho-capitalism.” as if only subscribers to ancap were allowed to post here, was a waste of my time and yours. My apologies.

59

No worries. [:)]

60

Well, I am one of those :slight_smile:

Let me explain what I thought and what I think. It may help you to figure out how to argue with marxists and convert them.

CONFESSIONS OF A MARXIST MIND TURNED IN FAVOR OF FREE MARKET CAPITALISM

I used to believe that people’s motivation was more or less constant and not so sensitive to incentives. Thus people would strife and innovate independently of what economic system there was. This was never made explicit in my brain, but it was nevertheless an underlying assumption. A necessary corollary of this assumption is that differences in wealth has to derive from a combination of the following causes:

  1. differences in innate abilities

  2. exploitation by some of others

It was clear to me that differences in abilities could not explain the differences in wealth that I saw around me. After all, no Robinson Crouse could end up super rich. That could only happen by taking advantage of others. (And, as I thought, necessarily at their cost.) Under this assumption, it was natural to think that society collectively should gather to protect itself from the exploiters, just as libertarians usually think that society should collectively defend itself from outside invaders through national defense. The taxes that capitalists had to pay was not “their” money in any meaningful way, since it was basically stolen from the workers. Therefore the state should take it all back and use it for the common good. In fact, I thought that the government should not only take back what the capitalists had stolen from their workers, they should take the further step to artificially erase the innate differencies in productivity. The slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” should be the guiding rule.

Why did I change my mind?

I need not to go into detail about the merits of free market capitalism, as you all know it. Basically I realized that people react to incentives and that this was the underlying reason why capitalist nations were richer than communist nations. I also began to understand how free markets work in allocating resources, and why it was futile to believe that state planning could do the same job. I also realized that one cannot count on the government to act for the common good, since state bureaucrats are not necessarily more angel-like than businessmen. I now realize that the “natural selection” that acts on business is essential to drive out inefficiency.

In short, I have changed my underlying assumptions about how society works and come to different conclusions. This was not done by divine inspiration. It was done by starting to read about economics. I did it reluctantly. I thought that economists were not interested in understanding how the economy worked and had no theories about it. I thought they only invented theories about how to earn money by not working (i.e. “robbing” from others). When I started to learn about the workings of the market I was really thrilled. It was the beginning of a 3 years battle where old “obvious truths” were to battle agains reason and statistics. There are literally billions of neurons that have to connect in a different way when you change your world view in such profound ways. Fortunately I am a man of science, so I know that empirical data has to be accepted and interpreted rather than explained away. I think this helped a lot. But more than anything else, I benefitted from reading Sowell. It was like reading the Devil’s poetry. So clean, so logical, and so contrary to anything I had always thought. It is a strange feeling to have your assumptions and convictions smashed down mercilessly without being able to get upset. Sowell kills almost any argument against him. One can only ignore him or respect him. But to ignore would be intellectual dishonesty.

To sum up, I should perhaps say that I am probably not a “true” libertarian, as far as I understand the concept. By that I mean that I do not warship freedom. I think freedom is nice, of course, but not sufficient as an argument for the free market. Under my old assumptions and conclusions, i.e. that “freedom” led the masses into misery, I condemned freedom since I saw it as being beneficial only for a small randomly selected group. Only under my newly acquired hypothesis that freedom is the most efficient method to bring prosperity to the masses do I embrace it.

I therefor strongly suggest that, when arguing with marxists, do not emphasize freedom. Do not talk about profits in terms of rewards for good work. Talk about it as a necessary evil that has to be there to get those small-minded people out there into being useful. If you have to mention freedom, treat it as a positive side effect, not as a goal in itself. Marxists think that this freedom is only theoretical, that in practice it leads to LESS freedom for the masses since it permits them to be exploited by the capitalists.

Good luck,

Martin