You’re engaging in a correlation fallacy. From the fact that LL’s may share cultural values with “progressives”, it does not follow that LL’s actually have a political link with “progressives” (I.E. a support for corporatist welfare statism and the general political program of the group that originally called itself “progressive” in the early 20th century). This is simply guilt-by-association. What’s more, LL’s are not particularly allied with “progressives”, it’s mostly in an explicitly anarchist context.
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Irrelevant. I asked you a direct question about Proudhon. A question that relates to your claim that he was an influence, within the current discussion about left culturalism in libertarianism. YOU brought Proudhon up.
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He was not a pseudo-racist. He was for aggressive violence against Jews. Don’t equivocate. If you invoke him, then weather the shitstorm. Trappings of the 19th century! You better hope I don’t find any quotes from you condemning the Founding fathers for being pro-slavery.
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I agree he was not a garden variety collectivist. He was exceptional. He saw the Jews as a race to be expelled or exterminated, not as individuals. So don’t tell me about what an individualist he was. His antisemitism was an influence on the fascist movement in Germany. The man actually supported slavery in the South for crissakes. He was an exceptional collectivist.
Anyway, I am done with Proudhon. If anyone does any honest research, they can see for themselves what he was all about. And likewise, cultural leftism in general.
Did I claim that? I’m talking about left culturalism, not left politics.
Only when you create one with a strawman fallacy. Don’t try to reword what I wrote, infer or assume. You know better on this forum.
koinônia, not polis, means society.
Doesn’t change the fact that in Attic Greek “Polis” meant both “State”, and “Society”. For most ancient civilizations, the state was society.
State referred to public and citizenry even in colonial America.
Then why would they have a separate word that only means society?
And why doesn’t the un-radical definition I gave suit you? I never thought it was a controversial concept. I grew up with some of my family members and meeting other people saying what I think is a common understanding: “It’s all politics”
Edit: It happens in the workplace. It happens amongst friends. There’s the “cool people”, “dorks”, “loners”, etc… through socialization people naturally develop ways in how they will structure and maintain their society/group. There’s in-group, out-group dynamics. Trade is one way that usually opens a path between all these diverse political structures.
nevermind
“Koinônia” is a word that reflects ownership through participation; it means society because of the Greek citizen’s participation in the polis, and the resulting unity that it gave to the Greeks, hence its translation as “Society”. “Koinônia” is not a word that neatly translates into the english word for “Society” for the two involves the social-perceptions of individuals seperated by millenia.
Does anyone mind if I split off this semantic debate into a new thread? It’s not adding anything to the OP.
You are quoting Long out of context.
He is not saying that all intuitions are equally important. Rather, he is saying that intuitions and empirical data are on the same level; that both must be rationally assessed to become objective and non-arbitrary.
Here’s what he actually says:
Reflective equilibration, as I’ve described it, is in tension with empiricism, since empiricism by definition grants empirical data a privileged status, while reflective equilibration throws them in on a level with everything else. (p.5)
So this:
is clearly a strawman.
Long:
“Most of the disagreements between Yeager and myself can be traced to one fundamental
divergence: our differing appraisals of the scientific value of reflective equilibrium
as a method of inquiry. Yeager sees this method as having a more limited
applicability than I do. More precisely, he is happy to endorse reflective equilibrium
when judgments about specific cases are revised to fit general principles, but not vice
versa (p. 34); in the latter case, the number of normative judgments treated as fundamental,
and so immune to rational assessment, is too great. Here I would maintain,
however, that because the reflective-equilibrium method is itself a form of rational
assessment, any normative judgment (“fundamental” or otherwise) that is left standing
after the application of the method has thereby received, and survived, rational
assessment—and so can no longer be described as arbitrary or untestable. What distinguishes
reflective equilibrium from mere “intuition-mongering” is that while it may
start with intuitions, those intuitions are not accepted uncritically, but are instead
tested against other intuitions; the cognitive value of intuitions lies not in the intuitions
themselves but in the use that is then made of them.”
I interpreted Long as seeking to apply the method of reflective equilibrium to various normative judgments (intuitions).
In this view, traditional libertarianism that is concerned primarily with liberty from the State or from coercion in its traditional libertarian meaning, is one such intuition or normative judgment. By contrast, leftist concerns such as wealth discrepancies, hierarchical discrepancies, race relations, etc., are a separate set of normative judgments. I interpreted Long as implying that his method of reflective equilibrium would throw all normative judgments on the same level (i.e, not granting privileged status to any particular normative judgment). That seems to be what the passage above is saying.
In the Yeager critique, Long is not discussing leftism or left-libertarianism, and so he applies his understanding of reflective-equilibrium to his view of Yeager’s empiricism.
My quoting passages from this article is a strawman in the sense that Long isn’t discussing leftism or left-libertarianism in this article, but is discussing Yeager’s empiricism.
From separate sources, I took what I believe to be some of the normative judgments of leftism and left-libertarianism that Long is sympathetic to, and juxtaposed them with Long’s stated position on reflective equilibrium which he seems to be saying throws all normative judgments on a level with everything else.
If Long doesn’t mean that all normative judgments are to be thrown on a level with all other normative judgments, and then subjected to his conception of reflective-equilibrium, and if by contrast it is his position that there are some normative judgments that are of higher status than others, then I may be mis-representing his conception of reflective equilibrium.
Then the question would probably be: what does Long’s method of reflective equilibrium show with respect to the normative judgment (intuition) that is traditional libertarianism (focussed on anti-statism and anti-coercion [narrowly defined]), and the normative judgment(s) that is traditional leftism (focussed on wealth, hierarchy, and race discrepancies)?
If Long’s reflective equilibrium shows that libertarian concerns are of higher status than leftist and rightist concerns, or alternatively, that his method of reflective equilibrium somehow pre-supposes the fundamental intuition of libertarianism as hierarchically superior to other rightist and leftist social intuitions, then again, I may be mis-representing or not understanding his conception of reflective equilibrium.
On a plain reading of it as expressed in the article I referred to, reflective equilibration seems to be a method that starts by taking all normative judgments (all intuitions), throwing them on the same level, and then subjecting them to a process of reflective equilibrium; testing the various intuitions against each other, as Long writes. This method would appear to include the intuitions of traditional libertarianism as well as the intuitions of traditional leftism.
I guess the question is whether this process has been completed by Long with respect to the intuitions of traditional libertarianism versus those of traditional leftism, and if so, what has this process shown? Or is this a process (reflective equilibration) that Long has yet to apply to the intuitions of traditional libertarianism versus those of traditional leftism?
(maybe you can provide the appropriate links)
The thread had been developing into a discussion of thick-libertarianism as it is being conceived by left-libertarians, and the point had been made by one poster that if libertarianism were to take on leftist social concerns as part of its program, this would not dilute libertarianism:
“There is no reason why one has to concentrate only on a narrow sense of anti-statism, and it does not follow from the fact that one emphasizes social goals in addition to anti-statism that one’s devotion to anti-statism is lessened. So let’s be clear here: there is a difference between advocating social goals at the expense of anti-statism and advocating social goals in addition to anti-statism. This is part of the confusion over “thick” left-libertarianism. It is a broadening of scope in which the already granted political premises constitute a part of a broader social philosophy, not an either/or antagonism with the already granted political premises. Adding things to oppose in addition to the state does not inherently water down anti-statism and adding goals to support in addition to political liberty does not inherently water down political liberty.”
My point was to show how this sentiment is/was not simply an isolated insight by an autonomous individual, but a developing philosophy that Long and other left-libertarians appear to have adopted. Rather than conceiving libertarianism as a fundamental and singular normative judgment having to do with liberty from the state, they are proposing to add leftist social concerns, not as individual moral concerns, but as part of the libertarian program itself.
This would constitute a dilution of libertarianism analogous to the case if libertarianism were to take as part of its program an anti-abortion and pro-school prayer stance.
In traditional libertarianism, the additional social concerns are conceived as matters of individual conscience, separate from the overall political theory of liberty from the state. (notwithstanding the fact that closer analysis shows that many people include their own normative concerns—usually unstated—as part of their vision of libertarianism)
In left-libertarianism it is proposed that leftist social concerns be conceived as more than matters of individual conscience and individual action. The proposal is that leftist social concerns be explicitly placed within the libertarian program “on a level with everything else.” (that thesis was the focus of Charles Johnson’s essay “Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin”)
I was trying to draw attention to the similarities between what is being proposed by left-libertarianism and the analytical method Long is advocating. The equalization of all intuitions in the theoretical method of reflective equilibration has, as its counterpart in left-libertarianism, promoting leftist social concerns from individual moral concerns to libertarian platform items on equal par with anti-statism and anti-coercion narrowly defined.
To draw attention to these similarities, I had to bring in information that was not in Long’s Yeager critique. But this information seems reasonably accurate and relevant to the context of that discussion. Generally, left-libertarianism seeks to add its social concerns to libertarianism as more than matters of individual conscience and individual action. It seeks to place leftist social concerns within libertarianism on a level equal with everything else. Or so it seems to “traditional” libertarians.
First, I should point out that I don’t think my comment above affects your argument very much.
I think this is a weird way to think about RE. Yes, all intuitions are on the same level, in the sense that they’re all intuitions. But I don’t think Long is saying that all intuitions are equally strong, or equally important, any more than he would say that all arguments are equally strong. For example, in Culture and Liberty he gives three kinds of other-regarding virtues: justice, negative beneficence (not harming others), positive beneficence (helping others). And he says that, in general, justice is more demanding than negative beneficence, and negative beneficence is more demanding than positive beneficence. So here he uses RE to arrive at the conclusion that some virtues are more important than others.
I think this, for the most part, would be his conclusion. But I think he would also say (and this seems to be your worry) that in some contexts it would be more important to oppose non-rights-violating oppression. So it’s not that leftist concerns are always equally important with traditional libertarian ones; sometimes they might be, other times they would be more or less important, depending on the context.
Like libertarianism in general, I think this is an ongoing project. As for conclusions, they seem pretty general, e.g. “the libertarian struggle against statist oppression needs to be integrated (or re-integrated) with traditionally left-wing struggles against various sorts of non-state oppression such as patriarchy, racism, bossism, etc.” Are you looking for something more specific?
Right. Thin-libertarians would see it as a dilution. But for left-libertarians, state-oppression and non-state oppression form an interlocking system of mutually reinforcing social practices and structures, so they would see adding leftist concerns as a bolstering of libertarianism. By opposing non-state oppression, they can more effectively oppose the State.
My view is that RE is just a philosophical method. It can be used to justify thin-, thick-, left-, or right-libertarianism.
Hoppe’s a marxist too then since he has agreed with aspects of it… This is absurd reactionism that I’m increasingly grown tired of here.
You seem to be bringing up a lot of very old threads
True.I thought they looked interested.That couldn’t be somewhat related to why your locking them up could it?
My estimation would be that thread necromancy (irrelevant to a currently active thread) is against forum rules. It’s generally very bad forum etiquette to necro without very good reason. That might explain the locking. I’ll see what a mod says, though.