Actually some are even worst they act like they are moraly superior and they dont even believe in morals…which I do.
Hit the quote button, then when it loads, look at the URL and at the end it will say ‘false,’ simply change that to ‘true’ and it will reload and the quote will be working.
I’ve got a treat for you then. Here is Rothbard’s book on the mindset, which is at the top of my reading list currently, and surely exactly what you’re looking for:
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
It’s free 
Thanks
Never forget this: it is on moral grounds that the fight must be waged. Socialism spread so far because people believed it was morally superior to the ruling classes using aggression to maintain their privileges at the expense of ordinary people. It was, in the face of even worse oppression. But socialism did not does not and cannot reject force in social relationships, it is predicated on force, and must be attacked on those grounds. Our best wedge is the non-aggression principle.
That attitude of moral superiority still persists to this day in those people. We must agree with their goals of freedom and prosperity for all–after all they took those goals from us back in the day. But their chosen means, of using force to achieve all ends, is completely and irredeemably immoral. And you cannot cleanse an evil means with good goals.
Ok thank you.
I got a confesion to make I never read a book (entire one at least), and when people write books they tend to be very scientifical and they end up being very complicated and not saying much. But I like the title because Egalitarianism its really a revolt against nature, natural laws and reality, but still I prefer reading your posts for now, maybe later when I develop reading habits ill have a look 
Okay guys. I think I understand now that libertarian socialism is dumb and that Chomsky is pretty much a statist.
Ok Imagine I quoted the whole thing you said on your last post basically I agree.
And I also thought of them like “well intentioned people” but hell is full of good intentions, and I always find hard to believe the good intentions of people that voluntarily ignore truth and facts…in order to impose their “moraly superior” goals. And the concept of justice they have is beyond me…totally based on emotion and personal interests I guess.
Not Rothbard, he’s write for a mass audience in a very easy to understand style And he says a lot.
Here, this is best book you could possibly read. And for it to be your first, that would be something you could boast about for life, because as far as books go it’s a life-changing book. It’s Rothbard’s explanation of libertarianism, and it’s free:
For a New Liberty, the Libertarian Manifesto
If you read just a few minutes a day, you’d be done in a month. Also, here’s the exact same book as an audiobook! Again, for free. So, if reading ain’t your thing, how about listening? I like to listen to audiobooks while driving for instance.
They believe in equality, it’s true. But it’s a kind of spiritual equality, or as Thomas Sowell puts it, Cosmic Justice, an unobtainable form of justice. That’s a great book on the leftist mindset as well. And speaking of Sowell, here’s another fantastic book about them he wrote called The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
Because it is unobtainable, it justifies going to any length to obtain it, including the violation of people’s rights–in their minds. They hold equality above justice in many cases, and thus accept the idea of using gov coercion to force certain social outcomes, such as using the obviously unjust racial tests for employment and school admissions. And they use them to “HELP” (favored) minorities, justifying it as discrimination used for good to make up for past discrimination which held people down.
That makes a certain sense in terms of justice. But it’s still evil to use force to discriminate against people, legally, even if you’re trying to help one group or another. What needs to be done away with in the first place is the idea that legal discrimination is in any way acceptable, even for good purposes. Because, as your said, the road to hell… good intentions. And Hitler thought he was doing the world a favor too.
Well…I wont say its unobtainable I would say its a stupid thought to start with, for equality to exist we necessarily needed to be all the same and do the exact same things, or else, justice couldnt exist. And thats what they try to ignore, that justice exists just like natural laws, if you put your hands on the fire you will get burned, not everybody will, just you. But anyway its a long discussion.
Thanks for the audiobook thats more my field (of research), I dont want to sound like a demiprophet or some might say “arrogant” but Im really not very much into knowing what others think, its good sometimes but I try to stay away from influences, thats how I apparently became a Libertarian (eventhou Im not sure of what that means), its a thing I have, its my way, im extremely individualist.
Just to add wouldnt exist justice and of course free will and I could even say LIFE itself.
You would not be able to hire me to run a machine in such a society. Once you get compensated for your work on the machine, your claims become unjustified. The fact that I would not be able to make as many hammers without you is irrelevant. Some who were born slaves would have died without their masters. Is that an argument for slavery? If I was born without wealth and you were not, it does not mean it is right for you to exploit me.
Even if the contract explicitly states that it can never be broken? Equivocation? Ok, forget “(sex) slave”, think “property”. By contract, she becomes my property and waives all of what we now call “rights and freedoms”. I own her like I own a dog. The contract can be made unbreakable. We can assume she will die the moment she steps outside my house. (She depends on me for medication or she has a non-removable bracelet which will explode or whatever pleases your imagination). My question is, do you find my behaviour acceptable in this scenario and if not, what could possibly stop me in your stateless capitalist paradise if I also happen to be disgustingly rich?
As romantic as it sounds, it’s simply not true. Freedom means freedom, not “freedom to do with your ‘property’ as you wish”. The two are different and incompatible. Your “free to choose” also means you are free to financially support people who directly oppose true freedom.
And if I want access to a lake, a river, a mine, a forest, a meadow etc and (private) police shows up and uses force to prevent me from entering this “private property”, how is that compatible with NAP? By my last line I mean that you can defend slavery using the same arguments. Slaves were also “free”. They can do what they are told or they can starve and get whipped. The employed are free. They can do what they are told or they can starve. The paperwork involved makes no difference. While no whipping and the ability to choose the master is an improvement, it doesn’t mean there’s no space for further improvements. In fact, some slave owners argued that this is not an improvement. If you own something that is hard to obtain (a slave), you will take better care of it than of something that you do not own and that is easy to obtain (a wage-slave).
The right to own the product of your labour. Waiving this right by signing a contract is no different than waiving any other right. How do you derive any rights?
If one agrees by contract to get tortured, where is the coercion?
And if there are no profits, the employer will just make money out of thin air to give them their fixed paycheck? But never mind that. Suppose the company is doing quite well and the capitalist earned back his investment. Now suppose all of the workers who could possibly work at his company unionize and demand that he gets no more than his contribution in production from now on. What then? In your capitalist utopia, rich people do not hire armed people to force others to work. They do not influence the market in ways harmful to the workers (e.g. food shortages). Union leaders are not lynched. Striking miners and their families are not massacred. Dictatorships are not installed to obtain cheap resources and labour. And rivers run uphill.
That can mean many things.
Is everything predicated on force then? I am not sure what your reasoning behind that is. Either way, aren’t your views as well? As I said earlier, you need to initiate force to keep me away from “private property”. The notion is based on force.
Why do you think that? Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist.
Dude sorry but Socialist contracts are far worse. Socialists and Communists operate on contracts that are collectivist and much more crude.
Life is about risk, people are allowed to take risk and sell themselves if necessary, especially if there is a meeting of the minds. It is not up to you or anyone else to determine what is good for me.
The reality is that Capitalism is more successful than Socialism, even impure capitalism like we have today is far better than whatever society you have in mind. Only the market can save us from problems.
“If I was born without wealth and you were not, it does not mean it is right for you to exploit me.”
I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that, as no one is arguing for exploitation.
“My question is, do you find my behavior acceptable in this scenario and if not, what could possibly stop me in your stateless capitalist paradise if I also happen to be disgustingly rich?”
Most libertarians do not accept the ability of an individual to actually sell himself, and in no society that isn’t extremely invasive would a group of people stop such a contract from going on if it was continually voluntary. I wouldn’t like it, and I could try to stop either of you from continuing the contract, but at the end of the day if neither you nor your slave was willing to do so then it would continue on, and such would likely be the case for the socialist anarchist society so long as it still allowed for any degree of social freedom.
“Freedom means freedom, not ‘freedom to do with your ‘property’ as you wish’.”
In a world of general scarcity this is the closest thing to freedom that you can get.
“Your “free to choose” also means you are free to financially support people who directly oppose true freedom.”
What?
“Slaves were also “free”. They can do what they are told or they can starve and get whipped. The employed are free. They can do what they are told or they can starve. The paperwork involved makes no difference.”
Really? I think it makes a lot of difference. In 99 percent of cases in the modern day there are alternatives for any individual than working for any single employer and eventually it comes down to the same thing: if the people of the society are willing to fund others to do absolutely nothing then they are more than welcome to do so. There is no guarantee that in a leftist anarchist society some variation of wage-slavery will be abolished (beyond becoming goods-slavery because money is gone), it’s up to everyone there to decide this. If you live in a commune and the workers decide that they don’t want to distribute goods to non-workers then you’re out of luck… Guess communists are slave owners.
Most importantly, however, is the fact that in the case of “wage slavery” I have done nothing to you, I have left you alone and now you are dead, no force was used, nothing of yours was infringed upon. You are free to survive in any way imaginable, and in the modern world these are numerous indeed and would shrink infinitely under the socialist system. If you were my slave then I could take your life, rape you, do anything to you. These are not the same and to equate them is gross conflation. The wage slavery doctrine was bunk from the start and it’s even more irrelevant now with exactly how far most people in the developed world are away from the starvation line.
“Waiving this right by signing a contract is no different than waiving any other right.”
You cannot physically stop controlling your body unless you die or are unconscious. You can sure as hell stop possessing practically any physical object.
“If one agrees by contract to get tortured, where is the coercion?”
If they agree to it all the way through, there is none, and there wouldn’t be in the socialist anarchist society either.
“Now suppose all of the workers who could possibly work at his company unionize and demand that he gets no more than his contribution in production from now on. What then? In your capitalist utopia, rich people do not hire armed people to force others to work. They do not influence the market in ways harmful to the workers (e.g. food shortages). Union leaders are not lynched. Striking miners and their families are not massacred. Dictatorships are not installed to obtain cheap resources and labour. And rivers run uphill.”
This isn’t an argument. Nor could it be made into one if you really think that there’s a likelihood of the capitalists actually influencing the market through something as ridiculous as producing food shortages or that basic law enforcement is impossible.
“Why do you think that? Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist.”
Chomsky supports numerous welfare programs and actions of the state, he also supports someone like Hilary Clinton over Ron Paul even though Paul supports the pacifism which Chomsky supposedly adores so much and wants to reduce the power of the central government only to make the state governments more powerful, take things down to a local level, like socialists supposedly want to.
This is what casts doubt on Chomsky for me more than anything else, although I do like a lot of his rhetoric involving knowledge, he admitted once that he doesn’t even necessarily oppose the existence of markets, which would necessitate then that according to Chomsky’s logic that if the socialist anarchist society was ever reached he would be brought over to voluntarism.
‘‘In capitalism there is hierarchial organization among people, and the workers don’t get the full product of their labor, whereas in socialism these two traits are absent.’’
By socialism, I take it you mean the abstract utopia (where everyone will be equal, blah, blah) in your mind, and not the socialism that existed in the USSR, its satellites, and the other countries claiming to have established socialism, because hierarchy certainly existed in all of those countries. It’s very fashionable for far-left true believers to claim that the 20th centuries social experiments (i.e. the USSR, etc.), which massacred millions, weren’t Socialist/Communist because these societies didn’t fit the abstract utopia they had envisioned in their minds. Every attempt at reaching the Communist utopia has ended in precisely the opposite direction of its stated goals. Please direct me to a Socialist/Communist experiment that survived for more than a decade and didn’t create a monstrous state apparatus, which enforced, through violence and terror, an ideological and economic monopoly over society. Perhaps it’s time for Marxists and the other ideologues from the loony left to consider the possibility that reality cannot be moulded to fit their abstractions.
It’s natural for hierarchies to form in nearly all, if not all, aspects of human activity primarily because of variation in human ability. Some people are more intelligent, some are stronger, some are faster, and so on. To give an example, a hierarchy will naturally arise in sports, such as cricket, were teams comprised of the most gifted, physically fit, and competently trained players will outperform teams comprised of less gifted, less physically fit and less competently trained players.
p.s I’m an ex-marxist that was influenced by left-communism, libertarian socialism, and anarcho-communism.
I extend my welcome to you Rugged Free-Marketer, thanks for joining this debate.
That depends on what you mean by socialism and how you measure success. Do you say that knowing (roughly at least) what I have in mind or do you think that capitalism is the pinnacle of human achievement and we needn’t look further?
Well, for me, renting is right next to it on the list.
I beg to differ. Being free to arm Saddam Hussein is light-years away from the notion of Freedom.
I would not be told what to do, I could work on my own terms and if I wished to use this planet in some way to feed myself, I could. In a commune it would not matter what my abilities are, I would still get what I need, right? So they are not really slave owners. Of course, this presupposes a functioning commune which is not something that is formed overnight.
Except perhaps putting a large fence and armed people around an area of land that I could work on to feed myself.
These things happen. So either you think they are OK, or you think free capitalism would get rid of them somehow or you think that is the best possible world. Please convince me of any of those.
When capitalists stop trying to destroy them, it might happen.
That depends on what you mean by socialism and how you measure success. Do you say that knowing (roughly at least) what I have in mind or do you think that capitalism is the pinnacle of human achievement and we needn’t look further?
Do you think that socialism is the pinnacle of human achievement and there is no need to look further?
Well, for me, renting is right next to it on the list.
Technically, the reasons for why it’s impossible to sell oneself makes it impossible to rent oneself as well.
I beg to differ. Being free to arm Saddam Hussein is light-years away from the notion of Freedom.
Relevance to freedom or capitalism? What about arming Lenin or Stalin or Pol Pot? Is that freedom? What about arming yourself?
I would not be told what to do, I could work on my own terms and if I wished to use this planet in some way to feed myself, I could. In a commune it would not matter what my abilities are, I would still get what I need, right? So they are not really slave owners. Of course, this presupposes a functioning commune which is not something that is formed overnight.
So if you have no abilities and can’t or won’t do anything you’ll get what you need? So now you’re the slave-owner. I’m beginning to see the appeal of these communes. Sounds like a sweet gig.
Except perhaps putting a large fence and armed people around an area of land that I could work on to feed myself.
So socialism means that everyone gets out of your way so you can have what you want? Give up your wives, give up your daughters, give up your food! Anonymous121393 has a hankering for some ‘socialism’…
These things happen. So either you think they are OK, or you think free capitalism would get rid of them somehow or you think that is the best possible world. Please convince me of any of those.
Source? (Specifically on how capitalism causes them to happen, as that is the gist of your argument.)
When capitalists stop trying to destroy them, it might happen.
Source?
I don’t remember even using word “justice” once, let alone putting a “theory of justice”.
It is the contemporary propaganda that makes my oppossition to wage labor a minory view. The USA and USSR propaganda machineries that both instited that USSR was a socialist country, USA to discredit it, USSR to leach on the popular appeal that real socialism had among the working masses in Europe, which was very real.
And the idea of wage labor being bad far from being a modern invention.
Pre-civil war republicans were also of that view, seeing wage labor as degrading, confining and resulting in a non-free man that are not free voters. That was the view of Lincoln, Jefferson, much of the republicans of the North accepted that, seeing wage labor at best as a prefigure of self-employment, being that the ideal was the yeoman, who was in control of his own life, without any boss.
Lowell Mill Girls, who without any knowledge of Proudhon, Dejacque, or any similar European philosopher coined the term “wage slavery” were also aware of that fact.
The Enlightenment espused the idea, the very Adam Smith that starts his work with the notion of division of labor later in the same work says that if left unchecked, it will make people as stupid and ignorant as possible, and Humbouldt wrote that when we see a worker doing a good job but under orders “we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is” because he doesn’t work as a human, but as a tool, as machine, being that “what is the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness”, and according to Enlightement values, humans are defined by their freedom and creativity, and being turned into a machine is contrary to human nature.
The notion is so far from being of modern origin that even Cireco wrote that “whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves” in On Duty.
Simon Linguet wrote in 1763
The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him. They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market. It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune. These men have the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?
Of cource, propertarians would say yes, being that you define freedom as your existing property (in person and external things) not being aggressed against, and of course, every socialist and anarchist will disagree.
What question I have not answered?
When in fact I have worker as a manager.
If you try hard enough to image that there exists something that it doesn’t, sure, you’re be able to see, you just have to look “hard enough”.
Talking in extremes, neither is a society where murder and theft don’t exist. Which has nothing to with whether if they should be banned or not.
So you are trying to find the most effective way to use appeal to motive logical fallacy? I don’t see what good does that do.
Socialist established itself in Europe only in two instatnces, both of which were destroyed pretty quick.
Which is a slim substitute for an ethical principle. It is a very narrow version of the harm principle (which is more justifiable as being an a priori norm of discourse) and allows for brutalities, like locking people up and starving them, or killing babies by exposing them to the elements, and also when intepreted as source of voluntaryist society it is an exuse for tolerating slavery, and torture, rape, and murder as legitimate action of owner toward his chattel slave.
Wow, and you “understand now”.
By socialism I mean a non hieararchial economy, in it’s form of (Proudhonian) mutualism, (Bakuninist) collectivism, or (Kropotkinist) communism. Such societies were the Free Territory in what is today Ukraine, Revolutionary Catalonia and Andalusia, and one exists in Zapatista Chiapas in Mexico.
USSR, it’s satellites, and similar countries were not socialist societies, but state capitalist ones.
It is not fasihonable, but correct, it USSR has been dismissed as not socialist or communist, not only by all anarchist of the time and the Esers (who conducted the February Revolution was to establish socialism in Russia) but also by orthodox marxists, such as Kautsky, Pannekoek, SPGB, and many other orthodox marxist groups - as soon as Leninists abolished the worker councils in 1918.
Bakunin, who died in 1876 (and Bolsheviks came into being in 1903, and into power in 1917), very cleary said that any attempt by the state to institute socialism is nothings except state capitalism.
Bolshevik never attempted it. They were vary at first explicit that they want nationalization of property as opposed to socialization (for which the Eser fought), and they inacted it when they came into power. The strugles for socialism happened in Ukraine and in Spain and they were successful, and they did establish socialism.
Except for in argumentation, where if hierachical organization among people becomes manifest, it invalidates argumentation and turns it into giving and taking orders. Which is to say that absense of hierachy is an a priori norm of doscourse, which means it an a priori ethical axiom.
Which can legitimately have as consequence only that being more intelligent, stornger, faster, and so on. You being stronger doesn’t give you the right to beat me, likewise being more intelligent doesn’t give you the right to be my boss.
I’m having pretty hard time believing that seeing your lack of understanding of what socialism is.
Im not trying to use apeal or logical fallacys I hardly understand what you mean by that. I would simply like to convince people like you (or much worst) to have a proper vision, so I dont know why you need to get all those fancy words. Its quite simple what I want, and I dont want to impose nothing neither I need to, I just think would be better for everyone (including me) to stop socialist rhetoric, as you think the opposite, nothing wrong with that and its quite simple.
Since I respect democracy and individual freedom the only way I can see a change is by convincing people (willing to listen), never by forcing others to live as I think they should or forcing them to listen even.
Anyway no doubts you have your lesson very well studied, and you seem to have coherence, unfortunatelly 95% of lefthists are not like you. Nevertheless I find your ideas far from convincing.
By the way a note for everyone : sorry for my english Im not a native english speaker.
“Well, for me, renting is right next to it on the list.”
Well for everyone here it isn’t. There’s a difference between saying “own my body which I cannot actually give a way” and “here, I understand that if I bake you cakes for an hour you’ll pay me money”. One is performing a simple, laid out service while retaining ownership, the other is seceeding ownership when you cannot. They are two very different things and more importantly renting will not and cannot stop in any society which wishes to continue to exist, even in a socialist anarchist society this would be the case.
“I beg to differ. Being free to arm Saddam Hussein is light-years away from the notion of Freedom.”
What are you talking about?
“I would not be told what to do, I could work on my own terms and if I wished to use this planet in some way to feed myself, I could. In a commune it would not matter what my abilities are, I would still get what I need, right?.”
You are not told what to do under capitalism, you can do whatever you want that doesn’t infringe on other people’s property when they don’t want to do. You would be told that you had to do something or you WOULD starve if you couldn’t find another way to feed yourself. If you could find another way to feed yourself you would be more than happy to do so under capitalism, no one would stop you. You are right that it would not matter what your abilities were if the commune decided to fund you, but this is the same thing as it would be in the capitalist society. If the working people decided to fund you, you’d be funded, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be. The same thing would happen in communism, period, because what I’ve never seen a socialist communist acknowledge is the fact that their system is a METHOD, not an ENDS. That is to say that their system of direct democracy doesn’t predicate any other result, there could still be inequality, there could still even be wages, all that direct democracy means, is just that. DIRECT DEMOCRACY.
At any rate, you acknowledge that the communists would still be slave owners. If you couldn’t find any other way to attain food then you would have to work for them or you would starve and die, which is the same as if they had been whipping you and had killed you if you hadn’t done their work. Stop being selective about what you’re saying, you just argued the same thing that a capitalist would have said in response to your accusation. Apply your own claim to your own words.
“Except perhaps putting a large fence and armed people around an area of land that I could work on to feed myself.”
The socialist anarchists would do that too if they wanted to use that land because it belonged to the community.
“These things happen. So either you think they are OK, or you think free capitalism would get rid of them somehow or you think that is the best possible world. Please convince me of any of those.”
The food market is too massive for capitalists to effectively influence it in the modern world with any degree of success. As for basic law enforcement it wouldn’t be a problem, why do you think that protecting people from violence would be hard?