From another forum topic, there was talk of striving for tangible goals. I guess this is the age old question of Would it be apt to use the system to change the system, or to totally disregard the system? Baby steps, or giant leaps?
I lean towards using the system to change the system. At the infancy of the US, it leaned towards a more libertarian type of state, though not perfect. However, slowly but surely the statist took over, inching away at freedoms. Those inches, became foots, and those foots became miles.
However, I do think baby steps and giant leaps both play an important role in regaining freedom.
Libertarians tend to me more concerned with morality and principles than statists. This leads to an understandable unwillingness to practice political incrementalism (after all, why should we be forced to enter the political arena to convince others to allow us to keep our own money?). This refusal to fight allows the statists to win the political battle, which causes libertarians to further lose faith in political incrementalism, etc.
Incrementalism, within the democratic-state system, works only in one direction: more power. It takes a serious crisis to shrink government, and when it takes place it’s usually done all at once. (See Pinochet, Thatcher, Shock Therapy, and so on)
It is not that we are unwilling to practice incrementalism, it is that gradual reduction of government is unrealistic. The incentives created by the democratic-state system make it substantially easier to increase government than to shrink it, and thus our opponents, if evenly matched, will win without effort. If our opponents in fact outnumber us, incrementalism is a fantasy.
In strategy, there is a concept called Schwerpunkt. It means focusing your efforts on the point of maximum vulnerability. Statists, within the system they have created, are by and large invulnerable. We are not going to beat them in a contest where they are the referee. We must challenge their point of maximum vulnerability.
What if the crisis happens and the men with guns lock things up tighter and impose order? I think one of the agorists argued for Zimbabwe in another thread, but I think we all know that Zimbabwe is no closer to abandoning the state and moving to free market liberty anytime soon, regardless of how bad the crisis becomes. Even if the Zimbabweans fight for it, some other state will move in and “establish control”.
I don’t see any harm in having people talking about liberty, creating (soft) liberty oriented legislation, voting against obviously bad legislation, speaking on TV, leaving a record in the halls of state etc. In fact, I’d argue that if we had enough of such people, liberty could be advanced significantly, perhaps bringing anarchy or agorism into the realm of the possible, instead of the radical extreme.
What happens if we don’t play their game? We allow the statists to continuously grab more power. Abstaining from voting on principle is similar to abstaining from self-defense on principle: don’t expect the result to be pretty.
What happens when you play their game? Their game is a power play! The statists grab more power and you yourself start to become one of them. Because you yourself are henceforth trying to grab power, consequentially becoming a statist in action. That’s what happens. Furthermore, comparing voting to self-defense is rather silly. Voting most certainly is not an efficient means of self-defense. When was the last time an individual vote actually constituted self-defense? I can’t think of any scenario in which punching a hole in a piece of paper is really self-defense.
A real analogy would be that there is a gang and you claim to oppose the gang, then you join the gang and make use of their own tactics. It makes no sense at all. You henceforth become a gang member; your own enemy. Joining the state in the name of abolishing it is similar to a white nationalist joining the Black Panthers or an atheist joining the Catholic Church. It defies all logic and is blatantly counterproductive.
Joining the state and participating in the political process allows the statists to win the battle. The statists want you to vote. They want people to patronize them. They want people to run for office. They want people to contribute money to campaigns. That’s precisely what they rely on on modern democracy. Abstainance from such things is not a “refusal to fight” or absolute inaction, it is fighting through disobedience. Engaging in those things is asquiescance, not a way to fight statism. State power largely rests on the asquiescance of the public to their own plunder and servitude (as La Boetie noted centuries ago). State power is rendered virtually obsolete by a mere mass withdrawl of obedience.
Libertarians, by definition, aren’t supposed to have faith in democracy and gradualism. The purpose of the libertarian is precisely to decrease faith in it. Democracy is to be viewed as tyrannical and gradualism is perpetuity in practise. Libertarianism is a radical creed, not moderate or conservative or gradualist or reformist. Less faith in the political process is a good thing. Faith in the political process merely reinforces the idea that the state actually can be tamed and made to “work” - I.E. minarchism at best. Hence, anarcho-capitalists who have such faith are actually functioning as minarchists or classical liberals, as they apparently believe that political means work and the state can be tamed, which sort of defeats the whole point of the “anarcho” part.
No, we try to grab power from them and then minimize the effect of that power over other individuals, ultimately eliminating it.
I assure you, the statists do not want their opponents to vote and run for office. They want us to continue cooking up our wild-eyed theories and then sit on our hands on election day.
You’re being much too collectivist; statists are individuals, too. An individual proponent of nationalized health care does not want her opponents to vote against it.
Why a special place in liberty hell for voting? Aren’t people who pay tax endorsing the system? Taking in tax subsidized education? Receiving any subsidized health care? If someone makes use of any public services, aren’t they enjoying the wealth confiscated by the state? And doesn’t their demand send a message to government that supply is being utilized and may even require an increase?
Perfect liberty may be a standard to strive for, but I cannot see how anyone rationalizes that it can only be achieved through an absolute approach. Existence under a state involves some form of compromise. How much compromise is subjective.
In other words, a transfer of political power into the hands of different people (and from the standpoint of those different people, a power-grab). Once this power is in the hands of different/new people, how is it to be maintained? Obviously, through political means. Otherwise, it could not be maintained and the power switcheroo would have been pointless. Therefore, this approch inherently reinforces the institutional problem itself because it relies on political means. Political means must be exercised in order for the process of power transfer itself to take place. Once the power is obtained, the only way to keep it is through political means. This is not a path towards abolition, it is a power game of musical chairs. Once people gain such positions of power, they don’t just willingly give it up. People don’t run for office and then dissolve their own office upon arrival. It just doesn’t work that way. They rely on the powers of the given position in order to even attempt to do anything, and thus by merely holding such a position they reinforce political power.
Not at all. Voting is heavily encouraged. There is an institutional status quo. The existance of different parties and agendas does not mean that politicians would prefer you not to vote. There is a compromise made between the parties and respective agendas in order to keep the system going. You need to understand the state as constituting one party in and of itself, I.E. a ruling elite. Combined, despite different factions, they have a mutual interest in maintaining the status quo. They compromise with eachother and the result is more often than not the worst side of both agendas. The differences between the parties, at the end of the day, are rather miniscule. The vast majority of politicians agree on the fundamentals. The status quo relies, in part, on people voting. If voting truly was capable of making a difference, it would be illegal. In reality, it is rather widely encouraged and in places like Australia it is compulsory. In professing faith in the viability of voting, you are merely accepting the myth of democracy and thus professing faith in the government. But democracy is a myth: voting does not mean significant control by the people and it does not gaurantee representation. If we openly aknowledge that the democratic process is a sham, then I don’t see why one would want to vote.
Despite disagreements among rulers, they are all institutional agents and have a common interest in maintaining their power. They agree on fundamentals and require the exact same political/coercive mechanisms in order to function as institutional agents. For the most part, there are no serious qualative differences between them. They pretty much all support taxation, monetary inflation, government courts, government police, a government military, foreign intervention, wealth redistribution, and so on. The disagreements between them are mostly pragmatic and over particulars, not over fundamentals. For them, it’s a question of which interest groups should be benefited, which country to invade, which industry to nationalize - not wether or not any interest groups should be benefited at all or wether or not countries should be invaded at all or wether or not nationalization of industries is right. But from a hardcore libertarian standpoint, such disagreements are pretty much irrelevancies because the fundamental and qualative problems remain. Politics is a pragmatic game, not a principled one. But libertarianism is a matter of first principles.
In my opinion, yes. I’m not going to call someone a statist if they’re using government services but they’re clearly not completely unhappy with it or they would resist more.
I don’t think there’s only one way to get to anarchy but I really don’t see how voting (more specifically working on a campaign) does anything but waste time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
I’ve made this distinction before and I’ll make it again. Taxation is compulsory. Public education is partially compulsory too. Voting, unless you live in Australia, is not. You must make use of the public roads if you wish to function reasonably within society. You do not need to vote to function reasonably within society. So no, the analogy does not quite hold. Those things are not quite similar to voting because you do not really have to vote to survive or function in society. Libertarians are not hypocrits for driving on public roads or having children in public schools because we have no choice but to make use of them. So in this sense, yes, compromise of this sort is fine. But the same is not true of voting. You do not have no choice but to vote. You can not vote all you like.
Another point though is that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t sometimes actively defy such things. Despite the coercive nature of the state, there still are possibilities and oppurtunities for you to employ alternatives and engage in civil disobedience. You can be a tax resister. You can open up and persue private alternatives to public/government services. You can break prohibition laws. You can protest. You can burn your draft card. You can homeschool your children. Strictly speaking, you do not have to obey - there always is a possibility for you to actively disobey despite the risk. The true apathy comes from those who do nothing at all to defy the state as members of civil society, not non-voters who persue civil disobedience and private alternatives.
On the other hand, actively patronizing and lobbying the government for special privileges and handouts or running for office is not a “compromise” forced by a lack of choice on your part but active collusion with and participation in the plunder. You do not have to ask the government for special protections and privileges. You do not have to lobby the government. You do not have to run for office. These are not things you are forced to do by merely existing under a state. They are cases of actively working with the state and trying to grab some of its power for yourself. They are cases of the corruption that inevitably springs from political power. These are not reasonable compromises for a libertarian to make in order to survive or function in society.
There is indeed a fine line that a libertarian has to walk between existing in current society and sticking to their princples, but I don’t think the line of compromise is subjective at all. I see the line being between passive and active activities, and direct and indirect ones. Actively trying to grab political power for yourself and directly patronizing the state (active) is not a sound compromise, it is self-defeating in principle and downright hypocritical for a libertarian to do. And while voting might not be immoral in any strict sense, nonetheless it is to asquiesce (passive) and to participate in something that the libertarian should very well know is futile (indirect action). On the other hand, in order to survive and function in society you may have to make use of certain public services (passive). But as I pointed out above, one could also actively resist and engage in civil disobedience (direct action). One could go out of their way to patronnize alternatives so that they don’t make use of such government services (direct action).
Mises had this to say in his final section of Theory and History, and I tend to agree (all emphasis is mine):
"Only a few men are endowed with the capacity to conceive new ideas. But as political ideas can work only if they are accepted by society, it rests with the crowd of those who themselves are unable to develop new ways of thinking to approve or disapprove the innovations of the pioneers. There is no guarantee that these masses of followers and routinists will make wise use of the power vested in them. They may reject the good ideas, those whose adoption would benefit them, and espouse bad ideas that will seriously hurt them. But if they choose what is worse, the fault is not theirs alone. It is no less the fault of the pioneers of the good causes in not having succeeded in bringing forward their thoughts in a more convincing form. The favorable evolution of human affairs depends ultimately on the ability of the human race to beget not only authors but also heralds and disseminators of beneficial ideas.
In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrant’s feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters. However, this may be slow to come about, and in the meantime irreparable damage may have been inflicted upon the common weal. In addition a revolution necessarily means a violent disturbance of social cooperation, produces irreconcilable rifts and hatreds among the citizens, and may engender bitterness that even centuries cannot entirely wipe out. The main excellence and worth of what is called constitutional institutions, democracy and government by the people is to be seen in the fact that they make possible peaceful change in the methods and personnel of government. Where there is representative government, no revolutions and civil wars are required to remove an unpopular ruler and his system. If the men in office and their methods of conducting public affairs no longer please the majority of the nation, they are replaced in the next election by other men and another system."
Despite his radical tendencies, Mises was a minarchist who tended to praise representative democracy. In this respect he was wrong. Constitutionalism and representative democracy are utter failures in light of libertarian goals, and both ideas have been throughly discredited by various libertarians (Lysander Spooner, for example, totally demolished constitutionalism before Mises was even born). Representative democracy may present the possibility for peaceful change in the methods and personnel of government, as Mises states, but if one’s goal is to actually eliminate the institution itself then this is not a compelling argument for a libertarian anarchist. My goal is not to change the methods or personnel of government, but to ultimately eliminate them. Mises is only speaking in terms of replacing one political system within another, or a change in terms of which individuals run a political system. That might be a reasonable thing to a minarchist, but to an anarchist it’s entirely beside the point. I don’t think in terms of replacing one system with another, or putting different people in charge of a system. I think in terms of eliminating imposed systems and replacing them with nothing, merely allowing a spontaneous order to result in the absence of a formal system.
Mises here is also quite clearly expressing his utilitarian sentiment that thinks that the preservation of social cooperation or utility is the standard by which to measure everything. But a more objectively ethical approach to libertarianism rejects this view in favor of raw justice. Mises favors representative democracy because it is a relatively peaceful process. I reject representative democracy because it is a political system (and I reject all political systems) that fundamentally contradicts justice, and it’s a total sham to boot. Mises seeks the maximization of utility. I seek justice. Mises seeks the reformation of government to fit the mold of a particular ideal political system. I reject all political systems and advocate the abolition of government. Mises is a very good person to rely on when it comes to economics. But he is not particularly reliable when it comes to overall libertarian theory or ethics. And he was very flimsy on the issue of democracy, which most other libertarian contemporaries of his has a hostile view towards.
I don’t think this is the right question, which IMO should be “once this power is in the hands of different/new people, what can be accomplished to further the cause of freedom?”. The answers to this question are quite intriguing. For example, via executive order, the president can re-establish a link to gold, and retain it for at least 4 years, during which time perhaps a more permanent link could be established (e.g. Constitutional amendment). With his power of pardon, the president could release all federal prisoners locked up for non-violent drug crimes and tax evasion. As Chief Executive Officer, the president can for all practical purposes shut down agencies falling under his jurisdiction, such as the Dep. of Education, Dep. of Energy, Dep. of Commerce and the USDA. The president also appoints Supreme Court justices so he could get a libertarian judge on that panel (noting that he’d need confirmation). That’s a lot of good that can be accomplished by one man within the system. Throw in a few hundred like-minded congressmen and senators and who knows what the country would look like in 4-8 years?
Why the collectivist view of leaders? Leaders are individuals, and in a democracy they are drawn from a pool that includes the entire population, including you. You could run for office, and if you won then would it be true that “there are no serious qualitative differences between them”?
My point, which mysterious is missed over and over again, is that in order to even attempt to further the cause of freedom with such a position of power, violations of freedom is required. That is, merely holding a position requires the institutional mechanisms that violate freedom to begin with. The existance of the position itself is a scar in the face of freedom.
It’s not a collectivist view of rulers. It’s a qualative and definitional one. It’s a matter of what it means to be a ruler.
Firstly, in representative democracy for all intents and purposes the rulers are not drawn from the entire population and the government is still an oligarchal institution. All of the rulers are at least moderately rich and many of them have familial ties to past rulers. They constitute a tiny minority in comparison to the overall population. The average person does not have the means to run and organize a political campaign. Control by the people in representative democracy is only an illusion, because in reality an oligarchy directly controls the state. The only “choice” the people could be said to have is between a handful of people who already are a part of the oligarchy or wish to join it, I.E. a package deal. And of course all the same it is not they who make institutional decisions at the end of the day. A state never has and never will truly be representative of “the people”. The requirement for this would be for every single citizen to literally be institutional agents/members of the state apparatus themselves, which is an absurdity.
Secondly, while they may have a wide diversity of views among them, all of the rulers accept certain fundamentals (including rare ones like Ron Paul). Even a Ron Paul supports taxation, political borders, government provided defense, government courts and wealth redistribution to some degree. No politician, to my knowledge, advocates the abolition of any of those things. Their disagreements are quantative and pragmatic: how much of them should there be, how big or small should they be, which interests should they be used to benefit, what type of taxes there should be, what the tax rate should be, how the borders should be drawn up, when or when not the military should be used, and so on. This is what the politicians quibble over in a representative democracy. The general premises of these things are not challenged. In contrast, the radical libertarian challenges the premise itself.
Furthermore, despite whatever views a ruler may have, certain institutional mechanisms are required for them to obtain and maintain their position. They cannot hold such positions without relying on such political means. So despite whatever good intentions they may have, their mere existance as rulers at least partially implicates them in the institutional and coercive means. They cannot function as institutional agents without such means. That is, the institutional mechanisms that the libertarian is supposed to be opposed to, such as taxation, is required for the maintanance of the position itself. This is why I proclaim that a libertarian running for office is self-contradictary and hypocritical. This is why I proclaim that the political process in representative democracy only reinforces the state.
Great quote here. Although I had libertarian tendencies, I never gave it a serious thought, nor did I actually accept it, until Ron Paul heralded and disseminated the concept during the presidential debates. Ron Paul is the type that would use the system, to try to change the system. Others may try another avenue. If we “attack” it at all angles, we are bound to get some headway.
Very well put. Just keep in mind that it is not easy to find that “Schwerpunkt” as it is a question of the frame you set. That means, the maximum vulnerability in a battle might not be the maximum vulnerability if your frame is winning the war. Loosing a battle might open a way to the real achilles heel.