Fine. It’s none of my business anyway. I only object to the idea that libertarianism has affinities to ‘social conservatism’ (which is not a clear or coherent philosophy anyway). I reject the line of reasoning that claims to prove that libertarianism needs social conservatism because Rothbard, undisputed libertarian hero, was a social conservative. Even if he was, the argument is nonsense.
None of my business either.
Let’s face it: No anarchist should call himself a left-winger or a right-winger. These are symbolisms to show where our tyrants sit in the parliament. Only calling yourself leftish or rightish means choosing which master is preferable. As for palaeolibertarians like Rockwell, does that mean we shouldn’t respect him just because he would prefer a conservative society. Let’s not kid ourselves, almost every person in his age is a cultural conservative. That doesn’t mean that he will use force to promote his ideas… I believe that the whole thing about x-libertarianism is about strategic alliances with non-libertarian people who would find it difficult to digest our ideas, since as I see the differences between “righties” and “lefties” as put out in this conversation are trivial, at best. While “righties” are right that an alliance with anti-market libertarian socialists (Chomsky-type) is unstable, sometimes friendliness toward other anti-statists might persuade them to embrace scientific economics. And if they don’t embrace violence or hierarchy they are hardly our enemies in non-intellectual grounds.
Did Rothbard not identify himself with Left Libertarianism?
“According to Konkin, it was Murray Rothbard’s idea to call his and Konkin’s radical free-market libertarianism “Left,” in order to appeal to the New Left and solidify an alliance with them and because they wanted to distinguish themselves as being interested in building counter-economic enterprises. In this view, libertarianism based on minarchism, gradualism, conservatism, or reformism is considered to be on the “Right.””
I honestly don’t see what this squabble is over. I’ve read over it, and see no points of contention. I just see both “sides” misrepresenting the other “sides” argument and honestly arguing about nothing.
What exactly is “social conservative,” or “culturally conservative.” Whenever I’ve heard “socially conservative,” people mean: anti-gay marriage, anti-porn, anti-abortion, pro drug war, etc. So unless you’re redefining terms to something nobody thinks of when the hear “social conservative,” Rothbard wasn’t one. I don’t think people mean “interest in church architecture and 20’s Jazz.”
Also, I think Long & Carson are wrong about corporations and a host of other “left issues.” But where Carson is right is that libertarians often choose to say that poor people now are getting a fair deal because it’s the free market when of course we don’t have that yet. I think Rothbard covered the issue well; there are working poor people who suffer because of government and poor people who have low time preferences and a parasitic mentality who may be net beneficiaries. Anyways, poor people is a sensitive topic for a lot of people and the so called “vulgars” make it unnecessarily hard to win people over by giving off a “poor people suck; it’s all their fault,” vibe.
There is, in fact, no single left-libertarian ideology. From within the Alliance, the whole enterprise frequently seems like the ultimate in cat-herding exercises, but, as I’ve said, and as the founding documents of the Alliance make clear, agreement hasn’t been at the top of our list of goals. The group that ultimately formed the Alliance of the Libertarian Left came together largely because of the fine online hospitality of Samuel Konkin III, and the Alliance was in part a posthumous tribute to SEK3, although strict agorists formed only one tendency in the whole. The Alliance was formed at a moment when one element within the agorist movement opted for more ideological purity; the rest of the motley-but-engaged crowd that Konkin had attracted decided to formalize our decision to continue to have it out over the fine points, and determine more precisely our agreements and disagreements.
The purpose is to continue to have real arguments about liberty, rather than pissing contests. It doesn’t always work, but I will say that the most substantive debates I have had in any anarchist or libertarian venue in recent years have been among left-libertarians. I’m sure your mileage would vary, but that’s not the point. The Alliance is useful to the members of the Alliance, because it has provided a reason to have it out with one another. It sometimes mutes useful internal conflict as well, as do, I think, all affiliations of that sort.
You would have to ask Roderick is he “watered down” his critique of Carson. From my perspective much of the “critique” in the JLS issue was truly shoddy stuff. For example, just calling something “marxist” isn’t serious critique. As for the debate about labor theories of value, I have yet to encounter any critic of Carson’s work who seems to know what “Carson’s LTV” amounts to, let alone possesses a clear argument about why it is fallacious. Carson’s primary contribution was to open a contemporary conversation about whether or not subjective theories of value and all of the labor theories are incompatible. Subsequent research has demonstrated the extent to which early anarchists incorporated subjective valuation into their systems. Some of those who insisted most strongly that “labor creates all wealth,” including folks like Josiah Warren, created highly subjectivized systems of exchange.
Is it possible that you have made your critique of left-libertarianism without bothering to read the handful of basic Alliance texts? “The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a multi-tendency coalition of mutualists, agorists, voluntaryists, geolibertarians, left-Rothbardians, green libertarians, dialectical anarchists, radical minarchists, and others on the libertarian left, united by an opposition to statism, militarism, and the prevailing corporatist capitalism falsely called a free market, as well as by an emphasis on education, direct action, and building alternative institutions, rather than on electoral politics, as our chief strategy for achieving liberation.” A broad coalition is going to have a broad definition. It would be “poorly defined” if it didn’t.
Something that is self-evidence shouldn’t be hard to cite and criticize in specific terms, which is what seems lacking in most of this discussion. But apparently by “anti egalitarian” you mean egalitarian? I think Wombatron has made some serious efforts to address Long’s approach to equality, and to the extent that other left-libs are egalitarian, it certainly isn’t in any way that’s either going to try to pretend everyone has equal abilities or in a way that is going to be satisfied with equal slavery. Everything that I have seen here presented as “critique” seems like quibbling about things no left-libertarian I know has ever said.
You like the word “pandering.” I think it’s an ad hominem attack. You apparently don’t think that laborers have been oppressed. Fine. That can be argued on the facts, if we could hammer out a set of working definitions we could agree on. But I don’t hold out much hope of rational debate with someone who makes assertions about “pandering” intentions, based on the fact that he disagrees with the conclusion.
If you honestly compare those examples, now that we have some concrete examples, with the things that have been said about left-libertarians in just this thread, such as your remarks about the delusional left, etc., it seems hard to see how any faction in this set-to couldn’t be dismissed as “incapable” of avoiding ad hominems, except that we probably all really know, rhetoric aside, that we feel somewhat justified in snapping at people we don’t feel have taken us seriously.
So…if it’s lame to call people “vulgar libertarians,” it’s way lamer to repeat the charge, while high-horsing it about who is and isn’t capable of civil discourse.
Well, since you were apparently going on about black bloc tactics, I was thinking about anarchist communists. Or libertarians of various varieties who are apparently much less concerned than you, for various actual reasons, with protecting the property of those who seem to have been the recipients of privilege. But the central point is that one man’s “thug” is, in the reasoned perspective of at least some others, not committing a crime against legitimate property.
The historical facts show that the state has propped up certain kinds of unions and criminalized others. The general defenses of unions that Carson and Johnson have made have been of industrial unions, like the IWW. In the case of the auto bailout, libertarians either have to take the “pox on all their houses” approach, because all the players have been sullied by government, or make some sort of pragmatic statement about essentially non-libertarian choices. I think that, despite all of the problems with contemporary unions, and despite the general odiousness of the bailouts, the unions’ refusal to give ground is actually as good a response as compromised bureacracies could make, given their express purpose and the circumstances. You can disagree. But the “defense” of otherwise harshly criticized unions in this particular case isn’t ultimately much of a defense of their existence. Libertarians can believe that governments behave a little better or a little worse, according to our values; it doesn’t make governments libertarian, but it’s probably still worth noting. If you believe that, tout court, unions are always bad, bad, bad, then we can’t even have a discussion.
There are other values than stability.
Actually, I don’t have to prove that the Alliance of which I was a founding member is essentially a Coalition to Have the Important Fights. The proof of the common ground either will or won’t come out of the experiment. This is a case where the burdon of proof, with regard to the alleged purposes and supposed “pandering” of the Alliance is really on the critics.
Actually, you seem to have no understanding at all of the history or purposes of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, despite the rather public nature of the conflict which led to its formation, and the explicit discussions of its nature and mission on its various forums and websites. It appears from my perspective that you have done little but misrepresent and misunderstand. I’m willing to believe that it was not a matter of malice. The nature of the Alliance has been, pretty explicitly, an attempt to break from the usual approaches of the libertarian and anarchist movements. But still…
I’m so glad you won’t be having children. We have, however, been over this before. Molyneux’s “theory” fails to account for anti family, anti church communists (which is basically all of them) and anarchists who are strongly in favour of the family and the church. Moreover, one could apply his nonsense about the family and the church to buisness too. In which case good luck defending market anarchism.
That’s just a blatant lie.
What’s your point? In any case Professor Hoppe does not wish to ally with the paleos you hate so much, so why you’re implying otherwise is beyond me.
Yes, and? He’s actually rather good on foreign policy (his book on Churchill sounds good, I’ve never read it).
Now, now, that’s a misrepresentation. LS’ point is that the right libertarians/ libertarian conservatives don’t go out of their way to create an Alliance of the Libertarian Right, or whatever.
And? I don’t see anybody here endorsing the LP. Neither Hoppe, nor Rothbard, nor myself. Rather Hoppe and Rothbard correctly identifythe vast majority of the LP as modal libertarians. Moreover, Hoppe doesn’t even favour the political means.
Moreover, Hoppe has been highly critical of the political right.
Well, that’s correct. RP is much more in favour of private property than most anarcho communists.
Yes, I do wish to purge the LLs, so what?
I see the left libertarians have once again dragged the topic of course from economic analysis to meaningless right - left debate.
What a wonderful defense of the state you’ve just constructed.
You claim that libertarianism and socialism go hand in hand. You back it up, stop trying to shift the burden of proof.
This is just a silly ad hoc defense of statist unions pushing for bailouts.
On another note, what I was really asking for was an economic analysis of the benefits of this particular cartel.
Ignoring Reisman and Block, who both in my opinion made good points. Murphy did a good job of refuting Carson’s LTV. But that’s exactly what I mean, I think Long would have been in the best position to make a decent critique about this. Instead, Long took the issue of competing systems of ownership in regards to whether or not they can be derived from self ownership, made a decent argument in favour of the Lockean system.
I’ve made some remarks that were less than kind. But they certainly don’t apply to all LLs. Mainly those like Brainpolice, Carson etc.
That’s the thing really. This was never meant to be a critique of the libertarian left, rather, it was meant to be a critique of the left libertarian position in the recent debate between Kinsella, Klein, Caplan, Huebert and Block on one side and Long, Carson and Johnson on the other.
Those things are irrelevant to Molyneux’s theory on children and the family and form the basis for a strawman argument of your own. You have yet to even demonstrate an understanding of precisely what that viewpoint is, you just seem to see “anti-family” implications and immediately attack it without having to address its substance as a criticism of traditional family roles.
Giles, quit playing to the gallery. I suggested that you had misunderstood the basic nature of the left-libertarian analysis, and you asked me what I meant. I have made a good-faith attempt to answer your questions. And you come back with vague charges about “the left libertarians.” Why should I take you at all seriously?
There is, in fact, little or no “economic analysis” in your post, and there has been precious little in this whole thread. I had said that I would return to two of the three comments you do make.
Unions: Industrial unions on the IWW model, anarcho-syndicalist organizations, Proudhonian agro-industrial federations are are voluntary non-state means by which, in a free society, workers could organize themselves, provide themselves services, provide support to worker-owned businesses, etc. In the transition to a free society, they might provide many of the same functions. To the extent that open labor-capital conflict remains a part of the social dynamic, unions will provide the “fighting force” on the side of labor. In a genuinely free market, the costs of engaging in open conflict ought to be higher than those of peaceful production, and both the general strike and the Pinkerton might reasonably be expected to become a thing of the past. But it’s hard to imagine us ever getting beyond the phase of class conflict if the free market and free society does not afford the same freedoms, including the freedom to organize, to all concerned.
After all, left-libertarians like Carson have also been critical of anti-trust laws, which have been applied in as topsy-turvy a manner as labor relations legislation.
THE ROADS: I don’t believe that Long or Carson have ever claimed that small business “does not use the roads.” The question regarding public infrastructure, including the interstates, the “free trade superhighways,” the internet, the cities being transformed with public moneys to be container shipping hubs, the subsidies given to air shippers, etc., is whether or not equal access to that infrastructure does not, hand in hand with other sorts of government intervention, such as differential treatment of small and large businesses on the basis of the tax revenue they may provide, provide an additional advantage to particular kinds of large firms. And the answer is, arguably, Yes.
For example, in my thirty years in the retail book industry, I’ve watched tax-law manipulation and local tax-revenue-driven development increase the barriers to entry by small and specialized publishers and retailers, while the means were provided for large, inefficient big-box stores, online drop-ship operations and middle of the road one-stop distributors to exist in their present forms. Other businesses have emerged around those behemoths, but the practical definition of efficiency, as determined by our rather less than free market, has been transformed to the point where it means high prices, but big discounts, lots of product, but arguably fewer titles on the shelf in any given city, and lots of merchandise destroyed because it is too expensive even to ship back to the distributor. It is reasonable to suggest that, even if, as you suggest, the roads themselves could be provided to everyone at lower cost, that the tax-funded development that makes the roads (etc.) so useful to the large, centralized firms would have to be provided by someone other than the tax payers. It wouldn’t take much of that to start to level the playing field again.
Try not to be a troll, please.
Ahem. What I have claimed is a matter of public record, and that’s not even close. What can be easily backed up is that there has been considerable overlap between those two broad traditions, and that contemporary anarchists, libertarians, libertarian socialists, etc., are still determining to what extent we are divided and/or united by specific goals, tactics, terminology, and such.Not all anarchists, socialists, libertarians, etc., think the traditions have anything in common. Fine. Both history and present dialogue tell a somewhat different story, but I’m not interested in telling you who to associate with; I’m only interested in seeing left-libertarianism misrepresented as little as possible.You can find the relatively extensive online literature dealing with “socialism” and its intersections with anarchist and libertarian traditions online, with no great effort, if you care.
You still have an argument to make about “pandering,” which is a claim you have concocted, dealing with intent and such.
Actually, it’s a silly ad hoc comment on the relative merits of various elements pushing for bailouts. Since the bailouts, which I oppose, are out of our hands, that’s pretty much all we’re left with.
My defense of some forms of unionization is, of course, above.
Well, my mileage varied considerably. Reisman has been pretty awful in his responses to Carson. I think Murphy talked past Carson a bit, although his piece is consistently serious. Block seems to miss the point entirely. But even the Rothbard piece in that issue appears to be based on a very strange misunderstanding of the mutual currency proposals of Tucker, Spooner, Greene, et al. Again, you would have to ask Long what prompted his particular approach. I suspect he naturally followed up his previous writing on property theory, and there were already plenty of folks willing to attack the LTV. I agree that it would be interesting to see Long tackle that aspect of the critique, but the charge of “watering down” doesn’t seem to me to be justified. For the record, I’m unconvinced that any particular property system can be derived from self-ownership, and have some serious questions about the non-proviso Lockean position that Long best defends. But there I agree with Carson and Long that the differences in property theories are not so great that we couldn’t all manage too organized a free society despite the differences.
Actually, once again, you started your most recent reply with a vague reference to “the left libertarians.” And certainly there have been plenty of less carefully aimed barbs from the anti-left faction. Personally, that’s fine with me, as long as we’re all aware when we’re being snippy.
Well, you might pick your titles a little more carefully, if that’s really what you intend, and you might be a lot more specific. But even if those three left-libertarians were your only target, the claim that left-libertarians was poorly defined, and intentionally so, can’t be solely related to a series of posts which quite simply did not have the definition of left-libertarianism as a subject. All the major Alliance sites have a version of the definition/mission statement on them, and it has been Long, Johnson, Carson, among others (myself included), who wrote and posted those broad, but consciously and appropriately broad, statements.
As we seem to be talking past each other, I’m happy to let things drop. I’ll take your word for your intentions. Mine have only been to clarify what seemed like misunderstandings to me.
Of course, these people supposedly capable of being won over are not actually poor themselves. (See http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-being-offended/)
I haven’t, but this topic was meant to be about the “conflation conflict” not left libertarianism. Perhaps I’ve been unclear, I’m limiting my attacks to Carson, Johnson and Long and their varietys of LLs, such as BP on these forums.
Because certain people have dragged this off topic.
You ignore the point, throughout their history unions have routinely engaged in violence. Moreover, you haven’t provided me a justification of why a cartel of labour can survive and yet no others can.
About the IWW: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D02E3DC163EE433A25751C2A9639C946996D6CF
And you ignore the point, everything you’ve said flies in the face of the division of labour and moreover ignores economies of scale. Big firms can deal costs better than small firms. In fact, the left uses this argument in regard to why taxation helps big corporations and then proceeds to ignore it in regards to the use of roads.
Is being a troll pointing out that your argument can be used a defense for that state?
Yes, I’ve read some of this literature. I don’t see what your point is though? Socialism advocates coercion, libertarianism doesn’t. The two are polar opposites.
The war is out of our hands, so let’s support the army? Or blackwater?
The reason that the bailout is out of our hands is because of the union.
But Long was in the best position to attack the LTV in my opinion. And as you said Long argued against Carson’s claim that no system of property than can be derived from self ownership and then granted that they could coexist anyway, it seems strange to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fan of anarcho syndicalists or whatever, but by LL I mean Carson, Johnson, Long and their followers on these forums.
Fair enough, sounds good to me.
I haven’t, but this topic was meant to be about the “conflation conflict” not left libertarianism. Perhaps I’ve been unclear, I’m limiting my attacks to Carson, Johnson and Long and their varietys of LLs, such as BP on these forums.
Because certain people have dragged this off topic.
You ignore the point, throughout their history unions have routinely engaged in violence. Moreover, you haven’t provided me a justification of why a cartel of labour can survive and yet no others can.
About the IWW: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D02E3DC163EE433A25751C2A9639C946996D6CF
And you ignore the point, everything you’ve said flies in the face of the division of labour and moreover ignores economies of scale. Big firms can deal costs better than small firms. In fact, the left uses this argument in regard to why taxation helps big corporations and then proceeds to ignore it in regards to the use of roads.
Is being a troll pointing out that your argument can be used a defense for that state?
Yes, I’ve read some of this literature. I don’t see what your point is though? Socialism advocates coercion, libertarianism doesn’t. The two are polar opposites.
The war is out of our hands, so let’s support the army? Or blackwater?
The reason that the bailout is out of our hands is because of the union.
But Long was in the best position to attack the LTV in my opinion. And as you said Long argued against Carson’s claim that no system of property than can be derived from self ownership and then granted that they could coexist anyway, it seems strange to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fan of anarcho syndicalists or whatever, but by LL I mean Carson, Johnson, Long and their followers on these forums.
Fair enough, sounds good to me.
Yours and Molyneux’s ‘theory’ on children and the family is exactly why left libertarianism should be completely rejected. Please fly some of your theories by with normal people and tell me how well that goes. If normal people start to believe that children having sex will become common in libertarian society they will never accept libertarianism.
I do fear that Molyneux’s theory will become part of the libertarian cannon.
I don’t think it should be rejected anymore than “right-libertarianism” (whatever constitutes either of these pretty useless terms, aside for superficial reference use), as it might prove to be an effective marketing movement (yup, that’s pretty much what it amounts to when you look at left-libertarianism, which others stays pretty consistent to libertarianism when it’s not trying to attract sympathetic Statists & non-libertarians & non-anarchists).
Yes & No.
His theory is a terribly missed opportunity (in the reception to his delivery, words, etc, as well as current views regarding his “cult”, & other such social factors) to critique the implications of familial authority (& it’s relation to various concepts relevant to anarchism & libertarianism), which imo, is neither bad nor good, but simply is (biology & all that, sans the circumstances around families that do not follow biological canon).
I think someone will eventually step in & put Molyneux in his place as someone with a good name-dropping rate, but in the grand scheme of anarchistic & libertarian thought, is merely another place on the bookshelf and/or another site on the Internets, that repackages previous thought, sprinkles some originality (which is legitly hard to come by, regardless, especially when utilizing The Internet as a medium), & adds some really good marketing “skillz” to live off of.
I don’t mean to diss Molyneux, but for every Rothbard there’s probably 5 to 10 more guys who just never got the limelight. Perhaps one of the next guys will work at a patent office :P.
In any case, If I ever get the time to seriously write (legit writing time on possible essays, not minor blogging or summary creations), I wouldn’t mind doing some of my own research into some of his ideas of familial authority, only with “less crazy” (I kid, I kid; maybe less fervor & more of an analytical approach, methinks).
Why? Molyneux’s “theories” are just a lot of ad hoc ranting, which he tries to justifies with some armchair mass psychoanalysis. To begin with Molyneux is inconsistant in his criticisms, in the sense that the family and the church really aren’t that different than buisness in the sense that he claims that matters. Moreover, he ignores the insights of Nisbet, who correctly claims that the church, family, community and other similar institutions protect the individual from the state. Now, who am I going to listen to here? An eminent sociologist or some fool whos never had anything more than a few articles published on the internet? There’s a good reason Molyneux isn’t taken seriously by anybody other than his cult.
I’d also love to see Molyneux account for the vast amount of anti family, anti church communists ( the vast majority) and the fact that small governments conservatives are generally pro family, and pro church. Moreover, there are plenty of culturally conservative anarchists who fail to fit into Molyneux’s worldview. Funnily enough, he claims that the state is an unnatural organisation. He managed to get something correct but who would claim that the family is unnatural is beyond me.
The fact is that Molyneux is a poor thinker and a worse writer. This is best seen in his views on Mises, who according to him acheived “nothing”. What a bloody fool. This silly revolt against all forms of authority whether it be his anti family stance or anti academic stance (best seen by his cheap shots against Long and his lashing out against Rothbard and Hoppe and as already mentioned Mises). Really now, this isn’t difficult to see what’s going on. Molyneux simply isn’t a smart enough guy to teach at a university, so he lashes out against those who are, especially the great thinkers such as Hoppe, Rothbard, Mises and Long.
As much as he’d tell you otherwise, Molyneux is on the fringe of a fringe movement. As I’ve said, the best thing Molyneux could claim is a few articles on Lew Rockwell, now those are gone too. So he has some articles on STR or whatever other site it is, and he maintains a silly podcast in which he “helps” children. He really doesn’t sound much different from the neighbourhood pedophile. What he does is takes advantage of emotionally and socially retarded children, with some pseudo psycho analysis, in an attempt to bring them into his line of thinking, join his cult, subscribe to his podcast or whatever. The fact is he really does see himself as the saviour to the evils of family and other institutions.
As for his writing, it has to be some of the sloppiest, poorest writing I’ve ever seen, really. His writing style is messy, overly simplistic and dull. Nobody need wonder why he’s got nothing more to his name than a few articles as opposed to anything academic.
The guy is filth, best to be ignored.
Please fly some of YOUR theories by with “normal” people and tell me how that goes. If you get someone to accept anarchy, I doubt you’ll be able to drive them away with any of your ideas.
Our theories don’t involve telling children to run away from their home so Stefan Molyneux can molest them they can live a better life.
Those who I have attempted to ‘convert’ to full blown market anarchism have been fairly receptive. However, if I had thrown in some left-libertarian nonsense about ‘wage slavery’ or the ‘cult of the family’ I doubt I would ever had any takers.
I do wonder though, if Molyneuxism is simply a business model. I read some of his work where he mentions just a few years ago (02?) he was all gung-ho about the Iraq War and just a year or two later he is a libertarian guru. But his much of his ‘orginality’ strikes me as nutty. “Defoo’ing”? You have to wonder if somedays he logs off the computer and says, “I can’t believe these idiots buy this”.