Interesting article about Class Theory from a Property and Freedom Society conference.
h/t Stephan Kinsella
I skimmed it once, will re-read again later today. Interested to hear other thoughts.
A point of the article is that there is much talking past one another, so please bear that in mind when responding. Thanks.
Are there any other articles up from this years Property and Freedom Society conference?
Well, according to our fearless leader I suppose it’s any citizen that earns more than $250k in a calendar year(with the exception of elected officials of course.)
In my opinion, it’s any person that can have a substantive effect on legislation at the federal level, wither it be a the President, Senator, lobbyist, SCOTUS justice, and so on a so forth.
I read an libertarian article a while back that did a pretty good job of putting forth the radical notion that we don’t really have a ruling class in the US anymore. It gave examples of how the free market has alllowed the poor live very similar to the rich when put into historical context, in that we all drive cars, shop at malls, don’t have slaves, etc. It’s an interesting perspective, wish I could remember where I read it.
Bankers.
I have a much clearer definition: the ruling class is that group of people who employ power. This includes politicians, banks, teachers and the non-government mafias.
People who are protected by the ruling class, like the Wal-Mart corporation, do not count, as at any moment their privileges can be revoked without their being able to act in their own defense. See for example Microsoft, which despite benefitting from IP laws (or more accurately, adapting to these laws) was the target of a vicious assault on its success and escaped it in extremis.
Good article.
I think this is a key difference to what the author is saying. For me this has always been a grey area. I tend to agree with the author, if a corporation is benefiting through means outside of the market (via privileges granted by the state) then won’t they have incentive to defend the state in return? I guess I don’t know if that makes them part of the ruling class, the lines are blurry for me.
I would definitely say that there is a matter of degree between buisiness interests that explicitly lobby the state and directly work hand in hand with the state on one hand and buisinesses that do not. But it seems undeniable that at least some buisiness interests are part of the ruling class due to the degree to which they are entangled in the state. There is an obvious degree to which big buisiness favors state intervention to stifle their competition and externalize their costs and responsibilities, as well as the fact that many politicians are in the pockets of various wealthy special interest groups.
On a certain level, there is a context in which the state could be seen as an agent of a larger plutocratic ruling class, while on another level the state could be seen as the heart of the ruling class due to its territorial monopoly on the law. I think both make a level of sense and it varies as a matter of degree between different systems. The line is definitely blurred the more that buisiness interests and the state have synergy. In fact, state-communism is what occurs when they begin to radically synergize, consequentially merging government and buisiness close to the point of indistinguishability - the state becomes big buisiness!
I think this is agreeable. It certainly is a more honest representation of the power groups than simply conflating big business with the state in the failed style of Carson and Long. At least here we acknowledge the financial and union parasites for what they are.
The financial parasites allow the government to support the union parasites through monetization of the debt. The unions provide massive voting blocks in return for handouts and protectionism.
And another good point to make is that so-called big business has to pay the extortioners fee, or they cannot compete at all. I think it was Rothbard who pointed out that if one bank took government privilege, then all other banks had to do so as well, or risk being driven out of business.
When you’re a small time internet blogger, it’s easy to pretend you have the moral high ground, the people in the trenches don’t always have the luxury of being so squeamish when the blood is real.
Why care who are members of a ruling class if nothing should be done about them? I think “bankers” or “people earning over $250K/yr.” are poor answers, as are any from looking at the problem in terms of corporations versus their individual employees.
Hoppe’s Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis is required reading for this subject. I like Block’s Radical Libertarianism: Applying Libertarian Principles to Dealing with the Unjust Government, Parts I & II too.
You are engaging in a strawman. Neither Carson or Long conflate big buisiness with the state - they have never argued that there is no distinction, the argument has been a question of the degree to which big buisiness and the state are synergetic. Left-libertarians tend to view the state as more synergetic with buisiness than people like Stephan Kinsella and Walter Block are willing to aknowledge, and the debate is a matter of degree rather than kind. You know, instead of engaging in knee-jerk assumptions based on your own misunderstandings, it’d be wise to actually know the positions of the people you are talking about.
Speaking of conflations (Long didn’t call it “the conflation debate” for no good reason), what Carson and Long have argued is that too many libertarians conflate the current economy with a free market in the name of absolving big buisiness from any degree of responsibility for the problem - that is what the debate is about, not the strawman commies vs. capitalists blowhard nonsense that you’d like to caricature it as. The argument has always been that the state is the main cause, that is, that the state’s interventions have lead to the negative effects that anti-corporatists decry, and that there is a degree to which various buisiness interests are explicitly complict in it. The entire argument is one against a conflation between “current economy” and “free market”. Unfortunately, the ideologues are too interested in holding on to their dogmas to have a meaningful debate about it.
Which is fair enough, but if they want to make such an argument they’re going to have to stop implying that Wal Mart is really just the same as Blackwater (or say, AIG, for that matter) when clearly it isn’t.
Which is fair enough, but if the right-libertarians want to be reasonable they’re going to have to stop ignoring the fact that when Wal-Mart uses eminent domain and zoning laws to have the state give them other people’s land so that they can do buisiness, this means they aren’t some sort of purely innocent free market entity.
And how many of them do that? Answer: not very many. So you might want to kill YOUR strawman, BP.
I never claimed they said there is no distinction. That in itself is a strawman. So you make a strawman, to propose another strawman. Good job.
It’s not that Block and Kinsella don’t acknowledge the LL position. They know it, and they know it is incorrect. They have explained why, and Long abandoned the debate.
It is easy for you to label my position knee jerk or a misunderstand when you have based it on a strawman.
Yes, they like to say this. But they are making a generalization, and another strawman. Who are these many? One quick look around Mises.org, you would be hard pressed to find a handful of these folks. But it is a powerful rhetorical tool for Long and Carson.
I didn’t mention communists. This is another strawman. Please follow your own cries to “actually know the positions of the people you are talking about.” It is very easy. Everything I have said, you can attribute to me. Everything I have not, you cannot. Can you work with that?
I agree with this. But you are excluding groups that pursue racial privilege and all manner of unions. In fact, I have twice brought up unions in conversations you were in, today you replied without touching on those issues, the last time, you abandoned the thread.
Now I wouldn’t say you did these intentionally, or that by not replying you are indicating a preference, but given that I am now directly addressing unionism and social special interest groups perhaps this will encourage you to increase your narrow definition of who the state’s collaborators and enablers are.
Indeed. Let’s talk unionism. Let’s talk about pro-women’s groups, pro-black, pro-white, pro-hispanic, pro-gay, anti-gay, pro or anti “any preference groups”. There are a lot of parasites that you exclude from your analysis.
give me a fraken break. wal-mart does not use eminent domain, and it sounds like you are just throwing ‘zoning laws’ out there as if you actually understand how that works. some left libertarians want you to believe that big business would not exist in a free market, which is completely false. of course big business is a phenomenon of the market, and i’m willing to defend it.
I would caution that there should be a distinction between which big business libertarians support. Certainly not ones who are sustained by state subsidization. Truly I think American auto would crash in a free-market.
And yet some would object & say that the free-market, being as great as it would be, would not support “big business”, then falsely assume anyone who is for “big buisness” means they are for businesses that thrive & exist soley due to or in part by the state and/or monopolized markets, when those that say they are for big business in the free-market, are for the businesses that emerge out of the free-market itself, & not due to statist prop-ups & interventions. The entire issue quickly disintegrates when usage’s get ignored.
I agree, though. A buisness like wal-mart would certainly have some sort of value in a free-market, & while it’s method’s of operating would have to be different, you cannot rely on wal-mart using zoning laws as an argument against it’s existence, or any other buisness in state-society, when they are coercivley forced to abide by such state-laws in order to make a profit at all (i.e. similar to the mob throwing a brick at a buissness’ owners window then offering protection. Owner may refuse, & may see his buisness go under, then makes a judgment call on creating a profit at all & doing the best he/she can, or giving up entirley.)
So it would be similar to us going “sure, I don’t need state credentials in education and/or a job in the non-free markets to ensure myself a standard of living, but it’s a lot fucking harder, almost unrealistic, to do so, in some cases.” Which, imo, is a better option than going “Fighting the state is hard…let’s go shopping!”
That is the strawman in a nutshell. This mythical group of “many” libertarians are vulgar for perpetuating that the current market is valid even with state involvement.
Some of us obviously laugh at such a silly idea but it is promoted as a mainstream view of LvMI by Kevin Carson amongst others. BP frequently promotes this same view about vulgar libertarians being a “many” of non-LLs. Many “who” is a question that is always evaded.
And again, missing from the analysis is that the current issues of “racism, sexism and bossism” would also be fundamentally different or obselete without the state, which begs the question why the parties who promote the existence of a vulgar libertarian view economically, seem to also be engaged in the same vulgarity on social issues.
At least you consistently attack both “right” and “left”.
I would not say those who promote subsidized business are libertarians but like you said there are people who think that libertarians think US auto is an example of free-market enterprise. This is simply untrue because they are constantly seeking subsidization from the government. It would do well to disprove this myth.