While I’m not sure that I’ll definitely find it useful, I’ve been persuaded to try Twitter. Those interested can follow me there[RSS] or get a consolidated activity feed[Atom].
Share ThisThe 2008 Liberty magazine poll results are out and they support something I’ve been talking about for the past few years and regard as crucially important for libertarians. The Libertarian Party specifically and electoral politics generally are very poor tools for the advancement of libertarian ideas if we’re talking about radical (i.e. real) libertarianism. Consider the first two questions alone:
1. There is a proper role for government, but that role is much smaller than the role government plays at present.
Today: 89.5% agree
20 years ago: 66% Agree2. Government should be eliminated altogether.
Today: 10.5% agree
20 years ago: 31 % agreeWhether there should be some minimal government is one of the oldest controversies in libertarian thought. If the poll results are representative of overall libertarian opinion, the minarchists clearly are making their case more persuasively than are the anarchists.
The trendline is clearly away from anarchist sentiments. The above supposes, though, that anarchists are (and have been) making their case among the movement cross-section represented by Liberty magazines reader poll — and that it is this case which has been rejected in favor of a purported minarchist case supposedly being actively advanced. No such thing is going on at all. Rather, within the libertarian movement, anarchists are not making their case because they’re busy “doing politics” and minarchists enjoy the pro-government bias inherent in existing government being the status quo.
I assert that anarchists in the LP (”partyarchs“) haven’t been adequately making their case because the attempt to use a political party as a vehicle for the communication of ideology results in our best and brightest people being tied up in endless platform wars with establishmentarian elements and vainly struggling to defend radicalism from smears by our worst enemies — those who want to define libertarianism out of existence by making the word come to mean something else entirely.
Perhaps the next LP executive director can be Grima Wormtongue.
The point is not merely that the libertarian movement is currently going down a wrong path, but that it has been going down the wrong path since the founding of the Libertarian Party in 1971. It’s not just that YOU, Mr. & Mrs. Partyarch (you anarcho-wretches) are somehow doing something wrong. As the Liberty poll results show, the libertarian movement as it existed 20 years ago was doing something wrong. Rather than libertarians gradually winning over mainstream society to our way of seeing things, mainstream society gradually winning over libertarians to their way of seeing things.
Electoral politics FAILS. There are built-in incentives for the distortion of our ideas contained in the approach and I maintain that those incentives are inherent in the approach itself.
The solution is revolution.
Ultimately, simple economic analysis points the way. If you’re busy sinking time and energy into building the Libertarian Party as an institution, you are foregoing using that time and energy to talk about anarchism. Opportunity costs do not merely arise in just financial matters, but in all decision-making.
Share ThisThe real price of gasoline? Possibly $15 plus per gallon according to this 1998 study from an org called the International Center for Technology Assessment.
I haven’t yet looked closely into the methods used to calculate that figure, so don’t count this blog post as an endorsement. I’m interested in the type of information that this purports to be, though. If anybody wants to critique the ICTA study, have at it in the comments.
Also, they released an update in January 2005.
Share ThisWe’re in for one wild ride. See here:
Boom Without End: What The Web Knows…..
Which brings to mind a question:
Would there be interest in taking up a collection to fund a Mandarin translation of New Libertarian Manifesto?
Share ThisIt’s starting; just a little bit.
I understand that April is not to late in the season to plant potatoes in much of the US.
MORE: US Facing Diminishing Supplies of Rye & Wheat
As Food Prices Soar, Some Shortages Appear
Run on rice makes its way to U.S.
Era of cheap food ends as prices surge
Americans hoard food as industry seeks regs
Bay Area Shoppers Asked To Limit Rice Purchases
Wall Street Journal editorial: Time for Americans to stockpile food
From theConverted: Anarchist Style Justice
“In Canada, we have a dark, dirty little secret - our Government, in cahoots with the churches, specifically the Catholic, Anglican and United Churches, tried to destroy native Canadians. They did this through active cultural assimilation, apartheid-like political enshrinement of dependence (aka “The Indian Act”) and now, it seems, through crimes of outright murder and genocide.
Harsh?
Yes, but true.
The latest in this tragedy occurred last week when…”
Read the rest.
Share This“On 4/20/1914, the National Guard and the company thugs pretended to negotiate with Louis Tikas while setting up machine-guns in the high-points around the camps. They fired down into shanty-town and, after many of the strikers dug into the ground for cover, they torched the tents. By the end of the night 45 men, women, and children were dead.”
read more | digg story
Things that really annoy me include people who want to try to riff on Kevin Carson’s “vulgar libertarianism” concept without really understanding it in the first place. Typically, this is because they don’t really “get it” that the original “vulgar Marxism” concept (which Carson was creating an analogue of with “vulgar libertarianism”) was itself a Marxist concept.
One Marxist might critique another Marxists position as a dumbed-down or farcically oversimplified version of Marxism and say “that’s vulgar Marxism”. The point is that the person hanging that label on another is implying that they misunderstand and misapply the ideology they both share — while the critic espouses the real thing in its deeper, sophisticated and most erudite version.
Substitute “libertarianism” for “Marxism” and you then understand the term “vulgar libertarianism”. The person making the accusation is essentially laying claim to possession of a deeper understanding of the libertarian ideology (one typically held by the better advocates of it).
It’s not that there are two kinds of libertarianism and “vulgar” is merely some effete intellectuals expletive that just means all of you right-wingers are ICKY-ICKY-ICKY!
No.
Rather, real free-market libertarianism taken to its logical end has enormously “left wing” implications — and all of you turds out there who think your membership in Conservative Book Club (or whatever) is indicative of libertarianism actually have your heads up your asses.
Share ThisJust in time for April 15th:
Save Taxes by Resisting the War
Share This“Portland couple has refused to pay taxes for 30 years to protest military spending, which now uses over 40% of every tax dollar.”
Although it doesn’t really need to be blogged, I wanted to archive the following exchange here as a way of keeping it handy.
“Go in Your Mother’s Basement And Smoke More Of Your Crack! Crack-Head Brad! Keep Watching MSNBC, The No Ratings, Anti-American Socialists. Listen to Media Matters That’s More Your Genre. Maybe Multi-Billionaire, George Soros, Will suffice your, LIBERAL-FAR LEFT NEEDS! These Are The People That Manipulate The Truth!” - SickDrummerJ
To which I replied:
Share This“If name-calling is the only way you know how to argue, at least get your terms straight. The one thing I am not and have never been is a “liberal”, or social democrat. I’m an anarchist. It would also be accurate to call me a radical.
Unless you’re a monarchist, you’re more of a liberal than I am because you and liberals both share a belief in a coercive nation-state government — as long it’s a democratic republic.
Considering that I’m an anarchist who’s free-market oriented in terms of economic theory, you’re mostly wrong in calling me a socialist — in that the sense of the word “socialist” YOU would be using (if you were literate enough to think so concretely) refers back to government control of the economy — and since I advocate a stateless society, even you ought to see a contradiction there after a moments reflection.
Now, there IS another, long-neglected, meaning of the word “socialist” that refers not to government control of the economy but to the abolition of economic exploitation. I’ve argued before at length in other forums that under this definition of socialism, even so-called “anarcho-capitalism” is a variety of socialism of that sort. Given another fifty points of IQ to work with, you might have realized the irony there — in that your own neo-con position is typically labeled right-wing socialism by the typical anarcho-capitalist.
Son, get the hell off of Digg and go read a few books. Challenge yourself. Develop your mind. Come back when you can hurl some insults that don’t bore me to tears.” — bradspangler
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