The Philosophy of Liberty

[SacRedMan]

Dear comrades,

I hope that this video isn't discuses already on RevLeft. If so, than I, SacRedMan, fail at making threads on revLeft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I

Please check it out and don't go like "Oh, the libertarians are making propaganda again! How cute." or something.

Regards,
SacRedMan

[Ocean Seal]

Ehh when it comes down to an analysis of this, its pretty much flawed in the sense that it emphasizes that individuals come to power because other individuals let them without fully stating the material conditions which lead to a concentration of power. It's almost as if the government just came to be because of someone's evil plot, not the idea that the state exists because of capitalism. Its more of the on a dark and stormy night some evil mastermind started the government with the help of the Illuminati and now it just exists.

[Octavian]

All I got out of it was the same drab speech about liberty and how property is such a necessary part of life. If only the government would stay out of our property affairs we could all live happily together, nobody would be poor, and world hunger would be gone.

[Hoi Polloi]

The telling thing is that the same sort of statement to what just said, Octavian, has been made by many different types of socialist over the years.

For the few, whose property comes from the guns of the state pointed at the workers, if the state would just shut up and keep the gun pointed that would be liberty. Things like minimum wage are a government imposition.

To the many, whose property comes from the sweat off their brow and the blood of their family and friends risked and lost in labor, if the state would just shut up and stop pointing the gun at them or even better point the gun at the capitalist few - the hereditary landowners who impose upon tenant farmers - that would be liberty. Things like a lack of a minimum wage represent an unlimited amount of the workers' product that the government is allowed to appropriate and give to the capitalist to economically plan with. The imposition of a minimum wage is just a limit on how much of the workers private property the government is allowed to redistribute to the capitalist.

So it ultimately boils down to class interest; no philosophy is ever going to talk the many out of stopping to fight - it is human nature; and the same is for the few, it is inevitable that once the state starts redistributing the lifeblood of the workers to a planner caste selected by the capitalist state and not by a government of the workers or with the consent of the workers, that those bourgeois planners - those capitalists - will seek to maximize their collectivization of the workers' wealth until, as Marx predicted, the workers become their wards - wards of the state not allowed to keep enough of their own product to support their families without going into debt and literal wage slavery with the company store and company credit for company goods.

Both the capitalists and the workers are arguing in this case that liberty is to no longer be restricted by the state - the difference is the capitalists want the state to serve them while not restricting them, the workers either want the state to serve and restrict everyone equally or to just stop serving at all and stop restricting and let the workers live their own lives and create their own state if they wish.

[CHE with an AK]

The video is right-wing Ron Paul-inspired bullshit!

It should be moved to opposing ideologies.

[hatzel]

It should be moved to opposing ideologies.

It could be, ooooor we could just ignore the video itself and discuss the philosophy of liberty. As I'm currently in the process of writing a discourse on exactly that topic, I definitely wouldn't mind getting involved :drool: