Anarcho-capitalist critique of collectivism

[JRR883]

http://www.mises.org/story/2197

An anarcho-capitalist I'm debating with on another site used this Murray Rothbard article to totally refute a post-scarcity society. I know the misconceptions and falsehoods presented in the piece, but I'm finding it difficult to put into words without sounding childlike. Could any of the more seasoned lefties take a shot at this? I don't really care about "winning" the debate or not, I just want to learn how to better critically analyze arguments.

[BobKKKindle$]

I know the misconceptions and falsehoods presented in the piece, but I'm finding it difficult to put into words without sounding childlike

The 'article' is really very light when it comes to content. Several references are made to private property as a 'right' and part of 'freedom'. We have had several discussions on this topic recently - ask him to justify the idea that private property can be considered a right and explore the broader question of where rights derive from - you should find if you think a little that rights are social constructs that exist simply to provide an ethical justification for the existing economic system. Throughout the article vague and ill-defined words are used in order to try and promote the ideology - words like 'rationality'. There is also evidence of straw-man logical fallacies, such as the comparison of Anarcho-Communism to a 'drug-rock youth culture'.

Show that Capitalism is a system based on coercion and control through the economic relationships and dynamics that exist between workers and Capitalists - proletarians are forced to sell their labour power and often to accept the terms of employment which are specified by the Capitalist because they do not have ownership of the means of production and thus have no other ways of securing an income. This is clearly coercive - someone is being forced to follow a particular course of action because they have no alternative choice.

The article also puts forward a very poor critique of how an economy could be organised under Communism. You can draw on historical examples in order to show that it is possible to effectively organise production and distribtion without a system of private property and price signals - the republican controlled areas during the Spanish Civil war, for example.

The article also tries to show that the State is an impediment to Capitalism. This is one of the most important flaws of the confused and absurd ideology that is 'Anarcho-Capitalism' - a failure to understand the character of and the conditions that give rise to the state. The state is a required component of any class society (it arises from the 'irreconciliability of class antagonisms') because the state is an institution that mediates class struggle in order to ensure the continued existence of Capitalism, primarily through what Lenin referred to as 'armed bodies of men' which can exercise coercive force against revolutionary or striking workers. This article does not recognize this because Anarcho-Capitalism is ridiculous.

Assuming that Anarcho-Capitalism actually came to pass (ha!) a body bearing all the characteristics of the state would soon arise in order to support the interests of the ruling class - Anarcho-Capitalists often unconsciously recognize this when they talk of private security agencies etc which would have the same function as the state - protecting the private property of the bourgeoisie.

Hope these general comments are helpful comrade!

[Kwisatz Haderach]

The article is nonsense and presents no real arguments beyond simply saying "anarcho-communists are wrong". The fundamental contradiction of anarcho-capitalism can be summed up as follows:

Without a single authority to define and enforce a single code of property rights (in other words, without a state), property becomes a matter of opinion, and your ability to keep your property directly depends on your ability to physically fight off other people.

Anarcho-capitalists seem to believe that saying "this is mine" is enough to create private property. Not true. In order to create private property, you must be able to say "this is mine, and men with guns will shoot you if you touch it".

Now, as to the article itself...


Originally posted by Murray Rothbard+--> (Murray Rothbard)Philosophically, this creed is an all-out assault on individuality and on reason. The individual's desire for private property, his drive to better himself, to specialize, to accumulate profits and income, are reviled by all branches of communism.[/b]
An utterly idiotic statement. The individual's drive to better oneself is clearly separate and different from the drive to accumulate property. Buying stuff does not lead to self-betterment, nor is a person "better" simply because (s)he owns more stuff than others. It is one of the great crimes of capitalism that it has subverted the natural drive to self-betterment and persuaded so many individuals to seek happiness in the marketplace, where only misery and self-destructive indulgence is to be found. The drive to accumulate property - which is socially conditioned by capitalist society - is one of the greatest wastes of human energy and creativity in history.


Murray Rothbard
At the root of all forms of communism, compulsory or voluntary, lies a profound hatred of individual excellence, a denial of the natural or intellectual superiority of some men over others...
Here is the unspoken essence of all capitalism, "anarcho-" or not. Here is the admission that the fundamental principle of capitalism is that of hierarchy and oppression: "Some men are naturally better than others" (and let's not even talk about women). This simple idea - that some human beings are naturally superior and others inferior - is the shared root of capitalism, racism, fascism, imperialism and all the great social evils of our world.

As for the true root of all forms of communism, it is the principle that all human beings are fundamentally equal, that individual differences cannot be quantified and people cannot be divided into "superior" and "inferior" groups (neither by the colour of their skin nor by the size of their bank accounts), and that those individuals who claim dominion over other human beings or the gifts of nature are nothing but despots and tyrants, who should be fought relentlessly and deposed.

[abbielives!]

an "anarcho" capitalist eh, thats tough comrade i got my clock cleaned the first time i debated one of them. the libertarians are intellectually our most formidable opponents because their arguements are logically consistant it's the base of their arguement that is wrong so that is were you should focus. shame i cant find a single source that refutes the whole theory, the FAQ has some good stuff though.

Section F - Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secFcon.html

[CrushCapitalism]

anarcho capitalists don't truly exist.

[Don't Change Your Name]

Originally posted by abbielives!@June 07, 2007 02:47 am
the libertarians are intellectually our most formidable opponents because their arguements are logically consistant
No, they aren't - they are just louder.

[Wanted Man]

I made a modest attempt at it here: http://soviet-empire.politicsforum.org/uss...pic.php?t=42359 (http://soviet-empire.politicsforum.org/ussr/viewtopic.php?t=42359)

For articles that really bag (capitalist) libertarianism once and for all, see:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/libertarian.html
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

[Dimentio]

Actually, the anarcho-cappies has a very successful ideal society.

Somalia (http://www.mises.org/story/2066)

*irony*

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 11:15 pm
Actually, the anarcho-cappies has a very successful ideal society.

Somalia (http://www.mises.org/story/2066)

*irony*
Ahahaha, that's priceless! I'll keep that one in mind next time someone assures me that paleolibertarians do not take Somalia as a good example.

[Dimentio]

What we must do is to emphasise the scarcity-vs-abundance conflict and blow holes into the economist postulates of the libertarians. Human beings have a limited ability to consume.

[Spirit of Spartacus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:15 pm
Actually, the anarcho-cappies has a very successful ideal society.

Somalia (http://www.mises.org/story/2066)

*irony*
:blink:

I honestly thought you were joking about the anarcho-cappies.

UNTIL, that is, I read that article. Gosh, they actually mean it! :D

[Dimentio]

They have a lot of fun articles there. Among others, one where they are defending Ebeneezer Scrooge, and some where they are equalising carbon dioxide emission controls with nazism.

[Anarchovampire]

Jennifer Government by Max Berry is a good book reflecting the failures of a anarcho-capitalist state, when several corperations join together and try to buy out the government... :rolleyes: Rather good read actually...

[Dimentio]

What a shame that book is so obscure...

I actually do hope that a major western country or so adopts anarcho-capitalism. Within 5 years, it will have given anarcho-capitalism a very bad reputation. but I guess that won't silence them...

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 05:05 pm
Jennifer Government by Max Berry is a good book reflecting the failures of a anarcho-capitalist state, when several corperations join together and try to buy out the government... :rolleyes: Rather good read actually...
Haha, everyone who has ever played NationStates already has the critique of Libertarianism down. :P Here's another decent critique, if only for making fun of Libertarian travesties like "Political Compass" and "World's Smallest Political Quiz"(the latter, specifically... Political Compass is not so much Libertarian as it is just plain stupid):

How to explain things to Libertarians (http://pandagon.net/2007/02/23/how-to-explain-things-to-libertarians)

Pretty anarchist-friendly too, where it suggests that you should explain libertarian socialism. I'm sure a lot of members here will like this article. :)

[People's Councillor]

THey completely leave out the third axis: political democrat-autocrat...

As if that was the only problem with that sort of test :lol:

[Fodman]

They (anarcho-communists) totally fail to realize that the State has always been the great enemy and invader of the rights of private property
what the fuck is this woman on?

[dez]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:22 am

They (anarcho-communists) totally fail to realize that the State has always been the great enemy and invader of the rights of private property
what the fuck is this woman on?
anarcho capitalISM

[Sh0t]

Hello all.

My name is Tim(Sh0t) and I am a Rothbardian anarcho-libertarian. I saw this thread linked in an irc channel and I would like to attempt to address some of the issues presented above.

It is true, the State is the great enemy of capitalism. Very commonly, people confuse mercantalism(state supported business practices such as protectionism, subsidization, etc) with capitalism(a free market).

States were not necessary for capitalism. It actually happened in the reverse. It took the upheavel and decreasing of state power of feudalism for capitalism as we know it to really rise in Europe. As those populations and what we call nations today became more wealthy, kings/governments saw there was more to loot, and therefore we get the condition of governments piggybacking on vibrant economies.
One clear illustration of this is how much free markets have been retarded by ever-increasing government power, in every Western country I can think of. The USA is the prime example of course.

Utilitarianism is a poor argument for Libertarianism, but I do believe it would be the most successful option for mankind in terms of economics. More importantly, however, Rothbardian Libertarianism cares first about the ethical. The prime axiom of everybody being the sole owner of hisself or herself from which the rest of the philosophy is derived. We see liberty as being the prime ethical situation which also happens to be the best for the flourishing of a capitalist economy. There can be little doubt that capitalism's rise has been the single greatest force which lead to widespread uplifting off the huge masses of the Western world, and a good chunk of the rest of the world by diffusion. The wealth of the United States reflects this.

The State HAS always been the great enemy and invader of private property rights. The most clear example of this is taxation. In the United States, the state takes an average of about 30% of the paychecks of individuals. I cannot think of any criminal enterprise that has a record that horrendous. The state also confiscates property, tells people what they can't do with land they have purchased, and in many cases, enables molestation of property "for the common good", such as laws in the late 1800s that enabled factories to pollute as a policy.

Every worthwhile service states provide can be and have been provided privately in the past. From roads, to courts, to police, there were private analogs in the past and in many cases, have current modern incarnations. With this understand, an understanding of the incentives of a government contrasted with the incenitves of a private company tell us that a government is going to be less efficient and less concerned with its customers. This includes the provision of "justice" which is seen as the ultimate responsibility of a government.

The government having a monopoly of justice provision gives us exactly what we see today. The price of justice goes ever upwards(increased taxation, fees, etc) and the quality of justice is ever going down. Victimless crimes, endless foreign affairs disasters, wars, etc, the quality of justice produced is quite poor. I'm sure many here agree with this assertion, even if they disagree with the reasoning for the cause.

I shall bookmark this thread in antipation of replies.

Thank you.

[Sh0t]

Show that Capitalism is a system based on coercion and control through the economic relationships and dynamics that exist between workers and Capitalists - proletarians are forced to sell their labour power and often to accept the terms of employment which are specified by the Capitalist because they do not have ownership of the means of production and thus have no other ways of securing an income. This is clearly coercive - someone is being forced to follow a particular course of action because they have no alternative choice.

Capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. Trade. Employment is one such exchange. Workers trade labor(by the hour, week, whatever) for a wage or salary. There is no conflict between workers and employers. Both are benefitted from the relationship. THe worker gets paid, the employer gets the work he requests done.

Nobody is forced to be a pure worker. IN the US at least, everybody has the liberty to save money and buy capital goods to become a producer and employ others. In fact, we are all capitalists in that we all own one very important means of production: the human mind-body. The human mind-body is the atomic unit of an economy. Before we have machines and other capital equipment, the initial means of production is an individual using his or her own personal energy to change the environment.

Coercive means violence or threat of violence. There is no violence involved in being an employee. If you choose NOT to work, you may starve, but you have no right to force anybody else to feed you. That would be tyrannical. Same as how you have the right to REFUSE to work for somebody you do not want to work for. You may quit, find another job, start your own business, be a free agent, etc.

Let us not confuse the liberty(nobody forcing you to do anything) with the absence of special rights that enable YOU to force OTHERS to do as you please.

[Dimentio]

The thing is, that in the end, productive forces will be so sufficient that we would have hard time to create a labor market for everyone. So either, within a capitalist context, we will see the emergence of a libertarian free market where a majority of people are self-emploed lumpen-proletarians, or a regulated capitalist economy where the state is intervening to destroy the abundance and create artificial markets.

I think we should strive to reach abundance, even if that means that we would have to sacrifice capitalism. I do not want to work to sustain myself, I am too proud and too unable to coze any boss, and I am irrational in the extent that I could work for days with what I love (writing for example), while neglecting more important things (food for example). The ideal is a world where we all should be able to fulfill ourselves without any social relations that puts people in barter positions.

As for voluntary exchange, there is a difference between the situation of a worker and that of a factory owner. The factory owner have property which she could sell off if she have a hard time, while the worker do not own any productive property besides her own body. A worker declining a low-paid, hazardous job, or a worker fired, is unlikely to be attractive on the labor market, while the owner, who owns money, could utilise the surplus of labor to drive wages to the absolute minimum, and achieve the highest rate of "efficiency", according to her interests of maximum profits.

[Dominick]

It is coercive precisely because an individual that refuses to work within the capitalisic context may starve. As to your point regarding the state, it was the state which expropriated the land, made concrete the concept of "private property" with laws and engaged in the imperialism which made the initial capitalist accumulation possible.

[Smokey_da_bear]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 04:06 am
It is coercive precisely because an individual that refuses to work within the capitalisic context may starve. As to your point regarding the state, it was the state which expropriated the land, made concrete the concept of "private property" with laws and engaged in the imperialism which made the initial capitalist accumulation possible.
The state often faded the line between private property and state ownership, which allowed many horrible outcomes in the past century, and the century before that.

For an individual that chooses not to sell their labor, by all means, that would be his or her choice, no coercion involved, and people shouldn't be punished for his or her choice by government intervention via taxation, which would be literally thievery, that is coercive. Such things do not happen in a libertarian (anarcho-capitalist if you wish) world as that would violate personal liberty and voluntary choice.

There is however no one stopping you for supporting this individual by yourself.

[Dimentio]

It all depends on if you have money or not. Of course, people will survive, but at what level. We would get more kids that are sniffing glue and working at factories, we would get large-scale prostitution followed by mafias and such structures, as well as rampant criminality. But oh, the criminals are of course "immoral" since they refuse to admit the superiority of libertarianism (even if the alternative is to starve to death or get ill).

The reason why the welfare states started to expand from the 19th century is because of the need of skilled labor, something which cannot be provided by the invisbile hand since a lot of people prioritise to get paid in beer or buying candy instead of providing the kid with education.

[Smokey_da_bear]

Originally posted by Serpent+June 16, 2007 08:52 pm--> (Serpent @ June 16, 2007 08:52 pm)
I think we should strive to reach abundance, even if that means that we would have to sacrifice capitalism. I do not want to work to sustain myself, I am too proud and too unable to coze any boss, and I am irrational in the extent that I could work for days with what I love (writing for example), while neglecting more important things (food for example). The ideal is a world where we all should be able to fulfill ourselves without any social relations that puts people in barter positions.[/b]
Who's stopping you from doing what you love, being that writing? Plenty of people write and have something to exchange with for food. By neglecting food, I believe you mean growing your own food and being a writer? Do you know anything about farming? There are people that grow food and more than happy to exchange with me for that food. People barter in order to save time and not do these things alone.


[email protected] 16, 2007 08:52 pm
As for voluntary exchange, there is a difference between the situation of a worker and that of a factory owner. The factory owner have property which she could sell off if she have a hard time, while the worker do not own any productive property besides her own body. A worker declining a low-paid, hazardous job, or a worker fired, is unlikely to be attractive on the labor market, while the owner, who owns money, could utilise the surplus of labor to drive wages to the absolute minimum, and achieve the highest rate of "efficiency", according to her interests of maximum profits.
There is no one forcing you to work at this factory. Are there any thugs walking around saying, "Hey you better work here or else"? No. The factory owner worked his way to achieve what the owner has just the same as any other person would have. Why should the owner be forced to do what other people tell him to do just because the owner was successful? That is coercion. Should success be punished because you couldn't achieve it? For the worker, he has every right to leave, protest, organize a protest, whatever the worker wishes. No one is really forcing the worker to be there at all, unless you mean our current situation which isn't capitalism at all.

Most of our current problems is due to government in these deals preventing people from doing anything about a bad situation, such as losing medical benefits, etc, forcing people to work their current jobs. A couple examples:



If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml)
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.
...
She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.



Why German doctors are packing their bags (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0607/p07s02-woeu.html)
More than 12,000 employees of university and state hospitals in nine German states have protested long hours and pay levels far below that of their colleagues in the rest of Europe.
...
Germany is suffering from rocketing public spending costs and an inflexible labor market that critics say has scared off investors and contributed to the fact that 4.5 million Germans are out of work. Though still a world-beater in exports, Germany hasn't shown the fervor that economists say is needed to trim social services and battle unemployment.
...
In the past three years, doctors have been "fleeing the country," says Mr. Drougias. According to one German doctors' association, 12,000 German doctors are working abroad. Most are on short assignment in the US, says Roland Ilzhöfer, the organization's spokesman. But at last count, 2,600 were registered in Great Britain. More than 1,000 others are in Scandinavian countries, he adds.

"We know that doctors here are unhappy with working conditions and the large amount of bureaucracy," he says. "But ... it also has a lot to do with money. They can earn double or triple the amount abroad."
...
The German government seems well aware of this new reality. Chancellor Angela Merkel has called healthcare reform "more difficult than any other" that Germany is being forced to undertake.

The system, which provides patients comprehensive coverage for low monthly payments, currently costs the government 143 euros ($183) billion a year, says Jochen Pimpertz at the Institute for German Economy in Cologne. But employers also shoulder considerable economic burden for the plan. As it stands, they must pay an additional 6.5 percent of an employee's salary toward healthcare.


Is this the type of world you want to strive for?

[Ismail]

Originally posted by Dick [email protected] 14, 2007 11:26 pm
(the latter, specifically... Political Compass is not so much Libertarian as it is just plain stupid)
Sorry to interrupt a bit, but how so? It does not appear to be a perfect test, but is there anything better?

[Dimentio]

I haven't seen any test based on the true political scale (in scales such as PC, Hillary tends to end up in the same corner as Iosif).

[Smokey_da_bear]

By the way, banning us (like you did the poster before who hasn't done anything) doesn't really help your cause and just makes you guys look more like hypocrites than anything else, especially the under the table bans so it looks like they're not replying (yeah, putting his ip in the firewall so he can't access site, nice).

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 07:42 pm
By the way, banning us (like you did the poster before who hasn't done anything) doesn't really help your cause and just makes you guys look more like hypocrites than anything else, especially the under the table bans so it looks like they're not replying (yeah, putting his ip in the firewall so he can't access site, nice).
I do think that there is a bit too much of restrictions here, and that the role of RevLeft as a combination between a discussion forum and an organisational forum for discussions within the left-spectra about internal matters is a bit vaguish and blurred.

But the guy was not banned, merely moved to the Opposing Ideologies forum, as you probably will be soon.

[Dimentio]

Who's stopping you from doing what you love, being that writing? Plenty of people write and have something to exchange with for food. By neglecting food, I believe you mean growing your own food and being a writer? Do you know anything about farming? There are people that grow food and more than happy to exchange with me for that food. People barter in order to save time and not do these things alone.

No, I am personally more for automated agriculture (I still want to diminish my dependency on others, but not if that means that I would need to work). What I mean is that I have actually sat three days on a row without any hot food at all, just writing on a book. I find it a living hell to have to think at bills and that is why I strive towards a paradise with a minimum of responsibilities. I.E, I want a Craddle-to-the-grave minimum standard of life society, partially because of the possibilities given by modern technology, and partially by the fact that I just want to play.

I cannot understand why a previous worker on a metal factory would start to work as a cleaner when production has actually improved the total resource output of society. Sure, a society benefits best when people are given maximum capacity to extend their capabilities.

[Smokey_da_bear]

Originally posted by Serpent+June 17, 2007 07:47 pm--> (Serpent @ June 17, 2007 07:47 pm)
[email protected] 17, 2007 07:42 pm
By the way, banning us (like you did the poster before who hasn't done anything) doesn't really help your cause and just makes you guys look more like hypocrites than anything else, especially the under the table bans so it looks like they're not replying (yeah, putting his ip in the firewall so he can't access site, nice).
I do think that there is a bit too much of restrictions here, and that the role of RevLeft as a combination between a discussion forum and an organisational forum for discussions within the left-spectra about internal matters is a bit vaguish and blurred.

But the guy was not banned, merely moved to the Opposing Ideologies forum, as you probably will be soon. [/b]
Group: Restricted Member
^^ Then what's that?

He was banned from the php forum and banned from accessing the site from his ip.
Was neither warned or moved, just under the table ban.

[Dimentio]

Yes, I said that he was restricted. A restriction means that he would not be able to post on any forum except the forums attached to "Opposing Ideologies". About the IP ban, I do not know, but I make a clear stand against such measures. The guy was not provoking, trolling or anything like that.

[Fodman]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 08:25 pm
It is true, the State is the great enemy of capitalism. Very commonly, people confuse mercantalism(state supported business practices such as protectionism, subsidization, etc) with capitalism(a free market).
the State was forced into implementing 'mercantilistic' reforms at the demand of the working class, through their decades of struggle.

Libertarians want to destroy everything they fought for

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by Fodman+June 17, 2007 08:47 pm--> (Fodman @ June 17, 2007 08:47 pm)
[email protected] 16, 2007 08:25 pm
It is true, the State is the great enemy of capitalism. Very commonly, people confuse mercantalism(state supported business practices such as protectionism, subsidization, etc) with capitalism(a free market).
the State was forced into implementing 'mercantilistic' reforms at the demand of the working class, through their decades of struggle.

Libertarians want to destroy everything they fought for [/b]
Libertarians are mainly a defensive group which is utilised by the interest groups of the corporate power (at least here in Sweden, in the form of Timbro) in order to assault left-leaning proposals of regulation and such. But the corporations themselves do prefer an interventionist state, only a state that follows their interests.

[Dominick]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 07:10 pm




The state often faded the line between private property and state ownership, which allowed many horrible outcomes in the past century, and the century before that.
The horrific actions of the past centuries made possible the capitalist market



For an individual that chooses not to sell their labor, by all means, that would be his or her choice, no coercion involved, and people shouldn't be punished for his or her choice by government intervention via taxation, which would be literally thievery, that is coercive.
The coercion is involved in the aforementioned choice: Sell labor, set up company or starve.



There is however no one stopping you for supporting this individual by yourself.
Capitalist relations do so.

[Wanted Man]

More fun with quotes from an anarcho-capitalist, Hans Hermann Hoppe. The Ideology of Liberty extends another olive branch:


...the anarchistic upshot of the libertarian doctrine appealed to the countercultural left. For did not the illegitimacy of the state...imply that everyone was at liberty to choose his very own nonaggressive lifestyle? Did this not imply that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality, insofar as they were victimless crimes, were no offenses at all but perfectly normal and legitimate activities and lifestyles?


the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.


At all points of entry and along its borders, the GOVERNMENT (emphasis mine), as trustee of its citizens, must check all newly arriving persons for an entrance ticket; that is, a valid invitation by a domestic property owner; anyone not in possession of such a ticket must be expelled at his own expense.


...all immigrants must demonstrate through tests not only English language proficiency, but all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure as well as a compatible system of values-with the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration bias.

Source is this (http://www.anti-state.com/preston/preston3.html) lovely bit of unity among the libertarian right. :lol:

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by abbielives!@June 07, 2007 05:47 am
an "anarcho" capitalist eh, thats tough comrade i got my clock cleaned the first time i debated one of them. the libertarians are intellectually our most formidable opponents because their arguements are logically consistant it's the base of their arguement that is wrong so that is were you should focus.
most libertarian arguments I've come across have the same line which runs like -

you are afflicted with group think;

be an individual and think like me,

and so on...

It seems it's a mostly American thing.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Dick [email protected] 18, 2007 02:49 pm
More fun with quotes from an anarcho-capitalist, Hans Hermann Hoppe. The Ideology of Liberty extends another olive branch:


...the anarchistic upshot of the libertarian doctrine appealed to the countercultural left. For did not the illegitimacy of the state...imply that everyone was at liberty to choose his very own nonaggressive lifestyle? Did this not imply that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia or any other conceivable perversity or abnormality, insofar as they were victimless crimes, were no offenses at all but perfectly normal and legitimate activities and lifestyles?


the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.


At all points of entry and along its borders, the GOVERNMENT (emphasis mine), as trustee of its citizens, must check all newly arriving persons for an entrance ticket; that is, a valid invitation by a domestic property owner; anyone not in possession of such a ticket must be expelled at his own expense.


...all immigrants must demonstrate through tests not only English language proficiency, but all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure as well as a compatible system of values-with the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration bias.

Source is this (http://www.anti-state.com/preston/preston3.html) lovely bit of unity among the libertarian right. :lol:
Good finds, comrade! It shows that taken to its logical conclusion, extreme freedom becomes tyranny.

Like another comrade said, they just shout the loudest... there's little of substance to debate and I honestly don't see the point. The vast majority I've seen seem to be mental types who can't get on with anyone else. The basic summation of their circular argument is that they're better than the majority so they should have more stuff, cos owning more stuff makes you better :lol:

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by PRC-[email protected] 18, 2007 08:55 pm
Good finds, comrade! It shows that taken to its logical conclusion, extreme freedom becomes tyranny.
Heh. I've "tried out" Mr Hoppe on a libertarian just now, and she said: "He's not a libertarian, but a Straussian fascist". So I went and looked for the (mostly anarcho-capitalist and paleo-)libertarians who have endorsed Mr Hoppe, and the results were honestly more revealing than I had expected:

http://www.jf-archiv.de/archiv05/200526062409.htm
http://www.mises.org/story/1455
http://www.mises.org/journals/aen/aen18_1_1.asp
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/hoppeintro.asp
http://www.mises.org/fellows.asp?control=7
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe-arch.html

German conservatives Junge Freiheit, and the paleo-libertarian Mises Institute and Lewellyn Rockwell have all given this man a platform.

[sh0t2]

Greetings again.

Unfortuntately, this forum does not support an exchange of ideas, because I and another libertarian were both banned once we began to post our opinions earlier in this thread.

Thus I had to create this alternative name to continue posting and responding to questions.


I will read the thread again and address the comments after my last post, hopefully this account won't get banned for some time.

Shame on your board administrators.

[sh0t2]

Professor Hoppe is probably the greatest living anarcho-libertarian around today. He is a libertarian.

Most libertarians are not libertarian, unfortunately. They don't stick by their principles in all cases, giving the state an excuse in many areas.

For example, the Libertarian Party in the United States is a much better alternative than the two big parties, but each year it moves further away from the libertarian view of its founding. It is becoming quite the centrist party.

I would also like to say that many people who are not libertarian use the term libertarian because it strikes a chord with Americans. By and large, most Americans identify with libertarian beliefs, but may have one area they hold dear from the Establishment(such as war for right-wing types, etc). They will call themeslves libertarian, but clearly are not, once you examine their principles.

I would ask that you evaluate such a situation, same way i realize a lot of "liberals" are not really liberals in the American sense of the word, but are just trying to identify with a popular faction.

I'm trying to find the sources for those quotes in hoppe's work from that article but haven't been successful so far. Hoppe does NOT think associating with the "libertine" libertarians is a strategically smart move for the anarcho-libertarian movement(I disagree with him here), but I've yet to read or hear him say he wants them physically removed from society. In fact, he has often said he would love to allow communists to exist in their own enclaves, and would be expecting them to return in a few years.

[sh0t2]

the State was forced into implementing 'mercantilistic' reforms at the demand of the working class, through their decades of struggle.

Libertarians want to destroy everything they fought for

Nope. In fact, what youa re trying to associate witht he working class struggle is a whole other scenario.

Mercantalism was the practice of the Ancien Regime, what Smith railed against in the Wealth of Nations and what Bastiat wrote about in France. It's what Cobden fought when he got the Corn Laws repealed in Britain.

Anti-Mercantalist practices were popular among what we could call "organized labor" today, the working class. For example, in Britain, everybody knew the Corn laws were blatant attempts to fleece the poor and not so poor.

Moving along, however, most of the policies that are associated more correctly with the working class struggle in many cases came from big business factions or unions of workers against OTHER workers. This is the hidden world of labor unions. Labor unions don't fight employers, they actually fight other workers(non-unionized ones or union members still unemployed).

In positive terms, many of the advances such as a shorter work day, vacation time, and factory working condition improvements came as a result of capitalists seeking to compete with each other for employees and to maximize efficiency.

For a negative example, we can look at something like the Anti-trust act which is hagiographically seen as being a victory for the working class and the small business owner. However, the true story of it was a seeking of state privilege by inefficient companies with the result that consumer prices began to RISE because of it. Another example we can look at is immigration reform, which was lead by many of the large unions prior to 1920. The result? keep out immigrants so those already here would be in a smaller workforce, hoping to extract higher wages. But those restrictions only caused labor shortages in other areas, raised the cost of production and made us poorer overall(see Japan today for an example of having unemployment issues AND a labor shortage at the same time).

Minimum wage is another "working class struggle" item and it is probably one of the most economically destructive laws we have on the books. Firstly, we should be suspicious that labor unions that generally make well over minimum wage are supporting such a policy? Our suspicion would be grounded because one result of a higher minimum wage is to dis-employ many of the competitors of labor unions, the un-unionized marginal worker who now has suddenly become a liability rather than a profit generator for a businessman. At 2 bucks an hour with 2.20 an hour worth of production, the employee was worth having. But force the employer to pay him 2.30, making him a 10 cent an hour loss, and the employer will have no choice but to unemploy him. Labor unions have been one of the two major proponents of minimum wage, not because it helps the working poor, but because it helps the working not-so-poor by keeping some of their competition off the market.

Almost without question, every union action is targeted at other employees, not employers.

[Demogorgon]

If you want to argue this, take it to Opposing Ideologies. The site is for leftists. Those who want to argue with us do it in that section in order that we can discuss issues that need debated amongst ourselves elesewhere.

At any rate, I would say your history is rather messed up, as is your economics, for the reason that capitalism simply is not possible without a state. It is the only thing that can create the situation in which capitalism can function. Otherwise such things as property rights simply do not exist.

As for state power decreasing with capitalism, that is ridiculous. States became far more powerful than they were in Feudal times. During Feudalism, there scarcely was a state. There were the local magistrates punishing criminals and the Nobolity maintaining an army and that was basically it. The rise of capitalism vastly increased the power of the state, and it was because the capitalists needed this that it happened.

Anyway I am quite happy to continue debating you in opposing Ideologies, where this kind of discussion belongs.

[Dimentio]

That minimum wage argument is based on the premises that there is nothing called "structural unemployment", and that the profits of capitalists are always marginal (i.e, the salaries are always the major cost of a capitalist). While this might be true when it comes to small firms, it is generally not the case for medium-sized and big firms.

We could also see that historically, factory owners have tried some unethical methods to keep down their costs, by for example paying their workers with beer (as was common in northern Sweden during the 1880;s). The labor unions was also the first organs who created their own unemployment funds for the workers (in Sweden).

As for the historical debate. Mercantilistic practices are not equal to city tolls but to increase the power of the state at the expense of the national nobility, a precondition for capitalism emerging. Also note that the states forced literacy on their subjects in the 19th century, as well as more actively integrating them in the social process.

BTW, why not move this thread to O.I.

BTW II, why seem anarcho-cappies so eager to defend their ideology?

BTW III, what is an anarcho-capitalist? Al Capone?

[sh0t2]

The minimum wage argument is based on the simple principle of what a price control does. The minmum wage is simply a law that says "no wage contracts below a certain level". Period.

If your output is less than this level, the employer is forced to either subsidize this employee and lose money per hour of work or lay him off.

That's all it means. Some will subsidize their employees for a short while, hoping to make it up in other areas, some will lay off employees right away if they are on a thin profit margin(or just close up shop completely in more extreme cases).

It doesn't matter if salaries are a major cost or a minor cost, but whether or not such a move is economically viable for them. In some industries, such as ones where there is a relatively inelastic demand curse for labor(highly specialized fields for example), they will pay any price. however, these fields tend to make way more than minimum wage anyway, which makes the minimum wage argument even more silly.

Minimum wage earners are typically the most marginal workers in the economy. AND they also have to compete with automation(a la Japan where instead of hiring cheap workers, they build vending machines in some industries, etc),

There is nothing unethical about paying workers with beer if workers agree to it. I can see how that would appeal to some people, not so sure I would take such an offer however. I can't speak for Sweden, but in American, voluntary fraternal organizations(that unions were not keen on typically) were sources of private unemployment insurances and such. Many companies used to have "in factory" doctors and such to to give as a perk to workers. that practice was highily lobbied against by unions(the medical union in particular, as presented by the mouthpiece of cartelized medicine, the AMA).

Capitalism has no pre-condition outside of economic liberty. It requires no statism or special situations for "national nobility". It just requires the ability to produce, trade, and own in peace. The major capitalizers for the Industrial revolution, for example, were the poor in Britain, as motivated by John Wesley.

Move this thread wherever is appropriate for the forum.

Why so eager? Because it's something I believe in, far above and beyond the intellectual exercise. The moral rigorism of anarco-capitalism is inspiring to those who care about such issues.

An Anarcho-Capitalist is a somebody who feels that the arguments for limited state power because the market is more efficient and just applies to not just clothing and garbgae collection, but also to areas that are normally considered inseparable from the State: police, roads, the provision of justice and courts.

Generally, I think of anarcho-capitalist as a david friedman type position: the State is bad only because it's inefficient, a market solution would be better. I see anarcho-libertarians as holding that position AND the position that the state is the major evil of the world. I am an Anarcho-Libertarian by those criteria. I see the market as a better alternative but I also hate the State independent of that.

[Dimentio]

You did not answer my post directly. I questioned whether or not marginal changes in salaries really would be that catastropic given that the salaries of CEO;s are several hundred times the salaries of factory workers.

A classical liberal is an advocate of capitalism. A capitalist is a person who owns means of production and hires other to work for her. I.E Engels was a capitalist, even though he was the co-founder of marxism.

[Janus]

Unfortuntately, this forum does not support an exchange of ideas, because I and another libertarian were both banned once we began to post our opinions earlier in this thread.
No, you were restricted which means you can only post in the Opposing Ideologies forum.


Thus I had to create this alternative name to continue posting and responding to questions.
Which I have just banned because duplicate accounts are not allowed on this forum


I will read the thread again and address the comments after my last post, hopefully this account won't get banned for some time.
Sorry, but attempting to circumvent restriction by creating a sock puppet is a big no no.


Shame on your board administrators.
Shame on you for not reading the guidelines.
Guidelines (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?act=boardrules)


Who is restricted?

In general, anyone who is ideologically opposed to the revolutionary leftist vision of this board is restricted to OI.

Anyone who defends capitalism or otherwise opposes worker liberation is automatically restricted. Anyone who opposes the rights of any other oppressed group is similarly restricted. This includes so-called "pro-lifers" or anyone else who opposes the right to abortion on demand.


Duplicate Accounts

Members registered on this board are not permittted to create additional accounts. Any duplicate accounts found will be unconditionaly banned, and the original account will recieve a warning point.

If the duplicate account was an attempt at circumventing restriction, the original restricted account will receive 3 warning points.

[Wanted Man]

This libertarian couldn't find the quotes? Odd, I found at least this one pretty easily:


Naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They -- the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism -- will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/02/2005021406n.htm

Try not to enter entire paragraphs between double quotes in Google next time! :lol:

[Janus]

He was banned from the php forum and banned from accessing the site from his ip.
Where are you getting this from? If he was IP banned then how could he have posted again under the same IP address? As I have already explained, we restrict capitalists as per the guidelines to the Opposing Ideologies forum.