Olen, pal, you take things far too seriously.
Sit back, relax, have a nice fat joint (on me) and enjoy yourself.
taking the joint
friedo, you come rollin’ on in here outta God knows where and start spoutin’ that shit, what the hell you expect me to do? Laugh and say “Aw, that friedo, what a card”?
Well see, there’s the problem. The first option is only available to anyone who’s got the money to live on while their business/venture/whatever builds up enough of a clientele to support itself, the person who runs it, and that person’s dependents. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the venture will succeed, forcing the hapless person back into the other two options, which is what he’d be faced with if he didn’t have the money to start his own business in the first place. And, of course, the fact that he owns a business means that he needs people to work for him - thereby limiting the options for any number of other people, depending on how large the business is.
Really, I think your “options” are nothing more than a Hobson’s choice of lifestyle. No matter what you do, you gotta do it in order to earn enough wages to support yourself at some acceptable level. Given that no form of society up until now has been able to guarantee everyone such a life, I don’t think removing any governmental fetters on the pursuit of profit (is this not what libertarianism stands for?) is going to improve the situation.
I’m still working on how to eliminate your confusion of socialism and “The State”, but I guess I have to ask what you consider “The State” to be, and your conception of the nature of “The State” under socialism.
Or defend it.
Olentzero:
I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’ admonition, “Don’t just read books about books. Read the books themselves.”
I recommend you read Mein Kampf in which Hitler explains the origin of his National Socialism in great detail, including why it diverged from the Social Democratic Party, which he called a “pestilential whore, cloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity.” He (correctly) drew a distinction between socialism and Marxism, and saw the Marxists as errant, even dangerous, socialists.
He observed that “[the] Pan-German movement was right in its theoretical view about the aim of a German renascence, but unfortunate in its choice of methods. It was nationalistic, but unhappily not socialistic enough to win the masses.” He sought to combine the nationalistic theme of the Pan-German movement with the socialist philosophy of the Christian Social Party. “If, in addition to its enlightened knowledge of the broad masses, the Christian Social Party had had a correct idea of the importance of the racial question, such as the Pan-German movement had achieved; and if, finally, it had itself been nationalistic, or if the Pan-German movement, in addition to its correct knowledge of the aim of the Jewish question, had adopted the practical shrewdness of the Christian Social Party, especially in its attitude toward socialism, there would have resulted a movement which even then in my opinion might have successfully intervened in German destiny.”
He saw Marxism as a plague on socialism, and his hatred of Jews was predicated partly on his hatred of Marx. He wrote, “In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.”
At the end of a lengthy portion in which he gave background on his study of Bismark’s socialist legislation, Hitler concludes:
He spoke often of his ideal for a “People’s State”, and the “völkisch”-ness of National Socialism, which he claimed the Marxists had usurped despite that they had ridiculed the idea year after year theretofore. He sought to “convert” communists to socialism.
He, too, championed individual rights, but at least he admitted that The State takes precedence when rights of the individual conflict with rights of The State, something that modern socialists are loathe to do, saving this aspect of their philosophy to spring as a surprise when they implement it: “We, National Socialists, would reverse this formula and would adopt the following axiom: A strong national Reich which recognizes and protects to the largest possible measure the rights of its citizens both within and outside its frontiers can allow freedom to reign at home without trembling for the safety of the State. On the other hand, a strong national Government can intervene to a considerable degree in the liberties of the individual subject as well as in the liberties of the constituent states without thereby weakening the ideal of the Reich; and it can do this while recognizing its responsibility for the ideal of the Reich, because in these particular acts and measures the individual citizen recognizes a means of promoting the prestige of the nation as a whole.”
Nazism is socialist through and through. Yes, it is also racist, but that doesn’t make it any less socialist.
Surely.
You’re talking about his mention of the “liquidation of groups based on class or political designations”, which he attributed to Lenin? You’re right. He ascribed the particular wording of Stalin to Lenin. The Jewish gentleman whose name you curiously ridicule was attempting, as he explained, to “comprehend the incomprehensible”, namely “the systematic annihilation of six million of my fellow Jews.” He wasn’t writing a research paper on Lenin.
In Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Lenin said, “Socialism means the abolition of classes.”
Abolition — liquidation. I concede he should not have indicated his paraphrase, however reasonable, to be a direct quotation. But it is a nit-pick of extraordinary proportions to claim some misrepresentation of Lenin’s intent. Of course, Trotsky and Stalin, Lenin’s torch bearers, carried out Lenin’s call to abolition and did indeed use the term “liquidation”. In fact, Stalin wrote Collectivization and the Liquidation of the Kulaks in 1929 to justify a murderous rampage that makes Hitler’s pale by comparison.
But Lenin had already set the tone. After murdering the Czar and his family, Lenin proceeded with the wholesale liquidation of the aristocratic and bourgeois classes. That’s why Zinoviev, one of Lenin’s sycophants and propogandists, cried triumphantly, “The capitalists killed separate individuals. But we kill whole classes.” Oh, the braggart.
One non-revisionist estimate of the Soviet socialist massacres is as follows:
Revisionists argue that the peasant numbers are more like 9,000,000. Perhaps they don’t include the Kulaks as peasants.
Morse’s point was not the red herring you lifted, but the same as mine: German socialism and Russian socialism were like a knife versus a gun — different, yes, but each a weapon, and each a means to the same end, liquidation of perceived “enemies”. Both socialist systems used whole classes of people as scapegoats to justify mass murder.
Compare these:
“The Jews are our destruction. They provoked and brought about this war. What they mean to acheive by it is to destroy the German state and nation… Every Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people.” The Jews Are to Blame! — Joseph Goebbels
“And so, the question stands as follows: either one way or the other, either back to capitalism, or forward to socialism. There is no third way, nor can there be … What does this mean? It means that we have passed from the policy of restricting the exploiting proclivities of the Kulaks to the policy of eliminating the Kulaks as a class.” Collectivization and the Liquidation of the Kulaks — Joseph Stalin
Let thinking people themselves decide whether there is a distinction with a difference.
Spiritus:
I didn’t use Hitler to critique socialism. I pointed him out as an abuser of it for his own ends, along with Mao and Stalin. In that same way, Morris abuses the scientific method.
I used Hayek to critique socialism. See the original thread in General Questions linked above somewhere. One problem with the implemenation of socialism, until its inevitable failure, is that it will always lead to abusive totalitarianism. Central planning is its chief attribute.
RT:
Rights toward what? Your real estate fetish is incredible. You seem to view rights as indemic permissions, and that nothing is worthwhile unless you can destroy something. Particularly, something belonging to someone else. You hold that no property is of value except real estate because you want to go to a specific location and let loose.
If land is what you lust for, then you are free to acquire land by peaceful honest means. Then you can go to that spot and do all the weird stuff that you resent others from allowing you to do on land they own.
Little fuckwad? How precious!
Using an anarchist to critique libertarianism is like using Henry Morris to critique the scientific method.
Suppose the distopia you champion were based on a princple of some kind. Just suppose. Who would enforce it? Does the government of your distopia invade other countries when it decides that their laws are no good? Oops. I guess it does. That explains why its army occupies more than half the nations on earth. Nevermind.
Olentzero:
Nevermind. Sorry.
RT, from what I understand of Libertaria, one would contract with a “government” for protection of one’s rights. Since the rights protected are based on the non-coercion principle, and since exccessive retaliatory force is considered initiated force, and since killing someone is not required to protect your right to not have your property tresspassed upon, the killer is guilty of murdering the tresspasser. If I had contracted with an organization to protect me, and they didn’t do anything to bring my killer to justice, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be good for their business.
As for rights, yeah, I suppose that if you are on someone else’s land, you really can’t use it for things they object to, just like in our society. Wherever you are, however, you still have the right to be free of initiated force and fraud. And I can’t imagine having a cause so unpopular that every property owner will forbid me from using their property to advance it. Most criticisms of pure libertarianism seem to depend on people acting in bizarre manners contrary to their own interests.
Wow. Lib, I gotta admit, that’s a big man kind of thing you did there. I got no choice but to offer to bury the hatchet on this one. Deal?
Of course, you’re dead on; under no circumstances am I defending Stalinism or his perversion of Marx’ and Lenin’s thought. I’m certainly open to keeping this debate alive, since I’d really like to see your true ideas and throw my 2¢ back at you - although more than likely this debate is destined to continue here in many forms for God knows how long. 
Since this is the Pit, however, ya threw something out that I gotta respond to. Just for form’s sake.
'S why I recommended reading Trotsky’s works on fascism, ya fat libertarian bastid. 
I’ve been rolling this stuff around in my mind since debating Lib far too often the winter before last. I’ve got several problems with this model: Libertarian ‘governments’ aren’t likely to guarantee protection (even to the extent of promising post-mortem retaliation) anywhere you go; they might well only contract governmental services within a predetermined set of borders; they may not consider everyone a good risk for coverage; and there will be people who can’t afford to contract for such protection, just as many people in the USA don’t have health insurance coverage today.
I would expect that, in a Libertaria, a fair proportion of propertyless people would be without viable governmental protection.
I don’t think it’s so unrealistic that one might have a hard time finding a place in Libertaria to exercise the sort of rights that Libertarians generally hold dear. I can’t imagine my neighbors letting me use their front yard as a protest site; they may think it’s good that I speak my piece, but they’d generally prefer I not clutter up their yard when I do so. And property owned by commercial interests…ever tried to get permission to protest at a mall?
In the end, you might be able to speak somewhere (quite possibly far from where anyone might have the opportunity to listen), but you’ve got no right to speak anywhere in Libertaria: you rely on the kindness of property owners. (Makes ya feel like Blanche DuBois, doesn’t it?) A peculiar state of affairs in a utopia named after liberty.
Things like freedom of speech, free assembly, free exercise of religion…the basics.
Funny, I see it as being the other way around: libertarians’ real-estate fetish is incredible. Almost feudal, IMO.
In Western democracies, real property is a nice thing to have, but most of us really don’t need it for anything. I like to have a place for my vegetable garden, and it’s pleasant to enjoy the view of the sunset through the woods from my back deck, but these are creature comforts, not necessities. I don’t need private property because there are public roads, public squares, and public parks which allow me free and easy access to a wide variety of places where I can exercise my rights under the US Constitution. My Fourth Amendment rights guarding against unreasonable search and seizure apply equally whether I’m living on my own real estate, or in a rented apartment. A renter in Libertaria has to contract for all the above - assuming he can successfully do so.
IOW, real property would have much greater significance in Libertaria than in the United States, and because of the far greater role it would play, available land would be much more scarce and costly. Increased attributes affect value, tilting the supply-and-demand equation, y’know?
Feel free to pull conclusions from thin air at any time, Lib. :rolleyes:
And suppose I do? I take that right for granted in the USA because public property is abundant. I can go to a specific location and let loose, praise Jefferson! I place a low value on real estate here because I can use the public square, or the public sidewalk, or whatever.
In Libertaria, where there’s no such thing as public property as we know it, I have no such right.
It’s not that I claim personalty has less value in Libertaria, but I can’t take out my copy of Common Sense and speechify from it; I need real estate - mine or someone else’s - from which to do that. And the only real estate on which I have any rights is my own. Anywhere else, either I can’t go there at all, or I have only those privileges - not rights - that I’ve been able to contract for.
Damn, you’re so weird, Lib. That paragraph doesn’t even make sense. :rolleyes:
First I’d have to champion a particular form of government.
Olentzero:
Done. Thanks for your magnanimity.
The problem I have with socialism is two-fold: (1) its centralized decision making and (2) its anthropomorphism of the abstraction called society.
It might be the case that that centralization can be democratized, but I don’t think that mitigates the problem. The problem is that people who are peaceful and honest ought to be free to make their own decisions.
And it might be that sociology can paint statistical pictures, but the problem is that I don’t think people who are peaceful and honest ought to have to conform to any statistical norm.
The Austrian economists have proven, at least to my satisfaction, that any interference of the type socialism brings to the economy causes general and unnecessary economic suffering all around. For example, if the socialist consults his statistics and determines that Mr. Smith is too far above the norm and Mr. Jones is too far below, it will seek to implement policy that will make Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones statistically equal. Is that correct? If so, I’ll continue with the implications from there. If not, I’ll back up and address whatever your response is.
RT:
But RT, that’s only because you convey to yourself, as a part of the public, a part of the ownership. The de facto owner of property is that person (or persons) who has the power to call the shots regarding it. In the case of what you call “public property”, it is property that is owned in real terms by the politicians who make laws that govern it. You don’t alleviate the problem of free-speech rights by democratizing your model either. In fact, it can be worse. Horror stories eminating from parochial politics are legion. Even your very treasure, protesting in a public place, can be contingent on local politics. They might decree that a permit is required for your protest, and they might decide not to issue you one. Weren’t the protesters in Seattle in a public place, but weren’t they summarily Tiannamenned?
RT, I suspect the “dystopia” Lib accuses you of championing is the United States of America (Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken, Lib). And with the eloquent post about some of our specific constitutional freedoms you just committed, I suppose he could be forgiven for assuming you do “champion” it.
waterj2
Would one be required to enter into a contract, or would (s)he be free to undertake such protection on his or her own? Because without a requirement to enter into a contract, we’re right back at RT’s do-it-yourselfer blowing away the neighbor’s kid when he climbs the back wall to retrieve his basketball.
This is quite apart from RT’s objection that the less affluent could be priced out of the rights market entirely.
Sorry, Kayalsdad, but I see that as a non sequitur. The “rights market” in the US is available only to the politically affluent. Examine the prison and jail population and tell me otherwise with a straight face. As to the “constitutional freedoms”, scribbles on ancient documents guarantee nothing. See the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. It “guarantees” rights to a fare-thee-well, including a bunch not “guaranteed” by the U.S. one.
Really Libertarian, this is … bizarre.
However, one should also look at the reality and not just the rhetoric, as well as contextualize the propaganda.
Once one strips away the cloak, one should be able to recognize the reality of Nazi programs were not socialist in any ordinary sense of the term. The fact the word is being thrown about does not make it so.
Bismark’s “socialist” legislation? Or perhaps we really mean Bismark’s social legislation. See, the world socialism here does seem to be in the sense of socialism as you are construing it – or appear to be. Of course here we are also dealing with translations, but leaving that aside, it rather appears to me the usage is not the same at all (if we are taking socialism to be built around the common definition starting with Proudhoun’s “property is theft” line of thought which at least holds the means of production should not be in private hands.) Of course one problem we have hear is the word itself can mean many things, but within the common meaning, I fail to see a true fit. What I see is the exploitation of some socialist, in the common sense as opposed to your abusively expansive sense, rhetoric combined with symbols in the service of an extreme nationalist agenda which is otherwise not socialist at all. An irrationalist, nationalist movement with odd neo-traditionalist overtones and a love of violence/war for its own means with a mere patina of socialist rhetoric as part of its populist program.
And when one puts this in historical context, including the European state tradition, we’re seeing rather clearly a sort of right-populism mixed in with racialist nationalism. One can find the same thing, for example, in Le Pen’s “National Front” despite the fact he’s quite right wing. Your analytical error is to presuppose anglo-saxon political frameworks from the get go. That and a desire to cram everything into a quite peculiar analytical framework.
See, this is the sort of sloppy and essentially ideologically driven conflation that led me to call your usage abusive.
(a) In fact Nazi party championed effectively a sort of petty bourgeious set of economic programs, while also working with major industrial interests, despite what early rhetoric might have implied.
(b) individual rights are in fact championed rather than “class” based rights, where they are not its on the basis of volk/race/nation.
© state interests put first, by no means a socailist precept, but rather part of the European statist tradition.
Bloody hell.
Only in reading utterly divorced from context for abusive ideological purposes. Ideologues, scourge of critical thinking.
Um, you’re sort of a day late and a dollar short, Sherlock.
Lib, cut 'em some slack. They may not all have followed the “sorry” link you posted after your last big post - even if they did, I have to admit I had to read it two or three times before I found what you were apologizing for. (I was distracted, had two 7-year-olds running amok in the house.)
All y’all - read that post he linked to. It’s worth the time.
I’ll get to your points you brought up in your reply to my peace offer in the next day or so - I need to get to bed since I’m involved in a women’s rights protest tomorrow.
Twasn’t clear that you were admitting that the kind of equation you made was not supportable.
Only???
Congrats, Lib, but that’s the whole point. As a part of the public, I have an undivided share in the ownership of all the public lands of my native country, rather than fee simple ownership of a 1/281,000,000 fraction of said lands. This is what enables me to get to a specific place.
The key attribute - a network of public rights-of-way running throughout a land - is something that probably predates government. I’ll bet that the earliest towns had paths running through them where it was understood by all that you didn’t build there, because that’s where people walked to get from one hut to another, or out to the fields and hunting grounds.
Government hasn’t so much created this idea as it has codified and refined it. It’s a simple and effective idea, and it’s proved to be a workable one for several thousand years, as far back as civilization goes.
But if you say it’s gotta go, Lib, then whatever you say.
I’m aware that the right to protest at a specific place, once you get there, is not always available, even in a democracy. It certainly wasn’t always there, even when the ink on the Bill of Rights was fresh; it’s probably more available now than it ever has been. I can go anywhere in the USA and pass out leaflets advocating virtually any political philosophy on any street corner in the land - because it is my right, not because I was able to wangle permission from a sympathetic landowner.
I can’t see how Libertaria can offer anything comparable in the way of liberties. But I can give a modest example of how the speech privilege works under private control.
Nike will let you pay a little extra to have a word or phrase stitched under the ‘swoosh’ on their shoes. There are limitations that Nike is clear about: no trademarks owned by others, no athletes’ names not licensed to Nike, and no profanity or inappropriate slang.
One Jonah Peretti requested “sweatshop”. Nike told him that that was inappropriate slang. (Cite: Hightower Lowdown, April 2001.)
I’ll take my chances with the public square, thanks.
That’s because that’s not what I was admitting. What I was admitting was that I had erected a strawman and argued against it. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao too — they appropriated socialism to their own ends which is frighteningly easy to do. Whatever the preceived threat to that abstract entity, society, socialist interpretations of an economy can be marshalled to confront it, be it Jews, prosperous peasants, or dangerously intelligent college students and their teachers. In other words, the socialist ruler will maintain that this class or that class is a bottleneck to the prosperity of the masses.
Class elimination can be accomplished either by statistically normalizing anomolous individuals or else by killing them. Either one is a weird and perverted application of social Darwinism. To eliminate classes, you must initiate force. And class elimination will always result in totalitarianism or majoritarian tyranny.
RT:
Well, you’re entitled to your druthers. Would that you would concede the same for every peaceful honest person, including those who would rather be libertarian.
But at least now you’re coming to an understanding that rights are an attribute of property. Ownership is the conduit of rights, whether that ownership is privately held or held by politicians. You’re fond of making the point that utterly destitute people — having spent their whole lives vainly attempting to acquire even a small piece of land, all the while operating freely in a context of peace and honesty — have fewer choices in Libertaria than those whose common sense made them prudent stewards. You seem content that ownership by legislators who represent that portion of their constituency with voting power is more fair. Poor, black, illiterate victims of the government’s prison-industrial complex, and others who are politically worthless understandably might have a different view.
To help you avoid my own mistake of erecting strawmen, let me remind you that I do not seek to impose Libertaria on people, like you, who are content with something else. I am merely saying let peaceful honest people decide for themselves. I cannot imagine a reason you would oppose this other than that your political ownership model might fall apart as the brightest, most talented, and most inwardly resourceful abandon it in favor of making their own choices. I suppose it is “safer” for you to have your own rights — and everyone else’s — meted out by people who can win elections.
In which case my posting remained relevant.
I’m not going to bother speaking to your excessive and unjustifiable definition of socialism as including Hitler.
Lib, I’ve been trying to understand why you accused me of perpetrating a non-sequitur. I can identify two statements that I made, which you felt compelled to refute (or at least to gainsay).
The first was my describing as “eloquent” Rufus T’s use of constitutionally enumerated freedoms as examples of rights that he enjoys in the real-world United States of America. You remarked that words inscribed on a two-century-old document do not in themselves guarantee any rights to anyone (I think I can get back to that later).
My second statement was a speculative restatement of RT’s complaint with having the protection of our rights being contingent upon the exercise of contracts that we must individually negotiate with whatever government is allowed in Libertaria. I said that the less affluent could find themselves priced out of the market (for rights). Your response to this was that, even now, rights are only enjoyed by the politically affluent.
Speaking of non-sequiturs :rolleyes: . I’m going to go ahead and state that I meant the word “affluent” to mean economically affluent, and I’m also going to state that, in the context, my meaning was clear enough that any assumption that I meant politically affluent must be attributable to either faulty comprehension or deliberate intellectual dishonesty (much as it pains me to have to even suggest such a thing about a fellow Doper, what the hell. This is the Pit, after all).
Now it may be that you feel justified in universally conflating economic and political affluence as being one and the same, and the frequency with which money and power are found in each other’s company might seem to support such a view. However, I think this, while debatable (although probably not by me ), is somewhat beside the point. Even granting that politically affluent persons are reliably economically affluent as well, not every economically affluent person is necessarily politically affluent, or even politically interested. Be that as it may, if, in Libertaria, the protection of my rights is something I must buy, my access to economic resources becomes an issue with regard to which of my rights I am able to get protection for. If I am economically affluent, even if apolitical, I can buy whatever is available. If I am not economically affluent, I get whatever rights protection might be on the shelf at the 99 Cents Only Store…
I also suspect that your position is that the rights question in Libertaria (what I will call the treatment of rights as commodities, available to anyone who can provide a quid in exchange for the quo), is not, practically speaking, different from the situation in the world of non-Libertaria that we live in today. That is, rights are already commodities, available only to the politically connected. The foundation of Libertaria, then, is inherently superior to that of the world we live in, because Libertaria openly acknowledges that rights are commodities, and is honest enough (and I suppose it is to be hoped, peaceful enough :rolleyes: ), to allow the market for these commodities to operate and flourish unhindered by the stifling hand, no, the grasping claw, no the coercive, weapons-brandishing behemoth, of (shudder) government. Is this, in fact a fair characterization of your position, or did I misinterpret something somewhere (I am taking it as read, by the way that you are sharp enough to discern the places in the above in which I use hyperbole and overstatement as humorous devices. Don’t disappoint me, please)? I don’t want to indulge in the vice of setting up a strawman argument, so I’ll not bother to comment on this one right now, except to say that it certainly isn’t mine.
As to the question of whether the Constitution, being a scrap of paper inscribed with some words “guarantees” rights to anyone, I’ll grant you that literally, it does not. However, as an enforceable contract that catalogs, among other things, certain rights enjoyed by individuals, I’d still say it’s a pretty handy document to have around, even for Libertarians 
.