leftlibertarian.org

What a difference a year can make. On July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms. Significantly, the document declared, "We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain establishing independent states."

The rest of TGIF is here.

Some thoughts on the nature and function of the ALLiance, stemming from our recent internal conflicts:

The ALLiance should be welcoming to women, men, transfolk, people of all nationalities and ethnicities, all faiths or lack thereof, transhumanists and survivalists, etc., that is, to all people seriously struggling for anarchism, along whatever economic or philosophical path, using whatever language or lingo. Members of the ALLiance should be expected to pursue this vision diligently, on their own responsibility, using their own best judgment, and respecting, as much as possible, the judgment of their ALLies. Strategic and tactical differences ought to be aired and discussed as precisely as differences within the ALLiance, differences between persons. Vague talk of "tendencies" and non-intention sub-alliances probably ought to be avoided as simply unhelpful, and likely incorrect, given the fairly low level of specific agreement between individual ALLies on any given issue, beyond the general pursuit of liberty and our policy of general welcome and support for the like-minded. Any attempt to treat individuals, within the ALLiance or without, as other than individuals--as mere instances of some social grouping, trend or pathology--ought to be opposed as destructive of the hospitality which alone can make the ALLiance into something more than a collection of more-or-less similar, more-or-less isolated individuals. By it's nature and composition, the ALLiance has to embrace viewpoints of a conflicting nature--and sometimes the conflicts will be of more than trivial significance to the ALLies. Most of us are committed to philosophical, political, economic and/or ethical paths, to which we have invested often considerable energy, time, ideological struggle (and the pains that come with it). ALLies, present from the beginning, work from foundations as disparate as amoralist egoism and spiritual revelation, and pursue means of libertarian social change that run the gamut of revolutionary and evolutionary approaches. The ALLiance of the Libertarian Left, as such, cannot endorse any or all of these positions without compromising the philosophy of hospitality which is at the core of our current disputes. Nor can the ALLiance, as such, be expected to present any particular approach any more prominently, or negatively, than it is presented by the actions and expressions of the individual ALLies--hopefully magnified, clarified, criticized, and put into creative, productive play with other such actions and expressions by other ALLies, motivated and guided by that spirit of hospitality.

From the perceptive Megan McArdle at The Atlantic:

I find it hard to believe that none of the liberal commentators breathlessly celebrating Wal-Mart's "capitulation" on national health care have even entertained the most parsimonious explanation: that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition. Yet somehow, this appears nowhere in any of the analysis.

She wraps up: "All of which is to say, Bootleggers and Baptists should be required reading in all schools. When you find strange bedfellows in politics, don't look for a surprising outbreak of spontaneous virtue: looking [sic] for the hidden conspiracy."

More here.

On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution of independence, submitted by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

Two days later, July 4, the Congress approved a document, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, intended to explain why independence was proper and necessary. We call that document the Declaration of Independence.

"Waiting for a moment until another shellbark dropped, a blue-jay perched upon a bare twig and sang after its fashion. It was a short series of discordant notes; collectively, a harsh, rattling, corvine call, and yet it blended well with the gnarly branches and shaggy bark. Coarse, but honest to the core. There was nothing for mere appearance's sake, such as gluts you in modern assemblages of men. The blue-jay is a bird murderer, but he does not care a whit who knows it. There is no stabbing in the back about him, and now that the spared nestlings of summer are all on the wing, and there is no lack of them, we forget the foul deeds, as we thought them, that so sorely vexed us in June, and take the jay for what he is to-day. No summer sky was ever a finer blue than is his plumage, and no jauntier crest ever reared its defiance. To whom does he call, I wonder, as he cries loudly, again and again, and then, hearing no answer at all, whips the idle air with impatient wings and is gone. The gentle summer shower, when every rain-drop falls as if saying, 'By your leave,' is all very well in its way, and so, too, the summer warblers, with their endless billing and cooing and languid love songs; but it cloys at last. Even if the lightning strikes near, the thunder gust is welcomed by a healthy man and the rasping cry and gruff, stringent intensity of purpose of a blue-jay find a welcome. Energy, not lassitude, is now uppermost, and better in November a blue-jay, fretful and in its way profane, than the amiable blue-bird, never of the earth, earthy." (Charles Abbot, The Rambles of an Idler, 1906)

Well, it shouldn't be as bad as all that, and we will have more to do with blackbirds around here, with those "birds of the coming storm" that feature so significantly in our shared histories, and with which many of us still fancy we have some kinship. But I expect to hit as many jarring notes as I make songbird melodies, as I engage in a rather wholesale exhumation of the radical past.

Corvus: face it, the easy "black" anarchist business names are pretty well used up, and as I live in a city where mere humans seem to go about their business by the leave of the seemingly omnipresent crows, well, things seemed to add up. And I wanted something a little messy and discordant, to go with the lovely cacophony of voices that I've been trying to arrange into a micropublishing catalog.

The Origin Story (short version): A couple of months ago, I started to realize that my corporate bookselling gig was going to drive me freakin' nuts. Capitalism = Epic fail!!11! these days, and working in a struggling big-box gives you a front-row look at the embarrassing details. You cannot run anything like a market, let alone a free market, if it's hedge fund managers who have the final say on policy questions, and my smidge over minimum wage was looking like a pretty low compensation for too few hours to live on of ignoring perfectly good market information by command. The business plan I came up with as an alternative was the equivalent of tearing up the bed sheets and knotting them together, but I think there's something to be said, in the face of pervasive irrationality, for acting as if the worst has indeed happened and just assuming that one has to get out and get on with it. I quit a decent job, in a city with very few decent jobs, because I was being told consistently, despite 25+ years in the business, that I wasn't doing the job. And then I got asked back for a seemingly endless series of "last" shifts and personal favors, and now I've really just cut my hours in half. Ah, well. My debtors can rest easier. But the time in between the break and the partial reconciliation gave me enough space to really work through the thing I had leapt at.

I've been lucky enough to be able to immerse myself in the history of the anarchist movement, and in its various contexts. I've compiled, as a result, a fairly extension collection of texts in various forms. My heart will always be with independent booksellers, infoshops, tablers and the sort of people who frequent those businesses, and in my last stint in the infoshop world it had become clear to me that one of the needs there was a fairly steady flow of cheap, new material, the kind of stuff that might bring people back to a space, and which all concerned could afford to play with. Having, for the moment, run into some brick walls where my various other talents are concerned, it hasn't seemed too unreasonable to roll the dice on my packrat propensities. Thus, Corvus...

I took a basic version of the new distro out to the Portland Anarchist Bookfair a month ago, and was pleased with the response. I also got to spend a little quality time with old friend/foe Aragorn!, get the skinny on the Anarchist Library project, talk to locals about the possibility of doing some community education around the Sellwood Firebrand, and gauging the interest in reprints of the sort of material I already have squirreled away. On the way out the door, I said to a friend that maybe I should try to do something like a pamphlet a day. I had done 25+ in a couple of weeks, before the bookfair, and just scratched the surface of the material I could easily access. The conviction grew on me after the fair, and it has stuck. I set myself a goal of having about two months worth of releases together before I took the project "live," and I've pretty well achieved that.

Today's share of that labor is a couple of pamphlets from the very beginning of the history of mutualism's entry into the United States. (I'm treating Warren's equitable commerce here as something different, if no less important.) Most of William B. Greene's work is now available online, either through my earlier efforts or through the library-dredging of Google Books, but, honestly, my earlier pdf editions of these early works were much less than they deserved. These, while not perfect by any means, are a solid step forward in treating the foundation texts of Greene's mutualism with the respect they deserve. Longtime readers may feel a little bit of the satisfaction I do at being able to see the 1849 Equality and 1850 Mutual Banking in print:



These two volumes are the beginning of my long-promised Blazing Star Library. Others are already almost ready to follow them, starting with two volumes of theological writings and period responses. For these, visit the Corvus Shop or download the free pdfs:

1. Equality (1849) (68 pages) - download pdf
2. Mutual Banking (1850) (80 pages) - download pdf

And tomorrow is another day, and another pamphlet. . .

The LPA convention was held last weekend. The “business as usual” faction put up an opposition slate at the last minute and won the field; since the rebel slate’s supporters had assumed (despite our warnings!) that we would be running unopposed, most of them didn’t show up to vote. (The entrenched establishment is largely located in Birmingham, where the convention was held; our supporters were mostly located elsewhere in the state.) We did get one member of our slate, Matthew Givens, elected (his opponent having failed to show up), plus I was chosen as the Regional Representative for the Selma-Montgomery-Auburn tier. Well, you win some, you lose some.

This was my first visit to Birmingham in years, so it was nice to see the art museum again. Though I have to grump about some dubious labeling in the Asian Art section; for example, bodhisattvas are not “Buddhist deities” (unless St. Francis is a Catholic deity). I initially thought the translation of lingam as “pillar” was another such error (or more likely censorship), but apparently there’s controversy as to whether lingam actually means “phallus” after all.

In other news, Olbermann’s at it again. Either last night or the night before, I saw him lambasting Joe the Plumber for saying that America’s founders had rejected socialism and communism. The concepts of socialism and communism, Olbermann explained, weren’t formulated until about 50 years after the American founding, so the founders couldn’t have rejected them. Now Joe the Plumber deserves lambasting for a good many things, but this isn’t one of them. The founders were well aware of the debate between Plato and Aristotle on the subject of communism, and took Aristotle’s side; see the Jefferson-Adams correspondence, for example.

I also saw an odd headline: “Sanford Mistress Breaks Silence, Says Nothing.” Did she belch?

Gary Chartier offers an interesting challenge to the Hobbesian: namely, to identify at what point along the spectrum between Leviathan and free-market anarchism we supposedly lose whatever it is the Hobbesian claims is essential to social order.

Consider the characteristic Hobbesian argument for the state: we need Leviathan to ensure, through the use or threat of force, that conflicts are resolved peacefully. (I do not say “justly”—there is no structural way to ensure that the outcomes of any state-based judicial system [or any comparable system in a stateless society] will be procedurally or substantively just, though of course some structures will be more conducive to just procedures and outcomes than others.)

I. It is important to note how little this argument even seeks, on its own terms, to demonstrate: if it succeeds, it shows the need, at most, for a “night-watchman” or “night-guard” state.

II. It has limited implications for the size of the state. Again, assuming the argument were correct, there would obviously be some such limitations: the population governed by Leviathan would have to be sufficiently large that

1. the people with whom one were most likely to have disputes would also fall within Leviathan’s jurisdiction
2. relevant economies of scale could come into play
3. Leviathan was sufficiently well funded to enable it to repel invasions by other states

III. This means, then, that nothing about Hobbes’s argument, per se, requires a world of c. 200 states, by his lights states that would need to be only night-guard states. A world made up of 100,000 micro-night-guard states (MNGSs—perhaps more limited equivalents of the basic social units in Murray Bookchin's libertarian municipalism)—the typical one perhaps comprising a small city and its suburbs—would seem to be one in which Hobbes’s stipulations were fulfilled: each of these micro-states could effectively perform the tasks for which Leviathan is, per Hobbes’s argument, purportedly needed. (If some of these micro-states were markedly bigger than others, of course, there would be risks of invasion and conquest. But that does nothing to show that micro-states couldn’perform the basic Hobbesian function of preserving internal peace.)

IV. Nothing about the basic functions of Leviathan precludes free departure from any of these MNGSs (presuming agreements across borders ensure that courts’ judgments could still be enforced against people who fleeing to avoid the enforcement of such judgments).

V. There would be no Hobbesian reason for general limitations on anyone's entry into any of these MNGSs, with the exception of someone with a history of violence that suggested that the MNGS would have more trouble keeping the peace were she to enter (and, even here, entry need not be precluded for a potentially violent person willing to post an appropriate bond).

VI. There would, again, be no strong Hobbesian reason for any MNGS to compel payment for its services by any resident. It could simply decline to provide direct protection via its police and judicial services for anyone who declined to contribute appropriately to support for these services. Of course, some people would reap positive externalities in this case, but it seems unlikely that most would because most would want personal access to police and judicial services.

VII. Finally, it is not clear that there would be a strong Hobbesian reason for an MNGS to be geographically localized: an MNGS could be a social network that provided police and judicial service to its members, who might be as geographically separated as proved economically efficient. It doesn’t seem as if having a territory is necessary for an MNGS to keep the peace: what matters is that it be clear which MNGS is responsible for resolving a particular dispute, something that can clearly be determined by the right sorts of agreements.

VIII. So we can imagine what seems to be a smooth conceptual transition from (1) the kind of large-scale state Hobbes himself doubtless had in mind to (2) an MNGS featuring unfettered emigration and largely unfettered immgration to (3) such an MNGS without compulsory funding to (4) such an MNGS without territory.

IX. It seems, then, that endorsing the Hobbesian argument for the state is consistent with endorsing market anarchy. Or, put another way, a voluntary protective agency could qualify as a Hobbesian Leviathan.

X. Clearly, this isn’t a conclusion the Hobbesian is likely to want to endorse. At what point along the continuum do you think she is likely to maintain that the MNGS would no longer be able to do the work Leviathan is supposed to do? And how would you respond?

Statement by the OLC (Organization of Libertarian Communists of Chile) trans. by machine, then cleaned up by LG.

Our organization's position on the military coup in Honduras: ----

1..- Once again the bourgeoisie allied with the armed forces engaged in a coup against a constitutionally elected president in the institutional framework of their own class. It is strange in the eyes of the world an action of this magnitude, even more so when those same national bourgeoisie gabbled about with "Never Again" and other polished phrases after white washing their sponsored dictatorships and waves of coups that ravaged the continent during the second half of the twentieth century.

2. Our organization rejects the oligarchs arguments on the illegitimacy of the "Popular Consultation" convened by a non-binding vote as a motive for the Gorilla Golpe against Manuel Zelay. This would ignore the long history of attacks on people's gains by the bourgeois parties, including the Liberal organization (the organization which was elected Zelaya), the ultimate expression was the law banning holding consultations 180 days before an election, an argument put forward by the bourgeoisie, their parties and their FFAA to make the referendum illegitimate, accusing Zelaya of unconstitutional practice and thus to execute the coup.

3 .- We note clearly that the CIA and the Government of the United States have learned from the failed coup in Venezuela against President Chavez. This time the White House openly rejected the coup in Honduras, which is consistent with the urgent laundering U.S. image in the region in light of its loss of influence and the need to gain ground lost in a continent boiling with popular revolt, while still supporting the old doctrine of national security, graduating senior officers in Latin America's infamous School of the Americas, where the same putschist Honduran officials, graduated with honors including chief of staff Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and Head of Air Force Luis Javier Suazo Prince.

4 .- Our organization openly recognized the government of Manuel Zelaya, as expression of decades of popular aspirations, which in terms of foreign policy is mirrored in alignment with the governments that support the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas ( ALBA), which have been formed in the last 15 years in our continent. We firmly believe that this attitude of the government of Zelaya, placed next to the working people, poor, indigenous and marginalized from Honduras and the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, has been the trigger for the establishment of the dictatorship in Honduras.

5 .- Located on the State of Chile there must be action against against the coup beyond mere declarations of good will. In our view, the minimum action that should be undertaken at the height of the decent people of Honduras, is totally breaking diplomatic and trade relations with the civilian-military dictatorship.

6 .- The resistance that has developed with its indigenous people, community, civil society, tradeunions, in the streets of Honduras is a demonstration that Zelaya's government is backed by the people. In parliament, while the president has no allies, the people in the streets are demanding his return via the demand for a General Strike. We hold that the military coup will not drown all hope of the Honduran people, on the contrary, this event will allow an exponential leap in the development of their political and social organizations, with regard to the maturation of a collective society and the definition of a road beyond the scope of mere democratic reforms. The overthrow of the government of Zelaya, has allowed not only a demonstration of the lack of social support for the bourgeois imperialist project, but has allowed millions to open their eyes not only in Honduras but also in Latin America and the world showing the limits of the bourgeois democratic framework.

7 .- The Libertarian Communist Organization of Chile rejects gorilla coup in Honduras, and is aligned with the honorable people of Central America in the rejection of the puppet government of Roberto Micheletti. We know, and history gives us the reason that dictatorships are not exceptional events in the life of nations, but a recurring weapon of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Today the Honduran people claim in the street what they have chosen at the polls, but we know that tomorrow, the same people in the same streets will build popular power and their liberation.

¡Arriba los y las que luchan!!!

¡¡¡ Venceremos!!!

Original at

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13605

UPDATE

Good article (translated) by Jose Antonio Gutierrez at http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos22877.html