leftlibertarian.org

Great song by Matt Ames with lyrics expressing clearly anarchist/libertarian sympathies.

Hat tip: Anthony Gregory

Despite having a hand in its launching, I have let the existence of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left go pretty well unremarked here. Mark that down to the distractions of daily life, to continuing labors for the long term, and not to any lack of enthusiasm for the coalition. March saw a marvelous burst of activity in left-libertarian circles. I feel like I'm only now catching up—with comrades who were obviously ready to head off in a new direction, and with my own aspirations for the alliance. I've done a lot of thinking about what form organizing for the ALL ought to take in my own area, and more than a bit about the more general issues facing the coalition. I hope to be able to say more about those first thoughts soon, but the fruits of the second are starting to appear in a kind of "periodical letter," on ALLiance, in the blogosphere. I welcome comments and contributions.

On March 19, 2007, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left (ALL) made its public debut, in a flurry of activity fueled by schism and in-fighting among partisans and allies of the agorist Movement of the Libertarian Left (MLL). From the main website:

The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a multi-tendency coalition of mutualists, agorists, voluntaryists, geolibertarians, left-Rothbardians, green libertarians, dialectical anarchists, radical minarchists, and others on the libertarian left, united by an opposition to statism, militarism, and the prevailing corporatist capitalism falsely called a free market, as well as by an emphasis on education, direct action, and building alternative institutions, rather than on electoral politics, as our chief strategy for achieving liberation.

The particular family feud that started the ALL rolling isn't of much importance now. Radicals of all stripes experience more than their fair share of that sort of thing. And it is perhaps not unforgivably trite to want to build an alliance around, well, alliance, and not schism. Proclaiming the ALL was, after all, little more than naming something which had been building for some time, a "more-than-agorist coalition that has grown out of the original MLL listserv (now succeeded by LeftLibertarian2), and broadened further in the Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left (BLL)." Samuel Konkin III had been a gracious host to quite an odd assortment of other-than-agorists, and particularly to mutualists and geolibertarians. He had, in any event, insisted that a key point of MLL "orthodoxy" was that "everyone here disagrees." After his death, Knappster's BLL marked a new stage of left-libertarian hospitality, and it was this, actually, that really cemented my move into the blogosphere. (I've talked a bit about my online history and my late-adoption of the blogform elsewhere.) Graciousness and hospitality may notnecessarily be the first words that come to mind when one thinks of anarchists, and particularly of market anarchists, anarcho-"capitalists," etc. But the crisis that led to the formal announcement of the ALL was, in many ways, a crisis of hospitality, provoked in large part by the presence of us pesky other-than-agorist mutualists and such. And no "multi-tendency coalition" can long escape the difficulties of maintaining a space of hospitality and of tolerance, within which differences in beliefs, assumptions, vocabulary and such, can be explored.

Anyway, on to the matter of this "periodical letter" (with apologies to Josiah Warren.) I can probably claim to have done my share of work in preparing the space into which something like the ALL could emerge. Since March 19, however, I have to confess a certain lack of effective action in support of the alliance which I helped to bring about. I come armed with all the best excuses, not the least of which is that I have been engrossed in work�research, writing, archiving�which I hope will serve, in the long run, to support and sustain this still largely virtual, in some senses merely nominal, coalition. But there's no point in looking to the past and the future, while neglecting the present. And I believe, quite strongly, that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is the sort of thing that the present needs rather badly. That belief may be a little hard to fathom, particularly for my old friends and allies in the broader anarchist movement, outside of mutualist or market-anarchist circles. Thus the need to explain myself, to attempt to articulate my thoughts specifically on the subject of alliance, and to make those explanations both to allies already under the ALL banner and to others who "hate the state more than the market" and who might make common cause. Because I am me, the anarchist historian, there will undoubtedly be some history here, and some exploration of the precedents for the coalition, but there will be more as well, much of it in a voice not so familiar even to old friends and allies. I don't pretend to speak for the ALL, or for anyone but myself. I welcome comments and contributions.

Human life begins at conception. To say otherwise is to be ridiculous: the clump of cells can't become spiders or turtles or chimpanzees, only humans.

But to say that human rights begin at conception is equally ridiculous. For one thing, most people don't even know until weeks later that conception occurred, and only if the clump of cells hadn't already been expunged from the body naturally. For another, even if the mother knows she's pregnant, other people don't necessarily know; how can society protect or grant rights to that which it doesn't even know exists? Third, who is a competent advocate for the fetus if the mother herself rejects the office? Fourth, the fetus may be a human life, but it is not a member of civil society, having no means of communication with it whatsoever, and therefore can't have civil rights.

If I am wrong and the fetus deserves full natural and civil rights from conception, and is valued equally with every born person, and if protecting human life is the primary function of government, then not only would outlawing abortion be justified, also:

- bombing abortion clinics and otherwise terrorizing those who perform abortions.
- abandoning a free market economy for a socialist one, if the socialist government is pro-life.
- abandoning the Constitution for an absolutist King or Dictator, so long at this new autocrat is pro-life.
- let invaders take over the country, so long as they're pro-life.
- institute chattel slavery of one form or another, so long as the government was pro-life.
- repeal freedom of speech and of religion, so long as the regime was pro-life.
- be guilty of all kinds of corruption and cruelty, so long as it effectively cracked down on the number of abortions.
- cede sovereignty of the United States to some foreign or international body, so long as it was pro-life.
- wage endless war on Muslim countries, so long as the Commander-in-Chief was pro-life.
- alternatively, it is also permissible to "cut and run," so long as the President remained pro-life.
- protect States' Rights to advance the pro-life agenda.
- or, abandon States' Rights to advance the pro-life agenda. It doesn't matter; the ends justify the means.
- pack the Supreme Court to get pro-life outcomes.
- declare martial law to prevent even one more abortion.
- engage in political assassination to get more pro-life politicians.
- turn the country into an anti-abortion caliphate.
- allow immigration, stop immigration, balance the budget, go bankrupt -none of it would matter. Only preventing abortion would matter, because that would clearly be the evil that must be eliminated, even at the cost of everything else.

There may be a few pro-life die-hards who would concede much of what I said. The very force of their own convictions mandate no other conclusion than that stopping the number of abortions is now and always will be the number one priority of government for which everything, and I mean everything, can be sacrificed. Curiously, however, the Religious Right doesn't agree. If given a choice between a a non-interventionist, pro-life but otherwise generally libertarian candidate for President like Ron Paul, and a perpetual-war, pro-Police State and pro-abortion candidate like Rudolf Giuliani, it seems that many social conservtives are preferring the latter. (ht: Anthony Gregory at LRC.)

It turns out that the Republican "base" is just as unprincipled as the politicians they routinely elect. They don't care about anyone's rights, let alone the "right to life" of the fetus. All they care about is having the more "manly" man be President, and their definition of "manly" doesn't even have to do with military service (Carter, Gore, Kerry), but rather how much of a "show of force" the USA can project to the rest of the world, and how much government agents can bully, intimidate, and scare innocent civilians at home. If the Lord Incarnate and Atticus Finch ran on a pro-life Democratic ticket, they'd be branded as traitors by this Bible-believing Republican "base."

Abortion doesn't matter. I wonder if it ever really did.

By now, all serious news junkies are well aware that Cindy Shehan has thrown in the towel on her high-profile antiwar activism. The sorrow and burnout in her words are regrettable, but it would be foolish to discount the role she has played in turning public opinion against the war — regardless of what the critics say. She spoke out when many ordinary Americans couldn’t find it in themselves to do so. The war against this war has not been won, but the tide has turned and she had a big part in that. I ask you to remember that heroes and heroines don’t flinch from breaking themselves, if that’s what it takes. Make no mistake — Sheehan is a heroine, however imperfect. Let me conclude by directing your attention to Francois Tremblay’s Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan.

Two great blog carnivals just finished their latest rounds/editions:

Carnival of Anarchy
–and–
the Market Anarchist Carnival.

By and large, I am not a fan of Jeremy Bentham. I think that his politics were middling at best, and his philosophical ethics are philosophically mistaken and both morally and politically corrosive. But I have been impressed by the early essay I�m currently in the middle of reading, in which Bentham argues against State control of the financial markets, which he provocatively if unfortunately entitled a Defence of Usury. Letter IV, on the Protection of Indigence, includes this wonderful response to the argument State command-and-control can or should be enlisted to protect the poor from their own decisions to seek credit from predatory lenders. As perfectly disgusting as I find most of the sharks who target poor people in money trouble, the problem has to do with laws that regulate and restrict formal-sector credit so as to make too little credit in too few forms available from too narrow a class of people. The proposed statist remedies � more bans and more restrictions � are worse than the disease. Here�s Bentham:

A man [sic] is in one of these situations, suppose, in which it would be for his advantage to borrow. But his circumstances are such, that it would not be worth any body�s while to lend him, at the highest rate which it is proposed the law should allow; in short, he cannot get it at that rate. If he thought he could get it at that rate, most surely he would not give a higher: he may he trusted for that: for by the supposition he has nothing defective in his understanding. But the fact is, he cannot get it at that lower rate. At a higher rate, however he could get it: and at that rate, though higher, it would be worth his while to get it: so he judges, who has nothing to hinder him from judging right; who has every motive and every means for forming a right judgment; who has every motive and every means for informing himself of the circumstances, upon which rectitude of judgment, in the case in question, depends. The legislator, who knows nothing, nor can know any thing, of any one of all these circumstances, who knows nothing at all about the matter, comes and says to him � It signifies nothing; you shall not have the money: for it would be doing you a mischief to let you borrow it upon such terms. � And this out of prudence and loving-kindness! � There may be worse cruelty, but can there be greater folly?

The folly of those who persist, as is supposed, without reason, in not taking advice, has been much expatiated upon. But the folly of those who persist, without reason, in forcing their advice upon others, has been but little dwelt upon, though it is, perhaps, the more frequent, and the more flagrant of the two. It is not often that one man [sic] is a better judge for another, than that other is for himself, even in Cases where the adviser will take the trouble to make himself master of as many of the materials for judging, as are within the reach of the person to be advised. But the legislator is not, can not be, in the possession of any one of these materials. � What private, can be equal to such public folly?

�Jeremy Bentham, Defence of Usury (1787), Letter IV.

I�ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to apply the same principles to parallel arguments against government-imposed wage floors, or against bans on so-called price gouging on essential commodities.

Earlier this month I wrote a letter to the New York Times and posted it here. Then I discovered that the Times would only print letters that haven’t appeared previously, so I deleted the letter from my blog. But since they didn’t print it anyway, here it is again:

To the Editor:

Patricia Cohen’s May 5th article “A Split Emerges As Conservatives Discuss Darwin” contains the following remarkable sentence: “Victorian-era social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer adopted evolutionary theory to justify colonialism and imperialism, opposition to labor unions and the withdrawal of aid to the sick and needy.”

Ms. Cohen’s charges against Herbert Spencer are false in every particular.

First: Spencer was in fact Victorian England’s leading opponent of imperialism; in Social Statics he described Western colonialism as bearing “a very repulsive likeness to the doings of buccaneers.”

Second: in his Principles of Sociology, Spencer hailed labor unions as a bulwark against the “harsh and cruel conduct” of employers, and advocated replacing the “slavery” of the wages system with self-governing workers’ cooperatives.

Third: far from advocating the “withdrawal of aid from the sick and needy,” he regarded the provision of such aid as a positive moral duty (though he stressed that it should be given in such a way as to avoid encouraging dependency).

Finally, inasmuch as Spencer developed and published his basic ideas on biological and social evolution prior to and independently of Charles Darwin, it makes little sense to describe him as a “Social Darwinist.”

Why do these bizarre distortions of a great humanitarian thinker persist?

Roderick T. Long

While, as I said, the Times didn’t print my letter, they did publish the following partial retraction:

A front-page article last Saturday about a dispute among some conservatives over whether Darwinian theory undermines or supports conservative principles erroneously included one social Darwinist among Victorian-era social Darwinists who adopted evolutionary theory to justify colonialism and imperialism. Herbert Spencer opposed both.

Score a victory for the Herbert Spencer Anti-Defamation League!

Wow. Just … wow. Over at The Wide Awakes:

Voting is the ultimate exercise of personal freedom.

WTF? When you vote, it’s usually over one of three things:

- Who is going to govern you (and everyone else). Now, perhaps you think that you (and/or others) need to be governed … but even stipulating, for the sake of argument, to that proposition, necessity doesn’t magically turn an exercise in submission into an exercise of personal freedom.

- What rules you (and everyone else) are going to be bound by. Once again, it’s possible that you think there should be limits to freedom, and that the best way to decide what those limits are is a referendum … but once again, we’re talking about an exercise in reciprocal restraint, not an exercise of personal freedom.

- Who’s going to pay for all this governing nonsense and how (i.e. taxes, bond issues and such). I suppose that voting “yes” on a measure to repeal a tax or “no” on a new tax or a tax increase might resemble an exercise in personal freedom (setting aside the question of whether or not the voting implies consent to the tax if the election doesn’t go your way, and what that says about your mindset) … but it really seems a lot more like a mass dine-and-dash episode in which everyone tries to stick everyone else with the check.

“Ultimate exercise in personal freedom?”

Making love with someone similarly inclined would certainly make my short list.

Taking my money to any store I choose and buying whatever I want there would too.

Voting? Um, no. Hell no, not even if I get to dip my finger in purple ink and ululate for the camera afterward.

Chaser:

It is difficult to know what [a hypothetical President] Gore would have done after 9/11 but I think it more than possible that he would have lobbed a few cruise missiles at Afghanistan trying to take out Bin Laden and gone the United Nations route.; sanctions, resolutions, and words of solidarity couched in the usual apologetic tones of “So sorry we can’t do anymore.” Regime change would have been off the table. And Bin Laden would not only have been free and on the loose, but hugely emboldened and the biggest hero in the Arab world since Saladin.

In other words, pretty much what we have now, but cheaper by 3,000-odd American lives, uncounted Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars. Perish the thought.

The post is generally interesting and sometimes thought-provoking, though, and it’s about Bryan Caplan’s new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (let’s see if that automated Amazon thingie does its duty here — if not I’ll come back and manually link). Caplan is a libertarian ass-kicker of the first water … see his home page for all kinds of good stuff, and don’t miss the Libertarian Purity Test (153 … I am not worthy).

L. Neil Smith wrote a new and interesting short article on the Liberator pistol of WW2 designed to be air-dropped to resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied territory. Towards the end of the article, he muses about the possibility of a 21st century version of the concept:

“We’ve made a very great deal of technical progress since the early days of World War II, and I believe that a modern incarnation of the Liberator Pistol could probably be made for under ten dollars. Given modern super polymers, the thing could even be made invisible to metal detectors. I’m willing to bet there are hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals more than willing to pay for this historic effort.”

An interesting factoid about the FP-45 Liberator is that factories were able, even back in the early days of WW2, to produce the pistols faster than they could be loaded and fired.

“Building the pistol took about six or seven seconds whilst loading took about 10 seconds.”

To me, that seems to point the way toward some rudimentary design specifics. For starters, don’t bother making the weapon reloadable. We’re talking about a “purse gun” for self defense or, in the true heritage of the original Liberator, a “great gun to get another with“. So why not produce the pistol and its full magazine as one, factory-loaded, integrated package — much like the cheap disposable 35mm cameras that come with one roll of film?

While Smith has long praised the .40 Liberty cartridge, cost is an issue. The popular favorite for pistol ammunition remains 9mm, I believe. One can safely assume that, whatever the constraints upon production, 9mm represents the least headache.

The Liberator was conceived of as an essentially disposable weapon in the first place and Smith rightly points to the advantages of high-tech polymer materials today. If we’re talking about a genuinely disposable weapon, materials requirements can perhaps be less stringent than Smith suggests, though. Although I’m nowhere near well-informed enough to say this with authority, it might be that simply using hard, engineering-grade nylon could produce a barrel sufficiently strong to safely shoot as many as perhaps five 9mm cartridges. Five sounds about right for a suggested magazine capacity for this particular weapon anyway.

If we assume that the magazine is made of the same material as the rest of the weapon it is a non-removable part of, and we assume that material is not transparent or translucent, there ought to be an open slot running up and down said magazine in order for the shooter to readily assess the amount of ammunition contained therein.

Ideas? Opinions? Insults?