Kehlkopfmikrofon

A year? Are you shitting me?

2008-07-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

Yes in-fucking-deed. Well I sort of slept through the anniversary of this blog but it's Independence Day in the United States today (4 July) and the token remarks have begun to pop up a little across the blogoverse. And I was thinking about what I said last year today. I'm not going to go read it, but I think it was something about how the founding of the United States didn't solve a lot of problems and we shouldn't celebrate it like that even if it had some positive points..
When I was listening to all those Robert LeFevre recordings[
Oh I see there are actually several of these (audio - mp3 warning):
The Declaration of Independence
The Beginning of American Independence
The American Revolution
]I think he sort of convinced me that that war was, in fact, revolutionary in some sense of the word that is worth celebrating but that was a while ago.
Well, one year later, I'm even further gone.

I don't think I'm ready to tackle the topic here right now but this is closely tied up with the idea of American Exceptionalism (read please, this isn't just about the idea that the United States should be excepted from international law and stuff) and the larger concept of Culture which was mentioned in that last post thing..

As far as I can tell, I mean, based on my history education, the ruling class in those areas that were colonies of Great Britain didn't change with that war.

And, see, I hate to call it a revolution because I don't think it was very revolutionary.

So what is this a celebration of? That ruling class's independence from Great Britain? The triumph of liberalism?
My criticism of liberalism will come at some later time, that is I don't feel like doing it now, but, suffice to say, I don't think it's worth celebrating.

zzzzzz back to hiatus

The Mountain Goats @ The Natural History Museum

2008-06-07T00:58:00.001-07:00

picture by youngthousands on Flickr
Best I've seen them. Definitely. Amazing. Played lots of stuff they don't usually play live
Jenny
Game Shows Touch Our Lives
Orange Ball of Hate
First Few Desperate Hours
Alpha Omega
Alphonse Mambo
River Song

Ambivalent Seascape Y [Extra Glenns song]

Transjordanian Blues
So Desperate
Young Caesar 2000
San Bernadino
Woke Up New
Wizard Buys A Hat
Going to Cleveland
Nine Black Poppies
—
Going to Georgia
No Children

Still sort of recovering... coming down. Great show.

JuneJuneJuneJuneJune

2008-06-04T17:16:00.001-07:00

I was reading the newspaper this morning and thinking about history and such and about assassination and such
(just as a concept... as a strategy I don't see it as being particularly effective for our ends... qua anarchists)
And I was thinking about how much Barack Obama is an embodiment of the idea that if we just have the right person in charge things will work out fine
then we can have real change
I guess something like

“The right man in charge can change the whole world”

And then I came back to this quote which I attributed to some Communist leader (Mao or Lenin or Che Guevara, etc.)

“One man can change the whole world with a bullet in the right place”

[Now that I try to figure out who actually said this, it may have originated in this film I saw a few months ago: if... starring Malcolm McDowell. On the whole not a great film.. I mean Malcolm is Malcolm and I enjoyed it as far as he was concerned but it didn't really stand on its own very well, I didn't think..]

The idea that both these quotes have in common is that what's wrong with things right now is that the person in charge is just fucking things up.
Now, granted the second quote is mostly negative, i.e., it doesn't say that the person that that bullet kills should be replaced by anybody, but I don't think that anyone who has ever said that meant that the problem with the world today is the people in charge
I think that the problem is much larger... it concerns the concept of systems and such... the way society works..
The problems with the world today are not dependent upon the person in charge.
Changing who is in charge will not change the system.

Hm this needs more thought... how do systems change?
that sort of thing

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More truth

2008-05-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

Writes Aster:

The reason this is a disaster is not because the Libertarian Party was ever the perfect embodiment of libertarian ideas, but because the treason of the ‘party of Principle’ is symbolic of everything wrong with libertarianism, which itself has a great deal to do with everything which has become wrong with America.

I.

Look from Bob Barr to Ron Paul to Lew Rockwell- the spokescreatures for the libertarian movement are everywhere conservative monstrosities. This is not a question of a Party/non-party split, extreme/moderate split, or minarchist/anarchist split. Some of the libertarians most alienated from the LP are among the worst (and some of the individualists remaining within the movement are Party members, minarchists, and political moderates),

The problem is with libertarianism, the idea and the concept- with an idea of liberty with has come to coalesce not around individualism and the completion of the Enlightenment project but around an anti-contextual hatred of the modern nation-state which simply begs for cooptation by reaction and obscurantism. Those calling themselves libertarians today do not foremost cry out for the human spirit to be able to think for itself and create its own life; they have united instead on a negative, *against* one recent and narrow form of tyranny and allied themselves with those who seek a return of earlier and more awful forms. Libertarianism as an ideology no longer works on balance as a force for liberation of the individual mind and spirit in today’s world- partially, it never did. This should have been expected given that ‘libertarianism’ as *anti-statism* rather that a positive affirmation of the cultural institutions of individualism is not much more of a coherent philosophy than ‘anti-Communism’ or anti-fascism, and similarly utterly vulnerable to use by vicious people for horrific purposes.

Ditching the Party is not enough. What has happened to the Party is the symptom. The Party did not betray libertarianism; the Party and libertarianism have both betrayed the Enlightenment, and both were set up without any structural safeguards which could prevent such a betrayal. The word ‘libertarianism’ does not mean freedom for living, breathing individuals if the mind and spirit of individual liberty becomes absent, and there was never anything in libertarianism to ensure that it was present.

II.

The trouble is that libertarianism was always the Archamerican Philosophy, and the corruption of libertarianism has a great deal to do with the changes which have come to America in the last thirty years. From 1776 to the counterculture, America once really did, despite its faults, at least to some relative degree embody the ideals of Enlightenment and individualism of which libertarianism was supposed to be an expression. But America is being thoroughly taken over by the other heritage which distinquished in from the Old Country- its violence, miltarism, bigotry, provincial ignorance, anti-intellectualism. and religious fanaticism. In an almost perfect morality play, America’s original sin of slavery has indeed at last destroyed it, for as Kevin Phillips’s _American Theocracy_ well observes, it is the Southern cultural patterns orginally produced by a slave society (and the worst and oldest of Cavalier British classism, before that) which have now spread to a working plurality if not simple majority of America. When the ideals of modernity started unvoidably hitting everyday culture in the 60s and 70s, a good part of America decided the deal wasn’t worth it, and what Leanprd Peikoff called the ‘nation of the Enlightenment’ is the headquarters of the most dangerous court of church and altar and (badly) storied pomp in the West. In 1929, *any* party which considered itself the embodiment of the German spirit would be in deep trouble, even if the German spirit it originally held in mind was that of Lessing, Schiller, and Beethoven.

Libertarianism has always been both explicitly and implicitly tied to a specifically American social system, culture, and mentality. If America fails, libertarianism will either have to recreate itself according to the grammar and rhythms of different traditions or perish ignomiously, tied in what remains of educated world opinion to a derided and discredited system which by all evidence is going to crash brutally with immense harm to all sorts of innocent (and less-than-innocent) bystanders. In New Zealand, the Libertarianz and ACT parties are far less devoted to liberty than to Americanism and are for all practical purposes aligned with more mainstream forces which, if successful, will see what is happening to America (and the UK and elsewhere) also come here. As for those mainstream forces, the same Kiwis who have expressed to be they would like New Zealand to imitate America simulatenously believe in ‘modernising’ in the manner of Singapore and China- for that is what America means to the world; wealth and efficiency by any means necessary (torture, for instance. Meanwhile those who practise liberty (along with many who don’t) rightly see America as the most *relevant* symbol of threatening authoritarism.

Libertarianism would have to de-Americanise itself to survive. but I doubt it can; libertarian theory is so caught up in unconscious American parochialism that it has little appeal outside the United States for both fairly good and pretty lousy reasons (just as ‘anti-Americanism’ has always been both a rational if preoccupied judgement *and* a resentful bigotry of ignorant and cynical premodernists). Even if libertarianism did fully de-Americanise, the perception that libertarianism=capitalism=America is going to make life difficult for libertarians in much the way as the existence of the Soviet Union once made life very difficult for anti-authoritarians who still held to pre-Soviet notions of communism.

Personally, I think it is more likely that many wonderful things- things like individualism, the market economy. high standards of living, the counterculture, modernity itself- will, as with 1929, be unjustly blamed for a failure which resulted precisely from their betrayal. I think the eclipse of America will do immense and very possibly fatal damage to libertarianism and to far, far more than libertarianism. The real battle today is not to save the Enlightenment in America. It is not even to save Enlightenment *from* America. It is to make sure that the destruction of the nation created by the Declaration of Independence does not bring down that declaration along with it. Every illiberal force in the entire world will work to make that happen- to convince the world that Imperial America rose and fell *because* of the Statue of Liberty- and sociobiology and 10,000 years of patriarchal tyranny will make it very easy for a world full of ignorant and brutalised people to believe them.

* * *

I put my money with the European Union, statist and badly flawed as it is. If the individualist way of life has any future it is there. India, I don’t know much of. But China? A world whose future lies with the most brutal and extensive dictatorship on the planet? Get me a drink. Get me six drinks and a glass of blue acid to wash it down with. I’ll be considerate, but probably not kind, and wash the glass.

Wonderful job we’ve done with this world of ours. If there are gods, they probably long ago disowned the human race in disgust.

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Dead?

2008-05-26T13:38:00.001-07:00

So Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party's nominee for president. I don't know what to think about that.. it's just the latest step in a long lasting trend that began when the party was founded. Radicalism does not blesh well with electoral politics. Obviously not. Inevitable.
I got a kick out of Radley Balko's reaction:

It’s the first time the LP has nominated a serious candidate in a long time. I’ve become rather fond of Barr over his 5-year conversion to libertarianism. Second place went to nutjob Mary Ruwart, who would have continued the party’s long history of kook-ism.

Barr has the potential to win more votes than any LP nominee in history. If he helps the GOP learn that it’s time to boot the neocons and pay more attention to its limited government wing, all the better.

This is a good thing.

Recall Brad Spangler's post from a few weeks ago

The point is not merely that the libertarian movement is currently going down a wrong path, but that it has been going down the wrong path since the founding of the Libertarian Party in 1971. It’s not just that YOU, Mr. & Mrs. Partyarch (you anarcho-wretches) are somehow doing something wrong. As the Liberty poll results show, the libertarian movement as it existed 20 years ago was doing something wrong. Rather than libertarians gradually winning over mainstream society to our way of seeing things, mainstream society is gradually winning over libertarians to their way of seeing things.

Writes Brad, once again the voice of reason, in comments on Roderick Long's blog:

You all ought to buck up and quit whining. You made yourselves vulnerable to this disappointment by refusing to listen to those who tried to tell you electoral politics was the wrong approach. So now you want to whine and moan because you lost a game you insisted on playing? Even though you should have known it was expensive entertainment, indeed? You’re a bunch of fools.
No, Spangler didn’t get his wish. In order for me to convince you of the error of your electoral ways, you would have first had to get your way (a Ruwart nomination) and then watched it fail. Now you insufferable idiots are talking about the Boston Tea Party, the Constitution Party and assorted other ballot-related abominations.

Goodbye's too good a word, babe

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Adam Green

2008-05-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last night at the Troubadour
Amazing shit

More pictures (not mine)

Some comments on Single Payer Health Care worth noting

2008-05-13T14:45:00.001-07:00

These comments on Shagya Blog came on my radar last night and then today Werner has a post up with some interesting points that just give me more to think about, more to be confused by
Well let's see if I can sort it out

My position on this sort of thing thus far has basically been “I don't fucking know, the way things work right now is just a fucking mess, any sort of solution proposed based on current conditions is going to have serious problems, won't be radical because it's just based on existing conditions”
I dunno, well the 2 extremes are individuals should provide for their own health care OR society should provide health care.
I mean, right now that means The Government
but I hearken back to an idea remember from last summer, both in Nock's Our Enemy The State and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid... well Mutual Aid (what Nock called Social Power). And how that was replaced by State Power..
I don't know, I never finished Our Enemy The State and I don't remember every little detail from Mutual Aid but that idea stuck with me. I may have misinterpreted though. I should try reading both of those again.

Anyway, supposing I'm not horribly misinterpreting what the premise of both their arguments was... I'll run with this concept..

Social Power replaced with State Power
No, in fact, I recall Nock talking about it being converted into State Power..
Obviously as anarchists we ought to work to convert that State Power back into Social Power...
But what of existing State Power? Can it be used for good? Surely it can... but ought anarchists seek to use it for such purposes?

I see 3 options
1) Actively oppose a Single Payer system
2) Actively support a Single Payer system
3) Abstain from such a discussion

I've taken that third option because to me, principled anti-statism (regardless on the economic organisation of proposed society) means not saying “The Government should do this” or “The Government shouldn't do this”
I don't know that position just makes things less complicated
Werner's post today makes that position less attractive when you look at other factors.. I mean, I guess I haven't covered my changing views on Liberty (it's not just the absence of coercion) but health care is important.

Okay, I think that if you're going to take option 1, you really need to be talking just as much, if not more, about why the current Health Care Crisis exists and what should be done to fix it. You've put your foot in the arena and you can't just say “No, I don't think that more government control is a good thing”. Surely, in the current system, corporate control is no better.

Well, part of all this rests on the question of whether health care should be provided through a market or provided by society free of charge.

The other part of the question is “how can you be an anarchist and advocate the growth of government”
I suspect that any question about the size of government is largely, if not solely, a question for Libertarians, radical or not. The question of the size of government traditionally seems to be irrelevant to the anarchist concerned with the many heads of Authority and not just Government.

The point in this whole argument that I think is a valid one: how would you like your coercion?
And as Werner points out, the traditional anarchist critique of Government is more sophisticated that just a critique of coercion in the form of taxation.

Writes Werner:

The reason why social anarchists assert the need for positive freedoms is that in the real world we can't wait around until the perfect stateless – and therefore classless - society comes into being. In the real world people have needs and these must be met, if they cannot be not through mutual aid due through state-enforced economic inequality, then through government. To destroy social welfare – as well as protective legislation like the 8 hour day, or vacation time – and leave the rest of the state – and therefore class society with all its vast inequalities intact is to condemn the vast majority of the people to Third World misery. It needs to be pointed out as well, that [mutualist] Kevin Carson sees the need for a selective or top-down dismantling of the state with those aspects which benefit the capitalists and state bureaucracy going down first. The social welfare measures last, being converted into mutual aid systems or stakeholder coops. Thus, there is no real difference between communist or syndicalist anarchists and mutualists on this issue. The real bone of contention lies between capitalist libertarians and traditional anarchists. Social welfare – those aspects that actually help the people in some manner are a state-perverted form of the social aspect that lies at the root of our humanness. It is thus something good that has been twisted or has a contradictory aspect. Leaving people to die in the street because they have been denied by state-enforced inequality the resources to help themselves, is simply evil through and through. It also needs to be pointed out that even in an anarchist society a significant minority of the population will have to be subsidized or supported in some manner think of the aged, sick, those with mental health problems etc. In a free society – and therefore one without the present vast inequality of wealth, and the resulting culture of narcissism and sociopathology – this could be done by mutual aid. In the meantime, and I have been discussing this for years, we can work to democratize, mutualize (de-state) existing social welfare measures. For example, Unemployment insurance should be run not by the state but be set up as a cooperative along the lines of a credit union. All workers become members of this coop and elect a board of directors for their city or region. Hospitals should be taken back by the community and run by elected boards representing the user population and the work force etc.

I really should (re-)read both of those books..

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Do mutualists want to reform capitalism?

2008-05-11T12:49:00.001-07:00

From An Anarchist FAQ, Section J.3.2, What are “synthesis” federations?

Of course, there are problems involved in most forms of organisation, and the "synthesis" federation is no exception. While diversity can strengthen an organisation by provoking debate, a diverse grouping can often make it difficult to get things done. Platformist and other critics of the "synthesis" federation argue that it can be turned into a talking shop and any common programme difficult to agree, never mind apply. For example, how can mutualists and communists agree on the ends, never mind the means, their organisation supports? One believes in co-operation within a (modified) market system and reforming capitalism and statism away, while the other believes in the abolition of commodity production and money and revolution as the means of so doing. Ultimately, all they could do would be to agree to disagree and thus any joint programmes and activity would be somewhat limited.

What is reform? Improvement, right? But there's definitely a connotation of gradualism. The theory of mutualism places a great deal of emphasis on “building a new world in the shell of the old” but this idea isn't unique to mutualism. I mean, mutualism doesn't reject revolution does it? I don't mean violence, I mean revolution in a general sense. There was a previous section about Social Revolution and that seemed pretty consistent with the ideas of mutualism to me. And there was a section about how anarchists reject the idea that capitalism can be reformed. So what does that sentence mean? Is this a contradiction within the FAQ?
Am I forgetting something about the nature of mutualism? Or am I interpreting that part incorrectly?
Obviously “reform” here does not mean reform by political means.
According to the FAQ, anarchists are not against reform, (J.1.2), but they are against reformism (J.1.3)

When you get down to the nitty-gritty issue of strategies for change it starts getting kind of weird when this almighty FAQ dictates what anarchists believe on some subject, but it definitely has good points. Even if some of these things are a bit confusing. But these later sections are logical extensions of ideas expressed in previous ones, and when the ideas are controversial (such as the debate over organisation) the authors make that clear.
And the introduction of the whole FAQ states that the authors don't claim to speak for all anarchists, but that doesn't really blesh with a lot of the FAQ.

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Paultown sounds better

2008-05-11T11:51:00.001-07:00

Paulchiks.. Paulsheviks...

Hm? Oh, just thinking of more names for supporters of Ron Paul

Anyways, look! It's Paulville!

The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty.

This is one of those things that has bugged me a lot about Libertarianism lately. Something that is so unappealing to me about it. The idea of “dropping out” is just the antithesis of genuine liberty. Do you not want liberty for everyone? Not that you care about anything Bakunin ever said... he consorted with Marx, after all
[hm can't seem to find the source for this quote but Eugene attributes it to Bakunin and that's good enough for me, I mean if Bakunin didn't really say it, it doesn't matter]
No man can emancipate himself, except by emancipating with him all the men around him. My liberty is the liberty of everyone, for I am not truly free, free not only in thought but in deed, except when my liberty and my rights find their confirmation, their sanction, in the liberty and the rights of all men, my equals.

“dropping out” is a bit like “Socialism In One Country”

Okay but this is the really funny part:

The process is forming a co-op of people buying shares in the community and these people would be granted land use at a minimum of 1 acre per share, for as long as they homesteaded the land. The community would be privately held by the co-op to establish private property for the general community thus preserving the community is 100% freedom and liberty lovers.

A co-op? What? Co-op implies democracy. I thought Libertarians weren't big on the whole democracy thing. Additionally, as is admitted, the land is only granted to the members of the co-op, it isn't actually owned by the individuals, it's just granted by the community. This is like those geoist communities except you to keep your economic rent. I think that's what goes on here..

The community votes on all community efforts, such as utilities etc. However no one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them, AKA people can be off grid on their share of land. This is in line with the ideals that you're free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with.

No one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them

No, I have better things to do than to make fun of these people..

No what was my interest here:

1. Genuine liberty of the individual is dependent on the liberty of others

2. Collective decision making is important... or something I don't know where I was going with that

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Update: Ron Paul does not support Paulville, says his supporters should “spread out and be as pervasive as possible”
Update again: aaaaand paulville.org is dead. Ashamed of Glorious Leader's reaction? Hrm...

Is exchange natural?

2008-05-10T14:56:00.001-07:00

First of all, X is natural, therefore X is good is fallacious. So it's inadmissible as evidence as far as I'm concerned. I mean if you want to convince me of the value of something you have to do more than just show me that it's natural.
If you look back into the archives I previously talked used the term market where I meant interaction. This was a mistake. Markets are about exchange. There are lots of types of markets but that's the only necessary quality, I think. However, interaction does not necessitate exchange.
The thing that I'm thinking about right now, and doesn't blesh with the market anarchist argument is that this ignores the potentials of a gift economy.
Gifting does not involve any exchange. So how does that fit into The Market?

Anyways how would we decide whether or not something is natural?
Maybe because it has always existed in lots of different environments?
Is slavery natural?
Is war natural?
Is religion natural?
Is government (I use this term with some reservation) natural?

I am using that same fallacy in reverse, by which because X is undesirable, X cannot be natural, but I guess my point is that this is all pointless. I don't see how you can really show that something is Natural.
Well the only thing that I can think of is language.
But is that natural or socially constructed?

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation is already on my reading list.

Previously:
Abandoned attempt to figure out exchange and markets and stuff
Market anarchism and communism

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Clarification: I'm not saying whether or not exchange is natural or not, just that it can't really be proven based on observations of human behaviour..

To do

2008-05-09T07:30:00.001-07:00

Polycentric Order: Resolving Anarchist Conflict

Daylight Atheism: Why I Am Not a Communist

Human Iterations: A Desperately Needed Note To Anarcho-Capitalists From The Poor

A plethora of issues related to Silent Radical's Blog

Anarcho: Quoting Marxo-capitalists out of context

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Plumb-line anarchism

2008-05-02T14:52:00.001-07:00

This is not going to be about “anarcho-capitalism”. I want this discussion to be applicable to more than that one specific instance..
My understanding of what I have read of Tucker is that “plumb-line anarchism” is a method of weeding out individuals who call themselves anarchists but are not, in fact, anarchists. A plumb-line is an ancient tool which basically is just a weight on a string used by engineers since time immemorial to judge what is vertical. I think the implication is that when Tucker drops that plumb-line, the real anarchists will fall on one side and the phony anarchists will fall on the other side. I don't know, it does have a certain appeal to it. I like the idea that there is something essential about anarchism that unifies all of us.
One of the stupidest things that the individualist anarchists around the turn of the century did was to deny that the anarchist communists such as Kropotkin were not in fact anarchists. I don't really understand what the reasoning was but I think it is fairly clear from having read Mutual Aid and The Conquest of Bread as well as several of The Anarchist Prince's essays, that man was most definitely an anarchist. As far as I know, his biggest transgression was voicing support for the Allied Powers during World War I. Whatever. Compared to Proudhon's and Bakunin's transgressions that's really not a big deal to me.

Anyways, there undeniably is something that unifies all types of anarchism, namely, the fact that they are all types of anarchism.So what is the essence of anarchism? According to Voltairine, it is opposition to government. That's all she said in that essay.
Has the meaning of government changed?
In any case, she didn't say the State. She said government. That is important to note, I think. Assuming that government just means a body that governs, she is not talking about an organisation that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a geographic area (the standard definition of a state). The problem with saying that we advocate the abolition of government is that government isn't necessarily authoritarian. Which is why I think that the definition based on opposition to power is a lot more useful.
I don't think the essence of anarchism is socialism or anti-capitalism (or “capitalism” if you think that “capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism”).
This is ultimately about power. There is a whole plethora of applications but that's what it comes down to.
I should give credit to William Gillis for introducing me to this view last year when I was questioning “anarcho-capitalism”.

I'm not sure where I stand. It's difficult to disagree with Voltairine de Cleyre... I mean of course writing out the communists is shitty and detestable and just plain stupid. I don't think that's the only thing she's talking about though.

No I think the question is whether or not those who claim to be anarchists espouse principles which are contrary to the nature of anarchism. That's all I'm going to say about this.

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Voltairine de Cleyre: Events are the True Schoolmasters

2008-05-02T09:31:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about Benjamin Tucker's concept of “plumb-line anarchism” the other day and I thought of this essay and then I discovered that it is not available online so I am transcribing it from my copy of Exquisite Rebel which contains several essays that AK Press's The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader does not contain. Most importantly, I think, is Anarchism, in which Voltairine laid out the idea of anarchism without adjectives. A discussion of this essay will follow here but I wanted to put it up first.

[I should mention, in the defence of The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader that it does include a selection of her poems, something that Exquisite Rebel lacks]

This first section is an introduction by the editors:

This essay is a brief plea for keeping anarchism eclectic and open, and also for the legitimacy of emotion as a factor in political movements. Both of these are central themes of Voltairine's work. It begins with a brief remembrance of her lover and mentor, Dyer Lum, one of the most interesting figures in the history of American anarchism. Twenty-seven years Voltai's senior, Lum came from a prominent family of New England abolitionists and individualists (he was a Civil War veteran, and had run for Lieutenant Governors of Massachusetts on a ticket with Wendell Phillips in 1876). Lum was also at one point secretary to the labor leader Samuel Gompers, and a friend and associate of the Haymarket martyrs. In fact, Dyer Lum was the person who smuggled a dynamite cigar to Louis Lingg, by which the latter committed suicide in prison, cheating the hangman. Lum himself committed suicide in 1893.

Voltairine:

I count it as one of the best fortunes of my life that in my early days as an anarchist it was my privilege to know Dyer D. Lum. These thirteen years he is in his grave, and yet whenever editors and contributors of anarchist journals fall to denouncing the actions of the unwise, the ebullitions of the mass, I hear his voice, as yesterday, saying in his short, brusque way: “Events are the true schoolmasters.”

There was in his day, as there is now, a certain percentage of propagandists who think that they possess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (a perhaps enviable condition of mind, but certainly an intolerant one). They appear to think that by the application of certain abstract principles they have been able to chalk-line the course of progress, and that if it be strictly adhered to an unquestionable triumph of these principles lies straight ahead. They are essentially reasonable, cool persons, somewhat over-impressed with their lack of sentimentality, having definite “plans of campaign” in their heads. The trouble is that when the plan is put in action, it meets with the difficulties the mathematical builders of Laputa met when the put up a wall. The planners never look to right or left of the chalk-line to measure the quantities with which they are dealing, or get a relative estimate of their own forces compared with the forces they are endeavoring to guide so straightly. All at once some of these unreckoned, undisciplined forces flies right across the well-laid-out path; helter-skelter, topsy-turvy goes all the patient work, and the “plan of campaign” is smitten in the house of its friends. Do the campaigners give a look around, now, and take in the situation? Do they begin to recognize that their little labored ant-track was just a groove bearing relation to the path of progress, about as the rut of a toy cart-wheel to the whole road; that the road is by no means straight, but full of hills and holes and curves and angles according to the obstacles met and the powers of the moving quantity? Not they! The plan is all right; so much the worse for the campaign if it disregards the chalk! The planners adjust their blinkers, give a look in their pocket-mirrors that they may behold “the face of Anarchy” undergenerate, lift up their voices, call for clean water, and was their hands, publicly, clean—very clean. They have nothing in common with these monsters of the depths which the Frankenstein of the State creates for its own undoing. Take notice, Frankenstein; if you lack epithets to vilify them we, the plumb-line anarchists, will supplement your stock. Nothing in common with these unregulated, undisciplined minds which are devoid of logic and filled only with unreasoning sentiments and the desire for foolish and inconsequent talk. Take notice, Prosecutor; if you lack condemnatory arguments we will furnish them. “Our ways are ways of pleasantness, and all our paths are paths of peace.”

What a very pretty thing progress would be if all her ways were likewise; all will admit that unconditionally. However, progress has to do with all mankind, not alone with the calm, the wise, and the patient. There is youth in the world, and youth is generally neither calm nor patient; it does not like to sit in the rear rows and listen to mature considerations rendered in the tone of a stock-market quotation concerning questions that are burning up its heart, itself silent; if it did, it might learn to be wise and calm,—and also ashy and inert. There is feeling in the world, and a very great quantity of it; and those who do the suffering and the sympathizing may be expected to say and to do many things not within the limits of logic. Sometimes these deeds take violent forms, sometimes they take merely foolish forms; but “Events are the true schoolmasters,” and in the twenty years that have elapsed since 1886, we have seen the wisdom of the wise confounded more than once, and the action of the resolute, the desperate and the foolish break the line of the opposition and make room for wider action and farther-reaching effort.

Through witnessing these unexpected acts and their still more unanticipated results, I have gradually worked my way to the conviction that, while I cannot see the logic of forcible physical resistance (entailing perpetual retaliations until one of the offended finally refuses to retaliate), there are others who have reached the opposite conclusions, who will act according to their convictions, and who are quite as much part and parcel of the movement towards human liberty as those who preach at all costs; that my part as a social student and lover of freedom is to get as wide an outlook as I can, endeavor to appreciate the relative values of contending and interplaying forces, try to detect among the counter-movements the net results, the general forward impulse cutting new barriers, and to move with it, quite confident that there is room and enough for me to hold my individual course within its broad sweep. If somebody cuts my course, why, then, I suppose I am cutting his at the same time. No doubt the believers in forcible resistance feel that those of us who eschew force and preach peace are on the wrong track; no doubt the censorious among them think that we are a nuisance, a drawback, a damage to the movement, in fact, no anarchists at all. But let us neither read out nor be read out. The ideal society without government allures us all; we believe in its possibility and that makes us anarchists. But since its realization is in the future, and since the future holds unknown factors, it is nearly certain that the free society of the unborn will realize itself according to no man's present forecast, whether individualist, communist, mutualist, collectivist, or what-not. Such forecasts are useful as centerizing points of striving only. Vast and vague the ideal persists, and a great social drift is setting towards it; somewhat of conscious anarchism therein, but infinitely more of the unconscious anarchism which is in all men. As well “put a bit in the jaws of the sea,” as try to control the movements of that great dtide. Then why exercise ourselves because someone conceived a different plan of free association from ours? Why, since no one can know a perfect method, nor even act always according to the best method he himself conceives, why fly to the defense of progress and protect destiny? It is a little too much like a Christian Inquisitor protecting the Almighty against heretics.

I believe that if those who feel called upon to act as guardians of the anarchist movement once again realized how little it is in need of their guardianship, what a trifle each individual contribution is, even theirs, they would be content to fight the battle with the enemy as it develops (not as they preconceive it ought to develop); and not think it necessary to turn about and add their stripes to those who will be quite sufficiently beaten by the State, merely because such have not waged war as per the cold-blood, wisdom and experience of the gray heads of others.

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Nestor Makhno: The First of May

2008-05-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

Symbol of a New Era in the Life and Struggle of the Toilers
In the socialist world, the first of May is considered the Labor holiday. This is a mistaken description that has so penetrated the lives of the toilers that in many countries that day is indeed celebrated as such. In fact, the first of May is not at all a holiday for the toilers. No, the toilers should not stay in their workshops or in the fields on that date. On that date, toilers all over the world should come together in every village, every town, and organize mass rallies, not to mark that date as statist socialists and especially the Bolsheviks conceive it, but rather to gauge the measure of their strength and assess the possibilities for direct armed struggle against a rotten, cowardly, slave-holding order rooted in violence and falsehood. It is easiest for all the toilers to come together on that historic date, already part of the calendar, and most convenient for them to express their collective will, as well as enter into common discussion of everything related to essential matters of the present and the future.

Over forty years ago, the American workers of Chicago and its environs assembled on the first of May. There they listened to addresses from many socialist orators, and more especially those from anarchist orators, for they fairly gobbled up libertarian ideas and openly sided with the anarchists.

That day those American workers attempted, by organizing themselves, to give expression to their protest against the iniquitous order of the State and Capital of the propertied. That was what the American libertarians Spies, Parsons and others spoke about. It was at this point that this protest rally was interrupted by provocations by the hirelings of Capital and it ended with the massacre of unarmed workers, followed by the arrest and murder of Spies, Parsons and other comrades.

The workers of Chicago and district had not assembled to celebrate the May Day holiday. They had gathered to resolve, in common, the problems of their lives and their struggles.

Today too, wheresoever the toilers have freed themselves from the tutelage of the bourgeoisie and the social democracy linked to it (Menshevik or Bolshevik, it makes no difference) or even try to do so, they regard the first of May as the occasion of a get-together when they will concern themselves with their own affairs and consider the matter of their emancipation. Through these aspirations, they give expression to their solidarity with and regard for the memory of the Chicago martyrs. Thus they sense that the first of May cannot be a holiday for them. So, despite the claims of "professional socialists," tending to portray it as the Feast of Labor, the first of May can be nothing of the sort for conscious workers.

The first of May is the symbol of a new era in the life and struggle of the toilers, an era that each year offers the toilers fresh, increasingly tough and decisive battles against the bourgeoisie, for the freedom and independence wrested from them, for their social ideal.

The Other May Day

2008-05-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Law Day, U.S.A., 2008
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

The right of ordinary men and women to determine their own future, protected by the rule of law, lies at the heart of America's founding principles. As our country celebrates the 50th anniversary of Law Day, we renew our commitment to the ideals on which this great Nation was established and to a robust system of ordered liberty.

The American legal system is central to protecting the rights and freedoms our Nation holds dear. The theme of this year's Law Day, "The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity," recognizes the fundamental role that the rule of law plays in preserving liberty in our Nation and in all free societies. We pay tribute to the men and women in America's legal community. Through hard work and dedication to the rule of law, members of the judiciary and the legal profession help secure the rights of individuals, bring justice to our communities, and reinforce the proud traditions that make America a beacon of light for the world.

Nearly 800 years ago, the Magna Carta placed the authority of government under the rule of law; centuries later, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution marked tremendous advances in the march of liberty. These documents established enduring principles that guide modern democracies. Today, we are reminded of that past and look toward a hopeful future as we work to secure the liberty that is the natural right of every man, woman, and child.

On Law Day, U.S.A., our Nation celebrates our belief in the equality of each person before God and renews our commitment to strive to bring America ever closer to its founding ideals.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87-20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2008, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also call upon Government officials to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.

GEORGE W. BUSH

# # #

[Incidentally, it's also RSS Awareness Day for some reason...]

Obligatory May Day! post

2008-05-01T08:03:00.001-07:00

Looking over this morning's blogs, I see a few sarcastic posts wishing me a happy May/Labour/International Workers' Day.
Like today is a socialist holiday.
You know what? It is. Not going to go into the history of May Day here because that's been done plenty of times before. If you consider socialism to be a movement originating in the 19th century seeking to abolish capitalism (not reform) and replace it with a something egalitarian and libertarian. So naturally the consistent socialist is an anarchist....
Eh, my idealism is showing... socialism is weird... if you want to look at it as just this anti-capitalist movement seeking collective ownership of the means of production in some form... Lots of splits when you start looking at the details of that, and how we're going to get there...
I for one think that our means ought to be consistent with our ends...
Yeah I'd call myself a socialist... need to qualify that with libertarian... libertarian socialist; because socialism is oh-so-often associated with authority and probably the majority of its supposed adherents embrace authoritarian means.

Section H::Why do anarchists oppose state socialism? (Link to Infoshop.org version if Geocities is not working as it is not for me right now.. I prefer the way the Geocities version looks..) Hm what was I thinking of posting this yes see especially section H3, the myths of state socialism.. esp. Do anarchists and Marxists want the same thing?

Are anarchists socialists?

Very interesting is Eugene Plawiuk on The Origins and Traditions of May Day

Collection of lots of stuff at the Marxist Internet Archive (This is a goldmine, I love the MIA, they have so much useful stuff)
According to Rosa Luxemburg, May Day was borne out of the eight-hour day movement in Australia, not Haymarket.

May Day - the Real Labor Day

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Over my shoulder: “A Heuristic World Regionalization Scheme” (Spoilers)

2008-04-28T19:29:00.001-07:00

This post contains SPOILERS. Don't read if you don't want the surprise of Martin and Wigen's proposed replacement for continents to be spoiled forever!

The Myth of Continents, Ch. 6, p 186-188.

Clearly, the world regional system has some serious flaws. In most presentations, it is contaminated both by the myth of the nation-state and by geographical determinism. Similarly, though less Eurocentric than the standard continental scheme, it still bear[s] traces of its origin within a self-centered European geographical tradition. More fundamentally, a world regional framework continues to grossly flatten the complexities of world geography. No less than the continental scheme, it implies that the map of the world is readily divisible into a small number of fundamentally comparable units. Nonetheless, we remain convinced that some form of baseline heuristic scheme is necessary for teaching and thinking about metageography, and that a refined version of the world regional framework is the most serviceable alternative available.
The cartographic outlines of our own preferred regions are depicted in map 10. In its contours, this map does not differ dramatically from the standard depiction of world regions already employed in geography and other disciplines; with a few important qualifications, we endorse the global architecture that has emerged within the North American academic world. Where we part company from textbook geography is less in cartographic depiction than in conceptual procedure. Our methodological differences with textbook geography can be summed up in three main principles. First, we have avoided defining regions in terms of specific diagnostic traits, focusing instead on historical processes. Second, we have ignored both political and ecological boundaries, giving primacy instead to the spatial contours of assemblages of ideas, practices, and social institutions that give human communities their distinction and coherence. Finally, we have tried to conceptualize world regions not only in terms of their internal characteristics, but also in terms of their relations with one another. For one region's identity has often coalesced only in confrontation with another.
This last point deserves underscoring. As Patrick Manning and others have argued, sub-Saharan Africa emerged as a distinct region of the world in good part through the mechanism of the slave trade, an intrinsically interregional operation implicating Europe, the Americas, the North African and Southwest Asia. African unity was later enhanced by the common experiences of colonial rule and anticolonial resistance, and it is maintained today in part by the common yoke of global financial institutions. Southeast Asia, similarly, has coalesced in part through confrontations with the historically expansive civilizations of the Eurasian mainland. And it is emerging as a more coherent region today in part because the majority of its member states are developing a common pattern of economic relationships with East Asia, Europe, and North America. Now more than ever, relational issues are crucial to macroregional identity.
So long as these methodological points are addressed, we believe that the world regional paradigm can be reformed and should be retained. But a number of caveats are still in order. First, as we have insisted throughout this critique, any scheme of global geographical division is only a rough approximation, a convenient but crude device for making sense of particular patterns of human life. World regions are better approximations for most purposes than continents or civilizations, but they are no more naturally given. Second, we would emphasize that this scheme has evolved essentially as a pedagogical tool: a vehicle for talking and teaching about basic global patterns of sociocultural geography at the college level. We claim no authority for it beyond those uses. Third, we would note that while our map by necessity shows seemingly rigid boundaries separating world regions, many of those boundary zones themselves function almost like hybrid regions in their own right. Finally, we would ask the reader to see this scheme, like all similar efforts, as but one contribution to an ongoing dialogue. Our purpose is not to settle the many delicate issues of metageography, but to advance the discussion of those issues.

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Is this a widespread misconception?

2008-04-27T15:09:00.001-07:00

From Bad Samaritans, Ch. 5, regarding privatisation:

[I]t is argued by the opponents of state ownership [that] you have to give people ownership, or property rights, over things (including enterprises) if you want them to use them most efficiently.*

*Endnote:

Property rights need not be private property rights, as it is implicitly assumed by many people who emphasize the role of property rights. There are many communal property rights that work well. Many rural communities from all over the world have communal property rights that effectively regulate the use of common resources (e.g., forest, fishery) to prevent their over-exploitation. A more modern example is open-source computer software, such as Linux, where users are encouraged to improve the product but are banned from using the improved for their personal benefit.

(Emphasis added)

The question of what to call more relatively permissively licensed software, if there is a program licensed under the GPL, and you make changes to it and distribute it, you can sell it... Just want to make that clear...

See also: Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses::Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Not a big fan of those licenses, as I have mentioned before...

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Over my shoulder: Race and Geography

2008-04-26T16:28:00.001-07:00

From The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography by Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen:

    Maps of “race” no longer have any legitimate place in global geography texts. For even as Carleton Coon was elaborating his contorted racial taxonomy, Ashley Montagu was demolishing the biological basis of race as a concept. Montagu and like-minded scholars advanced three powerful arguments. First, all identified racial characteristics are biologically superficial, and in no way challenge the fundamental biological unity of humankind. Second, any given racial attribute tends to mutate gradually as one traverses the landscape; distinct transitions from one “racial group” to another are almost never encountered. (While racialist theory ascribes this phenomenon to “racial mixing,” “pure races” have never been isolated.) Third, and most compelling from the geographic point of view, each racial characteristic has its own distributional patterns. The global map of skin color, for example, bears little resemblance to the map of hair form or the map of head shape. One can thus map races only if one selects one particular trait as more essential than others. (The 1963 Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, regards hair texture as the prime racial determinant.) Yet no real evidence can be offered to show why the selection of such an isolated trait is not entirely arbitrary.
    Nor is any firmer basis for racial categories to be found under the skin. The most rigorous investigation to date of global genetic patterns—L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paulo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza's massive History and Geography of Human Genes—finds that racial categories are genetically meaningless. The authors conclude that while one can identify “‘clusters of populations’ exhibiting genetic similarities,” such clusters cannot be “identified with races.” In fact, their painstaking genetic mapping and multivariate analysis fairly demolish the familiar “races of humanity.” For example, the northern Chinese are shown to be more closely related to northern Europeans than they are to southern Chinese. And Africans, far from forming a uniform race, actually show more genetic diversity than do all the world's non-African peoples put together.
    In a word, while race is indisputably an important cultural construct, it fails as a natural category on biogeographical grounds. The presumed correspondence between the distribution of racial traits simply does not exist. Only by abandoning the doctrine of geographical concordance—the belief that a wide array of unrelated features should correspond to their spatial patterns—can we begin to ascertain the macrogeography of human life.

(p. 122-3)

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Indifferent

2008-04-23T07:17:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned oh-so-long ago, my first step out of relatively conventional politics was through Ayn Rand and Objectivism. So you might have guessed that I was an atheist or something... yeah I was an atheist before that though...
The question of religion and such hasn't weighed very heavy on my mind in a while. It's just not something I worry about much.

Tonight there was a debate hosted by the atheist/agnostic club and the Christain club about the obvious conflict... Does God Exist?
Not much to say for the debate... but at the end there was a Q&A and ugh this is why atheists just turn me off... I just don't care about any of it... so often there is just such a lack of any understanding or sympathy or compassion oh I don't know that's not always the case but sometimes it just feels like

So one of the questions that is coming up is the question of miracles... now the Christian side brings up some pretty amusing cases:

This girl I know she had reaally thick glasses and then at this Christian camp we all prayed and then she suddenly had 20/20 vision and she still does explain that huh?
I know this guy who was lactose intolerant and we all prayed for him and suddenly he could drink milk yeah

The atheist/agnostic argument in response was correlation does not imply causation and that's just an argument from ignorance. I am inclined to agree with that position. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But hm where am I going with this...

So the first question is this old guy, about 60, i.e., not a student... and he has some question for the Christian side about like contradictions in the Bible testing your faith or whatever... yawn
Next person to come up is this crazed woman in her 50's, also obviously not a student... she doesn't have a question... instead she invites the atheists to come to her healing group thing where the atheists will see how miracles are performed and if they go and talk to her surgeon he'll tell them how he didn't perform that bypass he just let God control his hands... oh so awkward
Delicious crazy person and everyone exchanging looks of discomfort
“Okay, ma'am, do you have a question? This time is just for questions” etc.
sighs of relief when she steps away from the mic
and then the first questioner... ugh this is just the essence of this New Atheism... he says some shit like “What how did you get sick why did you need surgery? Was it because of God? Did God make you sick?”
Something stupid just the tone of the actual debate had been this pretty laid back and not hostile, pretty open, “okay we disagree but we'll be civilised and just lay out or differing views for all to see”
So groans all around I didn't hear what the woman said in response to that question... who cares

I dunno, I guess the question of religion is somewhat relevant to anarchism but I'm not going to explore it more here... some other time...
To lay out my views, I think that organised religion presents the same problems as any other hierarchical institution and yeah... well I really don't have much to say about unorganised religion... just like religious beliefs as such... insofar as they don't affect others negatively (not sure how I would apply that to your examples that you are already thinking of) it doesn't really much concern me at all... but yeah...

to be continued at some later date probably

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Okay, this is starting to piss me off...

2008-04-20T21:09:00.001-07:00

I've seen this picture on one blog too many now and I must comment.
This is sort of related to something that I've seen American libertarians do too so I can talk about that too..

The sign reads “Would we have allowed NAZI GERMANY TO HOST THE OLYMPICS?”

First of all, in rigorous debate, it's usually in bad taste (i.e., I will think less of you) to make comparisons to anything related to Nazis. It's just too easy. Too emotional.

But anyways, what these bloggers are all doing I guess is pointing and you know... “heh heh... you idiot we already let the nazis do that...”
That is assuming that “we” means humanity... or something...
But I'm pretty sure that that's not what this sign means... They couldn't be that stupid... and anyways, there's a logical explanation... I'm pretty sure that “we” means us. You and me. Us. people right here and now. Yes the International Olympic Committee and the governments of the world then made a mistake and let the Olympics go on in Nazi Germany but that wasn't us. We're not going to do that. We're going to say no.
That's what I think that sign is saying.

I don't think it means “Did we let Nazi Germany host the Olympics?”
It would have said that if it meant that...
Saying would sort of poses it as a question to the reader here and now... not some sort of eternal question for all times and all the people who ever existed and ever will exist...

And of course if you've spent much time around Americanlibertarians you gotta ask “what do you mean ‘we’?”
I don't really worry about that much... I mean it's a good point to make—yes that is an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon... but I'm not going to be a dick and run around correcting people whenever politics comes up... I mean when people are talking about this stuff they're working within a paradigm that assumes you agree with them on some basic principles... so it's not that absurd... and then if they keep saying it out of habit...

Yeah..

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Today's Featured Article: Emma Goldman

2008-04-18T19:42:00.001-07:00

Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of politically-motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics. Born in the province of Kaunas, Lithuania she moved with her sister Helena to Rochester, New York in the United States at the age of sixteen. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket Riot, Goldman was trained by Johann Most in public speaking and became a renowned lecturer, attracting crowds of thousands. The writer and anarchist Alexander Berkman became her lover, lifelong intimate friend and comrade. Together they planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. In 1917 Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested – with hundreds of others – and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. Eventually she traveled to Spain to participate in that nation's civil war. She died in Toronto on 14 May 1940. (more...)

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2008-04-16T14:21:00.001-07:00

Just found this blog Silent Radical. Same sort of history as myself: radical libertarian turned mutualist.
Some differences that I will look at more when I get a chance.

An Anarchist FAQ works wonders, I tell you.

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Anti-capitalist!

2008-04-15T12:43:00.001-07:00

So reading this book Bad Samaritans.. for this class all the students write what they liked and didn't like about the reading this is a quote from one of my classmate's writings. This student expressed concern upon discovering a quote from Noam Chomsky praising the book...

At times he seems to be anti-capitalist rather than just capitalist-critical. He mentions on page 31 that rich countries often give aid only once the conditions of a preferential trade agreement are met. I would argue that capitalism is not an idealistic system. Capitalists provide services, goods, or aid, in this example, only insofar as they can extract a profit and be compensated for their risk, to which they reinvest their capital into their industry or others, to further their profits and their own livelihood. This is not to say that all capitalists endorse conditional aid to exploit the disadvantaged. However, I believe that greed is the principal characteristic of human nature – just as survival itself is based on greed. One's own prosperity, built upon the survival instinct, leads us to conclude that if there is a profit to be made, someone will exploit it.

Now, this author Ha-Joon Chang basically seems to fall in line with people like Naomi Klein. I don't know what Naomi Klein offers as an alternative to the current system...
I didn't really see any explicit anti-capitalism. I saw a lot of criticisms of laissez-faire, especially liberalisation of trade. Well, he's against free trade too. He is critical of Ricardo's comparative advantage thing..

More on all this as it happens...
I just got a kick out of that response..

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Clarification of purpose

2008-04-14T12:59:00.001-07:00

Writes Curt Doolittle:

Over on kehlkopfmikrofon (yes that’s the name of the blog, and it’s cute, but the site can’t ever get traffic because no one can remember it’s name. I think it translates to something like voice or throat microphone - my German is terrible.)...

The purpose of this blog is not primarily to attract traffic. As I have stated before, the purpose is for it to be a way to document some small part of the way that I think about things. It's the kind of blog that I would like to read... the kind of thing that I find interesting.

That said, I am very interested in all this paleolibertarian stuff (albeit a morbid one). I have a list in my head of things that I will get to eventually. That's all I want to do; really understand all these weird things that seem so counterintuitive to me. So Curt Doolittle's comment is pretty interesting to me. Clarification is nice. Reminds me that the critique of Hoppe's system is that it is tantamount to feudalism, not that that's what he actually wants to create. I mean, I still think it's all bullshit but I don't know enough about it and I really don't have time to look into it more now.
Anyway, here's the comment:

RE: Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Lew Rockwell talking about how much better feudalism is than democracy.

They are not talking about feudalism. Feudalism is control of all property and resources one can conquer and hold.

They are talking about Kings in the sense that they had evolved to in the nineteenth century in germany. They mean kings like in Lichtenstein.

You are implying that the king can run a government. They are basing their decisions, (Hoppe is, not necessarily Lou) on the concept that property makes possible economic calcluation and a King, as a property owner acts in better interest of his property and that of his citizens than do any other governors. In Hoppe's world, private industry (now that we have insurance companies) can provide all government services, and the king simply exists to prevent the establishment of government. (This is oversimplified but it's close enough.)

There is a mp3 lecture that can be downloaded at mises dot com that covers the evolution of the english common law. And then the usurpation of the administration of that law by kings. It is this usurpation of the law that makes kings bad, just as it does with any other form of government.

Anyway, happy to keep open the dialog if you want to. I'll cross post on my blog. Thanks. -Curt

Don't have time for a dialog right now... sorry

The clarification and alternative point of view is greatly appreciated though..

Might be interested in a dialog at some later date I just don't know when...

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