Life, Love, and Liberty

(A person interested in Kevin Carson’s book, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, can view it online at this link. It’s the source for my quotation below)

Bravo! For Brad Spangler’s attempt at innovation and subsequent libertarian reconciliation with the left in the controversial realm of the nature of wage work. I try to paint myself as a guy whose been influenced by the dialectical way of looking at things, so I hope to prove my credentials on that score by pointing out that Brad’s analysis is a dialectical one. If we employ the definition of dialectics as “the art of context keeping”, for which the New Yawker Chris Matthew Sciabarra is to be forever thanked for bringing to my attention, then the dialectical nature of Brad’s take becomes ever more clear. The point of Brad’s post was to point out the conflation of context with casualty. A leftist will typically assert that the “market” is to blame for the phenomenon of individuals having little choice in their place of employment, while the libertarian will say “Silly leftist! There is no need to complain because you are still choosing between a number of employment options, even if said opportunities are not so great”.

Well, I thought I was a wordy guy, but Brad makes a bid for the top spot of wordiness by making use of the word oligopsony which describes a situation where there are few buyers but loads of sellers. This is the word that he believes provides an accurate description of the current U.S. labor market. He makes a plea to libertarians and leftists alike to recognize the current labor market is artificially tight; due to regulatory cartelization on the part of the state that makes it harder to start a money-making business or productive endeavor. A dialectical thinker would be keen to keep this state tainted context in mind when examining these issues, and thus see that the current marketplace is not as conducive to choice as alleged orthodox “free market” thinkers might have you believe.

I wish to extend Brad’s analysis beyond the context of the limited number of opportunities of employment by others due to state intervention in the economy and focus on the limitations on the ability to be self-employed due to an artificial shortage of capital. The contemporary mutualist anarchist, Kevin Carson, has written on this issue and thus is worth quoting here:

In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. The landlord monopoly, which we examined in the last section, is one example of this principle. And until the nineteenth century, the control of land was probably the single most important form of privilege by which labor was forced to accept less than its product as a wage. But in industrial capitalism, arguably, the importance of landlordism has been surpassed in importance by the money monopoly. Under that latter form of privilege, the state’s licensing of banks, capitalization requirements, and other market entry barriers enable banks to charge a monopoly price for loans in the form of usurious interest rates. Thus, labor’s access to capital is restricted, and labor is forced to pay tribute in the form of artificially high interest rates.

If you are forced to pay high rates of interest when seeking to obtain capital for which to go into business for yourself than the likelihood of being able to do so is drastically decreased. Furthermore; a smaller number of individuals will have the ability to work for themselves and thus self-employment will not be as realistic of an alternative to being employed by someone else. This context is also a creation of the state and must be overcome; if people are ever to have a more reasonable ability to be self-employed.

An awareness of these two state created contexts should be kept in mind when reading leftist literature that is replete with the loaded term “wage slavery”. It may not be the apex of intellectual preciseness to identify the term wages — since you can receive wages without being in the bondage of slavery — with the horror of slavery, yet it does capture the rotten emotional state that many individuals may feel when they are faced with one drudgery after another, as a means of making a living. It’s a term suited for people who want to express passionate outrage; if there ever was one.

The prolific leftist-libertarian-anarchist blogger, Arthur Silber, is experiencing a major financial crisis. I have a number of his powerful writings listed on my sidebar under insightful reads. I especially enjoy his heated and passionate denunciations of the psychology driving actions undertaken in the occupation of Iraq.

It is time for some very harsh truth-telling, and it is time to strip away the comforting and false self-delusions in which many hawks wrap themselves. There is nothing loving or kind about a parent who beats his child, while claiming that he does it out of love and concern for the child’s well-being. And there is nothing kind or benevolent about forcing Iraqis to adopt a form of government or a way of life which they may not want — and which they certainly do not want if it comes at the ends of the guns wielded by an occupation force.

We have invaded a country which posed no serious threat to us, and we still maintain we are intent on bringing the blessings of liberty to the Iraqis — but we will do it using force, fear and violence. This is a fatal contradiction that was doomed to fail. But in the process of attempting to make a contradiction true — which can never be done, and which must end in the destruction of the one who attempts it — we are turning ourselves as a nation into monsters. And we are also planting innumerable seeds of hatred against the United States, which may well grow into future terrorist attacks on the U.S., just as they are now causing the deaths of American soldiers on a daily basis.

The Bush administration, by means of this insanely destructive foreign policy, is now achieving one objective for which I truly cannot forgive them: they are making me ashamed to be an American.

Now, that’s what I call quality writing!. I encourage people to consider donating to him on the basis of this kind of passionate commentary.

June 2001: The Taliban are the champions of illiteracy and highest incarnations of ignorant arrogance. RAWA believes that despite manifold impediments and meager resources, one of its duties is to carry the torch of literacy and knowledge among women in defiance of the Taliban and enlightenment-hating fundamentalists. All the classes are run secretly in some cities.

You go, RAWA!

I’d tip my hat to these folks, but I am not wearing one right now

Did I get any laughs with that attempt at humor there?

Be honest!

But I am perhaps most intolerant, not of Christians per se, not of faith, certainly not of radiant self-defined spirituality, not even of organized religion, though I do fully believe more independent spirits and raw human souls and moist sexual licks have been lost to its often narrow-minded and cosmically rigid brainwashing techniques than have ever been saved. But hey, that’s just me.I am most intolerant of, well, of those who allow such intolerance. Of those who would, based on their narrow views of sex, God, love, hope, war, the mind, the Earth, soil and animals and air and water and fire and love and spirit and drugs and guns and dildos, work to legislate those neoconservative beliefs, codify them, make them the law of the land, force their regressive beliefs on everyone else under punishment of violence and beatings and prison. I am, in short, intolerant of intolerance.

Oh, let us be clear. I love diversity, religious pluralism, peace and love and pacifism and good drugs and open-mouthed sensuality, happy to let you believe in any god you like and marry any gender you like and let you love how you will and be in full control of your sex and your body and your mind.

This, to me, is the America worth fighting for. These are the laws I support. Don’t believe in abortion? Don’t understand gay people? Sexuality make you rashy? Think Harry Potter teaches kids evil and witchcraft? Don’t marry a sexy gay witch abortionist. But don’t you dare, based on your limited understanding of God and life, make laws declaring that I can’t.

Mark Morford speaks the language of liberty! I actually have some further thoughts to add on this, but that’ll have to wait until I am less sleepy.

Stay tuned!

Brad Spangler lets us know about a triple whammy of anarchist and/or libertarian media fundraising drives. If you’re interested, then here are the three sites:

-Antiwar.com

-Rational Review

-Infoshop.org

I’ve made use of all three sites before, but the one I visit the most is Antiwar.com. It’s a very good site for keeping up with news related to foreign policy.

Brad Spangler and I are having a good time here in Utah at the Beyond Ballots or Bullets conference. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his company and the workshop presentations I’ve had the privilege of hearing so far. The discussions that have followed have also been incredibly full of life so I like the atmosphere.

My notebook is filled to the brim with notes I’ve taken so I’ll be putting that into some kind of form for sharing on the blog. I feel like I’ve definitely learned from this experience so far. I hope you can learn from my future post on it.

Brad Spangler and Roderick Long are to be thanked for launching the Center for a Stateless Society. I plan to contribute writings and encourage others to do the same.

Here’s the celebratory press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A tiny think tank has set out on a project to provide ongoing news commentary in order to promote their set of views, known as market anarchism.

AUBURN, ALABAMA — October 10, 2006 — Center for a Stateless Society — The Molinari Institute, a market anarchist think tank, today launched a new media effort aiming to put their agenda to abolish government front and center in US political discourse. Dubbing their project the Center for a Stateless Society (www.c4ss.org), institute officials laid out plans to publish and distribute news commentary written by anarchists with radically free-market oriented views on economics — taking market anarchism out of the realm of academia and obscure internet blogs in order to put it in the public eye.

Molinari Institute President Roderick Long explained “For too long libertarians, and I mean anarchist libertarians, have treated market anarchism almost as an esoteric doctrine. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position. The Center for a Stateless Society aims to bring a market anarchist perspective to the popular press, rather than leaving it confined to scholarly studies and movement periodicals.”

Naming longtime radical libertarian activist and freelance web developer Brad Spangler as the first Director of the Center, Long unveiled the Center’s new web site at www.c4ss.org for Molinari Institute supporters and the public.

Said Spangler “I’m honored to accept the post. In anticipation of this moment, we’ve developed a database of thousands of US media outlets for email distribution of content which these publishers will be able to use free of charge. Additionally, the c4ss.org web site makes use of stable, reliable and “free as in freedom” open source web technologies. We’ve developed the site in such a way as to make maximum possible use of social bookmarking services, web syndication feeds and search engine optimization techniques. With this site, we aim to awaken more Americans than ever before to the brutal reality that all governments everywhere are essentially nothing more than murderous bandit gangs — and show them the shining light of hope for a world without the State.”

###

ORGANIZATIONAL SUMMARY The mission of the Molinari Institute is to promote understanding of the philosophy of Market Anarchism as a sane, consensual alternative to the hypertrophic violence of the State. The Institute takes its name from Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), originator of the theory of Market Anarchism. The Center for a Stateless Society is the Molinari Institute’s new media center.

CONTACT
Brad Spangler
Center for a Stateless Society
media@c4ss.org
http://www.c4ss.org/

This is a very exciting project! Having quality market anarchist material published in the mainstream could make an impact.