StephanKinsella.com

Facebook is cool. It helps bring back forgotten memories. A good example follows. I attended St. George Elementary in Baton Rouge for 8 years, and since joining facebook I’ve reconnected with several of my former classmates. Someone posted this picture of our sixth grade class (I’m sitting on the far right, front row). One of the girls, Rebecca Stewart, had the following (lightly edited) exchange with me today:

Rebecca: Hello SGS class of 1979 friends! Stephan – what r u doing? Do you remember when Julie Burroughs had you demonstrate the difference between LIE and LAY? I think of you every time I hear the stupid song with the lyrics that get it wrong.

Me: Rebeccca, god my memory is bad. I only vaguely recall that–who is Julie Burroughs… a teacher? I remember I think a Ms. Burroughs? What was the lie-lay incident? You have me curious now, do tell!

Rebecca: Yes Ms. Burroughs was a teacher, and I assume she taught English. She asked if anyone wanted to demonstrate the verbs lie and lay. Of course you know who volunteered. For LIE you stood in the front of the class and said, “Michelle Lorio has blue hair.” [She had red hair.] For LAY you laid (or lied?) down on the floor in the front of the classroom. That was right in front of my desk, and Ms. Burroughs was trying not to totally lose it so I guess that’s why it stuck in my memory. There were a few other Stephan Kinsella moments filed away with that memory. Mostly humorous!

Mises blog; archived comments below

Related:

• The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”
• Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?

There’s been a good deal of debate recently in libertarian circles about the word capitalism. Is it compatible with libertarianism? A synonym for it? Should we use it? For example:

• Voice of Radical Dissent podcast, Episode 109: “Capitalism; an interview with Walter Block and Brad Spangler”
• Walter Block: Say ‘Yes’ to Capitalism and ‘Capitalism’ Yesterday, ‘Capitalism’ Today, ‘Capitalism’ Tomorrow, ‘Capitalism’ Forever
• Sheldon Richman: Block Says Yes to Capitalism
• Alexander Benjamin Ramiresonty, Against Block Against ‘Libertarians Against Capitalism’
• Sheldon Richman at FFF: “Capitalism” vs. the Free Market (Youtube video)
• Kevin Carson, Socialism: A Perfectly Good Word Rehabilitated
• Bryan Caplan, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?
• Kinsella, Should Libertarians Oppose “Capitalism”?; The new libertarianism: anti-capitalist and socialist; or: I prefer Hazlitt’s “Cooperatism”; “Socialism,” the Tea Partiers, and Slate’s Political Gabfest

As some of my posts linked above indicate, I find this debate extremely frustrating because the nature of the debate is rarely made clear. In that respect it is reminiscent of the interminable debates over gay marriage and thick v. thin libertarianism. On the gay marriage issue, it’s often the case that the arguments of gay marriage opponents boils down to opposition to the word marriage being used by the state in the caption in the statute, though they usually won’t come clean and admit it. In my view (not shared by all my co-bloggers at TLS), the thick-thin paradigm adds nothing of substance and is used to equivocate–engaging in non-rigorous argument about what “libertarianism” “is” semantically and then using this to argue for one’s particular substantive positions; it’s like trying to prove that marriage implies slavery or wife-ownership because the word “my” is used in “my wife.”

The libertarian opponents of “capitalism” often engage in equivocation, I believe. If challenged they say they are just opposed to the word, as if this is a semantic or maybe tactical/strategic issue. But because of confused leftist beliefs, many of them are actually opposed to aspects of the underlying social order that we anarcho-libertarians refer to as (non-corporatist) “capitalism”–the modern industrial free market. They oppose “absentee ownership” (see my post A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy), favor localism and self-sufficiency, are leery of the division and specialization of labor, buy into Marxian ideas about “alienation” and “labor”; they accuse standard libertarians of putting undue stress on “capital” while they do the same with “labor” and “the workers”; some flirt with crankish Georgist ideas, and so on. Some of the opponents of the word “capitalism” seem to have genuine strategical or even semantic concerns, such as Sheldon Richman, instead preferring the term “free market.” But some of them seem to oppose even this term–preferring instead the bizarre and annoying term “freed market,” or outright opposing the word “market” in the phrase “free market” (see Markets vs Free Markets).

In my view we should separate the semantic and strategical debate from a debate about substance. Conflating these leads to dishonest argumentation, confusion, and equivocation. On the substantive issues, we can have that debate; I think “left-libertarianism” is a confused project. To the extent it is correct, it is just standard libertarianism and adds little new; see my post Wombatron’s “Why I Am A Left-Libertarian”, noting: “yes we need to be aware that modern day ‘big business’ is not pure; it’s too in bed with the state (as Rothbard, say, recognized long ago in criticizing Rand’s bemoaning of Big Business as being America’s most persecuted minority). Yes, corporatism is bad. Yes, “big business” is often in bed with the state. We know this. And to the extent left-libertarianism says things standard libertarians do not say qua libertarians, then it is either wrong, or incompatible with libertarianism, or, at best, compatible but completely orthogonal to it as much as one’s religious or recreational or cultural preferences are outside of libertarianism (see why the “thick-thin” debate can worm its way in here by unduly and unnecessarily expanding what libertarianism “is”?). In my view, we libertarians are neither left nor right; both left and right are confused, wicked doctrines. We are better than both of them. Which one is “more” evil is a question that may have no answer; from the libertarian point of view, both are wrong, which is why we have an original, fresh, consistent, and radical view focused on individual rights. But my point is not to debate this here. The point is that it’s a substantive debate. It won’t be solved one whit by pointing out that the word “capitalism” was originally attached to us by our enemies as a pejorative.

So to my mind, the only legitimate debate about using the word “capitalism” is a semantic one, or perhaps a strategical/tactical one. As for semantics, this is not really an interesting debate. As a semantical matter, “capitalism” technically means a system with private ownership of the means of production. This is true regardless of its origin, and regardless of whether corporatism is prevalent in the West. It is at least arguable that “a system of private ownership of the means of production” is an acceptable definition of “capitalism”. So much for the semantic issue. If this is what the word means, is it a synonym for libertarianism, as Rand, Friedman, and other founders of modern libertarianism used it; or at least for “free market”? Is it at least compatible with libertarianism? It seems to me that capitalism should not be used as a synonym for libertarianism. For this reason in the last few years I tend to refer to myself as an anarcho-libertarian instead of anarcho-capitalist. I believe capitalism–especially if it is made clear that it does not include corporatism–is closely associated with libertarianism in that it describes the free market in any libertarian society above a primitive level. That is, libertarianism supports property rights, which clearly imply a free market, so long as men engage in trade; and a free market is characterized by capitalism since the means of production (if there are any) are of course privately owned. This is true even of the left-libertarians’ kibbutzes, communes, and coops–such arrangements are simply voluntary coownership which is just one type or application of private ownershp rights.

What about tactical or strategical concerns? This one has more weight. The West is often referred to as “capitalist” because it allows a much higher degree of genuine capitalism than have other countries. Yet because the western states have never been fully libertarian, there has been a large and growing degree of corporatism or mercantalism. Thus in popular usage “capitalism” has some corporatist connotations. If we call ourselves capitalism we may mislead outsiders and open ourselves to unjust criticism. This is one reason I tend to say anarcho-libertarian instead. But so long as we are clear that we mean laissez-faire capitalism, or to condemn corporatism, mercantalism, and protectionism, I see nothing wrong with using the term capitalism to describe an important aspect of libertarian theory and society. Due to the constant drumbeat of the left-libertarians, there is a temptation to just give them this one. To stop using the word. To retreat. But we have to be careful in siding with them on their ostensibly “semantic” battle. In my view, we standard libertarians do not want to give the impression that we agree with the leftists’ substantive attacks on (laissez-faire, Lockean, private-property, modern, industrialized) capitalism. That debate should be a separate one, not mired in semantics.

Update: I posted the following comment to Sheldon Richman’s FEE blogpost Is Capitalism Something Good?:

It seems to me that a legitimate definition of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, and that there is no doubt that any advanced economic order of a libertarian society would have capitalism so defined. Even if it has private-collective worker-owned firms, co-ops, kibbutzes, and the like existing in isolated pockets sort of like the Amish still do today. And in fact even such communalist enclaves are built on private ownership of capital–it’s just that the members of the co-op voluntarily co-own the property privately. So we can view the co-ops etc. of a free society to be a (probably marginal) subset of capitalism; and in any case they are certainly compatible with capitalism since the economic order of a free society can have a wide diversity. In my view there is little doubt that there will always be a dominant and significant role for corporations, firms, employment, mass production, the specialization and division of labor, international trade, and so on–though there well may also be more opportunities for self-sufficiency, localism, communalist experimentation, and so on.

It is also true that the word capitalism nowadays has non-libertarian connotations like corporatism and crony capitalism. So where does this leave us? Capitalism, defined carefully, is a significant aspect of the economic order of a libertarian society. Even if defined carefully capitalism does not fully describe libertarianism or a libertarian society, but only one aspect of its economy. So I do not think we should use capitalism as a strict synonym for libertarianism (for this reason I use the term “anarcho-libertarian” nowadays instead of “anarcho-capitalist”), and when we do use it, we obviously have to be careful that we do not give the misleading impression that we are condoning crony capitalism or corporatism–so we can add a modifier if necessary, like “laissez-faire” or we can make it clear that we favor capitalism but condemn corporatism, etc.

So: do not use capitalism as a synonym for libertarianism; keep the word around for use in describing an aspect of a libertarian social order; but use it carefully in a way that does not connote crony capitalism.

A final note: we should not bash capitalism since this will be taken by anti-libertarians as siding with their hostility to property rights and the free market. And we should definitely not employ the word socialist, either, to describe our views.

Another comment of mine on the FEE blog:

@Little Alex:

“@Carpio: Your “eternal-teen-rebel” rhetoric is making you look silly and evasive. Placing capital in a hierarchy above the liberty of self-management to define a social system is regression. (http://wp.me/pnWUd-2rW)”

Libertarians view property rights as the only rights. Liberty is defined in terms of property rights. The libertarian conception of property rights immediately implies that all property, including “capital,” is privately owned. Thus “capitalism,” defined as a system in which capital is privately owned, is compatible with libertarianism and indeed an important aspect of any reasonably advanced libertarian society. Conceptually identifying this feature of the economic order of a libertarian society and attaching a name to that concept is not “Placing capital in a hierarchy above the liberty of self-management.” To the contrary, it is simply rational and honest explication and conceptual analysis of social and economic systems. As such, I can understand why it may rankle some leftists given the left’s hostility to rationality and clear thinking (and by saying this I do not mean to vindicate the right; they are both dishonest, wicked, confused views. Thank God we standard libertarians have escaped the left-right straitjacket).

“I’d never read Clarence Carson’s article, but you continue to ignore this rationale that many have echoed: “linguistically, it does not stand for private property, free enterprise, and the free market. It is false labeling to make it appear to do so. Capitalism means either a system in which capital holds sway, which is largely what Marx apparently meant, or an ideology to justify such a system”.”

“a system in which capital holds sway”–such vague, amorphous phrases are often trotted out and used for equivocation. We libertarians believe in property rights. Qua libertarians we need have no Marxian type opinion on whether any given feature of a free society “holds sway.”

“@Kinsella: RE: “It seems to me that a legitimate definition of capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production”

“Why? Assertion?”

This debate is at least partly about the meaning of terms–semantics. I think many leftists are reluctant to admit this because although in disingenuous fashion they at first seem to acknowledge this, this is quickly dismissed and substantive issues are smuggled in via equivocation. Well if someone says a word is inappropriate, then a semantical inquiry into what the meaning of the controversial term is, is warranted. Thus if I state that a legitimate definition of a word is X, this is not an “assertion”–it’s understood to be an appeal to standard methods of determining what definitions of given words are. That is, resorting to a dictionary or the like. And if you consult dictionaries, or encyclopedias, you’ll see that a very common definition of “capitalism” is “an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”

Or similar. This is not “assertion.” It’s a reasonable way to find out what a word means in a language. Now given this technical definition, as I argued, it is of course NOT incompatible with libertarianism and individual rights, and in fact is a crucial feature of any reasonably advanced libertarian society. As I acknowledged, it is not a good synonym for libertarianism but rather describes on part of the economic order of a libertarian society. It is associated with libertarianism because you cannot have true capitalism without a libertarian order (because capitalism requires property rights to be respected, and only libertarianism consistently does this); and you cannot have any reasonably advanced, productive, modern, prosperous, libertarian society without capitalism. So, they imply each other–so it is no wonder some people use capitalism as a stand-in for libertarianism, perhaps as a form of metonymy, in which “a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept”.

I also acknowledged that “capitalism” has other connotations that are incompatible with libertarianism, namely what we libertarians who try to keep concepts and definitions straight would call “crony capitalism” or perhaps “corporatism” or “mercantilism.” And because of these connotations and because of ambiguities and confusions (some of them caused by leftists and left-libertarians, perhaps), we have to be careful when we use the word capitalism: we should use it not as a synonym for liberty, but for a critical feature of the economic order of a free society; and we should be clear to use it in a context or way that makes it clear to the audience that it is the libertarian, free-market, anti-corporatist, technical, and libertarian-compatible meaning of capitalism that we have in mind.

So what if we need to do this? Such caution is (perhaps unfortunately) necessary for many of the radical ideas we advocate, which turn off the masses and the malicious–when we use free market, profit, individualism, self-interest, property rights, rationality, reason, economics, welfare, government, and so on. We have to deal with such misanthropes and ignoramuses, unfortunately, but we do not have to join them.

“RE: “It is also true that the word capitalism nowadays has non-libertarian connotations like corporatism and crony capitalism.”

“Nowadays? No, sir. Always.”

So what? It still has a technical definition in economics that in fact accurately describes a crucial feature of any advanced economic order that will arise when property rights (liberty) are respected. And for anyone who seeks any economic understanding at all, we need a word that correlates with this concept. There is a word; it’s useful; there is no reason whatsoever not to use it–so long as one is careful as I have adumbrated above–and as most libertarians are, already–once again showing that the left has almost nothing to teach us libertarians. Where the left is correct, we libertarians already know it (as Rothbard, say, recognized long ago in criticizing Rand’s bemoaning of Big Business as being America’s most persecuted minority). And where the left is original, or non-libertarian, it is wrong (e.g., its crankish economics, silly views on alienation, etc.–not that every aspect of Marxism is incompatible with libertarianism–see Hoppe: Marx was “Essentially Correct”).

I must say I have about had it with left-leaning libertarians having the gall to tell standard libertarians to learn from leftism–we are better than leftists, far better. It is they–these economically illiterate, individivual-hating, totalitarian-supporting, murderous, collectivist cranks–who should learn from us. Leftism, sir, frankly, is rank evil. Libertarianism is good. I know which side I’m on. The only thing I want from the left is for them to drop their crankism and misanthropy, acquire some economic literacy, and join us in respecting individualism and property rights. Other than that, I have no use for leftism/socialism, and am reminded of a comment by Sudha Shenoy in this regard about what socialists are really good for (this is said tongue in cheek, mind you).

“The usage of “capitalism” in the Randian/Misesean sense wasn’t intellectually honest; whether or not they admit it, it was purely political, they got away with it for a bit, but the crisis of actually existing capitalism has come back to bite genuine free marketeers in the ass.”

We will have to disagree on this. As a libertarian who appreciates the critical role of Mises in the fight for economic understandng and for individual liberty and property rights–and I also appreciate Rand’s role in the beginnings of the modern libertarian movement–I find such accusations to be completely appalling. Mises defended the private property order–the free society, whether left-“libertarians” realize this or not–and defended it proudly, using terms adequate to convey ideas–using terms that are part of the language, yes, using terms hurled pejoratively against us. The left also “accuses” us of favoring economic inequality (we do!), individualism (we do!), property rights (we do), self-interest (we do), and so on. I think Mises et al. are to be commended and appreciated for having the courage to proudly stand up for the goodness of the property-rights order that libertarianism favors. Mises fought for your rights, sir, and you call him dishonest? Utterly appalling.

In any case: your argument here is yet another apparently attempt to pretend like your are making only a semantic point, while the underlying motive, the passion, etc. are clearly political and activist oriented. The origin of the term is irrelevant. A word acquires a certain meaning in a given time in a given community; this is what dictionaries are for. It is clear beyond cavil that one standard, accepted meaning of the word “capitalism” is a system with private, as opposed to state, ownership of the means of production. And it is clear also that such a system is an inextricably important and good aspect of a libertarian society. Yes, the word has other meanings and connotations, but this only means we have to be careful and vigilant.

[Mises; TLS]

archived comments:

DixieFlatline April 16, 2010 at 1:19 pm

Brilliant.I remarked to Wombatron a long time ago that left-libertarianism (and as you noted, its sympathies with Marxism and Georgism) is an anachronistic venture, worried about who sat on which side of the legislature, and what terms meant 200 years ago (see the recent Charles Johnson/Lee Doren debate snorefest). While it is interesting historical trivia, it has very little to do with the development or promulgation of ideas.

As I noted in another blog comment, ideologues make poor marketers. In the aforementioned debate, Johnson tried to explain that using what seem to be to counter-intuitive terms (to the listener) are useful for initiating a dialog. As someone who markets for a living, I can say with confidence that confusing the listener/reader may work some of the time (like a stopped clock being right twice a day), but will almost always will yield a poorer result than being clear and reinforcing.

Ron Paul has proven that these ideas are infectious, exciting and powerful. They don’t need a complicated or intricate delivery. They do not have to be delivered by demagogues and skilled oratory. They don’t require sophisticated arguments about historical context. They certainly benefit from the absence of obfuscation and rhetorical tricks of redirection.

The appeal of revising language appears to me to be, that it keeps everyone talking about the superficial and not talking about and acting on ideas.

Reply

Brian Drake April 16, 2010 at 2:32 pm

Dixie,

I can appreciate your point. And in a way, that’s an element of libertarian philosophy that appeals to me intensely, it’s brilliant simplicity.

Libertarianism has the selling-point in its name: Liberty

And liberty functionally means only one thing: self-ownership

That’s it.

You’re a libertarian if you believe you-own-you and I-own-me. Period.

That’s a pretty simply sell, is it not? No historical context or understanding of economics necessary.

If you can convince someone of self-ownership, and they really buy it, then all else follows fairly easy for the rest of the philosophy is simply an exploration of the self-evident nature of liberty and the practical application of it. Of course, that’s where you encounter a lot of “buyer’s remorse” and the exposure of false “converts”. When a follow-the-idea-to-its-logical-conclusion investigation reveals that self-ownership is incompatible with theft, slavery, murder, and fraud, the true character of the person is laid bare. Which do they value more? Liberty, or what they can obtain by aggression against others?

Reply

Michael A. Clem April 16, 2010 at 1:45 pm

What could be more anarchistic than language itself? It is the users of the language who decide what a word means. The best advice is the often-used phrase, “know your audience”. Are you talking to a friend, a co-worker, a stranger at a fair; are you speaking on the radio, posting on the internet, writing a letter to the editor? Different audiences will have a slightly different understanding of the terms you use.

Reply

Brian Drake April 16, 2010 at 2:23 pm

Michael,

This is an excellent point (language is the ultimate proof of anarchy). Language is not absolute, it’s a bunch of arbitrary noises and squiggles that we’ve collectively attached meaning to. Just as all value is subjective, ultimately, language is subjective. That there is a high-degree of commonality in our individual subjective evaluations of those arbitrary noises and squiggles doesn’t change the subjective nature of language. In fact, the high-degree of commonality is further proof that it is human nature to mold one’s values to be compatible with others out of a desire to exchange (supporting the fact that order is a spontaneous result of voluntary society).

So I definitely agree choosing words that communicate with the intended audience is more important than “sticking to our guns” over a certain semantic quibble.

The caveat is that this must swing both ways. As it is wise to choose words that truly communicate our ideas to a specific audience, it is dishonest to use one subjective understanding of a word to falsely accuse another for using that word though they define it differently.

If those on the “left” want to use capitalism to refer to corporatism and reject that, that’s fine. But when they then criticize libertarians for supporting corporatism because we use the word capitalism, knowing full well that by capitalism we mean “the ‘system’ of voluntary exchanges between self-owning individuals (knowing full well because we are not ambiguous in defining our terms) — something fully incompatible with corporatism, that’s just lying.

I think it was Voltaire who said “if you want to converse with me, define your terms”. As long as someone will honestly and consistently apply their definitions, I have no problem adapting to their vocabulary for at least the duration of a discussion. It’s the “bait-and-switch” people who really piss me off.

Reply

Deus X. Nihilo April 16, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Well, I guess one up side to this is that in labeling their ideas LEFT-libertarian–which you hold to be confused and wrong–there’s no chance of yourself being confused with those ideas. At least they did you the courtesy of adopting a distinctive label that seperates them out from the rest of the libertarian movement.

I rather wish other libertarians would start doing this–I think it would help the rest of the world sort out all the different movement subsets there actually are, rather than just casually assuming that because Neal Boortz calls himself a libertarian, all libertarians agree with Neal Boortz (to use one extreme example).

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Russ April 16, 2010 at 4:34 pm

The only problem with so-called “left-libertarianism” is that it isn’t libertarianism at all. It’s just a repackaging of the tired old “property is theft” variant of anarchism of 100+ years ago. Just because it’s anti-state, that doesn’t mean it’s libertarian.

I agree with SK on the idea that we shouldn’t retreat, and allow the leftists to frame and define the terms of the debate. In fact, when I am in a discussion that allows me to define my terms, I call myself a liberal, then explain that I mean a liberal in the classical Misesian sense of the word, in a possibly Quixotic attempt to take the word back.

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Deus X. Nihilo April 16, 2010 at 5:08 pm

Who in the modern Libertarian Left says that “property is theft”?

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Stephan Kinsella April 16, 2010 at 11:33 pm

Russ, I think most soi-disant left-libertarians are very libertarian. Consider Roderick Long and Sheldon Richman. Both extremely principled, great libertarians. I just think for them left might describe some of their (a-libertarian) personal preferences, or some of their emphases in their libertarian interests or research. I think it’s a confusing and misleading concept, but that’s no crime.

Nihilo — well those libertarians and mutualists who advocate some kind of occupancy rule, and who maintain that a landlord or employer loses ownership of his own property to his tenants or employees because he is “absent” do in fact maintain that the societal recognition of the landlord/employer as owner of his property is theft from the tenants/employees, who have a better claim to it.

Reply

Michael A. Clem April 16, 2010 at 4:40 pm

Actually, they don’t tend to call themselves “left-libertarian”, but anarchist or libertarian, and objecting to us “right-libertarians” or anarcho-capitalists for trying to appropriate their terms…

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Stephan Kinsella April 16, 2010 at 11:28 pm

Well what other types are there? Most people that the left calls “paleo” or “right” libertarians are not. I am not. Most Misesians are not. We are just standard libertarians. We properly condemn the right as much as the left.

There are minarchist and anarchist libertarians; in my view anarcho-libertarian is redundant because libertarianism implies opposition to the state; a minarchist is not a full libertarian. In any case, they usually adopt these labels to specify which they are.

Other than these labels what other groups do you think need especial naming?

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Anthony Clair April 16, 2010 at 3:36 pm

“What could be more anarchistic than language itself?”

Great point, Michael. This idea follows closely with some insight a classmate of mine offered in a discussion a few days ago. We were discussing the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case, which effectively banned state legislatures from imposing anti-sodomy laws in their states (thank goodness, and finally), and she said, “This all seems so arbitrary. The laws are just words that a select few write down, and the Supreme Court is an even smaller group that decides our fate based on their opinions and interpretations.” Despite the State’s attempts to establish never-ending laws and regulations, people’s preferences for changing language will always trump their arbitrarily established rules. It’s a very ironic idea – the State has no option expect to try and establish its foundations using anarchistic devices.

I think it’s unfortunate that words like “liberal,” “liberty,” “freedom,” “capitalism,” and even to a certain extent “laissez-faire” no longer carry the same widely accepted definitions they did decades and centuries ago. Too often I hear highly educated, seemingly at-least-partially wise people proclaim the perils of our “free-market” system, and how the hands off approach of laissez-faire capitalism has proven itself to be an awful, innefficient, unfair system that breeds greed and egoism.

To me, people who have treated themselves to some Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt or any other Austrian by the time they hear such utterances should find very little difficulty in confronting the speaker and explaining his or her errors. But perhaps the most important task is to be comfortable using whatever words will work in the conversation. If one has to define self-ownership, the non-aggression principle and voluntary action as “Tallahassadoogyism,” so be it. Besides, that tends to lighten the mood.

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Brad April 16, 2010 at 3:56 pm

The only reason I question the use of the term capitalism is that it has been too polluted – both by those we don’t like it all and those Statists who have co-opted the term to mean the corporo-fascistic economic model that we actually have (and meant to). Unfortunately in the sound-bite world we live in we don’t have time to explain that what we mean by Capitalism is x, y, and usually z, not the 1,2, and 3 that it is said to be – you have lost the audience’s attention span.

If it’s a debate between right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, absent the use of Force, it then really is just a matter of how an individual chooses to live their life and the voluntary associations they choose to make.

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Stephan Kinsella April 16, 2010 at 11:29 pm

I don’t think there are many “right” libertairans if we are talking about anarcho-libertarians. We are neither right nor left.

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Aubrey Herbert April 17, 2010 at 8:21 am

“In my view, we libertarians are neither left nor right; both left and right are confused, wicked doctrines. We are better than both of them. Which one is “more” evil is a question that may have no answer; from the libertarian point of view, both are wrong, which is why we have an original, fresh, consistent, and radical view focused on individual rights.”

*Claps*

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Vanmind April 20, 2010 at 12:04 am

Use of capital is not optional in any society, therefore it is the self-professed “socialists” who must abandon that ridiculous term to start using various forms of “capitalism” (e.g. State Capitalism, Minarchist Capitalism, Free Capitalism, etc.).

On today’s Slate Political Gabfest the hosts criticized Tea Partiers for misusing the word “socialism.” David Plotz said it’s “stunning” that Tea Partiers would say Obama is leading the country into socialism. After all, the Obamacare legislation benefited corporations such as insurance companies. The hosts accuse the Tea Partiers of basically engaging in equivocation: using the pejorative potency of “socialism” because of its traditional technical meaning but using the word in a looser sense to refer to “big government.”

But of course the Tea Partiers have a point. It is true that socialism in a technical sense has been used to denote economic or political systems in which the means of production are publicly owned–basically, the state owns land and factories, as under communism. But fascism and corporatism can be seen as variants of this basic idea: instead of directly and explicitly owning the means of production, the state indirectly controls such resources by its control and regulation of corporations, who nominally own capital. This was done under fascism in Hitler’s Germany, for example, which was of course socialistic–the word Nazi means “national socialist”. Thus, the Slate Political Gabfest pundits, while a bit condescendingly chastising the Tea Partiers for their naivety, are themselves a bit naive in contrasting fascism from socialism, as if they are totally distinct or opposed.

As I noted in What Libertarianism Is, Austrian economist and libertarian philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added). He goes on:

If … an action is performed that uninvitedly invades or changes the physical integrity of another person’s body and puts this body to a use that is not to this very person’s own liking, this action … is called aggression … Next to the concept of action, property is the most basic category in the social sciences. As a matter of fact, all other concepts to be introduced in this chapter — aggression, contract, capitalism and socialism — are definable in terms of property: aggression being aggression against property, contract being a nonaggressive relationship between property owners, socialism being an institutionalized policy of aggression against property, and capitalism being an institutionalized policy of the recognition of property and contractualism. [pp. 12, 7]

In other words, although the term socialism is usually narrowly restricted to public ownership of the means of production, from a political or ethical standpoint there is nothing special about “capital”; what is important about it is that it is a type of private property. Thus the essence of socialism is simply institutionalized aggression against private property. In this broader sense, any state action that infringes on property rights is socialistic. The Tea Partiers are right to sense the socialism of Obamacare, for it most certainly involves institutionalized, massive, and widespread interference with private property rights–e.g., the taxes that fund it are theft of private property; the economic regulations imposed on businesses and individuals are trespass. Where the Tea Partiers go wrong is in not realizing that Republican and conservative polices are also socialistic in this broader sense–from the drug war to the war in Iraq. (See also Friedman and Socialism.)

Yet again, we have an illustration of the fact that only libertarians oppose the state, aggression, slavery, and socialism in a principled, consistent way.

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Latest notable terms from this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest and Slate Political Gabfest (feel free to email me suggestions or leave them in the comments to the main page). [continue reading…]

Anarcho-pacifist Jason Ditz did some funny mini-movies about Rothbard and his parting from Cato, with various other libertarian characters thrown in. Recurring characters include Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Tom Palmer, Lew Rockwell, me, Karen De Coster, and others. Many of the movies contain in-jokes regarding various discussions by a group of libertarians on a freewheeling, funny private libertarian discussion list to which Ditz and I belonged. They are strange but oddly compelling and kind of funny. I embed the key movies below; links theretok are found scattered around in various places, viz.: the Anarcho-Pacifist Films blog;  What Is The Kochtopus?; and Ditz’s site. Lew Rockwell thought they were great. There is “bonus content” (trailers and director’s commentary) as well. (N.B.: I had nothing to do with the creation of these films other than send Ditz a short voice recording, upon request, for “Wrath of Koch.”)

(Update: some of the links below and google videos are now bad; alternative ones can be found at Ditz’s site and I have added the Youtube embeds and links below.)

The following descriptions are taken from Ditz’s site:

Movie 1: I Can’t Drive 55: The Stephan Kinsella Story (Youtube version) – 2:24 January, 2007 (based on the September 2003 LRC Blog entry by Kinsella)

[continue reading…]

Those without any sound principles about rights and economics are totally confounded by the issue of gene patents. The author of “The absurdity of patenting genes,” in The Guardian, for example, first observes, “Patents are a sensible idea, because people are more likely to invest in innovation …”. But on the other hand, “patents also act as a barrier to innovation, and gene patents bring these disadvantages into stark relief.” So, patents are sensible, because they stimulate innovation … yet they also hamper innovation. Mmm-hmm.

Libertarians, however, having a better understanding of the nature of property rights, are increasingly recognizing that all patents are unjust (see my The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide). And something about gene patents–having the state grant monopolies on the way our genes are configured–is especially galling. Thank goodness this is being fought by the heroic David Koepsell, who is producing the anti-gene patent documentary Who Owns You? (see also Koepsell – Quinn “Debate” on Gene Patents; David Koepsell: Another Austrian-Influenced IP Opponent). And it’s also good that a federal trial court recently ruled against gene patents, in Association for Molecular Pathology and ACLU v. USPTO and Myriad (see Federal Court Invalidates Breast Cancer Gene Patent, Ronald Baily, Reason‘s Hit & Run; Court: Essentially All Gene Patents Are Invalid, Patently-O). [continue reading…]

Great illustration of the logic of MAD: the infamous “guillotine” cartoon:

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of deterrence according to which the deployment of strong weapons is essential to threaten the enemy in order to prevent the use of the very same weapons. The strategy is effectively a form of Nash equilibrium, in which both sides are attempting to avoid their worst possible outcome — nuclear annihilation.

Congratulations to Professor Peter Boettke on receiving the 2010 Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE). Teaching economic literacy and the principles of liberty is absolutely essential to making progress in the fight against the state. Professor Boettke is to be commended for his tireless efforts in this regard.

[TLS]

I blogged a year ago about the “Secret intellectual property treaty [that] could profoundly change life on the Internet.” At the time, the text was still secret but it was believed that the treaty: “seeks to set forth standards for enforcing cases of alleged copyright and patent infringement.” Now, as Cory Doctorow notes in How ACTA will change the world’s internet laws, the text has been leaked. This thing is bad. America and the west have long tried to extend the reach of their mercantalist IP laws — they use the WTO to twist the arms of other countries, etc. (see, e.g., my previous posts Hatch’s “International IP Piracy Priority Watch List”; IP Imperialism (Russia, Intellectual Property , and the WTO); Russian Free Trade and Patents; Bush Wants More Jailed Citizens in Russia and China; China, India like US Patent Reform).

The ACTA is also similar to another arcane law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, under the guise of protecting “property rights,” snuck in provisions that criminalize even the mere possession of technology that can be used to circumvent digital protection systems (see, e.g., my post TI Uses Copyright Law to Attack TI Calculator Enthusiasts). Likewise, under the guise or protecting property rights in inventions and artistic works (patent and copyright), it “seeks to provide legal authority for the surveillance of Internet file transfers and searches of personal property”. As one group notes, “ACTA goes way, way beyond the TRIPS (the copyright/patent/trademark stuff in the World Trade Organization agreement), creating an entirely new realm of liability for people who provide services on the net”. More invasion of personal liberty and property rights in the name of false, artificial property rights.

So the ACTA is like a hybrid of previous efforts: it is as abusive and insidious as the DMCA, and covers patents as well as copyrights. And it will apply worldwide. This is culmination of America’s efforts use of the WTO to extend western style IP rights worldwide. As Doctorow notes, this is “a radical rewriting of the world’s Internet laws, taking place in secret, without public input. Public input? Hell, even Members of Parliament and Congressmembers don’t get a say in this. The Obama administration’s trade rep says that the US will sign onto ACTA without Congressional debate, under an administrative decree.”

For detailed comments on the ACTA, please see the following report:

James Love, Comments on ACTA Provisions on Injunctions and Damages (pdf), KEI Research Note (Knowledge Ecology International, April 6, 2010).

[cross-posted at Mises blog and The Libertarian Standard]

Archived Mises comments:

newson April 11, 2010 at 6:44 pm

similarly liberticide moves by the british lower house in rushing through this bill:
http://bit.ly/cyN3ji

REPLY

newson April 11, 2010 at 6:48 pm

objectivists will be pleased about the international standardization of legislation.

REPLY

Civdis April 11, 2010 at 7:52 pm

The usual qualifier goes something like: “now I don’t encourage anyone not to pay taxes, but…” But how much of my money helps to lower my own standard of living? How much is going into bills helping to destroy markets, our only protection against the Malthusian population problem? How much of my money has gone into the genocide of middle-easterners? What are the numbers now? I know it broke a million a couple years ago in Iraq alone. 1 cent is beyond what I can morally accept. I always hold my breath, with all my hope being put into what I consider the most important invention man has ever created: the internet. If this is taken away… well, my naive hope is that people remain peaceful in their decent.

REPLY

Peter April 11, 2010 at 9:54 pm

how much of my money helps to lower my own standard of living? How much is going into bills helping to destroy markets, our only protection against the Malthusian population problem? How much of my money has gone into the genocide of middle-easterners

All of it. Every red cent.

now I don’t encourage anyone not to pay taxes

I can’t imagine why not.

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marxbites April 12, 2010 at 4:28 pm

It’s clearly waaaaaay past time to stop lending any scrap legitimacy or in cooperating with this counterproductive to freedom govt and FED of murderous thieving parasites.

This govt makes KGIIIs depredations upon the colonists seem as mosquito bites.

Are we Americans for freedom at any cost or subsevient get along wimps dodging few if any mosquitos.

Fellow guest Becky Akers and I discussed anarchy, the role of education in fighting statism, and related matters, with host Don Cooper on his Qaoss Talk Radio show, April 10, 2010. The show is archived here (local MP3).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.1MB)

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In recent years the “Net Neutrality” movement has gained steam. This is an effort by various statists, interventionists, do-gooders, meddlers, and techno-ignoramuses who seek to have the government forbid network providers (e.g. cable companies, telcos, and wireless carriers) from selectively blocking certain types of Internet use–for example, to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network. Of course, as I noted on A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality, the network neutrality movement is unlibertarian. There is nothing wrong with price discrimination or with charging different prices for different levels of service. As some anti-corporatist types are only too eager to point out, without state intervention the major telcos might well not have as much monopolistic power as they currently do. But it doesn’t make much sense to urge that the state engage in further intervention to fix the problem of previous state intervention. It is state intervention that is the problem.

In the latest development on this front, as reported in U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic, cable company Comcast Corporation had challenged the F.C.C.’s authority to impose Net Neutrality rules. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled in Comcast’s favor, holding that F.C.C. regulators have limited power over Web traffic. As the article notes, “The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users.”

Libertarians should not leap for joy, however. The court merely held that current federal statutes do not happen to give the F.C.C. quite enough authority to regulate Internet companies in this manner. They didn’t say it would be unconstitutional or even unwise. So all Congress has to do is pass a law. And they’re good at doing that.

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