I found a great morph of Olbermann and O’Reilly:
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
I’ve always thought that the anti-Christ would look something like that.
You know this isn’t a fair comparison. Yes, both are professional agitators. But Olbermann agitates into an egalitarian direction. O’Fuckhead agitates into an oligarchic direction.
Are you suggesting that Olbermann’s agitation in an “egalitarian direction” is less offensive somehow?
Are you suggesting that it isn’t less offensive? Agitation is in perfect accord with the non aggression principle. In fact, to agitate in a way that elucidates is more than just allowed, it ought to be applauded. On the other hand, to agitate in a way that obfuscates is — technically — allowed, but in the same way that the National Enquirer is allowed to print nearly whatever they want.
Olbermann champions causes like labor, maybe in an unsavory statist form, but the content is just. O’Reilly champions causes like corporate control of legal power.
Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh are professional agitators too. Do you think they are equally offensive?
I’m just saying that I find Olbermann’s calls for theft, and his incredible thoughtlessness about economics (see, for example, his “Afford to live? Are we so heartless?” tirade) very offensive.
And I’m not sure what you mean by the phrase “causes like labor.” Arguments on the side of “labor” are no more inherently just than those on the side of management…
Oops. Response here.
…I find Olbermann’s calls for theft, and his incredible thoughtlessness about economics (see, for example, his “Afford to live? Are we so heartless?” tirade) very offensive.
Since you imply that there is no degree of difference between the offensiveness of Olbermann and O’Reilly, I should simply ask which is more offensive: demanding a single payer system or demanding the status quo? Or are they equally offensive? Do you think Noam Chomsky is offensive when he demands a single payer system? And do you think Olbermann is offensive when he pledges to ignore the insurance mandate and to go to jail for passive resistance?
These are instances where it’s helpful to keep in mind the left/right dichotomy. If you’re thinking solely in terms of the anarchist/statist dichotomy, you’re likely to be confused. And whether you think you’re transcending the left/right dichotomy or not, you’re still falling to the right. Now swing left.
Or swing left.
…which is more offensive: demanding a single payer system or demanding the status quo?
I wouldn’t place either one above the other, in terms of offensiveness. Personally, if I had to choose, I would rather see the single-payer system enacted, because I think if we are to have tyranny then it should at least be an honest sort, and also because such a system might stand a better chance of collapse.
But of course the overwhelming majority of advocates for a single-payer system aren’t so nuanced in their reasoning.
It just so happens that Olbermann — the person you’re equating to O’Reilly — is so nuanced in his reasoning.
I wouldn’t place either one above the other, in terms of offensiveness.
So a system in which 10% of the population is left for dead is no more offensive than a system in which no one is left for dead but the rich is made less rich?
Olbermann supports a single-payer system because he believes it will bankrupt the state? Interesting; I hadn’t heard this.
…a system in which no one is left for dead…
That’s quite a presumption.
I didn’t know that’s what you meant. The single-payer logic from the anarcho-syndicalist perspective goes something like this: state-run programs that encourage institutionalized norms that are just — save the involvement of the state — will allow for smoother transitions to stateless societies than will attempts to bankrupt the state. The latter may likely be counterproductive and generate stronger statist structures in spite of the opposite intention. You may disagree with that strategy but to put it on par with the corporatism of O’Reilly is plain stupid.
Olbermann is an anarchist?
“…a system in which no one is left for dead…”
That’s quite a presumption.
Given the context, it’s not a presumption at all. How many Canadians are denied care?
…such a system might stand a better chance of collapse.
Sorry but collapse is much more likely to be caused by the financial system than the health care system. If your object is to bankrupt the US, then you’d be wasting your time focusing on health care. Just make sure that derivative markets are running smoothly in the dark so that private companies can bet against their own success. As if a single-payer system can hold a candle to the financial nuclear bomb that your vision of a stateless society ignores.
Why would a state-run program that looks nothing like a free market situation help the transition to statelessness?
In a free market, some people would be “left for dead,” on the basis of the prohibitive cost of saving them. Now, of course it shouldn’t be up to me or any other being (aside from, in some cases, the individual in question) to decide that; in a free market, it would be a simple matter of availability of funds and perhaps an honest look at costs and benefits. This is what has irked me the most of what I’ve heard from Olbermann: the idea that you can’t put a price on human life. That someone could honestly express such a sentiment, and really mean it, is just mind-boggling.
How many Canadians are denied care?
Nice try, but you said “no one is left for dead.” I’m fairly certain some Canadians are still dying from preventable or treatable medical problems.
…your vision of a stateless society…
Are you just making wild guesses about what I believe?
Olbermann is an anarchist?
To act like someone either is or isn’t an anarchist is to muddy the waters. People hold beliefs that match different degrees of anarchy. To be 100% anarchist is probably to act like the Joker. To be 0% anarchist is probably to act like Hitler. Given Olbermann’s willingness to openly break man-made law to honor his conscience, he’s likely at least 25% anarchist.
In a free market, some people would be “left for dead,” on the basis of the prohibitive cost of saving them.
To be “left for dead” is to have reasonable means to treat someone but not do so because that person cannot compensate those doing the treating. At least 10% of our population falls into that category. And the question is hardly one of scarcity. If hundreds of trillions can flow through derivative markets that bring one-way benefit to the least-deserving individuals in society, then a couple of trillion ought to circulate to those who deserve at least a dignified life. Any market system that does not redirect the flow of capital in such a direction would hardly be “free.”
This is what has irked me the most of what I’ve heard from Olbermann: the idea that you can’t put a price on human life.
Well, in a Wittgensteinian sense, the difference between life and price is the difference between quality and quantity. You can estimate, but to think of that as a rigid science is a bit sociopathic.
I’m fairly certain some Canadians are still dying from preventable or treatable medical problems.
You’re also fairly certain that by “left for dead” I mean something that I don’t mean.
Are you just making wild guesses about what I believe?
Not at all. You advocate bankrupting the state. I think that’s fucking retarded.
The state is dead. Long live the state.
“To be 100% anarchist is probably to act like the Joker.”
Joker is a nihilist, like Hannibal Lecter, not an anarchist. Anarchists merely seek to remove the central controlling authority. Nihilists seek, in addition, the destruction of legal and social orders to be replaced by nothing.
Joker is a nihilist, like Hannibal Lecter, not an anarchist.
Hannibal Lector is a nihilist. But I don’t think Joker is. Nihilists believe life is meaningless. If Joker believed life was meaningless, then why would he do anything? He explicitly says, “it’s about sending a message.” He may believe that the Gotham form of life is meaningless. But that’s a different belief from the belief that life in general is meaningless — like Hannibal seems to have internalized after his childhood experience in war.
Joker is 100% anarchist because his default setting is to demonstrate how the central controlling authority is powerless. Nothing that he does necessarily points to pure destruction — like Hannibal does. He would probably call it creative destruction.
Russell said something like: there are those who are responsible and those who pose as responsible. The duty of the philosopher is to expose the posers. Joker takes that kind of sentiment to heart. That’s his purpose in creating Two-Face — to show he’s not really a white knight. And he hints that it’s not a mere character flaw in Dent. It’s the form of life in which Dent is immersed that makes him vulnerable to madness. Joker talks about how that form of life is a sham created by “the schemers.”
I don’t think 100% anarchism is helpful. We can all agree that we want to transition to a different form of life — one with radically less injustice. But I advocate something like 50% anarchism so that the current form of life can safely mutate into one with radically less injustice.
“Joker is 100% anarchist because his default setting is to demonstrate how the central controlling authority is powerless.”
My interpretation of Joker’s actions is that he is trying to transform his surroundings in his own nihilistic image. If he does not believe life is meaningless, why give a loaded handgun to Harvey Dent and allow him to flip a coin over Joker’s life? If he doesn’t believe life is meaningless, why burn all of the money stolen from the mob, and then why steal it in the first place?
The best, purest two examples of the character I’ve seen are TDK and Batman: THe Killing Joke. IN both, Joker conducts sadistic experiments on people to attempt to strip away their thin veneer of civilization and expose their inner nihilist. He succeeds with Dent in TDK, but fails with the final experiment, the two groups of people on the ferries. He also fails with Jim Gordon in The Killing Joke, despite subjecting him to the worst physical and psychological tortures imaginable. The point of both TDK and Killing Joke is that Joker is wrong, we aren’t all bloody savages.
The Joker is an anarchist in the same way that Rand was an individualist.
The Joker is an anarchist in the same way that Rand was an individualist.
I think that’s right. Rand’s individualism went over the edge into solipsism. Joker’s anarchism goes over the edge into aggressive anarchism (which is what I would call “generic anarchism”).
MBH:
That’s not what not Anarchism is about. In fact, it has basically nothing to do with what Anarchism is about.
The aim of Anarchism is to abolish central controlling authority, in order to enable the emergence of consensual social order. Not to show that central controlling authority is “powerless” to stop random acts of terrorism. You may notice that that last italicized item, which has been central to Anarchism since Proudhoun wrote that “Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of Order,” is not exactly on Joker’s Christmas list.
I’m pretty sure he would not. You seem to be confusing him with the Shadows, or perhaps Ra’s al-Ghul.
Well, OK, but that’s not really what Anarchism is about, either.
Well, if you define your notion of 100% anarchism in terms of random violence and terror, I suppose that you wouldn’t.
Anarchism is a doctrine about ends, not just a doctrine about means. “100% Anarchism” means advocacy of a life 100% without government. Not advocacy of some particular set of tactics (random violence, blind destruction of all social institutions, whatever) to get there.
“100% Anarchism” means advocacy of a life 100% without government.
It also, necessarily, means total divorce from the conventional System. I don’t even know what that means.
It’s like Descartes asking whether or not his mind is the only mind — without noticing that the language he’s using to ask that question comes from a community of shared minds.
I agree that the System has to rejected. But how can alternative institutions ever be entirely uprooted from the System? If they could, would that even be desirable? You’re being way too Dr. Strangelove for me dude.
MBH:
Well, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, either, so I suppose that if you don’t know what you mean by it, and I don’t know what you mean by it, it may not have been a good choice of terms for describing the debate. Maybe we should try talking about real, identifiable institutions, or at least noticeable forms of institutions (e.g., “coercive,” “dominating,” “formalized,” whatever it is you have in mind) rather than a nebulous “System”?
You’re the one who introduced this “System” stuff out of the blue sky; how would I know whether or not alternative institutions ever can be uprooted from it? It “the System” means something like “society,” then I never said anything about getting out of that, and I don’t think Anarchism has anything to do with that. (Rather, Anarchists specifically distinguish society from the State, in order to explain that they want to reform the one from within, while — in part by — abolishing the other.) If it means something like “the entire institutional structure of society,” then I’ll just recur to my answer about society broadly; there are lots of institutions that Anarchism has no particular beef with, and lots that it suggests we bulk up. If it means something like “systems of domination” or “systems of coercion,” then of course alternative institutions can be uprooted from that — or at least, if they can’t, you haven’t given me any reasons yet to believe that they can’t. (Certainly your analogy to Descartes doesn’t help: Descartes’ problem, if he has one, has to do with his attempt to doubt human sociality. But Anarchism is all about human sociality; it’s simply proposing another, better form for the socializing. What it’s against is (1) coercion specifically, and (2) domination and hierarchy more broadly; but you haven’t yet offered any reasons to think that its critique of coercion or domination is presupposing either coercion or domination, in the way that Descartes’ act of raising doubts supposedly presupposes the social context that he’s trying to raise doubts about.)
“I think that’s right. Rand’s individualism went over the edge into solipsism.”
That’s true in a sense, but it’s only the beginning of it. In her sociopathic solipsism, she ends up not just going over the edge but rejecting individualism outright; she becomes an insane (and rather tacky) arch-collectivist. In the same way, the Joker’s “anarchism” really just amounts to government-by-the-Joker (“This is my city. Tell your men they work for me now.”)
Maybe we should try talking about real, identifiable institutions, or at least noticeable forms of institutions…
Why? Are deeply ingrained belief systems not institutions?
MBH:
No, not in the primary sense of the word “institutions” they are not. Of course, many or most of them are promulgated by institutions, and legitimize institutions — universities, churches, etc.
But, in any case, I had no idea that by “the System” you meant to refer to “deeply ingrained belief systems.” If that is what you meant by that term, then I’ll recur to what I said above, with some minor and obvious changes.
If you just mean any “deeply ingrained belief system” just as such, then of course no non-Nihilistic version of Anarchism has any problem with deeply-ingrained belief systems just as such, any more than we are against human sociality just as such — most of us would like anti-statism and anti-authoritarianism to become more deeply ingrained in most people than they currently are, for one thing. Of course, you may say, “Ah! But what about what the Nihilists say?” Well, what about it? I think what they say is wrong; but in any case I’m not aware of any strong reason for treating the Nihilists as the exemplary Anarchists rather than any other school of Anarchistic thought.
What about actually-existing deeply-ingrained belief systems? Certainly, Anarchists call on people to reject a lot of conventional beliefs. But it certainly doesn’t mean simply jumping out of all existing conventional beliefs, any more than it involves jumping out of the entire institutional structure of society. There are belief systems that we challenge, and belief systems that we have no basic beef with (most Anarchists, as far as I know, are happy with people believing that the earth revolves around the sun and that you shouldn’t torture dogs or children just for the fun of it). In point of fact, when we set out to challenge the belief systems that we challenge, it is often by showing how those beliefs conflict with other, deeply ingrained beliefs that we want people to hold onto (e.g., by showing how support for government wars is incompatible with opposition to murder and torture, etc.).
If you mean to pick out some particular form of “belief systems,” e.g. hierarchical belief systems or belief systems that sanction coercion, then of course there are available alternatives to that; or at least, you haven’t yet given me any reasons to believe that they can’t. Certainly, Anarchists have spent a lot of time trying to develop alternative, non-hierarchical, non-coercive belief systems, and I don’t think you’ve shown how “alternative institutions” or alternative belief systems or whatever presuppose the negation of those alternative belief systems.
Arguments on the side of “labor” are no more inherently just than those on the side of management…
Sure: from an ahistorical perspective that’s true. From another possible world perspective that’s true. From this world: you’re going to run into some difficulties. I don’t recall widespread incidents of labor dehumanizing management. But management dehumanizing labor? Does anything come to mind?
I’m not really sure what you’re referring to.
Must be nice to be self-employed or independently wealthy.
And what’s this “sun” thing people keep talking about?
It’s just a yellow round ball that rotates around the earth’s axis. Duh.
Were these supposed to pass for responses?
I can think of a number of instances of “labor” engaging in violence, direct or by proxy, against business owners and management. But I don’t know what you would categorize as “dehumanizing,” since you were quite vague about it.
And while I’m on the topic of vague terms, what exactly do you mean by “labor” as a cause?
Were these supposed to pass for responses?
Most definitely. Just mirroring your logic bub.
I can think of a number of instances of “labor” engaging in violence, direct or by proxy, against business owners and management.
And I can think of instances in which wives beat their husbands. But that doesn’t mean the scales tip in that direction.
But I don’t know what you would categorize as “dehumanizing,” since you were quite vague about it.
Here I pretty much defer to Roderick/Rothbard/Locke. Management doesn’t own the fruits of labor by default. Laborers own the fruits of their labor by default. Any system that overrides this setting is dehumanizing.
And while I’m on the topic of vague terms, what exactly do you mean by “labor” as a cause?
To consider systems that acknowledge laborers’ ownership over the product of their labor as the default setting.
I’d say they both agitate in an oligarchic direction (and they’re both remarkably careless — to use no worse term — with regard to facts). Olbermann’s rhetoric is more egalitarian than O’Reilly’s, but I’m not sure whether that makes him better or worse (is sweet-tasting poison an improvement over nasty-tasting poison?). And in terms of substance rather than rhetoric, in what respect is Olbermann significantly better than O’Reilly?
I do find Olbermann less annoying to listen to than O’Reilly, but the margin by which that’s true is steadily decreasing. Upon the election Olbermann shifted with surpassing swiftness from watchdog to lapdog. (I have similar problems with Maddow, but I find her more reasonable than Olbermann — and she is at least willing to interview people she disagrees with, unlike Olbermann; and she doesn’t interrupt them constantly, unlike O’Reilly.)
If anarchists are against aggression and domination, then the Joker’s a lot closer to Hitler than to anarchism.
I’d say they both agitate in an oligarchic direction…
I don’t want to say that Olbermann never agitates in that direction. He does and it annoys me too. But when he, for instance, uses his reach and sporting world connections to openly threaten the state of arizona that he will help organize big name athletes into boycotting big money events like the MLB All-Star game, I can’t help but hear a distinctly anarcho-syndicalist wavelength. That kind of airtime is substantively distinct from the shit O’Reilly spews.
Upon the election Olbermann shifted with surpassing swiftness from watchdog to lapdog.
That’s true.
If anarchists are against aggression and domination, then the Joker’s a lot closer to Hitler than to anarchism.
I don’t accept the antecedent. If ‘anarchists’ was prefaced with ‘well-trained’ then I’d accept it. But in the anarchist/statist dichotomy, I stick with the idea that 100% anarchy is chaotic fear — not the polycentric legal order I know you personally refer to when you use the word ‘anarchy’.
Well, anarchy means the absence of rulers. Why do you associate that with chaotic fear? The problem with violent criminals is that they act like freelance ruers.
Well, anarchy means the absence of rulers. Why do you associate that with chaotic fear?
I don’t. But my perspective is one amongst many. Most people would perceive it as chaotic fear. (It would be more than presidentlessness. It would be external authoritylessness. That would freak most people out.) They would be more, not less, susceptible to freelance rulers.
The state is dead. Long live the state.
Well, sure, there might be chaos if we pushed a button and abolished the state overnight, with no body of alternative institutions and practices to replace it. But any dramatic transition from one system to another without preparation is likely to be chaotic. Doesn’t seem like a particular objection to anarchy. Anyway, most anarchists don’t advocate an unprepared-for, overnight transition to anarchy; and even if we did, that’s not how we’re likely to get it.
Well, sure, there might be chaos if we pushed a button and abolished the state overnight, with no body of alternative institutions and practices to replace it.
Are you distancing yourself from Rothbard here?
But any dramatic transition from one system to another without preparation is likely to be chaotic. Doesn’t seem like a particular objection to anarchy.
It’s not. It’s an objection to a particular kind of anarchy — the popular kind.
Maybe, but not necessarily. It depends what precisely one thinks of the button as doing — and that’s never too clear in the metaphor. After all, if the state is “a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior,” then the button that destroys the state can operate only by persuading (some sufficient number of) people to behave differently. And that, depending on the details, might well involve the alternative institutions and practices, etc., that would make anarchy sustainable. If we could somehow magically get those overnight, I’d be happy to push the button that gets them overnight.
What popular kind do you have in mind? Most anarchists that I know of — be they socialist, capitalist, communist, syndicalist, mutualist, you name it — are in favour of “building the new society within the shell of the old.” So who exactly are the just-smash-the-state-right-now-and-who-cares-what-succeeds-it anarchists you have in mind, and why do you call them the “popular” sort?
So who exactly are the just-smash-the-state-right-now-and-who-cares-what-succeeds-it anarchists you have in mind, and why do you call them the “popular” sort?
Was that not Rothbard’s position?
MBH:
1. Rothbard was many things, but he was not a typical Anarchist. If that was his position, it wouldn’t make it “the popular kind” of anarchy.
2. Rothbard was very fond of this quote by William Lloyd Garrison:
Note the difference between the ideal propounded and the outcome expected; note also that for Garrison, “immediate abolition” certainly didn’t just mean anything that would result in the end of slavery immediately (you could do that by killing all the slaves, say, or forcing them all against their will onto ships bound for Liberia, both of which he opposed). What Garrison specifically wished for was universal conversion and the immediate emancipation of all slaves everywhere by repentant ex-slavers. I suppose that, similarly, the ideal that Rothbard has in mind (without expecting it) is that all rulers everywhere would immediately lay down their arms due to a universal conversion to radical libertarianism and spontaneous universal adoption of the Libertarian Legal Code within an advanced industrial society. Of course, what he actually worked for would be quite different in practice, but not because his practical aim was “just-smash-the-state-right-now-and-who-cares-what-succeeds-it,” either. He had a fairly specific idea of what should succeed it, and how he was trying to bring that about. The point of the whole exercise, rather (at least, the point Rothbard took) was that you can’t successfully bring the expected outcome about if you lose sight of the righteous ideal. He was mainly concerned — and in this, he was genuinely in line with Garrison — with keeping the discussion on the basis of conscience, solidarity, and the transformation of individual relationships, rather than letting it sink into utilitarian calculation or political excuse-making for continuing to violate innocent people’s rights.
See for example Why Be Libertarian?. (N.B.: he mentions the button-pushing test in this essay; for what it’s worth, you may notice that the test he proposes is a button “for instantaneous abolition of unjust invasions of liberty,” not a button for just abolishing government invasions and leaving the rest just as-is.)
1. Rothbard was many things, but he was not a typical Anarchist. If that was his position, it wouldn’t make it “the popular kind” of anarchy.
He was, I think, a right-wing anarchist. That’s what I’m calling “popular” anarchy. And while that position does not endorse violence, its consequence is systemic violence. You can argue all day that corporate power would suffocate without the state. I don’t buy it. And I consider movements towards right-wing anarchy to be self-defeating in every instance.
MBH:
Why? It’s not especially popular.
In any case, Rothbard’s immediatism is distinct from his pro-capitalism or other “right-wing” allegiances. Many anarcho-capitalists are not immediatists — cf. Randy Barnett, for example. If anything, I’d wager that practical immediatism (that is, calling for revolution-right-now, rather than policy reforms) is far more common on the left end of anarchism than on the right end of it; the Rothbardians are rather unusual, amongst anarcho-capitalists, in this regard.
Well, I do believe that (or more precisely I believe that things would tend strongly in that direction, with us needing to push forward with conscious activism to get the rest of the way). But if you’re not going to listen to arguments, I don’t know what to do about it. I’m also not sure what all this has to do with Rothbard. My reasons for believing that about corporate power aren’t really particularly Rothbardian, much as I may appreciate a couple of the arguments he made, especially during his New Left phase.
Why? [Right-wing anarchy is] not especially popular.
It’s 2010 dude. SCOTUS has ruled that the corporation is a person and has all the rights of people. If you look closely, right-wing anarchy is already present. Official monopolized legal literature even has to come out and say “The United States is not a corporation.” And don’t forget congressmen waving the “don’t tread on me” flag. You can tell me all day that those are statist events, but they serve — primarily — to protect corporate power. The state is only a symbol on that level.
But if you’re not going to listen to arguments, I don’t know what to do about it.
Seriously? Do I have to read everything you write to make sound judgments about your ideas? I’ve read enough to know that I agree with a whole lot of your philosophy, I disagree with some and the rest is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Have you ever worked inside a corporation? Ever seen, from the inside, what happens when a cost/benefit analysis intersects with legal power?
MBH –
How does that have anything to do with “right-wing anarchy”? I don’t know of any anarchists, right-wing or otherwise, who think corporations are persons. Indeed, right-wing anarchists in particular are fond of stressing that only individuals have rights. (And last I checked, the Supreme Court [I don't like to call it SCOTUS, out of respect for the two philosophers of that name] is not an anarchist organisation.) So it doesn’t sound like your beef is with the anarchists.
That likewise sounds like an argument for anarchism, not against it, so I’m not sure what point you’re aiming at.
How does that have anything to do with “right-wing anarchy”?
Let me upgrade my terminology. My beef is with anarcho-corporatism. I think that Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts are essentially anarcho-corporatists. I also think that kind of anarchist lurks around places like the Mises Institute and Cato. Kinsella strikes me as the perfect anarcho-corporatist.
So, strictly speaking, my beef is not with right-wing anarchism, but a specific mutation of it. I also think it’s fair to call that mutation popular since it covertly holds much sway in this country.
That likewise sounds like an argument for anarchism, not against it, so I’m not sure what point you’re aiming at.
My point is that legal power is no object on that level. It may as well not be there at all. You can argue that the corporation would never have become so powerful if not for legal power, and I’d agree. But it is what it is. And it doesn’t need legal power to sustain itself anymore. So arguments that suggest the removal of monopolized law as some silver bullet are, I think, just silly. And that is an objection to 100% anarchy. If the government falls, then we move directly into anarcho-corporatism. The sad thing is that, other than a few new symbols, we’d hardly notice a difference.
MBH:
Why? Has any of them ever given any evidence at all that they are “essentially” (or even marginally) opposed to the state as such?
If Keith Olbermann is “distinctly anarcho-syndicalist” for doing something liberal, and nearly half of the United States Supreme Court are “essentially anarcho-corporatist” (for thinking that corporations are persons? for some other reason?) I do have to wonder whether you’re using the prefix “anarcho-” with any meaning at all. How is what you’re describing different from plain old syndicalism, and plain old corporatism?
I do have to wonder whether you’re using the prefix “anarcho-” with any meaning at all.
Anarcho-corporatism holds no more or less meaning than free-market anti-capitalism. It’s a way of elucidating seemingly contradictory concepts.
MBH:
O.K., dude, but what are the concepts? Specifically, what’s the concept you’re trying to elucidate by including the “anarcho-”? I mean, I understand how Roberts, Alito, et al. are “corporatists.” But In what specific respect are nearly half of the United States Supreme Court “anarcho”-anything?
MBH:
No, but I don’t see how this rhetorical question is related to the sentence you’re responding to. My point isn’t that you have to read anything in particular; it’s that if you pre-announce that you’re no longer interested in listening to arguments (“You can argue all day … I don’t buy it”) in this specific conversation, while expecting me to accept conclusions that run directly counter to what I think those arguments establish, then (1) that’s really kind of rude; and (2) I don’t know what to do about that, except to tell you that you’re not likely to get what you want by through this kind of kerygmatic political economy.
Yes, I have.
If you were interested in listening to arguments, I would point out that most of the Fortune 500 depends on ongoing grants of political privilege, not just the long-ago privileges that allowed them to primitively accumulate. The entire “too big to fail” financial industry are an obvious case in point; so are the RIAA, MPAA and the patent monopolists are a case in point; so are the military-petrochemical complex. There’s a reason these dudes allocate so much for their lobbying budget: it’s because they know where their bread has been and is still being buttered.
[W]hat’s the concept you’re trying to elucidate by including the “anarcho-”?
Corporatism by itself implies two main centers of power: the state and the corporation. The state is supposed to have power because it monopolizes force. But if that force is subject to the decision-making of the corporation, then either (a) the state doesn’t monopolize force or (b) there is no actual monopoly on force.
…[T]hat’s really kind of rude…
You’re right. My apologies. Seriously.
I would point out that most of the Fortune 500 depends on ongoing grants of political privilege, not just the long-ago privileges that allowed them to primitively accumulate.
Those companies are nothing compared to hedge funds that participate in derivative markets. Those markets comprise $600 trillion and none of their activity has to be public. You’ve probably never heard their names and they probably laugh at Fortune 500 companies. I provided you a link to the operations of Magnetar a couple months ago. Magnetar is a paradigmatic example and they’re hardly alone.
MBH:
I do not grant that force is solely “subject to the decision-making of the corporation;” I think that’s an absurd oversimplification, and very obviously so in an age when the United States Department of the Treasury owns controlling shares in several major corporations. But even if I were to grant this for the sake of argument, the attempt to infer this disjunction from that premise is a complete non sequitur.
If a social function is entirely controlled by a single organization, then that organization is a monopolist, even if the organization is, in turn, controlled by some other organization. The monopoly is in the constriction at the point of production, not in the decision-making structure that sets policy for that constricted point of production.
You may as well argue, “Under absolute monarchy, the force of the State is under the personal control of the King, not the State as such. Thus, either (a) the State doesn’t monopolize force or (b) there is no actual monopoly of force. Thus, 17th century France was in a state of anarcho-monarchism!” This would, of course, be absurd. But no more absurd than the claim that effective corporate control over the state makes for “anarchy” in any way, shape or form.
Thus, 17th century France was in a state of anarcho-monarchism!” This would, of course, be absurd.
You aren’t very self-aware, are you? You say this in Liberty, Equality, Solidarity:
If you become an anarchist, then you have already completed the revolution: no government on earth has any legitimate authority to bind you to any obligation that you did not already have on your own.
Did it take Proudhon calling himself an ‘Anarchist’ for anarcho-monarchy to take hold in 18th century France? Or was it his recognition that no external authority held sway without internal complicity? And if that’s the case, there were almost certainly more before him who also had that revelation. Did they have to use the word ‘Anarchy’ for it to count as revelation?
And if there were just a single person in 17th century France who had that revelation, then yes, technically speaking, there existed a state of anarcho-monarchy. Maybe history didn’t write about that person, but be my guest telling her that her experience didn’t count because she didn’t use the word that you find sacred.
Come on, aren’t you changing criteria in midstream? When you called our current system “anarcho-corporatist” you didn’t mean that it’s a corporatist system that has some anarchists living in it. If switching criteria in midstream were legit, we could establish that Phyllis Schlafly is pro-communist because she wore a pink blouse. Gotta see the symbols in the signs ….
Come on, aren’t you changing criteria in midstream? When you called our current system “anarcho-corporatist” you didn’t mean that it’s a corporatist system that has some anarchists living in it.
No. But I was responding to this:
Thus, 17th century France was in a state of anarcho-monarchism!” This would, of course, be absurd. But no more absurd than the claim that effective corporate control over the state makes for “anarchy” in any way, shape or form.
Yet I’m not saying “that effective corporate control over the state makes for ‘anarchy’ in any way, shape or form.” I’m saying that if ‘state’ has any meaningful reference then it just is unhinged corporate power. I agree with you and Kevin Carson insofar as I think the state bred the monster. But I disagree that the monster still depends on government. Hence, I say that the state is no longer the government but instead unhinged corporate power. And if 100% anarchy is life entirely free from the rule of government, then we’re already in a virtual anarchy since the supreme court has tied government’s hands.
I’m not changing criteria midstream. This is just the humbling river.
MBH:
Well, if I’m not, I’m probably not aware of my lack of self-awareness. So I’ll leave that up to others to decide.
However, I will say that you either haven’t read the essay very carefully, or else not attending very carefully to this conversation. The passage you quote argues that dissenters are genuinely free of all political obligations, not that they are in a condition of anarchy.
But in any case, if you did want to say the dissenter is living in anarchy (which I don’t), what would follow from that is that to the extent she’s living in anarchy, she’s not living under monarchy; the purported monarch is just a belligerent foreign head of state, to whom she owes no allegiance. Which would mean that a claim of “anarcho-monarchism” is still absurd.
Meanwhile, this conversation had nothing to do with whether or not revolutionary rejection of government makes for anarchy. It had to do with whether effective control over the State, by a power center other than the State itself, makes for anarchy. (In your original, it wasn’t corporations dissenting from the state that were supposed to undermine government monopoly; it was corporations allegedly controlling the state, which you insisted entailed that “either (a) the state doesn’t monopolize force or (b) there is no actual monopoly on force” and (because of this disjunction) legitimized the claim that we already live under “anarcho-corporatism” (rather than just plain old corporatism) right now. The parallel is with those who had similar effective control over the State in 16th century France (at times it was the landed aristocracy; in the age of Versailles, it was the king personally). Not with dissenters who had no effective control over the State, but (rightfully) rejected its authority.
MBH:
Man, you must have a different Supreme Court where you live.
Anyway, again, if I grant your theory about the relationship between government and corporations, how does that chain of command alter the fact that government is commanding? If I’m Earl’s bondsman, and Earl takes orders from his Overlord, it doesn’t follow that Earl is no longer ruling me. It just means that the way he rules me is partly determined by the Overlord. If the Overlord never directly commands me anything, but always has Earl do it for him, then Earl still has a monopoly of force, as far as I’m concerned. (Just as NBC still has a monopoly on their copyrighted shows. Even though they are a wholly owned subsidiary of G.E. Or Kabletown.)
…[T]o the extent she’s living in anarchy, she’s not living under monarchy…
Sure. But anarcho-monarchism is not supposed to describe a single person’s perspective. It describes a situation. Some are living in anarchy; some are living in a monarchy.
When Molinari describes a free society as a “monarchy without monopoly,” is he being absurd?
Meanwhile, this conversation had nothing to do with whether or not revolutionary rejection of government makes for anarchy. It had to do with whether effective control over the State, by a power center other than the State itself, makes for anarchy.
I think you’re still confusing my point. I’m not saying that the corporate control of legal power is anarchy. I’m saying that contemporary corporate power makes legal power moot. And a world in which legal power is moot is anarcho-corporatism.
Again, it’s not that contemporary corporate power works through legal power (though that was the case before). It’s that contemporary corporate power doesn’t need legal power anymore.
MBH:
Jesus, man, that must be the world’s most sensitive antenna you have there. Maybe you’re picking up noise more than signal?
Seriously, not everything that some liberal does is secretly anarcho-syndicalist, even when the things that they do are (as they sometimes, certainly, are) things that an anarcho-syndicalist might feel genuinely sympathetic to. You may as well say that when you hear him inhaling, you “hear a distinctly conservative wavelength,” since, hey, conservatives are all for breathing oxygen too.
So endorsing the boycott of an economy that discriminates against Mexicans is to anarcho-syndicalism as breathing is to conservatism?
Are you fucking serious?
MBH:
Yes, just about.
Do you really, seriously think that the idea of using boycotts to protest absurd or unjust laws is a uniquely anarcho-syndicalist idea? If so, where in the world did you get such a notion? I wish that every boycotter in the world were secretly broadcasting on a “distinctly anarcho-syndicalist wavelength,” but I think you can really only make that claim by making the meaning of “anarcho-syndicalist” so broad as to render it utterly meaningless.
Do you really, seriously think that the idea of using boycotts to protest absurd or unjust laws is a uniquely anarcho-syndicalist idea?
No. But I never said that. I’m pointing to how Olbermann exhibits substantially higher degrees of anarchism than O’Reilly. I’m not playing your game in which you either are or aren’t an anarchist. You’ve totally missed the context.
MBH:
Well, O.K., so what did you say? Just what is it about Olbermann’s efforts that does give off this anarcho-syndicalist signal? The fact that he sticks up for Mexicans? A lot of people stick up for Mexicans, not just anarcho-syndicalists. (As much as I might like it if all my friends in the immigration freedom movement were anarcho-syndicalists — certainly it would make strategy meetings a lot easier — generally they are not.)
Is it the combination of the roughly egalitarian end with the use of economic action that’s supposed to make it secretly anarcho-syndicalist? If so, that would seem to include virtually the entire history of the labor movement, a lot of the civil rights movement, the Irish Land League (the folks who coined the term “boycott”), and a lot of other folks who would be very surprised to hear that they are secretly anarchists. Of course, again, you could redefine “anarcho-syndicalist” to mean something other than “revolutionary anti-statism in which a free society is conceived without government or bosses, in which economic production is primarily organized through the structure of democratic industrial unions.” But if you’re doing that, it might help to say what you do understand it to mean. If Olbermann counts as “distinctly anarcho-syndicalist” does the UFW also? (In which case, why even keep the “anarcho” around? Why not just say “syndicalist”?) How about the Montgomery Bus Boycott or the Irish land campaigns? (In which case, why even call it “syndicalism”? Why not just “Leftism,” which doesn’t refer to the specific ideological tendencies that “anarcho-” and “syndicalism” do?)
Based on what? The fact that you find his politics more agreeable? I mean, look, I like Dr. King’s politics more than I like Olbermann’s, and Ella Baker’s more than I like Dr. King’s. But I wouldn’t pretend that either of the two is an Anarchist. They have other, different positions, which happen to agree with Anarchism on some important particulars, and to disagree with Anarchism on others.
Well, O.K., so what did you say?
You’re approaching this as if certain positions either derive from a particular axiom or not. I’m not making the case that Olbermann is secretly coming from an anarcho-syndicalist axiom. I’m making the case that he takes positions that distinctly overlap with those that can be derived from the anarcho-syndicalist axiom. Not all politics is as symmetrical as you seem to assume.
…a lot of other folks who would be very surprised to hear that they are secretly anarchists.
Again, you’re assuming that you either are or aren’t an anarchist. I think that’s a muddled framing. And I think that if you told radical leftists who had never wrestled with anarchy that they were, say, 25-30% anarchist that they would not be that surprised.
…I wouldn’t pretend that either of the two is an Anarchist.
I don’t how much more of this name game I can take.
MBH:
Really? Where?
As far as I can tell, you’re the only one who’s mentioned axioms here. What I have said is that boycotts-for-equality or whatever are not uniquely or distinctly anarcho-syndicalist. And that if you tried to use the term “anarcho-syndicalist” in that way, you’d be encompassing a lot of people who certainly don’t understand themselves as anarcho-syndicalist, who are not understood as anarcho-syndicalists by anybody except you personally, and who don’t accept some of the core beliefs (N.B.: core; not axiomatic; we’re talking family relations here) that tend to mark out anarcho-syndicalists from the rest of political movements. For example, Anarchism. Or Syndicalism.
I don’t think there is an “anarcho-syndicalist axiom.” But in any case, this only underlines my point about conservatism and breathing oxygen. Of course, if you pick some single isolated belief at random without paying any attention to how the person’s beliefs are related to each other, you can find all kinds of “overlaps,” often including “overlaps” that pull in directly opposite directions from one another. Olbermann believes in an active government, and so do militaristic conservatives; so Olbermann is apparently also a militaristic conservative to some percentage, while being an anarcho-syndicalist to some percentage. It seems like his percentage of militaristic conservatism ought to be inversely proportional to his percentage of anarcho-syndicalism, but as specified there’s no reason so far why this should be so — certainly, you can believe in boycotts-for-equality really strongly while believing no less strongly in very active government. Meanwhile, Anarcho-syndicalists are for organizing labor, and so are fascists! So perhaps fascists are 10% Anarcho-syndicalist. Progressives are against religious law, and so are classical liberals, and so are Stalinists! So perhaps liberals and Stalinists are 25% progressive Islamists believe in political revolution, and so do radical feminists, and so do Anarcho-syndicalists! In fact, it’s very important to all of them. So maybe Anarcho-syndicalists are 50% Islamist. Or 50% radical feminist. Or… well.
MBH:
Am I? I thought what I was doing was giving you arguments that the spectrum you were trying to draw was not useful, at least not the way you were trying to draw it. (One such argument was the claim that it allowed you to draw “overlaps” which have nothing in particular to do with the real general tendencies of somebody’s political thought; another argument was that it tended to identify people as “anarcho-syndicalist” who would definitely reject that description, and who seem to fall way outside the boundaries of the concept. I don’t see that you’ve responded to these arguments, except to call their conclusion an assumption and to say that you don’t like it.
Nowadays? Some might, because Anarchism is increasingly popular on the radical Left, and these days even Trotskyists cite Anarchist literature in their anticapitalist broadsides, while Maoists show up to hang out with Anarchists in towns with a small radical scene.
But this was certainly not the case prior to about 1999; if you asked radical Leftists about their percentage of Anarchism prior to Seattle, what you’d get as a response would most likely be an index either of their doctrinaire Marxist-Leninism (in which case they’d recite a standard Leninist line about the infantile Left) or else of their attitudes toward the New Left (with some liking it and others detesting it). But in any case, I wasn’t talking about the weird socio-ideological dynamics of the “radical Left” social scene — of which Olbermann was not a part, and of which Dr. King and Ella Baker were not parts, either. (Although Baker could perhaps be listed as a “radical Leftist” in an extended, ideological sense.) If you asked Dr. King whether he was “25% Anarchist,” I am almost certain that he would reject the description right away. His writing on law and civil disobedience is specifically shaped by the desire to avoid conclusions that would lead to “anarchy” (quote-unquote). While there is certainly something for anarchists (of any adjective) to get from his writing on legal authority, to simply ignore the basic organizing principles of his thought, and to pretend as if it had no relationship to his conception of a just state (as opposed to anarchic freedom, as he understood it), is to simply ignore Dr. King’s political thought, in favor of tossing around, higgeldy-piggeldy, conclusions that you happen to more or less agree with, without any attention to why those conclusions were concluded, or how far they are or are not allowed to go.
Nowadays?
Can we just assume that I’m not giving a history lecture? Can we also assume that words might be more malleable than you’re willing to concede? Can we finally assume that, given the speed with which cultures change today, it’s a good thing that words are so malleable (even the sacred ‘Anarchist’).
MBH:
O.K., but expecting your use of 100-year-old technical terminology to be based on something that will cover more than just the past 10 years within a specific, narrow, and kind of weird subculture (viz. the movementarian radical Left) is not exactly expecting “a history lecture.” It’s more like expecting a functioning memory.
As you please, but the malleability of words depends on conventional use of the words. Not on your personal and extremely idiosyncratic use, or on the responses that you would imagine getting if you asked a weird and really stilted question (“Do you think that you would consider yourself 25% Anarchist?”) to a tiny minority of the population (“radical Leftists”), which nobody other than you personally has thought to go around asking.
What the hell is “anarcho-corporatism”?
America.
I think there’s a sense in which you can say America (and all roughly democratic western-style countries) exist in a state of “anarcho-corporatism”. But it’s the same sense in which we can quite literally never get out of anarchy (even where states exist, they’re just organizations made up of human beings – not gods – doing their best to run a big, clunky protection racket that leaves a lot of room for independent and legally ambiguous activity; and even if they did stamp out all disapproved activity, then there’d still be anarchy, because *they’re* still just doing whatever they can get away with, even if that happens to be everything).
But if that’s what we’re talking about, then, well, absolutely everyone is 100% anarchist, anyway.
Yes. And in that way — the way in which most people assume that anarchy is some distant phenomena — the word ‘anarchy’ functions as an anti-concept (just like zaxlebax.)
Well, that’s what the author of this article claims.
See also this.
Certainly you can talk about anarchy in this sense. But then self-described anarchists aren’t people who are for anarchy, but people who are against (at least) the state and bandit/mafia gangs generally, and (very likely) domination generally, and (fairly likely) hierarchy generally.
(On a side note, even if we talk about anarchy in this sense, I think it still makes sense to talk about states and governments as distinct, functional institutions).
On a side note, even if we talk about anarchy in this sense, I think it still makes sense to talk about states and governments as distinct, functional institutions
OK, but what does ‘states and governments’ refer to? If it refers to institutions that collectively monopolize force, then why look at legislators instead of the financial system? Why are legislators more powerful than the people who own them?
MBH: I doubt that the corporatists at the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft think of Kinsella as much of an ally.
And if you eliminated all the hidden subsidies to transportation and fuel consumption, eliminated favoritism in the tax code toward large-scale capital investment and capital, and eliminated patents and copyright, I expect a majority of corporate power would melt like fat on a hot skillet as a result of that alone.
I agree. But I’m questioning whether or not the corporation needs the government anymore to maintain subsidies, favoritism, copyrights and patents. Obviously things like taxation would take a different form, but so long as management owns the product of labor, nothing essential necessarily changes.
MBH:
How exactly do you envision GE, say, maintaining its patent portfolio against infringement if there is no government to issue or enforce legal patent monopolies? Let’s have some details.
Of course, they could hire the Pinkertons or whoever to go around and bash the heads of infringers. But hiring on your own muscle for that would really be quite expensive, particularly when you consider that they would have no presumption of social support for their position (since it’s no longer protected by the cultural prestige of the State), and since the people whose heads they want to bash are also going to have money and are going to want to be defended against the head-bashing. If GE has to resort to overtly criminal behavior and to pay in full for the enforcement of their own criminal monopoly, then I think you’d find that we’d be in a much better position than we are now. (For the same reasons that Mafia extortion rackets are not a very profitable business model in any but a few markets — most of them markets in which overt criminality is artificially selected for and rewarded, due to the effects of State prohibitions.)
I’ve been compelled by this kind of argument before. But now I tend to think it’s an open question. Yes, it would be expensive to maintain a virtual state without monopolized violence. But the question is whether it would be too expensive.
GE’s a terrible example because it would certainly be too expensive for them. But what about, say, Citi, Magnetar, and a few other hedge funds? I mean, how can you ignore that a handful of companies possess — directly and indirect — much more capital than all the other “competing” companies. And if that’s the case, how could the highest level companies not control the flow of capital to such a degree that they essentially owned the US armed forces?
I think it’s wrong to ask whether or not, in a free society, a group would form a militia and behave improperly. The question is who would purchase the already-in-place-military. And even that is kinda moot because it would just belong to those few companies who own it anyway. And they aren’t exactly dovish companies.
Hence, the state is dead. Long live the state. And that’s the world “anarcho-corporatism” is supposed to describe. If you leave off the “anarcho” then it implies that the government owns the military. That’s not the case.
MBH,
The way an anarchist society will most likely come about (and the way around which much anarchist activism, even of the “right-wing” variety, is focused) is through people building alternative institutions and withdrawing consent from the state. Once you’ve got a large enough percentage of the population doing that, why would it be any less effective against these anarcho-corporations you envision than against the state that preceded them? Even if — contrary to fact, as I think — the big corporations didn’t depend on ongoing state support for their power, why wouldn’t they still fall along with the state, given that the means whereby the state would fall applies just as well to them?
Even if — contrary to fact, as I think — the big corporations didn’t depend on ongoing state support for their power, why wouldn’t they still fall along with the state, given that the means whereby the state would fall applies just as well to them?
Because, given the make-up of the supreme court and the extreme concentration of capital within a few companies, the state apparatus is already fallen. And, as point of fact, the anarcho-corporate structure is free-standing today — uprooted from its statist foundation.
The burden now rests with you to demonstrate how that’s not, in fact, the case today. I’ll listen to arguments, but from my ongoing experience in corporations vs. the lifeworld, you might as well argue that gravity doesn’t exist.
While I don’t agree with you that the state apparatus has fallen (and I think Kevin’s two books make a pretty strong case for thinking that corporatism depends on the state for ongoing rather than just for past support), never mind for the moment — because even if I granted your point, I don’t see how your point addresses my point, namely that the strategy that anarchists recommend will work equally well against corporatist states, non-corporatist states, and stateless corporatism (should the latter exist). So at the overall strategic level it doesn’t matter that much which we have. (Of course at the level of tactics it will matter.)
…I don’t agree with you that the state apparatus has fallen…
Would you find it more admissible to say (a) whatever monopolizes force is the state, (b) a select group of banks and hedge funds monopolize force, and so (c) a few companies are the state? If not, which premise do you doubt?
FWIW: I’m comfortable saying either the state has fallen or the state is no longer the government.
I don’t see how your point addresses my point, namely that the strategy that anarchists recommend will work equally well against corporatist states, non-corporatists, and stateless corporatism.
I agree that what I’m saying wouldn’t invalidate any (non-corporatist) anarchist recommendations. But it would suggest that a limited number of “statist” recommendations would also be valid. For instance, it ought to be considered valid for (non-corporatist) anarchists to support, say, a supreme court nominee who recognized and found repulsive the anarcho-corporatism of western “democracy.” And while most anti-minarchist anarchists would reject the Judicial Branch as an illegitimate institution, anarcho-corporatism suggests that the current Judicial Branch is not part of the state. If that’s the case, then stacking the bench with explicitly anti-anarcho-corporatists would be a valid strategy. And tactically, participating in electoral politics — to vote for anti-anarcho-corporatists — would not count as violence, but quite ironically: empowering an alternative institution.
I doubt (b); I think the dynamics within the ruling class (both its statocratic and its plutocratic wings) are more complex than that. And from what you say below, so do you (implicitly).
1) The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. I’m not interested in teaming up with Hitler to fight Stalin or vice versa.
But even leaving that aside:
2) If you think that getting good guys onto the Supreme Court would be an effective strategy for counterbalancing the corporatists, then you must think the Supreme Court has some power independent of the corporatists. And so it turns out you really agree with us after all that there exists some governmental institution, with power, that is not identical with the “select group of banks and hedge funds” — and so you too don’t really believe your (c). (KP makes a similar point: if the judicial branch isn’t really part of the state and has no power, why does it matter to you who we put in it?)
If you think that getting good guys onto the Supreme Court would be an effective strategy for counterbalancing the corporatists, then you must think the Supreme Court has some power independent of the corporatists.
No. You’re grasping at straws. I don’t say that the supreme court is always and forever powerless. I say that “anarcho-corporatism suggests that the current Judicial Branch is not part of the state.” So long as the majority of justices are complicit with anarcho-corporatism — which they most certainly are today — the function of the supreme court today is to feign legal power while stateless-corporatism runs our world. The court holds the capacity for power, but as of now, it intentionally ignores that power. And an institution that functions as a mere place-holder is not powerful until some outside group changes its function.
I’m not interested in teaming up with Hitler to fight Stalin or vice versa.
Well, neither am I. But a functionally vacant institution is hardly Hitler. Unless you mean Hitler’s dead body.
Roderick, don’t go Glenn Beck on me. You’re better than that.
I think the dynamics within the ruling class (both its statocratic and its plutocratic wings) are more complex than that.
Well, I think it’s fairly simple. Derivative (absolutely private) markets account for $55-$600+ trillion in capital. Public markets and government account for $44 trillion minus national debt ($14 trillion) = $30 trillion. So why should I think the guys with 20/1 leverage are dependent on the other guys?
MBH:
Well, everything’s an open question — nobody with any sense is promising a strategy on the grounds that it absolutely guarantees success. The question is what tendencies would push in what direction. And my argument is that, generally, the tendency will probably be towards dissipating great fortunes, (creatively) destroying incumbent corporations, and undermining capitalist social relations. For reasons I’ve already discussed at length. If, on the other hand, that’s not what prevails — if the strategy fails, as it might — then failure is just going to be failure to keep the state abolished in the first place — that is, for powerbrokers to try to recuperate the cultural prestige and externalization of costs that they had through the state. But that would just be to recreate the state. Of course, the reemergence of a state is a well-known and much-discussed danger for any anarchistic society, but you’ve given no reason as yet to consider it inevitable, and all of this is certainly no reason to think that having to rebuild the state from scratch would be somehow more advantageous to the robber barons than is simply availing themselves of a ready-made state that they already have.
A terrible example for what? We were talking about enforcing intellectual monopolies without the state, so it makes sense to discuss a company that subsists mainly on its patent portfolio. We could talk about Microsoft, GlaxoSmithKline, Time Warner, or whoever you want, but I don’t think that changing the company will change the outcome. If it turns out that this kind of proposal is absurd for any of the major intellectual monopoly leeches, then it seems likely that intellectual monopoly would indeed collapse in a stateless society, as predicted.
Uh, well, what about them? CitiGroup controls fewer resources than G.E., not more (they have a much lower market cap, make much lower revenues, and lost about $1,606,000,000 last year, while G.E. made $11,025,000,000 in profits. Citi is also obviously not any more independent than G.E. from continuous and ongoing government privilege and subsidy as a basic part of their business model; you may recall that they’ve been bailed out by the feds four different times, were insolvent as of November 2008 prior to massive infusions of extorted cash. There is also the minor fact that the United States government currently owns about 1/3 of the bank.
If paying for enforcement on their own dime and without cultural sanction is not going to be sustainable for G.E. there is absolutely no reason to believe it would be sustainable for CitiGroup, or any other money-monopoly firm, either. (The financial sector, as a whole, is uniquely and peculiarly dependent on a very complicated network of interlocking government regulations, cartels, and massive direct subsidies.)
If there were no U.S., which is the hypothetical situation we were considering, there would be, ex hypothesi, no U.S. armed forces, either. Perhaps you mean hiring up the men and buying up the equipment after the U.S. military disappears? But if so, how is that a different case from any other case of hiring on private enforcement? How does it differ at all from the case I just discussed?
If paying for enforcement on their own dime and without cultural sanction is not going to be sustainable for G.E. there is absolutely no reason to believe it would be sustainable for CitiGroup, or any other money-monopoly firm, either.
I notice you didn’t address a cartel of hedge funds. I say that A is a bad example. I say it would take B, C, and D to monopolize force. You say, well, B couldn’t do it on their own. As if I ever made that claim. Just let me know when you’re willing to address B, C, and D as a cartel. And showing how each would fail alone is irrelevant.
So if X uses its power to support Y, then X really has no power, it only has a “capacity for power”? That claim just seems absolutely bizarre. Indeed, it seems like … grasping at straws. How can power cease to be power because it’s used to support some other power? What is it that’s being “used”?
Um … what on earth are you talking about?! Don’t go Timothy Leary on me, man.
So if X uses its power to support Y, then X really has no power, it only has a “capacity for power”?
X isn’t using any power. That’s my point. Sleeping at the switch doesn’t count as supporting Y. Maybe enabling Y.
What is it that’s being “used”?
Nothing. Say I’m an anarchist night-watchman for security company X. Say also that I know I’m being watched by the mischievous security company Y. If I step out into the lights and lie down my gun, does that mean that I support whatever mischievous stuff happens next? Or am I enabling whatever mischievous stuff happens next?
Don’t go Timothy Leary on me, man.
Think for yourself. Question authority.
MBH:
Because the other guys have atom bombs.
And own plurality stakes in a lot of the banks that you’re claiming to be independent of them.
What you did was make an ambiguous claim — or rather, implied a claim, ambiguously, through the use of a rhetorical question — about “Citi, Magnetar, and a few other hedge funds” without specifying whether this was supposed to be about them acting independently, or as a cartel, or in some other way. If you meant to talk about a cartel specifically, I apologize for taking the wrong interpretation.
This is just special pleading; of course, we could have added most of the IP industry acting in a cartel with GE (GlaxoSmithKline, Time Warner, the RIAA, Microsoft, Apple, et al.), just as easily as we could speculate about a cartel of the financiers. But how does that overcome any of the reasons that I gave for thinking that one company would be unlikely to manage it? None of the reasons I gave for thinking that G.E.’s use of overtly criminal means would fail depends upon G.E. acting as a single company; if they were trying to posse up with the rest of the copyright and patent monopolists, they’d just be facing the same basic problems with the additional problem of trying to keep a large cartel together, in spite of the transaction costs and the strong economic incentives for cartelists to defect.
The same is true for the financiers. Add together as many bankrupt TARP suckers as you like; they’re still going to be dependent on a functioning government to marshal the resources you say they can marshal. And without government, they are going to face exactly the same problems in trying to maintain a cartel. They can cartelize easily right now because they are held in the cartel by a government central bank explicitly designed to cartelize them, and because government laws make defection from the cartel illegal. Without government, you wouldn’t have that. But with or without the cartel, they will still face exactly the same problems of (1) the direct financial costs of enforcement; and (2) the social costs of reverting to overt gangsterism.
Because the other guys have atom bombs.
Well, that assumes that decision-making rests with those other guys. And if it doesn’t, then the other guys “have” atom bombs in the same way you “have” the clouds in the sky.
And own plurality stakes in a lot of the banks that you’re claiming to be independent of them.
Well, that assumes that banks hold more capital than hedge funds. That assumption would be outright false.
They can cartelize easily right now because they are held in the cartel by a government central bank explicitly designed to cartelize them, and because government laws make defection from the cartel illegal.
Is it a “government” central bank that holds them together or the incentive structure that promises endless exploitation and profit through the masses? Is it “government” laws that prompt cartel behavior or the perceived benefit of collectively manipulating supply and demand?
I think it’s safe to assume that all money ‘held’ by hedge funds is in a bank somewhere, so I would say banks ‘hold’ the amount of money that hedge funds ‘hold’, and then some.
I think it’s safe to assume that all money ‘held’ by hedge funds is in a bank somewhere, so I would say banks ‘hold’ the amount of money that hedge funds ‘hold’, and then some.
You’re right. I might say ‘generate’ more capital. But that implies that hedge funds are supplying really valuable services — which may or may not be the case. Maybe it’s safe to say that hedge funds ‘control’ capital in a way that banks can’t.
What am I to make of this? That you’re not certain that they ‘generate’ (whatever you mean by that) more capital, because you don’t want to admit that they supply valuable services?
So now it’s a different story all together…ok. In what way do hedge funds control capital that banks can’t?
What am I to make of this? That you’re not certain that they ‘generate’ (whatever you mean by that) more capital, because you don’t want to admit that they supply valuable services?
I say it may or may not be the case that they supply valuable services. In some instances they do. When they do what they’re designed to do — hedging risk, balancing market activity, “getting close to home,” etc. — then they’re valuable.
When they manipulate investors by presenting products their proprietary information reveals will almost certainly fail, then they supply nothing of value to the market.
That’s the problem. So long as they’re allowed to trade in the dark, they act like a bookie who already knows the outcome of the games and so only takes bets they know the bettors will lose.
Company X wants to maximize profits and realizes that market A is not the best place to do that. X understands that if they “throw the game,” so to speak, in market A, but bet even bigger on their failure in market B, then they can make exponentially larger profits than merely succeeding in market A. X consults with the manager of hedge fund Y and cuts a deal. X pays Y $Z for Y to place shorts on the value of X’s stock. Since derivative markets are entirely private, other companies don’t know that Y’s shorts on the value of X’s stock are essentially X betting against itself with the proprietary knowledge that it will “throw the game.” Otherwise rational investors may look into X and decide that, given past performance and future trends, the value of X’s stock is likely to rise. What’s especially catastrophic about this market structure is that lower end investors — those in 401K’s, for instance — aren’t aware that they’re invested in market B, where companies can bet against their own performance.
So hedge funds can effectively hoodwink masses of market participants so that capital trickles upward only. This is why I say that corporate power is no longer dependent on the state. So long as the X’s and Y’s can collude in this way, things like tax money are small potatoes. Why even print more money and risk inflation when you can dictate the capital flow of entire populations? This situation is more devastating than state-controlled capital.
In what way do hedge funds control capital that banks can’t?
Well, banks can’t bet against the success of their own products. Only a hedge fund can do that for them. So if a banks wants to maximize profits — and I defy you to find one that doesn’t — then they’re subject to the terms of hedge funds. If X depends on Y for the “real” money, then Y controls capital in a way that X can’t.
Damn,
No wonder that specific mutation of right-wing anarchism is so popular in the country, it is the country.
Anarcho-seriously, these anarcho-prefixes have gone too anarcho-far and don’t make any anarcho-sense.
Anarcho-seriously, these anarcho-prefixes have gone too anarcho-far and don’t make any anarcho-sense.
That’s exactly my point.
“That’s exactly my point.”
Your point being that you don’t know what you are speaking of?
If so, anarcho-point well done.
Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.
MBH is pointing to how your statement exhibits substantially higher degrees of being exactly his point. He’s not playing your game in which you either are or aren’t saying the exact same thing.
Except this.
“Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.”
No problem. Now would you mind actually explaining how Kinsella, members of SCOTUS (sorry Roderick) and Mises/Cato lurkers want private firms to purchase/control the U.S. military?
Especially Kinsella, he complains a hell of a lot I’m having trouble seeing how he is America.
I don’t think they necessarily want that. I’m contending they don’t recognize that it’s virtually already the case — the status quo is anarcho-corporatism. And when they advocate bankrupting the state or minimizing the role of government, they’re essentially saying “change nothing!”
Arthur Jensen describes it better than I can here.
So how exactly is he “the perfect anarcho-corporatist” when that isn’t what he wants at all?
I may be wrong about him specifically. But most right-libertarians are at high risks of slipping into anarcho-corporatism.
Of course, now most right-libertarians are dangerously close to becoming those fellows who want private firms to purchase/control the U.S. military, such as SCOTUS (sorry again Roderick) and Mises/Cato lurkers, to which there hasn’t actually been an explanation of.
“And while most anti-minarchist anarchists would reject the Judicial Branch as an illegitimate institution, anarcho-corporatism suggests that the current Judicial Branch is not part of the state. If that’s the case, then stacking the bench with explicitly anti-anarcho-corporatists would be a valid strategy.”
If thats the case then there wouldn’t be any empowering as the judicial branch isn’t a part of the state… if thats the case.
“No. You’re grasping at straws. I don’t say that the supreme court is always and forever powerless. I say that “anarcho-corporatism suggests that the current Judicial Branch is not part of the state.” So long as the majority of justices are complicit with anarcho-corporatism — which they most certainly are today — the function of the supreme court today is to feign legal power while stateless-corporatism runs our world. The court holds the capacity for power, but as of now, it intentionally ignores that power. And an institution that functions as a mere place-holder is not powerful until some outside group changes its function.”
Then you are implicitly admitting that SCOTUS (sorry again, again Roderick) does have the power… they just aren’t using it. Its not a Hitler’s corpse, he’s just asleep, and you wish to wake him.
Say that you and I are in mortal combat. I hand you my loaded gun, leaving myself defenseless. Would you say that I still have power? I’m just choosing not to use it? Or do you now have the power?
Power is a zero-sum game.
“Say that you and I are in mortal combat. I hand you my loaded gun, leaving myself defenseless. Would you say that I still have power? I’m just choosing not to use it? Or do you now have the power?”
Exactly my point! You have given your power away, SCOTUS (sorry 3X Rod) has no power. Supporting them would be nothing more than If you hold that the gun (power) can still be wrestled back then you do acknowledge that they still hold some power, meaning they aren’t dead.
Then you are implicitly admitting that SCOTUS… does have the power…
and then…
Exactly my point!… SCOTUS has no power.
OK.
No, you’re not seeing KP’s point. Either the SC has given up its gun and so can no longer use it, or else it’s still got its gun and could start using it if it wanted to. If the former, then why do you think it’s important to get anti-corporatists onto the SC? If the latter, then why do you say it has no power?
(Of course I don’t think either of those options describes the reality; I think the SC is actively using its gun on behalf of the corporatists — but that’s another issue.)
Why do you think it’s important to get anti-corporatists onto the SC?
Because I think it could reclaim some heavy-duty power more easily than alternative institutions — given its proximity to the levers. And yet it would be heavily influenced by alternative institutions. A bit of Aristotelian cake-having and cake-eating.
I think the SC is actively using its gun on behalf of the corporatists…
I think you’re right and my analogy breaks down here. I would say that recent rulings designed to unhinge corporate power are certainly instances of gun-use. But I would also say that the chamber is empty and the gun doesn’t need to be used anymore — if anarcho-corporatism is the desired end, then simply not reversing those rulings is enough to get the job done.
Its not a Hitler’s corpse, he’s just asleep, and you wish to wake him.
You should try out for fox news.
Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.
And you could resort to insults instead of answering KP’s argument. But it would be a shame.
Fair enough…
By the way, from what you said to KP I just figured out that it was my reference to Hitler and Stalin earlier that made you compare me to Glenn Beck; I was just mystified about that before.
But … really? References to Hitler and Stalin are pretty universal tropes across the political landscape (and for good reason, because they’re among the very few political figures whose moral status is not controversial). Fox News specifically? Come on.
Then you are implicitly admitting that SCOTUS… does have the power…
and then…
Exactly my point!… SCOTUS has no power.
OK”
Are you sure I’m the one who should look into cable news? Because that right there is some crooked journalism.
Either SCOTUS has no power (Hitler’s Corpse) or they do (Hitler asleep) which one is it? Wait, you’ve already admitted that they do “The court holds the capacity for power, but as of now, it intentionally ignores that power.” (corpses don’t intentionally ignore power) You know, not everyone thinks supporting the state is evil, you really don’t have to beat around the bush and try and convince people that zombies and other undead phenomenon are real.
Too bad Weekly World News is gone.
See the second section in this.
Thank you for admitting that Hitler is sleeping.