[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
An old joke has an alcoholic asking a priest, “Is it okay for me to drink while I’m praying?”
“Certainly not!” says the priest.
“Well, is it okay for me to pray while I’m drinking?” the alcoholic inquires.
The priest responds: “Absolutely!”
I’m reminded of this joke by the disagreement among libertarians over the role of the LP. (See, for example, the exchange between Brad Spangler and Less Antman in the comments section of this post. In fact the present post started as a contribution to that discussion until I decided it merited a post unto itself.) Just as it’s good to pray while you’re drinking, but bad to drink while you’re praying, so it’s good for the libertarian movement that radicals leave the LP, but also good for the movement that the LP have radicals in it.
Let me explain both sides of the paradox. Why is it good for the movement that radicals leave the LP? Because if the best way to achieve a libertarian society is to encourage the populace (via education and counter-economics) to withdraw consent and render themselves ungovernable, thus leaving the state apparatus to collapse – as opposed to seeking liberation through the state apparatus – then electoral politics is a counter-productive form of education, since it instead encourages people to continue looking to electoral politics as the natural venue for political change.
Why is it good for the movement that the LP have radicals in it? Because although electoral politics should never be the primary focus of libertarian education, so long as there is a self-proclaimed libertarian political party, whatever it says or does is going to have an impact on people’s perception of libertarianism, thus making the job of education easier or harder as the case may be. A libertarian party that puts forward relatively radical/leftish candidates like Ruwart thus helps the cause of radical libertarian education more (or, if you prefer, hinders it less) – in that respect, at least – than a libertarian party that puts forward relatively moderate/conservative/statist candidates like Barr. (No, I don’t think the adjectives “moderate,” “conservative,” and “statist” are interchangeable, exactly, but that’s another story. They’re all bad anyway.)
The paradox isn’t a contradiction. There is a respect in which radicals help the cause of agorist education by participating in the LP. There is a different respect in which radicals help the cause of agorist education by repudiating the LP. The question is how to weigh these two respects against each other. Most participants in the dispute seem to think it’s obvious how to weigh them (though their answers differ), but I don’t find it nearly so obvious.
To most people, the word “libertarian” means the Libertarian Party. One might react to this fact by feeling that it is vitally important for radicals to steer the LP in a radical direction so as to project the right image. One might instead react by feeling that it is vitally important for radicals to repudiate the LP loudly and forcefully so as to undermine the mistaken identification. I myself feel the pull of both considerations fairly strongly.
A repudiationist will argue that even if what the LP says does influence the success of agorist education, the solution is simply to abolish the LP. Maybe so, but there’s no magic button that will abolish it. In any case, there are also some strategic reasons for wanting such a party around come the revolution, for reasons I’ve discussed before. So I don’t think the case for repudiation is ironclad.
On the other hand, I certainly don’t think the case for participation is ironclad either. For one thing, there’s a strong case to be made for its being impossible – or at least bloody difficult – for radicals to work effectively in the party. Whatever we do in the party will either succeed or fail in making the LP more popular. If it fails, then obviously whatever we’re doing is not effective. If it succeeds, then more people will join the party, but the likely result of that is watering down the party and moving it in a moderate direction. Arguably this is already happening.
Less sees reason for optimism in the fact that “after 6 ballots 45% of the delegates still wanted an openly anarchist candidate.” Yes, that is some reason for optimism. But is the party likely to get more radical or less radical after the Barr-Root campaign? What kind of people is that campaign likely to bring into the party – people more likely to swell that 45% or more likely to diminish it? Surely the latter. Are there enough radicals to offset that trend if they got involved in droves? It’s not obvious.
I’m not arguing for any particular conclusion here. I’m through with the LP for this election (it’ll be the first since ’88 that I haven’t supported the presidential nominee), but I’m not committed to abandoning it forever. Though I’m not committed to going back either. (I let my membership lapse years ago, so I can’t have the satisfaction of formally quitting to protest the Barr-Root nomination.)
The good news is that in the end I don’t think that much turns on this issue. I think the pro-LP side tends to exaggerate the benefits of a libertarian political party, but I also think the agorist side tends to exaggerate the extent of harm that it does. Electoral politics is in the end peripheral to the central tasks of libertarian education and building alternative institutions.
Agorist Demerit Count: 4.5
I think it’s rather silly to say, as some have, that the LP is dead now that Barr has been nominated. I ought to know. I’ve been calling for the death of the LP for some time now.
What IS effectively dead now, or rather can be said to be dead with a degree of surety not previously available, is the Dallas Accord — and THAT is not uninteresting in terms of its implications for the future.
I confess to being fascinated by the notion of a Mutualist (and the far left of the left-Rothbardians) caucus in the LP, explicitly named “the Libertarian Socialist Caucus” — just for the sake of sending the conservatoids into fits of apoplexy. Almost, I convince myself, almost — but not quite.
Regarding:
“Just as it’s good to pray while you’re drinking, but bad to drink while you’re praying, so it’s good for the libertarian movement that radicals leave the LP, but also good for the movement that the LP have radicals in it.”
I think the apparent contradiction is best resolved by the understanding that people will naturally adopt diverse positions and opinions. The most radical will push the bounds of debate in a particular direction, but apart from them everyone will spread out along the spectrum-space created by the ultra-radicals moving the bounds. This is sort of what I was getting at when I said toward the end an old post that “We’re the new Reds… There will be shades of pink”.
Perhaps the best argument for voting and political parties, from an agorist perspective, might be the tactical necessity of hiding the fact that you’re an agorist. I have little doubt that the Objectivist Lenin would send us all off to the camps if given the opportunity. Note carefully that Barr said Rand was his favorite philosopher.
Hillary is doing her best to obliterate the DNC, while McCain makes a high percentage of the GOP cringe in horror. Now, Barr may not have killed the LP, but he’s doing a banner job of pushing it that way nonetheless.
Personally, I’m elated. Let the parties hit the floor! And melt.
Well, this paradox is easily resolved by simply educating the LP members without joining the party itself. There’s no reason why we can’t talk to these people, and there’s no reason why we have to join the party to do it.
The only problem left is that most people think “Libertarian Party = libertarianism.” But that can be solved by getting publicity for non-party libertarian organizations like the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
Personally I let my Party membership lapse when the Trojan Horse showed up at the gates and the people inside were clamoring for more war. Now that the Horse is within the walls, I fear it is too late for this phase of the party’s history.
I certainly agree that the death of all parties would be a good thing – it might actually force voters to find out about someone’s stand on the issues rather than pidgeonholing and stereotyping them because of the party they felt most aligned with. It is a real tragedy however that a single word like “libertarian” cannot just have a single definition. If the party had more internal spine they would have had a purge after 9-11 and would have remained radical and committed. One of the things that first attracted me to the party was a seeming committment to these radical principles. Then I started to meet more and more party members an slowly I realiized how wrong I had been to assume we all believed the same thing.
Come on people, how hard can freedom. liberty, small government, and the likes be to support?
Long: “Less sees reason for optimism in the fact that after 6 ballots 45% of the delegates still wanted an openly anarchist candidate.”
Um, I wouldn’t say that Mary Ruwart was an “openly anarchist candidate” during this campaign. To my knowledge, she never publicly said anything about abolishing the State entirely after she announced, nor did she say that during the candidates debate at the convention. She IS an anarchist, of course. But did most of the delegates know that? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think you can infer that 45% of the delegates still wanted an “openly anarchist” candidate though.
David S. wrote:
>It is a real tragedy however that a single word like “libertarian” cannot just have a single definition.
Dave, I couldn’t disagree more: this is part of the “logocentrism” that has plagued the libertarian movement for so long: if only we could get everyone to accept and love the word “libertarian” then Utopia would arrive tomorrow! This feeds in to the idea that if only we could get “libertarianism” mentioned in the media more, etc. we would win.
Our views are basically the views Thoreau expressed in the “Essay on Civil Disobedience.” Most Americans disagreed with him then, and they disagree even more strongly now.
That is the problem: not the words used to describe political views, but rather the substance of the political beliefs most Americans hold.
There is a broader problem, of course: worship of the American “nation” is now so nearly universal that, for example, even to repeat the famous quote from Spencer that we do not care about the deaths of those criminals called American soldiers who have hired themselves out to murder people halfway around the world risks getting ourselves physically assaulted.
We are in the position of Christians in the early Roman Empire: we are fighting against the ruling culture and the power elite that controls it, and we need to realize that.
I have no magic solution, but I do know this: unexpected things will happen. Sometime in the next hundred years, the US will lose a major war, there will be a Greater Depression, the dollar will collapse, there will be a new Civil War, or, most likely, some cataclysm none of us can anticipate will occur. Whatever magic strategy we plan – working within the major parties, a libertarian third party, counter-economics, etc. – will probably not prove to be the best strategy for taking advantage of what actually happens.
But whatever does happen will ultimately be controlled by the ideas that humans hold. It is those ideas we need to focus on – not what the word “libertarian” really means or who controls the “Libertarian” Party.
Rod’s blog, Rockwell’s blog, homeschooling our own kids with an honest political/historical/social perspective, and other activities of this sort matter far, far more than the LP or the use of the word “libertarian.”
Dave
JT:
I wouldn’t say that Mary Ruwart was an “openly anarchist candidate” during this campaign
She didn’t advertise her anarchism during her campaign (though she didn’t say anything that contradicted it either), but she continued to promote her book, which is openly anarchist.
PhysicistDave,
We are in the position of Christians in the early Roman Empire
Let’s hope we don’t follow their path of seizing power and then doing as they’d been done to.
Withdrawing consent to the State is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for “rendering yourself ungovernable.” The other part of the counter-economic equation is that Market Protection Firms are supposed to emerge that sell protection services against the likelihood of retaliation by the state. From an empirical standpoint, this evolutionary behavior of the counter-economy has yet to be observed in any meaningful fashion, other than organized crime bribing of politicians and cops, and, say, in the areas of Crypto protection in terms of encrypting your hard drive or anonymizing your web surfing(Crypto protection is definitely not a case of protection insurance, however). From my research of agorism, I have never encountered a single paper that addresses this fundamental assumption of the theory. From a game theoretic perspective, would it be rational or even boundedly rational for counter-economic agents to sell protection insurance that would risk having to fight the State. Would a dominant strategy of “fight” ever be “rational” for a counter-economic organization?
Frankly, I think the Agorists should worry more about the rigor of their theory than who the Libertarian Party is nominating. Just my 2 cents…
Rod wrote to me:
>[Dave]We are in the position of Christians in the early Roman Empire
>[Rod]Let’s hope we don’t follow their path of seizing power and then doing as they’d been done to.
Yeah, some of the people I knew in the LP (and, obviously, some Objectivists) do worry me in that respect!
Let me hasten to add that I am not worried on that issue with regard to Less, or, indeed, anyone who is participating in the discussion here. I think I disagree with Less simply on a practical matter of strategy (and I think he may have somewhat different tastes, inclinations, and talents than I do, also).
In short, I may be wrong and Less may be right.
Dave
kaligula — Check out Gil Guillory’s work.
kaligula,
While protection firms wouldn’t initially be in a position to make fighting cost-effective, there are still ways to manage the risks associated with non-violent illegality. One way is through insurance agreements, which spread risk by pooling assets among many counter-economic actors. Even though they don’t actively prevent busts, they can still alleviate some of the real-world effects, such as fines and court costs. As you can imagine, these could form the fund-structure for security arrangments later on.
So I don’t it’s really fair to say things aren’t happening because we don’t have protection firms able to actively fight off the police. What we should be looking at are relationships and support systems that provide an institutional base for stand-up protection once things get to a point where it makes sense.
It’s interesting that you mention cypto-anarchy, because there actually is a Swedish company selling protection insurance for filesharing against the RIAA. It’s called Tankafritt.nu (translates to “download freely.now”). The pitch is that for $19 U.S. a year, they will pay all of your fines if you are ever convicted for copyright infringement in a filesharing case. You also get a T-shirt saying “I was convicted of filesharing and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”. It seems on the level; Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group has chosen to endorse them. Unforunately, they only accept Swedish members for the moment. They are looking to expand internationally, but face certain . . . ahem . . . legal barriers.
Granted, fines in Sweden are somewhat lower than those here, but aside from higher capitalization requirements, there’s no reason why an underground equivalent of Tankafritt couldn’t be done here. In fact, there’s no reason why this couldn’t be done for any kind of non-violent illegality.
Michael J. Palmer said,
>The only problem left is that most people think “Libertarian Party = libertarianism.” But that can be solved by getting publicity for non-party libertarian organizations like the Alliance of the Libertarian Left.
I think it is really time to get more publicity for radical libertarianism. The Ron Paul movement is going nowhere and now the LP is clearly headed downward (or rightward if you want to be more sophisticated). What can we do to replace these faces of libertarianism with something better?
Long: “She didn’t advertise her anarchism during her campaign (though she didn’t say anything that contradicted it either), but she continued to promote her book, which is openly anarchist.”
Is it? I don’t have a copy of it right now. But I’ve read it before, and I don’t recall it explicitly saying that the entire State should be abolished. Even if it did, I doubt that most delegates to the Libertarian convention had ever read her book (except perhaps the child porn item after that became an issue).
Here’s something else to consider: How many of the delegates who voted for Ruwart simply backed the candidate widely perceived as the one most likely to defeat Barr, regardless of her anarchism? In other words, would many of them have backed her even if she had been a minarchist Libertarian and not an anarchist Libertarian? I think so. So I don’t believe the 45% vote for Ruwart proves much vis-a-vis anarchism among the LP delegates or the LP as a whole.
JT,
I do have the book currently. While I have not finished it cover to cover, I cannot find anywhere in it where she explicitly comes out for anarchism, though she does seem carefully to avoid anything clearly inconsistent with anarchism.
That’s her privilege of course – she’s the author! I don’t constantly run around yelling “I’m an anarchist!” either, and, indeed, as Less Antman strongly and rightly emphasized on another thread, the real issue is how do you end aggression against innocent human beings, not what label do you attach to yourself (or others).
But your and my observations do support the narrow point that LP delegates may not have known they were voting for an anarchist. Perhaps someone who was at the LP convention can provide us with other information that shows that they did indeed know Mary is an anarchist?
Incidentally, my own personal problem with Mary’s book is not the lack of explicit mention of anarchism but rather the fact that she seems to present her views as separate policy proposals that will somewhat increase the efficiency of government and improve the functioning of society.
I think there is way too little expression in the book of the fact that the government is simply a criminal gang that commits repeated and outrageous crimes against innocent people. (I know Mary actually thinks this; I just do not think it is well-communicated in the book.)
I think that Ron Paul, for all his many faults (he, after all, is not an anarchist) did a better job of denouncing the criminality of the state and expressing outrage at the suffering caused by the state’s criminal acts in his recent primary campaign than Mary’s book does.
I think that the key problem for libertarians is to delegitimize the state, to get people to view it as simply the criminal gang that it is. Mary’s book, to me, seems to say that there have of course been some bad apples in the government, and that the government has sometimes been manipulated or corrupted by bad people. But the major thrust of her book seems to be that the government has just been pursuing misguided policies.
I do not see running through the book a central theme that the very idea of “government” being entitled to do something that would be illegitimate for individuals to do is wrong, that the very concept of “government” is a snare and delusion used by evil people to hurt innocent human beings.
Ron Paul did not say this as explicitly as I would have liked, either. But his tone and approach seemed to express that more clearly than Mary’s book.
Considering that Mary really is an anarchist, and Paul is not, this seems more than a bit strange!
Dave
Ron Paul did not say this as explicitly as I would have liked, either.
That’s because he doesn’t believe it.
Those who say she didn’t explicitly campaign using the word anarchist are correct, but Ruwart’s anarchism was repeatedly brought up during the campaign by her opponents: a prominent attack by Wayne Allen Root was entitled:
Anarchism, Age of Consent, and the Dallas Accord
http://crazyforliberty.com/2008/05/07/anarchism-age-of-consent-laws-and-the-dallas-accord-wayne-allyn-root.aspx
and there was an explosion within the LP, including a press release by the executive director to try to distance the LP from Ruwart’s views.
Subsequently, George Phillies, Steve Kubby, and Christine Smith all issued press releases to emphasize that they believed free market capitalism was best protected by a centrally-planned socialist monopoly.
Well, okay, they just said they were minarchists. 😉
This was the hottest topic in the campaign, and was central to all the discussions in Denver outside the convention hall. Believe me, folks, every single person who voted in Denver knew Mary Ruwart was an anarchist. Just try a google search on “Ruwart anarchist” and enjoy.
And then 45% of the delegates voted to make her the LP Presidential Nominee. Subsequently, she was leading vote-getter to be put onto the Libertarian National Committee that sets policy.
Just to add vigor to the controversy and fun to the whole process, the Boston Tea Party, founded in 2006 in response to the evisceration of the LP platform by Tom Knapp, is holding its own nominations convention on 14 June – Flag Day! see http://www.bostontea.us for details
Yes, Less, I was there, and I saw Mary elected to the national committee for the LP. Her first act was to move to re-establish the publications review committee so that no more tawdry press releases calling for more government action on anything would be issued. Which, of course, was immediately criticised for slowing down the process.
“Why, we need to be able to issue press releases spot on the moment, Mary, none of your backseat driving, we’re the headquarters staff, damn you, and we work in the Watergate complex for a reason! We’re corrupt as sin! Nixon was a ruddy amateur.”
Yes, it was hysterical: the national office didn’t issue a press release opposing the Iraq War for several years, and now they’re complaining about a 12 hour delay.
Fortunately, nobody bought that baloney, and her motion passed 9-2.
*tsk tsk*
Your agorist demerit count is getting high. 🙂
Antman: “[Ruwart’s anarchism] was the hottest topic in the campaign, and was central to all the discussions in Denver outside the convention hall. Believe me, folks, every single person who voted in Denver knew Mary Ruwart was an anarchist.”
I honestly don’t see how you could know what “all the discussions in Denver outside the convention hall” centered on. But I’ll grant your premise here that every delegate knew that Mary Ruwart was an anarchist. That only proves that Ruwart’s anarchism wasn’t a dealbreaker for 45% of the delegates. Those Libertarians may have voted for her as the strongest candidate to defeat Bob Barr. They might have done so even if she had been a constitutionalist Libertarian candidate like Michael Badnarik. It doesn’t prove that anything like 45% of the delegates were anarchists, nor that anarchists are anything near 45% of the LP.
I wasn’t trying to suggest 45% were anarchists. I’ve regularly estimated the percentage as 10% to 15%. I do think it is meaningful that this wasn’t a dealbreaker (and there are other reasons she didn’t win, such as her poor performance in the debate the night before when she started and ended by saying the fact that she was a woman was a good reason to nominate her, which might have been true, but offended many).
Okay, I didn’t mean all. I did mean all the discussion about who to nominate. Ask others who were there: feel free to ask others who voted for Barr. Check out the google search and read some of the 6,000+ hits you get from “Ruwart anarchist” to see some of the coverage of that topic pre-nomination.
Actually, I’m pretty sure they WOULDN’T have given her 45% if she’d been a constitutionalist, as her plumbline libertarian was the foundation of her support. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have voted for her had she been a constitutionalist libertarian, and definitely wouldn’t have provided the money and time I did to her campaign.
But I don’t know for sure, and I think I understand your point.