Stephan Kinsella thinks Kevin Carson and William Gillis are anti-market. Good grief! Come on, Stephan, you’re not George Reisman!
Addendum:
Happily, I misunderstood Stephan; our disagreement is smaller than I’d thought. See the comments section.
Stephan Kinsella thinks Kevin Carson and William Gillis are anti-market. Good grief! Come on, Stephan, you’re not George Reisman!
Addendum:
Happily, I misunderstood Stephan; our disagreement is smaller than I’d thought. See the comments section.
violence against an aggressor has to have some practical relation to combating the aggression, for one thing
I should add that I consider that a constraint of justice, not just of prudence.
Thanks for the clarification, Roderick. It even helps me. So it’ll probably be even more helpful to Stephan.
>But I see I did leave out a line in the first para — it was late at night. I meant to clarify the that the market anarchists had tried to join the commie-pseudo-anarchists march, and that’s how Carson’s literature got mixed in(but to be honest I’m not sure, the reports are confusing).
To clarify: Carson’s literature, among other anarchist materials, were inside the RNC Welcoming Committee Convergence Center when it got raided by cops. The Convergence Center was a rented building set up as a space to coordinate anti-RNC activities.
Market anarchists trying, and succeeding, in joining the “commie-pseudo-anarchists march” did get a black and gold flag and a free market banner mixed in with the black and red. This is probably the first time many people have seen market anarchists doing anything outside of cyberspace.
I don’t see how lobbing rhetorical rocks at the other anarchists because someone broke a window is going to get them more friendly towards markets than treating them with the respect they deserve would. I also doubt that there would much to piss them off in a true free market as long as they can get by the m-word.
If I invoke the no true Scotsman fallacy here, will anyone complain? If not, can we get back to smashing the state now, instead of each other?
@Roderick
Regarding “…I certainly don’t favour hurling rocks at Macy’s windows”.
Neither do I. I think it’s a poor choice of tactics. I just disagree about the assertion that it’s a moral issue deserving of condemnation. I see the legitimacy of property claims by major corporations as doubtful for a variety of reasons. Lacking a legitimate owner, destruction of such unowned material (which doesn’t even qualify as property) is not even violence.
No true anarchist would invoke the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
Lacking a legitimate owner, destruction of such unowned material (which doesn’t even qualify as property) is not even violence.
Assuming Macy’s isn’t the owner, then by 1960s Rothbardian standards it’s not unowned, it’s owned by its current users (= the workers). That would seem to make the breakage morally problematic! (In any case it’s the workers who are going to have to clean it up.)
Professor Long’s rhetorical arrow critically strikes you for 232 points of damage. You die. Would you like your possessions identified [Y/n]?
Roderick: “b) is holding a 20% standard enough to disqualify someone from the ranks of market anarchism. You’re asking about (a), on which I have no especially strong thoughts at present. My disagreement with Stephan is about (b).”
I honestly don’t know. To me it’s a semantics question. I suppose they could be a market anarchist but have a different view than I of the legitimacy of using violence against relatively innocent people and their property. That’s why I simply say we need to distinguish. Fight the state, yes. But not Macy’s and Wal-Mart. If you think they are too entangled with the state, the solution is to reduce the state’s role. After all, we don’t advocate going shooting old people who receive–and voted for!!–social security.
“I certainly don’t favour hurling rocks at Macy’s windows — whether or not Macy’s turns out to be a legitimate target.”
I don’t favor it either, specifically because it is quite clearly not a legitimate target. This is yet another reason for a distinction, perhaps–some of us will take a stand one way on this, others a stand the other way or are unclear about it.
“Darian” wrote: “I don’t see how lobbing rhetorical rocks at the other anarchists because someone broke a window is going to get them more friendly towards markets than treating them with the respect they deserve would.”
I am a libertarian, apparently unlike our somewhat “allies”, the anti-market anarchists, or the market-anarchists-in-favor-of-brick-throwing (but not bewhiskered and bomb-throwing?). I will reject and condemn aggression for as long as I live–regardless of who does it. It is right and proper to do this. I am not saying we cannot work with these people–though I am not confident this is a good idea–but it’s not an alliance of equals or similar people.
This thread led me to do some further research. Here are some links for the interested:
The National Retail Federation’s “Government Relations” Page
http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=Dashboard&id=2&pmenu_id=14
Open Secret’s “Lobbying Spending Database” for the National Retail Foundation
https://opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=National+Retail+Federation&year=2007
Open Secret’s “National Retail Federation 2008 PAC Summary Data”
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00040329
They’ve been giving pretty generously to the Republicans this election cycle. It seems that they lobby for legislation to coerce other businesses (e.g. Visa/Mastercard), and to end the exploitation of children for work in foreign countries. I’m sure more could be gleaned from their policy reports. But you’d have to sign up to read it.
Dang, I wrote “Foundation” rather than “Federation” for the second link. The link’s still right though.
market-anarchists-in-favor-of-brick-throwing
Or market-anarchists-generally-against-brick-throwing-but-not-regarding-it-as-a-rights-violation, which is closer to the position that’s in question.
@Roderick: “Or market-anarchists-generally-against-brick-throwing-but-not-regarding-it-as-a-rights-violation, which is closer to the position that’s in question. ”
Yet another reason to distinguish between anarcho-libertarianism and this stance.
So what do you think of Rothbard’s 50% position?
///by this standard, we all have no rights, we are all criminals, all victims of each other and criminals at the same time.///
Dear lord. You zealous natural law ancaps realize there is such a thing as utilitarianism, right? Seeing yourself in others and working to maximize everyone’s capacity for choice, just as you would maximize your own capacity for choice? And seeing that empathy as logical and naturally emergent in an open mind?
Yes the world is a bloody place and we’ve all participated in the power structures around us. But Corporations are so profoundly removed and isolated from the free market, over-extended and deeply muddled in privileges granted by statist force that it’s almost impossible to tie their property back to real, actual existing human beings. That’s hardly ‘might makes right’ or sumsuch bugaboo. It’s just that we need to include far, far more context in our analysis of events and situations.
(Personally I think that some semblance of “property rights” should be reproduced — to a fuzzy degree — by a free REPUTATION market, but as an emergent arrangement, not a priori or forced reality… after the revolution, as teh punx say.)
“Windows getting broken” is simply not enough. And stopping at that and calling those whose fist (or head, in the instance where cops beat the crowd against one of the windows) went through some pane of glass “hooligans” is just a blind, impulsive cultural affiliation with the status quo.
.
I’d also like to clear up that I was not positing 20% as some personal marker of irrevocable taint, but to demonstrate the fuzziness of all this (how much of Macy’s position as an institution is granted by abstract state-induced scale-increasing realities in the background environment, how can we even measure or quantify that!? but, likewise how dare we ignore it) and the importance of subjective analyses on the ground.
None of us have access to all the context, all the hidden externalities — and that’s why most social anarchists (of which I ascribe in tandem to my identity as a market anarchist) support a diversity of tactics, up to each individual. We can criticize their effectiveness, and talk strategy and broad ethical constraints, but we’re not arrogant enough to presume some absolute divine laws should guide all tactical engagement with the State.
See in particular Peter Gelderloos’ HOW NONVIOLENCE PROTECTS THE STATE, for some popular arguments on this.
Of course Roderick and I disagree on Scottsmen, but we’ll hash that out in Thunderdome some day.
^
Of course by scottsmen, I’m wryly referencing my position that there’s ultimately no such thing as a “true scottsman” any more than there is even a “scottsman.” 😉
Or a Scotsman, for that matter.
😛
Orthography is oppression!
Anyway, William just means he’s hatin’ on Ken MacLeod.
Why’s he hatin’ on Ken MacLeod?
Because he hasn’t had a standout novel since The Cassini Division? Oooh, zing!
Seriously, though. Why the hell is it “scottish” and then all of a sudden “scotsman” is too good for the extra T? Bloody poor-man’s irish.
“Because he hasn’t had a standout novel since The Cassini Division? Oooh, zing!”
Does that mean you think the rest of them are no good? Or just that they don’t measure up to his best? In terms of literary merit? In terms of the science? And/or in terms of the political ideas?
Now that we’re completely off tangent. I think Ken’s at his best when he’s ranting from experience but placed in a distant enough and extreme enough context that it doesn’t sound like he’s hitting us over the head, but rather making one lengthy, extended in-joke at the pub.
His extremely tedious cosmonaut keep novels just didn’t hook me at all and everything else since then has been a blatant attempt to branch out / build up literary prowess. Which I applaud. But until he’s built up those skills we’re left with material that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up. Newton’s Wake, Learning the World and the Execution Channel were frankly sort of embarrassing, in that they proved his earlier success was personal-experience based badassery, not immaculately conceived badassery. (Although I persist in my desire to name my first born “But the Sky, My Lady. The Sky!”)
Ken, like peers in the current pantheon of rockstar SF (Charlie, Iain and Cory) lacks the literary prowess of Le Guin or Delany. And simply don’t have the mental muscle of say Chiang and Baxter. The only thing they’ve got going for them is their arrogance and youthful bravado.
Their strength lies in acting like total badasses and throwing out a million ideas, twists and injokes per page; brazenly compounding their ideas self-referentially on top of one another. When they play to this strength we get wonderful, gorgeous things like Accelerando, Excession and The Fall Revolution. When they deviate or try for something different, we get lesser material. (Although Iain can largely write whatever he damn well pleases and at least be above-par.)
The Fall Revolution was Ken’s “fun books”. They more or less flowed because he poured his geek heart into them. The rest was his “I’m a serious SF writer, too” books. And on the whole they’ve just been clunky.
I say Cassini Division specifically because the Sky Road bothered me politically and also seemed to self-indulgence himself into a corner. But also because Cassini Division was my introduction to Ancapism as a wee child (I thought it was a rich, marvelous joke) and on an even more superficial level contained the most wickedly awesome and deliciously, indulgently sectarian line ever:
“After we abolished capitalism and the greens died out…”