Happy Birthday to three great anarchists: Murray Rothbard (yesterday), and William Godwin and Gustave de Molinari (today)!
Tag Archives | Left-Libertarian
Two Guys Who Loved Them Some Stock Exchange
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
This passage from Voltaire’s Letters on England is well-known:
Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptized in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: that man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.
But this similar panegyric from Voltaire’s older contemporary Joseph Addison deserves recognition alongside it:
There is no place in the town which I so much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure, gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon High-Change to be a great council, in which all considerable nations have their representatives. Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the politic world; they negotiate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London, or to see a subject of the Great Mogul entering into a league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in mixing with these several Ministers of Commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages: sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman at different times; or rather fancy my self like the old philosopher, who upon being asked what countryman he was, replied that he was a citizen of the world. …
This grand scene of business gives me an infinite variety of solid and substantial entertainments. As I am a great lover of mankind, my heart naturally overflows with pleasure at the sight of a prosperous and happy multitude, insomuch that at many public solemnities I cannot forbear expressing my joy with tears that have stolen down my cheeks. For this reason I am wonderfully delighted to see such a body of men thriving in their own private fortunes, and at the same time promoting the public stock; or in other words, raising estates for their own families, by bringing into their country whatever is wanting, and carrying out of it whatever is superfluous.
Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another, and be united together by their common interest. Almost every degree produced something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbados: the infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippic Islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the Torrid Zone, and the tippet from beneath the Pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Hindustan.
If we consider our own country in its natural prospect, without any of the benefits and advantages of commerce, what a barren uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our share! Natural historians tell us, that no fruit grows originally among us, besides hips and haws, acorns and pig-nuts, with other delicacies of the like nature; that our climate of itself, and without the assistances of art, can make no further advances towards a plum than to a sloe, and carries an apple to no greater a perfection than a crab: that our melons, our peaches, our figs, our apricots, and cherries, are strangers among us, imported in different ages, and naturalized in our English gardens; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the trash of our own country, if they were wholly neglected by the planter, and left to the mercy of our sun and soil. Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable world, than it has improved the whole face of nature among us. Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate: our tables are stored with spices, and oils, and wines: our rooms are filled with pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan: our morning’s draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth: we repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies. … Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us greater variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with every thing that is convenient and ornamental. Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that whilst we enjoy the remotest products of the north and south, we are free from those extremities of weather which give them birth; that our eyes are refreshed with the green fields of Britain, at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that rise between the Tropics.
For these reasons there are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great. Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the Frozen Zone warmed with the fleeces of our sheep.
When I have been upon the ’Change, I have often fancied one of our old kings standing in person, where he is represented in effigy, and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place is every day filled. In this case, how would he be surprised to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former dominions, and to see so many private men, who in his time would have been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the Royal Treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us a kind of additional Empire: it has multiplied the number of the rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable as the lands themselves.
Now from a left-libertarian perspective it is true, of course, that much that went on in these commercial transactions was less than entirely innocent. Much that was traded was attained by partially or wholly compulsory rather than wholly voluntary means, both domestically (e.g., against the British proletariat) and abroad (e.g., against the colonised – and often against the colonisers too, for that matter); and of course in many cases it was human beings themselves who were so traded. The commerce that Addison celebrates was thus a tangled mixture of “economic means” and “political means” – as Addison must himself have been aware, writing as he did of the slave trade: “what colour of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity …?” (But despite his considerable influence on the liberal movement, Addison’s own liberalism was fairly tepid.) Recognising this mixed context lends Addison’s phrase “additional Empire” an uncomfortable ambiguity: an empire based on mutual consent and benefit, by contrast with the empire based on armed force? or a colonialist/mercantilist empire representing an extension of the empire based on armed force?
Nevertheless, taking Addison’s encomium as a tribute to the economic strands alone rather than to the whole mess, it’s true enough. And I especially like the cosmopolitanism of the first paragraph and the implicit criticism of aristocracy in the last.
Anarcho-Puffery, Part Deux
I’ve blogged previously about Doug Den Uyl’s plug for the Anarchism/Minarchism anthology, which reads:
This volume is a much needed revival of a debate critical to Libertarians, but also of significance to political theorists generally. The issue itself goes to the heart of what it means to do political philosophy, and the contributions found here skillfully keep those basic concerns in sight. In addition, I found the writing lucid and fair minded–something often missing in scholarly debate anthologies. I have no doubt that this volume will become a standard reference source for those interested in this particular debate and among the sources one consults when considering the foundations of the state generally.
I see that a second plug has since been added to Ashgate’s page for the book; this one is from Elaine Sternberg, and reads:
The forceful philosophical and historical challenges to the state presented in this volume should be read not just by libertarians, but by everyone who believes that government is either necessary or legitimate.
Also check out this write-up on the Auburn website.
Incidentally, anyone who is planning both a) to buy the book and b) to attend the Austrian Scholars Conference might want to postpone (a) until (b), because ASC attendees will be able to get 20% off the cover price if they pick up a flier from me at the conference. (Still pretty steep, alas.)
Locke the Antichrist
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
I’ve been reading Craig Nelson’s new Thomas Paine bio. So far it’s pretty good on the whole – a bit superficial philosophically and a bit too eager to entertain, but filled with lots of fascinating info I hadn’t known before.
Unfortunately, I’ve come across a major howler. And I fear that where there’s one there’s probably more.
Here’s the howler, from p. 264:
John Locke, surrounded by England’s religious tumult, would come to believe that “truly the Christian religion is the worst of all religions, and ought neither to be embraced by any particular person, nor tolerated by any commonwealth.”
Did John Locke, the great defender of religious toleration and author of The Reasonableness of Christianity, really say that Christianity was unreasonable and shouldn’t be tolerated? If true, this would be a surprising, startling fact that ought to prompt any writer even minimally familiar with the thought of the era to look more closely. But Nelson is evidently neither surprised nor startled.
So what did Locke actually write? Here’s the passage in its original context; judge for yourself whether it says what Nelson thinks it does:
I answer: Is this the fault of the Christian religion? If it be so, truly the Christian religion is the worst
of all religions and ought neither to be embraced by any particular person, nor tolerated by any commonwealth. For if this be the genius, this the nature of the Christian religion, to be turbulent and destructive to the civil peace, that Church itself which the magistrate indulges will not always be innocent. But far be it from us to say any such thing of that religion which carries the greatest opposition to covetousness, ambition, discord, contention, and all manner of inordinate desires, and is the most modest and peaceable religion that ever was. We must, therefore, seek another cause of those evils that are charged upon religion.
So did Nelson read the lines he quotes in their original context? If so, how could he have misunderstood them so badly? Or did he read them already excerpted by somebody else? If so, why wasn’t he curious to check the context of such an unlikely quotation? (An endnote informs us that he read them in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. But the passage isn’t in the Two Treatises, it’s in the Essay on Toleration.)
Now if Nelson can make a mistake this big and this obvious, how likely is it that that’s the only one in the book? Not likely, alas; how many hard-to-catch errors are lurking behind this easy-to-catch one? In fact there’s another somewhat harder-to-catch error, albeit a more minor one, on the immediately following page, where Nelson conflates two different anecdotes about Alexander Hamilton. But are there other, less minor flubs I didn’t catch? That seems the way to bet.
Wish Upon a Swastika
Several sketches of Disney characters, including this one of Pinocchio, are thought to have come from the pen of Adolf Hitler. No kidding. (Conical hat tip to LRC.)
Comparing Hitler’s version of Pinocchio with the original – is it my imagination, or has Hitler altered Pinocchio’s hairstyle to make it look more like … Hitler’s?
Pinocchio’s cap looks more like a traditional Tyrolean hat to me in Hitler’s version than in the original too – less floppy or something:
But I may really just be imagining that one. I feel more sure about the hairstyle, though.
Say, it’s a pity Hitler’s nose didn’t grow longer when he lied.
2017 Addendum:
It’s not surprising that a Wagnerian like Hitler would like Snow White, which shares a number of motifs with the Ring of the Nibelung, such as dwarves working in the mines, a maiden in an enchanted sleep waiting to be awakened by a handsome prince, and characters learning crucial information from helpful animals. (Plus, what Nazi could resist a story whose heroine’s defining feature is whiteness?)
Hitler’s self-identification with Pinocchio is interesting. Perhaps, like Pinocchio (or Ultron), he feels that in the past he’s been manipulated, like a puppet, by various hostile forces (the Western powers, the Jews) but now he’s asserting his independence and has “got no strings.” (Ironically, in the original “Got No Strings” song, Pinocchio is under the control of a representative of Italy (Hitler’s junior partner in real life) and is being courted by puppets from Holland, France, and Russia (all countries that Hitler would invade).
How Not to Liberalise
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
About a decade ago, much-missed Randian philosopher George Walsh (who once gave a student an A for showing up to his exam naked) offered the following remarks on Islamic history:
The forces of Islam quickly conquered the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin. There they encountered the Hellenistic culture which was already absorbed into Christianity. Translations of Aristotle had been made into Syriac in the sixth century by Eastern Christians, and these translations were in turn translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Other writings in Greek philosophy also became available. The Greek viewpoint was at first admired in Islam, unaware of what they were getting into, and it was advocated up to a point by a party called the Mutazilites, the pro-reason party in Islam. Greek philosophy, however, especially Aristotle, contradicted the whole Islamic viewpoint. The points of conflict were the following:
The Greek point of view was based on reason, the Islamic on faith and revelation. Greek philosophy regarded all of reality as knowable – this was true even of divine beings like the Prime Mover – knowable by reason. Whereas Islam believed that God was transcendent and unknowable. That is the second conflict. First is reason versus faith, second is the knowability of divine beings. Third, the Greeks believed the universe was fundamentally orderly and subject to regular law, but the Muslims believed that each event was separately decided by God’s arbitrary predestination. Fourth, the Greeks believed in an ethics and politics based on reason. For the Muslims, ethics and politics were based on the Qur’an and sacred tradition.
Those who subscribed to any Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, were soon in deep trouble. This is especially evidenced by the fate of the largely pro-Greek party, the Mutazilites. The sect of the Mutazilites represented a strong pro-reason reaction against the traditional doctrine of Islam. The traditional doctrine about the Qur’an was that it was part of the mind of God and therefore co-eternal with God. The real meaning of this doctrine is that it is a blasphemy to raise the slightest question about the Qur’an. The Mutazilites rejected this doctrine, and they said that it is making the Qur’an into a second God to make it unquestionable. The Qur’an, they said, is a creature just like a beast of the field, therefore it does not necessarily express the essential nature of God any more than a cockroach does (they didn’t put it that way). The Qur’an must be subject to the interpretation of reason. If we find that a given thing is irrational and seems to be taught in the Qur’an, we conclude that God didn’t really mean it this way; he merely talked obscurely at that point. If anything in the Qur’an seems contrary to reason, we must then reinterpret it in accord with reason.
This had an influence on the Christian Middle Ages. In this Mutazilite doctrine, we do not erect a second God and, at the same time, reason is saved. This is called the doctrine of the unity of God; it is really the doctrine of the priority of reason. Secondly, we apply this immediately to sections of the Qur’an which seem to teach predestination. Now predestination takes away moral responsibility and man, the Mutazilites said, is morally responsible. A good God would not reward or punish eternally unless man were morally responsible. This the Mutazilites called the doctrine of the justice of God and they presented themselves as defenders of the justice of God. But of course it was really the assertion of man’s free will. These two pro-reason doctrines were accompanied by a strong emphasis on moral virtue and uprightness.
The Mutazilite position began to make some headway when, unfortunately, their own zeal proceeded to fanaticism, as does indeed happen sometimes with people advocating reason, as well as anything else. They sabotaged their own cause. They came into power and issued a requirement that all public officials swear that the Qur’an is created and not divine. Some who refused this doctrine were put to death. This is sometimes called the Muslim Inquisition, from 830 to 845 (ironic that the only real inquisition in Islam was initiated by the pro-reason faction). Of course there was a religious reaction and the Mutazilites were thrown out of power.
What strikes me as interesting about the final paragraph is the suggestion that the reason the liberal/secular/rationalist-leaning faction lost out is that they tried to impose these values by force and so created a backlash. A lesson, perhaps, for those today who think the way to liberalise/secularise the Islamic world is to force liberal/secular values down their throats?