Is Left-Wing Libertarianism Viable?
The anarchist/libertarian movement is pretty much divided in certain aspects, especially in the hierarchy/equality point of view. Some people want people to be completely equal, even using the coercion of the communities or a State to make people equal, otherws prefer hierarchy, whether voluntary hierarchy (which by the way forms naturally), or forced hierarchy through a tribe system.
So we can identify 4 possible political systems (or their mixtures):
- Fascism (forced hierarchy through a State)
- Bolshevism (forced equality of the population, but the State and the politburo excepted from it, since the state will be the tool to force the equality, basically enslavement of the population meanwhile the ruling class is above the law)
- Voluntary Communism (voluntary equality through voluntary communities)
- Anarcho-Capitalism (voluntary hierarchy through private property)
Ok so we know that the first 2 are horrible systems, it has been tried many times: Kingdoms & Empires, Nazis, Soviets, etc....
We know that a voluntary society is the best one, the question is, will communism exist in a voluntary society or will it become capitalist based on private property. And here is the divide between the left and the entrepreneurial ideologies.
Now the problem with this left-libertarian movement in my opinion is that, they never talk about how they would create a voluntary left society, they always talk about how evil corporations are and just want to regulate them through the Government. So essentially feeding the Government from power taken away from corporations. It’s just Statism 101.
So they are either controlled opposition, or they are a form of Statist Liberalism, just blame the big businesses and ignore the 1000000x worse things done by Governments.
One of the people who are sort of left-libertarian is Noam Chomsky, who considers himself anarcho-syndicalist, basically governance through workers unions. I don't know how "anarchist" that is, but basically this is as far as I've heard the left-libertarians go. And don't get me wrong Chomsky puts out a lot of good criticism of corporations, but sometimes he goes far, and he also doesn't understands economics, and human incentives.
They never put out concrete plans how a voluntary society will be "equal", without using force. I mean after all, it's Nature that makes things unequal. So you have to use some kind of force to make things equal.
It's like if you try to put a square piece into a round hole, it won't go in there, unless you use force to push it inside. That is how I imagine the left-libertarianism.
Oh you are earning 1,000,000$ a year, why don't you just share that with the community at the point of a barrel of a gun?
Of course we can design voluntary economies through cryptocurrencies, but who is to say I am forced to use one that will have wealth redistribution systems inside them?
I might, but I should not be forced too. Even the Steem system, after the next hardfork will have voting rights inserted more equally.
But it's not a free lunch, only talented people get rewarded here, so you don't get something for nothing. People have to work, that is how it is.
So if you like how things will be distributed here more equally, fine. And there is no force here. But there is also no free money here either.
So I guess the left has a point when saying that wages can be made more equal, especially in the "Attention Economy", but remember you can't use force.
A contract is a contract, and private property still applies here. So there is nothing stopping a talented person rising to the top like: @timsaid , @stellabelle , @kafkanarchy84 , @sweetsssj and others.
So you have equality of opportunity, now you are either good or not. Just because you get envious of others working harder than you is not an entitlement for wealth redistribution.
So private property is sacrosanct, but inside this system, anything is possible, people forming voluntary communities and agreeing on how equally wages are given, but once they are out, you can't steal them back via coercion.
Sources:
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We know that in the same way we know unicorns are the best horses.
Which is to say we don't because such a thing has never existed and most likely never can exist due to human nature.
What a narrowminded response. That is like saying, people can't have voluntary interactions and everything
mustbe based on violence.............
A very narrowminded mindset you are in. So you can't imagine a voluntary society? But you don't realize that already 90% of what people are doing in their day-to-day life is voluntary.
It's just the the other 10% that has to be changed.
Humans came a long way from chained slave caravans, into an imperfect taxation system. So who is to say that it can go further than this?
We're a long way from chained slave caravans because it was made illegal.
Your examples really prove my point, you can point out all the consensual sex in the world but rape still happens. You need to prove it would happen less if there were no government to arrest the perpetrators.
Or maybe because human empathy and worldview has changed throughout the millenia.
Actually it's the government that arrests voluntary sex participants (prostitution), while in most cases let's the rapists go free (like in Europe with some of the migrants).
So the government doesn't do a good job preventing violence (hello, they are doing it), but also it does inflict a lot of violence on it's own.
Pointing out that the current system is imperfect does nothing to prove yours is better.
If you think human empathy has improved then prove it. Difficulty: Donald Trump just got elected with promises like killing the families of everyone associated with ISIS and building a wall the prevent people from leaving an impoverished region.
Well he got elected with a 40% population voting for him, and it's not like the population had a choice right?
I mean he came up with 100 different promises and only 1 of those were the middle-eastern problems, so could it be that the population elected him for the other 99 promises?
Usually policies come in a giant package, and you might only like 1 thing in that package but the other 99 are also shoved down your throat in an election. So quite possibly the voters didn't have a chance to vote on every single issue and voted in an entire policy package.
This is why I think direct democracy is superior consensus method, because you can vote on every single issue, and not have to tolerate things that you don't like for 4 years.
Need to point out to you that Hitler also won the election with only 40% of the population voting for him?
This is very much on point. The comparisons between Trump and Hitler began even before the primaries were over. In fact, Trump made very few actual promises and left things pretty ambiguous with everyone trying to figure out what actual plans he had. His entire campaign centered around ISIS, Mexicans, and repealing Obamacare.
His campaign earned him endorsements from groups like the KKK, a white supremacist organization, and other Nazi groups in the US.
And yes, the people did have choices. As a libertarian you probably get most of your information from libertarian sources, but from everything I've seen libertarian and anarchist news sources are pretty much conservatives from a political angle... meaning that they all work their hardest to demonize liberals/Democrats. For instance this radio host stating Democrats are "Children of Satan." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-children-of-satan_us_5947325ce4b0f15cd5bc501c
So aside from Clinton actually being a very good choice for President, there was an actual Libertarian candidate.
So yes Trump only got 40% of the population to vote for him (if not less) by spouting Nazi-like rhetoric and earning the endorsements white supremacists.
That's still 40% of the population who either actively wanted Trump to kill Muslim children and kick Mexicans out of the country, or who were at least accepting enough of those plans to vote for him.
Except that's not true. We've had this discussion before, and you want a consensus of something like 97%... which would, at the very least, leave 3% of people tolerating policies they don't like indefinitely. Moreover you'll probably never get that high of a consensus on anything, so what you'll actually have is 90% of people tolerating things they believe should be illegal like murder or rape.
What a horrible view on human nature you must have? That is one of the biggest lies you're told - that humans would be so raving mad without a government. We don't have problems now you mean? Rapists, murderers, terrorists, corruption, child abuse.. In a society without a state, everyone would have to step up their responsibility-game. Sure, these people would still exist, but they'd be fewer. To be born under the barrel of a gun most likely increases the chances you will become a violent person. Taxation is theft!
See my reply to @profitgenerator, you basically made the same flawed argument.
This is only somewhat correct but not all libertarians are like this. I consider myself to be one of them who has real changes we would like. For instance I would say we could eventually get rid of taxes in favor of usage fees instead.
Also there are a lot of libertarian city's popping up around the world now. Three major projects last I checked. Liberstand is one.
Well taxation really has to go, and the income tax is the worst one. Anyone who believes in taxes is not a libertarian, by any means.
Income tax is serfdom. You could at least make a case for other taxes, but the income tax is just pure serfdom. It's like stealing people's souls away.
I fully agree. Taxes especially the income tax is theft pure and simple it needs to be abolished. If we cut back some of this run away gov spending it would be more then doable to cut taxes.
Great article. In my opinion, we only need anarchy (laisezz faire, classical liberalism, libertarianism, whatever you want to call it) , because without government everyone are free to organize (or not organize) the way they want. So if someone wants anarcho-communism or anarcho-syndicalism, they are free to form that society. And then the rest of us can be free and watch it turn to shit :)
hence, not Libertarians ;>
Well they call themselves that, another attemps to skew the meaning of words.
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Who the fuck do you think is left-libertarian that promotes regulations? It's literally a mass-chanting of "death to the state" 24/7.
You simply smash the fuck out of the state and the seize what's rightfully yours from the state/elite, then you resign to fully democratic decisions on a local level.
There'd be no legal system as if you did wrong you'd be, most likely according to the community, thrown in a cell while you petition other communities to accept you, if nobody would you'd be given the choice of the communities punishment or going into a "openland" where no community currently occupies.
If you don't like something you can leave or segregate yourself from the community, but as you'd soon find out, short of maybe one or two communities, you have nobody to bully and exploit and the community may do so to you if so desired as that's capitalism.
No force is needed :)
If this wealth was generated before the switch, in the capitalist highly-exploited world we live in today, yes.
That value was likely stolen from the people they enslaved without consent, and thus the NAP is violated, and thus we will use any force required to return the rightful wealth to the populace.
Chomsky does it for once, and he is pretty big figure in the left- anarchist circles. Even in the 2008 crisis he called for regulating the banks. And then every time some issue comes up when some corporation got out of line he always says that the government should be regulating them, because in his mind a corporation is a "private tyranny", but he says that the Government at least can be "influenced" by the public.
Which is totally false. Corporations can be better influenced by the public than governments.
I am not sure if that system would be good. Minorities could be easily abused this way. Racism, xenophobia, or other kind of minority hatred could easily prevail in such "strong" communities.
I would not agree to that. It's one thing if they go after the bankers who have been fixing the gold and silver markets gaining trillion $ profits.
And it's another thing if they go after a mom&pop business that got rich from some good innovation.
Besides if you just start hunting down people that
youthink are immoral, then that can turn into savagery pretty quickly.At least they should get an open and free trial, but even then, this could turn into Bolshevism, and we know that 30,000,000 peasants were butchered then.
So I would definitely disagree with this method.
That's only because the corporations are the government, and thus when you mess with the government nothing gets done as there is a filter, a proxy, an excuse, for it not to be done.
In regards to regulations, I thought you were talking about as a goal. Are you genuinely advocating for us to not regulate banks whatsoever? To simply let them burn everybody's money and do their nasty artificial money-creating scheme between each other?
Sorry but the market is them, things will just crash and burn.
And in other communities the'd accept minorities no issue and such oppressive communities would likely be economically suffocated.
If someone innovated and provided value they likely aren't to be killed or their things damaged.
If all they did was enslave others and trade magical non-existent spooks called stocks, then they didn't provide value but merely stole it, so it'll probably be re-possessed.
It's not who I think is immoral, it's who violated the NAP by definition.
And what would happen there?
"Did you or did you not trade stocks and bonds?"
"Did you or did you not pay thousands of workers no more than the minimum for them to live while making millions of dollars off their labor with threat of death if they didn't comply?"
There's no purpose in that, and as I said nobody would be particularly lynched unless they provided resistance. If someone steals your property and when you try to retrieve it they again commit violence you're authorized to kill them if need be by the NAP if your in danger.
I think the propagation of social elitism is rampant and ubiquitous in any political system right or left leaning because if nothing else Maslowvian needs tend to make people and their perceived needs more important than anyone else's unless we are talking about completely self actualized beings. Which to date has not really happened.
Keep working, stop paying, we will never get to mars if we have to borrow the money to get there.
Provided enough people keep the ship upright, we just steam on except now we don't pay rent.
Some form of communism would exist in a free world, but it would be outcompeted by capitalism. It would be a bit like the amish.
Exactly.
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