-
AGORISM
-
From "agora" -- the Greek word meaning "open marketplace" -- agorism is both a
free-market
anarchist ideology and advocacy of a peaceful black market (a "counter-economy") as the means of
non-aggressive
libertarian
revolution.
(See agorist.org for more agorist definitions.)
(See also New Libertarian Manifesto, by Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3), father of Agorism.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Where anarcho-capitalists see no distinction between
capitalism and
the free market,
agorists make the following 3-part distinction:
- entrepreneur:
- (good)
- innovator, risk-taker, producer -- the strength of a free market
- non-statist capitalist:
- (neutral)
- holders of capital, not necessarily ideologically aware
- "relatively drone-like non-innovators"
- pro-statist capitalist:
- (bad)
- "the main Evil in the political realm"
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
The "Anarcho-capitalists" tend to conflate the Innovator (Entrepreneur) and Capitalist, much as the Marxoids and cruder collectivists do....
It's interesting that the gradual victory of Austrian Economics, particularly in Europe, has led ... some New Leftists at least to take our claim seriously that the Capitalist and Entrepreneur are very different classes requiring different analyses ...
Agorists are strict
Rothbardians, and, I would argue in this case, even more Rothbardian than
Rothbard, who still had some of the older confusion in his thinking.
SEK3
[sek3]
-
ANARCHISM
-
That organization of society in which the
Free Market
operates freely, without
taxes,
usury,
landlordism,
tariffs,
or other forms of
coercion
or
privilege.
RIGHT ANARCHISTS predict that in the
Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate.
LEFT ANARCHISTS predict that in the
Free Market
people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
[celine]
-
Anarchism is a negative; it holds that one thing, namely government, is bad and should be abolished. Aside from this defining tenet, it would be difficult to list any belief that all anarchists hold. Just as atheists might support or oppose any viewpoint consistent with the non-existence of God, anarchists might and indeed do hold the entire range of viewpoints consistent with the non-existence of
the state.
Anarchist Theory FAQ
or
Instead of a FAQ, by a Man Too Busy to Write One
by
Bryan Caplan
Version 5.2
[caplan]
-
This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.
Individual Liberty by Benjamin Tucker,
"State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ."
[tucker]
-
The philosophy of a new social order based on
liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government
rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
Emma Goldman,
"What is Anarchy?"
[redEmma]
-
ANARCHISM, the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.
Prince Peter Kropotkin, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910
[kropotkin]
-
(an·ar·chism
Pronunciation: 'a-n&r-"ki-z&m, -"när-)
- a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
[merriamWebster]
-
Anarchists believe that the highest attainment of humanity is the freedom
of the individual to express himself, unhindered by any form of repression
or control from without. The belief that all governments rest on violence
to control their subjects.
1984 Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia
[funk]
-
Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states.
Paul Goodman,
Like A Conquered Province, 1965
Chapter 6: "Is American democracy viable?"
[goodman]
-
ATOMISM
-
Individualists
have always been accused by
their enemies
of being "atomistic" -- of postulating that each individual lives in a kind of vacuum, thinking and choosing without relation to anyone else in society. This, however, is an
authoritarian
straw man; few, if any, individualists have ever been "atomists." On the contrary, it is evident that individuals always learn from each other, cooperate and interact with each other; and that this, too, is required for man's survival. But the point is that each individual makes the final choice of which influences to adopt and which to reject, or of which to adopt first and which afterwards. The libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals; what he abhors is the use of violence to cripple such voluntary cooperation and force someone to choose and act in ways different from what his own mind dictates.
Murray Rothbard,
The Libertarian Manifesto
[rothbard]
-
A common defense of the State holds that man is a "social animal," that he must live in society, and that individualists and libertarians believe in the existence of "atomistic individuals" uninfluenced by and unrelated to their fellow men. But no libertarians have ever held individuals to be isolated atoms; on the contrary, all libertarians have recognized the necessity and the enormous advantages of living in society, and of participating in the social division of labor. The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.
Murray Rothbard,
"The Moral Status of Relations to the State," The Ethics of Liberty
[rothbard]
-
Libertarians are generally what might be called simplistic and "vulgar" individualists.
[...] While only individuals exist individuals do not exist as isolated and hermetically sealed atoms. Statists traditionally charge libertarians and individualists with being "atomistic individualists," and the charge, one hopes, has always been incorrect and misconceived. Individuals may be the only reality, but they influence each other, past and present, and all individuals grow up in a common culture and language. (This does not imply that they may not, as adults, rebel and challenge and exchange that culture for another.)
[...] It is almost embarrassingly banal to emphasize that point, but apparently many libertarians aggressively overlook the obvious.
Murray Rothbard,
"The Nationalities Question"
[rothbard]
-
Liberty as I have defined it does not preclude as guidance for one's acts any form or degree of advice and influence, if voluntarily accepted, which, originates elsewhere than within himself. This guidance might be religious influences, evidence from historical records, scientific knowledge, the advice of another person, or even processes of mental telepathy or clairvoyance or insight from mystical origins, to whatever extent these may occur. If willingly accepted, the act resulting from such influences is as much an act of liberty as would be any other.
So liberty as I have defined it is not limited to self-willed conduct arising from total isolation. All these other forces can operate to influence one's acts as a free man. I would even argue that such influences operate at their best and their fullest only under liberty.
F.A. "Baldy" Harper, in an address given before the Mont Pelerin Society at St. Moritz, Switzerland, on September 4, 1957
[harper]
-
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
-
The 19th-century liberal held the same principles as the 20th-century individualist
libertarian
-- freedom from
coercion on both personal and economic matters.
As
the term
'liberal'
changed in the 20th century, from designating an
individualist
philosophy to something more
collectivist
(and influenced significantly by
moderate forms
of
state socialism), the term Classical Liberalism was used to indicate the pre-collectivist liberalism of the previous century.
Unfortunately, contemporary use of the term Classical Liberalism seems to emphasize economic freedom over civil liberties.
Even more unfortunate is the common association of Classical Liberalism with
conservative politics.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
First, I employ the term "liberal" in the sense attached to it every-where in the nineteenth century and still today in the countries of continental Europe. This usage is imperative because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals for slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage.
Ludwig von Mises,
Human Action,
Introduction to the 3rd Edition
[available online]
[mises]
-
The fact that
this book
was originally written with only the British public in mind does not appear to have seriously affected its intelligibility for the American reader. But there is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term
"liberal"
in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as
conservatives.
It is true, of course, that in the struggle against the believers in the
all-powerful state
the true liberal must sometimes make common cause with the convservative, and in some circumstances, as in contemporary Britain, he has hardly any other way of actively working for his ideals. But
true liberalism
is still distinct from conservatism, and there is danger in the two being confused. Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to
socialism
than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desireable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of estblished
privilege
and to lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of
the state
granting and protecting
rights
to some which are not available on
equal terms
to others.
F. A. Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(from the preface to the 1956 American paperback edition)
[hayek]
-
COERCION
-
- force
- force or fraud
- the initiation of force or fraud
- the threat of the initiation of force or fraud
(See also: Non-Aggression Principle.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term "coercion" can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it "physical violence or the threat thereof," with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What
anarchism
proposes to do, then, is to abolish
the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
Murray N. Rothbard, "Society without a State"
[rothbard]
-
If we consider that each
person
owns his own body and can acquire ownership of other things by creating them, or by having ownership transferred to him by another owner, it becomes at least formally possible to define "being left alone" and its opposite, "being coerced". Someone who forcibly prevents me from using my
property
as I want, when I am not using it to violate his right to use his property, is coercing me. A man who prevents me from taking heroin coerces me; a man who prevents me from shooting him does not.
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
[friedman]
-
COLLECTIVISM
-
As a moral philosophy, collectivism recognizes groups as potential moral agents.
(Contrast with individualism.)
In politics, collectivism is an emphasis on the
rights and responsibilities
of different classes or groups, and proposes collective strategies for improving the conditions of those classes and groups considered to be disadvantaged.
Collectivism does not necessarily deny individual rights, but it considers group rights primary.
(Compare with communitarianism.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
In collectivism, the "collective is the ultimate value, to which individual goals are subordinate."
R.W. Grant,
The Incredible Bread Machine
[rwGrant]
-
'Collectivism' is defined as the theory and practice which make a collective or collectives rather than individuals the ultimate and fundamental unit of political, social, and economic concern.
[...]
Presumably it is on present usage correct to characterize all socialists as being, as such, collectivists: while the nearest approach in our time to any actual realization of Bakunin's ideal of a collective would seem to be the self-managing 'associations of labour' in Yugoslavia, Israeli kibbutzim, or the collectives set up by the Spanish anarchists during the Civil War.
[...]
Collectivists in theorizing insist that the claims of collectives must, in general and normally, if not always and without exception, override the claims of individual members.
www.Anarchy-Movement.org
[krauth]
-
It seems to me that one thing all forms of collectivism share is that individual choice is always subordinate to The Group, be it the fascist volk or a local soviet or an anarcho-syndicalist people's council or whatever other fiction of 'society'
the state
decides to use.
[...]
Fascist
collectivists try to prevent mixed race sex,
socialist
collectivists try to prevent 'undemocratic'
private trade,
but the principle of collectivism is always the same.
If an individual does something he wants to do in a collectivist 'society', it is because the political collective allows him to do it, not because it is his right to do as he pleases with those who are willing participants.
Perry de Havilland,
Liberarian Alliance
[libertarianAlliance]
-
COMMUNISM
-
Communism is the position that
property
can only be legitimately owned by the community and never by individuals.
Much confusion, disagreement, stupidity, and bloodshed resulted from conflating The Community with
The State.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
(Contrast with
PROPERTARIANISM
and
IDEOLOGICAL CAPITALISM.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
In the 20th century, the term 'communism' came to mean
communitarian
statism.
As implemented at a national level, 20th-century communism was exclusively
authoritarian.
An
anarchist
or anti-Statist conception of communism is of a free society of equals without
private property.
In anarchist communism (a.k.a. 'anarcho-communism'), all property is owned by the community or
collective, freeing "the workers" from the
exploitation of
capitalism and the
coercion of
the State.
Karl Marx shared this definition of communism with the anarchists, but believed that the ultimate goal of an anarchist communism had to be preceded by
state socialism -- a "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Vladimir Lenin called the
Russian anarchists
"Left-Wing Communists" and described their stance against state centralization as
"an infantile disorder".
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Anarcho-communists, in contrast with their
mutualist
comrades, reject the market because they reject all forms of competition,
and see all forms of trade as
exploitative:
someone wins and someone loses.
To a communist anarchist, the very term
'free market'
is self-contradictory.
bkMarcus,
Reluctant Capitalist
[bk]
-
CONSERVATISM
-
That school of
capitalist
philosophy which claims allegiance to the
Free Market
while actually supporting
usury,
landlordism,
tariff,
and sometimes
taxation.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
[celine]
-
Right-Conservatives prefer self-government on economic issues, but want official standards in personal matters. They want the government to defend the community from threats to its moral fiber.
World's Smallest Political Quiz
[quiz]
-
The essence of conservatism is "its emphasis on tradition as a source of wisdom that goes beyond what can be demonstrated or even explicitly stated."
Conservatism FAQ
[conservatismFAQ]
-
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to
socialism
than
true liberalism;
and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desireable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established
privilege
and to lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege.
The
essence of the liberal position,
however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of
the state
granting and protecting
rights
to some which are not available on
equal terms
to others.
F. A. Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(from the preface to the 1956 American paperback edition)
[hayek]
-
Because
liberalism,
socialism
and leftism have become nearly universally identified with
statism,
it should not be surprising that many contemporary opponents of the state regard themselves as "conservative".
However, the historical meaning of conservatism is not
individual
liberty
and greater freedom from government but an emphasis on maintaining a static hierarchical, stratified order,
tradition-based
collectivism,
subservience of the individual to elite
privilege, theocracy, and
nationalistic statism.
Conservatism Is Not Enough: Reclaiming the Legacy of the Anti-State Left
[attackthesystem]
-
In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not
object to
coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what
he regards as the right purposes.
He believes that if
government
is
in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by
rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles,
his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule -- not merely
by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and
enforced by them.
Like the
socialist, he is less concerned with the
problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with
that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself
as entitled to
force
the value he holds on other people.
F. A. Hayek,
Why I Am Not a Conservative
[hayek]
-
It was European conservatives who, apparently fearful of the openness of the Industrial Revolution (why, anyone could get rich!), struck the first blows at
capitalism
by encouraging and accepting laws that made the disruptions of innovation and competition less frequent and eased the way for the comforts and collusions of cartelization.
[...]
The States' rights lapse is simply that conservatives who would deny to the Federal government certain controls over people, eagerly cede exactly the same controls to smaller administrative units. They say that the smaller units are more effective. This means that conservatives support the
coercion
of individuals at the most effective level. It certainly doesn't mean that they
oppose coercion.
[...]
In failing to resist state segregation and miscegenation laws, in failing to resist laws maintaining racially inequitable spending of tax money, simply because these laws were passed by states, conservatives have failed to fight the very bureaucracy that they supposedly hate -- at the very level where they might have stopped it first.
Karl Hess, "The Death of Politics", Playboy, March 1969
[karlHess]
-
There are no right-wing Utopias, either, no novels of the colorful Buckleyite future. The conservative view of heaven is the status quo ante -- a dead, flat, black-&-white daguerreotype of a past that never existed. Any status quo will do, as long as it ain't Red. If people are tortured in banana republic jails, it's acceptable as long as they're not Communist jails. If a long train of abuses & usurpations are visited upon individual freedom in this country, it's fine, as long as they're not left-wing abuses & usurpations, & even better, if they're in the name of National Security.
L. Neil Smith,
"Unanimous Consent and the Utopian Vision"
[elNeil]
-
DIVERSITARIANISM
-
... if a proponent of liberty is a
libertarian, then it seems to follow that a proponent of diversity is a diversitarian.
Let's call the practical, strategy-based position 'diversitarianism' -- the advocacy of decentralized, diverse strategies, solutions, services, cultures, etc. This is what I now understand many to mean by "the market" -- although I think the idea applies to all biological, ecological, social, organizational, negotiated exchange-based relationships, and not just what most people understand by the term 'economic'.
bkMarcus, Email Essay:
'diversitarian'
[bk]
-
It is more than passing curious that those in the university community who are most heavily addicted to diversity cannot tolerate it when it comes to divergence of opinions, conclusions, public policy prescriptions, etc.
Walter Block,
Social Justice
[block]
-
ECONOMIC CAPITALISM
-
Economic capitalism is a
free market
in privately held
property
titles, including titles for "infrastructural capital" (technology) and "natural capital" (land).
It is often called 'laissez-faire capitalism' or sometimes 'pure capitalism' or even 'true capitalism' by those who want to tie the economic concept back to the ethical position of
ideological capitalism.
(Contrast with
POLITICAL CAPITALISM.)
bkMarcus,
Reluctant Capitalist
[bk]
-
Your
property
is that which you control the use of.
If most things are controlled by individuals, individually or in voluntary association, a society is capitalist.
If such control is spread fairly evenly among a large number of people, the society approximates competitive free enterprise -- better than ours does.
If its members call it socialist,
why should I object?
Socialism is dead.
Long live socialism.
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom:
Guide to a Radical Capitalism
[friedman]
-
If commercial activity were unregulated and absolutely unsubsidized, it could depend upon only one factor for success -- pleasing customers.
Karl Hess, "The Death of Politics", Playboy, March 1969
[karlHess]
-
The
market
economy is the social system of the division of labor under
private ownership
of
the means of production.
Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybody's actions aim at the satisfaction of other people's needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens. Everybody, on the other hand, is served by his fellow citizens. Everybody is both a means and an end in himself, an ultimate end for himself and a means to other people in their endeavors to attain their own ends.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
[mises]
-
EXPLOITATION
-
Taking advantage of a
person.
Simply put, exploitation should be impossible between equals. To exploit persons is to use an advantage over them -- to their disadvantage.
An
uncoerced
transaction can still be exploitation if the terms of contract are dictated to someone's disadvantage. The exploitation
lies in the "conditions of compulsory restriction and limitation under which such contract" is made.
[quoting from
Benjamin Tucker's essay,
The Aboliton of Interest]
Individualist Anarchism sees the exploitation of certain groups or classes as the visible symptom of a deeper problem whose root cause is coercive monopoly.
The
individualist
does not sanction the use of force to fight the symptom, but only to fight the coercive root cause itself.
bkMarcus,
The Aboliton of Exploitation
[bk]
-
... the allegation that an exchange has unduly favoured one of the parties ...
Anthony de Jasay, "Your Dog Owns Your House"
[deJasay]
-
'Exploitation' is a word often used but rarely defined.
In its most literal meaning -- I "exploit" you if I in some way benefit from your existence -- it is the reason human society exists.
We all benefit from one another's existence.
We all exploit each other.
That is why we associate with each other.
But as the word is usually used, it carries the implication of one person benefiting from harming another, or at least of one person's benefitting unfairly, at
the expense of another.
This usage we derive from Marx's theory of the exploitation of labor.
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
[friedman]
-
The illusion persists that those with much are villains. With it as a necessary corollary goes the illusion that those who have little or nothing are the heroes who are deserving of every good thing in life.
This is the Marxist argument. It assumes that those who are capable of producing abundance, in some way exploit those who are incapable of producing much of anything. How does one "exploit" the impoverished? The concept is nonsense. One does not take from those who have nothing worth taking.
Robert LeFevre,
Capitalism
[leFevre]
-
FABIANISM or FABIAN SOCIALISM
-
Toward the end of the 19th century, a group of Brits, decided that they were in favor of
socialism
in the original sense of a planned economy, but that they were opposed to the revolutionary socialism of the Marxists and the
communist anarchists.
They called themselves "Fabians" after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, whose tactics involved harassment and attrition rather than head-on battles. Instead of revolution, the Fabians advocated evolution toward socialism.
Like Marx, they believed in class struggle and like Marx, they believed that "progress" meant moving away from
private property
and toward central administration.
The most famous Fabians were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and later, Bertrand Russell.
bkMarcus, "why I am not a leftist"
[bk]
-
It is commonly asserted that Fabianism and Leninism differ only in method and pace: that the former believes in gradual change and the latter in revolution.
But this completely misses the real point: that Fabianism, which is basically Social Democracy, believes in blending into
the State
apparatus, whereas Leninism believes in its destruction.
Murray Rothbard, "Liberty and the New Left"
[rothbard]
-
FASCISM
-
An
authoritarian
form of
statism that advocates
- private property
-
State-centralized economy
- militarism
- nationalism
(Notice that between the first 2 criteria, fascism promotes
political capitalism
without any pretense of a
free market.)
Socialists
and
left-liberals often refer to any form of fervent
conservatism as fascism, but they are incorrect in doing so.
Many people use the term to refer to any form of
authoritarianism.
This usage is less incorrect, but strictly speaking, fascism requires all 4 of the above criteria.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, refers to the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy in 1922-1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. The name comes from fascio, which may mean "bundle", as in a political group, but also fasces, the Roman authority symbol of a bundle of rods and axe-head.
The word fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that exalts nation and often race above the individual and uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition, engages in severe economic and social regimentation, and espouses violent nationalism and racism (ethnic nationalism).
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[wikipedia]
-
It has become customary among
libertarians,
as indeed among the Establishment of the West, to regard
Fascism
and
Communism
as fundamentally identical.
But while both systems were indubitably
collectivist,
they differed greatly in their socio-economic content.
For Communism was a genuine revolutionary movement that ruthlessly displaced and overthrew the old ruling elites; while Fascism, on the contrary, cemented into power the old ruling classes.
Hence, Fascism was a counter-revolutionary movement that froze a set of monopoly
privileges
upon society; in short, Fascism was the apotheosis of
modern State monopoly capitalism.
Here was the reason that Fascism proved so attractive
(which Communism, of course, never did) to
big business
interests in the West -- openly and unabashedly so in the 1920's and early 1930's.
Murray N. Rothbard,
"Why Conservatives Love War and the State"
(originally appeared in Left and Right, Spring 1965, pp. 4-22,
as "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.")
[rothbard]
-
[Wilhelm]
Ropke recognized that as a social and economic system fascism is not a third way between the
free market
and
communism.
It is merely another form of
totalitarianism
that sought to "combine its general totalitarianism with the individualistic character of society."
Such a
middle-of-the-road
policy created an extreme
interventionist
state whose chief production agent was the government-created monopolist.
Fascism has a grave moral defect, Ropke argued: it fails to recognize the
individual
as the key social unit. Right economic reasoning, he said, begins not with the nation but with
human action,
and right social policy begins with the recognition that society is made up of
individuals with souls.
Fascism, on the other hand, by ignoring the individual soul, is
socialism's
close cousin because it exults in the idolatry of
the state.
Mises.org: Biography of Wilhelm Ropke (1899-1966)
[mises.org]
-
If you study the domestic policies of the Herbert Hoover and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt Administrations, and compare them with the policies of
Adolf Hitler and his mentor, Benito Mussolini, you will eventually come
-- however reluctantly -- to the conclusion that World War II was not a
conflict between fascism and something else, as advertised, but a
conflict between competing brands of fascism.
L. Neil Smith, Empire of Lies
[elNeil]
-
definition of the economy of fascism: an economy in which big business reaps the profits while the taxpayer underwrites the losses
Murray N. Rothbard,
"Nixonian Socialism"
[rothbard]
-
FREE MARKET
-
That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without
coercion.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
[celine]
-
If a 'market' is a system of exchange, and 'free' means that it is voluntary, that is to say,
uncoerced,
then a 'free market' is a system in which all voluntary exchanges are permissible and all involuntary exchanges are impermissible.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
The Market is the sum of all voluntary human action. If one acts non-coercively, one is part of the Market.
New Libertarian Manifesto by Samuel Edward Konkin III
[sek3]
-
The free market is the name for the array of all the voluntary exchanges that take place in the world.
Murray N. Rothbard,
"Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics" (1956)
[rothbard]
-
Free market is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services.
[...]
Both parties undertake the exchange because each expects to gain from it. Also, each will repeat the exchange next time (or refuse to) because his expectation has proved correct (or incorrect) in the recent past. Trade, or exchange, is engaged in precisely because both parties benefit; if they did not expect to gain, they would not agree to the exchange.
[...]
In modern game-theory jargon, trade is a win-win situation, a "positive-sum" rather than a "zero-sum" or "negative-sum" game.
[...]
But exchanges are not necessarily free. Many are coerced. If a robber threatens you with "Your money or your life," your payment to him is coerced and not voluntary, and he benefits at your expense. It is robbery, not free markets, that actually follows the mercantilist model: the robber benefits at the expense of the coerced. Exploitation occurs not in the free market, but where the coercer exploits his victim. In the long run, coercion is a negative-sum game that leads to reduced production, saving, and investment, a depleted stock of capital, and reduced productivity and living standards for all, perhaps even for the coercers themselves.
Murray N. Rothbard, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
[rothbard]
-
A "free market" can represent a spectrum of things to a variety of people. For some, the free market may provide justification for government-issued license to favored corporations to ride roughshod over the common market. To others it may imply "free and fair trade," proponents of which naively expect government to reign in corporate depredations. Somewhere betwixt these two poles fall those who realize that government is to business what steroids are to cattle. Given an injection of big government, corporations grow unnaturally large and aggressive. A market free of help or hindrance by government is the solution least likely to be tried. Too many hands in the tills at either end of the buffet; whether good intentions or self-serving motives run the registers, the results are similar. Policies that protect individual rights can and should also protect corporate rights.
Protectionist policies thwart the action of corrective forces by removing companies from the judgment of the open market. Not judgment by a prescient elite or majority, or by market experts, but by the cumulative force of each freely made individual economic choice acting as the sand in the hourglass.
Reflections on Orwell and Political Language
by
Cat Farmer
[catfarmer]
-
First, there is no free market when government artificially restricts the supply of something, be it oil or sugar. In fact, because the U.S. government restricts the importation of sugar into this country in order to protect politically connected domestic sugar producers, we see a two-tiered pricing system: a world price and a U.S. price. While the U.S. price is determined in an open market setting, there is nothing free about it. The political classes have decreed that U.S. residents are going to pay higher prices for sugar than people do elsewhere.
The Oil Dependency Myth, by Willliam L. Anderson
[williamAnderson]
-
GRANFALLOON
-
A granfalloon is any large bureaucratic figment of people's imagination. For instance, there's really no such thing as the Feds or the General Veeblefeltzer Corporation. There are a bunch of people out there that relate to each other, and there's some structures, and some paper. In fact, there's lots and lots of paper. The people sit in the structures and pass paper back and forth to each other and charge you to do so.
All these people, structures, and paper are real. But nowhere can you point to the larger concept of "government" or "corporation" and say, "There it is, kiddies!" The monolithic, big "they" is all in your mind.
Kurt Vonnegut, who coined the term
[vonnegut]
-
A granfalloon is the lumping together of many diverse elements into an abstract collection, and to then think and speak as if the abstract collection is one single entity capable of performing actions. This phenomenon leads people to say things like "the government runs the country." I hope you realize (or will soon) just how absurd the previous sentence is.
Frederick Mann,
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT, Version 2 - October, 1998
[frederickMann]
-
(Compare to collectivism.
Contrast with individualism.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
INDIVIDUALISM
-
As a moral philosophy, individualism holds that only individual persons can be
moral agents.
It holds that
rights and responsibilities
are only relevant to individuals.
Individualism denies that there are any
collective
moral agents, and therefore denies rights or responsibilities to groups (but not to the individuals within those groups).
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Straw-man "individualism": The position that individual rights always supersede group rights.
Stated this way, individualism seems unreasonable -- seems in fact like a call for dogmatically privileging one entity over another. True individualism is both far more reasonable and far more radical for it
denies the very existence
of such a thing as "group rights".
According to individualism, no one's rights ever supersede anyone else's rights because all
rights are equal
and compatible.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
In individualism, the "collective is not the ultimate value, but rather a vehicle for the realization of individual goals".
R.W. Grant,
The Incredible Bread Machine
[rwGrant]
-
'Individualism' has a great variety of meanings in social and political philosophy. Three important types can be distinguished: ontological individualism, methodological individualism, and moral and political individualism. These three are often confused by highly reputable liberal and conservative philosophers [...]
Ontological individualism is the uncontroversial metaphysical doctrine that social reality consists, ultimately, only of persons who act and choose. Collectivities, such as a social class, a state, or a group, cannot act. It is more easily understood in contrast to ontological collectivism, which does suppose that such collectivities have a reality independent of the actions of persons.
www.Anarchy-Movement.org
[krauth]
-
We have talked at length of individual rights; but what, it may be asked, of the "rights of society"? Don't they supersede the rights of the mere individual? The libertarian, however, is an individualist; he believes that one of the prime errors in social theory is to treat "society" as if it were an actually existing entity. "Society" is sometimes treated as a superior or quasi-divine figure with overriding "rights" of its own; at other times as an existing evil which can be blamed for all the ills of the world. The individualist holds that only individuals exist, think, feel, choose, and act; and that "society" is not a living entity but simply a label for a set of interacting individuals. Treating society as a thing that chooses and acts, then, serves to obscure the real forces at work.
Murray Rothbard,
The Libertarian Manifesto
[available online]
[rothbard]
-
The word 'individualist' had little of the idea of the abstracted self that the word today conjures.
Rather, it was a dense concept suggesting an alternative to the
collectivism
of
socialism
and
communism,
certainly, but also remaining open to the interaction between the individual and his society and culture that crafts distinctive personality.
Individualists, in this sense, belong to societies in ways they couldn't possibly belong to
states,
any more than theory could be wholly self-created.
analysis, a blog for individualists
(citing The Intercollegiate Review on Lee Edward's Educating for Liberty)
[analysis]
-
ISOLATIONISM
-
"Isolationism" was coined as a smear term to apply to opponents of American entry into World War II. Since the word was often applied through guilt-by-association to mean pro-Nazi, "isolationist" took on a "right wing" as well as a generally negative flavor. If not actively pro-Nazi, "isolationists" were at the very least narrow-minded ignoramuses ignorant of the world around them, in contrast to the sophisticated, worldly, caring "internationalists" who favored American crusading around the globe. In the last decade, of course, antiwar forces have been considered "leftists," and interventionists from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter and their followers have constantly tried to pin the "isolationist" or at least "neoisolationist" label on today's left wing.
Left or right? During World War I, opponents of the war were bitterly attacked, just as now, as "leftists," even though they included in their ranks libertarians and advocates of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, the major center of opposition to the American war with Spain and the American war to crush the Philippine rebellion at the turn of the century was laissez-faire liberals, men like the sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner, and the Boston merchant Edward Atkinson, who founded the "Anti-Imperialist League." Furthermore, Atkinson and Sumner were squarely in the great tradition of the classical English liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in particular such laissez-faire "extremists" as Richard Cobden and John Bright of the "Manchester School." Cobden and Bright took the lead in vigorously opposing every British war and foreign political intervention of their era, and for his pains Cobden was known not as an "isolationist" but as the "International Man." Until the smear campaign of the late 1938, opponents of war were considered the true "internationalists," men who opposed the aggrandizement of the nation-state and favored peace, free trade, free migration, and peaceful cultural exchanges among peoples of all nations. Foreign intervention is "international" only in the sense that war is international: coercion, whether the threat of force or the outright movement of troops, will always cross frontiers between one nation and another.
"Isolationism" has a right-wing sound; "neutralism" and "peaceful coexistence" sound leftish. But their essence is the same: opposition to war and political intervention between countries. This has been the position of antiwar forces for two centuries, whether they were the classical liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the "leftists" of World War I and the Cold War, or the "rightists" of World War II. In very few cases have these antiinterventionists favored literal "isolation": what they have generally favored is political nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, coupled with economic and cultural internationalism in the sense of peaceful freedom of trade, investment, and interchange between the citizens of all countries. And this is the essence of the libertarian position as well.
Chapter 14: War and Foreign Policy
"Isolationism" Left and Right
Murray Rothbard,
The Libertarian Manifesto
[available online]
[rothbard]
-
LIBERALISM
-
That school of
capitalist
philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of
capitalism
by adding new laws to existing laws.
Each time
conservatives
pass a law creating
privilege,
liberals pass another law modifying
privilege, leading
conservatives
to pass a more subtle law recreating
privilege, etc., until "everything not forbidden is compulsory" and "everything not compulsory is forbidden."
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
[celine]
-
Left-Liberals prefer self-government in personal matters and central decision-making on economics. They want government to serve the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for economic equality.
World's Smallest Political Quiz
[quiz]
-
[Contrast with
CLASSICAl LIBERALISM.]
[Compare to
FABIAN SOCIALISM.]
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
To lay a
ghost
at the outset and to dismiss semantics, a liberal is here defined as one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political, and economic justice at the municipal, state, national, and international levels....
A liberal believes government is a proper tool to use in the development of a society which attempts to carry Christian principles of conduct into practical effect.
Former US Senator Joseph S. Clark, Jr., when he was Mayor of Philadelphia, Atlantic, July 1953
[clark]
-
Most on the left think of themselves, and probably sincerely, as
"democratic socialists,"
as believers in a blend of
socialism. with democracy and freedom of speech and opinion.
Libertarians hold that vision to be self-contradictory, and democracy, freedom of speech, and socialism to be ultimately incompatible.
Murray Rothbard,
"Where the Left Goes Wrong on Foreign Policy"
[rothbard]
-
This is perhaps the most ambiguous word in the political vocabulary.
[...]
American liberals are not hostile to the market and individualism; it is rather that they demand constant corrections of its apparently random processes by a benevolent state if the traditional value of freedom can be realized.
[...]
European liberalism is perhaps better known as
classical liberalism.
[...]
The basic tenets of liberalism were formulated in this period [in eighteenth-century Europe]. They may be summarized as follows. The individual is the source of his own moral values; the process of trade and exchange between individuals has both efficiency and freedom-enhancing properties; the market is a spontaneous order for the allocation of resources; exchange between nations will not only maximize wealth through the international division of labour, but also tends to reduce war and political tension; and public policy should be limited to the few common concerns of individuals.
www.Anarchy-Movement.org
[krauth]
-
As the word liberty is ambiguous, however, so is the word liberal. A liberal may believe that freedom is a matter for the individual alone and that the role of the state should be minimal, or he may believe that freedom is a matter for the state and that the state can and should be used as an instrument to promote it. The former view in its extreme tends toward
anarchism,
while the latter in its extreme tends toward
socialism,
called social, or welfare, liberalism. In between are myriad gradations. Rarely has a liberal movement been unaffected by this ambiguity; some have even collapsed because of it.
The Greek Catalog - History Directory
[omhros]
-
One of the effective tactics of creeping
socialism,
especially in America,
has been the annexation of words with favorable connotations.
The best example is the word 'liberal'.
In the
nineteenth century, a liberal
supported laissez-faire economic policy, free trade, broadly based democracy, and civil liberties.
The word had strong positive connotations;
even today, while 'conservative' is sometimes used favorably, 'illiberal' is always pejorative.
The socialists opposed liberal economic policies.
The more successful socialists, instead of saything that liberalism was bad and socialism good, called themselves liberals (or progressives, another "good" word) and their opponents conservatives.
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
[friedman]
-
The Old Left, flourishing in the United States in the 1930's and 40's, may best be summed up as Social Democracy... Essentially what this means is an accommodation to and admiration for
the State, and a willingness to settle down in cozy alliance with
Big Business
and other power groups to parcel out
perquisites and privileges
in the mixed economy of welfare-warfare
State Monopoly Capitalism.
Murray Rothbard, "Liberty and the New Left"
(PDF)
[rothbard]
-
LIBERTARIANISM
-
The principled rejection of all proactive
coercion, whether by individuals or by groups.
(See also: Non-Aggression Principle.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
The libertarian position is that there is no legitimate initiation of force.
Whether or not there is justification for reactive force is outside the definition of libertarianism, but do note that the
pacifist position presumes the libertarian position: you cannot oppose all use of force without also opposing the initiation of force. To be true therefore to pacifist principles requires an acceptance of the libertarian position ...
bkMarcus, A Brief Introduction to Philosophical Anarchism
[bk]
-
Libertarian Partisans (a.k.a. minarchists) "are self-governors in both personal and economic matters. They believe government's only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity."
World's Smallest Political Quiz
[quiz]
-
A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.
L. Neil Smith
[elNeil]
-
Libertarianism is a direct attack upon the mystique of
the state.
It recognizes that the state is
only an abstraction
and reduces it to the actions of
individuals.
It applies the same standard of morality to the state as it would to a next-door neighbor. If it is not proper for a neighbor to tax or pass laws regulating your private life, then it cannot be proper for the state to do so. Only by elevating itself above the standards of personal morality can the state make these claims on your life. . . .
Wendy McElroy,
Demystifying the State
[mac]
-
Libertarianism has become a descriptive term for the
individualist
political doctrine in recent years largely because the nineteenth-century word 'liberalism' has been used by semi-collectivist creeds, especially in America.
www.Anarchy-Movement.org
[krauth]
-
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a
political
theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Murray N. Rothbard,
Six Myths About Libertarianism
[rothbard]
-
Libertarians favor the abolition of all States everywhere, and the provision of legitimate functions now supplied poorly by
governments
(police, courts, etc.) by means of the
free market.
Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans but for all peoples.
Murray Rothbard,
The Libertarian Manifesto
[available online]
[rothbard]
-
'Libertarian' is another term for
Free-Market
Anarchist, though it often includes softer-core fellow travelers such as
minarchists.
The word originally was used by free-thinkers in relation to religion to mean those who believed in free-will over determinism (which is not all that bad an association for us) and then became a euphemism for anarchist in Europe in the 19th Century.
It was revived by Leonard Read in the 1940s to mean those
Classical Liberals
who refused to join the rest of the
Liberal Movement
into becoming soft-Left
statists, and who had largely joined the U.S.
Old Right coalition against that kind of Liberal, bordering on
fascist, New Deal.
With the election of Eisenhower and death of Robert Taft, the Old Right coalition disintegrated. Buckley pulled the pro-State
conservatives
into his New Right while
Murray Rothbard
rallied the Isolationist (non-interventionist in foreign policy) Libertarians into alliance with the New Left.
New York-based Rothbard became an anarchist in 1950 and defined the hard-core position accordingly.
Robert LeFevre accomplished the same in the Western U.S.
SEK3
[sek3]
-
Libertarianism elaborates an entire philosophy from one simple premise: initiatory violence or its threat
(coercion)
is wrong (immoral, evil, bad, supremely impractical, etc) and is forbidden; nothing else is.
Samuel Edward Konkin III,
New Libertarian Manifesto
[sek3]
-
In its broadest meaning, the word libertarian applies to anything that is
for Liberty and not against it. Many American libertarians in particular
wish to limit the label to people who believe the
free market
is essential to Liberty, leaving out the (mostly European) libertarians who just as
fervently believe in some form of
socialism
and
collective
property. And
while some Libertarians cling to
the State
as somehow capable of defending Liberty
if only kept small enough,
the modern Libertarian Movement that
we know and love (or not) considers the State (involuntary government)
a necessary or unnecessary Evil but definitely an Evil. In fact, the
State is generally perceived as the institutional opposite of Liberty.
SEK3
[sek3]
-
MERCANTILISM
-
The mercantilists wrongly assumed that gold and silver were the real wealth of a nation, not goods and services.
The Trade Deficit: Much Ado About Nothing, by Lawrence W. Reed.
[fee]
-
Mercantilism, which reached its height in the Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state. Thus, mercantilism held that exports should be encouraged by the government and imports discouraged.
Murray Rothbard, "Mercantilism: A Lesson for Our Times" in his The Logic of Action II (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar, 1997), p. 43.
[rothbard]
-
Mercantilism is economic nationalism for the purpose of building a wealthy and powerful state. Adam Smith coined the term "mercantile system" to describe the system of political economy that sought to enrich the country by restraining imports and encouraging exports. This system dominated western European economic thought and policies from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. The goal of these policies was, supposedly, to achieve a "favorable" balance of trade that would bring gold and silver into the country. In contrast to the agricultural system of the physiocrats, or the laissez-faire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mercantile system served the interests of merchants and producers such as the British East India Company, whose activities were protected or encouraged by the state.
The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
[econlib]
-
MINARCHISM
-
Term coined in 1971 by SEK3 to substitute for the clumsy phrase, "limited-government Libertarian."
The Agorist Institute
[agorist]
-
"[Minarchists] ... believe government's only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence."
(See libertarianism.)
World's Smallest Political Quiz
[quiz]
-
The minarchist position was summarized by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who said, "That government is best which governs least."
bkMarcus, A Brief Introduction to Philosophical Anarchism
[bk]
-
Minarchism, sometimes clumsily called minimal statism, is the view that government should be as small as possible. Supporters argue that it continues the tradition of classical liberal philosophy in its original form.
Radical minarchists usually agree that government should be restricted to its "minimal" or "night-watchman" state functions of government (courts, police, prisons, defence forces). Some other minarchists include in the role of government the management of essential common infrastructure (roads, money); some, by what is sometimes reproached to them as a slippery slope, include quite a lot in such essential infrastructure (schools, hospitals, social security). Actually, these minarchists often accept (in a conservative rather than principled way) as valid some of current government's domain, and consider it more urgent to stop the expansion of government than to reduce its domain to any particular size. Minarchists are generally opposed to government programs which transfer wealth or which subsidize certain sectors of the economy.
Minarchists usually justify their vision of the state by referring to basic principles rather than arguing in terms of pragmatic results. For example, in his book
Anarchy, State and Utopia,
Robert Nozick
defines the role of a minimal state as follows:
"Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons'
rights not to be forced to do certain things,
and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. Two noteworthy implications are that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection."
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[wikipedia]
-
Another point: in my view, we are about as likely to achieve minarchy as we are to achieve anarchy. I.e., both are remote possibilities. What is striking is that almost every criticism of "impracticality" that minarchist hurl at anarchy is also true of minarchy itself. Both are exceedingly unlikely. Both require massive changes in views among millions of people. Both rest on presumptions that most people simply don't care much about.
N. Stephan Kinsella,
"What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist"
[kinsella]
-
MORAL AGENT
-
a.k.a. 'person'
Moral Agency is a concept in moral philosophy and the discussion of ethics.
A Moral Agent is anything that can be held responsible -- credited or blamed -- for decisions or behavior. It is moral agents who have
rights and responsibilities, because it is moral agents whom we take to have choices and the power to choose.
If you do not think anyone or anything should ever be blamed, then you are denying the concept of moral agency -- as well as the concept of rights and of responsibilities. (See EGOISM.)
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
Being a Moral Agent does not mean that you are successfully making moral decisions or that you are intelligent or that you are righteous. It means that you belong to that category of being that can be blamed. If we can't blame you, you have no rights. If you have no rights, we can't blame you. It means that we get to hold you responsible for the decisions you make, no matter how well or poorly you make them.
If the guy who beats me up isn't a moral agent, then I can't blame him for what he did -- I have to treat him as a force of nature. Blaming someone MEANS that you are treating him as a moral agent. Without the concept of moral agency -- the idea of choice -- there can be no SHOULD or SHOULDN'T.
bkMarcus
[bk]
-
The number 4 is not a physical agent. It cannot do anything in the physical world.
A tornado is a physical agent because it can and does do things in the physical world.
But a tornado can't do anything in the moral world. It can destroy my house, but it can't rob me of my
property
in the same sense that a person can.
A person is a moral agent.
I care differently if my house is destroyed by a tornado than I do if it's destroyed by a terrorist. The terrorist robbed me of my house, because, unlike the tornado, the terrorist can do things in the moral world, and 'to rob' is a morally-defined term.
bkMarcus
[bk]
