Our Enemy, the Pigs

Limey polemicist and fiction author George Orwell is claimed as a hero by progressives and libertarians. How can this be? Tom Watson, commissar of the thought police and writer at Salon, says we must be in opposition to one another, instead of uniting against the NSA. George Orwell was not a libertarian, nor was he a classical liberal. He was however, a man with a proclivity to liberalism, and this is the least common denominator betwixt progressives and libertarians.

I may be a smidgeon tardy, but I just finished reading Animal Farm by George Orwell. Literary critics, and more importantly Orwell, say that the entire novel is an allegory to the U.S.S.R. under commissar of the commissars Joseph Stalin. I agree. SPOILER ALERT, this should not be necessary seventy years after Animal Farm was written, but I'm covering my bases with my readers. Mr. Jones is a human farmer who gets his farm, Manor Farm, overthrown by his animals who had been preached the equality of nonhuman animals by an aged goat. The nonhuman animals, hereafter beasts, want to have equality of outcome and establish seven commandments which they will abide by. It does not take long for hierarchy to set in. The pigs, the most literate of the herd, take charge and deliver orders. Most of the commandments are about not emulating humans - one in particular bans trade with them. The pigs incrementally break/alter the commandments and become more human. In the end the beasts can't tell pig from human. Mr. Jones is the tsar, the pigs are the State Socialist ruling committee, the neighboring humans that the pigs trade with are the varying interventionist countries bordering the U.S.S.R. , and the beasts are the uneducated masses intellectually won over by the utopia of State Socialism.

A progressive and a libertarian can read this tale and learn that as Lord Acton says

power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I would stipulate this phrase works in the context of man, and has no metaphysical connotations. The pigs claim to be equal with the beasts, but over time they become "more" equal. They get more food. They dress as the humans do. They get drunk as the humans do. They walk on two legs as the humans do. The progressive sees that this is an issue of authority. She says that the pigs have no right to tell the beasts what do in the privacy of their homes. The libertarian takes this one step further and says the pigs have no authority the beasts are bound to respect. Let's make like a tree and leave this allegory.

The brushfire of liberty is being ignited in the minds of progressives, because the State has penetrated our collective privacy to an extent they did not expect. Progressives do not want the State to read the emails, listen to the phone calls, and track all electronic trails of Americans without a warrant. They don't think the State should have the authority to do this, nor to prevent homosexual unions, nor to hail missiles at Syria until kingdom come. The libertarian agrees. Again, she takes this thinking to its theoretical conclusion. She pontificates, "If the State should have no authority to do x, why should the State have authority to do y?" She concludes, the State should have no authority that men outside the aegis of statehood should have. She concludes, the State should have no authority to steal, kidnap, murder et cetera. She concludes, the State should have no authority.

The great uniter betwixt progressives and libertarians is our shared appreciation and history against authority. Though Lord Acton uses the term power, authority is interchangeable. Progressives and libertarians are witnesses to the collusion of corporation and State in sundry sections of the market economy. The libertarian testifies to this persistence in all State action - roads, courts and security production included.

I'm not asking every progressive to wave the black flag, against all other flags, though I would ooze jubilee everywhere I frolicked if they did. I'm asking progressives and libertarians to put aside their other differences and collaborate against authority wherever and whenever they both see it. Smash the NSA, the banks, Big Pharma, land thieves, oil tycoons, patent/copyright Gestapo, the military-industrial-complex and any other tentacle of the State. People of the world, unite against our enemy, the pigs.

The Gang or Us?

Cookie cutters, suburban domiciles, and textbooks provided by the State are engraved with the stale bacteria known as commonplaceness. Cookie cutters are designed to mold raw materials to one prescribed shape and size. How boring. Suburban domiciles are mass produced to reduce the cost of quickly expanding across former deserts. Great for affordability, horrendous for standing out in our universe. Our enemy, the State, has had a stranglehold on individuality since it was a zygote. Statehood and individuality are inherently at each others' throats. The former demands, at gunpoint, uniformity and mediocrity of services. The latter permits herd thinking, but thrives when host to sundry strains of dissent. The public school system in the U.S. is an abject failure. No controversy here. In this discussion, let us prioritize the mal effect this has on our ideas over the economic disarray it displays.

There is no positive reason to have a system of State sponsored schooling. The commissar, or lobbyist, responsible for maintaing the status quo is acting either in ignorance, or malevolence. Either she does not know that she is suppressing the human spirit, or she is proud of the fact. The secular humanists worship the State. Like any other religion, secular humanist adherents have texts considered holy. In this case, it is those anointed for distribution to our children by the State's high priest of schooling. Revisionist historian Jeff Riggenbach notes the constricted view of history this leaves us.

Wendy is damned to have her world view highly influenced by an institution that wants her no different then the other cogs. She may have wanted to explore art, theoretical mathematics, Eastern mysticism, Austrian Economics et cetera. Her wants are for not. She gets the same recipe as the rest of us, the glory of the State. Why is there order? The State. Why is there respect for contracts? The State. How should security and law be provided? The State. What about the roads? The State. To think otherwise is sacrilegious.

If we abolished the State today, thought would be freed. The diversity of ideas would be expressed in the varying schooling methods of local communities. There would be more home schoolers, cooperative based teaching, private schools, religious schools et cetera. The specifics are questions for entrepreneurs to pursue. With certitude, I can say that we would have ranging opinions on history, science, mathematics, art and so forth. This would promote the investigation of truth. Which one is right? Which schools have the most voluntary consumers? Who gets to select what we learn, the gang or us?

If State theft and transfer of wealth is an inseparable part of your ideology, fret not. There is a plan for you as well. If we abolished the schooling bureaucracy, we would see the same advancements in education as listed above. Sponsoring students with scholarships (reduced tithes), from the State, to attend these myriad schools is a better alternative to the status squo.

The first option would be better for lack of theft. Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

Recall the book review I did of legendary polemicist Murray Rothbard's Education Free & Compulsory. If nothing else, I want you to read his analogy of State education

One of the best ways of regarding compulsory education is to think of the almost exact analogy in the area of that other great educational medium- the newspaper. What would we think of a proposal for the government, Federal or State, to use the taxpayers' money to set up a nationwide chain of public newspapers, and compel all people, or all children to read them? What would we think furthermore of the government's outlawing all other newspapers, or indeed outlawing all newspapers that do not come up to the "standards" of what a government commission thinks children ought to read? Such a proposal would be generally regarded with horror in America, and yet this is exactly the sort of regime that the government has established in the sphere of scholastic instruction.

She is A Paper Tigress

Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, And Structural Poverty is a tome of authors who hate the State. Not because of ivory-tower-circle-jerk-abstractions, but because of systemic invasions in the affairs of consensual exchange that have unintended yet damning consequences. Here is professor Gary Chartier's video summary.

The premise of the series of polemics is simple. We all have an enemy, the State. This enemy has an ally, corporate America. We should not anathematize a company for making profits, but we should beware of the means of said profit. The authors live by the motto "let any union of State privilege and corporation be anathema". The authors criticize zoning laws, licensing laws, permit laws, trade barriers, border Apartheid, the land monopoly, the credit monopoly, the currency monopoly, the digital files monopoly, and indeed the entire apparatus of centralized law and security production as a monopoly.

A ruby of wisdom I found, whilst flipping through the digital pages of my copy of Markets Not Capitalism, is the open field for alliance with unlikely friends. People who call them selves non-State socialists, or enemies of property, or communists, or syndicalists have more in common with market anarchists than I previously thought. Anyone who waves the black flag of Anarchy, and verily seeks a stateless society, should work in stigmergic direct action protests of the corporate-capitalist statist quo. What happens after the disintegration of the State should be determined after the disintegration of the State. Until then, we should weave decentralized networks, on the internet and in our communities, to dismantle the false principalities and powers that be. The Axis of Evil comedy tour had a phrase about America that I think is apropos for the corporate-capitalist statist quo.

She is a paper tigress - she will fall.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

If you prefer Amazon, go purchase the book here.

A five minute video on why all anarchists should unite, by Karl Hess, can be found here.

Capitalism: A Conflation Story

Those of us who give a damn about societal discourse should have consistent terms. Many disagreements occur because of what the debate community refers to as two ships passing in the night. If our arguments don't meet each other face-to-face, we are talking at each other and not with each other. Communication brings understanding. Without understanding we convince no one.

The Telegraph and The Guardian are two British newspapers that I read from time to time. I sense less partisan goat offerings, and it is refreshing to see English written differently. Read this article about Detroit from The Guardian. Read this article about Detroit from The Telegraph. Richard Wolffe and Daniel Hannan, I accuse you both of conflation. They both use the term capitalism in contradictory ways.

Wolffe says that

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

Hannan says that

The Observer, naturally, quotes a native complaining 'that capitalism has failed us', but capitalism is the one thing the place desperately needs.

They cannot both be right. Either capitalism was a detriment to Detroit, or would be a boon. Wolffe and the Detroit denizen seem to be speaking of capitalism in its common usage. The prefix corporate makes it more accurate, but capitalism usually references the status quo. Proper understanding of the status quo, lets us know that Wolffe is confused. He wants more workers' cooperatives, and claims the movement of production was the main woe. The status quo incursions into the production process by the State, on behalf of corporate interests, was, is and will be the problem unless we end the State. For smaller workers' cooperatives to flourish, the State imposed increased costs of production need to be discarded. Hannan is usually a sober analyst of economics, and does not disappoint in noting the problems with Detroit. His Atlas Shrugged reference is a bullseye. Ayn Rand's fictional Starnesville is a doppelgänger of Detroit in 2013. But, he should know better than to think that the Detroit denizen and he agree on what capitalism means. Hannan is no anarchist, but he definitely wants to sever the umbilical chord between corporation and State. He wishes the market would be freed.

The corporate capitalist State is the ungodly polygamous union of privileged cyclopean corporations to the tangled bureaucracy of taxgatherers. Corporate capitalism is the status quo. Corporate capitalism is the theft of our funds, to maintain and promulgate the flourishing of the largesse of corporations and the State. State regulations, State licenses, State prohibitions, State land grabs, and State monopolization are the tools of oppression. Corporate capitalism is evil, always and everywhere. I capitalize the s in State, because I want that word engraved in your minds. Corporate capitalism is impossible without the State. If you don't believe me that the State is the problem, I want you to at least consider it. Many ignore the State. Ignore the State, and it wins. I refuse to cede to it, and will ever more audaciously proceed against it.

Furthermore, we must end the State.

Reparations Exist

The adage goes

even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The State, though evil root and branch, is capable of making good decisions. In Columbia, the State has  a law that helps victims of land theft get their land back. Non-State marauding gangs of goons with guns, led by supervillain Carlos Castano, stole land from Mario Cuitiva. Thank God, Mario got it back.

Find the full story from Human Rights Watch  here.

These types of joys are what we should appreciate more often today, and look forward to in a stateless society. With no monopolized court system, we would have sundry consensual dispute resolution firms. Some would be cooperatives, and some would be business. There would be community courts of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. The State occupies acres of land that was acquired through conquest. In a stateless society distribution of this land would be settled in consensual courts. Consequentialists would yawp for the land slide in land prices. Fanatics of justice would yawp for the equality of protection under the homesteading principle.

Furthermore, we must end the State.

Call a Duck a Duck, and a State an Honor-less Thief

Lysander Spooner is my hero. His religious views and copyright/patent views aside, I stand in solidarity with him. He was a lawyer when the legislators said he couldn't be. He delivered mail to consumers when the legislators said he could not- resulting in lower prices for consumers. He was an abolitionist when slavery was a la mode. He called the constitution an antislavery manuscript, whilst maintaining that it was of no force.

In any case, the man's writings deserve to be explored. Have at it.

Lucidity is one of my immovable values. Conflation of ideas, meanings, and intentions sully our talks. Whether you disagree or concur with Lysander Spooner, you know where he stands. I made this blog with this intent. I don't think everyone will agree with me. But, these ideas need to be considered outside the hollow halls of Capitol Hill, and the suburban ivory towers of academia. Spooner's lucidity on taxes is unparalleled in today's discourse.

No middle ground is possible on this subject. Either "taxation without consent is robbery," or it is not. 

This is an apodeictic claim. He asks, where do you stand? And by the phrasing of the question, we can infer where he stands. Depending on where you stand, what follows?

If it is not, then any number of men, who choose, may at any time associate; call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves; plunder them at will; and kill them if they resist. If, on the other hand, taxation without consent is robbery, it necessarily follows that every man who has not consented to be taxed, has the same natural right to defend his property against a taxgatherer, that he has to defend it against a highwayman.

 No one can truly call this argument inconsistent. Spooner goes further. He says a highwayman is evil, but he is a saint in comparison to the State goons. The State goons are duplicitous. The highwayman is lucid in his theft.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave (emphasis is mine).

Spooner continues his kritik, by illustrating the cowardice of State theft. The bureaucracy is so dense and interwoven that the victims of theft don't know whom to blame for the loss of their property. Is it the taxgatherer? The monopolized law writer? The monopolized security that protects and serves the taxgatherer and the monopolized law writer? Is it the bankster whom stores these stolen goods? Is it the rubber stamper, judge, who approves of this process?

The whole institution of coercive governance is to blame. We should have voluntary governance. Furthermore, we must end the State.

Our Enemy, Centralized Power

Before I knew I was a libertarian, I knew that I delighted in asking questions. Usually the questions that others left to the dust mite kingdoms. Liberalism is the pattern of thinking that questions the status quo. Do we need to be ruled by bosses at every level of society? Or is there room for me to be the boss of me? Do I need the State to tell me what food I can eat, and whose dietary recommendations I can pay for? Do I need the State to tell me which tour guide I can use? Do I need the State to tell me which hair braiding professional I can use? The scientists, political analysts, cable news anchors, environmental inspectors, licensing writers, corn and sugar lobbyists are all establishment thinkers. At its root, they say, there are no problems with this world. I say nay, the problems are legion.

When I was a young warthog, I loved studying George Orwell's 1984 and watching JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings trilogy. Their fiction novels have been fodder for the edacious readers of the English language, as well as the wide-scale consumption of the reading laity. Listening to revisionist historian Jeff Riggenbach's podcasts on Erik Blair (George Orwell) and J.R.R. Tolkien told me why I was a party to this feast. Authority and power are wielded by people, with the same flesh and blood as us, who believe us too incompetent or evil to manage our own affairs. The banner of Liberalism contains people who, at differing degrees, say "no, I want to manage my own affairs." For some this leads to opposition to State invasion of social affairs. For others this leads to opposition to State invasion of economic affairs. For the globally conscious, this leads to opposition to State invasion of international affairs. For the anarchist, this leads to opposition to State invasion in all affairs.

When I read 1984 and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was in the first and third platoons of Liberalism mentioned above. I opposed State invasion of social affairs, and international affairs. Now I am more consistently against State invasion. Orwell, were he alive, would stand with Eric Snowden's whistle-blowing of the NSA's global peeping Tom network. Orwell criticizes centralization of authority and power. The State's invasion could not occur without the centralization of power. Tolkien is also an enemy of centralized power. There are 19 rings, and one ring to rule them all. Whomever wields the one ring gains power over the rest of the world. Anyone who uses the ring will eventually become corrupt. If that is not a kritik of using the State, I don't know what is. I believe that my reasons for smiling through these stories were sundry. But, the struggle of the protagonists against centralized power was subconsciously pushing me to empathy, and I believe it did the same to you.

Please take the time to listen to the two podcasts highlighted in yellow above, and come to your own conclusions on these two literary behemoths.

Furthermore, we must end the State.


Post Scriptum:

Whatever theses authors' specific policy prescriptions may have been, they held their convictions through principled thought. Tom Woods Jr. recently wrote a piece on Sweetie-Pie Libertarians. Though Orwell and Tolkien may have never called themselves natural rights libertarians, their opposition to centralized power aligns them with the libertarians that believe in natural rights, and against the sweetie-pies. The sweetie-pie, or utilitarian, or pragmatic libertarians lack the passion of the natural rights variety. Murray Rothbard asks the question that is telling of where you stand, Do You Hate the State? An incendiary passion to change the world, because the world is engraved with centralized power, is a yes to this question. The beauty of Orwell and Tolkien lies in this passion. Do you have it?