Stephan,

I agree that getting a precise and theoretically useful concept is more important than the specific word you use to tag it; I’m perfectly willing to talk with people who use “socialism” in a Hoppean sense and I agree that questions of lexicography shouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of analysis and discussion.

But, granted all that, I also think that it can be worthwhile to look at how the choice of a particular word for your stipulate definition eases or obscures communication with others about the content of the theory. I mean, I take it that Hoppe didn’t think of himself as offering a pure neologism—if he did, then he would have made up a word or phrase that doesn’t have a fixed meaning—but rather catching ahold of, and clearly setting out, what is essential to a historical common usage.

I think that’s a mistake, but you’re right that the mistake isn’t a serious mistake as far as the development of the theory is concerned. But there are questions as to what sort of problems in the gaps between the historical usage of “socialism” and Hoppe’s (and other 20th century libertarians’) stipulative definition of “socialism” might cause for the communication and application of the theory. (In particular, I’d argue that the use of the term in such a way that libertarians become by definition anti-“socialist” has encouraged libertarians to overestimate their proper distance from the Left and even more substantially underestimate their proper distance from the Right. If this can partly be traced to the Left and libertarians simply talking past each other when they use terms like “capitalism” and “socialism” (in ways that libertarians did NOT use them in, say, the 19th century), then that may be a reason to reconsider the words. Not necessarily a decisive reason, but at least a prima facie one.

As for what word to use… well, again, what’s wrong with “statism?” Doesn’t that already mean institutionalized aggression against private property, especially for a specifically anarcho-capitalist libertarian like Hoppe? Or if you think that runs the risk of making the account seem tautologous at first glance (“states are bad because they’re statist”), why not just use the term “institutionalized coercion” instead? Or “a racket,” if you want something a bit punchier. These are all terms that get the point across clearly and wouldn’t raise any objections from even the most ardent Tuckerite.

“There are nations that are states such as Japan, Han China, Korea etc and then there are states comprised of nations such as the UK, Spain, Iraq, Pakistan and historically France.”

I don’t get the principle behind the proposed distinction here.

Is it supposed to be that the first group of states are relatively homogenous in terms of national composition whereas the second are multinational political amalgamations? If that’s the case, then I don’t understand how Han China—which has for millennia been one of the foremost multinational imperial entities in the world—goes in the group of “nations that are states.”

Is it supposed to be that the first group of states are states in which, if there is a multinational population, nevertheless one national group has historically had exclusive or overwhelmingly prevalent access to the instruments of state power? (I.E. that the state was ruled imperially rather than federally?) If so, Han China clearly belongs in the first group rather than the second, but so does Spain (at least, up until 1975), the “UK” for the overwhelming majority, and Iraq.

Or is the distinction supposed to mean some third thing which I am not grasping? If so, I look forward to being corrected.

Thanks, Flute. This is a fascinating piece you’ve forwarded and worthy of a lot of discussion.

One thing, though: it’s important to remember that every mother is a working mother. Childcare and housework are work, too, and important work, even though they’re not counted as a formal “job.” The study tells us something about how mothers doing different kinds of work structure their work lives; it doesn’t tell us anything about working vs. non-working mothers.

“If we had a fair conscription and the sons and daughters of congressmen and their contributors were being sent to Iraq do think they would be applauding Bush’s foreign policy so loudly?”

Who cares? The sons and daughters of the wealthy and powerful are not pawns for your political purposes. Enslaving other people in order to shift policy is treating other people as if they were your property. They’re not.

(Of course, it’s also worth noting that even if moral side constraints were satisfied here—which they aren’t—the practical case would still be extraordinarily weak. There is no example in American history of any war that was prevented or shortened by a draft. Every single draft has prepared for or prolonged a war which could not be pursued by voluntary enlistment. And of course even if the draft were somehow passed (by whom?!) in such a way that the sons and daughters of the wealthy and powerful weren’t given easy outs, they would still—as they always have—exercise their influence to achieve safer officer and clerical positions. That’s exactly what happened in Vietnam once the lottery was instituted and student exemptions were undermined, just to pick a recent example. Conscription always and everywhere means more war for longer.

Kinsella: “I have always liked Hoppe’s definition of socialism as a system of institutionalized aggression against private property.”

Stephan, one of the problems with this definition is that there are many clear cases of people who called themselves socialists, and were recognized as such by other folks at the time, but did not accept any kind of aggression against private property, institutionalized or otherwise, especially Benjamin Tucker and the Liberty circle in the late 19th and early 20th century. Of course, they recognized at the time, and defined themselves in opposition to, statist socialists such as Marx. But they viewed this as an internecine struggle within “Modern Socialism” over a question of means (both constitute and instrumental, for what that’s worth), and identified the State-capital nexus, not statist socialists, as the primary target of their struggle. (Of course, the seizure of the state by the most monstrous forms of state socialism in the 20th century couldn’t help but change the rhetorical stance that libertarians would take. But while the change may have been understandable, there may be good reasons to think that it’s had plenty of unfortunate consequences.)

Of course, you might say, “Well, look, they may have called themselves socialists, but if they didn’t endorse institutionalized aggression against private property then they weren’t really socialists at all; they were libertarians.” I agree that they were libertarians, but I think that conceding the term “socialists” to the Marxists and the welfare statists gives the doctrinaire pronouncements of statist butchers entirely too much credence. Just because specifically Marxist socialism was clearly ascendent from ca. 1921 onwards doesn’t mean that the Marxists have any firmer claim to determining the content of the word “socialist” than the many other competing conceptions of socialism that were common in the 19th century. If Tucker used the word “socialist” in such a way that socialism was conceptually compatible with a thoroughgoing free market (as, in fact, he did), I don’t see any reason to take Marx’s word over his as to what “socialism” means.

Or, while we’re at it, to take Hoppe’s stipulative definition over either historical conception. It’s good to point out that welfare liberalism, fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, theocracy, “progressivism,” etc. all have something importantly in common with one another. But isn’t the best word for what they have in common just “statism,” or, if you prefer, “coercion?” Why not save socialism for what its practitioners actually took it to pick out—a tradition of thought and action with the aim of placing the means of production under workers’ control—rather than expanding it (so as to encompass all other forms of statism) and contracting it (so as to eliminate many forms of anarchist socialism) so as to make it fit a concept that we already have a perfectly good word for?

Interestingly enough, Boaz’s point isn’t just hypothetical. 19th century libertarians often did in fact describe themselves as both free marketeers and as “socialists”—Benjamin Tucker and his circle at Liberty in particular were fond of characterizing their political-economic position as voluntary socialism, in contrast with both to state-privileged capitalism and to state socialism.

Since the rise of monster state socialism in the 20th century, libertarians have often found themselves, whether willingly or unwillingly, driven into alliances with statist conservatives, and so have tended to identify themselves as first and foremost anti-socialist, where they used to identify themselves as a kind of socialist. They have gained a better understanding of some issues (e.g. interest) in the process, but I think there’s a good argument to be made that they’ve also lost a lot and tended to become apologists for the very crony capitalists (and other traditional elites, for what it’s worth) who so often have strengthened the coercive power of the State. Hence the work that Roderick Long and I have been trying to do through the Molinari Institute to reclaim the 19th century radical libertarian vision for 21st century libertarians.

Thanks, Fred, for the support and the discussion.

You’re right that the current search results for “abortion” aren’t all that objectionable at the moment. When I wrote down the targets for the bombing, the deceptive abortionfacts-dot-com was the #1 result, above the evenhanded religioustolerance.org discussion. I’m actually not sure why the reversal came about—it isn’t because of the GoogleBombing; I suggested GynPages as the target for “abortion.”

In any case, even though there has been this welcome change, I’d still like to encourage people to GoogleBomb abortion with GynPages. Roughly, the reason why is this: religioustolerance.org isn’t an offensive result the way that abortiontv-dot-com or abortionfacts-dot-com is, but I do think that (1) since the relative positioning between #1 and #2 is fragile, we should see what we can do to boost alternatives to the deceptive anti-abortion sites; and (2) GynPages provides something very important that religioustolerance doesn’t: it’s a direct link to objective information on where to find abortion services. That’s one reason that people may be searching on “abortion” in the first place, and if it is it’s important that they be able to find it. As it stands, though, it’s crowded out by a bunch of political advocacy at the top of the search results—both even-handed and anti-tilted, and a few times pro-choice-tilted. That’s something that I wouldn’t mind seeing changed at all, and I hope that others agree with me.

Could you explain, maybe, how using the old Crusader slogan to describe the attitude behind the obliteration of Fallujah—a town of about half a million inhabitants—and the decision to treat all military-age males in the city as potential military targets is “spinning events in favor of the zealots”? It’s true that there are radical Islamists out there who believe that the Iraq war is a modern Crusade (although, for the record, the quote was actually not uttered in the context of a Crusade against Muslims). But so what? Many radical Islamists also believe that the world is round, but stating that it is is not “spinning events in favor of the zealots.” These are questions to be decided on their own merits, not by appealing to what good or bad people believe on the matter.

Is the quote applicable to the U.S. military’s assault on Fallujah—in which all “military-aged males” had to either turn themselves over to military custody or else be attacked—or isn’t it? If it isn’t, why isn’t it? If it is, then what’s wrong with pointing it out?

In light of the link that you apparently endorse below, is there any policy in Iraq short of genocide that you would take to be a rational response to the actions of some Arab or Muslim terrorists?

FP: “Does it not allow women to evade responsibility as well? Or is the pill a natural function now?”

A heart attack is a “natural function”. A defribillator is an artificial intervention that prevents cardiac arrest from taking its normal course, i.e., death. It doesn’t follow from this that you are evading your responsibility to die.

Broadly speaking, “natural” is not a term with any intrinsic normative content whatsoever. Certainly not for human beings, anyway: invention is a part—perhaps the most distinctive part—of our nature.

I got hit with a similar flood of trackback spams earlier today. Unfortunately one of the reasons that I am still sticking with stupid old MovableType (spam control tools) didn’t come through as well with the pings as it has with past waves of comment spam. (Basically because there is no concept of “moderating” TrackBack pings in MovableType, so one of the layers of interdiction between your front page and the spammer is removed. The only filters that go through are the ones that are set up to block—e.g., known spammer URIs that have already been posted somewhere.)

Do you know what’s available for Drupal in the way of spam-quashing utilities? If this hasn’t been a matter of module development I should hope that people will get working on it soon…