Comments Elsewhere

gabriel: Your main problem, from a practical POV, is that the current left is doing great without you and they have their own agenda, pretty much centered on things you technically don’t like.

What is the statist Left currently doing great at? Nothing in the United States comes to mind. The dominant tone of every orthodox Leftist publication and organization at the moment seems to be a combination of outrage and despair. Even hand-wringing lefty Democrats seem to be pretty firmly convinced that the project of the Left is in a state of debilitating crisis.

On a global scale, they’ve won some a series of recent elections in South America. But in Brazil (for example) the victory has already led to a great deal of tension between the governing Left, the grassroots state socialists, and the autonomists (whose relationship to the State is ambiguous at the most, and often straightforwardly hostile) who laid much of the organizational and ideological groundwork for recent electoral wins.

That’s about the beginning and the end of what comes to mind in terms of Leftists “doing fine.” Maybe you could explain what it is that you had in mind?

It’s also worth noting that, while I can’t speak for Brad, I can say that my dialectical goals in advancing “Left Libertarianism” (and related notions) have as much to do with convincing libertarians to stop being corporate (patriarchal, etc.) tools as it does with convincing leftists to stop being state socialist tools. Whatever my opinions about the various departments of the left (and my hopes vary a lot depending on the departments in question), I am quite sure that the goal with regard to libertarians is achievable and that it will (1) get libertarians closer to the truth of matters, and (2) improve their ability to work substantial changes as libertarians, quite independently of whether the established left cooperates or not.