More to come later when I have a bit more time. For now:

Paul,

Yes, I know that our methodological differences spring from the fact of you (and Roderick) being followers of Wittgenstein in this matter and my being a follower of Popperian critical rationalism and his view that “nothing of substance depends on words”.

Doesn’t Wittgenstein rather famously also suggest that “nothing of substance depends on words”? (Cf. for example TLP 4.003, TLP 6.53, etc.)

Maybe the differences that you (and Popper) have with Wittgenstein — and with me and Roderick — actually have to do with something other than this methodological dictum?

I would suggest that our intellect is more fruitfully employed in criticizing and refuting their erroneous theories rather than in designing a more consistent scheme of words with which they can continue to articulate their errors.

The aim of the linguistic criticism isn’t to furnish them with new language for articulating their errors, but rather to furnish us with new language for criticizing and refuting their erroneous theories. You might think that we could save time by just doing so with the old language we already had at hand, but if Roderick’s right about the conceptual misdirections embedded in that old language, then it simply is not useful as a means to that end.

You could say, “common usage can go hang; stipulate meanings for your own terms to get any questions of meaning out of the way as quickly as possible, and then devote your energy to making your case, rather than punching at the tarbaby of other people’s conceptual confusions.” But as a practical matter, common usage really is harder to divorce yourself from than this suggests: even when you make explicit stipulative definitions it can be hard to divorce yourself from the conventional paradigm cases and the connotations you’re familiar with (I think this often actually happens when many libertarians start talking about “market processes,” but that’s another long discussion for another time). And, perhaps more importantly, what Roderick’s doing in the passages you cite is part of a different intellectual task than formulating your own theory: the task that he’s engaged in is in fact criticizing someone else’s false theory (statist political economy), so part of what he needs to do is to engage with what they are actually claiming and how they are supporting it. Otherwise, he is just punching at a strawman. So engaging with the way in which package-dealing language is commonly in framing the theory he’s criticizing, and the way in which that language insulates the theory from criticism (by concealing where, and with whom, the dispute actually lies) is part and parcel of the task you are trying to urge him to devote himself to. Specifically, it involves knocking out one of the supports used to hold up the false theory — e.g. by taking away the state socialist’s ability to rely on the admitted evils of neomercantilism in order to make a case against free enterprise. And by making clearer where the dispute lies, it also makes clearer the sorts of evidence that need to be adduced in order to criticize whatever supports remain.

On the other hand, you could always argue that Roderick’s just saying something false about how the already existing language in the debate is commonly used, and that it is (as Frank claims) really much less ambiguous or incoherent than Roderick is claiming. But then you’re punching at that tarbaby no less than Roderick is, since determining that that’s the case just does involve doing linguistic analysis.

agm:

You can’t implement good laws if you ignore a large chunk of the population, and this includes people who have the jitters about brown-skinned immigrants.

Whether this is true or not, the point I was making had nothing in particular to do with whether or not you should implement new, better laws, or if so, when. It had to do with whether or not you’re obliged in conscience to try to enforce already existing laws that are unjust. (You’re not, because an unjust law has no legitimate authority, and because you’re never obliged in conscience to do an injustice—even if every single person in the country besides you were demanding that you do it.) Admittedly ridiculous laws should not be enforced, and real people’s lives and livelihoods are a hell of a lot more important than making your point about “national sovereignty.”

Kennedy,

Roderick’s a philosopher, and moreover an Aristotelian. He is more optimistic about the possibility of changing hearts and minds than you are, but when he starts talking about conceptual confusions and “anti-concepts” it’s safe to assume that he considers clarity on the matter something desirable in itself, not only for its consequences. Confusions are worth exposing because they are confusions, not just because they serve nefarious purposes (although, in fact, they do).

I think he’s probably right that there is some hope for a renewal of a left-libertarian alliance, but the points he makes about the terms “capitalism” and “socialism” are still worth making whether or not they have any practical impact on the populace at large, movement types, or indeed anyone else at all.

Randy: It is irrational to be upset by the details of a compromise when a compromise is clearly necessary.

Hey, Randy, 1850 called. They want their argument back.

Nativists are calling for peaceful people to be rounded up, restrained, confined, exiled, or shot if necessary, and for real people’s livelihoods to be destroyed, when they have not violated a single person’s rights to person or property. Bush is suggesting that we escalate that violence to the tune of 6,000 soldiers on the border, while implementing a program that will allow a few more people to sidestep that kind of systematic violence against peaceful people.

There is no need and no room for compromise on this issue. Peaceful people should not be assaulted under any circumstances. Anything else is just more of the same old bullshit.

zuzu, nope, but they did it without V.D.’s knowledge or consent, so he still has his own personal copy, Endlösung reference intact, online. You can click through to the original and modified copies via my post linked above.

Glaivester, personally, I’m all for it because I want to overthrow the government and achieve international workers’ control over the means of production. Thanks for trying, though.

Paul,

The issue here isn’t the need for “precise” meanings — as a late Wittgensteinian I think that the quest for those is itself a form of linguistic delusion — but rather for consistent ones. If Roderick is right that “capitalism” and “socialism” as commonly used don’t have a consistent meaning, then even if you regard them as mere “tools” for the formulation and testing of theories, they are not useful tools for that purpose. If you’re interested in getting down to facts then it is in your interest to critique uses of language that obscure them or deflect you from them.

That said, it is a serious error to compare the relationship between clear language and true theories to the relationship between letters and words, or between hammers and nails. Of course it’s true that whether or not to use a particular word to express a particular idea is a purely pragmatic decision that you ought to make on the basis of the audience and the conversational context. But Roderick’s issue is not with the word “capitalism” as such, but rather the way in which that word is commonly used. And that’s quite a different issue. In this sense, language is a means to (among other things) formulate and test theories, but it is not an instrumental means to an end that can be spelled out independently of it. Theories are, after all, made of language, not just made with it, and using language clearly is a constitutive means to an end of which it is itself a part. (In a sense, singing “Tochter aus Elysium” in the second line is only a means to the end of singing the Ode to Joy. But it would make little sense to say “Quit worrying about singing ‘Tochter aus Elysium’ in the second line; just worry about singing the Ode to Joy right, and the second line will sort itself out.” If you fail to use the right means here, then you have also failed to achieve the end.)

Frank:

I think that what Popper is recommending here is that one should try to avoid getting bogged down in definitional disputes and, more controversially, that ultimate precision about terms is not required for most purposes. The rough and ready approximate understanding of these terms does generally suffice.

Roderick’s point has nothing to do either with the alleged need for precise definitions, or with the “right” definition to attach to the words “capitalism” and “socialism.” What he says is that “the rough and ready approximate understanding of these terms” as commonly employed conceals an internal inconsistency. Criticizing common usage, if it is indeed as he says it is, doesn’t turn on any claims about precision in definitions; it turns on the idea that incoherent meanings don’t get you anywhere.

Of course, you also claim that you disagree with him on the way in which the words are commonly used. But then your issue with him is one of substantive disagreement over what the linguistic situation is, not the sort of methodological disagreement that Paul’s quotations from Popper are trying to suggest.

As far as that substantive disagreement goes, I agree with you that it’s usually pretty clear that calling yourself “anti-capitalist” usually conveys pretty clearly that you’re opposed to the free market. But I don’t see how that’s inconsistent with what Roderick said. If your understanding of capitalism is something like “this free-market system that currently prevails in the western world,” then saying you oppose “this free-market system that currently prevails in the western world” will (among other things) commit you to opposing the free market. The problem is that it also commits you to thinking that what you’re opposing is the actually existing political economy in which we live. If your “pro-capitalist” opponents buy into the package-deal that you are employing, then they will think that they are committed to defending the actually existing political economy in which we live as part of defending the free market. But since we don’t live in anything like a free market, it’s foolish for them to do so.

And frankly I simply have no idea what is meant when someone calls herself “pro-capitalist” or “anti-socialist.” Some people tend to use these terms strictly to describe their adherence to free market principles; others tend to ue them strictly to describe their solidarity with actually existing big business; others (probably most) tend to use them to describe the chimerical combination of the two attitudes that they’ve mistakenly bought into. In practice I have seen plenty of people denounce voluntary strikes for higher wages, advocate for “right to work” laws which explicitly violate the right of free contract, endorse explicitly protectionist arguments for copyrights and patents, apologize for government lending agencies such as the IMF and World Bank, endorse state auction “privatization” schemes, etc., all in the name of being “pro-capitalist” or “anti-socialist.” Clintonian liberals, for that matter, often use this sort of language to justify anti-trust interventions and the institution of government-run, completely fabricated “markets,” such as those in transferable political correctness “credits” of various sorts. Of course, whenever someone does that (and they do it very often), you could insist, “But no, you see, ‘capitalism’ really means a free market! Not patronage for big business!” But then it’s you, not Roderick, who’s getting bogged down in semantics. It is precisely by exposing and dealing with the inconsistencies in common usage that we can avoid that kind of unproductive squabbling.

Just for fun, here’s Du Toit specifically addressing gun registration databases (2003-02-26):

One of the basic disadvantages of the State knowing who is armed and who isn’t, is that the State knows who has to be disarmed, if they are to impose any kind of tyranny. …

As we saw earlier in the case of Nazi Germany, by giving the State the ability to identify gun owners, we give the State the ability to disarm us.

This is not a situation of “Trust us, we’ll never do that.” We would be incredibly naïve to fall for that nonsense. In all of history, assumption of government benevolence has been betrayed, sooner or later, and the greater the power of the State, the sooner comes the betrayal.

Gun owners know the underlying motives behind gun registration, and we are not reassured or fooled by the weasel denials of politicians. Licensing and registration constitute infringement, and that’s prohibited by the Second Amendment. Anyway, we know the progression.

Good thing that freedom of speech and association aren’t important rights like gun ownership is, or else we might have a real problem here.

So, last night George Bush announced plans to have the National Guard “support” the Border Patrol until an additional 6,000 Border Patrol agents can be hired. …. this is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

It’s a bad idea because the government has no right to shoot or restrain peaceful people just because they are trying to find a place to live in the United States. Ramping up the number of people working on making that a reality just means ramping up violence against innocent people.

There are lots of reasons why the means that Bush is proposing are unlikely to achieve his professed ends. But since the ends are themselves fundamentally immoral, the strategic and tactical mistakes he’s making in trying to pursue them are of secondary importance at most.

Incidentally, WorldNetDaily sent his reference to the Final Solution down the Memory Hole this morning. Now the column simply asserts that it couldn’t take more than eight years to put 12,000,000 undocumented immigrants on the cattle cars, without any explanation of where he pulled that particular timetable from.

But V.D. is proud of his work and has kept an unedited copy on his own website, so that you can compare and contrast.

agm: As T. Roosevelt is reputed to have held, we need to fix the ridiculous immigration laws we have, but we need to enforce them until we do so. To do anything less is to profligately damage national sovereignty.

The desire to relentlessly enforce a policy that is admittedly “ridiculous” in order to prove some kind of point about “national sovereignty” may be the quidditative essence of both this administration and its supporters.

Meanwhile, among non-sociopaths:

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail