Bystander,

Well, I’m inclined to agree that “initiation” is not the most useful conceptual framework for this, but I don’t think it’s obviously unworkable, either. We could start with examples. It seems to me that when Emma Goldman is speaking in a hall, and not physically attacking anyone, and when some police roll up on her and physically attack her and force her off to jail at gunpoint, that’s initiating violence against someone who was not herself engaging in violence. (Even if, say, she made an argument to the effect that people have the right to resist or rebel.) Now, perhaps I’m oversimplifying matters. But if so I’d like to know how.

To return to the earlier discussion about media monopoly and right-conflationism, I’m done trying to engage with MBH’s trolling, so I’ll beg your leave to come back around again and say things a bit more succinctly, and more clearly, in response to your specific question.

“Right-conflationism” and “left-conflationism” are terms that apply to the analysis of structural outcomes, not of individual market transactions. (Claiming that BP’s business model would not exist in a free market is one thing; claiming that BP did not have the right to sell me gasoline last time I took a road trip is another.) If one were to claim that the prevalence of a particular viewpoint in the (profoundly constrained and monopolized) media indicated that the idea must be genuinely popular, or that it must have won out in the “marketplace of ideas,” that would be an instance of right-conflationism. (Because there isn’t a genuine “marketplace of ideas;” access to the press is profoundly constrained and monopolized, etc.) But I don’t think I made that claim.

On the other hand I don’t think that defending the individual rights of people — including those who might plausibly be called media monopolists — to print their own views, in a particular instance, without forcible interference would be an example of right-conflationism. Certainly I didn’t anywhere claim that the virtues of a freed market in ideas justify the evils of right-wing advocacy in the media. What I said is that the right way to deal with those evils, where they occur, is not by forcibly censoring them.

If it’s not right-conflationism, my position might still be an example of some other error — although, of course, I don’t think that it is. Besides the fact that allowing that precedent would be extraordinarily dangerous (when they start clamping down on “irresponsible” or “inflammatory” speech, it’s always the Anarchists they have come for first), I think it is also fundamentally immoral to treat your fellow human beings that way. As I said, it seems like the natural response to such a monopoly is to remove the prohibitions on others. Not to lay down some new prohibitions on the monopolists. Does that make sense?

> what they're elected to do is serve. Members of Congress are elected to make laws. Making laws is not "serving" the people who are subject to those laws, on any coherent conception of the term "to serve;" it is ordering them, making them do something whether or not they had wanted to do it. Perhaps you think that the ordering around is justified; perhaps you think that the people who vote for members of Congress are asking for it, and are better off for it. But it is still a matter of giving orders to people who do not have the option to refuse them. A person who makes their living by governing other people is not a servant under any meaningful definition of that term. > We can UN-elect them if they fail to serve, so trying to label them rulers is inane. The fact that a ruler is elected by the majority doesn't make them something other than a ruler. In Rome, dictators were voted in and served for fixed terms. But what they did while in office was to dictate. I'm glad Giffords heard from her constituents. In some companies, bosses read the notes that employees put in the suggestion box. In some companies, bosses may even get fired if employees lodge too many complaints against them. This does not, however, make the bosses into the employees of their employees. They are still bosses, and the normal course of affairs is that they spend day after day telling everybody else what to do.

> what they're elected to do is serve. Members of Congress are elected to make laws. Making laws is not "serving" the people who are subject to those laws, on any coherent conception of the term "to serve;" it is ordering them, making them do something whether or not they had wanted to do it. Perhaps you think that the ordering around is justified; perhaps you think that the people who vote for members of Congress are asking for it, and are better off for it. But it is still a matter of giving orders to people who do not have the option to refuse them. A person who makes their living by governing other people is not a servant under any meaningful definition of that term. > We can UN-elect them if they fail to serve, so trying to label them rulers is inane. The fact that a ruler is elected by the majority doesn't make them something other than a ruler. In Rome, dictators were voted in and served for fixed terms. But what they did while in office was to dictate. I'm glad Giffords heard from her constituents. In some companies, bosses read the notes that employees put in the suggestion box. In some companies, bosses may even get fired if employees lodge too many complaints against them. This does not, however, make the bosses into the employees of their employees. They are still bosses, and the normal course of affairs is that they spend day after day telling everybody else what to do.

MBH:

Since no one could ever carry out an insurrection with objective knowledge of the outcome, you imply that if someone thinks they have good reason to believe the insurrection will be successful, then they ought to do it.

Well, no. You seem to have inferred that, but nothing I said implied it; your inference involves an especially crude confusion of metaphysical and epistemic claims (as a brief reminder, “If P, then it is permissible for Smith to do V” does not imply “If Smith believes that P, then it is permissible for Smith to do V”).

you see no connection between rhetoric like yours and someone who decides to assassinate their Congressman.

Well, I didn’t say anything about “rhetoric like mine.” You started talking about the Kochs and I (among others) answered and then decided to change the topic to me. That said, I am pretty confident that the contents and the rhetoric of “Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism” played more or less no causal role in the Loughner’s decision to shoot up a supermarket in Tucson. If it did, I have a much broader readership than I imagined.

However, if it did, I will also simply say that someone who reads the essay and comes away thinking “It’s time for me to shoot a member of Congress,” they have not read the essay carefully or honestly, and while I am perfectly happy to take intellectual responsibility for the conclusions that people might reasonably draw from things that I write, I think it is fundamentally absurd to expect anyone to take intellectual — let alone legal responsibility — for admittedly irrational reactions that admittedly irrational people might independently decide to take after reading something that they did not understand.

I’ve already addressed why it’s not correct to shoot Congressmen in the face.

Not at the link you just pointed to. That’s a discussion of the gold standard and government regulation of hedge funds. Did you mean to point to something else? Or is this yet another example of you throwing shit around and expecting people not to read what you link to?

I asked you for an argument for your position. You haven’t, as yet, given one.

Literally.

Do you have an argument against that conclusion? Or a logical response to the arguments that I’ve already given for it?

MBH:

From the perspective of a polycentric legal system, any organization that refused arbitration in a court that held persons responsible for a particular kind of negligence would be aggressive organizations.

Whatever you want, man. So, since you regard the Kochs (in this rather strange hypothetical scenario? about a nonexistant polycentric legal system?) as being involved with “aggressive organizations,” you support using violence towards them in order to extract damages, yes?

MBH:

You think that Jared Loughner is justified in killing the Congresswoman?

No, I don’t. I think that the shooting was foolish, and also that it probably fails a test of proportionality. (Certainly, carrying out the shooting by murdering innocent bystanders does.)

Again. Do you have an argument against that? Or against anything said in the passage you are quoting?

Hell, if I did (as I do not) think that the shooting of Giffords (but not the innocent bystanders) were justified, would you have an argument against that conclusion? Or just some more shit to sling at the wall?

You know how I know when someone has almost certainly not followed the logic of the source that they are supposedly replying to? When they lead off with “by that logic ….”

As you already know, or ought to know if you do not, the passage you’re quoting from is specifically a passage which is discussing why the unconditional right of revolution need not necessarily involve armed insurrection or other uses of force. It says literally nothing — deliberately so; it says that it says nothing — about what strategy or tactics for resistance I am or am not willing to adopt, suggest, condone, accept, or tolerate. You cannot possibly have missed this point if you read the essay seriously and with understanding. As you already know, I do not think very much of most violent tactics, and I specifically advocate strategies (such as agorism and nonviolent syndicalism) which avoid violent confrontations, even in many situations where I think that such confrontations would be well within the rights of the resisters (e.g. people defending themselves against imminent assault by cops, soldiers, border guards, tax collectors, etc.).

As you may also know, I endorse the right of tyrannicide. (I have written about this in places other than the L/E/S essay — e.g. in my Tyrannicide Day posts — and it would be more on point to mention those than it would to try to pull it out of L/E/S.) However, believing that someone is within their rights to do X (i.e., should not be themselves forcibly restrained, gunned down, jailed, etc. if they try to do it) is not the same thing as believing that someone is acting rightly to do X. (Acts which are within one’s rights may well be foolish; and they may indeed be immoral.) More to the point, I also don’t think that killing 1/435th of 1/2 of the legislative authority in the U.S. constitutes a legitimate act of tyrannicide, and considerations of proportionality would rule out any kind of use of deadly force (particularly since the force would in no conceivable way remove the threat that Congress poses). The issue in tyrannicide is the threat that an individual poses by exercise of their political power; but Caesar exercises a kind of unilateral individual power that Gabrielle Giffords does not.

That said, while it’s sad when anyone dies, Gabrielle Giffords is a moral criminal, and I’m a lot more concerned about, say, innocent 9 year olds being killed than I am about what happens to Congressional conspirators.

Do you have an argument against that position?

Yes, I do. Do you have an argument against it, or a logical response to the arguments given for it?

MBH:

Martin, I never say that anyone should kill them. In fact, any violence toward the Koch’s would be completely antithetical to my advocacy

As I recall, you specifically stated that you thought they should be held legally liable for (the downstream effects of independent third parties’ reactions to) the political rhetoric of groups that they provided money to. How exactly do you think government holds people legally liable for torts? With soul-force?