Scott, well, the shorter version of what I said is: I don’t think the dispute is merely definitional. The kind of complications that Wilde’s pointing to are indications that there are more socioeconomic class distinctions than vulgar Marxism suggests, not that socioeconomic class isn’t a good tool for understanding the transit strike.

Kennedy: Then it would be nice to give an example of how the union did this in the case McArdle is talking about. I’ve yet to hear of anything the union did wrong in the transit strike.

Sure. As usual, a lot of libertarians tend to think that the word “union” is enough to summon statist demons. The attempted analysis is just lazy argumentation; I just think that it’s also the case that, even if it were a solid argument, it wouldn’t establish that class analysis isn’t useful for understanding social life.

Dave: This is because union dominated industries can’t compete forever with non union companies. Only if propped up by political power can unions survive.

There were a good six and a half decades between the foundation of the Knights of Labor, and the establishment of government patronage of unions under the Wagner Act. I conclude that unions can survive quite well without being propped up by political power, and that there’s nothing intrinsic to unions that’s antagonistic to market survival.

What you say above suggests that you think something about the market has changed such that unions might have been beneficial back in the day but aren’t anymore. But then you’d have to identify what it is you think has changed in the interim. What do you think made unions as such potentially beneficial then, but categorically inefficient now? (One thing clearly has changed: the organizational structure and tactics of unions. But that’s certainly something that it’s possible to change without giving up on labor unionism as such.)

Dave: Kennedy is right, the voters have only themselves to blame. You can’t blame the unionists for trying the same tricks that have always worked before.

I don’t think Kennedy’s point had anything in particular to do with voting.

Me, to Wilde: Or, to put it another way: if you aren’t offering a class analysis of the transit strike, what level of analysis are you offering? Individual?

Berg: Interest group analysis?

And interest groups whose membership are are defined by their jobs, income levels, and level of control over terms of employment are usually called “classes,” or (more precisely) “socioeconomic classes.” Aren’t they?

Schuele: Jonathan seems to be saying that none of the typical conglomerations deemed “classes” have a unified self-interest, as is suggested by some.

I don’t know what you mean by “a unified self-interest.” There are lots of things that you might mean when you apply a predicate to a set. Is it supposed to mean (a) “a self-interest shared by each and every member of the class,” (b) “a self-interest mostly shared by members of the class” (with some kind of statistical meaning attached to “mostly”), (c) “a self-interest typically shared by members of the class (under normal conditions)”, (d) “a self-interest not necessarily shared by individual members of the class but somehow held by the class itself,” or something else?

I ask because if you mean (a), then I don’t know of any class theorists who have suggested that classes have “a unified self-interest” in that sense. (I think they typically mean something more like (c), although I suppose there may be some who, through various sorts of mystification, try to hold (d).) In any case, if you mean (b)-(d), then Wilde’s merely pointing out that there are members of the class who individually don’t share the class’s self-interest does not tell against the accuracy of class analysis, any more than poor Tibbles, who has been maimed and shaved, tells against the accuracy of a natural history documentary that says “Domestic cats have four legs and a soft coat of fur.”

If, on the other hand, you mean something more like claim (c), as I think Jonathan seems to, then the sort of exceptions you’d need to point out to even begin undermining the analysis have to be systematic exceptions to the alleged uniformity of self-interest. Which Jonathan does do, above. But the thing is that the systematic exceptions he points out are exceptions on the basis of factors that we usually take to differentiate between socioeconomic classes — jobs, pay, control over terms of employment, etc. — and in spite of his later protest that “It ain’t about big guys vs little guys” he explicitly says above that this is about bigger vs. littler guys: “Some little guys are bigger than other little guys. Any special benefit that any particular union garners for one set of little guys comes at the detriment not just from businesses, but also from other little guys.”

He seems to suggest toward the end that conscious organization, or perhaps access to the political means, better explain systematic differences of interest within the supposed “working class” than factors that mark out socioeconomic classes. But (1) the idea that either of those factors are independent of socioeconomic class is not at all obvious, and (2) neither saying “group X is better organized on behalf of its interests than group Y” or “group X has a greater ability to serve its interests through political pressure than group Y” explains what it is about group X and group Y that make for the difference in interests to be served in the first place. In the case that Jonathan seems to be discussing, the difference seems to be made on the basis of the socioeconomic factors I mentioned. (Specifically, the distinction between an “aristocracy of labor” and workers that are comparatively less well-off in terms of jobs, income, and organizational resources — a class distinction within the larger working class that has been discussed and fleshed out by many analysts who gladly make use of class analysis, and in regard to the history of labor organizing in particular.)

Kennedy: Say what? In a market unions can’t do anything “at the expense” of others since the only people who will do business with them are those that profit from doing business with them.

Well, I think there’s clearly a sense of “expense” and “detriment” in the English language, under which peaceful market competition can produce profits at the expense of, or be to the detriment of, third parties. (Businesspeople use it all the time — if Wal-Mart is eating K-Mart’s lunch, then there is some sense in which Wal-Mart’s competition is detrimental to K-Mart’s owners, or Wal-Mart’s greater profits are coming at the expense of K-Mart.) Of course, what I think you’re right to point out here is that these senses of “expense” and “detriment” aren’t senses in which profiting at someone’s expense, or doing something to their detriment, is in itself an objectionable thing to do.

To be fair, though, Jonathan et al. are operating from the presumption that unions are availing themselves of legal coercion in order to enforce their bargaining position, in ways that unorganized workers aren’t able to. (That’s true enough, but I think that the balance of political power in the late strike, given that it was against a government employer that had the power to throw union organizers in jail for continuing to strike, and publicly contemplated doing so, is clearly not in favor of the union.)

Jonathan, I think that your analysis leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but suppose we grant, arguendo, that this is a good account of how things are. Now what? Are we supposed to give up class analysis? If so, why? It seems that what you’ve offered here is just a claim that there are more classes than simply a monolithic managerial class and a monolithic working class, and that some classes of workers might seek to benefit at the expense of others?

(Or, to put it another way: if you aren’t offering a class analysis of the transit strike, what level of analysis are you offering? Individual?)

Generally speaking, the idea of an “aristocracy of labor,” and of the possibility that people at higher strata within the working class might try to benefit at the expense of people at lower strata — including by means of labor unions — is not exactly new. In fact it’s a standard part of many radical Left critiques of the AFL and related unions. (See Paul Buhle’s Taking Care of Business for one example.) It doesn’t demonstrate “the poverty of class analysis;” it just demonstrates the need for, well, richer class analysis.

You do know that one of Morales’ major planks was opposition to the Drug War, and one of his major bases of support were Indian coca-leaf growers who were under systematic assault from the previous government, right?

I think the outcome in Bolivia may be more mixed than you give it credit for.

Kennedy: Will you concede that many of Tookie’s supporters holding Schwarzenegger to this standard are not holding the former leader of the Crips to anything remotely like the same standard?

I wouldn’t know; I haven’t talked to many of them. I don’t think that an answer can be read off the public statements I’ve read or the ones you’ve pointed to.

Whether or not they’re holding Tookie Williams to the same standard as Arnold Schwarzenegger depends on (1) whether or not they believe that he’s guilty of murder at all, and (2) if they do think he’s guilty, whether or not they think that the murders he committed were as bad or worse than Schwarzenegger’s participation in having him killed.

As for (1), some people think that he’s innocent, at least of the murders that he was slaughtered for; and that belief may or may not be dishonest — I wouldn’t know — but if it is, the dishonesty doesn’t have anything in particular to do with comparative judgments with Schwarzenegger. If he is innocent, then there just isn’t any question of holding people to the same standard at all, since they don’t believe that they both did the same thing.

As for (2), how would I know? I haven’t seen any statements comparing the two at all, or resting on an implied comparison between Williams and Scharzenegger. You might think it’s implied if they (a) believe Williams is a mass-murderer, but (b) try to portray him as a good person nevertheless, while not extending the same charity, or indulgence, towards Schwarzenegger. But it seems obvious to me that how you take someone’s past violence to bear on their character depends a lot on whether it was committed a quarter century ago or less than a week ago. Again, maybe people who think that Williams genuinely repented of his past are fooling themselves — again, I wouldn’t know — but again, it’s unclear what the dishonesty in question would have to do with Schwarzenegger, who had a man killed not a week ago and to all appearances sticks by his sincerely-felt endorsement of it.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who opposed killing Tookie Williams who were being dishonest — that’s true of most political movements and there are specific facts about the conditions under which campaigns against a particular death sentence are conducted that encourage dishonest arguments (it’s a person’s life at stake, the time is limited, the arguments most likely to succeed are arguments against the verdict rather than the sentence, etc. etc. etc.). That sucks, and I don’t like it or engage in it, but it’s not clear that the phenomenon has to do with differing standards for outrage.

Kennedy: Rad’s running interference for people who don’t mean what he means. Schwarzenegger was called a cold blooded killer to condemn him, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with cold blooded killing as Rad lays it out. A man may justly kill even if his blood isn’t hot. No, they were saying that Schwarzenngger was doing as bad or worese than what Tookie was convicted of. That’s not the case.

When you say “No, they were saying that Schwarzenngger was doing as bad or [worse] than what Tookie was convicted of. That’s not the case,” do you mean to complain that it’s in fact not the case and that Williams’s supporters were wrong to believe otherwise, or that they don’t even believe that it’s the case, and so were being inconsistent or dishonest to imply it? If it’s the former, then why do you suggest they’re not holding both men to the same standard, instead of just saying that their standards are wrong? If it’s the latter, what grounds do you have for saying that? If it’s that you think that death sentences for convicted murderers aren’t as bad as freelance murders of the innocent, then again, it’s unclear why the issue is supposed to be dishonesty rather than error. If it’s that they think that death sentences for convicted murderers aren’t as bad as freelance murders of the innocent, why would that death penalty opponents believe that?

That’s connected with my reasons for “running interference” through a narrowly literalistic reading of the words involved. I think that bullshitting through word-choice is one of the ways that people avoid real arguments about matters of life and death, particularly when they’re connected with the State, and I’d like to put a stop to it. I also think that in this particular case it conceals where the real argument lies. Greenwald explicitly claims, and you seem to want to suggest (maybe you don’t; if so, my bad) that you ought to object to the way that Tookie’s supporters are carrying on about Schwarzenegger and the hangman State broadly whether or not you believe that the death penalty is justified, because it involves dishonesty or hypocrisy. I think that the moral status of the death penalty as applied to Williams is the only genuine issue in the debate, but that this is concealed by using language that covers over what a death sentence is. The actual complaint is that Schwarzenegger is being held to standards that Greenwald disagrees with, not that he’s being held to a different standard from Tookie Williams, or to a different standard from Iran or China or whatever other slaughterhouse we’re supposed to be denouncing first thing this morning. The shift in language from “cold-blooded killing” to “the execution of the unquestionably guilty mass murderer and violent gang founder Tookie Williams — after a jury trial and multiple judicial appeals” makes it easier to talk in a way that effectively presupposes that killing Williams wasn’t a serious offense that anyone ought to care about, and so helps license the classic “And what about your blacks in the South?” feint.

Dave: [The death penalty’s] real basis is to enforce just retribution against the criminal.

Most people who oppose the death penalty as a matter of principle deny that violent retribution can be just. Most people who don’t oppose the death penalty in principle but do oppose this or that instance in fact, deny that violent retribution against the condemned would be just in that particular case (for whatever reason).

Of course, you’re free to disagree with them and give reasons for your disagreement, but thus far you’ve only begged the question against them in the course of your description.

Dave: Before the strong state was established the job of executing those who allegedly deserved it was in the hands of the decedent’s family or clan. As mankind has become progressively civilized the state took over this function and rationalized and democratized it, which has resulted in increased justice and eliminated the problem of the killer’s family then seeking reciprocal vengeance and the resulting destructive vendettas. For the life of me I don’t see how this is so horrible.

Because if you think that the death penalty is unjust, increased bureaucratic rationality as applied to injustice is not something to be cheered. Again, you may not think that the death penalty is unjust, but since you’ve given no argument for that position, you can hardly expect this to convince those who don’t already view deliberate, non-defensive killing of prisoners as permissible.

Dave: Sure it is an imperfect procedure, but what system is perfect.

These happen to be people’s lives that you are fucking talking about. Even if you think that killing people who pose no further credible threat is, in principle, permissible, how many innocent lives do you consider acceptable losses for the sake of the “system”?

Dave: You will hear no comparable outcry when child killer John Gacy or similar persons are executed.

It’s true that people often find some of the condemned more sympathetic than others, and those who elicit more sympathy tend to get more people trying to defend their lives. That’s too bad, but so what? Some people don’t turn out for unsympathetic victims because they’re unprincipled; other people because they oppose the death penalty only in some specific cases but not in others; others because they genuinely oppose the death penalty in all cases but have only so much time and energy to spend and choose to spend it on some cases but not others. (And none of this has anything to do with whether or not the death penalty is in fact justified, of course.)

Dave: The public wants it. This is a democracy.

Oh, well. If it’s popular that must mean that it’s alright.

Thanks for clearing that one up.

Kennedy: When did he sentence anyone or carry out their execution? When did he kill?

When he deliberately declined to order subordinates, over whom he had direct and unquestioned control, not to kill someone that he knew they planned to kill, when he claimed the authority and in fact had the power to stop them by a simple order, because he approved of the actions that he was permitting.

Are you claiming that to count as one of the people responsible for killing Tookie Williams, Schwarzenegger would have had to issue a direct order stating “Kill Tookie Williams,” or jabbed the needle in himself?

Kennedy: I’ll leave it to others to document the double standards, they were evident to me when Tookie’s supporters were calling Schwarzenegger a cold-blooded killer.

He is a cold-blooded killer. Last I checked, executing a death sentence meant killing somebody, and carrying out a deliberate, premeditated killing 24 years in the planning could hardly be described as a crime of passion. Making the words “cold-blooded” and “killer” longer and more Latinate (“the execution of the unquestionably guilty mass murderer and violent gang founder Tookie Williams — after a jury trial and multiple judicial appeals …”) doesn’t change the fact of the matter.

Maybe you were objecting to something else? E.g. the express condemnation of Schwarzenegger without a corresponding condemnation of Tookie? But most people who objected to Tookie’s sentence either thought (1) he wasn’t guilty, or (2) whether or not he was guilty killing him would be unjustified. Those who believe (1) may or may not have been dishonest about the facts of the case (I wouldn’t know; I don’t care whether Tookie was guilty or not and I haven’t studied the case). But what’s that got to do with their opinion of Schwarzenegger? (It’s not a matter of dispute as to whether or not Schwarzenegger authorized the killing.) Those who believe (2) are under no obligation to make sure they denounce any murders that they believe Tookie committed before they denounce Schwarzenegger’s having him killed—since they think that whether Tookie was evil or not is irrelevant to whether or not Schwarzenegger should have him killed. If you mean (3) the attempt by many to portray Tookie as a good person in spite of any crimes he may have committed, since he supposedly turned his life around, then I have no idea whether or not he became a good person or was just trying to save his skin (how would I know?), or whether the people who believe this are being dishonest, but I don’t see what any of this has to do with Schwarzenegger either.

You seem to think there’s some kind of comparative judgment involved here instead of a simple statement to the effect that Schwarzenegger killed somebody when he shouldn’t have. If there is such a comparison, explicit or implicit, where is it?

Schreiber: Libertarianism, which I generally support, isn’t justified by recourse to objective deontology (nothing is) and as a meta-ethical point, the functioning of all ethical systems are predicated on a hypothetical imperative. … But in the latter case, the first argument of Mackie’s Error Theory will apply and the position is untenable.

These are bold claims for which you have provided absolutely no support. I don’t know which argument of Mackie’s you’re referring to as the “first”; if you mean the Argument from Relativity (the first one he uses to attack the existence of objective values in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) then the argument is not even remotely decisive. (So people disagree on ethics and it’s hard to resolve the dispute by introducing bits of evidence that one of the parties has not got. So what? You could offer the same worries about meta-ethics or philosophy generally that Mackie offers about normative ethics. If it doesn’t entail that there’s no objective fact of the matter as to whether or not error theory is true, then it doesn’t entail that there’s no objective fact of the matter as to whether a given normative ethical claim is true, either. Broadly speaking, if your argument depends on this kind of crude verificationism, you should probably give the argument up.) For discussion of the second claim, see Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness, in which she revisits (and rejects) her own earlier argument from “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” The first claim is also simply irrelevant, since the claim was merely that slavery is an evil in itself and not for its causal contribution to something else. That may be true under deontology but it’s also perfectly compatible with virtue ethics, some kinds of consequentialism, and many other theories about the nature of the Right and the Good. It’s not compatible with hedonism, but the fact that hedonism blocks you from viewing slavery as an evil in itself is one of the chief reasons that hedonism is false.

But to press my earlier point on real freedom: there is somethign that you know you will never do, the government suddenly bans it, is your freedom diminished?

Yes. Freedom is a term with modal weight; it has to support counterfactuals.

Kennedy: Yes. He’s quite right that many actively excuse rights violations in these other places and hold the U.S. to be a worse offender when it usually is not.

I certainly agree with you that there are people who do this, and that the examples that you give are good ones. But is this just a general beef on your part, or do you have specific examples in mind having to do with the killing of Tookie Williams, or even the death penalty in general? Because frankly, the only evidence that Greenwald seems to offer is that some people vocally objected to the killing of Williams but he personally hasn’t seen them objecting to executions in other countries where the death penalty is used more freely and against people who certainly didn’t do anything wrong. Which is frankly a ridiculous standard for concluding that someone is being dishonest or selective; there are lots of honest reasons that you might object to both A and B but only mention A at some particular time. (Maybe there are some Leftists in Europe, or some libertarians in America, whose outrage over Williams’ execution is dishonest; but the argument certainly hasn’t shown that.)

WhiskeyJuvenile: People post a lot of words about Kelo because:

a) we have a more realistic chance of dealing with it; b) we actually are arguing against an opposition, whereas nobody is defending the events in the Congo.

That’s fine. Maybe similar considerations to (a) and (b) explain some people’s decision to spend a lot of words on the killing of Tookie Williams without first having made sure that they denounced every murderous regime in the world that also deliberately kills prisoners?

Kennedy, that’s fine. Did anyone suggest that the premeditated murder of prisoners in the US is worse than the systematic human rights violations in the P.A., Iran, Syria, Cuba, China, etc. that Greenwald mentions? Or are they just focused on things that happen bear on them at the moment?

Schreiber, of course there seems to be nothing instrinsically wrong with slavery if you don’t think that people have any rights not to be enslaved. So what? The question is why you’d believe such a ridiculous thing.

As far as freedom goes, you seem to be either neglecting or intentionally obfuscating the distinction that libertarians make between freedom in the sense of uncoerced choice and freedom in the sense of the choice between available alternatives. There are lots of reasons alternatives might not be available to you, but that’s only an actionable problem, from the standpoint of libertarian theory, when what’s restricting your choices is coercion by another person. You might think that that distinction doesn’t bear logical scrutiny, but it’s silly to pretend as if it didn’t exist when trying to make a point in a mostly libertarian forum. And I am not at all clear on why having a different theory about the logical status of the categorical proposition in A, when the domain is empty, commits you to any particular claims about the proper functions of government at all. (I happen to think that they have false presuppositions, and like Strawson, I think that sentences with false presuppositions are neither true nor false, but rather failed attempts at asserting. So what now?)