Tex: “The labor theory of value and and the class theory of conflict still live on.”

You do know that the labor theory of value and class theory both predate Marx—and, for that matter, predate socialism entirely, don’t you? The former can be found in, inter alia, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and others; the latter is a bedrock component of republican political theory dating back to classical Greece and Rome. (Not surprisingly, class theory as such isn’t wedded to any particular theory about the respective roles of State and Capital, since it originated before either the modern State or modern capitalism.)

I mean, look, if you want to complain that both are wrong-headed, you can do so, but taking either one as a mark of Marxism or even Marxian influence is, frankly, historically illiterate.

I also have to wonder how many contemporary anarchists you have read when it comes to their relationship to Marxism. The historical rivalry between anarchists and state socialists (and Marxists in particular) is hardly a matter of little knowledge. On the contrary, a lot of contemporary anarchists are concerned to the point of obsession with Marxist betrayals in, e.g., Russia between the Revolution and the end of the Civil War, or in revolutionary Spain.

If you’re looking for embarassing quotations from Bakunin—an anti-Semite, among other things—or Proudhon or any number of other 19th and early 20th century anarchists, they aren’t very hard to find. On the other hand, since contemporary anarchists are both aware of and explicitly critical of these strands of their thought, I have to wonder what of value you think this sort of drive-by ad hominem abusive is going to accomplish.

Dobeln:

Plus, it’s pretty obvious Rall’s position on the issue is a ruse. Rall and his friends will cheer on any force that opposes the United States. Simple as that.

If they has to make up a halfway consistent position to cover their asses , they will do so.

Fine, but that’s not really to the point. Maybe Rall is playing games here and maybe he’s not, but either way the conclusion that he is “casting his lot” with the Taleban is radically undermotivated by the evidence which is presented in the post. If you want to make the claim that Rall casts his lot with the Taleban, or cheers on any forces which happen to oppose the US, you’ll need burlier evidence for that conclusion than an interview in which he declares the Taleban “the world’s worst regime” ca. December 2001. You can write off the statements in that interview as duplicitous, but then whatever other evidence that you have for considering them duplicitous seems like a more natural candidate to present as evidence for the conclusion that he sides with the Taleban than the interview linked here.

It’s also worth wondering what any of this has to do with anything of real interest. If Rall does happen to “cheer on any force that opposes the United States”, does that make his assessment of the evils of the Taleban and Northern Alliance therefore wrong? I thought that the truth or falsity of statements like that were established by an appeal to the facts of the matter, not by the team loyalty of the person advancing them.

“Mr. Rall, of course, casts his lot with that genocide’s perpatrators and beneficiaries.

“Apparently murderous hatred of Westerners, especially Americans, gives you carte blanche for murderous hatred of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and, yes, Zoroastrians.”

jeet, what are you talking about? If you’re referring to the Taleban, Rall describes them as “the world’s worst regime” ca. December 2001. He also thinks the Northern Alliance jihadi-warlords who now have their claws sunk into the country are just as bad, or worse, than the Taleban were. Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not—Afghans who had to deal with all of these fuckers from 1989-present are mostly not very enthusiastic about any of them. But (1) how do Ismail Khan, Rabbani and company count any less as “that genocide’s perpatrators and beneficiaries” than the Taleban? And (2) how does ranking one bunch of people “#1 most evil motherfuckers in the world” and ranking another bunch of people “#2 most evil motherfuckers in the world” constitute casting your lot with #2?

“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.

“Riiiiiight… gotta watch out for all those free-market conservatives, they might just tear down what remains of the socialist regulations we put in place!”

Red State Republicans have had control over the Presidency and at least one house of the legislature for the past four years; and they’ve had control over both the Presidency and the entire legislature for the past two. In the meantime they have erected the largest expansion of government programs and spending since LBJ’s Great Society.

I am wondering just when these “free-market conservatives” are going to start tearing down some socialist regulations. Whether the Beast is starving or not, it seems to be bigger than ever.

Haven’t the hobbits’ finders responded to claims of microcephaly already by pointing out that they have found more than one hobbit-sized jawbone at the site? A freak find of microcephalic remains would be one thing; several would be quite another…

pconroy thinks I am indeed being dense: “as surely you know where the reformation started and where its principal exponents came from”

I’m well aware of how the Reformation worked and where the hot spots were. But that’s not the claim that I was responding to. I was responding to your claim that “This vast area is predominantly Protestant today as a result.” I don’t think the data bears that out.

While we’re on the topic, though, I think you are in fact mistaken to claim that “they [are] all in the core of the Celtic Christian sphere”. Most of them are actually on the periphery: in Moravia, Wittenberg, and Switzerland, with the south of France coming on strong later. The Protestant countries in the “core” were either notably moderate in their ardor for Reform (England) or else following in the wake of Switzerland and France (Scotland, the Netherlands).

And yes, nearly all the Protestant countries in Europe are on your list. But that shouldn’t be surprising. Protestantism was a phenomenon within the Western Church, and you named nearly every country in Western and central Europe. If you go much further east from the sphere you set out, you are in the Eastern Church’s sphere of influence, and if you go much further west, you fall in the Atlantic Ocean.

Excluding some tiny principalities, the only Western Church countries you missed were Portugal, Spain, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Norway, and Sweden. And of those 6, two are overwhelmingly Protestant as well.

“Celtic Christianity spread from Ireland”

91.6% Catholic (not counting Ulster)

“to, Britain,”

High Church Protestant with a substantial Catholic minority (their Census doesn’t seem to take denominational figures for England and Wales)

“Iceland,”

87.1% Evangelical Lutheran

“North and Central France,”

83%-88% Catholic

“Belgium,”

75% Catholic

“Holland,”

31% Catholic, 21% Protestant, 40% unaffiliated. Mostly Reformed Protestant in the past.

“Germany,”

34% Protestant (mostly Lutheran), 34% Roman Catholic

“Southern Denmark,”

95% Evangelical Lutheran

“Czech Republic,”

39.2% Catholic, 4.6% Protestant, 39.8% atheist

“Switzerland,”

The home of Geneva, yes, but 46.1% Catholic, 40% Protestant

“Northern Italy”

Predominantly Roman Catholic (they don’t seem to keep figures)

“and Slovenia.”

70.8% Roman Catholic (2% Uniate)

Forgive me if I’m being dense, but I don’t see any overwhelming trend towards predominant Protestantism here. Of course, a large number of the countries that did turn out to be majority Protestant are in this sphere; but so, too, are a large number of the countries that turned out to be majority Catholic. (If you go much further east, you end up in the Byzantine and Turkish sphere of influence; if you go much further west, you fall into the ocean.)

gc: “if they enter the United States illegally they ARE trespassing on the property of US citizens”

What property are they trespassing on? If I own a plot of land adjacent to the border and invite immigrants to cross it (for a small fee) to safely enter the United States, do you claim that the government still has a right to attack them as “trespassers”? Against whom? Clearly not against me, since I invited them. Against “property collectively owned by the citizens of the United States”? Where did they cross onto that? At the border? The border is a dimensionless line, not a plot of land that anyone can own, either individually or collectively.

gc: “What don’t you get? Whether the land adjoining the border is privately or publicly owned, it is ILLEGAL for aliens to cross over without getting permission from the US government.”

I’m well aware of the state of immigration law. What we’re arguing about is whether or not it ought to be illegal. That is: whether or not the government has any right to attack people for trying to move across the border without showing their papers, whether or not they have trespassed on anyone’s land and whether or not they have endangered anyone’s person or property. I emphasize the “whether or not” because you continue to say things like this:

“Your use of the adjective “peaceful” is an inversion of reality. This flow of migrants destroys private property in their wake. They use the land as a toilet. They hijack cars and kill cattle. [… home intrusion, robbery, rape, murder, etc. …] You are totally out of touch with the reality of the situation – it is NOT a “peaceful” migration and I’d appreciate it if you stop using that misleading adjective.”

Let’s try this once again.

1. You know perfectly well that a substantial number of the abuses that you cite are the direct result of immigration prohibition. People don’t sneak through ranches or fear to stop at a restaurant to go to the bathroom or cut fences or hire violent and dangerous coyotes to smuggle them through the desert if there are clean, safe highways into metropolitan areas that they can take instead. They don’t do these things because they are louts; they do them because they have to sneak around to avoid men with guns and clubs who will attack them if they find them. You could stop the overwhelming majority of these problems tomorrow by abolishing immigration restrictions.

2. You know this perfectly well, but you don’t care—because what you are defending is a law that uses force to stop immigrants whether or not they have done any of these things. You propose to use violence against undocumented immigrants whether they are peaceful or violent, whether they commit trespassing or not, whether or not they defecate on anyone’s lawn, whether or not they endanger anyone’s life, health, or property. There are already laws on the books, completely independent of immigration policy, against trespassing, vandalism, theft, robbery, carjacking, rape, murder, et cetera. Laws that we are not arguing about. It’s the case of peaceful immigrants that we disagree over. That is why I keep using that adjective, and that is why your continued sensationalist red herrings are wearing more and more thin every time you trot them out.

gc: “Zizka, I think it would be a curious definition of Western Civilization indeed if it included Islam. Mesopotamia, sure, but not Mohammed.”

On what principled grounds would you include pre-Muslim Mesopotamian civilization in the cluster concept, but not Muslim civilization—at least as it reached Mesopotamia (let alone Spain and Eastern Europe)?

Razib: “it’s easily defensible if you think about it on a world-historical scale. but the definition i’m using implicitly is constrained to western europe (orthodox-byzantine europe is left out as well).”

It seems like the obvious response here is going to be the seven centuries of Muslim Spain… if Cordoba’s not in Western Europe, where is it?