Tremblay: Glad to know I’m a Stalinist for no particular reason except criticizing the choice of a book.

Of course, the reason I gave for describing your attitude as “intellectual Stalinism” has nothing to do with the mere fact of “criticizing the choice of a book.” I’d elaborate, but I already said why I did describe it as that: what I really object to is the intellectual Stalinism on display from Tremblay when he condemns a course based solely on their use of a disapproved textbook — which, in turn, is based on the (bizarre, but revealing) tacit premise that someone teaching a course would obviously only pick a textbook that she agrees with. In a non-totalitarian intellectual climate, teachers aren’t expected to offer up a defense of the texts they choose or prove their ideological correctness to avoid being called “a traitor” to The Movement.

AnarchoJesse: philosophically questionable concepts such as self-ownership are embedded in the text.

Well, heavens, if it contains philosophically controversial concepts, then obviously there’s no point in reading it.

AnarchoJesse: They don’t explain the underpinnings of anarchism, they barely touch on the history of the movement, and it is specfically a book against anti-Statism– not Anarchism.

If the purpose of selecting a reading for a course were to ensure that you have a book that details every single thing you might possibly want to cover in that course, without any need of lectures or discussions from the teacher or independent research from the participants, then I agree that all this might be a problem.

But it’s not.

AnarchoJesse: Perhaps what has me so opposed to this course is that it claims to be an introduction, but the material used in the course is pretty incomplete and hardly touches on the concept of anarchism itself.

The fact that a text doesn’t cover topic X doesn’t mean that a course using the text won’t cover topic X. All texts are “incomplete;” fortunately, classes also have teachers.

Of course, even with the teacher, the course will also be incomplete. All courses are incomplete, and introductory courses especially. That’s OK: the purpose of an introductory course is to introduce you to a topic, not to exhaust it. Or even necessarily to outline it. A “survey” course, which does attempt to touch on most everything very briefly, is one way of introducing a subject. But it’s not the only way. (I doubt it’s even a particularly good way, most of the time.)

AnarchoJesse: Roman and all of you folks who are in this course: you were robbed.

Jesus, man, you’re talking to adults, not to children. And generally to adults who already know quite a bit about Anarchism, actually, but are interested in the course because they’re interested in Gary’s take on things. They’re capable of deciding for themselves whether or not the course is worth taking. On which subject, have you actually listened to any of the lectures in the course? Or are you just guessing on what’s covered, based on a glance at the reading list?

Well, I agree that if you endorse an explicitly totalitarian theory of government authority, then that theory would usually allow for government immigration restrictions, as a special application of its totalitarianism.

... Oh, I agree with you about all that. I'm not agreeing with Bookchin on this; just trying to get clear on where the argument is. Speaking for myself, I do

... Well, not that he isn't conflating like crazy, but a fair number of the post-Left types who Bookchin is fighting with in the later work do have a direct

Kinsella: If Gendron or you mean something else by “capitalist” as an adjective you’ll have to spell it out.

As you already know, Stephan, I’ve already spelled out several different things that “capitalism” can mean, depending on context, on several different occasions. I don’t know precisely what David Gendron means by it. But I do know that he doesn’t mean “an advanced free market of a libertarian, property-rights respecting society” by it. How do I know? Because David Gendron already said that that’s not what he’s complaining about when he complains about “capitalism.” Presumably you know this too, because you already made a one-line reply in that thread, just below where he says that that’s not what he has a problem with.

Of course, knowing what he does not mean only goes so far. But if I needed to know just what he meant to answer his question, then I think I might consider asking him what he means, instead of ignoring context entirely and offering a non-responsive “answer” based on a question you know he wasn’t asking.

Kinsella: Otherwise, all this meta-talk and confusion is in my view exactly what you get when you start focusing on semantics …

Don’t be disingenuous. You keep trying to tell me that I’m “focusing on semantics” here, Stephan, but, again, you’re the one who began your answer with ‘if by “capitalist” you mean ….’ My complaint in this thread has nothing to do with an argument about the right meaning of the word “capitalism.” It has to do with your treatment of your interlocutor.

Kinsella: and trying to change accepted terminology

The discussion has nothing to do with trying to “change accepted terminology.” It has to do with responding to the question that was asked, not a different question that you find easier to discuss. That sort of thing may be a nice lawyer’s trick, but it doesn’t help much if the aim to actually get closer to truth, or even mutual comprehension.

martin: So the point was that he *doesn’t* mean “Carsonian property rights” [by "capitalist property rights"]?

Obviously not, because he already said he has no problem with Carsonian property rights, whereas he does apparently have a problem with capitalist property rights.

The point is that he already explicitly stated that he doesn’t have a problem with “an economic system that features Carsonian property rights and voluntary exchanges of goods and services,” whereas he does have a problem with Chartier’s capitalism-2 and capitalism-3. So when Gendron makes it clear that he has a problem with “capitalist property rights and profits,” it’s pretty clear that he is probably referring to institutions connected with capitalism-2 or capitalism-3, not with capitalism-1. Yet when he asks Kinsella a question about it, Kinsella proceeds to try and answer a question about capitalism-1, “an advanced free market of a libertarian, property-rights respecting society.” That makes it pretty clear that Kinsella is choosing to interpret “capitalism” to mean what he customarily uses it to mean, rather than what Gendron might be using it to mean.

What does Gendron mean by it? Capitalism-2? Capitalism-3? Something else in the neighborhood? I dunno. If it mattered to me to find out what he meant by his question, then the thing to do would be for me to ask him what he means. Rather than shoving ahead with a completely non-responsive “answer” based on something that he’s already told you he doesn’t mean by the term.

Unfortunately, this cheap rhetorical trick (as well as related cheap tricks, such as constantly changing the subject to his preferred hobby horses, or pissing and moaning about people “changing the accepted meanings of terms,” and then pissing and moaning, if they should take the bait and try to respond to this claim, about how they are “focusing on semantics” (!) rather than substance) is all too indicative of how Stephan chooses to approach this particular issue. I don’t know what he thinks it accomplishes, but I guess he gets to throw around the word “obfuscate” a lot.

Martin: That surprises me, because I thought that in Kevin’s view on property rights you can not – for instance – own a factory while others work in it.

That’s absolutely not Kevin’s view. (Or Tucker’s, from whom Kevin draws a lot of his analysis and critique.)

His view is that workplace hierarchy will be much less common absent the state, because it’s currently supported by state invasions against the property rights of poor people, and state subsidies to the employing class. This is of course a very different claim from the claim that you simply have no right to hire on labor at a factory.

Martin: assuming David is a mutualist

I can’t speak for Gendron, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume that he’s a mutualist. Lots of non-mutualist Anarchists have no basic problem with mutualist economic arrangements (that is, they don’t consider them anti-Anarchistic), but do personally prefer some other kind of arrangement (communistic, collectivistic, social ecology, whatever) over mutualism.

martin: do you support the property rights of a capitalist with respect to the capital and the profits that come from it?

That’s an interesting interpretation of the question. I don’t know whether it’s the right interpretation of the question. I do know that it wasn’t Kinsella’s interpretation of the question — since Kinsella already said that he was taking “capitalist” to refer to “an advanced free market of a libertarian, property-rights respecting society.” Not to the particular occupation of somebody in the business of renting out capital.

"that being said, the idea was acted upon on 4 july 1776. and the founders fought a little something called the revolutionary war so that we could have these things"

Don't be absurd. The Revolutionary War was fought to get the several states out from under the British Crown. It was not fought to create the U.S. Constitution. That was not conceived of until years later, after both the provisional governments of the war and another, different arrangement (state sovereignty with a loose confederacy under the Articles of Confederation). Many of the people involved in the Revolutionary War (e.g. Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Mason) were actively opposed to the U.S. Constitution when it was proposed, and would have been disgusted to be told that that was what they were fighting for during the war years.

"when and if you do, you will see that those two documents cover only AMERICAN citizens"

You're asserting, but what's the argument? How do you figure the Declaration could cover "AMERICAN citizens" in 1776 when there were no American citizens? If you read actual legal writing from the time, what it says is that people were citizens of their states (Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, etc.), not citizens of "America" (which, again, didn't yet exist except as a purely geographical entity). Anyway, the Declaration doesn't talk about "all citizens," whether of the several states or of the United States or of anywhere else. It talks about "all men."

"these things are ours by birthright, because good men and women have gone to their deaths"

If that's what you want to believe man, then go for it, but that's not what the Declaration of Independence says about rights. The Declaration says that all men are "endowed" with rights by God. Not that their rights are won for them by soldiers.

Of course, if you want to believe something different, you should feel free to. The Declaration of Independence is a legal argument, not holy scripture. Maybe it is wrong. But you should stop trying to pretend like your view is the same as the view of the Declaration of Independence. If you want a document that says "all citizens are created equal," then you'll have to write it for yourself.

j summ,

I'm familiar with the argument and the historical context of the Declaration.

What I'm not familiar with is what part of the document would justify this parenthetical:

"hence all men, colonist as well as titled nobility (in england) are created equal."

I have no idea where you got the "(in england)" from. Certainly, it's not in the text. As far as I can tell, you made it up; what the text says is that all men are created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights, which particular governments (the text does use the plural here, so it is clear that Jefferson et al. are talking about more than just their own government), at best, only exist to recognize and secure.

"hey, you say you have a declaration of independence, right? point out to all of us, the names of the other countries ,"

I have no idea what your point is here. The entire point of the "endowed by their Creator" business is that rights belong to people because of their nature and their relationship with God, not because of their relationship to a "country." The long list of complaints are not intended as a defense of the rights that are listed in the opening paragraphs; rather, the position that human beings have those rights is held to be "self-evident," that is, not needing any defense. What that long list of complaints is, is an attempt to apply the universal principle that human beings have rights, and that governments only have legitimate authority when they defend those rights, to the particular circumstances of the relationship between the British Crown and the American colonies. While the application of the principle is certainly local, I can find absolutely nothing in the text which would give any reason to believe that the general principles themselves are supposed to be limited. On the contrary, what the text says is that those principles are universal and self-evident.

"besides great britian and the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA"

Actually, the Declaration names fourteen "countries," if by "countries" you mean independent states -- Great Britain, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. "The united states of America" was not the name of a "country," or of a government, in 1776. The word "united" is a description of the relationships that the states claimed to have as newly "free and independent states." The notion that there was some general government called "the United States of America" was completely foreign to the signers of the Declaration. No such government existed until the adoption of the Constitution, about a decade later.

Kinsella: Rad, in fact it is you guys who are bringing up the origin of the term.

Not in this thread. We’ve had more than one discussion about it elsewhere, of course. Nobody else except you has been arguing about the origin of the term in this thread, either — not David Gendron, not Francois Tremblay, and not Roderick Long. But my point above has nothing to do with that debate. So why do you keep trying to change the subject from what my comment was about (your attempt to “clarify” by ignoring your interlocutor’s speaker meaning) to some other debate that I didn’t so much as mention (the provenance of the term “capitalism”)?

Kinsella: So I think it’s disingenuous to suggest it was just a few Austrian economists.

Who said it was? Not me. My point didn’t have anything to do with this kind of philological question. It had to do with your non-responsive “answer” to David Gendron’s question.

Kinsella: What exactly do you disagree with in my position?

What I’m disagreeing with at the moment is your rhetorical approach to Gendron’s question. As I said:

The point is that when you start responding to what somebody else said, your understanding of the claim ought to be based on what they seem to mean by the terms they use, not what you’d like to mean by them. … “Clarification” by means of ignoring your interlocutor and substituting a question you find easier to answer is cheap rhetoric, and wildly uncharitable.

This has nothing to do with the details of the philological question about the different meanings of the word “capitalism.” That’s another debate for another day. It has to do with how you’re responding, or rather not responding, to your conversation partner in this specific conversation.

"the declaration of independence, the constitution and its bill of rights cover US, not everyone, everywhere."

Man, you must have a different copy of the Declaration from me. Mine says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL MEN are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Emphasis added.

I certainly don't know how the Declaration would be limited to U.S. citizens, anyway, since there was no such thing as the United States of America when it was written, and no such thing came into existence until about 10 years later.

Not that it matters much. If there were some imaginary Declaration of Independence which only said that all U.S. citizens enjoy the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then that imaginary document would be a stupid fraud. Natural rights are not created by documents; they belong to every person as a birthright, simply because they are people. That's something that many conservatives also claim to believe when they talk about rights coming from God, not from government. But if so, then it's manifestly inconsistent with the other views they express about the rights of people who aren't U.S. citizens.

Ryan, If you've never been to Santa Cruz, maybe you could chill it a bit on the amateur sleuthing about who's "coordinating" with what and who does or does not "commit a large amount of political violence" in a rather insular and peculiar small community with an unusually transient population? I notice that we seem not to be discussing the earlier liberal immigration rights rally at all, and now are exclusively discussing SubRosa, the shop one link down the chain. Does that mean you're retracting your earlier speculation about "coordination with" SubRosa? You ask: "Is SubRosa denying that the first man arrested, Jimi Haynes, worked at the cafe for a year?" Yes, they are. You also ask: "Is it just a coincidence that anarchist symbols were among the graffiti sprayed in the attack?" No, I expect it's not. There are some self-identified anarchists who genuinely believe that street riots, and in particular trashing capitalist businesses, are legitimate and productive tactics for social transformation. And other anarchists who do not believe that. Besides that, there are also lots of people loosely associated with radical politics who like to use Anarchist dress and symbols for their radical flair, but know little or nothing about Anarchism as a body of ideas or as a social movement. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no fatwa from the Supreme Anarch of all the Anarchists which would tell everybody what to believe or what to do. Anyway, you do understand the difference between "random people passing through who identify with Anarchism," "customers who happened to be at the SubRosa cafe at some point in time," and "members of the organization that runs the SubRosa cafe," no? You ask: "Since SubRosa proudly proclaims that it 'challenges the commercialism and rampant capitalism of downtown Santa Cruz,' why would it be unlikely for their members to attack said commercialism and capitalism in downtown Santa Cruz?" Not everybody who "challenges" something physically attacks the person or property of the people responsible for it. Of course, you already know that -- you yourself apply the same distinction when you complain about media paranoia about violence supposedly coming out of Tea Party opposition to Fed power-grabs. Maybe you should keep the same standards when it comes to people you're less familiar with. You ask: "Do the people in the Youtube videos belong to another anarchist collective?" I wouldn't know. There's a lot of anarchist collectives in northern and central California, but not all self-identified anarchists are members of "collectives." And those anarchists who do like to participate in street riots often use loose networking and signaling to come up with ways of pulling together a riot without having any central coordinating committee to plan it out. You ask: 'Even if the violence were not perpetrated by SubRosa members, why does the collective deny any responsibility for the atmosphere it created by "challenging" the commercialism and capitalism?' See above. Opposing a form of society that you consider destructive or immoral doesn't mean that you therefore take on responsbility for anything that any random person happens to do against people who represent something destructive or immoral. This is the same kind of political baiting routinely, and dishonestly, used by establishment liberalism against conservatives who oppose statist power-grabs. Why use the same kind of rhetoric yourself?