Comments Elsewhere

Also — for what it’s worth — previously discussed at BHL, in “I’m against Free Trade Agreements because I’m for free trade”.

Also — for what it’s worth — previously discussed at BHL, in “I’m against Free Trade Agreements because I’m for free trade”.

Jason Brennan : "May Day is now primarily associated with state communism,  ..."

By whom?

That seems to be what you primarily associate it with, but I have to wonder how widespread you seriously believe your associations to be.

In the two communities I've lived in for the past several years (in southern Nevada, and in eastern Alabama), May 1 seems primarily to be associated with street protests in favor of immigration freedom.

Jason Brennan : "May Day is now primarily associated with state communism,  ..."

By whom?

That seems to be what you primarily associate it with, but I have to wonder how widespread you seriously believe your associations to be.

In the two communities I've lived in for the past several years (in southern Nevada, and in eastern Alabama), May 1 seems primarily to be associated with street protests in favor of immigration freedom.

> Off topic question but is he [S.E. Parker] even alive anymore? Pains me to say, but I'm completely not sure? As far as I can tell his writings have made it out to a lot of folks but I haven't had, and as far as I can tell, nobody on the Internet has ever had, much success in collecting hardly any personal information about him. If he is still alive he would now be in his 80s. I don't know that he's written much, or that anyone I know of has had much success in contacting him, in about the last decade or two. > Off topic again, are you a subscriber to them [The Sovereign Self]? Not yet -- so far I've just picked up copies as I've seen them -- but I plan to subscribe when I next get together some money to send their way. Besides the fact that they publish interesting articles, the typography is just too beautiful for me to pass up.

> Off topic question but is he [S.E. Parker] even alive anymore? Pains me to say, but I'm completely not sure? As far as I can tell his writings have made it out to a lot of folks but I haven't had, and as far as I can tell, nobody on the Internet has ever had, much success in collecting hardly any personal information about him. If he is still alive he would now be in his 80s. I don't know that he's written much, or that anyone I know of has had much success in contacting him, in about the last decade or two. > Off topic again, are you a subscriber to them [The Sovereign Self]? Not yet -- so far I've just picked up copies as I've seen them -- but I plan to subscribe when I next get together some money to send their way. Besides the fact that they publish interesting articles, the typography is just too beautiful for me to pass up.

> Most consider him an anarchist, I was using him as an example. I get that, but if you put someone forward as an example it seems odd to complain when people take him as one. That said, what I wrote above was deliberately framed in terms of general criteria (i.e., that bit about affirming or denying that "an Anarchist" is a "socialist") rather than a specific claim about Stirner because I didn't intend for it to rest on any claims about Stirner's being or not being an anarchist, and I'm quite familiar with some of the nomenclature problems involved. > I can name various others who would be unknown outside of the individualist anarchist and egoist anarchist community. Well, sure. You get some very explicit statements on this from folks like Sid Parker, or the crew at The Sovereign Self, for example. > Socialism itself has a common idea that is central to it's beliefs, Maybe. But I don't know that that needs to be the case. "Socialism" may be a family-resemblence concept, or a number of distinct family-resemblence concepts, rather than just one thing. > specifically it has a sort of morality. Well, I don't know about that. Do you mean that "Socialism itself" is based in an explicit appeal to morality, or that it does this on the sly, without acknowledging that that's what it's doing? Because if you mean the former, there certainly are people who want to call themselves socialists, who would specifically deny that -- Marx and Engels being a couple of obvious and notable examples. A lot of syndicalists, too. (M&E wanted to claim that their predecessors were more or less all moralists, but that certainly wouldn't be the first ridiculously inaccurate claim they made about their predecessors.) > I've yet to see a definition of socialism that one can apply to Stirner, if one ever comes about I'll gladly say that he fits under that definition but I wouldn't label him one for the single fact he never called himself one. O.K., fair enough. So just to be sure I understand, your reason for thinking that he doesn't qualify for, say, Tucker's understanding of "Anarchistic Socialism" is because you think he doesn't show enough concern for (macro-scale?) economic issues to think that that was really a live question for him? Or something like that?

> Most consider him an anarchist, I was using him as an example. I get that, but if you put someone forward as an example it seems odd to complain when people take him as one. That said, what I wrote above was deliberately framed in terms of general criteria (i.e., that bit about affirming or denying that "an Anarchist" is a "socialist") rather than a specific claim about Stirner because I didn't intend for it to rest on any claims about Stirner's being or not being an anarchist, and I'm quite familiar with some of the nomenclature problems involved. > I can name various others who would be unknown outside of the individualist anarchist and egoist anarchist community. Well, sure. You get some very explicit statements on this from folks like Sid Parker, or the crew at The Sovereign Self, for example. > Socialism itself has a common idea that is central to it's beliefs, Maybe. But I don't know that that needs to be the case. "Socialism" may be a family-resemblence concept, or a number of distinct family-resemblence concepts, rather than just one thing. > specifically it has a sort of morality. Well, I don't know about that. Do you mean that "Socialism itself" is based in an explicit appeal to morality, or that it does this on the sly, without acknowledging that that's what it's doing? Because if you mean the former, there certainly are people who want to call themselves socialists, who would specifically deny that -- Marx and Engels being a couple of obvious and notable examples. A lot of syndicalists, too. (M&E wanted to claim that their predecessors were more or less all moralists, but that certainly wouldn't be the first ridiculously inaccurate claim they made about their predecessors.) > I've yet to see a definition of socialism that one can apply to Stirner, if one ever comes about I'll gladly say that he fits under that definition but I wouldn't label him one for the single fact he never called himself one. O.K., fair enough. So just to be sure I understand, your reason for thinking that he doesn't qualify for, say, Tucker's understanding of "Anarchistic Socialism" is because you think he doesn't show enough concern for (macro-scale?) economic issues to think that that was really a live question for him? Or something like that?

O.K.; that's fine. (The only thing I'd be inclined to quibble about is that I think those leftist modes are an essential *part of* a freed market, not external counterbalances to it.) In any case, though, my point is just that that seems to be a different sort of account of what "capitalism" is and how it works than you get from the way it is used by, say, Rothbard, or David Friedman, or Kinsella, or Daniel D'Amico, etc., at least if we trace out how that notion actually gets deployed in argument. Now, maybe that's a reason to say that you're not an anarcho-capitalist after all; or maybe it's a reason to say that whatever you mean by "capitalism" is just something different from what other anarcho-capitalists have meant by it, etc. My main concern is just that it is important to note and keep track of the conceptual difference.

O.K.; that's fine. (The only thing I'd be inclined to quibble about is that I think those leftist modes are an essential *part of* a freed market, not external counterbalances to it.) In any case, though, my point is just that that seems to be a different sort of account of what "capitalism" is and how it works than you get from the way it is used by, say, Rothbard, or David Friedman, or Kinsella, or Daniel D'Amico, etc., at least if we trace out how that notion actually gets deployed in argument. Now, maybe that's a reason to say that you're not an anarcho-capitalist after all; or maybe it's a reason to say that whatever you mean by "capitalism" is just something different from what other anarcho-capitalists have meant by it, etc. My main concern is just that it is important to note and keep track of the conceptual difference.