Comments Elsewhere

... Donald, You may not be familiar with the work that folks have been doing on this, but you're mistaken if you think that left-libertarians never point to

... Huh? Your post about orthodox Marxist economics was putatively a reply to *what Kevin had just said about Marx* (the original *point* of the post was

AntiGermanTranslation: However, C4SS, where the essay was published, is an explicitly market anarchist or anarcho-capitalist site

C4SS is definitely a market anarchist site but it’s not an anarcho-capitalist site. I think most of the writers there would consider themselves free-market anti-capitalists. Some (e.g. Kevin Carson) are mutualists; others (e.g. Brad Spangler) are agorists. Mutualists and agorists have their disagreements, but they tend to agree with each other on class and other economic issues than either of them agrees with anarcho-capitalists.

AntiGermanTranslation: right-wing in the very basic sense of being interested in liberty and the pursuit of profit, but not so interested in social justice or overcoming non-state forms of exploitation

Many people who call themselves anarcho-capitalists are right wing in that way. But a lot of pro-market, pro-property individualists (like Darian or Kevin or me or Sheldon Richman Roderick Long) have specifically written about the need for individualists to see individual liberty as one part of many interconnected struggles, and to develop ways to combat non-state forms of exploitation throughgrassroots, antiauthoritarian, non-state means.

AntiGermanTranslation: I think the paleo-libertarian milieu which overlaps a little with the anarcho-capitalist one does skate close to some dodgy territory.

I definitely agree with you about that. The paleo-libertarian approach is really toxic, and I think “anarcho”-capitalists who inhabit it are generally worth less than nothing to Anarchism, unless and until they start to break out of it. (Which, to be fair, a few have.)

... The "per se" is something that you added, not something Kevin wrote. Do you really not know of any examples in which writers at Mises.org (depends on the

**simplegreens:** > What is a country if not it's government? I think that the answer to this ought to be obvious to you on reflection. I'm part of the American country. I'm not part of the U.S. government. The Mississippi River is part of the American country. It's not part of the U.S. government. Etc. The government is a definite institution with limited membership, defined rules of decision-making, and an immense amount of power over everyone and everything else within the country. The country is a loosely-defined, wide-open expanse of land, places and people which encompasses much of a continent, several of the world's largest cities, and a constantly-changing population of about 300,000,000 people or so, coming and going. The flag is the flag of the government (specifically, the federal government; there are other governments in this country, too, with other flags). The country was here for thousands of years before the government claimed the right to rule, or started waving its military colors around. > since our government is elected, and since we pay taxes into the system to support the system, it very much does represent us Well, say I don't vote and I stop paying taxes. Then do I get to opt out of being "represented" by this government? Or are they going to keep on inflicting their "representation" on me whether I want them to or not? If the latter, then it is silly to act as if I'm somehow agreeing to the arrangement by voting or paying taxes. Doing X only counts as opting in to an arrangement if declining to do X would have been counted as opting out. If you want to say I'm obliged to obey and there is no way for me to opt out, you can argue that position; but then you ought to stop talking about "representation" and my "deciding." My decisions are irrelevant if they won't take "No" for an answer.

**simplegreens:** > What is a country if not it's government? I think that the answer to this ought to be obvious to you on reflection. I'm part of the American country. I'm not part of the U.S. government. The Mississippi River is part of the American country. It's not part of the U.S. government. Etc. The government is a definite institution with limited membership, defined rules of decision-making, and an immense amount of power over everyone and everything else within the country. The country is a loosely-defined, wide-open expanse of land, places and people which encompasses much of a continent, several of the world's largest cities, and a constantly-changing population of about 300,000,000 people or so, coming and going. The flag is the flag of the government (specifically, the federal government; there are other governments in this country, too, with other flags). The country was here for thousands of years before the government claimed the right to rule, or started waving its military colors around. > since our government is elected, and since we pay taxes into the system to support the system, it very much does represent us Well, say I don't vote and I stop paying taxes. Then do I get to opt out of being "represented" by this government? Or are they going to keep on inflicting their "representation" on me whether I want them to or not? If the latter, then it is silly to act as if I'm somehow agreeing to the arrangement by voting or paying taxes. Doing X only counts as opting in to an arrangement if declining to do X would have been counted as opting out. If you want to say I'm obliged to obey and there is no way for me to opt out, you can argue that position; but then you ought to stop talking about "representation" and my "deciding." My decisions are irrelevant if they won't take "No" for an answer.

> So in the writer's opinion only white people are racist? Maybe, but what the author said in the article is that only *non-*white people can *experience* racism. (The claim was about the receiving end of racism, not the inflicting end.) Which, whether true or not, is a distinct claim. Presumably, the claim about experiencing racism would still be true if there are some POC who inflict racism on other POC.

**mattkerle:** > please tell me how you intend to have a society with computers, internet, mains power, clean water, sewerage systems, medicine, universities et al, without having someone in charge Come on, really? Who's "in charge" of computers? Of the Internet? All the things you mention require large-scale cooperation. They don't require any one person or group of people to be "in charge." Unless you think people can't co-operate except on command. But why think that? People co-operate consensually all the time, without being forced to, for all kinds of reasons.

**10Nov1775:** "human government is the only demonstrable thing that has reduced human suffering on a large scale." Really? Human governments killed about 400 million people in the last century alone. (Through government wars, genocides, terror-famines, concentration camps, gulags, colonizations, occupations, counterinsurgencies, death marches, massacres, reigns of terror, et cetera.) Along the way human governments committed the largest and worst atrocities ever known in the history of humankind. Meanwhile, private individuals and private institutions invented rock and roll, developed the birth control pill, created Google and discovered a vaccine that saved millions of children from being crippled by poliomyletis.

**uppercrust:** > ... when an organization you are a part of takes actions against markets, will you just join in and say, "I don't believe in this?" Could you give me an idea of what you have in mind when you think of an Anarchist organization "taking action against markets"? I've been in lots of Anarchist efforts that had something to do with undermining capitalism, or corporations, or providing positive alternatives to commercialized relationships. (I do local organizing for the IWW, Food Not Bombs, have helped organize anticapitalist (A) conventions, etc.) But I didn't see any of these as being "action against markets," because I don't see capitalism, corporations, or commercialized relationships as being identical with "markets." Markets are a lot broader than that, and like many market Anarchists I believe that the shitty stuff you see in actually-existing markets today comes about because of the direct and indirect effects of political privileges granted to capitalists and political rulers. Anyway, give me an example of an action and I'll let you know how I'd react to the proposal. > antithetical to the idea of a world that doesn't glorify the rights of private property. I don't know what you mean by "glorify" here. Is it supposed to mean something stronger than just "defend the legitimacy of"? If so, what? If not, then I agree that market Anarchism is antithetical to rejecting the legitimacy of private property. But again, I deny the claim that rejecting the legitimacy of private property is identical with Anarchism. It sounds to me like you're trying to build some fairly specific tenets of communist Anarchism right into the definition of Anarchism itself, but without giving an argument in favor of it. But it seems to me that that's precisely what you need to argue for, if you want to claim it.