Comments Elsewhere

I think we agree that incremental reforms, where they can be gotten, would be preferable to the status quo. The important thing is to be clear about the difference between (1) supporting incremental measures for strategic reasons, in order to pry whatever limited relief you can out from under a horrid political system, and (2) compromising moral principle by accepting, or pretending to accept, that some kinder, gentler, more efficient form of international apartheid could possibly be just or prudent or excusable. (1) is a perfectly reasonable political strategy, but it is worth nothing, or even less, when accompanied by (2) rather than by a principled moral opposition to the violent punishment of peaceful immigrants.

As Garrison said, “Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be we shall always contend.”

Thanks for the notice, and for the kind words.

For clarification, though, what did you have in mind when you refer to “calling for more government” or “threatening anyone who disagrees with our ideas with loss of their property?” I don’t recall calling for either lately, so specifics might help either clear up a misunderstanding, or at least clarify the point of disagreement.

Here’s something Catharine MacKinnon said back in 1982, during a debate with Phyllis Schlafly over the Equal Rights Amendment: “I am for the ERA. I think it is progressive if not transformative. It is one of many small initiatives we can use. Whenever I hear the right attack it, I am more for it than I was before, because they think it will be so far-reaching.” I feel much the same when I see Caesarian running dogs like Eric Dondero slamming Ron Paul as a “leftwing Anarchist.” If only….

Jimi G, I can’t answer for Sheldon. But I’d be interested to know whether you think that the reasons not to support Paul’s candidacy are moral reasons or strategic ones. From a strategic standpoint, at least, there is at least one good reason to hope that Paul might be able to win in the Republican primary, which doesn’t have to do with any kind of delusion about “putting the right people in charge.” Specifically, if he somehow were to win the Republican primary, he would thereby prevent all the other Republican candidates from having a crack at the presidency. Putting “the right people” in charge is never going to fix a damned thing, but stopping even worse people from taking up the reigns does offer the chance for some breathing room and a lot more opportunities for progress by other means.

GT 2007-11-16: Urban homesteading, on how city governments force poor people into the rental economy against their will, and the people-power actions that can be employed to resist this form of government-backed exploitation.

GT 2007-11-25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

I don’t see anything wrong with buying “shit you don’t need.” There are lots of things that I don’t need, but which I choose to buy anyway because it makes my life better to have them. E.g., books, music, tasty food, computer equipment, furniture, hot running water, trips to visit my family and friends, etc. etc. etc. Of course, I could choose to abstain from these and limit my spending only to necessities. But why should I?

Of course, there are also many activities that make your life worthwhile that do not require a purchase. To the extent that corporatism cuts people off from these forms of enjoyment, corporate capitalism should be undermined and resisted. But whether or not one chooses to personally abstain from spending on non-necessities does just about nothing to address these issues. The power of corporate capitalism to restrict alternative forms of enjoyment has very little to do with individual decisions about consumption and a lot to do with the monopolistic privileges granted by State power at the points of production and acquisition of land and resources. These are better resisted through labor organizing, targeted strikes and boycotts, resistance to State coercion, etc., rather than doing what “anti-consumerist” groups typically do, i.e. adopting an ascetic lifestyle and chiding, ridiculing or harassing those who aren’t as personally hardcore as you are.

Arthur,

Again, I’m not denying that parents have a legitimate right to reclaim the money that is stolen from them in taxes, whether through education vouchers or through other means.

What I am saying is that voucher systems constitute a government subsidy to private schools, in virtue of forcing the parents to spend that reclaimed money within a cartel of government-approved private schools. There is nothing wrong with parents reclaiming stolen money through the voucher system, but the cartelized schools that financially benefit from federal patronage are still subject to the usual libertarian analysis and criticism offered against government subsidies.

There is no benefit that you could possibly get from a government voucher scheme that you could not get just as easily from a no-strings-attached tax break, and some specific evils that vouchers but not tax breaks would produce. So the question is, given the choice, why advocate the cockamamie transitional government scheme, rather than just advocating the simple libertarian measure?

This is a software bug in feed consumers, related to some mistakes, rather easily made under certain conditions, as to how to handle Yahoo’s MediaRSS namespaced elements. It is not, essentially, a problem with WordPress.com’s feeds.

FeedWordPress users may be pleased to know that this bug has been fixed in the latest release of FeedWordPress, version 0.991.

No, “returning tax-payers’ money” is not a subsidy. But forcing the recipients to give the “returned” money to one of a select cartel of government-approved “private” schools is a government subsidy to those schools.

If you want to return tax-payers’ money, why not just advocate tax cuts?

William,

Well, the question you posed was not whether “Leftist” properly refers to “people whose view of economics and labor history is generally compatible with the ideas of Karl Marx,” but whether there was another short word that could do the same work just as well. If there is such a word then there are independent reasons (already explained) for preferring that other word to “Leftism” when what you mean is “state socialism” or “government economic planning.”

I am not sure that I understand your objection to using “state socialist” in particular. Doctrinaire Marxists famously believe that the “workers’ state” is a transitional phenomenon, which will become unnecessary with the emergence of communism proper. Does that make the label “state socialist” inappropriate for, say, V.I. Lenin? Well, in one sense yes, and in another sense no, since he advocated state socialism in the short term and a form of anarcho-communism in the long term. But whatever complications this may introduce into applying the label, it will introduce exactly the same complications for your usages of “Leftist” and “socialist,” since you’ve made those identical with state economic control, and it was advocacy for state economic control during a “transitional” period, but not after, that supposedly generated this problem.

As for the common usage of “Leftism,” you’re right that when most people use the term, they are referring to state economic control. When most people think of “free trade,” they are referring to IMF-financed state corporatism, and when most people think of “anarchy,” they are referring to riots or civil war. What Wittgenstein advised looking to was not just the unordered facts about usage, but the logic of the use, and if the usage is incoherent or confused, the thing to do is to disentangle the confusion, not to pander to it. In any given case, depending on the breaks, it might be better to disentangle it by abandoning the word for a different word, or it might be better to keep on using the word, so long as you use it more rigorously or precisely. One should often do the latter when there is something challenging and genuinely valuable embedded in the package-deal which it is important to emphasize or affirm. I hear that some Russian radical once made similar efforts to reclaim or redeem the package-deal term “capitalism” from advocates of government privilege for the business class. While I disagree with the application on this point, I see nothing wrong with the method.

Jonathan,

Everyone knows that the only true libertarians are those who support creating new transnational government trade bureaucracies and federal government subsidies for “private” schools. Didn’t you get the latest memo from HQ?