ALLiance Journal recently posted a Utah Phillips quote on class relations. I like that Phillips clarifies that class is based not on income but on whether or not one controls his workplace – the struggle is less about wealth than it is about the freedom to produce it. However, the distinction he makes would seem to place the self-employed outside of the working class. Also, as an old quote, it does not specifically say how to categorize the vast numbers of managers who have command, but not ownership of a workplace but still answer to a boss. The work done in drawing out an Agorist Class Theory might be a useful complement here.

Reason Magazine’s article Class War is certainly a worthwhile read concerning government employees’ privileges that the rest of us are forced to pay for. But I wish it spelled out the differences between unions that operate through government force and unionism in general. By focusing on the damage done by certain unions, the article might leave the inexperienced reader with the impression that any time workers organize they are seeking advantages they don’t deserve at the expense of the general public. And while I certainly don’t want cops or bureaucrats making money, a lengthy article called “class war” that does not address privileged business interests is a little misleading on the nature of current power relations.

Of course, as someone who does not idealize the “free society envisioned by the Founders” as Greenhut does, the inability of the state to keep providing what it has promised is less of a crisis than it is a strategic factor. How can we encourage defections toward a consensual society, and thwart those who want authoritarian privilege to continue?

Whether labeled public or private, rich or poor, the important question for me is “What are you doing in your life, in your situation, to advance the liberty of all individuals?” Subvert authority at every opportunity.

Says Wikipedia:

The Blyskawica (Lightning) was a submachine gun produced by the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, a Polish resistance movement fighting the Germans in occupied Poland. A successful construction, it was most probably the only weapon designed and mass produced covertly in occupied Europe.

Ignorance plus arrogance equals fail:

Calling an anti-constitution advocate a Libertarian is Sophistry and muddies the water for the sake of,…What? Sorry to those who want otherwise, but the label is taken, find another.

This makes me figuratively bang my head against a wall.

Long Title: “Why The Law of Equal Liberty is a better starting point for libertarian thought than The Zero Aggression Principle (a rough draft & exploration)”

One could use the Zero Aggression Principle (AKA Non-Aggression Principle) to determine acceptable action, but its language confuses issues and leads to harmful associations. The Law of Equal Liberty (AKA Formula of Equal Freedom), described by Herbert Spencer in the mid 19th century, seems a better way to formulate the requirements and boundaries of liberty.

The exact wording of the Zero Aggression Principle differs among its proponents, but L. Neil Smith describes it like this:

no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever

Admittedly, I have read very little of Herbert Spencer (whom Roderick Long often defends from defamation). Clarence Lee Swartz’s 1927 work What is Mutualism didn’t convince me to go mutualist, but it did make me more favorable toward Spencer’s formulation of liberty. On Page 21 of the Invisible Molotov version, Swartz bases liberty on Spencer’s formula, which he describes thusly:

That every man may claim the fullest liberty to do as he wills compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man.

The Law of Equal Liberty is otherwise written as:

Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of every other man.

Here is why I think the Law of Equal Liberty (LEL) is more useful in acting for liberty than is the Zero Agression Principle (ZAP).

1) ZAP requires defining force in a way that does not mean physical force, but instead coercion. Pushing a person out of harm’s way does not violate his liberty if he does not want to be harmed. Shooting a terrorist who hasn’t hurt anyone yet but threatens to is likely acceptable because the terrorist is attempting to coerce – even though the first act of physical force would be by the person who shot him in defense. So saying that you oppose the initiation of force means you have some explaining to do. With the LEL it is clearer that you may do as you will to stop a person from doing something that is incompatible with the liberty of others.

2) ZAP must be stretched if it can apply to using force against those who have initiated force in the past, or have stated their intentions and shown the ability to initiate force. Does a state of “force initiation” exist once coercion has been used until restitution is made? I do not see this problem with LEL.

3) Using force against an individual who you haven’t seen use force but is a member of a deadly organization is agreeable to liberty and to individualism, but it would seem to violate ZAP. It is likely that many members of Nazi death squads didn’t personally shoot unarmed people (see Ordinary Men) but one could not expect a resistance fighter to make the distinction. An individual can choose to identify as a member of a harmful organization, and if he can be reasonably expected to know that the organization is a threat to others then force can be used against him.

4) Anti-segregationist sit-ins on private property and Bash Back disruptions of church services can be said to initiate force by occupying property that doesn’t belong to individuals who have initiated force. But the targets of these actions have violated liberty by joining with a system based on physical oppression. It is unreasonable to think that someone can help people murder then be immune from the consequences on his property as if it were “base” in a game. Thinking in this way requires drawing lines between what is and is not acceptable, but hard work is no excuse for failing to adopt good principles.

From a LEL standpoint, those who bolster oppression by creating spaces where some people are regarded as inferior to others (and therefore thought of as acceptable targets for violence) are assisting the violation of people’s liberty. One could call their activity aggression, but it again seems that you would need to redefine the way most people think of aggression, and I don’t see why this is necessary when a better principle exists.

5) The Law of Equal Liberty uses more positive language (“claim the fullest liberty to do as he wills”), while ZAP has more restrictive connotations (“no one has the right, under any circumstances”). The libertarian project can be thought of as the creation of a world in which liberty is maximized. The LEL is more compatible with this mentality.

6) The ZAP suggests a defensive posture resembling that of conservatism, but the LEL suggests equality.

Both 5 and 6 might contribute to the right-wing flavor that the American free-market libertarian movement often has. Those who start with the desire for ultimate freedom limited only by the equal freedom of others might be less attracted to ZAP than to LEL. Those who start with the desire to set the rules that must be dogmatically adhered to might be more attracted to ZAP than LEL.

The ZAP may also be responsible for the perception among free-market libertarians that all politics is about using force to restrict behavior. The ZAP addresses only the use of force, and therefore every discussion of upholding liberty becomes a question of using force. For example, authoritarianism in the workplace that does not use physical force can be said to prevent a person from doing as he wills (talking back to bosses, influencing the conditions of work, etc). The ZAP does not address this, but LEL would seem to imply the utility of some kind of proportional means of opposition (bolstering worker power through unionism, establishing competing business models, etc). Thus LEL promotes a more complete and realistic view of maximizing liberty.

The Zero Aggression Principle is seemingly more precise than the Law of Equal Liberty. But it is only precise once the definition of terms like “aggression” and “force” are agreed upon. The meaning of liberty, doing as one wills without infringing on the ability of others to do so, is implied in the Law of Equal Liberty.

I think it is useful to have principles that succinctly point the path to liberty. As noted in the lengthy title of the post, this is a rough draft and exploration. Feedback might result in revised versions.

The Win:
Bosco’s Alliance of the Libertarian Left Anthem. In this entirely factual and not-at-all sarcastic video, Comrade Bosco presents a moving tribute to our struggles without once rhyming anything with ALL. The song doesn’t actually say what ALL stands for either. That’s conspiratorial.

The Fail:
Detroit Checkpoint Charlie. While touring Detroit, the Motorhome Diaries Crew made a wrong turn. No big deal, right? Not according to the border guards of Canada and the United States. No U-Turn was allowed without a complete Authoritarian Figurative Cock Measurement Ritual. Even more fail-filled are the excuses presented for this behavior: “Did you know that 18 of the 19 9.11 terrorists had lived in the Detroit area?!” September 11 might be good for the security-industrial complex’s business, but the reality is that the government makes attacks on Americans more likely while making it harder for Americans to defend themselves.

At least a picture containing a dangerous amount of win came out of the situation.

1) People calling themselves a “state” establish boundaries for their claims, usually through violence.

2) Resources are stolen from productive individuals to fortify these boundaries.

3) People try to move across these boundaries (sometimes to land they accessed freely before the state forbid it).

4) Those privileged by state power are concerned by the unauthorized movement of humans, and more violence is used against people trying to cross boundaries.

Like this video I found on Feta Cheese and Falafel, in which Israeli authorities wage chemical warfare on people who get in their way.

See also On Borders.

WWII Partisan, carrying Soviet Model 1938 Carbine

Alexander Cockburn reviews the mass murdering life of superstatist Robert McNamara.

Robert McNamara, who died yesterday, July 6, served as Kennedy’s , then as Johnson’s defense secretary. He contributed more than most to the slaughter of 3.4 million Vietnamese (his own estimate). He went on to run the World Bank, where he presided over the impoverishment, eviction from their lands and death of many millions more round the world.

Just as George Kennan, one of the architects of the Cold War, helped bolt together the ramshackle scaffolding of bogus claims that provided the rationalization for Harry Truman’s great “arms scare” in 1948, launching the postwar arms race, McNamara tugged his forelock and said “Aye, aye, Sir” when Kennedy, campaigning against Nxon in the late 1950s attacked the Eisenhower/Nixon administration for having allowed a “missile gap” to develop that had now delivered America naked and helpless into the grip of the Soviet Union.

This was the biggest lie in the history of threat inflation and remains so to this day…

McNamara played a crucial, enabling role in the arms race in nuclear missiles…

H/T Jim Davidson via Facebook.

Overthrow the nationalists who co-opt revolution. Be revolutionary!

“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it.” -Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts

Sam Dodson, who was arrested for filming in a courthouse and held in jail for refusing to cooperate with his captors, was unexpectedly released today.

While Sam was in prison, the Boston Globe reported him as saying “I see Free Staters as the modern-day abolitionists.” I’ve seen this statement criticized as trivializing the horror of chattel slavery and the bravery of the original abolitionists. It would miss the point to debate whether the practice of attempting to force the legal status of property onto human beings, which can only be done through the most brutal violence and degradation, is worse than the practice of modern statehood, which would include blocking supplies to an entire nation after bombing their infrastructure to pieces and poisoning their environment.

The point is that the principles of abolitionism, which held that regardless of popular justifications no human is worthy to be master and no human can be owned by another, when carried to their logical conclusion require this: that no human is worthy of authority over another, and that no person is owed allegiance simply because of political status. When reason disassembles the popular justifications of statism, as advances in political philosophy since the 1850’s have assisted in doing, the consistent abolitionist cannot oppose the voluntaryist principles of the Keene radicals.

The principle of self-ownership was not alien to the original abolitionists. Lysander Spooner, an abolitionist I never heard mentioned in all of my schooling, would eventually become associated with Benjamin Tucker’s anarchist journal Liberty. Spooner had such an influence that Tucker would describe his death as “Our Nestor taken from us.”

Individualism was the basis of Henry David Thoreau’s opposition to tyranny. In his influential essay Civil Disobedience he writes,

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Nothing at all makes the conscience of a legislator worth more than the conscience of the citizen. The primary obligation of any man was to his personal conscience.

Today we are expected to defer our consciences to the legislators as they go on “realistically” lowering the intensity of one imperial conflict only to expand the empire’s reach in another location. We are told to obey the police officer because the badge he carries means he knows better than us – because after all, he has been trained by the state. This is where the deference to authority has led us. Despite the deadly powerlust of the politician, the superiority complex of the judge, and the barely-accountable brutality of the police, we are told to respect them because they have been selected to govern us. Our decisions on who rules us have been made by the so-called “majority.” Numerical superiority imparts no rights, and neither does having one’s interests coincide with the most politically powerful faction in the contest.

In Slavery in Massachusetts, another great political essay, Thoreau displays outrage at the arrogance of a court deciding whether one man is actually be the property of another.

Again it happens that the Boston Court-House is full of armed men, holding prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE. Does any one think that justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s decision? For him to sit there deciding still, when this question is already decided from eternity to eternity, and the unlettered slave himself and the multitude around have long since heard and assented to the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous…

Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring’s decision, as if it could in any way affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous and fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such a case. It was really the trial of Massachusetts.

The title of “judge” does not give one the power to decide if a man is really a slave. The answer is decided by the man whose life is in question, as he knows that he is not another’s property. It is criminal to put this decision into anybody else’s hands, criminal to give the judge authority that could never legitimately be his, criminal to force the “slave” into a court beholden to his opponent’s criminal wishes.

Thoreau also describes how many people relegate the battle for liberty to a mere historical celebration and ignore the living struggle.

Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty — and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. Nowadays, men wear a fool’s-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke.

As he walks, Thoreau’s “thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her.”

We have come a long way since the 1850s because of people like Thoreau and other daring radicals. We will cover more ground through the efforts of people like Sam Dodson and other committed liberty activists. We can build a future without slaves or masters, a future in which only voluntary agreements carry weight and aggression is commonly recognized as crime regardless of the perpetrator.