From The Ashes: The Political Philosophy Of The Libertarian Left

[Scam of God]

Introduction


Our present crisis is the result of nearly a century of economic mismanagement, and has not been unexpected by any astute observer of trends in the development of capitalism. We of the left have long predicted this falling of a dark winter over the springtime idyll of industrial development; we of the libertarian left have always known that it would be the result of an overreliance on centralized industry, and a monopolization of the means of production by forces who preserve their economic hegemony through manipulation of the State.

For the traditional political divide in America, conservative and liberal, over the size and scope of the government, is in reality an intentional misdirection from the truly pressing issue: the State's dogmatic support of corporatism, that is, its insistence on supporting the national industry through means both overt and covert. And, for its part, industry has been more than happy to allow the State to play its part as sworn defender of the profits of its shareholders; indeed, industry exerts its control over the machinery of government wherever it can, so as to ensure that it has control over the State's monopoly of violence to do its bidding. From the "banana wars" in Central America during the early part of the preceding century to our present sprawling military-industrial complex, industry and the State have at every turn walked hand-in-hand in a perverse fashion, each owing its success to the other.

And yet no political program today in proposal even pretends to do anything about this. Our conservatives feign allegiance to the cause of small government, save when they require that government to exert force in the defense of their traditional social hegemonies; and, when they mouth the dogmas of their puerile misunderstanding of the laissez-faire society, what they mean by it in reality is a corporatist nightmare: they would destroy trade and regulatory barriers to economic expansion, but do absolutely nothing - indeed, they would actively promote - the continued centralization of economic activity in the hands of an elite few.

Our leftists are little better. For nearly eight decades now they have championed the advances of the State in every aspect of life: from taxation to regulation, they suppose that the economic difficulties now making themselves known can be corrected through the continued and judicious use of government power. They are wrong, and they know it; for if they learned anything from the excesses and abuses of the Bush Administration, it is the fundamental truth that the State and industry are by no means in conflict, but actively pursue the same ends, only through slightly different means.

And what are those ends? The continued monopolization of economic resources; the destruction of wealth through excess; the enforcement of legislation designed to actively give established interests an economic advantage over their smaller competitors; the establishment of a police-state. Both our "conservatives" and our "liberals" march hand-in-hand in pursuit of this goal.

This is an extremely bleak picture of America's present, but if it is not painted over, the future is likely to become only worse. Fortunately, the means to avert this destiny are today closer to our grasp than ever before. Only the will to implement them is lacking.


1. The Entrepreneurial Society


The economically free man is the economically stable man. Our agrarian ancestors, though certainly materially poor in comparison to even our more modern lower-class citizens, was nevertheless not nearly so subject to the twists and turns of the market economy as we are today. For his life was in his own hands; he alone was responsible for seeing that either his harvests were successful or his handicrafts had a market - no man and no market downturn could take from him his source of wealth.

I do not dare propose that we attempt to stem the advent of modernity; far from it. Agrarianism worked well in the past for material reasons relating to the vastly smaller and more diffuse population and the lack of modern farming techniques and technology - to retreat back to premodernity, as many of our conservative populists and cowardly "paleoconservatives" seem to want, would be deadly folly.

What is needed instead is a new modernity, which masters the forces of production and places them in individual hands. For, in freeing one's self from the bonds of the corporate market, one asserts control over his own economic fortune, and, in doing so, breaks the authority of both business and the State over his own being.

Accordingly, a new strategy is needed. The left-libertarian does not shy in using the State to undermine itself; far from it. If the power of government can be used to further the cause of liberty - always, of course, resulting in its own eventual dissolution - then it is only appropriate that such actions be taken.

Therefore, the left-libertarian seeks to cause the State to invest in those technologies which will ultimately be the source of its own undoing. We have seen this in practice without a concentrated effort to do so - the Internet was a project of Cold War statist paranoia; today it threatens to undermine the stability on which the modern nation-state rests, by rendering physical borders obsolete and tearing down cultural barriers.

What is needed most today is a new project, similar in scope to the DARPA initiative that gave rise to the Information Age, to liberate man from the shackles of ancient industrial capitalism and redirect possessorship into his own home. Inefficient though it may be, we cannot expect business to happily sacrifice its powers of monopolization, so instead the State must be made to work against itself.

What would such a project entail? Through investing in exploration of radically disruptive technologies such as nanotechnology and rapid prototyping, we hope that a solution can be found to the problem of employment: that eventually the technology will exist to render collective employment and all of the social difficulties associated with it - labor-management grievances, the need for a welfare State, and reliance on the whims of capitalist chieftans as guarantors of social progress - will be rendered irrelevant. Man does not own himself unless he exerts total ownership over himself; by turning every man into an owner, every man will be just that.

[Scam of God]

2. The Peaceful Society


"The only real purpose of government is the defense of its citizens." This conservative maxim is as false as it is old; for the State has served its historical purpose and must be permitted to die away.

In times of old - and here we see the source of conservative nostalgia - the State was an unfortunate necessity, when, prior to the Treaty of Westphalia and the rise of the modern nation-state, standing armies were a rarity in Western society, and the bribing of mercenaries was the typical method by which the feudal order secured its defense.

Today, of course, as the threat of international war such as that which racked the twentieth century recedes into the distance, the Western world finds itself confronted with a dilemma: how does a State which relies on a standing military to inflate its employment numbers and defend its aggressively expansionist governments continue to justify military spending in the absence of potential conflict?

The United States has hit upon one possible solution: perpetual war whose aim is not perpetual peace, but the radical transformation of a competitor-society whose alternative form of monotheism offends the popular (vulgar) sensibility and whose basic similarities frightens the citizen like his own reflection in a fogged-over mirror.

How incoherent, how self-contradictory both "wings" have been in response! Indeed, on security matters, American politics is more akin to an ostrich than an eagle. Our "leftists" - that is to say, our liberals - demand a more humane art of war, which, of course, belies their utter lack of artistic taste. Moreover, they expose their own hypocrisy each and every time they do so: for in this instance, and this instance alone, they are willing to accept what we libertarians have known all along: that so long as the nation is defended by a military whose real reason for existence is the continued subsidization of the armaments industry, there can be no real and lasting peace.

For their part, our conservatives are no better, and in many ways worse. They will cry and hue regarding the deficit, yet any attempt to tear down their precious shrine dedicated to the gods of machismo is met with a reaction bordering on sociopathy. Boeing is regarded more favorably among them than the independent contractor; their preferred form of welfare is welfare for Lockheed Martin. To this the leftist cries: enough!

We will no longer tolerate a military whose Constitutional justifications are nonexistent and whose purpose it is to serve at the beck and call of industrial leaders and their slaves in the Federal government. We instead demand a return to the legally obligatory form of defense provided for in the United States Constitution: a self-organized and thoroughly voluntary militia. Only when the apparatus for making war has been ground into dust and salted over can a genuinely peaceful society be established.


3. The Free Society


Capitalism without personal freedom is industrial slavery. This maxim must become second nature to anyone who professes a personal conviction regarding the state of the economy.

For the past five centuries, capitalism has played a pivotal role in destroying those social conditions which stifle innovation by impeding personal initiative. By creating the economic progress that drives technical achievement, free enterprise has constructed the world in which we reside today, a world that grows ever more open to a philosophy of individualism by creating out of nothing the choices that allows men to conduct themselves according to their personal orientation.

But today this progress is threatened by the very forces that erstwhile pretend to champion the cause of capitalism. The forces of reaction have seen the world that technological progress creates, and fear it mightily, for reasons rooted primarily in their own base instincts and ignorance.

The modern Luddite, for instance, fears the continued development of capitalism because he fears its environmental impact - paying no heed to the fact that technological progress, is inherently capable of minimizing its own destructive possibilities by rendering itself ever more efficient in its self-applications. The theocrat, to the contrary, bemoans its destructive effects upon community and tradition: utterly neglecting the possibility of communications technologies to bring forth new communities and new traditions out of the ashes of the old.

Neither of these causes of cowardice are cause for alarm. Both will be defeated in the ultimate course of things. The danger lies in the possibility that these retrograde crusaders will temporarily inhibit the advance of man by causing him to doubt himself, to doubt his aims, and thereby to destroy himself.

Progress requires economic freedom, of which personal liberty is the chief prerequisite. If society permits itself to be tamed by primitive savagery, if it harnesses its potential in a sheath of superstition, it cannot possibly expect to overcome the difficulties it presently faces.

Conservatives have long complained that a culture war is being waged against them and against their values. They are absolutely correct. The left-libertarian ultimately intends the final destruction of the collectivistic value-regimen they have implemented, which demands absolute obedience to the authority of a "higher tradition" while rejecting the true tradition of the West, which is absolute freedom of thought and will.

At the same time, a left-libertarian must not surrender to the temptation to arbitrarily impose the value system of the left, although he does not share the right-libertarian's typical conservative skepticism of it. We have inherited that Protestantism that requires the right of conscience for every free man, and will not debase ourselves to the level of our enemies. Both will suggest we are at the command of the other because of our inactivity in imposing their own regimen. This is precisely as it should be.


Conclusion: The End Of Society

It will be charged, of course, that our ultimate program is to end society as we know it. We are guilty as charged. For we find that society itself is quickly undermining the very need for its own existence; it has been weighed on the scales of necessity and found wanting. The need for organized civility declines as the atomizing tendency of technology increases.

This needn't be a painful process, though the vulgar mind will of course imagine it to be so. By isolating the causes of collectivism, we can actively pacify mankind, can make him more social by decreasing the need for it.

And since there is such an extraordinary quantity of prophecies, apocalypses, signs, and insights in our age when so little is being done, there is probably nothing else to do but go along with it, although I do have the unencumbered advantage over the others' burdensome responsibility to prophecy and forebode that I can be sure no one will dream of believing me.

- S. Kierkegaard, Two Ages

[k-onmmunist]

VERY very well written. I personally agree with much of this.

[President Mitt]

This is why we shouldn't ban Einzige.

[Swing Voter]

This has been a very good read. I find that the statist/libertarian divide has never truly culminated in American politics. The best example of such is likely the 1920 Presidential election, calling for a "return to normalcy" and a reduction in Wilson's aggressive and authoritarian changes to the nation.

What our focus should be is reducing the state's influence and impact on our daily lives, maintaining and asserting our individual liberties and ensuring that what state exists works for us and not against us. This may seem difficult, but the prospects of ascertaining our liberties is more important than single-issue disagreements.

[Phony Moderate]

This is why we shouldn't ban Einzige.

[Scam of God]

A version slightly modified for clarity, as posted on The Next Right:

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[Scam of God]

Continued:

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[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

This is why we shouldn't ban Einzige.