Re: North on ideology
--- Kevin Carson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "One neocon recently argued that anyone who does not support Isreael is, by definition, an antisemite, because Israel is the Jewish national homeland." Which is ironic in that Arabs are Semitic as well. Picking sides in the conflict is not anti- or pro-Semitic, any more than hating the Scots and loving the Welsh is anti-British. Go figure. -jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
Re: North on ideology
And free market anarchists like Tucker, who also identified themselves as "libertarian socialists," saw the state as the central, defining characteristic of capitalist exploitation (and all other forms of exploitation). Exploitation, defined as the use of force to enable one person to live off another's labor, was the central function of the state, and was impossible without it. For Tucker, "free market capitalism" was an oxymoron. It's interesting you refer to Leninism, Social Democracy, and Fabianism as allied phenomena--because in fact, they all reflect the rise of the "New Class" of professionals and planners, who began to take over the labor and socialist movement in the late nineteenth century. In fact, Nazism itself was prefigured in many ways (including extreme antisemitism, eugenics, etc.) in Fabian thought. Socialism in the U.S. persisted, though, as a largely self-organized, working class movement until WWI. It was at that point that the "progressives" and Crolyites in the Wilson administration, under the pretext of war hysteria and the Red Scare, liquidated most of the genuine working class left. Before WWI, the main electoral support for the Socialist Party was among Oklahoma oil workers, Montana miners, Milwaukee brewery workers, etc. After WWI, "socialism's" main demographic base was either academia or yuppie hog heavens like Burlington, Vt. >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >I suspect that Von Mises' insight refer more to the brands of socialism >popular in his era, such as communism, social democracy (Austria, France, >Germany), Labour Party socialism (Britain), and of course Nazism, rather >than to all socialisms throughout modern history. As Elizabeth Tamedly >points out in _Socialism and International Trade_, most forms of socialism >historically have not advocated an abolition of private property. Most >have >advocated some mixture of private property and government control. If you >want to argue that the more the government control, the less the substance >of >private property ownership, I'd certainly agree, noting that there's >something of a spectrum of government control, with communism on one >extreme. > Not all government control is created equal (thankfully). > >David Levenstam _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: North on ideology
>From: "Alex Robson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>I haven't read the Pipes book. He's a neoconservative, isn't he? >I don't know what the term "neoconservative" means, nor do I understand >why >that particular label is relevant to this discussion. Neoconservatism, generally speaking, is a sort of "Shiite conservatism" composed of former Cold War liberals and leftists. The term was first applied to Cold War Liberals, New Deal supporters like Scoop Jackson and Jean Kirkpatrick, who thought the McGovernites had gone too far to the left. It also includes associates of William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, etc., in venues like *Commentary* and *The Weekly Standard*, and ex-leftists like David Horowitz. The traditional right in the U.S. was suspicious of the state, and viewed standing armies and foreign empire as incompatible with republican institutions. Neocons, in contrast, are distinguished by their enthusiasm for foreign intervention and standing armies, their defense of the National Security State and of Presidential war prerogatives, their blithe dismissal of civil liberties concerns involving "counter-terror" legislation, and their Straussian views on constitutional history. They are ardent propagandists for "benevolent American hegemony" in promotion of "democratic capitalism." The version of "democratic capitalism" neocons favor does not involve minding our own business and trading with those willing to do so, but instead requires a permanent warfare state and agencies of global governance like the Bretton Woods institutions. I thought, therefore, that the peculiar neocon notions of "economic liberty" were worth bearing in mind when considering any of Pipes' comments on property. > >I've read Bethell's book in parts, and skimmed through most of it. It > >strikes me as a very ahistoric view of property: taking the >contemporary, > >Lockean/capitalist model of private property as some kind of Platonic >ideal, > >and then judging history as it progressively approximated that ideal over > >time. >If you had actually read the book carefully, you would realize that your >assessment couldn't be more incorrect. That may well be. I may have misread it; or then again, we may just disagree on the interpretation. In any case, I'll reread it to find out. _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Re: North on ideology
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >I'm not sure that anyone knows what it means or rather, that there's any >common agreement on what it means. It seems to have started out referring >to >a group of Sixties liberals in America who decided that Big Government >wasn't >an effective way of pursuing the goals of reducing poverty et al, and thus >became conservatives by the late 1970s. Many prominent ones like Irving >Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb (husband and wife, columnist and historian) >and their son Bill Kristol (former chief of staff of veep Dan Quayle and >now >editor[?] of The Weekly Standard) are Jews, and Patrick Buchanan began to >use >the term "neoconservative" as a term of derision in order to covertly >signal >to the anti-Semitic right that he was one of them (although according to >personal accounts supposedly he's not) without alerting good conservative >Christians to his Jew-baiting (it actually plays quite poorly in Iowa). I'm not sure when the term "neoconservative" was first used, but I think it predates Buchanan's prominence by a good bit. And a major contingent of the New Deal (not sixties) liberals who formed it were non-Jews, like Moynihan, Jackson and Kirkpatrick. They were essentially Cold War liberals who supported both Truman's national security state and FDR's New Deal, but thought LBJ had gone too far in the direction of the welfare state. And McGovern's retreat from anti-communist engagement was the final straw. In many ways, the neocon movement was prefigured by Art Schlesinger's "vital center." And the issue of Jewishness and anti-semitism is raised more by neocons themselves than by their detractors. Neoconservatism is characterized by a fanatical defense of Israel; and many neocons like David Horowitz reflexively categorize any critic of Israel as either an antisemite or a "self-hating Jew." The constant exhortations to help "defend Israel" on Horowitz's FrontPage site sound a lot like the U.S. Communist Party's calls to rally behind the "socialist motherland" after the invasion of Russia. And Horowitz plays the "antisemitism" card so much, he sounds like Jerry Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, who accused a cook of being an antisemite for overcooking his hamburger. One neocon recently argued that anyone who does not support Isreael is, by definition, an antisemite, because Israel is the Jewish national homeland. Some Old Rightists (Buchanan especially, although as a Cold Warrior he is more like a convert to the faith of Bob Taft) are pretty careless about excluding antisemites. But there is nothing antisemitic about the neoconservative label, as such. And David Horowitz himself has been pretty uncritical about the unsavory types he attracts. _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: North on ideology
>From: "Alex Robson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the >absence > >of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two > >criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) >that > >labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was > >possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally > >privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such >privilege > >were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of > >value-added. > >I haven't read Tucker, but I've always thought that Von Mises is correct >when he says that the essential mark of socialism is that "one will alone, >acts, irrespective of whose will it is" (Human Action, p 695.) To me, this >"essential mark" implies an absence of private property rights. The identification of socialism with statism or collectivism reflects the victory of a particular tendency within the socialist movement. To define the movement in terms of that particular tendency, therefore, strikes me as ahistorical. The original main current of "socialism," in the early nineteenth century, was the mutualism of P.J. Proudhon and Josiah Warren, both of which predated Marx. Warren founded an American tradition, culminating in Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, that was a virtual free market fundamentalism. Libertarian socialism, or anarchism, was a major current within the original socialist movement even after Marx; and a major part of that current, especially in America, favored the free market. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: North on ideology
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Irving Kristol defined a neo-conservative > as a liberal who had been mugged. I guess that makes me a classical neoconservative (as of October 24). -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
Re: North on ideology
>I don't know what the term "neoconservative" means This one is easy. Irving Kristol defined a neo-conservative as a liberal who had been mugged. Bill Sjostrom
Re: North on ideology
In a message dated 8/12/02 8:49:19 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << I haven't read Tucker, but I've always thought that Von Mises is correct when he says that the essential mark of socialism is that "one will alone, acts, irrespective of whose will it is" (Human Action, p 695.) To me, this "essential mark" implies an absence of private property rights. Alex Robson >> I suspect that Von Mises' insight refer more to the brands of socialism popular in his era, such as communism, social democracy (Austria, France, Germany), Labour Party socialism (Britain), and of course Nazism, rather than to all socialisms throughout modern history. As Elizabeth Tamedly points out in _Socialism and International Trade_, most forms of socialism historically have not advocated an abolition of private property. Most have advocated some mixture of private property and government control. If you want to argue that the more the government control, the less the substance of private property ownership, I'd certainly agree, noting that there's something of a spectrum of government control, with communism on one extreme. Not all government control is created equal (thankfully). David Levenstam
Re: North on ideology
In a message dated 8/12/02 8:48:56 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << I don't know what the term "neoconservative" means, nor do I understand why that particular label is relevant to this discussion. >> I'm not sure that anyone knows what it means or rather, that there's any common agreement on what it means. It seems to have started out referring to a group of Sixties liberals in America who decided that Big Government wasn't an effective way of pursuing the goals of reducing poverty et al, and thus became conservatives by the late 1970s. Many prominent ones like Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb (husband and wife, columnist and historian) and their son Bill Kristol (former chief of staff of veep Dan Quayle and now editor[?] of The Weekly Standard) are Jews, and Patrick Buchanan began to use the term "neoconservative" as a term of derision in order to covertly signal to the anti-Semitic right that he was one of them (although according to personal accounts supposedly he's not) without alerting good conservative Christians to his Jew-baiting (it actually plays quite poorly in Iowa). I briefly joined an email list years ago on which one fellow who seemed to like Buchanan (again Pat, not James) charged "neoconservatives" with wanting to have some sort of watered down "civic religion" instead of good old whatever the fellow practiced. Supposedly in orgin the term "neoconservative" distinguished between the newcomer refugees from liberalism and the old-time conservatives who had always had "the faith," although considering that Buchanan supported the statist-liberal Big Government policy of wage and price controls imposed by the Nixon administration (in which he served as an ardent statist) it seems a poorly descriptive term at best. David
RE: North on ideology
Kevin Carson wrote: > As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the absence >of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two >criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) that >labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was >possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally >privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such privilege >were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of >value-added. I haven't read Tucker, but I've always thought that Von Mises is correct when he says that the essential mark of socialism is that "one will alone, acts, irrespective of whose will it is" (Human Action, p 695.) To me, this "essential mark" implies an absence of private property rights. Alex Robson
RE: North on ideology
Kevin Carson wrote: >>I haven't read the Pipes book. He's a neoconservative, isn't he? I don't know what the term "neoconservative" means, nor do I understand why that particular label is relevant to this discussion. >I've read Bethell's book in parts, and skimmed through most of it. It >strikes me as a very ahistoric view of property: taking the contemporary, >Lockean/capitalist model of private property as some kind of Platonic ideal, >and then judging history as it progressively approximated that ideal over >time. If you had actually read the book carefully, you would realize that your assessment couldn't be more incorrect. Alex
Re: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling
Hummbut I still wonder if North was rights. Maybe we are not sharing mental models...:-) - Original Message - From: "Kevin Carson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 8:20 AM Subject: RE: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling > Interesting. Your remarks on tunnelling dovetail nicely with an excellent > article by Sean Corrigan at LewRockwell.com: > > http://www.lewrockwell.com/corrigan/corrigan13.html > > Corrigan refers to privatization, as part of IMF-imposed "structural > adjustments", as a carpet-bagger strategy for enabling international > financial classes to buy up taxpayer-funded assets for pennies on the > dollar. > > This discussion reminds me of something I heard second-hand about the > Austrian economist and anarcho-capitalist Hans Hermann Hoppe. I've yet to > read it myself, so take it for what it's worth. Anyway, he argued that the > ex-Communist states were the one proper area for implementing syndicalist > control of industry, since the original ownership was hopelessly muddled or > moot, and the state industry thus qualified as "unowned property" in the > Lockean sense. It was therefore quite logical to treat the workforce as > occupiers or homesteaders, and place it under their collective ownership. > Anyway, it sounds to me a lot better than turning the product of seventy > years stolen labor of the Russian people over to domestic and international > elites at fire sale prices, and then turning the country into a big > sweatshop. > > On a related note, in the "Tranquil Statement" of the YAF's Radical > Libertarian Caucus, Karl Hess argued that radical student occupations of > even private universities wasn't a violation of any valid private property > right, because such nominally "private" institutions were almost entirely > dependant on the state's subsidies. Therefore, they should be treated as > unowned, and "homesteaded" by students or faculty--in many ways a return to > the original medieval idea of the university. I've also been told that > Rothbard, at one point, (in the late 60s, I think, at the height of his > affinity for the New Left) called for the expropriation of any corporation > that got more than half its profits from state capitalist intervention, and > its being placed under workers' control instead. The agorist Samuel Edward > Konkin, another Austrian radical, speaks of a period of restitution in which > the property of statists will be seized to pay back what they consumed > through robbery of the producing classes. > > For "privatization" in this country, there's a lot to be said for what Larry > Gambone calls "mutualizing" state property as an alternative both to > corporate capitalist privatization and to state ownership. It entails > devolving social services, police, schools, etc., to the local level, and > then placing them under the direct democratic control of their > clientele--sort of like transforming them into consumer co-ops. The > ultimate goal, of course, is to fund them on a user-fee basis and make > consumption voluntary. It's quite a bit like what Proudhon called (in > *General Idea of the Revolution*) dissolving the state within the social > body. > > > >From: Grey Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Subject: RE: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling > >Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 11:22:22 +0200 > > > > > quoth Tom Grey: > > > > . . . For instance, the need for government to prevent "tunneling" > > > > of newly privatized companies by the managers. . . . > > > > > > Define please? > > > >It's basically asset stripping, in any of sundry ways. > >Asset stripping has occurred in almost all newly privatized Slovak firms. > > > >A few ways I know of: > >1) The new manager, often part owner, creates a new brand name for > >the product the newly privatized company is making. This brand name > >is owned by a little company wholly owned by the manager. The production > >company pays millions for the brand name. -- production company has > >losses, the little company is quite profitable, but prolly off shore and > >untaxed. > >2) The new owner's wife or son writes up a "strategic" or "marketing" > >plan, some 5-20 pages of BS to lay a shelf; to get millions in fees. > >3) Older but working, high-market value production equipment is sold at >
RE: North on ideology
>From: "Alex Robson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Are you (and North?) saying that socialism (whose defining feature is the >absence of private property rights) has been the natural state of >affairs, >and that private property rights are unnatural? > >If so, you might be interested to know that is a fallacy (initiated and >perpetuated by - you guessed it modern socialists!) which has been >refuted >by several scholars. See, for example: > >1. Pipes, Richard (2000) Property and Freedom, New York: >Vintage Books. I haven't read the Pipes book. He's a neoconservative, isn't he? >2. Bethell, Tom (1999) The Noblest Triumph: Property and >Prosperity Through the Ages, St. Martin's Press. I've read Bethell's book in parts, and skimmed through most of it. It strikes me as a very ahistoric view of property: taking the contemporary, Lockean/capitalist model of private property as some kind of Platonic ideal, and then judging history as it progressively approximated that ideal over time. Kind of like the Whig view of history, in which the civil tumults in Livy were viewed as blind gropings toward nineteenth century Liberal England. As far as I could see, the only reference to Proudhon was to his dictum "Property is theft," taken entirely out of any historical context. So Bethell certaintly isn't doing justice to the many possible variants of the idea of property itself, or the way the idea evolved as a product of history. _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: North on ideology
Excellent point. For example, the commons which existed under the manorial system had at least as much claim to be "private" property as a joint-stock corporation. And any theory of private property should take into account that the Lockean system (with absentee ownership, landlordism, etc.) is not the only possible variant of private property. The mutualist standard of property based on occupancy and use definitely qualifies as private property, since the occupier's dominion is absolute once he meets the criteria for appropriation. The difference is the rules for how the property is appropriated in the first place. And there's nothing self-evident about the rules of Lockean homesteading. For example, if one appropriates land by mixing in some of one's labor, how is that defined? Is simply marking off the boundaries of unoccupied land enough admixture of "labor"? And is there a time limit? Can one appropriate as much land as one can encompass with a 4x4 in a day's driving? A week's? Or is having a Pope draw a line across a map of the western hemisphere sufficient "admixture of labor" for claiming your portion? Both the Lockean and the Proudhonian/Tuckerist versions of private property require some social enforcement, and therefore some community agreement on rules of the game. As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the absence of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) that labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such privilege were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of value-added. The identification of socialism with collectivism and statism reflects the takeover of the socialist and labor movements by "new class" Fabians, Progressives, Leninists, etc., at the turn of the century. But these are not by any means inherent characteristics of the movement. There were indeed collectivist branches of the movement from the beginning, such as Owenism. But there was also a non-collectivist variant going back to Josiah Warren and Ricardian socialists like Hodgskin. >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >It seems that in debates between advocates of individual liberty and >advocates of government regulation people on both sides seem to juxtapose >private ownership of property with collective ownership. Yet it seems that >private property ownerships often contain collective elements. Many >professions, like law and accounting for instance, operate most commonly in >the partnership form in which the partners collectively own the business. >Shareholders collectively own corporations. Since private property allows >owners to try various and sundry ownership arrangements, many of which >involve collective ownership, what do we mean when we juxtapose collective >ownership to private property? It sounds like both sides of the debate >mean >some sort of collective ownership from which the individual owners cannot >volunarily separate themselves and even perhaps into which they have been >forced. > >Sincerely, > >David Levenstam _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
RE: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling
Interesting. Your remarks on tunnelling dovetail nicely with an excellent article by Sean Corrigan at LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/corrigan/corrigan13.html Corrigan refers to privatization, as part of IMF-imposed "structural adjustments", as a carpet-bagger strategy for enabling international financial classes to buy up taxpayer-funded assets for pennies on the dollar. This discussion reminds me of something I heard second-hand about the Austrian economist and anarcho-capitalist Hans Hermann Hoppe. I've yet to read it myself, so take it for what it's worth. Anyway, he argued that the ex-Communist states were the one proper area for implementing syndicalist control of industry, since the original ownership was hopelessly muddled or moot, and the state industry thus qualified as "unowned property" in the Lockean sense. It was therefore quite logical to treat the workforce as occupiers or homesteaders, and place it under their collective ownership. Anyway, it sounds to me a lot better than turning the product of seventy years stolen labor of the Russian people over to domestic and international elites at fire sale prices, and then turning the country into a big sweatshop. On a related note, in the "Tranquil Statement" of the YAF's Radical Libertarian Caucus, Karl Hess argued that radical student occupations of even private universities wasn't a violation of any valid private property right, because such nominally "private" institutions were almost entirely dependant on the state's subsidies. Therefore, they should be treated as unowned, and "homesteaded" by students or faculty--in many ways a return to the original medieval idea of the university. I've also been told that Rothbard, at one point, (in the late 60s, I think, at the height of his affinity for the New Left) called for the expropriation of any corporation that got more than half its profits from state capitalist intervention, and its being placed under workers' control instead. The agorist Samuel Edward Konkin, another Austrian radical, speaks of a period of restitution in which the property of statists will be seized to pay back what they consumed through robbery of the producing classes. For "privatization" in this country, there's a lot to be said for what Larry Gambone calls "mutualizing" state property as an alternative both to corporate capitalist privatization and to state ownership. It entails devolving social services, police, schools, etc., to the local level, and then placing them under the direct democratic control of their clientele--sort of like transforming them into consumer co-ops. The ultimate goal, of course, is to fund them on a user-fee basis and make consumption voluntary. It's quite a bit like what Proudhon called (in *General Idea of the Revolution*) dissolving the state within the social body. >From: Grey Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: RE: North on ideology -- Free Markets, & Marketeers -- tunneling >Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 11:22:22 +0200 > > > quoth Tom Grey: > > > . . . For instance, the need for government to prevent "tunneling" > > > of newly privatized companies by the managers. . . . > > > > Define please? > >It's basically asset stripping, in any of sundry ways. >Asset stripping has occurred in almost all newly privatized Slovak firms. > >A few ways I know of: >1) The new manager, often part owner, creates a new brand name for >the product the newly privatized company is making. This brand name >is owned by a little company wholly owned by the manager. The production >company pays millions for the brand name. -- production company has >losses, the little company is quite profitable, but prolly off shore and >untaxed. >2) The new owner's wife or son writes up a "strategic" or "marketing" >plan, some 5-20 pages of BS to lay a shelf; to get millions in fees. >3) Older but working, high-market value production equipment is sold at >almost zero "book value" (near end of depreciated life). >4) The production company builds a mansion, pays millions; sells it to >the owner's little company at a huge loss. Similarly with luxury cars. > >Here in Slovakia, accounting form requirements are rather strict; but >the first three above are entirely legal. I'm not sure on the details of >(4) in order to make it legal, but I strongly suspect certain perpetrators >have legal opinions on how to do it legally -- in accordance with required >form based reporting. > >The failure of the Klaus voucher privatization plan was that the mostly >m
