"We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority." – Voltairine de Cleyre
Posts tagged ATP-101
The Presumption of Liberty.
Apr 19th
Week 5 of C4SS’s ATP-101 involves a critique of punishment and its place in libertarian theory :Is restitution preferable to retribution? Why of why not?
A unique feature of Libertarian thought is the concept, default or norm understood as the presumption of liberty.
This presumption has been wrested and won from Authority after centuries of intellectual battle, physical sacrifice and, unfortunately, martyrdom. The presumption asserts that we are free, that liberty is our natural and rightful status, and that any and all transgressions against or attempts to limit this liberty must be justified. The Burden of Proof is on the enemy of liberty; they must offer an argument that liberty stands in the way of human flourishing and, therefore, must be limited, restrained or removed. If no argument or a poor argument is offered, then liberty must remain unmolested and unfettered, unless it is the mantle of tyrant and the blade of Brutus that you desire.
The Classical Liberal, occasionally, believed that an argument limiting liberty could be justified, while the Anarchist denies the occasion and the possibility that such an argument could ever have warrant or justification.
This is the context that libertarian discourse takes place and it is this norm that is continually being evoked when consistency is championed or demanded. The easiest way to determine whether or not someone is a libertarian is to see how seriously they take the presumption or consistency challenge.
The Tannehills, on page 88 of The Market for Liberty, rightfully, take the government monopoly over punishment in criminal suits as an unwarranted, unjustified usurpation of liberty and a violation of the presumption of liberty.
“Throughout history, the means of dealing with aggression (crime) has been punishment. Traditionally, it has been held that when a man commits a crime against society, the government, acting as the agent of society, must punish him. However, because punishment has not been based on the principle of righting the wrong but only of causing the criminal “to undergo pain, loss, or suffering,” it has actually been revenge.”
This is also similar to the position taken by Murray Rothbard, in his The Ethics of Liberty, chapter 13, that the principle of non-aggression precludes systems of punishment, retribution or victim restoration that goes beyond a standard of double-restitution. That the victim has a right to not only get their property back, but that the criminal forfeits, to the victim, their own right to an amount of property equal to the property stolen or destroyed.
Even this modest double-restitution by Rothbard was challenged by Samuel Edward Konkin III in his New Libertarian Manifesto (pg 32; footnote 21):
“Murray Rothbard takes the most moderate position here: he advocates double restoration; that is, not only must the aggressor restore the victim to prior unharmed condition (as much as possible), but must become himself a victim for an equivalent amount! Not only does this doubling seem arbitrary, nowhere does Rothbard provide a moral basis for punishment, let alone a “moral calculus” (a la Bentham).”
Without an argument justifying Rothbard’s transgression against the presumption of liberty the theory of double-restitution gives way to a single restitution in a libertarian theory of restoration. As should all challenges to liberty give way to liberty – the norm and default condition of humanity.
“But who will provide…?”
Apr 15th
Week 4 of C4SS‘s ATP-101 involves a critique of Insurance Companies as Defense Providers: In what way or ways would it be most difficult for insurance companies to function successfully as sources of justice and defense against aggression?
In libertarian circles the question, “who will provide the roads, if not the state,” has reached a level of boredom and exhaustion to be almost dangerous. I am certain that “burn out” has been objectively reached by many enthusiastic libertarians after addressing that question for the 900th time to the same person.
With most questions of the “who will provide…” variety, the libertarian has a kind of “live and let live” attitude; acknowledging that such and such innovation or service would be super cool, but since they have no right to force it they repress any feelings of entitlement to have it. This is not to say that some wild eyed libertarian would not be all over it. A libertarian with a smile is a libertarian with an idea and three plans to make it happen – even with Big Brother watching.
It is this lovable and tenacious quality of the libertarian that keeps even the question, “who will provide justice and defense,” the last bastion of “perceived” statist necessity, from keeping me up at night.
But who will provide justice and defense services? The quick and dirty answer: I will, you will, we will. The more drawn out answer: Arbitration Specialists, Philosophers, Mutual Aid Societies, Martial Art Instructors, Detectives, Security Agencies, Justice Entrepreneurs, and Insurance Providers. All playing to their respective strengths and competing with each other for market share in ever decreasing market for aggregated wealth maintenance.
“Hey Murray, Big Bill what kind of security providers do you use?” Diogenes asks.
“I have an insurance policy with Midas Touch, a safety deposit box at Greene’s First Mutual Bank and I am assistant organizer of my Neighbor Hood Watch.” Murray Rothbard cheerfully explains.
“All my important papers are secured in a safe at the Black Cat Lodge, one of the benefits of membership, the factory’s doors and gates are secured with Solidarity Steel Locks and some Fellow Workers that live nearby help keep an eye on it and if any would be Mugger tries to shake me down I just present my Red Card and let them know that picking the pocket of one is picking the pocket of all.” Big Bill Haywood smiles as he puffs up his chest.
“What about you Diogenes?” Murray and Bill ask together.
“Well, I have let go of all my possessions and have taken up aikido.”
Of all the possible security providers, the one that I am most skeptical of is the Insurance Company. I don’t see any problem with them providing policies, packages or product reviews, but I don’t see their interests being aligned, in the same way and for the same reasons, with their client. It must be made clear that the client hires a security provider because they do not want their heirloom stolen or their body harmed, but the Insurance Provider wants to manage risk in such a way as to support their bottom line while fulfilling their contractual obligations.
This is what insurance is and it is not unreasonable for an Insurance Provider to “pay out” or settle at the agreed rate, instead of taking steps to prevent theft.
This, along with having to compete with other security providers, puts the Insurance Company in a poor position as sole security provider; though their services will undoubtedly be important to aid other, more direct, security providers in risk management, reputation underwriting and quality assurance.
My Homework, Week 3.
Apr 8th
Week 3 of C4SS’s anarcho-school involved reading pages 44-64 of Morris and Linda Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty and answering the questions: Is taxation theft? Why or why not?
I remember once in junior high civics class the teacher asked, what I suspect was meant to be a rhetorical question, “Who here would pay taxes, if they didn’t have to?”
No one raised their hands.
“This is why we don’t leave the matter up to you,” the teacher said aloud as if to fortify in their mind the righteousness of this position.
Years later, community college, Intro. to American Federal Government, a Prof. asks the same question. I was already well on my way down the anarchist’s path and took a particular interest in the classes response.
“Welcome to American Federal Government. With a show of hands: if you didn’t have to pay taxes, who here, knowing what vital services they provide, would pay them voluntarily?”
A grin pulled across my teeth as I looked around the classroom. Not a single hand. The scene could only be improved if someone asked if raising their hand would count as extra credit.
“No one!” the professor cried, “How many here vote in state or federal elections?”
I couldn’t hold back a laugh when the landscape remained the same: zero hands. Not even the illusion of consent; just placid, bored acquiescence of young powerless adults with better things to do.
The Prof. ran a frustrated hand through their hair and continued, “Welcome to American Federal Government. If you will open your texts to the introduction we will go over what you’re paying for…”
Is taxation theft?
Yes!
All (X) is theft.
Taxation is (X).
Taxation is theft.
(X) is “legitimately held property seized against the proprietor’s will, desire, wishes, choice…”
Every argument in favor of taxation, that I have ever heard, is a consequentialist laundry list of cost/benefit analysis favoring roads, police, defense, prisons, traffic lights etc, etc. Each one an essential, yet creaking levee protecting modern civilization from a raging social chaos. Every argument presented is an argument for justified theft, but it is important for them that it not be theft. It is important to the statist that taxation is not placed in the same category as actions performed by highwaymen, rogues, warlords, cutthroats and pirates. Murray Rothbard in his book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, draws a bright red circle around both actions. The only practical difference between the politician and the warlord is fashion.
“…if we look at the State naked, as it were, we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even non-libertarians concede are reprehensible crimes. The State habitually commits mass murder, which it calls “war,” or sometimes “suppression of subversion”; the State engages in enslavement into its military forces, which it calls “conscription”; and it lives and has its being in the practice of forcible theft, which it calls “taxation.” The libertarian insists that whether or not such practices are supported by the majority of the population is not germane to their nature: that, regardless of popular sanction, War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, and Taxation is Robbery. The libertarian, in short, is almost completely the child in the fable, pointing out insistently that the emperor has no clothes.”
The last line of my quoted professor contains an interested phrase: “what you’re paying for.”
This is sanitized political speech and it is a necessary part of politics. I and two class rooms full of humans are not paying for anything in the same respects that we would pay for a movie or a coffee. Taxes are seized. What is seized is used to pay for (X-prison) or (Y-war), but we did not pay for it.
Taxes are theft; please don’t add insult to my injury so you can feel good about your life.
My Homework, Week 2.
Mar 22nd
I present my second week critique of pages 16-42 of the Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty. I feel I most apologies for this piece because it was read and written in one night that ended a full day of flying. The previous week and weekend were spent in the San Fransisco Bay Area attending their Anarchist Book Fair. Needless to say I had a blast, learned a lot and made a couple friends. The Bay Area Wobblies are friendly, open and amazing.
The question being critiqued for this week: “To what extent and in what ways, if any, does government exhibit the problems typical of other monopolies?” (I apologies for neglecting to giving the question being addressed in the first week: “What is aggression? How can we distinguish between aggression and other kinds of undesirable influence?”)
“In their book The Market for Liberty the Tannehills, Morris and Linda, present a theoretical case for distinguishing between two types of monopoly: one benign and one malign.
The benign or market monopoly maintains its vaulted status tentatively and precariously, always contingent on customer satisfaction or competitor disinterest. If the market monopoly were to offend its customer base or draw unwanted entrepreneurial attention, it’s over.
The malign or coercive monopoly is the complete opposite. It “maintains itself by the initiation of force or the threat of force to prohibit competition, and sometimes to compel customer loyalty.” (Pg. 27)
Roderick T. Long, in his Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections, identifies three basic problems that the statist or pro-coercive-monopolist must overcome for their case to have merit: the moral, incentive and epistemic problems.
The moral problem asks the question, “why you; what makes you so special?” Granting someone monopoly use of coercive powers seems rather drastic and dangerous.
“To put it simply, government is the rule of some men over others by initiated force, which is slavery, which is wrong.” (Pg. 35)
The incentive problem asks the question, “in the absence of market forces directing agents towards the production of lowers costs, higher qualities or both, what incentives at work on the coercive monopolist guiding them to similar ends?” If there is no worry of losing market share or market relevancy, then why not set my commodity price, by lowering quality or raising costs, to that point just below where you would prefer to go without?
The epistemic problem asks the question, “even if you found a saint (that had no objection to ruling over other humans?), gave them coercive monopoly powers and they did everything they could to stay along the straight and narrow road of truth and justice, how do they know that they offering the best quality goods and the cheapest price?” Without competition or options, choices or alternatives to compare notes with or contrast services against, how do I know that I am providing a desirable and efficient service? Compared to what?
The Tannehills begin their analysis of the State by defining it as a coercive monopoly in classic Weberian fashion:
“Government is a coercive monopoly which has assumed power over and certain responsibilities for every human being within the geographical area which it claims as its own.” (Pg. 32.)
They rightly do not put anything past or any sphere of social interaction beyond the reach of the State; not narrowing it down to night watchmen duties of retaliatory force via police, armies and judges.
The State for the most part interferes with the market through indirect means or the threat of force. The imposition of taxes, regulations, licensing, and credit manipulation skews, suppresses and restricts market actors and participation. The most unfortunate result of this kind of market destruction is the creation of a permanent underclass of poverty level labors. The diminished access to capital and means of capitalization provide ostensible verification for statist apologists to demand more police with greater powers to keep disenfranchised populations under control.
The consequences of one problem becomes the reason for another.”
My Homework, Week 1.
Mar 21st
I enrolled and was one of the lucky 15 to test out C4SS’s new ATP101 – An Introduction to Anarchism. The instructor is the always surprising and refreshing Gary Chartier; who has also provided the internet with his lecture series covering ATP-101. Below is my first weeks assignment, a 500 to 600 word critique of the first 15 pages of the primary text: The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill. As will be apparent I have some problems with their, the Tannehills, normative foundations for anarchism as well as their rhetorical strategy, defenses of retribution and Big Business. I look at the whole experience as fruitful, fun and thoughtful. I hope to be publishing my other homework assignments as the weeks roll on. ALL the Best, –James.
“My reading of the assigned pages, 1-15, of The Market for Liberty has stirred up a number of positive and negative emotional responses. The Tannehills, Linda and Morris, seems to be trying to “scorch the earth” of any rival theories that might be in the minds of the audience. They repeat certain phrases over and over again as if, at first, to head off possible questions the reader might have, but, later on, it feels like it is in order to help the reader correct a bad mental habit.
This rhetorical strategy has positive and negative effects: On the positive, for a reader treading water, barely keeping their head above a tumultuous sea of forced and contradictory bromides, a clear and open desert can be a life changing discovery.
“Finally I can breathe and think,” the reader sighs.
On the negative, this desert should just be a rest stop; one cannot stay there. Life, philosophy and morality are in a continuous flux of changing conditions and shifting contexts. If you try to take the desert with you, you’ll do just that, extending it to cover the forests and lakes of your intellectual landscape.
“The only way a man can be compelled against his will to act contrary to his judgment is by the use or threat of physical force by other men. Many pressures may be brought to bear on a man, but unless he is compelled by physical force (or the threat of force, or a substitute for force) to act against his will, he still has the freedom to make his own choices. Therefore, the one basic rule of civilized society is that no man or group of men is morally entitled to initiate (to start) the use of physical force, the threat of force, or any substitute for force (such as taking something from another person by stealth) against any other man or group of men.” Pg 10.
The Tannehills have created a desert call “non-aggression.” It is a place where everything is permitted, but aggression and aggression is initiated physical force. The statement, “initiated physical force is illegitimate,” is easily acceptable, but the stressed, “only initiated physical force is illegitimate,” sounds insane. The evaluative concept “legitimate” is an index that we use to navigate our moral lives; it points us down paths worthy of exploration and identifies obstacles that are worthy of dismantling. To reduce the concept of “aggression” to only identifying “initiated physical violence” as illegitimate is putting ethical blinders on, always looking at the world from one point of view, and strapping yourself into a practical straight jacket, only reacting to physical violence while dismissing all the other ways humans are warped and adjusted by institutions.
The Tannehills mention the concept “institution” many times in the first fifteen pages.
“But more than enough can be reasoned out to prove that a truly free society – one in which the initiation of force would be dealt with justly instead of institutionalized in the form of a government – is feasible.” Pg 4.
“In all of recorded history, men have never managed to establish a social order which didn’t institutionalize violations of freedom, peace, and justice – that is, a social order in which man could realize his full potential.” Pg 6.
The sociologist Alvin Gouldner defines “institution” in his text book Modern Sociology (1963, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.) as a “societally prescribed system of (more or less) differentiated behavior by means of which recurrent problems are resolved.”
Does “aggression” and “institutionalized aggression” always look, feel or operate the same way? If not, then it might be easy to spot one while the other goes unnoticed all around you, even while you are looking for it. You might even be an active party in its maintenance.”
