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The uniquely toxic form of libertarianism in the US and is a symptom of private power and influence run amok.
This is just a snippet of the interview with Noam Chomsky, I recommend you go read the entire article on Alternet.
Wilson: Why should we choose anarchy, as opposed to, say, libertarianism?
Chomsky:Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society. Actually that has been believed in the past. Adam Smith for example, one of his main arguments for markets was the claim that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets would lead to perfect equality. Well, we don’t have to talk about that! That kind of —
Wilson: It seems to be a continuing contention today …
Chomsky: Yes, and so well that kind of libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. Anarchism is quite different from that. It calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private power concentrations. So why should we prefer it? Well I think because freedom is better than subordination. It’s better to be free than to be a slave. Its’ better to be able to make your own decisions than to have someone else make decisions and force you to observe them. I mean, I don’t think you really need an argument for that. It seems like … transparent.
The thing you need an argument for, and should give an argument for, is, How can we best proceed in that direction? And there are lots of ways within the current society. One way, incidentally, is through use of the state, to the extent that it is democratically controlled. I mean in the long run, anarchists would like to see the state eliminated. But it exists, alongside of private power, and the state is, at least to a certain extent, under public influence and control — could be much more so. And it provides devices to constrain the much more dangerous forces of private power. Rules for safety and health in the workplace for example. Or insuring that people have decent health care, let’s say. Many other things like that. They’re not going to come about through private power. Quite the contrary. But they can come about through the use of the state system under limited democratic control … to carry forward reformist measures. I think those are fine things to do. they should be looking forward to something much more, much beyond, — namely actual, much larger-scale democratization. And that’s possible to not only think about, but to work on. So one of the leading anarchist thinkers, Bakunin in the 19th cent, pointed out that it’s quite possible to build the institutions of a future society within the present one.
Before my libertarian friends get entirely up in arms I’d like to preface this article with a disclaimer. This is not a’ beat up on libertarian inanity’ post, I have plenty of those already, but rather an examination of the role of the state when it comes to managing the affairs of a country. Now as to what the optimal mix is between the public/private is, is quite contentious. In my opinion, the social democratic state a la Sweden or to a lesser extent Canada does the best at preserving choice and liberty while keeping its citizens safe from “free-market” discipline and providing the social services necessary for a smoothly running society. Unfortunately for Mexico, they have been herded far away from anything resembling a social democratic state.
Mexico, the biggest loser in the NAFTA free investors agreement has never recovered from the trauma. Local industry and manufacturing was gutted with the influx of tariff free American goods. Local agriculture was hollowed out as tariff free food-stuffs made farming unprofitable with people leaving the land en mass (Our churlish Canadian federal conservatives are dismembering our single desk wheat board, moving us merrily closer to the Mexico model, yaaaa!) . What was left intact in Mexico was drug cultivation and production, as illegal trade tends not to respect treaties or borders (kinda like a different shade of NAFTA, creepy eh?) While the Mexican economy is going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the government was forced to adopt many of the notorious structural adjustments that we tend to enforce on even poorer countries to cut the ‘fat’ out of government spending.
What constitutes “fat” are programs that strengthen the social fabric and cohesion of society: Health Care, Education, and Welfare. Obviously the state has no business in areas like these, and the inevitable cuts destroy the social safety net for a countries citizens. Another step toward that lovely Darwinian state of being that is so often bandied about by libertarians. Survival of the fittest, personal liberties and freedom from government interference. Most of the time, your freedom consists of choosing how you and your family can starve or how quickly you can be come destitute if your unlucky enough to get sick. As the structures of the state fall away society morphs closer to the “me first, once I get mine, fuck you” attitude that exemplifies the majority of libertarian thought. Altruism, community, social supports all decay as the struggle to survive quickly marginalizes these now luxurious concerns. “How can I help my community?”, is trumped by, “How can I feed my family?” and necessarily so.
The emergence of the Mexican Narco state is the response to “how can I feed my family?”. The Narcotics industry is profitable, and there are many jobs available, positions that need to be filled and are filled by desperate people who struggle to exist in Mexican state that has been economically and socially hollowed out by ‘market forces’. The violence continues as the Cartels struggle for territory and power while the enfeebled state attempts to maintain order.
“The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped in the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country’s two main drug cartels.
The bodies were found early on Thursday in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city, according to several local media.Most of the men died of asphyxia, according to officials in Jalisco state where Guadalajara is located, though initial reports indicated some had been shot. Mexican drug cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of sowing fear and taking credit for their actions.”
This is a version of the free market in action. With no rules, no regulation, everything is on the table.
“The victims, apparently between the ages of 25 and 35, all had the words “Milenio Zetas” or “Milenium” written on their chests in oil, said Jalisco state Interior Secretary Fernando Guzman Perez. A law enforcement official who was not authorised to speak on the record said the writing was apparently meant as the killers’ calling card, identifying the assassins as being from the Zetas and a smaller, allied gang, the Milenio Cartel. The official said a banner found in one of the vehicles, whose contents Guzman Perez refused to reveal, was in fact signed by the Zetas. The killings, apparently carried out before dawn, bore an eerie similarity to the September 20 dumping of 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz.”
The desperate poor a set on each other killing themselves for their small slice of “the action” so they and their families might survive another day.
“Our correspondent said the federal government was steadfast in its decision to continue using the full force of the state to battle the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel.
“Despite all of those efforts … these kinds of killings continue here and there’s a sense at times that the federal government is really unable to control these kinds of possible revenge killings by trafficking organisations,” he said. Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, has deployed the army to crack down on powerful criminal gangs and some 45,000 people have died in the conflict since he took office.”
The Drug War continues in Mexico. We are at least partially responsible for what has happened there, and what continues to happen there (we provide the market for the narco state’s end products).
Well, explained more than F-you, I’ve got mine.
Gleaned from Pharyngula, a post from Jadehawk.
I think that it’s possible to have libertarian values and still like things like governments and taxes and social programs.
yup. That’s called being liberal, progressive, or even anarcho-syndicalist, depending on the exact ratio of “libertarian” values to government/taxes/social programs
I concede the point that the phrase Libertarian has been tainted by the Tea Party
oh it was tarnished way before that, sometime around the time free-marketeers stole the label from what are currently called leftwing anarchists.
This is for reference for those who are curious:
oh FFS. Weve gone over this before. almost every single point is phrased in such a way that it, by omission, permits the limiting of freedoms of the non-privileged. a few examples:
Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government. Our support of an individual’s right to make choices in life does not mean that we necessarily approve or disapprove of those choices. […] Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships.
IOW: if a privately owned hospital wants to deny you visitation rights because you’re gay, well, that’s tough shit: not only can’t the government tell them to stop on principle, you’re not allowed to legally make yourself your loved one’s “next of kin” to gain legal visitation rights on an individual level, because marriages aren’t the government’s business.
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.
IOW, libertarians don’t want the government to fund PP, because poor women don’t deserve the same right to “conscientious consideration” than rich women do.
The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression.
IOW, libertarians support power-balances in negotiations, since only employers are allowed to consist of more than one person; employees may not.
libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner.
well, too fucking bad then that you can either have a competitive, or a free market, not both, since a free market tends towards monopoly over time, since competition is expensive. And evidence suggests that libertarians in fact support a free, non-competitive market.
Property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights.
IOW, owning shit is just as, or more, important than not starving, not freezing to death, and not dying of preventable disease.
Where property, including land, has been taken from its rightful owners by the government or private action in violation of individual rights, we favor restitution to the rightful owners.
except the Indians. They can’t have America back, we stole it fair and square.
All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor.
except workers, since we’re against the minimum wage. workers should hand over most of the fruits of their labor to their corporate overlords.
We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution
again, because owning shit is more important than not starving, not freezing to death, and not dying of preventable disease.
Education, like any other service, is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality and efficiency with more diversity of choice.
IOW, libertarians know nothing about education, except that poor people don’t need it. Oh, and positive externalities don’t exist, which is why the free market will have no problem allocating the right amount of education to the right people; meaning not-poor people.
We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system.
poor people don’t deserve the freedom that comes from knowing that the next bout of illness isn’t going to kill and/or bankrupt you.
etc. ad nauseam. The fucking platform itself is evidence for what people have been saying on this thread: that libertarianism supports the rights of the dominant group to remain the dominant group; it does not support factual freedom for everyone, only the freedom of those who can buy everything.
Thanks JadeHawk :) Oh and another great summary from the same thread…
John Scalzi wrote the best paragraph ever on glibertarians. Here it is:
I really don’t know what you do about the “taxes are theft” crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally entitled, generally soft and pudgy asses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That’ll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/26/tax-frenzies-and-how-to-hose-them-down/
Noam Chomsky again pushing debate to the margins where you get a glimpse of how the world works and how we have allowed our debate to be warped by the radical priorities of corporate culture.
I’m not a big fan of Capitalism, nor its ideological bretheren libertarianism and objectivism. And to my critics, yes I know…markets are wonderful they give us lots of choice blah blah, free market blah blah blah.
It would be all good if we could get away from the tremendous income inequalities that are endemic to capitalism. Exploitation of the working class, the environment and even the state itself are all corollaries of the capitalism we know today.
Spare me the tales of the working business man fettered by government regulations and taxes. Without the superstructure the state provides, you would not even have a business. When discussing economic systems it never fails that I must cut through the glowing capitalist mythology to get even remotely close to what is really going on in the world.
I assume that it is why it is so difficult to debate Libertarians and Objectivists because their respective points of view dovetail so succinctly with capitalist ethos. Greed is good, and if I am doing well then by that virtue others will benefit when I accumulate more wealth.
Whoops, more free market mythology. It grows on ya, like ringworm.
What galls me more is the impertinence of the business class. Privatizing the profits and letting the public assume the risk seems to be the grand strategy and sadly we let them get away with it. Consistently.
You know that state when you just wake up, before your morning pandiculation and daily ablutions, where your consciousness is really neither here nor there? Just floating, mildly cognizant of your surroundings in a happy grey state?
The people of Alberta are exactly like that, wandering about in a comforting political miasma, becoming activated only when the government decides to make further cuts to education, healthcare or privatize a lucrative public utility. Like dessicated Zombies we moan louder for awhile then fall back into our happy conservative haze knowing that we really cannot change anything and as long as business is happy, we are happy.
On to the vibrant political stage in Alberta ( a whopping 41% turnout last election coronation) we have new contender, new blood, a new vision for the province, we have Danielle Smith and the jack booted fascist Frasier institute stormtroopers Wild Rose Party. Alberta has been in the throes of right wing lunacy since before I was born (38 years and counting) and the prospect of going even further right (with a libertarian outlook to boot, ooooh how I love their batshite-craziness) is about appealing as a warm bowl of cockroaches and milk for breakfast.
For some idea of what Danielle Smith brings to the table lets look at what Keith Brownsey, political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary says:
“With vague policies of less government, less taxes, more individual rights and freedoms, the party can have broad appeal, he said. But that changes with Smith because supporters and critics can now point to her track record.
On the campaign trail, Smith challenged provincial changes to oil royalties that she said have sent investment dollars elsewhere.
‘Elsewhere’ being the multi-nationals and assorted corporations that want it *all* instead of just most of the profits from Alberta’s natural resources.
She promises to push individual property rights to the top of the agenda – no land expropriated without due consultation and compensation.
Oh look a meaningless bout of populist hand-waving to con persuade rural voters that the Wild Rose Party really cares about them.
She wants to revamp health care to match models where health providers are paid per job done rather than in a lump sum.
The Americans, currently mired in a pay per job done system are saying that a lump sum payment is the solution. – “Dean also argued that passing some sort of healthcare reform is crucial for Democrats politically if they want to hold onto their majority. He closed the event by arguing for increased compensation for primary care physicians, perhaps even through a salary structure that would allow them to spend more time with patients. “If physicians were paid in a lump sum, rather than by the procedures and tests they perform, we could deliver extraordinary care,” he said.”
Way to go Ms.Smith, already bucking for shiny-awesome Maverick status. *headdesk*
She wants to dump Alberta’s multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage project as a political boondoggle. Carbon capture, still in its infancy, would see greenhouse gases stored underground but at a hefty cost.
Carbon capture and storage is an amazing lead balloon and energy industry masquerade. We need to update our energy infrastructure. If you have not heard of hydricity find out what we should be doing if we want to live comfortably past the fossil fuel era.
On abortion, Smith said that she is pro-choice and that it should be publicly paid for, but only under hardship or special circumstances – not when it’s used as birth control.
Ah yes, a libertarian that panders to her religious hard right constituency. Squaring libertarian ideals with traditional hard right support is a tough one isn’t it Ms.Smith?
“She’s a leader with a very right-wing track record,” said Brownsey.”
I caught a National Post Blogger’s take on the WRP and Ms.Smith.
“Ms. Smith’s is plainly to the Tories’ right: she looks to the Fraser Institute for health care reform (though vows to respect the Health Act); is skeptical of carbon-curbing efforts since she thinks many Albertans, like her, aren’t totally buying the manmade climate change theory; and promises laws protecting property rights.”
It is a rare day indeed that I agree with anything that comes slithering from the National Post’s direction, but they appropriately framed Ms.Smith as a hard right ideologue who has a marginal grip on reality. Case in point; Ms. Smith’s endorsement of the policies of the Fraser Institute: privatizing health care (CUPE has another take on what our dear neoliberals have to say) and denying climate change are some of the low-lights for your enjoyment.
Progressive politics here we come!
This is just what we need in Alberta to fix our political malaise… gasoline anyone?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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