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Castro has passed on

Do we mean different things by "libertarian"? I recall the word has very strange political connotations in the USA.
 
I remember when I first read Michael Crichton's "Sphere", I imagined Captain Barnes as Fidel Castro.

..... that's all I got.
 
Craig B said:
Do we mean different things by "libertarian"? I recall the word has very strange political connotations in the USA.
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Libertarian essentially means anarchist. In the US however "libertarian" denotes a form of fascism. To make the confusion complete some US "libertarians" have started to call themselves "anarcho-capitalists".
 
caveman1917 said:
Libertarian essentially means anarchist. In the US however "libertarian" denotes a form of fascism. To make the confusion complete some US "libertarians" have started to call themselves "anarcho-capitalists".
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American libertarians are fascists? Wow, that is perhaps the dumbest thing you've ever said. American libertarianism is pretty much the opposite of fascism. The former is about minimal government, the latter maximal government. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
 
Ziggurat said:
American libertarians are fascists? Wow, that is perhaps the dumbest thing you've ever said. American libertarianism is pretty much the opposite of fascism. The former is about minimal government, the latter maximal government. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
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:rolleyes:

1. Fascism is not "maximal government". It is the combination of a neo-liberal economic policy (privatization of state enterprises) with handing direct control over the state's repression apparatus to capitalists to be used for breaking up strikes, imprisoning union leaders, etc. It is effectively the merger of the state and private capital.

2. US-libertarianism is not "minimal government". It is also the combination of a neo-liberal economic policy with handing direct control over the state's repression apparatus to capitalists to be used for breaking up strikes, imprisoning union leaders, etc. It is also effectively the merger of the state and private capital.

The only - cosmetic - difference lies in which way this is supposed to take place. In orthodox fascism the method lies in taking control of the existing state apparatus and then handing it over to private capital. In US-libertarianism the method consists of abolishing the existing state apparatus and letting each capitalist construct their own personal repression apparatus, through so-called "private police", "private justice", "private prisons", etc. These are then claimed to uphold something called a "NAP" - a ******** set of rationalizations for, among other things, breaking up strikes and imprisoning union leaders.

Well, I guess you could call US-libertarianism a blend of fascism and feudalism since it isn't nationalism-based (ie merger of private capital with a national state apparatus) but more local-fiefdom-based with each capitalist owning their own "private state". Still, it's effectively indistinguishable from fascism other than the scale.

ETA: oh and then there's that strategy of co-opting and recuperating left-wing terminology such as "libertarian" - that really gives it away.
 
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caveman1917 said:
2. US-libertarianism is not "minimal government". It is also the combination of a neo-liberal economic policy with handing direct control over the state's repression apparatus to capitalists to be used for breaking up strikes, imprisoning union leaders, etc. It is also effectively the merger of the state and private capital.
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Yeah, no. This is delusional.

US-libertarianism the method consists of abolishing the existing state apparatus and letting each capitalist construct their own personal repression apparatus, through so-called "private police", "private justice", "private prisons", etc.
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Again, no. None of this is libertarian. Do you even know any American libertarians? Because you're just making stuff up.
 
Ziggurat said:
Yeah, no. This is delusional.



Again, no. None of this is libertarian. Do you even know any American libertarians? Because you're just making stuff up.
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Well, unmake it for us. The American use of the expression is a bit mysterious to the European mind.
 
Craig B said:
Well, if you have no comments to make on the points raised since you linked that article, we'll have to be content with what it has to tell us.
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I have comments to make, but it would be helpful to know what exactly you need commenting upon.

I'll expand a little on the issue of unions, though. In the US, unions enjoy certain legal privileges. In some cases, for example, unions can legally prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees. Courts can also force companies to negotiate with unions. And libertarianism does indeed oppose such laws, because they are restrictions on the freedom of people to negotiate and engage in business without coercion. But it is not categorically opposed to unions.

In fact, the libertarian view is that the government cannot prohibit people from forming or joining unions. It's just that unions and employers must negotiate without government interference. Unions are free to organize employees at will, they are free to stage strikes at will, but employers can fire striking employees at will as well. If an employer and a union negotiate a contract, then that contract is as binding as any other contract. Strikers cannot violate the property rights of the employer, but the employer cannot use violence against striking employees either, because both of these violate the non-aggression principle. So this idea that libertarians are in favor of private police throwing union leaders in jail is delusional.
 
Ziggurat said:
No, it doesn't. The non-aggression principle it describes prohibits the sort of "repression apparatus" you describe.
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From here
During his years at graduate school in the late 1940s, Murray Rothbard considered whether a strict laissez-faire policy would require that private police agencies replace government protective services. He visited Baldy Harper, a founder of the Foundation for Economic Education,[74] who doubted the need for any government whatsoever. During this period, Rothbard was influenced by nineteenth-century American individualist anarchists, like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, and the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari who wrote about how such a system could work.[26](pp12–13) Thus he "combined the laissez-faire economics of Mises with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state" from individualist anarchists.[6] In an unpublished memo written around 1949 Rothbard concluded that in order to believe in laissez-faire one must also embrace anarchism.[26](pp12–13)

Rothbard began to consider himself a private property anarchist in 1950 and later began to use "anarcho-capitalist" to describe his political ideology.[75][76] In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state monopoly on force.[75]
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caveman1917 said:
From here
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Anarcho-capitalism is a fringe part of American libertarianism. One of the reasons it's a fringe is that it mistakenly believes these private agencies could be held to the non-aggression principle, and most libertarians recognize this as a mistake. But mistakenly believing that they would abide by it is still different than wanting them to violate it, which is what you allege.
 
Ziggurat said:
I have comments to make, but it would be helpful to know what exactly you need commenting upon.

I'll expand a little on the issue of unions, though. In the US, unions enjoy certain legal privileges. In some cases, for example, unions can legally prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees. Courts can also force companies to negotiate with unions. And libertarianism does indeed oppose such laws, because they are restrictions on the freedom of people to negotiate and engage in business without coercion. But it is not categorically opposed to unions.
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As if not being categorically opposed to unions means anything by itself.

In fact, the libertarian view is that the government cannot prohibit people from forming or joining unions. It's just that unions and employers must negotiate without government interference. Unions are free to organize employees at will, they are free to stage strikes at will, but employers can fire striking employees at will as well. If an employer and a union negotiate a contract, then that contract is as binding as any other contract. Strikers cannot violate the property rights of the employer, but the employer cannot use violence against striking employees either, because both of these violate the non-aggression principle. So this idea that libertarians are in favor of private police throwing union leaders in jail is delusional.
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A breach of contract is aggression, no? Being on the company grounds after your "employer" has "fired" you for being on strike is aggression in the form of trespassing, no? Oh and technically it's not the employer who is using violence, but his private police force - which is merely enforcing his "NAP".

And why not imprison their union leader? The leader of a crime ring conspiring to commit violence against capitalist property rights.
 
caveman1917 said:
A breach of contract is aggression, no?
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Depends how it's breached, but not generally.

Being on the company grounds after your "employer" has "fired" you for being on strike is aggression in the form of trespassing, no?
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Why would striking employees be on company grounds?

And no, it's not trespassing to be on grounds when asked to leave. It's only trespassing if you don't actually leave.

And why not imprison their union leader? The leader of a crime ring conspiring to commit violence against capitalist property rights.
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Again, striking isn't a crime. The libertarian employer's ultimate recourse isn't to imprison anyone, but to fire them.
 
Ziggurat said:
I have comments to make, but it would be helpful to know what exactly you need commenting upon.

I'll expand a little on the issue of unions, though. In the US, unions enjoy certain legal privileges. In some cases, for example, unions can legally prohibit companies from hiring non-union employees. Courts can also force companies to negotiate with unions. And libertarianism does indeed oppose such laws, because they are restrictions on the freedom of people to negotiate and engage in business without coercion. But it is not categorically opposed to unions.

In fact, the libertarian view is that the government cannot prohibit people from forming or joining unions. It's just that unions and employers must negotiate without government interference. Unions are free to organize employees at will, they are free to stage strikes at will, but employers can fire striking employees at will as well. If an employer and a union negotiate a contract, then that contract is as binding as any other contract. Strikers cannot violate the property rights of the employer, but the employer cannot use violence against striking employees either, because both of these violate the non-aggression principle. So this idea that libertarians are in favor of private police throwing union leaders in jail is delusional.
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Strikers "cannot violate the property rights of an employer", and in return - the employer cannot violate the property rights of employees? No, you haven't presented this symmetrical picture. The employer merely has to abstain from "violence". This indicates something known or suspected about US anarcho-capitalism. There are no rights except private financial rights. Therefore workers have no rights - for in this ideology labour input confers no rights - except what individual employees are able to negotiate personally ... against the power of a corporation.

It seems to me that a "libertarian" sought after utopia would be a "Company Town" located in a "Banana Republic". To live there as an employer, of course, not a union member. Company towns are not shining examples of human rights by the way. But that is what your country will return to under the arrangements you have described. I have more respect for the American people than to imagine they will long submit to that treatment, even if racism and bigotry (the perennial trusted weapons of would-be oppressors) are employed as means of dividing and bamboozling them into accepting the yoke designed for their necks.
 
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Ziggurat said:
Why would striking employees be on company grounds?
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Ehm, picket lines, general assemblies, ...? You know, those things which need to be broken up. What exactly do you think the notion of "breaking up a strike" consists of actually?

And no, it's not trespassing to be on grounds when asked to leave. It's only trespassing if you don't actually leave.
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Ok, then what? Suppose I'm in a picket line and the boss's gang showed up telling us to leave, and we refuse, what happens then?

Again, striking isn't a crime. The libertarian employer's ultimate recourse isn't to imprison anyone, but to fire them.
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Apparently depending on the form of libertarianism, his recourse is either to go on the market and buy "protection and judicial services" to both break up the strike and legitimize that course of action, or he is required to pay taxes for that service.
 
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caveman1917 said:
Ehm, picket lines, general assemblies, ...? You know, those things which need to be broken up. What exactly do you think the notion of "breaking up a strike" consists of otherwise?
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Wow, is this wrong. Picket lines are not done on employer property. They're done just outside employer property, on public property (commonly sidewalks). Even under current law, unions aren't allowed to invade an employer's private property in order to stage a strike. Why would they be? And a strikebreaker is someone who works for the employer despite the strike.

Apparently depending on the form of libertarianism, his recourse is either to go on the market and buy "protection and judicial services" to both break up the strike and legitimize that course of action, or he is required to pay taxes for that service.
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Nope. An libertarian employer's recourse in the case of a strike is to either negotiate a settlement with the union, find new employees, or shut down (temporarily or permanently). The difference between the current situation and a libertarian approach is that the current situation often interferes with the employer's ability to find new employees.
 
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