Libertarian Class Theory
Ali Hassan Massoud has a new post: The Great Denial: Liberty and Class-Consciousness
Ali (and others), I don’t know if you’re familiar with this or not, but there is a body of work referred to as Libertarian Class Theory that could use some refinement, re-statement and updating.
It’s essentially the pre-Marxian class theory of Comte and Dunoyer — the struggle of the productive class versus the political class.
For extensive reading on Comte and Dunoyer, this might be a good place to start:
http://homepage.mac.com/dmhart/ComteDunoyer/Title.html
Perhaps the best modern and (relatively) short explicitly libertarian take on it is this essay by Rick Tompkins from when he was running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination back in 1996:
http://sc.ca.lp.org/scl/9605-class.html
I’d love to see some fresh and original work in this vein. I took a tentative stab at it with an article on Rational Review several months ago. I keep meaning to come back to it, but seldom find myself in a position to give it the attention it really deserves.
I’ve heard that Marx had a critique of Comte’s class theory, although I personally haven’t gotten around to researching it yet. What I can tell you is that Marx’s description of primitive accumulation actually meshes pretty well with a Rothbardian outlook, in my own opinion.
Someone might be able to break some new ground by answering Marx’s criticism of Comte from a more informed modern perspective — that is to say, illuminated by a solid understanding of Rothbard and perhaps Konkin. As a suggestion, one person to talk to about this would definitely be Kevin Carson of mutualist.org fame. He’s done a lot in that vein already, particularly with “Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis“.
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Hey Brad!
Don’t worry if they call you a commie. The true is what it is. Anyhow here is my reply to you and Tomkins. More later.
http://alisvoice.blogspot.com/2005/06/reply-to-brad-spangler.html
[...] A historical revolutionary period more closely resembling our own and near future circumstances is the Russian Revolution of 1917. The well-off then typically had gained possession of their wealth not through their own productive activity or voluntary exchange, as Lockean/Rothbardian natural law theory would dictate, but through alliance with the State to unjustly steal wealth from the oppressed. They were the political class. [...]
[...] When we ask how to rule, we are subtly encouraging ourselves to identify with the ruling class. That works to our own detriment, in the long run, because the political class subsists upon the productive class parasiticially. To identify with the State is nothing less than another manifestation of Stockholm syndrome or the twisted loyalty of the abused to their abuser in a domestic violence situation. [...]
[...] Libertarian Class Theory and a proper understanding of the nature of property rights suggest other potential avenues. As I’ve noted before, the true state is the entire political class, the parasitic net beneficiaries of the coercive apparatus of government. One of the most often overlooked aspects of Rothbards thought is that Lockean property rights exist independently of their recognition by government and that, as a bandit gang, the state can not rightfully own anything. While corrupt government “privatization” schemes that benefit large corporations are thus seen as mere transfer of assets to a different arm of the political class, genuine privatization, or people’s privatization, would consist of extra-legal and decentralized asset seizure from all parts of the political class — cooperation in such seizure resulting not from direction by a Bolshevist vanguard party, but by an interlocking network of private arbitrators recognizing the legitimacy of the new “homesteaders” claims to the formerly unowned parcels of property. [...]