Consiga del asno de Kevin Carson: Get off Kevin Carson’s ass
Although he might not appreciate my choice of words, mutualist Kevin Carson’s take on “socialism” makes him a more ideologically correct anarcho-capitalist than most avowed anarcho-capitalists. The occasion that causes me to say that is discovery [here] of criticism of Carson that appears misinformed — ¿No será Carson un socialista vulgar en casi todos los sentidos? — or, with the help of Google translation — Will not be Carson a vulgar Socialist in almost all the senses?
Political discussion is usually imprecise, often quite frustratingly so, even when conducted within the same language. As Alberto mentioned, however, the poster, Pablo MartÃn Pozzoni of Buenos Aires in Argentina, is “a austrian school libertarian” and I feel the post needs to be addressed, regardless of the hazardous potential for confusion inherent to conducting debate across a language barrier. I am by no means bilingual, my understanding of the Spanish language being limited to a handful of obscenities I picked up while working in the restaurant industry several years ago. Even so, I’ll try, with the help of Google translation.
Carson is not an Austrian. The political conclusions Carson has reached, though, are more often than not fundamentally very compatible with the anarcho-capitalism (or as I prefer to say, market anarchism) of Austrian great Murray Rothbard in my view.
Let’s examine what Pablo has to say:
Kevin Carson is a vulgar igualitarista [egalitarian?], as soon as it thinks that if does not tend to the igualitarismo [egalitarianism?] the things are not working well, and as it says to defend the free market, for him the existence of concentration of income is double test that: 1) who they have less income are harmed of the existence of great capitals and 2) that the free market is not working and that then who defend greater opening of the free market in countries with economic inequality in fact they have to be defending estatismo forms, because of another way true a free market - according to him it would take to the igualitarismo. To which it concludes changing the reality by the ideology and equaling the unequal enrichment, social modernization and improvement of the conditions of life in the capitalist countries (that the flame “capitalist of State”) with the empobrecedor igualitarismo the socialist dictatorships (that do not call Socialists… we see: Socialists of State? capitalists of State also)
My understanding of the above is that Pablo basically says that Carson believes the existence of great concentrations of capital confirms that:
- People in poverty are harmed by concentrations of capital.
- The free market is not working.
In my view, this is an inaccurate reading of Carson.
Carson would not (as far as I know) say “the free market is not working” — because Carson, like any Austrian ought to, points out consistently that we do not live in a free market. A free market is best defined as an ideal of zero state intervention in the market — which for all practical matters can not be achieved as long as states exist. Carson denounces state intervention in the market very consistently from what I’ve seen from him, and in this he adheres to the Austrian view better than several Austrians.
Carson would not (as far as I know) say that people in poverty are harmed by concentrations of capital. This confuses cause and effect. He maintains that concentrations of capital are often achieved by state intervention in the market and that these concentrations of capital are maintained by state intervention that frustrates the dynamism of the market. This is by no means incompatible with the Austrian view or classical liberalism in general. Bastiat called this “legal plunder“.
As Austrian great Rothbard asked:
“…Indeed, what is the State anyway but organized banditry?”
What is so preposterous, then, about assuming that the lowliest among us are those who have been stolen from the most, in one way or another? The State is not run for the benefit of the poor and the weak, but for the rich and the powerful. It is a tool for expropriating the wealth of the common person in a thousand myriad ways.
I disagree with Carson on a few topics. We each hold different views on the nature of land ownership, with me taking the Rothbardian view. I take the Misesian subjective view of value, while Carson holds forth his own modified labor theory of value. Sometimes we choose to emphasize different things, but that is a matter of style rather than ideology. Ideologically, though, Carson is closer to Rothbardian than the fake free marketers of the Chicago school are. The battlefield of ideas is a “target rich environment” for the advocate of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism. Picking on fellow members of the broader market anarchist tradition seems like a poor choice of targets to me.
Addendum: I should add that I have been guilty in the past of “picking on fellow members of the broader market anarchist tradition” myself when debating some anarcho-Georgists. For what it’s worth, I’ve had a harder time accepting their reasoning, as it has been presented to me before.
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Brad, I join in your defense of Kevin. I believe you have stated his positions accurately. While I am with you in the Rothbardian camp on land ownership and value theory, I see Kevin as an ally. Every libertarian would benefit from reading his book, which I am reading now. I am learning much.
Thanks, Sheldon.
Reading the people who made this posts, do you understand why so many people in the left are reluctant to even discuss with libertarians? At least it reminded me why I was, until I discovered left libertarians like you, Radgeek, Profesor Roderick or Kevin Carson. By the way, I just joined in the defense of Kevin.
Brad-
I would have to say that Kevin is closer to a Georgist than he is an Austrian…
I said he’s not an Austrian.
sorry…what i meant to write was:
closer to being a Georgist than he is to being an Austrian…
the issue around marginal utility (neo-classical school) is a pretty wide divide to try and build a bridge between Rothbard and Mutualism don’t you think??
besides the issue of land ownership…I would also throw in all aspects of the natural commons (everything that pre-exists human labor) which I believe Kevin is in agreement on.
what would Austrians being willing to give up on in their critique to bring them into an effective coalition with:
1. mutualists
2. catholic distributists/southern agrarians
3. georgists
4. bio-regionalists
??
Well, I can’t “negotiate” for the Austrian school or even claim to be an economist. What I can tell you is that other than the things I’ve mentioned, I see a greta deal of compatibility on a political level with not Austrian economics per se, but the anarcho-capitalism that Rothbard arrived at *through* Austrian economics. That may be a more precise way of putting it than I did above. I hope so, any way.
What I can say about the natural commons is that one aspect of Rothbards thought that avowed Rothbardians commonly overlook is that property rights derive from natural rights rather than from state awards of title. State awards of title are often if not mostly fraudulent. I see the Georgist take on land as a well intentioned effort to address some of the injustices that have arisen from this, but that the problem is best understood as property rights arising from individual rights and injustice in property resulting from fraudulent awards of title to members of the political class, as but another example of the looting the political class engages in at the expense of the productive class generally.
While property title arises from individual rights, free associatio necessarily implies the ability of people to use free association to create stateless institutions of law that would delineate and clarify property title through multilateral and consensual negotiation. Additionally, free association provides the potential for people to own and administer property jointly where a consensus developes that this makes the most sense for a particular situation.
That’s my take on things, and although it’s coming out of an Austrian economics derived viewpoint of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, I don’t see it as being incompatible with what I’ve seen of mutualism. There could be plenty I’ve overlooked, though. Please feel free to point out where you believe I might be wrong.
As a summary, what I should add is that the compatibility I perceive arises not from the Astrians “giving up” a great deal so much as coming to understand the *full* implications of their own ideas better.
property rights derive first from self-ownership and then naturally from the fruits of one’s labor as the logical extention of self.
whereas exclusive use of land (title or no title) is just up until a certain point beyond which it has to violate the absolute property rights to labor of those being excluded.
the title is not the problem but rather the exclusive use beyond a certain point which creates economic rent that is monopolized (with title backed by the state) by the excluder without expending any labor and actually capturing the socially creating surplus land values.
if Rothbardians were trully interested in the greatest amount of equal freedom for the greatest number of people they would calling for the voluntary sharing of economic rent to STRENGTHEN property rights to labor for all.
Well, I’ve already said that disagreement over the nature of land ownership is one of the few things that distinguish Carson’s views from my own (and by extension, Rothbardians generally — at least to the degree that my views are the most correct understanding of Rothbard, anyway).
If you’d like to debate Georgist vs. Rothbardian views on land ownership, we can do that. Do you have your own blog? We could each link to each others posts/responses and go back and forth. It’ll work out great that way for both of us in terms of Google PageRank and a higher profile for the debate generally on Technorati and similar. Contact me if you’d like help setting one up.
As I understand it, the positions break down this way.
- Anarcho-communists like Kropotkin think that land should be owned by and managed by the community.
- Georgists think land should be owned by the community but managed by individual possessors so long as they pay rent to the community.
- Mutualists think individual ownership of land can be acquired by homesteading but that ownership lasts only so long as the owner is currently using it (no absentee landlordship).
- Moderate Lockeans (like Robert Nozick, David Schmidtz, and Locke himself) think individual ownership of land can be acquired by homesteading, subject to some proviso or provisos (variously interpreted) to acknowledge prior rights of the community, and once homesteaded remains one’s property even if one rents it out.
- Extreme Lockeans (like Rothbard — and me) think individual ownership of land can be acquired by homesteading with no need for a proviso, and once homesteaded remains one’s property even if one rents it out.
Since most Lockeans think you lose property rights if you “abandon” a piece of property, one could say the fundamental difference between mutualists and Lockeans is a question of what counts as abandonment (a point Kevin Carson has made). If you look at it that way, it’s not obvious that mutualists are closer to Georgists than to Lockeans.
Among those who accept some version of private ownership, another difference is whether the possibility of common ownership is also endorsed. David Schmidtz, Carlton Hobbs, Randall Holcombe and I have all defended the position that there could and should be cases of legitimate common ownership in a libertarian society. Most Rothbardians reject this view. (I don’t mean that they reject the possibility of contractually-formed partnerships and the like, but they do tend to reject the idea of less explicit and less rigidly bounded forms of common ownership.)
I don’t see why Kropotkinite, Georgist, mutualist, Lockean, etc. forms of property couldn’t peacefully coexist in a libertarian society. There’ll be disputes about title, etc., sure, but under anarchy there’ll be an incentive to resolve such disputes through peaceful arbitration rather than through violence.
On Austrian vs. mutualist economics: well, Kevin’s version of the labor theory of value is much more subjectivised/Austrianised than the better-known Marxian version. There are still differences between Kevin and the Austrians, but they’re more nuanced.
Incidentally, the next issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies features an exchange between Kevin and several Austrians/Rothbardians (including me) on questions of land ownership and economic theory. It will be apparent that there’s a wide range of opinions among Austrians as to how great or small the commonalities between Austrians and mutualists are.
In any case, I don’t think that making common cause between Rothbardians and mutualists has to mean that either side gives up its own views about economics or ownership or stops arguing with the other. But I do favour treating it as a friendly, inside-the-family dispute that doesn’t hinder our working together. A world in which the chief political dispute was between Rothbardians and mutualists would certainly be far preferable to the present one.
By the way, “berserkrl” is me, Roderick Long.
Two more points:
a) Issue 3 of The Industrial Radical is going to be devoted inter alia to the question of Georgist vs. Lockean vs. mutualist vs. etc. approaches to land ownership; we eagerly solicit contributions from all view points on this topic. To submit an article see here:
http://praxeology.net/industrial-radical.htm
b) For anyone interested, here are links to some defenses of the Lockeanism-plus-common-ownership position:
- by Carlton Hobbs:
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=362
- by Randall Holcombe:
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/19_2/19_2_1.pdf
- by David Schmidtz:
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~schmidtz/manuscripts/InstitutionofProperty.doc
- by me:
http://libertariannation.org/a/f33l2.html
http://libertariannation.org/a/f53l1.html
Thanks, Roderick!
so Roderick is it safe to assume that you also put the Georgists in the “friendly, inside the famly dispute” realm?
how about Catholic Distributists/Southern Agrarians?
sorry Brad I don’t have a blog and don’t have the time to blog extensively as I am devoting fulltime efforts to the Second Vermont Republic…
sorry missed this…
the Georgists I hang around with (Sullivan, Altmann, Smith, Hartzok, Flo, Kyriazi) don’t think land should be “owned at the community level but managed by individual possessors”
land ownership is a bundle of rights with use, possession, exclusion, transferability retained by the individual while the economic rent is owned in common and shared equally amongst neighbors in the community to uphold the excluded’s absolute right to their labor.
since the economic rent only appears beyond Locke’s Proviso homesteading free and clear prior to without any obligations is just.
the difference then with mutualism is that there would be a huge amount of land free to homestead and not much economic rent.
regarding anarcho-communists…ownership in common and collective ownership are opposite because common ownership is an individual right that requires no prior consent before access/use but only judge afterwards if it is just whereas collective ownership requires the consent of ALL owners (or their delegated authority) prior to use.
Also George’s view on the labor theory of value is quite nuanced too…which is why he introduced the concept of “value from obligation”. George saw that the amount of value is indeed subjective as it is determined by nothing more than the “higgling of the market”. However, the source of value is not subjective as it depends on one all important objective quality - whether it was or was not produced via human labor…which allowed him to build an economic theory that could finally reconcile freedom and equality.
> so Roderick is it safe to assume that you also put
> the Georgists in the “friendly, inside the famly dispute”
> realm?
Sure. (If Albert J. Nock and Frank Chodorov aren’t part of the family, who is?)
> how about Catholic Distributists/Southern Agrarians?
I confess I don’t know very much about their views.
> the Georgists I hang around with (Sullivan, Altmann,
> Smith, Hartzok, Flo, Kyriazi) don’t think land should
> be “owned at the community level but managed by
> individual possessors”
Yes, certainly all my descriptions of the various views are over-simplifications in need of qualifications/clarifications; those were just the cartoon versions.