Notes on Red and Gold Alliance [Part 1]
Let’s take this bit from William Gillis as a cue to proceed with thinking some things through, not necessarily with any particular animus toward the Green, but to examine how Red and Gold complement each other and mesh — in order to elaborate a line of thought that can potentially be extended to include all, or at least most, schools of anti-state thought.
To put it in terms of a high level overview, free market libertarianism and libertarian socialism are, I contend, two sides of the same coin in their most radically anti-state forms. It might also be accurate to say they provide, respectively, the flesh and the bones of “anarchism without adjectives“.
I will elaborate several points in support of this view, but the principal understanding could be characterized, to restate it in yet another way in hopes of breaking through to both sides, as that while the broad libertarian socialist movement gets the broad outlines of anarchism more correct in practice, the free market libertarian movement has a philosophical precision to lend that they have mostly misapplied in the past. Together, we are stronger.
Anti-statism and anti-politics
The anarchist hardcore of both the free market libertarian movement and the libertarian socialist movement are afflicted with smug, condescending, non-anarchist moderates and the burned out or cynical pseudo-anarchists (”partyarchs”, as SEKIII called them in derision) who enable them. While these moderates may be quite radical in comparison to mainstream political thought, they are statists and they are principally responsible for the stereotypes we all to often hold of each other in the sense of the broader, not-necessarily anarchist umbrella movements (free market libertarism and libertarian socialism).
The corporatist “pot-Smoking Republicans”, so widely cited as an oversimplification and smear of what (free market) libertarians are, can best be understood by the open minded anarchist communist as mirror images of the loathsome Leninist vanguard types and “progressive” Democratic Party hacks they themselves have to put up with. Much like with the mainstream political parties, the statists have been running the good-cop / bad-cop scam on us by encouraging and highlighting stereotypes of each camp.
A couple of talking points on stereotypes…
- Saying “market anarchism” sounds like something concocted by the advertising industry is about as shallow as saying “social anarchism” sounds like they spend all of their time making small talk at wine-and-cheese affairs.
- The “pot-smoking Republican” slur is comparable to saying anarchist communists are just “Hillary voters who like to riot”.
In point of fact, such stereotypes often have a grain of truth in them, but they’re ham-fisted generalizations about groups of individuals with diverse views and practices. Some thoroughly exemplify those stereotypes, a very few are completely untainted by them and the majority are tainted by them in varying degrees. I don’t think the best of either group would like their core ideologies to be judged by the behavior of the worst purported adherents of those ideologies, or even just the mediocre ones.
What’s really interesting about this conflict is that we have a conflict among camps of anarchists that, ultimately, is all about what our second choices are when we give up on anarchism or fail to ever become bold enough to truly embrace it in the first place. It doesn’t take a great deal of perceptiveness to recognize what’s going on with that.
The statists are feeding on us, organizationally. It usually goes the same way in both cases:
- Oh, this anarchism thing is never going to go anywhere. You need to grow up, be practical and fight for our shared ideals of socialism in the context of [insert statist social democratic or democratic socialist something or other here].
- Oh, this anarchism thing is never going to go anywhere. You need to grow up, be practical and fight for our shared ideals of a free market in the context of [insert statist "libertarian" or "small government conservative" something or other here].
As the activist ages, the “moderate radicals” seek to seduce them into statist electoral politics. Often, this is accompanied by playing on the personal financial marginalization dedicated advocates of anarchism often endure from the establishment. The “moderate radical” is, ultimately, on the statist side of the class line according to Agorist Class Theory.
Likewise, “free-enterprise†conservatives, and “libertarian†minarchists call for retention of the State, however restricted or restrained. They are the enemy of the agorists, the free market, and complete liberty. They fall on the statist side of the class line. “The libertarian rhetoric they offer,†Konkin wrote, “may be ‘turned’ or continued to consistency in winning over confused and marginal potential converts  but they offer no material substance for freedom. That is, they are objectively statists.â€Â
I’ll say it again for effect — this is good-cop/bad-cop writ large.
The most important point in setting aside differences may be rather simple — have the courage to be anarchists, instead of acting like statist Constitutionalists in practice or statist social democrats in practice. Reject, and continue rejecting, electoral politics and advocate a stateless society.
Non-aggression and property
Free market libertarians suffer from a confusing multitude of definitions of their creed. Like libertarian socialism, free market libertarianism is not so much of a unified movement and more of a spectrum or family of related movements. The principal such definition I advocate revolves around the Non-Aggression Principle:
“The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (’aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.” — Murray N. Rothbard, essay “War, Peace, and the State” in the anthology The Myth of National Defense edited by Prof. Hans Herman Hoppe
Stated more succinctly, perhaps:
“No one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, nor to delegate its initiation.” — L. Neil Smith
While many libertarian socialists may find the NAP basically non-controversial in and of itself, initial objections commonly focus on inclusion of property. There’s much that can and should be said in regard to this, but perhaps the key point is that real libertarians don’t defend all purported property, but only justly acquired property. Mutualist Kevin Carson has examined this before and shown how this leaves plenty of ideological room for “socialist” revolutionary redistribution of property that still fits entirely within the framework of the free market libertarian non-aggression principle and legitimate property rights. Please refer to Libertarian Property and Privatization: An Alternative Paradigm and A “Political” Program for Anarchists.
I should perhaps note in passing that I do have my small differences with the ideas of Kevin Carson and Carlton Hobbs in those essays, mainly in that I view the best approach to the treatment of “the commons” as treating it as the jointly held property of explicitly formed voluntary associations, as opposed to vaguer notions of a socially managed commons. The main thrust of the article is entirely valid, though. Terrific, in fact. As Carson notes at the end:
“If libertarianism continues to be perceived in this way, as an elaborate justification of sympathy for the haves against the have-nots, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of ever achieving victory. But if we act on the principles of non-aggression and non-coercion, even when those principles are harmful to big business, we will have the basis for a genuinely libertarian coalition of left and right that can storm the citadel of the State. I hope I have provided some concrete examples of how these principles can be applied in response to current issues.”
There are misunderstandings that need to be addressed in regard to the terms “property” and “private property”.
From the perspective of a free market libertarian, all legitimately held non-state property is “private property”. Private property, in this understanding is just another term for “property”. It’s the opposite of “public property”, which is another way of saying “State property”; and since the state is nothing but a bandit gang with flags, the State is not the legitimate owner of any property. Private property is understood in this sense as simply the property of non-state actors, meaning individuals or voluntary associations. If your local anarchist collective runs an infoshop that sells books, the books you have for sale are your collective’s “private property” and must be handled according to the standards set forth by (or expectations of) the membership of that collective as a whole.
Free market libertarians need to remember, conversely, that the term “private property” in the libertarian socialist ideological framework is approximately what we would identify as illegitimate or fraudulently held property. The term raises a red flag (no pun intended) because it is synonymous with injustice and theft to the libertarian socialist. While we may have a more precise understanding of when property is legitimate or not, we’re in the unenviable position of trying to explain what we conceive of as a superior theory of “good” while calling it (effectively) “evil” to the ears of our target audience. This leads to an extraordinary amount of frustration, naturally. Please, remove the term “private property” from your vocabulary when talking to other anarchists and, instead, simply say “property” and try to explain you see some property claims as legit and others not.
Ultimately, legitimate property rights and the non-aggression principle are the heart and soul of real libertarianism and they are compatible with, even necessary for, a thoroughly anti-state libertarian socialism. After all, isn’t the whole point of “socialism” that “capitalism” is ripping off the workers? Refer also to mutualist Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Corporate Capitalism As a State Guaranteed System of Privilege”.
To begin to grasp the basics of the non-aggression principle (or “individual liberty”) as the hard, crunchy center of libertarianism (to even include genuinely anti-state libertarian socialism, as we shall see), I can’t recommend enough to libertarian socialists the following presentation from the International Society for Individual Liberty, entitled The Philosophy of Liberty:
Up next, Part 2 — Polycentric Law, The Panarchist Framework and Libertarian Communism. Until I get that finished, enjoy Kerry Thornley’s “In Defense of Libertarian Communism”.
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To my knowledge, “The Myth of National Defense” was authored by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, not Murray Rothbard.
@iceberg — You’re right, of course. I copied & pasted the attribution to Rothbard along with the quote itself off B.K. Marcus’s page that I linked to. Off the top of my head, I imagine that Marcus got that from first reading that passage quoted from Rothbard somewhere IN Hoppe’s Myth of National Defense, although I need to verify that. In the meantime, I’ll edit it to say “quoted in The Myth of National Defense”.
Correction — The Myth of National Defense is an anthology edited by Hoppe. Rothbard’s essay in it, containing the quoted passage, is “War, Peace and the State“. The cited passage can be found on page sixty-six (66).
I’d like to clarify libertarian socialist reactions to the term “private property” based on my own experience discussing things with other libertarian socialists.
The most common approach distinguishes “possession” from “property.” “Property” can mean any claim of ownership, but most often [in these contexts] “property” refers to absentee claims of ownership, while “possession” refers to occupancy and use.
If precision is more important than brevity, “possessive property” and “non-possessive property” can be used, and “Lockean property” and “non-Lockean property” (or “labor-based property” and “non-labor based property”).
The distinction is most important for land or other means of production, so that “personal possession” and “personal property” are roughly equivalent, and references to “personal property” don’t bug most libertarian socialists like unqualified assertions of “private property” or “state property” can. The exact scope varies. Proudhon’s later works seem to describe using use/possession as the main consideration for land, and original creation [of the goods] as the main consideration for capital. Some anarchocommunist works seem to dismiss original creation [of the goods] entirely.
But - setting aside the exceptions for extra-precise terms and for personal property, the objection is usually to “private PROPERTY” not to “PRIVATE property.”
Mike Erwin
P.S. I don’t mean to suggest there’s a right terminology or a wrong one.
Mike wrote:
“The distinction is most important for land or other means of production, so that “personal possession†and “personal property†are roughly equivalent, and references to “personal property†don’t bug most libertarian socialists like unqualified assertions of “private property†or “state property†can.”
Just curious Mike.
What in your opinion do libertarian socialists make of the distinction between common property (individual equal rights) vs. collective property (joint rights that tend towards unequal the farther abstracted away from consensus one strays) - what you are calling “state property”?
Mike, that’s an instructive distinction. Thanks for sharing your perspective on that.
When it comes to “private property”, it seems to me that libertarian socialists are the ones that need to redefine their terms in this particular case. Just as the socialist usage of the word “capitalist” is more correct than the right-libertarian usage, the market anarchist usage of the phrase “private property” is more correct than the socialist usage. Propagandists of all stripes should use the commonly-accepted meanings of words unless they wish to alienate their potential audience.
[...] - Notes on Red and Gold Alliance [Part 1] “Saying “market anarchism†sounds like something concocted by the advertising industry is [...]