BradSpangler.com

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I’m not particularly interested in making government policy work. I am about to make a rare policy suggestion, though — with other notable ones being stuff like “quit waging war” and so forth.

The Cato Institute recently published an article about how great it would be for the California state budget and economy if the tyrannical bastards in Sacramento eased up on all of the licensing board bullshit — as if they have any business requiring permission slips to engage in productive activity (without harassment by their agents) in the first place.

While such liberalization would be an improvement, that’s because peaceful and productive people have a natural human right to be left alone in the first place. The reason I’d like to see it happen has nothing to do with the California state budget crisis. Also, it’s not clear that such liberalization would, alone, address the California state budget crisis.

What would have a fair chance of really addressing the California state budget crisis, without a Federal bailout, would be California secession from the United States — complete with impoundment of outgoing Federal tax payments and across the board 50% refunds. The state budget and overall economy would likely improve, considering there’d be a lot less ruling class parasitism draining wealth from the productive economy. As a bonus for the conscientious, there’d be that much less imperialism being financed abroad.

Secession, though, is one of those topics where the anarchist often has difficulty with wholeheartedly offering either support or opposition. Anarchism itself can perhaps be understood, at its core, as support for a right of all individuals to “secede” from anything — freedom of association, in other words. Conventionally, though, political secession involves supporting a new or potential smaller state in its efforts to break away from a larger state. And since we don’t support states, the seeming dilemna arises.

A big part of the obstacle for the anarchist is simply the hypocrisy of the typical statist secessionist, who says “We should be free to separate from them, but you shouldn’t be free to separate from us“. Which the anarchist, of course, recognizes as balderdash.

As the US Empire races toward ever greater economic meltdown, though, questions of secession will arise with greater and greater frequency. As the federal cancer metastasizes, it’s only natural to think “We could do better locally or regionally”. In many cases, fears of a new localist authoritarianism can add to the confusion and uncertainty. What I propose, then, is a simple standard for limited, conditional support by anarchists for secession efforts.

It seems to me that, AT A MINIMUM, conditional support for a secession effort by any political sub-division would require that political sub-division extend an explicit guarantee of the same right of secession to AT LEAST the next smaller size political sub-division that constitutes it.

Discuss.

It is with some sadness that I note that Professor Roderick Long is running for chair of the Libertarian Party of Alabama. While I don’t see partyarchs as deserving of strong moral condemnation in quite the same way that Konkin or voluntaryists like George Donnelly might, some strategies can be so wasteful or counter-productive that we might draw ancillary, “second order” moral conclusions about them based on their results rather than the methods themselves. But, then, my own political history includes many years with the Libertarian Party during which I wish I had been more resolute and not so easily pressured by older activists into seeking the false respectability of supposed “moderation”. So, surrounded by glass, I won’t be throwing to many stones, I suppose. But I won’t entirely avoid these topics either.

Like Long, I haven’t quite wholly bought the argument that the electoral politics approach to libertarian activism is, in and of itself, evil. I’m somewhat sympathetic to such arguments. I’m aware that it can draw the libertarian into evil political acts and believe that there is no “libertarian” way to rule in terms of overall state policy. Personally, though, I’ve found it more compelling to note that electoral politics is principally a grave strategic error because it disguises the task before us. As I see it, the task of the radical libertarian (i.e. agorist) revolutionary is not to shape state policy but to combat the illusory moral legitimacy of the state — and in doing so to build a revolutionary class consciousness of the productive class (i.e. workers and entrepreneurs) that can result in snowballing peaceful and productive disobedience ultimately capable of displacing the state.

Long and I share thinking that, in some ways, isn’t terribly far apart on these matters — except on some rather crucial points. Where he says the following:

The objection that activism via a political party will mistakenly encourage people to focus on political campaigns rather than on building alternative institutions is, I think, well-taken; but that danger has to be balanced against the party’s usefulness as a tool of education.

…I find myself agreeing with the form of the statement itself. If it were a mathematical formula (a + b = c), I would say my objection isn’t to the formula, but the values Long is plugging into it. Simply put, the party isn’t all that useful as a tool of political education. The nature of partisan politics is that efforts and resources that could get used for political education get used up on the “political overhead” endemic to political parties. How Professor Long proposes to “balance” a Volkswagen and a feather duster is beyond me.

Now, the advocates of using partisan politics for purposes of political education will typically, at this point, reply with some statement like “But look at how many people discovered libertarianism through the Libertarian Party! How can you say the Party isn’t useful in that regard?”

Very simply, such objections are just Bastiat’s broken window fallacy all over again. One must, as Bastiat would, examine what is seen and what is not seen. The role of the Libertarian Party in the discovery of libertarianism for many people does not mean it’s well suited for the purpose of promoting libertarianism (rightly understood). Rather, that simply means it has been the most common choice among the prior existing base of libertarian activists. It is as if one were to contend that a dentist’s pick is a useful tool for plowing a field, because you’ve been plowing this field with a dentists pick for 30 years and most of the dirt that’s been moved so far has been moved with your dentist’s pick. That’s simply reflective of your own choices. Pointing to the overhead involved in partisan politics is what indicates those choices were poor choices.

Some recent remarks by Rad Geek seem applicable here:

I’d just want to stress, in addition to what Brad has to say, that the kind of co-optation and self-vitiation that Brad talks about aren’t just tendencies, and they aren’t just the work of some clever set of minimal-statist manipulators. I think that they are built in to the electoral-reformist project itself, necessarily and always — that they are structural limitations that you will always face if your politics is hitched primarily to influence the state or trying to gain a base of power within the state. The process itself only admits of certain outcomes, and the process itself also tends to consume those who put themselves into it.

Let me close by suggesting that perhaps those of us that consider Long a friend might wish to go in together on buying him a Statism Offset.

I recently found myself sending an email explaining why I wouldn’t be promoting a particular establishment think tank’s content.

If you’ve been following events at Bureaucrash, CEI is arguably trying to suppress or boot out the radicals. I, for one, won’t be promoting their content. Let them buy content promotion from all those neocon donors they’re falling all over themselves to pander to.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about with regard to the Bureaucrash activist network, Xaq Fixx’s resignation letter is probably the best overview that can be provided at this point:

Hello Crashers,

I have had the pleasure of working with many of you during our time with Bureaucrash, and some of us have only recently discovered each other. Regardless of whether we are new friends or old allies, I thank you all for your commitment to liberty.

As you all know since the beginning of Bureaucrash the position of Crasher-in-Chief has always been held by very principled libertarians. All were welcomed to be members of the Bureaucrash community so long as they shared the desire to decrease the roll of the state in our lives. Passionate freedom fighters Ryan Oprea, Jason Talley, and Pete Eyre have guided the organization as members and not as top down masters by encouraging people to find their own path to liberty and offering assistance along the way. I had hoped to continue in this tradition if I was passed the sledgehammer. Jason and Pete were some of my earliest supporters, and I thank them for that. There were several other applicants for the crasher-in-chief (CiC) position that I would have gladly worked alongside as they followed the trails blazed by their CiC forerunners.

CEI has decided that tradition has no virtue, and crasher quantity is far more important than crasher quality. Over the past several years they have attempted to exert more control over BC, stifling several pro-liberty projects, hamstringing others, discouraging some issues and encouraging others that fit their narrow vision of liberty that coincides with the interests of their donors. Jason and Pete proved difficult to control, and I would be no better so they hired an outsider with no knowledge of our community. They chose someone that they wouldn’t have to fight with or attempt to mold. I cannot blame them for their hiring decision, because to them it makes sense. Bureaucrash became their brand several years ago and they can do with it what they wish.

Lee Doren to some extent is as much a victim as any of us. He was hired to turn Bureaucrash into a youth outreach organization by a conservatarian think tank. Having no prior knowledge of Bureaucrash tt was not unreasonable for him to expect a crowd that shared similar views. He was also not given help for feedback from CEI after being hired; he was given a site and a password and told to make it work. His views may not be in line with ours, but they are what his superiors were looking for. We could perhaps fault him for taking a job with an organization where he strongly disagrees with the majority of active members, or at least being woefully uninformed about the goals of views of that group but, most likely, he was brought in to reform those things anyway. He is just doing his job, and as this is a voluntary organization we should remember that every government employee is more deserving of scorn and ridicule than he.

Because of CEI’s clear disdain for Bureaucrash’s traditions, and complete lack of respect for all of us, the Crashers, I feel it is time to turn our backs on the Bureaucrash brand. I will no longer be hosting the Podcrash, and will be returning all the equipment to CEI. If they are to offer me the position of Crasher-in-Chief, I cannot in good conscious accept it knowing what they want to turn BC into. I cannot continue to contribute my time, labor, and money to what is becoming a front group for an organization that is aligning itself with the authoritarian right instead of those that love liberty the most.

I would be honored if you would join me in finding somewhere else to unite against the ever growing state. I have created a facebook group, ABC (After Bureaucrash) Action to share some alternatives, and discuss what you want out of them.

Yours in Liberty,

Xaq Fixx

My refusal, of course, generated the same sort of petulant whining in response that one usually encounters from those who, in their hubris, demand radicals act like reformists in the service of a reformism so tepid as to be a de facto factional dispute among the ruling class.

The objection offered basically goes like this: “You’re never going to accomplish anything as anarchists. You need to get serious about the political challenges we face from statists”. And by statists, they mean even worse statists (in their own, statist, judgement).

The libertarian movement has been more or less consistently giving in to that sort of guilt-tripping manipulation from pseudo-libertarian lackeys of ruling class banditry for going on fourty years, and all it has accomplished is the obfuscation of libertarianism. Guys, it’s wearing a bit thin, you know…

More importantly, the demand that radicals abandon radicalism shows a profound ignorance of the dynamics of social change as they manifest in the real world of politics. The continuing crisis of accelerating descent into ever-increasing statism that Young Republican types point to and use to shrilly demand you fall in line behind their at-best-merely-nominally “small government” reform efforts is itself proof that what they ask for doesn’t work.

It’s easy to see why the libertarian movement has been ineffective. Libertarians often roll over for this sort of demand that they let themselves be co-opted by the “small government” statists and thus share in their guilt. In doing so, they fail to hold the radical libertarian banner aloft. In abandoning the project of revolution, political pressure for reform also gets sabotaged.

Effective reform efforts tend to be “conservative” ruling class responses to radical challenges to the status quo. If the tiny minority who *could* be effective radicals capable of building such a radical challenge to the status quo allow themselves to be hectored into acting like reformists, no political pressure for reform materializes and reform doesn’t happen either.

Patri Friedman had a critique of agorism as revolutionary strategy that he shared recently. As Patri’s a super-sharp guy, this seems to demand I make it a priority to address the misconception his objection is based on.

Despite my broad agreement with much of the underlying philosophy, I find this chain of events ludicrous – and I am not using the word lightly. Let us consider one of the largest black markets in the world, the market for illegal drugs, which has been thriving for decades. Has this resulted in market demand for protection agencies to replace the government? Um, no. It has resulted in exactly the opposite – a strengthening of the monopoly provider of security and law. It has given us the militarization of policy, legalized theft via civil asset forfeiture, and a well-funded DEA.

I agree that the direct effect of the black market for recreational drugs is to increase freedom – it provides something the government is trying to ban, thus ameliorating the effect of that ban. As an occasional user of illegal drugs, I think that’s fabulous. But to see black markets as the route to indirectly weakening and eventually toppling governments just doesn’t match up to the evidence. Coercive geographic monopolies on violence work, folks, much though we may hate it.

Yet Konkin, to the best of my knowledge, never said the black market alone is enough. My reading of his thought is slightly different than that, else I would be out running a heroin ring or something instead of blogging. Over and over again he stresses throughout New Libertarian Manifesto and elsewhere the importance of libertarian education and activism.

The real problem is statist “false consciousness” — the sanction of the victims, as Rand would have put it. The perceived moral legitimacy of the state does two things. First, it makes the states prohibitions and other edicts more effective than they would be if people generally looked at them in terms of actual risk from an always finite degree of “law” enforcement. Second and much more importantly, that perceived legitimacy limits the capability of defending one’s self against the state. In short, state power is based on the falsehood of its moral legitimacy.

Markets provide what people want, as best that is economically feasible in a given context. The matter of WHAT IT IS that people might want (i.e. demand) is outside the field of economics. More specifically, if overall demand is not sufficient to bring the capital and labor to bear required to provide the particular product, that product will not get provided at all or supplies will be temporary, hard to find, limited and intermittent at best. That is exactly what we see in the field of anti-state defense services. Statist false consciousness suppresses demand for the service of defense against the state.

Thus, the role of the libertarian activist is to delegitimize the state (and statism generally) in the minds of the public. Konkin called this “pseudo-political” activism, but it’s really market development work in the field of revolutionary defense services. And it’s a necessary role.

In short, Friedman confuses the means of meeting market demand (black markets) with the reason that demand will arise (people coming to value Liberty).

People need to read An Agorist Primer. It’s important. I’ve been promoting sales of the hardcover dead-tree version of the book on agorism.info for several months now. I’ll continue to do so. It’s high time there was a free PDF available, though.