“Rothbardians” For ACORN?
Over on the Mises Institute blog, Stephan Kinsella blogs about this miserably inadequate post from a blogger who claims that the breaking-and-entering on the part of the thugs and thieves from ACORN, along with the assistance of their trained parasite squatters, is “libertarian.” He asks everyone to please support ACORN’s efforts to allow freeloaders to live in houses they cannot possibly finance via their own means. Read Stephan’s post for his interesting take on foreclosure resistance, legalese, and Ayn Rand.
I really didn’t want to give him any more attention, but it gets worse than the post Kinsella links to. This post is even more comical. First the blogger says that it is “particularly sad to see Karen DeCoster continually gushing about [Rick] Santelli.” Actually, “continually gushing” = exactly two posts where I mentioned him. Outside of enjoying Rick Santelli’s wild speech on CNBC, I don’t continually gush. Google will prove that well enough. Perhaps Mr. Brad should put away the thesaurus. Second, he says that I “so easily disregard the clear implications of Rothbardian property theory.” He builds in a link to “implications of Rothbardian property theory,” yet the link he builds in points to this post, by him, that does not explain how ACORN antics are “Rothbardian property theory.” He just states “the homes in question are property of the banks have no merit in terms of libertarian theory. Resistance to foreclosures is thus fully libertarian.” That’s it. It is because he says so. The reason he doesn’t support his point with actual links or scholarship from Rothbard is because there is no such thing that exists, from Rothbard, that can support such nonsense.
Of course, those of us who have studied Rothbard, or even those who have known him intimately – like a few people on this site – know that Murray Rothbard would not place himself side-by-side with the ACORN gang of thugs, cheering on their pathetic property grabs at the expense of legitimate owners.
Another important point is that the blogger completely ignores the dismal record of the squatter in question, Donna Hanks, a perpetual ne-er-do-well and professional property plunderer who attempted to live way, way beyond her means at the expense of everyone else, including her creditors. In this post, I linked to the place where you can find the legal records online. The blogger has no quarrel about her refusal to make her mortgage payments even after she refinanced her ATM house and took out $200,000 in cash to blow it on….well, who knows.
The blogger is one of a small group of left-wing (self-described), autarkist, “free-market”-but-anti-capitalist, mutualist, anarcho-syndicalist, agorist, socialist non-libertarians who call their doctrine the real “libertarianism.” They post all kinds of cute, little banners and sayings and signage and logos on their blogs. And for some reason, some of them try to hold up Rothbard as one of their own. To them, Lew Rockwell.com is a brand of “vulgar libertarianism,” meaning people who don’t “correctly apply libertarian principles.”
They are pro-union, favor the proletariat, and hate corporations. They think corporations are illegitimate entities. Perhaps their most farcical claim is that those of us who work wage jobs are wage slaves. (See my post on this.) If you voluntarily contract with a company or individual to produce goods or services for wages, you are a part of the wage-slavery society. This is based on their hatred of formal organization and hierarchy (even if voluntary), as well as envy of careerists and people who earn a high wage. Rothbard spent his entire career fighting these types – he called them the luftmenschen. In fact, Ben O’Neill took apart their “wage-slavery” myth in an article for Mises.org in January 2009.
It’s actually too zany to take seriously, but people should know how this splinter group could possibly come to support the hideous group ACORN and claim that they are acting upon libertarian principles.
bosco… your take?
While I get what Mr. Spangler is getting at it’s very vague and as said above I doubt very much Rothbard (from my readings) would support any such action. Simply because banks are little less than a branch of the government in many respects that does not negate any legitimacy in their property titles. Criminals still have property rights. Rights to those things otherwise legitimately obtained. And in the case at hand where the home had been sold to a new couple it seems they have no case. Even if you subscribe to usage based property rights it was obvious that this property while not being currently lived in was being worked on. Any system which legitimizes that type of usage policy would get very little support in general.
Related posts:
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
The other topic currently making the left vs. right libertarian rounds is the EFCA. Just so you know.
Squatting is an interesting idea. If you are making use of a previous unutilized or severly under utilized resource, more power to you. If you do it long enough and mix your labor with it I say you gain ownership. To me ownership can only be held through continued use of a resource. Now don’t think I’m too ignorant to see the myriad of subjevtivities in the situation I just described above. Ultimately you’re going to need some sort of method of mediation to resolve disputes and determine what constitutes underutilization and appropriate utilization.
I am pro-union (voluntary, participatory). I favor the proletariat and if you want to throw other rusky words at me to vilify me I also like the fundamental idea of a soviet. I think the idea of corporate personhood is bad, and I believe many people are consumerist wage-slaves who lack the education to navigate their way out. I don’t really like formal organization and heirarchy, but I don’t envy high wage earners. So I guess I’m a cliche.
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:55 am
Being pro-union as in free association of individuals is not what is implied there. (Though even in a free market unions could distort wages relative to non-union free agents. Forcing up costs and prices in a geographic area. Likely only temporarily.) I don’t really see how the proletariat really exists. Marx’s belief in what capitalism was was incorrect. I think the agorists have it right. Those who don’t own the means of production in a free market choose not to or can’t because of their lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Either because they are incapable of being capital owners and controllers or because they would rather not take the risk. Most of what I find in the left is the former. Corporate personhood is not in debate and the use in the above quote is incorrect. It seems obvious “business” was meant. Most corporations are small businesses yet you don’t hear the left railing against Alloway Village Hardware and Feed.
Wage slavery really implies serfdom. I fail to see how anyone in today’s world is a serf. Being incapable of figuring out where else to work or what else to do is no more being a slave than ignorance meaning a decision is irrational. Slavery involves force.
Disliking formal organization and hierarchy is fine… to claim however that the left does not often take it to extremes would be willful ignorance. They often argue against it for the sake of it. Ignoring the very obvious fact some people are followers and others leaders (workers and managers) or that vertical organization to a point produces greater efficiency in particular venues. And I absolutely believe there is a strong case to be made for wage envy. Spend any amount of time with leftists and I find the primary complaint is “wage disparity” and others compensation related. They don’t prefix their arguments saying their complaints are of those who have high wages due to government intervention… it is very blanket and hyperbolic. As if there is no separation between the State and a corporation. As if the corporation is 100% illegitimate. The assumption is that if one makes some amount more than others, even voluntarily, it’s a problem. Those people who are so vitriolic toward those wage earners aren’t libertarian. They nearly always, like Noam Chomsky, fall back to coercion (by the state often) to rectify the situation to bring equality to individuals for equality sake. Another idea that historically has lead to very unlibertarian actions by those who believe it strongly.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Let me start by saying I’m willfully underinformed regarding the ACORN issue. It doesn’t interest me terribly so I haven’t devoted much time to it. I can however speak for myself on these other topics and maybe help clarify some of the views of other left libertarians.
The proletariat exists as people who do not own the means of production and work for a wage.
That’s fine. That doesn’t disqualify those people from being the proletariat. Also you’re dismissing the governmental and social influences that prevent people from recognizing the importance of owning the means of production and ultimately their own survival. People remain uninformed or scared of new ideas because of government propaganda campaigns and social programs designed to sedate them.
If someone is ignorant as to the means to remove themselves from a hole in the ground they are effectively a prisoner of any person who set up those circumstances. Likewise if someone has been consistently manipulated into not valuing the importance of controlling the means of their livelyhood, they are a wage-slave. There are social and governmental forces you can use to prevent people from every truly being free and they do not require the obvious use of a gun.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
The term proletariat means more than just people who don’t own the means of production. Everyone would be part of the proletariat at some point. Marx saw them as a different social class. As being exploited by capitalists. As having no other choice. That is simply false.
Owning the means of production is not important for one’s own survival. Most people are not risk takers. Are not motivated. Are not entrepreneurs. Those who do take the risks do so in effect so the rest of us don’t need to. Education does not change that. If one is an entrepreneur one is an entrepreneur. History is jam packed with individuals with no formal education (or one that made no difference) who had drive and succeeded in being capitalists. Being a worker for a wage allows for the survival of billions on the planet. And what does it mean to own the means of production? If the wage earner has no desire to work he has control over the capitalist to that extent. No more or less quantifiable ownership than the one syndicalist of a 100 supposed shared owners of a factory.
“… any person who set up those circumstances.” That is a terrible analogy. No one put you in any circumstance. You are an individual impacted by hundreds of others in a negative, not positive, fashion. To claim society and culture are manipulating individuals removes personal responsibility. No one forces you to attend school and be a cog in machine. You arrogantly assume that people are incapable of seeing the value which you place on things rather than accepting that perhaps other people have different priorities. And again… ignorance is not slavery. Your “freedom” of the mind has just as much huberous as those who claim an action is irrational due to your belief that it was wrong. No one forces anyone to be ignorant. It is the natural and obvious outcome of paternalism and a brief reading of history shows that paternalism is very heavily a product of the left and statists.
Freedom is a negative. The lack of aggression by other right possessing beings. Your anti-ignorance, mental freedom, is a positive. The left’s drive to “free” everyone (in that positive way) inevitably will lead (and historically has led) to anti-libertarian ideas and actions.
Those who wish to voluntarily interact with each other are not the enemy of freedom. It doesn’t matter if you like or agree with those actions. It is those who wish to aggress against others who are the enemy and any discussion otherwise between the so called left and right libertarians are a waste of resources. If the true worry was liberty (NAP,ZAP) there would be none of this stupid back and forth. Let the left vs. right economic system be decided in the market place.
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm
The proletariat is a social class and people are pressed into it by our current government.
I disagree with you as to why people do not wish to own the means of production. Education is not just limited to the formal realm. Those entrepeneurs of which you speak probably had a really good education, albeit non-traditional.
Around here they do.
People won’t see something if they don’t know it exists. If a group of people makes a concerted effort to prevent certain types of information or methods of thought from being known they can do it. You know it, you watch the MSM.
Yes it is if the ignorance was forced on you. This is the crux of our argument.
Agreed. Also even if the market “decides” (even though markets don’t do anything) in a truly free society people like myself are still free to not go along with that “decision”.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I’ve never read anything that claimed government created the proletariat. That’s effectively agorist class theory. The whole idea as I have ever read involves little more than the difference between a lord and his serfs. Wage slavery claims that those individuals have no choice. Educated or not.
They don’t force you to go to their schools. There is a bit of freedom in schooling. There are plenty of privately educated people who are members of modern corporate society. Just as there are plenty of people who went to government school and aren’t part of the system.
I think you should do more research on humanity in general. If you think that all the inventors, dreamers, and generally motivated individuals of the world were given really good educations relative to others around them you seem entirely ignorant of history. There is far more to life, to one’s personality, to one’s ability than education.
How is that even close to being true? Please explain every philosophical idea ever conceived, religion, art, etc.? I didn’t grow up in any different environment from my sister or hundreds and thousands of others. Yet I have a very different view of the world.
Ignorance can’t be forced on you. No one has control of your mind. Your imagination. Your reason. I went to government school like everyone else. My parents are statists (though mildly in most cases). My sister works for the military. I choose to educate myself. I choose to search out more information. The knowledge is out there. If you have no desire to find it that can not be blamed solely on any one or group. Some people have the drive to learn and expand… some don’t. And anyway how is that different than any other group? Since when were you presenting anarcho-capitalist views or fascist or Keynesian or socialist democratic views? You know they exist. Why aren’t you actively trying to educate people of them so they can best make a decision of what is best for themselves? At what point is it censorship? Is it because I know it exists and refuse to air it? Is refusal to proactively provide info censorship? Creating ignorance? Why does it matter? You are free to challenge them. Censorship in and of itself is not a problem. That action taken by those in government by force are. But only because of the force. Knowledge is ever expanding. Everyone is ignorant at some level. And just because two people have exactly the same knowledge doesn’t mean they make the same decision as you seem to imply. As such you are trying to take away responsibility from people while at the same time blaming others for theirs. It’s contradictory. Why is Morgan and Rockefeller held to some higher moral or social standard than Jim the plumber or janitor or software engineer? Couldn’t it be too that they (the former two) are ignorant? They appear to have been ignorant of liberty and its advantages. Or perhaps they weren’t. Maybe they just disagreed. They believed they could bring efficiency, rises in the standard of living, increase happiness to the general public through education. Sounds really similar to the lefts mantra. Only difference is that the libertarian left claim not to want to force it on people. But if that’s true why focus so much energy on those things that aren’t actually forced on people? Why the priority on equality through education, a very subjective and vague and highly debated topic, than on the obvious NAP infringements and negative liberty? The positivism of which the left puts forth leads fairly naturally to the desire to control others. It is implied in its assumptions of human helplessness.
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
For those of you interested in the ACORN thing and resulting left-libertarian brouhaha that followed, this is a pretty good comment.
Bile, I’ll give you my response to your comments tomorrow.
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I’m not sure that response by Knapp actually addresses anything. He just said he doesn’t think the person had any homesteading rights and it seems incredibly obvious to me that’s the case given her background, her and ACORNs stated intent and the fact it was sold and under construction when they broke it.
Regardless, Knapp says he doesn’t use capitalism because:
All libertarianism rejects the legitimacy of state involvement in the market completely obviously including corporate personhood and limited liability. That’s a rather meaningless statement.
I’d like to note that the corporation is also not historically strictly tied to the corporate personhood. That idea came about legally due to a Supreme Court case in the late 1800’s.
The whole objection to capitalism due to historical usage is rather silly. By that logic he wouldn’t use any term. Capitalism has a much more consistent usage than socialism or communism or “left”.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Let’s start with the capitalism thing. It amazes me that you don’t like the historical usage of the term capitalism and at the same time you don’t like it’s modern usage to describe the US. So if you don’t like the old usage and you don’t like the current one are you a propent of some sort of special future usage that you’re making up? I’ve already got the bosco special dictionary, can we expect a bile dictionary too?
You’re a product of your experiences. Those experiences are, and continue to be, your education. You cite yourself as an example, yet you are very much a product of how you grew up. You often reference developmental experiences you’ve had when making arguments. You’re not all that disimilar from your sister, father or mother. I’m not absolving people of responsibility, I’m just recognizing the environmental factors that you seem to wholly disregard.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:32 am
“capitalism” has a very well defined textbook meaning today. Private ownership of the means of production and capital plus the economic theory around capital by which resources are controled voluntarily and not by a State. (You should finish up with Human Action.) Even when Marx used it it wasn’t too far from the current meaning. To the contrary, “socialism” has been used by many different people to mean very different things. As has “left” and “right.” I fail to see how complaining that people who are lied to and/or are simply ignorant are misusing a word is a problem. I do the same for communism, socialism and other isms. Knapp is being rather silly to adopt “left” rather than “capitalist” because he thinks the fact that the original author meant mixed economy (which given the research i’ve done is false, he wasn’t using it as an all encompassing ideology) or that it’s missed used today when “left” has had far more and varying usages throughout time. If he doesn’t believe in capitalist economic theory that’s fine. But that’s not what was said. I’m pretty sure that Rothbard was far more read and knowledgeable than Knapp, you or I and he made the term anarcho-capitalism well known. I don’t believe he would have designed a purposely misleading name as libertarian socialism is. Note that there are lots of X-capitalisms. “crony”, “state”, “state monopoly”, “corporate”, etc. They all are distortions of capitalism proper. If the term was so vague as implied those adjectives would be generally ignored just as you have very few adjectives to “socialism.”
You are not a product of your experiences. You can be changed by them. Internalizing them in your unique way. You are not a creation of them. Not a “direct result; a consequence.” Science shows you wrong. Identical twins separated at birth have very similar traits. Similar interests often, similar motivations. They have different experiences but they have the same (or damn similar) foundations. Every person is different. That difference is a combination of genetics, environment, experiences and education.
To call all experiences “education” in the proper sense of the word is rather disingenuous and looks to me to be a way to divert my claims of that a call for education is inevitably a call for positive action toward individuals.
education
1. The act or process of educating or being educated.
2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process.
3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level
experience:
1. The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind
2. Active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill
Experience is everything you encounter in life. It is not in the proper sense “education.” Education is positive, often planned. Experience is both positive and negative. Planned and not.
I in no way disregarded the role of environment. I pointed out that you place it as the sole factor in life and that is blatantly false. If one was a product of just their environment or experiences man would not progress without external involvement. There would be no advancements. Your comments do absolve people of responsibility because you are stripping away the concept of free will, uniqueness, and the idea that one can impact and change their environment.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:50 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Anarcho-capitalism_and_anarchism