We talk about the epic film “Reds” which follows John Reed as he covers the Bolshevik Revolution as an idealistic journalist with utopian visions of successfully implementing socialism. Our guest is Jon Reed (no relation) and we have a barn-burner of a discussion about this marathon of a movie that has some many discussion-nuggets that our show went a little long.

A Ronald Reagan favorite. #9 on the top ten list of “epics”. An obsession-project for Warren Beatty who would shoot up to 100 takes and keep the film rolling so that he had over two weeks of footage. This movie destroyed his relationship with Diane Keaton and got Gene Hackman to refuse a role a decade later. His speech scene instigated the crew to strike over “exploitation” demanding higher wages.

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Google Description

Reds

American journalist John Reed (Warren Beatty) journeys to Russia to document the Boleshevik Revolution and returns a revolutionary. His fervor for left-wing politics leads him to Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), then married, who will become a feminist icon and activist. Politics at home become more complicated as the rift grows between reality and Reed’s ideals. Bryant takes up with a cynical playwright (Jack Nicholson), and Reed returns to Russia, where his health declines.

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Our guest has a penchant for long movies, apparently. His first appearance being for the nearly-3-hour DiCaprio flick “The Aviator” which can be found at:

https://www.actualanarchy.com/2017/07/22/episode-33-the-aviator-ancap-movie-review/

Jon Reed’s a communications professional who’s been a writer and video creator for the past 20 years. He enjoys debating current events and explaining the blessings of liberty and how to get it and long walks on the beach. Jon’s a movie buff, wine lover, and introvert who enjoys his time chillin at home, or hanging out with a select few people who spike his intellect and curiosity…and cats…he’s a cat person.

You can go to his website http://jonreedcreative.com/

Here are some of the books, podcast episodes and articles we referenced during the show, be sure to check them out:

101 year anniversary of murdering the czar and his family.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/17/otd-july-17-romanov-murder-a66433

DiLorenzo, 10 things to know about socialism

Playing this at 2x only takes 25 minutes, which is a small price to pay to avoid perpetuating terrible ideas that can’t work and will only result in a lower standard of living at best, and well, millions of dead at worst.

Here is his related book:

Revolution in Russia. Tom Woods episode 399

Ep. 399 Lenin and the Russian Revolution: Institutionalized Insanity

Here is Tom’s write up describing the background:

https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/bernie-commie

If you are looking for some free e-books that take down the all-too-popularity of socialism in the recent politics of Bernie Sanders and Sandy Cortez, check out the following:

http://www.bernieiswrong.com

http://www.AOCiswrong.com

Ludwig von Mises books:

Socialism

Human Action

Murray Rothbard book and lecture series:

The Progressive Era

Lecture series:

It’s almost that time of the month…that’s right, we’ll be back next week with our next installment in our summer series on episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation with Pat MacFarlane of Liberty Weekly. This time we’ll be taking the argument for Data’s self-ownership and step further down the family tree as we explore the episode called “The Offspring” (S3E16) where Data creates a “child”. Engage.

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The Actual Anarchy Podcast is all about Maximum Freedom.

Robert and I analyze popular movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective. If it’s voluntary, we’re cool with it. If it’s not, then it violated the Non-Aggression Principle and Property Rights – the core tenants of Libertarian Theory – and hence – human freedom.

We use movies as a starting point for people who may not be familiar with this way of thinking. Discussion of the plot and decisions that characters make in relation to morality and violations of the non-aggression principle are our bread and butter.

We also will highlight and discuss any themes or lessons from Austrian Economics that we can glean from the film.

The point is to show what anarchy actually is with instances that are presented in film.

We publish new episodes on Sunday just in time for your Monday commute; and occasionally will do specials surrounding holidays or events (elections/olympics).

For our show where we talk about movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective, we often watch them on our various devices via Netflix, Amazon Prime or on VUDU (which lets you redeem UV content as well). The VUDU one is nice because once it is in there, you know it will still be there a few months later:

ABOUT

Actual Anarchy, an anarchy unlike what the average idiot thinks it would be. Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules. The non-aggression principle and a respect of property rights are what makes it go.

We host a podcast where we take pop culture movies and showcase moments or scenes or themes throughout that are literally actual examples of anarchy.

Any place, around the world, there are always examples of Actual Anarchy all about you. Sometimes you just have to sit back and take a look. It’s easy once they’ve been pointed out a few times.

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Read Rothbard is comprised of a small group of voluntaryists who are fans of Murray N. Rothbard. We curate content at www.ActualAnarchy.com and on the www.ReadRothbard.com site including books, lectures, articles, speeches, and we make a weekly podcast based on his free-market approach to economics. Our focus is on education and how advancement in technology improves the living standards of the average person.

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The post Episode 139 – Reds (1:28:03) appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

There’s a new piece out with MIT professor Noam Chomsky, adapted from a previous interview, titled Noam Chomsky Explains Exactly What’s Wrong With Libertarianism . He doesn’t do this, but instead, characteristic of Chomsky, goes on vague rants which appear to offer no real, workable solutions to the problems in the world. Indeed, Chomsky would appear quite favorable to the state; at least, relative to the market economy which he fears would be a unchecked force without the state.

The first non-argument set forth by Chomsky, intended as a way to make libertarianism seem so obscure that it must be illegitimate, is to say that, “what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, [it] doesn’t really exist anywhere else.”

This would be the same as to say that, since only few people have acknowledged the validity of something, that it’s not valid. This is often invoked as a case against free-market (Austrian) economics. “If it’s correct/the best way,” the opponent will claim, “why isn’t it the prevailing doctrine?” Well, because there is nothing to stop bad ideas from taking over.

Left-anarchists overall like to use this Chomsky non-argument to say that, since “anarchism was historically socialist,” therefore “anarcho-capitalism is not real anarchism.” It is true that anarcho-capitalism is more modern relative to anarcho-socialism, but historical or etymological origin doesn’t change meanings. It doesn’t change that the anarcho-capitalist is extremely hostile to the state (more so than Chomsky), and that it emerged from centuries of anti state classical liberalism.

Thus, even if we grant the validity of the argument, it isn’t even true the anarchists always cited — or the ones existing in the 19th century — were opposed to individualism, free-markets, and property rights. As anarcho-capitalist Bryan Caplan noted, “ despite a popular claim that socialism and anarchism have been inextricably linked since the inception of the anarchist movement, many 19th-century anarchists, not only Americans such as Tucker and Spooner, but even Europeans like Proudhon, were ardently in favor of private property (merely believing that some existing sorts of property were illegitimate, without opposing private property as such).

Caplan goes on to quote the American anarchist Benjamin Tucker, who, writing in 1887, said that,

“it will probably surprise many who know nothing of Proudhon save his declaration that ‘property is robbery’ to learn that he was perhaps the most vigorous hater of Communism that ever lived on this planet. But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the laborer of his products.”

Chomsky then continues to strawman the anarcho-libertarian tradition following the above non-argument, saying that it, “permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes.”

This is not at all the case. The libertarian holds to the non-aggression principle, which condemns aggression as criminal, and permits the use of force only in self-defense of rightful ownership of body and property. It is the idea of the state in which power can be unleashed to do whatever it likes; and it would seem Chomsky is fond of this solution.

Chomsky has a loose way with words which must turn some people on to, well, whatever his ideas really are, such as to say that “concentrated private power” will take over. He is, again, quite vague on what it is he really stands for, generally self-identifying as an “anarcho syndicalist.”

“Private power”

Chomsky is afraid of what he repeatedly calls “private power,” perhaps such as to make you fear freedom from the state; he uses this term eight times in this piece. But he leaves out that these corporations he speaks of have always went to the state to obtain the power that they were unable to on the market.

As documented by Murray Rothbard in The Progressive Era , in every industry, every time, private attempts at cartels and monopolies failed, and these businesses saw to it that the only way they would be successful is to turn to the strong arm of the state. And so they did, putting forth various laws, such as the Federal Reserve Act, to gain control of the economy which they found impossible to do so without state assistance.

Chomsky would seem to hold the view that the state came in to save everyone in the 1930s, and the preceding progressive era, rather than this being a time when private interests indeed worked to secure special privileges from the state. The progressive era was not one where unchecked private power was finally checked; it was a time when these private interests saw to it that the government secure their position in the economy.

However, Chomsky, the alleged anarchist, believes that we need more of the state to check them.  Despite acknowledging the “concentration of private power through the use of state system,” he would seemingly like to have it both ways: the state can be convenient and socialist, too.

While the anarcho-capitalist acknowledges that not every quasi-private business in our crony-socialist economy is legitimate, being that many of them have been privileged by the state in various ways, the solution remains that denying them the state — and its special privileges, subsidies, contracts — would lead them to fail . Private power came about through state power, and Chomsky is completely backward — my guess, wittingly — in his idea of the role of the state.

A strategy for liberty?

In the voluntaryist tradition, which Chomsky would deride as giving way to “private power,” it is never acceptable to use statist means toward libertarian ends; the state is patently coercive and anarchists should avoid associating with it in any capacity (voting, taking office, etc).

Long a question to anarchists is how this anarchist society will be achieved.

Especially if the political means are off the table. Some will agree that it sounds ideal, but being that we do have a state, how do we get there?

According to Chomsky,

“One way, incidentally, is through use of the state, to the extent that it is democratically controlled.”

Trying to reconcile this with their alleged anarchism, the state is justified “in the context of the capitalist economy.” So long as there is private power — though, how will anarcho-syndicalism rid the world of private property? — the state may be a useful tool in controlling it.

If they fear “private power,” which economists such as Ludwig von Mises had always distinguished from state power for that the market economy exists to serve the consumers, then it would seem that Chomsky and anarcho syndicalists are scared of statelessness. For, how would they stop people from accumulating capital, freely exchanging, using money, etc., in a world without the state? It seems they believe they couldn’t , and the state may hold the solution.

It is almost as if they rightly realize the state is socialist and exists as the means to trample on private property rights. So much for the “capitalist state,” as the interviewer suggests, it is correctly realized that the state is the means of having socialism; and that a stateless society would in fact mean capitalism.

To Chomsky, the state is useful because it “provides devices to constrain the much more dangerous forces of private power.”

While the world isn’t perfect, and the scope of discussion is very much what is preferable , e.g., liberty to the state, Chomsky is clear that he believes the private, market economy is “much more dangerous” than the state. That the state is preferable to the market is all that’s needed to confirm that one is not an anarchist.

But he’s not done yet. The state has won so many concessions for the people, it is believed, that surely the enactment of more laws for “the workers” would be good. One starts to get the feel that there is no real difference in an anarcho-socialist and a state-socialist; socialism always means to violate property rights. It is typical of left-anarchist types that state-run healthcare, labor laws, minimum wage laws, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc., are all good; to abolish them would be horrendous. What does Chomsky suggest is good in the state?

“Rules for safety and health in the workplace for example. Or insuring that people have decent health care, let’s say. Many other things like that.”

Again, on not realizing that “private power” turned to the state for real power, these interests —and not “the workers” — were always the ones behind these acts. It was those at the top pushing for workman’s compensation and other labor laws, knowing this would increase the costs of doing business, thus heightening the barriers to entry into the market and keeping out competition.

What is “decent” healthcare is apparently to be decided by Chomsky.

Again, ignorant that markets do provide, Chomsky tells us these wonderful things the state has given us are “not going to come about through private power.”

So how might an “anarchist” suggest they will come about?

“They can come about through the use of the state system under limited democratic control…to carry forward reformist measures. I think those are fine things to do. they should be looking forward to something much more, much beyond, — namely actual, much larger-scale democratization.”

Chomsky is essentially a democratic-socialist, hence his giddy support for the Bernie Sanders campaign, respecting Sanders for being brave enough to come out as a socialist. Indeed, he says of “anarcho-syndicalism” that “democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.” Worse, Chomsky appears quite fond of Chavez and the Venezuelan prospect of offering the world an alternative (just as Sanders praised it).

Typical of a democratic socialist, which is but a softcore variety of communism, distance is sought from the much more heinous episodes in socialism, while a “huge” difference is presented to exist between both degrees of socialism. Chomsky is content with the latter, still statist, variety.

“As for state socialism, depends what one means by the term. If it’s tyranny of the Bolshevik variety (and its descendants), we need not tarry on it. If it’s a more expanded social democratic state, then the comments above apply.”

There you have it: state-socialism isn’t bad per se ; it “depends what one means” by it. There is thus an implicit admission that the state is in fact socialist (not capitalist), and this is good so long as it’s democratic . Seemingly his, and other anarcho-syndicalist’s, only problem with the state is that it isn’t democratic enough.

He continues

Further into this think-piece, Chomsky sounds the alarm of “climate change,” saying “we are facing a threat, a serious threat, of catastrophic climate change. And it’s no joke.” Presumably, the state would be used to check this, too. The solution, may we suggest, would be a greater enforcement of property rights, which doesn’t come under the state, to where any polluter, without a free pass, could be tried for aggression against the property rights of others.

It is true that the state rests on legitimacy, and not simply force alone, but Chomsky’s idea of indoctrination and propaganda is not that of the state indoctrinating people, but rather corporations who use clever marketing to dupe them. It’s as if people are forced to watch television or buy products in the same way they’re forced to fund the state through taxes.  Chomsky doesn’t seem to care much to talk about how the state seeks to control people. Rather, he thinks the state can be used as a device to do the controlling.

In a way, Chomsky is much like Sanders to simply point out a problem which most anyone agrees is a problem (say, prices are rising), but fail to identify the cause to the reader (monetary inflation), on top of offering no real solution to this problem (a return to sound money). He voices his concern that “one of the main problems for students today — a huge problem — is skyrocketing tuitions.” In democratic socialist fashion, this must be compared to other, relatively rich countries, and we should ask “why do we have tuitions that are completely out-of-line with other countries?” Nevermind the massive government meddling in education in the United States, where there is no free-market in education, where should Americans look for examples of better models?

“Go across the ocean: Germany is a rich country. Free tuition. Finland has the highest-ranked education system in the world. Free … virtually free. So I don’t think you can give an argument that there are economic necessities behind the incredibly high increase in tuition.”

Chomsky is obviously not an economist, but to make use of his renown, speaks of economic issues anyway. Someone needs to tell Chomsky “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” and that “taxation is theft” already, because this “anarchist” had a lot to learn.

Chomsky and libertarian-anarchism

To be so hostile to anarcho-capitalism, Chomsky is quite vague here in what it is he believes are the solutions, though he does mention these anarcho-syndicalist models which he says are still in need of work. Anyone looking for clear, concise, coherent arguments against the state and for liberty will have to look toward the anarcho-libertarian tradition set forth by figures such as Murray N. Rothbard, who Chomsky has also commented on.  They won’t find it from left-anarchists.

In the interview, Chomsky gives us his [vague] definition of anarchism:

“Anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics.”

Rothbard gives us something of much more substance, in his Society Without a State .

“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual.”

Whereas anarchism and the market is a “spontaneous order” to many anarcho-libertarians (of the American phenomenon!), the leftist-egalitarian variety of anarchism is apparently something that needs to be planned; it is not the market economy where many individuals privately associate with one another.

In the end Chomsky doesn’t offer much of anything to one interested in ideas to reach liberty.  He gives us the solution of the state, which has been no solution at all. Maybe the elites, perhaps Chomsky included, genuinely fear the libertarian tradition, for it serves as a decisive smack-down of the state and leaves no wiggle-room, as Chomsky likes to create, for the possibility that the state is a public benefactor. Contra Chomsky, to Rothbard, “the state is organized crime, murder, theft, and enslavement incarnate.”  There are no exceptions.

If the government really needed to pay a shill to confuse those with anarchist inclinations, and turn them back to the state, Chomsky would be their guy. If they were ever in need of a guy to make anarchism seem like an incoherent, impossible ideology, Chomsky is their man.

Mike Morris’s work can be found at the Front Range Voluntaryist

The post Noam Chomsky: Poser Anarchist appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

The World Health Organization, though incorrectly identifying “self-harm” as a form of violence[1], provides an otherwise laudable definition of violence:

the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation[2]

The question of primacy then for libertarians as it relates to liberty is as follows:

“Is using violence against non-violent individuals ever justified?”

A common argument is that violence is warranted when used to retrieve stolen property or to mitigate the acts of being defrauded. These examples still beg the original question, as both stealing and defrauding property are considered a form of violence itself; theft is clearly deprivation; theft is clearly intentional.

However, when “defensive violence” becomes conflated with“aggressive violence”, it becomes an obvious concealment for the true intent of the aggressors.

For example, if Robinson Crusoe shows up on an island and claims a coconut tree for himself (among many), and someone else shows up and tries to claim the same tree, it would be argued that “Crusoe is inherently violent. If someone seeks to access “his” tree”, which is given to all of us by nature, he will use violence.”

It is not asked, however, “why is person B attempting to use the tree Crusoe has claimed and begun to care for when 1.) there are plenty of other trees around to homestead, and other islands for that matter and 2.) it has been expressed that conflict will unnecessarily arise.

It cannot be taken seriously that there is real concern over scarce resources being oppressively utilized, but only that a desire to encourage conflict is prevalent in the first place; the lust of another’s source of happiness, in other words, seeks to downplay the sacrifices and time preferences of people enhancing their lives.

Yet many examples exist outside of Crusoe’s fictitious island.

Marquis de Sade, a late 18^th-century libertine philosopher, suggested in his violently pornographic (yet somehow morally based) novel Juliette that:

Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft; thus, the law punishes the thief for attacking thieves, punishes the weak for attempting to recover what has been stolen from him, punishes the strong for wishing either to establish or to augment his wealth through exercising the talents and prerogatives he has received from Nature. What a shocking series of inane illogicalities![3]

Speaking of “illogicalities”, is it odd that Juliette runs rampant with ideas such as killing young boys to prevent them from being harmful males, or befriending a millionaire who kills girls and engages in incest with his daughter? The ideas indeed seem in line with the crudeness of labeling a thief a hero, as corroborated above.

De Sade, of course, spent the last 13 years of his life behind bars after the novel was released. Napolean Bonaparte had considered de Sade’s words he voluntarily wrote worthy of violence, in the same way that de Sade thought the same of those voluntarily claiming property.

Peter Kropotkin, a Left-Anarchist of the 19th century, stated:

By what right then can anyone whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say—This is mine, not yours?[4]

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, another Left-Anarchist that claimed “property is theft”, opined that:

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?[5]

Even Karl Marx, when asked in a letter to describe his views of Proudhon, found these sentiments (along with the Left-Anarchist philosophy) utterly contradicting:

The upshot is at best that the bourgeois legal conceptions of “theft” apply equally well to the “honest” gains of the bourgeois himself. On the other hand, since “theft” as a forcible violation of property presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon entangled himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to himself, about true bourgeois property.[6]

 Marx knew if the logic was applied evenly across the board, that a claim to land in an area where there isn’t a sign of life for 50 miles would be doing so ferociously despite no one else seeking access. In order to establish a defense of at least some property, in a more convincing way than Proudhon and other Left-Anarchists, the words “private” and “personal” were differentiated.[7] “Private” property is thought to be related to capital goods used in the process of making other goods such as ovens, hammers, factory machines, and also unmoveable goods such as land, while “personal” property is related to moveable possessions that are not used in the process of making other goods.

Much is left to figure out for ourselves, sardonically so considering Marx’s haphazard explanations. Is a child engaging in labor in the form of chores and homework doing so under duress that would amount to violence? If I lend someone a lawnmower, contingent on that they compensate me for the time I loan it out, have I stolen money from an innocent person wanting to cut their lawn for not loaning it for free?

The distinction is meant to rile up anyone who draws a connection as such: there is nothing wrong with me if I own a lawn mower, but there is everything wrong with me if refuse to loan out a lawn mower for free. If, on the other hand, the capitalist is examined beyond their supposed “lack of input”, the incentives they have to make gains on investments cannot be ignored, as the other alternative is them never investing at all.

Marx, through duplicity, gave his own response to the idea of lost incentives:

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.[8] 

The Paradox:

Few fail to amply understand the nature of an individual and their body, which of course is the pith of our ability to find peace and carry on through our lives.

We would find it difficult to travel and cooperate with others if, upon arbitrarily being punched in the face, we were the ones considered violent in this instance. By depriving the attacker of the opportunity to practice martial arts moves on bypassers, we deny them their psychic profit of engaging in such an act! And a natural act at that! Faces are given to us by nature, and were meant for punching, and there is no shortage of faces!

This theoretical is veritably over the top for even a Marxist or Left-Anarchist, but why is it then when we say it is violent to deprive a benevolent person of their land or factory, we are said to engage in the antithesis of meanings?

The first reason is that there exists some plausibility within these buried sentiments. It does appear that by saying this computer monitor is mine, that presumably if someone seized it that I would try take it back; by force if necessary. However, once credence is given towards the fact that I acquired the screen through self-sacrifices of my own, or that it was gifted to me because im poverty-stricken, the believability of the thieves peril in lacking my property becomes transient.

The second reason, with many connections to the first one, is in avoidance to the underlying principle of Marx’s theory of surplus value: that workers get the short end of the stick by default. Marx espoused that a capitalist, in seeking profit through investment, will compensate the employee for much less value than they have produced. For example, if a capitalist invests $100 in capital goods/resources and $50 in labor, but then sells the product for $200 and profits $50, the capitalist has exploited the employee and extracted $50 extra dollars out of them. If, however, the worker were given access to the full value of their labor, they would be entitled to the full $100 (labor value plus profit). This ignores many factors, the first being that capitalists are consumers too. But if we are to base this theory of exploitation off the idea that people are entitled to the full product of what they mix their labor with, then how are we to justify the seizing of a person’s property who earned it through their own labor? Is it not contradicting to state that a person can acquire property if they are the one being exploited, but that they cannot maintain their property in instances where they are said to exploit others (by not wanting to loan property for no interest)?

The last reason has an innumerable set of examples given all of history, yet for some it’s arduous to admit: People who want to commit violence against others will justify it any way they can, often through absurd measures. In this way, the thief can now be considered “the retriever of natures property back unto the public”. The murderer can now be considered “the person preventing further exploitation by capitalists”. The violent rhetoric, often used in real attacks day to day, is rhetoric “only as a result of those wishing to institute mass freedom, which must be stopped.”

The paradox between liberty and violence is such that on one hand, liberty is an experience lacking violence and dominance by others entirely, while the suggestion that liberty is felt through violence versus the aversion of it, is an unpalatable revision of terms.

[1] While harming oneself causes physical harm, libertarians do not tend to view harming oneself as “violent” as comparable to a crime. Though intentional, it only effects the individual at hand (physically at least).

[2] See http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/en/

[3] Marquis de Sade, Juliette (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 177.

[4] Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (London: Chapman and Hall, 1913), p. 9.

[5] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Works of P.J. Proudhon (Mass: Benj. R. Tucker, 1876), p. 11.

[6] See Marx’s letter to J.B. Schweizer written January 24, 1865 in Marx Engels Selected Works Vol. 2

[7] He did this interchangeably, depending on the instance he was trying to defend or argue against

[8] Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Community Party, 1848, p. 24.

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

The post Liberty and Violence: A Paradox appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all over the net

Libertarian infighting, as good as it gets.

The young cats and rookies, the intellectual debtors

watch left and right scrum over racist news letters.  
Should anarchists vote? Or is it a crock?

‘Wendy’s a statist!’ Exclaimed Walter Block.

Anarchists, minarchists, a matter of degrees?

You min-mins are fascists! Awaiting kings decrees!  
Atheist, Christian, Muslim or Jew

We don’t fight over faith, like statists do.

We prefer to fight over who should be ruling.

And private vs public vs un-or-homeschooling.  
Taxation is theft, and all war is murder.

Further consensus? Good luck, cat herder.

Even semantics are points for a schism,

Call it free-markets, or capitalism?  
Austria or Chicago? Friedman or Mises?

Is Peikoff the pope, if Ayn Rand is Jesus?

Konkin or Rothbard? What’s on your shelves?

Ah hell, what’s the difference, Ron Paul twenty-twelve!  
So on Hayek and Murray, on Ron and on Ayn.

On Ludwig and Milton! on Bastiat and Heinlein.

Let’s call a truce, friends, for just this one night.

Then on the 26th… libertarians…. FIGHT!

The post Libertarian Night Before Christmas appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

A man who lived through WWI and understood the power of the state by his wartime experience: J. R. R. Tolkien. His works show a great spectrum of political power structures which span from pure and free to evil and controlling.

Tolkien was an anarchist.

Think about the journey from the Shire to Mordor:

The hobbits live in the freedom of the Shire. They have no formal government and live in anarchy. As they travel east, they witness varying levels of increasing control and corruption.

Rivendell is the perfect platonic republic under the care of the ‘wise rulers’. But it is rigid and constrained by Elrond. Its success depends upon the longevity and nearly incorruptible nature of the elves.

Yet Rivendell is a step down in freedom from the Shire. In spite of the strong will and high character of the elves, it is still Frodo, a hobbit from the completely free Shire who is selected to carry the ring. Even an elf would succumb to its power. If the Ring is state power, then only the most free can hope to survive it’s influence.

Orthanc and Saruman himself show the danger of trusting in a wise leader. When danger threatened from Mordor, Saruman took the easy path of bending to evil. His power was flipped from serving good to spreading corruption and death. When it came down to a choice, he chose power for himself over freedom, and even life, for others.

Rohan is a loose feudal monarchy held together by Theoden. Tolkien shows us the danger of a wise ruler being corrupted by evil through Saruman’s agent, Gríma Wormtongue. The nation nearly falls to the orc invasion because of the corrupting power of Saruman, Sauron and the Ring.

Gondor is a crumbling empire that has finally succumb to its own size and lack of wise leadership. The reigns of power still remain to be abused by the insane Denethor, Steward of Gondor. He becomes so desperate and trapped in his own madness that he refuses to call for aid. When Denethor commits suicide in despair, he almost drags down the people of Gondor with him.

Mordor should be obvious: Full power. Absolute control and absolute evil are equated through Sauron and the One Ring. The orcs march rank and file. There is no light except that of the evil eye upon Barad-dûr, watching to make sure every orc does his duty. It is the ultimate authoritarian state.

The Ring itself is power and control. We are constantly told through the books that it is unable to be wielded without succumbing to its corruption and thus spreading evil even in the attempt to do good. The power of the state is represented through the ring.

Gandalf is an embodiment of good but also an agent of power. Since Gandalf is good, Tolkien shows restraint in the way Gandalf uses his powers. Gandalf only uses his power when forced to do so. But he is stretched thin and cannot put out all the fires caused by the corruption of Sauron’s One Ring. The source of power can only be destroyed by the smallest and most free, a hobbit from the Shire.

Through Gandalf and the Ring Tolkien tells us that power cannot be fought by power. Power itself (the ring) must be destroyed, not through using force, but by letting it go. (Dropping it, releasing it, into the fires of Mt. Doom.) The right to rule must be let go, by not accepting it, and never using it, and thus destroying it.

At the end of the novels, Tolkien takes us back to the Shire. The corrupt Saruman has sought revenge upon the hobbits by bringing in Ruffians (immigrants of low character). This Ruffian network enslaves the hobbits, forcing even the peace loving inhabitants of the shire to take up arms in defense. Tolkien’s final message is that when you remove corruption from power, expect those who were corrupted to fight back and take revenge. Even a peaceful society must be ready to defend itself.

And what about Gollum? Smeagol represents us all: The common individual tempted by power. Wrapped in the ring’s blanket of comfort we find reason to ignore the slow release of our individuality. We choose the pleasures the state gives, while ignoring its cost. Rather than examine the effects of the ring upon himself, Smeagol gives up, sacrifices his identity, and becomes nameless. Absorbed fully by the temptation of the ring, of state power, Smeagol becomes a slave. In the end, Gollum chooses self-destruction with the ring rather than give up his ‘precious,’ but not before he fights tooth and nail to protect it.

Here is the Read Rothbard Podcast episode on the Lord of the Rings:

Episode 13 – The Ring of Power Must Be Destroyed (1:15:42)

There are those among us that will fight to protect their state provided comforts. Some are even willing to use violence to do it. They will throw their bodies into the fires of Mt. Doom to prevent the destruction of their own ‘precious’. Addicted to state provided resources, laws enforcing their version of morality, and propaganda, they will feel trapped.

Previously being dedicated to projecting their morality through state power and law they will have a huge struggle with cognitive dissonance. Those who love freedom and liberty will point out how the Smeagols of the world have been serving evil by consenting to state rule. This forces the mind of the Smeagol Statist to choose between two realities: Either they were wrong in the past and thus have to deal with the guilt of spreading corruption, or they will reject the message of the freedom lover to prevent the obvious discomfort of re-examining their world view.

Those unable to overcome their confirmation bias will defend their old view. This is much easier to do than to change world views. They will see those who want to reduce and remove the power of the state as an attack on their lifestyle. They will see you, freedom lover, as a threat, and thus evil. Eventually their Gollum will overcome their Smeagol and they will fight to save the state.

Be ready for their ire.

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

The post Tolkien was an Anarchist appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

There could be many reasons. One of the common reasons, which is frequently cited is “the internet is chaotic and incomprehensible”. 

Let’s not track the history of the internet, lest we bring up Al Gore’s spurious claims, but rather let’s explore the structural function of it. 

The ever-expanding and changing lattice work of billions and billions of inputs and outputs from millions and millions of users all over the planet boils down to one thing:

The internet is anarchism

Because the order – which it follows – is spontaneous.

The world wide web is not a function of the imposed order system. The whole spiritual feature of the internet is very much in sync with the autopoiesis (self-control).

Former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt noted, “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”

I would say that the best way to understand the order of internet is to comparatively understand the philosophy of anarchism, which is highly practical. The philosophy of anarchism primarily denotes rejection of the state and compulsory government. It denies the validity of enforced man-made laws and is characterized by a general distrust of external authority.

Just like internet.

On the internet, everybody owns themselves. Everyone is free to make their own rules for their own computers and servers.

Each place decides its own rules.  For instance, on Twitter, the rules of Facebook do not apply.

And some restrictions are not implemented until the government steps in. Instagram doesn’t ban adult porn until the government (moral police) compels it to do so. 

However, there already market checks. If facebook allows porn, it will lose its so-called popularity. Cultured people will look for the “cleaner” and “moral” social networks; Facebook will lose to the competition, consequently. 

But, does that mean people can’t find porn on the internet? No! 

They can, and they just need to Google it, sign up on Tinder to hook up with the sapiosexualists, or find what they are seeking on thousands of different websites. There literally are “different strokes for different folks.”

The next point is…property rights.
What would be the “property” on the Internet? As far as my limited knowledge is concerned, I guess it would be the servers and computers. Everything that you own that is connected to the Internet, basically. 

For instance, Quora.com is the property of the site creators until they sell it. People on Quora have to follow the rules set by the owners. They are free to go to other sites or even create their own, if they are dissatisfied by the service. Overall, the structure of subscription is voluntary. No one is forcing anyone in the whole context, right?

Therefore, everybody is responsible and also accountable for their own security and privacy. You must secure your server and terminals yourself, exactly the way you guard your bathroom (or your wallet if a politician is nearby).

Government helps very little in this regard because they’re wholly orwellian and nothing else. But, do we need the government protecting us? I would say a big NO. We don’t need the government (legal gang of mafia) protecting us from the “evil gang of hackers”.  In many instances, they are the hackers themselves.

And due to the inherent inefficiency in the bureaucratic nature of their processes, the government is not able to provide you effective protection and security.

Fortunately for us and the rest of the internet, there are scores of private firms and individuals developing products and services to provide solutions to the problems consumers encounter today and in the future.

There are market solutions to help you, like anti-virus software, identify security features, VPN and encryption. Or, you could learn and use Linux. 

Internet users like you and me largely follow the NAP (non-aggression principle) even in discussions. Also, it is easy to ignore and block people or ultracrepidarians that you dislike or disagree with. There have been cases of cyber-bullying but they are minimal, compared to the tax collectors (who bully us every month for the potholes or big bureaucracy). By and large, you and me follow the NAP because internet users like us believe in tranquil discussion, peaceful interaction and nonviolent discourses. These traits are the features of anarchism. Therefore, you’re an anarchist too, even if you don’t realize it.

The major chunk of development in the internet field was done when the government was least interested in controlling and regulating it. So, one could say that internet development was a consequence of the free market. 

As for the free market on the internet, you are responsible for your own money and how you spend it. The popularity of Bitcoin is also increasing, with more alternative currencies on the way. Yes there are government regulations here and there, but you can circumvent them with a little know-how. In many ways new technology makes it  easier than ever to be an agorist!

You can also see various free societies forming in various places. It is now easier than ever to find like-minded people from around the world who you may have more in common with than the neighbors down the street voting for increased taxes or regulations to further their misguided, utopian dreams.  

In these places people are not forced to be present. They are also not forced to participate. Other places on the Internet are not very different. The owners of the servers make the rules and compete with other service providers. Users are free to roam or click their selfies!
If this appeals to you, please join us in the Actual Anarchy Group on Facebook. Share your ideas and engage in conversation with people who share the same respect for self-ownership, property and peace.

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About the author

Prof. Jaimine Vaishnav is an anarcho-capitalist based in Mumbai, India. His hobbies are about defending the liberties of all his dissents without charging any fee.

Twitter a/c

@meritocratic

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The post Internet = Anarchism appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

Robert and I were interviewed by Mike Tilden at the Battle for Liberty to discuss what we do in our efforts to promote the ideas of anarchy and liberty through our show and websites.

Here is the link to the show:

https://battleforliberty.com/39

He is a great host and produces excellent work documenting his journey in educating himself and his listeners as they fight their statist indoctrination in their very personal battles for liberty.

Look for him to be a guest on one of our shows in the coming weeks!

The post Featured on the Battle for Liberty Podcast appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

AnarcoTopics #1 – Philosophy For Five Year Olds (19:28)

Part 1 of a 9 part series on Anarcho-Capitalism.

Support our site by clicking through our Amazon link to make your purchases.

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

The post AnarcoTopics #1 – Philosophy For Five Year Olds (19:28) appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

I am not an Indologist but I live in India. In this article, I do not intend to divulge the marketing skills of my authorship but helping my international amigos to know the features of Vedic anarchism. To begin with, the Vedas are a large body of knowledge texts originating in the ancient Indian subcontinent.

Composed in the Sanskrit language, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means “not of a man, superhuman” and “impersonal, authorless”. Vedic anarchism period existed in Bhaarat (India) between 4000 BC – 500 BC. But, in today’s time, in India as elsewhere, the anarchist thought is widely misunderstood. As Bhagat Singh (1907–1931), one of the few Indian revolutionaries who had explicit anarchist leanings, put it:

“The people are scared of the word anarchism. The word anarchism has been abused so much that even in India revolutionaries have been called anarchist to make them unpopular.”

Vedic anarchism is a fearless trek into the unknown. Since it throws out the imposed normative ideals of other political philosophies, Vedic anarchism prescribes complete sacrifice of the ego of a politically-driven mind. It forebodes the usual prescriptions and solutions for society’s ills and trusts the forces of cooperative effort, mutual respect, and mutualism will do better. It’s the respect for the limits of human reason, the fallibility of human power, the unlikely, but unsurpassed, power of unconscious design, the appreciation of innovation and progress brought about by forces completely out of our control and, above all, humility – the recognition of one’s own mistakes, flaws, ignorance, and inability to know the unknown.

Vedic anarchism is the “spiritual recognition” of our ultimately unprivileged position in the world, the acknowledgement of the fact that we are systematically ignorant of the crucial forces that the fabric of social life depends on, and to embrace this dynamism of life is to live happily and freely. To reject the conservatism of coercion, hierarchy, and central planning, to see that only a virtuous, impassioned people are capable of developing and maintaining the peaceful emergent orders that allow humanity to flourish requires the humility that only honest and everlasting introspective analysis can provide. Vedic anarchism emphasises that only constant self-questioning accompanied with self-improvement will reveal what our lives and our happiness ultimately count on.

Unlike the modern Western Anarchist theories, the Vedic Anarchism is a time tested and successfully established anarchist model of the ancients. The rishis (saints) who have given Vedas are the first founders of Vedic anarchist societies. They dwelled in forests outside the control of any state or governments or monarchies and enforced a values-based living through the knowledge on Rta (principle of self-regulation and universal coordination) and dharma (right way of living is achievable through non-aggression).

Unlike the Western anarchism that emphasises priority to anti-state and anti-rulers policies, Vedic Anarchism primarily deals with self-consciousness, non-hierarchical and decentralised polity, community living, and ecologically sustainable lifestyles through its varna, ashrama, dharma, and janapada system.

The term “Janapada” literally means the foothold of the people.  The Janapada system created a non-hierarchical and decentralised polity of root-level democracy.

The dharma system is wisdom in action. The wisdom that brought awareness about natural and social powers is known as Rta. This system attempted values-based living and brought ecologically sustainable lifestyles.

The dharma system is wisdom in action. The wisdom that brought awareness about natural and social powers is known as Rta. This system attempted values-based living and brought ecologically sustainable lifestyles.

The ashrama system empowered individual freedom and independent expressions. Based on the biological age, the needs and behavior of individuals are categorized as:

1) Student life,

2) Householder life,

3) Retiring life, and

4) Renouncing life.

The Vedic varna system ensured swadharma-based entitlements that brought flexibility, non-hierarchical and decentralised distribution of powers among all the communities for a balanced society, smooth inter-dependency, as well as deals with social responsibilities.

From these Vedic systems, arose the Mahajanapada system that formed the basis of all kingdoms and republics of India. This system administered the root-level distribution of political, technological, economic, and social powers.

All of the ancient Vedic period states followed grass-root democracy raising from the village communities. The Vedic polity of root-level democracy has turned the entire India as a community and village-based society. These villages were, in Vedic times, completely self-sufficient, self-governing, cooperative, nature bound and ensured complete independence from the state and its politics.

Thomas Munroe, Charles Metcalfe, and Mark Wilks are a few of the Orientalists who have eloquently described these importance village communities held in India. Because of the Janapada system, anarchism ruled the roots and roosts of India, irrespective of kings and other types of rulers. C.F. W. Hegel finds that this system ensured the whole of India and her societies not yielding to despotism, subjection, or subjugation of any rulers. Its influence is very strong and far reaching, even in the colonial period, the colonialists found that the establishment of Vedic anarchism through its village communities as the most difficult barrier to break and could not completely enforce their hegemony.

To know more about Indian anarchist thinkers, please read my reblog on Anarchy India portal.
_________________________________________________________

About the author

Prof. Jaimine Vaishnav is an anarcho-capitalist based in Mumbai, India. His hobbies are about defending the liberties of all his dissents without charging any fee.

Twitter a/c
@meritocratic

The post Vedic Anarchism appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

It is just not a belief but also a modern ideology. They worship this political ideology, like the way jihadists worship Islam, but without directly initiating violence. The tribe also believes that it is morally correct to have freedom in all economic activities because they trust the principles of government-constituted free market.

When it comes to defense, police and courts or law, the tribe would not mind distrusting the principles of laissez-faire. To add, the tribe does not realise that it suffers from a psychotic disorder called ‘stockholm syndrome’ (which means, sympathising with the crime doer).

For example: they chant, blog & podcast “government is evil” (without realising that they’re the ones who are always eager to necessitate the evil at the expense of everyone else). They tend to forget that ‘limiting’ the evil does not equate to abolishment of evil.

Evil is evil, no matter what’s the size of it.

I do not intend to bash these intellectuals in this article. I am simply analysing their unnoticed hypocrisy.

What makes their myth so different from other political ideologies like democracy, communism, etc., when their own ideology is a diet coke of all the fascist tendencies?

On one hand, they condemn monopoly of the state. I think it makes sense because monopoly over the means of production is the root cause of all problems in our world.

On the other hand, the tribe believes that a magical constitution would suddenly beget “good governance” administered by a “good government”, out of nowhere, in the complex world.

In this regard, how would they behave with their own dissents if the constitution is deemed as a social contract?   A constitution is just not a rule book but also a “social contract”, which makes citizens (slaves) to pay obligation to their master (government) without signing the agreement et al.

This is where the tribe consciously fail to realise with their own eyes that government is a lie.

Governments are “malum in se” (evil in itself) in their nature and violate the non-aggression principle (an ethical stance which asserts that “aggression” is inherently illegitimate).

In this case, let’s assume that taxation is not a legal robbery. Then, why would a ‘limited’ government continue to conscript people’s wealth for the sake of building the roads? What is the fair percentage to consider that taxation is a not a legal theft, when any “illegal” mafia gang can also empower itself to expropriate the people?

While these philosophers continue to claim that the emergence of a government is inevitable and that therefore efforts must be concentrated towards establishing a “minimal government” to protect freedom, but then it cannot prevent its collapse or political suicide without compromising all of its laws and principles.

For example: How would it decide the rate of defence expenditure without inflating the public funds for defence services, which is likely to maximize the monopoly, tax structure and power of the minimal government?

I suggest you to apply the same reasoning/question/logic to “priority sectors” like fiscal policy with reference to populism, monetary policy with reference to printing machine, and property rights with reference to eminent domain.

As the American Experiment has proven, a mechanism like constitutional check-and-balance has not been successful in stemming the tide of governmental expansion. Checks and balances are not enough to successfully distract the members of the ruling class from their convergent interests, since, checks or not, they are still all part of the same parasitical entity.

An exterior standard alone is also not sufficient to stop the governmental expansion. A piece of paper or constitution is only somewhat obeyed as long as its legitimacy remains: the more misinterpreted and controversial it becomes, the least protection it affords against the government’s expansion.

To conclude, coercion cannot produce cooperation.

My facebook note highlights a case of the minimal government sustaining corporatism. Governments are not, and cannot, be based on consent. It is mathematically impossible to maintain a government over a territory of any considerable size without imposing some non-consensual rules.

Furthermore, no government has ever been founded on consent. All governments are based on the necessity for victorious warring factions to organize the taking of tribute from conquered factions, to make organized theft less risky and more profitable. All other governments derived from those have come to existence through ruling class conflicts or colonial politics.

In short, consent of the vast majority of people is nowhere involved in the process of government-creation.

About the author

Prof. Jaimine Vaishnav is an anarcho-capitalist based in Mumbai, India. His hobbies are about defending the liberties of all his dissents without charging any fee.

Twitter a/c
@meritocratic

The post Diet Coke of Fascism appeared first on Actual Anarchy.