Brainpolice : Collectivism, Democracy

Politics Is The Opiate Of The Masses

Brainpolice — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:38:00 GMT

Theism is not the only kind of mysticism. Collectivist and political ideologies are also forms of mysticism. The nature of politics involves blind faith in a "highest essence". The abstractions of these "highest essences" function as arbitrary authorities to appeal to. The most common of these arbitrary and rhetorical authorities are "society", "nation", "state", "humanity", "race", "class" and "gender". In political ideology, these concepts function precisely in the same way as a deity. As a consequence of faith in these abstractions, individual human beings and/or certain collections of human beings are given the status of a deity. These concepts also all have one thing in common: they obscure the individual and turn the individual into a sacrificial peon to collective abstractions. In all cases, belief in something that doesn't exist (at least in the way concieved) functions as a mechanism to provide a plastic sense of meaning or identity.

While theism assigns a non-existant entity with rights not possessed by human beings, statism assigns certain human beings with rights not possessed by everyone else. While religious ideologies conflict over who rules the universe and how they do it, political ideologies conflict over who rules over other human beings and how they do it. In electoral politics, certain human beings are deified and people conflict over which deifed human being should rule over everyone else. For many people, the election rallies and political holidays are just as much of a "spiritual experience" as any religious ceremony at a fundamentalist christian church. People literally have faith in politicians, bureaucrats, nations, and states and they use that which is attributed to them as a way to legitimize their personal biases and their actions. The health of political power relies in large part on the exploitation of the religious impulse in the broadest sense through the use of rituals, symbolism, illusions, grandios promises, bread and circuses.

Many political assumptions are essentially forcibly inherented from parents and cultural norms, just like in theism. While religions tend to promise a utopia after death, political ideologies tend to promise a utopia during life. Both make use of fear and guilt and exploit the pessemism within people to elicit obedience. The morality of politics is based on arbitrary authority rather than reason. "The law" has the same functionality as a deity's alleged words or religious texts. The individual must submit in spite of their rational evaluation. Furthermore, politics provides a mechanism by which people can enforce their personal preferances and their incorrect conceptions of morality onto innocent bystanders. Politics is more dangerous than religion is by itself, since it is only through the mechanisms of politics that religion can be tyrannical on a large scale. Politics is the opiate of the masses.

Definitions

Brainpolice — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:08:00 GMT

So I put together some relatively witty definitions of my terms. If you're not offended by at least one of these, then you are awesome!

Constitutionalism - The belief that a piece of paper drafted and signed by a tiny aristocracy of men is a legitimate perpetual contract that makes the government voluntary on the part of those within a society that did not sign the document and limits the powers of governmental agents for all of eternity.

Minarchism - The belief that there can be a government limited to the protection of rights without violating rights in and of itself; the belief that all goods and services should be provided by the free market yet somehow the principle magically doesn't apply to the defense and arbitration industry.

Democracy - The belief that the government is controled by the people simply because every few years they get to punch a hole in a piece of paper with the names of a few rich and powerful men on it.

Nationalism - The belief that imaginary lines on a map constitute real and meaningful property boundaries; the belief that territories have human traits or personalities of their own; the belief that immigration is the spawn of satan.

Objectivism - The belief that the initation of force is wrong yet somehow it is permissible to arbitrarily invade Iran and Venezuela because "we" have oil interests there; the belief that only romanticism is real art; the belief that you can eliminate taxation and still have a "government".

Political Libertarianism - The belief that the state is inefficient and immoral yet for some strange reason the state is the only viable means by which we can bring about liberty; the belief that democracy is tyrannical yet we must use it to our advantage.

Paleoconservatism - The belief that conservatism was hijacked by leftists and communists and that the "true conservatives" are those who support protectionism and white nationalism; the belief that you're more conservative than those creepy neocons yet somehow you support just about as powerful of a government as they do.

Christianity - The belief that the path to salvation lies with devotion of one's life to a Jewish zombie hippie who is his own father.

Satanism (Laveyan) - The belief in the writtings of a former carnie con artist who haphazardly threw together the ideas of Ayn Rand and Aleister Crowley, incoherant ramblings on the Enochian key and rhetoric to drawn in rebelious teenagers.

Zionism - The belief that because your people were nearly liquidated once, you have an inherent right to liquidate others and forcibly remove them from their own territory.

Religion - The belief that fairy tales from centuries or millenia ago passed down through shaky oral tradition and written down by fallable men are actually absolutely true and codes to live one's life by.

Collectivism - The strange belief that groups have a mind of their own yet their component parts don't.

Altruism - The belief that self-destructive servitude for the sake of others is the greatest virtue; the belief that everyone should mutually be slaves to eachother.

Epistemological Subjectivism - The belief that all truth claims can be reduced to mere personal opinion or preferance, yet somehow this view isn't a mere opinion in and of itself.

Epistemological Nihilism - The belief that there is no such thing as truth, yet somehow it is true that there is no such thing as truth.

Statism - The belief that it is not only moral but necessary for a particular group of individuals to do that which is openly aknowledged as being immoral and not necessary for everyone else to do; moral hypocrisy at the institutional level.

Primitivism - The strange belief that living in a cave or mud-brick hut or as a hermit in the woods is preferable to modern industrial society; the romantisization of long gone tribal and hunter-gatherer societies (in which life was nasty, brutish and short) as peaceful and prosperous utopias.

Welfarism - The belief that the poor can be helped by giving them back a tiny chunk of what was originally stolen from them and keeping them in a state of dependancy on the government; the bribery of the lower classes.

Inflationism - The belief that all problems can be solved by simply printing up more money, despite overwhelming evidence that the arbitrary creation of new money creates problems in and of itself.

Monetarism - The belief held by a bunch of Chicago School economists who think that they are free market proponents but really are quasi-Keynsians.

Anarcho-Syndicalism - The belief that corporations are evil yet somehow corporate dominated, government chartered and cartelized unions are the path towards a free and stateless society.

Hobbesianism - The belief that a highly pessemistic view of human nature that entails war of all against all justifies absolute control by the state, despite the fact that the state is made up of *gasp* human beings.

Radical Environmentalism - The belief that the planet itself has intrinsic value and that human beings are inherently evil parasites on the face of the planet; the modern religion of nature-worshop.

Globalism - The strange belief that large-scale conflict and war would end if only we put all political power in the hands of a singular oligarchal institution with control over everyone in the entire world.

Animal Rights - The belief that non-human entities deserve human rights; the belief that chickens and bumble bees should be equal before the law; the attempt to liberate the unliberatable.

Marxism - The belief that some crazy rich German guy has predicted an inevitable egalitarian future and has mapped out the path towards the liberation of all poor and working people through the work of a benevolent dictatorship.

Racism - The strange belief that a particular roll of the genetic dice entitles and requires one to completely separate themselves from others with another particular roll of the genetic dice; the collectivism of bubble-headed bigots.

What Is Democracy? Part One: Democracy Is Slavery

Brainpolice — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:57:00 GMT

This is part one in a three part series: democracy is slavery, democracy is impossible and democracy is liberty.

Democracy Is Slavery

By the phrase "democracy is slavery", I refer to the tyranny that inevitably arises from the principles of majoritarianism and communalism. One standard definition of democracy is rule by the majority. Rule by the majority is fundamentally in opposition to the liberty of the minority, and the individual is of course the greatest minority of them all. The logical implication of the principle of majoritarianism, viewed as an ethic, is that superiority in numbers justifies decision-making over others. The group with the largest amount of people in it may control and subjugate all other groups, all other individuals not within it. To use a common phrase that accurately describes majoritarian democracy, it reduces to "might makes right". Majoritarian democracy creates a master-slave relationship in which the masters outnumber the slaves. The range necessary for a group to become a majoritarian ruling class could be anywhere between 51% and 99% of a given population.

Numerical majoritarianism, a subcategory or altered version of majoritarian democracy, is somewhat different in that no true majority is actually required. One does not have to exceed 50% in numerical superiority in order to rule over others. The numerical majority could theoretically be constituted by anywhere between 1% and 49% of a given population. In practise, it actually reduces to a minority ruling over a majority in terms of the overall population of those involved. Numerical majoritarianism creates a master-slave relationship in which the slaves outnumber the masters. The more groups that are involved, the smaller the numerical majorities may potentially get, and conversely the larger the dominated or subjected group may potentially get. Most examples of democracy in action are cases of numerical majoritarianism, although democracies could be said to vary between exercises of both pure and numerical majoritarianism interchangably depending in the particular situation in question.

Democracy is slavery because the minority, most importantly the individual, is forced into an association with and subjected to the decision-making power of the majority that they did not explicitly consent to. I define slavery quite simply as involuntary servitude and forced association, a state of affairs in which one or more individuals imposes decision-making from above upon one or more individuals against their explicit consent. Under democracy, whatever positive obligations that the majority wishes to impose on the minority must be lived up to regaurdless of the consent of the minority. The majority exercises decision-making power over social and economic life of others. Certainly a man is no less a slave if they have a multitude of masters rather then one master. While in monarchy the individual has one ruler or is the subject of a tiny familial or noble aristocracy, in democracy the individual has more of a plurality of rulers. The majority exercises shared or quotal rulership over the subjected individual. Democracy increases the amount of rulers. It could conversely be said that it reduces the amount of subjects as compared to monarchy, but this does not solve anything and the subjects are only reduced by the creation of more rulers.

It is important for one to realize that, as a principle seeking to justify authority and decision-making, majoritarian democracy, wether it be constituted by true majorities or numerical ones, is blind or neutral to the logical or ethical nature of the preferences of the majority in question. It justifies whatever decision is made by the majority, regaurdless of wether or not is right or wrong based on any independant ethical criterion and regaurdless of wether or not it makes any sense at all. In an exercise of majoritarian democracy, anything from murder to theft to rape to kidnapping could theoretically be given sanction, so long as the group approving of or engaging in such actions constitutes a majority. To reduce majoritarianism to the absurd, using the principle of majoritarianism on a small scale, if there are two men and a woman and the men want to have sexual intercourse with the woman and she does not, the two men are allegedly justified in raping her. Or, to use a large-scale example of the absurdities resulting from the principle, 51% of a population may allegedly legitimately murder the other 49%.

Majoritarian democracy fails the criterion of universality in ethics because the respective majorities and minorities are not held to the same basic standard of ethics. It functions as a defacto justification for the majority or group being able to get away with doing that which the individual or minority may not do. In short, the majority is exempted from being subject to the same ethical criterion and responsibility as everyone else. This is logically inconsistant if ethical principles and rights are supposed to apply to all individual human beings, if the individual is our standard of sovereignty. Using the law of universality as our criterion, even if it is one individual against everyone else in the world, it still is not just for even everyone else in the world to enslave, plunder or murder the individual. "The community", "the majority", and the deceptive phrases such as "the will of the people" and "the public good" cannot legitimately be invoked to justify tyranny. These terms function as obfuscations and illegitimate apologetics for the subjugation of people.

Utilitarianism could be seen as being linked to democracy in terms of the old and common maxim "the greatest good for the greatest number". Using this as a criteria for ethics could be used to justify majoritarianism because the precise definition of the term "good" is left up in the air so that whatever the majority happens to consider to be "good" is sanctioned. Afterall, the majority is "the greatest number". The majority may certainly benefit and gain utility, wether it be in a purely psychological and emotional sense or in terms of material and physical well-being, prosperity and survival. But the criterion for justifying it is arbitrary and inconsistant, especially when terms such as "happiness" are employed. The means toward obtaining the utility are not taken into proper consideration. The end of utility or happiness for the majority is used to justify the means. What is not addressed is that there is a burden of proof on the majority to justify their means. The burden of proof always lies with those who assert authority, and a mere numbers game does not constitute a sufficient justification for authority. If explicit consent is used as a criterion for the burden of proof, then democracy and utilitarianism cannot ethically legitimize anything at all. It functions as little more then majoritarian hedonism. In the absence of explicit consent, democracy as a general principle is nothing but an arbitrary apologetic for slavery.

The idea that one has a right to participate in and have decision-making power over other people's private relationships against their explicit consent is fundamentally contradictary to the concept of individual sovereignty and free association. A sovereign individual is one who is free from the imposition of 3rd parties of people, including majorities. Noone else has an abstract entitlement to decision-making over the individual and the private relationships that they enter into. Only the individual has legitimate authority in decision-making over their own person. The only alternative to individual sovereignty or self-ownership, as Murray Rothbard once pointed out, is either for another individual to exercise decision-making over their person, which would create a master-slave relationship in which one person rules over another, or for the collective or everyone to exercise quotal ownership or decision-making over eachother's person, which would create an absurd scenario in which everyone attempts to own a quotal share of everyone else. Since this is practically impossible to realistically enforce, the communalist alternative, in practise, reduces to the first alternative of individual rulership, only in the name of the community or collective. Democracy is somewhere in between the two extremes of individual rulership and the mutual and universal slavery of everyone to eachother. Democracy is as close to the communalist ideal that a society can get, reducing to some combination of pure and numerical majoritarianism in which there is a mixed and somewhat dynamic network of master-slave relationships.