Brainpolice : Libertarianism, Slavery

Do slaves have "self-ownership"?

Brainpolice — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:31:00 GMT

I'd like to extend on my criticism of Hoppe's argumentation ethics by concretizing the point about the difference between "self-ownership" as it is used ontologically and "self-ownership" as it is used ethically. I realize that this point has been made in one way or another by others before me, but I am putting it in my own words and using my own conceptual framework to express it.

If all one really means by "self-ownership" is the capacity to purposefully act (and this capacity, at best, is all that "argumentation ethics" proves), then slaves must be said to have "self-ownership", since even though they are slaves their basic nature as human beings has not changed and therefore they retain the capacity to purposefully act despite being a slave. Liberty does not merely mean that someone has the capacity to purposefully act, it more specifically entails that their sphere of action is not infringed upon. A slave has the capacity to purposefully act, but their sphere of action is significantly limited by their master.

This is the problem with trying to prove "self-ownership" by treating it as an ontological given upon the act of argumentation. A slave completely retains the basic capacity to argue and act in general. Presumably, their state of slavery does not eliminate their will. And yet it would be absurd to proclaim that a slave proves that they have rights by engaging in argumentation. They could argue until they are blue in the face, but their rights would still be restricted by their master. In this sense, people are not "inherently free", otherwise there would be absolutely no point in proclaiming that people should be free in the first place.

The slave argues not because they have rights (and by "have rights" I mean their actualization, not "having rights" in the more basic sense of an ought), but because either their master gives them the permission to argue or they manage to argue in spite of their master's control. In terms of the actualization of rights, the slave does not have rights, or at least not completely. And in terms of rights purely as a prescription, the fact that the slave argues by itself does not does not "prove" the validity of rights as a prescription. But if argumentation ethics is to be taken seriously and applied consistent, we would have to say that the slave is "free" and implicitly proves that they have rights by arguing. Surely this is nonsensical if not outrageous.

Clearly, the fact that people engage in argumentation is not sufficient in and of itself to prove that people have rights. For in all times and all places, people who do not completely have rights have engaged in argumentation! Upon them engaging in argumentation, it is not implicitly proven that they have a certain set of rights that is consistent with a specifically libertarian social theory. To treat rights as some sort of inherent ontological fact in this way is to confuse what the meaning and purpose of rights is to begin with. The purpose of a theory of rights is not to prove some sort of ontological characteristic that people inherently have, for rights are ethical norms and not merely descriptive traits. At best, they can only sensibly be treated descriptively upon their realization as ethical norms or as a description of such ethical norms as such.

What's strange about Hoppe's argumentation ethics is that it appears to be attempting to make an "ontological proof" of libertarianism. Unfortunately, there is no such ontological proof, because libertarianism is not an ontological fact. "Liberty", strictly speaking, is not some sort of "natural state" that we cannot possibly escape any more than "tyranny" is such a "natural state". Argumentation ethics seems like a naturalistic fallacy because it treats liberty as if it an intrinsic quality of all humans. Perhaps all people have the capacity for liberty, but the realization of liberty as such is not intrinsic.

Furthermore, the attempt to derive a specific notion of rights and the general premise that people should have liberty from such an assumption of intrinsic ontology inherently is fallacious and bumps into the most obvious sense of the is-ought dichotomy. If liberty is some sort of intrinsic quality in this way, then there is no rational reason to argue that we should have liberty. An "ethics of liberty" would henceforth be completely pointless. On the other hand, if liberty is some sort of capacity that has not yet been fully realized, if liberty is prescriptive in nature and hence constitutes an ethical norm, then it makes no sense whatsoever to appeal to liberty as an intrinsic ontological fact, for in this context it is a goal that has not yet been realized (and hence in this sense it simply is not a "fact").

Inalienability

Brainpolice — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:35:00 GMT

There recently has been a lot of discussion and debate among libertarians online about self-ownership, rights, responsibility, voluntary slavery and inalienability. I think that this has helped reveal some significant flaws in the way that certain libertarians approach such matters, especially as it relates to Walter Block's ideas. In essence, what the issue boils down to is wether or not rights and responsibilities are alienable or not, or if alienation is possible or consistant with libertarianism. By alienation I do not refer to the Marxist notion of alienation, but the separation of certain things from the self in a more literal sense. As I have said before, a dualistic concept of self-ownership is an incoherant concept because it tries to alienate the mind or will from the body, and this simply cannot be done, hence why Walter Block's notion of "voluntary slavery" is incoherant and contradictary. I have explained in quite a bit of detail why this is in past blog posts.

But the issue apparently is even more far reaching than this. Some people have been taking the viewpoint that rights and responsibilities are actually commodities to be bought and sold on a free market. I think this stems from taking metaphors (such as self-ownership) too literally and not fully understanding what inalienable rights means, which leads some people to take what amounts to ridiculous positions that blatantly violate basic notions of personal responsibility and individual sovereignty. Not only is it impossible to alienate the mind or will from the body, but as a consequence of this, you cannot alienate someone's responsibility as an individual as if it something that can be transfered to someone else through contract. Nor is someone's actual person a commodity to be bought and sold on a free market, as that is precisely what chattel slavery is. If libertarians really want to take such a position, they must realize that the ultimate consequence is the total elimination of any coherant meaning for rights and responsibilities in libertarianism.

One can concievably sign a contract that says that someone else is responsible for their actions, but this contract would not change the actual causal reality of responsibility, which remains in the metaphorical court of the actual people who are human actors in a given scenario. If someone murders someone else, for example, it doesn't matter if they have made a contract that delegates responsibility for their murder to someone else, they are still the murderer. Such a contract is fraudulent with regaurd to their actual behavior. The idea that criminals can be exempted for responsibility for their crimes through contract eliminates a good deal of the meaning of justice. While I myself do place a lot of emphasis on the restitution of victims, I do not accept the notion that the criminal actors in a given scenario can delegate their responsibility for restitution to someone else. This is because you cannot alienate responsibility from someone, as you cannot alienate their will and the causal reality of the scenario is that they are the ones who commited the given act in question.

I think that a lot of this also generally stems for improper concept formation or a lack of understanding of the proper order of concepts. The old saying goes "life, liberty and property", and it is in this order for a good reason. A problem I often run into is that some people appear to act as if property is primary or axoimatic at the expense of life and liberty. But a coherant theory of rights does not place property above life and liberty, property is contextual to respecting the right to life and liberty. Property rights does not grant one a legitimate right to violate someone else's right to life and liberty, and it is a grave error to conceptualize literally everything, such as personhood and responsibility, as a property right. The idea that personhood is a property right to be bought and sold is part of the very basis for slavery of all kinds, and you cannot argue for a notion of "voluntary slavery" without destroying the inalienability of rights. Trying to turn literally everything into a propertarian question is to nonsensically expand the concept of property to absurdity.

While freedom of contract is a vital component of libertarianism, it is does not supercede people's inalienable rights. There is such thing as a fraudulent or criminal contract, and a perpetual contract that is enforced onto someone against their explicit consent into the future or as a 3rd party not directly privy to the contract is fraudulent and the basis for gross rights violations, including the coercive social contract. All contracts must have a way to get out of them, even if there are conditions or consequences for opting out of a contract such as dealing with withstanding debts. A perpetual contract that you cannot possibly get out of regaurdless of your will is a significant part of the very basis for the coercive social contract, and there is a huge differance beween the delegation of the enforcement of rights to a 3rd party and the delegation of the rights themselves. If contracts are a method by which one can legitimately lose all of their rights, then rights essentially lose their meaning as something to consistantly apply to recognize in people.

Wether they realize it or not, those who advocate notions of justice that rely on an alienation of the mind, will, responsibility and rights from the self are undermining the entire basis for individual liberty. The very premises that they are using can be used against the entire libertarian notion of justice and as a way to legitimize political institutions or policies that libertarians normally would oppose. So it turns out that this is actually an extremely important issue to clarify. It is based on some fairly fundamental philosophical misnomers that threaten to undermine the entire libertarian project, despite the good intentions of some proponents of such misnomers. If this issue is not properly clarified, I fear that libertarianism can be used to push for abominable notions of justice that commodifies rights and responsibilities. But rights and responsibilities are not commodities in any rational theory of justice.

Two Philosophies of History

Brainpolice — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:02:00 GMT

Political philosophies often involve views of history. There seems to be two fundamental views of history, as I have touched on in "Traditionalism as Stagnation" and "Radicalism and Moderation". These two views are what I would call the "conservative" and "progressive" views of history. I would like to elaborate on the ups and downs of both of these views of history and to explain why I ultimately side with a progressive view of history and consider it to be compatible with and perhaps even essential to libertarianism.

The conservative view of history may be summed as either the desire to keep things the same or the romantization of the past. The progressive view of history may be summed up as a desire to see things change or the idea that things progress and evolve over time. By definition, the progressive view is more foreward looking, and as a consequence it is quick to abandon traditions. It easily leads to notions of social evolution. In contrast, the conservative view is pessemstic towards the future and consequentially clings to tradition and even aims at reversing history in some respects. The progressive view could be said to be comparatively optimistic because there is something to possibly look foreward to, and therefore it would seem like it has the potential to be radical and revolutionary, while the conservative view easily becomes reactionary and counter-revolutionary.

The marxist view of history, in which communism is proclaimed without proof as being an inevitable future stage of history, is an example of progressivism. On the other hand, progressivism of a quite different sort was espoused by Herbert Spencer, in which social evolution necessitates adaptation to man's environment through increased individual freedom in accordance with the laws of nature. An example of the conservative view would be rigid religious or cultural traditionalism, in which changes that have occured in recent times, such as the move towards secularism and cultural tolerance, are radically opposed while systems of the past are held up as the ideal.

When understood in their proper context, both views have lead to both erroneous and correct conclusions. The conservative view always faces the danger of becoming primitivism or ludditism, in which more simple, agrarian and tribal living of the past is considered the ideal. And progressivism always faces the danger of becoming unenthusiastic and desensitized to the present, or of becoming overly utopian by basing the allegedly "inevitable" future on false notions about human nature. Hence, the social evolutionist faces a danger of becoming more gradualist. Such was Murray Rothbard's diagnosis of what happened to the social evolutionist Herbert Spencer as he aged.

But there have also been some good tendencies on both sides. The wise progressive possesses the insight that it is possible to improve conditions through both social evolution and revolution. They are aware that there things that have not been tried yet, at least fully. The progressive has reason for optimism toward the future. The wise conservative possesses the insight that there are certain basic principles or laws which are necessary for order to flourish. They are aware that there is much to be learned from the thinkers and writters of the past, and that there are some things that will never go away.

Where the progressive may err is over the question of how to go about changing things and what to change to, and in exessive optimism. Change for its own sake, divorced from context, is not rational. Neither is a utopian view of the future. Where the conservative may err is in the inability to aknowledge the changes and extensions that have been made upon the basic principles and laws of the past, and in their exessive pessemism toward the future. Tradition for its own sake, divorced from context and new information, is not rational. Neither is a utopian view of the past.

However, despite such a neutral comparative analysis, ultimately the progressive view has certain benefits that is lacking in the conservative view. For as Frank Zappa once stated, "progress is not possible without deviation from the norm". All innovations had to result from deviations from, modifications on and the total abandonment or replacement of past traditions. The conservative ends up functioning as an apologist for the status quo in the name of a false sense of realism, while inaccurately demonizing all progressive forces as idealist or utopian. The more successful progressive forces are, the more the conservative enters a state of desperation. At best, the conservative can only be a moderate, while the progressive at least has the potential to be a libertarian. The only thing that the strict conservative could concieve of abolishing is modernity, for when driven to their extremes the conservative effectively becomes anti-modern.

Allow me to apply these two basic views via historical example. When there was slavery in America, there were three basic positions with respect to chattel slavery. There were the slavery abolitionists, the slavery reformists and the outright slavery supporters. In the context of the times, the application of the conservative view of history inevitably would lead one to be a slavery supporter or a mild reformist at best, for this view would treat slavery as if it were virtually an inevitable law of nature that always has been and always must be. In this view surely the abolitionists were far too radical and utopian. Consequentially, the conservative view could only lead to a passive acceptance of the existance of the institution of slavery while possibly trying to minimize its effects if one is slightly generous. Only the progressive radicalism of the abolitionists could truly represent a principled opposition to slavery.

The same principle applies to any other institution or tradition, such as the state. By their own logic, the conservative has no choice but to conclude that because the state currently exists and has prevailed in the past, it inevitably must exist by necessity of human nature. Indeed, the conservative view easily leads to extremely pessemistic notions about human nature that are used to legitimize current conditions and institutions. All inequities can be brushed off as mere inadequacies of nature, and all positions of power can be legitimized as the consequence of inexorable laws of nature. Libertarianism and anarchism, in contrast, questions the alleged legitimacy of the state and consistantly applies the same human principles to state agents as they would to any other individual. It questions whether or not existing institutions and traditions are particularly necessary or ethical or logical at all.

The level-headed progressive does not necessarily have to be a starry-eyed utopian. For the progressive may very well grant that there will always be some degree of inadequacy and suffering in life. What they seek to abolish is not reality itself but the synthetic institutional framework that allows such things to be expanded and traditionalized. The constant charge of utopianism thrown at the progressive by the moderate or conservative thus becomes a mischaracterization. The progressive libertarian is neither a utopian or a conservative. Rather, they are radical bastions of vigilance and certainty. The libertarian stands on the side of social power rather than political power, and they do not cave in to moderate and conservative pressure. Neither would it be accurate to blame the libertarian of being only against things and for nothing, for while they certainly may wish to deconstruct certain things they also propose the construction of new things.

The conservative is ultimately a mere apologist or shill for power, while the libertarian is a delegitimizer of power. While the libertarian has a possible future to look foreward to, the conservative is ultimately doomed because they are attempting the impossible: a static society. Despite their sense of being realistic, the conservative refuses to accept the dynamic nature of reality. The future lies with the libertarians.