In one of Dr. Roderick T. Long's lectures he stated that he liked to call the libertarian revolution a proletariat revolution. Whither he was serious about this statement or was saying it in tongue in cheek I do not know. However, it made me think: Is the libertarian revolution also a proletariat revolution? Really ponder this question.
'the American is the most unphilosophical of beings. The rationalization of conduct in general is most repugnant to him; he prefers to emotionalize it.' - Albert J Nock
You should post the source for reference. Pedantically, I am in partial agreement, but Marxism is bullshit.
Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write. ---Karl Kraus.
Context is important here. Does Long support violent overthrow of the State, or does he consider the libertarian revolution to be led by people who have a greater "class consciousness" than others?
Irish Liberty Forum
Well of course Marxism is a joke but is Dr. Long correct in his statement?
http://mises.org/story/2099
No. A libertarian revolution is political, it has nothing to do with economic class.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation
Stranger:No. A libertarian revolution is political, it has nothing to do with economic class.
What about John Calhoun's 'Tax providers' and 'Tax consumers'?
Anarchist Cain: Well of course Marxism is a joke but is Dr. Long correct in his statement? http://mises.org/story/2099
Removing the State will fundamentally improve the lot of the working man.
MatthewWilliam:Removing the State will fundamentally improve the lot of the working man.
See what I mean?
Anarchist Cain: Stranger:No. A libertarian revolution is political, it has nothing to do with economic class. What about John Calhoun's 'Tax providers' and 'Tax consumers'?
Rich and poor people compose both tax consumers and tax payers.
Stranger: Rich and poor people compose both tax consumers and tax payers.
Government employees and the taxpayers.
Anarchist Cain:However, it made me think: Is the libertarian revolution also a proletariat revolution? Really ponder this question.
In a sense, yes...
If you mean proletariat as the workers, not the poor class structure, then obvioulsy yes, the workers stand to benefit the greatest from a libertarian revolution, certainly there will be no minimum wage or forced insurance, but, the price drop and the stable free market currency will benefit them far more than the current systems...
If you mean the poor that live off welfare.... no...
It sounds like the ocean, smells like fresh mountain air, and tastes like the union of peanut butter and chocolate. ~Liberty Student
When I say proletariat I mean marginal workers.
Long was sort of being tongue in cheek, but basically the point is that there is no good reason why libertarianism can't or shouldn't be appealing to "the left", if conceptualized in a certain way. The speech that the statement comes from is Long's "Rothbard's Left and Right, 40 Years Later" (which can be found at this very site), in which he is retrospectively trying to make the case for a "libertarian left" that does not have conservative connotations.
Brainpolice: Long was sort of being tongue in cheek, but basically the point is that there is no good reason why libertarianism can't or shouldn't be appealing to "the left", if conceptualized in a certain way. The speech that the statement comes from is Long's "Rothbard's Left and Right, 40 Years Later" (which can be found at this very site), in which he is retrospectively trying to make the case for a "libertarian left" that does not have conservative connotations.
Long did have a joshing voice. However, I found it a very thought provoking lecture and that statement specifically a revolutionary one in my thought process.
Anarchist Cain: When I say proletariat I mean marginal workers.
I know Thomas Paine was a thorn in John Adams and Hamiltons heel due to Paine was all about the worker and wanted to take the revolution a step further and rid the aristocratic strangle hold on government agendas due to their powerful, including monetary, influences on governmental policies. Paine was looked down upon by many "high class" people due to his poor background and rough edged mannerism, but that's part in measure why he had the pulse of the everyday man and woman and became the voice of the Revolution not only in America, but in France and almost Britain for he could write on-point to the laymen and so-called higher class intellectual alike. He knew cause he was one of them and was also able to mingle with the "higher class" as Franklin took him in and introduced him to numerous well-known people during that time for Paine before "Common Sense" was already showing his bravery and skill with the pen in some articles in Britain.
The French Revolution took heed of Paine's calling and if you smelled like an aristocrat (maybe literally at times...lol) you were mobbed and potentially hung in the streets. The French didn't have a reasoned debate on what the government would look like after monarchy fell. In a biography of Paine I have recently read the author made a good case that in America the revolution, aside from not taking that next step Paine wanted, it did adhere to rationalizing natural rights and thus became an argument at Conventions, Congress, via letters, individuals meeting, and books whereas the natural rights of the French sided with Rousseau's sensibility and once that passion was unleashed no intellectual replacement surfaced, other than Bonaparts.
Is this similar to what you're asking and discussing?
No free market with blind headbutting as thine and mine goes unseen, you know, current events. But if there's an increased implementation of property rights so economics justly happens with this scarcity.. then yes.
Anarchist Cain:When I say proletariat I mean marginal workers.
Well then yes, and Wilderness is exactly correct, Paine, if you examine all his work, was very anti aristocrat, he had even made the claim, and I would have to search the source so do not quote me yet, that the perfect republic would have no government (to this effect)...
Also I would like to add this from a very interesting article I found here at the Mises site by David Osterfeld (who currently contributes to the Mises Daily I noticed) in which he is in part critiquing an article that has a socialist/Marxist position:
"Since the Marxist views both the market and the state as nothing more than alternative methods by which the ruling class is able to dominate and exploit the rest of society, he is unable to distinguish between the market process itself, and the effect of government restrictions on the market. And this, in turn, means that the Marxist cannot distinguish between what is commonly referred to as capitalism, or a system of free trade, and mercantilism, or a system in which the operation of the market is impeded by extensive government restrictions for the benefit of the ruling group. It is important to realize that it is not simply that the Marxist does not distinguish between capitalism and mercantilism. It is that the Marxist paradigm quite literally renders him incapable of making such a distinction.
...In contrast, the strength of the liberal paradigm lies in precisely its ability to provide an analytical distinction between voluntarism and power, market, and government. This distinction has been at the center of liberal thought from its very inception. Adam Smith, for example, wrote his massive Wealth of Nations specifically to refute the doctrine of mercantilism. Smith argues that under mercantilism monopolistic privileges were granted to a few favored firms, permitting them to sell at exorbitant prices, while tariffs were enacted to keep out foreign competitors. But if a nation were to eliminate imports it would need to have its own exclusive colonies in order to obtain raw materials. The power of the state, of course, was ideally suited to carve out and police the resulting colonial system. Smith charged that the mercantilist system not only hurt those in the colonies but the workers in the mother country as well. Its only beneficiaries, he says, were "the rich and powerful." Permitting the colonists to buy only from merchants in the mother country enabled those merchants to sell at monopoly prices in the colonies. The colonists, therefore, were unable to pay for the administration of colonial government as well, so the workers in the home-country were heavily taxed to defray this cost, thereby perpetuating the profits of the state-favored merchants. The effect of mercantilism, said Smith, was that "the interest of one little order of men in one country" was promoted at the expense of "the interests of all other orders of men in that country and of all other orders of men in all other countries" (Smith 1776, p. 578). What Smith urged was the replacement of mercantilism by free trade. This, of course, would logically entail the abandonment of the entire colonial empire and Smith did not shrink from drawing that conclusion.
...While Mises sees peace as the necessary precondition for free trade, mercantilism, he says tersely, is "the philosophy of war." Similarly, Murray Rothbard (1970, pp. 194-96) draws a sharp contrast between the market principle, personified by individual freedom, mutual harmony and peace, and the state, or "the hegemonic principle," characterized by "coercion," the "benefit of one group at the expense of another," "caste conflict," and "war." Similarly, Milton Friedman is fond of drawing attention to the fact that while such policies as tariffs are "pro-business," they are "anti-free trade." The inability of the Marxist paradigm to distinguish between capitalism and mercantilism has resulted in an unfortunate terminological confusion which has meant that classical liberals and Marxists have often talked past one another when they were, in fact, in substantial agreement, at least on certain key issues regarding the state, such as its role in generating class conflict and turning trade into a situation in which one group benefits at the expense of another. This is precisely the case with Traders Versus the State. What the authors of Traders Versus the State condemn as "capitalism" is nearly identical to what liberals criticize as "mercantilism.""
Anarchist Cain: Stranger: Rich and poor people compose both tax consumers and tax payers. Government employees and the taxpayers.
Government employees are a member of the so-called tax-paying class.
The entire idea of a proletariat revolution is very Manichaen, and Hegalian, and in this sense it is wrong because there are very rarely, esspecially with the fall of feudalism, clear-cut classes with their appropriate clear-cut interests.
I am becoming a Burkean Whig.
- F.A. Hayek
Anarchist Cain: Brainpolice: Long was sort of being tongue in cheek, but basically the point is that there is no good reason why libertarianism can't or shouldn't be appealing to "the left", if conceptualized in a certain way. The speech that the statement comes from is Long's "Rothbard's Left and Right, 40 Years Later" (which can be found at this very site), in which he is retrospectively trying to make the case for a "libertarian left" that does not have conservative connotations. Long did have a joshing voice. However, I found it a very thought provoking lecture and that statement specifically a revolutionary one in my thought process.
I was also inspired by the lecture, at about the time that it initially was made.
Brainpolice: Long was sort of being tongue in cheek, but basically the point is that there is no good reason why libertarianism can't or shouldn't be appealing to "the left", if conceptualized in a certain way.
Long was sort of being tongue in cheek, but basically the point is that there is no good reason why libertarianism can't or shouldn't be appealing to "the left", if conceptualized in a certain way.
The left is going to have to get over their distaste for private property for that to ever be a success.
"In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions" - George Cardinal Pell
laminustacitus:Government employees are a member of the so-called tax-paying class.
government employees if they are members of the 'tax paying class' are the non-tax paying members of it.
wut?!?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
nirgrahamUK: laminustacitus:Government employees are a member of the so-called tax-paying class. government employees if they are members of the 'tax paying class' are the non-tax paying members of it
government employees if they are members of the 'tax paying class' are the non-tax paying members of it
Government employees still pay taxes.
I'm trying to resist the urge to quote Rothbard at you, but I will if you insist....
nirgrahamUK: I'm trying to resist the urge to quote Rothbard at you, but I will if you insist....
Take off the libertarian googles - the fact that government employees pay taxes is an undisputible truth, and ergo they are a member of the "tax-payer class.
*sigh*
Rothbard : Power & Market:One thing we know without difficulty, however. Bureaucrats are net tax consumers. As we pointed out above, bureaucrats cannot pay taxes. Hence, it is inherently impossible for bureaucrats to pay income taxes uniformly with everyone else. And therefore the ideal of uniform income taxation for all is an impossible goal. We repeat that the bureaucrat who receives $8,000 a year income and then hands $1,500 back to the government is engaging in a mere bookkeeping transaction of no economic importance (aside from the waste of paper and records involved). For he does not and cannot pay taxes; he simply receives $6,500 a year from the tax fund.
what would you recommend?
nirgrahamUK: Rothbard : Power & Market:One thing we know without difficulty, however. Bureaucrats are net tax consumers. As we pointed out above, bureaucrats cannot pay taxes. Hence, it is inherently impossible for bureaucrats to pay income taxes uniformly with everyone else. And therefore the ideal of uniform income taxation for all is an impossible goal. We repeat that the bureaucrat who receives $8,000 a year income and then hands $1,500 back to the government is engaging in a mere bookkeeping transaction of no economic importance (aside from the waste of paper and records involved). For he does not and cannot pay taxes; he simply receives $6,500 a year from the tax fund.
Tax consumption, and paying taxes are two different concepts - equivocating the two is economic nonsense designed to continue a political agenda, its things like these that are the albotrases around the neck of Austrian economics. For most government-employees (bureaucrats obviously included), the job is no different than that in the private sector other than the fact that it is the state that writes their pay-check; they still pay taxes even though their salary is derived from tax collections.
The amount of taxes one pays is not a function of the one's tax-rate, and then one's rate of tax-consumption, rather it is merely the former. That function, rather, is one's overall rate of tax consumption - having a positive amount of tax consumption (recieving more than one gives into the tax-pool) does not make that person a non-tax payer.
laminustacitus:having a positive amount of tax consumption (recieving more than one gives into the tax-pool) does not make that person a non-tax payer
yes, of course, he goes through the charade of paying tax. if you think charades are significant then you have won this argument to your satisfaction.
nirgrahamUK: laminustacitus:having a positive amount of tax consumption (recieving more than one gives into the tax-pool) does not make that person a non-tax payer yes, of course, he goes through the charade of paying tax. if you think charades are significant then you have won this argument to your satisfaction.
Its not a charade: paying taxes, and benefitting from tax-consumption are two independent, though often interrelated, phenomena.
Yes the secretaries are part of the tax payers, as are the road crews...
The Government that Cain was talking about, I am sure, are the elected officials that do not pay taxes....
laminustacitus:Its not a charade: paying taxes, and benefitting from tax-consumption are two independent, though often interrelated, phenomena.
what sense of the word independent are you using, presumably not 'not at all dependant', since a government employee could not even go through the charade of 'paying taxes' from non-existant wages. and neither could a government employee earn wages, if other people besides government employees did not TRULY (non-charadically (sp?)) Pay Taxes.
Harry Felker:The Government that Cain was talking about, I am sure, are the elected officials that do not pay taxes....
All elected officials, at least in the United States pay taxes just like private citizens; public officials like the president, and congress members must publish their tax returns.
laminustacitus:Take off the libertarian googles - the fact that government employees pay taxes is an undisputible truth, and ergo they are a member of the "tax-payer class.
If a government employee makes 40k a year and pays 10k in taxes [ This is Rothbard's hypothetical situation ] then really the employee is only making 30k.
All elected officials, at least in the United States go through the charade of paying taxes unlike private citizens who actually pay taxes; public officials like the president, and congress members must publish their tax returns, which is a fun joke if you understand the punchline.
laminustacitus:All elected officials, at least in the United States pay taxes just like private citizens; public officials like the president, and congress members must publish their tax returns.
Yes but who pays the government salaries? Certainly not the government itself which does not involve itself in profit seeking adventures nor is it concerned with profit/loss.
nirgrahamUK:what sense of the word independent are you using
They are independent in the respect that the fact individuals pay taxes as a fact, and that concept should not be equivocated with the tax-consumption of an individual.
nirgrahamUK: presumably not 'not at all dependant', since a government employee could not even go through the charade of 'paying taxes' from non-existant wages.
No employee could.
nirgrahamUK:and neither could a government employee earn wages, if other people besides government employees did not TRULY (non-charadically (sp?)) Pay Taxes.
No employee can be paid unless their employer is able to gain revenue.
laminustacitus:They are independent in the respect that the fact individuals pay taxes as a fact, and that concept should not be equivocated with the tax-consumption of an individual.
well, just so i know the kind of independance you speak of....
anyhow.
given that i grant that government employees positively do go through the charade of paying taxes., even if infact, once accounting anomalies are understood ,one understands that they dont (in the significant way of speaking) pay taxes.
perhaps you will say why you feel the insignificant to be significant? why must i always mention the charade when i wish to highlight the truth?
i am very curious. to have these riddles answered.
nirgrahamUK:All elected officials, at least in the United States go through the charade of paying taxes unlike private citizens who actually pay taxes; public officials like the president, and congress members must publish their tax returns, which is a fun joke if you understand the punchline.
Stop equivocating paying taxes with tax consumption, the two are different. This is just libertarian babble.
yes they are different, but the difference is insignificant.
your hysterics to the contrary are nothing but unreasonable babble(regardless of what crackpot political ideology you hold to, given that you seem disposed against libertarianism)
nirgrahamUK:given that i grant that government employees positively do go through the charade of paying taxes., even if infact, once accounting anomalies are understood ,one understands that they dont (in the significant way of speaking) pay taxes.
They might be tax consumers, but tax consumption, and paying taxes are different - you are equivocating the two, and hence obfuscating the entire matter.
nirgrahamUK:i am very curious. to have these riddles answered.
There are no riddles, just don't equivocated tax consumption with paying taxes.
nirgrahamUK:yes they are different, but the difference is insignificant.
No they are not, there are no economic reasons why the difference is insignificant, though many political ideologies seek to equivocate the two.
nirgrahamUK:(regardless of what crackpot political ideology you hold to, given that you seem disposed against libertaria
Blah, blah, blah.
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