Why Hate the Anarcho-Left?

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Angurse replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 9:09 AM

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AJ,

That article is excellent, its more or less my own view of a more voluntaryist society. Competitive legal systems, will have differing systems of property which will inevitably have different ideas of what constitutes "aggression." It isn't (foolishly) trying to merge pluralism with universalism.

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wilderness replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 10:04 AM

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Hairnet:

The market... is genetically dependent on the property rights that form it.

That's how I see this.  Property rights are a principle explaining what factually is, and I see no way around property involved in economics.  The variations are in the theories based on property rights.  Some are logical extensions of, some not, and some argued over whether or not the consistencies are fully hashed out.  And thus how the science, ie. knowledge, of ethics, ie. an individual relating with other individuals, is understood.  Do people morally degenerate in relation to scarcity or morally generate?  Questions not necessarily to be answered with a final conclusion, but observed as such events play-out as billions of individuals relate with each other on this earth, at least that's what I'm doing, watching this play-out in real-time.

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Hairnet replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 12:36 PM

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In Restraint of State:

Hairnet:

Angurse:

Hairnet:

   I said that the rhetoric was dishonest. I don't know you.

I'm a so called "voluntaryist" though.

  I guess it is kind of silly to say that rhetoric can be dishonest. Isn't that a human-specific quality?

  I think that voluntaryism is a dishonest rhetorical term because it makes one's beliefs seem more pluralistic than they can possibly be. I here people say "I am okay with socialism as long as it is voluntary". That doesn't mean anything to a socialist because they think that socialism is voluntary, and capitalism is aggressive against workers.

  If we look at what wikipedia says (if you disagree please say so)-

   "Voluntaryism, or voluntarism,^[1] is a philosophy that opposes anything that it sees as unjustifiably invasive and coercive. Voluntaryism regards government as coercive, and calls for its abolishment, but, unlike a number of other anarchist philosophies, it supports strong property rights which it regards as a natural law that is compatible with non-coercion.

The goal of voluntaryism is the supplantation of the state by a voluntary order, in which political authority is reverted to the individual, and association among people occurs only by mutual consent. Voluntaryists believe voluntaryism itself should be the means to achieve this goal, rather than forceful action."

   This is just Anarcho-Capitalism repackaged to look nicer to certain kinds of personalities. Just like how some people call themselves leftists even though they support market anarchism.  The thing is that there isn't anything voluntary about property rights, violence is required to maintain them. The only people who don't use violence are Tolstoyan pacifists.

 

 

No, actually I think you totally miss the point. Property rights are indeed voluntary. Why? Sure violence is needed to DEFEND them...but not necessarily to maintain them. See what happened there? If nobody uses violence against you FIRST, then you never need violence to maintain property rights. You need violence to maintain property rights only when someone first uses violence against you. Using violence in a defensive manner is still adhering to voluntarism by the person that is defending. It's the person that initiated the violence in the first place that has broken the voluntary nature of things.

 

edit - I do think voluntarism and anarcho-capitalism are just two ways of saying the same thing though.

   That is a good point. I do think that only applies within the context of currently established system. Since the thread is about leftists, they are the people who would disagree, and thus object to your ownership of capital, or really anything you don't "need".  They disagree with your definition of property, and your definition or property is what would have to be enforce via violence (until its establishment as the status quo).

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In Restraint of State replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 5:07 PM

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Brainpolice:

Seph:

scineram:

In Restraint of State:

Property rights are indeed voluntary. Why? Sure violence is needed to DEFEND them...but not necessarily to maintain them. See what happened there? If nobody uses violence against you FIRST, then you never need violence to maintain property rights. You need violence to maintain property rights only when someone first uses violence against you

This is true of any ethic or property theory.

 

But only one theory is fully grounded on the concept of self ownership.

The concept of self-ownership is itself ungrounded, or at best circular and cartesian. I already went in circles on these forums about that issue long ago though, so I'm not going to repeat that in detail now.

Meh, it's the best system we have. First-come-first-serve is how ownership is basically come across. You are the first to have control over yourself because your brain has control over your body.

edit - to the person that said voluntarists think all voluntary things are ethical: that might be so but I personally haven't met anyone like that. Most of them simply say that you shouldn't use violence to break voluntary arrangements. It doesn't cover ALL of ethics/morality, only part of it - it simply says when violence is justified(when it should not be punished). It's justified in defending innocent people("innocent" meaning people who have not first violated the NAP).

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Angurse replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 5:39 PM

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In Restraint of State:

edit - to the person that said voluntarists think all voluntary things are ethical: that might be so but I personally haven't met anyone like that. Most of them simply say that you shouldn't use violence to break voluntary arrangements. It doesn't cover ALL of ethics/morality, only part of it - it simply says when violence is justified(when it should not be punished). It's justified in defending innocent people("innocent" meaning people who have not first violated the NAP).

Please keep in mind that the NAP is open to interpretation.

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In Restraint of State replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 11:19 AM

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I don't see how it's open to interpretation. Then again, I haven't read much about it, just heard it explained.

You can't use force against someone that hasn't first done so to you or used force to take or use someone's property(including your own) without the consent of the owner. "Owner" here means someone that came upon owning something by homesteading it or can trace their ownership back to some original owner who homesteaded it and that was traded through voluntary exchange.

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Angurse replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 12:41 PM

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Force, aggression, coercion. All interpretable.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 9:30 PM

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The goal of voluntaryism is the supplantation of the state by a voluntary order, in which political authority is reverted to the individual, and association among people occurs only by mutual consent. Voluntaryists believe voluntaryism itself should be the means to achieve this goal, rather than forceful action.

Hm, intersting notion.  Sounds a lot like a union of egoists.

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Angurse replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 11:23 PM

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Jackson LaRose:

Hm, intersting notion.  Sounds a lot like a union of egoists.

Yeah, minus the members eventual realisation that they don't want to hold more than they need junk.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Wed, Feb 10 2010 8:06 AM

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Angurse:

Yeah, minus the members eventual realisation that they don't want to hold more than they need junk.

  ?

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Angurse replied on Wed, Feb 10 2010 11:11 AM

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Otherwise their independence will be destroyed.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Wed, Feb 10 2010 12:08 PM

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Angurse:

Otherwise their independence will be destroyed.

I don't understand what this means in the context of our posts.  All I typed was that the voluntary society described in my last post seemed similar to the union of egoists described by Stirner.

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 12:09 AM

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Jackson LaRose:

I don't understand what this means in the context of our posts.  All I typed was that the voluntary society described in my last post seemed similar to the union of egoists described by Stirner.

And your right, except Stirner said more (them not wanting more than they need) than one would really draw from the voluntary society description you provided.

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William replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 12:21 AM

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Damn, you cats are having a titanic Frazier-Ali battle over 3(?) threads! 

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 12:38 AM

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Dondoolee:

Damn, you cats are having a titanic Frazier-Ali battle over 3(?) threads! 

I've decided to allow your thread to live.

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Caley McKibbin replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 12:59 AM

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Jackson LaRose:

But what's a greater threat to your liberty right now?  The fact that a few, decentralized lefty tribes won't respect your property in a hypothetical future?  Or that the terrible mechanations of the state threaten your property now?  

The ideas from the lefty tribes are the basis for the state threatening our property.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 9:04 AM

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Angurse:

(them not wanting more than they need)

"Once the state is annihilated the Union of Egoists will prevail. This union is not sacred nor a spiritual power above man's power. It is created by men. In this union men will be held together by mutual advantage, through common "use" of one another. In joining the union an individual increases his own individual power. Each person will now through his own might control what he can. It does not imply though that there will be a region of universal rapacity and perpetual slaughter, nor does it mean the wielding of power over others. Each man will defend his own uniqueness. Once he has attained self-realization of true egoism he does not want to rule over others or hold more possessions than he needs because this would destroy his independence" -

Andrew Carlson, Philosophical Egoism: German Antecedents,

Yeah, I don't entirely agree with this part, but I think it was really more conjecture or "wishful thinking" on Stirner's part.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who value lots of cars, or slaves, to their own, unbridled freedom.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 9:09 AM

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Caley McKibbin:

The ideas from the lefty tribes are the basis for the state threatening our property.

But without a centralized power to lord over us with, who would listen?

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 10:51 AM

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Jackson LaRose:

Yeah, I don't entirely agree with this part, but I think it was really more conjecture or "wishful thinking" on Stirner's part.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who value lots of cars, or slaves, to their own, unbridled freedom.

Heretic! Looks like I'm slowly winning this war.

I'm going to look into this Carlson fellow though.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 10:59 AM

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Angurse:

Heretic! Looks like I'm slowly winning this war.

LOL, I can only be considered heretic if there exists an "Ideology of Egoism" to compare myself against.  Fortunately, there isn't.  Unless you convince me that your normative conclusions are facts, the war will continue unabated.

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 11:09 AM

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Jackson LaRose:

LOL, I can only be considered heretic if there exists an "Ideology of Egoism" to compare myself against.  Fortunately, there isn't.  Unless you convince me that your normative conclusions are facts, the war will continue unabated.

Church of Egoism is more like it, and now even you, the Pope, is questioning Christ himself. What have I done?

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Jackson LaRose replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 11:56 AM

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Angurse:

Church of Egoism is more like it, and now even you, the Pope, is questioning Christ himself. What have I done?

Wow!  You think I'm the Pope?  I don't know what to say... does this mean I'm doing a good job arguing?  Like I don't question Stirner...  I'm not too keen on his whole description of races.

I think I've asked you that a couple of times already, but you haven't yet told me; what does my new church believe?  Could you fill me in, this is all happening so fast!

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 11 2010 3:24 PM

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Jackson LaRose:

Wow!  You think I'm the Pope?  I don't know what to say... does this mean I'm doing a good job arguing?  Like I don't question Stirner...  I'm not too keen on his whole description of races.

Eh, backtracking, more like an alter boy who is just starting to see cracks in the faith. You can get out before you waste so much of your life! If I remember correctly, Stirner said that the history of the world properly belongs to the Caucasian race, yeah.

Jackson LaRose:

I think I've asked you that a couple of times already, but you haven't yet told me; what does my new church believe?  Could you fill me in, this is all happening so fast!

Stirner is God - The Ego and His Own is the unquestionable word of God.

Coming soon... pilgrimages to the bar in Friedrichstraße.

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Jackson LaRose replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 9:52 AM

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Angurse:

Eh, backtracking, more like an alter boy who is just starting to see cracks in the faith

Ha!  When did I claim Stirner was 100% correct, no matter what?  That is complete conjecture on your behalf.

Angurse:

You can get out before you waste so much of your life!

And convert to what?  Liberalism?

Angurse:

If I remember correctly, Stirner said that the history of the world properly belongs to the Caucasian race, yeah.

And I've disagreed with that before I came on the forums.  I don't really understand how that supports your case for my faith in Stirner.

Angurse:

Stirner is God - The Ego and His Own is the unquestionable word of God.

LOL!  That might be the silliest thing I've read so far today.  Could I have an ideological statement of principle?  What is the truth that the Church of Stirner advances?

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Angurse replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 10:35 AM

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We've been over most of this in the other thread, no reason to repeat it all.

Jackson LaRose:

LOL!  That might be the silliest thing I've read so far today.  Could I have an ideological statement of principle?  What is the truth that the Church of Stirner advances?

The entire book is a doctrine, just read it. And you obviously cannot have an ideological statement of principle, its a religion, we've had another thread on the two.

Here's a Hymn you can sing:

"I sing as the bird sings
That on the bough alights;
The song that from me springs
Is pay that well requites"

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Jackson LaRose replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 10:53 AM

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Angurse:

The entire book is a doctrine, just read it. And you obviously cannot have an ideological statement of principle, its a religion, we've had another thread on the two.

LOL!  What are you talking about?  I did read it.  So religions don't have ideological statements?  OK, now this is the silliest thing I've read today.

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Angurse replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 12:26 PM

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Jackson LaRose:

LOL!  What are you talking about?  I did read it.  So religions don't have ideological statements?  OK, now this is the silliest thing I've read today.

Did you not read the Atheism thread?

Ideological Statement:

"I essentially meant it as a "statement of beliefs" for those espousing that ideology"

What does it have to do with a religion?

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Jackson LaRose replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 12:39 PM

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Angurse:

"I essentially meant it as a "statement of beliefs" for those espousing that ideology"

What does it have to do with a religion?

"Islam is the religion articulated by the Qur’an, a religious book considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of the single incomparable God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's demonstrations and real-life examples (called the Sunnah, collected through narration of his companions in collections of Hadith)" - wiki

Christianity - apostles creed:

1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

3. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

4. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

5. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.

6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

7. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,

9. the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,

10. the forgiveness of sins,

11. the resurrection of the body,

12. and life everlasting.

Amen.

How are these not ideological statements?  Religions are ideologies.

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Angurse replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 1:03 PM

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Don't we already have a concurrent discussion about the differences between the two, regarding faith and the like

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Jackson LaRose replied on Fri, Feb 12 2010 1:34 PM

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Angurse:

Don't we already have a concurrent discussion about the differences between the two, regarding faith and the like

Yep.

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In Restraint of State replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 2:41 PM

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Angurse:

Force, aggression, coercion. All interpretable.

Only "interpretable" in the sense that some people can be wrong....but that's like saying, given our current definitions of things, that 2 + 2 = 4 is open to interpretation. I suppose if you wanna use the were "interpretation" like that, you could, but it would render the word meaningless.

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Angurse replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 2:49 PM

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In Restraint of State:

Only "interpretable" in the sense that some people can be wrong....but that's like saying, given our current definitions of things, that 2 + 2 = 4 is open to interpretation. I suppose if you wanna use the were "interpretation" like that, you could, but it would render the word meaningless.

Mathematics have been rigorously defined and are provable, the same cannot be said for "force," "aggression," and "coercion."

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In Restraint of State replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 6:14 PM

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Angurse:

In Restraint of State:

Only "interpretable" in the sense that some people can be wrong....but that's like saying, given our current definitions of things, that 2 + 2 = 4 is open to interpretation. I suppose if you wanna use the were "interpretation" like that, you could, but it would render the word meaningless.

Mathematics have been rigorously defined and are provable, the same cannot be said for "force," "aggression," and "coercion."

Actually I think "force, " "agression," and "coercion" have been pretty clearly defined. Most people i've heard use them in my whole life have always used them in the same way. The only area of difference is "coercion" where some people believe "wage-slavery" is coercion, but their concept of wage-slavery is highly problematic because of internal contradictions (you can't allow someone to work for a wage, of you could be forced to pay someone a certain wage so that would essentially be confiscation and/or forced labor in some cases which itself would be slavery in order to pay someone a certain wage).

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Angurse replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 6:25 PM

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In Restraint of State:

Actually I think "force, " "agression," and "coercion" have been pretty clearly defined. Most people i've heard use them in my whole life have always used them in the same way. The only area of difference is "coercion" where some people believe "wage-slavery" is coercion, but their concept of wage-slavery is highly problematic because of internal contradictions (you can't allow someone to work for a wage, of you could be forced to pay someone a certain wage so that would essentially be confiscation and/or forced labor in some cases which itself would be slavery in order to pay someone a certain wage).

Not really, even if they can agree on what defines aggression, say, unprovoked violence, the differences still remain, who decideds whether he was or wasn't provoked. And even libertarians use the term coercion differently.

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Caley McKibbin replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 6:30 PM

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I always say the same thing to this:

What have they ever done for us?

Nothing.

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Andrew Cain replied on Wed, Feb 17 2010 6:32 PM

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Angurse:

Not really, even if they can agree on what defines aggression, say, unprovoked violence, the differences still remain, who decideds whether he was or wasn't provoked. And even libertarians use the term coercion differently.

Part of having the concept of coercion is the ability to properly apply it with general success. If you cannot properly apply the concept of coercion then you don't know the concept of coercion.

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 18 2010 12:10 AM

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Laughing Man:

Part of having the concept of coercion is the ability to properly apply it with general success. If you cannot properly apply the concept of coercion then you don't know the concept of coercion.

Properly apply? General success? All debatable.

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Andrew Cain replied on Thu, Feb 18 2010 4:01 AM

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Angurse:

Properly apply? General success? All debatable.

What is debatable about them? What is general? I mean properly applying isn't really debatable. You wouldn't call a cat a chair.

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Angurse replied on Thu, Feb 18 2010 9:52 AM

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You obviously cannot properly apply coercion to any "general success" unless you have correctly identified what coercion is beforehand. And even libertarians disagree as to what coercion is.

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In Restraint of State replied on Thu, Feb 18 2010 10:06 AM

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Angurse:

 

Not really, even if they can agree on what defines aggression, say, unprovoked violence, the differences still remain, who decideds whether he was or wasn't provoked. And even libertarians use the term coercion differently.

mmmmm.....no, it's pretty easy to say what is provoked or unprovoked. If you go over to Walter Block's audio on this site here he goes over it very thoroughly. If someone threatens to steal or commit an act of bodily harm to you, in earnest, then it is provocation with regards to the Non-Aggression Principle. The way I see it, this is pretty consistent with the logic of the NAP because the NAP is based on individual sovereignty or self-ownership. All rights stem from individual soveriegnty and that's why the NAP is valid.

As for libertarians using "coercion" differently, i agree that some do....it's a matter of which ones understand the NAP or NAA and individual sovereignty and which ones don't.