General

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Birthday Pony — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:28:45 GMT

PS if we follow the logic of your first concern, then the laborers were actually the people homesteading the property in the first place, meaning they were the owners, meaning that most of the infrastructure of the US belongs to the workers and not the state or corporations. By following the logic of your first concern, you start supporting the ends that communist and socialist Anarchists wish to bring about.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Birthday Pony — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:24:53 GMT

"1) Who sold the land to these oil companies? Likely a corrupt state official protected by the state apparatus."

I don't quite see how that's relevant when you don't support expropriation, and this is a point that you've been called out on numerous times. How is the state to do away with any of their assets? How is any property justified? The state is the arbiter of titles, and aside from a few obvious cases of homesteading, the waters are looking pretty murky.

"2) How come people in the countries being occupied don't have strong police forces? Likely because they are economically underdeveloped thanks to lack of freedom."

Once again, you're going to have to explain to me how you think this is relevant. Does that justify the implementation of foriegn PDAs that regularly kill civilians? And on what basis can these countries develop stronger protection? Seeing as how contractors are the de facto police force in many areas of countries like Iraq, I don't quite see what your point is.

"3) State officials in occupied countries likely prevent social backlash over the violence. The roads used by the company are likely state owned, and the state is paid off."

Are you forgetting that I am not a statist? Replace "state" with "landlord" and I'm not quite sure how the substance of the situation changes. My solution is not to use the state. By now you should be pretty clear on that.

"4) Reading about the Pinkerton affair, it doesn't appear that it was that unreasonable - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike"

Since we've established you're able to use wikipedia, why don't you check out the article on the pinkertons rather than one incident out of context? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency Here's a couple gems

"Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America"

"During the labor unrest of the late 19th century and early 20th century, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to provide agents that would infiltrate unions, to supply guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and sometimes to recruit goon squads to intimidate workers."

So as it stands the PDA infrastructure we have, which legitimately owns and controls (according to the theories espoused here) their workers and arms, is run by people who will unflicnhingly work for the state, have no problem with intimidation, and have a history of acting against free association by not letting workers associate with unions or unionists. Yes, after having their legs broken, being intimidated, and then forced out of their work place, steel workers showed up with arms. If you follow the logic of your first concern in that last post, none of the action of the pinkertons was legitimate as they mostly gained prominence through working for the state. But of course, that would negate the justification for almost any private property in existence, and we've beat that one into the ground.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Wheylous — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:30:09 GMT

BP, I haven't read about the specific examples you give, and I withhold from giving a complete response, but I would like to throw out some ideas:

1) Who sold the land to these oil companies? Likely a corrupt state official protected by the state apparatus.

2) How come people in the countries being occupied don't have strong police forces? Likely because they are economically underdeveloped thanks to lack of freedom.

3) State officials in occupied countries likely prevent social backlash over the violence. The roads used by the company are likely state owned, and the state is paid off.

4) Reading about the Pinkerton affair, it doesn't appear that it was that unreasonable - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike

There were hundreds, if not thousands of people on the guy's property, armed with guns, and ready to fire on the Pinkertons. Not only was there trespassing, but trespassing with weapons and intent to fight.

The Pinkertons got licked pretty badly, too.

And according to the article, Frick expected the state militia to come out to support him - hence, there was an expectation of state backing.

Lastly, there is bound to be some initial friction when a system begins to emerge (I am speaking specifically about Pinkerton). If you think about it, the change from agricultural to industrial life was pretty gigantic, with the rise of numerous societal structures that did not exist before that. The market is far from equilibrium.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

John James — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:01:44 GMT

Just caught this and figured it might as well go here:

Noam Chomsky in defense of Ron Paul

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

thelion — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:54:56 GMT

Chomsky is still alive? Doesn't the sun have better things to do than to keep him warm?

A class in labor economics, even given by a socialist, so long as they have mathematical training, would destroy 90% of what Chomsky says right of from day one even with usual Pareto indifference-curve analysis.

None of his work is ever analysis properly so-called.

All his points are based singly on suspicion and fear.

For instance, if you fear private companies, than any ability of them to do anything is bad, no matter how competent they are. In fact, more competent they are worse people like Chomsky fear them. Economic arguments do no persuade such people.

They respect authority or National Will of Our One Nation in anthropomorphic words of Samuelson, because people with chest of medals are "more elegant", like Brezhnev, who pronounced "straniy socialistitiskiyiy" [socialist countries] as "srany sosiyskiyiy" [shitty sausages] every time he gave a speech.

Which is why I ask: how is he still alive? Doesn't he avoid the supermarket.

Isn't he suspicious that capitalist wreckers will poison his food (because private companies try to do evil things, according to him, for sake of giggles).

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Birthday Pony — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:31:41 GMT

That's all very nice Neodoxy, and it's clear you've thought this through, but that just has not been the case in places where there are examples of private defense agencies. The PDAs employed by oil companies in the Middle East are routinely the most violent against civilians. Mine owners hired the pinkertons, who were also ruthless killers. In South America, coke employs death squads to break union organizers' legs or kill them.

The general population is, no doubt, seriously upset about all of this when they encounter it, but most of it happens on private property that they do not own (land owned by oil companies, mine land, or the bottling factory). The clientel are very happy with the work of said PDA. The people of the communities they operate near are not. No such channel exists for them to hold the PDA or its employer accountable.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Neodoxy — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:29:27 GMT

"Building more accountable and approachable strucutres is the way to go if you want to curb that behavior."

Private defense is perfeclty accountable, the checks against it are more thorough than those of traditional democratic states.

I had an argument about checks and balances with a friend whose entire point was that there were no "checks or balances" in an anarchist society but the fact is that there are many. Let's assume that an agency "goes rogue", these are the checkes against it.

1. People will stop paying the organizations because they aren't being protected but violated

2. The law turns against these agencies and people resist them in a case where they are legally armed

3. These agencies have to convince their soldiers to fight and kill innocent people without the guise of the state. The reason that these soldiers are engaging in tyranny is because of the pay from their superiors. They can't hide behind ideology or anything of the like, they are hired killers who are helping to opress their friends and family, or, at very least, innocent people.

4. They have to fund a war to obtain money for supplies and the like with a very small actual base. War is a costly business, so they have to fund it, but from what? You can say that they will steal money but the fact is that with such a threat even the most greedy of businesses are going to have a difficult time justifying their trade with such an organization. You could argue that they would just go out and practically enslave people, but this would then require direct opression by their soldiers, decreasing moral and the amount of manpower available everywhere else

5. The leaders know that if they are defeated then they will be held as war criminals

6. Other defense agencies would be able to recieve a great amount of funding extremely easily to defeat such an organization, they would have a great increase in support from other areas who would want to see the rogue organization obliterated and the righteous organization would have a huge support of the area it would be attempting to invade would do whatever it could to help it

7. Watchdog organizations would likely spring up in order to attempt to prevent such abuse. You can bet that these would become more prevalent and invasive into the company each time that power was abused

8. Communal militias or something of the like could certainly exist. Indeed if companies started abusing their power then more horizontal or communal organizations would almost certainly start to gain a greater and greater market share.

Abuse in a free market is extremely unlikely.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Birthday Pony — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:32:27 GMT

"And any libertarian worth his salt would say, "no", because tyranny is tyranny, public or private. The main argument against the state's existence is that it is tyrannical in and of itself, so it's not "public" ownership that libertarians disagree with which makes them anti-statists, it is the tyrannical nature of the state. If the state wasn't tyrannical, it wouldn't be a state in other words. Libertarians aren't against state action per se, they are against the root of state action and if a private individual's behavior is reminiscent of the root of state action, it "acts like a state.""

That's a good answer. And I think given that, especially if we're granting libertarians as much as not being against state actions, Chomsky has a point. The democratic parts of the state were always given out grudgingly, as little as they do, and they are usually the one part that is accountable to the general population. Still, I think Chomsky made a pretty lame argument against Paul, probably granting his audience more comfort than his ideas.

"BP - what prevents a commune from going ballistic and destroying other communes?"

In a vaccuum, nothing. Communes are structurally more accountable than private entities or hierarchies, however. And history has yet to show massive violence on the side of the commune structure that communist anarchists support. A private company, only accountable to its shareholders, is much harder to file a complaint to, let alone alter the direction of it altogether. And hierarchies, where individuals are only accountable to their hier-up, are practically impossible to change without being at the high end of them.

Nobody can guarantee against people or groups of people acting tyrannical. People built the state. Building more accountable and approachable strucutres is the way to go if you want to curb that behavior.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Wheylous — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:33:26 GMT

BP - what prevents a commune from going ballistic and destroying other communes?

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Eric080 — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:20:28 GMT

Birthday Pony, I guess what I was trying to say with regard to the "acting like a state" business is that people act and only people aggress against other people. Tyranny is tyranny, it doesn't matter what the form of it is. Maybe I didn't read Chomsky close enough, but my point was that state action is ipso facto tyrannical but that private action may or may not be. I wouldn't deny that a private agent could cause harm to someone else. It would still be "private", but it wouldn't be "libertarian". I guess that was my point. He sounded as if this is what libertarians would accept as part of their system:

"Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window?"

And any libertarian worth his salt would say, "no", because tyranny is tyranny, public or private. The main argument against the state's existence is that it is tyrannical in and of itself, so it's not "public" ownership that libertarians disagree with which makes them anti-statists, it is the tyrannical nature of the state. If the state wasn't tyrannical, it wouldn't be a state in other words. Libertarians aren't against state action per se, they are against the root of state action and if a private individual's behavior is reminiscent of the root of state action, it "acts like a state."

I also never said they qualify as a state, I only said they act like one. I would define state as a monopolistic legal agency over an accepted geographic area that has the power to tax. A robber is not a state, but they act like one (i.e., they steal money).

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Birthday Pony — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:05:00 GMT

The only one I found particularly interesting was the comment on Paul's ultranationalism. Couple with his support for Private Defense Agencies, that one raises a point I haven't really seen in any discussion of paul. Having a blackwater type defense agency guarding a US corporation's oil wells in another country, going apeshit, and then not being accountable to the rest of the world is troubling to me.

And when discussing Paul, the private tyranny, or at least local tyranny, argument is one that needs to be addressed. In Michigan, state law gave us emergency managers (governor appointed dictators that run the cities in 'financial trouble').

And as a final note, the argument that "once a private agency goes rogue they're a state" reeks, just absolutely reeks of no true scotsman. The difference between private and public property has to do with ownership, not morals. If someone violates NAP they don't become a state. They're an individual that violated the NAP. Given that private agencies have a history of 'going rogue' when it comes to radical union organizing, that's not a point that can be easily dismissed.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Aristophanes — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:38:17 GMT

From http://www.lewrockwell.com/wall/wall26.html

""Chomsky has published a large number of books dealing with world events and American foreign policy, since his first collection of political essays, American Power and the New Mandarins, came out in 19691. In this book he rightly and tellingly criticized the ostensibly value-neutral approach of the managers of the United States' war on Vietnam and their apologists, pointing out that all statements of action under declaredly objective and neutral intent are in fact a power-serving and often cynical defense of the status quo and of a particular, dominant ideology."

"What those coalitions of ‘investors' (the gangs of power-seekers) and their sycophants dislike, more than anything, is for their intentions and their propaganda to be shown up for what they are: and in my opinion Chomsky's primary skill lies in doing just that, in the psychological work of analyzing and unmasking underlying structures and processes."

"In his academic work in linguistics, Chomsky developed the conviction of innate human potential and creativity into an extensive theory. In place of earlier, empirically-based theories, he developed and consolidated the idea — more philosophical than linguistic — that there are intrinsic (even biological) qualities of mind which enable us to generate rules of grammar and use of language without having first had to learn them all.

In so doing, Chomsky countered the mechanistic conception that we start out like a completely blank sheet of paper on which environmental factors — instructors, social engineers, culture — work their influences and totally shape the resulting human being. This was forcefully put in his essay entitled ‘Psychology and Ideology,'2 a rightly celebrated demolition of then highly influential behaviorist arguments of B. F. Skinner, whose best-known work was, notoriously, entitled Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972)."

------------------------------------ What I've always thought

James Ostrowski has made the best overall critique of the utopian nature of Chomsky's ideas in his January 2003 article entitled "Chomsky's Economics." He writes:

"Economics requires study and systematic thinking about the implications of action, choice, and ownership in a world of scarcity. It is a science that delineates the limits of how far the human mind can wander when thinking about what society can and should be. This is one reason that intellectuals, even great ones, take such pains to avoid studying economics, and instead latch on to fantasies like socialism and syndicalism."

"He also quotes Chomsky as once having said, "There are supposed to be laws of economics. I can't understand them." This pinpoints a seemingly willful ignorance when it comes to economic matters. I do not find this surprising in the context of Chomsky's intellectual interests but, as the passage of time has demonstrated, it of course limits the application of his ideas to the real world, and to bringing about any substantive changes to that world."

--------------------------------------------------

"First, a brief explanation. The description ‘libertarian' is claimed by both ‘left-libertarians' and ‘right-libertarians.' Left-libertarians and left-anarchists, including Chomsky, see libertarian socialism (or non-aggressive, non-violent anarchism) as the true legacy of classical liberalism, while anarcho-capitalists and libertarians of the right, because of their focus on economics, tend to see ‘libertarian socialism' as a contradiction in terms: for them, libertarian is diametrically opposed to collectivist, and socialism is by definition collectivist. Part of the problem lies in what left and right define as ‘socialism.' However, it is sufficient to understand that the tussles between left and right over the legitimate use of the words ‘libertarian' and ‘socialist' tend to generate misunderstandings and to confuse the issues. In fact, there is much common ground between left- and right-libertarianism, principally the opposition to state power and to war."

"Chomsky has acknowledged this in the past: "I find myself in substantial agreement with people who consider themselves anarcho-capitalists on a whole range of issues; and for some years, was able to write only in their journals. And I also admire their commitment to rationality — which is rare…." ~ Noam Chomsky, in an interview entitled "Noam Chomsky on Anarchism," December 1996"

"In the same excerpt, however, Chomsky goes on to say, "…I do not think they see the consequences of the doctrines they espouse, or their profound moral failings." Here he is referring to the alleged inability of anarcho-capitalists to admit that concentrations of private power (as found, for example, in large American and multinational corporations) can be as bad or worse than the coercive power of the state. As far as Chomsky is concerned, this is the additional and vital humanistic element in his preferred, leftist form of anarchism, as opposed to right-anarchism or anarcho-capitalism."

"The problem with this approach, as critics have pointed out, is that it produces seemingly arbitrary support for coercive or aggressive state action, in situations where state action is deemed the lesser of two evils. Chomsky believes that in such situations the state can and should act as a restraining influence so as to check "the ravages of an unconstrained corporate-capitalist system," a typical expression which he used in a recent interview. It is for this reason that he has been called ‘the coercive anarchist.'

Joe Peacott writes in "Chomsky's Statism": "Chomsky bases his support for the federal government on his contention that private power wielded by corporations is much more dangerous to people than state action, and that government can, and should, protect its defenseless citizens against the depredations of the capitalists. While the power of private corporations in the United States is truly awesome and oppressive, this power exists because these businesses are supported by the state, a point that Chomsky concedes."

"One can see why Julian Sanchez begins his article "Two Cheers for Chomskyism" with the words, "Libertarians are not supposed to like Noam Chomsky." Chomsky rather unthinkingly dismisses the (right-)libertarian vision laid out in, for example, Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty as "a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it, … a world built on hatred," something "not even worth talking about … a special American aberration, it's not really serious." And yet, as Sanchez points out, he is "a hell of a lot closer to [right-]libertarians than he or his groupies dare admit." Is this not because the ultimate objection is not to capital itself, but to the corporatism under which some capitalists cozy up to the state, contriving monopolies, subsidies, and other distortions of the true free market, while others simply take possession of the apparatus and offensive capability of the state to rig the markets in their favor? The end-result of all this is that all one can say about Chomsky's form of politics with any certainty is that he is more often anti-state than not. This is hardly satisfactory for anyone looking for a clear and positive political stance, or a straw man to knock down, but is comprehensible when you realize that Chomsky would probably much rather not adopt any particular political stance, and I suspect does not much care whether he is judged an anarchist or not, or whether he understands the laws of economics: his ultimate interest is in process and structure. Empirical facts are of course important to him, but like any true polemicist, he is selective in his choice of those facts. That he is still criticized for this is indicative of the extent to which the belief in desirability of objective neutrality and balance in socio-political analysis still prevails. Chomsky implicitly condemns this idea in all his work: for him, supposed objectivity and balance mask underlying ideologies of dominance and discrimination."

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Porco Rosso — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:19:47 GMT

Very nice Tunk and Wheylous.

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Neodoxy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 03:16:35 GMT

Friends! Romans! Misesians!

I feel that after all that has been said that we can safely say that Mr. Chomsky's statements are, for lack of a better word, "Wrong".

Rationality has been served!

.... That is all....

Re: Chomsky on Ron Paul's libertarianism. How do I respond?

Wheylous — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:46:10 GMT

Chomsky should stick to linguistics and leave the economics to economists. Parroting Paul Krugman's opinion pieces is not economics.

Goddammit Clayton! I was actually planning on saying this at the end of my responses! I work in the field of linguistics, so I felt like I could have connected my real world experience to a theoretical conversation, but no, you had to go and ruin it for me! Frickin capitalist.