Archive for Our Scotland - www.our-scotland.org Scottish Politics Discussion Forum / Messageboard - Dedicated to online discussion about Scottish Politics and an Independent Scotland, as well as Scottish Society today. We also have a section dedicated to Banter, Sport and Recommended Sites.
|
cornubian
|
The Scottish LibertariansAny opinions on this new party?: http://scottishlibertarians.blogspot.com/
| Quote: | In Scotland, we are posed with a false choice. Stick with Labour, and stay as a strong Scotland within the union! Or: Stick with the SNP and gain your freedom from England, to have it replaced by a serfdom to Brussels!
The UK Libertarian Party perceives that the freer individuals are from the State, the stronger they will be, and the stronger we will be as a whole.
This is the alternative answer we need to the prevailing ideology of statism and authoritarianism, both left and right. |
|
Dave Coull
|
| Quote: | Do "libertarian"-capitalists support slavery?
Yes. It may come as a surprise to many people, but right-"Libertarianism" is one of the few political theories that justifies slavery. For example, Robert Nozick asks whether "a free system would allow [the individual] to sell himself into slavery" and he answers "I believe that it would." [Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 371] While some right-"libertarians" do not agree with Nozick, there is no logical basis in their ideology for such disagreement. |
http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/1931/secF2.html#secf22
|
Morph
|
could someone explain this for me i dont understand how you can be libertarian but endorse slavery?
Am i being thick?
|
Dave Coull
|
The UK "Libertarian" party was formed in imitation of the USA "Libertarian" party, and this is merely the Scottish region wing of the UK imitation of that USA party.
| Quote: | due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social in New York between 1858 and 1861 while the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. [Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, p. 75 and p. 145] The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind (Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel published the paper Le Libertaire -- The Libertarian -- in France in 1895, for example). Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965. The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Later, in Section B, we will discuss why the idea of a "libertarian" capitalism (as desired by the Libertarian Party) is a contradiction in terms. |
http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/1931/secA1.html#seca13
|
Dave Coull
|
| Morph wrote: | could someone explain this for me i dont understand how you can be libertarian but endorse slavery?
Am i being thick? |
No, you are not being thick. Of course you can't be a genuine libertarian and endorse slavery, but you CAN be a "libertarian"-capitalist. Private Property is their God, and, if you are utterly committed to the idea that private property is the ultimate good, then, if some folk happen to have loads of private property, while some have absolutely nothing, well, that's just tough luck on those who have nothing. But even if you possess no land, no materials, etc etc, you do possess yourself. So you can sell yourself! You mustn't get together with other wage slaves to bargain collectively for a better deal (because that would limit the capitalist's freedom to use his possession of wealth to exploit you). It might turn out that the only way you could sell yourself would be, not on a weekly, or monthly, basis, but by selling yourself into permanent slavery. Such a contract should, from a "libertarian"-capitalist viewpoint, be legally enforcable. If you should later decide you've had enough of servitude, and decide to become a runaway slave, then you are depriving your owner of their rights, and you should be hunted down. All this stems from making a god of Private Property.
|
Morph
|
Thanks Dave i get that now.
|
Aventinian
|
| Dave Coull wrote: | | Quote: | Do "libertarian"-capitalists support slavery?
Yes. It may come as a surprise to many people, but right-"Libertarianism" is one of the few political theories that justifies slavery. For example, Robert Nozick asks whether "a free system would allow [the individual] to sell himself into slavery" and he answers "I believe that it would." [Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 371] While some right-"libertarians" do not agree with Nozick, there is no logical basis in their ideology for such disagreement. |
http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/1931/secF2.html#secf22 |
It rather contradicts the idea of slavery if one is doing it voluntarily. Indeed, it is then simply voluntary work.
| Dave Coull wrote: | | You mustn't get together with other wage slaves to bargain collectively for a better deal (because that would limit the capitalist's freedom to use his possession of wealth to exploit you). |
No Libertarian or Liberal-leaning person believes that.
| Quote: | | If you should later decide you've had enough of servitude, and decide to become a runaway slave, then you are depriving your owner of their rights, and you should be hunted down. |
That's a nonsense, specific implement is rarely ordered by courts when a contract is breached for obvious reasons. Damages are the proper recourse in such circumstances.
|
Dave Coull
|
| Aventinian wrote: | | It rather contradicts the idea of slavery if one is doing it voluntarily. Indeed, it is then simply voluntary work. |
Right wing or capitalistic "Libertarians" base their ideas on contract theory. They are in favour of abolishing all forms of welfare, and having absolutely everything regulated only by the market, by contracts between individuals, or between firms, or between individuals and firms. The trouble with this is that the individuals do not start off with equal amounts of property, like the players in a game of Monopoly, they start off with very different assets. Some of them may have huge assets simply through inheritance, without having done a single day's work for these assets, while others may have absolutely nothing except their own bodies. This isn't just a theoretical situation, this is the actual situation of many millions of people in countries throughout the world. So a person can find themselves in the situation of facing starvation (absolutely no welfare system of any kind in the "Libertarian"-capitalists' ideal society, remember) and having nothing to sell in the market except themselves, whether for a week, or a month, or into permanent slavery. You can't call something with an enforcable contract "voluntary work", especially if the only thing that was "voluntary" was avoiding starvation, and especially if that enforcable contract can be used (as proposed by some "libertarian"-capitalists) to hunt down escaped slaves. Or rather, that enforcable contract can be used to give out contracts to specialist private firms to hunt down escaped slaves.
| Aventinian wrote: | | specific implement is rarely ordered by courts when a contract is breached for obvious reasons |
We are not discussing what happens AT PRESENT. We are discussing what would happen in the kind of society that folk in the so-called Libertarian Party of the USA, and now their imitators in the UK, would like to come into existence.
|
Dave Coull
|
| Aventinian wrote: | | No Libertarian or Liberal-leaning person believes that. |
| Quote: | This defence of slavery should not come as a surprise to any one familiar with classical liberalism. An elitist ideology, its main rationale is to defend the liberty and power of property owners and justify unfree social relationships (such as government and wage labour) in terms of "consent." Nozick and Block just takes it to its logical conclusion. This is because his position is not new but, as with so many other right-"libertarian" ones, can be found in John Locke's work. The key difference is that Locke refused the term "slavery" and favoured "drudgery", as, for him, slavery mean a relationship "between a lawful conqueror and a captive" where the former has the power of life and death over the latter. Once a "compact" is agreed between them, "an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other . . . slavery ceases." As long as the master could not kill the slave, then it was "drudgery." Like Nozick, he acknowledges that "men did sell themselves; but, it is plain, this was only to drudgery, not to slavery: for, it is evident, the person sold was not under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill him, at any time, whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free out of his service." [Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Section 24] In other words, voluntary slavery was fine but just call it something else.
Not that Locke was bothered by involuntary slavery. He was heavily involved in the slave trade. He owned shares in the "Royal Africa Company" which carried on the slave trade for England, making a profit when he sold them. He also held a significant share in another slave company, the "Bahama Adventurers." In the "Second Treatise", Locke justified slavery in terms of "Captives taken in a just war," a war waged against aggressors. [Section 85] That, of course, had nothing to do with the actual slavery Locke profited from (slave raids were common, for example). Nor did his "liberal" principles stop him suggesting a constitution that would ensure that "every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves." The constitution itself was typically autocratic and hierarchical, designed explicitly to "avoid erecting a numerous democracy." [The Works of John Locke, vol. X, p. 196]
So the notion of contractual slavery has a long history within right-wing liberalism, although most refuse to call it by that name. |
http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/1931/secF2.html#secf22
|
cornubian
|
Perhaps we don't see people selling themselves into slavery right now but there is certainly a growing trade in human organs. People in the developing world faced with starvation and extreme poverty are increasingly selling parts of their body in order to get by.
But of course that's their choice isn't it? In a free 'libertarian' society one should have the right to dispose of ones body as one sees fit.
|
Aventinian
|
| cornubian wrote: | Perhaps we don't see people selling themselves into slavery right now but there is certainly a growing trade in human organs. People in the developing world faced with starvation and extreme poverty are increasingly selling parts of their body in order to get by.
But of course that's their choice isn't it? In a free 'libertarian' society one should have the right to dispose of ones body as one sees fit.
|
Of course it's their choice. You'd rather have them starve, would you?
|
Holebender
|
A choice made out of desperation is hardly a choice is it?
I'd rather have them well fed and keep their organs.
|
Morph
|
A desperate man will make poor choices sometimes, i agree Holebender. Its not a choice at all, this type of capaitalism has one fatal flaw, men and women are not things to be bought in contracts but living people, with thoughts souls and feelings, that is why this system is flawed from the start.
|
calum
|
Right-wing Libertarians have had dodgy links in the past - paedophiles and nazis come to memory. They could be another bunch of nutters like the Bnp, Ukip and Kilroy-Silk.
|
magister ludi
|
As a political ideology Libertarianism is not one with which I have any sympathy. Libertarians on the other hand can be put to good use as cannon fodder in the battle against state tyranny.
|
Dave Coull
|
| Quote: | | My main contribution to the Spanish resistance in those last days of Francoism was support for the libertarian prisoners of Franco. The name "libertarian" was still, at any rate in Spain, used only by the anarchists and syndicalists ; the hi-jacking of the name by right-wing private enterprise people not yet having become widely known outside of the USA |
(quoted from "I couldn't paint golden angels", the autobiography of Albert Meltzer, published by AK Press, 22 Lutton Place Edinburgh EH8 9PE, page 233) | magister ludi wrote: | | As a political ideology Libertarianism is not one with which I have any sympathy |
For me, it depends on what people mean when they say the word "libertarian". Personally, I do have considerable sympathy with libertarianism in the original meaning of the word, but I'm completely opposed to what it means for the so-called "Libertarian" Party of the USA, and now for the UK followers and imitators of that American party.
|
Aventinian
|
| Holebender wrote: | | A choice made out of desperation is hardly a choice is it? |
Of course it is - all choices take account of circumstances. Choice cannot exist in some theoretical vacuum.
| Quote: | | I'd rather have them well fed and keep their organs. |
In other words, you'd rather sit on the fence?
|
Aventinian
|
| Dave Coull wrote: | | The trouble with this is that the individuals do not start off with equal amounts of property, like the players in a game of Monopoly, they start off with very different assets. |
Indeed, just as people are born with different abilities and skills.
| Quote: | | So a person can find themselves in the situation of facing starvation (absolutely no welfare system of any kind in the "Libertarian"-capitalists' ideal society, remember) and having nothing to sell in the market except themselves, whether for a week, or a month, or into permanent slavery. |
There's not a great deal of point in selling a permanent contract to one's labour and I don't think many Libertarians would seek to make a contract of that nature enforceable. There is certainly nothing in Libertarian theory, so far as I know, which considers it essential. Indeed, the vast, vast majority of Libertarian philosophers have made the case against such things.
As for welfare systems: there is private charity, as well as an economy which can expand and grow. There's no two ways about it: people are not starving in Africa for want of welfare, they are starving for want of opportunities, denied to them by their governments - who are most commonly socialist and authoritarian.
| Quote: | | You can't call something with an enforcable contract "voluntary work", especially if the only thing that was "voluntary" was avoiding starvation |
Why? People have all sorts of desires that they wish work to fulfil. Some are stronger than others. If you agree to something to better you lot, then it is quite simply voluntary.
| Quote: | | We are not discussing what happens AT PRESENT. We are discussing what would happen in the kind of society that folk in the so-called Libertarian Party of the USA, and now their imitators in the UK, would like to come into existence. |
I doubt you'd find more people in the SNP who want to nuke England than you would find members of the Libertarian Parties in both countries that want a system which you are pretending is somehow axiomatic to Libertarianism when quite the opposite is considered true by the vast majority.
|
|
|
|