Mr Civil Libertarian

I repost this post by Kevin Carson, in full, something I’m not in the habit of doing, but will make an exception here purely because it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen on C4SS.

I’ve emboldened a few key parts.

“Free Market Capitalism” is an Oxymoron

It’s pretty much standard for the chattering classes — both liberal and conservative — to refer to something called “our free market system,” also known as “free market capitalism.”  To the extent that the right-wingers at Fox and CNBC or on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal advocate some purer form of “free markets” in contrast to the existing economy, what they mean is essentially the present model of corporate capitalism without the regulatory or welfare state.

But the form taken by the existing capitalist system that we live under owes precious little to free markets.  From its beginnings in the late Middle Ages, it has been shaped by massive and ceaseless intervention and enforcement of privilege — much of it breathtakingly brutal — by the state. To adapt a phrase from Orwell, the past has been a boot stamping on a human face.

The state played a central role in creating the defining characteristic of capitalism as we know it:  the wage system.  Had free markets been allowed to develop peacefully, with the peasant majorities remaining in control of their land and with free access to the means of subsistence, labor markets would likely have taken a much different form.  Employers would have had to compete with the possibility of self-employment, available to the vast majority of the population.  But thanks to Enclosures and similar land expropriations over a period of several centuries, the majority of the population was turned into a landless proletariat totally dependant on wage labor for its subsistence.

As if this weren’t enough, the British state imposed totalitarian social controls on the working class in the early days of the Industrial Revolution to reduce the bargaining power of labor.  The Laws of Settlement, for example, acted as a sort of internal passport system, forbidding workers to leave their parish of birth in search of better terms of employment without permission.  The Poor Law authorities then came to the rescue of employers in the underpopulated industrial North, by auctioning off laborers — cheaply — from the parish workhouses of London.

Over a period of several centuries the European powers brought most of the Earth under their subjection and imposed similar land expropriations and social controls on the peoples of the Third World, and looted the mineral resources and raw materials of most of the world.

A wide range of thinkers, from the free market anarchist Lysander Spooner to the Marxist Immanuel Wallerstein, have pointed out historic capitalism’s continuities with feudalism.  Capitalism, as a historic system of political economy, was really just an outgrowth of feudalism with markets grafted in and allowed to operate in the interstices to a limited extent.

The state also played a central role in the rise of corporate capitalism from the late 19th century on.  The railroad land grants created a single national market in the U.S., externalizing the costs of long-distance distribution on the taxpayer, and led to industrial firms and markets far larger than would otherwise have existed.  Patent law and assorted regulations passed during the Progressive Era served to cartelize markets under the control of a handful of oligopoly firms.

In the twentieth century, the state played a growing role in absorbing the surplus output of overbuilt industry or guaranteeing an overseas market for it.  The leading industrial sectors were state creations:  the automobile-highway complex, civil aviation, the miliitary-industrial complex and outgrowths like miniaturized electronics and industrial automation.

The neoliberal economy of the past twenty years is overwhelmingly dependent on the draconian enforcement of “intellectual property” law. The dominant sectors in the corporate global economy — software, entertainment, biotech, pharma, agribusiness, electronics — are all almost entirely dependent for their profits either on “intellectual property” or direct subsidies from the state.  The central function of the U.S. national security state since WWII has been to make the world safe for corporate power through the overthrow of unfriendly governments.

Both the statist right and the statist left, for their own reasons, equate the “free market” to corporate capitalism, and promote the myth that corporate capitalism as we know it is what would naturally have emerged from a free market absent state intervention to prevent it.  The statist right want to defend the legitimacy of big business, and the statist left want to make you think you need them to defend you against big business.

But the exact opposite is true.  Big business has been a creature of the state from the beginning.  And genuinely free markets would operate as dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.

And that’s exactly what those of us on the free market left want to do.

Reposted thanks to the wonders of the Creative Commons license. BTW, you did know that everything I post is under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, right?

I will take the homeopathy challenge. Just to make queen of woo @Political_fun shut up.

I will let her set the terms, the medicine, and what have you.

I’ll record/film/photograph everything and put it on youtube/whatever.

Let’s see how this goes.

That is to say, both have a a quite bizarre, almost morbidly loyal support base from within their own camps, whilst outside of them being seen as a dream come true for the opposition.

Washington (CNN) – For many Democrats in Washington, a Sarah Palin presidential run would be a dream come true.

As their thinking goes, Palin’s popularity among Republican base voters in early primary states would be enough to swamp the rest of the 2012 field and vault the conservative firebrand to the GOP nomination.

But in a general election, her standing among independent and swing voters, which began to crater in the closing weeks of the 2008 presidential race, might be too much to overcome.

New (admittedly early) polling data suggests that very scenario could play out if she decides to seek the White House.

According to a new Gallup survey, 76 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Palin – the highest rating among any of the presumed presidential candidates. The former Alaska governor also maintains the strongest name recognition of any potential candidate, while only 20 percent of Republicans view her unfavorably.

(…)

Among all Americans, though, Palin’s numbers are upside down. More Americans view her in a negative light (47 percent) than a positive one (44 percent). What’s more, only nine percent of Americans haven’t formed an opinion of the former Alaska governor, making it difficult for her to correct that deficit.

I support Ed Balls not because he’s going to be a good leader (an oxymoron if ever there was one) but because he’s going to finally kill the Fabian beast that is Labour. I can only hope Palin does the same for the Republicans.

The really amazing thing is how both Balls and Palin supporters refuse to see that outside their little circle of supporters, they’re a God damn joke.

It’s a bit like being a UKIP voter, really.

That Paris Hilton uses weed explains many things. I personally would not be willing to share a spliff with her, as I have no idea what else has been in her mouth*. And I would imagine he has a very novel use for a bong, too.

Going where no bong has ever gone before…

But, just as I’ll defend the freedom of speech of the Holocaust denier, or the right of association for the KKK, I’ll defend the right of millionaire air-heads who have never done a day’s work in their lives to smoke a bit of pot. I hope at this point in time, I don’t need to go over the basic points against the War on Drugs Some Drugs People, but it seems to me that if you’re carrying such a small amount of a naturally growing plant, being caught with the “Less than a gram” as she was (and that’s fuck all, seriously), you’re not a horrible, horrible criminal, or threat to national security, but rather, a minor annoyance. I mean, all she can do with “less than a gram” of the stuff is sit around doing nothing, talking random nonsensical crap and stuffing her face with other people’s food.

And then she will smoke weed.

Luckily for her, the cops released her without charge, so either they realize the futility of arresting people for such a victimless “crime”, or the muscles in her mouth have have had another good stretching. Either way, the fact that cops are wasting time one people like Hilton, Lance Armstrong, or any other of the countless celebs that are under the delusion that they own their lives and bodies, rather than going after those that actually bring harm to people (thieves, rapists, murderers, bureaucrats) just goes to show how the police is no longer about the prevention of crime, but the enforcement of morality.

Fuck the War on Drugs, and fuck Paris Hilton. Make sure you wear protection, though.

*Not strictly true. I do have some evidence of what has been in there.

How the FUCK can you be so obsessive about a company that treats you like shit?

Apple is offering a free case to every owner of its iPhone 4.

Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the offer at a press conference called to tackle the ongoing speculation about the iPhone 4’s antenna problem.

The case will help overcome a widely reported issue in which phone signal strength was drained when the phone was held a certain way.

Declaring “We’re not perfect”, Mr Jobs said reception problems were endemic throughout the smartphone industry.

To get their free case, owners will be able to apply via the Apple website from 22 July. Mr Jobs said Apple could not make enough for all owners of the phone but would source a supply and offer a range of cases.

I almost bought a Mac after constant disappointment from Microsoft. Fortunatly, I didn’t. Not least because even the most basic apple laptops were out of my price range. I went linux instead, and thank God I did.

Oh well. Horses for courses and all that.

Take your pick! They aren’t even mutually exclusive!

Vote for me in the Total Politics best blogs!

Or, vote for me as a top liar blogger! (Must cite example. Good luck).

Not suit you? Vote me as a twat of a blogger!

The good thing about being a supporter of drug law reform is that’s it’s a goal that actually has a chance of coming true before I keel over and die (hopefully at a ripe old age in an orgy of sex and cocaine).

Chairman of the Bar calls for decriminalisation of drug use

Nick Green QC is chairman of the Bar Council, the professional organisation of barristers in the UK. Writing in the organisation’s magazine this month, Green called for the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use, arguing (rightly) that a growing body of evidence supports the proposition that decriminalisation can have a number of positive consequences for drugs users and society. He lists the freeing up of police resources, the reduction of crime and the revolving door of imprisonment as peace dividends of ending the drug war, alongside improved public health. Noting that much of the mass media are given to moralising gestures and the whipping up of panic when it comes to drugs, he argues that the Bar Council, made up of lawyers and counting most judges amongst its ex-members, is in a good position to provide a rational argument, being familiar with both sides of the drug policy argument.

Mr Green’s intervention represents another profession speaking out in support of drug law reform at a time when the tide appears to be turning away from the prohibitionist model that was tried throughout the twentieth century, failed to suppress the flow of illegal drugs and added its own side-effects (including an entrenched criminal market and a global epidemic of injection-driven HIV) to those of the drug problems it was supposed to prevent.

When the supporters of prohibition are limited to a hysterical clergyman (not exactly a fountain of rational thought), and Peter fucking Hitchens, you know the jig is up. We can end teh war on drugz nao plz?

Another political hot potato is drugs. Drug related crime costs the economy about
£13bn a year. Again a growing body of comparative evidence suggests that
decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge
amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.
All this can be achieved without any overall increase in drug usage. If this is so, then it
would be rational to follow suit.
A rational approach is not usually the response of large parts of the media when it
comes to issues relating to criminal justice. This is something the Bar Council can
address. We are apolitical; we act for the prosecution and the defence and most of the
judiciary are former members. We can speak out in favour of an approach which
urges policies which work and not those which simply play to the gallery. And this
will save money and mean that there is less pressure on the justice system.

We are coerced by our fellow human beings. Since they have the ability to choose to do otherwise, our condition need not be thus. Coercion is immoral, inefficient and unnecessary for human life and fulfillment. Those who wish to be supine as their neighbors prey on them are free to so choose; this manifesto is for those who choose otherwise: to fight back

This is the opening passage of Konkin’s New Libertarian Manifesto, which was the starting point for agorism. I’ve always been aware of agorism, but it’s only very recently that I’ve really decided to look into it in any real detail. It seems I really missed a trick by not looking it up sooner, since much of what I found in NLM matches what I already thought. It’s entirely possible I’m an agorist without realizing it.