I’m hearing a lot of negativity — constructive negativity, but negativity nonetheless — from my comrades on the libertarian left, concerning the US federal government’s “shutdown.” As the Center for a Stateless Society’s Kevin Carson notes with reference to “furloughed” government employees, “[S]ome of what government workers do — for example cops who enforce drug laws or brutally shut down Occupy protests — is illegitimate per se. But much of it is stuff — delivering mail, putting out fires, protecting people from actual assaults on their persons and possessions — that there would be a need for even in a free society. … These people are not our enemies.”
And across the more general political left, there’s quite a bit of attention paid to the negative specifics of the “shutdown.” One of those “create your own memes” that’s getting considerable web-play goes “US Government Shuts Down! LOL, Not the Killy Parts!”
The US armed forces are still occupying Afghanistan and staging abductions in Libya and Somalia.
The FBI and IRS are still kidnapping alleged entrepreneurs and stealing their stuff.
The Capitol Police are still gunning down unarmed mothers who make wrong turns in Washington, DC.
I beg to differ with my comrades, though.
Yes, the “shutdown” is weak tea — only 17% of the federal government, much of it in the “social safety net” areas that are likely to produce exactly the “please, please, please end the shutdown” backlash the politicians want, and much of it already crumbling over creative interpretations of the law.
Still, it’s a good start.
The era of the Westphalian nation-state, including but not limited to the United States, is coming to an end. My prediction remains that the US in particular, in anything like a form we’d recognize as such, is down to low- to mid-single-digit decades before it gives up the ghost.
The US can go out one of two ways.
One way is for it to gently phaseout, perhaps with things like this “shutdown” being made permanent and other government activities coming under the ax in future “shutdowns” until it just gently slips away to sleep and never wakes up again.
The other way is a la Romania, with a few bitter-ender “security personnel” making desperate runs for Dulles and planes out of the country from a cratered Capitol Hill, trying to get there ahead of a large crowd sporting Molotov cocktails and an exceptionally ugly attitude.
There’s probably not a lot that anarchists like myself can do to directly affect which of those endings transpires, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try for the gentler landing.
And that, in turn, calls for a little tough love for “furloughed” employees, recipients of welfare, etc.
The state is bad for everyone. That includes its employees, and it includes those who currently depend on government’s alleged largess just to get by.
When an alcoholic runs out of booze, you don’t offer to run to the liquor store for more. You offer to help the alcoholic find a program for overcoming addiction.
When an abusive spouse kicks his or her victim out of the house, you don’t assist the victim in begging to be taken back. You help the victim find another place to stay, so as to get started on a new, better life.
Ditto the “shutdown.” We shouldn’t be trying to get those government employees called back to work, or to get those government agencies to start cutting checks again. We should be doing our best to encourage and help both sets of victims transition to the voluntary sector for good.
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, The Shutdown: A Good Start?, Counterpunch, 10/09/13
specifically, you should be doing your best to encourage those employees to expropriate the state
"When an abusive spouse kicks his or her victim out of the house, you don’t assist the victim in begging to be taken back. You help the victim find another place to stay, so as to get started on a new, better life."
Roderick Long would disagree with you. Because the house is partly built by the abused spouse, so it's her/his property and from which s/he couldn't be excluded. The most reasonable answer is Occupy!
What's the difference between a "left libertarian" and an objectivist ? The amount of pot they smoke? No difference at all? This is not a Joke. There is no funny punchline to this setup. Comparing people who have worked and saved their entire lives for the Social Security they receive and survive on, being compared to "alchoholics" who need Thomas L Knapp and Ayn Rands "tough love" is revolting. The only reason you are read at all on mainstream Left sites is because,99% of the time you conceal your primary agenda, hiding behind foreign policy tropes. I think many more people on the left need to be advised of the danger of these libertarian Trojan horses. That's the only good thing about these govt. shutdown political farces, is that something about them brings out the end-of-world crackpots and they show themselves up.
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What's the difference between a "left libertarian" and an objectivist ? The amount of pot they smoke?
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I don't know. Are objectivists big pot-smokers? Never toked much myself, and the last time (in the spirit of solidarity at a legalization protest I happened to be attending) was probably a decade or more ago.
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This is not a Joke. There is no funny punchline to this setup.
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Thanks for letting me know before I slogged my way through the whole thing.
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Comparing people who have worked and saved their entire lives for the Social Security they receive and survive on
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Ah, I see the problem — you accidentally read one piece and then responded to another (this one doesn't mention Social Security at all).
it seems like you missed the point near the end that it is up to–some, myself included, might say imperative for–people who have the resources to help integrate those into our communities in productive, positive, and meaningful ways (for all parties). attempting to remove this onus off of us as individuals and communities and assigning it to central planners either because of a fetishistic infatuation with paternalistic authority figures or because you think most humans are inherently too stupid and incompetent to become empowered and manage and organize ourselves and our own lives effectively and appropriately is characteristic of the obsolete authoritarian elements of the left which are now being shed by a stronger and more powerful movement for peace, liberty, and social justice. we are not infiltrating "your" movement, OUR movement is shitting the authoritarianism out of it.
Mark Ames?
you mean the right-wing elements of state-worship that usurped what we call the political left as early as the 19th century?
Right on. Flush it down!
ps. I have to marvel at the utter incoherent obsession by liberals with Ayn Rand as an all-purpose boogeywoman to shoehorn into their responses to anything critical of government. References to her pop up at a moment's notice seemingly everywhere.
How come? They seem to project their own contradictory views of society onto that woman. "We need" a monopolizing class of ubermen bosses and technocrats to plan for 'progress', that is, to make the gears of capital churn smoother, to help us learn 'who moved my cheese', to make us 'pay our fair share' to the masters who keep civilization afloat, or be shamed as degenerate, irrational free riders (Elizabeth Warren's 'anarchists' sound a lot like those 'looters' eh?). More than coincidental parallels emerge.
Thus the cognitive dissonance. Thus the defensive need to otherize and separate themselves by galaxies from Ayn Rand; in her authoritarianism they see quite a bit of themselves .