It’s not often that I find myself on the same side of any issue as the Chinese Communist Party. This is one of those times. Like the Chicoms — although for very different reasons — I’m appalled by the selection of “dissident” Liu Xiaobo as winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
According to the Chinese government, conferring the prize on Liu is “blasphemy” because he’s a “criminal” guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.”
If only it were so! I like to think I’m relatively knowledgeable on the subject of inciting subversion of state power. Hell, that’s pretty much my job description. And I’d be the first to congratulate the Nobel committee had it chosen an actual subversive for the prize. But let’s see what Liu himself has to say:
I know the basic principles of political change, that orderly and controllable social change is better than one which is chaotic and out of control. The order of a bad government is better than the chaos of anarchy. So I oppose systems of government that are dictatorships or monopolies. This is not ‘inciting subversion of state power.’
Perhaps Liu was softening his position in this statement to spare himself and his family the suffering of extended persecution? Who could blame him? He faces a long sentence in a harsh penal system.
Perhaps when he refers to “monopolies” in government, he’s outing himself as a panarchist — an opponent not of government per se but of the monopoly state?
But no: The “monopoly” Liu objects to is not the state’s monopoly on violence, but the Communist Party’s monopoly on the state.
The “crime” with which he was charged revolved around his support for Charter 08, a reformist document demanding the transformation of China into a modern “liberal” welfare state, complete with competition between parties for the “right” to exploit China’s workers and peasants; “freedom” for the press to choose the tunes it sings in its guilded cage; theft-funded “social security;” and “civic education” to make sure young whippersnappers don’t get caught up with any silly ideas like, well, real freedom.
Liu doesn’t seek peace, he just seeks a kinder, gentler version of the political class’s war on the productive class. That opinion shouldn’t bring about its holder’s imprisonment, but it doesn’t merit a prize for support of peace, either.
Last year, the Nobel committee awarded the “Peace Prize” to the world’s most vociferous warmonger (among warmongers with the power to fulfill their fantasies, at any rate). Its failure of discretion this year isn’t nearly as glaring, but the committee continues to miss the point: The state is the ultimate weapon in Hobbes’s “war of all against all,” and so long as it remains loaded it shall be continuously fired by those whose fingers have access to the trigger. You can have the state or you can have peace, but you can’t have both.
Citations to this article:
- Tomas L. Knapp, IgNobel again: In Liu of a real peacemaker, Le Qubecois Libre, 15 October 2010
- Thomas L Knapp, IgNobel again: In Liu of a real peacemaker, Dhaka New Age, 11 October 2010
- Thomas L. Knapp, In Liu of a Real Peacemaker, The Morung Express, 11 October 2010
Good point as usual, Tom! I had not looked deeply enough into the details; just finished (tho not posting) a Globe editorial congratulating Nobelliams for their choice – shoulda known by now they were doing their usual statist claptrap. Will look for better fodder tomorrow …
It's true though that after last year's choice they could only have gotten better …
This article made me sick. Ignorant, and dismissive of someone who's a real hero for liberty.
"If only it were so! I like to think I’m relatively knowledgeable on the subject of inciting subversion of state power. Hell, that’s pretty much my job description."
I'm guessing that was a joke, but it didn't have a punch line, since you appear to actually take this idea seriously. This man has faced brutal repression and been locked up for years, yet hasn't backed down an inch. He's refused to be broken by methods that would probably break most of us. You write shitty articles on the internet and beg for money. Well, you won't be getting any of mine.
Just because someone isn't an anarchist doesn't mean they don't deserve our respect. You've shown yourself to be as robotically doctrinaire as the worst Communist apparatchik.
"Just because someone isn’t an anarchist doesn’t mean they don’t deserve our respect."
And where, other in your imagination, did I say that Liu doesn't deserve respect?
What I said was that he does not deserve a "peace prize" for advocating war.
Big difference.
C'mon, Tom, give Liu a break. There are many more people who have some of the same ideals as anarchists–freedom, peace, equality, etc–yet are either ignorant of, or have yet to come around to the worth of actual anarchist means and strategies.
In my opinion, anyone who is advocating for some increase in individual autonomy, and for a decrease in the harsher aspects of state tyranny, at least–especially in a literal communist dictatorship like China–truly does deserve some respect, and should be recognized for their efforts, not attacked for failing to fully realize the worth of anarchist means and strategies. Recognize them, work with them where it makes sense, and then try to explain/demonstrate the value of your own philosophy…
Sean,
Here we go again.
This is not a matter of whether or not I "respect" Liu.
It's a matter of whether or not someone who advocates continued continued, unremitting civil war — which is what the state is — should receive a "peace prize."
Liu says that's what he advocates. I believe him. I take him seriously. Presumably it would be disrespectful of him to not believe him and to not take him seriously.
C4SS is an anarchist media center. That implies at least two things:
1) That we're going to address current events in our commentaries; and
2) That we're going to do so from an anarchist perspective, not from some other perspective.
The purpose of (1) — addressing the current events — is (2) — to get the anarchist perspective in front of audiences.
The Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age ran the piece today. Mission at least partially accomplished.
Tom,
I think you chose the wrong battle to fight. I also wonder, do you think any Nobel Peace Prize winner was deserving?
Until last year I felt that Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi symbolized what the prize was all about. Peacefully, non-violently trying (and succeeding!) to change the world for the better. Neither one of those men were overt anarchists, although, like Liu, the current state was their enemy. I know you long enough to answer this one before you ask: They admired Thoreau's civil disobediance, I don't believe his anarchism ever played a role.
Last year I was pretty much bowled over by the selection, so I looked up the award to try and find out the criteria. Turns out it's phrased very state-friendly:
"…shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Which would mean that MLK and Ghandi are less deserving than Obama. (At least the way I read the above criteria, coupled with the new regimes, and therefore "nations," in place in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as better US-Russia relations.)
So, all told, the Nobel Peace Prize, while privately financed, is a state-given, state-endorsing, politically motivated sham. If you're going to complain, do so about the prize itself, the jury, or the criteria, not its latest recipient.
Just my 2 cents.
Because he doesn't unequivocally condemn all government, you claim "Liu doesn’t seek peace". What unadulterated B***S***! You owe him, and your readers, an apology.
Its not a comfortable parallel, but one that liberal statists (like Mr. Liu and his supporters on this site) need to take seriously, to wit:
Too many Western left-wingers in the 1960s and elsewhere misguidedly and uncritically supported Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries in various parts of the world because they were perceived as fighting against a greater evil (usually true, but…) and because they were admirable or charismatic figures, espoused policy positions agreed with by many on the left. They needed to be "supported" and "respected" even "admired" but certainly not "attacked" or criticized. Unsurprisingly, this collapsed into the kind of hero-worship advocated by King Mob and wound up with quite a few leftists looking foolish or much worse for being the witting or unwitting pawns of what became some brutal regimes.
We should be very clear eyed about what would happen if Mr. Liu and other Charter '08 signers and their dissident movement gained power: they do not renounce the coercive power of the state, there would be arrests, purges, repression, executions, punishments. He would lead an army with nuclear weapons and hundreds, if not thousands, of missiles pointed at Taiwan.
Would they dismantle this Chinese military-industrial complex? Would they beat the swords to ploughshares? Would they renounce the disputed territorial claims with Japan, Korea, etc.? Does he think Tibetans deserve individual autonomy and freedom? Would the Chinese dissidents implement Tibetan freedom if they took control of the Chinese state? Autonomy in the Western, ethnic minority provinces? Or would they burnish their nationalist credentials with the population by continuing (or enhancing!) repression? I think we can surmise some less than promising answers to these questions. They are proud, loyal nationalists by their own admission, which in China comes with a strong does of militarism.
Just because this competing faction of statists seeking to gain control of the Chinese government machinery is the cause of the moment of some Western liberals without a great deal of contextual knowledge does not mean they are as pure in intent or policy as we might like to believe. Just because movements in opposition seem close(er) to libertarian or leftist views when they are not actually in power, their refusal on principle to renounce the use of this coercive power has had horrible consequences in history.
Once they gain power these "theoretical" differences take on deadly serious meaning. Unfortunately, most in the "don't critique Liu" frame of mind move at this point further down the road of apologia, explaining every "trade-off" as "better than the alternative" and certainly the most "realistic" and "responsible" option available. Thus does become "liberal" Obama's bombing campaign in Pakistan, or the torture of innocents in black sites, since there may be some health care benefit for some people down the road and don't you owe him respectful collaboration without critique on whatever you agree on?? Isn't he "closer" than the Bush regime, or Palin?
That Mr. Knapp's phrasing was provocative is not in doubt, but he has a solid intellectual and moral point to make about the sanctification of Mr. Liu and the Chinese dissident movement as a whole: "slightly closer" still means plenty of nasty repression would be carried out under their rule on totally innocent people who have done no wrong to the goo-goo liberal type commenters above. That is why while his refusal to renounce the very coercive government powers that have been used to unjustly imprison and harass him and his allies does not in any way mean they deserve the repression of their freedom, it does mean Mr. Liu and the Charter '08 people are yet quite some ways from the moral giants implied by some of the comments above.
"There are many more people who have some of the same ideals as anarchists–freedom, peace, equality, etc–yet are either ignorant of, or have yet to come around to the worth of actual anarchist means and strategies."
And the are yet others who, instead of living in a dream world, want to deal responsibly with the real one!
I’m with Tom here. If we take statists at their word, then it becomes difficult to find a way to justify giving them awards for peace. Accepting their terms and their compromised view of peace, or liberty, or anything else that we actually do represent, only concedes to the state the moral high ground. We don’t have to malign people like Liu Xiaobo — and Tom doesn’t do that here — but we don’t have to laud them for representing the apogee of peace either.
scineram,
You write:
"Don’t you advocate war on communists, conservatives, social democrats?"
That's an interesting question! When and if I'm nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, I suggest you pose it to the committee!
scineram,
Seeing as the market anarchist philosophy is defined by its rejection of aggressive force as a means to achieving social goals, the last thing we would advocate is war on anyone or any group. Anarchists reject the violence implied in most state-focused species of communism, conservatism, and social democracy, but insofar as a system can function within a voluntary framework based on the mutual consent of its participants that system is permissible to advocates for total liberty. Doctrinally, the only thing proscribed by market anarchism is use of coercion against a non-aggressor. Issues of social and economic justice are central in market anarchist class theory, and it comfortably accommodates socialism as long as that socialism exists without the institutional violence of the state. Anarchists advance a variety of very good and plausible answers to questions of social welfare without falling back on the brutality essential to all types of statism.
"Seeing as the market anarchist philosophy is defined by its rejection of aggressive force as a means to achieving social goals…"
Actually, it's created by defining things you don't like as "aggressive force" and things you do like as "peaceful."
I regard physical violence as fairly easy to identify, and that's all that is disallowed by market anarchism, as such. I don't know if maybe you want to unpack that a bit to help me understand what issue you're trying to isolate.
"I regard physical violence as fairly easy to identify, and that’s all that is disallowed by market anarchism, as such."
So if someone eats a meal at your restaurant and then walks out without paying, what do you do?
Okay, of course I appreciate that point. Market anarchism naturally recognizes an individuals right to self-defense (with respect to person and legitimately-owned property) and the prerogative to delegate that right; that's why I set forth the precept using the language, "use of coercion against a non-aggressor." What we're talking about here is the initiation of force against a peaceful person.
Doesn't he partially have you on this one Mr. D'Amato?
Most of the anarcho-capitalists I have ever read or heard emphatically support, if are not enthusiastic about physical violence. You simply have to define something they like (such as the last universal property owner on earth "justly" acquiring all property) as "peaceable" regardless of the actual history of how this came about and define things they don't like (such as other human beings living, walking upon, breathing on their "private property" unless they have explicitly previously allowed it) as "aggressive force" and the last universal property owner can shoot all of us for trespass and we'll finally all be free!
I WISH DEEPLY that market anarchist thought and practice would evolve in such a way that the statement "physical violence… is disallowed by market anarchism" and that all other rules and laws *including "property rights" and their enforcement [by "protection agencies" like Blackwater, no doubt!] be SUBSERVIENT to the principle of "physical violence… is disallowed"
Sit down strikers? "aggressive force"
Pinkerton folks tearing the place up? "peaceable" !!
Starving squatters in shacks in a third world megalopolis floodplain living on subsistence? "aggressive force"
Paramilitaries hired to burn down their settlement? "peaceable" !!
Just like Mr. Callahan said.
Nonviolence in principle and practice really ought to be the center point of the market anarchist vision, but sadly it is not always so. And I think you folks have a lot of work to to with the 'ana-caps' before this would ever come about…
'Market anarchism naturally recognizes an individuals right to self-defense (with respect to person and legitimately-owned property) and the prerogative to delegate that right; that’s why I set forth the precept using the language, “use of coercion against a non-aggressor.”'
Right, so the issue doesn't turn on violence at all — it turns on your definitions of what is aggresive and what is non-aggresive. And these things are certainly not easy to identify and are quite contentious.
Well…if this post doesn't show that the author has his head completely up his ass, I'm not sure what ever will. I have never liked anything Tom Knapp has ever written, but I believe this might take the cake. How dare you be so arrogant and pretentious as to write a whole article about how someone who will go to prison, and possibly die, for proposing moderate reforms is not a real subversive?! How about you move to China and show him how it's really done? I mean, it IS your "job description." Unbelievable. One day, I hope you will take a moment to reflect on how this line of thought is exactly why people believe anarchists to be childish, whining idealists.
That is all the insult I have for you. As for your feeble response that, hey, we deal with things here from an "anarchist" perspective — that's my case in point. Your naive idealism leads you to agreement with the Chinese Communist regime. Nuff said.
I certainly understand your points, and I agree that "[n]onviolence in principle and practice really ought to be the center point of the market anarchist vision." I think, though, that — at least among the market anarchists I know — the nonaggression principle is at the center of the philosophy and the literature that grows out of it. Now of course there are difficult issues related to the homesteading question, i.e., how much an individual is required to do in theory before a parcel of property becomes rightfully hers. Again, almost all of the market anarchists I know admit that this is a philosophical question within market anarchism, but I don't think the fact that this is a question undermines the correctness of market anarchism in any substantive way. There are many, many answers set forth by anarchists to confront the whole labor-mixing/homesteading issue, and I don't think that most market anarchists regard most of the chains of title that actually exist today as "legitimate." I wholeheartedly agree that the issues you bring up should be at the center of market anarchist scholarship in the future, but I think market anarchism will be strengthened, rather than threatened, by that process.
Nate wrote:-
I do not know enough about King's achievements to comment, apart from noting that in many respects it is still too early to tell. But Gandhi definitely did not succeed in changing the world for the better. That was clear from as early as the Partition of India.
There are lots of things I'd rather people didn't do, but that I don't define doing as "aggressive force." To pick a random example, picketing the funerals of soldiers with "God Hates Fags" signs.
There are also some things that I might like very much to do, but don't because doing so would constitute "aggressive force." To pick a random example, taking something I want off of a store shelf and walking out with it without paying.
As far as re-definitions of convenience go, Mr. Callahan lacks credibility to lecture others on the subject (I've caught him in at least three such re-definitions in the last month or so).
EXACTLY!!
The philosophy that sees eating a non-paid for restaurant meal as "the initiation of force against a peaceful person" and Blackwater Protection Agency breaking their kneecaps in response is merely "the prerogative to delegate that right [to *self-defense*!!]" of "legitimately acquired property" is….
well, more than a morass, more than a moral and ethical pretzel, more than a plan for a society even more unjust than statist society more than Orwellian Doublespeak
it is none other than aggression defined as its opposite by the most intentionally tendentious possible definitions of "physical violence" or "self-deference" possible…
uh, self means yourself, your body. that is the only morally permissible use of violence against the body of another human being is to repulse violence against your own human body.
non violent actions/infractions/things you dont like (like all of the examples listed above which are NOT violence and thus NOT aggression- restaurant meal, squatting, sit ins) must be dealt with NON VIOLENTLY in a free society… that IS the "free market" no? *voluntary* exchanges? *voluntary* organization of voluntarily collective human affairs, including a property rights regime??
not interested at all in "anarcho"-capitalist highest-bidder mafia/blackwater state at all, thank you
a free and peaceful society, indeed…..
maybe back to the drawing board guys?
Mr. Callahan,
You help clarify what I trying to articulate, that a particular definition of violent aggression is the fulcrum of market anarchism. As a matter of course the outer edges, the "hard cases," are out there, but I don't think this undercuts market anarchism either. We can sort through those questions as long as we agree that the initiation of force against person and property is wrong.
Ben Free,
I'm sure I agree with most of your underlying premises. For instance, I agree with you when you write, "non violent actions/infractions/things you dont like (like all of the examples listed above which are NOT violence and thus NOT aggression- restaurant meal, squatting, sit ins) must be dealt with NON VIOLENTLY in a free society." Like I said to Mr. Callahan, there are going to be some thorny cases, but if we can agree in principle that the use of violence against a peaceful person is wrong, then we're already well on our way to embracing market anarchism, which doesn't at all mean — at least to me and everyone I know at the Center — a "highest-bidder mafia/blackwater state."
The only thing I might add is that, in a nonviolent, free society, it is hardly permissible to trespass onto an individual's rightfully owned property; that, of course you will allow, is aggressing — initiating force — against that individual.
mixing labor and homesteading theories are very interesting philosophical material and I do think personally there is a lot of justice based on property rights theories based on them…
but none of this theoretical/moral/philosophical speculation can turn violence into nonviolence or vice-versa.
Either one forswears physical coercion for *whatever* social, political and economic ends one might view as most desirable and just- whether that be the Great Communist Commune of The People or the ana-cap property rights regime or one thinks no one else should use violence to impose their vision of society on anyone else but ours is so just and right that we can aggress (use physical violence on others who have not used physical violence on us) to set it up and maintain it.
the problem is whatever you or I or the next guy *think* is a good "rule" for "property" doesn't matter a damn. what matters a damn for non-aggression and non-violence (despite all of the tendentious stretching to try to pretend it isn't very clear that there is a totally separate and unique category to "self-ownership" or "self-defense" with respect to your physical body that cannot be alienated or violated justly in any way.) is that its about the defending or owning the self! Thats why the word SELF is right in there. It is NOT the same to "defend" your body or a potted plant or a piece of land, water, air, etc.
That is not "self" defense, even if it is "defense" of some kind, to pretend otherwise is an abuse of the language…
It is just like the "original sin" of marxist-leninism of imposing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
I do NOT accept aggression, coercion or violence to set up or maintain the "dictatorship of justly acquired property" or the enforcement, by mercenaries or soldiers, of the "dictatorship of the ana-cap property rights regime".
Though I do find pretty much the rest of the philosophy advocated on the sight quite intelligent and inspiring.
A philosophical purge of violence in enforcement is very much needed, nonetheless
Ben Free,
Very good point regarding the notion of self-defense. My only claim would be that, insofar as we live and work within a physical, tangible reality, the right to self-ownership could mean nothing at all without concomitant rights in physical things. Without such rights, enslavement results because even to walk about from here to there implicates the physical surroundings we inhabit. If self-ownership could be divorced from rights to tangible things, then it would mean nothing but to be free within our own sphere of thought; we could be prisoners and yet be "free," insofar as no one (yet) can impose parameters on our thoughts.
Gene,
If I start making shit up about you, you'll know it (just as I knew it when you made up the idea that I don't believe a power vacuum in society will be filled).
Brian,
The three recent re-definitions by Gene that come to mind, all extant at his blog, Crash Landing, are:
1) The re-definition of feudalism so as to exclude the American Revolution as a revolt against same (in this particular case, Mr. Callahan essentially asserted that his knowledge of what was going on there was superior to that of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom so described it).
2) The re-definition of feudal mercenary units as "private security firms;" and
3) The re-definition of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, a/k/a the East India Company, as a "private corporation."
I think the fundamental philosophical premise at issue here are not "border cases" but fundamental:
even in your shortest reply you collapse "person and property", which I am saying are NOT at the same level. Property has many important things and claims to it that I support such as outlined on the sight.
But it can never be equal to or trump the dont aggressor against *person* maxim.
Would you and I agree that no one should trample your daisy's? Of course! Do I think you should be allowed to violate the physical body of a person who does so because "aggression" against "person and property" is the same thing? No. I would (nonviolently of course) fight against that, perhaps by interposing myself between the two of you, boycotting your ventures, refusing cooperation with your initiatives, etc.
Maybe we need two different terms for these acts of physical violence against persons and non-person physical property. I would most probably agree with most of your philosophical axioms about violence against property rules, but I would NOT agree to allowing you to enforce them by "raising" it to the more important level of violence against a human person.
So, to answer directly your question: is "trespass" (walking across your claimed land? swimming across your river?) "agression" if I don't touch you (or even trample your flowers?) ?? Not if by "aggression" you mean the *exact same thing* as "aggression" against a real human body.
It is most certainly NOT "initiating force" against a person, as that word has a more precise physical definition that has not been met.
Yes, even respect for property rights must be garnered voluntarily in a truly free society, that is without resort to the initiation of force, the use of physical coercion, the employment of violence against a human being's body who has not initiated same towards you… in short, aggression!
I might quibble with your first example but the second and third do seem valid.
Tom, you make a point that I didn't immediately catch onto when reading the BBC online news reports about the Prize award recipient.
However, one would hardly expect that the Nobel prize committee would award any prize for ideas against the State – economics, literature and peace all traditionally closely tied to it. And as Nate quoted from the Nobel Peace Prize criteria:
“…shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” It's a State-supported, State-promoted, privately financed prize. So the whole idea of the Nobel Peace Prize is really not promoting of *peace*. Last year's award was one of the most blatant examples of the committee not even adhering to its own criteria….
Some additional thoughts that occur to me … Chinese society goes back a *very* long time – far longer than any Western organized group of peoples. Much of that time, China was governed by warlords and an emperor – a "super" warlord. It's my understanding also that change is something the Chinese (the majority together) have historically done only after long consideration, sometimes decades or generations. It may be that Liu Xiaobo is using the traditional methods of patience and more patience because he thinks only that will succeed with most of the those who hear/read his message. But then, there is the possibility that Ben Free suggests: "[I]f Mr. Liu and other Charter ‘08 signers and their dissident movement gained power: they do not renounce the coercive power of the state, there would be arrests, purges, repression, executions, punishments."
My current thinking is that Ben's possible scenario is unlikely – communication about the past "arrests, purges, repression, executions, punishments" have become common knowledge in China. The Internet has breeched the Great Wall and even the everyday Chinese farmer/worker is not about to be treated in the same harsh manner as hir predecessors, let alone will the large numbers of more educated be docile. How much liberty will they seek and how slowly/quickly and how much Liu Xiaobo plays a role? We'll just have to wait and see.
Wow, Tom.
"1) The re-definition of feudalism so as to exclude the American Revolution as a revolt against same (in this particular case, Mr. Callahan essentially asserted that his knowledge of what was going on there was superior to that of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom so described it)."
Tom, has it occurred to you that MODERN HISTORIANS are who we should look to on this, and that they use feudalism the way I do? (I.e., England in 1776 was NOT a feudal society.)
"In its most classic sense, feudalism refers to the Medieval European political system composed of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs." — Wikipedia
See, Tom, as historians TODAY use the term, "feudalism" was a characteristic of MEDIEVAL Europe. My usage is totally standard, yours is a quirky adherence to 230-year-old usage.
"2) The re-definition of feudal mercenary units as “private security firms;” and"
Just plain lying here. I defined them as "competing defense agencies," which they certainly were.
"3) The re-definition of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, a/k/a the East India Company, as a “private corporation.”"
"The East India Company (also known as the East India Trading Company, English East India Company, and, after the Treaty of Union, the British East India Company)[2] was an early English joint-stock company…" — Wikipedia
So, with 1) and 3) your complaining I'm not using your non-standard terminology, and 2) is simply a fabrication.
Yours in pwning,
Gene
Gene,
There's something to be said for "looking to modern historians" on issues, insofar as a backward glance may be more objective than a portrait drawn from within the thick of things.
On the other hand, the modern historian take on X is by definition a "re-definition" of X to the extent that it disagrees with an earlier or original definition.
Jefferson et al framed the revolution as a revolt against feudal relationships, specifically the notion of being bound "in all cases whatsoever" to the whims of a lord claiming a right to vassal-style allegiance, and to the monarch's privilege of granting tenure in land, etc. Those are the facts; they'll remain the facts whether you like it or not, and a "re-definition" is a "re-definition" regardless of its validity.
With respect to "private security firms" versus "competing defense agencies," I apologize — I should have run over to your blog for the exact terminology. However, if we're going to toss the term "lying" around, I'm interested in whether you confirm or deny that the gravamen of your argument was that medieval mercenary units were highly analogous to hypothetical "anarcho-capitalist" private sector security firms.
Finally, to #3, nice pull quote. Why am I not surprised that you didn't include this one, from the same article?
"The Company long held a privileged position in relation to the English, and later the British, government. As a result, it was frequently granted special rights and privileges, including trade monopolies and exemptions."
Or the part where the Crown gave the company a legal monopoly on trade with India.
Or the part where Parliament reversed the monopoly, created a new company with a £2 million government indemnity, and handed the new company over to the same directors as the old company.
Or the part where the old company and the new company merged with a third party (the state).
You know, minor little things like that which make it abundantly clear that the East India Company was about as closely related to the "private sector" as Stalin's gold mines in Kolyma were.
Gene,
AT&T has been a "regulated monopoly" — a government-controlled corporation — since at least as early as 1934. Back further than that, it was actually nationalized in 1918-19, and arguably became government-controlled at least as early as 1913's Kingsbury Commitment.
If you and the rest of the world are into crazy re-definitions, that's your problem. I decline to allow it to be mine.
Don’t you advocate war on communists, conservatives, social democrats?
Just like in Tom’s imagination he thinks a power vacuum in society won’t be filled, so in his imagination he believes he has “caught” me in “three such re-definitions.” I can’t think of a single thing that I would remotely describe like that.
Tom, can’t we disagree without you making up shit about me?
Mr. Knapp, perhaps if you cited the examples in question, we could clear up the matter?
Ben Free,
I most assuredly appreciate and acknowledge the distinction you’re drawing here. I don’t take market anarchism to embrace the idea that minor trespasses against legitimately-owned property (e.g., walking across a tract of land or swimming across a river) ought to be met with deadly force, or even the kind of force that would be permissible in cases of attacks on an individual’s body. In that I’m sure we agree. If I’ve conflated the right to own one’s body with the related right, growing out of the first, to own physical things, then that’s certainly a mistake that I want to remedy now. The crux of my point is merely that, while the right to personal autonomy and control of the physical body is foremost, self-ownership cannot exist in any substantive way in the absence of property rights. Now, I don’t know if we part ways here, but I think there are instances where trespass would justify physical removal from the property. If I didn’t believe as much, then I’m not sure I could say I believed in the right to own property. Eventually there comes a point when one must be able to halt or remedy another person’s interference with the incidents of ownership that come with legitimate ownership.
“”The Company long held a privileged position in relation to the English, and later the British, government. As a result, it was frequently granted special rights and privileges, including trade monopolies and exemptions.”
“Or the part where the Crown gave the company a legal monopoly on trade with India.
“Or the part where Parliament reversed the monopoly, created a new company with a £2 million government indemnity, and handed the new company over to the same directors as the old company.”
Not a single one of which makes the East India Company not a private corporation. When AT&T had a telephone monopoly, it was still a private company — by the way the rest of the world uses language. The fact that I do not share your quirky usage does not mean I am redefining things!
"Not a single one of which makes the East India Company not a private corporation."
One might sustain that argument, but the distinction between 'private' and 'not private' becomes very murky. How many tax-funded paychecks have to be signed, how many direct military interventions in one's favor sponsored, how much official support given, before an entity ceases to be private?
P.M.Lawrence,
I believe Gandhi did, indeed, change the world for a better. That we cannot view how the world would have been without him leaves us both unable to prove what we believe, however trying to blame the Partition of India on Gandhi, or claiming it would not have happened without him, seems a bit far-fetched. A bloody revolution in India, leading to millions of British and Indian deaths, followed by the same Partition of India, provided India won its independence, or further Indian deaths and hardship, seems to me far more likely. Or, perhaps, India would have peacefully remained part of the British Empire. While in the short-term that may have been preferable, I do not believe it makes for a better world in the long run. As for the Partition of India, Gandhi was against any such thing. That he didn’t manage to stop it is sad, but hardly reason to ignore what he did accomplish. (Also, a partition in and of itself would not have been such a horrible thing. I assume we agree that it was the herding of people leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths that was the atrocity.)
As for MLK, once again the two alternatives to non-violent protest would have been either (a) the continued mistreatment of millions of blacks, or (b) a bloody race-war, leaving millions dead. While King may not have given us a utopia to frolick in, I fail to see how the alternatives would have been better.
Obviously, without either man things may well have taken a similar course, other believers in non-violence rising to the occasion, but things also could have really hit the fan.
the idea I take and have loved learning about market anarchism from this site and the Molinari Institute writings I have gotten a chance to read is the idea that a society of free voluntary cooperation and exchange would be vastly the most beneficial for the most people, as well as the most ethically defensible way of living with others because exploitation as we know it today is not possible under a system where labor, trade, social organization, etc. is voluntary and not coerced. That justice and freedom need not be balanced off against each other but compliment and fulfill each other. That if people are left free of physical coercion the mutal arrangements they freely make with each other will benefit all who voluntarily take part in them. That without political force things would tend to evolve in this direction, and rather dramatically…
i personally think the most successful system for the most people would be the kind of respect for property made by the labor of others and free exchange in the market advocated by the market anarchist current of thought. but if the great-grandchildren of such a society voluntarily chose in large numbers to forfeit the right to that property and let the Great Communist (voluntary) Central distribute and dispose of it all i would shrug and say "the kids are strange" but so long as no one is being physically forced to do so….
I think to the extent that market anarchism has been overly influenced by completely anti-nonviolence and, in my opinion pro-aggression philosophies such as anarcho-capitalism such as that propounded at Mises Institute, etc. it has weakened this central powerful insight about a voluntary and coercion-free society being the most prosperous and just and polluted it significantly with the ana-cap obsession with "private property", up to and including the cancellation of the more important principle of real self-defense and self-ownership and real non-coercion and non-aggression. These mean against a persons body first, but anacaps clearly value the *derivative* moral claims you outline above equal to or over and above the dignity, self-ownership and integrity of the individual human being in their body:
"The crux of my point is merely that, while the right to personal autonomy and control of the physical body is foremost, self-ownership cannot exist in any substantive way in the absence of property rights."
I certainly agree to this, and it is exactly the market anarchist version of respect for property that I have found very convincing on this site. Yet formulated this way- property rights as necessary for the substantive fulfillment of personal autonomy and physical self-ownership/control- it seems to 100% contradict the ana-cap idea of groups of armed people that I have not physically hurt or attacked coming to enforce a *particular political/philosophical* property claim/idea by harming my body!
Though the arguments about "neo feudal" are a bit obscure and abstract to me, I think there is a lot of aversion, moral and practical, to the emphasis or existence of "private defense agencies". This is not a vision of a free or non-coercive future in any way and instead twists the words "self-defense" and aggression is such a way as to allow Blackwater type firms and disallow by violence peaceful sit down strikes because Murray Rothbard came up with a standard for original acquisition by homesteading decades ago and John Locke had a theory of labor and property centuries ago.
These theories can no more make defensible "private" armies or police forces initiating force against human beings who have not initiated force upon them and who no person can "consent" to be acted violently by in the absence of having attacked those individual people first, than can quoting the Marxian theory of property justify the Red Army liquidating Kulaks and forcibly collectivizing agriculture (our theory of property says this is "The People's"! i.e. the party-state's)
I am open to any property rights enforcement mechanism that doesn't rise to the level of physical coercion (file a claim on their "credit report" or "reputation report" for "property respect" , persuade them, boycott them in future business dealings and social events, call their mom, their employer or co-op members, voluntary tort systems whereby someone could lose cooperation to make contracts or business in a voluntary community, perhaps where to join they agree to put some assets in escrow or some such thing… etc.) Though I am not such a stickler to say you couldn't move someone to the side who was sitting in on your stoop, I would certainly advocate for going the extra mile to talk it out and respect the highest value of all in non physical coercion, even if the two of you are having a political/philosophical disagreement about the nature, existence, justness or acquisition of a particular piece of property and/or property in general…
"so long as it is peaceable"
Thomas L. Knapp wrote:-
Er… those are accurate.
Feudalism has a precise, technical meaning, and it was just about gone by the sixteenth century, let alone the eighteenth century (maybe some vestiges of it were visible in the rationale of the proprietorial colonies, but they were practically defunct by the last half of the eighteenth century and even they rested on other forms and structures, royal charters). If John Adams and Thomas Jefferson so described the American War of Independence, either they were using the term loosely and metaphorically like the French revolutionaries, or they really didn’t know what they were talking about; after all, their knowledge of what was going on there (and then) hardly qualified them to know about the real thing. We, on the other hand, have the advantage of studies like those made by François Ganshof and knowledge of countries where the vestiges lasted until even more recently (almost the other day, in Sark).
And, formally, a private corporation was just precisely what the British East India Company was. There is nothing in the definitions of those to stop it carrying out the sorts of activities it moved into; as late as the end of the nineteenth century, Cecil Rhodes was using that form for the same sort of thing in Africa, and it was in similar use in North Borneo (today’s Sabah).
Then Thomas L. Knapp wrote:-
The first sentence quoted is wrong, in three ways:-
– Yours is not “an earlier or original definition”, it is a late and loose usage.
– Modern scholars do not necessarily redefine when they do that sort of thing. Sometimes, as here, they are reaching back to older practices and usages so they can get to grips with the history they have to deal with; it’s not innovation, it’s renovation.
– There is also the matter of internal consistency. Much of what was accused of being “feudal” in the eighteenth century was in fact and in theory inconsistent with it, needing a formal hierarchy and state support for privilege, rather than those things being emergent from a decentralised form. Much of the confusion arises from the fact that eighteenth century magnates were bought out from their feudal positions by the offer of these new things; they were not feudal, but the price paid for feudalism.
And that is why, although it is quite true that ‘Jefferson et al framed the revolution as a revolt against … specifically the notion of being bound “in all cases whatsoever” to the whims of a lord … and to the monarch’s privilege of granting tenure in land, etc. Those are the facts; they’ll remain the facts whether you like it or not…’, it is not true that those things were feudal relationships or that those involved “claiming a right to vassal-style allegiance”. In both feudal fact and feudal theory, lords never had a right to claim allegiance! Rather, anyone choosing to become a vassal was by definition granting allegiance, usually in exchange for something such as a grant of land – that’s why each heir had to go through the process all over again, either as vassal or as lord. People like the – very feudal – Sire de Coucy, that Barbara Tuchman used as an example in her work, made the proud boast that they were not vassals, and feudal law recognised people casting off allegiance and setting up for themselves, if of course their lord didn’t defeat them; that’s where our word “defy” comes from, meaning to de-faith. So, any description those post-feudal people made, using feudal language and a misunderstanding of what the feudal system actually required, was an accurate description of what was going on around them but a wrong use of technical terms, just like describing the biology of a dolphin otherwise accurately but using the term “fish” instead of “mammal” throughout. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, and gives a poetic or metaphorical sense of things; sometimes it very much matters, because technical stuff really does need to be done right.
Later in the same comment, Thomas L. Knapp wrote:-
I forget the name for just what this sort of error in argument is called. Anyhow, it’s using the word “private” differently in different places, then conflating them. Of course it wasn’t in the private sector, properly understood. Nevertheless, a private corporation is just precisely what it was, being a privately held corporation – and extreme cases like these should serve to highlight both why and how none of those are fully compatible with true private activity, ever in principle and often in practice (though they are usually less self evident for what they are).
Nate wrote
That is full of bait and switches, no doubt inadvertent straw men:-
– “That we cannot view how the world would have been without him leaves us both unable to prove what we believe …”. That is not the comparison. We don’t have to look at what ifs, when the claim was that he made it better than it was; we only have to look at the before and after. It wasn’t better after (we don’t even have to prove it was worse).
– “… however trying to blame the Partition of India on Gandhi, or claiming it would not have happened without him, seems a bit far-fetched”. Yes, it is far-fetched. Don’t make it up. This is not about blaming him for what did happen, it’s about showing that since what did happen was not better, he did not actually make things better. Neither did anyone else, but that’s not the point.
– “As for the Partition of India, Gandhi was against any such thing. That he didn’t manage to stop it is sad, but hardly reason to ignore what he did accomplish.” True but irrelevant. We are not talking about what he did accomplish (in my view, very little except to make sure his lot were in position to move in – and even then, not in all of India, as previously implied). No, the point at issue is whether he made the world a better place – and, since it didn’t work out that way, it is not among his accomplishments any more than anyone else’s.
– “I assume we agree that it was the herding of people leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths that was the atrocity”. You assume wrong, and you are wrong about the atrocity too. It was the massacring of people that was the atrocity, and that was what led to people fleeing, which in turn produced secondary casualties when they couldn’t flee to safe places like Hyderabad that were trying not to join either India or Pakistan. It’s like saying that having Palestinians in refugee camps is the atrocity and forgetting what came first.
Later in the same comment, Nate wrote:-
Again this is looking at what-ifs rather than comparing before and after. Also, “failure to see” in this spurious comparison does not amount to an argument in favour. When I didn’t have enough to go on, I simply stated that I didn’t have enough to go on.
Simply, merely advocating non-violence does not in itself mean you have made the world a better place, though you may well have become a better person. It had instructive short and long term effects in Bali, after it was tried there against the Dutch in their interventions there just over a century ago.
P.M.Lawrence,
I guess we just see things a bit differently. While on the face of it, I can accept that you can look at time t, look at time t+x and thereby decide whether the world is better before or after, I really think that sort of thinking misleads. Preventing the deaths of millions of innocent people is, in my mind, making the world a better place. From your point of view – and please correct me if I am wrong, I don’t want to put words in your mouth – that would not make the world any better, because the situation was the same as it was before. Similarly, you seem to choose the value “x” in such a way as to guarantee noone will ever make the world better. With Gandhi you choose it not before the Partition of India, when perhaps you would be willing to admit the world was better, nor are you willing to choose a point in the future (or even today), when whatever criteria you are using would indicate the world is better. With MLK you admit not knowing enough now, prefering a wait and see approach. Commendable, but I have to wonder if you’re just waiting until something really bad happens so you can shout: “Now it’s worse than 1950!”
Perhaps I should have refined my “I fail to see how the alternatives would have been better,” with an “I honestly don’t know, feel free to point it out to me.” I do think it’s an argument in favor until someone gives either (a) a different likely scenario, or (b) tells me why one of the other two scenarios would have been better, but I guess that’s all beside the point if you only want to consider actual states in time.
I will admit that my knowledge of the Partition of India was not what it probably should be. You got me there, next time I’ll study before the test. However I stand by my claim that there is nothing inherently evil about the partitioning of any country, and I assume by the Partition of India we are talking about the atrocities involved, not the actual partitioning. (And I really should stop assuming things.)
What I do need to ask, even if it sounds strange, and approaches Godwin’s Law, is why you chose the Partition of India? If you just wanted to point to a time after Gandhi had accomplished some things, why not choose WWII? Why not point to that enormous loss of life and say, correctly by your definition, Gandhi did not make the world a better place?
I really don’t want to come off as ridiculing you, or be accused of building strawmen, but that’s what I am getting from your argument: Pick any time thereafter and compare, ignoring any and all causality and possible prevention of atrocities, focusing only on atrocities that did happen, regardless if, how, or on what side of the issue the individual was involved.
As a follow-up, do you believe *anyone* has ever made the world a better place?
In the future, though, I’ll be sure to say “made the world a better place than it would have been without him.” You can still disagree, but then at least we’ll both be talking about the same thing.
[…] far this week, I’m aware of three print media “pickups,” all of “IgNobel Again: In Liu of a Real Peacemaker” by yours truly. That piece appeared in the Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age and the Dimapur, India Morung […]
Nate wrote:-
There are several misunderstandings here:-
– It is perfectly true that "[p]reventing the deaths of millions of innocent people is, in my mind, making the world a better place", only, Gandhi didn't do that, not nowise, not nohow.
– 'I can accept that you can look at time t, look at time t+x and thereby decide whether the world is better before or after … Similarly, you seem to choose the value “x” in such a way as to guarantee noone will ever make the world better' isn't how I analysed things at all. You're using particular points in time, I was simply taking a broader before and after, with after not over yet but certainly well under way. The world is not observably better as a result of Gandhi. And yes, some rare people have made the world better, e.g. Sir Joseph Swan (inventing the light bulb) and Churchill (on balance, despite doing much harm, since he greatly improved matters between 1940 and 1945 and was not involved in their earlier deterioration).
Well, of course I wouldn't assess improvement that early; there was a lot yet to come. And I did not pick the Partition of India as a cut off, I pointed to the events associated with it as evidence of great harms that were in Gandhi's areas of activity. You can find even later cases too, such as the Indian invasion of Goa. And it is certainly fair to assess things after a few generations, even though (as it happens) things are not better today than in the late 19th century, even considering India alone – unless you buy into Indian revisionism.
It's not beside the point for that reason, it's beside the point because that wasn't the point at issue, it was Gandhi's actual (and so, identifiable and measurable) consequences – it's not, as I already stated, anything to do with hypothetical alternatives at all. Also, you're building in a bias, i.e. assuming a good outcome whenever you don't actually know, when "I don't know" should be the answer.
I did not pick that as a point in time, I gave it as a large example of harm associated with Gandhi (the Second World War was somewhat less harmed by him). That is not a claim about culpability or guilt, but a measure of an area in which he did not do something – he did not create an improvement. The fact that he was opposed to partition affects his moral culpability, not his repercussions. I could equally have analysed him in relation to his behaviour in South Africa, but it is less well known, less recent and less consequential – but trying to get Indians to be Apartheid insiders was never going to be positive.