A reader of one of my previous columns (“Another Stupid Remark from Mitt — But Who’s Counting?” C4SS, September 10) published in a local newspaper complained that the Center for a Stateless Society is “a far-left organization that promotes worker radicalism and anarchy.” But characterizing a position as “far-left” or “promoting worker radicalism and anarchy” isn’t the same as answering it on grounds of logic and evidence.
By definition, any characterization of where arguments fall on the political spectrum takes for granted a tacit assumption of the reference point considered “mainstream” or “centrist.” And by definition, whatever is classified as “mainstream” or “centrist” in any system of power falls within the range of positions that are compatible with preserving that system of power.
Any “reform” that involves tinkering around the edges of a power structure without fundamentally changing it, and can be implemented by the same classes of people who are running the present system, will be classified as “moderate.” Any proposal that involves changing the fundamental structure of power and disempowering the groups that run it will be called “radical.”
Any system includes a cultural reproduction apparatus that tends to create the kinds of “human resources” who accept as normal and given the structure of power under which they live. Bear in mind that the corporate-state power structure didn’t come about naturally or spontaneously. It came about through conscious, massive application of political power over the past 150 years.
From the Gilded Age on, the state intervened massively in the market to create a society dominated by giant, centralized organizations like government agencies and corporations, and later by centralized state education, large universities, and nonprofit foundations. When this state-created and state-subsidized centralized industrial economy became plagued with chronic excess capacity and underconsumption, the state turned toward policies to keep it going. This included a domestic economy centered on federal spending to absorb surplus capital through such massive state spending projects as the Interstate Highway System, a military-industrial complex that ate up huge amounts of surplus industrial output, and a foreign policy aimed at forcibly incorporating the markets and resources of the entire planet as a sink for surplus capital and output.
At the time the system was being imposed by the state, there was large-scale resistance by a general population that didn’t accept it as normal. From the 1870s through WWI, a major part of the population refused to accept as normal a situation in which they worked as wage labors for large authoritarian hierarchies. Movements such as the farm populist movement and the Knights of Labor amounted to near-insurrections, and such measures as the post-Haymarket repression and Cleveland’s suppression of the Pullman Strike constituted counter-revolution.
After the insurrection was defeated, the white-collar bureaucrats controlling corporate and state hierarchies adopted an educational system aimed at processing people who accepted the structure of power as normal. The official public education movement, advocates of “100% Americanism,” and the like, aimed at creating “human resources” who were “adjusted” to accept authoritarianism and hierarchy as normal, and to “comply” with any orders coming from an apparatchik behind a desk — whether in a classroom, factory, or government office.
And they succeeded quite well, as exemplified by this reader.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
Translations for this article:
- Portuguese, Emancipem-se da Escravidão Mental.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Emancipate Yourselves from Mental Slavery, Carroll County, Maryland Standard, 09/27/11
"When this state-created and state-subsidized centralized industrial economy became plagued with chronic excess capacity and underconsumption, the state turned toward policies to keep it going. This included a domestic economy centered on federal spending to absorb surplus capital"
See now this sounds like the nonsense put forward by new marxists who argue the contemporary world's ills are due to some chimerical vagaries of "neoliberalism" (and especially its horrible component they call "anti-statism"). I'm sure you have some technical defense of this position that's not completely stupid, but you're speaking the language of stupidity. And that's precisely the problem with "far-left radicalism." The entire far-left radical aesthetic of person-demonizing economic "class warfare," comparative wealth envy, "anti-capitalism" applied by everyone else far beyond idiosyncratic neomutualist definitions, industrial socialist imagery, labor-this, labor-that, private property in land and factory capital as the uber-factors of production that must be abolished, Marx quotations everywhere, etc. etc… it's all obsolete and on its own will be simply dismissed by everyone other than impressionable new ancaps and perhaps maybe possibly eventually some of the very few far-left radicals around these days (for instance, I brought Carson's LTV stuff to Marxist-LTV-loving Andy Denis at LSE. He was unmoved.) We don't dismiss this far-left radical aesthetic due to some "mental slavery" imposed by the corporations and state. It is dismissed due to the universally tragic history of regimes espousing far-left radicalism and attempting its policy prescriptions. South Koreans, for example, aren't widely dismissive chomskyite anti-american, anti-capitalist, far-left radicalist rhetoric because they've been brainwashed by those nasty evil corporationy corporations…
What nonsense. No one is directly brainwashing, teh system we have created for ourself thorugh great many decades is doing it more or less globally.
So you think widely dismissive contemporary attitudes toward "far-left radicalism" have nothing to do with the history of "far-left radicalism" in practice? …nothing to do with mixed economy capitalism and liberal democracy being comparatively much much better for human well-being?
To some extent, maybe. But considering that most of the people who yammer about "far-left radicalism" are people who listen to Sean Hannity and Limbaugh, I'd say pro-capitalist propaganda (dressed up in Red, White, and Blue, "Proud to be an American" dipshittery) plays a significant role.
Not that what you mean by "far-left radicalism" and what Kevin means by it are the same thing. Libertarianism is widely dismissed, too, because, you know, "Look at Pinochet's Chile."
Democrats and progressives eschew "far-left radicalism" and associated things like revolutionary communism and Marxism and anti-capitalist class warfare and "abolish private property" and all that too. Libertarianism is becoming much less widely dismissed, but even so there's no need to add insult to injury by trying to package unpopular libertarian ideas in even more unpopular far-left extremist frameworks.
I'm not sure how Pinochet is relevant. Chile became the by far the most developed and prosperous country in South America following "neoliberal" reforms by Pinochet and his successors, atrocious human rights violations notwithstanding. Though clearly not optimal, seems likely a much better alternative to revolutionary Marxian socialist Allende's total-statism plans for the Chilean people.
lol. you don't know anything about chile
I know something about Chilean history, have Chilean family, have taken classes and read books on the subject… but feel free to point out my errors or whatever. Or don't.
Of course Democrats and progressives eschew "far-left radicalism." They're defenders of the status quo, too, just like their conservative counterparts.
Pinochet is relevant because I don't see how denouncing Kevin's rhetoric because it sounds like the rhetoric espoused by certain radical left regimes is any different than a liberal denouncing libertarianism because Pinochet supposedly had some connection to Milton Friedman, or someone denouncing anarchism because of Somalia.
And re: "anti-capitalist class warfare," why is it only class warfare when someone points out how the wealthy use the state to further their own interests at everyone else's expense?
Conservatives, liberals, etc., various "moderate" unthinkingly-statist positions, make up the vast bulk of the Western population. If you care about communicating ideas, you can't ignore their understanding of the world because you think they're your enemies or whatever stupid thing.
Free markets and libertarian ideas are nowhere near as popularly associated with Pinochet as far-left radicalism is (virtually universally and understandably) associated with the numerous far-left radical regimes that litter 20th century history. Naomi Klein and a few marginal marxist geographers are prettymuch alone in making it their mission to change that. Fortunately, they haven't succeeded. And, as said already, the limited but significant libertarian economic reforms of Pinochet and his successors allowed Chile to become by far the most economically developed and prosperous country in S America. Not exactly a striking argument against Friedman or Hayek, unless you count the dishonest attempts made by Klein etal.
And, like I said, it still wouldn't make sense to wed an unpopular idea (libertarianism) to an even more unpopular framework (far-left radicalism).
When the vast majority of "far-left radicals" talk about "class warfare," they are not using in the Rothbardian left-libertarian "anti-capitalist" anarchocapitalist sense you're referring to, and when someone hears "class warfare" that's not the sense in which they're going to understand it. Person-demonizing "class warfare" rhetoric of any kind is likely unhelpful not only because of what it means to most everyone, but because it presents the case as if it were against some villainized minority group of people ("the currently comparatively wealthy," "bankers," "bourgeois," "capitalists," "the politically connected," whatever) rather than against a mass ideologically legitimated institution (the state). Attacking the former won't get you anywhere good.