Center for a Stateless Society » government

Labor day has come and gone. In spite of the fact that it was made a Federal holiday by a president who used government power to crush the Pullman strike, it’s still worth using it as an occasion for reflecting on the struggle for workplace liberty. Corey Robin had a good post on the subject. This piece will hopefully be a good addition to the ones he already lists.

Right-libertarians or non-left libertarians aren’t known for an overwhelmingly positive view of labor unionism. Walter Block was the target of a past blog post by me that illustrates this. This post challenged the simplistic notion that labor unions are just creatures of government. This notion tends to be at the core of anti-unionism amongst some libertarians.

Anti-unionism amongst libertarians serves no good purpose. Libertarian individualism is certainly compatible with a form of unionism that involves self-interested workers forming a voluntary association to deal with the power of the boss. People are not only oppressed by government. The power of the boss can be immensely repressive too.

Liberty is a multi-faceted thing. It certainly doesn’t exclude freedom in the workplace. Libertarians who wish to provide a comprehensive attack on authority and oppression should take notice of this truth. A boss can serve the role of a mini-state with all the attendant consequences for human freedom.

Libertarians who desire to reach the majority of people dependent upon employers for a livelihood need to offer an analysis like the above that will connect to their experiences as subordinate employees. Not only is it politically prudent, it’s the approach most compatible with human liberty.

Human liberty is preferably defended in this more totalistic fashion. It’s far better to advocate liberty in all areas of life rather than settle for a limited amount. The workplace is a key battleground for liberty. One that requires libertarians to step up to the plate and provide answers.

Nobody who loves liberty wants to be told when they can and can’t go to the bathroom. Something that an employer has the power to control. And a power worth contesting in the name of freedom. Not to mention all the other attendant petty tyrannies listed in Corey Robin’s linked piece above.

Some libertarians worry that unionism or labor struggle generally is collectivist and must depend on government coercion to succeed. This confuses collectivism with collective action. The second issue of government coercion being necessary is addressed in my post on Walter Block linked to above. Please consider commenting on that post and this one!

Are Anarchists Just Neoliberals Without Money?

Natasha Petrova — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 23:00:42 +0000

A charge that has been leveled by the pro-government left is that anarchists are simply neoliberals without money or some variation upon this. The tweeter in question provides no definition of neo-liberalism, so, we turn to Dictionary.com to provide us with a definition of neoliberalism to be used in analyzing this charge. It’s as follows:

a modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc

There’s a wide range of anarchist views and types of anarchism. Some of which largely or entirely reject economies based on notions of free exchange or free trade. Anarcho-communism and anarcho-primitivism come to mind. They tend to favor gift economies and oppose market economics. There are forms of anarchism like mutualism and left-wing market anarchism that do support free trade and markets. Their conception of free trade and markets is not neo-liberal however. These types of anarchism involve worker control and opposition to usury in some cases.

The related notion of privatization is another supposed feature of neo-liberalism that anarchists allegedly also agree with. There is a huge problem with this accusation. Anarchists favor the abolition of capitalist private property. A faulty assumption at work is that the government sphere and public sphere are the same thing. It’s possible to advocate “privatization” in the sense of non-government or non-state control/ownership without ditching the idea of public space. The kind of corporate capitalist privatization favored by neo-liberals is also not what anarchists support. A related point to be made is that neo-liberal “privatization” tends to involve just outsourcing a government monopoly to a private corporation. This corporation is the new monopolist protected by law and gains tax dollars via government compulsion.

What about minimal government intervention in business? Not all anarchists advocate business arrangements. Those that do are proponents of non-capitalist markets. It’s also important to note that our present neo-liberal system includes plenty of subsidies to corporations. This corporate welfare is something anarchists oppose.

Anarchists also don’t have the same ideas about what should replace government social services. We oppose capitalist arrangements as a viable alternative. Neo-liberals don’t. This is an important difference to note.

A final and very important difference to note is that neo-liberalism is not really so anti-government. Peter Frase noted this in a good Jacobin piece. He said:

Neoliberalism is a state project through and through, and is better understood as a transformation of the state and a shift in its functions, rather than a quantitative reduction in its size. In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey underlines the importance of the state in forcibly creating a “good business climate” by breaking down barriers to capital accumulation and repressing dissent.

Public vs Private Dualities and Contextual Analysis on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 19:00:03 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Public vs Private Dualities and Contextual Analysis” read and edited by Nick Ford.

It’s certainly possible for a non-government controlled space or institution to meet the criteria above. An example is a privately owned local library called Linda Hall Library that is nonetheless open to the public. This example also shows the problematic nature of the dualism between private and public. You have an entity that is privately owned in the sense of non-government owned and yet accessible to the general public. This shows the importance of contextual analysis in deciphering what is private and public under what definitions. It depends on the context. In one context, public may be a reference to government ownership, but that’s not what it means in the context of anarchy.

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The Individualization of Labor Problems

Erick Vasconcelos — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 19:00:32 +0000

Lysander Spooner wraps up his 1875 pamphlet Vices Are Not Crimes with,

[T]he poverty of the great body of mankind, the world over, is the great problem of the world. That such extreme and nearly universal poverty exists all over the world, and has existed through all past generations, proves that it originates in causes which the common human nature of those who suffer from it, has not hitherto been strong enough to overcome. But these sufferers are, at least, beginning to see these causes, and are becoming resolute to remove them, let it cost what it may. And those who imagine that they have nothing to do but to go on attributing the poverty of the poor to their vices, and preaching to them against their vices, will ere long wake up to find that the day for all such talk is past. And the question will then be, not what are men’s vices, but what are their rights?

Spooner was arguing against the Puritan idea of blaming the poor for their own exclusion. Individual vices couldn’t be the cause of general systemic poverty, according to him; if poverty was so widespread, it has been caused by something that transcends the individual.

The trend of individualizing social problems may sound like one of the old social pseudo-explanations typical of the 19th century, but it’s an idea that’s very much alive. As I’ve written, commenting on Brazil’s labor culture, the thought that individuals are responsible for their being unemployed for lack of qualification is very common in the government, businesses and unions.The discourse which favors training for the “job market” takes the current structure of production and employment as a given and, if workers are unable to place themselves in it, the problem can only be lack of individual initiative. This discourse, naturally, never shows up distilled, yet it is the foundation for the many defenses of “professional training” and the constant reminder that there are “job openings” just, somehow, there aren’t enough qualified people to fill them.

At the same time, we have the idea that the job market is more competitive and workers should adapt. This “education for competitiveness” is very common; colleges and technical schools are always flaunting this technique to show that their curriculum will prepare students for an environment in which jobs are scarce and the worker is replaceable – unless she takes action to counterbalance her economic ineptitude.

Obviously, real economic conditions have something to with this idea.

Overspecialization of labor is one of the collateral effects of corporate concentration. Subsidies to big business and favoring some players through market regulation (very common in the last 10 years in Brazil) extends the production chain and stimulates capital input in production. This extension of the production chain makes firms ever larger and less specialized. To fill specific job posts in the chain of production, however, workers have to become more specialized.

Thus, workers have to differentiate themselves because low specialization jobs are artificially devalued by corporate subsidies, which favor capital rather than labor inputs. And large businesses externalize training costs, outsourcing it to the government and unions.

These dynamics coupled with regulation (minimum wages, pay floors and ceilings, employees’ savings rules, urban laws, bans on street trade, home manufacture regulations, public transportation monopolies, etc.) systematically act to concentrate the market, favor a few established production methods, criminalize poverty and make self-sufficiency less attractive.

Because of that, at the labor end of the rope, “competitiveness” is always increasing in the corporate economy, while competitiveness at the (established) business end has settled at a comfortable enough level.

The professional qualification and job market competitiveness discourse are corporate economy rationalizations. They are the individualization of labor issues and the blaming of workers for their unfavorable position in the negotiation table.

Vices and individual inadequacy are not the reason people end up without jobs. And the attempt to frame the debate in those terms only diverts us from the real question. Paraphrasing Spooner, the question is not what are people’s shortcomings, but what are their rights?

The Question is, Why Would ANYONE Trust the Government? on Feed 44

James Tuttle — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 19:00:38 +0000

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Question is, Why Would ANYONE Trust the Government?” read and edited by Nick Ford.

What was government doing, back when trust was so high? As soon as it emerged as global hegemon after WWII, the US began resorting to direct invasions, military coups and death squads when countries refused to cooperate with the post-war corporate world order.

The much-vaunted “New Deal Compact,” besides providing sufficient aggregate demand to prop up a mass-production economy based on waste production, was also a way of engineering the kind of public consent Huntington nostalgized over. “Just look the other way when we overthrow Arbenz, Mossadeq, Sukarno and Diem, and you can have a split-level ranch and a new car!”

I remember well the one time since Watergate that public trust in government to “do the right thing” spiked above 50%: September 2001. Congress gave Bush a blank check to fight anywhere in the world, forever and amen, along with police state powers rivaling Hitler’s after the Reichstag fire. Noted watchdog Dan Rather said “Just tell me where to line up, Mr. President.

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The Weekly Libertarian Leftist And Chess Review 41

Natasha Petrova — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 23:00:59 +0000

Kevin Carson discusses why distrust in government is a good thing.

Kevin Carson discusses how the makers and takers aren’t who you think.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the War on Drugs, intervention, and immigrant children.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the Saudi complicity in the rise of ISIS.

Gina Luttrell discusses bootleggers, baptists, and birth control.

Justin Raimondo discusses how neocons are going undercover.

Ivan Eland discusses resolving conflict in artificial states.

Bionic Mosquito discusses the criteria for a just war.

Eric Peters discusses the non-aggression principle.

Patrick Cockburn discusses ISIS in Syria.

Norman Solomon discusses the god complex of Uncle Sam.

Wendy McElroy discusses voluntaryist anthropology.

Sheldon Richman discusses the smear of isolationism.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses how government power is about having power rather than catching terrorists.

Nick Gillespie discusses a libertarian foreign policy.

Jeffrey Miron discusses libertarianism.

Andrew Bacevich discusses the lessons from America’s war for the Greater Middle East.

Justin Raimondo discusses the new meaning of isolationism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses Christians in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses Jane Cobden.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the practicality of libertarianism.

Sheldon Richman discusses the politics of the border.

Sheldon Richman discusses why he can’t help being a libertarian.

John LaForge discusses censorship and myth-making surrounding the atomic bomb.

Ron Jacobs discusses Tonkin and Watergate.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how ISIS is winning on two fronts.

James Rothenberg discusses the American flags and its followers.

Empty Wheel discusses whether civil libertarians are falling for faux NSA reform.

Alexey Shirov beats Boris Gelfand.

Yifan Hou beats Li Chao.

Public vs Private Dualities and Contextual Analysis

Natasha Petrova — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 21:00:52 +0000

Among the most enduring and pressing of questions for social scientists has been the nature of the public and private spheres. A great many political battles have been fought over control or delineation of these respective spaces. Some of these battles have been fought by the Civil Rights Movement and labor movement. Both of which sought to make claims of control or access to contested public/private spaces. These conflicts cannot be resolved without a nuanced contextual understanding of the issue. This requires dialectically transcending a strict public-private dualism.

This dualism shows up linguistically when discussing government vs non-government ownership/control. The common usage of the terms private ownership and public ownership are to identify government and non-government ownership. In this parlance, public refers to government ownership while private refers to non-government ownership.

The underlying assumption here is that the government and the public sphere are the same. Dictionary.com defines public as follows:

of, pertaining to, or affecting a population or a community as a whole: public funds; a public nuisance.

done, made, acting, etc., for the community as a whole: public prosecution.

open to all persons: a public meeting.

of, pertaining to, or being in the service of a community or nation, especially as a government officer: a public official.

maintained at the public expense and under public control: a public library; a public road.

Anarchistic public space is an important part of a free society. It would involve a public right of way and accessibility through some kind of cooperative control. A sense of solidarity could ensure access to people not living in the local community or cooperatively controlled area. One way to go about creating anarchistic public space is to homestead government controlled areas and engage in management of the newly created anarchistic commons. I look forward to seeing people try this out!

The Question is, Why Would ANYONE Trust the Government?

Kevin Carson — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 18:00:49 +0000

The drastic long-term drop in Americans’ trust for government since the 1950s periodically evokes pearl-clutching on the center-left. Liberal radio talk show host Leslie Marshall recently tweeted, as apparent cause for concern, a Pew Research poll finding the percentage of the public that trusts government to “do the right thing” most of the time or “pretty much always” at 19% in 2013 (by way of background, it peaked at 77% in 1965). She linked to a piece by Julian Zelizer at CNN (“Distrustful Americans still live in age of Watergate,” July 7), lamenting the low level of faith in government (“which is necessary for a healthy society”) as a cultural inheritance from Vietnam and Watergate and calling for political forms to root out corruption, restore public trust and render the political system once again functional.

But what does “functional” mean? What kind of government did Americans live under in 1958 (when public trust was 73%) or in 1965 (77%) before Vietnam destroyed that trust? Samuel Huntington, who shared Zelizer’s horror over declining popular trust in government, described it well in a 1973 Trilateral Commission paper on the “crisis of governability” and “excess democracy.” For Huntington, the US postwar role as “hegemonic power in a system of world order” relied on a domestic system of power. Under this system, the US “was governed by the president acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the Executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private establishment.”

And high levels of public trust, like in the good old days before Vietnam and Watergate, were necessary to keep that system of power stable. The proper functioning of this global hegemony, Huntington said, required a state ability “to mobilize its citizens for the achievement of social and political goals and to impose discipline and sacrifice upon its citizens” in pursuit of them — in turn requiring Americans to trust their government and not look too hard into what it was doing.

So why should anyone trust the US government? It’s been the tool of one economic ruling class or another ever since the big merchants, bond holders, land barons and slave owners at Philadelphia created it. At the most delusional height of confidence in government, it was promoting torture, murder, terror and tyranny to defend a neocolonial world order — and it never stopped doing that. Indeed, the state takes advantage of every increase in public trust to ramp up its criminal activities.

So maybe popular distrust of government isn’t such a bad thing.