Center for a Stateless Society » libya

Reporting on demonstrations and outbreaks of violence in Libya this week, CBS News observes the “collision between Libyans’ aspirations for change and the capability of the country’s fragile, post-Muammar Qaddafi leadership to bring it.” Since the 40-plus year rule of Qaddafi ended last year, a miscellany of would-be tyrants have vied for position, with the militias that helped oust Qaddafi remaining something of a wild card.

While the number of definite factions is open to question, the widespread trepidation in Libya is palpable. There is a sense among the people that any moment, a shot fired, the rise of a charismatic leader, etc., a new despotism could come forth.

Conventional wisdom teaches that, in the absence of the state, violent conflict is inevitable, political, religious and class groups destined to clash until a single, central source of law and order is instituted in society. To avoid such endless and untold chaos, people inaugurate the “artificial man” of the state, its objectivity, fairness and justness proceeding from the fact that it is something separate and apart from the people who create it. By agreement, the theory instructs, people relinquish a portion of their natural sovereignty so that they might have peace.

But libertarians and radicals of all stripes suggest another backstory for the state, one that replaces the deified state of fairy tale political science with the actual, historical state. Endorsing this second narrative, market anarchists argue that, in the words of American anarchist Benjamin Tucker, “the State had its origin in aggression, and has continued as an aggressive institution from its birth.” American historian Charles A. Beard wrote similarly, “War thus begets the king.”

The aggression of the state, its attack on peaceful, productive society, is not random or without purpose, but fundamentally economic in nature; it has enabled a parasitic class of marauders to live at the expense of others throughout history. Naturally, then, the state’s presence in society has yielded results — like those in Libya — decidedly opposite those of the fairy tale chronicle that has been inculcated in us.

What is transpiring in Libyan towns today, what materialized last year during the Arab Spring, these are reactions to innate, shared awareness that society is subject to the rule of a conquering group. In its establishment, and then protection and patronage, of monopoly, the state is the principal source of poverty. In its furtherance of poverty, the state catalyzes the preconditions of crime and violence — the chaos is it thought to thwart.

The principle of equal liberty allows people with different beliefs and worldviews to live and work alongside one another, indeed, to cooperate and collaborate. It is only the inception of political authority, the power of some group to rule everyone, that creates the kind of bloodshed we witness today.

A fractionated society, divided along cultural, ethnic and other lines, its people estranged from one another, is not necessary or ineludible. We can mitigate or escape entirely most of the attributes of the splintered, political society by embracing a philosophy mutual respect and non-coercion. Market anarchists are upholders of this philosophy.

People who would leave their neighbors in peace, who would trade on a voluntary basis, who would refrain from forcing their views on others through politics, are all already anarchists. Libyans ought to oppose not any particular political ideology or regime, but the state itself; only in its final abolition can legitimate law and order come to fruition.

Cuidado con los Bombardeos Humanitarios

Kevin Carson — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 23:00:29 +0000

Como anarquista, me encuentro un poco más que consternado con los recientes acontecimientos en Libia. Creo que es muy probable que si los Estados Unidos no hubiese intervenido, hubiese ocurrido una gran masacre en Benghazi. Los estados–y sus fuerzas armadas–existen, y algunas de sus acciones son peores que otras. Y a veces las acciones estatales tienen efectos secundarios positivos. En este caso, podría decirse que el pueblo libio se benefició del conflicto entre los estados, que debilitó el estrangulamiento que ejercía el mafioso que los gobernaba sin un aumento concomitante del poder que el estado rival tiene sobre el territorio en el que viven.

Ciertamente sería insensato no celebrar el que haya gente que hoy está viva en Benghazi que probablemente no lo estaría si Estados Unidos no hubiese intervenido. Pero espero que a pesar de lo entendible que en este caso es el que hayan aceptado ayuda del Diablo, le presten mucha atención a la letra pequeña. Puede que se enteren de que por haber aceptado esa ayuda, no terminarán de pagar su deuda con Él hasta que Él decida.

La administración Obama presenta la intervención en Libia como un acto puramente humanitario. Pero como dice Noam Chomsky, “las buenas intenciones no forman parte de las características del estado… y los Estados Unidos, como cualquier otro estado en el pasado o el presente, lleva a cabo políticas que favorecen los intereses de aquellos que controlan lo controlan gracias a su poder doméstico…”

Desde hace aproximadamente un siglo, cuando la prensa masiva y la opinión pública se convirtieron en una fuerza con la cual lidiar en el mundo desarrollado, los gobiernos rara vez han admitido lanzar una guerra con el simple objetivo de expandir su territorio. Los intereses más espúreos se disfrazan de humanitarismo ó auto defensa contra una “amenaza extranjera”.

Chomsky, en “El Poder Americano y sus Nuevos Mandarines”, hace notar que las técnicas de contrainsurgencia utilizadas por los japoneses en Manchuria siguieron el mismo patrón usado desde las Guerras de los Bóers y los levantamientos en Cuba y Filipinas, hasta los esfuerzos de Estados Unidos en Vietnam. Chomsky cita cartas de oficiales japoneses explicando a sus familias la gloriosa misión de los soldados del Emperador a través de los mares para defender la civilización de la Amenaza Roja.

Hasta Hitler quiso hacer ver sus aventuras territoriales como una forma de defensa a minorías étnicamente alemanas oprimidas en el Sudetenland y el Danzig. En el último caso la provocación de hecho fue lanzada por soldados Nazi con uniformes polacos. (Antes de culpar al pueblo alemán por su credulidad, pido al lector que se pregunte qué haría la gente en Estados Unidos si un ataque de bandera falsa similar fuese reportado como noticia pura y dura, como seguramente lo sería, por CNN).

Y después tenemos a San Kennedy: Consistente con su promesa de “sobrellevar cualquier carga, pagar cualquier precio”, sus Mejores y Más Brillantes se avocaron a armar un aparataje global centrado en instituciones como los Boínas Verdes y la Escuela de las Américas, cuya función principal fue educar a dictadores militares y a paramilitares en las sutiles artes del asesinato y la tortura, y la desaparición de enemigos políticos. Si existe un Libro Negro del Comunismo que incluye las víctimas de las colectivizaciones China y Soviética y los Campos de la Muerte del Pol Pot, también debería existir un Libro Negro del Estado de Seguridad Nacional de los Estados Unidos que incluyese los cientos de miles masacrados por Suharto y Mobutu, los millones masacrados por escuadrones de la muerte centroamericanos y andinos, y los miles que fueron torturados por las dictaduras militares que arrasaron a América del Sur con la ayuda y cobijo del gobierno estadounidense durante los años 60 y 70.

Si el pueblo libio quiere una referencia de lo que resultará de permitirle al gobierno americano que tenga voz en la reconstrucción de su sociedad de posguerra, no tienen más que echarle un vistazo al trabajo de la CPA de Bremer en Irak. Un profeta Samuel moderno podría hacer una descripción elocuente de lo que le espera a cualquier país que acepta un gobierno neoliberal diseñado por Estados Unidos para que pueda ser “como las otras naciones”. Repartirá las tierras entre inversores occidentales políticamente conectados, en términos sumamente favorables; el país será ocupado por mercenarios contratados por Halliburton y Blackwater; y firmará un “Tratado de Libre Comercio” con cláusulas sobre “propiedad intelectual” que criminalizarán el almacenar semillas después de las cosechas e inflarán los precios de las medicinas contra el HIV en un diez mil por ciento.

Habiéndose beneficiado de la zona de exclusión aérea, esperemos que Libia ahora tenga en cuenta estas lecciones históricas y sepa mantener al Diablo a una distancia prudente.

Artículo original publicado por Kevin Carson el 17 de febrero de 2011.

Traducido del inglés por Alan Furth.

Beware of Humanitarians With Bombs

Kevin Carson — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:41:56 +0000

As an anarchist, I find myself more than a little conflicted about recent events in Libya. It seems entirely plausible to me that, had the United States not intervened, there would have been a large-scale massacre in Benghazi. States — and their armed forces — exist, and some of their actions are worse than others. And sometimes state actions have beneficial side-effects. In this case, the people of Libya might be said to have benefited from the conflict between states, which weakened the control of their own organized crime lord over the turf in which they lived without a corresponding increase in the rival state’s power over them.

I certainly can’t begrudge the people of Benghazi who are now alive and quite plausibly would not have been absent the U.S. intervention. But I hope that, no matter how understandable it may be that they accepted help from the Devil, they look over the fine print very closely. They may find that, having accepted the Devil’s help, they won’t be done paying till the Devil says so.

The Obama administration portrays the intervention in Libya as a purely humanitarian act. But as Noam Chomsky says, “‘good intentions’ are not properties of states … and the United States, like every other state past and present, pursues policies that reflect the interests of those who control the state by virtue of their domestic power …”

Since the rise of a mass press and popular opinion as a force to be reckoned with in the developed countries, a little over a century ago, governments rarely admit they’ve undertaken foreign wars for simple territorial aggrandizement. Naked self-interest comes clothed in the guise either of humanitarian intervention or of self-defense against some “foreign threat.”

Chomsky, in “American Power and the New Mandarins,” notes that the counterinsurgency techniques used by the Japanese in Manchuria followed essentially the same playbook used from the Boer Wars and the uprisings in Cuba and the Philippines, to the American effort in Vietnam. He quotes letters home from Japanese officers explaining to their families the glorious mission of the Emperor’s troops across the water — to defend civilization against the Red Menace.

Even Hitler passed his territorial adventures off as the defense of oppressed ethnic German minorities in the Sudetenland and Danzig. In the latter case, the actual provocation came from Nazi troops in Polish uniforms. (Before you judge the German people for their credulity, ask yourself what the American people would do in the case of a similar false flag operation if it was reported as straight news — as it certainly would be — on CNN).

And then there’s St. Kennedy: Pursuant to his vow to “bear any burden, pay any price,” his Best and Brightest industriously set up a global apparatus centered on such institutions as the Green Berets and School of the Americas, whose main function was to teach military dictatorships and paramilitaries the finer points of torture and of murdering and disappearing political enemies. If there’s a Black Book of Communism that includes the victims of Soviet and Chinese collectivization and Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, there should also be a Black Book of the U.S. National Security State that includes the hundreds of thousands massacred by Suharto and Mobutu, the millions massacred by Central American and Andean death squads, and the untold thousands tortured by the military dictatorships which swept South America with the aid and comfort of the U.S. government in the ’60s and ’70.

If the Libyan people want an illustration of what will result from allowing the U.S. government any voice in how their postwar society is reconstructed, they need look no further than the work of Bremer’s CPA in Iraq. A modern prophet Samuel could provide an eloquent description of what awaits any country that accepts a U.S.-designed neoliberal government so that it can be “like the other nations.” It will have its state property distributed on sweetheart terms to politically connected western investors, be overrun by mercenaries from Halliburton and Blackwater, and sign a “Free Trade Agreement” with “intellectual property” provisions that criminalize saving seed and drive up the price of HIV drugs by ten thousand percent.

Libya, having benefited from the no-fly zone, had better take these historical lessons to heart and keep the Devil at arm’s length.

Translations for this article:

Spanish, Cuidado con los Bombardeos Humanitarios.

The System Needs Us, We Don’t Need the System

Darian Worden — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:56:46 +0000

Uprisings against notably authoritarian regimes, and resistance to attacks on labor power in Wisconsin, show that the general public has power when they choose to use it. How powerful they can become and how beneficial their power will be rests on how much they continue to believe in authority.

A conscious populace can discard a system that does not work for them. The current political system solidly maintains the power of politicians and their supporters over the general populace. Office-holders and their corporate partners make deals with each other to keep their faction in charge — and the maintenance of a stable power structure is essential to enabling them to rule. Fortunately the system is composed of people, and those people are bound by the political necessities of good appearances, by rivalries among rulers, and by the consciences of the enforcers. All the weapons money can buy are only as effective as the individuals operating them.

Of course, any challenge to the system holds the dangers of wasting effort to perpetuate the system or adopting one that is no better. A brutal reaction might be unleashed, new elites could become rulers, or rebels might maintain or expand the privileges of the old system instead of leveling the system for mutual benefit.

To prevent the rise of new tyranny, the mobilized public must respect individual liberty and know how to safeguard it. It is of prime importance to consistently and effectively call out the lie that elites and rulers are necessary. The power-hungry will always claim they will exploit less than the other guy, and make the unstated assumption that exploitation is a necessity.

But exploitation and rulership are not needed to maintain a peaceful and prosperous society of freedom. Instead, power can be dispersed among equals. Elites provide nothing that cannot be better provided without them.

Security? Elites undermine it, and the foundations of true security are social bonds and solidarity that thugs are keen to disrupt.

Transportation infrastructure? The system builds according to the demands of power, sometimes demolishing neighborhoods in the process, and skims off into the pockets of numerous cronies before it delivers anything.

Education? People are eager to learn and teach, and only authoritarian structures, administrative excess, and the nonsense used to prop up the system obstructs them.

Environmental protection? Elites market green and pass laws, but encourage waste and destruction.

And so on. Power structures are made to support the powerful, and people do best by getting rid of them.

A populace that liberates itself has the chance to explore new options: ad-hoc neighborhood councils with common membership, the division of state organizations among mutual ownership shares, and whatever other arrangements satisfied the needs of safeguarding the equal liberty of all individuals to live as they want without infringing on others’ liberty. The groundwork for liberation can be laid by building networks and spreading ideas online and in person. But one must act when action is happening.

Events have shown that people do not need to defer to authority or wait for permission to take power from tyrants. If the masses retain power and show a widespread respect for individual autonomy instead of ceding power and liberty to ambitious politicians, an era of unprecedented human freedom will be safeguarded.