A guardare bene le statistiche sulla disoccupazione ci si accorge che non solo i numeri “ufficiali” sono fuorvianti, ma anche che il tentativo della stato di controllare e dirigere l’economia è un fallimento completo. Ad aprile, 800.000 persone sono uscite dalla forza lavoro. Quasi un milione hanno smesso di cercare un lavoro. Il numero di nuovi posti di lavoro non è neanche sufficiente a coprire la crescita della popolazione, che è di quasi il 7%.

Ora, agli occhi di una persona normale questi dati statistici sono un brutto segno, significano che non c’è crescita e che l’economia è ancora arenata. Ma nella sua crociata contro il senso comune, governo e media enfatizzano quei dati statistici che fanno apparire ogni cosa meno deprimente di quanto non sia in realtà. In questo caso, le statistiche migliorano quando le persone esce dalla forza lavoro.

La statistica più diffusa tiene conto soltanto di quei disoccupati che sono nella forza lavoro. Se una persona smette di cercare un lavoro, esce dalla forza lavoro. Questo fa “calare” statisticamente la disoccupazione anche se nessuno viene assunto. Una persona è sempre disoccupata, ma i numeri trasformano la sua disoccupazione in un miglioramento statistico. Questo genera discussioni sulla crescita economica che vedono tutto al contrario. Commentatori e politici vantano il calo del tasso di disoccupazione e dimenticano convenientemente chi ha smesso di cercare un lavoro.

Quando, ad aprile, la forza lavoro è scesa ad appena il 62,8% della popolazione, il livello più basso dagli anni settanta, i dati statistici sulla disoccupazione sono calati in parallelo. Più persone uscivano dalla forza lavoro e meno persone venivano considerate disoccupate. Ad abbassare sempre più il tasso di disoccupazione è il calo progressivo di chi è disposto a lavorare, non la crescita economica. Ma lo stato non vuole che lo sappiate.

Questa bizzarra illustrazione dei dati statistici sulla disoccupazione potrebbe essere interpretata come pura stupidità dello stato. È la rappresentazione di un’illusione. La verità è nascosta in fondo alle statistiche ufficiali. È una cosa ingegnosa. Gli stati cadrebbero se la verità dovesse venire allo scoperto. Se lo stato è terribilmente patetico quando si tratta di gestire un’economia, è fenomenale nel creare propaganda. Soprattutto quando la propaganda nasconde i veri effetti dell’intervento statale. Lo stato ha prima provocato la recessione attraverso una bolla immobiliare causata dall’inflazione. Quindi ha prolungato questa recessione con salvataggi e nuove normative. Ora ha convinto la popolazione di aver risolto la recessione usando, tra le altre cose, calcoli fuorvianti sulla disoccupazione.

Lo stato esige obbedienza senza dissenso. Ecco perché l’amministrazione rifila queste statistiche e ignora altri numeri, meno generosi (ma più accurati), sulla disoccupazione. Se la popolazione sapesse che i numeri sulla disoccupazione sono solo propaganda, perderebbe fiducia nello stato. Soprattutto quando si parla del suo successo nella risoluzione della crisi. Questa limiterebbe pesantemente le politiche che lo stato può perseguire. Se la gente fosse intellettualmente radicale e mettesse in questione lo stato, quest’ultimo perderebbe tutto il suo potere.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

A deeper look into the unemployment statistics reveals not only that the “official” numbers are misleading, but also that the state’s attempt at controlling and managing the economy is an abject failure. In April 800,000 people left the work force. Almost a million people simply stopped looking for work. Additionally, the number of jobs added is too little to keep up with the nearly 7 percent increase in population growth.

Now, to a normal person, these statistics seem like a bad sign — a sign that job growth is not occurring and the economy is still in the gutter. But, in a crusade against common sense, government and media emphasize a statistic that makes everything look much less gloomy than it actually it is. This statistic that everyone refers to improves when the labor force drops.

The most popularly used unemployment statistic only accounts for the labor force and how many people in the labor force are jobless. When someone stops looking for work, they leave the labor force. This makes unemployment go “down,” despite no one getting a job. The person is still unemployed, but the statistic shows their joblessness as an improvement. This leads to the national conversation about economic growth running completely backwards. Pundits and politicians talk about how low the unemployment rate is and the amount of people who left the labor force is conveniently forgotten.

When the labor force dropped to a mere 62.8 percent of the population in April, tied for the lowest rate since the 1970s, the official unemployment statistic also dropped. More people left the labor force so less people were considered unemployed. The increasingly smaller percentage of people considered in the labor force, not economic growth is driving the increasingly lower unemployment rate. But the state doesn’t want you to notice.

This bizarre construction of unemployment statistics could be construed as the mere stupidity of the state. After all, it’s portraying an illusion. The truth is buried deep below the official statistic. But it’s actually genius. States would fall if the truth about their existence came out. While states are terribly pathetic at running economies, they are supremely good at creating propaganda. Especially when that propaganda conceals the true effects of state intervention. The state created the recession through an inflation-driven housing bubble. Then it worsened and prolonged the recession with bailouts and new regulations. Now the state has convinced people it has fixed the recession using, among other things, a misleading unemployment measure.

The state demands unquestioning obedience. That’s why the administration touts this statistic and ignores other, less generous (but more accurate), unemployment measures. If people learned unemployment numbers were just propaganda, they would lose confidence in the state: Specifically in its success at fixing the economy. This would be a huge constraint on the kinds of policies the state could pursue. If people were intellectually radical and questioned the state, the state would lose all its power.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Le Statistiche sulla Disoccupazione Sono Propaganda di Stato.

Cops are, generally speaking, the enemy. They are a terrorizing, occupying force who preserve the culture of statism and violence. However, individual police officers are also human beings. They are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They have family and friends just like you and I. This is why the notion of violence against state agents puts anarchists in such a precarious situation. While we recognize the state is a monolithic, terrorist organization, it’s not obvious that every individual who works for the state is our enemy. I know a number of cops. I know their families and friends. I would never consider killing or even harming them.

Putting aside the awkward question of who is or isn’t our enemy, what is strategically effective? The problem with utilizing violence against the state is that the state won’t back down. Violence begets violence. The more cops are killed, the more cops are hired. The more funding they will get. The more and more powerful arms they will purchase. The more they will be trained to shoot first. Any significant campaign of violence against the police will be met with an even more violent and brutal campaign against civilians.

There will be no shortage of goons, thugs and guns for the state to use to achieve its goals. And if it is met with violence by liberty lovers, you can be sure the state will respond with violence of its own. This strategy is short-sighted and misguided. Coercion is almost always a bad way to solve problems — this is one reason why the state is undesirable in the first place. Trying to fight the state with its own tools and its own methods is doomed to fail. It will only escalate the problem and put civilians in more harm’s way than they are already in.

So what is an anarchist supposed to do? Just as violence won’t get us what we want, the opposite, peace, will. We don’t need to fall to the state’s level of using violence and terrorism. We can transcend what the state is doing. We must. The only way to a free society is through peaceful discussion. Our fight lies on the battlefield of ideas. And our battle plan is to win hearts and minds through engaging our fellow humans as conversation partners. Though building relationships predicated on peace and mutual aid, not violence. Our beliefs are fundamentally about peaceful cooperation and the rejection of the initiation of violence. Let’s act like it.

Are cops the enemy? Yes. But not in the traditional way of looking at things. They are not an enemy we must crush or destroy. It is the institutions we must do that to. Rather, they are an enemy we must convince and persuade. Agents of the state must be brought over to the side of liberty, not killed. They don’t deserve it and we certainly don’t deserve the trauma inherent in using that kind of tactic. Liberty is too important a project to be left to violence.

Today is a day to recognize that the death of these police officers was a detriment, not a triumph, in the fight for freedom: An example of sinking to the level of statism. We must be better than that. We are better than that. So instead of shooting a cop when he’s grabbing some pizza, join him. Pick up a slice and talk with him about why liberty is so important. Pizza and ideas: Those are the keys to freedom.

This theory is called left-wing market anarchism or laissez faire socialism. Its basic contention is that a truly freed market has never existed, and that capitalism is a statist system. There is also the conviction that genuinely freed markets would result in greater relative equality and more worker friendly conditions. The first thing to cover are the four big monopolies identified by the late individualist anarchist, Benjamin Tucker. They are described in his famous essay, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, And Wherein They Differ. They are the money monopoly, land monopoly, tariff monopoly, and the patent monopoly or intellectual property monopolies. Let us consider each in turn.

1) The money monopoly pertains to a government or state grant of privilege to select individuals or people possessing certain types of property. This privilege is the exclusive right to issue money. The effect of this is to keep interest rates artificially high or maintain them period. In a left-libertarian market anarchist society, anyone would be free to issue a currency. There would be a competitive whittling down of lending money to the labor cost of conducting banking business. Another positive effect identified by Tucker would be the absence of control mentioned below:

It is claimed that the holders of this privilege control the rate of interest, the rate of rent of houses and buildings, and the prices of goods,—the first directly, and the second and third indirectly.

Kevin Carson has quoted Alexander Cairncross to the effect that:

the American worker has at his disposal a larger stock of capital at home than in the factory where he is employed….

Said capital or property would serve as collateral or backing. This would increase the bargaining power of labor in relation to capital, because the laborers would be able to organize their own credit systems for conducting independent business apart from the capitalists. As Gary Elkin notes:

It’s important to note that because of Tucker’s proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual credit, his so-called Individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers’ control but would in fact promote it. For if access to mutual credit were to increase the bargaining power of workers to the extent that Tucker claimed it would, they would then be able to (1) demand and get workplace democracy, and (2) pool their credit buy and own companies collectively.

2) The land monopoly consists of governments or states granting or protecting land titles not based on occupation and use. This is a critique of absentee landlordism and the rent following therefrom. This has the effect of shutting out land based work as a competitive factor with industry. It also destroyed the independence to be derived from occupying land or making use of a stateless commons.

3) The tariff monopoly pertains to the protection of the profits of domestic capitalist industry from foreign competition. This increases the price of goods and thus extracts more of the product of laborers from them. It also helps create oligopolies or monopolies, because there is no competitive whittling down of profit or size. It’s worth noting that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon thought the money monopoly had to be abolished before the tariff monopoly, because the people put out of work by foreign competition would need a market with a vast demand for labor to find different work.

4) The patent or intellectual property monopoly allows people to extract monopoly prices from things that could conceivably be competed over. A person is also denied the ability to use their property in a way they see fit through aggressive force. Two people can write the same book without stealing from each other. Patents are also pooled by corporations to prevent any competition and to control economic resources. This allows them to lock the third world into a dependence on them for technology. In addition to the above, Kevin Carson has noted:

A survey of U.S. firms found that 86% of inventions would have been developed without patents. In the case of automobiles, office equipment, rubber products, and textiles, the figure was 100%.

The one exception was drugs, in which 60% supposedly would not have been invented. I suspect disingenuousness on the part of the respondants, however. For one thing, drug companies get an unusually high portion of their R & D funding from the government, and many of their most lucrative products were developed entirely at government expense. And Scherer himself cited evidence to the contrary. The reputation advantage for being the first into a market is considerable. For example in the late 1970s, the structure of the industry and pricing behavior was found to be very similar between drugs with and those without patents. Being the first mover with a non-patented drug allowed a company to maintain a 30% market share and to charge premium prices.

In my next post, I will continue this introduction.

Stay tuned!

Recentemente, o conhecido escritor e editor libertário Lew Rockwell escreveu um artigo em seu blog intitulado “What Libertarianism Is, and Isn’t” (“O que o libertarianismo é e o que ele não é”, em português). Nele, Rockwell afirma: “O libertarianismo se preocupa com o uso da violência na sociedade. Isso é tudo. Ele não é nada além disso”. Ele defende uma visão libertária que se preocupa somente com direitos de propriedade e sua defesa. Rockwell alega que a filosofia libertária se resume ao princípio da não-agressão, aos direitos de propriedade lockeanos e nada mais.

Quaisquer outras preocupações com questões sociais e culturais além desses limites são apenas preferências pessoais desconectadas de sua posição libertária. “Os libertários, é claro, são livres para se preocuparem com questões como o feminismo e o igualitarismo. Porém, seu interesse nessas questões não tem nada a ver com o libertarianismo, não é requerido por ele nem uma característica essencial.” Acredito que isso não seja verdadeiro. Meu alinhamento com as ideias feministas, anti-racistas, com a liberação gay e trans e meu apoio ao fortalecimento dos trabalhadores são frutos do meu libertarianismo. Defendo esses princípios pelos mesmos motivos pelos quais eu estou comprometido ao anti-estatismo.

O motivo por que eu me preocupo com as violações de liberdades que não têm origem no estado é explicada pelo próprio Lew Rockwell: “Nossa posição não é meramente a de que o estado seja moralmente mau, mas de que a liberdade humana seja um enorme bem moral”. Exatamente! Sou contrário ao autoritarismo, à dominação e acredito na igualdade de autoridade. É por isso que me oponho ao estatismo. É também por isso que sou favorável a um mundo livre de opressões institucionais como o patriarcalismo, o racismo, a repressão a gays e trans e ambientes de trabalho hierárquicos e sem autonomia.

Minha crença na igualdade de autoridade se aplica a mais que somente o relacionamento entre um político e o cidadão médio. Se aplica a todos os relacionamentos humanos, estejam eles localizados num prédio estatal, na mesa de jantar ou no balcão da lanchonete; eu desejo maximizar a liberdade humana. Desejar a liberdade humana em todas essas áreas tem relação direta com a filosofia libertária. Não são só complementos, são o prato principal.

Rockwell cita o próprio Mr. Libertarian, Murray Rothbard, em suporte à sua posição libertária enxuta. Rothbard escreve: “O libertarianismo não oferece um modo de viver; oferece a liberdade para que cada pessoa tenha a possibilidade de adotar e agir de acordo com seus próprios valores e princípios morais”. Eu acredito que as implicações verdadeiras do que Rothbard diz aqui dão suporte a um libertarianismo mais amplo, em contraposição à opinião de Rockwell. O libertarianismo, realmente, não favorece um estilo de vida particular, mas tem algo a dizer sobre como devem ser as interações humanas. Portanto, enquanto filosofia social, o libertarianismo deve defender o repúdio a relações autoritárias.

O argumento de Rothbard mostra como a liberdade é necessária para que cada pessoa encontre seu propósito e atinja seus fins. Isso vai muito além das ações do estado. Normas culturais repressivas e costumes sociais dominantes também impedem que as pessoas prosperem. Também limitam suas liberdades. Um negro não pode ter uma vida decente se estiver numa comunidade extremamente racista, onde empresários se negam a empregá-lo ou servi-lo. Eles não estariam violando seus direitos, mas certamente diminuiriam sua capacidade de atingir seus fins. Ele não poderia ser considerado livre numa sociedade tão opressora.

Rothbard continua: “Os libertários concordam com Lord Acton ao dizer que a ‘liberdade é o maior objetivo político’, embora não necessariamente o maior objetivo dentro da escala de valores pessoal de todos os indivíduos”. Embora essa seja uma excelente citação de Lord Acton, ela não vai longe o bastante. Por que a liberdade seria relevante somente à esfera política? Ela é, certamente, afetada por muitos outros fatores. Não há motivos para que nossas preocupações com a liberdade humana sejam deixadas na porta de entrada do Palácio do Planalto. Para sermos coerentes, devemos estender essa preocupação a todas as interações humanas.

Rockwell conclui: “[O libertarianismo] não precisa e não deve ser fundido com qualquer outra ideologia alheia a ele. Isso só levará a confusões e à diluição de seus argumentos morais centrais, além da diminuição do apelo da mensagem central da liberdade”. Contudo, essa fusão não existe. A preocupação com relacionamentos autoritários que estejam fora da alçada do estado é um mero desenvolvimento dos princípios centrais de autonomia e liberdade. Não dilui a mensagem, mas a fortalece. Torna-a mais coerente internamente e faz com que a preocupação com a liberdade seja o foco central, no lugar de um anti-estatismo vazio.

Nós apoiamos a auto-soberania, a autonomia individual e a liberdade pessoal. Esses são os pilares de nossas ideias filosóficas: a massa da pizza. A oposição ao estatismo, à tirania política e à força centralizada e o apoio às liberdades civis, ao livre mercado e ao não-intervencionismo são uma das conclusões que devemos apoiar: o molho de tomate. Mas não são tudo. Nossos fundamentos também justificam a oposição à repressão cultural, à intolerância social e a relacionamentos autoritários, além do apoio ao feminismo, à liberação gay e trans, ao anti-racismo e ao fortalecimento dos trabalhadores, que são o outro lado das conclusões que devemos apoiar: o queijo. Juntos, esses ingredientes formam a grande e deliciosa pizza conhecida como libertarianismo.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Recently, accomplished libertarian author and editor, Lew Rockwell, wrote an article on his blog titled “What Libertarian Is, and Isn’t.” Mr. Rockwell argues, “Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That is all. It is not anything else.” He supports a view of libertarianism that is concerned solely with property rights and the defense thereof. Rockwell envisions the libertarian philosophy as being the non-aggression principle, Lockean property rights, and nothing more.

Any concern for social and cultural issues beyond this is merely a person’s preferences that have nothing to do with their libertarianism. “Libertarians are of course free to concern themselves with issues like feminism and egalitarianism. But their interest in those issues has nothing to do with, and is not required by or a necessary feature of, their libertarianism.” I don’t believe this is the case. My aligning myself with the ideas of feminism, anti-racism, gay and trans liberation, and worker empowerment is an outgrowth of my libertarianism. I am committed to those principles for the same reasons that I am committed to anti-statism.

The reason I concern myself with violations of peoples’ liberty that don’t owe their origin to the state is explained by Rockwell when he writes, “Our position is not merely that the state is a moral evil, but that human liberty is a tremendous moral good.” Exactly! I am against authoritarianism, domination, and believe in equality of authority. That is why I am opposed to statism. But it’s also why I am for a world free of institutional oppression in the form of patriarchy, racism, gay and trans shaming, and autonomy-destroying, hierarchical workplaces.

My belief in equality of authority applies to more than just the relationship between a statesman and the average person. It applies to all human relationships. Whether it be in the capitol building, or in the workplace, or the dinner table, or the lunch counter, I want to maximize human freedom. My desire for human liberation on all these fronts is directly tied to my libertarian philosophy. These commitments are not merely the interchangeable toppings on the pizza of libertarianism, they are the cheese.

Rockwell quotes Mr. Libertarian himself, Murray Rothbard, to support his undecorated libertarian position. Rothbard writes, “Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles.” I believe the true implications of what Rothbard is saying here supports the idea of a broad view of libertarianism, as opposed to Rockwell’s view. Libertarianism is, in fact, not about a certain lifestyle, other than how you interact with fellow human beings. Therefore, as a philosophy about proper social interactions, libertarianism is about the avoidance and disavowal of authoritarian relationships.

Rothbard’s argument shows how liberty is needed for each person to find their own purpose and achieve their own good. This goes beyond the actions of the state. Repressive cultural norms and domineering social customs also prevent people from flourishing. They, too, lessen people’s liberty. A black person can’t flourish if he lives in a staunchly racist community with employers and businesses who refuse him service. They wouldn’t be violating his rights, but they would certainly be diminishing his ability to achieve his own good. He would hardly be considered free in such an oppressive society.

Rothbard continues, “Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.” While this is an excellent quote by Lord Action, it doesn’t go far enough. Why would liberty only be relevant in the political sphere? It is certainly affected by various other factors. There is no reason to end our concern for human freedom at the doorstep of the capitol building. In order to remain consistent, we ought to extend that concern to all human interactions.

Rockwell concludes, “It need not and should not be fused with any extraneous ideology. This can lead only to confusion, and to watering down the central moral claims, and the overall appeal, of the message of liberty.” But there is no such fusion. Showing concern for authoritarian social relationships outside the purview of the state is merely fully fleshing out our core principles of autonomy and freedom. It doesn’t water down the message. It strengthens it. It makes it more internally coherent and makes concern for liberty the primary focus, rather than just vacuous anti-statism.

We support self-sovereignty, individual autonomy, and personal freedom. These are the bedrocks of our philosophical ideas: the pizza crust. Opposing statism, political tyranny, and centralized force and supporting civil liberties, free markets, and non-interventionism are one set of conclusions we must embrace: the tomato sauce. But this hardly the whole story. Our foundations also mean opposing cultural repression, societal intolerance, and authoritarian relationships and supporting feminism, gay and trans liberation, anti-racism, and worker empowerment, which are the other set of conclusions we must embrace: the cheese. Combined, all these things make up a large, delicious, beautiful pizza known as libertarianism.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, O libertarianismo é mais que o anti-estatismo.