The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Trevor Hultner.

Parece que a reação padronizada da mídia ao surgirem denunciantes em nossos dias é distorcer-lhes a imagem de tal maneira que nunca ninguém possa vê-los como pessoas simpáticas. Assim aconteceu com Daniel Ellsberg. Aconteceu com o segundo cabo B. Manning. E, agora, é a vez do ex-administrador de sistemas da Booz Allen Hamilton, Edward Snowden, no palco do assassínio do caráter.

Snowden tornou-se conhecido no domingo (Gleen Greenwald, do Guardian) como a pessoa que vazou informações acerca de múltiplos programas da Agência de Segurança Nacional – NSA para a imprensa. Desde então, muitos comentadores atribuíram a si próprios a incumbência de não apenas questionar a lealdade de Snowden como ainda de perguntar em voz alta: “Quem o pagou?” Essa tarefa foi assumida mais completamente por dois dos maiores escrevinhadores sem originalidade do jornalismo: o colunista do New York Times David Brooks e o escritor do New YorkerJeffrey Toobin.

Toobin, em seu artigo no “Comentário Diário” “Edward Snowden Não É Herói,” infere das entrevistas que Snowden concedeu que ele é “exibido narcisista que merece estar na prisão.” Por quê?

“Qualquer cidadão marginalmente atento, quanto mais um empregado ou empreiteiro da N.S.A., sabe que a missão cabal daquela agência é interceptar comunicações eletrônicas. Talvez ele tenha achado que a N.S.A. funcionava só fora dos Estados Unidos; se esse o caso, ele não estava prestando muita atenção. […] Qualquer empregado ou empreiteiro do governo é repetidamente advertido de que a revelação não autorizada de informação oficialmente secreta é crime.Snowden, porém, aparentemente, estava respondendo a algum imperativo superior.”

Toobin argumenta a partir da mentalidade segundo a qual a legalidade do governo automaticamente se traduz em moralidade universal. Pelo fato de Snowden saber que vazar seu conhecimento acerca do que a NSA andava aprontando era ilegal e, nada obstante, tê-lo feito, ele deveria ser preso. Essa é ela própria uma premissa de adoção repugnante. Toobin, porém, vai ainda além:

“O governo estadunidense, e sua democracia, são instituições imperfeitas. Nosso sistema, porém, oferece opções legais para empregados e empreiteiros do governo que estejam insatisfeitos. Eles podem valer-se de leis federais de denúncia; podem levar suas reclamações ao Congresso; podem tentar protestar dentro das instituições onde trabalham. Snowden, porém, não fez nada disso. Pelo contrário: num ato que fala mais para o ego do que para a consciência dele, jogou os segredos que conhecia para o alto — e confiou, de algum modo, em que daí resultaria coisa boa. Todos nós agora temos de esperar que ele esteja certo.”

Esses são, quase palavra por palavra, os mesmos apelos cegos para a autoridade que corporações como a Walmart usam para sufocar quaisquer pensamentos nas mentes dos trabalhadores de fazerem algo tão ultrajante quanto entrar em greve ou sindicalizar-se. É de se perguntar, se a carreira de Toobin tivesse seguido rumo direrente e ele se tivesse tornado gerente de uma Walmart no centro de  — por exemplo — o maior processo de ação de classe de discriminação sexual da história, se ele usaria os mesmos argumentos contra as mulheres que estão chamando a atenção para o problema.

As verbosidades vazias de Toobin, porém, empalidecem em comparação com o monólito de estatismo que é a coluna mais recente de  David Brooks.

A lendária capacidade de Brooks de deificar, em vez de desafiar, a autoridade merece apenas leve menção. No ano passado ele escreveu coluna pedindo (não, não é piada) fossem erigidas em praças de pequenas cidades, em todo o país, estátuas da elite. Desta vez, Brooks leva sua arte a novas alturas (ou a novo nadir, dependendo da perspectiva).

Brooks começa sua magnum opus insultando a inteligência de Snowden; má jogada, considerando-se o cargo que ele tinha (para não mencionar a experiência que havia obtido) quando deixou a Booz Allen Hamilton. Brooks satiriza: “[Ele] não conseguiu ter sucesso na instituição da escola secundária. Depois, não conseguiu navegar através da faculdade comunitária.”

Isso é apenas o início das tentativas de Brooks de pintar Snowden como imoral por causa de sua suposta falta de valores familiares. Ele continua:

“De acordo com The Washington Post, ele não se faz presente nas redondezas da casa da mãe há anos. Quando um vizinho no Havaí tentou apresentar-se, Snowden interrompeu-o e deixou claro não desejar relacionamento com vizinhos. Foi trabalhar para a Booz Allen Hamilton e a C.I.A., mas rompeu com ambas, também.”

Snowden tinha também uma namorada. Contudo, fora isso, seu comportamento não parece fora do padrão de qualquer pessoa da comunidade de inteligência. Espionagem é profissão de gente fria.

Finalmente, Brooks mostra a evidência incontroversa: Snowden doou $500 dólares à campanha presidencial de 2012 do Deputado Republicano dos Estados Unidos Ron Paul. De acordo com nosso colunista detetive favorito, essa manifestação exterior de perigosos ideais libertários é o que realmente torna Snowden uma ameaça.

E, de certo modo, ele está certo — Não fora pelas tendências libertárias de Snowden, os vastos programas de escuta e coleta de dados do governo não teriam sido revelados ao público. Ainda estaríamos na ignorância.

Isso, porém, não é “perigoso.” Pelo menos, não do mesmo modo que é perigoso o servilismo de David Brooks.

Artigo original afixado por Trevor Hultner 12 de junho de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Anarchists tend to look embarrassed when the subject of economics comes up. Or we mumble something about Proudhon and then sheepishly borrow ideas from Karl Marx. It has always struck me as ironic that anarchism began largely as an economic theory, think only of Josiah Warren, Proudhon and Tucker, but then abandoned the field to the Marxists. A specifically anarchistic approach to economic analysis has lain dormant for the last 130 years. However, with the publication of Kevin A. Carson’s STUDIES IN MUTUALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY this period of dormancy has finally come to an end.

Carson starts off by critiquing post-classical economists such as the Marginalists, Marxists, and Austrians. But his critique is not a simple dismissal of these views, but is dialectical in form. What stands up after analysis, no matter what the school of economics, is incorporated into his anarchist synthesis. Without too much exaggeration, Carson has produced our Das Capital.

He begins his analysis with an examination of Adam Smith and David Ricardo’s Labor Theory of Value (hereafter LTV) and what was done to it by later economists. Early 19C economics was based upon the LTV resulting in a “revolutionary assault on entrenched power”. However, by mid-century the LTV was rejected by the new schools of Marginalist and Austrian economists. As a result economics degenerated into “an apology for… the large corporations.” The reason for this change of direction is fairly well known. The LTV shows that only labor can produce value, and thus exposes the capitalist and landlord as parasites. In order to intellectually defend the exploiting classes, the LTV had to be marginalized. (Sorry I couldn’t resist)

The chief critic of the LTV was the Austrian, Bohm-Bawerk, who built a straw man version of the theory to knock down. According to BB, the LTV didn’t hold in many instances – such as the value of antiques or rare paintings, and never exactly in other situations. Furthermore, the capitalist too created value by investing the capital which had accrued through his ’abstinence’. Landlords produced value through the use of their land. But Classical economists like Ricardo and Smith admitted the issue of scarcity of certain goods. The LTV only applied to items that could be freely reproduced. Due to the fluctuations in the supply and demand of these goods, there could never be an exact correlation between price and value. For Carson, the complaint about inexactitude “made as much sense as saying the law of gravity was invalidated… by air resistance…”

Carson then re-establishes the LTV not only through its Smithian-Ricardian base but also, with the irony of the dialectic, by using certain Marginalist and Austrian concepts. For Smith, labor was a plainly a ’hardship’. As such, the LTV has a “subjective basis” rooted in “common sense” and “the same a priori understanding of human behavior from which BB’s disciple Von Mises derived his ’praxeology’.” In essence, human beings maximize utility and minimize disutility. “The expenditure of labor is an absolute cost regardless of the quantity… the opportunity cost of labor… is non-labor.” “It is the disutility of labor and the need to persuade the worker to bring his services to the production process, unique among all the ’factors of production’, that creates value.”

There is a major difference between the situation of the laborer and the landlord-capitalist. Labor requires a “positive expenditure of effort”, ’abstinence’ and rent have to do with setting charges for access to something. Labor is an absolute sacrifice, abstinence, is at best, a relative one. The worker must work, someone with capital has a choice whether to not work or to invest. “The ’value’ created by capitalists and landlords is simply a monopoly price paid to their owners.” Furthermore, the Marginalists and Austrian critics of the LTV treated property relations as given. How did that pool of investment capital really come about ? How indeed, did the landlord get the land he rents ? The lack of property and capital that forces the worker to sell himself to a capitalist is best explained not through economic theory, but through history.

The facts of history are clear, the peasants were dispossessed through coercion and state intervention, transforming them into landless laborers and enforcing a situation of unequal exchange on the labor market. Carson goes into great detail about this process in the succeeding chapter, but first he turns his critical eye to the Marxist version of the development of capitalism. Marx was ambiguous on the role of coercion as a factor. Engels, on the other hand, was a market absolutist. Wage labor was “purely economic” and there was “no robbery or force or state involved” in the primitive accumulation of capital.

Marxist refusal to admit the statist origins of capitalism are political in origin. Engels was attempting to defeat Eugene Duhring’s version of socialism. Earlier on, the project was to trash Proudhon and the Ricardian socialist Hodgskin. All three of these thinkers saw capitalism as rooted in, and perpetuated by, statism and violence. The one aspect the Marxist and non-marxist socialists did agree on, is that for capitalism to exist, workers must be separated from the means of production. Carson’s recipe for a Free Market ? 1. steal the producing classes land. 2. terrorize the former owners so they won’t organize any opposition. 3. convince them this situation is a natural result of the Free Market.

Let’s now look at those facts of history. Proudhon was right, “property is theft”. The so-called right to peasant land was a feudal legal fiction established by the Norman conquest. However, the first real mass expropriation and eviction of peasants did not occur until the seizure of Church lands by Henry VIII. More than 10% of the peasantry were reduced to landless laborers by this action and were terrorized by the brutal Poor Laws enacted about the same time. Legal changes in the 17th Century converted the limited feudal right into private property right and the remaining peasants became tenents pure and simple. These were then dispossessed over the next two centuries by a series of Enclosure Acts.

The new-found capitalist landowners loved the Enclosure Acts, and not just for the property it gave them. The workers, lacking land, were no longer independent. Independence was a situation their masters considered “one of the greatest of evils.” Peasant communal land ownership (the traditional form) was considered “a dangerous centre of indiscipline.”

This evil system was imposed overseas and in this manner the so-called world market came about. Ireland was the dress rehearsal for the robbery, enslavement and genocidal murder of native people everywhere. The first slaves were the Celtic peoples, shipped out to die like flies in the cane fields of Barbados. Indeed, “America was built on slave labor.” The world market was established by the European navies who protected the slavers, forced weaker countries to buy European goods and crushed any competition. State intervention shut out foreign competition, even going so far as in the case of Indian textiles, to destroy an entire industry and impoverish this populous nation. Force was used wherever the European conqueror went. The method was always the same ; convert free peasants into cheap laborers who were then usually worked to death. As for hunters and gatherers ? Extermination. After you read this chapter, you come away thinking that these people had nothing on Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.

Capitalism was brought into existence by a land-owning aristocracy which transformed itself into a capitalist class when the old Medieval system broke up. From the centuries of looting and pillage by this class, came the investment capital of the Industrial Revolution. In the United States, long held up as a pillar of Free Enterprise, capitalist industrial development began as a result of mercantilism, slavery and the investments of landlords, who got their land from the government, who in turn stole it from the Native People. As Carson says, “capitalism has never been established by a free market” and “free market capitalism is an oxymoron.”

One major failing of Marxism, most especially vulgar Marxism, has been the failure to recognize the political causes of capitalism, and to reduce the social and the political to mere out-growths of economic forces. Marxism thus becomes an apologist for tyranny. “Parasitism was not necessary for progress.” State socialists and capitalist apologists (such as most so-called free market libertarians) alike, “for nearly identical reasons” have a common interest in maintaining the myth of 19th Century laissez faire.

The vast and cruel “subsidy of history” is what lay the groundwork for Monopoly Capitalism as it developed in the late 19th Century. At this point Carson introduces Benjamin Tucker’s analysis of monopoly. Patents, tariffs, the currency and banking monopolies all were forms of state-sponsored parasitism that gave rise to the giant corporations. Tucker’s “Four Monopolies” have to be coupled with land-grants, cheap loans and gifts, eminent domain (by which the state could steal your land for its corporate buddies) and a hundred and one other forms of subsidy and corporate welfare.

The problem for corporate monopoly capitalism is its fragility, its tendency to go into crisis. One root cause of crisis is the tendency to produce more than can be profitably sold. This is exacerbated by state subsidies which create a more capital-intensive form of economy than would exist in a genuine market. In order to maintain demand and profitability, the state steps in with even more subsidy and also the welfare state to keep underclass docile. There is “snowballing irrationality as the state’s intervention further destabilizes the system, requiring yet further state intervention.” The snowballing eventually leads to the fiscal crisis of the state, which began in the 1960’s.

State monopoly capitalism introduces technologies and methods which deeply harm society, replacing older more appropriate methods and technologies. Think of urban sprawl, over-dependence on petroleum and the auto, bureaucratization and so-called professionalism, as but a few examples. By pushing for ever greater size, ever greater inefficiency results. Corporations have all the problems of a Stalinist planned economy – a fundamental irrationalism. The only reason things work at all is that workers ignore the directions from above.

The fiscal crisis of the state combined with the resulting social breakdown due to capitalist irrationality gave rise to the neo-liberal reaction. Over the last 25 years the state has worked to shift wealth from consumption to investment as a prop for the corporate system. This action brings with it a contradiction, as the system depends on mass consumption at a profitable level to deal with the problem of over-production.

The final chapter entitled “Ends and Means” discusses Carson’s alternative to capitalism. The capitalist system should be replaced with voluntary associations ; an economy of worker co-ops, mutualist associations, and syndicalist unions, based on the commons, free exchange and usufruct principles. The state abolished and replaced by a federation of communities.

Carson’s revolution would be gradual and is marked by the development of a “dual power situation”. This requires the building of an “alternative social infrastructure” giving rise of forms of “social-counter power” such as syndicalist unions, coops, tenant unions, mutualist societies, “cop watch” groups and libertarian municipalist movements. Such a development is a form of “prefigurative politics”, by which people try as much as possible by their actions to live the revolution now. The distinction between reform and revolution is thus “mainly one of emphasis”. The groundwork for the “final” revolution has to be laid beforehand and this is the task of the alternative social structure.

The modern or Corporate State, is vastly more intrusive than it’s 19th Century version, and thus presents a problem for anarchists. (Consider that in many countries 20% or more of the population depend upon the state for employment or survival.) Even Benjamin Tucker saw the need for a “staged abolition of the state” so not to give rise to a dangerous situation. Therefore, it is necessary to have a “strategic position” visa vis the state. “It is not enough to oppose any and all statism… without any conception of how particular examples of statism fit into the overall system of power.” As a result, the dismantling of the state must occur “in the right order” and to do so in the wrong way is to court disaster. The proper sequence would be to first eliminate all state measures which support and give rise to capitalist and bureaucratic power. With the exploitation of labor abolished, any social welfare still needed could be handled by mutual aid societies.

The Corporate State will fall. First, through its own internal contradictions and secondly from outside ; “from a host of movements whose only common denominator is a dislike of the centralized state and corporate capitalism.” Carson sees a need to build broad-based ad hoc coalitions, but his “political strategy” is not electoral. (More like the movement which brought down East German Stalinism, perhaps.) Nor is dismantling the state the primary function of the revolutionary-evolutionary movement. The “political” movement should exist only to get rid of those forces which stop us from pursuing our primary activity – building the new free society.

Carson is a mutualist and offers a mutualist alternative to capitalism. The other schools of anarchist thought shouldn’t ignore his work because of this. In a voluntary society, people can live as they wish, providing they don’t coerce or exploit others. Thus, in a mutualist economy anyone who wanted could live according to, say, the principles of libertarian communism. Carson’s analysis can also be adapted to all forms of anarchism. The most important aspect of this book, the one that should overshadow other differences, is that the economic analysis of exploitation and capitalism has been placed on a solid anarchist basis. We need no longer play second fiddle to the Marxists.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Afaste-se, Karl, o Anarquismo Está de Volta!

We at the Center for a Stateless Society stand in solidarity with you, the Turkish protestors in your struggle that began with resistance to a particular instance of government cronyism but has widened into a revolt against police-state tactics, religious intolerance, and corporate privilege generally. Thank you for heroic and inspiring efforts!

The Center for a Stateless Society stands for left-wing market anarchism: anarchism, because we favor the establishment of a peaceful, free and orderly society without any state; market, because we defend market mechanisms as desirable and equitable means of non-state social coordination; left-wing, because we see the implementation of these ideals as crucial to combating subordination, exclusion, and deprivation, and giving ordinary people power over their own lives.

We know that many of you see a more secular and liberal constitutional republic as your final goal. We invite you to consider a society without a state as a more appropriate goal. After all, any state, by its nature as a coercive territorial monopoly, always acts, to greater or lesser extent, to impose its own vision by force on peaceful unconsenting people. Your recent and ongoing protests demonstrate the power and the beauty of human relationships that are voluntary rather than coercive, horizontal rather than hierarchical. Why not let those be a model for the society you seek?

Instead of police, have only security guards or neighborhood watch groups, responsible to their local communities.

Instead of statutory law, have only contracts and arbitration.

Instead of state monopolies to provide services, let many enterprises and voluntary associations of all kinds openly compete.

Instead of collecting taxes, let each person choose which services they want to pay for and whom to purchase those services from (or perhaps provide such services themselves, either individually or through local cooperatives).

We also know that some of you are anarchists already. But you who are anarchists tend to include not just the state, but private property and market competition, among the evils you combat. This is understandable, given the horrendous effects of policies that generally come wrapped in the free-market label. But we invite you to consider whether what are usually called free-market policies might not actually be violent interventions by the state on behalf of corporate interests terrified of the leveling effects of a genuinely freed market.

A world of only voluntary interaction without statist coercion is possible. The power of any state ultimately rests on the acquiescence of those it rules. Given the knowledge that a better world is possible, your creativity and courage can build it.

We look forward to an ongoing dialogue with you.

Thank you.

<< Back to the Market Anarchism FAQ page

The collective responses to the dramatic revelations of NSA mass surveillance feel like the well-worn plot of a classic movie. The story reminds me of the government’s admission a few years back that Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction. By the time it was admitted, everybody had already figured out the emperor was naked. But there was something about the formal acknowledgement that gave us permission to finally wrestle with the reality we had already suspected overwhelmingly.

Those of us who make a habit of dissent have gotten used to this frustrating complacency. It demonstrates that we as a social body don’t trust ourselves, that the complex of media, government, academia, and business — otherwise known as the state — that purports to lead us can be better described as creating and curating our reality. This insight renders many radicals outright misanthropic, but I tend to approach our apathy sympathetically, regarding our behavior as a kind of learned helplessness inculcated by decades of spiritually arresting mediation. When political expediency necessitates disclosure, we don’t know what to do with it, much like paroled prisoners who don’t know how to live on the outside.

So when the school assembly is over and the principal has made her announcements, thank God the pundits are there to round us up and lead us back to our homerooms, single file. Our passive consumption of pundits’ reactions give us a false sense of agency, as if somehow the variety of spins from which to choose is itself empowering. After all, we don’t have time in our busy lives to mentally deal with this, let alone exercise our inherent duty to apprehend it. Better to signal our relevancy by choosing our coping mechanism from a buffet of cynicism, jingoist indignation, reformist compromise, or handwringing resignation.

And so it is with the NSA story. As far as I can tell, we’re being provided a number of templates that can help us integrate this newly certified reality into our individual matrices, including:

1. Mass surveillance is an acceptable encroachment on our privacy.
2. Mass surveillance requires appropriate oversight or a national conversation to protect our privacy.
3. Mass surveillance is an unacceptable encroachment on our privacy.

You didn’t see it, but you just got jammed. The way we’re encouraged to cope with this is to make it about privacy: to turn inwards, take stock of our personal inner domain, and decide just how much of our lives can be offered up to the state. Large scale, bureaucratic intrusion into our personal lives is a given, but we can fill out a customer response card if we have any comments about the degree of the intrusion. If this is about privacy, the onus is on us to define its limits, to guide our servant institutions to the right policies that will protect our newly cordoned-off personal space.

It’s in this way that pundits can claim that our ubiquitous sharing on social media validates such large scale, coordinated exploitation. Just like the rape victim was “asking for it” because of what she wore at the time of her attack, we’re “asking for it” because our online sharing habits have been deemed unjudicious. They switch from condemning the aggressor to blaming the victim, and they do it because facing up to the cultural inertia behind the aggression risks exposing the perniciousness of the status quo. And so they invent a clever distraction about what the limits of privacy should be — as if that were the only limits with which we should be concerned. It’s like fighting rape by starting a conversation about the definition of tasteful attire.

Well, let me provide a counterspin that I hope is destabilizing: when it comes to this matter, I don’t give a goddamn about privacy. It’s no more relevant to this story than the big paychecks NSA contractors haul in. Privacy, like fatcat military industrial intelligence complex profiteering, is an important issue without a doubt, but it’s not at the center of this matter. The scandal is not about privacy, or whisteblowing, or whether Edward Snowden was a bad neighbor, or whether he had enough education to work within the NSA, or whether the media should have published the story, or the decline of community, or any of that. Anybody who makes the conversation about those issues are welcome to; they should find another room to talk in, though, lest they hijack the real conversation.

This is about state-sponsored spying, not personal privacy. The U.S. government has decided the best, most defensible way to fight whatever it deems threatening (now or in the future) is not to create a dossier on every human being on the planet — that would be totalitarian! Instead they’re merely building the infrastructure that enables them to do so both at will and retroactively. All they’re doing is merely collecting anonymous “metadata”. That’s true insofar as it goes (though as a programmer I must protest the abuse of the term “metadata”, which typicaly refers to “data about data”, whereas phone numbers, emails, Facebook likes and the like are “data about us”) but, like most spin, the argument routes around the point with expert precision.

The danger is not so much that government officials are currently investigating you (not that they aren’t). It’s that if they ever decide they’d like to, they already have your entire history of communication. Normally, an investigation would begin with the gathering of evidence. The cost and effort of beginning to collect evidence is a small and insufficient but important bureaucratic deterrent against starting arbitrary persecutions. However, now an investigation begins with merely bothering to look at the evidence already gathered. Essentially, they started the investigation into you years ago, but it’s proceeding on autopilot, waiting for a government spy caring to look.

Imagine, if you will, the NSA claiming the authority to search and catalog the contents of every home on the planet preemptively, but promising never to look at it unless absolutely necessary. The justification is that, in case you’re ever accused of a crime in the future, they don’t need to assume the burden of getting a warrant or actually searching for what they want to find. They already started it ahead of time, they already have the evidence, and they can just go back and mine that evidence for a crime. Maybe the crime validates the accusation. Maybe along the way they find a totally separate crime. The point is that the investigation is preassembled, a keyword search away from being an actual indictment. If they can create a dossier anytime they want with minimal effort, that’s functionally the same as keeping one on you right now.

There’s a reason NSA is not in law enforcement: there’s nothing limited or legal about the above. It has absolutely, positively zero to do with rights or the law as we understand them. They do what the CIA does to its targets: extralegal gathering of evidence for exploitation at a time of the government’s choosing. That is espionage, and there’s a reason we abhor it being done to people who are not part of the spy game, let alone people who are supposed to watch over the very government running the spy game.

Yet the most pundits can offer is a shallow, parochial debate about some bourgeois, neutered conception of privacy. For them, this is only about the exact nature of our freedom to share with sufficient insularity pictures of cats, what we had for lunch, and silly memes. Now we need to all sit around indian style and figure out the kind of Stasi with which we’d be most comfortable, what kinds of checks and balances, safeguards and oversight would allow us a good night’s monitored sleep.

Don’t be fooled. The onus is not on us to properly circumscribe the boundaries of our private lives. The onus is on them to explain the way their leviathan, totalitarian institutions spill out of the confines they agreed to obey, those charters that give them their existence in the first place, the enumerated powers they claim separate them from totalitarian regimes or organized crime syndicates. The lesson here that no pundit will mention is that the state is inherently a scam. This domestic spying on us is but one facet of the overall institutional hegemony that dominates us and teaches us helplessness.

It’s understandable to feel powerless when massive bureuacracies continually body check your sense of self. If you’d rather ignore the reality of what our world is becoming, fine. But you don’t have to accept the turnkey distractions of the punditry. Who knows, one day you may decide that this time they went too far, and if that happens, you’ll need a sense of judgment and agency that hasn’t completely atrophied.

It’s important, when listening to the official shapers of opinion in the media, to ask ourselves what they really mean by the words they use. As Orwell pointed out in “Politics and the English Language,” those in power use language to obscure meaning more often than to convey it.

A good example is the recurrence of phrases like “endangered our national security” and “aided the enemy,” from people like Eric Holder, Peter King and Lindsey Graham, in reference to leaks by people like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Now, they certainly intend to evoke certain associations in the minds of listeners with their word choices. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself responding in just the way the users intend — allowing their words to conjure up in your mind homes, families, neighbors, churches, a whole way of life, threatened with invasion and destruction by a nameless, faceless enemy — in the words of Orwell’s Two-Minute Hate, “the dark armies … barbarians whose only honour is atrocity.”

But if you look behind the words, their actual meaning is something entirely different. To the kinds of people who throw around such words, “national security” is a corporate-state world order enforced by the United States, run by people like themselves, which enabling global corporations to extract resources and labor from the people of the world and live off unearned rents. “The enemy” is you. And the danger is that you might figure out what’s going on and disturb their cozy little setup.

Alex Carey, historian of propaganda, argues that the central pillar of elite rule in mass democracies is the engineering of consent. In the late 19th century two phenomena emerged simultaneously: First, the giant corporation and the power nexus between corporation and state; and second, the threat to that power nexus from universal literacy and universal suffrage. Hence the importance of propaganda, of managing public opinion, in formally representative political systems.

Samuel Huntington wrote in The Crisis of Democracy, in 1974, that the United States in the two decades after WWII had been the “hegemonic power in a system of world order” — a state of affairs possible only because of a domestic power structure in which the country “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 this, in turn, was possible only because of the acquiescence, the passivity, of the American people, and their acceptance of it as a natural, inevitable, and perfectly legitimate state of affairs.

The Sixties, as you might expect, scared the crap out of these people. Until then the “New Deal social contract” had worked fairly well (at least for middle class whites): We’ll give you a suburban home, a TV, a new car every five years, and a secure union job with benefits and periodic pay raises. In return, you’ll show up for work in between contract renewal times and let us manage the factories as we see fit without bothering your pretty little heads about it. And you’ll let us manage the world in the interests of GE, GM and United Fruit Company, and look the other way when we install genocidal fascist regimes or fund death squads in Indonesia, Nigeria and Latin America.

The 1960s was the first time since WWII when it seemed to dawn on a significant portion of the public that “another world is possible.”

Since then, management of public opinion to engineer consent has been doubly important to them. That’s why the “national security” community engages in psychological operations to manage public perceptions, the same way they’d manage the perceptions of a wartime enemy — in both cases,  the goalbeing to manipulate the desired reaction out of us.

See, we really are the enemy. Every once in a while one of them slips up and reveals that all that stuff about government representing the sovereign will of the people is so much buncombe. For example, former Clinton “National Security” Adviser Sandy Berger’s statement in 2004: “We have too much at stake in Iraq to lose the American people.”

That’s why they get so bent out of shape when people like Manning and Snowden tell the enemy — people like you and me — the ugly truth about how their sausage is made. Their power depends on keeping us — the enemy — in the dark.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Inimigo Público Número Um: O Público.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Lysander Spooner’s “NO TREASON” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Lysander Spooner’s “NO TREASON”.

$2.00 for the first copy. $1.50 for every additional copy.

Perhaps Lysander Spooner’s most famous, and most provocative essays, “NO TREASON” first appeared as a series of three self-published pamphlets in Boston, appearing in 1867 and 1870. In NO TREASON Spooner argues, with sharp insight and relentless detail, against any binding obligation to obey the U.S. Constitution, and against all forms of non-consensual government. Rejecting paper constitutions as a failed strategy for the protection of liberty, and skewering the rationalizations for state power and forced obedience, Spooner defends a politics of pure consent and individual liberty, based in the rights and resistance of the oppressed, not on empty appeals to law, tradition, or state guarantees. In the process, he offers one of the strongest early statements of American individualist anarchism.

“Of all these swindles, the treason swindle is the most flagitious. It is the most flagitious, because it is equally flagitious, in principle, with any; and it includ­es all the others. It is the instrumentality by which all the others are mode effective. A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases. . .

“The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. . . . Neither voting, nor payment of taxes proves anybody’s consent, or obligation, to support the Constitution. Consequently we have no evidence at all that the Constitution is binding upon anybody, or that any­ body is under any contract or obligation whatever to sup­port it. And nobody is under any obligation to support it. . . .

“Whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain: that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

This edition collects all three pamphlets in the NO TREASON series: the introductory pamphlet No. 1, No. 2 on “The Constitution,” and No. 6, “The Constitution of No Authority.” (The collection is complete: in spite of the numbering, Spooner never published pamphlets 3, 4 or 5.)

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) was a labor activist and a radical abolitionist who came out in opposition to the Civil War. (He believed that the slavery should be ended by arming the slaves and supporting their rebellion, rather than by means of invading and occupying the South.) After the war, he wrote this series of essays, entitled “NO TREASON,” arguing against the U.S. Constitution and all forms of non-consensual government. His writing on natural law in the 1880s, for example in the “Letter to Bayard,” “Natural Law,” and the “Letter to Grover Cleveland,” made him an incredibly influential figure in the emerging individualist Anarchist movement, and he became close friends with the radical individualist writer and editor Benjamin Tucker. Spooner’s essays are today widely reprinted and read throughout the libertarian and anarchist movements, and his work played a major role in the intellectual revival of individualist anarchism during the 1960s.

The following article is translated into Deutsch from the English original, written by Gary Chartier.

Linkslibertarismus ist im wesentlichen Sinne eine Position, die zugleich links als auch libertär ist. Sie zeichnet sich durch linke Bekenntnisse aus:

• Beschäftigung mit Klassenanalyse und Klassenkampf,
• Opposition zu korporatistischen Privilegien,
• Minimierung von struktureller Armut,
• Begrüßung geteilter Verantwortung, um ökonomische Verwundbarkeit zu bekämpfen,
• Bekräftigung einer Wohlstandsumlagerung,
• Unterstützung von Graswurzelbewegungen,
• Humanisierung des Arbeitslebens,
• Schutz von Bürgerrechten,
• Opposition zum Krieg gegen Drogen,
• Unterstützung der Rechte von Sexarbeitern,
• Bekämpfung von Polizeigewalt,
• Förderung des Umweltschutzes und der Tierwohlfahrt,
• Förderung der Kinderbefreiung,
• Ablehnung von Rassismus, Sexismus, Heterosexismus, Nativismus und nationalem Chauvinismus und
• Widerstand gegen Krieg, Imperialismus und Kolonialismus.

Gleichzeitig zeichnet sie sich auch durch libertäre Bekenntnisse aus:

• Bekräftigung stabilen Schutzes gerechter Eigentumsansprüche,
• Begrüßung befreiter Märkte und eines sozialen Ideals einer friedlichen, freiwilligen Kooperation und
• Fertigung einer gründlichen antietatistischen Politik.

Eine linke Position

Eine linke Position ist gekennzeichnet durch, behaupte ich, Bedenken bzgl. Unterordnung, Ausschluss, Mangel und Krieg. Linkslibertäre nehmen diese linken Interessen von ganzem Herzen gerne an. Doch Linkslibertäre unterscheiden sich womöglich von anderen Linken insofern, dass sie:

• den unabhängigen Wert eines stabilen Schutzes gerechter Eigentumsansprüche bekräftigen – als einen, neben anderen Dingen, Ausdruck von und einem Mittel zur Implementierung der linken Opposition gegen Unterordnung und der linken Unterstützung eines weit geteilten Wohlstandes, aber ebenso als Einschränkung der Mittel, die gewöhnlich zur weiteren Verfolgung einiger linker Ziele genutzt werden,
• unterschiedliche Voraussagen über die Etablierung eines wirklich befreiten Marktes machen (in Ablehnung der Ansicht, dass solch ein Markt ein korporatistischer Spielplatz wäre),
• andere Erklärungen der Ursachen und Beständigkeit unerwünschter sozialer Phänomene anbieten (so dass beispielsweise staatlich gesicherte Privilegien für Eliten) statt Marktdynamiken die anhaltende Armut und Arbeitsplatzunterordnung bedingen) und
• andere Gegenmittel für diese Phänomene anmahnen (typischerweise eine Kombination aus dem Beseitigen staatlich verursachter und staatlich tolerierter Ungerechtigkeit und Förderung freiwilliger, solidarischer Maßnahmen).

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken das Bewusstsein, dass es vorhersagbare Gewinner und Verlierer in der Gesellschaft gibt und dass es nicht in erster Linie etwas mit Glück oder Können zu tun hat, in welchem Lager man landet. Doch Linkslibertäre betonen, dass dies nicht eine Konsequenz des Markttausches ist, sondern: Es handelt sich um ein Spiegelbild von staatlich begangener, staatlich gedrohter und staatlich tolerierter Aggression. So lange wie ein Staatsapparat etabliert ist können die Wohlhabenden diesen einnehmen, um ihn dafür zu nutzen, Macht und mehr Wohlstand zu gewinnen, während die politisch Mächtigen ihn nutzen können, um Wohlstand und mehr Macht zu erringen. Die herrschende Klasse – bestehend aus wohlhabenden Personen, ermächtigt durch den Staat, und hochrangigen Staatsfunktionären – ist definiert durch ihre Beziehung zum Staat, ihrem entscheidenden Ermächtiger. Sich dieser Klasse entgegenzusetzen bedeutet somit, sich dem Staat entgegenzusetzen.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die Erkenntnis, dass Big Business wesentliche Privilegien genießt, die dieses begünstigen, während sie der Öffentlichkeit schaden. Sie betonen jedoch, dass die angemessene Antwort zu korporatistischen Privilegien die Eliminierung von Subventionen, Bailouts, kartellisierenden Regulierungen und anderen staatlich bedingten rechtlichen Gegebenheiten sind, statt die Privilegien zu bewahren, während staatliche regulierende Eingriffe in die Wirtschaft erhöht werden – was erwarten lässt, dass dadurch neue Möglichkeiten für Manipulationen durch die Elite entstehen, korporatistische Macht intakt bleibt, emporkommende Alternativen zu den korporatistischen Giganten erstickt werden und die Öffentlichkeit verarmt.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken sowohl die Entrüstung über strukturelle Armut sowie die Erkenntnis, dass die Wohlhabenden und gut Vernetzten dabei helfen, die Regeln des ökonomischen und politischen Spiels derart auszugestalten, dass ihr Wohlstand und Einfluss erhalten bleiben, während andere arm gemacht werden oder dies bleiben. Doch Linkslibertäre betonen, dass Armut nicht durch befreite Märkte erschaffen oder aufrecht erhalten wird, sondern durch groß angelegten Raub und durch Privilegien und Einschränkungen – von Genehmigungspflichten für geistiges Eigentum zu Landnutzungskontrollen und Bauvorschriften – die Menschen davon abhalten, ihre Fähigkeiten und ihren Besitz effektiv zu nutzen oder die Kosten dafür dramatisch erhöhen. Strukturelle Armut zu eliminieren bedeutet staatlich gesicherte Privilegien zu eliminieren und staatlich sanktionierten Raub rückgängig zu machen.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken sowohl die teilnahmsvolle Sorge über ökonomische Verwundbarkeit als auch die Erkenntnis, dass verwundbare Menschen nicht sich selbst überlassen werden können, dass geteilte Verantwortung, um deren Bedürfnisse zu erfüllen, moralisch und praktisch unerlässlich ist. Doch sie betonen, dass Einrichtungen zur gegenseitigen Hilfe ökonomische Verwundbarkeit erfolgreich bewältigen konnten. Sie unterstellen ebenso, dass solche Einrichtungen erwartungsgemäß erfolgreicher wären in Abwesenheit von Besteuerung (Menschen können und werden ihr eigenes Geld zur Armenhilfe spenden, doch sie werden dies wahrscheinlich wesentlich effizienter und intelligenter tun als Staatsbeamte Steuereinnahmen dafür einsetzen würden), armutsproduzierenden staatlichen Regulierungen und der Einschränkung der Wahlmöglichkeiten in Bereichen wie der Gesundheitsversorgung.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die Überzeugung, dass die Umlagerung des Wohlstandes angebracht oder sogar erforderlich sein kann. Doch sie bestreiten, dass Umlagerung vernünftigerweise so gestaltet werden könnte, dass ein bestimmtes Muster an Wohlstandsverteilung herbeigeführt wird, dass sie durch aggressive Eingriffe in gerecht angeeigneten Besitz erfolgen könnte oder dass es angemessenerweise die Arbeit des Staates sei. Stattdessen sollte die Umlagerung durch die Rechtsordnung (da diese den Menschen Ressourcen, die ungerechterweise von ihnen oder ihren Vorfahren genommen wurden, mit Zins wiederbringt, da sie durch den Staat gestohlenen oder durch dessen Spießgesellen ungerecht angeeigneten Besitz wieder zur Besiedlung verfügbar macht und da sie die Gültigkeit staatlich geschützter Privilegien aberkennt, die die ökonomische Position der gut Vernetzten bewahrt, während sie andere arm hält), durch solidarische gegenseitige Hilfe und durch die Tendenz, dass ein von Privilegien befreiter Markt „die Reichen frisst“, erfolgen.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken – etwa der Neuen Linken und Grünen – die Überzeugung, dass Entscheidungsfindung dezentralisiert werden sollte, dass Menschen ermöglicht wird, sich zu einem maximal möglichen Grad in der Gestaltung von Entscheidungen, die ihr Leben beeinflussen, beteiligen zu können. Doch sie behaupten, dass dies bedeutet, vor einem Hintergrund sicherer, vorpolitischer Rechte, dass alle Vereinigungen auf gegenseitiger Übereinstimmung beruhen sollten. Hierarchische, gewaltsame Entscheidungsfindung wird wahrscheinlich geschädigt durch die Fehlbarkeit der Entscheidungsträger und deren Tendenz, eigeninteressegeleitete Ziele auf Kosten der Öffentlichkeit zu verfolgen. Kleine politische Einheiten sind menschlicher als große, doch Dezentralisierung muss letztlich eine Dezentralisierung bis zum Level der einzelnen Person sein.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die Erkenntnis, dass hierarchische Arbeitsplätze entmachten und lähmen und dass die Unterstützung von Arbeitsplatzhierarchien somit oft moralisch verwerflich ist. Doch sie betonen, dass hierarchische Arbeitsplätze wahrscheinlicher durch Staatstätigkeit bestimmt sind. Hierarchien beschränken die Möglichkeiten der Arbeiter, ihr Wissen und ihre Fähigkeiten zu nutzen, um flexibel und effizient auf Produktions- und Verteilungsherausforderungen zu reagieren und Kundenwünsche zu befriedigen. Die Ineffizienz von Hierarchien würde diese zu weniger gewöhnlichen Aspekten des Arbeitslebens machen und die Gelegenheiten vermehren, dass Menschen dazu in der Lage wären Alternativen zu wählen, die mehr Freiheit und Würde bieten (Selbstständigkeit oder Arbeit in Partnerschaften oder Kooperationen), in Abwesenheit der Privilegien, die die Kosten der Etablierung von Hierarchien senken und die Kosten für den Ausstieg aus ihnen erhöhen (indem Selbstständigkeit kostenaufwendiger und somit riskanter gemacht wird). Staatstätigkeit lenkt zudem Wohlstand zu denen um, die daran interessiert sind, dass sie und Menschen wie sie am Arbeitsplatz herrschen, und die staatlichen Gewerkschaftsregulierungen schränken die Möglichkeiten von Gewerkschaften ein, Arbeitsplatzhierarchien anzufechten.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken ein Bekenntnis zu Bürgerrechten. Doch sie betonen, dass der Staat ein vorhersehbarer Feind dieser Freiheiten ist und dass der beste Weg, diese zu sichern, im Schutz der Kontrolle der Menschen über ihre eigenen Körper und ihrer gerecht angeeigneten Besitztümer liegt.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die Überzeugung, dass der Krieg gegen Drogen  destruktiv, rassistisch und irrwitzig teuer ist. Doch sie betonen, dass der beste Schutz gegen prohibitionistische Kampagnen aller Art der Respekt für die Kontrolle der Menschen über ihre eigenen Körper und ihrer gerecht angeeigneten Besitztümer ist und dass aggressionsbasierte Einschränkungen aller unerwünschten aber freiwilligen Austausche verboten sein sollte.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die Sorge über das Wohlergehen von Sexarbeitern. Doch sie betonen, dass staatliche Akteure sich an der Gewalt gegen Sexarbeiter beteiligen und dass staatliche Politik, inklusive Kriminalisierung und Regulierung, die Risiken, die mit Sexarbeit verbunden sind, schafft oder erhöht.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken eine leidenschaftliche Opposition gegen Polizeigewalt und -korruption. Doch sie betonen, dass dies nicht lediglich das Spiegelbild einer schwachen Aufsicht oder der Anwesenheit einiger „fauler Äpfel“ in Polizeibehörden sei, sondern das Spiegelbild der strukturellen Positionen solcher Behörden als Garanten der Staatsmacht und dem Mangel an Verantwortung, geschaffen sowohl durch die Existenz von wesentlichen de facto Unterschieden zwischen den Vorschriften zur Nutzung von Zwang durch Polizisten oder durch andere als auch durch die Monopolstellung von Polizeibehörden.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken bleibende Bedenken zum Umweltschutz  und zur Tierwohlfahrt. Doch sie betonen, dass Umweltschäden ohne staatliche Beteiligung verhindert und beseitigt werden können, solange stabiler rechtlicher Schutz von Körpern und gerecht angeeigneten Besitztümern vorhanden ist, dass Staatstätigkeit nicht erforderlich ist, um nichtmenschliche Lebewesen vor Missbrauch zu schützen und dass Staatstätigkeiten und Politik oft unmittelbar verantwortlich sind für den Schutz von Verschmutzern, Umweltschäden begünstigen und nichtmenschliche Lebewesen schädigen.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken das Bekenntnis zum Wohlergehen von Kindern. Doch Linkslibertäre unterstreichen die Bedeutung der Achtung der Rechte von Kindern, ihre eigenen Körper und Besitztümer zu kontrollieren – in Ablehnung sowohl des Bestrebens, Kinder als das Eigentum ihrer Eltern anzusehen, als auch paternalistischer Staatstätigkeiten, die sich unangemessen in die Freiheit des Kindes einmischen – und betonen den Grad, in dem der Staat nicht der Beschützer der Kinder ist, sondern vielmehr verantwortlich für die vielfältigen Weisen der maßgeblichen Bedrohungen ihrer Freiheit und ihres Wohlergehens ist, in besonderem Maße durch Zwangsunterricht.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken das Bewusstsein, dass Rassismus, Sexismus , Heterosexismus, Nativismus und nationaler Chauvinismus moralisch abscheulich sind. Doch sie betonen die entscheidende Rolle des Staates in der Schaffung, Wahrung und Ausnutzung dieser Formen der Unfairness während sie herausstreichen, dass die Entfernung der Stützen, die der Staat für von Vorurteilen getriebenes Verhalten bereitstellt, eine zentrale Rolle bei der Bekämpfung von Diskriminierung spielen kann. Argwöhnisch beim Staat und respektvoll gegenüber gerechten Eigentumsansprüchen betonen sie nichtaggressive, solidarische Handlungen als das angemessene Mittel, um mit andauernder Diskriminierung umzugehen. Sie fördern gleichgeschlechtliche Ehen während sie die Trennung von Staat und der Institution der Ehe anstreben. Während sie sich anderen Linken beim Widerstand gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit anschließen, betonen sie zusätzlich, dass alle Grenzen niedergerissen werden sollten, um ungehinderte Migration zu ermöglichen.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Linken die leidenschaftliche Opposition zu Kriegen und Imperien und eine Sorge um die Opfer von beiden, inklusive Eingeborener in der ganzen Welt. Doch sie betonen die Verbindungen zwischen Kriegsführung, Imperialismus und Kolonialismus und die staatlichen, andauernden Übergriffe auf zivile und ökonomische Freiheiten – nicht zu erwähnen den Schaden durch die herrschende Klasse. Beeinträchtigungen friedlicher Handlungen von Menschen innerhalb der Staatsgrenzen sind aus ähnlich vielen Gründen verwerflich wie Krieg jenseits der Staatsgrenzen. Als eine Form der Sklaverei ist Wehrpflicht unberechtigt. Die Handelsfreiheit reduziert tendenziell die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Krieges. Und Kriegsführung ist eine wahrscheinliche Konsequenz der Tätigkeit des Staates, welcher vorhersehbar danach strebt, seinen Einfluss durch Zwang zu erweitern. Linke Opposition zu Kriegen sollte somit auch Opposition zum Staat per se zur Folge haben.

Eine libertäre Position

Eine libertäre Position ist gekennzeichnet durch, behaupte ich, die Unterstützung einer Gleichheit von Autoritäten, stabilen Schutzes von gerechten Eigentumsansprüchen und friedlicher, freiwilliger Kooperation, inklusive Kooperation im und durch Tausch. Linkslibertäre teilen diese Bekenntnisse. Doch Linkslibertäre unterscheiden sich womöglich von anderen Linken insofern, dass sie:

• andere Vorhersagen machen über die wahrscheinlichen Effekte der Befreiung der Menschen und der Eliminierung der institutionalisierten Aggression, die diese davon abhält, friedlich und freiwillig zu kooperieren (beispielsweise durch die Betonung der Zufälligkeit hierarchischer Arbeitsplätze),
• auf einzelne, generell akzeptierte Konsequenzen der Bildung einer freien Gesellschaft aufmerksam machen (etwa durch die Betonung nicht von Freiheit sondern auch von Solidarität, Vielfalt und Armenhilfe als eines der Folgen der Beseitigung staatlich geschützter Privilegien),
• andere historische und sozialwissenschaftliche Geschichten berichten über die Gründe und Dynamiken sozialer Phänomene (dass beispielsweise die vorhandene Verteilung des Wohlstandes als ein Produkt der Staatstätigkeit statt der individuellen Tugendhaftigkeit gesehen wird) und
• bestimmte Arten sozialer Phänomene (etwa willkürliche Diskriminierung) als moralisch verwerflich behandeln und für nichtaggressive aber abgestimmte Erwiderungen solcher Phänomene streiten.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Libertären das Bekenntnis zur Gleichheit der Autoritäten– zu der Ansicht, dass es kein natürliches Recht zu herrschen gibt und dass nicht auf beidseitigem Einverständnis beruhende Autorität vermutlich illegitim ist. Dieser Egalitarismus führt logischerweise zu einem Bekenntnis zum Anarchismus, da die Staatsautorität nicht auf beidseitigem Einverständnis beruht. Doch Linkslibertäre betonen, dass das Bekenntnis zur moralischen Beschaffenheit, die dem Glauben an die Gleichheit der Autoritäten zugrunde liegt, die Ablehnung von Unterordnung und dem Ausschluss aufgrund von Nationalität, Geschlecht, Rasse, sexueller Orientierung, Arbeitsplatzstatus und anderen irrelevanten Eigenschaften mit sich bringt. Während Linkslibertäre mit anderen Libertären übereinstimmen, dass die Entscheidungen von Menschen, Verbindungen mit anderen aufgrund solcher Eigenschaften zu vermeiden, nicht aggressiv beeinträchtigt werden sollten, betonen Linkslibertäre hingegen, dass solche Entscheidungen oft immer noch moralischer Kritik unterworfen werden können und durch nichtaggressive Mittel Widerstand geleistet werden sollte.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Libertären das Bekenntnis zum stabilen Schutz gerechter Eigentumsansprüche an physischen Objekten. Doch sie lehnen „geistiges Eigentum“ ab und betonen, dass Schutz von Eigentum nicht Objekte abdecken soll, die mit der maßgeblichen Hilfe des Staates angeeignet wurden oder welche offenkundig herrenlos sind. Sie machen deutlich, dass es gerechte Beschränkungen für die Möglichkeiten gibt, wie Menschen ihr Eigentum schützen dürfen (widerrechtliches Betreten von Land unterwirft jemanden nicht automatisch Gewalt). Sie bemerken, dass nur angesichts der ökonomischen Umstände einzelner Situationen und der Weise, wie bestimmte Ansprüche bestehen, ermittelt werden kann, ob Ansprüche an Land von Individuen oder Gruppen gehalten werden sollten. Sie betonen zudem, während gerechte Eigentumsansprüche respektiert werden sollten, dass es durchaus möglich ist, sich aggressiven Beeinträchtigungen der Nutzung der eigenen Besitztümer durch jemand anderen zu widersetzen, indem man diese Nutzung nichtaggressiv anfechtet.

Linkslibertäre teilen mit anderen Libertären das Bekenntnis zu einem Modell eines sozialen Lebens, das auf friedlicher, freiwilliger Kooperation begründet ist. Doch sie unterscheiden sich von anderen Libertären, indem sie betonen, dass, obwohl Zwang nur als Erwiderung gegen Aggression gerecht genutzt werden mag, friedliche, freiwillige Kooperation ein moralisches Ideal mit Implikationen ist, die über einfache Nichtaggression hinausgehen. Linkslibertäre mahnen an, dass Verbindungen aller Art derart strukturiert sein sollten, dass sie Freiheit, Würde und Individualität jedes Teilnehmers versichern, und somit allen Teilnehmern die Möglichkeit erlauben, nicht nur zu gehen, sondern auch ihre Stimme einzubringen – durch die Beeinflussung der Bahnen der Verbindung und der Ausübung so viel individueller Umsicht in ihnen wie möglich.

Während sie Kapitalismus ablehnen, teilen Linkslibertäre mit anderen Libertären eine enthusiastische Anerkennung der Werte von Märkten. Sie betonen, dass beide Seiten an einem freiwilligen Tausch teilnehmen, weil sie ihn vorziehen und sie glauben, dass er sie begünstigt, dass Preise exzellente Richtwerte für Produzenten und Händler darbieten (weit besser als alles, was ein zentraler Planer anbieten könnte) und dass Menschen sowohl die Kostens als auch die Gewinne ihrer Entscheidungen internalisieren sollten. Doch sie betonen, dass hintergründige Ungerechtigkeit Märkte verzerren (http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-distorting-effects-of-transportation-subsidies#axzz2UxcQpNz5) und die Möglichkeiten von Händlern beschränken kann. Sie bemerken auch, dass kommerzieller Handel nicht den Bereich friedlicher, freiwilliger Kooperation ausschöpft und dass Menschen auf vielfältige Weise – spielerisch, solidarisch, mitfühlend – kooperieren können und sollten, und dass dies nicht in kommerziellen Bahnen organisiert sein muss.

Eine umgewandelte Vision

Linkslibertäre begrüßen und überführen linke und libertäre Ideale.

Viele Linke und Libertäre teilen bereits einige Bekenntnisse: Opposition zu Kriegen, Imperien und korporatistischen Privilegien, Unterstützung von Bürgerrechten und Graswurzelbewegungen. Nichtsdestotrotz begrüßen Linke und Libertäre auch verschiedene verfehlte Annahmen und teilen diese oft.

Linkslibertäre hinterfragen diese Annahmen während sie die Bekenntnisse begrüßen, die Linke und Libertäre teilen. Sie streben an zu beweisen, dass es vernünftig ist sowohl strukturelle Armut zu bekämpfen als auch befreite Märkte zu befürworten, sowohl Würde am Arbeitsplatz als auch stabilen Schutz für gerechte Eigentumsansprüche anzustreben, die Freiheit von Verbindungen zu begrüßen und zugleich willkürliche Diskriminierung zu bekämpfen, sowohl Frieden als auch ökonomische Freiheit zu fördern, die Ablehnung von Krieg und Imperialismus mit der Unterstützung von friedlichen, freiwilligen Kooperationen auf allen Ebenen zu verbinden.

Durch das Bekräftigen linker und libertärer Interessen und dem Hinterfragen von Annahmen, die es schwer für Linke machen, Libertarismus zu begrüßen, und für Libertäre, Linke zu werden, bieten Linkslibertäre eine provokative Vision einer ansprechenden Politik und einer Welt, die sich durch größere Freiheit und Fairness auszeichnet.

Der ursprüngliche Artikel wurde geschrieben von Gary Chartier und veröffentlicht am 05. November 2012.

Übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Achim Fischbach.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Gary Chartier‘s “The Distinctiveness of Left-Libertarianism” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Gary Chartier‘s “The Distinctiveness of Left-Libertarianism“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.60 for every additional copy.

This essay from Gary Chartier, originally written for the Bleeding Heart Libertarians symposium on left-libertarianism in November 2012, lays out the distinctive vision of left-libertarian theory and practice: a social struggle to achieve left-wing ends by libertarian means — for a leftism that challenges the authoritarianism and privilege of the state, and a libertarianism that stands for liberation across the board from multidimensional, intersecting forms of oppression. Chartier applies left-libertarian thought to anti-capitalism, class, solidarity, grassroots mutual aid, civil liberties, the drug war, the rights of sex workers, the emancipation of children, challenging police power, resisting social privilege, and resisting war, imperialism and colonialism.

“Left-libertarianism embraces and transforms leftist and libertarian ideals. Many leftists and libertarians al­ready share some commitments: opposition to war, empire, and corporate privilege; support for civil liberties and grass-roots empowerment. However, many leftists and libertarians also embrace, and often share, various mistaken assumptions. Left-libertar­ians challenge these assumptions. . . .

“The ruling class — made up of wealthy people empowered by the state, together with high-level state functionaries — is defined by its relationship with the state, its essential enabler. Opposing this class thus means opposing the state. . . . Left-libertarians share the awareness that racism, sexism, heterosexism, nativism and national chauv­inism are morally repugnant. Suspicious of the state and respectful of just possessory claims, they stress non-aggressive solidar­istic action as the appropriate means of dealing with persistent discrimination.”

Gary Chartier is an American legal scholar and philosopher at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. A left-wing market anarchist and a proponent of New Classical Natural Law theory, Chartier moved from state social-democracy to anarchist views after his contact with the work of left-libertarian authors such as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long, the New Left-inspired decentralism of Karl Hess, and the individualist anarchism of Benjamin Tucker. He is the author of books including The Conscience of an Anarchist and Anarchy and Legal Order. Together with Charles W. Johnson, he is the editor of the free-market anticapitalist collection Markets Not Capitalism.

It seems that the standard media response when whistleblowers come out these days is to twist their images in such a way that no one could ever find them sympathetic figures. It happened to Daniel Ellsberg. It happened to Pfc. B. Manning. And now, it ‘s former Booz Allen Hamilton system administrator Edward Snowden’s turn on the character assassination stage.

Snowden came out on Sunday (the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald) as the person who leaked information about multiple NSA programs to the press. Since then, many commentators have taken it upon themselves to not only question Snowden’s allegiance, but wonder aloud: “Who paid him off?” This task has been taken on most completely by two of journalism’s greatest hacks: New York Times columnist David Brooks and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin.

Toobin, in his “Daily Comment” piece “Edward Snowden Is No Hero,” infers from the interviews Snowden has granted that he is a “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” Why?

“Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention. […] Any government employee or contractor is warned repeatedly that the unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a crime. But Snowden, apparently, was answering to a higher calling.”

Toobin argues from the mindset that government legality automatically translates into universal morality. Because Snowden knew that leaking his knowledge of what the NSA was up to was illegal and did it anyway, he should be imprisoned for it. This is itself an abhorrent premise to adopt. But Toobin doubles down:

“The American government, and its democracy, are flawed institutions. But our system offers legal options to disgruntled government employees and contractors. They can take advantage of federal whistle-blower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work. But Snowden did none of this. Instead, in an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience, he threw the secrets he knew up in the air — and trusted, somehow, that good would come of it. We all now have to hope that he’s right.”

These are, almost word-for-word, the same blind appeals to authority that corporations like Walmart use to quell any thoughts in workers’ minds of doing something as outrageous as going on strike or unionizing. One has to wonder, if Toobin’s career had gone differently and he had ended up as a manager at a Walmart at the center of — for example — the largest class-action sexual discrimination lawsuit in history, whether he would use the same arguments against the women bringing attention to the problem.

But Toobin’s bloviations pale in comparison to the monolith of statism that is David Brooks’s latest column.

Brooks’slegendary ability to deify, rather than defy, authority bears only a slight mention. Last year, he wrote a column calling (no, this is not a joke) for statues of the elite to be erected in town squares nationwide. This time, Brooks takes his art to a new height (or nadir, depending on perspective).

Brooks starts his magnum opus by insulting Snowden’s intelligence; a bad move, considering the position he was in (not to mention the experience he had obtained) when he left Booz Allen Hamilton. Brooks quips, “[He] could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college.”

This is only the beginning of Brooks’ attempts to paint Snowden as immoral because of his supposed lack of family values. He continues:

“According to The Washington Post, he has not been a regular presence around his mother’s house for years. When a neighbor in Hawaii tried to introduce himself, Snowden cut him off and made it clear he wanted no neighborly relationships. He went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton and the C.I.A., but he has separated himself from them, too.”

Snowden also had a girlfriend. But besides that, this doesn’t seem like deviant behavior from someone in the intelligence community. Spying is a standoffish profession.

Finally, Brooks brings out the smoking gun: Snowden donated $500 to Republican US Representative Ron Paul ‘s 2012 presidential campaign. According to our favorite gumshoe columnist, that outward manifestation of dangerous libertarian ideals is what really makes Snowden a threat.

And, in a way, he’s right — If not for Snowden’s libertarian tendencies, the state’s sweeping eavesdropping and data collecting programs wouldn’t have been revealed to the public. We’d still be in the dark.

But that isn’t “dangerous.” At least, not in the same ways that David Brooks’ servility is dangerous.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, A Banalidade da Condenação.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Kevin Carson’s “The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand”.

$2.00 for the first copy. $1.50 for every additional copy.

This essay, originally pub­lish­ed by Red Lion Press in 2001, was one of Carson’s first ground-breaking contributions to the revival of Mutualist ideas within today’s anarchist and libertarian milieus. It has been re-issued in a beautiful new printing by ALL Distro.

“Manorialism commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a rul­ing class established itself by force, and then com­pel­led the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation, including cap­it­al­ism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of rob­bery as massive as feudalism. It has been sus­tain­ed to the present by continual state inter­ven­tion to protect its system of privilege, with­out which its survival is unimaginable.

“The current structure of capital ownership and org­an­iz­ation of production in our so-called ‘market’ eco­n­omy, re­flects coercive state intervention prior to and ex­tra­n­e­ous to the market. From the outset of the industrial re­vol­ut­ion, what is nostalgically called ‘laissez-faire’ was in fact a sys­t­em of continuing state intervention to sub­sid­ize ac­cum­ulation, guar­ant­ee privilege, and maintain work discipline.

“A world in which peasants had held onto their land and property was widely distributed, capital was freely available to laborers through mutual banks, productive tech­nology was freely avail­able in every country without pat­ents, and every people was free to develop locally without col­on­ial robbery, is beyond our imagination. But it would have been a world of decentralized, small-scale production for local use, own­ed and controlled by those who did the work — as dif­fer­ent from our world as day from night, or freedom from slav­ery. . . .”

Kevin A. Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and a prolific writer on subjects including free-market anti-cap­it­al­ism, the in­div­idualist anarchist tradition, grassroots technology and radical unionism. He keeps a blog at mutualist.blogspot.com and frequently publishes short columns and longer research reports for the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).

Mutualism, as a variety of anarchism, goes back to P.-J. Proudhon in france and Josiah Warren in the u.s. It favors, to the extent possible, an evolutionary approach to creating a new society. It emphasizes the importance of peaceful activity in building alternative social institutions within the existing society, and strengthening those insti­tut­ions until they finally replace the existing statist system; doing whatever is possible (in the words of the Wobbly slogan) to “build the structure of the new society within the shell of the old” before we try to break the shell.

Last week Michael Lind asked a silly question (“The question libertarians just can’t answer”): if libertarianism is so great, why hasn’t any country tried it?

The question is silly because the libertarian answer is obvious: Libertarianism is great for ordinary people, but not for the power elites that control countries and determine what policies they implement, and who don’t welcome seeing their privileged status subjected to free-market competition. And ordinary people don’t agitate for libertarian policies because most of them are not familiar with the full case for libertarianism’s benefits, in large part because the education system is controlled by the aforementioned elites.

Lind’s question is analogous to ones that might have been asked a few centuries ago: If religious toleration, or equality for women, or the abolition of slavery are so great, why haven’t any countries tried them? All such questions amount to asking: If liberation from oppression is so great for the oppressed, why haven’t their oppressors embraced it?

Now E. J. Dionne proposes a different answer (“Libertarianism’s Achilles’ Heel”) to Lind’s question: “We had something close to a small government libertarian utopia in the late 19th century and we decided it didn’t work.”

Leaving aside the Orwellian use of “we” – as a serious claim about history, this is absurd. Even if we ignore, as we shouldn’t, the anti-libertarian legal disabilities imposed on women, nonwhites, and homosexuals (i.e, the majority of the population), it remains true that the late 19th century American economy was characterized by vigorous and systematic government intervention on behalf of big business (wrapped sometimes in laissez-faire rhetoric and sometimes in progressive rhetoric). A government that routinely brings in police or the army to break up strikes is hardly a laissez-faire regime.

In the 1880s, free-market anarchist Benjamin Tucker identified the domination of business interests in the Gilded Age as grounded in a variety of state-imposed monopolies, stressing four in particular: Protectionist tariffs; the monopolization of credit through government control of the money supply; the suppression of competition via informational monopolies (patents and copyrights); and the assignment of titles to land and natural resources on the basis of expropriation and political pull rather than homesteading and trade. Alongside these, Tucker listed the monopolization of security services represented by the institution of the state itself.

The rigging of the market in favor of big business did not end with the Gilded Age. Dionne’s claim that in that era “monopolies were formed too easily” ignores historical research by James Weinstein and Gabriel Kolko showing that the supposedly anti-business regulations of the Progressive era (and likewise, Butler Shaffer has shown, those of the New Deal) were actually lobbied for by the corporate elite, in order to prop up monopolies that could not survive in an unhampered market. Dionne’s vision of the New Deal as coming to the rescue of a government that was previously “helpless” and “handcuffed” by “anti-government ideology” is ludicrous; Roosevelt’s big-government, pro-cartelization policies were largely a continuation of Hoover’s. And given the destruction of affordable health insurance in the early 20th century via the political might of the medical establishment, as documented by historian David Beito, Dionne’s claim that laissez-faire left the poor “unable to afford health insurance” is literally adding insult to injury.

The myth of 19th-century laissez-faire is useful to statists on both the left and the right. As contemporary market anarchist Kevin Carson observes, “advocates of the regulatory-welfare state must pretend that the injustices of the capitalist economy result from the unbridled market, rather than from state intervention in the market,” since otherwise “they could not justify their own power as a remedy.” And by the same token, “apologists of big business” need to “pretend that the regulatory-welfare state was something forced on them by anti-business ideologues, rather than something they themselves played a central role in creating.”

Dionne’s identification of the Tea Party as representing “anti-statist libertarianism” shows that he has let himself be bamboozled by the anti-government rhetoric of what is mainly (with some honorable exceptions) a pro-big-government campaign for crony capitalism, intrusive morals legislation, harassment of peaceful immigrants, and a sanguinary foreign policy. The regulations against which Tea Partiers rail are mainly secondary regulations, the belt over the bones, designed merely to ameliorate the effects of those primary regulations that maintain the essential power structures in place.

A better question we might ask Lind and Dionne: if the intrusive state is so great, why does it need to retain its clients by force, rather than letting them peacefully opt out?

From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.

O sistema de medicina dos Estados Unidos é corrupto, ineficaz e desnecessariamente caro. Esses resultados decorrem da violência do estado em favor da elite politicamente bem relacionada (especificamente seguradoras privadas, médicos, empresas farmacêuticas e de equipamento médico). Escassez artificial, superfaturamento, má alocação de financiamento de pesquisa e supressão de terapias alternativas (não patenteáveis) podem ser remediados mediante revogação dos privilégios concedidos pelo estado à elite e pelo restabelecimento de financiamento cooperativo e mutualizado dos cuidados de saúde.

“Se o governo nos prescrevesse nossos medicamentos e dieta, nossos corpos ficariam na mesma situação em que se encontram atualmente nossas almas.”

Seguro Mercearia

O problema essencial do financiamento médico é descrito pela analogia do Seguro Mercearia — pagamento por terceiro (nominalmente seguradoras “privadas” ou o estado) divorcia preço de custo, distribui responsabilidade, suprime competição e exerce pressão altista sobre os preços: quando seu segurador só impõe uma pequena franquia para cada ida ao supermercado, você provavelmente comprará muito mais caviar, filé mignon e óleo de trufas brancas.

Analogamente, o vendedor aumentará os preços. Quando outra pessoa paga, o vendedor e o comprador não têm interesses antagônicos; o vendedor quer cobrar preços mais altos, e o comprador não se importa. Em última análise, os custos são externados. As companhias de seguros são inescrupulosas em seus esforços para conter custos, negar cobertura e ludibriar clientes (por necessidade) – a despeito de tudo, os custos são agregados ao fundo de seguro e redistribuído em forma de prêmios mais altos para todos. Não existe almoço de graça, e o modelo de seguros está baseado em tentar abocanhar o seu.

O estado, desorganizado como é, tem menos incentivo para ser implacável na minimização de custos, mas imenso desperdício é objeto de baixa contábil sob a rubrica de gasto humanitário indispensável. O estado sofre de deseconomias de escala, inércia burocrática, falta de incentivo para economizar e, por sua natureza, o estado é centralizado e propenso a corrupção. Hospitais, companhias farmacêuticas e médicos tiram proveito do inepto Panóptico mediante superfaturamento, empurroterapia e execução de procedimentos desnecessários.

Assim, pois, o sistema de duas vertentes de não prestação de contas empura os custos de cuidados de saúde numa única direção – para cima. Enquanto isso, pagadores de tributos e de prêmios são extorquidos sem ter para onde fugir – a tal ponto que 17% do PIB dos Estados Unidos e 23% do orçamento federal são gastos em cuidados de doença. Ninguém deveria culpar as pessoas doentes por o sistema estar quebrado; elas funcionam dentro de constrangimentos muito estreitos, especialmente falta de acesso a comida saudável, água limpa, informação médica precisa, e suportam condições de trabalho inseguras. Afirmar que as pessoas são aproveitadoras hedonistas do que ganham de graça é fácil. Poucas farão escolhas saudáveis por causa do espectro de custos médicos futuros; fazem-nos para evitar contrair doença. O problema é que há poucas opções, ponto final, e essas são todas insalubres.

Seja Seu Alimento Seu Remédio, ou Hipócrates Rolando no Túmulo

A cultura estadunidense não é conducente a saúde ideal. Comidas típicas estadunidenses são cachorros-quentes, hambúrgueres, refrigerantes e “comida étnica” culturalmente apropriada com aumento do conteúdo de sal, gordura e açúcar. O estado tornou difícil para as pessoas (especialmente as pobres) o consumo de comida saudável.

Planos quinquenais centralmente impostos chamados Estatutos Agrícolas subsidiam certos alimentos (milho, soja, trigo, canola, açúcar, laticínios), abrem espaço para modificação genética, biocidas e fertilizantes petroquímicos, e subtraem influência aos produtores locais. O estado afirma estar protegendo produtores rurais familiares, que quase já não existem mais. Essas formas de proteção na verdade subsidiam os lucros de empresas tais como Monsanto, Syngenta, ConAgra e Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Na verdade, para manipulação de preços, alguns produtores agrícolas são pagos para não produzir alimentos.

Essa é a insanidade econômica da agricultura de lucro privatizado e custo socializado de Chomsky; a União Soviética fracassou por motivos similares, particularmente o problema do conhecimento de Hayek. Mescle a impossibilidade de calcular os parâmetros apropriados de um sistema complexo com corrupção corporativa institucionalizada e voilà – o sistema de agricultura estadunidense. Como o próprio Dwayne Andreas da ADM disse de modo espirituosamente incisivo: “Não há um único grão de qualquer coisa que seja vendido num livre mercado. Nem um! O único lugar onde você vê livre mercado é nos discursos dos políticos.” [1] Isso mesmo, Sr. Andreas, e o senhor é o beneficiário.

A crise de alimentos é caracterizada por superabundância de alimentos insalubres e escassez de saudáveis. Nas zonas centrais urbanas decadentes têm surgido “desertos de alimentos;” grandes radiais onde não é possível encontrar hortifrutigranjeiros frescos – apenas lojas de bebidas alcoólicas e de armas de fogo. Soluções racionais radicais incluem projetos agrícolas urbanos de larga escala tais como Poder de Cultivo, Movimento Transição e os Cultivadores Urbanos Sempre Verdes de Cleveland. A crise de alimentos não é o foco da presente perquirição mas, de qualquer modo, ela é  crítica.

Nem é a qualidade da água grande coisa. Flúor, cloro, metais pesados, escorrência agrícola superficial e componentes sintéticos, inclusive produtos farmacêuticos, DDT e bisfenol A contaminam a água por cuja proteção o estado é pretensamente responsável. Cada vez mais comunidades estão removendo a medicação forçada do flúor da água, mas isso é fácil em comparação com, digamos, impedir que resíduos de mercúrio oriundo de hulha se acumulem em região banhada por sistema fluvial. A filtragem da água é mecanismo vitalmente importante que, infelizmente, desfavorece os pobres ou desinformados.

A solução sustentável de longo prazo para a crise dos cuidados de saúde é ir à raiz doença – dieta e estilo de vida. Assim sendo, questões relativas a custos, e tecnicismos administrativos, são ociosos. Entretanto, se a sociedade atingisse alto nível de saúde, algumaspessoas (talvez aquelas com distúrbios predominantemente genéticos) ainda assim poderiam ter atendimento de baixa qualidade. Infelizmente, dentro dos atuais constrangimentos, é improvável que pessoas em número suficiente tenham o esclarecimento e a iniciativa para colocarem sua saúde nos trilhos por conta própria. Portanto, o sistema médico precisa ser refeito para parar de ferir as pessoas (mas não pela força, expropriação de propriedade, ou outras formas de autoritatismo).

O Templo do Médico

“Primeiro, Não Cause Dano.” – Hipócrates

Os guarda-pós brancos são vistos como reis-deuses da ciência (e os médicos amiúde acreditam nisso, desenvolvendo eles próprios arrogantes complexos de deus). Sua condição alcançada via de regra resulta de sua condição herdada; apenas os nascidos em famílias abonadas, antes de tudo, podem permitir-se tornar-se médicos. Isso perpetua uma noção classista de superioridade intelectual e tomada de decisões “Eu é Que Entendo Deste Assunto” em cuidados de saúde.

A relação entre doutor (da raiz latina docere, ou ensinar) e paciente não mais é de compaixão, respeito e livre contrato; há uma assimetria de poder na qual o doutor não pode ser questionado (e ele ridiculariza ideias não ortodoxas). Os médicos inclusive têm uniformes, títulos e salários prestigiosos para robustecimento de sua superioridade. Os doutores começam a acreditar saber tudo e a desdenhar automaticamente de tratamentos a eles não ensinados na faculdade.

Nem faz tanto tempo que o Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis foi expulso da profissão (e enlouqueceu) por ousar sugerir que os médicos lavassem as mãos entre autópsias e partos. Foi posteriormente conhecido como o “Salvador Húngaro das Mulheres,” porque os índices de infecção das novas mães caíram abruptamente depois de sua teoria excêntrica ter sido posta em prática.

Dito tudo isso, os doutores podem também ser salvadores de vidas, santos, gênios e visionários. O presente sistema médico, entretanto, não atrai esses tipos, nem é conducente a fazer vir à tona essas virtudes nos praticantes de medicina. O problema não está no indivíduo, mas na instituição. Os policiais, na maioria, não são brutamontes repressores eles próprios, mas a instituição da polícia serve para esmagar dissidência, conduzir guerra contra as pessoas pobres e proteger a propriedade roubada pela elite. Como disse Omali Yeshitela, uma força policial militarizada “só se torna necessária numa conjuntura na qual existem aqueles que têm e aqueles que não têm.”

Destrutivo Sindicato de Trabalhadores: A Associação Médica Estadunidense

Os conservadores há muito tempo desdenham dos sindicatos de trabalhadores. Afirmam que os consumidores são prejudicados por preços mais altos, que os sindicatos usam táticas terroristas, e que a “minoria perseguida” de Rand, os grandes homens de negócios e acionistas corporativos, são insultados pelas exigências arrogantes de trabalhadores emproados.

Deixando de lado o fato de que os sindicatos de trabalhadores estabeleceram o dia de oito horas, fins de semana, e eliminaram o trabalho infantil, os sindicatos de trabalhadores são vitais para modelos econômicos de capitalismo liberal; o trabalho organizado é a máquina por trás da ascensão dos salários. As afirmações de que os sindicatos de trabalhadores são injustos dificilmente são de ser tomadas a sério, dada a importância do Movimento Trabalhista no início do século 20 para assegurar condições básicas de decência no local de trabalho. [2] De qualquer forma, as cooperativas de trabalhadores tornam tanto sindicatos quanto chefes obsoletos e são, em verdade, mais eficientes do que empresas capitalistas fundadas em relação escravo-senhor. [3]

Há contudo pelo menos um pseudo-sindicato inquestionavelmente destrutivo: a Associação Médica Estadunidense – AMA. A AMA usa sua considerável influência política para limitar o número de médicos que podem ser treinados anualmente, tornando os médicos artificialmente escassos e alcançando salários mais altos no mercado. Primeiro declarada em 1924 por Morris Fishbein, a AMA continua a conduzir guerra não abertamente reconhecida contra modalidades competidoras tais como quiropraxia, naturopatia e parteiras. A mesma cruzada é levada a efeito pela Associação Odontológica Estadunidense, Sociedade Estadunidense do Câncer, Instituto Nacional do Câncer e Academia Estadunidense de Pediatria. [4]

É preciso pagar por grau de MD, D.O., N.D. e por uma licença governamental para praticar até mesmo medicina básica. Faculdades de medicina e médicos são artificialmente escassos e farmácias autorizadas pelo estado só reconhecem a legitimidade deles para escreverem receitas. Os pacientes têm de pagar o custo amortizado da faculdade de medicina para obterem uma simples receita de antibiótico. Na China, médicos chamados de médicos de pés descalços recebem quantidade moderada de treinamento médico e viajam pelo país tratanto de condições médicas comuns tais como infecções e fraturas. [5] Paralelamente ao envelhecimento dos nascidos na explosão populacional do pós-guerra, requerendo mais cuidados médicos, há desesperadora escassez de provedores médicos. Como guilda que é, a AMA faz lobby para impedir que enfermeiros práticos e assistentes de médicos pratiquem sem a supervisão paternalista de um guarda-pó branco. [6]

Só médicos podem assumir riscos médicos sérios e cometer equívocos médicos sérios. Qual a dimensão dos equívocos que os médicos podem cometer é questão muito debatida, e é difícil ver como poderia ser completamente diferente. Em que ponto risco razoável torna-se negligência? Quando é que a atividade necessariamente arriscada de conter o anjo da morte torna-se licença para cometer equívocos horrendos?

No presente, a regra britânica é que ‘médicos’ que tenham recebido certificação do governo (isto é, da oligarquia médica patrocinada pelo governo – nunca é demais mencionar isto, pois é a essência da questão) podem assumir riscos médicos muito mais graves do que aqueles que sejam ‘médicos’ apenas na opinião de seus pacientes.

Se um médico (certificado pelo governo) fizer uma operação de algum tipo e a operação der errado (como ocorrerá sempre com operações, vez por outra), bem, essas coisas acontecem. Não há como ser médico sem cometer o equivalente médico de erros, no esporte, de cálculo de tempo, ou de deixar cair a bola depois de agarrá-la, ou de cometer o erro tipográfico ocasional. Por outro lado, se você não for ‘médico’ e assumir riscos médicos, então, mesmo que tudo dê certo, enfrentará problemas legais. [7]

Com efeito, um monopólio de licença, considerado razoável pelo estado, protege a negligência e proíbe a certos tipos de pessoas a prática da medicina, a despeito de demanda pelos pacientes.

O Golpe de Estado – Relatório Flexner

No Ocidente, as drogas farmacêuticas nem sempre foram a opção principal de tratamento. Antes de 1910, as formas dominantes de medicina eram nutricionais, herbais, osteopáticas, e cirúrgicas. O uso habitual de comprimidos e a frase “Um Comprimido Para Cada Doença” são fenômenos relativamente novos.

A mudança rumo ao tratamento farmacêutico derivado de petroquímicos começou em 1910, com o golpe de estadoeducacional de John D. Rockefeller e Andrew Carnegie, o Relatório Flexner. Esse relatório foi uma pesquisa reformatada para proposta formal, acompanhada de doações maciças a certas faculdades (propinas), que estabeleceu o código das instituições médicas que temos hoje. A estipulação precípua era a de que essas faculdades enfatizasssem drogas farmacêuticas de preferência a métodos tradicionais de tratamento.

O relatório também recomendava a fusão das faculdades de medicina com as universidades, o que fez subir o custo da instrução em medicina, limitando o acesso a todos, exceto às pessoas do sexo masculino brancas da classe alta. Ademais, o pacto estipulava que novas faculdades de medicina só poderiam ser criadas com aprovação do estado. Os barões ladrões reestruturaram o sistema de formação médica porque desejavam remodelar a  imagem pública de si próprios, mas também para urdirem uma indústria geradora de lucros nas décadas seguintes. [8] Rockefeller era também eugenista, esperando produzir um Übermensch [Super Homem] usando o novo campo da genética, que ele financiou largamente em Colúmbia e no Laboratório Cold Spring Harbor.

É de duvidar que mesmo os barões ladrões pudessem imaginar o quanto a situação dos medicamentos escapou de controle. A mesma falta de visão provavelmente se aplica ao monopólio da Standard Oil de Rockefeller — em seu evangelismo da gasolina, John D. provavelmente não esperava que a geopolítica viesse a girar em torno do petróleo como hoje gira. Mudanças desconhecidas porém influentes de políticas têm efeitos duradouros e caóticos. Isso é especialmente verdade quando legislação simples tem, de uma penada, o poder de desencadear a potente propaganda conhecida como anúncio direto ao consumidor.

Há trinta anos o agressivo executivo principal da Merck, Henry Gadsden, disse à revista Fortune de sua mágoa pelo fato de os mercados em potencial da empresa terem ficado limitados a pessoas doentes. Sugerindo que preferiria que a Merck fosse ‘mais como a fabricante de goma de mascar Wrigley’s,’ Gadsden lamentava acalentar, de longa data, sonho de fazer medicamentos para pessoas saudáveis. Pois, se assim fosse, a Merck poderia ‘vender para todos.’ Três décadas depois, o sonho do falecido Henry Gadsden tornou-se realidade. [9]

Os anúncios diretos ao consumidor começaram em 1981, e realmente deslancharam em 1995. A grande indústria farmacêutica convence você de que você está doente, que você tem “maus genes,” e só drogas farmacêuticas baseadas na indústria petroquímica tornarão você saudável. Para dar suporte a esse mito, empresas como Pfizer, Ely Lilly, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline e Sandoz são amiúde flagradas conluiando-se com a academia para apresentar falsamente eficácia de medicamentos aos médicos. A indústria da doença também faz lobby junto a políticos para assegurar que os lucros sejam maximizados em todas as frentes, independentemente das consequências humanas.

Nos dias de hoje, a grande indústria farmacêutica promove drogas para depressão crônica e transtoro de déficit de atenção – ADD. São tratamentos bandeide — o primeiro levanta o ânimo e mata a emoção a fim de anestesiar os pacientes para os males de seu ambiente, e o segundo ministra a crianças anfetaminas viciantes para que elas se tornem robôs hiperestimulados que por fim desenvolvem psicoses e exaustão adrenal. Tudo isso numa tentativa de “tornar normal” o comportamento. Acontece que a resposta emocional é despertada por estímulos ambientais. Em outras palavras, há motivo para crianças não se sentarem quietinhas dentro do sistema de escolas públicas de modelo militar prussiano, e há justificativa para alguém sentir-se cronicamente deprimido no mundo moderno.

Interações de drogas farmacêuticas não podem ser preditas com qualquer grau de certeza. “A pessoa média acima de 65 anos hoje usa sete diferentes medicações por dia, quatro prescritas e três sem prescrição médida,” disse Andrew Duxbury, MD, professor associado de geriatria na Universidade do Alabama -UAB e diretor da clínica de cuidados a idosos da Clínica Kirklin da UAB. “Nunca houve estudo controlado em ser humano envolvendo mais de três medicamentos circulando no corpo ao mesmo tempo. Portanto ninguém sabe, científicamente, exatamente o que acontece no seu corpo quando você toma sete, 10, ou uma dúzia ao mesmo tempo.” [10]

Os médicos sabem muito acerca de farmacologia, mas não muito acerca de nutrição ou medicina preventiva. Fatores de dieta e estilo de vida são a causa principal de morte prematura. [11] Os médicos recebem quantidade mínima de educação dietética. Estudo de 2006 de todas as faculdades de medicina dos Estados Unidos comprovou que menos de 41% das 106 pesquisadas oferecia o mínimo de 25 horas ou mais recomendado pela Academia Nacional de Ciências em 1985. [12] Essa recomendação foi feita enquanto estavam no ar anúncios de margarina “saudável” – com gorduras trans que hoje se sabe aumentarem a incidência de câncer e de doença cardíaca.

Não é preciso dizer, talvez em 1985 subestimássemos a importância da nutrição e, à luz da moderna evidência, a recomendação deveria ser de mais do que o parco mínimo de 25 horas. Vinte e cinco horas de instrução é o mesmo que duas horas por dia, cinco dias por semana, durante um total de duas semanas e meia. Isso não é nada, dado o quanto dieta e estilo de vida contam na patogênese. No mesmo estudo, 88% dos instrutores expressaram necessidade de educação nutricional adicional.

Má Ciência

“Simplesmente não é mais possível acreditar em grande parte da pesquisa clínica que é publicada, ou confiar no juízo de médicos fidedignos ou em diretrizes médicas fidedignas. Não me é agradável chegar a essa conclusão, à qual cheguei vagarosa e relutantemente ao longo de minhas duas décadas como editora do Periódico de Medicina da Nova Inglaterra.” – Marcia Angell, M.D.

Como é que drogas que se revelam perigosas obtêm reputação robusta na comunidade médica, para começar? Apresentação enganosa de dados pela Grande Indústria Farmacêutica, pela FDA, e por órgãos normativos internacionais foi fator importante. A FDA no passado era financiada inteiramente pelo governo federal (época quando a cooptação corporativa era vista com desfavor).

Em 1992, George H.W. Bush modificou as regras, e a FDA agora obtém mais de 40% de sua receita de tributos cobrados de companhias farmacêuticas. A versão britânica da FDA obtém 70% da receita de companhias farmacêuticas, graças às reformas iniciais de Margaret Thatcher nos anos 1980. A FDA ter monopólio da regulamentação já é ruim o bastante, e os conservadores mercantilistas acima mencionados simplesmente exigiam suborno impudente. A solução é desmonopolizar a regulamentação e permitir que entidades como o Grupo de Trabalho Ambiental ou os Laboratórios Subscritores certifiquem segurança e qualidade.

Hoje, há uma porta giratória de influência de políticas públicas, lobby, academia e corporação. Há múltiplos métodos empregados para apresentar enganosamente a pesquisa. Nem toda pesquisa é publicada — apenas cerca de 40% dela aparecem em periódicos. Na pesquisa publicada, há um “viés de publicação,” onde estudos que mostram resultados positivos (mostram que os medicamentos funcionam) são mais amiúde publicados do que aqueles que mostram que os medicamentos não funcionam ou são tóxicos.

Outra técnica é “fatiar salame” — A Grande Indústria Farmacêutica menciona os mesmos dados múltiplas vezes em numerosos estudos. Não há móbil de lucro para pesquisa financiada independentemente que busca tirar medicamentos perigosos do mercado. Ademais, a pesquisa independente não é publicada nos principais periódicos como The Lancet ou NEJM. Finalmente, manipulação contábil padrão, ou distorção dos números: qualquer pessoa ao longo da cadeia de comando pode, com uma batida de tecla, corromper os dados. Pesquisa apoiada pela indústria precisa ser vista com colossal reserva. [13]

Por exemplo, metanálise de 166 estudos acerca do adoçante artificial da Monsanto aspartame correlacionou fonte de financiamento com resultados. Setenta e quatro foram financiados pela indústria e 92 foram financiados independentemente. Cem por cento dos estudos financiados pela indústria concluíram que esse aditivo à comida era seguro, enquanto 92% da pesquisa financiada independentemente identificou problemas. [14]

Tais riscos incluem excitotoxidade, convulsões, transtornos do humor, dores de cabeça, aumento de apetite e câncer. [15] [16] Dos seis estudos financiados “independentemente” que concluíram por ausência de perigo, cinco deles foram conduzidos pela FDA. Repetindo, isso faz com que um dentre 92 estudos financiados independentemente tenha concluído ser a substância segura. Até hoje, o aspartame é a substância que mais recebe reclamações dirigidas à FDA, a qual insiste em que o adoçante é seguro.

“Propriedade” Intelectual – O Monopólio da Patente

Os direitos de propriedade estão limitados àquilo que é finito, ou de reprodutividade limitada. Ideias não são fisicamente escassas. Analogamente, o oxigênio não é escasso, e portanto não é realista considerá-lo propriedade. A terra é escassa — não está sendo fabricada em quantidade superior à existente. Há bom motivo para utilizarem-se os direitos de propriedade para organização não violenta. O que, porém, acontece quando pretensa propriedade não existe fisicamente? É o caso da propriedade intelectual. É forma ilegítima, artificial de propriedade, que só existe por causa da violência do estado. Os subprodutos dos “direitos” de patente são rentismo de monopólio para o proprietário e escassez artificial para todo mundo mais. Este tópico é tratado em detalhe alhures [17] [18].

Algumas pessoas acreditam que as patentes são mal necessário para tornar atraente o desenvolvimento de novas ideias e tecnologias. Primeiro, é duvidoso que a maioria dos intelectuais seja precipuamente motivada por lucros excepcionais. Lucro nunca é inspiração para as grandes mentes. Como disse Jonas Salk, o descobridor da vacina para poliomielite: “Não existe patente. Poderá alguém patentear o sol?” Ele tinha uma intenção superior para sua descoberta; não queria que ninguém sofresse desnecessariamente a fim de que bolsos científicos pudessem ficar forrados de dinheiro.

Mesmo, porém, assumindo que pesquisa socialmente útil não ocorresse sem o potencial de lucros excepcionais, há um mecanismo de ocorrência natural no mercado que recompensa a originalidade: o inchamento de preços. Há um período de tempo entre o momento em que a invenção é levada ao mercado e o em que os competidores conseguem fazer engenharia reversa e manufaturar sua própria versão. Esse período permite que o inventor cobre alto preço (se valorizar seu ganho pessoal marginal mais do que a disponibilidade para as pessoas pobres). Mais importante, porém, eliminar patentes abriria espaço para mais criatividade. Nas atuais circunstâncias, os desenvolvedores não têm permissão para aproveitar ideias de outras pessoas sem o pagamento de royalties. Isso atrasa o progresso tecnológico.

No caso de medicamentos farmacêuticos essa dinâmica é particularmente perniciosa. Recente estudo concluiu que a indústria farmacêutica despendeu 24,4% de seus dólares de vendas em promoção, em contraste com 13,4% para pesquisa e desenvolvimento, como percentagem de vendas internas aos Estados Unidos de $235,4 biliões de dólares. [19] Os preços artificialmente altos protegidos por patentes privam os pobres de medicamentos necessários, como é o caso no tocante à medicação para malária e AIDS no mundo em desenvolvimento. Medicamentos genéricos, vendidos por preço de custo de produção, poderiam suavizar essa tragédia. Hoje, pessoas estão morrendo para impulsionar lucros. Por todos os critérios, a indústria farmacêutica é a mais lucrativa de todas. [20]

“Os lucros combinados das dez empresas de medicamentos na Fortune 500 ($35,9 biliões de dólares) foram maiores do que os lucros de todas as outras 490 empresas juntas ($33,7 biliões de dólares) [em 2002]. Nas últimas duas décadas a indústria farmacêutica distanciou-se enormemente de seu alto propósito original de descobrir e produzir novos medicamentos úteis. Agora precipuamente máquina de marketing para vender medicamentos de benefício duvidoso, essa indústria usa sua riqueza e seu poder para cooptar toda instituição que se interponha em seu caminho, inclusive o Congresso dos Estados Unidos, a FDA, centros médicos acadêmicos, e a própria profissão médica.” – Marcia Angell, médica.

[Por favor, para ver o gráfico de barras consulte o original em http://c4ss.org/content/19098]

Para mais da ex-editora-em-chefe do NEJM, Marcia Angell, ver A Verdade Acerca das Empresas de Medicamentos, Sua Perigosa Farmácia, e Empresas de Medicamentos e Médicos.

Os Mercadores de Medicamentos

“Os remédios fazem você morrer vagarosamente.” – Plutarco

Pesquisar a indústria farmacêutica acaba com a fé da pessoa na humanidade. É como ler acerca do Congo do Rei Leopoldo, ou da pesquisa médica em campos de concentração nazistas. A pura intensidade da sociopatia da elite é impressionante. A extensa lista de crimes é longa demais para ser repetida aqui, mas basta dizer que a indústria inteira tem sido acusada de crimes contra a humanidade no Tribunal Criminal Internacional de Haia. [21]

Medicamentos xenobióticos são compostos químicos não encontrados em a natureza, e para os quais os seres humanos não dispõem de vias metabólicas eficientes de desintoxicação. São também o único tratamento que as companhias farmacêuticas podem patentear. Tratamentos herbais ou dietéticos não têm sido acolhidos pela indústria da doença, pois não podem ser patenteados. Precisamente por isso métodos dietéticos de Hipócrates, Pitágoras, Galeno, Avicena e da atual florescente legião de médicos de medicina natural são atacados e depreciados pela hegemonia vampiresca. Apesar disso, o público está acordando, e muitos médicos desertam para a medicina alternativa, e a demanda dentro desse setor está aumentando rapidamente. [22]

A Agência de Alimentos e Medicamentos – FDA é o setor de Gestapo do complexo industrial médico, promovendo a blitzkrieg da máquina contra a verdadeira saúde e a longevidade. Por décadas, a FDA sistematicamente levou a efeito incursões em cooperativas de alimentos, contra médicos usando terapias alternativas, fazendas, atéigrejas em esforço para suprimir terapias autênticas. Ela envia vans cheias de equipes de SWAT com rifles M16, algemas e coletes à prova de balas. Documentos, computadores, dinheiro, ervas e dispositivos são confiscados, e dano excessivo é causado às instalações. A FDA justifica as incursões com base em acusações que são, posteriormente, retiradas, e sistematicamente impõe, depois, multas exorbitantes a seus alvos. [23]

“O que me aborrece é as pessoas acharem que a FDA as está protegendo. O que a FDA está fazendo e o que o público pensa que ela está fazendo são tão diferentes quanto dia e noite.” – Dr. Herbert Ley, ex-comissário da FDA (1968-9)

A FDA restringe acesso tempestivo e de preço razoável a medicamentos necessários, mente acerca da segurança e eficácia a fim de proteger lucros, suprime terapias alternativas e desacredita médicos que as utilizam com sucesso. [24]

Em 2010, o Presidente Barack Obama nomeou o ex-advogado da Monsanto Michael Taylor como Comissário Adjunto de Alimentos da FDA. Ao longo de sua carreira, Taylor vacilou entre representar a Monsanto e trabalhar para a FDA — uma porta giratória par excellance. Em 1994, Taylor determinou que a FDA não exigisse que fosse rotulado o hormônio do crescimento recombinante bovino (rBGH), [25] que é tóxico para seres humanos e vacas. [26] Ele é proibido em países mais civilizados como Canadá, Austrália e Japão (e em toda a União Europeia).

Até julho de 1988, as autoridades alfandegárias dos Estados Unidos confiscavam qualquer sulfato dextrano que pacientes de AIDS trouxessem do Japão. Essa droga revelava alguma eficácia em inibir a capacidade do vírus HIV de atacar células brancas do sangue. Não deveriam as pessoas doentes ser livres para se informar e tratar de si próprias? A mesma lógica se aplica à fracassada e draconiana Guerra às Drogas; o indivíduo soberano está totalmente dentro de seu direito ao administrar a si próprio qualquer substância, independentemente das consequências pessoais. Só ao agredir outra pessoa comete transgressão.

Há muitas terapias de câncer não ortodoxas, como os antineoplastos do Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, [27] o protocolo Gerson, chá de Essiac, ácido elágico, laetrile, ácido ascórbico em alta dosagem, terapia eletromagnética, e dúzias de terapias dietéticas. [28] São todas altamente controvertidas, principalmente não por serem arriscadas, e sim porque se qualquer delas funcionar, ameaçará os lucros monopolizados das companhias farmacêuticas. De qualquer forma, a eficácia e toxicologia dessas terapias é irrelevante; os indivíduos precisam ser livres para escolher a própria medicina. No presente, a FDA processa, multa, prende e revoga a licença de qualquer médico que use métodos proibidos.

Otimistamente, a maré está mudando, e o Movimento de Liberdade em Saúde está ganhando força, exigindo reforma e eliminação da FDA em favor de agências do mercado tais como o Grupo de Trabalho Ambiental. Temos, como tema recorrente na autoritária estrutura federal dos Estados Unidos, o caso de uma agência centralizada, cooptada, protecionista, iludindo e tornando doente a população em favor de lucros de curto prazo. [29]

A máquina da doença não apenas extorque as pessoas vendendo a altos preços remédios de charlatão, como também reprime sistematicamente pesquisa de terapias eficazes, e até revoga as licenças de médicos que usem protocolos de tratamento não tóxicos e/ou baseados em nutrição. Célere se aproxima o dia quando a população transporá limiar de consciência e exigirá desforra da trindade impura que é a aliança FDA-Academia-Indústria Farmacêutica.

Para o milhão que morrerá este ano de doença cardíacaevitável e câncer, e os 100.000 por ano que morrerão de reações adversas a medicamentos, a mudança poderá não chegar a tempo. [30]

Livro recente, de Ben Goldacre, Má Indústria Farmacêutica, detalha algumas das transgressões da indústria.

Estudo de Caso: Dr. John Richardson e laetrile (amigdalina)

O Dr. John Richardson tinha uma clínica em Albany, Califórnia. Em 1972, foi objeto de incursão da FDA por prescrever um medicamento não aprovado para câncer chamado laetrile.

Autoridades armadas irromperam em seu consultório e, na presença de pacientes (bem como de fotógrafos de notícias que a FDA havia avisado para que cobrissem a prisão), algemaram-no, e a suas duas enfermeiras, e os arrastaram para a prisão como criminosos perigosos. O consultório foi pilhado e os arquivos pessoais e a correspondência do Dr. Richardson foram apreendidos. Pacientes necessitados de tratamento médico foram mandados para casa. Uma criança com câncer avançado da perna morreu pouco depois. É possível que a morte pudesse ter sido evitada não fora a interrupção do tratamento e o trauma psicológico da criança, resultante da incursão. [31]

Seja o medicamento eficiente ou não, alguns pacientes o desejam. Por que deveria o estado tratar um médico como criminoso por oferecer um serviço procurado pelas pessoas? Será que, no fundo, o estado realmente busca o melhor interesse das pessoas? O Dr. Richardson não é caso especial; esse é o modo padrão de proceder da FDA.

Há muitos outros homens corajosos que ficaram em situação delicadíssima. O Dr. Ernst Krebs, co-descobridor do laetrile, foi mandado para a prisão por fornecer ácido pangâmico (vitamina B15) como terapia auxiliar no tratamento do câncer. O Dr. James Privitera, M.D., de Covina, California, cumpriu pena de prisão por alegada “conspiração para vender laetrile.” O Dr. Bruce Halstead, M.D., de Loma Linda, Califórnia, outro defensor do laetrile, perdeu sua licença médica por usar o medicamento herbal “não comprovado” chamado ADS (Aqua Del Sol) como intensificador do sistema imunológico. O Dr. Douglas Brodie, de Reno, Nevada, outro especialista em laetrile, cumpriu pena de prisão, alegadamente por “sonegação de imposto de renda.”

O próprio Dr. Richardson resumiu a orwelliana pandemia artificial do estado como segue:

A pessoa média, segura em sua casa e seu sustento, não havendo nunca sentido o ataque esmagador de literalmente centenas de advogados pagos com impostos, não ameaçada por sentença de prisão por meramente fazer o que sabe ser direito, tal pessoa simplesmente não tem como entender a lógica de um urso ferido.

Quando criminosos de guerra nazistas foram acusados de genocídio, defenderam-se alegando terem apenas cumprido ordens e obedecido as leis do estado nazista. O mundo civilizado gritou: “Culpados!” Espera-se que o homem se curve a uma lei mais alta do que a de qualquer estado. Quando as leis de um governo exigem que um homem condene pessoas inocentes à morte, este tem de rejeitar essas leis e ser fiel a sua consciência. Se não o fizer, não será diferente dos nazistas que foram enforcados por crimes de guerra. […]

Quanto sofrimento e morte está o povo estadunidense disposto a aceitar antes de não se curvar à burocracia? Quantos médicos terão de ser postos na prisão antes de todos os médicos gritarem “basta!” ao crescente controle do governo sobre sua profissão? De quantos Watergates precisaremos antes de compreender que homens mortais são corrompidos pelo poder, e que a solução dos problemas de alguém repousa não em aumentar o poder do governo, e sim em diminuí-lo?

O espírito de resistência está no ar. Ele é uma brisa refrescante, mas dá-me grande esperança. Já resolvi ficar sozinho se necessário for. Contudo, enquanto escrevo estas palavras finais, não consigo deixar de pensar, haverá alguém mais aí? [32]

O duas vezes vencedor do Prêmio Nobel Linus Pauling declarou: “Todo mundo deveria saber que a maior parte da pesquisa relativa a câncer tem muito de fraude e que as principais organizações de pesquisa de câncer são altamente negligentes no tocante a seus deveres para com as pessoas que as apoiam.” Entidades tais como as fundações Rockefeller, Ford e Carnegie atualmente financiam pesquisa de câncer, as mesmas fundações que, no passado, apoiaram o movimento eugênico (e hoje fazem negócio com empresas tais como a Monsanto). [33]

Confusão Estatista Acerca de Direitos

As pessoas precisam ser livres para escolher sua medicina, e ter acesso (mas não direito imposto pelo estado) a cuidados médicos. Associação voluntária e comércio não violento entre pessoas livres é o meio mais eficaz e moral de serem proporcionados cuidados médicos acessíveis na ausência de coerção do estado.

É problemático quando a ação do estado é apresentada como “proteção de direitos,” porque o estado inicialmente restringiu o tipo de cuidados médicos que as pessoas obtêm e empobreceu os trabalhadores logo de início. [34] [35] O estado protege os direitos de seus súditos do mesmo modo que o fazendeiro protege seu rebanho: espuriamente, e apenas até o matadouro.

Estatistica bem-intencionada declara certos serviços direitos. Todo mundo reconhece certos direitos, particularmente direitos negativos, tais como não ser morto ou escravizado. Não deveria haver direito a bens ou serviços escassos quando esse direito está alicerçado na tributação (furto). Se uma sociedade livre quiser reconhecer tal direito, ele só poderá ser concretizado de maneira moral voluntariamente, apoiado na decência e na boa vontade humana, em vez de em monopólio e ordens oficiais.

O furto sistemático só é justificado sob o jugo do capitalismo; onde a classe proprietária tem empregado coerção (ou capitalizado em cima de violência preexistente do estado) para amealhar suas fortunas, tornando moral furtar uma parcela e redistribuí-la (se isso é o que verdadeiramente acontece na maioria dos estados do bem-estar social é duvidoso; o sistema de tributação pode em realidade ser regressivo e beneficiar mais assistencialismo à corporação do que cuidados reais para os pobres). [36]

“Minha ideia era subornar as classes trabalhadoras, ou, deveria eu dizer, ganhar o favor dela, de modo a ela ver o estado como uma instituição social existindo para o bem dela e interessado no bem-estar dela,” disse Otto von Bismarck. Certamente o estado assistencialista-beligerante é preferível à escola de estadismo histórica sangue-e-ferro pré-Bismarck; entretanto, isso é um paliativo, o opium das volkes. O bem-estar social é uma ferramenta funcionalista para manter a música tocando e o navio de escravos do capitalismo singrando ao ritmo dela. Todo mundo no navio quer ficar à tona, mas por queestá no navio, antes de tudo, é algo menos investigado, debatido, ou entendido.

Felizmente, porém, a economia comportamental sugere que os seres humanos são altruístas e compartilham voluntariamente seu excedente. Há explicações para esse comportamento baseadas na ideia de evolução. Se um médico não oferecer cuidados médicos para os pobres, todo mundo mais na sociedade poderá nutrir sentimentos de altruísmo ou ter senso de justiça e destinar pequenos montantes de seu excedente para caridade. Poderá também aglutinar-se para ajuda mútua, sob acordos de seguro cooperativo.

O argumento de que o estado é necessário para fazer valer beneficência é circular. Se ninguém se preocupasse com caridade, não usaria esta como justificativa para controle pelo estado. As pessoas valorizam caridade e justiça previamente ao estado, que expropria a propriedade delas e dá apenas uma lasca para os necessitados.

Ademais, responsabilidade pessoal por uma sociedade falida é lançada nas costas do estado (“Não me responsabilizem, eu pago meus impostos!”). Esse pretenso dinheiro de tributação poderia também ter ido para caridade (amiúde mais eficiente do que programas assistencialistas do estado, por causa do overhead). Os estadunidenses já doam mais do que os residentes de 152 outros países – imaginem quanto mais ficaria disponível se um terço de seus ganhos não fosse roubados deles. [37] Enquanto isso, o estado dos Estados Unidos despende apenas 1,5% do orçamento federal em “ajuda” externa (inclusive armas e projetos de infraestrutura que, no final das contas, beneficiam corporações estadunidenses). A avaliação radical é que o capitalismo de estado cria ou exacerba as condições que tornam necessária a caridade antes de tudo.

Como a maioria dos problemas sociais, a crise dos cuidados de saúde é exacerbada por dois fatores: ignorância e pobreza.

As “massas imundas” são desencaminhadas pela mídia de Edward Bernays e Joseph Goebbels para consumir hedonisticamente (alimento e medicamento) até o ponto da doença e, em seguida, buscam alguma panaceia (outra coisa que possam comprar) para serem curadas. Abstinência, disciplina e moderação (por mais solenemente puritanas que sejam essas palavras) não entram no cenário. O ascetismo é ruim para os lucros! A saúde existe num estado de equilíbrio (homeostase). O desequilíbrio leva à doença. Hoje, a pretensa cura para envenenamento é um tipo de veneno ligeiramente diferente (medicamentos).

A ignorância disseminada não é coincidência. No início do século 20 a classe trabalhadora tinha alto nível de alfabetização, ouvia preleções e publicava seus próprios periódicos. O sistema educacional atual está eivado de violência do estado, levando a propaganda jingoísta e a ultrafiltragem em vez de a esclarecimento autêntico, porque a maioria das pessoas é pobre demais para prover suas próprias escolas.

Assim, para obter financiamento do estado (o próprio dinheiro delas, para começar – pilhagem tributária), as comunidades abrem mão de seu direito de educar seus filhos como entendem melhor. Portanto os estudantes fazem juramento de lealdade à bandeira, sob Deus, e comemoram o Dia de Colombo. O sistema escolar é concebido para manufaturar trabalhadores obedientes e eficientes – não livres-pensadores. [38] [39] Essa ignorância manufaturada contribui para saúde precária, especialmente mediante engendrar deferência condicionada a figuras de autoridade tais como médicos e autoridades da FDA.

Pobreza é encontrada no cerne dos problemas sociais mais perniciosos. A maior parte dos crimes é cometida por necessidade de dinheiro. As pessoas não podem viver vidas plenas e libertadoras porque precisam trabalharpara adiar aprofundamento de sua destituição (amiúde debalde).

A pobreza é também o motivo pelo qual as pessoas não podem pagar cuidados médicos próprios do próprio bolso; somos forçados a nos agrupar e coletivizar para sobreviver (ou na genuína solidariedade das sociedades de ajuda mútua ou no torniquete da desumanizadora administração da saúde pelo estado). Se os trabalhadores recebessem o valor pleno de seu trabalho, talvez tais mecanismos de sobrevivência fossem desnecessários.

Medicina de Monopólio do Estado

Sistema de pagante único não resolverá os problemas básicos de alimentos tóxicos, medicamentos e estilo de vida. O socialismo de estado parece funcionar bem em lugares como Escandinávia, mas a saúde do povo de lá, para começar, é melhor do que a nossa (e o povo, de modo geral, é mais civilizado). [40] Mesmo pessoas que vivem em estados com cuidados de saúde “socializados” poderiam ficar em melhor situação usando o modelo libertário-socialista de ajuda mútua.

A essas nações falta também a cultura de compadrio capitalista que os Estados Unidos têm em alto grau. Os mesmos Estados Unidos onde o projeto de lei do Obamacare foi rascunhado por Liz Fowler, lobista da indústria médica. [41] Fowler trabalhou na Seguradora Well Point antes de rascunhar o projeto de lei, depois foi advogada do Congresso, e desde então passou pela porta giratória para os braços acolhedores da gigante farmacêutica Johnson and Johnson. [42]

Não, Obama não é messias socialista radical; seu projeto é uma propina para a indústria, típica do corporatismo-estado “Progressista.” Se ao menos ele fosse socialista, no sentido em que Benjamin Tucker usava o termo.

O analista da política de saúde de Washington Ramsey Baghdadi prevê ganho líquido de $30 biliões de dólares em dez anos para a indústria farmacêutica. “A indústria farmacêutica saiu melhor dessa situação do que todo mundo mais – não vejo como pudesse ter feito muito melhor,” disse. A indústria obteve polpudas concessões com o Obamacare, como evidenciado pela alta dos preços dos serviços de saúde e das ações de seguradoras no dia em que o Supremo Tribunal manteve o projeto de lei.

As concessões para a indústria incluem: patentes de nome de marca válidas por 12 anos, com subsídios federais crescentes para medicamentos. Os lobistas impediram a importação de medicamentos fabricados no exterior, restringiram a comercialização de genéricos por competidores e proibiram o Medicare de conseguir negociar preços de remédios. Os interesses farmacêuticos despenderam estimativamente $188 milhões de dólares em lobby em 2009, com um exército de 1.105 lobistas, de acordo com o Centro de Política Responsiva. No que poderá representar choque para vítimas do engodo do menor dos dois males, os Democratas, há muito tempo, abriram mão de qualquer tentativa de aparentar oporem-se ao poder corporativo e aceitaram 56% do total de suborno – mais do que os Republicanos. [43] [44]

Os métodos das organizações de gerência de saúde voltada para o lucro também são problemáticos. Por exemplo, tomemos a abjeta conversa de 1971 gravada em fita entre o sempre abominável Richard Nixon e o assistente John D. Ehrlichman (de notoriedade de Watergate) que levou à Lei HMO de 1973:

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser está administrando seu acordo Permanente para efeito de lucro. E o motivo que ele pode … o motivo pelo qual ele pode fazê-lo … eu fiz com que Edgar Kaiser … falasse comigo acerca do assunto e ele aprofundou o tema até certo ponto. Todos os incentivos tendem para menos cuidados de saúde, porque quanto menos cuidados de saúde forem dados, mais dinheiro eles ganham.”

President Nixon: “Excelente.”

Ehrlichman: “… e os incentivos seguem o caminho correto.”

President Nixon: “Nada mau.”

Como descrito por Thomas Princen em A Lógica da Suficiência:

Nos anos 1990s, organizações de manutenção de saúde (HMO) assumiram grande parte dos cuidados de saúde nos Estados Unidos. […] Joseph R. Wilder, professor emérito de pesquisa na Faculdade de Medicina Monte Sinai em New York, foi médico por cerca de cinquenta anos, vinte como chefe de equipe cirúrgica. Em cirurgias eficientes, de alta qualidade, descobriu que podem ocorrer erros: ‘é prática comum, em muitas instituições, o cirurgião começar uma operação e depois sair a certa altura, deixando um assistente terminá-la.

O médico pode correr para uma segunda sala de operação, onde outro assistente preparou outro paciente para cirurgia. Tudo o que o atarefado cirurgião vê é um local de operação — uma secção do abdômen, por exemplo, onde uma hérnia está por ser reparada. […] Suponha que o assistente, lendo equivocadamente um gráfico ou trabalhando a partir de registro impreciso, tenha coberto o lado errado do abdômen,’ diz Wilder. ‘Toda a habilidade do cirurgião será inútil se ele não fizer uma verificação ele próprio antes de começar a cortar.’

Cenário improvável? De modo algum; de acordo com estudo competente do Instituto de Medicina, entre 44.000 e 98.000 estadunidenses morrem cada ano por causa de erros médicos. No passado, os cirurgiões começavam, efetuavam e completavam cada operação; até colocavam as bandagens e cuidavam para que o paciente fosse removido adequadamente da mesa de operação. Para as HMO, isso seria terrivelmente ineficiente. […] Os hospitais funcionam como fábricas, tornam médicos e enfermeiras semelhantes aos funcionários de linha de Frederick Winslow Taylor. [45]

Como pode a medicina, uma disciplina alicerçada na compaixão e não no ganho material, ser tirada das garras da indústria de seguros e do estado?

Soluções Não Violentas

O cerne da solução é aumentar o grau de consciência, com mais pessoas pulando para fora do navio Titanic do “corte e envenene” biomédico. [46] Os consumidores estão-se educando quanto a alimentação saudável, suplementos e estilos de vida, e usando terapias “alternativas.” O NIH descobriu que quatro em cada 10 adultos informaram estar usando Medicina Complementar e Alternativa (CAM) nos últimos 12 meses, sendo 17,7% de tais tratamentos com medicações herbais. [47]

As pessoas com níveis mais elevados de educação mais provavelmente empregarão CAM, [48] o que poderá parcialmente refletir o fato de que a cobertura pública de saúde usada por pessoas mais pobres tende a não cobrir CAM. [49] Há esperança para consciência de saúde, mas também no financiamento e no próprio fornecimento.

Organizações de ajuda mútua, na tradição da Ajuda Mútua do anarquista Pyotr Kropotkin: Um Fator em Evolução, floresceram antes do estabelecimento do estado do bem-estar social.

As sociedades fraternais eram associações autogovernadas de benefício mútuo fundadas por trabalhadores manuais para proteção em tempos difíceis. Elas distinguiam fortemente sua filosofia orientadora da filantropia que se situa no cerne do trabalho caritativo. A associação de benefício mútuo não era gerida por um conjunto de pessoas com a intenção de ajudar outro grupo distinto, era uma associação de indivíduos comprometidos com ajudarem-se uns aos outros quando surgisse a ocasião. [50]

Em 1892, aproximadamente 6,8 a 7 milhões de trabalhadores industriais britânicos eram estimativamente membros de programas de seguro mútuo. [51] O sistema foi cooptado pela Associação Médica Britânica com a aprovação da Lei Nacional de Seguros de 1911 e depois finalmente sobrepujado pelo Serviço Nacional de Saúde em 1948.

Sistema comumente usado nos Estados Unidos era denominado prática de albergue, pelo qual uma sociedade fraternal subscrevia o serviço de diversos médicos por uma taxa fixa baixa. [52] Em sua incisiva análise A Crise da Saúde: Uma Crise de Escassez Artificial, [53] Kevin Carson descreveu um sistema precoce de cuidados de saúde anticapitalista de livre mercado:

Os Estados Unidos estavam muito atrás tanto dos britânicos quanto dos australianos em prática de albergue. Nesses últimos países, mais da metade dos assalariados antes da Primeira Guerra Mundial podem ter tido acesso a serviços de médicos por meio de prática de albergue. [54] Era, sem embargo, bastante prevalecente nos Estados Unidos. O comissário de saúde de New York City, em 1915, observou que em muitas comunidades a prática de albergue era ‘o método escolhido ou estabelecido de lidar com a doença entre os relativamente pobres.’ [55] […]

O custo de cobertura por meio de prática de albergue era em média de em torno de $2 dólares por ano — aproximadamente um dia de salário — e alguns albergues ofereciam cobertura para membros da família à mesma taxa. E esse era o preço típico de uma única visita doméstica de um médico que cobrava cada serviço separadamente à época. Mais que isso, a competição da prática de albergue provavelmente resultou em preços mais baixos pelos serviços dos médicos em prática privada. [56] Essa foi, talvez, um dos motivos pelo forte ressentimento da classe média.

A indústria médica reagiu deflagrando guerra à prática de albergue e limitando o suprimento de médicos. “Entre 1910 e 1930, o número de médicos por 100.000 pessoas encolheu de 164 para 125, em grande parte por causa das exigências cada vez mais estritas de licença, e por causa de redução do número de faculdades de medicina (em mais da metade entre 1904 e 1922).” [57] Isso se deveu em grande parte ao golpe do relatório Flexner.

Além disso, “o governo federal estimulou a substituição do seguro baseado em albergue por seguro oferecido pelo empregador, tornando o fornecimento de seguro em grupo da empregados dedutível de impostos sem dar tratamento tributário similar para prêmios de seguros de grupos baseados em albergue.” [58]

O seguro médico desde então ficou vinculado ao emprego. A hegemonia do seguro baseado no empregador atrela os trabalhadores a seu emprego — também denominada “diminuição da rotatividade,” com os trabalhadores temendo falar por medo de serem jogados na rua sem cobertura médica. Têm sido feitas tentativas modernas para criação de planos de cuidados de saúde compassivos e acessíveis, as quais porém têm sido subvertidas por barreiras do estado à entrada desses planos no mercado. Carson detalha os exemplos de John Muney, [59] da Aliança de Saúde de Ithaca, da PhilaHelthia e da clínica Qliance de Seattle. Esses provedores não-HMO afirmam economia de 25% só em papelada. [60]

Jesse Walker descreve circunspectamente a situação:

[Os cuidados de saúde estatais] ainda aceitariam as premissas institucionais do presente sistema médico. Considere a transação típica estadunidense dos cuidados de saúde. Num dos lados da troca você terá um número de provedores artificialmente limitado, muitos desses provedores concentrados naquelas enormes instituições sem face chamadas hospitais.

Do outro lado, fazendo a compra está não um paciente, mas uma dessas enormes instituições sem face chamadas seguradoras. Espera-se que as seguradoras, algumas das quais são na realidade braços do governo e algumas das quais meramente devem seus clientes a incentivos tributários do governo e delineiam sua cobertura para que se enquadre nas determinações do governo, paguem a totalidade ou uma parcela, até de despesas médicas rotineiras.

O resultado são custos mais altos, menor competição, menos transparência e, em geral, um sistema no qual o consumidor obtém aproximadamente tanta autonomia e respeito quanto o estetoscópio. Reforma radical restauraria o poder do paciente. Em vez disso, a questão em cima da mesa é se os mostrengos aos quais respondemos serão puramente públicos ou parcerias públicas-privadas. [61]

A cura começa com o fim de FDA, AMA, propriedade intelectual, subsídios estatais a comida de baixa qualidade e monopólios de pesquisa e de credencial do governo. É preciso dar poder aos indivíduos para que assumam o controle de sua saúde. Comida local, medicina alternativa, medidas de solidariedade socieconômica (cooperativas de trabalhadores, de crédito e de consumidores) construirão o sistema imunológico dos pobres e doentes, abolindo a dependência deles da elite privilegiada parasitária de uma vez por todas. Os trabalhadores do mundo precisam unir-se, não mediante ingenuamente esperarem soluções do estado que cria e exacerba a injustiça, e sim mediante mutualizarem os serviços sociais num paradigma libertário socialista.

“O homem da rua não percebe o diabo quando o diabo está segurando-o pela garganta.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Artigo original afixado por Sebastian A.B. 19 de maio de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Notes:

1 Carney, D. 1995. Dwayne’s World. Mother Jones Magazine.

2 Carson, Kevin. 2010. Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model. Center For A Stateless Society.

3 Folbre, Nancy. 2009. The Case for Worker Co-ops. New York Times.

4 Mercola, Joseph. 2011. Chiropractors and Naturopaths – Are They Dangerous? Mercola.com

5 Valentine, Vikki. 2005. Health for the Masses: China’s ‘Barefoot Doctors.’ NPR.

6 Schierhorn, Carolyn. 2010. As NPs push for expanded practice rights, physicians push back. The DO.

7 Micklethwait, Brian. 1991. How and How Not to Demonopolize Medicine. Libertarian Alliance.

8 Brown, E. Richard. 1981. Rockefeller Medicine Men. University of California Press.

9 Moynihan, Ray and Cassels, Alan. 2005. Selling Sickness. Nation Books.

10 Shaw, Gina. 2003. How Many Drugs Are You Taking? WebMD.

11 McGinnis JM, Foege WH. 1993. Actual Causes of Death in the United States. Journal of the American Medical Association. vol. 270, no. 18, pp. 2207-2212.

12 Adams, Kelly et al. 2006. Status of nutrition education in medical schools. American Society for Clinical Nutrition.

13 Kirsch, Irving. 2010. The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth. Basic Books.

14 Walton, Ralph. Survey of aspartame studies: correlation of outcome and funding sources.www.dorway.com/peerrev.html

15 Mercola, Joseph. Aspartame Studies. Mercola.comhttp://aspartame.mercola.com/sites/aspartame/studies.aspx

16 Blaylock, Russell. 1994. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. Health Press.

17 Kinsella, Stephen. 2008. Against Intellectual Property. Ludwig von Mises Institute.

18 Long, Roderick. The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights. Markets Not Capitalism.

19 Gagnon, Marc-André and Lexchin, Joel. 2008. The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States. PLoS Medicine.

20 Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. 2002. Pharmaceuticals Rank as Most Profitable Industry, Again.

21 Adams, Mike. 2004. Pharmaceutical industry accused of crimes against humanity before the ICC in the Hague. NaturalNews.com

22 Barnes PM, et al. 2007. Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults: United States. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics.

23 Batalion, N. 2011 Timeline of FDA Suppression of Natural Healing Sources. Healing Talks.

24 Null, Gary. 2012. FDA: Cult of Tyranny. Documentary.

25 Taylor, Michael C. 1994. Voluntary Labeling of Milk and Milk Products From Cows That Have Not Been Treated With Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin. FDA.

26 Robin, Marie-Monique. 2012. The World According to Monsanto. The New Press.

27 Adams, Mike. 2011. Burzynski documentary reveals true agenda of FDA and cancer industry to destroy cancer cures that really work. NaturalNews.

28 Griffin, G. Edward. 2001. World Without Cancer. American Media.

29 Feuer, E. 1998. Innocent Casualties: The FDA’s War Against Humanity.

[Notes 30 and 31 missing in the original]

32 Griffin, pg. 322-327.

33 Mercola, Joseph. 2011. American Cancer Society More Interested in Wealth than Health. Mercola.com

34 Long, Roderick T. 1993. How Government Solved the Healthcare Crisis. Markets Not Capitalism.

35 Johnson, Charles W. 2007. Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty As We Know It. Markets Not Capitalism.

36 Sinn, Mike. 2012. Welfare Statistics: Government Spends More On Corporate Welfare than Social Welfare Programs. Think By Numbers.org.

37 The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Americans Are Most Generous, Global Poll Finds. 2011.

38 Gatto, John Taylor. 1992. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers.

39 Rothbard, Murray. 1999. Education: Free and Compulsory. Ludwig von Mises Institute.

40 Olsen et al. 2011. Healthy aspects of the Nordic diet are related to lower total mortality. J. Nutr.

41 Lieberman, Trudy. 2012. Healthcare expert for sale: The Guardian follows the saga of Liz Fowler, healthcare lobbyist extraordinaire. Columbia Journalism Review.

42 Lennard, Natasha. 2012. Obamacare architect heads to Big Pharma. Salon.com

43 Fram, Alan. 2010. Big Pharma Wins Big With Health Care Reform Bill. Huffington Post.

44 Ridgeway, James. 2010. Big Pharma a Big Winner in Health Care Reform. Mother Jones.

45 Princen, Thomas. 2005. The Logic of Sufficiency. MIT Press. Pg. 92-93.

46 Null et. al. 2005. Death By Medicine. J. Ortho. Med.

47 Barnes P. and Bloom B. 2007. Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults and Children: United States. NIH.

48 Ni et al. 2002. Utilization of complementary and alternative medicine by United States adults. Med. Care.

49 Bodeker G. and Kronenberg F. 2002 A Public Health Agenda for Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine. Am J Public Health.

50 Green, David. 1993. Reinventing Civil Society. Institute of Economic Affairs, Health and Welfare Unit. Pg. 30.

51 Evans, Tim. 1994. Socialism Without The State. Libertarian Alliance.

52 Beito, David. 1994. Lodge Doctors and the Poor. The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty

53 Carson, Kevin. 2010. The Healthcare Crisis: A Crisis of Artificial Scarcity. Center for a Stateless Society.

54 Beito, David. 2000. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. University of North Carolina Press. Pg. 19.

55 Ibid., pg. 110.

56 Ibid., pg. 111.

57 Carson pg. 7

58 Ibid.

59 Parsons, Claudia. 2009. N.Y. Doctor Offers Flat Rate Care for Uninsured. Reuters.

60 Carson pg. 8-10.

61 Jesse Walker. 2009. Obama is No Radical. Reason Magazine.

In the late 19th century, the decentralizing potential of the Second Industrial Revolution — the introduction of electrical power into industry — was a common theme in social analysis.

The idea was that electrical power was destroying the technical rationale for large factories. The main reason for the Dark Satanic Mills of the First Industrial Revolution was to economize on power. The prime movers that powered industrial machinery — typically steam engines or water wheels — were very large and expensive, so it made sense to concentrate as many machines as possible in one building and power them all with belts running to a central drive shaft.

The electric motor eliminated this imperative. Since you could build a prime mover into each machine, it became economical to site it near the point of consumption and then scale its output to fit demand. The ideal production model for taking full advantage of this new technology’s potential would be craft production in small shops using general-purpose electrical machinery to produce for the local market on a lean, just-in-time basis — in other words, what job shops in places like Italy’s Emilia-Romagna district do today.

The liberatory, decentralizing potential of electrical power was the theme of works like Pyotr Kropotkin’s “Fields, Factories and Workshops,” which envisioned a world of small-scale relocalized industry integrated into village economies with raised-bed intensive horticulture. To repeat, this would have been the most natural use of electrically powered machinery — what Lewis Mumford called the “Neotechnic” revolution, in contrast to the Paleotechnic Era of coal, steam, iron and Dark Satanic Mills.

(The Paleotechnic Era itself — the First Industrial Revolution — was of course thoroughly statist in its origins. Its choice of production technologies and industrial focus were determined by the interests behind it: an alliance between the absolute states whose gunpowder armies had suppressed the free towns of the late Middle Ages, the big landed interests who switched to capitalist agriculture and enclosed peasant land, the mining and armaments industries, and the imperial fleets and colonizing corporations that plundered the globe.)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Neotechnic Revolution. To make a long story short, the state happened. Neotechnic technologies like electrical power were co-opted and enclosed by the existing economic interests that controlled the state in the U.S., Britain and Germany.

Instead of small, general-purpose machines making a wide variety of products in short runs as orders came in from the local market, electrical machinery was organized according to the mass production system. Large, product-specific machines engaged in long production runs to utilize maximum capacity and minimize the unit costs of the expensive, capital-intensive machinery. And all this was done in giant factories, with machines lined up in endless rows, just like in the Dark Satanic Mills. The new wine of neotechnical industrial technology was poured into the old bottles of paleotechnic institutional structure.

This was only possible because the state intervened to make it economical. Large-batch production in round-the-clock shifts could only be feasible if market areas were large enough, and shipping costs low enough, for the factories to dispose of their output. The whole system could never have come about in the first place in the United States, had not the federal and local governments massively subsidized the creation of the national railroad system and created a unified national market with artificially low shipping costs.

Because of the enormous capital outlays required for mass-production machinery, and the imperative of utilizing capacity to amortize those capital investments, it was also necessary to create political and social mechanisms for guaranteeing the entire output would be consumed. This mean cartels based on patents and other forms of regulation to stabilize control of industry in the hands of a few big producers, so that they could use monopoly pricing to pass the costs of idle capacity on to the consumer. It meant the use of mass consumer credit (and debt) to increase aggregate demand. It meant a planned obsolescence model which relied on the patent system to criminalize generic spare parts and design for interoperability, and on the schools and other organs of cultural reproduction to stigmatize homemade goods, conservation and reuse as “old-fashioned” and even “un-American.” And it meant, finally, direct state action to utilize idle productive capacity when all else failed, through things like building the civil aviation system and the Interstate Highway System, or the permanent war economy we’ve had since about 1940.

By all these means, the state and the coalition of interests that controlled it were able to stave off the threat liberatory technologies posed to their centralized power. The Second Industrial Revolution, which offered to destroy the factory system, free labor from the domination of capital, destroy decentralize production to the neighborhood and village, and abolish the divisions between both town and country and hand-work and brain-work, was instead co-opted into the institutional framework of the First Industrial Revolution. The technology that should have destroyed the old system of power was instead harnessed to serve it.

There are many today who fear that the big players in the corporate economy will enclose the technologies of the Third Industrial Revolution — based on micromanufacturing technology and networked communications — the same way their great-grandfathers enclosed those of the Second. Hilary Wainright (“Peer-to-peer production and the coming of the commons,” Social Network Unionism, September 2, 2012)  asks, what is to prevent distributed, peer-to-peer production technologies from being integrated into capitalism, rather than replacing it? “…[I]f the most intelligent predator companies are already exploiting commons production, what is to stop the corporations from fencing this commons in?”

In this nightmare scenario, corporate assembly lines full of 3D printers churn out goods, billionaires and cowboy CEOs get even richer — and millions fall victim to technological unemployment.

And make no mistake:  The dominant economic interests today would love to do just this.

The new technologies of liberation, if allowed to develop according to their own interior logic, render obsolete the entire material rationale behind the wage system and the factory system, and threaten to destroy corporate power. The factory system and wage system originally came about because of the technological shift from individually affordable, general-purpose craft tools to extremely expensive industrial machinery. Combine this with a state of affairs in which the propertied rich of Britain had already robbed virtually the whole peasantry of its rights in the land with the help of the state, and forcibly converted them into propertyless wage laborers, and you get a system in which only the very rich can afford to buy production machinery, and then hire factory laborers to work it for them.

The revolution in cheap, garage-scale CNC machine tools reverses this shift. The current trend is toward general-purpose machine tools whose most efficient use is in craft production in small shops. Open-source 3-D printers, cutting tables, routers and lathes can be had for $1000 or less apiece. When the cost of a garage “factory” is the equivalent of six months factory wages — how ya gonna keep ’em down in the factory?

But the dominant economic interests of the day are doing their best to stave off this revolutionary threat by domesticating the new technologies, co-opting them into the existing corporate institutional framework, and enclosing their productive potential as a source of rents. GE’s [PDF] “Industrial Internet” report is a perfect illustration of their preferred model of the Third Industrial Revolution. Just imagine a sped-up and Taylorized version of today’s corporate economy, with all production and distribution everywhere integrated into one seamless flow by means of the same technologies Walmart currently uses to track inventory through its “Warehouses on Wheels” wholesale and distribution system.

INTELLIGENT MACHINES New ways of connecting the word’s myriad of machines, facilities, fleets and networks with advanced sensors, controls and software applications.

ADVANCED ANALYTICS: Harnessing the power of physics-based analytics, predictive algorithms, automation and deep domain expertise in material science, electrical engineering and other key disciplines required to understand how machines and larger systems operate.

PEOPLE AT WORK: connecting people, whether they be at work in industrial facilities, offices, hospitals or on the move, at any time to support more intelligent design, operations, maintenance as well as higher quality service and safety.

In GE’s power fantasy, all the digital machine tools are heavily DRMed, the digital designs are proprietary, and “intellectual property” law enables corporations to capture the unprecedented productivity for themselves via 2000% brand-name retail markups rather than passing the savings on to the consumer. Sound familiar?

Perhaps even worse, some members of the Left whose hearts are clearly in the right place nevertheless unwittingly advocate a vision of “progressive” economics that amounts to a greenwashed version of corporate enclosure.

Jeremy Rifkin writes of “a Sustainable Era of Distributed Capitalism” (World Financial Review) in which green, decentralized technologies will provide the basis of a new 21st century industrial boom. Such technologies will lead to long-term economic growth and jobs. The Green Party takes a similarly misguided view, promoting the so-called “Green New Deal” and “Green Jobs” as an agenda for economic growth.

All these people see new technologies like wind farms, smart grids, hydrogen power, high-speed bullet trains and 3D printing as the foundation of a new long-wave cycle of investment of the kind Kondratiev wrote about, in which building a fundamentally new system of infrastructure and rebuilding industrial plant and equipment will soak up surplus investment capital for decades — the same kind of industrial boom generated by building the railroad system and the civil aviation and highway systems.

The problem is that decentralized, ephemeral technologies are by their nature deflationary. They reduce the need for investment capital and for labor. They destroy exchange-value. They do so for the same reason that the replicators in Star Trek: The Next Generation make it impossible to make a profit or earn a wage selling “tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Open-source, garage-scale CNC machine tools reduce the capital outlays for manufacturing by two orders of magnitude. A desktop computer costing a few hundred dollars can do the work of a TV station or newspaper publishing facility costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Rifkin, God bless him, says — entirely accurately — that the new technologies will enable each person to be their own manufacturer, power company and media production company. What he fails to realize is that it’s pretty hard to make large amounts of money in an economy like that.

Even in the heyday of mass production, the economy was plagued with a chronic tendency toward having more investment capital than it could find profitable outlets for, and more plant and equipment than it could run at capacity and still dispose of its full product. The recent revolution in ephemeral technologies — technologies that require one, two or more orders of magnitude fewer material inputs to produce the same goods or serve the same function — has accelerated this tendency beyond belief. According to Douglass Rushkoff (“How the Tech Boom Terminated California’s Economy,” Fast Company, July 10, 2009), the implosion of capital outlay costs required for production in the information industries rendered most of the venture capital previously invested in those industries obsolete.

The fact is, most Internet businesses don’t require venture capital. The beauty of these technologies is that they decentralize value creation. Anyone with a PC and bandwidth can program the next Twitter or Facebook plug-in, the next iPhone app, or even the next social network. While a few thousand dollars might be nice, the hundreds of millions that venture capitalists want to–need to–invest, simply aren’t required.

And micromanufacturing technology is doing the same thing to physical production.

“Economic growth” is a perverse metric in which anything that increases the total cost of inputs consumed also increases the value of economic output. It’s essentially a cost-plus accounting system in which the consumption of inputs is by definition a source of value. Corporate management uses the same accounting system, running up enormous administrative costs and sinking billions into ill-advised capital expenditures and then incorporating the bloated overhead cost into the transfer prices of goods “sold” to inventory.

By the same token, anything that reduces the total cost of labor and material inputs required to produce a given standard of living will reduce GDP by the same amount. The natural course of affairs is for the drastic reduction in labor and capital required to produce goods, and the drastic reduction in waste production )like the military-industrial complex, planned obsolescence, the car culture and guard labor), to result in an implosion of nominal GDP.

The natural effect of networked communications technology and ephemeral production technology, therefore, is to shift a major part of economic activity to self-provisioning outside the cash nexus altogether, in the informal and household sector, and to reduce the total cost of the remaining portion of our consumption needs to the point that we can pay for them by working (say) ten or fifteen hours a week.

If such people on the Left should know better, there are others backing the same greenwashed capitalist vision — the Warren Buffets and Bill Gateses of the world — who know exactly what they’re doing. The future of the world, if these people get their way, lies with Buffet’s giant corporate wind farms (linked to distant cities with a heavily subsidized “smart grid”), Microsoft’s proprietary software, and Monsanto’s proprietary biotech.

The new technologies, if left to themselves, would destroy the profits of such people. They would give the rest of us historically unprecedented abundance, independence, leisure, and control over our working lives. This is the natural effect of technologies of abundance in a freed market, when market competition socializes the benefits of innovation and efficiency.

The only way the propertied classes, the rentier classes, can prevent this is by relying on the state to step in and snatch scarcity from the jaws of abundance. The masters of our corporate economy dream of a world in which factories full of 3D printers churn out $2 widgets that sell for $200 at Walmart, farmers have to plant each year’s sterile crop with new genetically engineered seed from Monsanto, and $50 e-books wink out of existence after five readings.

Throughout history, the propertied classes  — landlords, usurers, capitalists, state bureaucrats — have used artificial property rights, artificial scarcities and monopolies of all kinds to arbitrarily increase the amount of labor required for us to support ourselves. They have compelled us — as the price of being allowed to produce to feed ourselves — to work hard enough to feed the parasitic rentiers in addition to ourselves.

The paradigmatic example of this is the landlord, who imposes his rule on a population of peasants already peacefully supporting themselves on their own land, and demands rent for “providing” them land to work (i.e., not evicting them from it). Throughout history, they have set up toll gates between us and natural opportunities, between our own labor and the satisfaction of our needs, so as to collect tribute for the “service” of not preventing productive labor.

And that is what they want to do with the new economy of abundance.

Fortunately, as much as they desire this, this time around they can’t have it. The legal monopolies their artificial scarcity rents depend on are becoming unenforceable. What Wikipedia did to Britannica, what the file-sharing movement is doing to the record industry, open-source micromanufacturing will do to corporate industry.

No doubt corporate interests will make a valiant effort to lock their digital design files with “unbreakable” DRM, Congress will mandate the production of 3D printers only with massive built-in safeguards against patent infringement, and circumventing DRM will be massively criminalized. That’s what the record and movie industries already tried to do, with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and subsequent legislation, to stop file-sharing. That worked out great, didn’t it?

The problem is, prohibiting the manufacture of “unauthorized” 3D printer and other machine tool models is a lot easier said and done, when the technology is self-replicating. What happens when a garage factory can churn out new tabletop machine tools, and the people working in it don’t care what the law is? And there’s 50,000 such garage factories, scattered through every neighborhood in America? On top of that, it’s a 100% certainty that CAD/CAM files will be available on torrent download sites, stripped of DRM, on the same day they’re created. The law, as the saying goes, is an ass — and it makes an even bigger ass of itself every day.

The new technologies of abundance, by their very nature, thwart the enforcement of state-imposed artificial scarcity. The present corporate-state order, exhausted and bankrupted from the sheer cost of subsidizing inefficiency and protecting it against competition against the superiority of free cooperative labor, has reached the breaking point. It is a dying system.

The Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

US President Barack Obama was a civil rights attorney and a “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago on constitutional law. He campaigned on an anti-surveillance state platform.
Now he spends his days drone-striking children and operating secret prisons all over the world, deporting a million immigrant workers, persecuting whistleblowers at home and supporting the corporatocracy with bailouts and privileges. In recent weeks, he’s also spent a great deal of time pleading ignorance about major privacy scandals.

“I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.” — Barack Obama, March 30th, 2007

The politically biased IRS tax targeting scandal came to light recently, but before we’ve had a chance to reread 1984, another, more devastating report has emerged.  The National Security Administration has been collecting everyone’s data for years, and doing so through unrestrained backdoor access to at least nine of the largest Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Skype.

The Washington Post and the Guardian broke the story:

“Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005.”

The NSA calls this the PRISM program. Obama knew about PRISM — the NSA brags that most of his Daily Brief reports are generated with PRISM data.

These are not “oops, my neighbor saw me naked” privacy breaches, this is a predatory state tearing through every communication you make and storing it in databases like the new $2 billion National Security Administration Data Center facility in Utah. All it does is store American data, 24/7. This Orwellian monitoring began years ago, in tandem with the evolution of information technologies, with such secret spy programs as Carnivore and Echelon.

The train of civil rights abridgments which picked up steam under Bush just keeps rollin’ with the Obama administration at the throttle. Add this to the list alongside the persecution of political activists like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Occupy protesters  and most recently anarchist legal advocate Gerald Koch.

If you have nothing to hide, what’s the problem with a surveillance state, right?  Imagine if the British crown had this level of intelligence gathering capacity during the American Revolution, or if the government had this Panopticon technology during the early 20th century Labor Movement, or if the FBI had this much firepower during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (indeed, the FBI already assassinated Fred Hampton and tracked and subsequently played a major role in the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr.).

Just because you don’t think the state will persecute you today, remember that Japanese Internment wasn’t so long ago, or that according to Noam Chomsky “The most civilised part of the world, with the highest cultural standards 70 years ago was Germany. No more need be said.” Just because the government appears less psychopathic or genocidal today does not mean it will be this way tomorrow. Even still, you might get thrown in jail for recreational drug use, political speech or tax “evasion” more easily than ever before.

What is to be done?

“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” — Edward Abbey

Whittle away state power. Use encryption methods when transmitting sensitive information. Withdraw support for the system in whatever way you can — and reinforce your own autonomy with alternative currency and the decentralized stability of your community with local forms of production and consumption.

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Gary Chartier’s “The Conscience of an Anarchist”.

$12.00 for the first copy. $9.00 for every additional copy.

Anarchy happens when people organize their lives peacefully and voluntarily — without the aggressive violence of the state. This simple but powerful book explains why the state is illegitimate, unnecessary, and dangerous, and what we can do to begin achieving real freedom.

As an idea, anarchism is the conviction that people can and should cooperate peacefully and voluntarily. As a political program, it’s the project of doing without the state. Because governments are rooted in the use of force, anarchists maintain that no actual government is legitimate and that, in any case, we would be better off without the state. Anarchists reject any kind of authority acquired or maintained through aggressive violence or fraud. More broadly, many anarchists — including me — maintain that the same ideals that motivate their opposition to aggressive violence prompt them to challenge social institutions and cultural patterns that subordinate, exclude, or impoverish people, stultify their lives, or force them into soul-numbing conformity. People can and should organize their interactions on their own terms. We can defend ourselves against aggression; we don’t need the state to force us not to kill each other. And we don’t need the state’s help to coordinate our interactions. Working together, we can craft meaningful lives and livable communities. [. . .]

In this book, I want to help loosen the hold the state still has on people’s imaginations. I want to point out that, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale, the emperor really has nothing on at all. I want to encourage you to shift your point of view–to come to see the state as a group of people no different from your neighbors, with no more inherent authority, no greater right to tell you what to do. [. . .] I want to undermine the myth that the state represents us in any meaningful sense, that when politicians and generals act, they’re acting on our behalf. [. . .]

This isn’t a primer, a narrowly academic work in philosophy or economics or political science or history, though it’s informed by the results of inquiry in all those disciplines. It’s a manifesto, a call to action: not to more violence that’s just the mirror image of the state’s own destructiveness, but to the creative work of envisioning a new kind of society and beginning to construct it here and now, right under the noses of the people in power.

Gary Chartier is Associate Dean of the School of Business and Associate Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University. He is the author of Economic Justice and Natural Law and The Analogy of Love. His byline has appeared in journals including Legal Theory, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence.

CONTENTS

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Open Your Mind to Anarchy
• 1. The Dissent of the Governed
• 2. Fish, Bicycles, and the State
• 3. The State, Big Business, and Economic Privilege
• 4. The State, War, and Empire
• 5. The State and Personal Freedom
• 6. Where Do We Go From Here?
• Resources: Stuff to Check Out on the Way to the Future

Let me throw out two predictions so obvious that I shouldn’t even have to commit them to print:

1) Within days, if not hours, of  Google Glass‘s release to the general public, hackers will “jailbreak” the hardware, allowing it to run any “Glassware” users desire and can create or find online; and

2) An independent developer community will emerge to create those applications , whether Google wants them to or not.

As a matter of fact, I’ll double down and assert that both of these predictions are already in the process of coming true, even while Glass is in its “Explorer Program” phase, and that Google’s announcements  this week that it won’t allow facial recognition apps or “adult” fare for Glass will only add fuel to the fire.

Porn, of course, is any device’s “killer app.” Enough people want it, and want it badly enough, that they’ll either have it from their devices or get OTHER devices to have it from. Above and beyond the usual — pedestrian porting of dirty pictures to Glass format, just like they were ported from print magazine to computer monitor way back when — I can’t imagine that more than a year will go by before there’s Glassware to predictively, imaginatively, visually undress whomever the user happens to be looking at on the street, on the dance floor, etc.

We don’t have to like it. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not, and whether Google likes it or not.

Similarly, facial recognition is the Glass-specific “killer app.” It’s the one thing that the device is so obviously useful for and that people will so obviously want to use it for that there’s just not going to be any stopping it.

The most benign and universal applications are obvious:

You meet someone, you get his or her name, you say “OK, Glass, this is John Doe.” You’ll never have to worry about forgetting a name again.

You want to introduce two people, but can’t be present. “OK, Glass, send John Doe’s facial profile to Joe Smith, with a message to meet him in the food court at noon.”

And so on, and so forth.

Are there more sinister uses for facial recognition? Of course there are. But facial recognition is coming.

Again: We don’t have to like it. It’s coming whether we like it or not, and whether Google likes it or not.

If by some chance Google is able to effectively darken Glass such that it can’t fulfill users’ desire for porn and facial recognition, then something else will come along with clearer vision. You’ll be able to pick up a Google Glass unit at Dollar Tree, like one of those little headphone-radio sets that people buy because they’re going to the beach and don’t want to risk getting sand in their REAL personal stereos.

The press is filled with nods — from Google itself, and from opponents of facial recognition tech — to something called “privacy.”

But privacy, as David Brin has been pointing out for years, just ain’t what it used to be. Absent complete technological collapse, it’s never going to be what it used to be again. If you show yourself in public, the assistive tech to identify you is going to be available. Period. And soon.

Instead of obsessing over the steady advancement of technology and attempting to thwart its potential at the development level, we should direct our efforts toward abolishing institutions which necessarily and murderously abuse that potential.

Technology is getting cheaper and cheaper, and more and more useful.

Political government is getting more and more expensive and less and less tolerable.

One of the two needs to go. And it’s pretty clear which one.

There are a growing number of complex wicked problems facing natural ecosystems and human civilization. In recent years we have seen that social movements can advance and uphold public welfare, seek justice and progress society. Throughout history, people’s movements have challenged institutions and power structures. Today these movements are beginning to address our most urgent need – the environmental crisis. No longer can we as a species afford to allow those with authority to utilize resources to serve self interests. The growing importance and success of worldwide collaboration and social partnerships indicates the need for an informed and engaged citizenry to change our institutions.

Being that natural resources are a public good and that said resources are neither rivalrous nor excludable, our government institutions perhaps hold the most authority in regard to resource management (Armsworth 2010). This power requires of government, then, to stimulate the supply of these resources in a sustainable manner and to preserve the natural world while providing for the societal needs of today and future generations. If only this were the case.

With a wide range of astounding resources, all tiers of government have become involved in environmental policy (Armsworth 2010). Institutions at the multilateral (World bank, IMF, UN, EU, etc), national (federal government), regional (state governments) and local (city council, municipalities) all work to manage natural resource issues. Using the United States as an example, all branches of government are also involved in Natural Resource Management (NRM). The legislative branch creates resource policy and authors laws that dictate the use of our resources (Armsworth 2010). The judicial branch interprets and decides how these laws are to be applied. Finally, the executive branch with its multiple environmental agencies practice and enforce resource policy (Armsworth 2010). With this system of checks and balances (centralized authority) what could go wrong? Just a few examples of major federal reforms enacted because of social movements are the Clean Water Act (CWA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), Clean Air Act (CAA) and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) – among many others. These mandated policies directly effect NRM. The government also purchases and manages public lands. The federal government owns 650 million acres of land in the United States. This is approximately 25% of the countries total landscape (Armsworth 2010). This has major implications for NRM – as evident by the case of Tim DeChristopher and the auctioning off of public lands to oil and gas companies.

Government policies do not always garner desirable results and in fact, can be absolutely devastating, especially in our globalized neo-liberal world. For an example: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Bush administration in 2002 reclassified mining waste as permissible fill material under section 404 of the CWA. Because of this redefinition, the process of valley fill has been deemed legal and dangerous pollutants such as arsenic, sulfates and selenium found in mine waste have made their way into the streams, tributaries and wetlands of Appalachia. This change in the interpretation of the law has allowed the massive acceleration of mountaintop removal permits and allows mining waste to be dumped into Appalachian waters. Aside from the environmental concerns, this has devastated the Appalachian rural poor by creating mono-economies. This captured market is controlled by the coal industry, as poverty and mortality rises in Appalachia, billions of dollars are extracted from these communities to line the pockets of special interests. The relationship between our government and corporate special interest has a history of exploiting innocent people and our natural resources. Peoples movements across the country have been evoked due to this relationship.

This brings me to the rise of the civic sector. In recent decades, the environmental movement has strengthened greatly by the formation of both large and small non-profit organizations (Armsworth, 2010). The non-profit movement has been very efficient in promoting the sustainable use of resources at the local level. Their subsistence is imperative to the changing world of resource management. As they can become well-known and respected in their communities, non-profits can implement conservation strategies more effective than the government (and allow them to force government to take sustainable positions).

The non-profit sector has gained considerable power in the past few years as more organizations develop. Environmentally oriented non-profits are growing at a larger rate than any other civic sector initiative (Armsworth, 2010). These organizations have effected many aspects of NRM as there are multiple organizations, with diverse management objectives. The civic sector is composed of large organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, whom operate both internationally and nationally, to local organizations such as the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

The growing importance of the civic sector cannot be ignored. Bill Bradley, a former US Senator (D-NJ), has repeatedly stressed this importance. In a 1998 article to the National Civic Review, Bradley states: “Never has a real vision come out of Washington and never has a real vision stemmed from just one of our political parties.” Bradley stresses that the civic sector is more effective in defining a common purpose with their local community members and stakeholders. This allows non-profits to negotiate consensus on, and agreements to, resource management issues at the local level. Non-profit organizations are most effective because of their independence from the state controlled market and with the freedom to build consensus (Bradley, 1998). This has allowed non-profits to work for the benefit of the environment and society without requesting or expecting anything in return. The ethos of these organizations have greatly prompted public trust in their approach to NRM and has made them an effective force in the environmental movement (Bradley, 1998).

The rise of non-profits are also very important politically. These organizations, especially at the local level, are composed of everyday citizens who are concerned about the well-being of their cultural and natural heritage. This allows for folks at the local level to organize and discuss NRM in terms of environmental sustainability, public health and the concept of environmental justice. Many non-profits are products of, and continue to build, people’s movements against destructive resource agendas while advocating smart management initiatives to protect our environment, land and people.

Though there have been many accomplishments achieved by the civic sector, these institutions too must be closely monitored by society. New reports suggest that a number of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) are, in fact, not actually NGO’s (Schott, 2010). Instead, these organizations have been classified as GONGO’s or rather Government Organized Non-Governmental Organizations. These particular groups are not only funded by, but fully staffed and supported by government (Schott, 2010). What is most striking about GONGO’s is that being government operations, they do not seek to bring change to the system, but to control and manage change (Schott, 2010).

“Market” institutions also heavily influence NRM. The current market system includes small businesses and large multinational companies that have corporate policies that directly affect our resources. Some of these institutions consider sustainable resource management a social responsibility; most enforce policies that are detrimental to our land, water and air.

Though investment in sustainable NRM is on the rise, the current (captured) market and economic globalization have had detrimental impacts to natural resources around the planet. Wendell Berry (author, cultural and economic critic, and farmer) often explains how the growth of factory farms and agribusiness have taken jobs away from local farmers. As industrialization continually forces locally owned farms and business’s closed it removes the ability for communities to produce their own food and other necessities (Berry 2002). In terms of natural resources, Berry explains that rules imposed on farmland by mega-corporations has resulted in soil loss, genetic impoverishment of our crops and contamination of our groundwater. In many cases, industrial economies impoverish communities they move into (Berry 2002). As natural resources in an area are exploited by large industries, the local uniqueness and cultural heritage of the area simultaneously diminishes (Berry, 2002). This is certainly a theft of liberty! For a current example, just recently a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in favor of the corporate giant Monsanto over a local farmer in a patent case. This is yet another example of state privilege granted to a corporate behemoth – and also an example of the state enacted privilege of the four monopolies.

Perhaps in the United States, our greatest benefit is that we live in a fairly open society where folks can (theoretically) sway opinion in their institutions. So we are told. The public’s power to change policy would be very empowering because this responsibility calls for everyday people to become an active force in the advancement of their communities. Although people benefit from having the power to engage their institutions, throughout history, society has been negatively impacted by the power its institutions wield.

A great trouble today is that the public occasionally gets to vote at the ballot box but is forced to vote with their dollar everyday. Government and “market” institutions respond to lifestyle choices – though they hold a monopoly over the choices we can make. People who cannot afford to be environmental are forced to buy products from corporations, protected by laws enacted by the government, that continually oppress the poor. People ignorant to natural resource and societal issues, voting with their dollars, too encourage our institutions to develop policies and practices that further oppression. Our current economic system is responsible for great gaps in wealth and power throughout society. Furthermore, influenced by special interests, government often uses its power to enact and enforce laws that benefit those who possess power and wealth. In order to break this cycle, society must continue to question the myth of a “national interests” and actually existing (state) capitalism/corporatism.

A reconstruction of both public and private institutions is necessary to allow future generations to inherit a world of social responsibility and environmental sustainability. History is full of people’s movements achieving great victories against institutional oppression. Social movements must progress society towards an economic system that does not seek to achieve maximum profit; instead, economic systems should be built by the public, for the public good. Democratic intervention in the economy will allow people to influence the means of production, thus advancing our civil liberties and awarding individual freedom from state/industrial tyranny. Institutions need to use natural resources rationally and equalize their distribution to benefit all people. In a truly free market system, said markets will lead to perfect liberty and a more egalitarian society. If a movement truly engages the market, and frees itself from state intervention and corporate privilege a people’s movement would attain a social, economic, and environmental world that is responsible and rooted in justice.

The most important change to be made is to no longer allow corporate and government imperialism to wage war for the attainment of natural resources such as coal, oil or water. There is no greater conflict between people and their institutions than that of war because war ends lives. Utilizing natural resources to build weapons of war for the conquest of more natural resources can no longer be accepted. War as means of resolving conflict must be eliminated because technology today allows for the indiscriminate killing of mass amounts of innocent people. No longer can a “just” war be waged because human beings cannot protect themselves from military’s in possession of great machines and weapons of war. The only absolute way to solve this problem is to transition from, and then abolish the use of fossil fuels as a means of energy production. The United States military is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels in the world. Fossil fuels are also the governments excuse to secure energy resources around the planet. Endless war consumes natural resources and utilizes them in ways that can only destroy and never create.

People need to be continually suspicious of authority and abolish unjust policies. This will create a world in which individuals are free from the ill effects of government and corporate power. In his essay, “The Long Legged House,” Wendell Berry makes the argument for citizens to confront unjust institutions on the grounds of morality, Berry writes:

Since there is no government of which the concern or the discipline is primarily the health of either households or of the Earth, since it is in the nature of any state to be concerned first of all with its own preservation and only second with the cost, the dependable, clear response to man’s moral circumstance is not that of law, but that of conscience. The Highest moral behavior is not obedience to law, but obedience to the informed conscience even in spite of law. (1965)

Berry argues that social movements have the power to create institutions whose primary concern is the health of people and the Earth. This world is, of course, not immediately achievable but the goal can be obtained over time. Global justice should not be viewed as an unworkable utopian view, but rather a philosophical movement of liberation to be achieved in the long-term.

In addressing the environmental crisis, natural/social scientists will play a vital role in progressing social movements forward. This brings up ethical considerations in the sciences that will be the topic of another blog post, but there are scientists (most recent example is Dr. James Hansen) that are becoming outspoken about data, and are treating conservation as a crisis oriented and mission dominated science. This is important because surveys suggest that the general public places great trust in science and further believes that science can solve societal problems while improving the quality of life. Though the public holds scientific information in high regards there is great social apathy, which has led to political gridlock, in the face of problems that affect the survival of human beings as a very species (Ostermier, 2010). The lack of public concern over environmental issues in the age of climate change suggests a great dis-communication between the scientific community and the public (Ostermier, 2010). This is again, a topic for another time, but I would suggest that the media treats the Vulgar Libertarian groups such as ALEC and Cato (along with other front groups) and scientists equally – even though there is overwhelming consensus about anthropogenic climate change in the scientific community. The corporate media is after all, all about debate and entertainment. Scientists must be able to address public misunderstanding or denial of these issues in a way that society begins to recognize the complexity of the problems that must be solved.

The role of communication for new professionals is of utmost importance as humanity will soon have to deal with effects of climate change in our everyday lives. Climate change will impact every facet of global society from NRM to immigration to health care. Incoming professionals need to adopt a communication strategy that pertains to, and inspires, the human spirit such as the message within the closing paragraphs of Arthur C. Clarkes, Profiles of the Future:

One thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glorious by such brilliant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius, and, on a more humble scale, our own Sun. Not until all these have flamed through their incandescent youth, in a few fleeting billions of years, will the real history of the universe begin.

It will be a history illuminated only by the reds and infrareds of dully glowing stars that would be almost invisible to our eyes; yet the sombre hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of colour and beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. They will know that before them lie, not the millions of years in which we measure eras of geology, nor the billions of years which span the past lives of the stars, but years to be counted literally in the trillions.

They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge. They will be like gods, because no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command. But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of creation; for we knew the universe when it was young. (1963)

What this passage describes in such a brilliant way is that as a species, one day, humankind will cease to exist. Whether we are awarded the opportunity to evolve into a higher species, or if a cataclysmic event forces our extinction, in time, humanity will be nothing but a memory of space and time. In the great history of an infinite universe and other worlds unknown, perhaps incomprehensible by humankind, we have but one bright and shining moment in time to achieve something great together. The triumphant nature of the human spirit must be inspired and the strategies of all resource organizers, especially new generations, must work to build social movements that progress human civilization towards sustainability.

The current environmental movement is a vast, worldwide movement that deals with complex social and economic issues on a seemingly inconceivable scale. The environmental movement also holds its place in human history as the largest and arguably most important political issue ever undertaken by our species (Roszak, 1995). Beyond the human race, the movement holds great implications for all flora and fauna, mountains, rivers, and all of Earths most vast and wondrous landscapes (Roszak, 1995). As the human race alters and utilizes natural resources we claim a great responsibility in the consequences our anthropogenic use imposes on our land, water, air and biosphere. Human dimensions will continue to grow in importance as we extract, utilize and manage Earth’s natural resources. John F. Kennedy once said: “We all inherit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures and we are all mortal.” From issues as small as reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park to the complex issues such as climate change that threaten the very existence of our civilization, as a species we must meet these challenges. As a species we must engage and fundamentally change all of our institutions, ensure they move beyond private interests and work together to achieve global peace and sustainability. It is time for humanity to achieve greatness.

References:

Ostermier, David. Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management. FWF 412 Lecture Notes. 2010.

Roszak, Theodore. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Sierra Club. San Francisco, California. 1995.

Bettoli, Phil. Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management. Guest Lecture. 2010.

Littmann, Mark. Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management. Guest Lecture, 2010.

Armsworth, Paul. Conservation Biology. EEB 484 Lecture Notes. 2010.

Berry, Wendell. The Long Legged House. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. United States of America. 1965.

Berry, Wendell. The Agrarian Standard. Orion Magazine. 2002.

BeeHive Collective. The True Cost of Coal. No Copyright.

Nibset, Matthew C. Ecologist Says Scientists Need to Re-Evaluate Approach to Communication. http://bigthink.com/ideas/22870. 2010

Rolle, Su. Measure of Progress for Collaboration: Case Study of the Applegate Partnership. United States Forest Service. Ashland, OR 2002.

Robbins, Jim. “Anger Over Culling of Yellowstone’s Bison.” The New York Times. New York, 2008.

Smith, Josh. Personal Interview. The Conasauga River Alliance. 2010.

Clark, Arthur C. Profiles of the Future. Harper & Row, New York. 1963.

Groffman, Peter et al. Restarting the Conversation: Challenges at the Interface of Ecology and Society. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2010.

Wheeler, William Bruce and McDonald, Michael J. TVA and the Tellico Dam: Bureaucratic Crisis in Post Industrial America.

Schott, Ben. GONGO: Government Organized Non-Governmental Organization. http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/gongo/ . 2010

 Bradly, Bill. The Importance of the Civic Sector. National Civic Review, vol. 87, no. 2, 1998

O artigo a seguir foi escrito por Kevin Carson e publicado em seu blog Blog Mutualista: Anticapitalismo de Livre Mercado, 29 de março de 2011. Thaddeus Russell. Uma História Renegada dos Estados Unidos (New York: Free Press, 2010).

Diferentemente de muitas histórias dissidentes dos Estados Unidos, que tentam retratar minorias raciais, subculturas sexuais e classes subordinadas como “vítimas dignas” em termos das convenções e costumes sociais da classe média branca, Thaddeus Russell exalta o tipo de gente acerca da qual seus pais podem ter acautelado você: as pessoas desprezíveis, sem mérito, não respeitáveis. Você sabe, as pessoas “malsucedidas” — como também você seria se não guardasse distância delas.

Contra a austera “virtude republicana” dos “Pais Fundadores” tal como usualmente a encontramos nas aulas de história estadunidense da escola pública, Russell justapõe as populações urbanas das colônias e as tabernas que as atendiam. Aqueles puritanos deuses de mármore eram obcecados com “licenciosidade,” “luxúria” e “degenerescência dos costumes” por bom motivo, se você olhar as tabernas que se postavam em praticamente toda esquina nas pequenas cidades da América Britânica. Ali você podia ver a plebe fazendo o que lhe aprazia e bebendo praticamente a qualquer hora, ver pretos e branco dançando (e “dançando”) juntos, e ouvir o palavrão sendo gritado com franca desinibição. Em grande medida as leis suntuárias do primeiro período republicano, com seu objetivo de estimular simplicidade e autocontrole espartanos, foram um experimento de engenharia social de “Pais Fundadores” que viam a população de seu país com horror.

Russell trabalha a partir de aparato erudito considerável o tópico da artificialidade da brancura, e foca em vívido detalhe o comportamento de minorias étnicas europeias tais como irlandeses e italianos antes de elas serem oficialmente incorporadas à raça branca.

Ele prefere a vítima “indigna” à “digna”: escravos libertos que não quiseram internalizar a ética de trabalho dos brancos anglo-saxões protestantes, gays que não quiseram criar imagens invertidas respeitáveis da família nuclear heterossexual monógama, e pretos que não quiseram marchar quieta e decorosamente vestindo ternos com o Dr. King.

Russell deixa claro que não gostaria de viver numa sociedade composta principalmente pelo tipo de gente que ele exalta — óbvia espécie de Cozinha do Inferno, como ele a vê: “Ninguém estaria em segurança nas ruas, o caos reinaria, e o lixo nunca seria coletado.” Nada obstante, as Senhoras  Grundy e Comstock, as Carrie Nation, são “inimigas da liberdade.” Se não tivesse havido resistência ao instinto delas de baixar normas e “reformar,” seríamos hoje tão miseráveis quanto Huck Finn na sala de recepção da Viúva Douglas. Até pessoas que se veem como “convencionais” e “de classe média” fruem de um espectro de formas de liberdade — formas de liberdade que são parte do que hoje consideram estilo de vida normal — que nunca teria existido sem constante luta dos “sem mérito” contra a respeitabilidade.

Em todo o livro, Russell expressa desagrado com a engenharia social e o paternalismo de todos os tipos. Isso fica bem claro na descrição dele do herói do Novo Pacto Rex Tugwell. Tugwell imergiu totalmente na cultura gerencista da Era Progressista, eugenia e tudo o mais, e perdeu-se em utopias totalitárias tais como as de H.G. Wells. Ele via o regime de planejamento instituído durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial como oportunidade de transformar os Estados Unidos numa utopia de “um engenheiro social.” Seu sonho no governo de FDR era substituir “a mão morta da empresa competitiva” pelo planejamento centralizado, e transformar os Estados Unidos numa grande fábrica.

Embora Russell seja escritor de sensibilidade amplamente libertária, não fui capaz de enquadrá-lo em qualquer orientação libertária estereotipada de direita ou esquerda.

Ele expressa atitude geralmente amigável em relação ao mercado (“… a economia de mercado sempre foi amiga de renegados e inimiga de guardiães da moral.”). E ataca críticas da esquerda à “cultura do consumo” (como as em Capitães da Consciência de Stuart Ewen) usando tipo de linguagem que os leitores deste blog normalmente associariam a defesas direitistas do capitalismo corporativo em Mises.org. Sem embargo, ele implicitamente trata “mercado” como equivalente ao “nexo de caixa” (por exemplo, ele contrasta “o mercado” com o estilo de vida de subsistência de produtores rurais isolados que viviam mediante autoaprovisionamento e escambo).

Por outro lado Russell discute a cultura do local de trabalho e a disciplina do trabalho em termos que são muito decididamente não direitistas, tornando abundantemente claro que a análise libertária dele não é a que apareceria em Mises.org. Ele descreve, no tipo de linguagem amigável que normalmente associaríamos a E.P. Thompson, a cultura da “santa segunda-feira” que os empregadores pagadores de salário consideravam tão reprovável no século dezoito. E trata tentativas dos Republicanos Radicais da Era da Reconstrução para superar a “indolência” e impor uma cultura de “trabalho paciente e honesto” a escravos libertos como moralmente equivalente às leis suntuárias dos puritanos da era Revolucionária. Tomemos, por exemplo, esta exortação do Conselhos Singelos para Homens Libertos, de Clinton Fisk:

Pois bem, trabalho livre não implica que você possa fazer seu trabalho irregular, descuidada, e desonestamente; e que seu empregador tenha de tolerar isso, sem dizer nada a respeito. Quando você era escravo, talvez possa ter sido hábito seu fazer o mínimo possível que o livrasse do açoite. Agora, porém, que você é livre, deverá ser acionado por princípio mais nobre do que o medo.

O tratamento dado por Russell à propaganda do Bureau dos Homens Libertados é bastante similar a – digamos – o tratamento de E. P. Thompson do wesleyanismo em A Formação da Classe Trabalhadora Inglesa. E os escritores do Bureau dos Homens Livres para os quais ele reserva tal zombaria soam quase exatamente como comentadores puritanos queixando-se do grande número de dias santos comemorados pelos camponeses ingleses, ou metodistas queixando-se da “santa segunda-feria.”

Talvez mais sugestivo, ele iguala tais apelos, em linguagem muito comparável à de seus ataques às críticas da esquerda cultural à “cultura do consumo,” como tentativa de impor sensibilidadades burguesas a pessoas que prezam lazer e autonomia. Argumenta, em resposta a tais tentativas de inculcar a “ética do trabalho,” nada haver de “natural numa vida dedicada ao trabalho.” E exalta a resistência dos Homens Libertados a tentativas de imposição de disciplina do trabalho. Por exemplo, um nortista na gerência de uma plantação confiscada, tentando impor ideias nortistas de disciplina do trabalho a meeiros pretos, foi frustrado pela demanda deles de — como faziam no tempo do antigo dono — “trazer suas armas de fogo ao campo e parar de trabalhar sempre que alguma caça passasse por ali.” Russell também exalta tanto greves organizadas quanto suspensões do trabalho — simplesmente tirarem um feriado quanto considerassem necessário para sua saúde — contra empregadores, por homens libertos em todo o Sul. Da mesma forma as greves-relâmpago durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, que eram feitas geralmente em resposta a ordens de aceleração do ritmo de trabalho e de horas adicionais.

O mesmo é verdade do tratamento dado por ele à resistência da classe trabalhadora branca à imposição de disciplina de trabalho nos primeiros dias do sistema de fábricas. “Quando as primeiras fábricas foram construídas, com suas regras de trabalho regimentadas e longas horas, muitas das pessoas brancas nelas empregadas revelaram-se trabalhadoras horríveis.” Russell escreve, em tom claramente favorável, acerca das altas taxas de rotatividade de trabalhadores despedidos por atos de pequena desobediência na indústria têxtil da Nova Inglaterra, e de tentativas de instituição de uma versão americanizada da “santa segunda-feira.”

É claro, também, que Russell não é defensor direitista das prerrogativas dos empregadores (“afinal de contas, você escolheu trabalhar lá!”) do tipo que você vê tipicamente nos círculos “libertários” majoritários, do fato de ele tomar o lado dos Homens Libertados em tentativas de empregadores de ordenarem a regularização de seus casamentos enquanto escravos como condição de emprego.

Acredito que Russell, em rejeitando a análise esquerdista da “cultura de consumo,” joga fora o bebê com a água do banho. Ao enfatizar as áreas em comum dos críticos da esquerda com o paternalismo e o pudicismo burguês, negligencia a a extensão em que a ascensão da “cultura do consumo” foi ela própria parte de uma estratégia deliberada de imposição da disciplina do trabalho pelas elites capitalistas corporativas. Ideólogos capitalistas do período pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial, em sua exaltação dos efeitos da cultura de consumo sobre a classe trabalhadora, usaram linguagem muito parecida com suas contrapartes de dois séculos antes que propuseram os Cercos como antídoto para a “santa segunda-feira.” É irônico que Russell, que exalta a escolha, pelos trabalhadores estadunidenses, do lazer acima do trabalho e ataca críticos de esquerda do consumo em massa por seu alegado “elitismo,” ignore a relação entre as duas questões. As elites corporativas daquele período deliberada e explicitamente promoveram uma economia de consumo em massa como forma de impedir a escolha do lazer em vez do trabalho, e empreenderam um projeto de engenharia cultural para igualar o consumo de bens comprados em lojas a “americanismo” e “respeitabilidade” e para igualar o feito em casa a “antiquado” e “rural.”

Embora Russell repetidamente aluda a argumentos de obras tais como Capitães da Consciência, segundo os quais a cultura do consumo foi imposta a partir de cima, ele nunca trata qualquer das evidências reais neles apresentados. A quantidade de papel de comentário, pelas classes proprietárias, expressando seu desejo de impor a disciplina do trabalho por meio de “fáceis pagamentos mensais,” é tão volumosa quanto a dos defensores do Cerco dois séculos antes.

Embora Ewen et al sem dúvida tenham tido seu lado puritano, também tinham muito a dizer acerca de consumismo como instrumento de controle social exatamente do tipo que Russell em geral acha tão abominável. Em focando tão fortemente um aspecto da obra deles a expensas do outro, acredito que ele presta-lhe desserviço e vai longe demais, caindo no mesmo falso populismo unilateral dos direitistas de Mises.org. Os críticos de esquerda da cultura de consumo têm pelo menos tanto em comum com Russell quanto têm com os puritanos dos anos 1770.

Em celebrando os aspectos liberatórios da revolução do consumo, acredito que Russell negligencia a extensão em que a cultura do consumo solapou a autonomia. Especificamente, ele negligencia a extensão em que a proporção de trabalho assalariado para dada unidade de consumo é ela própria matéria contingente. Na medida em que altos custos de marketing e distribuição, diferenciação de nome de marca, e obsolescência planejada refletem um modelo de negócios rumo ao qual o estado artificialmente viciou a balança, eles inflam artificialmente os custos de dada qualidade de vida. Consideremos, por exemplo, os custos quadruplicados de nome de marca de bens têxteis, roupas e acessórios comprados em loja, comparados com bens no atacado genéricos praticamente idênticos, como descrito por Ralph Borsodi em A Era da Distribuição.

Ao descartar críticas da cultura de consumo por seu alegado puritanismo ou elitismo, Russell negligencia a extensão em que o aumento da dependência do trabalho assalariado para maior volume de consumo pródigo também reduz o poder de barganha e aumenta a precariedade da vida da classe trabalhadora. É muito mais difícil suspender espontaneamente o trabalho para gozar a santa segunda-feira quando você está à distância de um cheque de pagamento de ser despejado ou de o homem do reempossamento levar seu carro ou máquina de lavar.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson 31 de março de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Ich setze als bekannt voraus, dass kein Politiker mehr als Hohn und Spott verdient, dass sie samt und sonders ein System der Macht und Privilegien repräsentieren, das auf legalisierten Raub in einem gigantischen Maße hinausläuft. Nun, nachdem das gesagt wurde, mögen Republikaner – für ihre verblüffende Fähigkeit, sich von der Realität loszulösen – den Preis für die „Lebensfremdesten“ halten.

In einem abscheulich lächerlichen Washington Post Kommentar („Mitt Romney: A good man. The right fight.“ 28. November) legt Stuart Stevens, der Mann, der als Hauptstratege in Romneys Kampagne gearbeitet hat, dar, dass sein Kandidat „die Mehrheit jeder ökonomischen Gruppe, bis auf derer, die weniger als 50.000$ im Jahr als Haushaltseinkommen aufweisen können, erlangt hat.“

Angesichts dieser Tatsache argumentiert Stevens, dass „jede Partei, die die Mehrheit der Mittelschicht erobert, etwas richtig machen muss.“ Stevens Behauptung gibt eine andere, einige Monate zurückliegende, sinnlose Bemerkung von Romneys Seite wieder, Romneys 47-Prozent-Ausrutscher, dass die politischen Lektionen den Republikanern offensichtlich abhandengekommen sind (nicht, dass dies schlecht wäre).

Die Kampagne, durch ihren Kandidaten, behauptete, dass arme Menschen Demokraten wählen, da sie von der Regierung abhängig sind. Nun deutet Stevens an, dass Menschen, die hart arbeiten und gutes Geld machen, republikanische Politik unterstützen. Die Ironie liegt natürlich dabei, was Marktanarchisten kontinuierlich verdeutlichen angesichts solch idiotischer Verunglimpfungen der Erwerbsarmut – dass die republikanische (und übrigens auch die demokratische) Version des „freien Unternehmertums“ ein aufgeschichteter Stapel ist, der systematisch Arbeit zugunsten von Kapital benachteiligt.

Staatliche Privilegien umgeben Big Business, schützen es vor Wettbewerb und unterwerfen Arbeiter der Gnade von Bossen, die ihnen Pennies des produzierten Dollars als Löhne zahlen können. Die Reichen können sich zurücklegen und die Spitze der harten Arbeit der Angestellten abschöpfen, da Landzuteilungen, Subventionen (direkte oder indirekte), Regierungsaufträge und teure regulatorische Auflagen gemischt die ökonomischen Interessen der Elite vor Wettbewerb schützen.

Die anzügliche Prunksucht, dass Republikaner gut ohne die Stimmen dieser ungewaschenen Massen unter 50.000 zurechtkommen, ist verblüffend anzuschauen. Stevens würde davon profitieren, das ökonomische System „republikanischer Ideale“ aufrecht zu erhalten gegen einen legitimen – und momentan natürlich rein hypothetischen – befreiten Markt, besonders wenn der Median persönlicher Einkommen in diesem Land bei ca. 40.000$ liegt.

Sollte er dies tun, würde es wohl klar werden (obwohl es Grund gibt, dies zu bezweifeln), dass „Reiche lange genug das Ziel von Wohltätigkeit gewesen sind“, wie es Ezra Heywood formulierte. Marktanarchisten würden die Privilegien der Mächtigen und einflussreichen Kräfte in der Wirtschaft beseitigen und somit das kapitalistische System zugunsten wirklich freien Wettbewerbs und freier Märkte auflösen. Freiwilliger Tausch und Kooperation, losgelöst von den Fesseln eines einst von Anarchisten so bezeichneten „Klassenrechts“, sind nicht nur unschädlich, sondern ein großer Segen.

Republikaner, Demokraten und der Rest der verfassungsgebenden Teile des politischen Systems dienen solchen missbräuchlichen Privilegien – das ist ihre Aufgabe auf einer wesentlichen Ebene. Statt ihnen Ehrerbietung oder selbst Beachtung zu widmen, sollten wir uns daran machen, die Gesellschaft zu schaffen, in der wir auf einer gegenseitigen Basis leben wollen, mit unseren Freunden und Nachbarn, praktische Politik für eine Weile verwerfend, oder sogar für immer.

Der ursprüngliche Artikel wurde geschrieben von David S. D‘Amato und veröffentlicht am 01. Dezember 2012.

Übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Achim Fischbach.