According to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera (“Criminal Card Games,” September 16), Home Depot’s security breach — the latest in an ongoing series of extensive exposures of customer financial information from large retailers — explains “why the federal government needs to get involved. With the banks and retailers at loggerheads, only the government has the ability to force a solution — or at least make it painful enough for companies with lax security to improve.”

But where this particular henhouse is concerned, the federal government is not just a fox, but one with a voracious all-hen diet, Peeping Tom compulsions and X-ray vision.

The monoculture of big box retailers, whose scale and homogeneity make them such lucrative targets for cybercriminals in the first place, is entirely a creation of federal subsidies. The economic advantage of vertical integration is not an inherent byproduct of economies of scale, but the artificial result of offloading the costs of large-scale distribution infrastructure through transportation subsidies.

Nocera notes that, in the account of former managers to Bloomberg Businessweek, Home Depot’s upper management allegedly deemed “C-level security” sufficient against expected attacks, since “ambitious upgrades would be costly and might disrupt the operation of critical business systems.” Only a plethora of interventions limiting liability and competitive pressure spare companies from being forced by market discipline to allocate revenue toward serving the needs of consumers.  For big businesses, having genuine conflicts of interest with each other smoothed out by government settlement, with costs passed on to customers, is far less “painful” than losing out to more agile and responsive smaller competitors.

Far better information security technology than that used by big business is available and affordable; it’s already in use elsewhere.  Indeed, Nocera quotes security expert Brian Krebs’s observation that an affected business is “always the last to know” when it’s compromised.  However, the financial system set in place by a government with ever-expanding appetites of its own requires a lack of opaqueness which inevitably prevents airtight security. As economist Robert Higgs explains, “once the government has made felonies of a raft of innocent actions … it follows as night follows day that it also treats as suspect every financial transaction you make — after all, any particular transaction might amount to ‘money laundering,’ itself as bogus a crime as any.”

This is doubly so when the federal government’s necessity for large-scale revenue grows to require taxation on sales and income, far beyond that obtainable by a tax on land which, as Henry George observed in Progress and Poverty, “cannot be hidden or carried off.”

Everyday consumer financial security, ensured with the military-grade secrecy used in cryptocurrency, is already technically feasible. Only the government-business alliance prevents market competition from making it economically inevitable.

Questo articolo è stato scritto da Sheldon Richman e pubblicato su The Future of Freedom Foundation il 5 settembre 2014.

In un suo sorprendente articolo, Daniel McCarthy, il lodevole direttore di The American Conservative (TAC), scrive: “L’impero britannico prima, e quello americano poi,crearono e mantennero un ordine mondiale in cui il liberalismo [classico] poté fiorire.” In altre parole, come scrive in Why Liberalism Means Empire, “Liberalismo e impero si rafforzano reciprocamente in vari modi.” Dunque, se vogliamo costruire una società liberale e democratica che duri nel tempo, dobbiamo riconoscere la necessità di un impero globale imposto dagli Stati Uniti.

Dico che l’articolo è sorprendente perché da anni TAC rappresenta il luogo in cui è possibile trovare critiche fondate alla politica estera interventista del tipo di George W. Bush e Barack Obama. Questo, però, è un richiamo al globalismo americano, anche se non del tipo che Bush e Obama accetterebbero.

Mentre libertari e liberali classici storicamente vedono gli imperi come nemici della libero mercato e della libertà in patria, per non parlare della libertà e della tranquillità di chi è soggetto ad un governo coloniale, McCarthy ne approfitta per rivedere questa posizione. Senza uno spazio protetto fornito da un impero liberale, prima britannico e ora americano, le democrazie liberali non avrebbero potuto emergere e fiorire, insiste. Il fatto, però, è che la dipendenza del liberalismo dall’esistenza di un impero è sempre stata incompresa. Molti pensatori pro-libertà considerano il coinvolgimento britannico in Europa nel 1914-18, e quello americano nel 1941-45, due errori terribili. Sbagliato, dice McCarthy. Gli interventi erano necessari per mantenere libertà e prosperità in patria:

Oggi i liberali antimperialisti, che siano libertari o progressisti, commettono lo stesso errore dei pacifisti britannici e dei non-interventisti americani tra le due guerre: credono che la complessità ideologica del mondo, così come determinata dallo stato che meglio riesce a proiettare la propria potenza, non abbia necessariamente a che fare con i loro valori e le loro abitudini a casa. Credono possibile un liberalismo senza impero.

Ma scarseggiano le prove storiche.

McCarthy non è un wilsoniano, né un neoconservatore amante delle crociate volte alla conversione al liberalismo democratico; capisce che il liberalismo è il prodotto di una lenta evoluzione sociale. Non ha tempo da perdere con chi nutre “l’ambizione napoleonica di liberare il pianeta con la rivoluzione.”

E poi scrive: “l’imperialismo liberale non è diretto alla conquista per la conquista ma al mantenimento di un ambiente con conduca al liberalismo.”

E avverte:

Così come alcuni idealisti negano che il potere sia alla base dell’ordine pacifico su cui poggia una democrazia liberale, altri, più pericolosi, negano che il potere sia un bene limitato, che non può semplicemente esistere perché lo si desidera. Questo punto di vista è caratteristico dei neoconservatori…

Il suo, al contrario, è un impero molto più modesto, un impero che cerca solo di mantenere l’ordine globale proteggendoi traffici commerciali, tra le altre cose, e impedendo l’ascesa di una tirannia che miri ad estendere il proprio potere. Questo impero vuole “difendere le condizioni in cui, per felice caso fortuito, il liberalismo può sopravvivere e crescere, se cresce, attraverso un lento processo di assimilazione.”

McCarthy pensa che si possano combinare antimperialismo e antiliberalismo, e cita Pat Buchanan e George Kennan come esempi: “vorrebbero che l’America somigliasse più a Sparta che ad Atene.” Ma l’americano moderno rifiuta questo punto di vista: “Dopo duecento anni, il liberalismo è penetrato troppo in profondità nelle fibre del carattere nazionale americano perché un nuovo percorso verso l’autosufficienza nazionale possa riscuotere approvazione popolare.”

Dunque il liberalismo è qui e ci resterà, e McCarthy crede che liberalismo e antimperialismo siano logicamente incoerenti per natura. Lui non celebra questa “amara verità del liberalismo dalle caratteristiche imperiali.” È che è così e basta.

Così lui opta per un “realismo conservatore” che riconosce “che l’America ancora per molto tempo non potrà diventare qualcosa di diverso da un paese largamente liberale e democratico, e pensa che una democrazia liberale richieda un sistema di sicurezza internazionale delicatamente equilibrato retto da un impero o da una potenza egemonica”. Ovvero, almeno per il futuro immaginabile, gli Stati Uniti.

Il punto chiave delle tesi di McCarthy è che “il potere sta alla base dell’ordine pacifico su cui poggia la democrazia liberale.” Scrive: “La democrazia liberale è innaturale. È un prodotto del potere e della sicurezza, non fa parte degli istinti sociali dell’uomo. È peculiare piuttosto che universale, accidentale piuttosto che teologicamente preordinato.”

Questo mette McCarthy in contrasto con il cuore della tradizione liberale, che individuava il seme della libertà individuale e della cooperazione volontaria nella natura sociale e razionale del genere umano. Adam Smith parla di “libertà naturale”. Thomas Paine scrive in Rights of Man che “gran parte” dell’ordine sociale non è il prodotto del potere, ovvero lo stato, ma della “interdipendenza e dell’interesse reciproco”. Secondo le teorie liberali, è la tirannia ad essere innaturale.

Spero di aver descritto onestamente la posizione di McCarthy. Ora, cosa possiamo dire al proposito?

Sulle prime ho pensato che McCarthy possiede una nozione piuttosto liberale del liberalismo; così liberale da includere l’illiberale stato corporativo, quello che Albert Jay Nock chiamava lo “stato mercante”; ovvero un potente regime politico-legale volto soprattutto allo sviluppo di un sistema economico al servizio dei padroni, tanto per usare le parole di Adam Smith. Il libertario Thomas Hodgskin, non Marx, fu il primo ad accusare i “capitalisti” di servirsi dello stato per conquistare una posizione di sfruttamento e privilegio.

Se per liberalismo intendiamo invece quello che avevano in mente, nonostante le differenze marginali, Adam Smith, J. B. Say, Frédéric Bastiat, Hodgskin, Herbert Spencer o Benjamin Tucker, è difficile immaginare un impero britannico, o americano, culla e protettore del liberalismo. Se McCarthy sostenesse che il capitalismo (di stato, politico o clientelare) ha bisogno di un impero, niente da ridire. Ma dove sono le prove storiche del fatto che un liberalismo radicale di libero mercato necessiti dell’ala protettrice di un impero globale? In realtà, le società considerate liberali si sono allontanate dal liberalismo radicale mantenendo allo stesso tempo quella protezione.

Il ragionamento di McCarthy poggia in larga misura sull’affermazione secondo cui il “complesso ideologico mondiale, determinato dallo stato che meglio riesce ad allargare il proprio potere”, ha buone probabilità di influenzare i “valori e gli usi” nazionali. Questo significa che una società non può mantenersi liberale a lungoin un mondo illiberale. Così come gli Stati Uniti adottarono misure illiberali dopo la Rivoluzione Bolscevica e dopo l’espansione sovietica nell’Europa dell’est dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, scrive, così un’America liberale e non interventista si allontanerebbe sempre più dal liberalismo se un potere tirannico estendesse il proprio potere al resto del mondo.

Forse sì e forse no. Dipende da fattori che non sono stati analizzati, soprattutto dalla fiducia ideologica della popolazione nella libertà (vedi l’eccellente confutazione di Robert Murphy alle teorie pseudo-keynesiane di McCarthy riguardo l’America, la seconda guerra mondiale e il totalitarismo).

McCarthy insiste a dire che “il potere è alla base dell’ordine pacifico su cui poggia la democrazia liberale” e che “con il tempo, i sentimenti liberali crebbero così forti all’interno dell’impero britannico che i suoi esponenti cominciarono a perdere di vista il contesto, in termini di sicurezza, che rese possibile il liberalismo. Idealisti e pacifisti, figli privilegiati dell’impero, credevano che la pace fosse un prodotto non del potere ma delle buone intenzioni.”

Ma McCarthy sbaglia a pensare che sia il potere, ovvero la forza, a governare il mondo. C’è qualcosa di più forte: le idee. Come dice Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in The Will to Be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense, “in ultima istanza sono le idee che determinano contro chi e che cosa [il popolo] deve impugnare le proprie armi e se deve impugnarle.”

“Tutti gli stati di successo possiedono legittimazione,” scrive Hummel.

Nessuno stato, non importa quanto tiranno, può governare a lungo con la sola forza bruta. Deve esserci un numero sufficiente di persone che accettino il suo potere come necessario o desiderabile perché la sua legge sia ampiamente applicata e rispettata. Ma lo stesso consenso sociale che legittima lo stato allo stesso tempo lo ingabbia. Perciò l’ideologia diventa la mina vagante che spiega perché esiste un movimento di massa dotato di senso civico che rinuncia ai benefici per ottenere significativi cambiamenti alla politica governativa. … Ecco quindi che le idee di successo possono alterare le dimensioni, lo scopo e l’invadenza dello stato.

Se questo vale per lo stato che fa soffrire il proprio popolo, sostiene Hummel, vale anche per quegli stati stranieri che rappresentano una minaccia potenziale. In altre parole, non c’è differenza sostanziale tra proteggersi da uno stato straniero e proteggersi dal proprio stato. Quelle stesse forze ideologiche che impediscono al “proprio” stato di diventare più aggressivo, forze necessarie a smorzarne il potere, riescono anche a tenere lontane le aggressioni esterne. Scrive Hummel:

Molte delle conquiste [coloniali] sono state ottenute grazie all’intermediazione delle locali classi di governo, che mantengono la legittimità presso la popolazione soggetta… Più problematico è il dominio da parte di aspiranti conquistatori in possesso della superiorità militare, che però devono affrontare l’ostilità implacabile di una popolazione ideologicamente unita. Proprio per questa ragione, la presa degli inglesi sull’Irlanda fu sempre debole, e casi simili si possono trovare anche ai tempi nostri.

McCarthy considera la “forza militare di una superpotenza” come virtualmente irresistibile. Che dire allora del Vietnam opposto agli Stati Uniti? O dell’Afganistan opposto ai britannici, sovietici e poi agli americani? La superiorità militare fallisce soprattutto a causa delle motivazioni e dell’impegno ideologico delle popolazioni indigene.

Un’apparente debolezza di questo ragionamento è che l’impegno ideologico, l’eterna vigilanza, sono difficili da mantenere. È vero, e Hummel riconosce che non esistono garanzie. Ma la stesso si può dire delle tesi di McCarthy. Cosa ci fa credere che l’amministrazione di un “impero liberale” resterà tale? L’articolo di McCarthy stranamente non parla delle rendite di posizione (l’acquisto dei vantaggi politici da parte di chi ha buone connessioni), della piaga dei benefici concentrati nelle mani dei gruppi di interesse e dei costi diffusi tra le masse, e di quel fenomeno che Hayek riassumeva nell’espressione “perché i peggiori arrivano in alto”. Il complesso industriale militare, ad esempio, difficilmente può essere definito un beneficiario passivo della politica governativa.

Conosciamo lo stato abbastanza bene da capire che anche le migliori intenzioni hanno buone probabilità di creare benefici per gli interessi particolari (“l’imperialismo di libero mercato”), e che le persone più inclini all’inganno, quelle che più si trovano a loro agio al comando del macchinario della violenza, sono anche quelle che più sono attratte dal potere politico e più hanno la capacità di procurarselo. Cosa impedisce all’apparato imperiale di cadere nelle mani di quei politici che vedono nella guerra e nella conquista la via che porta non solo alla pace ma anche alla gloria, alla virilità e alla grandezza nazionale?

Dunque se, come scrive McCarthy, “il liberalismo… tende a dipendere interamente dalla protezione liberalizzatrice di qualche grande impero,” questo significa che il liberalismo poggia su un piedistallo traballante. Basta dare uno sguardo alla storia.

Abbiamo molte altre ragioni per dubitare della solidità del liberalismo in mani imperiali. Una di queste è quello che Hayek chiamava “il problema della conoscenza”. Come i pianificatori economici, anche i meglio intenzionati pianificatori centrali di livello internazionale sono ignari delle preferenze locali in una società estera, e questo impedisce loro di svolgere il loro compito (vedi Iraq, Afganistan, ecc.). In breve, sono destinati al fallimento, seppure schivando le conseguenze.

Secondo McCarthy “occorre agire con discernimento e distinguere tra conflitti indispensabili (come la guerra fredda e la seconda guerra mondiale), assolutamente superflui (come l’Iraq) e ambigui come la prima guerra mondiale.” Ma anche ammettendo con McCarthy di sapere cosa è essenziale, superfluo e ambiguo, niente ci fa credere che l’amministrazione agirà bene. Dopotutto, ogni amministratore opera dietro incentivi perversi: spende denaro altrui e ha poche responsabilità personali. E anche quando sembra agire bene, la legge delle conseguenze involontarie causa tragedie… agli altri. Gli errori più comuni possono avere conseguenze catastrofiche. “Gli esperti di politica estera hannonelle loro predizioni una fiducia che non avrebbero il diritto di avere,” scrive Bryan Caplan.

Gli imperi sono maledettamente costosi. Anche un impero “liberale” avrebbe bisogno di spendere in deficit (chi si offre per pagare le tasse?) e di una banca centrale che faciliti i prestiti governativi. Tutto ciò porta ai mali che conosciamo bene, compresi i periodi di boom artificiale seguiti da altrettanti crolli e disoccupazione di lungo termine.

Le crisi economiche, come la guerra, sono la salute dello stato. Man mano che le crisi si ripetono sempre più profonde, cresce l’ansietà, e la gente comincia a credere ai politici che promettono un alleviamento nell’immediato e la stabilità nel lungo termine. Così, anche se un impero nasce senza uno stato sociale, con il tempo ci arriva. Randolph Bourne e Robert Higgs hanno spiegato perché. Per inciso, la richiesta di un migliore stato sociale e di quadri normativi arrivarono sulla scia dei privilegi particolari concessi alle élite economiche, come anche Grover Cleveland capì nel 1888. Una lezione che si può ricavare dalla storia americana è che l’impero corporativo è l’incubatrice dello stato sociale.

McCarthy dipinge l’impero britannico come essenzialmente benigno, più o meno un’area di libero scambio, e arriva anche a portare Ludwig von Mises dalla sua (Murphy ha corretto la fonte). Ma Mises non si faceva illusioni circa la natura del colonialismo, che, ricordiamolo, era diretto al controllo delle risorse, alla razzia del territorio, allo sfruttamento della manodopera a buon mercato e alla creazione di mercati a cui vendere i prodotti finiti. Come dice Mises in Liberalismo (1927):

Nessun capitolo di storia è più insanguinato della storia del colonialismo. Sangue inutile e insensato. Terre fiorenti furono devastate; interi popoli distrutti e sterminati. Non esistono scuse o giustificazioni. … È l’esatto contrario di tutti i principi liberali e democratici, e non c’è dubbio che dobbiamo lottare tutti per la sua abolizione.

Come era possibile credere che il liberalismo potesse fiorire in patria quando si era così illiberali all’estero? Herbert Spencer sapeva che era impossibile. Mentre,tra ottocento e novecento, le forze americane sterminavano i filippini che si opponevano al colonialismo, in patria accelerava l’interventismo progressista. Non a caso. Ai progressisti piaceva quella unità d’intenti creata dalla guerra e dall’imperialismo, e c’era tra loro chi si auspicava che questa unità potesse essere raggiunta senza spargimenti di sangue, ovvero tramite “l’equivalente morale della guerra”.

E arriviamo alle questioni di sicurezza interna a cui è esposto un impero, questioni che, come ben sappiamo, forniscono il pretesto per la soppressione delle libertà civili: perquisizioni senza mandato, spionaggio, e altro. Gli imperi creano nemici (oggic’è bisogno di dirlo?) e i nemici chiedono vendetta. La paura diffusa e l’opportunismo politico mettono a rischio le libertà civili, questo è sicuro.

La realtà non offre alcuna garanzia di sicurezza. Una società radicalmente libera priva di mezzi di offesa potrebbe essere conquistata da una potenza maligna nonostante il proprio affidamento alla libertà, alla ricchezza e al vantaggio tecnologico. Sul lato opposto, però, come abbiamo visto, ci sono le buone intenzioni imperiali che portano con sé il germe della tirannia.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

A National Public Radio (NPR) começou seu programa Week in Politics de 12 de setembro com uma análise do discurso do presidente dos EUA Barack Obama sobre o Estado Islâmico (ISIS). Vários jornalistas e comentaristas destrincharam o discurso de Obama — se teria sido forte o bastante, debateram suas intenções, perguntaram quem era o ISIS. Logo a seguir, percebi que o Estados Unidos bombardeiam o Iraque, de alguma maneira, desde que eu tinha 6 anos de idade — eu sou um homem de 30 anos. Essa tradição trágica, agora com já um quarto de século de duração, continua com o atual comandante em chefe, que possui um Prêmio Nobel da Paz.

Por todo esse tempo os Estados Unidos empreendem planos de engenharia nacional e atos de assassinato em massa no território árabe. Em seu discurso, Obama afirmava: “Nosso objetivo é claro: atacaremos e destruiremos o ISIS através de uma estratégia abrangente e sustentada de contraterrorismo”. A próxima grande guerra dos drones chegou — e certamente matará ainda mais inocentes. O governo dos Estados Unidos já é responsável pelas mortes de centenas de milhares na região, com ainda mais pessoas desabrigadas e propriedades destruídas. Os novos ataques não se limitam ao Iraque. Bombas também serão jogadas na Síria, apesar dos protestos nacionais contra os ataques ao regime de Bashar al-Assad. Eles conseguiram a guerra que tanto queriam.

O ISIS é um regime aterrorizante. O grupo subjuga e estupra mulheres, mata crianças e decapita prisioneiros. Mas mais intervencionismo não é a solução. Essa nova campanha militar exacerbará seu poder, não o restringirá.

Um vídeo terrível do Huffington Post mostra um bebê sírio preso em um prédio bombardeado. A câmera foca em um grupo de trabalhadores de resgate cavando freneticamente os escombros para resgatar a criança,. Seu grito é distinguível do barulho da multidão. Ao final, o resgate consegue salvar a criança. O som de alegria das pessoas é também de alívio.

Os ataques de drones ordenados por Barack Obama recriarão essa situação todos os dias, repetidamente.

Ataques com drones são atos de terror. A campanha contra o terrorismo, em si, é uma campanha de terror sem fim. Os Estados Unidos são um país perpetuamente em estado de guerra — o maior agente de repressão do mundo. Com cada bomba, o mundo se torna menos seguro. Com cada bomba, os Estados Unidos e todos aqueles que vivem dentro de suas fronteiras, se tornam mais sozinhos e isolados no mundo.

Ataques militares atingem os objetivos de curto prazo dos defensores das guerras, mas a liberdade é uma estratégia de longo prazo. Onde há mercados há paz e onde há paz há liberdade. Quanto mais liberdade houver no mundo, por definição, haverá menos regimes opressivos. Eu não desejo a existência do ISIS, mas a morte de dezenas de milhares não é a resposta — é a própria mentalidade imperialista que criou esse regime violento. O estado-nação, com essas ações violentas, é um regime opressivo — merece também desaparecer em prol da liberdade.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

September 11th is the anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. This terrorist attack was carried out by Al-Qaeda. An organization that has long waged war on the U.S. And whose head, Osama Bin Laden, has been killed. This hasn’t stopped the American government from pointing to its remnants as a reason for war though.

Indeed, September 11th is an event that launched a series of unfinished and seemingly unending wars around the globe. What should have been strictly a day of grief and mourning for victims became a pretext for expansive government warfare. This warfare has devastated and destroyed the lives of thousands. These additional casualties are worth mourning as much as the people who died on 9-11. They range the gamut from Iraqi children to Pakistani adults.

The greatest service we can render these dead individuals is to fight against the use of aggressive force and coercion. Both terrorism practiced by non-government actors and warfare conducted by governments can do massive harm to the lives of innocents. We don’t have to choose between one or the other as something to protest. They are both worthy of condemnation.

Aggressive coercion and force is present in both cases. It tends to be more institutionalized in the case of governments, but the damaging effect is the same. A good example is September 11th and the atomic bombings during World War 2. Both of which involved the direct targeting of civilians and killed large numbers of non-combatants. The actors were different, but the damage done was immense nevertheless.

Both of these incidents also involved the practice of terrorism. An act that can occur in the context of statist warfare too. In spite of the fact that governments have a habit of defining terrorism in terms that exclude them as potential users of it, but this is not an objective approach. It’s just an approach that is designed to make them look good.

Making state terrorist entities look bad is the task of the radical anarchist activist. One way to go about it is to promote the works of left scholars such as Noam Chomsky and William Blum. Both of whom have documented a great deal of atrocities committed by governments and especially the U.S. government. In addition, James Bovard is a good figure on the libertarian right to consult. I wish my readers happy reading in pursuit of knowledge on this subject!

George Reisman. Piketty’s Capital: Wrong Theory, Destructive Program (TJS Books, 2014).

Reisman’s critique of Piketty, from beginning to end, is nothing but pronouncements of a priori Austrian dogma from Böhm-Bawerk and Mises, with no direct contact with reality outside the pages of their work at any point in the process. He makes dogmatic pronouncements about the role of capital investment in productivity without reference to actual technological history, about the effect of government spending on capital investment while having apparently paid no attention to the actual role of government in corporate state capitalism, and about the heroic role of corporate management with obviously zero awareness of how information flow and distributed knowledge work within corporate hierarchies.

Reisman’s Mistaken Views on Technology

Reisman, like most of the Austrians, equates increased productivity to capital accumulation and capital intensiveness. Piketty, Reisman says, “advocates his program on the basis of ignorance of the essential role of capital in production, which is to raise the productivity of labor, real wages, and the general standard of living.” But Reisman’s criticism, in turn, is based on ignorance of actual technological history, or of anything else outside the dogmas of Austrian economics.

As people have learned that the economic system is not indestructible, they have turned in anger and resentment against “economic inequality,” as though it were the surviving wealth of others that was the cause of their poverty, rather than the fact that, thanks to the government, others do not have sufficient capital to supply and employ them in the manner they would like.

* * *

Now into the midst both of the assault on the capital supply of the American economic system and its ability to produce, and the unfounded resentment against economic inequality that has been stirred up by the impoverishment caused by that assault, has stepped one Thomas Piketty.

The truth, Reisman declares contra Piketty, is that “a rise in the productivity of labor and concomitant economic progress almost always requires an increase in the supply of physical capital goods relative to the supply of labor.”

What this means, for example, is that from time to time such things as the increasing quantities of iron and steel available per worker be accompanied by steam shovels made of iron and steel replacing conventional shovels made of iron and steel. While equipping a worker with 1,000 or 10,000 conventional shovels would not increase his output beyond what he can produce using just a single shovel, the same quantity of iron and steel as is in that many shovels being instead in the form of a steam shovel, can very dramatically increase his output. Such technological progress is essential to the continuing increase in the supply of capital goods.

The result of this accumulation of large-scale physical capital “is a steady rise in the productivity of labor, which continually increases the supply of goods produced relative to the number of workers producing them.”

Reisman’s imagery is straight out of the mid-20th century mass production era. The irony is that his aesthetic is almost identical to those of Rachel Maddow and Joseph Stalin. As far apart as they may be in some aspects of economic theory, Reisman’s heart beats in unison with those of the producers of 1930s Soviet propaganda films on the First Five-Year Plan and contemporary Maddow PSAs showing a gargantuan hydroelectric dam.

This ignores virtually the entire trend of technological history—especially over the past thirty years, but to a considerable extent since the late 19th century.

The internal logic of the changes in production technology made possible by the invention of the electric motor, as explained by Pyotr Kropotkin in Fields, Factories and Workshops, was to shift things toward small scale and decentralization.

In the days of steam power, the large factory was justified by the need to make maximum use of the power generated by a prime mover, so you crowded as many big machines as possible into a single building, all running off belts from drive shafts powered by a single giant steam engine. Electrical power, by making it possible to build a prime mover into each machine scaled to its size and power needs, ended this imperative. Instead, individual machines could be scaled to production flow, the scale of production flow matched to immediate demand, and the production process sited near the point of consumption. So instead of large factories distributing their wares over enormous market areas, you might instead have small shops with electrical machinery serving community markets.

The ideal use of electrical power, based on its innate advantages, was to integrate general-purpose electrically powered machinery into craft production serving the local market on a lean, demand-pull basis, with the shops frequently shifting from one product line to another in the face of demand.

Instead we got the 20th century mass production model, which was almost entirely a creation of the state. That model entailed large factories full of extremely expensive, product-specific machinery and dies that took a lot of time and effort to change. To minimize unit costs from these enormous capital outlays, it was necessary to run the machines at full capacity producing single product lines for long periods of time, and retooling as seldom as possible. This meant that production was undertaken without regard to current demand, and instead the entire society had to be reengineered to guarantee demand for the product after the fact.

Contrary to Reisman, this was only “more productive” (if at all) at the actual point of production. As pointed out by Ralph Borsodi in the 20s and 30s (especially in The Distribution Age), the unit cost of production for small-scale production near the point of consumption was a final cost, with distribution costs being virtually nil. The unit cost of production in a large factory, on the other hand—no matter how low it was—was only the first cost. In addition there was the bureaucratic overhead of not only the large factory but the multi-unit corporation, the enormous costs of work-in-process inventory, warehouses full of product awaiting distribution, long distance distribution chains full of goods in transit, mass advertising and high-pressure marketing.

On top of this state capitalism, by enforcing monopolies and artificial property rights from which the large property-owning classes derived rents, tended to shift income from those who produced and had a high propensity to spend, to those who lived off rentier incomes and had a high propensity to save and invest. That meant that there was a chronic tendency for the propertied classes to have more investment capital than they could find profitable investment opportunities for, and for them to invest in more productive capacity than there was sufficient demand to purchase the output of at full capacity. So the state was forced to step in to remedy these chronic tendencies by investing in public works, creating new (and unnecessary infrastructures), creating large military establishments, etc. All these incidental costs of mass production, in society at large, were far more than sufficient to outweigh the illusory efficiencies at the point of production.

(Note: I am not saying, with Keynes and some other under-consumptionists, that chronic tendencies toward over-accumulation and idle capacity are endemic to the market as such. Rather, I am saying that the intervention of the state to enforce special privileges on behalf of propertied classes, under capitalism, creates these tendencies by shifting wealth from those who create it to those who collect tribute with the government’s help. This was essentially the argument of J.A. Hobson in Imperialism.)

More recently, the unsustainability of mid-20th century mass production capitalism and a new spate of rapid technological innovation, taken together, have given new life to the decentralized, small-scale industrial model envisioned by Kropotkin. The main technological trend has been ephemeralization: lower and lower capital inputs required for production, in terms both of sheer material mass and price, compared to labor.

The first comparatively cheap, small-scale CNC (computer numeric controlled) machine tools in the 70s led to the proliferation of job-shop production. A major share of production for large corporations today is undertaken on a contract basis by independent job shops in Shenzhen province in China, and job shops in Emilia-Romagna province in Italy engage in networked independent production.

And more recently, hardware hackers have produced open-source tabletop CNC machinery that costs two orders of magnitude less than earlier commercial counterparts: CNC cutting tables, routers, 3-D printers, etc., for $500-$1500. That means that garage factories with ten or twenty thousand dollars’ worth of tabletop machinery can produce the kinds of goods that once required a million-dollar factory.

Reisman’s Mistaken View of the State’s Role

Reisman’s mistaken view of the significance of capital investment in the contemporary economy, described above, means he’s also flat-out clueless about the role of government spending under corporate capitalism. Like many economists on the Right, he views government spending and debt as crowding out private capital investment that would otherwise “create jobs.”

Over the course of several generations, the US government has taxed away trillions upon trillions of dollars that otherwise would have been saved and invested and thereby added to the capital of the American economy.

* * *

The massive loss of capital resulting from all this, is reflected not only in the recent recession/depression, but in the much larger-scale wiping out of much of the industrial base of the United States and its replacement with the “rustbelt.” As a consequence of this devastation, the populations of once great American cities, such as Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh have been decimated. Much of Detroit is now on the verge of reverting to farmland.

* * *

The government’s massive assault on the supply of capital has begun to transform the American economic system from one of continuous economic progress and generally rising living standards into one of stagnation and outright decline.

This is nonsense. The actual crisis tendency of corporate capitalism is its growing mass of surplus investment capital without a profitable outlet, and overbuilt industry with idle capacity resulting from inadequate demand. Capitalists aren’t investing the capital they already have.

This was already true of industrial capitalism in the early 20th century, with the resulting boom-bust cycle almost destroying capitalism in the 1930s, but World War II postponed the crisis for a generation by destroying most industrial plant and equipment outside the United States and creating a huge permanent war economy as an additional sink for surplus capital. But the crisis resumed around 1970, when the Western European and Pacific Rim economies had rebuilt their industry, and has worsened ever since. Capitalism has depended, from 1980 on, mainly on speculative bubbles in finance, high tech and real estate to absorb surplus capital. And the technological trend towards ephemeralization has made things still worse.

As Douglas Rushkoff argued, the crisis of California’s tech industry results from the fact that it takes far less capital than it used to to do anything.

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….

The banking crisis began with the dot.com industry, because here was a business sector that did not require massive investments of capital in order to grow. (I spent an entire night on the phone with one young entrepreneur who secured $20 million of capital from a venture firm, trying to figure out how to possibly spend it. We could only come up with $2 million of possible expenditures.) What’s a bank to do when its money is no longer needed?

Ephemeralization and downscaling of physical production capacity is doing the same thing to the money which previously went into large-scale industrial capital. I wrote the following comments in a review of Cory Doctorow’s Makers, but it applies almost as much to the era we’re living in.

The story begins with a press conference by Landon Kettlewell, frontman and CEO for the newly-formed Kodacell (a merger of Kodak and Duracell). He begins by summing up the current changes in physical production: “Capitalism is eating itself…. The days of companies with names like General Electric and General Mills and General Motors are over.” There are, in other words, no longer any surviving forms of capital-intensive, large-batch production sufficient to gobble up enormous amounts of investment capital.

Later in the story, Kettlewell splurges with travel on the seven Kodacell corporate jets with something of an “apres moi, le deluge” air. He mentions that the company can’t even unload them at fire sale prices, because there just aren’t any companies out there willing to spend money on jets any more. Not even Saudi princes. And an accountant says “In ten years, if we do our jobs, there won’t be five companies on earth that can afford this kind of thing — it’ll be like building a cathedral after the Protestant Reformation.”

Kodacell’s new business model, in that environment, is to ruthlessly liquidate most of its surplus manufacturing capability, and use its cash on hand as something like a Grameen bank for hardware hackers, to fund thousands of micromanufacturing startups. “The money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people.”

….The dying Fortune 500 companies at the outset of Makers are in the process of liquidating what’s left of their old mass-production facilities, and using their remaining liquid assets to fund as many micromanufacturing startups as they could find. Almost before Kettlewell’s press conference is finished, this becomes the dominant investment model for dozens and dozens of corporations that were finding 90% of their plant and equipment was superfluous with no idea what they could spend their capital on. Before long Westinghouse had shut down its appliances division and started its own multi-billion dollar microcredit operation, looking for garage startups to fund. By the end of Part One, the list of organizations with their own New Work microfinance organizations include not only a major part of the Fortune 500, but the investment arms of the AFL-CIO and major industrial unions….

The key to why the failure of the New Work boom is the contradiction inherent in Kettlewell’s investment strategy, and that of the other big corporate venture capital funds. There was a fallacy of composition implicit in his “straining a billion bits of krill” investment model. Those hundreds of thousands and even millions of ventures, cumulatively, weren’t enough to soak up even a large fraction of all the capital lying around waiting to be invested. What he described was an excellent model for a single small venture capitalist with several thousand dollars to invest. And that’s just how it worked, at the level of the individual product: he put fifty grand into bankrolling one of Perry’s and Lester’s product lines, and got seventy grand out three months later. But despite those astronomical ROIs, the absolute quantities of capital required for such startups was quite small. A corporation with fifty billion can’t repeat the same process a million times — especially when the entire Fortune 100 is doing the same thing, looking for opportunities to unload all their idle cash on whatever terms are available. As Kettlewell later complained,

“Our business units have an industry-high return on investment, but there’s not enough of them. We’ve only signed a thousand teams and we wanted ten thousand, so ninety percent of the money we had to spend is sitting in the bank at garbage interest rates. We need to soak up that money with big projects — the Hoover Dam, Hong Kong Disneyland, the Big Dig. All we’ve got are little projects.”

So the overwhelming majority of available capital still sat idle without any productive outlet.

We’ve essentially reached, and gone past, the point of both Peak Capital and Peak Jobs.

So throwing all the money currently soaked up by taxation and the capital soaked up by federal debt back into the private economy would just make the crisis of surplus capital even worse. The main interest served by deficit spending and government debt is that of capitalists, as evidenced by the role of corporate leaders like GE’s Gerard Swope in the New Deal. The federal debt absorbs trillions of dollars worth of capital that otherwise would have no outlet, and provides a guaranteed if small rate of profit on it. It’s basically a price support program for capital, directly analogous to the USDA program that pays farmers rent on land they hold out of use.

Reisman is also about as wrong as it is possible for a human being to get on the actual purpose of the regulatory state. The purpose of government rules and regulations (including, “of course, …those that compel dealing with labor unions”) is “forcing business firms to do what is unprofitable or prevent them from doing what is profitable”—resulting, among other things, in unnecessarily high production costs.

But in fact the main purpose of regulations–especially when they raise costs–is to erect entry barriers against market entry by newer, smaller firms using newer, more efficient technologies. They also restrict price or quality competition, so the handful of oligopoly firms that dominate an industry can agree to slow down the introduction of new technology, and collude in using administered pricing to pass the costs of inefficiency onto the consumer. The state, to paraphrase Marx, is an executive committee of the corporate ruling class, for managing its common affairs. In many cases its regulations are things in the common interest of capital, but–owing to prisoner’s dilemma incentives to defect–in the several interest of firms not to do. The regulatory state serves the same purpose as a private cartel, with the added advantage of stability resulting from the inability of individual firms to defect.

Reisman’s Managerialism

Reisman takes a heroic, Galtian view of corporate management and, in so doing, virtually repudiates insights by Friedrich Hayek and James Scott into the nature of distributed knowledge.

These CEOs are responsible for directing the labor of tens of thousands of workers and the use of tens of billions of dollars of capital. They decide what these workers produce and how they produce it. Thus, their decisions have enormous consequences. It is reasonable that they be remunerated on a scale commensurate with the scale of their decisions. A $50 million dollar income for a CEO is just 1 percent of $5 billion of capital or $5 billion of sales revenue, and the capitals and sales revenues they are actually responsible for are much greater. Money managers routinely earn a higher percentage of the capital they manage. Real estate brokers typically earn 6 percent of the price of the houses they sell. At a rate of remuneration of just 1 percent, indeed, less than that, to the extent that the amounts of capital and sales revenues actually involved are more than $5 billion, these CEOs are arguably underpaid.

Most important, it is essential that the decision-making power of CEOs be guided by their having a major ownership stake in the firms they direct. To function properly, they need to be motivated not only by the desire to make profits but also by the desire to avoid losses. To experience that desire, as it needs to be experienced, they need to have a major ownership stake in the firms they run. The high incomes they are paid are the means of their acquiring that stake. Typically, much or most of their income is paid to them in the form either of company stock or options to buy company stock.

Ironically, in CEOs and other key executives earning extremely high incomes, capitalism operates to accomplish something that the alleged champions of workers’ rights and “social justice” might be thought to favor. Namely, it accomplishes a transfer of a significant part of the ownership of the means of production from more or less passive capitalists to the workers who are doing the actual job of running the firms, i.e., those workers who are providing the overall, guiding, directing intelligence in the firms’ operations, and who, in just payment, now become substantial capitalists. Of course, as the result of the powerful ownership incentives given to those running the firms, the passive capitalists can expect to do better than they would have done otherwise.

In serving to make possible the acquisition of a substantial ownership stake in their firms, the high incomes of CEOs and other key executives solve another problem long lamented by the left. Namely, the alleged separation of ownership and control, a problem cited as far back as 1932 by Berle and Means. To the extent that this problem is real (and confiscatory income and inheritance taxes operate to make it real), it is solved by the high incomes of the executives. For their resulting ownership stakes mean that ownership is being given to those who have control.

Well actually, no. Misesians tend to minimize the Hayekian problems of aggregating distributed information, as well as what Herbert Simon called “bounded rationality,” in favor of a near-magical faith in the potential of double-entry bookkeeping. For Misesians, the ability of capitalists to punish firms by withdrawing capital, the use of senior management stock options and bonuses to reward good corporate performance, and the use of double-entry bookkeeping to monitor the performance of internal divisions of a corporation, make the corporation for all intents and purposes a miniature Gosplan functioning to meet the expectations of the most enthusiastic Soviet advocate of central planning.

Unfortunately this is nothing more than a long string of myths from beginning to end. First of all, outside investor leverage over the corporation is minimal. Mature corporations raise virtually none of their operating funds from sales of new shares, and in fact there has been a large-scale trend toward stock buy-backs. Hostile takeovers from outside, funded by junk bonds, were a short-lived phenomenon in the 80s which corporate management inevitably thwarted through their inside control over governance rules. The great majority of genuine investment—i.e. on new plant and equipment—is financed internally by retained earnings.

In any case the profit and loss figures of large corporations are meaningless to outside investors, as a gauge of management skill. Any given industry tends to be an oligopoly, dominated by a few firms protected from competition by assorted cartelizing regulations, sharing the same pathological internal culture (inside directors and senior managers, who absorbed the same B-school culture, constantly shuffling from one firm to the other), with major inputs heavily subsidized by the government, and able to pass the costs of mismanagement on to the consumer through administered pricing. So it’s entirely possible for all the major firms in an industry to be horribly mismanaged, but remain profitable.

Second, the incentive packages of corporate management—profit-based bonuses and stock options—amount to the same Lange-Taylor model of market socialism that Mises contemptuously dismissed as “playing at market.” Management gets huge bonuses in a profitable year, but pays nothing in the event of losses. Management is generally able to rig the rules to create high short-term profits by starving the company of basic maintenance and gutting human capital, at the expense of long-term capital. This means they’re basically gambling other people’s money and stand only to gain if they do well, but have nothing to lose if they do badly—exactly the features of Lange’s market socialism that caused Mises to deem it mere playing at market. And since both inside directors and the compensation committees they appoint generally owe their positions to incumbent management, they’re likely to engage in mutual logrolling with management in setting salaries and bonuses.

And third, double-entry bookkeeping is nowhere near the magic bullet Mises made it out to be. According to Mises, in Human Action, such accounting “relieves the entrepreneur of involvement in too much detail.”  The only thing necessary to transform every single employee of a corporation, from CEO on down, into a perfect instrument of the entrepreneur’s will was the ability to monitor the balance sheet of any division or office and fire the functionary responsible for red ink. Mises continues:

It is the system of double-entry bookkeeping that makes the functioning of the managerial system possible. Thanks to it, the entrepreneur is in a position to separate the calculation of each part of his total enterprise in such a way that he can determine the role it plays within his whole enterprise…. Within this system of business calculation each section of a firm represents an integral entity, a hypothetical independent business, as it were. It is assumed that this section “owns” a definite part of the whole capital employed in the enterprise, that it buys from other sections and sells to them, that it has its own expenses and its own revenues, that its dealings result either in a profit or in a loss which is imputed to its own conduct of affairs as distinguished from the result of the other sections. Thus the entrepreneur can assign to each section’s management a great deal of independence. The only directive he gives to a man whom he entrusts with the management of a circumscribed job is to make as much profit as possible. An examination of the accounts shows how successful or unsuccessful the managers were in executing this directive. Every manager and submanager is responsible for the working of his section or subsection…. His own interests impel him toward the utmost care and exertion in the conduct of his section’s affairs. If he incurs losses, he will be replaced by a man whom the entrepreneur expects to be more successful, or the whole section will be discontinued.

But in fact the standard model of corporate management accounting in use in the United States and elsewhere has built-in biases quite similar in some ways to the accounting metrics used by Soviet central planners. Under the accounting model pioneered by Donaldson Brown, who was Alfred Sloan’s man at DuPont and General Motors, labor is treated as the main direct, variable cost. Management salaries and capital outlays, on the other hand, are both treated as general overhead, and (through the magic of “overhead absorption”) incorporated into the transfer prices of goods “sold” to inventory even if there’s no buyer awaiting them.

Thus the standard corporate accounting system—like GDP accounting and like the Soviet central planning accounting system—treats the consumption of resource inputs, as such, as the creation of value. The more bloated administrative overhead and irrational misallocation of capital spending, the higher the book value of the goods in inventory. On the other hand, the treatment of labor as a variable cost leads to management focusing entirely on labor hours when it’s in a mood for “cost-cutting”—resulting in the total evisceration of distributed knowledge and other human capital within the corporation.

So for all intents and purposes, contrary to Mises’s dogma, corporate management is a self-perpetuating oligarchy with de facto ownership of a large mass of capital they did not contribute through their own savings, and using “shareholder ownership” as a legitimizing ideology to justify its own power. In that it’s much like the Soviet elite—a self-perpetuating managerial oligarchy lining its own pockets while ruling in the name of the working class or the people.

Finally, consistent with the scale of their activities, from time to time CEOs find that the services of thousands of the workers their firms employ are no longer necessary. This is the case, for example, when advances in technology and capital equipment make it possible to achieve the same results with less labor. The saving of this much labor is an enormous productive contribution not only from the point of view of the firms the CEOs work for, and for the stockholders of these firms, but also from the point view of the economic system as a whole, and the average member of the economic system, because the workers no longer needed by these firms are now available for achieving an overall expansion in production in the economic system, as and when they become employed elsewhere. Along with this, the funds no longer required to pay their wages are available to pay wages elsewhere in the economic system.

This ignores the enormous scale of the actual moral hazard built into corporate management decisions. Because of the legitimizing myth of shareholder ownership, management is able to expropriate, in the form of bonuses and increased stock prices, the productivity gains resulting from the distributed knowledge and other human capital of its workforce. Of course this results in reduced productivity from employees minimizing their contributions to productivity and doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting fired, because they know any contribution them make to productivity will result in the bosses getting bonuses while they themselves get downsized. The most efficient and productive organization for a firm is cooperative ownership, or at least high degrees of job security, self-management and profit-sharing. But this is not “efficient” from the standpoint of management, whose interest is rather to grab a slice that’s larger in absolute terms even if the size of the pie itself is smaller.

Finally, Mises dons cape and cigarette holder and goes into full heroic Randian mode:

The average person is not capable of making great innovations and building new industries or revolutionizing existing ones. But if he lives in a society in which private property is secure, he gets their benefit all the same. All he needs to obtain their benefit, is to have enough intelligence and knowledge to understand that his economic well-being depends on those who are more capable than him having the freedom peaceably to exercise their greater abilities. He needs to understand that he has no right to any of the property of those who supply and employ him, that seizing their property in the name of “social justice” and the “redistribution of wealth and income” is anything but just—that it is theft and can do no more good than a mob looting a store.

* * *

A manual worker uses his arms to produce his product. What makes him a producer is not the fact that he uses his arms, but that his mind directs the use of his arms to achieve the goal of producing the product. His mind provides guiding and directing intelligence to his arms and to whatever tools, implements, or machines he may use in the production of his product.

Now a capitalist supplies goals and provides guiding and directing intelligence not merely to his own arms and whatever tools or implements he may personally use, but to an organization of men, whose material means of production he has provided. A capitalist is a producer by means of the organization he controls and directs. What is produced by means of it, is his product.

Of course, he does not produce his product alone. His plans and projects may require the labor of hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of other workers in order to be accomplished. Those workers are appropriately called “the help”—in producing his products.

Thus, the products of Standard Oil are primarily the products of Rockefeller, not of the oil field and refinery workers, who are his helpers. It is Rockefeller who assembles these workers and provides their equipment and in determining what kind of equipment, tells them what to produce and by what means to produce it.

I hasten to point out that the standard of attribution I have just used, is the standard usually employed, at least in fields outside of economic activity. Thus history books tell us that Columbus discovered America and that Napoleon won the battle of Austerlitz. What is the standard by which such outcomes are attributed to just one man? It is by the standard of that one man being the party supplying the goal and the guiding and directing intelligence at the highest level in the achievement of that goal.

This echoes Reisman’s even more elitist language in his review of my first book, Studies in Mutualist Political Economy [PDF].

Carson is simply unaware that innovation is the product of exceptional, dedicated individuals who must overcome the uncomprehending dullness of most of their fellows, and often their hostility as well.

Well, not quite. If Reisman accuses Piketty of having never read Böhm-Bawerk or Mises, he is apparently equally guilty of having never read Hayek’s “The Uses of Knowledge in Society”—let alone James Scott’s defense of metis (situation-specific skills and knowledge) against high modernist central planning in Seeing Like a State. Most actual innovation comes from the knowledge of workers themselves—knowledge that has been referred to variously a distributed, job-specific or situation-specific, or tacit. And the most innovative and agile organizations are self-organized, stigmergic networks where the producers themselves can freely cooperate without the interference of clueless managerial hierarchies. American pointy-haired bosses, like their Soviet managerial counterparts, are heavily dependent on the ability of production workers to treat irrational management interference as damage and route around it.

Mises’s view of the omniscience and genius of the superior manager is, in a very real way, subversive to the basic principles of genuine free market thought. The Misesian, as opposed to Hayekian, view of the rational calculation problem treats the sheer volume of information, the difficulty of aggregating it, and the internal information problems of hierarchies as beside the point. The only real source of calculation difficulties lies in the need for market pricing of factor inputs. With that solved, a managerial genius equipped with double-entry accounting can run a giant corporation as a perfect centrally-planned economy, with all trains running on time.

Matthew Yglesias explains just why the cult of the cowboy CEO is so asinine, in Hayekian terms:

. . . it’s noteworthy that the business class, as a set, has a curious and somewhat incoherent view of capitalism and why it’s a good thing. Indeed, it’s in most respects a backwards view that strongly contrasts with the economic or political science take on why markets work.

The basic business outlook is very focused on the key role of the executive. Good, profitable, growing firms are run by brilliant executives. And the ability of the firm to grow and be profitable is evidence of its executives’ brilliance. And profit ultimately stems from executive brilliance. This is part of the reason that CEO salaries need to keep escalating—recruiting the best is integral to success. The leaders of large firms become revered figures . . . .

The thing about this is that if this were generally true—if the CEOs of the Fortune 500 were brilliant economic seers—then it would really make a lot of sense to implement socialism. Real socialism. Not progressive taxation to finance a mildly redistributive welfare state. But “let’s let Vikram Pandit and Jeff Immelt centrally plan the economy— after all, they’re really brilliant!”

But in the real world, the point of markets isn’t that executives are clever and bureaucrats are dimwitted. The point is that nobody is all that brilliant.

As Chris Dillow (a British Marxist who hates managerialism) argues, “Insofar as the private sector does increase efficiency, it is to a large extent because market forces drive out inefficient producers, and not because good management raises the performance of existing ones.”

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, to adapt an old saying: George Reisman is entitled to a priori axioms. He is not entitled to a priori facts.

American criminal law takes a nuanced view of murder, creating several punishable degrees of it. First degree murder is generally defined as premeditated. The murderer has a plan to kill and takes sufficient time to map out his crime. Second degree murder involves the killer who hasn’t necessarily taken the time to plan out his crime, but nonetheless has an “evil mind” and intends to kill. Another variety of second degree murder involves the killer who engages in conduct so depraved that the law says he should have known that his behavior would likely result in death. Then there’s manslaughter, sometimes referred to as “negligent homicide,” wherein the killer behaved negligently and someone died as a result. These are age-old American legal traditions.

Somehow, American war culture manages to turn a blind eye to these longstanding, basic legal principles when it comes to its government’s wars. Americans brook no nuance when it comes to war. A war with massive civilian casualties is the same as a war with no civilian casualties, as long it meets some vague government objective. For anyone who doubts this lack of distinction, simply look at the body of historical work surrounding “The Good War” — World War II.

War is hell, they say. War is a dirty business. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. The countless despicable metaphors used to describe war are intended to distract people from what war really is: Non-punishable mass murder.

Unfortunately, no matter how reckless, depraved, ill-informed or misconceived American war-making becomess, the war-makers are never held to the same standards as run-of-the-mill murderers. Neither George W. Bush nor any other American president, were he tried in a criminal court of law (loud laughter), would escape conviction for first degree murder.

But in war, all the war-making murderer needs is a place where he or she claims bad people exist. To hell with other details or circumstances. The rest of the war-making murderer’s conduct gets blanket immunity so long as that low threshold requirement is met. Most of the time even that part can later be found false or mistaken. The actual execution of war never matters. Its implementation always ends up being reckless, depraved, and of such a nature that even a toddler would recognize it as guaranteed to lead to the murder of innocents. Yet presidents and congressman always get away with behavior that would land any ordinary person behind bars, probably on death row.

Many critics of the American War Machine give their opponents the benefit of doubt by acknowledging supposedly good intentions. This is a grave mistake. It becomes a mantra that gets tossed out prior to challenging any war: “I know you mean well, but …” It’s time to drop that preface. Just as criminal law cuts the negligent killer no break, so too should serious war critics drop the forgiving aspect of their engagement with government killers.

Remember this when Barack Obama or any future president speaks to you in an effort to outline his or her war strategy. It doesn’t matter whether he or his clan of humanitarian killers are able to come up with some cockamamie excuse for dropping bombs. Their behavior is going to end innocent lives, pure and simple.

[O título deste artigo é um jogo de palavras com o nome da rede Burger King e com o regicídio, que significa o assassinato do rei (isto é, “king”).]

O anúncio da compra da rede de fast food canadense Tim Hortons pelo Burger King e os novos planos da empresa de se mudar para o Canadá para pagar menos impostos corporativos foram seguidos pelos previsíveis protestos dos social-democratas, ultrajados pela falta de patriotismo do Burger King. Os críticos afirmam que não é “patriótico” tirar proveito dos benefícios fornecidos pelos pagadores de impostos nos EUA e então fugir do pagamento de impostos para financiar os tais benefícios.

O que esperavam? Não existem corporações “patriotas”. Governos são ferramentas extrativas formadas por corporações em benefícios delas próprias. Governos servem para beneficiar agentes econômicos privilegiados às custas dos pagadores de impostos. A tendência central do capitalismo corporativo ao longo dos últimos 150 anos tem sido a socialização dos custos operacionais e a privatização dos lucros. Embora alguns democratas gostem de falar de “bilionários patriotas” como Warren Buffett, os bilionários são só patriotas — isto é, mantêm a fachada de lealdade ao governo — quando isso é do seu interesse. Os investimentos de Buffet, como outras empreitadas corporativas, dependem totalmente de subsídios governamentais a seus custos operacionais e da exploração dos consumidores através de monopólios que, juntos, são muito mais significativos do que qualquer imposto que ele paga ou defenda o pagamento.

Além disso, o imposto de renda corporativo — apesar de seu nome sugerir que prejudica corporações — não é tão “progressista” assim. Eu provavelmente odeio as corporações tanto quanto qualquer outra pessoa e provavelmente mais que a maioria e é por isso que eu afirmo que a função principal do imposto de renda corporativo é aumentar a concentração de poder, não reduzi-la. Deduções de impostos pontuais e créditos tributários, restituíveis ou não, significam que muitas corporações que empreendem em atividades favorecidas (como a produção com uso intensivo de capital de alta tecnologia e grandes fusões e aquisições) pagam poucos impostos ou nenhum. Como resultado de uma longa luta entre as facções Yankee e Cowboy do capital americano, a última (que concentra indústrias de serviços de baixos salários e aplicação intensiva de capital como as redes de fast food) paga o grosso dos impostos de renda corporativos e são os maiores defensores de sua diminuição. Além disso, as indústrias Yankee tendem a ser oligopólios em que as grandes empresas podem se juntar para passar os custos dos impostos aos consumidores através dos preços administrados, enquanto as indústrias Cowboy têm maior probabilidade de absorver esses custos.

Se queremos atacar o Burger King com base nos privilégios, ir para o Canadá para escapar dos impostos é um problema menor em comparação a coisas como seu uso da lei de marcas registradas, taxas de franquia e todos os acordos de fornecimento exclusivos que colocam os donos de franquias locais numa posição na qual o trabalho é literalmente a única coisa disponível para ser cortada. A maneira como as corporações tratam suas franquias é muito parecida com o jeito que o Walmart trata seus fornecedores.

Como afirmou Tom Knapp (o diretor de mídia do C4SS), os beneficiários do privilégio estatal sempre procurarão, como qualquer um, quem queira oferecer a eles os melhores privilégios. Um dos efeitos colaterais da globalização é que se torna mais fácil fazer essa busca — simplesmente coloque sua sede em um país com os melhores impostos, sabendo que todas as suas “propriedades intelectuais” e outros acordos ainda serão protegidos por outros estados, graças aos “acordos comerciais”.

A única forma de lutar contra o Burger King é sendo mais ágil que ele. Se a sede do BK pode mudar de país, os movimentos de solidariedade trabalhista também podem. Os trabalhadores da IWW podem fazer ações em restaurantes do Burger King no Canadá e também nos EUA. A nível local, podemos construir contrainstituições, como restaurantes de baixo custo caseiros e a entrega de comida preparada em casa, combatendo barreiras de entrada como regulamentações de zoneamento e licenciamento que dão aos restaurantes estabelecidos uma vantagem artificial. Assim, damos às pessoas comuns a oportunidade de transformar seu trabalho diretamente em renda para subsistência fora do sistema assalariado, reduzindo sua dependência dos baixos salários dos fast foods com suas péssimas condições de trabalho.

A raiz do problema é o privilégio — não os agentes econômicos que tiram a maior vantagem possível dele.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

As many in the libertarian community already know, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne recently unveiled a plan to build a revolutionary new model of finance on the back of the old financial system. Namely, by creating a Bitcoin equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange in hopes of eventually replacing Wall Street entirely with a crypto-security trading system that would liberate previously elite investment tools into “the hands of the general public.”

Such a populist vision may seem surprising coming from a former venture capitalist who descends from a good ‘ol boy lineage of concentrated capital – the sort of capital that is accumulated over generations with the help of state-enforced regulatory and legal barriers designed to favor the elite at the expense of the general public. As a former beneficiary of the very system he now seeks to replace, he stands as an odd figure to lead a populist financial revolution.

Given that bitcoin is a tool designed to empower the 99% and has the ability to destruct the very system of state and legal privileges that currently produce and protect Mr. Byrne’s wealth, it seems strange that he advocates the construction of a new system that would level him onto the same economic playing field as the rest of us. Yet despite this apparent philosophical discrepancy within his vision, Mr. Byrne wears an aura of Messianic servitude as he goes about his new-found destiny as the unlikely leader of a Rebel Alliance against the evil empire of Wall Street.

Confidence aside, Byrne himself actually has no idea how a stateless crypto-equity system might actually work in real life. And so he’s boldly enlisting the help of the public to fill in the blanks for him, asking anyone with ideas to contribute them freely to an open-edit wiki page that immediately greets the viewer with Overstock’s trademarked red and white logo along the header space. While looking through this wiki, my first thought was “what motivates so many people to do all of this hard work for free on behalf of a brand that belongs to an enormously wealthy individual?” An individual, no less, who isn’t likely to financially reimburse the efforts of all these anonymous volunteers who are not only giving him free brand advertising, but writing what may ultimately become the corporate charter of whatever next financial scheme he has in mind.

If Mr. Byrne’s worker bees will pause for a moment to examine the fine print in the Terms & Conditions portion of O.info(TM), they will notice that although the content they create for the website falls under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, the content may nonetheless “be protected by other intellectual property rights such as trademarks.” And O.info(TM) is clearly a trademark. Additionally, the contract states that as a condition of meeting the CC ShareAlike requirements, any and all use of the wiki’s content must be attributed as the creative work of Overstock.com and preferably provide a link back to the Overstock-branded wiki page. Not only are the wiki’s content creators providing free advertising for Overstock, but additionally they’re forfeiting credit for any of the work they’ve done or content they’ve produced on Overstock’s wiki. Additionally, just like any other fineprint contract, the agreement comes with the condition that “Overstock may modify these Terms at any time.”

I want to make it really clear that I’m not intending to paint Mr. Bryne in a villainous light. Not only is he one of today’s most-respected business minds, but he’s also contributed much of his own free time and energy to bring the Bitcoin movement forward into mainstream acceptance. I have no doubt that he has good intentions. And as far as weaving the project into his corporate branding, he is merely pursuing his own self-interest, as any rational individual should. What bothers me is not Mr. Bryne or his company, but how the mostly-libertarian authors of his wiki page have seemingly forgotten how to look after their own self-interests.

And as for those who believe that the promotion of Bitcoin as a concept and moral philosophy is even more important than the pursuit of self-interest, then it’s all the more important for them to question the motives behind the powerful companies and individuals that would attempt to shape its future. A healthy dose of skepticism is needed in such high stakes situations. When the elites of any particular system become aware of a potentially serious threat to their continued dominance, they generally have two options: either fight against the threat or co-opt and absorb it. Threatened by the growing popularity of stateless currency, the current financial elites are desperate to retain their state-subsidized market dominance by co-opting the movement that would flood the market with newer and better competitors.

As a bitcoin enthusiast myself who believes in the revolutionary potential of the bitcoin economy, I can understand the initial eagerness to volunteer for free in any project that promotes Bitcoin both as a currency and an idea. But one also has to remain wary of opportunists and consider the larger picture and long-term future of cryptocurrency that is at stake. What needs to be realized is that if we allow the current financial elites to keep the ball in their court, we’re helping to build a new system that remains tilted in their favor, one that preserves the current balance of power and does nothing to remove the state-sanctioned economic advantages that privilege a few at the expense of all others. Though Overstock is only one example among many, it’s symbolic of all fortunes built upon the inequities of the old system. Besides which, is it really a good idea to give the Mr. Byrnes of the world a head start advantage over the rest of us when we could be cultivating that advantage for ourselves?

As any good libertarian should know, if you’ve decided that you’re going to work for free, at least work as part of a public project for the greater good rather than for the narrow interests of a particular individual or for-profit entity. One such entity that first came to mind is the Bitcoin Foundation. But upon closer inspection, I found that its board of directors has been infiltrated with old school (read: pre-Bitcoin era) venture capitalists who are circling the territory like vultures. And in fact, the traditional VC industry is so interwoven with the Bitcoin community that it deserves its own separate article. But for purposes of wrapping up this first article, I’d like to promote the idea of using an already-existing bitcoin wiki that has no centralized leadership and no gatekeepers and is a natural fit for the type of agenda Byrne claims to pursue. Another possibility is that a stock exchange could even be built directly into the blockchain infrastructure itself. But regardless of what’s possible, what matters is that the platform itself does not come to represent the agenda of any particular brand or interest group, but rather the agenda of Bitcoin as a concept and a community.

As a free market anarchist, I’d personally prefer to see these cryptocurrency stock markets emerge spontaneously from the market in a decentralized manner. And while many will argue that Byrne’s approach evolved spontaneously through the market, it did not evolve through a free market, because capitalism is not a free market. If the stock market is fated to reinvent itself one way or another, does the Bitcoin community really prefer to have any specific person singlehandedly spearhead the project and claim it as his own? Or would they rather spearhead it collectively in the decentralized spirit of a community that values leaderless markets?

With another fall election season picking up steam, The New Yorker’s Sam Wang wonders whether the 2014 election will “be a wave or a ripple.” A wave, Wang says, occurs when “one party makes massive gains and overturns the existing power dynamic.” But notwithstanding Wang’s intended point, the “existing power dynamic” in the United States will go undisrupted regardless of the election results and who controls the Senate.

Politics is the great vampire capitalizing on the masses’ desire for meaningful change — siphoning vitality and resources from worthwhile projects, ventures that have a real chance of turning people away from the state and the ruling class.  Political libertarians of every party affiliation are quick to scoff and sneer at those of us who don’t vote, who avoid practical politics at all costs as a futile sinkhole for precious time and assets. Anarchists are anti-political by definition — how can we hope to use political participation to destroy politics?

Still, supposing that participation in politics isn’t wrong in itself, that it is a perfectly legitimate means of expressing opinions and preferences, we are no less left with serious questions and concerns. Ultimately, politics offers a ontes virtually guaranteeing a winner who is either a Republican or a Democrat, a victor who is neither being well nigh a statistical impossibility. “So what?” you say. “Certainly there are observable differences between the Red and Blue sides of the American political class.” True enough — differences exist, no doubt. We hear about them from our “public intellectuals,” from news anchors and our politicians themselves, all of whom insist that elections are high stakes battles between sworn ideological enemies.

Yet while there may be trace differences between the candidates in a given election, no Republocrat would dare question the fundamental, structural elements of the American political and economic status quo. As Albert Jay Nock wrote, “But what was I to vote for? An issue? There was none. You could not get a sheet of cigarette-paper between the official positions of the two parties. A candidate? Well, who were they? Both of them seemed to me to be mediocre timeserving fellows who would sell out their immortal souls, if they had any, for a turn at place and power …”

But let us grant at least the possibility that important policy questions might turn on election results. As with any other area of study or inquiry, be it automobile mechanics or microbiology, genuine, thoroughgoing understanding requires time and dedication, a careful and systematic approach to the subject. That almost no one is willing to undertake this kind of commitment to politics is one of the many reasons anarchists cite in favor of reducing political control over individuals’ lives to level zero.

What’s more, beyond the pesky fact that they have no right to rule over others in any case, even ostensible experts disagree on political questions. Surely it is an ill-conceived system that would leave any important policy outcome to the whim and caprice of an American populace that is by and large completely ignorant of political subtleties. Hence if elections aren’t just exercises in ritualistic state worship, they are expressions and celebrations of sheer idiocy. Either way, elections turn out to be a very bad idea, a waste of time, money and mental energy.

Market anarchists believe that individuals should make the decisions about their own lives — not politicians, election results, or arbitrary laws. Elections are one way that the State legitimizes its usurpations and brutalities. Want to make a real statement? Stay home this November.

Logo depois da crise econômica por que o país passou há mais de 10 anos, que chegou a seu apogeu em 2001, a Argentina se recuperou e entrou em um período de prosperidade relativa devido às condições do comércio exterior. Contudo, a situação do trabalhador argentino médio permanece a mesma há centenas de anos: seu acesso aos meios de produção, ao capital, ainda é restrito pela ação estatal.

1) Graças ao que já se configura como uma recessão incipiente, a situação econômica do país se deteriora rapidamente. 75% dos trabalhadores argentinos ganham menos que 6.500 pesos por mês (US$ 590), enquanto metade dos empregados ganham menos que 4.040 pesos (US$ 367), ou seja, pouco mais que o salário mínimo de 3.600 pesos (US$ 327). Os 25% que menos ganham recebem menos que 2.500 pesos por mês (US$ 227), a taxa de emprego informal já chegou a 33,5% e 1,2 milhão de pessoas estão desempregadas. A renda já muito baixa das pessoas ainda é erodida pela inflação galopante e pelos altos impostos. [1]

Metade dos trabalhadores que ganham menos e consomem a maior parte de sua renda pagam um imposto sobre valor agregado (IVA) de 21%. Essa é uma alíquota extremamente regressiva, já que um trabalhador com um salário de 3.600 pesos, que consome a maior parte do seu dinheiro, paga impostos que representam mais de um quinto dos seus rendimentos, enquanto alguém com um salário de 10.000 pesos — se presumirmos uma paridade dos níveis de consumo — paga apenas 7,5% de sua renda em impostos. Além disso, a inação do governo para atualizar as alíquotas de impostos já erodiu os salários de trabalhadores mais bem pagos: um trabalhador da construção civil que ganha 15.000 pesos (US$ 1.363) ou mais paga mais de 40% de sua renda para o estado.

Assim, a Argentina está passando a ser o país em que o estado tem a maior influência sobre a economia na região e um dos países do mundo em que os empregados pagam mais impostos. [2] Devido aos impostos ultrapassados aplicados aos trabalhadores que ganham salários decentes, o IVA e o imposto de renda são os maiores contribuintes aos cofres do estado em termos nominais, representando uma parcela maior do que aquela paga por grandes produtores de soja e combustíveis. [3]

2) O pior de tudo é que o trabalhador assalariado argentino tem menos alternativas de emancipação e independência atualmente do que nunca. Mesmo se conseguisse poupar e se proteger dos efeitos da inflação, ele teria que enfrentar barreiras intransponíveis de entrada nos mercados, devido principalmente a leis nacionais e regulamentações municipais para a abertura de novos negócios. Essas restrições elevam os custos iniciais para qualquer pequeno negócio para acima de 100.000 pesos (mais de US$ 9.000). Uma vez que é extremamente difícil para os trabalhadores driblarem os efeitos da inflação, o investimento com a poupança de seus salários é praticamente impossível.

O crédito é virtualmente inacessível. Os bancos cobram taxas de juros de cerca de 70% e não emprestam menos de 120.000 pesos para empresas pequenas ou médias. Além disso, os bancos oferecem cerca de 18% anualmente sobre os depósitos aos poupadores, uma porcentagem irrisória quando comparada às taxas cobradas dos consumidores em empréstimos ao consumidor e cartões de crédito. Os lucros que os bancos consequem com seu monopólio sobre o crédito não têm paralelo em outros setores da economia argentina. E com a última desvalorização em janeiro deste ano, seus lucros cresceram ainda mais. Na verdade, pode-se dizer que, além do próprio governo, os bancos foram os únicos beneficiários da desvalorização. Todos os outros setores sofreram grandes perdas de poder de compra. Durante o primeiro trimestre de 2014, a economia argentina não cresceu e os bancos mesmo assim registraram um aumento de 300% em seus rendimentos em comparação ao mesmo período de 2013. [4]

3) Sendo impossível alcançar a independência financeira através da poupança ou do crédito, o que resta aos trabalhadores médios é fugir para ativos que os permitam ao menos proteger o valor de seu pequeno capital da inflação. Isso costumava ser feito principalmente através da compra de dólares americanos ou de outras moedas estrageiras, mas o estado, em um esforço para cercar recursos em benefício de sua rede clientelista, impôs um rígido controle de compras de moeda estrangeira em 2011. O sistema era tão rígido nos primeiros estágios de sua implementação que ele estimulou o surgimento de um forte mercado negro de moedas. Ele só foi tornado um pouco mais flexível em janeiro de 2014 e para benefício de alguns poucos privilegiados: apenas aqueles que ganham 7.200 pesos por mês (US$ 654) — o equivalente a dois salários mínimos — ou mais podem adquirir moeda estrangeira e, a partir desse ponto, a permissão para compras em moedas estrangeiras cresce de forma concomitante com o nível de renda. É difícil pensar em um sistema mais regressivo que esse para racionar um recurso escasso. [5]

Em outras palavras, mais de 75% dos trabalhadores argentinos estão fora do mercado cambial, fazendo com que se torne extremamente difícil se proteger da inflação do peso. A fuga para outros ativos, como bens duráveis como carros — eu não levo imóveis em consideração porque já estão inacessíveis à maioria da população há decadas —, tem sido enorme e, juntamente com as compras brasileiras, é o principal fator de compensação das demissões e das reduções de operação por parte das grandes montadoras de carros devudio ao crescimento econômico mais lento. Em suma, o assalariado argentino não tem escolha a não ser trabalhar para outra pessoa por um salário miserável que rapidamente se evapora devido à inflação — isso se a incipiente recessão não os levar direto para o desemprego.

4) Com a crise de 2001, o espírito popular tinha em mente o slogan “que saiam todos”, um reflexo claro da perda de confiança na classe política. A proliferação de assembleias de bairro, fábricas ocupadas e gerenciadas pelos trabalhadores e organizações populares sem líderes políticos visíveis eram a norma até que o estado policial de Eduardo Duhalde abriu caminho, através da repressão e dos ajustes econômicos, ao primeiro governo de Néstor Kirchner em 2003. Hoje, apesar de as estatísticas de pobreza não serem mais tão dramáticas, o espírito do povo argentino é parecido, mas definitivamente não está maduro o bastante.

Estamos chegando a um ponto em que a legitimidade da democracia representativa está num ponto baixo histórico: as pessoas comuns parecem estar percebendo que o espetáculo político serve para manter o bem estar da classe política e que, novamente, a história vai seguir o mesmo curso que já segue há décadas. Essa percepção é ainda mais disseminada porque os candidatos que lideram as pesquisas presidenciais da eleição de 2015 são todos fabricados pela facção kirchinerista/duhaldista/menemista. Até mesmo o setor “direitista” liderado por Mauricio Macri já se aproximou do governo atual.

Por outro lado, a popularidade da esquerda estatista tem crescido consideravelmente nos últimos anos, especialmente em algumas das maiores associações comerciais do país e tem ganhado várias cadeiras legislativas. O trabalhador médio não é mais persuadido pelo peronismo, que se transformou no que o radicalismo se tornou na primeira metade do século 20 quando chegou ao poder: um movimento puramente conservador. [6] Contudo, apesar dos avanços das alternativas ao peronismo hegemônico serem um desenvolvimento positivo, ainda se trata da mesma esquerda autoritária de sempre. Suas propostas são, a não ser pela retórica de “assembleias” e “democracia”, mais centralização, mais poder para o estado e mais impostos para o produtor.

5) Penso que a a Argentina precise de um movimento de esquerda que verdadeiramente defenda a emancipação do produtor, pela eliminação dos privilégios na atividade bancária, nas propriedades fundiárias e na indústria e que não dependa do peso do estado sobre os ombros dos trabalhadores e empreendedores — uma esquerda que deixe todas as decisões políticas e econômicas nas mãos dos cidadãos. Um movimento libertário. Um movimento que não parta das altitudes liberais clássicas, que, de qualquer maneira, não tentariam se aproximar dos trabalhadores para mais do que estimulá-los a ler Ludwig von Mises e glorificar Juan Bautista Alberdi. Há um grande abismo cultural entre esse racionalismo herdado do século 18 e a herança cultural argentina. A mesma distância que existe para com as fgras de Marx e Trotsky que a esquerda pretende impor.

A mentalidade argentina é fundamentalmente libertária por motivos históricos, culturais e idiossincráticos e é com esse fato que temos que trabalhar.

Notas:

[1] “El 75% de la gente ocupada gana menos de $ 6.500 mensuales”, Clarín, 26/03/2014.

[2] Fernando Gutiérrez, “Cristina, “víctima” de la curva de Laffer: el Gobierno, casi sin margen para subir impuestos y mejorar la caja”.

[3] Arrecadação – Serie Anual 2014, AFIP. Um argumento frequentemente utilizado contra essa crítica da depredação estatista é que o dinheiro coletado “retorna” ao povo na forma de serviços públicos ou sociais, como a Assistência Universal por Filho (AUF) ou serviços educacionais. É importante notar que a AUF é meramente um remédio superficial que pretende conter os impulsos destrutivos do lumpenproletariado (que todos conhecemos bem depois dos episódios de 2001) e que, apesar do aumento dos gastos na educação pública de 4% para 6,2% do PIB, a matrícula de alunos em escolas particulares cresceu sete vezes mais que em escolas públicas devido à decadência contínua de sua qualidade, que não oferece qualquer esperança para o futuro dos alunos e mantém os professores em condições de trabalho absolutamente precárias. Novamente, os trabalhadores sofrem pelos dois lados: sustentam a educação pública por meio dos impostos e fazem um esforço hercúleo para pagar pela educação de seus filhos.

[4] Nicolás Bondarovsky, “Economía: la extraordinaria ganancia de los bancos”. Isso não é nada novo. Vários pensadores já observaram a necessidade de que o trabalhador tenha acesso ao crédito para sua emancipação, desde Proudhon, William Greene, Benjamin Tucker e Silvio Gesell, até Kevin Carson nos dias atuais, entre outros.

[5] “La AFIP anunció la fórmula con que se calculará la venta de dólares para ahorro”, Infobae, 27/01/2014.

[6] “La izquierda por la izquierda: Jorge Altamira – Partido Obrero – FIT”, La Barraca, 19/05/2014.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

For this week’s Weekly Abolitionist post, I’d like to emphasize the importance of holding a specifically abolitionist stance on prisons. Getting rid of prisons is not just one more reform to tack on after we’ve accomplished everything else. It’s the primary goal, and all other reforms should be judged with that in mind.

The key here is remembering that in order for a reform to actually be a reform, it needs to be a step forward, without any steps backward. Mapping out which way a reform is going, though, requires remembering that prisons are inherently unjust.

For example, measures that meaningfully work against something like prison rape should be supported, all other things being equal. However, all other things are sometimes not equal, as the introduction of women’s prisons has shown us. Since their beginning, the construction of women’s prisons has had the same effect that the construction of any prison does: higher and higher rates of incarceration . In this case, it has led to higher and higher rates of female incarceration specifically. This in turn leads to more and more women in danger of prison rape, especially from guards.

Outside of proposed reforms to prisons themselves, the prison abolitionist outlook also helps to structure our commitments on other social reforms. Hate crime laws provide a good example of this. Obviously, the libertarian prison abolitionist opposition to all punishment to begin with gives good moral reasons for opposing harsher punishments based on the motives of the offender. Beyond just that, though, keeping the structural problems related to prisons and criminal law in mind at all times helps us to see the actual effect of these laws. Namely, they do very little if anything to actually prevent hate crimes, while leading to plenty of real, tangible harms against the minorities they’re designed to protect.

Any expansion of hate crime laws (for example, to include gay or transgender victims) means an expansion of the prison state. Since the prison state is most likely to aim especially its aggression against the oppressed groups hate crime laws are ostensibly designed to protect – by locking up people of color and those who refuse to conform to heteronormative standards of gender or sexuality – this means strengthening the world’s biggest hate criminal. As prison abolitionist law professor Dean Spade tells us, hate crime laws are only about having the law say that oppressed people matter, not about treating them as if they actually do matter. With this in mind, he writes that “we must stop believing that what the law says about itself is true and that what the law says about us is what matters.”

As these and other examples show, insisting on an abolitionist rather than reformist stance is not some useless display of self-righteousness. It is a necessary consideration for making sure that every step taken is a step in the right direction. The incentive structures created by any system of domination and institutionalized aggression are such that it will co-opt any attempt at reform that is not aimed at abolition. We cannot afford to let the prison entrench itself any further. As the abolitionist of slavery William Lloyd Garrison said, “gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.”

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Poison as Food, Poison as Antidote” read and edited by Nick Ford.

But it is an all-too-common mistake – and this tendency to underestimate the chasm between free markets and corporatism is enormously beneficial to the state, enabling a slick bait-and-switch. When free markets and government grants of privilege to business are conflated, those who are attracted to free markets are easily duped into supporting plutocracy, thus swelling the ranks of statism’s right wing – while those who are turned off by plutocracy are likewise easily duped into opposing free markets, thereby swelling the ranks of statism’s left wing. (These are the two tendencies that Kevin Carson calls “vulgar libertarianism” and “vulgar liberalism,” respectively.)

As one of the villains in The Fountainhead explains in a moment of frankness, talking about the choice Europe was then facing between communism and fascism:

“If you’re sick of one version, we push you in the other. We’ve fixed the coin. Heads – collectivism. Tails – collectivism. Give up your soul to a council – or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective.”

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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National Public Radio (NPR) led its “Week in Politics” program of September 12 off with analysis of US president Barack Obama’s address to the nation on the Islamic State. Various journalists and talking heads discussed the fundamentals of Obama’s speech — was it strong enough, will it get the job done, just who is ISIS anyway? Afterward, I realized the United States has bombed Iraq, in some form or fashion, since I was six years old — I am a 30-year-old man. This tragic tradition, now a quarter of a century long, continues with the current commander-in-chief who holds a Nobel Peace Prize.

For all this time the United States government has carried on national engineering and acts of mass murder in the Arab territory. In his speech, Obama stated: “Our objective is clear: We will degrade and ultimately destroy ISI[S] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.” The next great drone war is upon us — sure to kill even more innocents. The United States government is already responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the region, with even more displaced and property destruction on a grand scale to boot. The new strikes are not limited to Iraq either. Bombs will fall on Syria despite a national outcry against the administration this time last year when it targeted the Bashar al-Assad regime. They got their damn war after all.

ISIS is a terrifying regime. The group subjugates and rapes women, kills children and beheads prisoners. But more interventionism is not the answer. This new military campaign will only exacerbate their power, not curtail it.

A heart wrenching video on Huffington Post shows a Syrian baby entombed in a bombed building.  The camera is focused on a group of rescue workers frantically digging through debris, laden with twisted metal, to rescue the child. The scream of the infant is distinguishable over the noise of the crowd. At the video’s end the rescue workers are successful and the terrified child is pulled from the rubble alive. The sound of jubilation in the crowd is as joyful as it is agonizing.

The up and coming drone strikes ordered by Barack Obama will recreate this situation every day, day in and day out, for as long as it is sustained.

Drone strikes are acts of terror. The campaign against terrorism is itself a never-ending campaign of terror. The United States is a permanent wartime state — the world’s greatest agent of repression. With each bomb, the world becomes less secure and less safe. With each bomb, the United States, and by default those of us living within its borders, become more alone and isolated in the world.

Military strikes meet short-term political goals for the war hawks, but the enhancement of liberty is a long-term strategy. Where there are markets there is peace. Where there is peace there is liberty. The more liberty in the world, by very definition, the less oppressive regimes. I don’t want ISIS around anymore than anyone else, but the slaughter of tens of thousands is not the answer — it is the very imperialist mentality that created such a violent regime in the first place. The nation-state, for engaging in such slaughter, is itself an oppressive regime — it deserves nothing less than to be vanquished in liberty.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Barack Obama Terrorista.

David S. D’ Amato discusses the political economy of Benjamin Tucker.

Tom Engelhardt discusses how America made ISIS.

Peter Harling discusses how ISIS is back in business.

Jacob Sullum discusses pot related prisoners of the War on Drugs.

Ronald Bailey discusses whether immigrants are more likely to commit crime or not.

Kevin Carson discusses Reason Magazine red baiting.

Ralph Nader discusses the ex-im bank.

Mike Marion discusses four questions that should be asked about renewed U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses how Obama is following Bush’s playbook.

James Bovard discusses how trade was shaped in early America.

Jan Oberg discusses the immorality of Obama’s speech.

Norman Solomon discusses the New York Time’s stance on war.

Barry Lando discusses the U.S., ISIS, and Al Qaeda.

Dan Sanchez discusses why the state is our enemy.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses September 11th.

The 7th part of George H. Smith’s series on social law.

Mike Whitney discusses war with Syria.

Matthew Hoh discusses perpetual war as U.S. policy.

Robert Parry discusses the revival of neocon bombing plans in Syria.

Johnny Barber discusses the lost lessons of 9-11.

Sheldon Richman discusses IP.

Nick Gillespie discusses alleged crime inducing youth icons.

Damon Root discusses Ken Burn’s new documentary on the Roosevelts.

Andrew J. Bacevich discusses Obama’s new war.

Lawrence Davidson discusses international law.

Justin Raimondo discusses the new Iraq War.

Abigail Hall discusses the arming of Syrian rebels

Jack Goldsmith discusses the expansion of war powers under Obama.

Alexander Alekhine plays Ruzena Sucha and wins.

Alexey Shirov defeats Jeroen Piket.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Egoism And Anarchy” read and edited by Nick Ford.

I’ve long held that Greek philosophy and modern libertarianism are natural allies, tailor-made for each other ‘ not because they are similar but because through their very differences each can supply the deficiencies of the other. This debate in Liberty is another example. Both sides of this debate shared a common assumption: that respect for others’ rights is not itself a component of our self-interest. From this assumption it follows that one must choose between putting one’s own interests first and regarding other people’s rights as having intrinsic weight. But this is precisely what is challenged by Classical Eudaimonism, the moral theory pioneered by Socrates, developed in different ways by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and accepted by nearly every major moral philosopher before the Renaissance, including Cicero and Thomas Aquinas.

Feed 44:

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• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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Burger King’s announced purchase of Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons, and its plans to relocate its headquarters to Canada to take advantage of the lower corporate income tax rate, were followed by predictable liberal cries of outrage over BK’s lack of “patriotism.” It’s “unpatriotic,” critics say, for the company to take advantage of taxpayer-funded benefits in the US and then bail out to avoid paying taxes to fund those benefits.

What did they expect? There’s no such thing as a “patriotic” corporation. Governments are extractive tools of, by and for corporations. Providing taxpayer-funded benefits to privileged economic actors who don’t pay for them is what government is for. The central trend of corporate capitalism over the past 150 years had been the socialization of operating costs and risks and the privatization of profit. And as much as some liberals like to talk about “patriotic billionaires” like Warren Buffett, billionaires are only “patriotic” — i.e. maintain the appearance of loyalty to a government — when it suits their interest. Buffett’s economic ventures, as much as other corporate endeavors, depend entirely on government subsidies to his operating costs and on gouging consumers with government-enforced monopolies that together far outweigh whatever he pays, or advocates paying, in taxes.

Further, the corporate income tax — despite a name that suggests sticking it to corporations — really isn’t very “progressive.” I hate corporations as much as anyone, and probably a lot more than most. But the main function of the corporate income tax is to increase the concentration of power, not reduce it. Targeted tax deductions and tax credits, both refundable and not, mean that many large corporations engaged in favored activities (like capital-intensive, high tech, export-oriented production, and large-scale mergers and acquisitions) pay little or no tax at all. As a result of the longtime struggle between the Yankee and Cowboy factions of American capital, the latter (including low-wage, labor-intensive service industries like fast food) bear the brunt of the corporate income tax and are the most vocal advocates for lowering it. On top of that, Yankee industries tend to be oligopolies in which the large firms can collude to pass on tax costs to consumers through administered pricing, whereas Cowboy industries are more likely to eat the cost themselves.

If we want to attack Burger King on the basis of privilege, going to Canada to escape taxes is pretty minor compared to things like their use of trademark law, franchise fees and all the supplier lock-ins that come with a franchise to put local franchise owners in a position where labor is literally the only thing available to cut. The way the corporation treats franchises is a lot like the way Walmart treats its vendors.

As Tom Knapp (our Media Director at C4SS) said, beneficiaries of state privilege will, like anyone else, shop for the best deal for their privilege. One side effect of globalization is that it’s easier to do that kind of shopping — just park your headquarters in the place with the best tax rate knowing that you still get your “intellectual property” claims, etc. enforced by other states pursuant to “trade deals.”

The way to fight Burger King is to outdo it in terms of agility. If BK’s headquarters can jump national borders, so can labor solidarity movements. Wobbly locals can take direct action in Burger King restaurants in Canada as well as the US. And at the local level, we can build counter-institutions, like low-overhead, home-based micro-restaurants and guerrilla delivery of home-produced food, to combat entry barriers like zoning and licensing that give established restaurants an artificial advantage. In so doing, we give ordinary people an opportunity to turn their labor directly into subsistence income outside the wage system and reduce dependence on fast food’s lousy pay and working conditions.

The root is privilege itself — not the economic actors who take the fullest advantage of it.

Chi vota per politici come il candidato alla presidenza brasiliana Aecio Neves, così come molti dei simpatizzanti del suo partito (Partito Socialdemocratico Brasiliano, Psdb), spesso va in confusione quando scopre che idee come “efficienza” nel settore pubblico, “cura choc”, e “professionalità” di governo non attirano larghe fette della popolazione. Si tratta di un’idea moderatamente diffusa, appoggiata anche nel governo dello stato di Pernambuco (più come programma elettorale che come azione) da Eduardo Campos, morto il dodici agosto scorso. È l’idea secondo cui c’è, o almeno dovrebbe esserci, una separazione vitale tra la politica e l’amministrazione pubblica; tra l’ideologia e l’efficienza. Ma l’idea della professionalizzazione della politica, che consiste nel mettere i “tecnici” al governo per “gestire” la cosa pubblica come se fosse una normale organizzazione della società civile, è di per sé profondamente ideologica.

È neanche una delle ideologie più recenti: Thorstein Veblen parlava di una tecnocrazia formata da ingegneri già negli anni venti. Veblen, nel suo famoso The Engineers and the Price System parla degli ingegneri (i “tecnici”) come di una classe di persone in grado di promuovere i principi della “gestione scientifica” rivolta alla produzione, opposti ad un sistema di mercato in cui i prezzi fungono da segnale. Veblen non vedeva niente di strano in un’organizzazione corporativa, che lui voleva far assurgere a modello universale e fondamento della società, eliminando le limitazioni tecniche di quelli che lui chiamava “valori industriali”. A loro volta, questi ultimi erano dipendevano dall’efficienza produttiva e non avevano niente a che vedere con gli incentivi del mercato; anzi, vi si opponevano.

Veblen promosse le sue idee riguardo l’industria e la tecnologia come punto di partenza di quella società basata su una produzione di massa da lui immaginata. Questa società, e i suoi valori, avrebbe dovuto far nascere, tramite i lavoratori dell’industria, una nuova forma di democrazia, gestita in maniera innovativa in modo da promuovere l’efficienza, la conoscenza tecnica e l’amministrazione della cosa pubblica. Ovvero una macchina perfettamente calibrata per il dominio e il controllo della società.

Questo ideale distopico riuscì a trovare adepti. Nel corso del ventesimo subì poche modifiche, perlopiù ad opera di progressisti come Joseph Schumpeter e John Kenneth Galbraith. Oggi ne sentiamo parlare soprattutto per bocca dei politici, che pensano di parlare con la voce dell’innovazione quando sostengono la necessità di mettere specialisti in posizioni di governo. È anche una comoda ideologia per un gran numero di burocrati perché non mette in dubbio l’esistenza di un dato incarico di governo, ma semplicemente si chiede chi dovrebbe ricoprirlo. La questione non è se un governo è necessario o meno, ma chi andrà a governare. Chi vorremmo sul Trono di Ferro se non uno “specialista”? Qualcuno che non si lasci trascinare da passioni politico-ideologiche, ma da quei “valori industriali” vagheggiati da Veblen. Qualcuno che olii gli ingranaggi di quel grande macchinario che è la società.

Certo sono tutte sciocchezze, perché quando parliamo di politica parliamo di ideologia, di priorità, della scelta di un obiettivo collettivo piuttosto che di un altro. Ma non ci sono fini sociali, a meno che non si consideri la somma dei singoli obiettivi individuali in senso puramente metaforico. Che poi è la ragione per cui non è possibile affidare la gestione della cosa pubblica al controllo degli esperti, perché la definizione stessa di “gestione della cosa pubblica” è una questione ideologica soggetta a negoziati politici e opposizioni.

Non è possibile rimuovere l’ideologia dal governo perché il governo stesso è un’ideologia: l’ideologia del potere, del controllo e della soppressione della dissidenza. L’ideologia della conformità, della dimensione macro-sociale, della società intesa come astrazione, mai riconducibile alle sue componenti individuali.

Governare, lungi dall’essere un’attività senza ideologie e programmi, consiste nel cucire assieme i programma della maggioranza all’interno di una gerarchia. Non c’è da meravigliarsi se il movimento anarchico tende storicamente verso rapporti orizzontali e la creazione del consenso come strategia che consenta di evitare la nascita di maggioranze e di strutture burocratiche di potere. Questa idea di un rapporto orizzontale ha l’obiettivo di mitigare gli effetti di particolari ideologie quando queste vengono applicate alla collettività. Al contrario una tecnocrazia, con il suo tentativo di razionalizzare i processi, ricorda un dispotismo illuminato. Certo è positivo che un processo socialmente desiderabile debba essere efficiente e consenta un risparmio di risorse, ma prima dobbiamo sapere quali sono i processi socialmente desiderabili. E non lo sappiamo.

È molto ironico il fatto che i politici di lungo corso siano i più grandi (e forse i più cinici) proponenti del credo tecnocratico. Lo stesso Aecio Neves, nonostante i suoi richiami all’amministrazione tecnocratica, è specializzato in una sola cosa: la poltrona. È stato direttore di una grossa banca pubblica, segretario alla presidenza, deputato, governatore e senatore.

Forse Aecio Neves oggi è un fantoccio della retorica che lui stesso ha messo su; un ostaggio. Perché Aecio Neves non è mai stato un tecnico; il tecnico è quello che realizza i suoi programmi politici.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Like many libertarians, I’ve learned a lot from Murray Rothbard on a wide variety of subjects. Of course, no one gets everything right, especially someone as intellectually ambitious, multidisciplinary, and prolific as Rothbard. Nevertheless, reading the work of the man who left such a mark on the modern libertarian movement is as profitable as it is pleasurable.

While rereading For a New Liberty (first published in 1973) recently, I confess I was puzzled, which is not the frame of mind Rothbard normally leaves me in. In deriving property rights, he used the example of a “sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials.”

Here’s the passage that had me scratching my head:

Let us waive, for the moment, the question of original property rights in the clay and the sculptor’s tools. The question then becomes: Who owns the work of art as it emerges from the sculptor’s fashioning? It is, in fact, the sculptor’s “creation,” not in the sense that he has created matter, but in the sense that he has transformed nature-given matter — the clay — into another form dictated by his own ideas and fashioned by his own hands and energy. Surely, it is a rare person who, with the case put thus, would say that the sculptor does not have the property right in his own product. Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material objects of the world in order to survive, then the sculptor has the right to own the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality. He has placed the stamp of his person upon the raw material, by “mixing his labor” with the clay, in the phrase of the great property theorist John Locke. And the product transformed by his own energy has become the material embodiment of the sculptor’s ideas and vision.

I find it odd that Rothbard wants us to ignore, even if only for the moment, the “original property rights in the clay and the sculptor’s tools.” It’s odd because to establish the sculptor’s ownership of the finished work of art, all we need to know is that he owned the clay and tools. The artist’s inspiration, creative genius, and labor — while undoubtedly important to the production of the finished product — add nothing to our ability to determine who owns the sculpture. If he owns the inputs, he owns the outputs. Period. (I elaborate on this in “Intellectual ‘Property’ versus Real Property.”)

As Rothbard acknowledges, when we talk about creation, we don’t mean it literally, as though a product comes from nothing. As libertarian thinkers have always understood, when we create things, we only change other already existing things from a less valuable (useful) form to a more valuable (useful) form. (At least that is the goal.)

Rothbard intends his example to demonstrate the injustice of depriving the sculptor of his product. He apparently thought that emphasizing the artist’s creativity would be the clearest way to highlight that injustice. “By what right,” he asks, “do [others] appropriate to themselves the product of the creator’s mind and energy? In this clear cut case, the right of the creator to own what he has mixed his person and labor with would be generally conceded.”

Again, he seems to derive ownership of the final product from “the creator’s mind.” Yet his second sentence, which is actually in tension with the first, indicates that we cannot ignore who owns the inputs. Had the sculptor mixed his person and labor with clay he stole from someone else, we could not conclude that the sculptor owned the final product simply because he exercised creativity and exerted effort. (He might have exercised creativity and exerted great effort in stealing the clay.) And if it would be wrong to steal the sculpture when the artist owned the inputs, then it would be equally wrong to steal the inputs themselves — before the creative act occurred. Ownership of the inputs is both necessary and sufficient for ownership of the outputs. References to mental processes add nothing to the story.

Now, I realize that Rothbard asks us to ignore the ownership of the inputs used by the sculptor only for the moment. A page later he focuses on who owns the clay:

The man or men who had extracted the clay from the ground and had sold it to the sculptor may not be as “creative” as the sculptor, but they too are “producers,” they too have mixed their ideas and their technological know-how with the nature-given soil to emerge with a useful product. They, too, are “producers,” and they too have mixed their labor with natural materials to transform those materials into useful goods and services. These persons, too, are entitled to the ownership of their products.

Of course, if the producers of the clay sold it to the sculptor, then ownership was transferred to the sculptor, and as noted, that’s sufficient for legitimate ownership of the final product.

But note that even here Rothbard muddies things when he mentions that the producers of the clay “mixed their ideas and their technological know-how” in the process of making the clay. Why talk about ideas and know-how to establish ownership of the clay when it’s enough to say that the producers acquired the land through purchase or homesteading (or lease or gift). The contents of their heads add nothing to the matter.

Why am I making such a big deal of this? Surely, Rothbard understood that if you mix your labor with inputs you legitimately own, then you necessarily also own the outputs. My concern is that his repeated references to the producers’ ideas, as though they are essential to establishing ownership, introduce confusion into his analysis. He inadvertently reinforces the erroneous notion underlying patents and other forms of so-called intellectual property (IP). Someone who believes that ideas are essential to establishing ownership of products might be tempted to think that ideas themselves are products subject to ownership. Ridding ownership theory of the intellectual element will help to avert the IP mistake. (Again, this is not to deny that ideas are important to all human action.)

Rothbard did not make the mistake I refer to. He rejected patents. According to Rothbard, no independent inventor could be legally barred from making and selling his product because someone else had already come up with the idea for that product. That position constitutes a rejection of intellectual property. However, in The Ethics of Liberty, he argued that the copyright principle is applicable to inventions as well as to literary and artistic works. Thus inventors could reserve the right to copy their products. The prohibition on copying would not be merely part of the contract between buyers and sellers. For Rothbard, all third parties would be also affected, even someone who found the product after it had been abandoned. The finder, in Rothbard’s view, may not legitimately copy the product because the right to reproduce it has been reserved by the inventor (or to whomever the inventor transferred the copyright to). Presumably, the product would display the copyright symbol to notify everyone that this right has been reserved and therefore does not adhere to the object.

This, to say the least, seems peculiar because, like today’s patent law, it would permit inventors to dictate to others — who entered into no agreement — how they may act with respect to their own physical property and with respect to other people. For example, if I saw a wheelbarrow, for which the inventor had claimed to reserve the right to reproduce, I would be legally prohibited from fashioning my own wood and metal into that form and from selling it to someone else without the inventor’s permission.

How would that be consistent with the natural right to be free from aggression? How would it be consistent with the right to ownership through homesteading and other legitimate acquisition? (For a discussion of the problems with the reserved-copyright approach, I refer readers to Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property. Also see his “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide.” For refutation of the claim that IP is necessary for innovation, see Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly.)

For the sake of justice and freedom, we ought not to falsely found ownership on ideas and creation.

Though many Americans know that prisoners often work while behind bars, the conditions under which they toil may be less than clear. Fortune magazine made waves this summer when it reported that “[p]rison labor has gone artisanal,” revealing a multimillion dollar business that puts convicts to work making everything from specialty motorcycles to goat cheese sold at Whole Foods.

And while consumers pay top dollar for the prisoners’ expensive wares — and companies like Colorado Corrections Industries rake in millions — the prisoners themselves often make as little as 60 cents per day. David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, says that prison labor operates in a “legal black hole” where basic legal protections such as minimum wage are conspicuously unavailable.

That hopeless black hole has swallowed nearly 2.5 million individual Americans, destroying lives and dreams, tearing families asunder and leaving them in financial ruin. As is now a well-known and shameful fact, the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its populace than any other government on earth. No country sanctioning such a practice can maintain that it is “free” in any but the most ironic, mocking sense.

Such statistical data confirm the United States’ brutal and unjustifiable over-criminalization, the tendency toward outlawing acts that a free society would treat as permissible. Today, a huge percentage of American prisoners at both the state and federal levels are nonviolent offenders, their crimes usually involving the possession of illegal drugs. Most of these captives are black or Hispanic Americans — even though these groups are no more likely to possess “contraband” than white Americans. Subjected to militarized police forces that treat their neighborhoods as occupied war zones, members of these vulnerable groups are routinely harassed, stopped and frisked, watched and arrested without cause. They are made criminals, sent to prison to languish or perform slave labor.

Yet even if we grant, for the sake of argument, the preposterous premise that almost everyone in prison has committed some actual crime, we are nonetheless left with the question of how a free society ought to deal with those who violate the rights of others. The notion that wrongdoers must be punished is the great unexamined assumption. It is not at all clear that justice is served by punishment — much less that justice requires punishment.

In Resist Not Evil, distinguished attorney Clarence Darrow argued that punishment itself represents a great injustice, his great legal mind condemning “the evil and unsatisfactory results of punishment.” Darrow believed the criminal justice system should strive to make a victim whole and to reform the lawbreaker, not to subject the criminal to savagery and vengeance, the barbaric holdovers of less enlightened ages. Darrow went so far as to contend that the state’s simple and mindless revenge, “without any thought of good to follow,” is indeed worse “than any casual isolated crime.” Considering the practice of punishment from all angles, addressing all ostensible rationales, Darrow revealed it as wrong, ineffectual, inhuman.

Market anarchists believe that only acts which violate the equal rights of others ought to be regarded as crimes. Every individual thus has the sovereign right to live her life in whatever way she chooses, as long as she allows everyone else the same right. Under these simple standards, the prison system is an abominable example of injustice and aggression.

“The time will come,” Darrow wrote, “when the public prosecutor and the judge who sentences his brother to death or imprisonment will be classed with the other officers who lay violent and cruel hands upon their fellows.” With American prisons bursting at the seams and giant corporations exploiting the slave labor pool they create, one hopes that the day Darrow wrote of is coming sooner rather than later.

All’inizio di settembre, la Reuters ha reso nota una ricerca commissionata dalla Federal Reserve che dimostra che negli Stati Uniti cresce la disuguaglianza in termini di reddito e ricchezza. “Tutta la crescita del reddito,” dice la Reuters, “è concentrata nella parte alta… con il 30,5% nelle mani del 3% della popolazione.”

La ricerca della Federal Reserve sconcerterà sicuramente chi, a sinistra come a destra, considera erroneamente gli Stati Uniti “la patria della libertà”, il luogo ideale per le opportunità, dove chiunque può fare progressi con un minimo di dedizione. Certo, però, i dati sembrano mostrare una realtà molto diversa da questi rosei fraintendimenti, una realtà in cui le connessioni tra le élite, nel business come in politica, assicurano che i ricchi diventino più ricchi e i poveri più poveri.

Davanti ad uno spettacolo così desolante dell’economia e della struttura di classe americana, quelle persone sinceramente turbate dalla crescita della disuguaglianza fanno presto a dare la colpa al “libero mercato” e alla concorrenza selvaggia che mette il profitto al di sopra della persona. Ma cosa è veramente un libero mercato, e se oggi ne possediamo uno, sono due domande separate a cui dobbiamo rispondere se vogliamo analizzare la questione della disuguaglianza in America. La sinistra americana sarebbe stupita ad apprendere che nella tradizione radicale socialista si trova tutto un genere di libertari contro lo stato e a favore del libero mercato.

Ammettendo che mercati e concorrenza di per sé siano parte del problema sociale da risolvere, la sinistra si mette in posizione di svantaggio da sola, capitolando alla falsa credenza secondo cui la classe di potere capitalista ha semplicemente vinto. Dopotutto, è il ragionamento, se è vero che abbiamo un genuino libero mercato qui e ora, cosa possiamo obbiettare?

La maggior parte dei nemici del capitalismo, dunque, condivide lo stesso mito propagandato dai peggiori apologisti dell’attuale capitalismo con le sue numerose disuguaglianze. Entrambi sostengono che il mondo economico attuale è essenzialmente di libero mercato. Anarchici sostenitori del mercato come Ezra Heywood e Benjamin Tucker non credevano a queste falsità. Non credevano che il lavoro non potesse competere con il capitale quando i due si sfidano su un piano equo.

Piuttosto, dicevano, le caratteristiche più comuni, più inique del capitalismo erano in realtà il frutto avvelenato di profonde offese, generalmente accettate, ai principi del libero mercato. Togliete gli aiuti che lo stato concede alle grandi imprese, i molteplici privilegi che limitano l’azione dei lavoratori, e allora un genuino scambio volontario, una genuina cooperazione dissolverà il capitalismo come lo conosciamo oggi.

Come dice Ezra Heywood in The Great Strike, “La sopravvivenza del più forte è un bene inevitabile; davanti ai lavoratori i capitalisti sono impotenti, a meno che lo stato… non intervenga a dar loro una mano ad afferrare e tosare le vittime. Il vecchio appello dei dispotismi, che la libertà rappresenta insicurezza, ricompare adesso sotto forma di concetto sbagliato secondo cui la concorrenza è un male per i lavoratori.”

Heywood dà una lezione alla sinistra americana contemporanea: Il capitalismo è un sistema basato sul furto della terra, norme che impediscono la concorrenza, monopolio della proprietà intellettuale e grosse regalie alle grandi imprese sotto forma di aiuti e contratti governativi. Cos’è, allora, tutto questo gran parlare di “libero mercato”?

L’anarchia di mercato è una forma di decentramento, un socialismo libertario che vede nello scambio volontario e nella cooperazione la soluzione alla disuguaglianza diffusa con cui oggi lottiamo. Politici e amministratori delegati preferirebbero mantenere l’attuale sistema americano; loro dipendono dal sistema e il sistema dipende da loro. A noialtri, a differenza delle élite politiche ed economiche, non dispiace lavorare per vivere; noi non chiediamo privilegi particolari; vogliamo solo essere lasciati in pace, liberi di realizzare le nostre idee e perseguire i nostri obiettivi. È questo genere di libero mercato che offre una via d’uscita dall’attuale iniquità, non il rafforzamento di quest’ultima.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.