Zygmunt Bauman, in Postmodernity and Its Discontents, writes that religion, in its traditional form, used to celebrate human insufficiency. With a path more or less outlined for her entire life, the individual found herself powerless to change the conditions she was inserted in. In contrast to what he considers the “postmodern” condition, of uncertainty, premodern life was based on a certainty particular to stratified and caste societies.

Postmodernity, always according to Bauman, forced a change of religious discourse: life, which used to be grounded on certainty and human powerlessness, becomes one of uncertainty. Thus, the individual, who is unclear about her destiny, must now feel self-sufficienty. Why? Because that way there’s at least the appearance of being capable of effecting change in her life. If the changes that occur in her life (and which cause this uncertainty that is typical of postmodernity) are not subjected to the person’s control, they cease to be a human subject and people lose interest.

In practice, it’s a marketing strategy: religion must guarantee to us that “we can,” that “we’re capable,” that “we’ll achieve” our maximum potential, otherwise they cease to be relevant to us — death, the classical religious theme, has lost its luster, since it can’t be changed through human action.

I was reminded of this observation by Bauman — about the current need for a guarantee of individual self-sufficiency — with the beginning of the electoral campaigns in Brazil. A very common line of thought has predictably found its way back into political discourse: there are enough jobs, what we need is professional training.

The idea is analogous: if we say that there are no jobs, the problem is structural and very little can be done on an individual level to change the situation. By contrast, if “there are job openings, but people lack the required skill to fill them,” the individual becomes the center of the discussion. Unemployment is now not a systemic problem, but the exclusive problem of the unemployed. If they can’t leave their unemployed situation, it’s their fault, because they have all the tools to do so. They only have to want it.

Truth is that we have to want it and use the appropriate middlemen. In religion, you can reach salvation by wanting it — but don’t forget that God answers through our temple. In the neoliberal economy, you have to want it and find the right middlemen to provide you with jobs and abundance. In Brazil, ironically, these middlemen are the unions.

As Raúl Zibechi notes in The New Brazil: Regional Imperialism and the New Democracy, the main proponents of this neoliberal idea that we don’t lack jobs but training are the largest unions in the country: CUT (Unified Worker’s Central Union) and Força Sindical (Union Force), which also control the largest pension funds in the country.

To CUT and Força Sindical, the current system is extremely convenient, since they are wholly inserted in the Brazilian corporate capitalism. To them, it’s not a good idea to fight for a deep structural change; they want workers to try and insert themselves in the market through these unions, through their “training programs” (which, because of FAT — Worker’s Support Fund —, guarantee a steady flow of money from the government to these organizations), and trust their “propositive” rather than “combative” unionism. It’s not by chance that May Day celebrations in Brazil are marked not by protests but parties sponsored by unions.

This enthusiasm for training and professional qualification programs is quite convenient to businesses, specially large ones, which frequently advertise the fact that they have many “job openings” that can’t be filled for the lack of skilled workers. Government is always all too happy to propagandize the story, because that allows it to keep the current system intact, spend a lot of money in frankly irrelevant qualification programs, and afterwards state that that’s how “unemployment is fought,” at the same time that it elevates work requirements, cutting low-skill workers off. Businesses, on the other hand, get giddy when they find out they can externalize their costs, turning the responsibility to qualify workers over to the government, and eliminating the need of spending on capital, raising wages, or even shrinking their firm size in response to the lack of labor.

In 2014, as always, candidates are going to show up on your TV to say that you are able to realize your every dream, provided you want it really badly, because it all depends on you. Look for a nearby community college, qualification program, or union chapter.

The same way salvation depends on you (through church), your economic welfare is your problem. If you fail, it’s your fault.

But if you manage to get a stable job, with a carreer plan and benefits, thank the government and the unions. You wanted it, but they made it possible.

It is easy to see moral irony in the arguments of those who support Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government in the ongoing dispute against a group of so-called vulture funds, led by the highly litigious Elliot Associates. Anyone even slightly familiar with the corrupt shenanigans of Fernandez, her late husband — former president Nestor Kirchner — and their cronies over the last 11 years is entitled to roll their eyes at claims that the interests of the Argentine people motivate Fernandez’s government to resist the vulture funds’ attempt to get paid in full for bonds the country defaulted on in 2002 (the largest debt default the world had ever seen until then — surpassed only by Lehman Brothers in 2008).

Egregious as the recent past of the Kirchner administration is, what truly adds insult to injury is the Kirchners’ earlier history. During the mid 1970s, Fernandez and her husband established a law firm in Rio Gallegos, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz. The firm thrived during those years, especially right after a sharp devaluation of the peso in 1980 caused by the disastrous economic policies of the military junta ruling the country at the time. When inflation-indexed rates on mortgage loans soared to sky-high levels, forcing desperate debtors to sell their homes at fire sale prices, the Kirchners cashed in handsomely, enforcing evictions on behalf of several financial houses and banks.

The methods they used for this purpose could easily be classified as “vulturesque.” Lawyer Rafael Flores — a fellow Peronist who would become one of the Kirchners’ main detractors during the ’90s — took up the case of Mrs. Ana Victoria de Aaset, a distressed mortgage-holder who successfully sued the Kirchners for allegedly keeping Asaet’s promisory notes rather than shredding them after payment. When Flores ran onto Fernandez right ouside the courtroom and asked her why she and her husband were doing this, she famously answered: “We want to get into politics, and for getting into politics, we need some serious dough.” Tony Montana couldn’t have said it better.

Sadly, Fernandez’s domestic political opponents, who include most local mainstream libertarians, have pathetically sided with the vulture funds, engaging in one of the most outrageous exercises of false free-market rhetoric the country has seen ever since the Menem years.

Their arguments amount to nothing more than crass rehashes of the well-PR’d statements championed by Elliot’s Paul Singer and others at the hedge fund community. As Jim Armitage put it in a recent article at The Independent:

The vultures argue that, were it not for the threat of relentless and unflinching court room battles, tinpot dictators, kleptocrats and plain old irresponsible populist leaders have nothing to prevent them racking up huge debts, wasting (or stealing) the money, and then disappearing off into the distance.

The most outrageous fallacy in this line of reasoning is the conflation of the political class of a country with its citizenry at large. Whenever vultures succeed in collecting the full value on defaulted government bonds, the ones who end up paying are, obviously, the taxpayers, the general citizenry of a given country. The local politicians who borrowed the money in the name of the people, obtaining enormous personal financial gains in process, won’t contribute to paying those debts any more than the regular Joe who does real work for a living. How can anyone in their right minds think that will discipline the political class into fiscal frugality of any kind? How can anyone claiming to defend any minimally substantive notion of human freedom advocate for socializing the losses of creditors who lend to corrupt, unaccountable governments, effectively subjecting the common people to government-debt peonage on behalf of crony financial operators?

Actually, many “free-market,” pro-Elliot pundits are so eager to counter Fernandez’s government at any cost that they end up defending Judge Griesa’s bizarrely heterodox interpretation of the pari passu clause in sovereign bonds. As financial blogger Felix Salmon recently pointed out, the clause “is a piece of hoary financial boilerplate that means absolutely nothing in a sovereign context.”

The traditional interpretation of pari passu by market players in international financial transactions is that it prevents the borrower from incurring obligations to other creditors that rank legally senior to the debt instrument containing the clause. Outside the framework of typical corporate-bankrupcy proceedings, the notion that a pari passu clause implies that equally-ranking debt must be paid equally is an utter fallacy.

No one with a minimum of common sense and intellectual honesty should portray financial operators specialized in extracting rents through unscrupulous legal manipulation as if they were free-market players seeking to enforce fair contractual terms — especially not those who call themselves “libertarians.”

Lysander Spooner termina seu panfleto Vícios não são crimes, de 1875, da seguinte maneira:

“[A] pobreza de grande parte da humanidade, em todo o mundo, é o grande problema mundial. Que essa extrema e quase universal pobreza exista em todo o mundo, e que tenha existido durante todas as gerações passadas, prova que ela se origina em causas as quais a natureza humana comum daqueles que sofrem com ela não foi até hoje capaz de superar. Mas os que sofrem estão, ao menos, começando a ver essas causas e decidindo-se por eliminá-las, custe o que custar. E aqueles que imaginam que não têm nada a fazer além de atribuir a pobreza das pessoas a seus vícios, e repreendê-las por isso, então despertarão para o dia em que toda essa conversa estará no passado. E a questão então não mais será quais são os vícios dos homens, mas quais são seus direitos?”

Spooner combatia o ímpeto puritano de culpar os pobres por sua situação de exclusão. Não eram os vícios individuais que causavam a pobreza generalizada e sistêmica, para ele; se a pobreza era tão geral, ela tinha que ter causas que transcendiam o individual.

A tendência a individualizar os problemas sociais pode soar como uma das pseudoexplicações sociais típicas do século 19, mas é uma ideia que não morreu. Como já escrevi anteriormente, o pensamento de que os indivíduos são responsáveis pela própria situação de desemprego por falta de qualificação é moeda corrente no governo, em empresas e sindicatos.

O discurso da qualificação para o “mercado de trabalho” toma a estrutura existente de produção e de emprego como dados e, se os trabalhadores não conseguem se inserir nessa estrutura, o problema é a falta de iniciativa individual. Esse discurso, naturalmente, nunca aparece de maneira destilada, mas é o substrato de muitas das defesas de cursos de capacitação e na lembrança permanente de que há “vagas de trabalho abertas”, mas não há pessoas qualificadas o suficiente para preenchê-las.

Paralelamente, a ideia que se desenvolve é a de que o mercado de trabalho está cada vez mais competitivo e os trabalhadores devem se adaptar a ele. Essa “educação para a competitividade” ocorre em todos os pontos de geração de discurso. Faculdades e cursos técnicos se beneficiam dessa técnica para mostrar que suas aulas preparam o aluno para um ambiente em que os empregos são escassos e o trabalhador é substituível, a não ser que tome atitudes drásticas para contrabalançar sua inaptidão econômica.

É claro que essa ideia tem fundamento na economia real.

A superespecialização do trabalho é um dos efeitos colaterais da concentração corporativa. Os subsídios às grandes empresas e o favorecimento de alguns agentes através da regulamentação do mercado (muito comum nos últimos 10 anos no Brasil) estendem a cadeia de produção e favorecem a aplicação de capital na produção. Esse aumento da cadeia de produção faz com que as firmas se tornem maiores e menos especializadas. Para preencher postos de trabalho específicos dentro da cadeia de produção, porém, os trabalhadores devem se tornar mais especializados.

Portanto, os trabalhadores são obrigados a se diferenciar cada vez mais porque os empregos de baixa especialização são artificialmente desvalorizados pelos subsídios corporativos, que substitui o trabalho por capital. E as grandes empresas externalizam os custos de treinamento e “profissionalização”, terceirizando essas funções para o governo e para os sindicatos.

Essa dinâmica combinada com o aparato regulatório (salário mínimo, pisos e tetos profissionais, regulamentações trabalhistas que confiscam a poupança dos empregados, regulamentações urbanas, proibição ao comércio de rua, regulamentações de manufaturas caseiras, monopólios de transporte público, etc) sistematicamente age para concentrar o mercado, favorecer certos modos produtivos estabelecidos e criminalizar a pobreza, além de tornar a autossuficiência cada vez menos atraente.

Daí, claro, do lado do trabalho a “competitividade” tem viés sempre ascendente na economia corporativa, enquanto a competitividade do lado das empresas (as estabelecidas, lógico) estacionou em um nível confortável.

Os discursos de qualificação profissional e competitividade no mercado de trabalho são racionalizações da economia corporativa. São a individualização dos problemas trabalhistas e a culpabilização do trabalhador pela sua situação desfavorável na mesa de negociação.

Não é por vícios e inadequação individuais que as pessoas acabam sem empregos. E a tentativa de moldar o debate nesses termos só desvia o assunto da real questão, como lembrava Spooner: não devemos nos perguntar quais são as insuficiências das pessoas, mas, sim, quais são seus direitos?

Last Friday, August 1st, President Barack Obama commented on the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11. At first glance, his comments look like an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. After all, Obama acknowledged that “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques – techniques that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture – we crossed a line.”

However, the way the president talked about CIA agents engaging in war crimes seemed downright flippant at times. Saying “we tortured some folks” is a remarkably casual way of acknowledging that employees of an organization you lead committed war crimes.

“We have to as a country take responsibility for that so hopefully we don’t do it again in the future,” Obama said. But his attitude towards individual responsibility for the torturers flies in the face of taking responsibility to ensure this never happens again. Obama directly deflected blame from the individuals responsible for torture, saying, “It is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had.” Obama not only made excuses for the torturers, he directly praised them, saying  “A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.” This is consistent with the pattern we’ve seen from this administration. Obama’s mantra has been that, when it comes to torture, “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” As such, his administration has consistently protected torturers from legal accountability.

If intelligence agents and guards in detention centers are “working hard under enormous pressure” that can motivate them to torture detainees, and if they know that they will face no consequences for torturing, then they have every incentive to torture.  We’re often told that the state is necessary to protect us from predatory criminals, but it’s clear in this case that the state empowers its agents to act as predatory criminals.

There’s another issue with Obama’s torture speech that has been much less widely discussed. Jeff Kaye points out that Obama explicitly said “one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.” That is to say, Obama only prohibited some of the torture techniques that CIA agents used.

Kaye explains some specifics on how the administration continues to permit particular torture techniques:

Obama’s admission that he had only banned “some” of the previous administration’s torture techniques was not the first time the government has made such an admission, however obliquely.

Last April, I wrote how the Department of Defense’s main directive on interrogations (3115.09), which supposedly had banned SERE-derived torture techniques (like waterboarding, hooding, etc.) used by the government after 9/11, in fact made a note that only some of the SERE techniques were banned. The ones that were not banned resided in — the Army Field Manual on interrogation, the same manual Obama had endorsed in his Jan. 2009 executive order on “lawful interrogations.”

SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, and is the name given to DoD’s program to prepare military and CIA and other specific government personnel for capture and imprisonment by a brutal enemy. Its participants take part in a mock-prison camp exercise, and it was the kinds of torture practiced during that exercise that were utilized in full-blown operational mode by CIA and Defense Department interrogators in the so-called War on Terror.

The SERE-derived model, which is what the “extraordinary interrogation techniques” really were, was superimposed on an earlier torture program based on isolation and sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, fear and drugs, developed by the CIA and codified in a 1963 interrogation program that is referred to today as KUBARK. Earlier this year, I obtained a version of the previously declassified KUBARK manual with new portions now unredacted.

But oddly, besides myself, only Obama seems to have noticed that not all the torture techniques were rescinded by him. The press and certainly the Senate and the House of Representatives have ignored entirely the use of torture in the Army Field Manual. While some bloggers and human rights groups have noted the anomaly of having the nation’s primary instructions on interrogation include torture techniques, and some have even called for a repeal of Appendix M or a rewriting of the field manual itself, none of these groups or individuals have made this a primary issue. Nor, when the controversy over the Senate report on the CIA torture program is discussed, is the ongoing presence of torture in the Army Field Manual ever mentioned.

This is a key point that is all too often ignored: torture is still happening. Kaye also notes that Jeremy Scahill uncovered the use of torture by the current administration at a black site in Somalia.

Last week, Obama tried to make a speech that showed the US government coming to terms with how wrong it was to use torture. Instead, the president illuminated how his administration’s actions, and the state’s very structure, enable torture.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Apio Ludd‘s “The Anarchist As Outlaw” read and edited by Nick Ford.

The original debates over illegalism were therefore not about whether anarchists should take illegal actions – it was assumed that all anarchists did – but about whether individual reappropriation was a legitimate tactic – and for an egoist this is not even a question; the only question is: “What can I get away with?” In any case, anarchists, and for that matter, all free-spirited, unsubmissive individuals, will inevitably break laws. When laws exist, my choice to live on my own terms will make me an outlaw, because I will ignore law except as an obstacle to avoid.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
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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
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Another water crisis is making national headlines. This time ground zero is in the mid-west. More than 400,000 people in and around Toledo, Ohio cannot drink water from their taps due to high levels of the dangerous toxin microcystin in the public drinking supply. The cause of this disaster is particularly concerning, however, as it is not the result of a tanker spill or any other large-scale industrial disaster, but rather a tried and failed approach to environmental management — top-down decree.

The spike of microcystin results from a massive eutrophication event on Lake Erie. Eutrophication is not a unique phenomenon. It occurs readily in nature — but there has been a noted increase in the past few decades as a result of anthropogenic influence. For this particular Great Lake (as well as many other freshwater systems) the current crisis is exacerbated by a rapid influx of nitrogen and phosphorous from urban areas, waste water and industrial agriculture. Simply put, eutrophication occurs when algae experiences a rapid spike in population deemed an “algae bloom.” As reported by Think Progress, exposure to polluted water of this nature can cause “abnormal liver function, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, numbness, and dizziness.”

In the short term, our current institutions will work with residents to try to ameliorate the crisis, but what about the long term? How can we work to ensure these 400,000 are not left without potable water again? There will be a lot of dialogue and debate over how to move forward and protect the public good. All too often, however, we look for simple, top-down direction to alleviate and mitigate environmental concerns.

This is understandable. The simple solution and the “decide, announce, defend” mentality is an easy way out. The problem is, no matter how simple an ecological concept, the natural system behind it is incredibly complex. Simple solutions cannot mitigate complex systems — but evolving, dynamic systems can continually shift policy to meet public and environmental health demands. This is why there is a need for greater community involvement, free association and a stakeholder approach that allows equal participation among all.

Lucky for us, Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) is already a growing trend in resource governance. ACM is a model of conflict resolution developed to resolve complex problems requiring collective action. Going beyond personal points of view, this management style implores science, politics and underlying interests to come together and confront conflict. Adaptive collaboration is a more democratic approach to natural resource conflict resolution, as opposed to the traditional top down, bureaucratic approach. Simply put, it is a step toward relief from the state, empowering voices as opposed to silencing them.

The goal of such collaboration is resilience — for both communities and ecosystems. In ecology, resilience is a property that reflects the ability of a system to withstand perturbations or shocks, of course we want this for our social systems as well. Resilience theory suggests that managed ecological systems are dynamic and unpredictable. Moreover, strategic top down management tends to erode resilience, making the system vulnerable to dramatic and surprising change.

To move forward in Ohio, and everywhere else, horizontal themes such as ACM need to be championed. To solve the problems created by top-down decision making, we must become dynamic. Decentralized policy making allows us to manage for change, rather than against change. Human interactions are complex, ecosystems are complex and there is beauty in complexity. To move forward we must empower the collective, amplify the voice of the individual and continue to build the decentralized society.

Um leitor anônimo do Tumblr do Centro por uma Sociedade Sem Estado recentemente perguntou:

“Duas perguntas: 1) Como exatamente a teoria e a prática propostas pelos anticapitalistas de livre mercado desafia a lógica cultural do capitalismo? 2) Não é verdade que todas as instituições de mercado — desde as grandes corporações até os pequenos comércios — desejam o estado como parte do processo de reprodução?”

A escala absurda e o crescimento do nexo monetário em comparação a modos alternativos de organização da vida social carrega muitos imperativos ruins consigo. Porém, a escala do nexo monetário dentro do capitalismo corporativo não é resultado da existência em si das trocas no mercado. Há muitos motivos para acreditar que a eliminação das barreiras ao autoemprego, à microprodução e à subsistência confortável causariam um encolhimento radical do nexo monetário. Essa eliminação também resultaria na mudança na maneira como atendemos a grande parte de nossas necessidades, adotando trocas em pequena escala com outros pequenos produtores em redes comerciais que se formam em paralelo às relações sociais em nossas comunidades (como artesãos em uma vila pré-capitalista) ou produção social não-monetizada dentro de casas de famílias estendidas e unidades sociais multifamiliares.

Embora problemas de cálculo econômico provavelmente tornam a precificação necessária para a coordenação da produção de larga escala de bens de distribuição ampla ou para a extração e a distribuição de matérias primas como minerais, a proliferação de ferramentas de micromanufatura baratas e a produtividade superior de horticulturas de pequena escala significa que a produção de grande escala e a distribuição de longa distância devem rapidamente diminuir em representatividade econômica. Uma das poucas formas de produção em larga escala absolutamente necessárias é a da indústria de microprocessadores. Esta e outras coisas ainda devem requerer a coordenação de preços por toda a economia para alocá-los em regiões muito grandes.

A produção de motores pesados de combustão interna, motores de aeronaves a jato, carcaças de carros que requerem estampagem em três níveis, entre outros produtos, são também coisas que requerem grandes estruturas e grandes mercados. Mas essas coisas são “necessárias” em primeiro lugar para atender a necessidades artificiais impostas à sociedade pela estrutura de poder atual. Como o Model T mostrou, um veículo de combustão interna leve poderia funcionar com um motor que pudesse ser produzido em oficinas locais atuais — sem contar os motores elétricos fabricados por manufaturas de pequena escala. Sem o papel do complexo militar-industrial na viabilização de aviões civis jumbo, viagens e fretes de longas distâncias provavelmente poderiam ser feitos por naves mais leves que o ar. E as carcaças moldadas, em vez de designs de carros com painéis planos produzidos em uma mesa de corte, são simplesmente produtos estéticos das montadoras de Detroit.

Em uma economia sem o desperdício subsidiado ou a obsolescência planejada, sem os subsídios e estímulos à cultura do carro, provavelmente 80% das necessidades de consumo poderiam ser produzidas dentro de uma casa ou de uma unidade de várias casas, ou mesmo em troca de dinheiro a nível local. Ao invés de pensar com base nas premissas e na lógica das instituições extrativistas, eu partiria da premissa de uma sociedade em que as pessoas interagem umas com as outras, têm necessidades para serem satisfeitas e habilidades para oferecer e os arranjos que combinam entre si para atingir seus objetivos. A partir desse nível micro de cooperação e trocas individuais, é mais fácil ver como a remoção dos monopólios, das barreiras de entrada e dos pisos artificiais ao custo de subsistência teriam um efeito liberador sobre aqueles que buscam controlar seus sustentos e saírem do sistema salarial. Ao comentar sobre a pergunta do leitor, o companheiro de C4SS Charles Johnson afirmou:

“Todo mundo parece achar que falamos sobre açougues de empresários locais ou outros clientes do Sebrae. Eu falo sobre o cara que vende espetinhos na esquina, do conserto de carros sem registro em um terreno vazio, de bicos diários, de operar um táxi ilegal ou ocupar um espaço vazio de um terreno para fazer uma horta comunitária. Uma cooperativa de alimentos ou uma fazenda comercial local são grandes negócios no meu mundo, não pequenos. (Claro, às vezes grandes empresas são aceitáveis, claro, e eu gosto da agricultura local.) Minha preocupação principal são as bibliotecas de regulamentações que procuram estrangular a possibilidade de relações comerciais em escala nano, em formas que não sejam os ‘pequenos negócios’ dos empresários formais.”

Isso coloca em nova perspectiva os argumentos frequentes entre os céticos ou hostis ao mercado da esquerda: de que o mercado tem imperativos estruturais de auto-exploração e de imposição de disciplina trabalhista mesmo dentro de cooperativas e outras formas de produção controladas por trabalhadores, ou de que a existência de vencedores e perdedores dentro de um mercado não-capitalista faz com que os vencedores cresçam e absorvam os perdedores como assalariados — recriando assim o capitalismo e o sistema salarial. Uma boa formulação desse problema foi dada na lista de emails da P2P Foundation pelo teórico P2P marxista Christian Siefkes, que vê a produção cooperativa com base nos comuns como a formação basilar de uma sociedade pós-capitalista.

“Sim, as pessoas fariam trocas, mas inicialmente essas trocas não seriam capitalistas, uma vez que o trabalho não estaria disponível para a contratação. Presumindo que as trocas e o comércio fossem a forma principal de organização da produção, o capitalismo eventualmente surgiria, já que alguns dos produtores iriam à falência e perderiam o acesso direto aos meios de produção, sendo forçados a vender sua força de trabalho. Se nenhum dos outros produtores for rico o bastante para contratá-los, eles estariam sem sorte e passariam fome (ou teriam que adotar outras formas de sobrevivência, como roubos, furtos e prostituição — que é o que vimos como fenômeno de grande escala com a emergência do capitalismo e que ainda vemos nos países chamados em desenvolvimento, onde não há capital o bastante para contratar todos ou a maioria da força de trabalho disponível). Mas, se houvesse outros produtores, as pessoas os contratariam e a semente do capitalismo e sua divisão entre capitalistas e trabalhadores estaria plantada.”

Mas em uma economia de pessoas autoempregadas ou de pessoas que produzem cooperativamente para o atendimento direto de suas necessidades dentro da economia social, não há motivos para haverem perdedores permanentes. Os requisitos de capital seriam tão baixos que seria possível suportar um período ruim de forma indefinida sem a necessidade de uma fonte de renda permanente para pagar dívidas. E quando as máquinas básicas para a produção forem amplamente disponíveis e facilmente deslocáveis para novos produtos, não existe “falência”. Quanto mais baixo o nível de capitalização para entrar no mercado e mais baixos os custos a serem suportados em períodos de baixa, mais o mercado de trabalho assume um caráter de rede, orientado a projetos — como por exemplo na produção cooperativa de softwares. No software livre e em qualquer outra indústria em que o produtor médio possui um conjunto completo de ferramentas e centros de produção para projetos próprios, a situação não seria caracterizada tanto pela entrada e pela saída de “firmas” discretas, mas por uma mudança constante do equilíbrio entre projetos, com fusões, separações e agentes flutuando constantemente de um ponto para outro — ou simplesmente atendendo suas necessidades independentemente com várias ferramentas baratas e gerais.

Em uma sociedade em que a maioria das pessoas é dona do teto que cobre suas cabeças e pode se sustentar com produção caseira, os trabalhadores que são donos das ferramentas de seu trabalho podem suportar períodos ruins para seus negócios e ainda serem seletivos na hora de escolher os projetos mais adequados a suas preferências. É muito provável que os trabalhos assalariados que ainda existissem em uma economia livre seriam parte muito menor do total, que o trabalho assalariado seria mais difícil de encontrar e que atraí-lo requereria salários consideravelmente mais altos; assim, o autoemprego e a propriedade cooperativa seriam muito mais prevalentes e o trabalho assalariado muito mais marginal. O trabalho assalariado que continuasse a existir provavelmente seria a província de uma classe de trabalhadores itinerantes que assumisse esse tipo de trabalho quando precisassem de alguns rendimentos suplementares ou quando precisassem de alguma poupança, rapidamente deixando essas responsabilidades e voltando para suas vidas confortáveis em casa. Esse padrão — a vida nos comuns e a aceitação do trabalho assalariado só quando conveniente — era precisamente o que os cercamentos na Inglaterra tentaram destruir.

Em firmas cooperativas que operam dentro do nexo monetário local, com baixos custos e ferramentas baratas, e uma força de trabalho com baixos custos caseiros e baixas necessidades de renda, os trabalhadores provavelmente prefeririam trabalhar em regimes compartilhados em vez de ser demitidos e simplesmente produzir na escala em que há demanda sem a necessidade da “falência”. Uma economia de distritos econômicos locais e pequenas manufaturas cooperativas em rede, ou uma economia baseada em projetos como as associações de construção ou os antigos galpões de contratação de estivadores, presume uma rede solidária de apoio profissional e não oficinas ou locais individuais como unidade econômica primária. Assim, deslocamentos advindos de declínios econômicos são muito menos severos.

Além disso, é provável que os próprios declínios deixassem de ser severos se existissem quando a maior parte do dinheiro circula localmente em mercados locais de pequenos produtores em que a produção está intimamente ligada à demanda imediata. Então argumentos de que os mercados têm alguma lógica estrutural em favor do capitalismo ou de que levariam inevitavelmente ao capitalismo implicitamente presumem várias características do capitalismo corporativo como “normais”.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

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

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

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

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

Gina Luttrell discusses bootleggers, baptists, and birth control.

Justin Raimondo discusses how neocons are going undercover.

Ivan Eland discusses resolving conflict in artificial states.

Bionic Mosquito discusses the criteria for a just war.

Eric Peters discusses the non-aggression principle.

Patrick Cockburn discusses ISIS in Syria.

Norman Solomon discusses the god complex of Uncle Sam.

Wendy McElroy discusses voluntaryist anthropology.

Sheldon Richman discusses the smear of isolationism.

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

Nick Gillespie discusses a libertarian foreign policy.

Jeffrey Miron discusses libertarianism.

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

Justin Raimondo discusses the new meaning of isolationism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses Christians in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses Jane Cobden.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the practicality of libertarianism.

Sheldon Richman discusses the politics of the border.

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

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

Ron Jacobs discusses Tonkin and Watergate.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how ISIS is winning on two fronts.

James Rothenberg discusses the American flags and its followers.

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

Alexey Shirov beats Boris Gelfand.

Yifan Hou beats Li Chao.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The ‘Makers’ and ‘Takers’ — Not Who You Think” read and edited by Nick Ford.

But you don’t get to be super-rich — to the tune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars — by making stuff. You get that filthy rich only through crime of one sort or another (even if it’s technically perfectly legal in this society). You get the really big-time money not by making stuff or doing stuff, but by controlling the conditions under which other people are allowed to make stuff and do stuff. You get super-rich by getting into a position where you can fence off opportunities to produce, enclosing those natural opportunities as a source of rent. You do it by collecting tolls and tribute from those who actually make stuff, as a condition of not preventing them from doing so. In other words you get super-rich by being a parasite and extorting protection money from productive members of society, with the help of government.

Feed 44:

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Critics of libertarianism on the Center-Left sometimes depict it as a radical ideology that would turn upside down everything we know — a doctrine of such thorough-going change that the critics are compelled to ask “what society in human history was ever organized along libertarian lines?” Not so! Nick Gillespie (“Why an 1852 Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne is More Relevant Than Ever & Should Be Your Next Beach Read,” Reason Hit&Run, Aug. 2) shows that this radical stereotype of libertarians is made entirely of straw. Like Homer Simpson’s Reader’s Digest, Gillespie isn’t afraid to tell the truth: “Things are just fine the way they are!”

In polemics, framing is everything. If you’re engaged in apologetics for an existing system of power, the best thing you can do is portray it as normal, natural and inevitable, and imply that things are the way they are because that’s just pretty much how everybody likes it. It’s critics of the system who want to impose their will on everybody else and force radical changes on the regular, ordinary way everybody prefers to do things. The irony is, it’s usually those on the mainstream Center-Left and Center-Right who present themselves as the defenders of normality and consensus, and accuse radical critics of the system like libertarians or socialists as the authoritarian social engineers. But this time it’s Gillespie.

Specifically, he recommends Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance as a humorous indictment of anyone (like “progressives”) engaged in systematic critique of the form of actually existing capitalism we live under, comparing them to utopian communities like Brook Farm (which is satirized in Hawthorne’s novel).

And if you’re a progressive or neo-con reformer, put down down your slide rule or whatever instrument you’re using to create the parameters of your nouveau Great Society and pick this up immediately….

It reminds us that even the best intentions are rarely strong enough to overrule either the longings of the human heart or the basic laws of economics.

As the quote suggests, Gillespie tries to position himself in the “just right” happy medium between left-wing critics of corporate capitalism and “neo-con reformers,” but in fact the system we live under is completely a product of neoliberal intervention, just as much as the earlier New Deal model of Consensus Capitalism was a result of “progressive” intervention. The neocon “reform” of Iraq under Bremer and the CPA, far from an outlier or a dramatic departure from some preexisting model of “regular” capitalism, was a direct continuation of long-term neoliberal trends that are defended at Reason every single day. Going further back, the American model of corporate capitalism that has prevailed since the late 19th century required an even more massive state intervention to establish, and capitalism itself as it emerged from late medieval times more massive still.

In every case, the capitalist system as we know it was imposed on societies from the top down by some party in control of the state. In industrial Britain it was the outcome of late medieval enclosure of open fields and the nullification of peasants’ traditional rights in the land, social controls like the Poor Laws, the Parliamentary Enclosure of common pasture and waste in the 18th century, and police state controls in the early 18th century like the Combination Laws, laws against working class friendly societies and the internal passport system created by the Laws of Settlement.

In the United States it required two civil wars. Not only the first Civil War in which the industrialists and financiers of the north decisively defeated the slave-based agricultural capitalism of the south and secured a monopoly on the national polity, but a second civil war in which they defeated all challenges to their agenda from the Left. In his history of the American cooperative movement, For All the People, John Curl refers to the political triumph of industrial capital in the Gilded Age as the Great Betrayal. This seizure of power relied first on the use of military Reconstruction to politically neutralize the slave-power and its regional economic model as a rival to northern-style industrialism, and second on the electoral bargain of 1877 (for which the Betrayal was named) in which Hayes and the plutocratic interests he represented were given a deadlock on the national government despite having an electoral minority, in return for giving the Redeemer class a free hand in imposing regional Apartheid in the former slave states). The industrial capitalists took advantage of their uncontested political power to impose corporate capitalism by a revolution from above. The statist means they used included the railroad land grants,  a high industrial tariff, a national banking system and the pooling and exchange of patents.

This statist transformation provoked a response from the Left–what Curl calls the Great Uprising–by the labor, cooperative and farm populist movements. In the end, the leaders of the new nationwide monopoly corporations used state power to defeat the Great Uprising. Between the state-created railroads’ ability to impose rates at will, and the financial power of the state-enabled banking system, monopoly capital declared war on consumer cooperatives and drove millions of farmers into debt and bankruptcy. The labor movement was broken on the front lines by Cleveland’s use of federal troops in the Pullman Strike and by governors’ use of martial law and state militia in the copper and coal wars. In addition the labor and socialist movements were politically liquidated by the police state uprising after Haymarket, and by the ideological offensive of “loyalty” and “100% Americanism” culminating in the mass arrests and vigilante violence of Wilson’s War Hysteria and Red Scare.

The neoliberal revolutions around the world over the past three decades have all followed Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.” In every case–Pinochet’s Chile, Yeltsin’s Russia, Iraq under Paul Bremer, the European periphery in today’s Euro crisis–either a coup, military invasion or large-scale financial crisis has been seized upon to “break” a system in order that transnational financial elites might reconstruct a country in their own image. In every case, this has resulted in the large-scale enclosure and looting–aka “privatization”–of taxpayer-funded services and assets, the diversion of state revenues to repaying odious debt at face value as the priority for spending, and rubber-stamping “free trade” accords whose main real function is to enforce the new, draconian levels of “intellectual property” protectionism that corporate control of outsourced production depends on.

The neoliberal transformation of the past three decades has been possible only through a series of interventions starting with Volcker’s use of the central banking system to destroy the bargaining power of labor through the biggest recession since WWII. Clinton set up a legal framework in the ’90s–the “intellectual property” components of the Uruguay Round of GATT, the WIPO copyright treaty and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act–without which corporate globalization would have been impossible.

Taken all together, then, the system of power we live under is the result of a series of revolutions from above imposed by the state with a level of coercion comparable to Stalin’s first Five-Year Plans.

And far from being a movement to unilaterally impose ideologically-driven controls on a spontaneously-arising system that reflects ordinary people’s desires, the twenty-year cycle of uprisings that began with the EZLN insurrection in Chiapas has been (as Immanuel Wallerstein describes it) a long-overdue counter-offensive by the global Left against a previous twenty-year statist offensive by the forces of corporate neoliberalism.

Far from requiring the seizure of state power or authoritarian social engineering to stop it, the only thing required for global corporate power to go down in flames is for states to stop what they’re doing now. Stop enforcing patent and trademark protectionism that enables corporations to outsource actually making anything for someone else, yet still be able to charge a 10,000% markup from retaining a legal monopoly on disposal of the product. Stop the looting of taxpayer-funded public services by politically connected insiders. Stop enabling neo-feudal landlords to evict peasants from land that is rightfully theirs so it can be used for cash-crop export production in contract to global agribusiness companies. Stop enforcing the music and movie industries’ copyrights.

Everything that’s being done in the way of creating a genuine successor society to corporate capitalism is being done horizontally and cooperatively, in open-source software development groups, neighborhood gardens and Permaculture operations, hackerspaces and open-source hardware development groups, community currencies, open-source sharing software, vernacular self-built housing. The most promising models for a post-capitalist society are all based on autonomism, on self-organized peer production based on the commons, on exodus and secession by the producing classes, and on prefigurative politics and the creation of counter-institutions. Compared to the waves of corporate capitalist and neoliberal revolution from above, the waves of resistance starting with the Zapatistas and running through Seattle, the Arab Spring, M15 and Occupy are incomparably more spontaneous and libertarian than the system we’re fighting.

So to sum up, Mr. Gillespie. I know one thing about the “basic laws of economics” — the global corporate economy we live under now couldn’t survive for a day without massive and ongoing intervention by the state. The corporate capitalism you defend was put into place by an all-out war on the longings of the human heart every bit as much as the Iron Curtain, as evidenced by our slogans of “Ya Basta!” and “Another world is possible”–and every bit as doomed to fall. And we’ll put down the slide-rule just as soon as we take it from the cold, dead hands of the people who created the system you defend.

Discussões sobre princípios expandidos são o assunto atual dentro dos círculos libertários. Quando os libertários atuais foram apresentados ao debate entre o debate entre thick/thin por Charles W. Johnson, pelo C4SS e por outros autores, a questão se mostrou bastante polêmica e provocante. A partir daí, surgiu a distinção entre “brutalistas” e “humanitários”, descrita por Jeffrey Tucker em seu agora famoso ensaio “Contra o brutalismo libertário“. Tucker afirma que:

“[O brutalismo] despe a teoria até o mínimo e mais fundamental e leva sua aplicação para o primeiro plano. Ele testa os limites da ideia, descartando sua elegância, seus refinamentos, sua delicadeza, sua decência, seus complementos. O brutalismo não se importa com a causa maior da civilidade e da beleza dos resultados. Interessa-se somente pela funcionalidade pura das partes e desafia qualquer um a questionar a aparência e a sensação passada pelo aparato ideológico. Quem questiona é desprezado, tido como insuficientemente dedicado ao núcleo da teoria, que, ela mesma, é afirmada sem contexto ou consideração estética.”

A preocupação de Tucker com “elegância”, “refinamentos” e “delicadeza” tem a ver com sua predisposição a aceitar uma certa estética civilizada que esteve sempre implícita ao anarcocapitalismo. O monólogo de Tucker a respeito do creme de barbear e seu inseparável terno são elaborações desse mesmo tema. Com ele e Murray Rothbard, a gravata borboleta se tornou sinônimo de anarcocapitalismo: a “gravata ancap” já aparece em camisetas, posters e até no mascote do subreddit anarcocapitalista. Na conferência regional do ano passado do sul da Califórnia dos Estudantes Pela Liberdade, percebi que usar uma gravata borboleta era um sinal silencioso de “ancap” por causa de um novato que usava uma gravata borboleta e que, infelizmente, era um conservador-libertário que não foi avisado das regras de estilo. A inclinação ao “civilizado” de Tucker tem origem em suas perspectivas otimistas quanto ao futuro da impressão 3D, do bitcoin e da força do mercado em geral. O mercado é, afinal, o jeito ótimo de alocar recursos escassos que acabam produzindo as grandes maravilhas da civilização, então é de se esperar que seus defensores adotem a estética que reflita essa realidade. Em contraste a esse orgulho da produtividade e das mudanças sociais causadas pelo mercado está um desgosto pelo “incivilizado”. Historicamente, no movimento libertário do século 20, isso incluía o desprezo a sonhadores, espíritos livres, hippies e outros tipos que faziam parte da contracultura. A estratégia morta do paleolibertarianismo procurava rejeitar as preferências culturais e estéticas de esquerda. Llewellyn Rockwell, que ataca de forma fervente as concepções thick da liberdade, em outros tempos defendeu suas próprias ideias expansivas do libertarianismo:

“Em seu ensaio ‘The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism’, Rockwell acusava os libertários de forma geral de ‘odiarem a cultura ocidental’. Ele alegava que a ‘fotografia pornográfica, o ‘livre’-pensamento, pinturas caóticas, músicas atonais, a literatura desconstrucionista, a arquitetura Bauhaus e os filmes modernistas não têm nada em comum com o projeto político libertário — não importa o quanto os libertários individualmente se regozijem com essas manifestações’. Sobre os paleolibertários, ele escrevia que ‘obedecemos e devemos obedecer as tradições de modos e gostos’.”

Da mesma forma, Rothbard não deixava de mostrar seu desgosto em relação àqueles que sonhavam com um locus amoenus em seu ensaio Conservation in the Free Market (PDF):

“Uma das características mais inquietantes do movimento ambientalista é sua rejeição à tecnologia moderna e sua filosofia romântica de retorno à natureza. A tecnologia e a civilização são responsáveis, dizem eles, pela superpopulação, pela poluição e pela depredação de recursos, então devemos retornar à natureza virgem, ao lago Walden, à contemplação em uma clareira distante.”

Tanto para Rockwell quanto para Rothbard, isso tudo era mais que moralidade e estratégia. Eles já haviam estabelecido seus comprometimentos culturais e estéticos antes de o debate entre thick e thin começar no século 21. Enquanto os liberais clássicos do século 20 defendiam os individualistas do século 19 como companheiros na luta pelo livre mercado, ocasionalmente eles não poderiam parecer mais distantes, cultural, estratégica e esteticamente. Considere a rejeição acima de Rothbard dos tipos que defendem um “retorno romântico à natureza” com a prosa melancólica de Voltairine de Cleyre:

“Eu nunca quis nada além do que queriam as criaturas selvagens — um sopro de ar fresco, um dia em que deitar na grama com nada a fazer além de passar as folhas por meus dedos e observar por quanto tempo eu quisesse o céu azul, com suas telas brancas e esverdeadas; sair por um mês para flutuar, flutuar pelas ondas e entre as espumas, rolar nua pela areia limpa da cor do sol; a comida que eu gostasse seria tirada direto do chão, com o tempo para provar sua doçura e o tempo para descansar depois de comê-la; dormir quando viesse o sono e a quietude e que o sono me deixasse no momento certo, não antes — ar, espaço, descanso, nudez quando eu não quisesse me vestir e, quando quisesse, roupas que não me prendessem; a liberdade para tocar a mãe terra, para estar com ela durante a tempestade e o brilhar do sol, como estão as coisas selvagens — é isso que eu queria — isso e o livre contato com meus companheiros; não para amar e mentir e ter vergonha, mas para amar e dizer que amo, ficar satisfeita; para sentir as correntes de dez mil anos de paixão transbordarem, corpo a corpo, quando as coisas selvagens se encontram. Nunca quis nada além disso.”

Com o crescimento de grupos como o C4SS e a Alliance of the Libertarian Left e a inclusão de libertários de esquerda em grupos notórios como os Estudantes Pela Liberdade e a Young Americans for Liberty, essas distinções históricas se tornam mais contrastantes e relevantes. Ryan Calhoun já escreveu sobre esse novo desenvolvimento:

“Vejo uma divisão muito parecida entre os libertários atualmente. Há os jovens profissionais dos Estudantes Pela Liberdade e os libertários pessoais que se mudaram para New Hampshire para fumar maconha nus em parques públicos. Acho que não é discutível dizer que ambos são necessários e vão continuar a existir, mas acredito que os benefícios de uma contracultura libertária radical é subestimado. Mais que um movimento político, os libertários precisam de um movimento cultural. Um que enfatize a diferença entre os valores sociais atuais e suas alternativas.”

A questão é: o libertarianismo nunca teve um “movimento cultural” uniforme. Embora Jeffrey Tucker, Llewellyn Rockwell e Ron Paul elogiem a produtividade e a ética de trabalho tradicional, o blog de Nick Ford, AbolishWork.com, desafia o eixo estatal-corporativo e a ética de trabalho “protestante-puritana que permite que a ética de trabalho moderna subsista e destrua a vida das pessoas”. Como devemos, então, estabelecer a trajetória da cultura em uma ideologia com um comprometimento histórico nebuloso à cultura e à estética? Como Leonard Bernstein Bernstein perguntou no século 20 “música para quê?”, devemos perguntar “libertarianismo para quê?”? Embora os padrões culturais adequados já tenham sido discutidos, os comprometimentos estéticos ideais para os libertários são completamente diferentes. A ideologia libertária, inerentemente individualista, atrai e adota pessoas muito diferentes — muitas vezes idiossincráticas — de todos os lugares. Até mesmo em tendências mais rigidamente definidas do libertarianismo, como o próprio livre mercado anticapitalista do C4SS, há sub-subculturas com sua própria estética visível: aqueles defensores da ética da virtude de Roderick Long são um bom exemplo. Embora estejamos vendo o nascer de algumas divisões muito fortes dentro do debate entre thick e thin, como devemos, eu não acho que deveríamos esperar ver — ou querer ver — a mesma coisa acontecer com a “estética libertária”, se é que uma vai chegar a existir. Uma característica atraente e definidora do movimento pela liberdade é sua consideração ao indivíduo, então que estética é melhor do aquela que o indivíduo carrega consigo?

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “Open the Borders Now and Forever” read and edited by Nick Ford.

Free and open movement is the natural, unconditional right of every single individual, a prerogative that precedes governments and their arbitrary borders and policies. Confronted with this fact, even some self-styled libertarians will cavil and complain, puling that open borders actually amount to “forced integration,” that a free society is in fact one of exclusion and static populations disallowed from free movement simply by facts of “private property.”

And of course these facts and the relationships they implicate are never to be called into question. Never are we to ask what kinds of results and patterns legitimate property rights, properly based on some notion of homesteading, would create if actually developed and held to. Given the limits on the circumstances under which such forms of private property would be regarded as legitimate in a hypothetical freed market, it strains credulity to think that the fear-mongering of anti-immigration “libertarians” is well-founded.

Feed 44:

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There can be no prescription old enough to supercede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.–James Otis, Jr.

James Otis, Jr. (2/5/1725-5/23/1783) of West Barnstable, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, began his tutelage under Reverend Jonathan Russell and, by fifteen, Otis entered Harvard College and graduated in 1743. He studied law for two years under Judge Jeremiah Gridley, a member of the General Court of Massachusetts. The young conservative (as Otis was earlier in life) then served the Boston vice-admiralty court as advocate general from 1756 to 1760.

In 1760, with the end of the French and Indian War and the accession of George III, his administration compelled customs officials in Massachusetts to apply for new “writs of assistance” in the king’s name. These writs were in effect, search warrants that gave customs inspectors the legal authority to inspect ships, warehouses, homes or wherever else they felt compelled to inspect. Smuggling was common in the colonies due, in part, to high tariffs on sugar and molasses. This encouraged American merchants to deal with French, Dutch and West Indies traders.

Royal officials in London tightened enforcement against smuggling by offering Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard with a third of the fines collected from such activities. To aid the call for tighter enforcement, Governor Bernard appointed Thomas Hutchinson Chief Justice of Massachusetts. In doing so, Bernard passed over Otis’s father, Colonel James Otis, Sr. This action infuriated the Otis family and led to Otis’s resignation as the king’s advocate general with the vice-admiralty. After resigning, Otis offered assistance to the merchants in their attempt to stop execution of the new writs.

On February 24, 1761, a case came before the Superior Court of Massachusetts by Charles Paxton, the Surveyor of Customs for the Port of Boston, for writs of assistance. Jeremiah Gridley appeared for the customs office. Otis and an associate represented sixty-three Boston merchants, in opposition. Gridley argued the Court of Exchequer had the statutory authority to issue them, that the province law of 1699 had granted the Superior Court jurisdiction in Massachusetts over matters which the courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, or Exchequer have, and further that such warrants were necessary in the collection of taxes and in protecting the state from foreign and domestic subversives.

When Otis spoke, one critic described him as “a plump, round faced, smooth skinned, short necked, eagle eyed politician,” but John Adams attended the trial and wrote down the account in his diary and again some fifty years later, “Otis was a flame of fire!”

Otis relied on English law to prove that only special warrants were legal and attacked the writs as “instruments of slavery.” Defending the right to privacy, he proclaimed that the power to issue general search warrants placed “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” In perhaps his most moving passage, Otis declared,

A man’s home is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it is declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom house office may enter our houses when they please and we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court, can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient. This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain. What a scene does this open! Every man, prompted by revenge, ill humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor’s house, may get a writ of assistance. Other’s will ask it from self-defense; one arbitrary action will promote another, until society be involved in tumult and blood.

Otis’s oration took some four or five hours and was not taken down stenographically, but it left an indelible impression on the young Adams. With a “profusion of legal authorities,” Adams tells us, “a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away everything before him.” Adams continued, “every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” Adams concluded his summation of the event by pronouncing, “Then and there, the child Independence was born.” Otis challenged not just the royal governor of Massachusetts, not just Parliament, and not just the King, but also the entire British government, with a solid appeal to the Rule of Law. Thus began the American Revolution.

Following the Otis oration, the members of the bench had been swayed, with the exception of Chief Justice Hutchinson, who delayed the vote in an attempt to buy precious time. Hutchinson succeeded in having the writs upheld when, in November of that same year, the case was heard a second time. George III was the new monarch, and the Court of Exchequer routinely issued writs of assistance in England. The Massachusetts judges felt they could no longer refuse to issue them in the colonies as well. Hutchinson had won a temporary victory. In 1765, Hutchinson’s Boston home was destroyed by an angry mob.

Otis’s battle against the writs of assistance won him great public favor for a time. In May of 1761, he won election to the Massachusetts General Court. The news of the election reached a Worchester dinner party. Attending the party were John Adams and Brigadier Timothy Ruggles, who was chief justice of the Common Pleas Court and later a Tory exile. Ruggles declared to Adams, “Out of this election will arise a damned faction, which will shake the province to its knees.”

Ruggles’s prophetic prediction proved even more accurate than he expected for it was 1761 that triggered the Revolution, and the Otis family, father and son, set the wheels in motion. That same year, James Otis Sr. was reelected as Speaker of the House, and together, they succeeded in pushing through an act which forbid any writ which did not specify under oath, the person and place to be searched. However, under the advice of the Supreme Court, Governor Bernard refused to approve the legislation. Nonetheless, the public sentiment had shifted, and talk of an independent nation had begun.

In 1764, Prime Minister George Grenville and the British Parliament had imposed upon the colonies the Sugar Act. The new law placed tariffs on sugar, wine, coffee and other products, and spelled trouble for many American businesses. At the time the Sugar Act was passed by Parliament, Grenville had also submitted a resolution for a Stamp Tax.

Otis was vehemently opposed to the proposition of these new taxes and wrote a pamphlet entitled The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Approved. In this pamphlet, Otis denied any fundamental difference between internal and external taxes. The Parliament dismissed the pamphlet as propaganda while the emotions of the American colonials were sparked.

Otis became an instant celebrity and a month later was elected to a seat in the General Court (legislature). As time passed and the list of American grievances against the Crown grew, Otis played an ever more prominent role in advancing the colonists’ interests. In 1764, he headed the Massachusetts committee of correspondence. The following year he was a leading figure at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City. In 1765, the Stamp Act was passed and Otis stood as one of the Acts most vocal critics. Under the pseudonym “John Hampden,” Otis published in the Boston press a sweeping denial of Parliaments right to tax the colonies without representation.

Otis’s open advocacy of American rights grated on many officials’ nerves; his election to the speakership of the General Court in 1766 was voided by the governor’s veto. Undeterred, Otis teamed with Samuel Adams to confront the next crisis: enforcement of the Townshend Duties in 1767. The firebrand duo drafted a circular letter to enlist the other colonies in planned resistance to the new taxes.

Otis’s pamphlet to the Parliament drew resolute approval from the Whigs in England.

Otis began a gradual loss of his mental faculties. His continued verbal assaults grew worse. In 1769, Otis was in a coffeehouse brawl with a customs official and received substantial injuries to the head. This quickened the pace of his failing mental capacities and two years later, his old adversary, Thomas Hutchinson, appointed a sanity commission which found Otis to be a lunatic.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Otis had intermittent spells of clarity, but he played very little role in the Revolution. He was placed in the care of various friends and family members. While under the care of his sister, Mercy Otis Warren, at Watertown, Mass., he heard rumor of battle. On June 17, he slipped away unobserved, borrowed a musket from a roadside farmhouse and joined the minute men who were marching to the aid of the troops at Bunker Hill. He took an active part in the battle and afterwards made his way home again. In 1783, James Otis, Jr. was struck dead by a bolt of lightning while standing in the doorway of his sisters’ home. A tragic end to an outspoken leader who sent the colonists in the direction of a revolution.

This little bit of history should be remembered by the current administration in their endeavor to allow warrants without recourse to local judges’ permission. This is how the American Revolution was touched off. If the Bush administration is not careful, there is little doubt in my mind that there will be unintended consequences in America’s future!

Uno dei fatti più trascurati nel dibattito sull’attacco contro Gaza è il ruolo che Israele ha avuto nell’ascesa di Hamas.

Proprio così. Lasciamo perdere il fatto che i razzi sparati da Gaza sono una roba amatoriale, che chiunque potrebbe fabbricare facendo un salto in un negozio di hobbistica, e che provocano appena l’uno percento delle vittime delle rappresaglie israeliane. Lasciamo perdere il fatto che questi razzi – condannabili in certe circostanze come attacchi contro i civili, a prescindere dalle provocazioni israeliane – provengono da disperati che vivono nell’equivalente mediterraneo del ghetto di Varsavia e finiscono in casa della nazione colonialista che ha cacciato questi disperati via dalle loro case. Lasciamo perdere il fatto che il lancio di razzi è stato spesso causato da violazioni del cessate il fuoco da parte di Israele.

Lasciamo perdere tutto ciò. Hamas – che l’apparato propagandistico israeliano presenta alla popolazione israeliana e al mondo come una minaccia esistenziale paragonabile ad Alien, scatenando l’isteria degli israeliani al punto che applaudono il bombardamento degli ospedali dall’alto delle colline – Hamas, si diceva, è stata creata in parte da quegli apparati dello spionaggio di quello stesso stato che sostiene di combattere una guerra su questioni di vita o di morte contro la stessa organizzazione.

Anthony Cordesman, analista strategico in questioni di sicurezza mediorientali presso il Center for Strategic Studies, racconta come Israele negli anni settanta abbia aiutato Hamas ad emergere come contrappeso alla Organizzazione per la Liberazione della Palestina (OLP). Un anonimo ex ufficiale della Cia concorda sul fatto che Israele abbia appoggiato segretamente Hamas come oppositore religioso di una “forte e secolare OLP”. Il grande appoggio popolare dato a Hamas negli anni ottanta, risultato in parte della rivoluzione islamica in Iran e in parte dello spostamento della sede OLP a Beirut, prese alla sprovvista i leader di Israele.

Qualcuno sostiene che l’appoggio israeliano a Hamas vada ancora più indietro nel tempo, e che sia lo Shin Bet che le autorità dell’occupazione militare abbiano appoggiato la crescita della Fratellanza Musulmana e la fondazione di Hamas già negli anni sessanta. A quei tempi, Hamas era contro le organizzazioni nazionaliste palestinesi, e dirigeva gran parte delle proprie energie contro Fatah, Fronte Popolare per la Liberazione della Palestina (FPLP) e OLP nei territori occupati (fonti: Richard Sale, “Analysis: Hamas history tied to Israel,” UPI, 18 giugno 2002; Robert Dreyfuss, “How Israel Backed Hamas,” Institute for Public Accuracy, 22 luglio 2014).

Purtroppo prevalse la genialità di alcune persone della sicurezza israeliana, che preferivano avere come nemico palestinese una temibile organizzazione teocratica come Hamas piuttosto che una secolare che chiedeva la nascita di uno stato palestinese in cui arabi e ebrei potessero vivere assieme in pace. Hamas impersona meglio il personaggio di Goldstein nei due minuti di odio di 1984.

Lo schema è inquietante. Hamas in origine era un prodotto della Fratellanza Musulmana a Gaza (e negli anni cinquanta aveva ricevuto l’appoggio americano come opposizione religiosa alle tendenze nasseriane e baathiste). Anche al Qaeda è emersa come guerriglia Mujaheddin appoggiata dagli Stati Uniti e diretta contro l’occupazione sovietica dell’Afganistan. E lo stesso si può dire dell’Isis, nata in circostanze simili in soccorso dei ribelli anti-Assad in Siria. Quindi tutti questi movimenti, creati con l’aiuto di fondi neri e di addestramento forniti dalla Cia, i berretti verdi o il Mossad, vengono usati per spaventare la popolazione in occidente e costringerli ad appoggiare le numerose guerre criminali in cui vengono commesse atrocità su larga scala contro la popolazione civile.

Da qui due lezioni. La prima è che la versione ufficiale dello stato riguardo le “minacce esterne” è quasi sicuramente una bugia, come quella della Germania, che mise suoi uomini in uniforme polacca e poi strillò: “a Danzica i polacchi attaccano i nostri fratelli tedeschi”. La seconda è che molto probabilmente lo spauracchio straniero è una reazione alle stesse politiche di stato. Gli stati cercano di dare legittimità al loro governo di classe e al loro imperialismo appellandosi al comune “interesse nazionale” condiviso da tutti, indistintamente. In verità queste politiche, private delle fesserie patriottiche, sono lì per servire gli interessi dei ricchi che controllano lo stato. E quasi sicuramente finiranno per portare morte e distruzione alle loro popolazioni, come gli americani hanno appreso l’undici settembre e come gli israeliani cominciano a capire ora.

Non fidatevi dello stato. Serve solo a mandarvi a morire, magari in qualche campo di battaglia in terre lontane, o nella vostra stessa casa.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

No debate atual sobre o Banco de Exportações e Importações dos Estados Unidos (Ex-Im Bank), acusado de corporativismo, estatísticas de emprego são muito comentadas. Em seu site, o banco afirma que sua missão é “prover empregos para os americanos”, acrescentando que já “apoiou 1,2 milhão de empregos americanos no setor privado desde 2009 e 205 mil somente em 2013”. A economista Veronique de Rugy aponta que esses números são uma fração insignificante dos empregos sustentados pelas exportações americanas.

Tim Carney desafia a validade desses números, dizendo que o banco “usa uma metodologia praticamente inútil para a contagem de empregos”. Ele argumenta que os subsídios do “Ex-Im Bank frequentemente prejudicam os empregadores dos EUA com os subsídios a seus concorrentes. Na melhor das hipóteses, o banco apenas desloca os empregos na economia, aumentando o emprego em algumas partes e custando empregos em outras”.

Porém, o debate sobre as estatísticas de emprego é problemático porque os empregos não devem serb o objetivo. Um emprego não é um fim, mas um meio. As pessoas buscam emprego para que possam comprar comida, pagar suas casas e adquirir outras coisas que desejam. Como escreveu Adam Smith, “o consumo é o único fim e propósito de toda a produção”.

Ainda assim, muitos medem a saúde de uma economia de acordo com seu nível de emprego, um fenômeno chamado pelo economista Bryan Caplan de “viés de criação de trabalho, uma tendência a subestimar os benefícios econômicos da conservação do trabalho”.

E há óbvios benefícios econômicos da conservação do trabalho. Suponhamos que Kevin Carson esteja certo ao prever que as impressoras 3D criarão uma revolução industrial caseira, permitindo que indivíduos e pequenas oficinas produzam bens de consumo modernos a custos incrivelmente baixos e com pouco investimento de trabalho. Isso provavelmente eliminaria vários empregos de manufatura e vendas, já que as pessoas seriam deslocadas para a criação de bens a baixo custo em casa ou em suas comunidades. Mas embora os empregos pudessem ser mais escassos, as pessoas estariam muito melhor. Teriam mais bens a preços mais baixos e provavelmente teriam maior escolha sobre o que fazer com o seu tempo.

Se esse tipo de inovação fosse suprimido, alguns empregos poderiam ser protegidos, mas as pessoas em geral estariam em situação muito pior. Vemos essa dinâmica em funcionamento hoje em dia quando rentistas utilizam a “propriedade intelectual” para suprimir a livre expressão e a inovação na internet. O infame projeto de lei de censura na internet SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) foi apoiado pela central sindical americana AFL-CIO, para proteger alguns dos empregos que seriam tornados obsoletos pela competição online. O projeto foi absolutamente impopular, já que destruiria um dos aspectos mais desejáveis da vida moderna. Tudo para proteger as indústrias bem conectadas.

A discussão sobre empregos é frequentemente usada para desviar recursos para a classe de empresários privilegiados. É exatamente isso que o Ex-Im Bank faz. Ele empresta dinheiro dos pagadores de impostos para corporações como a Boeing, a Caterpillar e a General Electric. Essas empresas fazem lobby em Washington e lucram muito com o militarismo e as guerras americanas.

Cada dólar desviado pelos políticos para essas firmas é um dólar alocado à força e não por trocas voluntárias. As trocas voluntárias tendem a ser mutuamente benéficas: as duas partes ganham algo que desejam com as trocas. Normalmente, ganham algo que valorizam mais do que aquilo de que abriram mão. Assim, associações voluntárias e trocas tendem a criar riquezas e a deixar as pessoas em melhor situação. Essas trocas também empregam o conhecimento tácito que os indivíduos possuem a respeito de seus valores e preferências únicos, algo que é inacessível a políticos e burocratas.

Em contraste, o estado toma dinheiro e recursos à força através dos impostos, então aloca seus recursos não àqueles que proveem bens e serviços que as pessoas desejam, mas a privilegiados pelo sistema político. O dinheiro passado para empresas militaristas de exploração do espaço aéreo como a Boeing é dinheiro que os indivíduos não podem mais usar para comprar comida, remédios, instrumentos musicais ou qualquer outra coisa que desejem. Assim, os empregos sustentados por instituições como o Ex-Im Bank são empregos que existem às custas de indivíduos que querem escolher como usar seus recursos.

O mesmo é verdadeiro em relação à abertura de novas prisões. É verdadeiro em relação aos empregos criados por gastos militares. Talvez empregos sejam criados, mas são criados com custos sérios à prosperidade e à escolha individual, além da destruição causada por institutos violentos como guerras e prisões.

É hora de parar de enxergar o trabalho como um fim em si. Devemos buscar um mundo em que podemos trabalhar menos e ter mais. Para isso, é importante que as pessoas possam se associar livremente e descobrir novas formas de produzir, trocar, compartilhar e interagir. O estado atrapalha esse processo, enriquecendo elites em nome dos empregos.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Some people in the city of Detroit recently had their water shut off due to 90 million dollars of past unpaid water dues. Much of the discussion that will probably emerge or has already emerged will revolve around whether to privatize the water supply there. This would probably involve contracting out services to a for profit corporation. Many libertarians will no doubt cheer this on as the “non-governmentalist” solution to the crisis. There is another solution far more consistent with libertarian principle than turning a government monopoly into a corporate one. The solution of mutualization or cooperatization.

Mutualization and cooperatization involves turning control of the service over to the people who produce it and receive it. In the case of water; this would entail handing it over to engineers, plumbers, electricians, rate-payers, and so forth. It would be a consumer’s-producer’s cooperative. This would make it neither governmental nor corporate. A transcendence of both forms of social organization. A showing of the fact that there are ways to organize services beyond the usual dualism of corporate and government control.

To further this goal, water workers should non-violently occupy the water department’s space and turn back on the water to those denied. They should invite elected representatives of consumers to a public meeting conducted under their auspices and invite them to form a cooperative. There should be pressure put on the city government to not interfere with this. In the current context of governmentalism, they could also use the state’s existing legal framework to form a legally recognized cooperative and shield it from attack that way. They could also make use of Federal Reserve notes to further its legitimacy and protect it from assault. An eventual move to a local or national alternative currency would be advisable though.

The above is based on the premise that marketization is not always the ideal choice nor is government the only alternative capable of providing services. Mutalization avoids the pitfalls of both corporate and government control. Neither of which truly empowers the people most affected by the decisions taken with respect to a given service. Both rest on top-down command and control hierarchy rather than bottom-up voluntary cooperation. This makes them more similar than either of their partisans would like you to believe. The revolutionary solution is to transcend these similar structures and construct relatively new ones. We can build on and learn from existing cooperative arrangements, but we can also improve on them. I look forward to seeing more of them take off!

An anonymous reader of Center for a Stateless Society‘s Tumblr recently asked:

Two questions: 1) How exactly do the theory and practice proposed by free market anti-capitalists challenge the cultural logic of capitalism? 2) Don’t all market institutions — whether a large corporation or a mom and pop shop — desire a state as part of the reproduction process?

The sheer scale of the cash nexus, compared to alternative models for organizing social life, and its growth at their expense, carries a lot of really bad imperatives with it. But the scale of the cash nexus in corporate capitalism doesn’t result from the existence of market exchange as such. There is every reason to believe that the elimination of entry barriers for self-employment and microproduction, and barriers to comfortable subsistence, would cause a radical shrinkage of the cash nexus. It would also result in transferring the way we meet a major portion of our needs either into small-scale exchange with other small producers in exchange networks that parallel social relations within our communities (like artisans in a pre-capitalist village), or into non-monetized social production within extended family households and multi-family social units.

While economic calculation problems probably make market pricing necessary for coordinating large-scale production of widely-distributed goods or the extraction and distribution of raw materials like minerals, the proliferation of cheap micro-manufacturing tools and the superior productivity of small-scale horticulture would mean that such forms of large-scale production and long-distance distribution will rapidly shrink as a total part of the economy. One of the few absolutely necessary forms of large-scale production is the microprocessor industry. This and a few other things will require large-scale price coordination to allocate them over fairly large geographical regions.

The production of heavy internal combustion engine blocks, jet aircraft engines, molded car body panels that require three-story stamping presses, and the like, are also things that require large-scale facilities serving large markets. But those things are mostly “necessary” in the first place only in response to artificially contrived needs imposed on society by the existing power structure. As the Model T showed, a light internal combustion vehicle could function with an engine within the capability of a community machine shop today — not to mention small-scale manufacture of electric motors. Absent the Military-Industrial Complex’s role in making civilian jumbo jets artificially profitable, large-scale air travel and freight would probably be done by lighter-than-air craft. And molded body parts, as opposed to a car design with flat panels produced on a cutting table, are a purely aesthetic product of Detroit.

In an economy without subsidized waste or planned obsolescence, and without the subsidies and props to the car culture, probably 80% of total consumption needs could be produced either within a large household or multi-household social unit, or for money exchange at the neighborhood or small town level.

Rather than starting with extractive institutions and their logic, I’d start with the assumption of a society of people interacting with each other, who have needs to meet and skills to offer, and the arrangements they work out among themselves to bring those things together. Starting from this micro- level of individual cooperation and exchange, it’s easier to see how the removal of monopolies, entry barriers and artificial floors under the cost of subsistence will have a liberating effect on those seeking to control their livelihoods and remove themselves from the wage system. Commenting on the reader’s question, C4SS comrade Charles Johnson said:

Everybody seems to think we’re talking about “Mom and Pop” butcher stores or some other SBA client. I’m talking about the guy selling tacos at a roadside stand or fixing cars off the books in a vacant lot or hustling jobs on the day labor market or driving around a gypsy cab they own and operate or squatting a plot on a vacant lot to create the South Central Farm. A food coop or a commercial farm with a CSA is a big business in my world, not a small one. (And sure, sometimes big businesses are fine, I like my CSA.) The main target of my concern are the libraries of regulation that aim to choke off the ability to engage in commercial relationships at nano scale, in forms other than formalized mom/pop “small businesses.”

This puts in a new light arguments of the kind frequent among market-skeptical or -hostile segments of the Left, either that the market carries structural imperatives to self-exploitation and the imposition of work-discipline even within cooperative and other forms of worker-controlled production, or that the existence of winners and losers within a non-capitalist market will result in the winners getting bigger and hiring the losers as wage laborers — thus essentially recreating capitalism and the wage system. A good statement of the problem comes from the P2P Foundation’s email list by Marxist p2p theorist Christian Siefkes, who sees commons-based peer production as the core formation of a post-capitalist society:

Yes, they would trade, and initially their trading wouldn’t be capitalistic, since labor is not available for hire. But assuming that trade/exchange is their primary way of organizing production, capitalism would ultimately result, since some of the producers would go bankrupt, they would lose their direct access to the means of production and be forced to sell their labor power. If none of the other producers is rich enough to hire them, they would be unlucky and starve (or be forced to turn to other ways of survival such as robbery/thievery, prostitution — which is what we also saw as a large-scale phenomenon with the emergence of capitalism, and which we still see in so-called developing countries where there is not enough capital to hire all or most of the available labor power). But, if there are other producers, people would hire them, the seed of capitalism with it’s capitalist/worker divide is laid.

But in an economy of largely self-employed people or people cooperatively producing for direct self-provisioning within the social economy, there’s no reason to have any permanent losers. The capital outlays are so low that it’s possible to ride out a slow period indefinitely without any of the need for a constant revenue stream to service overhead like debt. And when the basic machinery for production is widely affordable and can be easily reallocated to new products, there’s really no such thing as a “business” to go out of. The lower the capitalization required for entering the market, and the lower the overhead to be borne in periods of slow business, the more the labor market takes on a networked, project-oriented character — like, e.g., peer production of software. In free software, and in any other industry where the average producer owns a full set of tools and production centers mainly on self-managed projects, the situation is likely to be characterized not so much by the entrance and exit of discrete “firms” as by a constantly shifting balance of projects, merging and forking, and with free agents constantly shifting from one to another — or simply directly meeting their own needs through self-provisioning with an array of cheap general-purpose tools.

And in a society where most people own the roofs over their heads and can meet a major part of their subsistence needs through home production, workers who own the tools of their trade can afford to ride out periods of slow business, and to be somewhat choosy in waiting to contract out to the projects most suited to their preference. It’s quite likely that, to the extent some form of wage employment still existed in a free economy, it would take up a much smaller share of the total economy, wage labor would be harder to find, and attracting it would require considerably higher wages; as a result, self-employment and cooperative ownership would be much more prevalent, and wage employment would be much more marginal. To the extent that wage employment continued, it would be the province of a class of itinerant laborers taking jobs of work when they needed a bit of supplementary income or to build up some savings, and then periodically retiring for long periods to a comfortable life living off their own homesteads. This pattern — living off the commons and accepting wage labor only when it was convenient — was precisely what the Enclosures were intended to stamp out.

In small cooperative firms operating within the local cash nexus, with low overhead and cheap tools, and a workforce with low household overhead and low income needs, workers are likely to choose work-sharing with reduced hours in preference to layoffs, and simply produce on whatever scale there’s demand for at any time without any need to be forced “out of business.” A local industrial district economy of networked small manufacturing cooperatives, or a project-based economy like the building trades or old-style longshoremen’s hiring halls, presumes a solidaristic craft-based support network rather than the individual shop or job site as the primary economic unit. So the dislocations from economic downturns are far less severe.

Not to mention the downturns themselves are unlikely to be severe if they exist at all, where most money is circulated locally in local markets of small producers and production is closely tied to immediate demand. So arguments that markets carry some structural logic in favor of capitalism, or would inevitably lead to capitalism, implicitly assume a lot of characteristics of corporate capitalism as we know it as “normal.”

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In the ongoing debate over the crony capitalist “Export-Import” bank, job statistics get thrown around a lot. On its website, the bank boasts that “Ex-Im Bank’s mission is American jobs,” claiming to have “supported 1.2 million private-sector, American jobs since 2009, supporting 205,000 jobs in 2013 alone.” Economist Veronique de Rugy points out that these job numbers constitute a negligible fraction of jobs supported by American exports overall.

Tim Carney disputes the validity of the job numbers themselves, saying the bank “uses a nearly worthless methodology to count ‘jobs supported.'” He argues that “Ex-Im subsidies often hurt U.S. employers by subsidizing their competitors. And at best, Ex-Im moves jobs around the economy, boosting employment in some parts of the economy and costing jobs in others.”

But the debate over employment statistics misses a bigger point: Jobs shouldn’t be the goal. A job isn’t an end in itself; it’s a means to an end. People seek employment so that they can buy food, afford shelter, and purchase the other things they desire. As Adam Smith wrote, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.”

Still, many people measure an economy’s health in terms of employment, a phenomenon economist Bryan Caplan calls “make-work bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of conserving labor.”

And there are obvious economic benefits to conserving labor. Suppose Kevin Carson is right that 3-D printers will create a homebrew industrial revolution, allowing individuals and small shops to produce modern consumer goods at incredibly low costs and with very little requisite labor. This would likely eliminate plenty of jobs in both manufacturing and sales, as people move to creating goods at low cost in their homes or neighborhoods. But while there would be fewer jobs, people would be much better off. They would have more stuff at lower costs, and likely more freedom to choose what to do with their time.

If this kind of innovation were squelched, some jobs might be protected, but overall people would be much worse off. We see this kind of dynamic at play today as entrenched interests use so-called “intellectual property” to squelch free expression and innovation online. The infamous and censorious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was backed by the AFL-CIO in order to protect a narrow set of jobs from the internet’s competition. The bill was wildly unpopular, as it would have destroyed one of the most desirable aspects of modern life. But hey, anything to protect jobs in politically connected industries.

Discussion of jobs is often used to divert resources to privileged business interests. That’s exactly what the Ex-Im bank does. It lends taxpayer money to corporations like Boeing, Caterpillar and General Electric. These companies have connections in Washington and profit handsomely off of militarism and war.

Every dollar politicians divert towards these firms is a dollar allocated by force rather than by voluntary exchange. Voluntary exchange tends to be mutually beneficial: Both parties involved gain something they want from the exchange. Indeed, they typically gain something they value more than what they gave up. In this manner, voluntary association and trade tend to create wealth and make people better off. Such exchanges also employ the tacit knowledge individuals have about their unique preferences and values, knowledge inaccessible to any politician or bureaucrat.

By contrast, the state takes money and resources by force through taxation. It then allocates resources not to those who provide goods or services people want, but instead to cronies with political privilege. Money given to militaristic aerospace companies like Boeing is money that individuals can no longer use to buy food, medicine, musical instruments or whatever else they desire. Thus, the jobs supported by institutions like the Ex-Im Bank are jobs supported at the expense of individuals choosing how they want to use their resources.

The same is true for jobs created by opening new prisons. It’s true for jobs created by military spending. Perhaps jobs are created, but they’re created at a serious cost to prosperity and individual choice, not to mention the destruction violent institutions like war and prison impose.

It’s time to stop seeing work as an end in itself. We should seek a world where we can toil less and have more. To do that, it’s important to let people freely associate and discover new ways of producing, trading, sharing, and interacting. The state will undermine this process, enriching privileged elites in the name of jobs.

In July, I made a total of 36,470 submission of C4SS English-language op-eds to more than 2,600 publications around the globe.  So far I have identified 54 reprints of that content as well as one prominent institutional citation of a Center writer (Kevin Carson, mentioned and quoted in a Pew Research Internet Center piece on “Net Threats”).

A few pickup highlights:

• We had our first pickup in Barbados — Kevin Carson’s “Israel’s War in Gaza: Don’t Look Behind the Curtain” appeared in the Barbados Advocate on July 30.
• Kevin’s “ISIS: Yes, Mr. Blair, You Did Build This” was picked up by the Byron Shire Echo — not our first appearance in Australian media, but an encouraging development as we haven’t fully penetrated that media market yet.
• Taiwan’s China Post ran two of our pieces (William Gillis’s “Jaron Lanier, ‘Intellectual Property’ and Parasitism on the System of Violence” and Kevin’s “ISIS: Yes, Mr. Blair, You Did Build This”). With a circulation of more than 400,000, the Post is not only a prestigious venue for our work, it ranks highly in terms of reaching large numbers of readers with the market anarchist message. We’re sincerely flattered that the Post  continues to find our content worthy of its readership.

To date, we’ve identified 1,688 pickups of Center content in “establishment” or “popular” media. Onward to 2,000 (with your continued support)!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Senior News Analyst and English-Language Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

Nella città brasiliana di Amargosa, i cittadini sono scesi in strada dopo che un proiettile vagante sparato da un poliziotto ha colpito e ucciso una bambina di un anno. La folla si è diretta immediatamente verso la stazione di polizia, ha liberato le persone che erano rinchiuse, ha preso le armi di proprietà dello stato e ha ridotto in cenere l’edificio e due mezzi di servizio.

Nessuno è stato ferito. Il messaggio è stato: Non siamo disposti più ad accettare i “danni collaterali” delle vostre istituzioni. Le attacchiamo, le bruciamo, e prendiamo le armi della polizia per il nostro uso. Alla fine, la “rivolta” è stata soffocata da forze di polizia di un comando vicino. Ma nella Battaglia di Amargosa del Sedici Luglio 2014 a vincere sono stati i cittadini. E che ne è stato degli agenti più esposti alla rabbia di questi individui inferociti? Da codardi quali sono, si sono rifugiati in un albergo vicino. Prendete nota.

Il giorno dopo, in tutt’altra città, in tutt’altro paese, Eric Garner stava sputando il suo ultimo respiro mentre un gruppo di membri di una banda cittadina con i colori del Dipartimento di Polizia di New York si era ammassato su di lui. Garner aveva appena dissolto una piccola zuffa a cui la polizia aveva risposto con riluttanza.

Il suo crimine? Garner era un noto venditore di articoli di contrabbando, meglio conosciuti come sigarette sciolte. Senza alcuna prova del fatto che stesse vendendo, o anche che avesse con sé, questi articoli, dopo un breve diverbio Garner è stato immobilizzato a terra e pestato da diversi membri della banda di poliziotti. Le sue ultime parole? Le parole che un innocente padre di famiglia ha rivolto a questi “agenti di pace”? “Non riesco a respirare. Non riesco a respirare. Non riesco a respirare.”

Quel giorno non ci sono state rivolte. I passanti hanno obbedito al loro istinto di conservazione e hanno voltato la faccia altrove. Nessuna protesta, nessun dissenso. Solo un altro nero morto sulle strade di New York… solo che stavolta c’è un video. Con la forza di queste immagini, di Garner che urla pietà per l’ultima volta, gli americani che attribuiscono valore all’indipendenza sono riusciti a raccogliere indignazione su internet. Ho sentito dire che anche Al Sharpton è coinvolto. Al momento, Daniel Pantaleo, l’agente che ha dato il via al soffocamento, è stato privato dell’arma e condannato al duro lavoro della scrivania. A pochi chilometri di distanza, intanto, una madre e sei figli convivono con la tristezza, l’orrore e lo smarrimento per aver perso il loro marito e padre.

Eric Garner è morto e questo non cambierà nulla. Al massimo adotteranno una politica che scoraggia i soffocamenti (e ovviamente non sarà rispettata). Domani, o la settimana prossima, ci sarà un altro Eric Garner. Ci sarà perché esiste ancora un comando di polizia che non è stato raso al suolo.

Qualcuno potrebbe obiettare che le situazioni sono diverse. Il comando di polizia di Amargosa ha quattro agenti di pattuglia, e quello di New York migliaia. Le armi dei poliziotti di Amargosa sono semplici, quelle di New York di tipo militare. Certo il modo migliore per ricordare Eric Garner è un cambiamento delle politiche a fuoco lento, la formazione di un movimento di massa che rifiuti la collaborazione con la polizia, il che significa una reazione tutt’altro che immediata e diretta.

Potrei dire, concordando disperatamente con voi, che qualunque idea di combattere il dipartimento di polizia di New York è condannata dall’inizio. Non lasciatevi imbrogliare dalle apparenze, però: in queste cose, essere radicali significa incoraggiare uno spirito di ribellione come quello di Amargosa. Violenza e conflitto cono inevitabili a livello di individuo, comunità, città e nazione. Non ci sarà un vero movimento contro la polizia finché non saremo pronti a rivendicare il valore della vita dei nostri cari al di sopra delle pretese dei poliziotti, che ogni giorno tramano per opprimervi e trattarvi come nemici predefiniti.

È ora di trattare la polizia con la stessa ostilità con cui loro trattano noi; e anche peggio! È ora di metterli a tacere. È sempre ora di far terminare la loro tirannia; e con tutti i mezzi necessari. La popolazione di Amargosa l’ha capito. Può darsi che abbiano affrontato un dipartimento di assassini in uniforme meno temibile, ma rischiavano comunque la morte e la prigione, e hanno scelto di agire invece di scrivere lettere indignate. C’è voluta la comunità, la rabbia, l’indifferenza per la sicurezza, per la dignità degli agenti di polizia come eguali. Loro non sono eguali. È sempre più chiaro che i moderni dipartimenti di polizia in America e in tutto il mondo sono forze d’occupazione, che violano le comunità con la forza dei proiettili e dei distintivi. È ora di ridurli in cenere, prendere le loro armi e liberare le persone che hanno imprigionato. Non fatelo solo per Eric Gardner. Fatelo per voi stessi.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna