C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford’s “The Individualist Anarchist and Work” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 2 of THE NEW LEVELLER read and edited by Nick Ford.

The individualist anarchist may first notice in this situation that the individual is crushed not only by the political arrangements but the systematic and institutional arrangements of work. Whether you are in retail, the food industry — or even in the upper echelon of a big corporation — it remains true that the individual is crushed.

This is chiefly because of how the individual is both treated and seen.

By now it may be regarded as an overstated sentiment but within the context of corporate culture one is treated as a cog in the machine. None of the individuals are important in of themselves but only insofar as their roles are concerned in relation to the corporation.

The solution to all of these problems and more relies on not just abolishing the state and capitalism but abolishing work as well.

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From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in the corps he was sent to the Philippines (at the time of the uprising against the American occupation), China, France (during World War I), Mexico, Central America, and Haiti.

In light of this record Butler presumably shocked a good many people when in 1935 — as a  second world war was looming — he wrote in the magazine Common Sense:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism [corporatism]. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

That same year he published a short book with the now-famous title War Is a Racket, for which he is best known today. Butler opened the book with these words:

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

He followed this by noting: “For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”

Butler went on to describe who bears the costs of war — the men who die or return home with wrecked lives, and the taxpayers — and who profits — the companies that sell goods and services to the military. (The term military-industrial complex would not gain prominence until 1961, when Dwight Eisenhower used it in his presidential farewell address. See Nick Turse’s book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.)

Writing in the mid-1930s, Butler foresaw a U.S. war with Japan to protect trade with China and investments in the Philippines, and declared that it would make no sense to the average American:

We would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made.  Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers.  Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.…

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Noting that “until 1898 [and the Spanish-American War] we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America,” he observed that after becoming an expansionist world power, the U.S. government’s debt swelled 25 times and “we forgot George Washington’s warning about ‘entangling alliances.’ We went to war. We acquired outside territory.”

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people — who do not profit.

Butler detailed the huge profits of companies that sold goods to the government during past wars and interventions and the banks that made money handling the government’s bonds.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.

Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and ‘we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,’ but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed.

And who provides these returns? “We all pay them — in taxation.… But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.”

His description of conditions at veterans’ hospitals reminded me of what we’re hearing today about the dilapidated veterans’ health care system. Butler expressed his outrage at how members of the armed forces are essentially tricked into going to war — at a pitiful wage.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end all wars.” This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a “glorious adventure.”

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

Butler proposed ways to make war less likely. Unlike others, he had little faith in disarmament conferences and the like. Rather, he suggested three measures: (1) take the profit out of war by conscripting “capital and industry and labor” at $30 a month before soldiers are conscripted; (2) submit the question of entry into a proposed war to a vote only of “those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying”; (3) “make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.”

It’s unlikely that these measures would ever be adopted by Congress or signed by a president, and of course conscription is morally objectionable, even if the idea of drafting war profiteers has a certain appeal. But Butler’s heart was in the right place. He was aware that his program would not succeed: “I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past.”

Yet in 1936 he formalized his opposition to war in his proposed constitutional “Amendment for Peace.” It contained three provisions:

• The removal of the members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is prohibited.
• The vessels of the United States Navy, or of the other branches of the armed service, are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy, more than five hundred miles from our coast.
• Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is hereby prohibited from flying, for any reason whatsoever, more than seven hundred and fifty miles beyond the coast of the United States.

He elaborated on the amendment and his philosophy of defense in an article in Woman’s Home Companion, September 1936.

It’s a cliche of course to say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” but on reading Butler today, who can resist thinking it? As we watch Barack Obama unilaterally and illegally reinsert the U.S. military into the Iraqi disaster it helped cause and sink deeper into the violence in Syria, we might all join in the declaration with which Butler closes his book:

TO HELL WITH WAR!

Postscript: In 1934 Butler publicly claimed he had been approached by a group of businessmen about leading half a million war veterans in a coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the aim of establishing a fascist dictatorship. This is known as the “Business Plot.” A special committee set up by the U.S. House of Representatives, which heard testimony from Butler and others, reportedly issued a document containing some confirmation. The alleged plot is the subject of at least one book, The Plot to Seize the White House, and many articles.

I’m neither a Christian, nor religious in any of the other ways that one might be. I find contraception, abortion and all kinds of sexual activities between consenting adults to be completely unobjectionable and well within the rights of any individual who chooses one or all of these things.

Nevertheless, as a free market anarchist opposed in principle to aggressive interference with nonviolent, personal decisions, I can’t find a justification for the state to force an employer to foot the bill for contraception (or for anything at all). It matters not what the text of the Affordable Care Act dictates, nor what constitutional precedent seems to demand of that Act. Using the arbitrary force of a government edict to prescribe the terms of agreements between individuals is never legitimate or conscionable.

Arguably, however, state intervention has both limited access to contraception and consolidated market power in fewer hands, precluding opportunities for self-employment and driving people into a coerced dependence on large corporations — whether “closely held” or not. Perhaps, given such economic conditions, we as anarchists ought to see mandates such as the one at issue in Hobby Lobby as a move in the right direction, correcting an injustice created by conditions of corporate dominance in the American economy. But to the extent that this is how we contemplate such mandates, we are forced to grapple with the question of where to draw the line, determining just when we find it permissible to sanction government coercion in this way. And this, it turns out, is not such an easy question.

Unless as libertarians we continue to default to opposition in the face of new coercive mandates, regulations, and other controls, we find ourselves adrift in the muddle of balancing calculations for which we are constantly arraigning statist planners, attempting the impossible task of creating a more free society through statutory reforms and legal adjustments. Our focus must always be on opposing economic intervention, not concocting clever apologias for the kinds of interventions we feel might be less repellent or even potentially advantageous to the victims of primary interventions.

For someone with liberal, tolerant social values, defending Hobby Lobby is an odious and unpalatable position. Anything approximating the society that libertarians envision would find mere employees transformed into truly free individuals, autonomous sovereigns who could tell companies like Hobby Lobby to take a hike, who wouldn’t have to grovel for the scraps that large corporations toss their way. As Voltairine de Cleyre wrote, in a freed market, “exchange would take place freely, commodities would circulate, business of all kinds would be stimulated, and, the government privilege being taken away from inventions, industries would spring up at every turn, bosses would be hunting men rather than men bosses .  . . .” The products and services associated with healthcare would cease to be the crushingly expensive source of destitution and distress they are today.

From a market anarchist perspective, there could not have been a good or ideal result in Hobby Lobby. The factual picture on display in the case simply could not materialize in a free society, one where an economy of voluntary exchange without special government privilege truly flourished. It is left to us to imagine a more just and free world, to find a way to replace the pernicious corporate-government nexus with a genuine libertarian society.

Hi, everyone — time for a monthly update!

In June, I made a total of 48,508 submissions of C4SS op-eds to English-language publications worldwide.

So far I’ve identified 75 reprints of those op-eds in publications:

Not just across the US from west (California) to east (Rhode Island), north (Montana) to south (Florida) and in between (Iowa), but also in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Fiji, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica …

It took us 2 1/2 years to get our first thousand pickups. We’re ahead of the curve to hit one thousand this year. A year ago, I considered one pickup per weekday a reasonable goal. This month we did 2.5 pickups per days, seven days a week.

I’m not ready to declare “success” yet — what I really want is to see some states abolished! — but I do think it’s fair to say that C4SS has positioned itself as the global voice of the market anarchist movement and is coming into its own as a media center and “think tank” which can bring intellectual and philosophical influence to bear on world events in much the same way as its more statist counterparts.

As always, your support is key to continuing our work and expanding its influence. Thanks so much for all you do to make what WE do possible!

Best regards,
Tom Knapp
Senior News Analyst and English-Language Media Coordinator
Center for a Stateless Society

Il calcio trascende le classi sociali e quelle economiche. In Brasile è giocato ovunque da bambini e adolescenti di ogni classe sociale. Se si può improvvisare una palla, il divertimento è sicuro.

Il calcio è anche alla base del patriottismo brasiliano, che durante i mondiali si innalza. La bandiera nazionale diventa oggetto d’adorazione. E sventola nell’aria.

Ma nel 2014 è diverso. Slogan come “La Coppa del Mondo non Esiste” abbondano, ci sono proteste e l’opinione pubblica si divide sull’impatto dell’evento. Le persone interessate dalle preparazioni hanno scritto una lettera aperta e, il quindici di maggio, c’è stata la Giornata Contro la Coppa del Mondo, che ha spinto migliaia di persone nelle strade in tutto il Brasile.

È stato il risultato prevedibile delle politiche adottate nel paese, politiche che hanno promosso l’uso massiccio di denaro pubblico e il pugno d’acciaio dello stato per mandare via la gente dalle loro case (espropri discutibili anche secondo i traballanti standard legali brasiliani) e costruire pachidermi bianchi per usarli soltanto per un breve periodo. I principali beneficiari sono la FIFA, le ditte di appalti, le grandi aziende alleate tra loro e lo stesso stato.

Per schivare la concorrenza, secondo la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo, “la Legge sulla Coppa del Mondo istituisce zone di esclusione per un raggio di 1,25 miglia (2 chilometri) attorno alle aree della FIFA e gli stadi, e aree per i fan dotate di megaschermi, aree in cui soltanto gli sponsor possono vendere.” I venditori ambulanti, che muovono miliardi ogni anno, sono esclusi da grosse porzioni delle città.

Si potrebbe dire che viviamo una “situazione sportiva d’eccezione”, ma è un fatto che le preparazioni dei mondiali abbiano mostrato tutte le disfunzioni e le ingiustizie dello stato brasiliano. Le grandi imprese hanno ricevuto grossi aiuti economici tramite la banca pubblica BNDES, imprese che si sono alleate tra loro per attaccare coerentemente la proprietà dei poveri. C’è stato l’impulso irresistibile a controllare l’accesso dei poveri alla terra, per non dire della repressione generale dei venditori ambulanti in un paese in cui le leggi dicono di difendere la classe lavoratrice.

Questo incubo sportivo è la realtà quotidiana del paese, una realtà che punisce i poveri più di ogni altro, ma che oggi appare più evidente che mai per via dell’associazione con uno degli eventi mondiali più importanti per i brasiliani. Questo stato di cose è sempre esistito, ma oggi c’è un pretesto. Il paese del calcio ha capito che i campionati non sono semplicemente sport. Hanno a che fare con il denaro, le influenze, i mezzi politici, non lo scambio volontario.

Niente serve meglio ad illustrare la differenza tra mezzi economici (lavoro, produzione, scambio) e mezzi politici (forza, costrizione), per dirla con Franz Oppenheimer. Un’altra Coppa del Mondo è possibile, un mondiale senza espropri, repressioni, soldi pubblici, ma sarebbe una Coppa del Mondo senza il potere dello stato, fatta da persone che fanno a meno della forza.

Nel 2007, il governo disse che la Coppa del Mondo sarebbe stata pagata interamente dal settore privato. Con lo stato che ci ritroviamo oggi questo non accadrà mai. Nessuna società è disposta ad accollarsi il rischio di investire in un mondiale politicizzato come quello brasiliano. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, la mette così: “Ecco com’è lo stato. È stato inventato per fare quello che un privato non si sognerebbe di fare, il che significa che probabilmente non c’è alcuna ragione di farlo.” Lo stato fa questo, ma fa anche cose che fanno pendere l’ago della bilancia a favore di certe imprese private.

“Speriamo che la nostra storia non sia soffocata dall’urlo goal,” dice la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo. Se dovesse prevalere la coscienza, l’ingiustizia dello stato nel nome dello sport non potrà essere dimenticata.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Dylan Matthews recently published an article at Vox titled Prisons are terrible, and there’s finally a way to get rid of them. Matthews’ article starts out strong, beginning with an explanation of the horrific costs of prisons. He describes the appalling rates of physical and sexual assault, the data on systemic racism, and the costs to taxpayers for maintaining this violent system. He then notes the ostensible reasons for the prison system, such as deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation of prisoners. However, he notes “prisons aren’t the only way to accomplish those goals.” His alternative approach is using GPS tracking in order to enforce house arrest.

Matthews cites various empirical studies that suggest GPS tracking is very effective compared to other methods of crime control. Most of the studies compare GPS tracking and house arrest to parole, probation, community service, and other options besides imprisonment. However, one study examined tracking technology when used as a direct alternative to imprisonment:

The most intriguing evidence comes from Argentina, where Harvard’s Rafael Di Tella and Torcuato Di Tella University’s Ernesto Schargrodsky found that electronic monitoring cuts recidivism nearly in half relative to a prison sentence. That raises the possibility that electronic monitoring could be more than merely a supplement to prisons. It could replace many of them. The program evaluated used something a bit less technologically sophisticated than GPS tracking. Offenders wore an ankle bracelet which transmitted a signal to a receptor in their home. If the signal is interrupted, or the device appears to be manipulated, or the vital signs of the individual are not being transmitted from the bracelet, then the receptor calls it in.

Di Tella and Schargrodsky’s evidence is particularly compelling because the decision of whether to give Argentinian arrestees house arrest or prison was made randomly. In most countries, electronic monitoring is offered to defendants judged to be less dangerous, so you’d expect those sentenced to it to reoffend less than those sent to prison. “If you show someone released into monitoring has lower recidivism, all you show is that the judge was successful and identified the person who was less dangerous,” Di Tella notes.

But in Argentina, judges are randomly assigned to cases, and strict and lenient judges differ wildly in their inclination to use electronic monitoring. The result was that extremely high risk people were sometimes given electronic monitoring and extremely low risk people were sometimes thrown into jail — it was just random. The leniency of some judges meant that there were “people accused for the second time of murder [who] were still given electronic monitoring,” Di Tella says. Di Tella and Schargrodsky had stumbled upon a true, randomized experiment, and the result was being monitored instead of imprisoned caused people to reoffend less.

These results suggest that GPS tracking and house arrest could be more effective than imprisonment at preventing criminals from reoffending.

However, while Matthews’ argument at first appears to be a prison abolitionist argument, it is in fact a reform proposal. In order to make sure people remain under house arrest, Matthews proposes “a guaranteed, immediate prison stay for those who violate its terms.” He also argues that for the most dangerous offenders, such as murderers and rapists, house arrest is still insufficiently secure to hold them. Matthews’ proposal would, however, entail locking dramatically fewer people in prison. As Matthews points out, “In 2011, only 2 percent were admitted for murder, 0.7 percent for negligent manslaughter, and 5.4 percent for rape or sexual assault. … The vast majority of the people getting locked up aren’t killers or rapists.”

If Matthews’ proposal were ever implemented, it would in some ways be a dramatic improvement over the American prison system. The very structure of prison makes inmates vulnerable to rape, murder, and other forms of violence in a way that seems unlikely with house arrest and ankle bracelets.

However, there are also substantial risks to expanding the use of house arrest, ankle bracelets, and GPS tracking. The ultimate risk is expanding the scope of criminalization and turning society into an open air prison. These technologies risk turning our homes into sites of surveillance, control, and punishment while making the world a constantly monitored panopticon.

Another problem is that political incentives would make a less punitive system like the one Matthews proposes unstable. As I’ve discussed previously, politicians have plenty of incentives to support ever more punitive policies. After any crisis, heinous crime, or moral panic passing new punitive statutes is politically advantageous for politicians. Politicians further gain from high profile enforcement of the laws they pass and prosecutors benefit from successfully prosecuting people, so a symbiotic relationship between politicians and prosecutors emerges. Prison guards gain concentrated benefits from incarcerating more people, while the costs of imprisonment are dispersed to taxpayers as a whole, and only concentrated upon those who are systematically disenfranchised. Moreover, the general public is rationally ignorant about politics, and polls and surveys indicate that the public overestimates the amount of crime in society, producing a bias in favor of more punitive policies.

So even if GPS tracking is a good replacement for prisons, political incentives mean that punitive prison policies would be reintroduced after GPS tracking was adopted as a supposed replacement. Ultimately, change needs to happen at the level of the institutions and incentives themselves. Change needs to happen at what economists like James Buchanan call the constitutional level, where the rules of the game are made. In my view, the necessary constitutional change is the abolition of the state. It’s good that pieces questioning the necessity of prisons are being published in mainstream liberal outlets like Vox, but a more radical challenge to the  political structure is necessary.

In this talk, Karl Hess discusses his break with the Right of America. The ethic of the Old Right as isolationist, anti-federal and anti-state was destroyed by the alignment against international communism. He surveys the struggles of the radical figures of the anticommunist right to connect their historical opposition to centralized power with a new philosophy which seemed to necessitate glorifying and reveling in it. With the rise of Nixon and Agnew, he sees the right-wing embrace of power fully realized, and that the Republican party had become nothing more than the American expression of Stalinism.

Hess gains no comfort from the centralist liberals of the day, whose ideas of police reform involve teaching cops only to shoot straighter. Hess instead embraces the slogan of Power to the People and connects this tendency within the New Left to the embrace of full anarchism. The Right had grown tired of individuals, of people, of communities, saw the only true attainment of its goals through the institution of the nation-state. Hess saw the aims of the Left and of social revolution to be for “the people to be great and for the nations to be nothing”

Knowing Brazilian law is my trade, but I still get scared when I learn about the powers the Brazilian state possesses.

During the World Cup, the government established so-called “trade exclusion zones” in FIFA’s benefit, in a law called the “FIFA Act.”

Article 11 of the act establishes that the government guarantees “to FIFA and to its appointees the authorization to exclusively advertise their brands, distribute, sell, publicize or otherwise propagandize their products and services, as well as other promotional activities and trade in the streets, in the Official Competition Sites, their surroundings and main access ways.” Paragraph 1 determines that the limits of those surroundings extend up to 1.3 mile around the competition sites.

It’s always been the case that the Brazilian state functions to benefit systematically a group of plutocrats in detriment of the people. But the FIFA Act is surprising in that there wasn’t even a pretext. How are these trade exclusion zones constitutionally justified? How is public good promoted with the creation of exclusive trade zones for a specific corporation and its partners? It’s nothing but unmasked privilege. Just like mercantilism, when kings used to grant “exclusivities” for the production and sale of several items.

Marxist historian Christopher Hill described how life was to a common English person in the 17th century, living in houses made of monopoly bricks and setting her hair with monopoly hairbrushes. This judicial relic has been reborn in the 21st century.

Street sellers are also banned from these areas. The informal economy that continually routes around the repression and unpredictability of the state, moves hundreds of billions of dollars every year, wasn’t invited to the sports party. “Thousands of street sellers are being removed from the streets as stains on the landscape, having no security nor negotiating power with the government,” stated the open letter of the National Commission of Street Sellers last year.

Some street sellers were able to get some compromises from the government and FIFA and secured permits to operate in the “exclusion zones,” but only following the rules and guidelines set by FIFA. For one, in São Paulo, the agreement states that street sellers will only sell the sponsors’ brands (thereby protecting their “intellectual property”), offering slightly lower prices (only listed prices) and will have the right to a 30% share of the profits.

What’s left? Trespassing exclusion zones and having them occupied by illegal street peddlers, stores and other non-affiliated commerce can be met with overwhelming force by the state, which has positioned the Military Police and the army itself to guarantee FIFA’s interests.

Next time you see a street vendor having his merchandise confiscated with the excuse that she didn’t pay taxes or that her license was revoked, remember that FIFA pays no taxes and will make billions for their commercial privileges secured by the iron fist of the state. Then you’ll realize the urgency of Thoreau’s call: “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

Because the World Cup is in Brazil, but its trade is not made by Brazilian workers.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Aree Interdette ai Lavoratori.

Ivan Eland discusses why there should be no more U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses how the non-interventionists told you so about the Iraq War.

Vijay Prashad discusses the ISIS folks in Iraq.

Charles Hugh Smith discusses why George W. Bush and Obama’s presidencies are the two most destructive in U.S. history.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses nation-building with a national-security state.

Robert Scheer discusses Bush’s horrific Iraqi legacy. It’s a bit too Obama friendly but still good.

Sami Gillette discusses the movie, Dirty Wars.

David S. D’Amato discusses why government is not just what we do together.

Roderick Long presents the abstract for a paper on left-libertarianism.

Simon Jenkins discusses further military intervention in Iraq.

Ivan Eland discusses the worst effect of the Afghan War.

Justin Raimondo discusses whether the neocons will get away with more military intervention in Iraq.

William Loren Katz discusses the forgotten fight against fascism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the Baghdad fear index.

Marjorie Cohn discusses Obama on the brink of war or peace.

The Daily Take Team from The Thom Hartmann Program discusses why Cheney should be rotting at the Hague rather than writing editorials.

Stephen Cox discusses isolationism and Iraq. I am not an isolationist, but this has some good points.

Laurence Vance discusses the “libertarian” statism he sees behind the proposal for a basic income.

Matt Zwolinski discusses the libertarian case for a basic income. This is provided to provide a contrast to the position above. You can judge for yourself.

Nick Gillespie discusses whether anyone will really miss Eric Cantor.

Gene Healy discusses why don’t do stupid stuff is smart foreign policy advice.

Gina O’Neil-Santiago discusses what libertarian socialism is.

Dan Sanchez discusses how statism drove Iraqis into the arms of terrorists.

John Knefel discusses the War on Terror.

Corey Robin discusses feelings about humanitarian intervention, imperialism, and militarism.

William Pfaff discusses Iraq.

Justin Dolittle discusses Gitmo and liberals.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how Obama wants the Iraqi prime minister to leave.

Savielly Tartakower defeats Geza Maroczy.

Johannes Zukertort beats Joesph Henry Blackburne.

Mutual Exchange is the Center’s goal in two senses — we favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to the Center’s audience.

A lead essay, deliberately provocative, will be followed by responses from inside and outside of C4SS. Contributions and comments from readers are enthusiastically encouraged. The following Mutual Exchange will begin as a feature by Casey Given’s, “What’s the Point of Checking Your Privilege?”. Nathan Goodman, Kevin Carson, Casey Given and Cathy Reisenwitz have prepared a series of articles challenging, exploring and responding to the themes presented in Given’s original article. Over the next week, C4SS will publish all of their responses. The final series can be followed under the categories: Mutual Exchange or The Point of Privilege.

Reading Casey Given‘s final installment in our Mutual Exchange on the value of privilege theory, I have less confidence than ever that he understands what privilege theory even is.

He continues, perversely, to treat intersectionality as an alternative to privilege theory, when it in fact intersectionality presupposes privilege theory and uses it as a building block. And he continues to refer to oppression as a real thing, despite the fact that privilege is, by definition, nothing more than the relative advantage that not being oppressed confers on you compared to those who are. In Cathy Reisenwitz’s succinct phrase, privilege is nothing more than the fact that “you began the race a few steps ahead” of someone else. You may not like the term “privilege” for that fact, but the fact itself is common-sense reality. And “privilege” happens to be the name for it commonly used by social justice activists.

And, I repeat, it doesn’t matter whether learning the concept of privilege and considering the forms of privilege they have makes people feel bad. Sometimes I feel bad when my bank balance falls to zero and I have no clear idea how long till my next check comes in, but the laws of mathematics don’t depend on how I feel. Given says “heightened awareness of one’s privilege will not end systematic poverty or oppression.” Heightened awareness of the laws of gravitation and ballistics won’t get you to Mars, either, but ignoring them and proceeding as though they don’t exist is one way to guarantee you don’t get there.

Given also treats the privilege framework as “infamous” for “collectiviz[ing] people,” and juxtaposes to it intersectionality as a way “to analyze the numerous axes of privilege and oppression that an individual stands at the intersection of (hence the name)….” But as Given himself suggests here, the very word “intersectionality” implies that something is intersecting; and that something — as he explicitly admits — is axes of privilege and oppression as they intersect in specific individuals. If the practice of intersectionality was created by those using privilege theory as an outgrowth of that theory, and is seen — by both them and Given — as the application of intersecting forms of privilege to individual cases, then it stands to reason that Given’s view of privilege as “collectivist” and at odds with intersectionality reflects his own failure to understand the concept in the first place.

Intersectionality is fully consistent with privilege theory, because privilege itself rightly conceived is not a monolithic identity or an absolute value. A good comparison is the various positive and negative differentials — exhaustion, morale disruption, fuel or ammo depletion, suppression by nearby artillery, etc. — that might be assigned to a combat unit counter in one of those old hex-grid map war games like Avalon Hill and SPI used to make. Applying a specific negative differential doesn’t necessarily mean one combat unit is weaker than another as an absolute value; it just means it’s that much weaker than it otherwise would have been. A black upper-middle class man in the corporate managerial hierarchy may be more privileged in aggregate terms than the white woman working in the mail room, but his race as such reduces his total status differential compared to what it would be if, say, the circumstances were identical except for the woman in the mail room being black or the male executive being white.

In a sense, intersectionality is a remedy. But it’s a remedy, not to the concept of privilege as such, but to the misunderstanding and misapplication of privilege theory entailed in the so-called “identity politics” of the 1970s. To repeat, intersectionality is a remedy, not for privilege theory, but for identity politics. Given seems to confuse the one with the other. There were indeed problems with the method of analysis associated with identity politics in the 1970s. They did treat racial or gender identity as absolute, monolithic forms of oppression that trumped everything else. We see survivals of that today, among radical feminists who trace their ideological roots back to second-wave feminism. Some upper-middle class white feminists from this background argue — seriously! — that they can’t be guilty of class or racial oppression, or in possession of class or racial privilege, or guilty of oppressing sex workers or trans women, because as women they by definition cannot oppress anybody. The concept of intersectionality was created as a remedy for such people’s faulty understanding of privilege; as such, it is not an alternative to privilege theory but its fulfilment.

Given expresses puzzlement that Cathy Reisenwitz, Nathan Goodman and I seem to agree with him on so many of the particulars in his premises, and yet don’t draw the conclusion he does that privilege theory is pernicious. But the reason is that his conclusions don’t follow from his observations, because his observations don’t apply to privilege theory in the way he thinks they do.

In fact I’m equally puzzled, given some things Given says in his latest contribution, that he continues to disagree with us. The “one decent message” behind the idea of checking your privilege, he says, is that individuals should be self-conscious of — and presumably act on — “the oppression that other people have experienced throughout their life” and “the societal advantages and disadvantages they hold when interacting with others.” Well, yes. Being aware of these things, and acting on them, is what privilege theory and intersectionality are.

Given says they’re just “common courtesy” or “good manners.” But guess what? Although the concepts and practices of social justice are dismissed on the cultural Right as novel, radical or exotic (“political correctness,” “thought police,” etc.), in reality they are nothing but moral principles as old as humanity, applied universally and consistently.

Although the recent court decision striking down tenure for public school teachers has been viewed from many angles on op-ed pages, as Mark Palko points out in the Washington Post (Vergara vs. California: Are the top 0.1% buying their version of education reform?” June 23), almost nobody’s paying attention to the fact that virtually the whole gamut of “public education reform” comes out of billionaire-funded think tanks.

David Coleman, who with the help of Gene Wilhoit formulated the “Common Core” curriculum, claims as his major qualification a background as management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He personifies, as Palko puts it elsewhere (“Being a management consultant who does not suffer fools is like being an EMT who faints at the sight of blood,” West Coast Stat Views, April 1), an education reform movement dominated by “Taylorism, MBA thinking and CEO worship.”

In yet another commentary (“Understanding McKinsey,” West Coast Stat Views, June 13), Palko says Coleman worked the Common Core movement in typical McKinsey fashion. McKinsey’s style is to provide expensive services that can be duplicated much more effectively in-house, to drive a wedge between senior management and everyone below them, and to convince the boys in the C-Suite that actual production workers are lazy incompetents who need to be micromanaged and downsized.

And that’s exactly the approach Coleman took to Common Core. Instead of building grassroots support, he approached the richest former CEO in America, Bill Gates, enlisting his help in selling it to the U.S. Department of Education and imposing it on school districts top-down. The Common Core approach starts with the assumption that rank-and-file teachers are an enemy to be threatened and micromanaged into shaping up, and flatters public school administrators into siding with  Common Core wonks against teachers.

Anyone familiar with Friedrich Hayek knows that imposing top-down decrees on those who actually work, ignoring their body of situation-based knowledge, is exactly the wrong thing to do. In fact, besides having almost no teachers in its membership, the committee that set the Common Core standards was made up overwhelmingly of standardized test designers.

The same billionaires, billionaire-funded foundations and government educrats behind Common Core are also behind the push for charter schools. The country’s highest saturation of charter schools is in New Orleans, where the post-Katrina vacuum gave corporate interests and real estate developers the opening they needed to ethnically cleanse and gentrify the city and corporatize taxpayer-funded services.

Sadly, charter schools are quite popular among many right-leaning libertarians, who inexplicably see them as more “free market” than plain vanilla public schools. Maybe it’s because they’re not union-friendly — as if the pointy-haired government bureaucrats in the school district administration offices were somehow closer to the taxpayer than the teachers actually teaching the taxpayers’ kids. Charter schools are funded by the same tax money as the regular public schools and exist as part of the same state educational monopoly, regulated by the same people.

If you want to know the philosophy behind the corporate education “reform” movement and where the needs and desires of the students themselves fit into it, you can’t do better than listening to the words of the “reformers” themselves. Coleman stated that “as you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a s**t about what you feel or what you think. … It is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

But it should come as no surprise that children are the raw material, not the clients. Both Common Core and charter schools were created to make the education system more effective at “educating children for the global economy,” grading and sorting them into the kind of input that most closely meets the needs of corporate HR departments.

Common Core and charter schools are just one aspect of a system in which the state counters the corporate economy’s tendency toward falling profits by subsidizing all its major inputs. In this case, it processes the entire human population of our society, at taxpayer expense, into obedient servants for corporate masters. Whatever you want to call that, it’s not a free market policy.

As trocas mútuas são o objetivo do Centro em dois sentidos — nós defendemos uma sociedade baseada na cooperação pacífica e voluntária e buscamos estimular o entendimento através do diálogo contínuo. A série Mutual Exchange dará oportunidades para essa troca de ideias sobre questões que importam para os nossos leitores.

Um ensaio de abertura, deliberadamente provocador, será seguido por respostas de dentro e fora do C4SS. Contribuições e comentários dos leitores são muito bem vindos. A seguinte conversa começa com um artigo de Casey Given, “Qual o sentido de checar seus privilégios?“. Nathan Goodman, Kevin Carson, Casey Given e Cathy Reisenwitz prepararam uma série de artigos que desafiam, exploram e respondem aos temas apresentados no artigo original de Given. Ao longo da próxima semana, o C4SS publicará todas as suas respostas. A série final poderá ser acessada na categoria O sentido do privilégio.

*     *     *

É difícil apontar exatamente onde Nathan Goodman e eu discordamos a respeito da análise do privilégio. Em “As várias funções da análise do privilégio“, ele concorda comigo ao afirmar que a discussão se torna “vaga” quando consideramos “direitos básicos”, como não sermos perseguidos por raça, são tratados estranhamente “como privilégios”. Além disso, ele prefere evitar o uso da expressão “cheque seus privilégios” porque “muitos têm reações negativas a essa expressão” — algo que eu mesmo afirmei em minha resposta a Kevin Carson.

Além disso, Nathan reconhece a crítica coletivista avançada por muitos libertários — que eu evitei durante esta série, por uma preocupação com a originalidade — de que a análise do privilégio “envolve premissas injustificadas a respeito dos indivíduos”. Nathan corretamente demonstra que não há uma “experiência feminina” ou uma “experiência negra” padronizada, já que cada indivíduo é produto de vários fatores socioeconômicos (como raça, gênero, riqueza, sexualidade, capacidade, etc). Além disso, ele aponta corretamente para o fato de que qualquer tentativa de essencializar uma “experiência feminina” ou uma “experiência negra” normalmente favorece os indivíduos mais favorecidos: “Por exemplo, uma “experiência feminina” padrão pode descrever especificamente aquilo que é sentido por mulheres brancas heterossexuais e cisgênero, que passam por situações de misoginia mas não são vítimas da homofobia, transfobia e do racismo por que outras mulheres passam.”

Apesar de todas as suas críticas convincentes à análise do privilégio, Nathan ainda vê valor nela. Para salvar o privilégio de suas armadilhas coletivistas, Nathan apresenta o anti-essencialismo como meio para “observar os indivíduos de forma holística”, ao invés de utilizar premissas categóricas sobre suas experiências. Porém, como a visão de Nathan sobre o anti-essencialismo difere da resposta libertária padrão de que devemos julgar os indivíduos por suas experiências pessoais? Não é que eu discorde de Nathan, eu apenas não vejo em que ponto ele discorda de mim.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Salon’s Andrew Leonard worries that new business models and apps are often the brainchild of ideological libertarians pushing hard for “free-market fanatacism [sic].” Leonard sees young companies like Lyft and Airbnb as cheating, as “exploit[ing] regulatory loopholes . . . to game public goods.” In fact, Leonard even says that “safety regulations are a kind of public good,” that taxes and regulations exist to protect all of us as consumers from big, bad corporations. It is entirely lost on Leonard that his article defends those established corporations from much smaller start-ups that are giving consumers what they ask for. For anyone concerned about equality and a level playing field, fresh competition that comes from outside of the establishment paradigm—that attempts to route around regulations written by the lawyers of the regulated industries themselves—ought to be a welcome surprise. But the musty progressivism of people like Leonard is about social control and sterilization, the predominance of large institutions that work together for “the public good.” This progressivism, the American cousin of European fascism, distrusts any iteration of bottom-up, spontaneous order, anything that independently emerges without the blessing of corporate state elites. In this model, governments are the protectors of “community” even as they neuter any and all ideas of community that blossom outside of their control. As the notable Mussolini quotation goes, “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state.”

It seems downright bizarre that so many otherwise reasonable people persist in allowing governments the benefit of the doubt, continue to ignore every fact and past experience that show these institutions for what they actually are—the leeching, disease-spreading organization of aggression in society. From this very moment back to its illegitimate birth from rape and conquest, the State has never offered us anything more than the deal “your money or your life.” Springing forth from martial victory, it gathered together in its bloodstained hands everything of value, first the land and now, in the contemporary age, even the very ideas in our heads. In so doing, it sentenced its subjects to slavery just as a matter of course, offering protection from other tribes even as that protection amounted to permanent servitude and subjection in the subjects’ own homeland.

Enslavement need not take the shape only of owning men themselves. As Clarence Darrow wrote, “In its later and more refined stages [slavery] is carried on by the ownership of the things from which man must live.” Far from Leonard’s “public goods,” the State’s taxes and regulations are part and parcel of what prevents free people from breaking out of an economic framework of control. Thus are the State’s “law and order” no more than its name for cruel despotism and systematic theft; when its apologists claim that, in its absence, the poor and less fortunate would be forgotten and left to suffer and die, they reveal their ignorance of the State’s history and economic role. The widespread want and destitution of the poor are in fact the direct result of the State, of its active interventions against legitimate, voluntary trade and private property properly based upon homesteading. Quite contrary to what we’re told by Salon progressives, true community and solidarity are the first order enemies of the State, the social phenomena that most threaten its power. At no time have distributions of wealth or income proceeded from any economic system similar in even the remotest sense to what libertarians mean by free markets. Support for new government programs, laws, and taxes, rather than relief or subvention for the poor, simply means comfort for the ruling class, defined both economically and politically.

Public choice theory teaches us that we cannot magically abstract institutions out of all the normal, self-interested motivations of the people who make them up, nor can these institutions miraculously know the answers to complex social problems even assuming we could expect then to act as angels. The notion that the kind of institution we have come to call the State was ever motivated by a desire to help people and do good things in society is the worst kind of delusion, a naive fantasy designed to hold the captive and oppressed classes in their place. It is thus ideas that possess the strength, that fix and maintain such a poisonous, criminal system. Without active acceptance of and belief in its legitimacy, the ruling class could be overthrown with relative ease, not even by force or revolution, but simply by nonviolent disobedience on a sufficiently massive scale.

In its gasping, dying convulsions, the State’s fundamental character would be thrown into relief. Even the most superstitious worshipers of its monuments and its fairytale histories would shrink in horror at its monstrous visage. They would see that, as Albert Jay Nock once observed, the totalitarian state is not actually a new development or a thing apart from the state more generally. “The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient.” Regrettably, most of our bleeding hearts have failed to understand this, the state education apparatus having succeeded in obliterating historical reality and retarding critical thinking. Facts ill-fitting with the narratives of ruling class ennoblement are hurriedly deposited into the Memory Hole, to be neither seen nor heard again. We need not wonder why there aren’t more libertarians, anarchists, and radicals of all stripes; indeed, we might think it surprising that such people exist at all given the resources which the State has dedicated to active misinformation and to maintaining the appearance of real political debate.

No American, for example, can really be blamed for believing that the only legitimate choice in politics is the one that pits Republicans against Democrats. After all, in some sense, that is the only legitimate choice—and this is precisely the reason that politics itself is a superficial shell game and swindle, a way to draw your attention away from questioning anything substantive. None of this is to argue or even suggest that the differences between Republicans and Democrats (or any other political parties abroad) are not sincerely felt, or that the hostilities we observe are faked in order to perpetuate some dark conspiracy.[1] Surface tensions may well be (and more likely are) entirely unfeigned and contended in earnest all while the basic system that has endured for thousands of years persists underneath. The component parts of this political-economic system needn’t be cognizant of their role in it or even the fact of its injustice and iniquity.

Thus may the beneficiaries of privilege and corporate welfare, for example, quite honestly believe that their millions are the product of “the free market,” that the degradation of the poor is in all places the result of sloth. The police, prosecutors, and courts may just as sincerely imagine that they are engaged in the most righteous service of justice. In our hope for a free society without the State, we must resist the temptation to impute motives and guess about malicious mental states, instead adducing historical and empirical facts. And since, in the words of abolitionist Henry C. Wright, “[h]uman government has made the earth a slaughter house of the human race for 6,000 years,” there is never a paucity of such facts. Whoever should look for them will find them in spades; whoever would open her ears will meet their deafening roar, with carnage, hardship, and injustice crying out from the annals of history. “The Anarchist,” wrote A.H. Simpson, “knows very well that the present State is an historical development, that it is simply the tool of the property-owning class; he knows that primitive accumulation began through robbery bold and daring, and that the freebooters then organized the State in its present form for their own self-preservation.” The State is a terrorist organization, a contemptible instrument of organized crime draped in Tyrian purple and exalted as a guardian and almsgiver. When we expose it for what it is, we weaken it, chipping away at the ideological substructure that is its true strength. The most important work before us, then, is revising popular understandings of what the State is and what it has actually done, a project that means putting ourselves out in the daylight as anarchists, and showing anarchism to be not just the fascination of angry, smart aleck teens clad in black, but rational and sober critics of proven injustice. To progressives: we don’t believe you when you insist that individuals cannot be left to trade and provide for one another without the supervision of expert elites in Washington, DC regulatory bodies. We don’t believe you when you tell us that government is good, that it exists to protect community and equality. If your concern about these is genuine, join us in hastening the abolition of the State.

C4SS Feed 44 presents “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford.

Competition, next to the division of labor, is one of the most powerful factors of industry; and at the same time one of the most valuable guaranties. Partly for the sake of it, the first revolution was brought about. The workmen’s unions, established at Paris some years since, have recently given it a new sanction by establishing among themselves piece work, and abandoning, after their experience of it, the absurd idea of the equality of wages. Competition is moreover the law of the market, the spice of the trade, the salt of labor. To suppress competition is to suppress liberty itself; it is to begin the restoration of the old order from below, in replacing labor by the rule of favoritism and abuse, of which ’89 rid us.

Feed 44:

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We live in a time of precipitous biodiversity loss, on course to yield the sixth great extinction. In such a time there should be high priority placed on protecting biodiversity. Instead of curbing habitat loss, the leading cause of extinction, however, the Chinese government actively pursues it. In the rich bioregion of central China, home to numerous species of endemic plants and animals, the state is leveling 700 mountains for economic development.

An article published in early June by Chinese scientists in the international journal, Nature argues “the consequences of these unprecedented programmes have not been thought through — environmentally, technically or economically.” Such projects ultimately result in air and water pollution, soil erosion and large-scale geological hazards such as land subsidence. The authors conclude this project will lead to the vast destruction of forests – endangering rare flora and fauna.

State controlled media offers an alternative story, however, noting the loss of mountain habitat in the region will “lead to the creation of an environmentally sustainable economy based on energy-saving industries.” In their Nature article, though, the scholars note: “Many land-creation projects in China ignore environmental regulations, because local governments tend to prioritize making money over protecting nature.” The authors close by arguing the Chinese government needs to further research the project, recruiting help from other government organizations such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency, United States Geological Survey and an international association of hydrologist’s from the United States and Canada. Though I agree more environmental protection would relieve some ecological stress, these recommendations do not strike the root of the problem — state economic power.

If we instead apply laissez-faire politics to land management we may begin to view land as it is (natural, beautiful and important) as opposed to how it should be.

American libertarian and political philosopher Karl Hess Jr., in his book Visions Upon the Land: Man and Nature on the Western Range, attributes the decline in health of natural lands to inherent problems in government policy, ecological destabilization due to government intrusion and the destructiveness of sweeping land use policies. Hess believes that instead of looking for more laws and regulations to manage natural resources (inevitably enhancing state economic power) we should instead seek an economic system based on voluntary market interactions without the involvement of the state.

This adaptive approach to ecological protection yields incredible results. Take for instance the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom. Her work reveals environmental sustainability is not the product of government intervention, but instead a result of self organized institutions where key management decisions are made as organically as possible. It is also wise to remember the old community based, sustainable management of village lands – suppressed by the great landlords, the communist state and the neoliberal state in succession.

Homogenization is dangerous for both world ecosystems and economics. Nature and human civilization are incredibly complex and dynamic – neither will be sustained by sweeping ideas of natural resource management.

Ecological systems and free markets share an affinity for diversity and both long for sustainability. The dissolution of power and control will advance best management practices. For this reason, we should not look vertically to state institutions, but horizontally to one another in the market. The goal should not be expanding the floor of the cage, the goal should be abolition. Neighborhood environmentalism will build sustainable markets — and markets are beautiful.

A afirmativa do ex-deputado americano Barney Frank de que o “governo é apenas uma palavra para descrever aquilo que decidimos fazer juntos” está ganhando tração novamente entre os círculos mais desesperados por uma resposta engraçadinha para aqueles que enxergam o governo como ameaça. Mas qualquer um que afirme algo tão idiota com seriedade é um imbecil completo que não deve sair de casa sem a supervisão de um adulto responsável.

Para perceber como essa afirmativa é estúpida, vamos aplicá-la a alguns exemplos históricos concretos. Se “o governo é tudo aquilo que decidimos fazer juntos”, então “nós” provavelmente decidimos usar as tropas americanas para acabar com a greve da Pullman Company, instituir estado de exceção na maioria dos estados do oeste e usar a Guarda Nacional para empreender uma guerra contra os mineiros grevistas. “Nós” provavelmente decidimos juntos prender os prisoneiros políticos durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial e os nipo-americanos na Segunda Guerra Mundial. “Nós” provavelmente decidimos derrubar Diem e forjar o incidente do Golfo de Tonkin para arrumar desculpas absurdas para entrar em guerra contra o Vietnã e usamos os “bebês retirados de incubadoras” e as “armas de destruição em massa” como justificativa para entrar em duas guerras contra o Iraque. “Nós” decidimos não saber os detalhes de tratados como a Parceria Trans-Pacífico, negociado em segredo pelo representante comercial dos Estados Unidos e as corporações globais.

Eu repito, sem medo de errar: qualquer um que diga o que Barney Frank disse é um idiota.

Além disso, se o governo é apenas “aquilo que decidimos fazer juntos”, é estranho que ele se esforce tanto para garantir que nós — o público soberano a quem supostamente ele serve — não decidamos nada de que ele desaprove. Há décadas o governo americano trata a opinião pública como algo a ser controlado com o mesmo tipo de propaganda e as mesmas técnicas de desinformação que nós usaríamos para gerenciar as percepções de uma população ou um governo inimigo.

A ideia de que “nós” somos capazes de “decidir juntos” fazer qualquer coisa pressupõe que somos capazes de nos comunicar uns com os outros, sem tentativas externas de perturbação ou sabotagem pelo governo com que trabalhamos, para decidir o que dizer ao governo para fazer. A Operação COINTELPRO foi usada para sabotar as organizações “radicais de esquerda” nos anos 1960 porque o governo americano enxergava parte do espectro político que ela ocupava como ilegítima e pretendia higienizar aquela porção do espectro político do mercado de ideias.

Nos últimos anos, o Congresso tem aprovado explicitamente operações secretas do Pentágono de vigilância da mídia para gerenciar a opinião pública dentro dos EUA da mesma forma que operava anteriormente fora do país. O ex-Conselheiro de “Segurança Nacional” da administração Clinton Sandy Berger advertia em 2004, a respeito do declínio do apoio popular à Guerra do Iraque: “Temos coisa demais em jogo (…) para perdermos o povo americano.” Não parecia que o governo fosse esperar que o povo americano “decidisse junto” se a Guerra do Iraque era uma coisa boa, certo?

E agora o Pentágono está conduzindo pesquisas sobre as causas que levaram ao descontentamento e à formação da oposição durante os levantes da Primavera Árabe na Tunísia e no Egito, de forma que possa evitar que esse “contágio social” (palavras deles) ocorra nos EUA, é claro. Considerando que o movimento Occupy foi diretamente inspirado pelo modelo organizacional da Primavera Árabe, pelo 15M espanhol e pelos levantes da Praça Syntagma na Grécia, não se trata de uma mera questão acadêmica. Na verdade, o Pentágono menciona especificamente “ativistas sociais não-violentos” e “causas radicais” promovidas por ONGs pacíficas.

Então, se o governo não é “o que decidimos fazer juntos”, a quem ele serve? Todas as aões descritas acima fazem muito mais sentido se considerarmos o governo, nas palavras de Marx, como o “comitê executivo da elite capitalista”. Essa deveria ser — e era — uma definição boa o bastante para os libertários de livre mercado. Por exemplo, Franz Oppenheimer chamava o estado de “meios políticos” pelos quais uma classe de capitalista extraía rendas do resto da sociedade através da escassez artificial, dos monopólios e direitos de propriedades mantidos pelo governo.

Logo, o estado não somos “nós”. São eles.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

The New York Times recently reminded me of the infamous Baghdad shootings by Blackwater mercenaries. These shootings were symbolic of the broader violent aggression which Iraqis had been subjected to. Blackwater has rebranded itself as Academi, but its legacy as participant in imperial aggression lives on. It’s a perfect illustration of the faux corporate capitalist “privatization” that passes for a free market in the U.S.

These corporate capitalist military companies resemble states in their internal hierarchical organization and partner with governments to help wage wars paid for with coerced taxpayer money. As a largely Western phenmomen, they tend to be participants in the imperialist wars of Western powers against third world nations. No true friend of liberty can reasonably view these organizations as representing freedom.

They are instead representative of murderous corporate capitalist aggression. Not a surprise, because the corporate entity itself tends to rely on the aggression of the state or government to survive. The primary sufferers of said aggression are soldiers/civilians in both the third world and the West. One will preferably not forget that the employees of these companies bear responsibility for their actions, but they also suffer from the folly of corporate management. The corporate executives of the corporations can involve them in foolish wars of aggression and imperial intrigue. They may be duped into believing they are serving the goals of freedom and equality.

Of course, one will also preferably not forget the lives lost in the third world due to the actions of criminal private military corporations. Many Iraqis and Afghanis have lost their lives on the receiving end of the violence of these companies. Not to mention the participation of the official Western government militarties in meting out this violence. There are many nominally public officials who deserve war crimes trials as much as the private executives of these corporations.

A world without these companies would not be a world without defense, but a world shorn from aggression. There would arguably be greater levels of peace rather than the opposite. A completely peaceful world may never be achieved, but we can do our part in furthering the goal. The abolition of private military corporations is a first step in that direction. One approach is to focus on abolishing the states which they are in bed with, but that isn’t enough. Their power rests on more than just the state or government and protest movements directed against them specifically are necessary. Let us left-libertarian market anarchists get this movement started!

The earth’s surface, the natural environment, human, animal and plant life, but also the culture, have all been mapped out for centuries. Old cartography and engravings often show this with striking images. How one understands and interprets this mapping and imaging will depend largely upon the state of scientific development at the time. The reasons why people begin this activity can differ greatly.

Can the space be exploited? What about the possibility of trade, industry and traffic, which logistical problems will occur? These questions relate to imperialist objectives. There are geographers who offer their services to answer these questions. In the nineteenth century the objectives of imperialist nations such as England, France and Germany contributed to the development of a nationalist geography.

Not every geographer, just as every economist, sociologist or lawyer, is willing to serve the development or application of nationalist, imperialist objectives. The rejection is due to the difference in ideological perspective, which is chosen. This approach simultaneously determines scientific development. Because the ideas of the French geographer Elisée Reclus (1830-1905) [1] will be central here, it is not so strange to choose anarchy as the ideological perspective.

Anarchy refers to a state of order without an imposed government and without imposed rules. It is about order, which is self-chosen or has a freely accepted structure. The question now is, what is the possible link between geography and anarchy? It is this question that is formulated by the French social geographer Philippe Pelletier in his recently published book Géographie et Anarchie. Reclus, Kropotkine, Metchnikoff et d’autres.

The author, besides teaching geography at one of the universities in Lyon, is active in the anarchist movement. He publishes regularly on both subjects.

Introduction

For the purpose of answering the question of the possible link between geography and anarchy, it is necessary to discuss a number of previous questions. Pelletier does this especially in the first part of his book. Then it should be clarified that there are several choices to be made, depending on the ideological ‘spectacles’ that one uses. It matters greatly whether personal presuppositions are being influenced by anarchist elements or ideological elements of a capitalist and nationalist kind. Pelletier maps these differences out relevant to the kind of geography that is developed, in the second part of his book.

Although Elisée Reclus plays a leading part in Pelletier’s book, it has not become a Reclus biography. Significantly he puts in the title of his book, next to Reclus, the geographers/anarchists and his friends, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Leon Metchnikoff (1838-1888). Reclus does have a distinct stamp on the kind of geography that he operates. He has called this ‘social geography’. In addition Pelletier also speaks of ‘Reclusian geography’. In short, Reclus has claimed attention in many ways.

This makes a person vulnerable to insults. But are these indeed justified? Did Reclus defend colonialism, which is asserted, and would he not be free of anti-semitism? In the third part of his book Pelletier responds to such insults and he makes it clear that these are without any foundation. In this part he also deals with some themes that are dear to Reclus, such as the development of the social phenomenon: the city.

The work of Reclus has influenced both geography and anarchism. Each continuously overlaps the other. In order to provide an insight into the heart of those thoughts, I will first discuss some concepts or phenomena in pairs, taking Pelletier’s text as a point of reference.

The first pair concerns ‘geography and anarchy’: to what do these concepts refer? This then leads to the pair ‘anarchists and geography’: why are anarchists interested in geography? After that we come to the ‘anarchist position and science’. Anarchism (and anarchy) is not a science, but some anarchists are called scientists. Does the one have an impact on the other?

If this has repercussions, is this reflected in the type of geography in which one is engaged? This question refers to the following theme, in which the core is formed by the phenomenon of ‘border’. The accumulated sum of knowledge leads Reclus towards the end of his life, to what he calls ‘social geography’. Finally, one can find here a summary by Pelletier successfully defending Reclus against unjust criticism.

Geography and Anarchy

Previously Pelletier notes in his book that when we wander through the countryside, then we engage with geography. This is what I call a functional description of the object of study. What purpose does geography serve? It can be used for diplomacy and warfare (geography serves in the making of topographic maps for commanders) and for discovering areas that can be exploited (colonialism, imperialism).

Such a functional description, as opposed to an essentialist definition (what is geography?) is an open description. So geography can also be used for the creation of ‘peace’. In that case it is possible to connect it to irenology [2] (the science of peace), for which I refer to the Dutch libertarian social critic and antimilitarist Bart de Ligt (1883-1938).

A functional description can be instrumentalized. Through the course of time this can also be done with geography, as Pelletier has outlined in detail. This is exactly what the geographers among the anarchists have done. They have instrumentalized their geography using anarchy. This created the goal of a social order other than the existing one.

Anarchy is a term used in anarchist circles to indicate simultaneously a state of affaires, a perspective and a set of principles. Pelletier explains that one should not confuse anarchy with anomie. The latter term refers to the absence of rules in social life. Such absence is not characteristic of anarchy. A characteristic of anarchy is the rejection of heteronomy. So in summary, anarchy does not preclude the existence of freely expressed, social rules. Anarchy includes order and structuring, freely agreed by free people. It also reflects, Pelletier argues, the recognition of scientific and natural laws (so it is absurd to resist the law of gravity) and presuppose a multitude of principles. The principles referred to are considered to include mutualism and
libertarian federalism, other elements of the social order as the goal.

Anarchists and Geography

The descriptions of geography and anarchy do not clarify by themselves, which links exist between the two. Therefore Pelletier poses the question: why would anarchists involve themselves with geography? Furthermore, why should geographers engage themselves with anarchy? In short, there is a whole melange of links to investigate. That is the task that Pelletier has set himself.

The practice of geography to the extent that occurred in the last quarter of the nineteenth century within anarchist circles, involved three main characters: Reclus, Kropotkin and Metchnikoff. In addition, it is striking that in the work of some of the anarchists who preceded them such as Proudhon (1809-1865) and Bakunin (1814-1876), geographical dimensions can be distinguished. And in our period the work of Paul Goodman (1911-1972) and Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) refers back to the geographical dimensions of the previous ideas of Reclus and his contemporaries.

In this way Pelletier develops an order of people who, on the one hand, held libertarian views and on the other hand gave their work geographical dimensions (such as Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, Lewis Mumford and Colin Ward). It is also striking that the development of the Reclusian network of anarchist geographers, coincides with the development of the anarchist, socialist and syndicalist movement. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, socialism is known as an intellectual and social project. It gets rid, as noted by Pelletier, of mysticism and irrationality. It is then possible to connect it with various social sciences.

Thus, in Proudhon one can see an ‘announcer’ of sociology (following Auguste Comte (1798-1857) who was one of its founders). Proudhon is the first one to theorise mutualism and the premises of anarchism. Pelletier then sees Bakunin building, “on the rubble of the romantic nationalism”, the theory of revolutionary and libertarian socialism.

In fact, here we find the ‘personal touch’ of scientification of the libertarian project: some scientists (like geographers) began to instrumentalize their ideological principles (anarchy) within their scientific work. Can this be justified methodologically? That is the question, which is discussed in the following topic.

The Anarchist Position and Science

In the practice of science it is inevitable that a ‘personal touch’ plays a role. Strict positivism in this regard is a pacifier. “Facts are not facts”, I learned from the Dutch legal philosopher J.F. Glastra van Loon (1920-2001) in his critique of positivist science. The personal element provides subjectivity in science. Is there then, in that case, any science possible, as objectivity is presupposed?

I would think so. For that purpose, I derived from Helmut Schreiner (1942-2001) two minimum requirements proposed to be able to rise above a purely subjective moment.

These concern:

• The requirement of inter-subjective possibility of reconstruction, and
• The requirement of inter-subjective acceptability.

Possibility of reconstruction refers in this regard to the possibility of a person, other than its author, to develop not at random, certain reasoning of the author. The reader must therefore be able to follow and to check the data in use by the author (verifiability requirement). The requirement of reconstruction thus presupposes the existence of mutual communication and open communication channels.

Acceptability demands the accounting with regard to the conformity to the principles contained within a thought. The agreement about the principles can be realised voluntarily and/or by convention (conventional legitimacy) or procedural (procedural legitimacy). Thus an inter-subjective level can be achieved by using well-known methods, such as to analyse, systematise, and abstract, to apply logical reasoning, coherence and transparency.

It is clear that especially the requirement of acceptability places a clamp on the open end of the anarchistic epistemology, which was pleaded at the time by Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). [3] ‘Anarchy’ is reflected in his slogan: anything goes. The latter should be understood as a methodological challenge. I refer here to this point, because Pelletier expresses a different vision regarding Feyerabend, as do I.

With Pelletier, I am of the opinion that Feyerabend is frankly nearsighted in his book Against Method, with regard to his observations on Lenin and the neutrality of the state. Feyerabend also uses the term anarchy in a different way to both Pelletier and myself. He disconnects it from the anarchist movement and uses the term anarchy to describe the unconditioned practice of science. He rejects the compulsion and pressure in science. And this, for me, is an acceptable use of the term anarchy. However, at the same time, Feyerabend consigns the history and continuity of classical anarchism and anarchist philosophy, to the dunghill. As with Pelletier, I do not agree with this. Whilst this whole discussion can be ignored, the methodological approach of Feyerabend can still be appreciated.

So I am of the opinion that the methodological meaning of ‘anything goes’ with regard to Feyerabend has a fundamental, a procedural and a conditional character. It is fundamental because it requires the channels through which the communication takes place to be kept open. It is procedural because it works by hearing both sides: it is accepted that it is possible to introduce all arguments, to voice opposition (principle of contradiction). It is conditional because it is free to look at a completely different way beyond current levels. It is quite possible that what is accepted as a ‘normal’ position or vision should or can be surpassed.

All of this can lead to the discovery of facts or to acquire insights that are contrary to those previously considered being part of a ‘well established position’. The methodological position, which has the potential to enable contrarian discoveries, I am willing to defend as an ‘anarchistic position’. Without such a methodological commitment, the earth would still be flat, the sun would still revolve around the earth (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642); evolution would still be objective, linear, directed and executed according to a certain (divine) design (Charles Darwin, 1809-1882).

The opposition (of Galilei, Darwin) would under no circumstances be made public, as for example where the power has lain entirely within the Roman Catholic Church. These are the thoughts, which Feyerabend has provoked under his slogan ‘anything goes’. It is therefore completely incomprehensible why precisely he extols Lenin and his state as ‘neutral’. On this point he must have been blind. Perhaps his aim was to antagonise people, to that end his approach was masterly.

Different Types of Geography

So far, Pelletier has outlined different starting positions on geography and geographers, anarchy and anarchism and the study of science and their mutual relationship. Now it is possible for him to concentrate more on the Reclusian geography and the Reclusian network in particular. In addition, he can now also clarify what other types of geography occur or develop. In the context of this discussion I will focus primarily on the Reclusian view. But for creating a contrast it is good to pay some attention to the other views.

Two leading geographers in the late nineteenth century are, along side Elisée Reclus, the Frenchman Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918) and the German Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904). Politically, we find here very different personalities. Reclus takes on the side of Bakunin and the Paris Commune (1871), in which he also participated. He will be sentenced for that (ultimately to ten years exile from France). Reclusian geography has its roots in Proudhon and Bakunin and develops by the cooperation of Reclus with Kropotkin and Metchnikoff. They are anarchist and anti-capitalist in character.

In contrast, Vidal takes the side of ‘Versailles’ (the right-wing government that also bloodily pounds the Paris Commune). He will be the first to occupy the chair of historical geography (1891). Pelletier describes him as a nationalist intellectual who elaborates on an economic imperialism within a territorial one. This is influenced by the vision of Ratzel. Ratzelian geography serves the state apparatus and provides support for colonialism. This view permeates through Vidal into the Vidalian School. This school will preach pétainism (derived from the French commander Pétain), so too the Vichyist doctrine ‘back to nature’, explains Pelletier. It is the line along which the ‘Geopolitique nazifiee’ develops.

Thus Pelletier outlines two orientations, each with their own ‘ideology’ and diametrically different results. Who can thus pretend that an objective study of science is possible? In my opinion nobody can (the question of the personal touch arises; we are always at the level of statistical objectivity and/or in inter-subjective situations). So it is clear that whomever is engaged along side that of power, it is his conception that will be recognized as ‘objective’ and will be selected for use. Thus, those on the one hand in order to preserve ‘the power’ purge out those on the other hand who have a ‘desire for change’. Reclus, spokesman for the second position, holds that a libertarian social order is the goal.

In short, it does matter to pose the question along with German jurist Joseph Esser (1910-1999), with which kind of ‘Vorverständnis’ (premise, prejudice) one works. This is not only so in jurisprudence – compare Joseph Esser’s Vorverständnis und Methodenwahl in der Rechtsfindung (1970) – but also in geography. In that science it is not about ‘law’ that one thinks, but about ‘borders’. It appears that our perception of borders is equally as influenced by our different presuppositions, as we shall see from Pelletier.

Border

We saw above that Ratzel and Vidal take nationalist positions, whilst Reclus takes a ‘communalist’ position. The nationalist positions are grafted onto state law and the communalist manifests as anti-state law. The first two geographers focus on defending state borders, the latter rejects state borders. Pelletier argues that it is from this rejection of borders that the federalist proposals by Proudhon, Bakunin and Reclus come into being.

In the context of the ideas of Reclus, he takes a real break from predefined, legally guaranteed, territorial boundaries just like the so-called ‘natural’ borders. What applies to national state borders, I think can also be applied to municipal and provincial boundaries. In this case a functional approach can play an important role, concerning – current – boundaries. My suggestion here is derived from the role it also plays in jurisprudence. Two examples:

When the Dutch lawyer J. In’t Veld was searching, for his thesis in 1929, for new forms of decentralization (also the title of his thesis), he does not begin by describing a legal order, instead, he places value on thinking in terms of dynamic forces; centripetal forces (centralizing) and centrifugal forces (decentralizing). The problems analysed by In’t Veld were mainly related to the growth of the harbour of Rotterdam and the question of whether or not the expanding harbour activity ‘reflects’ the need in that area of Rotterdam of a new type of administrative authority of their own.

In a different way, considering (current) boundaries comes up for discussion via the expression of the immanent law of the functional structure. It is a conception by the Dutch legal theorist Jack ter Heide (1923-1988), elaborated in his doctrine of functional law. I took this from him, but applied it in a broad geographical perspective. The phrase indicates the relationship between a concrete means and the (direct and indirect) effects of the use of that means.

For example, an operating windmill (let’s say for grinding grain or sawing wood) can be used. Such a mill can only work if it can catch the wind freely and surely, which I call the immanent law. This means that within a certain radius around the mill no high constructions may arise. The mill itself can be seen as a functional structure. The interdiction of erecting high-rise constructions within the indicated radius does not depend on legal regulations (the ban), but the immanent law of that mill, which is contained within itself as a functional structure. Here the functional structure dictates the ‘law’ (the border) and not a legislator.

Pelletier reminds us that borders are markers of dominance. They are determined by or after warfare – by conquest. I would add that dominance also comes into play when determining municipal and county borders.

Borders are associated with geography, which is partly reflected in geopolitics. Theoretical anarchists, who are interested in politics by definition, engage consciously or not in geography, even though it is not their area of activity (such as Proudhon and Bakunin). Obviously the reverse is also true. A geographer, who is carrying anarchy as his Vorverständnis, will develop geography with an anarchist appearance. We meet this as far as it concerns Reclus in his ‘social geography’.

Social Geography

Pelletier points out that the geography as practiced by Reclus, rests on the dialectics of environment-space and environment-time. Space is a social construct; environment-space is studied in a synchronous approach to the complex structures of interactions (‘horizontal’ consideration). It involves attention to phenomena that coexist in the same period. Environment-time is studied by means of a diachronic, evolutionary approach. Here the attention is paid to phenomena that follow each other in time (‘vertical’ consideration). This provides a dynamic vision. So, as Pelletier concludes, Reclus has no static views of nature.

A difficulty arises when translating the term ‘environment’. Reclus has given that term a wider range than usual. The ‘environment’ simultaneously indicates a middle position: median (Reclus also speaks about mesology, ‘meso’ indicates the place between micro and macro). In my discussion with the author we found that the term, representing the inclusive character of ‘environment’ in Reclus’ notion, should be ambience: the material and moral atmosphere that surrounds a person or a group of people (the French explanatory dictionary Le Petit Robert).

Toward the end of his life, Reclus defines three “laws” and uses the term social geography. The three laws are “orders of facts” which must by studied, namely: (1) class struggle, (2) search for balance and (3) the sovereign decision of the individual. In the chaos of things, these orders of facts show themselves as sufficiently constant to talk about in terms of “laws”, believes Reclus.

It is not about legal but sociological laws, which are characterized in sociology as ‘conventional laws’. This involves groups of no more than partial regularity. This is also apparent in the explanation by Pelletier. The first law is a reference to socialist issues: human history can be understood as a long story of struggle between two differently resourced groups, of which one group consists of rulers.

The second law is now known by the term ‘homeostasis’. In relation to the first law, the second refers to seeking a balance in the struggle for justice. The third law refers to the idea that society cannot function properly and cannot move forward if it is not based on the free cooperation of the individual (for which the individual should be sovereign).

The three laws mentioned by Reclus make it clear where the differences can be found in relation to the view of Marx. For Marx the course of history is derived from determinism. Therefore predictions about the future possess levels of certainty (following the phases of capitalism, socialism will occur in the world). It is, as Pelletier indicates, an approach to history rejected by anarchists. Namely it upholds a vision in which phenomena are approached, linear, teleological and fatalistic (based in part on the dialectics of Hegel). In history, it is proclaimed as necessary for the different phases to proceed. We now know that nothing remains of the predictive value of these Marxian dialectics.

Insofar as one can speak of dialectics in anarchism, they take a serial form. So Proudhon speaks about ‘dialectique sérielle’ (sérielle, serial is here: bipolar). One is seeking balance (Reclus). That’s to say, there are ‘fields of tension’, for example, between freedom on the one side and justice on the other side. The contradictions have no ‘synthesis’ in which they are released (as in the Hegelian, Marxist conception). It just runs to ‘unstable equilibrium’ (Reclus).

This manner of Reclusian observation also determines how one reacts in discussions about, for example, Darwinism, nature, and ecology. Pelletier discusses all of this and takes the opportunity in his magnum opus to treat the themes. Whenever something is presented as transcendent, a non-correctable determinism, an inevitable fatalistic and an eschatological end, then this exasperates both Reclusian geographers and anarchists. Tirelessly Pelletier explains why this is so.

Criticism of Reclus

It almost goes without saying that certain views, or views of a scientist more than a century ago will be outdated. Pelletier points this out regularly as he discusses Reclusian views. However, these observations do not diminish the value of the aforementioned scientist. This is not the purpose of the criticism mentioned here.

The criticism here has been expressed within recent years. Namely that Reclus has been accused of being a racist, that he would have approved of colonialism and would have espoused anti-semitism. Pelletier rejects these criticisms. The basis for them being, is in one case a vague reference and in another literally nonsensical. The reason why such anachronistic accusations are made is completely unclear. The only thing I can think of is that one wishes to bring Reclusian anarchist thought into disrepute.

Pelletier pays most attention to the anti-semitism-reproach. He refers to texts by Henriette Chardak and Jean-Didier Vincent. These two authors do not mention documented sources from where they get their idea. Beatrice Giblin recently joined them. She notes that Reclus always refers to Jews in a certain discriminatory manner, but for this accusation she gives no textual reference. Pelletier takes some thirty pages for citing sources to disprove these damaging allegations.

Pelletier does not waste words answering the burning question of where this desire to discredit someone like Reclus comes from. I return to this question because in the Netherlands a similar anachronistic issue is at stake concerning the figure of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846-1919). Domela is one of the nineteenth century founders of socialism and later on, an anarchist. It is the contemporary Dutch biographer Jan Willem Stutje who, not so long ago, seized upon anti-semitism within Domela’s work. Historians such as the Dutch Bert Altena and Rudolf de Jong then skillfully parried these complaints. Nevertheless, such a reproach remains and is not easily silenced.

To another author, Robin te Slaa, these facts lead to the disfiguring comment that some fascists have derived their anti-semitic conceptions from some anarchists. On what does he base his view? Among other things, on a number of remarks about Domela found by Stutje. Hans Ramaer, editor of the Dutch anarchist three monthly de AS, notes in his commentary on Te Slaa’s book that this is how myths develop and go on the lead their own lives.

Sociability First

What is the overarching doctrine of Reclusian geography? This is difficult to summarize in one word, but with sociability, or mutual aid we are pointing in the right direction. It can be reasoned as follows.

The space, as we saw, is a social construction. A plurality of spaces is to be found. Also the ‘environment’ is characterized by Reclus in multiple forms. The human himself he called an environment for human beings. This multiplicity of spaces and environments are thought of as being in motion, hence the use of dynamic thought in relation to geographical and historical determinism. Determinism is in fact immediately counterbalanced by variation.

Plurality is therefore essential for Reclus says Pelletier. That struggle therefore is a factor in evolution, as Darwin worked out, is not denied. Darwin, however, forgot some factors, namely those of solidarity and cooperation, contained in one term: entraide (mutual aid). On this the anarchist geographers expound unrelentingly. It is one of the effects of people (and animals) that live in social relationships. The reference to the use of the term sociability proves it.

Mutual aid, entraide, plays a role in Reclus’ thoughts but it is put on the map by another anarchist and geographer, Kropotkin, with whom he was a friend, with his book Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution (1902). It should be noted that Leon Metchnikoff, the third geographer and anarchist, has played a major role in this. In fact it is he who in 1886 put forward the material base for the theory of mutual aid.

Pelletier has mapped out all of this in his book. He has consistently pointed out how concrete situations and social structures, in other words concrete sociability, produce composite human forces. These forces contribute to define the emancipating and revolting quality of collective unity. But without the presence of the sovereign individual this collective unity would deflate. The dynamics must be guaranteed.

Pelletier has delivered a book to study and to use as reference. It is also one of the rare French books with particular keywords and index!

Thom Holterman (September 2013)

PELLETIER Philippe, Géographie et anarchie, Reclus, Kropotkine, Metchnikoff et d’autres, Éditions du Monde libertaire & Éditions libertaires, Paris, 2013, 632 p., price 24 euros.

Remarks

[1] Reclus. The most Élisée Reclus has published about geography is his unprecedented Nouvelle Geography Universelle, La Terre et les Hommes, Hachette Paris, 1876-1894, 19 volumes. Towards the end of his life he completed L’Homme et la Terre, Librairie Universelle, Paris, 1905-1908, 6 parts, in which he explicitly elaborated on his ‘social geography’.

On anarchism he wrote only one book L’Évolution, La Révolution et l’Ideal anarchique (1898). In the hometown of Reclus, Sainte Foy la Grande (near Bordeaux) is an active Reclusian association called “Les Reclusiennes”.

[2] Irenology. It is the libertarian social critic and antimilitarist Bart de Ligt (1883-1938) who deals explicitly with irenology between the two world wars, see his “Introduction to the science of peace” (by De Ligt written for the first summer course at the Academie de la Paix in 1938), included in the anthology Bart de Ligt 1883-1938, Arnhem, 1939.

[3] For my observations on Paul Feyerabend, I used his Against Method, Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge, London, 1975; furthermore I based my comment on his “Outline of a pluralistic theory of knowledge and action”, in S.Anderson (ed), Planning for Diversity and Choice, Possible futures and their relations to the man-controlled environment, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, p.275-284.

My thoughts on scholarship, I justified in my book Argumentative arbitrariness and the practice of constitutional science (Zwolle, 1988), as well as in “Scholarly and public law” in the collection: Thom Holterman, C.Riezebos (ea ed.), General constitutional concepts (Zwolle, 1991, third edition, P 281-317). Both texts are only available in Dutch.

The “Facts are not facts” of J.F.Glastra van Loon is included in his collection The unity of action – Drawing on law and philosophy (Boom, Meppel/Amsterdam, 1980). With regard to inter-subjectivity I worked from H.Schreiner, who wrote Die Intersubjektivität von Wertungen, Zur Begründbarkeit von Wertungen im Rechtsdenken durch ethisch verpflichtetes Argumentieren, Berlin, 1980.

On the position of Paul Feyerabend within the anarchist movement, I suggest the following information. In the years 1974-1985 appeared the anarchist cultural magazine Unter dem Pflaster liegt der Strand, edited by Hans Peter Duerr, published by the libertarian Karin Kramer Verlag, Berlin. It appeared in 15 parts (in the form of yearbooks). In almost every part a contribution of Paul Feyerabend is included.

De AS, a Dutch anarchist three monthly, devoted considerable attention to Feyerabend in the special issue “Anarchism and science” (No. 37, January/February 1979).

On YouTube one can find an interview with Feyerabend, a year before his death, recorded in Rome, from a balcony overlooking the Vatican. The opening refers to it when the interviewer rhetorically comments on its grandeur. Feyerabend reacted by declaring “Es kann nicht gros sein!” For the interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr-Q6pfXSPo .

If you want a glimpse into the US bipartisan foreign policy establishment’s Heart of Darkness, you need look no further than Robert Kagan. He, along with his father and brother, was a signatory of the Project for a New American Century’s manifesto “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” — something normally associated with the neoconservative circles around George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But he also advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Obama had a very positive reaction to his article in The New Republic, “Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline.” And of course he has ties to both the Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations.

His article “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire: What our tired country still owes the world” (The New Republic, May 26) has generated a lot of buzz among Very Serious People over the past several weeks. The entire article is written from a high school civics text perspective that takes at face value the Empire’s idealistic sales propaganda over the past seventy years. The fact that it’s been so eagerly consumed says a lot about the mental level of the elites that run US foreign policy.

As the title suggests, Kagan writes from the assumption that Empire is a “burden of responsibility” undertaken primarily for the good of the rest of the world; the US established a “world order” at the end of WWII because of a “sense of global responsibility that equated American interests with the interests of many others around the world.”

Kagan frames FDR’s motivations for entering WWII — in contrast to those of the “realists” — in terms of “sentiment and idealism,” “the tenets of faith and humanity,” and a desire to preserve “the institutions of democracy” as a viable alternative in the world. And the postwar order engineered by FDR and Truman was based on an idealistic vision of “democratic capitalism,” with global free trade managed by the Bretton Woods institutions, and world peace guaranteed against new aggressions by the UN Security Council backed by the military power of the US.

But in fact FDR’s motives for entering the war were quite “realistic.” A joint study by the CFR and State Department in 1940, motivated by alarm over the large areas of Europe and the Western Pacific Germany and Japan were incorporating into the autarkic economic orders of Fortress Europe and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, set out to determine the absolute minimum of the world’s market areas and resources that would have to be integrated into the American corporate economy, in order for it to continue to function. This study determined that it was absolutely essential that a “Grand Area” including a bare minimum of the Western Hemisphere, the British Empire and East Asia be integrated into the global economy for the American economy to survive in its existing form. Hence further Japanese absorption of markets and resources, or a German capture of Great Britain and a major part of the Royal Navy (and hence of the British Empire), would be a disaster for American capitalism.

FDR decided, accordingly, to engineer American entry into the war. His aid to Chinese guerrillas, his oil embargo against Japan, and the Navy’s “pop-up cruisers” in Japanese territorial waters were meant to goad Japan into firing the first shot and giving FDR a pretext for war. Meanwhile, FDR was planning to initiate war by any means necessary, no matter how flimsy the pretext, if Japan moved to annex the rubber and tin of French Indochina or the oil of the Dutch East Indies.*

And the liberal capitalist world order created by FDR and Truman was focused primarily on ensuring that the world’s markets and resources remained integrated into Western corporate capitalism, and that the global security institutions associated with the UN (with the Security Council a de facto victors’ club on the model of the Concert of Europe) would prevent any new challenger from ever again threatening to remove the markets and resources of a major part of the world from global corporate control.

In short, this “idealistic” postwar order was the same kind of capitalist imperialism described by J.A. Hobson and Lenin, operating under the fig leaf of multilateral institutions.

The means by which it was brought about were hardly democratic or idealistic. As recounted by Gabriel Kolko in The Politics of War, the US inherited the UK’s role as chief naval power and guarantor of the global balance of power. But that’s not all it inherited. It also replaced Germany and Japan as the world’s leading counter-insurgency power. The US, Britain and France basically displaced all the Leftist anti-fascist resistance movements from their gains on the ground at the end of the war, and installed provisional governments run by former Axis collaborators. In Indochina, that meant supplanting Ho Chi Minh with a regime made up of generals who’d served under the Japanese puppet emperor Bao Dai, and serving the economic interests of the rent-gouging, French-educated Catholic landlords (who, in the most fertile areas of the Mekong Delta, charged rents amounting to 90% of agricultural output). In Italy, factories were taken away from workers’ committees and returned to fascist industrialists. Only in France, where the US initially intended to create a provisional government under a general of the former Vichy regime, was it forced to acquiesce in the face of De Gaulle’s popularity.

The US became a giant jobs program for unemployed counter-insurgency warfare experts who’d previously served the Nazi regime.

The policies of the US government in the postwar period have been anything but idealistic, except to the extent that US ruling elites find drinking their own ideological Kool-Aid makes it easier for them to live with themselves. The US inherited the role of the European and Japanese colonial empires in supervising the large-scale extraction of oil and mineral resources from the post-colonial world by Western corporations, and in colluding with Third World landed elites to evict peasant cultivators by the tens of millions so that their land might be used to grow cash crops for the export market. Its so-called “free trade” policy has had nothing to do with actual free trade, instead locking former colonial areas into supplying raw materials and sweatshop labor to Western capital entirely on the latter’s terms.

To be sure, the American state and the corporate interests it serves prefer “democracy” of a sort when it’s feasible — namely the kind of spectator democracy that doesn’t touch the structure of social and economic power, that involves choosing between almost identical subsets of the same neoliberal ruling elites and then sitting down and shutting up until the next election. This is the kind of “democracy” the US installed in Iraq under Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, where the puppet regime rubber-stamped a bunch of phony “Free Trade Agreements,” auctioned off state industry and utilities at fire sale prices to the scavengers of global finance-capital, and shut down the independent trade union federation and seized its assets — and then rubber-stamped a “democratic” constitution, almost impossible to subsequently change, that grandfathered all this looting in.

The US prefers this kind of illusory “democracy” whenever it’s feasible, because it’s less messy than the alternative. But when it doesn’t work, it’s more than happy to resort to the expedients of sponsoring military coups, death squads, torture and genocide. The deaths carried out by US-backed military dictators and death squads in Central America, Iran, Indonesia, the Congo, and the entire continent of South America, go upward into the millions. In fact the US has cheerfully overthrown democracies, as in Guatemala and Iran, when they imperiled the ability of Western corporations and landed elites to extract wealth from the people of those countries.

And the counter-insurgency playbook used by the US in “promoting freedom” around the world is the very same one invented by the British in the Boer War, the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines, the US itself against the Moro insurgency, and King Leopold’s troops in the Congo. It’s the same techniques subsequently used by the Japanese in Manchuria and by the French in Indochina and Algeria. It involves herding the population into “strategic hamlets” under military control, defoliating or carpet-bombing everything on the outside, and generally terrorizing the population into submission.

The US generally overthrows dictatorships, and backs “people power” and “color revolutions” through the National Endowment for Democracy and Soros Foundation, only when they’ve outlived their usefulness and stopped taking orders. Many of the dictators and terrorists the US has so ostentatiously overthrown — Noriega, Saddam, Bin Laden — had a previous history of being installed in power by the US or working with it.

If the US had installed Satan as dictator of Hell and provided him with arms and advisers, and he suddenly stopped taking orders from Washington, you can bet the very next day the White House Press Secretary would be standing on the podium talking in shocked tones about all the horrible things the US had “just discovered” going on in Hell.

So let’s be clear. The US superpower is not an idealistic bearer of burdens for the rest of the world, and the world order it has enforced has not been for the “peace and prosperity” of humanity. It is the very same exploitive, extractive order enforced previously by the colonial powers of Western Europe and Japan, and using the same bloody and genocidal methods — but packaged in idealistic rhetoric about “democracy.”

We never hired this superpower. It was hired by our enemies, to rob and brutalize us. It’s time, not for it to “retire,” but for it to immediately be fired and frog-marched out of the building.

*Note — Information regarding the CFR/State Department “Grand Area” study comes mainly from Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, “Shaping a New World Order: The Council on Foreign Relations’ Blueprint for World Hegemony 1939-1945,” in Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 135-156. 

The segment of the center-left who swoon over Elizabeth Warren are fond of quoting Barney Frank’s statement that “government is the name for the things we decide to do together.” Now, the idea that government is the embodiment of things “we” decide to do presupposes some non-trivial correlation between public desires and what government actually does. But according to a Princeton University study (Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens”), the effect of public opinion on actual public policy is roughly comparable to that of the sunspot cycle.

The study found no correlation at all between public opinion and policy. Graphing the correlation, the chance any random policy proposal will be adopted is a flat 30% regardless of the level of public support. On the other hand the correlation between the economic elite’s policy preferences and the policies adopted shows up on the graph as a nice, neat upward-slanting line at 45 degrees, with a 70% correlation between strong elite support and policy adoption.

That really shouldn’t be too surprising. The government set up under the U.S. Constitution was created in response to elite complaints that  state governments were too democratic, too responsive to popular sentiment, to the point of seriously inconveniencing economic elites. In many of the newly independent states, radical coalitions of farmers and small tradesmen in the legislatures passed land reforms and stays on debt and opposed tax increases to pay off the Continental war bonds held by the rentier classes.

The main political constituencies behind the Constitution were economic elites like the landed and mercantile interests. Their Constitution — created by an illegal coup against the Articles of Confederation — set up a government designed as an oligarchy run by economic elites like themselves, with popular control kept as nominal and indirect as possible. The government we have today, despite the “democratic” civics book rhetoric in official propaganda, is still in its essential features the same oligarchy they set up over 220 years ago.

Leaving the Constitution aside, the overall institutional structure of the American society, economy and political system make such elite dominance inevitable. When every aspect of national life is governed by an interlocking framework of centralized government regulatory agencies, several hundred giant corporations and banks, and giant bureaucratic think tanks, universities and charitable foundations, and the same tiny elites shuffle back and forth between these institutions, it stands to reason that the main influence on policy will be the mindset of those running such large institutions. This would be true even with the liberal panacea of public campaign financing, because the main factor in policy is not money but the unconscious assumptions of the Very Serious People making policy (and the people like themselves they automatically regard as sources of credible advice)  about what is normal and natural.

What Robert Michels called the Iron Law of Oligarchy — the tendency, regardless of how nominally democratic an institution is, for real power to accumulate in the hands of agents and representatives at the expense of principals and the represented — is inevitable. You’d be hard-pressed to find even a local government in a community of more than a few tens of thousands of residents where policies aren’t set almost entirely by real estate developers, the Chamber of Commerce and the public school administration. In fact many key “reforms” in municipal government promoted by “progressives” a century ago — larger wards, at-large representation, city manager-board government, non-partisan elections — were deliberately designed to reduce the influence of ordinary workers and small businesspeople on local government and instead hand policy-making over to “competent” upper-middle-class professionals.

Simply put, the kind of democracy Barney Frank talks about isn’t just an unrealistic description of American reality. It’s flat-out impossible. States originated as executive committees of the ruling class, created to serve the interests of economic elites by enforcing the artificial scarcities, artificial property rights and monopolies by which they extract rents from the rest of us. To expect them to do otherwise is like expecting a pig to fly.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Sul Governo Inteso Come “Ciò che Decidiamo di Fare Assieme”