Center for a Stateless Society

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.

* * *

After reading Nathan Goodman‘s reply to Casey Given, and his rejoinder to both of us, the striking thing is that Casey seems, by his own admission, to be less clear than we are of what our actual areas of disagreement are. His rejoinder to me at times talks past the points I made and restates his original complaints about privilege in slightly different words. And he actually interprets Nathan’s statement as being in agreement with him.

In reply to my argument that privilege theory wasn’t about guilt or culpability, he cites what he says is a common perception by those who have been through college sensitivity training that it is indeed about “induc[ing] guilt,” and that the intended takeaway is that even someone who didn’t own slaves or “act racist” “should still feel ashamed.” If that is indeed their perception, either someone isn’t teaching properly or, for whatever reason, they aren’t learning properly.

Simply put, it is a bare fact that (among other things) structural racism and patriarchy exist in our society, and that whites and men benefit from it as groups. It should be obvious to anyone, as a matter of simple common sense, that people who are not hindered by such forms of systematic structural oppression in their daily lives have an advantage over those who are, just as someone who doesn’t have a 50 lb. weight shackled to each arm has an advantage over someone who does. And “privilege” is as good a word as any to describe this phenomenon.

The idea that the word “privilege” carries a normative connotation, implies that anyone who isn’t so impeded by daily harassment or shackled to 50 lb. weights is at fault, or implies that anyone should be shackled who isn’t, is just ridiculous. Anyone who actually conveys the impression that this is what privilege means is doing a bad job teaching privilege theory, and alienating the very people who need to understand it in a non-judgemental manner.

The lesson of the marshmallow exercise Casey refers to isn’t that anyone who doesn’t have marshmallows in their mouth should have them “jammed down their throat,” or that they should feel guilty that they don’t have. It’s simply that they’re better off, both for reasons of structural injustice and perhaps for no fault of their own, than those who do have a mouth full of marshmallows.

On the other hand, I think there’s some attempt to encourage this misunderstanding of what privilege actually means, on the part of the cultural Right, as a way of sabotaging social justice activism. And some people may subjectively hear an accurate explanation of privilege as a condemnation of them because of unexamined resentments of social activism itself.

So some people interpret sensitivity training as a demand that they feel guilty for being white, male, straight, cis, etc. I’m a relative newcomer to these concepts — I’ve been actively learning about them for around two years now — but I never interpreted them that way. I interpreted them as a simple call to be aware of my advantages in interacting with women, people of color, LGBT people, etc., to be supportive and show solidarity, to hand them the mic and help amplify their voices, and to be on the alert for ways in which the justice movements I’m a part of could better address the intersectional needs of less privileged members.

But suppose some people do say the things Casey quotes? Some people also say things like “Why do blacks get to say the n-word?” “What’s wrong with a White Student Organization?” or “Slavery was 150 years ago and segregation’s been over for four decades — why do they have to dwell on it?” I hear stuff like this all the time from people who “never owned slaves” and don’t think they “act racist.”

The very fact that anyone sees racism or sexism as a matter solely of individual bigotry, that either a man or a woman, a white or black person, can equally be guilty of, rather than a structural phenomenon, reflects profound ignorance about the reality we live in. And any white person, man, etc., who fails to understand that we benefit by being white or male in ways that give an advantage over anyone who isn’t, is ignorant of something they shouldn’t be. Whether people fail to learn because somebody’s teaching the ideas badly, because somebody’s encouraging them to misunderstand, or because they don’t want to understand, doesn’t change the fact that these are things that need to be understood.

Whether intentional or not, the beliefs that privilege is about guilt and that racism is about “personal attitude” or “acting racist” have done a great deal to undermine social justice activism. By not only obscuring perception of the social structures of oppression we seek to dismantle, but also causing people to resent the concept of privilege based on a false understanding of what it means, these beliefs derail efforts to fight oppression.

Casey, oddly, attempts to put intersectionality forward in opposition to the concept of privilege. But the two concepts are inseparable. The whole purpose of intersectionality is to understand differential privilege within a group. To treat the acknowledgement that intersecting forms of privilege make people worse off than individual forms of privilege as a refutation of the concept of privilege is decidedly — I use the word again — odd.

Odder still, he actually quotes Nathan’s argument against essentialism as if it backed up his own position, as if it were a remedy for the “collectivism” of plain old vanilla-flavored oppression theory:

Essentializing a basic “woman’s experience” or “black experience” means ignoring the different ways oppression is experienced among members of these groups. Often, such essentialism means taking the experiences of relatively privileged members of groups as default. For example, a standard “women’s experience” may specifically describe the experiences of straight, cisgender white women, as they experience misogyny without typically experiencing the homophobia, transphobia, and racism that other women may face.

But the problem with essentialism is that it doesn’t pay enough attention to privilege. The “holistic undertanding of individual experience” that Nathan points to — the idea that a “typical female experience” may exclude women of color, working class women, trans women, &c — is more privilege-oriented than monolithic female, black &c identities, because it was created to prevent upper-middle class white professionals like the typical TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), SWERF (sex worker exclusionary radfem), and rich CEOs like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer from passing themselves off as spokespersons for the “typical woman,” and likewise to prevent a similar position of hegemony by an upper-middle class professional “black leadership” within the Civil Rights movement.

Finally, Casey repeats that “pointing out privilege is a cause without a call to action.” That’s like saying an understanding of hydraulics doesn’t build an irrigation system. No — but any attempt to build an irrigation system in ignorance of the principles of hydraulics, or in violation of them, will be doomed to failure. I really don’t know what to say, other than to repeat that any “action” that’s not based on an accurate perception of reality won’t be very effective. As I said in my original response, the sharecroppers union split along racial lines in the 1930s, not because members addressed race privilege, but because they failed to do so.

In this regard, I can do no better than quote Nathan: “Casey Given urges action to challenge the institutions and rules that enable and exacerbate oppression. But in order to engage in such action successfully, it’s important to have an accurate analysis of the oppression we’re seeking to fight.” Both action without reflection, and reflection without action, are useless.

Feed 44

Liberty by Design on Feed 44

James Tuttle | |

C4SS Feed 44 presents Andy Bratton’s “Liberty by Design” read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford.

I sometimes feel the need to justify my presence at these events and draw a specific connection between the work I do and the libertarian and anarchist philosophies I hold so dear. That’s what I will attempt to do here, not so much because for the purpose of validating my interest in activism, but to lay out an argument for what I think ought to be the next step for liberty activism: to break out of the box of academia and pursue the endeavors of the market as a career or, at the very least, as extra-curricular interests.

Feed 44:

Bitcoin tips welcome:

1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

Commentary

“Government Is The Things We Do Together”: Perhaps the Stupidest Thing Ever Said

Kevin Carson | |

Barney Frank’s statement, “Government is simply a word for the things we decide to do together,” is getting a lot of recirculation lately in goo-goo circles desperate for a glib answer to those who view government as a threat. Anyone who says a damfool thing like this and seriously means it is a gullible idiot who shouldn’t leave home without adult supervision.

To see how nonsensical this claim is, let’s apply it to some concrete examples from history. If “government is the things we decide to do together,” then “we” must have decided to use US troops to break the Pullman Strike and to institute martial law in most western states and use the National Guard to wage all-out war on striking miners. “We” must have decided together on the mass incarceration of political prisoners during WWI, and the detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII. “We” must have decided to overthrow Diem and fabricate the Tonkin Gulf incident to lie ourselves into war in Vietnam, and used “Kuwaiti incubator babies” and “weapons of mass destruction” to lie ourselves into two wars in Iraq. “We” decided to keep ourselves from knowing the provisions of treaties like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiated in secret by the US Trade Rep in collusion with global corporations.

I repeat, without apology: Anyone who uses this phrase is stupid.

Furthermore it’s odd, if government really is just “what we decide to do together,” that it puts such enormous effort and resources into making sure we — the allegedly sovereign public it serves — don’t decide anything it disapproves of. For decades the U.S. government has treated U.S. public opinion as something to be managed with the same propaganda and disinformation techniques it would use to manage the perceptions of an enemy population or government.

The idea that “we” can “decide together” at all presupposes that we’re free to communicate with one another, without any outside attempts at disruption or sabotage by the government we allegedly work through, in order to decide what to tell the government to do. Operation COINTELPRO was used to sabotage “left-wing radical” organizations in the 1960s because the US government viewed the portion of the political spectrum it occupied as illegitimate, and wanted to sanitize that portion of the political spectrum from the marketplace of ideas.

In recent years Congress has explicitly approved Pentagon operations to operate covertly in the media to manage American public perception in the same way it previously operated outside the US. Former Clinton “National Security” Advisor Sandy Berger warned in 2004, regarding declining public support for the Iraq war: “We have too much at stake … to lose the American people.” That didn’t sound much like a government waiting for the American people to “decide together” whether the war in Iraq was a good thing, did it?

And now the Pentagon is conducting research into the causes of the tipping points in public opinion that led to mass disaffection and the coalescence of opposition in Arab Spring uprisings like Tunisia and Egypt — so it can prevent such “social contagion” (their words) from happening here, of course. Considering the Occupy movement in the US was directly inspired by the organizational model of the Arab Spring, M15 and Syntagma, this is no mere academic matter. In fact the Pentagon specifically refers to “nonviolent social activists” and “radical causes” promoted by peaceful NGOs.

So if government isn’t just what “we decide to do together,” who does it serve? All the actions described above make a lot more sense if we view government, in Marx’s words, as “the executive committee of the capitalist ruling class.” That should be — and was — a good enough definition for free market libertarians. For example, Franz Oppenheimer called the state the “political means” to wealth, by which an economic ruling class of capitalists extracted rents from the rest of society via artificial scarcities, monopolies and artificial property rights enforced by government.

The state is not “us.” It is THEM.

Portuguese, Stateless Embassies

Qual o sentido de checar seus privilégios?

Casey Given | | June 21st, 2014

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.

* * *

Em apenas algumas linhas, o calouro da Universidade de Princeton Tal Fortgang levou novamente o tópico dos privilégios às notícias nacionais. “Por trás de todo sucesso, grande ou pequeno, há uma história, que nem sempre é contada pelo sexo ou pela cor da pele”, afirmava Fortgang em um artigo para o jornal estudantil conservador Princeton Tory. “[Presumir] que é e que eu deva pedir desculpas por isso é um insulto”, escreveu. O artigo de Fortgang foi republicado pela revista Time e deu início a um fogo cruzado de aplausos e vaios de todos os lados do espectro político.

O que a mídia não percebe, contudo, é que esse circo não é nada novo. O conceito de privilégios ronda os círculos acadêmicos há mais de meio século, sobrevivendo apesar de seu esgotamento. Embora surtos de indignação conservadora como os de Fortgang surjam com alguma frequência, com a defesa de valores meritocráticos, as críticas mais interessantes vêm do meio intelectual preocupado com a justiça social, de onde surgiu a análise do privilégio. Alguns acadêmicos alinhados à esquerda condenam a estrutura de análise de privilégios por varrer a opressão para baixo do tapete, enfatizando a culpa branca em vez da ação política para acabar com a desigualdade sócio-econômica.

Embora a mídia não dê muita atenção para esse fato na cobertura da polêmica sobre o artigo de Fortgang, o conceito de privilégio tem suas raízes no ensaio de 1988 de Peggy McIntosh “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (em português, “Privilégio branco e privilégio masculino: Um relato pessoal da percepção de suas correspondências através do trabalho nos estudos sobre a mulher”). Nele, McIntosh lista 46 “efeitos diários do privilégio branco”, desde os mais abstratos (por exemplo, “Me sentirei bem vinda e ‘normal’ nos locais mais comuns da vida pública, institucional e social”) aos mais concretos (por exemplo, “Eu posso ir fazer compras sozinha na maior parte do tempo com a certeza de que não serei seguida ou perseguida”). Embora a maioria das vantagens sociais enumeradas na lista de McIntosh sejam verdadeiras, o ensaio não dá ao leitor a certeza sobre o que fazer com seu novo conhecimento sobre as vantagens dentro da sociedade.

A própria McIntosh admite na conclusão de seu ensaio que a percepção dos próprios privilégios não é suficiente para combatê-los. “Me foi ensinado que o racismo poderia acabar se os brancos mudassem suas atitudes”, lembra ela. “Atos individuais podem amenizar, mas não podem acabar com esses problemas”. Como, então, a análise dos privilégios pode ajudar a acabar com a desigualdade estrutural? McIntosh parece apontar para alguns tipos de reformas governamentais, sem dar respostas definitivas. Na penúltima frase de seu ensaio, ela mesma pergunta: “O que faremos com esse conhecimento?”

Se a consciência dos próprios privilégios não é suficiente para acabar com a opressão, a própria estrutura analítica parece pouco mais que um exercício de alívio da culpa sentida pelos brancos. Qual seria seu benefício? A culpa branca não vai impedir que os policiais parem indivíduos negros. A culpa branca não vai ajudar uma família a escapar do ciclo de pobreza em que seus antepassados ficaram presos por séculos. Como explicou o Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective em um artigo no outono de 2013 para o Harvard Educational Review, “embora a leitura e o trabalho com o ensaio de McIntosh seja um exercício de conscientização para indivíduos brancos, seu texto não nos ajuda no entendimento e no desmonte da supremacia branca sistêmica”.

O conceito de privilégio não apenas ignora a ação, mas também ignora a opressão. McIntosh deixa claro que se tratam de conceitos separados na primeira frase, destacando a “frequência com que homens não estão dispostos a conceder que dispõem de mais privilégios, embora possam conceder que as mulheres estão em posição de desvantagem”. O privilégio, do ponto de vista de McIntosh, é mais que a ausência de opressão: são vantagens especiais concedidas pela sociedade a um grupo seleto de pessoas.

Ao observar sua lista, contudo, parece estranho dizer que se trata de “mais privilégio” não ser perseguido ao fazer compras em um supermercado. Afinal, todos deveriam se sentir seguros em um mundo ideal, correto? Não é o objetivo do ativismo antirracista ajudar as minorias a se sentirem bem vindas e “normais” em todas as facetas da vida pública, institucional e social? Nesse sentido, McIntosh parece confundir privilégios e direitos humanos, como explica o filósofo de estudos africanos Lewis Gordon em sua compilação sobre raça What White Looks Like:

Um privilégio é algo de que nem todos precisam, mas direitos são o oposto. Dada essa distinção, surge uma dimensão mais insidiosa do argumento do privilégio branco. Ele requer que condenemos os brancos por possuir, concretamente, as características da vida contemporânea que deveriam estar disponíveis para todos. Se isso estiver correto, como podemos esperar que os brancos abram mão delas?

A preocupação de McIntosh com a crítica dos privilégios de que todos deveriam desfrutar é priorizada em detrimento da luta contra a opressão que ninguém deveria sofrer. Não se engane, porém: há várias diferenças entre como as classes socioeconômicas lidam com a vida cotidiana. Contudo, a resposta a essas desigualdades não é oprimindo as pessoas que desfrutam de privilégios devidos, mas elevando aquelas que não os possuem através da ação política.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Feature Articles, Mutual Exchange, The Point of Privilege

A Point of Agreement on Privilege?

Casey Given | |

* * *

It’s difficult to pinpoint where exactly Nathan Goodman and I disagree on our viewpoints of the privilege framework. In “The Various Functions of Privilege Analysis,” he agrees with me that using the framework usually “muddles” conversation because “basic rights,” such as not being harassed because of one’s race, are oddly “referred to as ‘privileges.’” Moreover, he “perfer[s] to avoid” using the expression “check your privilege” because “[e]nough people have a knee jerk negative reaction to the phrase” — a point I made in my response to Kevin Carson.

Furthermore, Nathan acknowledges the collectivist critique that many libertarians have made — which I’ve avoided in this Mutual Exchange for originality sake — that the privilege framework “involves making unjustified assumptions about individuals.” Nathan quite correctly points out that there is no standard “women’s experience” or “black experience,” as each individual is a product of numerous socioeconomic factors (i.e. race, gender, wealth, sexuality, ability, etc.). Furthermore, he rightfully points out that any attempt to essentialize a “woman’s experience” or “black experience” usually favors more societally acceptable individuals over others: “For example, a standard ‘women’s experience’ may specifically describe the experiences of straight, cisgender white women, as they experience misogyny without typically experiencing the homophobia, transphobia, and racism that other women may face.”

Despite all his quite compelling critiques of the privilege framework, Nathan somehow still sees value in it. To save privilege from its collectivist downfall, Nathan posits anti-essentialism as a means to “look at individuals holistically” rather than making categorical assumptions about their experience. But, how is Nathan’s individualistic vision of anti-essentialism any different from the standard libertarian retort to judge individuals by their personal experiences? I don’t so much disagree with Nathan as I fail to see where he disagrees with me.

Feature Articles

The Middle East Harvests Bitter Imperialist Fruit

Sheldon Richman | |

The wall-to-wall coverage of the disintegration of Iraq ought to carry this credit: This bloodshed was made possible by the generosity of British and French imperialists.

The stomach-wrenching violence in Iraq — not to mention the horrendous civil war in Syria, the chronic unrest in Palestine/Israel, and problems elsewhere in the Middle East — are direct consequences of the imperialist acts of the British and French governments at the end of World War I, the history-altering catastrophe that began 100 years ago this August 4.

The story has been told many times. The government of Great Britain wanted to disrupt the Ottoman Empire’s ability to help Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire in the Great War. So the British dispatched personnel, most famously T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), to persuade the Arab leaders to revolt against the Turks, in return for which they would gain their independence in (roughly) the Levant (what today is Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Syria), Mesopotamia (Iraq), and the Arabian Peninsula. The Arab leadership agreed and proceeded to obstruct the Turks’ war efforts.

In the 1915–16 correspondence between the British High Commissioner in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon, and Arab leader Hussein bin Ali, McMahon acknowledged Hussein’s demand for independence in most of the Levant (Palestine included) and the Arabian peninsula:

Subject to the above modifications, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca [Hussein].

McMahon did not give a blanket guarantee; he excluded western parts of the Levant (Lebanon) in favor of French interests and declared that

With regard to … Bagdad [sic] and Basra [in Iraq], the Arabs will recognise that the established position and interests of Great Britain necessitate special administrative arrangements in order to secure these territories from foreign aggression, to promote the welfare of the local populations and to safeguard our mutual economic interests.

Nevertheless, the British led the Arabs to believe — and the Arabs indeed did believe — that they would gain independence in most of their lands not only from the Turks but also from Britain and France as well if the Allied powers prevailed.

The British officials, however, never intended to honor this promise to let the Arabs go their own way at the war’s end. The British (and French) cynically used the Arabs for their own advantage while secretly planning for a postwar Middle East dominated by their countries.

In 1916, after McMahon’s correspondence with Hussein, Sir Mark Sykes, a Middle East adviser to the British cabinet, and French diplomat François Georges Picot negotiated the famous secret agreement that bears their names. (It was also signed by czarist Russia’s representative.) The Sykes-Picot Agreement presumed to divide up the Middle East among the imperial Allied Powers, even before it had been wrested from the Turks.

Generally, the better developed parts of the Arab lands — Iraq and Greater Syria (including Lebanon) — would be controlled by Britain and France, while the undeveloped peninsula — today’s Saudi Arabia and Yemen — would be independent, though divided into British and French spheres of influence. (Its oil potential was yet unknown.) Part of what is today’s Turkey would be in Russian hands.

More specifically Britain would control southern Mesopotamia (Iraq), two Mediterranean port cities, and what would become Jordan. France would get Greater Syria, including today’s Lebanon, and northern Mesopotamia. Palestine (minus Jordan) would be under international supervision. This is not exactly how things ended up, but it set the stage for the final division of Arab territory between Britain and France after the war.

Obviously the agreement had to be kept secret, or else the Arabs would not have cooperated with the British. Moreover, the Allied powers hoped that President Woodrow Wilson would bring the United States into the war — and Wilson said he opposed territorial gains by the belligerents.

The agreement might have remained secret through the war except that after the Russian Revolution in the fall of 1917, the Bolsheviks discovered it in the files and made it public in order to embarrass the French and British governments.

This did not deter them from going ahead with their plan, in apparent disregard for Wilson’s Fourteen Points, issued in January 1918, 10 months before the end of the war. While Wilson is known for insisting on the principle of self-determination, in opposition to colonialism, the closest his Fourteen Points came to endorsing that principle is this:

A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

Note that the interests of subjugated people are to receive only “equal” consideration with the claims of governments. That hardly sounds like self-determination. At any rate, Wilson, who took sick when the Paris Peace Conference convened, was unable to stop the British and French from carrying out their imperial plans. In the end, his administration acquiesced in return for oil concessions for American companies.

As noted, the actual division of the Middle East did not follow Sykes-Picot precisely, because modifications were made in light of subsequent agreements, conferences (such as the 1920 San Remo conference), and events (such as the Russian Revolution). The language of 19th-century colonialism was dropped in favor of the “mandate” system, which (in theory) authorized Britain and France to oversee newly created Arab states until the Arabs were ready for self-government. The British created the states of Iraq and Transjordan (later Jordan). What was left of Palestine (it had different boundaries at different times) would not be designated a state but would be administered by Britain. France took Syria, out of which it created a separate Lebanon.

The arbitrarily drawn “national” boundaries cut through sectarian, ethnic, and tribal lines, planting the seeds of future conflicts that continue to this day. (The imperialists had done the same thing in Africa.)

Regarding Palestine, in the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration the British government expressed its approval of “the establishment … of a national home for the Jewish people,” and pledged to “use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” The declaration also stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” These provisos were little more than boilerplate.

Note that the declaration was issued before the British army conquered Palestine. The government was making promises about land it did not yet control — and this promise to the Zionist movement conflicted with the promises made earlier to the Arabs, again setting the stage for later conflict.

The Balfour Declaration, which created anxiety among Arabs and most Jews, of course paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel some 30 years later.

It is important to understand that throughout this process, the Arabs, Kurds, and other indigenous people were never consulted about the imperialists’ disposition of their lands. No wonder: what they wanted — independence from foreign powers — conflicted with the objectives of British and French politicians. But by what authority did they decide the future of the people in the Middle East?

Here’s another heartbreaking aspect to this story, When the Paris Peace Conference convened, Arab leaders looked to the United States to frustrate the imperialists’ designs, because they associated Wilson with the principle of self-determination. Their hopes, however, were dashed. (For details see Ussama Makdisi’s Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820–2001.) Anyone who protested the callous treatment of the Arabs and others was dismissed or ignored as naïve.

Let that sink in: the Arabs — Muslim, Christian, and secular — looked to the United States as a beacon of liberty and independence. (Whether American history justified that attitude is another matter.) They were let down and have suffered as a result ever since.

America may be despised by many people in the Middle East today — but it did not have to be that way.

The French and British proceeded to create states and governments in their new possessions. In the early 1920s, whenever Arabs tried to resist foreign rule, they were brutally suppressed — by the British in Iraq and the French in Syria. (This was reminiscent of the American suppression of the Filipinos, 1899–1902.) The Arab resistance was no match for the Europeans’ bombers, artillery, and mechanized vehicles.

Let’s now take a step back from the trees and view the forest.

This is a story about arrogant Western imperialists who thought enlightened, civilized Europeans should govern the Arabs (and Kurds) rather than let them determine their own destiny. Often the British and French described their rule in paternalistic terms. The barely disguised colonial system would be for the Arabs’ own good, it was said. When they achieved the elevated condition of their overlords, they will have earned the right to be free.

This view was voiced by men representing countries that had just engaged in over four years of savage trench warfare in the “war to end war,” not to mention the previous centuries bloodied by Europe’s religious and political wars. The paternalistic facade of course concealed narrow economic and political interests. (When Britain and France were unable to continue managing the Middle East after World War II, the United States took over.)

What’s happening in the Middle East today may be seen as a violent attempt to undo the Sykes-Picot, San Remo, etc., impositions of the last century. ISIS, for example, has erased the artificial boundary between Syria and Iraq. In this light, further Western intervention looks like a recipe for an even greater disaster.

As we look at the violence today in Iraq, Syria, Palestine/Israel, Egypt, and elsewhere in the region, we should remember that it all might have been avoided had the European powers not launched World War I, or if, in the event of war, the British and French had let the Arabs chart their own course.

As Edward Woodward’s character, Harry Morant, says in Breaker Morant just before being executed by the British army during the Second Boer War, “Well … this is what comes of ‘empire building.’”

Commentary

Ulster’s Alternatives to Security and Fear Culture

Juliana Perciavalle | |

A few weeks ago I went on a school trip to Ireland. As a relatively wealthy nation where everyone speaks English and shares deep cultural roots within the United States and United Kingdom, I found more base similarities with the strangers I talked to than glaring differences.

One of the most striking differences, however, was Ireland’s surface lack of security culture. I spoke to a few lads openly sharing a spliff on Belfast’s city hall lawn, a high-traffic area directly in the city center, about cannabis policies. Although smoking marijuana is illegal – seeds are readily available for retail sale but it is illegal to grow the plants, so the Irish government’s regulations actually make less sense than the American federal ones – these dudes didn’t seem like they were worried about being busted.

The Temple Bar district in Dublin was full of drunk, rowdy tourists over the weekend, but the various bar security guards held it down without a leering police presence. I was not asked for identification a single time that I purchased alcohol. Irish bartenders and liquor store owners don’t seem like they’re sweating in their boots that they’ll be shut down for serving an undercover cop with a fake ID. I also did not see a single uniformed police officer out in Belfast, Dublin, or any of the major cities I visited in Ireland. People leave their dogs unleashed, let their kids run ahead of them, and have no qualms about inviting an unfamiliar American to sit with them for a lunchtime pint. If there were security cameras on the streets, I didn’t see them. I didn’t have to step through a single metal detector outside of the airport.

This is especially remarkable considering Belfast was one of the most dangerous places in Europe during the Troubles, the most heavily bombed city in the UK up until 2001, and is still plagued by sectarianism that could turn violent at any time. The “peace walls” in West Belfast are a thick concrete barrier ominously running between Catholic and Protestant working-class neighborhoods with gates between them that only stay open during set hours. Basically, no one can agree on a solution to the sectarianism, and although the city is modernizing and attracting tourists exponentially with a rich cultural scene, the walls stand, marked by graffiti, propaganda messages and discoloration from blast bombs.

Yet Belfast enjoys a higher quality of life index than New York City and similar lowered crime rates since the Troubles.

Northern Irish customs took about five minutes; I was asked about two questions by a very pleasant woman concerning my business there. Most of their problems are highly regional, but I still had to answer fewer questions as a foreigner in Belfast than as a native citizen of the United States when I flew back. I’d imagine that a few stoned 20-somethings enjoying the rare sunny day is a less disconcerting sight to the average tourist than the assault rifle-toting police officers outside the White House and on NYC street corners. I’m not so naive as to assume that Ireland is a utopia of civil liberties, but I can say that I felt safer in the “sketchier” areas of Belfast than I do in crowded, cop-filled Times Square on a regular basis.

An older woman at a small shop in Cork remarked that Irish people don’t say anything if they see something that doesn’t immediately concern them. The culture of fear and persecution, the “see something, say something” attitude that is so prevalent among Americans, simply does not exist in Ireland.

Translations for this article:

Italian, Ulster: Alternative alla Cultura della Sicurezza e della Paura.

Life, Love And Liberty, Stigmergy - C4SS Blog

The Bipartisan Character Of American Empire And Imperialism

Nick Manley | | June 20th, 2014

Both Senate Democrats and hawkish Republicans lined up to support Obama’s recent sending of military personnel to Iraq. They are allegedly there only in an advisory capacity, but those of us who know something about how the Vietnam War started have reason for doubt. This support for a supposedly strictly advisory military mission is no surprise. The bipartisan character of the American mission of imperialism and empire has long been noted by leftists and libertarians alike. Those of us who are both radically libertarian and radically leftist are even more aware of said phenomenon.

This convergence between the two major party establishments is illustrated by the fact that both have launched covert operations and major wars. A few of the wars that a Democratic President got the U.S. into are WW1, WW2, and the the Korean War. Not to mention the role played by both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in continuing the Vietnam war. Democratic President, Harry S. Truman, also helped fund the French colonizers in their attempt to retake Indochina after WW2.

On the Republican side of the ledger, a few notable instances of militarist adventures include Dwight D. Eisenhower’s establishment of Military Assistance Advisory Group, expansion of the war in Indochina via the bombing of Cambodia by Richard Nixon, Bush the younger’s invasion of Iraq, and Bush the senior’s Gulf War 1.

Covert operationswise, Democratic Party administrations have engaged in support for the Baath Party 1963 coup under John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s war against Cuba, and covert “dirty wars” waged by Barack H. Obama in several countries. The Republican “achievements” in this respect include the 1953 coup that installed the Shah in Iran under Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 1954 overthrowing of the Guatemalan government, and covert dirty wars in various counties under George W. Bush.

As this brief overview shows, both sides of the two party establishment clearly participate in imperialist activity. The blood is on both the hands of the Democratic Party and Republican Party. An effectual anti-imperialist movement will preferably target both of them for protest. Of all the features of the modern state or government, this ability for imperial war is worth disrupting and destroying. The lives of many are dependent on the success of such a project. It’s time for radical left-libertarian market anarchists to do their part in pushing back the crimson tides of imperialist conquest. Let’s get started! And do a hell of a job.

Feature Articles, Mutual Exchange, The Point of Privilege

The Various Functions of Privilege Analysis

Nathan Goodman | |

* * *

Casey Given offers some interesting criticisms of the concept of privilege, criticisms drawn from feminist and anti-racist scholarship and activism rather than from the right. While I agree with some of these criticisms, I think his piece ignores several functions the concept of privilege can play, as well as some concepts in feminist theory that are useful for overcoming some of the criticisms often raised by libertarians.

He is correct to note that the conversation often becomes muddled, with basic rights, or at least reasonable expectations for all humans, referred to as “privileges.” I would contend that this indexing can still be useful, in order to understand how one’s own success may be contingent on oppressed people having basic rights denied to them. But the conflation at play can pose problems, and that’s worth noting.

However, a concept can be wielded in confusing ways and still serve useful functions. One key function of the feminist or anti-racist conception of privilege is its connection to standpoint epistemology. This focuses on how privilege makes itself invisible to the privileged party and simultaneously conceals the conditions of oppression from the privileged party. In other words, it deals with how knowledge is distributed along lines of oppression. In “The Knowledge Problem of Privilege” I argued that calls to “check your privilege” often represent “an attempt to get people to recognize the limits of their knowledge.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains this epistemological approach, known as feminist standpoint theory, as follows:

Women are oppressed, and therefore have an interest in representing social phenomena in ways that reveal rather than mask this truth. They also have direct experience of their oppression, unlike men, whose privilege enables them to ignore how their actions affect women as a class. The logic of an epistemology that grounds epistemic privilege in oppression is to identify the multiply oppressed as multiply epistemically privileged. Within feminist theory, this logic has led to the development of black feminist epistemology. Collins (1990) grounds black feminist epistemology in black women’s personal experiences of racism and sexism, and in cognitive styles associated with black women. She uses this epistemology to supply black women with self-representations that enable them to resist the demeaning racist and sexist images of black women in the wider world, and to take pride in their identities. The epistemic privilege of the oppressed is sometimes cast, following W.E.B. DuBois, in terms of “bifurcated consciousness”: the ability to see things both from the perspective of the dominant and from the perspective of the oppressed, and therefore to comparatively evaluate both perspectives (Harding 1991, Smith 1974, Collins 1990). Black women are “outsiders within,” having enough personal experience as insiders to know their social order, but enough critical distance to empower critique.

This approach to recognizing relationships between power, oppression, and knowledge is not unique to feminist theory. In “Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts,” James C. Scott argues that the perspective of the oppressed is rarely understood by their rulers. The power of rulers over their subjects or bosses over employees deters the ruled from telling the truth to those above them, thus relegating the perspectives of oppressed people to what Scott terms a “hidden transcript.” These types of information asymmetries can be discussed without phrases like “check your privilege,” and Enough people have a knee jerk negative reaction to the phrase that I personally prefer to avoid it. But the concerns about social position and situational knowledge that the phrase is often meant to raise are real and valid, so we should engage seriously with those who express these concerns in terms of privilege.

Often when I bring up the epistemological issues that discussing privilege is meant to illuminate, libertarians counter by arguing that this concept is collectivist, or that it involves making unjustified assumptions about individuals. This can be true if we essentialize groups and assume a universal “woman’s experience” or “gay experience” or “black experience.” This is why the concepts of intersectionality and anti-essentialism discussed by feminist scholars like Trina Grillo are so important to honing a realistic theory of social oppression. Intersectionality is about recognizing people and the oppression they experience holistically. For example, when studying the experience of a woman of color, it’s not sufficient to just study misogyny and racism and then add up the impacts of both. Sexism, racism, homophobia, poverty, and other factors all intersect to produce unique and potent forms of each other. Institutional environments further play a role. This means that while the law looks at particular forms of discrimination and oppression in isolation, intersectional feminists favor examining individuals and the oppression or privilege they experience holistically. This produces a more nuanced and individualistic feminism, as well as one that promotes solidarity among people resisting oppression. Anti-essentialism further promotes an individualist and nuanced approach to conceptualizing oppression. Essentializing a basic “women’s experience” or “black experience” means ignoring the different ways oppression is experienced among members of these groups. Often, such essentialism means taking the experiences of relatively privileged members of groups as default. For example, a standard “women’s experience” may specifically describe the experiences of straight, cisgender white women, as they experience misogyny without typically experiencing the homophobia, transphobia, and racism that other women may face. But this of course ignores that all these forms of oppression shape how some women are subjected to misogyny. Furthermore, it erases how cisgender straight white women have their particular gender norms shaped by their race, their sexual orientation, and their cisgender privilege. Thus, this essentialism normalizes a privileged experience while erasing the nuance of oppression. Anti-essentialism, much like intersectionality, enables us to look at individuals holistically, particularly as they experience oppression. As Trina Grillo puts it, “the anti-essentialism and intersectionality critiques ask only this: that we define complex experiences as closely as possible to their full complexity as possible and that we not ignore voices at the margin.”

Casey Given urges action to challenge the institutions and rules that enable and exacerbate oppression. But in order to engage in such action successfully, it’s important to have an accurate analysis of the oppression we’re seeking to fight. Tools from feminist theory and critical race theory such as standpoint epistemology, intersectionality, and anti-essentialism are all useful for analyzing, understanding, and ultimately dismantling oppression. And all of these tools have been tied to privilege analysis, thus making such analysis well worth studying.

Media Appearances

Cathy Reisenwitz with Angela Keaton from Antiwar.com

C4SS | |

C4SS Adviser and Contributor Cathy Reisenwitz is joined by Angela Keaton of antiwar.com to discuss the situation in Iraq as well antiwar.com’s lawsuit against the FBI for illegal spying.

Commentary

Hillary Clinton is a Terrorist

Cory Massimino | |

During a CNN town hall on June 17, Hillary Clinton made some controversial remarks about opponents of gun control. “We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people,” she said, “hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

But is gun control opposed by only a minority of people? It’s not so clear. According to Gallup poll from late 2013 49% of people agree that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict. 13% support less strict laws. 37% support keeping things the same and 1% have no opinion. Contra Clinton the subject of gun control is practically a 50/50 split.

Clinton continued, “I was disappointed that the Congress did not pass universal background checks after the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook.”

While Americans are divided on gun control more generally, if we are talking about universal background checks, the statistics change dramatically. 79% favor universal background checks for gun buyers, including those purchasing weapons at gun shows and from private sellers, with 13% opposed.

But background checks have little to no effect on criminals acquiring guns because most criminals acquire their guns through theft, black market transactions or personal acquaintances. A mere 1.7 percent obtain firearms from anyone (dealer or non-dealer) at a gun show or flea market.

It’s naive to believe more laws would have an effect on criminals. After all, by definition criminals rarely follow. Rather than preventing guns from getting into the hands of criminals, universal background checks simply terrorize law-abiding gun owners and potential gun owners. Furthermore, background checks have historically been used to disarm marginalized and oppressed groups, especially minorities.

The fact is that Hillary Clinton is not for gun control. She is for gun centralization. She wants to limit possession of guns to the government and people the government approves of. To enforce this policy of gun centralization, she is perfectly willing to resort to violence of her own.

After all, how do gun “control” supporters plan to prevent certain people from getting guns? Those laws will be enforced by police with their own guns.

The only minority terrorizing the majority is the government. Governments were responsible for more deaths than all private individuals combined in the 20^th century, with killing approximately 260,000,000 people. This is the type of organization Hillary wants to put in charge of who does or doesn’t get guns? A proper plan for reducing gun violence would be to take guns away from the government. But that doesn’t fly with the supporters of gun centralization, like Hillary.

Terrorism, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal. Hillary obviously has a political goal in mind: Gun centralization. That is, keeping guns in the hands of the government and those the government deems worthy. Her means? Limiting who can or can’t own guns using the threat of police violence.

Gun control opponents are not terrorizing anyone. On the contrary, politicians who support gun control are the terrorists. And we cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

Life, Love And Liberty, Stigmergy - C4SS Blog

ISIS Fundamentalists Square Off With Tyrannical And Corrupt U.S. Backed Iraqi Government

Nick Manley | | June 19th, 2014

Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militants recently launched a major offensive in Iraq. They managed to seize territory from fleeing Iraqi government/police forces. These Islamic fundamentalist fighters are basically engaged in behavior no better than what the Iraqi government does. Their behavior deserves no support from friends of liberty. There is a statist impulse similar to that of the U.S. government/U.S. supported Iraqi government animating them.

A general statist culture pervades Iraq. The main factions see possession of the central government or state as an institution that can protect them from the dominance of the others. Anarchism would strike at the root of this problem and do much to alleviate it. It wouldn’t be enough though. There are other destructive cultural trends at work in Iraq. One is clearly fundamentalist Islam, and its basic anti-liberty premises. These premises are the absolute reliance on divine authority, and the aggressive violence required by its particular brand of Islamic law. An uprooting of this element is also necessary in a struggle for individual freedom in Iraq. This is only my particular left-libertarian market anarchist view though.

The practical means of uprooting statist and fundamentalist Islamic culture are bound to be peaceful ones. The firepower possessed by a U.S. backed regime is too immense to do armed battle with. The ISIS forces probably also possess considerable arms. They would not otherwise have made the progress they did. It would be advisable for freedom loving individuals in Iraq to begin a campaign of informing people of the possibilities of civil or peaceful criminal disobedience. The word criminal here pertains to violations of unjust laws and not criminality in the sense of violating the non-aggression principle. This civil or criminal disobedience is preferably aimed at both the rule of the Iraqi regime and ISIS militants. Both are authoritarian forces bent on the imposition of laws requiring the aggressive use of force.

A movement for the rights of all Iraqis could begin with peaceful disobedience, but it may involve instances of individual or collective self-defense too. This is especially true with respect to the emergence of a liberated territory under statist assault. Violence is preferably not a first resort and is best avoided as much as possible though. Its defensive potential is only magnified by the participation of a sufficient number of others. This is why isolated acts of violence are likely to be ineffectual and potentially immoral due to this lack of effectiveness.

We left-libertarian market anarchists in the U.S. can do all we can to support Iraqi comrades in creating a free society.

Get on it! Liberty lovers.

Portuguese, Stateless Embassies

O protecionismo está morto. Vida longa ao protecionismo!

Kevin Carson | |

É frequente ouvir notícias sobre tratados — como a Rodada do Uruguai, o NAFTA, o CAFTA ou o TPP — descritos como “acordos de livre comércio”, cujos objetivos são “reduzir as barreiras comerciais”. Isso é mentira. Sem exceção, esses acordos fortalecem uma das formas de protecionismo mais vitais à proteção dos interesses corporativos contra a competição: a “propriedade intelectual”.

Em uma recente discussão no Facebook, David K. Levine, coautor (junto com Michele Boldrin) do livro Against Intellectual Monopoly, explicava o que os “direitos autorais” (“copyright”) tornam propriedade privada. Levine pergunta: se você grava uma música, dá para mim a cópia do arquivo de MP3 dela e eu duplico minha cópia e envio como anexo para outra pessoa (Bill), o que você perdeu? Você ainda possui a própria música. “O que você perdeu é uma (possível) venda para Bill. Em outras palavras, o direito que você ganha através do copyright é o direito exclusivo de vender para Bill; ou seja, o direito de propriedade concedido pelo direito autoral não é sobre uma ‘ideia’, mas sobre consumidores.”

Exatamente! A “propriedade intelectual” é um monopólio protecionista como as tarifas sobre produtos estrangeiros. Em ambos os casos, o que está sendo protegido é o direito de vender algo em particular para alguns consumidores. A diferença é que o monopólio conferido pelas tarifas opera de acordo com as linhas territoriais — as fronteiras entre os estados —, enquanto o monopólio criado pelas patentes e copyrights opera de acordo com as fronteiras entre corporações.

Os falsos “acordos de livre comércio” atuais enfraquecem ou removem barreiras comerciais ultrapassadas como as tarifas e fortalecem barreiras como as proteções à “propriedade intelectual” — a ponto de anular direitos de livre expressão e ao devido processo em casos de busca e apreensão nos países signatários, dando aos “donos” de conteúdos proprietários o equivalente a direitos de vigilância policial à censura sobre a internet e sobre os provedores de acesso.

Por que, então, enfraquecer uma barreira protecionista e fortalecer outra? Porque não se trata de um “acordo de livre comércio”. Esses tipos de tratado servem somente aos interesses das indústrias cujos representantes os escrevem. O “livre comércio” é apenas um slogan publicitário que usam para vendê-los para o público “representado” pelos governos que os negociam. (Evidentemente, a única forma de que o público dispõe para conhecer as provisões desses acordos secretos é com o seu vazamento.)

Os governos que negociam tais tratados e os advogados corporativos que os escrevem não baixam tarifas por convicção a barreiras comerciais. Baixam porque elas deixam de ser úteis. Cem anos atrás, a maioria das empresas no mundo industrializado eram nacionais: eram fisicamente localizadas dentro de um país e registradas dentro dele. Um monopólio de venda de bens manufaturados, nesse caso, era útil.

Hoje, a maioria das corporações são globais. O comércio internacional é representado especialmente pelo “comércio” de bens físicos inacabados entre as subsidiárias locais da mesma corporação global, de bens inacabados produzidos por empresas terceirizadas que fazem parte da cadeia de fornecimento de uma corporação, ou de bens acabados produzidos por empresas terceirizadas no exterior e vendidos dentro Estados Unidos. Portanto, uma restrição territorial do fluxo de matérias-primas e bens acabados e inacabados não serve mais aos interesses das corporações, porque elas deixaram de ser territoriais. Por outro lado, é extremamente útil para as empresas possuir um monopólio sobre o direito de vender um produto aos consumidores. Graças a patentes e marcas registradas, a Nike, uma corporação “americana”, pode delegar a produção de tênis a fábricas “independentes” na Ásia e utilizar seu monopólio sobre a venda de produtos acabados para pagar aos fabricantes verdadeiros poucos trocados por par e vendê-los para lojas americanas com um acréscimo de preço de vários mil por cento. Isso vale, em grande parte, para todas as cadeias produtivas no mundo. E vale ainda mais nas indústrias de software e entretenimento.

O que vemos na negociação desses “acordos de livre comércio” é uma versão atualizada da observação de Adam Smith: quando os representantes industriais se reúnem em segredo, estão conspirando contra o interesse público. O que as corporações de fato fazem em suas reuniões secretas é um tipo de terrorismo com impacto muito maior e mais destrutivo do que qualquer ataque da Al-Qaeda. Sua maior ferramenta de terror é o estado.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Missing Comma, Stigmergy - C4SS Blog

Paper Trails – Freedom of the Print

Juliana Perciavalle | |

In earlier times, the New York Times was a New York staple; the way you held the paper on the subway indicated whether or not you were from the area. Nowadays, most of us read the Times on our iPads, but although the New York Times and other print publications have cut staff and budgets drastically for print editions of their news in recent years, print is becoming the dominant form of media in developing nations.

Everyone going into journalism has probably heard that journalism is dying, or at least that brick-and-mortar newspapers are. This is quite misleading; with the upsurge in media technology, while niche publications and media start-ups in recent years have given aspiring journalists in the United States and Europe more mediums and avenues for their interests and ideas than ever, the assumption that print is dead is pretty Western-centric. As travel becomes more restricted, especially for members of the press, this assumption is understandable.

Why the shift to print? The 2011 State of the Media report said:

“Countries with either evolving democracies or at least evolving capitalist systems tend to drive newspaper growth, which helps explain why Hungary (6.9%) Kosovo (12.5%) and Russia (9.3%) are also on the list of countries where newspapers are launching in bigger numbers, helping advertising revenue grow. Volatile as it is, Afghanistan also saw its paid daily newspaper titles jump 12.5% in 2009.”

It’s safe to say that movement towards capitalism drives the growth of news as the market for news expands and literacy rates go up. This isn’t rocket science. What’s more interesting is this:

“Still a fourth factor affecting the health of the newspaper industry is government subsidy. In several countries, the government offers substantial subsidies to help the newspaper industry thrive as a matter of public policy. The amount and nature of the subsidy can vary widely, and it is difficult to pin down how widespread the subsidies are—they are being scaled back in some places and increased in others. Ireland, for instance, has devoted hundreds of thousands of Euros per year to subsidize Gaelic-language press.”

Aside from Ireland, where Gaelic-language media tends to have a niche, if culturally significant market, the government subsidizing news in developing nations is a red flag. That said, newspapers can slip further under the radar than easily trackable online media, even though they logistically take longer to produce. With Turkey’s recent Twitter ban though, and similar Internet restrictions worldwide, it makes sense that regional news is easier to circulate when it’s written down.

This 2008 Economist article reinforces that point:

“Publishers in India benefit from a long tradition of press freedom. But papers in countries with more meddling governments are also, by and large, doing well. This is especially true of small newspapers. Governments with limited resources are often ill-equipped to monitor a profusion of local and regional newspapers. In Mali, for example, newspapers are popping up “like mushrooms”, says Souleymane Kanté, the local manager for World Education, an American NGO that aims to eradicate illiteracy. The Malian government keeps large national publications in line, Mr Kanté says, but local and regional papers have some breathing room.”

Many pieces on print in the developing world refer to these markets as “maturing,” but this government sidestepping places small, localized papers ahead of the game, even if literacy rates still lag behind Western numbers. The developing world’s growing print industry is expected to decline as Internet access becomes more widespread, but Internet restriction doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere.

From Common Sense to anarchist zines, print has played a unique role in the face of the media. Limits on press freedom are a looming threat, but as the FBI discovers more and more Internet rabbit holes, maybe it’s time to throw them a curve ball and go back to basics.

Feature Articles, Mutual Exchange, The Point of Privilege

Checking Privilege Divides, Fighting Oppression Unites

Casey Given | |

* * *

In “Why Privilege Theory is Necessary,” Kevin Carson highlights three points of disagreement with my initial article. First, he claims that the point of the privilege framework is “not about feeling guilt.” Second, he believes that the privilege framework can “foster solidarity” among various socioeconomic groups. Third, he asserts that focusing on policy reform to eliminate oppression will only “make other forms of oppression function more smoothly and efficiently.” It is my point of privilege to respond in disagreement on all three points.

Regarding guilt, Kevin may not perceive the privilege framework as serving to shame individuals of supposedly privileged socioeconomic classes. Nevertheless, many reasonable people see it as such, especially students required to undergo sensitivity trainings on college campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented this academic trend over the past two decades, challenging the often bizarre exercises that students are forced to participate in to be made aware of their so-called privileges. One infamous case at the University of Delaware involved an exercise in which students were made to stuff marshmallows in their mouth if they have a societal disadvantage and then talk to each other, symbolizing the supposed privilege that straight white males enjoy since they were the only ones in the class without a muffled mouth.

Intentional or not, jamming the privilege concept down one’s throat (sometimes literally, as at Delaware) has had well-document pushback for attempting to induce guilt. The Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective, for example, reports one student’s reaction to reading Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”:

My reaction to this paper was basically if you are a white male you should be ashamed of yourself. Even if what happened a hundred years ago wasn’t done by you and you have tried to be accepting to all, you should still be ashamed.

This perception of guilt is all too common in discussions of privilege. As Jennifer Ng of the University of Kansas observes, “White students quite commonly deny their involvement in a racist society by pointing out that they were never slave owners.” And why should they confess to perpetuating racism through privilege if they themselves have never acted racist? Ng continues, “I doubt students would feel any more comfortable with being asked to personally identify or theoretically associate themselves with the deeds or feelings of colonizers or Nazis.”

In short, it should come as no surprise that the privilege framework’s practice of singling out heterosexuals, whites, and males for a supposed privilege that they did not choose comes across as a guilt trip and receives pushback as a result — which brings us to Kevin’s second point. With such well-documented hostility to the privilege framework, it seems impossible to claim that it serves to “foster solidarity” among various socioeconomic classes. To the contrary, its practice of alienating people based on race, sex, and sexuality has only served to divide rather than unite. The very fact that we’re debating this issue in a Mutual Exchange is testament to its divisiveness.

Indeed, it’s remarkable how explicitly the privilege framework marginalizes whole classes of people by assigning societal value to literally skin-deep qualities like race and sex. Kevin quotes an Occupy activist for stating on Twitter that “society has created a gendered hierarchy” that “needs to be dismantled, and you can’t properly dismantle something you don’t understand.” If this societal hierarchy needs to be discussed, let’s be specific about it.

Which race is more oppressed — blacks or latinos? Is a white trangendered woman more privileged than a black male? Do Jews and Catholics have the same white privilege as protestants? It seems impossible that any discussion of this privilege hierarchy will “foster solidarity” instead of reinforce discriminatory stereotypes. This is precisely why the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective recommends shifting intersectionality’s focus from privilege to oppression, as I argued for in my initial article. Fighting injustice is a uniting cause; pointing out privilege is a dividing one.

Furthermore, pointing out privilege is a cause without a call to action — which brings us to Kevin’s final point. As pleasing as it may be for libertarian anarchists to pat themselves on the back for being aware of their privilege, the state will continue to oppress. Anarcho-capitalists may conjure up an ideal world in their head where such oppression does not exist, but the real challenge for any activist is implementing their vision in reality. Instead of wishing the world’s problems away, libertarians should be active in fighting oppressive policies that actively keep minorities down like occupational licensing, mandatory minimum sentencing, the drug war, restrictive immigration, deportation, the public education monopoly, and the minimum wage. Anything less like privilege is bourgeois musings.

Commentary

How Brazil Learned that the World Cup is not Just Soccer

Valdenor Júnior | |

Soccer transcends social classes and economic backgrounds. Children and teenagers everywhere in Brazil, from every class, play it. Where a ball may be improvised, there will be fun to be had.

Soccer is also one of the foundations of Brazilian patriotism, that reascends during the FIFA World Cup. The flag colors come to be worshipped, the flag itself is flown.

In 2014, however, it feels different. Slogans such as “There Will Be No World Cup” abound, there are protests and public opinion is split regarding the event’s impact. There was an open letter from those affected by the preparations and, on May 15, the Day Against the World Cup, that pushed thousands of people to the streets everywhere in Brazil.

It was a predictable result of the policies adopted in the country, that promoted the extensive use of government money and the iron hand of the state to remove people from their houses — in expropriations questionable even according to the dubious legal standards of Brazil — and build white elephants that will only be used for a short while. The greatest beneficiaries are FIFA, the contractors, allied corporations and the government itself.

To sidestep competition, according to the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup, “the General Law of the World Cup establishes zones of exclusion of 1.25 miles around FIFA’s areas, stadiums, and fan areas with large screens, where only official sponsors will be allowed to sell.” Street sellers, who move billions every year, yet again, are excluded from large swathes of the cities.

One could argue we are living under a “sporting state of exception,” but it is a fact that preparations for the World Cup have amply shown the disfunctionality and injustice of the Brazilian state. There have been huge subsidies to large enterprises through state bank BNDES, and the uncompromising defense of the property of big corporations allied to the consistent neglect to the property of the poor. There has also been an irresistible impulse to control the poor’s access to land, not to mention the repression of the street sellers all over a country in which the laws claim to defend the working classes.

This sports dystopia is always the reality in the country — a reality that overwhelmingly punishes the poor — but now it seems clearer than ever because it is closely associated with one of the most important world events for the Brazilians. This state has always existed, but it now has a pretext. The soccer country has learned that Cups are not only sport. They are about money and influence, about the political means, not voluntary exchange.

There is no better illustration of the difference between the economic means (labor, production, exchange) and the political means (force, coercion), as Franz Oppenheimer put it. Another World Cup was possible, without expropriations, repression, subsidies, but it would be a World Cup without the power of the state, made by free people forgoing the use of force.

In 2007, the government stated that the World Cup would be paid for entirely by the private sector. However, that would never happen with the state we have nowadays. No company would ever take the risk of investing in a politicized World Cup like the Brazilian one. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, put it like this: “[T]hat’s how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn’t bother with, which means that there’s probably no reason for it.” The government also does stuff that allows private enterprise to tilt the table in their favor.

“We hope that a shout of goal won’t suppress our story,” states the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup. Should conscience win, state injustice in the name of sports can’t be forgotten.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos

Translations for this article:

Italian, Il Brasile Ha Capito che i Mondiali non Sono Solo Calcio.

Commentary

Michigan’s Minimum Wage — a Victory for Labor?

Dylan Delikta | |

A call to raise the minimum wage is happening all over the United States, a call Michigan just answered. The way Michigan went about implementing the raise is a different story, which may also shine light on how other states may implement their changes. Michigan’s Public Act 138 of 2014 to raise the minimum wage is not the victory for labor it claims to be. In fact, it’s more of a political expedient used as an attempt to sidestep a petition to raise the wage to $10.10. The act itself mainly does two things: First, it raises the minimum wage from $7.40 to $9.25 over the next four years. Second, by 2019, after the minimum wage reaches its target rate, the state treasurer is allowed to adjust the rate to “reflect the annual percentage change in the consumer price index”. As pointed out by the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy the act was passed for two main reasons: One, so that Republicans could combat higher voter turnout for the Democrats, and two, so that Governor Rick Snyder could secure votes from Democratic leaders for a bill that would put 1.5 billion dollars into repairing roads.

By passing this act, however, the state government has created a bit of mess. While proud of pushing the state government to increase the wage to its current rate, the Raise Michigan Coalition feels that 300,000 voices won’t be heard. This is due to the fact that the petition to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 takes issue with the old wage law. Since the new law is in effect, the petition may become a moot point, as groups such as the Michigan Restaurant Association argue, and will not become an issue to vote on in the November elections. If the petition is moot, then 300,000+ people may feel as if they have been ignored by their government. If the petition isn’t moot and makes the ballot, then democracy has spoken, and victory may be that much closer – right?

Well, this whole issue does not really improve the lot for labor. In the words the Industrial Workers of the World, labor law “is set up by the bosses and their government and courts system to keep you and me, the working stiffs, from coming together and fighting for our piece of the pie, for fear that we’ll want, and some day be able to take, the whole thing.” By pushing for reform, we are not helping labor, but giving the employer class what they want. With higher wages comes the push to automate jobs faster than people who can secure a living without having to be employed. Those who do not lose their jobs to automation will then have to deal with an even bigger workload due to a smaller workforce. As J. Edward Carp points out

Raising the minimum wage is a short term solution that creates more problems than it solves. Doing so only hastens the replacement of workers with machines, and without addressing the basic structure of state capitalism, with its socialization of costs and policy of ensuring that gains in productivity accrue to owners, not to workers, such a development would be disastrous.

By trying to be expedient, those laborers who are supporting the push for a higher minimum wage are accidentally making a bad situation worse.

Capitalizing on this issue though are the politicians in the state government. Both parties can now say they supported (or smear those who supported) the new law as “trying to bring recovery to Michigan” and being a friend to the people. If they were really our friends, then they would get out of our way instead piling on hundreds of regulation and licensing laws which keep us at the bottom and allow corporations to do business without threat of competition. Instead of falling prey to political pandering, we should focus on dismantling the state which keeps us from improving our lot, and create a market freed from both state and corporate rule.

This isn’t to say that I don’t understand why certain laborers would push for a higher minimum wage. Many people in minimum wage jobs are trying to support themselves and their families while also having to pay off student loans, car loans, etc. and did not ask to be put in this system in first place. However, pushing for reform is not the way to relieve the people of Michigan. Instead, let’s show every politician and boss that we don’t need them; we can find prosperity on our own.

Italian, Stateless Embassies

La Dottrina Sociale tra Cattolici e Libertari

David S. D'Amato | |

I leader cattolici, dal Cardinale Maradiaga allo stesso Papa Francesco, quest’anno hanno fatto notizia con le loro critiche alle presunte economie di libero mercato, paragonandole ad una forma di idolatria che sfrutta i poveri e nega loro l’accesso alle ricchezze. Partendo dal fatto che la dottrina sociale cattolica enfatizza l’assistenza e l’aiuto ai meno fortunati, sacerdoti come Maradiaga hanno preso di mira le “cause strutturali della povertà”.

I fulmini contro il libero mercato del cardinale diventano problematici quando si tratta di vedere quali sono queste cause. Difficilmente lo si può biasimare quando dice che qualcosa non va bene nelle relazioni tra ricchi e poveri, ma è nella sua fede nell’intervento esplicito dello stato che sta l’“inganno”. Ironicamente, il “libero mercato” che Maradiaga denuncia con tanta sincerità è esso stesso un prodotto di una profonda e sostenuta imposizione da parte dello stato le cui dimensioni raramente sono riconosciute come tali. Dunque, per non cadere nella trappola in cui è caduto Maradiaga, e cioè andare contro il libertarismo in principio senza capire davvero il sistema economico che sottintende, è bene specificare che l’espressione “libero mercato” viene interpretata in due modi diversi.

Per libero mercato non bisogna intendere la forma particolare di dominio corporativo mondiale che oggi vediamo tutto intorno a noi. C’era tutta una tradizione, quella anarchica e individualistica un tempo fiorente negli Stati Uniti, per la quale libero mercato significava semplicemente scambio volontario tra individui dotati di sovranità, pari diritti e libertà. Se si aderisce a questo sistema con coerenza, sostenevano questi anarchici, il risultato è una distribuzione della ricchezza e della proprietà più equa e con meno differenze, e questo porrebbe fine efficacemente allo sfruttamento dei poveri lavoratori.

Molti dei libertari di libero mercato di oggi continuano questa tradizione, sostengono che libertarismo non deve significare né difesa del capitalismo corporativo né un suo surrogato retorico ed eufemistico. Per noi, libero mercato significa un sistema in cui ogni individuo è lasciato libero di fare quello che può entro i limiti posti dalla pari libertà: ovvero, tutti gli individui stanno nella stessa posizione, sono liberi di agire, hanno la stessa possibilità di intraprendere un’attività, occupare una proprietà inutilizzata, vendere i propri servizi o i propri prodotti.

Un tale sistema, accoppiato all’assenza di aiuti alla grande industria, significherebbe enormi opportunità di esprimersi con i propri mezzi e abbondanza di lavoro autonomo, e questo porterebbe ad un cambiamento drammatico del potere contrattuale. Le grandi industrie non avrebbero più il diritto esclusivo di offrire una paga misera “prendere o lasciare”, perché un individuo libero potrebbe sommariamente decidere di “lasciare”. Con la disintegrazione del monopolio fondiario statale, con la possibilità per chiunque di emettere liberamente valute alternative, una volta abolite normative e licenze, nessuna attività economica potrebbe assumere dimensioni notevoli se non servendo fedelmente la clientela.

Questo è ciò che moltissimi di noi libertari intendono per libero mercato. Non siamo più innamorati del potere corporativo o del capitalismo di quanto non lo sia il cardinale Maradiaga o gli americani di sinistra; anzi, molti di noi sono molto più critici dell’attuale sistema economico di quanto non lo sia chiunque altro nella sinistra progressista tradizionale. Se c’è un problema che affligge l’attuale pensiero libertario, in realtà, è l’allontanamento dai principi di libero mercato, non la devozione “estrema” o “spietata”.

Ci sono pochi dubbi sul fatto che il cuore del cardinale Maradiaga stia dalla parte giusta, che la sua preoccupazione riguardo le differenze di ricchezza e la sua compassione per i bisognosi siano genuine. Ma l’opposizione libertaria all’aggressione in tutte le sue forme, comprese le azioni apparentemente legittime dello stato, non è del tutto antitetica a quelle preoccupazioni.

La povertà sistematica e lo sfruttamento sono il frutto dell’aggressione. I cattolici dovrebbero essere cauti davanti alla caratterizzazione del libertarismo fatta da Maradiaga, un libertarismo che giustifica avidità e miseria diffusa. Se davvero il libertarismo fosse così, anche molti libertari di mia conoscenza gli si opporrebbero.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Portuguese, Stateless Embassies

Carros elétricos não são a solução, são parte do problema

Dawie Coetzee | | June 18th, 2014

Eric Blattberg, no site VenturBeat, relata que a fabricante de carros elétricos Tesla passará a permitir que todos explorem suas inovações. “A Tesla não processará aqueles que, de boa-fé, desejam utilizar nossas tecnologias”, afirma o diretor executivo da empresa Elon Musk.

Acredito que a importância das patentes na concentração da indústria automotiva seja superestimada. Há precedentes legais que favorecem sistemas abertos de reposição de componentes de carros. Qualquer pessoa tem a liberdade para fabricar um componente que substitua parte de um sistema patenteado sem, assim, infringir a patente. Além disso, a maior parte das patentes automotivas é relativa a detalhes que os concorrentes podem facilmente contornar. E, no entanto, a indústria automobilística continua extremamente concentrada, devido a legislações de padronização, segurança e emissão de poluentes.

Musk minimiza o interesse dos grandes atores da indústria automotiva na propulsão elétrica. Todos os maiores grupos possuem programas já prontos para produzir carros movidos a eletricidade, aguardando apenas as regulamentações necessárias para protegê-los da entrada em massa de novos concorrentes. É uma ação coreografada: como já afirmei anteriormente (de forma aparentemente um tanto controversa), os principais grupos industriais desejam mudanças, mas mudanças específicas em momentos específicos. Se a mudança não estiver programa, ela deve ser destruída — embora eu acredite que carros elétricos estejam no roteiro. Eles têm muitos benefícios do ponto de vista do capitalismo corporativo — muito mais benefícios, penso eu, do que possuem do ponto de vista ecológico.

Primeiramente, a nova tecnologia elimina toda a necessidade de trabalho especializado para montagem de motores de combustão interna. Elimina também toda a variabilidade de componentes que faz com que os consumidores se sintam tentados a aprender detalhes tecnológicos sobre seus automóveis. O carro elétrico tem um potencial gigantesco para se tornar um carro descartável e, portanto, deve ser parte dos planos dos fabricantes já estabelecidos. O uso crescente de componentes eletrônicos digitais nos carros também os torna mais permeáveis à tradição legislativa de “propriedade intelectual” sobre software, que é muito mais onerosa que a propriedade intelectual sobre componentes automotivos.

Obviamente a Tesla está muito mais próxima do modelo dos grandes fabricantes de carros do que das redes descentralizadas de fabricantes locais de componentes e de montadoras, como eu vislumbro. Duas fábricas em dois continentes e produção de três digitos semanal caracterizaria a Tesla como plutocrática nos anos 1920. Ela não é exceção aos requisitos estatais de produção em massa — ou não seria tolerada pelo estado, especialmente não na Califórnia. A propulsão elétrica os libera das regulamentações sobre motores de combustão interna — essa é a brecha legal que os permite operar —, mas seus produtos continuam sujeitos a todas as regulamentações de segurança, inclusive a legislações anti-modificações e a testes obrigatórios caríssimos.

É interessante nos perguntarmos por que a Tesla está abrindo mão dessas patentes, dado que muitas delas são relativamente inócuas. A empresa obviamente quer se colocar no papel de herói oprimido e afetar solidariedade ao movimento open source, embora opere em uma indústria praticamente proibida de adotar métodos open source de forma significativa. O código aberto se torna trivial quando está sujeito à padronização requerida pelo regime atual. A falta de diversidade e flexibilidade resultante é análoga à diferença entre a democracia representativa (que consiste, basicamente, em votar naquelas mesmas coisas que todos teremos que fazer) e a anarquia (que consiste, basicamente, em todos fazermos o que desejamos, da forma que preferirmos e quando quisermos). Assim, mudanças tecnológicas não serão capazes de mudar a indústria de automóveis. Somente mudanças políticas poderão fazer isso. A própria existência da Tesla a denuncia.

A percepção comum de que o uso da eletricidade é ecologicamente benéfico vai de encontro ao consenso nos círculos de energia alternativa, segundo os quais a eletricidade é uma fonte de energia cara que deve ser reservada para a iluminação, para comunicações e pouco mais que isso. É cada vez mais fácil perceber a popularização dessa ideia: as pessoas acreditam honestamente que vasos sanitários elétricos usam menos energia que aqueles que não têm conexões elétricas; acreditam honestamente que fogões inteiramente elétricos sejam só questão de tempo. Essa percepção não se difundiu naturalmente.

A Tesla não tem tanto capital assim, mas outras companhias têm. A Tesla não é a única empresa interessada na análise segundo a qual 90 de cada 100 milhões de carros produzidos anualmente não são elétricos, em vez da adoção mais sensata da ideia de que o problema é que esses 90 milhões de carros a mais são necessários em primeiro lugar para satisfazer as demandas de um cenário de mobilidade artificial. Fora dessa situação artificial, de tráfego intenso, paradas frequentes, ruído, vigilância intensiva e altos investimentos em infraestrutura, eu afirmo que o carro elétrico não possui quase nenhuma vantagem.

Traduzido para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

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