Matthew Yglesias may be the most left-libertarian friendly liberal commentator out there. Not only is he unusually open to free market ideas, but he’s also repeatedly shown strong sympathies for open-source and post-scarcity approaches to economic organization. In fact, he’s practically built his brand around setting himself against the two defining features of American liberalism as it emerged in the 20th century: Managerialism and Hamiltonianism.

From its origins as the ideology of the managerial and professional classes in the Progressive Era to its heyday in the corporate-state gigantism of the mid-20th century, liberalism has always equated large, hierarchical institutions and the bureaucracies that run them with “progress.” Its response to the economic crises resulting from technologies of abundance — which reduce the amount of capital and labor required to produce a given level of output — has been Hamiltonian:  That is, to artificially inflate the demand for capital and labor through artificial scarcity, in order to keep their prices up.

Ygelesias has repeatedly fallen afoul of both these approaches. He has pointed out, more times than I have space to relate, the effects of licensing and zoning laws in creating barriers to self-employment and artificially raising the minimum cost of comfortable subsistence. And in a wonderful column three years ago (“Intellectual Property in the Anti-Trek Economy,” Think Progress, July 14, 2011), he pointed to the effect of so-called “intellectual property” in enclosing technologies of abundance as a source of rents for economically privileged classes rather than allowing their benefits to be socialized through free competition. Had strong patent law existed in the future of Star Trek, the result would have been an “Anti-Trek economy,” in which matter-energy replicators were a proprietary technology. Not only would replicators be DRM’ed so they couldn’t be freely reproduced (meaning people would have to buy them from the companies that held the patents), but the digital file for “tea, Earl Grey, hot” would also be someone’s “intellectual property” and you’d have to swipe your debit card every time you ordered it (that is, just incidentally, what the “progressive capitalism” model promoted by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett really amounts to).

Now Yglesias gores those same oxes again (“A Burrito Stomping on a Human Face — Forever,” Slate, February 28, 2014). He argues that peak labor hours, the mechanization of most high-paying manufacturing jobs and the predominance of low-paid service labor in the jobs that remain are virtually inevitable. But rather than repeating the standard conservative and liberal prescriptions of tax cuts for the rich, job retraining and higher minimum wages, he proposes instead the use of abundance as a weapon:

“… real wages and living standards have both a numerator and a denominator. The most sustainable way to tackle the problem of stagnating or falling working-class incomes is to work on the denominator — on the various regulatory privileges used by the wealthy and powerful to entrench their income and raise costs for everyone else.”

That means eliminating professional cartels like that of physicians (which would “raise real wages for everyone who needs medical care”) and radically scaling back or eliminating patents. It means eliminating “snob zoning laws” that prohibit trailers where land is cheap and high-density apartments and cohousing complexes where it’s expensive.

I’ve long argued that the only problem with labor-saving technology is that its full benefits aren’t internalized by workers and consumers through competition. If a self-employed farmer discovers a more efficient way of doing things that enables her to produce just as much corn while working half as many hours, she doesn’t worry that she won’t have enough work. This is because she receives the entire benefit of increased efficiency. While the amount of work she does is decreased, her consumption level remains exactly the same.

But at the level of society as a whole, the benefits of abundance are appropriated by rentier classes through artificial scarcities and artificial property rights like enclosure of vacant land, regulatory prohibition of cheaper and more efficient production techniques, and product prices that result mostly from embedded patent rents rather than actual labor and materials cost. Cheap, vernacular building techniques are criminalized by building codes, self-employment is criminalized by licensing and home-based production is criminalized by zoning.

The traditional liberal approach is to organize the economy as a Hamiltonian Rube Goldberg machine so as to provide sufficient profitable investment vehicles for Buffet’s capital and keep everyone working forty-hour weeks. Rather than allowing radical deflation of the cost of living, the idea is to keep costs artificially high so as to provide sufficient returns to fully employ labor and capital. Ours must be the opposite: To see that what is naturally free is actually free to the consumer, and whatever necessary labor hours remain are evenly distributed.

Kevin Carson, Senior Fellow and Karl Hess Chair of Social Theory at C4SS, was recently interviewed by KMO on the C-Realm podcast.

KMO talks with Kevin Carson, author of The Homebrew Industrial Revolution about the technologies that seem poised to end the dominance of capital-intensive production methodologies and brake the stranglehold that capitalists and the government minions hold over our lives.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Today, the Iraq War turns eleven. If you’re an American, you’d be forgiven for thinking the war in Iraq was over. After all, Barack Obama, after being thwarted in his desperate attempts to extend the American military presence there, has been crowing about how he “ended” the war in Iraq. But the war never ended.

Last night, 13 people were killed when a café in Baghdad was bombed, bringing the total killed yesterday to forty-six. In America, we are still discussing a terrible shooting at a school that killed 28 people, including the perpetrator, over a year ago. In Iraq, more than 2,000 people have been killed just so far this year. Every single one of those deaths, and every single one of the 500,000 killed since 2003, is an entirely foreseeable consequence of American foreign policy.

But today, rather than rehashing the well-known arguments against the war, let us focus on what the war has cost us. The American death toll is well known- 4,489 killed, 32,021 wounded. According to several studies, a minimum of 4% and a maximum of 17% of American veterans of the Iraq War suffer from PTSD. Applying the lower bound to the population of Iraq, we can estimate that at least 1.3 million Iraqis suffer from this debilitating condition, which can cause difficulty sleeping, emotional detachment and outbursts of rage, among other things, and which denies those who suffer from it the possibility of leaving their suffering behind and living a normal life.

Worse still, these victims of the Iraq War, along with the survivors left behind by the dead and the wounded, do not have the support structures American veterans enjoy. American veterans are eligible for disability pensions, career retraining, and free medical care for their war wounds, physical and psychological. However dysfunctional the institutions providing these services may be, American veterans still fare much better than the Iraqi people. The Iraqis, who bore the brunt of the war, are simply left to suffer while some “libertarians” wonder why they are not more grateful for their plight.

The Iraq War was, as wars go, not an especially harsh or brutal one, and was largely conducted according to all the latest precepts of “humanitarian intervention.” The free-fire zones of Vietnam were largely absent, as were the brutalities of massed, prolonged aerial and artillery bombardment. And yet, the results are unimaginably horrific to us in our First World comfort. Sandy Hook and Columbine reverberate to this day in America; in the hell into which we plunged Iraq, neither would even make the front page. There is no war without horrific violence and nightmarish suffering. Never forget.

Lynn Stuart Parramore recently wrote an Alternet article titled “3 Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode“. She identifies three areas where our heads will supposedly explode. They are inequality, public goods, and regulation. She evidences no awareness of the existence of left-wing market anarchists or any other type of libertarian leftist. In her world, the only libertarians that exist are the Reason Magazine or right-wing variety. In the first part of my series, I will discuss her contention about cronyism:

 When forced to deal with inequality, libertarians often talk about cronyism, something they insist would not happen in their free-market utopia. Cronyism, they insist, is all about government favors, forgetting that cronyism is rampant between various market players. What do you call it when corporate CEOs collude with their boards to award themselves outrageous salaries? If you are an English speaker, you call it “cronyism.” When the owner of a bank colludes with other bank owners to do things like interfere with prices or squash competition, that’s also a form of cronyism. For some strange reason, libertarians seem to think cronyism is just something businesses do with governments.

Non-governmentally enforced cartelization has a tendency to be more unstable due to the fact that it’s in the interest of competitors to break agreements. Gabriel Kolko has documented how regulatory measures were backed by big business for the purposes of cartelizing industries. Cronyism can occur without government, but the presence of government allows the use of coercive force to maintain it. The competitive pressure from markets far from a “freed” ideal were decentralizing economic power and wealth. This was occurring before the Progressive Era regulations were introduced. As Gabriel Kolko writes, the trend of the last decades of the 19th century and the first two of the 20th was:

toward growing competition. Competition was unacceptable to many key business and financial leaders, and the merger movement was to a large extent a reflection of voluntary, unsuccessful business efforts to bring irresistible trends under control. … As new competitors sprang up, and as economic power was diffused throughout an expanding nation, it became apparent to many important businessmen that only the national government could [control and stabilize] the economy. … Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly which caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.

Regulations contribute to inequality by creating barriers to marketplace entry. The larger corporations can easily afford to meet the costs of regulations while the less capital intensive businesses cannot. This leads to the further concentration of wealth and an economy dominated by corporatist business enterprise. Inequality is also inherent in the relationship between regulator and regulated. All may be formally equal before the law, but there is clearly a relationship of command and control. This kind of inequality is often overlooked by left-wing statists.

Jeremy Rifkin anuncia o “crescimento do anti-capitalismo” (“The Rise of Anti-Capitalism“, The New York Times, 15 de março), citando o paradoxo de que:

“O dinamismo inerente aos mercados competitivos está diminuindo tanto os custos que muitos bens e serviços estão se tornando quase gratuitos, abundantes e não mais sujeitos às forças de mercado.”

Os argumentos de Rifkin a respeito das reduções dos custos marginais e seus efeitos sobre os relacionamentos econômicos me lembram do anarquista Josiah Warren. Inventor e defensor de profundas mudanças sociais, Warren alegava que o custo é limite equitativo do preço e que a concorrência eliminaria a renda, os juros e os lucros dos privilegiados. Seu trabalho influenciou uma geração de radicais que viam na competição do mercado uma forma de solucionar os problemas econômicos de sua época.

Esses anarquistas americanos do século 19 que atacavam o capitalismo de uma forma que pode ser surpreendente a críticos contemporâneos, de uma perspectiva de esquerda, porém com argumentos em favor do livre mercado. Para esses anarquistas de mercado, era verdade que o capitalismo representava um sistema de privilégios e exploração — um sucessor de estruturas econômicas anteriores como o feudalismo e o mercantilismo. Ao invés de associar o capitalismo a mercados livres, porém, esses arqui-individualistas viam que o remédio para as relações predatórias e usurárias predominantes no capitalismo era uma genuina liberação da economia: o estabelecimento de reais trocas voluntárias, a abertura à competição e a abolição de privilégios.

Tratava-se de um grupo de anarquistas pró-mercado que argumentava que o poder dos capitalistas, sua capacidade de ter rendimentos sem trabalho, advinha do que chamavam de “legislação de classe” — barreiras políticas à competição que davam aos empregadores uma vantagem injusta. Nessa mesma linha de pensamento, os anarquistas de mercado contemporâneos veem o poder coercitivo do estado como a força que desequilibra as relações econômicas em favor das elites com influência política.

Como livre-mercadistas, descentralistas e individualistas, nós ocupamos um cantinho do movimento libertário. Ao mesmo tempo, como críticos da desigualdade de riquezas e defensores dos pobres e das classes trabalhadoras, nos encontramos dentro dos movimentos atuais anti-capitalistas em prol da justiça econômica. Dados os termos mais repetidos do debate e as falsas dicotomias propagandeadas nos canais de notícias e nas colunas opinativas de revistas, esses valores podem parecer contraditórios. Aqueles que defendem o livre mercado são considerados defensores do status quo plutocrático, numa visão que coloca o estado como principal defesa contra a competição desenfreada e como defensor dos menos favorecidos.

Trata-se, porém, de um ponto de vista equivocado a respeito do papel histórico do estado dentro do sistema econômico, que o coloca em um conflito contra o capital que nunca existiu. De fato, as elites políticas e econômicas sempre trabalharam juntas. A cultura dominante em Washington, a capital americana, mostra essa história de poder e conluio claramente — a todo momento, executivos se transformam em burocratas a serviço do governo federal e vice versa.

Rifkin está certo ao perceber “a realidade assustadora de uma economia de custo marginal zero” como uma ameaça ao capitalismo. As novas tecnologias realmente permite que nós utilizemos rotas alternativas para evitar os obstáculos às trocas que sempre foram a fonte do poder monopolista do capital. O sonho de Warren de que o “custo seria o limite do preço” — ou, pelo menos, algo bem próximo disso — se torna cada vez mais uma possibilidade real.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Según la interpretación de un reciente informe del Fondo Monetario Internacional que hace Howard Schneider en el Washington Post (“Los Comunistas se han Apoderado del FMI“, 26 de febrero), y la manera en que lo enmarca, el Fondo aparentemente ha ablandado sus estándares en cuanto a la “redistribución”. Vaya manera errónea de abordar el tema.

Tanto el informe del FMI (“Redistribución, Desigualdad, y Crecimiento“, FMI, Nota de Discusión SDN/14/02, febrero de 2014) como el artículo de Schneider confunden la “redistribución” con la “igualdad”: operan desde el supuesto tácito de que la desigualdad es el resultado espontáneo “del mercado”, mientras que el logro de una mayor igualdad requiere de la intervención del gobierno para redistribuir el ingreso en contra de esta tendencia natural del mercado.

Estos supuestos no declarados son, por supuesto, nada especial, constituyendo como lo hacen el núcleo de la ideología oficial del nexo gran-capital gran-gobierno que define al sistema capitalista existente. Los actores dominantes de la economía corporativa tienen un gran interés en promover el supuesto erróneo de que la concentración de la riqueza y el poder económico son legítimos, que son el resultado del buen desempeño en “nuestra economía de libre mercado”, en “nuestro sistema de libre empresa”. Y los que promueven el Estado regulador, tienen un interés similar en promover el supuesto igualmente erróneo de que la intervención del Estado es necesaria para evitar las crecientes concentraciones de poder económico y las disparidades de riqueza.

Sin embargo, estos supeustos no son ciertos. La acción del Estado para redistribuir la riqueza hacia abajo no es un correctivo a la tendencia normal del mercado hacia la desigualdad — al contrario, la desigualdad es el resultado de la intervención estatal sistemática en el mercado para distribuir la riqueza hacia arriba. La función primordial del Estado es hacer cumplir los mecanismos de escasez artificial, los derechos de propiedad artificiales, los monopolios, las barreras a la entrada, y los cárteles mediante los que la clase económica dominante extrae sus rentas; y no sólo eso, sino que también subsidia directamente los costos de operación de las grandes empresas a expensas de los contribuyentes. La inmensa mayor parte de la renta generada por la tenencia de la tierra, de los beneficios corporativos, y de los ingresos de la plutocracia, se mantiene gracias a esos monopolios impuestos por el Estado.

Lo que normalmente se conoce como “redistribución” es totalmente secundario. Debido a que estas rentas tienden a transferir ingresos de las clases que necesitan gastar dinero para vivir a las clases que lo invierten o lo ahorran, el capitalismo corporativo está plagado de una tendencia crónica y creciente a la sobreinversión, el exceso de capacidad de producción, y el subconsumo. Como resultado, el sistema se ve amenazado por un empeoramiento constante de las crisis económicas, y por la radicalización política de las clases bajas que resulta de la inseguridad económica, o hasta del hambre y la indigencia.

La tributación progresiva y el estado del bienestar — en la medida modesta en que realmente existen — implican tomar una pequeña fracción de los ingresos que se redistribuyen hacia arriba y volver a transferirla hacia abajo, para evitar niveles de pobreza políticamente desestabilizadores entre los más paupérrimos de la clase baja, y aumentar el poder de compra popular lo suficiente para reducir la capacidad industrial ociosa. El ingreso “redistribuido” a través de los cupones de alimentos, la asistencia social, y mecanismos similares, es por lo menos un orden de magnitud menos que el que originalmente redistribuye el Estado hacia arriba a favor de los arrendadores, los capitalistas, usureros, titulares de derechos de “propiedad intelectual” y otros monopolios, a los altos niveles gerenciales corporativos y las clases administrativas. Es el equivalente a que un atracador le deje algo de cambio a su víctima para que tome un taxi que le permita llegar seguro a casa, seguir trabajando, y ganar más dinero para que pueda robarle en un atraco futuro.

Así que la llamada “redistribución” hacia abajo es sólo una corrección secundaria a la anterior redistribución hacia arriba del ingreso ejecutada por el Estado. La única solución verdaderamente justa es eliminar la redistribución que ocurre en un principio, dejando que la competencia de mercado y la cooperación voluntaria destruyan los ingresos rentistas de nuestra clase dirigente corporativa.

Artículo original publicado por Kevin Carson el 9 de marzo de 2014.

Traducido por Carlos Clemente.

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moisés Naím (Basic Books 2013), 320 pages.

The topic of Moisés Naím’s book is the decay of power — the shift of power “from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, from old corporate behemoths to agile start-ups, from entrenched dictators to people in town squares and cyberspace.”

But he might just as easily call it a book on the transition from hierarchies to networks. Power, Naím says, isn’t just shifting in the directions described in the quotation above. Power itself is evaporating — “slipping away” — even in the hands of its new recipients. And what’s emerging in its place is a society based not on power but voluntary association: horizontal networks and self-managed groups.

The main reason for the declining power of legacy institutions is falling barriers to entry. Individuals, small groups, and self-organized networks are increasingly able to take on powerful institutions on an equal — or more than equal — basis. That results, in Naím’s terminology, from the “More Revolution” (quantitative increases in population, income, literacy, et cetera), the “Mobility Revolution” (self-explanatory), and the “Mentality Revolution” (more education, rising expectations, and decreased deference to authority).

But the decisive revolution, in my opinion, is the “Less Revolution”: the ephemeralization, or the decline in material requirements (overhead and capital outlays) required to undertake any given function. The 20th century was the era of large, centralized, hierarchical institutions, mainly because of the large capital outlays required to enter the field. The precipitous fall in capital costs required to undertake the same functions means that by the end of the 21st century there probably won’t be enough of such institutions left to bury.

Declining advantages

The rest of the book is a survey of Naím’s thesis — the declining power advantages of size — as it applies to specific facets of society.

In politics, majority parties in control of national governments are finding their political power less and less meaningful. The proliferation of groups with veto power — organized interest groups such as the Pirate Party in Europe and Tea Party in the United States, the Arab Spring, hacktivist movements, and NGOs et cetera — has led to a paralysis in national politics. The application of asymmetric warfare techniques to other areas of life — political, economic, social — means that the deliberate application of power finds itself increasingly thwarted by “vetoes, foot-dragging, diversions, and interference.” The network-communications revolution and the removal of transaction costs for coordination have increased what Samuel Huntington called the “crisis of governability” back in the 1970s by several orders of magnitude.

In the international arena, despite the apparent concentration of power in the hands of the United States (the “sole remaining superpower”), the actual power advantage of the United States and second-tier Great Powers is steadily diminishing. As asymmetric warfare techniques proliferate, the advantages of superior military force are in rapid decline. The weaker military side prevailed 55 percent of the time between 1950 and 1998, compared to only 12 percent between 1800 and 1849. And the change has accelerated in the last decade or so, with the rapid technological advances and cheapening of area-denial weapons that make American power-projection capabilities less and less usable.

In economics the falling capital outlays for production are undermining the whole material basis for the power of large institutions. The revolution in cheap manufacturing technology makes the large mass-production factory irrelevant from a purely material and technical standpoint. The revolution in desktop information processing, network communications, and P2P (peer-to-peer) organization is having a similar effect on the big media corporations.

The network-information revolution is also rendering large government and corporate institutions vulnerable to networked public information and pressure campaigns. Until the 1990s, the Mexican government’s attempted suppression of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas or Shell Oil’s use of mercenary death squads to suppress local resistance in Nigeria would hardly have merited an inside paragraph in the major newspapers of record. But thanks to global information campaigns on the Internet, such state and corporate malefactors have found themselves blindsided by negative publicity and scurrying under the refrigerator like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on.

For most prestigious corporate brands, the five-year risk of a catastrophic collapse of value from attacks on their public reputation has grown from 20 percent to 82 percent over the past 20 years. Negative publicity by means of networked communications media is a venerable David-vs.-Goliath strategy that has been practiced by the Wobblies as “open-mouth sabotage” for decades. More recently, in the Internet Age, it’s been the primary weapon of public-pressure campaigns such as Charles Kernaghan’s fight against Kathie Lee Gifford, and the Coalition of Immolakee Workers against Taco Bell and KFC. Corporations are starting to learn they no longer live in the broadcast era of one-way communications that they control. And their attempts to shut up critics with SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) or DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down notices are running up against what Mike Masnick calls the Streisand Effect: attempts to suppress embarrassing speech have the tendency to draw orders of magnitude more attention to the embarrassing speech.

The shared paradigm

The main problem with Naím’s analysis is that, for all his celebration of the network revolution and the decline in institutional power, he wants to stop the rolling rock halfway down the hill. Throughout the book, he warns of the dangers attendant to a loss of authority, like “anarchy” or a Hobbesian “war of all against all.” At the same time he idealizes the role of authority — e.g., the “Pax Americana” — in imposing order.

In the end he seems unable to conceive of the possibility that rather than being something “imposed” by authority, order may instead result from horizontal, voluntary cooperation.

It is a fundamental deficiency of vision. He repeatedly points to all the complex problems facing the world — climate change, terrorism, resource depletion, et cetera — that, in his view, require some sort of usable power to solve. He ignores the extent to which such problems actually result from the past exercise of that power.

In so doing, he perpetuates a paradigm common to both mainstream Left and Right that should be quite familiar to us in American politics: the portrayal of the world’s present ills (poverty, corporate power, the concentration of wealth, et cetera) as natural and inevitable absent state intervention to prevent them. The statist Left justifies state intervention on the grounds that it’s necessary to prevent the otherwise inevitable emergence of wealth disparities and concentrations of economic power caused by an unregulated market. The statist Right (which misappropriates to itself the label “free-market” or “libertarian”) shares the view of those outcomes as inevitable, but argues either that the outcomes really aren’t all that bad or that they’re the reward for superior productivity and performance in a “free market.” This shared paradigm of statist Left and Right serves as a legitimizing ideology for both big government and big business by portraying them as competitors or enemies rather than, as they are in reality, parts of a single interlocking system of power.

That is demonstrated by Naím’s view of the importance of some hegemonic power in guaranteeing global political stability. He idealizes the “peace” and “stability” imposed by hegemonic powers such as the bipolar superpower condominium of the Cold War, as well as the United States’s unilateral attempt to impose a world order since the end of the Cold War. He totally ignores the fact that many of the instabilities that supposedly require a hegemon to suppress them were themselves the direct result of past exercises of hegemonic power.

How much terrorism was directly generated by Britain’s promotion of the Zionist project in Palestine, or the American decisions to overthrow Mosadeq and to destabilize the Soviet client regime in Afghanistan? How many global hot spots are aftereffects of the World War I victors’ hubris in drawing imaginary lines through the territories of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires?

How much bloodshed was foisted on the world by the U.S. government itself, when it supported Central American death squads, instigated bloody coups in places such as Indonesia, and promoted the universal triumph of military dictatorship in the Southern Cone of South America through Operation Condor?

The superpower dual hegemony during the Cold War may have “left little room for local conflicts to spread,” but superpower involvement in local proxy wars also made them extremely bloody. The deforested toxic-waste dump that persists in what was formerly South Vietnam should be enough to convince us of that. Instead of asking who will prevent aggression after Pax Americana, it would make more sense to ask who will deter America.

Misunderstanding free trade

Naím also idealizes — unjustifiably — the world order enforced by superpower military hegemony and the “soft power” of the IMF and World Bank. The claim that the Washington Consensus promotes “lowered trade barriers” is ludicrous. It has lowered tariffs — but only because tariffs have ceased to serve corporate power and instead have become a hindrance to it. Meanwhile, it greatly strengthened a new form of protectionism: so-called intellectual property, which serves the same protectionist function for transnational corporations that tariffs did for industrial corporations a century ago. The global system of information lockdown enforced in behalf of transnational corporations — I call it the DRM (digital rights management) Curtain — is more protectionist than anything Smoot and Hawley could have imagined.

The “peace” enforced under the UN Security Council since World War II has been a regime of extraction by the industrial powers of the global north against the global south.

What Washington calls a global regime of “free trade” in fact ratifies a status quo resulting from centuries of imperial land expropriation, enclosure, and slavery. It protects state-subsidized and state-protected global corporations in mining and agribusiness, as well as sweatshop employers, against victims’ attempts to obtain justice. It has absolutely nothing to do with free trade or free markets.

The problem with Naím’s framing is that he fails to understand the true nature of the state. The state, as Franz Oppenheimer pointed out, is the political means to wealth — i.e., rent extraction — by the coalition of privileged classes that control it. This is as true of the global neoliberal regime enforced by the United States as it is of domestic policy. The American state does not promote “free markets” or “lower trade barriers,” but instead a mixture of markets and state intervention best calculated to guarantee the maximum sustainable rate of rent extraction for the classes that control the state.

Despite his enthusiasm for the network revolution, Naím constantly finds himself looking back to the fleshpots of Egypt. His most thoroughgoing rhetoric about the revolutionary effects of decentralization notwithstanding, he seems most comfortable with a hybridized vision in which the network revolution is domesticated, co-opted, and incorporated into existing institutional power structures.

The history of the last few decades is a history of attempts by existing power structures to put new wine in old bottles — to domesticate new decentralized production technologies by decentralizing operations while retaining centralized disposal of their product. Transnational corporations outsource actual production to small job shops in China but use “intellectual property” law to integrate them into a corporate framework. They attempt to copy the advantages of P2P organization within their institutional framework by means of management fads such as the Wikified firm and Enterprise 2.0, despite the fact that genuine P2P organizations are inevitably more agile and efficient than corporate imitations.

Naím shows no little sympathy with this state of affairs. In language reminiscent of Tom Peters’s gushing back in the 1990s about the portion of his new Minolta’s price that reflected “human imagination” rather than labor and materials, Naím celebrates the growing share of firm market value that results from patents and copyrights, human capital, and goodwill rather than the book value of tangible assets: in other words, “value” created by embedded rents on artificial scarcities enforced by the state, rather than by natural scarcities or necessary costs of production. To put it in Biblical language, the Children of Israel have invented a way to make bricks without straw — but Pharaoh has forbidden it in order to keep the straw suppliers in business.

Naím imagines that new small-scale production technologies such as job shops full of cheap CNC (computer numerical control) machinery will be integrated into the existing global economy — “small-batch production of mass-market goods.” But that is only a temporary hybrid form resulting from the effort — ultimately doomed — to integrate garage-production technology into a corporate institutional framework. It will eventually give way to small-batch local production of goods for local consumption, by small neighborhood shops in both American and Chinese communities. Garage factories in American communities will soon be producing knockoffs of patented industrial goods, or illegally producing generic replacement parts and accessories from CAD/CAM files on the Pirate Bay. Chinese and Vietnamese shops will ignore Nike’s trademark and sell identical sneakers — without the enormous brand-name markup — locally.

In every case, genuine network organizations run circles around the corporate imitations. And (as the record companies can tell you in regard to file-sharing technologies) the artificial property rights on which such attempts at co-optation depend are becoming unenforceable.

Despite Naím’s attempt to maintain a position with one foot in the old world and one in the new, there’s no halfway stopping point. He needs to stop worrying and learn to love complete freedom.

This article was originally published in the November 2013 edition of Future of Freedom.

It’s been more than a month since Toine Manders, tax consultant and former leader of the Dutch Libertarian Party, was arrested and jailed for protecting his clients from theft.  Less than a week away from his son’s first birthday Toine is still held prisoner and his custody has been extended for an additional 90 days. It seems impossible that someone would be arrested for avoiding theft. However, arrest is the natural consequence when you are up against government thieves who disguise their theft as taxation.

Toine Manders works at the Haags Juristen College (Hague Lawyers Board) and specializes in tax avoidance. Manders refers to tax avoidance as a moral duty. Tax revenue is used by the state to pay for war, prisons, the militarization of the police force and the regulatory agencies which constantly privilege big business. This moral duty is connected the Haags Juristen College’s former business practice which was to help individuals avoid the military draft. Avoiding the draft and avoiding taxes are both ways by which personal contribution to state oppression and war is reduced. Calling this a moral duty is not a far-fetched idea.

Tax reduction is a promise often made by conservative and neo-liberal politicians. Acknowledging taxation as theft might very well place this editorial on that side of the political spectrum. However, opposing taxation altogether is not a right-wing sentiment. Through taxation big business uses the power of government to socialize the costs of running the state’s operations. Additionally the state grants economic privilege to those very same corporations. When neo-liberal politicians argue for tax reduction they are merely saying that the current tax percentage is too high in relation to the economic privilege their corporate campaign contributors receive. Grant them more privilege and you won’t hear them complain.

Those on the left claim that taxation is necessary to achieve economic justice and that taxation counterbalances the enormous wealth that is held by the rich and powerful. However it is the state that grants economic privilege to corporations and it is the state that insulates them from competition. At best taxation is a secondary intervention meant to rectify the economic privilege of corporations. The road to economic justice is not to increase the taxing power of the state but to strike at the root of the problem. Economic privilege should be abolished and taxation will falter and fall soon after.

Opposing taxation is not an excuse for big business. By opposing taxation we root for the entrepreneurs, small business owners, worker cooperatives and the self-employed. However “Taxation is theft” must be followed by, “and economic privilege is bribery” otherwise it is rendered meaningless to those who truly seek liberty.

Economic privilege should be dismantled. In the meantime tax avoidance and even tax evasion are tools by which we can lessen our personal contribution to the state’s murder machine. Taxation is theft and if you don’t pay up you go directly to  jail – do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Free Toine Manders!

Het is al anderhalve maand geleden dat Toine Manders, jurist en voormalig lijsttrekker van de Libertarische Partij, gearresteerd werd vanwege de bescherming die hij zijn klanten bood tegen diefstal. Over minder dan een week zal Toine de eerste verjaardag van zijn zoon moeten missen, zijn voorarrest is namelijk kortgeleden met 90 dagen verlengd. Het lijkt haast onmogelijk dat iemand gearresteerd zou worden voor het voorkomen van van diefstal. Maar arrestatie is het natuurlijke gevolg als je wordt bestolen door overheidsboeven die hun diefstal vermommen als belasting.

Toine Manders werkt bij het Haags Juristen College en specialiseert zich in het ontwijken van belasting. Manders ziet het ontwijken van belasting als een morele plicht. Belastinggelden worden namelijk door de staat gebruikt om oorlogen, gevangenissen, en de politiestaat te financieren. Ook de overheidsinstanties die constant grote bedrijven privileges verlenen worden met belastingcenten in stand gehouden. Deze morele plicht is nauw verbonden met de voormalige bezigheid van het Haags Juristen College: het helpen van dienstplichtigen om onder de dienstplicht uit te komen. Zowel het ontwijken van de dienstplicht als het ontwijken van belasting zijn manieren waarop persoonlijke bijdrage aan staatsonderdrukking en oorlog verminderd kunnen worden. Het is dus geen vergezocht idee om dit een morele plicht te noemen.

Belastingverlaging is een belofte die in de verkiezingstijd vaak gedaan wordt door conservatieve en neo-liberale partijen. Het erkennen van belasting als diefstal zou deze tekst al snel aan die kant van het politieke spectrum kunnen plaatsen. Het verzet tegen belasting in het algemeen is echter geen rechtse uitspraak. Door middel van belastingen gebruiken grote bedrijven het staatsorgaan om de lopende kosten van de overheid te socialiseren. Daarnaast schenkt de overheid diezelfde bedrijven een groot aantal economische privileges. Wanneer neo-liberale politici lastenverlichting beargumenteren zeggen zij eigenlijk dat de huidige belastingdruk te hoog is in relatie tot de vergaarde economische privileges. Zou je de bedrijfslobby’s achter deze partijen wat meer subsidiëren of privileges toestaan dan zullen de politici stoppen met zeuren.

Politiek linksgezinden beweren dat belasting nodig is voor economische gerechtigheid en dat belastingdruk tegenwicht geeft aan het enorme rijkdom van de rijken en machtigen. De staat is echter degene die economische privileges uitdeelt aan deze bedrijven en het is de staat die hen beschermt tegen concurrentie. Belasting is op zijn best een bijkomende maatregel die bedoeld is om de balans van bevoorrechting te herstellen. De weg naar economische gerechtigheid is niet om de staat de macht te geven om nog meer belasting te innen. In plaats hiervan moeten we ons richten op de kern van het probleem en economische privileges afbouwen. Met het afschaffen van deze bevoorrechting zal de belasting ook ten onder gaan.

Het verzet tegen belasting rechtvaardigt grote bedrijven niet. Door belasting als kwaadaardig af te schilderen juichen wij juist kleine ondernemers, arbeiderscoöperatieven en ZZP’ers toe. “Belasting is diefstal” dient wel gevolgd te worden door, “en economische bevoorrechting is omkoperij” anders is de uitspraak zinloos voor de échte vrijheidsliefhebber.

Economische privileges moeten afgeschaft worden. Ondertussen zijn belastingontwijking en zelfs belastingontduiking manieren waarop we onze persoonlijke bijdrage aan de moordmachine van de staat kunnen verminderen. Belasting is diefstal en als u niet betaalt gaat u direct naar de gevangenis – ga niet langs Start, u ontvangt geen ƒ200. Bevrijd Toine Manders!

C4SS Media presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Good Piece In The Jacobin,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“The key word here is ‘most’. A left-libertarian market anarchist transformation would involve a free market anti-capitalist or laissez faire socialist democratization of the market through freed market means. This could conceivably involve expropriation of state corporatist or state capitalist property. It’s thus clearly possible to accept the libertarian critique of the state as valid and still advocate revolutionary economic transformation. Our ideal is freed markets and not the existing ‘marketplace’.”

Though it is responsible for lies, for deceit, for the distribution of misinformation, for inequality, for discrimination and many other things, the one area that I believe is most unethical about the state, is it’s hypocrisy. Though they repeatedly claim that it is not so, there is quite obviously one rule for the state, and those working for it, and another for everyone else.

A common response to anyone advocating a form of direct democracy, participatory democracy, or anarchy, is that the rule of law will not be upheld, there will be chaos and injustice. Whereas in actual fact a move away from the democracy we have now would actually yield a more just and more equal society. The laws would still be in place, but this time, they would apply to everyone. It is in fact the current system we live under that is proving itself to be full of injustice.

Let me illustrate this with a recent example. I try to go down to the South Coast of England as often as I can, the city of Brighton is where I studied in University, and I have many friends down there still. It was whilst there that I noticed a headline from the local paper saying that a man had been killed after getting hit by a police car. The victim, who was in his 40′s, was apparently dead at the scene of the accident, the police car doing enough damage to kill him almost instantly. Very few other details are included but it does say that the matter has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

I will tempt fate here and predict exactly what is going to happen with this case. The IPCC will look at it for a short time, declare it an accident and dismiss it. No further action will be taken, and if any action is taken, it will only be minor. Perhaps a suspension for the officer who was driving at the time.

That is my prediction, and I may well be wrong about this, but history appears to be on my side. I am unable to find a single instance whereby a policeman has faced jail time after killing someone due to dangerous driving.

On the other hand there are untold numbers of stories whereby ordinary citizens have been sent to jail for similar offences. Just a few weeks before the police car death story, the same paper ran an article on a man who was sentenced to twelve years in prison because he caused the death of another person. We must be careful not to draw too many parallels between the cases, as each is different, but the end result was the same. A man behind the wheel of a vehicle, took the life of a man who was standing on, or near, the road. The end result was that an innocent man had died because of dangerous driving.

As I said, we must not link these two stories too closely, the jury and the court had to take into account the motivations, the history of the accused, the circumstances of death and many other things. The two stories are not completely identical and so I would not expect an identical punishment. In all likelihood though, the policeman who was driving and caused the death of the man in his 40′s will face next to no punishment at all. This is the hypocrisy of the state, and the injustice that is so common in our society.

It seems that not only are the police the arm of the law, but they are also somehow above the law. In a quite blatant nonsensical and paradoxical construction, the police are put in place to make sure law is obeyed, and yet they are not subject to their own rules. There seems to be no justice if two incidents happen, both resulting in the same thing, and yet they receive utterly contrasting punishments.

I am not defending anyone who drives dangerously and causes the death of another human. I believe there should be a punishment befitting of the crime, but I believe that crimes committed by men wearing blue suits and wearing badges, are just as much a crime as those committed by people not in that attire. Perhaps crimes committed by police are even worse, because it is to them that society is apparently meant to look for noble and admirable actions. What I advocate is justice, a crime is a crime no matter who commits it. Justice will never occur however because the state blocks any attempt to achieve it.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, A cegueira da lei.

Jeremy Rifkin heralds “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism” (New York Times, March 15), citing a paradox whereby

“[t]he inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.”

Rifkin’s arguments about how reductions in marginal cost affect economic relationships remind me of American anarchist Josiah Warren. An inventor and advocate of sweeping social reform, Warren contended that cost is the equitable limit of price and that legitimate competition would erase the rent, interest and profit streams of the privileged. His work influenced a generation of radicals who looked to competition to solve the economic problems of the day.

This group of nineteenth century American anarchists assailed capitalism in a manner that may surprise its contemporary critics, attacking it from the left, but using free market arguments. For these market anarchists, it was true that capitalism represented a system of privilege and exploitation, a successor to earlier economic frameworks like feudalism and mercantilism. Instead of conflating capitalism and free markets, however, these arch-individualists saw the remedy to capitalism’s predatory, usurious relationships in a genuine freeing of economic relations: True voluntary exchange, open competition and the abolition of special privilege.

This group of laissez faire anarchists argued that capitalists’ “power of increase,” their ability to take an income without actually working, came from what they labeled “class legislation” — political barriers to real competition that gave employers unfair advantage. Continuing this strain of thought, today’s market anarchists see coercive governmental power as skewing economic relationships in favor of elites with political clout.

As free marketers, decentralists and individualists, we occupy a corner of the libertarian movement. At the same time, as critics of wealth inequality and champions of the poor and working classes, we find ourselves within today’s anti-capitalist movements for economic justice. Given the most commonly repeated terms of debate, the false dichotomies bleated on cable news and opinion pages day after day, these commitments may seem to present a contradiction. Free marketers are regarded as defenders of a plutocratic economic status quo, with the state cast as bulwark against cutthroat competition and protector of the little guy.

But this story misapprehends the historical role of the state in the economic system, placing it in a conflict with capital that has never actually existed. Indeed, political and economic elites have always and at all times worked together. The revolving door culture of Washington bears out this story of power and collusion, finding business executives into bureaucratic roles in the federal government and vice versa.

Rifkin is right to see the “creeping reality of a zero-marginal-cost economy” as a threat to capitalism. New technologies truly allow us to route around (to reference the famous expression about the Internet) the impediments to exchange that have always been the source of capital’s monopolistic power. Warren’s dream, “Cost the Limit of Price,” — or at least something very close — is all the time becoming more and more of a possibility.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, A nova economia e o princípio dos custos.
• Spanish, La Nueva Economía y el Principio del Costo.

Dit is zo’n tijd geweest waarin een reeks willekeurige, schijnbaar losstaande gebeurtenissen allemaal een algemene les voor mij hebben versterkt. Allereerst werd op 21 januari gemeld dat Canadese en Amerikaanse veiligheidsdiensten—Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), de Mounties, de FBI, Homeland Security, en provinciale, staats- en lokale politie—nauw hebben samengewerkt met Enbridge, TransCanada en andere energieleveranciers die betrokken zijn bij de aanleg van pijpleidingen, om activisten die strijden tegen fracken onder toezicht te houden als potentiële “terroristen” (“Opposed to Fracking? You Might Be a Terrorist,” PopularResistance.org). Scotland Yard heeft op soortgelijke wijze “radicalen” uit dierenrechten-, anti-oorlog-, antikapitalistisme- en anti-genetische modificatie-bewegingen in de gaten gehouden.

Nog diezelfde dag werd in Amerika (“So now Homeland Security can detain suspected movie pirates?” IO9, January 21) een man gearresteerd vanwege het dragen van Google Glass in een bioscoop in Ohio. Hij werd drie uur lang vastgehouden—ook al had hij de “record” functie uitgezet.

Tot slot werd op 3 februari door Truth-Out.org een rechtszaak gemeld met als doel het terugdraaien van de Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, een Amerikaanse wet die van voormalige overtredingen zoals het bevrijden van dieren uit intensieve veehouderij—of zelfs het illegaal betreden van grondgebied of undercover opnames maken zonder toestemming—als terroristische activiteiten behandelt. Ter achtergrondinformatie, onthoud dat—ondanks het feit dat de FBI in 2004 dierenrechten- en milieuactivisten als meest gevaarlijke dreiging van binnenlands terrorisme bestempelde—niemand ooit gewond is geraakt bij de protestacties van deze bewegingen.

Alle high-level “antiterrorismewetgeving” die na 9-11 is doorgevoerd werd toentertijd gerechtvaardigd door de dringende behoefte iedereen tegen te houden die van plan was een straalvliegtuig in een wolkenkrabber te storten, miltvuur te verspreiden of een “vuile bom” in een grote stad af te laten gaan. Dit waren veronderstelde buitengewone bevoegdheden die alleen moesten worden ingezet tegen buitengewone dreigingen, nooit tegen gewone misdaden. Maar wanneer heeft de staat ooit iets beloofd en haar woord gehouden? De Espionage and Sedition Acts die werden ingevoerd tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog werden vergezeld door soortgelijke toezeggingen. Ze zouden niet worden gebruikt om gewone meningsverschillen en politiek debat te onderdrukken—en eindigden uiteindelijk als aanleiding voor de massa-arrestatie van leden van de Industrial Workers of the World en de Socialistische Partij en openlijke critici van de oorlog.

Dus hier zijn we dan. De USA PATRIOT Act en een reeks veiligheidsdiensten zoals de CSIS, RCMP, FBI en DHS worden gebruikt om de belangen van de fossiele-brandstoffenindustrie, de filmindustrie en de landbouwindustrie te beschermen tegen open discussie, spot of protest. Het als “terrorisme” behandelen van protesten die bedrijfsactiviteiten verstoren? Als de USA PATRIOT Act een paar generaties geleden was ingevoerd, dan vermoed ik dat sit-ins in lunchzaken en bus-boycots als “terrorisme” zouden worden bestempeld.

Het ultieme doel van alle staatswetgeving en het handhavingsapparaat is, ongeacht de vele schijnbare rechtvaardiging voor deze of gene wet, het verdedigen van de belangen van het systeem en diegenen die het beheersen. Elke wet die door de staat wordt aangenomen, en elke gewapende en geüniformeerde  ambtenaar die door de staat gebruikt om deze wetten te handhaven, zal de wet interpreteren op een manier waarop de belangen van het machtssysteem het best worden behartigd.

Vertaald vanuit het Engels door: SBM

These days, some policy makers are discussing rolling back America’s system of mass incarceration. Figures from Eric Holder to Rand Paul are proposing eliminating many mandatory minimum sentences. States like Colorado are legalizing marijuana. But while some policy makers talk about shrinking the prison state, prison expansion continues to be pushed and passed by legislators.

On the federal level, the Bureau of Prisons recently allocated $54 million to open the Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Illinois. Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin and Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos have praised the funding, which redirects resources away from production for human needs and towards punishment and state violence. They praise it essentially as a stimulus package. Durbin said, “This is the news we’ve been waiting for. The funding that the Bureau of Prisons reported to Congress today is a significant investment in the economic future of Northern Illinois.” Similarly, Bustos said “This investment by the Bureau of Prisons in Thomson prison means that construction can soon begin, workers can soon compete for good-paying jobs and Northern Illinois will no longer be home to an empty prison.” According to Bustos’ press release, the prison is “expected to provide a major boost to the local economy and create more than 1,100 jobs. Annual operation of the facility is expected to generate more than $122 million in operating expenditures (including salaries), $19 million in labor income, and $61 million in local business sales.”

This tells us a lot about the economics of mass incarceration, but not in the way Bustos and Durbin might want us to think. These Democrats are entranced by Bastiat’s famous “broken window fallacy.” They ignore the opportunity costs of incarceration, from the redirection of resources away from peaceful production of goods and services to the caging of people who could make valuable contributions to communities if they were free. Moreover, this use of public prisons as make-work programs reveals that the perverse incentives at work in prisons operated by profiteers like the Corrections Corporation of America or the Management and Training Corporation also play out in the operation of public prisons. While the opportunity costs and tax costs are dispersed across the general population, and the human costs are concentrated upon people who are systematically disenfranchised, the benefits of prisons are given to concentrated interest groups like prison guards. Thus, public choice theory suggests that those who benefit have more incentive and ability to influence policy than those who bear the costs, so we see a rise in incarceration, regardless of whether it’s good policy for the general public. The perverse incentives are easy to illustrate when ruthless corporate profiteers are the beneficiaries and rent seekers, but local populations that want jobs as prison guards have the same types of incentive problems. This is why we need to push not just against for-profit prisons, but against all prisons. The economic logic of state financed prisons encourages a growing prison state.

In my home state of Utah, we’re seeing similar growth dynamics play out. The legislature recently passed bills to build a new prison and expand the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. Bids by private contractors will be taken by the Prison Relocation and Development Authority (PRADA) for the construction of the new prison. This may also provide an opportunity for the prison to be operated by a for-profit contractor like the Corrections Corporation of America or the Management and Training Corporation. But even if only the construction of the prison occurs for profit, this is a clear example of prisons as cronyism, with obscene profits being made to service the exercise of state power. The expansion of the prison in Gunnison is largely being justified based on extrapolations from current prison growth rates. In other words, the state is spending money on the assumption that drug prohibition and other policies that facilitate mass incarceration will and should continue for the foreseeable future.

So far I’ve discussed the economics of prisons as make work programs and crony capitalist rent seeking. But the prison state also thrives and grows based on an ideological commitment to punishment. Center for a Stateless Society senior fellow Roderick Long has argued that libertarians should reject punishment on philosophical grounds, and embrace restitution and defense in its stead. Recent speculation by philosopher Rebecca Roache postulates that in the future, punishment could be exacerbated, with advanced drugs being used to make prisoners feel as though they are suffering for a thousand years over the course of a mere eight hours. This is horrific on multiple levels. The type of trauma that could be caused to whomever the state wants to harm is terrifying to contemplate. Moreover, the basic idea seems to be rooted in a purely punitive mentality. Roache asks, “Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn’t simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments – the goal is to look at today’s punishments through the lens of the future.” This implies that justice is served by making “criminals” suffer. This method would do nothing to protect people from violence by likely reoffenders, nor would it assist in securing restitution for victims of harms. It would symbolize raw punishment and sadism, providing neither protection nor restitution. It is punishment distilled to its sadistic essence, and it’s sick indeed.

The punitive mentality is running rampant in the operation of America’s immigration system, but immigrants and their allies across the country are resisting the state’s violence and racism. My most recent column discusses the hunger strikes going on in Tacoma, Washington. Eunice Lee of the ACLU has a good blog post about the hunger strikes as well. Meanwhile, in my home state of Utah, immigrants are facing the full brunt of these punitive policies. The Cañenguez family is nearing their deadline to “voluntarily” (as if) self-deport, after which they face direct violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These migrants have not been charged with any crimes, and they are at risk of gang violence if the US government forcibly sends them back to El Salvador. Of course, the violence of the American state is its own form of gang violence. A gang with legal power is plotting to send them back into harms’ way at the hands of gangs that lack state authority. This is what immigration enforcement looks like. Please sign their petition to help this family be left alone by the state’s thugs.

In addition to immigrant resistance, opposition to the prison state continues to build from the radical wing of the transgender liberation movement. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a collective and law center led by transgender people of color, continues promoting prison abolitionist politics. The latest issue of In Solidarity, a magazine by their Prisoner Advisory Committee, was just released and was introduced and celebrated by former trans political prisoner CeCe McDonald. I highly recommend the issue, as well as everything else the Sylvia Rivera Law Project puts out.

The punitive state is continuing its growth and violent depredations, but resistance continues to build. Until all are free, let’s fight every day to stop the prison state.

Num texto recente publicado no site da Foundation for Economic Education chamado “Contra o brutalismo libertário“, Jeffrey Tucker pede para que os libertários reflitam sobre os motivos que os fizeram adotar essa identificação e descreve dois perfis mais gerais de libertários. São elas:

1. O humanitário, que se identifica como libertário porque se preocupa com a liberdade e a exploração dos outros.

2. O brutalista, que se identifica como libertário para justificar e desculpar qualquer comportamento indesejável ou destrutivo, contanto que não seja violento.

Tucker alega que, embora ambos sejam permissíveis dentro do libertarianismo, o humanitário é aquele que devemos celebrar e tentar emular, não o brutalista. Não devemos celebrar como uma vitória para a liberdade toda vez que um racista se recusa a prestar serviço para uma minoria ou quando um homofóbico investe numa campanha de relações públicas para desumanizar a comunidade LGBT.

Eu pensava que esse argumento não era controverso, então me surpreendir ao ver que a maioria dos comentários criticava o ponto de vista de Tucker. Depois de ler as resposta, porém, eu percebi que a maioria simplesmente não havia entendido o artigo.

Isso ficava aparente por conta do tema comum das respostas — o fato de que os discordantes tentavam atacar a posição de Tucker sobre a violação dos direitos dos brutalistas, preconceituosos etc, apesar de Tucker jamais ter defendido a negação ou a violação dos direitos de qualquer pessoa. Pelo contrário, Tucker reconhecia a legitimidade da posição brutalista dentro do movimento libertário:

“De fato, a liberdade permite tanto a perspectiva humanitária quanto a brutalista, embora isso possa parecer implausível. A liberdade é ampla e expansiva, não afirma quaisquer fins sociais em particular como únicos e verdadeiros. Dentro da estrutura da liberdade, existe a liberdade de amar e de odiar.”

“Os brutalistas estão tecnicamente certos em relação ao fato de que a liberdade também protege o direito de ser um completo ignorante e o direito de odiar”

Tucker não defende o uso de armas ou tanques de guerra para dissuadir violentamente os brutalistas — ou os fanáticos que eles defendem — de suas posições repugnantes. Ele apenas sugere que nós devemos abraçar e divulgar a posição humanitária e que, ao fazê-lo, devemos criticar, até mesmo publicamente, as motivações dos brutalistas.

Sua posição não é incoerente com a defesa dos direitos de propriedade, nem está vai de encontro a uma oposição às intervenções coercitivas empregadas pelo estado. Como afirmou Sheldon Richman em “Nós podemos lutar contra o preconceito sem os políticos“:

Agora, no momento em que uma pessoa diz que o governo não deveria ter o poder de punir as empresas de discriminarem em acomodações públicas, um interlocutor social-democrata provavelmente perguntará: “Então uma empresa deve poder recusar serviço a uma pessoa só por ela ser gay ou negra?”.

Ao que eu responderia: “Não, a empresa não deveria poder fazer isso. Mas ‘não poder’ para mim significa que nós devemos não-violentamente impor custos sobre aqueles que ofendem a decência ao humilhar pessoas com a recusa do fornecimento de serviços“. Como afirmado acima, isso incluiria boicotes, publicidade e ostracismo. O estado não deve ser visto como antídoto e, dado que sua essência é a violência, ele não deve punir condutas não-violentas, não importa o quão inaceitáveis elas sejam.

Está claro que ninguém além daqueles que defendem os preconceituosos, brutalistas, etc, está discutindo direitos de propriedade ou sua violação. Na realidade, a solução humanitária que Tucker e outros defendem é a interação entre dois ou mais indivíduos ou grupos com o respeito dos direitos de propriedade de cada um. Quando uma parte exibe publicamente comportamentos preconceituosos, anti-sociais ou desumanizantes, a outra (o humanitário) deverá mostrar sua oposição sem violência, através de boicotes, publicidade negativa ou ostracismo. O humanitário ainda respeita os direitos do preconceituoso, mas impõe a ele custos sociais e econômicos através de seus próprios direitos de livre expressão e associação. Nenhuma das partes é vítima de qualquer tipo de coerção, mas fazem uma escolha: o precoceituoso poderá modificar seu comportamento ou aceitar as consequências orgânicas de suas ações; o humanitário poderá aceitar o comportamento discriminatório ou abrir mão dos benefícios sociais e econômicos providos pelo preconceituoso. No entanto, uma terceira pessoa — o brutalista — aparece para fazer o papel de herói-defensor-da-pureza-libertária e afirma: “Ao utilizar seus direitos de propriedade para censurar atos precoceituosos, você está fazendo uso de coerção e deve parar!”.

Àqueles que rejeitaram os argumentos de Tucker com base em argumentos similares ao apresentado acima, eu pergunto: quem ou o que você realmente está defendendo? Vocês não estão defendendo os direitos de propriedade, porque eles não foram atacados. Vocês não estão defendendo as pessoas da obrigação positiva de procurar e condenar publicamente todos os fanáticos preconceituosos do mundo — ninguém defendeu a existência desse dever. Quando examinamos seus investimentos voluntários de tempo, percebemos que, na verdade, vocês apenas defendem um mundo em que racistas, sexistas e brutalistas de todos os tipos são protegidos das consequências sociais e econômicas de suas ações.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Ao interrogar na última quinta-feira (13) Juliano Torres, diretor-executivo da rede acadêmica Estudantes Pela Liberdade (EPL), a Polícia Federal se certificou de que teria à disposição todo o roteiro de viagens internacionais feitas por ele nos últimos meses, para que sua tentativa de intimidação fosse muito mais incisiva.

A PF brasileira tem intimado para depor (ou, como chamam os burocratas, “prestar esclarecimentos”) diversos indivíduos percebidos como lideranças dos protestos que ocorreram durante a Copa das Confederações, em junho. O EPL teve certo envolvimento nos protestos, e suas várias páginas no Facebook coordenaram a participação de vários grupos nas manifestações. Juliano Torres, então, foi interrogado a respeito de todo o seu envolvimento político e institucional – tendo que explicar até mesmo de onde saiu o financiamento para suas idas ao exterior. (O que deve nos fazer recordar o real motivo da existência dos passaportes: controle e vigilância da população.)

O contingente libertário das redes sociais rapidamente se mobilizou em suporte a Juliano Torres contra as táticas ditatoriais da PF, mas deve-se lembrar de que não são só os libertários que estão sendo alvos do governo brasileiro. O mesmo tratamento tem sido dispensado a diversos indivíduos envolvidos em manifestações políticas, notoriamente aqueles ligados à Marcha da Maconha e ao Movimento Passe Livre.

A Copa do Mundo deste ano e as Olimpíadas de 2016 jogaram rapidamente o país em estado de exceção, liberando o governo e a polícia para empregarem táticas cada vez mais repressoras e autoritárias. Com a desculpa de assegurar a segurança para os eventos internacionais, o governo brasileiro ganhou a conveniente justificativa de que precisava para reforçar a vigilância na internet, recrudescer a repressão às manifestações nas ruas e, pior, fortalecer o estado policial totalitário que já vigora nas favelas. No Rio, em particular, a sensação de terror domina as favelas “pacificadas”, em que os moradores vivem sob a mira dos fuzis da PM, sendo efetivamente cidadãos de segunda classe, sem direitos civis. A polícia, ao fechar o cerco em determinadas favelas, ainda empurra a força do tráfico de drogas para as favelas mais distantes do centro e, por isso, “invisíveis” – tolerando ainda a existência das milícias, que lutam pelo controle dessas áreas.

A visita dos ativistas de classe média à PF, em comparação, é um agradável passeio no parque.

Com a carta branca de que precisava para violentar a população, o governo se sentiu à vontade nos últimos anos para potencializar a exploração econômica dos cidadãos comuns. Os protestos de junho, precipitados pela condição precária dos transportes urbanos em todo o Brasil, são sintomáticos. Os gigantescos subsídios estatais a imóveis (efetivamente, apenas repasses governamentais às empreiteiras) fizeram com que as metrópoles brasileiras crescessem absurdamente na última década e transformaram o país num dos mais caros do mundo – de quebra, jogando o Brasil numa bolha imobiliária similar à dos Estados Unidos. A infraestrutura urbana brasileira não suportou esse choque e cai aos pedaços.

Os estádios construídos para a Copa do Mundo catalisam a revolta popular por serem ralos de dinheiro público, mas ainda escondem a tragédia humana das desapropriações violentas dos imóveis de milhares de famílias. Tudo pelo bem do esporte, evidentemente; por uma Copa no padrão FIFA.

Por isso, quando ícones do futebol como Ronaldo colocam o dedo na ferida, servem de garotos-propaganda oficiais e afirmam que não se faz Copa do Mundo com hospitais, é ainda mais doloroso. São manifestações assim que não deixam morrer o grito de que “Não vai ter Copa” entoado pelos black blocs.

Portanto, o Brasil atualmente é o paraíso da violência estatal, que fortalece a casta atual de petistas que se encontra no poder e garante os lucros das empreiteiras e demais corporações ligadas ao regime. É por essas e muitas outras que o governo brasileiro está certo em temer novas manifestações. É por essas e outras que a PF terá que separar muitos outros registros de viagens internacionais.

On Thursday, March 13, in interrogating Juliano Torres, executive-director of the Brazilian chapter of Students For Liberty (Estudantes Pela Liberdade – EPL), the Brazilian Federal Police (Polícia Federal) made sure they had all his travel records at hand to make their intimidation tactics appear even punchier.

The Federal Police has been summoning for questions (or, as they call it in their totalitarian lingo, “to provide clarifications”) several individuals seen as leaders of the protests that occurred during the FIFA Confederations Cup in June. EPL was somewhat involved in them, and their several Facebook pages helped organize demonstrations by several groups. Torres, then, was questioned about all his political and institutional involvement — having to explain even where the money for his trips abroad came from (which should remind us clearly of the real reason passports exist: Control over and surveillance of the people.)

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, Brasil Arderá de Nuevo.

Shamus Cooke discusses Obama’s far right foreign policy.

Cory Massimino discusses the relationship between liberalism and libertarianism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how war has changed.

Brian J. Trautman discusses endless war.

Casey Given discusses how the anti-gay bills are not libertarian.

Dave Lindorff discusses the U.S. lecturing of Russia about international law.

John Bew discusses the origins of realpolitik.

Tom Engelhardt discusses the new world order.

Sheldon Richman discuses the Ukrainian issue.

Justin Raimondo discusses the rise of Ukrainian fascism.

Peter Linebaugh discusses drones and slavery.

Curtis F J Doebbler discusses U.S. hypocrisy on international law.

Laurence M. Vance discusses constitutionalist support for the drug war.

Sheldon Richman discusses work.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses Obama’s complicity in covering up torture.

Neve Gordon discusses a novel about Iraq.

Uri Avnery discusses Netanyahu.

George H. Smith discusses Robert Nisbet and Thomas Sowell.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses immigration politics.

Richard Falk reviews Omar.

Ludwig Watzal reviews Understanding Shadows: The Corrupt Use of Intelligence.

Lina Khan discusses Dragnet Nation.

Josh Ruebner discusses Gareth Porter’s new book on Iran.

Norman Solomon discusses Hilary’s use of the Hitler meme.

Andrew J. Bacevich discusses American exceptionalism.

Peter Van Buren discusses a court case pertaining to whistleblowers.

Kelly Vlahos discusses a skeptic about the surge.

Arthur Silber discusses Edward Snowden.

Kevin Carson discusses upward wealth redistribution.

Alekhine beats Capablanca in their first world championship match game.

This game is called the immortal game.

Em Tacoma, no estado americano de Washington, imigrantes presos mantidos no Northwest Detention Center estão em greve de fome. Os oficiais da agência de imigração do governo dos Estados Unidos, a Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), enquanto isso, tentam intimidá-los e alimentá-los à força.

Quando converso com muitos americanos a respeito dessa greve de fome, muitos não expressam qualquer simpatia aos presos. Rotulam os imigrantes como “ilegais” e usam isso como desculpa para violar seus direitos humanos. Seres humanos não podem ser “ilegais”. Referir-se a eles dessa maneira os desumaniza através de uma ideologia tóxica e racista. As ações de uma pessoa podem ser prejudiciais ou até criminosas, mas o que há de criminoso em migrar? Tudo o que os imigrantes sem documentação fizeram foi entrar num novo país para viver, trabalhar e sustentar suas famílias através do comércio livre e da associação pacífica com outras pessoas. Nada disso é crime. A migração é parte daquilo que torna uma sociedade livre mais próspera. Além disso, a maioria dos imigrantes mantidos em centros de detenção não foram condenados por qualquer crime.

Enquanto isso, aqueles que prendem e reprimem os imigrantes envolvem-se em muitos outros crimes violentos, possibilitados pela autoridade estatal. Observe seus planos para alimentar à força os prisioneiros, por exemplo. A alimentação à força é amplamente considerada uma forma de tortura e já foi declarada desumana e cruel por organizações que incluem a Cruz Vermelha Internacional, a Associação Médica Mundial e as Nações Unidas. Por definição, forçar a alimentação dos grevistas envolve uma brutal e dolorosa violação da autonomia de seus corpos para suprimir sua expressão política.

Os crimes do sistema de detenção de imigrantes não param por aí, contudo. Os imigrantes são mantidos presos indefinidamente, supostamente durante “procedimentos legais”. Não são acusados de quaisquer crimes e seus direitos à representação legal não são honrados. Em 2010, 84% dos imigrantes presos não eram representados por advogados. Isso não é justiça. É sequestro, um procedimento sem devido processo legal dentro da legalidade.

Essas detenções sem acusações, julgamento ou representação frequentemente acontencem porque são lucrativas. O Northwest Detention Center, onde os presos em greve de fome estão sendo mantidos, é operado em um modelo “privatizado” pelo GEO Group. Como outros grupos prisionais terceirizados, como a Corrections Corporation of America e o Management and Training Corporation, o GEO Group consegue uma quantidade obscena de dinheiro público com o trancafiamento de seres humanos em jaulas. Ao invés de fornecer bens e serviços que as pessoas de fato desejam comprar, essas empresas prisionais utilizam a violência estatal para conseguir o dinheiro roubado das pessoas através dos impostos.

Em todo o mundo, os governos usam as fronteiras como justificativa para violar os direitos individuais e fazer uso de violência criminosa. Por exemplo, o estado canadense enjaula imigrantes indefinidamente simplesmente por serem imigrantes. Frequentemente essas pessoas são mantidas em solitárias, outra forma internacionalmente reconhecida de tortura.

Enquanto isso, o estado israelense tem enviado refugiados africanos para um enorme campo de prisioneiros. Lá, eles são sujeitos a violência e dicriminação motivadas por um clima de racismo paranóico em que os africanos são temidos como “infiltrados” que podem enfraquecer a maioria judia de Israel.

Estados em todo o mundo sequestram, prendem, torturam e deportam migrantes e refugiados, mas a brutalidade das restrições à imigração não para por aí. As fronteiras mantêm as pessoas presas sob governos opressivos, evitando que fujam de atrocidades violentas. Por exemplo, gays, lésbicas, bissexuais e transgêneros fogem da repressão homofóbica do estado russo e acabam prisioneiros das burocracias de imigração.

Da mesma forma, a crise na Ucrânia é exacerbada pelas restrições a imigração, que forçam os ucranianos a se colocarem na linha de fogo do conflito. Como Sheldon Richman afirmou recentemente:

Os ucranianos que desejem sair dos locais violentos onde vivem, permanentemente ou temporariamente, devem ter a liberdade para se mudar para os Estados Unidos. Perceba: como nós ousamos, como americanos, confinar os ucranianos a uma situação de que eles precisam desesperadamente fugir?

Com frequência, os imigrantes são acusados caluniosamente de serem criminosos. Mas os crimes verdadeiros são perpetrados pelos estados e suas políticas de imigração. Os estados sequestram, torturam e roubam para garantir seu poder sobre as linhas desenhadas nos mapas. E, para isso, permitem que outros estados reprimam brutalmente seus cidadãos. Todos os estados são criminosos e as fronteiras são suas armas mais poderosas.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

The conflict in Ukraine has prompted several level-headed commentators to point out that, of all governments, the U.S. government is in no position to lecture Russia about respecting other nations’ borders. When Secretary of State John Kerry said on Meet the Press, “This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext.… You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” one of those commentators, Ivan Eland, responded,

Hmmm. What about the George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq after exaggerating threats from Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and dreaming up a nonexistent operational link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. And what about Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983 to save U.S. medical students in no danger and George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama because its leader, Manuel Noriega, was associated with the narcotics trade?… More generally, Latin America has been a US sphere of influence and playground for US invasions since the early 1900s — Lyndon Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Bill Clinton’s threatened invasion of Haiti in 1994 being two recent examples.

Indeed, Russia isn’t the only country that has brutally regarded its “backyard” as its sphere of influence and playground. This doesn’t make it okay for the Russian government to behave as it has, but as Adam Gopnik observes,

Russia, as ugly, provocative, and deserving of condemnation as its acts [in Crimea] may be, seems to be behaving as Russia has always behaved, even long before the Bolsheviks arrived. Indeed, Russia is behaving as every regional power in the history of human regions has always behaved, maximizing its influence over its neighbors — in this case, a neighbor with a large chunk of its ethnic countrymen.

Eland of course only scratches the surface in mentioning the U.S. government’s unceasing program to control events in its sphere of influence. Some people understand that this program preceded the 20th century; it did not begin with the Cold War. The Spanish-American War, 1898, may come to mind, but I’m thinking further back than that. How far back? Roughly 1776.

Even the government’s schools teach, or at least taught during my 12-year sentence in them, that America’s Founders had — let us say — an expansive vision for the country they were establishing. Historian William Appleman Williams’s extended essay, Empire as a Way of Life, provides many details. Clearly, these men had empire on their minds. Before he became an evangelical for independence from Great Britain, Benjamin Franklin proposed a partnership between England and the American colonists to help spread the enlightened empire throughout the Americas. His proposal was rejected as impractical, so he embraced independence — without giving up the dream of empire in the New World. George Washington spoke of the “rising American empire” and described himself as living in an “infant empire.”

Thomas Jefferson — “the most expansion-minded president in American history” (writes Gordon S. Wood) — set out a vision of an “Empire of Liberty,” later revised as an “Empire forLiberty,” and left the presidency believing that “no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.” As Jefferson wrote James Monroe in 1801, Jefferson’s first year as president,

However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, & cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, & by similar laws.

Indeed, in the eyes of the Founders, the American Revolution was largely a war between a mature empire and a nascent one. (Many — but assuredly not all — Americans of the time would have cheerily agreed.) Their goal was to bring civilization (which was still identified with England and many of its institutions) to the New World’s benighted.

As Jefferson indicated, this vision was more than continental, because South America was never regarded as permanently off limits. If expansion required conflict with the French and Spanish also, so be it.

The Indian Wars were among the first steps in empire building. The unspeakable brutality and duplicity — the acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as we say today — were crimes, not merely against individuals, but also against whole societies and nations. “Imperialism” was not yet a word in use, but that’s what this was, as were the designs and moves on Canada (one of the objects of James Madison’s War of 1812), Mexico, Cuba, Florida, the Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana, the Northwest, and the Pacific coast (the gateway to Asia). The wishes of the inhabitants — who were “as yet incapable of self-government as children,” as Jefferson said of Louisiana’s residents — didn’t count. (Lincoln’s war is thus understood as an exercise in empire preservation.)

A good deal of this program was tied up with trade. For libertarians, trade far and wide is a good thing, but one must keep in mind that the expansion of trade in those days (as in these) depended on how strong the government was. By hook and crook, a constitution that denied the national government the powers to regulate trade and to tax — the Articles of Confederation — had been exchanged for one — the U.S. Constitution — that authorized both powers. (The libertarian Albert Jay Nock called the federal convention in Philadelphia a coup d’état. See my video lecture.) Trade meant trade policy, and that meant government activism, which included selective embargoes, such as those imposed by Jefferson’s program of “peaceful coercion.”

The Articles of Confederation were a poor platform for empire building; not so the Constitution. “Both in the mind of Madison and in its nature,” Williams wrote, “the Constitution was an instrument of imperial government at home and abroad.” (See my “That Mercantilist Commerce Clause.”)

I don’t mean to say that the liberty of Americans was of no concern to their rulers. I do mean, however, that liberty was to be subordinated (only to the extent necessary, of course) to national greatness, which was America’s destiny. (I first heard the words “Manifest Destiny” in a government school. Do kids hear it today?)

Americans sensed that something exceptional was happening. And indeed it was, as Gordon Wood explains in his masterful The Radicalism of the American Revolution. To the dismay of the dominant Federalists, average Americans, exemplified by those whom Wood calls “plebeian Anti-Federalists,” saw the revolution as having overturned hierarchical and aristocratic colonial society in favor of a democracy that facilitated personal and commercial self-interest. (This did not sit well with those who wanted America to be, per Wood, “either a hierarchy of ranks or a homogeneous republican whole.”)

But even well-grounded exceptionalism can quickly turn dark by the perceived duty to enlighten — or , if necessary, exterminate — the benighted. And that’s what happened. The Indian Wars were popular; so were the other imperial exploits. (This is not to say there were no dissenters.)

Williams notes that exceptionalism came with a feeling of aloneness. Thus, the quest for security and tranquility for the new nation — invoked in precisely those words — fueled these imperial exploits. The national-security state is nothing new; only the technology has changed.

Some American figures glimpsed that empire and liberty might not so easily fit together. (The unabashed empire builders were convinced that freedom at home required empire.) The problem was that even many who opposed empire, sometimes quite eloquently, wanted ends that only an empire could procure. Williams puts John Quincy Adams in this small camp. Secretary of State Adams’s July 4, 1821, speech, declaring that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” was “thoughtful, powerful, and subversive,” Williams writes. “But for the time Adams remained enfolded in the spirit of empire and was unable to control the urge to extend America’s power and influence.” (As secretary of state, he supported Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s seizure of Florida from the Spanish.)

Adams was the main author of the Monroe Doctrine, which announced not only that the United States would stand aloof from Europe’s quarrels, but also that the Western Hemisphere was exclusively the U.S. government’s sphere of influence: “The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers,” for any such extension would be taken as “dangerous to our peace and safety [i.e., our national security].”

So keep out of our backyard, Europe, and we’ll keep out of yours. Except, Williams adds, that President Monroe “then asserted the right of the United States to support Greek revolutionaries.”

This history doesn’t excuse Russia, but it does put Putin’s actions in perspective. It also accounts for the less-than-awed reception for President Obama’s and Secretary Kerry’s sanctimonious utterances. To the extent that Obama and Kerry imply that Russia threatens our “peace and safety,” they look like fools. “The worst pretense of empire,” Adam Gopnik writes, “is that every rattle on the edges is a death knell to the center.”