History is repeating itself in a terrifying way as Europe’s Romani population faces increased hostility, discrimination, marginalization and poverty. I have previously written about the ethnic registration of Romani people perpetrated by Swedish police. Those of us living in Sweden have in recent months also seen an influx of destitute Romani people making their way here from Romania, in order to attempt to make a living from begging. In Romania, Romani people often live in ghettos, with an incredibly high rate of drug addiction and crime. These awful conditions have prompted some Romani people to painstakingly make their way to Sweden, where they hope to be able to survive from street begging — it should go without saying the amount of money they get from this is in many cases very slight, and that only extreme poverty can explain this desperate move. But for some people, the money they manage to save up means the difference between life and death when they return to Romania.

The Swedish state is apparently devoted to make everything even worse for these migrants. A group of migrants of about a hundred gathered sticks and some tarps and made a camp of small houses in the Stockholm suburb of Högdalen, only to be evicted by police and have their cabins torn town. They relocated, with the help of local activists, to another empty plot of land in the suburb Sollentuna where they rebuilt their houses.  But after living there for a couple of weeks, the migrants were served with a new eviction notice on  March 11th. Not only was it in Swedish, making it impossible for the migrants to understand it, but it gave them less than two days notice; they were to leave the camp before 7 AM on the 13th.

These evictions are vicious attacks by the state and municipality on an incredibly vulnerable segment of society. The land in Sollentuna is claimed by the municipality itself, and is unused and unimproved. The migrants have done nothing but peacefully homestead the land, building their houses with their own hands. Obnoxiously, these attacks are partly carried out under the pretext that living in these houses is “undignified,” which makes about as much sense as breaking someone’s crutches because it is “undignified” that they should need them to walk. The real cause for these policies is that the politicians and the white middle class do not want poor Romani people in their country. Representatives from the municipality even “offered” the migrants bus tickets to Romania. The message seems clear: If you are going to starve, you will have to do it in the ghettos of Romania.

In response to the eviction, around thirty activists mobilized on the 13^th to resist it. Around 8 AM, the activists had formed a human chain and managed to push back the police. Around 2 PM, when I myself had gained knowledge of what was going on and joined the protest, the police had received substantial reinforcements, and again mobilized to carry out the eviction. We sat arm in arm in the houses, but after a while the police carried us away and placed us in a bus, later to be dropped off far from the scene, most of us suspected of what is called “disobedience towards law enforcement.”

The houses were all torn down. It appears that around half of the migrants went back to Romania, and about thirty where given temporary places to sleep by activists. The future is looking dark for these migrants, as well as for the hundreds of thousands or poor Romani people living in an increasingly cold and brutal Europe. It is not easy to come up with simple ideas of how to remedy this extreme poverty in the short run. But one thing is clear: the state’s evictions and callous demolition of the roof over their heads will make things much worse.

Translations for this article:

• Swedish, Stoppa vräkningarna av migranter.

C4SS Media presents Natasha Petrova‘s “Hayek vs Rothbard On Coercion,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the many ways in which it can manifest itself. Apart from the obvious use of physical force; there is the use of economic reward and punishment and social ostracism. Both of which can be used to control people.”

In a recent post for the Foundation for Economic Education, called “Against Libertarian Brutalism,” Jeffrey Tucker calls upon each libertarian to self-reflect on their reasons for adopting the label and in doing so, identifies and describes two broad categories of libertarianism. These are:

1.  The humanitarian, who identifies as libertarian because he’s concerned about the freedom and exploitation of others.

2.  The brutalist, who identifies as libertarian as a means to justify and excuse any disgusting or destructive behavior, so long as it’s non-violent.

Tucker makes the case that while both identities are permissible in the libertarian framework, the humanitarian is who we should celebrate and strive to emulate, not the brutalist. We should not cheer a victory for freedom every time a racist refuses service to a minority or a homophobe invests in a public relations crusade to dehumanize the LBGT community.

I thought this was an uncontroversial argument, so I was surprised to see that the majority of article comments were critical of Tucker’s view. After reading the responses, though, I realized, most simply didn’t get it.

This was apparent by the common theme of the responses—namely, dissenters attempted to rebut Tucker’s position on violating the rights of brutalists, bigots, etc., despite that fact that Tucker never argued for the negation or violation of anyone’s rights. To the contrary, Tucker acknowledged the legitimacy of the brutalist’s position within the liberty movement,

 “To be sure, liberty does allow both the humanitarian and the brutalist perspective, as implausible as that might seem. Liberty is large and expansive and asserts no particular social end as the one and only way. Within the framework of liberty, there is the freedom to love and to hate.”

“The brutalists are technically correct that liberty also protects the right to be a complete jerk and the right to hate.”

Tucker does not advocate for the use of guns or tanks to violently dissuade brutalists – or the bigoted jerks whose causes they champion – from their distasteful ways. He merely suggests that we should instead embrace and market the humanitarian position and that in doing so, we should be critical of, even publicly so, the brutalist’s motivations.

And his position is not inconsistent with property rights, nor does it contradict an opposition to the government’s favored approach of coercive intervention. As Sheldon Richman argued in “We Can Oppose Bigotry Without The Politicians,”

Now the moment anyone says that government should have no power to prohibit business owners from discriminating in public accommodations, a progressive interlocutor will respond, “So a business should be allowed to refuse service to someone because the person is black or gay?”

To which I would say, No, the business should not be allowed to do that. But by “not be allowed,” I mean that the rest of us should nonviolently impose costs on those who offend decency by humiliating persons by the refusal of service. As noted,this would include boycotts, publicity, and ostracism. The state should not be seen as a remedy, and considering that its essence is violence, it certainly should not punish nonviolent conduct, however objectionable.

It’s clear that no one, other than those defending the bigots, brutalists, etc., is talking about property rights or their violation. In actuality, the humanitarian situation Tucker et al, describes is an interaction between two or more individuals or groups, each perfectly respecting the other’s property rights. When one party publicly displays bigoted, antisocial or dehumanizing behavior, the other (humanitarian) shows their opposition nonviolently, through boycotts, negative publicity and ostracism. The humanitarian is still respecting the property rights of the bigot, but imposes on him social and economic costs through the humanitarian’s own rights of free speech and association. Neither party is a victim of coercion, but both are presented with a choice: the bigot can either modify his behavior or accept the organic consequences of his actions; the humanitarian can either accept the bigot’s behavior or forgo the social and economic offerings the bigot could provide. Such is the nature of markets. However, a third party – the brutalist – swoops in to play hero-of-the-day-purist-libertarian and declares, “By the affirmation of property rights, your bigot-shaming is coercive and must cease!”

To those who dismissed Tucker’s arguments on the above ground, I ask this: who or what are you really defending? You’re not defending property rights, as those were never under assault. You are not defending people from a positive obligation to seek out and publicly condemn all bigots in the world – that duty was never called for. When we examine your voluntary time investments, we find, in truth, you are only defending a world where racists, sexists and brutalists of all sorts are protected from the social and economic consequences of their actions.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Em defesa de Jeffrey Tucker.

In Tacoma, Washington, immigrant detainees held in the Northwest Detention Center are on hunger strike. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are attempting to intimidate, and threatening to force feed, them.

When I talk to many Americans about this hunger strike, many lack sympathy with the detainees. They brand immigrants as “illegals” and use this as an excuse to ignore violations of their human rights.  Human beings cannot be “illegal.” To refer to them as such dehumanizes migrants through a toxic and racist ideology.  A person’s actions may be harmful, or even criminal. But what is criminal about migrating? All undocumented immigrants have done is travel to a new country to live, work, support their families and engage in peaceful commerce and association with people. That’s no crime. Properly understood, migration is part of what makes a free society flourish. Moreover, the majority of immigrants held in detention centers have not been convicted of any crime.

Meanwhile, those who detain and repress immigrants engage in a litany of violent crimes enabled through state authority. Take their plot to force feed the hunger strikers, for example. Force feeding is widely considered torture and has been deemed cruel and inhumane by organizations including International Red Cross, the World Medical Association and the United Nations. By definition, force feeding hunger strikers involves brutally and painfully violating their bodily autonomy in order to suppress their political speech.

But the criminality of the immigration detention system doesn’t end there. Immigrant detainees are held indefinitely in supposedly “civil proceedings.” They are not charged with crimes nor are their rights to legal representation honored. As of 2010, 84% of detained immigrants were not represented by a lawyer. This is not justice. It is due-process-free kidnapping under the color of law.

This detention without charges, trial, or representation often occurs for profit. The Northwest Detention Center, where the hunger strikers are held, is operated in “privatized” fashion by GEO Group. Like other prison profiteers such as Corrections Corporation of America and the Management and Training Corporation, GEO Group extracts obscene profits from government for locking human beings in cages. Rather than providing goods and services people want to buy, prison profiteers engage in state violence in exchange for money plundered from the people through coercive taxation.

Throughout the world, governments use borders as an excuse to violate rights and engage in criminal violence. For example, the Canadian state cages immigrants indefinitely simply for being immigrants. They frequently hold these detainees in solitary confinement, which is internationally recognized as a form of torture.

Meanwhile, the Israeli state has been sending African refugees to a massive prison camp. These refugees are subjected to violence and rampant discrimination motivated by a climate of paranoid racism in which Africans are feared as “infiltrators” that may undermine the Jewish demographics of Israel.

States throughout the world kidnap, cage, torture, and deport migrants and refugees, but the brutality of immigration restrictions doesn’t end there. Borders trap people under oppressive governments, preventing them from fleeing violent atrocities. For example, many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees flee the Russian state’s homophobic repression only to find themselves ensnared in the coercive clutches of immigration bureaucracies.

Similarly, the crisis in Ukraine is exacerbated by immigration restrictions, which trap Ukrainians in the crossfire of the conflict. As Sheldon Richman recently put it,

“Ukrainians who want to get out of their dicey neighborhood, whether permanently or temporarily, should be free to move to the United States. Look at it this way: How dare we Americans confine Ukrainians to a condition they might desperately wish to escape?”

Immigrants are often smeared with accusations of criminality. But the real crimes in immigration policy are perpetrated by states. States kidnap, torture, and plunder in order to enforce lines drawn on maps. And in doing so, they enable other states to brutally repress trapped subjects. All states are criminal enterprises, and borders are among their most dangerous weapons.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Como as fronteiras possibilitam os crimes estatais.
• Italian, Le Frontiere Incoraggiano la Criminalità di Stato.

Big changes are often terribly disruptive, even among those who favor the changes. For an example, one need look no further than the libertarian movement’s struggles to address itself to recent social, legal and political developments on what I’ll call, for brevity’s sake, “the same-sex marriage front.”

Libertarian opinions on that issue run across a fairly narrow range. Some of us want government out of the marriage licensing business entirely (some of us want government out of business, period!). Others are content, at least for the moment, to end government discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in licensing. And hey … we’re getting there much more quickly than anyone would have dared predict a decade ago, aren’t we?

Now that we ARE getting there, though, some beneficiaries of the positive change want … well, more. And some of them are apparently ready and willing to appeal to the same institution which oppressed them for so long to oppress OTHER people into giving them what they want.

I refer, of course, to same-sex couples demanding that the state force bakers, florists and photographers to bake, arrange and take their wedding cakes, flowers and photos, whether those bakers, florists and photographers want to or not.

Libertarianism, as philosopher Roderick Long puts it, is the radical notion that other people aren’t your property. You don’t get to tell them whom they may or may not marry … and you don’t get to enslave them no matter how badly you want a cake, a bouquet or a pretty 8×10 from them.

That last paragraph, stripped down to its rhetorical essence, is what libertarian writer Jeffrey Tucker characterizes as a “brutalist” exposition: “Bigots have rights too. Get over it.”

As a matter of aesthetics, Tucker prefers  a “humanitarian” exposition which accentuates the positive aspects of liberty: The flourishing of people and societies flowing from acceptance of freedom of association, non-association and so forth.” Same rule, but a spoonful of sugar, if you will, helps the medicine go down.

In the broad strokes, I agree (although I often and easily fall into “brutalist” mode — a personal failing of style) Unfortunately some libertarians, in an effort to avoid the ugliness of “brutalist” rhetoric, seem to miss actual brutality in painting their “humanitarian” picture. This failure was obvious in many libertarians’ responses to the “religious freedom” bills recently proposed by several state legislatures.

Yes, some of those bills had poison pills in them — violating the “other people aren’t your property” stricture in the other direction by forcing employers to retain rather than fire employees who refused to do this or that “for religious reasons.”

And yes, it was fairly obvious that the real purpose, as opposed to the advertised effect, of these bills was to let politicians tell their most prejudiced constituents, with a wink and a nudge, “we’re on your side — remember in November.”

And yes, it is always painful to watch people for whose rights you have advocated turn around and demand that they be allowed to violate the rights of others. It makes you want to close your eyes for a few minutes, not notice and hope it goes away.

It is to just this kind of situation that only the “brutalist” response really works: Bigots have rights too. Get over it.

Om de zoveel maanden nadert de Amerikaanse overheid haar zelfopgelegde “schuldenplafond.” Om de zoveel maanden wordt het Amerikaanse publiek getrakteerd op een theaterstuk over de vraag of het plafond wel of niet moet worden “verhoogd,” inclusief hysterische doemscenario’s over wat er gebeurt als politici niet zoveel geld als ze willen mogen uitgeven aan wat ze ook maar begeren. En om de zoveel maanden besluiten de regerende partijen dat ze meer geld mogen lenen in plaats van te roeien met de riemen die men heeft.

Waarom houden Amerika’s politici hun collectieve financiën niet bij? Omdat ze vinden dat ze dat niet hóeven te doen.

Het is niet dat het moeilijk is. Integendeel, het zou zelfs erg makkelijk zijn.

De Congressional Budget Office schat dat de Amerikaanse overheid voor het fiscale jaar 2014 $514 miljard meer zal uitgeven dan het middels belastinginkomsten steelt. Maar diezelfde overheid kan haar defensie-uitgaven met $514 miljard terugbrengen en nog steeds op twee landen na het meest aan “defensie” uitgeven ter wereld (na Rusland en China).

In werkelijkheid, zoals dat gaat met natiestaten, zou de VS niet eens in de top-10 moeten staan. Het heeft op het moment (of in de waarschijnlijke nabije toekomst) geen vijanden aan de grens. Het wordt gescheiden van de meest waarschijnlijke en gevaarlijke vijanden door duizenden kilometers aan oceaan, toendra of andere natiestaten. En defensie-uitgaven terugbrengen naar een niet zo krankzinnig onredelijk niveau zou het minder, niet meer, geneigd maken om te beginnen aan wereldwijde mislukte avonturen die door spilzuchtige politici als een hobby worden nagejaagd.

Dus laten we de fictie loslaten dat de Amerikaanse overheid voor een dilemma of raadsel gesteld wordt waarbij groeiende schuld het enige plausibele antwoord is. Het is gewoon niet waar. De overheid zou haar budget vandaag op orde kunnen maken en daardoor beter af zijn, niet alleen in fiscaal opzicht maar ook in bijna elk ander aspect.

Nogmaals: waarom doen zij dat niet?

En nogmaals: omdat ze vinden dat ze dat niet hoeven te doen.

Ze hebben namelijk steeds kunnen wegkomen met het onverkapt stelen van in de dubbele cijfers lopende percentages van je werk en rijkdom, en het decennialang lenen van soortgelijke bedragen van leningverstrekkers (die verwachten dat het stelen onverminderd doorgaat, en zij meer betalingen ontvangen), zonder een duidelijke straf.

En net als alle profiteurs hebben zij zichzelf overtuigd dat het feest eeuwig kan duren, dat ze gewoon door kunnen blijven gaan en steeds meer geld van ons kunnen afpakken al naar gelang de behoefte.

Ze hebben zelf een “verpest ons feestje”- clausule aan de Amerikaanse Grondwet toegevoegd: “de geldigheid van de publieke schuld van de Verenigde Staten, geautoriseerd door de wet … zal niet in twijfel worden getrokken.”

Gelul. Ze hebben zo’n berg aan schulden verzameld dat geen enkel redelijk mens verwacht dat deze zullen worden afbetaald, en het idee dat schuld “publiek” is, is pure onzin. Wij zijn niet degenen die fraude plegen. Zíj zijn dat. Wij zijn niet verantwoordelijk voor het lot van hun criminele zaken; het is allemaal aan hen.

Op een gegeven moment zullen zowel de schuld als de politici die deze veroorzaakt hebben niet alleen “ondervraagd” worden, maar ook voldaan—door de rest van ons. Hoe eerder, hoe beter.

Vertaald vanuit het Engels door: SBM

Is there a connection between egoism and nihilism? Does Ayn Rand’s brand of ethical egoism amount to a form of nihilism? These are the questions addressed in this blog post.

Let us turn to dictionary.com for a definition of nihilism:

ni·hil·ism:
1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
3. total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler’s last years.
4. Philosophy,
a. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
b. nothingness or nonexistence.
5. (sometimes initial capital letter) the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.

The term nihilism will be used to refer to definitions “a” and “b” under philosophy. It will most definitely not be used to describe anarchism or anarchy.

Dictionary.com also provides us with a definition of egoism:

e·go·ism:
1. the habit of valuing everything only in reference to one’s personal interest; selfishness (opposed to altruism ).
2. egotism or conceit.
3. Ethics. the view that morality ultimately rests on self-interest.

Only if having objective values is equated with selflessness does it make sense to see nihilism and egoism as the same thing. An egoist can believe in rationally validated principles or values that are more than just subjective preferences. Self-interest is not equivalent to believing in nothing. Ayn Rand’s brand of egoism included the belief in an objective reality and morality.

I have known several egoists who evidenced no signs of nihilism. They could be as thoughtful and caring as anyone else. The notion that the two are the same thing is not borne out by empirical observation of actual egoists.

What implications does this have for left-libertarian thought? Should we left-libertarians embrace egoism? That isn’t a question I have an answer to. It certainly deserves further reflection and debate. I personally remain undecided on the question. It’s up to others to jumpstart a debate on it.

If the above question is answered in the affirmative; the next one is what brand of egoism to adopt. The egoism of Rand or Stirner? I leave that as an additional question for my readers to ponder.

Por que devemos nos colocar a favor da liberdade ao invés de defendermos uma ordem social dominada pelo poder? Ao elaborar uma resposta para essa pergunta, eu sugeriria que os libertários podem ser divididos, geralmente, em dois grupos: humanitários e brutalistas.

Os humanitários são atraídos à liberdade por motivos como os seguintes: ela permite a cooperação humana; inspira a criatividade das outras pessoas; minimiza a violência; permite a formação de capital e a prosperidade econômica; protege os direitos humanos de todo tipo de invasão; permite que as associações humanas floresçam de acordo com suas próprias características; recompensa as interações sociais e o entendimento, ao invés de romper os laços entre as pessoas, e constrói um mundo em que as pessoas são valorizadas como fins em si mesmas e não apenas peças no tabuleiro do planejamento central.

Sabemos de tudo isso por experiência e pelo estudo da história. São ótimas razões para amar a liberdade.

Porém, não são os únicos motivos pelos quais as pessoas são favoráveis a ela. Um segmento daqueles que se descrevem como libertários — e descritos aqui como brutalistas — consideram os motivos acima entediantes, vagos e excessivamente humanitários. Para eles, o que é atraente na liberdade é que ela permite que as pessoas afirmem suas preferências individuais e formem tribos homogêneas para reforçar suas inclinações, ostracizar pessoas com base em padrões “politicamente incorretos”, odiar os outros até se cansarem — contanto que nenhuma violência seja utilizada —, humilhar pessoas por conta de suas origens ou opiniões políticas, ser abertamente racistas e sexistas, excluir, isolar e não se contentar com a modernidade e, de forma geral, rejeitar as noções e valores de civilidade e etiqueta em favor de normas anti-sociais.

São dois impulsos radicalmente diferentes. O primeiro valoriza a paz social que emerge com a liberdade, enquanto o segundo valoriza a liberdade de rejeitar a cooperação em favor de preconceitos rasteiros. O primeiro quer reduzir o papel do poder e dos privilégios no mundo, enquanto o segundo deseja a liberdade de afirmar seu poder e privilégios dentro das fronteiras rígidas dos direitos de propriedade e da liberdade de desassociação.

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. Ao mesmo tempo, são duas formas muito diferentes de se ver o mundo — uma é liberal no sentido clássico e a outra é não-liberal em todos os sentidos — e é importante que você, enquanto libertário, as considere antes de se ver aliado com pessoas que, na realidade, não compreendem a ideia liberal.

Entendemos o humanitarismo. Ele busca o bem estar da pessoa humana e o florescimento da sociedade em toda a sua complexidade. O humanitarismo libertário observa que o melhor meio de alcançar esse fim é com um sistema social auto-ordenado, livre de controles externos violentos impostos pelo estado. O objetivo, neste caso, é essencialmente benevolente e os meios utilizados valorizam a paz social, a liberdade de associação, as trocas mutuamente benéficas, o desenvolvimento orgânico das instituições e a beleza da própria vida.

Do que se trata o brutalismo? O termo é geralmente associado a um estilo arquitetônico popular dos anos 1950 até meados dos anos 1970, que enfatizava o emprego de grandes estruturas de concreto, sem preocupações com estilo e elegância. A deselegância era seu ímpeto principal e sua fonte de orgulho. O brutalismo passava a mensagem da despretensão e da praticalidade crua da utilização de um prédio. Uma construção deveria ser forte, não bela; agressiva, não minuciosa; imponente, não sutil.

O brutalismo, na arquitetura, foi uma afetação que nasceu de uma teoria retirada de contexto. Era um estilo adotado com precisão consciente. Ele acreditava nos estar forçando a olhar para a realidade sem enfeites, desprovida de distrações, para que passasse sua mensagem didática. Sua mensagem não era apenas estética, mas também ética: rejeitava, por princípio, a beleza. Embelezar significa fazer concessões, distrair, arruinar a pureza da causa. Assim, o brutalismo rejeitava a necessidade do apelo comercial e não se preocupava com questões como apresentação e marketing; eram questões que, na ótica brutalista, desviavam nosso olhar do núcleo radical.

O brutalismo afirmava que um prédio não deveria ser nem mais nem menos do que o necessário para cumprir sua função. Afirmava o direito de ser feio, que é exatamente o motivo por que o estilo era extremamente popular junto a governos em várias partes do mundo e também por que as formas brutalistas são desprezadas quase universalmente.

Nós olhamos para trás e nos perguntamos de onde saíram essas monstruosidades, e nos surpreendemos ao descobrir que se originaram de uma teoria que rejeitava a beleza, a apresentação e os adornos por princípio. Os arquitetos pensavam estar mostrando algo que relutaríamos em enfrentar de outra forma. Contudo, só é possível apreciar os resultados do brutalismo se você já está convencido de sua teoria. Caso contrário, sem sua ideologia fundamentalista e extremista, os prédios parecem aterrorizantes e ameaçadores.

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

Nem todos os argumentos em favor de princípios centrais e análises puras são inerentemente brutalistas; o cerne do brutalismo é o fato de que precisamos reduzir para alcançar as raízes, de que precisamos às vezes nos deparar com uma verdade desagradável, de que devemos nos chocar e e às vezes devemos chocar os outros com as implicações implausíveis e desconfortáveis de uma ideia. O brutalismo vai ainda mais além: a ideia é a de que o argumento deve parar por aí e não avançar, e que elaborá-lo, adorná-lo, nuançá-lo, admitir incertezas ou amplificá-lo para além de afirmações cruas é um tipo de corrupção. O brutalismo é implacável e não tem pudores em recusar sair dos postulados mais primitivos.

O brutalismo pode aparecer em vários disfarces ideológicos. O bolchevismo e o nazismo são exemplos óbvios: classe e raça se tornam a única métrica da política, à exclusão de qualquer outra consideração. Nas democracias modernas, o jogo partidário tende ao brutalismo, uma vez que afirma o controle de um partido como a única preocupação relevante. O fundamentalismo religioso é outra forma bastante óbvia.

Num mundo libertário, porém, o brutalismo se baseia na teoria pura dos direitos de os indivíduos viverem de acordo com os próprios valores, quaisquer que sejam. Sua verdade central está aí e é indisputável, mas sua aplicação é crua para passar uma mensagem de forma mais eficiente. Assim, os brutalistas afirmam o direito de ser racista, o direito de ser misógino, o direito de odiar judeus ou estrangeiros, o direito de ignorar padrões de sociabilidade, o direito de ser incivilizado, de ser rude e grosseiro. Tudo é permissível e até meritório, porque abraçar até aquilo que é terrível é um tipo de teste. Afinal, o que é a liberdade senão o direito de ser um idiota?

Tais argumentos são profundamente desconfortáveis para os libertários humanitários, porque embora sejam, em tese, estritamente verdadeiros, eles desconsideram o que realmente importa na liberdade humana, que não é dividir o mundo ainda mais e torná-lo mais infeliz, mas permitir o progresso da humanidade em paz e prosperidade. Da mesma forma que queremos que a arquitetura seja agradável aos olhos e reflita a dramaticidade e elegância do ideal humano, uma teoria sobre a ordem social deve ser capaz de fornecer uma estrutura adequada a uma vida bem vivida e a comunidades de associações que permitam o crescimento de seus membros.

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, mas esses impulsos não se seguem da longa história das ideias liberais. Em questões de raça e sexo, por exemplo, a liberação das mulheres e das minorias étnicas do domínio arbitrário foi uma grande conquista dessa tradição. Continuar a afirmar o direito de voltar no tempo em suas vidas privadas e comerciais dá a impressão de que a ideologia foi retirada de seu contexto histórico, como se essas vitórias da dignidade humana não tivessem absolutamente nada a ver com as necessidades ideológicas atuais.

O brutalismo é mais que uma versão reduzida, anti-moderna e eviscerada do liberalismo original. É também um estilo argumentativo e uma abordagem retórica. Como na arquitetura, ele rejeita o marketing, o ethos comercial, a ideia de “vender” uma visão de mundo. A liberdade deve ser aceita ou rejeitada tendo em vista sua forma mais bruta. Dessa forma, ele é muito rápido em atacar, denunciar e declarar sua vitória. Percebe meios-termos e concessões em todo lugar. Adora desmascarar essas imposturas e tem pouca paciência para sutilezas expositivas e nuances circunstanciais de tempo e local. O brutalismo só vê a verdade crua e se agarra a ela como a única verdade, excluindo todo o resto da verdade.

Ele rejeita a sutileza e não vê exceções circunstanciais à teoria universal. A teoria é aplicável em todo local, a todo tempo, em qualquer cultura. Não há espaço para modificações ou mesmo para a descoberta de novas informações que possam modificar a forma que a teoria seja aplicada. O brutalismo é um sistema de pensamento fechado no qual todas as informações relevantes já são conhecidas e a maneira pela qual a teoria é aplicada é tida como um dado do aparato teórico. Até mesmo áreas difíceis como o direito da família, restituições criminais, direitos sobre ideias, responsabilização por invasões e outras áreas sujeitas à tradição de análise jurisprudencial se tornam parte de um corpo apriorístico que não admite exceções ou emendas.

E uma vez que o brutalismo é um impulso periférico no mundo libertário — os jovens não se interessam mais por essa abordagem —, ele se comporta da maneira típica a grupos muito marginalizados. A afirmação dos direitos e até dos méritos do racismo e do discurso de ódio já é excluída da discussão pública principal. As únicas pessoas que de fato escutam argumentos brutalistas — que são intencionalmente pouco convincentes — são outros libertários. Por esse motivo, o brutalismo é levado cada vez mais em direção ao sectarismo extremo; o ataque aos humanitários, que tentam embelezar sua mensagem, se torna uma ocupação integral.

Com essa sectarização, os brutalistas evidentemente afirmam que são os únicos verdadeiros adeptos da liberdade, porque só eles têm fibra para levar a lógica libertária ao seu extremo e aceitar seus resultados. Porém, o que ocorre aqui não é coragem ou rigor intelectual. A ideia deles do que significam as ideias libertarias é reducionista, truncada, impensada, incolor e sem a influência do desdobrar da experiência humana, tirando a liberdade do contexto histórico e social em que ela vive.

Digamos que você viva numa cidade tomada por um grupo fundamentalista que exclua todos aqueles que não são adeptos de sua fé, force as mulheres a usarem roupas como a burca, imponha um código legal teocrático e ostracize gays e lésbicas. Você pode até dizer que, neste caso, as pessoas são parte voluntária desse arranjo, mas, mesmo assim, não há qualquer liberalismo presente aí. Os brutalistas estarão nas trincheiras de defesa dessa microtirania, sempre com base na descentralização, nos direitos de propriedade e no direito de discriminar e excluir — ignorando completamente o cenário mais amplo de que, afinal, as aspirações individuais na direção de vidas mais plenas e livres são negadas diariamente.

Além disso, o brutalista acredita já conhecer os resultados da liberdade humana e que ela levaria a um cenário similar aos tronos e altares de tempos passados. Afinal de contas, para eles, a liberdade significa simplesmente o desprendimento de todos os impulsos mais vis da natureza humana que acreditam terem sido suprimidos pelo estado moderno: o desejo de pertencer a um grupo racial e religioso homogêneo, a permanência moral do patriarcado, a repulsa à homossexualidade e assim por diante. O que a maioria das pessoas considera como avanço moderno contra os preconceitos, os brutalistas creem serem exceções impostas na longa história dos instintos tribais e religiosos da humanidade.

É claro, o brutalista que eu descrevi aqui é um tipo ideal e provavelmente não é plenamente representado por qualquer pensador em particular. Mas o impulso brutalista está em evidência em todos os lugares, especialmente nas mídias sociais. É uma tendência de pensamento com posições e inclinações previsíveis. Trata-se de uma das principais fontes de racismo, sexismo, homofobia e anti-semitismo dentro do mundo libertário — uma tendência que nega que esta frase seja verdadeira, enquanto defende com igual paixão o direito de os indivíduos possuírem e agirem de acordo com essas visões. Afinal, dizem os brutalistas, o que é a liberdade humana sem o direito de se comportar de maneiras que coloquem nossas mais preciosas sensibilidades — e até mesmo a civilização — à prova?

Tudo, enfim, se resume à motivação fundamental do apoio à liberdade. Qual é o seu propósito? Qual é sua contribuição histórica dominante? Qual é o seu futuro? Aqui os humanitários divergem radicalmente dos brutalistas.

É verdade que não devamos negligenciar o núcleo e nos furtar às implicações mais difíceis da teoria pura da liberdade. Ao mesmo tempo, a história da liberdade e seu futuro não são apenas afirmações de direitos, mas também se relacionam à elegância, à estética, à beleza, à complexidade, ao servir as outras pessoas, à comunidade, à emergência gradual de normas culturais e ao desenvolvimento espontâneo de ordens estendidas de relacionamentos comerciais e particulares. A liberdade é o que dá vida à imaginação humana e permite que o amor se amplifique, estendendo-se a partir de nossos desejos mais benevolentes e elevados.

Uma ideologia roubada de seus adornos pode se tornar ofensiva à nossa vista, como uma monstruosidade de concreto, construída décadas atrás e imposta sobre uma paisagem urbana, constrangedora a todos, que apenas espera sua demolição. Então, o libertarianismo será brutalista ou humanitário? Todos precisam decidir.

Publicado originalmente no site da revista The Freeman

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Bitcoin has had a rough couple of weeks. With the closure and bankruptcy of MtGox and the closure-from-hacking of at least one smaller “bank,” the value of Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly. Predictably, this instability have caused some media outlets to make the exaggerated and premature announcement of the cryptocurrency’s death. But while most in the media are content to talk about Bitcoin the way they’d never talk about the dollar, Newsweek decided they would up the ante and “find” the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Certain publications, such as Salon, have taken to this story like a pig to mud, claiming a victory for the forces of the State over those scary, evil, unregulated market transactions and their crypto-communo-fascist-libertarian-anarchist-conservative followers. The thinking behind this is shallow, as is generally the case; if you can find and reveal Nakamoto, you now have someone to pin all of Bitcoin’s mistakes to. See also: attaching a leader to Occupy, or pinning the Koch Brothers simultaneously to everything labeled “libertarian” and confusing that with everything labeled “awful, statist and conservative.”

Now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been found, the punditry has someone to blame the Silk Road, MtGox’s failure and Dogecoin on. Except it’s becoming more and more unlikely that Newsweek actually found him.

Here’s the timeline:

On March 6, Leah McGrath Goodman published her cover story for Newsweek – the first print Newsweek cover story since they went online-only in 2012. It details a months-long hunt to find and talk to the man Goodman believes started Bitcoin. At one point, early in the article, she writes,

“It seemed ludicrous that the man credited with inventing Bitcoin – the world’s most wildly successful digital currency, with transactions of nearly $500 million a day at its peak – would retreat to Los Angeles’s San Gabriel foothills, hole up in the family home and leave his estimated $400 million of Bitcoin riches untouched. It seemed similarly implausible that Nakamoto’s first response to my knocking at his door would be to call the cops.”

Goodman found Dorian Nakamoto through an email list she obtained from a company that makes model train parts. They began a correspondence which ceased abruptly the moment she brought up Bitcoin. She then proceeded to contact Nakamoto’s family members, as well as Gavin Andresen, whose own contact with the founder of Bitcoin was limited to code and media angle and ceased when Andresen brought up that he was going to be speaking about Bitcoin to CIA officials.

From Dorian Nakamoto’s family, Goodman discovered a Cal-Poly-trained physicist who loved model trains and who excelled in anything having to do with engineering, computers and math, but who craved privacy and kept secrets; from Andresen, she learned exactly what everyone else has known since Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in 2011: that he was secretive, that he never talked about his personal life, and that the Bitcoin project was possibly a political statement.

On March 7, Dorian Nakamoto agreed to do an interview – no cops this time – with Ryan Nakashima from the Associated Press. Nakamoto denied any knowledge of Bitcoin until his son contacted him three weeks earlier, saying repeatedly, “I got nothing to do with it.” He was bombarded by press wanting to get in contact with him and eventually announced that he would only talk to one reporter over lunch. During that interview, Nakamoto said he had been misunderstood:

“I’m saying I’m no longer in engineering. That’s it. And even if I was, when we get hired, you have to sign this document, contract saying you will not reveal anything we divulge during and after employment. So that’s what I implied.”

Also on March 7, Newsweek and Leah McGrath Goodman released a statement standing fully behind their cover story:

Ms. Goodman’s research was conducted under the same high editorial and ethical standards that have guided Newsweek for more than 80 years. Newsweek stands strongly behind Ms. Goodman and her article. Ms. Goodman’s reporting was motivated by a search for the truth surrounding a major business story, absent any other agenda. The facts as reported point toward Mr. Nakamoto’s role in the founding of Bitcoin.

Finally on March 7, the P2P Foundation account of Satoshi Nakamoto went live for the first time in years – to debunk the Newsweek article: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

While none of this points to Dorian Nakamoto’s disqualification from the character, nothing so far points conclusively to him being the founder of Bitcoin either.

Since then, a host of ancillary blogs and punditry pieces have been published debating the facts and myths of the Newsweek article. But the crown jewel of them all has to be Salon’s aforementioned sneering, oddly sure of itself anti-libertarian “checkmate” piece, written on March 7, that boldly declares,

“If you invent a multibillion-dollar digital currency explicitly designed to remake the global financial system that gains serious traction, people will want to know who you are. If you mastermind an anarcho-libertarian project to break the hold of governments over money, history will demand answers — and good reporters will find them.”

That Goodman is a good reporter is not up to question here; what is questionable is how good the reporting in this particular instance is. It isn’t just Bitcoin fanatics that have criticized the article – other journalists have questioned it as well. As media critic Jay Rosen said in a column at PressThink:

“Show your work. Don’t tell us how much work went into it. You publish your story, you know it’s going to come under attack, you prepare for battle and when the time is right you release the evidence you have. Instead: ‘Goodman feels that she should be given the respect due a serious and reputable investigative journalist, working for a serious and reputable publication.’ That’s not ‘show your work.’ That’s, ‘You didn’t hear us. We are Newsweek magazine.’ They heard you. They don’t care. And they know that Newsweek sold for $1 a few years ago.”

It bears mentioning that Goodman did not shine a light on the evil anarcho-libertarian funny money conspiracy that Salon would so love to destroy. Read charitably, her article does one thing only: reveals the founder of Bitcoin. So the question of whether there is a plot “to break the hold of governments over money” goes fundamentally unanswered in this case – which, speaking frankly, makes the whole point of that Salon article seem silly.

And that’s really the lesson for today: if you’ve got an ideological agenda, maybe don’t make giant proclamations that your enemies have lost before the battle has begun.

De acordo com seu próprio relatório e com o que disse o colunista do Washington Post Howard Schneider (“Communists Have Seized the IMF“, 26 de fevereiro), o Fundo Monetário Internacional aparentemente amenizou sua posição sobre o “redistribuição de renda”. Isso, porém, é falso.

Tanto o relatório do FMI (“Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth“, IMF Discussion Note SDN/14/02, fevereiro de 2014) quanto o artigo de Schneider confundem “redistribuição” com “igualdade”. São textos que operam sob o pressuposto oculto de que a desigualdade é resultado espontâneo da operação do “mercado”, enquanto uma maior igualdade requer a intervenção estatal no mercado para redistribuir renda e contrabalancear essa tendência natural.

Esses pressupostos não surpreendem, já que são parte constintuinte da ideologia oficial da aliança entre as grandes empresas e o estado que define o sistema capitalista existente. Os atores dominantes na economia corporativista têm o interesse velado de promover a ideia incorreta de que sua riqueza e poder econômico são legítimos porque resultam de seu desempenho superior dentro de “nossa economia livre”, através da “livre iniciativa”. Os defensores do estado regulatório, da mesma maneira, têm um ineresse velado similar em promover a ideia também errônea de que a intervenção estatal é necessária para evitar o aumento da concentração de renda e das desigualdades de poder econômico.

Porém, esses são pressupostos falsos. A ação estatal de redistribuição renda para as classes mais baixas não corrige uma tendência natural do mercado à desigualdade — ao contrário, a desigualdade é resultado da intervenção estatal contínua no mercado para distribuir renda para as classes altas. A função primária do estado é facilitar a escassez de recursos, defender direitos artificiais de propriedade, monopólios, cartéis e barreiras de entrada ao mercado, através dos quais a classe dominante extrai seu excedente de renda — além de subsidiar diretamente os custos operacionais das grandes empresas com o dinheiro dos pagadores de impostos. A maior parte das rendas advindas da terra, dos lucros corporativos e das riquezas da plutocracia são rendimentos resultantes de monopólios estabelecidos e defendidos pelo estado.

O que normalmente é chamado de “redistribuição” é só uma política secundária. Dado que as políticas primárias do estado tendem a desviar a renda das classes que precisam gastar dinheiro para aquelas que o investem ou poupam, o capitalismo corporativo é tomado por uma tendência crônica e crescente ao sobreinvestimento, à capacidade excessiva de produção e ao subconsumo. Assim, o sistema é ameaçado por crises econômicas cada vez piores e pela radicalização das classes baixas, graças à insegurança econômica ou mesmo à pobreza extrema e fome.

A tributação progressiva e o estado de bem-estar — da forma relativamente moderada que existem — envolvem a tomada de uma pequena fração da renda que é redistribuída para cima e o desvio dela para baixo, de forma que sejam evitados níveis desestabilizadores de pobreza entre os mais pobres das classes baixas e que o aumento do poder de compra deles seja suficiente para reduzir a capacidade industrial ociosa. A renda “redistribuída” por políticas assistencialistas estão uma ordem de magnitude (pelo menos) abaixo da renda redistribuída originalmente pelo estado para as classes de proprietários, capitalistas, agiotas, detentores de “propriedade intelectual” e outros monopólios, e para as classes corporativas gerenciais e administrativas. É o equivalente a um assaltante dar a sua vítima o dinheiro do táxi para que ela chegue em casa com segurança, continue trabalhando e ganhe mais dinheiro para futuros assaltos.

Então, a pretensa “redistribuição” para as classes baixas é apenas um corretivo secundário à redistribuição anterior para as classes altas. A única solução realmente justa para eliminar a redistribuição para cima é deixar a competição do mercado e a cooperação voluntária destruírem as rendas da classe corporativa dominante.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

It can’t be easy living in Russia’s shadow, and I envy no one in that position. Given its long history and, consequently, the temperament of its leaders (and a good part of its population), Russia for the foreseeable future will be a regional power with an attitude. Thus it will ever be concerned with what happens on its borders. Like it or not, that’s how it is. America can’t change this situation, though it surely can exacerbate it.

And it has — by pushing NATO, the Cold War anti-Soviet alliance, up to Russia’s borders; by talking about putting interceptor missiles in former Soviet-allied nations in central Europe; by dangling NATO membership before former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia; and by cutting deals with other former Soviet republics in central Asia.

Yet the fact of Western contributory provocation is probably of little comfort to the innocent people of Ukraine.

So, what to do? Ukrainian military resistance would bring disaster. So would U.S. and NATO intervention. Destroying a village in order to save it is too reminiscent of America’s losing strategy in Vietnam. Perhaps some understanding between Ukraine and Russia along the lines of Finland’s would be possible; this would entail, in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, “mutually respectful neighbours, wide-ranging economic relations both with Russia and the EU, but no participation in any military alliance viewed by Moscow as directed at itself.”

That is for the people of Ukraine — not someone sitting safely in the United States — to decide. Ukrainian individuals and voluntary organizations should call the shots. I can see no good reason the central government in Kiev should determine for everyone in the country whether Ukrainians will trade with Europe or with Russia. The binary choice is a false alternative, and the two contending power groups should not demand that sort of choice. Free trade is about the liberty of individuals, not the power of governments, which would be well-advised to keep hands off.

None of this means that Americans can’t help individual Ukrainians. There is one important way to help without expanding Washington’s power, which achieved alarming proportions many generations ago.

I’m talking about opening America’s borders — scrapping immigration controls. Ukrainians who want to get out of their dicey neighborhood, whether permanently or temporarily, should be free to move to the United States. Look at it this way: How dare we Americans confine Ukrainians to a condition they might desperately wish to escape? How can we imagine ourselves to be a humane people while engaged in a policy with such odious consequences and implications for liberty?

Opening the borders, of course, is not offered here as a comprehensive answer to the conflict between Russia and the Ukrainians who want to be free of Russian influence, but it may be an answer for some Ukrainians. How many, no one can know. But it makes little difference. Let them in! There are about a million Ukrainians in the United States (2006 census figures), second only to Canada outside of Ukraine itself, with the largest centers in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. The newcomers need not be strangers in a strange land, though they should be welcome throughout the country.

Respecting the freedom to move would not only help the individuals who choose to exercise it; it might also have benefits in Ukraine itself. The kleptocrats of all parties, who have used Ukraine like their personal milch cow, might finally realize their folly if they witnessed an exodus of their most enterprising and ambitious residents.

But let’s not stop there. Why should Ukrainians get special treatment? There are oppressed and impoverished people everywhere, and it is no more humane for Americans to condemnthem to bad conditions than it is to condemn the Ukrainians. Respecting the freedom to move is a matter of justice.

Unsurprisingly, justice would have good consequences. “Immigration restrictions trap many millions in Third World misery. Economists’ consensus estimate is that open borders would roughly double world GDP, enough to virtually eliminate global poverty,” George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan writes (PDF).

So forget guaranteeing loans to corrupt government officials. Forget facing down the Russians over Crimea. Open the borders!

Very soon, S4SS will begin issuing its monthly newsletter, The New Leveller. It will be a running discussion devoted to radical libertarian and individualist anarchist thought, and, drawing off of nineteenth-century periodicals like Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty and Moses Harmon’s Lucifer, the Lightbearer, it will feature plenty of fire. The primary purpose of the New Leveller is to provide another voice for the most radical and unfiltered impulses in market anarchism.

Anyone interested in either feeding the flames by contributing, or in subscribing to the newsletter so that they can watch them go higher and higher, is more than welcome to contact as at the.new.leveller@gmail.com. Submissions should range (roughly) 500-1000 words, focused on content that would either help introduce people to the ideas of individualist anarchism, develop and explore the ideas of individualist anarchism for those already familiar with it, or analyze an issue from within a framework of individualist anarchism will be welcome. Basically, anything that you think might have fit with the aforementioned periodicals, or in the earlier issues of Murray Rothbard’s Libertarian Forum. Since this is a publication of the Students for a Stateless Society, we especially welcome content from students.

Those interested in getting an idea of what to expect can read the full text of the first editorial here.

“… So why call this publication ‘The New Leveller?’ Why use a name from the 17^th-century that wasn’t even liked by the group that got stuck with it?

We proudly take on the name ‘New Leveller,’ because as individualist anarchists, we are their philosophical descendants. Furthermore, even if they didn’t see it this way, there is something they were working to level, and it still needs leveling. …”

Com a falência do banco de Bitcoin Mt. Gox, mais de 400 de seus clientes expressaram interesse em entrar com um processo coletivo contra a empresa-mãe e seu dono, Mark Karpeles. A Mt. Gox era o maior mercado de Bitcoins do mundo e, embora o funcionamento da criptomoeda ainda seja incompreensível para várias pessoas, seu valor é real. Os prejuízos com a falência do Mt. Gox são estimados em US$ 480 milhões.

As acusações de fraude e negligência são justificadas, mas um processo talvez não seja a melhor forma de chegarmos a uma solução justa na economia desregulamentada da internet. É estranho que os membros da comunidade Bitcoin, muitos deles contrários à intervenção governamental sobre a oferta monetária, estejam tão dispostos a apelar para sistemas jurídicos estatais quando a situação se complica. Um processo certamente abriria as portas para que os legisladores complicassem ainda mais o uso do Bitcoin e de criptomoedas similares.

O ativista político americano Samuel Edward Konkin III popularizou a expressão “contraeconomia” para descrever todas as transações voluntárias que ocorrem fora do mercado regulamentado pelo governo. O Bitcoin, e as criptomoedas de forma geral, desempenham um papel importante na contraeconomia ao tornarem desnecessário o uso da moeda fiduciária estatal. Contudo, para que a contraeconomia seja sustentável, é necessário integrar sistemas legais não-estatais à sua estrutura geral. Ao invés de recorrer ao estado quando as coisas dão errado, esta oportunidade deve ser utilizada para discutir e desenvolver sistemas em que empresas contraeconômicas possam ser penalizadas por suas ações.

Um exemplo de regulamentação dentro da contraeconomia vem da comunidade em volta do Silk Road, um mercado online baseado em Bitcoins que serve principalmente para a compra e venda de drogas ilegais. Alguns de seus usuários — de um grupo chamado LSD Avengers — fez uma análise química do ácido que compraram para testar se era genuinamente LSD, dando aos outros usuários um padrão de segurança segundo o qual as drogas poderiam ser compradas e consumidas de forma segura. Isso ilustra como um mercado negro pode se auto-regulamentar sem recorrer à imposição de agências burocráticas como a Food and Drug Administration (agência do governo americano equivalente à Anvisa no Brasil).

O próprio Bitcoin desempenha um papel libertação em países como a Ucrânia e o Irã, já que disponibiliza um sistema de pagamentos independente do envolvimento e das diretrizes governamentais estipuladas pelos bancos centrais. É plausível que, se o destino do Mt. Gox fosse colocado nas mãos dos tribunais, regulamentações provavelmente se seguiriam. As regulamentações poderiam até satisfazer nossa necessidade ocidental de ter uma ilusão de segurança, mas prejudicariam a liberdade econômica em países cujos povos que tiveram menos sorte que os do Ocidente. Isso diminuiria o potencial revolucionário das moedas digitais.

Atualmente, não há sistema através do qual os mercados de Bitcoin possam ser punidos por suas ações. Recorrer ao estado, de fato, pode ser o único jeito pelo qual os clientes do Mt. Gox possam receber suas restituições devidas. O que se deve lembrar é que essa opção está longe de ser a melhor. Discussões maiores sobre a regulamentação de criptomoedas não são difíceis de prever e parecem até mesmo inevitáveis. No futuro, a contraeconomia digital terá que encontrar maneiras de se auto-regular. Os meios engenhosos pelos quais nós regulamos nossas economias digitais podem nos levar a maneiras de regular também nossas comunidades “analógicas”. Um dia, chegaremos num ponto em que a regulamentação dos mercados será coisa do passado e a contraeconomia, com seus mecanismos de auto-regulação, a substituirá completamente.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

C4SS Media presents Thomas L. Knapp‘s “Depends On What “Corruption” Is,” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

“We don’t need the politicians or their cronies. We don’t have to put up with them. And we should stop doing so.”

Wie opkomt voor vrijheid steunt vreedzame en vrijwillige uitwisseling tussen mensen en strijdt tegen gewelddadige beperking van deze uitwisseling. Het hoeft echter niet direct te betekenen dat een systeem van vreedzame, vrijwillige uitwisseling “kapitalisme” genoemd hoeft te worden.

Er zijn uiteraard sommigen die vinden dat dit overduidelijk is wat “kapitalisme” betekent. Ik kan ook niet bewijzen dat ze het bij het verkeerde eind hebben, omdat het woord verschillende dingen voor verschillende mensen betekent. Ik vertrouw er echter op dat zelfs wanneer voorstanders van vrijheid vrije uitwisseling steunen en dat willen uitdragen door te stellen dat ze “kapitalisme” omarmen, het misschien verstandig is simpelweg een ander woord te kiezen.

Dat komt omdat “kapitalisme” een voornamelijk negatieve lading heeft. Het is onbekend wanneer het Engelse woord “capitalism” voor het eerst werd gebruikt. Volgens de Oxford English Dictionary gebruikte William Makepeace Thackeray het woord (op neutrale wijze) al in 1854-55 in zijn roman The Newcomes.  Het werd echter al veel eerder op een kritische manier gebruikt. Zo werd het bijvoorbeeld al in 1825 meermaals met een negatieve bijklank gebruikt door de radicale vrijemarkt-schrijver Thomas Hodgskin. In zijn boek Popular Political Economy uit 1827 heeft hij het zelfs, in verrassend moderne bewoordingen, over “hebzuchtige kapitalisten” (“greedy capitalists”)!

Natuurlijk betekent het niet meteen dat het woord besmet is omdat één pro-vrijemarkt-schrijver “kapitalist” of “kapitalisten” op een negatieve manier gebruikte. Ik heb Hodgskin echter genoemd om duidelijk te maken dat deze woorden al geruime tijd afkeurend gebruikt worden, en niet alleen door tegenstanders van vrije markten. Het is vandaag de dag mijns inziens vrij duidelijk dat veel mensen die het over “kapitalisme” of “kapitalisten” hebben, in het geheel niet aan vrijheid denken.

Bijvoorbeeld: mainstream gedrukte en digitale media gebruiken regelmatig “kapitalisme” om te verwijzen naar “het huidige economische systeem.” Daarnaast is het redelijk gebruikelijk dat “kapitalisme” gebruikt wordt als synoniem voor het domineren van de werkvloer en de samenleving door de kapitaalbezitters. Voorvechters van vrijheid hoeven niet aangeduid te worden als voorstanders van kapitalisme in één van deze twee vormen.

Zoals de libertarische filosoof Roderick Long al aantoonde, vindt een bijzonder kwalijk gebruik van “kapitalisme” plaats wanneer mensen de term gebruiken in de zin van zowel “vrije uitwisseling” als “de status quo”, “overheersing door kapitalisten”, of beide. Op deze manier is “kapitalisme” een “package-deal”-concept dat twee onafhankelijke ideeën verbindt en ze behandelt alsof ze noodzakelijk bij elkaar horen. Voorvechters van vrijheid hebben alle reden dit gebruik van “kapitalisme” niet te steunen, tenzij ze de dubieuze opvatting willen staven dat vrije markten privileges met zich meebrengen en leiden tot hiërarchie, misbruik en armoede.

Tot op zeer grote hoogte is het huidige economische systeem één waarin vele vreedzame, vrijwillige uitwisselingen ontbreken. Een verstrengeling van juridische en regelgevende privileges bevoordeelt degenen met geld en connecties ten koste van alle anderen (denk aan patenten en copyright, heffingen, bankregulering, beroepslicenties, beperking in landgebruik, etc.). Het militair-industrieel complex hevelt onvoorstelbare hoeveelheden geld—onder bedreiging—over vanuit de zakken van gewone mensen naar de bankrekeningen van degenen aan wie overheidscontracten worden gegund en hun maatjes. Allerlei soorten subsidie voeden een netwerk van bevoorrechte bedrijven en non-profitorganisaties. Verder beschermt de staat aanspraken op land dat onder bedreiging afgestaan is of in beslag is genomen middels willekeurige volmachten, voordat het verdeeld wordt onder voorgetrokken individuen of groepen.

Nee, de economieën van de Verenigde Staten, Canada, West-Europa, Japan en Australië zijn ten minste niet centraal gepland. De Staat verklaart zich niet formeel eigenaar van (het merendeel van) productiemiddelen. Maar de bemoeienis van de Staat op verschillende niveaus omtrent het garanderen en uitbreiden van economische privileges maakt het moeilijk het huidige economische systeem als “vrij” te bestempelen. Dus als “kapitalisme” de naam is voor het systeem dat we nu hebben, heeft iedereen die vrijheid een warm hart toedraagt goede redenen om sceptisch over kapitalisme te zijn.

De privileges die kenmerkend zijn voor de bestaande economische orde, hoe we die ook noemen, bevoordeelt onevenredig diegenen met de meeste politieke invloed en de meeste rijkdom. Dit netwerk van privileges, in stand gehouden door de Staat, heeft ook de neiging om op verscheidene manieren de privileges van kapitalisten op de werkvloer te stimuleren. Met betrekking tot de werkvloer: door de Staat verzekerde privileges verkleinen de kans op zelfstandig ondernemerschap (door het verhogen van kapitaaleisen en anderszins de instapkosten te verhogen, terwijl tegelijkertijd de middelen die mensen kunnen gebruiken om een eigen bedrijf te beginnen en te onderhouden verkleind worden). Ook beperkt de Staat vakbondsactiviteiten door middel van de wet, waardoor werknemers minder effectief kunnen onderhandelen met werkgevers; hieronder valt ook wetgeving als de Wagner Act, welke vakbonden temt en hun geweldloze onderhandelingsmogelijkheden beperkt. Door zowel alternatieven voor loondienst als de collectieve onderhandelingsmogelijkheden van werknemers te beperken vergroot de Staat de invloed van werkgevers aanzienlijk. Kort gezegd: dominantie van de werkvloer en van de samenleving door “kapitalisten” zoals het tegenwoordig plaatsvindt bouwt op het verderf van de overheid. Nogmaals, als dit “kapitalisme” is, dan hebben voorstanders van vrijheid geen reden dit te omarmen.

Iemand kan uiteraard beargumenteren dat, hoewel “kapitalisme” regelmatig gebruikt wordt om te verwijzen naar afkeurenswaardige sociale verschijnselen, het net zo regelmatig verwijst naar een economisch systeem dat vrijheid werkelijk centraal stelt. Sommigen gebruiken het inderdaad op deze manier. Het negatieve gebruik is echter al lange tijd aanwezig en tegenwoordig zeer gebruikelijk.  Het woord is besmet. Wanneer mensen op straten van ontwikkelingslanden hun verzet tegen “kapitalisme” scanderen—in werkelijkheid niet doelend op oprechte vrijheid, maar eerder onrechtvaardige overheersing door Westerse machten en hun bevoorrechte corporate maatjes—denk ik dat het essentieel is voor voorvechters van vrijheid om duidelijk te maken dat het systeem van etatistische onderdrukking waar de betogers aan denken niet het systeem is dat wij voorstaan.

Bijdragers aan de redactionele pagina’s van Wall Street Journal, commentatoren op Faux News en andere spreekbuizen voor de politieke en economische elite mogen doorgaan “kapitalisme” te gebruiken voor wat het ook is waar zij zeggen voor te staan. Zij zijn niet de natuurlijke bondgenoten van het libertarisme en er is geen goede reden voor libertariërs om ze naar de kroon te steken. Steun aan vrije markten gaat bijzonder goed samen met het uitzwaaien van de term “kapitalisme.”

State violence thrives in the dark. This is why the state secrets privilege is so abused, it’s why the Obama administration has viciously persecuted whistleblowers, and it’s why states benefit from a  media climate where their legitimacy is assumed and radical ideas aren’t heard. So today I want to highlight some people both inside and outside prisons who are shining light on the prison state.

In Alabama, prisoners are filming each other on smuggled cell phones to tell their stories and express grievances about human rights abuses in Alabama prisons. These videos are then posted on a YouTube channel affiliated with the Free Alabama Movement. As Bay Area Intifada explains, “the prisoners speak of deplorable conditions, slave labor, prisons being a continuation of slavery and many candid stories from their lives inside and outside the cement walls of Alabama’s prisons.” The very nature of the prisoners’ non-violent disobedience tells us something about Alabama prisons. The communication mechanism they use to engage in political speech, the cell phone, is prohibited by prison officials. Only by disobeying the prison’s institutional rules can the truth about prisons be revealed. Prisons are designed to suppress communication, dissent, and the accountability that might result from openness. The Free Alabama Movement deserves the support of all who care about freedom and justice, and I’ll continue posting on their story in the coming weeks.

Outside of prison walls, I’ve been seeing prison abolitionist ideas in various media sources. Anarchist journalist Charles Davis published an excellent article at Vice that discusses prison abolition and interviews Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance. The interview covers a lot of important questions about prison abolition, including what to do about violent criminals, what tactics to use right now, and the risks of reform. Critical Resistance is one of the most significant prison abolitionist groups in the world today, and it’s always excellent to see their work highlighted at a popular website like Vice.

My friend Cory Massimo also recently published a guest post at The Stag Blog offering a libertarian case for prison abolition. He argues for a system based purely on restitution rather than punishment, and contends that prisons are the wrong response even to those who have violated the rights of others. I’m glad to see prison abolitionist ideas gaining traction in libertarian circles, and I hope they will continue to gain traction.

Shining light on the prison state doesn’t just mean talking about prisons themselves. Prisons are closely related to a variety of other political issues. For example, the prison industrial complex includes immigration detention centers th tat lock up migrants for deportation. Issues like border militarization should thus be core issues for those of us concerned about the prison industrial complex. Lucy Steigerwald has a great new column at AntiWar.com called “The War at Home,” which examines how issues like immigration restrictions, policing, prisons, and surveillance interact with militarism and the warfare state. Her first column, released this week, deals with border militarization. Border militarization tramples civil liberties while lining the pockets of both war profiteers and prison profiteers. I’m glad to see the issue being addressed at AntiWar.com.

The way borders operate as part of militarism, empire, capitalism, and the prison-industrial complex is also explored in Harsha Walia’s book Undoing Border Imperialism, which I recently started reading. The book develops a theoretical framework for seeing immigration restrictions not just as a domestic policy decision, but as a structural feature of empire. Moreover, the book discusses the tactics used by a network of anti-colonial and anti-state migrant justice organizations called No One Is Illegal, which operates throughout Canada. I haven’t finished reading the book yet, but so far it’s excellent and I highly recommend it.

Today’s a good day to mention border imperialism and the framework of criminalization that sustains it, because a major act of civil disobedience against the state’s borders happened today. Over 100 families attempted border crossings today at the Otay Mesa point of entry, demanding asylum so they could reunite with their families. These sorts of actions highlight the way the state’s borders, imposed through conquest and enforced through militarized violence, break apart the families, communities, and other peaceful forms of voluntary association that build a truly robust society.

These are just a few examples of the ongoing action, thought, and media happening lately to challenge the prison-industrial complex, the empire, and other mutually reinforcing systems of state violence. Let’s keep up these fights for freedom, until the state’s violence ends.

Julia Angwin (“Has Privacy Become a Luxury Good?”, The New York Times, 4 de março) relata as dificuldades enfrentadas pelas pessoas que tentam manter a privacidade de seus dados. Embora os indivíduos possam comprar bens e serviços para esse fim, seu alto custo diminui sua utilidade e disponibilidade. Não são produtos caros apenas no sentido financeiro, mas também exigem muito tempo, pesquisa e esforço para que sejam encontrados e funcionarem, além de não existirem critérios claros e verificáveis de sua eficácia. Angwin faz uma analogia com os alimentos orgânicos, chamando atenção para o fato de que a demanda tornou produtos seguros mais acessíveis e úteis, Angwin conclui que a regulamentação do estado é a única maneira de torná-los disponíveis para mais que apenas “aqueles que dispõem de tempo e dinheiro”: “O governo estabelece padrões mínimos para a segurança de todos os alimentos e tem requisitos bastante rigorosos de produção e rotulagem para produtos orgânicos. Talvez seja este o momento em que o governo deva começar a fazer o mesmo em relação à proteção de nossos dados”.

Mas os paralelos com a segurança de alimentos são, pelo contrário, uma ilustração clara dos motivos por que o estado regulatório não é um protetor confiável de nossos dados digitais.

Desde o livro de Gabriel Kolko The Triumph of Conservatism, vários trabalhos acadêmicos já demonstraram que a regulamentação da produção de alimentos nos Estados Unidos foi sempre promovida especialmente pelas grandes empresas, para subsidiar seu modelo de fabricação de produtos altamente industrializados e processados. Mesmo quando as regulamentações “estabelecem padrões mínimos para a segurança de todos os alimentos”, sua implementação impõe custos muito altos a pequenas empresas e alivia os custos das grandes empresas. Essas regulamentações também impedem a adoção de padrões voluntários mais rígidos e, às vezes, os torna ilegais, como no caso da pequena produtora de carnes Creekstone Farms Premium Beefs, que foi impedida pelo departamento de agricultura do governo dos EUA de testar todo o seu gado para verificar a existência da doença da vaca louca. Desde então as regulamentações alimentares têm sido promovidas por grandes empresas durante crises de segurança para estipular padrões mínimos suficientes para ter a confiança do público, mas que são mais baixos que os padrões que seriam efetivamente estabelecidos num ambiente competitivo. Em 2005, a Microsoft fez campanha por uma “legislação sobre privacidade que estabelecesse padrões uniformes de coleta, armazenamento e uso de informações pessoais” no exato momento em que seus programas começavam a perder espaço para concorrentes mais seguros.

Como grandes empresas são protegidas da competição em menor escala, seu inchaço organizacional requer que elas se tornem menos transparentes aos indivíduos e, ao mesmo tempo, exijam mais transparência deles. Assim, a dificuldade enfrentada pelos consumidores em determinar “o que tem dentro da comida” (tanto metafórica quanto literalmente) se torna cada vez maior, enquanto cada vez mais dados pessoais são coletados por grandes empresas e pelo próprio governo (que, dados os seus múltiplos escândalos de espionagem, seria praticamente uma raposa guardando o galinheiro dos nossos direitos digitais).

Uma população mais saudável só pode se originar a partir de ampla transformação que levasse a instituições em escala mais humana. Isso já era previsto por pensadores descentralistas e anti-estado como Murray Bookchin, que observava em 1952 que “o problema da adição de químicos à comida” era um efeito colateral de uma sociedade centralizada demais e que “é duvidoso se qualquer legislação poderia fazer algo para frear essa tendência”. Ralph Borsodi, já em 1920, defendia a produção orgânica de alimentos através de um livre mercado e da produção em pequena escala para consumo local a baixos preços, em contraposição à indústria de processados, que crescia na época. Basta que os dinossauros corporativos sejam tirados das costas dos pagadores de impostos que um livre mercado de serviços e produtos para proteger a privacidade dos dados dos indivíduos prosperará.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Dahr Jamail discusses the civilian deaths caused by the Iraqi government siege of Fallujah.

John B. Judis reviews Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama.

Brittney Wheeler discusses why liberty doesn’t need politics.

The LA Times editorial board discusses why the embargo on Cuba should be ended.

Karen J. Greenberg discusses 5 issues on which Obama is like George W. Bush.

George H. Smith discusses the study of liberty.

Dave Lindorff discusses how Americans could demand the ouster of the current government.

Alex Kane discusses U.S. meddling in the Syrian civil war.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses extrajudicial killings and the constitution.

Ivan Eland discusses North Korean human rights abuses.

Ajamu Baraka discusses the latest calls for war with Syria.

Sheldon Richman discusses how we can oppose bigotry while still rejecting politicians.

Ahmed Benchemsi discusses the tyranny of the Moroccan state.

Andrew Levine discusses what the U.S. will do without Al-Qaeda to justify war.

Wendy McElroy discusses how to live the good life.

Wendy McElroy discusses whether to steal or not.

Wendy McElroy discusses the virtue of self-interest.

Justin Doolittle discusses the selective concern of the U.S. government for human rights.

Uri Avnery discusses a film about Nazi Germany.

Peter Z. Scheer discusses corporate welfare.

Thaddueus Russell discusses labor corporatism.

Glen Ford discusses Obama’s war on civilization.

Z. Fareen Parvez discusses the Panjawi massacre.

Ehab Zahriyeh discusses a film set in Palestine called Omar.

John Stanton discusses the potential for a world war.

Graham Peebles discusses Ethiopian persecution of people.

Chris Ernesto discusses the U.S. siding with fascists and terrorists in 3 countries.

Jeffrey Sommers discusses discusses the Ukraine issue.

By its own recent report’s framing and that of the Washington Post’s Howard Schneider (“Communists Have Seized the IMF,” February 26), the International Monetary Fund has apparently gone soft on “redistribution.” But that framing is wrong.

Both the IMF report (“Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth,” IMF Discussion Note SDN/14/02, February 2014) and Schneider’s write-up of it conflate “redistribution” with “equality”: They operate from the unstated assumption that inequality is the spontaneous outcome of “the market,” while achieving greater equality requires government intervention in the market to redistribute income counter to this natural market tendency.

These unstated assumptions are of course unremarkable, constituting as they do the core of the official ideology of the big-business, big-government nexus defining the existing capitalist system. The corporate economy’s dominant players have a vested interest in promoting the erroneous assumption that their concentrated wealth and economic power are legitimate because they result from superior performance in “our free market economy” or “our free enterprise system.” And advocates for the regulatory state have a similar vested interest in promoting the equally erroneous assumption that state intervention is necessary to prevent rising concentrations of economic power and disparities of wealth.

But these assumptions are not true. State action to redistribute wealth downward isn’t a corrective to a normal market tendency of inequality — rather, inequality is the result of continual state intervention in the market to distribute wealth upward. The primary function of the state is to enforce the artificial scarcities, artificial property rights, monopolies, entry barriers and cartels by which the economic ruling class extracts its rents — and not only that, but to directly subsidize the operating costs of big business at taxpayer expense. The overwhelming bulk of land rent and corporate profit, and of the plutocracy’s income, are rents on such monopolies enforced by the state.

What’s normally called “redistribution” is entirely secondary. Because these rents tend to shift income from the classes that must spend money to live to the classes that invest it or save it, corporate capitalism is plagued with a chronic and growing tendency towards overinvestment, excess production capacity and underconsumption. As a result the system is threatened by steadily worsening economic crises and by political radicalization of the lower orders resulting from economic insecurity or outright homelessness and starvation.

Progressive taxation and the welfare state — to the modest extent that they actually exist — involve taking a small fraction of the income that’s redistributed upward, and shifting it back downward to prevent politically destabilizing levels of poverty among the poorest of the underclass and increase popular purchasing power enough to reduce idle industrial capacity. Income “redistributed” through food stamps, welfare and the like is an order of magnitude (at least) less than that originally redistributed upward by the state to landlords, capitalists, usurers, holders of “intellectual property” and other monopolies, and senior corporate management and the administrative classes. It’s the equivalent of a mugger hand his victim cab fare so she can get home safely, keep working and make more money for future muggings.

So so-called downward “redistribution” is just a secondary corrective to the state’s previous upward redistribution of income. The only truly just solution is to eliminate the upward redistribution in the first place, letting market competition and voluntary cooperation destroy the rentier incomes of our corporate ruling class.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, A verdadeira redistribuição ocorre por detrás dos panos.
• Spanish, La Verdadera Redistribución Ocurre Tras Bastidores.

The following article was written by Colin Ward and originally appeared in Freedom, June-July 1992.

The Background

That minority of children in any European country who were given the opportunity of studying the history of Europe as well as that of their own nations, learned that there were two great events in the last century: the unification of Germany, achieved by Bismarck and Emperor Wilhelm I, and the unification of Italy, achieved by Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuale II.

The whole world, which in those days meant the European world, welcomed these triumphs. Germany and Italy had left behind all those little principalities, republics and city states and papal provinces, to become nation states and empires and conquerors. They had become like France, whose little local despots were finally unified by force first by Louis XIV with his majestic slogan `L’Etat c’est moi’, and then by Napoleon, heir to the Grande Revolution, just like Stalin in the twentieth century who build the administrative machinery to ensure that it was true. Or they had become like England, whose kings (and its one republican ruler Oliver Cromwell) had successfully conquered the Welsh, Scots and Irish, and went on to dominate the rest of the world outside Europe. The same thing was happening at the other end of Europe. Ivan IV, correctly named `The Terrible’, conquered central Asia as far as the Pacific, and Peter I, known as `The Great’, using the techniques he learned in France and Britain, took over the Baltic, most of Poland and the west Ukraine.

Advanced opinion throughout Europe welcomed the fact that Germany and Italy had joined the gentlemen’s club of national and imperialist powers. The eventual results in the present century were appalling adventures in conquest, the devastating loss of life among young men from the villages of Europe in the two world wars, and the rise of populist demagogues like Hitler and Mussolini, as well as their imitators, to this day, who claim that `L’Etat c’est moi’.

Consequently every nation has had a harvest of politicians of every persuasion who have argued for European unity, from every point of view: economic, social, administrative and, of course, political.

Needless to say, in efforts for unification promoted by politicians we have a multitude of administrators in Bruxelles issuing edicts about which varieties of vegetable seeds or what constituents of beefburgers or ice cream may be sold in the shops of the member-nations. The newspapers joyfully report all this trivia. The press gives far less attention to another undercurrent of pan-European opinion, evolving from the views expressed in Strasbourg from people with every kind of opinion on the political spectrum, claiming the existence of a Europe of the Regions, and daring to argue that the Nation State was a phenomenon of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, which will not have any useful future in the twenty-first century. The forthcoming history of administration in the federated Europe they are struggling to discover is a link between, let us say, Calabria, Wales, Andalusia, Aquitaine, Galicia or Saxony, as regions rather than as nations, seeking their regional identity, economically and culturally, which had been lost in their incorporation in nation states, where the centre of gravity is elsewhere.

In the great tide of nationalism in the nineteenth century, there was a handful of prophetic and dissenting voices, urging a different style of federalism. It is interesting, at the least, that the ones whose names survive were the three best known anarchist thinkers of that century: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. The actual evolution of the political left in the twentieth century has dismissed their legacy as irrelevant. So much the worse for the left, since the road has been emptied in favour of the political right, which has been able to set out its own agenda for both federalism and regionalism. Let us listen, just for a few minutes, to these anarchist precursors.

Proudhon

First there was Proudhon, who devoted two of his voluminous works to the idea of federation in opposition to that of the nation state. They were La Federation et l’Unite en Italie of 1862, and in the following year, his book Du Principe Federatif.

Proudhon was a citizen of a unified, centralised nation state, with the result that he was obliged to escape to Belgium. And he feared the unification of Italy on several different levels. In his book De la Justice of 1858, he claimed that the creation of the German Empire would bring only trouble to the Germans and to the rest of Europe, and he pursued this argument into the politics of Italy.

On the bottom level was history, where natural factors like geology and climate had shaped local customs and attitudes. “Italy” he claimed, “is federal by the constitution of her territory; by the diversity of her inhabitants; in the nature of her genius; in her mores; in her history. She is federal in all her being and has been since all eternity … And by federation you will make her as many times free as you give her independent states”. Now it is not for me to defend the hyperbole of Proudhon’s language, but he had other objections. He understood how Cavour and Napoleon III had agreed to turn Italy into a federation of states, but he also understood that, per esempio, the House of Savoy would settle for nothing less than a centralised constitutional monarchy. And beyond this, he profoundly mistrusted the liberal anti-clericalism of Mazzini, not through any love of the Papacy but because he recognised that Mazzini’s slogan, `Dio e popolo’, could be exploited by any demagogue who could seize the machinery of a centralised state. He claimed that the existence of this administrative machinery was an absolute threat to personal and local liberty. Proudhon was almost alone among nineteenth century political theorists to perceive this:

“Liberal today under a liberal government, it will tomorrow become the formidable engine of a usurping despot It is a perpetual temptation to the executive power, a perpetual threat to the people’s liberties. No rights, individual or collective, can be sure of a future. Centralisation might, then, be called the disarming of a nation for the profit of its government …”

Everything we now know about the twentieth century history of Europe, Asia, Latin America or Africa supports this perception. Nor does the North American style of federalism, so lovingly conceived by Thomas Jefferson, guarantee the removal of this threat. One of Proudhon’s English biographers, Edward Hyams, comments that: “It has become apparent since the Second World War that United States Presidents can and do make use of the Federal administrative machine in a way which makes a mockery of democracy”. And his Canadian translator paraphrases Proudhon’s conclusion thus:

“Solicit men’s view in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political `language’ of mass democracy, which represents `the people’ as unitary and undivided and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end.”

This observation reveals a profound understanding of the psychology of politics. Proudhon was extrapolating from the evolution of the Swiss Confederation, but Europe has other examples in a whole series of specialist fields. The Netherlands has a reputation for its mild or lenient penal policy. The official explanation of this is the replacement in 1886 of the Code Napoleon by “a genuine Dutch criminal code” based upon cultural traditions like “the well-known Dutch `tolerance’ and tendency to accept deviant minorities”. I am quoting the Netherlands criminologist Dr Willem de Haan, who cites the explanation that Dutch society `has traditionally been based upon religious, political and ideological rather than class lines. The important denominational groupings created their own social institutions in all major public spheres. This process … is responsible for transporting a pragmatic, tolerant general attitude into an absolute social must”.

In other words, it is diversity and not unity, which creates the kind of society in which you and I can most comfortably live. And modern Dutch attitudes are rooted in the diversity of the medieval city states of Holland and Zeeland, which explained, as much as Proudhon’s regionalism, that a desirable future for all Europe is in accommodation of local differences.

Proudhon listened, in the 1860s, to the talk of a European confederation or a United States of Europe. His comment was that:

“By this they seem to understand nothing but an alliance of all the states which presently exist in Europe, great and small, presided over by a permanent congress. It is taken for granted that each state will retain the form of government that suits it best. Now, since each state will have votes in the congress in proportion to its population and territory, the small states in this so-called confederation will soon be incorporated into the large ones …”

Bakunin

The second of my nineteenth century mentors, Michael Bakunin, claims our attention for a variety of reasons. He was almost alone among that century’s political thinkers in foreseeing the horrors of the clash of modern twentieth century nation-states in the First and Second World Wars, as well as predicting the fate of centralising Marxism in the Russian Empire. In 1867 Prussia and France seemed to be poised for a war about which empire should control Luxemburg and this, through the network of interests and alliances, “threatened to engulf all Europe”. A League for Peace and Freedom held its congress in Geneva, sponsored by prominent people from various countries like Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Hugo and John Stuart Mill. Bakunin seized the opportunity to address this audience, and published his opinions under the title Federalisme, Socialisme et Anti-Theologisme. This document set out thirteen points on which, according to Bakunin, the Geneva Congress was unanimous.

The first of these proclaimed: “That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe”. His second point argued that this aim implied that states must be replaced by regions, for it observed: “That the formation of these States of Europe can never come about between the States as constituted at present, in view of the monstrous disparity which exists between their various powers.” His fourth point claimed: “That not even if it called itself a republic could an centralised bureaucratic and by the same token militarist States enter seriously and genuinely into an international federation. By virtue of its constitution, which will always be an explicit or implicit denial of domestic liberty, it would necessarily imply a declaration of permanent war and a threat to the existence of neighbouring countries”. Consequently his fifth point demanded: “That all the supporters of the League should therefore bend all their energies towards the reconstruction of their various countries in order to replace the old organisation founded throughout upon violence and the principle of authority by a new organisation based solely upon the interests needs and inclinations of the populace, and owning no principle other than that of the free federation of individuals into communes communes into provinces, provinces into nations, and the latter into the United States, first of Europe, then of the whole world.

The vision thus became bigger and bigger, but Bakunin was careful to include the acceptance of secession. His eighth point declared that: “Just because a region has formed part of a State, even by voluntary accession, it by no means follows that it incurs any obligation to remain tied to it forever. No obligation in perpetuity is acceptable to human justice … The right of free union and equally free secession comes first and foremost among all political rights; without it, confederation would be nothing but centralisation in disguise.

Bakunin refers admiringly to the Swiss Confederation “practising federation so successfully today”, as he puts it and Proudhon, too, explicitly took as a model the Swiss supremacy of the commune as the unit of social organisation, linked by the canton, with a purely administrative federal council. But both remembered the events of 1848, when the Sonderbund of secessionist cantons were compelled by war to accept the new constitution of the majority. So Proudhon and Bakunin were agreed in condemning the subversion of federalism by the unitary principle. In other words, there must be a right of secession.

Kropotkin

Switzerland, precisely because of its decentralised constitution, was a refuge for endless political refugees from the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires. One Russian anarchist was even expelled from Switzerland. He was too much, even for the Swiss Federal Council. He was Peter Kropotkin, who connects nineteenth century federalism with twentieth century regional geography.

His youth was spent as an army officer in geological expeditions in the Far Eastern provinces of the Russian Empire, and his autobiography tells of the outrage he felt at seeing how central administration and funding destroyed any improvement of local conditions, through ignorance, incompetence and universal corruption, and through the destruction of ancient communal institutions which might have enabled people to change their own lives. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the administrative machinery was suffocated by boredom and embezzlement.

There is a similar literature from any empire or nation-state: the British Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and you can read identical conclusions in the writings of Carlo Levi or Danilo Dolci. In 1872, Kropotkin made his first visit to Western Europe and in Switzerland was intoxicated by the air of a democracy, even a bourgeois one. In the Jura hills he stayed with the watch-case makers. His biographer Martin Miller explains how this was the turning point in his life:

“Kropotkin’s meetings and talks with the workers on their jobs revealed the kind of spontaneous freedom without authority or direction from above that he had dreamed about. Isolated and self-sufficient, the Jura watchmakers impressed Kropotkin as an example that could transform society if such a community were allowed to develop on a large scale. There was no doubt in his mind that this community would work because it was not a matter of imposing an artificial `system’ such as Muraviev had attempted in Siberia but of permitting the natural activity of the workers to function according to their own interests.”

It was the turning point of his life. The rest of his life was, in a sense, devoted to gathering the evidence for anarchism, federalism and regionalism.

It would be a mistake to think that the approach he developed is simply a matter of academic history. To prove this, I need only refer you to the study that Camillo Berneri published in 1922 on `Un federaliste Russo, Pietro Kropotkine’. Berneri quotes the `Letter to the Workers of Western Europe’ that Kropotkin handed to the British Labour Party politician Margaret Bondfield in June 1920. In the course of it he declared:

“Imperial Russia is dead and will never be revived. The future of the various provinces which composed the Empire will be directed towards a large federation. The natural territories of the different sections of this federation are in no way distinct from those with which we are familiar in the history of Russia, of its ethnography and economic life. All the attempts to bring together the constituent parts of the Russian Empire, such as Finland, the Baltic provinces, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Siberia and others’ under a central authority are doomed to certain failure. The future of what was the Russian Empire is directed towards a federalism of independent units.”

You and I today can see the relevance of this opinion, even though it was ignored as totally irrelevant for seventy years. As an exile in Western Europe, he had instant contact with a range of pioneers of regional thinking. The relationship between regionalism and anarchism has been handsomely, even extravagantly, delineated by Peter Hall, the geographer who is director of the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at Berkeley, California, in his book Cities of Tomorrow (1988). There was Kropotkin’s fellow-anarchist geographer, Elisee Reclus, arguing for small-scale human societies based on the ecology of their regions. There was Paul Vidal de la Blache, another founder of French geography, who argued that “the region was more than an object of survey; it was to provide the basis for the total reconstruction of social and political life.” For Vidal, as Professor Hall explains, the region, not the nation, which “as the motor force of human development: the almost sensual reciprocity between men and women and their surroundings, was the seat of comprehensible liberty and the mainspring of cultural evolution, which were being attacked and eroded by the centralised nation-state and by large-scale machine industry.”

Patrick Geddes

Finally there was the extraordinary Scottish biologist Patrick Geddes, who tried to encapsulate all these regionalist ideas, whether geographical, social, historical, political or economic, into an ideology of reasons for regions, known to most of us through the work of his disciple Lewis Mumford. Professor Hall argued that:

“Many, though by no means all, of the early visions of the planning movement stemmed from the anarchist movement, which flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth … The vision of these anarchist pioneers was not merely of an alternative built form, but of an alternative society, neither capitalist nor bureaucratic-socialistic: a society based on voluntary co-operation among men and women, working and living in small self-governing communities.”

Today

Now in the last years of the twentieth century, I share this vision. Those nineteenth century anarchist thinkers were a century in advance of their contemporaries in warning the peoples of Europe of the consequences of not adopting a regionalist and federalist approach. Among survivors of every kind of disastrous experience in the twentieth century the rulers of the nation states of Europe have directed policy towards several types of supranational existence. The crucial issue that faces them is the question of whether to conceive of a Europe of States or a Europe of Regions.

Proudhon, 130 years ago, related the issue to the idea of a European balance of power, the aim of statesmen and politician theorists, and argued that this was “impossible to realise among great powers with unitary constitutions”. He had argued in La Federation et l’Unite’ en Italie that “the first step towards the reform of public law in Europe” was “the restoration of the confederations of Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Danube, as a prelude to the decentralisation of the large states and hence to general disarmament”. And in Du Principe Federatif he noted that “Among French democrats there has been much talk of, European confederation, or a United States of Europe. By this they seem to understand nothing but an alliance of all the states which presently exist in Europe, great and small, presided over by a permanent congress.” He claimed that such a federation would either be a trap or would have no meaning, for the obvious reason that the big states would dominate the small ones.

A century later, the economist Leopold Kohr (Austrian by birth, British by nationality, Welsh by choice), who also describes himself as an anarchist, published his book The Breakdown of Nations, glorifying the virtues of small-scale societies and arguing, once again, that Europe’s problems arise from the existence of the nation state. Praising, once again, the Swiss Confederation, he claimed, with the use of maps, that “Europe’s problem — as that of any federation — is one of division, not of union.”

Now to do them justice, the advocates of a United Europe have developed a doctrine of `subsidiarity’, arguing that governmental decisions should not be taken by the supra-nation institutions of the European Community, but preferably by regional or local levels of administration, rather than by national governments. This particular principle has been adopted by the Council of Europe, calling for national governments to adopt its Charter for Local Self-Government “to formalise commitment to the principle that government functions should be carried out at the lowest level possible and only transferred to higher government by consent.”

This principle is an extraordinary tribute to Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin, and the opinions which they were alone in voicing (apart from some absorbing Spanish thinkers like Pi y Margall or Joaquin Costa), but of course it is one of the first aspects of pan-European ideology which national governments will choose to ignore. There are obvious differences between various nation states in this respect. In many of them — for example Germany, Italy, Spain and even France — the machinery of government is infinitely more devolved than it was fifty years ago. The same may soon be true of the Soviet Union. This devolution may not have proceeded at the pace that you or I would want, and I will happily agree than the founders of the European Community have succeeded in their original aim of ending old national antagonisms and have made future wars in Western Europe inconceivable. But we are still very far from a Europe of the Regions.

I live in what is now the most centralised state in Western Europe, and the dominance of central government there has immeasurably increased, not diminished, during the last ten years. Some people here will remember the rhetoric of the then British Prime Minister in 1988:

“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the State in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels”.

This is the language of delusion. It does not relate to reality. And you do not have to be a supporter of the European Commission to perceive this. But it does illustrate how far some of us are from conceiving the truth of Proudhon’s comment that: “Even Europe would be too large to form a single confederation; it could form only a confederation of confederations.”

The anarchist warning is precisely that the obstacle to a Europe of the Regions is the nation state. If you and I have any influence on political thinking in the next century, we should be promoting the reasons for regions. “Think globally — act locally” is one of the useful slogans of the international Green movement. The nation state occupied a small segment of European history. We have to free ourselves from national ideologies in order to act locally and think regionally. Both will enable us to become citizens of the whole world, not of nations nor of trans-national super-states.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Sociologia Anarchica del Federalismo.

Bibliography:

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Selected Writings, edited by Stewart Edwards (London, Macmillan, 1970)

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, translated by Richard Vernon (University of Toronto Press, 1979)

Edward Hyams, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (London, John Murray, 1979)

Michael Bakunin, Selected Writings, edited by Arthur Lehning (London, Jonathan Cape, 1973)

Willem de Haan, The Politics of Redress (London, Unwin Hyman, 1990)

Martin Miller, Kropotkin, (University of Chicago Press, 1976)

Camillo Berneri, Peter Kropotkin: His Federalist Ideas (1922) (London, Freedom Press, 1942)

Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: an intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988)

Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations (London, Routledge, 1957)

Ernest Wistnch, After 1982: The United States of Europe (London, Routledge, 1989)

Council of Europe, The Impact of the Completion of the Internal Market on Local and Regional Autonomy (Council of Europe Studies and Texts, Series no. 12, 1990)

Margaret Thatcher, address to the College of Europe, Bruges, 20th September 1988.