[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés]

The philosophy of Max Stirner (1806-1856 C.E.), or Egoism as it is sometimes crudely called, essentially addresses the relationship between the individual and alienation; to use Stirner’s language, the alienation between the individual and their property. Property can be interpreted in different ways, such as the common understanding of it as something owned, but also as a quality or attribute. I personally choose to interpret it as a combination of these two definitions, as a quality or attribute that is owned. Ownership takes place through the use of an individual’s power over their property and alienation takes place when we no longer exert power over it.

Alienation can also lead to domination, through which a thing that we do not exert power over may exert power over us in turn. Individuals within our society find themselves dominated by their social and material conditions due to their alienation, or lack of power, over them. It is our lack of power over these conditions that has led society in an ecologically disastrous direction, as power is concentrated into the hands of a few individuals. I contend that in order for us to confront ecological collapse, we must seize property out of private hands and into our own.

That is to say, we must address our alienation from the biosphere. I contend that this is only possible by direct confrontation with Capitalism and the Nation-State. The ways in which these hierarchical social formations alienate the masses is countless, but of particular interest to us is the ways in which they alienate us from our ability to have power over our material surroundings. Capitalism as an economic system is based within private property, that is property that is exclusive to the Capitalist. This exclusivity is only possible through the existence of the Nation-State, which protects private property through a combination of laws, social internalization, and the direct power of police and military institutions.

These institutional mechanisms allow for the constant accumulation of wealth for the Capitalist, at the expense of the masses and the biosphere. Private property in this sense can be understood as alienated property, property that the masses are excluded from, and in turn exploited by, through the forced labor of the Capitalist system. The biosphere is not something we relate to through the use of our own power, but rather as an alienated resource privately controlled by Capitalists. From the places we live to the spaces in which we work, everything is simply a source of exploitation and domination by the Capitalist system, justified and enforced by the Nation-State.

Confronting this situation would mean expropriating private property into the hands of the masses, under the power of the people to consume as they want. Consumption in the sense used by Stirner means to exert power over a thing and to take it into ourselves, to “dissolve” it into the I that is myself. Rather than being defined by this thing, this thing becomes a part of the greater whole that is myself. The implication that this has about our relationship with the biosphere means to me “consuming” it, taking it into ourselves with the understanding that the stability and life of the biosphere inherently affects our own. As such, we must protect the biosphere as an extension of ourselves, which is only possible through our direct power to affect a meaningful relationship with the biosphere. Such a relationship is impossible under our current, hierarchical social conditions and as such must be confronted.

This in essence is what the theory of Social Ecology advocates as well. Founded by Murray Bookchin (1921-2006 C.E.), Social Ecology is based in the idea that human social conditions are the cause of the current ecological crisis. The evolution of our human society (Second Nature) out of the non-human realm (First Nature) involved the development of particular social hierarchies that laid the groundwork for the domination within society that we see today. In order to create a holistic society, one based in the recognition of “Unity in Diversity” or the idea that the complexity of life and interactions within an ecosystem are directly affected by its stability, humanity must build a society in which we are active participants within our biosphere, rather than treating it as merely a resource to be plundered and exploited.

Which, as I’ve already elaborated on above, is only possible through direct confrontation with our current hierarchical conditions, seizing the land and resources out of the hands of Capitalists and into our own. Such conditions would mean a direct interaction with individuals and their communities in regards to their immediate biological surroundings, allowing them to make rational decisions based within the knowledge and understanding that comes with localized living. When I say “their” communities, I really do mean that, insofar as the individuals who make up their communities are the “owners” of it, they exert power over it and consume it as they want. They are not restrained by hierarchical relations and as such may associate freely, as they please, not because they are guaranteed by external right, but by the conscious, direct power of individuals themselves.

Such a society would be a meaningful embrace of the Egoism of the individual, the power of the I, to build the conditions of a Free Nature. Free Nature exists when the human and non-human realms co-exist, through the unity of Second and First Nature. This requires us to have the power to understand our place within nature, which means recognizing that human social evolution folded out of natural evolution. That the concept of “Unity in Diversity” holds a valuable social principle for humanity, not as a moral value, but materially valuable in its understanding of biological and social stability. For individuals, this means recognizing that isolated we are limited in our capacities, but with others, we can accomplish much greater tasks collectively.

It is through our collective action as unique, diverse individuals acting together that we can confront the systems of domination and subjugation that oppress the masses and the biosphere. We can reclaim ourselves, to be able to freely decide how and in what way we desire to live as individuals, either alone or together. Our surroundings would no longer be alien to us, but rather our own, something that we actively take into ourselves and care for as an extension of us. Conditions in which society, ecology and the Ego are in co-existence.

Escrito por Eric Fleischmann. Título original: Laurance Labadie’s “Money and Politics”, 27 de enero del 2022. Traducido al español por Camila Figueroa.

Dinero y política

El dinero, especialmente el dinero a crédito, es sin duda uno de los mayores descubrimientos cooperativos. Sin él no parece posible una gran especialización del trabajo, excepto bajo un control estatal total de la industria, e incluso aquí sería necesario algo de su naturaleza para mantener un control del consumo.

El dinero es inconcebible sin pensar al mismo tiempo en un patrón de valor y, seguramente, en una base de emisión. Decir que es un “engaño pernicioso que debe haber algo detrás del dinero” es decir un absurdo. El dinero, al ser un derecho sobre la riqueza, debe basarse en algo más sustancial que las meras promesas para ser sólido, estable o digno de confianza. Y este algo es la riqueza tangible, es decir, cualquier cosa de valor que no esté sujeta a una rápida y severa depreciación.

También es tan absurdo pensar que bajo un sistema monetario realmente sano el acaparamiento es un mal que causa tiempos difíciles como decir que un hombre que ha ahorrado para un día lluvioso sufrirá por ello. Siendo el acaparamiento un mero consumo pospuesto, no hay ninguna razón para creer que pueda cambiar fundamentalmente la producción o la distribución de la riqueza. Cuando se entiende que el límite natural del dinero a crédito es la cantidad de riqueza en la que se basa, es un error evidente pensar que el atesoramiento puede reducir la cantidad de moneda necesaria mientras haya riqueza sin monetizar.

Otro “engaño pernicioso” es pensar que el “aumento o la retirada adecuada de moneda” puede afectar a su valor o “estabilizarlo”. El dinero es una promesa de pago. Si Smith tiene 1.000 fanegas de trigo y emite 100 promesas por 1 fanega cada una, ¿cómo puede afectar al valor de esas promesas si emite 100 más? El valor sólo puede disminuir si emite en exceso, es decir, cuando no hay “algo a cambio de (su) dinero”. La “inestabilidad” es una característica de un sistema monetario defectuoso.

Después de todo, ¿cuál es el problema del dinero? Es proporcionar un medio de cambio sólido a bajo coste. Se ha demostrado con demasiada frecuencia que el interés es un fenómeno artificial y la causa principal de la explotación. Puede ser causado por dos cosas, una insuficiencia de dinero o el control de su emisión en pocas manos. Hoy en día se debe a ambas cosas, pero principalmente a esta última. El coste laboral real de la banca es probablemente inferior a la mitad del uno por ciento. Todo lo que se cobra por encima de esto es puro interés, es decir, robo y estafa.

Por lo que sabemos, el oro, más que cualquier otra cosa, posee las cualidades ideales de un estándar de valor. Tiene un valor relativamente estable, es útil, duradero, fácilmente reconocible, de calidad uniforme, se puede subdividir sin perder su valor y tiene un valor comparativamente grande en pequeñas cantidades. Pero es una base de emisión muy pobre medida en términos de oro, pero debería tener la misma oportunidad que el oro para servir como base para la emisión de dinero.

Hoy tenemos el espectáculo de que esos privilegiados, los dueños del oro, a través del Sistema de la Reserva Federal reciben intereses de 8 a 15 veces su capital original. Cuando se comprende que el interés del dinero es la causa principal de los beneficios empresariales, se manifiesta la enormidad de esta estafa. Es vital para entender los procesos económicos diferenciar entre el ámbito industrial y el financiero. El ámbito financiero es casi pura estafa. Los intereses de la banca están engullendo y ganando inevitablemente el control de la industria.

Comentario – Eric Fleischmann:

Este artículo, archivado en la Colección Joseph A. Labadie de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Michigan, fue escrito originalmente para la segunda revista anarquista llamada Madre Tierra y, en 1933, publicado en ella por John G. Scott y Jo Ann Wheeler. Este es uno de los aparentemente cientos de artículos que Labadie escribió sobre el tema del dinero. Chord -el autor anónimo que se encuentra en Anarco-Pesimismo- escribe que “[c]on el típico desprecio por los gustos populares o la moda, Labadie concibió el esquema básico de su concepto conspirativo del dinero en la década de 1930, con su implicación de que la única reforma que podría poner la mayoría de las palancas al servicio del individualismo y la libertad sería la separación del dinero y el Estado”. Y en este comentario para el Proyecto de Archivos de Laurance Labadie, me gustaría hablar primero de su teoría del crédito y luego de su relación con el Sistema de la Reserva Federal.

Para Labadie, “el límite natural del dinero a crédito es la cantidad de riqueza en la que se basa” y como tal “el dinero, al ser un derecho sobre la riqueza, debe basarse en algo más sustancial que las meras promesas para ser sólido, estable o digno de confianza. Y este algo es la riqueza tangible, es decir, cualquier cosa de valor que no esté sujeta a una rápida y severa depreciación”. Esto contrasta con la idea de Kevin Carson sobre el crédito en The Desktop Regulatory State, donde discute la idea de un sistema de compensación de crédito mutuo en el que las empresas “gastan dinero en existencia incurriendo en débitos para la compra de bienes dentro del sistema, y luego ganando créditos para compensar los débitos mediante la venta de sus propios servicios dentro del sistema. La moneda funciona como una especie de pagaré por el que un participante monetiza el valor de su producción futura”. La comparación de estas dos consideraciones mutualistas del crédito lleva a la observación de que: la primera sostiene que el crédito es principalmente una herramienta de intercambio a través de la propiedad de “acciones”, mientras que la segunda considera que el crédito es ante todo un mecanismo de “flujos” de bienes y servicios. ¿Qué modelo de crédito es el correcto? Tal vez sólo un mercado verdaderamente libre lo diga.

Pero siguiendo esta creencia en el dinero crediticio descentralizado, Labadie se opone necesariamente a la banca central como el FRS. Y la oposición a la Fed es un pilar de la política libertaria norteamericana, ya que la plataforma del Partido Libertario incluye sistemáticamente “la abolición del Sistema de la Reserva Federal, la Corporación Federal de Seguros de Depósitos, el Sistema Bancario Nacional y todas las intervenciones similares”. Sin embargo, la crítica de Labadie a “aquellos individuos privilegiados, los propietarios del oro, a través del Sistema de la Reserva Federal que reciben intereses de 8 a 15 veces su capital original” se produce casi 40 años antes de que David Nolan fundara el Partido Libertario en respuesta al fin de Nixon del patrón oro parcial que comenzó el mismo año en que Labadie escribió esta pieza. De hecho, Labadie escribe este artículo unos 20 años antes de que Dean Russell propusiera que los liberales clásicos abandonaran el título público de liberal y argumentara que “los que amamos la libertad nos reservamos para nosotros la buena y honorable palabra ‘libertario’”. Habiendo nacido 15 años antes de que la Ley de la Reserva Federal de 1913 pusiera a EE. UU. en el curso aparentemente permanente hacia la banca centralizada contemporánea, Labadie experimentó de primera mano la destrucción que dicho sistema provocó, especialmente durante la Gran Depresión. Esto da especial credibilidad a las perspectivas que presenta y un mayor contexto a la lectura de análisis como estos para los libertarios contemporáneos tanto de derecha como de izquierda.

Back on March 14, 2020, I began a series on the Coronavirus, which continued through 35 installments (the most recent of which was posted on November 10, 2021). This is not technically an installment of that series, but it addresses another kind of infection, which persists to this day among a certain brand of “libertarians”—who exhibited symptoms of it way back in the 1980s, when the HIV/AIDS crisis took hold in the United States. After seeing so many libertarians dismiss the COVID-19 “pandemic” (scare quotes intended) as non-lethal at best or an outright hoax at worst, I—a witness to hundreds of people in my hard-hit Brooklyn neighborhood being rushed to hospitals or off to funeral homes—was sickened, but not surprised by the denialism on display. On May 5, 2020, in the twenty-first installment of my Coronavirus series, “Lockdowns, Libertarians, and Liberation,” I wrote:

[T]here was something about the early response [of libertarians] to the coronavirus as a “hoax” or an “exaggeration” that was eerily familiar to me. Back in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was killing off a generation of gay men in the West (while ravaging a largely heterosexual population in Africa), some libertarians (including those influenced by Ayn Rand), ever fearful of those who proposed a growing governmental role in both medical research and in locking down bathhouses that were transmission belts for promiscuous, unsafe sex, grabbed onto the work of the molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, who played a major role in what became known as the AIDS denialism controversy. Duesberg was among those dissenting scientists who argued that there was no connection between HIV and AIDS, and that gay men were dying en masse because of recreational and pharmaceutical drug use, and then, later, by the use of AZT, an early antiviral treatment to combat those with symptoms of the disease.

If the scientific community had accepted Duesberg’s theories, hundreds of thousands of people would be dead today. The blood supply would never have been secured, since HIV screening of blood donors would never have become public policy, and countless thousands of people receiving blood transfusions would have been infected by HIV and would have subsequently died from opportunistic infections. …

So, while many libertarians have been at the forefront of rolling back the state’s interference in people’s personal lives, advocating the elimination of discriminatory anti-sodomy and marriage laws, there were some libertarians who, early on, in the AIDS epidemic, grabbed onto Duesberg’s theories as scientific proof that the whole HIV/AIDS thing was a pretext for the expansion of the state-science nexus.

While I do not dispute the dangers wrought by nearly a century of incestuous ties between government, science, and the medical, pharmaceutical, and health insurance industries, I do not believe that all the by-products of “state science” are “dangerous” to our health, as Edmond S. Bradley claimed back in 2006. Bradley, a doctor of music arts and composition, goes so far as to echo the Duesberg theory, which was dealt a serious blow by research developments in the late 1980s that bore fruit for effective treatments for HIV/AIDS by the mid-1990s.

Thinking that this 2006 Mises Institute article was an “outlier,” I was recently involved in a Facebook discussion where I was attacked by yet another “libertarian” for having proposed that there was something wrong with the Duesberg denialists. And then, on the site of the Property and Freedom Society, on January 5, 2022—only yesterday—a 2009 video of Duesberg was posted [YouTube link]. This resurrection of denialism is, of course, part of an overall pushback with regard to all things COVID. But it is not COVID that concerns me here.

The first cases of the “gay cancer” were reported in June 1981, but it was not until 1985, that HIV was first identified as “the causative agent of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and its complete genome was immediately available.” With nearly 48,000 people dead in the U.S. from AIDS by 1987, the formation of the group ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was a turning point for bottom-up civil disobedience against the administrative bungling, political in-fighting and bureaucratic red-tape that made it virtually impossible for any drugs under development to be used in the fight against HIV/AIDS. AZT, the first drug approved for use in this fight, certainly had some of the horrific side effects that Duesberg highlighted, but back then, it was being administered in much higher doses, given the lack of alternative treatments.

The big breakthrough came with the discovery of HIV protease-inihibitors in the late 1980s. Protease inhibitors played a crucially important role in the creation of
highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Proteases are

basically proteins that are used to break down other certain chemical structures of protein in your body—a process that can help with digestion or healing wounds. However, proteases are also necessary for certain conditions—including HIV—to thrive.  ‌Protease inhibitors, which figure among the key drugs used to treat HIV, work by binding to proteolytic enzymes (proteases). That blocks their ability to function.

Protease inhibitors don’t cure HIV. But by blocking proteases, they can stop HIV from reproducing itself. As such, they lower the body’s viral load—a term that refers to the amount of HIV in the body—and slow the progression of HIV.

It took about ten years for the first protease inhibitor to reach the market. Take a look at this table below—which will no doubt be dismissed by Duesberg denialists as CDC “fictions”:

The Duesberg denialists cannot explain what happened between 1993-1995 and 1996-2000. They cannot explain why the death rate from AIDS fell by nearly 50% in 1997 alone. I want an answer from these denialists as to why this happened. Did all those dirty, drug-addicted, gay men simply “straighten” up their act, and stop taking those recreational drugs that Duesberg saw as the cause of AIDS? Quite frankly, given that there were a reported 100,000 overdose deaths in 2021 alone—augmented by two years of a COVID crisis that has led to a significant rise in both mental health and substance abuse problems across the population regardless of sexual orientation or sexual practices—I’m wondering why, given Duesberg’s assumptions, we have not seen a corresponding rise in AIDS cases.

The Duesberg denialists have absolutely no explanation whatsoever for the remarkable turn of events from 1993-1995 to 1996-2000. It was with the introduction of “cocktail” drug therapies, which combined three or more antiretroviral drugs—chief among them those protease inhibitors that were able to prevent HIV from multiplying inside the body—that significantly reduced patients’ viral loads to undetectable levels, and that have curtailed the scourge of opportunistic infections that were killing people by the hundreds of thousands in the 1980s and early 1990s. Today, there are an estimated 1.2 million people living with AIDS in the United States—not dying from it.

This is personal. And I’ll even grant that it’s anecdoctal evidence. But in the 1980s, I was busy DJ’ing and dancing, though pharmaceuticals and unsafe sex were not part of the party. I knew scores of gay men, many of whom were very dear friends who died from AIDS. Only a handful of these friends could be characterized as recreational drug users.

One of my dearest friends in the world nearly died of AIDS in 1996, and if it were not for those miracle antiretroviral treatments, he would have been six feet under. Today, he is living and flourishing, without any detectable viral load, thanks to the medical breakthroughs from which he was able to benefit. Had he been diagnosed only two years before, I am convinced he would never have survived.

The Denialists have no answers. All they have is their stultifying ideological pseudoscience.

So I will declare this without an ounce of regret. To echo ACT-UP’s refrain that “Silence = Death,” I say “Denialism = Death.” And if you are among the denialists, then you have blood on your hands.

Anarchism and egoism have long shared a tension that follows all anarchist groups: how do we organize in a way that respects individual autonomy while providing the benefits of collective organization? The work of organizing is often the constant answering of this question: how much does this organization benefit me, and why should I provide support for this organization? This tension has been pointed to as the basis for many failures in anarchist organizing, generally with leaders of some sort arguing that their fellows are too unwilling to compromise on ideals, and egoists decrying the organization’s inability to meet the needs of its people. Stirner tackled this idea of egoist organization through his idea of the “union of egoists,” wherein egoists choose to associate or disassociate based on their desire to organize or not.¹ Put another way, for the egoist, organization is worthwhile as long as it is beneficial, and as soon as it is no longer beneficial, organization should no longer concern the egoist.

Historical anarchist practices such as mutual aid and community organizing find their strength in approaching this tension as a necessary feature of proper anarchist organization. This tension between the organization’s desire to maintain itself, even despite the needs or will of its members, and the members’ desires to preserve their own autonomy, even at the expense of their collective material benefit, is the same tension which the followers of Bakunin and Marx debated endlessly, resulting in the expulsion of Bakunin from the fifth congress of the International Workingmen’s Association. Anarchist organizing should take this split to heart because it was the philosophical dispute that underlies the tension between anarchists and orthodox Marxist socialism.

An organization can manifest in forms that are no longer anarchist, or which threaten the freedom of its members to freely associate with it. This tendency for organizations to manifest their own structural desires — which are separate or wholly divorced from the desires of its members — is the beginning of its devolution into the forms which anarchists fight against, such as the state or corporate form. The organization which has subjected its members to its own will beyond the point at which these members experience a net loss from associating with the organization, but which nonetheless continues to use their membership as a lever for its continued existence, is by any anarchist’s measure, no longer serving the needs of its members. This potential for the transformation of an organization from a freely associated union into the state-form or corporation requires that all anarchists resist this process and fight for the dissolution of such organizations.

If egoists and anarchists recognize this potential for failure in organization, how do they go about setting up properly anarchist organizations? Anarchist projects of mutual aid and community organizing find their strength in exploring the means by which the organization can serve the individual, even to the expense of the organization’s existence. The failure of anarchist organizations to survive is not a failure of organization itself but, in the anarchist sense, a testament to the transient nature of members’ desires. Calcifying an organization that does not change to meet its members’ needs, or does not dissolve when it no longer meets its current members’ needs, is to set forth on the perilous path towards a “transitional” lifelong Politburo. Acknowledging the natural lifespan of anarchist organizations is a necessary fact for anarchist organizers who seek to use mutual aid and community organization as a means of serving communities, as opposed to serving organizations for their own sake. There are clear parallels between this birth and death and rebirth cycle within the collective needs of organizing peoples and the “creative destruction” that Schumpeter expanded from Marx’s works. ²

Anarchist organizing in practice plays out in the forms of interaction between anarchists (self-identified or otherwise) when they participate in protests, labor actions, and group decision making of all forms. Understanding the underlying tensions between anarchist organizing itself and the various desires of individual anarchist actors is necessary to navigate the group dynamics of these organizations. While there may be certain group actions that are so anti-anarchist that no anarchist would rightly support them, and there may be some decisions of an individual anarchist that no group could justify allowing on behalf of the group, there are various penumbra between the black and white of anarchy in theory and organization in practice. One might say that it is in these gray areas that the theory becomes practice and anarchy of the individual meets the anarchy of the group. When we explore these gray areas we find the limits of non-anarchist methods and the benefits (to individuals and to groups) of seeking anarchist solutions to a problem that might otherwise divorce the group’s anarchists from their affiliation with the group.

In the years following the global financial crisis of the last decade, the Occupy Wall Street movement attempted to physically occupy the space of Zuccotti Park outside New York City’s Wall Street in the financial district. After a few months of severe police action against the protestors, they were eventually forced out of the physical space at Zuccotti Park and continued their organizing mostly through online spaces attempting to target smaller physical spaces at later points. While the original protest lasted, it was both a useful test of anarchist practices in action as well as an opportunity for individuals to learn about their own power to influence group actions. In a space with no centralized authorities and freed from the expectation to do anything more than provide for the existence of the space and its members, the protest thrived for a short time. After being forced into online spaces regulated by the media on which they gathered, the individuals found a decidedly different space. As they transitioned from a space that was free because they had liberated it to a space that was “free” because it sold their data to advertisers, consensus decision making and the free form flexibility for individual members to form their own working teams disappeared. Instead, the movement to a centralized digital space transformed the relation of members to the movement from one of functional hierarchy, where hierarchies existed in temporary forms as needed by individuals and the organization and disappeared when no longer needed by both, to one of anatomical hierarchy, where the structure represents organizational hierarchy with the organization above and individuals below serving organizational needs. ³ 

We might further expand this description to encompass both an existing functional hierarchy between movement supporters as a whole and the organization (as represented by its various members) and a subgroup consisting of the members interacting through the online digital organizing space and the faction of the movement which those members represent as interacting in an anatomy of hierarchy (existing within the larger functional hierarchy). Thus, even when the larger movement retains its horizontal structure, a pocket of anatomical hierarchy may form and threaten the integrity of the larger movement’s non-domination. Regardless of whether or not the larger movement is harmed by the emergence of hierarchical structures within this pocket, anarchist members within that subgroup will find the subsequent lack of autonomy stifling and would rightly dissociate.

As egoists attempt to organize in and through mutual aid or community organizing, they only need to ask the same questions that any egoists ought to ask of any situation. If the mutual aid action is pleasing or otherwise beneficial to one’s material or class interests, then an egoist would rationally participate. When an egoist seeks to formulate organization in ways that appeal to other egoists, the same question ought to guide their own thinking. Anarchists form organizations with the basic understanding that they ought to serve the needs of their members or the community they exist to serve. This organizational egoism is necessary to a properly anarchist formulation of organizing and asks the organization a question analogous to that which each egoist asks themselves. Does the organization in its present sense meet the needs of our present community? If this is not the case, the organization must either be changed or disbanded. The organization that seeks to continue to exist despite being unable to answer this question affirmatively, ought to understand that it is continuing for its own sake in spite of its inability to meet its own stated purpose. It has become a zombie organization that typifies the “state” structure. That is to say, even despite failing to meet the needs of its community, it continues to accost them through its needless continued existence. An egoist anarchist faced with this organization, would rightly work to end it and free its members from that yoke, or otherwise, simply remove themselves from it.

An egoist organization, if it is to use that terminology, has a duty to its members to ensure that its continued existence is in each of their best interests, or otherwise remain neutral when those members choose to leave the organization. While it is certainly likely that the interests of the organization and the individual may evolve over time and with changing circumstances, an egoist and an egoist organization ought to be of the mutual understanding that they associate to fulfill mutual needs, and dissociate when these needs are no longer properly served. It is in furtherance of this idea that Malatesta warned of the dangers of accepting the violence of the state through electoral politics and the inability of such systems to work against privileged classes. ⁴ Power cannot be used to create non-power, because power, in being used, negates the existence of non-power. Anarchy exists not where power is taken by anarchists, but where power is erased.

Organizing as unions of egoists and working to provide mutual aid, we ought to consider the benefits of heeding the complaints of other egoists. If the organization is in danger of alienating individual members, through an unsavory insistence on subservience, or some other reason, then the organization ought to rightly consider its actions and their consequences. While organizers and “party leaders” have commonly decried these people as unwilling to compromise or be “practical,” there is a resilience that the anarchist organization can find in being willing to consider each of these complaints.

Courtney Morris, in covering the FBI informant Brandon Darby’s rampant misogyny and alienating aggression towards other members, points out how continuously vetting ourselves and the organizations with which we work is necessary for a conscious security culture. ⁵ For an anarchist organization to protect itself properly, it should be centered on supporting its members foremost. Calls to unity that jettison members’ perspectives, however minority, risk removing anarchism from the organization, leaving nothing worth saving behind.

Conflict within an organization necessarily stress-tests it for future conflicts and ensures that it is resilient to outside pressures while maintaining a focus on providing for its individual members and service communities. The anarchist organization that understands the benefits of healthy conflict as a means of sorting out its organizational structure and providing an open forum for members and service communities to provide feedback on organizational decision-making finds a strength in this conflict which it would otherwise lack. By building conflict into one’s organizing as a means of facilitating growth and centering the questions that arise from tensions between individual desires and organizational choices, anarchist organizations build a resilience that makes them ready to adapt to change as needed. This readiness to adapt is necessary for avoiding the calcification which can lead an organization to lose sight of its purpose and continue to exist without meeting the needs of its service community or members.

Direct action movements are considered “prefigurative” in that they prefigure their approaches to current proposed actions based on the future they hope to engender. By organizing horizontally, allowing members to associate or dissociate at will, and rejecting anatomical hierarchies, direct actions can prefigure anarchist ends through the means they employ.  In utilizing an affirmatively feminist, anti-speciesist, and anti-classist security culture anarchist organizations protect themselves from state infiltration while providing the proof of work for their proposed futures. Bakunin’s colleague James Guillaume considered prefiguration to be the fundamental improvement of anarchist tactics over Marxism. ⁶ In understanding this prefiguration of ends in means, egoists know that if they take part in an organization that is no longer anarchist, then the end result of that organization’s actions will also be non-anarchist. Organizations of anarchists must constantly struggle with this tension between organizational goals and individual desires. The willingness to engage this tension as a necessary function of anarchist organizing can separate the fully calcified anatomy of hierarchy from the anarchist organization. How this tension is resolved becomes the test of whether its members retain their autonomy as individuals acting through an organization, or whether they have become the instruments of the organization’s will.

Radicalized by the poverty of the Great Depression, Ella Baker worked to empower communities to utilize their own resources, in common, for their own benefit. In encouraging members of the Black south to protect themselves through organizing in their own defense for themselves and for each other, the movement for civil rights kept consensus decision making at its core, and organized around affinity groups with the knowledge that individual groups acting in common empower each other while empowering themselves. ^7,8 Individual groups could retain the protection from responsibility or blame for the actions of other groups if they turned out poorly, while ready to provide support in solidarity with them.  In the rhizomatic structure of various anarchisms working together, determining the origins and overarching strategies of working towards anarchy is both unimportant and an unnecessary burden. Anarchisms as a family find strength in this milieu where origins cannot be neatly divided and responsibility is shared amongst a diversity of tactics and actors.

It is likely that the differences between Bakunin and Marx’s followers were too great for the International to remain a cross-factional organization. Likewise, organizations which are willing to go to the extreme of pushing out or bulldozing over the perspectives of their individual members in favor of organizational dominance will find themselves continuing to alienate egoist members. An egoist in union with these organizations would be right to dissociate from the organization if it no longer suited them. The organization that aims to take an anarchist stance to mutual aid and community organizing ought to rightly consider whether doing so will allow it to meet its stated purpose. The organization that throws out its members’ views in the search of unity may find itself united only through isolation. For organizations that caution their members to make practical sacrifices in furtherance of organizational desires, I caution those organizations to consider taking their own advice and making organizational sacrifices in furtherance of continuing their mutually beneficial union with egoists. 

  [1] Stirner, M. (1995). Stirner: the ego and its own. Cambridge University Press.  

  [2] Joseph, A. (1942). Schumpeter, Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. Nueva York.

  [3] Swann, T., & Husted, E. (2017). Undermining anarchy: Facebook’s influence on anarchist principles of organization in Occupy Wall Street. The Information Society, 33(4), 192-204.

  [4] Malatesta, E. (1926). Neither Democrats, nor Dictators: Anarchists. Pensiero e Volontà.

  [5] Morris, C. D. (2018). Why Misogynists Make Great Informants How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements. In J. Hoffman & D. Yudacufksi (Eds.), Feminisms In Motion Voices for Justice, Liberation, and Transformation (pp. 43–54). Chico, CA: AK Press.

  [6] Franks, B. (2003). Direct action ethic. Anarchist Studies, (1), 13-41.

  [7] Crass, C. (2001). Looking to the light of freedom: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement and thoughts on anarchist organizing. Collective liberation on my mind, 43-61.

  [8] Mueller, C. (2004). Ella Baker and the origins of “participatory democracy”. The black studies reader, 1926-1986.

The work of Max Stirner is a contentious topic among anarchists, with numerous interpretations of his work, ranging from descriptive, presenting a certain framework of thought, to prescriptive, advocating for anti-authoritarianism, and expressing a commitment to “individualism.” It is my position that egoism is primarily descriptive in nature. The key distinctions Stirner makes, those between fixed and unfixed ideas, and conscious and unconscious egoism, do not lead us to any normative conclusions, despite Stirner’s clear personal opposition to the state and authority in general. Rather, many anarchists are egoists because they find personal value in this perspective. Egoism has both everything and nothing to do with anarchism.

In The Unique and Its Property, Stirner writes that he has “based [his] affairs on nothing.” The nothing he refers to is the “creative nothing” or the unique, an internal emptiness, or indeterminacy, the absence of any rule that determines how we ought to form concepts. It is comparable to other ineffable non-concepts like the Śūnyatā of Buddhism or the Dao of Daoism. Stirner does not comment on what those affairs are, or what form they should take, only what they are “based on.” Therefore, to base one’s affairs on nothing is to consciously base one’s affairs on emptiness, a non-concept that escapes definition, lacking in any essential or ideal forms, or reference to any concept, including desire, thought, mind, and so on.

The process of becoming from an underlying emptiness can be expressed as momentary desire or will, arising from the creative nothing, forming concepts that “please” or are useful to it. Every subject can be said to express and act on their desires, and so Stirner would contend that everyone is an egoist, which mirrors the theory of psychological egoism. The individual who consciously develops out of nothing is referred to as a conscious egoist. Stirner contrasts the conscious egoist to the unconscious egoist, one who lacks consciousness of the unique, and instead attributes desire to abstractions such as the self, the mind, the brain, Platonic forms, and so on, as opposed to the creative nothing, resulting in what Stirner calls fixed ideas, concepts that are deemed to exist in the world, not prefigured by emptiness, but as objective features of a predefined existence.

Stirner’s approach bears similarities to the skeptical problem Wittgenstein expresses in Philosophical Investigations, which notes that there is no principle “out there” that determines how we ought to form meaning in terms of definitions, grammar, and logic, undermining any notion of fixed meaning. Reality is defined into existence, using language. Although Wittgenstein does not explicitly posit an “emptiness” beneath these definitions, it is implicit in his reasoning. He notes that every “thing” appears to lack any kind of fixed essence. Rather, concepts are useful abstractions that dissolve when we adopt slightly different perspectives; zooming in, zooming out, making observations over vast time scales, etc. Insofar as these perspectives are simplifications or generalizations, we have to ask, relative to what? And the answer is, typically, relative to an alternative lexicon, using particular definitions of “simplification” and “generalization.” Nothing can be said to exist in an unchanging, discrete sense, independent of thought; rather, concepts lack inherent existence. Moreover, existence itself is a category we attribute to concepts, it is ultimately ephemeral, washed away in a shifting of perspectives and constant change. Hence, no-thing exists in itself.

Stirner’s position can be described as nihilistic, in that it denies existence itself, along with all other fixed categories, like selfhood. Following skeptical inquiry beyond Descartes’ cogito ergo sum simply leads us to “thought,” subjectivity devoid of any content or further categories. Concepts are recursively generated in thought, which assigns itself the label of “thought,” “subjective experience,” or “being,” and so on. The self, the object of introspection, is a formation in thought and develops in relation to other concepts, all of which stem from the creative nothing. There is no normative notion of how one ought to conceptualize selfhood, or whether we should have any concept of it whatsoever. Stirner denies the inherent existence of the self, just as he denies the inherent or objective existence of all concepts.

Here, it’s important to note that none of this entails opposition to any given concept, only a framework of how ideas are conceptualized, as fixed or unfixed. That is, one can have an indeterminate, unfixed self, generated out of utility, and a fixed self, conceptualized as static and uniform. This framework can be extended to everything else. For example, anarchism, the rejection of authority, can be conceptualized as a moral duty, or a personal preference, or a desire that provides utility. This utility shouldn’t be confused with selfishness. One can find utility in any number of things, including altruism. Another example might be a chair, an emergent property we affix to an assemblage of other objects, each of which is also an assemblage, composed of different parts that can be infinitely subdivided, which only take shape in relation to other objects. Furthermore, as the “chair” decays, it changes from moment to moment, until at some point we might say that it no longer “exists.” Is the “chair” a particular orientation of the objective joints in nature, or is it a useful concept within our frame of reference, defined in terms of our ends, in this case, something to sit on? As the former, the chair is a fixed idea, as the latter it is unfixed, existing for one’s own ends. 

This requires us to ask, if egoism has nothing to do with the content of ideas, what is the point of conscious egoism? Nothing follows from egoism, it is not authoritarian or anti-authoritarian. Rather, it negates fixed ideas, making a distinction that puts it in a similar position to meta-ethics in relation to ethics, a framework that does not concern itself with the content of concepts, but the emptiness underpinning them.

For example, take the issue of “moralism,” which many self-described egoists oppose. For a consistent conscious egoist, morality is a fixed idea by definition, a statement of truth, and something that objectively exists, embedded in the structure of the brain or floating around as a set of platonic forms. The egoist might instead express values as personal preferences, where truth value is something attached to expressions out of utility, forming tautologies based on the application of logic and useful definitions. To say that “theft is wrong” is to define theft as non-consensual appropriation, on grounds that one opposes for their own reasons. Similarly, the statement that a “chair is red,” is not inherently true, it is true based on one’s own definitions of “red” and “chair,” with reference to a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the practical utility of an object for sitting on, and the use of logical operators to convey “truth.” Of course, this is a matter of definition. “Morality” is not necessarily defined in objective, fixed, or essential terms, rather, the nature of morality is debated in the field of meta-ethics, but here I am laying out how an anti-moralist can consistently hold this position in light of Stirner’s main distinctions.

However, accusations of “moralism” are often employed in an inconsistent manner, as a way to short-circuit discourse; the use of meta-ethical claims to invalidate normative values is inconsistent because egoism does not prescribe the content of desire. Telling someone that their moral beliefs do not “exist” does not address the content of their belief, in the same way that telling someone that a chair does not “exist” will not make them stop believing in the chair. Instead, it makes more sense to point out inconsistencies and problems in one another’s positions based on shared axioms. For example, one can say that “theft is wrong,” without engaging in moralism, which depends on how one conceptualizes “wrongness” in meta-ethical terms. To take a more controversial example, it is not necessarily moralistic to state that “one has a duty to serve the nation,” which depends on how one conceptualizes “duty,” and the “nation.” Granted, “duty” and the “nation” are usually fixed ideas, but this example helps further illustrate what exactly fixed ideas refer to, not to mention the fact that I have encountered people in the political right with fairly consistent interpretations of Stirner. If one experiences a “higher calling,” what matters in terms of Stirner’s distinction is the specific nature of the higher calling: is it a conscious expression of desire that springs from nothingness, or does it justify itself in relation to a network of external concepts? No word is inherently moralistic (I am defining moralism in terms of fixed ideas here), although many are more likely to be used in moralistic ways.

Egoism is also often likened to moral relativism and specifically used to critique the concept of morality, which is a misreading of Stirner. His notion of fixed ideas can be applied to all concepts. Moreover, an egoist can consistently impose their values on others, claim their values are more important than others, employ coercion, and even make “universal” claims (not as a truth, but as an assertion). For example, it is not necessarily moralistic to argue that we should be universally anti-racist. A nihilist can hold any position they happen to desire because nihilism does not justify or refute anything. 

Now, keeping in mind these clarifications, we can go back to the question of “what exactly is the point of conscious egoism?” There is no point in being a conscious egoist. This too, a consistent conscious egoist might say, boils down to one’s own desires. Perhaps they find comfort in nothingness and flux. Stirner himself provides a reason, suggesting that one can be ruled by fixed ideas or “absolute thought,” that morality has “power over” the spirit, and that the “spirit of love” can enslave a person — as if unconscious egoism is a form of self-betrayal. Here, by “rule,” Stirner does not mean the rule of authority, but self-denial due to unconscious egoism. One example of it may be someone who engages in sexual abstinence out of a higher calling, despite their desire to have sex. In a similar sense, Wittgenstein claims that one can be “held captive by a picture,” the “picture” being an objective framework of reality, not seen as useful, but necessary, leading one to endlessly seek truth where there is none. Despite the apparently prescriptive language, this is not exactly a contradiction in Stirner’s thought, but an expression of his own preferences (not something that follows from egoism). An unconscious egoist emerges from nothing, albeit unconsciously, this emergence is still a function of desire, the property of the unique.

I personally do not care if it pleases one to view anarchy as a duty, as long as I do not disagree with the content of their actual beliefs. Holding onto fixed ideas, like asserting that existence is more than simply a useful concept, but an essential property of the universe, and believing that we can know the nature of existence with absolute certainty, are principles that many, if not most, people hold. The same goes for ideas like nationalism, which I oppose, not because they tend to be fixed (they aren’t necessarily), but because of their content. Although one’s desires may change after rejecting fixed ideas, the emergent values and ideals of the unconscious egoist can be identical to those of the conscious egoist, who may treat existence and truth as useful concepts that can be interacted with and formulated in different ways, some of which are more useful to them than others.

Even if there is no central point to egoism, we can still ask why anarchists, in particular, tend to be drawn to egoism. The first thing that comes to mind is Stirner’s union of egoists, an anarchic association of conscious egoists that is voided without ongoing consent. This idea is a conjecture of what consensual interactions between conscious egoists might resemble, people consciously cooperating with each other in pursuit of their own desires. However, a conscious egoist is not necessarily someone who participates in a union of egoists because they can impose their will on others, concepts like nationalism automatically preclude the possibility of a union of egoists because they rely on non-consensual relations. Furthermore, one does not necessarily have to be a conscious egoist to be an anarchist, one can participate in consensual, non-hierarchical associations while holding onto fixed ideas.

Another reason many anarchists seem to find value in egoism is that a rejection of fixed ideas suggests that there is no true paradigm, only paradigms that are useful to individuals, where everything is subjective. From this perspective, there is no fixed basis for any universal “ought” that can be used to legitimize rule, depriving it of any fixed ontological and epistemological foundation. For example, egoism invalidates stories like progress, gender, science, and nation as absolute truths, posing them instead as useful concepts that individuals adopt for their own reasons.

However, contrary to what many people think, the fact that egoism invalidates the idea of philosophical foundations does not entail that egoists are obligated to value subjectivity of others. There is no principle that derives from egoism according to which an egoist should not strive for epistemic and ontological authority for their own reasons, only how they conceptualize those reasons. Rather, consistent egoist anarchists choose to value subjectivity because it pleases them, they prefer a union of egoists. Someone who believes in truth, existence, and morality, may also place moral emphasis on, for example, the subjectivity of personal identity, even in the presence of apparent “contradictions.” I personally reject constructions that invalidate self-expression or are historically, empirically, or intuitively wrong or useless to me.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says, “don’t think, but look.” What he meant by this is that, given that all attempts to define the world in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions are insufficient, it might be better to describe the world as we experience it. The nature of this “experience” may be a complex, reciprocal system of signs, or a simple, monolithic set of definitions that does not map onto individual subjectivity. Hence, in order for the world to be organized according to a monolithic worldview, there would have to be some form of top-down enforcement. However, again, someone with a subjective theory of morality can still hold views that pave over subjectivity, they simply do not use the language of objectivity to express their own positions. In the same sense, someone who conceptualizes things as objective may reject enforcing their views onto others, while nevertheless holding them to be true. Conscious vs. unconscious egoism is a meta-awareness of all values. One either views values as stemming from nothing or from objective systems like natural rights. Objectivity vs. subjectivity is a useful distinction in this sense but does not come with any prescriptions of its own.

Di Eric Fleischmann. Originale pubblicato il 17 gennaio 2022 con il titolo Laurance Labadie’s “Letter to Mother Earth”. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Lettera a Mother Earth

Credo che il tempo-lavoro come misura standard dell’unità monetaria sia un errore destinato al fallimento pratico. Faccio qualche domanda e qualche osservazione. Quale lavoro dovrebbe essere preso come standard, quello del lavoratore più efficiente o quello del meno efficiente? Prendiamo una merce a caso, le scarpe. John ne produce cinque paia al giorno, James dieci. In un libero mercato, potrebbe John spuntare il doppio del prezzo praticato da James? No, sarebbe assurdo! In un mercato concorrenziale, John sarebbe costretto a chiudere se chiedesse un prezzo doppio. Ma se chiede lo stesso prezzo, come sarebbe costretto a fare se vuole restare sul mercato, cosa ne è dell’unità tempo-lavoro? Semplicemente scompare.

Qual è il termine di riferimento del valore? È una merce rispetto alla quale viene misurato il rapporto di scambio di altre merci. È vero che il lavoro, inteso come utile ottenuto dal superamento di un ostacolo obiettivo, e il cui valore è determinato in un mercato concorrenziale, entra come elemento che determina il valore di scambio di una merce e in un mercato liberamente concorrenziale tende a diventare il fattore unico. Ma le merci devono essere utili per poter essere scambiate, e l’utilità è determinata dalla desiderabilità. È il valore del lavoro ad essere determinato dai suoi risultati, non i risultati dalla quantità di lavoro espresso in unità di tempo.

In realtà, è la desiderabilità di una merce che può determinare l’utilità e il valore del lavoro occorso alla produzione, non è la quantità di lavoro che misura il valore di una merce. E come differenziare lavoro produttivo e lavoro improduttivo? In un sistema di libera concorrenza inefficienze e sprechi vengono automaticamente eliminati. Questo va a beneficio della società in generale. È per questo che un sistema di libera concorrenza rappresenta, in termini generali, la condizione più automaticamente cooperativa. Ed è per questo che, fortunatamente, è la libertà a risolvere la questione economica. L’efficienza scaccia via l’inefficienza, mette l’uomo giusto al posto giusto e remunera ognuno secondo il servizio reso alla società.

Il problema dell’attuale sistema economico è che non si basa sulla libera concorrenza, è lo stato che tiene in piedi un sistema basato sul furto. Privilegiando gli uni e azzoppando gli altri, succede che qualcuno ottiene più della sua giusta quota di ricchezza prodotta. La condizione necessaria a una società di libera concorrenza, la pari opportunità a cui aspirano gli anarchici, oggi è più lontana che mai. È questo che spinge un anarchico a lottare, per far capire alla gente i benefici economici della libertà.

Diciamo che la libertà risolve ogni problema sociale risolvibile, che si tratti dell’istruzione, il sesso, la letteratura, l’arte, il crimine, i credi religiosi o quel che si vuole, ma evidenziamo soprattutto l’ambito economico perché crediamo che questo rappresenti la chiave che apre tutte le altre porte. È un peccato che molti dei cosiddetti radicali (persone che vanno alla radice delle cose) non capiscano i processi economici, soprattutto quelli possibili in un mondo libero. La colpa, a mio parere, è, non solo dei voluti pervertimenti dei testi di economia, ma anche, credo, degli stupidi errori fatti da Karl Marx nel suo onesto sforzo di lottare per la causa dei lavoratori.

Per quanto riguarda la questione del denaro, è desiderio di un anarchico che chiunque, singolarmente o combinatamente, sia in grado di fornire denaro o assicurare credito. Agli occhi di una persona superficiale, soprattutto se orientata all’autoritarismo come i socialisti o i comunisti, tutto ciò appare come un autentico ritorno al caos. Si vedrà in futuro quanto è precaria e disonesta l’esistenza del denaro, e quale sarà la sorte del tasso d’interesse sotto la libera concorrenza bancaria. Ciò che con ogni probabilità avverrà è stato già anticipato da Proudhon, William B. Greene e altri.

Ma è molto improbabile che si arriverà a adottare il tempo-lavoro come unità di valore.

Laurance Labadie

Commento di Eric Fleischmann

Questo saggio, ultima aggiunta al Laurance Labadie Archival Project, pubblicato per la prima volta in forma epistolare in un numero del 1933 di Mother Earth, rivista diretta da John G. Scott e Jo Ann Wheeler, entrò poi a far parte della Joseph A. Labadie Collection della biblioteca dell’università del Michigan. Ultimo vero erede dell’anarchico Tucker, Labadie è anche erede naturale delle idee di Josiah Warren, che a Cincinnati, nell’Ohio, nell’ottocento aprì uno sperimentale “Time Store” (negozio del tempo, NdT). Come spiega William Bailie, in questo negozio il compenso veniva “determinato sul principio di un uguale scambio di lavoro, per cui una merce prodotta con un tot di ore di lavoro era scambiata con un’altra merce prodotta nello stesso tempo.” Ispirandosi a Warren, Edgar S. Cahn sviluppò negli anni 1990 il movimento delle banche del tempo, fino ad allora relegato all’ambito teorico del mutualismo e ad alcuni esperimenti durante la Grande Depressione. La lettera di Labadie – così come nel caso di Warren – è molto probabilmente una risposta al mutualismo.

Avendo lavorato per una banca del tempo, non concordo con le teorie di Labadie a proposito delle valute basate sul tempo. Digressione personale, ovviamente. Qui invece vorrei sottolineare come questo saggio anticipi la critica del sistema bancario del tardo novecento, soprattutto le idee dell’economista del Mit Frank Fisher. Negli anni ottanta, era opinione di Fisher che il prezzo della valuta basata sul tempo, impostato dalla banca del tempo, fosse soggetto agli stessi problemi del calcolo economico e degli incentivi propri di un’economia a pianificazione centrale.[1] Ci accostiamo così a Labadie quando dice: “Prendiamo un prodotto a caso, le scarpe. John ne produce cinque paia al giorno, James dieci. In un libero mercato, John potrebbe ottenere per le sue scarpe il doppio del prezzo praticato da James? No, sarebbe assurdo!” Ad accomunare Labadie e Fisher è la credenza che le valute basate sul tempo non possano funzionare come meccanismi di informazione distribuita tramite i prezzi.

Ma, aggiunge Labadie, anche senza questi problemi una valuta basata sul tempo non è necessaria. Ereditando la teoria del valore del lavoro di Benjamin Tucker e Pierre-Joseph Proudhon e anticipando il rifacimento fatto oggi da Kevin Carson, Labadie sostiene che “data una libera concorrenza, cioè un libero e equo accesso ai mezzi di produzione, alle materie prime e a un mercato senza restrizioni, il prezzo di ogni merce riflette sempre tendenzialmente la quantità di lavoro impiegata per la produzione. Ovvero, nel misurare il valore il lavoro diventa il fattore predominante.” In sostanza: se il prezzo delle merci si abbassa al costo del lavoro, la moneta usata per misurare il valore deve riflettere il lavoro, non il tempo-lavoro.

Nota

1. Vedi: Cahn, No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative.

Oleh: Darian Worden. Teks aslinya berjudul “Autonomy Versus Secession” Diterjemahkan oleh Iman Amirullah.

Catatan penerjemah:

Wacana pemisahan atau secession yang menjadi topik utama dalam pembahasan artikel ini merupakan upaya pemisahan Amerika Serikat menjadi dua negara, yaitu Utara dan Selatan yang banyak diorganisir oleh para sayap kanan dan neo nazi Amerika Serikat. Sehingga pemisahan yang dimaksudkan disini berbeda konteks dengan upaya-upaya pembebasan berbagai bangsa dari negara-negara kolonial yang menindasnya -yang seharusnya kita semua dukung.

***

Sudah sejak dahulu kala orang-orang Amerika Serikat membicarakan tentang pemisahan atau memecah negara tersebut menjadi beberapa bagian kecil. Pembahasan ini menjadi semakin sering terjadi seiiring dengan pembuatan perjanjian regional untuk mengatur penanganan COVID19 dan para orang-orang kanan berfantasi tentang perang sipil. Membuat negara AS yang lebih kecil tidak akan membebaskan orang-orang yang menempati wilayah tersebut. Sebaliknya, yang kita perjuangkan adalah memperluas otonomi individu dan komunitas

Otonomi adalah kemampuan untuk bertindak sesuai keinginan dan tanpa diperintah. Otonomi komunitas tidak menjamin adanya otonomi individu, namun otonomi komunitas akan menyediakan kerangka kerja untuk menjaga otonomi individu. Berfokus pada pembatasan jangkauan kontrol yang datang dari luar dan bukan pada pembentukan otoritas lokal berarti prinsip otonomi dapat diterapkan dari tingkat masyarakat hingga ke tingkat individu. Komunitas dan jaringan otonom tidak perlu membatasi diri dalam batas-batas negara, tetapi dapat bergabung satu sama lain melintasi wilayah yang diklaim oleh berbagai pemerintah.

Pemisahan memecah otoritas yang ada menjadi lebih kecil sehingga otoritas akan memimpin di area yang lebih terbatas. Otonomi berarti menyangkal otoritas sehingga kebebasan akan meluas ke banyak bidang. Pemisahan menghasilkan negara-negara baru dan kesempatan baru bagi otoritas untuk membatasi individu. Pembebasan sejati membutuhkan otonomi, untuk menghancurkan otoritas tanpa kembali menciptakan yang baru.

Pemisahan mungkin memecah sebuah negara, tapi itu akan menciptakan lebih banyak negara dan perbatasan. Untuk melakukan pemisahan diperlukan kontrol dari pemerintah negara yang mendeklarasikan perpisahan. Menciptakan perbatasan baru akan membatasi kebebasan untuk terhubung dan berpindah tempat. Perbatasan yang mematikan diberikan kepada orang-orang miskin, memecah belah kelas pekerja, dan para elit akan tetap dengan mudah berpindah dari satu tempat ke empat lain untuk berlibur atau menindas masyarakat yang hidup di sisi lainnya. Itu akan menjadikan gerakan sosial sulit untuk terhubung satu sama lain dan berbagi pengetahuan atau sumber daya.

Penciptaan negara-negara baru di Amerika Utara akan memperburuk kerusakan yang telah dilakukan oleh otoritas yang telah eksis. Ini kemungkinan akan melibatkan para legislatif mayoritas kulit putih yang akan menciptakan garis perbatasan yang melintasi tanah masyarakat adat dan rute migran. Jika masyarakat yang tinggal di wilayah dimana Demokrat berkuasa merasa biasa saja dengan membiarkan orang-orang marjinal berjuang bertahan hidup sendirian di area negara itu yang begitu luas dan mengabaikan kekerasan polisi serta eksploitasi kapitalis yang tetap terjadi di kota-kota yang dianggap progresif, maka akan sulit untuk membangun jenis solidaritas yang akan meraih kebebasan. Jika orang-orang di negara bagian manapun lebih memilih untuk menyatakan kesetiaan kepada elit lokal alih-alih kebebasan dan kesejahteraan untuk semua orang, maka itu adalah kekalahan dari kebebasan.

Pemisahan memang tidak selamanya berakibat buruk, tapi akan selalu disertai dengan berbagai marabahaya. Orang-orang di Ukraina secara umum menikmati lebih banyak kebebasan dibandingkan jika mereka dibawah kekuasaan Rusia, namun mereka juga harus menghadapi ekspansi kapitalis, ultranasionalisme, korupsi, dan kekerasan yang dilakukan oleh tetangga imperialis mereka.

Di Amerika Serikat, kata “Pemisahan” sangat terkait dengan Konfederasi dan simbolisme nya yang masih sering ditampilkan secara terang-terangan oleh para orang-orang kanan di seluruh negara bagian. Elit-elit di selatan AS mendeklarasikan berdirinya Konfederasi ketika mereka menyatakan pemisahan diri dari Amerika Serikat yang mereka yakini tidak akan mendukung perbudakan seperti yang mereka inginkan. Orang-orang kulit hitam selatan menghancurkan Konfederasi para tuan budak dengan menggunakan otonomi, mengangkat senjata, dan menyerang mantan majikannya. Banyak orang-orang kulit putih selatan juga mendeklarasikan otonomi mereka dengan menolak untuk bertempur di sisi para tuan tanah. Mereka yang menentang pemisahan berada di sisi kebebasan.

Otonomi diciptakan diluar dari kontrol negara, itu diciptakan baik dalam tindakan individu maupun dalam jaringan dan komunitas yang berpusat pada kebebasan dan kesejahteraan individu. Membangun kekuatan diluar negara dan diluar kendali kapitalis akan menciptakan kekuatan yang lebih besar untuk menantang atau bahkan membuang otoritas yang ada. Masyarakat yang lebih baik akan tercipta saat hierarki sosial dan tindakan opresif yang dilakukan oleh para individu dihapuskan dalam komunitas.

Otonomi akan melampaui batas-batas negara tanpa menciptakan yang baru. Perjuangan untuk pembebasan harus terhubung dan bekerja sama dengan satu sama lain, alih-alih menciptakan zona kontrol eksklusif. Jaringan mutual-aid dan koneksi antar komunitas diciptakan di level akar rumput atau dengan tindakan sukarela, jadi orang-orang tidak memerlukan para politisi untuk menentukan bagaimana mereka akan berinteraksi dengan orang-orang yang menghuni sisi lain dari garis yang ada pada peta.

Jika tujuan akhirnya adalah untuk memaksimalkan kebebasan dan menjaga kesejahteraan untuk semua orang, maka menciptakan otonomi adalah cara untuk meraihnya. Jika tujuan akhirnya adalah untuk untuk membuat orang-orang tunduk pada kendali lebih banyak elit lokal dan membatasi akses mereka ke sumber daya dan koneksi vital, maka pemisahan adalah jawabannya.Orang-orang tidak akan meraih kebebasan dengan membagi-bagi wilayah untuk politisi dan orang-orang kaya untuk memerintah. Orang-orang akan bebas ketika penghalang dipatahkan dan tuntutan otoriter tidak dapat dilakukan.

Okumak üzere olduğunuz makale, Alex Aragona tarafından kaleme alınmış. 25 Ocak 2021 tarihinde “Some Thoughts on Private Censorship, Power, and Control of Speech” başlığı altında yayınlanmıştır.

İfade hakkı söz konusu olduğunda, benimsememiz gereken genel görüş, herhangi bir bireyin ya da özel kurumların, hükümet müdahalesi veya kamuoyuna uymak adına yasal bir zorunluluk gibi etkenler olmaksızın, kendi alanlarında kimlerin bulunabileceğini ve bu alanda neler söylenebileceğini ve neler yapılabileceğini belirleme hakkına sahip olduğudur. Bu aynı zamanda, kendi alanlarından kimi ve neyi çıkarabilecekleri hakkında sınırsız bir güce sahip olmaları gerektiği anlamına gelir. İster kafelerden ister bakkallardan ya da internet sunucularından ya da herhangi bir şeyden bahsedelim, bu böyledir. Kısacası devletin kimseyi kek pişirmeye ya da tweet atmaya zorlamak gibi bir derdi yok.

Bunu belirtmekle beraber, özel platformları, ifadenin herhangi bir şekilde kısıtlandığı bir olayda kendi mülklerinde istediklerini yapabilme haklarının tanınmasının ötesinde bir açıklamaya ihtiyaç duyulmayan bir yer olarak değerlendirmek büyük bir hatadır. Özel bireylerin ya da kuruluşların sahip oldukları şeyi ve bunu kimin kullanabileceğini kontrol etme hakkının lehine olan bu ilke duruşu, insanları platformlarından mahrum etmenin, belli bir grup insanı kendi mülklerinden çıkarmalarının ya da fikirlerini açıklamalarını engellemenin gündelik hayatımızda hissettiğimiz genel devlet sansürü kadar tehlikeli olabileceğinden ayrı bir konudur. Özel sektöre ait tartışma forumlarını yöneten ve düzenleyenler genellikle onlara ana sansür biçimleri ışığında tek taraflı bir seçim yapma yeteneği ve insanların aklını çelerek bu sansürü ilerletmek için sosyal sermaye sağlayan yoğun bir güce sahiptir. Herhangi bir özel sansür örneğinin nihayetinde “iyi” mi yoksa “kötü” mü olduğu her zaman meşru bir soru olmalı ve serbest fikir pazarını genişletebileceği veya daraltabileceği için duruma göre analiz yapılmalıdır.

Hangi makaleler yayınlanıyor, hangi görüşler en çok teşhir ediliyor, bir konuda kimlerin otorite olduğunu düşünüyoruz, hangi grupların megafonlarını (fikirlerini açıkça ifade edebilmek) kullanmaya devam etmelerine izin veriliyor, hangilerinin daha “normal” olduğu kabul ediliyor vb. gibi konular nesnel veya bilimse bir süreçle ya da demokratik bir süreçle kararlaştırılmıyor. Çevrimiçi veya çevrimdışı, nispeten az sayıda platform, yayın- ve bunları yöneten, düzenleyen ve etkileyenler- kimlerin anlamlı teşhir, söylem, tartışmaya erişebileceğinin anahtarlarını direkt kendi elinde tutuyor. Belli bir şekilde, örneğin ana akım haber yayınları ve popüler sosyal medya platformları, hangi fikirlerin, görüşmelerin ve konuşmaların makbul kabul edilebileceği, critical mass’e (yazar burda bir deyim kullandı, bir nükleer zincir reaksiyonunu sürdürmek için gereken minimum malzeme miktarı anlamına gelir, burda gereken kaynağın sağlanması anlamında kullanılmıştır.) sahip olabileceği konusunda bazen en son karar verici olabilirler. Ve bu nedenle, bizi ilgilendiren ilgili platforma kimin bunlara erişebildiği değil, kimlerin erişemediği, neden erişemedikleri ve internette kurumsal bir sansür vakasının kamu söyleminin sağlığına zarar verip vermediğidir.

Birçok kişi, görüşlerine uygun bir platform ya da kendi tartışma zevkleri için bir forum bulamayan herkesin gidip kendi platformlarını inşa edebileceğini söylemek için yarışacaktır. Bununla birlikte, çevrimiçi veya çevrimdışı, kişinin kendi platformunu oluşturmasını söylemek yapmaktan her zaman daha kolaydır -sadece maddi açıdan da değil, belki de daha önemlisi, ana akımla uyumlu olup olmamanın güvenilirliğinize getirebileceği zararlar ve tehditler söz konusu. Bir örnek vermek gerekirse, ana akım sosyal platformlardan sağ görüşe sahip birçok kişinin tasfiyesi, bireysel özgürlüğün birçok güçlü savunucusu tarafından sadece platformların kendi örgütlenme özgürlüklerinin bir sonucu olarak değerlendirilip alkışlandı. Ayrıca sağcı projesi Parler’in ne kadar cansız ve etkisiz olduğu hakkında da birçok kez makara yapıldı. Bu vakanın ayrıntıları ve kimin dahil olduğu gerçekten de birden fazla neden dolayı bir ironi ve mizah kaynağı olsa da diğer birçok şeyin yanı sıra yine de az sayıda şirketin ve özel karar vericilerin ne kadar kontrol sahibi olduğunun bir kanıtıdır (Parler: muhafazakar görüş odaklı bir uygulama idi, en yaygın uygulama mağazalarının hepsinden kaldırılmıştı.) – başka bir deyişle, ana akım kamusal söylemin ana alanlarında kimin hoş karşılanacağına veya kimlerin dışlanacağına karar verme güçleri var. Sonuçta Parler, çoğu kişi tarafından sıra dışı ve gülünç görülüyordu. Bunu kullanan herkese de aynı muamele yapıldı ve güvenilirlikleri kırıldı. Bu insanların kamusal söylemlere ve “fikirler pazarına” içtenlikle katılıp katılmadıkları ya da bu platformu inşa ederek kendi kendilerine konuşacak bir yer mi buldukları artık gerçekten bir soru değil.

Neredeyse herkes birinin kişisel davranış veya tavırları yüzünden özel bir alandan çıkarılma gerekçeleri olabileceği konusunda hemfikirdir – ister açık bir dizi kuralın tekrar tekrar ihlal edilmesi olsun, ister uyarılardan sonra hâlâ devam eden bir eylem olsun vb. gibi. Ve açık olmak gerekirse, birinden herhangi bir nedenle evinizden ayrılmasını istemek, bir şekilde özgür konuşmanın veya açık diyalogun sonu değildir. Bununla birlikte, popüler sosyal etkileşim, örgütlenme ve tartışma için kitlesel forumlar olarak hareket eden özel sektöre ait alanların sadece düzenli veya saygılı bir atmosfer sağlama hakkının ötesinde, aynı zamanda belirli görüşleri aktif olarak filtreleme, belirli siyasileri temizleme hakkı olduğu zaman bu herkesi ilgilendirir. Prensip olarak, bu tür bir regülasyon ve kültürel yönetim, benzer düşüncelere sahip herhangi bir grubun başına gelebilecek bir şey olarak ele alınmalıdır. Fikirleri, görüşleri ve sosyal etkileşimleri yoğun bir gücün kontrol etmesi sorununu ele alabilmek için, platformdan platforma geçen boş kitleler ya da Twitter’dan ırkçılık dolayısıyla banlananlar gibi ceviz kabuğunu doldurmayacak konulara odaklanmamıza gerek yok. Ne de olsa bunlar nihayetinde birer işletmedir. Mantıklı tartışma ve sivil etkileşim ilkeleriyle örtüşmeyen insan önyargıları ve çıkarları her zaman söz konusu olacak ve hangi tartışmaların ya da görüşlerin gün ışığına çıkmasına izin verilip verilmediğini etkileyecektir.

George Orwell’in Hayvan Çiftliği kitabında yayınlanmamış giriş kısmı da benzer endişeleri gündeme getiriyor. Makalenin tamamı, kendi ülkelerinde iktidarın kimin elinde olduğuna ve kamu söyleminin nasıl çalıştığına bakmadan Sovyetler Birliği veya Çin gibi ülkelerde hükümet sansürünü ve fikirlerin baskı altına alınmasını hicvetmeye istekli olanlara sert bir uyarı notu görevi görüyor. O dönemin kamu söyleminin yönlendirici güçlerinin çoğu değilse de önemli bir kısmının kitaplar, makaleler vb. gibi şeylerden oluştuğunu aklımızda tutarsak, Orwell’in bu platformlara sahip olanların nihayetinde fikir filtreleme süreçlerini kontrol ettiğini anladığı açıktır.

Sadece neyin yayınlanıp neyin yayınlanmayacağına karar vermede rol oynamakla kalmaz, aynı zamanda neyin kamusal söyleme girdiğine, kimin onu şekillendirmeye katılmasına izin verildiğine ve kimin saygı ve etki kazanacak şekilde konumlandığına da karar vermede rol oynarlar.  Tabii Orwell için “ifade özgürlüğüne ana tehdit” devlet sansürü değildir:

“İngiltere’deki edebi sansürle ilgili uğursuz gerçek, bunun büyük ölçüde gönüllü olmasıdır. Popüler olmayan fikirler susturulabilir ve uygunsuz gerçekler, herhangi bir resmi yasaklamaya gerek kalmadan karanlıkta tutulabilir.

Uzun bir süre yabancı bir ülkede yaşamış herkes, İngiliz basınında bazı haberlerin saklanmasının nedeninin devlet müdahelesi değil, bu haberlerin tatmin edici olmadığı üzerine zımni bir genel kabul olduğunu bilir. İngiliz basını son derece merkezileşmiştir ve çoğu, belirli önemli konularda dürüst olmamak için her türlü nedene sahip olabilen zengin adamlara aittir. Ama aynı örtülü sansür, oyunlarda, filmlerde ve radyoda olduğu kadar kitaplarda da işliyor.

Ortodoksluğun olduğu herhangi bir anda, doğru-düşünceli tüm insanların sorgusuz sualsiz kabul edeceği varsayılan bir fikirler bütünü vardır. Şunu, bunu ya da diğerini söylemek tam olarak yasak değil ama “söylenmesi gerekmiyor” … Hakim ortodoksiye meydan okuyan herkes, şaşırtıcı bir etkiyle susturulduğunu görür. Gerçekten modası geçmiş bir görüş ne popüler basında ne de seçkin dergilerde neredeyse hiçbir zaman adil bir şekilde ele alınmaz.”

Orwell İngiltere’den bahsediyordu ve açıkçası 2021’deki internet gibi basının durumunu ve yeni sosyal paradigmaları özel olarak ele almıyordu, ancak bu nokta şu anki çoğu Batılı toplum için geçerli hâle geliyor: Muhalifleri susturmak, bilgiyi filtrelemek ve kamusal söylemi düzenlemek için kullanılabilecek orantısız, merkezi gücün özellikleri gözler önünde. Bugün, bir makaleyi yayınlamak, bir fikri yaymak vb. için çok daha fazla fırsata sahip olsanız bile ana akımın dışında kalmak, zorunlu olarak marjlara itildiğiniz ve küçük zamanlı faaliyetler haline geldiğiniz anlamına gelir. Gerçekten de bazı şeyleri söylemek “söylenmesi gerekmiyor” durumundaysa veya hüküm süren ortodoksiye karşı çıkıyorsanız – belki sadece özel bir düzenleyicinin bir kararına meydan okuyarak bile – zaten size karşı kullanılacak bir erişim ve güvenilirlik tekeli ile bir savaş içindesiniz.

Açık olmak gerekirse, bir sansür aracı olan özel güce karşı endişeleri dile getirmek, herhangi bir hükümet politikasının uygulanması için bir çağrı olmadığı gibi, belirli bir özel sansür vakasının otomatik olarak daha iyi veya daha kötü olduğunu söylemek de değildir. Bununla birlikte, kamu söyleminin sağlığı ve bu söylemin çerçevesine ilişkin endişeler, haklar veya insanların ne yapıp ne yapamayacakları hakkındaki siyah beyaz ifadelerden daha karmaşıktır. Özel gücün kamu gücüne uyguladığı kontrolleri ve diğer özel güç biçimlerine karşı nasıl denge kurduğunu takdir ederken, yine de tek noktada yoğunlaşmasının getirdiği sorunları kabul edebiliriz. “Fikirler pazarında” özel gücün nasıl çalıştığını ve düşünce, inanç, kanaat ve konuşma özgürlüğünün nasıl kontrol edilip regülasyona uğrayabileceğini anlamalıyız. Tartışma ve sosyalleşme için ana kanalları ve platformları yönetenlerin kamusal söylemi ve daha geniş görüşleri şekillendirmede ne kadar önemli bir rol oynadığını göz ardı etmek akıllıca olmaz. Sağlıklı bir kamu söylemini sürdürmek, farklı görüşlere yer vermeyi ve tartışma genişliğini en üst düzeye çıkarmayı gerektirir. Bazı kişi ve kuruluşların kamusal söylem üzerinde güçlerini kullanma hakkına sahip olmaları, tüm değerli tartışmaların başlangıcı ve sonu olmayacaktır.

“My affair is neither the divine nor the human;

it is not the good, the true, the just, the free, etc.,

but only my own,

and it is not general, but is unique, as I am unique.

For me, there is nothing greater than me!”

– Max Stirner

The worst thing I could do in a piece about Egoism, in my view, would be to frame my own position solely through the ideas of a long-dead German edgelord. If you’re looking for a book report on The Unique and Its Property, this piece is not that. I’d recommend “Stirner’s Critics” if you want a brief intro to his Egoism.

All Collectives Are Nothing to Me

Yes, I am literally saying that my “Unions” — friendships, political alliances, romantic partnerships (or lack thereof), and all free associations — exist on the basis of “nothing” other than my own will. Does this mean I have fewer friends or that I’m more distant as a person? Does my lack of commitment to a cause like “the revolution” or “full communism” reduce me to nothing but a grifter? As far as I’m aware, I’m no more of a recluse than anyone else (at time of publication), and the friendships I have are relatively healthy, I think. This is because my relationships don’t govern me; no higher bond ties me to anyone and no shared feature inherently aligns me with any other individual. Because of this, I see Unions as stable yet chaotic associations with people I can rely on for material needs, emotional support, mutual aid, or just good company. My contribution to my Union comes not from coercion or external pressure, but from my own appreciation of the people within it and my desire to make them happy, safe, and free.

Fixed Unions, by which I mean rigid collectives I’m unconsciously drafted into (e.g. American, White, Woman, Man, etc.) aren’t so much a Union as they are a denial of my personhood, confinements that assign certain behaviors and traits to me in an attempt to strip me of my uniqueness. Whether I share anything with members of a given collective is completely irrelevant, ultimately achieving nothing towards the end of describing who I am or how I behave. I might have a lot in common with other non-binary queer anarchists with moderate household incomes, but I and this hypothetical individual are still irrefutably unique, separate entities. If I choose not to associate with a given collective identity, then the collective is outside of my Union and irrelevant to me; in rejecting the Fixed Union, it provides me nothing and I give it nothing in return. Our interests do not intersect, so we do not associate.

As strange as it may sound, my Union based on “nothing” is infinitely stronger than Fixed Unions based on “something.” To illustrate what I mean, let’s examine “the nation,” a perfect example of a Fixed Union. Its interest is its own preservation at any cost. Within “the nation,” acting totally for one’s own cause isn’t possible, as it’s always necessary to consider what “the nation” would suffer under your autonomy. Violence for yourself — defensive or otherwise — is at best discouraged if not outright punished, but violence for the sake of the nation is incentivized (qualified immunity, enlistment benefits, privileging of fascist street gangs, etc.). In such a Union, there’s no intersection of egoistic interests or a shared desire to coexist, but rather an evangelical faith in the Fixed Union’s legitimacy. We ignore our uniqueness, allowing ourselves to be governed by the Fixed Union as if it were a real entity with genuine power over its constituents; in reality, it’s another rigid abstraction that needs to be dismantled from within. 

My Union

In a previous article, I wrote that “Queerness is fundamentally a declaration of uniqueness.” For my purposes here, I want to highlight the last few points:

“A core foundation of any legitimate individualist perspective is that every human being is unique to the extent that static labels can never describe a person to a sufficient extent, hence the opposition to “collectivist” attempts to put people into boxes that will never fit them. 

Queerness is fundamentally a declaration of uniqueness. Who we’re attracted to, how we want to present, what we do with our bodies, and many other aspects of our identities are defined on our own terms, subject to no one’s input but our own.”

Shortly after this piece went live, I began referring to myself as a “queer anarchist without adjectives,” not only to indicate my own relentless queerness, but because the concept of queerness has become increasingly significant to my perspective. In a general sense, we are all strange, queer, a diversion from fixed ideas of what a “person” is supposed to be. The notion of “social order,” therefore, necessarily requires a suppression of individual uniqueness – “edge cases” that need to be guided towards the “normal.” Anthropology, psychology, and most legitimate social science contends, at least to some extent, that the organization of the world is an act of projection; aside from perhaps the most liberal essentialists within any field, there is a recognition that the heuristics and mental shortcuts we use to categorize individuals are acts of deliberate insistence, necessary dismissals of outliers for the sake of efficient dialogue rather than discoveries of objective truth.

Let’s consider individuals who identify with the label “trans lesbians of color.” Trans lesbians of color aren’t all the same, and within the trans, lesbian, and POC communities respectively, there is an infinite degree of deviation and uniqueness that can’t be fully captured by these terms. People are unique, no matter how many labels they share with one another, and there’s no experience that can truly, in any meaningful sense, be completely “shared.” In recognizing this, we can use such terminology as descriptive rather than prescriptive; it’s possible to recognize the individuality of people who could be described by certain terms without reinforcing the image of an ideal “person.” Sticking with our example, it’s not hard to argue that an individual who identifies as a trans lesbian of color has likely experienced queerphobia and racism, but to claim that they necessarily must share certain experiences with others in order to be “valid” is exclusionary, a rejection of the Unique in the pursuit of an essence that doesn’t exist.

This, unfortunately, is the direction many self-described allies and abolitionists take with their analysis. In a hopeless attempt to gain the support of centrists and authoritarians, the Unique is discarded in the pursuit of a reformed normalcy. Rather than embrace the total freedom of individuals to identify with and present as whatever identity they choose, queerness (in the general sense of nonconformity) is reduced to an aspect “beyond our control,” dismissing the genocidal bigotry of the evangelical right not primarily as an infringement of liberty, but as an ineffective means of enforcing the wrong social order. To these text-bank liberationists, assimilation into a society of tolerance, defined by a better status quo, is the best we can realistically do; any more radical suggestion, in this framework, can only be the work of malicious infiltrators threatening “the community.”

While a marginal improvement over white supremacist police statism, this progressive utopia is ultimately a poor substitute for total liberation, as its premises are still defined by fixed ideas (humanism, rationalism, social contract theory, etc.). To be blunt, any self-proclaimed “radicalism” that shudders at the idea of abolishing normalcy itself is insufficient in the total embrace of queerness and the Unique. So long as a fixed idea of normal, value-neutral personhood exists, the experience of deviants will be codified in relation to a nonexistent personification of a social average, rather than a unique mode of being.

My Union’s Affair

In the process of participating in my Union, am I thereby giving it power over me? Could I be tricked by malicious actors into thinking selflessness is in my self-interest? Fixed Unions are also susceptible to violations of trust, infiltration, and other harmful behaviors to a much greater extent than my or any other Union. This isn’t necessarily because my Union and those like it contain better people, but instead the result of a difference in our affairs – our primary motives as entities.

My Union’s “affair” is, strictly speaking, nothing. It’s not a real entity governing over the individuals involved, but a recognition of the intersection of our self-interests. I never make friends with someone because we both have a vested interest in “preserving our bond”; my friendships exist because I and another person want to be around each other for some reason. If our time spent together becomes emotionally draining, toxic, or otherwise undesirable, that friendship (i.e. My Union) dissolves, either passively or spontaneously, permanently or temporarily. There’s no point at which we both sacrifice our uniqueness to maintain the Union, since its affair isn’t self-preservation. My Union’s affair is, as I said earlier, nothing. Its existence is governed by our shared interest in one another, not the other way around.

To some extent, this runs counter to class theory, particularly its most essentialist manifestations. As I said earlier, there’s a practical justification for categorizations such as class analysis as a descriptive framework, as it enables more directed action against dominant state capitalist entities. The problem, of course, is when such systems claim to uncover an essence to one’s identity on the basis of their relationship to the state, means of production, and existing institutions. In addition to being a complete lie, this essentialist approach leads to a philosophical dependence on fixed ideas (the legitimacy of the state, an inherent need for hierarchy, the unambiguous benefit of increased scale, “rights” to national self-determination, etc.) which ultimately prevent many theories from becoming totally liberatory and, in practice, reduce their efforts to reformist gestures towards “real change.”

In the pursuit of “legitimacy” in the eyes of a broadly defined public, we distance ourselves from the Unique in an attempt to build a “mass movement,” rallying a conscious collective of laborers around the notion that their action as part of a larger whole is where true power lies. 

The “Nothing”

By uncovering the emptiness of the Union, fixed or otherwise, I don’t want to gesture towards an arbitrary template for organization in response to our existing enemies or the material struggles that will persist in the absence of the state, nor do I necessarily want to totally dismiss any specific model. In revealing the emptiness of the Union, we’re able to expand our associations far beyond the boundaries of class, culture, and fixed identities, unburdened by the lofty commitments that distract us from our own cause. The “nothing” liberates us from each other, our ideas, and the compromises we are compelled to make for the sake of fixed ideas.

My goal here is to suggest that my Union, despite what some may claim, is not formed on the basis of any greater cause. My Union is an egoistic one, formed between me and others as a result of mutual, intersecting interest in one another. I don’t serve the self at the expense of others, and I don’t serve others at the expense of the self; I and other unique individuals, together, form a Union through our combined egoistic affairs. No narrative, metaphysical framework, or determinism can adequately describe my Union. After all, claiming there is something where nothing exists requires lying by omission, usually at the expense of uniqueness.

In our attempts to achieve “universal dignity and autonomy for all,” it’s absolutely necessary to recognize the unique, the egoistic union, and the voids therein. The moment we start suggesting rigid, fixed frameworks under which individuals “should” associate, we cease to be anarchists.

This year, C4SS Fellow Cory Massimino joins Alex McHugh as a host for Mutual Exchange Radio. For this first episode of the season, we sat down together to talk about intellectual influences, the upcoming podcast season, and C4SS’s forthcoming Mutual Exchange Symposium on Egoism and Anarchism.

See the Mutual Exchange Symposium here starting Tuesday, Feb. 2nd.

This should also be our last late release for a while (huge thanks to Cory here!) and we’ll be getting back on schedule in February. So, look out for episodes to post publicly on the last Friday of each month, and about a week early for our supporters on Patreon.

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Here’s what’s coming up soon: 

• February: Alex interviews Sarah Skwire of Liberty Fund on what we can learn about economics from literature
• March: Cory interviews Abigail Devereaux on complexity economics and what she calls synecological game theory, “an analytical bridge between traditional economic theory and agent-based modeling”

C4SS Mutual Exchange Symposium:

Anarchism and Egoism: The Only Authority Is Yourself

Many consider anarchism and egoism polar opposites. Anarchism opposes all forms of domination, from statism to capitalism to patriarchy, because it is about dignity and autonomy for everyone. Egoism, from the French égoïsme meaning “to think of oneself,” is about the affirmation and assertion of the self. How can the anarchist commitment to everyone be reconciled with the egoist commitment to oneself? This Mutual Exchange Symposium is a collective effort aimed at exploring these and related tensions.

Anarchism and egoism are, ironically, kindred spirits. Both share roots in 19th century radical philosophic and political thought—though the ideas and practices associated with each surely predate their first explicit articulations. Both have been considered, at best, taboo and, at worst, dangerous. Both have been misunderstood, but also mischaracterized. Both ultimately found refuge during the 20th and 21st centuries within broader libertarian undercurrents, where their adherents were fractured and ideas were sharpened. Most importantly, both consider themselves on the side of life and freedom. The essays compiled here explore the complex relationship between these two traditions. 

Egoists have, fittingly, defended their emphasis on the self in a variety of ways. The egoist tradition most strongly associated with anarchism is, in the tradition of Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar Schmidt’s pseudonym), nihilistic. Benjamin Tucker, founder and editor of the most prominent 19th century anarchist periodical Liberty, translated Stirner’s The Unique and Its Property (sometimes translated as The Ego and Its Own) from German to English and incorporated Stirner’s egoism into his own Proudhon-influenced individualist anarchism. This ideological shift was happily embraced by some Liberty authors, such as Tak Kak (James L. Walker’s pseudonym), but fervently rejected by others, particularly those more inclined towards the ideas of human nature and human rights, such as Gertrude B. Kelley.

Stirner rejected morality as yet another archaic tool of control to be abandoned along with statism, capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, nationalism, religion, and all forms of collectivism, which elevate illusory abstractions above the concrete individual. To submit oneself to any kind of externally imposed restraint is to betray oneself. Whether the self is to be discovered or created, it is, most of all, to be upheld. Morals, states, bosses, genders, races, nations,  and gods are to be thought of like Casper the Ghost, as mere “spooks.” Nihilist egoists ground anarchism, not in pretenses to nature or justice, but in their simple and straightforward commitment to the inviolability of the individual, to the sacredness of the self, to the ego and its own.

Another strand of egoism is ethical egoism—though neither strand much likes to grant the legitimacy of the “egoist” title to the other. Ethical egoism doesn’t view morality as an externally imposed restraint, but as a necessary component of a flourishing life. On this view, morality (including the demands of justice) is considered internal to one’s flourishing; facts about morality ultimately relate back to facts about flourishing. Morality straightforwardly emerges from one’s life, relationships, and projects. The most popular proponent of this view is Ayn Rand, who was herself a fervent critic of anarchism, but who influenced many thinkers that took her radical individualism in a decidedly anarchist direction, such as Murray N. Rothbard, Jeff Riggenbach, Roy A. Childs, and Roderick T. Long. 

Rand formulated a colorful combination of Ancient Greek virtue ethics, proto-existentialist (and sometimes Stirner-reminiscent) Nietzscheanism, and classical liberal individualism. By grounding her egoism in Aristotelian ideas about human flourishing, Rand argued living well is not a project independent of, let alone threatened by, living morally. Part of living a good life is being a virtuous person, acting in accordance with justice, and respecting the rights of others. Where Stirner’s nihilist egoism has lived on as an undercurrent of individualist anarchism more broadly, the 20th century U.S. libertarians that drew on the individualist anarchists of old largely preferred the natural law of Lysander Spooner to the nihilism of Benjamin Tucker. Rand offered the natural law and anti-nihilism of the former, but without sacrificing the egoism of the latter.

Despite their historical affinity, anarchism and egoism also share many areas of tension. These questions are meant to help spur inquiry into those areas for the conversation that follows.

• Is the egalitarianism of anarchism reconcilable with the individualism of egoism? 
• Does egoism provide firmer grounding for anarchism than alternative theories that emphasize consequences or duties?
• How is egoism related to different branches of anarchism, e.g. market anarchism, social anarchism, primitivism, transhumanism, etc.?
• Are the multiple branches of egoism as disparate as they are sometimes treated?
• Should egoists abandon notions of human nature and objective morality or embrace them?
• How should egoists relate to collective identities such as race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, nationality, and/or species (possessed by themselves and/or others) when those categories are treated as significant by nearly everyone? Can egoists acknowledge “spooks” without entrenching them? 
• Is egoism compatible with historical anarchist praxis such as mutual aid and community organizing?
• What does egoism have to say about intersectional approaches in which oppression is understood as mutually interlocking phenomena, like the bars of a birdcage?
• Does egoism ignore the insights offered by the dialectical methodology usually associated with Hegel and Marx? Or are John Welsh and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (who respectively interpret Stirner and Rand through dialectical lenses) on to something?
• Can egoism survive Marxist critiques that say true liberation requires some kind of collective consciousness and solidarity?
• Can egoism survive postmodern critiques that say the “individual” and the “self” are constructs as illusory as the collective abstractions egoists oppose?
• What can egoism offer us concerning the issues of modernity, such as alienation, environmental destruction, secularism, neoliberalism, and resurgent fascism? 
• Is egoism harmful in the face of collective action problems and negative externalities such as those associated with climate change?

I hope this Mutual Exchange provides a space for anarchists and egoists to collaboratively reflect on these tensions and maybe even stumble onto some solutions together.

Egoism, like anarchism, is a much richer tradition of thought than it’s often given credit for. While historically unconventional and unpopular, egoism offers a variety of novel, thought-provoking, and sometimes even beautiful, insights into the human condition. After all, every insight has its origins in the mind of some individual and every philosophical problem is related in some way to the individual, whether it concerns a society which consists in them or a cosmos which spawns them. If “egoism” literally means “to think of oneself,” then surely we are all egoists at least some of the time. Maybe we should confront that ego every now and then—we might be surprised by what we find.

Background Readings:

The Unique and Its Property – Max Stirner

Stirner’s Critics – Max Stirner

The Philosophy of Egoism – James L. Walker

Just and Moral – Dora Marsden

Why We Are Moral – Dora Marsden

Relation of the State to the Individual – Benjamin Tucker

The Revolt of The Unique – Renzo Novatore 

Toward the Creative Nothing – Renzo Novatore

My Anarchism – Sidney Parker

Anarchism versus Socialism – Sidney Parker

Morality vs. Egoism – Robert LeFevre and Sidney E. Parker

Politics of the Ego: Stirner’s Critique of Liberalism – Saul Newman

Dora Marsden, Stirner, and the Critique of Culture – John F. Welsh

From Feminism to Egoism – John F. Welsh

The Relevance of Max Stirner to Anarcho-Communists – Matty Thomas

Egoist Agorism – Vikky Storm

The Right To Be Greedy – For Ourselves

The Buddha and Max Stirner – David D’Amato

James L. Walker, Philosopher of Egoism – David D’Amato

Sidney Parker, Egoist: Against All Systems – David D’Amato

Dora Marsden, Free Woman – David D’Amato

Avowals of Selfhood: Review of Egoism – David D’Amato

Egoism In Rand and Stirner – David D’Amato

Galt’s Speech – Ayn Rand

The Objectivist Ethics – Ayn Rand

Objectivism and the State – Roy A. Childs Jr.

Ayn Rand and Altruism – George H. Smith

Rand, “The Virtue of Selfishness,” and Veatch, “Rational Man” – George H. Smith

A Groundwork for Rights: Man’s Natural End – Douglass B. Rasmussen 

An Objectivist Case For Libertarianism – Neera Badhwar

Ayn Rand’s Contribution to Philosophy – Neera Badhwar

Virtues, Vices, and Egoism – Neera Badhwar

The Winnowing of Ayn Rand – Roderick T. Long

Egoism and Anarchy – Roderick T. Long

Individualism, Anti-Essentialism, and Intersectionality – Kelly Vee

The Mutual Exchange Symposium:

Lead Essays

My Union Based On Nothing – Spooky

Stirner, Wittgenstein, and Anarchism – Rai Ling

Communities of Egoists – Joseph Parampathu

The Social Ecology of Egoism – Aaron Koek

The Eco- And Our Home – Evan Pierce

Against Moral Cannibalism – Jason Lee Byas

Anarchy is Moral Order – Jason Lee Byas

The Authority of Yourself – Jason Lee Byas

A Dialectical Rand For An Egoist Anarchism – Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Insurrection or Revolution? – Saul Newman

Emma Goldman and Individualist Anarchism – Shane Ross

Egoism, Morality, and Anarchism Under Complexity – Andrew Kemle

Transhumanism and Egoism – Frank Miroslav

Christianity and Egoism – Alexander W. Craig

The Anarchist and the Egoist in Love – Kelly Vee

Response Essays

Refining the “Amoralist’s Challenge – Spooky

The Ego and His Cross – Joseph Parampathu

Bloody Rule and a Cannibal Order! Part I: The Egoist– Ash P. Morgans

Bloody Rule and Cannibal Order! Part II: The Anarchist – Ash P. Morgans

Bloody Rule and Cannibal Order! Part III: The Nothing – Ash P. Morgans

Is There a “Self” Left to Talk About? A Reply to Ash P. Morgans – Andrew Kemle

Mutual Exchange is C4SS’s goal in two senses: We favor a society rooted in peaceful, voluntary cooperation, and we seek to foster understanding through ongoing dialogue. Mutual Exchange will provide opportunities for conversation about issues that matter to C4SS’s audience.

Online symposiums will include essays by a diverse range of writers presenting and debating their views on a variety of interrelated and overlapping topics, tied together by an overarching theme. C4SS is extremely interested in feedback from our readers. Suggestions and comments are enthusiastically encouraged. If you’re interested in proposing topics and/or authors for our program to pursue, or if you’re interested in participating yourself, please email C4SS’s Mutual Exchange Coordinator, Cory Massimino, at cory.massimino@c4ss.org.

As my listeners may have noticed, there has not been a new episode of the Green Market Agorist podcast this month. This is because Green Market Agorist will be taking a backseat for the time being as I focus on other projects. Dont worry! The podcast isn’t over! It’s not even officially on hiatus so much as it will be switching to a much more sporadic schedule.

There are many reasons for this. Things have become a lot busier in my personal life and trying to schedule guest interviews for each month is a lot of work to keep up with right now. I am so behind that I have not even made the switch from Anchor to Libsyn like I promised months ago. Switching to a more sporadic schedule allows me to schedule cool interviews that I think are relevant to the podcast while making sure that those individual interviews are of a higher quality. This also allows me the time to finally switch things over to being hosted on Libsyn alongside the rest of the C4SS podcasting network and add transcriptions for each episode to make them more accessible.

Switching to a more sporadic schedule also allows me to put more focus back into my writing and prepare for the 3rd year of Coup de Gras, our yearly anarchist Mardi Gras festival in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Be sure to keep an eye out on here for more upcoming writing of mine and be sure to check out https://coupdegras.wtf/ to buy your tickets to Coup de Gras 3: Tammany Drift today!

On February 16, 1967, NBC aired the twenty-second episode in Season 1 of “Star Trek“; it was called “Space Seed,” known to Trekkies as the episode that introduced the world to the character Khan Noonien Singh, he who would come back with fury in the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

For those who aren’t familiar with this episode, the Starship Enterprise intercepts the SS Botany Bay, a spacecraft with 84 humans aboard, in suspended animation. Only 72 of them survive, including Khan, all of them products of a selective breeding program that led to the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Khan led these genetic superhumans to conquer one third of the world, until they were driven to abandon planet Earth.

Toward the beginning of the episode, when all the facts of the unfolding mystery of Botany Bay have not yet been made clear, there’s an interesting exchange between Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner) and the ever-logical Vulcan, Mr. Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy):

Kirk: So much for my theory. I’m still waiting to hear yours.

Spock: Even a theory requires some facts, Captain. So far, I have none.

Kirk: And that irritates you, Mr. Spock?

Spock: Irritation?

Kirk: Yeah.

Spock: I am not capable of that emotion.

Kirk: My apologies, Mr. Spock. You suspect some danger, then?

Spock: Insufficient facts always invite danger, Captain.

Kirk: Well, better get some facts.

I recently saw this episode after many years, and just shook my head, thinking of how timely that advice is in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic.

While I’m going to do my best to deal with “some facts,” I am not a Vulcan. As a human being, I am very much prone to feeling “irritation.” This post is going to express a lot of irritation. But it is a cathartic exercise, one that I hope will go a long way toward healing some of the divisions I’ve seen among many people who call themselves “libertarians.” Rather than “disown” such an emotion, I’m just going to get it off my chest. A wise psychologist once told me: “Don’t keep anything in! Give the other guy the ulcer!”

Well, I don’t wish any ulcers on anybody, any more than I wish that the “naysayers” among us get coronavirus and die just to prove a point.

Since I started blogging explicitly about coronavirus, I have lost count of the number of times that I have found myself irritated—or downright outraged—over the kinds of things I have heard coming out of the mouths of self-described libertarians.

In this post, I am focused primarily on libertarian responses to the virus because that is the community with which I’ve been associated for the bulk of my professional and intellectual life, albeit advocating a “dialectical libertarianism” that has always tried to push my colleagues and friends toward a greater understanding of the larger context within which human freedom flourishes—or dies. But this confession of my irritation with some folks is as much a therapeutic exercise that I urge everyone to embrace, no matter where you stand on the current debate. Better self-understanding goes hand-in-hand with a better understanding of those with whom you disagree. It also tends to shed more light than heat. And, Lord knows, we’ve had a lot of heat over these last two months.

For the record, I’ll just state the obvious: As a radical libertarian (or radical liberal, in the classical sense), I am typically irritated with folks on both the socialist left and the nationalist right who have never met a crisis they would not use as a means of increasing government power in the spheres of their respective interest for “the common good.” But critique must begin at home. And since I find so much discord in my libertarian home, I feel the need for even greater self-examination. I won’t allow irritation with others to cloud my vision of their humanity or their very real concerns.

Pandemics as the Pretext for Advancing Statism

Nevertheless, as part of this therapeutic exercise, I wish to make explicit the very first time I began to feel a level of irritation with some of my libertarian colleagues. It came from those who first declared it a hoax or an exaggeration, being used by those in power who sought to augment the power of the state over our lives. To be generous, many of these folks come from a “good” place; they are understandably concerned with the history of corrupt entanglements that mark the state-science nexus, which has given us every instrument of mass terror and every weapon of mass destruction in the modern era. They see that with advancing government control over our society in the name of an emergency, there comes a form of militarization that starts to infect the body politic in ways that are just as insidious as the virus itself.

I am deeply aware of the importance of this issue. As I pointed out in my second Notablog entry on the coronavirus, “Disease and Dictatorship”:

First, there is a need to put all this into a larger context with regard to the policies of the Chinese government [which dealt with the first outbreak of the virus in the city of Wuhan]. This is the same government that has maintained concentration camps (euphemistically described as ‘re-education camps’) for nearly two million Muslims, while waging war on those seeking freedom from Beijing’s control over the people of Hong Kong. So the ‘Chinese model’ continues to be an authoritarian one, whether it is used to contain people or pandemics. I don’t know all the answers on how to confront a pandemic, but clearly the draconian measures enacted by some of those in power will have an impact that far outlasts the containment of any disease. Most governments have referred to this as a war, but all wars have always been accompanied by a vast increase in the role of the state in ways that never quite go-back to ‘pre-war’ levels. This isn’t a call to anarchy (at least not yet…)—but it is a call to vigilance on behalf of human liberty, even in the face of a dreaded disease.

Indeed, as my friend Pete Boettke recently reminded us, it was in volume three of Law, Legislation, and Liberty that F. A. Hayek warned:

“Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded—and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency persists.”

The Problem of Confirmation Bias

But there was something about the early response to the coronavirus as a “hoax” or an “exaggeration” that was eerily familiar to me. Back in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was killing off a generation of gay men in the West (while ravaging a largely heterosexual population in Africa), some libertarians (including those influenced by Ayn Rand), ever fearful of those who proposed a growing governmental role in both medical research and in locking down bathhouses that were transmission belts for promiscuous, unsafe sex, grabbed onto the work of the molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, who played a major role in what became known as the AIDS denialism controversy. Duesberg was among those dissenting scientists who argued that there was no connection between HIV and AIDS, and that gay men were dying en masse because of recreational and pharmaceutical drug use, and then, later, by the use of AZT, an early antiviral treatment to combat those with symptoms of the disease.

If the scientific community had accepted Duesberg’s theories, hundreds of thousands of people would be dead today. The blood supply would never have been secured, since HIV screening of blood donors would never have become public policy, and countless thousands of people receiving blood transfusions would have been infected by HIV and would have subsequently died from opportunistic infections. A whole array of “cocktail” drugs were developed that have targeted HIV, the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and they have been effective in keeping people alive, reducing their viral load down to undetectable levels, boosting their T-cell counts, and allowing them to go on to live normal, productive, and creative lives. Still, safe sex remains the mantra of the day.

So, while many libertarians have been at the forefront of rolling back the state’s interference in people’s personal lives, advocating the elimination of discriminatory anti-sodomy and marriage laws, there were some libertarians who, early on, in the AIDS epidemic, grabbed onto Duesberg’s theories as scientific proof that the whole HIV/AIDS thing was a pretext for the expansion of the state-science nexus. Confirmation bias is an especially strong urge for anyone with strong convictions. All the more reason to constantly check one’s premises, as Rand once urged.

My own libertarian approach has always had a dialectical hue—which means that I try not to jump to conclusions with ideological blinders, without first addressing the real conditions that exist, and placing them within a larger context. No state can wipe the canvas clean; the historical attempts to do so have left oceans of human blood in their wake.

And yet, each of us is part of the very canvas on which we wish to leave our mark. This must be recognized especially by those of us who offer a political vision for a noncoercive society free of oppression.

So I can’t wipe my own canvas clean. Just as I remain a hard-core libertarian, I am also a New Yorker to my core. And I’ve seen up close and personal the death and destruction that this virus has caused to the people in my state and in the city of my birth, the city where I will stay until the day I die—because no terrorists, no viruses, will ever drive me away from the place I call home. It was deeply saddening to see my hometown re-discovering, yet again, what it meant to be crowned “Ground Zero” early in the pandemic.

When New York first earned the “Ground Zero” distinction, back on September 11, 2001, the ideological fissures in the libertarian movement were just as apparent. Neoconservatives were leading the way, not merely to strike back at those responsible for the terrorist attacks, but to begin a “nation-building” crusade, with no regard for the cultural or historical context of the countries impacted by their wrongheaded policies. What followed was a vast expansion of the National Security State through the PATRIOT Act (opposed by only three Republicans in the House of Representatives), which continues to be used in ways unrelated to “Homeland Security,” further eroding civil liberties in this country. An unjustified war in Iraq destabilized the entire region, leading to unintended consequences that will be with us for generations to come.

At the time, I found myself at odds with many libertarians of a more “Objectivist” bent who wanted to annihilate the Middle East with nuclear weapons, unconcerned with the side effects of, say, a nuclear winter. Times were tough for any libertarian, like myself, who argued that 9/11 was primarily a blow-back event brought about by years of brutal US intervention abroad, but who also condemned the mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians by Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in their terrorist attacks on that tragic day. I supported targeted strikes against Al Qaeda, while also arguing that the United States should get the hell out of the Middle East and the rest of the world’s hot spots. I was called a “traitor” by many in Objectivist circles. It never phased these folks that Rand herself had opposed US entrance into World War II, and actively opposed US wars in Korea and Vietnam, the latter, while troops were on the ground, even counseling draftees to get good attorneys, because she was also opposed to military conscription. Unlike her progeny, she saw that there was a highly toxic, organic relationship between domestic interventionism at home and “pull-peddling” interventionism abroad.

Ironically, one of those Objectivists who favored the war in Iraq was Robert Tracinski. Today, I find myself in greater agreement with Tracinski, especially in a recent, wide-ranging essay, which dissects the arguments of those who downplay the impact of COVID-19, people like Richard Epstein, Michael Fumento, Tucker Carlson, Britt Hume, Glenn Beck, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and various Objectivists. Tracinski criticizes those who argue that

“there are no libertarians in a pandemic,” the idea that the coronavirus response proves how much we need Big Government. … But there has also been an attempt to portray the pandemic as an overblown hysteria, a hoax designed to impose dictatorship on us in the form of mandatory social isolation. The unstated premise is that if the pandemic were real, it actually would make the case for Big Government, so therefore it cannot be admitted to be a genuine threat. … The basic facts are that this virus spreads more quickly and easily than the flu and is about ten times more deadly, with a mortality rate in the neighborhood of one to two percent. … This is not the Black Death or Ebola, diseases with mortality rates of about 50%, and I have no doubt there are eras in history when a mortality rate of 2% would barely have been noticed. But we are very fortunate not to live in one of those eras. Given our high standards of medical care and low death rates from other causes, COVID-19 produces dramatic increases in mortality to levels far above the norm. And just in terms of absolute numbers, a morality rate of one to two percent means that its unchecked spread would be likely to produce a death toll in the millions in the US alone, in the span of just a year. By comparison, a little over 400,000 Americans died in all of World War II. I don’t know by what standard a potential death toll greater than that of a major war would not be considered a catastrophe. … The point is that this is not “fake news” coming from the left-wing media. It is really happening, and people we know are trying to tell us about it.

In the face of growing evidence, it does seem that the “hoax” theory has ebbed in most libertarian circles. But there are still those who hang onto the belief that this whole “pandemic” (in scare quotes) is overblown and nothing to worry about, except for those older folks with pre-existing conditions (like me, for example), who are going to die at some point anyway (aren’t we all?). It’s the kind of stance that leads people to view libertarians as not having a single empathetic bone in their crippled bodies.

***

As Pete Boettke argues, a genuinely realist approach must navigate between the false alternatives of “Romance” and “Cynicism”—the Scylla and Charybdis—that we typically face in all crises that have led to an augmentation of government power:

Romance lead[s] us astray by framing political leaders as saintly geniuses, whereas Cynicism leads us astray by framing the system as completely corrupt and devoid of any hope for improvement. Nothing in the Humean dictum that in designing institutions of government we should assume all men are knaves is either descriptive or hopeless. In fact, the hope in that dictum comes from … minimizing the loss function in the design from the possibility of knaves ascending to power. It is from constructing the institutional rules of our governance such that bad men can do least harm, rather than assuming that only the best and brightest among us will rise to leadership, or that whatever system of governance we talk about it will devolve into corruption and immorality.

Realism forces us to reason through the tricky incentives that actors face in making their decisions. Realism also forces us to place the theorist in the model itself. Why do theorists choose the theories that they do, why do they make the statements that they do. The old political science “law” that where you stand is a function of where you sit, is just as true for scientists and academics as it is for Senators and Congressmen.

I fully agree with Pete that this pandemic has become a “testing ground” for our biases and ideas. The first step toward freedom is liberation from our ideological blinders. That doesn’t mean a renunciation of our core values and convictions. It is an admission that human beings are

fallible yet capable creatures that when given freedom from the oppression of servitude (Crown), dogma (Altar), violence (Sword), and poverty (Plough) … unleash their creative energies and lead to improvement in not only the material conditions of humanity but physical, spiritual and interpersonal. True radical liberalism is an emancipation doctrine, and seeks to cultivate a social system that exhibits neither discrimination nor dominion, and promises a social system that strives to minimize human suffering while maximizing the chances for human flourishing.

***

On the wall next to my desk, I have a small plaque, gifted to me by my family doctor when I was a young boy, who had emerged from life-saving surgery, after suffering for fourteen years without any diagnosis. It’s an “Indian Prayer” and it says: “Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”

I have seen the pain caused by this pandemic on every level, though as someone who has had 60+ surgeries in his life to combat the side effects of my own illness, I naturally share an affinity with those who become sick, for any reason. I have seen neighbors to the right of me and neighbors to the left of me who are sick, dying, or dead.

But I am not oblivious to the other pain that is being experienced by people who are not sick. They too are my neighbors. They are out of work, their unemployment checks are held up, some of them are too “proud” or ashamed to even apply for food stamps, until they realize that they can’t afford to feed their own children without some help.

The human costs of this pandemic run deep, among families that are grieving over the loss of loved ones, among those whose businesses may never recover, whose jobs may never reappear, and whose dreams have been aborted. I have seen too much suffering on both sides of this divide.

But if we are to make the case for a new radicalism, each of us must be willing to engage in self-critique, to make transparent and examine our own biases. This must be coupled with a willingness to embrace the very real human need for empathy, the ability to truly share and understand the struggles of other individuals, especially those with whom we may disagree.

Without that empathy, I fear that the things that divide us may become irreparable not just to the libertarian project, but to the ideal of human freedom that we seek.

De Jordan Jardine. Original: Build Back Ourselves, del 24 de enero del 2022. Traducido al español por Kesabel Babe.

Durante las últimas semanas, ha sido difícil ignorar el lloriqueo que ha estado ocurriendo a lo largo de la gran llamada “izquierda en línea” — e incluso en la prensa convencional — sobre el colapso total del proyecto Ley Build Back Better, principalmente debido a la oposición a dicho proyecto de ley por parte de los demócratas extremadamente conservadores Kyrsten Sinema y Joe Manchin. Si bien es completamente cierto que Manchin y Sinema son personajes moralmente reprensibles que son irremediablemente títeres corruptos de la América Corporativa, no es cierto decir que la Ley que bien ellos pudieron haber matado era algo del otro mundo. La Ley es una mezcla miserable (1) de políticas que los progresistas asumen que ayudarían a los estadounidenses y a sus familias a recuperarse después de sufrir durante más de dos años debido a la catástrofe económica provocada por la pandemia del COVID-19.

Hay numerosos problemas con la premisa. Primero, si bien la ayuda del Estado puede ser ciertamente útil como un medio temporal para proporcionar un colchón financiero durante tiempos difíciles, no soluciona el problema subyacente de los trabajadores siendo explotados hasta el punto en el que son incapaces de mantenerse a sí mismos ni a sus familias. El problema no es solo sobre el dinero. Es también sobre la explotación capitalista, y no hay nada en Build Back Better diseñado para abordar eso porque el Estado, el cual está diseñado para proteger a los propietarios del capital privado, no está interesado en alterar el statu quo capitalista.

El Segundo problema, como se mencionó anteriormente, recae en la Ley misma y en cuán menospreciado ha sido tanto por los Demócratas como por los Republicanos.  El gasto en el proyecto de Ley, hasta el momento, totaliza menos de $ 2 billones. Según Político, se suponía que la Ley Build Back Better original costaría $ 3.5 billones (luego de que su primera propuesta de $ 6 billones fuera rechazada). Vox informa que muchas de las disposiciones del proyecto de Ley caducan al poco tiempo. Por ejemplo, la provisión ampliada de cuidado infantil expirará luego de 3 años, y la expansión del programa prescolar, que originalmente se suponía ser universal, expirará en 2028.

Un problema adicional se trata de la política fiscal del proyecto de Ley. Según Vox, si bien el proyecto de ley aumenta los impuestos corporativos, también reduce los impuestos principalmente para las personas ricas en los estados azules. Para el colmo de males, el proyecto de Ley contiene un impuesto sobre los cigarrillos electrónicos, lo que claramente tendría un impacto negativo en los fumadores de bajos ingresos. Este proyecto de Ley logra un poco más que recompensar a los liberales ricos y castigar al resto del país mediante incrementos de impuestos y programas temporales disfrazados de patéticas expansiones de la ya exigua “red de seguridad” de Estados Unidos. Los llamados progresistas pueden llorar lo que parece la inevitable muerte del proyecto Ley Build Back Better, pero los anarquistas no deben derramar ni una sola lágrima.

No podemos confiar en que burócratas respaldados por corporaciones vengan a nuestra ayuda, incluso en tiempos estresantes como la pandemia del COVID-19. El gobierno estadounidense, particularmente a nivel federal, ha mostrado constantemente incompetencia e indiferencia a lo largo de esta crisis en curso. Según una encuesta de Pew Research publicada en mayo del 2021, solo el 2% de los estadounidenses dicen que “casi siempre” confían en ellos y 22% dicen que confían en ellos “la mayor parte del tiempo”. La encuesta también mostró que la confianza en el gobierno está en un mínimo histórico.

La gente está cansada de contar con promesas vacías y dobles raseros de sus líderes. Es tiempo de actuar por nosotros mismos. No tenemos mucho más que perder. A través organizaciones de cooperación descentralizada y de ayuda mutua, podemos encontrar un camino y florecer por cuenta propia. No deberíamos depender del gobierno o de corporaciones para reconstruirnos y recuperarnos de la pandemia. En cambio, ¿por qué no usarlo de trampolín para un nuevo movimiento libre de intervención del gobierno y controlado totalmente por la gente? El desempleo ha sido un tema popular de discusión últimamente. La gente desempleada podría usar esta oportunidad para formar cooperativas de trabajadores o descubrir cuáles son sus propios sueños y talentos y luego administrarse ellos mismos.

La era del COVID ha sido un tiempo difícil para todos y ha traído innegablemente bastante miedo e incertidumbre en un mundo ya inmerso en el caos y corrupción. La buena noticia es que aún hay tiempo para revertir el curso y cambiar la sociedad por el bien de todos. No lloren por la muerte del proyecto Ley Build Back Better. Es tiempo de reconstruirnos a nosotros mismos. (2)

Notas

1. En el texto original dice “watered-down hodgepodge”, que se divide en dos jergas: la primera “watered-down” que se refiera a menospreciar o quitar valor, y la segunda “hodgepodge” que se refiere a una mezcla desordenada o heterogénea.

2. En el original se expresa como un juego de palabras del “Build Back Better” (la Ley) a “Build Back Ourselves”.​