Libertarian Party Uk

[Blagsta]

That maybe true but the real reason is that you don't put the effort in. You've misread me at least three times - basic problem of comprehension, nothing to do with the difficulty of what I say. Your replies are one liners. Your arguments are pot shots.

No, it's more to do with your confused posts. Really it is.

The point is that I don't know. I think the very idea of maximising liberty is incoherent.

You don't know, yet you asserted that it was the case. Errrr...I dunno how to respond to that. Like most of what you've posted in this thread.

However right wing libertarianism is pretty clear most of the time. Its very straight forward to the point of being simplistic - the state should but out of personal and economic affairs.

Being familiar, as you say you are, with the anarchist faq and with Kropotkin, then I needn't point out to you how limiting and incoherent this definition is.

I have offered Kropotkin as a representative of anarchist libertarians. We can talk about someone else. We could talk about what you think. Really you should tell me, you're the libertarian socialist, you know more about this than I do.

I have told you what I think, if you care to look!

 

[Blagsta]

Don't you find me compelling? I find you compelling.

I find you confusing and little irritating tbh.

 

[Knotted]

No, it's more to do with your confused posts. Really it is.

My posts are very clear. In fact it surprises me how clear they are. You have coerced me into going back and checking them with your accusations of going round in circles and being confused. Each time you got confused it was the result of simple failure of comprehension. I think you are not even reading my posts just glancing at them and guessing the content.

You don't know, yet you asserted that it was the case. Errrr...I dunno how to respond to that. Like most of what you've posted in this thread.

Now that's confused!

Being familiar, as you say you are, with the anarchist faq and with Kropotkin, then I needn't point out to you how limiting and incoherent this definition is.

It is limited but it is coherent with respect to a large range of issues. Take drug control for example. The libertarian will say that there should be no restrictions on drug use or the selling of drugs. Victimless crime etc. Whether you agree or disagree, you have to admit its pretty clear.

I have told you what I think, if you care to look!

I don't remember, but more broadly you could reply to posts by telling me what you think. These one liners are very tiresome.

 

[Knotted]

Apologies to Blagsta, I missed this.

You're concentrating solely on negative freedoms. The anarchist position is that these negative freedoms don't mean very much without postive freedoms as well. The freedom to cross a picket line may be a liberty for the individual crossing it, but it's not not for the people who are striking. The conception of freedom you have is one based on abstract individualism. If you actually read anarchist theory, you'll see that it disagrees with this. Read the faq again, it's quite a good explanation, it'll correct your misconceptions.

OK this is the problem with libertarianism of all stripes. In conflicts you trade one liberty for another. The right to cross picket lines or the positive liberty to win a strike. It comes down to what you value, not to how libertarian you are. Your values determine your 'libertarianism', your 'libertarianism' does not determine your values in such cases.

To be honest I don't think much of the use of the term "positive liberty" - I'd rather talk about welfare, education and social justice. I think that is much clearer.

 

[ViolentPanda]

That's a coherent point, but it wouldn't have even occured to me to associate coercion with extra legal methods. That seems very odd to me - maybe that's just me though.

I believe it may be "just you".
I've personally rarely experienced the word "coercion" being used to describe anything other than extra-legal (or occasionally extra-moral) methods or, at the very least, persuasion under duress.

More problematically it means that you should not call perfectly ordinary capitalist exploitation 'coercion' even though if you don't work you don't get paid.

Why not, don't bosses sometimes (arguably often) employ extra-legal methods to maximise surplus value?

If somebody is beaten and they retaliate violently then this is still a violent act. You might mitigate their violence, but it would still be violence.

Contextually, it's primarily a violent response. A clear case of only using violence once violence is done unto you.

You can still make sound ethical judgements relative to a context without altering the definitions of words so that the meanings of words are relative to the context.

Just as you can do the exact opposite.

You can coerce someone on the pain of torture but you can also coerce them on pain of public embarrassment. The word doesn't do the ethical judgement for you.

The problem is that you associate coercion with a sin, for want of a better word. You don't need to. What's wrong with coercion. I've been coercing blagsta and he's been coercing me throughout this debate. Really. We are using public norms of behaviour and politeness to cajole each other. Neither of us is the worse for it. (I hope )

I don't associate coercion with a "sin", but with socially-unacceptable behaviour, whether that's in inter-personal interactions, employer-employee interactions or whatever. You and blagsta haven't "coerced" each other, you've argued.

 

[Blagsta]

Apologies to Blagsta, I missed this.



OK this is the problem with libertarianism of all stripes. In conflicts you trade one liberty for another. The right to cross picket lines or the positive liberty to win a strike. It comes down to what you value, not to how libertarian you are. Your values determine your 'libertarianism', your 'libertarianism' does not determine your values in such cases.

To be honest I don't think much of the use of the term "positive liberty" - I'd rather talk about welfare, education and social justice. I think that is much clearer.

You're abstracting this. The anarchist position is that private property and wage labour are a form of coercion. To be truly libertarian, you cannot also be in favour of private property. The only consistent position to have to be libertarian is to have solidarity with other working class people in struggles against wage labour.

You can talk about welfare, education and social justice all you like, but unless you place them in the context of class struggle, then it's pure abstraction IMO.

 

[Blagsta]

I believe it may be "just you".
I've personally rarely experienced the word "coercion" being used to describe anything other than extra-legal (or occasionally extra-moral) methods or, at the very least, persuasion under duress.

Why not, don't bosses sometimes (arguably often) employ extra-legal methods to maximise surplus value?

I would disagree here. The state defines what is legal and what is extra-legal. The state is run in the interests of the bosses, not the workers. By very definition, what favours bosses is often made legal and what favours workers illegal (of course there are concessions here and there, but the point still stands.)

Wage labour is coercion. If you have to sell your labour so you can survive, you are coerced.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well I am aware of the difference between anarchy and anarchism. Unfortunately there is not a corresponding distinction with communism. Communism refers both to the society and to the movement. I meant anarchy as in the society and communism as in the society. I think most versions of anarchy are forms of communism (the society not the movement). I think both anarchists and communists have said this. Same end goal, different means to the end.

Except that Communism is perceived to exist most efficiently within a state (or, as was originally envisaged) multi-state framework, whereas anarchism is nothing if not opposed to "the state".

So communists are also libertarians if liberty is taken in this sense. That is communists favour a society of self-management. Lenin - every cook shall rule.

Leninist rhetoric is hardly the place to draw inferences on the nature of communism from.

The problem is that there is very little substance to this sort of talk. Its almost as vague as saying liberty = good and hurrah for good.

I realise I am missing the point btw. I don't know what it is that I'm missing.

The wood for the trees, perhaps?

 

[kropotkin]

You're abstracting this. The anarchist position is that private property and wage labour are a form of coercion. To be truly libertarian, you cannot also be in favour of private property. The only consistent position to have to be libertarian is to have solidarity with other working class people in struggles against wage labour.

You can talk about welfare, education and social justice all you like, but unless you place them in the context of class struggle, then it's pure abstraction IMO.

Good post Blagsta.

 

[Knotted]

I believe it may be "just you".
I've personally rarely experienced the word "coercion" being used to describe anything other than extra-legal (or occasionally extra-moral) methods or, at the very least, persuasion under duress.

Curious.

Why not, don't bosses sometimes (arguably often) employ extra-legal methods to maximise surplus value?

But sometimes they don't. I would say its coercion regardless of the legality.

Just as you can do the exact opposite.

True. But I'm not going along with it. I'm going say what I mean rather than sound like what I mean to be saying. What are the pressures that are encouraging this sort of language modification? Bourgeois moralism. If coercion by workers is becoming a bug bear for the bourgeois then lets talk coercion. Let's not soften reality in order to cower before this moralism.

I don't associate coercion with a "sin", but with socially-unacceptable behaviour, whether that's in inter-personal interactions, employer-employee interactions or whatever. You and blagsta haven't "coerced" each other, you've argued.

There's a lot more going on than arguement. We are trying to get each other to adopt different standards of debate. I have even used polite persuasion which is very clear form of coercion. If someone does not comply with a polite request then they are implicitly labelled as being rude. I am using social norms to compel Blagsta to adopt different standards.

 

[kropotkin]

With arguments like this, I find the the way to cut through it all is to start not with Platonic abstractions shorn of all connection to material circumstance, but to start with the concrete: the class struggle.


A lot of the language used historically has been to co-opt Victorian and Judeo-Christian morality to our benefit. "Liberty" can be viewed in this light- no class struggle anarcvhists I know give much of a fuck for the 'liberty' of the bosses, either now or in the throws of a revolutionary event. They just don't m,atter- our politics is autonomous of that- their needs or desires are irrelevant to us. Our job is to help strengthen the collective hand of working people to force the greatest concessions possible.

 

[Blagsta]

There's a lot more going on than arguement. We are trying to get each other to adopt different standards of debate. I have even used polite persuasion which is very clear form of coercion. If someone does not comply with a polite request then they are implicitly labelled as being rude. I am using social norms to compel Blagsta to adopt different standards.

It isn't y'know.

 

[Knotted]

The wood for the trees, perhaps?

Very probably.

 

[Knotted]

It isn't y'know.

Oh yes it is.

Coercion coecion coercion coercion. Who's afraid of coercion?

 

[Blagsta]

Oh yes it is.

Coercion coecion coercion coercion. Who's afraid of coercion?

It really isn't.

Can someone buy knotted a dictionary please?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Wikipedia on anarchism:


Not that I'm taking that as anything authoritive, but it does perhaps indicate what I'm missing. I'm ignoring attitudes and just looking at theories. That's probably why I like Kropotkin and have little time for most other anarchist writers.

I suspect Chomsky has said something interesting about anarchism - just because he's a man of substance rather than platitude. I have read a bit by him on anarchism, but don't remember him saying anything particularly interesting. Any recommendations?

It's hard to recommend any particular book by Chomsky, because his anarchism is espoused in his answers to questions/problems that are put to him in his various books, rather than there being a single coherent encapsulation of his anarchism, IMO. I've read and enjoyed "Keeping the Rabble in Line", "Failed States", "Radical Priorities", "Manufacturing Consent" and "Letters from Lexington" plus half a dozen others, but I'll put my head above the parapet and say his books with David Barsamian as his interlocutor are the best for getting a general flavour of his anarchism.

 

[Knotted]

You're abstracting this. The anarchist position is that private property and wage labour are a form of coercion. To be truly libertarian, you cannot also be in favour of private property. The only consistent position to have to be libertarian is to have solidarity with other working class people in struggles against wage labour.

Agreed. Or as I put it:
Anarchists don't try to maximise liberty in the immediate. They have a long term strategy of communism in which to realise greater liberty. They are willing to coerce now in order to achieve greater liberty later.

You can talk about welfare, education and social justice all you like, but unless you place them in the context of class struggle, then it's pure abstraction IMO.

Agreed.

 

[Knotted]

It's hard to recommend any particular book by Chomsky, because his anarchism is espoused in his answers to questions/problems that are put to him in his various books, rather than there being a single coherent encapsulation of his anarchism, IMO. I've read and enjoyed "Keeping the Rabble in Line", "Failed States", "Radical Priorities", "Manufacturing Consent" and "Letters from Lexington" plus half a dozen others, but I'll put my head above the parapet and say his books with David Barsamian as his interlocutor are the best for getting a general flavour of his anarchism.

Thanks!

Do you think his polemic against BF Skinner is related to his anarchism?

 

[Blagsta]

Agreed. Or as I put it:
Anarchists don't try to maximise liberty in the immediate. They have a long term strategy of communism in which to realise greater liberty. They are willing to coerce now in order to achieve greater liberty later.

You'll have to give an example of this coercion.

 

[kyser_soze]

Coercion: the act of compelling by force or authority.

Taxation is coercive - you don't pay, you go to jail.

Workers are coerced because they are forced to sell their labour.

Workers can use the strike to coerce bosses into making concessions.

All are examples of using force to attain an objective. Polite persuasion isn't coercive unless you're backing it up with some form of force, legal, spiritual (telling someone to do X and if they don't they'll burn in hell for eternity is coercive) or physical.

 

[Knotted]

With arguments like this, I find the the way to cut through it all is to start not with Platonic abstractions shorn of all connection to material circumstance, but to start with the concrete: the class struggle.


A lot of the language used historically has been to co-opt Victorian and Judeo-Christian morality to our benefit. "Liberty" can be viewed in this light- no class struggle anarcvhists I know give much of a fuck for the 'liberty' of the bosses, either now or in the throws of a revolutionary event. They just don't m,atter- our politics is autonomous of that- their needs or desires are irrelevant to us. Our job is to help strengthen the collective hand of working people to force the greatest concessions possible.

I agree very much with the sentiments here. That is except the bit I have highlighted. Surely co-opting in this manner is confusing? Can't we speak plainly?

 

[ViolentPanda]

I would disagree here. The state defines what is legal and what is extra-legal. The state is run in the interests of the bosses, not the workers. By very definition, what favours bosses is often made legal and what favours workers illegal (of course there are concessions here and there, but the point still stands.)

Wage labour is coercion. If you have to sell your labour so you can survive, you are coerced.

Obviously in the broader sense you're absolutely correct. However, the point I'm making is that even in the here and now of existing inside a "parliamentary democracy", as I believe it's jokingly called, some practices are extra-legal, even if the state has legalised other extra-legal and coercive practices. In other words there are layers of coercion beyond the principle that wage labour is coercion.

I do hope that makes sense.

 

[Knotted]

You'll have to give an example of this coercion.

Back to the beginning again. In a strike the workers coerce the boss (possibly unsuccessfully), the anarchists support the workers in this coercion.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Thanks!

Do you think his polemic against BF Skinner is related to his anarchism?

I think his anarchism may have informed his attitude to Skinner's work, but I rather suspect his reluctance to suffer poor scholarship and academic noodling and Skinner's apparent fondness for authoritarianism played a part too.

 

[Knotted]

Wikipedia has a whole article devoted to coercive persuasion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_persuasion

Of course any coercive persuasion going on in this thread is a very mild form. But the threat of a small loss of social standing is still a real threat and for some people more than others. Put it this way you can change people's behaviour using mild or implicit threats. Psychological warfare and all that.

 

[kyser_soze]

That's not coercion, that's persuasion. There is no force being applied - thinking you're going to loose social standing is something you generate inside your own head, by it's nature coercion is something external to you forcing you into acting.

 

[Blagsta]

Back to the beginning again. In a strike the workers coerce the boss (possibly unsuccessfully), the anarchists support the workers in this coercion.

You're abstracting again. The whole thing hinges on where you sit with regard to class struggle. You seem to want to define "coercion" from some god like perspective completely abstracted from real life.

 

[Knotted]

That's not coercion, that's persuasion. There is no force being applied - thinking you're going to loose social standing is something you generate inside your own head, by it's nature coercion is something external to you forcing you into acting.

Social attitudes are external to you. Think of office politics - people have very real material interest in conforming to social norms whether or not they agree with them.

 

[Blagsta]

Wikipedia has a whole article devoted to coercive persuasion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_persuasion

Of course any coercive persuasion going on in this thread is a very mild form. But the threat of a small loss of social standing is still a real threat and for some people more than others. Put it this way you can change people's behaviour using mild or implicit threats. Psychological warfare and all that.

and you think you're doing that over the internet? PMSL

 

[Blagsta]

Social attitudes are external to you. Think of office politics - people have very real material interest in conforming to social norms whether or not they agree with them.

I don't give a fuck whether you think I have less or more social standing on here! Why should I? I don't know you.