Libertarian Party Uk

[Azrael]

...not left wing?

Is this a trick question?

Not at all. Either Labour are right-wing, or largely apolitical and seeking power for its own sake.

I'd rule the last one out: the government's fanatical support for the Iraq invasion was not the actions of hard-headed devotees of realpolitik. As for right-wing, even if you limit to economics, Labour's unsustainable levels of spending on healthcare and education, its squandering of tax money on PFI projects, and Mr Brown's fun with pension funds, aren't the actions of market fundamentalists dedicated to laissez faire economics above all else.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Not at all. Either Labour are right-wing, or largely apolitical and seeking power for its own sake.

I'd rule the last one out: the government's fanatical support for the Iraq invasion was not the actions of hard-headed devotees of realpolitik. As for right-wing, even if you limit to economics, Labour's unsustainable levels of spending on healthcare and education, its squandering of tax money on PFI projects, and Mr Brown's fun with pension funds, aren't the actions of market fundamentalists dedicated to laissez faire economics above all else.

Er, but they're patently not left-wing. I hate to point this out but privatising and outsourcing everything in sight and conducting state affairs for the benefit of private industry is not by any sane definition the practices of a "left-wing" government.

 

[Azrael]

Er, but they're patently not left-wing. I hate to point this out but privatising and outsourcing everything in sight and conducting state affairs for the benefit of private industry is not by any sane definition the practices of a "left-wing" government.

If the privatization was for its own ends, and not coupled with an increase in the "public sector", daft spending on schools, transport and education, and "authoritarian" law and order that shows no interest in actually punishing people, I'd agree.

That's why I asked, if Labour aren't left-wing, what are they. They're clearly not left-wing in the old school sense of running around nationalizing everything that isn't nailed down, but neither are they 19th century liberals reincarnated. So what are they?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

The only alternatives are a 20th-century definition of a "left-wing" government or 19th century Liberalism?

 

[Blagsta]

If the privatization was for its own ends, and not coupled with an increase in the "public sector", daft spending on schools, transport and education, and "authoritarian" law and order that shows no interest in actually punishing people, I'd agree.

That's why I asked, if Labour aren't left-wing, what are they. They're clearly not left-wing in the old school sense of running around nationalizing everything that isn't nailed down, but neither are they 19th century liberals reincarnated. So what are they?

Neo-liberal. Have you not been following?

 

[Azrael]

The only alternatives are a 20th-century definition of a "left-wing" government or 19th century Liberalism?

Of course not. That's why Labour aren't automatically excluded from being left-wing if they refuse to nationalise everything from coal mines (if you can still find one) to Captain Birdseye's fishing boat.

"Left-wing" and "right-wing" are of course vague terms that precede modern socialism. Labour aren't doctrinaire supporters of deregulation and market purity, for the reasons given, amongst others. "Left-wing" is as good a term as "neoliberalism", especially as it takes it beyond Labour's hodge-podge economics.

What's Labour's desired end for society? (Idealists always have one.) That'll tell you where their priorities lay.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I really have no idea what your point is here, now.

 

[Azrael]

That there's as good a case for calling Labour left-wing as there is for calling them right-wing.

I dislike both terms, but they're embedded.

 

[Blagsta]

You've yet to make that case.

 

[Azrael]

If you can have "left-wing Whigs" when talking about the Glorious Revolution, I think Mr Brown's government can qualify.

 

[LLETSA]

Labour's ends are vague enough: reduction in inequality, "social justice", that sort of thing. I don't think for a second that the free market can be harnessed towards those ends; that's why I called Labour's ideology incoherent.

Although they might express it in different ways, the Tories and the Liberals are as committed as Labour to reducing inequality and social justice. Take a look at any Tory manifesto. You won't find any reference to maintaining or increasing inequality or reinforcing poverty. The difference between what socialists would say and what the three main parties claim to stand for lies in the conviction of the mainstream that the free market is not the enemy of these goals, but the key to achieving them, and that drastic differences in income are not incompatible with social justice. This is why the more eccentric elements of the Right like to claim that 'communism' has taken over the political mainstream.

In any case there is no 'Labour' anymore. The party is a shell. The rank-and-file of the party never did have a real say in anything, and now what's left of it has none. The MPs, the CLPs the NEC and the unions used to have varying degrees of influence, but real power always lay with the leadership, who could ride roughshod over the decisions of the party conference, and always but always went for the most right-wing option. However, any pretence of inner-party democracy has been dropped altogether for a reliance on focus groups and think-tanks, with the final say going to a select group within the cabinet. The New Labour project, as is well known, was the work of a tiny clique within the LP, who sought to give neo-liberal ideas a soft left veneer. They may or may not be on their way out, but Labour will never recover from their handiwork, even should it want to.

This bit of your post,

"As for concrete policies, I'd have thought their aim of 50% in university, over 70 billion on education in general, authoritarianism without punishment etc were specific enough.

If Labour aren't left-wing, what are they?"

makes no sense whatsoever. What's specifically left-wing about the things you mention?

 

[LLETSA]

Not at all. Either Labour are right-wing, or largely apolitical and seeking power for its own sake.

I'd rule the last one out: the government's fanatical support for the Iraq invasion was not the actions of hard-headed devotees of realpolitik. As for right-wing, even if you limit to economics, Labour's unsustainable levels of spending on healthcare and education, its squandering of tax money on PFI projects, and Mr Brown's fun with pension funds, aren't the actions of market fundamentalists dedicated to laissez faire economics above all else.

John Gray, hardly a left-winger, makes a convincing case in his book 'Black Mass' for Blair's fanaticism over Iraq being the result of his US-style neo-conservative convictions. Although your point here seems dubious anyway when you consider that the vast majority of right-wing governments of any importance supported the Iraq war.

The spending on health and education comes partly as result of trying to put a soft-left veneer on neo-liberal economic policy, although governments of the centre-right have also spent lavishly on the public sector. Public spending, despite periodic cutting offensives, rose considerably under the Thatcher governments. All have discovered that despite their dogma, modern societies so require vast public spending, for a whole variety of reasons, that they can't fully control it even should they wish to, although they might vary in what they prioritise.

PFI and Brown's 'fun with pensions,' meanwhile, are precisely the actions of a market fundamentalist, and he is merely following the lead taken by his Tory predecessors.

 

[LLETSA]

Of course not. That's why Labour aren't automatically excluded from being left-wing if they refuse to nationalise everything from coal mines (if you can still find one) to Captain Birdseye's fishing boat.

Contrary to popular myth, the private sector was larger than the public sector under any Labour government, and Labour governments consistently bent over backwards to please it at the expense of their own constituency. All Tory governments, meanwhile, accepted the post-war economic arrangement, and so too did influential elements of the Thatcher cabinet before their government acquired a dogmatic ideology almost by accident.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Of course LPUK are an irrelevant clique of twats but they are funny to point at and laugh about. Just for something to while away the time like. Meet Chris Mounsey, Head of Communications for LPUK, seen here doing his best Alan Partridge impersonation:

He must have recently ingested an entire copy of atlas shrugged, he’s been seeing “socialist monsters” again:

It is this, more than anything else, that has led to my depression today: it looks like those of us who espouse freedom have not only lost the battle, but also the war. All around us and ranged against us are not only the politicians, but the massed ranks of the pig-ignorant and the willfully uninformed idiots who vote for them.

We who are libertarians, who want to be left alone, are being conspired against and soon, no matter how rich you are, there will be no place of escape for the G20 socialist monsters will control all the civilised world.

Yes that’s right, he’s the parties head of communications!

Communications.

What a laff they are.

 

[Blagsta]

what a twat

 

[butchersapron]

Get back to tory party you odious chancers. You too darios.

 

[Azrael]

What's specifically left-wing about the things you mention?

The university idea is egalitarian. Universites are inherently elitist: making attendance the norm, instead of increasing access, is equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.

With Law & Order, the combination of uninterest in punishment (vanishingly rare hyper-senteces for high-profile murderers excepted) with a distain for liberty is the mark of a government that doesn't believe criminals are truly responsible for their actions. "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." What are these "causes"? A right-wing view is that crime is a wrong act done by choice. Criminals cause crime. If Labour thought that, they'd have no need to identify and address exterior "causes".

You say the Tories and Liberals are equally committed to attacking "social injustice" as if this somehow invalidates my point. Quite the contrary, it just shows that certain left-wing ideas have become the norm. The Lib Dems are in reality social democrats (the clue's in the title), and the Conservative Party has surrendered to fashion to regain power. That's an old Tory tradition, I suppose, but hardly proof that right-wing ideas dominate.

The term "right-wing" is mostly a term of abuse devoid of meaning, used to encompass everything from kindly One Nation conservatives with subscriptions to the National Trust and English Heritage to frothing racial bigots who'd probably go for a nationalized economy if it gave them license to kick out the minorities. Likewise, "left-wing" is thrown around to mean anyone who doesn't think the country should be fossilized in the 1950s.

That's why I don't like the left/right paradigm, but while its here, I feel common assumptions about its application need challenging.

 

[LLETSA]

The university idea is egalitarian. Universites are inherently elitist: making attendance the norm, instead of increasing access, is equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.

With Law & Order, the combination of uninterest in punishment (vanishingly rare hyper-senteces for high-profile murderers excepted) with a distain for liberty is the mark of a government that doesn't believe criminals are truly responsible for their actions. "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." What are these "causes"? A right-wing view is that crime is a wrong act done by choice. Criminals cause crime. If Labour thought that, they'd have no need to identify and address exterior "causes".

You say the Tories and Liberals are equally committed to attacking "social injustice" as if this somehow invalidates my point. Quite the contrary, it just shows that certain left-wing ideas have become the norm. The Lib Dems are in reality social democrats (the clue's in the title), and the Conservative Party has surrendered to fashion to regain power. That's an old Tory tradition, I suppose, but hardly proof that right-wing ideas dominate.

Despite the New Labour rhetoric (which never talks about equality of outcome but equality of opportunity), the bloated university system is more about parking away from the jobs market the hundreds of thousands for whom there are no worthwhile jobs or careers due to the decimation of the country's industrial base. The same could be said to apply to the expansion of the public sector. The expansion of the university system began under the Tories as one response to the dismantling of industry they presided over. The Tories will do nothing different in this respect when they are in government, just as centre-right governments in most other former industrial nations have massively expanded their higher education systems.

In actual fact, while the emphasis might be different, few right-wingers now leave out the social aspects of the causes of crime, while few left-wingers try to claim that individuals are not responsible for their behaviour. Do you always talk in caricatures? Whether criminals are adequately punished is open to debate, but aren't their more people in prison than ever before in the UK? And a few days after Manchester gangsters received thirty year sentences you can hardly say that serious punishment isn't still meted out. Again the Tories would do nothing different in this regard, and did very little different last time they held office.

Where are the right-wingers that demand an increase in inequality and a deepening of poverty? Out on the weird fringe. This is not to say that neo-liberal economics does not result in these outcomes, but the rhetoric that comes from the free-market ideologues is that free-market economics raises people out of poverty and opens up opportunity to all. Rather than being social democrats, the Liberals espouse the same neo-liberal economics that nearly all social deomcratic parties have adopted (despite maintaining some hollow social democratic rhetoric.) Social democracy has been dead for some time, killed off by globalisation and the erosion of the industrial bases of many advanced economies.

Interestingly (although mildly so) just where do you get you strange ideas from?

 

[Azrael]

Do you always talk in caricatures?

The cliché is to accuse "new" Labour of being "right-wing" or, absurdly, "conservative", and to blame Mr Blair destroying Clause Four.

I excluded "vanishingly rare hyper-sentences" from the softening of our law in the post above yours. These are imposed for headline-grabbing murders. If you look into the case, you'll find that the killers were convicted of hoarding a cache of illegal weapons (including a sub-machinegun!) with "intent", gaoled for nine years, and released early, allowing them to commit the murder they got 30-39 years for.

Tony Virasami's sentence is rather more representative.

Convicts are automatically cut loose after serving between one-half or two-thirds of their sentence. There is no duty on governors to punish them beyond the loss of liberty. Labour haven't toughened the penal regime. Convicts aren't made to perform hard labour. They don't wear arrow-flecked uniforms or have their heads shaved. Neither the silent regime nor the separate regime is imposed.

And most tellingly, the government that invaded Iraq condemned the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Labour are uninterested in punishment for its own sake: rare hyper-sentences are a headline-grabbing irrelevance, used to mask the routine feebleness of our law courts. Labour are, simultaneously, uninterested in jury trial, habeas corpus and the right to silence. Like all left-wing authoritarians, they think a state ruled by them is inherently good and must be free of restraint.

Not only do Tories support this thinking, they've advanced it, and introduced the laws that cause a judge to lie every time he passes sentence.

I don't care about "inequality" one way or the other. Everyone should be covered by social insurance against misfortune not of their own making. This is the mark of a civilized and compassionate society. But there should be no duty on the state to rig the economy to make us more equal, and disaster tends to follow when it tries.

I get my ideas from looking at the facts, including those bits of the law the press don't bother to report on. Given the above, do you maintain that Labour have any interest in punishing convicts? If not, ask yourself why. Then examine their other policies, and ask if practical measures like faking the unemployment figures are all that lie behind them.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Libertarian news feed:

Local Libertarian Astonished by Science

Local Libertarian Delighted By Wayward Son's Career Choices

Local Libertarian Can't Understand Why Moronic Electorate Won't Vote For UK Libertarian Party

 

[LLETSA]

The cliché is to accuse "new" Labour of being "right-wing" or, absurdly, "conservative", and to blame Mr Blair destroying Clause Four.

I excluded "vanishingly rare hyper-sentences" from the softening of our law in the post above yours. These are imposed for headline-grabbing murders. If you look into the case, you'll find that the killers were convicted of hoarding a cache of illegal weapons (including a sub-machinegun!) with "intent", gaoled for nine years, and released early, allowing them to commit the murder they got 30-39 years for.

Tony Virasami's sentence is rather more representative.

Convicts are automatically cut loose after serving between one-half or two-thirds of their sentence. There is no duty on governors to punish them beyond the loss of liberty. Labour haven't toughened the penal regime. Convicts aren't made to perform hard labour. They don't wear arrow-flecked uniforms or have their heads shaved. Neither the silent regime nor the separate regime is imposed.

And most tellingly, the government that invaded Iraq condemned the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Labour are uninterested in punishment for its own sake: rare hyper-sentences are a headline-grabbing irrelevance, used to mask the routine feebleness of our law courts. Labour are, simultaneously, uninterested in jury trial, habeas corpus and the right to silence. Like all left-wing authoritarians, they think a state ruled by them is inherently good and must be free of restraint.

Not only do Tories support this thinking, they've advanced it, and introduced the laws that cause a judge to lie every time he passes sentence.

I don't care about "inequality" one way or the other. Everyone should be covered by social insurance against misfortune not of their own making. This is the mark of a civilized and compassionate society. But there should be no duty on the state to rig the economy to make us more equal, and disaster tends to follow when it tries.

I get my ideas from looking at the facts, including those bits of the law the press don't bother to report on. Given the above, do you maintain that Labour have any interest in punishing convicts? If not, ask yourself why. Then examine their other policies, and ask if practical measures like faking the unemployment figures are all that lie behind them.

So they didn't really get 30-39 years then?

Whether criminals are effectively punished is really a debate for another thread (for what it's worth I believe that many are not.)

That aside, you'd think that all the trends you highlight began after 1997. They didn't; they go back decades, were started for a variety of reasons specific to what is generally accepted (even by mainstream right-wingers) as being a capitalist society, and are, as you say, the work of both main parties of government. Which I suppose brings us back to the notion that all parties now adhere to the hidden socialist agenda (on which nothing is specifically socialist, but is really more socialist than proper socialism), which has been so effective that socialist socialism has been replaced by socialist capitalism. In other words the politics espoused by people who so live in a world of their own that the only item of clothing they ought to be allowed to wear is the straitjacket.

Nobody did more to fake the unemployment figures than the Thatcher governments, until New Labour came along to deepen their agenda of ideology-driven economic deregulation and privatisation. It is an action characteristic of governnments of both centre-left and centre-right now that deindustrialisation has reduced employment opportunities in the advanced economies. Despite one set of statistics after another that demonstrate how inequality has deepened under Labour, you still fail to give any examples of how the government is 'rigging the economy' (all types of economy are rigged to some end or other, by the way; always have been and always will be) to bring about greater equality.

Some attempts to bring about greater equality have ended in disaster, while others have led to more stable capitalist societies, which is why mainstream right-wing governemnts for a time adopted measures aimed at increasing equality. Equally, attempts to destroy these measures by right-wing governments have brought about disaster and are doing so as we speak.

While many people rightly claim that New Labour is neo-liberal, few that I've noticed call it conservative. Even conservative parties have to vainly try to redefine conservatism nowadays, due to the fact that genuine conservatism is politically dead, finished off by the social changes brought about by economically neo-liberal governments.

 

[Azrael]

Whether criminals are effectively punished is really a debate for another thread (for what it's worth I believe that many are not.)

I agree. I raised it here not to discuss its merits, but to highlight the dichotomy between Labour's general authoritarianism and their uninterest in punishing the guilty. This "tough" government has signed us up to treaties banning capital punishment in all circumstances.

I never said Labour are trying to rig the economy: I rejected the general principle necessary if income disparity is to be attacked. The income gap might have widened under Labour, but it's their intent I'm referring to, not their competence. When they finally realise that the market can't be harnessed towards egalitarianism, they'll shift to a new dogma. It might already be happening, what with all this talk of economic "intervention".

Some attempts to reduce economic inequality might be worse than others, but in Britain it left us with a stagnant economy. At its worst extremes in foreign parts, it has left the world with tens of millions of bodies.

What matters isn't addressing "inequality" but providing social insurance. What does the family in the tower block care if people in the suburbs earn 10% less? Legal equality is the mark of a just society; economic equality is a pipe-dream that gives the state opportunity to seize dangerous powers over its citizens. Sadly, cries of "equality" and "social justice" make attractive and easy slogans.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

This is a laff, personal ads from an Ayn Rand Fan Dating Site (five words you should never hear in the same sentence).

http://nymag.com/news/features/artifact/51814/

This is my personal fav:

Rob, Stanford, California

Ayn Rand ignited the fire within me that was searching for the right spark. My every action is guided according to my philosophy, and my philosophy is the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

I am interested in meeting someone that truly embodies the values and virtues of Objectivism. I have found very few women that have not already been beaten down to a flimsy, irrational, empty pulp. I have changed many girls’ lives, but no one has blown me away yet.

I never “hook-up” randomly, I never kiss a girl that doesn’t deserve mine. I have yet to find a girl deserving of my falling in love with her. But “other people” are secondary values no matter what, so finding someone is not a priority for me.

 

[LLETSA]

I agree. I raised it here not to discuss its merits, but to highlight the dichotomy between Labour's general authoritarianism and their uninterest in punishing the guilty. This "tough" government has signed us up to treaties banning capital punishment in all circumstances.

I never said Labour are trying to rig the economy: I rejected the general principle necessary if income disparity is to be attacked. The income gap might have widened under Labour, but it's their intent I'm referring to, not their competence. When they finally realise that the market can't be harnessed towards egalitarianism, they'll shift to a new dogma. It might already be happening, what with all this talk of economic "intervention".

Some attempts to reduce economic inequality might be worse than others, but in Britain it left us with a stagnant economy. At its worst extremes in foreign parts, it has left the world with tens of millions of bodies.

What matters isn't addressing "inequality" but providing social insurance. What does the family in the tower block care if people in the suburbs earn 10% less? Legal equality is the mark of a just society; economic equality is a pipe-dream that gives the state opportunity to seize dangerous powers over its citizens. Sadly, cries of "equality" and "social justice" make attractive and easy slogans.

So they might have signed us up to those treaties, but all governments in the EU and beyond, whether formally centre-left or centre right, have done so. It hardly proves that Labour are left-wing, especially when you consider that most regimes stemming from the left that the world has seen certainly did punish crime, with some of them being particularly keen on capital punishment. Equally, a high proportion of right-wing politicians the world over have been opposed to it and backed liberal approaches to crime.

We've been through your next bit before. Like neo-liberal enthusiasts who are formally centre-right, New Labour claimed that a commitment to the free market didn't rule out, but actually opened the way to equality of opportunity, not of outcome. How could you have missed the number of arguments Labour politicians have, since at least the early 1990s, argued against egalitarianism? Recent enthusiasm for state intervention into the economy has, you might have noticed, been widely shared by governments and pundits of both centre-right and centre-left. What largely amounts to the bailing out of the bankers at the public expense and the reinflating of the debt bubbles that resulted from the recipes of right-wing economists hardly represents a new socialism in any case, as right-wingers know.

Social democratic economics might have eventually resulted in a stagnant economy, but that was after engineering a society of vastly increased social mobility and not state emasculation of the individual but the expanded liberty that freedom from poverty represents (compare the life of the average citizen before WW2 and in the decades afterwards and then try to argue that most people experienced more freedom in the earlier period.) Rather than having a socialist outcome, these measures gave capitalism a new lease of life. Again, this is something we've already covered, but the reason why conservative governments all over Europe accepted measures designed to reduce inequality is because they saw this outcome developing. And a stagnant economy might be one thing, but in October last year we saw that three decades of right-wing economics brought capitalism to within hours of a general collapse, which is what would have happened had the world's banking system imploded, with who knows what consequences. It could have led to even people like yourself longing for some socialist order, but it wouldn't have come due to the undermining of the socialist possibility by the consequences of those three decades of neo-liberalism. As for certain of the communist dictatorships, not only have their body counts been matched (proportionally) by certain regimes of the Right; they have been surpassed by the wars, economic degradation and famine gifted the world by the imperatives of capitalism.

 

[Azrael]

How could you have missed the number of arguments Labour politicians have, since at least the early 1990s, argued against egalitarianism?

I've not missed it: I haven't taken it at face value.

I suspect it's window dressing, a front designed to con the electorate that Labour are now of the right. At best, their passion for egalitarianism is unconscious; old instincts die hard. A meritocratic government wouldn't be railroading 50% of school leavers into the universities: most tellingly, they would support grammar schools. If Labour had abandoned comprehensives, their principal weapon since the 1960s, then the actions would match their words.

Tories do the same with EU membership and law and order. "In Europe, not run by Europe," to give the oxymoronic slogan. Likewise, Tory MPs are all for hanging in front of constituency associations in the shires, and then become abolitionists on the quiet once elected. We're told they're tender souls who couldn't endure a singe innocent death. Rot. This moral squeamishness isn't applied to any other area of policy. I suspect the reality is that they hate the responsibility of power: under the old system, a decision between life and death fell to a colleague and friend.

Social insurance might remedy the excesses of the market; "planned" economies nearly subjected it to death by a thousand cuts. I'm ambivalent about capitalism. Its best points --encouraging initiative, freedom and enterprise -- are countered by its worst -- selfishness, profiteering, inhuman ruthlessness. But I'm no economic reductivist. Capitalism is but one element of society, and the best economic system yet devised. Unlike its competitors, it grew organically. It will only die organically, when people choose to follow an alternative.

Captialism might have cause deaths; difference is, it didn't intentionally slaughter millions, nor did it overthrow the legal system in its drive for utopia.

This brings us back to left-wing governments who support the death penalty. Left-wing abolitionism isn't absolute but limited to non-left states. A state run by the left is inherently good, and can be trusted with the power of life and death. This is but an extension of Labour's authoritarianism. The gallows might return, but without due process, jury trial and the presumption of innocence. A left-wing state, being correct by default, has no need of such things. "Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail!", to quote the beardy pin-up beloved by students.

In such circumstances, I will become a passionate abolitionist.

 

[LLETSA]

I've not missed it: I haven't taken it at face value.

I suspect it's window dressing, a front designed to con the electorate that Labour are now of the right. At best, their passion for egalitarianism is unconscious; old instincts die hard. A meritocratic government wouldn't be railroading 50% of school leavers into the universities: most tellingly, they would support grammar schools. If Labour had abandoned comprehensives, their principal weapon since the 1960s, then the actions would match their words.

Tories do the same with EU membership and law and order. "In Europe, not run by Europe," to give the oxymoronic slogan. Likewise, Tory MPs are all for hanging in front of constituency associations in the shires, and then become abolitionists on the quiet once elected. We're told they're tender souls who couldn't endure a singe innocent death. Rot. This moral squeamishness isn't applied to any other area of policy. I suspect the reality is that they hate the responsibility of power: under the old system, a decision between life and death fell to a colleague and friend.

Social insurance might remedy the excesses of the market; "planned" economies nearly subjected it to death by a thousand cuts. I'm ambivalent about capitalism. Its best points --encouraging initiative, freedom and enterprise -- are countered by its worst -- selfishness, profiteering, inhuman ruthlessness. But I'm no economic reductivist. Capitalism is but one element of society, and the best economic system yet devised. Unlike its competitors, it grew organically. It will only die organically, when people choose to follow an alternative.

Captialism might have cause deaths; difference is, it didn't intentionally slaughter millions, nor did it overthrow the legal system in its drive for utopia.

This brings us back to left-wing governments who support the death penalty. Left-wing abolitionism isn't absolute but limited to non-left states. A state run by the left is inherently good, and can be trusted with the power of life and death. This is but an extension of Labour's authoritarianism. The gallows might return, but without due process, jury trial and the presumption of innocence. A left-wing state, being correct by default, has no need of such things. "Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail!", to quote the beardy pin-up beloved by students.

In such circumstances, I will become a passionate abolitionist.

How is anybody supposed to argue with somebody who refuses to take anything at face value even when the results are in line with the stated intentions? New Labour declare themselves to be anti-egalitarian and inequality widens under their goevernment, but Azrael maintains that they are egalitarians and wibbles on about results being different than secretly intended. Simply daft.

Do you really believe that capitalism grew organically (whatever that's supposed to mean)? Again I'd point you in the direction not of any writer of the Left, but to John Gray, whose excellent False Dawn: the Delusions of Global Capitalism effortlessly dispels such myths. There are any number of books you could read, meanwhile, and again not necessarily from the Left, that would undermine the absurd, naive belief that capitalism didn't deliberately and indiscriminitely slaughter innocents. Do you really believe this nonsense? Do you really believe that capitalism is simply an economic system that grows benignly and (ahem) without the aid of chemical fertilizers?

There might be some truth in what you say about left-wing regimes and the death penalty, but (in contrast to you, it seems; what exactly lies behind your apparent obsession with the death penalty?) it wasn't an ideological commitment towards executing people that drove them on. The Bolsheviks, for example, initially abolished the death penalty, only for circumstances to see them quickly restore it and for it to become an entrenched part of the system they devised mostly on the hoof due to the chaos they'd partly, although not wholly, been responsible for creating. Labour's social authoritarianism has nothing at all to do with this, but is part of an agenda of social engineering geared towards shaping society to fit the post-industrial economy created by neo-liberalism. It is common to both centre-right and centre-left governments, as you will probably soon find out. And if left-wing governments upheld the death penalty due to a sense of infallibility, what was behind the greaterl number of right-wing and other non-left regimes that enthusiastically practiced it?

It's interesting that you seem to think so-called meritocracy and egalitarianism are incompatible, by the way.

 

[Azrael]

There are any number of books you could read, meanwhile, and again not necessarily from the Left, that would undermine the absurd, naive belief that capitalism didn't deliberately and indiscriminitely slaughter innocents. Do you really believe this nonsense?

How does capitalism act "deliberately"? Even the most fanatical Smithian wouldn't claim the free market was sentient!

Sure, capitalists have done nasty things, but that's beside the point: not all were motivated by their economic system of choice, and there's more than one version of capitalism. With appropriate regulation, the free market is compatible with the rule of law and personal freedom; with the social insurance, that extends to freedom from want. Which alternative can do the same?

By organic, I don't mean that capitalism evolved in isolation from the state, but that the free market wasn't designed in advance and imposed. I'm unaware of a group of merchants sitting down in Venice or Amsterdam c.1600 and saying, "Right, mercantilism was good while it lasted, but here's its replacement. Gentlemen, I give you, capitalism." The Wealth of Nations was a response, not a blueprint. Could you say the same for any of the alternatives?

I'm unaware of any obsession I have with capital punishment. I've referenced universities and grammar schools just as much on this thread. I raised it to counter the argument that Labour now believe in punishment. You can substitute capital punishment with hard labour, or even making convicts serve their full sentence. (And what's notable about the left's use of the death penalty is that they're often vocal opponents of it in non-left-wing states, even those that employ jury trial.)

Meritocracy and egalitarianism are compatible if we all have equal abilities. Are you claiming this?

 

[LLETSA]

How does capitalism act "deliberately"? Even the most fanatical Smithian wouldn't claim the free market was sentient!

Sure, capitalists have done nasty things, but that's beside the point: not all were motivated by their economic system of choice, and there's more than one version of capitalism. With appropriate regulation, the free market is compatible with the rule of law and personal freedom; with the social insurance, that extends to freedom from want. Which alternative can do the same?

By organic, I don't mean that capitalism evolved in isolation from the state, but that the free market wasn't designed in advance and imposed. I'm unaware of a group of merchants sitting down in Venice or Amsterdam c.1600 and saying, "Right, mercantilism was good while it lasted, but here's its replacement. Gentlemen, I give you, capitalism." The Wealth of Nations was a response, not a blueprint. Could you say the same for any of the alternatives?

I'm unaware of any obsession I have with capital punishment. I've referenced universities and grammar schools just as much on this thread. I raised it to counter the argument that Labour now believe in punishment. You can substitute capital punishment with hard labour, or even making convicts serve their full sentence. (And what's notable about the left's use of the death penalty is that they're often vocal opponents of it in non-left-wing states, even those that employ jury trial.)

Meritocracy and egalitarianism are compatible if we all have equal abilities. Are you claiming this?

Capitalism doesn't act; the wide variety of people that implement the imperatives of the market and manipulate societies in order to act in accordance with them do.

There might well be varieties of capitalism, but you can say that about any system, including socialism. Furthermore, the model of capitalism you uphold isn't typical of capitalism either now or historically.

There have in actual fact, been few alternatives to capitalism established as functioning systems, but those that have been were deinitely not the result of blueprints. I've already mentioned the improvised nature of the system the Bolsheviks established, for example. The point is not that egalitarianism has resulted in some kind of perfect society, but that it mitigated the worst effects of capitalism for the vast majority, doing capitalism a favour along the way, in fact, by giving tens of millions the chance to participate in the consumer society that proved to be capitalism's saviour in the post-war decades. Even in the formerly communist-ruled countries its effects were by no means all bad, as most fair-minded (and anti-communist actually) people who grew up in them, in my experience, are prepared to concede.

You appear to be obsessed with capital punishment in that that you keep falling back on it whenever you fail to keep up your arguments on other issues. Not least to repeat your daft idea that the current Labour government (and by implication 'socialists') don't believe in punishing crime.

Lastly, it's bizarre that you seem to think that meritocracy is compatible with the kind of conservatism you claim to believe in. Have you read anything about the origins of meritocracy?

 

[Azrael]

There might well be varieties of capitalism, but you can say that about any system, including socialism.

True, although when has socialism (as opposed to "mixed economies") been implemented successfully, and without harming personal liberty?

Egalitarianism never existed in any soviet country I'm aware of, making it hard to praise it. Whether life was "all bad" is questionable: personally, I don't know what would compensate for the wholesale surrender of civil liberty.

Labour's fanatical opposition to capital punishment is simply a useful comparison to the same government's willingness to wage "liberal interventionist" wars that see thousands of innocents butchered. In their view, it's wrong to execute a murderer after due process, but right to slaughter civilians with fire from on high. Telling. But as I said, substitute other forms of punishment if you prefer. Point is, Labour are restricting civil liberties in general while showing no interest in toughening prisons or increasing most sentences. Also telling.

What kind of conservatism do you think I believe in? I've never laid out my plan for society on Urban, because I haven't got one. I believe change should be undertaken with caution, and certain essential freedoms should be absolute and inalienable. Beyond that I'm flexible. How is this incompatible with meritocracy?

 

[nino_savatte]

This is a laff, personal ads from an Ayn Rand Fan Dating Site (five words you should never hear in the same sentence).

http://nymag.com/news/features/artifact/51814/

This is my personal fav:

I find it surprising that these emotional cripples would seek 'love' by placing a personal ad. Surely the very idea of human love is abhorrent to Objectivists since it requires some 'altruism' on the part of one or the other, or both.

Have you noticed that the posters on there are all men?