I choose atomization
(posted by Angelica)
Human are social animals and I think it is an illusion to think that we can ever be, or would ever want to be, completely free of others. However, I think that as societies we can choose how to structure that obligation. When we talk about freedom on this blog, it is usually in relation to the state. But the truth is freedom from tradition and family obligations can be just as important.
The reason I raise this discussion now is Mona’s post on the religious nutcase parents who chose prayer over treatment for their daughter’s condition. The girl died. Many in the comments echoed Quasibill:
with our current atomized society, with little to no community cohesion, there really is no alternative [to state action in this case]. I was interested to learn recently that the most common social unit in history was not the family, but the tribe. I think the solution we should be aiming for is to return to close communities (small! small! small!) and have this function fulfilled by community members who know the most about the situation.
“Our current atomized society” seems like a horrible thing contrasted with the kind of close, supportive community ‘bill is talking about. But what is the reality of living in societies that are less individualistic and more communal?
I live in Taiwan where traditional family bonds are much stronger. The state have a smaller, though expanding role, in providing welfare and regulating social services. Parents let kids live at home until they’re married, and sometimes beyond. In return, they expect obedience. Children take care of parents and have them move in in their old age to live and die at home. The grandparents and aunts often form a supportive network allowing women to work without the expense of daycare. Beating your child is not considered beyond the pale. In fact, there is an old-fashioned saying “You’ll find an obedient son at the head of a stick.”
And you know what, Taiwan have one of, if not the lowest, birth rates in the world. 1.1 children per couple on average. Women, in particular, are refusing to play. Having tasted some independence as working individuals on their own, they no longer want to be subsumed into their husband’s family and shoulder all the obligations that comes with it.
Meanwhile, others simply just stop playing by the filial rules even though there are laws mandating that the children take care of their parents to some degree. The social problem of abandoned or abused aging parents is a serious one, and it will only get worse as the population ages. Not only will there be less young people to take care of the elderly, they will feel less obligation to do so.
They are often called selfish, unfilial and all sorts of horrible things. But as a member of that generation, I don’t think that’s fair. All they’ve done is chosen freedom. And freedom, in this case, means atomization and the breaking of family bonds.
I will never live with my mother again for as long as I live. But I am in favor of a stronger social security institutions for the elderly. Kevin said that people do not choose atomization from the bottom up but that it was imposed upon us by a “top-down corporate revolution“. Well, the state didn’t tell me to be an unfilial daughter. In fact, it’s I’m sure the government would much prefer that families keep taking care of their old people themselves until the end of time.
I look forward to Mona’s planned post on the raid at the YFZ ranch. I don’t know whether it was right to take those children away because taking away children is a massively traumatic thing to do. But make no mistake, I would not consider those growing up on the YFZ ranch to be free in any meaningful sense of the word. They might well be happy, and that’s fine and might be a good enough reason to leave them alone. But I don’t call them free.
Tags: , Family
April 17th, 2008 at 5:38 am
I think your concerns are fair. Certainly left libertarians recognize the soft tyranny of certain traditional obligations and liberties. I think most people will be happiest overall with a diverse offering of stable communities (emphasis on “diverse”). In a free society there are bound to be communities of people who’s great draw to one another is to leave each other the hell alone. And there’s always room in the interstices of communities for people to come and go.
Of course not; but it did create an economic structure that allows you to opt out from family and community on easier terms than you otherwise might have. That’s neither good nor bad in and of itself, but it does have consequences. Hence my comment on Mona’s post: libertarians are all about choice, so that we can choose which consequences are least grating with those values we want our lives and neighbors to reflect.
What about the daughter who wants to stay with her family and support them, but can’t afford to because of redistribution to urban industry? There’s always a trade off, and I prefer a situation where a central authority is not arriving at these compromises for us. That’s really all there is to my argument.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Jeremy,
Nobody is preventing people from being filial. In fact, many still are extremely devoted to their parents and proud of that choice. It is not something that is incompatible with modern life. I have friends who are in their early thirties and have a curfew because they live with their folks. And in return, mom always have dinner waiting on the table.
However, given the choice, the tendency is for people who have the freedom to choose to break away from the traditional family structure. One might say that they are making a bad deal, or that they’ll regret it when they’re old and lonely etc etc. That might well be true. But their current preference is revealed by their action and it is hard to second guess that.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Their current preference exists within a larger environment that is not solely a product of people’s choices - there are big things like states and corporations pushing things around. This overall, arbitrary environment is usually what people are referring to when they talk about “being realistic” - making choices within the structure without asking questions about why the structure is thus organized. If you think the structure is set in stone, you’re unlikely to imagine whether other, better choices exist than the ones you’re offered.
I’m perplexed as to why you’re so skeptical about my argument. Surely we can agree that, regardless of what outcomes we prefer, the bureaucratic, top-down, centralized, corporate state *matters*. It isn’t just some abstraction incidental to the human experience. It has effects on human life: careers, families, life choices, etc. All I’m saying is that it’s possible people might organize and act differently - better, even - if large institutions weren’t throwing their weight around.
Furthermore, we’ll see just how sustainable this atomistic model of society is. I’m more than willing to put my contention to the test of history.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Like Jeremy, I’m fine with you not being filial and supporting your mother. That’s a choice you are absolutely free to make. (and notcie how your Taiwan example is clearly *not* a free choice, as your article itself admits that there are laws involved!).
Just don’t force me to do it for you - I’m too busy taking care of my own parents and my in-laws. I have a limited budget for charity, but I do give charitably to those who need it and use it in a way that I find wise. Your failure to take care of your parents shouldn’t force me to give up either of those pursuits.
And again - you’re making what kevin calls a vulgar liberal argument. You’re arguing as if the current system in any way resembles a free system, where you’re free to make decisions, but the costs of your decisions are internalized. The costs of your decision to atomize socially is externalized onto me in myriad ways through government intervention. And you argue for even *greater* externalization of these costs! To talk of this process as a natural expression of free choice is exactly the same error vulgar libertarians make when they talk about Wal-Mart being the result of better/harder working John Galts. “Hey, it’s the free market demonstrating revealed preference when Exxon pollutes miles of coastline despite making billions of dollars!”
Finally, just because I think things are better without coercive state involvement, doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that some cultures/societies are worse than others according to my values and mores. Quite often, they are worse because of coercive influences in the past, but regardless, I agree that a culture that demands obedience from children (and note that I would agree with Arthur Silber that physical discipline of a child is quite often a criminal act) is not my kind of culture. I just don’t agree that I should be allowed to kill people who disagree with me on that limited point, which, in the end, is what all law is about (being allowed to kill people who disagree).
April 17th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Quasibill,
and notcie how your Taiwan example is clearly *not* a free choice, as your article itself admits that there are laws involved!
Yes. But the filial piety system predates the law and the law is weak and seldom enforced compared to the social enforcement mechanism such as shame.
And again - you’re making what kevin calls a vulgar liberal argument. You’re arguing as if the current system in any way resembles a free system, where you’re free to make decisions,
As I said on the top of my post, I think it’s necessary that there is some kind of safety net for people to fall back upon when they are helpless (old, sick, too young, in jeopardy for other reasons and in need for assistance). It’s been pointed out repeatedly on this blog that where the state imposes this safety net, it does so through coercion, making people unfree to some extent. I agree. However, what my post points out is that where such a safety net is provided by family and community, people are also unfree in other ways. Just because it’s oppression through brainwashing of values, enforcement of tradition, emotional blackmail and other social management mechanisms doesn’t make the oppression less real.
And by the way, notice how I’m not calling for an abolition of the filial piety system. In fact, it is a system that have a lot of benefits. I’m just say that there are tradeoffs . Just as libertarians are quick to lecture that one can’t assume that governments will be perfectly efficient, one also can’t assume that local communities and families are always enlightened and uncoercive. If you want to engage with others who are different politically, it’s important to see the things that you are advocating warts and all, not your idealized version of how you would like them to be.
Jeremy,
I’m perplexed as to why you’re so skeptical about my argument. Surely we can agree that, regardless of what outcomes we prefer, the bureaucratic, top-down, centralized, corporate state *matters*.
I’m not too sure what you’re talking about. Of course it matters. My whole post is about how I would not be free to make the choices I’m making if I was not living in a modern economic structure.
All I’m saying is that it’s possible people might organize and act differently - better, even - if large institutions weren’t throwing their weight around.
Well, go ahead and tell me why and give me some examples that are concrete. A lot of people have utopian visions of how people can organize and act differently away from the established rules of society. Most communes crash and burn in hardship and infighting.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
There’s an axiom at the root of the libertarian argument here that makes common ground extremely difficult. The libertarians see forced contribtution to state retirement plans as coercive and impinging on their ability to choose their particular degree of atomization/filial piety.
Angelica agrees there are tradeoffs, so has conceded this delicate balance. But her proposal of continuing forced contribution tilts this balance in a coercive way. So whereas both sides admit tension and ambiguity regarding the question, the libertarians show more humility by allowing for different levels of atomization/filial piety, while Angelica would, as she states, choose atomization…for everyone else too?
A a side note, I simply can’t get behind a plan to “free” people from their tribal and religious traditions. I tend to take people at their word, and dont’ second guess their preferences, however arrived at. If a 34 year old, pious Mulsim woman tells me her upbringing was good for her, what am I supposed to say? The results from this latest poll of the Muslim world, compiled in the new book Who Speaks for Islam? is telling:
Perhaps the most counterintuitive result of the Gallup data for Western readers will be findings that the ostensibly degraded cultural status of women in the West is one of the things most despised by Muslims of both genders (110) ; that “the data simply do not support the persistent popular perception in the West that Muslim women can’t wait to be liberated from their culture and adopt the ways of the West” (110); and that there are no “systemic differences in many [Muslim] countries between males and females in their support for Sharia as the only source of legislation” (48).
April 17th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Dain,
while Angelica would, as she states, choose atomization…for everyone else too?
The problem is more or less symmetrical I think. I don’t think this level of atomization is possible in the absence of a state because there will be no provider of a safety net. You ask whether I choose atomization for everyone else too. The question can be turned around — you choose embeddedness in a commmunity in return for security…for everyone else too?
A a side note, I simply can’t get behind a plan to “free” people from their tribal and religious traditions. I tend to take people at their word, and dont’ second guess their preferences, however arrived at.
A very good point. I didn’t say that the state should go out of its way to demolish the filial piety system because I do not love it. I’m saying that when people, of their own free will (and since we’re not second-guessing muslim women who are undoubtedly affected by the larger society they’re in let’s not second-guess people like me either) choose to abandon a system that provided the previous social safety net, the state will then have to step in to provide that safety net. I’ll foot taxes.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“You ask whether I choose atomization for everyone else too. The question can be turned around — you choose embeddedness in a commmunity in return for security…for everyone else too?”
Ah, but it can’t be turned around, because I would no more force you to contribute to the state’s safety net appartus than you would, hopefully, force me to remain in my close knit community. Please, feel free to contribute to a savings account for your elderly loved one and let hired nurses do the rest. My point is that I would not choose embeddedness or freedom from filial piety for anyone else.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
“However, what my post points out is that where such a safety net is provided by family and community, people are also unfree in other ways. Just because it’s oppression through brainwashing of values, enforcement of tradition, emotional blackmail and other social management mechanisms doesn’t make the oppression less real. ”
Agree, to an extent, but here’s another place where language gets very squishy - we’re dealing with a contested term “free”. Libertarians would use it to denote lack of coercion, whereas you are using it in another context. I’ll agree that under your definition, there are costs that constrain choice. But exactly to the extent that they are constrained by voluntary (non-coerced) tradeoffs between valued outcomes, I have no problem with this lack of freedom. As liberals are wont to note, we are social animals, and our freedoms are limited by the fact that we choose to live with others. All I say, as a libertarian, is that you shouldn’t be allowed to externalise the costs of your decisions onto me without my (non-coerced) consent.
“If you want to engage with others who are different politically, it’s important to see the things that you are advocating warts and all, not your idealized version of how you would like them to be.”
Well, it might be useful to address that argument to someone who hasn’t *explicitly admitted that there are warts in the comment you are responding to!*
***Finally, just because I think things are better without coercive state involvement, doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that some cultures/societies are worse than others according to my values and mores.****
I’ve not made the argument that the absence of state coercion will solve all the world’s problems. What I do argue is that the absence of state coercion will make the world a better place. If you want to engage with others who are different politically, it is important to actually engage the arguments that they are making, not the arguments you wish that they were making.
“The question can be turned around — you choose embeddedness in a commmunity in return for security…for everyone else too?”
Actually, that’s a complete fallacy. You certainly are choosing it for me - I have aboslutely no way to opt out of your system - if I try, you will at the very least rob me of the resources I wish to use for the welfare of my family, neighbors, and others in need. I, on the other hand, will absolutely allow you to use your resources to create the system you desire, and furthermore, will allow you to band together with as many people as will voluntarily do so to create that system. Heck, if your system is well run and efficient, I’ll probably even voluntarily contribute to it. I am absolutely not choosing anything for you, embeddedness or not.
Your rhetorical attempt at turning the argument around is illogical, at best, and well, dishonest, at worst. The last thing anyone on this thread, other than you, has suggested is *forcing* someone else to live pursuant to their own personal preferences. Rather, Dain, Jeremy, and I have argued that we should be free to experiment to find the best way to achieve these social goals that we actually share with you (safety nets for the young, old, and poor).
” I’ll foot taxes.”
I’m glad you’re willing to impose your preference on the rest of us. Just don’t complain to me when the religious whackjobs use the same mechanisms to impose their preferences on you.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Quasibill,
But exactly to the extent that they are constrained by voluntary (non-coerced) tradeoffs between valued outcomes, I have no problem with this lack of freedom.
Well, you can always leave the country and start your own elsewhere. That doesn’t sound reasonable? Well, it’s not much more reasonable to say to someone who spent their entire life in a single strongly-bonded community to turn their back on it. Especially when many of worst-off members of that community will be kept deliberately resource and education poor to stop them from doing just that.
Flippancy aside, I do think increased immigration between countries will go some way to ameliorate the impass we’ve reached. There is not yet a country with no state, but some with bigger states and some with smaller states. If I ever go back to Northern America, I might try Canada instead of the States. Better big gubmint healthcare.
All I say, as a libertarian, is that you shouldn’t be allowed to externalise the costs of your decisions onto me without my (non-coerced) consent.
I don’t really have any power to impose anything on you. We live in a democracy where we vote our preferences for what we think society should be like. I have one vote. You have one vote. You are free to vote for a libertarian candidate who will then dismantle the state. However, in order for that candidate to be elected you’ll need to build majority support for your position.
Jeremy have suggested that individual choices in our democracy are not really free when there are “big things like states and corporations pushing things around” but I’m sure since you’re not a fan of squishy language you’re not a fan of that argument.
Rather, Dain, Jeremy, and I have argued that we should be free to experiment to find the best way to achieve these social goals that we actually share with you (safety nets for the young, old, and poor).
It’s a rather large leap of faith to say “Well, give up your current way of organizing the country at every level and abandon all your current safety nets and we’ll think of something better.”
Since you guys are always talking about personal responsibility, why not take the personal responsibility to move to some small but democratic country, dismantle the government there and try your ideas out on a small scale. If your experiment is successful, then perhaps I will want to join you.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I don’t really have any power to impose anything on you. We live in a democracy where we vote our preferences for what we think society should be like. I have one vote. You have one vote. You are free to vote for a libertarian candidate who will then dismantle the state. However, in order for that candidate to be elected you’ll need to build majority support for your position.
So you acknowledge that if you and enough others want something, you can impose it on whoever remains? (More often than not these days it’s in fact a minority imposing it on the majority, given paltry turnouts, and the fact that most state law was never open to debate.) Is there a limit to the scope of just what is up for democratic deliberation?
April 17th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Dain wrote: “Is there a limit to the scope of just what is up for democratic deliberation?”
This slippery slope can be tilted the other way . . . i.e. is there a limit to personal autonomy? All legal systems assume that some behavior is not permissible and the decision about what is and is not acceptable has to be made. Even anarchists assume that some sort of formal system of dispute resolution should exist.
Now the typical libertarian counter is that everyone should freely choose their social system. That sounds great in theory, but that can never truly happen. The reason it can’t arises when you ask when a person chooses their social system. If a person can always freely choose their social system, then they can opt out in order to avoid punishment for an infraction. If there are restrictions on when they can opt out, those restrictions may be themselves coercive.
It’s just like the problem of slave “contracts” — there has to be some way to opt out of the contract, otherwise it isn’t voluntary and thus not really a contract.
Theoretically, you might have a society where all of our social contracts are explicit and have clear escape clauses and penalties for withdrawal that leave the whole social system voluntary. However, in the meantime there are all sorts of ingrained social mores (like the filial duties Angelica cites) that make it impossible to make these interactions truly voluntary. The results wouldn’t work out well precisely because the existing social mores bias voluntary behavior toward consistently negative results.
For example, freedom of association means you’re free to be a racist, but how many people actually complain about anti-discrimination laws (who aren’t themselves racist)? Not too many, in my experience. Such laws are definitely coercion, but is it really a bad policy?
April 17th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Dibs on being the first to reference Levy’s “Liberalism’s Divide“. Also, Tyler Cowen saying “The welfare state is the Randian’s secret dream”.
I responded to the “achieve libertarianism democratically” argument in a snarky manner here. It is the nature of the state to seize power at the expense of our liberty and democracy is a fool’s game. The only plausible hope I see is in dynamic geography, which hopefully will work out better than Minerva.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This slippery slope can be tilted the other way . . . i.e. is there a limit to personal autonomy? All legal systems assume that some behavior is not permissible and the decision about what is and is not acceptable has to be made. Even anarchists assume that some sort of formal system of dispute resolution should exist.
Personal autonomy defined as the right to be left alone? Yes, there is a limit, defined as the moment at which ones subjective feeling of no longer being “left alone” infringes on the property of others in their bodies and justly acquired external objects. (If Ted Kazynski were to bemoan a new neighbor on a nearby hilltop, this would be an example.)
But the answer to the question of the proper scope of democratic legitimacy is by definition only as good as the arguments of all those participating in formal, state recognized deliberation. This is far more arbitrary and open ended than the answer above.
This isn’t even a state vs. anarchist dispute, strictly speaking. More like Republican vs. Majoritarian system.
Now the typical libertarian counter is that everyone should freely choose their social system. That sounds great in theory, but that can never truly happen. The reason it can’t arises when you ask when a person chooses their social system. If a person can always freely choose their social system, then they can opt out in order to avoid punishment for an infraction. If there are restrictions on when they can opt out, those restrictions may be themselves coercive.
Well, if “social system” means the aggregate of individual, voluntary choices and/or the constraints of nature then no, people should not (and indeed could not) freely choose their social system. I can’t choose a social system wherein uncles are not the brother of a mother, nor a world where the clatter and anxiety of cities are absent.
As for the opting out of punishment, there is a rich literature on this among market anarchists such as Edward Stringham. (See the book Anarchy and the Law.) Suffice it to say, the costs of always opting out are too great for most to bear. I could opt out of punishment for forgetting my girlfriend’s birthday by not being with her to begin with, but I choose those particular rules for the overall benefit.
For example, freedom of association means you’re free to be a racist, but how many people actually complain about anti-discrimination laws (who aren’t themselves racist)? Not too many, in my experience. Such laws are definitely coercion, but is it really a bad policy?
Well, I’m one of those non-racist complainers. And to the extent that Hate Speech laws are the same thing, they’ve got plenty of perfectly liberal, non-racist critics. Nat Hentoff, Glen Greenwald…
April 17th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
TGGP,
I think that the gulf between the libertarian rabble and the beltway crowd will only deepen as the former come to realize that the latter are really fans of what could basically be called the modernist project. Powerful states, globalization, secularism and the extension of trade. The rabble hate the state, the elite love the (”benign hegemony” backed) market.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
TGGP: I responded to the “achieve libertarianism democratically” argument in a snarky manner here.
Well, how about responding to it in a non-snarky manner? Really, if most people want to keep the state chugging along and a small minority don’t, I don’t see why we have an ethical obligation to give in to that minority.
I wish the seasteaders luck.
Kurt Horner:
Theoretically, you might have a society where all of our social contracts are explicit and have clear escape clauses and penalties for withdrawal that leave the whole social system voluntary. However, in the meantime there are all sorts of ingrained social mores (like the filial duties Angelica cites) that make it impossible to make these interactions truly voluntary.
Very well-put. I would like to think that the libertarian dream of a whole ecosystem of competing social systems one can participate in and leave on a voluntary basis is possible at least in theory, because it sounds incredibly attractive. However, I see very little connection from A to B here between abolishing the state and this utopia coming into existence.
To use a horticultural metaphor, an authoritarian state is like a monoculture factory farm. If you stop farming it altogether, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a lovely diverse habitat rather than a kudzu-infested wasteland. Liberalism is kind of an in-between where diversity and freedom is valued but also rules are enforced, like a cottage garden. OK I’ll stop it with the horticultural metaphors now.
Dain,
Is there a limit to the scope of just what is up for democratic deliberation?
Well, obviously if everybody voted to start eating babies tomorrow, I’ll be horrified for sure. But I think all things considered a democracy with a strong rule of law is the least likely system where that kind of insanity would happen.
Let’s say one in a hundred people are crazed baby-eaters. In a democracy, that crazed baby eater will always be overruled and baby-eating harshly punished. In an autocracy, there is a one in 100 chance that the crazed baby eater will be king and make everybody start eating babies. In a completely decentralized system, one in 100 people will be baby-eaters while everybody else minds their own business. Democracy: it minimizes the Baby-eating.
Now if you want to make an argument that we don’t have the best and most responsive democracy possible, I’ll be right there with you, trying to improve it. But if you’re rejecting democracy outright, then I just can’t go there.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
This is a very insightful and provocative post and I have many thoughts.
First, I regret that extended family has been all but destroyed in America due to mobility. That has been an enormous loss for parents and children, the former having to cough up bucks rather than get help from Aunt Edna and Grandma, or Uncle Ed and Grandpa, for assistance with children, housekeeping, auto.home maintenance & etc. Paying day care centers that shriek and charge exorbitantly if one is so much as 5 minutes late picking up the tots is a huge stressor for working couples, and I am not convinced that being raised in day-care is optimal for children.
That said, I would be in a mental institution if I had to live with my parents, or be significantly responsible for them. Their extremist religious and political views are utterly incompatible with my own, and they are not good about keeping their opinions to themselves. And, there are serious personal reasons why I find them psychologically difficult to deal with.
It is easy to think of Small Town USA c. 1925 as some Golden Age, but it could also be constricting and limiting. Overall, I prefer the choices mobility has given me, even as I choose to remain in a geographic area with my son’s family (but we get along very well) because they are my center, and I gain emotional gratification helping out and being a part of their lives. Further, I am as sure as one can be about anything in this life that my son will not, when I am in my dotage, let me languish alone is some sterile home for geriatrics.
It is all about trade-offs, and those will be weighted differently by individuals depending on temperament and experience.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
It is all about trade-offs, and those will be weighted differently by individuals depending on temperament and experience.
Precisely. What state coercion does (for example, social security) is pre-empt the manifestation of personal weighting by limiting choices in the market. Even those strongly inclined to value a general, social safety net may not think the state is the best vehicle by which to implement it.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Mona,
I too mourn for the extended family and look forward to the formation of new and voluntary networks of people coming together in sensible ways to share the burdens of childcare (and share in the joy of children), sane and humane division of household duties (without the traditional rigidity of roles) and just be there for one another. We are social monkeys.
However, voluntary is the key word. I have two roommates and I love having them because they bring an interesting perspective to my life and they are good company and I have done many activities from kickboxing to playing mahjong that I would not have done without them. However, my previous roommate was a nightmare and I kicked him out (with a months notice, of course). Each roommate is also free to leave given a months notice without having to give a reason. However, I would not ever rely on such voluntary arrangements (and I include marriage in that) for a real safety net. Seeing the arrangement as insurance will inevitably bring obligation, lack of mobility and ultimately lack of freedom and the misery. Hell is other people, when one cannot get away.
Then there are those who think that hell is other people regardless. I’ve known a few in my time and even married one. My husband, now that’s a guy who would rather eat from the cold hand of the state rather than rely on the kindness of neighbors.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I agree that there are tradeoffs, and that the “organic community” of neighbors and extended family can sometimes be oppressive.
But if atomization increases individual autonomy against local social networks and families, it simulteneously reduces individual autonomy–not just against the state–but more generally against the management of our lives by professionalized bureaucracies of all sorts. It’s a lot harder to take refuge in the catacombs when they’re all posted “Access regulated by People’s Ministry of Interral and Disposal–Keep Out!” And it’s a lot harder to live cheaply on your own skills when everything you want to do is subject to some licensing regime that costs tens of thousands of $$.
And for the reasons that Jeremy mentions, I take issue with your statements that “Nobody is preventing people from being filial,”
and “their current preference is revealed by their action and it is hard to second guess that.”
The corporate state has promoted social atomization and demographic mobility in ways that dramatically increase the difficulty and opportunity cost of maintaining stable extended families and other organic local social ties. As Jeremy says, people reveal their preference within a framework whose parameters they have little say over.
I really like your horticultural example. I may quote it in a chapter I’m writing on the process of dissolving the state. Unlike some of the other anarchists who post here, I’m afraid of something like a kudzu infestation happening if the monoculture is bulldozed too quickly. But I would like to replace the monoculture as much as possible, and as quickly as possible, and see how far it’s feasible to push the process.
In the case of social atomization, again, it’s a tradeoff and people should be free to choose their own balance between the negative aspects of both community and atomization. I’d just like the corporate state to stop tilting the balance. I’d like to eliminate all the subsidies to economic centralization, and to the overall corporate culture that promoted the “organization man” lifestyle of commuter society and being shuffled around the country by an employer.
Even before the Model T and mass communications, when the extended family and demographically stable communities predominated, the cities existed as a refuge for those who found community too oppressive. The difference was that back then it was moving to the city that had a cost, whereas today it’s community that’s become an expensive lifestyle choice. I suspect that without the state-sponsored corporate transformation of the economy, the balance would be more in the other direction.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Angelica:
An excellent point worthy of a bump.
My point isn’t that it should be your way or my way. My point is that people should have a choice about which way to pursue. The only way that we can have a choice about how we’re oppressed, since you want to put it in that way, is if a variety of systems of economics and value coexist, so that people can abandon communities or systems they find unpalatable.
But in order for this to happen, we have to get off the universalist bandwagon that justifies the use of force as a means to realizing our values. This is essentially all I want; Quasibill is making a much more effective and articulate version of that argument, so I think I’ll bow out, as I’m not being understood.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I just want to acknowledge that this blog’s purpose is to find some common ground. So, having said what I said, I’d hardly place Social Security on a list of priorities for state power reduction.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Now you’re bringing up the argument that grates on me. Why can’t we share the country and not point guns at each other?
And how come you get the country and I have to leave? Why not the other way around? As Karl Hess once said, “Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions. It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status.” Is there something special about your system because it got a foothold before mine?
April 17th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
CORRECTION:
KURT: This slippery slope can be tilted the other way . . . i.e. is there a limit to personal autonomy? All legal systems assume that some behavior is not permissible and the decision about what is and is not acceptable has to be made. Even anarchists assume that some sort of formal system of dispute resolution should exist.
DAIN: Personal autonomy defined as the right to be left alone? Yes, there is a limit, defined as the moment at which ones subjective feeling of no longer being “left alone” infringes on the property of others in their bodies and justly acquired external objects. (If Ted Kazynski were to bemoan a new neighbor on a nearby hilltop, this would be an example.)
There was no need on my part to include that first sentence. Consider my answer to begin with “Yes, there is a limit…”
April 17th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Angelica writes: Then there are those who think that hell is other people regardless.
In the 80s, I had a T shirt that read, “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” And I did and do believe that. It is just that the little bit of heaven also comes from “les autres.” I’m not really a Sartre fan, but I think he would have agreed.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Angelica sez:Since you guys are always talking about personal responsibility, why not take the personal responsibility to move to some small but democratic country, dismantle the government there and try your ideas out on a small scale. If your experiment is successful, then perhaps I will want to join you.
Just to be clear, I do not regard “libertarians” who hold the goal of totally dismantling the state as libertarians; they are anarchists. I’m not an anarchist, and neither are most libertarians I interact with.
For example, I do not advocate privatizing the courts or the police, and I think our common law deposit evolved from the British version is well worth preserving. And to a limited and careful extent, as a Hayekian, I do accept less-intrusive, not-so-govt-empowering safety net programs. But I do so with greater care than I think many liberals are willing to consider.
Take the king’s coin, dance his jig — that is not an unreasonable fear.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Jeremy,
Now you’re bringing up the argument that grates on me. Why can’t we share the country and not point guns at each other?
And how come you get the country and I have to leave?
Well, as most people think democratic government is a good idea and it’s the idea we’ve used for a long, long time, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that your idea is better. We can’t be demolishing our way of life everytime somebody come by and say they have a better idea.
As states cannot tolerate non-state entities to coexist within it, I would have though that was fairly obvious — can’t have people be exceptions if you’re going to have things like taxation and law enforcement.
Of course, if you are willing to start a new community/system/company/whatever organization while still obeying all the rules set forth by the government, then you are very welcome to do so.
Mona,
Just to be clear, I do not regard “libertarians” who hold the goal of totally dismantling the state as libertarians; they are anarchists. I’m not an anarchist, and neither are most libertarians I interact with.
Ah, but the anarchists here call themselves libertarians. Tricky one.
Kevin,
It’s a lot harder to take refuge in the catacombs when they’re all posted “Access regulated by People’s Ministry of Interral and Disposal–Keep Out!” And it’s a lot harder to live cheaply on your own skills when everything you want to do is subject to some licensing regime that costs tens of thousands of $$.
I take your point is more general. But in the future can you use examples that are less…bucolic? First it’s talking over unimproved lots of land and now it’s hiding out in catacombs…I have a feeling when framed this way most people would choose to stay in their air-conditioned offices.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:50 am
Well, how about responding to it in a non-snarky manner?
But I’ve so much more snark remaining!
Really, if most people want to keep the state chugging along and a small minority don’t, I don’t see why we have an ethical obligation to give in to that minority.
Really, if most people want to exterminate redheads and a small minority (the damn gingers themselves and the odd ginger-lover), I don’t see why we have an ethical obligation to give in to that minority. I’m willing to say that with a straight face because I don’t believe in any ethical obligations. Are you? And can you avoid the unprincipled exception salvaging majoritarianism?
The argument seems to be centering around choice vs exit. Jeffrey Friedman has argued that’s a superior way of viewing things than libertarianism. I don’t think Jeff has a blog of his own, but I last came across him here.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Angelica, you are no doubt inadvertently setting up a straw man with “Well, go ahead and tell me why and give me some examples that are concrete. A lot of people have utopian visions of how people can organize and act differently away from the established rules of society. Most communes crash and burn in hardship and infighting.” You don’t have to look at extremes that have more often existed in theory than in practice, you only have to look at our own history to get real examples (although you may have to take out the romanticising). But I can give you one that used to apply among the Aleuts: they were a littoral hunter gatherer society, and shellfish formed a low effort food source that was reserved for the elderly by custom.
You also write “Since you guys are always talking about personal responsibility, why not take the personal responsibility to move to some small but democratic country, dismantle the government there and try your ideas out on a small scale.” Funnily enough, some people have tried that, and even more funnily, some like the Strangites succeeded - and the reward of their success was to be overthrown. (And, of course, the same thing happens when people instead opt to leave; the powers that be come after them in due time - see what happened to the Boer voortrekkers, and indeed most of the Mormons.)
Kurt Horner, be careful with “Even anarchists assume that some sort of formal system of dispute resolution should exist“. That is mediation, a mere matter of convenience, not an acceptance of something that has binding authority - and not all anarchists would even accept a formal system, for fear it would move towards the latter (in fact, that’s just precisely what happened with the Common Law, which started as a feudal mediation that adversaries didn’t have to accept).
Angelica, there’s a subtle fallacy in “…Democracy: it minimizes the Baby-eating“. Your hypothetical is a one off, but in fact we are subjected to repeated iterations covering a multitude of topics. Not only do the agenda setters revisit matters until the people get it right (sorry, “… until the people are ready”), but also we ourselves are remade by what they create - the second half of tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis (times are being changed and we are being changed in them, as I’m sure readers knew). This happens to the point that individuals of a later generation, or sometimes even the same individuals, accept changes that would once have horrified them. With the multitude of topics and the horse trading, there is always going to be something nobody else likes that some minority agenda setters get through anyway. A case in point: the ringbarking of the cultural base of constitutional monarchy and revisiting the republican issue by Australian republicans. Another: referenda on European Union structures.
KC, if you must borrow that horticultural example, either adapt it to something more universally accessible or clarify it in its turn (which might be more trouble than just clarifying the original point you want to make). I only understand it because someone else once used Kudzu as an example and I had to ask for clarification. As it stands, only people in the USA have experience with the problems it causes, so for anyone else the analogy will just be confusing. (And Dain, even Social Security apparently means something else in the USA than it does here in Australia.)
Angelica, you’re probably too close to it to recognise it, maybe with some unexamined assumptions feeding it, but you have achieved a circular argument with the first part of “Well, as most people think democratic government is a good idea and it’s the idea we’ve used for a long, long time, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that your idea is better“. (The second part amounts to “we’ve always done it that way”, which is an argument for caution as to potential downsides of change which don’t have to be checked for the status quo; it is not in its own right an argument for stasis.)
TGGP, it’s interesting that you should ironically bring up “Really, if most people want to exterminate redheads and a small minority [don't] (the damn gingers themselves and the odd ginger-lover), I don’t see why we have an ethical obligation to give in to that minority“. A.E. Housman used that same imagery in his poem “Oh Who Is That Young Sinner“, a coded reference to the situation of homosexuals (like Housman himself) in a time and place where (the practice of) that sort of thing was dealt with as a crime. It’s amusing (in both senses) that you should call them “gingers”, too (cockney rhyming slang: ginger=ginger beer=queer).
Now for something of my own. It was a feature of the tribal bonds still prevailing in Nigeria when I was a teenager there that our and other families’ servants always had near and not so near relatives descending on them and burdening them - most importantly, overcrowding the servants’ compound, something we had to discourage as tactfully as possible to stop slum conditions developing. Essentially, they were using the traditional family based support system, sharing the good fortune with no shame or condescension on either side. In fact it would have been a non-problem, maybe even a good thing up to a point, if it hadn’t been for the sanitary issues that (of course) had never been factored in before, in a system that hadn’t evolved in a suburban setting but in a rural one. It did prevent hard work and thrift paying off in upward mobility, though.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Angelica,
Interestingly, among the libertarian (despite Mona’s attempt at re-defining the term) commenters here, I’m probably the only one (other than Mona, of course) that, as a practical matter, is willing to accept states in the end goal. I just want those states to be no larger than municipalities, and I want them to be organically organized from the ground up, not imposed from the top down.
I still believe in the ethical principle of self-ownership and the non-agression principle that flows from it, and make my moral judgments from that standard. But I have a gut feeling that people will organize into democratic states at local levels naturally. And at that level, the exit costs are so low that I don’t fret (much) about the violations of self-ownership that may occur - I would agree that, at that level, the state imposed costs are roughly equivalent to the costs imposed by social forces, and therefore, while still ethically wrong, not something that poses a large problem.
But it is important to focus on the fact that centralization of political power is actually the *cause* of most of today’s problems. Therefore, any rational person must, at the very least, question the assumption that centralized power can be the cure of these problems.
And I’m sorry to see that you’re a “‘merica, luv it or leave it!” type. You know, the Jews in Germany had the same choice. Just because a plurality of the population supported the policies, doesn’t make them defensible. Quite often, the direct opposite is true.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:57 am
“But I think all things considered a democracy with a strong rule of law is the least likely system where that kind of insanity would happen.”
That’s quite a loaded statement, but let me just point out that the Weimar Republic was a democracy with a culture with a fanatical respect for ‘the law’.
I’d say that a society with a strong grounding in morality and a willingness to challenge authority (even “the law”) when the results appear to be immoral is the least likely system where that kind of insanity could happen. Democracy is a likely by-product of such a society - not a cause.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Quasibill, I also do not consider myself an anarchist, for the reason Randall Holcombe gave. Also possibly some lingering Hayekian pragmatism.
I chose “gingers” because I had recently seen this.
For an examination of anarchy without a legal system, see Order Without Law.
Theodore Dalrymple discusses the extended family relations he observed in Rhodesia here.
David Friedman has a series of posts on the church compound in Texas.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
@quasibill: Interestingly, among the libertarian (despite Mona’s attempt at re-defining the term) …
No attempt at redefinition. But I’ve been a libertarian for some 30 years, of the Hayekian, Reason, and Cato variety. We are not anarcho-capitalists, or anarchists of any stripe.
We don’t have our heads in the clouds about notions of, say, dismantling the entire federal govt and returning to a confederation, which is never going to happen. I appreciate the intellect and provocative ideas of folks like Kevin Carson, but he is well outside the libertarian world I have long-occupied. We do not deplore the common law; we uphold and even revere most of it, especially as it has dropped some of its religious trappings.
Libertarian = limited govt. Anarchist = no state.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Mona,
Rather than defining anarcho-capitalism and other forms of market anarchism out of libertarianism altogether, I think it would make more sense to treat them as one subgroup within the broader libertarian movement. I’ve seen arguments by market anarchists that minarchist or small government libertarians aren’t really libertarian because they don’t consistently apply the nonaggression principle (which in the anarchist view is the defining feature of principled libertarianism). I don’t think this makes sense, either.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
…but he is well outside the libertarian world I have long-occupied.
I’m at the point where I’m trying to figure which route to take. The Reason/Cato groups offers more prestige, but is less inspiring to me. I almost think becoming a philosophical anarchist academic at some community college would be preferable.
There’s something to be said for agitating for anarchy and realistically expecting only limited government. Advocating for limited government as end goal, at least in my opinion, is intellectually dishonest.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Kevin sez: Rather than defining anarcho-capitalism and other forms of market anarchism out of libertarianism altogether, I think it would make more sense to treat them as one subgroup within the broader libertarian movement.
I understand I may sound like a Stalinist “purger,” but honestly, I think it is important for some labels to maintain integrity. Anarcho-capitalism is an interesting view I have explored, and rejected, even as I admire the minds of some of its proponents.
But that is not libertarianism as commonly understood in contemporary America. The Constitution, as a starting point, is very fine with me — I would just add a well-crafted privacy amendment, as well as one clarifying that the Executive cannot wage war without a 2/3 vote from both houses of Congress, absent a direct attack on the nation. (And any war response must then be ratified by Congress within, say, 30 days, or the defensive violence must cease.)
April 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Angelica,
As states cannot tolerate non-state entities to coexist within it, I would have though that was fairly obvious — can’t have people be exceptions if you’re going to have things like taxation and law enforcement.
Well, you can always leave the country and start your own elsewhere. That doesn’t sound reasonable?
There are no areas of the earth left not claimed by some nation-state or group of them. And the vast majority of this territory was claimed merely by decree and backed up by the philosophy of might makes right. This is an extremely illiberal political theory, no? (Or is the question an oxymoron?)
The only room left is within nation-states. There is no way, then, to “experiment” - to peacefully withdraw - without challenging the first statement above.
The state is NOT about harmony and goodwill. Remember this the next time a presidential candidate uses such buzzwords.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
TGGP,
This an excellent summary of Friedman’s views. Quite lenghty and substantive:
http://www.the-dissident.com/theory.shtml
April 18th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
“A a side note, I simply can’t get behind a plan to “free” people from their tribal and religious traditions. I tend to take people at their word, and dont’ second guess their preferences,”
Do you believe people have some rights that are inalienable? Would accept tribal traditions that violate people’s rights?
April 18th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
“Let’s say one in a hundred people are crazed baby-eaters. In a democracy, that crazed baby eater will always be overruled and baby-eating harshly punished.?”
I’d add that most people, nowadays, are crazed baby-eaters, from the perspective of folks 300 years ago. What would the witch burners of Salem say of our current sexual mores?
I was recently reading about the big crackdown on soddomites that the Sherrif of London carried out from 1728 to 1730. Hundreds of men were hanged. The Sherrif’s opinion on gay marriage can be guessed at.
I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the United States. Just today I saw a black man walking down the street while holding hands with a white woman.
My point is that once the majority comes round to some point of view, things that were once deemed beyond the pale come to seem perfectly reasonable. (The sexual aspects of Brave New World seem less exaggerated now than in 1932.)
April 18th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
“people reveal their preference within a framework whose parameters they have little say over.”
Kevin, just curious, but why do you think people don’t fight harder against the current framework? Your words suggest that there is a lot to dislike about the framework in which people need to make decisions about their personal lives. People could, of course, agitate against the system that promotes atomization. Yet I don’t see much in the history of 20th century that suggests people really hate that atomization (I’m confining my remarks to the U.S.). Even during the periods of mass political mobilization (1912, the 1930s and 1940s, the 1960s) most of the laws agitated for seem designed to increase individual autonomy.
“The corporate state has promoted social atomization and demographic mobility”
Okay, but the corporate state is not the only actor on stage. Where is the mass movement that opposed social atomization? When you look at the history of the last 100 years, do you see a mass movement that, say, fought against demographic mobility?
April 18th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
My point is that once the majority comes round to some point of view, things that were once deemed beyond the pale come to seem perfectly reasonable. (The sexual aspects of Brave New World seem less exaggerated now than in 1932.)
Right. Those that scoff at the “slippery slope” argument take heed.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Ha, I didn’t look at the writing preceding your statement, Jackson.
Of course I was thinking of stuff like executive power, intrusive government, etc., not gay relations.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
“And I’m sorry to see that you’re a “‘merica, luv it or leave it!” type. ”
Damn funny to try to imagine Angelica saying “America, love it or leave it.”
She’s already left it, so I guess she’s free to criticise it if she wants to. She already mentioned that if she ever comes back to North America, she’ll give Canada a try.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Jackson,
The reason there hasn’t been more of a mass movement, IMO, is enculturation. The majority of people tend to have very little historical memory or basis for comparison–because, in part, the publik skools have done such a damned good job of making sure most of the human resources they process never develop a sense of perspective from which they might criticize the corporate state. Every society tends to have a hegemonic ideology which defines the existing structure of power as “normal” and “inevitable,” and the educational system and mass media tend to reproduce that ideology from one generation to the next. Part of the process the Marxists call “reproducing human labor power” involves reproducing the popular attitudes the system needs to survive on a stable basis.
Of course, it doesn’t do a perfect job of this. There have been mass movements, of sorts, against atomization: the back to the land movement, slow food, community supported agriculture, LETS systems and other alternative economics, etc. But they’ve pretty much been in a position of swimming against the tide.
But the system does face problems in reproducing the proper mass mindset. For one thing, as Chomsky pointed out, for its functioning the system requres a bit more openness and correspondence to the truth in the picture of the world its educated elites have, if they’re to do their jobs. So there’s always the danger of proles jumping the fence and reading beyond their pay grade.
And the system faces crises of legitimization, because elites are forced to act in ways that contradict their official values, or because what they’re saying now contradicts what they were saying six months ago. Whenever the corporate economy enters a crisis, the state is forced to intervene in ways (”socialism for the rich”) that directly contradict the official “free market” and “individual responsibility” rhetoric. And over time, by the nature of corporate capitalism, the state is forced to institutionalize more and more such intervention to keep the system going. And the danger is very real that average people will put two and two together and perceive a glitch in the matrix. That’s especially so now that the Internet has made it possible to bypass the old gatekeepers of the semi-official media.
Another source of legitimation crisis is when the state fails to deliver on the promised goods in return for acquiescence. From FDR through 1970 or so, the corporate liberal compact was that the average person would have a house, job security, and wages that kept up with productivity, in return for leaving the corporate economy to its managers and supporting the corporate state’s adventures overseas. From the ’70s on, American elites were forced to renege on this social compact. And people are pissed off over downsizing, stagnant wages, and so forth. Karl Rove and Frank Luntz had limited success in diverting some of the resentment against “cultural elites” (a la Thomas Frank), but all the people aren’t stupid enough to be taken in by this all the time.
I think we’re headed for a full-blown legitimation crisis where the state is simply unable to avoid contradicting its own official ideology and exposing the contradictions in it.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Kevin, I don’t think I disagree with much of what you say, but your list of mass movements is interesting:
“the back to the land movement, slow food, community supported agriculture, LETS systems and other alternative economics, etc.”
None of these movements named atomization (in the sense Angelica is using the word) as their main, explicit enemy. That suggests that atomization is fairly low on the list of things that people, even radicals, really want to protest. My own experience with intentional communites has been that in each one there are some dedicated cosmopolitan individualists (my tone of voice here is “God damn, even there you find some cosmopolitans”). Even among radicals who are part of counter-hegemonic movements, atomization doesn’t seem to often get named as the enemy. I’m left feeling that atomization is fairly popular. I’d guess there is a fairly wide portion of the public that feels as Angelica does: “I choose atomization”.
You can call that enculturation, and I don’t disagree with you, but is enculturation illegitimate? Aren’t people allowed to vote their cultural values?
April 19th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Mona, have you read Brian Doherty’s “Radicals for Capitalism”? There was a time in the 20th century (and before it) when anarchists were the majority of libertarians and minarchists were the odd men out. You are reading out a considerable chunk of the libertarian movement. I agree that our goals are probably never going to happen. I think that is also true of more moderate minarchists. I think that just as the original Constitution failed in its intended purpose (the anti-federalists were proved right by history, the federalists wrong) even if you did manage to change the Constitution in a more libertarian direction (and there is no reason to believe that you will be able to) the government will proceed to simply ignore it. So what’s left if adding an amendment or two won’t two? I say removing power from the state and trying to block any grab for power. Perhaps it will inevitably increase until it collapses and a new dark age ensues. In that case reducing the rate of entropy is the best that can be hoped for and it’s still something. “Standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” was how one former acolyte of Nock put it.
Thanks for the link, Dain.
Hayek and Galbraith had a dispute over enculturation. Greg Mankiw summarizes Hayek’s argument here.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:12 am
“From FDR through 1970 or so, the corporate liberal compact was that the average person would have a house, job security, and wages that kept up with productivity, in return for leaving the corporate economy to its managers and supporting the corporate state’s adventures overseas“.
KC, that is almost precisely what Belloc foresaw in his The Servile State (downloadable here).
As for “From the ’70s on, American elites were forced to renege on this social compact. And people are pissed off over downsizing, stagnant wages, and so forth.“, here is what I wrote on that side of things at Limitedinc:-
“Belloc missed a few tricks about reaching collective ownership through gradual purchase. In particular, funds for it can be obtained through issuing fiat currency (which Marx had already suggested, because it would also damage the bourgeoisie), and taxes and other burdens on private industry can create a competitive advantage for the other sort (think Zimbabwean agriculture). Neither did he foresee today’s corporate system in which managerialism has crowded out actual individuals rich in their own right as the class needing to be squared - but that is a detail, as far as his thesis is concerned.
“Belloc also did not foresee the present situation in which industry would be willing and able to sideline workers, instead thinking of conditions in which workers would be desired and the need would be to marginalise them. But still, the trends are there to have the remaining workforce dependent, if not yet receiving the quid pro quo of security that he thought necessary for stability. That may be a matter of not yet having reached the level of instability he saw coming - but the trends are there.”
On ‘Karl Rove and Frank Luntz had limited success in diverting some of the resentment against “cultural elites” (a la Thomas Frank), but all the people aren’t stupid enough to be taken in by this all the time‘, that’s Lincoln’s famous misdirection all over again. What counts isn’t whether you can fool some of the people all of the time, whether you can fool all of the people some of the time, or even whether you can fool all of the people all of the time - it’s whether you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, which is the ball that Lincoln made the people take their eyes off by emphasising those other things.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Jackson,
But regardless of the values of the individuals, don’t intentional communities *function* in a less atomized way? I mean, you can hardly live in one without knowing your neighbors, or have a Wal-Mart in it with no ties to the community.
And I have no problem with enculturation as such. My problem is with the fact that the culture people are being encultured into is a culture largely manufactured for them, and that it was manufactured to serve the interests of institutions that are almost totally unaccountable to them.
These institutions were created by the imposition of a top-down revolution on society in barely a generation’s time, around the turn of the 20th century. A cultural transmission system designed to serve these institutions then successfully encultured a majority of people into values that shaped them to serve the same institutions. In so doing, it pulled off the greatest sleight of hand of all: it created a population that saw these monstrous institutional changes as “natural” and “inevitable,” and their own limited choices made within the parameters set by these institutions as “autonomous” or “revealed preferences.”
PML: Thanks for the Belloc references. The Servile State is a monumentally important work. Another thing Belloc missed was failing to see how much the concentration of property he obseved depended on ongoing state intervention (odd, since he gave an excellent account of the state’s role in its *origins* by expropriating the peasantry). As a result, the debate was framed on the assumtion that the concentration of property and centralization of enterprise was the natural outcome of a market, and the only matter for contention was how the state might intervene to counteract it.
…Which ties in pretty closely, it seems to me, with my discussion with Jackson. One reason there hasn’t been more of a debate over the corporate revolution is that “both sides” in American politics are so closely associated with centralized institutions, and have been able to get away with framing the debate in such false terms. Both mainstream liberals and conservatives promote the myth (for all intents and purposes an official myth, in the “received version” of American history taught in the schools), that the corporate economy emerged spontaneously from 19th century “laissez-faire,” and that only government exercise of “countervailing power” can counter this natural tendency. It simultaneously serves the conservatives by implying that the present corporate economy is the natural product of superior performance in the market, and serves the liberals by implying that big government is necessary to fight big business (rather than being necessary to prop it up).
As for the Lincoln thing, whether culture war can fool *enough* people for the successful diversion of economic pain against cultural scapegoats, is what remains to be seen. I don’t think it can, in the long run, because even the kind of idiots obsessed with Janet Jackson’s tit are smart enough to know Bear Stearns can’t be blamed on “latte-sipping elites” who drive Volvos and read little magazines. But if a GOP ploy involving flag lapel pins and “God damn America” is decisive this fall, this stratagem will have at least managed to squeak through another time.
April 20th, 2008 at 5:30 am
“Another thing Belloc missed was failing to see how much the concentration of property he obseved depended on ongoing state intervention”? Actually, no, it didn’t. That is, the customary institutions that backed family-linked landed property were quite capable of perpetuating the imbalance once it was in there, without acting through either further legislation or executive measures or whatever from the state itself. Typically, wealthy landowners had quite enough gamekeepers and other retainers not to need to call on state aid to keep squatters off their land, and they themselves held magistrates’ positions so the law wouldn’t challenge them, but they didn’t need to use magistrates’ powers, only make sure nobody else got them. The landowners only needed to get wealthy in the first place.
I also downloaded Molesworth on (late 17th century) Denmark quite a while back, but I haven’t got into it yet. He was also commenting on England in a coded way, by way of what he brought out in comparisons, because it wasn’t very safe to be more direct. You should be able to google for it (it’s at a constitution site, so try putting “constitution” in the search too).
April 20th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Here we are, “An account of Denmark, as it was in the year 1692, Robert Molesworth (1694) - Commentary on Denmark that is really a commentary on constitutional issues in England” (within http://www.constitution.org).
April 20th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
PML: I suppose it’s a semantic quibble whether legal enforcement of Hodgskin’s “artificial property rights” in land, along with the Combination Laws and Laws of Settlement, constituted “ongoing state intervention.”
At any rate, the concentrations I was referring to were not so much the land holdings of the Whig Oligarchy as the great industrial corporations, which were the primary concern of distributists at the time Belloc was writing (industrial serfdom was clearly the primary focus of The Servile State). And IMO the latter couldn’t possibly exist without the ongoing support of the state.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
It’s actually understandable that Belloc should have overlooked the significance of those things. The Combination Laws etc. had gone, and systematic arrangements for corporate structures were only about a generation old in the UK. Until Company Acts were brought in in the late 19th century in the face of international competition from other countries’ corporations (particularly German), Britain had had a long period after the South Sea Bubble when companies were considered harmful as a general rule. The only companies allowed were holdovers from before (e.g. the East India Company) and special one offs that had to get their own charters and acts after parliamentary review to see that they really were in the public interest (e.g. the railway companies). So, factories and mines and such pretty much had been private property of natural persons or families, and that had only just changed. Even so, Belloc does show some awareness of trusts by his day.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:10 am
Benjamin Tucker made the same mistake, focusing even after 1900 almost entirely on how his Four Monopolies operated at the level of individual exchange, and ignoring the ways in which the state aided corporations on an organizational level.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:57 am
I wouldn’t use the term “mistake” for an omission that just rendered the work incomplete, only for one that led him astray and made the work inaccurate.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:56 am
“No attempt at redefinition. But I’ve been a libertarian for some 30 years, of the Hayekian, Reason, and Cato variety. We are not anarcho-capitalists, or anarchists of any stripe.”
Well, as others have pointed out, that’s not necessarily accurate. And, as others have pointed out, the real question comes down to one of consistency - anarchist types are consistent believers in self-ownership, while minarchists are believers up until the point there is something that *they* truly value and think is worth violating the self-ownership of others for. So the distinction is one of degree and not one of kind, as you attempt to posit.
“We don’t have our heads in the clouds about notions of, say, dismantling the entire federal govt and returning to a confederation, which is never going to happen.”
I could just as easily demean your position as a head in the clouds belief that 225 years of increasing statism under the constitution can be overcome by following the constitution - *it’s never going to happen!* The constitution is doing pretty much precisely what the Hamiltonians wanted it to do, and which the anti-federalists predicted it would do.
“We do not deplore the common law; we uphold and even revere most of it, especially as it has dropped some of its religious trappings.”
Funnily enough, I pretty much revere the common law as well. But, well, that’s *because* it had its genesis in what you would consider anarchy. Read up on the history of the “King’s Bench” and early common law. You’ll find that your belief that it somehow contradicts anarchists’ arguments is ill-founded.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
But see, that’s the problem: I don’t really care whether my idea is better or not. I just want to live in a society that reflects my values - just like everybody else. This is only a competition because the State and its defenders are intolerant of different forms of organization. There is no real dilemna here; it’s all about power.
Plus, as Dain said, there’s no place to go.
You make a great argument for free association there. It’s not a very good argument for the state, though. Your way of life and mine are not in the LEAST collectively determined, at least as far as internal organization, except through the abstraction of the state.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
It seems to me fairly straightforward that free market anarchism, minarchism, and other related ideologies are all members of a common category and differ only in degree. Leaving aside questions of whether libertarianism implies anarchism as a matter of consistency in principle, or the historical ties between the libertarian movement and all the events around the YAF secession in 1969, it simply makes sense to say that in contemporary terms, market anarchism is at the extreme end of the existing libertarian spectrum. It makes no more sense to create a false dichotomy between market anarchism and libertarianism than it does to treat “socialism” and “communism” as two separate things, rather than treating one as an extreme subset of another. For that matter, it makes no more sense than the Objectivists’ strenuous denials that they are “libertarians.”
April 21st, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Mona,
I’ve only been a libertarian for 10 years (before that I was an apolitical high school student) and I used to believe the same as you - until I discovered David Friedman. Soon thereafter I realized that many of libertarian thinkers and institutions I had previously regarded as minarchist were in fact either explicitly anarchist or anarchist-compatible. Both Reason and Cato are replete with anarchists - some more explicit in their anarchism (e.g. Brian Doherty), than others (Tom Palmer, Randy Barnett).
Angelica,
This reminds me of a story I once heard from a man named OWK: The Hanover Street Shoe-Shine Boys.
A snippet:
May 13th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Good read and interesting follow-ups. The issue really strikes close to the heart of the differences between libertarians and liberals. Both sides acknowledge that some form of power is necessary to protect and provide welfare for the vulnerable. The question then what form that power should have. Ceding power to the state is ultimately the only way of protecting people from their potentially deleterious upbringings, but then thats putting all your eggs in one basket.
Traditions like filial duty may at times be difficult to understand but in one sense they work. Atomization could be seen as a potential market failure of sorts. The breakdown of trust between parents and offspring means that parents can no longer guarantee to get back what they put in. Probably contributing to the drop in birth rates developed societies?
If you want to engage with others who are different politically, it’s important to see the things that you are advocating warts and all, not your idealized version of how you would like them to be.
Amen.