Archive for the ‘class’ Category
Dialectical Libertarianism
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008In the comments to Angelica’s post “Fannie’s Follies, Freddie’s Foibles,” an interesting discussion developed in the comment thread about the order in which to scale back the different forms of state intervention. We also discussed the possibility that particular regulations, even though nominally a form of state intervention, might not actually be a net increase in statism; they might be, rather, a case of the state limiting its own previous grant of special privilege, and amount substantively to a reduction in statism. In such cases, nominal deregulation may actually result in a net increase in statism. In “Public vs. Private Sector,” I discussed the class nature of the state and the meaninglessness in many cases of the distinction between nominally “public” and “private” organizations.
Both of these issues involve what Chris Sciabarra, in his brilliant book Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, called… well, “dialectical libertarianism.”
Meritocracy
Friday, March 28th, 2008I recently reread The Revolt of the Elites, by Christopher Lasch–one of my favorite writers. One of the most important themes in the book is his contrast of the Jeffersonian democratic ideal to the meritocratic ideal that replaced it.