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Why NOT left-libertarianism?

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Wheylous Posted: Fri, Dec 30 2011 3:20 PM

Why are you guys not left-libs? (besides hierarchy deconstruction)

Specifically (if I understand their ideas correctly), they believe that whoever uses the factors of production should be their owner and have access to them. What makes the permanent ownership of AnCap superior, in your opinion?

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Private property aka "hierarchy" is the most efficient. Why do so many mutualist coops fail and so many hierarchical businesses succeed? Also left-libertarianism is akin to mutualism which promotes anti-private property and collectivist stances.

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Specifically (if I understand their ideas correctly), they believe that whoever uses the factors of production should be their owner and have access to them. What makes the permanent ownership of AnCap superior, in your opinion?

so a left -lib sees some property and thinks he'd like it. so he takes it.
case 1)

the previous owner abandoned it. the left lib is now the owner. end.

case 2)

the previous owner had not abandoned it and asserts his rights. 

Case 2 sub a) the left-lib accepts this assertion and the original owners rights are confirmed, the left-lib wanders on his way
Case 2 sub b) the left-lib must demonstrate how the original owner has abandoned the property, given the fact that this is not case1 but case 2 this seems like a losing strategy. the original owners rights are confirmed, the left-lib wanders on his way

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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Wheylous replied on Fri, Dec 30 2011 4:28 PM

 

Private property aka "hierarchy" is the most efficient.

Explain what you mean by efficient and why efficiency is necessarily good. You can pass laws more quickly in a totalitarian state than in a democracy, yet I fail to see people arguing for totalitarianism due to its efficiency.

Also left-libertarianism is akin to mutualism which promotes anti-private property and collectivist stances.
I am asking exactly why you do not support this stance. As in "why is collectivism bad?"
 
 
nirgrahamUK, I don't get your example. Can you explain?

 

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It is a walkthrough that I intended to deflate 'usufruct' concept. 

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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Wheylous replied on Fri, Dec 30 2011 4:52 PM

Alright, can you explain it some more?

From what I understand, you're arguing that it's tough to prove abandonment. Alright, but abandonment is legitimate in AnCap as well...

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z1235 replied on Fri, Dec 30 2011 4:55 PM

Wheylous:

What makes the permanent ownership of AnCap superior, in your opinion?

Under private property they could do whatever they want on/with their property (own what they use, use what they own, or have sex with it, for all I care) and I could do whatever I want on/with mine. Under no-property, we all must do whatever they want. Basically, I'm in awe of the superiority of the "live and let live" and "mind your own f-ing business" aspects of the private property concept. 

 

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>>Alright, but abandonment is legitimate in AnCap as well...

yeah, sure its legitimate to have abandonment and homesteading unowned objects. thats case 1.

so this left-lib attitude doesnt amount to much... unless you break on case 2b, i.e. there no property abandonment but there is a miscarriage of justice, a forced transfer from 'not-abandoned-it' original owner to the left libber usufructer.

 

If the left-libs are advocating for that then hows that not immoral?

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

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Wheylous:
Why are you guys not left-libs? (besides hierarchy deconstruction)

Specifically (if I understand their ideas correctly), they believe that whoever uses the factors of production should be their owner and have access to them. What makes the permanent ownership of AnCap superior, in your opinion?

Because, like the communists, the left-libs start their analysis in the middle, with firms, capital, and management already in existence. Sure, at that point the workerz could own the factories, but how did those factories come into existence in the first place? This would be feasible if ready-made factories somehow pop out of the sky. But in a world where economic activity does require coordination this would make modern economic performance utterly impossible.

"They all look upon progressing material improvement as upon a self-acting process." - Ludwig von Mises
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Because, like the communists, the left-libs start their analysis in the middle, with firms, capital, and management already in existence. Sure, at that point the workerz could own the factories, but how did those factories come into existence in the first place?

Primitive accumulation!

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Because, like the communists, the left-libs start their analysis in the middle, with firms, capital, and management already in existence. Sure, at that point the workerz could own the factories, but how did those factories come into existence in the first place?

Primitive accumulation!

 

Troll somewhere else plz.

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Wheylous replied on Fri, Dec 30 2011 9:47 PM

Well, given that this is a thread about left-libertarianism, I'd say the input is not misplaced wink

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You're confusing left-libertarian with anarchist (mutualist and everything-"left") again. Roderick Long is a left-lib.

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You're confusing left-libertarian with anarchist (mutualist and everything-"left") again. Roderick Long is a left-lib.

So what's the difference between mutualists and left-libs? Plz explain thoroughly.

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This won't be thorough, because I'm tired to the point of feeling nauseaus, but am also having a bout of insomnia.

In my opinion, left-libertarians are just regular american libertarians with some different social values tacked on, sometimes very convincingly and well, but not always that interesting. Mutualists are socialists, have a completely different methodology, and a have been part of a historical discourse that is vastly different from that of classical liberals.

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MaikU replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 4:43 AM

so mutualists are the bad guys. Ok. So we will live left-libs alive in Libertopia.

"Dude... Roderick Long is the most anarchisty anarchist that has ever anarchisted!" - Evilsceptic

(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)

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About the non mutualist left libs 

https://mises.org/Community/forums/p/22122/391536.aspx#391536

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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Why would anyone pay to build a factory, if they could lose it to someone else?

No factory or other business enterprise can operate without an effective system for sound decision-making--about where to build the factory, whether to open a second factory, or a new branch, whether to make this product or drop that one, etc.  These decisions decide the fate of the company; and ought to be made by whomever has the most at stake--or whomever that person hires to make such decisions, presumably someone who has shown sound decision-making in the past.  Look at government today and you'll see that leaving such decisions to common votes leads to more benefits and less revenue--to huge debt.

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EmperorNero:

Because, like the communists, the left-libs start their analysis in the middle, with firms, capital, and management already in existence. Sure, at that point the workerz could own the factories, but how did those factories come into existence in the first place? This would be feasible if ready-made factories somehow pop out of the sky. But in a world where economic activity does require coordination this would make modern economic performance utterly impossible.

You could use the same logic to argue that:

Stupid Statist Argument:

Like the communists, libertarins start their analysis in the middle, with roads, schools and the post office already in existence. Sure, at that point private individuals could own the roads, but how did those roads come into existence in the first place? 

 

Clearly the answer to this crique of libertarianism is that private ownership of roads pre-dated state ownership and the only reason all the roads are owned by the state today is because of the states monopoly on force - not because the of the obvious superiority of state roads.

And you can use a similiar argument against your critique of 'left'-libertarians. The dominance of large, heirachical firms and wage labour is a product of past and current state intervention and not because of the obvious superiority of this mode of production.

Birthday Pony:

Left-libertarians are just regular american libertarians with some different social values tacked on, sometimes very convincingly and well, but not always that interesting.

My feelings exactly.

 

 

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The best thing left libertarians bring to the table is the notion of thickness - that various libertarian positions entail holding some other position either by logical necessity or reasonable expectation of making the first position come into fruition.  For example, even though racists could live in a free society without ever causing a single problem, racism as an ideology ought to be opposed by libertarians because it provides justifications for insitutions like slavery.  If nearly everyone were to accept that Eskimos were sub-human, it would be much harder for libertarians to show why Eskimos ought to be free as well without introducing the concept of racial equality.

Rand actually had a similar position - the tribal mentality which underlies racism is non-compatible with the egoist mentality of capitalism, so to support the latter means to necessarily reject the former.

 

they said we would have an unfair fun advantage

"enough about human rights. what about whale rights?" -moondog
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Libre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 8:40 AM

Isn't Chomsky a self professed "anarchist" and "libertarian-socialist" (are these terms mutually compatible?!) ? So doesn't that make him a "left libertarian"?

http://mises.org/daily/1132

"The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
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Praetyre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 9:04 AM

Chomsky is not a libertarian of any sort, left, right, center, whatever. He's a social democrat (anti-federalism, anti-MSM-because-he-thinks-it's-anti-government, anti-gun, pro-educrat, pro-social security) with somewhat more radical views on foreign policy (he was opposed to Ron Paul's "ultranationalism" in the form of the US withdrawing from the UN, so it would seem it's not as isolationist as people repute him to be. Maybe he's the antiwar movement's version of Hayek?). If you want real left-libertarianism or, frankly, real radicalism, look at Kevin Carson, Roderick Long, Benjamin Tucker, William Godwin and elements of Lysander Spooner and Keith Preston's body of work.

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Libre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 9:09 AM

I thought Tucker and Spooner could be anachronistically called anarcho-capitalists.

"The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
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Wheylous replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 10:05 AM

No factory or other business enterprise can operate without an effective system for sound decision-making--about where to build the factory, whether to open a second factory, or a new branch, whether to make this product or drop that one, etc.

That is the most convincing argument to me, I think. Yet it avoids any notion of "fairness." Though I suppose you could argue that choosing a higher standard of living over a lower one is always more "fair."

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Not sure if this will make any sense, but here's how I understand the relationship between the different position:

 

                                                                                      / Libertarian Marxist (Autonomist; Council Communist; Situationist)

                                         / Libertarian Communist <

Libertarian Socialist <                                                   > Social Anarchist (Anarcho-communist)                                    

                                         \ Anarchist <

                                                                                      \ Market Anarchist (Mutualist; Individualist Anarchist)

 

                                   /  Left-libertarian

Classical Liberal <    -  Anarcho-capitalist

                                   \  Minarchist (Misesian; Objectivist)

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Libre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 1:07 PM

Just goes to show that "categorization" is useless. We ought to debate the points and ideas.

"The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else." - Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
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Wheylous replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 1:09 PM

It in fact does not make sense because the formatting is

 

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To format it another way...

Libertarian Socialist > Libertarian Communist >Libertarian Marxist (Autonomist; Council Communist; Situationist)

Libertarian Socialist > Libertarian Communist > Social Anarchist (Anarcho-communist)

Libertarian Socialist > Anarchist > Social Anarchist (Anarcho-communist)

Libertarian Socialist > Anarchist > Market Anarchist (Mutualist; Individualist Anarchist)

Classical Liberal > Left-libertarian

Classical Liberal > Anarcho-capitalist

Classical Liberal > Minarchist (Misesian; Objectivist)

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Wheylous replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 1:19 PM

Now I get it.

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"I thought Tucker and Spooner could be anachronistically called anarcho-capitalists."

Try reading them.

Tucker held some positions that were akin to what would one day become anarcho-capitalism, but his reasons were completely different and he considered himself a socialist, someone working towards the liberation of the laborers. Much of his thoughs are, I think, unapplicable today and maybe even would have fallen apart then given his motivation. His support for things like might makes right property, wage work, etc., were all intended to bring about the full value of product to labor, which just wouldn't happen.

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Libre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 4:39 PM

Out of Tucker and Spooner, I have read the latter -  he seemed to be very anarcho-capitalist. Am I wrong?

I initially confused Tucker with Douglass... Ok, yes, Tucker's a socialist.

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"Why would anyone pay to build a factory, if they could lose it to someone else?"

They most likely wouldn't. The logic of possession is that the workers are going to build it, much of the same workers will probably end up working in it, and the guy paying for it will probably never operate any of the machines in it. So why not give it to the people that are actually using it?

"No factory or other business enterprise can operate without an effective system for sound decision-making--about where to build the factory, whether to open a second factory, or a new branch, whether to make this product or drop that one, etc.  These decisions decide the fate of the company; and ought to be made by whomever has the most at stake--or whomever that person hires to make such decisions, presumably someone who has shown sound decision-making in the past.  Look at government today and you'll see that leaving such decisions to common votes leads to more benefits and less revenue--to huge debt."

Argue the finer points of democratic workplaces all you want, but that's just not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasinpat FaSinPat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brukman_factory Brukman

To name just two...

Quite honestly, this argument that "common votes" by supposedly common people will lead to utter insanity sounds way more reactionary than it does liberatory. If you're worried about the common people doing things you don't like you sound a lot more like a monarchist than you do anything near a libertarian or Anarchist.

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Can't say I'm familiar with Douglass, but here's a good one about Spooner that pretty much covers the bases.

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secG7.html

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Libre replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 4:53 PM

Thanks. I came to the same conclusion as Rothbard on Spooner when I read Spooner's essay "The Constitution of No Authority". Seemed very anarcho-capitalist.

 

Spooner, in spite of his closeness to classical liberalism, was no more a capitalist than Rothbard was an anarchist.

 

XD

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James replied on Sat, Dec 31 2011 8:58 PM

The logic of possession is that the workers are going to build it, much of the same workers will probably end up working in it, and the guy paying for it will probably never operate any of the machines in it. So why not give it to the people that are actually using it?

 
This just blows my mind...
 
What workers before the factory is built, Pony?  Where do you find these people, and why would they build a factory if they could lose it?  You haven't changed the fact that this factory has to be owned, you've just pointed to an imaginary group of God-knows how many people who would own this factory, and failed to answer the basic question...
 
Have you ever tried deciding on lunch with a group of friends, Pony?  Or do you all eat hay?

This is what leftists never seem to comprehend...  The actual work, individual initiative and risk that goes into setting up an enterprise.  The fact that you have to assume the risk and build a goddam factory before the workers will get off their asses and realise it's there, and that it can improve their sorry lot in life.  Oh, it will just get built, fairies will do it, the worker's dictatorship will prevail for a thousand years...  They'll all agree on what the party/technical elite wants, or we will declare them insane.

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
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"I thought Tucker and Spooner could be anachronistically called anarcho-capitalists."

Try reading them.

Tucker held some positions that were akin to what would one day become anarcho-capitalism, but his reasons were completely different and he considered himself a socialist, someone working towards the liberation of the laborers. Much of his thoughs are, I think, unapplicable today and maybe even would have fallen apart then given his motivation. His support for things like might makes right property, wage work, etc., were all intended to bring about the full value of product to labor, which just wouldn't happen.

They were definitely socialists in a lot of respects. That's why I have no faith in left-libertarians.

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They were definitely socialists in a lot of respects. That's why I have no faith in left-libertarians.

Idk... Tucker had some great ideas that make for wonderful critiques of the state and of the mainstream view of history:

The Many Monopolies

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Birthday Pony:

Tucker held some positions that were akin to what would one day become anarcho-capitalism, but his reasons were completely different and he considered himself a socialist, someone working towards the liberation of the laborers. Much of his thoughs are, I think, unapplicable today and maybe even would have fallen apart then given his motivation. His support for things like might makes right property, wage work, etc., were all intended to bring about the full value of product to labor, which just wouldn't happen.

But it would. In a free market labour would tend towards getting the full value of it's product discounted by time preference (DMVP). I don't think Tucker would have suddenly became a Marxist if he had come to an understanding of Austrian economics. The main difference between Tucker-Spooner and Rothbard was land titles, and even there Rothbard said that the property rights Tucker-Spooner envisioned were infintely superior to the current system. 

Freedom4Me73986:

 

  They were definitely socialists in a lot of respects. That's why I have no faith in left-libertarians.

Where's the face palm smiley?  Define socialism and why you are opposed to it. 

 

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Bah! That came out wrong. I accidentally included my response to Birthday pony within my quote of Freedom4Me. Whoops. 

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James:

The logic of possession is that the workers are going to build it, much of the same workers will probably end up working in it, and the guy paying for it will probably never operate any of the machines in it. So why not give it to the people that are actually using it?

 
This just blows my mind...
 
What workers before the factory is built, Pony?  Where do you find these people, and why would they build a factory if they could lose it?  You haven't changed the fact that this factory has to be owned, you've just pointed to an imaginary group of God-knows how many people who would own this factory, and failed to answer the basic question...
 
Have you ever tried deciding on lunch with a group of friends, Pony?  Or do you all eat hay?

This is what leftists never seem to comprehend...  The actual work, individual initiative and risk that goes into setting up an enterprise.  The fact that you have to assume the risk and build a goddam factory before the workers will get off their asses and realise it's there, and that it can improve their sorry lot in life.  Oh, it will just get built, fairies will do it, the worker's dictatorship will prevail for a thousand years...  They'll all agree on what the party/technical elite wants, or we will declare them insane.

The ability to invest and build new factories clearly depends on how much investable capital you had before hand.The investable capital at the begining of the industrial revolution was all in the hands of nobles, merchants or land owners, all of which were massive benificiaries of state privilege. So of course the people building the factories are going to be nobles, merchants and land owners, but if it weren't for the state the capital would have been more evenly distributed and this might have led to more horizontal modes of production.

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