Firstly let me say that I do not agree with the implict argument that because libertarianism appears to be based on force that it is not viable. I am an anarcho-capitalist myself and would like to know if anyone has a response or could link me to one which deals with the Anarchist Writers FAQ?
The FAQ says, "If the "anarcho"-capitalist is to claim with any plausibility that "real" capitalism is non-statist or that it can exist without a state, it must be shown that capitalism evolved naturally, in opposition to state intervention. In reality, the opposite is the case. Capitalism was born from state intervention. In the words of Kropotkin, "the State . . . and capitalism . . . developed side by side, mutually supporting and re-enforcing each other."
The writer continues by saying that any system of property must ultimately be based on the force used in the past. Reading the essay itself is worth it.
So does anyone have any reply to this because I must admit it's annoying me! History of capitalism is not my strong point.
Evilsceptic:No, if I build a house, and then a fence around that house, and then someone jumps over my fence and I throw him out, I initiated force against him, not the other way around.
If I tried to walk right through you, did you initiate force against me by merely existing? Or by not stepping aside?
Z.
Evilsceptic: No, if I build a house, and then a fence around that house, and then someone jumps over my fence and I throw him out, I initiated force against him, not the other way around.
No, if I build a house, and then a fence around that house, and then someone jumps over my fence and I throw him out, I initiated force against him, not the other way around.
you initiated force and violence maybe, but it was justifiable. Sure, if you simlply killed a trespasser, that would be violation of a NAP too. NAP is non-agression, not non-force, or non-violence.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
'Captilalism requires property.
Property requires the initiation of force against people who don't share your definition of property.
You could go on all day about natural rights but this fact will never change. So yes I would say libertarianism is based on force, but I am still a libertarian.'
So it isn't property if people do share your definition of property?
To OP,
Don't waste your time with Anarchist Writers FAQ. They are dunderheads Overly opinionated versions of Revleft.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
It is impossible that capital evolved as a result of the state, because without capitalism the modern state would be impossible itself. The state can only live off already accumulated capital, and thus can only grow after economic growth (well, unless there is capital deaccumulation as a result of too large a government) has taken place.
That argument is a red herring. Ancaps aren't saying that the current mixed market is desireable, so its history is irrelevant to their argument.
Force is what happens when A and B don't come to an agreement. Any anarchist will kill as quickly as the next guy to win that fight, including killing each other.
Evilsceptic:Captilalism [sic] requires property.
Undoubtedly true, as the (libertarian) definition of "capitalism" implies property.
Evilsceptic:Property requires the initiation of force against people who don't share your definition of property.
I think you mean that they would see it as initiation of force. Naturally, the property owner wouldn't see it that way.
Evilsceptic:You could go on all day about natural rights but this fact will never change. So yes I would say libertarianism is based on force, but I am still a libertarian.
It seems you're basically talking about the is-ought problem. There's no way to prove one definition of "property" as the correct one. However, I've concluded that private property has an instinctive basis in nearly everyone. Otherwise it wouldn't be a human-universal concept.
Keep in mind, however, that "force" can be either defensive or aggressive. So I agree that libertarianism is based on force, but that said force is considered entirely defensive in nature.
I'm a libertarian because I see it as being the most consistent with human nature.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
How is that necessarily the case? Why couldn't you consider the fence-jumper to have initiated force against you and/or your property?
All political philosophies that aren't purely pacifist in character are "based on force" in some way or at some level, so of course libertarianism is based on force. The more interesting part is that what constitutes the distinction between justified and unjustified force is entirely dependent on concepts and values that are non-reducible to the notion of non-aggression itself - which makes libertarianism cease to really be special with respect to the question of aggression, despite the protests of its ideologues.
Why couldn't you consider the fence-jumper to have initiated force against you and/or your property?
This would only seem to work if you so closely align personhood and property that, by extension, external objects and space is considered a part of you. If we're speaking at any literal level, this should obviously be seen as ridiculous. Someone who jumps over a fence has not "initiated force" against any people. Indeed, they haven't "used force" in any meaningful way at all so much as engaged in physical activity that clashes with someone else's desires (I.E. an owner).
If libertarians are going to essentially define doing anything within a certain boundary (indeed, even just so much as happening to occupy such a space) that property owners happen not to like or want as "the initiation of force" (and then rationalize physical force against others as "defense"), they have some serious problems to contend with and intellectual honesty should lead them to admit that their highest value is property, not non-aggression. It appears arbitrary and too literalist.
The FAQ says, "If the "anarcho"-capitalist is to claim with any plausibility that "real" capitalism is non-statist or that it can exist without a state, it must be shown that capitalism evolved naturally, in opposition to state intervention.
Nonsense. This suffers from, among other things, a multiple meaning fallacy.
That real capitalism is non-statist is part of its very definition:
Marx coined the term (aside from Proudhon using it to refer to something completely different), and explicitly stated that capitalism cannot exist without a completely free market, which he called a laissez-faire economy.
So it is definitively non-statist.
What's more, it's entirely possible for something to be non-statist, even though it evolves from the state in some regard...if its setup required a state, but its existence did not, then it would be non-statist.
In reality, the opposite is the case. Capitalism was born from state intervention. In the words of Kropotkin, "the State . . . and capitalism . . . developed side by side, mutually supporting and re-enforcing each other."
Again, that's not capitalism...it's market socialism.
Brainpolice:All political philosophies that aren't purely pacifist in character are "based on force" in some way or at some level, so of course libertarianism is based on force. The more interesting part is that what constitutes the distinction between justified and unjustified force is entirely dependent on concepts and values that are non-reducible to the notion of non-aggression itself - which makes libertarianism cease to really be special with respect to the question of aggression, despite the protests of its ideologues.
Brainpolice:This would only seem to work if you so closely align personhood and property that, by extension, external objects and space is considered a part of you. If we're speaking at any literal level, this should obviously be seen as ridiculous. Someone who jumps over a fence has not "initiated force" against any people. Indeed, they haven't "used force" in any meaningful way at all so much as engaged in physical activity that clashes with someone else's desires (I.E. an owner).
Brainpolice:If libertarians are going to essentially define doing anything within a certain boundary (indeed, even just so much as happening to occupy such a space) that property owners happen not to like or want as "the initiation of force" (and then rationalize physical force against others as "defense"), they have some serious problems to contend with and intellectual honesty should lead them to admit that their highest value is property, not non-aggression. It appears arbitrary and too literalist.
Life is filled with misinterpretations, misrepresentations, and prodigal folklore.
Perhaps you'd like to support your bare assertion? Or have you done so elsewhere already?
If someone comes along and keys my car, did they initiate force against me? Not literally, as I wasn't the one keyed. But it seems rather self-evident to me that the whole concept of private property could be likened to considering external objects and space to be parts of people, in a metaphorical sense. Otherwise, concepts like property damage/destruction and trespassing would be meaningless, wouldn't they? Or is that your point here?
"Arbitrary and too literalist" compared to what, exactly? It appears you're using a different definition of "aggression" from most other libertarians.
What part are you calling a "bare assertion"? That all non-pacifist political philosophies, including libertarianism, rationalize physical violence? Or my premise (which Gene Callahan apparently has a similar notion to) that there is simply no such thing as a neutralized concept of non-aggression (and therefore the portrayal of libertarianism as uniquely situated with respect to the question of aggression is wrong)?
The former is supported by a basic survey of political philosophies and is kind of true by definition in the sense that only pacifism rejects physical violence consistently, and the latter can be unveiled by continually asking an advocate of libertarianism for reasons and pointing out their reliance on specific concepts and values in order to frame their understanding of "non-aggression". One is likely to find paradoxes of circularity (such as the relationship between property rights and the NAP) in which one's alleged "axioms" end up relying on other things (and hence can't really be axioms) while one simultaneously wishes to pass those other things off as derived from the alleged "axiom".
It's more that I (and Callahan apparently) make a distinction between physical aggression and property-related infringements. To say that someone has "initiated aggression" against you by standing on a patch of grass that you own or not agreeing to some rule you want to impose on them is simply ridiculous. To then proceed to rationalize actually using physical force against another person in the name of non-aggression makes things appear even more absurd.
In effect, by rigid propertarian definitions, civil disobedence is the initiation of force while the use of physical violence in reaction to it is defense or justified retaliation; but these definitions don't come from any abstract principle of non-aggression itself, they rather stem from a whole slew of values and concepts that give a context to the use of such a notion of non-aggression. For Gene, it's simply a matter of intellectual honesty about what one advocates. For me, it helps form a case against propertarianism.
Arbitrary and too literalist" compared to what, exactly? It appears you're using a different definition of "aggression" from most other libertarians.
Arbitrary because it just begs the question of property norms, and too literalist in the way that it treats relations to physical objects as essentially having equal status to personhood. My whole point is that most libertarian's definition of aggression is determined by factors that have nothing to do any essence of non-aggression. Libertarianism has no neutral grasp of non-aggression in and of itself, as there is simply no such thing. People's concepts and values are interrelated; hence there is no notion of "non-aggression" that is in a vacuum.
The decision to consider whatever violence supports a neo-lockean property framework as non-aggression and whatever violence (and apparently non-violence) is simply arbitrary in that it is relative to a particular concept-value scheme. Change such a value scheme, and you still have some "non-aggression" notion, but the boundaries have been redefined. Most libertarians just define the boundaries in a certain way and then act as if they have access to non-aggression in some neutral way, as if it's the essential distinguishing feature of their political philosophy.
The truth is that libertarian philosophy (and its inherent fragmentation into competiting interpretations) has no such neutrality about aggression. It functions within the limits of value heirarchies and discriminations, just like all other political philosophies. Indeed, the fragmentation that exists within libertarianism is itself a testament to the incompatible concept-value heirarchies that people bring to the table when they enter into the world of libertarian politics, and it fuels the contention that libertarianism can't be presented as a coherant whole via reduction to the NAP.
What people seem to forget is that it's not "Force" thats the problem but the "initiation of force" that begins to cause problems. There is nothing wrong with defense, and while I consider myself a pacifist I would be the first person to advocate for defense of property and self.
People who are trying to defend against a utopian concept of a force-free society have fallen victim to a strawman. That or they mis-understood the NAP, and related libertarian principles to begin with.
Force = OK
Initiation of Force = Bad mmkay
On the flip side, it is a bit if a mischaracterization to say that libertarianism is based on force, as if force was the centerblock. That line of reasoning follows more akin to statism in general. Libertarianism is more easily described as a system based on social cooperation, as opposed to force alone. Force, defense of property, is just one ingredient.
I'm not argueing under the assumption that libertarianism either claims to involve no force or physical violence or that any good political philosophy must meet such a criteria. I'm argueing against the claim that libertarianism actually objectively distinguishes the initiation of force from other kinds of force, as well as the claim that it is uniquely consistently concerned with non-aggression. How the line between the initiation of force and the non-initiation of force is drawn depends on some kind of favoritism to certain values and how one ideologically relates to the different parties in a given conflict of interest.
If you take away a given libertarian's underlying assumptions about property, rights, ethics, and various institutions, they are left with no way to disambiguate the question of force. Although it's impossible, this would be a genuinely neutral view of force that by its very nature could not make any normative distinctions. On the other hand, the moment you make normative distinctions, you can't claim to have a neutral view nor can you claim that your concept of aggression/non-aggression is pure or detached from idiosyncratic considerations. The first step comes in admitting it's an interpretation.