When Socialism Had A Free Market Ideal Too It!

[wkmac]

This piece by Kevin Carson poses some interesting thought along that line of thinking and a wider implication of de-fanging the state itself.

 

[steward71]

So please explain to me what you are trying to say with this, Do you support what he is stating and what he is supporting. He states he for socialism.

 

[brett636]

I've come to the conclusion that he has no political convictions of any sort. Wkmac just likes playing devils advocate on here and he does play it well.

 

[wkmac]

So please explain to me what you are trying to say with this, Do you support what he is stating and what he is supporting. He states he for socialism.

Yes he did and Kevin Carson also openly and very frankly calls himself "anti-capitalist" also. Kevin's personal blog even incorporates the term anti-capitalist into it's title. But who were some of the men he also named in his piece that he called socialist as well?

Franz Oppenheimer, the man who wrote the anti-state classic "The State" was a socialist in the 19th century traditional sense but far from what we think and think we know of the term in the late 20th and now early 21th century sense. This quote from Oppenheimer's book, The State, from chapter 1 may give you some sense of his socialist leanings.

In the case of a thinker of the rank of Karl Marx, one may observe what confusion is brought about when economic purpose and economic means are not strictly differentiated. All those errors, which in the end led Marx's splendid theory so far away from truth, were grounded in the lack of clear differentiation between the means of economic satisfaction of needs and its end. This led him to designate slavery as an "economic category," and force as an "economic force" — half-truths that are far more dangerous than total untruths, since their discovery is more difficult, and false conclusions from them are inevitable.

Did you catch that about Marx, "Marx's splendid theory" as Oppenheimer put it? Now Oppenheimer went on to condemn much of Marx means but Oppenheimer was able to appreciate Marx's class analysis and how state privilege is the source of such interventions to even exist. This he wrote his important work "The State" and it's so important that the Austrian Economic Free Market Think Tank Mises Institute has the book on pdf for open source reading. In fact, I took the quote you read direct from the Mises Institute's website in which chapter 1 of "The State" was excerpted. And the great free market economist Murray Rothbard at Mises also spoke very highly of Oppenheimer. Rothbard's analysis although brief is very true and IMO Oppenheimer's "The State" is a must read if you believe in anything from a limited state or to a no state society along with voluntary free markets.

Lysander Spooner, now here's one of my heroes dating back to the 1980's when I discovered him. As I was discovering my then anti-federalist leanings, I came across his work "No Treason, The Constitution of No Authority". Spooner was an abolitionist and lawyer from Boston Mass. and he wrote a series of political tracts on the authority of gov't to wage war to force a people to remain bound to it. These tracts were later assembled into book form. Here's tract #1 as an example. Spooner in some sense should be a hero to UPSers because he opened up a private mail service to challenge the authority of the Federal gov't to control and maintain that sphere of monopoly. He did loose in the end but he still felt on the footing of law that he was right. Spooner was a socialist in the definition of the day but he was also opposed to the State and it's powerful authoritarian and regulatory means.

Ralph Borsodi is a 20th century agrarian theorist and a hero of mine from the 70's. Some of his books are "This Ugly Civilization" and "The Distribution Age" and that last book, if you are a UPSer would be like a christian reading Satan's bible. LOL! But having been written over 80 years ago and having 80 years of data, his analysis turns out to be stunning when you understand he made it in 1927' looking at current market and political forces of his day. Borsodi in some sense is the Luddite but his Exeter Experiment with inflation free currency was fantastic and those who oppose fiat money should see Borsodi's in that area a "must study." I've posted this elsewhere here but for you I'll post it again.

In 1948, roughly 60 years ago, Dr. Ralph Borsodi wrote a booklet entitled, “Inflation is Coming and What to Do About It”. In the mid 1970’s, around the time of his local currency experiment, he wrote, “If we continue this foolishness [fiat money],” says Borsodi, “we’re eventually going to witness a debacle followed by a depression worse than that of the 1930’s.” Dr. Borsodi was a very smart man and about 30 years ago he experimented creating his own version of privately
issued, commodity backed local money. His experiment and creation is considered a successful venture.

Ponder where we are today economically and ponder the real value of the dollar in true purchasing power when Borsodi said those words and now consider them in this day when you also consider the true value and purchasing power of the dollar now. Just a note of where I learned of Borsodi? Mother Earth News and yes I still read it!

Benjamin Tucker. A socialist yes but in Tucker lay many of the roots and foundations of what we call libertarianism and anarchism in the American tradition. Even the strains of the limited state in modern conservatism has roots to Tuckerist ideals if one ventures back through the icons of the old right such as Garet Garrett. Tucker called his way of thinking, "unterrified Jeffersonianism" and I quite agree with him on that point.

In 1892', Tucker wrote a piece entitled "Why I Am An Anarchist" and what he sez IMO is worth of not in the framework of using the term socialist.

For what are the conditions of happiness? Of perfect happiness, many. But the primal and main conditions are few and simple. Are they not liberty and material prosperity? Is it not essential to the happiness of every developed being that he and those around him should be free, and that he and those around him should know no anxiety regarding the satisfaction of their material needs? It seems idle to deny it, and, in the event of denial, it would seem equally idle to argue it. No amount of evidence that human happiness has increased with human liberty would convince a man incapable of appreciating the value of liberty without reinforcement by induction. And to all but such a man it is also self-evident that of these two conditions – liberty and wealth – the former takes precedence as a factor in the production of happiness. It would be but a poor apology for happiness that either factor alone could give, if it could not produce nor be accompanied by the other; but, on the whole, much liberty and little wealth would be preferable to much wealth and little liberty. The complaint of Archistic Socialists that the Anarchists are bourgeois is true to this extent and no further – that, great as is their detestation for a bourgeois society, they prefer its partial liberty to the complete slavery of State Socialism. For one, I certainly can look with more pleasure – no, les pain – upon the present seething, surging struggle, in which some are up and some are down, some falling and some rising, some rich and many poor, but none completely fettered or altogether hopeless of as better future, than I could upon Mr. Thaddeus Wakeman’s ideal, uniform, and miserable community of teamy, placid, and slavish oxen. [Online editor’s note: Thaddeus Burr Wakeman (1834-1913), leading American Positivist. – RTL]

Now I bolded and underlined a specific sentence to make a point on Tucker worth noting. Tucker called himself an anarchist but he never ran from the word socialist either but let's make note of his point above when he talks about State Socialism. Archistic Socialists is another way of saying state socialist because the word archistic comes from the word archy which in the greek origins means "ruler". In otherwords, Tucker was condemning the ideal of "ruler socialism" or heirarchy meaning ruled from above. Anarchy or anarchism is the ideal of "No Rulers" Archy meaning rulers, the prefix An meaning the word "No". The ideal in the corrupted political class of today would be that socialism would have no freedom component to it and that capitalism would be all about a freedom component to it. Kevin's point was in essence, "Think Again!" And in that historical context, I would completely agree with Kevin that we should think again and in the ideal of Benjamin Tucker, we should be completely "Unterrified Jeffersonians!"

Whether you do read all of this or not is purely up to you but the point was to show that many in the 19th century who called themselves socialists and some of those who do the same in our modern times are in fact much farther against the State and it's regulatory arm than those of the minarchist or limited state variety and that more often than not these same modern day "socialist" are for a more robust and truly free market than the "Archistic Capitalists" who think they have that free market all cornered to themselves. Very far from it!

Gary Chartier also wrote this piece on capitialism and the various defintions ascribed to the term. Both Gary and Kevin in the case of capitalism hold very similar views and in the question of capitalism, Gary better defines the subject matter and goes from there to show the conflict and opposition.

Brett,

I may or I may not be "playing devil's advocate" as you put it but to figure out which, you'll have to do the homework.

 

[wkmac]

Social Cooperation

I’ve heard that story before, but this time it got me thinking: Would the free-market movement have been perceived differently by the outside world if Mises had used the other title? With the question phrased so narrowly, the answer is probably no. So let’s broaden it: Would the free-market movement be perceived differently if its dominant theme was social cooperation rather than (rugged) individualism, self-reliance, independence, and other synonyms we’re so fond of?
Maybe.
There’s no mystery why that other title occurred to Mises. I haven’t tried to make a count, but I would guess that “social cooperation” (or “human cooperation”) is the second most-used phrase in the book. First is probably “division of labor,” which is another way of saying “social cooperation.” Human Action is about social cooperation or it isn’t about anything at all. The first matter Mises takes up after his opening disquisition on the nature of action itself is … cooperation. He begins, “Society is concerted action, cooperation…. It substitutes collaboration for the – at least conceivable – isolated life of individuals. Society is division of labor and combination of labor. In his capacity as an acting animal man becomes a social animal.”

Competition and Cooperation

Competition and cooperation are often juxtaposed, yet in the market they are two sides of the same activity. One of the oldest observations by economists is the way in which the division of labor and exchange enables an uncountable number of people to contribute to the production of any given product. Adam Smith used the example of a wool coat and all the people who were part of its production, from the owner of the sheep who produced the wool, to those who contributed to the dye, to those who made the buttons, to those who put it all together and those who sold it.
In our own era, Leonard Read’s classic essay, “I, Pencil,” captures this same idea. When we consider the vastly more extensive division of labor in the 21st century, as compared to the eighteenth — particularly the elaborate communications and transportation processes — the number of people who contribute to the production of even the simplest product is beyond our ability to list.

Social:

[h=2][SUP]1[/SUP]so·cial[/h] adj \ˈsō-shəl\


[h=2]Definition of SOCIAL[/h]1
: involving allies or confederates <the Social War between the Athenians and their allies>

2
a : marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with friends or associates <an active social life> b : sociable c : of, relating to, or designed for sociability <a social club>

3
: of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society <social institutions>

4
a : tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others b : living and breeding in more or less organized communities <social insects> c of a plant : tending to grow in groups or masses so as to form a pure stand

5
a : of, relating to, or based on rank or status in a particular society <a member of our social set> b : of, relating to, or characteristic of the upper classes c : formal

6
: being such in social situations <a social drinker>

ism:

[h=2]ism[/h] noun \ˈi-zəm\


[h=2]Definition of ISM[/h]1
: a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory

 

[moreluck]

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.