[Rei Murasame]

No, we've established that both of you would try to kill me.

To even get to a libertarian anarchy, you would have to try to kill me at some stage, basically. The difference is maybe that you would be more proactive about it.

[Husky]

No, we've established that both of you would try to kill me.

To even get to a libertarian anarchy, you would have to try to kill me at some stage, basically. The difference is maybe that you would be more proactive about it.

I wouldn't kill you.

The path to libertarian anarchy is establishing a minarchy, and subsequent privatization of all key functions of the government.

Show me where I stick a barrel in your face.

[The Immortal Goon]

Husky, why don't you answer the initial claims of authority? Why scramble out twenty-eight other questions that have nothing to do with anything?

Do you think Marx's propositions I mentioned are true or false.

You didn't mention anything from Marx, just a bunch of bloated hyperbole and preaching. Same with Popper, incidentally.

Do you think historical materialism is falsifiable? Do you deny that Marxist scripture is continuously re-interpreted to suit contemporary Marxists wishes and allow them to maintain their position?

I don't think you know what an analysis is, despite my lengthy attempt to explain what historical materialism is. Either that or it's the famous libertarian love of illiteracy rearing its head again.

1. An analysis, by its very nature, is not "scripture" in the sense you're trying to make it with your Newspeak.
2. Obviously an analysis of history is frequently "re-interpretated." I have no idea why this would be a bad thing.
3. Contemporary Marxists live in a different time than Marxists of a century ago. Thus, the material conditions of society are different. Thus, different analysis is needed.
4. Do I really need to be explaining these kinds of basics of how to simply view the world work?
5. What "position" do you imagine Marxists "maintain?"

This is, again, you pretending that materialism is idealism. They haven't been on the same track for 5,000 years.

When/if Marxist predictions do not come true, does that discard historical materialism in your eyes?

There is no, "prediction." It's an analysis.

Please answer this one mate...I'd like an answer here.

Why? So that we can continue to pretend that you didn't just throw a bunch of random unrelated questions up when everything you were proposing was exploded?

I will be purged if the proletariat revolution happens.

Your ideology will kill. And kill. And kill. In order to achieve its aims.

I'm really not worried that you like to pretend to be a vicim in your imaginary future.

And anyway, as Rei is well pointing out, you'd have to stand over our bodies to get what you want anyway. Just like the trillions of bodies and millions of cultures destroyed so you can even get a taste of capitalism now.

[Rei Murasame]

I wouldn't kill you.

The path to libertarian anarchy is establishing a minarchy, and subsequent privatization of all key functions of the government.

Show me where I stick a barrel in your face.

Since we're in a British context at the moment, I'll keep using that context for the sake of consistency and build the scenario on that. The part where you stick a barrel in my face is at the part where I come out with a gun and say that I'm defending Her Majesty's Government's existence because:

• 1. I believe that the House of Windsor has a 'right to rule'. (You never know, I might say this!)
  
  
• 2. I don't want to experience the social and economic turmoil that would come from allowing you to just abolish the state, because the chaos would negatively impact me in various ways, for virtually no gain. (I think a lot of people from all sides of the spectrum would say this one!)

You would then then try to shoot at me, claiming that you are defending yourself from me.

[Husky]

You didn't mention anything from Marx

Oh really?

Your value theory, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx's conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by, and equal to, aggregate value and surplus value are all false propositions. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit.

There is no, "prediction." It's an analysis.

I thought capitalism will collapse due to internal contradictions, and socialism will follow.

Why? So that we can continue to pretend that you didn't just throw a bunch of random unrelated questions up when everything you were proposing was exploded?

Just solve that calculation and I'll leave the thread, mate.

I'm really not worried that you like to pretend to be a vicim in your imaginary future.

I would be killed though, just for speaking out against the new state of things. Thousands would be slaughtered.

And anyway, as Rei is well pointing out, you'd have to stand over our bodies to get what you want anyway. Just like the trillions of bodies and millions of cultures destroyed so you can even get a taste of capitalism now.

Only 110billion people have lived in history. So no, not trillions of bodies.

You're just saying any deaths in history paved the way for capitalism. What nonsense.

[Rei Murasame]

No, all jokes aside, seriously though:

The stoical peace of mind with which the political economist regards the most shameless violation of the “sacred rights of property” and the grossest acts of violence to persons, as soon as they are necessary to lay the foundations of the capitalistic mode of production, is shown by Sir F. M. Eden, philanthropist and tory, to boot. The whole series of thefts, outrages, and popular misery, that accompanied the forcible expropriation of the people, from the last third of the 15th to the end of the 18th century, lead him merely to the comfortable conclusion: “The due proportion between arable land and pasture had to be established. During the whole of the 14th and the greater part of the 15th century, there was one acre of pasture to 2, 3, and even 4 of arable land. About the middle of the 16th century the proportion was changed of 2 acres of pasture to 2, later on, of 2 acres of pasture to one of arable, until at last the just proportion of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable land was attained.”

In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion between the agricultural labourer and the communal property had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent times, have the agricultural population received a farthing of compensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by parliamentary devices presented to the landlords by the landlords?

The last process of wholesale expropriation of the agricultural population from the soil is, finally, the so-called clearing of estates, i.e., the sweeping men off them. All the English methods hitherto considered culminated in “clearing.” As we saw in the picture of modern conditions given in a former chapter, where there are no more independent peasants to get rid of, the “clearing” of cottages begins; so that the agricultural labourers do not find on the soil cultivated by them even the spot necessary for their own housing. But what “clearing of estates” really and properly signifies, we learn only in the promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland. There the process is distinguished by its systematic character, by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as German principalities are dealt with), finally by the peculiar form of property, under which the embezzled lands were held.

The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or “great man,” was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these “great men,” and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honored trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their own authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force. “A king of England might as well claim to drive his subjects into the sea,” says Professor Newman. [25] This revolution, which began in Scotland after the last rising of the followers of the Pretender, can be followed through its first phases in the writings of Sir James Steuart [26] and James Anderson. [27] In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were forbidden to emigrate from the country, with a view to driving them by force to Glasgow and other manufacturing towns. [28] As an example of the method [29] obtaining in the 19th century, the “clearing” made by the Duchess of Sutherland will suffice here.

This person, well instructed in economy, resolved, on entering upon her government, to effect a radical cure, and to turn the whole country, whose population had already been, by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to 15,000, into a sheep-walk. From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave.

Thus this fine lady appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea-shore — 2 acres per family. The 6,000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen clanland she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported English farm-servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant of the aborigines flung on the sea-shore tried to live by catching fish. They became amphibious and lived, as an English author says, half on land and half on water, and withal only half on both. [30]

Liberal capitalists destroying whole regions and replacing them with sheep so that rich people in the City of London can eat mutton after a hard day's work embezzling the public purse.

The entire Anglo-Saxon economy is built atop that action, so you would have to let me know when you plan to stop standing on those skulls. As far as I understand it, libertarians have a commitment to the maintenance of absolutely all private property going back into antiquity, even the most 'unjustly' - by your own standards - acquired property, so aren't you also in on the killing?

[Turning Point]

I wouldn't kill you

...The path to libertarian anarchy is establishing a minarchy, and subsequent privatization of all key functions of the government.

Show me where I stick a barrel in your face.

So, how are the markets supposed to enforce the mass privatization of 'all key functions of the government' (?) without a police force, a standing army, etc.? Are the police and/or the army going to become privately-owned as well in your libertarian minarchy utopian monstrosity...something?

So you wouldn't kill me for being an evil communist stateist opposed to 'libertarian anarchy?' That's nice to know.

Do you think Marx's propositions I mentioned are true or false.

Well, seeing as to how you seem to think that Marxism is a religion and that we 'Marxists believe mankind, led by a vanguard of secular saints, will establish a secularized Kingdom of Heaven on earth' is no different from 'the coming of the messiah' I'm pretty sure that your propositions on Marxism are false.

How is totalitarianism and stalinism loaded terms? I mean exactly their dictionary definition.

Because your using those terms carelessly. First of all, the Soviet Union under Lenin or China under Mao were not totalitarian regimes nor do I think that Mao-era China or the later-Soviet Union were Stalinist.

What checks and balances would prevent the vanguard party from purging me for being a bourgeois reactionary? Oh wait, that is indeed required and encouraged.

According to Philip Short's Mao: A Life, attempts were facilitated (however imperfect) in post-revolutionary China to allow for 'a hundred schools of thought' to co-exist alongside socialism; the main question of the day was how to allow for freedom of speech and to safeguard the revolution from active counterrevolution be it domestic or foreign?

And yes, if you as a 'bourgeois reactionary' were actively plotting against the revolution then you would face punishment for your actions.

Because you are a statist and will throw me in a cage if you ever come to power.

Yes, I'm a statist. And yes, I'd gladly throw you in a cage if I ever came to power.

No, I'm a Marxist who believes in the withering away of the state and am for proletarian dictatorship as a higher form of democracy.

[The Immortal Goon]

Your value theory, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx's conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by, and equal to, aggregate value and surplus value are all false propositions. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit.

You, again, didn't mention anything from Marx. You're asking me to answer some offhand comment you made about an uncited instance I'm receiving second hand from someone who hasn't even read the Communist Manifesto.

I thought capitalism will collapse due to internal contradictions, and socialism will follow.

Nothing is inevitable. Socialism or barbarism, as they say.

Just solve that calculation and I'll leave the thread, mate.

Why would I want you to leave the thread?

And, anyway, I've been on forums long enough to know that when someone is confronted with an issue of abstract fail (like you and authority) and then suddenly demands a yes or no answer on something completely unrelated and totally specific question, it's a schoolyard tactic of trying to put words into another's mouth. Like telling an opponent, "You have a dyk fore on your knee," so the opponent will say, "What's a dick for?" and then we'll all forget about the fact that you have failed and are trying to move past it. No. Address the topic and stop with this childishness or move on.

I would be killed though, just for speaking out against the new state of things. Thousands would be slaughtered.

And I'd be in a libertarian gas chamber, except called a, "Happy fun vacation of freedom," instead of what it actually is if you were in charge.

Only 110billion people have lived in history. So no, not trillions of bodies.

I guess I was totally wrong to think that a libertarian would resort to petty schoolyard tactics.

You're just saying any deaths in history paved the way for capitalism. What nonsense.

No, capitalism has only killed the billions it has killed. Here's a billion, I found on a cursory search.

Second Boer War 75,000
Japanese Massacre of Singapore 100,000
Burma-Siam Railroad Construction 116,000
Japanese Germ Warfare in China 200,000
Rebelling Shia Killed by Saddam 300,000
US Bombing of Yugoslavia 300,000
US Bombing Iraq Water Supply '91 500,000
US Civil War 700,000
Iraq-Iran War 1,000,000
US sanctions on Iraq 1,000,000
US Backed Suharto 1,200,000
Irish Potato Famine 1,500,000
Japanese Democides 5,964,000
Famine of 1932-33 7,000,000
Bengal Famine of 1943 10,000,000
Famine in British India 30,000,000
US Intervention in the Congo 5,000,000
Indonesian Anti-Com. Purge 1,000,000
Stateless Capitalist Somalia 1,000,000
Industrial Revolution USA 100,000
1898 US War vs Philippine 3,000,000
Palestinians Killed by Israel 826,626
Guatemala 300,000
Nanking Massacre 300,000
Iraq (Selling Gas to Saddam) 400,000
Iraq (Desert Storm) 500,000
Invasion of the Philippines 650,000
Feudal Russia 1,066,000
Afghanistan 1,200,000
Iraq 1,300,000
South African Apartheid 3,500,000
US Aggression on Latin America 6,000,000
Japanese Imperialism 6,000,000
Vietnam War - including Cambodia & Laos 10,000,000
Korean War 10,000,000
British Occupation of India 20,000,000
Great Depression (America alone) 12,000,000
World War One 16,500,000
World War Two 60,000,000
Native American Genocide 95,000,000
Capitalist Policy in India 1947 - 1990 120,000,000
African Slave Trade 150,000,000
US Backed murder of Tamils 30,000
Spanish-American War 100,000
Spanish Civil War 400,000
Union Carbide Bophal Disaster 15,000
Massacre of Paris Commune 20,000
First Indochina 1946-1954 1,500,000
Belgian Congo Colonization 1,000,000
French Madagascar 80,000
Nigerian Civil War 1,000,000
Rwandan Genocide 1,000,000
US Made Famine Bangladesh 100,000
Children Died fr Hunger '09 5,256,000
Children Killed by Hunger Since 9/11 235,000,000
Children Killed by Hunger during the 1990s 100,000,000

[work-in-progress]

You're so wrong Rei.

Rei... we've established the communists will kill us post-revolution.

In a libertarian anarchy you could freely express your opinion. Freely communicate with others about your ideas. Etc. Could you do that post revolution, as all "bourgeoisie ideas" are purged?

As long as it is peaceful, I don't care.

I've been looking for a spot to jump in on this thread again for a little while, and this might be my opportunity. Question: in your libertarian anarchy, are there any restrictions on property ownership or wealth accumulation? If not; would there be any restrictions regarding numbers or weaponry on a business owner who wants to hire his own security staff? What if the business owner owns copyrights and other forms of "intellectual property" and wants to use his security force to stop others from using his patented or copyrighted property. I can easily envision how the private use of force could impose tyranny every bit as bad as any government institution, can't you?

And what if these business owners feel their business is threatened by spurious accusations from detractors...such as factory farm operations that are right now trying to shut down criticism from consumer watchdogs, animal rights activists, vegetarian activists etc.. Where's their freedom of speech? And how would their freedom of speech magically appear in libertarian nirvana, where private owners of wealth hold all the cards, and there are no government institutions to pass laws to reign in their power?

[oppose_obama]

Famine of 1932-1933? Are you blaming capitalism for stalins forced famine in the Ukraine?

[work-in-progress]

No, all jokes aside, seriously though:


The entire Anglo-Saxon economy is built atop that action, so you would have to let me know when you plan to stop standing on those skulls. As far as I understand it, libertarians have a commitment to the maintenance of absolutely all private property going back into antiquity, even the most 'unjustly' - by your own standards - acquired property, so aren't you also in on the killing?

Recalling the latest major disaster in Bangladesh...the 1100 dead from one factory collapse, while I was in the middle of a futile debate with a highly motivated Walmart defender, I came across a few anecdotal stories of the migrant workers, who were leaving the farms in the countryside to flock to the major cities and look for work in these decrepit sweatshops. And it's the same damn story as the one that forced English peasantry off the land so they could work in the mines and mills of industrializing England! A casual observer might see it as a tragic, accidental coincidence, but time and time again, first in Europe, then in Mexico, Asia, Africa, even places like Haiti with Bill Clinton's so called initiatives, liberal capitalism first makes it impossible for peasants to do subsistence farming (nowadays often done through "free trade agreements" that flood a third world agricultural nation with cheap food imports to drive local farmers out of business. That's what happened in India and Bangladesh -- the itinerant farmers invariably said they did not flock to the cities looking for work! They would have preferred to eek out, even a meager life on their own farms, growing their own food if they could, rather than go to the city to work in a death trap for 22c an hour and have to spend most of their wages buying substandard food at the markets.

All across the world it's the same pattern that fuels this so called economic growth: first, force the people off the land so that a teeming mass of desperate migrants show up willing to do any job, work any hours under any working conditions to collect a wage that doesn't even put enough food on the table to feed their families!

[The Immortal Goon]

Famine of 1932-1933? Are you blaming capitalism for stalins forced famine in the Ukraine?

As mentioned, I didn't make that list. If i helps, exchange that in with the Khamier Rouge and their best friends Reagan and Thatcher.

[Decky]

If you feel that is immoral to "enforce" a principle that states aggression is illegitimate, then you must show why.

What agression? The working class taking back the product of their labour from some theives is not agression. There is nothing agressive about that.

Decky, on a scale of 1-10, how awesome do you think Stalin was?

11, he saved the lives of every man, woman and child between Warsaw and the Urals from the German genocide machine, he was the greatest induvidual humanity has ever produced.

[Someone5]

Only 110billion people have lived in history. So no, not trillions of bodies.

You're just saying any deaths in history paved the way for capitalism. What nonsense.

Strictly speaking, capitalists have killed trillions of living beings to feed themselves. They have actually depopulated vast swaths of ocean and arable land in their tenure.

[Eran]

You would then then try to shoot at me, claiming that you are defending yourself from me.

Rei,
You are talking as if the question of who initiates violence is an arbitrary one, subject to a point of view.

While there may be some grey areas at the boundaries, it is typically easy to distinguish between those who initiate violence (aggressors) and those who merely use force to defend themselves.


So libertarian use of force is fundamentally (and in a morally-critical sense) different from the use of force you suggest you might engage in.

However, while it would be perfectly justified for libertarians to use force against those wishing to rule over them, this is not how libertarianism would come about.

Unlike Communist of Fascist agitators, libertarians don't tend to call for a violent revolution or armed struggle. Libertarians consistently call for change through education and persuasion.

It isn't just the libertarian end-goal that is peaceful. It is also the means chosen towards that goal. A libertarian anarchy will, as Husky suggests, follow a minarchy which in turn is the end-point of a democratic process of gradual diminution of government powers. This is inherently an evolutionary and peaceful process, no step of which requires violence.

[The Immortal Goon]

This has been discussed at length in many threads, but the point is always the same: libertarians worship at the alter of capitalism. Capitalism has probably murdered far more people than any other economic system. We, like abused spouces, are told things will be different this time around. That violence wouldn't have to be used if we just did what we were told. That the language should be changed so a kick-to-the-gut is more of a hug. That you don't want to act like that, but it's actually good for us to watch our union men gunned down in the streets, our children forced into factories, and really-the abuse is pretty much our fault anyway.

Regardless, it's less of a task of listening to how moral he pretend to be despite all evidence to the contrary. For the Marxist at least, it's the fact ye pretend nothing will ever materially change and thus your sustenance will run perfectly on magic and collective willpower.

[Eran]

Indeed we have. Capitalism, in fact, is responsible for the vast increase in the number of people alive in the world. Without capitalism and the technological, medical and societal innovation it brought to humanity, the world would have still been as it was in 1750 - a much smaller population, the vast majority of whom are subsistence farmers.

Thanks to capitalism, billions of people can afford standards of living previously undreamed of by royalty.

Communism and Fascism, by contrast, are demonstrably responsible for the direct, deliberate murder of hundreds of millions of people.

You cannot consistently blame capitalism for the crimes of imperialism without blaming communism for the gulag and Fascism for the holocaust.

You cannot consistently blame capitalism for starvation of hundreds of millions without crediting it with the industrial revolution and the wealth it brought humanity.

And you certainly cannot consistently distance yourself from the failures of state communism without allowing libertarians to distance themselves from the evils of state capitalism.

[mikema63]

Ultimately the view of who the aggressor is is subjective.

Some see the wage system itself as aggressive, some see the privatization of a government service as initiation of violence against society.

Your definition of who is initiating violence would be objective only given a very exact and narrow view of aggression that not everyone shares.

Thus when they attack you for perceived aggression they will see you killing them for it as an evil act to continue your oppression and you will see it as self defense.

In the end the winner will write the history books from their point of view and the losers will die.

[Rei Murasame]

While there may be some grey areas at the boundaries, it is typically easy to distinguish between those who initiate violence (aggressors) and those who merely use force to defend themselves.

Maybe the difference is "who is the present government and who isn't".

Unlike Communist of Fascist agitators, libertarians don't tend to call for a violent revolution or armed struggle. Libertarians consistently call for change through education and persuasion.

So? That's because you want to persuade people to use the state to 'gently' continue to initiate force against people in a slightly way from how it is presently initiating force.

It isn't just the libertarian end-goal that is peaceful. It is also the means chosen towards that goal. A libertarian anarchy will, as Husky suggests, follow a minarchy which in turn is the end-point of a democratic process of gradual diminution of government powers. This is inherently an evolutionary and peaceful process, no step of which requires violence.

Except for the fact that the state is violence and therefore a libertarian minarchy inherently involves using violence against people?

[Eran]

Ultimately the view of who the aggressor is is subjective.

No, it isn't. It is an objective question. When you have a farmer peacefully cultivating a piece of land, and a horde of barbarians rushes in, burning his house and raping his wife, the question of aggression isn't in doubt by any reasonable standard.

Nor does it become different just because the barbarian horde is made of people of the same nationality as the farmer, they aren't called "barbarian", they have been democratically elected, they only take part of the farmer's annual produce, rather than rape his wife, etc.



To be clear, I cannot stop people from defining "aggression" in any way they want. But given the libertarian definition, determining who the aggressor is is typically straightforward.

So? That's because you want to persuade people to use the state to 'gently' continue to initiate force against people in a slightly way from how it is presently initiating force.

No, I don't. While libertarians, like most constitutional democrats, prefer the use of peaceful methods to affect change, we differ from constitutional democrats in that we consistently oppose any initiation of force, whether by government, corporations or individuals, whether technically legal or not.

I want to persuade people to gently reduce the use of the state to initiate force against others. I challenge you to identify any way in which libertarian ideals call for initiation of force.

Except for the fact that the state is violence and therefore a libertarian minarchy inherently involves using violence against people?

Indeed. Which is why I am not a minarchist, but an anarchist.

But just because all governments involve aggression (which may or may not be violent, btw) doesn't mean that there is no difference between different governments. The current government of Denmark and Nazi Germany both engaged in aggression, but I can tell the difference between them.

Similarly, a minarchy, while still engaged in some level of aggression (if only in prohibiting other organisations from engaging in right-protection functions alongside itself), is vastly superior to current democracies.