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chris_gerribMy favorite libertarian posted on Friday an article to the effect of anything not libertarian is Marxist. "Anything" as in "minimum wage" or a progressive tax code. Needless to say, I disagree with this theory. It took me a while - basically the time to drive downstate to my parents house - to figure out how to coherently express my disagreement. My objection to Rand’s article is that it's is historically illiterate. See, Marx didn’t develop his ideas in a vacuum.
When Marx was doing his thinking, he was living in an era with no minimum wage, no income tax, no old-age pension, no real labor laws and poorhouses for the bankrupt. It was, in short, exactly the sort of libertarian world Rand wants. Unless one was a white Anglo-Saxon male with money, life was less than good.
Now, Rand may say “but that’s corporatism" or some other abuse of libertarianism. That’s like a Marxist saying “but that’s Stalinism!” Corporatism is what happens when libertarians get control of government, just like Stalinism always follows Marxism. And corporatism sucks so badly that all sorts of mass movements, from anarchists to communists, rise up against it, frequently violently.
So while Marx was coming up with his ideas, other people were coming up with theirs, which included a lot of the progressive ideas like minimum wage, etc. Ideas that didn't involve a key aspect of Marxist thought, namely seizing private property and giving it to the workers. Ideas that, in short, supported capitalism, freedom and the idea that people shouldn't be treated like dogs. Ideas that were even mentioned in the comments to Rand's article, such as bankruptcy laws and requiring people to be paid in legal tender.
See, these are progressive ideas. After all, bankruptcy is by definition theft – the defaulter steals value from the creditor(s). Requiring people to be paid in real money is interfering with the free market. After all, why shouldn’t two people be allowed to agree on an alternative means of payment or a “trade” of labor for services?
Progressives, looking at the problems of industrialized, urbanized life, discovered that setting a floor or a “safety net” on society meant that the poor wouldn’t rise up and kill the rich. This was considered beneficial to all concerned. We can argue about the size and parameters of the safety net, but arguing that the net is “Marxist” is simply wrong.
When Marx was doing his thinking, he was living in an era with no minimum wage, no income tax, no old-age pension, no real labor laws and poorhouses for the bankrupt. It was, in short, exactly the sort of libertarian world Rand wants. Unless one was a white Anglo-Saxon male with money, life was less than good.
Now, Rand may say “but that’s corporatism" or some other abuse of libertarianism. That’s like a Marxist saying “but that’s Stalinism!” Corporatism is what happens when libertarians get control of government, just like Stalinism always follows Marxism. And corporatism sucks so badly that all sorts of mass movements, from anarchists to communists, rise up against it, frequently violently.
So while Marx was coming up with his ideas, other people were coming up with theirs, which included a lot of the progressive ideas like minimum wage, etc. Ideas that didn't involve a key aspect of Marxist thought, namely seizing private property and giving it to the workers. Ideas that, in short, supported capitalism, freedom and the idea that people shouldn't be treated like dogs. Ideas that were even mentioned in the comments to Rand's article, such as bankruptcy laws and requiring people to be paid in legal tender.
See, these are progressive ideas. After all, bankruptcy is by definition theft – the defaulter steals value from the creditor(s). Requiring people to be paid in real money is interfering with the free market. After all, why shouldn’t two people be allowed to agree on an alternative means of payment or a “trade” of labor for services?
Progressives, looking at the problems of industrialized, urbanized life, discovered that setting a floor or a “safety net” on society meant that the poor wouldn’t rise up and kill the rich. This was considered beneficial to all concerned. We can argue about the size and parameters of the safety net, but arguing that the net is “Marxist” is simply wrong.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 01:31 am (UTC)I guess I have you all wrong then.
Where do you personally draw the line? Is it okay to send in an intelligence group, for example, that breaks another country's laws to gather information for Delta? If they get caught, what does our government do? Disavow them, or send in Delta to rescue them? Would that be okay?
A note for tone - I'm not being flippant, I'm just asking the question of you with the knowledge that each of us have exactly the same power to affect the real outcome of the matter: one vote.
(Also, as for Colombia, most of the time in Colombia we have the agreement of their government, such as it is, and are going in on their request for something they can't handle - and can't be known as handling. It would depend what timeframe you're talking about though.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 01:48 am (UTC)Regarding rescue vs. disavow - that's a decision that has to be made on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, the people going in need to know what that answer will be, but we have used CIA assets on a "disavow" basis before.
Generally, the less cooperation, the more forceful we should be.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 09:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 01:55 am (UTC)If the crimes are serious and attract international activity you tend to find that a solution gets implemented.
In extreme circumstances there are sanctioned assassinations, I've no problems there either.
Terrorism is actually easier to deal with than, say, war crimes, and we seem to be finding and deali with that reasonably effectively. The trick is to have good and stro relations with the nations they might be in.
Of course, if they're hiding in countries, any country, the you might be straight out of luck. How is the hunt for Osama coming along? We're not doing so well there with the military options...
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 09:33 am (UTC)Nice passive sentence construction, utterly obscuring the fact that you actually have outlined no solution short of the act of war you are about to propose, namely
In extreme circumstances there are sanctioned assassinations, I've no problems there either.
To begin with, this is an act of war against the sovereign state on whose territory the assassination is carried out. What do you do when said sovereign state decides to sanction assassinations against your personnel by way of retaliation?
Terrorism is actually easier to deal with than, say, war crimes, and we seem to be finding and deali with that reasonably effectively. The trick is to have good and strong relations with the nations they might be in.
And this really shows the flaw in your theory, in that it takes no account of Terrorist States: that is, states whose regimes back international terrorism. What do you do if the terrorists are being actively sheltered by the regime in the country in which they are located?
For that matter, "war crimes" are virtually impossible to punish, given a regime willing to shelter the perpetrators. The few cases in which we have been able to punish war criminals have been ones in which the regime was not willing to so shelter them.
If you doubt this, how many prosecutions were there against the Soviets who committed war crimes against Germans in World War II, or Red Chinese or North Vietnamese who committed war crimes against South Korean, South Vietnamese, or Allied citizens or troops in the Korean or Vietnamese Wars? Such crimes were incredibly common, indeed they were part of deliberate national strategies, yet their perpetrators have never been punished, or in most cases even investigated for their acts.
Of course, if they're hiding in countries, any country, the you might be straight out of luck. How is the hunt for Osama coming along? We're not doing so well there with the military options...
The Pakistanis are probably actively sheltering him. Our mistake has been to play it soft with the Pakistani regime.