From opposite of obvious, in eye of the storm (10 January 2012).

perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of poor people to have an extremely powerful and pervasive state; perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of rich people to have a tiny powerless state. however, looking at the thing squarely, this is the opposite of obvious. it seems obvious because people keep repeating it or always conceive the terrain this way. but it’s just wackily false with regard to reality. who needs the state more: you know, robert rubin or rodney king? the idea that robert just wants to be left alone while rodney wants to be constantly entwined in police and welfare programs seems rather odd. or: which of these people needs to be left alone, and which coddled or beaten? when the state leaves robert rubin alone, he’ll be broke. when it leaves rodney king alone, he’ll have better brain scans.

now tom frank or corey robin believe that the road to equality is the non-stop growth of a hierachy of power: the state is the representative of the poor. now, what in the world could be the empirical basis for a belief this ridiculous or even contradictory (create equality by distributing power hierarchically)?

—Crispin Sartwell

In comments on Those Damned Statists!, Gene Callahan gets pissy about the claim that he’s being fussy about word usage. Thus:

One of the most telling rhetorical tics one finds amongst radical libertarians is to refer to every single person who does not buy their entire program as a ‘statist’. Now, when Mises used that term, he was referring to people like, say, Mussolini, who were engaged in some form of state worship, who were making the State a God on earth. This made sense.

But many rad-libs today apply it to every person who does not want to destroy the State as a social institution. This is an extraordinary usage….

And so:

I am not being fussy about word usage; I am noting the extraordinary phenomenon of a group that represents .1% of the political spectrum lumping the other 99.9% under a single label.

You mean like when Jews (about 0.2% of the population of the world) refer to all of the other 99.8% of the people in the world as “Gentiles,” or when priests (about 0.03% of the total membership of the Roman Catholic Church) refer to all of the 99.97% of the Church as “laity” or atheists refer to absolutely everyone who believes in any way in any gods at all a theist? My, how extraordinary. Ah-HA! Gene will say, clutching his New Science of Politics — all of your examples are religious; isn’t that telling? Only if you think it’s equally telling that the residents of every country on earth refer to the 6.5+ billion or so other people in the world as foreigners, that gay men and lesbians took to using the word straight to refer to absolutely everybody who’s not gay, when BOFH types took to describing absolutely everybody outside of their subcultural circle of technical expertise lusers, etc.^[1] It seems to me the most ordinary thing in the world for members of a relatively coherent, exclusive group to spend some non-zero amount of time discussing (whether politely or abusively or neutrally) the much larger number of people who are not a part of that group, and to come up with a word to name them. (This does, of course, tell us that radical libertarians are a small group in a much larger world who spend some time arguing about the things that make them radical libertarians. Well, yes.)

Let me offer an alternative story here about what has happened, linguistically speaking, with statism. I haven’t done a lot in the way on paleontological research on the past uses of statism, so I am going to recklessly presume there isn’t much to say about it before where Gene starts — with the use of the word by Mises and the rest of the mid-century minimal-governmentalist coffeeklatsch. Now, those folks frequently employed a political term which was transparently polemical and had more or less no neutral analytical use. (State worship? Really?^[2]). They applied it to Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon quite as freely as they did to explicit totalitarians like Mussolini or Stalin.^[3] This certainly had its uses, but it was more or less an overt example of a persuasive definition, and had no descriptive content except by reference to the moving target of how much government, in what direction, the speaker considered decent or worthwhile.

Then some Anarchists came along, found this empty polemical term in the discourse, and gave it a new meaning — more or less, someone who accepts the legitimacy of government as a social institution, or someone who does not believe that the state as such must be abolished. Unlike the use by Ludwig von Mises or Ayn Rand, this use of the term statist included minimal-statists like Mises and Rand, since they too believed in at least some government. Their use of the term lumped together something like 99% of the population of the world under a single label, since it defined everyone else by contrast with laissez-faire/laissez-passer limited-governmentalism; our use of the term lumped together something like 99.9% of the population of the world, since it also tossed out folks who believed in minimal government. On the other hand, it also gave statist a non-polemical, descriptive, and analytically useful definition. Statist as non-anarchist meant something that the person being so described would probably accept as a self-description; it is analytically useful because it turns out that sometimes we argue about whether or not any government can be legitimate, and this gives a handy descriptive term for each side of the debate — anarchists on the one hand and statists on the other.^[4] Admittedly, this is an appropriation of the term and a redefinition of it. But, well, so? Planet used to include Pluto and New York City used to refer only to Manhattan. We take the words we find and apply them to our own circumstances; sometimes existing words get jiggered to have a narrower or broader extension, or a more technical usage, in order to make them more useful for purposes of discussion or analysis.

Then Gene Callahan came along and took it as another reason to gripe about the language that libertarians use rather than identifying any specific problem that this language-use has caused in any specific conversation. No doubt there are examples where this has happened, but I think that if you go looking seriously, you will actually find that the old, empty polemical use of the term in the hands of mini-statists like Mises or Rand (the use that Gene insists made sense) has caused far more conversational misfires than the newer, more descriptive meaning employed by libertarian anarchists.

See also:

• Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm 24 April 2011

1. ^[1] In spite of the religious subject matter, the structured relationships between Jews and Gentiles, priests and laity, atheists and theists, etc., are in any case really nothing like the kind of relationships between the initiated and the uninitiated in Voegelian Gnosticism. ↩
2. ^[2] Of course, I myself have frequently drawn parallels between religious devotion and the ways that states legitimate themselves. I hope there’s some insight in that. But the insight is insight by means of an acknowledged metaphor: hardly anybody accused of being engaged in some form of state worship … making the State a God on earth would accept that as a non-tendentious description of what they do or believe. And the talk about worship is clearly meant polemically — the real application of the term is wherever the speaker finds devotion or deference significantly beyond whatever she herself considers acceptable. For Mises, the critical point was supposed to be whether the person believed in limited government or unlimited government. But of course limited and unlimited in that context were just as contested as the terms they were supposed to define. Limited government for Mises certainly didn’t just mean any government with any constitutional limits whatever. Most mid-century welfare-state liberals, for example, believed very strongly that government should be subject to some constitutional limits. Just not the specific limits that Ludwig von Mises thought it should be subject to. ↩
3. ^[3] Mises in any case explicitly included both socialism and American-style state-capitalist interventionism as forms of what he called statism or, as in Omnipotent Government, etatism. The claim that he reserved it for people like, say, Mussolini, is pure bosh. ↩
4. ^[4] We’d use archist — Tucker, for one, sometimes did — but, ew. ↩

Don’t forget.

• The world is awesome.

• People are awesome. You don’t need plans, or politics, or power. Put them up against people, and people will win every time. People came up with that video. Also, other people came up with this.

• Technological civilization is awesome. (In case you’re wondering, it’s awesome because it’s made of people.)

• Books are awesome. Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (2009-05-29): Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• To-day is awesome. It’s an anniversary. My love and I were married three years ago today. If the normal online rounds are held up for a while, well, that’s why.

Solidarity.

• In memory of George Tiller. feministe (2009-05-31): In honor of Dr. Tiller (if you would like to donate in memory and in honor of Dr. Tiller’s work). Among others, the National Network of Abortion Funds has established a George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

• IQSN, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-27): Solidarity with Queer Bulgaria on 27 June 2009. A day of international actions in solidarity with the LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s march was attacked by neo-Nazi groups who decided to Keep Our Children Safe with a campaign of roving basher gangs and by slinging molotov cocktails and small explosives at the marchers. International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria for this year’s march.

News.

• Underground abortion networks in Chile. Feminist Daily News Wire (2009-05-29): Abortion Hotline Launched in Chile. The Chilean government inflicted a categorical abortion ban in 1989. A coalition of pro-choice feminist groups has now launched a phone hotline which gives women information about how to use Misopristol (usually used in the U.S. together with Mifepristone; in Chile it’s legally available to treat ulcers) to give themselves safe DIY medical abortions in defiance of the law.

• Shoot an unarmed old man, get a four-month paid vacation. Vickie Welborn, Shreveport Times (2009-05-24): NAACP questions Homer officers’ leave status

• The question is who is to be the master — that’s all. The Status of Forces Agreement requires all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the end of June. A Senior U.S. Commander [considers] the security agreement a living document, so he intends to comply with the deadlines by withdrawing the political boundaries of Baghdad from his occupation patrol forces

Comment.

• On knowledge problems and management make-work. quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-05-28): Scene 3

• On free-market mutualism and open source solutions to the social question. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-27): Mutual Aid: A Factor in Cyberspace. (As for whether the word socialism is the best tag for the kind of mutualist projects under discussion, I reckon that it depends on your intended audience. I use it happily, but then, my intent in doing so is deliberately provocative, as is my use of freed market language around anti-authoritarian Leftists: given the right audience, you can pull some philosophical aikido by using a term’s very unpopularity in order to provoke a conversation about some fundamental premises.)

• The State is male in the political sense. (Cont’d.) Alderson Warm-Fork, Directionless Bones (2009-05-26): The State is Incapable of Submissiveness. (This particular article deals mainly with the external relations among many states; for discussion of the male State in the context of the internal relations between the government and the country that it occupies, cf. GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence.)

• The George Tiller I Knew. loree920, Daily Kos (2009-05-31): The George Tiller I Knew

• A Loatian American teen protested No Child Left Behind and Won. Mandy Van Deven, ColorLines: She Said No To The Test. In which a second-generation Laotian-American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent English and graduated 7th in her class was declared illiterate by school officials for refusing to retake a basic English-proficiency test that she’d already aced — and how she and her fellow students protested and won.

• Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes. (Cont’d.) Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian (2006-05-16): Do roads pay for themseles? (Cf. GT 2008-12-01: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes.

• On public space and the microphysics of male power. Norma, Happy bodies. (2009-05-25): Fighting Unwanted Attention

• On neuro-jargon as modern mumbo-jumbo. Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-31) […] the problem is that these approaches work backwards from social categories to neurology and enshrine momentary social formations, which are essentially created by power, as inescapable bio-destinies. the entire scientificness of the thing is usually presented in a few phrases - ‘medial prefrontal cortex,’ say - which function essentially as authorities: they’re supposed to show you that you’re too ignorant to assess what’s being said, to put the actual ethical/political/economic conclusions beyond the realm of disagreement, to flummox you into nodding vaguely along. if you don’t, you must be a dolt. they function like phrases from the koran or something. they actually do no work except to assert a kind of prestige. […]

• Against psychiatric coercion and psychiatric contempt. anarchafemme (2009-05-11): I Am Crazy, Yet I Am Human

• On standing up for the marginalized and the enemies of the State. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-05-31): The strategic wisdom of defending prostitutes

• The Conservative (Hive) Mind. Will Wilkinson’s The rise of collectivist conservatives is right-on in almost every respect, particularly in emphasizing how belligerent nationalism (I’d add sadistic law-n-orderism and anti-immigrationism) poison any attempt by the pseudopopulist Right to come out with a consistently individualistic position. Towards the end, Will asks Conservatism must stand for something. But here’s the big question: Can a politics of individual freedom be revived? Can it win elections? As you may know, I’m an optimist about the first question, a pessimist about the second, and mainly concerned that people realize that the two are importantly distinct. If you want to know why the substance of Beck’s politics is so much like the substance of Brooks’s politics, underneath the pseudoindividualist rhetoric, well, part of the answer is the structural limitations that you necessarily accept when you start out hitching the success of your political philosophy to victory in government elections.

Historicize.

• Jourdon Anderson authenticity update. Laster Hunt, E pur si muove! (2009-05-14): Jourdon Anderson’s Letter to His Former Master. (Cf. GT 2009-05-06: Wednesday Lazy Linking for my reprinting of the original letter.)

• We apologize for the fault in the historicity debate. Those responsible have been sacked. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-31): Dragonquest; or, A Voyage to Arcturus

Communications.

• ALLiance Issue #2 (Beltaine 2009) is now available. Thanks to awesome editor Chris Lempa. This issue features articles by Chris, Darian Worden, Fred Foldvary, Kevin Carson, Michael Kleen, Sharon Presley and Lynn Kinsky.

• Portland Anarchist Bookfair, June 6-7 at Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy in Portland, Oregon. The event is free to attend; childcare will be provided. Also, keep an eye out for Northwest ALLy Shawn Wilbur, who will be there to promote his new radical publishing project, Corvus Distribution.

• The Cop Watch LA Radio program is looking for volunteers interested in recording, producing, interviewing and researching material for the Cop Watch LA radio program which airs every evening on the Raise the Fist Radio Network.

• An IRC network for liberty builders: agora.anarplex.net:14716. The time for waiting for others to do things is over. … Learn, create, cooperate, advance. (Via Wendy McElroy.)

From Small Wars Journal 2009-05-15, from a retired soldier who served under, and thinks the world of, Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of Camp Nama, now named by anti-torture Peace President Barack Hussein Obama to command the United States government’s military occupation and counter-insurgency in Afghanistan:

Obviously writing from the seat of retirement, and with absolute respect and gratefulness for LTG McChrystal’s aggressive leadership, personable demeanor, and unwavering mentoring, I envy the guys that are soon to find themselves sharing the same mess hall, weight room, and helicopter as The Pope. The man is unstoppable. Demonstrably more committed than most. More open, in fact insistent, on creative and innovative ideas from his subordinates to fight the war on terror. From my perspective, our rules of land warfare, our respect for human life, and our strategic constraints handcuff us to the point that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. But, with LTG McChrystal at the helm now all bets are off.

—Small Wars Journal 2009-05-14: The Pope

(Via Andrew Sullivan 2009-05-15, via Crispin Sartwell 2009-05-15.)

• Quote for the Day: Via Brad Spangler 2009-05-02, Mikhail Bakunin on spontaneous order and the utopia of utopias:

  … [W]e neither intend nor desire to thrust upon our own or any other people any scheme of social organization taken from books or concocted by ourselves. We are convinced that the masses of the people carry in themselves, in their instincts (more or less developed by history), in their daily necessities, and. in their conscious or unconscious aspirations, all the elements of the future social organization. We seek this ideal in the people themselves. Every state power, every government, by its very nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organization and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people. We declare ourselves the enemies of every government and every state power, and of governmental organization in general. We think that people can be free and happy only when organized from the bottom up in completely free and independent associations, without governmental paternalism though not without the influence of a variety of free individuals and parties.

  —Mikhail Bakunin, Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State

• Obama’s Earth Day: Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-07). In the spirit of this administration.

• The War on the Informal Sector: Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-04-10): Air Force Unable to Hold Bake Sale to Buy Bomber, in which, thank God, the Professionalizing State saves us from the menace of unfettered pie-baking at the Friday fish-fry.

• The War on Urban Homesteaders: Daniel Santana, Los Angeles IMC (2009-04-25): Never Forever 21 Action: Round 3 4/25/09, in which the South Central Farmers continue their fight to reclaim their homesteaded land from the city government bulldozer-brigade Development schemes (cf. GT 2006-06-14: Enclosure comes to Los Angeles), currently slated to be turned over for a Forever 21 clothing warehouse. They’re calling for protests to the city government and a boycott of Forever 21.

• On Libertarian Fissionism and open Anarchism: Brad Spangler (2009-04-30): Left Libertarian Terminology and Strategy: Obama the statist and more

• Congratulations to Jeff Riggenbach: his fine little book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism is now available for free online (or you can pay to get it in print or on Kindle, if you prefer).

• On Patriotic Correctness run amok: Dennis Perrin (2009-05-02): Just Kidding! Ltd., on corporate liberal pressure-valve Jon Stewart, the nuclear terrorist, war criminal, and President Harry S. Truman, and the horizons of acceptable satire in the American Patriotically-Correct media.

• Anarchy in L.A. a Report-back: Rockero, Los Angeles IMC (2009-04-24): The Resistance is Not Quiet: 2009 Anarchist Activist Conference at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

• Anarcho-Nerdery: Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-11): Dilithium Dynamite, in which a bunch of us anarchists get together to geek out (including the time-honored geek tradition of lodging endless nitpicking quibbles) about the new Star Trek.

• On home cookin’: Jennifer Reese, Slate (2009-04-22): Scratch That: How cost-effective is it to make homemade pantry staples? Answer seems to be that it’s mostly a win, although not always. My own experience is that it becomes even more cost-effective compared to store-bought when you get all your vegetables for free through Food Not Bombs.

• War news: While on patrol in Baghdad in 2007, Master Sergeant John E. Hatley, Private Michael Leahy, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo, soldiers in the U.S. government’s army, murdered four Iraqi captives by shooting them in the back of the head at point-blank range while they were tied up and blindfolded. Then they dumped the bodies in a canal. Major General Qassim Atta, a general in the U.S.-approved Iraqi government’s military, is filing suit in order to get the government to forcibly shut down a major newspaper and an Iraqi television station for publishing claims that the government claims to be false.

• On legal lynching: Joshua Holland, AlterNet (2009-04-01): Ted Stevens’ Charges Dropped: A Tale of Two Justice Systems. When Anarchists propose that all the functions currently controlled by the authoritarian State, including the judgment of cases involving disputes or violent crimes, we are inevitably told that without a State-controlled, hierarchical system of courts, you’d have nothing more than the justice of the lynch mob. This is actually a classic example of statist inversion: by focusing on the dangers that informal and irregular efforts at seeking justice will lead to a disregard for objectivity or evidence, the statist completely blanks out the ways in which formalization and enforced hierarchy oblige government courts to disregard evidence themselves in the name of formal procedures, and to elevate authority above objectivity, by standing on ceremony or respect for turf at the expense of substantive justice. If the state’s plans to murder Troy Anthony Davis are not an example of a slow-motion lynching, what is?

• On tearing down the walls (of Facebook): Martin Blaabjerg, Kaplak Blog (2009-05-10): When The Garden Walls Come Crumbling Down, Or what would happen if Facebook went GPL. One thing I would like to see more of is a discussion not only of using Facebook’s code, and of exporting its data for open reuse, but also the kind of architectural and structural changes you might expect to see as a result of those garden walls crumbling. If the data moves freely and exchanges between countless networking tools, you can expect to see emergent networks that aren’t dependent on any single site, and that provide real polycentric social networking, where the platform is the Internet, not one company’s server grid, with the rich features of social networking sites dispersed out to billions of far-flung nodes and hubs. What might it look like, and what would be the implications? Technologically? Socially?