That said; is there anything sacred about the property rights of a racist apart from a generalized principled respect for some conception of private property? My spiritual sympathies are with the Civil Rights movement. No one possesses a right qua racist. They may possess a private property right out of belonging to a liberal polity, but that doesn’t mean there is need to morally or socially sanction them. I contend that the morally guilty party are the property owners who press charges against the people above or the state acting in their place. Those students above are the real victims of violence — not the racialist property owners.
Provocative quote that touches on this: “Things don’t bleed. Those heavy with the dead weight of things will die the death of things. Victor Serge recounts that during the sack of Razoumovskoe the revolutionaries smashed some porcelain; and when they were criticised for having done so, they replied: “We’ll smash all the porcelain in the world to transform life. You love things too much and people too little… You love men too much the way you love things, and man you don’t love enough.” What we don’t need to destroy is worth saving: that’s the most succinct version of our future penal code.”
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/63
Comments? ( :
]]>Scineram,
The Civil Rights protesters were natural allies of Libertarians. Whatever inconsistencies they may have had by the strict standards of anti-statist ideology, they clearly wanted freedom in a major way.
All left-libertarians and anarchists of any school of thought should study the movement to glean lessons on successful non-violent action. Our message at the time should have been to point out that property rights are designed to PROTECT (not yelling just putting emphasis) the expression of free individuality. Does that mean we have to endorse every action? Of course not. Not all Civil Rights people agreed on every action taken. At the same time, a property owner who pressed charges against the kids above would be acting immorally and would have to be approached or socially boycotted.
I’d be expending my rhetorical energy in attacking the idea of racial separatism and reaching out to the Civil Rights movement with ideas about how freedom should come to other less racialized areas of their life too.
]]>Anonymous raises legitimate concerns about Libertarian ideology. I am curious to hear what you think about the tactics of the Civil Rights movement overall. You and I are both principled moralists about the initiation of force — though, I came to it less out of a sense of moralism then a strong uneasiness about visiting the effects of coercion upon anyone not violently attacking me. Some would call it sentimental, but I consider a quickness to resort to force over compassionate or not so compassionate at first conversation to change the world to be a highly dangerous mindset.
Obviously, we’ve no problem with occupying things like public libraries that are state property and thus in need of corrective action to foster truly public access to them.
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