Rad Geek People's Daily

official state media for a secessionist republic of one

Posts tagged Alliance of the Libertarian Left

Welcome, Antiwarriors

Bob Kaercher hipped me to the fact that my post How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? is being featured today at the front page on Antiwar.com. I’m flattered; and presumably this also means that for the time being I’ll be getting a lot of readers who are more or less new to the blog.

So–welcome! By way of introduction, I’m Charles Johnson, also known as Rad Geek. I’m an individualist anarchist, originally from Alabama, now living in Las Vegas. I am a founding member of the Southern Nevada Alliance of the Libertarian Left and an occasional writer for The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. If you’re new to the blog, here’s some things you might want to read which will give you some idea of where I’m coming from, and what I care about:

I believe that the nationalistic violence of the warfare State is closely linked with the paramilitary patrols, police state, and nationalistic violence of government border controls — which are nothing other than international apartheid. See for example:

I also believe that the violence of the U.S. government’s imperial military abroad is closely linked with the repressive violence of (increasingly militarized) paramilitary police forces within the U.S. See for example:

And I think that the violence of men’s wars and of men’s law enforcement are closely linked with the violent ideals of masculinity and patriarchy that men are brought up with in our society. For more, see:

On economics, I often write about the relationship between the economic privileges granted by the State, class, poverty, and labor solidarity:

In terms of strategy, I discuss my views on the most effective ways to work against government war and the violence of the State in:

Welcome, enjoy, and feel free to drop me a line about any thoughts, questions, comments, concerns, applause, brickbats, &c. &c. &c. that may occur to you — in the comments sections, or in private if you prefer.

Rad Geek Speaks: a talk on Anarchism and its ideas TOMORROW, at the Las Vegas Anarchist Cafe. Las Vegas, 28 January 2009, 6:30pm

The Vegas Anarchist Cafe is a meet-up for networking, building community, and doing some outreach for anarchists in Las Vegas, which Southern Nevada ALL has been organizing together with unaffiliated local anarchists for the past several months. The main idea is just to give anarchists, anti-statists, and anarchy-curious fellow travelers a place to meet up and talk in an informal setting at a local coffee-house. There isn’t a fixed business agenda; the idea is to give people a place to find each other. Once they’ve found each other, A-Cafe can serve as a springboard for the independent projects that they may want to start.

After some discussions with regular A-Cafers, we’ve decided to start putting on a series of talks, presentations, skill-shares and open mics — tentatively titled the Free Speech Soapbox Series. The idea is to take an hour of the A-Cafe time for ongoing programming — including introductory material that may interest non-anarchists as well as anarchists, talks about issues local anarchists care about, organizing pitches for projects they are working on, how-tos to share skills amongst ourselves, presentations of classic anarchist lectures, etc. etc. etc. Talks take place during the middle 60 minutes of the Anarchist cafe (6:30pm – 7:30pm), with the 30 minutes before and the 30 minutes after available for the usual informal meet-up and chat.

I’m happy to announce that our first Soapbox talk will be TOMORROW, Tuesday 29 January 2009. And I will be doing the talk:

At this week’s A-Cafe, Anarchist philosopher Charles Johnson will present a special lecture on the topic What is Anarchism? presenting the ideas of Anarchism in theory and practice, and correcting common misconceptions. For anyone interested in the ideas of philosophical Anarchism, or interested in conversation.

The Anarchist Cafe meeting will begin at 6:00 PM. My talk will begin at 6:30 PM (and should run to about 7:30 PM, including time at the end for Q&A).

Here are the details on the event:

  • WHAT: Talk by Charles Johnson of Southern Nevada ALL on the ideas of Anarchism, the main misunderstandings about anarchy, and replies to the main objections.
  • WHEN: Wednesday, 28 January 2009, 6:30 PM.
  • WHERE: Weekly Anarchist Cafe @ The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Running Rebel Plaza (across the street from UNLV). 4550 S. Maryland Parkway; we’ll be in the meeting room off to the left of the entrance.

If you’re in the Vegas area (or even if you’re not), it’d be great to see you there. If you know anyone around abouts who might be interested in a general talk about Anarchism, then please do forward the announcement on to them.

Future Soapbox events are already being scheduled; in particular, next week will feature Las Vegas ALLy Kelly Patterson giving a talk on the Industrial Workers of the World, We Need the Wobblies Now More Than Ever! A Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World. See the Vegas Anarchist Cafe website for more details.

More to come soon; watch this space.

See also:

Announcing ALLiance a journal of theory and strategy

From ALLy Chris Lempa (2009-01-11):

ALLiance a journal of theory and strategy [beta] is done. I’m very happy with the content. I used Scribus to do the page layout and that was a mistake. It kept crashing my system and was overall not a very friendly program. Hopefully it will be replaced before the next issue. Please take a look at this issue and provide constructive criticism. My goal is to create a journal that promotes libertarian (broadly defined) theory. Please contact me if you are interested in a hard copy.

It is currently being hosted at www.issuu.com but will soon have it’s own space on the web. Issuu makes two versions available – a downloadable pdf as well as a version that is easier to read online.

Thanks for your interest and please remember that this is a test release! I need your comments. Please send them to chris (at) chrislempa dot info

Read ALLiance [beta] – http://issuu.com/alliancejournal/docs/alliance0

Here’s the introduction from the Beta issue:

A Note from Z’s

Libertarianism is political philosophy with a rich history. A countless number of people have dedicated their lives to the freedom movement. The goal of ALLiance a journal of theory and strategy is not to explain libertarianism — that has been done. The Molinari Institute, the Libertarian Labyrinth, and Anarchy Archives, amongst others, have a great collection of foundational texts. ALLiance aims to disseminate theory and strategy. Both new and recently published articles will be included. So many great articles have been published on blogs and articles. Some of these reach a large audience, unfortunately many do not. Many end up preaching to the so called choir or converted. Hopefully ALLiance will spread the ideas of our loose knit movement.

Future issues will, hopefully, focus largely on strategy. Most people reading this will agree that change is necessary, but how do we realize that change? Let’s move our theory to action. Articles on theory will be accepted and published, but we prefer to move those ideas forward. A lot of other venues focus on theorizing a more free society. An example of such a publication was Z Papers. This magazine continued up where Z Magazine stopped. That is, Z Papers went beyond analyzing what was wrong. In fact, that’s where the journal began. Unfortunately, from what I can gather, it failed due to lack of submissions.

Eventually I would like to turn ALLiance into a Z Papers for the libertarian left. Strategies will be diverse and differ in reach and risk. Anything from encrypting email to tax avoidance will be included. Electoral strategies will also be considered, but we really don’t have much interest in relying on the parasitic class. However since the state is so overarching, there will undoubtedly be people who work within the system. My personal view is that this is okay so long as it’s done as a non-reformist reform (i.e. working towards structural change).

Housekeeping Notes

ALLiance will be published quarterly. Submissions will be accepted up to one month before the next issue is published (February 1, May 1, August 1, and November 1). Please submit articles in publishble form. While I will attempt to edit them, I can’t guarantee that I will catch every error (or that we have the same writing style). Please email submissions to me no later than two weeks prior to the deadline if you are in need of proofreader. That will provide enough time to edit and/or suggest revisions if necessary. There is no specific length requirement. Every submission will be read and considered.

I would love to have a large print run, but that isn’t possible at this time. Until it is possible, I encourage interested parties to print and distribute copies. While it’s not necessary, I ask that you contact me if you plan to do this. The pdf will be distributed freely and hopefully widely.

Also note that this is a Beta Issue. The submissions are top notch, but the format is a work in progress. Graphics posed a problem for this issue. At the end I kept them even though the quality for many were poor. Fault lies with the editor (me) nd not the authors. I used Scribus, an open source desktop publishing program to layout this issue. I will be exploring other options for the next issue. Please contact me if you have any suggestions.

Letters/feedback are encouraged. In fact, response articles are encouraged. Symposium styled issues will be published in the future.

Donations/trades are accepted. There is also limited ad space available. Contact me to work something out.

Thanks for reading.
Chris Lempa
chris@chrislempa.info

Here’s the information about the next issue:

Next Issue

The next issue will take a closer look at action. How can we move towards a stateless society. What are some alternatives to the welfare state. I touched briefly on Mutual Aid Organizations, but what else is there? Have you written (or thought about writing) a Do It Yourself guide or primer tht will help peopl live life a little more freely? If so, please consider submitting it to ALLiance. Submissions deadline is February 14.

Submissions can be sent to chris@chrislempa.info.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Update 2009-01-15: If you don’t want to use issuu.com’s online reader or register an account with them, Chris Lempa has also provided a direct link to a PDF of the Beta Issue.

Left-Libertarian Engagement

  • Lew Rockwell’s recent interview of Naomi Wolf for his podcast — the scare quotes are there because it quickly turns into a very two-sided conversation, and works very differently from a conventional interview — is really remarkable, and a paradigm for the kind of engagement that could build a vibrant libertarian Left. Naomi Wolf is not my favorite feminist, and Lew Rockwell is certainly not my favorite libertarian, but this is great stuff. Naomi Wolf now says she thinks she’s been a secret libertarian for many years in many, many ways and mentions that she’s feeling increasingly sympathetic toward radical libertarianism; she insists on the importance of challenging both Democratic- and Republican-sponsored power grabs, and expresses sympathy for the libertarian case for abolishing federal control over schooling. Rockwell does a tolerable job of explaining the libertarian case against the Fed as a instrument of class warfare, does a good job of cautioning against premature jumps into statist political action, and comes out that the conservative movement has been an engine of fascism for the past 50 years. Also, Wolf has some great material at about 23:45 in the interview about the way in which media producers deliberately encourage false-alternative shouting matches and instruct their guests that serious deliberation is not good television.

    Listen to the whole thing.

  • Socialist Alexander Cockburn writes a libertarian article for the Buchananite newsjournal The American Conservative, discussing the ongoing bipartisan assault on civil liberties, in which he points out the continuity between Clinton’s and Bush’s anti-terrorism and drug war rackets, decrying Social Security Numbers and the Kelo decision, while praising the defense of the individualist reading of the Second Amendment in Heller.

  • There’s been a lot more discussion of Roderick’s Corporations Versus the Market piece on Cato Unbound. Roderick’s Keeping Libertarian, Keeping Left replies to the initial responses from the Danny Bonaduce of the Blogosphere, Steven Horwitz, and Dean Baker. Roderick’s Owning Ideas Means Owning People makes the case for libertarian radicalism against Intellectual Protectionism (indeed, for a position even more radical than those advocated by Cato minimal-statist Tim Lee and by anti-IP, but pro-governmental Leftist Dean Baker).

    Yglesias, in reply to Roderick and Steven Horwitz, says he is a bit puzzled by pragmatic arguments for left-libertarianism, based on the claim that markets do more for human flourishing than government programs, writing: If this means that the absence of governance ?@c3;a0; la Joseph Stalin is a more important determinant of our well-being than is, say, the existence of unemployment insurance then, yes, of course this is true. But the question facing government programs is not whether they are more or less beneficial than the existence of a market economy, the question is whether the programs are more beneficial than would be the absence of programs. Roderick does a great job of responding to Yglesias (as well as to some another reply by Dean Baker) here. Let me just add a bit more about the fundamental problem with Yglesias’s proposed methods for assessing whether or not a given government program is warranted.

    The problem here is that Yglesias seems to be treating this as a ceteris paribus comparison: as if the right question to ask is whether people would be better off with the government program in place or in a situation which is exactly identical, but without the government program.

    There are two problems with this. First, unless there is some strong reason to believe that ceteris will stay paribus in the absence of a government program, the real alternative is between a government program and market alternatives to that program. So, for example, Yglesias mentions ex ante environmental regulations. But he rigs the match by apparently comparing outcomes with ex ante environmental regulations to outcomes from a market situation which is basically the same as the present, but in which corporate polluters are free to go on polluting with impunity. An un-rigged comparison would be one between ex ante environmental regulations and free market means of addressing pollution that the ex ante regulations have either directly suppressed or crowded out — like the use of pollution nuisance suits or a more robust use of free market grassroots activism, through boycotts, sustainability certification, social investing, and so on. Maybe these kind of tactics would not be as effective as ex ante regulation, or maybe they would be more effective; but in either case, this is the comparison that actually needs to be made, and as far as I can tell Yglesias hasn’t given any argument to support a claim that market methods would do worse. Indeed, there’s some good reasons to think that they might do better. Since freed-market methods are by their nature decentralized, and not dependent on political lobbying or electioneering, they are also not subject to the same problems of regulatory capture by those who can put a lot of money and political influence behind their interests.

    Second, Yglesias also more or less explicitly suggests that, when you’re deliberating over whether to favor government programs or freed-market alternatives, any given government program ought to be assessed in isolation from all the others (on a case-by-case basis). But of course libertarian Leftists have repeatedly stressed the importance of seeing particular social or political processes in the context of how many different processes interlock and interact with each other. So, for example, as Roderick has repeatedly stressed, if you want to know about whether to prefer unfettered free markets or regulatory command-and-control in financial markets, it doesn’t make sense to compare a rigged market where finance capital is tightly regulated and can reasonably expect government bail-outs in case of failure to a rigged market where finance capital is loosely regulated but can still reasonably expect government bail-outs in case of failure. Whether the latter or the former turns out to have better results is a question we could debate, but the important point, from a left-libertarian point of view, is that it would be more interesting and fruitful to compare the rigged markets to a free market with neither ex ante regulation nor bail-outs. Similarly, if we are looking at environmental regulations then we have to consider not only market alternatives to ex ante environmental regulation; we also have to consider other government programs which may indirectly contribute to environmentally destructive practices — like subsidizing corporate centralization and capital-intensive production; or stealing land from homeowners and small businesses for large, polluting manufacturing plants, garbage incinerators, and other forced-modernization boondoggles; or subsidizing fossil fuel dependence; or highway-driven suburban sprawl — and whether the absence of those other programs, taken together with the absence of ex ante environmental regulation, would make freed-market alternatives to ex ante environmental regulation even more palatable than they would be when considered in isolation. (For some similar points in the context of health care, see GT 2007-10-25: Radical healthcare reform.)

    Meanwhile, Roderick’s article has also prompted a lot of discussion outside of Cato Unbound, most notably interesting but misguided replies from Peter Klein, Will Wilkinson, and an extremely ill-conceived response by Walter Block and J.H. Huebert. I’ve already discussed Block’s and Huebert’s comments, with a focus on their distortion of my own expressed views (cited favorably by Roderick) on radical labor unionism.. There’s a lot of fascinating exchange among Klein, some other right-libertarians and agnostic-libertarians, and a number of libertarian Leftists in the comments thread on Klein’s article; note especially the exchange among Araglin, Klein, P.M. Lawrence and others over the legitimacy and viability of the corporate form, limited liability, etc., under freed markets, and this short comment by Jesse Walker: It seems clear to me that, at the very least, the “more local and more numerous” claim is correct, if not in every sector than certainly in the economy as a whole. Removing occupational licensing laws alone would unleash such a flood of tiny enterprises — many of them one-man or one-woman shows, sometimes run part-time — that I doubt the elimination of antitrust law and small-business setasides would offset it. Especially when large businesses have proven so adept at using antitrust and setasides for their own purposes. . . . . (Jesse promises a more detailed follow-up at Hit and Run; I look forward to it.)

    Meanwhile, as promsied, Roderick has added his own (detailed, excellent) reply on most of the points raised by Klein, Wilkinson, Huebert, and Block back over at Cato Unbound, entitled Free Market Firms: Smaller, Flatter, and More Crowded.

    Read the whole damn thread. It’s great.

  • On the activist front, this past Monday, New Jersey ALLy Darian Worden announced a new series of Alliance of the Libertarian Left outreach flyers and subversion squares available from the NJ ALL website. Enjoy! (I also think there will be some interesting news in the near future about ALL in Southern California, England, Denver, and some new activities for ALL in Las Vegas. But I’m not going to tip my hand more than that in public, just yet. If you’re curious — and especially if you are in one or more of those geographical areas — drop me a line in private.

Strategery for the post-Bush era #2

ALLies,

First, (re-)read Shawn Wilbur’s excellent post from September, Time to free ALL the political prisoners. Also, the discussion on part Strategery for the post-Bush era part 1, and The Empire is Not American, But Washingtonian, and Beyond Blockades. Now, let’s brainstorm.

By the day after tomorrow, we will know something about what regime we’ll be facing for the next four years. Electoral politics are weird, and anything could still happen. But the chances are very good at this point that, a few months from now, (1) the Bush administration will be gone, (2) the Democratic Party will hold even larger majorities in the House and the Senate, and (3) it’s likely, although by no means certain, that there will be Democratic President and administration headed by Barack Obama. This after 6 years of trying to get by under a Republican-dominated government, and 2 years of divided government, which has largely maintained the status quo without any challenge or change. Or, less likely but certainly possible, that there will be a divided government, with both houses held by large Democratic majorities, and with the Presidency in the hands of John McCain. Whatever the case may be, the process of transition and of setting the tone will begin the day after tomorrow when the election results are finalized.

Meanwhile, among movement libertarians, there have been some significant shifts as the Bush era draws to a close. Chairman Ron’s Great Libertarian Electoral Revolution has dissolved, but there are remnant groups remaining. Most of those who have not simply dropped out of electoral politics or returned to their favorite evil of two lessers, seem to have either (re-)joined the LP or launched into an almost certainly futile crusades to take over their local Republican Party aparat. Meanwhile, in the Libertarian Party, the Barr/W.A.R. ticket has successfully marked the take-over and rebranding of the Party, with the express invitation and encouragement of an opportunistic and easily-awed leadership, by small-government conservative exiles from the fracturing Republican party. The election results (i.e., whether the LP’s inevitable miserable failure at the polls turns out to be a little less miserable or a little more miserable than its usual 0.25%-0.5% performance) will probably play some role in determining whether or not this rebranding is consolidated or not over the next few years. On the other hand, alleged political pragmatists are in leadership positions and are, as a rule, immunized against any empirical falsification of their views (if the LP does better, it’ll be taken as proof that the strategy worked; if it does worse, it’ll be taken as proof that they needed even more of the same). So, depending on the breaks, the LP may be stuck with more ridiculous conservative tools at the top of the ticket for some time to come. But if it is not, then the LP’s future may well be marked by left-sympathetic radicals like Mary Ruwart. A lot will turn on the usual weirdness of LP internal politics, and on what happens in the immediate aftermath of the election, starting, again, the day after tomorrow.

The most important point to make about the upcoming electoral coup is that, even if there is a massive change-over in the balance of power in Washington, D.C., it won’t change much of anything fundamental. There will be shifts on the margins — some for good, some for ill, and most of them neutral shifts of patronage and privileges from one set of power-brokers to another set of power-brokers. Whatever may be the case, radicals will have to go on organizing and go on fighting uphill against the warfare State, paramilitary policing, plutocratic state capitalism, government managerialism, the forced-pregnancy brigade, the War on Drugs, the border Stasi, and all the rest of it.

But also, presumably, the changing of the guard in the State citadel will mean that some of the facts on the ground are going to change, as is some of the rhetoric and some of the constituencies of Power. Presumably that means that we are going to have to make some shifts in tactics and strategy for outreach, organizing, education, evasion, resistance, etc. in the coming months. The time to start talking about this, and to start laying the groundwork for what we will be doing in the coming years, is now, if not six months ago. We need to start thinking about where should we go, who should we talk to, and what should we do from here on out.

So, with all that in mind, what changes are there likely to be in the challenges we'll face during the post-Bush era, and under a consolidated Democratic Party-dominated regime in D.C.? What about under a McCain Presidency with a consolidated Democratic Party-dominated Congress? What changes in strategy, tactics, outreach, education, propaganda, and institutional infrastructure do you think that anti-statist liberation movements need to make, and what should they start doing now in order to be able to make those changes?

Let's reason together and talk about it in the comments. (Or on your own blog, if you want the extra space; if so, leave a comment here with a link back to your post.)

Anticopyright. All pages written 1996–2025 by Rad Geek. Feel free to reprint if you like it. This machine kills intellectual monopolists.