You might be interested to know that there’s a new weblog out there that you might enjoy — Winter Evenings: or, Lucubrations on Life and Letters. The author’s been writing for years in many forums; perhaps more than anything, against war and despotism. Here, for example:

Despotism delights in war. It is its element. As the bull knows, by instinct, that his strength is in his horns, and the eagle trusts in his talons; so the despot feels his puissance most, when surrounded by his soldiery arrayed for battle. With the sword in his hand, and his artillery around him, he rejoices in his might, and glories in his greatness. Blood must mark his path; and his triumph is incomplete, till death and destruction stalk over the land, the harbingers of his triumphant cavalcade.

And:

The total abolition of war, and the establishment of perpetual and universal peace, appear to me to be of more consequence than any thing ever achieved, or even attempted, by mere mortal man, since the creation.

His aims with the new blog, though, are a bit more modest, and more varied. He’s promised upcoming posts on everything from the titles of miscellaneous papers, the abuse of biography, modern heroism, and the influence of militarism on manners. Here’s a bit from one of the introductory posts:

However I may be disposed to self-delusion, I am not so simple as to imagine that a book which has nothing to recommend itself can be recommended by a preface. I think it indeed at once a mean and vain attempt to deprecate a reader’s displeasure, by preliminary submission. The avowal of conscious defects, of involuntary publication, of youth and inexperience, and of inability to resist the importunate solicitations of discerning friends, is ever supposed to be insincere; and, if it is true, ought in many instances to operate in the total suppression of the work for which it means to apologize. Great pretensions and bold professions, on the other hand, justly raise the contempt of a judicious reader. The liberal spirit of learning should scorn the language of self-commendation, and leave the soft and flowing diction of puffery to the pulpit of the auctioneer, and the stage of the empiric.

This new blogger is the Rev. Vicesimus Knox (1752–1821), an English essayist and minister known for his writing on morals and literature, and his preaching against war and despotism. The source is a decaying hardback volume from the early 19th century British Essayists series, which I stumbled across on the $1.00 rack of a used bookstore in SoHo just before leaving New York City last Thursday. The plan is currently to post each essay in sequence, at a pace of somewhere between one post a day and one post a week; we’ll see how well that is maintained.

I’ve been interested for a while now in the idea of what you might call a retro-blog — the word being my own contribution to the store of cutesy web neologisms, and the thing being an old book, especially a collection of short essays, a periodical, or a diary, serialized into the format of a weblog for easy and pleasant reading online. I first came across it with The Diary of Samuel Pepys, and ran across it again with the Diaries of Lady of Quality (maintained by Natalie Bennett), and The Blog of Henry David Thoreau. It’s an interesting experiment, because of the ways that it may help make public domain literature online easier to publish and easier to manage (since it offers the same advantages for publisher that weblogging software normally offers to authors), and also more accessible, useful, and pleasant for readers (since it breaks up the work into readable chunks, and makes use of a successful convention for periodic reading, easily takes advantage of standard features such as syndication feeds, categories, and reader comments). Winter Evenings is my first stab at implementing the idea. If it goes well, I hope that I can follow it with more.

Let me know what you think. And enjoy!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that the Molinari Society would be meeting in New York at the APA Eastern Division meeting, and that the topic for the day was going to be the debate between thick and thin libertarianism. I was invited to comment on both of the essays, which I think went well, except for the inconvenience of having nowhere to print them out and therefore having to read them off of my laptop screen at the presentation; ah well. In any case, I’ve been asked to put my remarks online; they may not be the easiest thing in the world to follow if you haven’t read the essays I’m commenting on, for obvious reasons (if versions are posted on the Internet, I’ll link to them from here and from my remarks). But there is some material that might be of general interest, such as my discussion of the different ways in which a version of libertarianism might make demands for thick rather than thin commitments, and my discussion of the ways in which a libertarian labor movement ought to relate to the government (distinguishing depoliticized unions from anti-statist unions) and to other social justice movements (distinguishing thin unionism from thick unionism). In any case, here’s the links:

• Remarks on Jan Narveson’s Libertarianism: the Thick and the Thin, in which I discuss Jan Narveson’s defense of libertarianism as a thinly moral doctrine and try to distinguish five different senses in which a version libertarianism might be said to be thick. (I said four in the remarks in spite of listing five; oops. I think because I did not count the first, entailment thickness, as a genuine form of thickness at all — since it merely amounts to saying that libertarians should, indeed, be libertarian.)

• Remarks on Jack Ross’s Labor and Liberty, in which I discuss different takes on labor history and the prospects for reclaiming the tradition of pro-liberty, pro-labor radicalism.

Enjoy. Feel free to direct any comments on the remarks to me personally or to the backtalk section here.

Happy 2006, y’all.

Try saying that three times fast.

For a while now I’ve been urging libertarians and the labor movement to take a more serious and sympathetic look at one another. (Cf. GT 2004-05-01: Free the Unions (and all political prisoners!), GT 2005-03-23: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! and GT 2005-03-31: Anarquistas por La Causa for representative examples.) Just as with radical libertarianism and radical feminism I think that the supposedly obvious and unbridgeable opposition between the two is the result more of terminological difficulties and shifting political alliances over the course of the 20th century than any deep or principled gulf. The best way to see this is with more engaged discussion: fewer polemics, more history, more earnest questioning, and more listening. So I’m excited to see a lot of interesting new material just in the past couple of weeks from libertarians (mostly but not exclusively left-libertarians) trying to get clear on the questions and hammer out some of the answers about the prospect for a libertarianism that has a place for workers organizing freely, and a wildcat labor movement that frees itself from the smothering patronage of the State. Here’s a bit of lazy linking to the discussion so far.

• Brad Spangler (2005-12-03): War, Socialism, and Precision in Thinking writes on the need to disentangle the different meanings attached to the words capitalism and socialism (each of them has at least one traditional meaning that’s perfectly consistent with the peaceful economic cooperation, and one that’s directly antagonistic to it). Brad protests the fuzzy thinking that typically comes about from running the terms freely together, and urges libertarians to realize that If anything that is voluntary on all sides is, at the very least, acceptable to the point that it at least can not righteously be opposed by force, then one has to come to grips that a stateless society will have capitalistic and socialistic aspects in practice. Hippy communes. Farmers co-ops. Employee owned enterprises. Workers syndicates. Unions. … Ultimately, vulgar libertarians, on this point anyway, fail to distinguish libertarianism from personal preference for a particular class of business models.

• Roderick Long at Austro-Athenian Empire (2005-12-04): Freedom and the Firm asks What will firms look like in a free society? He points out the important trade-off that you face when you decide whether to get business done with a centralized, amalgamated firm, or a small-scale, decentralized operations like family shops and worker’s co-ops: larger size can mean lower transaction costs, but it also comes at the cost of calculational chaos. (The incentive problems and knowledge problems that libertarians have pointed out in central planning don’t evaporate when the central planning is done by corporate rather than government bureaucrats.) Roderick points out some of the ways in which state capitalism distorts the trade-off in favor of big, centralized firms; Leviathan, as always, is Behemoth’s greatest ally: We don’t have a free market, however; instead we have a highly regulated market. For familiar reasons, such regulations hamper the less affluent more than the more affluent, and so successful firms will tend to become somewhat insulated from competition by less established firms, thus removing one check on their inefficiency. And as Kevin Carson points out, regulatory standardisation also decreases competition among the successful firms — a form of de facto cartelisation. Government regulation thus lowers the costs associated with size and hierarchy more than it lowers the associated benefits; it stands to reason, then, that firms in a genuine free-market context could be expected to be smaller and less hierarchical than they tend to be today. This is doubly true once one takes into account the increased competition for workers that a less regulated economy would presumably see (assuming that workers generally prefer less hierarchical work environments).

• Kevin Carson (2005-12-08): Socialist Definitional Free-for-All: Part I reviews a recent donnybrook over the meaning of socialism and whether voluntary workers’ co-ops and other forms of state-free direct worker control over the means of production are (1) instances of socialism, and (2) compatible with libertarianism. Bithead makes an ass of himself; Knapp holds his own; John T. Kennedy directs some good critical questions at Knapp; Knapp offers some good replies. Carson adds his own Extended Commentary, placing the debate in the historical context of the thought of late-19th and early-20th century libertarians such as Thomas Hodgskin, Benjamin Tucker, and Franz Oppenheimer, who explicitly considered themselves (1) socialists, (2) supporters of organized labor, and (3) radical advocates of laissez-faire in economics. Carson also offers some interesting historical notes on the individualists’ economic thought

  Individualist anarchism, the strand of socialism that most closely approximates my own position, doesn’t place that much importance on ownership of the means of production (leaving aside the views of Tucker et al on occupancy-based ownership of land, anyway). Although some strands of mutualism tended toward a much more active affinity for cooperative organization of production, and considered explicitly cooperativist arrangements would likely predominate in a stateless society, the American individualist branch of mutualism placed much more emphasis on the conditions of exchange than the organization of production. … What mattered to him was that, without state enforcement of special privileges for capital, and without artificial scarcity rents resulting from such privileges, the natural wage of labor in a free market would be its full product. And without the state’s enforcement of artificial scarcity in land and capital, jobs would be competing for workers instead of the other way around.

  And Carson points out that the debate is often confused by the fact that all sides tend to talk about coercion and property as if everyone already had a perfectly clear and common conception of what sorts of things can count as your property and under what conditions. Libertarians tend to broadly agree on central cases, but when the debate is about something more substantial than name-tags or banner colors, it usually comes down to substantive disagreements over peripheral cases:

  All the parties to the debate tend to throw around the term coercion, in discussing whether coercion is essential to collective ownership of the means of production, without addressing the prior question of what constitutes coercion. Now I would argue that whether the establishment and enforcement of collective ownership is coercive depends on what set of property rights rules you start out with. Forcibly invading someone’s rightful property, by definition, is coercion; but using force to defend one’s rightful property claims against invasion is not. So the question of whether force is coercive depends on who the rightful owner is. When the parties to the dispute adhere to two separate sets of rules for property rights, they will disagree on who is the aggressor and who is the defender.

• Kevin Carson (2005-12-08): Socialist Definitional Free-for-All, Part II offers a lengthy follow-up where he assembles quotes from posts Roderick, Brad, and me on definitions of socialism and capitalism, the size of firms, and organized labor, and adds his own exposition and commentary. Among other things, he points out one of the important ways in which unionization can serve as a road to, rather than a roadblock against, workers adjusting pay, security, and conditions to something like the marginal product of their labor: Regardless of the long-run market incentives to pay labor its full product and treat people like actual human beings, in the short run the uncertainty and potential disruption of being an at-will employee can be quite a hassle. For the benefit of those who have been living on Planet Cato these many years and never had direct experience working for a boss, I’d like to point out that the average boss can fuck your life up in some really unpleasant ways before the market disadvantages of doing so are finally brought home to him. And, as some radical historians of workplace relations have pointed out, a management policy of harassing selected subgroups of workers and dividing them against each other may produce benefits, in the form of reduced labor solidarity and bargaining power, that outweigh the alleged irrationality costs. On the other hand, the benefits of contractually-enforced stability and predictability are just as real to a wage-laborer as they are to the parties to any other kind of contract.

That’s a rather dense thicket of interlinking posts; moving aside from this mutualist admiration society, there’s also been good discussion elsewhere:

• Joshua Holmes at No Treason (2005-12-09): Open Question about Libertarians and Unions asks What do libertarians have against labour unions? This question struck me the other day (because it was better than studying for Business Associations) and I wondered why libertarians have so much bile for labour unions. Holmes has a good breakdown of common corporatarian objections to unions and responses to them. A vigorous go-around on semantics, tactics, and principles follows in the comments.

• Irfan Khawaja at Theory and Practice (2005-12-15): The Taylor Law and the Transit Strike: Some Questions asks for further discussion from libertarians and classical liberals about the status of strikes and work stoppages, and laws (such as the Taylor Law) which ban strikes by government employees:

  Is a strike–as Howard Dickman suggests in his book Industrial Democracy in America–just a glorified form of breach of contract? In that case, libertarianism justifies strike-breaking and scabdom, period. (Cf. Truman’s breaking up the railway and miner’s strikes in 1946.) Or does striking have a deeper justification in libertarian principles? To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t much normative discussion of this subject in the contemporary libertarian literature–a shame, considering the centrality of the issues.

  In comments, I suggest a focus on questions about individual rights to refuse to work and move on to the status of strikes from there; Irfan replies with more helpful questions and commentary.

This doesn’t end here. A week from now — 28 December 2005, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m — The Molinari Society will be holding a symposium at APA Eastern Division in New York. The topic is going to be the debate between thick and thin libertarianism, and the thick side will be represented by Jack Ross’s Labor and Liberty: A Lost Ideal and an Unlikely New Alliance. Ross will read and I’ll be commenting on the essay. (Shorter me: the outline of Ross’s argument is correct and important; I’m not so confident about the details and I think there are some important questions and distinctions to be raised about the kind of labor organizing that libertarians should ally with.)

Hope to see you there!

We identify with all women. We define our best interest as that of the poorest, most brutally exploited women. —Redstockings Manifesto (1969)

December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The commemoration began from the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project‘s memorial and vigil for the victims of the Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Since then its purpose has expanded to a memorial for, and protest against, all forms of violence against women in prostitution and elsewhere in the sex industry.

I’m opposed to prostitution as an industry, on radical feminist grounds. I frankly have very deep and sharp differences with the organizers of the event, and I’m iffy at best towards the rhetorical framework of sex work as a whole, for reasons that are way beyond the point of this post). But so what? The day is an important one no matter what differences I may have with the organizers. Real steps towards ending the ongoing daily violence against women in prostitution and elsewhere in the sex industry are more important than that; here as much as anywhere — probably more than anywhere else — women’s lives are at stake.

Women in prostitution, especially, have always been the first to suffer and the last to be protected from the very worst forms of men’s intimidation of, harassment of, scorn for, and violence against women. They have been the first and most common victims of almost every serial rapist-murderer, from the eleven women mutilated and murdered by Jack the Ripper to the 48 or more women raped and murdered by Ridgway. But the most lurid and well-known cases are only the purest expressions of the hatred, terror, and violence that pervades our culture and that all too many women in prostitution face every minute of every working day of their life. They are spat upon, robbed, raped, attacked, ignored, and left to die by the men who hold power — as pimps, as johns, as opportunistic cops, and as sanctimonious politicians. A serious commitment to freedom for, and an end to violence against, women means a serious commitment to end violence against women in the sex industry. All of it. Now and forever.

That means fighting back against rape and assault, no matter who the victim is or how she puts food on the table.

That means resisting sexist contempt against women in the sex industry. And its hideous offspring, the killing cruelty of malign neglect when women in prostitution are attacked, robbed, raped, or killed.

That means going to the streets and helping women in prostitution — with food, with money, with legal aid, with emotional support, with condoms, with transportation, with referrals to clinics and shelters if they need it. For exactly the same reasons that we help any other women at risk of battery or rape. It means options and hope.

That means stopping pimps who beat and rape and steal.

It means stopping johns who believe that their money buys a woman’s body and gives them the right to do anything they want to her, whether she agrees or not.

It means stopping cops and prosecutors who respond to these crimes with a shrug of indifference or a sneer of whore.

And ending violence against women in prostitution also means ending State violence against women in prostitution. All of it. Law enforcement comes from the barrel of a gun, and criminalizing women in prostitution means authorizing cops to attack them. Ending violence against women means decriminalization of prostitution; it means an end to cops, guns, clubs, cuffs, jail for women who are just trying to get by in peace. It means an end to the misogynist audacity of conservative pols who use violence against women in prostitution as one of the primary excuses for attacking those women with the sword of the Law. If you want someone to go after, there are plenty of abusive pimps and johns and traffickers out there to go after. Please. For the love of God.

And while statements are important, it also means more than making statements. Today I contributed $50.00 to Alternatives for Girls, a nonprofit near here in Detroit, which (besides a lot of other worthwhile projects) runs a life-saving Street Outreach Project aimed at homeless women and women in prostitution. The Street Outreach Project uses a van as a mobile base, and sends teams through the streets of southwest Detroit and the Cass Corridor offering food, clothing, and shelter, along with HIV prevention materials, crisis intervention, rides for medical services, and referrals. They also organize support groups, activities, and case management services. I hope that you’ll do something similar — if you want to contribute to Alternatives for Girls specifically, you can contribute money, donate items from their wishlist, or volunteer.

For New Yorkers, the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center provides legal aid, legal training, and documentation for women in prostitution, whether by choice, circumstances, or coercion. You can help them out with a monetary donation.

If you know of other projects that provide direct safety or legal aid services in other towns, please feel free to add links to them in the comments.

May we all live free
in the glory and joy of life
that every human being deserves.

— Daisy Anarchy, I deserve to be safe

Remember. Mourn. Act.

First Boston, and now New York City. Soon the whole world will be in the long shadow of the Molinari Society. Fortunately, as antiwar anarchists, our imperialism will turn out to be of a rather easy-going kind…

Call for Abstracts

The Molinari Society will be hosting its second symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, December 27-30, 2005. We plan a two-hour session, with two papers, and hereby solicit abstracts on the general topic of Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin. Papers should address the general question of whether libertarianism should be thick or thin (thin libertarianism is libertarianism understood as a narrowly political doctrine, while thick libertarianism is libertarianism understood as essentially integrated into some broader set of social or cultural values) and may (but need not) also address the connection between libertarianism and some specific position or set of positions (environmentalism, left-anarchism, Aristotelianism, feminism, egalitarianism, Christianity, secular humanism, the labor movement, etc.).

Send abstracts to Roderick T. Long. (Those interested in being a commentator at the session should do likewise.)

Deadline for receiving abstracts: 5 May 2005
Notification of acceptance / rejection: 15 May 2005
Accepted papers due: 1 November 2005