Calling all Stalinist-Jeffersonian-Bozoian Libertarians

From The Dallas Libertarian Examiner - by Garry Reed

Apparently it's becoming ever more popular to create crossbred mutant coercive philosophies and then attempt to smuggle them into unsuspecting minds by incorporating the "libertarian" label.

A recent article, "Politics not as usual – second look" warned of other groups hijacking the libertarian brand and contorting its meaning into whatever some budding ideologue wants it to mean.

First, modern collectivists took the liberal American founding ideals of individualism and strictly limited government and turned it bottoms up so that today the liberal label means the opposite of the Founder's liberalism; the oxymoron of "group rights" as opposed to individual rights and massive intrusions into virtually every aspect of the personal and private lives of individuals by an elitist-run government with nearly unlimited power.

Monday came the announcement that earlier in the month a Danish group founded Libertære Socialister, translating literally to "Libertarian Socialists" and describes itself as oriented towards "syndicalist, anarcho-communist and collectivist anarchist currents."


From left, Joseph Stalin, Thomas Jefferson, Bozo the Clown. Anyone
who can embrace "progressive libertarian" or "libertarian socialism"
should have no problem with the absurdity of "Stalinist-Jeffersonian-
Bozoian Libertarianism." (all images from Wikimedia Commons)

None of this sounds even remotely libertarian to American ears. It's as though a group got together and started the "African-American Ku Klux Klan". Or maybe "the Holy Church of Blessed Atheist Catholics." Or perhaps "the La Leche League of breastfeeding men."

Or started a group with the self-contradicting designation of "progressive libertarian" as a misguided guy already has.

At its simplest, libertarianism means maximizing freedom for all and minimizing government intrusions into the affairs of free and sovereign individuals. The anarchist form of that means total freedom and zero government. To all libertarians it means uncoerced, voluntary interactions amongst people. It means free trade, free travel, free thought. It means capitalism in its individual, non-government corporatist form.

The only way that any manner of "socialist libertarianism" can exist while incorporating the inherently coercive elements that define socialism, communism, and syndicalism is for individuals to freely give themselves over to the collective, in which case it's no longer libertarian.

So why can't these people be content with just calling themselves Socialists or Communists or Syndicalists and quit pretending to be libertarians?

The answer, apparently, is that more and more people are seeing the spreading popularity of libertarian ideals and want to twist the concept to further their own ends, which inevitably includes hoodwinking the unwary.

In a libertarian society people are free to voluntarily pool their money, buy and hold property in common, and as long as all individuals retain the right to join and unjoin at will, they can set up any kind of voluntary Marxist Leninist Maoist Castroist Whateverist collectivist society they want.

But it cannot, by definition, be a hyphenated libertarian society because their ism, as in all isms except the libertarian ism, absolutely requires coercion to make it work.

While libertarians will always tolerate voluntary collectivists, those same collectivists will never tolerate libertarians.

So c'mon people, if your philosophy is so great why don't you just call it what it is and stop trying to smuggle it into people's minds by pretending that it's something else?

And that goes for American progressives, too. When will you admit that your beliefs can't possibly work unless they're forced onto everyone by the power of the government's gun?

No person can ever legitimately claim the name "libertarian" without first curing oneself of the obsessive-compulsive disease of power lust, commonly known as "initiation of force."

Libertarian originally was

Libertarian originally was just a new word for anarchist, to try and get away from people's assumption of anarchy=chaos.

Right wing individualists took the word for themselves later.

Yeah, Dejacques was the

Yeah, Dejacques was the first to use the term to distinguish himself from Proudhon.

wow. this is REALLY

wow. this is REALLY hilarious.

before the term "anarchist" was coined, anarchists called themselves libertarian socialists, as opposed to Socialists and Communists who supported a state.

the fact that whatever idiot wrote this now thinks that libertarian socialists are stealing the word libertarian from HIM is total hilarity.

this loser's complete lack of historical knowledge is incredible and makes him a total laughingstock.

why is this even on here. except as tragi-comedic entertainment?

Jeezus friggin cripes ...

Jeezus friggin cripes ... wtf is this drivel? wtf is it doing here?

gtfo you damned moron!

the editorial standards for

the editorial standards for this site seem to be

1) it has the word "anarchist" in it somewhere, or
2) it has the word "anarchist" in it somewhere and it's vaguely amusing

If you have problems with

If you have problems with the editorial standards for this or any other site that you find mildly interesting and/or amusing, then don't just complain about it--set up a site that reflects your own editorial standards. It's not that difficult, and I bet worker would even help you out a little.
=Mister Grumpy

(No subject)

This right-wing tripe has no

This right-wing tripe has no place here.

libertarian has meant socialist for at least 150-200 years. How can you be free when a capitalist owns the property you need to survive? Anyone who values freedom must oppose capitalism. In the 1970s the "Libertarian" party hijacked the term libertarian to apply it to the theory that "if you minimized or eliminated that state, you end up with capitalism". This makes no sense at all because capitalism depends on the state in order to employ violence to enforce the contracts and property "rights" of the ownership class and to keep the workers for taking over the means of production.

NONE OF MY USUAL

NONE OF MY USUAL SARCASM:
The right wing tripe has a place here, if only for you to provide a nice, concise demolition of their main premise. Well done!
=Mister Grumpy

It certainly is right-wing

It certainly is right-wing tripe but let's leave it here so we can attack it as such.

Libertarianism: freedom for some to exploit others.
Anarchism: freedom for everyone from exploitation.

That's libertarians for you

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

i know it's been said around

i know it's been said around here before, but in case anyone missed it, the designation of wingnut at the top of the page should prepare you to gather your sense of humour before reading whatever nonsense you're about to read

seconded! -laozi

seconded!

-laozi

On Order by Peter

On Order
by Peter Kropotkin

We are often reproached for accepting as a label this word anarchy, which frightens many people so much. "Your ideas are excellent", we are told, "but you must admit that the name of your party is an unfortunate choice. Anarchy in common language is synonymous with disorder and chaos; the word brings to mind the idea of interests clashing, of individuals struggling, which cannot lead to the establishment of harmony".
Let us begin by pointing out that a party devoted to action, a party representing a new tendancy, seldom has the opportunity of choosing a name for itself. It was not the Beggars of Brabant who made up their name, which later came to be popular. But, beginning as a nickname - and a well-chosen one - it was taken up by the party, accepted generally, and soon became its proud title. It will also be seen that this word summed up a whole idea.

And the Sans-culottes of 1793? It was the enemies of the popular revolution who coined this name; but it too summed up a whole idea - that of the rebellion of the people, dressed in rage, tired of poverty, opposed to all those royalists, the so-called patriots and Jacobins, the well-dressed and the smart, those who, despite their pompous speeches and the homage paid to them by bourgeois historians, were the real enemies of the people, profoundly despising them for their poverty, for their libertarian and egalitarian spirit, and for their revolutionary enthusiasm.

It was the same with the name of the Nihilists, which puzzles journalists so much and let to so much playing with words, good and bad, until it was understood to refer not to a peculier - almost religious - sect, but to a real revolutionary force. Coined my Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons, it was adopted by the "fathers", who used the nickname to take revenge for the disobedience of the "sons". But the sons accepted it and, when they later realised that it gave rise to misunderstanding and tried to get rid of it, this was impossible. The press and the public would not describe the Russian revolutionaries by any other name. Anyway the name was by no means badly chosen, for again it sums up an idea; it expresses the negation of the whole of activity of present civilisation, based on the opression of one class by another - the negation of the present economic system. the negation of government and power, of bourgeois morality, of art for the sake of the exploiters, of fashions and manners which are grotesque or revoltingly hypocritical, of all that present society has inherited from past centuries: in a word, the negation of everything which bourgeois civilisation today treats with reverence. It was the same with the anarchists. When a party emerged within the International which denied authority to the Association and also rebelled against authority in all its forms, this party at first called itself federalist, then anti-statist or anti-authoritarian. At that period they actually avoided using the name anarchist. The word an-archy (that is how it was written then) seemed to identify the party too closely with the Proudhonists, whose ideas about economic reform were at that time opposed by the International. But it is precisely because of this - to cause confusion - that its enemies decided to make use of the name; after all, it made it possible to say that the very name of the anarchist proved that their only ambition was to create disorder and chaos without caring about the result.

The anarchist party quickly accepted the name it has been given. At first it insisted on the hyphen between an and archy, explaining that in this form the work an-archy - which comes from the Greek - means "no authority" and not "disordeR"; but it soon accepted the word as it was, and stopped giving extra work to proof readers and Greek lessons to the public.

So the word returned to its basic, normal, common meaning, as expressed in 1816 by the English philosopher Bentham, in the following terms: "The philosopher who wished to reform a bad law", he said, "does not preach an insurrection against it.... The character of the anarchist is quite different. He denies the existence of the law, he rejects its validity, he incites men to refuse to recognise it as law and to rise up against its execution". The sense of the word has become wider today; the anarchist denies not just existing laws, but all established power, all authority; however its essense has remained the same: it rebels - and this is what it starts from - against power and authority in any form.

But, we are told, this word brings to mind the negation of order, and consequently the idea of disorder, or chaos.

Let us however make sure we understand one another - what order are we talking about? Is it the harmony which we anarchists dream of, the harmony in human relations which will be established freely when humanity ceases to be divided into two classes, one of which is sacrificed for the benefit of the other, the harmony which will emerge spontaneously from the unity of interests when all men belong to one and the same family, when each works for the good of all and all for the good of each? Obviously not! Those who accuse anarchy of being the negation of order are not talking about this harmony of the future; they are talking about order as it is thought of in our present society. So let us see what this order in which anarchy wishes to destroy.

Order today - what they mean by order - is nine-tenths of mankind working to provide luxury, pleasure and the satisfaction of the most disgusting passions for a handful of idlers.

Order is nine-tenths being deprived of everything which is a necessary condition for a decent life, for the reasonable development of intellectual faculties. To reduce nine-tenths of mankind to the state of beast of burden living from day to day, without ever daring to think of the pleasures provided for man by scientific study and artistic creation - that is order!

Order is poverty and famine become the normal state of society. it is the Irish peasant dying of starvation; it is the peasants of a third of Russia dying of diptheria and typhus, and of hunger following scarcity - at a time when stored grain is being sent abroad. It is the people of Italy reduced to abandoning their fertile countryside and wandering across Europe looking for tunnels to dig, where they risk being buried after existing only a few months or so. It is the land taken away from the peasant to raise animals to feed the rich; it is the land left fallow rather than being restored to those who ask nothing more than to cultivate it.

Order is the woman selling herself to feed her children, it is the child reduced to being shut up in a factory or to dying of starvation, it is the worker reduced to the state of a machine. It is the spectre of the worker rising up against the rich, the spectre of the people rising against the government.

Order is an infinitesimal minority raised to positions of power, which for this reason imposes itself on the majority and which raises children to occupy the same positions later so as to maintain the same privileges by trickery, corruption, violence and butchery.

Order is the continuous warfare of man against man, trade against trade, class against class, country against country. It is the cannon whose roar never ceases in Europe, it is the countryside laid waste, the sacrifice of whole generations on the battlefield, the destruction in a single year of the wealth built up by centuries of hard work.

Order is slavery, thought in chains, the degradation of the human race maintained by sword and lash. It is the sudden death by explosion or the slow death by suffocation of hundreds of miners who are blown up or buried every year by the greed of the bosses - and are shot or bayoneted as soon as they dare complain.

Finally, order is the Paris Commune, drowned in blood. It is the death of thirty thousand men, women and children, cut to pieces by shells, shot down, buried in quicklime beneath the streets of Paris. It is the face of the youth of Russia, locked in the prisons, buried in the snows of Siberia, and - in the case of the best, the purest, and the most devoted - strangled in the hangman's noose.

That is order!

And disorder - what they call disorder?

It is the rising of the people against this shameful order, bursting their bonds, shattering their fetters and moving towards a better future. It is the most glorious deeds in the history of humanity.

It is the rebellion of thought on the eve of revolution; it is the upsetting of hypotheses sanctioned by unchanging centuries; it is the breaking of a flood of new ideas, or daring inventions, it is the solution of scientific problems. Disorder is the abolition of ancient slavery, it is the rise of the communes, the abolition of feudal serfdom, the attempts at the abolition of economic serfdom.

Disorder is peasant revolts against priests and landowners, burning castles to make room for cottages, leaving the hovels to take their place in the sun. It is France abolishing the monarchy and dealing a mortal blow at serfdom in the whole of Western Europe.

Disorder is 1848 making kings tremble, and proclaiming the right to work. It is the people of Paris fighting for a new idea and, when they die in the massacres, leaving to humanity the idea of the free commune, and opening the way towards this revolution which we can feel approaching and which will be the Social Revolution.

Disorder - what they call disorder - is periods during which whole generations keep up a ceaseless struggle and sacrifice themselves to prepare humanity for a better existence, in getting rid of past slavery. It is periods during which the popular genius takes free flight and in a few years makes gigantic advances without which man would have remained in the state of an ancient slave, a creeping thing, degraded by poverty.

Disorder is the breaking out of the finest passions and the greatest sacrifices, it is the epic of the supreme love of humanity!

The word anarchy, implying the negation of this order and invoking the memory of the finest moments in the lives of peoples - is it not well chosen for a party which is moving towards the conquest of a better future?

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