I am often disappointed by how some "left-libertarians"
as they sometimes call themselves,
following Rothbard in his most ill-inspired dalliances:
at the same time that they claim to defend individual property rights,
they support socialists, communists and collectivist anarchists
who attempt to seize ownership of state assets in the name of some collective.
As Brad Spangler, such a "left-libertarian" activist, writes:
MONTREAL STUDENT MOVEMENT: There's an old radical saying that
rather than being content with the prospect of a whole loaf,
let alone half a loaf, we want the whole damned bakery.
My sincere suggestion is that the students in Montreal and elsewhere
shift from protesting tuition increases carried out in the name of "austerity"
and, instead, make an offer direct to the taxpayers.
That offer is this — let the students and faculty manage the universities
as cooperatives funded with voluntary subscriptions and tuition they set
rather than taxes involuntarily looted from other producers by
(and for the benefit of) the political class.
If cuts must be made, let the students decide where to make cuts —
by recognizing the schools as naturally being
their own rightful joint property rather than government property.
The state "provides" nothing. Everything it has is stolen.
One does not rob when taking anything away from the state.
In short. demand voluntary socialism via the people's own privatization.
Rothbard made almost exactly the same point long ago which I am making now.
Confiscation and the Homestead Principle
(podcast).
This is so disconnected from both libertarianism and reality
that it's hard to know where to begin commenting on such a statement.
In summary,
some consumers of a service blatantly demand
the wholesale robbery of the provider to their profit,
and Brad approves, citing "old radicals" (i.e. stalinian communists),
as a justifying authority,
together with an article by Rothbard
that justifies stealing from thieves
and from there seizing government property.
"People's own privatization", despite Brad's claims to the contrary,
is but a glorified word for robbery indeed.
Just because the current property holder has an invalid title
doesn't automatically qualify the first rival claimant
as a good guy with a valid title.
Or does it?
If we accept that the second thief becomes a legitimate owner,
then it's a great way to launder usurpated wealth and power!
After Hitler has no rights in his totalitarian dominion over Germany
and confiscation of the property of jews and opponents,
does that mean that Stalin is entitled to seize said dominion and property,
and is suddenly made a legitimate owner because he took it all from an usurper?
In that vein, I suppose George Bush's war were justified
because Saddam Hussein was illegitimate;
each and every politician and bureaucrat in every country
is justified in spending taxpayers' money as he pleases,
because the money was already robbed by low-level tax-collecting goons,
and robbed again by the higher-level apparatchiks;
and each and every mafia don is justified in the wealth
he confiscated out of the ill-begotten gains of his underlings.
Finally, asset forfeiture laws, instead of being maligned by libertarians,
should be applauded, and
when a first group of violent cops is found
to have unjustly confiscated wealth,
then a second group of peaceful cops
can legitimately claim it as its own after taking it from the first group.
Somehow, I find the consequences of such an argument repulsive,
and I don't believe Brad or any libertarian would stand by it.
Maybe then Rothbard's argument
doesn't make the second thief a legitimate owner,
but instead one to which the same argument applies, and so on, so that
by induction, the next thief will be justified, and the next one, etc.
Thus the stolen property becomes fuel
to legitimize an eternal cycle of violence and robbery.
Worse, as more and more wealth becomes touched by thieves,
every piece of property slowly becomes tainted by theft,
until in the end all is fair game for all to steal,
and the notion of property rights soon enough becomes extinct.
This hardly counts as a property rights argument;
quite the opposite, it's a negation of property rights,
the essence of what libertarianism stands for.
Frankly, I'd rather see all stolen property be destroyed
and ill-acquired buildings burnt to the ground,
than let it all become the justification for eternal violence, or worse,
some destructive green slime that turns everything it touches
into more green slime.
Happily, that needs not be.
For one person is missing from this entire pseudo-propertarian argument:
the victim.
Property rights are not a fragile label
giving a forever license to steal when tainted;
they are a persistent mark,
and require the property to be returned to its legitimate owner or his heirs,
however many hands have touched it since it was stolen.
Whoever assumes the property of some assets
must assume the associated debts and liabilities, too;
that includes the duty of returning any tainted portion of such assets
to a previous legitimate owner they were stolen from,
or existing heirs, when identified.
In the absence of identified owner or heirs,
the assets may be held in escrow,
but cannot be considered forfeited until a long enough time has passed
to extinguish any expectation of demonstrable legitimate claim,
though not so long a time for the good to perish, which would be waste.
Even then, it is extremely bad incentive to ascribe the unclaimed assets
to those who recovered it from the thieves, rather than
to some uncontroversial charities (as much as can be),
preferrably ones benefitting the general pool of victims
of same or similar thieves.
Spangler adds: I advocate property rights.
Leaving public universities in the hands of the state
is not an example of freeing the market.
I wonder where respect for property rights fits in Brad's mind.
Allowing the first-come robber to seize said universities
is hardly freeing the market either.
Each and every settled piece of property has existing owners.
Abolishing the State is returning that property to its lawful owners,
it isn't giving it to a new State made of petty robbers.
Not that a big organized State will let itself overrun by petty robbers,
anyway;
and still if somehow that big State imploded,
petty robbers seeing their violent claims unopposed
would not be less of a State than the former big State,
just a heap of pettier ones.
Besides, the current collectivist robbers that Spangler supports
are explicitly not challenging
taxes and a State to to forcefully collect them to fund this University;
quite the contrary, and despite Spangler's wet dreams,
they are advocates of a bigger State,
more so forceful extracting wealth from the public to hand it to
them newcomers at the game of communist usurpation.
Indeed, if somehow the protestors wanted the voluntary funding of a university,
without tax money but rather through tuitions and donations,
they wouldn't need to protest at all, for they can already do that:
it's called a private university and there are plenty of them in Canada.
(Certainly, the barriers to entry to starting a university could be lowered,
but all the protesters I've interacted with were instead
adamant to insist on the State control of higher education
through forcefully imposed regulations, standards and licensing.)
So it is naïve at best of Spangler
to give such sympathetic advice to the protesters
as to how they could make libertarian (of sort) demands
instead of their current communist ones;
he might with no less effect give sympathetic advice
directly to the current State bureaucrats
on how they could behave like libertarians rather than statists.
I am left to infer that the socialist leaders of this whiny bunch
appeal to our "left" libertarian friends
out of what could be called "vulgar collectivism":
just because he believes they're saying magic words such as
"people" or "cooperatives",
which evoke some sacred sentiments,
and otherwise posing as enemies of the Establishment,
Brad and other "left libertarians" side with them.
Yet, whatever fantasies Brad et al. may have
about what "cooperatives" could possibly be,
as opposed to the arguably miserable failures
that were all previous attempts at large-scale cooperatives,
the one and only system that would be condoned by giving away power
to the most impudent loud-mouthed claimants in the bunch would be just that:
giving away power to the most impudent loud-mouthed claimants in the bunch.
They could call it a "commune" or "cooperative" all they like,
and say it is "run by the people" and "for the people",
the precedent followed and set would once again be that
a self-annointed "avant-garde of the proletariat"
can speak in the name of the masses and go on to
rob said masses and impose their will over other
students, teachers, parents, taxpayers, etc.
And of course, if these protesters somehow got granted
some or all of what they wanted by the Government,
that would make them part of the Establishment that lives off stolen goods,
rather liberators returning the stolen goods to the victims.
It is sadly not a new thing, and we've seen this communism at work before.
In the end, the "left" libertarians are indeed "left-wing"
in the ease with which they fall victims to the demagoguery
of alleged egalitarianism.
Granting ownership right to the loudest claimant
is a most counter-productive way of fighting the Establishment.
More than that: the Establishment already has the loudest mouth,
by definition.
By the dubious principle of "Homesteading"
as proposed by Spangler after Rothbard and Hess,
these State properties are already being homestead
— by the very people most hated by Spangler et al.: the State bureaucrats.
These people already occupy and make productive the resources at stake
and defend them, forcefully, against rival claimants.
Any rule that would grant ownership to current occupants,
far from expropriating the Establishment from the resources it grabbed,
would only make their ownership of it more complete,
to the increased detriment of their current victims
(again, the main missing party to that pseudo-libertarian argument).
Maybe instead Spangler, after Kevin Carson and other collectivist anarchists,
has very high standards for what it means to homestead land
(or property in general),
and a very low standard for accepting newcomers as new owners
against the claims of previous occupants.
I have questioned at length this approach in the past
(see for instance my comments
on another blog):
if these standards mean that you lose rights to any property
any time that you stop watching it personally,
then it's not much of a property right approach.
Are you forfeiting part or all of your property
if you invite some people in?
if some people move in without your permission?
If you go on a vacation trip?
If you visit your family? Visit a doctor? Go to the market?
Shop at a store (assuming there is any left)?
What if you stop watching your belongings while in the bathroom?
What if you fall asleep?
Can you still claim your property
five seconds after it's been seized by newcomers?
Five minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades?
If somehow any greedy newcomer can seize the property
of previous legitimate owners,
then this spells the economic death of the society
that adopts such standards for involuntary transfer of ownership,
as no one will take pains to
create, build, grow, develop, trade, or otherwise produce anything,
for that thing would as soon be taken away
by the first-come greedy claimant, specialized in looting producers.
Unless some loophole is quickly found in such standards
and massively exploited,
this society will soon be overrun by neighbors with less absurd laws,
who will defend their property against the claims of these anti-propertarians,
no doubt under complaints by would-be looters
that their defense is "violent" and "aggressive".
In any case, such rules would be a great regression
as compared to the already quite imperfect respect for property rights
in current western societies.
Rothbard may be a great philosopher, economist and historian, and yet,
Rothbard is far from infallible, and has often
ventured with miserable results into fields in which he wasn't qualified.
In practical politics particularly, whether domestic or international,
his tentative alliances have led him nowhere except to condone
criminals and unsavory people on both sides of the political spectrum.
Contra Rothbard, I will thus cite one of my favorite authors:
It is no crime to be ignorant of politics, which is, after all,
a specialized discipline and one that most people
consider to be a "dismal science".
But it is totally irresponsible to have
a loud and vociferous opinion on political subjects
while remaining in this state of ignorance.
Of course, the original author of the quote is Rothbard himself,
albeit discussing economics instead of politics.
Politics is the science of force. Force is.
It doesn't magically appear or disappear. It follows its own laws.
The study of Force certainly isn't completely unrelated to the study of Law,
in which Rothbard excelled; but it is nevertheless quite distinct.
(I briefly discussed this relationship in my essay
Capitalism is the Institution of Ethics.)
And so any applicable solution
to abolishing monopoly mismanagement of resources
should take into account the balance and dynamics of existing forces,
and offer a way out that is a win-win proposition to
all the existing parties that will partake,
and a win-lose proposition for said parties against those that won't.
You cannot wish away the costs of politicking
and then claim you have an economical solution;
you cannot side with some political group
and suppose its opposition will magically disappear
(if it disappears, it will be through murder);
you cannot support violence without expecting
an retaliatory escalation of violence.
Now, in all his political endeavors,
Rothbard's basic stance has been that
USG, the United States Government, is his first and greatest enemy
— which is correct — and he therefore supported any enemy of his enemy
as his friend — which is absurd.
The Czar may have been the first enemy of the russians he dominated,
but in a rivalry between the Czar and the bolsheviks,
the latter were hardly the friends of the people,
and tens of millions discovered to their demise that theirs was
several orders of magnitudes more murderous and oppressive a regime
than the one that preceded it.
Similarly, USG may be an evil exploiter,
the violent enemies of USG can be an even worse threat in case they win,
and even when they don't,
their violent actions cause USG into become more violent
rather than less.
Sometimes, it is better to recognize that you have no dogs in the fight;
and sometimes even,
it is indeed better to help quickly put to death the rabid dog
rather than let it to either win or infect the other one.
As such, for instance,
Rothbard's infamous praise of the Vietnam Communist as enemies of USG
are particularly disingenious.
Rothbard is no authority at all in politics.
In the particular piece linked by Brad Spangler,
he is naive at best in his praise of Tito's policies
as an improvement over not just the Stalinian status quo
(which they may well be in this particular case;
though you should be wary of praising his policies in general,
for as a whole they have taken his country to civil war),
but also the american status quo
(which is demonstrably absurd, whichever way you measure things).
The privatization that happened in many countries of Eastern Europe
as they abandonned communism, however imperfect,
at least recognized some sound principles
that Rothbard seems to ignore, and that could be systematized:
there have been attempts to return property to previous owners
in the few cases when they could be identified;
sometimes, the new regime identified a class
of legitimate creditors of the State
(there is a justification for offering compensation
to distinguished victims of State oppression,
and for considering currently occupied possessions
and promises of future welfare payments,
if not as ownership titles of said resources,
nevertheless as claims of credit against assets to be liquidated).
Otherwise, it was recognized that the remaining capital goods should be
distributed among the mass of undistinguished victims,
the former taxpayers and oppressed subjects of the State.
One could endlessly argue how much each one should be entitled to
as compared to other people;
an equal distribution amongst people without a distinguished title
is but a good first approximation,
and one that is easier than others around which to gather political consensus.
Workers and managers in a company were often recognized
a title to some of its assets, but not all of them
(and hopefully, not bigger of a share than workers and managers
have through stock grants in a typical free market company);
for inasmuch as the capital was provided by taxes and oppression imposed
on the population at large, that population has a title to this capital.
Basically, as
Mencius Moldbug
points out,
the proper treatment of the State is to declare its bankruptcy,
collect and liquidate its assets to the benefit of
its victims and other legitimate creditors.
However, we're far from the point
where we can consider the liquidation of USG yet,
or see it replaced by anything but States.
One thing is understanding to what conclusions
our principles should or shouldn't lead us eventually.
Another thing is understanding what they tell us about what we can do today,
and what they tell us about how best to advance or not to advance them.
And so, in the case of stolen wealth,
the foremost mantra of the social doctor should still be:
First, do no harm.
Wealth may have been stolen, this is no justification for further robbery.
The second mantra should be: stop the harming.
Maybe some universities have been funded through stolen money
in the form of government subsidies from taxes;
but before you consider changing anything
to the current management of said universities,
it is more important to stop the continuous theft
and abolish those subsidies and taxes.
The victims in this case are taxpayers;
it is more urgent to stop robbing them than
to return their previous taxes to them.
As I've argued in
a previous essay,
it is more urgent to free the slaves
than to establish whether and how much slaves or slave-owners
should be receiving from whom after the slaves are freed;
if the slaves receive no compensation at all,
it might well be a sad denial of justice;
but this denial of justice is totally secondary compared
to the continuing injustice that is the continuation of slavery.
The third mantra should be: don't let it go to waste.
It might not be clear yet to whom to return how much of which stolen assets,
but whoever holds it in escrow must not be authorized to spend them away
in booze and whores or the bureaucratic equivalent thereof:
high salaries for the managers and their proteges,
lavish parties, pharaonic buildings, and worst of all,
purchasing pseudo-intellectual propagandists of theft to justify more of it.
Instead, demand that the money should be well spent.
In the case of public universities, that means making sure
that the university is as well managed as a private university,
that tuitions and donations cover the operating costs,
that spending is in line with the utility offered to students,
that students are being offered classes that lead to actual jobs,
that professors are not being hired to spread government propaganda.
Finally, we must realize that our ideas will not prevail
by coopting the demands of communist agitators
and trying to sneak in a few suggestions that are foreign
to their very mode of thinking.
Our ideas will prevail when we spread them fair and square;
when we demonstrate how they work, explain why they work,
show why they are right, and gather momentum behind them.
That is why
we must not expand our energy on negative-sum games of claims and occupations,
but build our own parallel structures, including universities,
by cultivating positive-sum games of cooperation.
We must not make demands and issue slogans,
but educate people as to how free markets work,
and how they are already abiding by them in their private lives.
We must not demand transfer of property to people unrelated to the victims,
always insist on the restoration of the rights of individuals being victimized,
and if not on compensation of past wrongs,
at least on the end of the brutality.
We must not spend away the little capital of good will we possess
in confrontational situations,
but earn more such good will the hard way,
through education and through example,
in mutually advantageous exchanges.
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