Here’s a letter that I sent to the Boston Globe:
James Carroll’s remembrance of Howard Zinn is nicely done (“Zinn’s life was a testament to possibility,” Feb. 1). But it should be pointed out that Zinn’s healthy refusal to take at face value the many popular justifications for war sat quite uneasily with his eagerness to accept at face value the many popular justifications for government intrusions into the economy.
Were Zinn still alive, I would ask him why the very same government that he believes scurrilously, cold-bloodedly, and deceptively sends young people off to die in unjustified wars is to be trusted on the home front with the task of rearranging America’s own economy and society.
Seems to me that an evil brute pointing guns at foreigners remains an evil brute when he turns ’round to point those guns at fellow citizens.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Of course, many conservatives are equally inconsistent, save in the opposite direction.
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If I were going to speculate, I would say Zinn's apparent inconsistency could be that he most likely viewed the government that cynically sends young men to war and death is that evil capitalistic conservative government; and, the government he would trust with owning and guiding the economy is that benign nanny state of socialist theology.
Well, you may both be wrong when it comes to war. Hitler should have been stopped long before 50,000,000 had to die and an important chunk of the “civilized” world was left in ruins. Countries with nuclear weapons have the capacity to wipe out much more than Hitler could have imagined. The 2nd amendment won't help when the nuclear missiles are launched by a push of a button.
One of the first thing a beginning econ student learns is the production possibilities curve showing the trade off between guns and butter. The amount of resources put into the armaments trade is beyond scary. Do you believe in the free trade of the weapons of death and destruction? I'd like to see an end put to it myself.
The only difference between liberals and conservative is when they believe government should initiate force upon others.
LOL, no fool, based on what is written above by Don and myself, you can not use it to assess what we think of war, as neither of us expressed an opinion or belief regarding war. Our opinions were addressed to the obvious inconsistency of broken brained Howard Zinn.
You looney lefties are so blatant in your use of disingenuous and duplicitous presentations. It really never hangs together and amounts to no more than the nattering nonsense of fools. It is Regressive and that is about all.
As Stalin has about 38 million Soviet citizens on his conscience maybe we should have got to him early as well.
Damn! You mean if we-the-people just give up our rights to keep and bears arms as recognized and protected in the Bill of Rights,….if..if we do that then that will eliminate nuclear weapons? Such brilliance, such insight, and such pure bullshit right off the pages of socialist scripture.
But, since you asked, I believe in the free trade of what ever people want to trade.
I can kill you with a rolled up Mother Jones magazine. Shall we ban that sill-ass rag as a weapon of death and destruction? Well by your logic I guess we must. I know how to use heat to soften the plastic lid you just took off the coffee cup you bought at the 7-11, and mold that softened plastic into a sharp shiv about three inches that will easily puncture your jugular vein. Ban lids on coffee cups, oh hell yes.
In short and in summary, anything in trade that you want to ban, any man can learn to produce using some pretty damn crude tools and materials. It isn't cost effective as life is lived today, but regress life like you Regressives want to do, and what wasn't cost effective becomes a necessity…and it will be done. You can't stop it.
That is where you show your broken brain, thinking you can make a law and everyone will automatically willingly and voluntarily live by that law.
Can you say, independence and Black Markets?
LOL, muirduck, Tex, meet No_Red_Bull, you guys will get along.
BTW Don,
Like the play on words.
Your vitriolic posts usually keep me away from the comment section. I wish Don would take notice and remove you. You offer nothing and make the comments section of Cafe Hayek less interesting.
Well said. Libertarians to rule the world! (/irony off)
I like his comments.
I like vidyohs's posts even though I don't agree with all of them.
Even muirgeo is allowed to post his tired old rhetoric over and over. If you don't like it, don't read it.
Scary!
One reason for my conservative inconsistency: Defense has relatively clear outcomes. We're either safer or not. Sure, there are gray areas, but when threatened good intentions matter much less than results.
In just about all other areas of government, intentions obfuscate results. In other words, as long as intentions are good, results are debatable and perceived good intentions can override actual results for a long while.
Zinn was supposed to be an anarchist. I think he wanted the bottom-up direct action of worker-syndicates seizing the means of production and operating them without the intermediary of the state. Judging by his last published writings, he didn't have any great faith in Obama's management of the economy.
In fact, I'm going to guess you don't know a whole lot about what Zinn actually believed. As Murray Rothbard once said, it is no sin to be ignorant. However, if you are to opine it is incumbent upon you to learn a little rather than assume all leftists fit your preconceptions.
Well-said!!!!
Were Zinn still alive, I would ask him…
Your timing is very bad.
I like his comments.
So do I.
Ever since the comment section went to this format, the name is at the beginning of the post. This gives you a simple remedy. Unlike our federal government, the Cafe isn't a Nanny State.
Vitriolic? LOL!
Actually I offer a lot, you just don't want to read it because as I have said (stand-by now I am going to offer wisdom) looney lefties can tolerate anything but opposition. See there, now that was something you hadn't ever got on Huffington Post or Moveon.org.
Now you can't say that anymore, Billy P.
I notice you didn't take note of the stupidity of the post I responded to, now did you. Shall we just let such BS lie out there to act as truth because the presumption wasn't rebutted? It deserved the reply it got.
You and others like to drop in here, well maybe not you so much because you don't stand out in my memory as anyone worth noting, but the others like to drop in and make stupid, disingenuous, duplicitous comments in the most denigrating manner possible; and are just so shocked and amazed, hurt no less, when I give it back to them in their style.
And, if that willing in-your-face honesty keeps you away, you found your way in, please find your way out…….bi bi!
One hard question, sir.
“Zinn was supposed to be an anarchist. I think he wanted the bottom-up direct action of worker-syndicates seizing the means of production and operating them without the intermediary of the state.”
I am glad you used the word supposed; because would you agree with me that if your second sentence is accurate, is it possible for worker-syndicates to “seize” the means of production and that still come under the theology of anarchism?
I am curious as to how that would work.
Vidyohs,
You are the Glen Beck of the comments section. You missed your true calling in life, namely working for a hot air balloon company.
Well…I think vidyohs can take it down a notch but I do find myself agreeing with him most of the time…maybe his rudeness is a result of frustration caused by protectionists, leftists, warmongers, nanny-staters, huffingtonposters…!
Anarchism is a political ideology/philosophy, not a theology. There are strains of “Christian anarchism” a la Tolstoy or Dorothy Day, but there are also “Christian Democratic” political parties.
Murray Rothbard, the anarcho-capitalist, sometimes encouraged such seizures. He used the term “homesteading”. His view was that the State is illegitimate, all its claims to property are illegitimate, and thus should be considered unowned and ripe for the taking. When he was a fellow traveler with the New Left he viewed the corporatism of our current economy as endemic, and as a result nominally “private” owners were not considered private at all, but rather extensions of the State and beneficiaries of its largesse. Similarly, the 19th century individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner urged the Irish peasantry to seize land from their landlords and attempted to instigate slave uprisings to seize plantations in the American south. Many anarchist theorists have engaged in what Per Bylund derisively calls “blueprint anarchism” where they detail how the new order will work. Some may argue that in many of those blueprints there are very state-like entities that are merely called something else. Bob Black discussed this in My Anarchism Problem.
I skip most anything written by disingenuous dan unless vid ripped into him, in which case I'll skim over his hair splitting to see what set vid off.
Don't like it, don't read it.
That applies to the radio as well. One knob changes the station, the other turns it off.
Go play with your knobs.
Why thank you, bold sir, comparing me to Glenn Beck is quite complimentary. Oh I know I am supposed to feel insulted by your hot air balloon thrust, LOL.
I just enjoy fighting the battle on the same terms you lefties do, and using those tactics better.
I know we in opposition are supposed to quake in our boots and run when accused of being mean if we respond to stupidity with caustic humor. I couldn't care less that you're offended by my directness and frankness.
I'll make you the same offer Beck made the Whitehouse and Congress when he sat that red phone on his desk. It is a dedicated line, just as my participation on this Cafe is a dedicated presence. When you see me write something that is a lie, or an unjust accusation, ring my red phone.
Now pay very close attention to my writing style because I know the qualifiers in the English language, I know when they should be used, and I use them in accordance with my training, which is, if I do not have absolute proof then I qualify.
You may not like how I say things, hey that's okay, I don't like how you and your side tries to steal from me using the vote.
The thug mugger with a gun, or the thug socialist with a vote, both are an anathema to me, and I will forcibly fight back.
Sir,
You left out thieves and liars.
I guess I have to spend more time with Lysander, as so far in my readings I haven't got to the part about him being an anarchist, or least I have come to that interpretation yet.
Now I gratefully know he does advance the theory that the government founded by the constitution is only relevant to those who signed it as it is indeed a contract or compact, and we do know and believe that no one can contract for another, so signatures of long dead people could not bind Lysander, nor you and I. In case you aren't familiar with things I have posted here frequently in the past, the lack of jurisdiction over me is the key weapon in my battle with the over whether they own me or I am a free man. (Interesting battle, BTW)
I am not familiar with the writings of Murray Rothbard, but I share the belief you say he held about state ownership property (meaning land in my understanding), a legal myth, a fiction, can not own.
But, this diverges from this quote, in reference to Zinn, I asked about: “I think he wanted the bottom-up direct action of worker-syndicates seizing the means of production and operating…….”
I took the words “seizing the means of production and operating…” to mean that worker-syndicates would be seizing manufacturing plants and factories, which is quite different from a meaning contained in the belief that the state should not own the land. True land is in itself a means of production, but even when agriculture was king in America it is hard to imagine worker-syndicates seizing farms.
But, then how do worker-syndicates legitimately have any right to seize anything as a worker-syndicate is also a legal fiction along the identical lines of government? Why would a worker-syndicate have any more legitimate right to any land or means of production over the rights of an individual? In the absence of other government, wouldn't the worker-syndicate become the defacto government over the means of production they seized?
How would they produce anything of value if there was no rational organization, structure, or standards over the process. And, how is that going to happen if some form of governing body or person isn't sitting in a position of enforcement power?
In truth, I can't help but have the feeling that if Zinn expressed that as his belief, he was really just trying to get to where socialism could be imposed even if brought in under a false flag.
In support of my feeling, I regularly listen to Houston's own Pacifica (communist radio) KPFT, where Howard Zinn is adored. I always got the feeling they consider him a fellow traveler, not an allied anarchist. Of course this is not proof of anything but my own assessment based on the data I have.
Don't count on it. I've never seen them reign in outrageous statements from people they substantively agree with. Maybe it's happened but it would be news to me.
Which is fine, honestly. I like an effectively unmoderated blog. But I sympathize – vidyohs regularly detracts from what Don and Russ have to offer, and he often does so by viciously insulting people who come here to have a discussion.
Has anyone other than muirgeo ever denigrated you, vidyohs?
And even in muirgeo's case, half the time it's provoked, to be honest.
“Seems to me that an evil brute pointing guns at foreigners remains an evil brute when he turns ’round to point those guns at fellow citizens.”
Seems to me that most of the guns are pointed at us. That the guns are only pointed at foreigners as necessary to protect the ability to continue to point guns at us. Politics is a continuation of war by other means.
Sure, you try and do it on a regular basis, with your disingenuous promotions.
Just your presentation of a nonreality. Look above at my response to NRB, then look below to my conversation with TGGP.
NRB came here blathering socialist idiocy with no discussion intended, and TGGP came here in honest discussion. The former is treated with the contempt he/she deserves, and the latter with the respect he deserves.
That is real world, my youngling, at least the real world I grew up in and the real world that accumulated the wealth that your fellow travelers and heros are now trying like hell to seize across the board.
All your disingenuous and duplicitous posts are not clever enough to disguise the direction you'd be happy to see the country and the people go.
Smile, my youngling, you are known here.
But what's the point? Have you ever changed your mind? Probably not.
I should note that I'm a proponent of capitalism (even actually existing capitalist compared to actually existing anything else), and cannot fully embrace even the anarchist version of capitalism right now (as Randall Holcombe suggests, it just may not be a stable equilibrium).
I hardly think my interpretation of Spooner as an anarchist is unusual. He famously claimed that the State is no different from a band of highwaymen. The idea that we may only be bound to governance we have agreed to is also sometimes called “voluntaryism”, and is basically a form of anarchism.
I used to post and read the comments here more often, but there are just too many other blogs out there demanding my time. So I am not familiar with other things you have written.
There are actually some people called “Georgists” or “geolibertarians” who claim it is illegitimate for anyone to own land. Thus, they claim the one legitimate tax is the “single tax” on unimproved land. It is a marginal view now but was once highly influential among libertarians. Oppenheimer, Nock and Chodorov were all adherents to it and “The Freeman” was originally an output for that viewpoint.
Bob Black makes a similar point about such a syndicate being a de facto government in the link I posted earlier. Anarcho-syndicalism was perhaps at its most popular and successful in Spain in the 1930s. Bryan Caplan has written about what happened in “The Anarcho-Statists of Spain”. As you might guess, he doesn't have a very high view of syndicalism. He says two different things happened in the countryside vs the cities. In the countryside the anarcho-syndicalist unions/parties succeeded in implementing their kooky ideas and had complete control, which turned out badly. In the cities, the workers ended up acting like capitalists. That shouldn't be too surprising, there are plenty of worker-owned co-ops within capitalist countries that act just like big businesses.
It's not that hard to imagine workers seizing farms. There had been slave uprisings before (though I don't know if they continued operating the farms). James Scott, who seems to lean some variety of left-wing anarchism, says in “Seeing Like a State” the peasants spontaneously seized and ran the farms during the Russian Revolution, though afterward they were forcibly “collectivized” by the Bolsheviks. I think similar things happened during the French Revolution.
I don't know how much thought Zinn gave to theoretical anarchism. I think he was more interested in current real-world applied issues (anti-war movement, civil rights/civil liberties). I haven't actually read any of his books, but that's my impression.
Note I didn't say you were wrong about Lysander, I just said that, in my quite likely more meager reading of Lysander, I had not made that interpretation. Now that you've suggested it, I'll look closer.
I know that workers at various times have risen up and seized the farm from its owners, but my point was that in most cases they probably didn't get a whole hell of a lot from it, hardly worth the effort unless life in general where the farm is located is also just a living hell for everyone. I guess I am saying that in my view, and in general, while a farm may produce a tidy wealth for one man, typically that wealth divided amongst many men isn't going very far. It may, in the cases of knowing, competent, and ambitious men, provide at best a subsistence level income if it is divided and such men do not have the burden of the lazy, incompetent, and ignorant hanging on their shoulders.
So, we agree that worker-syndicates seizing the means of production and running them without some “form” of government just isn't going to work out very well, and as it has to have some fashion of “governing body” it hardly qualifies as anarchism. You offer historical documented proof of that, I think.
Not to change the subject, but this begs the question of: When collectivism (socialism/communism) fails in every form, fashion, and instance it is tried, how is it that we still have here in the USA the largest body of believers in the world in that failed system, and who work to see it implemented here?
And, this blog and the people would change my mind about what?
The brighter ones have made me rethink many things, sometimes my opinion is altered, sometimes not.
I guarantee you that no socialist or socialist enabler has ever done so about socialism, nor will they.
On one side of the scale is the “feeling” that socialism is so nice; on the other side is an overwhelming mass of historical and current evidence that socialism is devastating.
Ignore the evidence and change my mind? Not likely.
Now what do you have to offer other than bland inane whine?
Workers taking over the means of production: You can see it in this documentary here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426596/
Great post. You point to something that I think is too overlooked. The logical inconsistencies of social democrats (the democrats) and the nationalists (republicans) always baffle me.
I haven't closely read the histories of the French & Russian revolutions, but my impression is that the peasants did alright on initially seizing the farms, but later on suffered when they came under the eye of the new regime. Your point about dividing the income of a farm seems to me a non-sequitur. Farm-workers were already living off the divided income of the farm, by “firing the boss” they have only reduced the headcount income needs to be divided among!
Albert Jay Nock distinguished between small-g “government” and the State. If a club runs itself by Robert's Rules of Order and elects officers to run meetings, we can say that it is being “governed”. But that's not the same thing as being a State. Anarchists all oppose the State, but most (other than Bob Black) would not say they oppose governance.
I highly doubt that the USA has the largest body of believers in that system. The U.S never had a major socialist party. Even the Democrats are technically the party of Grover Cleveland, and most Europeans say they would be considered center-right in their own countries. In India right now there is still an active Maoist insurgency, and Maoist rebels actually succeeded in toppling the Nepalese government not too long ago. Should I even have to bring up Latin America? For an explanation of why these ideas have such appeal, check out The People's Romance.
vidyohs: I guess I have to spend more time with Lysander, as so far in my readings I haven't got to the part about him being an anarchist, or least I have come to that interpretation yet. [...] Note I didn't say you were wrong about Lysander, I just said that, in my quite likely more meager reading of Lysander, I had not made that interpretation. Now that you've suggested it, I'll look closer.
Well, from the sounds of it you've already read No Treason. If you haven't yet gotten the anarchistic implications of Spooner's view, you might consult his later books, in which he most clearly argues that he views any form of government whatever as illegitimate, e.g. his “Letter to Thomas F. Bayard: Challenging his right — and that of all the other so-called senators and representatives in Congress — to exercise any legislative power whatever over the people of the United States” at http://praxeology.net/LS-LB.htm or his short book “Natural Law; or
The Science of Justice: A Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society; showing that all legislation whatsoever is an absurdity, a usurpation, and a crime” at http://praxeology.net/LS-NL-1.htm . Spooner makes it pretty clear there.
I know that workers at various times have risen up and seized the farm from its owners, but my point was that in most cases they probably didn't get a whole hell of a lot from it, hardly worth the effort unless life in general where the farm is located is also just a living hell for everyone. I guess I am saying that in my view, and in general, while a farm may produce a tidy wealth for one man, typically that wealth divided amongst many men isn't going very far.
Well, um, in situations where peasants get together and seize control over farms, it has typically been the case that they were seizing control over farms that they were already working on as their primary means of subsistence. The difference is that before they had to work according to the requirements set by a government-privileged landlord, and to turn a hefty share of the fruits of their labor over to him, whereas afterwards they didn't have to do that. They were already surviving on shares of the income generated from a single (typically very large) farm or plantation; the difference is that, after the expropriation, the shares they got were no longer reduced by the leeching of government-appointed tax farmers and landlords. (* Government-appointed because the landlord typically owed his control over the land to a grant from the Crown or the State based on nothing more than the naked exercise of government power and privilege (to conquest and feudalism in Russia or France; to conquest and colonialism in European-colonized territories in Latin America or Africa).
Not symetrical. On the other side of our “evil brute pointing guns at foreigners” are foreign “brutes” pointing guns at us. We sensibly expect our government to hold the foreign “brutes” at bay. We have a duty to ensure that our government never turns around to aim its guns at us.
Not symetrical. On the other side of our “evil brute pointing guns at foreigners” are foreign “brutes” pointing guns at us. We sensibly expect our government to hold the foreign “brutes” at bay. We have a duty to ensure that our government never turns around to aim its guns at us.
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