Dear libertarians and free-marketarians,
It seems, I'm truly sorry to say, that the philosophical undercurrent of your thinking gravitates toward, or emanates from a fearful skepticism about the state’s lack of potential for benevolence, and its oft demonstrated high potential for transgressing against its citizens’ liberties and interests. I don't wish to be polemic here, but it would appear, I’m afraid, that your darksome conception of the societal agenda of leftists, and of the futuristic, socially-engineered state they supposedly have in store for us is somewhat B-movieishly Orwellian. Indeed, you seem to take it quite for granted that some kind of dystopian nightmare is the only and the inexorable outcome of what you consider to be the left’s progressive pipedream of social justice for all.
Well, I for one beg to disagree that an anti-libertarian statist system is the catastrophic anticlimax that all socialist thinking unavoidably leads to. This last sentence may very well already have your minds forming erroneous preconceptions about yours truly, so let me crucially clarify something up front, I am not at all some sort of statist socialist, in actuality I’m more of an anarcho-communist. As you’ll shortly become aware, I’m admittedly quite anti-capitalist and make no bourgeois bones about the fact that I do advocate socialist remedies for our society’s socioeconomic ills. However, the ultimate form of social organization that I would like to see human society aspire toward is decidedly not an overly bureaucratized, Big Brotherly socialist system, but one in which all property and power are communalized, in which the whole public sphere of life, i.e. both the political and economic spheres are thoroughly controlled by the people themselves through the application of authentically participatory, direct democracy (you know, democracy uncompromised by the ole business-political complex).
Such a society ideally would be divided into small social units, locally manageable by their members, and linked with other units into an interdependent and cooperative league of communities. One that recognizes the fundamental and liberating life-truth, that no living organism is an island unto itself, that everyone and thing exists and operates within a mutually dependent and creative matrix, and that individuals must go along with the ontologically deep mutuality of this matrix to get along.
Which is all to say that in my view the best form and arrangement of society would be one that reflects the creative cosmic modus operandi of life’s inherent fruitfulness, bounty, and splendorous potential coming into actualization through the unified diversity of all things. That is, we need to embrace e pluribus unum as more than a mere motto, we need to structure its sublime spirit into the politico-economic morphology and status quo of our nation and world.
Alas though, the excessive economic individualism of capitalism, it’s advocacy of self-interest as the chief guiding principle of economics and life, grievously errs on the side of an unbalanced emphasis on the diversity-individuality part of the equation. The cruel consequences of this out-of-balance, out-of-whack emphasis are all around us today. Ours is a society full of atomized individuals wrapped up in the privatistic pursuit of profit, possessions, and pleasure – many of any of whom come to disappointingly find that such a selfishly-lived, materialistically-driven existence is less than fulfilling at a deep level. Such egoistic individualists then turn to various unhealthy form of escapism and faux fulfillment to self-medicate the gnawing ache of their “inner void”. You can read about the sociological ill-effects of this in the morning newspaper of any big city (and many small towns), you know, rampant drug addiction and the criminality it fuels. The spiritual vapidity of the lives of the solipsistically self-interested citizens of capitalist societies is the true, underlying cause of a host of their troubles.
Of course not only is the existential lot of modern man under capitalism less than spiritually satisfying, it’s also painfully less than materially comfortable and secure. For in a system of individual competition, for whatever reasons, not every individual is going to fare well, this is another fact of life that capitalism unwisely and callously does not take account of and compassionately adjust for. That is, in a system based on the principle of “Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost”, there are just way too many folks who are going to be found in the hindmost socioeconomic demographics of society. Too many folks who don’t have enough to live in a fashion consistent with the intrinsic sacredness of life and the inalienable right to dignity of human beings. Too many folks who are subjected to gross miscarriages of social justice and the criminal greed of those at the top of the societal food chain. Too many socially damned members of the human family.
Moreover, the self-aggrandizing and ruthless individualism promoted by the narcissistic ethos of capitalism primes it to be a system that allows alpha individuals to rise to economic preeminence and dominance. A dominance which they then use to utterly subvert and do away with any fairness and meritocracy that’s theoretically supposed to inhere in the capitalist order of things; and to systematically exploit, victimize, and pauperize working-class men and women whose labor produces the wealth they voraciously expropriate.
And the closer a society approaches the free-marketeer’s theoretical beau ideal of private enterprise and ownership, the more of an exploitive and greed-ruled system capitalism devolves into. The more of a baronial system you end up with! Say what?! What do I mean by baronial? Well, think of the way the laissez-faire and unregulated individualism of the wild, wild West permitted not a meritocracy of small homesteaders but rather the rise to dominance of land barons and alpha ranchers who came to monopolize vast tracts of acreage. And who commonly employed heavy-handed and deadly methods to attain and maintain their wealth, such as hiring gunmen to enforce their will and rule, as well as co-opting town sheriffs and political officials.
Then, of course, in industrial sectors of the less governmentally-fettered economy of the 1800s you had the so-called robber barons (Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, John D. Rockefeller, that whole rogues gallery), whose unabashed avarice took them to the pinnacle of capitalist success, where they used their money-power to rig the game for themselves, to the disadvantage of capitalism’s smaller players and proletarian pawns.
I won’t even go off on a digression about the virtual gangsterism practiced by the heroes of American economic history in the more ruggedly individualistic 19th century; about the way the greater liberty that men of big business were at to have discontent workers and union activists literally beaten down, sometimes at the hands of police acting as their private thugs, made a malicious mockery of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and vaunted “free market forces”. In short, a system, such as “free-market” capitalism, that proposes to give permissive, licentious freedom to the unenlightened individualism and will-to-dominance that lurks in the reptilian recesses of our triune brains is a profoundly corruptible system indeed, one that will invariably be corrupted into precisely what we have today, a predatory and plutocratic power structure that leaves billions, with a B, at home and in the Third World, cold and hungry and powerless.
To recap, this is what we get when we opt, as a civilization, for an economic system predicated upon excessive, morally and spiritually shallow, selfish individualism. The sort of libertarian socialism that I advocate as an alternative is not at all a chilling philosophy of soulless statists and social engineers who wish to craft a technocratic tyranny in which everyone’s path in life is prefabricated from the cradle to the grave, with not a moment of free choice in between. I don’t fancy living in such a society any more than you-all do, but neither do I fancy living under the ferally dog-eat-dog system that is free-market capitalism, nor under the tyranny of the tycoons and titans of the corporatocracy that will inexorably take form. The preferable third way is a system of equally shared resources, equally shared ownership of the means of productions, and equally shared power, all through the direct-democratic public administration of each of us.
To intentionally oversimplify it, “free market” capitalism would inevitable equal the rule of capitalist fat cats, and libertarian socialism equals the rule of all the people, hopefully with wisdom and liberty and justice for all. Of course this won’t always be the case with flawed human beings, but we’ll enjoy more liberty and justice under our own rule than we will if we choose a system that allows successful capitalists, with all their dangerous character flaws, to unilaterally run the show for us.
It seems, I'm truly sorry to say, that the philosophical undercurrent of your thinking gravitates toward, or emanates from a fearful skepticism about the state’s lack of potential for benevolence, and its oft demonstrated high potential for transgressing against its citizens’ liberties and interests. I don't wish to be polemic here, but it would appear, I’m afraid, that your darksome conception of the societal agenda of leftists, and of the futuristic, socially-engineered state they supposedly have in store for us is somewhat B-movieishly Orwellian. Indeed, you seem to take it quite for granted that some kind of dystopian nightmare is the only and the inexorable outcome of what you consider to be the left’s progressive pipedream of social justice for all.
Well, I for one beg to disagree that an anti-libertarian statist system is the catastrophic anticlimax that all socialist thinking unavoidably leads to. This last sentence may very well already have your minds forming erroneous preconceptions about yours truly, so let me crucially clarify something up front, I am not at all some sort of statist socialist, in actuality I’m more of an anarcho-communist. As you’ll shortly become aware, I’m admittedly quite anti-capitalist and make no bourgeois bones about the fact that I do advocate socialist remedies for our society’s socioeconomic ills. However, the ultimate form of social organization that I would like to see human society aspire toward is decidedly not an overly bureaucratized, Big Brotherly socialist system, but one in which all property and power are communalized, in which the whole public sphere of life, i.e. both the political and economic spheres are thoroughly controlled by the people themselves through the application of authentically participatory, direct democracy (you know, democracy uncompromised by the ole business-political complex).
Such a society ideally would be divided into small social units, locally manageable by their members, and linked with other units into an interdependent and cooperative league of communities. One that recognizes the fundamental and liberating life-truth, that no living organism is an island unto itself, that everyone and thing exists and operates within a mutually dependent and creative matrix, and that individuals must go along with the ontologically deep mutuality of this matrix to get along.
Which is all to say that in my view the best form and arrangement of society would be one that reflects the creative cosmic modus operandi of life’s inherent fruitfulness, bounty, and splendorous potential coming into actualization through the unified diversity of all things. That is, we need to embrace e pluribus unum as more than a mere motto, we need to structure its sublime spirit into the politico-economic morphology and status quo of our nation and world.
Alas though, the excessive economic individualism of capitalism, it’s advocacy of self-interest as the chief guiding principle of economics and life, grievously errs on the side of an unbalanced emphasis on the diversity-individuality part of the equation. The cruel consequences of this out-of-balance, out-of-whack emphasis are all around us today. Ours is a society full of atomized individuals wrapped up in the privatistic pursuit of profit, possessions, and pleasure – many of any of whom come to disappointingly find that such a selfishly-lived, materialistically-driven existence is less than fulfilling at a deep level. Such egoistic individualists then turn to various unhealthy form of escapism and faux fulfillment to self-medicate the gnawing ache of their “inner void”. You can read about the sociological ill-effects of this in the morning newspaper of any big city (and many small towns), you know, rampant drug addiction and the criminality it fuels. The spiritual vapidity of the lives of the solipsistically self-interested citizens of capitalist societies is the true, underlying cause of a host of their troubles.
Of course not only is the existential lot of modern man under capitalism less than spiritually satisfying, it’s also painfully less than materially comfortable and secure. For in a system of individual competition, for whatever reasons, not every individual is going to fare well, this is another fact of life that capitalism unwisely and callously does not take account of and compassionately adjust for. That is, in a system based on the principle of “Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost”, there are just way too many folks who are going to be found in the hindmost socioeconomic demographics of society. Too many folks who don’t have enough to live in a fashion consistent with the intrinsic sacredness of life and the inalienable right to dignity of human beings. Too many folks who are subjected to gross miscarriages of social justice and the criminal greed of those at the top of the societal food chain. Too many socially damned members of the human family.
Moreover, the self-aggrandizing and ruthless individualism promoted by the narcissistic ethos of capitalism primes it to be a system that allows alpha individuals to rise to economic preeminence and dominance. A dominance which they then use to utterly subvert and do away with any fairness and meritocracy that’s theoretically supposed to inhere in the capitalist order of things; and to systematically exploit, victimize, and pauperize working-class men and women whose labor produces the wealth they voraciously expropriate.
And the closer a society approaches the free-marketeer’s theoretical beau ideal of private enterprise and ownership, the more of an exploitive and greed-ruled system capitalism devolves into. The more of a baronial system you end up with! Say what?! What do I mean by baronial? Well, think of the way the laissez-faire and unregulated individualism of the wild, wild West permitted not a meritocracy of small homesteaders but rather the rise to dominance of land barons and alpha ranchers who came to monopolize vast tracts of acreage. And who commonly employed heavy-handed and deadly methods to attain and maintain their wealth, such as hiring gunmen to enforce their will and rule, as well as co-opting town sheriffs and political officials.
Then, of course, in industrial sectors of the less governmentally-fettered economy of the 1800s you had the so-called robber barons (Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, John D. Rockefeller, that whole rogues gallery), whose unabashed avarice took them to the pinnacle of capitalist success, where they used their money-power to rig the game for themselves, to the disadvantage of capitalism’s smaller players and proletarian pawns.
I won’t even go off on a digression about the virtual gangsterism practiced by the heroes of American economic history in the more ruggedly individualistic 19th century; about the way the greater liberty that men of big business were at to have discontent workers and union activists literally beaten down, sometimes at the hands of police acting as their private thugs, made a malicious mockery of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and vaunted “free market forces”. In short, a system, such as “free-market” capitalism, that proposes to give permissive, licentious freedom to the unenlightened individualism and will-to-dominance that lurks in the reptilian recesses of our triune brains is a profoundly corruptible system indeed, one that will invariably be corrupted into precisely what we have today, a predatory and plutocratic power structure that leaves billions, with a B, at home and in the Third World, cold and hungry and powerless.
To recap, this is what we get when we opt, as a civilization, for an economic system predicated upon excessive, morally and spiritually shallow, selfish individualism. The sort of libertarian socialism that I advocate as an alternative is not at all a chilling philosophy of soulless statists and social engineers who wish to craft a technocratic tyranny in which everyone’s path in life is prefabricated from the cradle to the grave, with not a moment of free choice in between. I don’t fancy living in such a society any more than you-all do, but neither do I fancy living under the ferally dog-eat-dog system that is free-market capitalism, nor under the tyranny of the tycoons and titans of the corporatocracy that will inexorably take form. The preferable third way is a system of equally shared resources, equally shared ownership of the means of productions, and equally shared power, all through the direct-democratic public administration of each of us.
To intentionally oversimplify it, “free market” capitalism would inevitable equal the rule of capitalist fat cats, and libertarian socialism equals the rule of all the people, hopefully with wisdom and liberty and justice for all. Of course this won’t always be the case with flawed human beings, but we’ll enjoy more liberty and justice under our own rule than we will if we choose a system that allows successful capitalists, with all their dangerous character flaws, to unilaterally run the show for us.
