On Amoralist Anarchism

Thursday, January 22, 2009

I've been a part of numerous online social networks or general social groups online that contains some amoralist anarchists, who either are former libertarian anarchists who have come to reject libertarianism or they are anarchists who rejected libertarianism from the get-go and reached the conclusion of anarchism from a completely different conceptual framework.

On the most personal level, the youtuber D4Shawn and the persona formerly known as Stodles (who now runs this website) are the two amoralist anarchists that I've interacted with most. D4Shawn used to be a libertarian anarchist, and made a separate channel one day trying to approach anarchism from a more utilitarian or relativistic perspective, which has recently devolved into an ethical nihilism. Stodles never was a libertarian, he jumped straight from white nationalism to anarchism, which created some confusion about his position along the way.

Both Stodles and D4Shawn philosophically reject libertarianism while still prefering anarchism. D4Shawn effectively claims that ethics is completely useless metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, and thinks that we should be speaking in purely preferential terms. Stodles even appears to go so far as to imply that any conception of ethics inherently leads to rulership. On the other hand, both of them practically take positions that may very well tend towards libertarian anarchism, but it is functionally a mere statement of preferance from their perspective. This starts to hint at the complications that leads me to see this approach as silly.

While these amoralists may philosophicaly reject libertarianism, they essentially practically support it and they cannot completely avoid value-laden terminology. So while they may loudly proclaim their opposition to ethical principles and rights-concepts until they are blue in the face, they ultimately would like to live their lives in a way consistant with certain ethical principles and rights-concepts. While, unlike Stefan Molyneux, I am not argueing that this by itself proves those ethical principles and rights-concepts, it certainly gives reason for pause when comparing one's behavior to one's philosophy and may hint at a need to reanalyze the moral-practical dichotomy.

Anarchism is indistinguishable from anomie if there is an ethical vacuum. There is no such thing as a society in an ethical vacuum. Even if one concedes to the existance of some kind of subjectivity, I don't think it logically follows that ethics is completely useless and irrelevant. An anarchist society either cannot conceptually be an anarchist society to begin with or will not last as an anarchist society for long if its philosophical and cultural norms deliberately undermine it. So it doesn't make sense to act like anarchism is compatible with any set of values or to act as if all values are equal.

Various ethical principles can undermine anarchism, help foster it and widen its scope. Furthermore, merely having an ethical principle, wether it's sensible or not, doesn't necessarily lead to the use of violence to enforce it. Questions of the use of violence inherently are ethical questions themselves, and the behavior of an individual doesn't always align with their philosophy. There really is no such thing as a person who has no ethical considerations, and this includes self-proclaimed ethical nihilists and various post-modernists. Noone can really divorce themselves from goals, reasons for goals and means towards goals.

Such things almost always have a reason. It makes no sense to proclaim that you favor a society in which rulership is normatively shunned, and then say you have no real reason for it other than preferance. To borrow Molyneuxian terminology, that reduces it to the level of "I like ice cream". Surely, a cause such as anarchism is not at the level of "I like ice cream". If one is putting foreward anarchism as a goal, surely one must explain why it is your goal beyond a mere appeal to the fact that your do favor the goal. It makes no sense to have a goal, and then proclaim neutrality as soon as the question of its foundation and application comes up.

So, by the very least, this ethical nihilism is highly impractical. If taken to its extremes, one is simply advocating anomie. If one is more practical about it, one is nonetheless sort of advocating both anarchy and anomie at once. On one hand, I think there's a sense in which this ethical nihilism is harmless, since the ethical nihilist may practically take a libertarian type of position anyways and most people aren't going to practically take ethical nihilism seriously. Sometimes they even bring up some interesting points. On the other hand, it poses a threat to libertarian anarchism to the extent that it encourages people to either think that anarchism is a pandora's box compatible with any set of values or to ultimately reject libertarian values in the name of putting on a facade of neutrality.

Posted by Brainpolice at 6:12 PM

Does Freedom have a Social Context?

May 24, 2010

Is it really the case that freedom is a separable factor from the kind of social atmosphere in which people exist? I think not. The particular conditions within a society is linked with people's capacity to independently make decisions about their own lives. This includes the possibility of mobility and the structural landscape of power. A social context in which there is a significant disparity of power, including the kind of power that comes with ownership and wealth, functions as a limit on freedom in that it is more susceptible to certain consequences.

A social hierarchy is what occurs when disparities of power are institutionalized and used to limit the freedom of certain people. What this entails, in effect, is that those in positions of power have the most freedom, while those who are in a subordinate or dependant position relative to such power structures have the least freedom. While freedom might not be something that is quantifiable in the sense of mathematical exactitude, it is relative to the particular circumstances that would allow an individual to exercise their faculties and live without appeal to a command structure. When power is centralized or densely concentrated, a breeding ground for authoritarianism is in place.

When the alternative to subordination to authority requires a mobile maneuver and a sacrifice of well-being, to the point where there really is no viable alternative at all or the only alternatives are just subordination to another authority, people aren't really free in the social context. They are systematically prevented from being free by the circumstances of the environment. The possibility of full consent is precluded. At best, they acquiesce for practical reasons. And it is most definitely not simply "nature", some sort of inherent necessity at the level of a law of physics, that causes them to be unfree. The kind of environment in question is a social one having to do with the particular distribution of power.

It is true that a position of power is not absolutely or inherently authoritarian, in the sense that someone can refrain from exercising it or using it to impose an institutional monopoly. But it is also true that the circumstance opens up the possibility of this and that authoritarian consequences are ultimately more likely to occur when power is concentrated. For example, a society in which the economic structure of power is plutocratic or one in which the distribution of land is feudal, is logically compatiblewith and an apt atmosphere for authoritarianism. The people who exclusively hold such massive amounts of power are in a better-suited position to control other people.

This is part of why I really don't understand certain proclamations that some people make to the effect of saying that particular socio-economic and cultural circumstances are effectively irrelevant "so long as everyone is free", or worse, "so long as I'm free". This has also been expressed in the form of a "consequences be damned" mentality. But the problem is that this presumes the two to be absolutely separable. To be sure, perhaps it is possible for a society to at least nominally be free and yet have a sick culture or be stricken with poverty. But aside from the fact that there would still be a reason for opposing a sick culture and mass-poverty in and of themselves, the idea that such an atmosphere can last without internal tensions causing it to be unfree strikes me as ridiculous.

I would say that this kind of "freedom" doesn't amount to much if it ultimately just means that most people live in a horrible socio-economic atmosphere or that society ghettoizes itself into fiefdoms. Such conditions are undesirable regardless of any nominal "freedom" that comes along with them. To have no real concern about the actual condition of people's lives in the name of "freedom" seems to turn freedom into a fairly useless abstraction, while reflecting what could frankly be called psychological bankruptcy and a low moral character. I would question the character of anyone that just said "screw society, as long as I'm left alone" and meant that plainly. It seems like more of an anti-social streak than a well thought out philosophy of freedom.

Healthy social atmospheres are desirable both for their own sake and in the sense that they integrate with freedom. It could be said that freedom is a prerequisite for a healthy social atmosphere and it could also be said that a healthy social atmosphere is a prerequisite for freedom. They are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are robbed of substance without each other. This is a more holistic view. It is also a more society-based view, because I'm insisting on freedom and society as being reconcilable and mutually dependant. A philosophy that openly (although sometimes not-so-openly) says "down with society" in its one-eyed zeal to respect some narrow set of principles such as property rights is doomed from the start.

Posted by Brainpolice at 7:57 AM

The Usefulness of a Left/Right Distinction

Monday, May 17, 2010

I'd like to defend the proposition that a left/right distinction is useful even for libertarians, although the proposition does have some qualifications.

There is a sense in which it may make sense to say that libertarians transcend the left/right dichotomy at least in the more mainstream and common way that it is presented, in terms of the over simplistic choice between contemporary liberalism and conservatism. Libertarians do not fall neatly into such boxes. Libertarianism could be presented as either synthesizing elements that are typically associated with both or as falling outside of the paradigm because it represents two sides of the same statist coin that libertarians oppose. When the dichotomy is presented in such terms, then perhaps libertarians can claim to be unique.

But it may also be the case that reducing everything to a new dichotomy of statist vs. non-statist or anti-statist can obfuscate the details of political ideologies. One reason for this is that precisely what counts as statist and non-statist may be defined in a way that is contingent on certain norms that are in dispute. Precisely what norms are sufficient for a stateless society to arise and sustainably function is debatable at least on consequentialist grounds. Libertarians sometimes draw different conclusions about what common principles imply. Simply saying that it's about aggression, while doing this in a way that presumes ones own particular take on things, doesn't seem to take the multitude of positions at play into account.

It also isn't clear by any means that all libertarians have completely done away with baggage that can be traced back to the more common left/right dichotomy. People come into libertarianism from different angles, and this may influence what libertarianism means to them. Libertarians do not exist in a vacuum with respect to historical context and contemporary political ideologies. There are distinctions as to how various libertarians align themselves relative to other political groups and what they distinguish as being compatible and incompatible with the core philosophy. This alone is part of precisely why there is inter-libertarian factionalism.

Once one digs into the meat of political philosophy at a broader level, a vast multitude of particular positions on multiple spectrums can emerge. This includes views on social authority, property, the distribution of resources, organizational structure, cultural norms, and so on. In light of more detailed questions such as this, the simple and perhaps vague reduction of political philosophy to "aggression" and "government" doesn't seem to tell us very much by itself, especially when one takes into account the ways in which these different spectrums may overlap or be integrated by people. I suspect that a "plumbline", in the sense of a political philosophy that is genuinely consistently "thin", simply doesn't exist.

A left/right distinction, although things obviously get much more specific than these two terms, is useful insofar as the integrated social philosophies of particular libertarians are inevitably colored by different values or norms in a way that forms distinct views that simply cannot be reduced to a vaguely defined opposition to aggression or the state. Once one begins to disambiguate that, "thickness" of some sort is already at least implicitly entering the picture. The moment that one forms a libertarian philosophy that excludes certain norms from compatibility or defines freedom in specific terms, the alleged "neutrality" of libertarianism begins to dissolve. No libertarian sincerely maintains a neutral standpoint in practise. At best, this is a self-deception.

What a left/right distinction in a libertarian context may signify are varieties of gradiation in terms of how things like more general social views, property norms, and economic goals interlock in an overall ideological system. On a property spectrum, for example, hardcore propertarians are on the far right and communists are on the far left. On an economics spectrum, people who explicitly favor hierarchical and oligarchic structures are to the right of people who put an emphasis on a more equitable distribution of resources and flatter organizational structures. On a social spectrum, people who strongly question traditional social authority could be said to be to the left of those that are indifferent or supportive of it. These are real tendencies, and "left" and "right" are the most convenient and most-likely-to-be-understood terms for them.

The claim that these views are irrelevant seems to obfuscate the way in which "libertarianism" is effected by them. It is necessary to take such things into account if one wants to accurately consider the various ideas that float in and out of "libertarian" circles. While the desire for libertarianism to be unique is understandable at a certain level, it is not unique in a sense that is completely detached from relations with "other" ideas. Once such ideas are considered, this is the context in which a left/right distinction understandably continues to be a question for libertarians, even if some people want to avoid the terminology.

Posted by Brainpolice at 11:48 PM

Labels: Libertarianism

Propertarianism, Voluntaryism and Freedom

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

I'd like to once again clarify my own views, put in contrast to some views that I have rejected. Hopefully this may help illuminate exactly what is at stake in the conflicts that take place within libertarianism and anarchism.

Propertarianism

One of the major issues at stake is how one treats the concept of property. I use the term propertarianism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat property as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or the basis for defining everything. For example, Murray Rothbard's declaration that all rights are property rights is an example of a form of propertarianism. More generally, propertarians tends to view freedom as reducible to a question of property and have a deontological view of property rights.

I reject propertarianism. To be clear, rejecting propertarianism does not necessarily mean that one rejects property or property rights outright. In my case, what it means is that freedom is not reducible to property because life and liberty are prior concepts, and that property rights are not absolute in that they may have contextual side-constraints. I reject any framing of the question which assumes that we must either be pro-property or anti-property in some absolute sense, and I do not think that freedom and property can be absolutely equated.

There are reasons for this. There are contexts in which a default defense of property amounts to a rationalization for infringing on someone's freedom or unnecessarily taking their life. I don't think that ownership legitimately grants absolute authority, regardless of how it is acquired. I think that ownership alone may be necessary but insufficient for legitimacy. I think that freedom is more fundamentally a matter of the concrete interpersonal relations of individuals, while property is a secondary question in relation to it.

In my understanding, property in the most general and disambiguated sense is a multi-faceted concept that cannot reasonably be simplified or reduced to a particular aspect or manifestation of it. It depends on the context. In one context, property could be linked to freedom. In another context, property could be linked to aggression and tyranny. Propertarianism attempts to reduce property to its positive aspects while ignoring or denying its negative aspects, and in the process it may end up effectively legitimizing the negative aspects, even if some propertarians do not explicitly intend to rationalize or endorse infringing on anyone's freedom.

If freedom entails not unnecessarily being coerced or bossed around on the basis of other people's whims and not being physically aggressed against in a clearly non-defensive context, then propertarianism has tension with freedom to the extent that this can be justified in its framework. To take this to the institutional and territorial level, if a territorial monopoly on ultimate decision-making power and force is a state and a propertarian framework establishes a standard for legitimacy in which a qualitatively identical institution can be justified depending on nothing more than property acquisition norms, then propertarianism can logically entail and consequently lead to a state. Hence, anti-statists have a reason to be skeptical of propertarianism.

A purely deontological or absolutist conception of property rights also leads to blatant absurdities on practical grounds, particularly because it commits the propertarian to dismiss all life-boat scenarios out of hand or simply default to whatever a property owner decides as an answer. From the point of view of the person in a sticky situation, this implies that they have a moral obligation to let themselves die or at least suffer a significant amount of unecessary harm in the name of respecting property. Hence, property is effectively placed above life. This gives one consequentialist grounds for rejecting propertarianism.

At each step of the way so far, we have pointed out various ways in which property can conflict with both freedom and life. I think that it is important to emphasize that to the extent that one wants to uphold the value of freedom and life in these contexts, one has necessarily placed limits on the concept of property and its practical applications. On the flip side, to the extent that one upholds a propertarian theory one is committed to some sort of negation of freedom and life. I think that there are well-meaning propertarians who hold positions that are a bit fuzzy on these matters, so I wouldn't want to lump them in with a more extreme position. However, I think they have reason for cognitive dissonance.

These questions can invoke a lot of hostility among libertarians and anarchists. Some propertarians are absolutist to the point where the more nuanced positions that I have hinted at are considered to be diametrically opposed to everything they favor and as a total negation of property. I believe that this is false because it is based on a misleading framing of the question that smuggles in the assumption of certain absolute dichotomies. Those propertarians who think that the choice is essentially between their position and communism, or who act as if any alternative position necessarily equates to statism, are being dogmatic and making non-sequitors.

This should constitute a decent overview of the problems that I have with propertarianism. While I don't necessarily condemn property and property rights outright, I do not consider property to be the right framework to conceptualize everything in. I view these concepts as inherently being contingent and necessary but insufficient. There are great dangers to focusing so much or so narrowly on property that all common sense and decency goes out the window and the pretense of freedom begins to become suspect. It would be wise not to think in such simplistic and axiomatic terms about the question of property.

Voluntaryism

I use the term voluntaryism to refer to libertarian ideologies that tend to treat the notion of voluntary interaction as a primary value, as an absolute, or as some sort of starting point or basis for defining everything -- in a way that does not particularly disambiguate what constitutes "voluntary" and "involuntary" relations. Generally, voluntaryism is presented in a way that makes it seem more pluralistic than propertarianism, as a sort of all-inclusive umbrella "so long as it's voluntary". I am using the term voluntaryism to refer to views that tend to consider the question of interpersonal relations as being reducible to a question of voluntary-ness, beyond which point "anything goes" or is "just a preference".

To be sure, I think that some ideas going by the name of "voluntaryism" are actually hardly distinguishable from propertarianism because the concept of "voluntary" and "involuntary" are disambiguated in explicitly propertarian terms, which can make it rather misleading. But as I am using the term here, it involves at least the intent of being more pluralistic than that. Voluntaryism contrasts with propertarianism insofar as propertarians act as if their particular models are the only ones that can possibly be compatible with freedom, while voluntaryists function on the pretext that essentially all norms other than "is it voluntary or not?" are compatible with freedom.

As I have already hinted at, I think that voluntaryism suffers from ambiguity. There are a multitude of normative concepts of exactly what is and isn't voluntary, so a meta-debate is almost inevitably begged. What one voluntaryist considers voluntary may be considered involuntary by another depending on normative assumptions, so it seems hard to think that the concept of voluntaryism can be separate from such questions. I think that voluntaryism collapses into meaninglessness if it is taken at face value, divorced from any particular norm. This kind of pluralism is just nihilism by another name, a nihilism that clings to one norm: noone's views can apply to anyone else. To put it another way, it is a form of nihilism that at least puts on the front of valueing tolerance as some sort of end in and of itself.

Perhaps the closest that voluntaryist pluralism can come to providing a neutral definition of "voluntary" that isn't packaged with additional norms is a definition that effectively reduces to "agreement". But it is hard to see how this is particularly useful. The very nature of any society contains various degrees of disagreement. A stalinist, a monarchist, or a neo-nazi aren't going to agree with libertarians and anarchists, but surely libertarians and anarchists aren't inherently imposing an "involuntary" relationship by opposing those ideas and systems. A murderer may disagree with being defended against or shunned, or they may disagree with the idea that they've done something wrong, but surely their rights aren't violated by this. Something is very fishy about this.

Some voluntaryists essentially do take a meta-view that is inclusive towards all norms and systems. Monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, whatever it may be, is fine and dandy with them "so long as it's voluntary" (or contingent on these systems isolating into enclaves or tribes). The problem is that this completely collapses the notion of "voluntary" and "involuntary". At best, it means that each system is voluntary relative to other systems, but a given system inside of this framework could be internally involuntary. Indeed, one could have a totalitarian dictatorship, and it would be okay by these standards so long as it does not cross over into the nation next door.

To be fair, not all those who call themselves voluntaryists take it to this level. Rather, what they are more likely to promote is effectively what's been called "thin libertarianism", the view that freedom or libertarianism is purely reducible to something like the non-aggression principle, beyond which point everything is a matter of subjective personal preferences. That is, it's the idea that non-aggression (which is almost always defined through the lens of some kind of property norm) is sufficient to produce a free society. Thick libertarians, such as myself, disagree with this on the grounds that this is insufficient (although perhaps necessary), that additional considerations matter.

So in this sense "voluntaryism is more or less the same thing as thin libertarianism. A big part of the problem with thin libertarianism is that it seems obvious that political outcomes are in some way dependant on cultural atmospheres and that not all cultural atmospheres are equally good breeding grounds for the goals of political freedom. Hence, this sort of total cultural and moral relativism can be a dangerous attitude to attempt to start a free society with. It is arguable that certain cultural and moral norms are likely to lead to aggression and statism, while others are a healthy precondition for realizing libertarian goals. Without getting into the details of the normative debate, I don't think it should particularly be hard to see the general point being made about this.

Some voluntaryists may be tempted to engage in a non-sequitor in reaction to such objections by accusing the critic of necessarily supporting aggression or "involuntary" relations. This is based a false framing of the discussion and it also likely involves the voluntaryist having hidden or unspoken normative assumptions. The fact of the matter is that noone has a concept of non-aggression or "voluntary" that is completely detached from particular normative premises, and in this sense "thin libertarianism" is inherently misleading, I.E. it is a front of value neutrality or a hypocritically applied relativity.

This should function as a sufficient general overview of my problems with voluntaryism. While I do think that pluralism is an important value, I don't think that it is an acontextual value or some sort of absolute. There are good reasons for being concerned about people being too open-ended with their pluralism, taken to the point of rationalizing blatant contradictions and leaving the door wide open for any old authoritarian ideology and system. And it is wise not to focus so much or so narrowly on "political justice" that a good deal of the social questions that effect people in their everyday lives are dismissed as irrelevant, while being naive about the preconditions necessary for practical achievement of political goals.

Conclusion

For the most part, this was a reiteration and clarification of positions that I've already taken ad naseum elsewhere and talked about in older posts. The two ideological tendencies that I've critisized can be viewed as representive of two extremes in a more general conflict between ideas that are too closed and absolute on one hand and ideas that are too open and ambiguous on the other hand. I would suggest that the most coherant positions can be found somewhere in between such extremes. What I've said here only scratches the surface of a multitude of much more particular discussions that could be had, but I think that I've set up the general foundation for such a discussion.

Posted by Brainpolice at 3:14 PM

Labels: Libertarianism, Lifeboat Situations, Nihilism, Non-Aggression Axiom, Pluralism, Propertarianism, Property Rights, Thick Libertarianism, Thin Libertarianism, Voluntaryism

Positive and Negative Liberty

Friday, January 16, 2009

There are numerous different takes on positive liberty. The 1st take is that it's an unchosen positive obligation, otherwise generally known as "positive rights" (which may as well be substituted with the term "positive benefits for the masses"), which inherently violates a consistantly applied negative liberty. But in this view, everyone is inherently entitled to (insert arbitrary positive benefit here). All libertarians have to reject this position by default because no contract can coercively be enforced onto 3rd parties of people who did not consent and are logistically incapable of consenting to the particular contract (this is part of why both state social contracts and corporate status are illegitimate). This usually devolves into libertarians championing negative rights vs. left-statists championing positive rights.

However, the 2nd take is that the context of negative liberty, I.E. the freedom from imposition and aggression by others, inherently grants the freedom to pursue positive benefits, mutual aid or mutual self-interest in that context. This freedom to pursue positive benefits for yourself and others given condition of consistant negative liberty, in turn, is what sets up a contractual basis for "positive liberty". So liberty is both positive and negative in a sense. It prohibits decision-making power over you by others and justifies your own decision-making power over yourself. In this context, a libertarian can consistantly advocate concepts such as mutual aid and cooperative management. This usually devolves into vulgar and thin libertarians denying the reconciliation vs. neo-artistotileans and left-libertarians defending such a reconciliation.

The three main points of the reconciliation are that (1) negative liberty, by itself, does not absolutely gaurantee survival, happiness or flourishing and (2) yet without negative liberty, one cannot freely or adequately pursue survival, happiness or flourishing and (3) hence, positive liberty, insofar as it is restricted to the context of negative liberty, is the basis out of which we can establish methods of cooperation to better foster survival, happiness or flourishing. However, I'm not entirely satisfied by the invokation of the concept of happiness when something more along the lines of "self-actualization" or "personal growth or progression" is what is really meant, and I find Rand's emphasis on survival as the justification for ethics to be distasteful. That being said, one cannot reasonably divorce ethics from the context of goals.