Ian Murray wrote:
>> Why Hobbes you've aged well. :-) Of course the same logic applies to
>> individuals. So no one has the right to say someone else or some
>> institution has no rights, which makes Chuck0's assertion meaningless.
>> Damn, we're back to paradox again.
Carrol Cox:
> I think that on individualist premises (individuals exist and existed
> prior to and autonomously of any social relations) Hobbes has got it
> right (war of all against all). Clearly on that premise an individual
> only exists on the basis of power (force) he (she?) can exercise, and
> all social relations (including nation states) are the result of
> opportunistic alliances among discrete (isolated) individuals.
>
> But if social relations are prior to (and _relatively_) independent of
> the concrete or historical individual, then (as Hobbes recognized)
> freedom _emerges from_ rather than is in contradiction to social
> relations. Hobbes assumed those social relations must take the form of
> the absolute state, but that is not a necessary implication. _At the
> present time_, however, the only possible forms those social relations
> can take are manifested in (dependent on) the nation state (whatever may
> be the case in the future). Hence for this historical epoch the
> rejection of the nation state is the rejection of the possibility of
> human freedom.
I was only reciting liberal theory above, because the concept of rights, as the term is usually used in the contexts I find myself in, is a liberal concept. In fact I believe that rights are an artifice whose actual function is to restrict freedom -- it is not an accident that the word derives from one meaning "to rule". This would be quite plain if states indeed granted one another rights -- that is, if the ruling classes of the states agreed to recognize the powers of one another's political structures and authority; the state's sovereign license to kill would be replaced by a universal license to kill, a hyperstate, in which the formerly sovereign states now took their place as subordinate constituents in order to more securely dominate and subjugate their captive populations. In would be, in fact, what appears to be actually taking place under the name of globalization, or as conspirato- logists call it, the New World Order.
So if the nation-state is our instrument for defending or obtaining human freedom, we're in a bad way. It's dissolving out from under our feet. This is in fact the context of the present system of conflicts in the Middle East and the attack on the World Trade Center: the attackers are not a nation, not a state, not even an identifiable political party; that which they attack is not a nation or a state but "the West", a congeries of states, corporations, parties, and other groups. Or at least that's what they tell us.
> I don't have the slightest idea how much further this argument might be
> carried, or what slippery slopes it may be situated on.
> P.S. I don't know whether Chuck0 has retreated from his declared
> intention of burning any flag anyone brings to his demonstration, but
> that position illustrates perfectly how freedom is impossible without
> social organization, for what the position implies is that every
> demonstration will be a battle of all against all even within the the
> demonstration. I for example would never myself wave or carry a flag and
> I would argue against any organization supporting such a practice -- but
> in the hypothetical circumstances suggested by Chuck0 I would find
> myself physically protecting the fucking flag. Chaos and unfreedom.
> Sophocles' Creon was correct in assuming that there was no freedom
> without order -- he was just tragically wrong in his judgment of the
> nature of order. Hence his order was in fact disorder -- anarchy.
I'm sure you're aware that _anarchy_ is not equivalent to _disorder_. Let's anarchically and self-organizedly maintain some standards of rhetoric and logic here. And I'm pretty sure that Chuck0 would anarchistically allow you to wave or wear almost any flag you wanted.
-- Gordon