[lbo-talk] First Principles First

[Robert Wrubel]

Peter.  I can agree with your principles: institutions serve power; and any power over others is unjust.  This thread has been making a mistake about socialism.  Socialism does not have to be national socialism, i.e. a national economy controlled by a central government.  Strictly speaking, socialism just means ownership of the means of production is collective not individual.  But the collective does not have to be a nation; it can be a township, a neighborhood, even an apartment building.  Marxism, aside from the revolutionary prophetic strand, is merely a tool for understanding who has the power, and how it is exercised and manifested in society.  It's a style of thought, a more systematic and empirical form of scepticism.  Long live scepticism!

  
Peter Ward <peterhartward at gmail.com> wrote:

  This is not a rely to one post in particular, and has wide bearing. I
am simply trying to clarify where I stand on principle --

When I describe myself as libertarian (or anarchist or otherwise use
the terms) I mean: I think that authority of humans over others is
fundamentally unjust unless the relationship is genuinely voluntary.*
In this respect I think large sectors of the left are in advocation of
an unjust social arrangement: a platonic set-up, ruled by wise
philosophers; and would say that Bakunin (along with John Dewey,
Bertrand Russell, inter alia) was right as far as his critique of
marxian socialism went irrespective of his moral or ethical character
(I don't think much of Lenin, but agree with him when he says, "One
can never be radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as
radical as reality itself."). (I think that slavery is criminal on
principal also.) If this is a dogmatic or quasi-religious stance then
I plead guilty...and would urge others to sin in the same way.

A note on politics: I believe that all formal intuitions (governments,
corporations, etc.) exists primarily to serve power. This was true of
the Church, e.g. The Gnostic gospels where libertarian in that they
reject human authority on religious matters. The nascent Church did
everything in its power to destroy these texts (unsuccessfully it
turns out).

If anyone disagree with me on principle I would be interested to here
why. I am not interested in whether or not Mikail Bakunin or Bertrand
Russell, or anyone else was a saint or not (that was never a claim I
made to begin with).

NB: Most of my principles have been well defined by Wilhelm von
Humboldt in "Limits of State Action".

*Even parent-child relationships off exceed the bounds of what is
legitmate in, my opinion.
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