87 Jahre Murray Rothbard

Eine der Spezifitäten des rothbardschen Systems dass er letztlich "naturrechtlich" abgeleitete Eigentumsrechte über freiwillige Vereinbarungen stellt:

"The right of property implies the right to make contracts about that property: to give it away or to exchange titles of ownership for the property of another person. Unfortunately, many libertarians, devoted to the right to make contracts, hold the contract itself to be an absolute, and therefore maintain that any voluntary contract whatever must be legally enforceable in the free society. Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party. In short, a contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property. But this can only be true if we hold that validly enforceable contracts only exist where title to property has already been transferred, and therefore where the failure to abide by the contract means that the other party’s property is retained by the delinquent party, without the consent of the former (implicit theft). Hence, this proper libertarian theory of enforceable contracts has been termed the “title-transfer” theory of contracts. (...)"

(aus The ethics of liberty, Kapitel 19: "Property rights and the theory of contracts")

Woraus Rothbard ableitet, was alles in einer libertären Rechtsordnung verboten - da illegitim - sind, etwa fractional reserve banking, GmbHs oder Bankrottregelungen.

Hierzu schreibt der Panarchist Adam Knott, meines Erachtens zu Recht:

"Rothbard, C, is saying to two people, A and B: Here is what you are allowed to do between yourselves, and here is what you are not allowed to do between yourselves. This is my natural law system, that is absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places...  Therefore, you, A and B, cannot do such and such between yourselves. You can only do what my system says.
Rothbard's point might be that then, A and B could do something that would spill over and effect person C. But my point is that this is why C has a government, to protect his (C's) rights. So for the cases of conflicting value systems or overlapping jurisdictions, the governments of A and B, and of C, have to arrive at some solution.
Rothbard is saying: No, the solution is for A and B to belong to the Rothbardian society !  
Question: Will this be by force, or by voluntary consent of A and B ?
I think that part of the problem is that the Rothbardian school of libertarianism bases its concept of liberty on property. But others base their concept of liberty on voluntary consent. Thus, the Rothbardian system ends up contradicting voluntary consent, because it arrives at an abstract conception of property that is based on a specific individual's theory, and considers as invalid a priori, any property arrangements at variance with the theory, even if voluntarily chosen by the individuals concerned. It also considers as invalid a priori, alternative or rival theories of property. Implicit in the private property ethicist's theory of property is the implication that the core property theory of the philosopher and his students is more important than voluntary consent, and more important than the property relations accepted by other individuals amongst themselves. The private property ethicist's theory of property does not allow voluntary consent in regard to property, nor does it allow alternative theories of property. The private property ethic is considered by its adherents to be 'absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places'."

(with thanks to the author Adam Knott, and to Christian Butterbach for the text and backchecking with Adam!)

86 Jahre Murray Rothbard

Zum Geburtstag von Murray Rothbard ein Auszug aus The Betrayal of the American Right über seine Zeit in der Peace and Freedom Party Ende der 1960er:

"The peak of my political activity on the New Left came during the 1968 campaign. In the spring of 1968, my old enthusiasm for third-party politics was rekindled, albeit in a different direction. The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) which had become (and still is) established in California, decided to go national, and opened up shop in New York. I found that the preliminary platform and the only requirement for membership contained only two planks: the first was immediate US withdrawal from Vietnam, and the second was some plank so vague about being nice to everyone that almost anyone, left, right, center could have endorsed it. Great: here was a coalition party dedicated only to immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and requiring no commitment whatever to statism! As a result, our entire libertarian group in New York poured happily into the new party.

The PFP was structured around clubs, most of them regional — such as the powerful West Side (of Manhattan) club, the hippie Greenwich Village Club, etc. One was occupational — a Faculty Club. Since there were very few actual faculty members in this very youthful party, the PFP generously widened the definition of 'faculty' to include graduate students. Lo and behold! On that basis, of approximately 24 members in the Faculty Club, almost exactly one-half were our people: libertarians, including myself, Leonard Liggio, Joe Peden, Walter Block and his wife, Sherryl, and Larry Moss. The legislative arm of the PFP was to be the Delegate Assembly, consisting of delegates from the various clubs. The Faculty Club was entitled to two delegates, and so we naturally divvied it up: one going to the socialists, and one to us, who turned out to be me.

At the first meeting of the Delegate Assembly, then, here I was, only in the party for about a week, but suddenly vaulted to top rank in the power elite. Then, early in the meeting, some people got up and advocated abolishing the Delegate Assembly as somehow 'undemocratic'. Jeez! I was just about to get a taste of juicy political power, when some SOBs were trying to take it away from me!

As I listened further, I realized that something even more sinister and of broader concern was taking place. Apparently, the New York party was being run by a self-perpetuating oligarchical executive committee, who, in the name of 'democracy', were trying to eliminate all intermediate social institutions, and to operate upon the party mass unimpeded, all in the name of 'democracy'. To me it smacked of rotten Jacobinism, and I got up and delivered an impassioned speech to that effect. After the session ended, a few people came up to me and said that some like-minded thinkers, who constituted the West Side Club, were having a gathering to discuss these matters. So began our nefarious alliance with the Progressive Labor faction within Peace and Freedom.

It later turned out that the PFP and its executive committee were being run, both in California and in New York, by the Leninist-Trotskyite Draperites, international socialists run by Berkeley librarian Hal Draper. The Draperites were the original Schachtmanites, Trotskyites who had rebelled against Trotsky as Third Camp opponents of both the United States and the Soviet Union. The New York party was being run by the Draperites, including as their allies a motley collection of assorted socialists, pacifists, countercultural druggies, and left-libertarians.

The opposition within PFP was indeed being run by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PL), who the Draperites feared were plotting a takeover. Actually, it soon became clear that PL had no such intention, but were only keeping their hand in, and were using the West Side Club to recruit candidate-members into PL. Both PL and the Draperites were keeping the structure loose while waiting for an expected flood of Gene McCarthy followers after Humphrey's expected Democratic nomination victory — a flood that, of course, never materialized. Hence the loose ideological requirement, and the fact that the platform was up for grabs. The alliance between PL and us libertarians was highly useful to both sides, in addition to cooperating in fending off Draperite dictatorship in the name of democracy. What PL got out of it was a cover for their recruiting, since no one could of course call us vehement antisocialists tools of Progressive Labor. What we got out of it was PL's firm support for an ideological platform — adopted by our joint caucus — that was probably the most libertarian of any party since the days of Cleveland Democracy. The PL people were pleasantly 'straight' and nondruggie, although quite robotic, resembling left-wing Randians.

The great exception was the delightful Jake Rosen, the absolute head of PL's fraction in the PFP. Rosen — bright, joyous, witty, and decidedly nonrobotic — knew the score. One of my fondest memories of life in the PFP was of Jake Rosen trying to justify our laissez-faire platform to his Maoist dunderheads:

'Hey, Jake, what does this mean: absolute freedom of trade and opposition to all government restrictions?'

'Er, that's the 'antimonopoly coalition'.'

'Oh, yeah.'

Jake, with more sincerity, joined us in opposing guaranteed annual income plans; he considered them bourgeois and 'reactionary'. About the only thing Jake balked at was our proposal that our caucus come out for immediate abolition of rent control.

'Hey, fellas, look, I'd love to do it, but we have commitments to tenant groups.'

Graciously, we let him off the hook.

With his personality, I didn't think Jake would last in PL. In addition he had already implicitly rebelled against party discipline. An obviously bright guy, Jake had accepted PL's orders to be 'working class' and became a construction worker; but he stubbornly failed to obey orders and move from the hip, cosmopolitan West Side of Manhattan to Queens. ('Jake, no construction worker lives on the West Side.') Indeed, a year or so after the breakup of the PFP, Jake left or was expelled from PL, and immediately went upwardly mobile, moving to Chicago and becoming a successful commodity broker.

As the McCarthy people failed to come in, conflicts within the party became ever greater, and the New York PFP began having almost weekly conventions. In addition to the PL Draperite conflict, the Communist Party set up its competing front in New York, the 'Freedom and Peace Party' (FPP), the existence of which began to confuse everyone, including the Left. Trying to put down the schisms, the California Draperites sent to run the New York party the supposedly legendary organizer Comrade Carlos, a Chicano whom the Draperite wing found to be charismatic, and to whom the rest of us took a strong dislike.

Although the PFP was clearly fizzling, the time finally came in late summer for nominations. The Draperites had decided on the ex-rapist Eldridge Cleaver for president, then head of the Black Panther Party. Cleaver displayed his contempt for the PFP by not showing up, and sending Black Panther sidekick Bobby Seale to sneer openly at his honkie admirers, who masochistically welcomed every sign of Panther derision. No one opposed Cleaver for the nomination; and since the PL bloc abstained, and since my libertarian colleagues did not make the early morning hour, it turned out that mine was the only vote cast against Eldridge Cleaver for president — not a bad legacy of my time on the New Left.

For the US Senate nomination, the veteran socialist-pacifist David McReynolds was the Draperite candidate, and I was persuaded to run against him to represent the PL-libertarian opposition. I agreed to run only because I knew darn well that there was no chance at all to defeat McReynolds.

I did not envy McReynolds's day in the sun. The Freedom and Peace Party was running a black candidate for Senate, and the Black Panthers did not wish to oppose a fellow Afro-American with the white McReynolds. The Black Panthers apparently pulled a gun on McReynolds, ordering him to withdraw his candidacy. What happened after that is hazy; I don't believe that McReynolds withdrew, but on the other hand I don't believe that either of these people made it to the ballot — and the 1968 election turned out to be the end of the PFP (except in California) and the FPP. And, oh yes, I heard later that Comrade Carlos had turned out to be a police agent."

Qualitätsjournalismus

In ihrer heutigen Ausgabe entdeckt die Zeitung vum lëtzebuerger Vollek die seltsame Kandidatur einer "Taube" inmitten eines "Wanderzirkus mit fünf Falken". Gemeint sind Ron Paul und der republikanische Wahlzirkus in den USA. Die Zeitung lobt zunächst die Antiimp-Credentials von Ron Paul:

"Was den Millionär Paul auszeichnet, sind seine seit Jahrzehnten beharrlich vertretenen Positionen gegen die militaristische Außenpolitik und die Aggressionskriege der USA sowie gegen die finanzielle und politische Unterstützung der israelischen Kriegsabenteurer und der israelischen Lobby in den USA."

Des Weiteren schreibt das KPL-Zentralorgan über Pauls Kampf gegen die Fed: "Paul wirft der Fed vor, den ihr vom Staat übertragenen hoheitlichen Aufgaben nicht zum Wohl des Volkes, sondern zwecks Bereicherung ihrer privaten Eigentümer nachzugehen und fordert daher ihre längst überfällige Verstaatlichung." 

Ähem, Genossen, es übersteigt vielleicht euer Vorstellungsvermögen: Ron Paul fordert keineswegs die "Verstaatlichung" der Federal Reserve (ohnehin ist die Eigentümerschaft der teilnehmenden Bankinstitute eher symbolischer Natur - obwohl man natürlich sagen kann, dass die Fed zum Wohl der Banken agiert, aber nicht weil sie dieses über das "Wohl des Volkes" stellt, sondern wohl weil sie beides als identisch ansieht) - er will ihre Abschaffung. Eigentlich ist der Titel seines Buches End the fed in dieser Hinsicht doch schwer misszuverstehen, oder?

Realismus

"The OWS brigade along with the more mainstream left believe that greater regulation, more political control of markets and higher taxes on the wealthy will rebalance the system, breaking up the existing power structure. They fail miserably however to explain why the wealthy won’t use their current power to find ways of manipulating this increased intervention via continuous rent seeking. Adding yet more interventions and taxes which discourage the formation of new fortunes will simply provide additional opportunities for the current elite to avoid the ‘creative destruction’ characteristic of un-fettered market competition. The Classical Liberal/ Libertarian solution, by contrast, is to dis-empower the interventionist apparatus that enables the wealthy to shelter behind bail-outs and protective barriers of various sorts. Yet, Libertarians also fail to explain why those who benefit from the status quo would give up their privileges in order to return to a genuinely free market model."

Mehr hier: http://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/two-views-on-structured-inequality/

Hagbards Definitionen (Schluss)

ANARCHISM: That organization of society where the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. RIGHT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate. LEFT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.

Robert Shea/Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, nach der Ausgabe London 1998, S.624.

Die "Neue Linke" als Geburtshelferin

Interessante These auf dem Blog Libérale et Libertaire:

"At the turn of the 20th century, libertarianism, i.e, 'individualist or liberal anarchism' was a minority subset(more of an intellectual movement) compared to the population of left, 'social anarchism (more of a labor movement)'. However, even libertarianism was anti-capitalist. But Corporate Liberal consolidation essentially subsumed the 'social anarchist' movement (i.e., labor) and beat the remnant of the libertarian movement like a pathetic, yelping dog over to the capitalist side.
In 1926, Benjamin Tucker, in a postscript to his original 'State Socialism and Anarchism' essay, argued for an educational propagation of a libertarian remnant to allow the possibility of a future movement to gain political power to execute a massive redistribution of political power to break the monopoly trusts. But Tucker’s libertarian remnant would not survive. Instead, 'the remnant' would survive via the so-called 'Old Right', which was a network of businessmen, journalists and the refuge from the crumbled regime of Bourbon Democrats. Tucker’s 'radical political redistribution objective' would be supplanted by an objective for the revival of 'Lockean liberalism', which would entail the restoration of the 'social contract' along Lockean terms, and not the outright abolition of all political authority, which is what libertarianism proper demanded.

The New Left Critique against Corporate Liberalism that emerged in the context of the political radicalism of the 1960s was an academic critique. But there was no 'civil society' of labor, a 'remnant' so to speak, that could actually take advantage of it and run with it. The 'new' social anarchism of the counter-culture communes was no match for the realities of latter-half 20th century Global Corporate Capitalism. Libertarianism was the only radical framework that had built up a 'civil society', or a 'market', that could take the New Left Critique and run with it in the context of 20th century Global Corporate Capitalism.

The reality is that the New Left inadvertently played an important hand in spawning 'anarcho-capitalism', the capitalist version of individual anarchism in the late 20th century-early 21st century America."

(Kontext hier)

Könnte man dementsprechend sagen, dass die Left Libertarians weniger eine "zentristische", vermittelnde Position zwischen "Sozialanarchismus" (i.e. Anarchosyndikalismus, libertärer Kommunismus) und "Anarchokapitalismus" einnehmen, als vielmehr den Versuch einer Restauration der Tuckerschen Spielart eines Anarchismus, der sich gleichermaßen als individualistisch/liberal und als "antikapitalistisch" (also gegen die gegenwärtige Wirtschaftsordnung gerichtet) verstand, darstellen?

"Libertarian Unionism", bis

Als Zugabe zum hier kürzlich verlinkten Economist-Onlinebeitrag im Zusammenhang mit den Protesten in Wisconsin, zwei weitere Stimmen aus dem US-amerikanischen libertären Milieu, die darüber hinaus gehen, und ausdrücklich die demonstrierenden Staatsbedienstete unterstützen. Dass der bereits im ersten Beitrag zitierte Kevin Carson die Staatsbeamten unterstützt, mag wenig überraschen, dass allerdings sogar ein Walter Block die Gewerkschaften des öffentlichen Diensts als "kleineres Übel" einschätzt, erstaunt dann doch etwas:

Libertarian mixed feelings about Wisconsin (Carson)

Scott Walker vs. the public employee unions (Block, Rechtfertigungen hier)

Strikt gegen eine Unterstützung der Proteste wendet sich hingegen Sheldon Richman, sonst eigentlich recht nah bei Carson: Wisconsin Labor Brouhaha.

124 Jahre Rose Wilder Lane

Ähnlich wie Albert Jay Nock bildet Rose Wilder Lane (der Masse eher bekannt als "Baby Rose" aus Unsere kleine Farm) eine Übergangsfigur zwischen dem klassischen amerikanischen individualistischen Anarchismus, der sich neben Einflüssen aus Europa (Stirner, Proudhon, Tolstoi), nicht zuletzt auch aus den freiheitlichen Traditionen der amerikanischen Revolution und dem Individualismus der sogenannten "Transzendentalisten" von Thoreau bis Whitman speiste, und dem anarchisierenden Radikalliberalismus des libertarian movement, an dessen Herausbildung sie maßgeblich beteiligt war. Die zeitweilige, von einem Aufenthalt in der Sowjetunion und mehreren Begegnungen mit der Tscheka gleichsam "geheilte" Kommunistin, die als Autorin der afroamerikanischen Zeitung The Pittsburgh Courier auch eine Vorkämpferin gegen Rassismus war, wurde nichtsdestotrotz, aufgrund ihres späteren ausgeprägten Antikommunismus und ihrer Ablehnung des rooseveltschen "New Deal" auf der politischen Rechten eingeordnet. Wilder Lane hierzu selbst in einem Antwortschreiben an Jasper Crane, der am 8. Februar 1961 an sie geschrieben hatte, sie seien ja  keine" anarchists, but patriotic and law-abiding citizens":

"To me the very word, patriot, has collectivist connotations. Pater, father; patria, fatherland; patriarch, generating source and ruler of a family-Whole. And patriotism is everywhere regarded as obedience to, dependence on, self-sacrifice for, the divinely ordained Ruler: The Government (whether Emperor, Queen, Parliament, or FDR).

Detour: Look for instance at the whole American press, even the Wall Street Journal, on these anti-trust cases against the electric companies; all condemning the hapless victims on 'moral' grounds. The assumption is that obedience to Acts of legislators is moral. In that case, genocide is moral: 'liquidating' Jews or kulaks was and is obedience to absolutely legal orders from absolutely legal authorities. Price-fixing (if done by men other than politicians in office) is a crime but certainly no sin; morality has nothing to do with it. At the same time that brother Kennedy is sending men to jail and wrecking corporations, (ruining hundreds of thousands of little small stockholders in them) for the crime of price fixing, big brother Kennedy is all set to bribe, intimidate and blackmail legislators into fixing prices. And the whole American press yaps about the immorality of the criminals, while discussing the expediency of the proposed legislation. This is only a little indication of the practical effect of patriotism; patriotism being a lingering tradition of the Divine government of a human Whole, which is at least as old as the first Living Gods: Ur Nammu, Khammurabi, Pharoah, Ptolemy, Augustus Caesar. Every one of them, and men in all Governments, since then, and now, was or is a robber, murderer, treacherous betrayer of trust, and all have been and still to some extent are, worshipped as somehow holy, somehow having some quality or attribute of God. It is incredibly fantastic, but it is a fact.

I have immeasurably less respect for 'the office' of President or for any President personally, than I have for you. And I do not go into rhapsodies about 'my country', its rocks and rills, its super highways and wooded hills, as Bob does in that 'Tiger' piece you sent me. This whole world is almost unbearably beautiful; why should I love Oak Creek Canyon or California’s beaches or Washington’s Sea Island counties any more than the Bocca di Cattaro or Delphi or the Bosphorus? Because I, me, the great RWL, was born in the Dakota Territory? The logic seems weak, somehow, don’t you feel?

My attachment to these USA is wholly, entirely, absolutely to The Revolution, the real world revolution, which men began here and which has – so to speak – a foothold on earth here. If reactionaries succeed in destroying the revolutionary structure of social and political human life here, I care no more about this continent than about any other. If I lived long enough I would find and join the revival of the Revolution wherever it might be in Africa or Asia or Europe, the Arctic or Antarctic. And let this country go with all the other regimes that collectivism has wrecked and eliminated since history began. So much for patriotism, mine.

As to anarchy, you can find me with Woodrow Wilson (that lying treacherous scoundrel who began this World War; truly a Platonic “idealist,” he was) who said words to the effect that increase of freedom is decrease of Government. The difference between W.W. and me is that I mean what I say. I am not wildeyed and whiskered and I do not contemplate throwing a home-made bomb at Mr. Kennedy but I am FOR any and every way of diminishing the size, the activity, the extent of Government per se, and all respect for Government, to the eventual end of eliminating Government totally. Anarchy is absence of earthly Authority over human beings, by definition and etymology; so I am an anarchist.  

I am not a utopian, though, so I am not impatiently trying or expecting to establish the Kingdom of God on earth next year, or next century, or even next millennium. I will even concede that progress toward it may be the ancient Greek’s – I forget his name at the moment. Who was it who described that progress which perpetually advanced half the distance to the goal in each successive period of time and therefore never arrived at the end? It is the direction of the movement that matters. Progress is advancing toward a goal. That old Greek’s racer never quite reached the goal, true; but in time he was much nearer it than he would have been if he had perpetually backed away from it. When Jefferson said that the least Government is the best Government, what was he advocating but anarchy? The lesser and lesser and lesser the Government the better and better and better, and the nearer no Government. 

As to being law-abiding, I deny that legislators make law. They create legal Acts, statutes, which may or may not coincide with real Law, and in fact seldom do. Generally a statute is an order which 'executive' Government uses physical force to 'enforce' upon persons not in The Government, but believed to be subject to it, and the great majority of such legislative Acts are intended to prevent or hamper or stop harmless and useful human action, so the enforcement of them has that lamentable effect. Consider the so-called 'laws' that we more-or-less obey nowadays; how many of them do no harm? Is it virtuous, or desirable in any way, to concur in doing harm?

I am 'law-abiding' purely for expediency, for self-defense, in the main against my conscientious principles, so at bottom I am ashamed of not being a conscientious objector practicing Ghandi’s or Thoreau’s civil disobedience. I did refuse to be rationed; I do absolutely refuse to be Social-Secured; but I should refuse to pay taxes and be in jail, only what would become of my little Maltese puppies? and my own little area of freedom? and my books and my friends and correspondents? I shall be reluctantly a martyr only when backed into the last corner of the last resort. No heroine, alas."

Rose Wilder Lane an Jasper Crane, 14. Februar 1961, Auszug (vollständig hier)

Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Seeschäumer

Gelesen bei Peter Sloterdijk:

"Vom piratischen Atheismus her denken die Modernen die Gefahren der libertären und der anarchistischen Enthemmung, hier hat die konservative Partisanenphobie ihre Quelle. Die seit der Antike notorische Angst der Ordnungshüter vor den Neuerern wandelt sich neuzeitlich zur Angst des Landmenschen vor dem seegängigen Unternehmer, bei dem, auch wenn er den Zylinder trägt und bei Tisch ein Fischmesser zu gebrauchen weiß, der Pirat hervorlugt. Darum kann sich kein Terraner ohne Grauen eine Weltlage vorstellen, in welcher der Primat des Politischen, und das heißt hier: des Festländischen, nicht mehr in Kraft wäre. Denn wenn sich der Pirat an Land begibt, welche Verbrechenspläne trägt er in der Brusttasche? Wo hält er seine Waffen verborgen? Mit welchen verlockenden Argumenten läßt er seine Spekulationen anpreisen? Unter welchen humanitären Masken kaschiert er seine verruchten Intentionen? Wo Räuber in guter Gesellschaft auftreten, sind ihre Sophisten, die Berater, nicht weit. Seit zweihundert Jahren sortieren die Bürger ihre Ängste: Der Anarcho-Maritime wird an Land im günstigsten Fall zu einem Raskolnikow (der tut, was er will, es aber bereut), im weniger günstigen zu einem de Sade (der tut, was er will, und die Reue negiert), im schlimmsten Fall zu einem Neoliberalen (der tut, was er will, und sich dafür, Ayn Rand zitierend, selber zum Mann der Zukunft ausruft).

Die Piraterie strahlt freilich auch auf andere Weise ins bürgerliche Denken ein: Schon früh wird sie von den Phantasien der Festlandsbewohner zu einer libertären Gegenwelt verklärt, in der alles möglich wäre, nur keine Langeweile. Jahrhunderte vor der Künstlerbohème liefert die maritime Bohème den Evasionsträumen von Bürgern, die etwas anderes als Bürger sein wollen, unerschöpfliche Stimulationen. Auf Stichen des 18. Jahrhunderts treten weibliche Korsarinnen auf die Bühne - mit gezogenem Degen und offener Bluse, die Brüste hervorspringend - wie um den Beweis zu führen, daß die neue Frau auf dem Meer als Räuberin aus eigenem Recht agiert. Bis zu Brechts Dreigroschenoper (1928) und Pasolinis Scritti corsari (1973-75) läßt sich das kriminalromantische Begehren verfolgen, das die Große Freiheit vom Meer her kommen sieht. Auch Friedrich Schiller hat in den Entwürfen zu seinen 'Seestücken' mit dem Gedanken gespielt, 'die schwimmende Republik der Flibustiers' zu portraitieren. Der Verfasser der Räuber mußte zugeben, daß die Seeräuber die eindrucksvollere Gegenkultur bildeten."

Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals. Für eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, S.181-182.

Zur Verklärung der Piraterie als libertärer Gegenwelt, siehe z.B. das Daniel Defoe zugeschriebene Libertalia (das ich selbst mit 20 begeistert gelesen habe). Mehr über pirate utopias hier. In diesem Zusammenhang bietet sich natürlich auch ein Hinweis auf zeitgenössische Utopien an, z.B. das von Patri Friedman (Enkel von Milton) und anderen propagierte seasteading.

Bonus: der Held meiner Kindheit.

84 Jahre Murray N. Rothbard

Heute jährt sich der Geburtstag des Erfinders des Begriffs "Anarchokapitalismus" (ausführlicher Wikipedia-Artikel hierzu) zum 84ten Mal. Rothbard, der in den USA über den Umweg des Agorismus bzw. "left Rothbardianism" auch einen deutlichen Einfluss auf die linkslibertäre Richtung hatte (jedoch von libertären Sozialisten, Anarchosyndikalisten und Anarchokommunisten immer als pseudoanarchistischer Apostat und Befürworter eines "Raubtierkapitalismus" gesehen wurde), wobei es wohl kaum jemand gibt, der sämtliche Wendungen des radikalen Individualisten und Naturrechtlers - bis hin zur Unterstützung der Präsidentschaftskandidatur Pat Buchanans 1992 - mitgemacht hätte. Wie immer habe ich wieder einen Text des Geburtstagskindes mitgebracht; anknüpfend an die Mattick-Auszüge hier ein Artikel aus dem Jahr 1989 über die heute vergessenene Renaissance des Keynesianismus unter Reagan II und Bush Vater:

Keynesianism redux

"One of the ironic but unfortunately enduring legacies of eight years of Reaganism has been the resurrection of Keynesianism. From the late 1930s until the early 1970s, Keynesianism rode high in the economics profession and in the corridors of power in Washington, promising that, so long as Keynesian economists continued at the helm, the blessings of modern macroeconomics would surely bring us permanent prosperity without inflation. Then something happened on the way to Eden: the mighty inflationary recession of 1973-74.

Keynesian doctrine is, despite its algebraic and geometric jargon, breathtakingly simple at its core: recessions are caused by underspending in the economy, inflation is caused by overspending. Of the two major categories of spending, consumption is  passive and determined, almost robotically, by income; hopes for the proper amount of spending, therefore, rest on investment, but private investors, while active and decidedly non-robotic, are erratic and volatile, unreliably dependent on fluctuations in what Keynes called their 'animal spirits.'

Fortunately for all of us, there is another group in the economy that is just as active and decisive as investors, but who are also--if guided by Keynesian economists--scientific and rational, able to act in the interests of all: Big Daddy government. When investors and consumers underspend, government can and should step in and increase social spending via deficits, thereby lifting the econ omy out of recession. When private animal spirits get too wild, government is supposed to step in and reduce private spending by what the Keynesians revealingly call 'sopping up excess purchasing power' (that's ours).

In strict theory, by the way, the Keynesians could just as well have called for lowering government spending during inflationary booms rather than sopping up our spending. But the very idea of cutting government budgets (and I mean actual cut-cuts, not cuts in the rate of increase) is nowadays just as unthinkable, as, for example, adhering to a Jeffersonian strict construction of the Constitution of the United States, and for similar reasons.

Originally, Keynesians vowed that they, too, were in favor of a 'balanced budget,' just as much as the fuddy-duddy reactionaries who opposed them. It's just that they were not, like the fuddy-duddies, tied to the year as an accounting period; they would balance the budget, too, but over the business cycle. Thus, if there are four years of recession followed by four years of boom, the federal deficits during the recession would be compensated for by the surpluses piled up during the boom; over the eight years of cycle, it would all balance out.

Evidently, the 'cyclically balanced budget' was the first Keynesian concept to be poured down the Orwellian memory hole, as it became clear that there weren't going to be any surpluses, just smaller or larger deficits. A subtle but important corrective came into Keynesianism: larger deficits during recessions, smaller ones during booms. 

But the real slayer of Keynesianism came with the double-digit inflationary recession of 1973-74, followed soon by the even more intense inflationary recessions of 1979-80 and 1981-82. For if the government was supposed to step on the spending accelerator during recessions, and step on the brakes during booms, what in blazes is it going to do if there is a steep recession (with unemployment and bankruptcies) and a sharp inflation at the same time? What can Keynesianism say? Step on both accelerator and brake at the same time? The stark fact of inflationary recession violates the fundamental assumptions of Keynesian theory and the crucial program of Keynesian policy. Since 1973-74, Keynesianism has been intellectually finished, dead from the neck up.

But very often the corpse refuses to lie down, particularly one made up of an elite which would have to give up their power positions in the academy and in government. One crucial law of politics or sociology is: no one ever resigns. And so, the Keynesians have clung to their power positions as tightly as possible, never resigning, although a bit less addicted to grandiose promises.

A bit chastened, they now only promise to do the best they can, and to keep the system going. Essentially, then, shorn of its intellectual groundwork, Keynesianism has become the pure economics of power, committed only to keeping the Establishment-system going, making marginal adjustments, babying things along through yet one more election, and hoping that by tinkering with the controls, shifting rapidly back and forth between accelerator and brake, something will work, at least to preserve their cushy positions for a few more years.

Amidst the intellectual confusion, however, a few dominant tendencies, legacies from their glory days, remain among Keynesians: (1) a penchant for continuing deficits, (2) a devotion to fiat paper money and at least moderate inflation, (3) adherence to increased government spending, and (4) an eternal fondness for higher taxes, to lower deficits a wee bit, but more importantly, to inflict some bracing pain on the greedy, selfish, and short-sighted American public.

The Reagan Administration managed to institutionalize these goodies, seemingly permanently on the American scene. Deficits are far greater and apparently forever; the difference now is that formerly free-market Reaganomists are out-Keynesianing their liberal forebears in coming up with ever more ingenious apologetics for huge deficits. The only dispute now is within the Keynesian camp, with the allegedly 'conservative' supply-siders enthusiastically joining Keynesians in devotion to inflation and cheap money, and differing only on their call for moderate tax cuts as against tax increases.

The triumph of Keynesianism within the Reagan Administration stems from the rapid demise of the monetarists, the main competitors to the Keynesians within respectable academia. Having made a series of disastrously bad predictions, they who kept trumpeting that 'science is prediction,' the monetarists have retreated in confusion, trying desperately to figure out what went wrong and which of the many 'M's they should fasten on as being the money supply. The collapse of monetarism was symbolized by Keynesian James Baker's takeover as Secretary of the Treasury from monetarist-sympathizer Donald Regan. With Keynesians dominant during the second Reagan term, the transition to a Keynesian Bush team--Bush having always had strong Keynesian leanings--was so smooth as to be almost invisible. 

Perhaps it is understandable that an Administration and a campaign that reduced important issues to sound bites and TV images should also be responsible for the restoration to dominance of an intellectually bankrupt economic creed, the very same creed that brought us the political economics of every Administration since the second term of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It is no accident that the same Administration that managed to combine the rhetoric of 'getting government off our back' with the reality of enormously escalating Big Government, should also have brought back a failed and statist Keynesianism in the name of prosperity and free enterprise."

aus: The Free Market, vol. VII, 1, Januar 1989 (Download).

Links, zusammenhangslos

- A propos Slowenien: Laibach veröffentlichen anlässlich ihres dreißigsten Geburtstags ihr Debütalbum neu, später dieses Jahr auch den Volkswagner als Doppelalbum. Eine Hörprobe findet man hier, mehr Infos zum Projekt (inklusive Reminiszenzen an den KdF-Wagner) hier.

- Ein lesenswerter Aufsatz von Wendy McElroy über die libertären Credentials von Oscar Wilde.

- Darian Worden über libertäre Anfälligkeit für Dogmatismus und Personenkult (aber wieso hält er darauf, sich an der "Ideologie" festzuklammern?).

- Hart, Härter, Hartz IV.

Joseph Déjacque und die Erfindung des Worts "libertär"

Anlässlich des 188. Geburtstags des französischen Anarchisten Joseph Déjacque wollen wir uns heute dem Ursprung des Wortes "libertär" widmen, als dessen Urheber Déjacque gemeinhin gilt. In einem 1972 in der Zeitschrift Economie et société erschienenen Artikel erläutert Valentin Pelosse die Schaffung der Neologismen "libertär" und "Libertarismus" (bzw. auf französisch "libertaire" und "libertarisme") bei Déjacque. Zuerst habe Déjacque den Begriff "libertär" in Opposition zu "liberal" in seiner Kritik an Proudhons Misogynie De l'être humain mâle et femelle. Lettre à P.J. Proudhon (1857) benutzt, in dem er Proudhon vorwirft, Freiheit im Handel, aber Protektionismus zwischen Mann und Frau zu vertreten:

"Anarchiste juste-milieu, libéral et non LIBERTAIRE, vous voulez le libre échange pour le coton et la chandelle, et vous préconisez des systèmes protecteurs de l'homme contre la femme, dans la circulation des passions humaines ; vous criez contre les hauts barons du capital, et vous voulez réédifier la haute baronie du mâle sur la vassale femelle ; logicien à bésicles, vous voyez l'homme par la lunette qui grossit les objets, et la femme par le verre qui les diminue ; penseur affligé de myopie, vous ne savez distinguer que ce qui vous éborgne dans le présent ou dans le passé, et vous ne pouvez rien découvrir de ce qui est à hauteur et à distance, ce qui perspective de l'avenir : vous êtes un infirme !" (den ganzen Text findet man hier).

Ich muss jedoch sagen, dass ich in diesem Zusammenhang nicht ganz überzeugt bin, dass dies wirklich der erste Gebrauch des Begriffs "libertaire" ist, zumal Déjacque sich keineswegs genötigt sieht, die Opposition zwischen "libertaire" und "libéral" weiter zu erläutern. Proudhon selber benutzt den Begriff "libertaire" wie selbstverständlich 1858 in De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise, allerdings dort nicht mit Bezug auf Déjacque, auch nicht als Selbstbezeichnung, sondern als Oberbegriff für die radikalsten Vertreter der Freihandelsschule, wie Bastiat, de Molinari oder Dunoyer (vgl. De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise. Première étude, 2. Auflage, Brüssel 1860, S.58-59). Bei beiden Verwendungen des Begriffs hat man den Eindruck, dass die Autoren davon ausgehen, dass der Leser bereits etwas mit dem Begriff "libertaire" verbindet. Wikipedia gesteht übrigens Déjacque den ersten "politischen Gebrauch" des Wortes "libertär" bzw. "libertarian" zu, unterstreicht aber, dass der englische Begriff "libertarian" bereits im 18. Jahrhundert benutzt wurde. Der älteste nachgewiesene Gebrauch stammt aus einem  Essay von William Belsham: "On liberty and necessity", erschienen in Essays, philosophical, historical and literary, London, 1789, S.1-15. Dort stellt der englische Philosoph den "necessarians" (d.h. die Deterministen) die "libertarians" als Verteidiger des freien Willens entgegen: "Or, where is the difference between the Libertarian, who says that the mind chuses [sic] the motive; and the Necessarian, who asserts that the motive determines the mind; if the volition be the necessary result of all the previous circumstances?" (ebd., S.13).

Die Entwicklung des Begriffs "libertär" von diesem philosophischen Gebrauch hin zu einem politisch bzw. ökonomischen Gebrauch bei Déjacque und Proudhon, und darüber hinaus zur gebräuchlichen Benutzung als Synonym für Anarchismus, aber auch ab den 1940ern als Selbstbezeichnung für eine gewöhnlich eher der politischen Rechten zugerechneten Bewegung in den USA wäre dementsprechend eigentlich noch zu schreiben. Klar ist allerdings, dass die 1858 bis 1861 von Déjacque in New York herausgegebene Zeitung Le Libertaire den Begriff nachhaltig popularisiert hat. Die Zeitung Déjacques, die mittlerweile integral online einsehbar ist, existiert übrigens in gewisser Weise, nach vielen Unterbrechungen und Neubeginnen, bis heute, seit 2005 allerdings nur noch als Online-Edition. Herausgeber ist mittlerweile die "Coordination anarchiste" aus Le Havre, ein Überbleibsel der "Union anarchiste" die sich in den 1970ern aus der "Fédération anarchiste" gelöst hat, da diese sich zu sehr in Richtung Anarchokommunismus entwickelt habe. Hier findet man die aktuelle Ausgabe.

Abschliessend ein Auszug aus einem Gedicht Déjacques, das in der letzten Ausgabe des ursprünglichen Libertaire vom 4. Februar 1861 erschienen ist:

"Au delà du gouffre qui gronde
Loin de l’écume de nos mœurs,
L’esprit signale un Nouveau-Monde.
Le monde des libres penseurs...

Voile au vent ! fils de la pensée,
Marcheurs dont l’âme est le gréement
Voile au vent, et flamme hissée !
— L’idéal... c’est le mouvement !"