Wednesday, January 5, 2022

MOVING ON

Well, that was only partially successful. Most of the comments argued with, rather than accepted, the hypothetical.   So let me move on to something else that has struck me in the past several days.

 

Apparently, judging from the text messages and other documents that have been released thus far, with the sole exception of Trump himself, all of the conspirators seeking to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election were dismayed by the violent invasion of the Capitol. As someone – I think it was Don Junior – said in a message to Mark Meadows, the violence was undermining everything they had planned. They quite correctly judged that the out of control mob was interfering with, rather than advancing, their carefully thought through plans.  Only Trump himself, who is a corrupt, vicious, and not terribly competent or disciplined plotter, was so delighted by the televised images of violence that he completely lost track of the plan, if indeed he ever fully grasped it.

 

Perhaps it is because of my age and my awareness that I will not live to see how things turn out in 20 years, but I am beginning to think that if we can somehow get past the 2024 election successfully, the balance of power in the country will tilt in our direction. As I have said in this space before, I pin my hopes (or my dreams or my fantasies – take your pick) on the reversal of Roe V Wade by the Supreme Court this June and a consequent flood of anti-Republican votes from women in red states and districts.

 

My guess is that the soon to be launched public hearings by the January 6 Committee will be dramatic, devastating, astonishing but in the end will have little effect on the midterm elections. Nevertheless, I shall watch every minute of it, having nothing better to do in my locked down condition. After all, if the quartet is going to continue playing on the deck of the Titanic, I hope at least it plays a lovely Beethoven quartet.

28 comments:

  1. Professor, I came away from reading In Defense of Anarchism rather disappointed. Not being an anarchist myself but open to hearing new ideas, I had gone into it expecting a description of what a thriving society organized under an anarchist ethos might look like, and a plan, or series of suggestions, of how we might transform our current state into such a society. Instead, as I think you acknowledge in one of the prefaces, you ended up writing a negative defense of anarchism, essentially just an attack on hierarchical forms of government and on the assumption that representative democracy is inherently the best and most practical form of government.

    With all of the free time you have now, instead of spending all your time worrying about the outcome of the elections, might you not consider revisiting that subject and providing a sketch of how our society could look if we decided to transition to anarchism? What steps would need to be taken for such a transformation if we Americans* decided to start working on it tomorrow? What would we have to give up? Who would "win" and who would "lose" (or is that the wrong question to ask?)? Would such a transformation even be possible, or do you think the obstacles too formidable?

    A couple of practical questions:

    How would decisions be made with regard to divisions of labor? Chomsky in an interview suggests that these decisions would be made democratically, and undesirable chores would need to be shared (eg trash collection, cleaning sewers). But what about forms of work that can only be competently performed after long periods of study and training, or that need to be started at a very early age? How would it be decided which children would be chosen for such training, for example?

    How would an anarchist society be able to defend itself against aggression by hierarchical states? Human nature being what it is, it seems reasonable to expect that it would be hard for anarchists to quickly come to agreement on how to protect themselves in response to threats. A very hierarchical, authoritarian state, making decisions by fiat, could easily outmaneuver and overcome them as they endlessly debate alternative courses of action. (Just look at the responses to climate change.) There is no reason to believe the entire world would suddenly all transition to anarchism. So there would be a period, perhaps a very long period, during which the anarchists would coexist with and face threats from nonanarchists.

    *We who are called Americans today, whether or not that label would be appropriate after the transformation.

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  2. I fear that the Jan 6 committee will have all the impact of the Mueller report

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  3. My take is that once Pence refused to leave the building (possibly allowing Grassley to take his place), those folks lost their nerve while Trump is made of sterner (and more deranged) stuff.

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  4. "I pin my hopes (or my dreams or my fantasies – take your pick) on the reversal of Roe V Wade by the Supreme Court this June. . ."

    Seems to me a bit of a hostage to (mis)fortune to leave it hanging there like that. I hope you mean that the hoped for consequent surge in votes for "anti-Republicans" will soon enough bring about the further consequence that women's right to terminate pregnancies will become enshrined in legislation. But how likely is that to happen? Anyway, I think you should have said something like that.

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  5. James Wilson,

    If, as expected, the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, they will rule that the Constitution either does not protect a woman’s right to have an abortion at any stage in her pregnancy, or it only protects the right up to some period less than the 6 months that Roe v. Wade established. In that case, Congress could not pass any federal legislation that expands the right beyond the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe, because the reversal would hold that the states cannot be required to recognize a more expansive right, and any federal legislation expanding the right would be unconstitutional. It will be left to the individual states to grant or deny the right to an abortion, as they choose. Consequently, if reversal of Roe v. Wade angers enough more women to vote, even if it means they elect more Democrats to the House and Senate, Congress could not pass legislation contradicting the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe. The benefit of having more Democrats in the House and/or Senate would only enhance the potential of passing other progressive legislation, but not federalizing the right to an abortion.

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  6. Thankyou for your explanation, A.A. To my mind it makes our host's reliance on the overthrow of Roe v. Wade terribly problematical and not something to be wished for.

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  7. James,

    The right of women in this country to obtain an abortion, regardless where they live, has been lost for at least a generation. It will take a Supreme Court with a liberal majority to reverse the reversal of Roe v. Wade. That is why I have periodically railed about the 2016 election, in which too many liberal voters did not understand the potential consequences of their refusal to vote for Hilary Clinton. Blemishes and all, she was a far better candidate to protect Roe v. Wade, and other progressive values, than Il Duce.

    To Eric’s point above, in his book “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality,” Prof. Alex Rosenberg argues that our core moral values cannot be justified by deduction. Applying game theory principles, he maintains that our core moral values evolved among early hominids as expressions of the need for mutual cooperation in order to survive. Since anarchism as a philosophy emphasizes autonomy over mutual cooperation, if Prof. Rosenberg is correct, then anarchism could not form the basis for a social system which requires cooperation in order to survive.

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  8. Since anarchism as a philosophy emphasizes autonomy over mutual cooperation

    Didn't the anarchist Kropotkin write a book called Mutual Aid?

    (N.b. I don't claim to know much about anarchism or the anarchist tradition.)

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  9. Another Anonymous: "anarchism as a philosophy emphasizes autonomy over mutual cooperation"

    ???
    Why do you think cooperation is incompatible with anarchism?
    Even if we accept your premise that anarchism, broadly defined, prioritizes autonomy over mutual cooperation, it does not necessarily follow that there can be no cooperation in anarchism. (One might claim that democracy as a philosophy emphasizes cooperation over autonomy. Does that mean there is no autonomy under democracy? These are matters of degree, not absolutes.)

    As I understand it, anarchism, or at least many forms of anarchism, arguably requires certain amounts of cooperation, because a core principle is voluntary association and mutualism. The essence of anarchism is the absence of hierarchical government (or, as Chomsky says, the absence of unjustified hierarchical government). Voluntary association, sharing, democracy are all possible components of an anarchist society.

    And, with regard to a comment s. wallerstein made a while back, I don't see why competition, entered into voluntarily, could not also be compatible with anarchism. I think the key questions would be to what ends that competition would be intended and who would be meant to be served by it. (Competition under capitalism primarily serves the haves at the expense of the have-nots. If the latter benefit, it is only by accident—benefits trickling down.) A healthy competition to see who could come up with the highest-yield strategies for growing crops, or produce a vaccine most effective at preventing a disease while causing the fewest side effects, or create the tastiest recipes could benefit the whole of society—if the results are shared, not hoarded as "intellectual property" as in capitalism.

    But I don't really know much about anarchism, which is why I suggest Prof Wolff might opine on it.

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  10. (contd from 7:00pm)

    From Andrew Fiala's entry on anarchism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


    "Anarchism is usually grounded in moral claims about the importance of individual liberty, often conceived as freedom from domination. Anarchists also offer a positive theory of human flourishing, based upon an ideal of equality, community, and non-coercive consensus building.
    ...
    Anarchism is often taken to mean that individuals ought to be left alone without any unifying principle or governing power. In some cases anarchism is related to libertarianism (or what is sometimes called “anarcho-capitalism”). But non-rule may also occur when there is unanimity or consensus—and hence no need for external authority or a governing structure of command and obedience. If there were unanimity among individuals, there would be no need for 'ruling', authority, or government. The ideas of unanimity and consensus are associated with the positive conception of anarchism as a voluntary association of autonomous human beings, which promotes communal values.
    ...
    A more robust form of individualist anarchism will focus on key values such as autonomy and self-determination, asserting the primacy of the individual over and against social groups as a matter of rights. Individualist anarchists can admit that collective action is important and that voluntary cooperation among individuals can result in beneficial and autonomy preserving community. [my emphasis]
    ...
    On the other hand, socialist or communistically oriented anarchism will focus more on a sharing economy. This could be a large form of mutualism or something local and concrete like the sharing of family life or the traditional potlatch. But these ideas remain anarchist to the extent that they want to avoid centralized control and the development of hierarchical structures of domination.
    ...
    Socialist and communally focused forms of anarchism emphasize the importance of social groups. For example, families can be viewed as anarchic structures of social cooperation and solidarity. A social anarchist would be critical of hierarchical and domineering forms of family organization (for example, patriarchal family structure). But social anarchists will emphasize the point that human identity and flourishing occur within extended social structures—so long as it remains a free and self-determining community."

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  11. Eric,

    What would be an example of Chomsky's "justified" hierarchical government? Who would justify it and how? How would it differ from justifications offered by the governments we have now, e.g., majority rule? Can anarchism exist with governments that have powers (however justified) of coercion?

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  12. Eric,

    Terms such as “individualistic anarchism”; “socialist oriented anarchism”; “communistically oriented anarchism”; “these ideas remain anarchist to the extent that they want to avoid centralized control and the development of hierarchical structures of domination” – these are just high falutin words strung together, with no substantive meaning.

    Why do I say that anarchism is incompatible with cooperation? Because in any organization whose members are called upon to cooperate, there has to be a leader who sets the agenda, who calls the organization to order, who monitors the time of the speakers, and assigns the projects. Such cooperation requires that each member subordinate their individual autonomy to some degree. Such subordination is incompatible with true anarchism.

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  13. David Palmeter,

    I won't pretend to be able to defend Chomsky's position to anyone's satisfaction.
    So instead here are some quotes from the book On Anarchism, which is a collection of Chomsky's essays and interviews. You be the judge.

    Interviewer: You often seem reluctant to get very specific in spelling out your vision of an anarchist society and how we could get there. Don't you feel it's important for activists to do that, though ... I'm curious why you don't do that more often.

    Chomsky: Well, I suppose I don't feel that in order to work hard for social change you need to be able to spell out a plan for a future society in any kind of detail....

    I don't feel in a position--and even if I felt I was, I wouldn't say it--to know what the long-term results are going to look like in any kind of detail; those things will have to be discovered, in my view. Instead, the basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of authority and domination and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that it's justified--it has no prior justification. For instance, when you stop your five-year-old kid from trying to cross the street, that's an authoritarian situation: it's got to be justified. Well, in that case, I think you can give a justification. But the burden of proof for any exercise of authority is always on the person exercising it--invariably. And when you look, most of the time these authority structures have no justification: they have no moral justification, they have no justification in the interests of the person lower in the hierarchy, or in the interests of other people, or the environment, or the future, or the society, or anything else--they're just there in order to preserve certain structures of power and domination, and the people at the top.

    So I think that whenever you find situations of power, these questions should be asked--and the person who claims the legitimacy of the authority always has the burden of justifying it. And if they can't justify it, it's illegitimate and should be dismantled. To tell you the truth, I don't really understand anarchism as being much more that that. As far as I can see, it's just the point of view that says that people have the right to be free, and if there are constraints on that freedom, then you've got to justify them. Sometimes you can--but of course, anarchism or anything else doesn't give you the answers about when that is. You have to look at the specific cases.

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  14. ___

    Interviewer: So coming out of this tradition, being influence by and continuing to believe in it, what is your notion of legitimate power? Under what circumstances is power legitimate?

    Chomsky: The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then it should be dismantled.

    Can you ever prove it? Well, it's a heavy burden of proof to bear, but I think sometimes you can bear it. So to take an example, if I'm walking down the street with my four-year-old granddaughter and she starts to run into the street, and I grab her arm and pull her back, that's an exercise of power and authority, but I can give a justification for it, and it's obvious what the justification would be. And maybe there are other cases where you can justify it. But the question that always should be asked uppermost in our mind is, 'Why should I accept it?' It's the responsibility of those who exercise power to show that somehow it's legitimate. It's not the responsibility of anyone else to show that it's illegitimate. It's illegitimate by assumption, if it's a relation of authority among human beings which places some above others. Unless you can give a strong argument to show that it's right, you've lost.

    It's kind of like the use of violence, say, in international affairs. There's a heavey burden of proof to be borne by anyone who calls for violence. Maybe it can be sometimes justified. Personally, I'm not a committed pacifist, so I think that, yes, it can sometimes be justified. So I thought, in fact, in that article I wrote in fourth grade, I thought the West should be using force to try to stop Fascism, and I still think so. But now I know a lot more about it. I know that the West was actually supporting Fascism, supporting Franco, supporting Mussolini, and so on, and even Hitler. I didn't know that at the time. But I thought then and I think now that the use of force to stop that plague would have been legitimate, and finally was legitimate. But an argument has to be given for it.

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  15. You can call it sophomoric, but I think an effective way to really highlight this approach to understanding what anarchism is about at its most fundamental level is to pronounce the word with the primary stress on the second syllable. So, instead of AN-archism, it's an-ARCHism. No hierarchy.

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  16. Eric,

    Chomsky’s example of a grandfather saving his granddaughter from being struck by traffic is too simplistic.

    Here’s a different example. You open a gate door and walk onto the property. The property owner comes out and accuses you of trespassing and demands that you leave. You challenge his right to put the fence up and demand that you leave. By what right does he have to do so? You demand that unless he demonstrates to you what right he had to exercise authority over you, you will not leave. He goes back to his house and upon returning shows you his deed. You challenge the deed, and the legal system that has issued the deed to him. According to Chomsky, unless the property owner can prove to you that he has a legitimate right to claim he owns that property, indeed that anyone can own any property, you have a right to walk on the property for as long as you wish, as often as you wish.

    The same example can be expanded to any form of ownership. By what right does the driver of that vehicle claim that you have no right to enter the vehicle and drive off with it? What right does your child have to refuse to allow a neighbor child to play with his hobby horse? These are all exercises of authority. According to Chomsky, none of these rights exist unless they can be morally justified. Nonsense.

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  17. Another Anonymous,

    You have prejudged the answers.
    "The property owner comes out..." How is *property owner* defined?
    (And that scenario you paint raises the ugly specter of the whole settler-colonial experience. I doubt that Chomsky would accept that as an example of what he means when he talks about legitimate authority.)

    "By what right does the driver of that vehicle claim that you have no right to enter the vehicle and drive off with it? What right does your child have to refuse to allow a neighbor child to play with his hobby horse?"

    How did the driver come by possession of the vehicle? How did my child come by possession of the hobby horse?

    In most societies isn't it generally accepted that when a free man or woman builds something with his or her own hands, from materials he or she has freely gathered, that he or she is entitled to decide, within limits, how that object may be used and by whom it may be used? (Land "ownership" is a whole other ball of wax entirely.)

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  18. Eric,

    The automobile owner purchased the automobile with wages he was paid for his labor/service. The hobby horse was purchased by the parents with wages they were paid for their labor/services. Neither item was built by the owner. Therefor they have no right to exercise authority over who may use the items they purchased without providing moral justification for their exercise of authority?

    Moreover, upon what moral basis is the premise that if I built it, I have the right to exercise authority over it? If you believe that the right exists because it is “generally accepted by society,” why does this not hold true for all of the other conventions regarding the exercise of authority which Chomsky claims cannot be exercised unless morally justified? In the simplistic example he used, the grandfather is exercising authority in order to protect the life of the granddaughter. Does this mean that authority may only be morally exercised if it provides protection to the recipient? In that case, how does exercising authority over the house you built with your own hand protect the intruder who claims s/he has a right to live in the house along with its builder, but which the builder claims a right to exclude the intruder, even though such exclusion does not protect the intruder?

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  19. Eric refers above to a comment I made about anarchism and competition. I don't recall saying anything of the sort, but my memory isn't great and I make a lot of stupid comments all the time. I change my mind every 20 minutes, but I hope that when I grow up, I'll stand by my opinions for decades as Professor Wolff does.

    I do recall saying that while socialism convinces me some days, anarchism doesn't. I see no reason why companies could not belong to the state and profits be distributed among the workers as well as going to finance social spending. Managers could be paid more or less the same as workers with some incentives for increased efforts among workers and managers.

    On the other hand, when I look around, I think we need a state. We need strengthened consumer and environmental protection agencies, we need cops (hopefully trained to be less trigger-happy and to respect human rights), we need judges, we need prisons, etc.
    When I walk my neighborhood, I'm happy to see a police car drive by


    It may be that in prehistoric societies people cooperated with one another and respected one another out of pure good will and a desire for mutual benefit, but in the society I live in, there isn't much mutual respect. I can sense the irritation of all too many drivers as they brake for an elderly pedestrian (me) as he crosses all too slowly in the crosswalk as is my legal right. The other day a woman friend had to call the cops because of repeated violence on the part of her teenage son and surprise, a specialist in domestic violence, appeared and dealt very skillyfully with the situation. I could go on for days...


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  20. Eric,

    Two quotes in posts above from Chomsky epitomize my problem with both anarchism and socialism:

    1.“It's the responsibility of those who exercise power to show that somehow it's legitimate.”
    Everyone who exercises power claims that it’s legitimate. Trump is doing so right now and so is Mitch McConnell. The question then is, to whose satisfaction? In a democracy, the answer is to a majority’s satisfaction. But anarchism, as I understand it, would reject this. In a nation of 330 million, unanimity is impossible.

    2. “I don't feel in a position--and even if I felt I was, I wouldn't say it--to know what the long-term results are going to look like in any kind of detail; those things will have to be discovered”

    This is the answer I always get when I ask how socialism would work. “Marx didn’t say much of anything about it.” So, how can we know that we’re not jumping from the frying pan into the fire? To put it mildly, the experiments to date with socialism have not been encouraging.

    That leads me to where I see myself on the political spectrum: a left-wing New Deal Democrat a la Bernie Sanders: private ownership of the means of production, regulation, progressive taxation, and a strong social safety-net.

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  21. David Palmeter,

    To point 2--
    I left out what Chomsky said right before the line that you quoted back:

    "So for example, in the case of workers taking control of the workplace, there are a lot of different ways in which you can think of workplaces being controlled--and since nobody knows enough about what all the effects are going to be of large-scale social changes, I think what we should do is try them piecemeal. In fact, I have a rather conservative attitude towards social change: since we're dealing with complex systems which nobody understands very much, the sensible move I think is to make changes and then see what happens--and if they work, make further changes. That's true across the board, actually."

    On point 1--
    I don't see anarchism and democracy being incompatible. To quote Chomsky again (since I have not read Kropotkin, Bakunin, etc), the democracy of anarchism is from the bottom up, rather than (in, say, US society) from the top down.

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  22. Another Anonymous,
    If someone has purchased a hobby horse, he or she has been given it by someone else who owned it in exchange for some payment or service. So he or she now has the same right to decide how it may be used and by whom it may be used as the original owner. I'm no anthropologist, but I assume that among humans this is a widely recognized right across many cultures. (There are probably also many cultures in which there are expectations of sharing that are much stronger than anything in contemporary American culture, but I assume that the maker/owner still has a stronger claim on the use of something even in most of those societies.)

    Of course, as I say, I don't pretend to know what Chomsky would say. But I think he would respond to your challenges--
    unless the property owner can prove to you that he has a legitimate right to claim he owns that property, indeed that anyone can own any property, you have a right to walk on the property for as long as you wish, as often as you wish....
    These are all exercises of authority. According to Chomsky, none of these rights exist unless they can be morally justified. Nonsense.
    --
    by replying that you are attacking a straw man. AFAICT, he never says or implies that there isn't a need for a mutually agreed way by which to resolve disputes. Where he departs from you is in your slavish (heh) acceptance of the a priori legitimacy of the state, represented in this case by the police potentially being called in to haul one of the disputants off to jail and to kill him if he resists. You accept that the state is legitimate without question. He rejects any such assumption (which is also the whole point of In Defense of Anarchism, if I understand it right).

    For anyone who has not thought much about the anarchists' view of the state, your position seems entirely reasonable. That is, until one begins to consider the actions of the state in Salem, Massachusetts during the witch trials, or in the American colonies and the antebellum United States in the treatment of enslaved Africans, or in Germany and Poland 80 years ago.

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  23. Prof Wolff must at this point be scratching his head and wondering, "What the heck does all this talk about anarchism have to do with the hypothetical I proposed?"

    Well, if you will indulge me in a bit of polemicism...

    The question was: Should the attorney general violate his oath of office and engage in professional misconduct as a prosecutor if he is convinced that doing so serves the higher good?

    And, as I think several have pointed out in the discussions (most recently Howie, was it?), the Republicans treat politics as war and will stop at nothing to achieve their ends, while Democrats think they are engaged in a debate society and want to stick to Marquess of Queensbury rules.

    One might argue that the atty genl IS morally obliged to take those actions which, viewed individually, would otherwise be considered unethical and immoral. If you really believe Trump & the Republicans will bring Fascism to America, leading to the Fourth Reich and World War III, then it seems not only reasonable but obligatory to insist that anyone who is in a position of power to stop them MUST do all they can to try to keep that from happening.

    (Of course, one of the strongest arguments against defending the atty genl's taking such an action is that if we say it is acceptable for him to violate his oath, those on the right will be able to use the same sort of reasoning to justify a similar violation of the oath of office by ultraconservative attorneys general and ultraconservative judges who stand for all we oppose. One might say that the thought of that possibility ought to be enough to keep anyone from trying to defend misconduct by the atty genl. Except that we know that the ultraconservative attys genl, and ultraconservative judges, and ultraconservative officials in the Executive branch are without question going to violate their oaths of office no matter what Merrick Garland does. We've already seen them do it time and again for decades.)

    I, for one, think these nightmare scenarios involving Trump are quite far-fetched. On the other hand, I think the threats posed by climate change are very real. And things may be even worse than what we've been told because reports keep coming out that some critical changes are occurring faster than many scientists had been expecting.

    If we are convinced that the climate crisis poses for humanity a bona fide existential threat--the real McCoy here, not just another hyperbolic use of that hackneyed phrase)--at what point do we start realizing that we have reached a break glass in case of emergency moment?

    Do we continue to follow the same rules as in the past, trusting in our Constitution and limiting our engagement to voting for the Democrats or the Republicans every few years, despite the fact that we can see that what we have been doing has not been working?

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  24. I assume most of the folks here have either already seen the new film Don't Look Up, or have at least read or heard about it. Are we, like the characters in the movie, just going to watch helplessly as our sociopathic leaders lead us to our doom? Are we going to just sit quietly because it would be uncouth to raise our voices or to challenge the rules we have been taught?

    Do we not have a moral obligation, not just to ourselves but to the memory of our forebears and to the innocents who will come after us, to start trying to completely change how we do things, before it is too late, even if that means completely remaking how we govern ourselves?

    The people in Chile seem to be saying, Yes, we do.

    Am I saying here that the answer is Anarchism? No. Not necessarily. I am saying we need to remember that there are a great many alternatives available for us to choose from in deciding how to solve problems. We need to be open to exploring our options. Our current form of governance is not the only option available and was never intended to be. The stakes could not be higher.

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  25. In my experience in situations where there is no stipulated group hierarchy, for example, in certain leftwing collectives, the most dominant individual or individuals simply impose their will. Those who dissent are ostracized or disqualified by the prevailing group think.

    Given that that is the case, it's wise to have a stipulated hierarchy, to have someone officially in charge and to have explicit rules. I recall a conversation with a very alternative and leftwing woman during my Berkeley, California days (in the mid 1970's) and she explaining to me "there are no rules". I insisted that in our group there were in fact many rules, but unwritten rules that she accepted without thinking. Of course our conversation got nowhere.

    Chomsky, the anarchist, would not have noticed that in non-hierarchal groups the strongest persons impose themselves because Chomsky has such a dominant personality that no one nowhere is going to dominate him. Not all of us have Chomsky strength of character or intelligence.

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  26. In Locke’s state of nature (an anarchistic condition), he ties owning land to working it (and presumably living on it)
    – “for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.”
    The question AA’s intruder should be asking is, “what’s all this wasted land doing behind your gate? There’s no free land around here and you’re not growing anything on it. Your house is hardly in sight. I’m going to start plowing right here.”
    Locke tells us that the same basis for rights in the state of nature should be preserved in a commonwealth. It follows that if someone is not using the land he has fenced in, he should lose title to it. Locke seems to just accept that the introduction of money makes holding title to unused land legitimate (50), but that seems to be an inconsistency. AA’s intruder should be allowed to sue for squatter’s rights according to the founder of Liberalism.

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  27. "...Your house is hardly in sight. I’m going to start plowing right here.”

    You clearly don't live in a rural county.

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