OFF: Bill of Rights sent to Whitehouse

Hardman DK D.K.Hardman at CITY.AC.UK
Thu Feb 29 09:55:55 EST 1996


On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, M Holmes wrote:

> >
> > Actually, what annoys me about the American Liberatarian movement is that
> > they wrap up nutty right-wing laissez-faire economics with perfectly good
> > libertarian ideas.  Even worse, this interpretation of the word is
> > gaining ground in the UK.
>
> Hardly surprising since laissez-faire economics *is* libertarian. If the
> market isn't free then there's coercion in there somewhere. Coercion is
> anti-libertarian by definition.
>
Annoyed as I am by having to trawl through all this non-BOC/HW material,
I can't help making some comments myself. I'm always struck by the
similarities and differences between what American libertarians espouse
and what (mainly) European anarchists espouse. Both hate government and
the coercion that ensues from having government. However, the libertarian
solution embraces the traditional American values of rugged
individualism: everybody is a free agent who should be able to say what
s/he wants in the free market of ideas and to trade what s/he wants in
the free economic market. Of course, in the libertarian world everyone
has to take more risks in order to accrue more benefit for each
individual self, with the downside that many people will fall by the
wayside. Hence, the freedom that libertarianism brings also means that we
all have to survive in a tougher economic environment. But - hey! - we're
free and government is off our backs.
  Anarchism, on the other hand, tends to emphasise the freedom of the
social group over the individual (though there are more individualist
versions). Yes, government should be abolished, but the basis of society
should be determined according to a true democracy of the people. This
means planning, rather than relying on the invisible hand of the market.
The people must decide what the needs of their social groupings are and
how to go about meeting those needs. With regard to laws, this may involve
decisions about what is and isn't acceptable. E.g., for some anarchists
drug dealers are antithetical to the interests of the social group, and it
is up to the group to enforce sanctions against drug dealers.

IMO, both libertarianism and anarchism are woolly-headed ideals, although
elements of libertarianism can be found running through much of
mainstream American politics and in some of the more right-wing British
Tories. In practical terms, there is no such thing as a free-market,
because markets are socially-determined arrangements that can never
operate equally in everybody's interests. Furthermore, experience of
increasingly laissez-faire economics under Thatcher in Britain has proved
to be little short of disastrous and has certainly caused many people a
great deal of suffering. Lack of planning continues to bedevil our
economic progress.  Personally, I am much more sympathetic to anarchist
ideas as they seem more concerned with *humanity*, but fear that they are
little more than a pipe dream in today's highly-populated industrialised
technological world. Imperfect, messy, solutions to our problems are all
we realistically have. Sadly, the pursuit of idealistic politics so often
seems to result in an extremism that is more concerned with satisfying
the needs of the idealogue than with the real concerns of the people.

Incidentally, I'm sure many of the Moorcock enthusiasts on the list will
be aware of that author's anarchist politics. I can greatly recommend one
of the books he mentions in "The Opium General":  "Nestor Makhno in the
Russian Civil War", by Michael Malet  --- an account of the life of one
of the great anarchist figures in history, who fought for an independent
anarchist Ukraine during the Russian civil war, alternately fighting and
making unholy alliances with a number of other forces and ultimately
being betrayed by Trotsky.

Sorry this has got so long: I'm not going to post anymore on the
topic...promise!

Dave



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