Weigh in.
Well, if you insist.
War, Socialism and Precision in Thinking
7/1/05 anti-state.com:
I am unable to justify ansoc property or any other form of a commons or commonwealth. The legal issues seem plain.
If property is held in common, it is impossible to litigate. Every current and future member of the socialist collective would be party to a lawsuit and they might all be simultaneously petitioners and respondents, unless an individual member seeks to enjoin or sue everyone else. Legal standing to sue the state (collective) is narrowly defined in most jurisdictions. The alleged injury must be personal. If you are similarly situated to other citizens and required to obey laws and pay tax or perform service according to administrative rules that are more or less uniformly applicable to all, then you have no individual standing to sue, comrade. I shudder to think what ansoc due process might be. Stalinist/Maoist show trials of freethinking bourgeoise "traitors"?
The Freeman's Constitution limits the standing of states, corporations, and other collective entities. They can sue and be sued, but cannot prosecute felony or treason. Every natural person (every living individual human being) is competent to claim the right to liberty -- and it seems very probable that numerous ansoc chumps will end up feeling like slaves. Ancap courts could be flooded with habeas corpus and restraint of trade complaints. If an ansoc enclave proclaims itself sovereign and/or exercises police power within its territory, Laissez Faire Supreme Court has original jurisdiction (Art. III) and will not countenance endless litigation, one complaint after another alleging socialist denial of liberty, condemnation of property, child abuse, etc.
Ansoc enclaves are destined to stress and infuriate everyone, especially the neighbors. I'll wager $100 to a donut that all socialism will ever produce is untreated sewage dumped in rivers to the exasperation of capitalist neighbors downstream. In U.S. history, 'libertopian' socialist enclaves were founded repeatedly and failed every time. Equity requires abatement of nuisance, and greedy rotten capitalists (working class freemen) will get stuck with the bill for cleaning up ansoc disasters, food and shelter for survivors, environmental reclamation, etc. Pray that ansocs don't experiment with nuclear power. One Chernobyl was enough.
Nor is it accurate to depict an ansoc commune as a family. States and/or dominant institutions are emphatically not families. The legal controversies they spawn cannot be adjudicated in Family Court, where custody and care of children drives everything else. It is absurd to characterize ansoc leaders and apparachiks as sovereign "parents" with numerous adopted children, grandchildren and future generations of slaves, none of whom can ever be emanicipated or individuated or hold title to property. The moral crime of brainwashing small kids to deny liberty becomes heinous by claiming that a collective is their perpetual and exclusive moral tutor.
Taxatio
(continued)
Taxation, collectivism, and involuntary service are unconstitutional globally (Art. V), and thus I'm inclined to say that ansoc is probably outlaw in se.
By the way, this puts paid to *grounded's* theory that all justice flows from promises. Agreeing to hand your children into ansoc is criminal and void.
Well, I should know better than to argue with someone whose position is that something is illegal under his interpretation of a law code he wrote...
Even so, are you aware that you just outlawed all forms of voluntary sharing, from Christmas gifts to potluck suppers? Some "freeman's" constitution, alright. Pfft!
Go slow, Brad. We have a long way to travel together. War is illegal because states are unconstitutional. (Art. V.)
Whether I created it or someone else is really beside the point. Without law, there is no context to measure justice. The crucial question, as my philosophy professor Gerald Macallum used to say, is the rights of children. The Christmas gifts and potluck suppers we visit on the innocent must do no harm.
I got drawn into this because I can't abide the assertion that all humans are evil by nature. Okay, it's awkward to inject the notion of property. And it's more awkward still that "private property" is mostly nonsense. But there's a bright line that prohibits conscription, taxation, bombardment and terror.
Go slow, Brad. We have a long way to travel together.
Fair point. I was being excessively snippy on one count. My bad.
I would like to have read the whole article first (assuming what's above is just an excerpt), and would have, if I could have found it. It's not in the old articles section or the new PNAC blog on anti-state.com, though.
The phrasing of your words above seem to imply very specific ideas about what "ansoc" consists of. That makes you a lot more sure of yourself than I, because in practice (rightly or wrongly), political terms tend to be "fuzzy", from what I've seen.
The point I was getting at is that HOPEFULLY you didn't mean:
1) that non-profit mutual benefit associations, the assets of which only consist of ethically acquired property and which claim no prerogative to aggress or coerce, aren't illegal.
2) that employee-owned enterprises, the assets of which only consist of ethically acquired property and which claim no prerogative to aggress or coerce, aren't illegal.
3) that labor unions, the assets of which only consist of ethically acquired property and which claim no prerogative to aggress or coerce, aren't illegal.
...and so forth.
Maybe I jumped the gun, but the way you phrased the above seemed to indicate that you were merely reacting to perceived connotations of the label "ansoc" rather than specific practices.
For example:
The Freeman's Constitution limits the standing of states, corporations, and other collective entities. They can sue and be sued, but cannot prosecute felony or treason.
In the context of a discussion of ansoc, that statement implicitly supposes that "ansoc" is actually "govsoc" -- that some pseudo-state is required or implied.
With regard to what some avowedly "ansoc" people want, that would be correct. In other cases, it wouldn't. For which of those the label "ANsoc" would be more appropriate seems apparent...
Tom,
Our disagreement hinges on the definition of "war" not on the definition of "necessary". You said "So, let's take your example: a community is attacked. Guess what: There's a war on."
Dictionary.com has a pretty standard definition of war:
1. a. A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
b. The period of such conflict.
If you accept this definition at face value then I agree with you. Especially since you say "I don't regard the fact of the war as a free pass to tax those who happen to be part of one side (as defined by the other), or to kill innocents, or to claim immunity for damages caused..."
However, if we look further, at how the word is actually used, we find instances which match the definition, but are not war. Notably family or clan feuds such as the Hatfields and McCoys. That feud lasted over a decade and saw 12 people killed. Yet no one would call it a war, because it did not have any of the other attributes normally associated with war. On the other hand, inner city gang wars and organized crime wars do qualify since they do have the other attributes.
In war, both sides engage in taxation, willful violation of the rights of innocents, and do not pay restitution (unless they lose and are forced to do so).
If there is an armed conflict in which neither side engages in these activities, then the conflict is not war. I think we can agree on this. Am I correct?
If there is a conflict in which one side does not engage in these activities, but the other does, is it war? I think our disagreement lies here.
I think it is not war. If, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the US in 1992, he had been hunted down and killed/arrested, that action would not have been war. If the American colonists had blown up Parliament and assassinated King George III, that would not have been war. These are not acts of warfare, they are acts consistent with self defence and retaliation.
Cross posted here.
That blog is beautiful; was it begun only recently? Thanks for posting a link to it... I'm not sure of its ideology though; it seems libertarian leaning.
Jorge,
Dang, I keep getting behind. You write:
"Notably family or clan feuds such as the Hatfields and McCoys. That feud lasted over a decade and saw 12 people killed. Yet no one would call it a war, because it did not have any of the other attributes normally associated with war."
Actually, I have seen the Hatfield-McCoy feud and other similar clan fights referred to as "wars." Especially when, as was inevitable, they ended up getting a political texture (I seem to recall that the Hatfields and McCoys were on opposite sites of the Mingo County mine war, for example).
I dunno if I can agree that taxation and other depredations are essential features of war. Gonna have to skull it some more.
Regards,
Tom
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Apparently this thread has been linked a great deal, and I selected the Wolf DeVoon quote on socialism above for inclusion in "Laissez Faire Law" recently published at Lulu. See http://www.lulu.com/content/1162989
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