Of course, it is not just YouTube that cannot be trusted (which is why when I link to video content I expect YouTube to take down at some point, I tend to download it & upload it to BitChute), but this is a prime example of why.
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Why YouTube cannot be trustedJanuary 11th, 2025 |
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YouTube is owned by Google – and Google has had a leftist agenda for many years.
YouTube promotes leftist (“mainstream” Collectivist) content, and downplays “right wing” content (by the way – “right wing” includes being opposed to the People’s Republic of China Communist Party Dictatorship).
The Google search engine also promotes the left and hides away the right – yet most people still use it, believing the lies that it is an “objective, scientific, search engine”.
Yes I am saying that the Google business model is based upon a fraudulent claim – namely the fraudulent claim that their search engine is objective when, on political and cultural matters, it is not.
During the Covid pandemic and continuing to this day, YouTube helped kill many people.
It down played, or just banned, videos suggesting generally effective Early Treatments, and it promoted (and still promotes) the harmful Covid “vaccines”.
This is nothing to do with “credentials” – many well qualified academic medical scientists and experienced medical doctors had the courage (and it required courage – because they were persecuted) to tell the truth, but YouTube (Google) either downplayed their videos or just banned them.
So YouTube (Google) knew what they were doing – they kept information (about Early Treatment) away from people that could have saved their lives, and they promoted false information (about Covid “vaccines”) that injured or killed them.
They are still doing it – for example absurd Computer Models that say the Covid “vaccines” have “saved millions of lives”.
And the computer models (not thermometer readings) that say that 2024 was the “hottest year in history” – the lies are extreme, and very damaging.
People are in danger of freezing to death in Britain because of high energy prices – high energy prices justified as part of a “Green” agenda to “save the planet” – based on lying computer models pushed by Google and the rest of the “mainstream”.
Place not your trust in Princes. Especially the Digital Princes, even though they may appeal.
DiscovedJoys – even I am less gloomy about this than I was, for some time it looked as if the internet was going to be dominated by pro censorship corporations. But then Elon Musk came along – not a perfect man (there are no perfect people), but he has all the right enemies – for example the British establishment, the same people who have licked the boots of Bill Gates for years, who claim that Mr Musk is a “threat to national sovereignty” – if Mr Musk really was a such a threat to British independence they would love him, as the establishment hate and despise national sovereignty – almost as much as they get angered by anyone talking about Islamic rape gangs (the rape of thousands of girls does not bother them at all – but mentioning it is forbidden as “Islamophoic” and “racist”).
As for computer models – garbage in – garbage out. If they are programmed to say it is very hot that is what they will say – even if you are freezing to death. And if they are programmed to say that an injection saved your life that is what they will say – even if the injection killed you.
This isn’t really news, is it?
It’s been known for years that Google, YouTube, and the social media platforms, have been censoring content. Unfortunately, it’s not clear what’s to be done about it. Governments regulating them (well, regulating them more than they’re already regulated), really would be an example of the cure being worse than the disease.
In the meantime, we need to be grateful that the censorship has not been very effective. YouTube et al. may censor content, but it’s not hard to find it somewhere else.
And let us also be grateful to Elon Musk for buying what is now X.
I remember when I first heard of this a couple years back. Some guy in an hnn discussion just casually threw out “well, we know the russian flu of 77 was
caused by a lab leak” and I was all like “wtf?”, but I checked it out and it appeared to be true. Doesn’t definitely prove that covid was caused by a lab leak, of course,
but people who discuss the possibility while failing to mention that fact are clearly deliberately distorting the evidence. Of course, suppressing the fact goes way beyond
that.
Oh?
Since when has Google been handing the means of production over to its workers?
(Google is NOT leftist. At all, in any sense)
neonsnake – Since when has Google been handing the means of production over to its workers?
It’s pretty rare for that to happen; the only genuine example I can think of was the Meriden (Triumph motorcycles) cooperative bank in the Seventies, and that did not last long. Maybe there was some of it in the early days of the Soviet Union, but at best it wasn’t long before the means of production there was firmly under the control of the State; even where it had formerly been in the hands of the workers – see Kulaks. Usually, a loudly proclaimed leftist agenda is about conning the workers into supporting you because they think there’s something in it for them. A softly proclaimed one, like Google’s, is of course more to do with virtue signalling for other powerful interests.
In other words, Google are about as genuinely leftist as any others – although in an honest world your definition would be a good one.
Marxism is just one form of “leftism” (i.e. socialism in the Marxist tradition). Corporatism (of which Fascism is also a form) is also socialism, just in the Henri de Saint-Simon & Giovanni Gentile tradition. Google has been quite ‘corporatist’.
I am old enough to remember the BBC “Survivors” series from 1975.
I think it got unpersoned by the Beeb a few years later, when somebody spotted that apart from a token Welsh tramp, everybody who survived the pandemic was terrifyingly middle class. Which would never do.
Anyway, the title sequence had an actual Chinese scientist, in an actual lab, dropping an actual flask and letting loose the pandemic.
Did I mention it was a BBC series ? Delicious.
@Lee Moore
I had forgotten that, but you are spot on. How delicious!
Spot on – they news of ex-Labour MO Ivor Caplin (and the reason for it) is all over Twitter, and the red sheet newspapers, but nothing on the BBC, Guardian or Independent…
And we can all draw our own conclusions as to the reason for that.
I can remember those title sequences as if it were yesterday! A great series by the much-missed Terry Nation, wasn’t it?
I’m a little bemused by the expectation that Google’s leftist agenda would involve an element of practicing what you preach. Surely all of us most know at least one middle class socialist who is only keen on wealth distribution when it involves other people’s wealth.
Perry – correct.
People who say that Google is not leftist because it does not strictly follow the ideas of Dr Karl Marx (1818-1883) are being stupid – someone can be a leftist Collectivist and not be a strict Marxist (and Frankfurt School Marxism is different from Classical Marxism anyway).
By the way Karl Marx and Fred Engels were not about “handing over the means of production to the workers” anyway – they despised worker cooperatives, and they did not allow industrial workers any real control of groups that they (Marx and Engels) set up. The workers were just there to do what Marx and Engels told them to do.
For those interested in the leftist bias of Google (its search engine and so on) see the work of Dr Robert Epstein.
Dr Epstein is a life long Democrat – but his work showed him that Google is most certainly not objective, it pushes a political and cultural agenda.
I have been told, but am unable to verify, that a few days before his arrest the alleged would-be nonce former Labour MP (and why shouldn’t I highlight his party? The bbc is never reticent in this respect whenever a Conservative steps out of line) was criticising Elon Musk for having the temerity to raise the subject of widespread child rape. Incidentally don’t ever say abuse, grooming or even trafficking, the word is rape.
Karma can work surprisingly fast on occasions.
Oh, my. Another blast from the past. I also watched it at the time. One storyline relied on one of the kids breaking a double-barrelled shotgun by dry-firing it, and to this day I won’t dry-fire a shotgun.
I’ve watched episodes of it on the Tubes of You but I suspect the intro may have been trimmed as the dropped-flask does not appear, but now you mention it, it comes right back. Prescient? It certainly is a strange coincidence . . .
llater,
llamas
llamas – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch7N7KCn778
Julia M – yes, Terry Nation
Thsnk you, Lee Moore – it all came right back. Eerie.
Regarding Ivor Caplin – not just a ‘former Labour MP’, but a former Labour Minister, and so presumably subject to more and deeper vetting than he would have been as a candidate. Perhaps he only developed these – tastes – after leaving Parliament. Really.
llater,
llamas
Perry:
Of course, neonsnake is wrong because he does not adopt the xxi century Anglo-American understanding of “leftism”.
— But from previous comments i believe that you, Perry, realize that the understanding of “left” and “right” changes with time and place.
And i further believe (based on The Road to Serfdom) that Saint-Simon was considered a man of “the right” in his time & place; because he wanted a return to authoritarianism, after the French Revolution demolished the authority of monarchy, church, and aristocracy.
And even further, i not just believe, but know for a fact that Mussolini defined fascism as a movement of “the right” (in The Doctrine of Fascism)) based on the understanding of his time & place; because fascism opposed individualism and endorsed authority, the collective, and the State.
— But, once again, one must understand that the above has no implications for the understanding of “left” and “right” in the xxi century.
Perry: There’s, of course, a lot more forms than just those (which I assume that you are aware of), but broadly speaking, the main differential is whether they’re authoritarian (state) or libertarian (non-state). I’m a socialist of the Benjamin Tucker free-market non-state persuasion.
Barbarus: I agree. That said (and I think I’m answering a different question than the one you posed?) there are a LOT of co-operative businesses in the world. There’s over 7.5 thousand in the UK alone, contributing something like £40billion per annum to the economy. Other the obvious one – the Co-Op group, John Lewis and Waitrose are probably the other most famous. And yes, in an honest world, my definition is probably correct – and I like to be honest 😉
Stonyground: yes, we all know some embarrassing liberals, of all classes. It’s a factor of “leftism” being so perverted that they think it just means wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and calling for higher taxes on billionaires (or similar, but you surely know what I mean), without any proper analysis beyond that. Bless them, and all that, but they’ve a long way to go.
Paul: I didn’t say that (and his date of birth and death are irrelevant); further I’m not a Marxist of any stripe as I’ve stated on numerous occasions, and Marxism is largely irrelevant to me other than something to argue against. Probably also worth noting that neither Marx nor Engels “set up” any industrial organisations that workers would have played a part in, so that’s an irrelevant statement as well. You may be talking about his opposition to Bakunin in the First International; if so, I am firmly on the side of Bakunin.
Snorri: No, I’m right precisely because I am not adopting a 21st Century (or even mid-to-late 20th Century) of what “leftism” means. If you wish to join the liberals in thinking that “leftism” is asking politely for a higher minimum wage and nothing more, than you go for it, but this ends up with the current state of affairs where very gullible people think that Kier Starmer is on a par with Stalin; therein lies the route to fascism.
I, personally, will not do so, and continue to push for a more proper understanding of what libertarianism and being “anti-state” actually means.
Neonsnake:
You are assuming that there is a “true” meaning of the words ‘left’ and ‘right’, while the history of ideas show that there is no such thing. Anything has been called “left-wing” except absolute monarchy; and anything has been called “right-wing”, even Stalinism; but not (yet?) wokeness afaik.
Therefore, when Paul Marks speaks of ‘leftists’ wrt Google, i assume that he refers to the current American meaning; but when Perry refers to Saint-Simon and Gentile, i do not think that the current American, or Anglo-American, frame of reference is appropriate.
No, I’m not assuming, I’m stating. When people call anything up to but not including “monarchy” leftwing, they are wrong. When Paul Marks calls what Google is doing “leftist”, I am full-on stating that he is wrong. This isn’t an assumption on my part, or a mix-up of words, it’s a literal statement of fact.
As I said, if you want to pretend that leftism is anything up to but not quite monarchy, then you go for it. I will not do so, for the very obvious reasons that it’s wrong, and leads to incorrect conclusions like I’ve pointed out in my previous post.
I’m struggling to see how to distinguish libertarian socialism from libertarian capitalism. Or libertarian knitting. Libertarianism describes a social means, which precludes the specification of a social end.
Obviously we might all choose to work in worker cooperatives, but then again, we might not.
Proof by assertion.
(Not that Paul Marks has not made the same mistake.)
Henri Saint-Simon a man of the right?
Well if one considers Credit Money, indeed Credit Bubble banking (which, inevitably, needs the support of government and its corrupt courts), and “public-private partnership” tyranny to be righteous – then yes, but it is not righteous, it is evil.
As for the French Revolution – fiat (whim-command) money was introduced in 1790 – and Robespierre later (but not much later) made it clear that anyone who did not accept it, or who tried to follow free market prices, rather than government set prices, would be executed.
The French Revolution was not about rolling back government power – on the contrary it was about increasing government power, the government even introduced a new system of weights and measures, and a new calendar.
“But the Rights of Man….” – READ the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, there is no limitation of government power there.
It is all about the rights of “the people” (the state) not the rights of individuals AGAINST “the people”.
People who confuse the French Declaration with the “reactionary” (and it was reactionary – it was, and is, righteous) American Bill of Rights make a basic error – indeed they have reversed reality.
As for the French Monarchy before the Revolution – it was also a violation of tradition,
It was also an effort at the state being “all in all” (as Edmund Burke’s son said).
The system set up by Louis XIV and Colbert (although traces of it can be found as far back as the time of Henry IV – for example his imposing of guilds on French towns and cities that did not have monopoly guilds) was a violation of traditional limits on government power.
As far back as 877 AD it was understood and accepted (even by the ruler Charles the Bald) that the monarchy was limited (not absolute like a Roman Emperor) that it was not above the law, and that there were many things (such as take land from one family and give the land to another family – or interfere with the doctrines of the Church) that monarchy was NOT allowed to do – this was explained again and again, right up to the 18th century with Montesquieu and another Saint-Simon (the Duke who opposed the leftist policies of Louis XIV – the Sun King). But kings such as Louis XIV (the Sun King) rejected traditional limits on government power.
The French monarchy had long left the path of righteousness (the right hand path) – because this is a steep and difficult path, it had gone down the left hand road, a broad and easy road – but one which leads to Hell.
Sadly the Revolution did not reverse this – it made it worse. Vastly worse.
In English a “Revolution” (such as that of America in 1776) was supposed to be Reactionary (righteous) – restoring things to as they had once been (revolving things back – rolling back the state) – but in France “Revolution” came to mean creating a new society, with less (not more – less) limits on government power.
The left hand path – to Hell.
See Doyle (French Revolution published in 1989) on the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly quite ordinary people in the provinces, murdered by the Revolutionaries and their new all-mighty-state.
It is true that the compulsory guilds of Henry IV were abolished by the Revolutionaries in 1791 – and that is indeed good (righteous), although the guilds should not have been “abolished” they should have been made voluntary.
Those who talk of serfdom and slavery should honour Louis X in the Middle Ages – not the French Revolution (contrary to some books who take propaganda for historical fact) – for it was Louis X who reversed (rolled back) these state interventions that went back to the Emperor Diocletian (in the case of de facto serfdom) and, in the case of slavery, to the fatal mistake of Classical legal writers in holding that the laws of the state take precedence of the Natural Law (as a Christian Louis X knew that the opposite is true – but many non Christians also understand this).
Those who talk of the end of torture and religious toleration should honour the, much smeared, Louis XVI who had denounced “putting the question” (a perversion of Roman Law) years before 1789 – indeed the Revolution brought torture back. It was also Louis XVI who had established religious toleration (apart from in Alsace – where he had no power to do this) – far from establishing religious toleration, the Revolution meant the vicious persecution of the religion of the vast majority of ordinary people (the Roman Catholic Church).
“The People” of the French Revolution meant The State, the group of activists who controlled the state, it did not majority of ordinary persons – after all most of the leading Revolutionaries were followers of Rousseau, they despised the majority of ordinary persons (the “will of all”) and stood for the “General Will” – i.e. the unlimited power of the Law Giver (themselves). No matter how many ordinary persons they “had to” murder.
The lies started at once – “liberate the political prisoners in the Bastille”, there-were-none, “safe conduct” for the Governor (for the Bastille was not “stormed” – foolishly the Governor surrendered it) – he was then murdered (so much for “safe conduct”) – every year the French left celebrate this treacherous murder, by butchering a pig (the pig being, to them, the foolish Governor who trusted them).
As for robbery – again it started at once, with the stealing of the land of the church (supposedly to back the new fiat money – although what specific land the note was supposed to represent was never explained) and the land and goods of other people.
This was not righteous.
Paul: some of your historical notes are interesting, but you seem to be under the delusion that you (or anybody else, for that matter) can give good reasons to believe that somebody/something is “right-wing” or “left-wing”. That yours is a delusion, can be seen from the fact that, by your own admission, the Ancien Régime is “left-wing” by your criteria. That just goes to show that you could not care less about what anybody except yourself mean by the words that we use.
IIRC I myself tried, years ago, to extrapolate a few criteria which approximate, with the least number of deviations, what people historically meant by “left” and “right”. You (and others) screamed in outrage. That, by itself, shows that there cannot be any agreement on what those words mean (in politics).
— About Saint-Simon: it should have been obvious, had you put your mind to it, that since “left” and “right” have no objective meaning (only a meaning specific to a time & place) then it follows that Saint-Simon could not have been either “of the left” or “of the right” (except wrt criteria specific to one time & place).
I think that Saint-Simon was “right-wing” by the criteria of his own time & place, but i make no claim to certainty.
This shows why the terms “right” & “left” obscure more than they reveal. Even the term “socialism” is bent beyond any meaningful utility when neonsnake writes:
if Joe Stalin & Benjamin Tucker are both “socialists” then the term is meaningless within the context of this conversation. But then I’ve opined on that score before back in 2003.
Do you not draw a distinction between libertarian- and state-socialism, then?
I genuinely don’t know how much you know about Tucker, Mutualism or the American Individualist Anarchists as a whole, so it’s difficult to get a starting point on this. I do know, however, that you’re aware that “libertarian” used to be another word for “left-anarchist”, and that it’s only in the past 60 (ish?) years that it became associated with the “right”, as we’ve spoken about that before. Tucker is a free-market enthusiast of the highest order – far more so than most libertarians that I know, and to the extent that he sometimes is claimed by the anarcho-capitalists. But he’s of the “libertarian-left”, properly understood.
I have my issues with the “Political Compass”, but as a starting point for understanding why a simple “left to right” direction isn’t enough, I find it a reasonably good starting point.
That’s a long post, and I confess that my eyes glazed over slightly when I realised that the guy was trying to make Blair’s Labour out to be libertarian. Whether he honestly felt this was true in 2000, I cannot possibly say, but I think it’s certainly clear that they were not, as we sit here looking back from 2025.
There’s some stuff in the initial lines that you quoted that I largely agree with; the latter set of lines I largely disagree with. He seems to be saying (and correct me if I’ve misunderstood) that individual liberty is a good thing (which, yay), but can only be achieved by a large, interventionist government (which, nay).
Without wanting to go overboard and make too many parallels, it’s the same shit I hear from tankies and MLs all the time.
But if there’s something where you think we differ greatly, please do point out particulars, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
I really don’t know why you’re struggling with this. The original French parliament split from which “left” and “right” comes from was defined (essentially, but not exclusively) by the left being socialist, which at the time meant worker-ownership of the means of production. That’s not an assertion, that’s historical fact. Again – if you want to redefine that based on statism in the 20th and 21st Century, I cannot and have no interest in stopping you, but it makes such definitions irrelevant, as it allows such nonsense as defining my current government as “left”. I will stick to the original definitions, thank you.
The straight answer to this is: it depends on how you’re defining Capitalism.
If you’re defining it as nothing more than “free markets”, then there’s no substantial difference. “Free-markets” includes any and all means of trade: one thing for another, or pure gift economies, or economies based on currency exchange, or wage-labour, or mutualism, or syndicalism, or full-blown anarcho-communism for all I care (and so on, with all the rich and varied ways that humans have traded and survived through the years). The “free” bit is the most important, and it includes all of – and more – of the forms I listed.
But: if by Capitalism, you mean “an economy based around laws prohibiting free exchange by placing government-backed barriers on trade including but not limited to: tariffs, patent laws, land enclosure, government issued monies” – and many more – then they’re different things. The second list is what Capitalism is in actual existence today, and is generally labelled as cronyism or corporatism.
The world we live in today is Actually Existing Capitalism, and when people decry the Crony-Capitalism/Corporatism of today, it’s not dissimilar at all to the Marxist-Leninist cry of “Real Communism has never been tried!”
To speak frankly, you are bullshitting — or perhaps you are delusional.
A. At the time, the word ‘socialism’ had not even been coined.
(Saint-Simon is often claimed to be the first ‘socialist’, but even he did not use the word.)
And btw Tocqueville said in a speech to the French Parliament, in 1848 i believe, that socialism is contrary to the principles of the French Revolution. Who am i going to believe about the French Revolution, you or Tocqueville?
B. The original split of Left vs Right was about the power to be granted to the Monarchy.
Further, this original split was forgotten by the time Robespierre took power.
It was resurrected only with the restoration of the Bourbons.
It is the xix century definition that is of most interest, not the “”original”” definition before Robespierre.
And is the xix century definition self-consistent? Just reflect on the facts that Bastiat sat on the Left, and Tocqueville said that socialism is contrary to the principles of the French Revolution.
You still don’t get it. I don’t want to redefine ‘left’ and ‘right’. I want to abolish those words altogether in serious political debate.
But you are welcome to use them in frivolous political debate.
Snorri, mate, I’m genuinely trying to be gentle with you here.
The idea of worker-ownership massively predated Saint-Simon; it’s irrelevant when the word “socialism” was used.
I would gently suggest doing at least a little bit of reading before replying again accusing me of “bullshitting”. It’s…a bit, um, awkward, shall we say? that you’ve missed the point that Bastiat sat on the left…
You say:
Good for you! You crack on! You go off and do that! Off you go, son! Godspeed!
We are agreed that we do not live in a perfect world. Nor will we ever.
But I am still struggling with what “socialism” in “libertarian socialism” adds to “libertarian.”
Libertarian describes a philosophy of social organisation that primarily values liberty and free association. That necessarily precludes the specification of any particular outcome, because it instead specifies means.
Socialism traditionally describes a philosophy of social organisation that specifies an outcome – precisely what outcome or range of outcomes depends on what flavour of socialism, but it’s generally something to do with equality or communal sharing or saving the hindmost from the Devil or slaughtering the rich, or whatever.
But what does your “socialism” mean ? It can’t mean anything like the socialisms I’ve mentioned, or indeed anything involving an outcome, if it is coupled with libertarian. So what is it ?
It can’t simply mean “permitting workers to form co-operatives if they wish” – as that is already included in “libertianism.” Adding “socialism” would be not merely superfluous, but contradictory.
Agreed – the socialisms you’re thinking of are state-socialisms, I’d wager (USSR, North Korea, etc etc)?
But in the same way as most people are comfortable with the idea of a “libertarian to authoritarian” spectrum when it comes to “right”, the same exists when it comes to “left”.
It’s kind of out of scope for me to go into exhaustive detail on every aspect of what it means (and there’s clear differences of opinion between different people on the libertarian-left, as much as there are differences between right-libertarians!); but the socialism aspect of it means socialising wealth – NOT by forced redistribution, but by removing laws which prevent (or discourage) competition – I’m sure you can come up with a dozen regulations off the top of your head which heavily load the dice in favour of big corporations or those with existing hoards of money.
It also means a society with a much heavier focus on mutual aid and other “non-market” mechanisms of ensuring that everyone is looked after, as opposed to the right-libertarian focus which is more on “markets” and less on mutual aid (I’m using markets in the colloquial sense of “cash exchange” here)
(I’m stereotyping a bit and also wielding a pretty broad brush to avoid a lengthy post, but that’s largely the gist of it)
Perry: I have read with interest (most of) your essay on “”libertarian socialism”” from 2003.
Your arguments are sound, but in my conceit, i think that a simpler argument can be made, as follows:
* let’s start by agfreeing, if we can, that
socialism = collective ownership of the means of production (COotMoP);
* COotMoP => collective decision making on how to use the means of production;
* collective decision making cannot work in a society of more than, say, 100K adult people (and i am choosing a generous limit here)
=> the decision making must be delegated to a relatively small number of people’s representatives;
* the council of such representatives, in turn, must delegate day-to-day administration to a professional cadre of “civil” “servants”.
At this point, you end up with a structure that we might as well call a State.
Except that it is much worse than modern “democratic” States, because it does not and cannot have an independent judiciary. (See chapter 6 of The Road to Serfdom).
— And i have not even started discussing Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, or the arguments about the fakeness of representative “democracy” made by Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels.
Does my logic seem as compelling to you as it does to me? 🙂
I think the difficulties you’re having stem from conflating libertarian- with state-socialism still. Undedrstandable enough given that no-one exactly gets taught about libertarianism or anarchism (Individualist Anarchism even less so, I suspect)
In a libertarian co-operative operation, the answer is simple – your supply chain department works in tandem with your demand planning department, and talks to either its suppliers (say, a farm or dairy) or its customers in basically the same way they do now.
“Collective ownership of the means of production” doesn’t mean (in libertarian terms) that absolutely everyone owns absolutely everything (which in practice means no-one owns anything in any meaningful sense). It means that the workers of any given operation own that particular operation, and make the decisions about it. The distinction between this and non-socialist ownership is that the operation is NOT owned by outside investment (if outside investment is required, it is paid back in full as soon as feasibly possible, and the investor has no say in the running of the operation).
Details vary between co-operatives, and I cannot possibly list every type, but that’s crudely how it works.
I’ve read through the post properly now that Perry linked, and my initial scepticism towards the author of the article seems justified (albeit I cannot get to the original article); by appealing to “democracy”, he undermines his initial points entirely (which is the thrust of Perry’s disagreement, with which I 100% agree). I would therefore suggest that the author knows (or knew, it is 25 years old) much less about libertarianism of either the left- or right- varieties than he makes out.
Snorri – we can exchange insults if you like, you calling me deluded and me calling you deluded (or whatever).
But the fact remains that Louis XIV (the Sun King) was trying to create something new – a break with the past, an absolute (rather than a “feudal”) monarchy, so were some other people.
And crusty old Reactionaries (like the Duke Saint-Simon – not to be confused with Henri Saint-Simon) opposed what the King was trying to create.
Versailles was ultra Modernism for its day – compare it to the place in which the Kings of France had lived before then (the Castle of Vincennes).
The new aristocracy were to be painted dolls, living in Versailles, with elaborate hairdos and toy swords.
No longer men living on their country estates in castles – even before Louis XIV Modernists in France had been undermining the old aristocracy (Cardinal Richelieu started it).
The Church was to be corrupted as well – with the King appointing Bishops who were most certainly not warriors for Jesus Christ (rather they were to be more painted dolls).
As Edmund Burke pointed out – by corrupting all the institutions the absolute monarchy was signing its own death warrant, it was rotting away the very groups who were its foundations, and the foundations of society.
To be fair, Louis XVI (King in 1789) seems to have been sincerely horrified by all this – for example by his discovery that he was expected to appoint atheists as Bishops. But he was not strong enough to stop the decay.
The “Sacred Blue” summed it up – once they had been a group of knights who had sworn a vow that the King of France (and his family) would not be harmed till the blue sashes that they, the knights, wore were covered in their own last blood – till they were slain.
By the 1780s – they were a dining club. Louis XIV would have been delighted – but Louis XVI and his family paid with their lives.
Perhaps it was too late to restore traditional honour – Modernism had gone on too long.
On the other side of the water – the swords of English gentleman were real, and so was their political power.
Neonsnake – if you dislike religious egalitarian communities then secular ones are open to you.
The ultimate case was Israel – when egalitarian communities were strongly pushed, and subsidised (by both the Israeli Labour Party government – and by well meaning foreigners).
No more than 5% of Israeli Jews choose to be part of these egalitarian communities – and these communities have been in decline for 50 years since the subsidies largely (although not totally) ended.
The United States had many such egalitarian cooperative communities – they always failed after a generation or so.
However, one group did help found the city of Dallas – their Owenite community failed, but they were skilled craftsmen and so went into private business (various trades) and helped create the city we know as Dallas.
Paul; you are indeed correct in your (implied) assumption that I would dislike religious egalitarian communities – beyond anything else, I am an atheist, and it would be arguably wrong to take advantage of such. I would, further, join a secular one, if such existed in the UK and was accessible to me given my circumstances. In the meantime, I do what I can with mutual aid and so on – in a very small manner, I must say.
You talk about the subsidies to egalitarian communities; I would therefore ask in turn that all subsidies to non-egalitarian communities also be ended, and let us have a fair playing field of it.
It’s open to discussion on what you mean – or indeed what you think I mean – by egalitarian communities, mind.
Traditional liberty has a cost – and that cost can be your life.
For example, in the Gordon Riots of 1780 Edmund Burke and others had to defend houses that might come under attack – defend them with musket and pistol.
“In Paris we can call for the police – in London you have no police” sneered French gentlemen.
But what if you call for the police and they do not come, or they come but are on the other side?
This the clever French gentlemen found to their cost in 1789, and so did their families – and many other people did to, mostly very ordinary people in the provinces, hundreds of thousands of them in the 1790s.
And the British are starting, just starting, to get the same lesson – with a police force, and court system, that has been taught to support “Diversity and Inclusion” – the Rousseau of our day.
If your reaction to deadly danger is to call for the police – what do you do when the forces of the authorities are the deadly danger?
As for national defence.
John Reeves set up an organisation (in response to the French Revolution) – the Association for the Defence of Liberty and Property.
It was armed (it even had its own artillery) and, at its peak, it had more armed men than the British army.
Unsurprisingly leftist “mainstream” establishment historians do not like talking about such things.
neonsnake – you had your level playing field in the old America before the government got in the business of handing out subsidies (even in the 19th century it handed out some – but nothing like modern times).
You know what happened to the egalitarian cooperative communities – you do not need me to tell you how they mostly failed.
But your point about the rich getting subsidies is valid – I do not deny it, indeed I have been denouncing fiat money (how this is, mostly, done – via the Cantillon Effect) for many years.
Where the money is corrupt, and it is corrupt, so is everything else – as even people who do not wish to be corrupt tend to get drawn into the system.
To give just two examples – the “Green” subsidies tend to go to despicable corporations, and the “medical” subsidies pushing Covid injections and so on, go to even more despicable corporations.
I presume you know this, but yes: they failed because they were outnumbered by non-egalitarian communities that were also subsidised. You can be as efficient as humanly possible, but if you’re outnumbered 10-1 by less-efficient opponents, you’re still going to lose.
And again: yes, you are right to denounce the rich receiving subsidies. In many ways, I’ve watched your more recent anger (?) at corporatism with some interest; I’m interested to see whether you’ll eventually come down on the side of “this is the end-state of capitalists doing their literal job by lobbying the state for more and more subsidies and laws to allow them make more money for their shareholders” or not. I’m interested to see you follow to the conclusion your earlier musing around fiat money and debt.
I hope you do, frankly, with everything else that that implies.
Paul: I did not say that you are deluded (although i might have thought it 🙂 ).
I said that you suffer from one specific delusion, shared by neonsnake btw.
Saying one stupid thing never made me stupid; saying one delusional thing does not make you delusional.
This is your delusion: you think that facts can be brought to bear on the discussion of the meaning of words. Only TEXTS can be brought to bear on the meaning of words in the past. And texts are pretty clear on this: contra neonsnake, the Monarchy was by definition Right-wing.
INCIDENTALLY, i do not think it true that Louis xiv was trying to bring a complete break with the past. It is probably true that he is the one person most responsible for centralizing power in France, the consequences of which we can still see. But i learned from Samuel Finer that public administration in France goes back to Philippe Auguste; by far the oldest in Europe, perhaps.
IIRC Tocqueville also discussed (in L’Ancien Regime et la Revolution — pardon my French) how a sort of corporatism existed in France even before Louis xiv.
But all of that is history — if i am correct. It has nothing to do with how words were used in 1789, or afterwards.
Eh? Where did I say otherwise?
No neonsnake – the egalitarian communities, for example the Owenite communities in the United States, failed because it is a bad idea – not because other communities were subsidized more.
I have already given the example of Israel – where there was massive bias in favour of such communities, but, even at their peak, no more than 5% of Jews choose to be members of them – they have been declining for 50 years.
Former Prime Minister Sharon was born in such a community – but his father left because he was sick and tired of trying to farm-by-committee – with people who knew less about farming than he did, telling him how to farm.
In America this was seen centuries ago – with the failure of communes very early on – the first colony in New England was such a commune. With the colonists working together and getting rations, and so on.
It failed – Governor Bradford had to abandon the idea. That is the true story of “Thanksgiving” – not the modern myth that the “Native Americans” saved the Puritans.
What saved them was private-property-in-land and voluntary for-profit work and trade.
Private property in land, for profit work and trade, and families made up of a mother, father and children, is the the foundation of society.
Plato was wrong – Aristotle was correct.
Snorri.
There was a movement in the 16th and 17th centuries away from limited monarchies – to absolute monarchies, the “Enlightened Prince” who would have no “feudal” limits on their power.
Thomas Cromwell (and John Hales and so on) were the Modernist Progressives (the “left”) of their day – and such thinking, at least in terms of an absolute state and the rejection of traditional law as a limitation on state power, was pushed by such thinkers as Thomas Hobbes in England and Jean Bodin in France.
The end result of this, Europe wide, intellectual movement, was the “Sun King” Louis XIV of France – and such ministers as Colbert.
They were very much the Modernist Progressives of their day – they rejected all traditional limits on state power.
Thomas Hobbes, long before had written “A Dialogue Between A Philosopher And A Student Of The Common Law Of England” – it is clear that Hobbes is the “philosopher” and that he has nothing but contempt for the idea that the traditional law was a limitation on state power. To Hobbes “law” is the will of the state – and “justice” is whatever the state says it is.
After all Thomas Hobbes was a follower of Francis Bacon (of “The New Atlantis” 1610) – the arch enemy of the Reactionary Lord Chief Justice Coke (of the case of Dr Bonham – also 1610).
Francis Bacon was the Modernist Progressive (the supporter of an all mighty state) – Coke was the Reactionary.
Hang on – how are you defining “private property” here – specifically in the case of the Pilgrims and The Merchant Adventurers corporation?
Do you mean the colloquial meaning – as in “my own house, the land it sits on, and – in this instance – the strip of land that each Pilgrim family owned and worked”? Or do you mean the more formal “owned by absentee landlords, who are owed rent (etc, or a broadly similar form of payment) for the use of the land”?
(I’ll take your word on it re. Israel. I know little about the specific instances, and have not the time to research it in the near future)
neonsnake – private property in land, the private person gets to make the decision as to how the land is used and may sell it. That is why English “Freehold” was always private property in land, although the fiction that the King owned the land was maintained. William the Bastard may have really intended to set up a system where he owned all the and and could give it, and take it away, on his whims – but his successors soon retreated from that position.
Only a few decades later his son Henry was swearing oaths proclaiming that he would not violate the laws (read – would not take away land from those who held it – without a crime being proven), just as Henry was careful to marry a direct descendant of Alfred the Great in order to get justification for being King (a common Norman move – many of them married the daughter of someone who had held the land before 1066). A policy of letting it be known that he was born in England (and was thus too young to have been involved in the crimes of his father and elder brothers), had sworn to uphold the laws (no claim that his whims were the laws – as with Thomas Hobbes or even David Hume), and had married a direct descendant of Alfred the Great – the agenda (the objective of winning over the English) is obvious.
As for rent and so called “absentee landlords” – the David Ricardo idea that there is something wrong (or at least something special) about land rent was refuted by the American economist Frank Fetter in the late 19th century.
The Spanish law (I forget which King of Castile introduced the law) that a landlord could not remove a tenant as long as “customary rent” (not a market rent) was paid – greatly harmed Spain, and later greatly harmed many Latin American nations.
The owner of land must be able to remove the tenant after the term of the lease (the contract) is up. Otherwise one gets terrible backwardness.
As for whether tenant farming, or direct estate management, is best – that depends on local conditions and commercial judgement.
It always has – see both M.M. Postan “Medieval Economy and Society” and Alan McFarlane “The Origins of English Individualism” for how the idea of a “moral economy” with a “just price” (or rent or wage) was always false.
At least in the West the origin of writings supporting a total-absolute State goes back to Plato – he is also the origin of attacks on the family, the attack on what is called today “traditional gender roles” and children being brought up by their mother and father – rather than collectively (his plan for the children of the Guardians).
This is not a coincidence.
Bertrand Russell and other Collectivist Political Philosophers looked back to Plato – and were correct to do so.
The claims of Sir Karl Popper that Plato was a conservative thinker do not stand up to the examination of the works of Plato – which show him to be a Radical Progressive.
The move of, for example, the Cambridge England (and Cambridge Massachusetts – Harvard) elite from Plato to Karl Marx, was a logical and predictable move.
And by “private person”, do you mean literally a single, solitary human individual, or do you mean a that a group of people can jointly own land (again, I’m very specifically talking about the Merchant Adventurers, who as a corporation owned the land that the Pilgrims settled on)?
So now you are saying that the Cavaliers were the Left; and presumably the Roundheads were the Right.
Interestingly, Dan Hannan made precisely this claim.
A strange kind of Progressive, one who thinks that all change is for the worse.
Snorri – Plato wanted very radical change, indeed an entirely different society.
He even wanted to change the traditional stories of the Gods – written down by Hesiod and others long before, thus showing that he had no real respect for the religion or traditions of his people. As Dr Johnson (the English Samuel Johnson rather than the American Samuel Johnson – although they were similar in some ways) pointed out about David Hume – even when he, Hume, seemed to be conservative he was NOT as he did not believe in the religion or traditions of his people (it was NOT just that he was an atheist – David Hume did not believe in anything, not even in the existence of humans-as-free-will-beings), he just regarded them as useful tools, or whatever. Thomas Hobbes was much the same – he did not believe in anything, apart from power – unlimited power.
As for Cavaliers – I do not think that Thomas Hobbes cared at all if the absolute state was that of a King or a Parliament – he just wanted an absolute state. Hobbes, like Hume (if Hume can be said to really “want” anything – he seems more indifferent than anything else), also wanted the “euthanasia of the Constitution” – he just did not use the term.
People on both sides in the Civil War were divided – some of them, on both sides, wanted an absolute state and some of them, on both sides, were very much against the idea.
As for the King – his speech at his execution was a model of limited government and a correct understanding of liberty as being those laws that left persons, their bodies and goods, most unmolested. But how sincere was his speech? And how sincere was “the King’s Book” – the best selling book of the time (other than the Bible), a good book (unjustly ignored today) – but how sincere was it? I do not know.
But certainly the Commonwealth regime was more oppressive than anything the King had done, or was even accused of wanting to do.
The rule of the Major Generals.
But even before then, the Rump Parliament had shown it had no respect for tradition or custom, or any limits on state power.
People smile about such things as abolishing Christmas – but these tyrants (for that is what they were) were in deadly earnest.
They wanted to utterly transform society and control every aspect of human life.
You, Snorri, seem to think that someone like the Emperor Diocletian or Louis XIV (the Sun King) is the opposite of someone like Rousseau, or Robespierre or Karl Marx.
You could not be more wrong – they are not opposites, they are the same. They all want to get rid of all traditional limits on state power.
neonsnake – I am sorry if I was unclear.
I am against a group of people jointly owning the lan – that system led to starvation in the first New England colony, which is why Governor Bradford had to abandon the system.
But one does not have to go so far back – it is, after all, now the system of many of the tribal reservations in the United States.
The group of people (the tribe) jointly owns the land and, since 1934, the system is controlled by elected Tribal Councils.
So there were are – Pine Ridge and so on, democratic socialism for the last 90 years. Not a success – to put the matter mildly. I suspect that the New Dealers, if they could, would have done that to all of America – but they did not have the power, so they used the tribal peoples for their socialist experiment. Pine Ridge, in all its horror, is what they really wanted all of America to be like.
And the Collectivist academics have not changed – they would still like to impose this on all of America, indeed the world, if they could – they could not give a fig how many deaths the system would lead to.
In some Latin America nations “land reform” is held to have “failed” if people sell the land they are given – no “landlords” must emerge, we are told. So we get the village community idea being presented – which fails again and again and again.
Just as Alexander II in Russia giving land to the village Mirs, rather than to individual families, failed. Although no action was taken till the time of Stolypin – and Stolypin ran out of time, he did not have enough time before his murder.
By the way – on King Charles the First.
I am not saying that he was lying when he delivered that speech, which was so much about limited government and right-liberty, at his execution – he knew he was about to die (that he was going to the final judgement) – I am sure that at-that-moment he believed what he said.
But would he have ruled like that if he had won the war? Or with the temptations of power, and with flatterers all around him, would he have ruled very differently – not respecting the persons and goods of the subjects?
Mr Hampden would have pointed to “Ship Money” and other abuses of the time when Charles had ruled – and Mr Hampden was also sincere, and died in battle for his beliefs.
The King’s standard bearer at Edge Hill was of like mind – but said “I have eaten his [the king’s] bread too long to betray him now” – and plunged himself into the battle, he died still holding the standard.
There were many good men on both sides.
Men, on both sides. who wanted the same thing, limited government and respect for traditional rights. They just disagreed, profoundly disagreed, on how to get there. On what the real threat was – was the threat a bad (or at least not well governing) King manipulated by people who wanted a Catholic tyranny (like Spain), or was the threat an out of control Parliament and a dark conspiracy (of radical Puritans who believed themselves to be the Elect of God who could do no wrong and needed no limit on their power) that really operated using Parliament as a mask? Or were both threats real?
But there were also many bad men – again on both sides.
And in war, and chaos, bad men tend to get to the top.
At the judicial murder of the King, his murderers pretended to be operating on behalf of “the people of England” – “not half, not a quarter, of the people of England” cried out Lady Fairfax – the wife of the official commander of the Parliamentary army (Cromwell being the real head of it by this time – due to the illness of Fairfax).
But there were people close to the King who were just as bad as the people who murdered the King – and these men had long whispered poison (unlimited government) into his ear.
How to restore limited government and keep it limited – this is, and has always been, the great question.
So “the lives and goods of men may be most their own”.
Plato wanted a radically different society – as he shows us in the work we call The Republic. This is no traditionalist – no respecter of limits on government power. He even opposed (at least for the Guardians – but really, if he could, for everyone) the family and the basic roles of mothers and fathers.
As for Mr Hume – he was indifferent to what he called the “euthanasia of the constitution”, but then he appears to have been indifferent to everything. Even his denial of human personhood (of humans as beings) is made in an indifferent way.
Such a person (Mr Hume) would not die to defend moral liberty, no more Thomas Hobbes would have – and for the same reason, because they do not believe that moral liberty even exists. Neither Hobbes or Hume really believed that humans are persons – that we can choose to do other than we do. This sort of position naturally ends with Jeremy Bentham – with his 13 Departments of State controlling every aspect of life.
Why not? If humans are not really beings, not really persons, then there is no reason why our “lives and goods be most our own”.