We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Social individualists of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains
and a whole world to win!
Although intended as a humorous meme-hack, the statement is also quite clearly true. The irony is that for individuals to preserve their individuality, they must unite with others to fight the collectivist political pressures that would deny that we are moral free agents and make us so much less than we are: to fight involuntary collectivism we must voluntarily act collectively.
And so that is why I set up Samizdata.net and lured others to dive into the blogosphere with me head first.
It was my attempt to give a platform to shout out to the world for like-minded individuals who rejected the intrusive force backed collectivist view of the world. We are not really trying to ‘convert’ people, though that would be nice, rather we are trying to change people’s meta-context and let the ideology take care of itself. That is our ‘mission statement’ if you like.
A meta-context is a person’s frames of reference through which they interpret the world around them. It is not an ideology or a political ‘ism’ or even a philosophy… it is ‘just’ a series of axioms and ‘givens’ that colour and flavour how you think about things and come to understand them via a set of critical or emotional preferences and underlying assumptions. We all have a personal meta-context.
For example, it is one of the reasons that although I have written many articles on Samizdata.net about the issue of private ownership of firearms in the USA, I very rarely discuss the Second Amendment. Why? Because an individualist meta-context does not have rights as something which are dependent on The State.
The Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal artifice, but it is not the source or reason that people should be able to own weapons as a matter not of privilege but by right. In fact, no state and its laws is the source of any right whatsoever: rights are objectively yours to begin with and are not given to you by anyone. Thus I will never argue an American has the right to own a gun because ‘it says so in the Second Amendment’ because they would have a right to do so even if it said nothing of the sort.
Yet that is not to say I think the Second Amendment is a bad idea, just that it is nothing more than a useful profane tool to secure an objective right, not a source of rights. To me as an individualist, I see do not see the state as central to my life or quite frankly to civil society… as I am not a fully convinced anarchist I do see some role for limited government in securing the rights of individuals, but just as an adjunct to far more important the networks that are primarily social rather than political.
And so if we are trying to change people’s meta-context to include more individualist and less collectivist frames of reference, then it behoves us to use phrases which assist in this process rather than those which are loaded with ‘trigger words’ that may well get our views unhelpfully pigeonholed in places that does not really reflect where we are coming from. Now I certainly regard myself as a libertarian of the minarchist flavour… what is sometimes called a ‘Classical Liberal’. However the term ‘libertarian’ is increasingly loaded with meanings that generate more heat than light, and thus I have started using the term ‘social individualist’ rather than ‘libertarian in Samizdata.net’s introduction in the sidebar. We have not changed… certainly I have not… and I intend to continue arguing that the term ‘libertarian’ can only be used correctly to describe people who promote the individual liberty to chose how you interact with the world via social interaction rather than force backed political interaction. Just as Living Marxism changed its name to Spiked in order to shed the ‘baggage’ of the term ‘Marxism’ without actually changing a thing ideologically, we started life as ‘Libertarian Samizdata’ back in our early days on-line and then just became Samizdata.net in order to better reach beyond the worthy true believers. We are no longer Libertarian Samizdata but our thinking is really no different to when we started.
Yet if the term ‘libertarian’ gets in the way of what we are trying to do, it is time to start de-emphasising it. I am still a member of the executive committee of the London based Libertarian Alliance and I still regard myself as a pukka libertarian. But a more accurate description of my views than just the broad church of ‘libertarianism’ would be that I reject collectivist views of the world as utterly falsified, but at the same time I do not regard individuals as atomised objects existing in splendid isolation. Unless you live alone in a log cabin in the middle of Canada subsisting on nuts and moose meat, you are an individual within a social environment: a civil society. And it is the extent to which you can freely act within civil society as an individual pursuing self-defined ends by right, without political coercion or permission, that is the measure of whether you are free or not.
Additionally, I have long regarded socialism as the most ironic use of language in the history of mankind, given that it means to replace social interaction with entirely political interaction. It is time to reclaim the word social and reject the newspeak inversion of it into meaninglessness.
And it is addressing those issues that make this a social individualist weblog.
Responding to a posting a fortnight ago on CrozierVision, I posted a piece the day before yesterday on my (Brian’s) Culture Blog entitled Do blogs convert people? Jonathan Wilde commented on that piece in a manner which suggests that the early editorial meetings concerning Samizdata may have been bugged. By Jonathan Wilde. He certainly gets what we’re trying to do here:
As I stated in my original post on Patrick’s entry, I do believe that blogs at least influence people, if not convert them. Yet. I was a libertarian prior to finding Samizdata, but over the 18 months or so that I have been reading Samizdata, I have been directly influenced by what I have read. I used to be a reluctant voter thinking that to be a libertarian meant being a Libertarian (i.e., member of the American Libertarian Party) and that taking part in the political process was the only way to be a libertarian. When I read Samizdata, I saw people who didn’t really care that much which political party was in power, but were in the business of changing ‘meta-contexts’ and going around the state, rather than through it. Further, I saw people who were influenced by Mises, Popper, and Hayek rather than the usual Rand and Rothbard that you find in America, yet arrive at the same basic conclusions on most issues. I saw people who were proud of Western culture. I saw people who were proud of defeating the Nazis in WWII rather than simply seeing it as just another state war, with all of its side-effects. These were all things that made me believe that it was okay to be a libertarian and agree with those ideas.
Since this is a culture blog, let me mention that the ‘culture’ of Samizdata had a lot to do with its success. Yes, the brilliant writing on the blog is vital to convert readers. But the culture is also essential. Pictures of Samizdatistas drinking, acting goofy, fondling women, and making fun of war protestors gives the impression that libertarians aren’t angry gun nuts from Montana (the stereotype in America), but are simply regular, everyday people.
And the last way in which Samizdata influenced me is to start my own website with similar characteristics – a group blog focused on Austrian economics, with a ‘laid-back’ non-angry-gun-nut atmosphere, and periodic ‘off-topic’ content.
I was already a libertarian, and perhaps I’m not the best example of blogs influencing, if not converting people, but the blogosphere is young. If our ideas are better than the rest, then they will rub-off with time. After hearing Perry being on a forum with ‘mainstream’ media on BBC last week, I really think that Samizdata has a chance to be something special. And it’s a classic libertarian strategy: carve a new niche, go around the established paths, and succeed on what you do best. The blogosphere is the new niche, and Samizdata is at the top.
Jonathan Wilde
Who, precisely, is busting out all over? People who call themselves ‘socialist libertarians’ are busting out all over, that’s who.
The latest addition to this roll-call of the ragged is a certain Mr.Paul Anderson who, I am advised, was previously a columnist for the left-wing newspaper ‘Tribune’. Mr.Anderson has started a blog. Good for him. His blog is called ‘Gauche’ which is fine insofar as his Francophonic pretensions are entirely a matter for him.
My annoyance, however, is with the subtitle of his blog which reads:
Democratic Socialism with a Libertarian Punch
May I humbly suggest a clearer alternative to that meaningless bit of cant? How about:
Vegetarian cooking with just a hint of roast beef
That is what he might as well be saying. In fact, that is what he is saying and, one supposes, with a straight face to boot. Mr.Anderson has clearly not yet been advised that he can either be a socialist OR he can be a libertarian but he cannot possibly be both. Nor can he plausibly pass himself off as representing some sort of squishy compromise position between the two. If Mr.Anderson wants to know exactly why, then I can do no better than to recommend this comprehensive exposition on the subject by Perry de Havilland.
I have no intention of apologising for the tetchiness of my tone but, you see, this is something of a ‘hot button issue’ for people like me. We at Samizdata will be tarred, feathered, damned and consigned to purgatory before we sit back and allow the word ‘libertarian’ to be hijacked in the manner that the word ‘liberal’ was once hijacked and then handed over, gift-wrapped, to people who have since proved themselves to be anything and everything but liberal. → Continue reading: They’re busting out all over!
Well, I must say I am shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the gazillions of pounds of taxpayers money that has been thrown at the state health and education sectors have not made a blind bit of difference. Who says? Why, none other than our Glorious Leader, Tony Blair:
Higher taxes will be needed to fund health and education improvements, Tony Blair indicated yesterday after admitting that his first six years in power had failed to deliver a promised “transformation” in public services.
‘Higher taxes’! Of course, that’s the answer! Damn, why didn’t he think of that sooner? Er, except he did think of it sooner. He thought of it back in 1997 and we have been paying increasingly higher taxes ever since. Oh never mind, just hike them up again, that’s bound to work.
Keep digging, Tony.
Are you gainfully employed? If so, does your wicked employer make all manner of unreasonable demands upon you, such as actually turning up for work or doing the job you’re being paid to do?
Up until now, there was no means of redress for such manifest injustice and rank exploitation. But, lo, the dark ages are at an end. Thanks to the Health & Safety Executive, all employers must now comply with a ‘Stress Code’:
Employers will have to protect their staff from stress – or risk legal action, a watchdog has warned.
The Health and Safety Executive has launched a six-point code which firms must abide by.
They must support their employees and ensure they do not feel overly pressured in their roles.
Now I don’t profess to any expert medical knowledge or even any medical knowledge at all but even I know that a broken foot is a broken foot and pretty easy to detect. But how on earth is something as subjective as ‘stress’ going to be either properly identified or measured?
Well, the bright sparks at the H&S have come up with a forumla:
Companies will be assessed to see if they have reduced stress to manageable levels.
If fewer than 65 to 85% of all staff feel each standard has been met, the company will fail its assessment.
If that isn’t a charter for malingerers, clock-watchers, perennial malcontents and compensation-sniffers then I don’t know what is. And, short of being paid to go the park every day and feed the ducks, what job doesn’t involve some level of stress at some point or other?
Up to 13.4m days a year are lost due to stress at work.
And I wonder how many of those are actually ‘I’ve-got-tickets-to-the-football-match’ kind of ‘stress’?
It would be tempting to suggest that there is some insidious political agenda behind this but I honestly don’t believe that much thought has gone into it. More likely it is another classic case of bureaucratic empire-building which, as in this case, is usually done on the back of quackery, junk science and manipulated statistics.
The result is the same regardless. British entrepreneurs, already snowed under with laws, regulations, diktats and directives, have yet another welfarist function to fulfil and, I daresay, yet another sheaf of related forms that they will be required to waste their time completing.
I have a dream about just how much more prosperous and innovative our society could be if its wealth-creators were not required to spend so much of their productive time jumping through government hoops and avoiding state-created bear-traps that have no right to exist. It is rather similar to the dream that, one day, somebody in the parasitical public sector will realise that there is only so much blood they can draw out of the private sector before the latter simply rolls over and dies. I am not at all confident that either dream will be realised any time soon.
Having been involved in British libertarian circles since I was in my late teens about 18 years ago – god that makes me feel old – I have gotten used to the charge that the likes of us are crazed dogmatists. In Britain’s notoriously anti-intellectual culture, being interested in ideas, and worse, ideas which question the need for most of what governments do, is to be branded as a dangerous nutter. (Mind you, having read abusive comments directed at yours truly by various LewRockwell.com types, I feel almost quite moderate and middle-of-the-road these days.)
Step forward Aidan Rankin, who in The Spectator magazine, charges that eurosceptics within the Tory Party and among libertarian circles are the “new Trotskyists,” every bit as militant and dogmatic as the old left. In a way, that is a backhanded compliment of sorts because it shows that folk like Rankin are at least becoming aware of our existence, even though they prefer to construct straw men for the purpose of easy knock-down pieces rather than describe us more accurately. Anyway, let us fisk:
On Europeans and other issues the Tories are still impeded – not by indecision as in the recent past, but by an insidious ideological rigidity, a right-wing version of political correctness.
Huh? Really? Has the Tory Party, in recent years, called for, say, total withdrawal by this country from the EU? No. But to read Rankin you would assume that to be the case.
Public scepticism about the single currency is matched by the lack of public support for Eurosceptic campaigns. This is because even to sympathetic observers such campaigns appear so often to be bitter and bigoted.
He has half a point. I think the eurosceptic lobby would do better to focus on the essentially illiberal nature of the EU rather than on the fact that is being run by vile Frogs, etc. → Continue reading: Straw men
George Monbiot made one valid point in his debate with Perry (and others) on B.B.C. Radio 3. Although I suspect that Mr Monbiot did not believe in his own point.
George Monbiot stated that a Parliament does not have to pass laws so his World Parliament need not mean world regulations. I suspect that world regulations are exactly what Mr Monbiot wants (indeed he admitted this by talking about ‘fair trade’ rules in the same discussion). However, a Parliament need not be, indeed should not be a legislature.
Having a group of people elected to pass laws is a terrible system. It leads to endless laws to please this or that special faction (which may represent only a tiny fraction of the general population), and even laws passed to satisfy the whims of politicians.
When libertarians and others denounce ‘delegated legislation’ (rules made up by officials), we should not forget that laws made up by politicians are no good either.
Whether one believes that law should be established by deduction from the principles of justice (i.e. property rights – the nonaggression principle), and-or should evolve in a Common Law way – the whole concept of a body of politicians creating laws (a legislature) just does not make sense.
But can a Parliament just be a check on the Executive – deciding on the budget and (under some systems) throwing out the Executive if the Prime Minister or President becomes too bad to tolerate.
Does not having a body of politicians sitting there and then saying “now do not do very much” involve a fatal contradiction? Someone is not going to go through all the vast effort of getting to be a member of this body and then do little or nothing – human nature just does not work that way. Individuals and parties are going to mess about.
Once you elect a body of people (called a Parliament or whatever) do they not inevitably become a legislature – creating laws as they choose? That is part of the basic anarchist libertarian case.
Constitutional limits on the power of such bodies have proved largely ineffective (although in the case of the United States Constitution this may be because it relies for its enforcement on a body of appointed judges).
Perhaps the way to go is the way of the Constitution of Texas – have the ‘legislature’ meet for as few days as possible, this structural limit (rather than policy limit) may have some effect in limiting the number of crazy laws such a body can pass.
I hope there are not too many absurdities in the above (sleeping in the last day or so might have been a good idea), but let those who will open fire.
A quick suggestion – given the differences within the libertarian section of the political jungle about the case for or against armed intervention in other states, what do fellow contributors and commenters think about us setting up a one-day conference or suchlike on this topic?
I’m really interested to set something up, probably here in London. (But of course I would hope some non-Brit folk could be persuaded into coming).
Blogging is fantastic but sometimes there is still a place for face-to-face debate. And you get to hold the event right next to a pub!
On a recent visit to Lancashire (a county in the north of England) I found a 1906 Chambers encyclopaedia in the house I was staying in.
Now whilst the encyclopaedia had lots of the then newly fashionable statism within it (the “historical method” in economics and other such nonsense), it did have some interesting articles and the one on Iceland caught my eye.
Most libertarians are aware of the Iceland example of a basically free society. How incoming settlers arrived in an empty land (apart from a handful of monks in a tiny area), and established a private property based society without such things as taxes.
Also how things first went well over time – for example with slavery dying out (the Norse settlers started off with Irish slaves – but, over time, the practice of slavery fell apart) without any civil war.
However, then (after centuries of settlement) tithes were introduced in the 1080’s (Iceland had become Christian in 1000 – so Christianity did not mean religious taxes at first). And then (after a couple of more centuries) a few families tried to monopolise the courts of justice (which arbiter one went to had been a matter of choice), fell into conflict – and the Icelanders made the fatal mistake of inviting in the power of the King of Norway.
First under the Kings of Norway and then (far worse) the Kings of Denmark statism grew in Iceland, with state control of much land, monopoly of trade and on.
A sad tale – supposedly one well fitted for grim minded people like myself.
However, the story did not end there. I have long known that in stages in the 18th and 19th century a lot of freedom was restored to Iceland (by later Kings of Denmark), but I did not know just how much of a free society Iceland became again.
Reading the Chambers article was instructive. Not only was Iceland a free trade country (which I knew) it was also a land of a fairly high cultural level.
In about 1900 (a time when there were hardly any state schools in Iceland – indeed when there was very little government at all) virtually every person could read and write (they were taught, by their families, in childhood) – and a large proportion of adult men could get by in several languages.
This was at a time when in, for example, Sweden (with its system of state education) about one in four people was illiterate.
Certainly after 1904 local government was allowed to grow in Iceland – but the fact remains that Iceland had, for a time, become a basically free society again.
It is these sorts of things that makes me (much to the confusion of the people who know me) take a fairly positive view of the future of the human race. The growth of statism is not inevitable – government control can decline without a collapse into chaos and a free society can be rebuilt.
Modern Western nations are (as is well known) fiat money, credit bubble, welfare states. They will fall apart, most likely quite soon – say over the next ten years.
However, I do not think that this will mean a collapse into savagery (mass starvation, cannibalism and so on). I believe that (with hard effort and good luck) something much closer to a free society will emerge.
I do not expect to live to see it (my own position is not a good one, and I am a fairly realistic man – not in the habit of accepting comfort from lies), but I firmly believe that many libertarians now living will see it.
You have both my best wishes and my confidence.
David Farrer links to this story, about a call from a Scottish lawyer to legalise not just cannabis, but all drugs.
A LEADING Scottish criminal lawyer yesterday called for the legalisation of all drugs.
Donald Findlay QC said legalising narcotics such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis was the only way to “break the link” between users and dealers.
The advocate also attacked politicians and the Scottish Executive for failing to get to grips with the problem of drug abuse, accusing them of fostering a “tough on crime” image rather than looking for radical solutions.
However, politicians last night hit back at Mr Findlay, describing him as “irresponsible”.
The Executive also denied Mr Findlay’s claims, pointing to a raft of recent policies to tackle drug abuse.
Mr Findlay, who last week attacked the Executive’s policy on crime, said: “Drugs is a huge issue and there is no question that what drugs do to families and communities is the biggest problem that we have had in recent years, and it is a problem that politicians just will not tackle.
“Since the mid-1980s we have had drug offences. It is now more than 20 years on and the problem is continuing to grow.
“From the law’s point of view, there has to be much more effort to break the cycle, and I really think we should be having a proper look at legalising drugs. You have got to try something to get people away from the dealers.”
Mr Findlay said simply decriminalising cannabis did not go far enough.
Alas, there’s no chance of Findlay QC winning this argument in the near future in Scotland, because, as David notes, Mr Michael McSomeone has said that this would “send the wrong message”. There was, Mr McSomeone added, “a clear need for a consensus”, by which he meant everyone agreeing with him.
I also believe that there is a clear need for a consensus, by which I mean everyone agreeing with Findlay QC and with me. This would send the right message, namely (and with thanks to P. J. O’Rourke for saying something along these lines on a Cato tape I once listened to): (a) do what you want with what’s yours, and (b) accept the consequences.
It is hot and humid Monday morning here in Britain and, right about now, millions of people are waking from their slumber to the start of another week.
Bleary-eyed and sticky with sweat, they will munch their toast, slurp their coffee, grab their keys and head out of their doors to do battle with another working day. A day, on the face of it, much like any other day.
Only it isn’t. Not quite. For today, 2nd June, is Tax Freedom Day in Britain. This is the day when we stop working for HMG and start working for ourselves. From today, we can begin supporting our families and not the state. Up until today, from January 1st, we have laboured non-stop for the benefit of the public sector; for all those legions of bureaucrats and rubber-stampers without whom life would be worth living.
There will be no celebrations though. No party hats, no holiday cheer and no group hugs. For the vast majority, the day will pass by without so much as a brief acknowledgement of the temporary release from bondage. There is something sad about a whole nation being so inured to the painful bites of the government that they do not even notice when the biting ceases.
Nearly half a year. Nearly half a life. What a waste.
There are many pleasurable benefits in writing for a blog such as this, not least of is revelling in the quality of our readership. This being the case, I can think of no finer endorsement of our efforts than that we attract thinkers and writers of the calibre of Andy Duncan, a regular reader who has produced an analysis of the strategy behind the EU project that I cannot possibly leave languishing at the bottom of a heap of comments where it currently resides.
Andy’s hypothesis is so startlingly good, not just because of the thought that has gone into it but also because he admits to having once been a ‘creature of the night’. We can therefore safely assume that he knows whereof he speaks. So let him speak:
I’m unsure as to your political orientation, but if you were a follower of Karl Marx’s fallback idea of creating a social democratic Utopia, via the ballot box rather than via the bullet in the back of the neck, how would you do it? Putting my devout Marxist hat on, (and I was such an idiot, until well after my 30th year), this is how I would do it:
Marxist Hat ON
- I would base myself in my philosophical homeland of Germany and France, the roaming ground of Hegel, Marx, Napoleon, Kant, Sartre, and other assorted violent destroyers and idiots.
- I would pretend to be democratic, having seen honest revolutionaries fail in Russia and elsewhere.
- I would slowly subvert democracy, steal or distort the language of liberty to throw off my accusers and enemies, and gradually form an unspoken aristocracy of fellow travellers. What better than to call this a “liberal” elite, to really turn white into black, and make two plus two equal five? 🙂
- I would gradually raise taxes, intervene, cause capitalist failure through regulation, thereby allowing myself the excuse to interfere even further, raise even more taxes, etc, etc, until at least half of the economy was in my hands (though 40% will do nicely).
→ Continue reading: Duncan’s Laws
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
