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]
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Sean Gabb‘s account of the debate he took part in yesterday evening, already referred to here (and assuming that yesterday is the proper word for the day that only ended a little over an hour ago), is already up and readable on his own website. The full text of what he said is there, together with his account of some other things he said during the Q&A. Recommended.
The titbit in the report of the evening that interested me most was somewhat off the central agenda. It seems that after the debate, which all went very smoothly and politely by the way, Sean was challenged in a rather interesting way by a young woman in the audience:
She began with flattery. She was a reader, she said, of Free Life Commentary on my web page and found it very interesting. The surest way to an intellectual’s heart is though his ego. This young lady will doubtless go far in life. She then asked why I was spending so much of my time on the mixed bag of losers and cretins who are the modern Conservative Party? Why not turn my attentions to the Liberal Democrats? These at least were already social liberals, and they might with a fraction of the effort I had wasted on the Tories come to some agreement on economic liberalism. Good question, and I had no ready answer. Perhaps I should think of one.
Yes do, Sean. I for one would love to hear it.
In this connection, our American readers in particular would surely appreciate some explanation of the parlous state that Britain’s Conservatives now find themselves in, especially when you consider how well the Republicans are now doing over there. Why is the political right that in such a mess here, while it is the left that is in trouble in the USA? I hope to offer a few answers to this question in a future Samizdata posting, but I have learned from bitter experience over the decades that what I say that I hope to do, and what I do do, are two things that often diverge with embarrassing completeness. So expect that when you read it and no sooner.
I cannot even hope to offer much on the subject of the Lib Dems, the young lady’s proposed alternative focus of Sean Gabb’s attention. Recently someone told me that there are clever young people in their ranks who are not completely indifferent to the claims of economic liberalism. Until then I despised the Liberal Democrats utterly, and had as little to do with them, and even with thinking about them, as I could contrive. But maybe they might make something approximating to libertarians some time reasonably soon. They’re already very sound about cannabis. And they are descended from the nineteenth century Liberal Party of William Gladstone. In the 1950s there were still old-fashioned Liberals like Jo Grimmond to be found among them, before they succumbed to the statism Mark 2 posture that they have adopted for the last forty years or so. Comments anybody?
Paul Marks has seen spotted the true historical template for Tony Blair…
For some time now I have been puzzled by the fact that although Mr Blair has followed ‘left wing’ policies of ever more government spending, taxes and regulations he is widely seen as “free market”, “really a Conservative”, “very right wing” and so on.
I must stress that not only the ‘usual suspects’ (Marxists and other such) have used such language, but quite a few pro-free market and even libertarian people.
What I have tried to do is find people in history who have followed statist policies and still got a reputation as free market folk.
President Hoover comes fairly close. Herbert Hoover, as Commerce Secretary in the 1920’s, worked endlessly to increase the budget and powers of his department and showered President Harding and President Coolidge with bad advise (which, thankfully, they mostly ignored – indeed President Coolidge is supposed to have said “no one has given me more advise than Herbert Hoover – and all of it bad advise”),
As President, Herbert Hoover went along with big tariff increases and demanded that large companies keep up wage rates at a time when both prices and output were falling (thus ensuring vast unemployment) – and yet Herbert Hoover (“The Forgotten Progressive”) is widely seen as the free market man that President Roosevelt reacted against.
However, President Hoover was faced with the worst depression in American history (caused by a credit-money boom that he had nothing to do with creating) – and this is likely to warp the judgement of most men. Also Herbert Hoover was a man of strict honesty in his dealings with businessmen – which does not fit in with the cozy image (however false it may be, my dear libel lawyers) of Mr Blair and those known (however wrongly) as his friends.
I think that I have found a closer match for Mr Blair – someone who may indeed have served as a role model for him.
Louis Phillippe “King of the French” from 1830 to 1848:
Louis Phillippe was a ‘People’s King’ rather than ‘King of France’ you see, the son of the Duke of Orleans. His father had helped finance the French revolution and voted for the execution of his kinsman King Louis XVI, and has himself later been executed by his own comrades. Louis Phillippe came to power after a strong media campaign had helped whip up public hatred for King Charles X. → Continue reading: Mr Blair’s role model
I got a call yesterday from Tim Evans of CNE saying that the Libertarian Alliance is now listed at the Stockholm Network website. For a brief few hours yesterday afternoon, if the LA’s hit counter is to be believed, the LA was getting more hits than Samizdata. So this is a plug for the Stockholm Network website. Thank you guys. If you want to learn about all those Free Market Institutes which now abound throughout Europe, this is the cyberplace to go.
Founded in 1997 in London and Stockholm, the Stockholm Network is a dynamic working group of European market-oriented think-tanks. We have two primary objectives: to build a wide network of pro-market policy specialists within Europe and to use that network to influence the future direction of European policy-making on issues of pan-European importance.
And that’s what they are doing. The blogs are a very different proposition from operations like the Stockholm Network. People don’t read the blogs to learn about Institutes, and to be steered towards amazingly long publications only in Acrobat format about European Fish Stocks – The Way Forward. They read blogs for fun, for daily ego massage and navel tickling. Nevertheless, if you want to spread ideas among the suit-wearing, fun-avoiding, core value adhearing, mission statement stating, movers, shakers, policy makers and action planners, this is all part of how you do it. You create virtual shopping malls of ideas and idea-mongers like this one, and help people to find whatever they want. → Continue reading: The Stockholm Network
I don’t normally respond publicly to comments, but I will make an exception. Peter Cutbertson has a blog called Conservative Commentary, it is certainly better than the Conservative Party’s website. He thinks that this conclusion I made makes me insane:
“The problem for British libertarians is that they aren’t really used to the idea that the state really is our enemy. This is one reason why I don’t think that the UK withdrawing from the European Union is an automatic recipe for joy.”
In the exchange which follows he appears to believe that “without law or government” society cannot function, and those who disagree with him are “insane” or follow “an incoherent, warped political philosophy”.
I am very tempted to ask our Mr Cuthbertson to define Conservative political philosophy, in plain coherent terms, with the agreement of those current and former leaders of the Conservative Party who are still alive: Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague and Duncan Smith. But I don’t hate the man, so I won’t.
However, it amazes me that Mr Cuthbertson cannot see that law doesn’t necessarily derive from government. For a start, any conservative who believes in God ought to consider the possibility that there is a higher authority than the State. Assuming atheism (which isn’t very conservative, but hey, who’s being coherent?), I should have hoped that a conservative might believe in the organic, spontaneous order of common law. Assuming God doesn’t exist, and the common law is a fiction (sounds more like a French Jacobin!), what has Mr Cuthbertson done with civil society? Is it true that members of the Carlton Club only behave because of the fear of being arrested by the police? Does the members’ code of conduct depend on the State for its existence and enforcement? Is there an Act of Parliament for table manners?
If the cream of the Conservative movement believe that regulation of human behaviour is only possible by State intervention, then it is no wonder the Conservative Parliamentary Party is an unelectable shambles comprised largely of cretins, petty crooks, pompous buffoons and in-bred yahoos. I will take no lessons in morality or “coherent political philosophy” from a Tory.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, far too many people still believe that their elected officials exist to look after the interests of the ordinary person. Yes, of course they make mistakes. Doesn’t everybody? Still, their hearts are in the right place and that’s what counts.
For those who may still harbour these lingering, absurd delusions, I recommend this article by Sean Gabb.
As always, Sean’s language is both florid and forthright. But so it should be because it explains, in detail, how wealth-producing, hard-working Britons have been robbed of their future by a government that they, inexplicably, still trust above all other institutions.
“But the tax changes are enough. People of my generation may now be looking at a far less comfortable retirement than we expected. Some of us may find ourselves in very straitened circumstances. Those of us lucky enough to stay reasonably healthy may find ourselves having to delay or even give up on retirement.”
And it may get worse. We have a desperate administration that has plundered everything in sight and the temptation to help themselves to the juicy, low-hanging fruit of private pension funds, may be more than they can resist.
The government is not your friend.
The main differences between a British libertarian gathering and an American one is the attitude towards foreign affairs and their own governments. During the Cold War many American libertarians, Murray Rothbard especially, denounced the US federal government’s attempts to “encircle” Communism, build alliances, station troops in Europe etc.
Most British libertarians, being somewhat closer to the Iron Curtain, and feeling that the English Channel might not be a huge obstacle to the Asiatic hordes of the Red Army, were rather happier with the presence of large, well equipped armies. We also took a more relaxed view of state violations of individual rights when the persons concerned were Communists, pro-Soviet peace protesters or “useful idiots” who acted spontaneously in a manner which would have delighted Stalin, Hitler or Napoleon.
We tended to admire the antics of the security services as they “bugged and burgled their way across London”. Some of us cheered when police officers on horseback smashed their way through ranks of protesting miners in 1984. I know no one in British libertarian circles who wondered if it might not be our turn some day, although Sean Gabb came closest.
The gloom among British libertarians today is partly the result of the realisation that now the apparatus of state oppression is randomly destroying people’s lives like in the final chapters of “Atlas Shrugged”.
But there is something particularly awful about the gloom engulfing British libertarians. No one born in the mainland of the United Kingdom and alive today has ever seen a group of police officers march up a residential street, knocking at selected doors and leading families away to some awful fate. Yet in every other member state of the European Union except Finland and Sweden, the are people who remember watching their neighbours being taken away. In the case of recent refugees from the former Yugoslavia, such memories may be very recent indeed.
The problem for British libertarians is that they aren’t really used to the idea that the state really is our enemy. This is one reason why I don’t think that the UK withdrawing from the European Union is an automatic recipe for joy.
Paul Marks reminds us that the motivation to do good does not ensure good is actually done
Today I read the obituary of John Rawls (who died on Sunday) in the Daily Telegraph. Dr Rawls was a brave soldier, a loving husband and a good father to four children – he was also kind and polite to all who encountered him.
However, Dr Rawls was also the author of “A Theory of Justice” (1971) the main modern justification for the ever increasing burden of the welfare state.
According to Dr Rawls no one had any right to increase their income or wealth unless they could prove that by so doing they improved the economic life of the “least favoured”. Just not harming the least favoured would not do – as inequality harmed the “self esteem” of the poor.
Interestingly I also read in today’s Daily Telegraph a little example of how Rawlsian type thinking works out in practice. In the Spanish region of Valencia the government is working in a public-private partnership to improve the lot of the least favoured. Private developers produce a plan for the creation of urban zones (flats, shops, places of business and so on) in sparsely populated coastal areas, the government judges the plan and then levies a tax on land owners in the area to provide such things as roads and drainage.
What a wonderful thing – from either a Rawlsian or a utilitarian point of view.
However, the plan means that retired people who have bought properties by the coast have to pay the government lots of money (or have their property taken away) for roads and drainage (and so on) that do not benefit them.
Why do I think that Rawls (kind and decent man that he was) would have been disgusted by this sort of thing?
before you say “but that is the corruption of the idea” – maybe so, but that is statism in practice.
Paul Marks
Matthew O’Keeffe warns libertarians to be mindful of the company they keep
Antoine Clarke wrote a piece last week called Against Paranoia which got me thinking. In it he lamented:
“the tendency among Libertarians to worry obsessively about every infringement by the state, to link up instances of state oppression, and to deduce from this either that there is a vast campaign to destroy freedom, or that we’re powerless to combat the tide of enslavement. This makes us seem obsessive, paranoid and miserable company, except to others of a similar emotional condition”.
I had similar misgivings about the attendance of a leading conspiracy theorist at the recent Libertarian Alliance conference. Why do we keep such company?
Consider some of the good things in life: the English language, the Common Law, money, the market economy, etc. As libertarians, we appreciate all too well that none of these things were invented by any one well-meaning academic, lawyer, banker or economist. On the contrary, all of these things have arisen by way of a spontaneous order.
Conversely, consider some of the bad things: poverty, for example. I believe that the welfare state manufactures poverty for a variety of reasons to do with incentives, moral hazard, taxation, misallocation of resources, the general inefficiency of the state machinery etc. etc.. What I do not believe is that there is a group of sinister statists somewhere conspiring on how best to impoverish our inner cities.
The point is that, as libertarians, we should appreciate the law of unintended consequences. Where our enemies see a world full of evil capitalists, Zionists, or whoever, we should have a view of the world which is more adult than is. And, because we appreciate unintended consequences, we should see a world full of irony – leaving us with a world view which is also humorous rather than sour. Let’s leave the paranoia and misery to the statists.
Matthew O’Keeffe
There may be a suit against the Feds over the use of Federal funds for electioneering purposes at the State level.
Wouldn’t it be lovely (cough) to see those Statist turkeys behind bars? (pass that over to me again would you?….)
There is a new film called 28 Days Later, which to summarize extremely briefly, involves Britain in the very near future laid waste by a bio-engineered plague released by animal ‘rights’ activists. This plague, called The Rage, turns people into feral zombie-like killers.
Although the film has gained some rather good reviews, why bother shelling out your hard earned and heavily taxed money to see zombies up on the big screen?
Britain is already full of zombies tramping somnambulantly under the CCTV cameras, past the voting booths in which they can meaninglessly vote for ‘worst choice one’ or ‘worst choice two’ and only moving at all due to the sensory stimuli provided by the carcinogenic stench of greasy fast food dispensaries and the flickering light cast by sub-moronic Pavlovian response inducing game shows.
So why bother going to see a film about them when all you have to do to see zombies is look out your well barred and burglar alarmed window?
I am not usually this bleak-of-view, but to see the protections of both habeas corpus and double jeopardy doomed by a currently unassailable government… and yet to then see this greeted not with rioting on the streets but for the most part with a collective ovine shrug, does rather lead anyone who values liberty to dark sentiments.
This meme hack was brought to you by Alan K. Henderson. See here for the inspiration.
Last night I attended a discussion evening in an upstairs room of the King George IV pub in Portugal Street, hosted by the London School of Economics Hayek Society. Very good. Very high quality talk, very smart group of people, from many different countries, Americans, Scandinavians, an Italian, and enough Brits for it not to be a completely non-local event, about twenty people in all. There was no set speaker, we just took it in turns, but as Mr Visiting Libertarian I was given extra pontificating rights, which I trust I did not abuse too annoyingly. They asked me to come again so I must have behaved reasonably well.
The topic was along the lines of “Does libertarianism imply an optimistic view of human nature?” I voted no, but not with any huge confidence and with less after the discussion than I had before. It made me think, in other words, as all good meetings do. For what it may signify, the vote went about two-to-one for no. But that was just a fun way to wind up the discussion, it wasn’t the point of the thing. This wasn’t one of those ghastly Oxford Union type debates where everyone is training to be or pretending already to be a cabinet minister. We just sat around in a circle and talked, gently but firmly chaired by one of the Americans.
The Hayek Society has been chugging along for some years, and in general it is fascinating how university groups, once founded, often seem to stick around, even after two or three complete personnel recycles. The significance of the Hayek Society is thus hard to overstate. I don’t know exactly where in the British university pecking order the LSE comes but it’s not far from the top. In the past, it has made a lot of mischief all around the world, and was I think started to spread collectivist economics. Like France, it is often deeply annoying but it remains a great institution and is a great intellectual prize, a great meme machine. So for us to be getting our memes into it in a big and quality way is, well, big.
The person who invited me to this meeting was Nick Spurrell, and last night he mentioned something about “setting up a website” for the Hayek Society. Either I misheard him (in which case grovelling apologies) or he doesn’t know that there already is one, which was last updated on April 3rd 2001. He must know this. I must have got that wrong. Anyway, I’ll clarify all that soonest, and link to whatever new operation gets going as and when, giving any new material they produce the push here which I’m sure it will deserve.
Meanwhile, email Nick Spurrell to signify that you’re interested in meetings like this, if you are. There doesn’t seem to be any problem about non-LSE folks joining in but sort that out with him. At the moment the meetings happen every Thursday evening, and there’s also a bigger set-piece meeting happening next Wednesday afternoon (1pm – 3pm), which I may also go to.
I got to know Nick Spurrell through him coming to a couple of my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings. As usual, meatspace continues to matter.
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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.
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