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Posted July 27, 2002
State and Society Dialog
Alan Koontz: In part 2 of his column on "Libervention," J. Stromberg wrote, "Libertarians might be expected to have some notion that the state differs from society and, indeed, is inimical to society, even if they only picked it up in an LP brochure or heard about it in a chat room. (You can't expect them to read Nock, Mencken, or Rothbard, can you?)"
On the contrary, and if indeed they've read Mencken, they would know that he holds this view that both the State and society are inimical to the individual -- and that, one would hope, is the underlying thesis of libertarianism as it is generally understood.
Joseph Stromberg: I've read Mencken, and he does make the point in support of which I mentioned him. I wasn't citing him as a general authority whose every word was as good as any other. If I believed that about Mencken, I would have to think that 1) World War I was a horrible disaster; 2) everyone below the Mason-Dixon line is a moron; 3) atheism is compulsory for all intelligent people, and 4) there really is an 'American language' separate from English. I only agree with 1).
Alan Koontz: Both the State and society are mere abstractions in utter conflict with the individual.
Joseph Stromberg: The ontological status of complex things, institutions, and abstractions has kept philosophers up late for centuries. Sure, truth, beauty, promises, lies, and kinship do not exist in exactly the same way as a desk, or a rock, or a federal highway does, but they certainly exist in some way or another and are usually more interesting to acting humans than inanimate objects are.
An institution requires for its existence that people persist in acting in the ways sustain the institution. The Rotary club will exist as long as the members keep on acting in a Rotarian fashion. "Society" is the term we have for very broad and coherent patterns of human cooperation and interaction across time and space. There is nothing inherently sinister about "society" and therefore no need for a massive libertarian flight from serious social thought.
The state most certainly "exists," precisely because certain people keep acting in statelike fashion and others keep obeying them. The whole point of early liberal social thought was that societies work best when there is individual freedom. As Mises says, freedom is a sociological concept. It never occurred to classical liberals to deny the existence or reality of society. The question was, given that only individuals think and act, what forms of social cooperation work out for the best. One could also start from individual rights and still arrive at a social philosophy.
Most classical liberals, libertarians, and even anarchocapitalists have no problem with this. It is largely a fiction of socialists and conservatives that libertarians believe in "atomistic" individuals, colliding with one another and, therefore, requiring a strong state to make society bearable. So how is society "in utter conflict with" the individual? Without individuals there are no societies, free or otherwise, and without society there would be no individuals, at least not for long.
Logically, the individual is "prior" to society; historically and biologically, society is "prior" to the individual. This has not yet proved to be an insurmountable problem for theory or practice.
Alan Koontz: They are both abstractions to the point of ideals whose supremacy enthusiastic interventionists, one and all, will uphold come what will as a consequence to the individual. It is precisely for this reason one should not mistake State or society for the individual, if indeed the survival of the individual is of uppermost concern -- and that, one would hope, is the uppermost in the mind of anyone with libertarian propensities.
Joseph Stromberg: Not exactly. Failure to adopt a sort of Stirnerite solipsism does not commit one to anything that could be called an intervention. There are interventionists, but that is another matter. The fact that people might want to cooperate to make society freer does not turn them into advocates of a tyranny of voluntary exchange, or a tyranny of free association.
As for "the State and society [as] mere abstractions in utter conflict with the individual," I find this operationally meaningless. Individuals cannot be "in utter conflict" with society, since they constitute society. A better question is whether or not the state is in conflict, at the same time, with individuals and with the pattern of society at which they would arrive through uncoerced cooperation
To set the problem up as the individual vs. society is to lose all track of the real contributions of liberalism to our thinking about society works. We might as well be asked to choose between water and air. Stirner and Hobbes pitted the individual against society, while coming to different conclusions. There is no reason to accept that framing of the problem.
We would be better advised to learn from Rothbard, Mises, Nisbet, Burke, Constant, Bastiat, and other writers in the liberal/libertarian tradition, than to spend our time squaring artificial circles.
Decline and Fall
Many thanks to Justin for highlighting the two current analyses of Empire ("Decline and Fall," July 24). Wallerstein's view of the demise of American hegemony is certainly refreshing. It's interesting, though, that he all but dismisses the Balkans as an irrelevant sideshow, even though it was the clearest example of an attempt to reassert the slipping dominance of the US over Europe and NATO. As such, it had temporary success. But the conquest and occupation of Bosnia and Kosovo have used up too many resources, and will continue to do so in the future, for no clear purpose.
Wallerstein is right the the Yugoslav Succession Wars were irrelevant to global politics -- that is, until the Empire intervened and made them a flashpoint. Absent outside meddling, Yugoslavia might still have dissolved, but the end-result would have been far less bloody and unstable. In addition to enforcing an untenable state of affairs in the Balkans, the Empire now has to deal with other consequences of intervention, such as the International Criminal Court.
If this is not evidence of decadence and decline, I don't know what is. Yet Wallerstein glosses over it, probably unfamiliar with intricacies of the Balkans crisis. This does not hurt his argument, though it certainly could have helped.
~ Nebojsa Malic, Balkan Express
Sources
I've recently read Kevin Carson's article on Noam Chomsky and David Horowitz's, correctly described, "straw man" attacks on him. However, I had a couple problems with Carson's article. First of all, Carson has "a tendency to play fast and loose with his sources." He refers to "paragraphs" in a Chomsky book called Deterring Democracy but he has made it "as hard as possible" for us to look up the ones to which he is referring in order that we may check his "characterization" of what actually appears. The only source for us to follow is a link that takes us to Amazon.com where we must first buy the book itself, and then I suppose use E.S.P. to find these particular "paragraphs" that Carson is referring to, before we can even begin to check his "characterizations." Is Mr. Carson aware that the entire text of Deterring Democracy is available online...?
Carson then refers to an elusive Bakunin quote that he claims Chomsky refers to ad nauseum without adequately "accessible" citation. Does Carson quote or cite the Bakunin quote to save us the obstacle course that Chomsky chooses to put us through in in his works? No. He sends us to the home page of some Bakunin archive where we must then, I suppose, search through the whole archive in hopes of finding some quote that Carson complains is "not exactly accessible to the average reader who wants to find out more." ...
It's possible that these inadequate web links were added by some person other than Mr. Carson, and that would of course mean then, that Mr. Carson provided his reader with even less source material with which to check his "characterizations," namely, none. He tells us that Chomsky cites it in some "inaccessible" work in French by David Guerin, so this really begs the question. What then is the source, the one, or the many, that Chomsky could have used instead, and that Mr. Carson could have used here, that would make this quote sufficiently accessible to the average reader in a way that Mr. Carson would approve of?
I don't wish to accuse Mr. Carson with "intellectual dishonesty" but rather just "sloppiness."
Kevin Carson replies:
I'm amazed at the amount of indignant pro-Chomsky response that was generated by three or four throwaway paragraphs, intended to set up what was primarily an anti-Horowitz piece. Go figure.
Regarding Joshua D's letter in particular, my initial reaction was "Ouch"!
My reference to "paragraphs" in Chomsky was intended to convey my personal reaction to his general style. Since this was primarily a commentary piece, and since anyone familiar with Chomsky's writing could probably decide whether or not he agreed with my characterization, I didn't think detailed documentation was necessary.
I attempted to look up the Bakunin quote because it struck a note with me. I was frustrated in my attempt to trace it to a source in which I could read his entire letter. I would have been quite satisfied had Chomsky cited a collection of Bakunin's letters in English, or at least reproduced more of the original context from which the quote was taken.
Excess
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's "Decline and Fall"]
Great article, as usual!
A friend and I had this discussion a couple of weeks ago. Is this just the beginning of the empire, or the beginning of the end? Although I don t know when or where the end will come, I believe history will show that the American Empire began in 1865. The decline of empires is always accompanied by excess. The rampant licentiousness of our empire indicates the beginning, if not the middle, of the end. At least the Roman legion had to pay for their strippers with gold or silver. They didn't have credit cards, unlike our legion....
Liberventionism
I just read the Stromberg essay on Liberventionism and I am totally at a loss to understand who or what he is talking about, since he makes no concrete reference to specific ideas or positions of those he is "opposing." He does not quote any ostensibly "pro-war libertarians" nor does he argue the merits of either interventionism or non-interventionism.
He sounds like a priest who says "you can't possibly be a Christian if you believe differently from me." I don't think that is the way to build an antiwar movement or a pro-freedom movement.
Joseph Stromberg replies:
I suppose I am assuming that people read. If they do that, they could read any number of Old Cause columns, which I have been writing for -- what? -- three years now, or they could read the other regular columnists -- Justin, Alan Bock, and so on -- and would thereby win themselves a context. The whole point of Antiwar.com has been to address the issues this reader raises, and we have addressed them massively.
Why I should, or how I could, compress all that into one column, is hard to say. I mean, I have even built two columns around suggested readings. There is my antiwar bibliography at LewRockell.com, and on and on. As for the narrower issue of libertarians-turned-interventionists, if people really want a list of the major liberventionists, I can certainly oblige them.
Anyway, I hardly could have planned to address all the arguments made by libertarian interventionists in one essay. Next time, I'll telegraph the fact that if I say these guys are deficient in history and theory, that means that I intend to do a future column on 1) history and 2) theory.
Of course I didn't address everything in one column. My comments on the historical claims of one or more liberventionists will come together soon. As for theory, interested parties could look at my two columns on Rothbard, pending a column on that. Finally, the issues of war and peace, empire vs. republic, etc., are more fundamental, and therefore more interesting, than internal quarrels within the libertarian movement, if indeed there still is such a thing.
The case against intervention and empire has been made, over and over, at Antiwar.com. If some claimants to the libertarian label wish to jump ship over this "war" or some other one, I expect we will continue to make the case against intervention and empire in spite of them.