Chris Matthew Sciabarra is disappointed that some of his compadres online actually advocate such statist institutions as antitrust laws and public schools. Now, most of the people hanging out at that site do not endorse such monstrosities. But Chris was provoked, and he responds with some thought-inducing comments:
What must be emphasized here is that all of this is part of one interconnected context (can you say "dialectics????): government monopoly of education, advancing government control of domestic and global political economy, the inculcation of conformity, and the undermining of independent thinking. Each of these factors reciprocally reinforces the other. Indeed, they are mutual requisites for the success of statism. Statism requires a docile population, and there is no better way to disarm a populace than by miseducating its children.
Absolutely. In fact, Chris previously mentions government's monopoly privileges as well (especially the issuing of money), and recommends some worthy libertarian classics. "Laissez-faire capitalism," Ayn Rand wrote, "is the only social system that bans force from social relationships." Chris has more to say on the theme of docility and its effects:
Malcolm X once said: "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." The problem with statism is that it makes all of us "part of the problem"--because we embedded in this system. We go to government schools, we drive on government roads, we mail our letters through government post offices, we are alternately benefiting from some government privilege or being hurt by some government prohibition or exclusion, we pay government taxes, we die in government wars (not all of which are "defensive"--but that's another issue for another day). Being part of the solution requires change, therefore, on every level.
Again, I agree with Chris here: change is needed, and at every level of society. Politically, the change needed is to stop regarding the initiation of force as legitimate. We need to ban force, as Rand said, and therefore to remove government coercion from every area of the economy. In a coerce-commerce mixed economy, all are at the mercy--and at the throats--of all, special interest groups arise to clamor for privileges and favors, and far too often, one gains only at the expense of someone else, who of necessity loses. That is the only way things can be when government creates various grants of monopolistic privilege, or arrogates monopoly to itself: as Chris says, "we are alternately benefiting from some government privilege or being hurt by some government prohibition or exclusion." He continues:
The famous Beatles song goes: "You say you want a revolution. Well, you know we all want to change the world...But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out?"
And there, John Lennon's lyrics point to the problem: when it comes to violence and coercion, not everyone avers "count me out." Lennon himself wasn't sure at first that he actually felt that way: on the single released by The Beatles, "Revolution," he did indeed sing "count me out," just as the lyrics above indicate. But on the earlier version of the song released as "Revolution 1," on the album The Beatles, he clearly sings "count me out...." Is violent revolution the only way to bring about change? Many believe so, and the much-admired John Lennon, as we've seen, had trouble making up his mind on the point. Many of his younger devotees on the New Left felt the same way, regarding Che Guevara with awe and coining such anti-middle class slogans as "The Revolution will not be televised," and the explicitly murderous "Up against the wall, motherfuckers!" And such attitudes go back a long way, as Ludwig von Mises tells us in Human Action:
Today many historians and writers are imbued with the Marxian dogma that the realization of the socialist plans is both unavoidable and the supreme good, and that the labor movement is entrusted with the historical mission of accomplishing this task by a violent overthrow of the capitalistic system. Starting from this tenet, they take it as a matter of course that the parties of the "Left," the elect, in the pursuit of their policies, should resort to acts of violence and to murder. A revolution cannot be consummated by peaceful methods. It is not worthwhile to dwell upon such trifles as the butchering of the four daughters of the last Tsar, of Leon Trotsky, of tens of thousands of Russian bourgeois and so on. "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs"; why explicitly mention the eggs broken?
And events have shown us that all statists of all persuasions think this way, from Lenin to Jimmy Carter, who while president made the same "omelet" remark, and including the near-deified John Lennon, who opposed US involvement in Vietnam and Britain's role in the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, but said nary a public thing about the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979. So the communist revolutionary Lenin, the socialist-"pacifist" Lennon and the ostensibly conservative Democrat Carter prove, each in his own way, Mises' point: to a statist, it is a "matter of course" to employ violent coercion, up to and including murder, in the pursuit of political aims. Businesses of all sizes can be regulated out of existence, property can be forfeited to the Internal Revenue Service or to the Drug Enforcement Administration even before one is convicted in a court of law (unlike a forfeit in sports or chess, the forfeit is not offered, but imposed by those taking the property); you can be murdered in your own home if police thugs have a "no-knock" warrant to confiscate drugs, or if you are a Branch Davidian.
Sciabarra again:
Fortunately, for the advocates of freedom, change is not about nihilistic destruction. It is about creation: the creation of alternative voluntary institutions that supplant the old coercive ones. When the very first institution that children encounter is a compulsory one, teaching them to destroy the efficacy of their own minds, it is no wonder that the rest of the society accepts compulsion and coercion as an appropriate social relation.
And Lennon again:
You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be all right...
Lennon and Sciabarra are both right on this one: we have to change our heads and our institutions. In fact the great minds Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, John Lennon, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra are in accord with The Anger of Compassion here: we have lots of minds to change; we have, as Chris says, a culture to transform--"but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out."
And yeah, I do think it's gonna be all right.
Posted by Craig Ceely at July 12, 2003 06:30 PM