What is a political party?

This fucking election...

The following rant was my response to the assertion that the Libertarian Party is not a real party. I'm saving it for posterity:
 
 "Your political leaders sell their influence for personal gain while humiliating and nickel-and-diming the regular people with unreasonable regulations and penalties. They make you afraid of your neighbors (including the other "real" political party), so that you feel that you have no choice but to surrender your freedom and wealth to them. You're so enamored with he idea that you can get close to power that you make endless excuses for the failures your candidates. You don't have a political party, you have a professional marketing campaign that is run on the same principles as a campaign for any mass-market commodity, and is funded by the same corporations."

FWIW, I don't take the LP too seriously, and I think most LP members don't either. ..even though they take the movement seriously.

hello again

Well, I'm back.

As the Trump crisis unfolds, I've been drawn back to the left-libertarian blogosphere, looking for ideas for how to respond. My thoughts have been turning to direct action -- which I thought would only be an issue if Trump got elected and the mass-deportations started (or if his supporters feel emboldened to terrorize immigrants -- win or lose). However, it looks like some others have decided that direct action is needed even before he's elected.

I hope to write up some thoughts on that topic in the next week, and I hope I'll be able to get some feedback from my old crowd (whomever is still around). Unfortunately, my real-world demands haven't let up any, so I'm not sure I'll follow through.

Anyway, here's a variety of things I've had on my mind relating to the Trump crisis:

1. Electoral. Can Johnson split the Republican vote? Is he a good advocate for liberty (from the left-libertarian perspective)?
2. Organizing. Should I be getting more involved in local organizations so that there's a network in place in case the shit hits the fan? What types of organizations? Neighborhood? Libertarian Party? Refugee support? Local politics? What communities are most likely to feel the brunt of Trump and his fans?
3. Resistance. At what point do we need to take direct action against injustice. What approaches will be the most effective (while also avoiding personal risk and escalation)?
4. Free trade (this is tangential to the Trump crisis): I need a good write up of how modern trade agreements are efforts to bias the market is favor of capital. I found some stuff with RadGeek, but I don't think it went as far as it could...

Scanning the web, here's what I've found:

• Relevant blogs that are still active: C4SS, RadGeek, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, EFF, my favorite communist.(I'm sad to see that Ruling Class has been inactive for a year -- he opened my eyes to a lot of issues). Will Reason be useful in the Trump resistance? What about The Intercept? And maybe the conservative Front Porch Republic?
• The Dividist provided me with some good anti-Trump propaganda (and a reminder of how bad his election could be if he has  GOP Congress)
• Evolution of digital currencies (as medium for international transactions). Bit in China. RipplePay.

Hindsight is the playground of propaganda

I have previously been critical of manned space exploration as being nothing more than extremely expensive political propaganda. A new history book recounts what Americans thought of the Apollo program and shows how it has taken decades for the propaganda to really saturate our culture, to the point that every American knows the name of the first man on the moon, and politicians speak of space exploration as though it were the obvious measure of a society's greatness. Thank Ford for state-run schools!

Many people see space exploration as part of a culture war. According to a review in the Economist, NASA's chief saw it as the flag-bearer for "Squareland", in its contest with "Potland". According to an editorial in Space Review, the contest was between rationalism and neo-romanticism. Unfortunately, space exploration never represented true rationality, but instead of the religion of rationalism, where the achievements of science are used to induce a mystical awe among the rabble and legitimize power relationships both within and between nations, as illustrated by both the USSR and post-war USA.

A success of small-scale farming in Tanzania

The Economist tells us of an Oxfam-backed TV show that is attempting to enable women-run, small-scale farms. The author even asserts that:

It showed that small-scale agriculture is a sustainable way of feeding the country.

Not what I expect from the Economist, which normally champions large-scale, mechanized commodity agriculture.

Who's the Party Elite? (at the Monkey Cage)

I just want to point you to a post at the Monkey Cage, discussing the role of media institutions in defining political parties: Who's the Party Elite?

The author David Karol bemoans the lack of public appreciation for how political parties are shaped by what we might call "allied institutions". This ignorance is pervasive, and I believe it underlies the idea that campaign finance regulations will act as some sort of rescue from plutocracy and elitism in government. After all, what does it matter if some rich guy can buy a political advertisement in the newspaper if he can just buy (or build) an entire newspaper for use as a propaganda tool?

What do university administrators do?

One of the main targets of the Occupy Cal movement is administrator salaries, connecting the increase of these salaries with the increase in tuition. The administrators shoot back by pointing out that their salaries make up a tiny portion of university expenditures, and that the real problem is that the legislature (the EVIL Republicans!) has cut university subsidies.

I don't know what the salaries are at Cal itself, but I've noticed extravagant salaries at other institutions (up to $1 million /year for top administrators), which doesn't always match the salaries of football coaches, but is substantially more than the salaries of even the most prominent professors.

With salaries like this, I'd expect the administrative activities of the university to be seamless-- professors would be able to quickly hire technicians, and graduate students would not have a two-month gap in their health insurance coverage following the annual renewal of coverage. But that's just a fantasy land.

I'd like to know how school administrators command such high salaries, and what they are spending their time on if not actually making sure that the administration runs smoothly. Maybe they are just glorified lobbyists, trying to eek more money out of the state. Maybe they are well-dressed sycophants, drawing money from the pockets of wealthy alumni, or perhaps they are slick PR men running immense propaganda campaigns. Maybe they are exceptionally competent administrators, but their fiefdom is so immense that it is impossible to run it efficiently.

Well, I'll hopefully find an answer as I finish reading Benjamin Ginsberg's essay at The Washington Monthgly -- Administrators Ate My Tuition. Being a PoliSci professor and JHU, he may have some insight (or he may just be venting faculty frustrations).

Do they understand what they are doing?

This past Wednesday, riot police tried to disperse a large group from the campus of UC Berkeley. As pointed out by the Chancellor, the protestors engaged in activities that were outside of what he understands to be the tradition of "peaceful" resistance. I wonder if the protestors understood that they had crossed that threshold, and what it implies about their attitudes towards established legal authority.

For those unfamiliar with the events, this is how I understand the course of events: there was a big rally, then some people set up tents, cops amassed and told the protesters to take their tents and leave, protesters refused. A negotiator said that the protestors could occupy the plaza constantly for a week, as long as no camping equipment was set up and people didn't sleep there. When the protesters rejected this offer, the cops tried to dismantle the campsite, but were blocked by a crowd. The cops then beat their way through the crowd and took the tents.

Here's the video of part:



Here is the core of the Chancellor's letter:

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers’ efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them.

...

We call on the protesters to observe campus policy or, if they choose to defy the policy, to engage in truly non-violent civil disobedience and to accept the consequences of their decisions.

Basically, the distinction that he is making is between those who use the legal system as a stage on which to protest-- using their arrest for theatrical purpose-- and those who stand outside of the legal system and try to gain sympathy when the legal system imposes itself on them.

This later activity is fundamentally radical, since it rejects the legitimacy of the legal system itself. The only alternative to the use of force is the abdication of authority by either the University administration or the police. We've seen this tactic used repeatedly in the Occupy protests, but it is also paired with rhetoric that suggests that the protestors don't comprehend how these actions are an immediate and radical threat to the establishment (e.g. "stop beating students"). On the other hand, the rhetoric of "occupation" is inherently radical, but it doesn't seem to be a turn-off to the non-radical left. People apparently treat it as nothing more than a brand. But we've also seen this contradiction in the Tea Party movement, where they simultaneously spouted radical rhetoric (including the name) even as they demanded respect from the establishment.

In the end, I'm not sure exactly what these people wish to achieve, or how they expect their actions to achieve these goals. It seems that the protests have become focused on the tactics of protest themselves -- the perpetual occupation of public space for the sake of protest, and camping as a form of protest. Right now, I don't find these to be particularly compelling reasons to get involved.

However, there are some good fights to be picked over this issue. There are plenty of cities with overly restrictive requirements for permits to gather. It may be interesting to see these rules presented as a form of class-warfare, which weaken the ability of regular people to engage in political propaganda, even as the wealthy have the alternative outlet of mass-media.

UniLeaks: wikileaks for education

I just came across a new website called UniLeaks, which solicits...

restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance which is in some way connected to higher education, an agency or government body working in partnership with an institution, e.g., a University.

As yet, I do not see the point in creating a system targeted at particular institutions. Maybe this is a way to attract specialists who would be interested in these documents. However, my first suspicion is that this is the work of anti-intellectuals who are digging for any possible dirt on academia.

In part, this is because I can't imagine that they would find particularly interesting documents that are distinctive of universities. The most likely "dirt" will relate to fund-raising, resource allocation, and employee relations -- just like with any large institution. My fear is that these people will be digging for documents like the stolen* emails at the center of Climategate, which they can then pass to the right-wing noise machine for selective quoting.

As I suggested in Privacy and Transparency at the University, this strategy seems to be increasingly common among some political factions. Michael Mann suffered legal harassment as a result of the Climategate brouhaha, and Frances Fox Piven was singled out and demonized by Glenn Beck at the height of his popularity. This may be a strategy of attacking soft targets -- mid-level public figures who will never wield political power and do not have a mass-audience.

With that being said, I am cautiously optimistic about the establishment of UniLeaks. I am deeply interested in maintaining transparency and accountability (but also political independence) among universities. I am also hopeful that the proliferation of Wikileaks-style organizations will help to move these whistle-blower systems into the political mainstream, and reduce the risk of retaliation.

Update: I found an article about UniLeaks in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The rhetoric used by the (Australian) administrator of the site seems to be a mixture of academia-idealist (e.g. students are not clients), and government-accountability (e.g. universities get a lot of state money). Also, some articles noted that this is just one of many specialized WikiLeaks clones.

*I say that these emails were stolen rather than leaked, because a leak requires that someone had legitimate access to the documents being leaked. Since no-one should have had access to the email database at the center of Climategate, that data must have been stolen.

Those reasonable anarchists

It's no secret that I find much value in anarchist writings; particularly in anarchist criticisms of statist ideology and institutions. When I see the clear thinking of such essays, I sometimes wonder how anarchists got the reputation for being unreasonable. Of course, there are less "rational" or "realistic" aspects of anarchism. For instance, anarchists put a lot of effort into dreaming up institutions that will replace the state, and the problems of establishing these institutions may seem insurmountable, making the anarchists into a bunch of dreamers. At the extreme, there are frequent calls of alarm and the repetition of conspiracy theories (aside from those "conspiracies" that have been well documented, even if ignored by most people).

Anyway, even the most extreme and alarmist anarchists are no more wild-eyed than plenty of "respectable" voices in mainstream political debate. Over the past few days, I checked in on the local talk-radio station, and got an earful of conspiracy theory and alarmism from nationally syndicated conservative stars -- Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.

If this type of stuff is respectable these days, then there is no good reason that anarchism shouldn't be mainstream.

My respectability vs. their legitimacy

Over the past few years, I've been conversing with a bunch of anarchists, and have come to accept their basic arguments. Anarchists have a bad reputation, so I've been using a pseudonym for these online conversations. In fact, I now use the name Ricketson (from Benjamin Ricketson Tucker) in all my online political discussions, though this is simply because I prefer that a Google search of my real name points to my professional writings and not my political opinions.

The core doctrine of anarchism is that all coercive power, particularly the state, is illegitimate and should be resisted. As such, it can be difficult to support anarchist causes while maintaining respectability in mainstream society, where state power is generally taken for granted and is often considered an essential part of a good society. On top of that social pressure, there is also the fact that anarchists position themselves directly at odds with an institution that regularly deprives people of property, liberty, and life; so associating with anarchists brings some physical risks, and it is very important for anarchists to know what actions will provoke the state to action and stay within those bounds.

Fortunately, the USA and its citizens are generally tolerant of abstract political opinions, so there is a lot of room for advocacy of anarchic social reforms. However, anarchists necessarily push the limits of that tolerance in their attacks on the legitimacy of the state and its laws. If laws of the state are illegitimate, then interfering with the enforcement of those laws is implicitly legitimate, as long as the circumstances are appropriate.

However, not all law-breaking is the same. Anarchist "direct action" can come in the form of scofflawry*, civil disobedience, and outright resistance against the enforcers of the law. Anarchists are safe as long as their opposition to the law is kept abstract (even the American Declaration of Independence advocates the right to resist the state), but they could get in hot water if they were to support particular acts of resistance. Even if they stay within the formal limits of the law, they would risk attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies and facing extra-legal harassment from these powerful groups. I've got a family to support, and don't want to go there.

The recent brouhaha surrounding Wikileaks illustrates these dynamics. For details, go to Wikileaks Watch at the Ruling Class Blog, but there are two important points relevant to the topic of this essay: first, a person who says "the wrong thing" can be targeted for extra-legal harassment by the USA; second, reciprocal harassment of the state and its allies will be taken very seriously by the state.

The harassment of Wikileaks is a prime example of extra-legal (i.e. no due process) harassment in response to "saying the wrong thing". Following their publication of a whole bunch of slightly confidential documents, Wikileaks' website suffered a denial-of-service attack, law enforcement agencies effectively froze several accounts associated with Wikileaks, and several high profile politicians called for extra-legal action to be taken against Wikileaks.

In response to this harassment, several of the instigators and collaborators have been themselves targeted for similar harassment, such as denial-of-service attacks on their websites. This has sparked debate among anarchists over whether this counter-harassment is justified. Some of the rhetoric has made me question whether I can openly associate with these people (for instance, by making a donation) and maintain my mainstream respectability (i.e. avoid unwanted attention from powerful institutions).

It's one thing to make abstract arguments for breaking the law; it's another to provide moral support for people who are breaking a specific law as we speak. The difference is even greater when the law-breakers are physically interfering with another person's activities (an "attack", in the broadest sense of the word).

Finally, the justification of the law-breaking is important. The DoS attacks by "Anonymous" are often portrayed as Civil Disobedience; such cases are treated as limited threats by the established powers, but they can still be met with substantial retaliation. However, if the attacks are viewed as resistance (i.e. an attempt to directly block the exercise of power) , the full power of the state will be brought against the lawbreakers and their supporters. In this case, Anonymous has really escalated the seriousness of the Wikileaks situation. Compare the "Civil Disobedience - Resistance" of Anonymous with the "Scofflawry - Civil Disobedience" of Wikileaks. It isn't even clear that Wikileaks did anything illegal, but there is no doubt that the acts of Anonymous are illegal. Furthermore, Anonymous has a clear victim. This type of escalation had better be necessary, or else I am going to stay a mile away.

Through my associations with anarchists, I have been comforted by those who swear off confrontation, insisting that their goal is to expose the illegitimacy of the state and start building the institutions that will replace the state. Not only do I believe that they make an important point about what is the most productive strategy for improving society, but I feel comfortable that associating with such people will not bring me to the attention of the police.

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm whining about how hard it is for me to contribute to "the cause"; I did not write this to make excuses for myself or belittle those who have shouldered the responsibility for developing and communicating anarchist ideas. I just want to make a small point about the tactics of a political movement -- if we want to gain mainstream influence, then mainstream people need to feel comfortable associating with us.



*I believe that I have coined the term "scofflawry". Is there a better term for the habit of evading law enforcement? Scofflawry is a bit awkward, but is conveniently parallel to outlawry.

Common sense: it's what they asked for

Cross posted to Freedom Democrats

Glen Greenwald complains about how Glen Beck is presenting himself as a modern day Thomas Paine, by writing his own pamphlet called "Common Sense". I'm not sure exactly what Beck is getting at in the book, but I have no respect for his intellect (though his rants are quite amusing) so I won't be reading it. However, I doubt that Beck and his audience are really ready to hold up Thomas Paine as their mascot.

If you want to read some brilliant writing that contains innovative and profound thoughts (penned by a brave man), check out Pain's writing:

1. Common Sense: A masterpiece of radical political propaganda. Paine took an idea that had previously seemed like common sense (allegiance to the monarchy) and presented it as pure madness.
2. Agrarian Justice: An argument for the citizen's dividend funded by a land tax. As a matter of practicality, Paine suggested a lump sum payment to all young adults and regular payments to the elderly, all funded by an inheritance tax (which would effectively be a land tax, since he lived in an agrarian society).
3. The Age of Reason: A critical examination of Christianity.
4. Rights of Man: Defending the French Revolution against Burkean criticism.

To top off Paine's anti-conservative credentials, he typically presented elected government as the incarnation of the people's will, and would probably be baffled by the application of "Common Sense" to such a government (but maybe not if he had seen how the American experiment has turned out).