Race And Libertarianism: Left And Right

by Michael Parish

http://quagmire-abeautifulmind.blogspot.com/2011/03/race-and-libertarianism-left-and-right.html

As of late there been a surge of discussion regarding the role of race in Libertarianism, centered around the theoretical debate between Keith Preston and the ALL. Due to the confusion, both conceptual and practical, it is mired in, I have prepared this piece. This is intended as both a critique of the Left-libertarian conception of race, and as a clarification for the movement generally.

Left-Libertarians refer to “racism” on a regular basis, although they when they do they are referring to it in the abstract, as a mental concept, and not to concrete instances thereof. This is a key conceptual flaw, causing it to be defined in a sense so broad as to lose all meaning. Specifically, they define it as and/or equate it with authoritarianism but this is an ontological fallacy. According to Libertarian theory, authoritarianism is defined as state intervention that directly restricts the individual from the exercise of his or her negative rights. Racism, on the other hand, that rejects individuals in the social sphere because of percieved attributes associated with their race. The former is a form of agency occuring in the physical world; the latter is an idea occuring only within an individual’s mind. Therefore, the ontological distinction between the two could not be clearer.

Because of this distinction, racism is not necessarily a form of authoritarianism but a set of opinions that, if adhered to by individuals in power, could be manifest in a form of authoritarianism; however, this is not predetermined, as it can exist inert within the human mind independent of the state. However, the same can be said of its antithesis, left anti-racism, which the Left-Libertarians adhere to. This can be seen manifested in a number of policies, including but not limited to anti-discrimination law, affirmative action, and “hate speech” and “hate (i.e. thought) crime” legislation, all of which are wholly incompatible with Libertarianism. The reveals to us that the tendency towards statism is a natural human one, instantiated not within any specific ideology but within human nature itself; any ideology can lead to statism should its adherents if so inclined assume institutional power.

The Left-Libertarian will extend his claim by classifying the voluntary organization of individuals into racially exclusive communities as a form of authoritarianism; this is argued on the ground that their implied exclusion of those outside their race is a violation of their right to free movement. However, according to Libertarian theory, if property is privately as the basis for free association, then this includes the right to not associate. Conversely, there is no right in this tradition to not experience discrimination or to enter someone else’s property without their permission. If this applies to private property on an individual basis, then it does also on a collective basis, as the voluntary aggregation of property can be reduced to its individual constiuent parts. Therefore, the voluntary creation of a racially exclusive community is not authoritarian nor do its exclusionary policies constitute a violation of another’s freedom.

In their mistaking this, the Left-Libertarian conflates Libertarianism with liberal humanism, and misuses “authoritarianism” as a blanket term for any form of social organization they disagree with, regardless of its being voluntarily. In doing so, their conceptions of these things cease denoting concrete objects of discussion and devolve into mere abstract concepts, which in turn devolves the clarity of their movement. One function of this is the apparent backslide into the positive rights theory of the statist-left, as indicated by the theoretical fallacy discussed in the previous paragraph. It should be noted that the desire for National Anarchists to secede from the dominant society and create exclusivist communities in the absence of the state should be welcomed by Left-Libertarians; however, their hysterical denunciations of such a proposition appear very much in contradiction to their current adamant exclusion of them from the anti-state movement.

Hillary Clinton Lets the Cat Out of the Bag

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/?p=6529

In an interview with Denise Maerker of Televisa, during her February trip to Mexico, Hillary Clinton explained why drugs couldn’t be legalized: “I don’t think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate…. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don’t think that—you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.”

At first glance, you might think this is just economic illiteracy. After all, it’s just common sense that the reason there’s “so much money” in drugs is BECAUSE they’re illegal. They fetch a black market price. If pot was legal and sold for the same per ounce as oregano, you think there’d be Mexican gangs fighting to control the border trafficking in it? The best way to “stop” the people “who are making so much money selling” is to make the stuff cheap and legally available.

It stands to reason that the biggest foes of legalization — even more than the drug cops — are the folks in organized crime who make money off the drug trade. I vaguely recall an anecdote about a “dry county” election somewhere in the deep south; the local bootlegger’s car was plastered with bumper stickers reading “For the sake of my family, keep X County dry.”

But on closer examination, I suspect Clinton’s remark was a Freudian slip. She wasn’t guilty so much of exposing her ignorance as of inadvertently giving the uninitiated a brief glimpse of the truth. The truth is that the government won’t legalize drugs is that there’s too much money — for them and their allies — in keeping them illegal.

It’s basic economics that creating a black market in any criminalized substance will, in turn, create organized crime networks that profit from trafficking in controlled substances. Prohibition resulted in the explosive growth of organized crime in America.

But what some people don’t realize is that one of the organized crime gangs that profit from controlling the drug trade has blue for its gang colors. On the crudest level, of course, you’ve got cops on the take who allow some drug traffickers to operate — just so long as they pay protection money. Or cops who seize the stuff and then sell it. But it would be a mistake to treat this as just a “bad apples” problem. Police culture is corrupted to its very heart by the Drug War. Drug criminalization doesn’t just enable the profits of syndicates in Colombia or Mexico. It props up a sordid empire of militarized SWAT teams that terrorize families and murder innocent people in their homes, of civil forfeiture larceny enabled by jailhouse snitches, and of “Interjurisdictional Drug Task Forces” overflowing with cash. The entire police culture associated with the Drug War — just as much as what we conventionally think of as organized crime — looks like something beneath an overturned rock.

The Drug War, in short, is where all the money is. You can’t legalize drugs because there’s too much money in keeping them illegal — for the cops.

On a much larger scale, the biggest narcotraffickers in the world are the U.S. National Security State and its clients. Afghanistan is a case in point. One reason the Taliban were so unpopular was that they stamped out opium production. The only place in Afghanistan where the poppies were being cultivated on a large scale was in the Northern Alliance territories. So the U.S. overthrows the Taliban, the CIA handlers on the ground set up the Northern Alliance as the new national government — and Afghanistan is once again the center of world heroin production.

Drugs can’t be legalized because there’s too much money in it — for the international spooks. That includes the big banks that launder all the drug money and buy politicians all over the world (including in the U.S.). It includes the CIA, which has historically used the drug trade to fund death squads and coups all over the world.

There’s too much money — for the state and its allies — in keeping drugs illegal. Kind of makes you wonder whose side the state’s really on.