There is no Alternative to a Market Economy

David McDonagh

There is no alternative to the market economy!

Or why Karl Marx was a failure [being a reply to Robin Cox who writes in here as Hood1. He was in the SPGB but he is now a statist who thinks he is an anarchist].

The economic calculation argument [eca] that quite phenomenally Robin Cox still does not understand, despite decades of studying it, is what best indicates that there is no alternative to the market economy. Robin imagines that he does supply a way how free access might work but he shows no sign of even understanding that a method of social cost is needed but he does show plenty of ignorant protest against the fact that the economic problem is demanding, that it makes him feel insecure and the like, all of which leads the reader of his posts in here to think that he is merely attempting to wish the economic problem away.

Robin makes a lot of fuss about being an anarchist but he also seems to go along with ideas like democracy that are a form of government and government implies a state.  It is mere chance that consistent pristine liberalism is anarchy, it is the liberalism rather than the incidental anarchy that matters but it is also a mere fact that men like Bakunin were de facto statists.

Karl Marx set off on a tricky premise when he defined a commodity as production for use as well as exchange, as it saddled him with the true idea that production for profit was thereby always for use too, 

Medical Heroics: A Doctor Writes

Note: This is not the most cheerful posting we could make on New Year’s Eve. However, I watched a close friend die of cancer several years ago. He had the best medical care BUPA could provide. He had three big operations, a dose of chemotherapy, and occasional bursts of radiotherapy. He consented to them in the belief that they would extend his life, and even achieve a partial cure of his cancer. I don’t believe any of these interventions extended his life. I suspect they did much to shorten his life. I am certain that every single one of them reduced the quality of his life.

Of course, knowing when the game is up may not be easy. Some terrible conditions can nowadays be cured if caught early enough. Even so, I hope I shall have the courage to face reality when it comes, and choose the palliative care only. SIG

The great and the good?

by Richard North

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/great-and-good.html

He is a Marxist and was a long-standing member of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain and the associated Communist Party Historians Group. As such, he has been (and still is) an apologist for one of the most vile regimes this earth has ever spawned, openly justifying a system responsible for the death of 15-20 million people, and denying the extent of its crimes against humanity.

Yet Eric Hobsbawm is president of Birkbeck, University of London and recently president of the Telegraph Hay Festival. He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1998, a British honour unique in that it is the personal gift of the monarch for outstanding achievement in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion. And even to this day, he is fêted by the BBC as a great historian.

This being the case, and quite understandably, Your Freedom and Ours believes we have lost the propaganda war. But it also speaks of an establishment that has lost its way, one that has no true idea of values and one which has demonstrated a complete inability to make sound judgements.

We have no lessons to learn from him or the people who support and applaud him, other than that it is quite possible for the establishment to be totally, completely and vilely wrong.

When Fascism Was On the Left

by Keith Preston

http://attackthesystem.com/?p=12717

The conventional left/right model of the political spectrum holds Fascism and Marxism to be polar opposites of one another. Marxism is regarded as an ideology of the extreme Left while Fascism supposedly represents an outlook that is about as far to the Right as one can go. A title recently translated into English by Portugal’s Finis Mundi Press, Eric Norling’s Revolutionary Fascism, does much to call the perception of Fascism, conceived of as it was by Mussolini and his cohorts, as an ideology of the extreme Right into question.

Libertarianism: Thick and Thin

Article by Matt Zwolinksi.

http://attackthesystem.com/?p=12750

A fairly balanced discussion of “thick vs thin” libertarianism from a generally “thin” perspective.

Self-Serving Fake Tory Scum at Work

by Richard North

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/spot-difference_30.html

The difference between this approach and this tells you all you need to know about the nature of modern government – and the character of David Cameron Esq.

Labour and the Living Wage

by David D’Amato

http://c4ss.org/?p=9291

CNNMoney reports (“Minimum wage increases for workers in eight states,” December 23) that “[w]hile some workers are worried about smaller paychecks next year, more than 1.4 million low-income earners will see their wages go up on New Year’s Day.” The story notes that these jumps emerge at a time when “the fate of the payroll tax cut [remains] in limbo.”

Alcohol Pricing: Better England Free than England Sober

 

Libertarian Alliance News Release
Release Date: Wednesday 28th December 2011
Release Time: Immediate

Contact Details: Dr Sean Gabb, 07956 472 199, sean

“ALCOHOL MINIMUM PRICING: BETTER ENGLAND FREE THAN ENGLAND SOBER,” SAYS FREE MARKET AND CIVIL LIBERTIES THINK TANK

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties institute, today condemns proposals to make it harder for poor people to buy alcohol. The proposals include higher taxes, compulsory minimum prices for drink, further controls on advertising, and power to close down retailers. The only disagreement between the three main parities is how far they wish to go.

The Whole World is Watching – the Diggers, the Occupiers, Some Chinese Protesters

by Kevin Carson

http://c4ss.org/?p=9284

In 1649 at St. George’s Hill in England, as recounted in the revolutionary anthem “,” a band of landless peasants who called themselves the Diggers tore down enclosures, built themselves cottages, and began spading up land to grow food. Their goal was to set an example for the people of England, to throw off their chains and reclaim their ancient birthright. They were eventually driven off by the local Lord of the Manor, but they survive in memory as heroes in the bloody five thousand year war between those who claim to own the Earth and those who live and work in it.

Kindle and Eye Strain

by Sean Gabb

Pretty to look at. A bitch to use with pdf files. I have horrid eye strain. Any advice before Mrs Gabb sends it back?

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

by Kevin Carson

http://c4ss.org/?p=9282

Since passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, the Lords of Scarcity have given us one demonstration after another of the totalitarian lengths they’re willing to go to — that they’re driven to, in fact — to preserve their system of power.

The Libertarian Alliance Christmas Message 2011

David Davis

It’s that time again, after about five minutes, these days. Each year I try as sort of self-appointed Blogmaster to say some apposite and calming or perhaps narcolepsy-inducing things, to you all, about the state of the world: and in particular Britain, which is where most of us that scribble on here live.

It’d be really nice, and such a gas, to report things like “Landslide victory as Revolutionary-Liberalist party sweeps to power in Scotland…three million public-sector-workers to be made redundant this morning” (cue: Daily Mail photo of endless lines of labelled binliners on street outside office block in Glasgow or somewhere), or even “Cameron declares UDI from the EU: five million UK-council-liaison-officers and staffs to receive P45s by tomorrow, by text”. (cue: more photos of rows of binliners.)

But unfortunately I can’t.

Ought we to derive cheer from the way Cameron diffidently said “no (“er well, not today then, in front of the jounralists”…) to the EU fellas the other week? Let’s not be hasty: we don’t know what’s been cooked up round the back while we weren’t looking, and they thing they’re coming for another £25 billion in the meantime (more than the “cuts” actually.) But at least the underlying, increasingly fractious opposition to our continued EU membership has been somewhat emboldened. With a little luck it may boil over before it’s too late.

And we can rejoice in the death of the late Kim Jong-Il’s last useful body-double: so the wicked, smirking, fawning buggers in too-large-peaked-caps, always accompanied by some terrified little woman with a pen and notepad. They’ll have to get some other short fat unsmiling bloke to be worshipped.

And at least Barack Obama is becoming more unpopular by the day, as a previously fairly sound USA begins to unravel around him. Not that we should be glad about that either. The destiny of the USA is so important, and the identity of its President so crucial, that I have often argued for known classical-liberally-inclined UK voters to be given a share of the US’s electing-franchise. Another thing on the wish-list that’s not going to come about this coming year.

Well. It’s time for the Queen in a minute. Sorry that this year’s Christmas “state of the Union” is a bit rushed and rather devoid of Olympian viewpoints on global libertarianism. I’ll try to do better next year.

Merry Christmas to All!

Guardian Readers Snarling through Bars of Their Intellectual Cage

Taking liberties with the concept of freedom guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 December 2011

It was amusing to read Sean Gabb of the so-called Libertarian Alliance proclaim the need for “exposing your readers to genuine libertarian positions” (Letters, 21 December). If that were done, they would discover that libertarian was originally coined by a French communist-anarchist in 1857, over one hundred years before the propertarian right in America appropriated it for their hierarchical ideology. To quote leading propertarian Murray Rothbard: “we … had captured a crucial word from the enemy … ‘Libertarians’ … had long been simply a polite word for … anti-private property anarchists … But now we had taken it over.”

A Christmas Appeal from Private Eye

The Myth of the Rule of Law and the Future of Repression

by Keith Preston

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-myth-of-the-rule-of-law-and-the-future-of-repression/

Richard’s post, “Obama’s Ennabling Act,” raises some interesting questions regarding the significance of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, and its probable impact, that I believe merit further discussion. The editorial issued on December 17 by the editors of Taki’s Magazine, “The Government v. Everyone,” represents fairly well the shared consensus of critics of the NDAA whose ranks include conservative constitutionalists and left-wing civil libertarians alike. While I share the opposition to the Act voiced by these critics, I also believe that Richard is correct to point out the questionable presumptions regarding legal and constitutional theory and alarmist rhetoric that have dominated the critics’ arguments.

Why we must leave the European Union

By Richard North

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-we-must-leave.html

There are many highly principled reasons why we should leave the EU, but down amongst the weeds, there are equally important practical reasons why we should get out as fast as possible. One such is the absurdity bordering on the insane of the ECJ ruling on car insurance for women with favourable terms prohibited by the EU’s Gender Directive, even though women present less costly risks to insurers.

Scott Crow. Black Flags and Windmills

by Kevin Carson

http://c4ss.org/?p=9269

Scott Crow. Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective (PM Press, 2011).

I’m writing a book about how networked communications enable self-organized groups to take on functions that once (supposedly) required large, hierarchical, capital-intensive institutions. One of the functions I’m examining is disaster relief. I recall, from the very outset of Katrina, reading about how the agencies offifically tasked with aiding the victims of that disaster were actually treating them as the enemy: putting NOLA under lockdown, turning refugees attempting to flee the city back at gunpoint, turning would-be volunteers and helpers away at gunpoing, and suppressing self-organized groups in the city as if they were criminal gangs. So when I was invited to read and review an anarchist’s account of those events, I jumped at the chance.

General Idea of the Revolution in the Twenty-First Century

by David D’Amato

http://c4ss.org/?p=9258

Humanity has had to live, and civilization to develop, for six thousand years, under this inexorable system, of which the first term is Despair and the last Death. What secret power has sustained it? What force has enabled it to survive? What principles, what ideas, renewed the blood that flowed forth under the poniard of authority, ecclesiastic and secular?

Sean Gabb in The Guardian – “Free Yourselves from the Lefty Ghetto!”

Free yourselves from the lefty ghetto

Letter from Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance