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I was recently sucked into a conversation with Libertarians which I found after they linked to me. I know I really shouldn’t have done that but some times I can’t resist. Unfortunately I can’t really continue commenting there because the comment form they have there is slow, ugly and buggy and it generally not good for having a comfortable conversation.

As is classic, the main argument that was raised there was that the “Free Markets are the best ev4r”. Anything wrong with the world is blamed on the government and everything good on the “Free” Markets. This is based on the idea that anything that moves towards deregulation does well but anything that moves away does bad. As an example for that, the US was proposed which apparently for the last 30 years has been moving towards socialism (I kid you not, the greatest push towards neoliberalism in the history of the US and the world was actually a move toward socialism).

Other than the usual strawmen like equating communism with USSR and failing to grasp how it does not require a state another argument was put forward:

So again, you do not care what the other 10% want, you will forcefully take from them what they have earned for yourself. You are blaming them for your own failures. I have no desire or need to exploit anyone else in order to get what I want out of life. I wish to treat everyone as equals while knowing full well that we are not all equal. Some people have more desire, more ambition, more knowledge, more energy, more perseverance, and more skill than others. I know where my faults lie and I know what I am capable of doing and I know that I am not equal to everyone else and not better than them either. I am my own man, with my own desires, and I want to fulfill those desires without the need to force other people to shares them with me.

Indeed, I do not care what the 10% want because what they want can only be achieved by exploiting the other 90%. When the majority of the world wants to move to an egalitarian system where nobody is exploited, nobody had to starve and nobody has to work where they do not want, why should we care that we don’t spoil the party of those 10% who are living the good life?

Apparently for the Libertarian, having the vast majority of the people in abject poverty is fine and dandy as long as some of them have theoretically the chance to rise to the top. He assumes that the majority of the wealthy have risen to the top from the lower classes but that’s just just untrue. The majority of the people are born into their position and there’s a small minority that manages to rise above their class. The later examples have more to do with luck than it has to do with skill. Yes the people who become wealthy from poverty, have to have skill, but there’s much more hard-working, skillful people who cannot rise, not because they are worse, but because there’s simply not enough room at the top.

But for a Liberatian that’s alright. As long as those 10% of humanity have absolute freedom, he can simply assume that their position is deserved. And anyone who dares to disagree must be a lazy bum who is simply not hard-working, skilful or competitive enough to achieve it. This reminds me of the common U.S. American arrogance where they assume that their position as world power was deserved because of how hard-working and skilful as a whole they are.

So yeah, I have no qualms in taking the means of production from the 10% who owns them and forces the rest of humanity to wage-slavery. I have no qualms in wishing for a better society where everyone has a chance to happiness instead of the minority who just happened to be lucky. And yes, prosperity today has much more to do with where and from which you were born than with how hard-working or talented one is.

Making happiness and life-fulfillment a lottery is simply selling humanity short.

The thing that is telling about Libertarians is how little they understand the system they support. The “Free” market is equated with Capitalism and all together is provided as a panacea.

I answered for you because I knew you couldn’t. You proved it too. “Seizing the means of production” is that not force? You still fail to understand free markets. I do not support coercion by force of the state, that is not a free market and it is not capitalism. On the other hand you support the idea of force, workers forcefully taking over the means of production from the owners of that production.

The “Free” Markets you’re wishing for cannot work without a government force behind them. Otherwise there would be nothing to stop criminals or enforce contracts. It is this state force that the Capitalists who controls all the wealth and power will seize and increase, for their own interests. It is this state force that the Capitalist will use to bust unions who “illegally go on a strike”. The idea of Libertarianism is simply Government protection only for the rich (more than it is now that is). It is not a problem to force starving people in brutal “voluntary” contracts and then use the government to enforce them. That is the coercive force that the “Free” Markets use.

When this force is rejected by the majority of the human wage-slaves, they will revolt and attempt to seize the means of production. The “non-coercive” Libertarians will immediately claim that they are assaulted, even though what is simply happening is the majority rejecting the minority’s rules, and will send the state to intervene. This, for the Libertarian is fair game for they are only protecting their “rightful property” after all.

This has been the history of revolution everywhere however. The oppressed majority rising up, without force and demanding equality, and the minority using the state machine to put them into their place. First it was the slaves, then it was the peasants, and now it’s the proletariat. And in every case, the minority was, in their own minds, in the right.

But when the vast majority wants to play a new game, there is not reason to keep playing the old one, simply because the ones who were winning already don’t like it. When there is a difference on what is “right” between the vast majority of the working class and the small minority of the bourgeoisie, I do not see why the small minority must have its way.

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