The Tao of Strategy

[Selene]

George:

I have not read your writings. I am in the process of reading your three (3) part voting tract.

"A term that may generate some confusion is 'electoral voting.' This means voting for the purpose of placing someone in a political office. It does not refer to other kinds of political voting, such as voting on particular issues in a referendum. (This requires a somewhat different analysis.) Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, the simple term 'voting' shall be used to mean 'electoral voting.'"

This is a significant distinction and I am glad you made it in this post.

It will assist me in reading your tract this weekend.

Thanks.

Adam

[sjw]

What anyone would object to my usage, when I am very clear about what I mean, escapes me. What qualifier would you suggest that I use instead of political libertarians? Musical libertarians? Bonehead libertarians?

I did not realize you were an epistemological anarchist as well as a political one. Clearly I can logically take exception to your definitions regardless of how clear they are if I disagree with how well-formed they are.

I said that your usage of "political" is so broad as to be useless in any specialized discussion. And it is. From what I have seen so far, it differs little if at all from the meaning of "social." And you will have a serious problem when discussing libertarianism (and political theory generally) if you don't distinguish the political realm from the social realm.

My conception of "social realm" is far broader than my conception of "political realm", so maybe we have a disagreement regarding that distinction as well.

To me your objections to my preliminary expositions of the terms "strategy" and "politics" imply what Rand called a "frozen abstraction" on your part. Which is interesting because I think anarchists in general suffer from this epistemological affliction concerning government. They define government in accord with the minarchist definition, and thus reject it as violating individual sovereignty (because certainly, the minarchist conception does violate consent), refusing consider whether there might be an alternative form of government that does not. The irony here is that the frozen abstraction here is actually Rand's conception of government. So she accuses anarchists of being "concrete-bound", while expounding an idea of government that ends up being grasped in terms of a frozen abstraction, both by her acolytes, and by those who think they disagree with her (yet another irony).

Shayne

[Selene]

Shayne:

Out of curiosity, what is your ideal practical government paradigm.?

Second, would you be so kind as to define "politics" and or "political"?

Thank you.

Adam

[sjw]

Out of curiosity, what is your ideal practical government paradigm.?

I don't identify practical instantiations I specify constraints. I think people should be given a wide liberty concerning how they structure their governments, just as people widely vary concerning how they raise their children in their own homes (but there are constraints there as well regarding child abuse). That doesn't mean there isn't a practical instantiation I would prefer, but my personal preferences are beside the fundamental point. A confusion between preferences and principles is yet another problem in how people construe government (the more fundamental confusion is between man-made and natural law). See my book at Amazon for details.

Second, would you be so kind as to define "politics" and or "political"?

I haven't crafted a definition from my conception but politics concerns the creation, maintenance, alteration, or even destruction of government. Political action is a species of human action, and therefore is made up of individual human action of widely varying kinds, including but not limited to: debating, voting, advocating, organizing around a political candidate, moving to New Hampshire, book-writing, writing a new Bill for congress, writing to congress, having coffee with an old friend and convincing him to change his ideas, etc. Like many raindrops adding up to a stream adding up to a river, all political actions can coalesce and manifest as a seemingly unstoppable force such as national politics, but we have to always remember that it all started out as individual raindrops.

Political actions are a type of social actions which are far broader than political actions: they do not necessarily have the political (government-oriented) purpose.

Shayne

Edited September 18, 2010 by sjw

[Selene]

Shayne:

Excellent.

Now at least I have a basis to go forward.

By the way, I love that last page in your acknowledgment section[pg. 159].

Adam

[George H. Smith]

What anyone would object to my usage, when I am very clear about what I mean, escapes me. What qualifier would you suggest that I use instead of political libertarians? Musical libertarians? Bonehead libertarians?

I did not realize you were an epistemological anarchist as well as a political one. Clearly I can logically take exception to your definitions regardless of how clear they are if I disagree with how well-formed they are.

And I did not realize that you are the dictator of word usage to whom all writers should bow. You should pay more attention to writing clearly than objecting to those who do.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

George:

I have not read your writings. I am in the process of reading your three (3) part voting tract.

"A term that may generate some confusion is 'electoral voting.' This means voting for the purpose of placing someone in a political office. It does not refer to other kinds of political voting, such as voting on particular issues in a referendum. (This requires a somewhat different analysis.) Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, the simple term 'voting' shall be used to mean 'electoral voting.'"

This is a significant distinction and I am glad you made it in this post.

It will assist me in reading your tract this weekend.

Thanks.

Adam

If you are interested in arriving at concise conceptions of terms like "state," "government," and "political," you cannot do better than to read the first part of Max Weber's classic and highly influential work in two volumes, Economy and Society. I quote Weber at least once in "The Ethics of Voting."

Regarding the subject at hand, Weber (I, p.54) writes:

A "ruling organization" will be called "political" insofar as its existence and order is continuously safeguarded within a given territorial area by the threat and application of physical force on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be called a "state" insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order. Social action, especially organized action, will be spoken of as "politically oriented" if it aims at exerting influence on the government of a political organization; especially at the appropriation, expropriation, redistribution or allocation of the powers of government.

Weber goes on to say: "This usage does not exactly conform to everyday speech. But the latter is too inconsistent to be used for technical purposes." Anyone who has seriously explored political philosophy will appreciate the problem to which Weber refers. He formulates definitions in social theory that some logicians call "précising definitions."

Weber wishes to distinguish political activities from economic, cultural, religious, and other types of activities. The first 100 pages or so of this work are an extensive exercise in conceptual analysis. It is not necessary to agree with all of Weber's conclusions (I don't) in order to benefit from his treatment. Weber provides an excellent foundation from which to clarify one's own thinking.

[sjw]

George,

I just read your "IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ANARCHISM." The first time I read it, perhaps a year ago, I just skimmed it for your rationale for why government can't be formed based on consent for the purposes of my book. I set out looking for differences. This time I just read it. Up and down the line, you and I are on almost exactly the same page. It is treasonous that Objectivists have not dealt with the issues you raise there, though I suspect that those who have are now anarchists. What you have perhaps done is gut the Objectivist movement of any people who have moral sensibilities, leaving only the pragmatists and the children behind. Which explains a lot.

An important difference we have is that your position is far better informed by history and philosophy, which ironically means that you are better positioned to make *scholarly* case for *my* view of government than I am. Indeed you came ever so close to justifying government of a certain kind, not a minarchist one, certainly not one as we have had for the past few hundred years, but one based on true consent.

It is probably a good thing that I had not read your article before I got fed up with Objectivist nonsense and wrote my book. Otherwise I might not have bothered to try to rationally construct a form of government based on consent, I might have just gone along with you because you are 100% right on 99% of what you say.

Shayne

[Selene]

George:

Weber. Wow, been a long time.

Man as a cog in the machine or the Iron cage. He also posited the concept of the administrative state, correct?

Many of us, including Mark Levin have been screaming about this edifice as being an even greater threat than the actual "state".

Interesting.

I will have to re read some of Weber.

Thanks.

Adam