My Cato Essays

[George H. Smith]

State and Society, Part 1

Smith discusses some preliminary issues involved in the classic libertarian distinction between the spheres of “state” and “society.”

My Cato Essay #106 is now up.

Ghs

George, one thing that has always bothered me is the libertarian use of the phrase "the state". It's never been clear to me exactly what it means. Is it referring to government or it used in the sense of being the composite of sovereignty, territory, population, and government?

The word "state" suffers from the same ambiguity as the word "society" (as I discussed in my essay); i.e., it can be, and has been, used in a variety of ways. The "composite" meaning that you mention is analogous to the "inclusive" meaning of "society" that I discussed in Part 1.. In your sense "state" would mean essentially the same thing as "nation" or perhaps "country," or maybe even "society," as when we speak of a particular society to mean its government, territory, institutions, etc. There is nothing wrong with your usage, but it is not very useful for the purpose of sociological analysis. I will probably mention this problem in my next essay.

When libertarians (and many social theorists) use the word "state," they usually mean a government that claims and exercises sovereign power over a given territory. A state, in this sense, is an institution.

Ghs

[Samson Corwell]

State and Society, Part 1

Smith discusses some preliminary issues involved in the classic libertarian distinction between the spheres of “state” and “society.”

My Cato Essay #106 is now up.

Ghs

George, one thing that has always bothered me is the libertarian use of the phrase "the state". It's never been clear to me exactly what it means. Is it referring to government or it used in the sense of being the composite of sovereignty, territory, population, and government?

The word "state" suffers from the same ambiguity as the word "society" (as I discussed in my essay); i.e., it can be, and has been, used in a variety of ways. The "composite" meaning that you mention is analogous to the "inclusive" meaning of "society" that I discussed in Part 1.. In your sense "state" would mean essentially the same thing as "nation" or perhaps "country," or maybe even "society," as when we speak of a particular society to mean its government, territory, institutions, etc. There is nothing wrong with your usage, but it is not very useful for the purpose of sociological analysis. I will probably mention this problem in my next essay.

When libertarians (and many social theorists) use the word "state," they usually mean a government that claims and exercises sovereign power over a given territory. A state, in this sense, is an institution.

Ghs

That's a little clearer. My reference to the state as a composite comes from a distinction between government and state made by this one lefty anarchist I occasionally chat with over on a political message board that I'm a member of. He pointed to article and its use of the term seems fairly non-idiosyncratic when you consider the distinction made between "head of state" and "head of government" in political science (i.e., Queen Elizabeth II is head of state while David Cameron is head of government).

I've been pondering the concept and how it relates to scenarios I've seen posited as examples of anarcho-capitalism.

[George H. Smith]

State and Society, Part 2

Smith explains the meaning of “society” and “institution,” and he discusses the distinction between designed and undesigned institutions.

My Cato Essay #107 is now up.

Ghs

[Samson Corwell]

State and Society, Part 2

Smith explains the meaning of “society” and “institution,” and he discusses the distinction between designed and undesigned institutions.

My Cato Essay #107 is now up.

Ghs

Regarding methodological individualism, have you encountered methodological pluralism?

[George H. Smith]

State and Society, Part 3

Smith, drawing from Machiavelli’s The Prince, discusses two essential ingredients of successful states.

My Cato Essay #108 is now up.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Ideas, Human Action, and Social Change

Smith explores various ways in which ideas influence human action, and why ideas are essential to the success of libertarianism.

My Cato Essay #109 is now up.

Note: My essays will now appear on Friday of each week rather than on Tuesdays. The change was made to facilitate my work on another project for libertarianism.org.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Poor George; he's obviously been sucked into a vortex of productivity.

--Brant

[Samson Corwell]

Ideas, Human Action, and Social Change

Smith explores various ways in which ideas influence human action, and why ideas are essential to the success of libertarianism.

My Cato Essay #109 is now up.

Note: My essays will now appear on Friday of each week rather than on Tuesdays. The change was made to facilitate my work on another project for libertarianism.org.

Ghs

A question on this regarding the nature of sociology: How does this view take physiological or subconscious explanations into account for certain types of behavior? It also seems to destroy any point in finding the "true" perspective and seemingly lends itself to relativism.

[George H. Smith]

Value Judgments and the Human Sciences

Smith examines the problem of whether the human sciences can be value-free, and if so in what sense.

My Cato Essay #110 is now up.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The Lust for Power

Smith explains how the insatiable desire for power and its corrupting influence have been dominant themes in libertarian theory and history.

My Cato Essay #111 is now up.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Just an absolutely great article, George. My caveat is the differentiation between "self love" and "selfishness" back then doesn't really work. If we start, logically enough, with self you can put anything you want in the pot as long as it is understood we are dealing with an incomplete but foundational issue of human being. Think of the selfishness of a baby. All a baby can be selfish. Think of adolescent selfishness in its glorious superficiality when we go from one person to two as in Romeo and Juliet. (The relationship between parents, especially the mother, and the child is a somewhat separate category. So too between siblings.) As we socialize the interactions lead to a selfishness involving others and, respecting the natural state of the human organism, may be good or bad with a lot of in between. Thus the lust for power can become destructive and selfless, not selfish.

What is not covered is how power lusters can hang together for greater destructive effect and power, as how this country is actually ruled by left-fascist-liberal-progressive media elite on the one hand and those who buy influence as do the crony capitalists. Then there are the religionists. George H.W. Bush was a lot of the last plus a lot of crony.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Thanks, Brant.

Montague's distinction between selfishness and self-love has problems, in my opinion. I included it because it represents a fairly common opinion from that era, and I wanted libertarians, especially O'ist types, to understand that denuniciations of "selfishness" did not entail some kind of altruism. Rather, defenses of self-love, or rational self-interest, were very common. The standard distinction was this: Self-love entails the pursuit of self-interest within the boundaries of justice (respect for the rights of others), whereas selfishness does not take the rights of others into account. This, I think, is a legitimate distinction, whatever terms we may use to express it.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

George,

I've come to think in terms of "rational self interest" as the best way to express the base of the Objectivist Ethics and your essay reconfirms this. In modern parlance "self love" has no punch and "selfishness" has too much of the wrong baggage. "Selfishness" might work for an Aspie, not for me nor most. Rand used the word rhetorically in the title of her book of essays, but inside she denatured it with a phony dictionary definition no one uses or used, "concern with ones own interests." That definition is even no good for rational self interest. It just lies on the ground as does "self love." The only way to keep selfishness might be to make it a term, "rational selfishness." As the years go by I'm more and more of the opinion that the 1960s were Rand's angry years, angry that Atlas Shrugged wasn't enough, angry over her love life, angry at the negative reception by the intellectual and cultural elite of her magnum opus, etc. She had spent two brain-cracking years writing Galt's speech surrounded and suffused by positive feedback from he "Collective" and then publisher seduction, a river which emptied into an indifferent, vast cultural sea controlled by a contemptuous intellectual liberal elite. Art met reality. It wasn't pretty.

What's most important about the Objectivist Ethics, so far, is it stops the altruistic collectivists from controlling productive people through guilt and denying them happiness to the extent their censure is accepted, as incomplete and undeveloped as the Ethics is. That's why I've no regret over the title, The Virtue of Selfishness. If you nuance it, which was not Rand's intent I'm pretty sure, one might say yes, there is virtue in selfishness--some virtue--but there can also be lack of it therein, or worse. It could be like a gun, the virtue of such is in what it is used for and how it is used, to parse the idea all the way further down for philosophical gourmets. (I'm not one, but am willing to toss them this gift and skip before that bird starts eating my liver.)

--Brant

coward (part of my multi-faceted character)

(as needed)

[merjet]

Egoism and/or Atruism (link).

Abstract: Ayn Rand's use of "selfishness" and "altruism" was polarizing and contrary to common usage. With the help of Venn diagrams, this essay compares and even reconciles the divergent meanings of egoism and altruism. It cites Rand's usage of "traditional egoism," a term she used in correspondence but in none of her books or periodicals. This term helps to understand Rand's meaning of egoism. It also comments on earlier essays in this periodical about egoism.

I quote George's Ayn Rand and Altruism, Part 2. If I had been aware of Montague's distinction, I might have used it.

[George H. Smith]

Rudolf Rocker and the Will to Power, Part 1

Smith discusses Nationalism and Culture, a classic history of libertarian ideas in which Rudolf Rocker uses the struggle of freedom against power as his theoretical framework.

My Cato Essay #112 is now up.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

George H. Smith, aka the Energizer Bunny of libertarian theorectical-historical-actual-political thought things.

--Brant

Casey George at the throttle doing 90 miles an hour, the children they were brave . . .

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George rocks.

That's truth.

He's what an academic should be.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

I sent this to George yesterday, but what the heck, I'll post it here, too:

(Heading) of all the unmitigated...

John C. Gall ????

Yeah, I just read your Ayn Rand and Altruism Part 1. Curiosity got the better of me. A Republican businessman named John C. Gall...1943...correspondence about altruism? Huh....?

You didn't comment on the guy's name, but isn't it *highly* likely that naming the lead character of Atlas Shrugged "John Galt" was a tip of the hat (or more?) to this guy? Either that, or a horrible failure of imagination...?

I can hear people now: "Who is John Gall?" "Oh, he's a businessman Rand wrote to about the evils of altruism just before she started writing Atlas Shrugged, in which she wrote about the evils of altruism and featured a hero named John Galt." Mmm-hmmm.

[George H. Smith]

Rudolf Rocker and the Will to Power, Part 2

Smith explains Rocker’s theory of why the ideas of classical liberalism were swamped by the rising tide of statism.

My Cato Essay #113 is now up.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

The problem described is structural, not philosophical: how do we structure a government that doesn't become statist? The anarchical solution can't create a structure. It is only used as a moral retreat for anarchists with the actual politics in action practically beyond them. All relationships are power relationships that butt up against each other. If you want freedom then fight for freedom by getting and using strength and power to that end. Understand that power has all kinds of facets and the anarchist must learn to use the moral power of his position and the businessman economic power, the comedian comedy, etc. Understand also Utopia is impossible and undesirable except in the imagining of the freedom fighter. People will have to fight for freedom as long as there are people. A true dynamic; the only one possible.

--Brant

mo freedom--fight for your freedom!

[merjet]

George rocks. Rocker rocks.

[BaalChatzaf]

The problem described is structural, not philosophical: how do we structure a government that doesn't become statist? The anarchical solution can't create a structure. It is only used as a moral retreat for anarchists with the actual politics in action practically beyond them. All relationships are power relationships that butt up against each other. If you want freedom then fight for freedom by getting and using strength and power to that end. Understand that power has all kinds of facets and the anarchist must learn to use the moral power of his position and the businessman economic power, the comedian comedy, etc. Understand also Utopia is impossible and undesirable except in the imagining of the freedom fighter. People will have to fight for freedom as long as there are people. A true dynamic; the only one possible.

--Brant

mo freedom--fight for your freedom!

You cannot structure such a government. Every government is run by people and governments attract the sort of people who can validate themselves only by ruling others or interfering with others. So every government no matter how benignly constituted will go rotten. I estimate it happens in as little as three generations. The generation the brought the new government in is very jealous of its liberty. The next generation knows how their parents feel but it is only second hand. And the third generation has no grasp of the motives of the first generation and that is when the rot will set in for sure.

Only permanent revolution complete with slaying of tyrants will do the trick. As Jefferson once wrote - The Tree of Liberty must be fertilized by the blood of tyrants and patriots. That is its natural manure.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[merjet]

Note the similarity between the ideas of Rudolf Rocker and Ayn Rand.

Having witnessed the rise of fascism in his native Germany, Rocker perceptively noted the fundamental similarity of fascism and communism.

Today we deal only with secondary differences….Fascism and communism are…not to be evaluated as the opposition of two different conceptions of the nature of society; they are merely two different forms of the same effort and operate to the same end.

As for why most western intellectuals did not condemn the statist core of both communism and fascism, Rocker believed this was because western democracies had abandoned individual rights and freedoms and were defending their own versions of statism instead, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the specific form of statism made relatively little difference. (link)

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of "Freedom or dictatorship?" into "Which kind of dictatorship?"—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 180.

[Francisco Ferrer]

This paragraph in particular is of enormous value:

Liberalism began as a protest against the absolute sovereignty of monarchical governments, so it is understandable why liberalism, in its early stages, sometimes contrasted the sovereignty of the people or nation with the sovereignty of hereditary monarchs. But this appeal, which was originally intended to weaken the power of governments, was later transformed into a rationale for the expansion of power. The “will of the people,” as expressed in popular elections, became the ultimate political good, an irresistible power that trampled under foot the rights of individuals.

[Brant Gaede]

This paragraph in particular is of enormous value:

Liberalism began as a protest against the absolute sovereignty of monarchical governments, so it is understandable why liberalism, in its early stages, sometimes contrasted the sovereignty of the people or nation with the sovereignty of hereditary monarchs. But this appeal, which was originally intended to weaken the power of governments, was later transformed into a rationale for the expansion of power. The “will of the people,” as expressed in popular elections, became the ultimate political good, an irresistible power that trampled under foot the rights of individuals.

Why is this of such value?

--Brant

I want what's in your head, not mine