Why Anarchy is Leftist

I have recieved some well thought out comments on my liberty posting so i shall continue to evovle the definition.

Although it has been acknowledged that liberty is not anarchy the assertion that anarchy is collectivist—statist ideology is being challenged. So I shall explain the logic. What makes anarchy a leftwing ideology is that as it necessarily leads to tribalism. Tribalism is form of governance where the individual’s rights are subordinated to the group’s desires, needs ands wants—legitimate or not. Under a tribal existence men have no moral right to exist for themselves which makes it contradictory the creed of liberty.

Easy enough to say but why does anarchy necessarily mean tribal governance. Because the individual has no way to protect his interests (his property and family) without the backing of a group which leads to him to being dependent on some sort of group affiliation to secure protection from other potential rouge groups. I define anarchy as a lawless state. The individual is inevitably coerced into seeking group protection for the purpose of survival.

Under anarchism the individual has no recourse against potential violence done against him which compels him to join a group. A free state is based on the banning of compulsion and force and a lawless state guarantees the prevalence of both. Without group association the individual must be on constant guard against potential intruders. In no way is this type of citizen free to pursue his values in a rational way as he is dependent on the mercy of thugs for his existence rather than his own production.

One commenter makes the common example of ideal Native American anarchism. But for me Indigenous North America is a perfect example of how a lawless society necessarily leads to a tribal existence. How easy was it for the laymen Aztec to protest the practice of human sacrifice? To protest immoral arbitrary coercion? He would surely be killed or expelled. A native expelled from his tribe lived a dangerous life. He was vulnerable to attacks from any marauding group or tribe he encountered. His was a life that had little in common with liberty as it was entirely dedicated to rudimentary survival.

A tribal society is ruled by the group dynamic which overrides the interests of the individual. The group always holds the power of force or expulsion over the individual and while ensuring obedience tribalism this coercion has the negative connotation of stagnating free expression and the competition of ideas thus ensuring group misery and limited freedom.
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Another example used was Russia which also demonstrates the inevitable consequences of a lawless society. Russia is controlled and ruled by the arbitrary whims of various competing Cartels and crime syndicates which are run by strong arming brutes that depend on force—something illegal in capitalism— for results. Lack of law doesn’t mean the citizen is free and in fact means the exact opposite.

"Ask a native about being arrested on 'private' land that is still debated territory. Anybody who doesn't think laws can be arbitrary simply hasn't had the misfortune to be on the other side of the stick."

Defn. of Arbitrary—something that can be neither proven or disproven. For example an arbitrary claim is "if people shared more then there would be world peace." Although ridiculous a statement like this can be either proven or disproven with the application of either logic or evidence. Contrary to arbitrary laws—which have no connection to reality—Objective law can be conceptually proven—although I am not attempting to do that here. The serf ordered to be burned for heresy cannot appeal to logic for his defense because the king is owner of the definition "heresy" While in a free state the compelled serf may appeal to the tenet of free expression and the state is powerless to persecute regardless of their personal interests or definition of heresy.

Objective law can be understood and agreed upon according to its governing principles. For instance in a free society it is arbitrary to persecute the use and sale of marijuana while on the other hand in a free society that protects property rights it is objectively moral to penalize theft. Objective law ensures the freedom to pursue liberty.

Misconceptions about Liberty.

I received a comment under Intellectual mistakes that is another perfect example of how little people understand liberty. I was attacked for making the obvious association between a free society and the “rule of law”.

"Rule of law' doesn’t 'award liberty', it of course restricts it, that's basic. The more rules there are, the less liberty you have. In a dictatorship the rule of law is absolute, there is only one arbiter, the tyrant. That certainly isn't the opposite of rule of law, a dictatorship is the very definition"

I love that he says “that’s basic”. Oh Is it… Before I point out the false premises that lead to his false conclusion I want to give a brief description of the development of the concept of “liberty”—this is the teaching part.

1) The Greek creation of democracy was far from perfect, but it was the first time in history the citizen was allowed a voting share. Citizen was still an exclusive term but the idea in of itself was fundamentally new and completely opposed the Spartan royal dynasty. The creation of democracy freed citizens from some of the more arbitrary aims of the ruling families, but democracy didn’t guarantees individual rights because the democratic majority can be just as arbitrary as a king. Ideas are paramount once they are discovered they can never be destroyed

2) Rule of law. Romans created the foundation for objective law. Why did everyone want to be a Roman? Because to be a Roman citizen was to be equal before the law. To be equal before the law guaranteed a citizen’s ability to determine his own fate in life. A man can learn the law, but it is next to impossible to predict the moods and bias of a constantly changing ruling elite. For the first time in history man was free from the arbitrary aims and whims of an unpredictable despot or local regulator.

3) The enlightenment—a triumph of reason—bore the American Constitution. The constitution was a declaration of individual rights. It was a ruling charter that guarantted man's freedom from the arbitrary aims of government and democratic mob. It was a document that guaranteed for the first time the citizens freedom to seek his or her happiness.

More on Roman Law….

For the first time in history men were ruled by the concept of objective laws with understood penalties. Previous to this innovation kings, Caliphs, Aristocrats, Sultans, Popes and dukes ruled their citizens arbitrarily—meaning citizens were always in danger of doing something wrong, whether it be not having enough barley on randomly chosen tax day, or spreading heresy, or just looking at the princess wrong. To be ruled arbitrarily and whimsically meant that citizen were unfree to pursue their own liberty as they lived in constant danger of angering some random elite.

Roman law meant men were to be judged equal before the courts irregardless of their race, lineage or class status. Rule of law said “no” to privilege. Roman law effectively guaranteed citizen’s equality. This was a major historical step toward liberty as it freed men from the ever changing unpredictable aims of laws of the ruling thug. Men desired to become Roman because it meant freedom from arbitrary rule. To be roman was far superior than anything else. The freedom from arbitrary governance left men free to pursue their own values and rewards.

"In a dictatorship the rule of law is absolute, there is only one arbiter, the tyrant. That certainly isn't the opposite of rule of law,"

Under a dictatorship law's defining factor isn't that it is “absolute” as all law is logically absolute-- the concept implies absolution-- rather it distinct feature is that it is “arbitrary” .


”You seem a little confused about several items. That 'individual freedom and limited government' forgets the point that other interests can limit your freedom just as easily as government. If a corporation owns all the land in my town, and I want to start a land based business, then my freedom to do that is severely limited.”

The right to your own life doesn’t mean a right to whatever you want. Just because you want some land and can’t have it doesn’t mean your liberty is being denied if the owner doesn’tt give it you. Why would you have the moral right to seize another’s property just because you want to start a business there—that would be arbitrary system of law... a law beacuse someone with power feels like it—the rule of law protects individuals from this type of immoral power.

Liberty isn’t absolute freedom to do whatever you want rather it is the right to exist free from arbitrary coercion. The main flaw made is that the writer presumes liberty is anarchy, which is philosophically and factually untrue. When you associate liberty with lack of laws what you are in fact doing is confusing liberty and anarchy. Anarchy is another form of collectivism and antithetical to individual rights and freedoms.

Political Freedom vs Economic Freedom

The notion that economic freedom precedes political freedom is a popular myth amongst academic leftists. Perhaps you have heard "Well who cares about ideology when there is starvation" or the bearded close fisted revolutionary yell of "bread precedes liberty" Ironically ivory tower socialists claim philosophy or ideology "is a middle class term throw away" term without any practical implications because men’s needs are primarily economic and not political or said differently physical instead of intellectual. Declaring man’s needs as material and that the mind is of no importance is not original; it’s an essential tenet of Communism and is rehashed in many alternate forms by contemporary leftists. Believing man’s needs may not move beyond the material until his physical needs are met is naïve at best as it is easily seen to be evidentially false in both historical and logical contexts.

Historically the idea is radically false. Never in history has an increase in economic wealth existed prior to political freedom. Liberty preceded wealth in ancient Greece. Rule of law (rule of law awards liberty because it frees people from being ruled by the unpredictable arbitrary whims of a tyrant. Instead there is an open code of laws which all men, regardless of birth, must adhere to) lead to the prosperity in ancient Rome. Free trade—the Corn laws— led to the industrial revolution in Great Britain, The bill of Right led to America being the most prosperous county in the modern world and freedom preceded wealth in 20’th century South Korea, Hong Kong, And Japan. And in contrast evaluate the economic freedom produced in historically politically un-free countries—China, North Korea, Palestine, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and East Germany. This is not a coincidence because individual freedom and limited government are absolutely necessary for obtaining man’s most basic needs and material wealth.

Logically the notion that man can be a slave ruled by force and still be economically prosperous—on any general level— is false and ultimately arbitrary because the assertion refuses to attach itself to any context. It fails to take into account how material wealth is created or how physical requirements are most efficiently met. To claim they both exist separately and independent from one and another is absurd. They are not corollaries but rather they are related causally. Man needs to be free for the very reason of meeting his most basic goals. A moral code that says man has no right to his own life, or to the rewards he produces is antithetical to in every way to economic freedom. To deny man freedom is to condemn him to death for the very reason that on a grand scale he will not be able to meet his physical needs.

Marxists claim that philosophy is a bourgeois pastime of no relevance to the real world yet this philosophical misunderstanding has lead to over 100 million deaths. "Philosophy" and "Freedom" are not unimportant middle class leisure words but rather they are some of the most important concepts man has ever created and without their understanding we doomed to endless misery, slavery, famine and warmongering.

Intellectual Mistakes

An interesting comment appeared under Jimmy and the Hamas Gang I like constructive thinking. So I have posted my response.

“Fatah--was corrupt and unaccountable, ciphoning millions of dollars away from the Palestinian people”

When a county’s biggest contributor to GDP is foreign aid you can bet your bottom dollar the government is corrupt. Palestine doesn’t afford it citizen’s religious, political or economic freedom. When the only way to access wealth is through strong arming your way to political power men will inevitably become ruthless in order to gain and maintain power. I acknowledge Fatah is corrupt but this corruption is predictable in an oppressed state which only succeeds in so far as it can procure international welfare.

“Hamas has been building schools and homes and providing clean water for people”.

The soup kitchen is the dictator’s oldest trick. Hitler posed with the elderly. Castro visits the sick. The mob fed the homeless. Nationalism and benevolence are the autocrat’s favorite form of propaganda. Villains always seek to been seen compassionate towards the very misery they are solely responsible for.

“The fact is that "ideology" (at least how you construe the word in your blog) is a throw-away term the leisure classes use.”

Ideology is hardly a “middle class catch word” or a “throw-away term.” It refers to the prevailing moral philosophy of a mind (originating with metaphysics and concluding with politics). It makes resulting actions a predictable result of a mind’s intellectual foundation. Anyone who understands the communist—capitalist dichotomy from either a historical or philosophical perspective realizes the practical implications of opposing ideologies. The difference between slavery and freedom is very real.

But to that point more directly— The way the left, or thinkers sympathetic to socialist aims, discredit concepts (ideology is a concept) is through the collective doctrine of moral equivalence (there are no differences in things. Things are just things. The only difference in things is the words we attach to them—this is how terrorists become freedom fighters and Capitalism and Communism becomes on in the same; two radical ideologies, two interesting words—their actual definitions are obliterated). Moral equivalence is an arbitrary metaphysical and epistemological foundation. Through the virtue of discernment man is able to judge opposing values. Moral equivalence seeks to obliterate the value associated with this productive process.

Individuals and nations governed by principle are less sustebile to whimsical thinking and easily acknowledge that it is immoral to trade with or send aid to a nation whose moral foundation rests upon the destruction of another race.

A first step solution to Iran

In Bush’s state of the union address he claimed it was imperative to develop alternative forms of energy in order to break the Middle East’s grip on the country—they were in fact funding the very terrorism they were fighting against. American citizen—Gas station—oil company—Ayotollah/kings/dictator/mullah/—radical church/Whabbism—terrorist. We need a plan. So here is one

1) An oil embargo on Iran. Forbid foreign countries from extracting, purchasing or transporting oil or gas from Iran including the United States. This would limit Iran’s potential to generate revenue. Iran is trying to build nuclear weaponry which requires vast amounts of money to create. This is how a country can sit upon one of the largest deposits of one of the most valuable resources in the world and stay dirt poor. Iran nationalized the industry and contracts out the work and spends all of the resulting profits on weaponry.

Ending resource profits will put an even larger strain on an unstable religious dictatorship. Most of Iran’s population is under 30—thanks to the Ayatollah forbidding birth control as soon as he seized power— and presumably they yearn for change from this repressive regime and historically this is the demographic that brings it about. Limiting a dictator’s revenue puts huge strains on his ability to stay in power. Repressive socialist utopias are expensive to fund.

2) This embargo would drive the price of gasoline up in North American, Japan and Europe thus creating a tremendous incentive to invest in technologies relating to alternative energy sources—wind power and hydrogen. As the price of gasoline rises the more one is willing to invest in other more expensive sources of energy. This demand will create greater efficiency in young underdeveloped technologies and eventually leading to less demand for oil and gas.

Next.... Iran and eight cents a liter gasoline.