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Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

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Wednesday, March 02, 2011

At C4SS: Libertarian Mixed Feelings on Wisconsin

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I’m uneasy about the standard libertarian framing of the issue with rank-and-file government workers as the villains and Walker as the good guy.

That would be because it is NOT libertarian, it is propertarian...

Look at what is happening -- the state is attacking workers. The workers are resisting -- they are trying to tame the autocratic power of government.

The workers united are a force which could be more powerful than the state. That is why neo-liberal and other authoritarian regimes try to break the unions -- partly to please their capitalist masters, partly to ensure they have no resistance to their plans.

The propertarian-inspired assault on unions have strengthened the state (and capital) by weakening a counter-power to it. As intended.

If you want to know which master’s voice he obeys, just pay attention to who he takes calls from.

Good one! The Koch brothers, the people most responsible for turning the meaning of the word "libertarian" into its exact opposite in American politics...

So there should be no "mixed" feelings about what is happening -- if you are a real libertarian rather than a propertarian.

And while I felt the need to point that out, please don't take this as any sort of comment on Kevin -- it is a comment on the debasement of the word "libertarian" in American politics.

Iain
An Anarchist FAQ

March 04, 2011 2:19 AM  
Blogger Kevin Carson said...

Thanks, Iain. My mixed feelings come from the reservation that the state that employs those workers is not a voluntary institution, and that coercive taxation isn't very libertarian. But I do see the protests as a net positive that weakens the power of the state and the organized capital with which it is aligned.

March 04, 2011 9:53 AM  

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