Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1997 22:24:03 -0500
Subject: Re: M-TH: Whether Freedom Has Any Chance


Camus observes that those only who are alone have the luxury of being on
the right side. At 08:31 AM 2/3/97 -0800, you wrote:
>On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Spoon Collective <spoons-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU> 
>wrote:
>
>>Nor do I. But libertarians wax utopian in the sense of "utopianism" that
>>Marx attacks which actually has teeth. What social forces exist that might
>>lead to a night-watchman state? Marxists point at the working class as a
>>force that might get rid of the capitalist state and establish a socialist
>>society. But what class or other forces support the libertarian
>>revolution?
>..
> And many
>>of us to not regard minimum wage and hour laws, union organizing rights,
>>and extensive Congressional powers to deal with social and economic
>>problems (the subjects of the New Deal caselaw) as "slavery." Of course
>>capitalists may see it differently.
>>
>
>No single restriction on liberty constitutes full-fledged "slavery," of
course. 
> But to the extent your freedom to make voluntary agreements with others is 
>denied, your freedom is restricted.  There are lots of these restrictions.
>
>The poster asks what "classes" in society could possibly lead to a free
society 
>governed by the nightwatchman state.  Socialism, after all, has the
proletariat 
>which believes in the minimum wage and the capitalist businessmen who
believe in 
>unholy alliances with the state.  What do the advocates of freedom and
economic 
>well-being have?
>
>How about truth, justice, knowledge, the abysmal failure and depredations of 
>socialism that are a matter of bloody historical record, which might dispose 
>some persons to reflect on the rational alternatives, etc.?  What about 
>individuals who do not align themselves according to "class" but who
consider 
>their political self-interest in terms of their underlying actual individual 
>self-interest?
>
>The obvious superiority in all respects of the market over the dead and 
>deadening hand of socialism is a great asset for those who prefer freedom
and 
>would wish to persuade others of its virtues.  Only on some kind of Marxist 
>supposition that ideas are impotent and that liberty is doomed in advance by 
>blindly cranking materialist forces could anyone ask such a question as
"what 
>possibility do the advocates of economic (and personal?) freedom have to 
>prevail"?  They have that chance to the extent that people are rational,
willing 
>to re-evaluate their views, act benevolently toward others, and act for
their 
>own rightly perceived self-interest.  The chance lies in education,
thought, and 
>political change.  Libertarians don't have to appeal to "classes," they need 
>only appeal to rational minds.
>
>David M. Brown
>davidmbr-AT-sprynet.com
>
>P.S. Let's make a distinction between the freedom to unionize and the
"freedom" 
>to forcibly prevent other people from working, or from declining to join the 
>union.
>
>
>
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