The actions of the Cameron government are best understood when one recognises that the driving force in contemporary political economy is Anarcho-Capitalism, A-C and nobody seems to have noticed. The beast needs to be named and revealed in the light.
Its High Priests are David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Bruce L. Benson, etc, drawing on recent sources such as Ayn Rand and much earlier ones including John Locke.
The mark of an A-C advocate is their assertion that all taxation is theft and deification of "the market." "There is no such thing as society comes" from the same stream of thought.
A-C notions are cropping up regularly in discussion groups such as the Guardian's Comment is Free, though probably most of those who are spouting them have no idea of their origins.
The left has no answer to this which is why A-C is making the intellectual running at the moment and will continue to do do. It is very dangerous nonsense because it is grounded, partially, on familiar experience which makes it superficially plausible.
The underlying fallacy of A-C is that it accepts John Locke's flawed theory of the origin of property rights. Since the left in general has no coherent theory of property rights to pose as an alternative, it is defenceless in the face of this onslaught. The alternative notion "All property is theft" does not stand as it is so obviously flawed.
The only plausible arguments against A-C is the set of ideas put forward by Henry George in the nineteenth century. Better get familiar with them or A-C will take us over and society will be smashed to smithereens.
Time for a new Papal encyclical methinks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
2 kommentarer:
as an ancap myself i can tell you with confidence that anarcho-capitalism rejects Cameron, the Tories and even the most pro-market of politicians. The differences between us and minarchist right wingerers are many and deep. You have to understand that what motivates many (if not all) ancaps are leftist ideas such as anti-war, anti-police state, and even egalitarianism. there are feminists amoung us. we are also closely related to Proudhon's mutualism, even if our stream is more individualist do not confuse it with isolationism. we are anti-interventionists. this is different.
the left and the right traditionally only understand the free market, capitalism and property within the statist context. however in this context the market is neither free and private property does not exist.
finally one reason the left, and the right, fail to cope with the increasing waves of ancapism, is because our school of thought benefits from a deep understanding the subjective marginal utility theory of value and alternatives to aggression.
Olly - interesting, but how do property rights arise in this scheme of things and how are they sustained?
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