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Several comments stuck in my mind that were made by speakers at the Liberty Conference on Saturday in central London at which I was present along with David Carr and some other Samizdata and Libertarian Alliance members. The following will not be forgotten easily:
“Er, Mr Chairman, we live in a managed society. We all manage each other. We cannot have a world where we just have freedoms and certain rules”.
This was uttered by a man who claimed to be a member of Liberty, the civil liberties lobby. Perhaps he should lobby to have that organisation’s name changed to something more appropriate to what he thinks should be its true values, such as ‘Nanny’.
As David said, it was not a particularly encouraging event, although a few half-decent contacts were made and a lot of Libertarian Alliance pamphlets were taken away.
As with many such events, the best course of action is to behave like a decent human being. However, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, most of the people there did not have the intellectual equipment to figure out the exit route from a damp paper bag.
Yesterday, I took myself along to a rather dreary and sullen conference hall in Central London to attend the Liberty Conference previously flagged up by Brian.
I admit that I was unsure about whether or not to bother going but it was curiosity more than anything else which tipped me in the direction of attendance. An event which was touted as a meeting of minds between socialist ‘rights’ campaigners and capitalist ‘liberty’ campaigners was, I thought, bound to set a few sparks flying and that would be a worthwhile way to spend an otherwise idle Saturday afternoon. Fellow libertarians like Tom Burroughes, Chris Tame and Marc Glendenning clearly felt the same.
Sadly, it was a sparkless day. Brian pointed out that Liberty is the re-branded National Council of Civil Liberties which was set up as a Bolshevik front and, I regret to have to say, that the Bolsheviks have left their imprimatur. There was no meeting of minds, no agreements, no breakthroughs, no ideas, no progress and no real debate to speak of. The atmosphere was stultified by stubborn unwillingness to address any issue other than the race and immigration in any depth whatsoever. Mostly though there was an abundance of waffle; waffle, waffle and then some more waffle. Valiant efforts on the part of Tom, Chris and I to raise other issues or inject other memes or even start a meaningful debate fell on stoney ground. We were strangers in a strange land, spectres at the feast and we all felt it.
There was, however, some cursory discussion about the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ and even some agreement that such terms were no longer adequate or even redundant. But ditching outmoded terminology does nothing whatsoever to bridge the yawning gap between those people who think that the world will become a freer, better place with more laissez-faire and those who think that freedom cannot be achieved without state enforced equality and state distributed entitlements. It was the difference between ‘free to’ and ‘free from’ but between those two little words lies a vast ocean. It wasn’t just a difference in approach. We were two sets of people who simply saw the world through a whole different set of lenses.
I came away with the feeling that the whole day was not so much an attempt to reach out to libertarians for new ideas but more an attempt to gather us into the big tent and thereby neutralise us. In a way this is actually quite good news. It means that they not only are aware of us but are frightened of us. Good. If we can’t join ’em, beat ’em, that’s what I say.
And it is in that spirit that I actually decided that it would be a good idea to join them nonethless. It means I can go along to future meetings and make a thorough nuisance of myself by asking lots of discomforting questions. I shall try to plant the seeds from whence some different memes can germinate and whilst I doubt very much that I shall succeed I shall have enough fun in the process to make the relatively modest (and tax deductible) subscription fee worthwhile.
I must remember to arm myself with some cream, strawberries and maple syrup though.
Josh Chafetz over on OxBlog has an interesting post about the nature of order, touching on Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith but mostly about Fred Hayek. He also brings up a useful point about a Pejman Pundit post ridiculing the idea of an anarchy club. In a later posting Pejman insists he does understand the definition of the word ‘anarchy’ and points out his first posting was mostly in jest.
There is indeed a useful point being made here and one I have made to several Libertarian Alliance members before: we understand what we mean when we say ‘anarchy’ but when the term is used in common parlance, it is generally a synonym for ‘nihilism’. For example when a bunch of scruffy self-described anti-globalisation protestors set fire to a MacDonalds in Paris and smash up a Mercedes parked near by, those so-called ‘anarchists’ are not doing those things because they want more kosmos (spontaneous or natural order) and less taxis (imposed order), leading to a morality based anarcho-capitalist golden age… no, they are mostly just nihilists whose vision of the future is little different from that of the bikers from hell in the movie ‘Mad Max’. The few of them who actually do have a semi-coherent idea of what the future should look like are Spanish style (circa 1938) ‘anarcho-syndicalists’… which is to say they are rather like meat eating vegetarians (see the ‘related article’ link below).
It is for this reason I usually urge libertarians to stay away from the ‘A’ word because it is so widely misused. Josh Chafetz also expresses his views about anarchy as an objective that shows he more or less does understand the true nature of what real anarchists are arguing for:
That is to say, there is nothing absurd about people organizing in favor of anarchy. What they are doing is stating a preference for absolute kosmos with no taxis. Again, I think this preference is folly. I think that it is neither possible nor desirable to do away with all taxis. I am not an anarchist.
I said more or less understand because taxis does not necessarily mean state imposed order: for example most of the rules within a stock exchange are ‘taxis’ rather than ‘kosmos’ and are analogous to the rules of a private club.. a few are imposed by the state but most are imposed by the exchange itself. No one is forced to trade in a stock exchange and thus in some hypothetical anarchist future, there may well still be ‘taxis’ intensive stock exchanges.
However like Josh, I too am not an anarchist. I am a minarchist but where I depart from Josh is that whilst I agree it is probably not possible to depart from a system in which there is a state, I do think it is desirable. In essence I believe in systems involving the one word conspicuous by its absence in this interesting but utilitarian discussion: morality. I believe in objective morality, albeit imperfectly understood and conjecturally proposed. That, rather than the force of state or vox pop, is the one and only source of legitimacy in any system.
 Probably not what you had in mind
Just to make the point that the Liberty Conference on Human Rights, Civil Liberties, etc., this coming Saturday (June 8th), which I mentioned in an earlier post is not just warmed over Bolshevism, Chris Tame flagged the event up on the Libertarian Alliance Forum with the following introductory spiel:
Please note that this year’s annual conference of LIBERTY (The National Council for Civil Liberties) is quite historic, in that it features speeches and debates by libertarians and non-socialists, including myself, Marc Glendening of the Democracy Movement, Michael Gove of the Times and others.
Quite so. I won’t be there myself, even though the Libertarian Alliance (i.e. Chris Tame) offered to pay my entrance fee, but Tom Burroughes has just emailed me saying he will, and that he intends to supply a report for Samizdata.
By the way, as not mentioned earlier (and sorry about that), the Conference is in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1, starting (as I did mention) at 10 am and going on ’til 4 pm.
Yesterday four of us stuffed a Libertarian Alliance mailing, chez moi. It will be going out second class mail (don’t ask), on Wednesday (Monday and Tuesday are Golden Jubilee Bank Holidays). Libertarian Alliance publications are written and edited so that they can stand any amount of delay, so I’ll tell you about them when Sean Gabb’s computer is back in business (British Telecom are messing him around royally) and we have them up on the LA website.
However, one of the fliers added to the mailing, about a conference next Saturday organised by Liberty (formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties) will hit hall carpets a lot later than would have been desirable.
This conference is bizarrely entitled “Human Rights v Civil Liberties”. What’s the “v” about? I guess by “Human Rights” they mean robbing people to pay for other peoples’ education, hospital treatment, etc. But the worst things about the conference are that you have to pay GBP35 to get in, and that it starts at 10 am (lasting until 4 pm.) That’ll keep the riff-raff away, including me. Maybe Tom Burrroughes – wearing his Reuters hat? – can talk his way in for a better price, and at a time to suit himself.
The “Workshop” subjects give you the flavour: “Hunting, Shooting, Fishing: Neglected Freedoms?”, How do Libertarians defend equality?”, “The European Union: A threat to our freedom?”, “Libertarian Right v Liberal Left: Insurmountable differences?” Speakers include: Louise Christian (Christian Fisher Solicitors), Claire Fox (Institute of Ideas), Mark Glendening (Democracy Movement) , Lord Peter Goldsmith QC (the Attorney General), Michael Gove (Times columnist), Imran Khan (solicitor), Claude Moraes (Labour MEP), Professor Conrad Russell (Kings College London), Steven Norris (former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party), Rabinder Singh (Matrix Chambers), and John Wadham of Liberty itself.
NCCL, as it was, was started by Bolsheviks for their own entirely Bolshevik reasons, and remains overwhelmingly left-of-centre. But as you may have noticed, three of those four workshop subjects push libertarian buttons, and they are apparently making genuine attempts to extricate themselves from the tag of being Blairite poodles. I asked Sean Gabb if he was going? “Oh no, a bunch of lefties chattering amongst themselves.” And in truth that is probably what it will be. Nevertheless, they are trying. (The Libertarian Alliance is affiliated to them, for its own reasons.) But what do you do if your side is now the ruling class and hence the people now most vigorously violating civil liberties? What do you do if you have friends of friends whom you are now supposed to be campaigning against? What if the man who is now stitching up asylum seekers or fox-hunters came to your wedding?
Libertarian Alliance Director Chris Tame will also be one of the speakers at this conference, so he at least will know some of what transpires. Marc Glendening, a long-time anti-EU campaigner, is also a cordial acquaintance. Maybe I’ll be able to extract something in writing from one of them about it all.
If you’re interested, ring 020 7378 3667, or email zoe@liberty-human-rights.org.uk
Last week, immediately after returning from my trip to France, I visited St Andrews University in Scotland, courtesy of the Liberty Club guys, to speak at a meeting they’d organised. It was all a great pleasure, and not just because the lodgings they shared with me for the night after the meeting are so nicely situated right by the sea or because they are such nice people or because the weather was so nice.
Even nicer is that the Liberty Club is doing so well.
Universities are vitally important places if you’re in the idea spreading business. You’ve got a clutch of bright people relatively early in their lives, selected for their brightness and put together into a community. And, for once, community really means community. As I wandered about the town with Alex Singleton on the day after the meeting, he kept greeting familiar faces. Messages sent out in one part of the place don’t just meander off into the wild yonder. They double back on themselves, and if you keep on with them you can very quickly dose the entire place. Universities are, to use a word libertarians are particularly fond of, meme machines.
So, if you do what the Liberty Club does, and hold a series of different meetings on different topics, and if you get thirty people to each meeting but not always the exact same thirty people, and if libertarianism is the meta-context of the people organising all this, then pretty soon everyone in the university with any interest in such matters gets to hear about libertarianism. You don’t agree with it necessarily, in fact you may disagree with it all the more fiercely on account of understanding it all the better. But for the rest of your life the libertarian attitude is fixed in your head as an attitude that you can have, that other intelligent people do have, and that you could switch to if you ever felt like it.
The Liberty Club is one of the most if not the most active student organisation on the entire St Andrews campus. It is (a) definitely libertarian. It is in particular (b) not conservative. And it is in general (c) not stupid. Its leading lights are not thoughtless, unfunnily self-mocking posturers, of the “we don’t mean this really we’re just students arsing about” variety. They give off vibes of philosophical and political passion and intelligence.
Their Liberty Log is a modest operation, with bits appearing only every day or two rather than every hour or two as here. Before leaving I contributed a piece to it concerning the meeting I spoke at, and there’s only been one further posting (by Marian Tupy) since then. But that’s a pace they can sustain, and their web activity (see also their website), is but the seasoning of the philosophical and intellectual dish they are serving up to their local target community. The meal itself is face to face contact and face to face argument and public debate. What their internet activity does is add a few more libertarian memes to an already meme-rich environment, and supply heavyweight back-up for any who want to pursue libertarianism further, either to agree with it or to attack it.
Like all capable people, the St Andrews Liberty Clubbers worry that they could be doing better. Couldn’t we all? Alex mentioned setting up some kind of organisation for reaching students everywhere, and that might make sense if it could be done without too much strain. But I’d say that what they’re already doing is a model to libertarian groups in colleges and universities everywhere. And thanks to the internet, others really can look and learn. My bet is that they’ve already “infected” several other campuses without even realising it.
Allen Thorpe also sees demonstrations as a largely pointless exercise
Demonstrations have lost their point. It used to be that oppressed people, like American blacks under Jim Crow, could demonstrate and draw national attention to the injustices of the way they were treated. Then it meant something.
Today it’s just a substitute for thinking and reasoned argument. Causes are inflated to the point where fat people demonstrate because they’re not considered beautiful. Who cares? And if we do care, what can anybody do about the situation?
Demonstrating, picketing and marching is now so common that the media hardly notices anymore, so the demonstrators try to get attention through numbers (The Million [Insert name here] March), violence (anti-globalist demonstrators), or commit terrorist acts such as those of the ELF (Environmental Liberation Front) in the U.S.
The more it goes on, however, the more pointless it all seems. The Palestinians could probably win more sympathy by non-violent means than by what they’re doing now. The problem is that they want more than simply a state of their own. They want to destroy Israel, to accomplish what all the wars with Israel were unable to accomplish. By teaching their young people that martyrdom is the gate to a better life and earns a perpetual income for their families, they have made themselves appear irrational and abominable to the rest of us. It is difficult to see where this will end. How can Arafat stop this? And if he can’t, why should anyone negotiate with him or anyone else from the Palestinian side?
What’s next, everyone in Gaza and the West Bank to go on a hunger strike? How about mass suicide? Everybody will be sorry then, right?
In essence demonstrations have become tantrums, not the simple, civil refusals that Ghandi and King used. These worked because they brought attention both to the powerlessness of the demonstrators and the injustice of their treatment by those in power. Once they start using violence, the demonstrators lose that appeal and become mere lawbreakers.
Allen S. Thorpe
Lagwolf is also not too keen on demonstrations
It seems that every time I try to take the bus to Oxford Street here in London, some bunch of Islamo-fascist lovers is having another demo. The police were more prepared this time, so things did not come to a complete halt. I am sure it is deliberate that the degenerates (who don’t seem to know what a shower is) are holding this event during Passover. No doubt there was anti-semitic bile frothing from the mouths of all those on hand. Why is it that the left can so anti-semitic and get no flak, while anyone on the right criticises Israel is lynched? I wonder if any sympathy was uttered for those poor Israelis who have been killed by suicide bombers? They want the US/UK/Israel to stop the war, how about getting the Palestinian militants, so of whom were represented at this event, to stop killing civilians.
The amusing thing to me is that each time I see a protest of the sort my support for Israel goes up, not down as they intend. Any group that has that lot against them is good by me. I am sure that the Voice of Palestine (BBC) will have a report on it. There were fewer people there than last time, this time however there was a sit-down protest outside Downing Street.
Lagwolf
There was a demonstration in London yesterday. It was described on the local London TV news as being “against the war on terrorism”.
I don’t hate demonstrations, because demonstrations are easily ignored or got around. But I do hate demonstrating, that is, taking part in the damned things. Occasionally someone sends me an e-mail begging me to be somewhere at such-and-such a time on behalf of this or that. Such e-mails usually involve the European Union. But I never go. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Many others with political opinions like mine are, I think, equally reluctant to demonstrate.
I hate the idea that instead of expressing the exact opinion that is my own, I must instead attach myself to a collectively expressed opinion which isn’t exactly my own. I see no virtue in collective agreement for its own sake.
I hate that demonstrations are, in addition to being an intellectual pretence of unanimity, also an emotional pretence. Demonstrations are not events. They are pseudo-events. Their purpose is to create the appearance of a spontaneous outburst of mass anger or enthusiasm, by planning this spontaneous outburst weeks or even months in advance.
Demonstrators are like movie extras. I wouldn’t mind being a real movie extra. That’s honest pretence, for which you are even paid a bob or two if you’re lucky. Neither the makers of movies with big crowd scenes in them nor the viewers of them are under any illusions about the illusions they are dealing in. But political demonstrations aren’t like that. They are dishonestly dishonest, really dishonest. The idea is to suggest that all those contrived emotions – all those frenzied emotional states that the demonstrators work themselves into – are the real thing.
I hate that the meaning of a demonstration will be decided not be those organising it, but by the news media. Take yesterday’s demonstration “against the war on terrorism”. How many of the demonstrators thought that this was what they were saying? Some maybe. But others were merely trying to say that declaring war on entire countries isn’t the right way to chase after terrorists, and that chasing after terrorists should be done differently and better. (Personally I think that chasing terrorists by declaring wars on entire countries makes a lot of sense, but that’s not my point here.) In my case, if I attended a demonstration against some aspect of the European Union, then in the unlikely event that the media deigned to notice it at all, I would almost certainly find myself described as “anti-European”, which I’m not.
Demonstrations can only enact melodramas that are already established in the minds of the news media and their customers. They don’t change thinking. They only take sides between thoughts that have already become established.
What interests me is changing how people think. For that, there is no substitute for my own exactly chosen words, words that I’ve thought about, words that I’ve written. Then, if they want to, media people can read these words and invite me to participate in indoor discussions about the exact rights and wrongs of it all, in conversation and in further writings. In these discussions I speak with my own individual voice.
Political partisanship used to be measured by the willingness to demonstrate. But the conventional political radar kits underestimated the size and strength of the libertarian movement. Like I say, I’m not the only one. I believe that libertarians in general are, because of and as an inseparable part of being libertarians, reluctant to demonstrate in great massed gobs of collectivised dishonesty.
But now the internet is registering what the TV news cameras missed, because the internet allows us each to speak with our own voice. That’s what we want. That’s a crowd we are willing to join, because we can each join it on our own exact terms.
Dale Amon is someone with whom I actually have an unusually high degree of agreement on many many issues. In his article Free love or fight! however, I find myself agreeing with his conclusions only partly and even that for rather different reasons.
Whilst he is quite correct that there are elements of the Republican Party in the USA which are supportive of profoundly repressive actions by the state regarding sexual freedoms, I am not sure the issue of abortion comes under the category of ‘sexual freedoms’ at all. It is a contentious issue pertaining to definitions of life and death rather than sex, which whilst the proximate cause, is a separate issue.
Similarly I know many Republicans who are very libertarian regarding matters of sexual liberty… profoundly so in fact, taking the view that provided possible results of sex such as disease and pregnancy are treated responsibly and of accepted consequence, then the fact a person might like to have wild monkey sex is none of any one else’s business. The ‘Ashcroft’ faction does not define the entire Republican Party’s views on sex.
Of course there is indeed a certain paleo-conservative constituency within Republicanism in the USA which is inimical to libertarian values on many issues… but then I would argue they are just as inimical to neo-conservative values. Similarly there is a large and just as toxic ‘anti-sex’ element within the US Democratic Party, largely drawn from their still large number of paleo-feminist supporters. In reality I suspect the Democratic Party’s infection with Political Correctness is probably the greater threat to sexual freedoms (abortion is another issue entirely) than the Republican Puritan elements will ever be.
I am convinced that libertarians can indeed find significant elements within both the Democratic and Republican Party with whom to work, based on the inherent contradictions of these philosophically fuzzy groups that make a subversivist approach both practical and productive.
My worry about whether libertarians can actually find any common ground in the short term with mainstream Republicanism is more due to the fact it is becoming clear that George Bush is just another economically incoherent crypto-Keynsian. For all his talk about free trade, he has added not just steel tariffs but also wood tariffs against Canada, honey tariffs against Argentina, textile tariffs against Pakistan and sugar tariffs against Mexico… never mind that Mexico and Canada are NAFTA members.
I shall blog another article soon about the economic and political harm being done by the US government not just in their own country but also elsewhere, as they undermine the very people they should be supporting.
Regular Samizdata.net contributor Brian Micklethwait will be appearing on BBC Radio 4’s “You and Yours” programme, defending the relaxation of the drink licensing and gambling laws, on Thursday March 28, at 12:30 pm. As will long-time Libertarian Alliance supporter Dr Robert Lefever, an expert on addiction, and Mary Kenny for the keep-it-illegal persuasion.
The thing about the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) is that it has just kept on keeping on.
I remember how, during the eighties, Chris Tame and I used to hammer away at ISIL conferences and gatherings about the overwhelming importance of publications, publications, publications. Typical ISIL types, especially the Europeans, preferred their endless schemes to “popularise” libertarianism by, basically, just talking about it to this or that “interest group”, which would then topple or else totally libertarianise this or that government, but which somehow never quite did. They said: why don’t you do that? To hell with that, we said, we’re already doing what we’re doing. And I remember being badgered by Americans about the “internet”, which, they said, would “cut out the middle man” and make the Libertarian Alliance publications-based strategy obsolete. You can just talk to people! Millions of people! Why don’t you do that? To hell with that also, we said. But what good, they said, are two hundred mere publications compared to immediate libertarian political triumphs and millions of new computer connected recruits? Because we actually have the two hundred publications, we said. You can buy them in the foyer. If you’re so keen on this other stuff, why don’t you …?
None of us were all wrong. None of us had it quite right. And now it’s all coming together. ISIL has an excellent new website, which contains, among other things, a small (by Libertarian Alliance standards) but growing list of, yes, publications. Two individuals, according to the latest ISIL communication that I received on Sunday, deserve special credit (two middle men, you might say): Chris Whitten, who designed the ISIL site, and Alberto Mansueti, who is translating ISIL stuff into Spanish. And I’d also like to mention Jim Elwood, for (see above) just hanging on and keeping going, like a dog who won’t let go of a bone. He was isiling away back in the early eighties, and he’s been isiling ever since.
We of the Libertarian Alliance have yet to get ourselves a website designer as good as Chris Whitten, but all the bits of an LA website as good as www.isil.org promises to be are slowly being assembled. We too have just kept on keeping on. The most interesting recent change to the LA website is the hit counter, which had been underestimating the number of hits, and has now done a guess-jump from 13,000 to 20,000 which I also reckon is about right. There’ll be more publications Real Soon Now. And we’ll also start having most of them instead of only a few of them available in html, also Real Soon Now.
And, of course, we London libbos do have ourselves a nice little blogging operation, where we, you know, kind of talk about libertarianism. Does ISIL have one of those? Jim, you’re not doing anything. Why don’t you..?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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