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These definitions seem to endorse anarchism rather than merely explain the concepts.

I like that he points out how capitalism involves state interference, though. Indeed, that's the crucial libertarian fallacy: that capitalist market conditions are created through free markets without state interference. Really, for the state to permit a few people to exclusively control large segments of the country's natural resources is not non-interventionist or libertarian.

Only by arbitrary fiat do such conditions get justified. Some have argued that working the land, developing and caring for it, confers a natural right upon the person to own it -- but by that standard, everyone who participates in working and caring for the land deserves a stake in it, and a person who merely inherits property from his parents certainly has no right to it.

Of course, once it comes to hereditary privilege, "conservatives" change their tune and don't mind tolerating a non-working person to be rich. They only insist upon hard work when it does not involve the non-working rich having to give anything up. The system they favor requires the non-working rich to give less, the working non-rich to give more -- in sweat and blood.

I don't think he fairly describes liberalism, though. Controlled capitalism, mitigated by progressive taxation, social welfare and health-and-safety regulation, is still capitalism, but also a system that enables many to prosper. If he rejects state-socialism and state-capitalism, and offers anarchism instead, he must explain how to regulate harmful behaviors in the truly free market. We would still need to decide together -- and enforce, sometimes with force -- what happens to child molestors and people who run red lights.

posted by Dylan24 on July 21, 2005 at 5:37 AM | link to this | reply