Kerry Thornley - In Defense of Libertarian Communism

[Cain]

Thought this essay may be of interest.  It seems to be the most cited work by Thornley that isn't (explicitly) connected to Discordianism.

http://agorism.info/_media/indefenseoflibertariancommunism.pdf

An extract:

For many years I accepted without question the prevailing opinion on the libertarian right that communist anarchism is "anti-market," that it was espoused principally by people who objected unconsciously to the idea of having to work and that it preached excessive violence.  During the summer of 1975 I read Alexander Berkman's What Is Communist Anarchism? and confirmed a suspicion I'd been nurturing since 1969 that the last two of these charges, at least, were wholly in error. Berkman, like his comrades Emma Goldman and Rudolph Rocker, held views similar to those developed by Peter Kropotkin - except that Berkman was exceptionally eloquent and quotable in his expressions of them, while at the same time confining himself in What Is Communist Anarchism? to simple, working-class language.

[...]

As Hagbard Celine points out in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, left anarchists disagree with right anarchists only in their predictions as to how people will behave in a free market - the leftists believing that cooperation will take the place of competition, the rightists assuming that people will remain as competitve as ever. In other words, while authoritarian economics are  proscriptive, libertarian economics are predictive - a realization which facilitates left-right unity among anarchists and libertarians.

Libertarians tend to agree with Marxists that economics usually determine politics, that economic forces are more basic to the structure of society - but neither seem to take into consideration how much prevailing human values determine human choices. An ignorant society composed of ignorant people will make foolish purchases and thereby become a market for junk merchandise and/or enormously destructive weaponry designed to wipe out foreign civilian populations instead of its own domestic and multinational oppressors. Unfortunately, ignorance tends to feed on itself. Spencer thought universal literacy would culminate in the solution of all of most of society's problems, but as Aldous Huxley observed he did not anticipate that most people would opt to read trivia - escapist fiction, inaccurate propaganda, advertising, etc. - instead of consciousness-raising materials and scientific papers. When television was in its infancy all kinds of optimistic predictions were made that it would eliminate war by establishing global communication between people of all cultures!

It's only about 6 pages, so if you want to read on it, then its not a long or especially difficult piece.

[hooplala]

Thanks Cain, can't wait to devour it tonight.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm going to sit down tomorrow night and give it a read.

[Cain]

No problem guys.  Like I said, I've been meaning to post this for forever, but every time I remembered I could never find the damnable thing on my HD.

[Elder Iptuous]

thanks man!
the title alone will cause vicious spittle gnashing when i post it on some boards....

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Pretty interesting essay. It's funny how guys like Thornley and Wilson would occasionally write something serious and thought provoking and then destroy all their 'credibility' by behaving like nutjobs. Hail Eris!

[Salty]

Here's my under-educated opinion on the matter.

Is it just me, or did he seem chock-full-O-hope?

An ignorant
society composed of ignorant people will make foolish purchases and thereby become a
market for junk merchandise and/or enormously destructive weaponry designed to wipe out
foreign civilian populations instead of its own domestic and multinational oppressors.

Unfortunately, ignorance tends to feed on itself. Spencer thought universal literacy would
culminate in the solution of all of most of society's problems, but as Aldous Huxley observed
he did not anticipate that most people would opt to read trivia - escapist fiction, inaccurate
propaganda, advertising, etc. - instead of consciousness-raising materials and scientific
papers. When television was in its infancy all kinds of optimistic predictions were made that it
would eliminate war by establishing global communication between people of all cultures!

This is one big part of the problem as I see it. How can you compete with The Dream[tm]? How do you shake people out of that when A) Billions and billions of monies go into keeping the dream machine running and B) That's exactly what people want?

Here, this is what I mean by full of hope:

Once we construct our alternative institutions with that question in mind, generations of
human beings will begin to grow up in genuine freedom - and no past or present communist
anarchist or laissez-faire capitalist can predict with certainty what will happen after that, but it
seems to me they should be able to agree that this is where to begin.

For libertarian capitalists that means becoming aware of communist anarchist doctrines, and
realizing that they are based not so much on ignorance of economics as on unlimited
optimism for the potential rationality of genuinely free people

This just seems unrealistic in the extreme. The problem, again, is The People. They don't want genuine freedom. They want Britney Spears. They want Tiger Woods. They want anything at all that will keep them from noticing the giant abyss that stands right behind them and follows every move they make.

Am I reading this right? Or have I missed something entirely?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Well, of course he's full of Hope... you can't be much of an optimist otherwise

However, I think the argument he's trying to make is that most people don't want Ms. Spears and Tiger Woods... they simply take whats handed to them. Rather than the people shaping the society, many "anarchists" (for lack of a less loaded term) aruge that society (under the control of governments, corporations etc) are shaping the people.

For example, many people see the US School system as a tool of the corporations... a factory to pump out factory workers and good employees. Rather than teaching Children to THINK, we teach them to answer the questions, read the assignments and then, right before crashing out on top of your homework... grab a good hour or so of "Keeping Up With The Kardashians".

I dunno if you watched "Meet the Natives" on the travel channel or not. I found it a bit trite, but there were some interesting comments. Basically they brought five natives from a small island in the South Pacific and took them on a five week tour of the US. They had a very hard time understanding why we chose to base our society on money. One of the chiefs spoke at length about the homeless people he saw ("I have heard of such a thing, but I have never seen it!"). He couldn't get past the idea that because he didn't have money, he didn't have a place to sleep. The visited the NY Stock Exchange and he tried to ask the people there about it... it made no sense to them that here was a huge building that was empty all night, and yet, somehow people outside were homeless. He pointed out that no one in his village was homeless because everyone in the village built the huts for people to live in. It was simply how their society and its institutions worked.

He met a homeless man and they spoke through a translator... afterward one of the older men said that it was obvious that no one loved this man, because if someone loved him, how could he be homeless?

I have great hope for us monkeys... if we can break free of the institutions that are currently shaping us. When we look at the past, humans were not always horrible to each other. Throughout much of history humans worked together to survive... humans looked out for each other. Some humans were bad/evil/dangerous... but they were the exception rather than the rule. Now of course, there were other terrible problems in their life as well... maybe wild animals, or human sacrifices to ZamGooba the Spirit of the Lake. Not saying that they were Noble Savages, only that changes in the institutions, standards and beliefs of a given society can have a major impact on the quality of life.

Even here in America, if the right philosophy came along, in the right package... I think it could spawn major changes and might create huge effects on our society. Would it be utopia? Hell no... could it be better quality of life for more people in our society? I think it could.

[Requia ☣]

Humans were *always* horrible to each other, from long before we learned to walk upright and lost most of the body hair it was that way.  What changed is that we were nice to people in our own communities, and only horrible to the next village over.

But the communities now are too big.  you just can't watch out for everyone in town when there are a thousand people, let alone a million.  So we watch out for our families, and a few friends, and the rest of the The City becomes the next village over.

[Reginald Ret]

monkeysphere ITT

[BabylonHoruv]

In my experience the most important difference between Libertarian Communists and Libertarian Capitalists isn't over human nature, it is over the role of corporations.  Libertarian Communists view corporations as an arm of the state which need to be destroyed, Libertarian Capitalists view them as a viable alternative and replacement for the state.

[Cain]

A fair few Mutualists (who seem to sit in the middle when it comes to Anarcho-capitalism/right Libertarians versus Anarcho-Communism/left-libertarians) would agree with the Commies on this one.

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/05/corporations-state-capitalism-and.html

[BabylonHoruv]

That Mutualist blog seems to suggest that corporations could not exist without government, which may be true, but the corporations would, in my opinion, be likely to build a government to support their continued existence if the current one were removed.

[the last yatto]

suits only know how to make suits

[Cain]

That Mutualist blog seems to suggest that corporations could not exist without government, which may be true, but the corporations would, in my opinion, be likely to build a government to support their continued existence if the current one were removed.

This is true.

However, to be fair to Carson, who I've read for a while, his proposals are a lot more radical than the average vulgar libertarian fare, and his suggestions would eventually amount to the dismantling of the existing corporate system at the same time as rolling back the state.  I was trying to find a better example than that one, but his writings are all over the place, and he's prolific as hell, so I wasn't having much luck.