#1
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http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-education-of-a-libertarian/

The Education of a Libertarian
by Peter Thiel
April 13th, 2009

I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.

As a Stanford undergraduate studying philosophy in the late 1980s, I naturally was drawn to the give-and-take of debate and the desire to bring about freedom through political means. I started a student newspaper to challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies; we scored some limited victories, most notably in undoing speech codes instituted by the university. But in a broader sense we did not achieve all that much for all the effort expended. Much of it felt like trench warfare on the Western Front in World War I; there was a lot of carnage, but we did not move the center of the debate. In hindsight, we were preaching mainly to the choir — even if this had the important side benefit of convincing the choir’s members to continue singing for the rest of their lives.

As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s, I began to understand why so many become disillusioned after college. The world appears too big a place. Rather than fight the relentless indifference of the universe, many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small gardens. The higher one’s IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it.

As one fast-forwards to 2009, the prospects for a libertarian politics appear grim indeed. Exhibit A is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government. Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane. The events of recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand.

Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom. Let me briefly speak to three such technological frontiers:

(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, I have focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order. The limitation of the Internet is that these new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more imaginary than real. The open question, which will not be resolved for many years, centers on which of these accounts of the Internet proves true.

(2) Outer space. Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but we also must be realistic about the time horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science fiction, à la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century.

(3) Seasteading. Between cyberspace and outer space lies the possibility of settling the oceans. To my mind, the questions about whether people will live there (answer: enough will) are secondary to the questions about whether seasteading technology is imminent. From my vantage point, the technology involved is more tentative than the Internet, but much more realistic than space travel. We may have reached the stage at which it is economically feasible, or where it soon will be feasible. It is a realistic risk, and for this reason I eagerly support this initiative.

The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.

A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.

For this reason, all of us must wish Patri Friedman the very best in his extraordinary experiment.




Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal, a venture initially designed as an independent, non-governmental currency. He is president of Clarium Capital, a highly successful hedge fund, and was one of the early investors in the social networking site Facebook.

Thiel holds a J.D. from Stanford University.


libertarians reject "the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual"
there's so much to be said of this one sentence, leaving aside the rest of the many memorable quotes in this must-read article. badiou says that "the essence of revisionism is the fear of death." is the explicit libertarian ownership of this fear of death, rejecting the very concept of their own individual demise, rewriting not as a fact of life but as a mere facile ideology that they will some day die, not the most extreme manifestation of this revisionism? libertarians after all do see themselves as radicals, to us merely a radical interpretation of the status quo to be sure, but their image of themselves is one of supreme revolution. one grounded explicitly in this fear of death (what are nerd dreams of transhumanism and the singularity anything but this), which leaves us with a deeply narcissistic and selfish ideology. how else can you make sense of the statement that "freedom and democracy are incompatible" other than to read it as confirming that implicitly, freedom is only freedom of the speaker's individuality in its most personal, not abstract, sense.

despite the transparent absurdity and obviousness of the mendacious nature of libertarianism's intellectual justifications, the sakes are high. our world is quickly becoming one with their vision through the sheer momentum of capital.

notice the names and overlap with thiel's idiotic screed.

http://www.economist.com/node/21541391

Now, for the first time, libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the Honduran government to develop them.

One firm goes by the name of Future Cities Development Corporation. It was co-founded by Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics, and until recently executive director of the Seasteading Institute, a group producing research on how to build ocean-based communes. The other is called Grupo Ciudades Libres (Free Cities Group) and is the brainchild of Michael Strong and Kevin Lyons, two entrepreneurs and libertarian activists.

Both share a purpose: to build “free cities”. Last April all three spoke at a conference organised by Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a libertarian outfit in Guatemala. In September they and Giancarlo Ibárgüen, the university’s president, launched the Free Cities Institute, a think-tank, to foster the cause.

As so often with enthusiasts, divisions within the cause run deep. The two firms hail from different parts of the libertarian spectrum. Mr Friedman is an outspoken critic of democracy. It is “ill-suited for a libertarian state”, he wrote in an essay in 2009—because it is “rigged against libertarians” (they would always lose) and inefficient. Rather than giving its citizens a voice, he argues, they should be free to exit; cities should compete for them by offering the best services.

The second firm’s backers appear to be less radical. A founder of several charter schools, Mr Strong is now the force behind FLOW, a movement that claims to combine libertarian thinking “with love, compassion, social and environmental consciousness”, says its website. He too prefers exit over voice (meaning that he thinks that leaving and joining are better constraints on executive power than the ballot box). But he also believes that democratic consent is needed in certain areas, such as criminal justice. His goal in Honduras is less to implement libertarian ideals than to reduce poverty and to speed up economic development.

Some in the Honduran government have libertarian leanings, which is one reason why the authorities have moved so quickly. But when the master developers for the new zones are selected next year, strong political credentials will not be enough—and may even prove to be a drawback. Mr Friedman is stressing a difference between his political beliefs and his firm. “Ideology makes bad business,” he says, adding that Future Cities Development wants to focus on the needs of the people who live in the city.

Yet the biggest hurdle for the libertarian start-ups may be that the transparency commission, which will oversee the development regions, is unlikely to give them free rein. The “constitutional statute” for the development zones, which the Honduran national congress passed in August, does not leave much wiggle room in key areas, not least when it comes to democracy: ultimately their citizens will vote.

Both firms, however, have links to prominent libertarians with deep pockets. Mr Strong is close to John Mackey, the co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain—though Mr Strong says that Mr Mackey already has too many other things on his plate. Mr Friedman’s contacts seem more promising: the Seasteading Institute received lots of cash from Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who founded the internet payment service PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, the world’s biggest social network.

Mr Thiel’s ambitions go far beyond scouting out the next big thing in technology. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote in an essay in 2009. This is why libertarians should find an escape from politics, he added. “Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode of escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country.” Back then he had the ocean or space in mind. Honduras would certainly be more convenient.



libertarians seem bent on opening critical spaces outside of politics (although certainly the political coup d'etat in honduras had a part in allowing such developments). and unlike your local anarchist commune, they have the capital to do so. let us hope in this case politics and democratic freedom reemerge against this worrisome libertarian "freedom"

#2
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This is tangential but I think the "fear of death" idea Badiou proposes is a really interesting one. Here's Badiou on the cultural revolution:

http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/alan-badiou_cultural-_revolution_.pdf

Here we are at the heart of the hypothesis: the Cultural Revolution is
the historical development of a contradiction. On the one hand, the issue
is to arouse mass revolutionary action in the margins of the state of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, or to acknowledge, in the theoretical jargon
of the time, that even though the state is formally a “proletarian” state, the
class struggle continues, including in the forms of mass revolt. Mao and
his followers will go so far as to say that under socialism, the bourgeoisie
reconstitutes itself and organizes itself within the communist party itself. On
the other hand, with actual civil war still being excluded, the general form
of the relation between the party and the state, in particular over the use of
repressive forces, must remain unchanged at least insofar as it is not really a
question of destroying the party. Mao will make this known by noting that
“the overwhelming majority of cadres are good.”



It does a very good job tracing the history of the events and highlighting the ideological contradictions at different points. Strangely, Badiou doesn't follow his own logic and says that the conclusion of the GPCR is that "In the end, the Cultural Revolution, even in its very impasse, bears witness to the impossibility truly and globally to free politics from the framework of the party-state that imprisons it" and More generally, the Cultural Revolution showed that it was no longer possible to assign either the revolutionary mass actions or the organizational phenomena to the strict logic of class representation."

This is strange to me, because the withering away of the party state has always been a fundamental part of communist experience. Wasn't the cultural revolution precisely the destruction of the state, which had stopped being a progressive force and was turning towards revisionism, the very thing Marx envisioned? The party state fulfilled it's function perfectly (revolution, class based repression, and then self-destruction), the conclusion should be why did Mao not follow through on what he started? why did Mao fear death and the destruction of the party when he says “the overwhelming majority of cadres are good.” And how can we take it to the next step and have the last revolution come to it's conclusion and destroy the the socialist state to replace it with communism.

A revolutionary must be suicidal. This is not just a question of most revolutionaries dying in prison/getting shot without even a mention in the paper, but the nature of being a revolutionary is self-destruction, or at least creating a revolutionary party to fulfill a repressive function and finally repress itself. Why are so many socialists rabble, who pretend to be revolutionaries but merely pander to the weakest and most oppressed instead of elevating themselves and the masses to a higher ideal? We need a party with the courage to die as well as the courage to kill. Mao was a great man, great enough to represent himself as an ideal (as Badiou points out in the cult of personality section) but he was not ready to become an eternal ideal. Rejecting the party, which is still the only successful method for socialist revolution in history, is the cowards way out.

As for the OP, libertarians are scum, the lowest most fearful, impotent, unmanly people in history. If Nietzsche thought the anti-semitic germans were too vulgar to understand his thought, the libertarian American character is the worst combination of German and English cowardice. The resurgence of libertarianism is a sign of the decline of the American empire and the decadence of a finance capital system as it implodes and leaves the people caught in the spectacle without support or guidance.

#3
tardy on these heaters
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Today I bought a Kierkegaard book called Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing, and it got me thinking that really the only coherent thing one can "live for" is one's death, and so you should live fully "complicit" in your own death, i.e. "die before you die" as a certain Prophet (saws) said. Deviations from this path are necessarily founded on falsehood.

Edited by babyfinland ()

#4
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#5
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babyhueypnewton posted:
A revolutionary must be suicidal. This is not just a question of most revolutionaries dying in prison/getting shot without even a mention in the paper, but the nature of being a revolutionary is self-destruction, or at least creating a revolutionary party to fulfill a repressive function and finally repress itself. Why are so many socialists rabble, who pretend to be revolutionaries but merely pander to the weakest and most oppressed instead of elevating themselves and the masses to a higher ideal? We need a party with the courage to die as well as the courage to kill. Mao was a great man, great enough to represent himself as an ideal (as Badiou points out in the cult of personality section) but he was not ready to become an eternal ideal. Rejecting the party, which is still the only successful method for socialist revolution in history, is the cowards way out.



this is where i think zizek is right to praise robespierre, and advocate a "divine violence" for any revolutionary project

#6
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destroy all nafs
#7
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We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this ... If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.
#8
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We are all just dumb scared apes, all this pontificating about ideology and purpose and freedom is hubris and folly
#9
tardy on these heaters
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#10
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im finding this new fad of libertarian intellectuals overtly embracing anti-democratic sentiments (as opposed to merely implicitly through their actions) pretty interesting especially considering the rhetoric they throw at socialists for ostensibly the same "totalitarian" thinking

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism/

Democracy Is Not The Answer

Democracy is the current industry standard political system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian state. It has substantial systemic flaws, which are well-covered elsewhere, and it poses major problems specifically for libertarians:

1) Most people are not by nature libertarians. David Nolan reports that surveys show at most 16% of people have libertarian beliefs. Nolan, the man who founded the Libertarian Party back in 1971, now calls for libertarians to give up on the strategy of electing candidates! Even Ron Paul, who was enormously popular by libertarian standards and ran during a time of enormous backlash against the establishment, never had the slightest chance of winning the nomination. His "strong" showing got him 1.6% of the delegates to the Republican Party's national convention. There are simply not enough of us to win elections unless we somehow concentrate our efforts.

2) Democracy is rigged against libertarians. Candidates bid for electoral victory partly by selling future political favors to raise funds and votes for their campaigns. Libertarians (and other honest candidates) who will not abuse their office can't sell favors, thus have fewer resources to campaign with, and so have a huge intrinsic disadvantage in an election.

Libertarians are a minority, and we underperform in elections, so winning electoral victories is a hopeless endeavor.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765808684/theseastinsti-20catounbound-20
Democracy: The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

This sweeping book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from limited monarchy to unlimited democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy, with all its failings, is a lesser evil than mass democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both as systems of guarding liberty. By focusing on this transformation from private to public government, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, the decline in security and freedom, and the growth of the mega-state.

In addition, Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of anti-statist conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers.



as true reactionaries, they're even becoming monarchists. libertarians are endlessly entertaining to me.

#11
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#12
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Apparently, the boyfriend of an acquaintance i have on the polo team, just gloated about giving $40,000 to Ron Paul on his facebook. Word is bond. Empire is ending
#13
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"He characterizes democracy as "publicly owned government," which he compares to monarchy—"privately owned government"—to conclude that the latter is preferable"

In his lectures, Mr. Hoppe said that certain groups of people -- including small children, very old people, and homosexuals -- tend to prefer present-day consumption to long-term investment. Because homosexuals generally do not have children, Mr. Hoppe said, they feel less need to look toward the future. (In a recent talk at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which Mr. Hoppe says was similar to his classroom lecture, he declared, "Homosexuals have higher time preferences, because life ends with them.") , Mr. Knight found that argument unwarranted and obnoxious, and he promptly filed a complaint with the university. In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Knight said: "I was just shocked and appalled. I said to myself, Where the hell is he getting this information from? I was completely surprised, and that's why I went to the university about this."
#14
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he also used to be a marxist of course, once again lending truth to what zizek says all the time "Nothing is more conducive to proper integration into the hegemonic ideologico-political community than a ‘radical’ past in which one lived one’s wildest dreams."


#15
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I read the title of the thread and the first line "I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years" and thought that this was going to be about the Torturous Getfiscal Road to Socialism, through baseline conservatism inherited from ones parents, through wide-eyed libertarianism, to anxious flirtations with progressivism, social democracy, and finally to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Third And A Half Worldism, the fourth and a half, and highest, stage of revolutionary science.
#16
[account deactivated]
#17
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

aerdil posted:
im finding this new fad of libertarian intellectuals overtly embracing anti-democratic sentiments (as opposed to merely implicitly through their actions) pretty interesting especially considering the rhetoric they throw at socialists for ostensibly the same "totalitarian" thinking

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism/

Democracy Is Not The Answer

Democracy is the current industry standard political system, but unfortunately it is ill-suited for a libertarian state. It has substantial systemic flaws, which are well-covered elsewhere, and it poses major problems specifically for libertarians:

1) Most people are not by nature libertarians. David Nolan reports that surveys show at most 16% of people have libertarian beliefs. Nolan, the man who founded the Libertarian Party back in 1971, now calls for libertarians to give up on the strategy of electing candidates! Even Ron Paul, who was enormously popular by libertarian standards and ran during a time of enormous backlash against the establishment, never had the slightest chance of winning the nomination. His "strong" showing got him 1.6% of the delegates to the Republican Party's national convention. There are simply not enough of us to win elections unless we somehow concentrate our efforts.

2) Democracy is rigged against libertarians. Candidates bid for electoral victory partly by selling future political favors to raise funds and votes for their campaigns. Libertarians (and other honest candidates) who will not abuse their office can't sell favors, thus have fewer resources to campaign with, and so have a huge intrinsic disadvantage in an election.

Libertarians are a minority, and we underperform in elections, so winning electoral victories is a hopeless endeavor.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765808684/theseastinsti-20catounbound-20
Democracy: The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

This sweeping book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from limited monarchy to unlimited democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy, with all its failings, is a lesser evil than mass democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both as systems of guarding liberty. By focusing on this transformation from private to public government, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, the decline in security and freedom, and the growth of the mega-state.

In addition, Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of anti-statist conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers.



as true reactionaries, they're even becoming monarchists. libertarians are endlessly entertaining to me.



isn't that the leninist solution as well

#18
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no. not exactly. it's far more complex and it's not the whole hearted rejection of democracy that we're seeing here w/ libertarians

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/dec/23.htm

The Scheidemanns and Kautsky's speak about "pure democracy" and "democracy" in general for the purpose of deceiving the people and concealing from them the bourgeois character of present-day democracy. Let the bourgeoisie continue to keep the entire apparatus of state power in their hands, let a handful of exploiters continue to use the former, bourgeois, state machine! Elections held in such circumstances are lauded by the bourgeoisie, for very good reasons, as being "free", "equal", "democratic" and "universal". These words are designed to conceal the truth, to conceal the fact that the means of production and political power remain in the hands of the exploiters, and that therefore real freedom and real equality for the exploited, that is, for the vast majority of the population, are out of the question. It is profitable and indispensable for the bourgeoisie to conceal from the people the bourgeois character of modern democracy, to picture it as democracy in general or "pure democracy", and the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, repeating this, in practice abandon the standpoint of the proletariat and side with the bourgeoisie.

Marx and Engels in their last joint preface to the Communist Manifesto (in 1872) considered it necessary to specifically warn the workers that the proletariat cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made (that is, the bourgeois) state machine and wield it for their own purpose, but that they must smash it, break it up.

It is sheer mockery of the working and exploited people to speak of pure democracy, of democracy in general, of equality, freedom and universal rights when the workers and all working people are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out, not only as a result of capitalist wage slavery, but as a consequence of four years of predatory war, while the capitalists and profiteers remain in possession of the "property" usurped by them and the "ready-made" apparatus of state power. This is tantamount to trampling on the basic truths of Marxism which has taught the workers: you must take advantage of bourgeois democracy which, compared with feudalism, represents a great historical advance, but not for one minute must you forget the bourgeois character of this "democracy", it's historical conditional and limited character. Never share the "superstitious belief" in the "state" and never forget that the state even in the most democratic republic, and not only in a monarchy, is simply a machine for the suppression of one class by another.

The dictatorship of the proletariat alone can emancipate humanity from the oppression of capital, from the lies, falsehood and hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy — democracy for the rich — and establish democracy for the poor, that is, make the blessings of democracy really accessible to the workers and poor peasants, whereas now (even in the most democratic — bourgeois — republic) the blessings of democracy are, in fact, inaccessible to the vast majority of working people.

But this means replacing "universal", "pure" democracy by the "dictatorship of one class", scream the Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Austerlitzes and Renners (together with their followers in other countries — the Gomperses, Hendersons, Renaudels, Vandervelde and Co.).

Wrong, we reply. This means replacing what in fact is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (a dictatorship hypocritically cloaked in the forms of the democratic bourgeois republic) by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means replacing democracy for the rich by democracy for the poor. This means replacing freedom of assembly and the press for the minority, for the exploiters, by freedom of assembly and the press for the majority of the population, for the working people. This means a gigantic, world historic extension of democracy, its transformation from falsehood into truth, the liberation of humanity from the shackles of capital, which distorts and truncates any, even the most "democratic" and republican, bourgeois democracy. This means replacing the bourgeois state with the proletarian state, a replacement that is the sole way the state can eventually wither away altogether.

#19
tardy on these heaters
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i understand the difference between substantive democracy and formal democracy n00b

still doesnt address schmitt tho

Edited by babyfinland ()

#20
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im also wondering if a bow tie is a signifier for being a reactionary or conservative? or has any prominent socialist ever worn one? and what does this mean for the latest doctor who?

Edited by aerdil ()

#21
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babyfinland posted:


i understand the difference between substantive democracy and formal democracy n00b

still doesnt address schmitt tho



what in particular are you trying to point out? or are you trying to draw parallels between leninist and straussian vanguardism? im glad ur reading nazis btw, someday u will become a great islamofascist

#22
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#23
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nazis ftw
#24
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aerdil posted:
im also wondering if a bow tie is a signifier for being a reactionary or conservative? or has any prominent socialist ever worn one? and what does this mean for the latest doctor who?



i feel like john reed probably sported a bow tie sometimes

#25
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i can see how you can come about it, and in that sense both the leninist party and the monarchy function as kind of a mediator of ideas, determining public policy.

i think monarchy is indeed 'private', of course in the service of the public, mediated by fielty to bloodlines via divine right, buoyed by the repressed violent establishment of Law. in monarchies frequently it is interesting to note that nobility is typically established as the conquering nobility from distant lands. In the Kingdom of Georgia, for example, noble families tied their relationship to noble surnames of foreign states: http://geogen.ge/indexen.php?id_menu_up=2&lang=en&id_menu=12&abc=1

For instance, some of the Russian nobles were trying to improve that as if almost all their kin (generation) had been coming from the Variags (Vikings); The Hungarian nobles (earls: Hadiks, Ziches, etc.) were trying to prove the ties of a blood relationship with the Georgians (R. Khutsishvili, Hungarian-Caucasian Problem, Thbilisi, 1994. p. 212); To cut the long story short, in Georgia the Bagrations linked their posterity with the Hebrew Kings - biblical Jesus, David and Solomon. Even their titles began so: "We, Jesusian, Davidian and Solomonian Bagratovans…" It is known that the Orbelianis has been declaring the Chinese as their ancestors. Also, the families of Amilakhvari, Eristhavi, Tsitsishvili etc, were declaring that their forefathers are the foreigners. Professor Iase Tsintsadze correctly notes (Russian Early Feudal State, Thbilisi, 1968. P. 26), that they were working out this non-existed history of their surnames because of being different from a local ruling circle and having more rights of ownership, as if, it had been given to their forefathers in the foreign country. According to the opinion of Academician George Meliqishvili: "Often, in such cases it was related only to the ruler strata and origin of their dynasty, because they were trying to dissociate more sharply from their people's basic masses"



So what you have is monarchy kind of establishing the idea of hierarchy based on private power, fidelity to bloodlines being tantamount, a kind of fidelity to the idea of differentation tied to land and trade. nobility and gentry is tied to bloodlines and perhaps the violent establishment of new Law (in war and conquest, overthrow and civil war) that also take mythical proportions (Hebrew king descendants in the case of the Georgians). nonetheless, the land is mediated through this logic in the manner of stratification.

The Leninist party, on the other hand, is a perversion of this, and I would say indeed in favor of the masses. It is kind of an inversion of the private power into the public power, not just contingent to the public, but subjectizes the people itself. The idea is not a paternal stewardship (though this can devolve into such at a revisionist 'fear of death'), and not a representative of divinity, and its attendant pagan order of power, but the proletariat as the subject of history. Simply, the Monarchy is its own subject of history, mediated by both the public, and 'divine law' (typical rhetoric of monarchists, surfacing in different guises), and thus fundamentally narcissistic. While Leninist theory, is a mediator to a different subject of history: the people, manifested in the proletariat and peasants. The Leninist party doesnt function under the mediator of 'divine right' and faraway nobility, but an idea that actualizes the power of the people, a standin for humanity. In that way, the Leninist is a partisan on behalf of true divinity, taking the full Abrahamic burden of what this means: equality between humanity in their position towards Truth (Godhead). This is where zizek is very sympathetic to Legalism that binds all of society under equal law, regardless of social position, and I agree, of course if one also carefully outlines contingent social flights.


sorry if this is abit incoherent or unclear, I drank too much coffee and now i'm doing some schizo-maneuvering

Edited by Crow ()

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tardy on these heaters
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nm
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straight up g move
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I also want to add that in monarchy, the land is contingent on peasant use but is primarily overdetermined by private 'divine law' / fealty to bloodlines. thus we have 'commons', but also peasant and artisan production tied to Houses. in Leninist theory, land is contingent to proletariat/peasant use, and primarily overdetermined by primacy of Party doctrine / democratically-elected cadres and proletariat/peasant soviets, thus we have kolkhoz, democratic centralism, and mass proliferation of union power.

it's interesting to note, Stalin's theory of nations would be the (historical) separation of House nobilities into National nobilities, with attendant Party doctrine, as well as aforementioned cadre/soviet nexus. i can understand zizek's gesture here, the one where he places the Party as basically being an analyst for the people (the analysand/subject), and thus of course is a give and take which guides the analysand to self-fulfillment. In that sense, the analyst is placed as a sort of 'subject-supposed-to-know', intent on actualization of the analysand subject. In psychoanalysis, the analyst deteriorates his 'subject-supposed-to-know' status, as both come to the realization of the analysand's desire/self-fulfillment, and the analyst's authoritative status is terminated. Thus, the Party's role is eventually made non-essential, and the subject can come into itself, probably where the State will dissolve.

in Maoism, you can see these general outlines as well, but I have to think more on that. i do see the psychoanalysis outline very useful, and i would wager that the Cultural Revolution in a way tends towards that analysis, as many workers and peasants and students attempted to dissolve the analysts' 'subject-supposed-to-know' status, but it wasnt consummated. Perhaps this is what happened in the dissolution of the Soviet Union as well?

i hope that's not too redundant there
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discipline posted:
Mommy, Daddy, how come libertarian writers never emerge from proletarian backgrounds?



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following schmitt, perhaps its useful to see just how the slow pace of Bureaucracy is necessary in this step towards dissolution of the state. Maybe bureaucracy wasn't the problem, but the Party, as Stalin understood. first purging the Old Bolsheviks was a good step (perhaps too reliant on police tactics, but to me that's an unclear question, and besides likely now wouldnt be such a problem due to the profound technologies and techniques of power and domination we have since developed), and replacing them with a young generation was good, but there is something wrong here... and I'm not entirely sure what, for it seems even Stalin wasn't above the law (if the stories of his assassination are true). or rather "the state of exception"

But there's that essence of revisionism that makes me think, from where it developed and how could it have been avoided, I'm not entirely sure. The atrocities of World War II? the fear of death that grips the world when it's teetering on ruins? There's something there, where commitment and selflessness warped into self-preservation and fear. Maybe it really was the sceptre of nuclear war that caused them to waver, stemming from a fealty to objective Science. they tried to break this deadlock (rip Lysenko), but ultimately Science wasn't enough, and revolutionary fervor wasn't properly kept aflame. maybe it was this 20th century adherence to Objective science that caused the dispelling of faith, and you had Khruschev promoted on the basis of his background, rather than his revolutionary fervor which would mean his assertions at the UN and against Nixon were bluffs, for truth doesnt need such defense or certain forecasts into the future.

Now the proud Americans are in the same grip! Deeply reactionary, jettisoning faith in Truth, by and large replacing it with faith in greed. How did it happen? the sceptre of nuclear war? when did people truly start living for themselves instead of their brothers and sisters, even if it used to be just limited to their ethnic community, that's no longer the moral law.

probably there is something in state socialism that led to a grave error later down the line, when the revolutionary, internationalist fervor was diminished due to pragmatic real politik in the nuclear bomb age, and no longer did the USSR freely send revolutionaries abroad. maybe Afghanistan was a legitimate struggle, but by then the revolutionary fervor was dead, and it was far too late.

what's dead in libertarians? their brains first of all! But seriously folks, their brains, but also any kind of idea of fairness (in the American sense), because that's exactly what they've grown up in, a Scientific miracle of social darwinism. Fairness only makes sense in the sense of consumption, which is a hallow defeat, not invigorating in the least. now the OWS is trying to reclaim American fairness, and if this country is to survive, that's it's only path. if it survives
#34
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it seems like your making up rules about reality that probably never applied like you think they did
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#36
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that's what i do all the time you ingrate
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Nippon
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hes right. the masses if left to their own devices are mongoloids who worship kim jong il
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Goethestein posted:

hes right. the masses if left to their own devices are mongoloids who worship kim jong il



yeah you gotta bring em up to civilized standards. you arent gonna convince many goat herders to stop sodomizing little boys after 40 years of war or whatever, not just by throwing the book at em

gotta send in cadres to show : baby sloths

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noavbazzer posted:
straight up g move


gotta type it like this, the whitest way: Straight up G-move.

animedad was probated until (April 15, 2012 04:04:23) for this post!