It was a huge, damn near Earth shattering decision, but after giving it some thought I decided to change the label in the blog description from "market anarchist" to "individualist anarchist." Why?
The single biggest reason has to be my affinity for historical individualist anarchism, and its analysis of contemporary "capitalism" as a statist system of plunder and exploitation. Essays such as this and this and this (among others) gradually pushed my perspective back "leftward" after thinking about them for some time.
Now I realize that the reason it took me so long to return to a more "leftist" perspective of market anarchism wasn't so much the arguments (many of which I've always agree with), but the behavior of self-identified left-libertarians. Seriously, I'd go to forums like Mises and every thread would like this:
Guy #1: I like the free market.
Left-libertarian: That sounds like a bunch of VULGAR LIBERTARIAN twaddle to me! I suppose you support CAPITALISM, don’t you, you fascist paleoconservative?
Guy #1: Huh? All I said was I like the free market.
Left-libertarian: Spoken like a true VULGAR LIBERTARIAN. When I smashed a CAPITALIST window yesterday, I thought of how badly it would hurt the RICH and their state-built HIERARCHIES which you coddle!
Guy #1: Uh..ok. I’m guessing you define capitalism differently?
Left-libertarian: I define capitalism as YOUR FACE, you homophobic little BITCH! Huzzah!
Ok, so that’s a huge exaggeration (not sure how that “huzzah” got in there), but you get my point. At some point it just got repetitive and fucking tiresome, so I put a lot of effort into trying to piss these people off. Just ask Freeman—that dude still hates me ;)
The steam has now finally been let out, so I’m back to my old bag of tricks…both in the “clumsily chasing tail” department and the “left-libertarian” department.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still don’t believe in the normative labor theory of value, and so I’m still (politically) Rothbardian. I still think anarcho-communism is asinine. I still oppose the statist left, and I'm still viciously anti-collectivist. I still think smashing random windows is stupid.
Nonetheless, it's about time that label was simply changed to "individualist anarchist."
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2 comments:
Welcome back to the leftist side. :)
My views are pretty much the same in regards to what a market anarchist economy would look like and I don't really buy LTV or the mutualist views on land ownership.
Thanks Rorshak!
I plan to put up my thoughts on the employer-employee relationship (when it's authoritarian, when it isn't) some time in the next week to clarify things. I also don't think the LTV or occ-and-use land views are necessary.
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