Re: Socialism & Libertarianism

J. Maxwell Legg (income@ihug.co.nz)
Fri, 30 Oct 1998 00:04:54 +1300

Ian Goddard wrote:
>
> At 09:56 AM 10/29/98 +1300, J. Maxwell Legg wrote:
>
> >> IAN: In fact, it stands to reason that "socialist
> >> transhumanism" would be "compulsory transhumanism,"
> >> because a socialist plan is government implemented
> >> and thus compulsory, and therefore the libertarian
> >> ethic is the definitionally anti-Nazi >H policy;
> >> and as such, the libertarian ethic is the only
> >> policy compatible with ethical transhumanism.
> >>
> >
> >excerpt from "Isn't libertarian socialism an oxymoron?"
> >
> >http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secI1.html
> >
> >So what does socialism mean? And is it compatible with
> >libertarian ideals? Webster's New International Dictionary
> >defines a libertarian as "One who holds to the doctrine
> >of free will; also, one who upholds the principles of
> >liberty, esp. individual liberty of thought and action."
> >
> >According to the American Heritage Dictionary "socialism"
> >is "a social system in which the producers possess both
> >political power and the means of producing and distributing
> >goods." This definition fits neatly with the implications
> >of the word "libertarian" indicated above. In fact, it
> >shows that socialism is necessarily libertarian, not statist.
>
> IAN: The definition of socialism cited observes
> by default that consumers have been deprived of
> political power -- which is held by producers --
> and that consumers have been taken out of the con-
> trol of the distribution of goods; which is exactly
> the case in the socialist, but not libertarian, state.
>
> We can also observe that a definition of libertarianism
> need only note that * individuals * have political power,
> not that one social subset, such as producers, had power.
> What is more, the idea that producers have power in the
> socialist state is false, the central planners have it.
>

Ian, what seems evident here is that argument by selective definition is not enough and cannot persuade parties. In this thread, for example, others would say that politics is about forging and changing coalitions and that this definition seems to negate the ability of any individual from having or creating political power without the involvement of others, as you implied.

There is this problem with general discourse in a way that likely even a Platonist would agree that written language is about not being able to come to agreement and in fact is more about missing perspectives. What I would hope eventually to see is a collective internet rendering of presentations that is something even bolder than what crit.org can do. I'd like to eventually see an elevation of subject matter on the basis of subjective evaluations of features where, by using say e.g., floating radio buttons in a sidebar to the subject area, to enable a scoring of features so that neural net patterns and/or markov-like chains could be developed and forever remain open to revision. Such an eventual global valuation of everything via the net is what I foresee. Because my software development is in this field, this is my expectation of libertarian socialism.

Until this demarchy is a reality I feel it is a pity to contribute a wasteful writing of replies to email posts that disappear into a nothingness of biased meanings.