[P2P-F] Libertarians

Wed Oct 19 03:15:38 CEST 2011

On 19/10/11 00:58, Natalie Golovin wrote:
>  You can’t throw away thousands
> of years of civilizations’ attempt to codify property and human
> rights&  obligations.

In the moment you support the federal United States of America or any of 
its states or their respective constituencies, you throw away thousands 
of years of native livelihoods, property relations and traditions on the 
continent - in favour of an elitist European colony gone rogue, i.e. 
"independent", in the name of freedom, liberty and whatever other terms 
are bandied about to conceal a "keep your hands off of my stash" attitude.

As always, whose freedom? Whose liberty? Freedom from what? To what? All 
of these terms are entirely dependent on a definition that can only be 
manifested through practices - else, as you suggested about equaliberty, 
it would be a mathematical/abstract idea removed from social relations 
and thus determining them like a despotic government would do, indeed, 
is required to do - and as such freedom and all that stuff must 
necessarily be measured in empathy, solidarity and that sort of thing, 
in aesthetics coupled with environmental justice (i.e that it is not 
always the poor, coloured, whatever who live where the industrial 
contamination is, for instance, and not always the indigenous people who 
live where the grave cost of resources for the industrial machine are 
really paid and so on) - not empty words spoken by the 
white/western/urban elites.

Borders are the ultimate constructions of abstraction and you might find 
interesting stories about how maps and cadastral maps - borders internal 
to and surronding sovereign territories - were required to throw away 
thousands of years of property rights and associated cultural 
traditions/customs - this appears in the work of James Scott, recently 
referred to on this list. Also in Wolf's "Europe and the people without 
history", but you can find social history in many other sources. 
Linebaugh's work on the Magna Carta comes to mind, which is an 
extraordinary effort to extend the history of the modern world back into 
the 1200s, thus revealing the processes through which the obliteration 
of customary property relations (covering rights to food, fuel and 
building materials, i.e. the capacity to reproduce autonomously, or, as 
it were: real/lived libertarianism) unfolded and created a new universe 
of abstract nonsense on stilts that you now defend and have the temerity 
to proclaim as having its roots in time immemorial.

The problem with your philosophy, then, to speak bluntly, is that your 
baseline, your "ground zero" - to use a popular term across the pond - 
is already exploitative and racist: premised on the last 4-800 years of 
white expansion and supremacy. That apart (and removal of any human 
decency and empathy beyond race and borders, i.e. historical 
knowledge/understanding/information not written by the winners), and I 
would sign up for Ron Paul, too. Alas, you both live in an entirely 
different universe, - all in the name of freedom, liberty etc. and with 
good intentions, I am sure, but..

-mp/

-- 
NOT sent from a flippin' "smart"phone - 'cause I like birds...