(October 14, 2011 at 5:14 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote:True, but you're just talking about two different kinds of communism. You can have a communist society that is to say a communist government, you can have a fair and democratically elected communist government (theoretically), or a governmentless communist society.Quote:The term "communist" might be distasteful for the 'left libertarians" but that sounds to be essentially what it is.Yes it is, seeing that historically communists have opposed us 100%. Communism is authoritarian. They FORCE you into the commune. Syndicalists (left libs) create co-opts. Communists consider free speach, in the words of Lenin, to be a "bourgeois superstition". Syndicalists consider free speech to be the most important factor of humanity. Communists create a state wide commune. Syndicalists oppose such concepts as "the state", and they oppose any type of "authority".
Although the term tends to be affiliated with authoritarianism, a 'left libertarian paradise' would seem to be something along the lines of a community that has all but completely eliminated money and government, outside of a few necessary functions and everything done is done for the community at large.
The term applies more to economics than level of governmetn control.
What you're thinking of is basically a fascist communist society and another one that basically discards government entirely.
It's much more a description of a society that's based on helping the community and that old saying 'to each according to need" than it is about how much or little control the government has.
The "Right" libertarian society can be fascist without government at all - it would just be fascism by corperate ownership than government overreach. For example - how companies in the Phillipines (or one of the other asian countries) essentially own slaves by keeping hteir employees paid in 'slave wages' - sort of what would happen in the US if minimum wage were eliminated (which is why I imagine so many companies push for it to be abolished.)
But the short of it is that what you are describing is a sort of communism - a society based upon communal living instead of the more darwinian capitalism of right-libertarianism.
(Though in my opinion, they would both fail for a number of reaons.)
(October 14, 2011 at 5:14 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote:Quote:This doesn't sound like the ideal society to me, however, as much of the progress humanity has made philisophically, technologically, and so forth are a direct or indirect result of many of the things a "Left Libertarian" society would eliminate. It also seems incompatible with large and very large populatoins that are literally dependant upon large-scale organisation brought about by powerful governments and corperations.Although syndicalism is an Ideal, and even considered an "Idealism", in no way do its adherents consider it a "Utopia". It will have its problems, and it does. In no way would a left libertarian society eliminate technology, philosophy, or other such things. Syndicalism, as i have said before, is a co-opt of individuals with no state authority above them. This means, if anything, that individual freedom and creativity will be enhanced... not eliminated. Syndicalism has been implemented in many different time frames and many different countries, most especially in Spain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci...el_Trabajo
But what you suggest can also be applied to most other forms of govt. You may as well say that democracy is incompatable with a large amount of people, as there will be no way that everyones voice or vote will be met.
I didn't say that it would eliminate technology, but the reason that the US and societies like it (several european countries, china, and so forth) and one of the better results of capitalism is the kind of progress that it can bring. When you know it'll benefit you greatly, you can bring together scores of people who wouldn't normally work together (and may even hate one another or have other reasons to work against one another) to found new industries, invent radically new technologies, invent new medical techniques, and so many more.
NASA, the computer, atomic energy, cell phones, and all of those things came into being and became widespread because - whether it was the government or a private company or even an indivdual who took out a loan from the bank - have all been able to thrust humanity's technological progress forward substantially and suddenly.
Every major civiilization that we would consider advanced have had societies closer to the sort of nation that modern nations are than any like the communal tribal societies that native americans or tribal african nations have ever been able to accomplish.
It's not to say that these societies can't have creative individuals, but without a large support structure and the kinds of massive engineering projects that strong governemnts and companies can throw around to build things like skyscrapers, city-wide water and sewage systems, space agencies, GPS systems, and so on, I have major doubts that a society that eliminates government and money will have a society anywhere near the ability to support so many people (because of hte infrastructure necessary to distribute food, power, and provide roads and power lines.)
THat's just the tip of it all.
A democracy can build this because it can concentrate money from taxes and companies with profit to build large-scale factories, distribution centers, and grocery stores that you just don't see and have never really seen in any place that ascribes to that style of communal living.
Even the kind of libertarian society that exists to the right (the right-libertarians) can at least have that kind of forward progress because - despite the kind of inherant corruption that unfettered capitalism can have (leading to fascism) it still can gather all that capital and build whatever it needs to keep things moving forward and to look for the next best thing.
I just don't see that happening in a left-libertarian society.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan