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Sarokrae comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong
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Upvoted for "left-libertarian whig marxism"
That's Ken MacLeod, isn't it?
Don't tell me that that ideology, which I invented specifically to sound ridiculous, is actually HELD by somebody!
The phrase he uses himself is "libertarian Trotskyist", but I don't think I can insert so much as a cigarette paper between that and "left-libertarian whig marxism". But no doubt the real left-libertarian whig marxists would castigate him as a splitter.
He's a writer of hard SF; this is his blog.
Do those words actually have meanings?
Certainly they do. A Marxist is someone who identifies with the doctrines expounded by Marx, a Trotskyist the same regarding Trotsky (let them fight among themselves over exactly what those doctrines are), a Whig (nowadays) is someone who interprets history as the march of progress towards the present enlightened dispensation, a libertarian is one who regards personal liberty as a fundamental value and government as no more than a very doubtful means of its protection, and "left" means generally favouring collective organisation and distribution of production over personal creativity, initiative, and capture of the value one creates.
Whether they still mean anything when jammed together by a random political affiliation generator is another matter. Personally, I'm not sure why Ken MacLeod's head hasn't exploded yet.
Ah, OK. I knew Marxism, but I was under the impression that "Whig" was a political party of some kind and "left-libertarian" just sounded meaningless.
Is that regarding libertarians? 'Cause in the general population it just seems to mean "liberal".
Only in the American interpretation of the word "liberal", which is at odds to how it is used both in most of the world (British Commonwealth, Europe, etc.) and historically.
I'm ... not American.
Europe!"liberal" means "strongly for economic freedom, weakly for social regulation", so pretty much right-wing. US!"liberal" means "for economic regulation, strongly for social freedom", so totally left-wing.
"The version of left-libertarianism defended by contemporary theorists like Vallentyne, Steiner, Otsuka, van Parijs, and Ellerman features a strong commitment to personal liberty—embracing the libertarian premise that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership—and an egalitarian view of natural resources, holding that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of resources to the detriment of others.[17] On this view, unappropriated natural resources are either unowned or owned in common, believing that private appropriation is only legitimate if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if private appropriation is taxed to compensate those who are excluded from natural resources. This position is articulated in self-conscious contrast to the position of other libertarians who argue for a (characteristically labor-based) right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as land.[18"
I said it sounded meaningless, and from context I had assumed it was deliberately so. That's why I was surprised to learn that it was an actual political philosophy. Read the grandparent.
I don't see how they propose the complex organization necessary for ensuring resources are only appropriated appropriately without severely compromising personal rights and liberties.
One way would be to drive notions of proper appropriation (under whatever scheme) into cultural background as folk knowledge, so the "complex organization" is diffused among individuals rather than being externalized as a state apparatus. In other words, someone making an illegitimate property claim under this regime would not be suppressed by force, but instead mocked and not taken seriously, in the manner of someone who today claims to own the air you're breathing or the idea of birthdays. Only if they resort to force against others would there be a problem.
Then I gues they just have to use redistributive taxation to iron out the consequences of a necesarily inappropriate distribution of resources.
With the magic of economics.
BTW, left-libertarian is a retronym -- libertarian capitalists started to label themselves as libertarian about a century later than libertarian socialists did.
I see there's actually a Wikipedia article on "left-libertarianism" and another on "libertarian socialism". On skimming them, "libertarian" in that context appears to mean having everything controlled by a democratic government to which everyone voluntarily submits. Democratic totalitarianism, in other words. "Liberty" is the freedom to do anything permitted by the other words that "libertarian" is yoked to.
?! I gotta see this!
Oh, wait, nevermind:
I think you may have misunderstood the way "socialist" was being used there.
They talk about the elimination of the state, and in the same breath (or at least the same Wiki article) of collective ownership of the means of production. The idea seems to be that it isn't a "state" when it's Us, only when it's Them. Since it's Us, and therefore good and right, everyone will voluntarily agree to it. Anyone who does not is Bad, and therefore not one of Us, but one of Them. Liberty is liberty to do anything that is right, that is, to agree with Us. You can have anything you like, and do anything you like, as long as it's what We think you ought to have and do. We are truly democratic, since everyone voluntarily supports Us, but They are undemocratic, even if They have elected government, because if They had truly democratic government They would be organised like Us.
But this is politics.