Saturday, January 14, 2012
PoTD
Bloody Shovel with a long bit reminding us that the #1 enemy of tradition (and authority) is capitalism and the free market. I'm pretty sure I come down on the opposite side of most of the questions raised than does the author. For instance...I hate (with a white hot passion) both drill and ritual. But the thought process is right. Now if only the rest of the reactionaries would catch up and realize that tradition and capitalism are incompatible...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
8 comments:
tradition and capitalism are incompatible
But which one has more survival value? Looks to me like people who embrace capitalism go extinct.
Well I cop to "reactionary" at least on alternate Tuesdays, but I've always been pro-capitalist. There are two points to make here.
First, obviously "reactionary" can mean a lot of different things. In the context of 21st century America, I think the most compelling definition is "anti-democracy". Others may differ. Anyway, at least how I see it, there is no tension between capitalism and reaction. To the contrary: there is a huge tension between democracy (in the abstract) and capitalism. Democracy is a particular theory of socialism: de facto, the collective owns everything. Of course our so-called democracies which function are successful because they have huge honking exceptions to where democracy applies. (I.e. they have the concept of human rights; they allow limited private property and thus are fairly capitalistic.) But this does not mitigate the underlying contradiction between the power structure and the property structure. And we see this playing out as the ever-increasing regulatory state.
"Reactionary", by contrast, is locked into no particular theory of the state. (At least not by my definition.) As such, he is able to advocate an actual private property society -- which anarchocapitalism surely is. Neocameralism is also, at least under the assumption that the rulers are not utterly incompetent.
Second point is, although I agree with you and Shovel that there surely is tension between capitalism and tradition, I think there is a decent argument that progressive democracy like we have is far more hostile to tradition than just about anything else.
Leonard,
I think that you're referencing Democracy, when in reality you should be talking about the doctrine of unlimited government: There are no things that aren't the government's business.
Communism did it worse. Fascism did it worse. Saddam's Iraq did it worse, and so did Theocratic Iran. The method by which the decisions get made seems largely a side issue when compared to the question of the scope of government.
I'd say that it's pretty obvious that Democracy contributes to the problem which is unlimited government ... but substantially less so than the doctrines that actually support unlimited government.
RSF,
Every time a pro-Capitalism people has encountered an enemy, the enemy has lost.
I don't see any extinct capitalist peoples...unless you want to argue that the half-billion-ish people, pre-eminence on the world stage, and ownership of two continents by folks of Anglo cultural descent (starting from the 4 million English on an island in Europe in 1500) constitute extinction.
I bet capitalism over tradition in 100 out of 100 contests.
The conquerors of history seem pretty well steeped in tradition, ethnicity, and non-capitalism: Mongols, Tartars, Cossacks, Islamists, Bantus, Chinese.
The Dutch and Portuguese were capitalists on the go. Now they are extinct in comparison to what they once aspired.
I'm thinking capitalists become wealthy, then embrace supra-nationalism and demographic decline. On comes a better trained traditional group, drilled in tribal survival, and replace the gentrified first adopters.
Aretae, you contrast democracy against "doctrines that actually support unlimited government", which is like contrasting a bicycle against wheeled vehicles. Democracy is not limited. American democracy is limited, sort of, but not by the political structure; it is limited only by the continence and good sense of the people, as filtered through the giant committee meeting.
Leonard,
Democracy (qua Democracy -- watch me get all Randian) is a method for choosing laws...not a specification for the scope of those laws.
The modern unlimited government doctrine in democracy is a result of a sequence of erosions of limitations on democracy. In 1900, much less 1800, no one would have imagined the democratic government should have anywhere near this much power.
Yes, yes, public choice, shit rolls downhill, etc.
Unlimited monarchy is no (?? not much ??) better than democracy. Unlimited autocracy is almost universally massively worse than democracy.
My claim is that the core issue is the unlimited government...not the democracy. I'll concede that democracy aids and abets the unlimted government even...but the core problem is the unlimited government.
What we have had (in Angloland) in the past is a limited monarchy, which was great. Then we had an even more limited republic, which was even greater.
Spin. We're talking past each other somewhat.
Yes, democracy is a method of making decisions. (Not even just making laws -- democracy may apply anywhere you have a committee; it means equal voting is used.) But we were discussing making sovereign decisions. So: your use of "law" was correct, since that is what sovereign decisions are.
Now, by definition all sovereigns are unlimited, in a sense. That is, they are limited only by their own constitution. Thus, when we discuss sovereign decisionmaking, to talk about limited government or unlimited government is to discuss the constitution of the state. If it limits the state, then you have limited government. If it doesn't, you have unlimited government.
Incidentally, this discussion of limited or unlimited government can be reframed as private property versus state property.
Anyway, when I look at democracy (or any state structure) I find myself asking: OK, what's stopping this state from banning alcohol? What's stopping this state from demanding political officers be empaneled into all corporate boards?
That's why I don't find it very useful to discuss "monarchy" or "autocracy". These are very broad; there may well be institutions within "autocracy" that limit it. For example historical monarchy was limited for a long time, for basically technological reasons. Centralized control simply was not possible.
Anarchocapitalism is a design for actual limited government. Sovereignty is abolished.
Neocameralism is a design for a state (that is, unlimited government) that voluntarily limits itself. The limiting factor is the greed of the shareholders. The greed is ensured in the long run by making shares salable.
I am not aware of any other designs that are limited in the long run. Democracy is, as you say, probably the best of a bad lot. At least in democracy popular things will be left private. Monarchy or autocracy you can't even rely on that, although on the other hand at least theoretically there is the possibility of responsible governance that is absent in democracy.
Post a Comment