In practical terms, either the government holds absolute power, or big business and the financial sector hold absolute power.
Forget about liberal and libertarian daydreaming - in practice, our only options are;
1. Statist authoritarianism,or
2. The tyranny of capital.Fort Russ — Op-ed
Russia's traditional political authoritarianism has always prevented scenario #2. Russia has oligarchs and former oligarchs, but their property-rights have never been treated as sacrosanct by the state. This is a key point - whether we're discussing Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, or present-day Russia, Russian society has never seen property-rights as morally axiomatic, or as central to its conception of freedom.
Russians have a much deeper conception of "freedom" - building a conception of freedom around a principle like "property-rights" would seem absurdly trivial to them.
And apart from its absurd triviality, it should be obvious to anyone, whether they were Russian or not, that building a conception of "freedom" around property-rights would mean freedom only for the rich.
Anybody who wasn't deliberately obtuse would see that.
The Irish Crimean: Lack of 'capital tyranny' as basis of Russophobia
Padraig Joseph McGrath - "The Irish Crimean"
Good points, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteAnglo-American liberalism posits a "natural" right to private property as the basis of freedom.
ReplyDeleteThose that disagree with this POV are considered "the enemy."
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ReplyDeleteI've said here in the past that there is something wrong with 'property rights'. Well, everything has a good side and a bad side. So we want our homes and our little it of land to be ours and that's good, but what if we live in a resource rich country where everything of value is owned by foreigners? What if the owners of all the resources had made their enormous wealth a few centuries back out of the slave trade? What if they could borrow money from banks that created the money or of nothing?
ReplyDeleteSo borrow the money from a bank that creates the money out of nothing and buy up all the oil wells in a country, and as you make a profit you pay back all the bankers. Play your cards right, and that can't be too difficult, and with all your wealth you can but up the oil wells in another countries too, and so on, because as you become richer you can buy more. It's a game of Monopoly where in the end a handful of people get to own everything and their children become the self perpetuating rich and they praise the virtues of capitalism.
This might not be too bad if there was fairness, but the peasants in some countries don't own any of the fertile land either and so they look through fences and railings and see thousands of acres of land with cattle grazing on which will become hamburgers in Western takeaways. Guards protect the land with rifles and the children of the poor in mineral scavenge on the dumps. They might ask, how did someone get to own all the land which was once freely given by God?
I think many if not most liberals would say that ownership of property is a right but it is not absolute. Nor are "the big three" — life, liberty and property — the only factors or even the guiding factors.
ReplyDeleteMost modern liberals subscribe to an extended view of human right and civil liberties and acknowledge that these rights can come into conflict and need to be harmonized through compromise.
They also recognize that there is no genuine freedom without corresponding responsibility and that responsibility is both individual and social.
Good points, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteAgree.
From the article: And apart from its absurd triviality, it should be obvious to anyone, whether they were Russian or not, that building a conception of "freedom" around property-rights would mean freedom only for the rich.
Which, if we’re being honest, was precisely the situation in the early days of the Republic when only those with land could vote. How to keep the Darkies and other deplorables out.
Those that disagree with this POV are considered "the enemy."
Yip.
They also recognize that there is no genuine freedom without corresponding responsibility and that responsibility is both individual and social.
The Greeks, in their definition of democracy, had a word for those who would only recognize individual responsibility, and said fukkit to their equal social responsibility (a la Ayn Rand): idiote.
Although, by the same token, the Greeks only conferred civic status on the privileged class, which is probably where our Founding Fathers eager to protect their smuggling and other dollars got it from.
ReplyDeleteElites always rule since they hold the levers of power and control. They need workers to produce stuff for them and cannon fodder to fight their wars.
ReplyDeleteThis is why the development of technology is the only way to get beyond this other than Jacobinism, and that didn't work out so well after the French Revolution either.
Capitalism will have to fulfill its positive potential before being replaced. That potential is to reduce the need for work in production through scaling technological involution while making war impractical owing to mutually assured destruction.
The problem is that capitalism has considerable negative potential, too.
From the article: This is a key point - whether we're discussing Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, or present-day Russia, Russian society has never seen property-rights as morally axiomatic, or as central to its conception of freedom.
ReplyDeleteWhich is probably why Putin chased Khodorkovsky across Europe in 2003 to get the Yukos shares and property back for the Russian people, and prevent him selling them to Cheney’s secret oil gang. Interesting to note that Jacob de Rothschild (who was to be part of that share purchase) managed Khodorkovsky’s holdings while he was in jail.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI liked a comment that Skidelsky made in an interview somewhere. Roughly he said that both Keynes and Marx agreed that capitalism is necessary to bring us out of the tunnel of necessity into the sunlight of abundance—Skidelsky claimed in this same interview that the whole of economics is based on the concept of scarcity. He said BOTH Keynes and Marx acknowledged that UTOPIA was after capitalism, not outside capitalism.
Right. Progress.
ReplyDeleteNo, Tom. Change in values.
ReplyDelete