The Propertarians

Capitalist reality

Since its establishment capitalists have identified two key elements of class power: mobilization of public opinion and control of the State. The masters of capital have taught the working class a priceless lesson. You will not get what you want unless you mobilize in order to capture State power, i.e. power to turn the State into one whose dominant objective is to further the interests of the working population. It’s not impossible; it only looks that way. To secure class interests the goal is a political one.

At no point in history was capitalism able to operate "profitably" without first committing a massive theft of resources. In England this was termed The Enclosures and began when the wealthy wanted to export wool to Spain. They enclosed the commons where the peasantry traditionally could obtain wood and water and grow subsistence crops. This process continued and was repeated many times. The conquest of the Americas and Australasia can be interpreted as the greatest enclosure in human history. The Enclosures tells us: Private wealth comes from the enclosure of the common wealth via state intervention on the side of the incipient capitalist class. In other words, state sanctioned robbery for private benefit. The state is not a neutral actor. David Harvey calls this process "accumulation by dispossession." It goes on today all the time. Capital has always needed and used the state to fix the process in their favor and to murder and remove inconvenient people impeding the process of (as Marx termed it) primitive accumulation.

Knowing this is important when debating the right libertarians (or propertarians) about capitalism. Libertarians claim that what we have today is a form of corrupted capitalism. We just need to get the "state out of the way." We just need to get back the "genuine" capitalism of yore. But history shows us that that corruption was enabled by the state and christened the dawn of the capitalist era. The role of the state is key to the profitability of capital. There is no uncorrupted capitalist past to go back to. The modern day propertarian libertarians represent the interests of small capital, that is, the petit bourgeoisie. This pretty much explains their ideology. They oppose the power of big capital and its control over the state (that's where their program seems to coalesce with the reformist left). But their program is attached to a capitalism that never existed. It has never been the case that small capital was hegemonic. It is big capital that makes the rules by which the small capitalist plays. The libertarians use the language of "freedom" and "liberty" and individual entrepreneurship to build an ideological framework to build a mass base for what is really a reactionary program. They want a share of the action that big business enjoys. We are a cooperative species, living in communities and with complex social relationships. "Running our own lives" as a proposed response to social issues is the problem and can never be the solution.



It is true that with class societies such as slavery and feudalism, we were severely exploited and once capitalism emerged we became “free,” - free of what allowed us to live, land and tools. To survive, we were forced to become wage laborers.  In capitalism our capacity to work thus became a commodity, something bought and sold. The buyers, our employers, owned this capacity just as they owned the buildings, and like any privately owned property, the owners were legally free to use our labor power as they saw fit.

Our bosses hired managers who had one goal — to see to it that their companies made as much money as possible. Then the capitalists took the profits and expanded their businesses. To make these things happen, they did whatever they could to convert as much of our labor power as possible into actual work effort. Capitalists herded us into factories, so that they could watch us and make sure we worked with due diligence for as long as possible each day. Factory whistles told us when to begin and when to end our daily labors; failure to obey their commanding sounds resulted in us being disciplined or fired. The managers who observed us discovered that dividing tasks into simpler details made us more efficient. Why not, they reasoned, assign different workers to each detail, and in this way economize on skilled labor and lower the overall cost of producing a pair of shoes, a straight pin, or a piece of meat. When they had to, they hired women and children to do the least skilled jobs; they got the kids from orphanages when we wouldn’t send our children into the dark, satanic mills. Repetitive detail work lent itself to the introduction of machinery. Soon series of mechanically connected machines were  configured into assembly lines. These controlled more completely the pace and intensity of our work. In Karl Marx’s famous words, we became “appendages to the machines.”

The great capitalists organized the markets in which we toiled so that core firms—automobile manufacturing plants, for example—were surrounded by parts supplier plants—such as those producing automobile steering assemblies. The supplier companies delivered the parts “just-in-time,” that is, only when needed by the core companies, thus saving money on inventories, storage space, and, most importantly, our labor. Employers also used modern electronic technology and the enormous pool of underutilized labor worldwide to offshore and outsource as much production as possible to places with lower wages. They used their tremendous political power to get governments to do their bidding: through laws, subsidies, tax breaks, and austerity measures that raised our economic insecurity.

 Capitalists use whatever legal and political entities they can bend to their will. The powers of the U.S. government and most state governments are bought. This is also true for most governments in the world and those that don't knuckle under are subject to military attack carried out by state power; the  government provides public and private thugs for capitalist enforcement actions. Capitalism lives on exploitation, destroys in order to expand endlessly and devours mindlessly anything in its path in order to grow without bounds. Socialists challenge those who deny the existence of an economic class division. We are fundamentally and increasingly a world divided between haves and have-nots. We have resisted control when we could. But whether we did or not, our work became ever more controlled and stressful.

Market fundamentalists and their army of supporters, in a political system hijacked by big money and corporations, cloak their interests in an appeal to “common sense,” doing everything possible to deny climate change, massive inequalities, the militarization of everyday life and the corruption of civic culture by a consumerist and celebrity-driven advertising machine. The financial elite, the 1 percent and the hedge fund sharks have become the highest-paid magicians in America. They perform social magic by making the structures and power relations of racism, inequality, homelessness, poverty and environmental degradation disappear. They employ deception by seizing upon a stripped-down language of choice, freedom, enterprise and self-reliance - all of which works to personalize responsibility, collapse social problems into private troubles and reconfigure the claims for social and economic justice on the part of workers, poor minorities of color, women and young people as a species of individual complaint. It substitutes shared responsibilities. It creates isolated individuals who live in gated communities. A legion of consumer citizens to engage in a survival-of-the fittest ritual in order to climb heartlessly up the ladder of capitalism, worried only about their personal safety, on one hand, and their stock portfolios on the other. .

The class struggle now becomes a live-for-oneself mentality, of a narrow and selfish responsibility only for oneself. When injustice become obscured by a explanations of individual failure they are no longer the objects of compassion, but of scorn and derision. It renders invisible poor people along with others marginalized by class and race. The Occupy movement and other social movements are challenging many of these anti-democratic and anti-intellectual forces. Ideas are not empty gestures. Ideas provide a crucial foundation for assessing our collective strengths. Ideas offer us the opportunity to think and act , to cross over into new lines of inquiry and take new positions, without standing still. Capitalist apologists do not work with ideas, but sound bites. They don’t engage in debates; they simply present unsubstantiated opinion.

The Occupy movement showed it is time to initiate a campaign in which reason can be reclaimed, truth defended and education connected to social change. There has never been a more important time in history to proclaim the importance of communal responsibility and to shift from a democracy of ill-informed consumers to a democracy of informed citizens. When the apologists of capitalism defend the privileged, isolated, removed and individualized interests of those who decry the social and communal responsibility as a pathology, then socialists must ensure their work and actions ensure power is democratized and our collective class values trump the elites private interests.

 Paul and son

How easy it is to fall into the same trap as we often criticise the mainstream media for for ie accepting their re-definition of words. Check out the history of the political meaning of "Libertarian"

Ron Paul, and his son, Rand Paul are NOT libertarians, no matter how often they or others make the claim. To be clear and to use the correct terminology the Pauls are propertarians.

Individualists or Right Libertarians (propertarians) attack socialism because they fear the whole of the wealth of society shall be owned by a number of persons incorporated into a State or a bureaucracy, instead of being, as at present, owned by private individuals. They maintain that the right of the individual is supreme, and condemns any action on the part of a State or collection of individuals, that interferes with your desires. But socialists are not statists, that if the working class was compelled to work for a State instead of for individual employers then wage-slavery is not abolished, but is intensified. The worker to-day, while compelled to work for an employer, still has some sort of a choice among those masters, but with the State as the only employer he is compelled to work for that employer and under all of that employer’s conditions, or take the only other alternative – starvation. State-capitalism (or as some like to call it state-socialism) would intensify slavery, but state- capitalism is not socialism.

Right-"libertarians" are not interested in eliminating capitalist private property nor the authority, oppression and exploitation which goes with it. They make an idol of private property and claim to defend "absolute" and "unrestricted" property rights. In particular, taxation and theft are among the greatest evils possible as they involve coercion against "justly held" property. They call for an end to the state, not because they are concerned about the restrictions of liberty experienced by workers and tenants but because they wish capitalists and landlords not to be bothered by legal restrictions on what they can and cannot do on their property.

Noam Chomsky argues that right-wing "libertarianism" has "no objection to tyranny as long as it is private tyranny....if you have unbridled capitalism, you will have all kinds of authority: you will have extreme authority."
Again  Chomsky put it: "Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else."

Chomsky explains "Consider, for example, the [right-'libertarian'] 'entitlement theory of justice' . . . according to this theory, a person has a right to whatever he has acquired by means that are just. If, by luck or labour or ingenuity, a person acquires such and such, then he is entitled to keep it and dispose of it as he wills, and a just society will not infringe on this right. One can easily determine where such a principle might lead. It is entirely possible that by legitimate means -- say, luck supplemented by contractual arrangements 'freely undertaken' under pressure of need -- one person might gain control of the necessities of life. Others are then free to sell themselves to this person as slaves, if he is willing to accept them. Otherwise, they are free to perish. Without extra question-begging conditions, the society is just.The argument has all the merits of a proof that 2 + 2 = 5 "

Paul's support for "free market" capitalism ignores the impact of wealth and power on the nature and outcome of individual decisions within the market. This can be seen in the argument of Paul's influence Ayn Rand - "Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state -- and nothing else!".

Right-"libertarians" ignore the vast number of authoritarian social relationships that exist in capitalist society. The right-"libertarian," then, far from being a defender of freedom, is in fact a defender of certain forms of authority. To defend the "freedom" of property owners is to defend authority and privilege.

Right-"libertarianism" is unconcerned about any form of equality except "equality of rights". This blinds them to the realities of life; in particular, the impact of economic and social power on individuals within society and the social relationships of domination they create. Individuals may be "equal" before the law and in rights, but they may not be free due to the influence of social inequality, the relationships it creates and how it affects the law and the ability of the oppressed to use it. Without social equality, individual freedom is so restricted that it becomes a mockery (essentially limiting freedom of the majority to choosing which master will govern them rather than being free).

In the Paul's "libertarian" world there would be no National Insurance, no Social Security, no National Health Service, nothing corresponding to the Poor Laws; there would be no public safety-nets at all. It would be a rigorously competitive society: work, beg or die.

Emma Goldman's rightly attacked that "rugged individualism" expoused by Paul "which is only a masked attempt to repress and defeat the individual and his individuality. So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by classes by means of trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit . . . That corrupt and perverse 'individualism' is the strait-jacket of individuality . . . This 'rugged individualism' has inevitably resulted in the greatest modern slavery, the crassest class distinctions . . . 'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen' . . .and in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as . . . evil in the name of that same individualism."

Common ground? The socialist opposition to wage labour was shared by the pro-slavery advocates in the Confederacy. The latter opposed wage labour as being worse than its chattel form because, it was argued, the owner had an incentive to look after his property during both good and bad times while the wage worker was left to starve during the latter. This argument does not place them in the socialist camp any more than socialist opposition to wage labour made them supporters of slavery. As such, right-"libertarian" opposition to the state should not be confused with anarchist and real-libertarian opposition. The former opposes it because it restricts capitalist power, profits and property while the latter opposes it because it is a bulwark of all three. Therefore it is no coincidence that Ron Paul try to limit the definition of "libertarian" purely to opposition to the state or government.

As Anatole France said which reflects Ron Paul's philosophy "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

"Ron Paul's little known bill, the We the People Act...clearly, is an attempt to block national redress of state tyranny. It makes it possible for individual states to create their own little theocracies, while it prevents anyone from taking this to an authority beyond those individual states. Obvious abuses come to mind and strike this reader as a return to pre-Civil War days, when "states rights" was an excuse to continue the practice of slavery. I find it an incredibly dangerous piece of legislation, and indicative of the mindset of Ron Paul. Indicative of the con game he's been playing as well. Champion of civil rights and civil liberties? Not if "states rights" trump them." (see here)

Bruce Wolman  blogs "...While Paul's anti-war stances and liberalism can attract adherents, if he were to become President those positions wouldn't necessarily have the consequences many supporters might think. Let's say Paul becomes President and does reduce US militarism, foreign interventionism, eliminate Federal drug laws, etc. His States Rights position would allow states to pick up the slack in all of these areas. From my reading of Paul, the Federal Government would stop supporting Israel, but he would have not hinder New York and California cutting their own deals with the Israelis if the states so chose...While US military aid would end, US defense corporations could sell their wares abroad without government control or intervention. While the Federal Government would restrict its own violations of civil liberties, the states would be able to run their own affairs and corporations would be without regulation or interference of their fundamental right to use their property and capital as they saw fit, including spending on political involvement. One of the reasons Christian extremists are attracted to Paul despite his libertarian positions is that they believe his states rights priority would allow them to regulate private behavior on the state level..."

One comment of the above explains that under the constitution "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded" Trade such as arms though is something different.

As individul economies California has a similar GDP as France. Texas’ economy compares to that of Canada. Florida is comparable to South Korea. Illinois – Mexico New Jersey – Russia Ohio – Australia New York – Brazil Pennsylvania – Netherlands Georgia – Switzerland North Carolina – Sweden.

The bottom 10 states are Delaware – Romania Utah – Peru New Hampshire – Bangladesh Maine – Morocco Rhode Island – Vietnam South Dakota – Croatia Montana – Tunisia North Dakota – Ecuador – Belarus Vermont – Dominican Republic Wyoming – Uzbekistan

Historically, state governments were some of the biggest supporters of the vilest discrimination in the United States. Federal laws were necessary because racist state politicians and local police were murdering, harassing and oppressing people in a regular and systematic fashion based solely on their race.

Q: But you would decriminalize it [drug laws]?
Ron Paul: I would, at the federal level. I don’t have control over the states.

"So all of you who believe that Ron Paul would release the millions incarcerated for the victimless crime of using drugs should realize that he would only release those held in federal prisons. If you're locked up in the State Penitentiary, he sympathizes, but thinks that States have a perfect right to do it. The total federal prison population in 2010 was around 200,000 people while the state and local prison population was about 1.5 million. Paul says there's nothing he can do about the latter and wouldn't dream of telling those states what they should and shouldn't do. That's his principle, not freeing the victims of the drug war."

"Just because you break up state power into fifty entities instead of one, it doesn't make their infringements on liberty ok, does it? On a philosophical and ideological level, libertarians should be clear that infringements of people's rights should never be subject to the whims of the state --- whether it's Hawaii or the United States of America. So why doesn't Ron Paul say this? He defends states' rights to infringe on individual liberty as being under the Constitution but what he's really defending are the Articles of Confederation. This isn't libertarianism. It's "tentherism" disguised as libertarianism. (see here)

 A tentherist is the constitutional theory that early twentieth century justices wielded to protect monopolies and strip workers of their right to organize.

He can also be described as a throw-back.

"Libertarians who believe that "statism" is ok if comes from state of California but not the US government are not only living in the early 19th century, they are basically saying that their only real beef is if the government abridging individual freedom is the federal government. Tyranny on a smaller scale isn't their concern. And that isn't liberal or libertarian. It's just plain old antebellum era American politics -- which is what Ron Paul truly believes when you see his positions on issue after issue. The antebellum south is where his philosophy really comes from --- and where it leads"

Historically, state governments were some of the biggest supporters of the vilest discrimination in the United States.
"Paul's Christian Reconstructionist friends, seek the destruction of the federal government for the opportunity to implement "God's law" on earth. Ron Paul seeks to shrink the federal government to minimal size not because it intrudes in the lives of individuals, but because it stands in the way of allowing the states and localities to enact laws as they see fit -- even laws that govern people's behavior in their bedrooms."

"WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.
PAUL: Technically, they are.…
WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal to, and we had to reverse that.
That's interesting because Paul's philosophy really says that the constitution doesn't have the authority to declare slavery illegal..."

Many do not endorse all of Ron Paul's views and policies, yet by not saying anything critical of those and preferring to simply ignore them, becoming complicit in a cover-up.

Obama/Paul - Repeating mistakes

The fact that our class enemies fall out amongst themselves over what they consider the better policy in their overall interest does not mean we support them. Genuine libertarian communists are vehemently anti-capitalist, but we do not support the Establishment, or Leninists and Trotskyists, nor the fascist so-called anti-capitalists. We do not employ the same arguments as other Republicans or the pro-Obama parties, nor the mainstream media against Ron Paul.

A vote for Ron Paul is vote for capitalism and the illusion that capitalism can change its spots. Capitalism is in the end an ideology; everything it does, all of its workings, all of it is a human product, constructed in the minds of humans, and obeyed because it presents itself as the natural law, as the real world, and the realm of the possible. Money itself is the example par excellence of ideology at work; it is a sign, an idea, used to cover up the contradictions in property society. Money presents itself as the natural and only way of dealing with property relations, and as a socially neutral object, and not as a way of controlling poverty and inequality in favour of a small minority, which it really is. To fail to reveal the ideology, to de-mystify and explain it, means to remain within it.

Many “anti-capitalist” personalities have indeed in the past urged people to support one of the two main capitalist parties, the Democrats, on the grounds that they are a “lesser evil” compared with the Republicans. Now they insist the lesser evil is to vote for is Ron Paul. The socialist response is straightforward. If you want to get somewhere, aim for that destination directly, rather than going on detours and trusting that you will eventually, by however roundabout a route, arrive at where you want to be.

I do not deny that in some ways or in some situations it may be better to have Ron Paul rather than Obama in the White House. After all, isn’t it worthwhile just to reduce, even if not eliminate, the probability of an attack on Iran? In that case, helping them into office does ward off a greater evil. But only in the short term. For once in office, Paul would come under irresistible pressure from his capitalist masters to break his “populist” promises, to disappoint, disillusion and betray the people who placed their trust and hope in him. Some capitalist politicians are totally subservient to the oil, gas, and coal corporations and recklessly oblivious to the looming danger. In their hands we are doomed. Other capitalist politicians are a little less subservient, show a limited awareness of the situation, and try to do something to mitigate it. Something, but much less than is absolutely essential. In their hands we are still doomed. Hoping that Ron Pauo will behave differently is a utopian – expectation. Any politician who tries to run capitalism gets his hands grubby, as a matter of course, in what is a very dirty business.

The main difference between them is Paul admits to being a swine, Obama lies about it!!

It is good that so many of Obama’s followers are disillusioned. It seems, though, that many of those who describe themselves as disillusioned are accusing Obama of breaking his promises, rather than blaming themselves for falling prey to a naïve illusion. The idea that Obama has broken his promises can only seem valid to those who – against all the evidence he himself provided – fashioned an image of him as the country’s progressive saviour

Obama made no secret during his election campaign of his “moderate” political outlook. A central theme of his campaign, in fact, was the need for bi-partisanism to counter the trend towards politics becoming too “ideological”. Those who now criticize Obama for being yet another spineless Democrat were not paying adequate attention to the statements he made during the campaign. Obama made no secret of his deeply-held principle of never sticking to any principle. He has never claimed to be anything but a “pragmatist”, which is a nicer way of saying “opportunist”. Obama has not budged from his belief that the solutions to the problems plaguing the United States can be found lying in the middle of the political road, so to speak, just waiting to be picked up. This is the belief he wrote about back in 2006, and his policies in office have been based on it.

There was, of course, that promise Obama made about bringing about some sort of change. Things have changed – just not for the better. He left many Bush Administration policies intact; and even his healthcare reform that leaves the parasitic insurance companies in place and even presents them with opportunities for expansion.

“I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised…I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military…"

Yet how can Obama be blamed for all those false expectations? The signs that Obama was more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing were there.

His views on foreign policy, for example, an area where the views of the “anti-war” candidate Obama were thought to differ sharply from the hawkish approach of Hillary Clinton (now his Secretary of State!), not to mention the belligerent policies of Bush and McCain. Obama made it perfectly clear in The Audacity of Hope that he would deploy US troops when necessary, because “like it or not, if we want to make American more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure”. Rather than rejecting Bush’s absurd and counter-productive “war on terrorism”, Obama wrote that “the challenge will involve putting boots on the ground in ungoverned hostile regions where terrorists thrive”. And lest the reader imagine that such military force would only be used in retaliation, Obama claims that “we have the right to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat to our security”. It is something of a mystery how Obama managed to convince so many that he was a foreign policy “dove” while at the same time publishing such views.

Few of his thoughts are in harmony with the views of his leftwing supporters, who worked so hard to get him elected. People went from the naïve view that Bush is the root of all evil to the equally simplistic idea that Obama could uproot that evil. And now we have a sense of disillusionment due to the persistence of deep-rooted problems despite the election of Obama. Yet the idea that Obama has betrayed us is based on the initial illusion that he could rescue us from problems that are deeply rooted in capitalism itself. This notion, in turn, is no different from the superficial idea that those problems arose from Bush’s stupidity or mendacity. It is pointless to transform Obama from a saviour into a new scapegoat.

The Socialist Standard wrote at the time of his election:
"If Obama apologists think President Obama will put a halt to the blood letting they are going to be sorely disappointed. Make no mistake; whilst the left are fond of castigating Republicans as the masters of war, the truth is that historically the Democrats have started far more wars than the GOP. More recently, under the last Democrat to hold office, President Clinton, one million Iraqis are said to have died under US enforced sanctions, 500, 000 of them children. Sorties over Iraq were flown every single day Clinton was in power. Yugoslavia was mercilessly bombed and a much needed pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was bombed on the pretext that it was manufacturing Chemical weapons, and villages in Afghanistan were flattened because Bin-Laden was presumed to be living there. And who could forget the US invasion of Somalia, with troops storming the beaches live on prime time TV!...Not only is Obama incapable of ushering in significant change, bar a few miserly reforms, but neither is there anyone he can bring to his administration capable of bringing the change that was so promised in his election campaign for no other reason that changers do not get confirmed by the Senate. There exist quite influential interest groups – the AIPAC, the military security complex, Wall Street etc to hinder the advancement of such undesirables The hope many have in Obama to implement policies that will benefit the class that matters is misplaced. His political rawness means he will be manipulated by more experienced advisers, little different from the neo-cons, maybe even key figures from the Bush administration, and pressured by a corporate elite who funded his victory to execute policies that fit in with their own agenda.

The outcome of US elections carries one truth: namely that whichever candidate becomes president, he has but one remit once in office – to further the interests of the US corporate elite.It’s just not a feasible option for any newly elected president to entertain any idea other than guaranteeing a safe playing field for the domestic profit machine and doing what’s needed to try to ensure the US maintains its global hegemonic status "

Now it is Paul who is providing illusion that one single politician can transform a rotten social system.

St Paul
People are attracted to Ron and Rand Paul because they appear to be  against wars of intevention, for drug legalization, hands off the internet, etc. and then they swallow the pill and think they hold the key to 'righting' the economy with his gold standard ideas. Why are so many leftists offering sympathy to Ron Paul , a free-market capitalist, right-wing pseudo-libertarian? The ONLY things they have in common is some degree of anti-government sentiment and an anti-war position. Opposition to the state might sound pretty good, but the Libertarian anti-state position is based on a blind faith in the free market. They argue that the benevolent forces of the market economy are curbed by the centralised power of the state, which results in a curtailment of individual liberty. Libertarianism states that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy. If libertarians are serious about liberty, and truly want to live under a state-less system where peace then they must end capitalism, whose invisible hand has been slapping all of us around and pushing us to slay each other.

Today in the United States, Ron Paul seeks to abolish what little services the state still provides for its poor, hungry, and dispossessed. These services were paid for in sweat and blood by activists who aimed to alleviate the stress and misery of poverty for the American working class. Although against reformism we cannot deny the reality that certain reforms such as an eight-hour work-day or welfare assistance help those who cannot endure the nature of our survival-of-the-fittest capitalist state. Social and welfare services which have been forced upon the elite and conceded to the working class during the New Deal and the Great Society, amongst other epochs cannot be written off as unimportant. Militant labour fought for concessions. Poor people now have social programs. Ron Paul's visions are nothing more than the resurrected dreams of robber barons past. He may be against state authority, but it is inconsistent to oppose tyranny in the public sphere of government and leave it unaddressed in the private sphere of work. It is to simply trade one slavemaster for another.

The logic goes something like this: Free-market capitalism on its own would naturally lead to a world of personal freedom and economic prosperity, but this is thwarted by the power of the state, an organism that grows robustly at times of war. Hence, war must be opposed not only because of its own obvious evils, but as a way to drive back the power of the state which is standing in the way of a better life. For Libertarians capitalism is an inherently peaceful system. They ridicule the idea that there is a connection between the nature of capitalism and the wars that constantly break out under it. In the Libertarian’s mind, capitalism is—or should be—a world made up of enterprising capitalists, minding their own business(es) and interacting peacefully, without any need for the state to intervene in these affairs or for wars to be waged overseas. Here we are basically dealing with the viewpoint of the individual capitalist, particularly the small-scale one, who experiences the state as an unpleasant institution that appropriates his hard-earned wealth through taxation, sometimes to pay for wars that bring him no direct benefit. Remove this alien force, he reasons, and life would immediately be much rosier. The “liberty” that Libertarians wax so philosophical about is the freedom of this economic actor to chase after his profit in peace. Ron Paul feels that capitalism can somehow behave more rationally than it does. This Libertarian view of the benevolent nature of a market economy is a selective one. Their focus is on exchange, as a mutually beneficial act. This is a real “win-win” situation, where I give you my widget and get your gadget in return. The reality is quite the opposite. What is left out, however, are some of the strikingly war-like aspects of a capitalist economy, starting first and foremost with the cut-throat competition that goes on in the pursuit of profit. Nor do they dwell on the class divisions inherent to such a system and the conflict that that results. Never minding the fact that profits are squeezed out of workers, thus depriving them of their own personal liberty!

The state and the wars it wages may seem a complete waste of taxpayer money to the individual capitalist (and to the Libertarian who translates his blinkered viewpoint into a grand philosophy), but things look a bit different if we consider the capitalist class as a whole. Like any ruling class throughout history, the minority capitalist class needs the state, as an apparatus of coercion, to maintain its grip on power. And in addition to this age-old function of the state, a capitalist state is also necessary as a means of coordinating the diverse interests of individual capitalists in order to represent their collective interests as capitalists. The example of banking alone shows how deregulation may benefit a tiny stratum of capitalists at the expense of their bourgeois brethren who have to purchase exorbitant or shoddy products. Given this twin-necessity for the state—as policeman and mediating judge—the more far-sighted or financially more comfortable capitalists view the taxes directed to the state apparatus as money well spent. Libertarians, in short, loathe the state without understanding why it must exist and play certain roles under their cherished capitalist system.

And the same shallowness characterizes their view of war, which is fervently opposed without an understanding of its root causes. Tensions between nations are always present over shifts in political allegiances between countries that may benefit some better than others. Global politics is a macrocosm of the local economy, with each company vying to get as much of the business as it can, such as trade, material resources and opportunities for future economic growth. Capitalism, as already noted, generates its own war-like behaviour at home, where capitalists will go to any lengths to vanquish the enemy (i.e. competitors). We may find this behaviour deplorable from the standpoint of human decency, but it does have its own necessity. And there is a similar capitalist logic at play when nation-states jostle and throttle each other for access to markets and resources, despite such behaviour being the height of idiocy from the perspective of humanity as a whole.

Noam Chomsky has said of Ron Paul "He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages..."

Ron Paul wants to abolish "The Fed", the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, a critic of “fractional reserve banking” , as well as an advocate of a return to a gold-backed currency. If Paul had his way, the Fed would no longer manage the issue of the currency. This would pass to the Treasury Department which would only be allowed to issue paper money if it had the equivalent value of gold in Fort Knox. This would be a further absurd waste of resources as much more gold would have to be mined – just to store in places like Fort Knox. Paul thinks that a return to a gold-based currency would eliminate crises such as in the 1930s and today. This is an illusion. There was a gold-based currency up until WWI, yet crises occurred regularly, including a Great Depression in the 1880s and a hundred years ago the same sort of banking crises as today. Capitalism goes through its boom/slump cycle whatever the currency. No monetary reform can change that.

Money originated as a commodity, i.e. something produced by labour that had its own value, which evolved to be the commodity that could be exchanged for any other commodity in amounts equal to the value of the other commodity. Various things have served as the money-commodity, but in the end gold (and silver) was almost universally adopted. Being rare (i.e. requiring more labour to find and extract from nature, so concentrating much value in a small amount), and it was divisible and so easily coined as well as long lasting. As capitalism developed it was found that gold itself did not have to circulate, but that paper notes could substitute for it as long as those accepting or holding it could be sure that they could always change them for gold. Up until WWI in most countries the currency was gold coins and paper notes convertible into gold. The Great Depression of the 1930s led to the major capitalist countries abandoning this convertibility. Since then the currency nearly everywhere has been inconvertible paper notes. With an inconvertible paper currency, the amount of money is no longer fixed automatically by the level of economic transactions, nor is there any limit to the amount of paper currency that can be issued. It is this that Paul objects to because, if the central bank issues more paper money than the amount of gold that would otherwise be needed, then the result will be a depreciation of the currency; the paper money will come to represent a smaller amount of gold with the result that prices generally will rise.

The gold standard was put into effect in the U.S. after the American Civil War. The gold standard in the U.S. was implemented due to demands from Wall Street financiers. they had financed the Union Army based on paper money. They wanted to be able to redeem the debt in dollars worth more than what they provided by tying the dollar to gold, and this would cause deflation, thus raising the value of their dollar-denominated debt. But the effect of this was to restrict growth in the money supply which was to drive down farm commodity prices, impoverishing farmers and driving a huge number of people off the land. That was because, as productivity in agriculture and industry in the U.S. grew in the late 19th century and early 20th century, growth in the money supply didn't follow suit. This led to a constant deflationary tendency. as farmers could get less and less per unit of output, they were unable to pay their debts.

In that era credit in general was extremely scarce. for example, until after World War II, it was hard to get house mortgages in the U.S. Typically you could only get a mortgage for a short period. Consumer credit only really developed in the '20s. This is relevant to the issue of the money supply because expansion of credit expands the money supply. Individualist Anarchists in the US in the 19th century spent a lot of time attacking the gold standard as it allowed the banks to charge extremely high interest as it restricted the money supply. Of course, in practice, banks used lots of techniques to increase the supply to make more profits, of course, but it was a key means of restricting working class access to capital -- which was essential to proletarianise a mostly artisan/peasant (i.e., pre-capitalist) society.

Nor was the deflationary effect necessarily a good thing for workers in the late 19th century. Falling commodity prices meant that employers also were under pressure to cut wages, which they did. It was wage-cutting that provoked the Great Rebellion, the railway strike, of 1877. Recessions/depressions tend to reduce worker bargaining power, and the late 19th century was subject to continual recessionary tendencies, with a big depression in the 1870s and again in the 1890s.

In reality there is no particular reason to tie money to gold. The right-libertarian types such as Ron Paul like gold because the idea is to have control of the money supply independent of the state. Paul cannot be called a currency crank as he has a correct understanding of what causes inflation and his solution would work to stop it, if that what was wanted, even if it would be unnecessary, pointless and a waste of resources.

Ron Paul is not our friend. He is not our ally. He is not fighting for us. If our goal is the eradication of capitalism, then supporting Ron Paul is just completely delusional.

Ron Paul wants to go back to a gold-based currency. The right-"libertarian" types like to return to the gold standard because the idea is to have control of the money supply independent of the state. But the financial industry will itself create money, and in ways that can lead to dangerous crashes. Paul has a correct understanding of what causes inflation and his solution would work to stop it, if that what was wanted. ( Nor has he been a lone maverick voice. Even in 1974 Rees-Mogg of the Times was urging a return to the gold standard). Some politicians and economists are now urging a return to the nineteenth century gold standard in order to get rid of inflation. The amount of notes and coins in circulation in Britain has increased from around 450 million in 1938 to over 19,000 million in 1996, much more than would have been needed because of increases in production and trade. Workers will still of course be faced with the wide range of difficulties the failed policy of "more money" was supposed to help cure in the first place.

It only needs to add that getting rid of inflation is not the answer. Capitalism without inflation, as in the nineteenth century, no more solves working class problems than does capitalism with inflation. Since the U.S. dropped the gold standard in 1971, the price of gold has risen tenfold. But consumer prices have risen only two and a half times (In recent years Paul’s view has been modified to peg currency value to a market basket mixture of commodities in place of simply gold). If the U.S. had instituted a full gold standard in 1971, the result would have been the worst deflation since the Great Depression. Deflation isn't necessarily a good thing for workers. Falling commodity prices mean that employers are under pressure to cut wages, which they did in previous deflationary years. It was wage-cutting that provoked the Great Rebellion, the railway strike, of 1877. Recessions/depressions tend to reduce worker bargaining power. Wages shrank by a quarter in the 1870s and in some industrial states like Pennsylvania by 50 percent.

Ron Paul thinks that a return to a gold-based currency would eliminate crises such as in the 1930s and today. This is an illusion. There was a gold-based currency up until WWI, yet crises occurred regularly, including a Great Depression in the 1880s and similar banking crises as today. The National Bureau of Economic Research lists 12 recessions totaling 312 months out of the 588 months from 1865 through 1914. Moreover, it was a period of frequent financial crises. There were at least seven national banking panics, with some banks failing and many others suspending withdrawals and payments of checks for some period. Capitalism goes through its boom/slump cycle whatever the basis of the currency. No monetary reform can change that. Socialists have no nostalgia for the Gold Standard. While this may have both advantages and disadvantages to the capitalists as an international trading system revolutionary socialists are only interested in the abolition of all the defining characteristics of the capitalist economy (wages, capital, prices, money, etc) including the paraphernalia of international trade. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism - to go back to the gold standard - but in establishing socialism.

A general who ruled Brazil in the 1970s once said "The economy is doing well, but the people are doing badly." That is a pretty good description of capitalism.

AJJ