3.  RIGHT WING WHAT?
    by Carl Bussjaeger 
    Exclusive to TLE

I've just finished reading Manuel Miles' rather disturbing article, Right
Wing Anarchy: A Dead End (TLE #179, June 24, 2002). Mr. Miles states that,
in an attempt to learn more about "right wing anarchism", he has
been posting at an "anarcho-capitalist" site.

This is a new one on me. My exposure to right-wingers in the modern
American sense usually shows them as being hawkish, nationalistically
patriotic, and favoring a paternalistic government that makes sure we all
toe some legalistic line - usually laws based on conservative Christian
concepts of sin. That's just a little hard to reconcile with most of the
anarchocapitalists I know. Especially the one I know best; me. More
specifically, while what I am is an individual, I have no problem with
being called an anarchocapitalist, and this right-winger label sure doesn't
stick to me. Perhaps Mr. Miles has a differing
definition of "right wing" that he'd like to share with us.

Or more likely, based upon some of his assertions about anarchocapitalists,
he's merely setting up a straw man argument by starting out with fallacious
assumption that anarchocapitalism is something that clearly is not. He
supports this with characterizations of anarchocapitalists which certainly
don't match my personal experience.

He calls us dilettantes who delight in theory, but abhor practicality.



The hard-core anarchocapitalists whom I know are serious realists. They are
out in the real world everyday making a living, running businesses, and
raising families; all this while operating under basic anarchocapitalistic
principles.

Miles also calls anarchocapitalists, "television watchers" as if
this were automatically something bad. Well, I must admit: I did buy a
television set this year. I even watch it sometimes. But my main objection
to television in general doesn't have anything to do with intellectual
snobbery that relegates television to the unthinking, illiterate masses. I
just consider most programming to be low quality, or focused on topics that
don't interest me.

Or I'm simply too busy doing something practical, like earning a living or
trying to stay free.

Miles also suggests that we're historically ignorant, though he fails to
give any supporting details. Possibly he encountered someone like me, who's
been too busy trying to accomplish something real to have read every single
book, treatise, and essay which he personally has stocked in his ivory
tower. In discussions with people who dismiss anarchocapitalism, I've had
my arguments rejected out of hand, because I backed up my ideas with my own
real world experience, and on-going real world examples, instead of
referencing some obscure Ayn Rand essay. Until libertarian intellectual
elite accept that individuals born in the last 50 years can actually have
original, valid ideas,
libertarianism of any flavor isn't going anywhere.

But historically ignorant? Do some web searches - I suspect you'll come up
with some of my articles on various historical periods. My first nationally
published work, fifteen years ago, was on medieval European politics. Yep,
us dumb anarchocapitalists are an ignorant lot.

Ignorance must be catching. Mr. Miles complains that anarchists don't like
government, when the real problem - to him - is statism. He says we equate
government with statism, when he believes them to differ. A look a
dictionary might help the gentleman. Since - paraphrased from The New
Merriam-Webster - a state is people and /or territory organized under a
government, and government is the political organization that exerts
authority over people in a political unit, the two are pretty much
inseparable. Government is a subset of state, which also includes the
ruled.

And we object to governments because our experience - and that history we
aren't supposed to know about - has shown us that no matter how benign in
original intent, all governments grow and seize more and more power,
authority, control over the people. American is a textbook example of this;
the usurpation of power and shredding of the US Constitution is what
dissuaded me from... call it Constitutional minarchy. Having a nice little
benevolent government is akin to having just been infected with anthrax; it
will get worse. That's the nature of both beasties.

Mr. Miles is unhappy with our supposed ideological bankruptcy. We lack a
fancy, formal statement of principles, eloquently drafted on fine
parchment. Anarchocapitalists do have an ideology., but I'm guessing that
he missed it because he was looking for the wrong thing; he's too busy
trying to shoe-horn everyone into convenient
Republican-Democrat-Libertarian boxes, and decrying anyone who doesn't fit
as invalid, wrong.

Ideology: To quote the title of a friend's book: I just want to be left
alone. Or, as one of my own characters says, "You let me be, and I
won't have to kill you." Not the words of a psychopath; just an
unmistakable statement that we won't put up with coercion. And we believe
that everyone has the right to try to improve their lot in an uncoerced
free market.

That's it. If you want elaborations, speak to any anarchocapitalistic
individual, because beyond that, we all have a few ideas
of our own. We don't think everyone has to march lockstep on every topic to
be an anarchocapitalist. I think it's simple. Apparently Mr. Miles finds it
simplistic.

I find some of his thinking a bit simplistic. He makes the surprising claim
that the free market can only provide goods and services - right so far -
but not protection from fraud and violence. Somehow he fails to make the
mental jump to seeing that protection can be a service. Isn't that what the
police claim to be doing, albeit coercively?

Maybe Mr. Miles needs to take a look in his phone book yellow pages under
"security". Brinks, Pinkerton's et al are in the business of
providing the service of protection. I do it myself on occasion.

But that isn't really a free market. The government police have a gov-
protected monopoly. As a cop, I could carry a gun anywhere. I could shoot a
person in the back as he ran away (it was even in the job description). I
could pull people over and arrest them.

As a private security officer, I might be required to get a license to
operate at all. There was a whole slew of places I couldn't carry any
firearm. If I shot anyone, my weapon would more than likely be confiscated,
and I'd face charges. If I shot someone in the back, the charge would be
murder. If I followed standard police procedures in detaining someone, the
charge would be kidnapping. All this despite the fact that I had more
formal training and experience than the average cop with whom I'd worked.

On the other hand, when private security companies were allowed to operate
in a gov-monopoly free open market they were frighteningly - to would be
criminals - effective. Wells-Fargo and Pinkerton's had impressive
reputations in the nineteenth century West. For that matter, frontier
sheriffs in towns that hadn't been federalized yet, were commonly hired by
voluntary citizens associations. Not governments.

On a personal note, I've never been saved from violence by a cop. I have
saved my own butt a few times. Self defense is a basic biological function.
A rabbit being stalked by a wolf doesn't dial 911; neither should you.

As for national defense, quite aside from the militia concept, and the fact
that the US - for example - has something like forty percent of the
world's supply of small arms (a probably low estimate
based on the silly notion that guns only last twenty years) in the hands of
around one hundred million private individuals - maybe Mr. Miles never
heard of mercenaries. An old historical concept; quite popular in medieval
and Renaissance Italy.

Mr. Miles also ridicules a concept that I know is popular with some
anarchocapitalists, though hardly all of us: Gulching. As in Galt's Gulch.
It's a fun idea that exemplifies the common "leave me alone"
attitude, and demonstrates that unlike some people, if the rest of the
world doesn't want to do things our way, we aren't going to force them.
What the man misses, though, is that we like to discuss it and keep our
options open, but have for now filed it away in the impractical drawer.

Related to gulching is our alleged belief us starry-eyed dreamers think
that if we just went into space, we good establish our anarchocapitalist
Utopia out there somewhere. Whereas us surprisingly practical
anarchocapitalists know darned well that we'll have to be pretty far along
in establishing that utopia here before we'll even be able to make the big
exodus to "out there".

I'm not sure how Mr. Miles managed to lump all anarchocapitalists in with
"Assassination Politics". I'll do some checking, but I'm not
aware that Bell ever claimed to be an anarchocapitalist. And to my mind, as
described, Assassination Politics violates the no-coercion principle, for
me personally exemplified by the Nonaggression Principle.

And then there's Miles' truly peculiar assertion that anarchocapitalists
"Endorse and vote for right wing statists".



I have never heard anyone known to me to be an anarchocapitalist advocate
voting for a "right wing statist". Generally, we don't think too
highly of voting at all. I have heard folks advocate voting to get a right
wing statist out of office. Personally, I don't think
much of the idea; too easy to fall into the mobocracy trap, and it usually
doesn't work. In the US, an incumbent pretty much stays in office as long
as he wants, thanks to the voting laws that incumbents wrote.

Miles claim of our anti-immigrant position is right in there with the
voting claim - in the Twilight Zone. I favor open borders. I've published
articles calling for open borders and immigration. I know others with a
personal interest in - and support of - open borders.

And life bless 'im, the man claims we'll re-institute
feudalism if we let private security companies compete
for the business of private individuals. He offers no examples, but claims
that this is how modern nations got their start. I do hope he'll elaborate.
The closest to this I can see was the effect the Condotteries (mercenaries)
had in Italy. Unfortunately, that makes a poor example because the
mercenaries were hired by city-state governments, paid with the proceeds of
taxation and other forms of theft, and generally used so that the locals
government could keep its own troops available to keep its subjects in
line, while the mercs found new subjects to
tax.

I suppose the idea that, an anarchocapitalist culture once established, the
gov-hating anarchists would then hire Brinks to form a nation-state all
over again is possible. In some alternate reality not
accessible by Confederate broach. But it sure sounds unlikely.

Mr. Miles summarizes by informing us that right wing anarchism - which he
has conveniently, and bizarrely defined as anarchocapitalism - has nothing
to offer libertarians. This is because "At heart, most right wing
anarchists are right wing statists." I have no doubt that having been
completely wrong about everything that anarchocapitalists are, he's wrong
on this. We offer freedom.

Mr. Miles claims that he learned all these fascinatingly fubared facts from
an anarchocapitalist website. I'd love to have the URL, assuming it's even
attached to this planet's Internet. Because what he claims to have seen as
anarchocapitalists there has nothing to do with reality.

For some sites on this world's Internet that are
anarchocapitalistic check out:

Anti-State.com
http://www.Anti-State.com

Doing Freedom! Magazine
http://www.DoingFreedom.com

Liberty Round Table
http://www.LibertyRoundTable.org

or even my own Samizdat (even though some of my old Constitutionalist
tendencies still show) http://members.surfbest.net/Samizdat{at}surfbest.net/

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Copyright 2002 by Carl Bussjaeger. All rights reserved. Permission to
redistribute this article for noncommercial purposes is herewith granted by
the author, provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety,
appropriate credit given, and that the author is informed.(It's an ego
thing; I like to know how far my work gets.)

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