While I think the state should own natural recourses I believe your average factory or company should maybe be worker-operated. Would that stop the harmful practices of capitalism?

Thank you for the question.

There are many ways to mitigate the harmful practices of capitalism. There have been the injections of socialist ideals into mixed economies (you can read more about this here: How Socialist Contributions to Civil Society Saved Capitalism From Itself). There have been left-anarchist experiments — see List of anarchist communities - Wikipedia. There have been authoritarian communist experiments (U.S.S.R., China, etc.) which have drawn a lot of criticism, mainly because they haven’t been very democratic, and have been equally exploitative — a sort of “state capitalism” run amok. There have also been what Elinor Ostrom called “common pool resource management” arrangements that have worked well for managing the commons (see Ostrom Design Principles). And there have been many additional proposals as well that offer an alternative political economy (here is my own: L e v e l - 7 Overview).

In many of these experiments, some combination of worker-ownership (of the means of production) and public ownership of natural resources (e.g. the commons) have been in play. The challenge, though, is that when these systems are competing with capitalism — or embedded inside global capitalism and subjugated to it — the negative externalities of the global capitalist system are still wreaking havoc on people’s lives, on the environment, and on the planet as a whole. Growth-dependent industrial capitalism is simply too caustic and destructive to continue at such a large scale.

I personally am not a fan of “statist” solutions (see graphic below), and would rather see democratic institutions thrive in a more horizontally collective way. Any concentrations of power end up also concentrating wealth and privilege…that is just how humans get corrupted. Without strong democratic institutions participating in all decisions — at every level — there will always be those who game the system to their own advantage, and to the detriment of everyone else. So diffusion of power and diffusion of wealth must go hand-in-hand (this is why right-libertarian solutions will never work, and why statist governments tend to get “captured” by special interests).

The last issue is that of private property itself, which tends to undermine both personal and collective liberty, and a strong civil society. I’ll offer two essays regarding this:

Private Property as Violence: Why Proprietarian Systems are Incompatible with the Non-Aggression Principle

and

The Goldilocks Zone of Integral Liberty: A Proposed Method of Differentiating Verifiable Free Will from Countervailing Illusions of Freedom

I hope this was helpful.

What is your stance on people with mental illness, that are a danger to themselves and others, refusing to take their medication?

First, I think this speaks directly to the fundamental failures of both a medical system focused on profit, and the diseases of consumerist society that externalizes is agency and happiness into commercialized dependencies (on technology, pharmaceuticals, titillating self-distractions, self-medicating behaviors, etc.). Not only can we lay the epidemic levels of unhappiness at the feet of these causes, but also the horrific mishandling and counterproductive treatment of both serious and debilitating genetic or epigenetic psychological disorders (bipolar disorder, various personality disorders, schizophrenia, etc.) and what we could describe as more environmentally exacerbated or triggered conditions (PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc.). For-profit medicine and a culture of commoditized well-being have been disastrous amplifiers of mental illness in the modern world. To understand these impacts, check out:

1) Reviewing the Evidence for Mental Illness Being Epigenetic,

2) Epigenetics, Stress, and Their Potential Impact on Brain Network Function: A Focus on the Schizophrenia Diatheses, and

3) Consumerism and Well-Being in India and the UK: Identity Projection and Emotion Regulation as Underlying Psychological Processes.

So part of the answer to this question is addressing those underlying amplifiers: if we attenuate or eliminate these causal factors, there will be less mental illness in society — both in terms of stress-induced phenotypical expression of genetic disease, and crippling cognitive behavioral responses to stress. The principles of what is basically a preventative approach to mental illness have been demonstrated by a number of success stories. Check out 'Care BnB'- the town where mentally ill people lodge with locals and Soteria (psychiatric treatment) - Wikipedia, both of which essentially replace a transactional, commercialized model of treatment with a relational, community-centric one.

In addition, in my own L e v e l - 7 proposals, access to mental health resources is treated the same way as access to physical health resources: it’s integral to civil society and part of a “Universal Social Backbone” available to everyone without cost.

This is similar to a left-libertarian approach to criminality in society: by reducing the incentives to criminal activity, diffusing and reversing dysfunctional cultural norms that promote violence and coercion (including, and perhaps most especially, the concept of private property — see Private Property as Violence: Why Proprietarian Systems are Incompatible with the Non-Aggression Principle), and strengthening community-centric civil society at the same time, we may not be able to eliminate criminal behavior altogether, but we can greatly reduce it to the point where enduring interpersonal relationships and strong expectations of prosociality have a greater regulatory effect than policing ever could.

That said, the issues of personal agency and selfhood are also at the center of this question. I lean in the direction of personal agency trumping societal or institutional impositions of will. At the same time, I have a right-libertarian friend who was institutionalized and medicated under a 5150 (involuntary psychiatric commitment here in California), after planning and nearly executing his own suicide. I helped him through that time and afterward, and he has been thriving ever since and has been very grateful that others intervened as they did. He had been on the wrong medication (another consequence of a profit-driven medical system) that worsened his depression, but during his 5150 stay he received much more competent assessment and a much better treatment plan. Even as a lifelong libertarian, he has no problem with his involuntary commitment, because he knows he was not in his right mind at that time. In such cases, sanity is a more critical standard than agency, even (by most accounts) according to the perspective of the personal deemed “insane.”

My 2 cents.

Instead of a stateless world, why don't anarchists think that a small government is enough, like libertarianism or minarchism?

The question behind your question is, I think, really about hierarchies and the abuse of those hierarchies via concentrations of power. Once a hierarchy is in place, it just tends to be abused to accumulate power, and then either used for direct oppression and exploitation, or becomes corrupted/captured — as with crony capitalism, clientism, etc. So all traditional forms of left-anarchism and left-libertarianism (which are the same thing btw) have sought to minimize hierarchies, and replace them with diffusions of power — direct democracy, nested councils, subsidiarity, and other form of highly distributed self-governance — and diffusions of wealth (i.e. no private property rights, the commons, public ownership, etc.). There are many historic and present day examples of such left-libertarian experiments, all of which have worked pretty well.

Right-libertarianism, on the other hand, creates inadvertent hierarchies by allowing corporations, monopolies, and concentrations of private property ownership and wealth that ultimately behave just like State institutions (in terms of capacity for oppression and exploitation). Which is likely why there aren’t as many right-libertarian real-world examples — and certainly none on a large scale.

Now even when the objective is to avoid hierarchy and potential tyranny, some left-libertarian and right-libertarian proposals have included minarchist systems. The idea is to create dual systems of power that check-and-balance each other. And we actually see such dual systems working fairly well, even where the State is large — such as in the semi-direct democracy of Switzerland. Really, all that matters is that a political economy be designed so that power and wealth cannot concentrate anywhere, and will always be countered by democratic will.

One such hybrid option is my own L e v e l - 7 proposal. Eventually, the goal would be to attenuate the power of whatever vestigial State is left in place to coordinate things like infrastructure, technology standards, essential goods and services, etc., while strengthening direct democracy and localized civic institutions. But guarding against concentrations of power will, I suspect, always be a perpetual concern…..

My 2 cents.

What books are good starting points for studying leftist libertarianism, socialist libertarianism and libertarian Marxism?

Thanks for the question. There are many excellent ones. Here are a few I would recommend as starters, listed in the order I think would be helpful:

An Anarchist FAQ

Demanding the Impossible - Peter Marshall

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice - William Godwin

The Ecology of Freedom - Murray Bookchin

The Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin

David Graeber - Debt: The First 5,000 Years

What is Property - Pierre Proudhon

My 2 cents.

Is now the time that the world could potentially drop money entirely and spontaneously collaborate and share without coercion? What can be done to help trigger this?

Thanks for the question.

First, that’s already happening. Established movements/practices like P2P and Open Source, for example, as well as the democratization of knowledge and creative sharing via the Internet, and efforts to return economies to a commons-centric model. The “trigger” has simply been the desire to create and collaborate, while sidestepping an obsession with ownership and profit, often with very specific and pragmatic ends (in the real world). So in both the digital realm, and the material realm, “spontaneously collaborating and sharing without coercion” is a fait accompli.

In terms of expanding just these two approaches, efforts are underway. Check out the P2P Foundation, Creative Commons, http://commonstransition.org and of course Wikipedia.

In terms of “how we get there,” well, certainly educating ourselves (and helping educate others) about the current models is an important part of the mix — and, perhaps more than that, creating a positive vision around them. At the same time, encouraging folks to question the destructive aspects of capitalism is also important — to help them recognize that we do, in fact, need to change our systems and philosophy of production and distribution in order to survive as a species.

There are also forms of activism that can help “trigger” a change. I cover some of those here: L e v e l - 7 Action. There is a lot to take in on that web page, but the essential idea is a multi-pronged approach to change that addresses many different levels and arenas of engagements. Please consider spending some time there and following the links to more in-depth discussions of many topics.

In a very real sense, the current COVID-19 pandemic may help folks reevaluate the inherent flaws of our global economic system, and perhaps consider some of these alternatives.

I hope this was helpful.

What do you, as an anarcho-socialist, think of the notion propagated by right-wing libertarians that taxation is theft imposed by the government on citizens?

This has always been a pretty humorous issue to my thinking, mainly because of the source — and because it’s part of a pattern. Consider what’s really going on here:

- Extracting natural resources from the planet — which is really held in common and belongs to everyone — and then selling them for private profit isn’t theft…but taxes are.

- Exploiting workers — their time, their effort, their creativity — in order to, once again, accumulate private profit that is not shared with those workers isn’t theft…but taxes are.

- Property ownership (think of patents or land ownership in particular) that excludes everyone from using or sharing in the benefits of that property — even if the property isn’t being used at all by its owner — isn’t theft…but taxes are.

Using services provided by the government, but not paying for them, isn’t theft…but taxes are.

Can you see the pattern here? It’s really a sort of childish, selfish, whiny entitlement — and it is utterly hypocritical, along the lines of “everyone else should have to pay ME for things I think are important, but that same standard shouldn’t apply to ME…I should not have to pay others for something just because THEY think it is important…”

This mindset embraces an utterly perverse and unworkable conception of freedom, a la adolescent pseudophilosophies like that of Ayn Rand. Why is it unworkable? Because it corrodes the prosocial foundations of civil society itself, where we collectively and democratically agree to limit our own selfishness, acquisitiveness and self-indulgence for the sake of societal stability and collective thriving. We relax I/Me/Mine for the good of All. That’s what adulthood looks like.

Of course, if enough folks don’t agree to given tax, and want to vote it out of existence, they can do that. But that means — in the context of the State — that they will need to give up something in return. A protection, a privilege, or possibly a perceived right. Not appreciating this leads to…well…soaring deficits.

My 2 cents.

Does libertarianism require a higher than average level of social capital in order to work on a large scale?

Thanks for the question Olga. First, I would qualify “higher than average” to be relative to what we have now…which is a fairly broken and meager social interconnectivity. Things like social media (and communications media and technology) have tended to supplant real relations, and created an increasing poverty of social capital — at least that which transcends mere “relationships of convenience” or tribal conformance.

With that said, right-libertarians tend to idealize contractual, voluntary, individualistic relations that do not require social capital to function. Social agreement, sure…but not any complex interdependent social networks…no. Right-libertarian arrangements would still benefit from social capital…but it isn’t a prerequisite IMO.

Left-libertarians, on the other hand, tend to view social relations (usually at the community level, and in a horizontally collectivist sense) as a key component of effective governing of the commons, and are less reliant on contractual obligations. So left-libertarian proposals definitely would benefit from “higher than average social capital” to function well…and really as a prerequisite.

Again…this is all relative to the current paucity of social capital in Western cultures.

My 2 cents.

How would you convince socialists to become libertarian?

Thanks for the question John. I had to chuckle a bit when I saw this question…

The main challenge in any conversation — persuasive or otherwise — is that everyone share the same definitions of terms. If they don’t it will be impossible to communicate. In other words, we need to synchronize our knowledgbase. In this case, the terms “libertarian” and “socialist” have very broad definitions, and there is no better example of that than the fact that several answers so far confidently assert that it is “impossible” to persuade socialists to become libertarians, while at the same time I myself (along with countless others in the present day and throughout history) am a libertarian socialist. So there’s the source of the chuckling. Ha.

Unfortunately, there are a number of barriers to education and subsequent knowledgeable synchronization. One is ideological resistance (we might call this “willful ignorance” that bubbles up from deeply cherished beliefs). Another is subjection to years of misinformation and propaganda. Another is a simple desire to avoid embarrassment when someone discovers their own mistaken understanding. Another is ego — just ‘wanting to be right,’ because that is very important to some people’s self-concept. There are other barriers, but these seem fairly common.

So how do we approach these barriers or mitigate them? First, although it’s fairly rare to do this successfully in today’s sociopolitical landscape, offering some educational resources may spark curiosity and willingness to be educated in some people. Sometimes just asking a person if they are interested in learning about X or Y can open that door. To that end, a person could be offered some or all of the following resources:

1) Watching a few of the plentiful videos of Noam Chomsky discussing socialism, liberalism, capitalism, libertarianism, and the language and history around these ideas. Here is one:

https://youtu.be/Qc6AgXVNNsY

2) Reading up on the history of anarchism, libertarian socialism and anarcho-capitalism in books like Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible.

3) Appreciating how right-libertarianism (that is, capitalistic libertarianism) developed as a uniquely American flavor of libertarianism (via Mencken, Rothbard, Nozick, Mises, et al — there is a fairly good overview here: Right-libertarianism - Wikipedia), and how it was then entirely coopted by neoliberalism (see L7 Neoliberalism)

4) Appreciating just how pervasive, corrosive and distorted right-wing propaganda has become. Brock’s book Blinded by the Right might be helpful in this regard, and a Harvard study on how propaganda shaped the 2016 election can be found here: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstre...

In any case, that’s a start. A person’s response to this initial exposure and education will help determine next steps. Are they surprised by what they learn? Are they willing to admit the extent of their own ignorance? Do they turn to poorly informed, knee-jerk polemics, ad hominem attacks or name-calling to reject the information? Do they express a thirst for additional information? How to handle each of these responses is a separate and often challenging question in itself.

I hope this was helpful.

Why isn't libertarian socialism more popular?

IMO there are three potent reasons for this situation….

1. Libertarian socialism is a well-rounded ideology that countervails every aspect of the current status quo. In other words, it inherently opposes neoliberalism, market fundamentalism, crony-capitalism, conspicuous consumption, economic materialism, individualism, atomism, egotism, etc. As such, it is anathema to nearly all corporate-controlled media, habituated consumer dependencies, apathetic and plutocratically captured democratic processes, and the economic patterns and civic institutions that concentrate wealth and oligarchic power.

2. The term “libertarian” has been coopted by anarcho-capitalists in the U.S., who in turn have consistently been manipulated to serve a neoliberal agenda (i.e. Koch brothers capturing the Tea Party, Friedman and Mises pretending to be libertarian, etc.). At the same time, the Red Scare rhetoric after both World Wars has poisoned American attitudes about “socialism” to the extent that most Americans don’t know they live in a partly-socialized country (i.e. a “mixed economy”). As a result, the term “libertarian socialism” strikes many Americans as confusing or contradictory…the achievement of over a century of propaganda.

3. Some libertarian socialist ideas can be difficult to explain in a sound bite; there are no libertarian socialist equivalents of “free markets!” or “no more taxes!” or “get out the vote!” or “equality now!”

Why isn’t Noam Chomsky ever interviewed on any mainstream media outlet? Why don’t high school students in the U.S. learn about the successful libertarian socialist enclaves that once existed in Spain or the Ukraine? Why isn’t what’s happening right now in Rojava avidly debated in either mainstream media or on college campuses? Well because these realities threaten the lucrative status quo…and we can’t have that, can we?

My 2 cents.

Does libertarianism lead to social darwinism?

I’m left-libertarian so I’m not a fan of Mises or anarcho-capitalism. In fact I think capitalism, private property and unregulated market environments are pretty destructive to civil society on the whole, and individual liberty in particular. But that’s another discussion. Because this question seems to be targeting right-libertarian thinking, it’s only fair for me to say I’m answering from a perspective that is critical of that end of the libertarian spectrum….

So to answer this question as amended to read “right-libertarianism:” Yes, absolutely right-libertarianism promotes a form of social darwinism. The reason is that right-libertarianism celebrates the profit motive, which inevitably encourages the following selective characteristics:

1. The lowest-common-denominator of I/Me/Mine moral function, where individualistic economic materialism subjugates prosocial traits to grubby egotism and acquisitiveness.

2. The toddlerization of consumers into perpetual dependence on unhealthy commercial products and services.

3. De facto wage-slavery (albeit contractual and voluntary) that likewise disrupts self-sufficiency and personal growth.

4. Multi-generationally amplified cognitive stupefaction via inherited concentrations of private property and wealth.

5. A persistent isolation and atomization of the individual that disrupts psychosocial well-being, interpersonal relationships, cultural capacities and skillfulness, and (ultimately) evolutionary advantages through group selection.

6. Disregard for any other externalities of commercial production (environmental pollution, stress-related illness, decreasing food quality, poor socialization, etc.) *that have a demonstrated negative epigenetic impact*.

Over time, the amplification of such characteristics through the market dynamics, products and services inherent to profit-centric owner-shareholder enterprise models will inevitably decimate the human species. It’s already happening, and the only current bulwark against a steepening downward spiral is regulatory oversight…which is also failing. As the State can never adequately react to the fluid and persistent energies of the profit motive (or worse, succumbs to its capture), this will always be a losing battle; the organs of the State are simply too cumbersome, while rent-seeking is a wily and pernicious viper. That is, unless and until: All enterprise submits to worker self-management, community level oversight, and daily democratic controls; all resources are freed of private ownership and returned to the commons; and profit is redefined to support civil society rather than undermine it. If not, humanity is doomed to become dumber, less healthy, and more ethically incompetent with each generation. There can still be competition and indeed limited markets in a left-libertarian world, but those mechanisms will be subjected to the collectively agreed upon priorities of civil society - instead of the other way around as things are today. Essentially, then, market fundamentalism has to go the way of all other forms of fundamentalism to avoid any new mutations of feudalism that can degrade our genome.

My 2 cents.

From Quora: https://www.quora.com/Does-libertarianism-lead-to-social-darwinism-1/answer/T-Collins-Logan

What are the criticisms against market socialism?


Here’s the thing: there are many different forms of market socialism. I am actually a proponent of one form, which I call a Level 7 political economy (you might call it “market-friendly libertarian socialism”). However, I am critical of some other forms, so I will focus on one of those and describe how my proposals seek to remedy its problems.

Proudhon’s mutualism is probably the most widely-considered version of market socialism - at least when differentiated from authoritarian, State-centric Marxist-Leninist proposals. I actually agree with several components of Proudhon’s reasoning (for example, his arguments regarding property), but differ in a few important areas. One of these is the Labor Theory of Value. The LTV attempts to rigidly constrain the value of a good or service to the labor required to produce it - and then restrict the exchange to other goods and services with equivalent labor inputs. We can quickly see the problem with such a system with respect to the realities of subjective valuation - how people actually value things in a social context. You can also read about additional criticisms here: Criticisms of the labour theory of value - Wikipedia.

My answer to this problem is to create a different system of valuation that is non-capitalist, but still encourages friendly competition for some (but not necessarily all) goods and services. I call my approach to property exchange value “holistic valuation,” and it includes a host of factors - intersubjective use value, effective nourishment value, accounting for negative externalities, etc. - that redefine scarcity as “scarce quality” or “scarce safety,” and advocate consideration of perverse utility that potentiates harm. These concepts are discussed in more detail at this link: Level 7 Property Position, and in the book from which that excerpt was taken (also linked at the top of the Property Position page). Such property then can be part of an exchange economy that includes both limited for-profit and non-profit businesses that are owned and managed by workers and members - with input from the surrounding community. My goal is to include as many democratic controls as possible over larger free enterprise and the markets themselves.

With respect to various forms of market socialism, there are also other questions regarding resource valuation and management, how currency is backed, and how essential infrastructure and services are provisioned. My approach to these also departs from other proposals as well, as I advocate a Social Credits System tied to a Universal Social Backbone, to avoid the moral hazards of a social dividend or basic income. In addition, I believe it is critical to address the issue of economic growth - both as a functional dependency and as an unsustainable trajectory - which is why I also advocate Sustainable Design principles, proof-of-concept piloting, the precautionary principle, etc. Again you can explore these concepts by perusing the Level-7 website links.

My 2 cents.


From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-criticisms-against-market-socialism/answer/T-Collins-Logan

Why do some people think that anarcho-communism can work?


To me, the idea appears as an oxymoron. Communism requires some authoritative power (government) to be successful and anarchy is a lack of government. Am I wrong with this logic? If not, what can I tell a peer who identifies as an anarcho-communist to talk some sense into them?



Thanks for the A2A…I think.

So first off your assumption is incorrect: no oxymoron here. Your conception of communism seems rooted in Lenin’s version of a rather murderous and authoritarian form of Marxism, which was then exported to China, Vietnam, etc. Marx and Engels had envisioned a much more democratic arrangement (read up on the Commune of Paris | 1871 as an example). Also there were examples of a more spontaneous form of anarcho-communism “in the wild” in many places around the globe. Not just what happened early on in the Russian revolution, before the Bolsheviks killed off the competition and consolidated power, or what arose in Spain prior to Franco. A pretty sound argument can be made for primitive communism being the default mode of political economy in early, primitive societies. In any case, one problem was that Marx presumed some stages of transition did indeed involve expropriation, central controls…and yes, violent revolution. So there is that. But folks like Kropotkin (whom you should read) had a very different vision of distributed, diffused and self-directing communistic transitions and management. His The Conquest of Bread is a fascinating read. Before you engage your friend, I would encourage you to read that book - it’s pretty short and easy reading (unlike most of Marx).

Now your broader misconception - that communism requires centralized authoritative power - is an understandable mistake. It’s one that Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others also made. But I think that is mainly because revolutions involving force were the only examples or models those folks had for change - in a historical sense; their information was limited. In any case, I would encourage you to look into libertarian socialism (of which anarch-communism is a subset) for a broader understanding of nonviolent approaches to cooperative proposals. Also, you can check out my website, which also approaches political economy from a libertarian socialist perspective: Level 7 Overview.

My 2 cents.


From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-think-that-anarcho-communism-can-work/answer/T-Collins-Logan

What do you think of a basic income for everyone?


UBI is attractive for many reasons, but it also has some problems. Rather than going into all the pro/con details, I’ll direct you to my alternative….a Universal Social Backbone accessed via Social Credits that are tied to civic contributions. This is a setup I developed under my Level 7 political economy proposals, and you can find details about it on that site. Basically, what I envision is a system in which a certain baseline of social credits are provided to everyone - stored digitally and distributed via a Unique Digital Identifier provided to every citizen. These credits provide absolutely basic (i.e. very minimal) public goods and services that are part of a network of essential infrastructure and services in this alternative political economy. This Universal Social Backbone is run by a combination of worker-owned or member-owned non-profit enterprises that are tactically managed at the community level, but strategically managed (in terms of standards and long-term planning) in a more central way, and both management schemas are facilitated by direct and semi-direct democracy, as well as citizen’s councils appointed by civic lottery. In other words, this is a completely different setup than either socialized, centralized State systems or for-profit privatized systems, and aims to conform more to some of the design criteria enumerated by Elinor Ostrom from managing the commons. In any case one of the key characteristics of the Social Credit systems is that citizens can increase their balance of credits by being civically productive - producing a positive impact on civil society in some way. They can also be penalized by committing infractions. In this way, the available social credits incentivize civic responsibility and accountability. As to which contributions are considered the most “civically responsible” or productive, that would likely be left to individual communities to decide. It could mean, for example, active participation in Daily Direct Democracy (another feature of Level 7), or providing sound contributions to a Public Information Database (ibid) the pubic relies upon for “real facts,” or inventing/creating something beneficial for their community, or being a Good Samaritan, and so forth.

My 2 cents.

From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-of-a-basic-income-for-everyone/answer/T-Collins-Logan

What is needed to improve the amount and quality of civic engagement in the United States?

I think there are several issues in play, and we will need to address all of them for civic engagement and a sense of responsibility to be fostered. This means removing barriers as well as inspiring participation - and also holding folks accountable to some degree. Mainly I think we need to return governance more directly to the people - and in a more distributed and localized way - so that citizens have “skin in the game” as it were. Currently, our elected officials and their work are too far abstracted from the day-to-day concerns of average citizens, and this creates a “consume and forget” model of electoral abdication.

To address this I think we first and foremost require more frequent and direct forms of democracy, and some of my ideas about that are discussed here: Direct Democracy. Also for the long term, I would offer proposals around community involvement (see: Community Engagement) that emphasize non-governmental as well as governmental institutions and processes - many of which are well-tested in the real world. I also envision a system of social credits for utilizing essential infrastructure and services that is tied directly to civic participation (see: Social Credits System).

At the same time, we will also need to remove substantive barriers to folks even wanting to be involved - and ensure they have enough accurate information to do so skillfully and meaningfully. Regarding the former, I discuss the some of the primary concerns here: The Spectacle; Commercialist Distortions; Neoliberalism; Oppression of Women; and The Tyranny of Private Ownership. Regarding the latter, I would promote major revisions to education, the press and public information management that depart from today’s coopted and corrupted practices (see: Education).

Of course not all of this can happen at once. But if we don’t address all of these issues to a radical degree, I just don’t see change happening. The systemic failures and opposing forces are just to great. In terms of first steps, I discuss some of those here: L7 Action

My 2 cents.

(From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/What-is-needed-to-improve-the-amount-and-quality-of-civic-engagement-in-the-United-States)

Are there any libertarians that are critical of the Non-Aggression Principle?

This is a bit of a hot potato IMO. In the U.S., there is a somewhat myopically individualistic and self-referential version of libertarianism that not only embraces the NAP, but expands it (via Murray Rothbard) into all property, treating individual ownership as an extension of one’s person. This is a pretty extreme distortion that imposes a tyranny of private property equally on all, thereby depriving all of significant liberty. So, in this context, the answer to your question would be a resounding “most libertarians;” meaning most libertarians outside of the U.S. (and indeed most throughout the history of libertarian and anarchistic thought) would reject the application of the NAP to property as U.S. Libertarians tend to do. Of course, there are also left-libertarians (libertarian socialists) in the U.S. who also take exception to the…er…aggressive application of the NAP to property by right-libertarians. As I said…a bit of a hot potato.

As for the underlying sentiment of non-aggression, I think that is more widely shared by anarchists and libertarians of most persuasions. But even here what precisely constitutes “aggression” (or coercion, compulsion, etc.) is widely debated. Where right-libertarians seem to see all actions of the State (and sometimes even community-level government) as executed “under the threat of force,” a minarchist libertarian socialist would defer to collective agreement around a given issue to assert its persuasive legitimacy, and not view it as coercive or oppressive in the same way. In other words, for a right-libertarian individual sovereignty tends to be the central compass for defining non-interference (negative liberty), while the left-libertarian views collective cooperation as a preferred standard for facilitating liberty for all.

I think all of this orbits around the question of political obligation, and I write more about that here: http://www.tcollinslogan.com/resources/IntegralLiberty.pdf

(From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-libertarians-that-are-critical-of-the-Non-Aggression-Principle)

Why should a young person be a Socialist?

Simply put: because democracy should not - and in fact cannot - exist only in the political sphere. It must also be part of the economic sphere. At its core, this is what various forms of socialism are all about. That said, economic democracy in socialist proposals has often been coopted the same way democracy has been coopted in capitalist societies: by concentrations of wealth. Well, to be truly “democratic,” a society can’t have a small number of folks who a) make all the decisions, or b) control all the wealth. Wealth and power concentrations are how oligarchy and plutocracy are created and maintained - there is no “freedom of choice” in markets where corporate monopolies dominate, for example. This is such a fundamental historical fact, but it often gets overlooked in mainstream discourse on both the right and left halves of the spectrum. Socialism (and I think most specifically libertarian socialism…but that is my bias) acknowledges this reality and seeks to remedy it - so this would be a great starting point for any young person. The challenge, of course, is how to evolve such notions into a new, functional paradigm that replaces the tyranny of private ownership.

My 2 cents.

(From Quora question: https://www.quora.com/Why-should-a-young-person-be-a-Socialist/answer/T-Collins-Logan)

What exactly is Libertarian Socialism?

Thanks for the A2A Binyemîn Alpaydin.

I like Tom Wetzel’s answer, but I understand that you are looking for a simplification. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if a complex idea like libertarian socialism can be easily reduced. However, I will give it a try….

Some elements common to many libertarian socialist proposals:

1. As little centralized State authority as possible - where power is distributed to the people as locally as possible (this is sometimes called “susidiarity”) through various methods of direct democracy, consensus democracy or citizens councils.

2. Greater democracy in the economy - for example, where workers own their own factories, bank customers own their banks, the community has a say in how local resources are used, etc.

3. Greater social equality and wealth distribution - where everyone in society has similar access to opportunities, productivity and civic participation.

4. Non-aggression - force is only used in self-defense.

5. There is less private property, and more common property shared by all - in some cases private property is completely eliminated.

6. Access to a basic level of income, infrastructure, and essential services (education, healthcare, etc.) is provided to everyone through voluntary agreement of all.

7. An emphasis on collectivism rather than individualism.

My 2 cents.

(see https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-Libertarian-Socialism)

How do libertarian socialists plan to redistribute wealth without the use of or threat of violence?

Thanks for the question Samuel.

Libertarian socialism is an incredibly diverse container for many, many different approaches to political economy (see Libertarian socialism). It's a really quite a vast spectrum. So to generalize about it in any way is to basically say something like "All people who drive Volkswagons..." yada yada yada. It's kind of pointless.

That said, since I self-identify as a libertarian socialist, I'm happy to answer for myself. However, I'd like to reiterate that I can't answer (at least not definitively) for anyone else - even people I agree with. For example Noam Chomsky is a libertarian socialist, but his thinking seems firmly grounded in anarcho-syndicalism. Personally, I don't think that's a viable approach, and even though I agree with Chomsky on many things, this is one area where we would disagree.
So how would I get from where we are now to my own libertarian socialist model? To understand my proposal fully, you would have to visit my website, www.level-7.org, or read my other writing on this topic:

http://www.tcollinslogan.com/resources/IntegralLiberty.pdf and other essays at www.tcollinslogan.com

and my book,

Political Economy and the Unitive Principle : T.Collins Logan : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Since those are lengthy reads, however, I'll try to summarize the essence of my nonviolent proposals:

1) Encourage people to mature morally and socially so that they become increasingly motivated by mutual compassion rather than egoic self-interest. There are many ways to do this, but one is to simply educate people on how humans evolved prosocial survival traits in the first place via group selection. Another is to lay bare the fallacy of individualism as an invention of philosophers, and one that isn't grounded in empirical evidence.

2) Help people realize that private property ownership actually annihilates freedom in profoundly oppressive ways, and then illustrate the success of common or collective ownership models as the most viable, liberty-enhancing alternatives.

3) In conjunction with increasing moral edification and philosophical education, advocate for more and more democracy so that power truly rests with the people - ideally in polycentric governance that integrates consensus, direct and representative (technocratic) democracy on multiple levels.

4) Establish a basic infrastructure and essential services civic backbone that uses centralized standards and coordination, but relies on the principle of subsidiarity for decision-making, standards adoption, boundary integrations and self-management.
No violence there. Just education, democracy, proven models of distributed management (Ostrom's CPRM, etc.) and a willingness to let go of antiquated notions that have served plutocratic capitalism quite well while they have pulled the wool over the eyes of workers, consumers and citizens. And please note that there is no central State involved in my model - at least not what you would traditionally think of as a State, and certainly not a police State. This is a highly distributed model of political economy.

Again for more depth you'll need to slog through my writing. Apologies for that. But the only "violence" that I advocate in any of my writing (with respect to a necessary revolution) is the disruption of the status quo through things like community activism, nonviolent resistance, art activism, non-lethal hacktivism, and other forms of civic engagement. In other words, nothing that violates the essence of the non-aggression principle, which I believe will be essential to creating a better system than the one that oppresses us now.

My 2 cents.

Comment by Ed Johnson: "So education, against human nature, is the answer. Eventually, ‘re-education’ a la Mao. “No violence there”, of course."


Says who? All of the most current research (over the past decade) regarding prosocial traits (generosity, cooperation, self-sacrifice, etc.) is that prosociality is hard-wired into humans, and has been for millenia. In fact, across most fields of study (anthropology, sociology, psychology, genetics, biology, etc.), there is unified agreement that prosocial traits are what allowed humans to survive into modern times. It was only the advent of certain “engineered” social structures, in certain parts of the world, that began to undermine that prosociality and replace it with other cultural expectations — and this happened selectively throughout history, and more uniformly only recently (well into the 2nd Millennium CE). Here’s a link to a decent article about some of the underlying research…I have many more if you are interested:

Scientists Probe Human Nature--and Discover We Are Good, After All

How do libertarian socialists plan to redistribute wealth without the use of or threat of violence?

Thanks for the question Samuel.

Libertarian socialism is an incredibly diverse container for many, many different approaches to political economy (see Libertarian socialism). It's a really quite a vast spectrum. So to generalize about it in any way is to basically say something like "All people who drive Volkswagons..." yada yada yada. It's kind of pointless.

That said, since I self-identify as a libertarian socialist, I'm happy to answer for myself. However, I'd like to reiterate that I can't answer (at least not definitively) for anyone else - even people I agree with. For example Noam Chomsky is a libertarian socialist, but his thinking seems firmly grounded in anarcho-syndicalism. Personally, I don't think that's a viable approach, and even though I agree with Chomsky on many things, this is one area where we would disagree.
So how would I get from where we are now to my own libertarian socialist model? To understand my proposal fully, you would have to visit my website, www.level-7.org, or read my other writing on this topic:

http://www.tcollinslogan.com/resources/IntegralLiberty.pdf and other essays at www.tcollinslogan.com

and my book,

Political Economy and the Unitive Principle : T.Collins Logan : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Since those are lengthy reads, however, I'll try to summarize the essence of my nonviolent proposals:

1) Encourage people to mature morally and socially so that they become increasingly motivated by mutual compassion rather than egoic self-interest. There are many ways to do this, but one is to simply educate people on how humans evolved prosocial survival traits in the first place via group selection. Another is to lay bare the fallacy of individualism as an invention of philosophers, and one that isn't grounded in empirical evidence.

2) Help people realize that private property ownership actually annihilates freedom in profoundly oppressive ways, and then illustrate the success of common or collective ownership models as the most viable, liberty-enhancing alternatives.

3) In conjunction with increasing moral edification and philosophical education, advocate for more and more democracy so that power truly rests with the people - ideally in polycentric governance that integrates consensus, direct and representative (technocratic) democracy on multiple levels.

4) Establish a basic infrastructure and essential services civic backbone that uses centralized standards and coordination, but relies on the principle of subsidiarity for decision-making, standards adoption, boundary integrations and self-management.
No violence there. Just education, democracy, proven models of distributed management (Ostrom's CPRM, etc.) and a willingness to let go of antiquated notions that have served plutocratic capitalism quite well while they have pulled the wool over the eyes of workers, consumers and citizens. And please note that there is no central State involved in my model - at least not what you would traditionally think of as a State, and certainly not a police State. This is a highly distributed model of political economy.

Again for more depth you'll need to slog through my writing. Apologies for that. But the only "violence" that I advocate in any of my writing (with respect to a necessary revolution) is the disruption of the status quo through things like community activism, nonviolent resistance, art activism, non-lethal hacktivism, and other forms of civic engagement. In other words, nothing that violates the essence of the non-aggression principle, which I believe will be essential to creating a better system than the one that oppresses us now.

My 2 cents.

Comment by Ed Johnson: "So education, against human nature, is the answer. Eventually, ‘re-education’ a la Mao. “No violence there”, of course."


Says who? All of the most current research (over the past decade) regarding prosocial traits (generosity, cooperation, self-sacrifice, etc.) is that prosociality is hard-wired into humans, and has been for millenia. In fact, across most fields of study (anthropology, sociology, psychology, genetics, biology, etc.), there is unified agreement that prosocial traits are what allowed humans to survive into modern times. It was only the advent of certain “engineered” social structures, in certain parts of the world, that began to undermine that prosociality and replace it with other cultural expectations — and this happened selectively throughout history, and more uniformly only recently (well into the 2nd Millennium CE). Here’s a link to a decent article about some of the underlying research…I have many more if you are interested:

Scientists Probe Human Nature--and Discover We Are Good, After All