6 posts tagged “community”

Classic Article on A Christmas Carol: Read Butler Shaffer's "The Case for Ebeneezer" at LRC.

VDare.com is having their annual War Against Christmas Competition. See Tom Piatak's report.

The Bubble Economy.

Read "Evidence that the Fed Caused the Housing Boom" by Robert Murphy.

In February look for a book on this economic depression by Thomas Woods. I am happy to report that a mainstream publisher, Regnery, is publishing it. This will increase the book's exposure to people who are unfamiliar with Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Listen to the 1992 Mises Institute conference on Money and the Federal Reserve.

Read Peter Schiff at Taki's Magazine.

Hear the great Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show.

"Barack Obama," Chris Brown writes, "plans to initiate public-private partnerships."

"Obama's 'New Deal'" by Jeffery Kuhner.

"Garet Garrett knew where FDR's policies—and Bush's—would lead," says Justin Raimondo in The American Conservative.

George Smith writes about the evil Alexander Hamilton, founding father of crony capitalism.

The Fascist Market: Timothy Carney, author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, is interviewed in The University Bookman.

In my view, this deep alliance is a topic that too often gets overlooked, even by those who claim to be supporters of the free market. It can drive one mad how so many men frame arguments around the premise that today's economy is "free," or around the premise that the regulatory state was primarily created to "protect" consumers or small upstart businesses.

One gentleman, it is said, that explodes these myths is Gabriel Kolko. In Murray Rothbard's writings you will sometimes find references to his works, even though Dr. Kolko is a Marxist------By the way, read the new article, which mentions Kolko, by Dylan Hales called "Left Turn Ahead."

For example, in "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" Rothbard wrote:

In The Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko traces the origins of political capitalism in the "reforms" of the Progressive Era. Orthodox historians have always treated the Progressive period (roughly 1900–1916) as a time when free-market capitalism was becoming increasingly "monopolistic"; in reaction to this reign of monopoly and big business, so the story runs, altruistic intellectuals and far-seeing politicians turned to intervention by the government to reform and to regulate these evils. Kolko's great work demonstrates that the reality was almost precisely the opposite of this myth. Despite the wave of mergers and trusts formed around the turn of the century, Kolko reveals, the forces of competition on the free market rapidly vitiated and dissolved these attempts at stabilizing and perpetuating the economic power of big business interests. It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms of the market that big business turned, increasingly after the 1900s, to the federal government for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed, not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies that big business (as well as trade associations of smaller business) had not been able to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market.

When a man says we "must" have this or that regulation against laissez-faire capitalism, I often wonder: Who will regulate the regulator?

H.L. Mencken Club.

In late November they had their very first annual meeting.

Addresses Online:

• “Hear No Genes, See No Genes, Speak No Genes--the Jargon of ‘Culturalism’” by John Derbyshire. (The text of Mr. Derbyshire's speech is just excellent. I am not sure how he writes for National Review.)
  
• “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right” by Paul Gottfried.
  
• “Greek to Us: The Death of Classical Education and Its Consequences” by E. Christian Kopff.
  
• “The Old Right and the Antichrist” by Richard Spencer.

Secular Right.

Even though I am not an atheist, I'm okay with cooperating with those who are (in a non-militant sense). It is independent of being opposed to fascism and socialism. There were, of course, plenty of nonreligious gentlemen in the Old Right. (Rothbard, one of my heroes, was an agnostic.) However I agree with paleoconservatives when they say that traditional conservatism----in a cultural sense----cannot be atheistic. If it is to conserve the natural, the good, the transcendent, and the normal, then a conservatism that defends Western Civilization cannot leave behind its religious roots. That should be obvious.

Take a look at Joe Sobran's 1999 article "Christianity and History."

James Bovard: "Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?" Ha-ha.

"Police Have Killed 400 With Tasers Since 2001."

"Obama Finds Favor with Neoconservatives," writes Paul Gottfried.

"Blagojevich, Obama, And The Diversity–Fueled 'Chicago Way'" by Steve Sailer-----And see his new book America's Half-Blood Prince.

"In Praise of McCarthyism" by Justin Raimondo.

Ron Paul is interviewed at Huffington Post.

Patrick Keeney writes about Theodore Dalrymple's new book, The Politics and Culture of Decline. He is additionally the author of In Praise of Prejudice.

See Clyde Wilson's "Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be" at Chronicles.

Stateless Proprietary Communities: I was going to type up a separate larger entry on this but decided not to. Instead, please allow me to leave you all with a few articles by anthropologist Spencer Health MacCallum on this subject...

• “The Enterprise of Community: Market Competition, Land, and Environment.”
• “Land Policy and the Open Community: The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision.”
• “The Quickening of Social Evolution: Perspectives on Proprietary (Entrepreneurial) Communities.”
• “The Social Nature of Ownership.”
• “Werner K. Stiefel's Pursuit of a Practicum of Freedom.”

Reading Dr. David Gordon's review of the fairly popular book Crunchy Cons by Mr. Rod Dreher over at Taki's Magazine is what encouraged me to type up this blog entry. The objective of this entry is to address what I believe are some confusions in what we can call the "anti-capitalist wing" of traditional or paleo- conservatism.

Life is More than the Market

It is not uncommon to find among some traditional conservatives the creating of caricatures when they identify advocates of a free market economy. They depict supporters of laissez-faire as genuinely believing that all of life is "economic." That market supporters think there is nothing more to life than "economics" and that life is nothing but a seeking of "maximum utility" in the workforce.

Of course, no advocate of a purely free market really believes that. One does not find Ludwig von Mises even remotely saying that man acts for money profit alone, or anything of that sort; on the contrary.

It is said that conservatism hates "terrible simplifiers." Frequently this is justifiably so. I'm with them. When looking at most schools of thought in economics it almost appears that they truly view man as a so-called "economic man" who seeks, like some kind of drone or robot, greater and greater money in his life and nothing else. The Austrian school of economics, in contrast, rejects the existence of the "economic man" because it views value as meaning more than the dollar sign. It understands that value derives from man's subjective preferences. That is to say, that value is not derived objectively through some equation but is determined in the minds of men. Because man acts for things that have nothing to do with buying or selling in the market place is a sign that man values non-monetary (non-"economic") things.

At the same time, though, the goal of an action which attempts to obtain a non-monetary satisfaction is still under and subject to the laws of economics. A man that acts towards such a goal is doing so because he, at the moment, thinks that end-goal is greater than other end-goals he could instead be acting or aiming towards. Hence acting always involves preferences. In addition, it involves costs because time is scarce. Doing X instead of Y costs not doing Y. Yet, even given this, this obviously does not parallel the silly caricatures that are created by those who are anti-market. There is nothing anti-conservative about Austrian economics. It does not at all imply, for example, that Church and family life is not part of the social order, or that it is "inefficient" to the social order.

Society and the Individual

Russell Kirk wrote that:

The cosmos of the libertarian is an arid loveless realm, a "round prison." "I am, and none else besides me," says the libertarian. "We are made for cooperation, like the hands, like the feet," replies the conservative, in the phrases of Marcus Aurelius. [The Essential Russell Kirk.]

"Mr. Libertarian," Murray Rothbard, would reply that this is an "authoritarian straw man." As an economist, he understood full well we are "made for cooperation, like the hands, like the feet." Neither did he understand that only in an "economic" sense. As Dr. Paul Gottfried writes in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, Rothbard had "characteristics linking him to a traditionalist conservative position." For instance, he had a "fierce defense of marriage and the family and [a] stated dislike for feminism."

Still, it is a grave mistake to put the "individual" and "society" at two opposite poles, as if they were antagonistic towards each other and incompatible with each other. "If the conflict," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "between the community interests of the whole and the particular interests of the individual really existed, men would be quite incapable of collaborating in society." In actual fact, the very idea of peace and civilization would be quite foreign to our minds if that conflict existed. A healthier society is a healthier individual, and vice versa.

There is another problem with this idea of conflict; although, this is particularly seen more with left-liberals than traditional conservatives. An individual conflicting with the collective is equally akin to varying collectives conflicting with each other and a collective itself having conflicts from within. As Mises said, collectivists rarely think about that and make a leap of faith that the "collective" will be astonishingly filled with no conflicts. Capitalism, instead, recognizes that interests, wants, and desires differ in society. That society is about variety; not leveling or pure conformity. (This is in agreement with Kirk's fifth principle of "Ten Conservative Principles.") Private property brings, versus top-down collective ownership, harmony between men who do not have the same exact needs and wants.

Because of the false idea that market supporters only support "the interests of particular people" versus the "public welfare" at large, Mises has said that "Capitalism [as a term] is better suited to be the antithesis of Socialism than Individualism."

And what we can call "conservative harmony" is produced in the market. Here is Mises:

[T]here is a tendency to forget that the physiological structure of mankind and the unity of outlook and emotion arising from tradition creates a far-reaching similarity of views regarding wants and the means to satisfy them. It is precisely this similarity of views which makes society possible. Because they have common aims, men are able to live together. [All Mises quotes are from Socialism.]

Indeed, tradition brings man a much needed stable environment to live and work in. It brings man a sense of belonging. Furthermore, as capitalism develops a diversified and complex division of labor, men become more interdependent on each other. It therefore, in a way, actually enervates (detached and isolated) "radical individualism." Correspondingly, as will be briefly argued below, capitalism encourages the development of "practical wisdom" and conservative "prejudices." They provide men a helpful guide in acting, i.e., in making good decisions.

The Family

Von Mises, far from thinking society is only made up of "economic men," described radical feminism as "a spiritual child of Socialism." He said that promoters of socialistic feminism do not confine themselves to supporting equality of law, as the classical liberals do, but wish to abolish the institution of marriage and family in a way which will "free" women of the inequalities they perceive as being produced through the social order of capitalism.

But they fight against reality, said Mises:

Pregnancy and the nursing of children claim the best years of a woman's life, the years in which a man may spend his energies in great achievements. ... It is clear that sex is less important in the life of man than of woman. ... Her destiny is completely circumscribed by sex; in man's life it is but an incident. ... It is not marriage which keeps woman inwardly unfree, but the fact that her sexual character demands surrender to a man and that her love for husband and children consumes her best energies. By "abolishing" marriage one would not make woman any freer and happier; one would merely take from her the essential content of her life, and one could offer nothing to replace it. ... All mankind would suffer if woman should fail to develop her ego and be unable to unite with man as equal, freeborn companions and comrades. To take away a woman's children and put them in an institution is to take away part of her life; and children are deprived of the most far-reaching influence when they are torn from the bosom of the family.

Feminists fight against natural inequalities which capitalism tries to nourish and direct for the good.

[Differences between men and women are not "social constructions"; read, e.g., Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven Rhoads.]

Mises in his Socialism book explained that "the principle of violence dominates" the sexual relationships of pre-capitalist times. The traditional and non-violent ideal of marriage today is a product of capitalism. It is where "marriage and love are united" together based on mutual consent and free will. Where there are equal legal rights. When "the principle of violence dominates," though, there is no mutual consent or free will. Polygamy is widespread in such a violent domain. On the other hand capitalism takes the ideal of monogamy, and mutual fidelity.

On top of this, this ideal, which free market capitalism promotes, is a weapon against prostitution----what Mises called "a remnant of ancient morals":

The most powerful influence against it today----the demand for man's abstinence outside marriage----is one of the principles involved in equal moral rights for man and woman, and is therefore altogether an ideal of the capitalist age.

The policies of socialism, according to Mises, work against the tendencies of capitalism. By socializing society and family functions, sexual promiscuity and "liberation" will be elevated. (As with many other things, I think it is safe to say that Mises was prophetic on what happens to family life when it is socialized, like it has been today to a great extent. Statistics are well-known in documenting the high number of broken families in today's day and age. It is a very sad thing to see. [Read, e.g., Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 by Charles Murray; Overcoming Welfare by James Payne; Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis by Allan Carlson; The Case for Marriage by Linda Waite & Maggie Gallagher.])

Why go into this? I do so because certain traditional conservatives have tried to portray capitalism as the enemy of the family. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not capitalism that has made it almost impossible for mothers of families in the middle class to be "stay-at-home-moms." Or that has made it difficult for adequate family and home investment. A wealthier, i.e. capitalistic, society can afford it. Fathers can earn wages without having almost half of their wealth being stolen directly (and indirectly) from the government.

Moreover, it is not capitalism but statism with civil "rights" and egalitarian "ideals" that have promoted the blurring of gender roles or differences. Various social engineering programs have further enhanced the present state of affairs. Affirmative action is one example. Government has also loosened the important bond of the nuclear family by other programs, for instance public education and subsidized childcare. It artificially, from the outside, as you might say, breaks family up and promotes feminism. The responsibility and importance of motherhood has thus been systematically attacked.

Accordingly, it is not incorrect to say that in so many ways government has literally taken (stolen) money away from families that raise their own children and given it (redistributed it) to those families who do not do so. That is, fiat has made it increasingly expensive for the traditional, natural family in comparison with the un-traditional, un-natural family. Clearly the consequence of such statism has been a pushed shift from the former to the latter.

The inheritance tax, for yet another example, is a direct attack on family. It makes families become less future orientated, and more unstable. The incentive to be good to your elders diminishes, since inheritance as an incentive to treat your elders well diminishes. It thus promotes disloyalty and bad behavior. Familial relationships, then, artificially loosen and breakup. These kinds of statists programs result in, in the individual family, less focus on family tradition and less overall family investment for the future. And, parenthetically, capital build-up in a society starts to correspondingly decline.

And with this Managerial State has come the Therapeutic State. The statist establishment pushes the idea of seeing traditional values as "bigoted," "sexist," and so on. Today we have what the late paleocon Sam Francis would call anarcho-tyranny.

Even the military (which is by definition a socialist enterprise), as family advocate Dr. Allan Carlson has shown, has engaged in massive social engineering when it comes to the family.

By the State weakening more constant and organic groups, which help provide a bulwark against advances from statist interventions (because they are natural outgrowths of civil society and are generally autonomous that live and breathe detached from the central government), its power increases vis-à-vis civil society. And from this, there is a systematic stimulation for a form of atomistic individualism that is detached from the attachments and bonds of civil society.

All of this should be expected in a statist society. It is in the interest of the State to engage in these destructive policies for a simple reason: the State can then fulfill its incentives of expanding itself.

A "Crunchy Con" Life

In 2006 Mr. Jeffrey Tucker over at the Mises Institute wrote a devastating review of Crunchy Cons and its economic nonsense.

It goes without saying that a man and his family that wishes to live a "crunchy con" life cannot do so without the ability to do so. The pre-capitalist era would not have the capability to have a population living life in such crunchy con luxury. When a crunchy con speaks ill of capitalism he bites the hand that feeds him. It is the market that allows people to live such a life.

While, as Mr. Tucker shows in his review, I think there are very serious problems with many of Mr. Dreher's ideas, this does not mean I do not agree with him on many other things. We all believe in the importance of social and cultural conservatism in general.

And, to note, the TAC issue (June 30) that focused on "culinary conservatism" I enjoyed very much. Mr. Dreher was in that issue. And on this blog I have voiced my support for Grace Before Meals.

Additionally, no thinking and spiritual man should applaud a life of pure materialism, consumerism, selfish egotism or narcissism, or childish hedonism.

The way crunchy cons want to see society organize around some of their principles and beliefs, nonetheless, is subject to question. Their view of capitalism as it relates to this topic is also subject to question.

Take for example healthy living. Obviously any rational man is supportive of healthy eating and living. However, high quality food, clean water, and high quality dietary vitamins are costly. Only when men have accumulated enough wealth in the market can the market then enter these lines of production. It is likewise for the construction of health clubs, gyms, or what have you. At first the outcome of these enterprise productions only the wealthy can afford. If an increasing number of men demand healthy food of this sort and other health products of this sort, entrepreneurs will see that there is great profit to make in these specialized industries and will thus enter them. As this happens the costs and prices will tend to go down and it will be easier for non-wealthy people to live a "crunchier" life.

It is (thankfully) true that under capitalism there is a tendency that the input costs involved in production lowers downwardly in competition. From this, however, it plainly does not follow that the quality of output in the form of consumer goods ready to be sold on the market lowers as well. The quality is based on consumer demand and can only be objectively identified as based on consumer demand. It is therefore subjectively determined from the frame of reference of consumers. Economically speaking, quality can only be determined based on this criterion, and this criterion alone. Based on this criterion, there is a capitalistic tendency that the output of goods to be sold on the market raises upwardly in competition. If a group of men do not like such a given criterion that currently exists in the minds of the public that consumes such-in-such good or goods, and are willing to pay for a business that works based on their respective criterion, then this opens up a hole that can be filled by the entrepreneur.

An added problem that many crunchy cons----not to mention many traditional conservatives in general----have is that all business should be local (or, at least, it should be close to this "ideal"). This is in contradiction to healthier and stronger living. It would produce poor conditions for family life. Community would be damaged more than helped in the long-run. One must understand that the market is about dividing up labor so as to increase wealth and prosperity. It is by comparative advantage that trade develops in a local and non-local sense. There is no dualism.  The logic is the same for all trade; just as the laws of arithmetic are true at all places and at all times.

Mises wrote:

It is clear that such an argument proceeds from the view that natural ownership in these means of production is undivided, and that only those benefit from them who have them physically. It does not realize that this view leads logically to the socialist doctrine with regards to the character of ownership in the means of production. For if it is wrong that Germans do not possess their own cotton plantations, why should it be right that every single German does not possess his coal mines, his spinning mill? Can a German call a Lorraine iron ore mine his any more when a German citizen possesses it than when a French citizen possesses it?

Then there is the argument that capitalism promotes incontinent hedonism and in so doing so disregards non-"economic" aspects of life. That it hurts the moral values of a people and that it results in surfeit. Mr. Samuel Gregg in The Commercial Society would argue otherwise. (See a review of this book here.) Many values that conservatives see important are presuppositions and reflections of a vibrant market economy. Civility, peace, restraint, tolerance, practical wisdom (prejudices), and trust are all characteristics of the "commercial society." (With tolerance, though, does come some needed intolerance against "bads.") In fact, all of these things become enhanced with capitalism as it increases social mobility beyond a privileged few. For instance, eleemosynary work can increase to a larger amount of people.

Gregg writes, for example:

Another feature of civility in commercial society is the quality of self-restraint. "Self-command," [Adam] Smith wrote, "is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre." The emphasis upon self-control flows, in part, from the realization that self-improvement in commercial orders requires much delayed gratification. ... In commercial society, the self-restraint associated with civility is closely linked to the pursuit of self-interest, self-improvement, and especially prosperity. It extends, for example, from entrepreneurs deferring much satisfaction if they are to accumulate the capital that they need for a loan, to those in a small business who need to work long and disciplined hours if their business is to grow significantly, to middle class property owners who voluntarily put aside considerable resources to fund their retirement or to help their children acquire the expensive education they need if they are to enhance their chances of success in a market order.

He continues:

The incentives for self-restraint in commercial society are thus more considerable and also accessible to larger numbers of people that any previous social order. Thus while it is true that in commercial society, as Helmut Kuzmics writes, "the society of the working bourgeois adopts the rituals of the courtly society," this is partly because manners and habits of politeness smooth the process of market exchange and the daily intensity of business and often become broadly associated with the achievement of prosperity.

And here is Max Weber:

The impulse to acquisition, the pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. ... This naïve conception of capitalism ought to be given up once and for all in the nursery school of cultural history. Unbridled avarice is not in the least the equivalent of capitalism, still less of its "spirit." [Quote from The Commercial Society.]

In actuality, it is through time that capitalism promotes the opposite qualities of "consumerism" and "materialism." In its place, capitalism through times promotes what are called "non-material," i.e., nonexchangeable, goods. To turn to Murray Rothbard, in Man, Economy, and State he praxeologically deduced that the "marginal utility of exchangeable goods tends to decline over time, while the marginal utility of nonexchangeable goods increases. ... [Thus] Rather than foster 'material' values, then, advancing capitalism does just the opposite." [Emphasis mine.]

Little Platoons and Permanent Things

I believe Russell Kirk said that if one were to summarize traditional conservatism in one word it would be community. The question, then, is of asking how community can be revived.

A central point of this entry is that wealth creation can enhance conservatism. After all, how can the prospect of a "crunchy con" organic ideal of food develop in the modern world of billions of people without the existence of a market place? Or, how can mothers be "stay-at-home-moms" without pushing for a free market that will get rid of all of the statist restraints that have made this increasingly more difficult for the middle class? Or how can motherhood become more common without all of the various statist disincentives being destroyed once and for all?

Similarly, how can man spend more time with his family or at Church functions or at community functions without a free market that increases productivity which allows the possibility? How can local market diversity exist without the development of wealth and specialization that can make this possible? How can "the little platoons" of civil society exist without them being allowed to exist as the things that they are? That is, things that are independent and exist as non-government entities. And how can they exist without wealth being created in the free market that frees man to put more effort (time, labor, and resources) into them? How can we have community if community's functions and roles are taken over by the central government? Et cetera.

The same reasoning applies to promoting fiscal conservatism and responsibility. How can these important characteristics and work ethics be promoted when social security and the welfare state exist? What they do is attack personal responsibility and lower the value of the family (and other intermediate institutions). In a recent blog entry I quoted Mises in saying that inflation is an attack against "'old-fashioned' morality and thrift." How can we encourage those values without then fighting inflation?

Capitalism, what is more, actually opens up the "higher arts" to a larger amount of men. Hence Johann Sebastian Bach becomes not a luxury that is limited to the very wealthy. It also must be remembered that a genuine free market system will always benefit the poor and the middle class the most. This is because, among other reasons, the entrepreneur who serves the greater amount of people will become richer than the entrepreneur who does not. And, obviously, the "marginal satisfactions" that are increased with increased wealth are always more substantive for the poor than the rich.

Now all of this should show the vital importance of private property. Something Richard Weaver, who was a supporter of Austrian economics (even though he would make a distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' private property), recognized. In Ideas Have Consequences he called private property "the last metaphysical right." He said that private property for man promotes responsibility, stewardship, imagination, innovation, and a commitment to something beyond himself.  That private property develops man's character and gives him a sense of honor, and in so doing so fights against dishonor and sloth. That it gives man the ability to practice virtue.

Let me also point out that Robert Nisbet, wanting to make more vital the intermediate institutions, did not see capitalism as the enemy of traditional conservatism but statism in the Leviathan form:

Capitalism has more often than not been declared the culprit in [the] historical destruction of communities. Marx and Engels gave that supposition dogmatic status, and others, including so conservative a thinker as Schumpeter, have followed, seeing in capitalism a process of continuing destruction of its social foundations in kinship and locality. But the truth is, the political state, by its incessant centralization and bureaucratization of power, has done far more than capitalism to effect this destruction...  [From Prejudices.]

True, he called for a "new laissez-faire"----and believe it or not, I pretty much agree with him, as I understand him-----but it was a call to put the intermediate institutions into context when it comes to a market order. And, for Nisbet, to make more vital these institutions is to dismantle much of statism.

With all of this said, it thus appears to me that far from looking to the State, social and cultural conservatives should look to Civil Society and Capitalism. Yes, this means an "extreme" anti-statist outlook. But if there is anything that real conservatives should have learnt, then it is that statism is no friend to conservative values. Conversely, it is private property that provides the best defense. Moral socialism is destined to fail just as much as economic socialism. Looking at the current gang in power is not something to look to for moral virtue. To make families strong and fruitful is not going to happen if man concedes to the State control or management over them.

Even though he was not an "anarchist" or a philosophical libertarian, the great Robert Nisbet's central insight is that Civil Society, made up of the so-called intermediate institutions which persons are naturally born into and are a part of (viz., family, locality, church, etc.), and the State are inversely related to each other in terms of strength and the role they play in society.

It is consequently when the state is small and weak that social authority is vibrant. The more functions and roles the state takes on, the less civil society has to take on. A powerful managerial state always results in imposing a top-down, monolithic-coercive control, breaking down pluralistic authorities, autonomies, communities, institutions, traditional norms, and ultimately thereby isolating and detaching the individual from civil society. All that is left after this process is Leviathan and atomistic, detached, and "loose" individuals. Once this has happened the state has what it wants, i.e., control over isolated and weak individuals.

Extending and furthering this analysis, we can understand how increased democratization and centralization of state power directs man's activities increasingly at using this apparatus. This not only must be done at the expense of civil society, since the state's relationship with civil society is parasitic, but also cause conflict between those trying to use power, which is monopolistic, for their own purposes. These men will be constantly fighting to control this coercive power for their own ends and at the expense of other men. Politicalization in increased areas of life will only result in a greater amount of people joining in this infighting (with the upshot of man investing and producing less in civil society). It actually becomes a necessity, if only as a means of (pseudo) "self-defense." All of this further feeds the growth of politics. And the distinction between civil society and state will fade away. In addition, they will blend together as many former civil society institutions attach themselves or ally themselves with statism. States ultimately consume civil society.

(This will even have a major change on the culture regarding the individual character development of men. The character characteristics that man will develop will tend to be those that define a politician rather than a gentleman.)

Indeed, today every nook and cranny Leviathan has its hand in. No wonder, as Robert Nisbet says, we have moved "from a highly traditionalist, hierarchical, decentralized, and inegalitarian society to one that in our time approaches the diametrical opposite of these qualities." [Quote from The Present Age.]

Now the objective of this Paleo Blog entry is to attempt to show, using insights from Nisbet, Murray Rothbard, Russell Kirk and Robert Murphy and also going through some economic analysis (which has been greatly influenced by Hans-Hermann Hoppe), how power destroys civil society. The topics covered may be loosely organized and assumes the reader has some knowledge about the possibility and logic of a private law society, but it is my hope that it provides some insights into this important subject.

Authority versus Power

"[L]ibertarians," writes Murray N. Rothbard in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature (p 152, n 1),

accept the authority of sound values, civilization, and especially reason; it is those who refuse to accept such authority who turn instead to outside coercion and violence. On the confusion between authority and power, see the brilliant article by Robert A. Nisbet, "The Nemesis of Authority," The Intercollegiate Review (Winter-Spring, 1972): 3-13.

Happily the 1972 article is available online here [pdf].

In the article Robert Nisbet removes, as Rothbard explained, the common misperception between authority and power. Power, not authority, amounts to the usage (or threat) of physical force or coercion. It is civil society, he goes on to say, that you find a multiplicity of authorities:

Civil society, in whatever degree it may be said to exist at all, is a tissue of authorities, however loosely knit these may be in times of stress. Authority, unlike power or coercion, is not rooted in force, or threat of force. It is built into the very fabric of human association. Authority exists in the very roles and statuses of the social order. It is no more than an aspect, though a vital aspect, of the social order. . . . Freedom, in any positive, creative sense, is inseparable from a structure of authority ---- of rules, norms, roles, and statues ---- which can alone give the stamp of character to the free mind. No mistake could be greater than that of counterpoising freedom and authority. Freedom and power, freedom and coercion, yes. But not freedom and authority.

(There will be more on this specific article later.)

Children and the Family

Out of all the intermediate institutions, obviously the most essential and basic building block in society is the family institution. Individuals do not exist apart from family, which, by the way, includes even Robinson Crusoe. The atomistic individual is just a myth. And, incidentally, the reason for Rothbard's footnote was to defend parental authority, as long as it does not contravene the foundation of self-ownership and private property rights, over those who say it is (somehow) "un-libertarian."  After all, a child is under the private household rules of the father, who is the owner of the household and accordingly has patriarchal authority and control over it. Private property (which is inegalitarian, hierarchical, exclusive, undemocratic, etc.), outside of our physical body, is not a "given" to us as we are born into the world. We must earn it and therefore must work within the framework of families and authorities in civil society.

This framework is essential to society as a whole. The family, that is. As Robert Nisbet says:

[A] well-attested fact [is] that whenever there is private property there will be a strong family system. After all, the origins of private property lie in clan and kindred; and even after the conjugal family, the household, became the chief element of kinship, its relationship to property remained very close. As Joseph Schumpeter noted in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy*, it was not the isolated individual . . . but the household that was the main engine of modern capitalist development. Not economic man but, quite literally, the head of the household working for the present and future of the members of his family, and hence saving and investment. [Twilight of Authority.]

Traditional family households hence promote a low time preference. Their success and longevity depends on this fact. It brings stability to society and capital growth, which advances the capitalistic process. This is what makes genuine capitalism and family mutually reinforcing. It was what, in the past, allowed only the father to enter the job market.

However, it becomes almost unavoidable, in modern society, that both father and mother have to enter the workforce due to the taxation, regulations, and inflation that eats away at persons' wealth. Procurement of wealth has been made comparatively more costly because income used in production has been made less, as it is expropriated by way of taxation, and the opportunity cost for non-production has been lowered. The destruction and blockage of contractual relationships between parties, due to thousands of pages of regulations, lowers market transactions, and thus investments and wealth. And inflation, in particular, is a direct assault against the family institution because, by continually lowering the value of the dollar, savings and long-term planning is discouraged. Consumption, leisure, short-term thinking and planning are encouraged. All of which are to the damage of capitalism and family.

Soon a major social and cultural transformation took place with the increased socialization in society. The belief and value in the father working towards a family wage to provide for the family vanished. Home mothers became stigmatized by ideological feminism, the sexual revolution, and Cultural Marxism. The ideas in the minds of men changed and the course of history assimilated those new values. Entering the workforce became more important than becoming a wife and mother. Womens' investment in the latter areas declined. Job advertisements took on a shift as this transformation took place, and was given additional thrust by today's sacrosanctity of civil "rights"** laws. Old advertisements, with an ethos of strong family values, labeled "Men Wanted" and "Women Wanted" was deemed illegal because it was discriminatory.

Statism has alleviated, to a high degree, father and mother their function and role to raise, care for, and teach their own children. In replace of these functions and roles, that naturally reside in the family institution, has come the state. Put in another way, these functions and roles have become socialized. Children are thrown into the statist education system, where they are fed anti-family, anti-market ideas. Parents can no longer raise their children in a manner they want to and instead must accept school teachers and social workers as the ultimate judge and authority. There is thus less parental investment in children, the family structure, and the next generation and their development. Under statist conditions the internally weak family is promoted and encouraged vis-à-vis the strong family for the reason that investment is made more costly. Natural authority is zapped-away and parental irresponsibility, neglect, and abuse is encouraged because it is made less costly. The natural bond and attachment between parents and children falls. A decline and degeneration must follow.

The externalized value and cost of children also decreases the attachment and bond between mother and father. This encourages an increase in divorce rates. At the same time, divorce courts have become one-size-fits-all and "no-fault." Marriage contract and covenant has been taken away and placed into the control of the state. Mothers, moreover, have a court that is biased to them and, by default, negative to fathers. Added with numerous interventionisms into civil society, there is subsidization of single mothers at the expense of non-single mothers. This is nothing but the collective reinforcement of such lifestyles, illegitimacy, irresponsibility, divorce, and so on.

By socializing the costs of children, the incentive to act with sexual restraint declines. Continuing this socialization will push man to an animal looking to fulfill his appetite through his next "free love" conquest. The animal side and sensationalist side of man replaces the rational side.

Children, in the governmental schools, lose attachment to family, their heritage, and family values. These schools elevate and promote collectivism, uniformity, egalitarianism, "political correctness," and anti-moral values. Schools, in their raised position relative to the family, create dependency between children and the state. Permissiveness is promoted from the diminishment of parental authority. Children, who are under a collectivistic rule, are set "free" and an increase in crime, drug use, and all-around juvenility occurs. They become a lone grown-up drone in the masses attached and dependent on the government, in view of the fact that their early development was deformed (to some degree) to the state's image and its wants.

In addition, as children are forced into the educational system, child labor laws further decrease children's attachment to civil society. Their value to the family household is lowered, as they cannot contribute to it financially. Because their prospects of entering the workforce at a young age has decreased, they will be less likely to develop good work ethics, the skills of being independent or responsible, or have a respect for (non-statist) authority.

Far from being any kind of supporter and up-lifting institution, the State is the enemy of the family. A weaker family is one less bulwark the state has to confront in its desire to enlarge its power vis-à-vis the individual. It is those who want to give the state more power, for whatever reason (even in the name of "saving" or "protecting" the family), that are ultimately empowering an institution that is the enemy of the family.

Sub-Notes:

*Schumpeter believes that, paradoxically, while the family is a backbone to capitalism, capitalism will ultimately hurt this backbone leading to an anti-capitalist mentality. With the analysis in this blog entry, this seems to be un-true. As Jeffrey Tucker says: "Where Schumpeter went wrong was in believing that advanced capitalism itself contributed to undermining the family (thus his pessimism regarding the future of free economies). In fact, if we look at the case of the United States, it is easy to see that it is not the market, but government policy that penalizes marriages by directly and indirectly discouraging their formation."

**Statist and managerial elite, by programs such as affirmative action, have managed to push this process via social engineering. Collective women rights were deemed to exist in which the central state has to enforce and impose on all, contra to private persons and their properties. And those critical of this are labeled as mentally ill and persons of "hate," needing therapeutic help from the establishment. Helping along feminism, of course, has been the neoconservative right; claming that it is only the new "radical" feminism that has corrupted this ideology. (This is no different than their view on civil rights. Paul Gottfried has thus said that "On almost all social issues, starting with Third World immigration, feminism, and civil rights, neoconservatives are far closer to the Left than they are to the Old Right.")

War, Culture, and Community

Centralization is always the stamping out of community and locality. Returning to Nisbet, he saw that the reason modern man has become preoccupied with community is for the very fact that community has waned. Unfortunately, this desire to restore community has not resulted in man endeavoring to reestablish genuine community, which has nothing to do with political power, but the seeking of community by the use of the central state. Yet all this has done is further the erosion of community. According to Nisbet, there is nothing more fraudulent or dangerous than a "phrase as 'national community.'"

This "quest for community" can be seen in times of war. There is probably nothing greater than war that brings out the mass mobs in modern democracy, especially today's Limbaugh-type conservatives or kiddy-con conservatives, with their nationalistic and patriotic spirit banging on the drums and labeling war skeptics as "unpatriotic" (or worse).

Ironically, this patriotic or nationalistic spirit, having everything to do with glorifying Leviathan than anything else, is in all probability the result from the loss of any genuine conservative community. This is why states like a community void. Man has become increasingly detached and atomized from others. This makes, at least at first, the masses gung-ho about war. Just remember back to the first days of the Iraq War. War for a moment brings a sense of community and connection. Certainly those in actual combat feel a sense of community with their fellow soldiers. Those at home feel a bit of that as well. A little later, nonetheless, it dries up because it is a shallow and false collectivist and statist community.

In response to those that judge military life as beneficial to the development of a young man, conservative Russell Kirk said that "there is no tyranny more onerous than that of military life." Military life does not build character, strength, or independence of mind. It does not make a man "a real one." That kind of life, due to its socialistic nature, is antagonistic towards these characters. It is "military discipline," says Kirk, that is "crushing to self-reliance."

"In military life, distant from home and most of the forces of social opinion, there is every inducement for an average young man to sink into indolence and indulgence and every reason for him to rely increasingly upon the state for very existence."

So life in the military does not resemble community at all. Not only does it distort the development of young men, life in war and military tears families apart. It discourages old taboos on morality, including sexual relationships. War encourages promiscuity. And this has been multiplied many times over by unnaturally allowing women in combat.

"War and the military are," writes Robert Nisbet,

without question, among the very worst of the earth's afflictions, responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible---not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. ... Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind. [Twilight of Authority.]

And it is in times of war, Nisbet says, that the welfare state proliferates. Around "75 percent of all national programs which have been instituted in Western countries during the past two centuries to equalize income, property, education, working conditions, and other aspects of life have been in the first instance adjuncts of the war state and of the war economy." [Twilight of Authority.] War, socialism, and "progressive" movements are bound at the hip.

The Natural Community

Natural authority is not only found in the family and its extended outgrowths. It is found in businesses, churches, firms, associations, schools, and other places. In communities you generally find natural leaders (or, if you will, aristocrats). These are families who are good at organizing community functions and resolving quarrels. The majority of the town respects their position and abilities. In community you find differentiation and distinction between individual persons who possess different levels of authority and who play different roles (occupations) in the community.

One aspect in the development of community or neighborhood is the stabilizing effect that businessmen (working within the community) have on it. For instance, Robert Murphy's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism points to how

public safety is best ensured when people voluntarily look after their own streets, and where stores, bars, and restaurants (open night and day) and public spaces are all jostled together, because it gives residents, business owners, and customers a mutual interest in ensuring safety, a complex interaction of unexpected "neighborhood watch" mutual support.

What takes this away, Dr. Murphy says, is forced and top-down planning by the government. It "breaks up this mutual support." All of this has led to is increased crime rates and the annihilation of natural community development. It cuts off the bonds between men in community.

Again, this is exactly what the state wants. Any private functions and roles communities takes on, power in the state is less. Any kind of private authority is a threat to the state. Thus to gain power, the state must crush community development. Community functions and roles the state must take over. And when this happens man increasingly turns to the state for the answers to all problems. (The more centralized this state, the worse.) It becomes the center of society and existence. Instead of seeking private solutions, state solutions are almost always sought. This unties the structure of civil society. The atomization of individuals from all cultural and social restraints takes place. Hierarchical outgrowths of pressures and competing authorities atrophy. There has been hence the development of the ferine and democratically "equal" mass of individuals with "equal" authority in relation to each other. And hence the increase in immoral, "alternative," and destructive lifestyles.

Socializing personal morality and conduct to the state can only result in a decrease in the importance of civil society's role to "regulate" these matters. It is then that the family loses authority. Churches, in the realm of personal or individual morality and conduct, get hurt as a source of authority in society. Social pressures lose their value. So it is the socialization that lowers investment of civil society's institutional and associational presence in these matters. As a consequence, statism will actually tend to increase destructive behavior all-around on net. What is defined as "good" and "bad" will be state defined. Man will increasingly depend on the state for the guide to what morality means. Morality will enter in a state of flux, ever changing, and ever relative.

Under a free society, on the other hand, and implied in the above analysis, social and cultural restraints would be restored. Families, in both the nuclear and extended sense, would regain their natural authority. Churches can gain functions and roles in communities. Without a central power, communities can be restored in vigor. A person's membership in various intermediate institutions would be reestablished (or created anew) to his natural position in its hierarchical structure. A pluralistic society would develop. There would not be any collective, systematic subsidization of harmful lifestyles or activities with the welfare state gone. Property owners would regain the right to discriminate, and implied in that would produce an increase in civil behavior by the joining increase of the ability to discriminate against uncivil behavior. And so on.

Moreover, instead of public laws there would be private laws. Laws that would arrive out of civil society; not the state.

Murray Rothbard writes that "Under total privatization, many local conflicts and 'externality' problems ... would be neatly settled.

With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortion, others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person's or community's land area. ["Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State"]

"In a country, or a world, or totally private property,

including streets, and private contractual neighborhoods consisting of property-owners, these owners can make any sort of neighborhood-contracts they wish. In practice, then, the country would be a truly "gorgeous mosaic," ... ranging from rowdy Greenwich Village-type contractual neighborhoods, to socially conservative homogeneous WASP neighborhoods. Remember that all deeds and covenants would once again be totally legal and enforceable, with no meddling government restrictions upon them. So that considering the drug question, if a proprietary neighborhood contracted that no one would use drugs, and Jones violated the contract and used them, he fellow community-contractors could simply enforce the contract and kick him out. Or, since no advance contract can allow for all conceivable circumstances, suppose that Smith became so personally obnoxious that his fellow neighborhood-owners wanted him ejected. They would then have to buy him out----probably on terms set contractually in advance in accordance with some "obnoxious" clause. ["The 'New Fusionism': A Movement For Our Time"]

Sub-Notes:
 
1. A free libertarian society would therefore not only consist of a horizontal "convivial order" made up of natural law. Vertically on top of this would be the development of the "social order's" voluntary positive law. For more on the difference between the "convivial order" and the "social order," see these notes from the PFS.

2. The communities that would develop would be diverse and this would allow people to live by those of like-values. Interventionists, as Rothbard said, would have no place in a libertarian society however. This would remove a major source of conflict in society. If communists want to a have voluntary communist community, then it does no harm to me (but only them).

3. Nonetheless, communities would tend to develop homogeneously. Today, even in a statist world, neighborhoods and towns that are wealthier and that have a stronger level of trust between neighbors are homogeneous versus heterogeneous. A free society would amplify that tendency. In particular, argues the great libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe, insurance companies would encourage this development:

"Heterogeneous" risks either cannot be insured or must be insured separately (in different pools, jointly with other homogeneous risks, and at different prices). Ethno-cultural homogeneity of neighborhoods, then, is simply a device for making insurance against external threats and interferences possible and thus lowering the cost of residential property protection. Homogeneity facilitates mutual property insurance. Capital-based insurers will charge lower premiums for clusters of homogeneous territories (while at the same time revealing the different ranks in cultural development of various ethno-cultures, as reflected in the price-spread of the premium charged at different locations.)

The process to a free society via secession, says Hoppe, "Rather than promoting a downward leveling of culture as under forced integration, ... stimulates a cooperative process of cultural selection and advancement."

The Authority of Culture, Language, and Reason

To loop back, in the first article linked-to above, the "authority of language," especially, is shown to be of great concern to Robert Nisbet, for it is language that is the most basic social and cultural bond between men. This is not only limited to verbal language but also the "silent language" of physical expressions. Language as well, as a means of communication, expresses itself in mathematics, music, paintings, et cetera. It is the essential foundation to any civilization, and therefore encompasses "nearly the whole of experience and reality."

With that in mind, there is a direct correlation, Nisbet believes, between the loss of authority in language and the increase of power and the decline of culture. Specifically, he points to George Orwell's work. Orwell said that in politics you locate "phrases tackled together" made up of meaningless abstractions and generic terms. In political discussion, for example, you find interminable phraseology that is vacuous: "human rights," "democracy," "social justice,"* "civil rights," "diversity," and so on. (With pro-empire Sen. Obama we can add the word "change," which is a political word that is as empty and lifeless as them come--------no wonder he is so liked.)

*(On "social justice," Irving Babbitt wrote: "Every form of social justice ... tends toward confiscation, and confiscation, when practiced on a large scale, undermines moral standards, and, in so far, substitutes for real justice the law of cunning and the law of force.")

"A generation," writes Nisbet, "that has formed itself linguistically around the primitivism of 'like,' 'cool,' 'man,' 'feel,' and, above all, 'you know' will not be a difficult generation to enslave politically, socially, and culturally." As a matter of fact, in the article he points to a study that reports the average Englishman and American recycles on a daily basis only "thirty-four basic words."

One author Nisbet finds loathsome is Richard Poirier and his book The Performing Self. Poirier disapproves of the "waste" of language and believes it must be personalized to the "performing self." All constraints and authority must be removed. Nisbet replies that this is not how genuine culture works. It is not how the genius develops or how the genius flourishes.

Creativity in high culture

is never the consequence of nihilistic rejection of the forms and structures which the creative mind finds around him. It is invariably a working from, and generally through, these to new forms and structures: forms and structures that may be so original indeed as to make their relation to past seem highly tenuous. That creative minds do indeed reveal capacity for liberating themselves in some degree from accepted modes of intellectual order, as a means of quickening the search for other modes, in no ways means that passion for disorder for "waste" is overriding. Least of all does it mean passion for "self-watching."

"The basis of any culture," says Nisbet, "is the presence of values which have external force in the individual's life, which reflect a power greater than anything that lies in the [single] individual alone." [Emphasis mine. This, separate quote, from Twilight of Authority. The above one, of course, is from Nisbet's essay on authority.]

Robust culture in literature rides the tides from the point of the Greeks. That is, of their techniques, forms, styles, and structures. Developing culture is the outgrowth from them. Not only is today's language untidiness caused by the denunciation of authority, the authority of reason has been waning.

In the West man finds the "acceptance of objectivity as at least a worthy goal." Our philosophical literature, says Nisbet, has looked for the objective in the order of existence, rather than the subjective or the "cult of individuality" of one's feelings. And it is this objective search that "declare[s] something of superlative nobility."

Without the authority of reason comes irrationality. It has thus been at the university where you find "feeling, through sensitivity and encounter sessions, ... exalted, in those wide spheres of the arts ... where preoccupation with self, with display or exhibition of self, takes the almost invariable form of display of the least rational, the least reason-oriented..."

In regards to the decline of the arts, for example, Murray Rothbard agreed. Rothbard saw nihilism forming in the arts:

The art-for-art's sake scam that permeates the modern liberal world-view, was launched by nineteenth-century aesthetes as a camouflage of their own morbid, nihilistic, pessimistic, and violently anti-traditional outlook: the French poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the Impressionists, Dadaists, and later the Bloomsbury Set and the literary and art critic Roger Fry. Since they could not get anywhere at the time by openly advocating their nihilistic values and epistemology, or their "alternative life-styles," they pushed – unfortunately with great success – the "art has its own reasons" rationale.

First, the left-liberals preached l' art pour l' art in aesthetics, and as a corollary, in ethics, trumpeted the new view that there is no such thing as revealed or objective ethics, that all ethics are "subjective," that all of life's choices are only personal, emotive "preferences." ["KULTURKAMPF!"]

This, according to Robert Nisbet, makes our age a "critical" one. Saint-Simon said that there are two types of ages: "organic" and "critical." It is in organic ages that the authority of culture, reason, and language is dominant. The age of our time is critical because these intellectual and abstract authorities are weak. We are in a "twilight of authority." And it is no quirk that with this comes the rise of Power.

Methodological Individualism and Intermediate Institutions

Man is obviously not an island all alone to himself. This is a fact that is a given in libertarianism or "paleolibertarianism," properly understood. No man or men could live in that kind of state, unless their wish is starvation, death, and extinction.

For man to fulfill his natural instincts of preservation, contractual and covenant marriage comes about. As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises reasoned, the division of labor for sex under capitalism brings about "traditional" marriage and fosters it.

Man wanting to enlarge his family's wealth, for that of his wife and children and their future, and not to live a minimum and brute life cannot happen without voluntary cooperation with other men under an economic division of labor. This cooperation under the division of labor represents the source of civil life. It brings a natural social order of free market activity and capitalism.

Building up material wealth also allows man time to fulfill his religious and spiritual needs. (State fiat requiring man to work from dawn to dust leaves little time for religion, family, or such things! In the same manner, involuntarily forcing both parents into the workforce lessens the family structure.) Man's "quest for community," too, is fulfilled in this cooperative, non-political atmosphere. Intermediate institutions, or social intermediate institutions, absent monopolistic statist power and dictates, fill the necessary need for social, cultural, and economic authority and "regulation." They provide a framework to a world of uncertainty and scarcity.

This brings us to the first article. In the Mises.org Daily Article “What We Mean by Individualism” by Adam Martin, the author explicates why supporting subsidiary institutions requires the understanding that the building blocks to all institutions is that they are always and by necessity composed of individuals. For intermediate institutions to be present, they cannot be divorced from the actions of individuals, nor could they possibly be formed without individuals.

This is why a methodologically individualist stance must be taken, both metaphysically and morally. Once this is grasped, then the idea that there is a battle between intermediate institutions, community and individuals (if the terms are properly defined), as Mr. Martin writes, is theoretical nonsense. To organize and form institutions is only natural to man. They make an atomistic individual with no attachments nonexistent. Because of this, attacks against libertarian individualism, by such gentlemen as Russell Kirk, are falsely premised.

This understanding also amplifies important insights from the great Robert Nisbet. The State is not just at war with the lone individual and his liberty and property. This is to miss the full picture, perhaps most interestingly the most important aspect of the full picture. The State is also at war with all societal institutions and associations that men----individuals----form. One individual is alone and weak. But institutions---be they a business enterprise, a church, or family---are not. This proper frame of reference allows us to understand how to strengthen these institutions and associations (and, at least in purely economic terms as it relates to some of these institutions, why they exist in our scarce world).

A Layered Society: Individual, Nuclear Family, Extended Family, Clan, Nation

Roland Watson's LRC article “State vs. Community” makes a conceptual framework to understand community and its relationship to separate, unique individuals by that of a layered onion.

At the very center of this onion there is the individual. It is what makes you, you and me, me. It expresses our individualism and the "something" that makes us truly human.

Family is the nearest layer to this center. It is nearest to us. It provides the nearest support for the individual. This natural attachment and its impact on our development, too, make us truly human. Without it, we would be gone. In this layer there is an internal authority vis-à-vis the individual. Most importantly to any society, it is the institution that supplies and supports the development of children into adults. Its role in this process is to provide love and guidance. It supplies, among other things, economic and emotional support, education, the teaching of moral and religious values, work ethics and guidance for children to learn individual responsibility. It is thus the most important layer to nourish the individual core, the center, of the onion.

To continue to apply Mr. Watson's framework, let us say that the extended family is the next layer. It adds another layer of support to the individual, and to the nuclear family. Another layer would be the local community, which is filled with neighboring family households, friends, church and church leaders, community leaders, businesses and business leaders, and so on. Moving even further we enter into the very outer layers which include that of the region or nation. Those outer layers can be defined by the bond of language, ethnicity, and a discernible culture.

Community vs. State

“Let’s Gut the Political Community” by P. Andrew Sandlin contends that during the past three hundred years the political community has reigned supreme; whereas before, to differing degrees, governing was more left to non-coercive forms of management and governorship, such as kinship and religion. Along with kinship and religion communities, today, if we got rid of the State, we could introduce the "economic community."

Mr. Sandlin writes:

When left unhindered [e.g., "strong families, churches, and businesses"], they tend to assume most of the legitimate responsibilities in human society: nurture, education, bread winning, communication, health, transportation, wealth creation, and so forth. Just remember: in principle, what these communities do, the state doesn’t get to do. And what the state does, these communities don’t get to do. Why should we want the family, church, business, and other non-political communities to assume these responsibilities? Because these other communities are voluntary and non-coercive. You can ... walk away from a family. You can walk away from a church. You can walk away from a job. But in today’s Western world, try walking away from the state. Because these communities are voluntary, and non-coercive, they also do a better job of fulfilling their responsibilities in human society than the state does.

He continues that "It is a strong, non-coercive institution that binds a society together." For this reason they are "bulwarks against tyranny." And, unlike some critics from the "paleoconservative" side, we "need more small, family businesses" just as much as "we need big businesses." "'Big Business,' like 'Big Family' and 'Big Church,' is a great check on 'Big Brother.'"

The very last thing to do, as a result, to strengthen social intermediate institutions, like that of family, is to replace them or lessen them for statism and the political circus. Combining them with politics will always be damned to failure.

Authority, Private Communities, Law, and Peace

Jonathan Liem writes in “The Voluntary Community”:

Every removal of subsidiarity from the regulation of the community, by the ever-expanding state, displaces the human being from that which grounded them in wholesome relationships. This loss of wholesome relationships has unleashed the atomistic-individualism of libertinism. Thus, the state is responsible for the degeneracy of today’s community. The state has neutered the role that the voluntary community plays in the natural authority that regulates human action, and replaced it with the unnatural authority of the omnipotent state, its political shenanigans and relativistic moral center based upon pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. The irony of the entire experience is that in working towards the virtuous community through the mechanism of the state, the conservatives have in actuality, ensured the supremacy of libertinism.

Now I am not certain if what I am about to say is "politically incorrect" or not. These days it is hard to tell. (It might be to the Reason crowd.) Authority and social structure is essential to any society, even one that is purely libertarian.

But authority and power are two different things. According to Brad Lowell Stone in his book on Robert Nisbet, here is how Nisbet saw these two terms:

Power, by contrast [to authority], is external and based on force. It entails an effort to exact obedience or compliance of others to the will of one or more person in a way not derived from the roles or statues of the aggregate. Thus, power tends to be monistic and indiscriminate, with uniform effects, whereas authority by its nature is pluralistic, with multiform effects. Power arises, Nisbet says, only when authority breaks down.

It does not take much to see that without authority society would parish. Mankind has an inegalitarian nature. All men, for instance, cannot be business owners. Some just do not have the ability. Under the free market, contra statism and its political hierarchy of the usage of power, it produces a hierarchy that awards excellence in servicing others. Something of which is mutually beneficial and reinforcing to all individuals, of all talents and intelligence levels, in a society. To get "on top," so to speak, one must serve his fellow man. Hence there exists in free firms hierarchical authority. There has to be. In the free market at large there is a general hierarchy.

Capitalism and the free market, more specifically, is all about an institutional setting. Once this is seen and understood it becomes clear that the atomistic individual and egalitarian individual is an absent and mythical individual. They do not exist in relation to any internal market institution in an atomistic sense or an egalitarian sense having equal authority vis-à-vis others. There is not the hint of democratic values. It may be heresy to say this, but focusing too much on pure individualism and nothing else is destructive. Something too many libertarians fall into.

Children, living with their parents and under their private property, could never develop into mature adults without good parental authority. Therefore in the same regards there is a hierarchy in family*. (Children cannot be said to be equal to their parents in authority!)

*[As Robert Nisbet wrote, today's "disorganization of the modern family," and the loss of much of its private authority, is the result from the "absorption of its functions ... chiefly (by) the state." And, as he said, the family is the most important molecule to society.]

In communities, large and small, there are leaders who are better at organizing functions and resolving disputes than others. Schools have teacher authority figures. In religion, there are also leaders and authority figures. There are thus layers of authority hierarchically structured. But these men, in a free market, do not have the ability to tax or coerce anyone. In addition, many of these authority figures are in constant competition with each other.

A look into private property also shows that such property has an "internal law." It is also something, by its very nature, inegalitarian. Its ownership is inegalitarian. Furthermore, private property does not form a vacuum, or a chaotic free-for-all of open access in terms of accessibility and/or rules of usage, like that of public property nor become detached from bourgeoisie moral and social values. It does not create a drone of detached zombie-like individuals walking about.

It is also important to understand that a free society, as I am describing, allows a harmony between different people, with different beliefs and values. Men do not need a uniform one-size-fits-all set of rules or dictates. They do not need it with purchasing goods and services on the market today. They would not need it if law were to be private. Allowing family households to associate with who they wish to associate with or apply to themselves this or that law (e.g., pure libertarian natural law, Catholic law, Jewish, a secular form of law, etc.) would remove conflict between people. There would no longer be conflict, for instance, between secular versus religion in State monopoly law (or on public property, for that matter).

The replacement of such a society is one where authority, and a unique "authority" development of power or coercive violence, is placed into the managerial, all centralized, State. In not abandoning State monopoly law for private, the result will just be the increasing diminishment of all societal institutions and private authority into central hands to be molded and deformed. It is the destruction of any and all community. By doing this, it is also sets into motion the atomized individual. To use a term from Brad Lowell Stone, even though the words are not exactly to my liking, a "communitarian traditionalist" has no place in a statist society.

For example, one crushing defeat to community, and private property rights in general, were State laws getting rid of covenants. They are a perfect illustration and example of a form of competitive and private law. For this reason it is understandable why the State would outlaw them. They are, at least indirectly, a form of competition to the State institution itself! It makes them, essentially, incompatible with statism and the managerial state.

This topic brings us to the last articles. Yet another strength to freedom is that it will eliminate any problems of forced integration and forced exclusion. See  “Community by Force” by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. They would disappear because all property would be privately owned. There would be no such thing as an immigration problem because all people would be invited into their communities. (Trespassing being against property norms.) At the same time, though, there would be the tendency to promote an all-inclusive complex division of labor to bring people together in the market place. Free trade between all would exist.

To understand where communities typically spring from and how the market's spontaneous order of movement would generally tend to work out, you can see  “Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Oh, Wait, Make That ‘Weakness’” by Steve Sailer.

One more mention worthy article would be Mr. Rockwell's “Capitalism and Culture.” It is a bit off-topic from this, but interesting nonetheless.

“In brief, culture is an exclusive, which is to say, self-defining creation, which satisfies needs arising from man’s feeling and imagination. Every culture has a kind of ontological basis in social life, and this social life does not express itself in equality, but in a common participation from different levels and through different vocations.” --- Richard Weaver

I am in the process of reading Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time by Richard M. Weaver. It has an introduction by Russell Kirk and a foreword by Ted J. Smith, III. I have only read the very first chapters and have skimmed some of the rest, but it is the usual rigorous presentation and analysis you would come to expect from the great Weaver. This book deserves a summary and review here at The Paleo Blog. I'll endeavor to put together one that does it (partial) justice in a week or two, depending how things work out in blog time.

Weaver is more known for Ideas Have Consequences, but, according to the late Mel Bradford in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, Visions of Order might be his more important book.

The author, of course, is a citadel of conservatism, properly understood. In the process of reading it has made me ruminate on a few tangent issues. The first thing is technology, in particular the Internet. The second thing is man's loss of community and sense of being.

The Internet

One thing I do think is the truth is that, while I am tremendously thrilled in so many ways with technology and the Internet for an almost infinite number of reasons (there is no need to analyze them in detail here), becoming too attached to it is destructive for any individual. A man that becomes obsessed or too attached with the Internet loses his place, of where he is, where he came from, and the many natural real face-to-face attachments he has to the "world outside" the net. Surfing the Internet, posting on a blog or two, email, and some online shopping is fine and wonderful. Making a few online-buddies is great too. The Internet is a great place with many wonderful things. (And sadly bad things too, of course.) I cannot stress that enough. But then again, many of men---especially the young----make it their basis of daily activity for life. It consumes it, too much. Are you to some extent guilty? Maybe, probably. Me? Yes, no doubt sometimes. (I spend time to produce sometimes long and repetitive blog posts.)

There are even web community sites out there that encourage you to post your daily activities hour-by-hour online for all the world to see. You have man getting caught up in all the chat rooms, forums, and the like. They become obsessed and infatuated with it, and lose a hierarchy of values for making an actual life for oneself. I would not call this healthy for mind, body, or spirit. At the extreme end, it can help shatter man (and mankind). It deforms personality. Of course, I defend the freedom to do such. The mob-mentality will do its thing. It is not as if the State, or I, can make life better to even the tiniest of degrees by dictatorial force. But that does not make it above examination or make a search for higher ideals for a culture and society nugatory. Man will always be required to be in an interminable state of cerebration, man being short of perfection and always in the possibility of heading to ruin or annihilation.

You might ask, What about the guy who makes his living online? There is nothing wrong with that. There should be no objections. It is a fine profession. He should be able to judge the proper balance in his life. Hopefully he is able to determine what is best for him correctly. And only he can do that, but one wishes he does contemplate that balance and not ignore it.

Community: "Globalization," Immigration, and Statism

I can understand more why some (paleo)conservatives attack "globalization." That is to say, I understand relatively more the temperament of this view. It is true that half of the attack I see as erroneous. Some of the error is in not seeing the difference between a free market and a statist (welfare for the rich) market or free trade and what is currently in existence. It is also not taking into account what, as Henry Hazlitt would hammer on, is the seen and the unseen when it comes to economic transactions.

It would be in vain to deny certain directions of a free market, but the chief principle is that under freedom such directions are organic. It flows with traditional settings and it flows with institutions and institutional development. Does a more international market come into existence under free conditions? Surely, yes. This should not be seen as a negative, not the least of which includes the reality that third world nations develop into higher living standards. Something that should be praised by all. In such a process, though, it further increases our living standards. It may even make certain jobs obsolete, but all to the good for the redirection into new areas. It is the two-sided transaction that makes this process possible in the first place. It does not contradict itself if such redirection happens. It happens based on the initial premise of mutual advancement. Real free trade is a blessing on community strength and well-being. It is also something that promotes peace between peoples. But be this as it may.

One aspect of this, by the way, is that if genuine free trade exists it will cause less immigration into the U.S. There will be less reason to move. Protectionism, on the other hand and all things being equal, will promote more immigration. It is funny because the position from a Buchananite would actually lead to things that would actively promote what is not wanted. If only he and his followers would read some good economics [PDF].

The immigration angle of what is currently taking place before our eyes, in my view, does bring danger. Some consider this part of today's "globalization."* Now there is nothing wrong with nationality, no matter what some left-libertarian will tell you. It does not originate out of the State; anymore than language has its genesis from State. Probably a good way to "gauge" the artificiality of today's immigration is by observing the bilingualism that is expanding. An underlying fabric to any society or division of labor is language. Just as a complex free market needs a hard money and must evolve out of a barter system, a market needs a common language in which people are attached to. It is of the most essential and necessary bonds to any society. (One example at end.)

*[Again: I do see danger in today's statist globalization.]

A main theme of The Paleo Blog has been the subject of social-cultural institutions and its relationship to statism. A point brought up several (!) times is that by giving more authority and control to the State, the less other areas of life will have in meaning and authority. In particular this is true for institutions that are essential for society to live and grow, like family. It is also true for church and community relationships. A Wal-Mart in a free market brings no harm to society or a small town. But when we lose community relationships/interactions, culture and church, we are harmed. We are harmed when we lose its hierarchy.

To quote Weaver one more time:

“A just man finds satisfaction in the knowledge that society has various roles for various kinds of people and that they in the performance of these roles create a kind of symphony of labor, play, and social life. There arises in fact a distinct pleasure from knowing that society is structured, diversified, balanced, and complex. Blind levelers do not realize that people can enjoy seeing things above them as well as on a plane with them. Societies with differentiation afford pleasure to the moral imagination as an aesthetic design affords rest to the eye.”

The State has never been the savor of community and conservative-oriented (non-statist) tradition. The State has done nothing to serve a conservative like the great Richard Weaver. Quite the opposite of doing any "good." The loss of the small town feel or the sense of community can partly be seen how a State has the means and the desire to break it up and stretch public property to all corners of "its" territory. It wants all family households, and especially individual persons, to be as tied to it as possible, if only to tax them as much as they can get away with. Major interregional roads or highways do not exist solely as the means for the advancement of economic exchanges. This I would call a "good." From the frame of reference of the State, contrariwise, it is seen as a powerhouse for control: for taxation and various regulations, least an institution stand in its way---it does not like any kind of (even indirect) competition. It is thus likely to create more such roads and highways, due not to market/people demand, but for its benefit.

Statism will consequently artificially facilitate an environment in which any kind of cultural development becomes less possible. For a culture to be whole it needs an ideal. It (i.e., the men that compose it) needs therefore to use judgment to discriminate against lesser values or ideas that lead to the opposite result. This kind of cultural metaphysical force cannot hold when statism controls spatial relationships and private property arrangements.

One aspect of this is immigration and assimilation. Instead of private property, in a sense, "regulating" immigration, the State opens all public property up in a free-for-all. (See my entry on the subject here.)

Property owners in the "public" sphere have very little discriminatory ability. Since discrimination results in ridding oneself of risks and lower property value, statist interventionism will promote a decline in civility and in fact promote a boost of dis-civility (by making it less expensive than under normal conditions, loosely speaking). They will hire disruptive men in fear of the State hammering down of them. Likewise, for the most rude of customers. For example, a Wal-Mart near-by me has hired a couple of people that cannot even speak English---literally. It is there business to do so, of course, and I hold no resentment or animosity to the given persons who were hired. Not at all. (I find such emotions damaging to oneself.) But what is the chance it was out of fear from State?

In response to this. It is the state that promotes “atomism”. Instead of looking to family, friends, neighbors, the community, the church; we look to the State. Government is anti-community.

Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty:

Individualists have always been accused by their enemies of being "atomistic" -- of postulating that each individual lives in a kind of vacuum, thinking and choosing without relation to anyone else in society. This, however, is an authoritarian straw man; few, if any, individualists have ever been "atomists." On the contrary, it is evident that individuals always learn from each other, cooperate and interact with each other; and that this, too, is required for man's survival. But the point is that each individual makes the final choice of which influences to adopt and which to reject, or of which to adopt first and which afterwards. The libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals; what he abhors is the use of violence to cripple such voluntary cooperation and force someone to choose and act in ways different from what his own mind dictates.

The Amish are a good example of a libertarian society (a private law community), as the article noted. This alone should give you second-thoughts about your comments and your misunderstanding of what libertarianism is all about. Thus a private Catholic community is fully compatible with a libertarian order too.

See libertarianism is not about individual “atomism”. We (paleo)libertarians recognize that the world is filled with interconnected relationships. These are the natural outgrowth of a society. (This includes institutions such as churches. Libertarianism is not against non-coercive institutions, such as the church.) Man recognizes that he can improve himself through relationships. And as much as he can see this (voluntary relationships), society will advance.

Society could never have grown this large without recognizing this fact. If man existed without trading, building relationships and institutions; then the population of man could not be this great in number. Man has civilized from savagery and barbarism from the increase in the specialization and diversification of labor. It is this truth that libertarians understand. And it is this understanding that sees that leftist egalitarianism brings out decivilizing forces.

As the great classical liberal Ludwig von Mises wrote:

If and as far as labor under the division of labor is more productive than isolated labor, and if and as far as man is able to realize this fact, human action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare. Experience teaches that this condition----higher productivity achieved under division of labor----is present because its cause----the inborn inequality of men and the inequality in the geographical distribution of natural factors of production----is real. Thus we are in a position to comprehend the course of social evolution.

Here we see how we are so deeply interconnected. We also see that egalitarianism is against the nature of man and civilization.

This, of course, is not to say that man does not act in the objective of helping other men and their wellbeing. It is erroneous to equate this example of action as “anti-libertarian.” It is in full compliance with libertarian action. It is libertarian action.

I am not exactly sure what you mean when you say: “A libertarian would have the tendency to view his attachments to others as obligations, and is constantly worried that people (or the government) is asking too much of them.”

You also equate a free society to one that has no attachments. This is false. As illustrated, “atomism” is not really a part of libertarianism. If I rent an apartment in a libertarian society, I have an attachment and obligation to pay my rent. There is no anti-authority here. The libertarian does not frown on the owner of the apartment building. Or if I live in a private Catholic community, I am obligated to obey private Catholic laws.

“True Christians are supposed to stop grasping for control over their lives.” If you mean that a true Christian is not supposed to try to control the life of others, then this is exactly equivalent to the libertarian philosophy. The libertarian does frown on the person, mob, official that violates the “do not steal” commandment at the point of the gun.

It is also important to note that government programs that may appear Christian in nature, often do the exact opposite of what they intend. They bring about unintended consequences. The goal might have been noble, but looking into the economics shows us that they are hurtful to man in the long-run. In fact, the very thing you wrote against is promoted in government! Instead of looking to family, friends, neighbors, and the church; we look to the government for all of our solutions.

We don’t look to each other. Instead we act like we live in an “atomistic” society. Therefore, the state promotes “atomism”.