Re: nettime: the liberty tree

[Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail) <stahlman@radiomail.net>]

Hey Mac (and Nettimers too):

I've really been enjoying your narratives but this putative history of
Libertarianism seems quite odd to me.  Doesn't it strike you as a bit goofy
to describe liberty as 

>a tree dreamed up by english gentlemen

when these "gentlemen" were the employees of the world's then richest
multinational corporation and the philosophers of the ruthless British
Imperial assault on humanity specifically charged with coming up with a
notion of liberty which would surely destroy any chance of freedom from
imperial rule itself?

You then go on to presume that this tree was

>planted by American small farmer-revolunaries

when those who crafted this revolution and drafted its central tenets were
bitterly opposed to the British East India Company and its agents --
philosophical or otherwise .  They were also hardly small farmers.  What on
earth do they teach you all the way down-under in your history class? <g>

With this comic book version of events, it is no wonder that you would
conclude by saying that liberty was

>somehow inherited by the farmers of patents in California.

Sorry, the mystery has been solved.  Refer to my "English Ideology and
WIRED Magazine" (in the Nettime archives as well as on the Re-Wired site)
for some help on unraveling this fairly straight-forward geneaology.

But, then you go on to compound some earlier confusions about American
history by saying

>This suspicion of the state certainly has genuinely American
>roots. The American constitution must still be the only one
>written by people who were in the main fundamentally suspicious
>of the state, and who set about dividing and limiting its
>power as best they could.

Huh?  How about suspicious of those who would attempt to undermine the
tenous success of the world's first anti-imperial and revolutionary
nation-state -- such as the very English against whom that revolution was
fought and against whom another war was fought in 1812 and against whom
another war (otherwise known as the American Civil War) was fought in the
1860's.   The Constitution of which you speak is a triumphant and exuberant
definition of a state designed to thwart undermining imperial intrigue --
exactly the intrigue personally represented by those very "english
gentlemen", fer chrissakes.  

Who says that 

>Jefferson's views aren't necessarily
>typical, but they were certainly influential  . . . ?

The man was little more than the pretty-worder scribe who's views out of
office carried little support and who wisely dramatically tempored his own
foolishness when he was allowed into office.  I have yet to meet a
libertarian (i.e. self-styled Jeffersonian) who understood these events.  I
wonder why?

Could it be that the insane notion that 

>liberty equals nature -- as in Kevin
>Kelly's fabulously funny *unintentional* parody of Mandeville's
>Fable of the Bees: kick out the artificial structures and let
>the hive mind rule, OK?

is in fact a very English and hardly an American notion at all?  The
English Elightenment effort  which seems to register pretty high on your
nifty-keen meter was anti-American to its core.  And, the profoundly theist
character of that American revolution was thoroughly anti-Enlightenment --
as you would expect from God-fearing Christians with a very different
notion of liberty.   Liberty for them was rooted in scripture and that
scripture was founded on the fundamental notion of original sin.  By their
voluminous writings it is clear that  they viewed human nature is sinful
and only potentially less so under conditions of serious and thoughtful
righteousness.  By no means was the Enlightenment's "reason" the remedy for
that sinfulness, either.   

And, as the one who introduced Mandeville into this conversation, let me
congratulate you for your familiarity with the text.  It should be required
reading before any discussion of libertarianism can proceed.  For the
record, Kelly told me that he had never heard of the man.

Along the way you do tip your hat in the generally correct direction by
noting that 

>This is a perverse way of looking at David Hume. Its no accident
>that Foucault's main example was Jeremy Bentham, Hume's English
>disciple. 

Perversion is the right attitude to adopt when referencing either Foucault
or Bentham , as you probably know even better than I.  BTW, I caught
Bentham's mummy on TV the other night -- his will requires it to be wheeled
out annually and, alas his real mummy head is now in a vault and generally
unseen since the school boys seemed to like to pinch it.  On the otherhand,
it's hideousness might be hidden in order not to scare the childish
Extropians too badly.

These people have no comprehension of liberty.   Liberty is impossible to
understand without understanding humanity -- a humanity which stands alone
as conscious, creative beings.  Libertarianism (to the extent that it has
any foundations at all and isn't just a "united front" of anarchists and
tax-cheats) is premised on the presumption of humanity's essentially
bestial character.  Such a notion would have revolted the Americans, if
they weren't revolting enough as it was.  Such a notion is also desperate
lie, needless to say.

Don't be fooled by WIRED (or anybody else's) public optimism, BTW.  WIRED
is in crucial respects a front for a think-tank, the Global Business
Network, that takes in millions advising multi-nationals how to survive
under breakdown conditions in a New Dark Age.  The "optimism meme" ,as
editors at WIRED have described it to me, is just candy-coating for the
credulous masses.  When you graduate, you move on to the real money and you
quickly learn that 25% of the population is expected to become permanently
"lost."  Never take a hypocrite at face value.  Particularly a newly rich
one.

You conclude by noting that  

>As I write, Korean workers are fighting in the streets
>with cops. Its a scene that makes the old May 68 in Paris look like
>a tea party. 

Of course it was.  Today, post-industrialism is crushing workers worldwide
and catalyzing what used to be called a mass strike wave (which is heating
up in Europe too) vs. the May-June French Benthamites who were striving to
establish the post-modern attitude which could only lead to today's attempt
to crush Korean workers.  1968 is right there in Seoul.  On the wrong side
of the barricades, of course.  But, then, here on nettime, we all know that
story, right?

Mark Stahlman
New Media Associates
New York City
newmedia@mcimail.com
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