WATCH: Freedom’s the Answer! (What’s the Question?) #SolutionsWatch
So you want to know the answer, do you? You know: The Answer. Well, freedom’s the answer! (What’s the question?)
Joining James to demonstrate this point and discuss a few of the details are Keith Knight, Managing Editor of The Libertarian Institute and editor of The Voluntaryist Handbook, and Larken Rose, author of The Most Dangerous Superstition and creator of Jones Plantation film.
Sources, shownotes and links – as well as audio versions and download options – can be found here. Previous episodes of #SolutionsWatch can be found here and here.
Follow us on Telegram for regular updates & commentary
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
At the 20-minute mark, Corbett asks a ingenious question which gives to the interview a Marxian turn. It is the kind of question often asked to Communists and Socialists: “Anarchist societies never existed; Anarchism is against human nature, etc”.
Larken’s uses a moral argument and takes as an example slavery which lasted centuries during which it would seldom have occurred to anyone a society without slavery, but that doesn’t mean, the argument goes on, it’s a good thing even if, then, no one could have imagined another way to organise society; proof of it, we, here and now, can appreciate the fact that it is not because slavery-based societies (referring to classic understanding of slavery of course) had lasted for so long that it makes it a moral society, since we see that it has ended, and so immoral things have to end sooner or later.
The reasoning is incomplete IMO because it doesn’t ask how slavery ended. There is this conception of objective morality many anarchists adhiere to, achievable according to them through the sole will (this is suggested implicitly). But while objective morality exists in the sense of there being clear objective immutable laws, the will is not enough to achieve a moral society IMO; the power of the conscious will to achieve change at the scale of a social order is very limited, if not impossible. Larken doesn’t consider that the end of slavery was a historical process, i.e. the result of changing circumstances, social, political, economic; that is, outside any particular individual’s or group’s conscious will; that, precisely, while slavery lasted it fulfilled a function to the then specific economic organisation of society which cannot be altered by a decree or by the social will, so long as the prevailing circumstances are not exhausted; Larken contents himself in realising that slavery ended at a certain time because it was immoral, suggesting, I gather, that we just have to will anarchism to bring it into being.
Had Larken considered the historical process that led to the end of slavery, namely, the wealth created by slavery itself and the process of industrial revolution that rendered slave keeping costlier and therefore unsustainable than the competing and newly created wage labour, he would have concluded that immoral social organisation, however revolting that may sound, fulfills a historical function and perdures as long as the economic and material conditions demand it perdures, however consciously opposed to it the whole of society may be. This is not pessimism or defeatism if we believe it to be just a historical stage, just like slavery was one.
Therefore, in outlining what a Stateless society shall be, we must investigate the raison d’être of the State, (which is not monopoly on violence and inefficient administration; these are consequences of that raison d’être), instead of believing the State be abolished by the the action of the will.
Sure. But perhaps it is much more fundamental to answer the questions: “What is slavery? What is freedom? ”
I, for one, would argue that current slave-wage earners are in a much worse state of affair than these slaves of yesteryears! I would further argue that most folks can’t even begin to comprehend how they’re bounded by their own mental and physical existential illusions. Perhaps our greatest prison is the one produced by our cherished rationalizations of what and who we are, our limited and limiting ego identities. Until we experience and know the truth of what we really are, any so-called freedom remains illusory and only serves to crush and imprison us further.
I have many questions to ask Larken and Keith, but I’ll ask just one for now: About inequality, poverty and homelessness touched upon at the beginning; the answer they provided, if I understood correctly, is that it will be “dealt” with through charity. So, at a certain point, these people will organise to defend their interest as they won’t see themselves as individuals but as forming a particular class, because as time goes by, and the capitalistic root of inequality being active there is no way to remove the problem since Capital can absorb only so much labour, and anyway needs unemployment as a leverage for setting up wages, so then a certain rate of poverty and homelessness will always exist. The people in this class will organise somehow, and in response a certain organisation of those making charitable work will also take place. It’s the natural trend when a problematic phenomenon persists in time, its resolution tends to become systematic, that is bureaucratic. And there you’ve got the first burgeoning of a State; not any organisation but a class-based organisation.
So the question is this: How could the proponents of a simple removal of the State (keeping everything else intact) prevent the resurgence of the State, considering that the State does not exist because of somebody’s whim but because it fulfils a function (administer class conflict, including social contention) and if the root of social conflict is not removed because the economy is ruled by the laws of Capital, how could they manage to solve inequality and poverty, without organisation, that is without a State that is class-based?
There is a more basic question related to the above; what is the worth of a system in which social inequality is dealt with through charity rather than through removing it?
How the fuck did this crap make it on to OffG?
International Crisis Summit in Bucharest (about the covid scam)
Allusion to Gertrude Stein aside, Corbett and company seem to come up with select questions to contrive a rather one-dimensional answer to complex problems of living. Freedom isn’t the answer but the question, or a question among others, from what is justice or truth(fulness) to what are needs in relation to desires to any inquiry or dilemma raised by self-conscious creatures like ourselves which lead us into a world that is moral, not merely given but made by values and virtues we practice, or not. Indeed, the dark history of the present presents us with a crisis of perception as to whether the world is moral at all, and not just a machine in which we merely function, no longer mysterious souls but hackable animals (Harari).
We may sum up our moral senses of the world in nouns, concepts, ideas like freedom, but we encounter problems of freedom in existential terms that always elude abstract resolution, if any at all, not least of all because conflicts of values themselves can leave us unclear in deciding a course of action, hardly to be determined by any utilitarian calculation of the greater good. Divergence between liberty and responsibility, for example, demonstrates the difficulty of reconciling principle and practice. Freedom alone is a complex phenomenon, extending from simple choices to commitment to a way of living which may lead to loss of liberty in responsibility to a greater good originally unforeseen as a consequence of one’s actions.
We may be born free only to be everywhere in chains as Rousseau said because we inherit consequences of others’ actions before us in institutionalized patterns and social organization. We are social beings by nature, interdependent as with all life, but by virtue of second nature of culture collectively constructed as conditions relativizing the range of our choices across struggles of human history. No man or woman is an island, entire of itself (Donne), and politics may be seen as our birthright, fundamental to who we are, insofar as we choose to live as cocreators of different destinies than those chosen for us, natality, not mortality, being essential in this respect to the human condition as Arendt emphasized, in contrast to the banality of evil, compliantly going along to get along.
So the problem of the state remains secondary to, parasitical upon the question of governance and how we might shape the conditions of our humanity by the necessary means of society. Perhaps we owe to ourselves a long overdue society of self-governance where the free flourishing of each is rooted in egalitarian relations among all, beyond the relations of rule that have made civilization a nightmare from which we are trying to wake (Joyce).
We look at moral sense as a way to avoid the collective insanity that surrounds us.
Otherwise one runs the risk of being absorbed by the short lived wonder of it all.
Australia now has it’s own Greta Thunberg.
Would you believe, her name is _ _ _ wait for it _ _ _ Nirvana.
Here she is in her PRIVATE SCHOOL uniform. Funny that:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-18/climate-change-school-strike-protests-kids-demand-action/103112486
If kids like this are our future, we’re well and truly fucked.
It has been worse. Under Chairman Mao most Chinese kids could only recite his little red book. Same brainwashing commie shit.
Excuse the off topic comment but I note, whilst perusing the embarrassingly ineffectual contributions of Zionist shill Lee Kern, that there seems to be a new breed of “entertainers” who display no indication that they ever learned their trade through active participation in genuine actual live shows. Kern comes across as a frankly mentally feeble sheltered little moron whose natural defensiveness is magnified by the customary Zionist persecution complex. Just bask in the mortification of this:
https://twitter.com/leekern13/status/1725560577907449863
UK government to cut inheritance tax allowance thereby stealing money from people that have already paid their taxes.
Freedom is no government..
Add in Taxation is Theft. The only beneficiaries of government are the already wealthy — who avoid taxes
Can we get an negative rating star when we don’t like an article?
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose = We will own nothing and be happy.
Hey Klaus! Stop stealing from Janis. Get your own material.
Kris Kristofferson wrote those lyrics.
Janis immortalised them.
Kristofferson is named by Fritz Springmeier as an MK Ultra re-programmer. There’s certainly some strange footage of him leading Sinead O’Connor away went she went off-script once on stage. Kristofferson’s father was senior military and he himself was a Rhodes Scholar. I used to disregard Springmeier but I’ve seen a number of mind-control tropes he identified cropping up repeatedly (especially in music videos) and have been forced to take him more seriously.
Janis Joplin was of course one of the 27 Club. 27 = 9+9+9 or 666 inverted (plus it’s three cubed).
As far as I recall, David Icke reckoned Kristofferson was one of the lizard people.
I went to a doctor the other day to find out if i was sick..
The doctor could find nothing wrong, yet offered two
injections that would protect me “in case……”
I left the doctors thinking “What a great Protection
Racket ( I think i’ll be a doctor in my next incarnation.)
The hippocratic oath needs to be amended to make as much money as possible and to hell with patient safety..
Have you actually read the full Hippocratic Oath?
It’s not what people are led to believe.
Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, fesses up:
‘The ABC does not ban people based on their political beliefs, and our guidelines require that the ABC is not seen to be condoning or encouraging prejudice or discrimination.
He also said impartiality did not require every perspective to receive equal time or for every aspect of an argument to be presented.‘
The people’s broadcaster?
Yeah, and pigs fly on gossamer wings.
More here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-17/abc-managing-director-david-anderson-gaza-israel-news-coverage/103120818
‘If the prophets of ancient Israel (such as, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Malachi, And Amos) were alive today, Benjamin Netanyahu
would accuse them of antisemitism for daring to describe
his government as a travesty of what the Mosaic covenant
was all about. A common thread running throughout the
Jewish Bible – Christianity’s Old testament – was to criticize
kings, the wealthy, and the corrupt courts for violating the
Mosaic Commandments to create a fair and equitable society
protecting the poor from the economic oppression of debt
bondage and the loss of their land. If the prophets were
summoned to give judgement today, it is Netanyahu’s right-
wing Likud Party and steeply unequal economy of Israel that
would be condemned as violating the most basic laws of
Biblical Judaism.’…Michael Hudson:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/11/michael-hudson-were-the-prophets-anti-semitic-debunking-netanyahus-distorted-biblical-justifications
What would Jesus Say ? “Cancel the Debts !”
GREENWALD interviews SNOWDEN on video, before publication
This article w video w/b up for only 1 more day.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/11/17/citizenfour-the-end-of-privacy-is-near.aspx
Gripping & charismatic & history making events.
Actually the whole video documentary can be seen here.
https://rumble.com/v33khgx-citizenfour-2014-full-documentary-about-nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden.html
Thinking about it, David Cameron may not be such a bad idea..I have heard his wife is really nice – something about massive attack and Bristol and possibly WOMAD concerts..and being nice with kids (when he forgets them after the pig?)
David Cameron has got a reputation (he largely managed to keep quiet) for bombing Libya back to the Stoneage.
So the Russians might not totally ignore him, supposedly Piggy in The Middle between New York and Moscow, but the City of London’s PR recently has not been too good.
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Not Tony Blair Too – or we will stand no chance
Boris Johnson is personally Responsible for the deaths of over half a million Ukrainians and Russians. Russia and The Ukraine were very close to a ceasefire, and he flew to Kiev to tell them to keep on fighting.
Cameron quoted me once: “Immigration is not an unalloyed good.”
I swear I coined it 20 years before Cameron said it. But he knows to steal from the best.
Corbett’s a bit heavy for this time of night, but I admit his 5 minute video re 9/11 about 20 year ago was top class.
I tried to be a 9/11 truther, a covid nonsense truther and ffs don’t get jabbed truther..
But it didn’t do me any good, and I refused to go to the funerals.
Then mainly because of Lockdown, and masked zombies jumping out of my way after 10 days sailing…I got ill…
Still in July 2023, I thought I’d made a pretty good recovery…got over my agrophobia, started going down the pub again…and shopping by myself buying floor tiles…Then it hit me again.
Two days after Sinéad O’Connor died
My wife dialed 999 and I was bluelighted to the RESUS Ward..The Ambulance man phoned ahead – probable case of Sepsis here…He saved my life.
I remained conscious most of the time, when I could see on the monitor, my heart had not only stopped, but was now pumping backwards. I insisted to the nurse that this was not possible, otherwise I would already be dead – can you please turn the sound down.
In the morning he seem amazed I was still alive, and disconnected all the monitors on my chest, and the oxygen mask ..and tried to move me from the RESUS ward.
But the hospital was full, so they stuck me in The Storeroom, where it was nice and cool, I suspect right next to the morgue.
23 days later, I was still as weak as a kitten..could barely walk with the help of a zimmerframe.
My wife was a total angel, so again today we had all the Grandkids round ONE to EIGHT – in fact they are sleeping here…and have met our new kitten (8 weeks) – she is very fast
Not been to the pub yet, but we have had a party.
So there is Life after Near Death (thanks to nursing care and antibiotic drips)
I didn’t complain, and asked nicely, and said thanks in the middle of the night (I couldn’t walk)
They said, I should make a full recovery, but it will take time. I can do about 2 hours on my feet, but then I get tired and want to go to sleep.
“Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbyAZQ45uww
be hiking yet. I keep a walking stick in my car.
Tony
Netanyahu has employed “The Samson Option” – he’s
gonna take Israel down with him…
That’ll teach those High Court bums !
Netanyahu’s were tested, with the help of Margaret Thatcher’s Son – Mark Thatcher “born 15 August 1953)” an English business man then in Apartheid South Africa.
In England we didn’t know what was going on except Peter Gabriel sung Biko, and all of us at Wembley Stadium Broadcast across 2 Billion live sung “Free Nelson Mandela”
He IS MAD enough to press The Red button to kill The Rest of Us.
Oh Shit. Lets hope they don’t work.
I think The Russian’s probably work, and they maybe getting a bit trigger happy
The problem with Netanyahu’s lot, is their conciences kicking in? or have they been brainwashed to not feeling anything, and just want to die themselves???
Best Ignored
Their mums think their kids are Special…
So they please their mums, and submit to
their mum’s expectations of them…
It’s a heavy expectation…
Their mums have got them by their balls…
Proof of genocide:
I Inhuman
S Sadistic
R Rapacious
A Arrogant Apartheid
E Evil
L Lesion
And Turkey doesn’t have the guts to turn the oil off.
Mutual Aid.
It. Makes. Sense.
It’s how Mother Nature has functioned successfully for billions of years.
Cooperation has been crushed by the Turds at the top.
Are we just dumb or just slow learners?
When Old Ma Nature allowed humans to evolve from the primeval slime she obviously didn’t allow for the Turds who floated to the top. Maybe she’s not as successful as you make out.
Thing is Saint John, we eschewed Mother Nature a long time ago, preferring petroleum, plastic, bitumen and iron.
No matter, the Earth will survive WITHOUT US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
dumb…..we are dumb!
And, thanks to government indoctrination centers (“public schools”), it’s not getting any smarter out there.
No, I’m not “upset” and I’ve not been “challenged” – except I’ve never listened to such a delusional, ahistorical, retarded, pile of crap. Let’s take just one example. How do these retards think slavery was abolished? The answer is that the state declared it illegal and then enforced the law. Without the state, the law, and the enforcement, your neighbour could decide that he’s going to make you his slave. And unless you are more powerful and violent than he is, there’s nothing to stop him.
Don’t you mean WITH the state, your neighbour can exert those? The state does it anyway, monkey see monkey do.
The picking and choosing of which ‘statism’ is or is not allowed is exactly why politically it’s a waste of time promoting it.
I know exactly what I meant, but I couldn’t be bothered trying to figure out what you mean.
Johnny explains it.
Slavery was, and still is, sanctioned by the state.
One or two murderous thugs cannot build an empire on slavery. It requires laws, armed forces and police forces.
It took them half a millennia, but Rome managed to get there!
Go on then, tell us about it. Please provide examples of the UK (or US) state sanctioning slavery.
They’re called wage slaves.
They live below the poverty line and there’s at least seventy million of them in the US.
Ditto UK, Australia, Europe, etc etc.
They’re the Folks serving us from the other side of the counter and doing monotonous, shitty work in factories and most service industries.
So you redefine slavery to mean something else. And you swing from the extreme form of laissez-faire, neo-liberal Thatcherism promoted in this video to being concerned about the poor and people doing “shitty jobs”.
In advanced societies, we have employment laws and protections, such as minimum wages, which assist the low paid. And they have access to social benefits such as free education and health care. Of course, none of that would exist in your mythological notion of a free society.
Minimum wage laws hurt the poorest in the community.
“Free” education and health care are ANYTHING BUT. Someone somewhere pays for it. And the return is far from superior.
Are Americans today more ‘free’ than when the federal gov’t became involved in education – OR health care?
Vagrancy Act;
Workhouse;
Poor Law;
Capital punishment.
Four to get the ball rolling. Not necessarily at the point of a shotgun and dressed in irons but has had the same effect. Could have been the 15 minute cities we hear about now. The distance between Liverpool and Manchester is about 30 miles but speak and sound as different as an Australian does to an American; replicated throughout England particularly. May not have been called slavery but the outcomes are the same. Then we have indentured servitude to take this further.
As I said previously, this video is promoting an extreme form of laissez-faire, neo-liberal Thatcherism. The above society – pre-welfare and zero safety-net – is what they want to return to.
Research Austrian economics.
Ludwig von Mises.
Debt Slaves.
The UK and the US are full of them.
The world is full of Debt Slaves.
Thanks to government cooperation, laws, regulations, etc.
Problem with libertarianism is, after the dreamers come the child-molesters.
And how do you eject undesirables from the community if following the NAP to the letter?
I don’t know, but “freedom” is such a vague concept that it can be used for ill as well as good. Think of the “freedom” of the market. Or all Mel Gibson shouting “Freedom.” Of the freedom of your neighbor to play the same thumping song on his sound system over and over again all night long. A two-edged sword if there ever was one.
aye you need truth, honesty and mutual compassion/co-operation at least in order to attain freedom
Personal responsibility.
You have hit on a good point.
‘Freedom’ is not infinite (Don’t get me started !)
The boundaries are defined by those who we elect to impose the boundaries.