Bohemian Tangents

Thomas Jefferson, American founding father and icon among American libertarians, was a radical revolutionary to some, a Lockean classical liberal to others, and a mysterious “sphinx” to biographer, Joseph Ellis. He was an enormously multi-talented man:  an architect (including Monticello), inventor, musician, prolific writer, scholarly lawyer, and observant scientist (in several fields).  He achieved the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which really matched his keen interest in natural science, and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which embodied his deep convictions about religious freedom.

Jefferson was a planter farmer, author, governor of Virginia, foreign diplomat (and celebrity abroad), secretary of state, president, co-architect of Virginia’s constitution, founder (and architect) of the University of Virginia, political philosopher, and much more. Jefferson believed in the enlightened rights of man as reflected in the Declaration of Independence, and he advocated the Bill of Rights to ensure that they were specifically expressed in the Constitution. Jefferson more than any other major leader of the Revolution believed in those lofty ideals, which were radical for the time. Jefferson was a revolutionary and a dreamer.

He also was a legal reformer, supporter of the arts, and a public education advocate – far ahead of his time. He believed in equal opportunity in the context of his time, although he could be quite arrogant towards those of lesser achievement and, like almost everyone else at that point in American history, did not yet believe that women and people of color were equal in civil matter. As president, he is rated among the best.

Thom Hartmann, a progressive liberal, outlines the virtues of Thomas Jefferson as the founding father whose vision of a free democratic America which excluded corporate monopolies and was an egalitarian utopia of free farmers and independent businessmen. He had 3 basic fears that he wanted addressed in the Constitution: tyrannical governments, organized religion, and commercial monopolies. He wanted to make sure that the wealthy ruling elites would not corrupt the fledgling democracy of the U.S. In a letter to James Madison he wrote: “I will tell you now what I don’t like. First, the omission of a Bill of Rights, providing clearly… for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, and the eternal and unremitting force of habeas corpus laws and trials by jury”.  The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 but had no provision against monopolies and the standing army issue was addressed by the 2nd amendment with the “well-regulated militia”.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/377-unequal-protection-jefferson-versus-the-corporate-aristocracy

Biographer Richard K. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson, claims that Jefferson went farther than his fellow revolutionaries in creating a radical democratic philosophy. The Virginian was a true believer in not only a philosophy of liberty, but the best way to preserve that liberty through societal revolution, the “earth belongs to the living” concept, and his view of “ward republicanism”. He saw the American Revolution as a fulfillment not only of Locke and Algernon Sidney (English political critic of absolute monarchy) but also saw it as a new beginning for liberated man. This new begining would constantly renew the faith of the American Revolution through periodic change in laws and constitutions. Jefferson wanted to preserve liberty by extending democratic republicanism to virtually all white males through his granting of 50 acres of land to every man in Virginia in the belief that property ownership would secure the liberty fought for in the Revolution. Jefferson’s proposals to abolish primogeniture and entail are radical attepts to equalize property relations by as he put it ” to put all on an equal footing”. Next is Jefferson’s “ward republics”, which he saw as his most important. The ward would be the basic unit on democratic government which were similar to New England Townships and would allow for citizens’ direct local governance. Public schools, militia duty, opposition to tyranny from other branches of government could all be begun here. He also included the “care of the poor” and “care of the roads”.

Many American libertarians seem to claim Jefferson as their ideological forbear or hero or icon as the advocate of “limited government”, states rights, and Lockean principles of government. Van Bryant, II, debunks the notion of Jefferson as a libertarian president, noting that “a peculiar trait found among a majority of libertarians” which is “the desire to elevate Thomas Jefferson to the heroic status of intellectual forebear of their ideology.” Bryant says that “From state’s rights and secession, to individual freedoms, peace, and the role of central government, Jefferson talked the talk, but never walked the walk. Far from an ideologue or proto-libertarian (lol), Jefferson was simply a successful politician, a well-read master of rhetoric and propaganda… And a statist.”

 Bryant adds: “The Louisiana Purchase stands out as one of America’s greatest ‘internal improvement subsidies,’ with a number of foreign and domestic interests receiving their share of the wealth of the U.S. citizenry. In fact, part of the deal included the U.S. assuming $3.75 million in debt owed to private U.S. citizens by the French government. ‘Paying it to ourselves,’ indeed. As a side note: Many people are also unaware of the private banking interests in both England and the Netherlands that were involved in financing this deal. For all of his writings against the ‘monied aristocracy’ , Jefferson was more than willing to work through the wealthy bankers to achieve his goals. One must finally ask: where was Jefferson’s ‘strict Constitutionalism’ when he pushed the Louisiana Purchase Act through Congress without amendment?”

https://www.nolanchart.com/article9600-thomas-jefferson-vs-libertarian-mysticism-html

The general point I am attempting to make is that Jefferson, like any mortal imperfect human serving as president was a creature of his times, having to deal with immensely difficult and complex issues and not able to live up to anyone’s idealizations 200 years later, particularly if these idealizations are constructions of cherry-picked facts. Jefferson possessed a massive intellect and polymath education, but this gargantuan mind left behind a thicket of enigmas and contradictions as the “American sphinx” described by Joseph J. Ellis whose characterization of the American icon treads a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today “hovers over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams.” For, at the grass roots, Jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist. He is all things to all people. His own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself (which left him deaf to most forms of irony) has leaked out into the world at large–a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

The fact does remain that Jefferson was the father of the anti-federalist movement that became the democratic-republican party versus the federalist party led by Alexander Hamilton. These two men both served under George Washington as secretaries of state and treasury and butted heads over what the proper role and function of the national government should be vis a vis the individual states. This particular massive topic will require its own blog post which means Alexander Hamilton will be included on an equal billing with Jefferson.

Author Elvin T Lim notes that the anti-federalists had their “first founding” under the 1781 Articles of Confederation and that the Constitution ratified in 1789 was the “second founding”.

“The United States has had not one, but two Foundings. The Constitution produced by the Second Founding came to be only after a vociferous battle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists favored a relatively powerful central government, while the Anti-Federalists distrusted the concentration of power in one place and advocated the preservation of sovereignty in the states as crucibles of post-revolutionary republicanism — the legacy of the First Founding. This philosophical cleavage has been at the heart of practically every major political conflict in U.S. history, and lives on today in debates between modern liberals and conservatives.”

Source: The Lovers’ Quarrel: The Two Foundings and American Political Development by Elvin T. Lim

Lim’s assessment of the quarrel between Jefferson’s anti-federalists vs Hamilton’s federalists dramatically sets the stage for part II of this blog installment.

Caveat: The various movements put under the elusive “libertarian” category differ considerably. I am not a fan of the free-market-idealizing capitalist movement headed up by Ron Paul, nor am I fan of anarcho-capitalism created as a term by Murray Rothbard, the same fellow who boasted of his movement stealing the term “libertarian” from the “enemy” he described as “left-wing anti-private property anarchists”. I state this so that my readers won’t assume I support everything I write about, but I think it’s important to study all these movements.

Benjamin Tucker is a theoretically prolific and unique contributor to a form of individualist anarchism that at times appears to be “proto-capitalist” libertarianism that may not have been recognized as such in its time, but appears as such in retrospect.

Brian Doherty, modern American capitalist libertarian author, radiates a warm glow over individualist anarchist kingpin Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939), calling him “the linchpin of the American individualist anarchist movement”, which Tucker called “unterrified Jeffersonianism”. Doherty notes (page 44, Radicals for Capitalism): “Trucker held no truck with the violence of the stereotypical bomb-throwing anarchists… Tucker was no pacifist, but he considered bomb throwing to be a less productive strategy than education”.

He was a Bostonian from a well-to-do Unitarian family. He blended the beliefs of his various American forebears and dedicated his life to a plumb-line, no-retreat, no-sellout defense of them. Doherty connects Tucker to the modern American anarcho-capitalist, Murray Rothbard: “Tucker’s role for his intellectual movement presaged Murray Rothbard’s in his. After reading Tucker in the light of Rothbard, one seems to hear eerie echoes sounding backward in time. They shared a similar tone, a passionate belief in the moral illegitimacy the state…”

Radicals for Capitalism, A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, p. 37

This movement which Tucker presaged, anarcho-capitalism, is defined by the Mises Institute as “a libertarian and individualist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty in a free market… In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through taxation, and money would be privately and competitively provided in an open market… Personal and economic activities would be regulated by the natural laws of the market and through private law rather than through politics.”

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Benjamin Tucker made his debut in liberty-minded circles 1876, when Heywood published Tucker’s first ever English translation of  Proudhon’s classic work What is Property?. From August 1881 to April 1908, he published the periodical, Liberty, “widely considered to be the finest individualist-anarchist periodical ever issued in the English language”.

He called his own philosophy “anarchistic socialism” and explained that “the most perfect socialism is possible only on the condition of the perfect individualism”. At this time in history “socialism” was a broader term before the Marxist statism took it over. Tucker was opposed to collective ownership of the means of production as he was opposed to the state ownership thereof and of property in general. His individualist anarchism advocated distribution of property in AN UNDISTORTED NATURAL MARKET AS A MEDIATOR OF EGOISTIC IMPULSES AND A SOURCE OF SOCIAL STABILITY (emphasis is mine).

He noted “the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour. . . . And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege. . . every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers . . . What Anarchistic-Socialism aims to abolish is usury . . . it wants to deprive capital of its reward.

He contrasted the wage-workers who depended on selling their labor against the capitalists who had the legal privilege to sell something other than labor. To Tucker, removing “capitalist privilege” will make a man a laborer exchanging with felllow laborers. He maligned anarchistic socialism for wanting to to abolish usury which is to deprive capital of its reward. He said interest was theft, rent was robbery, and profit only another name for “plunder”, YET HE UPHELD THE RIGHT OF ALL PEOPLE TO ENGAGE IN IMMORAL CONTRACTS (emphasis is mine).

His explanation was: “Liberty, therefore, must defend the right of individuals to make contracts involving usury, rum, marriage, prostitution, and many other things which are believed to be wrong in principle and opposed to human well-being. The right to do wrong involves the essence of all rights.” He asserted that anarchism is meaningless unless it includes the liberty of the individual to control his product or whatever his product has brought him through exchange in a free market – that is, private property.

Tucker argued that the poor condition of American workers resulted in 4 legal state monopolies: 1) Money and banking monopoly

He opposed state protection of the ‘banking monopoly’ – the requirement that one must obtain a charter to engage in the business of banking. He hoped to raise wages by deregulating the banking industry, reasoning that competition in banking would drive down interest rates and stimulate enterprise. Tucker believed this would decrease the proportion of individuals seeking employment, and wages would be driven up by competing employers. “Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.”He did not oppose individuals being employed by others, but due to his interpretation of the labor theory of value, he believed that in the present economy individuals do not receive a wage that fully compensates them for their labor. He wrote that, if the four “monopolies” were ended, it will make no difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others. In any case they can get nothing but that wages for their labor which free competition determines.  

2) Land monopoly:

He acknowledged that “anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended,” but would not recognize full property rights to labored-upon land: It should be noted, however, that in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based upon actual occupancy and use. Tucker opposed granting title to land that was not in use; he argued that an individual should use land continually, in order to retain exclusive right to it. He believed that if this practice were not followed, there was a ‘land monopoly’.

3) Tariffs and (4) Patents: 

Tucker opposed protectionism, believing that tariffs caused high prices, by preventing national producers from having to compete with foreign competitors. He believed that free trade would help keep prices low and therefore would assist laborers in receiving their “natural wage”. Tucker did not believe in intellectual property rights in the form of patents, on the grounds that patents and copyrights protect something which cannot rightfully be held as property. He wrote that the basis for property is “the fact that it is impossible in the nature of things for concrete objects to be used in different places at the same time.” Property in concrete things is “socially necessary” since successful society rests on individual initiative, it is necessary to protect the individual creator in the use of his concrete creations by forbidding others to use them without his consent. Because ideas are not concrete things, they should not be held and protected as property. Ideas can be used in different places at the same time, and so their use should not be restricted by patents. This was a source of conflict with the philosophy of fellow individualist Lysander Spooner who saw ideas as the product of “intellectual labor” and therefore private property.

Doherty remarks that Tucker failed to significantly turn America in an anarchist direction which began to wear on him. His brand of individualist anarchism suffered from having no clear constituency that directly benefited from it, unlike labor agitators’ attraction to socialism or big business’s attraction to progressive centralization. (Radicals for Capitalism, p. 47)

  Tucker’s historical legacy is cemented by the modern mutualist and individualist Kevin Carson as noted in a lengthy wikipedia passage:

Kevin Carson’s critique: Tucker’s concept of the four monopolies has been discussed by Carson in his book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Carson incorporates the idea into his thesis that the exploitation of labor is only possible due to state intervention. However, he argues that Tucker failed to notice a fifth form of privilege: transportation subsidies. One form of contemporary government intervention that Tucker almost entirely ignored was transportation subsidies. This seems odd at first glance, since “iinternal improvements” had been a controversial issue throughout the 19th century, and were a central part of the mercantilist agenda of the Whigs and the Gilded Age GOP. Indeed, Lincoln has announced the beginning of his career with a “short but sweet” embrace of Henry Clay’s program: a national bank, a high tariff, and internal improvements. This neglect, however, was in keeping with Tucker’s inclination. He was concerned with privilege primarily as it promoted monopoly profits through unfair exchange at the individual level, and not as it affected the overall structure of production. The kind of government intervention that James O’Connor was later to write about, that promoted accumulation and concentration by directly subsidizing the operating costs of big business, largely escaped his notice. Carson believes that Tucker’s four monopolies, and transportation subsidies, created the foundation for the monopoly capitalism and military-industrial-complex of the 20th century.^] Ironically, Carson has also noted that the heavy use of this new monopoly by the state may be grounds for optimism that Tucker was unaware of. As, in order to maintain the corporate system, the state has been forced to continually ratchet up the level of subsidies that it provides until it is very close to bankruptcy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carson

The individualist anarchism movement within the anarchist ideology emphasizes the individual and his/her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. Thereafter, it expanded through Europe and the United States. Benjamin Tucker (to be discussed in Part VI) a famous 19th-century individualist anarchist, held that “if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny”.This particular movement is a crucial ideological bridge connecting the original classical liberal ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith to those of 20th century American capitalist libertarians. The American anarchists described in Part V of my blog are especially influential: Josiah Warren and Lysander Spooner–truly rugged individualists whose lives and works highlighted the stark contrast between the creative enterprising individual and the oppressive stifling state.

 In his 2007 book: Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, self-described libertarian (in the modern American capitalist sense) author, Brian Doherty,  discusses the highly influential individualist American anarchists along with many other historical figures whom he deems important to the evolution of libertarianism leading up to America’s 20th century libertarian “radicals for capitalism”. The American individualist anarchists represented a small but ultimately important sidestream in what Doherty calls “19th century American radicalism” and they shared a passionate belief in the moral illegitimacy of the state. 

Doherty’s interview upon writing Radicals for Capitalism: http://www.c-span.org/video/?196490-1/words-brian-doherty

Contemporary individualist anarchist Kevin Carson characterizes American individualist anarchism saying that “Unlike the rest of the socialist movement, the individualist anarchists believed that the natural wage of labor in a free market was its product, and that economic exploitation could only take place when capitalists and landlords harnessed the power of the state in their interests. Thus, individualist anarchism was an alternative both to the increasing statism of the mainstream socialist movement, and to a classical liberal movement that was moving toward a mere apologetic for the power of big business.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualist_anarchism_in_the_United_States

Josiah Warren (1798-1874) was the first American anarchist and author of the first anarchist periodical, The Peaceful Revolutionist. In his younger days he joined social utopianist Robert Owen’s communist colony in New Harmony, Indiana, arriving in May of 1825, but leaving after 2 years convinced that the complete individualization of interests was necessary to cooperation. He considered Owen’s experiment “communism” which he rejected in no uncertain terms, but he developed a warm and lasting respect for Robert Owen and his sons.

Like Proudhon, the first self-declared anarchist, Warren chose the path of anarchism and individualism and espoused the principle of sovereignty of the individual and is credited by Benjamin Tucker as “the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism”. John Stuart Mill said Warren’s philosophy, “though being a superficial resemblance to some of the project of the Socialists, is diametrically opposed to them in principle, since it recognizes no authority whatever in Society, over the individual, except to enforce equal freedom of development for all individuals.”

Warren’s individualistic philosophy arose out of his rejection of Owen’s communist movement from having participated in it and witnessing in person its failure. He wrote: “It seemed that the difference of opinions, tastes, and purposes increased just in proportion to the demand for conformity… It appeared that it was nature’s own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us… Our ‘united interests’ were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation.” He said there should be absolutely no community of property and all property should be individualized, and “those who advocated any type of communism with connected property, interests, and responsibilities were doomed to failure because of the individuality of the persons involved in such an experiment.”

Josiah Warren wrote in his manifesto: “The formation of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever commited by legislators and reformers. That all these combinations require the surrender of the natural sovereignty of the INDIVIDUAL over her or his person, time, property, and responsibilities, to the government of the combination. That this tends to prostrate the individual—To reduce him to a mere piece of a machine ; involving others in responsibility for his acts, and being involved in responsibilities for the acts and sentiments of his associates ; he lives & acts, without proper control over his own affairs, without certainty as to the results of his actions, and almost without brains that he dares to use on his own account; and consequently never realizes the great objects for which society is professedly formed.”

He believed that goods and services should trade according to how much labor was exerted to produce them and bring them to market, instead of according to how individuals believed them to be subjectively worth. Therefore, he “proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce.” To charge more labor for something that entailed less labor was “cannibalism,” according to him. Moreover, he believed that trading according to “cost the limit of price” would promote increasing efficiency in an economy. He set up an experimental “labor for labor” store in Cincinnati where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store operated successfully for 3 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Warren

Brian Doherty views Warren’s “antistate radicalism” as arising in a different intellectual climate from that of mid-20th Century American libertarianism but finds modern libertarians would give “enthusiastic nods of assent” to his individualism. Both Warren and Proudhon saw themselves leading a worldwide socialist revolution, which is alien to the main thrust of 20th century American libertarianism. The main goal for these two individualist anarchists’ movement was to eliminate the causes of exploitation and repression that keep the laborer from what is properly his. As an anarchist contrary to statist socialists like Marx, eliminating the state was the clearest, most just path toward the goal of individual sovereignty.

The illustrious individualist anarchist, Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) is the most revered by modern libertarians, according to Doherty. Spooner became an enemy of the state early on and succeeded in repealing a state statute that prevented him from getting a law degree without attending college. Before beginning his copious writings on the criminal nature of the state, he practiced some competitive anarchism: running a private post office. Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company, launched in 1844, was cheaper and more efficient than its government competition, and was driven out of business by Congress. For those who want to explain Spooner’s relentless assaults on every ethical excuse for the government as arising from personal pique, one could look to that, and to the fact that the state of Ohio drained a river and damaged the land that Spooner owned on the shore.

Spooner attained his greatest fame as a figure in the abolitionist movement. His most famous work, a book titled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery to great acclaim by many abolutionists. From the publication of this book until 1861 Spooner actively campaigned against slavery. In the late 1850’s, copies of his book were distributed to Congress sparking some debate over their contents. Even Senator Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippis, a slavery proponent, praised the argument’s intellectual rigor and conceded it was the most formidable challenge he had seen from the abolutionists to date. In 1858, Spooner circulated a “Plan for the Abolition of Slavery”, calling for the use of guerrilla warfare against slaveholders by black slaves and non-slaveholding free Southerners, with aid from Northern abolitionists. Spooner also conspired wih John Brown to promote a servile insurrection in the South, and participated in an aborted plot to free Brown after his capture following the failed raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). 

Although he denounced the institution of slavery, Spooner recognized the right of the Confederate States of America to secede as the manifestation of government by consent, a constitutional and legal principle fundamental to Spooner’s philosophy; the Northern states, in contrast, were trying to deny the Southerners that right through military force.  He vociferously opposed the Civil War, arguing that it violated the right of the southern states to secede from a Union that no longer represented them”. He believed they were attempting to restore the Southern states to the Union, against the wishes of Southerners. He argued that the right of the states to secede derives from the natural right of slaves to be free. This argument was unpopular in the North and in the South after the War began, as it conflicted with the official position of both governments. 

Spooner advocated for people to be self-employed so they could fully enjoy the fruits of their labor rather than share them with an employer. He was opposed to the government intervening in the free market to make it difficult for people to start their own businesses. He opposed laws against usury because those with capital needed compensation for the high risk of not being repaid. In order for the worker to obtain capital on credit, it is necessary that he be allowed to contract for such a rate of interest as will induce that man with surplus capital, to afford to make the loan, for the capitalist cannot, consistently with natural law, be compelled to loan his capital against his will. All legislative restraints upon the rate of interest, are, therefore, nothing less than arbitrary and tyrannical restraints upon a man’s natural capacity amid natural right to hire capital, upon which to bestow his labor.The effect of usury laws, then, is to give a monopoly of the right of borrowing money, to those few, who can offer the most approved security.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

Part VI will delve into the important contributions of the American individualist anarchist, Benjamin Tucker, whose voluminous output merits its own blog post. 

Now it’s time to get back to anti-capitalist libertarianism, which can be called both anarchism and libertarian socialism. The last two installments, Parts II and III, focused on classical liberalism and the political events surrounding it, so that some form of representative government with a parliament answerable to the people replaces an absolutist monarchy where kings acted like dictators. The historical context was one where feudalism was giving way to capitalism and getting the government to serve the capitalists, the owners of property whom John Locke was addressing with his classical liberalism triad of life, liberty, and property.

Contrary to the capitalist libertarianism most of us are accustomed to in the United States, the original French version of libertarianism was “socialist” in that the means of production were to be socially owned and run, that is, by the workers cooperating with one another in contrast to the hierarchical capitalist system. Furthermore, there is anti-state socialism or anarchism versus the state socialism of Marx. So the French libertarians of the 1800’s were anti-state anti-capitalist socialists who called themselves both anarchists and libertarian socialists. The French word libertaire was used to evade the French ban on anarchist publications. In this tradition, the terms “libertarianism” and “libertarian socialism” are generally used as synonyms for anarchism, derived from the Greek ἀναρχία, i.e. (from ἄναρχος, anarchos, meaning “one without rulers”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

The first modern proponent of anarchism, under the influence of the French Revolution, was Englishman William Godwin (1756-1836) whose aim was the complete overthrow of all existing political, social, and religious institutions. He said monarchy was unavoidably corrupt and he desired a government of the simplest construction, came to consider “government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of the original mind”. He argued that government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence and ignorance, but that it will be rendered increasingly unnecessary and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge and the expansion of human understanding. He follows Tom Paine’s view in Common Sense that “society is in every state a blessing… government even in its best state is but a necessary evil” by seeing society as antecedent to government with its principles setting the bounds of its legitimacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, founder of the mutualist philosophy, considered by many to be the “father of anarchism”. Hubert Largardelle credits Proudhon with being the first anarcho-syndicalist. The syndicalist school of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, states the state’s primary purpose is to protect private property and therefore economic, social, and political privilege, thereby denying most citizens  the material independence and social autonomy enjoyed by the aristocrats running the state. The workers organize and govern themselves in solidarity, through direct action and direct democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists maintain that a Marxist “worker’s state” cannot be successful in serving the workers over the ruling capitalist elites. The state will inevitably empower itself or the existing elite at the expense of the workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

Proudhon is famous for saying “property is theft” which meant that the landowner or capitalist stole profits from the workers. He favored workers’ associations or co-operatives, as well as individual worker/peasant possession, over private ownership or nationalization of land and workplaces. He considered social revolution to be achievable in a peaceful manner.

He clarified that anarchy is order without power and that property is freedom, referring to property as the product of an individual’s labor. In fact, he regarded labor as the only legal innate source of property. What one produces is his property and anything beyond that is not, asserted Proudhon. He declared property defined as such is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the state. As an anti-capitalist or libertarian socialist he favored collective ownership of the means of production.

He was not a communist and strenuously rejected the ownership of the products of labor by society. “The right means is common; the right to product is exclusive”. He called the use-ownership “possession” and his economic system mutualism. He opposed both capitalism and state ownership of property, arguing for small-scale property ownership associated with peasants and artisans.. He believed that property should be equally distributed and limited to size to that actually used by individuals, families, and workers’ associations. In his vision, self-employed artisans, peasants, and cooperatives would trade their products on the market. For Proudhon, factories and other large workplaces would be run by “labor associations” operating on directly democratic principles. The state would be abolished; instead, society would be organized by a federation of “free communes” (a commune is a local municipality in French). In 1863 Proudhon said: “All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.”

Proudhon opposed the charging of interest and rent, but did not seek to abolish them by law: “I protest that when I criticized… the complex of institutions of which property is the foundation stone, I never meant to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity which I propose.  

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon

Proudhon criticized the authoritarian socialists of his time period, including the state socialist Louis Blanc. He made few public criticisms of Marx who at that time was a relatively minor thinker. Proudhon’s book What is Property?influenced the young Karl Marx’s ideas on the abolition of private property.

Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, written as a refutation of Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty, was the beginning of a historic rift between libertarian and authoritarian Socialists and between anarchists and Marxists. After Proudhon’s death, the First International Working Men’s Association dissolved in the feud between Marx and Proudhon’s disciple Mikhail Bakunin. After Bakunin’s death, his libertarian socialism diverged into anarchist communism and collectivist anarchism, with notable proponents such as Peter Kropotkin and Joseph Déjacque.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon

Proudhon also clashed with Joseph Déjacque, the anarcho-communist noted in Part I as the first self-described libertarian. Proudhon emphasized the worker is entitled to the product of his labor whereas Déjacque said
“It is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

There are other important anarchists we’ll see in Part V. 

I have put forth the notion that libertarianism has many faces, ranging from anti-capitalist to pro-capitalist. The last installment, Part II, was essentially the first part of examining historical events contributing to classical liberalism which was specific to Great Britain and its political turbulence in the 1600’s. Idegues like John Locke and Adam Smith responded to this turbulence with their ideas of government and economics. The events and the thinkers responding to the events lived where capitalism began, Great Britain. 

My generic all-purpose definition of “libertarian” is anyone wanting an alternative to absolutist despotism which in current time refers to the coalescence of a crony-capitalist cabal and the elected government officials of the United States more inclined to serve the cabal than the “99%”. The libertarian alternative to despotism is comprised of individuals who govern themselves or seek a government based on their consent. Classical liberalism which is the ideological basis of the capitalist version of libertarianism currently in vogue in the United States. This is different from the socialist or anarchist types of libertarianism that came about in the wake of the French Revolution. In order to see the common ground for all types of libertarianism I look at the absolutist monarchies of both England and France, both of which had kings who claimed the “divine right of kings” where God is claimed to have chosen someone as His representative on earth to rule a nation. France’s famous King Louis XIV (reigned from 1643 to 1715) ruled as the prototype of absolutism having said “L’état, c’est moi” meaning “I am the state”. His heirs, Louis XV and XVI carried on the absolutist tradition until Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793.

England’s King Charles I, the arrogant absolutist, was not able to get along with his parliament and even suspended it from 1629 to 1640 and was beheaded in 1649 after his side, the Royalists, lost to the Parliamentarians led by Oliver Cromwell and the monarchy was replaced by what was termed a “republic” or “Commonwealth” led by Cromwell and the grandees (senior members) of his New Model Army. There were various smaller versions of Parliament: Rump, Barebones, and the Protectorate. In 1653 this Rump Parliament was dissolved because Cromwell couldn’t get along with it and he became “Lord Protector” until his death in 1658 when his son, Richard, succeeded him as Lord Protector but was removed by the Grandees of his dad’s New Model Army in May 1659 and the Rump Parliament was reinstalled.  Attempts to restore the monarchy started on 4 April 1660, Scottish General George Monck sent a secret message to Charles II who then issued the Declaration of Breda, which made known the conditions of his acceptance of the crown of England. Monck organised the Convention Parliament which met for the first time on 25 April. On 8 May it proclaimed that King Charles II had been the lawful monarch since the execution of  Charles I in January 1649. Charles returned from exile on 23 May. He entered London on 29 May. To celebrate “his Majesty’s Return to his Parliament” May 29 was made a public holiday, popularly known as Oak Apple Day. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 April 1661.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_England

The tale of classical liberalism continues in Part III.  King James II (reigned 1685-1688) was England’s last Catholic king and he abused his power, alienating many of his subjects. He enlarged the standing army.  This alarmed his subjects, not only because of the trouble soldiers caused in the towns, but because it was against the English tradition to keep a professional army in peacetime. Like a dictator, James suspended Parliament in November 1685, never to meet again in his reign. The proverbial “last straw” was when his wife, Queen Mary, finally gave birth to a Roman Catholic son and heir, James Francis Edward in June of 1688. Prior to that his 2 successors were his two protestant daughters, but the birth of the son opened up the possibility of a permanent Catholic dynasty and the Anglicans were having none of this. On June 30, 1688, a group of 7 Protestant nobles invited William, Prince of Orange, Charles I’s grandson and James II’s son in law to come to England with an army.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_II_of_England

The inability of James II to work with Parliament, combined with his reckless Catholic appointments, brought both the political and religious spheres of the monarchy under fire again. The situation reached its climax in 1688. James established an alliance with Catholic France; arrested Archbishop Sancroft and six other bishops for failing to proclaim the Catholic faith; tampered with private property and historic rights; and produced a male heir after abandoning Anglicanism for Catholicism, which destroyed Parliament’s hopes that the crown would pass to the Protestant children of James’ first marriage. Parliament appealed to William of Orange, urging him to save England from a Catholic takeover. William gathered his forces and landed in England in November of 1688. William’s professional troops and the welcome they received from the English landholders intimidated James. James was captured while fleeing from London, but William ensured him safe passage to France. James, feeling alone and realizing his lack of popular support, abdicated and accepted his exile in France. James made one attempt to regain the crown, but his French and Irish forces were soundly defeated at the Battle of Boyne and James returned to France to live the rest of his life in exile.

Parliament, although victorious in unseating James, was faced with a dilemma. They wanted the throne to be the sole possession of Mary, with William serving as Prince Consort, but Mary refused due to her self-imposed subservience to her husband. William was reluctant to accept the throne by means of conquest, preferring to be named king by Parliament through birthright. Parliament succumbed to the wishes of William and Mary, and the pair acceded as co-rulers. As the reign unfolded, however, Parliament’s original plan became the reality of the situation. William was considerably more concerned with his holdings and the Protestant-Catholic conflicts on the continent, leaving Mary behind in England to rule. William and the English populace were conspicuously indifferent to each other, but Mary loved England and the English people loved her.William was married to James’ daughter, Mary, and was the grandson of Charles I, and importantly he was a Protestant and the desired successor to James II by those parliament members opposed to him.  William landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688, in 463 ships unopposed by the Royal Navy, and with an army of 14,000 troops which gathering local support grew to over 20,000 and advanced on London in what became known as ‘The Glorious Revolution’. James fled to France, and in February 1689 William and his wife were crowned King William III and Queen Mary II. Parliament passed the Bill of Rights which prevented Catholics for succeeding to the throne ensuring that Mary’s sister Anne would become the next queen, and after the autocratic rules of Kings Charles II and his brother James II limited the powers of monarchs so that they could neither pass laws nor levy taxes with parliamentary consent.

http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon51.html

William’s intentions to invade were public knowledge by September 168 With a Dutch army, William landed at Brixham in southwest England on 5 November 1688. He came ashore from the ship Brill, proclaiming “the liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will maintain”. William had come ashore with approximately 11,000-foot and 4,000 horse soldiers. James’s support began to dissolve almost immediately upon William’s arrival; Protestant officers defected from the English army (the most notable of whom was Lord Churchill of Evemouth, James’s most able commander), and influential noblemen across the country declared their support for the invader. James at first attempted to resist William, but saw that his efforts would prove futile. He sent representatives to negotiate with William, but secretly attempted to flee on 11 December. A group of fishermen caught him and brought him back to London. He was allowed to escape to France in a second attempt on 23 December. William permitted James to leave the country, not wanting to make him a martyr for the Roman Catholic cause.

The political reaction to a Catholic absolutist king was to give parliament much more power and the consent of the governed is through parliament’s representing the English people. The rule of law was placed above the arbitrary whims of someone acting like a dictator “on behalf of God”.

The Bill of Rights

In February 1689, Parliament, with Tories and Whigs participating created the Declaration of Rights. In December this was amended and became the Bill of Rights, a bill that embodied terms of Parliament’s offer to William and Mary to rule as joint sovereigns. It was a list of grievances against James II, laws agreed to by William and Mary. In accordance with these new laws,

• Parliament was to meet frequently.
• The crown retained the right to veto bills and to pardon whomever he or she chose.
• Freedom of speech was guaranteed.
• The crown was not allowed to interfere in the selection of members of Parliament.
• The crown was to keep no standing army without the consent of Parliament.
• People had the right to petition government.
• People were to be free from cruel and unusual punishments, and they were guaranteed freedom from excessive bail.

 In the euphoria of a bloodless revolution and unity against Catholicism, Parliament also passed the Toleration Act: people were no longer to be punished if they were not members of the Church of England, and people were not to be compelled to become members of the Church of England.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h25eng5.htm

To sum things up, the Glorious Revolution enabled England to move from absolutism to a Constitutional monarchy and the ideas of classical liberalism began to be translated into actual government. This happened a full 100 years before the French Revolution which inspired the socialists and anarchists to respond with their own ideas of liberty and government some of whom called themselves “libertarian”.t

The term “libertarian” has changed meaning over time. Joseph Déjacque, the first self-described libertarian was an anarcho-communist. He lived in the period influenced by the French Revolution and his anarchism meant he was anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical, anti-private-property and anti-state. His philosophy was based on workers being able to cooperate and essentially to govern themselves in a non-hierarchical manner, free of any institutional oppression 

Today’s American capitalist libertarians cite a different historical tradition from that of Déjacque to explain their roots. If you talk to a Ron Paul supporter who’s into history you will likely hear about classical liberalism and this is not quite like the liberalism (called “social liberalism”) you’re accustomed to. Classical liberalism is the historical basis of libertarianism as fancied both by Ron Paul as well as Murray Rothbard whom I quoted in Part I who admitted he stole this word from left-wing anarchists.

Classical liberalism developed from the Whigs of Great Britain, who were essentially the first political party, originating from opposition to absolute monarchy, or particularly that of Catholic monarchy. Great Britain had a Civil War in the 1640’s due to the tyranny of King Charles I who was beheaded in 1649 and the Commonwealth headed up by Oliver Cromwell followed, but his regime turned out to be a Puritan Dictatorship of sorts and he slaughtered the Irish because they were Catholics. After 11 years of this unsatisfactory solution to absolute monarchy, many Brits were more than ready to get their “good old fashioned” monarchy back and Charles’ son, Charles II came to the throne in 1660. Problems emerged in 1670 when he entered into the Secret Treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates’s  revelations of a supposed “Popish Plot” sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles’s brother and heir (James, Duke of York) was a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whigs_%28British_political_party%29

The Whigs’ ideology emerged dominant over that of the Tories following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and was associated with the defense of Parliament, upholding the rule of law and defending landed property. The origins of rights were seen as being in an ancient constitution which had existed from time immemorial. So now the stage was set for classical liberals who were committed to individualism, liberty and equal rights. They believed these things required a free economy with minimal government interference. Central to classical liberal ideology was their interpretation of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government  and “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, which had been written as a defense of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although these writings were considered too radical at the time for Britain’s new rulers, they later came to be cited by Whigs, radicals and supporters of the American Revolution.

The standardbearer of American right-wing capitalist libertarianism, the Mises Institute defines “Classical liberalism” as:”the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade” The original designation of classical liberalism was simply “liberalism”. Over time “social liberalism” came into existence and was “associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals”.

http://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism

One key factor in this was the labor movement and workers wanting more wages and rights to be able to afford their own private property and climb the socio-economic ladder to approach the level of their capitalist “benefactors”. Classical liberalism encompassed the sociological concept of society as a complex set of social networks—that individuals were “egoistic, coldly calculating, essentially inert and atomistic” and that society was no more than the sum of its individual members. The purpose of government was to protect the citizens from each other as each citizen pursued enlightened self-interest without control or restraint by government.

Classical liberals believed that individuals should be free to obtain work from the highest-paying employers, while the profit motive would ensure that products that people desired were produced at prices they would pay. In a free market, both labor and capital would receive the greatest possible reward, while production would be organised efficiently to meet consumer demand.

Drawing on selected ideas of Adam Smith, classical liberals believed that all individuals are able to equally freely pursue their own economic self-interest, without government direction, serving the common good. They were critical of welfare as interfering in a free market. They criticized labour’s group rights being pursued at the expense of individual rights while they accepted big corporations’ rights being pursued at the expense of inequality of bargaining power noted by Adam Smith.

It was not until emergence of social liberalism that child labor was forbidden, minimum standards of worker safety were introduced, a minimum wage and old age pensions were established, and financial institutions regulations with the goal of fighting cyclic depressions, monopolies, and cartels, were introduced. They were met by classical liberalism as an unjust interference of the state. So called “slim state’ was argued for, instead, serving only the following functions:

• protection against foreign invaders, extended to include protection of overseas markets through armed intervention,
• protection of citizens from wrongs committed against them by other citizens, which meant protection of private property and enforcement of contracts and the suppression of trade unions and the Chartist movement,
• building and maintaining public institutions, and
• “public works” that included a stable currency, standard weights and measures, and support of roads, canals, harbours, railways, and postal and other communications services.^]

They believed that rights are of a negative nature which require other individuals (and governments) to refrain from interfering with free market, whereas social liberalism believes labor has a right to be provided with certain benefits or services via taxes paid by corporations.

Core beliefs of classical liberals did not necessarily include democracy where law is made by majority vote by citizens, because “there is nothing in the bare idea of majority rule to show that majorities will always respect the rights of property or maintain rule of law.” For example, James Madison argued for a constitutional republic with protections for individual liberty over a pure democracy, reasoning that, in a pure democracy, a “common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole…and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party.

As this movement of classical liberalism was developing the term “libertarian” did not yet exist and, in fact, it was over 100 years after the Whigs emerged that finally a “radical Whig” William Belsham used the term “libertarian” in 1789 to indicate he believed in free will and opposed any physical determinism upon human will. Just 4 years later, the founder of “philosophical anarchism”, William Godwin argued that government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence and ignorance, but will be rendered increasingly unnecessary and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge and the expansion of the human understanding. As the French Revolution was underway, Godwin expressed the goal of overthrowing all existing political, social, and religious institutions. Monarchy he felt was unavoidably corrupt and he desired a government of the simplest construction and came to consider that by its very nature government counteracts the improvement of original mind.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/

These two historical movements, originate from opposition to absolutist monarchs first in England then in France. The French Revolution is far better known than the English Civil War between the Parliamentarians and Royalists, but the Brits did behead their King Charles, a revolutionary act, and in 1688, the so-called Glorious Revolution took place and the Constitutional Monarchy was estabished as the Dutch William of Orange took the throne. These historical developments led to the classical liberalism viewed by American libertarians as their historical foundation. The anarchists, of which there were many, grew from the French Revolution and their libertarianism is called “libertarian socialism”.

Of course, there is more to the history of people wanting to get the government off their backs and our journey will continue in Part III.

What is addiction? Is it a disease over which one has no control and must therefore submit to a 12-step program? Is it the malfunctioning of a brain genetically predisposed to get hooked on some chemical or group of chemicals?

My answer is that addiction is simply the dark side of consumerism, which is the demand-side of capitalism. Those who profit from selling us stuff need consumers. They need not just consumers, but regular reliable consumers who will keep buying and using products so that the company is assured of continued success and can inspire people to buy shares in their stock. The line between devoted use of a product and addiction is too blurry to make any definitive statements about it. People getting hooked on some product is just part of the downside of capitalism, the inevitable “cost of doing business”. The bottom line in selling a product is getting many people to use it a lot and inevitably people will misuse or overuse a product.

Think about the specific items people easily get addicted to. Sugary empty-calorie junk food results in many people getting heart disease, diabetes, and becoming obese, but the stated goal of junk food manufacturers is merely to boost sales. Cigarettes are very addictive and expensive, yet more smoked by lower-income people who are already struggling to make ends meet. Alcoholic beverages dominate ads for live sports and the addictions to these are just the downside for the companies, especially beer-makers, that make billions in profits. Gambling casinos obviously profit from addiction and are often suggested as a solution to boost a local economy, despite the many lives ruined. Basic all-American products have addiction as a considerable risk but the universality of these products somehow casts a rosey glow on them. The happy indulgences for most users wash away the worries of potential abuse as the rosey glow of hedonistic consumption, the high, the buzz, the good feelings of the given product, all get to the core of why consuming is the engine of capitalism.

The addictive use of products is not a moral issue from the capitalist perspective because the overall marketplace of competing suppliers and those buying comprise a self-regulating dynamism possessing its own intelligence where mistakes get corrected, products get better, and people get higher levels of satisfaction over time. This sounds logical, right? If there are some existential components omitted from the analysis, then leave these to those bearing the external costs, the addict him- or herself, the rehab people, mental health professionals, pop psychology gurus like Dr Phil. The balance sheet for an opiate drug, for example, looks at sales, but bogus prescriptions, people using the drug outside medically valid reasons and to excess, are not anywhere in the analysis. If these facts were included in the drug company’s analysis there would be actions taken to make sure crooked doctors and the “pill mills” churning out drugs for addictive usage don’t evade law enforcement. Whatever laws there may be to stop these crooks are not enforced and this lack of enforcement contributes to the bottom line, profit.  Consumption of the product by addicts helps the drug company making it.

The great profit-enhancing aspects of addiction are that there are many types of treatment or rehab for addictions and these create lots of jobs for people along with the addicts being cured (or not). Much of the time addiction and treatment comprise a feedback loop because the treatment doesn’t work, so the person must do some treatment again and maybe many times. The net profits generated by overconsumption of the product one is addicted to followed by a treatment comprise a huge amount of income for all those involved and the economy is certainly stimulated by this feedback loop.

The fact is, given our state of health care, addictions continue to run rampant, and the need to addictively use something is just as potent, if not more so, than the treatments available for it. People get enough pay-off from their addictions to sabotage their treatments to resume their addictions. So to call addiction a tragedy amidst the collective ineptitude of the health care community to counter the desire to be addicted is essentially a denial of the harsh reality that addiction is a way of modern life. If one sacrifices oneself at the altar of addiction then one is simply part of the fabric of a consumption-based society. Consumption is the heart and soul of modern American life, whether it’s food, drugs, behaviors, music, cable TV, programs on netflix and hulu and amazon prime, or images on plasma screens, etc.

Ultimately it is an individual’s struggle to weigh one’s role as a consumeristic monad, a nano-entity in the collective consuming culture of which they play a part as one bee in a swarm or one bird in a flock, a mass in the apparent possession of a single mind guiding the collective behavior to do something. One may take alarm at “crossing the line” into addiction and take remedial action or one may “go with the flow” and continue to ride addiction’s wave. Life is a bitch and then you die, so you might as well live today, right?

One may be sincere and acknowledge the destruction one does to one’s life and sincerely get treatments, once or as often as it takes, on the road to healing. This journey of living modern life entails mistakes, mistakes of excessive consumption, for which the hard knocks they impart on one’s soul there is no substitute as an existential teacher.

Think about the more innocuous forms of addiction like eating too many brownies or muffin bites or cookies or some other “comfort food”. Or consider binge watching some awesome cable or netflix program. Addiction in these forms shows its deep-rootedness in our lives. Too much of something IS what the doctor ordered. You eat “just one” more cookie. Then another and another and the just one more becomes 10 more. You feel bad in your tummy or conscience and do the same damn thing again. And say that knocks a year or two off your life. It was worth it.

What about binge drinking as a rite of passage? I recall hating the taste of beer and training my taste buds to like it. There was the mandatory ritual of chugging beers to keep up with your buddies. Watch TV commercials today and nothing’s changed. Beer and sports go together as marketed by the entertainment conglomerates to coach dutiful young male consumers. Put that lime wedge in your Corona on that beach with the Kate Upton look-a-like. Quit being a wuss, postpone your homework, chores, call in sick the next morning, and drink another lime-wedged Corona and enjoy the real or fantasied lady with you.

Yo-yo dieting is the quintessential American pastime. Plus, there are all those “don’t give up anything diets” with yummy desserts included. You can have it all, lose weight….and gain it all back again BECAUSE YOU WANT IT ALL, after all. Who are these diet-sellers conning anyway? You got to believe, then fail, then believe again. It’s this struggle that pads profits and fuels the economy.

Addiction is derived from Latin to reward or assign. This captures the true self-indulgent aspect of addiction, a component of consumeristic capitalism. If one hurts oneself with the excessive consumption of something, one may blame some disease and follow a 12-step program or blame their brain’s biochemistry or “wiring” that seems to mandate addiction. If any of these attributions of causation produce successful treatment, then that’s terrific. For me, I try to understand addiction and look at it from many perspectives, learn from my past experiences with it, and simply move forward. I don’t presume to know what’s best for any given individual because we are all unique and must forge our own paths forward and hopefully get better over time.

Today (June 15, 2015) marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, a document paving the way to constitutional government. English barons forced King John to approve the charter in 1215 in Runnymede, southwest of London. By appending his seal to the Magna Carta, John was the first monarch to submit to demands for a detailed limitation to the powers of the sovereign. Not only did the document limit royal power, but it made clear even the king had to obey the law. This charter granted many rights to the English aristocracy, but many years later it became a model for those who demanded democratic and individual rights for all.

During the first years of the 1200’s John’s policies had led to the loss of long-held estates in Northern France, eliminating an important source of his nobles’ wealth. Also, his arguments with the church (over such matters as the right to appoint archbishops of Canterbury) resulted in a decline in national pride as England became a fiefdom of the Pope, and the imposition of heavy taxes to fund the army added to a simmering discontent that boiled over into rebellion in 1215. On June 15, in return for promises of loyalty, John met with his barons and clerics in Runnymede, on the banks of the River Thames southwest of London and agreed to provisions outlined in a lengthy manuscript that would curtail his authority. An amended version was approved 4 days later, and a formal record of the understanding was prepared by the royal chancery on July 15. Revised versions of Magna Carta were issued in 1216, 1217, 1225, 1264, and 1297. The 63 clauses in the document covered many aspects of life dealing with the church, land holding arrangements, the legal system, royal appointments, urban trade, and the means by which the monarch could be held to the agreement. Most focussed on the circumstances of the time and are of little importance to modern society, but these three have a lasting legacy:

(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

Historian and author, Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, provides a historical synopsis-context for the Magna Carta and the terrible king who was forced to sign it:

“John’s reputation is one of the worst kings in English history, a diabolical murderer who brought tyranny and constitutional crisis to his realm…. In the most sympathetic analysis, John’s greatest crime was to have been king as fortune’s wheel rolled downward. He had all his family’s most ruthless instincts allied with none of their good fortune. He presided weakly over the loss of Normandy, and once the duchy was lost he twice failed to win it back. He did not inspire men to great deeds with the force of his personality, yet it is fair to wonder if Henry II or even Richard might have regained Normandy from the position that John occupied in 1204…. As it was, a disastrous civil war, capped by a French invasion, was John’s immediate legacy to his family. In 1215 the Magna Carta was nothing more than a failed peace treaty. John was not to know—any more than the barons who negotiated its terms with him would have done—that his name and the myth of the document sealed at Runnymede would be bound together in English history forever…. The Magna Carta would be reissued time and time again in the years immediately following John’s death, and interpreting this intricate document on the limits of the powers of a king would be at the heart of every constitutional battle that was fought during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As Henry III struggled to regain the rights and territories that his father had lost, the Great Charter gradually came to define the terms of engagement between king and community. When it was reissued in 1225, the Magna Carta was nailed to church doors and displayed in town squares across England, gaining legendary status as a document whose spirit stood for the duty of English kings to govern within the laws they made.”

Even though Pope Innocent III annulled the Magna Carta in August of 1215, declaring it null and void and having been sealed under duress, the document was resuscitated over time. Over the course of the next 800 years, the idea of Magna Carta gathered momentum and assumed a greater authority in respect of the central key clauses concerning liberty and justice. The central clauses have not only stood the test of time, but have a potency of their own which has seen off hundreds of attempts at annulment, repeal, modification and suspension by successive monarchs and governments.

Sources: World Book Encyclopedia, 2015 edition; Historical Dictionary of the British Monarchy by Kenneth J. Panton; http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation; and The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones