Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Pains of Private Health Insurance
An institutional analysis can focus on only almost any corporation or industry and identify ways in which that subject detrimentally affects individual freedom, conceptualized in concrete terms as choice, health, and safety.
Let's consider the private health insurance industry and its business model. At the core of it is this calculation: the medical loss ratio. This figure refers to the amount of money insurance companies have to pay out for medical care. The higher the medical loss ratio, the worse off is the company’s bottom line and the less excited are the owners about the company’s stock. Despite the widespread notion that the purpose of health insurance is to cover persons in need of medical care, actually covering medical care is a bad thing from a business standpoint.
Looking at a range of data publicly available, the average medical loss ratio in the insurance industry ranges from around 75 to around 60 percent. The latter number is the more attractive number from the point of view of the investor. If I am looking to invest my money in one of the fastest growing industries in the country, and I want to maximize my return, then I am looking for companies with something like a 60 percent medical loss ratio.
UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthGroup, whose “mission is to help people live healthier lives,” is one of the largest health insurance company in the United States. United has a medical loss ratio of 74 percent. This means means that less than three-quarters of every dollar customers pay United to help them “live healthier lives” is actually spent on medical care. The rest of the dollar goes to the bureaucracy, including executive pay (United CEO Stephen Hemsley makes more than $100,000 per hour), and income for shareholders (quarterly revenues for UnitedHealthcare are in the quarterly 20 billion dollar range and growing).
That 74 percent number could be lower from an investor standpoint. If I were the executive for a company like UnitedHeathcare, I would find ways of reducing that figure and make my company more profitable for the stockholders, thus attracting more investment in the company, which would in turn allow me to raise my salary, earn bigger bonuses, and buy more stock on Wall Street (what I would do with my more than $100,000 per hour would be my business).
In order to make this happen, I need to eliminate sick people from the rolls and roll back coverage for paying customers. It's the sick people who need medical care; they're the main cause of medical losses for my company. And many of these tests the doctors in network are ordering will need to be rationalized as unnecessary.
One strategy I use is called "policy rescission." I instruct my employees to scour the policies of sick persons to find evidence of minor illnesses and pre-existing conditions that I can use to justify canceling policies. If, for example, a policyholder has Barrett's esophagus, that person is more likely than a person without it to develop cancer of the esophagus. Esophageal cancer is a very costly cancer (although the patient usually dies quickly, so it’s not as bad as it could be). For an insurance company, this "more likely" part suggests a potentially higher medical loss ratio. The policyholder with Barrett's esophagus has to go.
Another strategy I use is called "purging." When I identify an industry where there are too many sick persons relative to healthy persons on the rolls (and I determine this by looking at the medical loss ratio), I raise rates for that industry to very high levels that I know policyholders can't afford. The more customers drop off the rolls, the more my medical loss ratio improves.
Another strategy I use is to instruct my employees to delay payments for procedures with the expectation that some customers won't have the time to devote to challenging those decisions and thus cover this or that cost out of pocket. Hassling customers is a good way of getting off the hook for covering their health care needs even when the policies they hold cover those services. I go after the smaller payouts with this stratgy. Four hundred dollars here, eight hundred dollars there. Is it really worth the time and effort to make my company pay up? Hassling involves a range of tactics: making customers file multiple appeals (and the state regulations my lobbyists obtained prevent customers from suing my company until they have done so - and good luck beating me in court), “losing” referrals and other paperwork, dropping calls, re-routing the customers to nowhere, etc.
My company also spends a lot of money making sure that the government doesn’t regulate the insurance industry too aggressively. If the government mandates a medical loss ratio of 85 or 90 percent, and prevents me from using rescission and other strategies to cut costs, then my stockholders may look for other avenues of investment and my salary won’t be as high and the bonuses will be less. I can't earn less than $100,000 dollars an hour.
Even worse, the government could move to a single-payer system or something like Medicare for everybody, programs that would have bureaucratic costs of five percent or less, since they’re not-for-profit. Such developments would be terrible for my industry. So a good chunk of revenues, instead of going to cover the medical needs of my customers, is dedicated to lobbying the government to not force me to cover the medical needs of my customers. This way narrow private interests can prevail over broad public ones. We call that the "free market."
The effects of this for-profit health insurance dynamic on individual freedom are significant. Those in need of medical services often find themselves without coverage, paying higher premiums to keep their coverage (and going without in other areas of their lives), and spending an inordinate amount of time struggling with insurance company representatives to get them to pay for the services they are supposed to cover. The number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States is medical bills.
Often those who lose their coverage can’t get coverage elsewhere and wind up in emergency rooms with more costly illnesses. And sometimes those without insurance, because they lost it or because they can’t afford it, die from their situation. According to a Harvard Medical School study, nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year – one every 12 minutes – because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. That's more that those who die from drunk driving and homicide combined.
Let's consider the private health insurance industry and its business model. At the core of it is this calculation: the medical loss ratio. This figure refers to the amount of money insurance companies have to pay out for medical care. The higher the medical loss ratio, the worse off is the company’s bottom line and the less excited are the owners about the company’s stock. Despite the widespread notion that the purpose of health insurance is to cover persons in need of medical care, actually covering medical care is a bad thing from a business standpoint.
Looking at a range of data publicly available, the average medical loss ratio in the insurance industry ranges from around 75 to around 60 percent. The latter number is the more attractive number from the point of view of the investor. If I am looking to invest my money in one of the fastest growing industries in the country, and I want to maximize my return, then I am looking for companies with something like a 60 percent medical loss ratio.
UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthGroup, whose “mission is to help people live healthier lives,” is one of the largest health insurance company in the United States. United has a medical loss ratio of 74 percent. This means means that less than three-quarters of every dollar customers pay United to help them “live healthier lives” is actually spent on medical care. The rest of the dollar goes to the bureaucracy, including executive pay (United CEO Stephen Hemsley makes more than $100,000 per hour), and income for shareholders (quarterly revenues for UnitedHealthcare are in the quarterly 20 billion dollar range and growing).
That 74 percent number could be lower from an investor standpoint. If I were the executive for a company like UnitedHeathcare, I would find ways of reducing that figure and make my company more profitable for the stockholders, thus attracting more investment in the company, which would in turn allow me to raise my salary, earn bigger bonuses, and buy more stock on Wall Street (what I would do with my more than $100,000 per hour would be my business).
In order to make this happen, I need to eliminate sick people from the rolls and roll back coverage for paying customers. It's the sick people who need medical care; they're the main cause of medical losses for my company. And many of these tests the doctors in network are ordering will need to be rationalized as unnecessary.
One strategy I use is called "policy rescission." I instruct my employees to scour the policies of sick persons to find evidence of minor illnesses and pre-existing conditions that I can use to justify canceling policies. If, for example, a policyholder has Barrett's esophagus, that person is more likely than a person without it to develop cancer of the esophagus. Esophageal cancer is a very costly cancer (although the patient usually dies quickly, so it’s not as bad as it could be). For an insurance company, this "more likely" part suggests a potentially higher medical loss ratio. The policyholder with Barrett's esophagus has to go.
Another strategy I use is called "purging." When I identify an industry where there are too many sick persons relative to healthy persons on the rolls (and I determine this by looking at the medical loss ratio), I raise rates for that industry to very high levels that I know policyholders can't afford. The more customers drop off the rolls, the more my medical loss ratio improves.
Another strategy I use is to instruct my employees to delay payments for procedures with the expectation that some customers won't have the time to devote to challenging those decisions and thus cover this or that cost out of pocket. Hassling customers is a good way of getting off the hook for covering their health care needs even when the policies they hold cover those services. I go after the smaller payouts with this stratgy. Four hundred dollars here, eight hundred dollars there. Is it really worth the time and effort to make my company pay up? Hassling involves a range of tactics: making customers file multiple appeals (and the state regulations my lobbyists obtained prevent customers from suing my company until they have done so - and good luck beating me in court), “losing” referrals and other paperwork, dropping calls, re-routing the customers to nowhere, etc.
My company also spends a lot of money making sure that the government doesn’t regulate the insurance industry too aggressively. If the government mandates a medical loss ratio of 85 or 90 percent, and prevents me from using rescission and other strategies to cut costs, then my stockholders may look for other avenues of investment and my salary won’t be as high and the bonuses will be less. I can't earn less than $100,000 dollars an hour.
Even worse, the government could move to a single-payer system or something like Medicare for everybody, programs that would have bureaucratic costs of five percent or less, since they’re not-for-profit. Such developments would be terrible for my industry. So a good chunk of revenues, instead of going to cover the medical needs of my customers, is dedicated to lobbying the government to not force me to cover the medical needs of my customers. This way narrow private interests can prevail over broad public ones. We call that the "free market."
The effects of this for-profit health insurance dynamic on individual freedom are significant. Those in need of medical services often find themselves without coverage, paying higher premiums to keep their coverage (and going without in other areas of their lives), and spending an inordinate amount of time struggling with insurance company representatives to get them to pay for the services they are supposed to cover. The number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States is medical bills.
Often those who lose their coverage can’t get coverage elsewhere and wind up in emergency rooms with more costly illnesses. And sometimes those without insurance, because they lost it or because they can’t afford it, die from their situation. According to a Harvard Medical School study, nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year – one every 12 minutes – because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. That's more that those who die from drunk driving and homicide combined.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
The National Review Editorial on Health Insurance - Stupid or Lying
From today's The National Review
The health-reform bill is an assault on our liberties and pocketbooks, but it’s also an assault on the English language: Insurance is, by definition, an agreement in which one party pays a fee to another party in exchange for the promise of a payment in the event of a future misfortune. Insurance is a way to hedge against the risk of things that might happen in the future but have not happened yet and may not happen at all. Insurance companies determine how much insurance will cost by taking those risks into consideration. But the Democrats’ bill forbids insurance companies to take into account preexisting conditions, and thereby converts insurance into something else, for which we do not yet have a name: It’s something that does not consider events in the future, but in the past — and you cannot insure against something that already has happened. As we have previously observed, the Democrats are turning insurance into a product that no rational person would buy and then forcing everybody to buy it.I don't have time to go through The National Review editorial and rebut every point, but I do want to note a problem with the above passage. Insurance companies denying coverage or dropping coverage on the grounds of pre-existing conditions isn't about not wanting to cover past events, as the editorial claims, but about not wanting to cover things that may occur in the future. Denying pre-existing conditions is the opposite of what The National Review editorial claims! If a person has, for example, Barrett's esophagus, this condition may or may not become esophageal cancer. Barrett's esophagus is not itself cancer. The condition means that the person with it is more likely than the person without it to develop cancer of the esophagus. "More likely" is about a future event, which is what insurance is all about. Yet, a person with Barrett's esophagus may be denied health insurance on the basis of this pre-existing conditions. There are other more shocking examples. Women who have been raped or victimized by an abusive husband have been denied health insurance on the grounds that these are pre-existing conditions (for cervical cancer, future injury, etc.). What the House bill actually does (for all its faults) is make insurance more of what it is supposed to be, to quote The National Review: "a way to hedge against the risk of things that might happen in the future but have not happened yet and may not happen at all."
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Zionism’s Version of History
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews He blogs on www.alanhart.net. This is his interview with Norman Finkelstein.
Hart of the Matter - Norman Finkelstein from Alan Hart on Vimeo.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tyranny of the Majority in Maine
It looks like Maine voters have overturned a law permitting gay marriage. Maine no longer recognizes gay marriage. Why does there need to be a law permitting gay marriage? How can there be a law forbidding it in a free society? Civil and human rights are not subject to popular vote. They exist as unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Supposing these rights are inalienable, two (or more) individuals may only be denied the status of marriage - if the state recognizes any marriage - if there is a compelling secular reason for denying them marriage. I have been asking people for years now to give me a compelling secular reason for denying marriage for gays and lesbians. I have to put the word "secular" in there because if I don't people give me religious reasons which they should already know carry no weight in a society based on the separation of church and state. What Maine voters have done is impose a tyranny of the majority in Maine.
For most of our history, in states throughout our nation, the white majority denied the right of black and white men and women to marry. Those laws were overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967 because they represented a fundamental violation of civil and human rights. If the state sanctions marriage, then it cannot treat individuals equally when it denies marriage to some consenting adults while permitting it for other consenting adults. The same principle applies to gay marriage. This is not an argument by analogy. It is an argument of principle. By denying gays and lesbians their right to marry - and they have that right whether it is recognized or not - the majority of voters in Maine demonstrate that they do not cherish the fundamental tenets of a free society.
For most of our history, in states throughout our nation, the white majority denied the right of black and white men and women to marry. Those laws were overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967 because they represented a fundamental violation of civil and human rights. If the state sanctions marriage, then it cannot treat individuals equally when it denies marriage to some consenting adults while permitting it for other consenting adults. The same principle applies to gay marriage. This is not an argument by analogy. It is an argument of principle. By denying gays and lesbians their right to marry - and they have that right whether it is recognized or not - the majority of voters in Maine demonstrate that they do not cherish the fundamental tenets of a free society.
The Goldstone Report
Who authored the Goldstone Report? Justice Richard Goldstone, former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, headed the Mission. The other three appointed members were: Professor Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, a member of the high-level fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun in 2008; Ms. Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and former Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, who was a
member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur in 2004; and Colonel Desmond Travers, a former Officer in Ireland’s Defence Forces and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.'
They found what they found not because they are prejudiced towards Israel. Quite the contrary in Goldstone's case; he is a committed Zionist. They found what they found because the facts led them there.
Here are some excerpts from the report's conclusions. Here is instructions to the international community:
member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur in 2004; and Colonel Desmond Travers, a former Officer in Ireland’s Defence Forces and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.'
They found what they found not because they are prejudiced towards Israel. Quite the contrary in Goldstone's case; he is a committed Zionist. They found what they found because the facts led them there.
Here are some excerpts from the report's conclusions. Here is instructions to the international community:
The Mission recommends that States Parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognised standards of justice.Then to Israel:
In view of their crucial function, the Mission recommends that donor countries/assistance providers continue to support the work of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations in documenting and publicly reporting on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and advising relevant authorities on their compliance with international law.
The Mission recommends that Israel immediately cease the border closures and restrictions of passage through border crossings with the Gaza Strip and allow passage of goods necessary and sufficient to meet the needs of the population, for the recovery and reconstruction of housing and essential services and for the resumption of meaningful economic activity in the Gaza Strip.Goldstone Report
The Mission recommends that Israel cease the restrictions on access to the sea for fishing purposes imposed on the Gaza Strip and allow such fishing activities within the 20 nautical miles as provided for in the Oslo accords. It further recommends that Israel allow the resumption of agricultural activity within the Gaza Strip, including within areas in the vicinity of the borders with Israel.
Israel should initiate a review of the rules of engagement, standard operating procedures, open fire regulations and other guidance for military and security personnel. The Mission recommends that Israel avail itself of the expertise of the ICRC, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other relevant bodies, and Israeli experts, civil society organizations with the relevant expertise and specialization, in order to ensure compliance in this respect with international humanitarian law and international human rights law. In particular such rules of engagement should ensure that the principles of proportionality, distinction, precaution and non-discrimination are effectively integrated in all such guidance and in any oral briefings provided to officers, soldiers and security forces, so as to avoid the recurrence of Palestinian civilian deaths, destruction and affronts on human dignity in violation of international law.
The Mission recommends that Israel allow freedom of movement for Palestinians within the OPT - within the West Bank including East Jerusalem, between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and between the OPT and the outside world - in accordance with international human rights standards and international commitments entered into by Israel and the representatives of the Palestinian people. The Mission further recommends that Israel forthwith lifts travel bans currently placed on Palestinians by reason of their human rights or political activities.
The Mission recommends that Israel release Palestinians who are detained in Israeli prisons in connection with the occupation. The release of children should be an utmost priority. The Mission further recommends that Israel cease the discriminatory treatment of Palestinian detainees. Family visits for prisoners from Gaza should resume.
Israel should forthwith cease interference with national political processes in the OPT, and as a first step release all members of the Palestinian Legislative Council currently in detention and allow all members of the PLC to move between Gaza and the West Bank so that the Council may resume functioning.
The Government of Israel should cease actions aimed at limiting the expression of criticism by civil society and members of the public concerning Israel’s policies and conduct during the military operations in the Gaza Strip. The Mission also recommends that Israel set up an independent inquiry to assess whether the treatment by Israeli judicial authorities of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis expressing dissent in connection with the offensive was discriminatory, both in terms of charges and detention pending trial. The results of the inquiry should be made public and, subject to the findings, appropriate remedial action should be taken.
The Government of Israel should refrain from any action of reprisal against Palestinian and Israeli individuals and organizations that have cooperated with the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, in particular individuals who have appeared at the Public Hearings held by the Mission in Gaza and Geneva and expressed criticism of actions by the State of Israel.
The Mission recommends that Israel reiterates its commitment to respect the inviolability of UN premises and personnel and that it undertakes all appropriate measures to ensure that there is no repetition of violations in the future (ref Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the UN). It further recommends that reparation to the United Nations be provided fully and without further delay by the State of Israel, and that the General Assembly consider this matter.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
US Apologizing for War Crimes and Weak on Settlements
Al Jazeera is terrific on this issue. The newsman had the congressman dead to rights. With this resolution, the United States is apologizing for war crimes. How about that Brian Baird? Write him a thank you letter.
The settlements - colonies - are illegal. They always have been. To argue that this is better than the alternative is meaningless. The alternative is the complete incorporation of Palestine into Israel.
The settlements - colonies - are illegal. They always have been. To argue that this is better than the alternative is meaningless. The alternative is the complete incorporation of Palestine into Israel.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Jeremiah Wright and the AIDS Controversy
It may seem strange to hear a learned man like Jeremiah Wright make the claim that AIDS was created by the government, but it's not an obscure belief among the black intelligentsia worldwide. For holding such beliefs, Wright and others have been labeled "crazy."
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize, asked, "Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious." It was reported that she went further than this and said it was "deliberately created by Western scientists to decimate the African population," but she denies saying this. However, she did say this: "I have no idea who created AIDS and whether it is a biological agent or not. But I do know things like that don't come from the moon. I have always thought that it is important to tell people the truth, but I guess there is some truth that must not be too exposed." Asked to clarify she said, "I'm referring to AIDS. I am sure people know where it came from. And I'm quite sure it did not come from the monkeys." Under pressure, she backtracked from this statement, saying she was misunderstood, but it doesn't seem that she could have meant something different than what is implied.
In 2005, a survey by the Rand Corporation found that half of all American blacks surveyed reported that they believe AIDS is man-made, one-quarter believe it was created in a government laboratory, and 16 percent believe it was created to reduce the black population.
Where do such ideas come from?
One possible source is the juxtaposition of two facts that occurred in 1969 in the halls of our own government.
In July, 1969, George H. W. Bush, US Representative from Texas, gave a major speech on the need to control population growth in the Third World. It was one of many he gave on the subject. He was so obsessed with population control, in fact, that his colleagues nicknamed him "Mr. Rubbers."
A few days later, the Department of Defense requested $10 million dollars from Congress to fund the development of a "synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."
The following conversation is from the Congressional Record, the event a hearing over the Department of Defense appropriation request (HB-15090) for budget year 1970. Here is the Pentagon’s Dr. Donald MacArthur telling Congressman Robert Sikes of the need for a “synthetic biological agent”:
Most white people will never have heard of this theory. For most whites who have heard this, they won't make the connection - they will see it as a coincidence (not all, of course, e.g. music genius Frank Zappa, who believed AIDS was created to kill blacks and gays, wrote a famous play about it called Thing Fish).
But among blacks, a relatively smaller proportion of the population than whites, and linked together through a tight network of black churches, many will have heard of it. When black people hear this they have a different reaction than whites. They make the connection. And this is because of their history.
Black people remember all too well that the United States government conducted syphilis experiments at the Tuskegee Institute on black men from the 1930s through the 1970s, an experiment that violated the Nuremberg Code, the rules governing the punishment of Nazi doctors who engaged in medical experiments. The Nazi doctors were hanged to death. Yet nothing happened to the Tuskegee doctors.
Moreover, blacks know the government dumps toxins on their communities, locates landfills in their neighborhoods, and keeps blacks in the dark about working conditions that make them sick. Combine this with vast disparities in health care services and outcomes for blacks, and experience and context make it easy to believe that the government would do something like create a virus that targets undesirable populations.
When Jeremiah Wright was confronted with what he had said during his April 2008 National Press Club appearance, he asked the media in attendance, "Have you read Medical Apartheid" (I have, by the way, and it's excellent and extremely important - the full source: Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday, 2007). Wright said, "Based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."
Much of the theory about government involvement in the creation of AIDS comes from the work of Boyd Graves, who argues that AIDS is associated with the US Special Virus Program (1962-1978). Related to this is the work of Dr. Alan Cantwell, Jr., for example, this article.
While it may not be true that the government created AIDS, it's no stretch of the imagination to suppose that it may be true. Majorities believe much stranger things than this (such as the existence of an invisible man who lives in the sky and watches everything we do and punishes us in a place called Hell if we don't obey a book full of out-of-date rules).
There are lots of things that sound bizarre that turn out to be true upon careful investigation. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment seems hard to believe, but it's true. Forced sterilization programs in the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Scandinavia, responsible for the surgical mutilation of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of human beings sounds like a fantastic story. But it's for real. The Holocaust - the systematic murder of millions of human beings in an efficient bureaucratic death machine - seems farfetched, almost impossible, but it is a very real historical truth. It happened. It really happened. Millions of people were taken from their homes, herded into death camps, killed with bullets and poison gas, and their bodies burnt to ash in networks of crematoria. Of course people still deny it.
To suppose that such things are impossible is to run the risk of permitting terrible things to happen and to continue. The scientific mind remains open to possibility. What some people call conspiracy theories, others see as bold conjecture or even working hypotheses.
Wright's error, in my view, is in stating a hypothesis as fact, but then millions of brothers and sisters do the same thing. They may have jumped the gun. But that doesn't make them crazy.
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win a Nobel Prize, asked, "Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious." It was reported that she went further than this and said it was "deliberately created by Western scientists to decimate the African population," but she denies saying this. However, she did say this: "I have no idea who created AIDS and whether it is a biological agent or not. But I do know things like that don't come from the moon. I have always thought that it is important to tell people the truth, but I guess there is some truth that must not be too exposed." Asked to clarify she said, "I'm referring to AIDS. I am sure people know where it came from. And I'm quite sure it did not come from the monkeys." Under pressure, she backtracked from this statement, saying she was misunderstood, but it doesn't seem that she could have meant something different than what is implied.
In 2005, a survey by the Rand Corporation found that half of all American blacks surveyed reported that they believe AIDS is man-made, one-quarter believe it was created in a government laboratory, and 16 percent believe it was created to reduce the black population.
Where do such ideas come from?
One possible source is the juxtaposition of two facts that occurred in 1969 in the halls of our own government.
In July, 1969, George H. W. Bush, US Representative from Texas, gave a major speech on the need to control population growth in the Third World. It was one of many he gave on the subject. He was so obsessed with population control, in fact, that his colleagues nicknamed him "Mr. Rubbers."
A few days later, the Department of Defense requested $10 million dollars from Congress to fund the development of a "synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."
The following conversation is from the Congressional Record, the event a hearing over the Department of Defense appropriation request (HB-15090) for budget year 1970. Here is the Pentagon’s Dr. Donald MacArthur telling Congressman Robert Sikes of the need for a “synthetic biological agent”:
Dr. MacArthur: There are two things about the biological agent field I would like to mention. One is the possibility of technological surprise. Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.Of course none of this proves the government created AIDS. What it does show is that the military and political operatives at the highest levels of the US government were interested in a program which could produce a AIDS-like virus for the purposes of biological warfare and that experts believed that such a virus could be produced in 5 to 10 years. That in itself is something and when some people hear this, recall that AIDS emerged in the early 1980s, then do a little math.... well, it seems to fit the time line, doesn't it?
Mr. Sikes. Are we doing any work in that field?
Dr. MacArthur. We are not.
Mr. Sikes. Why not? Lack of money or lack of interest?
Dr. MacArthur. Certainly not lack of interest.
Mr. Sikes. Would you provide for our records information on what would be required, what the advantages of such a program would be. the time and the cost involved?
Dr. MacArthur. We will be very happy to.
The dramatic progress being made in the field of molecular biology led us to investigate the relevance of this field of science to biological warfare. A small group of experts considered this matter and provided the following observations:
1. All biological agents up the present time are representatives of naturally occurring disease, and are thus known by scientists throughout the world. They are easily available to qualified scientists for research, either for offensive or defensive purposes.
2. Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon when we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.
3. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million.
4. It would be very difficult to establish such a program. Molecular biology is a relatively new science. There are not many highly competent scientists in the field., almost all are in university laboratories, and they are generally adequately supported from sources other than DOD. However, it was considered possible to initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of sciences - National Research Council (NAS-NRC, and tentative plans were made to initiate the program. However decreasing funds in CB, growing criticism of the CB program., and our reluctance to involve the NAS NRC in such a controversial endeavor have led us to postpone it for the past 2 years.
It is a highly controversial issue and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to yet another method of massive killing of large populations. On the other hand, without the sure scientific knowledge that such a weapon is possible, and an understanding of the ways it could be done. there is little that can be done to devise defensive measures. Should an enemy develop it there is little doubt that this is an important area of potential military technological inferiority in which there is no adequate research program.
Source: Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970. United States Senate Library. Hearings before a Subcommitee of the Committee on Appropriations. House of Representatives. Ninety-First Congress. First Session. Subcommittee on Department of Defense. Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations. US Government Printing Office. Washington: 1969. Tuseday, July 1, 1969. Synthetic Biological Agents.
Most white people will never have heard of this theory. For most whites who have heard this, they won't make the connection - they will see it as a coincidence (not all, of course, e.g. music genius Frank Zappa, who believed AIDS was created to kill blacks and gays, wrote a famous play about it called Thing Fish).
But among blacks, a relatively smaller proportion of the population than whites, and linked together through a tight network of black churches, many will have heard of it. When black people hear this they have a different reaction than whites. They make the connection. And this is because of their history.
Black people remember all too well that the United States government conducted syphilis experiments at the Tuskegee Institute on black men from the 1930s through the 1970s, an experiment that violated the Nuremberg Code, the rules governing the punishment of Nazi doctors who engaged in medical experiments. The Nazi doctors were hanged to death. Yet nothing happened to the Tuskegee doctors.
Moreover, blacks know the government dumps toxins on their communities, locates landfills in their neighborhoods, and keeps blacks in the dark about working conditions that make them sick. Combine this with vast disparities in health care services and outcomes for blacks, and experience and context make it easy to believe that the government would do something like create a virus that targets undesirable populations.
When Jeremiah Wright was confronted with what he had said during his April 2008 National Press Club appearance, he asked the media in attendance, "Have you read Medical Apartheid" (I have, by the way, and it's excellent and extremely important - the full source: Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday, 2007). Wright said, "Based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."
Much of the theory about government involvement in the creation of AIDS comes from the work of Boyd Graves, who argues that AIDS is associated with the US Special Virus Program (1962-1978). Related to this is the work of Dr. Alan Cantwell, Jr., for example, this article.
While it may not be true that the government created AIDS, it's no stretch of the imagination to suppose that it may be true. Majorities believe much stranger things than this (such as the existence of an invisible man who lives in the sky and watches everything we do and punishes us in a place called Hell if we don't obey a book full of out-of-date rules).
There are lots of things that sound bizarre that turn out to be true upon careful investigation. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment seems hard to believe, but it's true. Forced sterilization programs in the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Scandinavia, responsible for the surgical mutilation of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of human beings sounds like a fantastic story. But it's for real. The Holocaust - the systematic murder of millions of human beings in an efficient bureaucratic death machine - seems farfetched, almost impossible, but it is a very real historical truth. It happened. It really happened. Millions of people were taken from their homes, herded into death camps, killed with bullets and poison gas, and their bodies burnt to ash in networks of crematoria. Of course people still deny it.
To suppose that such things are impossible is to run the risk of permitting terrible things to happen and to continue. The scientific mind remains open to possibility. What some people call conspiracy theories, others see as bold conjecture or even working hypotheses.
Wright's error, in my view, is in stating a hypothesis as fact, but then millions of brothers and sisters do the same thing. They may have jumped the gun. But that doesn't make them crazy.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Frank Gaffney says Islam threatens "our capitalist system."
This is from a breakout session on Iran at the 2008 Christians United for Israel conference. Frank Gaffney, one of the neoconservative players at the center of the Project for a New American Century and among those tapped by the Bush administration to form the president's team on Middle East policy, rants about banks offering Islamic investment products (products that don't charge interest), calling those products a threat to "our capitalist system." In the same breath he characterizes Sharia as "sedition." Of course rebellion against capitalism is sedition! Yet another reason to bomb Iran. War on Terror = Cold War. Here are several minutes of his talk recorded by activists who infiltrated the session: click here. This is from the organization JewsOnFirst, formed by Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak to raise awareness about the spread of conservative Christianity and the growing unity between the elements in the American Jewish community and right-wing Christianists (the Christian Zionist movement).
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Alliance Defense Fund is very Confused
The Alliance Defense Fund and Wisconsin Family Action are trying to stop domestic patnerships on the grounds that is violates the state constitutional ban on gay marriage. The language of the ban (which is a clear violation of the separation fo church and state and basic civil liberties, which cannot legitimately be legislated): "Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state." The ADF argues "the state’s 'domestic partnership' scheme...creates a legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage, which directly violates Article 13, Section 13, of the state constitution." ADF describes itself as "a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith." Who is stopping people the right to freely live out their faith? Gays who want to marry? How do they affect Christians who are attacked to members of the opposite sex? See is irony? In fact it is ADF who is seeking to prevent people from freely living out their faith.
The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation
The following is the testimony NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano will deliver on Oct. 28 to the California Assembly Public Safety Committee's special hearing on "the legalization of marijuana: social, fiscal and legal implications for California." Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, sponsor of AB 390, The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act, is the chairman of the committee.
The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation
Paul Armentano Deputy Director NORML
By any objective standard, marijuana prohibition is an abject failure.
Nationwide, U.S. law enforcement have arrested over 20 million American citizens for marijuana offenses since 1965, yet today marijuana is more prevalent than ever before, adolescents have easier access to marijuana than ever before, the drug is more potent than ever before, and there is more violence associated with the illegal marijuana trade than ever before.
Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and 1 in 10 -- according to current government survey data -- use it regularly.
The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol.
NORML believes that the state of California ought to amend criminal prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization, taxation, regulation and education.
The case for legalization and regulation
Only through state government regulation will we be able to bring necessary controls to the commercial marijuana market. (Note: Nonretail cultivation for adult personal use would arguably not be subject to such regulations, just as the personal, noncommercial production by adults of beer is not governed by such restriction.) By enacting state and local legislation on the retail production and distribution of marijuana, state and local governments can effectively impose controls regarding:
For example:
Taxing and regulating cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol will bring long-overdue state oversight to a commercial market that is presently unregulated, uncontrolled and all too often inundated by criminal entrepreneurs.
While this alternative may not entirely eliminate the black-market demand for cannabis, it would certainly be preferable to today's blanket, although thoroughly ineffective, expensive and impotent, criminal prohibition.
Voters nationwide, and in California in particular, support ending criminal marijuana prohibition. This past spring, 56 percent of California voters expressed support for taxing and regulating marijuana in a statewide Field poll.
Doing so would give greater control to state law enforcement officials and regulators by imposing proper state restrictions and regulations on this existing and widespread marijuana market.
I urge this committee to move forward with the enactment of sensible regulations for legalizing marijuana.
The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation
Paul Armentano Deputy Director NORML
By any objective standard, marijuana prohibition is an abject failure.
Nationwide, U.S. law enforcement have arrested over 20 million American citizens for marijuana offenses since 1965, yet today marijuana is more prevalent than ever before, adolescents have easier access to marijuana than ever before, the drug is more potent than ever before, and there is more violence associated with the illegal marijuana trade than ever before.
Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and 1 in 10 -- according to current government survey data -- use it regularly.
The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol.
NORML believes that the state of California ought to amend criminal prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization, taxation, regulation and education.
The case for legalization and regulation
Only through state government regulation will we be able to bring necessary controls to the commercial marijuana market. (Note: Nonretail cultivation for adult personal use would arguably not be subject to such regulations, just as the personal, noncommercial production by adults of beer is not governed by such restriction.) By enacting state and local legislation on the retail production and distribution of marijuana, state and local governments can effectively impose controls regarding:
which citizens can legally produce marijuana;By contrast, the criminal prohibition of marijuana -- the policy the state of California has in place now -- provides law enforcement and state regulators with no legitimate market controls. This absence of state and local government controls jeopardizes rather than promotes public safety.
which citizens can legally distribute marijuana;
which citizens can legally consume marijuana; and where, and under what circumstances such use is legally permitted.
For example:
Prohibition abdicates the control of marijuana production and distribution to criminal entrepreneurs (i.e. drug cartels, street gangs, drug dealers who push additional illegal substances);Marijuana is not a harmless substance -- no potentially mind-altering substance is. But this fact is precisely why its commercial production and distribution ought to be controlled and regulated in manner similar to the licensed distribution of alcohol and cigarettes -- two legal substances that cause far greater harm to the individual user, and to society as a whole, than cannabis ever could.
Prohibition provides young people with unfettered access to marijuana (e.g., according to a 2009 Columbia University report, adolescents now have easier access to marijuana than they do alcohol);
Prohibition promotes the use of marijuana in inappropriate and potentially dangerous settings (e.g., in automobiles, in public parks, in public restrooms, etc.)
Prohibition promotes disrespect for the law and reinforces ethnic and generation divides between the public and law enforcement. (According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, 75 percent of all marijuana arrestees are under age 30; African Americans account for only 12 percent of marijuana users but make up 23 percent of all possession arrests).
Taxing and regulating cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol will bring long-overdue state oversight to a commercial market that is presently unregulated, uncontrolled and all too often inundated by criminal entrepreneurs.
While this alternative may not entirely eliminate the black-market demand for cannabis, it would certainly be preferable to today's blanket, although thoroughly ineffective, expensive and impotent, criminal prohibition.
Voters nationwide, and in California in particular, support ending criminal marijuana prohibition. This past spring, 56 percent of California voters expressed support for taxing and regulating marijuana in a statewide Field poll.
Doing so would give greater control to state law enforcement officials and regulators by imposing proper state restrictions and regulations on this existing and widespread marijuana market.
I urge this committee to move forward with the enactment of sensible regulations for legalizing marijuana.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Robertson says Jerusalem belongs to the Jews because King David bought it for 600 talons of gold
That is, according to the Old Testament.
"This whole thing is based on fantasy."
No kidding, Pat.
"This whole thing is based on fantasy."
No kidding, Pat.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Privatizing Management of the Surplus Population
According to a New York Times story published today, titled "Arizona May Put State Prisons in Private Hands," Arizona is seeking bids from private companies for nine of the state’s ten prison complexes that control some 40,000 inmates, including 127 death row inmates. "It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control." A state with an entirely privatized prison system including privatized medicine and administration of death represents a giant leap forward in the emergence of the corporate state. Murray Rothbard's ideas advance!
Corporations are based on a fascist model of social organization: top-down hierarchical bureaucratic organization of mass human action for the sake of a collective goal determined by the chief executive officers and the wealthy elite. It follows that when corporations take over government functions in a republic, what democracy exists in that republic is reduced. If all government functions are privatized, then the republic ceases to exist altogether, replaced by a de facto corporate state. In such a situation, corporations would run your lives more than they already do. Indeed, corporations would run everything. But even partial privatization means the destruction of a significant degree of democratic freedom.
Who is Murray Rothbard? Rothbard is idolized by right-wing congressman Ron Paul, who believes white business owners should be able to refuse service to black families. Rothbard influenced philosopher Robert Nozick, who believed individuals should be allowed to sell themselves into slavery. Rothbard was an associate of Frederick Hayek, the social Darwinist we discussed earlier in the semester. Rothbard argued that all government functions should be privatized. The police. The military. Everything.
He called this arrangement "anarchocapitalism." Yet this isn't anarchy at all, since the resulting order of things is neither emergent from the people nor based on individual freedom. Instead the order of things is emergent from the corporate hierarchy. Moreover, anarchy means no rulers ("No Gods! No Masters!"), and if corporations run society, then corporate executives and the wealthy elite who own the companies would be our rulers and their corporate slogans would be our mottoes.
The corporate state won't be shaped by the public interests, but instead by private interest for the sake of profit. A democracy puts people before profits. A corporate society puts profits before people. The people wouldn't contract with corporations for police protection under corporate state arrangements (really, individuals would only be able to contract to rent or sell their bodies to corporations); the corporations would institute police systems to control workers. They do this now in part through the state and have the citizen pay for it (the other part of control of people - the larger part - is private), but this is because the state under capitalism is not sufficiently democratic.
Why is Arizona doing this? Arizona is facing a two billion dollar budget shortfall, and they hope to make $100 million by selling their prison system to a private correctional corporation. It's an auction of human lives, something like selling one's plantation with the slaves included. The state could raise taxes on the wealthy, but, nah, instead they want to turn over to the wealthy the incarcerated portion of surplus workers. That is what prisons are for: controlling the so-called dangerous classes. A third of inmates aren't working when they are arrested for the crime that sends them to prison. Another third are earning very little money. Two-thirds are illiterate and haven't graduated high school. So rather than have the capitalists and their managers pay for the problems of capitalism, the state of Arizona seeks to turn the prison system over to corporations who will profit at the taxpayers expense.
The article is shocking in that it doesn't discuss at all the implications for democracy but instead looks at the matter as a technical problem. The Times quotes James Austin, a co-author of a Department of Justice study in 2001 on prison privatization (and president of the JFA Institute, a corrections consulting firm), who suggests that private companies may not be ready to manage the most dangerous prisoners, since their experience has been overseeing minimum- and medium-security inmates.
Moreover, the article is upbeat about the future, noting that prison privatization advocates are pleased by Arizona's move given that privatization "has been on the decline across the country as cost savings from prison privatizations have often failed to materialize, corrections officers unions have resisted the efforts and high-profile problems in privately run facilities have drawn unwanted publicity."
Arizona representative John Kavanaugh, Republican, told The Times that private prison corporations “are the future of corrections in Arizona.” It is hoped that Arizona - that little engine of democracy - can provide a model for other states. From the corporate point of view, many states have tragically been pursing a different strategy: closing prisons and changing sentencing rules to reduce crowding. How horrible is that? Less authoritarian control in a corporate society is never a good example. “There simply isn’t the money to keep these people incarcerated," said Ron Utt, a senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation; "the alternative is to free many of them or lower cost.” The Heritage Foundation work on privatization was cited by one Arizona lawmaker as expert opinion. The Heritage Foundation, a leader in the corporate-led movement to privatize everything, is an right-wing think tank bankrolled by corporations and corporate-funded foundations.
The privatization movement itself gained momentum because of the massive burden on state budgets with the get-touch-on-crime disaster of the 1980s, fueling the private prison boom in the 1990s. The benefit for authoritarians pressing for the de facto corporate state is that companies do not generally provide the same wages and benefits as states and therefore attracts less-qualified workers and allows states to stick it to the unions. The federal government jumped into private prison contracting, as well, more than doubling the number of federal prisoners in private facilities, a much faster rate of growth than in the states.
The Times notes, "With bad economic times again driving many decisions about state resources, other states are sure to watch Arizona’s experiment closely." If there were a Heaven, Rothbard would certainly be up there smiling.
Corporations are based on a fascist model of social organization: top-down hierarchical bureaucratic organization of mass human action for the sake of a collective goal determined by the chief executive officers and the wealthy elite. It follows that when corporations take over government functions in a republic, what democracy exists in that republic is reduced. If all government functions are privatized, then the republic ceases to exist altogether, replaced by a de facto corporate state. In such a situation, corporations would run your lives more than they already do. Indeed, corporations would run everything. But even partial privatization means the destruction of a significant degree of democratic freedom.
Who is Murray Rothbard? Rothbard is idolized by right-wing congressman Ron Paul, who believes white business owners should be able to refuse service to black families. Rothbard influenced philosopher Robert Nozick, who believed individuals should be allowed to sell themselves into slavery. Rothbard was an associate of Frederick Hayek, the social Darwinist we discussed earlier in the semester. Rothbard argued that all government functions should be privatized. The police. The military. Everything.
He called this arrangement "anarchocapitalism." Yet this isn't anarchy at all, since the resulting order of things is neither emergent from the people nor based on individual freedom. Instead the order of things is emergent from the corporate hierarchy. Moreover, anarchy means no rulers ("No Gods! No Masters!"), and if corporations run society, then corporate executives and the wealthy elite who own the companies would be our rulers and their corporate slogans would be our mottoes.
The corporate state won't be shaped by the public interests, but instead by private interest for the sake of profit. A democracy puts people before profits. A corporate society puts profits before people. The people wouldn't contract with corporations for police protection under corporate state arrangements (really, individuals would only be able to contract to rent or sell their bodies to corporations); the corporations would institute police systems to control workers. They do this now in part through the state and have the citizen pay for it (the other part of control of people - the larger part - is private), but this is because the state under capitalism is not sufficiently democratic.
Why is Arizona doing this? Arizona is facing a two billion dollar budget shortfall, and they hope to make $100 million by selling their prison system to a private correctional corporation. It's an auction of human lives, something like selling one's plantation with the slaves included. The state could raise taxes on the wealthy, but, nah, instead they want to turn over to the wealthy the incarcerated portion of surplus workers. That is what prisons are for: controlling the so-called dangerous classes. A third of inmates aren't working when they are arrested for the crime that sends them to prison. Another third are earning very little money. Two-thirds are illiterate and haven't graduated high school. So rather than have the capitalists and their managers pay for the problems of capitalism, the state of Arizona seeks to turn the prison system over to corporations who will profit at the taxpayers expense.
The article is shocking in that it doesn't discuss at all the implications for democracy but instead looks at the matter as a technical problem. The Times quotes James Austin, a co-author of a Department of Justice study in 2001 on prison privatization (and president of the JFA Institute, a corrections consulting firm), who suggests that private companies may not be ready to manage the most dangerous prisoners, since their experience has been overseeing minimum- and medium-security inmates.
Moreover, the article is upbeat about the future, noting that prison privatization advocates are pleased by Arizona's move given that privatization "has been on the decline across the country as cost savings from prison privatizations have often failed to materialize, corrections officers unions have resisted the efforts and high-profile problems in privately run facilities have drawn unwanted publicity."
Arizona representative John Kavanaugh, Republican, told The Times that private prison corporations “are the future of corrections in Arizona.” It is hoped that Arizona - that little engine of democracy - can provide a model for other states. From the corporate point of view, many states have tragically been pursing a different strategy: closing prisons and changing sentencing rules to reduce crowding. How horrible is that? Less authoritarian control in a corporate society is never a good example. “There simply isn’t the money to keep these people incarcerated," said Ron Utt, a senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation; "the alternative is to free many of them or lower cost.” The Heritage Foundation work on privatization was cited by one Arizona lawmaker as expert opinion. The Heritage Foundation, a leader in the corporate-led movement to privatize everything, is an right-wing think tank bankrolled by corporations and corporate-funded foundations.
The privatization movement itself gained momentum because of the massive burden on state budgets with the get-touch-on-crime disaster of the 1980s, fueling the private prison boom in the 1990s. The benefit for authoritarians pressing for the de facto corporate state is that companies do not generally provide the same wages and benefits as states and therefore attracts less-qualified workers and allows states to stick it to the unions. The federal government jumped into private prison contracting, as well, more than doubling the number of federal prisoners in private facilities, a much faster rate of growth than in the states.
The Times notes, "With bad economic times again driving many decisions about state resources, other states are sure to watch Arizona’s experiment closely." If there were a Heaven, Rothbard would certainly be up there smiling.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
True Libertarianism. It's Communism
The discussion of true libertarianism really turns on the definition of liberty, of which there are basically three.
The oldest notion of liberty in the Western tradition is the contradiction that simultaneously holds to the labor theory of value, in which those who mix their labor with the instruments/objects of production are seen as naturally entitled to the things they produce, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, bourgeois property relations, legal relations that allow individuals to have property in things they do not produce themselves without fully compensating the producers the full value of labor expended.
John Locke and Adam Smith, among others, held this view. The early theorists of political economy suspected that capitalism was exploitative, since the capitalist made off with more value than he produced - often he did no productive labor at all! - but they couldn't reveal the secret of accumulation. They weren't too troubled by this, however, since, the utilitarian side of their thinking allowed them to argue that the benefits - wealth creation - outweighed the moral downside, namely inequality and poverty.
In Capital, Karl Marx solved the riddle of the metamorphosis of labor into capital scientifically: M - C - M'. Earlier, he had resolved the contradiction of liberalism by jettisoning bourgeois property relations in favor of workers keeping the full value of their production, that is socialism. Unlike the capitalist ideologue, Marx correctly saw liberty – i.e. individual freedom and personal sovereignty – as predicated on substantive equality. "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms," he and Engels wrote in Manifesto of the Communist Party, "we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Anarchists agreed with the conclusion, but disagreed with the political strategy advocated by communists. As Berkman noted in the ABCs of Anarchism, the end goal, communism, was common to Marxists and anarchists, but the proper path to the promise land was disputed. So anarchists identified themselves as communists and socialists but distinguished themselves from Marxists by calling themselves libertarians, creating compound words such as anarchist-communist (Berkman and Goldman were fond of this term), libertarian-socialist (Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and later Chomsky, Bookchin), and libertarian-communist.
The libertarian tradition on the left has a long history. Indeed, it has the longest history. Anarchist Sebastien Faure’s Le Libertaire, published in 1895, is the first publication to use the term in a purposeful political sense, although the earliest usage politically appears to have been anarchist-communist’s Joseph Dejacque's use of the word in 1858. The anarchist tradition of libertarianism was continued throughout the 20th century. The Libertarian League was founded in the United States in 1920, publishing the journal The Libertarian. During the Spanish Revolution, a coalition group, the United Libertarian Organizations, was created to get the revolutionary anarchist message out. The anarchosyndicalists were influenced by Spanish anarchist Isaac Puente, who in 1932 wrote the pamphlet Libertarian Communism. Gregory P. Maximoff founded the Libertarian Book Club in the late 1940s, which by 1954 had grown into the second Libertarian League (the first having dissolved in 1930). George Fontenis’ The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism was published in the 1950s. In 1959, Cuban anarchists founded the Libertarian Association of Cuba. In 1962, George Woodcock published Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Also in the 1960s, the Solidarity Group published Solidarity: A Journal of Libertarian Socialism.
In other words, long before there was a US Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971 and didn't call itself libertarian until 1972, there were libertarians - and they were anarchists, communists, and socialists!
Which brings us to the third definition of liberty: the neoliberal or New Right take popularly, sometimes accompanied by philosophically sophisticated treatments. Neoliberals recognize the contradiction between the labor theory of value and bourgeois property relations and jettison the former. And they are not utilitarian about relations at all. In their view, all value (exchange and use) is reduced to use value only, and even more to the subjective, to the desire of the individual will. There is no social order really, only individuals, families, and markets. To the extent that there is an economic reality, markets reflect the natural order of things – survival of the fittest – and individuals are either more or less fit to survive. This is why right-wing libertarianism is more aptly labeled social Darwinism.
There are different varieties. There is anarchocapitalism (Murray Rothbard), which dreams of no government and corporations running everything. Corporations would provide the police and military. Indeed, everything would be private. If your labor wasn't needed you would starve or be shot by a corporate cop for trying to procure food for your family. It's a truly horrifying vision. It's stateless fascism, tyranny of the corporate bureaucracy.
Others believe government's role should only be protection of property and contract enforcement (see F. A. Hayek). The outcomes of this arrangement is not much different than anarchocapitalism, as the state is obligated to treat everybody exactly the same even though there are vast differences among individuals. Imagine a world in which the disabled are treated the same as the ablebodied without regard to the disabilities and see the nightmare scenario unfolding. This is the Ron Paul world where white restuarant owners deny black families service. Libertarianism without civil liberties? I think you see the absurdity.
There are still others, such Robert Nozick, who believe a free society allows individuals to sell themselves into slavery. Again, libertarianism without civil liberty. Indeed, all these views lead to the same place, a place where liberty is enjoyed by a few and denied to or curtailed for the many, with either no government standing between exploited and the exploiter or a minimalist state aiding the exploiter in perpetuating the conditions of exploitation. Why anybody but the super rich would want such a hierarchically-structured manner of living is beyond me, but I do know the result is inconsistent with liberty.
So what we have is a contest between those who first used the word libertarianism to advance their vision of liberty worldwide – the radical left – and those who broke away from the Old Right seeking to co-opt the term "libertarianism" to advance their vision of liberty – a form of unfreedom for the majority. Since my definition of liberty is consistent with the radical left, libertarianism means something radically different to me than it does to neo-liberals/social Darwinists. And, since my definition of libertarianism is the much older and the more recognized worldwide, it is the best way to express myself to my comrades around the world. Moreover, I am a dedicated civil libertarian. Yes, I am a card-caring member of the ACLU (I'm even a board member).
By letting the political right have the term, those of us who believe in freedom participate in legitimating a conception of liberty that is antithetical to freedom. If we cede the meaning of the term to them, then we allow them to define liberty, and if their movement continues to gain followers, and if in the end they win, that will be a disaster for freedom and democracy. And make no mistake about it, they openly despise democracy. Democracy is incompatible with their definition of liberty.
But not with mine. I use the term in its traditional non-contradicted meaning. The right has co-opted the term for use as propaganda for an ideology that does not hold individual freedom as its overarching concern, but rather seeks unregulated tyranny of property over society.
The oldest notion of liberty in the Western tradition is the contradiction that simultaneously holds to the labor theory of value, in which those who mix their labor with the instruments/objects of production are seen as naturally entitled to the things they produce, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, bourgeois property relations, legal relations that allow individuals to have property in things they do not produce themselves without fully compensating the producers the full value of labor expended.
John Locke and Adam Smith, among others, held this view. The early theorists of political economy suspected that capitalism was exploitative, since the capitalist made off with more value than he produced - often he did no productive labor at all! - but they couldn't reveal the secret of accumulation. They weren't too troubled by this, however, since, the utilitarian side of their thinking allowed them to argue that the benefits - wealth creation - outweighed the moral downside, namely inequality and poverty.
In Capital, Karl Marx solved the riddle of the metamorphosis of labor into capital scientifically: M - C - M'. Earlier, he had resolved the contradiction of liberalism by jettisoning bourgeois property relations in favor of workers keeping the full value of their production, that is socialism. Unlike the capitalist ideologue, Marx correctly saw liberty – i.e. individual freedom and personal sovereignty – as predicated on substantive equality. "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms," he and Engels wrote in Manifesto of the Communist Party, "we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
Anarchists agreed with the conclusion, but disagreed with the political strategy advocated by communists. As Berkman noted in the ABCs of Anarchism, the end goal, communism, was common to Marxists and anarchists, but the proper path to the promise land was disputed. So anarchists identified themselves as communists and socialists but distinguished themselves from Marxists by calling themselves libertarians, creating compound words such as anarchist-communist (Berkman and Goldman were fond of this term), libertarian-socialist (Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and later Chomsky, Bookchin), and libertarian-communist.
The libertarian tradition on the left has a long history. Indeed, it has the longest history. Anarchist Sebastien Faure’s Le Libertaire, published in 1895, is the first publication to use the term in a purposeful political sense, although the earliest usage politically appears to have been anarchist-communist’s Joseph Dejacque's use of the word in 1858. The anarchist tradition of libertarianism was continued throughout the 20th century. The Libertarian League was founded in the United States in 1920, publishing the journal The Libertarian. During the Spanish Revolution, a coalition group, the United Libertarian Organizations, was created to get the revolutionary anarchist message out. The anarchosyndicalists were influenced by Spanish anarchist Isaac Puente, who in 1932 wrote the pamphlet Libertarian Communism. Gregory P. Maximoff founded the Libertarian Book Club in the late 1940s, which by 1954 had grown into the second Libertarian League (the first having dissolved in 1930). George Fontenis’ The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism was published in the 1950s. In 1959, Cuban anarchists founded the Libertarian Association of Cuba. In 1962, George Woodcock published Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Also in the 1960s, the Solidarity Group published Solidarity: A Journal of Libertarian Socialism.
In other words, long before there was a US Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971 and didn't call itself libertarian until 1972, there were libertarians - and they were anarchists, communists, and socialists!
Which brings us to the third definition of liberty: the neoliberal or New Right take popularly, sometimes accompanied by philosophically sophisticated treatments. Neoliberals recognize the contradiction between the labor theory of value and bourgeois property relations and jettison the former. And they are not utilitarian about relations at all. In their view, all value (exchange and use) is reduced to use value only, and even more to the subjective, to the desire of the individual will. There is no social order really, only individuals, families, and markets. To the extent that there is an economic reality, markets reflect the natural order of things – survival of the fittest – and individuals are either more or less fit to survive. This is why right-wing libertarianism is more aptly labeled social Darwinism.
There are different varieties. There is anarchocapitalism (Murray Rothbard), which dreams of no government and corporations running everything. Corporations would provide the police and military. Indeed, everything would be private. If your labor wasn't needed you would starve or be shot by a corporate cop for trying to procure food for your family. It's a truly horrifying vision. It's stateless fascism, tyranny of the corporate bureaucracy.
Others believe government's role should only be protection of property and contract enforcement (see F. A. Hayek). The outcomes of this arrangement is not much different than anarchocapitalism, as the state is obligated to treat everybody exactly the same even though there are vast differences among individuals. Imagine a world in which the disabled are treated the same as the ablebodied without regard to the disabilities and see the nightmare scenario unfolding. This is the Ron Paul world where white restuarant owners deny black families service. Libertarianism without civil liberties? I think you see the absurdity.
There are still others, such Robert Nozick, who believe a free society allows individuals to sell themselves into slavery. Again, libertarianism without civil liberty. Indeed, all these views lead to the same place, a place where liberty is enjoyed by a few and denied to or curtailed for the many, with either no government standing between exploited and the exploiter or a minimalist state aiding the exploiter in perpetuating the conditions of exploitation. Why anybody but the super rich would want such a hierarchically-structured manner of living is beyond me, but I do know the result is inconsistent with liberty.
So what we have is a contest between those who first used the word libertarianism to advance their vision of liberty worldwide – the radical left – and those who broke away from the Old Right seeking to co-opt the term "libertarianism" to advance their vision of liberty – a form of unfreedom for the majority. Since my definition of liberty is consistent with the radical left, libertarianism means something radically different to me than it does to neo-liberals/social Darwinists. And, since my definition of libertarianism is the much older and the more recognized worldwide, it is the best way to express myself to my comrades around the world. Moreover, I am a dedicated civil libertarian. Yes, I am a card-caring member of the ACLU (I'm even a board member).
By letting the political right have the term, those of us who believe in freedom participate in legitimating a conception of liberty that is antithetical to freedom. If we cede the meaning of the term to them, then we allow them to define liberty, and if their movement continues to gain followers, and if in the end they win, that will be a disaster for freedom and democracy. And make no mistake about it, they openly despise democracy. Democracy is incompatible with their definition of liberty.
But not with mine. I use the term in its traditional non-contradicted meaning. The right has co-opted the term for use as propaganda for an ideology that does not hold individual freedom as its overarching concern, but rather seeks unregulated tyranny of property over society.
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