The properties of propaganda part 1

Propaganda is the main tool of legitimacy that the state has in its possession. As discussed before, the state is nothing without legitimacy, and legitimacy can only be obtained by getting people to believe in the state narrative. And given that the state is not legitimate, any propaganda must fundamentally be a lie. Propaganda is inherently immoral.

But what is propaganda ? From a sociological standpoint, Jacques Ellul defines it as such :

Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the (...) participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulation and incorporated in an organization.
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, p61

Randall Bytwerk, professor and author of "Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic", defines propaganda politically as :

(...) the systematic attempt to persuade a public to accept the views of its leaders.

These definitions are crucial to understand the nature of propaganda. They indicate that, despite the common conception, propaganda is not just a message but a coherent structure of psychological entrapment (the Nazis, who were pioneers in employing large-scale propaganda, were well-aware of the need for systematizing). They also tell us that propaganda has the aim of manipulating people's value systems into serving the initiators of propaganda. Let's look at these two points in turn.

The democratic state is unusually well positioned to establish a powerful propaganda machine. Its democratic status confers it an initial credibility that simply does not exist with a monarchic state. Thus the task is quite simpler, since all politicians need is to convince voters that some measure or program represents "the will of the people" and that they serve "the people". This inevitably means that individual values must be attacked as going against the "common good". So propaganda must imply collectivism.

In the fully developed parasitic democracies of the developed world, the propaganda machine encompasses large swaths of society : the educational system, the academia and the arts, the media, fulfilling "public goods", and fascist control through subsidies and the threat of force. By coordinating its activities, government is able to indoctrinate the population on a certain issue, then implement measures that were anticipated by the propaganda, and repeat this over and over, building on previous propaganda successes.

These last two elements are perhaps the most interesting and least obvious. By establishing itself as a monopoly on the "provision" of certain goods (although we know very well that government in itself produces nothing, and must still be a parasite on private expertise in order to "provide" anything), the state establishes itself in the mass mentality as the only possible provider of that good. No one today can imagine private roads (even though a few exist), private police, private courts, or private defense, even though all of these things have flourished at different times and places, and are already the result of private expertise to begin with.

Fascist control is another powerful propaganda tool, although it does not involve any message per se. Fascist control over property consists of permitting private ownership, but controlling every aspect of it. For example, you may own a house, but government dictates what you will do with it, mainly through zoning laws and construction laws. You own your body, but the government reserves itself the right to tell you what to do about a foetus inside it, what substances you can put in it, what foods it will artificially inflate in price, what you can do with your own organs, or even what you can do with your genes or your cells. So it is a very myopic view of property which changes the conditions of society in favour of the state.

Continue to part 2.

Government schools suck / The Preamble Reconsidered

On the 2+2 forums (Niels' favourite), Michael Owen ("Borodog") makes a great post about why government schools suck:

In my opinion, not a single one of these students has any business being anywhere near a university, except possibly working in the cafeteria. That may sound harsh, but it's the truth. The majority are wasting taxpayer dollars earning fraudulent degrees in voodoo fields like education.
(...)
They are the inevitable products of a system that is not built to educate children, it is built to pay bureaucrats, which it does exceedingly well. Administrators of failing school systems make six figure salaries. Educational spending is inversely corelated with academic achievement: The more you spend, the worse they do.

Jim Davies shows us how to realize that the Preamble of the US Constitution is complete bullshit, at least from a market anarchist perspective.

"... establish Justice..."

Oh, really? Let's leave aside the monstrous caricature of justice that the government monopoly has become, and notice just the theoretical nature of what the Constitution put in place.

They first monopolized it--government (in its several levels) was to administer the whole industry, with no competition allowed. Appeals were to be possible, but the Supreme Court was not to be obliged to hear them. Very few specific powers were either granted or prohibited to the judicial branch by Article 3, leaving the whole system wide open to self-monitored abuse--an opportunity of which it has taken full advantage.

Then they based it upon retribution. Yes, civil cases were contemplated, but the essence of their idea of "justice" was that of crime and punishment, not injury and recompense. This is barbaric and to this day a victim or his survivors can be seen vindictively celebrating if a defendant is found guilty of harming him and sentenced harshly. He walks out of court happy with what he thinks is "closure," but without a penny in compensation. The perp is left to rot behind bars and the taxpayer is forced at gunpoint to foot the bill. Some justice.

The Founders showed no evidence of having thought through what justice truly is, and their claim in this Preamble to have "established" it is therefore so much hokum.

The ruling class and its lackeys

Class rhetoric is traditionally a Marxist tool, but libertarians have to a certain extent reclaimed it as a valid tool of social analysis. I think it is a valid way of seeing society, to a great extent (although not completely), and so use the term often. But what exactly is the "ruling class" ? Who is in it ? What does it do ? These questions deserve reflexion.

Well, one obvious way to define "ruling class" is : the set of people who rule. But how do we know they are the rulers ? One obvious answer is to look at who is using force, such as a soldier. But this category also includes, for example, a serial killer, who is obviously not a ruler. The difference is that the serial killer has no legitimacy, while a soldier does. The category also does not include people like political parties, interest groups and union leaders, who exploit that force in order to achieve their own ends at the expense of the general population.

So it seems that the concept of ruling class is very much tied in with the concept of exploitation. The ruling class is the set of exploiters in a given society.

Our concept of exploitation dictates our relationship to the ruling class. Libertarians see the ruling class as necessary evil at best, parasitic evil at worst. Now, the intuitive model of exploitation tells us that any concentration of power is exploitative. Thus people who subscribe to this model will tend to see government as a justifiable tool to hammer out social inequalities.

Of course they are blind to the fact that government is the greatest concentration of power in any society, because of the illusion of legitimacy provided by the democratic process ("It's not a concentration of power, because we are the government !"). Communism and nazism are merely extensions of this.

The initial impetus for the expansion of the ruling class was the democratic process. While monarchic systems provided incentive to restrict access to the ruling class and the resources of society, democracy opened the floodgates by making access to those resources a public good. As for any other Tragedy of the Commons scenario, the natural consequence of such an act is to endanger these resources. As a consequence, the level of taxation and control over individual freedoms is now higher than it has ever been under monarchies - and it didn't take very long, either.

One consequence of democracy is the dramatic expansion of the ruling class. A monarch is only interested in personal profit and does not need to get elected, and thus has only a modest interest in controlling the laws and means of production. In a democracy, political parties survive and flourish by manipulating the laws and increasingly controlling the means of production in ways that garner them more votes, resources or public opinion.

And one form of control opens the door to three others. For example, banning certain drugs for racial reasons led to the War on Drugs, which itself opened the door to the police state, which can then be used to control other areas of society.

This gives rise to the two other categories of exploiters I discuss in my entry on exploitation, second-hand parasites and free riders. These are the "lackays", in that their existence depends solely on the exercise of fascistic control by the democratic ruling class. If the government did not assert control over corporations and markets, coercive unions, corporate trusts and sybsidies would not exist (or be substantially reduced). If the government did not assert control over certain markets such as narcotics and sexuality, mafias would not exist. And so on and so forth.

What of the notion of class warfare ? Well, our notion of class is political in nature, and not economic. We therefore cannot agree with the Marxists that class warfare takes place between arbitrary levels of income. It is true that people who possess more means of production can become exploiters through the power of the state, and that this is a grave problem. But in general it is not concentration of money which is the problem, since in an anarchic society that money will have been acquired by fulfilling the needs of others in the free market. Rather, it is exploitation that is the problem. Some corporation owners are part of the ruling class because they are exploiters, not because they control more means of production.

The parasitic nature of the ruling class does give us hope for its extinction, in that a majority of people refusing to feed it could starvge it to death. A social parasite cannot survive without production to exploit. This is, therefore, the anarchist dream.

Republican Statism / Space Aliens from Luxembourg

Here is a great site to show to those statist idiots who think the Republicans are more capitalist than the Democrats : "Republican Statism - Or... coercion is okay, as long as we're the ones coercing"

And here is a great article from Stefan Molyneux : "Space Aliens From Luxembourg: A Horror Story".

"We will use a two-phased approach to set you free," gurgles the alien, squinting into the camera with at least a dozen eyes. "First, we will impose economic sanctions, designed to force your leaders to relinquish their ill-gotten power. As part of this process, we will use ray shields to block international trade, ground your airplanes, and irradiate your food and medicine." Two of the alien’s eyes dart down to check some figures. "Based on prior experience, we calculate that this phase will cause the deaths of no more than 5–6 million of your children. Also, about 13% of your newborns will die before reaching the age of 5. But we are willing to make that sacrifice, because we believe it’s worth it. For freedom!"

The space alien frowns and flips some pages. Your mouth hangs open.

A Market Anarchist on: non-violence and peace

The topics of non-violence and peace are intimately associated with market anarchy. One term commonly used by market anarchists is NAP - Non-Aggression Principle - which states :

No one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, nor to delegate its initiation.
L. Neil Smith

This is all well and good, and even most statists agree that violence and force are bad things (only that politicians are somehow immune from this universal moral principle). but there are a lot of pacifist, emotionalist, starry-eyed people muddling an already complicated and touchy issue. So there is a lot of things to untangle here.

The first issue is that of free will. I think that collectivism has instilled the idea that people can be inherently evil (which, except in extremely limited cases, is just not true). An integral part of collectivist belief system is that man is somehow degraded or corrupted. Statists always try to make us believe that people do "bad things" without any good reason. But this is nonsense. People don't do things without reason.

The first premise we have to start with is : only individuals can harbour peaceful or violent intentions, not parties, cities or countries. You can't have peace at a social, national or international level without individual peace. And governments of all stripes exploit the lack of commitment to peace on the individual's part as an avenue to use propaganda and gain support for wars. Simply expressed : if everyone valued peace, then there would be no war. It must be the case, therefore, that most people do not value peace, but rather security, conformity or historical determinism.

The notion of a "just war" that has anything to do with government is an absurdity, and the notion of a "just war" in general is a purely theoretical construct, at least from our experience of history. At best, and I'm not saying this is sufficient justification, war can be justified from a pragmatic standpoint as an extension of an economic struggle.

The second premise is that people always act in their perceived self-interest. If you don't start from that point, then, as I said before, you will find human behaviour inexplicable, and might come to the conclusion that people are inherently evil, which is mostly nonsense. People who participate in, or support, wars are not inherently evil, they are participating in a system which they think they should perpetuate for their own self-interest. The same applies to the Nazi gassers, the American who has a yellow ribbon on his car, Haliburton, and army generals.

While war is its most prominent expression, violence is a much more extensive subject. We are here of course talking about criminality, of the grave kind and the more banal kind. There is also the issue of social warfare, discussed in previous entries, which, while not violent per se, encourages violence by isolating people from the greater society and implanting the belief in religious, class or race conflict.

So the important questions are : how does the democratic incentive system make war and violence in people's perceived self-interest, and whether market anarchy can solve these problems.

Because it is an exclusive tool of the state, war is an easier phenomenon to analyze than crime. It is also easy to figure out its roots in modern society - wars are waged because its instigators (governments) do not have to suffer through them or cover their costs. Rather, they can burden the masses with more taxes, drafts and tremendous propaganda in order to get the flesh and financial resources needed for wars.

Wars are also fought over what is seen as illegitimate government. Here it is the monopolous power of government which is at fault. People do not go to war over how bad Adidas shoes are (for example) : they buy shoes from someone else. We don't have that luxury with force, which is always monopolized by one person or a group of people. If you don't like said monopoly, the only way for you to become a competing agent of force is to go to war.

Market anarchy is therefore supremely able to destroy the motives and means for war. Since those who wage war would have to pay for it and persuade others to fight with them, and other people would see as suspicious any organization who tries to accumulate that much power, any warmonger would have his work cut out for him. And there would be no reason for people to feel trapped in a monopoly of power, since it would no longer exist. People would be free to start their own agencies or courts, and live the way they desire.

Crime is a more complex issue, and I really have no intention of detailing it, if only because I don't have the expertise to do so. However, there are a few things I can say about it :

* The least productive and free a society is, the more incentive there is for crime. This is once again simple self-interest - if honest work provides very little incentive, then crime comes up as an alternative. So a market anarchy, by being more prosperous, reduces these incentives.

* A lot of crime is caused by black markets, which are once again a government invention and probably would not exist in a market anarchy (or at least be drastically reduced).

* A better security market and ending gun control would lower the expectations of criminals. No one commits a crime thinking he'll get caught or shot at.

I realize these are somewhat superficial points, but they represent a large part of criminality. The moral roots of crime also need to be examined. While I don't think it would be that easy, I think that living in a society where peaceful cooperation, instead of social warfare, is the norm would present a moral example to all individuals to follow.

Net Neutrality = Net Socialism, redux

Ever since I posted my entry yesterday about the socialist concept of "Net Neutrality", whereby stupid statists cry for the state to solve a problem that the state itself created (network territorial monopolies), I have noticed many hits from Technocrati. Looking at their dynamic page for entries about "Net Neutrality", I have noticed a total absence of opposition (apart from mine). It's filled with stupid statists who believe that the issue is about free speech - and not the state's control over communication networks. Behold :

http://bridger987.blogspot.com/2006/05/death-of-internet.html
In common sense terms it's about the government withdrawing our right to Internet Freedom, it's about the Death of The Internet.

What is "Internet Freedom" ? Is that different from normal freedom, with a small F ? And how many times have idiots preached the end of the Internet ? How is charging more for Google traffic going to kill the Internet anyway ? Never mind that, I guess...

http://jgrr.blogspot.com/2006/05/brownback-opposes-free-internet.html
Net neutrality removes the need for a heavy hand of regulation, instead allowing the invisible hand of the market to let businesses succeed or fail. Net neutrality is the principle that allowed the internet to be the tremendous influence it is, a power for democracy on the world stage and a powerful way of building links between unexpected corners of society.

Yes, OBVIOUSLY clamoring for more state regulation removes the need for regulation, attacking the free market more than ever allows the market to operate, and this has magical powers of democracy (all the more reason to oppose Net Socialism) and linkage... did I mention that war is peace ? Really, we're fighting for peace !

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/05/22/net-neutrality-something-on-which-we-all-agree/
Net Neutrality: Something on Which We All Agree
If Net Neutrality is gone, the future of the Internet will be dominated by only those large companies that can pay the phone cartel’s broadband fees. This predatory scheme would muscle aside the Internet’s real revolutionaries — the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

Once again with the democracy bullshit. I'd rather take the Internet down than promote the evils of democracy around the globe (okay, maybe not, but it's a hard tradeoff). But as we all know, anyone who disagrees about Net Socialism is at the pay of big eeevil corporations, and these heroes are the ones who support the innovators. Through state regulation. Yes, I can see how... HUH ?

Of course, none of them point to the real problem - the state. Who's surprised ? Even when they are beaten over and over again, people never learn. They just spew more statist propaganda and hope they can look like freedom fighters, when they are against you and your freedom.

Here is a positive article, from the Daily News in Jacksonville, to counterbalance all this bullshit : Eyes on the ’Net.

Instead ["Net Neutrality"] is a legal and political term for the belief that the Internet should be governed as the old monopoly utilities were, with the “pipes” to the Internet viewed as "common carriers," open to all on terms decided by a government regulatory agency. Ultimately, it means government price controls.

Net Socialism / The rich and powerful pissing on us... again

The so-called "Net Neutrality" initiative is nothing less than outright socialism. It should be called Net Socialism. Apparently anyone who is against "Net Neutrality" - which should really be called Net Socialism - is at the pay of a big corporation. Gee, I wish I was at the pay of a big corporation.

It is the government that gave AT&T and those other companies territorial monopolies over the lines, and now they want the government to intervene even more because of that. The dirty statists want the state to "solve" a problem already caused by the state. Business as usual, then...


Talking about irrational expressions, "price gouging" is another one which should be censored or replaced. People call "price gouging" on other people they don't like - nothing more. When "organic farms" (a scam in and of itself) demand higher prices for their products, it's a premium in the name of the Earth. When oil companies raise prices after they lose a big part of their supply, it's "price gouging". And note that when Wal-Mart offers products at lower prices, they are evil agents of consumeurism. Lower or higher, youi can't win when you're an enemy of the ruling class.

Of course, the real winners here, as usual, are the ruling class and the giant oil corporations who gain at the expense of the smaller ones, and the loser is, as usual, the people :

If [anti-"price-gouging" legislation] passes, of course, it’s just going to hurt consumers. The same consumers that will then scream for more government intervention, further screwing the whole thing up. They don’t understand the implications of voting based on their own economic ignorance, and can’t see that politicians are willing to sell them up the river just to increase their own power.

This legislation, in fact, is a boon to the major gasoline chains. They’re the ones that know that if they get investigated, their armies of lawyers will keep them clean. It’s the little guys, like Warren, who would rather hang up their spurs than face the risk. Increased regulation helps big corporations improve market share, and will only end up creating higher prices and harder-to-find gas for consumers. I said before that this problem will only improve when individuals start to see government as the problem, not the solution.

What is legitimacy ?

In recent entries, I have discussed exploitation, the model of exploitation that most people hold, and how this gives undue legitimacy to democratic systems. This of course brings up another question : what is legitimacy ? How is it given and maintained ?

This is a vital question for market anarchists, because we see government as exploitation and coercion, while most people see government as a legitimate and noble set of institutions. How does someone get to equate the organized murder of the military, or the organized theft of taxation, as legitimate ?

I think we need to first look at the concept of authority, because authority is what individuals who hold legitimacy claim to have. In the case of politicians and bureaucrats, this is, of course, a vain and hollow claim, much like how politico-scientific or pseudo-scientific hucksters claim to possess the "real truth".

However, there are cases where authority is warranted. I recognize that Stephen Hawking is an authority on the subject of astrophysics, while I obviously am not. Not only does he possess authority but also legitimacy - he is widely recognized as an eminent scientist. So in this case the two aspects co-exist. Despite the debacle of his first election, George W. Bush is widely recognized as a legitimate ruler. However, he has no objective authority to back up this claim, as he is an evil, barely educated, dope-addicted moron.

Now, belonging to a specific segment does not make one automatically an authority. I'm sure some bureaucrats are very competent in what they do and simply do not realize the cause they are serving. Likewise, some scientists can be most corrupt and servile, as the growing class of politico-scientists demonstrates.

Legitimacy, therefore, is a matter of, fundamentally, public opinion. The only reason why we legitimize a soldier and not a serial killer is one of pure public opinion manipulated by the apparatus of government. Authority, on the other hand, is a matter of fact. I'm sure some soldiers are quite the authorities on how to kill people, but all that means is that you are a very good murderer. It does not legitimize them as justified social agents.

Legitimacy and exploitation are closely linked, or to be more precise exploitation links itself to legitimacy, because it is far easier to exploit when the exploited believe that you are acting for their own good.

Scientists have legitimacy without wanting to exploit people. But this is only because science fills an actual need. The exploitative bastard cousins of science - politico-science and sacred science - are a lot more popular than science, because they gain their legitimacy by borrowing the language of science, but have no qualms with adapting their positions to the changing social context.

The legitimacy of the democratic system rests on three main pillars :

1. The illusion of equality presented by the democratic process - that "everyone has a say" and that power ultimately rests in the hands of "the people".

2. The social engineering that public schools, control of the media, the academia, the arts, imprint on the individual from his early childhood on.

3. All the "services" enforced or controlled by government, which lead people to believe that such services couldn't or wouldn't be provided by private individuals.

The main advantage of legitimacy is that the system is never under attack. No one, except us, questions the premises of government. If government is legitimate, then any problem that happens must be the fault of specific people, not of the system itself and its structure of incentives.

This is like a market anarchist saying that a soldier is fully responsible for all the people he killed. Trivially true, but in terms of understanding the situation you are going nowhere. You need to understand the system of incentives, manipulated by government, that led him to accept and follow the path of organized murder. Likewise, it is futile to try to analyze scandals, corruption, fraud, dishonesty in government without looking at its incentives system.