Die wesentlichste Funktion eines Staates ist der Schutz des Lebens der Bürger. Wie auch immer, Individuen können nicht entscheiden wer sie beschützt. Sie sind dazu gezwungen den Schutz ihrer lokalen Monopolschutzmacht in Anspruch zu nehmen, die ihnen das Geld für Dienste abnimmt die die Individuen wollen oder eben nicht. Wenn sie sich wehren, werden im Gefängnis gebracht oder schlimmeres.

Einer der Wege die Marktanarchisten an dieses Thema herangehen ist es zu fragen; „soll eine Dienstleistung jemals durch Waffengewalt erzwungen werden?“ Wir, natürlich, sind gegen einen solchen Akt der Brutalität aus ethischen Gründen, ebenfalls stellen wir fest, das durch einen solch’ gewalttätigen Eingriff in die Wahlfreiheit des Kunden schlimme Probleme entstehen.

Ein Staat basiert auf einer Herrschaft durch Zustimmung der Beherrschten, erobert durch den falschen anschein der Legitimät.

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: Sascha Bose

The libertarian left has many luminaries, but few as quirky, thoughtful or influential as Wilson and Hess. Wilson brought us our concern for the SNAFU principle. Hess brought us our understanding of the left/right spectrum. And both brought us a shameless embrace of counter-culture and a playful interest in all things counter-economic. The first joint is smoked around minute 2:45, the second around minute 27.  Enjoy, then enjoy again.

Marktanarchismus ist die Lehre die die Funktion der Legislative, Judikative und Exekutive als ungerecht und ineffizient ansieht, monopolisiert durch Zwangsmittel. Der Staat soll in eine voluntaristische Marktgesellschaft umgewandelt werden.

Kurz gefasst: Marktanarchismus befürwortet das Austauschen des Staates mit einer Zivilgesellschaft während er auf die freie Marktwirtschaft hinweist um die Fähigkeit zur Umwandlung oder/und die Attraktivität der Zivilgesellschaft zu erklären.

Wie auch immer, die ideologische Priorität für eine Marktgesellschaft ist nicht so hoch wie die methodische Niotwendigkeit für einen dezentralistischen und politischen Pluralismus. In einer anarchistischen Gesellschaft wird nicht jeder marktorientiert sein, es wird auch solche geben, die Profitstreben insgesamt ablehnen. So lange sich alle respektieren, können wir alle eine friedliche Evolution starten um mit den verschiedenen Modellen der sozialen Organisation zu experimentieren.

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: Sascha Bose

By “us,” I mean the many thousands of people who work as journalists in this country, myself included. This war extends a larger, more subtle war on whistleblowers that the government, and the Obama administration more specifically, has waged for several years.

Last week, the first overt shot: The announcement by Associated Press president and CEO Gary Pruitt that the US Department of Justice had secretly subpoenaed records from 20 AP phone lines, gaining unprecedented access to reporters’ phone numbers, both work-related and personal.

The probe stems from an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Matt Apuzzo describing, in fairly innocuous terms, how US and British intelligence allegedly thwarted a terrorist attack on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing.

This week, that same DOJ announced that it had gained access to the email of another journalist, Fox News reporter James Rosen. This time, DOJ apparently went to a judge and claimed that Rosen was taking part in a “conspiracy to release classified information” in order to obtain a search warrant.

Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian writes:

New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ’s attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests – something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US.

The ramifications of effectively accusing journalists of federal crimes just for doing their jobs – something rarely done to cops or soldiers, even when they commit the most vile acts while “on the job” – are widespread and horrifying. We know that this has been an issue since at least 2005. Why is the media only now starting to talk about it seriously?

Because of the “view from nowhere.”

The view from nowhere allows mainstream journalists two privileges: It removes them from the story (which can be beneficial until they are the story themselves), and it sets up the premise that there are two equally valid perspectives on any given issue (rather than one, or many, perspectives of varying credibility).

Reporters aren’t supposed to be people when they’re reporting; rather, they exist as living, breathing receptacles and dispensers of information. This precludes any emotional attachment to a story. Again, this can be a good thing – especially in disaster areas where a massive physical and emotional toll has been exacted on a community – but it can make reporters blind to issues that directly effect them. Until earlier in May, this applied to the war on whistleblowers.

We’re also supposed to adhere to the laughable idea that fairness and objectivity in our reporting automatically means that there are two – and only two – equal and opposing sides to any given story. Not only is this not true most of  the time, it came back to bite reporters in the face regarding both the DOJ AP investigation and the announcement that Rosen had essentially been accused of a crime.

Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog, put out messaging days after the DOJ AP story broke that, while not explicitly siding with the government, tried to put “equal” skepticism on the legality of the AP’s actions. In the Rosen case, critics on Twitter tried to argue that since Fox News wasn’t a “legitimate” journalistic institution and that Rosen allegedly acted with some impropriety, the reporter in question forfeited journalistic protections, and therefore the government was justified in falsely accusing him of conspiracy.

As Tommy Christopher wrote about the Rosen case for Mediaite, another progressive news-watcher, “Mr. Kim didn’t approach James Rosen, wracked by conscience over some government malfeasance, and Rosen didn’t approach Kim with a noble desire to gather the truth.”

Christopher continues:

“That James Rosen was never charged seems to indicate that the evidence didn’t support the charge, but it is as silly to contend that the government had no right to ask as it is to conclude that James Rosen had no right to ask his source for information. The details matter, and they are being lost in the press’ knee-jerk revulsion at the general idea of investigating reporters and their sources.”

Although Christopher also acknowledges the First Amendment doesn’t make an exception for ignobility, the point is clear: If one’s status as a journalist can be questioned in the name of “seeing both sides,” so can their rights. Why is this okay?

In both the AP and Rosen stories, the State used force to invade journalists’ privacy in the name of plugging leaks. This is unacceptable. If we are to advocate for a truly free society, there should be no concession on this issue: the State must not be allowed to do this.

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, anarchist lawyer and activist Gerald “Jerry” Koch was taken into custody in New York City for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is the second time Koch has been subpoenaed, after the government informed his lawyers that it was believed that he was at a bar in 2008 or 2009 where a patron indicated knowledge of who had committed the bombing.

Koch is the latest victim in the Red and Black scare, a FBI campaign which began in earnest shortly after the Occupy Oakland demonstrations in 2011, where activists are being targeted for their political views and not on the basis of suspected criminal activity.

Another recent and prominent victim is libertarian Adam Kokesh, who is being held for resisting arrest during an anti-drug war demonstration. Kokesh may have been targeted due to publicity surrounding his upcoming “Open Carry March” on Washington, an action that remains controversial even among gun rights activists. One salient question is, in light of the successful 3D printing of a firearm (a movement initiated by Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed), whether this flamboyant open rebellion against state encroachment is even necessary.

Witch Hunt

Instead of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee of the “Cold” War, the Obama administration’s weapon of choice in the war on dissent is the eternally authoritarian grand jury.

This fresh abuse of power comes on the heels of numerous grand jury subpoenas of anarchists on spurious charges in the Pacific Northwest. Young anarchist were targeted in a series of FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of 2012 during an investigation into “acts of vandalism” that took place during the Seattle May Day protests just two months prior.

The search warrants issued required victims to provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature,” including flags, cell phones, hard drives, address books and black clothing.

Despite not being present or involved in the May Day march, Maddie Pfeiffer, Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik and Matt Duran were each imprisoned for almost six months for contempt of court after refusing to speak before the grand jury. They were mainly asked whether or not they knew other anarchists in their community and what their politics were.

Manufacturing Political Prisoners

Grand juries are when the state ostensibly believes you have knowledge of a crime and subpoenas you before a court — or else you face prison time. That’s right. If you don’t talk, have fun in prison. No evidence of wrongdoing required. Your freedom is revoked simply by failing to provide information to or submit your body before the cold legal machinations of a witch-hunt state.

Furthermore, you can’t have a lawyer in the room with you when before a federal grand jury, and the proceedings are not open to the public. Finally, there is no judge present in the courtroom. There are instead 16 to 23 citizen jurors and the whole affair is coordinated by the prosecutor, the Assistant US Attorney (AUSA).

As you might imagine, grand juries tend to indict successfully (estimates around 98% of the time). This led Judge Saul Wachler to state that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”

While the United States has been fond of grand juries, most other “nations” have long ago done away with this barbaric display of state power. The first such courtroom to be called a grand jury began with an 1166 act of Henry II of England, in an attempt to increase the power of the royal court over the local feudal courts. England abolished the grand jury in the Criminal Justice Act of 1948.

Back in the land of the free, the grand jury lays the groundwork for litigation by the attorney general (now district attorney) — prosecution by the state instead of by an aggrieved private party. This is how victimless crimes are punished, most notably the war on drugs (or tax evasion). The Black Panthers, anarchists, communists, environmental and animal rights activists have all been subjected to grand juries.

Take Action 

Koch, who has a record of defending Occupiers and activists, faces 18 months behind bars. An excerpt from a personal statement:

Over the past few decades, the FBI has demonstrated a consistent pattern of harassment and illegal surveillance of anarchists and other radicals not only here in New York, but also across the country.

Throughout this time, federal grand juries (incredibly secretive proceedings that do not permit one’s lawyers to be present) have played a significant role; a federal grand jury is authorized to ask questions about anything and anyone, and often the declared intention is simply a mask to disguise the actual goal of acquiring information for use in other politically motivated cases.

It is my belief that these two federal grand juries—despite the pretense of investigation into the 2008 bombing—are actually being used to gain information about my friends, loved ones, and activists for whom I have done legal support. By declining to testify, I refuse to be coerced into participating in a political witch-hunt that eerily recalls those of the McCarthy era Red Scare.

Please donate to his legal fund. Find out more on the beautifully designed webpage jerryresists.net.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemöller

But this campaign is illustrative for another reason. Facebook is under fire not just for permitting misogynistic speech that condones violence, but for banning speech far more innocuous. As Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman and Lauren Bates explain in their open letter to the company:

These [misogynistic] pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies. In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content — prohibited by your own guidelines — remains. It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse. Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

This is truly a vile double standard. It treats women’s bodies as more offensive than violence against women. It treats rape and domestic violence as less objectionable than women breastfeeding.

What we should keep in mind, however, is that this double standard did not start with Facebook. The same double standard has been promoted for more than a century as part of US law. One of the few exceptions to the First Amendment that the US government recognizes is an exception for “obscenity.” The US government claims the power to prosecute and incarcerate people for speech and expression it deems legally “obscene.”  Historically this has meant targeting sexual expression.

In 1873, Anthony Comstock convinced Congress to pass the Comstock Law, banning “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” content from the mails. Moses Harman, publisher of anarchist feminist journal Lucifer the Lightbearer, was jailed multiple times under Comstock’s reign, because his periodical featured “obscene” advocacy of birth control and free love. Margaret Sanger was similarly charged with obscenity for distributing information about contraception. The Comstock Law was used to punish practically anyone who sent information about contraception or criticism of marital rape through the post.

Obscenity law has changed a lot since the days of the Comstock. In 1973, in Miller v. California, the Supreme Court affirmed that “Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment” but narrowed the definition of obscenity, defining speech as obscene based on the following criteria:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

“Prurient interest” refers to sexual arousal. So the US government claims the power to use force and violence to censor speech based on it being sexually arousing, “offensive,” and lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”  This provides justification for the US government to censor completely non-violent pictures of naked bodies. As John Stoltenberg writes, “obscenity laws are constructed on the presumption that it is women’s bodies that are dirty, that women’s bodies are the filth.”

Based on the Miller test, US courts have also ruled that government censorship of sexist material is unconstitutional. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon’s Civil Rights Antipornography Ordinance was ruled unconstitutional in part because “The Indianapolis ordinance does not refer to the prurient interest, to offensiveness, or to the standards of the community.” Instead, the statute referenced objectification of women, degradation of women, and portrayal of violence against women.

The American legal system believes that the state has more legitimate interest in stopping people from being sexually aroused than in countering sexism or violence. Don’t you think those are bizarre priorities?

As a matter of principle, the state should have no power to censor. Furthermore, the state’s backwards priorities present a good argument for its abolition. In addition to abolishing the state, we should seek to stop its toxic and bigoted standards from defining the privately run social media spaces we use.

FREIER MARKT: Der Zustand der Gesellschaft in dem alle ökonomischen Handlungen (Geschäfte) auf Freiwilligkeit basieren, nicht auf Zwang.

DER STAAT: Die Institution die den freien Markt behindert durch die direkte Anwendung von Zwang oder die Gewährung von Privilegien (unterstützt durch Zwang).

STEUER: Die Form des Zwangs bzw. Behinderung des freien Marktes durch den der Staat Abgaben kassiert (die Steuer), die die Anheuerung von bewaffneten Truppen ermöglichen welche den Zwang ausüben und Privilegien verteidigen, auch die Beteiligung an Kriegen, riskanten Unternehmen, Experimenten, Reformen, etc. wie es ihm beliebt, nicht auf eigene Kosten, sondern auf die Kosten seiner Propanden.

PRIVILEG: Von Latein: privi – privat und lege – recht. Eine Bevorteiligung, die durch den Staat garantiert wird und von seinen Kräften mit Zwang geschützt wird. Ein privates Vorteilsrecht.

ZINSWUCHER: Die Form von Privileg bzw. Einmischung in den freien Markt bei dem staatlich- unterstützte Gruppen das Geldsystem monopolisieren und dadurch Abgaben (Zinsen) einnehmen, direkt oder indirekt, von allen bzw. den meisten ökonomischen Transaktionen.

GROẞGRUNDBESITZ: Die Form von Privileg bzw. Einmischung in den freien Markt bei dem eine staatlich unterstütze Gruppe Land „besitzt“ und dadurch Abgaben (Pacht) von denen einnimmt die dort leben, arbeiten oder produzieren.

ZOLL: Die Form von Privileg bzw. Einmischung in den freien Markt bei Waren die ausserhalb des Staates produziert wurden nicht in gleicher Weise mit den Waren konkurrieren die im Staat produziert wurden.

KAPITALISMUS: Die Gesellschaftsordnung bei der Elemente der Steuer, des Zinswucher, des Großgrundbesitzes und des Zolls eingebettet sind, welche den freien Markt verweigert während sie so tut als würde sie ein Beispiel für diesen sein.

KONSERVATIVISMUS: Die Schule der kapitalistischen Philosophie die behauptet loyal zum freien Markt zu stehen, während sie eigentlich Zinswucher, Großgrundbesitz, Zoll und manchmal Besteuerung unterstützt.

LIBERALISMUS: Die Schule der kapitalistischen Philosophie welche versucht die Ungerechtigkeit des Kapitalismus durch neue Gesetze zu beseitigen. Jederzeit wenn Konservative ein Gesetz erlassen das ein Privileg erschafft, erlassen Liberale ein anderes Gesetz um das Privileg zu modifizieren, dies veranlasst Konservative mehr raffinierte Gesetze zu verabschieden die das Privileg wiederherstellen, usw. solange bis „alles was nicht verboten ist Zwang ist“ und „alles was nicht Zwang ist verboten ist“.

SOZIALISMUS: Die versuchte Abschaffung aller Privilegien durch die Wiederherstellung der vollständigen Zwangsgewalt hinter allen Privilegien, dem Staat, wodurch die kapitalistische Oligarchie in einen staatlichen Monopolismus umgewandelt wird. Eine Wand kalken, indem man sie schwarz streicht.

ANARCHISMUS: Die Ordnung der Gesellschaft in der der freie Markt ungehindert agiert, ohne Steuern, Zinswucher, Großgrundbesitz, Zoll und anderen Formen von Zwang oder Privilegien. „Rechte“ Anarchisten prophezeien das die Menschen in einem freien Markt freiwillig mehr miteinander konkurrieren statt kooperieren würden, „Linke“ Anarchisten prophezeien das es mehr Kooperation als Konkurrenz geben wird.

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy (New York: Dell, 1975) pp. 622-23

Die ursprüngliche Version dieses Artikels wurde von Robert Shea und Robert Anton Wilson veröffentlicht.

Übersetzung aus dem Englischen: Sascha Bose

Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West and “is set to become the world’s largest apparel exporter over the next few years,” the Economist reports. Wages are lower there than most places, including China, and a large percentage of the 4 million garment workers are women.

Are dangerous factories the price of progress? A passionate debate now rages over whether international safety standards should be enforced against manufacturers in the developing world and their Western retailers. Proponents of standards argue that the costs would be small and the benefits great. An Accord on Fire and Building Safety has been signed by major retailers in Europe and a few in North America, but the Huffington Post says that 14 other North American retailers have refused to endorse it.  “Some retailers, like Walmart, claim they are working on separate initiatives to improve conditions and workplace safety in Bangladesh,” the online publication states, but this claim has been met with skepticism.

Opponents of government regulation argue that artificially raising the costs of manufacturing in poor countries would harm intended beneficiaries by destroying jobs. If so, workers would face worse options, including life on the streets and prostitution.

Unfortunately, the debate is unnecessarily narrow. What needs discussing — and radical changing — is the country’s political-economic system, which benefits elites while keeping the mass of people down. The economists are correct that under the status quo, imposing safety standards would raise costs, cause unemployment, and aggravate poverty. But we can’t leave the matter there. We must go on to examine how the political-economic system constricts people’s employment opportunities, including self-employment, and otherwise stifles their efforts to improve their lives. Thus, a debate over whether garment factories should be subject to safety regulations, while the status quo goes largely undisturbed, misses the point.

According to a report (PDF) written for the Netherlands ministry of foreign affairs, most Bangladeshis, unsurprisingly, are victimized by a land system that has long benefited the rural and urban elites. “Land-grabbing of both rural and urban land by domestic actors is a problem in Bangladesh,” the report states.

Wealthy and influential people have encroached on public lands…, often with help of officials in land-administration and management departments. Among other examples, hundreds of housing companies in urban areas have started to demarcate their project area using pillars and signboard before receiving titles. They use local musclemen with guns and occupy local administrations, including the police. Most of the time, land owners feel obliged to sell their productive resources to the companies at a price inferior to market value. Civil servants within the government support these companies and receive some plot of land in exchange.

Women suffer most because of the patriarchy supported by the political system. “Women in Bangladesh rarely have equal property rights and rarely hold title to land,” the report notes. “Social and customary practices effectively exclude women from direct access to land.”

As a result,

Many of the rural poor in Bangladesh are landless, have only small plots of land, are depending on tenancy, or sharecropping. Moreover, tenure insecurity is high due to outdated and unfair laws and policies…. These growing rural inequalities and instability also generate migration to towns, increasing the rates of urban poverty.

Much as in Britain after the Enclosures, urban migration swells the ranks of workers, allowing employers to take advantage of them. Since Bangladesh does not have a free-market economy, starting a business is mired in regulatory red tape — and worse, such as “intellectual property” law – that benefit the elite while stifling the chance for poor individuals to find alternatives to factory work. (The owner of the Savar factory, Mohammed Sohel Rana, got rich in a system where, the Guardian writes, “politics and business are closely connected, corruption is rife, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.”) Moreover, until the factory collapse, garment workers could not organize without employer permission.

Crony capitalism deprives Bangladeshis of property rights, freedom of exchange, and therefore work options. The people need neither the corporatist status quo nor Western condescension. They need radical land reform and freed markets.

De todos os comentários pretensamente libertários que tentam colocar a tragédia das confecções de peças de vestuário de Bangladesh em “perspectiva,” o de Benjamin Powell é provavelmente o pior (“Sweatshops Em Bangladesh Melhoram A Vida De Seus Trabalhadores, E Estimulam Crescimento,” Forbes, 2 de maio). Em Bangladesh, escreve Powell,

“cerca de 4.500 confecções empregam aproximadamente 4 milhões de trabalhadores. Levando-se em consideração todos os aspectos, eles ficam em melhor situação com as confecções do que ficariam sem elas; os benefícios superam os riscos. Na verdade, em comparação com outras oportunidades em Bangladesh, a indústria de peças de vestuário paga razoavelmente bem.”

Se empresas dos Estados Unidos como a Nike reduzissem sua presença em Bangladesh e abandonassem confecções lá por temor de má publicidade, “centenas de milhares de trabalhadores em peças de vestuário poderiam perder seus empregos e ser lançados em alternativas piores.”

Bem, é mesmo — sob certo aspecto. Quando um assaltante diz “seu dinheiro ou sua vida,” fico em melhor situação entregando o dinheiro e permanecendo vivo — mas foi o sujeito com a arma de fogo que estabeleceu artificialmente o leque de alternativas. A pergunta que você se deveria fazer, e que pessoas como Powell e o pessoal de nível de chefia da Nike não querem que você faça, é: quem decide quais outras alternativas estão disponíveis em Bangladesh?

Não se passa que algum fato da natureza, sem face, inevitável, seja forçado sobre as sweatshops — ou sobre a Nike — por algum mercado anônimo. Graças à marca registrada e à lei de patentes internacionais, a Nike e umas poucas outras empresas são as únicas opções disponíveis quando se trata de empregar pessoas para fazer sapatos. Elas podem aceitar o preço da Nike ou rejeitá-lo. Há porém muitas sweatshops competindo umas com as outras, e a Nike pode facilmente fazer negócio com outras delas. O poder oligopsônico de preços da Nike significa que a empresa pode estabelecer o preço que paga a uma sweatshop por um par de tênis tão baixo quanto desejar. E a mesma “propriedade intelectual” dá a ela poder de preço de oligopólio nos Estados Unidos para vender os tênis com preço de varejo milhares de por cento acima do custo real de produção. A margem entre o que ela paga às sweatshops pelos sapatos e o quanto ela extorque dos consumidores ocidentais não é estabelecida pelo “mercado.” É estabelecida pela Nike. Ela pode estabelecer essa margem tão alto ou tão baixo quanto desejar.

E a expressão decisiva aqui é “tão alto.” A Nike preferirá maximizar a margem que ganha em seus tênis, mesmo à custa de pessoas que residem em habitações locupletadas e trabalham centenas de horas por semana por poucos dólares por dia — e por vezes têm morte lenta e horrível às centenas nos escombros de suas confecções.

A chamada “propriedade intelectual” não é propriedade legítima, e sim monopólio imposto pelo estado, exatamente tão protecionista quanto as tarifas industriais de há um século. Do mesmo modo que a tarifa, a “propriedade intelectual” cria escassez artificial em bens que não são escassos por natureza, permitindo que corporações privilegiadas extraiam rentismo dessa escassez. As corporações globais do século 21 são tão dependentes da “propriedade intelectual” para seus lucros quanto as antigas corporações industriais nacionais do início do século 20 o eram das tarifas. As tarifas pararam de ser úteis à grande empresa, e a “propriedade intelectual” tornou-se útil, porque as corporações se tornaram globais. Pelo fato de o “comércio internacional” em realidade consistir em sua maior parte de transferência interna de bens entre subsidiárias locais de corporações globais, as tarifas não mais servem aos interesses das corporações gigantes. Do mesmo modo que a tarifa, a “propriedade intelectual” é uma restrição governamental acerca de quem tem licença para vender dado tipo de bem em dado mercado, permitindo ao beneficiário cobrar o que quer que os consumidores possam pagar. Diferentemente da tarifa, contudo, que era uma forma de protecionismo que regulava a transferência de bens através de fronteiras nacionais, a “propriedade intelectual” regula a transferência de bens através de fronteiras corporativas.

Diferentemente das corporações industriais de há cem anos, empresas como a Nike na verdade não fazem coisas. Elas usam direitos artificiais de propriedade tais como a “propriedade intelectual” para controlar as condições sob as quais outras pessoas podem fazer coisas, e para criar postos de pedágio entre as pessoas que fazem as coisas e as pessoas que consomem as coisas. O dinheiro realmente, realmente grande não está na capacidade de produzir, e sim na capacidade de coletar tributo para permitir que a produção aconteça.

Sem a “propriedade intelectual,” aquelas confecções em Bangladesh poderiam ignorar a marca registrada Nike e comerciar calçados idênticos com a população local por minúscula fração do preço. E sem a Nike para impor preços uniformes em toda a indústria, elas teriam de competir por trabalhadores locais. Não haveria problema nenhum se a Nike resolvesse “diminuir sua presença” e sair de Bangladesh. O meio de vida dos trabalhadores não mais seria mantido refém do que a Nike fizesse ou deixasse de fazer.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 20 de maio de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Pssssh. That America has ever had government for common good is one of those officially-sanctioned lies they tell you in the public schools’ American history classes. In fact, though, the U.S. government since its beginning has been — like all other states — the executive committee of the ruling class.

It’s probably no coincidence that the nonsensical phrase “general Welfare” appears in the US Constitution’s Preamble right after the equally nonsensical “common Defence.” The idea that American military policy serves some common “national interest,” as opposed to the corporate entities in whose interests wars are actually fought, is pure buncombe. And so is the idea that the American state’s economic policies are aimed at some sort of general welfare.

The examples of so-called “government for common good” that “Progressives” put forth, like the New Deal, are no exception. Whatever benefit accrued to the working class from the New Deal was purely a side effect of promoting the economic interests of the segment of organized capital represented by the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, admittedly, generally oversee a lower overall rate of exploitation by capital under their watch. Part of the reason is that the wing of organized capital behind the Democrats is just a little bit smarter than its Republican counterparts.

The Republican business coalition just wants to strip-mine the U.S. population. They figure if they exploit us for maximum short-term gains and we all die at age forty from dioxin poisoning and black lung disease, all they have to do is make abortion and birth control hard enough to get and they can breed another supply of slave labor in no time.

The Democrats, on the other hand, tend to limit exploitation to the maximum sustainable level, like a farmer who feeds his livestock well and works them only in moderation. But that’s not “promoting the common good.” That’s simply effing us over at a sustainable rate.

The Democrats and Republicans agree on probably ninety percent of the structural monopolies and privileges by which the propertied classes extract rents from the producing majority of the population. The Democrats give just enough of the rents back to the most poverty-stricken segment of the population to prevent the factories from clogging up with unsold inventory or outright homelessness and starvation from leading to political destabilization that might cause them to lose the whole ball of wax. But that amount is just a tiny fraction of the total rents extracted by the classes that own this country.

Of course such nonsense from vanden Heuvel shouldn’t come as a surprise. Remember in the weeks after 9-11, when she gushed about the return of public faith in the government? Thirty years before, in the early ’70s, Samuel Huntington lamented in almost identical language the loss of public trust in government and other forms of authority as a result of Vietnam, Watergate and the student protest movement. It was only public trust in government after WWII, Huntington said, that enabled a tiny clique of corporation lawyers, investment bankers and generals to govern the world without interference from the ignorant public. And the restored faith in government that so tickled vanden Heuvel’s fancy had exactly the same effect. The burst of public trust and support for the government after 9-11 resulted, in effect, in giving the Permanent Warfare and National Security States a blank check to invade, bomb, torture and wiretap anyone anywhere in the world who stood in the way of global corporate power. And it’s a check Obama is still cashing to this day.

I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if an earlier incarnation of vanden Heuvel had supported Hitler for “restoring faith in government,” so long as the death camp guards were unionized.