-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.5/pageone.html
<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.5/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times
- Volume 3 Issue 5</A>
The Laissez Faire City Times
February 1, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 5
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
-----
Howard Olson: A Global Chance for Anti-Statism
an interview by Alberto Mingardi
It is not common to find people working with the express goal of
organizing a world-wide educational and activist network for libertarian
ideals. But the International Libertarian Nework (ILN) (see
http://maxpages.com/libertarian) is doing just that. It is "in the
process of choosing continental and national coordinators" and looks
"forward to hearing from prospective members."
There is no charge for membership in ILN: ILN’s only purpose is to
maintain a global presence for libertarianism through nonviolent
activism and education.
What kind of thinking gave birth to ILN? The Laissez Faire City Times
interviewed biologist Howard Olson, the mind behind it all, to ask this
and similar questions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor Olson, yours is an uncommon story: from anarchosyndicalism
[roughly: worker-syndicates own the means of production] to
anarchocapitalism. How did this come about?
My path from anarchosyndicalism involves a variety of individualist
anarchism that is common in America, based on people like Albert Jay
Nock. I was (and am) essentially accepting and tolerant of the Free
Market because such acceptance is the only way to prevent the fascist
right and the authoritarian left from usurping power, especially in the
USA.
I began voting for Libertarian Party candidates even as a syndicalist,
because I KNEW that only a party like the LP had the revolutionary
potential to irreversibly undo statism and not become an entrenched
bureaucracy itself. My original background was working class but my
father was involved in the High Tech area working for a NASA and Defense
contractor. My father attempted to start a union at this company and I
learned early on about the hosility between government and the people. I
floundered for a few years through college as a radical with lots of
friends in the LP, and even convinced a lot of conservatives and some
liberals to join the LP. I even read Ayn Rand and appreciated her back
then.
I then became involved in the anti-war movement AFTER the horrors of the
Vietnam War. In graduate school I came closer and closer to the
anarchosyndicalist position and I eventually joined the Wobblies (IWW).
For many reasons I became a supporter of the Solidarity movement in
Poland while here in the US, and felt this to be consistent with my
anarchosyndicalist values.
To understand the rest of my political odyssey you must understand that
my education in biological sciences and biochemistry has made me a
supporter of advances in biomedical technology. I feel vindicated in
this position by the crises in medicine brought about by AIDS. Without
these developments our species would be doomed to extinction. Given the
statist antipathy toward biotechnology which filtered down even to the
anti-authoritarian left, I began to question my associations with those
who offered only uncritical acceptance of the statist rheoric against
biotechnology. As a result I have drifted toward the Libertarian
movement as the only movement consistent with freedom-oriented solutions
to our ever increasing biomedical difficulties in this world.
Having faced this issue, I saw that other threats to freedom could only
be fought with reasoned scientific analysis that is present ONLY in the
Libertarian Party in my country. As an anarchist I experienced doubt
over participating in any Party, but I now feel that the LP
de-legitimizes the State far more than it legitimizes it by any
participation in the system. Lastly, I find that the threat of statism
to free speech can only be fought by the reasoned and principled
approach that the LP has taken.
You are the founder of the International Libertarian Network, that has
contacts in European countries like France, Italy and Padania. What are
your hopes for this movement?
My hope is that the International Libertarian Network (ILN) can become a
nucleus for a widespread global movement against statism--reaching out
even to my fellow anarchists. By setting up coordinators in a variety of
areas and at least one on every inhabited continent, we can hope to
guarantee the spread of libertarian ideals in a rigorous and
cross-cultural framework that will enrich the LP here in the US as well.
I think the direct Internet connection of rank and file libertarians
talking to each other, and to anarchists, will totally disrupt what I
call the Right-Left Con Game.
As an ex-anarchosyndicalist, how do you see and judge Ayn Rand's
rejection of altruism?
I think Ayn Rand's rejection of altruism is very important, because it
removes both the possibility of right-wing and left-wing authoritarians
from using assertions about "the good of the species" to justify statist
controls. Rand's rejection of altruism is really only a rejection of
self-sacrifice--not a rejection of mutualistic helping behavior. She, in
effect, advocates what we biologists call "reciprocal altruism."
Popper wrote that "our egoism gives birth to our altruism" . . .
If I understand your question and reference to Popper, I agree that
altruism does arise out of individual needs. Modern evolutionary biology
argues strongly that the individual is the focus of natural selection,
as did Darwin himself. This focus on individual selection was
threatening to statist ideologues of both the authoritarian left and
right. The result was the fallacy of "group selection". The latter was
used to distract biologists and social scientists away from the Truth
that those who demand sacrifices for the "good of the species or
society" are usually demanding sacrifices to rulers and ruling classes.
Ayn Rand, biology, mutualism-- what is your code of morality?
My code of morality is essentially mutualist. That is: mutual exchange
to mutual advantage. But I do not define value merely in economic terms.
I advocate an ecological approach to value analysis that transcends the
ethnocentric limits of monetary systems. This allows me to evaluate the
social systems of stateless pre-industrial societies devoid of
state-capitalist, western-nationalist or Marxist preconceptions. Thus my
everyday morality as an individualist anarchist might seem horribly
altruistic to a literal-minded Objectivist.
But my values as a relatively underpaid science educator, for example,
are such that I can accept a lower income for an opportunity to help
undo the work of statist and fascist ideologues in American education. I
consider this truly selfish in an evolutionary and quasi-Randian sense.
You are a biologist. A big man of Classical Liberalism, Friedrich August
Von Hayek, was really interested in biology before chosing economics for
his own life’s work. Has Hayek had any influence on your thought?
Hayek was a particularly good influence on libertarian biologists like
myself. He was as critical of dogmatic Reductionism as Ayn Rand was. In
a chapter of a book edited by Arthur Koestler and J.R. Smythies titled
Beyond Reductionism, he argued cogently against biological determinism.
He thus helped to correct the dogmatic social-Darwinist ideology
advocated by the American Right in the 19th Century. Spontaneous order
is a broad concept that avoids ethnocentric assumptions about economic
relations in non-Western societies, and makes it possible for
individualist anarchists to frame voluntarism in the broadly human
framework rather than the Western imperialist framework of
State-Capitalism.
An other great of Classical Liberal Thought who looked at biology was
Herbert Spencer ...
Herbert Spencer was, of course, a great advocate of Laissez Faire.
However, philosophically, from an individualist standpoint, he made a
major error in supporting an implicit concept of group selection in that
he ultimately justified Capitalism in terms of alleged species-benefits
rather than individual benefits. This led him to oppose even private
charity on the grounds that it would allegedly help the poor, whom he
very erroneously classified as "unfit". He believed that helping the
poor even with voluntary charity would hurt the human race by diluting
"good" traits. Biologists now know that his narrow definition of fitness
was circular and unscientific. As a result libertarian biologists have
an uphill battle in convincing people of the fallacies of racism because
of his interpretation of evolution in terms of species-benefits or group
selection rather than individuals as the basic units of selection.
Darwin himself objected to both Spencer’s and Marx’s attempting to use
evolutionary biology to support their political ideologies. He was
scientifically correct in objecting to this. Darwin’s theory
necessitated use of the individual as the unit of natural selection and
this was incompatible with BOTH Marx AND Spencer's species-benefit
reasoning. A lot more could be said about this, but that is my view.
As a biologist, how do you view the government’s involvement in medical
research?
As to the effect of government on biomedical research, I can only say
that the effect is chilling both at the economic level and at the level
of limits to scientific progress. Economist George Stigler dealt
effectively with the economic effects of regulation in medicine many
years ago. But the effects of government regulations are dwarfed by the
dastardly limited perspective that government brings to the research
funding process. The emphasis of government policy in research funding
is all too often focused far too much on military or other authoritarian
applications such as "mental health". The latter reduces to an attempt
to enforce conformity of thought and educational policy to keep it
within the limits of statist ideology. Government funding is also highly
politicized in a dangerously conventional sense that we see in all
statist societies. The result is a stagnation and self-serving rhetoric
to explain away our lack of progress in dealing with developments like
treatment for AIDS.
Fortunately, the unyielding activism of anti-authoritarian patient
groups like ACT-UP has embarrassed the US government into allowing a
modicum of availability of substances like DHEA with some merit for
those with HIV infection. This effect seems to be snowballing and some
aspects of deregulation are even spreading to the pseudo-scientific "War
on drugs".
Most importantly, rank and file scientists throughout the country and
the world have vocally criticized statist attempts to stifle
biotechnology. This is encouraging to me because biotechnology is our
only hope in the race against viral evolution, which otherwise would
threaten human extinction.
You have many web pages, as do a lot of libertarians. What will the role
of the Internet in promoting our ideas?
As to the role of the Internet, I feel that anarchists and libertarians
are just beginning to use it effectively despite our pre-eminence here
on the Web. The goal for me is to reach out to anti-statist radicals of
all persuasions, so as to at least begin thinking of a theoretical
synthesis for anarchism. By approaching anarchists of other tendencies--
such as syndicalism and anarcho-feminism--I hope to begin a dialog
devoid of the harsh tirades so typical in newsgroups. I just started two
web sites with this in mind at:
http://maxpages.com/chameleon
and
http://maxpages.com/anarchism
Reaching out like this is risky, but we have no other choice if we are
to achieve a truly free and peaceful global stateless society,
What do you mean when you refer to a "theoretical synthesis" of
anarchism?
By a theoretical synthesis for anarchism, I mean an explicit recognition
that the abolition of statism in ANY form has to be the goal of
anarchists. That means we can allow NO ruling class, bourgeois,
proletarian or otherwise to claim hegemony. Anarchists in all tendencies
must seek a global stateless society that will remain a totally
pluralist society with no monopoly of force for any ideological system
or tendency within anarchism. This is a tall order because all
tendencies within anarchism are subject to outside influences from
reactionary authoritarian statist ideologies, These influences must be
repudiated, and they must be repudiated nonviolently, if we are to
remain truly libertarian. Only an "agreement to disagree" can allow the
anarchist movement to comprehensively vanquish the forces of statism.
Otherwise we will descend into the factionalism that has clearly
destroyed the authoritarian left. The anarchist synthesis may ultimately
resemble biological mutualism. Mutualist anarchism may be the most appr
opriate fusion of human social and individualist tendencies that can be
created in mass human society on a global scale. To accomplish this,
anarchists and libertarians from the natural and social sciences must
work together help identify social conditions that simulate the
mutualistic behavior of early humans as nearly as we can reconstruct
them.
And all of this has to be done objectively, without Western cultural
bias, I believe that the scientific method in sciences like
anthropology, with its cross-cultural methods that acknowledge the
biological and cultural aspects will thus be the key to this anarchist
synthesis.
Finally, Howard, how could libertarians help the work and the growth of
ILN?
I believe that libertarians can best help the International Libertarian
Network by spreading the word about us on and off the Internet all over
the world so we can assemble a network of libertarians that can survive
any attempt to suppress the ideals of human freedom which are so
beautifully articulated in libertarian theory and practice. I am
re-joining the Libertarian Party as a card-carrying member after a long
hiatus as a "pure" anarchist. I urge other anarchists and nonvoting
libertarians to do the same so that we can maximize the thrust of our
movement whether it succeeds at the present time or not. Libertarians
and anarchists must always maintain at least a diffuse presence if
humanity is to survive the evils of state terrorism. ILN is not an end
in itself. It can only be at best a catalyst to ignite the hearts of
decent people everywhere against the juggernaut.
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 5, Feb. 1, 1999
-----
Published by
Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer
The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is
published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of
Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its
founding trust. Just as the New York Times is unaffiliated with the city
of New York, the City Times is only one of what may be several news
publications located in, or domiciled at, Laissez Faire City proper. For
information about LFC, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
