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This article isn't about a leftist view of cyberlibertarianism, but about a liberal view of cyberlibertarianism. I doubt that many leftists see the capitalist

by tedks 13y ago

This article isn't about a leftist view of cyberlibertarianism, but about a liberal view of cyberlibertarianism. I doubt that many leftists see the capitalist Western states as "the realization of democracy".

dmix 13y ago
Indeed, cyberlibertarians are all about decentralized power structures. The internet is actually anti-democratic in a sense, as it gives individuals direct power, not just by proxy of representative politicians or collective voting (as in a "leftist" world). Therefore it's the most classically liberal political position around. And one not to be mistaken with the authoritarian-"liberal" style generally upheld in current politics.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  Direct power is democratic. You're thinking of republican (the governing structure, not the party).
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Democracy is collective action whether by direct or indirect voting. Direct power is individual action (with the implication of freedom from collective action), and is thus libertarian or classically liberal, not democratic.
    - humanrebar 13y ago
      OK. Your distinction between direct power and direct democracy has been clarified, so I'll set semantic considerations to the side. I do not see why cyber-libertarianism is incompatible with direct democracy any more than a constitutional republic is. In both cases, basic rights should not (theoretically) be able to be overridden through majority votes. The difference is in what counts as a basic right.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        You correctly recognize the key issue that "basic rights" are intrinsically a restriction on democracy. The question is: what counts as "basic rights"? In the U.S., we have a basic set of rights: those enumerated in the Constitution itself plus those that exist as a result of long historical practice plus those recognized by the Supreme Court based on a combination of the other two sources. In a Constitutional republic, rights aren't static, but they're slow to evolve. Cyber-libertarianism, at least as espoused by many today, embraces a dramatically broader notion of rights. You don't just have the classic rights of Englishmen (life, liberty, and property), but the right to privacy, the right to free and anonymous exchange of information, the right to tinker with your cell phone, the right to turn your apartment into a hotel, the right to transfer money freely and anonymously, etc. Cyber-libertarians tend to believe that government should be restrained from acting unless absolutely necessary, and almost never believe that government action is necessary when it comes to cyberspace. The more rights you recognize, and the broader those rights, the narrower the scope of democratic self determination. This viewpoint is the diametric opposite of constitutional republicanism. Under that view, government, by the will of the majority, can act so long as it does not invade certain "basic rights." Under cyber-libertarianism, the assumption is reversed. Government is barred from acting unless there is an immensely pressing justification.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - dmix 13y ago
    Correct. That's why it's ultimately anti-democratic and not at all attempting to adopt leftist ideals (other than maybe social freedom). Note I said "direct power" not "direct democracy" which tends to be confusing to observers.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      You're right, I misread your post.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    I don't think cyber-libertarianism is incompatible with direct or representative democracy. It's probably fair to say that the structure of government takes a back seat to certain expectations about what a "free" person may do in the internet age. I also agree that cyber-libertarians would not support restrictive government regulation. But it would also not support restrictive corporate control. Effectively, it recognizes new interpretations of the rights to assembly, privacy, property, and speech (and perhaps others). I don't see how that's incompatible with "the right of people to act collectively through government". It just clarifies the implicit stipulation: "as long as natural rights are respected".
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  (Hey Dan, long time no see.) I really dislike the term cyberlibertarians, since it conflates a (nearly) authority-less society with the movement. We don't call people that go 250 km/h on desert highways "highwaylibertarians". Libertarians will always do what is right, regardless of the law, provided there are no consequences (and even then, they often take the risk). Right now, that is setting up TOR for people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling black slaves from the south to Canada. As for the confusion between democracy and freedom: The root cause of course is that many non-libertarians pattern match and see democratic country and free speech next to each other. But when they try to "democratize" Iraq or Egypt to their horror they see that despite record turn out rates even more restrictive social policies. This is because the majority of non-libertarians fail to fully accept that democracy only establishes common wishes as a basis for legality. This in and of itself is actually undesirable. Liberalism had a history of "natural" or "negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it abandoned.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    I think you're confusing modern American liberalism with classical liberalism. Despite the word "liberal", they are pretty different. The emphasis on positive rights, like the right to healthcare, is one of the major distinctions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
    - 3pt14159 13y ago
      Actually I'm purposely mixing them. Liberalism was never as black and white as people made it out to be. Sure John Locke had a long list of reasons why natural rights should be a modern tenant of a just society, but to the average citizen the shift from classical liberalism to contemporary liberalism was a series of steps, each of which made sense.
      - humanrebar 13y ago
- tedks 13y ago
  >Indeed, cyberlibertarians are all about decentralized power structures. This isn't really true. Libertarians are all about having many centralized power structures. You could call this "decentralized," but it's decentralized in the sense of email being decentralized -- in reality, four entities control email; in a libertarian world I doubt things would be different. What leftists want is distributed power structures. Facebook is centralized; Email is decentralized; FreeNet[1] is distributed. I think it'd be a lot more forthcoming for libertarians to say what they actually mean -- something like feudalism -- rather than try to lay claim to a historically leftist term[0]. > not just by proxy of representative politicians or collective voting (as in a "leftist" world) Are you using quotes here for a reason other than to tonally denigrate leftism? Voting and representation are hardly hallmarks of leftist political structures. The largest popular leftist movement in the United States recently (Occupy) was based entirely on direct consensus systems (not democracy) (for better or worse). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian#Etymology [1] https://freenetproject.org/ https://freenetproject.org/
jboynyc 13y ago
Not sure I follow. Significant parts of the left see the institutions of the state as a means to the realization of democracy. Take, for instance, most socialist, social-democratic, or Left parties in contemporary Europe. They advocate for the state to take an active role in making space for democracy (for instance by legislating codetermination in the workplace) and de-commodifying labor to protect the working classes from capital. True, many leftists -- especially those in the communist and anarchist left -- have the long-term goal of abolishing the state, but that doesn't mean the institutions of the state cannot play a role in advancing some of the goals of the left in the interim. Even Nikolai Bukharin did not deny this. That's what the author is arguing here -- that the state should not be ruled out tout court as a potential site of engagement for those seeking to realize the promises of radical democracy. The author is not saying that state already is the realization of democracy, as your paraphrase suggests.

by tedks 13y ago

dmix 13y ago

Indeed, cyberlibertarians are all about decentralized power structures. The internet is actually anti-democratic in a sense, as it gives individuals direct power, not just by proxy of representative politicians or collective voting (as in a "leftist" world). Therefore it's the most classically liberal political position around. And one not to be mistaken with the authoritarian-"liberal" style generally upheld in current politics.

humanrebar 13y ago
Direct power is democratic. You're thinking of republican (the governing structure, not the party).
- rayiner 13y ago
  Democracy is collective action whether by direct or indirect voting. Direct power is individual action (with the implication of freedom from collective action), and is thus libertarian or classically liberal, not democratic.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    OK. Your distinction between direct power and direct democracy has been clarified, so I'll set semantic considerations to the side. I do not see why cyber-libertarianism is incompatible with direct democracy any more than a constitutional republic is. In both cases, basic rights should not (theoretically) be able to be overridden through majority votes. The difference is in what counts as a basic right.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      You correctly recognize the key issue that "basic rights" are intrinsically a restriction on democracy. The question is: what counts as "basic rights"? In the U.S., we have a basic set of rights: those enumerated in the Constitution itself plus those that exist as a result of long historical practice plus those recognized by the Supreme Court based on a combination of the other two sources. In a Constitutional republic, rights aren't static, but they're slow to evolve. Cyber-libertarianism, at least as espoused by many today, embraces a dramatically broader notion of rights. You don't just have the classic rights of Englishmen (life, liberty, and property), but the right to privacy, the right to free and anonymous exchange of information, the right to tinker with your cell phone, the right to turn your apartment into a hotel, the right to transfer money freely and anonymously, etc. Cyber-libertarians tend to believe that government should be restrained from acting unless absolutely necessary, and almost never believe that government action is necessary when it comes to cyberspace. The more rights you recognize, and the broader those rights, the narrower the scope of democratic self determination. This viewpoint is the diametric opposite of constitutional republicanism. Under that view, government, by the will of the majority, can act so long as it does not invade certain "basic rights." Under cyber-libertarianism, the assumption is reversed. Government is barred from acting unless there is an immensely pressing justification.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- dmix 13y ago
  Correct. That's why it's ultimately anti-democratic and not at all attempting to adopt leftist ideals (other than maybe social freedom). Note I said "direct power" not "direct democracy" which tends to be confusing to observers.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    You're right, I misread your post.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  I don't think cyber-libertarianism is incompatible with direct or representative democracy. It's probably fair to say that the structure of government takes a back seat to certain expectations about what a "free" person may do in the internet age. I also agree that cyber-libertarians would not support restrictive government regulation. But it would also not support restrictive corporate control. Effectively, it recognizes new interpretations of the rights to assembly, privacy, property, and speech (and perhaps others). I don't see how that's incompatible with "the right of people to act collectively through government". It just clarifies the implicit stipulation: "as long as natural rights are respected".
3pt14159 13y ago
(Hey Dan, long time no see.) I really dislike the term cyberlibertarians, since it conflates a (nearly) authority-less society with the movement. We don't call people that go 250 km/h on desert highways "highwaylibertarians". Libertarians will always do what is right, regardless of the law, provided there are no consequences (and even then, they often take the risk). Right now, that is setting up TOR for people longing for unrestricted information, in the past it was smuggling black slaves from the south to Canada. As for the confusion between democracy and freedom: The root cause of course is that many non-libertarians pattern match and see democratic country and free speech next to each other. But when they try to "democratize" Iraq or Egypt to their horror they see that despite record turn out rates even more restrictive social policies. This is because the majority of non-libertarians fail to fully accept that democracy only establishes common wishes as a basis for legality. This in and of itself is actually undesirable. Liberalism had a history of "natural" or "negative" rights which during the expansion of the Great Society, it abandoned.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  I think you're confusing modern American liberalism with classical liberalism. Despite the word "liberal", they are pretty different. The emphasis on positive rights, like the right to healthcare, is one of the major distinctions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    Actually I'm purposely mixing them. Liberalism was never as black and white as people made it out to be. Sure John Locke had a long list of reasons why natural rights should be a modern tenant of a just society, but to the average citizen the shift from classical liberalism to contemporary liberalism was a series of steps, each of which made sense.
    - humanrebar 13y ago
tedks 13y ago
>Indeed, cyberlibertarians are all about decentralized power structures. This isn't really true. Libertarians are all about having many centralized power structures. You could call this "decentralized," but it's decentralized in the sense of email being decentralized -- in reality, four entities control email; in a libertarian world I doubt things would be different. What leftists want is distributed power structures. Facebook is centralized; Email is decentralized; FreeNet[1] is distributed. I think it'd be a lot more forthcoming for libertarians to say what they actually mean -- something like feudalism -- rather than try to lay claim to a historically leftist term[0]. > not just by proxy of representative politicians or collective voting (as in a "leftist" world) Are you using quotes here for a reason other than to tonally denigrate leftism? Voting and representation are hardly hallmarks of leftist political structures. The largest popular leftist movement in the United States recently (Occupy) was based entirely on direct consensus systems (not democracy) (for better or worse). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian#Etymology [1] https://freenetproject.org/ https://freenetproject.org/

jboynyc 13y ago

Not sure I follow. Significant parts of the left see the institutions of the state as a means to the realization of democracy. Take, for instance, most socialist, social-democratic, or Left parties in contemporary Europe. They advocate for the state to take an active role in making space for democracy (for instance by legislating codetermination in the workplace) and de-commodifying labor to protect the working classes from capital. True, many leftists -- especially those in the communist and anarchist left -- have the long-term goal of abolishing the state, but that doesn't mean the institutions of the state cannot play a role in advancing some of the goals of the left in the interim. Even Nikolai Bukharin did not deny this. That's what the author is arguing here -- that the state should not be ruled out tout court as a potential site of engagement for those seeking to realize the promises of radical democracy. The author is not saying that state already is the realization of democracy, as your paraphrase suggests.