Agitprop - Anarchy Edition

My most recent post discussed how the wage theory of value (LTV), an idiotic Marxist (but I repeat myself) idea, has found new life among young Internet agitators and morons (but again, I repeat myself). This is but one of many examples of “agitprop,” the deliberate use of popular media by political machines to spread their narratives.

Today, I touch upon another, one that has long plagued libertarians. It is the “anarchy” straw man, where people claim that libertarians want no laws, no “protections” against bad actors.

This is born of what I can only conclude is a lack of mental effort on the part of the accuser.

This is what the Internet does to us. See something, knee-jerk with some “feelZ,” type it, send it to the world... oops, now you have to defend it.

Thomas Jefferson laid it all out:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Y’all know that part.

Then he wrote:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.

Some of you know that part.

The purpose of government in a liberty-based society is to protect our rights. This purpose gives rise to a set of laws that do just that: protect us against infringements of our rights (personal and, by extension, property) by others.

This purpose also limits what such a government is permitted to do. This is why our Constitution is structured as it is. It delineates what the government is empowered to do, and very specifically says, in the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This means that laws that protect individuals’ rights are proper and legitimate in a liberty-based society.

It also means that laws that go beyond that purpose are not. A law is not proper or moral simply because it gets enacted. Too many people either forget or fail to ponder that distinction.

A liberty-based society is not an anarchic, lawless society where might makes right, where law of the claw reigns supreme, and where the powerful run roughshod over the weak. Oddly, or perhaps not so much given the curiosity that is horseshoe theory, big-government societies, whether they be socialist, communist, or fascist, are where might makes right, where law of the claw reigns supreme, and where the powerful run roughshod over the weak.

Libertarians are forever pointing out the fact that the idealized libertarian society has laws that protect individual rights and enough government to enforce them. Yet we are barraged with ignoramuses insisting we believe otherwise. Here’s a suggestion. Rather than telling someone what he believes, ask him. But, since it’s the Internet, that’s no fun, so, instead, we get told we don’t care if businesses poison their customers.

As I noted, this is a perpetual annoyance. Lately, however, it has grown exponentially in volume, with “capitalism” subbing in for “liberty.”

Capitalism is an economic subset of liberty that relies on the same basic premises. Individuals acting freely and cooperatively, and a set of laws that protect individual and property rights serving as a foundation. And rule book. And constraint.

Because it has such a constraint, capitalism is not anarchy.

Yet that is exactly what is being bleated, endlessly, all at once and everywhere, by the Orwellian sheep that infest every pro-liberty social media page I frequent.

This is not a coincidence.

Just as the re-emergence of LTV via a “stolen wages” mantra is almost certainly the result of planned agitprop, this “capitalism is anarchy” canard reeks of the same artifice. So, watch for it, be wary of it, know it for what it is, and know those who repeat it for what they are.