nettime: libertarians

[pit@contrib.de]

"Libertarians complain that the state is parasitic, an excrescence on
society. They think it's like a tumor you could cut out, leaving the patient
just as he was, only healthier. They've been mystified by their own
metaphors. Like the market, the state is an activity, not an entity. The
only way to abolish the state is to change the way of life it forms a part
of. That way of life, if you call that living, revolves around work and
takes in bureaucracy, moralism, schooling, money, and more. Libertarians are
conservatives because they avowedly want to maintain most of this mess and
so unwittingly perpetuate the rest of the racket. But they're bad
conservatives because they've forgotten the reality of institutional and
ideological interconnection which was the original insight of the historical
conservatives. Entirely out of touch with the real currents of contemporary
resistance, they denounce practical opposition to the system as "nihilism,"
"Luddism," and other big words they don't understand. A glance at the world
confirms that their utopian capitalism just can't compete with the state.
With enemies like libertarians, the state doesn't need friends."    

Bob Black, 1984

http://www.c2.org/~mark/lib/libertarian.html
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