Author: Anthony Flood

Free markets: real or imaginary?

Anticapitalist propaganda—a subset of the Communist propaganda now increasingly in vogue—often takes the form of denying the reality of free markets and mocking those who affirm it. “So-called” usually precedes the reference. The mockers deem market-realists as being in need of therapy, not argument.

Given the platforms that anticapitalist forces have, I decided to use mine to lay out a pro-market argument, one that presupposes that human flourishing is a good thing. It’s a slightly modified excerpt of chapter 20 of Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic. The “polemic” was my apologia for the free-market Austrian School of Economics against a critic, but you won’t need to know that spat’s background to follow this theoretical portion.

Yes, theoretical: you’ve been warned! Unless philosophy is your meat and drink, you might be skip it (or save it as a substitute for Sominex for your next sleepless night). I have little doubt, however, that you’re dealing with the malign consequences of anticapitalist error. What follows might help you think about ways to engage its purveyors.

—Anthony Flood

 

What are “Free Markets”?

Defining terms

By “real” we mean the logical contrast of the illusory, the delusional, the fictional, the artificial, etc. When we know or suspect that we are in the presence of the latter, we appeal to some notion of the real to negotiate our encounter with it. A good analogy is found in the contrast between the true and the false: the notion of truth emerges only through the experience of falsehood. (If we could never experience being in error, or being deceived or lied to, we’d have no use for a notion of truth.)

Whatever is a function of real entities is also real. A market is a network of exchanges that persons, according to their human nature, spontaneously form. (That is, they do not engage in exchange because they read in some book that that’s what they must do.) Markets are functions of persons, and persons are real. (Persons are entities with causal efficacy, however, markets are not.)

The market is an order—specifically, a network of exchanges—that persons naturally create in pursuit of their flourishing (which exceeds in value their mere biological sustenance and continuance).

Since persons generate that order by acting in accordance with their nature, it is a natural order, one level, aspect, or dimension of several that make up the universal natural order. Violations of that order, which tend toward human self-destruction, is not to be put on the same ontological level as that which contributes to human flourishing.

Continue reading “Free markets: real or imaginary?”

The truth about Herbert Aptheker: correcting a New York Times obit

Before the New York Times became the ultraleft rag it is today, one could at least count on its reporting a story’s basic facts. Or an obituary’s. And so in 2003, when I read the paper’s notice of the passing of Herbert Aptheker, whom I knew, I was surprised to see how many easily discoverable facts the Times’s esteemed book review editor, the late Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, got wrong. To its credit, it published a correction (three weeks later). The New York Times didn’t publish this letter, and neither did I in Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness. I do so hereunder, not only for its intrinsic interest, but also in shameless promotion of the book.

—Anthony Flood

March 22, 2003

To the Editor:

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt’s March 20 obituary of Herbert Aptheker contains several errors of commission and omission.

Aptheker’s Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States runs to seven volumes, not three. He edited and annotated three volumes of W.E.B. Du Bois’ correspondence and 40 volumes of his published writings, including a 600-page annotated bibliography.

 

The obituary fails to mention that Aptheker’s 1937 Master’s thesis was about Nat Turner’s 1831 slave revolt and written on the basis of primary source research. This should be considered when weighing William Styron’s accusation that only politics motivated Aptheker’s criticism of his novel.

 

Continue reading “The truth about Herbert Aptheker: correcting a New York Times obit”

Rights political and epistemic: Biblical theism alone can account for them

William F. Vallicella, Ph.D.

Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella, a friend of this site (and its ancestor since 2004), posted recently about the source of rights in God, saying things about argumentation that loomed larger for me than any conclusion he drew about rights and their derivation.

Conservatives [Bill writes] regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly won’t lead anywhere if we invoke premises leftists are sure to reject.  The  Left has always been reliably anti-religion and atheist, and so there is no chance of reaching them if we insist that rights come from God. So from a practical point of view, we should not bring up God in attempts to find common ground with leftists.  It suffices to say that our rights are natural, not conventional.  We could say that the right to life, say, is just there, inscribed in the nature of things, and leave it at that.  Why wave a red flag before a leftist bull who suspects theists of being closet theocrats?

What “common ground” is there between the atheist and the theist? If I understand Bill correctly, it consists in a key worldview concession that the theist allegedly must make to the atheist if there is to be conversation.

For the Biblical theist, the “common ground” between him and his atheist dialogic partner is they’re both divine image-bearers (Genesis 1:26). The one acknowledges that status, the other suppresses it. Continue reading “Rights political and epistemic: Biblical theism alone can account for them”

“Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.

Diana West

In American Betrayal, Diana West exposes the role that name-calling plays in inhibiting, even shutting down, critical thinking about vital subjects. Her words are worth quoting at length, given the relevance of our conditioned reflex both to criticism of Islam and how we’ve been conditioned to disarm before the Communist threat (present as well as past).

Bat Ye’or (pen name of Gisèle Littman)

She had been reading Bat Ye’or’s investigations into the decades-long self-subjugation of the West to Islam, including The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: from Jihad to Dhimmitude, and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide–all of which debunk the proposition “Islam is peace.” No, West learned . . .

Continue reading ““Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.”

Universal Basic Income: the conservative-libertarian case

I would not entertain this argument except that today the Anglophone world’s firmest conservative-libertarian hand has marshaled it. Here are its opening paragraphs. For the rest of the essay, please take this link to Sean Gabb’s site.—Anthony Flood

Universal Basic Income: Some Political and Economic Advantages

Sean Gabb, 16th August 2020

Sean Gabb

My vision of Utopia has remained constant since I was thirteen. It is a nation of free citizens, keeping jealous watch over a state strong enough to defend the borders and keep a minimal internal peace, but restricted from doing anything else. Sadly, this vision is further out of reach today than when I was thirteen. The modern British State is a vastly extended despotism, limited only by incompetence and corruption. It is also a despotism to which the majority of people, with whatever success and at whatever overall cost, look for immediate benefits. Libertarians and conservatives may dream of a coup in which the present order of things will be torn apart and replaced with something more natural and sustainable. But we might more usefully dream of winning the Lottery or being offered three wishes by a fairy. Any scheme of change requires the acceptance that, even if it can somehow be captured, the British State cannot in the short and medium term be minimised.

Given enough political will at the top, an end could be made in days to political correctness and lifestyle regulation. Beyond the readership of The Guardian, I see no yearning for political censorship and surveillance. I doubt there would be a general outcry if the BBC were closed, and the universities purged and the schools depoliticised. None of the fake charities would be missed. Ditto the Green agenda and most bureaucracies of intrusion. The health and welfare budget is another matter. Regardless of how little health is preserved and how little welfare is delivered, any government that announced an attack on that budget would lose immediate legitimacy. A riot of sacked BBC apparatchiks could be dispersed by a half-hearted truncheon charge. Touch the welfare state, and the demonstrations might fill a triangle tipped by Marble Arch, St Clement’s and Parliament Square.

This being said, pragmatic acceptance is not the same as acceptance of present arrangements. The principle of universal welfare cannot be touched. Its modes of provision can and should be harmonised with a new and more libertarian and conservative order of things. I will leave aside health and education. I have already discussed these here and here. I will instead focus on welfare entitlements. I propose abolishing every present entitlement, including old age pensions, and replacing them with a universal basic income.

This essay continues here.

When fascists were frank: Another look at “We were the first fascists”

Talk of fascism is in the air; fascist violence, masquerading as opposition thereto, in the streets. Its appeal crosses racial lines, and it isn’t the first time. It seems opportune to republish “‘We were the first fascists’: from Garvey to Farrakhan.” — Anthony Flood

“We were the first fascists”: from Garvey to Farrakhan

First published February 21, 2019

Marcus Garvey (August 5, 1924)

On August 13, 1920 Marcus Garvey presided at the convention of the United Negro Improvement Association held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There he promulgated the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Its 54 points comprise the farthest thing from a fascist manifesto.

And yet, as my friend Hugh Murray noted a quarter-century ago, Garvey “admired . . . leading anti-communists, such as Mussolini. Indeed, in 1937 Garvey proudly proclaimed of his Universal Negro Improvement Association, ‘We were the first fascists.'”[1]

Here’s the full quote:

We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism.[2]

He said this in 1937, after Mussolini consolidated his rape of Ethiopia.

While many liberals [Murray continues] are the first to hurl the word “fascist” at those with whom they disagree, they usually ignore the fascism of blacks, even when publicly advocated.[3]

A few years after Hugh wrote those words, King’s College Professor of American and English Literature Paul Gilroy came out with “Black Fascism” (Transition, Indiana UPress, 2000, 70-91), a scholarly monograph on Garvey’s boast, the first instance of Black public advocacy of fascism. I recommend it to students of this overlooked chapter of Black American history.

George Lincoln Rockwell, center

On June 25, 1961 American Nazi Party Commander George Lincoln Rockwell sat in the Uline Arena, Washington, DC (where the Beatles would give their first US concert a few years later). He was there at the invitation of Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Elijah Muhammad. Thousands were in attendance. During the collection, Rockwell shouted:

George Lincoln Rockwell gives $20!

Continue reading “When fascists were frank: Another look at “We were the first fascists””

G. Edward Griffin: Prophet with Honor

G. Edward Griffin

I was so impressed by the video John A. Lancaster posted today that I feel compelled to join him in getting the word out. He entitled his post “Is the Current Unrest a Communist Prophecy?,” but I decided to drop the rhetorical question mark.

The presenter is G. Edward Griffin (b. 1931). When he delivered this talk, so calmly, so professionally, the Left called him a “Red baiter.” Today he’s called a “conspiracy theorist.” Both are empty tags signalling the tagger’s determination not to have a conversation.

Griffin’s topic is a conspiracy—the Communist conspiracy, its self-understanding and its exploitation of America’s racial tensions. As you watch and listen, ask yourself whether the violence, mayhem, and frank advocacy of communism you see nightly on television is not exactly what Griffin was warning Americans about.

Color, Communism, and /Common Sense is an eight-minute YouTube video, excerpted from Griffin’s full presentation, also on YouTube, More Deadly Than War The Communist Revolution in America.

The film has the “look-and-feel” of the early ’60s. At the 2.47 mark, Griffin holds up and quotes from The Nature of Revolution, a 1959 pamphlet by Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker (for whom I worked as a research assistant in the early ’70s). That made me think the film is earlier than 1969, the date given for Griffin’s pamphlet on Amazon. (In 1969, would he cite something from 1959?) I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who can settle the date of the original filmed presentation.

Otis Q. Sellers: Prophetic Prayers about God’s Kingdom

“I will be a king over you.” Ezekiel 20:23

The cumulative effect of the following 25 prophecies is the conviction that God is going to govern this planet. What they pray for has not occurred, but will. Yes, they express happy thoughts—“Wouldn’t it be great if God one day governed the earth . . . ?,” but they do much more. They speak God’s word authoritatively. And that’s what it means to prophesy.

Like the prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13), these prayers are prophecies that are also predictions. Not one describes present conditions. They all await realization. God’s word never returns to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

I’ve excerpted the following from This I Believe, a 1963 pamphlet by Otis Q. Sellers, the subject of a biography I’m working on.

—Anthony Flood

As the pages of the Old Testament are turned, one reads of a time to come when the entire flow of satanic evil will be overwhelmed by a greater flow of righteousness from one who is the seed of the woman, even Christ (Genesis 3:15).  He goes on to read of a time when

  • All the ends of the earth will remember and be turned to the Lord (Psalm 22:27)
  • All the earth will fear the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him (Psalm 33:8)
  • The meek will inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11)
  • The streams of God’s river will make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4)
  • Wars will cease and God will be exalted among the nations (Psalm 46:8-10)
  • God’s way will be known upon the earth and His saving health will be the portion of all nations (Psalm 67:2)
  • God will judge the peoples righteously and govern the nations upon the earth (Psalm 67:3-4)
  • God will bless Israel and all the ends of the earth will fear Him (Psalm 67:7)
  • all nations will call Him blessed and the whole earth be filled with His glory (Psalm 72:17, 19)
  • The world will be established so that it cannot be disrupted (Psalm 96:10)
  • The nations will fear the name of the Lord (Psalm 102:15)
  • One generation will praise His works to another and declare His mighty acts (Psalm 145:4)
  • God will turn His hand upon Israel and purge away her dross (Isaiah 1:25)
  • The mountain of the Lord’s house will be established in the top of the mountains and all nations will flow unto it (Isaiah 2:2)
  • Nations will beat their swords into plowshares and turn all instruments of destruction into instruments of peace (Isaiah 2:4)
  • The wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6)
  • None will hurt or destroy, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9)
  • God’s judgments will be in the earth and the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9)
  • The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf be unstopped
  • The lame will leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing (Isaiah 35:5, 6)
  • the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together (Isaiah 40:5)
  • God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, put His law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts (Jeremiah 31:27,33)
  • God will fulfill His great promise to Israel to seek them out, bring them out from all peoples and all countries and bring them to their own land, and to set one shepherd over them, even David (Ezekiel 34:11-24)
  • Out of Bethlehem will come One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2)
  • The Lord will be king over all the earth (Zechariah 14:9)

Check out related posts
Here are a few short studies on the Kingdom by Otis Q. Sellers (PDFs at Seed&Bread.org)
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his library and recording studio

Diana West: The Conscience of a Conservative

With journalistic skills honed over decades, skepticism toward received opinion, a graceful literary style, and considerable courage, Diana West has been contributing to the preservation of America’s heritage of liberty against its enemies, foreign and domestic. She’s been doing this by defending American philosophy, culture, and history—and common sense—in essays, books and, lately, videos.

Her contribution, unfortunately, is not as widely known as its high literary quality would lead one to predict. The Left have mainly ignored her, but false friends on the Right have vilified her, arrogating to themselves the right to determine how far the defense of liberty may go and whose sacred cows may not be blasphemed along the way.

In the words of ex-Communist journalist and novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), West detects a red thread of continuity between his era and ours:

. . . [R]ecounting his experience as a German Communist in the 1930s, [Arthur] Koestler is nonetheless describing the post-Communist, postmodern, post-9/11 American condition. It is the sinister overhaul of language and thought . . . that he personally engaged in, and that was and is the primary tool of Marxist and Islamic subversion. “Not only our thinking, but also our vocabulary was reconditioned,” he explains. “Certain words were taboo.” Certain other words became telltales by which to identify dissenters or enemies. Literary, artistic, and musical tastes, he writes, were “similarly reconditioned” to support the renunciation of independent thought and logic necessary to submit to ideology.[1]

Sounds familiar? She calls for a “cultural reexamination” of the process by which Americans were force-fed one “blue pill” of lies after another and, for the most part, they swallowed them willingly, casting into outer darkness those who spit them out and sought the “red pill” of unpleasant truth.[2] Continue reading “Diana West: The Conscience of a Conservative”

“Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.

A little over fifty years ago, when my interest in philosophy was budding, I encountered Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian. (My edition was the 1957 Simon & Schuster paperback, the one pictured below).

I was a recent Marxist convert; Russell was no Marxist, but this rebellious teenager welcomed his criticisms of theism in general and Christianity in particular.

Upon reading his obituary fifty years ago this past February, I marveled at the longevity some enjoy—he died age 97—and therefore how long ago a contemporary of mine might have lived. A Victorian, Russell grew up in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. He had John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty I was then reading, as his godfather.

Recently I stumbled upon words attributed to Russell, words I’ve read many times over the years, but could never find in his writings. An internet search turns up many reflections on these words, but their authors never source the quote. I was beginning to think them apocryphal until a more precise query yielded its source in, not an essay, but an interview.

The initial search string was <Russell not enough evidence>. It yielded, among many other hits, Emily Eakin’s imagined post-mortem exchange, in a 2002 essay for the Times’s arts section, between the sage and God, whose existence he says he could not affirm.

Asked what he would say if God appeared to him after his death and demanded to know why he had failed to believe, the British philosopher and staunch evidentialist Bertrand Russell replied that he would say, “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence.”[1]

Philosopher of science Wesley C. Salmon (1925-2001) created this version for a footnote to a 1978 journal article:

If I recall correctly, Bertrand Russell was once asked if there were any conceivable evidence which could lead him to a belief in God. He offered something similar to Cleanthes’s suggestion. He was then asked what he would say if, after dying, he were transported to the presence of God; how would he justify his failure on earth to be a believer? “I’d say, ‘Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!’”[2]

This game of telephone has one final (for now) regression. It’s from an interview of Russell by humorist and Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten, conducted “many years” (Rosten says) before 1974, the year in which this memoir was published.

I asked, “Let us suppose, sir, that after you have left this sorry vale, you actually found yourself in heaven, standing before the Throne. There, in all his glory, sat the Lord—not Lord Russell, sir: God.” Russell winced. “What would you think?” “I would think I was dreaming.” “But suppose you realized you were not? Suppose that there, before your very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was God. What would you say?” The pixie wrinkled his nose. “I probably would ask, ‘Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?’[3]

With the origins of the story fairly nailed down, what do we make of Russell’s quip?

Continue reading ““Why did you not give me better evidence?,” the atheist would ask God, as though his demand for evidence were not itself evidence.”