VGPolyglot said:
So, I understand that there are market socialists, but I still don't understand why one would want to call himself/herself a left-Rothbardian? Wouldn't it be less confusing calling yourself a mutualist or a market socialist? |
I am not a mutualist. You asked how the second person I linked to could support "free-market libertarianism" as a form of socialism, I explained how. I am a left-Rothbardian who believes in lockean property norms and is agnostic on the question of usury (I don't buy into the labor theory of value and accept subjective theories instead, which makes the "exploitation" theory harder to agree to.)
The point that Kevin Carson, who is a mutualist, was making is that Rothbard took very left-leaning views and formed coalitions with left-wing libertarians. He later moved rightward when he was disenchanted with events surrounding weather underground and certain views of the radical left, but others have continued his legacy. An example being Roderick Long.
Kevin Carson believes that there is a lot of common ground to be had between mutualists/market anarchists and left-Rothbardians.
Kevin Carson wrote another article talking about how the only big difference between left-Rothbardians and mutualists is to what extent they believe property could be abandoned before others had rights to it. The left-Rothbardian, who believes in lockean norms, is more permissive to abandoned private property than the mutualist. Kevin Carson predicts that in an anarchic society different communities would have different property norms. I agree with that prediction, but I suspect that more communities would have a common law based on lockean norms than occupancy and use.
The biggest difference between left-Rothbardians and right-Rothbardians is the latter is not commited to lockean property norms, and sometimes confounds artificial (state-granted) property with justified property. Also, the latter often has a view that all property should be individually held, when a left-Rothbardian is much more open to collective ownership (in so much as it was collectively homesteaded.) Being a left-Rothbardian does not imply one is left-wing. I consider myself a libertarian-centrist. I am fine with whatever norms come to exist in the absent of the state. Common law/natural law > statual law.
