Conflation and the Twisting of Ideas in Anarcho-Capitalism, Part 1

Once upon a time, I used to be an anarcho-capitalist, but I have distanced myself from them considerably. I can still find some parts of what they are doing agreeable; nevertheless, I think that there is something really suspect about some of their arguments. They seem to be trying to create the impression that there is a large history or precedent for their ideas within what would be considered traditional or classical anarchy. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I started my drift away from anarcho-capitalism. It has to do with what appears to me as blatantly incredulous arguments when they are trying to make anarcho-capitalism appear to be congruous with things that it is clearly not. It seems like a gigantic attempt to conflate anarcho-capitalism with everything else: liberalism, individualist anarchism, Proudhon and the mutualists and so on. It is something that really bothers me because it just seems like an attempt to create all these harmonies when no such harmonies exist. I will also point out that I think they have a terrible tendency of abusing texts by misquoting and distorting what they are citing in some instances. I am not saying that anarcho-capitalism is an inherently mendacious doctrine; however, there are some things that I think are troublesome and warrant concern from a purely academic sense of accuracy in scholarship.

1. Liberalism and Anarcho-Capitalism

I will start here because this is exactly where my suspicions were piqued, initially. It is this attempt to transform the liberal (that means laissez-faire capitalist) Ludwig von Mises into an “anarchist” by some of his anarcho-capitalist followers that first caught my attention.

Let me begin with Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s attempt to transmogrify Ludwig von Mises into an anarcho-capitalist by quoting selectively from Mises’s book Liberalism (I change the order by putting Hoppe’s conclusion first and then giving Hoppe’s version of Mises’s quote, just because I think it explains better what Hoppe is trying to do here):

Essentially, with this statement Mises has already crossed the line separating classical liberalism and Rothbard’s private property anarchism; for a government allowing unlimited secession is of course no longer a compulsory monopolist of law and order but a voluntary association.

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to a state…their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars….If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual, it would have to be done. (Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed, 238)

I read Mises’s Liberalism in my early days as an anarcho-capitalist. It was one of my introductory reads. Right off the bat, I found it very strange that Mises’s Liberalism is being held up as evidence for anarchy when the book is clearly anti-anarchy. Mises makes this explicitly clear when he writes (I have the Liberty Fund edition):

Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped. (19)

Moreover, the often cited notion of “voluntary” associations from anarcho-capitalist writers is inconsistent with Mises’s views. He openly calls for violence. He wants it. In fact, he demands violence and coercion because without violence and coercion, liberalism–i.e., Mises’s version of laissez-faire capitalism–would not work:

But the anarchist is mistaken in assuming that everyone, without exception, will be willing to observe these rules voluntarily….Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace. (17)

Let me now quote from Mises by inserting in the parts that Hoppe left out (in bold–I will use bold to show what Hoppe excised) in order to further show how Mises doesn’t have anarchy in mind in his book Liberalism:

The right-of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars. To call this right of self-determination the “right of self-determination of nations” is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong….If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations, which make it necessary that a region be governed as a single administrative unit and that the right of self-determination be restricted to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of areas large enough to count as territorial units in the administration of the country. So far as the right of self-determination was given effect at all, and wherever it would have been permitted to take effect, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it led or would have led to the formation of states composed of a single nationality (i.e., people speaking the same language) and to the dissolution of states composed of several nationalities, but only as a consequence of the free choice of those entitled to participate in the plebiscite. The formation of states comprising all the members of a national group was the result of the exercise of the right of self-determination, not its purpose. (Hoppe’s version of Mises in regular text; I’ve added Mises’s original text in bold, See Mises’s Liberalism: The The Classical Tradition, 79-80 in the Liberty Fund edition)

Here are my comments on what I think Mises is saying and why I think Hoppe’s selective quoting distorts Mises’s original intent.

First of all, Mises uses the term “anarchy” in a way that makes sense. Mises understands that the term anarchy is a socialist term because it opposes private property. It sounds as though Mises has in mind anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-communism when he uses the term anarchy:

The anarchists consider state, law, and government as superfluous institutions in a social order that would really serve the good of all, and not just the special interests of a privileged few. Only because the present social order is based on private ownership of the means of production is it necessary to resort to compulsion and coercion in its defense. If private property were abolished, then everyone, without exception, would spontaneously observe the rules demanded by social cooperation. (Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, 16, bold emphasis mine)

It is clear that Mises uses the term “anarchists” correctly. That sounds pretty much like what you would expect from anarchists such as Bakunin or Proudhon. We would expect anarchists to denounce private property as being just another form of “state.”

So I guess the question then becomes, is this attempt to merge Mises with anarcho-capitalism successful or not? Is Mises really an advocate of Rothbard’s system of “private property anarchism” (which does appear to be an oxymoron given that Mises uses the term anarchy in the context of people wanting to abolish all private property)? In other words, let us assume for the moment that “private property anarchism” is a coherent system. Does Mises implicitly support it or not?

It seems to me that Mises does not support a “private property anarchism” in his section called “The Right of Self-Determination” in his book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. Notice that when I reinsert the parts that Hoppe excised, Mises is not talking about the creation of some voluntary associations. This talk of “voluntary associations” by Hoppe is just what he is reading into the text so that it will fit in with the Rothbard scheme.

Notice all the parts that Hoppe is ignoring. These people are having some sort of plebiscite. They “wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state,” according to Mises. Is an “independent state” or “some other state” supposed to be construed as “they wish to join a voluntary association”? I think not. Mises defined the right of self-determination as “the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.” Deciding which state they want to belong to does not sound like deciding on what voluntary association they want to join. I think I am being quite fair to the anarcho-capitalists, since they view the state as a territorial monopolist out exploiting property owners and engaged in interminable aggression. I think all anarcho-capitalists would object if someone were to claim that the state is a voluntary association. But this is exactly what Mises is talking about in this part of his book. He is talking about re-drawing the state boundaries of Europe in 1927. Notice how Mises calls for the right of self-determination to be “restricted to the will of the majority.” This is not some sort of “individual level” secession. In other words, this is not the spin that Rothbard and Hoppe attach to Mises. In fact, if you go back to Hoppe that is exactly what he is trying to read into this part of Mises’s Liberalism.

Once admit any right of secession whatever, and there is no logical stopping-point short of the right of individual secession, which logically entails anarchism, since then individuals may secede and patronize their own defense agencies, and the State has crumbled.” (Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed, 238)

Hoppe claims that “there is no logical stopping-point short of the right of individual secession.” But that is not what Mises said in the part of Liberalism that Hoppe is selectively quoting from. Mises called all of that individual secession stuff “impracticable.” Why? Because, as Mises goes on to say, that such a view makes it impossible to have regions “governed as a single administrative unit.” But of course having a region “governed as a single administrative unit” means that some sort of state governing apparatus must still exist. So now, I think, the question becomes whether or not Mises’s is being logically consistent or not.

Interestingly enough (maybe even an inconsistency), is the fact that Mises appeals to empirical evidence when he talks about how the right of self-determination leads to “the formation of states composed of a single nationality.” Again, Mises did not write that the right of self-determination leads to the creation of voluntary associations based on the right of individual secession. Nope! That is not what Mises observed. He observed that the right of self-determination led to “the formation of states composed of a single nationality.” So maybe, based on the empirical evidence that completes Mises’s discussion, it is Hoppe who is wrong on what the right of self-determination implies.

I will conclude by saying that reading this section of Mises’s Liberalism, I am convinced that Mises was strongly in favor of the existence of the state. So to try to claim that he fits into some sort of anarchist scheme (if we allow for such a thing as private property anarchy or if we allow for the term anarchy to mean simply “anti-state”) is an error. I think it is a gross distortion of Mises’s position to claim that he wants to abolish the state. That is not the intent of what he is writing here. He is simply saying that the borders of Europe make no sense. They need to be redrawn (he seems to think that they should be redrawn based on language) and we will redraw the borders of the European states by using plebiscites based on majority rule. In other words, a democratic vote to redraw the borders of European states to create homogeneous linguistic zones. It is clearly not an argument for a stateless society in the Rothbard and Hoppe scheme. Again, this is because Mises keeps stressing again and again the need for states to govern over these homogeneous linguistic zones. And I will quickly add that anarchists–traditional anarchists–would claim that anarcho-capitalism is not a stateless system either. It is just a private state system because landowners do exactly what states do, both are based on absolute rights of decision making over a given territory enforced by the use of violence and coercion. The only difference seems to be that in a state a public police force exists to enforce absolute territorial rights, while under anarcho-capitalism private defense forces will enforce absolute territorial rights over private territorial claims.

2. Mutualism and Anarcho-Capitalism

Moving along, I also observed some time ago that there is a tendency to conflate mutualism with anarcho-capitalism. I noticed this in the book Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice. This is definitely one of those anarcho-capitalist books. In fact, I had it shipped to me in Canada from the Mises Institute in Alabama along with Rothbard’s magnum opus, Man, Economy and State. 

In Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, Chapter 33 is by David Osterfeld. The chapter is entitled Freedom, Society, and the State: An Investigation Into the Possibility of Society without Government. We get this fantastic claim that Proudhon–one of the greatest anarchists ever–was really a capitalist:

In short, despite Proudhon’s famous statement on property and his regular condemnations of “capitalism,” the essential components of mutualism are private property, exchange, and contract. With the one significant exception of his stricture concerning the size of property, mutualism is, in most other respects, not incompatible with capitalism. (512)

When I was doing my research for this entry, I looked up Benjamin Tucker’s book Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy To write One. Benjamin Tucker was an important individualist anarchist, who tends to be conflated with anarcho-capitalism (and this conflation is erroneous). Notice that the introductory quote in Tucker’s book is from Proudhon, supposedly from the “capitalist” Proudhon:

In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gauge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.

Normally, socialists are the ones running around condemning “rent” and “interest.” We would not expect a capitalist to say that rent and interest are “the last vestiges of old-time slavery.” I think most people reading what Proudhon wrote would conclude that Proudhon is dismissing capitalism as slavery. That is how I read this quote.

Then, looking up Proudhon’s economic scheme, we see that the great anarchist wants to abolish wage labor as well.  In the article A Few Thoughts on Anarchist Economics, Proudhon attacks wage labor:

Proudhon’s vision of a free economy was bound up with his critique of the existing one. Thus he discussed the contradictions caused by applying machinery under capitalism and concluded that to solve these you needed to abolish wage-labour by workers associations, or “organising labour”.

Or in the article entitled How Could an Anarchist Economy Function?, we see Proudhon’s opposition to wage labor:

Hence Proudhon’s comment that socialism’s “underlying dogma” is that the “objective of socialism is the liberation of the proletariat and the eradication of poverty.” This emancipation would be achieved by ending“wage-labour” via “democratically organised workers’ associations.” [Property is Theft!, p. 372 and p. 377]

What does any of this have to do with capitalism. Interest and rent–obviously components of capitalism–are dismissed as forms of slavery. Wages–another obvious component of capitalism–are dismissed. The replacement for wage labor, i.e., the replacement of capitalism, is to be found in “democratically organized workers’ associations.” Mutualism means abolish the bosses–get rid of the capitalist bosses. We see this very clearly when Voltairine de Cleyre writes:

In contrast, mutualist anarchism “is a modification of the program of Individualism, laying more emphasis upon organisation, co-operation and free federation of the workers. To these the trade union is the nucleus of the free co-operative group, which will obviate the necessity of an employer . . . The mutualist position on the land question is identical with that of the Individualists.”  The “material factor which accounts for such differences as there are between Individualists and Mutualists” was due to the former being intellectual workers and so “never know[ing] directly the oppressions of the large factory, nor mingled with workers’ associations. The Mutualists had; consequently their leaning towards a greater Communism.” [“Anarchism”, Exquisite Rebel, p. 77 and p. 78] (See Are Individualist Anarchists Anti-Capitalist?, bold emphasis above is mine)

Voltairine de Cleyre makes it abundantly clear that the Mutualists have nothing to do with capitalism. Could you imagine a capitalist standing up and saying:

1. Trade unions are the nucleus of the free cooperative group! (Anarcho-capitalist literature is not very fond of trade unionism).
2. These trade unions will obviate–render unnecessary–the necessity of an employer! (This sounds like the Mutualists want to “fire all the bosses.” In other words, the capitalist class will be eliminated under a Mutualist anarchism.)
3. Leaning towards a greater Communism! (That sounds like the opposite of capitalism to me.)

It seems to me that Mutualism is some sort of anti-capitalist exchange system. For example, in the article Are Individualist Anarchists Anti-capitalist?, we see that one can support exchange while still opposing capitalism. Or, in other words, just because Mutualist anarchists support exchange it does not follow that they are therefore supporting capitalism:

The central fallacy of the argument that support for markets equals support for capitalism is that many self-proclaimed socialists are not opposed to the market. Indeed, some of the earliest socialists were market socialists (people like Thomas Hodgskin and William Thompson, although the former ended up rejecting socialism and the latter became a communal-socialist). Proudhon, as noted, was a well known supporter of market exchange. German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer expounded a similar vision to Proudhon and called himself a “liberal socialist” as he favoured a free market but recognised that capitalism was a system of exploitation. [“Introduction”, The State, p. vii]

My conclusion is simply this. A cursory review of Mutualist anarchism suggests strongly that they are anti-capitalists. To try to claim that Proudhon was a capitalist is erroneously.

In Part 2, I plan to write more about how anarcho-capitalists conflate their views with other schools erroneously. One of them is the individualist anarchists. This is because Benjamin Tucker talked about “private defense forces.” So, on the surface, it appears that anarcho-capitalism is grounded in an individualist anarchist idea–i.e., breaking the state’s monopoly on defense through competing defense firms offering their services on a free market. However, a more thorough analysis will show that the “private defense firms” of the individualist anarchists are very different from those of the anarcho-capitalists. The anarcho-capitalists who try to conflate their system with that of the individualist anarchists are taking the individualist anarchist system out of its context, namely, an anti-land rent system. So although the systems look similar at the surface level, they different greatly when one penetrates below the surface. I will write more about this in a later post.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The Attraction of Anarcho-Syndicalism and a Gentle Admonishment of Anarcho-Capitalism

In the long run no government can maintain itself in power if it does not have public opinion behind it, i.e., if those governed are not convinced that the government is good. The force to which the government resorts in order to make refractory spirits compliant can be successfully applied only as long as the majority does not stand solidly in opposition.

–Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, p. 21

Sometimes I think that if Ludwig von Mises were to be resurrected from the dead he would be disheartened to read what is being pushed right now under the rubric of anarcho-capitalism, at least when it comes to what is being pushed on Facebook at the moment by some of them.

I am going to structure my post as follows:

1. Some General Observations from my Experience on Facebook with some Anarcho-Capitalist Posts
2. Some Comments on my Observations on these online Anarcho-Capitalists
3. Conclusion: Anarcho-Capitalism Lacks Broad Public Appeal
4. Why I Think Anarcho-Syndicalism Has a Better Chance of Appealing to the Masses

Some General Observations from my Experience on Facebook with some Anarcho-Capitalist Posts

Before I make my observations, I want to make it explicitly clear that I am not trying to claim apodictic truth. I certainly do not have the hubris to assume that I know the truth. Of course this is the complete opposite of many anarcho-capitalists who assume that Mises’s praxeological method assures them of absolute truth, with the concomitant claim that everyone else must be wrong before he or she opens up his or her mouth. This intellectual insolence makes it virtually impossible to have a discussion with them. How can you? They are right (at least in their minds) before the debate or discussion begins. Such impudence reminds me of my futile attempts to defend atheism.

Let me quickly summarize some of my interactions with them. In fact, I used to be an anarcho-capitalist at one time. Moreover, I used to put up posts on the Mises Facebook page and on the Circle Bastiat for a few months. As you can tell, I have apostatized by moving away from anarcho-capitalism toward classical anarchism (i.e., opposition to all hierarchical relationships including the whole idea of people selling their labor to capitalists or land owners). I say this in the hopes that nobody accuses me “straw-manning” anarcho-capitalists. Moreover, I say this in hopes that nobody tells me to go read XYZ or watch ABC YouTube movie because I (putatively) don’t “understand” anarcho-capitalism. I don’t claim to know everything about it; however, I think I understand it well enough to present its basic tenants fairly.

One rather disturbing incident occurred a few months ago when I pointed out that anarcho-capitalism is inconsistent with the desires of homosexuals for equality in society.  And boy oh boy, you would think that I had committed heresy of the highest order, some sort of unforgivable sin.  If I remember correctly, I put the following quotations up on my Facebook wall from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book Democracy: The God that Failed:

Indeed, private property means discrimination. (209)

Anthropologist Raymond Firth records an expression of exile from the Pacific island society of Tikopia that evokes in its simplicity the pathos of the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer.” Inasmuch as all land was owned by the chiefs, an exiled person had no recourse but to canoe out to sea–to suicide or to life as a stranger on other islands. The expression for a person who is exiled translates that such a person “has no place on which to stand.” (217)

If they continued with their behavior or lifestyle, they would be barred from civilized society and live physically separate from it, in ghettos or on the fringes of society, and many positions or professions would be unattainable to them. In contrast, if they wished to live and advance within society, they would have to adjust and assimilate to the moral and cultural norms of the society they wanted to enter. To thus assimilate would not necessarily imply that one would have to give up one’s substandard or abnormal behavior or lifestyle altogether. It would imply, however, that one could no longer “come out” and exhibit one’s alternative behavior or lifestyle in public. Such behavior would have to stay in the closet, hidden from the public eye, and physically restricted to the total privacy of one’s own four walls. Advertising or displaying it in public would lead to expulsion. (212)

There would be signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and, once in town, requirements for entering specific pieces of property (for example, no beggars, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, Jews, Moslems, Germans, or Zulus), and those who did not meet these entrance requirements would be kicked out as trespassers. (211)

My observation was very simple: why on earth would a homosexual want this? How can this possibly be appealing? Let’s see:

1. I have to pretty much go hide in the closet again
2. I will be blocked from most professions thus lowering my lifetime income substantially
3. I will get to live in the libertarian ghetto!
4. Private police will ban me from entering the libertarian city because I will be a “trespasser” on their homophobic (what appears to be) exclusive gated community
5. Maybe I will get to go commit suicide because I will have nowhere to stand or live

Basically, this sounds like a hellhole for homosexuals. But what really frustrated me was how the Facebook anarcho-capitalists just parrot back all the abstruse theoretical answers–i.e., answers that ignore the human suffering that I will have to endure under their system. Let me see if I can remember some of them.

Of course, the ubiquitous non-aggression principle gets thrown out there. Ignore the horrific outcomes such as shipping the gays off to the libertarian ghetto (because remember property means exclusion and the idea seems to be to use property as the means of imposing some sort of Christian theocracy) by focusing on the putative “just means.” That seems to be how most of the arguments are framed–focus on the fact that they used the “correct means” so therefore the outcome–no matter how horrific–must be the “just one.”

Then there was this one guy who was going absolutely hysterical. It was almost too funny to listen to. His thesis was basically this: if he didn’t have some absolute property right then there would be no way to stop people from raping him!

The first problem, of course, is that we do not have absolute property rights in Canada. This is true of the United States, Europe, and I would guess most of the earth. Virtually nowhere on earth would we expect to find the anarcho-capitalist idea of absolute property rights. But–surprise, surprise–most people don’t go around all day saying to themselves, “I live in fear of being raped because I do not have absolute property rights!” The average person on the street just does not talk like this. It is an esoteric argument totally disconnected from the reality of the lived experiences of most people.

I bet you that if I were to go to a university pub and ask some female college students, tell me about what you worry about when it comes to date rape, I think they would mention things like a guy slipping a drug into their drink or maybe drinking too much alcohol and then getting taken advantage of by the guy. I seriously doubt that too many of them would raise the lack of absolute property right as their primary concern when they are on the dance floor! But that is the kind of stuff we get from these Facebook anarcho-capitalist. These kind of totally detached theoretical arguments presented in some hysterical way.

I also want to mention another observation I made a few days ago. One of my Facebook friends was involved in an online debate regarding food stamps. I think involved Rand Paul saying something in opposition to food stamps. And the criticism was something about how these putative “pro-life” politicians don’t care about starving out kids and unemployed people.

Now, the food stamp and poverty statistics in the United States are horrible to look at:

Then you get the comments. They basically have a few lines of thought that really show a disconnect from reality. One of them was basically, “you should look after your own kids. That’s not my responsibility.” Then there is the absolute property claim (again since absolute property does not actually exist in reality they are taking hypothetical scenarios and applying them to reality) that basically says that paying for food stamps to help the poor is property theft. I am being robbed by tax extortion! Aggression!

Some Comments on my Observations on these online Anarcho-Capitalists

I started this entry by quoting on of anarcho-capitalism’s main authors, Ludwig von Mises. It seems to me that these online anarcho-capitalists are not listening to Mises.

Mises’s point is that in the long run power is rooted in public opinion. So if we assume that Mises is right in claiming power = public opinion, then the anarcho-capitalists are burying themselves with their approach to arguing their viewpoints.

Even if I were to concede everything they believe in as correct, such as absolute property rights, the non-aggression principle, Civil Rights need to be abolished, private contracts are the best way to organize society and so on, they are never going to get broad public opinion behind them with these kinds of heartless arguments.

Take the first observation I made about homosexuals living in right wing libertarian land. It is pretty obvious that public opinion is moving towards some sort of acceptance of homosexuals. Slowly but surely more and more jurisdictions (state governments and foreign national governments) are bringing in laws to legalize marriage equality. The LGBTQ rights movement has made tremendous progress.

Now just image buying billboard space and publishing Hoppe’s arguments. Anarcho-capitalism means ghettos for gays! Get back in the closet or get expelled! Go commit suicide because this is our land and we can make whatever rules we want on our land! Purge gays from the professions!

It makes them look like totally disconnected reactionaries.

From a purely theoretical point of view, Hoppe’s arguments are logically consistent. If I were trying to set up a society based exclusively on private property, I too would not want gay rights. Equality, fairness, having to accept “anti-family” values etc., these are all anathema to capitalism. Hoppe states that very clearly, he needs property and family values for his anarcho-capitalism system to work:

They must also be willing to defend themselves, by means of ostracism, exclusion and ultimately expulsion, against those community members who advocate, advertise or propagandize actions incompatible with the very purpose of the covenant: to protect property and family. (216)

I think Hoppe is right to worry about the gay rights movement in the context of his property-only society. The literature on gay rights has historically be very radical and tends to draw upon classical (real) anarchist ideas. For example, the Anarchist Library has a paper entitled For a Dialectic of Homosexuality and Revolution by David Berry. I’ve picked out one quote that I think gives the essence of what I am trying to say. Hoppe wants for his right wing libertarian anarcho-capitalist paradise some sort of Christian puritanical theocracy it seems. Family values! Property! And stuff like that. Now compare and contrast that with the anti-puritanical and anti-bourgeoisie views expressed in gay liberation literature. Basically, the two are enemies. They are incompatible:

There were other influences on Guérin’s thinking about sexual liberation, notably among the anarchists. In his youth, Guérin read E. Armand’s individualist anarchist organ L’en dehors, which used to campaign for complete sexual freedom, and for which homosexuality was regarded as an entirely valid form of “free love”.  Much later, Guérin discovered the German individualist anarchist, Max Stirner. If some anarchist-communists have been a little puzzled by Guérin’s interest in Stirner — generally anathema to the non-individualist wing of the movement — the answer lies in what Guérin perceived to be Stirner’s latent homosexuality, his concern with sexual liberation and his determination to attack bourgeois prejudice and puritanism: “Stirner was a precursor of May 68”.

There you go. The gay liberation material talks about: “attacking bourgeois prejudice and puritanism.” This is the complete opposite of what Hoppe wants: he seems to want the puritanical family values stuff that will support capitalism. Train the kids from day one for living in (putatively) “voluntary” hierarchies, i.e., a wage laborer by getting them to accept the hierarchical nature of the traditional family (dad rules).

When I did all of this, I had just recently come out of the closet. What I found so surprising was that none of these anarcho-capitalists could grasp the fact that my argument was simply that I do not want to have to live in a ghetto; I do not want to have all the professions blocked to my access; I do not want to have to go suicide myself; I do not want to be blocked from entry to a city by a private police force. In other words, the outcomes are going to adversely affect ME. I am going to suffer because of this. 

So what I was looking for was for someone to address my concerns. 

Tell me why do I want to live under these conditions? Why do I want to go from a situation where I have some legal protections that protect me from discrimination to a situation where I seem to have absolutely no protections?

Telling me about absolute property rights and a non-aggression principle doesn’t speak to my concerns for the obvious reason that I do not own land or property. I don’t own a factory. I don’t own a private city. I don’t own a Wal-Mart. I own nothing. So telling me about how property is going to be used to “protect my rights” is a meaningless response.

My educated guess is that they have no answer. Their entire system is simply whatever property produces must be just. So if property sticks the gays in a ghetto then that is the “just” outcome. To then say, “hey, this outcome sucks” is just an “aggression” against the property owners.

The same thing applies to the food stamp observation I made earlier. If they have an absolute property right then taxing it to feed a starving unemployed family is an “act of aggression” against the property owner. Consequently, in their system, they are being logically consistent. But the message is horrific.

The sales pitch is again to defend a horrific outcome. Kids and poor people starving for food–this is an awful message to sell.

Come join our anarcho-capitalist movement and defend starving out kids and single moms and unemployed people. As the underclass grows, more and more people are going to be in desperate economic conditions. Why are they going to want to listen to the anarcho-capitalist propaganda?

Hmmm. It is easy to conjure up why a lot of people are going to reject the anarcho-capitalist message pretty much immediately. Let’s say Bob has lost his job. Bob then lost his apartment. So Bob is now living out of his car. Bob is told how he is the “aggressor” against the property rights of bankers because Bob has the temerity to ask for food stamps paid for by the “violence of taxes.” Do you really think that Bob is going to now say: I love anarcho-capitalism! They rock!

It stretches credulity. I can see Bob saying something like this: the government bailed out those banking bastards and now you are telling me that their “property” has to be treated as sacrosanct? And because of these property rights, I am told, go starve! WTF! Fuck that.

I think that this is the major problem with anarcho-capitalism. Telling Bob about Lockean property rights or homesteading theories or “natural rights” means absolutely nothing to him. Bob wants food. Bob needs a job. Bob is suffering in pain. He is probably sick and afraid and suffering from depression. And what do they offer Bob? Abstruse theories that don’t provide solutions.

Well if only we had free voluntary exchange! Well if only gold were money! Well if only pigs fly!

That is the problem right there. If only X, Y, Z, A, B were to exist then Bob would be free! But by the time all of these things come around (if they ever do come into existence), Bob will be dead.

To me it seems as though the anarcho-capitalists have nothing to offer people at the moment. They have abstruse theories that don’t deliver the immediate goods. Instead, they come across as offering up mean spirited solutions: attack food stamps or relegate homosexuals to ghettos.

But as the underclass grows, I think it makes the anarcho-capitalist message more and more marginalized. So I don’t see how they expect to get anywhere with their message. Consequently, one of the reasons for why I ended up rejecting anarcho-capitalism is that I think it is totally unimplementable. They just are not going to get broad public opinion behind them. The trend seems to be towards poverty and suffering among the masses. That means people without property! So the message for broad public opinion needs to speak to people without property. It needs to speak to the people in the growing underclass. A sales pitch based on the defense of absolute property rights seems to be completely out of place given the current situation.

Conclusion: Anarcho-Capitalism Lacks Broad Public Appeal

Again, I think the anarcho-capitalists can learn a lot from Ludwig von Mises. Take Mises’s book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. It was one of the first books I read when I was still into all this anarcho-capitalism stuff. The book was written in 1927. It seems to be about how Europe has fallen into some sort of bloody battle between various political factions. Mises’s liberalism (he means laissez-faire capitalism) seems to be dead:

Only when the Marxist Social Democrats had gained the upper hand and taken power in the belief that the age of liberalism and capitalism had passed forever did the last concessions disappear that it had still been thought necessary to make to the liberal ideology. (26)

I think that is exactly what is going to happen if our economy totally collapses. I am writing this on October 5, 2013. The US government “shutdown” is happening and the October 17, 2013 debt ceiling event is coming shortly (which if it were to happen is supposed to be quite catastrophic to the US economy). When things start to fall apart, I suspect that liberal ideas–laissez-faire capitalist ideas–are going to become more and more marginalized. 

When reading about this 1927 period of upheaval in Europe, Mises seems to be saying that fascists (one extreme group) is “saving civilization” from another extreme group, namely, the “socialists and communists.”

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merits that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error. (30)

My impression is this: when there is social upheaval, these “liberal” or “laissez-faire” ideas pretty much disappear. They just don’t have much practical relevance to the struggles happening in the streets. So I think as our world today starts to implode, I think “laissez-faire” ideas will become less and less relevant. 

In fact, I read one paper that suggests that these cruel and inhumane anarcho-capitalist prescriptions are not in the best interests of the capitalist class. It is almost as though the anarcho-capitalists don’t know what is in the best interests of capitalists. Going after food stamps or going after gay rights. Very bad and ultimately self-defeating thinking.

The last thing a capitalist–a real capitalist not some Facebook capitalist–wants is to go back to what Mises is describing, i.e., violence and fighting in the streets and blood shed. Because a poor person might lose their car in a riot, but a rich person might lose a factory or an office building. The rich have a lot more to lose from naked violence in the streets as society starts to fall apart with lots of desperate hungry and unemployed people.

From what I have read, the 1960s era–back when the “evil” Civil Rights Laws were created–was basically a form of bribery by the capitalist class meant to “buy peace.” The story seems to be that too many radical groups were rioting in the streets threatening the property owners. In order to “buy peace,” the capitalists brought in Civil Rights Laws. So it actually makes more sense for capitalists to pay some taxes in order to protect their property from being burned to the ground. Yet these anarcho-capitalists don’t seem to see this. By being so stuck in their “absolutely true” ideology, they can’t see that it is in the best interest of capitalists to have Civil Rights Laws and other laws that keep the poor masses assuaged. But of course, that means some taxes–oh the tyranny! And so I suspect that these anarcho-capitalists will shoot themselves in the foot. In order to avoid some taxes up front for food stamps or civil rights, they will end up paying a lot more for private police forces needed to protect their property from total destruction at the hands of the angry mob of poor and destitute population.  Again, I think this speaks to the lack of practical consideration when it comes to most anarcho-capitalists. Yes, in theory taxes to pay for food stamps are “exploitation” and “aggression” against property owners. But, but, but! Practically, they might make a lot more sense in suppressing open revolt against your property claims.

Why I Think Anarcho-Syndicalism Has a Better Chance of Appealing to the Masses

I think that anarcho-syndicalism has a better chance of appealing to the masses because it speaks directly to the suffering and needs of the poor and underclasses. What I find very attractive is what the anarcho-syndicalists did in the 1920s in Italy. In an article entitled Italian Syndicalism and Fascism, we see that the masses of workers and the underclasses can strike at the root of power by going after the factories. Organizing the masses to go after the big property assets by occupying them can strike fear in the hearts of the existing ruling classes:

As Malatesta argued at the time of the factory occupations, “[i]f we do not carry on to the end, we will pay with tears of blood for the fear we now instil in the bourgeoisie.” Later events proved him right, as the capitalists and rich landowners backed the fascists in order to teach the working class their place. Tobias Abse correctly argues that the “aims of the Fascists and their backers amongst the industrialists and agrarians in 1921-22 were simple: to break the power of the organised workers and peasants as completely as possible, to wipe out, with the bullet and the club, not only the gains of the biennio rosso, but everything that the lower classes had gained . . . between the turn of the century and the outbreak of the First World War.”

Over the occupied factories, flew “a forest of red and black flags” as “the council movement outside Turin was essentially anarcho-syndicalist.” Railway workers refused to transport troops, workers broke into strikes against the orders of the reformist unions and peasants occupied the land. Such activity was “either directly led or indirectly inspired by anarcho-syndicalists.”

For me, let’s say we have 40 million Americans on food stamps. This is a very large group of people in a very precarious situation. I just do not see how they will gravitate towards the anarcho-capitalist message. Why would very poor people care about protecting the absolute property rights of the people who actually have property? For me, this is one of the fatal flaws with anarcho-capitalism. Why would members of a large underclass buy an ideology that tells them that there is something out there called “justly acquired property.” I think that saying that “justly acquired property” exists is a chimera.

Let me give you a simple example. My dad worked most of his life for General Motors Canada. Following anarcho-capitalism, everything he owns is unjust property. Why? First of all, my dad belonged to a very powerful labor union–the Canadian Autoworkers. But unions are in league with the devil remember! Enemies of the property owners, the shareholders in GM stock. But then of course, GM seems to be a recipient of government bailouts. I remember as a boy watching the TV when they were bailing out the car companies. It seems like car company bailouts happen every 10 years it seems. So even the “capitalists” are getting government subsidy money, but that is tax money–another act of property aggression! So everything about General Motors seems to suggest “tainted property” or “unjustly acquired property.” And I bet that one could do this for every industry.

Maybe the easiest way to show that all property (or at least most property) is “tainted” and therefore “unjustly acquired” is to point out that oil has pretty much touched everything. Plastic water bottles. Plastic pens. Gasoline to drive your car. Jet fuel to air mail a letter. Use oil to make electricity. Fertilizers apparently are made with oil and everyone needs to eat food.  And so on. The get a book such as William Engdahl’s book A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. What we find is that the entire history of oil is about violence, robbery, coup d’etats and so on. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “justly acquired property” acquired through “homesteading” and all the anarcho-capitalist justifications for “justly acquired property.”

Engdahl’s story of the history of oil begins with a story of land theft by the British:

But the trump card which Her Royal Britannic Majesty played in the final phase of the negotiations around the Baghdad railway was her ties with the Sheikh of Kuwait. In 1901, British warships off the Kuwait coast dictated to the Turkish government that henceforth they must consider the Gulf port located just below the Shaat al-Arab, controlled by the Anaza tribe of Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah, to be a ‘British protectorate.’

Turkey was at that point too economically and militarily weak to do other than feebly protest the de facto British occupation of this distant part of the Ottoman Empire. Kuwait in British hands blocked successful completion of the Berlin-Baghdad railway from important eventual access to the Persian Gulf waters and beyond. (24-25)

And again, from a practical point of view, the masses are not going to be impressed by esoteric arguments about property rights or theories on property rights origins, such as the idea that people own themselves (self-ownership) or original appropriation or homesteading theories.

But seizing factories and banks by having the workers and the poor–the underclasses–rising up when the economy totally tanks, well that is something that probably has a better chance of being sold to them. It is exactly what Mises said in my opening quote: power = public opinion. So, public opinion will be much more accepting of something like a factory occupation than listening to theoretical arguments about how “just property” emerged in some fairy tale past.

This seems to be the direction the world is heading, at least in America. Look at the Facebook posts I am reading or am posting. Get rid of food stamps! If the October 17, 2013 default happens, seniors will lose social security benefits! One of my British friends posted an article about how the UK government wants to strip all benefits from young adults under 25. What a horrific idea. So now you cut off 18-25 year olds. Let us assume they have no food, no housing, no school. What are they going to do? Sit around and read Rothbard about how the production process is supposedly distorted by central bank interest rate interventions? Or are they going to say: Fuck this! I have had enough! I bet they will take the Fuck this! option. It just seems much more natural. They will be prime targets, I think, for anarcho-syndicalism. But there seems to be little appeal of anarcho-capitalism to this group.

The beauty, I think, of anarcho-syndicalism is that it has all the right messages. It speaks of freedom and liberation. It speaks to the workers and the underclasses–hence it will have much broader appeal. It directly attacks concentrated power by occupying factories and other large businesses. It has perfect propaganda value: the workers seize the factories and then they fire the managers! Talk about role reversal. Now the poor people have jobs working in the occupied factories, and the rich are forced to suffer in the streets unemployed! There you go, you rich people! Enjoy the anarcho-capitalist system of absolutely no social safety nets! Enjoy your world without food stamps! Have a taste of your own medicine.

There is also an indirect effect going on here. One can talk about the “free market” and “market mechanisms” until you turn blue in the face. But, will it all work? I think it was around 1920 that Benjamin Tucker–the famous American individualist anarchist–wrote that he was losing faith in the idea of simply saying that the free market will smash the existing powers. The initial plan seems to have been simply to throw the country onto a free market. Then competition would eventually destroy usury, i.e., things like rent and interest and profit. Capitalism would be destroyed by letting the free market work its magic. But by 1920 he made an important observation. Although free market competition is an important force, it is only one force at work. There are other forces working in the opposite direction. One of these “opposing forces” is concentrated capital. In other words, even if you were to create a perfectly free market tomorrow, the existing concentrated capital and the existing banking sector could negate the whole free market process.

Is Benjamin Tucker right? I don’t know. I suspect that he might be. If the US government were to disappear tomorrow, I seriously doubt that the owners of capital are going to just sit by idly to let the free market take over and destroy all of their rents, profits, and interest income. So they will need to hobble the free market, which means they will need some sort of government or state. Maybe this will take the form of a “private state” as opposed to a “public state.” But I seriously doubt that existing capital will let the free market forces come back. And maybe just the existing concentrated capital makes the idea of reestablishing a free market impossible or nearly impossible.

But a mass poverty induced movement toward anarcho-syndicalism might solve this problem. If the workers and the underclasses can smash concentrated capital by taking over all the factories and banks and other large institutions, then property will no longer be concentrated in the hands of the few. Now, all property will be in the hands of the many, i.e., the poor, the workers, the underclasses, the students and so on. And so, now you can actually talk about having a “free market” based on “voluntary exchanges” because now you don’t have this concentrated capital problem that Benjamin Tucker was worried about around 1920. This is because anarcho-syndicalism, by putting capital into the hands of like 90% or more of the population, implies that social relationships will be far more equal. Now, ideas that tend to be more anarcho-capitalist will make more sense: exchange, voluntary transactions, choice, competition, creative destruction and innovation and so on. Now more people can experiment because now more people have access to capital. This would actually support the whole entrepreneurial emphasis of anarcho-capitalism. What I am trying to say is that anarcho-syndicalism is a means for “unlocking” concentrated capital and getting capital out there for many people–maybe even most people–to utilize. It also prevents existing capital owners from re-establishing some sort of “private state” which is exactly what I fear would happen if anarcho-capitalism were to be imposed. This is because I don’t see how anarcho-capitalism will destroy all the existing “unjustly acquired” property. How will it undo all the previous property distributions—all these unjustly acquired property distributions? My impression is that anarcho-capitalists assume that they can just run with the existing distributions as though existing distributions are our starting point for the new right wing libertarian world. But if Benjamin Tucker is right, then the free market mechanisms won’t kick in–things will stay pretty much as they are because of existing concentrated capital. And so there will still be a highly skewed society (many poor; few rich) without any free market mechanisms going on to give us all these rosy solutions of “voluntary exchanges” and “choice” and “competition.”

But anarcho-syndicalism pretty much guarantees that concentrated capital will be smashed. Capital will now be widely held. This makes talk of free market solutions sound much more viable now. Now with smashed concentrated capital since the workers own all the capital (the many own all the means of production–I do not mean to “literally” smash physical capital; what I mean is that concentrated capital in the hands of a few has been smashed, so now that physical capital is owned by the masses), now solutions desired by people such as Benjamin Tucker could very well be implemented. Now we can have many choices and competition and now talking about “free market processes” actually makes some sense. It also means that the idea of having the police protecting property has come to an end. One might need some sort of police to protect possessions, but there really is no need now for police to protect property. This is because property–the idea of “excluding people from access to the means of production”–no longer exists in any practical sense.

I am going to conclude by saying that one could use anarcho-syndicalism with its appealing messages to break up the existing concentrated capital problem. You take advantage of the growing underclass as the economy tanks. Then, non-capitalist free market solutions will probably work. So I see anarcho-syndicalism as a possible means to the end of non-capitalist free market solutions. And of course, maybe syndicalism will carry on. I am not sure exactly how this would play out. But I do think it would be better for the masses and especially the growing under class to go this way.

More Thoughts on Prayers for Bobby

In the movie, Prayers for Bobby, one comment is made when the family goes to the psychiatrist that I don’t know what to make of it. She tells the family that Bobby’s “confusion” might be caused by:

1. A distant father
2. Overbearing mother

For me personally, I know that I have both. Nevertheless, I do not think that my father’s distant nature or my mother’s incessant nagging caused me to be attracted to men for the most part.  I say “for the most part” because when I reflect on my life, I would say that I probably have spent 80% of my time thinking about men and maybe 20% of my time thinking about women. So I don’t think of myself as exclusively gay; I think of myself as being bisexual with strong gay tendencies. 

Let me begin by talking about my dad.

This cartoon clip seems to capture the nature of my relationship with my dad. When I was growing up, we were always kind of distant. He worked a lot at General Motors, and I know that it was very hard on him. Working in a factory–not some cushy office job–is not an easy thing. When I was 17 he took my brother and me on a factory plant tour. I bet you that my father probably has hearing problems because it was so loud. The smashing of steel. I had to wear ear protection and still it was so loud. Much more recently, my dad won some Ontario Labor appeal and was found to be physically disabled because of his job. It doesn’t surprise me because factory work is hard and taxing on the body. When you work in factories for 25+ years, physical injuries like what my dad has in his shoulder is to be expected. 

I know why my dad did what he did. He wanted me and my brother to have a better life. He wanted us to have safer careers. I think that is why he moved us to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario from St. Catharines, Ontario, i.e., from the city to the neighboring small town. The idea seemed to be that we would be safer going to a smaller rural high school than going to a big city high school. 

Niagara District Secondary School

My dad was always kind of distant. He spent so much time working. When he would come home from work, he was always working on various projects. He bricked our driveway, and he bricked our patio. He did all of his car and boat engine repairs himself. And so on. My dad was really big on doing everything himself. Or he would get my brother or me or both to help out. For example, when our roof was leaking and the shingles obviously needed to be replaced, we were up there and we changed them all ourselves. 

So I would never blame my dad and say that his emotional distance “made me gay.” I would say that because we do not have a strong relationship that causes me to not come out of the closet to him. I have told my mom, but I have not told him. I fear that he would never accept me. But he certainly did not cause my gayness. 

And then there is my mother. My mother has a heart of gold. I can tell that she loves me so much and she only wants the best for me. She worries about me interminably. However, she does have a tendency to be rather overbearing–just as Bobby’s mother was overbearing to him. When I was a teenager, I suffered from really bad acne. My mother would just never let it go. She was always on my back–your pimples, your pimples, your pimples. It drove me nuts. Her solicitous nature comes across as incessant nagging. I know she means well, and I know she just wants the best for me. 

I think what is going on with my mom is what tends to go on inside my brain a lot, namely, we want to control something we can’t. I want to control so many things so that they go “my way” but they don’t. Similarly, I think my mom has this halcyonic view of what my life was supposed to be like and I turned out to be the complete opposite. I am not going to be giving her grandchildren. I am not going to be a Christian like she is because I abandoned my Christian upbringing. That tergiversation on my part from Christianity was a long and slow process but rooted in a realization that my profession of Christianity was superficial. Deep down, my heart was just not in it. 

So I would never say that my mother or my father caused me to be gay or bisexual or somewhere in between. 

I can recall very vividly my first moment when I noticed that I was very strongly attracted to a guy. I was still in elementary school. I would guess that I was around 10 years old at the time, and I was helping out in the school’s office. I was supposed to be handling phone calls. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what the heck I was doing, so apparently instead of putting parents on hold I was actually hanging up on them! It was all unintentional, trust me! 🙂 

In the local newspaper there was a black and white picture of a student from my school. He was one year behind me. I just couldn’t stop looking at his picture. There was just something about his face that I could not stop admiring. He was absolutely gorgeous. So I furtively “smuggled” the newspaper home so I could cut out his picture and keep it hidden in my desk drawer. Every time I looked at it, I got so excited. I was really turned on by him. 

How does any of this bear on my parents? I just don’t see it. I don’t see how there could be a causal link between my father being emotionally distant and my gayness. Similarly, I don’t see how there could be a causal link between my mother being domineering and my gayness. 

I don’t know why I felt this strong attraction to him when I was around 10 years old, but I know that I felt it. It was a very powerful feeling. 

When I think about all of the guys about whom I have fantasized, I wonder if my attraction to men at a physical level has to do with aesthetics. I seem to find male faces beautiful. For example, when I see pictures of guys from my elementary school days and my high school days–i.e., guys I liked from back then–I still find their faces beautiful. I am talking about maybe a 14 year+ aging process. But if I do the same with elementary and high school females, I find them all to be hideous. I just do not find them attractive. I remember just a little while ago seeing a few of them and I was like: “I found that girl attractive when I was in Grade 10! Really! No way!” 

So maybe there is something about facial structures that my brain tends to seek out at some sort of unconscious level. I can tell that my eyes tend to gravitate towards looking at male faces over female and I do tend to find the male face much more beautiful than most female faces. 

I have also noticed that there is something about the way he talks that I find attractive. His word choice and his soothing nature when talking with him are things that definitely turn me on. It is something about how he talks to me that gets me going. I don’t know how to describe it; maybe it is an ineffable thing? 

So maybe the combination of a beautiful face with a sweet and gentle personality explains why I am attracted to certain males instead of other males or instead of females. 

Now, can I “pin” any of this on my parents? Is there parenting style of distant father and overbearing mother in any way responsible for my behavior? At this point I would say, I don’t think so, but maybe I am wrong. 

When I was 10 years old, I don’t recall being depressed or angry at my parents. I can think of some events that happened later in life when I was starting high school for instance and I had this fight about having friends over to the house. But when I think back to when I was 10, I think I was a very happy child. 

These are some of my inchoate ideas. I just can’t see blaming my parents for my gayness as the psychiatrist in Prayers for Bobby tries to do. 

For me, the questions I will ponder now (and maybe write about later!) are:

1. Why do I find male faces so attractive? Why this preference for male faces over female faces?
2. Why do I find male faces attractive over the long term? For me, thinking back to my elementary/high school days is about 14 years ago, yet I can still find those faces to be very attractive.
3. Why do I tend to have very transitory attractions to female faces? 
4. Why do I tend to view so many older female faces as hideous and disgusting? 
5. Why do I find the way some men talk to be so attractive? What is it exactly that makes their speech pattern and vocabulary etc., so alluring? 
6. Is there some sort of aesthetic explanation to homosexual attractions? 
7. Is there some sort of linguistic explanation to homosexual attractions? Maybe there is something in Noam Chomsky’s writings that might touch upon this?