Libertarian socialists have long consistently defined socialism as meaning direct democratic decentralized worker control over the means of production. See the I.W.W. or Noam Chomsky for starters if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Authoritarians will say anything they think will give them more power, so it doesn’t really matter how they define socialism or capitalism, it’s just self-serving distortion.

Don’t tell me there aren’t libertarian versions of socialism, I happen to have lived and worked with a collective of libertarian socialists when I was

“Capitalism” connotes cigar smoking, corporate fat cats toting bags of money.

“Laissez faire” is as often used perjoratively to describe dog-eat-dog competition, or careless indifference.

“Market” suggests some Invisible Hand deity worshipped by the Right that most of the world does not believe in.

“Anarcho-” anything says Molotov cocktail.

“Enterprise” means creative, problem-solving, boldly going where no man has gone before.

I assume you mean self-employment.

Carson also writes,

“in common usage, among establishment libertarians and what passes for mainstream ‘free market’ wonks, any country that hasn’t adopted Marxian socialism as its official ideology is ‘capitalist.’”

…
This assumption underlies most mainstream “free market” commentary in the business press and business news channels: even when they explictly refer to “our free market system” in so many words, they really mean a system in which most business enterprise is nominally “private.” No matter how statist a system of regulations is in effect, so long as they’re exercised primarily through “private” actors, and most money passes through the hands of such “private” actors rather than the U.S. Treasury, it’s a “free market” system. Hence, the kind of “free market” agenda you see at places like Heritage and the Adam Smith Institute for “privatizing” government functions by contracting them out to “private businesses,” even when those businesses are guaranteed a profit at taxpayer expense.

It seems to me that by this argument that “free market” is just as bad a term as “capitalism” is for describing the …. free society that we favor (I don’t know what to call it any more). So, do we have to be anti-capitalist and anti-free market too? What terms are we permitted to use to describe our preferred social system?

Carson also writes:

“Mises answer to Rothbard above–aside from confusing a “market for capital goods” with a market for equity in firms–implies that, no matter how economically unfree, a country in which most business enterprise is absentee-owned by the owners of concentrated wealth, and most labor is hired for wages by such absentee owners, passes muster as “capitalist.” Presumably a country in which wealth was so widely distributed, and self-employment and cooperative ownership were such primary forms of social organization that stock trading was marginal in importance, would fall on the “socialist” side of Mises line–even if there were no regulatory constraints whatsoever on market exchange and the free movement of prices.”

Interesting point about how Mises equates capital goods with equity in corporations. I’ve wondered that myself. Still, the pro-”capitalist” (in the libertarian sense), is of course in favor of (real, not nominal) private ownership of all property, including capital, where firm-equity is just a subset of capital.

I don’t agree with Carson’s apparent view that absentee-owned property is not legitimate. I believe this view is unlibertarian, as I have noted in A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy.

I find astonishing his apparent/implicit claim that in a free society, you could have a prosperous, advanced economy based primarily on “coops” and self-ownership. But I’d be glad to have a free society so we could try it out.

I’m trying to square that with how the “progressives” put up a complete joke of a Presidential candidate and got 67 million votes (the other socialist got 58 million). How long have Fabians been around now? [sigh]

That ‘s why I will side with Professor Reisman, calling myself a pro-capitalist.

Pretty much you did, yeah.

This doesn’t answer my point. To say “libertarian” leaves unresolved what type of libertarian. Since there are different types (including those that disparage labor and elevate capital), this is unsatisfactory.

I didn’t say we should side with workers or owners of capital (I side with both under free-market conditions). But there is much libertarian material that seems to side against labor and to elevate capital. I want to distinguish myself from it.

Maybe I missed it, where is the siding with conservatives or liberals? This entire discussion was about PR, right? Are you just against PR on principle?

I personally divide the world up into the 1% “players” and the 99% “played”. I want to help the played, whatever they are scared of (and whatever that is is what makes them “left” or “right”), reject the players and their schemes. A lot of the played who are ready to see the light consider themselves to be “workers”.

““I differ with you, apparently, on the need for or viability of some of the more Marxian-sounding worker-centric/communal/localist ideas.”

“Worker centricism preceded Marx and was a theme of such libertarians as Hodgskin and Spencer and Spooner and Tucker (and his circle). It only sounds Marxist because libertarians stupidly abandoned it, presumably, under the “the friend of my enemy is my enemy” doctrine. IOW, “I don’t like Marxists. Marxists side with workers against capitalists; therefore I side with capitalists against workers.” Nonsense, of course.”

We should “side with” neither workers nor capitalists; we favor freedom and property rights and the free market, which would contain a rich diversity of market actors and institutions, including workers and “capitalists”. Everyone benefits. The fetish with “workers” is not required by nor part of libertarianism.

“Re left and right: within the broad category of libertarianism there are some important differences in emphasis and nuance that stem, in part, from the fact that many libertarians began as conservatives and retain vestiges of conservatism I need not elaborate here. The prefixes “left” and “right” are useful in referring to these differences.”

Sure. Many libertarians start on the right. And some start on the left. But once one evolves out of these flawed ideas and is a libertarian, one is a libertarian. Libertarianism is neither left nor right. Both left and right are flawed and evil. In fact the very left-right spectrum is based on confusion.