User talk:Ruadh

Is it true that you're the latest incarnation of Mihnea? --Christofurio 20:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

On the assumption that you are ... what is the deal with a "social contract theory" that really only means "the law is the law"? Do we gain anything from that tautology?

An anarchist of any sort (and that includes Marxists who take the "withering away" promise seriously) is someone who believes that law as an institution, as the term is normally understood within a context of sovereignty is illegitimate. In other words, that law is nothing but force, and distinctions between lawful and unlawful force are themselves supported by nothing.

A social contract theory is an effort to supply a something is response to that nothing, to say "this implicit contract IS what supports that distinction."

To start off by expounding what you called a social contract theory was interesting enough. But then when I expressed surprise at how mystical this supposed contract was, you replied, "it isn't mystical at all. Its simply the law."

So social contract is just a synonym for the law, and the "theory" is just the tautology for "law is law"! This doesn't answer the original challenge though. Law remains unsupported by something other than itself, sometimes under different names.

I'm not in prison as I write. So I generally obey laws. This means ... what? I've signed a contract? Should it dissuade me from being an anarchist? If so, explain why? That is always the challenge of social contract theory. It is the point of having one.

Suppose I believe the humann race will be better off, as a whole, when there is no sovereignty any more, and accordingly when there are no laws. Does any "social contract" theory prove that wrong? How? If I believe that, shouldn't I do what I can to undermine sovereignty, if only by (lawfully) spreading the idea that its phony and dysfunctional? Or am I honor bound as a supposed contractor to lie? Why?

Or, let me try again. A mugger comes up to me one day while I'm out walking alone. He sticks a gun in my ribs and demands my wallet. I hand him a wallet, and he walks away happy. Little does he know that in our little story I was anticipating such an eventuality. I was carrying an extra wallet, and one of them was filled with tissue paper. My ruse works. He walks off with the money-less wallet without checking it until I'm out of sight. Question for a social contract theorist (or at least for the sort of social contract theorist that you seem to make yourself out to be) did I do something wrong?

It seems to me that to be consistent, you have to say that by offering him a show of obediance unless coercion, I "signed the contract" with him. So I owed him obediance. But that sounds rather absurd to those of us whose instincts are decayed by too much bad philosophy.

Surely, to undecayed folk, the mugger is the one in the wrong here, and my contrived get away is legitimate self defense. In which case: how does coerced obediance to the law (which is all that signing the social contract means, on your reading as you've conveyed it to me) bind me to any real obediance whenever I have a choice? How does it prove anarchism wrong? Anarcho-cap or any other? You seem to think the social contract theory in the might-makes-right form in which you've provided it does score some points against anarchism, but you've defined it in such a narrow self-referential way that you haven't made at all clear why it should.

--Christofurio 15:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

But you often tell me, when I quiz you about such points, "I wasn't speaking for myself at all, just using hypothetical premises." When I prove them to be worthless, they become 'hypothetical' or, worse yet, you attribute them to me. Never yet have you attributed any of these 'premises' to me with any actual basis in anything I've said, although I've spoken of my own views here in various Talk pages and my own user page so that if you wanted to work from my premises, as you've sometimes claimed, you would have plenty of material whence to work.

Hegel once said, "Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word." I found that in the "positive liberty" article. Isn't it a marvellous piece of evidence of how worthless a character Hegel was? Science would have told him that matter has no weight unless it happens to be near a larger body.

At any rate, one of my conclusions (not a premise) from history is that Hegel is the cause of most of the modern world's troubles, and the magisterial way in which he presumes to legislate for all future physics by telling us what the "fundamental character" of matter must be is an example of the over-weening arrogance of the b**tard. No wonder both Stalin and Hitler were acorns from that tree. They fell from different branches, but Hegel is the tree.

"Error exists" is probably a more secure starting point in the struggle against methodical doubt than the one Descartes employed. Meanwhile, too few of us believe that we may have a plank in our own eye, while we look intently for the motes in the other fellows. But the notion of the historical dialectic, precisely because it sees rightness emerging through historic conflicts, tends to license ruthlessness by the victors -- who, after all, have proved their rightness by their victory. What you see as a "strength" looks like a weakness to me. Okay, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Still ... Mihnea has sought to explain to me that it is illogical for anyone to believe "this picture is beautiful" without believing that the statement "this picture is not beautiful" must be wrong! I certainly believe of a lot of pictures that they are beautiful, without believing that the contrary assertion must be wrong. It is a matter of context, etc. But that is an example, in a relatively harmless sphere, of the ruthlessness and destruction that diamat encourages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.206.189.3 (talk) 02:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"Anti-Marxism" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Anti-Marxism and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 14 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. MB 14:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)