Ironies Never Cease: Great Moments In Libertarian History
Why have I never posted about Yasha Levine over at The Exiled? They’re the ones that first broke this story about Koch luring Hayek to America with Social Security, and I make a point to put down my coffee when reading Yasha, to avoid expensive and embarrassing spit-takes.
Just a week ago he gave us this:
More Great Moments In Libertarian History: Ancient Sumerian Word For “Libertarian” Was “Deadbeat”, “Freeloader”
… If you go onto one of the Liberty Fund’s project websites, the Library for Economics & Liberty, you’ll find this ancient cuneiform symbol at the footer of the home page:The Liberty Fund-backed website goes on to explain that the significance of the amagi symbol goes deeper than just the word “liberty.” It represents the first popular struggle against big government tyranny
Except it doesn’t (emphasis mine):
What the history-failures at Liberty Fund hilariously mistranslated was that the term “return to mother” is Sumerian-speak for “jubilee”–as in “debt forgiveness” or “freedom from debt.”
Here’s how David Graeber explains it in his brilliant book Debt: The First 5,000 Years:…Sumerian word amargi, the first recorded word for “freedom” in any known human language, literally means “return to mother”—since this is what freed debt-peons were finally allowed to do.
If you haven’t read Graeber, run don’t walk. In the meantime, read Yasha (too much good copy to highlight; read it all):
So in other words, amagi’s not about “freedom” from government interference at all–it’s about welching on your debts and sending Sumerian deadbeats back home to mooch off mommy. “Moochers,” “deadbeats,” “debt welchers”–Now that sounds more like the true face of libertarianism!
Despite the misunderstanding—or maybe because of it—the amagi symbol has become all the rage with baggertarian youngins’ all across the USA, many of whom have been known to get their pasty white hides branded with “deadbeat 4-ever” tats en masse at Koch-sponsored Free State campouts.
So does this make them moocher-bashing moochers? Or maybe closet-freeloader freeloaderphobes?
We’d like to thank Koch operative Peter Eyre for taking the time to maintain an up-to-date bagtard tat page, which includes a big collection of Sumerian deadbeat tats, as well as a nice range of other freemarket groupie ink. Eyre’s got himself branded a “deadbeat” in 2007, back before it was considered cool:
Cross-posted at Asymptosis.
my sumerian is a bit rusty… it’s been four thousand years since i studied it in school … but sometimes details matter
is it amagi or amargi?
Transliteration, I’m thinkin’. You choose.
“So in other words, amagi’s not about “freedom” from government interference at all….”
And, since the king called Jubilees, amagi/amargi is freedom by virtue of government intervention.
The old testament was full of jubilees. If you think about it, they make sense. Most economic systems result in a concentration of money and power in relatively few hands. This usually has pernicious effects. One of these is a particular problem for kings. When someone gets enough money and power, they figure the next step is replacing the existing king. By reseting a broad range of the transactions that resulted in those concentrations of money and power, the king could win favor among his subjects, as most of them would benefit from a jubilee, and also weaken potential rivals. (This is why certain folks fume against federal tyranny while encouraging state and local level tyranny.)
The old testament is full of a lot of non-capitalist stuff. For example, the crops at the edges of your fields and anything not harvested on the first pass belonged to the poor. That probably includes any IP, so take that Monsanto.
the blog at the Library for Economics & Liberty is the only place on the web where i’ve been banned from commenting…
Context is everything, isn’t it.
It is astounding to me how many people act on seemingly small amounts of information from any source without question. The good news is that it will be very easy to identify a Tea Partier in the future by the amagi tatoo on their hide.
That’s why cattle are branded. If you think about the normal range of human behavior and capabilities you will suddenly understand that the concept of “normal” intelligence assumes that half of the population is below that measure and only only about 12.5% is meaningfully above average. That results in a lot of really dumb people.
Jack
you want to be a little careful about this. someone might say “only about 1% have intelligence that is meaningfully above average.” meanwhile the President and his elite advisors have high enough i.q.’s but they are profoundly stupid. Similarly I have met many libertarians who have i.q.’s they are quite proud of, and they are profoundly stupid.
i don’t take the iq of people i meet, but some of them have had no education and don’t sound like they would care very much for what passes as education in the schools, but they seem quite adequately intelligent about their own affairs. sadly, they are easily led by Fox news. but perhaps no more easily led than the “educated” are by NPR.
Bob S
not so sure. good chance the debtor’s debt was taxes to the king. so freedom from debt might be freedom from taxes, which would suit the libertarians down to the ground.
The old testament is full of a lot of non-capitalist stuff
not surprising, since capitalism would not be invented for another two or three thousand years.
Even as a libertarian, I have to admit this is pretty funny stuff.
Coberly: “good chance the debtor’s debt was taxes to the king”
Perhaps in part, but no. Read Graeber. Brilliant stuff. Actual historical knowledge. (Plus, yes, quite a bit of axe grinding.)
@poppies: “Even as a libertarian, I have to admit this is pretty funny stuff.”
Love it. I have to admit that much of my frustration with the right is their seemingly complete lack of humor. Where’s their Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
I’m glad I had nothing in my mouth when I read “up-to-date bagtard tat page“.
That’s almost ironic as the Obama regime keeping Gitmo open, extending the Bush tax cuts, targeting U.S. citizens for death, foisting a “payroll tax holiday”, etc. Of course the libertarian thing is just a symbol. The policies of the Democratic Party’s leader actually kill people and/or impovrish them. But here’s something even more funny…99% of the so-called Progressives who read and comment at this blog will vote for him in November!
Obama has the luxury of running to the center. That makes the right ever more radicalized in opposition.
LJ–You know, O didn’t ask my advice when he kept the worst policies of the Bush admin and even expanded the war in Afghanistan. So, I don’t defend this President’s foreign policy. As for voting for him, I don’t know that I will. Not liberal enough. NancyO
Intelligence is a necessary, but insufficient trait to assure rational thinking and behavior. The emotive aspect enters into our observations and comprehension of the external world. We act accordingly to the benefit of many, only a few or no one at all. Worse yet, we can’t always tell what level of benefit we will achieve unless intelligence over comes emotion, which includes avarice.
little john,
I won’t be voting for Obama (nor can I see voting for his Republican opponent or the candidate of any of the other “major” minor parties), but I can sympathize with those who will. After all, the probable alternativees aren’t likely to provide better policies.
If the choice is between Romney or Obama, this shouldn’t be that difficult.
Vanilla or chocolate. There is no other flavor that’s going to be vended in 2012.
Protest votes will defend your ideological purity but if the worse alternative wins you will suffer directly thereby.
The ~ 6 million purity voters in 1932 Germany got to experience the fallout of their purity most directly and rather surprisingly quickly. Most of their leaders imprisoned or exiled within a year’s time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_November_1932
I’m not saying the Republicans are on the order of NSDAP, but one would think the lesson of the damage the Republicans did to this country 2001-2005 would give purity voters some perspective.
Ms. NO-Don’t waiver and change your mind and vote for the “best of the worst”.
Mr. cactus-I had no doubt you would stick to your guns.
Mr. Troy-Nazi allusions? From your previous comments I believed you were too thoughtful for that kind of stuff. Nonetheless, 33% of respondents will vote for an international war criminal, crypto-Peterson Social Security dismantler, betrayer of the Constitution, etc.
If I had a better choice I would take it.
Not that my vote in California matters one way or the other. If the child-rapist can’t win this state without my vote he will be nowhere close to 270 EVs anyway.
I made no Nazi allusion, btw. I was describing a dynamic that happened in 1932 at the end of Weimar Germany, when the purists voted for purity and then found themselves out of power forever for that obvious-at-the-time idelogically-driven mistake.
Troy
i am not sure — just don’t know enough — that the “purists” could have changed things with their vote. If you want a better lesson for today: they couldn’t change things because they didn’t know how to get the people to have a better choice.
“might be freedom from taxes, which would suit the libertarians down to the ground.“
Don’t give them any ideas.
My daughters response to this post was: That’s why the first rule in getting a tattoo is to make sure what you are getting says what you think it says.
Bullshit. It may not have Ben called capitalism, but the economic structure of the Roman Empire at its height, dominated by the Equites (the class below the Patricians and above the Plebians and somewhat misleadingly translated as ‘Knights’) was thoroughly capitalistic.
Now this fact was pretty inconvenient for both branches of 18th and 19th liberal economics (Classical/Neo-Lib schools on one side, Marxists on the other) which were both invested in capital P Progress as opposed to those holding to a somewhat older conception of Renaissance (literally ‘re-birth’). The result being a total discount of economic history’s before 1492 (the traditional dividing point between the Medieval and Modern eras, and only partly because of Columbus).
It is rather amusing to see the back-flips and contortions of so-called historians of capitalism to wave away hundreds and even thousands of years of capital accumulation and deployment by appealing to such things as “the Feudal Mode of Production” and “the Dark Ages”. Such are the handcuffs of Historicism as assisted by tunnel vision focused on northern France, western Germany, and southern England. In that way you can force Capitalism into its Procrustean Adam Smith bed, just lop off or stretch inconvenient appendages whether geographical or historical. But I have yet to see a convoimcimg rebuttal of the claim that the Roman Empire pre-‘Barbarian Invasions’ was dominated economically by a capitalist class (the Equites) even as agricultural lands were still controlled largely by the Patricians (any resemblance to Britain in the late 17th early 18th century not being a coincidence-not exactly anyway)
No wonder why tat removal is a rapidly growing business today. You’re supposed to “think” first, according to Daniel’s daughter, and only some economists believe consumers typically do this.
Bruce
as always i defer to your superior knowledge of history. still, to the best of my knowledge the old testament was written before the “Age of Rome,” and whatever actual “capitalism” was practiced, was not, I think, “rationalized” as a system of economics. I could be wrong. Easily.
pjr
my god, whatever happened to “economic man” or “ratioinal actors”?
Yeah, but what the corporatist media call “the center” is pretty far to the right by my reckoning. After all, they’re talking about Romney now being able to “turn to the center.” Do you think he’s going to come out in favor of increased income taxes on the 2%? For chrissake, they call Grassley a “centrist.”
coberly, I believe in the rational actor as much as I believe in the existence of the ancient gods of Rome. A myth is a myth.