Author: Camilo Gómez

I studied Philosophy at the National University of San Marcos. My main interests are politics, music and film.

Crony Capitalism with a Human Face

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Left-wing academics always blame capitalism as the root of all problems of the world today from poverty to war, from racism to patriarchy. They had use capitalism as a synonym of free markets and property rights. Left-libertarians tend to oppose that but I don’t think much people is listening to that. There had historically attempts to reform capitalism some even talk about capitalism with a human face to referring to a form of capitalism that is not global corporate structure of profit but few on the left had defended these models. When Hillary Clinton in the last debate defended capitalism against Bernie Sanders she mentions the capitalism of small business but this isn’t the kind of capitalism that her husband defended. In the 90s the Clintons embraced supposed third way that was neither capitalism neither socialist but I think took the worst elements of both and lastly never took the form of social democracy but it was a form of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is maybe the essence of crony capitalism meaning the marriage between big government and big business with a cut of social services. For the primaries she try to portray herself as a progressive but there are a lot of doubts about the convictions of her statements.

But is Bernie Sanders really different, yes he says he is socialist but a model like the New Deal was born to save capitalism and wants a New New Deal. He is in favor of massive military industrial complex. I recognized that Sanders is one of the few politicians that had the courage to call himself a socialist in United States and contrary to Hillary, Sanders positions with the exception of foreign policy are the same as when he was a young radical. But there is not a real thought about thinking beyond capitalism even the Green Party which in its platform said they to abolish corporate capitalism, they also support another of New Deal called the Green New Deal.

What about the GOP? Libertarians blame the GOP for giving a bad name to capitalism. I once found on Green Party page a comment like that “If the GOP were smart, they would nominate Hillary. She agrees with most of their wretched policies but also is electable”. I suppose that despite the rhetoric the GOP and Democratic Party stand for more or less the same kind of corporatism. After all are neocons really defenders of free markets, I think no one in their right mind could say that. Maybe Hillary Clinton is crony capitalism with a human face.

Jim Webb, Tulsi Gabbard and the Future of the Democratic Party

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb speaks at an event at the public library in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Thursday, April 9, 2015. Jim Webb and Martin O'Malley are both in Iowa, trying to establish themselves as the alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

There has been for a long time a problem for identity in the Democratic Party since the days that George McGovern, the liberalism that he promote was found repulsive but a lot of people in Middle America. Jimmy Carter southern populism was consider weak on foreign policy. Bill Clinton won on a neoliberal platform of corporativism and hawkish foreign policy. The Bush years made some liberals consider an alliance with libertarians against neoconservative republicans in that years the name of Brian Schweitzer sound strongly as an antiwar, anti-tax, pro-gun rights ans pro-privacy kind of candidate but when the 2008 primaries come both Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson who were somehow close to that ideal do very badly in the elections. Civil libertarians like Russ Feingold and Mark Udall had lost their seats and the Democratic Party has embraced identity politics as their main credo. The party hasn’t completely rejected neoliberalism or liberal interventionism but their main issues are cultural not economical.

Jim Webb has supposed to change that. Having been a Vietnam War veteran and Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. He became the antiwar hero of 2006 becoming a Democratic senator from Virginia. He’s by no standard a pacifist, even some neocon publications respect his positions on foreign policy. But he is still the most thoughtful democrat when it comes to international relations. He wants American foreign policy to focus more on China than the Middle East but at the same time he understands the that the current conflicts are product of the implicit alliance between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists. On economics he is a populist who wants more government intervention but I don’t think to the level of the dreams of Bernie Sanders. On gun rights he is closer to the position of Bernie Sanders that is shared both by people in rural areas and military families. He has issues with affirmative action and while is not for open borders with the time has been more supportive of immigration reform. He’s not a environmentalist and supports coal.

The reactions to his performance at the debate had been mixed from some praising to some criticism. I don’t think really that debates were the reason why is doing so badly. He is after all is one of the few democrats which focus on the possibility for the party to regain white voters from rural areas that had been abandoned  by the party for their insensitivity toward cultural issues while the majority of the party is focusing on identity politics for only relying on minorities. Jim Antle argue that if Jim Webb left the Democratic Party for McGovern then he leave the Republican Party for Bush, now he is man without party. I disagree, I think that actually one of recent figures of the Democratic Party, a young congresswoman that in a lot of positions is closer to Webb than any of the old rural democrats. Tulsi Gabbard is a rising star congresswoman representing Hawaii, she is of Samoan descent and is the only Hindu American in Congress. One would think than in the party of identity politics she would be a progressive queen but like Webb she is a former veteran who on foreign policy sounds very independent even questioned the Iran Deal. Webb was saying that debates were rigged while Gabbard was calling for more debates. Webb had been praised from National Review, Gabbard too. A devout Hare Krishna and a surfer, the socially conservative positions of his relatives get her in problems in democratic primaries. Jim Webb wants to run as an independent but maybe he could work with democrats while a fresh face like Tulsi Gabbard would advance the cause of realism and independence inside the Democratic Party. I’m a non-interventionist but I think the realist challenge in foreign policy of people like Jim Webb on hawks like Hillary Clinton still could help define the future of the Democratic Party. Webb is a warrior which is still could have a last fight against a totalitarian leader.

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The historical legacy of American Socialism

The recent book The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History by Jack Ross, a contributor to this blog, is a must-read for anyone interested in the meaning of American socialism. The books starts in the nineteen century with the early socialists of America, some more close to Marx and others more similar to Bakunin. What seems to be the center of the book is American social democracy, but when Ross speaks about social democracy, he doesn’t refer to the Keynesianism of liberals like Paul Krugman, but the populist Jeffersonian decentralism of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas.

Both Debs and Thomas are central to history of American socialism. The book refers to Debs as biggest champion in American history of the cause of free speech. Being imprisoned for a political speech in the context of World War I, there are few politicians that could match his anti-imperialism and conviction, and Ross mentions a possible kindred spirit in the present, the conservative libertarian Ron Paul.

Debs was a five time presidential candidate, a man who came from a prosperous immigrant family from Terre Haute, Indiana but who gave his life to the cause of workers and peace. Ross mentions that if Debs had been the presidential candidate of the Populist Party, history could have been very different; if the socialists would have gotten the endorsement from the unions, they might have been able to become an organization similar to social democratic parties in Europe. Ross makes clear his admiration for Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister opposed to both the New Deal and World War II, who ran six times for president as a candidate of the Socialist Party of America. Like Debs, Thomas was an anti-imperialist whose commitment to peace made him an ally of the Old Right.

Both Debs and Thomas were patriots in the most profound sense of the word; like the early socialists, their cause was a new American revolution against the oppression of capitalism, but their desired model was very different from Marxian European Socialism.

Why socialism failed to take root in the United States is question that gnaws at the edges of the book. While there is not one answer, Jack Ross thinks that the early days of the Socialist Party were crucial to their tragic future, because despite the fact that Eugene Debs was a true hero for the working class, the Socialist Party could never build a strong alliance with national labor organizations. I think there is some truth to that but the question of race is very important; the ties of socialists with racists and even with the Ku Klux Klan in some regions generate a strong problem with minorities in the days of Debs despite that he and important of the leadership of the Socialist Party were anti-racist. Also the question of Zionism made some Jewish socialists change their anti-interventionist position.

The text attempts to refute the Popular Front narrative that has been common in the history of the American Left — the role of communism and especially the Communist Party USA were overstated in the historiography of the Cold War. Though the Popular Front realignment was due largely to communists, it is very hard to think that this explains why some radicals support the Democratic Party today. Socialism was misunderstood in the context of Cold War as a synonym for communism, despite that in the American tradition they were particularly opposed to one another.

The attempt to defend the historic American social democracy is complex, because today social democracy is synonym of left-liberalism and identity politics. Maybe Milwaukee could be an interesting example for the history of American socialism, a city with a history of mayors from the Socialist Party which were efficient and transparent in the way to govern — the last one was Frank Zeidler, elected in 1948. John Norquist who called himself a fiscally conservative socialist was elected in 1998 as a member of the Democratic Party. I think that while Norquist never hold the fame of Bernie Sanders, he would probably had been closer to a more populist vein of the socialism that the Socialist Party used to represent.

On the legacy of American socialism, Ross points three groups that emerge from the break-up of the Socialist Party of America: the Schatmanites of SDUSA, the reformers of DSOC and the radicals of SPUSA. While Schatmanites were fundamental to the development of neoconservativism and very hard to identify as socialists, you can hear prominent neocons like David Frum supporting universal health care and a hike of the minimum wage. However, if non-interventionism is what used to be the principal characteristic of the American socialism, that makes them, definitively, something else.

DSOC, now DSA, is very small and despite having prominent members like Cornel West it is still part of left-wing of the Democrat Party, and it’s not event as prominent as some other progressive groups. The SPUSA still participates in some elections, but shows weaker and weaker results; their last elected member Karen Kubby was a councilwoman from Iowa City, who switched parties to the Greens, a relatively a quite common choice for members of the SPUSA.

The possibilities of development of socialism in America despite the odds were very exciting. The book relates that in the beginnings of the last century there was even a proposal of members of the Socialist Party to form an independent socialist republic in Texas. But the most clear possibility for the development of American Socialism was if Martin Luther King would have survived and run as a third party candidate in 1968.

King’s politics were close to Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, but obviously being a prominent Afro-American leader he could rally the support of minorities. Without King the third party effort of the People’s Party failed. In the 80s the Citizens Party was born out of the Barry Commoner presidential campaign but its form of liberal reformism never became powerful. In 1984 the Green Party was born. The Green Party, despite being identified with the Keynesianism of Ralph Nader, was born in the legacy of the New Left. In the 80s socialists and anarchists founded the Left Green Network, whose purpose was to drive the party to the left, among them was the social theorist and eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Under his influence the Left Green Network developed a decentralist platform fighting for change at the local level, but with time the Left Green Network’s priorities fell off in favor of the more liberal wing of the party that was more focused on the national level.

I think Ross’s book fails to mention the importance of one of the Green Party founders to the history of socialism in America, Howie Hawkins was a member of SPUSA that became an ally of Murray Bookchin, but also was key into drafting Ralph Nader as the Green Party candidate. While the 2000 Nader campaign caused a backlash against the Green Party for allegedly being a spoiler, party insiders had said that the organization wasn’t as strong as in the early days of the party. The Green Party failed to become a biggest threat to Democratic Party in the next election, the liberal wing decided to choose as presidential candidate an unknown lawyer David Cobb in 2004, against Nader who was supported by socialists and anarchists and even some libertarians and paleoconservatives.

Nader running as an independent didn’t help in the party building, but neither did running a weak candidate like Cobb. In 2008 Nader built a relatively similar alliance running as an independent, while greens choose Cynthia McKinney a popular black congresswoman, but with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party nominee both Nader and McKinney showed poor numbers. In 2012 they ran Jill Stein, a physician, and got numbers far from the ones of Nader in 2000. Stein, unlike Nader, never showed interest in making inroads with the paleoconservative or libertarian vote and was in search of progressive supporters. The Green Party has evolved from libertarian municipalism of the 80s to the liberal reformism of the 90s to eco-socialism today. Though eco-socialism is a term connected to Murray Bookchin, I think today eco-socialism has in more in common with state interventionism in the name of ecology. The Green Party has embraced identity politics, which could be a problem if as in the past there is need of the votes from what used to be the Old Right. Though decentralism is still on their platform, they focus a lot more on the presidential campaign.

Ross mentions that the Old Right and socialist left had a lot in common, and I agree. Their foreign policy was the biggest common cause, Bill Kauffman goes as far as to suggest Pat Buchanan is the second coming of Eugene Debs. The text fails to mention that Goldwater speechwriter Karl Hess was also a former member of the Socialist Party, but unlike the neocons he went leftward in the context of the Vietnam War. But the text mentions something often forgotten, the fact that after his presidential campaigns Norman Thomas started to sound closer to Peter Kropotkin, denouncing state bureaucracy and calling for the development of mutual aid. In those days he sounded closer to eco-anarchists like Murray Bookchin or Christian anarchists like Dorothy Day. But even with libertarians there is still some room for an alliance, in the 2014 election Howie Hawkins the eco-socialist candidate of the Green Party for Governor of New York opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline on the grounds that it violated property rights.

A curious fact is that Jack Ross was a writer of The American Conservative, and I think he could be defined as a heterodox left-conservative, but his book could make the radical left think again in their own tradition. Today the possibility of America having a president who calls himself a socialist is real. Few journalists predicted Sanders’ success, the liberal left is tired of the corporatism of the Clintons, and Sanders’ message is resonating with a public tired of the merger of Wall Street and Washington. But neither Debs nor Thomas would had been proud of Sanders, who is not only much more bureaucratic than them, he is also a supporter of the American Empire.

Ross points that socialists are like prophets, and he is right. The historic antiwar activist David McReynolds said on the 100 year anniversary of the Socialist Party that the victory of socialism in America was not going to be when someone who was part of the socialist left is in a place of power — a sly reference to the neocons. Likewise, a victory for Bernie Sanders could easily be less the vindication of American Socialism than its defeat.

I don’t know if America will see a character like Debs or Thomas again. Ralph Nader was closer to the Old Left in speaking about a broad left/right alliance against the corporate state and the importance of the concept of community activism. But Ron Paul was even closer because in making foreign policy his priority he was able unify libertarians, conservatives, progressives and socialists against the American Empire, and like Debs and Thomas he want a Republic. I think that the book shows that not only the New Left had a lot in common with the Old Right but actually the Old Left had also a lot in common with the Old Right, a call for a Jeffersonian decentralist Republic, and whether one calls that libertarian, conservative or socialist doesn’t make much difference. The socialist left in America had strong democratic convictions and was opposed to all totalitarian forms of socialism. Though today there is still a caricature of socialism as a synonym of Soviet communism, but the youth is not interested in buying it.

There is a long noble history of American socialism, men and woman who choose to believe that they can build a new country, based on the ideals on which the old one was founded. We may need to rediscover it, as the socialism we’re most familiar with is much more pernicious. America has in the last century started to live under a kind of socialism, the state socialism of Bismarck, proper to a military empire like the ones between World Wars. Later, in the context of Vietnam War, Murray Rothbard described a “nixonian socialism,” and since Reagan, neoconservativism can be understood as right-wing social democracy. If conservatives have been vital for the triumph of some forms of socialism, maybe they could be a factor in bringing about a future for the more positive kind. Maybe the descendents of the prairie socialists are supporting Donald Trump but I think they could be waiting for a new Eugene Debs.

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The X-Files, Anarchy on TV

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The X-Files is one of the most iconic shows of the 1990s, conspiracy theories and aliens would seem an odd idea for TV but it became a hit. David Duchovny, who plays Fox Mulder, once said that when he shot the pilot he never feel sure that they would be on TV, but they were for nine seasons. The X-Files will be back in January of next year for a small season of six episodes.

The show developed an intense fan base, it was one of the first shows that hit in the age of the internet, so since the beginning there have been a lot of online forums developed to the series. The geek culture was shaped by a show where the heroes were almost geeks themselves. It was a success both in America and overseas.

But it wasn’t just another Hollywood show. Libertarian academic Paul Cantor argues that X-Files wasn’t left or right but posed the question of the legitimacy of nation-state — after all, a key premise was that the government was part of a conspiracy involving aliens to conquer the world. After the Cold War, a show like The X-Files had the license to be anti-government. The FBI is portrayed like a bureau institution which is against the interests of the citizens. A curious thing is the strange conservativism of the show, in several episodes foreigners weren’t treated with sympathy, the strange traditions of some groups of immigrants were feared by the local population. It also seemed to have some sympathy for militias. However, some episodes had more left-wing themes, like suspicion of corporate culture or planned residential communities. The logo of the show “Trust No One” could be interpreted as a libertarian mantra.

The funny thing about a series that insinuate that the government is involved in a big conspiracy is that both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have confessed in press conferences that some fans had told them they joined the FBI, CIA or other government agencies because of them. It doesn’t like the most logical step, but a hunger for answers exerts a powerful pull on young people. If one can fathom why a libertarian like Edward Snowden could decide to work for the government, he might have taken a similar path to Fox Mulder.

Another interesting element was The Lone Gunmen, three hackers who were friends of Mulder and Scully, these computer geniuses mixed some ideas from geek culture, conspiracy paranoia and a vague concept of achieving social justice with technology. The Lone Gunmen were some kind of precursor of Anonymus, though in the last season they were portrayed as patriotic, unlike Anonymus which is mostly described as anarchist.

There were particular aspects that made a show like The X-Files a success in America and abroad, among them the sentiment found basically anywhere in the world, that their politicians are corrupt.

The 90s were a particular time, now with a popular politician like Ron Paul it’s not difficult to imagine that today the series could have made an issue of the spying, drones and growth of the Military-Industrial Complex, positions that were before at the fringe and now have become relatively mainstream. It would not be a surprise if the new X-Files episodes retain their anti-statism. The lesson of the X-Files is that people may distrust their leaders, but they still like heroes. It doesn’t matter if their name is Fox Mulder or Edward Snowden, sometimes the anarchist is the real patriot.

What’s the matter with left-libertarianism?

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Left-libertarianism is a peculiar variant of libertarianism. It has some elements in common with the left, but it also supports positions that are at odds with the left in a general sense. I had previously written about its history, and while doing that I found that left-libertarianism is far from a united theory, but a relatively broad realm of ideas about about free markets and achieving and social justice. Karl Hess, Robert Anton Wilson and Samuel Edward Konkin III are big names in libertarianism on their own and also left-libertarians. Today the Center for a Stateless Society and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left are the new faces of left-libertarianism, most of its writers and members are young activists who despite claiming to be following the paths of the left-libertarians of the past, also raise their own issues.

Left-libertarianism is still unknown to the public. The mainstream media has portrayed libertarianism as something of the right, with an spokesperson like Ron Paul who is pro-life and against open borders, or figures like the Koch Brothers, which are donors to Republican campaigns and the bête noire of a lot of liberals, so isn’t very easy to associate libertarianism with the left. Yet a lot of Ron Paul supporters and those who identify themselves as libertarians are pro-choice, and skeptical of Republican Party. J. Arthur Bloom some time ago argued reflecting on a poll that suggests that young Americans prefer socialism over capitalism but at the same time support a free market system over a government managed economy, my initial reaction was that young Americans could find left-libertarianism interesting, but I wasn’t sure at that moment of the limits of my reflection.

The libertarian movement had been in large part financed by the Koch brothers though institutions like the Cato Institute, Reason, FreedomWorks and Students for Liberty to only mention a few. With the Ron Paul campaign the age-old paleo-cosmopolitan intra-libertarian dispute was reborn. The Ron Paul campaign was closer to the Rothbardians than the Friedmanites and it generated radicals rather than reformers. Despite that some cosmopolitans express his doubts about Ron Paul and the Koch brothers didn’t support or endorse him, I think the Koch brothers were intelligent enough to know that Ron Paul was bringing a lot of young people to libertarianism, something that could be useful to them. That’s why despite the disagreements, Ron Paul has been a main speaker at events organized by Koch-affiliated organizations, they know he energizes the base. Ron Paul and the Koch brothers are capitalist and for different reasons they had a long relation with the GOP. On the left-libertarian side there isn’t much famous politicians or bigger donors. Left-libertarians rely mostly on making new converts at libertarian events, but most libertarians consider themselves capitalists and I don’t think that will change any time soon. There is a solid left-libertarian tradition that young people could find interesting, however, especially in their critic of the corporate capitalism.

I think that it’s better to present my own philosophy before continuing exploring the limits of left-libertarianism. I’m a socialist, not a social democrat whose model is Scandinavia but rather a libertarian socialist whose model are Zapatistas in Mexico or the Kurds in the Middle East. Elections are not the only thing that matters, but I think electoral politics could radicalize the public and also move the left in a more libertarian direction. As far as I know, most left-libertarians come from the libertarian right and the anarchist left, so it’s easy to suppose that few of them ever would be sympathetic to electoral left-wing politics, but history tells us radical libertarians like Karl Hess and Murray Bookchin were involved in third party politics. So to be involved in electoral politics seems more an opportunity than a problem.

The Ron Paul campaign was a better tool for promoting libertarianism than the millions of dollars spent by the Kochs in think-tanks. Sometimes when left-libertarians said: “the dominant left-libertarian aim is to fuse Murray Rothbard with David Graeber,” I think a more interesting goal would be to fuse Ron Paul with Karl Hess. There are limits to the electoral politics, for example most leftists support the minimum wage (there are some left-libertarians that agree but most disagree). Other long time objectives of the left are universal health care (this policy was supported by Libertarian Party presidential candidate Mike Gravel but not for most left-libertarians). But compromise in the search of peace, liberty and justice seems to me a mature political move, along the lines of the one Murray Rothbard hoped for, broad on the left and right.

Here at The Mitrailleuse, there has been some polemic about left-libertarianism. James E. Miller argue that left-libertarianism is closer to left-liberalism than libertarianism, I disagree with that, I think that the fact that some left-libertarians had un-libertarian positions don’t mean left-libertarianism as a whole is doomed. For other part I recognize that the argument that sometimes C4SS sounds like Salon is true, far from joking some time ago I consider seriously writing a response Kevin D. Williamson argument that the Baltimore riots should be blame on the Democratic Party which historically has governed Baltimore, my response was going to be that the riots should be blame on the Republican Party crackdown on the Black Panthers because since then the Afro-American communities lacked radical organizing. When I was thinking where to publish the article, I thought C4SS and Salon. J. Arthur Bloom makes the case that it’s difficult for left-libertarians to gain support in the broad left, I agree a lot anarchists are closer to the Democratic Party.

There is something that should be said — Karl Hess, probably the most radical left-libertarian, was still a man of the Old Right, even when he joined Students for a Democratic Society and Industrial Workers of the World. He was deeply patriotic and inspired from the American history, he was not a cosmopolitan libertarian but a rather a man of a community. The Neighborhood Power of which the New Left speaks was an idea that had on board both the Black Panthers and radical Christians; a self-governing community was a real policy for left-libertarians. Since the New Left era, the idea of liberal identity politics was present and affected the movement. The black power, feminist and LGBT struggles were co-opted by the Democratic Party which, though movements that at some point were anti-statist, become functionally supportive of growing state power.

I don’t think that left-libertarians are going to win that argument by sounding like left-liberals, but by actually accepting that a free society would not be constructed if some day everybody started to think the same, but when one can reach broad agreement about letting communities be free. For example when it comes to immigration, most left-libertarians tend to support Open Borders, and I also do, but I understand that probably cosmopolitan communities like Williamsburg or Echo Park are more willing to receive immigrants than communities in rural Alabama, and a real immigration policy should respect that the communities could have different positions on whether or not receive immigrants. When Karl Hess spoke about education he also had the same argument, he said that there isn’t a problem if a black community decided to teach Swahili to their kids, I think that the same arguments should go for a religious community teaching their kids their values. Radical decentralization really means that abolishing the state or not, the communities at least would be freer to choose their own policies based on their everyday life rather than waiting for a bureaucrat in Washington.

Left-libertarians had an interesting history, in the present they are growing and their future is still unknown. Trying to recruit new members at libertarian events had it limits. With the exception of agorists, most left-libertarians weren’t organized in the past in any specific group but they were in a lot of ways closer to more average New Left radical, not only because of the left was more decentralist back then, but also they more willing to engage in a debate with the radical left. Most left-libertarians are great fans of the Marxist historian Gabriel Kolko, but I listen to very few about the reflections of other socialists. For example, Carl Oglesby the former leader of SDS is considered by the people of C4SS and ALL as a left-libertarian, though he wasn’t an anarchist and supported the minimum wage. Left-libertarians tend to criticize liberalterians saying that they are not radicals because they aren’t anarchist and also supported some state policies, so why do left-libertarians claim Carl Oglesby as one their own, when he probably should be called a proto-liberalterian? I think that a really thoughtful reflection of that would tell us a lot of left-libertarians claim to be radicals, yet still prefer the comfort zone of libertarian conferences rather than, say, going to the Left Forum to speak about free markets and property rights. If they want a revolution they should reject the liberal identity politics of us versus them, the real struggle is between the political elite and the grassroots rebellion.

What the Latin American left could learn from Ron Paul?

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Ron Paul is clearly one of the most influential politicians in America. His presidential campaigns popularized libertarianism in a way no one had  before. Libertarians overseas know him, and a lot of them had a genuine appreciation, but people outside the United States who are not libertarians don’t know him. The foreign media probably doesn’t have a clue why a Republican Party presidential candidate is against war and supports drug legalization.

I’m a Peruvian who came to politics from the radical left but after getting familiar with libertarianism, I think there are a lot of things that the Latin America left could learn from Ron Paul.

Ending the War on Drugs is the most obvious libertarian idea that the left should embrace. Prohibition of drugs was part of an imperialist policy that generated the corruption of Latin American governments and had caused the boom of large narco guerrillas which endanger the civil population mostly in Mexico and Central America but also in Peru and Colombia.

The drug legalization argument could be based on the idea of individual responsibility and freedom of choose, conservatives would sound like hypocrites if they attack these policy on that grounds.

Oppose corporate free trade deals. That’s a position that the left wings in most countries oppose, but Chile, now governed by the Socialist Party, supporting TPP shows that there are exceptions. Even in countries where there is a right-wing government the left should use the argument that free trade deals are just corporate protectionism and have nothing to do with free markets. What could be reaction of conservatives in a parliament if a left-wing congressman argue against free trade while mentioning Ron Paul and the works of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute on the matter? The conservatives would not only look like hypocrites but also ignorant if they continue to support that policy.

Show respect for civil liberties. The Latin American left had a bad experience in the past with coup d’états promote by the United States but I hardly believe that the protests of indigenous people in Bolivia or Ecuador are a product of imperialism. The right of free speech and free assembly should be consider fundamental for any left-wing government.

Stand for anti-imperialism. Imperialism is not a myth of the left but a real policy of global expansion of influence by the United States. Quoting a conservative congressman from United States would made clear that imperialism is not creation of the left but a reality.

Closing U.S. military bases in the region should be a priority, and reducing military spending. The nationalism of Latin American armies is dangerous. A lot of corrupt military leaders had participated in coup d’états in the region. Giving more money and power to them is not a good idea.

While maybe some readers could had been surprised at beginning of the text, there are several policies proposed by Ron Paul that the Latin American left could embrace. In the American context, Ron Paul is to the left of Barack Obama. Ron Paul had spoken that despite not agreeing with the policies of Venezuela, he doesn’t think that sanctions have done any good. Ron Paul has been saying that United States shouldn’t intervene in Latin America and that the embargo toward Cuba must end. He has some fans in the region — probably not part of left — but maybe Latin American radicals could learn something from the Ron Paul revolution.