This article makes me sad, especially the part about kids. The main reason I never attended Porcfest, (but I paid almost every year, just to contribute a little) is the timing. Most public schools (at least in NY where I live) don't finish the school year until the end of June, barely missing the Porcfest week. I know, I shouldn't have my daughter in a public school, hehe, but I don't have many reasonable options around here and I don't want to get her in trouble for missing school. I'm not sure what the reasons are behind these dates, but I'm sure they would get more families with kids if they moved it to July.
The account of the children in attendance makes me think of Mackey Chandler's April series, which envisions children in an orbital habitat being raised in a very free range style, and goes on from there.
The way I usually put it is that at FreedomFest someone tries to sell me a gold mine, at Porcfest someone tried to sell me a mango lassi. That's based on attending FreedomFest a long time ago in Las Vegas. I gather they hold it other places now.
"Free state" projects are going to meet the same fate as utopian socialist communities and hippie communes. Trying to carve out an "ideal" petty-bourgeois capitalism in an isolated area is not much less ridiculous than Jim Jones gloating about his "advanced" model of communism in the Guyanese jungle.
It's also how you end up with bizarre concoctions like the author of the article "who had attended both Porcfest and a rationalist/techie/NY/Bay Area event." That author is someone who wants to not only revive ancient Paganism, but combine it the teachings of the Founding Fathers (presumably the likes of Jefferson who saw industrial development as antagonistic to his dream of a society comprised of self-sufficient farmers—as indeed it was.)
And the petty-bourgeoisie in this case try to work "within" the Republican Party, much as so-called "democratic socialists" preach subordination to the Democratic Party, so you don't even get a third party effort, not even one that ends up co-opted, you just have a straight line from illusions to collusion with one of the two major bourgeois parties.
Those are your conclusions. What are the arguments to support them? More precisely, what keeps the Free Staters from continuing to push New Hampshire in a libertarian direction?
Utopian socialists and religious communities generally depended on a charismatic leader. That does not appear to be true of the Free State Project.
It all depends what "a libertarian direction" means. If it means something as humdrum as passing a bill to lower property taxes then, of course, that's perfectly possible. But Free Staters obviously have more ambitious goals in mind. What they're essentially trying to do though is no different from other utopian efforts to "escape" actually existing capitalism, the important difference of course being that the Free Staters want to enact their own "ideal" capitalism freed from "cronyism." In some cases, like the person whose article you quoted, Free State ideas are combined with the explicit notion that dividing humanity up into self-sufficient communities on Hoppean lines is possible.
It's true that many utopian communities relied on a "great man" to guide them, but not all. Plenty simply tried to adapt in modified form the doctrines of a prior utopian thinker like Robert Owen or Charles Fourier, or work out what they thought the Bible said about how "true Christians" ought to live. The point though is that, "great man" or not, these communities are ultimately doomed because they do not take into account the level of productive forces on either a national or global scale. They already have their ready-made "solution" (basing economic activity on "justice," or "God's will," or some other abstraction) rather than taking into account trends of economic development and what degree of socialization is actually possible.
That's why China, for all its market reforms since the late 70s, represents a greater threat to capitalism than all the various kinds of "intentional communities" put together, since the CPC has long taken into account Marx's statement that, "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
I am afraid I still do not see your argument, perhaps because you are imagining a different objective for the Free Staters than I am. And I don't see that they are doing anything impossible.
I don't think the author whose article I quoted is a free-stater, judging by the article.
This article makes me sad, especially the part about kids. The main reason I never attended Porcfest, (but I paid almost every year, just to contribute a little) is the timing. Most public schools (at least in NY where I live) don't finish the school year until the end of June, barely missing the Porcfest week. I know, I shouldn't have my daughter in a public school, hehe, but I don't have many reasonable options around here and I don't want to get her in trouble for missing school. I'm not sure what the reasons are behind these dates, but I'm sure they would get more families with kids if they moved it to July.
Is there no procedure to get the school's permission to spend a week on something educational?
The account of the children in attendance makes me think of Mackey Chandler's April series, which envisions children in an orbital habitat being raised in a very free range style, and goes on from there.
Fantastic! I'd like to go next year.
David, have you ever visited FreedomFest in Las Vegas? If so, how would you compare it to Porcfest?
The way I usually put it is that at FreedomFest someone tries to sell me a gold mine, at Porcfest someone tried to sell me a mango lassi. That's based on attending FreedomFest a long time ago in Las Vegas. I gather they hold it other places now.
It did not have nearly the live feel of Porcfest.
"Free state" projects are going to meet the same fate as utopian socialist communities and hippie communes. Trying to carve out an "ideal" petty-bourgeois capitalism in an isolated area is not much less ridiculous than Jim Jones gloating about his "advanced" model of communism in the Guyanese jungle.
It's also how you end up with bizarre concoctions like the author of the article "who had attended both Porcfest and a rationalist/techie/NY/Bay Area event." That author is someone who wants to not only revive ancient Paganism, but combine it the teachings of the Founding Fathers (presumably the likes of Jefferson who saw industrial development as antagonistic to his dream of a society comprised of self-sufficient farmers—as indeed it was.)
And the petty-bourgeoisie in this case try to work "within" the Republican Party, much as so-called "democratic socialists" preach subordination to the Democratic Party, so you don't even get a third party effort, not even one that ends up co-opted, you just have a straight line from illusions to collusion with one of the two major bourgeois parties.
Those are your conclusions. What are the arguments to support them? More precisely, what keeps the Free Staters from continuing to push New Hampshire in a libertarian direction?
Utopian socialists and religious communities generally depended on a charismatic leader. That does not appear to be true of the Free State Project.
It all depends what "a libertarian direction" means. If it means something as humdrum as passing a bill to lower property taxes then, of course, that's perfectly possible. But Free Staters obviously have more ambitious goals in mind. What they're essentially trying to do though is no different from other utopian efforts to "escape" actually existing capitalism, the important difference of course being that the Free Staters want to enact their own "ideal" capitalism freed from "cronyism." In some cases, like the person whose article you quoted, Free State ideas are combined with the explicit notion that dividing humanity up into self-sufficient communities on Hoppean lines is possible.
It's true that many utopian communities relied on a "great man" to guide them, but not all. Plenty simply tried to adapt in modified form the doctrines of a prior utopian thinker like Robert Owen or Charles Fourier, or work out what they thought the Bible said about how "true Christians" ought to live. The point though is that, "great man" or not, these communities are ultimately doomed because they do not take into account the level of productive forces on either a national or global scale. They already have their ready-made "solution" (basing economic activity on "justice," or "God's will," or some other abstraction) rather than taking into account trends of economic development and what degree of socialization is actually possible.
That's why China, for all its market reforms since the late 70s, represents a greater threat to capitalism than all the various kinds of "intentional communities" put together, since the CPC has long taken into account Marx's statement that, "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
I am afraid I still do not see your argument, perhaps because you are imagining a different objective for the Free Staters than I am. And I don't see that they are doing anything impossible.
I don't think the author whose article I quoted is a free-stater, judging by the article.
Thank you for gracing us with your presence yet again!