Para,

While your concerns are valid, I think you misunderstand the intent of the pledge. I don't have time to give your comments the answer they deserve, so I'll try to remember to come back later on it. Thanks for some insightful commentary, though. Baker, ditto what I said to para.

Military force is simply a tool. Used correctly, it serves its purpose justly. Abused, it becomes the equivalent of a hammer in the hand of a murderer. To rule out its use simply gives the benefit of the initiative to those who don't mind abusing it far, far worse than you would.

Excellent.

That's my view on military force as well.

A communist society is absolutely DEPENDENT upon force to exist.

No. You are talking about a communist state.

A communist society requires less force than a capitalist society, because property rights need not be enforced.

I know, I once lived in a shared house that was essentially communistic with regard to common items like the kitchen or the garden. Everybody used it, nobody claimed any of it as their own.

Making, say, the garden private property would have required an initiation of force.

The same thing must have happened with the earth several thousand years ago when farmers replaces hunter-gatherers.

You cannot enforce ANY view of private property rights without initiating force against those who happen to disagree with that particular view.

Excellent comments, even though we are at separate points on the political spectrum.

Exactly.

What would you do about it if they refused to leave? Whether you do it yourself or call the police, you would initiate force to achieve your social goal... That or you would merely surrender your property to the interlopers and it would become theirs.

Well put. To this one might answer that the trespassers had already initiated force and that any force used against them would would be defence.

But then we get a) this is no longer pacifism and it can only be true that the trespassers initiated force first if they originally agreed to the house being owned by somebody else or being owned at all by anybody but the person currently sitting in it; and such an agreement is, in this example, unlikely to have occurred.

Such agreement can, however, have been enforced by a state.

I fully support your right to be a pacifist. I don't consider you a coward or lazy. However, all pacifists must come to grips with the fact that their right to be pacifists depends on others willingness to protect that right.

Well said.

Except I'm not sure that pacifism is a right. It seems to me more like a possibility. How can you have a right not to defend yourself and others? When you have children, have you not put upon yourself the duty to protect them? If others do it for you, you are fine, but how can it be a right to depend on others?

No. You are talking about a communist state.

That's why I DID distinguish between macro- and micro-socialism.

OK,

I'm freshened up, java in my system, ready to give a coherent reply.

First of all, I stated the LP pledge poorly. It states that I do not believe in the INITIATION of force as a means to obtain political and social goals. That makes a big difference in the big picture.

You see, Libertarians do see that force is sometimes a necessary evil (as do many pacifists, but I will address the pacifist question later in this reply). The concern is the initiation of force as a means to obtain political and social goals. Force used for defensive purposes is not in any way excluded in this statement.

As to Libertarian being "out of touch with reality", I don't believe it is any more so than the Democratic Party, whose goals of Universal Health Care and programs such as that without taxing American citizens beyond their ability to pay, or the Republican Party, who preach fiscal responsibility, yet whose programs are so riddled with pork as to make them virtually indistinguishable from the dems. The LP platform is based on the goals that are consistent with our core beliefs.

Most of us realize that every point in our platform is unlikely to be realized, but that our platform gives us a base from which to operate, a strong backing as we enter into debates with opponents as to what solutions we offer and why we believe they will work. Yes, it is idealistic, but I don't believe as "out of touch with reality" as you paint it.

As for pacifism, most people mistake the nature of pacifism. Pacifism does not mean that you offer no resistance to injustices, but thaat you do so with words and constructive actions rather than with fists and destructive actions. Ghandi was a pacifist, but he was by no means a pushover. The same can be said of many Mennonites, Amish, and Quakers throughout history who held pacifist ideals but whose resistance was based on a different set of values than those of others.

Thanks, all of you, for offering constructive, insightful comments. It's nice to have good discussion on this site.

A communist society requires less force than a capitalist society, because property rights need not be enforced. I know, I once lived in a shared house that was essentially communistic with regard to common items like the kitchen or the garden. Everybody used it, nobody claimed any of it as their own.

The difference being, a communist society is a voluntary way of life. Those who lived in the shared house understood that there was communal property and private property (since I'm assuming the there were private living spaces such as bedrooms that weren't communal) and everyone living there respected the rules of the house. Each person living there had the right to leave anytime they wanted.

The problem with communism as a system of government (or socialism as an economic model), it is not voluntary. In your shared house, how long would you have stayed there if those living in the house decided who would share the bed you sleep in, or what community property you could use at what times... now picture the same scenario except, you could not leave and live somewhere else.

The difference being, a communist society is a voluntary way of life. Those who lived in the shared house understood that there was communal property and private property (since I'm assuming the there were private living spaces such as bedrooms that weren't communal) and everyone living there respected the rules of the house. Each person living there had the right to leave anytime they wanted.

Now if only a capitalist society would be a voluntary way of life. Instead the idea that there are property rights is forced on those who disagree with the view.

(There were no individual bed rooms, but that's beside the point.)

If in that house one of the "citizens" had disagreed with the community communism we had, could he or would he have forced his views on the rest of us?

Say one citizen noticed that the garden had not been claimed as private property. Had he claimed it as his, would it have been an initiation of force? Would it be in real life?

It states that I do not believe in the INITIATION of force as a means to obtain political and social goals.

Yes, that's how I understood the principle. Yet nearly everybody believes in it, opinions merely vary on what constitutes defence and what is an attack.

For a communist defending his belief that everybody has a right to use all land is not an initiation of force. And for a capitalist (here: believer in capitalism) defending his belief that THIS particular piece of land is HIS is also not an initiation of force.

Thus a communist party, even one that advocates a strong government to defend their particular view of property rights (communal such), whatever they do is not an initiation of force; just like it isn't for the LP to defend their particular view of property rights (individual such).

That doesn't make the LP more principled than the communists. It merely suggests that the two have different views and share but one idea: that initiation of force is wrong.

Note that this is a hypothetical communist party I am talking about here. I do not claim that this was what the communists in Eastern Europe and China etc. were doing.

The LP is more principled then these communists. By far.

Leauki,

Thanks for clarifying...lol! And yes, you are correct that I should have differentiated between a communist SOCIETY rather than a communist STATE!

The problem with a communist state is that one becomes a part of it by accident of birth, rather than by choice. Thus, unless a program of state sponsored emigration is put into place, membership is not voluntary, but rather forced.

In a free enterprise, capitalist society (which the LP endorses, and which we do NOT have in this country at present...not by a LONG shot), a communist society is one of the possibilities that could exist. It's your land; if you choose to share it with others that's your choice and your responsibility. In fact, it's my belief that communist and socialist societies within a government where free enterprise is exercised is a healthy, necessary component of that society (for more information on my belief in this matter, my article "Must Socialism and Free Enterprise be at Odds?" can be found in my article archives under "top articles". I'll hunt it down and link it for you here so I don't have to rehash the whole piece).