Leisure and Work – Maverick Philosopher

My Grunt Jobs

Furniture mover in Santa Barbara; exterminator in West Los Angeles; grave digger in Culver City; factory worker in Venice, California; letter carrier and mail handler in Los Angeles; logger in Forks, Washington; tree planter in Oregon; taxi driver in Boston; plus assorted day jobs out of Manpower Temporary Services in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Boston. One thing's for sure: blogging beats logging any day of the week, though the pay is not as good.

Five reasons to avoid blue-collar work: (1) The working stiff gets no respect; (2) the pay is often bad; (3) the work is boring; (4) working class types are often crude, ignorant, resentful, envious, and inimical to anyone who tries to improve himself; (5) the worker puts his body on the line, day in and day out, and often bears the marks: missing thumbs, hearing loss, etc.

Being from the working class, and having done my fair share of grunt work, I have been permanently inoculated against that fantasy of Marxist intellectuals, who tend not to be from the working class, the fantasy according to which workers, the poor, the 'downtrodden,' have some special virtue lacking in the rest of us. That is buncombe pure and simple. There is nothing to be expected from any class as a class: it is individuals and individuals alone who are the loci of value and the hope of humanity.

But individuation is a task, not a given. Es ist nicht gegeben sondern aufgegeben. You have to work at it.

There are no true individuals without self-individuation, something impossible to the mass man who identifies himself in terms of class, race, sex, and who is never anything more than a specimen of a species, a token of type, and no true individual.

And then these types have the chutzpah to demand to be treated as individuals. To which I say: if you want me to treat you as an individual, don't identify yourself with a group or a class or a sex or a race.

Tribal identity is pseudo-identity.

In Praise of the Useless

A Substack short.

Work, Money, Living, and Livelihood

Substack latest.

Paul, Baruch, and Henry had the right idea.

Marx and Work

Physical work is good for the soul if you are working for yourself and have time for other things. So I have long felt a certain sympathy for a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

With all due respect to talk show host Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling. If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx. But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above.

First of all, it is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes." Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished? PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope? Einstein a general? Patton a physicist? Woody Allen a bronco-buster? Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?

And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it only once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

So despite my sympathy, I judge that what we have above is utopian, reality-denying nonsense. Dangerous, murderous, leftist nonsense. Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise. Cuba? North Korea? Communist China? Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .). Classlessness by reduction of the people to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed, lorded over by apparatchiks vastly UNEQUAL in power, perquisites, and pelf to those they lord over. So in the end two classes: oppressed and oppressors.

The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell: The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.

But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay. One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and 'liberals' refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens. RINOs want cheap labor while the 'liberals' want to alter the demographics of the nation so as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left. These two unsavory groups are in tacit cahoots.

To hell with them both. Not that they are equally bad. It is hard to beat the scumbaggery of a 'liberal' or leftist who delights in smearing his political opponents with such epithets as 'xenophobe' and 'racist.' The typical RINO is either a useful idiot or someone who lacks the civil courage to stand up for what he knows is right. But at least he falls short of an all-out assault on the English language.

A Sane Populism is not an Anti-Intellectualism

Here is a statement that is not only extreme but also manifestly false:

In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine.

If there were no trucks, there would be no truckers. If there were no automotive technology, there would be no trucks. If there were no engineering (applied physical science), there would be no automotive technology. If there were no theoretical physics, there would be no applied science. If there were no pure mathematics, there would be no theoretical physics (in the technologically implemental, post-Galilean sense of the term). If there were no people who never got their hands dirty, there would be no pure mathematics. And there would be none of this if there were no philosophers.

It all began with philosophy, the attempt to know man and world by the use of reason applied to the data of experience. If there were no philosophers, we would still be retailing cosmogonic myths.

And if there were no philosophers like me, there would be no one to explain all of this to you, something I have just done, in an admittedly inadequate bloggity-blog sort of way, without getting my hands dirty.

That being said, I fully support the peaceful and eminently democratic protests of the Canadian truckers and their American confreres.

And I heartily condemn the anti-democratic fascists of the Left, both here and to the North, who use the power of the State to suppress individual liberty, and then engage in the Orwellian subversion of language to cover their tracks and gaslight the citizenry.

For example, the foolish Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, claims that the trucker protests are racist. But what does race have to do with them? Nothing. When he's done misusing 'racist,' he will go on to misuse 'domestic terrorist' and 'insurrectionist.' What sort of person is terrorized by the blaring of horns? What does terrorism and insurrection have to do with these legitimate and eminently democratic peaceful protests? Nothing.

And isn't Trudeau famous for his asseveration that "Diversity is our strength"? One who dissents from fascist clamp-down is holding a view diverse from that of the fascists.

A Vocation, not a Job

Heading out the door for a walk, the wife invited me along. I told her I had too much to do, that the clock was running, the format sudden death, the time-control unknown.

"But you're retired."

I reminded her that philosophy is my vocation. One can be retired from the largely meaningless job of teaching the unteachable, but one can never be retired from one's vocation in the proper sense of that term.

I hope to have my boots on when the flag falls.

In what state will death find you when the Reaper's scythe cuts you down? Will it matter? Is that a question that needs to be investigated?

A Couple of Venice Characters I Met While Working for Manpower

Bill Keezer e-mails re: my Manpower post:

I think it would be good for all young men somewhere in their early years to have to work for Manpower. It might give them more appreciation of what they have. It also might teach them something useful. I remember my various Manpower stints with some pleasure. I worked hard at a variety of jobs, learned a number of things I might not have, and felt like I earned my money. That’s not all bad.

I agree entirely, Bill, though your "with pleasure" I would qualify. It is not pleasant to be bossed around by inferior specimens of humanity, but that can and does happen when you are at the bottom of the labor pool. But working Manpower grunt jobs was well worth it, if not for the money, then for the experiences and the characters I met.

One cat, Larry Setnosky, was a failed academic, known in the seedy bars we'd hit after work as 'The Professor.' A doctoral student in history, he never finished his Ph. D. He lived in Venice, California, with a couple of other marginal characters, rode a motorcycle, wore a vest with no shirt underneath. He'd write articles and then file them away. He was just too wild and crazy to submit to the academic discipline necessary to crank out a thesis and get the degree. Booze and dope didn't help either. I still recall his "Nary a stem nor a seed, Acapulco Gold is bad ass weed!"

Ernie Fletcher was one of Setnosky's housemates. A law school dropout, he was convinced that the system was a "rigged wheel." When I met him he was in his mid-thirties, an ex-boozer, and warmly in praise of sobriety. He had sworn off what he called 'tune-ups" but was not averse to watching me "dissipate" as he told me once, not that I did much dissipating. In point of dissipation I was closer to the Buddha than to the Bukowski end of the spectrum.

Fletcher was from the Pacific Northwest and had worked as a logger there. Observing me during Manpower gigs he thought I was a good worker and not "lame" or "light in the ass" as he put it. So he suggested we head up to Washington State and get logging jobs. And so we drove 1200 miles up the beautiful Pacific Coast along Highway 1 from Los Angeles to Forks, Washington in my 1963 Karmann Ghia convertible. Amazing as it is to my present cautious self, we took off the very next day after Ernie suggested the trip to me. We probably had little more than a hundred bucks between us, but gas in those days was 25 cents a gallon. On the way we stopped to see Kerouac's friend John Montgomery, who was also a friend of Ernie. John Montgomery was the Henry Morley of The Dharma Bums and the Alex Fairbrother of Desolation Angels. (For more on Montgomery see here.) Unfortunately, when we located Montgomery's house, he wasn't at home. I've regretted that non-meeting ever since. Now I hand off to my Journal, volume 5, p. 32:

Saturday Midday 10 February 1973

Last Monday left L. A. about 12:00 PM. Saw [brother] Philip in Santa Barbara, made Santa Cruz that night, stayed in motel after checking out [folk/rock venue] "The Catalyst" and local flophouse. While passing Saratoga, CA decided to look up John Montgomery, friend of Ernie's who knew Kerouac and the Beats. We couldn't get in touch with him. So on to Frisco, entered the city, became involved in intricate traffic tangles, visited [Lawrence Ferlinghetti's] City Lights Bookstore and Caffe Trieste where I had a cup of espresso. By the way, in Big Sur visited Ernie's friend Gary Koeppel. [He was bemused to hear from Ernie that I was a Kerouac aficionado. In those days, Kerouac was pretty much in eclipse. The first of the Kerouac biographies, Ann Charters' was not yet out and Kerouac's 'rehabilitation' was still in the future.]

Spent Tuesday night in Dave Burn's trailer in Arcata, CA. [Dave was the drummer of a couple of bands I was in back in L. A. 1968-1971] Gave him the two tabs of acid I had in my attache case. Wednesday morning fixed the headlight (highbeam) which was malfunctioning and for which I received a citation the night before. Then went to the nearest CHP office and had the citation cleared. Breakfast at Ramada Inn and then on to Eugene, Oregon. Dug Taylor's, The New World Coffee House,and Ernie and Larry's old haunt, Maxie's. Arrived at Ernie's brother-in-law's house at 11:30 PM. Thursday spent in Eugene. I bought Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interests. Friday morning left early for Forks, Washington, arriving around 6:00 PM. Presently lodged in Woodland Hotel. Drinks last night with Ernie and legendary logger, Jim Huntsman. Arranged to start working Monday morning. So far, so good.

Of E-Mail and Doing Nothing

I do appreciate e-mail, and I consider it rude not to respond; but lack of time and energy in synergy with congenital inefficiency conspire to make it difficult for me to answer everything. I am also temperamentally disinclined to acquiesce in mindless American hyper-kineticism, in accordance with the Italian saying:

Dolce far niente

Sweet to do nothing

which saying, were it not for the inefficiency lately mentioned, would have been by now inscribed above my stoa. My paternal grandfather had it emblazoned on his pergola, and more 'nothing' transpires on my stoa than ever did beneath his pergola.

So time each day must be devoted to 'doing nothing': meditating, traipsing around in the local mountains, contemplating sunrises and moonsets, sunsets and moonrises, and taking naps, naps punctuated on one end by bed-reading and on the other by yet more coffee-drinking.

Without a sizeable admixture of such 'nothing' I cannot see how a life would be worth living.

Is Ora et Labora Enough? Or do Christians Need Leisure Too?

Paul J. Griffiths maintains a strikingly wrong-headed thesis in an article entitled, Ora et Labora: Christians Don't Need Leisure. The Latin translates as "Pray and Work.' The thesis is in the second paragraph:

The deleterious effects of narcissism are evident in the work of many, Christian and otherwise, who advocate leisure as good for us, appropriate to us, necessary for us, a blessing to us, an aid to contemplation, the foundation of culture, and so on. Christianity is more bracing than this: we Christians think, when we are thinking clearly, that between conception and death in this cataclysmically damaged world we should neither expect nor seek leisure. What we should expect, and will certainly find, is the double curse of death and work. Each of those involves pain, so we should expect a lot of that as well. Our task as Christians is not to look for islands of leisure-for-contemplation exempt from the eddy [ebb] and flow of work and suffering and death; were we to do that . . . we would become fascinated by phantasms, especially those of our own inner life . . . and would, too quickly, learn to close our eyes to the pressure of pain and the imminence of death—our own, that is, and all else’s, too.

The main thesis is the one I bolded above, namely, that Christians should not seek leisure. A subsidiary thesis is that the pursuit of leisure is an effect of narcissism.

Upon reading this, the philosophically literate will immediately think of Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture (Pantheon, New York, 1964, tr. Alexander Dru, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.) This book contains two essays, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture," and "The Philosophical Act." Griffiths appears to be alluding to the first of the essays in this wonderful old book with his phrases "an aid to contemplation" and "the foundation or culture." I would be very surprised if Griffiths was not at least aware of Pieper's book. But if he has read it how could he write the article before us? How could he maintain something so absurd as that the pursuit of leisure is an effect of narcissism?

Griffiths doesn't have a clue as to the classical conception of leisure found in Aristotle and Aquinas and explicated by Pieper. Griffiths writes,

Suppose we understand leisure as otium, which is to say the state or condition of doing nothing, of being otiose, of occupying a place in which nothing is expected and there is nothing to do but . . . what? If there were a place of otium for human creatures, it would be hell: a no-place capable of occupation only by the solipsist who has reached the end of narcissism, which is to be the only thing there is, to live in a world in which relation with others, animate and inanimate, is impossible because they have been abolished.

Otium liberale in the classical sense has nothing to do with narcissism or doing nothing or being idle or indolent or lazy or sunk in acedia (cf. Pieper, p. 24 ff.) or otiose in the wholly pejorative sense that this word has in contemporary usage. Leisure in the classical sense is disciplined activity in pursuit of non-utilitarian ends. It issues in contemplation which is an end in itself and the basis of culture. It was the contemplative monastic orders that preserved and transmitted the culture of the ancients to the moderns. On the classical view, the servile arts subserve the liberal arts. The vita activa is for the sake of the vita contemplativa. We neg-otiate the world to secure a space within it to pursue otium iberale. The worldly hustle is for the sake of contemplative repose.

The non-utilitarian is not eo ipso worthless. On the contrary, the truly and finally worthwhile is precisely the non-utilitarian. Griffiths needs to read Pieper.

Related: Why I Resigned from Duke. Curiously, I agree entirely with Griffiths' explanation of his resignation.

Classical leisure is this:

Not this:

The Dignity of Labor and Marxist Utopianism

This old man busted his hump for a solid three hours this morning shoveling a ton and a half of 3/4" Madison gold landscaping rock onto his property. I paid $91 for the rock and $45 to have it delivered. Here in the Sonoran desert water-wasting lawns are frowned upon; xeriscapes are de rigueur. The existing rock was wearing thin. Since I keep myself in shape with weight-lifting and such, I was up for the job, though by 10 AM with Old Sol beating done mercilessly I was righteously fagged out and ready for the old man nap. Since I arise at two ante meridian, by ten I have already put in an eight hour day.

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling. If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx. But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above.

First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes." Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished? PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope? Einstein a general? Patton a physicist? Woody Allen a bronco-buster? Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon? And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell: The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.

But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay. One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and liberals refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens. RINOs want cheap labor while the liberal scum want to alter the demographics of the nation in such a way as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left. These two unsavory groups are in tacit cahoots. To hell with them both.

So here you may have a reason to support Trump, as awful as he is.

Philosophy and Livelihood

Recently over the transom:

I'm wondering, as a 17 year old early entrant to university who's looking for a direction in his life: how do you manage to make a living from what you do?

Also, keep up the great work!

I have been asked this question many times and have written several posts in reply. Here are three of them:

Philosophy and Livelihood: Build a Slave!

A Reader Wants to be a Professional Philosopher

Work, Money, Living and Livelihood

Philosophy Bakes No Bread, but Man does not Live by Bread Alone

This from a reader:

I wanted to bring to your attention a passage I came across in Nicholas Rescher’s Philosophical Standardism (Pittsburgh, 1994):

“The old saying is perfectly true: Philosophy bakes no bread. But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone. The physical side of our nature that impels us to eat, drink, and be merry is just one of its sides. Homo sapiens requires nourishment for the mind as urgently as nourishment for the body. We seek knowledge not only because we wish, but because we must. The need for information, for knowledge to nourish the mind, is ever bit as critical as the need for food to nourish the body.” (p. 67)

I was struck by what I believed was the distinctively Vallicellan retort, “But it is also no less true that we do not live by bread alone.” I’m curious: Is this a well-known retort among philosophers? If not, did you get that from Rescher, he from you, or is this just an instance of great minds thinking alike?

None of the above. Here is what I wrote in 2012:

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school." You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions. Put him on the spot. Play the Socratic gadfly. If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"

I wouldn't say that the not-by-bread-alone retort is standard among philosophers, especially not now when Christianity is on the wane and one cannot assume that philosophers have read the New Testament. Professor Rescher, of course, knows the verse at Matthew 4:4.

I didn't get the retort from Rescher: Philosophical Standardism is not a book of his that I have read. The retort occurred to me independently as I am sure it has occurred independently to many of a certain age and upbringing.

And of course Rescher did not get the line from me since his book was published in 1994 long before the blogosphere.

And it is not a case of great minds thinking alike since neither of our minds are great. It is more like above-average minds thinking alike, though I concede his to be more above-average than mine.

Is there anyone in philosophy more prolific than Rescher? Here is a list of just his books. Forty years ago I heard the joke about the Nicholas Rescher Book-of-the-Month Club. And he is still happily scribbling away. Here is another Rescher joke:

A student goes to visit Professor Rescher. Secretary informs her that the good doctor is not available because he is writing a book. Student replies, "I'll wait."

When the Government Does Everything for You, What Will You Do with Yourself?

It is simply a fact about human nature that few are able to make good use of free time, 'leisure' time. Provide them with it and they 'go to seed' in no time, following the path of least resistance ever downward. The classical concept of leisure. not to be confused with 'leisure,' as the former is explained by Josef Pieper in his Leisure: The Basis of Culture is not understood and few have the self-discipline nowadays to live a life that is leisurely in the classical sense. What we can expect thanks to Obama and his ever-increasing infantilization of the populace via his promotion of welfare dependency and 'free' health care is more social pathology, more tattoos, more drug use, more mindless texting and sexting and high-tech time-wasting. As the government grows bigger, the citizen grows smaller, weaker, and less self-reliant so that he needs ever more government to feed, clothe, shelter, and wipe his butt for him, the mediating institutions of civil society (see article below) having been weakened if not destroyed by big government and its liberal-fascist initiatives.

A good example of the latter is the Obama Administration's attack on Catholic Charities:

It is now a requirement of Obamacare that every Catholic institution larger than a single church — and even including some single churches — must pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and morning-after abortifacients for its employees. Each of these is directly contrary to the Catholic faith. But the Obama administration does not care. They have said, in effect, Do what we tell you — or else.

If that isn't liberal fascism, what would be? Now I can't expect a morally obtuse liberal to appreciate what is wrong wth the killing of innocent human beings who just happen to be prenatal, but you would think that liberals, of all people, would understand what is wrong with forcing people to support what they, in their serious and deeply considered judgment, consider to be a grave moral evil.

I now hand off to Mark Steyn:

“Work” and “purpose” are intimately connected: Researchers at the University of Michigan, for example, found that welfare payments make one unhappier than a modest income honestly earned and used to provide for one’s family. “It drains too much of the life from life,” said Charles Murray in a speech in 2009. “And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors – even more to the lives of janitors – as it does to the lives of CEOs.” Self-reliance – “work” – is intimately connected to human dignity – “purpose.”

So what does every initiative of the Obama era have in common? Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security disability expansion, 50 million people on food stamps. The assumption is that mass, multigenerational dependency is now a permanent feature of life. A coastal elite will devise ever-smarter and slicker trinkets, and pretty much everyone else will be either a member of the dependency class or the vast bureaucracy that ministers to them. And, if you’re wondering why every Big Government program assumes you’re a feeble child, that’s because a citizenry without “work and purpose” is ultimately incompatible with liberty. The elites think a smart society will be wealthy enough to relieve the masses from the need to work. In reality, it would be neofeudal, but with fatter, sicker peasants. It wouldn’t just be “economic inequality,” but a far more profound kind, and seething with resentments.

One wouldn’t expect the governing class to be as farsighted as visionaries like Bezos. But it’s hard to be visionary if you’re pointing in the wrong direction. Which is why the signature achievement of Obama’s “hope and change” combines 1940s British public health theories with 1970s Soviet supermarket delivery systems. But don’t worry: Maybe one day soon, your needle-exchange clinic will be able to deliver by drone. Look out below.

SCOTUS Rules Against SEIU

Not all news is bad.

I have nothing against unions as such. My father was a rank-and-file member, all his working life, of the Boilermakers' Union. SEIU, however, is a public-sector union, a horse of a different color. So what's the problem with public-sector unions? Briefly, this.

You pay taxes. Some of your tax dollars go to pay the salaries of so-called 'civil servants.' Some of these 'civil servants' belong to unions that automatically deduct union dues from their salaries and funnel this cash to the union bosses and lobbyists who pressure Democrat Party legislators to do their bidding. Legislators, being human, love their power and perquisities, and do whatever they can to hold onto them. To stay in power they need votes which they get from the union members who vote as a block for the Dems to get as many goodies as they can.

So we the people are forced via taxation to support the fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable Democrat Big Government agenda. Would you say that that smacks of corruption?

Suppose you object that that the Dems are not fiscally irresponsible. Well, then you are wrong, but you have a right to your opinion. That's not the issue, however. The issue is whether it is legitimate to force people to support political parties whose ideas they oppose.

Cooperation and Competition

Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus.

Consider competitive games and sports. The chess player aims to beat his opponent, and he expects his opponent to share this aim: No serious player enjoys beating someone who is not doing his best to beat him. But the competition is predicated upon cooperation and is impossible without it. There are the rules of the game and the various protocols governing behavior at the board. These are agreed upon and respected by the players and they form the cooperative context in which the competition unfolds. We must work together (co-operate) for one of us to emerge the victor. And in this competitive cooperation both of us are benefited.

Is there any competitive game or sport for which this does not hold? At the Boston Marathon in 1980, a meshuggeneh lady by the name of Rosie Ruiz jumped into the race ahead of the female leaders and before the finish line. She seemed to many to have won the race in the female category. But she was soon disqualified. She wasn't competing because she wasn't cooperating. Cooperation is a necessary condition of competition.

In the business world, competition is fierce indeed. But even here it presupposes cooperation. Fed Ex aims to cut into UPS' business – but not by assassinating their drivers. If Fed Ex did this, it would be out of business. It would lose favor with the public, and the police and regulatory agencies would be on its case. The refusal to cooperate would make it uncompetitive. 'Cut throat' competition does not pay in the long run and makes the 'cut throat' uncompetitive.

If you and I are competing for the same job, are we cooperating with each other? Yes, in the sense that our behavior is rule-governed. We agree to accept the rules and we work together so that the better of us gets the appointment. The prosecution and the defense, though in opposition to each other, must cooperate if the trial is to proceed. And similarly in other cases.

Is assassination or war a counterexample to my thesis? Suppose two warring factions are 'competing' for Lebensraum in a no-holds-barred manner. If this counts as a case of competition, then this may be a counterexample to my thesis. But it is not that clear that the Nazis, say, were competing with the Poles for Lebensraum. This needs further thought. Of course, if the counterexample is judged to be genuine, I can simply restrict my thesis to forms of competition short of all-out annihilatory war. Or I could say that rule-governed competition is a species of cooperation.

Competition, then, contrary to liberal dogma, is not opposed to cooperation. Moreover, competition is good in that it breeds excellence, a point unappreciated, or insufficiently appreciated, by liberals. This marvellous technology we bloggers use every day — how do our liberal friends think it arose? Do they have any idea why it is so inexpensive? Competition!

Not only does competition make you better than you would have been without it, it humbles you. It puts you in your place. It assigns you your rightful position in life's hierarchy. And life is hierarchical. The levellers may not like it but hierarchies have a way of reestablishing themselves.