At 03:47 PM 10/30/98 +1300, J. Maxwell Legg wrote:
>>
>> IAN: A libertarian society is a society in which
>> a set of collective rules (political power) exist
>> that define the rights of individuals. Robinson
>> Crusoe has no political rights, and the example
>> of your computer free from the net is Crusoe.
>>
>> So there's no contradiction between the concepts of
>> political rights, the individual, and libertarianism.
>> The individual in society has political rights, more
>> or less, but Robinson Crusoe has no polical rights.
>>
>
>Crusoe is still an individual and your earlier statement that the basic
>political unit in your definition of Libertarianism is the individual. I
>contradict this. Sure the basic political unit may reside in the
>individual but isn't the individual.
IAN: There is (1) an individual, like Crusoe, and (2) a political individual, which is an individual in a society, i.e., a "social individual." The term "political" refers to identity attributes of the individual that are derived from social relations.
The dual states of the individual cited "quench" the purported contradiction: (1) is the absolute individual Crusoe, and (2) is the relational, and thereby political, individual. Both are individuals.
That there are social relations in a market society and a set of rules of conduct, which thereby define the political, does not negate a set of rules that define and defend private property and liberty.
So the "social individual" is not a contradiction, neither is the individual as the basic social unit, and as such, the individual as basic political unit.
> The individual may be a type of
>political unit but hardly *the* basic one. I would be happy to accept
>that another basic political unit maybe an abstract conflict of some
>sort.
IAN: Well, of nonzero positive integers, 1 is the basic unit, and in the same way it would appear that 1 person is the basic social unit. Of course, I guess we could go so far as to say that it's one cell or atom.
We are a collection of "humanized atoms," perhaps soon to be "transhumanized atoms."
The Transhumanized Atoms o o o o o
T
Trans
Transhuman
TransHumanized
Transhumanization
TransHumanizationology
Transhumanizationianeophitology - b O i N g -