> the fatal problems with Hardin’s argument (actually, for analytical purposes we might distinguish the claims involving ‘carrying capacity’ from the wider argument that concludes with the putative ‘tragedy of the commons’) are well-known

But you aren’t going to state them. Are they well known among the same imaginary friends you mentioned?

> The assumption of short-term rationality by the agents involved is problematic and often empirically refuted in practice.

Practice? Anyone who has ever picked up a public school (K-12) textbook knows about how tragic the commons can be.

That’s why you assert it has been refuted in practice, but in fact even describe in what way it has been refuted. Did your imaginary friend refute it in practice for you?

> Hardin is quick to resort to coercion

I didn’t cite him for everything he ever thought or said, just for the notion that communism doesn’t have a chance because of what happens in the commons.

> Rather than Hardin, you’d be better served by reading Kaushik Basu’s…

Why? Hardin tells a basic and undeniable truth. Which is why you haven’t done a particularly good job denying it. You first talk about everything but the central issue which is the inefficiency of the commons and its application to non-authoritarian communism. You get into Malthus, which has nothing to do with that, and so on. You mention supposed failures in practice, but every person in reality sees what happens in practice. You cite 50 million books by people I never heard of and whom you gave me no reason to respect. I cite your 11th grade textbook, scribbled on, cut up and otherwise destroyed not necessarily by you, but by people who don’t care because they 1) did nothing to get what they were receiving and 2) will pay no price for the book’s destruction. In other words, you cite the content of books and I cite the reality of collective ownership of textbooks.

By comparison, see how things change when you get to college and you have to buy each book, and you will often sell it back at the end of the semester. Those books are treated kindly, gently. Keeping what you create, and earning what you receive, is the cure for the shortcomings of the commons. In other words, the problem is the commons itself; the commons always becomes, well, tragic. And getting all communist with our labor only has tragic results.

And don’t even get me started on how our socialized educations system in the k-12 levels cause educational quality to degrade, and breeds inequality, not equality.

But go on, please tell me why impractical treatises should trump common reality that every person can observe. It should be amusing.

By the way, clearly you didn’t read my whole list before getting back with me. Why not? I gave you an instruction and you should follow like a zombie, right? Or does that rule only apply to those you talk to, because you are so clearly a wise man who of course already knows everything. You have gone to the Yale Library and read all 4 million books, including those on my list, right?

If I tell you an imaginary friend wrote to me praising my bibliography, would you read them, then?

Or are you going to finally admit you don’t really find a reading list a useful tool in this kind of discussion? Oh, except you hope to intimidate with it.

Btw, is it beginning to dawn on you that as cocksure as you are, as snotty as you are, you are actually quite thoroughly outmatched?

Incidentally, the fatal problems with Hardin’s argument (actually, for analytical purposes we might distinguish the claims involving ‘carrying capacity’ from the wider argument that concludes with the putative ‘tragedy of the commons’) are well-known, and the policy proposals and implications derived therefrom fare even worse (e.g., his proposal to offer licenses for reproduction on the open market, or the reduction of allocative principles of distributive justice to a concept of economic triage as crystallized in his infamous essay on ‘lifeboat ethics’).

Hardin’s argument is not even original, having been resuscitated from a parable from a pamphlet written in 1833. Several of its assumptions are shared with those of Thomas Malthus in the latter’s polemic against Condorcet, Godwin, et al., An Essay on the Principle of Population…. Malthus’ essay, despite its well-known shortcomings and eminently contestable presuppositions and assumptions, is at least more respectable as an economic argument, in any case, Hardin was a biologist (a geneticist) and ecologist by training and temperament and it shows. Here, as elsewhere neo-classical economists have attempted to lend the epistemic legitimacy of natural science to what is a *social* science and one in an embryonic state of development at that. [For a succinct and devastating analysis of Malthus' argument, see Alec Fisher, The Logic of Real Arguments (1988): 29-47]

The assumption of short-term rationality by the agents involved is problematic and often empirically refuted in practice. Hardin is quick to resort to coercion and the rule of elites for solutions to his highly abstract and overly idealized model of the commons (not without reason did he later suggest we should refer to it as the ‘unmanaged commons’). His single-minded focus on population was unduly narrow and his willingness to resort to coercion when efforts at education fall short are on par with the Chinese government’s efforts at population control. What might be salvaged from Hardin’s efforts are not unique to him: the significance of the prisoners’ dilemma and the “free rider” problem, of which there is an enormous literature that takes us far beyond Hardin. Hardin’s colleague at my alma mater wrote a book that deals with these issues in a more ethically sensitive, theoretically sophisticated and real-world fashion than Hardin: William W. Murdoch’s The Poverty of Nations: The Political Economy of Hunger and Population (1980).

Rather than Hardin, you’d be better served by reading Kaushik Basu’s Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics (2000)…and the works of Amartya Sen, Partha Dasgupta, Meghnad Desai, Parnab Bardhan, Philip Mirowski, S.M. Amadae, William I. Robinson, Anwar Shaikh, Paul Sweezy, Robert Pollin….

> I didn’t say I wanted to nor do I hope to intimidate anyone, what I said and you apparently can’t make sense of plain English, is that YOU are intimidated

Of course you didn’t say it, but you hallucinated that I was intimidated because that is what you are really hoping for. You know as well as I do that it is not constructive to any discussion to suddenly start listing books as reference without a word establishing that they are an authority. And your wish-fulfilling hallucination that I was intimidated, rather than just pointing out how your bibliographies add nothing to the conversation, is the dead giveaway as to their real purpose.

Apparently you were not being so careful in your reading. Heh.

Take this next line:

> Don’t be ashamed to admit you’re ill-read, as it’s now clear to everyone.

See? Clearly you believe your bibliographies are giving you an advantage.

> If you were familiar with the literature in question you would appreciate the expertise from which it was generated.

Right. The fact I never heard of these books proves that I don’t know what I am talking about. You know, because these books are so self-evidently great that no other books can inform me on their subjects.

The fact is I am a student of reality, not fiction, which is why I don’t bother with books that claim that we can learn anything from the utopian societies of the 1840’s other than the fact that this style of communism is doomed to fail. The fact you cited with no self-awareness the example of the Shakers is only the most laughable example of that.

I am, unlike you, a working lawyer. It is amazing how literally decades of legal theory can be proven utterly wrong in only six months of real world experience. For instance, law and economic theorists, such as Guido Calabresi or Tony Kronman, love to cite Holmes’ various pronouncements that really a contract gives the person two options: to honor it, or to break it and pay the damages for such breach. From there, Holmes gives us the theory of efficient breach. But Holmes is wrong. There are actually 3 options in any contract: honor it, breach it, or hire a lawyer to try to get you out of it. Three years in law school, and I never heard any of my “law and economics” professors figure that one out, but I did based on my experience in my first case. I don’t hate academics, but I don’t put half as much truck in their supposed “expertise” as you do, apparently. Meanwhile, you continue to hoppy that this time Pepperming Patty will let you kick the football.

And before I went to law school, I was a student of history. I am aware, on a level that you don’t apparently get, how the rubber of your theories met the road of reality. Communism is and always will be at best a failure, and at worst a nightmare. Anyone who denies that either 1) doesn’t know history or 2) knows it but doesn’t get it. The fact you knew of the Shakers and didn’t understand how problematic it was to cite them, suggests that you are more likely in the second category than the first. Or for that matter the fact you continued to insist the Cuban healthcare system is great even though Fidel Castro would have nothing to do with it, when his life was on the line. The fact that you can’t understand or admit, that it is a devastating indictment of the Cuban health care system is telling.

But in the spirit of your argument, I will cite to you:

“Why Patty is a Deluded Commie” by I.P. Oncommunists.

What? You never heard of that book? Well, it just shows how utterly ineducated you are. Everyone who is educated has read that book. Reading that book is what all the cool kids are doing.

And please don’t tell me you live in the real world. You don’t. The fact you can’t even refute my common sense and indeed classical attacks on your silly commie theories proves that. I mean you would think by now you would at least be able to address the tragedy of the commons argument. Its only been around since 1968.

See, that is the horns of the dilemma every commie finds themselves in. If everyone is free and equal, then the product of the collective becomes a commons and things turn pretty tragic pretty fast. But the “cure” of authority is worse than the disease, and pretty soon you have transformed a free and equal people into classes of masters and slaves, and you get what they used to call on American plantations “fooling old master,” or the Soviet version, “you pretend to pay me, I pretend to work.” In other words, you get failure either way, but the authoritarian route staves off failure a little longer, but not after pogroms, concentration camps and other fun things like that.

So let me give YOU a bibliography. First, if you don’t know of the “Tragedy of the Commons” by Hardin, that is basic economic literature, so go find it (and by all evidence, you have no idea what I was talking about the first time I mentioned it). I mean you should read it regardless. Unlike the crap you listed, you are not even literate on economic matters if you haven’t read it. It’s like talking about evolution without having read Darwin; you can do it, but you really are missing a lot. You seem to know about the utopian societies of the 19th century in America, so I am not sure any particular history book on that subject will help. Your problem is not knowledge but understanding. So, to the extent that those societies were communist (and some were and some weren’t), Hardin makes you understand why failure was built in.

Further I think you would benefit from a few lessons about the economics of slavery. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel has a nice economic analysis of slavery in his book “Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.” His basic argument is that in economic terms slavery is like as if every day you work, you go to the bank to get your paycheck and then as you leave, someone holds you up and steals it from you. His flaw is a common one among economists: he underappreciates, I think, the morality of the situation. I am not saying he thinks slavery is okay or anything, but I think he fails to understand just how evil it was. Still, his economic arguments do shed light, although I have given you his basic idea.

And then there is Ralph Korngold’s biography of Thaddeus Stevens. First, its just plain a wonderful book. The problem with civil war historiography is that the biggest consumers of Civil War history books are the descendants of Confederates, or southern, or otherwise not in the mood to hear anything bad about the Confederacy. Now while Stampp, Franklin, et. al. have made great strides toward reversing the revisionism of Bowers et. al. (later mimicked in “Birth of a Nation” and to a less obvious extent, “Gone with the Wind”), and no one today would say that slavery was a positive good, etc. (I mean, besides commies who instead deny that authoritative communism is morally and economically indistinguishable from slavery), there is a palpable desire among civil war historians not to offend the descendants of confederates by, say, pointing out what a sham the “states’ rights” theory of the Civil War is, or just how intractable the south was in reconstruction, or how reconstruction became our first “war on terror” (which, by the way, we lost). In other words, those who purport to sympathize with the southern cause, do so out of ignorance of the fact that the only real southern cause was the maintenance of slavery, and ignorance that most historians allow its audience to maintain. But Korngold is admirable in that he pulls none of those punches, and points out a lot of really uncomfortable facts from that era. That is enough to recommend the book, but also germane to the discussion, Korngold (unintentionally) shows how Hummel’s economics of slavery links up with the cold calculus of war. Really, despite the fact that Hummel’s book comes long after Korngold’s, Hummel’s and Korngold’s books work very well together on the economic front. And Korngold has a moral sense that Hummel lacks.

[By the way, don’t bother with either Fawn Brodie’s book on Stevens or Richard Current’s. Current’s book is actually bigoted against Stevens, I guess for not being a proper commie and for being club footed—as silly as that seems to modern Americans. (There were some people who believed that a clubbed foot in particular was a sign that you were the child of the devil.) Brodie doesn’t share Current’s politics, and claims not to share his anti-disability prejudice, but instead argues that Stevens’ experience with discrimination twisted his heart so that it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. On the other hand, Woodley’s account of Stevens’ life is the only one to consider a more uplifting possibility: that his experience with disability discrimination was educational and led him to understand the immorality of all discrimination in a way that he otherwise wouldn’t. Woodley’s problem is his thesis is only clear after far more work than he should have required of the reader. Its almost like a secret code, but if you read him very carefully, you will see that this is precisely what he is saying. There was a fifth book written more recently on him, but I honestly forgot the author’s name and the title, probably because the book was pretty forgettable, offering little insight, indeed not even seeming very interesting in the subject.]

[And this is truly off-topic, but Brodie is famous for a biography of Jefferson where she argues in a very flakey fashion that Jefferson was sleeping with Sally Hemmings. The fact she was right is proof that even a broken clock is right two times a day. She seemed to be attracted to this theme for Stevens probably had an affair with a free black woman named Lydia Smith. It is an interesting contrast, because where Jefferson’s relationship with Hemmings was probably abusive (I mean how do you “consent” to sex with a person who purports to own you, exactly?), Stevens’ and Smith’s was probably beautiful in the ordinary way love is beautiful, and only tragic in the sense that they had to keep it in the closet.]

Finally, you should read everything that George Fitzhugh wrote, especially “Sociology for the South,” but also “Cannibals All!” Mind you, you will want to take a shower afterward. His writings are the closest thing to Mein Kampf ever produced on American soil. But these books will expose you to some very uncomfortable applications of your pet theory.

Now you might get why I think you need to read about slavery as it existed, but you might wonder why I focus much on the destruction of slavery. That is because in some ways you can learn more from its destruction than its life. Toward that end, let me recommend two more things. First is not a book of an episode of Civil War Journal, on the History channel. It’s the one on Grant. I was frankly surprised at how brilliant this episode was, because I never expected the history channel to offer anything but standard vanilla approaches to history. But this one revised wholly my understanding of Grant as a general. The short version is this. There is a difference between strategy and tactics. Tactics is winning the battle, Strategy is winning the war. Lee was a brilliant tactician, but Grant was the better strategist. Grant never beat Lee in a single battle until the very end, but in battle after battle, Grant bled Lee’s forces dry. I am reminded of Tom Clancey speaking on the Gulf War, arguing that with the technological gap the Iraqis didn’t even understand what we were doing to them. Grant didn’t have a technological advantage, but Grant, being one of the first truly modern generals, was so far beyond Lee that Lee didn’t even understand what Grant was doing to him. Grant was like a brutal accountant, making sure that each fight resulted in losses that Lee could not sustain. That and the fact that Grant simply refused to accept defeat, led to his final victory.

The second, I would also recommend that you read the stump speech of Carl Shurz, given during the 1860 elections. You see back then presidential candidates didn’t campaign on their own behalf (with Douglas being an exception). So Shurz was Lincoln’s surrogate. Shurz was an uncommonly brilliant man and really any time he expressed himself, it was worth paying attention, and his stump speech was a perfect example of that. In a winking fashion, he argued that the South would not dare secede, because the North would crush them. Of course, I say it was “winking” because I think his real message was more “so what if they secede, we will beat them.” And in that description of how the North would win, he laid out exactly how it would occur, even explaining why Sherman’s march (whose brutality has been overestimated because of the nature of the civil war history market I discussed above) was vital to victory, long before anyone else conceived of it. It also will depress the hell out of you, because you realize that if everyone had listened to him, the war would have been done within months and yes, with full emancipation for the slaves. But sadly I can’t tell you exactly where to find that speech, so that will take some digging. Its not the most important piece of the puzzle, but it is very illuminating and will help you understand how the economics of slavery worked with military strategy. So it helps, but it is not so vital that you don’t have a chance of understanding without it.

But when you can come back to me and say that you know why it is very likely that the emancipation proclamation was the true turning point of the Civil War, then I will know you understand slavery well enough to discuss whether authoritative communism is morally indistinguishable from slavery. And you need to be able answer the inherent problems in a collective identified by Hardin. Then you will finally understand why I say non-authoritative communism as doomed to failure, and authoritative communism as morally indistinguishable from slavery.

And you can consider yourself schooled.

At this juncture your replies are rather embarrassing so by all means retain your anonymity and refer to my “imaginary friend.”

I didn’t say I wanted to nor do I hope to intimidate anyone, what I said and you apparently can’t make sense of plain English, is that YOU are intimidated, in other words, you’ve made clear the subjective experience of intimidation on your part.

Comments like this suggest your emotions have gotten the better of you: “you have to be careful not to become so cloistered that you disappear up your own arse.”

Don’t be ashamed to admit you’re ill-read, as it’s now clear to everyone. If you were familiar with the literature in question you would appreciate the expertise from which it was generated.

I’ve raised two adult children who are by conventional standards successful but more importantly wonderful human beings: honest, bright, good-natured, etc. I’ve been married for close to thirty years. I excelled in school and have held all sorts of jobs and continue to work in several areas outside the academy. I’m well known by my neighbors many of whom I count as friends. So you’re in no position to say anything whatsoever about me being “life dumb” as you have not the faintest idea about my life.

I’m not waving any flag of any sort but celebrating the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and looking forward to tomorrow’s presidential inauguration ceremony.

Wishing you the best in mental health,

Patrick

> You persist in displaying an impressive inability to appreciate “distinctions with a difference” as, say, between Communism and communism

Ah, here we go with your rebranding, too, a truly dishonest tactic.

> I understand Jonestown as a religious cult

A commie one.

> National Socialism was at best a nominal appellation

No, that is just what is said to cover up the very real connection.

> Incidentally, the bibliographies and references that clearly intimidate you

Well, isn’t that revealing? You admit finally why you do this irritating thing: you hope to intimidate the other person. I should’ve seen this more quickly.

But really all it does is avoid discussion. If those books have a point, YOU make it. if they contain useful facts, present them. If they have useful arguments, present those as well. because if you think someone is going to go and read 14 books and then comment back to you, you are kidding yourself.

But the point isn’t to discuss, it is to try to intimidate.

> As a well-known professor in the blogosphere recently wrote to me

Is this professor a person other people can see, or is he just an imaginary friend.

Hey, but a former president wrote to me and said, “Pat is being kind of a schmuck. By the way, I am genuinely surprised, after having written the Emancipation proclamation, that tomorrow a black man is going to be sworn in as president. That is great. Signed: Abe.”

> it behooves that person to be familiar with the bulk of the relevant literature

Right, right, its not experience that matter or even a good history book, but some person writing about how gee maybe this time communism would work. You know, I like that this blog is more intellectual, but you have to be careful not to become so cloistered that you disappear up your own arse. There is a whole world outside those books of your, Professor, and I suggest you get acquainted with it. Anyone who defends Cuba’s health care when Fidel Castro himself would have nothing to do with it, is clearly a person who is book smart but life dumb..

> Alas, the rest is not worthy of reply.

Ah, so what is not worth a reply:

You degraded the tone here in the first place.

The “utopian” societies of the 19th century was based on the bloody “fiction” of an empty America a situation we shouldn’t replicate.

Communism with freedom and equality inevitably fails; authority is always needed, and authority ends freedom and equality.

Reading lists, without saying a word to establish that these people are authoritative on their subject, is worthless.

And much, much more. But who are we kidding? It really means you are waving the white flag of surrender on those points.

I understand Jonestown as a religious cult, not a Communist party or Communist movement or Communist state, whatever the bizarre rhetorical use and social engagement of “Communist” ideas. I think it’s best understood and explained as a religious phenomenon. Jones was a preacher if I recall correctly, a fact that would appear to rule him out as a Marxist, at least as usually understood. In graduate school we spent a fair amount of time in one seminar examining Jonestown as a religious phenomenon, relying on insights provided by Jonathan Z. Smith’s Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (1982). I also happen to believe, with the late Ninian Smart, that some worldviews, like Mao’s brand of Communism, can be fruitfully explained in many respects with the concepts, categories and methodological tools in general used by students of religion.

National Socialism was at best a nominal appellation for what political scientists and theorists, political philosophers, historians, and other experts on the matter refer to as Fascism. Again, a distinction with an important difference. Communism is not the same thing as Fascism. Hitler and the Nazis well understood the attractions of socialism and tried to co-opt that appeal (not unlike the manner in which the centrists in the Democratic Party successfully took over much of the rhetoric and some of the policy ideas from the Republican Party’s ‘Contract with America’). As to why the Nazis succeeded on that front, one could do worse than consult Erich Fromm’s pathbreaking study, The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study (English tr., 1984).

There are fallacious and non-fallacious ad hominem arguments: yet again, a distinction with a difference. Yours is an aptitude for the former.

Incidentally, the bibliographies and references that clearly intimidate you exist for a reason: should you not understand that rationale please don’t hold it against the rest of us. As a well-known professor in the blogosphere recently wrote to me in regard to several of these lists: “They are really great and will be very useful. You’re reviving the lost art of bibliography here.” I’ve saved several hundred letters expressing similar gratitude for the compilations. It is in fact quite exasperating to discuss any topic in which one of the interlocutors demonstrates an unusual degree of ignorance of the relevant literature (of course we’re all ignorant to one degree or another, but if one decides to speak in an authoritative manner on a topic, it behooves that person to be familiar with the bulk of the relevant literature). In such cases, I do indeed prefer to say, well, familiarize yourself with the relevant literature and then get back to me, as there’s no common ground from which to have a meaningful dialogue. In the social sciences and humanities this is, rightly, part of the formal process for earning one’s doctorate: mastering a basic grasp of the relevant literature (and often then some).

Alas, the rest is not worthy of reply.

Wow, a short novel designed to cover up a few things.

First, you complain in a long winded passage I won’t bother to quote (because, my God, you just go on and on, don’t you?) that I drew this into a quarrel. Mmm, yeah, like as if you starting off with snottily correcting his spelling didn’t have that effect. Again you astound us with your sense of self-awareness.

You complain I used an ad hominem, but the question was your conduct so what was I supposed to talk about?

And again, it shows your usual lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy. This is how the conversation flowed:

Anon compared you and Solove to propagandists who wrote: “”I’ve never read Solzhenitsin, but I know his books are terrible!”

You said he spelled his name wrong. Oh and “Solzhenitsin” was an evil anti-semite, etc. Which is an ad hominem attack on Solzhenitsin (however you spell it), and utterly irrelevant to whether it was right for those propagandists to do what they did, or for you to imitate them.

So you had ad homs flying around long before I engaged you here.

> And the red-baiting

Excuse me a second, but you ARE a communist. “Red baiting” is only wrong when you aren’t a red.

> and calling me “snotty” lend the overal tenor and tone to your replies.

Which I guess in your mind is worse than actually being a snot. *rolls eyes* But I love how that works. You are an snot, I call you on it, and you accuse me of ruining the tone of the conversation by calling you out for your snottiness.

> The former is of course reminiscent of the political climate of the Red Scare and specifically, McCarthyism,

Right. McCarthy went around accusing people of falsely being a communist. And here I am correctly accusing you of being a communist. Eerie how similar those scenarios are.

> my point of mentioning the spelling error did have an ulterior motive

So you admit after claiming at first you had none.

> to call attention to the self-importance and hubris of the comment made to Professor Solove.

Mmm, right. Self-awareness is batting zero today.

> It was not made as an “argument,”

No, in fact you were quarrelling, to use your lexicon. Or as I said earlier:

> your purpose was to belittle him, because you didn’t really have a good response. He nailed you substantively and you dickered about spelling. Who exactly do you think you are fooling?

Moving on…

> so your repeated attempt to characterize it as [an argument]

No, I did not characterize it as an argument. It was a cheap shot, not an argument, as the part I quoted above makes clear.

> as the works of Walton, but also that of Stephen Toulmin

Well, the works of Larry, Curly and Moe tell me that you are a complete snot.

Sorry, you never bother to explain who these people are and why would should care about what they say. Just writing a book doesn’t make your views valid. Ask Bruce Ackerman. Or rather, ask anyone who has read what Bruce Ackerman wrote. “We amended the constitution and didn’t even know it!” Sheesh.

> It’s impossible to belittle an anonymous commentator as their identity is unknown, and thus there is no “person” to be belittled.

An anonymous person is not a person. Good to know.

> I did want to “belittle” *the remark* inasmuch as and for reasons I later spelled out, it was an awful analogy and really said nothing informative or interesting at all, apart from insinuating that Professor Solove was, and this you’ll well appreciate, acting like a communist dupe.

Right, pointing that you behave just like a propagandist is not fair. I mean why should we learn from all that boring history anyway?

Didn’t your hero, Marx, say that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce? Of course as usual Marx was overgeneralizing, but it is true that usually it is a farce when history repeats if only because we should have been smarter the second time. Like as we hear American liberals ignore Ahmadinjehad’s continual statements to the effect that he will kill every man, woman and child in Israel, there is an element of farce there because we made the exact same mistake with Hitler. Or hell, it is downright quixotic of you to say communism can work and cite the Shakers as an example of your ideal. Last I heard there were like three of them left: three very old, very frustrated triplet women. And that was a few years ago. For all I know, the Shakers could be gone.

> Incidentally, I’m not out to “fool” anyone.

Then why do you continually lie, indeed admitting a few posts later what you denied a few posts before?

> The fact that you repeat this accusation ad nauseum, along with repeatedly charging me with the lack of self-awareness, is a telling and troubling indication [of] … [blah, blah, blah, blah] a pathological tendency to infer motives and motivations [blah, blah, blah—more or less saying I am not being fair.]

Sorry, but you actually lie, and I refuse to cut you any slack to pretend otherwise. And yes, your hypocrisy is pretty glaring.

> So it is reasonable to conclude from the above that you have no deep interest in or abiding concern for a rational argument

So… unless I take all your words at face value with slack-jawed credibility I am not interested in reasonable argument. But on the other hand you can lie and employ screamingly hypocritical standards, but we aren’t supposed to question your interest in reasonable argumentation.

I mean, when you call another person arrogant, we are supposed to take that seriously?

When you accuse a person of making irrelevant arguments, after you made irrelevant arguments, we are supposed to take that seriously?

And on and on it goes.

> that you are not reasoning at all but simply hurling insults

Unlike you who picked on the guy’s spelling.

> but I will state categorically that I have never “lied to the public”

Except for where you have admitted you did. And where you told tales that were just plain implausible. Or attempted “rebranding” right in front of my eyes.

> this creates no small amount of tension in our household when I would prefer to buy books rather than more sensible things like food and clothes.

Well, let no one accuse you of being an impractical academic, a man who is book smart and life stupid.

> Indeed, I can’t help but point out that instead of buying Coulter’s book, or one like it, my money is more prudently if not wisely spent on books with some degree of intellectual heft and substance

So you say… not having read it. Again who do you think you are fooling?

> It is not the same thing.

Oh yes it is. Maoist politics in the 1970’s blurred the line between personal life and political life.

> My worldview is in fact beholden to several Eastern religio-philosophical traditions, Liberalism (which includes the likes of Locke, Hobbes, Mill, etc.), classical Greek philosophy, Marxist and anarchist traditions, philosophy of science, etc.,

Again, exactly who do you think you are fooling?

> I don’t in general believe in letting “liars of[f] the hook,” be it Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, or Pol Pot.

I would agree 100% with that sentiment, if only I thought for a moment you believed it. but you don’t practice what you preach.

> I’m not at all terrified that someone might read Coulter’s stuff and I’ve never done anything whatsoever to stop them,

Nah, you just support those who do.

> I will do everything in my power to contribute to the emergence of culture in which the likes of Coulter have little or no influence

You say, having never read her book. And, by the way, I haven’t either. That is why I am not actually defending her, just saying that should keep an open mind.

> I am likewise not at all terrified by people believing in Coulter’s views because I’m certain there are aleady many such folks.

Ah, sure what’s a few million changed minds going to do? I mean besides give us “President McCain” instead of “President Obama.” Please every sophisticated person know that the margins are tight right now.

> like people liste[n]ing to Rush Limbaugh on the radio

Anyone want to take a guess as to whether Patrick has listened to Rush either?

[By the way, for someone who got all snotty about the proper spelling of a transliterated Russian name, you make a lot of typos yourself.]

> In fact, as Erich Fromm argued, “just as there is a folie à deux, so there is a folie à millions

Wow, that was not at all snotty.

> To repeat, you have absolutely no idea what I think about (the claims of) communist regimes

“I will keep repeating myself without recognize I was already refuted on this point!”

Besides we know what you think: maybe next time communism will work!

> Indeed, I have not

A flat out lie.

> I have done nothing in a blogging thread that remotely resembles

Lies, rebranding, judging the worthiness of an argument purely on ideology without listening, cheap shots taking the place of argument, false intellectualism, party over principle and so forth. It all might as well be in the little red book. And it is you to a T.

You go on, giving yet another reading list… sigh.

Look if you want to read more to learn about how pointless reading lists are, I suggest you read:

War and Peace

The Stand

Williston on Contracts (unabridged version)

Corbin on Contracts (unabridged version)

Corbin Bernstein on Contracts (I think it’s just a pamphlet)

The first restatement of contracts

And the second.

All of the issues of the Yale Law Journal, ever.

Ditto with the Harvard Law Review.

All of the Vampire Chronicles

All of the Ender books

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lord of the Rings, as translated into Klingon

The Lord of the Klingons, translated into Elvish by Tolkien

The script for Gigli

And then when you are done reading all of those books, scripts, pamphlets, you will understand fully my argument. /super sarcasm

> I used those passages to illustrate the vigor of a utopian tradition of communism in this country from which we still have much to learn.

Yes, you do, like how they are destined to fail. I mean, they only survived on the fiction that the “West” was empty and land plentiful, and once that ended, they folded like tents. The Shaker example is only the most laughable, but really, leaving out the Shakers how do you propose we replicate that situation? Should we go to, say, Africa, commit genocide and then create brief communist utopia as we fill it with our people?

> The quote from [Harold and] Kumar which you chose to highlight was attempting to convey the perspective of those “socialists” and “communists” (indeed many Americans of that era) and was not Kumar’s belief nor did it represent mine.

Yeah, translation you didn’t realize how bigoted the quote was until I pointed it out. Fair enough, you wouldn’t be the first. But that is my point. Those “utopian” societies you idealize were founded on blood.

And your passage doesn’t make it clear at all that this is not Kumar’s belief, although it might have been if you, God help us, quoted even more of it.

> may contain many true propositions as well as false ones,

Yep, “maybe next time it will work!” You’re like Charlie Brown, unable to grasp that you should stop trying to kick the football! Especially considering the fact that, to depart from my metaphor, very often when communism is tried millions of people die. The failures of communism has not generally been costless.

> As the best socialist thinking is grounded in principles of freedom and equality

Lol if you are “free” then the communist society falls apart. Take a simple farming collective. They say, “everyone eats from everyone’s efforts.” So Bob works hard all day, but Bill and Ted don’t. So Bob shares his crops, all three eating based solely on Bob’s efforts. Pretty soon Bob gets the message: working hard is for suckers. In short the farming becomes a commons and it gets pretty tragic pretty fast.

So then in comes John and he says, the solution is to make all three of them work. So John spends all of his day making sure the other two work. Now you don’t have freedom; you have coercion. You also have inequality; John has a position different from, and indeed above, the other two. And I am sure John won’t become, say, a tyrant at some point, right?

Freedom and equality are impossible in any functioning communist system.

> many of the works in the bibliography cited above; the Marxist notion of “the good” as self-realization exemplifies this

And again, why should any of these writers be seen as superior sources of information over 200+ years of unbroken experience? Communism is at best a failure, at worst a nightmare.

> is an oxymoron of the egregious sort to equate it with slavery

Right. Well, okay if you try the “everyone is free” approach mentioned above, its not slavery: it is just an instant failure. But most of the time people figure that out, so pretty soon an authority is 1) telling you what work to do and 2) not letting you keep the fruits of your labor. In what way is that not slavery?

> Communism had nothing whatsoever to do with Jonestown or Nuremburg.

Are you joking? Jim Jones was a big Marxist, and yeah, what could Communism have to do with “National Socialism.” Sheesh.

> to visit my library and see for yourself how it is chock full of titles with views I disagree with

So don’t believe my words, believe what I allege that I do.

So basically to wrap things up, you have an extremely long-winded post accusing me of doing, pretty much what you are clearly doing. The only attempt at substance was to try to claim that communism goes with freedom and equality like peanut butter and jelly. Mmm-hmm. And also generally to try to defend communism. This, after accusing me of red baiting, even though you are an admitted red.

Well, you certainly showed me.

As I stated earlier, your are neither a careful nor thoughtful reader and you have a predilection for the fallacious resort to the abusive and circumstantial ad hominem argument. This means, in short, the conspicuous absence of either the taste or talent for enjoyable conversation or meaningful dialogue.

In fact, you’ve here displayed ample lack of the ability to discern a proper argument. First, it is important to be able to understand the dialogue form in which an argument is embedded, and there are at least six or seven of them, as Douglas Walton’s work makes plain. In this case, the nature of a blogging thread is akin to and thus in some respects resembles, an everyday conversation; it also features elements of a “persuasion,” “information-seeking” and, especially in the instant case, “educational” dialogue forms. In this thread, these forms eventually reduced to the most troubling dialogue form, namely, a “quarrel,” if only because of your fondness for the ad hominem argument, which relies above all on the method of personal attack and is defined by an air of emotional disquiet featuring slavish devotion to the primary agonistic goal of “hitting” out at the other, or simply attachment to a picture of the dialogue form as one that is identical in many respects to a “war” or “battle” (cf.: ‘outside the conduct of actual battlefield operations in war, or in espionage…’). Your repeated use of agonistic terms and imagery is testament enough to the tenacity with which you’ve cleaved to the quarrel form of dialogue. And the red-baiting and hurling of personal insults is clear and convincing proof that this is your preferred form of dialogue. In particular, the red-baiting and calling me “snotty” lend the overal tenor and tone to your replies. The former is of course reminiscent of the political climate of the Red Scare and specifically, McCarthyism, but perhaps you see it as a justifiable form of ideological cleansing.

Insofar as this was a “conversation,” my point of mentioning the spelling error did have an ulterior motive: to call attention to the self-importance and hubris of the comment made to Professor Solove. It was not made as an “argument,” so your repeated attempt to characterize it as such makes painfully clear you don’t understand the nature of an argument at all. Assuming you understand the dialogue form in which an argument is typically contained, you are better equipped to identify any and all arguments the form possesses, and they are not always easy to identify, as the works of Walton, but also that of Stephen Toulmin and Alec Fisher, enable us to appreciate.

Now, to reiterate, pointing out the putative spelling error was not an argument, and not only because I did not intend it to be such. However, my response to his defense of the spelling in question could be considered an argument if you wish, but given the dialogue form here, I did not invest much energy in the “argument,” nor did I care one way or another if, in the end, I was wrong: hence my willingness to concede the possibility of a technically acceptable alternative spelling, although, as stated I believe there is a (normatively: because lexicographically and conventionally supported) correct way to spell the name in question.

As the individual in question was “anonymous,” it is impossible to “belittle him” as there was no “him” there, indeed, perhaps it was a “she” or a trans-gender indiviudal, I have no idea. It’s impossible to belittle an anonymous commentator as their identity is unknown, and thus there is no “person” to be belittled. Of course your characterization of our exchange as “He nailed you substantively and you dickered about spelling,” misses the mark and once more is revealing about your inordinate fondness for the quarrel form of dialogue conducted in purely agonistic fashion. I did want to “belittle” *the remark* inasmuch as and for reasons I later spelled out, it was an awful analogy and really said nothing informative or interesting at all, apart from insinuating that Professor Solove was, and this you’ll well appreciate, acting like a communist dupe.

Incidentally, I’m not out to “fool” anyone. The fact that you repeat this accusation ad nauseum, along with repeatedly charging me with the lack of self-awareness, is a telling and troubling indication not only the inability to use the Principle of Charity (one of the things this principle entails is that ‘if interpreting as reasoning a passage which is not *obviously* reasoning yields only bad arguments, assume it is *not* reasoning) in an argument but a pathological tendency to infer motives and motivations when no such inferences are necessary to the exchange nor in any manner whatsover useful or productive to carrying on a rational exchange of ideas or arguing in a reasonable fashion. So it is reasonable to conclude from the above that you have no deep interest in or abiding concern for a rational argument if only because you flagrantly flout the conventions and norms of same. And when not doing that, you violate common norms of conversational etiquette. But I might also accord you the benefit of doubt in spite of your avowed belief that you are carrying on a rational argument and conclude, as a result of the Principle of Charity, that you are not reasoning at all but simply hurling insults (e.g., ‘close-minded’) and making bizarre insinuations (e.g., ‘blinded by ideology’ and ‘you defending the ideological gaming of the system’) and false imputations of motive (‘you think that dishonesty in a “good cause” is justified on a regular basis.’). I’ll admit to feeling compelled to engage you in your preferred method of dialogue conducted in quarrelsome terms if only to make a point that you could understand, and perhaps as well for a bit of perverse fun, but I now regret doing so, for it only encouraged you to descend to ever deeper levels of the dialogue equivalent of Dante’s Hell.

The number and nature of the accusations and insults achieved its crowning glory in, nay, received its quintessential expression in, the following comment: “Every time you lie to the public, what you are really saying is ‘I don’t believe in democracy.’ But then, you are a Commie, so that is hardly surprising.” To unpack this would take far too much time and is probably not worth the effort, but I will state categorically that I have never “lied to the public” and you have not a jot of plausible evidence to the contrary. What is more, while I need not jusitfy my commitment to democratic ideals, principles and practices to you, unsuspecting readers who might think there is an iota of truth to your ridiculously churlish if not juvenile remark would be interested to know that several parts of a massive bibliography on democratic theory and practice I put together were in fact published in two issues of the journal, The Good Society (in 2005 and 2006). Not a few political scientists and political philosopers (who specialize in this area) have personally informed me of how helpful this compilation was. You might also ask students who attended my class on “political thinking” at the local college: this course is principally about democratic theory and praxis from ancient Greece to the contemporary period. My students would be happy to inform you of what I think about “democracy.” But of course, I don’t really believe in democracy, for you’ve said as much, so you’ll find some way to put an Orwellian spin on these facts and inform us of how this is yet further evidence of my disdain for democracy. But what it is really evidence of is your utter disregard for truth and a corresponding talent for hurling invectives of one kind or another.

I do not “whine” about the cost of books, I complain about their cost, as do a lot of respectable people I know. And most of us are with Erasmus: “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” I complain not only because I’m not wealthy, but because the cost of books has been dramatically rising (especially but not only law books) and this creates no small amount of tension in our household when I would prefer to buy books rather than more sensible things like food and clothes.

“My money is better spent on books like…

Oh, God, you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

Indeed, I can’t help but point out that instead of buying Coulter’s book, or one like it, my money is more prudently if not wisely spent on books with some degree of intellectual heft and substance on subjects that are closer to my heart. And owing to my educational background and ardent avocational pursuits, I happen to prefer books more theoretical and philosophical in nature. Which is to say I also don’t read the more popular or best-selling books written by Liberals or Leftists (there’s really very few of the latter around anymore) either.

You should enroll in a critical thinking course, a class in introductory philosophy, or at least spend some time studying the art of rhetoric as well as the art and science of hermeneutics so as to save yourself from indulging in howlers like this:

“I don’t hate her as a human being, rather, I detest her political views…

Which in your strain of politics is just about the same thing.”

It is not the same thing. If you had had an introductory course on philosophy you might have learned that it is important most of the time (there are exceptions which I won’t take the trouble to explain here) to separate the personhood or character of the speaker from the argument or ideas being spoken so as to more fairly assess the logic and reason of those ideas on their own, that is to say, without needlessly importing bias or prejudice or distorting emotional reactions into that evaluative exercise. I do not hate Ann Coulter. You have no justification whatsoever to find a hidden meaning behind that assertion. What is more, you are really clueless as to “my strain of politics.” My worldview is in fact beholden to several Eastern religio-philosophical traditions, Liberalism (which includes the likes of Locke, Hobbes, Mill, etc.), classical Greek philosophy, Marxist and anarchist traditions, philosophy of science, etc., etc. You cannot always and easily deduce from this worldview a politics that is readily identifiable on the existing spectrum of political views, even if I most often subscribe to views that are to the Left side of Mirabeau’s geography of the Assembly. That fails to explain or account for those political views which I have that are more Confucian or even Gandhian in inspiration, for example. So you have no inkling whatsoever as to my “strain of politics.”

I have no idea what you intended to communicate by the following:

“Lying is lying, dishonesty is dishonesty. The fact that a person shouldn’t believe the liar doesn’t let the liar off the hook. But you are ready to do so.”

…but I will state that I don’t in general believe in letting “liars of the hook,” be it Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, or Pol Pot. Now the person who lies about the whereabouts of the intended (possible) victim of a murderer so as to protect that person from being discovered by the murderer, that individual I can honestly “let off the hook.”

In any case, the fact that you relied on a straw man and red herring remains unassailable.

I’m not at all terrified that someone might read Coulter’s stuff and I’ve never done anything whatsoever to stop them, nor do I fancy myself possessing any such power whatsoever. In fact, I’ve long been resigned to the fact that people will read and watch all sorts of mindless crap and that is their right or prerogative. Do I wish it was otherwise? Of course, I will do everything in my power to contribute to the emergence of culture in which the likes of Coulter have little or no influence, but I’ll do the same for “reality” TV shows, backbiting gossip, gangsterism, etc., indeed, I still believe in the Arnoldian ideal of “sweetness and light.”

I am likewise not at all terrified by people believing in Coulter’s views because I’m certain there are aleady many such folks. In fact, the views I subscribe to are rather unfashionable and belong to a very small minority and I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime or even the lifetime of my children’s children. I’ve long reconciled myself to this and other such facts (like people listeing to Rush Limbaugh on the radio). The hoi polloi do and believe in a number of disturbing or strange things but I’ve never looked to them for guidance or inspiration nor have I envisaged any dramatic change on that score in the near future. In fact, as Erich Fromm argued, “just as there is a folie à deux, so there is a folie à millions: ‘the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.’”

“You certainly have shown much less skepticism about the claims of communist regimes than of anything coming from Coulter’s mouth.”

To repeat, you have absolutely no idea what I think about (the claims of) communist regimes, as I’ve never expressed any thoughts on those claims nor relied on those claims to talk about anything involving a current or previous communist regime.

Ditto: “I have never ‘defended communist regimes’ simpliciter.

Indeed, I have not, and if you believe to the contrary, show us where I defended a communist regime simpliciter. I have never done that. Again, I have never defended a communist regime as such. Need I repeat myself again? How many times do I need to say it before it sinks in? Of course, no matter how many times I say it you’ll believe otherwise, as that is intrinsic to red-baiting and symptomatic of your constitutional inability to accurately and carefully read and characterize the thoughts of others.

And again, “Such an accusation actually trivializes in a disturbing manner political tactics that Communists around the world have in fact historically employed.”

The red-baiting and false accusations are relentless and shameless: “So you say, while behaving like a classical Maoist.”

And again, the point of my earlier comment hits its target (to use the agonistic imagery you favor).

I have done nothing in a blogging thread that remotely resembles in even a figurative fashion, the “behavior of a classical Maoist.” To claim otherwise is to expose the depth and breadth of your ignorance of the behavior of “classical Maoists.” It suggests to us that you have no idea of what you’re talking about, but are all-too-adept at indulging in ad hominen insults that swarm in the muck and mire of ideological epithets.

You still evidence no idea whatsoever about what it means to call oneself a “communist” with a lower-case “c,” like Jesus and his disciples, or the early Chrisitan communities, or members of the Catholic Worker movement or those in liberation theology base communities in Central and South America, or what Ganbdhi endeavored to instantiate with his use of the ashramic ideal as part of his satyagraha campaigns and sarvodaya movement, etc., etc. It’s first and foremost about a kind of spiritual and ethical orientation that holds an individualist moral ethic up as a standard for politics or social praxis. It refuses to countenance a divide between an ethics for the individual in his or her private life and in the intimate realm and that on a collective plane or in the conventional political sphere. That is, there is no “double standard” here, and as an ethical conviction it runs contrary to dominant political theories of both Conservative and Liberal provenance.

But when I stated before you that you had no idea what I meant, you yet again provided us with evidence that that is in fact the case. But of course to call me an “idiot” and a “dishonest person” will decide the question in a rational way. You are free to ask my friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, colleagues, students, even casual acquaintances, if they think I’m an idiot and dishonest. I suspect you’ll find that you are all alone on a deserted island when it comes to that judgment. But feel free to shout, because maybe, just maybe, someone, somewhere, will hear you.

Your throwaway remarks about communism and socialism simply show that you are not well-versed in the subject. You could not have read deeply or widely in the literature on same (for just a taste of the better part of that literature, at least of the more theoretical and philosophical sort, see here:

http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/12/marx-marxism-very-select-bibliography.html

I used those passages to illustrate the vigor of a utopian tradition of communism in this country from which we still have much to learn. The quote from Kumar which you chose to highlight was attempting to convey the perspective of those “socialists” and “communists” (indeed many Americans of that era) and was not Kumar’s belief nor did it represent mine. It was an attempt at historical description and did not in any way make an evaluative claim about the belief itself. I’m therefore puzzled as to why you found it necessary to reply: “Mmm, I don’t think the Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, etc. would agree with that characterization.” Nor do I, nor does Kumar, so what’s your point? Yet once again we have an illustration of your inability to carefully read something and your penchant for drawing implications or imagining inferences or making assumptions that are wholly unwarranted and thus patently irrational.

“Mmm, yes, the people who believed that all sex, including in the context of marriage, was evil and therefore they didn’t do it. And of course that wonderful and perfect society is thriving today. /sarcasm”

Look, people hold all sorts of beliefs, some more plausible and rational than others, some more psychologically healthy than others. But a typical worldview, Shaker or otherwise, may contain many true propositions as well as false ones, or ones in which the question of truth remains undecided or open. It does no good to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, which is just what “black-and-white” thinking is inclined to do: “Classifying every particular case as an example of one of two extremes when in fact there is a range of possible postions that can be occupied with the extremes. Black-and-white thinking occurs when you try to make the world fit very simple preconceived categories.” Many of your comments are perfect exemplars, textbook examples of such thinking.

As the best socialist thinking is grounded in principles of freedom and equality (see many of the works in the bibliography cited above; the Marxist notion of “the good” as self-realization exemplifies this, as do the works of John Roemer, Jon Elster, G.A. Cohen, Michael Harrington, Michael Luntley, David Schweickart, David Miller, to select just a handful of more recent cases), it is an oxymoron of the egregious sort to equate it with slavery. The magnitude of your incomprehension here is what remains frightening, and again alerts the “learned” reader that you have no idea whatsoever as to what you’re talking about.

I don’t hold Christians today responsible for the Inquisition nor the centuries of anti-Semitism cultivated and practiced by Christians with an horrific vengeance. I trust them to be accountable and responsible for their own understanding and avowed Christian faith, beliefs and values, including their sincere endeavors to live a life that incarnates that faith and belief. And God knows there’s all manner of Christian…and so too is there all manner of socialist and communist.

BTW: Communism had nothing whatsoever to do with Jonestown or Nuremburg.

“I refuse to read any book written by a person who disagrees with me.”

Well, you’re invited, like “anon,” to visit my library and see for yourself how it is chock full of titles with views I disagree with to one extent or another. Indeed, the many bibliographies I’ve assembled and made publicly available are representative of that library and contain all sorts of views, some of which I vigorously disagree with or dissent from. Oh, I forgot, I’m a snotty liar and communist, lacking in self-awareness and a victim of self-deception, completely full of myself, insecure about my intelligence and out to fool everyone. What is more, I’ve “been beaten,” “have nothing substantive to say,” and have “obviously been outmatched.”

Heh.

Yes, I’m quite snotty and wholly bereft of even a modicum of self-awareness.

And witness a truly remarkable phenomenon: a continually snotty man who accuses someone else of being is full of himself. The mind boggles. You really don’t have any sense of self-awareness, do you?

You’re wasting your gifts and talents with comments on this blog, as we’d be better served by your published thoughts, your public service and leadership, your shining example. I can’t run back fast enough with my tail between my legs and join the other dim-witted and dull denizens of the cave. I can’t thank you enough for showing us how to break the shackles of self-deception, how to be free from the fetters of self-denial so as to be better fitted for that journey of emancipation and enlightenment you’ve blazed on the path from the City of Darkness to the Celestial City.

Oh, right, real arguments like “you spelled his name wrong.” Rational discussion like, “I don’t feel like explaining myself, so here are ten books to read instead of me actually saying anything of value, and did I mention I had all of these books all around me because I want you to know I am such a learned (pronounced “learn-ED”) fellow.” Critical thought like “I refuse to read any book written by a person who disagrees with me.” And practical reasoning? What could be a less practical point of view than “communism can work”?

Look, I get it. I’ve known people like you all my life. You are deeply insecure about your own intelligence, and this is all about trying to make people think you are smarter than you are. So this is a drama of self-construction, as well as self-deception, where you try to tell yourself that you were perfectly rational, debating idea for idea and so forth, even though you really weren’t. Because the point isn’t to convince me or anyone else. It’s to convince yourself. It’s sad and wasteful, because if you devoted as much energy to actual reason as you do to being a snot, you would be much more useful to our society.

you have been so thoroughly shown up you don’t have anything left to say. Again, who do you think you are fooling? I just put a wrecking ball to just about everything you stand for and believe in.

and here: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2009/01/utopian-thought-imagination-part-2.html

In a future post I’ll discuss, among other things, the virtues and shortcomings (i.e., attempt to ascertain the relevant contemporary value of) communal “experiments” with utopia.