The Picket Line — 11 July 2003

11 July 2003

After giving Claire Wolfe a plug in Wednesday’s Picket Line, I’m delighted to report that she’s returned the favor, with a big show of support for this site on her blog.

As a result, there’ve been a lot more visitors here in the last few days, and a lot more email to respond to. Welcome! I’ve put some excerpts from these emails below:

I admire your thought process. Just earlier this year I found myself thinking “what can I do to earn less next year?” as I contemplated what my tax dollars were doing. I’ve not made much headway, but finding your site enables me to begin again. Thank you.

Wow! Thanks! That’s fantastic news!

Might we call your tactics “civil-financial disobedience?”

After some rooting around on clairewolfe.com I noted that in some circles, tactics like mine are being debated under the name “economic secession.”

For instance, this article suggests the tactic, this article criticizes it, and this one responds to the criticism.

It’s possible that if enough affluent Americans stopped participating in the economy, the politicians would sit up and notice. It probably would not have worked much if at all in a Gandhian context; the British Raj’s sleep would have stayed quite blissfully untroubled if a few million poor Bengalis had decided to quit, and hence to starve.

Actually a big hunk of Gandhi’s program was in fact “economic secession” of this sort. The salt march was all about encouraging people to (illegally) replace their taxed consumption of imported salt with untaxed domestic salt. Similar was the Gandhian insistence that everyone in the independence movement should wear (and should personally take time every day to help create) homespun cloth rather than wear imported fabric (imported from Britain and taxed). The boycotts and pickets of liquor stores and opium dens were only partially aimed at the intoxicating effects of the drugs, but were also directed at the British monopoly on alcohol and opium.

The raj was worried enough that the viceroy sent troops out who beat people senseless just for harvesting salt.

I’ve said elsewhere why I’m not a Gandhian pacifist, but I was very much influenced by his insistence that the way to throw off the chains of the tyrant is by withdrawing the everyday economic support it thrives on.

I am very glad that you have taken this step. I wish more people would do the same instead of waving their posters and chanting those silly chants. You keep up your end of the bargain and I will do my best to keep up mine. (I love that answer in your FAQ)

Thanks. I’m on it!

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How you can resist funding the government → other forms our opposition can take → economic secession: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; Details emerge about the new Medicare bill’s tax-free Health Savings Accounts. Also: How to be a permanent tourist, what does the I.R.S. think of Julia Butterfly Hill’s record tax resistance, and why did Thoreau go to jail when the law said he should have had his property seized instead?; The tax resistance and shrugging of Rose Wilder Lane and of David King. Also: thanks to two bloggers who are pointing their readers at The Picket Line, and some Colorado Democrats have a chance to vote for a war tax resister on Tuesday.; Cindy Sheehan and Sam Bostaph join hands across the liberal/libertarian divide in order to fight aginst the war. And: Samuel Edward Konkin III says that counter-economics may be the best sabotage where sabotage is most needed: against the war machine. Also: Frustrated that you can’t resist U.S. federal income tax because you don’t live in the States and don’t owe anything to the I.R.S.? Try a consumer boycott.; The Picket Line commemorates an important anniversary with some vintage rhetoric and a bunch of links.; Jeff Knaebel examines the sort of relationship an ethical person should have with a government, using the framework of Thich Nhat Hahn’s socially engaged Buddhism. Also: libertarians debate civil disobedience and the possibility of geographically diffuse, agorist splinter economies that compete with the State without confronting it directly. And: anti-war activists may be having more success than they know. Also: Wendy McElroy shares her “frugalista” philosophy. And: Vermonters are encouraged to seceed from the Union before Vermont does. Also: corruption and graft in wanton disregard for the safety of U.S. troops amongst American war profiteers? Who’d have guessed?; As an enterprising do-it-yourselfer, you can best respond to the current economic crisis by printing your own money, says Douglas Rushkoff. Sunni Maravillosa thinks economic secession is an even better answer.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → India / Gandhi’s campaigns → the salt march: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; “I have made sedition my dharma.” — Mahatma Gandhi, 18 March 1930; Also — more information about the Palestinian tax resistance in Beit Sahour.; So what of this legendary Gandhian non-violent revolution? How does it work, or DOES it work, and why did anybody think you could meet British guns and steel batons with unresisting bodies and get anywhere with such a tactic? Don’t tell me they were tax resisters too!; Today is the 75th anniversary of the successful conclusion of Gandhi’s Salt March, which he used to popularize his drive to end the British monopoly on salt in India.; On this date in 1930, the Pittsburgh Sentinel told its readers “Salt Raiding in India to be Ended: Far More Serious Menace Now — Tax Resistance.” Also: War and Taxes at the Volokh Conspiracy.; The pro-British press ridiculed Gandhi’s attack on the salt tax as trifling over pennies, but he knew the symbolic value of his salt march and the authorities did too — the government employed hundreds of people to destroy naturally-occurring salt deposits rather than allow the marchers to harvest them. Also: back to the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.; The British empire in India: people with well-trimmed moustaches in white suits sitting straight in their wicker chairs over tea quietly discussing where to put the cricket field? Nope: massacres and brutality. It’s a myth that Gandhi’s methods only succeeded because his opponents were civilized.; Tax resistance campaigns sometimes choose a particular tax to resist, not because it is particularly offensive, but because it is easier to resist or the ramifications of resistance are less frightening. This is meant to encourage more people to begin resisting. Today I’ll give some examples.; One tactic tax resisters have used from time to time is to pack up and leave when the tax collector comes calling, or when arrest is imminent. Also: the tale of James F. Hathaway, who won tax concessions by threatening to go Galt in 1897.; The British empire in India: people with well-trimmed moustaches in white suits sitting straight in their wicker chairs over tea quietly discussing where to put the cricket field? Nope: massacres and brutality. It’s a myth that Gandhi’s methods only succeeded because his opponents were civilized.; It’s violence week at The Picket Line. Today: some examples of violent attacks on police or soldiers who come to the assistance of tax collectors or who take reprisals against tax resisters.; Tax resistance campaigns have sometimes engaged in smuggling to get consumer goods to market while evading a tax or a government-enforced monopoly.; Tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns have sometimes attempted to make tax enforcement costly for the government — for example by clogging the jails or the court system. Here are some examples.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → India / Gandhi’s campaigns → homespun cloth (khādī) / swadeshi: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; So what of this legendary Gandhian non-violent revolution? How does it work, or DOES it work, and why did anybody think you could meet British guns and steel batons with unresisting bodies and get anywhere with such a tactic? Don’t tell me they were tax resisters too!; Operation Bankrupt Washington continues. Also: Could homebrewing beer be the American equivalent to Gandhi’s campaign of homespun cloth?; Visualizing U.S. war fatalities, buttons of death in the Twilight Zone, a dumpster diving information clearing-house, the President vows to stay the course, Samuel Adams calls for a campaign of swadeshi, and a look at the anarchist colony of Pennsylvania. Y tambien, El Piquete en español.; Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of this.; Tax resisters have sometimes augmented their campaigns by manufacturing and selling untaxed alternatives to taxed goods. Here are some examples.; Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → India / Gandhi’s campaigns: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; So what of this legendary Gandhian non-violent revolution? How does it work, or DOES it work, and why did anybody think you could meet British guns and steel batons with unresisting bodies and get anywhere with such a tactic? Don’t tell me they were tax resisters too!; Satyagraha includes a refined, carefully-selected subset of nonviolent resistance. It seems to be designed to be a means that guarantees a particular quality of ends, and that avoids certain disadvantages of violent, coercive, or humiliating methods of resistance. Is it a pipe dream, or the discovery of a powerful universal law?; An interview with the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, as channeled through a clairvoyant tapeworm that is communicating telepathically with an imaginary friend of mine.; The collected works of Gandhi — 98 volumes worth — are now available free-of-charge on-line. Also: two peeks behind the curtain at the I.R.S. bureaucracy, one amusing, the other giving us some hints of how much “token” tax resistance hurts the government in enforcement-related costs.; A new ruling from the D.C. District Court of Appeals ought to reinvigorate the constitutionalist tax protester subculture. Also: protesters plan to return to the Keene, New Hampshire I.R.S. office now that Russell Kanning is free. And: looking past the myths and iconography of Gandhi to see what we can learn from him.; Tipping Pete Seeger’s seesaw with a teaspoon, the Asch Conformity Experiment, The Emperor’s New Clothes, the banality of evil, the Sepoy Mutiny, Benjamin Ricketson Tucker’s book, and a Last Minute Tax Guide & Civil Disobedience Primer from The Beast.; Examples of twenty-two ways tax resisters and their sympathizers have organized to support tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns.; Google has added more text-searchable newspaper archives to the Web, and I go hunting for more information on the history of tax resistance.; Just how non-partisan are these “tea party” protests? Also: a review of the documentary “Garbage Warrior.” And: a flashback to the imperial media belittling of Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaigns.; Anti-war conservatives shake things up at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and meet with their libertarian and progressive counterparts to plan an antimilitarist alliance. Also: in 1922, the residents of Guntur jumped the gun, and, disregarding Gandhi’s pleas to wait, launched a tax resistance campaign on their own.; John Hampden was adopted as a sort of patron saint of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and other suffragist groups who used or defended the tactic of tax resistance. Other tax resisters from Gandhi to Karl Marx to Benjamin Ricketson Tucker also looked to the example of Hampden. Here’s why.; The Raj goes on the offensive against Gandhi’s tax resisters, 80 years ago today. Also: George Bernard Shaw prepares to become an unwitting tax resistance martyr for women’s rights.; Eight Catalonian war tax resisters are acquitted of vandalism. Also: The myth and the reality of Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign. And: the lie that military spending is a boost to the economy.; On this day in 1958, picketers protest the imprisonment of war tax resister Maurice McCrackin; and on this day in 1949, picketers welcome war tax resister Katsuki James Otsuka back from prison.; Two dispatches from India on this date in 1931 highlight the tension between the untrained violent Indian resistance, and its more deliberate Gandhian nonviolent counterpart.; Some thoughts on reading Joan V. Bondurant’s “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict.”; Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of this.; A variety of tactic that has occasionally accompanied tax resistance campaigns is the renouncing of government privileges and titles. Here are some examples.; Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes, business shut-downs, or consumer strikes as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities. Here are several examples.; Today I’m going to cover a specific variety of consumer strike undertaken in coordination with some tax resistance campaigns: a strike against goods sold by the government or by a government-protected monopoly, or goods that are subject to a particular tax.; This may seem a little out-there, but I’d like you to consider radical honesty as a tactic with potential to augment a tax resistance campaign.; A rarely used tactic in tax resistance campaigns has resisters turn themselves in for prosecution for having paid taxes (for instance under the theory that paying such taxes makes them guilty under the Nuremberg Principles). Also: observations about tax resistance from the pioneering nonviolent resistance historian Clarence Marsh Case.; Budget cut woes for the IRS. Also: the agency plans to use consumer-tracking databases, and to link those up to government databases, as a way of pinpointing tax evaders and finding their assets. And: a fed up farmer in Argentina fires 23 bullets into a car carrying tax inspectors, and the local prosecutor decides to let it slide. Also: a note about a planned tax strike in India in 1921.; From the first draft of history comes a curious moment in the Dharasana Salt Raids in which the police used nonviolent satyagraha tactics to temporarily thwart the raiders.
Miscellanous tax resisters → individual anarchist or libertarian tax resisters → Claire Wolfe: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; A reader asks me more about my decision. I say that I didn’t have to take a vow or pursue sainthood or anything like that, I just had to honestly come to grips about what I was doing with my life.; The history of radical pacifism and direct action in the United States pulls from Thoreau and Gandhi, filters it through Quakers and conscientious objectors, and fertilizes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Congress for Racial Equality, and does some tax resistance along the way. Also: The I.R.S. hopes to use private collection agencies to help it go after tax evaders.; Every time we go to war it’s to the accompaniment of patriotic music and falsehoods. But almost never do those falsehoods come back to bite the liars who told them. We may get lucky this time.; One day, when Ishmael Gradsdovic was startled out of a daydream, he found himself transformed into a horrible zombie.; The discussion on the Claire Files Board continues, with a fable about a troll bridge.; Sorry for the long break between blog entries, but I’ve been busy planning mayhem and trying to get hippies and Randoids to march arm-in-arm.; The tax resistance and shrugging of Rose Wilder Lane and of David King. Also: thanks to two bloggers who are pointing their readers at The Picket Line, and some Colorado Democrats have a chance to vote for a war tax resister on Tuesday.; Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman give us their 5.2 cents on the “Fair Tax” National Sales Tax proposal.; The New York Times wonders how the military budget has climbed to dizzying heights while the troops in the field can’t afford what they need to keep fighting. Turns out it makes more sense for Congresscritters to spend taxpayer money in their Congressional districts than in Afghanistan or Iraq. Also: Claire Wolfe wants to show us how to stop working for a living.; How to avoid work (part two), and how to avoid paying retail (for good measure).; Claire Wolfe says in her new book that there are “179 Things to Do Until the Revolution” — and for Things #29 and #132 she tells her readers to check out The Picket Line and sniggle.net for the low-down.; How did the Amish manage to get themselves exempted from the U.S. Social Security system? Also: Crispin Sartwell gives a conference of young Democrats a good talking to, and that’s not all he’s got to say.; Hawkish types who love war as long as someone else is taking the risks are called “chickenhawks” — what shall we call peaceniks who applaud deserters and conscientious objectors but who keep shoveling money into the treasury?; J. Tony Serra — an unsung hero of the war tax resistance movement. Also: Can you really get half a million dollars just from packing your own lunch? And: a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system may make a believer out of this alternative currency skeptic.; Claire Wolfe attempts to rescue us from the disaster for freedom that is the Job Culture. Also: Dave Barry counsels tax resistance, and 30,000 tax payments are dumped off the San Mateo bridge into San Francisco Bay.; When U.S. troops torture prisoners, is it a “leadership failure” or a “followership failure”? Also, is the anti-war movement finally giving up on the Democrats?; A round-up of tax resistance news, including a new academic paper on the ethics of tax evasion, an effort by NWTRCC to get some attention for the war tax resistance cause, and a brief overview of the war tax resistance movement in the Utne Reader.; Where’s the outrage? Well, maybe it’s being channeled into productive action instead of noisy lather.; The people, united, will pass a non-binding resolution disapproving of their defeat!; A journalist asks me about my “poverty” method of tax resistance, and I try to set the record straight. If this is poverty, poverty is very underrated. And Claire Wolfe notes that prosperity is pretty overrated — if it’s measured in trinkets and baubles and McMansions made of debt instead of things of real value.; Russell Kanning, fresh from getting arrested for trying to convince I.R.S. employees to quit, is planning to try it again. Also: the Dervaes family turns a home on fifth of an acre in Pasadena into an experiment in sustainable living that it calls “a homegrown revolution.” And: a profile of The Emma Goldman Finishing School — a decade-old anarchist commune in Seattle.; The growing respectability of torture leads me to consult Hannah Arendt’s “Responsibility and Judgment” and to ask myself if we can get out of this mess by thinking.; If you want to change government behavior by asserting your own power, don’t do the same ineffective things over and over, and don’t throw up your hands and say “impossible!” — R.T.F.M.!; A bipartisan consensus builds to squeeze a few more drops from the tax gap. Also: Claire Wolfe begins a new fiction series about the antics of a guerrilla trickster.; “Collection Due Process” resembles an appeals process but behaves like a rubber stamp. Also: if this doesn’t convince the show-me-the-law set that their Constitutionalist tax protester arguments are full of baloney, nothing will. And: right-wing blogs continue to go off half-cocked on war tax resisters.; Claire Wolfe on the dangers of lifestyle purity perfectionism, a new tax resistance campaign in the Ivory Coast, a writing competition on the theme of financial integrity, Fred Reed on America sticking its paws in the monkey trap, and Kevin Zeese on the courageous stand of Bradley Manning. Also: paleocon tax resister Irene Whetstone goes to jail in 1952.; Daniel Kahneman, in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” has mapped out many of the cognitive illusions that interfere with our ability to properly understand and respond to the world around us.

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