tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81757206177184010822024-03-08T01:47:59.086-08:00Silent Radical's Blog"I am an anarchist not because I believe anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal." ~ Rudolf RockerSilent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-2847265331811143292009-06-23T10:27:00.000-07:002009-06-23T10:52:01.133-07:00I Have TwattedI finally caved in and got myself a twitter account. I've added a sidebar feed of my tweets for all to enjoy...or not. <br /><br />"I have twatted." -Stephen Colbert<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Stephen Colbert has twatted on the Today Show.</span><br /><p class="MsoNormal"></p> <iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyS2P_3pvphcaP_XAYcZHaNiRhT3BIyUnjjzuq0WLRw8WYGdwSye7KbiP6agUKpKgTOk3MzTkjaY2OldjEHOw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-70335206236968760862009-03-24T14:23:00.000-07:002009-03-24T14:29:17.142-07:00Don't Forget That Infoshop.org Needs Your Support!Please support <a href="http://www.infoshop.org/">Infoshop.org</a> with a small financial donation. We need to raise money right now to pay for Internet access, rent, electricity and other expenses. Thanks for your support!<br /><br />We need to raise $1000 by April 1, 2009. So far we've raised $389. Thanks!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.infoshop.org/donate.html">Donate today!</a><br /><br />You can now make <a href="http://littleblackcart.com/category/publisher/infoshop/">donations using your credit card</a> to Infoshop courtesy of Little Black Cart!Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-84028298473239313662009-03-04T16:02:00.000-08:002009-03-04T16:07:57.348-08:00Shoplifting In A Free StoreHere’s something in the news recently that I know will be of interest to anarchists. Knowing that I have a fondness for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_really_free_market">Really Really Free Markets</a>, my father brought this story to my attention. As an art project, a shop on Nassau Street in the Financial District is giving everything away for free. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_store">‘Free Store’</a> in New York is giving away goods as form of public art. It’s always interesting to see these little experiments in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy">gift economics</a> spring up. The world definitely needs more sharing these days. <br /><br /><a href="http://wcbstv.com/topstories/the.free.store.2.946340.html">It's True, It's True: Everything Free In NYC Store </a> <br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="400" height="264" ><param name="flashvars" value="webhost=fora.tv&clipid=8616&cliptype=highlight" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://fora.tv/embedded_player" /><embed flashvars="webhost=fora.tv&clipid=8616&cliptype=highlight" src="http://fora.tv/embedded_player" width="400" height="264" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-75962116475987996172008-10-14T11:18:00.000-07:002008-10-14T12:23:00.004-07:00The Least You Can Do is Not VoteWith elections creeping up swiftly next month, what is an anarchist to do? For many of us the obvious thing to do is simply not vote. However, there are still those of us out there who believe anarchists should vote in self-defense. After all, we know that either John McCain or Barack Obama will become the next ruler of the United States, and that our anarchist system isn’t right around the corner. We know that a third-party candidate doesn’t have a chance of winning the election this time around and probably never will within the US political system. So even if we know that voting for the lesser evil is still supporting evil, is it reasonable to accept that it is still better than nothing? It would be extremely hard to look a struggling single mother in the eyes and tell her not to vote for a politician she hopes will make her life easier—even if it is just a little bit. Maybe we believe that one candidate is more likely than the other to start yet another war. So some people may consider who will become president a matter of life and death. From what privileged perch can we tell such a person not to vote? After all, most of us are already made hypocrites by the necessity of surviving within the current system. We are all unwillingly helping sustain what we abhor because we are currently dependent upon it.<br /><br />We can look at these facts and see that anarchists really need to be careful about not becoming too detached from the pressing needs and concerns of the general population. Even though many anarchists are against participating in elections, we must never take a dogmatic stance against those who do—especially those we are trying to help. We must understand that until we start providing viable alternative organizations for self-help and self-management, it is going to be extremely hard to gain more support from those most oppressed by the system. The more dependent people become, the harder it becomes to break free. Instead of focusing so much energy on the protest end of things, anarchists should probably focus much more time and energy creating alternative support networks that can genuinely connect with the common everyday individual.<br /><br />While we can accept that some people must pragmatically seek charity when their survival is at stake, we still have to help those same people realize that handouts from the state-government and capitalists only serve to sustain an oppressive system of dependency. Most people want to be independent because they know it means freedom and equality. They intuitively know that dependency is the opposite of liberty. These people want self-government and self-sufficiency. It must be made clear that relying on handouts from the oppressors is not an improvement, but a barrier to the creation of much-needed radical change. In the end, such help from on high isn’t about justice. At times accepting charity may be necessary for survival, but ultimately it serves to maintain the exploitive system by making injustice more palatable. Such so-called “charity” is designed to protect the parasitic ruling class.<br /><br />I do still personally believe that voting can accomplish nothing in furtherance of anarchist goals. Voting is also statistically meaningless. You do have a better chance of winning the lottery than actually having an impact on the election results. The logical retort is “If everyone thought that way…” Well not everyone does think that way. For some people, not voting suddenly becomes akin to the familiar argument against littering. Your little bit of litter won’t do much harm, but if everyone thinks that way, than everyone’s little bit of litter ends up mattering a lot. That is true, but is not voting really bad enough to be likened to littering? The funny thing is that if everyone actually did think that way and didn’t vote, then it would actually be a good thing for anarchists. It would mean that disillusionment with the system would have definitely reached critical mass. Maybe we should be more worried about opposing an unjust system instead of worrying about whether Obama or McCain will temporarily be at the top. Not voting is akin to littering only if voting is inherently a good thing even within a corrupt system. I’m not convinced that my not voting is going to harm someone. Whoever wins this upcoming election is inevitably going to be doing the harm. In my opinion, those who think not voting amounts to littering have it backwards. After all, our state-government is both figuratively and literally the world’s largest polluter.<br /><br />The reality is that people will inevitably show up to vote by the millions, and your vote will still be statistically insignificant. So it is pointless to worry that those who choose not to vote will make any real difference. The outcome won’t be significantly affected by those choosing not to vote. When you disagree with all the choices available, not voting should be considered a legitimate part of having a democracy. By not voting, I am participating as much as anyone else. I reject the system and all of its choices, so my vote is for nobody. Why do so many look down upon the right to do so? Here we should also note that meaningful reform of a corrupt system must often come from outside pressure instead of from within. For the even more radical change that anarchists desire this is especially the case. Voting too often deludes people into thinking that their desired change can be approached from the inside, but this almost always corrupts the person trying. The truth is that democracy simply cannot function on the large-scale we have now because it has become far too bureaucratic and detached from the people that it is supposed to be serving. The agency problems become far too great. The more hierarchal and centralized, the worse things become. The state-government is there only to serve itself at the expense of the people.<br /><br />For those of you worried that my not voting helps John McCain, consider that we can’t even be that sure that Obama will actually be all that much better than John McCain. In Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” he can be quoted as saying, "The Founders recognized that there were seeds of anarchy in the idea of individual freedom, an intoxicating danger in the idea of equality, for if everyone is truly free, without the constraints of birth or rank or an inherited social order - if my notion of faith is no better or worse than yours, and my notions of truth and goodness and beauty are as true and good and beautiful as yours - then how can we ever hope to form a society that coheres?" That’s not exactly something I’d expect anarchists to be able to grit their teeth and bear supporting. Obama is clearly being funded by Wall Street, and is trying to appease the ruling elite by reassuring them that he won’t threaten the status quo. All the talk of “hope” and “change” becomes quite laughable. Obama likes portraying himself as the anti-war candidate, but he has voted for every Iraq war appropriation bill—totaling around $300 billion. If he was genuinely worried about the various false justifications for going to war with Iraq, why would he vote to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State when she was one of the very architects for “Operation Iraqi Liberation”? Obama even voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, which is easily one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in the last half-century.<br /><br />Obama even went out of his way to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge from the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. Lieberman has been called “Bush’s closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War.” Obama has repeatedly stated that he wants to add 100,000 combat troops to the military and that he doesn’t want to completely remove troops from Iraq. In response to a question posed by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013. Obama even appears ready to "redeploy" the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. He also refused to be photographed with San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom for fear it'd be interpreted that he supported gay marriage. Obama also voted against single payer health care, and proposes a plan that would keep control in the hands of the same insurance companies that have been screwing people over. Obama joined Republicans in passing a law called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), which shuts down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Here Obama is plainly seen favoring banking, creditors, and other corporate interests. Obama even voted against capping predatory credit card interest rates at 30%. He supports the death penalty, the Israeli war machine, and the fence on the US-Mexican border. In light of these facts, isn’t it a little silly to worry that much about Obama beating McCain? Obama’s list of horrors just goes on and on. I can’t bring myself to support such an individual, and I find it hard to believe that any anarchist could feel good about doing so.<br /><br />Democracy must start at the very lowest levels of society and extend from the bottom-upwards. It must reside at the human-scale where an individual can become sufficiently informed about the important issues and have direct participatory control over the decisions that will affect his or her life. Anarchists are necessarily against the very idea of having representatives, so it seems quite counter-productive to support any so-called “representative” even if some small good might potentially come out of it. It still won’t be any significant move in the direction anarchists want. Any improvement in people’s lives made by the state-government will almost assuredly be gained at the cost of individual freedom and equality. My prediction is that under an Obama or McCain administration, the US will still commit human rights violations around the world, the police state will continue increasing, censorship will remain, the rich will still get richer, and the pace that the environment is being ruined will not reverse or even slow down significantly. The reality is that we don’t truly have a say in the election outcome or the resulting policies, so why should we bother participating in such a farce? All our “choices” have been pre-chosen for us. Participating is futile for anarchists. Every anarchist must recognize that our fight must predominately be waged from the outside. Trying to fight the beast from the inside just means that you have already been swallowed.<br /><br />You’d have to organize a huge mass of people to have any bargaining power in our electoral system, but doing so would still contradict anarchist principles. So far it doesn’t seem like politicians are all that worried about the anarchist vote, so I don’t know why any of us would be looking for representation. Obama might be slightly better than McCain in some ways, but I know that neither of them can actually represent me in any meaningful sense. Regardless of whether or not a candidate comes close to my political beliefs, my conscience won’t let me participate when there are so many factors thwarting the will of the people in our system. We all know that the Electoral College is there to make our vote even more meaningless than it already is, so once again we see the will of the people subverted. Anarchists that vote tend to go for Democratic candidates because they are slightly closer to being anarchists than the Republicans. However, let’s recall the superdelegates of the (un)Democratic Party. I just don’t know how I can in good conscience support anyone from a political party that selects nominees in a manner even less democratically than the Republicans. We are still worlds apart from the Democrats. On principle I’m against trying to impose my will upon anyone through a coercive hierarchical system anyways. If I voted for Ralph Nader and by some miracle he won the election, shouldn’t I then feel bad about having used an unjust system to impose my will upon the anarchists who voted for Barack Obama? Trying to work towards anarchist principles within the very system we oppose becomes increasingly silly in light of such questioning.<br /><br />If the will of the majority isn’t even being expressed in our political system, then it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to bother voting. Even so-called majoritarian voting has trouble actually representing the will of the majority. Kirkpatrick Sale points out the following interesting paradox concerning majoritarian voting in his book “Human Scale”:<br /><br /><pre><br />One-third of the legislators prefer A to B to C<br />One-third B to C to A<br />One-third C to A to B<br /><br />Therefore, if A vs. C, C wins, then C vs. B, B wins<br /> if B vs. C, B wins, then B vs. A, A wins<br /> if A vs. B, A wins, then A vs. C, C wins </pre><br /><br />Therefore any outcome is possible, theoretically representing the “majority will,” depending merely upon the order of the vote.<br /><br />I try to convince others not to bother voting, but I don’t hold anything against anarchists who decide to engage in what they believe to be strategic voting. I think that voting is futile and unproductive, but I am not going to be exclusionary and call someone “un-anarchist” for having voted. We must all individually pursue what we believe is best. Regardless of my being strongly against anarchists voting and encouraging others to vote, I can understand the strong instinct to act in self-defense that compels people to vote for the lesser of two evils in spite of everything. People desperately want to feel some kind of relief for the burden they feel living in an imperfect world. People don’t want to feel so incredibly helpless. Voting makes people feel like they are doing something, but that is often the problem. They want to feel like they did their small part in an attempt to make the world a better place. Voting may be an understandable act of desperation in our system, but we must be keenly aware of the danger of people being co-opted and absorbed into the system where they can forget or quit caring that a vote for the lesser evil is still voting for evil. If people are going to vote, they must be made aware that it can’t be where their political action ends if they want real change.<br /><br />For me, resigning yourself to the belief that you have any real control over the political process when you vote means that the state-government has won a victory over you. It is precisely the issue of control that should make us feel queasy at the thought of lending even one measly ounce of support for any of the “lesser evil” candidates claiming to represent us. If you vote for Obama or anyone else, then you are telling most of the world that a state-government politician is actually capable of representing you. I know that is not what voting anarchists actually believe or want to hear, but most people view voting as a sign of your consent. It is why so many supporters of the status quo get worried when voter turnout is so low. It is the very reason why supporters of the State often get very flustered when they encounter someone taking a principled stance against voting because of the system itself. For them, it would be much better if you didn’t vote because you were lazy or apathetic. Also notice how those who think voting is so important often don’t have a problem with your not voting if you were planning on supporting that other candidate. It shows that their real concern lies with being able to impose their will upon others and not with giving people control over the decisions that affect their lives.<br /><br />We must be careful of defeating ourselves with this idea that we won’t have our preferred anarchist system this time around. It may be true, but we must always have the attitude that we are going to do our best to make it happen this time around. Or we at least have to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities presented when the system weakens or begins to collapse. We can’t just say that we are going to vote this time because the final goal isn’t currently around the corner. We must remember that as anarchists we shouldn’t even believe in a final goal. The struggle is forever. We have to try our hardest to be the change we want to create. If your vote doesn’t really count, then voting or not voting ultimately doesn’t matter. Taken in isolation, they are both examples of inaction either way. What our voting or not voting does outside of our opposed political system is what really matters.<br /><br />As anarchists we already know we can’t rely on the system, so whether we vote or not shouldn’t make much of a difference in what we do. How our thoughts and actions affect ourselves and those around us is of greater significance. If participating causes us to abandon projects outside of the system or it convinces others not to take us seriously, then we have a problem. As anarchists what are we really telling state-government supporters when we bother participating in their system? At the same token, even if it were possible to get nobody to vote, those in power would just point to the fact that people still have the option of expressing themselves through the proper electoral channels. They aren’t going to let go of power just because people have stopped voting. Therefore there is even a danger of inaction for those anarchists who don’t vote. Anarchists encouraging people not to vote isn’t going to accomplish much of anything by itself. Our more important projects involve things like starting co-operatives, local currencies, squats, self-help groups, radical self-reliance training, social networks, intentional communities, affinity groups, etc. So the need to take action outside of the political system is not really something any anarchist disagrees with. Voting or not voting only really amounts to doing what makes you feel good. When I don’t vote in a system I find corrupt to the core, I feel satisfied. Others evidently feel content trying to support candidates that will hopefully allow some growing room for anarchist projects. Some feel like they should vote because the outcome could decide life and death for some people, but I don’t vote precisely because I reject having a state-government’s president monopolizing power over life and death. All we really want is the freedom to live and die in the manner of our own choosing.<br /><br />So the least you can do is not vote. How you interpret that statement is up to you.Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-76684539848554638182008-06-05T15:54:00.001-07:002008-06-06T08:59:58.559-07:00A Novice Defense of the Labor Theory of ValueOk, here it goes. I'm going to attempt giving my novice defense of the labor theory of value and probably waste everyone's time. Those of you who are a lot more knowledgeable than I on the subject, please feel free to step in and correct me. I am still learning. My following response was inspired by some misinformed comments made by Christopher C. concerning the Labor Theory of Value that were made on the social networking site <a href="http://www.essembly.com">Essembly.</a><br /> <br />Christopher C. says: <blockquote>“Man A spends 1 hour to build 1 iPod."<br /><br />"Man B spends 1 hour to build 5 iPods using his iPod-making machine that fell out of the sky."<br /><br />"The average value of the iPod is 20 labor minutes (6 iPods / 2 hours = 20 minites/iPod)."<br /><br />"But in 1 hour of labor, man A produced 1 iPod, man B produced 5 iPods."<br /><br />"Man A sells his iPod for 20 labor minutes of some other good. Man B sells his iPods for a total of 100 labor minutes of some other good."<br /><br />"Ergo, Man A's labor value is 20 minutes per hour. Man B's labor value is 100 minutes per hour."<br /><br />"Ultimately, under this theory, either time is relative at zero acceleration or the theory is false. I'm inclined to believe in the laws of physics over the fickle fantasies of man.”</blockquote><br />From what I can tell, the labor theory of value does not say that those who put in more time than others to produce the exact same product should receive more compensation for the work they have done. I don't believe in the notion that there is an objective "just price" depending on the cost of production and from what I know about the labor theory of value, it doesn't seem to require one either. A society doesn't prosper by increasing the labor value of a given output, but by increasing the use-values that can be produced by the labor force. Decreasing the labor values of commodities increases the use-value or utility. It makes life easier by providing the luxuries and necessities of life with less consumption of individual time and energy. Clearly person B's time is more valuable than person A's because more is accomplished and more value created. Person B clearly has better skill, knowledge, and/or technology, which means his or her current labor value is also factoring in past labor (embodied in say the iPod-making machine, time spent getting an education, etc.), which allows him or her to be more productive than person B. Because person B is not using his or her time efficiently, most likely he or she will shift his or her time and energy to do something else as a result of interacting economic pressures. Ultimately, relative prices tend towards relative labor values. So we should realize that the labor theory of value says that the price of a commodity is something other than its value. The relative prices of most reproducible goods and services are proportional to the amount of present and past labor time required to obtain, manufacture, process, distribute, and transport them. So the labor theory of value is restricted to the analysis of reproducible commodities that have a use value in a capitalist society and states that market prices are attracted by prices proportional to the labor time embodied in commodities. <br /><br />So the labor theory of value is really referring to some abstracted labor value equilibrium point that would hypothetically be reached through the forces of supply and demand if everything else were kept constant. It would need to be a situation of perfect competition. Of course these economic pressures do not remain constant and therefore the equilibrium point itself if constantly shifting. However, with a free market in labor as well as capital (absent the money, land, tariff, patent/copyright monopolies created by state-government) supply and demand would constantly push the prices of goods and services towards that shifting equilibrium point that represents labor time. Here we have the idea that cost would approach or become the limit of price in a genuine free market absent state-government intervention. Naturally, the cost of production and thus the price will always fluctuate due to the different interacting economic forces at a particular time and place. The main thing to remember is that the labor theory of value is concerned with looking at a stretch of time to find the average labor value (measured in hours or person-years) necessary to produce a commodity. It is saying that if supply and demand equilibrate each other, the market prices of commodities will correspond with their natural prices, that is to say, with their values as determined by the respective quantities of labor required for their production.<br /><br />I think that labor values can be seen as playing a role in the widely accepted conception of economic scarcity. Scarcity obviously plays a big role in price because being scarce by definition means that on average it requires more labor to acquire or produce. You might be walking down a road and come across a nugget of gold, but on average it requires more labor to find due to its scarcity and thus commands a higher price. Water is very important for survival, but it is so cheap when it is readily available, meaning it requires less labor to acquire or produce. When scarcity goes down due to something like new technology, less labor is required to acquire or produce the commodity, so the price goes down. I don't see the labor theory of value necessarily rejecting the subjective valuations of supply and demand. <br /><br />Even if we disregard the labor theory of value, I believe we can still come to the same mutualist conclusions. So lets say we fully reject the labor theory of value and accept the subjective theory of value. Most of us would agree that remuneration for work done should be based on actual labor contributed to the production process. You should be giving something up by sacrificing your time and energy to produce value and then you should get something back in return. You should receive compensation based on your skills and knowledge, which means you should only be receiving compensation based on the value placed on what you produce with your own labor. Compensation should be based on the subjective value you are actually creating. You shouldn't be receiving benefits from the value of someone else's labor. <br /><br />Thus comes the idea that you should be receiving the full fruits of your labor. If you are being compensated for something other than your applied mental and/or physical labor, then you are a lazy leech sucking the blood out of productive society. Even state capitalists would have you believe that this is what they are supporting. I claim to be ultimately against all handouts and so do the capitalists. But now we can look out into society and see if we can spot the leeches. Who if anyone is receiving compensation based on something other than their productive labor? <br /><br />Here we should look at the sources of bargaining power in society. So we look at the two main forces: capital and labor. It should be plain to see that those who privately own the means of production/survival have the upper hand when it comes to bargaining power in society. So what does this ultimately mean? It means capitalists are able to command much more than labor. So the capitalists do not compete on the basis of individual productive labor, but instead compete on the basis of private control over the land and resources for which access is necessary for individuals to provide for themselves. Money is made from simply owning money. This is primitive accumulation. Most of us probably don't think that Paris Hilton has earned her fortune or that a corporate executive making millions of dollars is actually contributing more valuable labor than all of the other workers combined. According to a post on the <a href="http://question-everything.mahost.org/2004/03/if-you-believe-in-work-then-you-should.html"> Question Everything </a> blog:<blockquote>"In the US the richest 1% of the population (the capitalist class) owns more wealth than the bottom 95% of the population combined. It is physically impossible for that one percent to work harder then the other ninety-five percent. There simply aren't enough hours in the day. The average American worker works around 50 hours a week; for the capitalists to work ninety-five times more then the average worker he would have to work 4,250 hours a week. There are only 168 hours in a week; it's not possible for this wealth disparity to be the result of capitalists working harder."</blockquote> Now we can see that one can reject the labor theory of value and propose unequal bargaining position rationales for the exploitation theory. <br /><br />So the mutualist solution is to create an economic system that produces a self-sustaining information feedback loop that produces prices that reflect productive mental and physical labor subjectively valued in a free market. We believe that this would have the opportunity to develop in the absence of state-government intervention. We aren't calling for any kind of state-government redistribution program (that is what got us here in the first place), but are instead trying to free up the market and create competition among capital. So instead of having state-government protected privileges conferring private control over access to the means of production/survival skewing prices and bargaining power in favor of those who don't labor to produce value, productive labor would have more bargaining power. With labor now hiring capital instead of the other way around, the increase in competition would allow economic pressures to compensate individuals on the basis of productive labor (factoring in skill, knowledge, effectiveness, efficiency, etc.). So to the extent possible you would now have more of a merit based system. The mutualist free market in credit would increase competition between lenders, which would make interest-free loans available and enable workers to buy their own means of production rather than having to sell their labor to a capitalist in order to survive. Therefore, usury in the form of interest, rent, and profit would be greatly reduced or disappear. It would result in a form of free market socialism where workers' cooperatives and self-employed individuals freely exchange goods and services. <br /><br />If you don't want people getting a "free lunch" or "free ride" like a bunch of "fucking hippies", then your primary target should be the capitalists and the state-government officials that maintain their privileges while themselves simultaneously benefiting off of these artificial privileges through taxes, political favors, etc. Mutualists aren't for a return to dirt farming and we aren't even for ridding the world of all force and coercion. That is obviously impossible. We still support self-defense and the directing of human behavior that inevitably comes from the pressures inherent in social interaction. We support free association and disassociation. We can still consider those to be applications of force and a type of coercion. From that understanding, mutualists only oppose certain forms of force or coercion that come with a certain type of authority. We oppose the irrational authority that comes from a formal institutionalized hierarchical seat of power, while supporting the rational authority that comes with mental and physical prowess or expertise. Rational authority emerges spontaneously from individuals willingly following a leader instead of having a ruler force them to "follow" and obey. When we look at our representative "democracy" most of us can readily see the irrational outcomes that stem from its bureaucratic hierarchical power. So monopoly is a mutualist's ultimate enemy. Instead we are for more diffuse sanctions (ridicule, expulsion, disassociation, etc.) and religious sanctions (even though many of us are ultimately against religion) to mold society instead of legal sanctions. We are for mediation instead of legislation. We don't want people from above employing behavior modification techniques to program our thoughts and actions. Mutualists are about more evenly spreading out power or democratizing power so that each and every individual has freedom and equal opportunity to shape society and his or her own life.Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-3689629289389530092008-05-31T12:33:00.000-07:002008-05-31T13:20:06.253-07:00Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 4)This is my fourth response to a conversation with Cork that follows from my <a href="http://silent-radical.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversations-with-left-rothbardian_10.html">“Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 3)”</a> blog post.<br /><br />Private ownership over the means of production is a necessary requirement of capitalism, but it is not all that is required. Capitalism requires a capitalist class, which Benjamin Tucker is clearly opposed to even though he is for private ownership over the means of production. This is why most libertarian socialists are comfortable accepting Benjamin Tucker as one of their own. For capitalism you need the means of production to be the private property of a few individuals at the top of an economic pyramid. Placing the means of production within the reach of all is incompatible with capitalist private property. You just can’t narrow the definition of capitalist private property down to the point where it becomes applicable to people who are blatantly anti-capitalist. Ask an individual if a self-proclaimed anti-capitalist socialist can be claimed as a supporter of capitalist private property and I can pretty much guarantee that you are going to get some funny looks. Go up to pretty much anyone and ask them if an individual against the usury of interest, rent, and profit is for capitalist property rights. I have done so recently with non-anarchist family and friends and everyone I have talked to has said that such a person is against capitalist property rights. Consider that a self-employed individual can still privately possess the means of production even under mutualism. For example, I can privately possess a plough under mutualism as long as I am the only one personally using it. I can use the plow (means of production) to cultivate the soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting (fruits of my labor). As long as I am not using the plow to exploit someone by taking the fruits of his or her labor, individual ownership over the means of production is acceptable. In this isolated self-employed scenario I am not employing the labor of another individual. I am not controlling access to the plow in order to extract surplus value from another user of the plow. Instead I am creating value myself and then directly enjoying the full product of my labor. Such individual ownership over the means of production is not enough to constitute capitalism, and it is acceptable under mutualism because it does not entail the exploitative relationships that arise as a result of extracting surplus value from the labor of others.<br /><br />An Anarchist FAQ correctly claims that Benjamin Tucker was opposed to capitalist property rights. I can reasonably guess that an overwhelming majority of the population thinks that a person against interest, rent, and profit is necessarily against capitalist private property. Benjamin Tucker’s exclamation about “depriving capital of its reward” doesn’t exactly sound like defending capitalist private property. I can promise you that most will not accept your claim that an explicitly anti-capitalist socialist individual can be claimed as a supporter of capitalist private property. I do not see anything misleading concerning Benjamin Tucker contained within An Anarchist FAQ. The FAQ goes about explaining the views of different schools of anarchist thought—including those it explicitly disagrees with in some areas. Just because much of the FAQ condemns “capitalist property” in the sense of Tucker’s support for private ownership of capital goods, does not make it hard to understand that Tucker holds his own beliefs that are separate from other sections of the FAQ. To gain a correct understanding about people like Tucker you are actually going to have to read that section of the FAQ in its entirety. Naturally if you read selectively you are going to come out with loads of misconceptions from just about any text. Anyone who, in your own words, “only drops by to read the section discussing his views” is of course going to leave misunderstanding Benjamin Tucker. That is true of anyone trying to understand someone’s nuanced philosophy in such a haphazard manner. <br /><br />As I have already pointed out An Anarchist FAQ actually agrees with your understanding of Benjamin Tucker. I can’t personally speak much about the inaccuracies concerning Medieval Iceland, but I have glossed over the conversation between David Friedman and the writers of An Anarchist FAQ and do find myself agreeing more with the latter. Medieval Iceland was a communal society so it definitely seems silly to try claiming it as a shinning beacon of anarcho-capitalism. The writers of An Anarchist FAQ even readily admit their mistakes concerning Medieval Iceland by saying, <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/iceland.html">“Yes, the initial version of that section was full of errors. It was written in a rush, in 1996 when we were getting what we had ready of the FAQ ready for release and was not checked before going on line. That was a mistake, very true, which was corrected as soon as the errors were shown. However, making mistakes under pressure just shows that we are human.”</a> I and plenty of others fully accept that An Anarchist FAQ is not perfect. That is why the writers accept the need to correct any errors that are spotted as a result of constructive dialogue. That is a strength and not a weakness. There is a reason that it is called AN Anarchist FAQ and not THE Anarchist FAQ. I myself don’t even agree with all that An Anarchist FAQ has to say. For instance, I agree with much of what it says about anarcho-capitalism, but I am not one to dogmatically reject the formation of any alliance with anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians when our goals overlap. In an anarchist society I am fine with anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians trying to do their own thing as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others to do the same. In my opinion Anarcho-capitalism has even contributed some good ideas that are applicable to different forms of anarchism. Regardless of any flaws, An Anarchist FAQ is undoubtedly one of the best sources of information about anarchism. <br /><br />I am surprised that any anarchist would have a problem understanding what is meant by “hierarchy.” Hierarchy can be defined as “any system of persons or things ranked one above another” or “government by an elite group.” One of the things I find interesting about anarcho-capitalists is that they believe in the destruction of hierarchy in terms of the unequal relationship between individuals and state-government, but then fail to apply the same principles to the unequal employee-employer relationship. Anarcho-capitalists realize that for individual freedom you must have equality between individuals through the destruction of centralized state-government power, but then they claim that individual freedom doesn’t require equality in terms of economic power. Centralization of economic power magically becomes okay for anarcho-capitalists even though it clearly gives one group of individuals more say in the lives of others. The idea of a capitalist consumers’ “democracy” is complete nonsense. Real democracy doesn’t entail people with more money having a greater say. The golden rule that “those who have the gold make the rules” is completely incompatible with individual liberty. <br /><br />Hierarchy is the organizational structure that embodies authority and is therefore antithetical to equal-liberty. Capitalism requires class stratification. There must be an elite ruling class containing those few individuals at the top of the economic pyramid controlling access to the means of production/survival. This inequitable bargaining power based on capitalist private property means that the lower classes become dependent upon the “generosity” of the ruling elite to gain access to the means of production/survival. Therefore, capitalists have a much greater say in the running of other people’s lives and functionally serve as a privatized government. Look at the internal structure of any capitalist business and you will readily observe that a few individuals at the top of the corporate hierarchy deny those below any say in the decisions that affect their lives. For instance, just look at the authoritarian monitoring systems that capitalist corporations implement to induce enough fear to keep their workers in line. It’s enough to make Big Brother proud. Indeed, more people come into direct contact with authoritarianism at their workplaces than state-government. This is why when you talk about eliminating state-government the first reaction that most people have is horror at the idea of private capitalist bosses ruling their lives. Class divisions, with their power disparities, are clearly incompatible with individual freedom. If you don’t have a say in decisions proportionate to the degree to which they affect your life, then you are not free. <br /><br />If you have a classless society, then you don’t have capitalism. Benjamin Tucker’s individualist anarchism allows private ownership of the means of production, but sets out not to allow the means of production to become monopolized by a few. Once again, Tucker envisioned an individualist anarchist society as "each man reaping the fruits of his labour and no man able to live in idleness on an income from capital....become[ing] a great hive of Anarchistic workers, prosperous and free individuals [combining] to carry on their production and distribution on the cost principle.” Tucker was clearly for a society without a capitalist class extracting surplus value from the labor of others, so there is no intelligible way to claim that such a society would entail support for capitalist private property. <br /><br />You seem to still be misunderstanding where economic coercion comes from. For mutualists, we don’t see it coming from the bargaining power of exchanged labor. A person with rare skill is expected to command more than others in a socialist free market. It is obvious that hierarchy is not necessarily involved in your description of “performing a service for someone else in exchange for money.” Furthermore, you are wrong to say that this is “all that employment is.” Paying someone money to shine my shoes is obviously not hierarchical. I am not the boss over the person shinning my shoes, so he or she is not my employee. The shoe shiner is a producer and I am a consumer. I haven’t used authoritarian control over the means of production/survival to artificially limit the shoe shiner’s options in this scenario. Here your description of “employment” or “wage labor” brushes aside the blatantly inequitable bargaining power created by economic rules allowing for the unlimited accumulation of capitalist private property. Your description ignores that such economic power entails the artificial narrowing of other people’s choices. If individuals have taken measures to limit my options to working for you or starving to death as a result of their private ownership over the means of production/survival, then there isn’t much in the way of real choice for me. I’m being coerced by those who have imposed upon me an economic system designed to perpetuate artificial scarcity. I am being denied the ability to govern over my own affairs. Having no other choice but to work for a capitalist boss is the same thing as having no other choice but to vote for a state-government politician. In both cases I am being denied any real say in the decisions that affect my life. That’s simply not freedom. <br /><br />For anarcho-capitalism freedom becomes measured in how much private property you own. The more private property you have the more freedom you have. You have unrealistically redefined libertarian socialism’s opposition to capitalism so that it comes to mean opposition to all economic transaction. That is clearly not what mutualists are saying at all. I am against capital hiring labor, which constitutes “wage labor,” but I am not against labor hiring capital or labor hiring labor. Of course I am for “performing a service for someone in exchange for money.” How could I even support co-operatives if that weren’t the case? Observe that when I pay someone to mow my lawn, that person is not my employee, and yet the transaction involves “performing a service for someone in exchange for money.” I am not ruling over any one in such an economic relationship. We both come to the bargaining table as equals to exchange our labor-added value. You have completely edited out the role capital ownership plays in the “wage labor” picture. <br /><br />I think you may also be confusing inequality and hierarchy. You can have inequality without hierarchy, but you can’t have hierarchy without inequality. Hierarchy requires inequality in terms of power, which entails people being freer at the top and less free at the bottom. However, you can have inequality in terms of possessions without it necessitating exploitation or hierarchy. For instance, I can possess many toothbrushes without it conferring upon me inequitable bargaining power over another individual. You see, when talking about inequality it is necessary to make it clear what you are looking at. As mentioned before, inequality based on labor (ex. greater bargaining power as a result of having a relatively rare skill) is acceptable under mutualism. We don’t believe we can make everyone the same and we don’t desire to do so. We want equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome. <br /><br />So we have observed that items can be used in different ways to promote certain human relationships. It is the hierarchical use of land and resources to extort money from productive individuals that I am against. As long as having more possessions does not confer upon you inequitable bargaining power on the basis of this mere ownership, then any resulting inequality on the basis of valued labor is acceptable. This would constitute inequality of possessions, but it would not entail inequality in terms of freedom between individuals. This is what the co-operative business form with its one person one vote system aims to do in terms of equalizing bargaining power. It does this by circumventing the coercive effects of private capital ownership. For instance, consider how workplace democracy based on one person one vote equalizes bargaining power by taking capital (ex. shares of stock) out of the equation. Instead of bargaining power based on idle capital ownership it becomes based on valued labor. Note once again that I am not for equality of outcome but for equality of opportunity. Those who have an aesthetic dislike of all “equality” often try to confuse the different things that equality can be referring to. It is simply this unequal bargaining power on the basis of capital ownership that is being attacked by destroying the capitalist privileges in the money, land, tariff, and patent/copyright monopolies. <br /><br />I see this being related to the whole anarchist understanding that there is a difference between being an authority and having authority. There is legitimate (or rational) authority and illegitimate (or irrational) authority. <a href="http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/BasicAnarchy.html">“Being an authority means that a person is recognized as competent for any particular task based on her or his knowledge and individual skills. It is socially acknowledged expertise. Legitimate authorities are experts who are particularly knowledgeable, skillful or wise in any particular area. It may be in our best interests to follow their recommendations, but they have no power to force us to do so, nor should they. Legitimate authority is this kind of authority, the authority of an expert. Having authority is a social relationship based on status and power derived from a hierarchical position within a group. It means dividing society/the group into the order givers and the order takers. The order givers, the authorities, tell the order takers what to do and they must obey. This is illegitimate authority.”</a> <br /><br />Ok, so you are telling me that if I built a fence around North America it wouldn’t mean that I magically own everything inside according to anarcho-capitalism. I figured as much. So if I can only own what I transform through labor, then I do at least privately own the fence around North America. I’m assuming that I can forcefully keep people from trespassing on my private property. No one is allowed to touch, damage, alter, or cross my fence without my permission. I’m assuming that I can also charge people to cross my fence border. So I am effectively using the fence to restrict access to the inside and outside. I am making whatever lies inside and outside the fence artificially scarce. Just like implementing tariffs on imports and exports! Now instead of using state-government guns to extort money, I am using capitalist private property to extort money. I am using the fence to artificially restrict the free movement of people and goods. If I don’t also own the land below and the sky above my fence, then I assume that the only way people can legitimately cross my fence according to anarcho-capitalism is by tunneling under or flying over my fence. As far as I am concerned forcing others to expend labor to tunnel under or fly over such a fence still constitutes theft from the labor of others. Just let people peacefully cross through your fence! Also consider that it may have taken $200 billion dollars worth of time, labor, and resources to build a fence around North America, but eternally charging everyone who wants to cross the fence would cover the cost of building it hundreds of times over. If people want your fence, you should only be paid for what it cost you and no more. Otherwise you are being paid for something other than labor. Such capitalist private property allows a person to remain idle indefinitely and leech off of the productive labor of others. It is quite clear that capitalist property is theft. <br /><br />I am glad that you acknowledge that it would not be impossible to own an island under anarcho-capitalism. Therefore, the owner of a private island can deny a desperate shipwrecked man life and liberty in the way that I have described. Now we should be readily able to see the coercion inherent in capitalist private property. I am glad that you have apologetically resorted to explaining that owning an entire island would not be as likely under strict acknowledgement of anarcho-capitalist property rules. If it were likely would you or anarcho-capitalism have a problem with it? I might agree that owning an entire island would not be as likely under anarcho-capitalism, but it does not erase the coercion inherent in even the smallest example of capitalist property rights. Can I deny a starving individual access to an apple from a tree in my yard according to anarcho-capitalism? The only consistent anarcho-capitalist answer that I can see is “yes.” As far as I am concerned the starving individual’s life takes priority over your capitalist private property. Note that having a bunch of individuals privately own an entire island produces the same effect. It still produces a lower class of people ruled by and dependent upon those who own private property. Maybe it is not very likely that one individual could come to own an entire island, but some part of you must accept that such a coercive situation of private world ruler-ship would be hypothetically acceptable under anarcho-capitalism. Making the argument that it is “unlikely” instead of arguing that it is “incompatible” with anarcho-capitalism means that you have come to some small realization that it is unacceptable to have this unlimited accumulation of capitalist private property because it destroys individual liberty. <br /><br />You are right in terms of how much more quickly capitalist private property accumulation occurs as a result of forceful state-government intervention. However, I highly doubt your assumption that anarcho-capitalism would make it unlikely for individuals to privately own huge swaths of land (like entire islands) in the long run. Even if you start out roughly equal in an anarcho-capitalist society of small individual homesteads, the rules of capitalism ensure that it won’t stay that way forever. Over generations of private property transactions in an anarcho-capitalist society more and more land and resources would accumulate into the hands of a few individuals. I use to think so myself, but it is simply inaccurate that anarcho-capitalists believe that you can only get your wealth from laboring. What happened to the capitalist spiel about “getting your money to work for you”? Sorry, but capital simply is not labor. <br /><br />No, my statement that “Crusoe can work years homesteading different parts of the island himself and/or he can buy up the homesteads of others. Such an occurrence is completely compatible with anarcho-capitalism” doesn’t apply to the mutualist property system. You can’t homestead different parts of the island so that each plot permanently becomes your private property, and you can’t buy up the homesteads of others to become an absentee landlord under mutualism. You only own the land and resources that you can personally occupy and use. If you mix your labor with something and leave it unused and unoccupied, it becomes abandoned. You ask, “What if I’m a rich mutualist who simply pays people to “occupy and use” every square inch of the island? Or the entire world?” I am sorry, but I must admit that I find these questions of yours pretty funny. Let’s think about this a second. If under mutualism I own what I personally occupy and use, then why would a “rich” mutualist pay me just to sit there and own what I already own? I can already exclude people from accessing what I personally occupy and use, so what exactly is the “rich” mutualist gaining? He or she isn’t gaining any power from doing such a thing. The “rich” mutualist would be gaining nothing. It would just be a big waste of money. It is not as though paying others to personally occupy and use the whole island or the entire world enables these things to become the property of the “rich” mutualist. Each individual would still own what they personally occupy and use. No one has to obey any of the decisions made by the “rich” mutualist. They aren’t dependent upon the money being paid to them by the “rich” mutualist, so not obeying wouldn’t be that big of a deal.<br /><br />Everyone would still be able to personally occupy and use whatever un-owned land and resources are available. No one is dependent upon the “rich” mutualist to gain access to the means of production/survival and can easily enter a co-operative to become a business owner. Under mutualism there is an upper limit on wealth accumulation because it is only possible for one human to produce so much labor-added value. When capital isn’t being paid tribute in the form of interest, rent, and profit, there isn’t this hypothetically unlimited amount of wealth that can be accumulated by an individual. There isn’t this unsustainable capitalist “grow or die” imperative. Therefore, your “rich” mutualist itself is an oxymoron. Whatever wealth disparities exist under mutualism can be expected to be relatively small. Furthermore, whatever the size and magnitude of these wealth disparities under libertarian socialism, the situation still wouldn’t bestow some individuals with hierarchical power over others. If people are already personally occupying and using an island or the entire world to the greatest extent possible—to the point where not even one more human life could be sustained by the available land and resources—then there isn’t scarcity artificially being imposed upon others by human beings (to benefit some at the expense of others), but the existence of actual nature-imposed scarcity. The person who comes along when I am drinking the last life-sustaining glass of fresh water on Earth is simply out of luck. I am not responsible as long as the other individual’s sad predicament is not a result of my actions but the result of nature. Paying everyone to occupy and use every bit of land and every single resource on an island or on Earth wouldn’t accomplish a thing under a mutualist or other libertarian socialist scheme of possession property rights. <br /><br />Those individuals passing through a community’s co-operatively owned road network that pay for temporary road usage do not form a landlord-tenant relationship. This scenario does not involve usury because those individuals just passing through the community’s co-operatively owned road network could just as easily reside within the community and become road co-op owners just like everyone else. Opportunity isn’t being denied to them. Their freedom of movement isn’t being denied. Ownership over the road isn’t being held above others to confer some individuals with greater bargaining power at the expense of others. When the road is co-operatively owned it isn’t like having a capitalist owner privately control the conditions under which the road can be used. Those just passing through are just paying to cover a small part of the wear and tear contributed through use of the road network. They aren’t bared from owning the road through personal occupancy and use. You shouldn’t be making money off of something that is not labor. That is theft, and it is what would occur with private capitalist ownership of the roads. <br /><br />Sorry, but an anarcho-capitalist road owner would indeed have quite a lot of bargaining power. It’s interesting that you find this so funny and hard to believe. Just further proof that you can’t recognize economic coercion with your incomplete conception of freedom. You can rest assured that I am not entering the realm of paranoia here. Let’s think for a moment. Why do existing private roads only charge a few quarters for passing? The reason is that they are competing with state-government subsidized roads that are completely open to the public. Now let’s imagine what would happen if every road was someone’s private property. Under anarcho-capitalism the road passing by my house could be someone else’s private property, which means the road owner can deny me access for whatever reason. I would have no say in how the privately-owned road is run. I can’t go anywhere without permission from the private road owner because I could be punished for trespassing on his or her property. I am stuck. I am at the mercy of the private road owner. I need free access to the road in order to get to work, go to the store, etc. I don’t have a choice but to pay for use of the road or suffer, starve, and die. This sort of coercive privatized tyranny also shows that anarcho-capitalism would result in things like widespread gentrification. The poor would be forced into slums in great numbers—most likely more so than under our currently restricted state capitalist economy. Anarcho-capitalism would undoubtedly promote an ever-increasing rich-poor divide. It would give people no other choice but to rebel violently to survive. Things that approach natural monopolies like roads, electricity, sewage, etc. must especially be co-operatively owned to avoid this kind of coercion. <br /><br />Direct democracy is not tyrannical and does not require a monopoly of force. You can have direct democracy without state-government. All libertarian socialists are against the representative “democracy” of countries like the USA. Libertarian socialists are for a completely voluntary direct democracy that does not involve a majority coercing a minority. Freedom to associate and disassociate at will ensures that both the majority and minority are protected. No one is bound by the decisions of an organization that he or she disapproves of. Continual renewed consent is required. Yes, by democracy we are talking about rule by the people. Libertarian socialists believe that an organization must be libertarian internally as well as externally. That is why internally hierarchical capitalist organizations are not considered libertarian by most anarchists. Private rule by capitalist corporations is not rule by the people.<br /><br />Now let me deal with your example of a group of actors getting together and deciding that they want to act in a movie even though they know little of filmmaking. No, there is no goofing up the division of labor here. If there were, co-operatives in places like Argentina would not be as successful as they have been after the failure of state capitalism. Let’s think about this a moment. So I am an actor that realizes that I don’t know how to make a successful movie. According to you this means that I can’t shop around in the free market to find a good filmmaker. That is simply not the case. My example of finding a good doctor without any real medical knowledge has already addressed this. Imagine that I shop around and discover that I have a choice between Jack, who has made some unsuccessful movies, and Jill who has made some very successful movies. If I can afford it, I am naturally going to hire Jill to direct my movie. I don’t need to know how Jill does it, only that she can do it. You don’t need to know much of anything about script writing, directing, and so on to hire people who are good at those particular things. If need be, you can even voluntarily consult people who are good at identifying talent. If you don’t have a good manager/director/filmmaker/etc then you simply are not going to be successful in a socialist free market. Note that I find nothing wrong with a filmmaker hiring actors, and of course I have nothing against actors hiring filmmakers. As long as everyone involved becomes an owner of the project within a workplace democracy, then there is no exploitive employer-employee relationship. <br /><br />Remember that I don’t have a problem with labor hiring capital or labor hiring labor. I have a problem with capital hiring labor. All I require is that people go into business as co-owners (as equal partners/one person one vote) instead of forming hierarchical employee-employer wage labor relationships. I even expect more filmmakers to hire actors instead of the other way around. Those who have a project in mind are likely to be the ones seeking out the talent to implement their vision. Logically you are more likely to have more actors clamoring to work under the direction of a great filmmaker than the other way around—although it is true that filmmakers also like working with successful actors. Naturally those with greater skill, knowledge, and wisdom are going to have higher bargaining power and command more in a socialist free market. Again, the real issue is with capital extracting surplus value from the labor of others. Greater bargaining power based on valued labor is good, while greater bargaining power based on capital ownership is bad. In a co-operative all of the actors, filmmakers, technicians, etc. would co-own their project. In a libertarian socialist society you could have a film studio co-operative hiring people from acting co-operatives. The means of production (sets, lights, studios, cameras, etc.) would still not be privately owned by a few individuals who extract value produced by the talent of others.<br /><br />I agree with quite a bit of what you say in your description of your imagined anarchist society. As you expect, I do disagree vehemently with your impoverished assessment of co-operatives. Note that by “purity” libertarian socialists are referring to the differing degrees of hierarchy that can be found within co-operatives. In particular we are concerned with the percentage of non-owner employees within some of the existing co-operatives. Let’s not forget that co-operatives are at a disadvantage automatically by having to compete within a market biased by an imposed state capitalist system. The value of things becomes skewed by capitalist pricing mechanisms even within non-capitalist co-operatives. Whatever the case, all existing co-operatives are majority-owned by the workers. Co-operatives contain a higher owner to employee ratio. Regardless of how “pure” any of these co-operatives are from a strict libertarian socialist viewpoint, the important thing is that all of them involve labor hiring capital instead of capital hiring labor. Even with some internal hierarchy, co-operatives of all shapes and sizes are still anti-capitalist and are therefore a vast improvement. In any case, it is up to the voluntary actions of the equal worker-owners to decide how non-hierarchical their co-operative is internally organized. Regardless of “purity,” all of the successful co-operatives analyzed in the studies provided demonstrate that there are viable alternatives to capitalism. As much of the data shows, capitalism is politically, economically, socially, and environmentally unsustainable in the long run, so even in the absence of ideological considerations, an alternative to capitalism must be found. I would still be much happier with a world containing co-operatives even if they aren’t completely “pure” by rigorous libertarian socialist standards. One of the most important things is that all individuals are free to experiment in order to discover functional non-hierarchical or flattened hierarchical ways of libertarian organization. I would not support capitalist forms of organization within an anarchist society, but I am fine with people voluntarily choosing to do so as long as they do not impose capitalism on others. Whatever the case may be, there is no doubt that co-operatives provide a viable alternative to capitalist corporations that entails greatly reduced hierarchy.Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-26378451762446215452008-05-10T15:48:00.000-07:002008-05-10T19:04:59.692-07:00Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 3)<p class="MsoNormal">This is my third response to a conversation with Cork that follows from my <a href="http://silent-radical.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversations-with-left-rothbardian.html"> "Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 2)"</a> blog post.<span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:12;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:12;" >I agree with you that Benjamin Tucker denies that anyone in his system has to be self-employed.<span style=""> </span>I explicitly said “I did not mean to imply that Tucker was against wage labor in the sense of an employee-employer relationship with my observation that he talks about getting rid of the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-takers” and then confusingly refers to the arising non-hierarchical relationship as “wage” labor.”<span style=""> </span>I explained that “Tucker is inconsistently saying that he can remove the coercive dynamic between employee-employer without abolishing the actual employee-employer relationship.”<span style=""> </span>I even mentioned your quote from Benjamin Tucker’s letter to Bellamy as a good example!<span style=""> </span>One of the main things I am pointing out is that “If Tucker was correct about not needing to abolish individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor to ensure everyone receives his or her “full wage”, his program would still entail the same effect as destroying the actual employee-employer relationship.”<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:12;" >No, Kevin isn’t lying in that quote you provided.<span style=""> </span>I completely agree with your quote from Kevin Carson.<span style=""> </span>Of course Tucker is not lying about his own beliefs.<span style=""> </span>Quit attacking me for things I never actually claimed.<span style=""> </span>I never disagreed with you about Benjamin Tucker being fine with employee-employer relationships, individual ownership over the means of production, and wage labor.<span style=""> </span>There has apparently been much ambiguity and misunderstanding.<span style=""> </span>What I disagree with is your claim that Benjamin Tucker is a supporter of capitalist property rights.<span style=""> </span>If you support capitalist property rights, you are necessarily a capitalist.<span style=""> </span>That is clearly not the case for Benjamin Tucker, as you readily admit.<span style=""> </span>If you aren’t a capitalist that necessarily means that you do not support capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>At least you acknowledge that Benjamin Tucker was not a capitalist unlike some anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians I have met.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:12;" >The problem lies in what you and I think constitutes “support for capitalist property rights.”<span style=""> </span>We seem to both be defining that differently.<span style=""> </span>For me Bejamin Tucker’s points of contact with capitalist property rights such as employee-employer relationships, individual ownership over the means of production, and wage labor are not enough to claim that he supported capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>You would think that just Tucker’s conception of occupancy and use rights for land would be enough that no one would claim that he supports capitalist property rights.<span style=""> </span>I have heard many anarcho-capitalists decry property rights based on occupancy and use as theft from the rightful capitalist owners.<span style=""> </span>Indeed, Tucker’s whole philosophy is based on an intended “depriving capital of its reward.”<span style=""> </span>Interest, rent, and profit would be gone.<span style=""> </span>This entails complete destruction of the effects of capitalist property rights.<span style=""> </span>So in what meaningful sense is Tucker for capitalist property rights then?<span style=""> </span>He isn’t.<span style=""> </span>Benjamin Tucker is clearly talking about a world without capitalism.<span style=""> </span>How much proof do you need to accept that Benjamin Tucker did not support capitalist private property?<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">It is funny how you talk about the revisionism being led by An Anarchist FAQ when they actually agree with you that Benjamin Tucker supports wage labor.<span style=""> </span>You appear to be misunderstanding An Anarchist FAQ in the same way that you are misunderstanding me.<span style=""> </span>An Anarchist FAQ says, “As we noted in section G.1.3, there is one apparent area of disagreement between Tucker and most other socialists, namely the issue of wage labour. For almost all anarchists the employer/employee social relationship does not fit in well with Tucker's statement that <i>"if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny."</i> [<span style="">The Individualist Anarchists</span>, p. 86] However, even here the differences are not impossible to overcome. It is important to note that because of Tucker's proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual credit, his individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers' control but would in fact <span style="">promote</span> it (as well as logically requiring it -- see section G.4.1).”<span style=""> </span>In reference to people like Benjamin Tucker An Anarchist FAQ also says, “The Individualist anarchists argue that the means of production (bar land) are the product of individual labour and so they accept that people should be able to sell the means of production they use, if they so desire.”<span style=""> </span>Therefore, I think your arguments against An Anarchist FAQ and myself are largely misplaced.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">Concerning my shipwrecked island scenario and African American debt slavery, you have completely missed the point.<span style=""> </span>I understand how you may have misunderstood what I was trying to get at, but I honestly did not mean to imply that the shipwrecked person or the African American would necessarily be a slave to one particular owner for the rest of his or her life.<span style=""> </span>People eventually die and there is always the possibility of transference of ownership in terms of land, resources, debt, etc.<span style=""> </span>Naturally there is still some socioeconomic mobility even within a capitalist society.<span style=""> </span>If there wasn’t this illusion of “enough” or “just” socioeconomic mobility within capitalist societies then the foundations of the capitalist system would more readily be struck at by the general population.<span style=""> </span>I am trying to get at the illegitimacy of the dominant-submissive relationship itself, while you try to circumvent the issue by pointing out that the exploited can sometimes become exploiters—like that’s a good thing.<span style=""> </span>This is what I am referring to when I mention that “</span>just because slaves can occasionally become slave owners doesn’t make the situation of slavery right<span style="">.”<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">In general I was talking about what’s in the self-interest of capitalists, and certainly it is in the self-interest of capitalists to keep the people below them dependent and enslaved to debt for as long as possible.<span style=""> </span>It would certainly benefit the capitalist if he or she could keep someone enslaved for their entire life through economic coercion.<span style=""> </span>Clearly capitalism places artificial constraints upon socioeconomic mobility that are not based on the merits of valued labor.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism necessarily entails hierarchical authoritarian control.<span style=""> </span>It is a fact that anarcho-capitalists defend economic hierarchy and believe that private rule by capitalist owners is somehow compatible with individual liberty.<span style=""> </span>It is because anarcho-capitalists believe that economic domination occurs as a result of merit-based capitalist superiority.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">The whole shipwrecked island scenario is clearly meant to parallel a more complex society within which a capitalist class actively works to subjugate the lower classes and profit off them.<span style=""> </span>My point about shipwrecked islands and African American post-Civil War debt slavery wasn’t necessarily about being dominated by one individual for the rest of one’s life, but about general subjugation by an entire class of individuals.<span style=""> </span>Being able to move from exploited to exploiter doesn’t really entail much of a change at all.<span style=""> </span>There is still an un-free relationship of dominance-submission which is repugnant to a free and equal people.<span style=""> </span>The unjust situation is still present.<span style=""> </span>Just because African American’s aren’t debt slaves to the exact same people from the post-Civil War sharecropping days does not exonerate capitalism in the least.<span style=""> </span>Somehow managing to get out from under the rule of others (and typically under the rule of someone else) does not justify the existence of dominant-submissive relationship in the first place.<span style=""> </span>Just because there are a few “rags to riches” stories does not get capitalism off the hook.<span style=""> </span>Such examples are the exception to the rule.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism is still all about supporting economic rule by a capitalist class which is completely antithetical to equal-liberty.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="">Yes, I really was an anarcho-capitalist at one time.<span style=""> </span>There is much written proof available on essembly if you really need to see it.<span style=""> </span>My writings there also had some good support from many other anarcho-capitalists.<span style=""> </span>There are plenty of people who came into contact with me when I was an extremely orthodox anarcho-capitalist.<span style=""> </span>Anyways, if I traveled to some un-owned oasis and built a fence around it, I wouldn’t at least own the fence?<span style=""> </span>You seem to be telling me that that I wouldn’t even own the fence according to anarcho-capitalism even though I used my labor to transform the natural resources at my disposal.<span style=""> </span>The fence is a product of my labor, so according to anarcho-capitalism I do believe that I would indefinitely own the fence and the land it rests upon.<span style=""> </span>In anarcho-capitalism I believe I have the right to exclude whomever I wish from my private property, so “just owning the fence border around the oasis is enough to effectively deny others access.”<span style=""> </span>I am surprised that you don’t understand what I mean when I say, “Therefore even if one person is unable to homestead an entire island by him or herself, the claims of many other homesteaders can be bought up by a single powerful capitalist.”<span style=""> </span>Consider Murray Rothbard’s Crusoe scenario that you have provided: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="">“…return to our Crusoe “model,” Crusoe, landing upon a large island, may grandiosely trumpet to the winds his “ownership” of the entire island. But, in natural fact, he <i>owns</i> only the part that he settles and transforms into use. Or, as noted above, Crusoe might be a solitary Columbus landing upon a newly-discovered continent. But so long as no other person appears on the scene, Crusoe’s claim is so much empty verbiage and fantasy, with no foundation in natural fact. But should a newcomer—a Friday—appear on the scene, and begin to transform unused land, then any <i>enforcement</i> of Crusoe’s invalid claim would constitute criminal aggression against the newcomer and invasion of the latter’s property rights.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="">“Note that we are not saying that, in order for property in land to be valid, it must be <i>continually</i> in use. <span style=""> </span>The only requirement is that the land be once put into use, and thus become the property of the one who has mixed his labor with, who imprinted the stamp of his personal energy upon, the land.<span style=""> </span>After that use, there is no more reason to disallow the land’s remaining idle than there is to disown someone for storing his watch in a desk drawer.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I never denied that anarcho-capitalism requires an initial transformation of land through use.<span style=""> </span>Murray Rothbard says, “One form of invalid land title, then, is any claim to land that has never been put into use. The enforcement of such a claim against a first-user then becomes an act of aggression against a legitimate property right.”<span style=""> </span>I completely understand this facet of anarcho-capitalism and haven’t denied it in my shipwrecked island or private oasis scenario. <span style=""> </span>Where I disagree is with your conclusion that anarcho-capitalist rules for private property ownership would make it impossible to privately own an island or an oasis.<span style=""> </span>Now we can consider what would happen if Friday could sell his homestead to Crusoe.<span style=""> </span>It would result in a greater percentage of the island becoming privately owned by one person who can then deny others access to parts of the island that aren’t actually being personally occupied and used.<span style=""> </span>Crusoe can work years homesteading different parts of the island himself and/or he can buy up the homesteads of others.<span style=""> </span>Such an occurrence is completely compatible with anarcho-capitalism.<span style=""> </span>We already observe that the more money and resources you have means that you can better command even more money and resources.<span style=""> </span>Gradually (possibly over a few generations) one person could easily come to own huge swaths of land in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism is completely fine with this accumulation of land, wealth, and resources at the top of an economic hierarchy.<span style=""> </span>It is indisputable that capitalists support permanent absentee landlord ownership.<span style=""> </span>For capitalists, once an individual has mixed their labor with land and resources, it becomes their private property forever and ever.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, according to anarcho-capitalism it is definitely possible for one person to legitimately come to own an oasis or an entire island and if it were possible it would also be completely compatible with anarcho-capitalist principles for one person to privately own the entire world.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">No, paying for the usage of a co-operatively owned road is not the same thing as landlordism.<span style=""> </span>If you pay for a road you own through personal occupancy and use, then there is no tenant-landlord relationship.<span style=""> </span>You can’t pay rent to yourself.<span style=""> </span>Your ownership of the road means that you have a direct say in the maintenance and building of the road.<span style=""> </span>Those decisions are no longer being made for you by a landlord.<span style=""> </span>You are essentially the landlord and tenant, which is already the case in housing co-operatives today.<span style=""> </span>Applied to co-operative roads, this means how much you pay for the road is determined by you in cooperation with others.<span style=""> </span>You aren’t paying more for the road than you have to because no one is in a position of higher bargaining power over you through private ownership of the road.<span style=""> </span>A user-fee in a co-operative situation does not constitute rent because you own the land through occupancy and use.<span style=""> </span>A user-fee is more akin to a business expense in a co-operative situation.<span style=""> </span>Cost-based user fees are completely compatible with mutualist co-operatives of all types.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">If none of the co-operative owners want to pay for the roads in terms of time, energy, money, planning, and resources then there simply will be no roads.<span style=""> </span>Take how owners of a capitalist business endure expenses and are therefore essentially paying to use what they own.<span style=""> </span>They are simply paying to cover the cost of things like electricity, water, sewage, etc.<span style=""> </span>This is no different in a co-operative business.<span style=""> </span>If you don’t want or need these things, then you can just occupy and use your property without paying for anything.<span style=""> </span>If you can sustain yourself on property you own without any outside help, then you won’t have to pay for anything—you directly receive the product of your own labor through your own sacrifices.<span style=""> </span>You go out and pick an apple from a tree and enjoy it right there.<span style=""> </span>However, this level of self-sufficiency isn’t the case for most people.<span style=""> </span>Just like we see reinvestment back into things like capitalist businesses, I don’t see why you would think that this wouldn’t be the case for co-operative businesses running roads, utilities, housing, healthcare, insurance, retail, etc.<span style=""> </span>You are only having a larger group own the business in a co-operative.<span style=""> </span>If you can have one person own a road in a capitalist situation then you can logically have many people owning the road in a co-operative situation.<span style=""> </span>Many of the same economic rules would still apply, but it would just be related to a situation in which you have many more owners.<span style=""> </span>It is completely in the self-interest of the co-operative road owners to democratically decide upon a pay plan to maintain and build the roads that they personally occupy and use.<span style=""> </span>Consider that in co-operatives there is also stronger incentive not to overproduce roads, but instead to keep costs as low as possible while satisfying the owner-users.<span style=""> </span>With co-operatives you are getting rid of the opposing forces inherent in employee-employer relationships.<span style=""> </span>Now to me, that sounds good for business.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">No, it is not necessary for everyone to co-operatively own every road and highway.<span style=""> </span>Naturally this will all be determined by the voluntary agreements made between different communities of various sizes.<span style=""> </span>The information relayed by interactions within a socialist free market will help determine the optimal size for co-operative road networks.<span style=""> </span>Experimentation helps the fittest organizational structure evolve for co-operative ownership within particular environments.<span style=""> </span>On a road trip, I foresee those individuals just passing through a community’s co-operatively owned road network paying for temporary usage (which isn’t the same as occupancy and use), while those residing in the community that personally occupy and use the road network daily can pay via subscription.<span style=""> </span>I can actually turn your road trip question back upon you.<span style=""> </span>In a capitalist society could someone necessarily go on a road trip?<span style=""> </span>What happens when the private capitalist owner of a road decides to use his or her bargaining power to extort money from those who need the freedom of movement to provide for their own survival?<span style=""> </span>Can a capitalist deny whomever he or she wants from having access to his or her private road?<span style=""> </span>I’m sorry, but that sounds a lot like the same dilemma that the desperate shipwrecked man had when dealing with the owner of a private island.<span style=""> </span>You tell me that one individual can’t own vast swaths of land like an entire island, an oasis, or the world, but I am fairly certain that I have heard anarcho-capitalists talk of private ownership over the roads.<span style=""> </span>I seriously hope that you aren’t going to deny that anarcho-capitalists support privately owned roads now.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I know this will be hard to believe, but I actually don’t believe you set out to be a tyrant although I do fear that if your anarcho-capitalist conception of the world could actually be sustained in the absence of state-government that the result would be privatized tyranny.<span style=""> </span>I don’t think you have intentionally set out to enslave workers and help the rich, but I fear that would be the end result of what you support.<span style=""> </span>I know that is not what I set out to do when I was an anarcho-capitalist myself.<span style=""> </span>I wasn’t a bad guy when I was an anarcho-capitalist, but unfortunately some of my ideas were bad.<span style=""> </span>I believe that it is hard for you and many others to see the coercion inherent in capitalist property rights and the resulting hierarchical concentrations of economic power.<span style=""> </span>When I was an anarco-capitalist, I know that for a long time it was extremely hard for me to even begin understanding libertarian socialism.<span style=""> </span>I couldn’t figure out where they were seeing this coercion inherent in capitalist property rights and how a society could function in the slightest without capitalism.<span style=""> </span>Most people don’t set out to hurt and oppress others, and instead start out with good intentions.<span style=""> </span>There often isn’t just one side to an individual.<span style=""> </span>Take any politician that we anarchists believe to represent and serve the coercive institution of state-government.<span style=""> </span>I am sure that George Bush and even Adolf Hitler had loving friends and family.<span style=""> </span>Minus their atrocities, many probably experienced these individuals as though they were good people.<span style=""> </span>The humanity of these monsters is often the scariest part of all.<span style=""> </span>Like myself, I believe you are just another individual trying to better understand the world in an attempt to do what is right—even if you do start off every morning by clubbing cute baby puppies.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I am not a fan of representative “democracy” but I do think that it is better than monarchy.<span style=""> </span>I am disappointed that monarchy is apparently capable of being considered more compatible with the principles of anarcho-capitalism.<span style=""> </span>The truth is that minorities can be screwed in different ways under many different systems—and that includes your anarcho-capitalism with its hierarchical concentrations of economic power.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes things like cultural issues are separate from the system to an extent.<span style=""> </span>You could have slavery, racism, irrationality, bigotry, sexism, etc. perpetuated by the people within just about any form of human society.<span style=""> </span>You may have the right system (anarchism), but there may still be attitudes and behaviors lingering that need changing through further human action.<span style=""> </span>Ultimately, it is always up to people cooperating together to put an end to immoral activities that infringe upon equal-liberty.<span style=""> </span>However, if your institutions embody the libertarian principles of freedom and equality, then it is much more unlikely that minorities will be oppressed.<span style=""> </span>The system itself plays a huge role in promoting certain attitudes and behaviors.<span style=""> </span>The ability to associate and disassociate at will and having a direct democratic say in decisions that affect you life creates a system that tends towards promoting libertarian attitudes and behaviors.<span style=""> </span>Many people, especially in the “ruggedly individualist” USA, have a tendency to overplay the role of the individual and underplay the role of the system.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, you appear to be confusing the representative “democracy” of the USA with the direct democracy of libertarian socialism.<span style=""> </span>If you permitted voluntary direct democracy in the South, then the African American population would actually have quite a large say in their own lives.<span style=""> </span>The libertarian organization of society would naturally mean that African American’s wouldn’t be bound by decisions made by organizations that they do not voluntarily choose to participate in.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I think that division of labor has been taken too far by capitalism with its deskilling of labor in order to create a favorable labor market providing cheap disposable human cogs for their machines.<span style=""> </span>In a co-operative economy I expect the optimal level of “division of labor” to be decided upon by economic pressures within a free market absent capitalist privileges.<span style=""> </span>You ask me “Are assembly-line workers going to know which specialists to hire for marketing, accounting, etc. or what kind of business strategies to pursue?”<span style=""> </span>Well answer me this:<span style=""> </span>Do you or do you need to know everything about the medical profession in order to pick a good doctor?<span style=""> </span>Of course not, and the assembly-line workers don’t need to know everything about marketing, accounting, etc. to search for and hire people with specialized knowledge in those areas either.<span style=""> </span>When searching the market we look at credentials, reviews, results, etc. to come to informed conclusions about who we want to hire, fire, consume from, work for, trust, etc.<span style=""> </span>Those with relatively scarce specialized knowledge and skills are expected to command more compensation within a socialist free market.<span style=""> </span>Such people would be valuable to the worker-owners of a co-operative.<span style=""> </span>Those who know what kind of business strategies to pursue will naturally be asked to present their plans for careful consideration and then aid in implementation.<span style=""> </span>There can be business consultant co-operatives from which other co-operatives hire outside management.<span style=""> </span>If the assembly-line workers don’t know how to determine who works in every different department and how it is run then other sources can naturally be hired to help those decisions get made.<span style=""> </span>However, I would venture to say that the individuals working in their department typically know how to run their department.<span style=""> </span>Capitalist management selfishly squanders much time and energy figuring out how to squeeze as much as they can out of labor for the least amount of compensation possible instead of focusing on more worthy issues.<span style=""> </span>The important thing is that any higher compensation is coming from valued labor (i.e. specialization) instead of capital.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I have heard the arguments about the greater risk involved in co-operative businesses.<span style=""> </span>Worker risk aversion definitely needs to be addressed by co-operative institutions.<span style=""> </span>This inherent riskiness certainly seems to be true in our predominately capitalist world where there is much ideological and institutional bias against co-operatives.<span style=""> </span>However, I do believe that there are other ways of lowering risk besides resorting to capitalist tactics like diversified stock portfolios.<span style=""> </span>A national co-operative credit union should be created to address things like the shortage of funds for co-operative development.<span style=""> </span>Having property rights based on personal occupancy and use at least assures people that they will own some land beneath their feet.<span style=""> </span>Sure some products take years to sell and some machinery takes years to build.<span style=""> </span>That doesn’t change for co-operatives, but naturally there needs to be non-capitalist solutions to address these issues.<span style=""> </span>By your own logic if a start-up business is not selling anything, then I don’t know how a capitalist business is going to be paying employees in advance of the sale.<span style=""> </span>Obviously that start-up capital has to come from banks—and for co-operatives it would come from a mutualist interest-free bank.<span style=""> </span>Worker-owners also share the gains and losses, which means risk is spread out more evenly among more people.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">Different strategies can be taken to counteract a situation within which a product doesn’t sell at all.<span style=""> </span>The worker-owners aren’t any more screwed than capitalists when a business venture fails.<span style=""> </span>The same inputs are required for a co-operative business as they are in a capitalist business. <span style=""> </span>If liquidation occurs the worker-owners would simply receive whatever value was salvageable and incur the losses. <span style=""> </span>Risk would be addressed to some extent by mutualist banking that provides interest-free credit and places access to the means of production within the reach of all, and there are always well-established co-operatives where people can accumulate wealth for other ventures.<span style=""> </span>In some ways having workers assume more risk would be a good thing because it also provides more incentive to avoid irresponsible and corrupt behavior that could endanger the success of the business.<span style=""> </span>Those who engage in an activity should bear the full risk and cost of their actions.<span style=""> </span>There shouldn’t be this irresponsible “limited liability” nonsense.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">In any case, I believe you can lower risk without resorting to the restoration of capitalist privileges.<span style=""> </span>You can organize mutualist insurance companies, friendly societies, and other forms of mutual aid.<span style=""> </span>Cooperation in general is a good strategy for lowering risk.<span style=""> </span>It creates a social safety net.<span style=""> </span>Sharing reduces risk.<span style=""> </span>The co-operative ownership of land, resources, and businesses lowers risk to an extent by spreading cost in smaller increments among the worker-owners.<span style=""> </span>If you are a capitalist you personally have quite a lot to lose in a business venture, but if you are a worker-owner along with a bunch of other people then the size of the investment amount you could lose is smaller.<span style=""> </span>There are also other costs involved in maintaining the opposition between employees and employers within the capitalist business form.<span style=""> </span>For example, capitalist businesses require more authoritarian monitoring and external punishment/reward schemes in an attempt to keep employees in line.<span style=""> </span>The gains involved in co-operative organization can in some ways counteract any inherent costs in terms of risk.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">I am probably not the one to turn to as a source of a complete understanding of co-operatives, so below I have provided some excerpts from scientific research papers that would probably help answer some of your more technical questions about co-operatives:<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p>In <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/4158328870221052/">“Worker Democracy and Worker Productivity”</a> William Heard Kilpatrick explains, “A major source of oppression in industrial and post-industrial society is the restrictive and highly authoritarian nature of the workplace. One response is to democratize the workplace by increasing the participation of workers in making decisions and in choosing and evaluating managers as well as sharing in the ownership of the firm. These are not new ideas, and there are many examples of organizations pursuing various forms of democratic practices. However, a major objection is that such participation would compromise economic and other types of organizational productivity. This article examines the empirical support for that argument over a wide range of types of organizations in which workers participate in important decisions affecting their welfare. The overall results of this survey across many different forms of work organization suggest that the evidence supports the opposite conclusion, that worker participation increases productivity, particularly when workers share the benefits of higher productivity. The challenge is to ascertain ways of spreading these practices more widely.”<br /></p> <p><a href="http://rrp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/2/45">“The Comparative Efficiency and Productivity of Labor-Managed and Capital-Managed Firms”</a> by Chris Doucouliagos says, “The available empirical literature comparing the efficiency<sup> </sup>and productivity of labor-managed and capital-managed firms<sup> </sup>is reviewed and meta-analysed. The results suggest that labor-managed<sup> </sup>firms are not less efficient or less productive than capital-managed<sup> </sup>firns. Labor-managed firms have lower output-to-labor ratios<sup> </sup>and even lower capital-to-labor ratios. However, the differences<sup> </sup>in these ratios are not statistically significant. The labor-managed<sup> </sup>firm's democratic governance, industrial relations climate,<sup> </sup>and organisational setting do not appear to adversely affect<sup> </sup>productivity and efficiency.”<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p>In <a href="http://rrp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/4/44">“Why Capitalist Firms Outnumber Labor-Managed Firms”</a> Chris Doucouliagos says, “Orthodox economists argue that capitalist firms outnumber labor-managed<sup> </sup>firms (LMFs) because capitalist firms are more efficient. This<sup> </sup>paper reviews the literature on the economics of LMFs and argues<sup> </sup>that efficiency has very little to do with the dominance of<sup> </sup>capitalist firms. Capitalist firms outnumber LMFs because LMFs<sup> </sup>are disadvantaged in capitalist economies and because of ideological<sup> </sup>bias against LMFs. The principal obstacles faced by LMFs are:<sup> </sup>cultural and social backgrounds, workers' educational experience,<sup> </sup>worker risk aversion, financial discrimination, forces inducing<sup> </sup>degeneration and ideological bias. The importance of `shelter<sup> </sup>organizations' and a cooperative culture in supporting LMFs<sup> </sup>are discussed.”<span style=""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="">Whether co-operative strategies can combat riskiness in the same way or to the same extent as capitalist strategies ultimately does not provide a death-blow to the co-operative economy.<span style=""> </span>From real world experience we know that co-operatives are capable of functioning adequately in every industry.<span style=""> </span>Whatever the pros and cons are, this whole capitalist “get your money to work for you” has got to go for the sake of individual liberty.<span style=""> </span>Someone somewhere is always doing the labor to produce the value that you receive for your investment.<span style=""> </span>This is clearly a case of making money off of simply having money.<span style=""> </span>It undeniably involves theft from the fruits of productive labor.<span style=""> </span>If everyone had their money working for them, then we would all starve to death.<span style=""> </span>It is like one of those old economic parables decrying the evils of theft—usually in reference to taxation.<span style=""> </span>The message is that there could not be thieves if we were all thieves—to have theft you always have to have someone somewhere producing something of value to steal.<span style=""> </span>It’s funny how the same thing can be applied to the theft perpetuated by capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>In the case of losses in terms of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, etc., I am still of the opinion that any negative consequences would be an acceptable price to pay for political, social, and economic equal-liberty.<span style=""> </span>Just because capitalist exploitation and economic coercion may benefit business does not make relationships of dominance and submission acceptable.<span style=""> </span>African American slavery makes labor even cheaper, but we don’t defend it even when it increases business profit.<span style=""> </span>Would you reject anarcho-capitalism if it were proven to be incapable of providing the exact same economic efficiency or standard of living that we currently enjoy under the coercion of state-government?<span style=""> </span>I know that I would take justice over profit any day.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-54301759404631218472008-05-03T18:20:00.000-07:002008-05-10T19:04:23.092-07:00Conversations WIth A Left-Rothbardian Anarco-Capitalist (Part 2)This is my second response to a conversation with Cork that follows from my<a href="http://silent-radical.blogspot.com/2008/04/conversations-with-left-rothbardian.html"> "Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 1)"</a> blog post.<br /><br />Okay, I agreed that Benjamin Tucker inconsistently supported a part of capitalism when he agreed with private ownership over the means of production and wage labor.<span style=""> </span>I also explained that you have to consider Tucker’s inconsistent comments within their proper historical context.<span style=""> </span>He was envisioning a society predominately made up of self-employed peasants/artisans.<span style=""> </span>Even I am all for the individual ownership of the means of production when there is no employee-employer relationship.<span style=""> </span>Does that make me a supporter of capitalist private property?<span style=""> </span>No, it does not.<span style=""> </span>Benjamin Tucker’s points of contact with capitalist property rights are still not strong enough to make him a supporter of capitalist property rights, which is what I understand you to be erroneously claiming.<span style=""> </span>My problem is that these few points of contact with capitalism apparently lead you to believe that An Anarchist FAQ and libertarian socialists in general are wrong to say that Benjamin Tucker did not support capitalist private property rights.<span style=""> </span>If he were a full supporter of capitalist property rights, which requires more than individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor, it would have made him an anarcho-capitalist and not the individualist anarchist that he actually was.<span style=""> </span>Claiming Benjamin Tucker as a supporter of capitalist private property flies in the face of everything he stood for.<span style=""> </span>I don’t believe you are doing so, but I have had too much experience with anarcho-capitalists trying to claim people like Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner as one of their own to let such revisionism go unchallenged.<span style=""> </span>When I point out that these people were involved in things like the labor movement and called themselves socialists, I have had many anarcho-capitalists go completely ballistic on me.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span> <p class="MsoNormal">Clearly Tucker was not a proponent of unlimited private ownership over land.<span style=""> </span>That is just one of the few things that shows Tucker is pitted squarely against capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>I just don’t know how you can claim someone supports capitalist private property when they are denying the legitimacy of accumulating an unlimited amount of land—considered one of the most important forms of capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>Sure you can point out Tucker’s inconsistent support of wage labor and individual ownership over the means of production, but such points aren’t enough to show support for capitalist property rights—especially when the intent is to “deprive capital of its reward.”<span style=""> </span>I am pretty sure Tucker would revolt at a few individuals having monopoly control over the means of production since he wanted capital to be reachable by all through mutualist interest-free banking.<span style=""> </span>He is simply going about the destruction of usury in an incomplete way by denying that workers should own their workplaces in accord with his own principle of occupancy and use.<span style=""> </span>Tucker’s comment that he wants to “deprive capital of its reward” displays his true intent against capitalist private property even while he inconsistently supported individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor.<span style=""> </span>Capital receiving a reward is the whole point of capitalism.<span style=""> </span>Without it, there is no capitalism.<span style=""> </span>In the absence of interest, rent, and profit there simply is no capitalism.<span style=""> </span>That is what Benjamin Tucker wanted even though he approached the eradication of usury inconsistently.<span style=""> </span>If you could get rid of interest, rent, and profit while still retaining private ownership over the means of production and wage labor, then the situation still couldn’t accurately be described as capitalism.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Benjamin Tucker refers to there being a “wage” when he says he envisions a world where “there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor…not to abolish wages but to make every man dependent upon wages and to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism.”<span style=""> </span>He is obviously referring here to all forms of compensation for labor as receiving a “wage” because what he says necessarily covers things like self-employment.<span style=""> </span>When we refer to wage labor we are typically talking about capital hiring labor.<span style=""> </span>So it seems inaccurate to call it a “wage” when only labor hires labor. <span style=""> </span>Tucker makes it clear that he doesn’t want capital hiring labor, so there is no meaningful sense in which one can claim he is in favor of capitalist property rights and all it entails.<span style=""> </span>For Benjamin Tucker, as long as you don’t have capital receiving its reward, any resulting employee-employer relationship would not entail the hierarchical dominant-submissive dynamic.<span style=""> </span>The existence of wage labor and individual ownership over the means of production would become moot points if it were really possible to “deprive capital of its reward” at the same time they exist.<span style=""> </span>I think Benjamin Tucker’s ideas would go a long way towards accomplishing the intended disappearance of usury, but I believe doing so also requires the eradication of wage labor through co-operative ownership over the means of production.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, I understand that with the abolishment of the money, land, tariff, and patent/copyright monopolies Tucker thinks that wages will raise to the value of the worker’s “full product.”<span style=""> </span>I suppose I have been somewhat unclear.<span style=""> </span>Note that I sometimes don’t make it obvious that I am explaining what I believe or trying to explain what I understand Tucker to believe.<span style=""> </span>I did not mean to imply that Tucker was against wage labor in the sense of an employee-employer relationship with my observation that he talks about getting rid of the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-takers” and then confusingly refers to the arising non-hierarchical relationship as “wage” labor.<span style=""> </span>I have agreed that he was inconsistent about these points from the start.<span style=""> </span>In reality, if you get rid of such a distinction by removing capital from the equation, everyone is essentially self-employed, and it is unfortunate that Benjamin Tucker was never able to see that.<span style=""> </span>Everyone would be self-employed or potentially self-employed thanks to “occupancy and use” property rights and being able to readily receive the capital necessary to start a business through utilization of a mutualist bank.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tucker is inconsistently saying that he can remove the coercive dynamic between employee-employer without abolishing the actual employee-employer relationship.<span style=""> </span>To me that is definitely strange and confusing, but still very antithetical to capitalism and its private property rights.<span style=""> </span>You accurately pointed out that in his letter to Bellamy, Tucker stated “When interest, rent and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make little difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others.”<span style=""> </span>All I meant to highlight here is that Tucker’s program of erasing the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-receivers” would effectively end the exploitation that is fundamental to the capitalist employee-employer relationship.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, Tucker is obviously still coming to extremely anti-capitalist conclusions. <span style=""> </span>If Tucker was correct about not needing to abolish individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor to ensure everyone receives his or her “full wage”, his program would still entail the same effect as destroying the actual employee-employer relationship.<span style=""> </span>Such an occurrence would in no way be favorable towards capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Occupancy and use is not just for unused land, but also for scarce goods including raw materials, products, equipment, materials, buildings, structures, etc.<span style=""> </span>That is what I believe, and I am fairly certain it is what Benjamin Tucker believed.<span style=""> </span>In “Instead of a Book” he shows his disapproval of unlimited holdings of scarce goods when he says, “in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use.”<span style=""> </span>Therefore I don’t see Tucker being for a capitalist monopoly over capital goods even though he stated support for individual ownership over the means of production.<span style=""> </span>For Tucker, the legitimacy of any such individual ownership over the means of production still requires it be within the reach of all by not being “so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities.”<span style=""> </span>If property rights are founded upon personal occupy and use of land, then I also don’t see how it can get around entailing the occupancy and use of whatever resides upon the land—meaning abandoned buildings, means of production, etc.<span style=""> </span>It seems to me that if you are for occupancy and use of land you must necessarily be for occupancy and use of capital goods.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I explained, “The important idea being that the desperate shipwrecked man’s need to occupy and use part of the island would involve another individual not being able to sustain their own life.”<span style=""> </span>All I am trying to say is that you can’t legitimately deny a man access to something with which he could use to sustain his own life.<span style=""> </span>If you can spare something without dying or unreasonably harming yourself, you are obligated to help the shipwrecked man.<span style=""> </span>Doing otherwise is incompatible with individual liberty.<span style=""> </span>You can’t be free if you are dead.<span style=""> </span>It would be like watching a child drown to death in a pool of water when it was easily within your power to save the child.<span style=""> </span>You can’t claim to be for individual liberty while claiming that you don’t have to help the child because you would lose something by, say, ruining your good clothes.<span style=""> </span>For the maintenance of individual liberty, human life must always come before any consideration of material possessions.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For anarcho-capitalists, the homestead principle requires mixing your labor with unclaimed land and resources.<span style=""> </span>If building a fence does not meet this anarcho-capitalist requirement for a legitimate private property claim, I don’t know what does.<span style=""> </span>I am truly dumbfounded that you believe that no anarcho-capitalist claims that you can own land or natural resources by simply building a fence.<span style=""> </span>Come on, you can’t truly expect me to believe this.<span style=""> </span>I would like to know what constitutes legitimate private property for an anarcho-capitalist such as yourself then.<span style=""> </span>I know I would have claimed building a fence around an oasis would constitute a legitimate property claim when I was an anarcho-capitalist.<span style=""> </span>Even if the standard is that there needs to be a “transformation” of the oasis itself to claim entire ownership, just owning the fence border around the oasis is enough to effectively deny others access.<span style=""> </span>This would have the same effect as claiming the entire oasis as one’s private property.<span style=""> </span>For anarcho-capitalists, once the “transformative” mixing of labor occurs, continual occupancy and use is not required to retain ownership.<span style=""> </span>It becomes your property indefinitely until you make the conscious decision to sell it or give it away.<span style=""> </span>Therefore even if one person is unable to homestead an entire island by him or herself, the claims of many other homesteaders can be bought up by a single powerful capitalist.<span style=""> </span>So it is definitely conceivable that one individual could easily meet the anarcho-capitalist standard for owning an entire island, and it is very plausible that a fence could be built around an oasis and used to “legitimately” deny desperate passersby any water in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles.<span style=""> </span>The main thing here is that concentrated economic power is a severe threat to individual liberty. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Contrary to what you have said, things like co-operative roads would be operated on a pay-for-use basis, subscription, or some mixture of both.<span style=""> </span>Supporting co-operatives doesn’t mean being opposed to a pay-for-use basis.<span style=""> </span>Such a pay scheme is completely compatible with occupancy and use.<span style=""> </span>If you use it, you pay for it, and you also own it.<span style=""> </span>Under co-operative ownership, you are considered part-owner of the road if you use it, and you have a direct democratic say in the construction and maintenance of the road.<span style=""> </span>The same problems you have with co-operatives being able to handle large highway construction and maintenance could be leveled against your anarcho-capitalist privatization of roads, which also lacks recourse to taxation.<span style=""> </span>In a genuine free market it is very possible that the cost of building a large road network outweighs the benefits.<span style=""> </span>Instead of such a large need for cars in an anarchist society, you might see the proliferation of mass transit which is easier to maintain on a pay-for-use basis.<span style=""> </span>We shouldn’t always assume that anarchism’s inability to sustain big business, big roads, big industry, big military, big energy, big whatever constitutes a weakness.<span style=""> </span>The bigness of our society carries with it many double bind consequences that are very likely to prove unsustainable in the long-run.<span style=""> </span>The free market will send the proper signals under the given circumstances to signify what is inefficiently too small or too big.<span style=""> </span>If giving up the institutions of huge size and scope we see today is the price for individual freedom and equality, those calling ourselves anarchists should be willing to pay it.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is incredible that you defend such big business monopoly control in your supposedly “free” market.<span style=""> </span>Monopoly is completely incompatible with a competitive free market.<span style=""> </span>When you have a monopoly there is no longer a “serving of others” required but an even more extreme case of “serving yourself” at the expense of others.<span style=""> </span>For you, the issue obviously isn’t about concentrations of power.<span style=""> </span>You’re apparently all for that.<span style=""> </span>Your only concern is with who has that power.<span style=""> </span>You are for centralization as long as power is held by the private sector and not state-government.<span style=""> </span>As long as big capitalist corporations are using their coercive concentrated power efficiently in service of profit, everything is peachy keen for individual liberty.<span style=""> </span>Yeah, right.<span style=""> </span>How is it that the notion that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” magically doesn’t apply to concentrations of economic power?<span style=""> </span>It is truly frightening that you would be fine with one person or a few people owning the world “if they treated (you) like a god, and all of us (got) to live in mansions with free foot massages, tennis courts, etc at barely any price (which is the kind of value they would have to be providing to even get half that far).”<span style=""> </span>Your faith in the benevolence of private “free” market rulers of the world is truly astounding.<span style=""> </span>Is it any wonder that some anarcho-capitalists like Hans-Hermann Hoppe defend monarchy as a “lesser evil” over democracy?<span style=""> </span>I guess we should go back and undo the American Revolution then—one of the few revolutions I though many right-libertarians look favorably upon.<span style=""> </span>You would think democracy would be considered the more “libertarian” of the two since more people get some kind of say in decisions that affect their lives, but no!<span style=""> </span>Instead you see anarcho-capitalists defending monarchy where a few individuals in a royal family get to rule over their property.<span style=""> </span>In a monarchy you get to be king or queen over your own little private kingdom where you are free to treat other individuals like property—your subjects are there only for your own benefit.<span style=""> </span>Yeah, that sure smells like freedom to me.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Your assumptions about what would have to occur for someone to own the entire world in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles are way off base.<span style=""> </span>If what you were saying were true, then we would already observe this “being treated as kings” occurring to some extent even in our restrained capitalist market.<span style=""> </span>It is simply not occurring.<span style=""> </span>Capitalist corporations try to manipulate and screw over customers and their employees at every turn.<span style=""> </span>To take one example, look at the rise of sweatshop labor.<span style=""> </span>State-government didn’t initiate it.<span style=""> </span>Capitalist corporations worked to establish it all on their own—often through the manipulation of state-governments.<span style=""> </span>It is really very hard to attack state-government without attacking corporate capitalist economic power.<span style=""> </span>Indeed, corporations are typically the prime movers and shakers of state-government policy.<span style=""> </span>Maybe we should look at Blackwater where profit is quite vividly held above individual life and liberty.<span style=""> </span>For capitalism “profit over people” is the name of the game.<span style=""> </span>Do you think that privatization of the water supply in countries like Bolivia was done for the benefit of the people or for the benefit of private corporate interests?<span style=""> </span>I think the resulting water price increases and resulting riots speak for themselves.<span style=""> </span>Even if we inaccurately assume that a capitalist corporation would initially have to unfathomably satisfy their customers to accumulate enough to own the entire world, after having achieved world ownership, the owner(s) wouldn’t have to do squat in order to maintain their “legitimate” anarcho-capitalist property.<span style=""> </span>After you own the world, you can sit back and reap the rewards of everyone else’s labor and pass the same coercive privilege on to whomever you desire.<span style=""> </span>It would be “I own the world, so you have to do whatever I say.<span style=""> </span>Otherwise, get off my property!”<span style=""> </span>The blown up exaggerated “ownership of the world” example is just meant to bring into sharper focus the real-world examples of capitalist coercion.<span style=""> </span>This reaping the rewards of others labor and not having to really satisfy anyone once you become a capitalist at the top of some private tyranny is what we are trying to point out by denying the legitimacy of interest, rent, and profit.<span style=""> </span>If you really want a free market to operate on the basis of merit then you need to remove capital from the equation.<span style=""> </span>Labor must be the source of the free market pricing feedback loop.<span style=""> </span>Only then will you be commanding wealth through perpetually satisfying the needs of your fellow human beings while also satisfying yourself.<span style=""> </span>Corporations must be directly accountable to the lives their decisions effect instead of just being responsible for delivering a profit to its shareholders.<span style=""> </span>Good luck getting your private capitalist owners of the world to treat us all like kings.<span style=""> </span>You might as well try getting state-government to treat us all like kings, too.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Being your own boss does not deny ever working in order to satisfy the needs of someone else.<span style=""> </span>It means owning your industry.<span style=""> </span>It means equal opportunity bargaining power based on subjectively valued labor instead of having bargaining power based on capital controlled access to the means of production.<span style=""> </span>In fact, cooperation defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy by making it so that my fate is linked with yours.<span style=""> </span>With cooperative forms of organization we sink or swim together.<span style=""> </span>It is all about satisfying others while also satisfying yourself, whereas completion is a zero-sum game where one person gains at another’s expense.<span style=""> </span>In competition the only way to win is to make someone else lose.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Besides Walter Block, I know that Robert Nozick also supported voluntary slavery.<span style=""> </span>I have also personally known many less famous anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians that have defended voluntary slavery.<span style=""> </span>I myself defended voluntary slavery when I was an anarcho-capitalist because it was the only logical outcome of my incomplete conception of freedom.<span style=""> </span>I don’t see how you can be a consistent anarcho-capitalist without supporting voluntary slavery.<span style=""> </span>You can’t really own something unless you can sell it.<span style=""> </span>Self-ownership is one of the cornerstones of laissez-faire capitalist ideology.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, since you own yourself you can sell yourself. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Who said anything about African Americans being debt slaves to the exact same line of people from right after the Civil War?<span style=""> </span>Your incredulity is misplaced.<span style=""> </span>All you asked me was if African Americans are still slaves to debt.<span style=""> </span>Yes, they are along with countless others.<span style=""> </span>My point is that capitalism obviously doesn’t give people a fair shake.<span style=""> </span>Regardless of occasionally being able to get out from under one debt collector (and typically under another), it is plain to see that socioeconomic mobility is artificially hindered by capitalist property rights, which runs counter to merit-based mobility founded upon valued labor.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, just because slaves can occasionally become slave owners doesn’t make the situation of slavery right.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I did not say that Mondragon and Publix employ zero wage labor and I have nothing against specialists/managers hired by labor instead of capital.<span style=""> </span>People are naturally going to be better than others at doing certain things.<span style=""> </span>I have no problem per se with specialization and division of labor.<span style=""> </span>I have a problem with the systematic deskilling of labor perpetuated by capitalism to further increase dependency on a ruling capitalist class.<span style=""> </span>As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said, “In cases in which production requires great division of labour, it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among the workers…because without that they would remain isolated as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage workers, which is repugnant in a free democratic society.<span style=""> </span>But where the product can be obtained by the action of an individual or a family…there is no opportunity for association.”<span style=""> </span>So co-operatives are not necessarily against specialization and division of labor, but are for empowering more individuals through self-management.<span style=""> </span>The best way of learning is by doing.<span style=""> </span>This is about providing access to the resources necessary to more fully develop towards ones full potential.<span style=""> </span>It is about better developing and releasing our individuality.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For some of these co-operative companies there is usually some percentage of the business made up of worker-owners.<span style=""> </span>Ideally everyone involved in a co-operative would eventually become a worker-owner.<span style=""> </span>Right now I believe that to legally be considered a co-operative in some places you must have at least half of the business owned by the workers.<span style=""> </span>The rules naturally vary from place to place.<span style=""> </span>No matter how imperfect, these co-operatives are definitely a step in the right direction and are living proof that co-operatives work and can function on quite a large scale.<span style=""> </span>Just check out the situation in Argentina for instance.<span style=""> </span>Let’s also not forget that these co-operatives have to thrive within a market place biased towards capitalist business forms due to state-government intervention.<span style=""> </span>Zero wage labor would occur if everyone working in the co-operative was an owner.<span style=""> </span>Ideally that is what libertarian socialists would want. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I know that there is usually a trial period before employees have an option to buy into the company and become worker-owners.<span style=""> </span>Even if this practice were retained in an anarchist society, the important thing is that everyone can easily become a worker-owner somewhere and everyone has access to the means necessary to sustain themselves through their own hard work.<span style=""> </span>The point is that people don’t have their compensation artificially reduced by the coercive bargaining power of capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>These worker-owners make decisions on a one-person-one-vote basis, so even if you can own more stock in the co-operative you don’t receive more decision-making power.<span style=""> </span>Some co-operatives use consensus decision making while others democratically elect a board of directors.<span style=""> </span>Naturally what method you use can also be effected by size and the type of work involved.<span style=""> </span>Your comment about “hundreds of thousands of employees hold(ing) meetings every day to decide on each and every aspect of when and how to work” reveals a profound misunderstanding of how co-operatives function and the way libertarian socialists expect them to work.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Naturally there is room for deviation, but the way I ideally desire co-operatives to run would be along the following lines:<span style=""> </span>Immediately or after a trial period, every worker would have the option of buying into the business and becoming an owner.<span style=""> </span>You would have a face-to-face general assembly held as often as needed at which time company policies would be laid down and/or amended.<span style=""> </span>These policies then provide mandated guidelines within which a democratically elected board of directors is appointed to coordinate certain activities.<span style=""> </span>The manager-delegates are rotated and are recallable by the general assembly if there is an unacceptable departure from the mandated policies.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As already noted, ideally we should be working towards a situation in which an individual has a say in decisions proportionate to the degree by which he or she is affected by them.<span style=""> </span>So a hospital janitor obviously wouldn’t have a great deal of say in the decisions of a surgeon, and a flight attendant wouldn’t have much of a say in the decisions of a pilot.<span style=""> </span>It all depends on who the decision affects that determines who has a say.<span style=""> </span>Certainly you didn’t think we are saying that a janitor with little to no knowledge on the subject gets to influence how a surgeon performs brain surgery.<span style=""> </span>Such a thing wouldn’t be in anyone’s self-interest.<span style=""> </span>If need be, you can certainly have separate smaller general assembly meetings held by different company departments.<span style=""> </span>Many decisions can be made spontaneously on the floor with fellow co-workers anyways.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, notice how co-operatives bring into alignment the self-interest of the workers and the success of the business by making everyone an owner.<span style=""> </span>Consider how receiving compensation directly from “profit” provides workers an internalized incentive to reduce wasteful and inefficient activities.<span style=""> </span>In a capitalist corporation an employee doesn’t care about wasting company resources because he or she knows that doing so is unlikely to make much if any difference in how much he or she receives from the capitalist boss.<span style=""> </span>In capitalism wages are inversely related to profit.<span style=""> </span>In a co-operative culture, worker-owners understand that hurting the bottom line of their business directly hurts themselves.<span style=""> </span>There is more of an internalized incentive to monitor yourself and your co-workers in a co-operative instead of having an authoritarian capitalist boss externally threatening you to fall in line.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In some co-operatives everyone might own an equal amount, while in others that is not the case.<span style=""> </span>Some co-operatives pay everyone the same, while others don’t.<span style=""> </span>These things are all decided upon by the worker-owners themselves and are influenced by the particular situation at hand.<span style=""> </span>It’s not even like hiring and firing decisions aren’t made in co-operatives.<span style=""> </span>No one denies the necessity of such decisions.<span style=""> </span>What we are worried about is where this decision-making power is coming from.<span style=""> </span>The main thing is giving people equal opportunity through denying capital its reward and only rewarding labor.<span style=""> </span>While Mondragon and Publix aren’t perfect examples of what libertarian socialists want in a co-operative, they do display that co-operatives are compatible with complex industrial society.<span style=""> </span>Most importantly, there is plenty of freedom for these co-operatives to adapt to their respective situations. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, co-operative retailers buy things and then sell them at a higher price to make a “profit.”<span style=""> </span>Note that co-operatives operate in a capitalist “free” market, so that is going to impose certain constraints upon co-operatives.<span style=""> </span>In a socialist free market we would expect economic pressures to cause cost to approach or become the limit of price.<span style=""> </span>The “cost” of labor is considered to be the subjective cost (i.e. the amount of suffering or sacrifice involved).<span style=""> </span>Profit is therefore defined as money withheld from laborers who produce products using equipment or land owned by a capitalist.<span style=""> </span>Profit is therefore possible because capitalists are assumed to own the products that are made with their equipment, otherwise, they would charge the laborers rent to achieve the same effect.<span style=""> </span>We are not opposed to someone taking natural resources, applying his or her labor to create a product, and then bartering or selling it for whatever can be received through subjective valuations within the free market.<span style=""> </span>We aren’t opposed to “profit” in that sense—in the sense of benefiting from the provision of a good or service.<span style=""> </span>Even if we call it “profit” the main thing is that it does not involve surplus value extracted from the productive labor of others by capital.<span style=""> </span>Such a “profit” going directly to the workers and not to a capitalist controlling access to the means of production is acceptable.<span style=""> </span>What we want is equal exchange—you should get back the same value that you produce.<span style=""> </span>When we oppose profit, the coercive hierarchical relationship allowing capital to extract surplus value from the labor of others is really what we are talking about.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><br /><o:p></o:p><span style=""> </span></p>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-67526291699353479022008-04-26T01:08:00.000-07:002008-05-02T22:56:05.877-07:00Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 1)This is a response to a conversation with Cork started in the discussion section of my <a href="http://silent-radical.blogspot.com/2008/04/who-am-i-journey-shaped-me.html">"Who Am I?: The Journey That Shaped Me"</a> blog post.<br /><br />Cork, I have actually read the entirety of Benjamin Tucker’s “Instead of a Book” and haven’t solely received my information from secondary sources.<span style=""> </span>I quoted An Anarchist FAQ simply because it already clearly explains my own conclusions about Tucker.<span style=""> </span>Ok, let’s make the issue of Benjamin Tucker’s capitalism really simple.<span style=""> </span>Did he or did he not proclaim himself to be a socialist?<span style=""> </span>Can a socialist be a capitalist?<span style=""> </span>The answers to these questions are hopefully obvious enough to circumvent your attempted revisionism of Benjamin Tucker’s socialism.<span style=""> </span>He declared himself a socialist in <a href="http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm">“State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, And Wherein They Differ”</a> and a socialist obviously can’t be a capitalist. Benjamin Tuker was a smart enough thinker that I seriously doubt he has made a mistake in calling himself a socialist. <p class="MsoNormal">I have looked over some material and have found where Benjamin Tucker supported wage labor and became inconsistent with his own ideas about “occupancy and use” while still coming to extremely anti-capitalist conclusions.<span style=""> </span>Observe Tucker’s <a href="http://fair-use.org/benjamin-tucker/instead-of-a-book/should-labor-be-paid-or-not">“Should Labor be Paid or Not?”</a><span style=""> </span>In it Tucker says that he supports the ability of individuals to buy the labor of others, while in the same breath opposing “the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously.” <span style=""> </span>Even here he is completely at odds with some of the fundamental aspects of capitalist private property rights.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tucker goes on to say, “the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers.<span style=""> </span>Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury.” <span style=""> </span>The erasure of a distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-receivers” as well as "depriving capital of its reward" sounds very much like opposition to the very foundation of capitalism to me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The problem seems to be arising here because Benjamin Tucker is confusing the word “wages” by not considering its possible usage in reference to different kinds of economic relationships. <span style=""> </span>Tucker is using the word “wage” to refer to “any kind of compensation for labor” when it is typically used to refer to “compensation received from a capitalist owner/boss.”<span style=""> </span>For Tucker a “wage” would occur when “an individual is hired to mow a lawn” while most of us think of a “wage” as meaning “a capitalist hiring an employee.”<span style=""> </span>I am in favor of the former and opposed to the latter.<span style=""> </span>Think about the difference between a wage and a salary.<span style=""> </span>In a worker co-operative everyone is technically a self-employed owner, and thus there is no wage labor.<span style=""> </span>In the lawn mowing scenario, there is no employee-employer relationship, so most of us don’t consider that a “wage”, but Benjamin Tucker has confusingly referred to it as such.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also consider the context within which Tucker is saying that he is for individual ownership over the means of production and the ability to hire the labor of others.<span style=""> </span>Benjamin Tucker is referring to a world containing predominately self-employed peasant/artisan production.<span style=""> </span>That means no employee-employer relationship involved in the idea (in your words) that “literally everyone should sell their labor.”<span style=""> </span>For him even if there were some labor sold in the sense of an employee-employer relationship, the abolishment of the money, land, tariff, and patent/copyright monopolies would still ensure people receive their “whole wages” within the workings of a socialist free market.<span style=""> </span>You can’t have capitalism without capital ownership receiving tribute in the form of profit, interest, and rent.<span style=""> </span>So even by erroneously being for what he calls “wage” labor and individual ownership over the means of production, Benjamin Tucker is still espousing ideas that are very much against capitalist property rights. He is just doing it inconsistently. Ultimately, Benjamin Tucker’s saying that he is for wage labor in our current world would be in direct conflict with his ideas about “occupancy and use” which must logically be extended to the workplace containing the means of production.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Honestly, it is impossible for someone who says “Interest is Theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder," to be considered a genuine proponent of capitalist property rights even with tenuous inconsistent points of contact with capitalism. <span style=""> </span>You say, “I didn’t say he supported profit, I said that he supported capitalist property rights.”<span style=""> </span>Tell me then, where do profits come from?<span style=""> </span>They can only come from capitalist property rights, which mean private ownership over the means of production/survival. <span style=""> </span>Interest, rent, and profit all stem from capitalist property rights.<span style=""> </span>Sorry, but you simply can’t oppose those things without rejecting capitalist property rights.<span style=""> </span>Tucker has very clearly placed restraints on the amount of property one can own, which is in direct conflict with the most fundamental principles of capitalist property rights. <span style=""> </span>Also note that I am fine with anarcho-capitalists voluntarily organizing around capitalist principles as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others <span style=""> </span>to completely disassociate with their system of “voluntary slavery.”<span style=""> </span>So in that sense only I am not opposed to people freely forming wage labor relationships, while personally being opposed to wage slavery.<span style=""> </span>So in that sense, like Benjamin Tucker, I am for the “untrammelled right to take usury” while being personally opposed to any of its exercise.<span style=""> </span>It is interesting to observe how Tucker himself makes this distinction in <a href="http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2007/04/tucker-on-right-and-rights-1882.html"> “Right and Individual Rights” </a> where he says, “In defending the right to take usury, we do not defend the right of usury.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, occupancy and use is still a system of property ownership.<span style=""> </span>I have already said that.<span style=""> </span>However, it is not a capitalist form of property rights.<span style=""> </span>You are correct that if someone was occupying and using every part of the island it wouldn’t change the guy’s circumstances much.<span style=""> </span>The important idea being that the desperate shipwrecked man’s need to occupy and use part of the island would involve another individual not being able to sustain their own life.<span style=""> </span>Otherwise, there are no legitimate grounds for denying the shipwrecked man anything.<span style=""> </span>If there is only one glass of fresh water available and both of us need to drink its entirety to survive another day, then one of us is going to be out of luck.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes scarcity is an unavoidable aspect of a situation.<span style=""> </span>The problem with capitalist private property is that it produces artificial scarcity whereas possession does not.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism is building a fence around an oasis in the desert, claiming it as your homesteaded capitalist private property, and denying thirsty passersby a drink even though there is enough fresh water there to sustain yourself and countless others.<span style=""> </span>It is certainly much more unlikely that so much of an island would be occupied and used that no arrangement could be made to sustain the shipwrecked man without harming or killing another inhabitant of the island.<span style=""> </span>On the other hand, there are real world examples of <a href="http://www.privateislandsonline.com/"> privately owned islands </a> where capitalists would no doubt support the owner’s right to shoot or remove trespassers.<span style=""> </span>Again, the important difference is genuine scarcity involved in possession as opposed to the artificial scarcity of capitalist private property.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism adds a layer of artificial scarcity to the genuine scarcity of our planet’s land and resources.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hotels, parking lots, college dorms, roads, and recreation centers can all be organized by people on co-operative basis.<span style=""> </span>There is already <a href="http://www.coophousing.org/"> co-operative housing </a> that addresses the issue of hotels and college dorms.<span style=""> </span>Instead of privately owned roads you can have <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/transport/publicat//td-rd13.htm"> co-operatively owned roads </a> such as the ones in rural Finland.<span style=""> </span>We already have some utility co-operatives providing things like <a href="http://www.nreca.org/"> electricity </a>.<span style=""> </span>You can do this same sort of thing for parking lots and recreation centers.<span style=""> </span>Any of your left-Rothbardian capitalist private business model solutions to hotels, parking lots, college dorms, roads, and recreation centers can be accomplished by workplace democracy in accord with the co-operative organizational form.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So according to you it is a good thing that bigger businesses destroy smaller businesses.<span style=""> </span>Nice, so we would have an even greater narrowing of choice and the limiting of individual autonomy. We should have an even greater consolidation of coercive economic power into the hands of a few. Therefore, you obviously would be fine if one person or a few people could come to own the entire world just as I suspected.<span style=""> </span>You can’t be for individual liberty and be okay with capitalist businesses forming huge, hierarchical, inefficient, state-like, bureaucratic, and centralized monopolies that deny people any say in the running of their own lives.<span style=""> </span>The choice to work for one of several capitalist boss masters or suffer hunger, thirst, homelessness, poverty, sickness, and death is no choice at all.<span style=""> </span>To be free you must be your own boss.<span style=""> </span>I am actually fine with whatever size organizations can reach as long as the people involved have a direct say in decisions proportionate to the degree that they are affected by them.<span style=""> </span>Naturally this means that organizations would be much smaller, sustainable, and more local than they are today.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ask anarcho-capititalists if it is legitimate for someone to sell him or herself into irrevocable slavery and you will soon find out just how opposed to slavery they really are.<span style=""> </span>Yes, African Americans today are still debt slaves.<span style=""> </span>There are very real socioeconomic and structural reasons why there is such a low degree of social mobility for African Americans.<span style=""> </span>You better believe that being kept without property, in debt, and dependent upon state-government welfare has a lot to do with this and that the reason isn’t because African Americans are inherently lazy, ignorant, violent, and stupid.<span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html"> “The average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family. But the disparity of wealth is a lot greater.<span style=""> </span>The average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family.”</a> <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_4_35/ai_n7576609"> Total debt as a percent of net worth for African Americans is 42.3% while it is 16.5% for Whites. </a> Many of us, not just African American’s, are in fact debt slaves.<span style=""> </span>See the fantastic educational animation <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279">“Money As Debt” </a> <span style=""> </span>to better understand our unsustainable monetary system which is producing an out of control spiral of indebtedness to banks.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Furthermore, there is nothing within the worker-owned business model that relegates it solely to small local businesses.<span style=""> </span>What we are proposing isn’t “a bunch of dinky little co-ops” with no division of labor or economies of scale.<span style=""> </span>There are already co-operative retailers that employ economies of scale on behalf of its retail members, so you are grossly mistaken that “you couldn’t even have retailers."<span style=""> </span>The following are a couple of examples large enough to extinguish notions that co-operatives are incompatible with a modern industrialized economy:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Concerning <a href="http://www.mcc.es/"> Mondragon</a> : <a href="http://www.ncba.coop/resources.cfm?rcatid=9"> "Located in Spain, this conglomerate has a net worth of ten billion dollars and employs three thousand worker/owners." </a><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publix"> "Publix Super Markets, Inc. (commonly known as Publix) is an American supermarket chain based in Lakeland, Florida. Founded in 1930 by George W. Jenkins, it is an employee-owned, privately held corporation and was ranked No. 4 on Forbes' 2006 list of "America's Largest Private Companies...Publix has operations in five states: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. It employs over 146,000 people at its 922 retail locations, corporate offices, eight grocery distribution centers, and nine Publix brand manufacturing facilities which produce its dairy, deli, bakery, and other food products"</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ncba.coop/abcoop_stats.cfm">"Cooperatives range in size from large enterprises, including U.S. Fortune 500 companies, to single, small local storefronts." </a><br /><br />"Cooperative Home Care Associates <a href="http://chcany.org/index.html">(CHCA)</a> : is the largest worker-cooperative in the country, providing employment opportunities to 1,050---many of whom were low-income residents of the South Bronx who transitioned from public assistance after graduating from our nationally-recognized paraprofessional training program."</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Furthermore, the libertarian socialism that we are talking about has actually worked in practice.<span style=""> </span>I highly recommend reading Harold Barclay's "People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy." In it he explains, "anarchy is by no means unusual; that it is a perfectly common form of polity or political organization. Not only is it common, but it is probably the oldest type of polity and one which has characterized most of human history." He describes examples of anarchy among hunter-gatherer, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural societies. He also explains, "While it may be said that anarchy occurs most frequently in a small group situation and is probably easier to perpetuate in this condition, this is not to say that it is impossible in a modern more complex context. Rather it is more correct to say that it is not very probable. Yet we do have examples of anarchic polities among peoples of the Tiv, Lugbara, Nuer and Tonga, numbering in the hundreds of thousands and with fairly dense populations, often over 100 people to the square mile."</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Right, I understood that you don’t think it is possible for someone to own the entire world.<span style=""> </span>I don’t think it is possible for one individual to own the entire world either.<span style=""> </span>That is just an exaggerated worst case scenario that hopefully clearly exposes the flaws in capitalism.<span style=""> It is meant to expose the coercive nature of capitalism. </span>The same points in my exaggerated hypothetical scenario still hold when a small group of individuals can come to owns more land, resources, wealth, and power than the rest of the population.<span style=""> </span>That is the situation we are now in.<span style=""> </span>Your answer that it is impossible for one person to own the entire world completely dodges the important questions.<span style=""> </span>The issue I have is that you apparently think that in it would be completely legitimate for someone to own the entire world if it was really possible and it was the sole result of purely capitalist market transactions and a so-called "really, really, really satisfying customers."<span style=""> </span>Thus you also obviously don’t see the trouble with having a small group of people privately own the majority of our planet’s land and resources.<span style=""> </span>My problem is that you apparently don’t see the coercion contained within a situation that is completely compatible with capitalist principles.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Trust me, I know what my life is like, and you don’t.<span style=""> </span>I know what attitude I have towards life in general.<span style=""> </span>Naturally, my emotional state fluctuates, but in general I don’t let the bad things in life get me down.<span style=""> </span>I enjoy plenty in life and I don’t let the impoverished state of the world ruin the things I love.<span style=""> </span>I have no problem rebelling against everything around me that needs rebelling against.<span style=""> </span>I don’t have a problem being angry at what deserves my anger.<span style=""> </span>Isn’t that an unavoidable part of being an anarchist or libertarian anyways?<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, most of the miserable people in this world aren’t even anarchists.<span style=""> </span>There are plenty of other things in this world to be miserable about, but not everyone adopts a pessimistic outlook towards life.<span style=""> </span>Despite what you think, even a libertarian socialist like myself can find happiness in an imperfect world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-45827369502044419592008-04-18T16:19:00.000-07:002008-04-26T11:42:26.471-07:00A Rant Against The Offensiveness Of Tacky Patriotism<p class="MsoNormal">The following is an old bit of writing I created in September 2006 when I was still an anarcho-capitalist responding to someone whining, “I find the plastering of the United States flag all over clothing and tacky merchandise offensive.<span style=""> </span>One may express a form of pride (or a desire to sell merchandise to those who feel such a form of pride) while the other expresses anger or even hatred, but I personally find this flag-plastering as distasteful as flag burning.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>The United States flag does not offend me. Why would I be offended at a piece of cloth or some artistic rendering? That would be silly. However, I do want to get rid of countries, with their arbitrary borders, and the mentality that sustains them. So ultimately I am looking to get rid of the collectivist manifest destiny nationalistic nonsense that is represented by the US flag. I will not dawn a US flag or engage in any flag worship of any kind, but if other people want to act silly and let themselves be brainwashed that is fine. Just don't expect me to be silent when that brainwashing has real world consequences attached to it. I am not offended by your silly little symbols. Squabble about which ones offend you and which ones don't. Wave them around and plaster them on whatever you like. We don't have a right not to be offended.<br /><br />The flag is kind of pretty isn't it? You have been conditioned through all sorts of behavior modification to associate warm, happy feelings of pride, awe, joy, and inspiration at the sight of it. You hear the National Anthem start up and it is an automatic response to jump up and stare at that flag waving hypnotically in the wind and worship the powerful authority figures that it represents. You have people that would beat a fellow human being if they were burning the flag or flying it upside down. I am not offended by some clueless, harmless schmuck who wears a USA flag t-shirt, baseball cap, pin, and boxer shorts as a “beautiful” matching outfit. All it would tell me is the level of intelligent thought I can expect from that person. I am offended by what is perpetrated in the name of those symbols. Individuals that commit evil and help sustain systems of coercion offend me.</p>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-2929740144912204052008-04-14T17:58:00.000-07:002008-04-26T11:39:37.828-07:00Petit Bourgeois Anarchist: Enemy or Ally?<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;">Right now, I have received a bachelors of science in Business Administration from a small liberal arts college and am currently working in small restaurant owned by my family.<span style=""> </span>I started out with that major because I ultimately plan on taking over the family business.<span style=""> </span>And strangely enough I became a libertarian socialist, which rejects the capitalist values I was taught.<span style=""> </span>Now my major doesn’t seem like much of a fit with who I am.<span style=""> </span>Maybe I would have been happier learning something else, but what’s done is done.<span style=""> </span>I am not sure that I will be continuing my education any time soon, but I never let school get in the way of my education anyways.<span style=""> </span>As far as plans go, I am already getting more involved in the family-owned restaurant.<span style=""> </span>Since I have been born, my family has been very well off, but they had to work up from having next to nothing.<span style=""> </span>So I’ve been part of the upper middle class for my entire life.<span style=""> </span>I know that there are quite a few libertarian socialists out there who are part of the petite bourgeois and can probably relate to some of the feelings of guilt I am experiencing.<span style=""> </span>On the flipside, I definitely believe that my family’s financial success gave me the time, resources, and opportunity to develop my own thoughts.<span style=""> </span>Their success may actually be partially responsible for my ever reaching my beliefs in libertarian socialism.<span style=""> </span>Unfortunately, the nature of state capitalism seems to do a really good job at preventing many people from having the time, resources, and energy to thoughtfully consider things like anarchism. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]-->I am currently working at our family restaurant, and I am doing my own research to better organize and improve upon our restaurant’s success.<span style=""> </span>In keeping with my libertarian socialist beliefs, I am trying to implement better pay while dealing with my parents who are blocking my suggested changes.<span style=""> </span>I am trying to come to a compromise with them by actually developing a pay scheme that would somehow fall between a co-operative form of profit sharing and a normal hierarchical small capitalist business.<span style=""> </span>I just can’t convince the rest of my family to bring in others to share in the ownership of the business.<span style=""> </span>They understandably want to keep the business solely within the family, and I do want to respect their wishes.<span style=""> </span>At the same time, I can’t help but feeling like I am being part of the problem.<span style=""> </span>A small part no doubt, but a part nonetheless.<span style=""> </span>I’m certainly wealthy, but I am not disgustingly super rich.<span style=""> </span>The consolidation of global big business interests is certainly doing no favors for small business.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]-->I know that many anarchists could consider my being a small business owner and therefore a boss fairly hypocritical.<span style=""> </span>To some extent I agree, although I look at anarchism as trying to make everyone his or her own boss.<span style=""> </span>We want everyone to essentially be business owners, and that naturally sounds very petit bourgeois.<span style=""> </span>Although I could probably be called a “petit bourgeois anarchist”, which is a dirty word for some libertarian socialists, I believe that because I live in a State Capitalist society, where money unfortunately buys freedom, I don't have much of a choice other than to use the system to thrive and survive.<span style=""> </span>It would just be a lot to risk giving up.<span style=""> </span>I cannot give up what my grandparents and parents have painstakingly built from the ground up throughout the years.<span style=""> </span>They themselves had to struggle through financial hardship, and I want to make sure that my children and grandchildren don’t have to go through that.<span style=""> </span>I simply do not have the confidence to radically restructure an already very successful business and believe that it would be immensely foolish to give up what I have.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, I can use the resources gained from our business to hopefully promote some good.<span style=""> </span>We can see that as anarchists we face a never-ending inward and outward struggle for freedom and equality.<br /><br />Most of us want more money and thus more freedom and power within the current state capitalist system.<span style=""> </span>For the most part, we have no choice but to play their corrupt game.<span style=""> </span>If we don’t, our lives can become quite uncomfortable.<span style=""> </span>Trying to destroy an inequitable system that saturates our society can be very risky to ones own security, health, comfort, and life.<span style=""> </span>Once you move up the socioeconomic ladder it becomes very hard to destroy the very ladder you had to climb to get where you are.<span style=""> </span>It’s understandable that my parents and grandparents, who had to scrape by and work extremely hard to create a successful small business, would be very leery of my desire to share the wealth, comfort, and control with others.<span style=""> </span>Fighting the system can be very risky business.<span style=""> </span>It is for that reason that I believe the anarchist movement needs to do a better job at giving those who don’t want to directly confront the state-government a better outlet for exercising their beliefs.<span style=""> </span>I have no qualms about those who engage in illegal acts such as vandalism, squatting, and violent protest, but unfortunately such activities seem to alienate many people who would like to be doing something for the anarchist movement.<span style=""> </span>While some of us are directly confronting the state-government power head-on, we need others to more actively circumventing the system through the anarchistic organization of their daily lives.<span style=""> </span>As we can see, we certainly have an incredibly uphill battle.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> It is clear why a movement that desires such radical change needs the widespread support of the working class (they are the ones who have the least to lose) but I am unsure that the petit bourgeoisie has no role to play.<span style=""> </span>The petit bourgeois has things to gain from libertarian socialism as well.<span style=""> </span>When oppressor an oppressed interact it is not only the oppressed who suffers although they arguable suffer the most.<span style=""> </span>The oppressor also suffers from alienation, dehumanization, guilt, and inner turmoil that result when still being an oppressor with a human conscience.<span style=""> </span>Unfortunately, a large part of the problem is that many in the working class desperately want only to move up the socioeconomic ladder.<span style=""> </span>Many can only see the option of becoming the oppressor to alleviate being oppressed.<span style=""> </span>They see that as the only realistic option to get out of their desperate situation.<span style=""> </span>Many can’t see the alternative of destroying the oppressive ladder altogether.<span style=""> </span>That is a huge part of the problem with our fight against the state capitalist system.<span style=""> </span>The truth is that those within the working class need to step up and assume the roles of management and capital ownership.<span style=""> </span>As anarchists have always said, the revolution needs to come from below and not from above.<span style=""> </span>The working class needs to start becoming small business owners and self-managers of their own communities.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10;" >I might not seek to change my current family-owned business into something more compatible with my libertarian socialist ideals, but I personally dream of eventually opening up a separate worker-owned store of some kind.<span style=""> </span>It is certainly possible that this might become a reality thanks to my current access to property and resources.<span style=""> </span>It would ultimately depend upon my technical understanding, financial situation, human resources, level of interest, and will power.<span style=""> </span>Maybe then the rest of the anarchist community won't consider me too much of a hypocrite.<span style=""> </span>It would definitely be a risky venture, so I will be keeping our current restaurant as financial backup instead of trying to radically restructure it.<span style=""> </span>Hopefully, my access to capital will help me further put my principles into action.<span style=""> </span>This control over resources is what the working class desperately needs to really progress the libertarian socialist movement.<span style=""> </span>I also plan on supporting counter-economic activities by promoting things such as the use of alternate forms of currency.<span style=""> </span>While trying to bring down the system, the anarchist movement must also be about finding peace and freedom within our own personal relationships.<span style=""> </span>Even if we can’t completely bring down the state-government and capitalism, there are things all of us could probably do to make ourselves freer.<span style=""> </span>At least we have our freedom of thought.<span style=""> </span>It’s about seeking out and enjoying our own little slice of freedom.<span style=""> </span>So is a petit bourgeois anarchist an enemy or ally?<span style=""> </span>What’s the verdict?<span style=""> </span>We must all fight the enemies outside and within ourselves.<span style=""> </span></span><span style=""></span></p><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10;" ></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10;"><span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-size:10;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8175720617718401082.post-5322312182132151862008-04-13T00:27:00.000-07:002008-04-26T11:54:32.358-07:00Who am I? (The Journey the Shaped Me)<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="">I am a 22 year-old straight Caucasian male who happens to be a <a href="http://www.mutualist.org/">mutualist</a> anarchist and atheist living in a small town within the state of Alabama.<span style=""> </span>I know, it definitely doesn’t sound like a place you would expect to find an anarchist.<span style=""> </span>For the most part I am still in the closet concerning my atheism and anarchism.<span style=""> </span>I sometimes feel surrounded by way too many religious conservatives who would probably maul me if they ever knew what I really think.<span style=""> </span>Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but living in the Bible Belt definitely makes you tread lightly so that the wrong people don’t catch wind of your unorthodox beliefs.<span style=""> </span>There isn’t much of an outlet around here for me to express my anarchist beliefs, and I would probably move away if I didn’t have a loving family and friends keeping me here.<span style=""> </span>I would say that my road to anarchy began when I started becoming an atheist towards the end of high school.<span style=""> </span>I went to a private high school in Alabama and was a really quiet loner.<span style=""> </span>I don't know for sure, but it is possible that my detachment from society allowed me to more readily turn a critical eye towards things. Being largely an outsider may have helped me become more observant and inquisitive.<span style=""> </span>Since I wasn’t looking to impress others or become accepted by anyone, I did not have to worry as much about coming to unpopular conclusions.</span><br /><br /><span style="">Anyways, I was never really religious.<span style=""> </span>I had never really questioned the things around me that everyone else just seemed to accept.<span style=""> </span>I would just nod and say that I believe in God without really taking the time to understand what that meant.<span style=""> </span>My curiosity was eventually peaked by religious imagery in movies, music, and on TV.<span style=""> </span>I set out to become a religious person of some kind, but I quickly found myself becoming an atheist.<span style=""> </span>After rejecting the Christian God I almost became a Gnostisc and then later I almost became a Buddhist.<span style=""> </span>However, the more I looked, the more illogical all religions seemed.<span style=""> </span>Ultimately, I ended up the atheist that I am today.<span style=""> </span>The Internet was definitely an invaluable tool in helping me investigate and discover who I am.</span><br /><br /><span style="">After becoming a atheist and a skeptic, I began turning my eyes towards politics.<span style=""> </span>The whole World Trade Center incident probably contributed to my increasing interest in the political realm.<span style=""> </span>I had always considered myself a Republican because of parental influence.<span style=""> </span>Like religion, I hadn't really taken the time to give politics much critical thought.<span style=""> </span>I had just assumed that figures of authority, like my parents, knew what they were talking about.<span style=""> </span>I even started out supporting the War in Iraq and rigorously defending it against people I talked to.<span style=""> </span>Luckily my support didn't last too long.<span style=""> </span>I shudder to think about who I was and who I could have become.<span style=""> </span>However, I was never much of a Republican, so after some research I found that my own ideas lined up closely with US Libertarianism.<span style=""> </span>College economics classes and a particular professor helped further cement my right-libertarian ideas.<span style=""> </span>I was always pretty liberal socially and conservative economically.</span><br /><br /><span style="">Essentially, what happened was that through my atheism I happened upon a site called <a href="http://hellboundalleee.com/">Hell Bound Alleee</a>.<span style=""> </span>It was one of the many of websites I would frequent for atheist views.<span style=""> </span>Francois Tremblay and Alison Randall hosted this amateur radio show, and I would listen on occasion.<span style=""> </span>The both of them were minarchist Libertarians at the time I started listening, but they eventually moved towards anarcho-capitalist market anarchism.<span style=""> </span>I believe that it was through their website that I first noticed a website containing articles and podcasts from an anarcho-capitalist perspective.<span style=""> </span>It was a site called <a href="http://www.freedomainradio.com/">Freedomain Radio</a>, which is hosted by Stefan Molyneux.<span style=""> </span>Curious about learning about an even more radical libertarian perspective than my own, I began listening to Stefan's shows.<span style=""> </span>I was never expecting to agree with anarchism, and went in with the attitude that I would easily be able to find glaring flaws.<span style=""> </span>I went in with a very skeptical attitude, but I eventually found myself agreeing more and more until I concluded that I had become an anarcho-capitalist. In my opinion it does become evident that anarchism is the logical conclusion when one consistently applies libertarian principles.</span><br /><br /><span style="">Through Stefan Molyneux's message board and podcasts, I was guided to a social networking site called <a href="http://www.essembly.com/">Essembly</a>. I joined the site along with an infamous influx of anarcho-capitalists.<span style=""> </span>We were all curious about what we would discover about other people and what kind of impact we could have through such a social networking site.<span style=""> </span>Our views are certainly not aired anywhere in the mainstream media, so we were searching for a way to reach out to people.<span style=""> </span>Anyways, I started having conversations with an anarcho-syndicalist on essembly.<span style=""> </span>Thus, I began more vigorously researching the left side of the anarchist spectrum.<span style=""> </span>I looked at things such as <a href="http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html"><span style="">An Anarchist FAQ</span></a>.<span style=""> </span>I began slowly drifting leftward until I eventually became very confused about which anarchist label I could use to best describe myself.<span style=""> </span>Today I consider myself a <a href="http://www.mutualist.org/">mutualist</a> anarchist, which could probably be considered somewhere between left and right, but it is definitely left of center.<span style=""> </span><a href="http://mutualist.blogspot.com/">Kevin Carson’s</a> great blog has had a huge influence on my current beliefs.<span style=""> </span>I am no longer a fan of anarcho-capitalism and am very shaky about their classification as anarchists.<span style=""> </span>However, to remain a consistent anarchist I don’t deny people the ability to organize along capitalist lines as long as they don’t interfere with those of us who desire libertarian socialism.<span style=""> </span>The ideas of <a href="http://www.agorism.info/">Agorist</a> anarchists also fascinate me and overlap with some of my own beliefs.<span style=""> </span>Agorism can interestingly be considered a form of leftist anarcho-capitalism or Left-Rothbardsim.<span style=""> </span>I definitely still have plenty more to learn about anarchism.<span style=""> </span>Ultimately, I support the idea of anarchism without adjectives.<span style=""> </span>I believe that anarchists with passionate disagreements can find common ground, work together, and co-exist peacefully while creating a more free and equal world.</span><span style=""><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--></span><br /></div>Silent Radicalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556828280893757494noreply@blogger.com14