Author: Db0

What role does Capital play during production?

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Steve Keen makes a detailed argument against Marx’s inconsistencies in the explanation of the Labour Theory of Value. I present an alternative explanation.

"The production of surplus value," f...
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I’m a cautious fan of Steve Keen’s post-Keynesian economics ever since I was introduced to him via the AFAQ. A fan because he takes an empirical criticism to contemporary economics and cautious because he still supports the capitalist system and dismisses the LTV. So when I stumbled upon his reasoning for this dismissal [pdf] I felt that there are some flaws in the logic that I should point out.

The basic argument that Keen pursues in his refutation of the LTV is to concentrate on Marx’s own arguments on why Capital does not add any surplus value during the productive process, point out logical contradictions and use this as a proof that capital does add part of the surplus value created in production. First of all, I want to point out that I find this reasoning fallacious. The flaws in Marx’s reasoning might invalidate the proof of the LTV as Marx argued for it, but it just leaves us back in a situation where we again need to figure out what adds the surplus value in production. What it doesn’t do, is constitute a proof for the validity of the STV or even proof that labour isn’t the only thing that adds to the surplus value created in production. But this is the non-sequitur that Keen does as soon as he has pointed out the Marxian inconsistencies.

Of course I can imagine that for Keen, this follows from other theories of value such as Sraffa’s, but still this criticism makes it appear that all those other theories cannot stand unless Marx’s theory of value is countered and labour is shown not to be the only source of surplus value. However I believe that even though Marxian theory might be flawed, there are other argumentation paths that can point out the truth of the LTV, and I’m going to posit one now. I’m going to try and show what the actual purpose of Capital is.

A Primal Example

Lets take a tool-less society of humans (I know, completely unrealistic but stick with me). No tools (and thus capital at all) exists in the current society but nevertheless people can still create some basic commodities (trinkets to exchange, food to eat etc). Now lets take a person in this society which manages to discover the way to make a stone hammer from raw material. Lets say it takes him 20 hours to build it once he’s figured out how (Obviously he will have to do in in his free time, which assumes looking for food does not take up all of his productive life.)

If we assume a market economy in this society and that person wanted to trade the hammer for something else, the would obviously do so for something of equal value, ie something which took approximately the same amount of time to create. Why? Because if either party tried to get more, then a better option would be to build whatever it is you’re looking for, yourself.

For the same of simplicity, lets assume that this corresponds to 20$. Now at this point, we can’t realistically talk about any productivity of capital since none was used in this process. The whole 20$ of exchange value is a result of the surplus value created by only by labour.

Now lets assume that with a stone hammer available, someone can build another stone hammer in 15 hours only. The hammer is now being used as a mean of production, Capital. Does this prove that the capital contributes value to the surplus value created? To see if this is the case, we need to look at two different examples.

1. Let’s assume that the first hammer is not sold while the second hammer is created in order to be traded, seeing as there would be a demand for it. We can safely assume that the second hammer will be sold at the price of 20$ again, for the same reason as before. If it wasn’t, then someone would simply build his own. At 20$ though, a hammer that was made in 15 hours gives a 5$ profit (seeing as in those extra 5 hours, one can work on building more hammers to sell.) Does this show that the hammer provides 5$ of to the final surplus value created? We’ve already seen that the same hammer, and thus the same value can be created with no capital at all, and thus its “contribution” is not actually necessary at all. The only evidence of capital’s contribution is the price difference between the hours worked and the fair price requested for it.

But there is one simple problem. The price of the hammer will not stay at 20$ for long. As soon as the second and third hammer has been sold, others will figure out that there is a profit to be made in selling hammers and will use their new hammers to build them within 15 hours as well. A price war will occur until the price now stabilizes at around 15$, which will correspond to the time required to build it. So what has just happened? Where has Capital’s contribution disappeared to?

What happened is that once new novel capital was created, there was an immediate disequilibrium between the Socially Necessary Labour Time (SNLT), that is, the average time required to build the commodity with the new technology level, and the current price which still corresponds to the old SNLT. So what was the role of Capital in this case? Reducing the SNLT. It doesn’t provide surplus value, it doesn’t contribute anything, it simply makes the productive process faster.

But one would ask: What about the initial profit that the first builder made between making the first hammer and until the price stabilized to 15$? To jump to the conclusion that this was capital’s contribution is wrong. Not only because the capital’s contribution was in fact the original worker’s in the first place, as the hammer was nothing more than crystallized labour-power, but also because there are far more fitting explanations for the initial profit, the most simple one being: Reward for the intellectual labour required to build novel capital, ie a return for innovation. It’s only natural to assume that the first prototype of the hammer took far more effort to build than any subsequent copies. But this labour lost can never be captured simply through selling, for once it’s been designed, it’s not difficult for others to copy the idea anymore, so that’s basically labour-time lost. However, the time between the creation of novel capital and the reset of the SNLT is exactly which provides the opportunity for the creative labour investment to be returned.

So it all ties perfectly together in showing how labour is the only thing that created the surplus value (realized via the exchange value) while capital’s purpose was simply to reduce the SNLT and allow humans to produce more stuff in less time. However this does not change the fact that the average exchange value of whatever is produced is tied directly and only to the labour-time extended to replicate a commodity. This is in fact the process by which human production achieves an exponential rate since each new piece of capital frees up more time and thus allows more commodities and new capital to be built, and so on.

But now, lets take the second example, in which I’ll try to take a society that approaches our a bit more.

2. Let’s now assume that we have a similar situation of creating novel capital, but in this case, within a society which is  wildly unequal. Some people have hoarded all the land for themselves, which means that there are a lot of people who do not have the capability of feeding themselves without working for others. Let’s also assume that the same hammer was created by one of those who own the land. Again, the hammer’s fair price is once more the same 20$ since anyone with free 20 hours would be able to make it. However now there’s a problem: Most don’t have the capacity to extend these 20 hours as their whole productive power is spent in the time they need to work for others. If they took this time off, they would starve ((OK, this might sound silly when used about something that needs 20 hours to create but the same principle applies to larger scale capital which requires hundreds of hours to build. However this is simply a hypothetical example where one full days work as a wage-labouring farmer provides enough food live and be productive for one day. Please bear with me.)) and thus even though the capital is as costly as before to make, it is external circumstances which make it unfeasible for others to trade for it in a fair price.

Now our wannabe-capitalist knows that most people can’t afford it and thus there is a market only for other capitalists (ie, those who make stone idols or other stone commodities). He knows that those will build in in 20 hours themselves if he tries to sell it at a higher price, so his max is 20$ again. However, now he has another way to make more money. Rather than use the hammer himself to make new hammers to sell as in example 1, he now hires one of those people who don’t have another choice (remember, everything is hoarded already by the few, much like the current system) to use his hammer and make new hammers. He gives them a wage of 10$ per hammer created (which is enough money to live and be productive for one day and something extra to give incentive for people to work for him) which means that he starts with a profit of 10$ which eventually drops to 5$ once the hammers have become distributed and the SNLT has dropped to 15 hours.

Now according to opponents of LTV, the 5$ of profit is now considered the productivity of capital and thus belongs to the person who created and owns the capital that the worker’s use. But there is a problem as we’ve seen in example 1: The only way that the productivity of capital can even exist when the SNLT has moved to 15 hours is if the new hammers are being produced via wage-labour. And this can only exist in a situation where all other resources have been hoarded and people are being passively coerced (ie starvation, homelessness) into wage-labour.

As such, the “productivity of capital” is in fact completely indistinguishable from the rate of exploitation caused by an unfair distribution of resources. The flaw in this logic in short, is that it assumes an unfair distribution of resources (ie hoarding) as a normal and appropriate situation which evolved naturally and from this starting point tries to understand capital’s relation to the production. But the hoarding of resources is not something that can happen naturally, both in theory and the history of humanity can point to this as it took very extended state and private violence in order to allow some to control most of the land.

The role of Capital then, has always been simply to reduce the SNLT required to produce any commodity. It’s role is not to contribute to surplus value, but simply to allow humans to produce the same amount of surplus value in lesser time than they would need without it. The surplus value is still created by the actual human labour and as such, all the conclusions that follow from this point still stand. To claim that capital contributes to production and therefore its owner needs to be “rewarded” for such production (even though the owner did nothing other than claim ownership) is simple apologetics for wage-slavery and exploitation.

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What about discrimination against men?

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Is it discrimination against men when a women organize a women’s only event? In this I explore this idea and show it as the cover for misogyny that it is.

Everyday Sexism
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In my recent encounter with sexism, one argument was often put forth by the males of Reddit. It went something like this:

If it is discrimination to setup male-only poker tournaments, then it follows that it must be discrimination to setup female-only poker tournaments. Therefore the guy did nothing wrong to use anti-discriminatory laws in order to take part. And if you would root for a female taking part into a male-only tournament and winning, so we are justified in rooting for a the guy in this case.

This is actually an argument that makes sense, unlike the rest of the misogynistic strawmen, and thus deserves a more detailed counter.

The short answer is no, it’s not discrimination when women do it. You’re not justified in rooting for a male crashing the women’s tournament. No, this is not a double standard. Why? Because of privilege and existing domination.

You see, we do not live in a gender equal society and many many sports and hobbies are male-dominated without particular logical reason (ie unlike some physical sports where the male physical build gives a distinct advantage) but rather as a historical continuity. This changes the environment and thus the ethical considerations we have, with which to decide if the label of discrimination can be assigned. You see we cannot judge as if the environment was already equal and so act as if we’re simply trying to maintain this equality. The environment is not equal and men are the privileged party in this case.

How are they privileged? In this particular case by dominating all such events (ex: poker tournaments). Why is this privilege? Because of a few things. First, a man playing in such an event, is not automatically assumed to represent the whole of his gender. If he wins or loses, he’s a good or bad player respectively, while women are treated as if they represent every other woman. Second, they don’t get to feel like an external no matter the event. There will always be a majority of males which act and speak in manners comfortable to other males. This by default makes it an uncomfortable environment for women, instantly putting them on their guard and accentuating their alienation. Finally, and this follows partly from the previous point, there will be a natural hostility of males, who now have to conform more with mixed-gender social standards, and thus will feel bitter that they cannot be as relaxed as they were. I believe it will manifest as a subconscious attempt to turn attending women off the sport.

So these are all effects that any woman entering a male-dominated hobby will face, something I’ve seen personally from my RPG/Tabletop gaming groups to the IT sector where I work. Even when there are people who wish to have more girls involved, their eagerness can inflame the problem rather than help (think of the awkward sweaty gaming geek trying to be nice to a shy girl joining the group, while leering at her boobs half the time.)

So all of these constitute the privileged position of males in a sector and thus an inequality that will remain until sexism is abolished. In this situation, someone who strives for equality, cannot simply act as if equality already exists. This is simply living in a dreamland and giving your silent consent to sexism at best, or actually acting like an unwitting apologist to misogyny at worst. Rather, someone who strives for equality roots for the weakest party until such time as equality has been achieved.

And this is the ethical aspect that determines that a women-only event in a male-dominated hobby is not discrimination.

You see women do not host such events in order to avoid losing to their “natural superiors” as sexists like to imply, they do it as a reaction to the fact that it’s impossible to avoid the male privilege in all such events. It’s impossible to avoid the subconscious hostility, patronization or over-eagerness that exists in male-dominated events and thus a specific event needs to be organized for fans of the hobby in question in order to play in a more relaxed environment. To call this setup discrimination is wilful ignorance which serves as an excuse for asshole-ish acts against it.

So to put it plainly, when there is a male-dominated hobby or job, any attempt to restrict entrance to females can rightly be called discrimination as the reasoning behind it is simply to maintain “purity.” On the other hand, when in the same male-dominated hobby or job, an attempt by the few females that exist to organize a female-only event cannot by any strain of imagination be seen as an attempt to restrict males, since they already dominate. Rather it is an event of solidarity which serves to avoid the very real effects of the male domination.

The same reasoning just as well applies to other marginal groups in different settings. Blacks setting up black-only events in a society dominated by whites and crypto-racist sentiments is also an understandable reaction. And not only that but when the roles have been reversed, when say you have a women-dominated hobby/job, in that case any attempt to restrict entrance to men can rightly be seen as discrimination against males.

In closing, things are not simply black and white on the issue of discrimination. It is the whole of the environment around any such act which provides the ethical considerations we need to in order to decide on the issue. Those ignoring them and simply looking at one such decision in isolation in order to jump on the high horse are simply using intellectual dishonesty in order to hide their sexism.

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Sexist Schadenfreude

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A “funny” post was made in reddit about a man winning a women’s tournament. I point out the insidious sexism lurking just below the surface.

LAS VEGAS - JUNE 08: Poker player Linda Johnso...
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It surprises me sometimes of how many faces male sexism can take. One usually expects it to be in the clear form of misogyny, which would make it easy to point out and counter but more often than not it appears in many other insidious methods which make it difficult to discern.

Such was the case when I stumbled onto a link from the /r/funny subreddit, pointing to a story about a man winning a women’s-only poker tournament. Now that title, or story, by itself is not really sexist (or especially funny for that matter) but what really got on my tits was the OP comment:

Sheesh, feminists: They complain about the world being man dominated, then a man puts himself in a female dominated environment, still wins and suddenly it’s ‘why is he ruining it’.

lame, so very lame.

Not only was the OP displaying his misogyny as what made him find the post funny but he’s spinning the quotes he mined from the article to make it sound as if the women are simply complaining about losing to a man (instead of complaining that he ruined a women’s only tournament which is the truth.) and as if this is some kind of proof of the inherent superiority of males which makes them suitable to dominate the world.

It thus clearly shows that this was pure shadenfreude of a misogynist enjoying a women’s event be spoiled and taking opportunity to make pot shots at caricatures of feminists he has in his small reptile brain. It adequately helps point out how sexist mentality can crop up without being a clear women-hating comment.

As was only natural, when I pointed out the implications of the OP comment, apologetics and alternative interpretations of it were quick to come and I was quick to be buried while trying to set the record straight. People were unbelievably eager to believe that all women were annoyed about was simply that a man won. They were also quick to use a man’s victory as some kind of proof of superiority of the whole genre in poker.

Even worse was the OP who continued to press the issue, even when his misogyny became glaringly obvious. It just goes to show how blind sexists are to their own trait even as they spew out the lowest forms of bile against women and feminists.

Through the whole of this exchange, I was dismayed not only by the popularity of the OP but also by the number of people who in this day and age eagerly jump in to defend him. Fortunately even though I was  downvoted out of sight, there were other voices of reason who managed to give the correct context.

All of this just points even more to how widespread patriarchy remains in this day and age and how this mentality spreads itself even without having to be glaringly obvious. We still have a lot of work in front of us.

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Why Anarchists and "Anarcho"-Capitalists can't be allies

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Can the two camps of anti-statism unite in order to pursue their common goal? No. It is tactically impossible.

Protester throwing Molotov Cocktail at a polic...
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One things that crops up over and over when someone on the libertarian right notices the outright hostility of anarchists when he appropriates the “Anarchist” label for himself is the accusation of “harming the movement” by not being willing to look past differences and work with each other for a stateless society. The argument goes that since both Anarchist and “Anarcho”-Capitalists wish a stateless society but simply with a different mode of production (Socialism VS Capitalism respectively) we have at least one common goal we should be working together for: The abolition of the State.

On first view, this makes a modicum of sense, if we both want a stateless society, and if we are willing to tolerate each others productive organization within their respective areas, then why are we fighting, arguing and criticizing each other when united we could be more formidable in both convincing people and undermining the state?

The answer is simple: Tactics.

It is true that Anarchists wouldn’t try to violently enforce libertarian socialism on other areas and other people. This is simply contrary to the whole theory behind it. As such, it is only to be expected that after a possible revolution, in some parts of the world capitalist relations would remain and some of them might even approach the “Anarcho”-Capitalist model. However a revolution will not happen by itself. The areas which turn Anarchist or “Anarcho”-Capitalist will do so – will move to either stateless direction, by the methods that were used to bring the general populace to the boiling point of revolt.

And these methods are inherently opposite.

Libertarian Socialist of all types (yes, including individualist anti-capitalist anarchists) generally promote all tactics of Direct Action and Mutual Aid. This means that they will be positive to Unions, Strikes, Takeovers, Cooperatives, Mutual Banks, Communes and the like. They will even be the least hostile on state acts giving more power to the working class ((Anarchists do not support using the state to push forth regulations but do not oppose regulations which benefit the working class out of principle. Such regulation, even though flawed, can be the result of direct action or can give some breathing space for the workers to request more and get their hopes up.)) Their arguments on the other hand, will be based on the things which support such paths. That would include stuff like the fact human evolutionary psychology is conductive to Mutual Aid, the validity of the Labour Theory of Value and the consequent exploitation theory, the moral imperative for self-determination and self-management, a hostility against all types of domination and hierarchy and so on.

On the other hand, the “Anarcho”-Capitalist, even though distinctly lacking in tactics, are ideologically opposed to most such measures which would bring a society to a libertarian socialist revolt. They are against unions (at least, most of them are), against expropriation of land and capital by those who work it, consider Cooperatives “ineffective”, vehemently oppose all state acts which increase social security (while being least hostile to state acts which simply protect private property more) etc. Their ideological bases furthermore compels them to acts as apologists to the system through their dismissal of the LTV, the ethical support for the right to Private Property, accumulation and usury, the allowance or even support of hierarchy and domination as long as it’s “voluntary” and so on.

Even what tactics they do have end up being opposite to anarchist principles since they advocate the consolidation of force and judgement to third parties which is a distinctly anti-direct action idea.

All of this should make it obvious that there is an impassable rift between these two movements ((Well one movement and one ideology, as there’s not really any actual movement behind AnCaps)) which prevents both of them from working together to change the system, since they would be simply pulling in opposite directions, countering each other. Much like the practical gap between Private Property and Possession, so does the difference of tactics and theory make co-operation of these two camps impossible.

Sure, if by simply willing it strong it enough, lots of people could magically pop-out a stateless society, then “joining forces” might make sense. But the world is not the magical la-la land. It’s the paths we tread, the methods we espouse and the tactics we use that defines which kind of stateless society we will have in the end.

So please “Anarcho”-Capitalists, Right Libertarians and all other assorted Propertarians, don’t ask us to co-operate and accept your as “fellow Anarchists”. Our possible co-existence in a stateless future is irrelevant when in the real world your whole worldview is counter-productive to what we suggest.

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Why choose Libertarian Socialism?

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A facebook contact has challenged me to provide “proof” for Anarchism. In here I will point out the fallacious reasoning behind this question.

I’ve been having a lengthy discussion with an Anarchist on Facebook which was triggered by my criticism of a link he made on one of Molyneux‘s videos. The argument has been mainly around the issue of whether we should be promoting “Anarcho”-Capitalist ideas since they are also considered libertarian, promote freedom/liberty and might thus bring someone close to Anarchism, even if through a different path. Needless to say I disagree.

Nevertheless, the discussion took an unexpected direction when he demanded “proof”

I just want something more substantial than rhetoric (no offense) but the more I look for these kinds of quantitative examples, the more I realize that, so far, there are none in existence. Rather than encourage, I find that discouraging; even disturbing. […] I won’t be satisfied until I see real, measurable progress[…]I’m open to new information if it’s quantifiable; it’s generalized rhetoric that fails to persuade me.

The quote above is referring to my pointing out the success of anarchist movements from the takeovers of Argentina to the Spanish Revolution. It seems then, that because the world is at the state it is now, ie not in Anarchy, all anarchist theory has been empirically disproven. That is, none of the methods suggested – syndicalism, collectivism, direct action etc, have made the world a better place. This reasoning might look valid on the surface but unfortunately is quite fallacious.

The problem here is that one ignores the reality of human politics. There has never been a human society which managed to totally change their sociopolitical system within a generation or hell, even within a 100 years. In fact, there has never been a radical sociopolitical change of such scale outside of socialist revolutions. Both Feudalism and Capitalism came about through hundreds of years of evolution, struggle and pressure which slowly made the environment fertile for their spread. In fact the form of those systems never reached a “final form” of any sort and simply continued to change according to the way the environment around them allowed. One could even go further and say that Capitalism is in fact the natural continuation of Feudalism as it provided a way for the Landed aristocracy to retain their elite status without having to base it on metaphysical rights.

As such, to request “proof” of going closer to the Libertarian Socialist ideal is entirely the wrong way to look at this, as this is rather a gradual progress which is based on many different aspects such as popular understanding and/or support, betterment of human life, liberalization, democratization etc. And this process can even be reversed when the class struggle goes toward the benefit of the ruling class, as is what has been happening in the last 30 years.

So to ask for “quantitative examples” is to miss the forest for the trees. The process is all around us and we can see it whenever we see betterment of human life, greater satisfaction from work, increased social safety etc. If one is simply looking for the “signals of revolution” in order to be convinced who to support, they’ll be waiting forever.

The question to ask rather is: What is causing all these beneficial events? What makes human lives better, work more fulfilling and increases social safety? The answer can easily be seen: Direct Action & Mutual Aid. In short, the Libertarian Socialist principles. Whenever these have been applied, a noticeable improvement can be observed while when these are missing, when Authoritarianism (the opposite of Direct Action) and Crass Individualism (the opposite of Mutual Aid) take over, we notice the exact opposite, even though superficial improvements might be observed, like an increase in GDP or some other irrelevant statistic.

So if these principles work and if the improve the lives of humans, why are we not in Anarchy yet? The answer to this is class struggle. For every attempt by those at the bottom to self-manage and help each other directly, there is a push in the opposite direction by the ruling class through any means possible, from propaganda to violent suppression. You cannot simply ignore the opposing force and claim that nothing works because the result is not here yet! Rather one needs to look at the gradual progress and the many different movements that progress. Once there’s a relatively large amount of such anarchistic instances, then a revolution can’t but follow as the capitalist system will be too undermined to work. Such was the case in the Spanish Revolution for example.

Then there is the other aspect of the demand for “proof” put to me. The question I need to ask, proof of what? That an anarchist society can work? There’s more than enough historical proof of that already. Or is it proof that anarchist principles will bring about Anarchy? If so, then I have to point out that it’s impossible to prove the future. But you don’t have to anyway, we do know that even outside Anarchy, libertarian socialist principles make our lives better and give us incentive to do more of them. This is why Anarchism is a hopeful theory, not a Utopian or nihilistic one.

Or perhaps it’s proof that anarchist principles are better than Reformism, State Socialism or Neoliberalism? In that case, one only has to point out at the inherent flaws in each of these theories. Thus when they were attempted, their failure only validated the predictions that anarchists made. Along all of them, only Libertarian Socialism actually did what it predicted when put into practice, even if it was later crushed military before it had a chance to ignite people’s feelings elsewhere.

So there’s really no rhetoric needed to make the case for Libertarian Socialism. History and personal experience are more than enough. This is in fact why so much rhetoric is needed by everyone else, for they need something to cover the abject failure of their practice.

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In which I try to clarify LibCom for Stefan Molyneux

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I’ve just finished talking in an online Anarcho-Capitalist talk-show. Unfortunately, while I was there after the host requested clarification, I came away disappointed.

really really free market!
Image by Shira Golding via Flickr

Last week in a video from Freedomain Radio was posted in /r/Anarchism with the notice that its host, Stefan Molyneux – apparently an “Anarcho”-Capitalist of some renown – was honestly curious about some aspects of Social Anarchism, such an Anarcho-Communism or Anarcho-Syndicalism,  and wished that “someone competent” from that movement call him to clarify some of his contentions.

Although the fact that he didn’t understand some aspects about this very popular movement and for some reason couldn’t find out sources of clarification (although a wealth of information is at best, one internet search away) was immediately suspect, I decided to take him up on this “challenge” (Yes I do understand it wasn’t a formal challenge, I’m just using this word for lack of a proper alternative).

After some fiddling with the way to call-in ((Blogradio’s builtin call-in feature sucks in GNU/Linux. I don’t know why this is so but calling via it, the voice reaches me as if in slow-motion. /rant)) I’ve finally settled to using Skype to call their landline number and soon it was my turn to speak. You can find the discussion here starting at 22:30 (I’ll post the Youtube vid when Stefan uploads it). I’m not nearly as glib as Stefan and thus you have to suffer through my thick accent and “umm”s as I’m trying to make my point (although hearing my playback, I don’t think I was as muffled as he claimed). Which is incidentally why I have not made any videos 😉

Unfortunately I must say that I was disappointed in the end. While Stefan proclaims his wish to understand the Social Anarchist movement, I got away with the impression that this is simple rhetoric to appear open-minded. I didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to clarify points he was not sure of, but rather throwing various concepts at me in an attempt to trip me up so that he can take over and proceed to claim intellectual superiority, as you will find out he did.

The points we discussed in rapid succession were:

  • Does LibCom discard Property Rights?
  • How can a society progress from Primitivism to LibCom?
  • How does  new industry get created?
  • How would a future LibCom society work?
  • How would you proceed to a future LibCom society?

Now each of these points, especially the last two, takes some explaining and I could only give the vaguest framework in all of the ~15 minutes I was on the phone (of which I spoke for about 7 at best). In the last one especially, arguably the most detailed and important part of Anarchist thought, I was given the whole of 1 minute before being abruptly cut-off mid sentence.

But what irked me most is that after being cut-off Stefan proceeded in a long-winded monologue in which he assumed ignorance of my part of what a LibCom society would look like and proceeded to claim superiority and attack my presumed ignorance of both the details of the future and of how Free Markets really work.

Needless to say he didn’t make any arguments I couldn’t counter, only that I didn’t get a chance. In fact, I found out this way of kicking off your caller and then making a closing statement without allowing a rebuke as a low trick which doesn’t really raise my perception of Stefan a lot. If he really didn’t have enough time for me, then just leave it at that. Don’t silence your opponent so that your argument goes unchallenged.

So here I’m also going to take the opportunity to address what Stefan said after I was disconnected:

1. You need to think in some detail.

Here Stefan made the assumption that I didn’t have any details on my ideas other than some vague concept of “Strikes and so on”. This is in fact quite far from the truth and such an impression was only given due to the short amount of time I was given to express them and the constant switching of subjects which was not allowing me to elaborate more on any one of them. Anarchists have about 150 years of political theory and needless to say that everything that needs it, has been described in as much detail as possible. Further than that, we also have around 100 years of actual, practical experience in social struggle and revolution which the theories have taken into account and been modified accordingly (which is the reason for example why social anarchists reject reformist tactics).

On the opposite side, AnCaps have at best 60 years of theorizing about a future Utopia of free markets and absolutely no idea how to get there. Stefan boasted about his 1 year of thinking about this, which is practically nothing in the larger picture of things. And this is why I was trying to explain that it’s not worth spending so much time visualizing the perfect AnCap world, when you don’t have the progression tackled first.

2. You need to work within the system before you criticize it.

The gist of this argument was basically that unless one is an enepreneur or capitalist, they don’t understand the system and thus they should refrain from criticizing it. Here Stefan considers that since his experiences in this have convinced him of the superiority of the Free Markets, then it’s obvious that someone who criticizes them must not have enough experience to make an educated criticism.

Of course he realized the trap he put himself into, when he admitted that he could also be called on criticizing the government while not being a politician. He attempted to get out of this by claiming he has enough experience in working with the govt and being educated by them that he can now make an accurate criticism. However he misses the point that Anarchist and all other critics of the Capitalist system have as much of “peripheral” experience of the Capitalist system and the markets as he has of the State. We too have worked for Entepreneurs. We too have had to suffer “market discipline”. We too have been educated and propagandized ad infinitum by a system which treats Capitalism as the natural state of affairs. The indoctrination towards this is as big, if not bigger than the indoctrination towards Statism.

And thus Stefan’s contention can be turned back upon him. If he wished to support the system, he should try becoming a wage-slave on a third world country to see how privileged he is currently. Or he should take an unskilled job at a MacPosition  to see how superior the entepreneurs and bosses really are. There’s lots of experiences that Stefan has not lived in order to judge Capitalism as a good system, Experiences which the Anarchists and other Socialists have lived through, which is incidentally why the movement was started: From experiencing the true nature of the system as the majority of the world does rather than the privileged few.

He also did a grave mistake of pointing out programming and web developing as an example of the free market (that one should experience). A mistake that undermines his own position as an “Anarcho”-Capitalist. You see the environment he works in, is a peculiar one because it differs from a capitalist system in some very important variables. The most important one, is that the workers own the means of production. Programming languages are free. Web Servers are free. Replication is free. The only cost one has to start their own business online is the small cost to get a hosting plan, and most often than not, not even that ((All because of Free Software naturally))!

As such, to point to the internet as a free market paradise is to concede that a truly free market can only work via Socialism, much like Mutualists have been claiming for ages. In fact, what Stefan sees and is inspired of, is the kind of thing Tucker was seeing in the 19th century, when the land was free and people could start their own homestead or business at very small upfront cost and retain it. However, this is not Capitalism, as much as Molyneux would like to redefine it. Not only that, but actual Capitalism constricts such a development as it is inherently destabilizing to it. It happened in Tucker’s age and it is also happening ((or at least, the Powers That Be are working towards it. See Patents, Copyrights, Net Neutrality etc)) now in the internet.

In closing, I came out of this discussion disillusioned. For all of Stefan’s proclaimed wish to understand and speak with the other side, it seems to me that he only wishes to score some easy points with his internet audience. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been so eager to kick me off his show with vague suggestions of a one-on-one talk without even bothering to learn who I am! It seems to me that instead of actually understanding what I said, he was all to eager to misrepresent Social Anarchism and cover that by continuously repeating his “wish to understand.”

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Why Recorded History is Skewed Towards Conflict and Calamity

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Human history is full of war and strife and this is taken as evidence of the nature of human societies. However this perspective is missing an important fact of life, which end up giving the opposite impression.

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As I’m continuing my reading of Mutual Aid, Kropotkin keeps presenting one great insight after the other. This time it was something which is incredibly obvious but nevertheless something that people don’t take into consideration. The fact that recorded history presents a limited perspective of human existence; a perspective that is always centred around human conflict and competition with one another.

The cause of this is very easy to understand really. Like human memory, history is punctuated around great events, ones that enter into the consciousness of a large amount of people living in a particular area. But unlike an individual human who might consider a wedding or a birth as a generally important event in their lives, in the grander scale such positive events don’t register. What does register quite well however is conflict and disasters. And this is understandably, what the historians of each era write about.

This can be easily seen from even our modern experience. If a historian of a thousand years in the future were to look back into the popular records we’ve kept of our existence, such as newspapers or tv news, they would undoubtedly get the idea that all human life in the 20th and 21st century was one of perpetual crime, wars, disasters, exploitation, struggle etc. Why? Because this is what is newsworthy!

Normal life events are not newsworthy. Mundane facts of existence such as the fact that our lives generally roll in peace and quiet, the common social events such as parties or festivals, the small acts of human kindness like helping grannies pass the street or picking up hitchhikers, all of these are boring. And this is not because they are simple, but because they are so common that everyone of us has experienced them at one point or another. There is no reason to report on them because everyone is aware that they do happen.

On the other hand, not only is the rare disaster reported with glee, but most often than not, it’s exaggerated to make it seem even more interesting. And it is the rarity of such events that makes them more newsworthy. Most of us will very rarely, if at all, experience a murder or other unnatural death situations (ie not diseases)  in our living lives and yet, if one watches the news, they would undoubtedly get the impression that unnatural human death is commonplace. In fact, it has been reported and displayed in popular culture so much, that most of us have grown partially blasé to displays of human death without ever having witnessed one!

And this is the fallacy that far too many people make when looking back at recorded human history and seeing trends. They surmise, from the overwhelming majority of conflict depicted within, that humans during ancient times must have been living in a state of perpetual war against all. Greeks against Trojans, Greeks against Persians, Athenians against Spartans, Macedonians against everyone, Romans against Everyone, Catholics against Orthodox, Germans against Romans, Christian against Muslim, Ottoman against European, Scot against Scot, Scot against English, etc etc.

But what defines such recorded events, what made them noteworthy, was exactly the opposite of what the contemporary historical analyst sees in them. They were rare! This is the reason why they were recorded in the first place. It is a great error thus for someone to surmise that humans must have been in a perpetual state of conflict from looking at their recorded history. It is an even greater mistake to define “human nature” from such a flawed analysis and from there to suggest “fixes” such as greater state control or free markets, to a problem that does not exist.

What in truth defines human societies, is exactly what is not mentioned at all or at best mentioned in passing, precisely because of it’s banality. And we see that what is rarely mentioned is human cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid in times of difficulty. It is these unmentioned facts of human life that are the unwritten rule of existence.

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