Executive flight is the corporate world’s only effective form of self-regulation: those who are too selfish to pay what they owe to society send themselves into voluntary exile. It’s an act of self-sacrifice for which we should all be grateful. It’s hard on the Swiss, but there’s a kind of mortal justice here too: if you sustain a crooked system of banking secrecy and tax avoidance, you end up with a country full of crooks and tax avoiders.
And for a 2-hit combo:
International attempts to close down tax havens remain half-hearted. But if by some miracle these measures were to succeed, one haven – let’s say St Helena – should be kept open. It should be furnished only with rudimentary homes. All who chose to could live there in peace. Every penny they possessed would remain safe from the taxman, as long as they never set foot in another land. They could sit in their cells and count their money for the rest of their lives. Parties of schoolchildren would be brought to the island to goggle at these hermits, and learn some lessons about the follies of wealth.
On a related note, we need more humor in the anti-capitalist movement.
Perhaps it was, but even if that were the case it wouldn’t mean we still need it. When a (US) shuttle launches into space it has huge rocket boosters/tank attached. Without these it couldn’t overcome earth’s gravity, but at some point they become a drag on progress.
It may well be that we needed war, state and conflict to get us going down the technology road. Once upon a time capitalism gave us the light bulb, the phone, the car, the computer. Today it gives us the DMCA, DVD region codes, copy rights, Internet censorship. It’s very clear (at least to me) that it has stopped rapidly moving us forward and is actually slowing down progression. It’s time to disconnect the boosters and move to the next stage.
If there one question that gets asked ridiculously often to anarchists is to describe how the future society would look like, how would an anarchistic world function. Any answer given to this question can but only raise more questions and open more venues for criticism as any system described can only be simplistic and full of conceptual holes. Therefore I dislike this question with a passion, as not only it is commonly used as a basis for dismissal of anarchism without bothering to look any deeper but also misses the greater point that anarchism is about the process rather than the end result.
However today I had a small epiphany on this topic while watching the excellent BBC documentary The Secret Life of Chaos. At some point in the film, Prof. Al Khalili made the point that while migrating birds have no leaders and no complex system of organization or rules to guide their flights, their flocks nevertheless not only manage to achieve great feats such as flying over whole continents but also display stunning patterns of flight formations, surprisingly suitable for their purpose (such as flying in a V-shape formation) or simply beautiful, while managing to avoid even colliding with each other.
What surprised me about this statement is how incredibly similar this type of organization sounds to an anarchist society. A society which has no leaders and no complex rules and yet manages to function and even create a very complex societal organization and order which serves to maximize the happiness of every human within it. The complexity of it arises, not despite the simple rules underlying the system but because of them and the existence of chaos. In short because of the natural complexity that arises when one combines simple rules with feedback.
And human societies, if anything, are nothing but feedback.
And this, I realized, is why one can never describe an anarchistic society. The simple fact of humans starting to follow simple anarchistic rules will create such levels of complexity and radical, strange and wonderful patterns and formations of social organization, that any prediction one of us makes now can only end up horribly wrong. In fact, the only accurate prediction one can make about a system that follows a certain set of rules within a chaotic environment is…that the system will follow those rules. Nothing else. You cannot predict the end result any more than one can predict the shape a flock of birds will take or how a certain pattern will look like when zooming 10x in a Mandelbrot set, while starting at a random location.
What does this mean? That any targets we set for a future society, such as the end of crime or having conquered the galaxy with billions of human colonies is impossible to predict with any certainty. No matter the system we setup to achieve this, because the smallest changes in our environment and behaviour will radically change what we expect. Just look at how science fiction looked even a mere 100 years ago (not to mention even longer) and you will see how little resemblance it has to our world. In fact, even looking at popular conceptions of the future, as crystalized in various movies produced a mere 30 years ago we can see that most of them are way off base. Personally, I’m still waiting for the flying cars.
And yet, even 30 years ago, nobody could even imagine something like the internet and how it would completely revolutionize our whole way of thinking and interacting with each other.
And yet, when one simple technological innovation completely re-shapes significant parts whole world in one short generation, you ask us to describe how an anarchist society, which would require a whole change of social relations, not to mention technology and lifestyle – in the face of rapid climate change and disentanglement from oil – would look like?! This is simply impossible.
However we can predict one thing: An Anarchy, that is, a society where humans individually follow and promote anarchist principles will…have anarchist principles. Simple nü?
So let me clarify this. One of the most fundamental anarchist principles is true democracy; the very simple concept that the power of one to affect a decision should be directly proportional to how much that decision affects them. As far as social rules go, this is as simple as “One person – One vote” or “The King’s choice is infallible”. We cannot remotely predict how a society based on this rule will look like any more than classical Greek democrats could ever foresee the US political system. What we can predict though is that the society will at its core allow people to have a truly democratic voice in their lives and thus greater control. Such a society would be definition need to have all hierarchies abolished (and that includes for example prison and business hierarchies) and will not have any prohibition on recreational drugs of any sort.
The rule is simple but the society that will form around it will be incredibly complex and impossible to predict.
This, I realize, is the only way to think about societal change. There is no point making utopian constructions in one’s head about how a future society must function for all humans to be happy, as this is moored in current social relations and current technological levels. This is the fatal flaw all such ideas had, from communist Utopias to “anarcho”-capitalist conceptions of freed markets and competing defence organizations. They assume a static world and a have a distinctly “Newtonian” understanding of social sciences. They assume that they have discovered the perfect equation which will bring about the perfect society…if only humans were smart enough to follow it to the letter.
But no matter how smart humans are the end result predicted is impossible. Not only because of minor, minuscule changes in the system (not to speak of major changes such as a new revolutionary technology being innovated), but fundamentally because of feedback, the end utopia will never come to be. All one will end up with is a vague trace of the original idea, somewhere in the developing society. Much like someone, paying very close attention, might discern the flame of a candle as it is moved within a video-feedback system.
In fact, our current society is nothing more than the end result of humans following a host of other basic rules of organization such as respect of free speech, respect for private property, promotion of classical freedom (i.e. your rights end where my rights begin), “one person-one vote”, secularism, gender and race equality, promotion of and respect for the scientific method and many others ((If you thought it’s merely very difficult to predict a future society based on only 1 rule, I want to see you juggle 5 or 10)). However, society did not change overnight, we did not move from feudalism to capitalism in one month, nor did we embrace modern science in a few years. It took centuries for those ideas to become mainstream because of the societal evolution. And those ideas only even got a hold in the first place because of the same evolution that came before them. Because of the way the system ended up forming from the ideas that were dominant in the past. And the funny thing is that those ideas might have been the complete opposite of what they produced.
What this means is that while we may have reached where we are because of the ideals that came before us, the capitalist mode of production which came after feudalism and slavery, which came after theocracy which came after imperialism and so on, we are still capable of changing where we are headed by the simple act of embracing different ideals. We will not know how exactly we will turn out, but we will know that we’ll have those ideas in action ((that is, unless there are no conflicting ideals as well. In fact, this is why we cannot have a free society or even one that is simply gender or race egalitarian. Those conflict with respect for private property and respect for authority which breeds hierarchies and thus perpetuates patriarchy minority oppression)) and thus can rule at least the things out that conflict with them.
In the end, the order of human societies are the complex result of simple rules, much like chaos theory predicts. However there is a factor which is absent from every other chaotic system we see around us. A simple detail which gives a whole new dimension of complexity to the evolutionary progress:
Humans can modify their own environment.
This simple fact I have come to realize is surprisingly important. Whereas every other organism (or simple pattern) can only adapt to how the environment around it changes and will only slowly change its basic rules as a result of natural selection, humans can to a large extent modify both their behaviour and their social rules instantly (in an evolutionary timescale) by using their primary trait, their reason, to discover a better optimal path than the one they were following until then. This means that they can follow a particular rule-set until it stalls or it becomes obvious that it is detrimental and then either modify their environment until this is not the case anymore, or simply discard their rule set for a superior one ((Of course, by going one level of abstraction back, this human ability to modify their environment and behaviour is only the result of evolution again, which has granted the humans the best capacity to expand their number given the nature of the planet and the universe as a whole))
Looking back at human history from this perspective, it’s impossible to miss this process. Humans adapted to their environment by using a specific system of social organization and production. When their environment changed (say by the introduction of a new technology or resource) they changed then either or both of them accordingly. Thus the slavery as a mode of production led to Imperialism (as well as, surprisingly, Democracy in classical Greece – remember the things we can’t predict?). The discovery of the steam engine and oil and the general industrial revolution led to the widespread abolition of slavery in favour of wage-slavery.All these things happened not because of fate, or the will of a creator and whatnot, but because of simple rules and material changes and feedback which always worked mindlessly to create the best combination of social organization given the existing environment for the maximal human spread.
And this is in fact the crux of the cookie. The current socioeconomic framework is not optimal anymore. The environment has changed far too much since the dawn of capitalism. Not only has the technological level broken the barriers of the system and thus made the ground fertile for different organizations (much like the industrial revolution made slavery sub-optimal) but the way the environment changes because of the system (such as global climate change and peak oil) has made the current one not only simply detrimental but outright destructive for the evolutionary success of humans (i.e. our continued existence as a species).
And this is where Anarchism comes in. I can only but consider it but the latest of an human societal recalibration required to work with the current and changing environment. It is no wonder than the first flickers of the idea occurred just as the capitalist system completed its dominance as the chosen method of production. It’s as if human history cunningly winks at us, while it hints to what is to follow. In fact, I consider it even more noteworthy that anarchist theorists had intuitively grasped the chaotic nature of social change approximately half a century before Turing made his breakthrough research into biological patterns. If there’s one thing that has always been a primary concept behind the anarchist movement is how it gives far more weight to the means to achieve change than it does to the ends. For me at least, the more I learn, the more this fact is solidified and the current post is only the latest of such knowledge.
Is Anarchism (or Marx’s “Pure Communism) to be the last sociopolitical stage? I used to think so but now, highly doubt it. As much as we can’t even remotely predict the future, so can we not predict the circumstances that might make Anarchism obsolete. Perhaps it will be enough to save us from annihilation by our own hands but not enough to survive contact with Alien races. Who knows? As much as Adam Smith could not even imagine a system like Anarchism when the Free Markets he suggested was itself a radical concept, so can I not even imagine what could possibly follow Anarchism.
But what I do know, is that no anarchist will be ever be able to accurately describe what Anarchy will look like. Only that like a flock of birds, it will be complex in its simplicity.
Is Anarchism opposed to any and all forms of authority? Does it oppose coercion of any and all forms? Most importantly, can one criticize it by assuming your own answers to those questions?
Ah, another day, another horribly misguided anti-anarchist post from the Barefoot Bum who seemingly simply refuses to even listen to what anarchists propose before criticizing Anarchism. It’s kind of sad really, especially seeing that it’s someone who wishes to pass himself as a radical intellectual and yet is too stubborn to know his enemy and rather prefers to imagine what their position is and counter that. It’s starts to feel as if he purposefully avoids knowledge just so that he cannot be accused of willful strawmanning. But one cannot avoid pointing out that this kind of behaviour goes far beyond simple misunderstanding, and rather points out a stubborn unwillingness to understand the other position. This is unfortunately only exaggerated when one is closed to all dialogue and would rather close his ears while shouting at the wind ((It’s not even worth pointing out how astonishingly hypocritical he is to claim that he faces “hostility and contempt”, when he is practically the one making people hostile by treating them like shit, banning them from his site when they disagree with him and then talking shit about others where he cannot be countered. When he is criticized elsewhere, he faces “hostility and contempt”. Hah.)).
Still, it does seem that when sufficiently demolished, TBB just might realize how egregiously wrong he is and jump to another strawman. At best, one can expect him to eventually run out of strawmen. At worst, this might serve to prevent someone who does not know better from being taken in by this kind of nonsense. So, without further ado, lets take a look at the arguments put forward in this article.
First of all anarchism is criticized for not having a sufficiently succinct definition like “Communism” which he mistakenly defines as governmental control of capital. One can provide quite a lot of descriptions of Anarchism but you cannot understand the sociopolitical system from just a description. That requires either reading, or a discussion with actual Anarchists and you cannot do the latter by acting like a twat. Nevertheless, one can describe Anarchism as egalitarianism via prevention of concentration of political or economical power. The replacement of hierarchical control with individual voluntarism and the replacement of competition as the driving force of progress with cooperation. As TBB said, the devil is in the details but fundamentally anarchism is predicated on the idea that distributed capital is order more effective than concentrated capital ((And this is something sufficiently shown by looking at reality historically and empirically rather than pulling facts out of one’s own arse.)) and that self-determination and mutual aid allows humans to achieve personal happiness that is orders higher than authoritarian top-down management can ever achieve.
TBB then moves to wonder what anarchists mean when they say that they “oppose authority” which is something that indeed needs clarification. But if one actually read what Anarchists had to say about this, they shouldn’t really have any confusion on this issue. This is really not a subject that is easy to explain, nor does it spring up from the definition of anarchism or from sound-bites one heard in a forum discussion and unfortunately that is precisely what TBB is doing and then wondering why it makes no sense. Anarchists recognise very well the distinctions of “authority” and are very clear on what exactly they oppose. In the words of Colin Ward:
“You can be in authority, or you can be an authority, or you can have authority. The first derives from your rank in some chain of command, the second derives special knowledge, and the third from special wisdom. But knowledge and wisdom are not distributed in order of rank, and they are no one person’s monopoly in any undertaking. The fantastic inefficiency of any hierarchical organisation — any factory, office, university, warehouse or hospital — is the outcome of two almost invariable characteristics. One is that the knowledge and wisdom of the people at the bottom of the pyramid finds no place in the decision-making leadership hierarchy of the institution. Frequently it is devoted to making the institution work in spite of the formal leadership structure, or alternatively to sabotaging the ostensible function of the institution, because it is none of their choosing. The other is that they would rather not be there anyway: they are there through economic necessity rather than through identification with a common task which throws up its own shifting and functional leadership.”Perhaps the greatest crime of the industrial system is the way it systematically thwarts the investing genius of the majority of its workers.”
It is blatantly obvious, when one retains intellectual honesty and does even a light attempt at discovering what anarchists oppose, that it is hierarchical authority. We oppose the authority which comes from people being in control only in lieu of them having more power than others. In very short, we oppose coerced authority. Either passively or actively coerced, that is either authority enforced by force of arms, or authority imposed by taking away all other choices. TBB proceeds to doubt wether coercion can be imposed as it’s always “within society” but that is blatantly false as any society which has been invaded by another should make abundantly clear.
He also argued:
The anarchist opposition to “hierarchy” does seems really nonsensical; a small group that exercised coercive power should be objectionable even if it were organized other than hierarchically. For example, the capitalist ruling class employs hierarchical structures, but is not itself organized hierarchically.
This is irrelevant, since the capitalist coercive power can only be maintained by hierarchical control. Taking away hierarchical control would necessarily require the abolition of capitalism and therefore the capitalist class. In short, it is not possible to have a “ruling elite” without hierarchical authority, ie someone to rule over.
Anarchists of course do not aim to abolish all coercion, as that is simply impossible. At the most basic level, we still need to use coercion to prevent the imposition of coercion. Eg, we need to physically prevent someone beating up people who will not become his slaves. It is the use of coercion that matters and how it is applied and anarchists argue that using coercion to form coercive hierarchies is bad, because hierarchical coercion is bad for humans. The reasons why this is so, is a lengthy subject for another day.
Furthermore, his argument that distributed coercion is worse than hierarchical coercion is of course pure nonsense.
Finally, he also posits the following “paradox”
Another important consideration is that there are intrinsic variations in individuals and in the organization of more-or-less “voluntary” associations. These variations can combine naturally to afford some groups more power to effect their desires than other groups. And, of course, one natural desire is for more power. Not only does power naturally concentrate, but the concentration of power forms a positive feedback loop. In order to keep power distributed, some group would have to have the authority — the coercive power — to block or reverse natural concentrations of power. Concentration of power is necessary to stop concentration of power, a nifty paradox.
If there’s one thing that an anarchist who has had to debate quite a lot has learned to look out for, it’s the common fallacy from human nature. There’s key words and phrases which should automatically ring alarm bells to the heads of everyone reading such arguments as they attempt to call out to previous assumptions of the reader about “facts of human nature” and work from there. Such is the argument TBB is doing by saying “And, of course, one natural desire is for more power” where he doesn’t attempt to base his arguments on anything other than a very shaky assumptions of what is a “natural desire” for humans. Once you challenge this, the whole “paradox” topples down like a house of cards.
There is in fact no reason for humans to form coercive authority in order to prevent coercive authority. We can firstly prevent hierarchies from forming by not enabling them (which is where the abolition of private property comes in) and by distributedly coercing those who would impose them. But it is not tyranny to oppose tyranny. TBB would like us to believe that humans naturally would try to accumulate power and that groups of people will somehow manage to do this within themselves before extending over others. This of course will not work as within the group, those who are in the lower rungs of the hierarchy will soon rebel and demand equality. This “natural movement or humans within a positive loop” that TBB asserts is nothing more than an unrealistic idea based on assuming a human who acts however you’d like and on the pre-existence of a system which would naturally select for such a behaviour (such as any propertarian system).
While I was writing this, TBB also wrote an article against voluntary co-operation, unfortunately filled with the same kind of misunderstandings of what Anarchism stands for. This is a perfect example of why it makes no sense to argue against a theory, any theory, without first bothering to at least understand what that theory suggests in the first place. It is unfortunate to say this but TBB is only following in the proud tradition of Marxist-Leninists (I’m certain he’ll reject this classification too and call it slanderous) who go out and make strawman after strawman as they attempt to make people pre-emptively dismiss Anarchism.
Are anarchists naive in their solutions to problems in contemporary society? No, we simply recognise the harmful long-term effects of statist intervetnion.
Recently someone in /r/Anarchism inquired what action should Anarchists ought to take against violent crime in contemporary society, something which triggered quite a thought-provoking discussion since this is a subject which does not really have an easy or simple answer. The subsequent misconstruement from a non-anarchist who happened to be browsing the subreddit at the time, triggered me to put my thoughts down on the general subject of anarchist problem solving and hopefully present a perspective that makes sense and does not sound simply “naive.”
One of the most basic concepts of anarchism, and one that people – who routinely dismiss anarchist solutions – do not know or refuse to understand, is the idea that it’s the methods we use to try and change the world that define how society will look like after we’ve succeeded. To put it more simply: Changing the world via authoritarianism, will create an authoritarian society. Changing the world via violence, will lead to a violent society. Using “bad” tactics, will lead to “bad” society. And as naturally follows, using the right tactics, will lead to the right kind of societal result.
As such, when anarchists see something something that is not right, they look for ways to fix it, that are compatible to the future society they wish to have. And since the two main cores of that future society will be direct action and mutual aid, any way to resolve a contemporary problem will most likely revolve around them primarily. The problem arises when the current society as it exists makes such methods difficult or outright unviable. This, more often than not, is because to allow them would undermine the legitimacy and requirement for the state itself.
In practical terms this means that anarchists will initially try to find a solution to a social ailing which they can implement themselves, via their own power, and when that is lacking by the cooperative power of the community affected by the problem. They will not immediately turn to the state’s aid, even when that is easier to do (in mental and physical effort) because we recognize that not only are most of these problems the result of state action in the first place, but to go to them for solutions only serves to de-power us in favour of those who caused the problem and more often than not, creates peripheral problems that are of equal or greater intensity.
The cop that you empower and trust to protect you from violent crime and activity you wish to prevent, ends up performing it itself, either as a form of corruption (i.e. turning the blind eye to the criminals who can pay him) or as a result of the authority and power that only he possesses (i.e. bullying, uncalled violence, violation of rights etc). And whereas you could fight alone or with your community against crime, you are now powerless against the police.
The judge that you empower and trust to take the objective and right decisions, ends up following the rules that have been decided for society by biased people (politicians), has far more connection (and therefore bias) towards the wealthier society due to his status and is easily manipulated by money (i.e. who can buy the best laywer). As a result, justice is skewed towards the rich, sometimes in very crass ways. Much like the previous example, a distributed, democratic solution would serve a justice that was far closer to the real sentiments of people, which is in fact why trial by jury was implemented (and subsequently corrupted by the way the system works), but as the system stands now, your only options for justice are via costly and time consuming means, which of course end up favouring those with spare time and/or money.
So instead of this, we try to find a way which would be both anarchistic and viable. In the discussion above, people (inlcuding me) attempted to posit answers to the long term problem of violent crime in contemporary society. We recognize the limitations we have to work with, i.e. that as long as the state, capitalism and gross inequality persist, violent crime will never go away, and thus propose solutions which are effective in the short and in the long run. The person who dismissed anarchism because of its proponent’s unwillingness to use state power to combat violent crime only looks at the short term solution and even worse, from a punitive, rather than a reformative perspective.
But the problem is not how to stop this particular gang of thugs in the short term. It doesn’t really matter when the system you empower to do this, will endlessly grind more people into this lifestyle and as long as communities of people cower in their homes unless the police comes to help them – not to mention when those thugs come out of the inhumane prison system far worse than they entered it. It’s like fighting fire with oil. Sure,if you use quite a lot of it, you may end up smothering the flames for a bit, but not only did you create a mess of the place in order to do this, but it wouldn’t take a lot of effort now to end up with even a worse conflagration than before. Just a spark.
Let me present you an example from my own life to see what my own actions and perspective are.
Almost one year ago, me and my girlfriend finally moved together into a larger house. The area we live in is a classic German residential one. As a result there’s a lot of teenagers around who are bored and alienated from society, especially German society which is ridiculously uptight. As one would expect, there’s also the usual samples of discontent youth who just don’t care about the rules enforced on them. The Germans call them “Asis” which basically means “anti-socials” and don’t really want them around. Not because they’re dangerous per-se, but because they’re unruly and will most likely give you the finger if you try to tell them to follow “The German Way”.
As a result, most residents around here, many of which are middle-aged or old try to get rid of them whenever they see them and their main course of action of course is to (threaten to) call the police. This means that the Asis end up in a nomadic style, moving around the neighborhood every time some old fart threatens to call the cops because they don’t like their presence (they’ll imagine some excuse). Eventually some of them ended up sitting close to our balcony, boozing, smoking and whatever and I really couldn’t care less. Not only did we not care if they sat there all day, but my girlfriend at some point even waved at them in friendship.
And it seems that was a mistake. Shortly after this, snowballs started pelting our balcony window now and then, something that is quite shocking if you’re having a calm night watching a movie or something. I didn’t notice it often because I’m either not here or in my own world behind the monitor. However the gf is really starting to get upset about it, not just from the snowballs per-se, but because some of them ended up breaking a plant pot or two and she’s afraid one of them if going to think to throw of beer bottle eventually, which our window will probably not survive.
Now a typical German would have called the Police a long long while ago but my gf (who is slowly moving towards anarchism herself) didn’t and asked me what our joint course of action should be. She had already tried talking, explaining, shouting, and even approaching them in person and she was at the end of her wits. They seemed not to listen and whenever we tried to go down to speak to them, they thought we were trying to catch them or something, and run away.
Now this is difficult situation for me as we need to find a solution to this problem (stuff on our balcony likely to break and we need to then pay for replacement) but I am loathe to involve the state. Thinking about it, we’ve decided that our first actions would be to somehow reach out to them and explain what effects their actions have. The original idea we have is to see when they’re around and then go down to talk to them. If they flee when they see us, we could try to leave them a message and a beer or two, and explain within how we really don’t mind them around but we would appreciate them not breaking our stuff. Will it work? Hopefully. If not, we’ll adapt our tactic.
There is always the case that nothing we think of will make them stop. There’s always the case that my solutions are foiled because I unfortunately live in the current society and not a future anarchist one. I could try to organize something like a neighborhood watch or something similar but given the community’s rather large alienation from each other (a normal middle-class city-dweller’s mind frame really, exaggerated by the German ideas) and my personal language isolation, it will most likely fail. Thus it may come to be that I will indeed have to call the police. The difference is that I will do it as a measure of last resort, and fully recognize that I had to involve them mostly because of the mess they, and all they stand for, have caused. I will rightly blame the state, not thank it, for taking away all my options except going to the state. Much like I would blame a Mafia, not thank it, when my store doesn’t “accidentally” burn down while I pay them for “protection”.
That unfortunately I sometimes may have to go against the ideal solution I would like to have is simply an indication of the non-ideal system we live in. It is not a betrayal of principles any more than working for a capitalist or renting an apartment is a betrayal. We’ve been forced to live in an unfair system which very often leaves us with no choice. However the difference is that as anarchists we will explore all other possibilities which are closer to how we’d like things to be done, before accepting a bad option. And then agitate and point to the unfairness of being left with no choice but to perpetuate evil practices.
In short, anarchists may be visionaries but we are are also pragmatic. We will first try to exhaust the options which would be compatible with our future society before moving on to the “lesser evil” solutions as a measure of last resort when no other possibility is left for us. And even then, the consequences of not taking the “lesser evil” solution need to severely overwhelm the negative effects of such actions, which anarchists are often all to aware of.
Once again I must return to the subject of ownership rights and how there’s two very distinct ways to define them: Private Property and Possession. That is not of course to mean that there’s no further variation between each of those systems, such as variation on the time to abandonment, the scale of ownership (individualist or collective) etc but rather that there is a hard core difference which splits the ownership scale in half, making each half incompatible with the existence of the other within the same social structure.
This idea, that Private Property as an ownership system is distinct from Possession as an ownership system should not be difficult to grasp. It is after all one of the core concepts of most forms of Socialism and anyone trying to do a substantial critique – especially of communism – should as a bare minimum be able to understand what socialists actually oppose when we speak about “abolition of private property” or what collective ownership means in practice.
And yet, time and again, instead of seeing valid criticism against socialist theory from defenders of the capitalist mode of production, we see an endless string of strawmen centered around misunderstanding (purposefully, one starts to think eventually) the socialist opposition to “Property”. This is even more cringe-inducing when it is stated as a novel and irrefutable argument against socialist theory. As if it so easily proves that all socialists are just too silly to see and understand the obvious flaws in their opposition to Capitalism. It’s like someone bringing up the “Mud Pie” example as a new and exciting criticism against Marxian economics.
Such is the most recent example where we are guided to understand what “property” is and that communists “seem to forget” a bunch of stuff about how human societies function and the positive aspects of being able to own stuff. It once again trots out the classic red herrings about people who would prefer private property over anything else and that the only way to stop them must be via a state. Yadda yadda. Regular readers of mine should already know how easy it is to refute this nonsense.
It is all, in the end, based on simply calling all “Ownership” as “Property” and thus claiming that we, as humans, can’t function without “property”.He therefore obscures the fact that there is a difference between “Possessive property” and for lack of a better word now, “Sticky Property” and its significance. He pontificates on the voluntary aspects of “property” and how everyone else got it so wrong, while failing to make any point on whether Possession or “Sticky” property should be preferred, something which is at the heart of the socialist idea. In short we replace arguments over substance with arguments over vacuous semantics.
You see, it does not really matter what we call the various systems of ownership, we could call them blue and purple bananas for all the good it will do us. The important thing is that we understand the same concepts. That the socialist criticize the ownership system which facilitates and promotes wage-slavery, rent and usury and promote one which makes that systematically impossible. That this is not a discussion on how we’re going to enforce it (voluntarily or coercively) but on simply which system we ought to prefer.
To simply take your own or what you assume are the “right” definition of the word ‘property’ and superimpose it onto socialist critique, is simple a recipe for strawmen fallacies. Perhaps you have the most popular definition. Perhaps you have the proper or more the most clear. Perhaps not. The important thing to remember, as Proudhon pointed out in the past, is that if you’re going to call all types of ownership “property” then you really need a way to distinguish between possession and “sticky property”. He suggested to call the later the more appropriate name of “theft” of course but I doubt the propertarians will agree on that.
As a communist, I have a reason why I prefer the definitional distinction to be between “Private Property” and “Possession”. Property is generally understood anyway to be “sticky” that is, to remain with someone until they sell or abandon it, regardless of occupancy or use. As such, it does not take much effort, other than explaining that there’s other possible forms of ownership other than that, to clarify my opposition to it. But it’s not important to use those concepts if they confuse someone. I can easily switch to a terminology that one feels more comfortable with if that will make things easier for them. However this is still my preferred terminology for the reason I just explained and thus find it incredibly silly for someone to make strawmen based on what I write for the general audience and then defend their actions on the grounds that their definitions are superior or more correct.
OTOH, what I most commonly end up seeing is that propertarians do not choose to call everything “property” because it is easy to discuss the concepts around it, but because it conveniently allows them to pretend that other valid forms of ownership do not exist. They will attempt to argue that “Property” is necessary and by that lump all concepts of ownership into the same umbrella, even when incompatible with each other. This is necessary in order to make their core arguments from “self-ownership” lead to Laissez-faire Capitalism, something which would be weakened if possession was a valid form of ownership, distinct from private property. Therefore it’s better to assume that the former is simply a subgroup of the latter. In fact, this is surprisingly similar to the way they try to argue that they’re open to the idea of communism…as long as it exists within a greater propertarian framework.
But I digress into an anti-AnCap rant again. What I’m trying to point out is that the words we use are irrelevant as long as we end up understanding each other and making substantial arguments. I long to see someone making a solid critique on why a Possessive system is unfeasible or even simply inefficient, or how private property is more ethical and whatnot…without having those points demolished by decade-old anarchist arguments or simple facts of reality.
And until then, all misguided propertarians who insist on making strawmen and presenting them as the most insightful thing ever and the absolute refutation of any and all forms of Socialism – should and will receive at best a quick dismissal as the waste of time they are, or at worst a well deserved ridicule for being obnoxiously ignorant.
How can a religion which promotes meekness and absistence from wealth manage to combine so well with the most wealth-seeking and sociopathic ideology?
The US conservative mix is an interesting combination of ideologies, from one hand bringing the Christian fundamentalist aspects of Protestantism or Catholicism with their values of meekness, “turn the other cheek”, “love thy neighbour” to rest with the pro-Capitalist ethics of dog-eat-dog competition, “grow or die”, “profits above all”. To say the least, to imagine a pro-capitalist christian is quite a long way away from the story of a Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple, or to combine the “there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-meal” concepts with a Jesus feeding everyone for free.
However the truth is that there are also significant similarities between the two ideologies when one takes the contemporary version of Christianity as is dominant in the USA, which has chosen particular aspects of the Christian dogma to promote and others to marginalize as is common with the Great Book of Multiple Choice: The Holy Bible. In this instance far more weight is given to the concepts of the Protestant work ethic, Catholic blind respect for authority, self-blame, judgement and fear, while the ideals of selfless love, communalism, anti-metchantilism, anti-greed etc have been quite purposefully hidden from view to all but the most inquisitive minds (i.e. to those who are not content to have the bible interpreted for them by their local clergy.)
When taken in this light, “Christianisty” becomes suddenly a perfect match with the right-wing ideologies which spread the myths that Capitalism rewards the hard-working and most capable, that only the best rise to the top (and therefore the “just hierarchy” this implies) and the general idea that the poor and downtrodden have only themselves to blame. In fact, the basic combining point of those two ideologies would be this simple concept:
The Poor and downtrodden have only themselves to blame.
This kind of mentality is profoundly popular amongst pro-capitalist, right-“libertarians” and assorted propertarians and very often my discussions with them will devolve to the point where I’m trying to explain how wealth is primarily accumulated via some combination of luck (or ancestry, of birth, of health, of location, of time etc) rather than personal hard work. And this is treated a the gravest of heresies. I urge you to try it one time with some defender of Capitalism and see how they react.
When you point out that there’s plently of hard-working people who remain poor, the counter argument is that some few people did grow rich (at this point names like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are commonly mentioned). This does not counter the fact that the majority of hard-working people don’t “make it” but it does serve as a useful distraction. When you point out that a rich guy born in the US has infinitely more opportunities to “make it” than a poor, black guy born in Congo, they may point that better ones manage to immigrate. Again, a red herring.
Propaganda and a priori justifications of propertarian free markets are not much different. More often than not, the simplistic examples used involve one “entrepreneurial” individual who is more able, smarter, more frugal, wiser, or simply more hard-working from the rest and therefore manages to create, accumulate or invent something that others will wish to rent from him. This implies of course that the reasons the rest of people stayed in their current social position is because they are lazy or stupid. The silliness of course is when those fantastical examples are juxtaposed in current reality as an attempt to prove that the poor have only themselves to blame. No attempt at empirical research to discover the reasons is made. As is common in economics, reality is assumed to fit the theoretical models.
Similarly, the USA breed of fundamentalist Christian is quick to assume that their current life is totally justified by their work ethic and their piety in front of their god. All good luck is interpreted as holy blessing for their good deeds and faith while all trouble can easily be attributed to insufficient following of their interpretations of the Great Book of Mutliple Choice Bible. Under this prism, it’s not difficult to see how religious nutters can attain any measure of success.
This mindframe then allows the believer to not only ignore the visible effects of poverty without helping and with a clear conscience (“It’s their own fault for being too promiscuous/sinful/unfaithful”) but to also rationalize the existence of wealthy Christians (“They wouldn’t have been rewarded with wealth had they not been good Christians“) to Christian claims such as the ones which claim that the rich will not get in Heaven. This is what, to me at least, seems to feed the extreme judgementalism and schadenfreude that fundamentalists display.
Given such a strong connecting point, it’s not surprising at all that US conservatives are a unstable mix of Pro-Capitalist and Christian Fundamentalists and how criticisms on their intolerance or inhumanity in the face of suffering does not seem to affect them when the way the view the world fundamentally differs from the reality. It’s no wonder that some of the more radical elements of both parties, resemble each other so much in action. It’s no wonder that the two ideologies most unwittingly supporting the ruling elite have found common ground to work at it together.
Of course, as is the case for all things which depart from the facts, reality has a particular way of slapping one back in very unpleasant ways. Once this happens, once the true nature of the capitalist system starts to make itself known to those two camps and the answers provided by their apologists of choice (Priests or Economists, pick your poison) don’t fulfill, then is the time that friction starts to occur. The lifetime hard-working christian who suddenly finds himself at or past the edge of bankruptcy because of a serious illness is quite likely to start challenging the notions that the Capitalist system or God rewards the hard-working. He will seek answers for his predicament and when those fail to fulfill as they are bound to do, perhaps they’ll start thinking things over. The eager entepreneur who finds his startup attempts squashed like a bug by large companies and corporations and ends up in the position of a minimum-wage-slave despite his credential might end up challenging ideas of working free markets and how the brighter rise to the top, once he has to experience the true face of scientific management.
As unfortunate as it is that there’s not a lot of room to convert people who simply don’t have the correct experiences in their life (good luck convincing a successful entrepreneur that his success is due to luck and privilege and that capitalism doesn’t work) the good thing is that the periodic collapses of the capitalist system often make large bulks of people start challenging their previously held beliefs. We can then only hope we have good enough arguments to push them in the right direction and start the snowball effect of their awakening from Religious and Capitalist myths.
A blogger make an empirical research on the subjects of right-libertarian blogs. The results were unsurprising.
Someone recently attempted a small study to check what the top topics of the top “Libertarian” ((Well, you know, right-libertarian really, which is only close to actual liberty in la-la land)) blogs are about and found some interesting conclusions, namely, that right-libertarians are in denial about economic externalities. This is not particularly surprising for anyone who has had the misfortune to discuss extensively with some of their more vulgar elements but it is interesting how a similar result can also be seen from a methodological research.
I like how the author has seen the general trend towards denial that one can notice in right-libertarians and consolidated it as denial against economic externalities. That’s far more concise than my observation of their general denial against anything that might point out that capitalist free markets are not a particularly good solution. I personally find that it’s the flaw of starting from the explicit premise that the Free Markets Are Good which therefore compels one to ignore and eventually deny all evidence that might challenge this. It can easily lead to a faith-based belief that is severely unhealthy to critical thought. It’s only more ironic when one considers how proud right-libertarians are of their “Rationality”.
As one would expect the author noticed that the top subjects discussed in the top blogs are all of those one would expect from people already convinced that what’s good for business, is good for everyone. Denial of AGW (Because there’s no easy market-based solution so it’s far easier to support libertarianism when this uncomfortable harm doesn’t exist). Denial of Smoking harms (Same as before). Support for tax breaks for the rich (On the flawed assumption that either the rich invest more when they have more money or Randian-esque nonsense that the rich deserve their wealth because of their hard work.) Fortunately for the author, he didn’t get to see other crown favorites such as support for sweat-shop practices, Anti-Trade-Unionism, Pro-IP confusion, Anti-Minimum-wage, crypto-misogyny etc.I guess he can consider himself lucky.
Expectedly, the right-libertarian stormtroopers quickly descended to defend their ideology with the wrath of heavens It’s a pity the author didn’t take the time to respond to them (or was it because of his crappy commenting system?) to provide more lulz for onlookers like me.
I also found this kind of research interesting. Perhaps it’ll be worth doing the same in the Anarchosphere and see what kind of stuff we’re talking about. Of course there’s bound to be some confusion if one simply tries to look for the top 20 Anarchist blogs as they’re going to end up with some confused right-libertarians in the mix as well, skewing the result. Perhaps I’ll choose the top 20 blogs which I know are LibSoc. I’d be interesting to see what we’re talking about in general.
I won’t go into the details on why Brad didn’t attempt to argue against the LTV but rather against the moral basis of Marx’s theory of exploitation as Kapitalism101 already skewered that particular misunderstanding. What I would like to do is to point out why even then example chosen, in all it’s rigged splendor is misguided in providing us even with clear moral insights into the ethics of capitalist production.
First, lets start deconstructing the example put forth. One might wonder why we should be doing that of course and the reason is that there is a fine line between rigged examples and unrealistic examples which are so goddamn popular within economic circles. It’s quite important to expose the unrealistic expectations and ignored inconsistencies which make up so much of such scenarios so as to point out why they can’t be used to describe reality in any meaningful sense.
In fact, I’m going to digress towards a small rant on this particular subject as it annoys the hell out of me when I see it. Dear Economists please stop doing that! Stop imagining scenarios, perfect, clear cut scenarios, with no ambiguity at all, which can fit into perfect mathematical models and then try to describe reality from those conclusions! It is not reality. It has nothing to do with reality. It’s as absurd as a physicist trying to explain reality by positing a scenario starting with “Imagine a man flying by flapping his arms”. You can’t model reality in your heads and then use those fantastical examples to describe the real world. As such, your examples have as much accuracy to the reality of economics as Democritus Atomic Theory has to the reality of chemistry. It sounds alike and seem on the surface to approximate reality, but is nevertheless quite wrong.
Marx, for all his errors at least started the right scientific way by looking at how the capitalist mode of production worked and then writing a theory to describe it. You know, like a proper scientific theory. That doesn’t necessarily mean that his initial theory was perfect any more than Darwin’s initial theory of evolution was perfect. It was nevertheless based on empiricism rather scholasticism. /rant
So from the get-go, Brad’s example starts on the unrealistic foot.
Now suppose that ten of these families starve themselves for a decade–living on little more than half-rations–to raise the cash to buy farm machinery, irrigation systems, fruit trees, et cetera from the cities.
Which automatically means that A) Those farms were not subsistence and they were producing already more than they could consume as nobody can keep on starving for 10 years and B) There is already a working industrial production which provided them with the research and capital to buy. Under what circumstances this was bought it is not said as that production might be based on exploitation as well. But lets for the sake of the example assume that people starving for 10 years instead put their labour in researching and building all that capital and see where it leads us.
As a result of their sacrifice, saving, and investment, thereafter their farms require four times as much labor each year to operate, but also produce crops worth eight times as much because of the capital investment.
Now we see that all those abstained consumption of those families was used to create capital which can only be used by more than their current manpower. This is weird to put it mildly as one would expect them to simply improve their own processes rather than build capital requiring more manpower. It points in fact to the idea that those starving families had a plan to hire other workers or to put it shortly, to rent out their capital rather then selling it or using it themselves. Keep this in mind as we proceed.
They then hire thirty additional families’ worth of workers, leaving the remaining ninety original farmsteads to be worked by sixty families.
And this is the sticking point for me. What Brad casually assumes would happen easily and without much fuss is, in fact quite complex, when one looks at things realistically and with an anthropological perspective. Why would 30 families of workers agree to be hired as wage-workers?
This may not sound as much of an issue for someone who takes the current world as given and the current human mentality of passively accepting wage-labour but it is quite important to analyze. Lets take the things we know. Those 30 families currently can produce enough food to fill their current needs and then some extra to sell and buy luxuries (otherwise, those entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to “starve” themselves). Those 10 families that “starved” themselves for 10 years on half-rations, we can assume that they consumed only half as much of their product right? So if they produced 3000 pounds of wheat per year, this means that they saved 1500 per year. So 10 x 10 x 1500 = 150.000 pounds of wheat, or 75 tons, in order to buy/build the capital right? Right.
At this point one might ask, why didn’t those families pool their resources together and buy capital that is small enough that they can work themselves? Lets assume that the smallest unit of capital they could buy was this, requiring a minimum of 40 families. Again this raises questions on why this is the minimum unit of capital and this is not a neutral question. Kevin Carson would have a lot to say about the purpose of capitalist technology and which interest it represents.
So we have unit of capital which was bought by 10 families who can’t currently use it. At this point, one starts to question their sanity. It’s like a blind man buying a truck. “Why did you just do that?”, one expects everyone else to ask. “You just starved for 10 years in order to buy something you can’t use? What’s the point”. At which point those brilliant entrepreneurs say “Ah but my plan is to hire you guys to work in it and give you a share of the profits while I keep something for myself for all our starvation.” At which point general laughter occurs. For you see, there’s no reason for anyone to accept such a plan. And I’m going to explain why:
The Entrepreneurs are now left with something they cannot use. They are at a severe bargaining disadvantage to everyone else, having wasted 5 years of money’s worth on machinery which will degrade if not used and maintained. As such, they are now at a pressure to use it. It is not in anyone else’s interests to hire themselves out as wage workers when they can instead buy the capital at the far lower second-hand price.
It is not explained what the bargain is for everyone else to hire themselves out as wage-workers. It is assumed that the extra money (an increase of 1500 pounds of wheat-per-year, per family) would be enough to make them take this job. But this is counteracted by the loss of freedom. Whereas those 30 families had control over their own work hours, they will now lose it and will have to work under a boss. This may not sound as much but looking at historical examples of where such scenarios played out, we can see that almost nobody (and I use “almost” only because I can’t speak with absolute certainty, not because I’m aware of any counter-examples) during the migration from farming/artisan production to industrial production, chose to leave their own self-controlled work in favour of factory wage-work. Quite the opposite in fact. People preferred to spill blood rather than choose this.
It is therefore highly unlikely that those 10 families with the capital would find anyone to hire as wage-worker when people had the alternatives to either keep working self-employed which was both traditional (and we know how hard that is to change) and trouble-less, or to buy the capital second-hand or new buy banding 40 families together and amassing the same amount of capital in “2.5” years by starving or 3.3 years by “tightening the belt”. Then, they would both get the increased production AND keep their freedom AND keep all the profits at equal shares.
So in the end, the only way that Brad’s scenario could play out would be for one or more of these reasons
The 30 other families are stupid: This is the only way they would not realize that the “entepreneurs” have put themselves at a disadvantage and they can now buy the decaying capital at bargain price.
The 30 other families are terminally lazy: They’re not willing to abstain from even one pound of their current lifestyle, even if it means 50% increase in wealth 4-5 years down the line.
The 30 other families are made up of submissives: Only those would enjoy all loss of freedom during work hours that they enjoyed until now.
There is something elsein play which took the previous means of subsistence from those 30 families, leaving them with no other option than hiring themselves out to those 10 entrepreneurs as wage-workers.
Brad, and most mainstream economists and economic examples such as the above, quite strongly imply that the poor and working class are lazy, while the truth is that historically (even continuing to this day) it’s the last option that has happened. Those 10 families bought the capital and then put their friends in the state to enclose on all the property of the 30 other families so that they have ample wage worker who “volunteer” to hire their labour out.
This example thus is no different. It simply posits a reality and assumes away all those embarrassing natural reactions humans would have. No, let’s just assume that 30 families agreed to hire their labour out with not a lot of fuss. It’s the voluntaryist fallacy all over again where the argument assumes a scenario where a bad situation is accepted voluntary from one party and then wonders where all the moral condemnation comes from.
Let me exemplify this by taking Brads example and using slavery rather than wage-slavery.
Lets take the same scenario with the 10 families starving and whatnot to build/buy capital that can only be worked by 40 families. Now lets assume that those 10 families take 30 of the other families as voluntary slaves in the new plantations to work them for 4800 pounds of wheat per year instead (an increase of 300 over wage-work). As voluntary slaves it means that they get to live and work whenever their masters tell them and get beaten if they do not follow orders. According to Brad’s logic, there’s nothing wrong with that is there? After all, they slaves now get more money than before and everyone is better off. Aren’t they?
What? You object to the assumption that people would just like that voluntarily sell themselves into slavery for more money given other alternatives? If so then you understand why I object to the assumption that people would voluntarily sell themselves into wage-slavery for more money, given other alternatives.
This is the flaw in Brad’s scenario. This is the flaw in all economic scenario. They are unrealistic and suffer from hoards of inconsistencies. They only work as long as we play along with the author and avoid thinking too much about what they’re really implying. It can justify wage-slavery. It can justify slavery. It can justify goddamn Cannibalism if we really want it to. As long as we’re assuming, we might as well assume anything voluntary we want.
I can take my above example with wage-work and make it worse for the slaves. I can make it better for the slaves as well. Since it’s a rigged example I can do whatever the hell I want! I can make a scenario where someone would be offered 10 times more money if they accepted to be a slave. I can make a scenario where someone accepted to be a slave for a meager 1% increase. It’s my assumptions and I can do what I want. And this is precisely what Brad is doing. He’s simply built a scenario where it looks like an improvement for the wage-workers and assumed nobody would be willing to look close enough to challenge wage-work itself. It bases itself on people already having a mentality which accepts wage-work and thus going along with it without too much fuss or thought.
As soon as someone asks “Why did those people accept to be hired as wage-workers?” his whole scenario tumbles down like a house of cards.
As for his “critique” of Marx’s theory of exploitation, it could be just as well surmised in one sentence: “It’s voluntary so it’s not exploitation. Therefore the LTV is false.” And it’s as convincing as that.
Privileged people might be wondering why they should espouse Anarchism when other ideologies appear to work better.
The other day, an interesting question was posed to me by a commenter in Broadsnark’s blog who was asking how Anarchist principles (i.e. Mutual Aid and Direct Action) can help him in his current life:
35 yr. old male, struggling to survive in the trading pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with Fed controlled interest rates serving as the main cause of my detriment[…]The Fed is crushing my first entrepreneurial attempt, the state is delaying my second. What can I learn from, support, and make use of Anarchist principles in my day to day life both economically and in regards to my pursuit of making my life and my family the best for us, while living my life by standards that I believe are beneficial to my family, as well as my community?
This is undoubtedly a question that anyone who might be investigating Anarchism might be asking. “How can this philosophy improve my current conditions?” and it certainly deserves some consideration.
The first problem is in the way that this question is posed. It puts forth a lot of premises that are incompatible in the first place and then asks how one would reconcile this. It’s obvious that the author of the comment has already decided that the State regulations is his primary problem and thus a beneficial solution should be one that has such a deregulation in the solution. This of course only serves to exemplify further how people tend to choose their political orientation from their immediate short-term situation.
In this case, the author’s main issue is that in his current choice of work, the state regulation are constricting him being more wealthy. It therefore follows that whatever will reduce such regulations, will improve his life. Right-Libertarianism proposes to reduce such regulations as a general plan of action. Thus right-libertarianism is seen as the most viable solution. In a very similar way we can see how others might end up supporting one ideology over another based on the same short-term thinking. A factory capitalist might see the worker’s union as his main source of grief, since their collective bargaining is eroding his profits. He thus promotes ideologies such as neoliberalism which suggest that there should be no state protection of unions. A factory worker sees the power differential between himself and the boss as the source of his low income and thus promotes trade unionism which he believes will allow him to demand more.The truck driver sees the increased weight-based taxes on the roads as the source of his problem and thus supports socialization of costs and flat-rate taxes for all as a solution.
But the problem is that the short-term solution for each individual situation is not necessarily compatible with Anarchism. In fact, the whole profession which one might be in can in it self be something incompatible. Take the factory boss for example. His solution is one which would retain himself as the boss and also improve his life as is. But within Anarchism there’s not supposed to be any bosses in the first place! Thus the whole question of “How can Anarchism help me improve my conditions as a capitalist boss?” is oxymoronic.
In a similar vein, asking how Anarchism can improve your life in Finance Capitalism is also flawed since Anarchism is anti-capitalist in the first place. It’s impossible for a theory opposed to a whole profession to offer any solution for improving that profession.
This of course is quite logical to lead people to reject Anarchism because it does not provide a solution to their immediate problems as they perceive it. After all, what is the point in espousing Mutual Aid when crass Individualism will provide a far better ROI? What is the point in espousing Direct Action when putting myself as an Authority will also provide me with the lion’s share of the wealth?
And this is the sticking point. The solutions that Anarchism provides is to point that your perception of where the problem lies is wrong in the first place. To put it into perspective, imagine playing various versions of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in real life. Your standard solution is to defect, to look at one’s interests in the short term and expecting everyone else to do the same. Your solutions focus around either making it easier for you to defect, hide such defection, and make it harder for others to defect when you do. This will all maximize your own benefits. Anarchism is trying to explain how mutual co-operation is superior and how to setup a system where any kind of defection is either difficult or impossible to hide.
Those people asking me what solutions Anarchism offers in their particular short-term problems are akin to asking me how Anarchism can help them defect faster, smarter or sneakier.
If you see how the world works, you notice exactly this kind of pattern. All that Politics is, is a continuous tug-o-war between various competing factions pulling in different directions. The Truckers want flat-tax while those without cars want weight+mileage based tax (if any). The Finance Capitalists want more deregulation while the industrial capitalist want more regulation. The plutocracy want a stronger state and a powerful military to “open markets”, while the progressive small businessmen want as little state regulation and intervention as possible. The workers want more wages while the capitalists want more profits.
Politicians are only there to represent the various interests in a peaceful manner (i.e. to avoid the losing party from using force to equalize the game).
Each of those factions keeps looking at their immediate short-term interest and does not realize that in the game of defection you either have to have a “sucker” or everyone suffers. The original commenter for example does not realize that further deregulation of the financial capital will only mean that the current plutocracy, the big dogs will abuse the system far more than they do now. The small investors will suffer and most likely the cost is going to be taken by the middle and lower classes even moreso than now. The middle/lower classes have already seen this once so they are loathe to permit it again (if they can) so they oppose it in their own interests. Both factions in this case can have their own ideologies explaining rationally why theirs is the superior choice. The Neoliberals, Friedmanists, Reaganites etc on one side and the Keynesians, Krugmanites etc on the other. Both factions coming to blows and never reaching an agreement because their short-term interests are directly opposed.
The whole game of politics is simply the same thing, only spread out in thousands of different conflicts. And where two factions are opposite on one issue, they may become allies against a third in another.
Anarchism however suggests that all situations where such conflicting interests exist is flawed. If you have two competing factions, the answer is not to join one and seek to give it more power. The answer is to make such conflict obsolete in the first place so that the end result is mutual co-operation instead. The result of such co-operation always benefits both sides who co-operate more in aggregate, than defective practices. We ask that if any two such factions notice that they are in opposition to each other, that they look at the premises for such opposition and change the scenario itself, rather than fight out for dominance.
Of course, this is not always possible as very often one faction is perpetually on the winning side and co-operating will reduce their wealth. Think of it again in the context of a Prisoner’s Dilemma where one prisoner is forced to always co-operate while the other can defect at will. Obviously the defector will not want to change the rules of the game, even if it means both co-operating, for the current setup is far more to his own benefit than any alternative. In this case the current setup must be dismantled and smashed with force if necessary due to its inherent unfairness. The benefiting party will whine, complain, subvert, lie, obfuscate and finally fight to preserve things as they are due to the obvious way it’s gaining, but this will not change the exploitative nature of such benefits. It will not change the fact that mutual co-operation is the superior result and can only be prevented via some kind of applied coercion on one party and not the other.
Now to go back to the original question, it is clear that Anarchism cannot provide a solution within the defined premises. However it can provide the solution on how to redefine the premises so as to follow anarchist principles and that would necessitate a change of career for the author. He may not like it, he may wish to remain working in finance capitalism because it is exciting but it will not change the fact that his career is built on the exploitation of labour via usury and is only possible via state backing (i.e. corporate laws).
Is it possible that this might not allow him to maintain his current suburban lifestyle? Possibly. As much as it wouldn’t allow the luxurious lifestyle of the ruling elite either. But one must willingly close his eyes to the destitution others must suffer for such a lifestyle to be maintained in order to accept this in the first place. Those that oppose the systematic change required to improve the lives of everyone are the ones that are already at the top of the “foodchain” so to speak, who would be the minority which would have to lose some of their privileges in order for the rest to gain their basic human needs in life and dignity.
Unfortunately those at the top would never be convinced to let go of their privileges, no matter how good the arguments. Fortunately those at the top are the small minority and only because the vast majority is still convinced to play by the current unfair rules. We don’t have to convince those at the top. We only have to deprogram the propaganda from the majority.
Perhaps the OP will ask me now: “But you never answered my question. Why should I ever embrace Anarchist principles when my interest lies in simple deregulation?”
The answer to this question is simple: Your interest is irrational as it bring a collectively worse result, even if you end up benefiting from it in the short-term. You are already at the privileged few on the top of the world so you’re already at diminishing returns even if you don’t realize it. Equalizing the rest of the world in terms of power is the only thing that can improve your life by taking away the real causes of “pain” such as stress caused by having to maintain a luxurious lifestyle or the lost dignity when you have to cower before your “superiors”.
If you’re still not convinced. If you still believe that your life would be better if only you had more money, more luxuries, more power, then before you even consider Anarchism, I suggest a change of Philosophy first.
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