Tag: anarchism

The Kudos economy and some criticism.

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A market anarchist proposes a system which might bridge the gap between a market-based economy and the problems that disparity of wealth creates. Here’s my LibCom citicism.

Kudos Burgerville
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William Gillis writes an interesting post about the differences between Capitalist and Communistic ownership rights and gives a different perspective of how market theorists misunderstand the criticisms Anarcho-communists are directing at Private Property. It’s a bit thick to parse but I think it’s worth a read especially on how he takes the distinction between property and possession to a different dimension and the 2 pointed critiques of Private Property.

Of course there are some parts I have to disagree, for one:

Obviously however, just because such differing economic approaches might make better software for a fraction of the energy Microsoft spends doesn’t mean that it can do things like move goods between locations to satisfy demand efficiently or signal all the costs of one consumption versus another. Without the capacity to assign value to spatial/physical relationships (as with the realm of actors and objects) one can’t concretely mediate between those relationships

This particular part is, I believe, making the mistake merging two different concepts of a capitalist economy. Production and distribution. William accepts that socialized production seems to be much more efficient than the capitalist mode of production but he then proceeds to criticize the former for not achieving efficient distribution. But this is something unrelated to the productive process so I assume he’s attempting to criticize an explicitly Communist (or moneyless) way of distribution (as opposed to collectivist or syndicalist which might still retain money).

The problem is here again some of the assumptions of free market theory. The assumption that free markets satisfy demands and the assumption that the price mechanism passes along the correct signals. Unfortunately none of these assumptions are right as  the markets can only satisfy effective demand and the signals ignore externalized costs and don’t provide enough information. By not basing transactions on prices, but simply on pure supply & demand (as would be the case in a communist society) both of these issues are avoided for demand is based on people’s needs and the productive process and democratic control of it ensure that the supply is analogous to the costs.

The second criticism I have is directed towards this sentence

Anti-capitalists often disingenuously blur the distinction between wealth and coercive power — wealth and/or disequilibria in wealth do not inherently have to grant any capacity for social control — but it’s certainly true that direct pursuits of power and wealth share the same form.

I don’t think it’s disingenuous at all as anti-capitalists are criticizing actually existing capitalism and not theoretical market constructs with wildly different parameters on production and money. In actually existing capitalism as well as in any market based system where money is arbitrary (ie not tied to labour-hours or something as solid) and private property the dominant form of property, the accumulation of wealth is very much a measure of coercive power as it directly limits the options of those who do not get to have any. But no anti-capitalists will consider that wealth is power when in a system which has been specifically setup so as to ensure that wealth is not power. The only problem is that all conceptions of a propertarian economy have not managed to avoid this problem.

Which brings us to the interesting part of Williams conception of a market economy. It looks like something taken out of the Algebraist to tell the truth and I can’t but worry that it’s as much of a fictional concept. You see the idea looks workable, in a theoretically constructed society around the concept of a reputation market, and I do think that if we did get such a system then I (or most communists I assume) really wouldn’t have any issue with it. Nevertheless my main criticism would again lead to ask: How do we get there?

If a labour-time-tied money system is already a difficult concept to grasp and put into practice or even move towards a situation where it can be put into practice, an even more extravagant concept based on reputation just strikes me as half-way impossible. I would be far more interested to see a viable process by which such a system might become a reality until which point, I cannot consider the actual criticisms made by William against anti-capitalists to hold much water, as they were based on comparing them to a utopian construct. Unfortunately I believe such a practice ends up diverging attention from practical issues and solutions (ie criticism of capitalism and ways to fix things) and gives some ammo for market theorists who would twist and grasp any concept in order to prove that “Free Market (Capitalism) works!”

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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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The defenses of State and Religious law are surprisingly similar

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Statists love to argue that without the government humans would descend into chaos. Much like theists claim that without God we’d all be beasts. Here’s why they’re wrong.

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While discussing with people who are pro-state and even wish to increase its scale there are a few arguments that are most often used to base this position, the most notorious of which is the Argument from Human Nature. The perspective from the statist is basically that humans needs to be controlled from themselves lest they return to a beast-like existence as well as considering the state the most important institution for the advancement of civilization.

It is no wonder that those most supportive of the most authoritarian of states, the absolute monarchy, were also those who initiated the concept of Hard Primitivism to counter the Romanticism of the “Noble Savage” which made libertarian concepts such as self-management and direct action seem natural and possible. In fact the “Noble Savage” is all to often raised as a handy strawman when the idea that humans are not naturally bastards is put forth.

In this, the statists have a lot in common with monotheists who consider that a higher power is necessary to decide the hard rules all of us should follow. It is all too often for atheists to hear that without a god deciding the absolute rules for all of us (as interpreted by the official clergy of course), humans would immediately turn to barbarism. Without absolute objective morals, humans -is argued- would never be able to have a civilization, and thus religion (and the church) is necessary.

The basic idea from these two perspectives is surprisingly similar so lets look at them each in turn.

Is humanity inherently flawed?

Whereas theists consider than humans are  inherently evil, coming from an original sin and can be made “civilized” only through strict religious authority and trust in a god’s rules, Statists consider that humans are inherently greedy, vicious and destructive and can be made “civilized” only through strict state authority and trust in the common law. The difference is that the former’s excuse lies in the supernatural, while the later in perceived scientific authority.

In short, the idea that fear of God or fear of the State is the only thing keeping society together and chaos & destruction at bay.

The counter to the former is fairly simple: We’ve observed that in fact humans do not turn to barbarism when religious moral are taken away, in fact many Atheists can be perceived to be “better” morally, even from the perspective of the theists and secular societies have a generally good correlation with civility.

The counter to the later is similar: Much like we don’t expect a Theist to become a rampaging beast when they discard their religion, so will a human not turn into a beast when the state authority drops away. In fact, we would consider anyone who does not become a murderer, rapists or thief only because of the fear of getting caught as having a very stumped moral system. We normally consider such a person a sociopath.

But this is in fact the argument that the statist brings forward. That we are a society of sociopaths, barely being held together by the heroic actions of those at the top, who somehow have managed to escape their personal sociopathy while also convincing all the other sociopaths to elect them.

I hope the absurdity of this proposition becomes obvious.

The truth is fortunately somehow different. While humans do have a capacity for both good and evil acts, they also have a tendency towards cooperation and mutual aid as well as having their moral code internalized rather than enforced externally. This is why when the state authority drops away, such as in national disasters like Katrina, we see humans managing to act civilized (even if they can get away not doing so) and helping each other, while those who assume the worst in humans, end up becoming what they fear.

Examples such as these are all too often in human societies, where those at the top, who consider themselves enlightened and surpassing their own “human nature” act the most brutally, while those whom they condemn end up proving them wrong in reality. One only needs to look at the communes in the Spanish Revolution, the Soviets of the Russian Revolution (before Lenin’s consolidation of power that is), the libertarian projects such as Christania or the Kibbutz. All practical, working examples that humans without the state can function just as well if not better.

Thus, much like a new atheist retaining most of their moral system once they lose their religion, so do people retain their moral system once they lose their rulers.

Is central leadership necessary for civilization?

This is another favourite argument from both camps and we’ll see, it is related to the previous one. Theists will argue that without their god’s code of laws, humans would never have been able to organize and achieve a civilization. Without religious scripture and leadership of the clergy/founding fathers/scribes/etc humans would have forever remained in a state of primitivism. In a similar vein, statists claim that without a state promoting science and reason, humans would have remained ignorant, superstitious and crude.

The religious argument is generally easy to counter by pointing out the existence of civilizations which existed along with religions other than their own. They may argue that no other civilization managed to reach the level we have no except Christianity of course, but one can point out that this happened <i>despite</i> Christianity and in fact we see the rise of secularism and atheism as the best correlation, not a particular religion.

The counter-argument from the statist claims is a bit more tricky. They will certainly point out that a state existed ever since we’ve had civilization but that is through a clever definitional trick: We define “civilization” generally from the point at which a state appeared.

Certainly, almost all cultures at some point achieved a state but that has obviously not been enough for the modern civilization and in fact, very often rolled any progress backwards. Rather, something else was necessary.

That was Rationalism. The Age of Enlightenment saw finally the time where humans started coming out of the dark ages and superstition and religious or arbitrary authority started being superseded by rationality and reasonable authority. And while the initial states and other assorted authority institutes were initially hostile to the concept, as it undermined their rule, rationality still increased as the environment of the time made it a competitive meme.

As this increased, we saw first the mellowing of authority and then the first steps towards reasonable authority as seen by the use of political democracy. Traditional customs were discarded and relationships of domination started getting criticized. As rationality increased feeding upon its achievements, so did human behaviour which was shaped by it, start becoming more civilized.

It is this that defines the rise of modern civilization, not the democratic state. That was a symptom of the need for reasonable authority. As such, the claim that the state was necessary is false. Humans would have progressed to a brighter future with or without a state, and in fact they were on the road of doing exactly that within their medieval cities which freed from the state authority, became bastions of progress. If anything, the state, initially feudal but later democratic as well, was the primary cause of the stalling of such progress, with it violently enforcing a system with a conflicting nature in regards to human progress: Capitalism

How? Well it’s a fact that Capitalism is not good at inventing new stuff. This is because of its necessity for short term profit, while research is a long-term goal. As such, the state is necessary to provide the funds for research and advancement, and it is exactly this fact that Statists will bring up as definite proof of the necessity of the state.

But this argument is flawed. The state is only required as long as a system which is inherently irrational in regards to progress needs to be pushed in the right direction. And then it can only do a half-job. But this argument is defeated once one poses the question “Why is Capitalism required?”. Can we not have a system which does not provide a disincentive for research? We can. And once this fact becomes clear, the necessity for the state collapses. Which is naturally why a statist will also maintain that Capitalism is absolutely necessary while moaning about the inability of the system to do what is needed for humans.

In the end, for libertarian socialists, this defense ends up looking more like schizophrenia, with the Statist on one hand trying to praise Capitalism for its ability to promote progress, while one the other trying to defend the state’s existence by lamenting on how bad Capitalism is for progress.

The Truth? Humans Can do Without Authority.

Fortunately, there is ample evidence to prove that humans are not the flawed beasts that theists and statists suggest in order to maintain the rule of their chosen leaders. While humans are of course not Noble Savages, they do have a natural tendency towards Mutual Aid and Co-operation, something which is both historically and empirically proven. We’re not talking about romanticizing the tribal structures, nor are we suggesting we return to such a living (another favourite strawman of the statists).

What we are suggesting is that since humans have the capacity for both “Good” and “Evil” it is the system around them which naturally selects which behaviour will come to the front. Obviously, a system like Capitalism which promotes Greed, Material Self-interest, viciousness, win-culture etc will require a state in order (among other reasons) to prevent this behaviour from unraveling the whole social order. Of course that wouldn’t happen anyway as without a state or other organized submission, humans would most likely follow their natural tendencies and discard capitalism as well.

But a system which promotes a behaviour based around co-operation and mutual aid, such as any system which has discarded private property, will not risk devolving into chaos and therefore a state would not be required to maintain order.

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Anarchism is Hope

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If one wants to have hope that the world can become better, that humans can have a fair society, Anarchism is the only thing that will retain and fulfill it.

A red and black flag used as anarchy symbol. T...
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We’re spiraling down a profound systematic crisis of a magnitude rivaling, if not exceeding, the Great Depression of 30’s. In the last century we’ve also seen the utter failure of the two most popular populist political ideologies – Revolutionary State Socialism and Reformist State Socialism – to achieve their goals and thus the utopianism of expecting either of them to bring us out of a capitalist crisis and into an egalitarian future becomes obvious. We’ve also seen (and see currently) how xenophobic, hateful ideologies of the likes of Fascism can feed on human desperation caused by such a crisis and rise to power with disastrous consequences for the world.

It’s thus not difficult for an a socialist, a radical leftist or any egalitarianist in general to despair about the future as their “representatives” fail to act or betray them outright while the “revolutionaries” sit and wait for the “coming revolution” which they can then attempt to “lead” as the vanguard.

Fortunately, there is a way to avoid such a despair, to manage to keep up the hope in a world which seems to be going in the opposite direction of what you’d like. It’s the way of walking your path as much as possible, of making part of the future society come true even within one’s lifetime by living and acting as close to the ideal as structurally possible. In short, it is the path of Direct Action.

Why is this the key to hope? Because through it we can both  make our lives easier and know that this also undermines the Capitalist system, and thus bring a social revolution closer. It is the good feeling of not only improving one’s life but also that any success in such an endeavor will inspire others to do the same, while any failure can serve as a learning experience.

And this is where the hope that Anarchists will always feel, comes from.

It is the hope we get by not relying on anyone to act for us. Unlike reformists waiting for the state to act for them, or begging the politicians to do their job for once, Anarchists take matters into their own hand and do what needs to be done. And if or when the capitalists and/or their personal gendarme (ie the state) trip us, block us, jail us or kill us, it only serves to show their true nature to those not yet convinced of it. It only serves to boost our ranks.

It is the hope we get by not being Utopian. Because we know that every libertarian action brings the world a bit closer to anarchy whatever form that might take. We do not then have to despair that we may never live in a “perfect society”, for we know that’s impossible. Nevertheless our actions, as long as they stay within the spirit of libertarian socialism, will always leave the world a bit better, a bit more tolerable for those who come after us to step on and push further.

It is the hope we get from knowing that our actions push the world towards the direction we wish, with a visible and practical result. Unlike academic “revolutionaries” or vanguardists we build the society of the future in the decaying corpse of the old. Co-operatives, Mutual Banks, Syndicates, Community unions, Councils and all other forms of Mutual Aid are what can turn people socialist en mass, not dry rhetoric. Anyone who acts like this, is a friend to Anarchists, regardless of their political affiliation. While anyone who denigrates, disrupts or attacks such initiatives is no ally, regardless of what radical name they choose for themselves.

I wrote before about “the hope that Anarchists will always feel” and you might wonder how true that might be. In fact, I’d argue that you can’t be an Anarchist without having any hope left, as then it’s much easier to simply submit to the system we’re in as something unbeatable, and embrace one of the many palliatives. From trying to polish the rough edges (reformism) to simply passively joining the system and praying for deliverance by God or Glorious Leader, to outright nihilism.

But for those of us who still retain it, Anarchism is its expression and it is self-fulfilling by every libertarian act one makes.

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A Social Democrat and a Mutualist duke it out

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The Black Sun Journal takes a misguided swipe at Anarchism triggered from a spat with a Mutualist. I attempt to point out how absolutely confused he is.

My RSS reader recently lit up with a new post on the Black Sun Journal attacking (or defending against?) Francois Tremblay’s calling him out over a Facebook discussion. Now this should have normally been another instance of internet drama (of the kind I keep getting into myself unfortunately) and I wouldn’t have gotten involved (especially since I’ve gotten in my own private flamewars with Francois in the past), if it wasn’t for Sean bringing up the whole topic of Anarchism and not only misrepresenting it horribly in order to denounce it but also making some common arguments for statism, which stem out of ignorance. Ignorance which I’ve pointed out to him in the past and he simply (obviously) ignored.

From the get-go, it’s obvious that Sean conflates Anarchism with the (far-smaller) individualistic wing, even bordering on merging it with the right-“libertarianism” of Rothbard and other wannabe Anarchists. This by itself is a blunder as he only seems to perceive the individualist aspects of Anarchism while ignoring the very solid theory that exists on the points of society organization, community management economics and-so-on. In short, he assumes that Anarchism is simply Anti-statism and wishful thinking which is a wholly intellectually dishonest representation he’s been called on many times before and should know better than.

So lets look at Sean’s specific arguments against Anarchism and dismantle them one-by-one.

Why do humans have an even longer history of violence than do governments?

Here Sean is countering the classic straw-man of social-democrats, the “Noble Savage” which is the idea that people were more peaceful in the past. Anarchist do not claim that humans are inherently peaceful and abstain from violence. That may be a pacifist’s myth but not an Anarchist’s (although a minority of Anarchists are pacifists). As such, this poses no argument against Anarchism?

Yes, humans can be violent but they can also be peaceful if their society and the ethic values they are raised with promote such a behaviour. The rise of civilized behaviour thus, is not the cause of the state but of the changing values of humans which eventually the state acknowledged in the form of laws, laws which always follow the acts of man rather than the other way around.

Furthermore, while tribal societies may have been more violent, there were also far more egalitarian. This is the aspect that Anarchists point at as a fact that our proposed social-structures are not against human nature. Sure, the Celts may have been killing one another, but such deaths were usually cross-tribal and when they were within the same tribe, very often you’ll find that they were against usurpers of power, such as power-grabbing warchiefs and the like. Looking at other tribal structures such as the Iroquois, we notice similar patterns.

And what about the recent reduction of violence? Was that caused by the emergence of republics and the capitalist mode of production? Here Sean has far less of a base to stand on other than simple correlation. What we in fact notice is that the drop of violence does not correlate with republics which for many years promoted inhuman acts such as human Slavery and still promote many forms of human-over-human domination. Rather the drop of violence correlates far better with the rise of rationalism, a process which started only a few hundred years ago.

What in fact has happened under Capitalism (and its supporting state apparati) is the continuation of human suffering, not in the form of active violence, but rather in the form of passive coercion or economic destitution. To put it more simply, instead of humans killing humans, they simply let them die (from starvation or easily preventable diseases). And the rate of which this death occurs, as can be seen from the scale of misery which occurs in most nations outside the rich “developed” ones, vastly outnumbers the suffering from active violence that occurred in pre-civilization periods.

Do humans universally manipulate for power and profit?

While humans can manipulate each other for such reasons, this is far from being the natural state of mind of human behaviour. It is this precice point which Anarchists call attention to when they say that it’s the environment that shapes the behaviour of humans inside it.

Sean once again appeals to human nature as he perceives it and brings as backup genetics (ie the Selfish Gene). But what he misses is that Genes do not care how they reproduce and perpetuate but only that they do, and what this means is that the way by which they go about doing this does not have to be competitive.

This fact escapes Sean who is so keen to tie evolutionary science with his pro-capitalist bias (ie he wishes to have an empirical foundation) that he jumps to conclusion on how this works in human societies.

The actual empirical facts however beg to differ and in fact utterly demolish Sean’s argument that the human drive is a materialistic self-interest. Kropotkin’s evolutionary studies on Mutual Aid have not only shown that species (even different species) can find it far more helpful to cooperate rather than compete for natural resources but he has extensively documented how the human civilization naturally moves towards such a cooperative society (ie egalitarianism) when state-domination is reduced.

Not only that, but Engel’s analysis on the rise of the state and the pre-civilization familiar structures further reinforce that humans, lacking factors which promote inequality (such as private property) naturally form co-operative societies and in fact strong co-operative bonds were evolutionary required before Homo Sapiens became a viable evolutionary path.

So no. Humans will not naturally manipulate for power and profit, but when you put them into an environment which naturally selects for those which will manipulate for power and profit, then those will be selected. This is in fact what is happening in a propertarian economy and which Sean takes for granted and then draws his conclusions and states them as a fact of nature.

It is not possible to “opt out” of society.

Here we can clearly see Sean’s confusion on what Anarchism is and his merging it with Right-“Libertarian” rhetoric.  His argument is simply that people live in societies and as such need to provide for those more unfortunate around them. But Anarchists do not claim that they should not! If anything anarchists stress the requirements of acts such as Mutual Aid and (social anarchists) generally promote socialistic measures such as “according to need”. And while individualist anarchists and mutualists embrace a more market-based economy, they also oppose “sticky” property (ie private property) and believe that such a society would be better because the truly free market (ie free from inequality and the state) would be able to care for the less unfortunate without people needing to give the power to do so to a higher authority.

So Sean is proposing a false dilemma when he assumes that there’s only two choices, Tax-funded governmental social nets and dog-eat-dog rugged individualism. Anarchism is in fact all about pointing out that it is, in fact very difficult to opt-out of society (although not impossible as Sean suggests) but that this society does not have to be condensed around a nanny state who will care for us. It is about pointing out that a nanny state is far worse at providing such functions than what freely cooperating individuals are.

In fact, very often the delegation of the safety net to the state is a detriment to those who need it as the state is a tool of the ruling elite and as such this safety net will be dismantled when it goes against their interests. The experience of the last 35 years in the developed world should have been enough of a waking call to the flaws of this perspective. One only has to look at how the Reaganites gutted social spending once they got into power and such a trend continued through both Social Democrat and Liberal rule even when obviously against the will of the “democracy”. One also only needs to look at the phenomenal success of community driven mutual aid projects such as building societies, clothing clubs and the like to provide social safety despite the failure of both government and markets to achieve this.

Examples such as these should have been enough to make most people reconsider their opinion on what humans do “naturally”…

Will humans without regulation exploit and destroy common resources?

It is funny that Sean brings up the “Tragedy of the Commons” argument against Anarchism. A theory so debunk by studies in communal societies and co-operative management that it’s laughable to see it brought up as a counter to anything but free-for-all capitalism. Something that not even the right-“libertarians” do not suggest (They prefer to privatize everything).

Once again, that Sean brings this up as an argument against what he thinks is “Anarchism” is once more a case in point that he has not even bothered to understand what Anarchism is, even after the numerous times I explained that he has not understood it yet.

In closing, I will quote the last paragraphs of Sean which is in fact what has itched me enough to write this post to counter his rampart confusion:

There are many other sound reasons (beyond the scope of this article) why anarcho-anything does not work and can never work. Humans are a social, hierarchical species, and we need organizers.

No Sean. You have not yet proven that we are hierarchical species or that we need organizers. You simply allow your preconceptions to blind you and stubbornly refuse to understand why what you say is wrong. You seem content to simply repeat it.

Still anarchists continue with their irrational claims that people will all just somehow naturally work together for the common good, absent external incentives

*Sigh* No Sean. We do not claim that. In fact what we claim is that it is the external incentives that will shape how humans will work together and thus we propose a society structure (ie an external incentive) that naturally selects for co-operation and altruism rather than greed and domination over others.

What irrational claim, in fact, continues in this case, is your ideas of what Anarchists claim without having bothered to understand the theory behind them, the extensive evidence backing them up and the already existing criticism of your arguments that me and others have repeatedly pointed out to you.

And this is the last time I bother to correct your misrepresentations of Anarchism. If you continue with your misguided arguments as if they have not been addressed already, you will forever have exposed yourself as someone who does not care about the truth but only about stubbornly sticking to your ideological castle and basking in your own assumed intellectual superiority.

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Using libertarian means to help moderate an online community

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What do you do when you are dedicated to anti-authoritarianism and direct action and someone decides to abuse the system for their own purposes? Here’s how simple peer-pressure solved one problem.

“Peer Pressure”
Image by Ninos_Gun via Flickr

It should be obvious to readers of the Division by Zer0 that I am a frequent user of Reddit for my source of news and online interaction. You may have also noticed that I am also generally hanging out a lot in the Anarchism subreddit as I find the community there quite vibrant and interesting to discuss with. Recently I’ve also been promoted to a moderator as this particular subreddit has a different policy on this issue to get around the potential abuse. This is a complex issue so I won’t go into it at this point as I simply wanted to mention that I ended up getting mod powers.

Now, there’s also a frequent topic of discussion on the subject of “Anarcho”-Capitalists who often come over from other parts of reddit, complain about the anti-capitalist sentiment of the Anarchism subreddit and usually proceed to downvote all pro-socialist articles and submit pro-capitalist articles which are quickly downvoted. Nobody has ever been banned or moderated in any other way for doing this as we prefer to let the moderation happen naturally through the reddit system by the community.

We always had the possibility of moderation in case obvious problems occurred, such as spam accounts. Fortunately, the automated moderation of reddit never made this an issue, so most that the mods ever did was to unban people and posts mistakenly caught by the spam-filter. However just yesterday, this exact dilemma presented itself to me, as I caught one of the latest “Anarcho”-Capitalists to join had been obviously gaming the reddit system for his own purposes.

Now I had three options. The easy one would be to simply start banning his accounts from /r/Anarchism using my moderator powers. Another one would be to report the user to the Reddit moderators themselves for them to take action. However none of them felt right. Using either, would mean that I would have to use authoritarian means to solve the problem and this is something I wanted to avoid. So what is left for an Anarchist to do? Name & Shame.

Why use this method? Simply because I believe that someone who is so interested in making his position look right to an unsuspecting audience will be particularly susceptible to public humiliation once his underhanded tactics were brought to the fore. Not only that, but it would also provide the evidence to use against him pointing to his “public approval” in the form of upvotes as an argument as he was known to do.

And it didn’t take long. Just today I noticed all his accounts have been deleted along with his main one. True, I cannot know for sure that it was indeed him and not the Reddit moderators that finally caught up with him, but as he stopped writing soon after I called him out on the sockpuppetry and he also received scolding PMs from his fellow AnCaps I believe it must have been his own decision.

For me, this was a great example of how moderation of a community can happen even without authoritarian means such as moderation or banning.It shows that even in an online forum with anonymous aliases, where very little outside IRL crimes can get back to bite you in the arse, peer-pressure can be enough to force someone who misbehaved to voluntary “exile”. It shows that simply by public condemnation or activities we wish to discourage, the community can moderate itself and avoid “benevolent dictators” or a bureaucracy.

The sad part in all of this, is all the people who, when reported, jumped in to his defence. Accusations of me bring an “Alarmist”, “Propagandist” and whatnot started flying, even in the face of undeniable evidence of wrongdoing and no actual “force” from my end. It is sad that the simple act of trying to direct peer pressure to a good cause (ie, stopping abuse of the system) must be labeled as “Propaganda” or other such nonsense. This is like the fear of public opinion I was talking about before which in my mind is an excuse for wanting to act like a jerk or of preferring to use authoritarian means.

For me, this experiment in libertarian action has been a success and gives me faith that if this can work even in an environment where peer-pressure is weak by design, it can surely work wonders in real life.

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Email: Divided between Communism and Anarchism

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A reader contacts me about his dichotomy between communism and anarchism. I think his PoV deserves some more publicity as it points, I believe, to a common question most outside the scene have.

red red red flags
Image via Wikipedia

Recently someone sent me an email letting me know that he likes the content of the Division by Zer0 (Thanks!). Along with his email, he sent some of his own musings which I found interesting enough to deserve some extra publicity. So I got his permission to post them on the blog. Enjoy.

Why I’m divided between “communism” and “anarchism”

By Scott

I have been, for the last few years of my life, moving radically leftward, from my rather innocuous beginnings as a “Trotskyist” to simply a “Marxist” to being labeled a “Left-Communist” to where I am now, which is on the fence between “communist” and “anarchist”. Both sides have their influences; the “communist” side has given me a strong respect for Marx’s historical analyses, as well as his critiques of the Capitalist system, among other things, while the “anarchist” side has given me the example to live by, for many anarchists are “lifestyle” anarchists, living their lives as withdrawn from the capitalist system as possible. Their world-wide actions (notably the recent “unrest” in Greece, along with the French riots a few years ago) have made world powers shake with fear, governments almost collapse, and the entire world watched as cars burned and the streets were controlled by police no more.

So what am I to do?

I believe that the best solution is simply to ignore these labels and be reminded of what is important: ending capitalism’s reign of terror. All who oppose the horrors of capitalism must work together under that banner, not as “communists”, not as “anarchists”, but as people who believe in the survival of humanity, and who believe that humanity cannot survive under the conditions of imperialism, oppression and slavery. What you want to add to that (from environmentalism to animal rights to “power to the people” to whatever else) is up to you. But we who oppose capitalism must not be divided by these ideological differences. Even the most dogmatic of communists from the same party cannot agree on everything, so why should we try? Instead, we should act. An action carries only the message that is put behind it, and a Leninist and an anarchist can both protest against imperialism in the 3rd world. They can both protest against the treatment of workers in many workplaces. They can both agree that community activism is a good thing. So why can’t they work together? We’ll sort out our differences (in a comradely fashion) when capitalism is no longer our enemy. Until that time, though, we must focus on our common struggles.

Truth is that I’ve had similar thought myself but the more I read and interact with Marxist-Leninists, the more stark the differences become between us. While theoretically what Scott says seems reasonable, the problem appear very soon once one tries to actually cooperate as it’s all a matter of how each movement tries to go about bringing down Capitalism.

The biggest difference imho is how one side (M-L) wants a vanguard party to lead the struggle while the other wants the revolution to occur through spontaneous and decentralized actions of the workers. There can be no agreement on this point. Anarchists cannot commit to promoting a vanguard party and M-L very often refuse to support and occasionally oppose struggle which is not led by them.

It is exactly because the methods by which we try to achieve the future society will make or break the revolution that there can be no cooperation when there’s a fundamental difference in tactics. It is exactly because the difference in tactics between Anarchists is not fundamental that they generally cooperate while on the other hand distance themselves from Marxist-Leninists and Rothbardians.

So as nice it would be for all of us to cooperate to bring about a better world, there’s also a reason why this doesn’t generally happen. The best we can do instead is patiently explain and convince people that our tactics are the ones that can work.

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Is Public Opinion oppressive?

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Will taking away laws defined by the state turn society into a totalitarian nightmare as Orwell had thought. I point out why this is scaremongering and highly unlikely.

Public Opinion
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The Barefoot Bum posts a passage from George Orwell criticizing Anarchism for its apparent tendency for transparent totalitarianism. For Orwell and TBB, people acting as per the social norms is the worst kind of dictatorship, while having actual dictators who tell you what you cannot do is “obviously” far superior, because among the things you can do, you have more freedom.

First, lets take a step back and see how our current society works. Is it true that people in the current society only live according to what they cannot do? Do they abide by the few restrictions and then go wildly in all directions on everything else? Even a casual observation of society shows the falsity of such a view.

Truth is, people do currently abide by social norms and public opinion to a large degree. Do you see people running naked around? Do you see people making physical contact with strangers (at least in western society)? There’s a lot of things people do not do, even though the freedom is there. Is this totalitarianism? Of course some people still do “eccentric” acts even when it goes against the public opinion, but it is a baseless assertion to claim that the same would not happen in Anarchism. Why not?

In fact, there is nothing that would stop this. A social rules and laws are not black and white. It’s not that we have some definite laws and then freedom. It’s that we have a gradual scale of rules which move in the intensity of social disapproval. We start from simple etiquette, progress through unwritten rules and eventually reach the definite “laws” that one is not allowed to break. All the rules in this scale are decided via public opinion. Yes. including Laws. Laws do not spring up from nothingness, nor are they inherent rules of the universe that some “bright minds” have discovered.

The distinguishing thing is that the power to decide the unbreakable rules in an authoritarian system (such as any statist system, from Representative Democracy to a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship) is granted only to a privileged few. The original and basic laws that will be passed (such as respect for human life etc) will be based on pre-existing social rules of the same type and thus will seem natural, but many of the rest of the laws will be decided arbitrarily by the ruling elite and may even come in opposition to the public opinion. The rest of the social norms, such as etiquette or unwritten rules will remain in the enforcement of the public, as has always been the case.

Now the fallacy that Orwell is commiting is to assert that if the ruling elite is taken away, if the power to decide the laws is taken away from the few, then all social rules will become laws. That is, people will start treating rules of etiquette with the same contempt and opposition as murder. This is the only way that one can be forced out of eccentricity and conform with every rule the public opinion decides.

But this is absurd. There is nothing to make us believe that if the power to decide and enforce the strictest rules (laws) in a society is decentralized, there will be no gradual scale and no freedom anymore. This is a mental jump that just makes no sense to take.

In Anarchism then, the only difference from an authoritarian system is who hold the power to decide and enforce the laws. The statist will tell you that it’s better for the enlightened few to make those decisions but I don’t think I need to point out the utopianism of the  “enlightened few” concept. The Anarchist will tell you that since laws are in any case taken from what the public opinion already does, it makes no sense to take this power away from the people.

To do so is to simply invite abuse and stagnation into our society. Abuse from those who would pass arbitrary laws only to benefit themselves and stagnation from making it difficult to modify the laws when public opinion does not agree with them in the same intensity anymore (for example a law becoming an unwritten rule, such as in the case of nudity.)

To allow the public to decide its rules is not to have absolute conformity with the public opinion as this is impossible for the non-major things. For public opinion includes every one of us and all of us. The less important the act, the more diverse and therefore weak this “public opinion” becomes.

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