Gift, Trade, Theft, Choice and Compulsion after the rev.

[anarchomedia]

Hello this is my first post on rev left so go easy on me. I have been vaguely leftish for all of my adult life, ranging from commie to wet social democrat and back again. Over the past year or so I dropped the vagueness and put some serious thinking into my politics and realised that I was an Anarchist. Increasingly I am agnostic on the economics because to me the nature of the beast is coercion and not so much greed and anyway greed is toothless without coercion. The epitome of the beast is state and government and it don't matter that much whether its a red or a blue state, the state is the state and it is the enemy all people, especially the working class. I reckon the state is finally on its way out or if it isn't then humanity is on its way out. Things are fast coming to a head, the final face off between liberty and slavery. So I am optimistic but I got some worries about what happens after. What happens to the non-cooperators? I mean those that just don't get the communal thing, I don't mean the big boss men or the politicians, fuck them they can hang, I mean just the ordinary people who want to make a living. Those that choose to do the an-cap thing or similar.

[Blake's Baby]

Welcome to RevLeft.

Well, the 'An-Caps' I argue with tell me that it's the socialists that are the problem - in their post-state utopia, we'd be free to form our communes, and they'd be free to have their 'An-Cap' micro-states, and everything would be hunky-dory.

I tell them that's fine, as long as they respect our 'traditions' we'll respect theirs. So, when they come to our communities they have to pay for things, as that's how they do things, and when we go to theirs, we can take things, because that's how we do things. Somehow, that doesn't seem to sit right with them, because all of a sudden it's obvious that it's them imposing their property laws on us that is the problem.

Production is social. All wealth has been produced by humans - not by this human or that human (because to make the pot you have to mine the clay using a spade made by a guy who got a bit of wood from someone else and some metal that was forged by some people who got it form someone else that was smelted by some other people; after you cut the clay, you take it along the road that was made by yet more people to the building that was built by other people where you put the clay on a wheel made by other people powered by electricity generated by other people and all the time the energy that you're personally using comes from the food you've eaten that someone else prepared - you're too busy fetching clay to make your own lunch - that was grown by yet more people; the kiln that you use was built by other people, the fuel for the kiln was collected by other people, the road that you take the pots to the market along was built by other people, the space or building that houses the market was cleared or built by other people, the interactions you have with other people in the market are in a language created and negotiated by other people - and the pots are 'yours' because 'your' labour created them? I dont think so) but by humans as a group, by society. One human being is not a viable unit of species survival, so any social theory that starts from 'the individual' is a ridiculous abstraction.

'Individual labour' is a nonsense, even if a human goes somewhere where no humans have ever been a creates everything from scratch - they can't create themself from scratch, they are still the product of the society that originally created them and the labour of all those people that fed and clothed and taught and healed and protected them over the years still counts. Every person is a product of society.

So, what happens is, we don't allow the 'An-Caps' to expropriate the social product from society as a whole, any more than we let the capitalists do it. The revolution is not just against the state, it's against property too, because property is the process of expropriating from the 'common wealth'.

[anarchomedia]

Blake's baby - Thank you for the welcome and for your interesting answer. Your description of production of course is correct and I am familiar with that understanding not least from my own observations. I recently caught a similar description of production from an libertarian / an-cap called David Friedman. It would seem that an-caps are actually not in denial of the cooperative nature of production but only disagree on how the accounting should be done.

The way I see it all the economic *isms are all about authority over stuff and the exchange of stuff. Capitalism is just defined authority and defined exchange of stuff, communism is just fuzzy authority and fuzzy exchange of stuff.

Defined property and exchange is inefficient and cumbersome because of the accounting overhead needed to keep everything defined but does have the advantage of making disputes easy to solve - its most sensible use then is in environments lacking in love and trust.

Fuzzy property and exchange is efficient because of low or non-existent accounting overhead and also because exchanges need not be synchronous but it does make disputes harder to resolve when they happen - its most sensible use then is in environments wealthy in love and trust.

Love is the key to knowing where you should be on the left-right economic axis with whom you are dealing.

Ronald McDonald would be quite happy to put you in the meatgrinder for hamburger meat if he thought he could get away with it so with him you should be a capitalist and insist on clearly defined written contracts - no love environment.

With, for example, you wife or child, assuming you have a non-dysfunctional relationship, you can be free to be a commie - big love environment.

What this means is, to be realistic, in practice you should be a capitalist AND a communist. Just treat them as tactics to use according to the situation.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Welcome.

Increasingly I am agnostic on the economics because to me the nature of the beast is coercion and not so much greed and anyway greed is toothless without coercion.Most Marxists and class-focused anarchists don't see "greed" as the problem or reason for opposition to capitalism; we tend to see it as a system of exploitation and control - the capitalists benefit from the system but really can't control how the system works and so greedy or not, capitalists have to compete and exploit and drive down wages or else they are pushed out of the market by someone or some other group that will.

So I don't see "coercion" as counter posed to "economics", rather coercion is necessary in order for a market system to work and for the working class to be exploited. What is coercion in the absence of a reason for it? If coercion was only about power, why is coercion used on people to condition them for a specific kind of work, why aren't the rich and powerful and large companies coerced? Our states and the coercion they use is directly tied to maintaining the social conditions and order for trade and labor to be done. Navy's were important to open ports and protect trade routes. In the early modern period the main use of coercion against common people was to enclose them off land and force them into capitalist labor by making being a "vagabond" a crime.


The epitome of the beast is state and government and it don't matter that much whether its a red or a blue state, the state is the state and it is the enemy all people, especially the working class.But why? What purpose do states serve? How did they come about and for what reasons?

Power for the sake of power would make no sense considering that bourgeois states look different than states under feudalism and so on. Why have these variations - why don't all states just look like North Korea or have a King if the point is merely control for the sake of it.


So I am optimistic but I got some worries about what happens after. What happens to the non-cooperators? I mean those that just don't get the communal thing, I don't mean the big boss men or the politicians, fuck them they can hang, I mean just the ordinary people who want to make a living. Those that choose to do the an-cap thing or similar.This is another place where economics comes in as far as my view. Living cooperatively isn't a sort of aesthetic or lifestyle choice; we produce cooperatively right now, but the problem is that the collective, cooperatives of workplaces and shipping and distribution etc, are all controlled by private entities or people for the interest of increasing privately held wealth surpluses created by that collective effort. When you look at the state in bourgeois countries, often they can't touch that private capital sphere of social power - it's held by a bunch of corporate fiefdoms - this is part how parliamentary systems protect the economic power in society from the rest of the population. At any rate, so for the most part capitalism collectivises tons of people into a large production process. The goal of Marxists and many anarchists is to encourage and help workers to take control and cooperatively reshape that process themselves.

Socially, there's no reason people can't live anyway they want as long as they are not holding power over others or hurting others directly. So people could arrange their communities as a big long-house where everyone sleeps in a big room together or indusvidual dwellings or a dorm-like community or whatever. I think they will tend to want to live cooperatively because it would reduce the amount of labor needed to live a good life and since relations would be mutually benifical (rather than exploitative).

[anarchomedia]

The market always exists and it exists everywhere, transactions can be voluntary or coerced but there are always transactions. Coerced transactions are less efficient over all but allow the coercer to get more out of transaction than they would otherwise. The state is the ultimate institution of coercion; it is by definition a self-legitimised local monopoly on force. In a market where voluntary transactions dominate those that work will be enriched more than those that don't, so the workers should get richer. Capital is just a representation of wealth made by labour. Those that work should then accumulate capital. The state is the institution for redistributing through coercion wealth from the working people to the non-working people. The non-working people having unjustly acquired the capital of the workers use that capital to maintain the coercive apparatus of the state to continously transfer capital from the workers to what we now can call the capitalists. What we call the 'capitalist' class are nothing without the state. If there is a state there will always be a capitalist class of non-working people taking from the working people. Red or blue that is the nature and function of the state.

So after the state we should aim for a just society which can only happen if the market transactions are mostly voluntary, gifting and trading, rather than state-type transactions, theft. If some us for some misguided ideological reason start coercing transactions then we will soon end up with same kind of unjust exploitation that we are in revolt over now.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Moved to OI as this is a discussion of an.-capialism.

[Revolution starts with U]

No, the market has not always existed.
No, economics is not a science. There isn't an economist in the world that predicts the economy better than chance. Capitalist economics is the homeopathy of the social sciences.
Google "debunking economics" for a good intro.

Feudalism didn't have a bureaucratic state, is what we think of as a state, it was more like a quasi-private legitimate use of force. Yet it was coercive, arguably moreso than the modern state

[anarchomedia]

I don't mean market in the sense of a particular marketplace but in the agorist sense of the sum of all transactions. So yes the market has always existed and exists everywhere. When some hunter-gatherers 'agree' to share the spoils of the hunt then that is a market-transaction in the most general sense. All exchanges be they gifts, trades or thefts are part this market.

[Blake's Baby]

No it hasn't, no it doesn't, no it isn't.

There are something like 17 different ways that anthropologists have identified for physical goods to be distributed. If what you mean by 'the market has always existed' is 'humans have always given each things for some reason' then yes, that's true, but it's also as politically and economically meaningful as saying 'humans have always eaten stuff'. It's utterly banal as an explanation of anything.

[anarchomedia]

:confused: Funny reactions. Oh well. Is this wrong (and why)? Voluntary gifts most virtuous. Voluntary trade next most virtuous. Involuntary transactions for example theft least virtuous (actually evil).

Would work be properly valued if the market (sorry I can't think of another word that means market but isn't the word market) was mostly free from involuntary transactions?

[Jimmie Higgins]

:confused: Funny reactions. Oh well. Is this wrong (and why)? Voluntary gifts most virtuous. Voluntary trade next most virtuous. Involuntary transactions for example theft least virtuous (actually evil).

Would work be properly valued if the market (sorry I can't think of another word that means market but isn't the word market) was mostly free from involuntary transactions?Yes, but then the capitalist free market couldn't function. For most of history any trade was based on equivalencies, not trying to generate profit - people traded one thing for that thing, not for some extra value that could be derived from the trade. It was simply: our villiage doesn't have these resources or skills but we have these other things so let's figure out what would be worth your while for a trade.

Trade has existed to some extent as far as we know - but people making increased wealth on the market is a little newer - and soceties which primarily function through the accumulation of wealth and exchange over use-value is very recent.

Capitalism as a system was only able to thrive because of compulsion - first through closing off non-market means of subsistance, the commons and feudal arragements of pesant labor. Then through forced labor both in europe to compel the peasants and plebians to sell their labor as well as direct slave labor of Africans and Indigenous people elsewhere.

Even if the current government was overthrown, if a system based on accumulation through profits would still be inherently driven to exploit labor because this is where surplus wealth is created for the capitalists. Over time this would simply recreate the kinds of capitalist states we know and the employers who best (not necissarily hardest or most brutally, but most efficiently) exploited their workers would still come out on top and begin to domninate - eventually causing them to have the need of some kind of state power to ensure that workers don't revolt and competators play by the rules that you want.

[Blake's Baby]

:confused: Funny reactions. Oh well...

Really? I take it you've never met a communist before.


Is this wrong (and why)? Voluntary gifts most virtuous. Voluntary trade next most virtuous. Involuntary transactions for example theft least virtuous (actually evil)...

No 'theft' isn't 'evil', and 'voluntary gifts' aren't 'virtuous', it's entirely context dependent.

I could 'voluntarily' give you a burger knowing it was laden with fat and contributing to your heart condition. Is that 'virtuous'?

You could withold medicine from me because you 'owned' it, even though you didn't need it, and I would have to steal it from you to stay alive. Is this 'evil'?

Your categories are meaningless.


Would work be properly valued if the market (sorry I can't think of another word that means market but isn't the word market) was mostly free from involuntary transactions?

What do you mean by 'would work be properly valued'? What is the 'value' of work?

[anarchomedia]

Yes, but then the capitalist free market couldn't function. For most of history any trade was based on equivalencies, not trying to generate profit - people traded one thing for that thing, not for some extra value that could be derived from the trade. It was simply: our villiage doesn't have these resources or skills but we have these other things so let's figure out what would be worth your while for a trade.

Trade has existed to some extent as far as we know - but people making increased wealth on the market is a little newer - and soceties which primarily function through the accumulation of wealth and exchange over use-value is very recent.

Capitalism as a system was only able to thrive because of compulsion - first through closing off non-market means of subsistance, the commons and feudal arragements of pesant labor. Then through forced labor both in europe to compel the peasants and plebians to sell their labor as well as direct slave labor of Africans and Indigenous people elsewhere.

Even if the current government was overthrown, if a system based on accumulation through profits would still be inherently driven to exploit labor because this is where surplus wealth is created for the capitalists. Over time this would simply recreate the kinds of capitalist states we know and the employers who best (not necissarily hardest or most brutally, but most efficiently) exploited their workers would still come out on top and begin to domninate - eventually causing them to have the need of some kind of state power to ensure that workers don't revolt and competators play by the rules that you want.
Yes everything you say here is correct in my opinion except that last paragraph, well intentioned but not 100% on the money if you will pardon the pun. There is an implicit contradiction in correctly asserting that the unfair distribution of reward for work comes from the capitalists soliciting the coercive powers of the state to ensure their dominance but then suggesting that this would happen anyway without coercive distortions of the market. Why would capitalists bother with the state if they didn't need it?

[Blake's Baby]

EDITTED as you're not a Marxist (or indeed an Anarchist) so we need to get some basic theory out of the way.

Capitalists need a state but more than that, there can't be capitalism without a state. They don't just need to set it up, the fact that capitalists exist means there must be a state.

A state is the organisation that defends a particular set of property relations - Engels, I think it was (though it might have been Marx, it doesn't matter), said that in the last analysis the state was 'men armed in defence of property relations'.

As capitalism is impossible without a mechanism to ensure property rights, and as those property rights produce classes (some have, some have not), and as a state is a form of social organisation to defend the status quo (ie the 'rights' of the powerful), then the existence of capitalists as in your example, means that property exists (obviously, capitalists aredefined by a particular relationship to property), and the existence of property means that classes and the state follow as links of an inevitable chain. You have to take them as a package, capitalists and capitalism = property and the state.

From an Anarchist point of view, as capitalism is a class sytem and therefore a system of social hierarchy and control, it imposes the illegitimate authority of those who 'have' on those who 'have not' (incidently, this is why there can never be a 'free' contract in a property system). Either way, a class system is necessarily a system of oppression, and a class system relies on a property system, so the existence of property itself is a cause of oppression.

Therefore, it is impossible to be both 'for' capitalism and 'against' the state, that's like being 'for' gravity but 'against' weight.

[anarchomedia]

Um I want to abolish the government and help create a voluntarist non-hierarchical society of peers, how am I not an anarchist? :confused: Have the damn statist doublethinkers gone and mutated the meaning of Anarchism again?

Capitalism - Okay using your definition of capitalism then I am all for its abolishment.

[Blake's Baby]

Is there property in your 'anarchist' society? If there is, I think that the anarchists here (who represent the real currents of anarchism that have actually existed over the last 160 years, not some weird Rothbardian cult dreamed up 30 years ago) would argue that you're not an anarchist. Property creates hierarchy - haves and have nots; this hierarchy (the class sytem) is a power-relationship (because people need to eat, and the haves can then control the have-nots through access to the essentials of life). These power-relationships are what anarchism seeks to destroy. As you cannot be both for, and for the destruction of, power-realtionships, you cannot be an anarchist and also believe there should be property. 'Anarchist' is a word to describe someone with a particular philosophy. If you don't ascribe to that particular philosophy (if, for example, you believe that property-rights are more important than solidarity with fellow-beings) then it's illegitimate to use that word to describe yourself. As you seem to think that property is more important than people, then you're arguing contrary to a pretty fundamental conception of anarchist thought. Ergo, if you do believe that, you aren't an anarchist.

Of course, if I've got you wrong, then maybe you are.

[anarchomedia]

Blake's baby - common or private there is always property in any -ism. Would you be against private property if it was in practice evenly dispersed? I think the state is the main culprit for extreme wealth concentrations as it always steals from the many and gives to the few. Absent the state I think property would tend to be much more evenly distributed. If every worker owns his own house instead of renting from a landlord how is that worse than every worker owning each other's houses equally? If it is worse is it a big deal really?

I do agree wealth disparity is bad and making all wealth the common property of all would be one way to fix it, but it might not be the only way or the best way, I remain unconvinced on that.

Since you are into common property could you give me a couple of hundred quid to help with the whole eating thing? Thanks

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not into 'common property'. I'm into the abolition of property.

[anarchomedia]

You must be using a different definition of property than I am familiar with. Property rights just means the right to use something. If you abolish the right to use something then how can you use it? Common property means the right of use is shared by all people. Private property means the right of use is just for some particular individuals. Do you claim your body is the common property of all or do you claim your body is your private property? Lets see how commie you really are..

[Blake's Baby]

My body isn't any sort of property. Try to 'use' it and I stab you. I don't 'use' it either, I am it, there is no 'property called body' that is seperate from 'entity called Blake's Baby'. They are one and the same thing, not one thing inhabiting or using the other.

Property means that an object has rules attached to it, that it can be possessed (and therefore, dispossessed, repossessed, disposed of, alienated, bought and sold, in short owned). After the revolution there will be no property because none of these things will be possible. Things will be used. That is all. No sense of 'ownership' will attach to them, any more than one can 'own' air or sunshine.

[anarchomedia]

If you gave away a kidney to save some one's life would that kidney still be you? Could you ask for it back? I don't understand your strange squemishness about using words as they are normally used.

After the revolution property will certainly be redistributed (hopefully more fairly) but will not cease to exist. Hopefully at least land and natural resources will become common property but I'm fairly sure most other stuff will remain in some sense private property, or possessed to use more commie-friendly language, even if its distribution becomes more decentralised.

[Blake's Baby]

If you gave away a kidney to save some one's life would that kidney still be you? ...

If something stopped being part of my body, would it still be my body? Is that seriously what you're asking?


...
Could you ask for it back? I don't understand your strange squemishness about using words as they are normally used...

Property means something is owned. The main definitions of 'property':
1. a. Something owned; a possession.
b. A piece of real estate: has a swimming pool on the property.
c. Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks.
d. Possessions considered as a group.

2. The right of ownership; title.
3. An article, except costumes and scenery, that appears on the stage or on screen during a dramatic performance.
4. a. A characteristic trait or peculiarity, especially one serving to define or describe its possessor.
b. A characteristic attribute possessed by all members of a class. See Synonyms at quality (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/quality).

5. A special capability or power; a virtue: the chemical properties of a metal.

I assume you're not talking about theatrical 'props', nor chemical properties; so, you must be talking about 'property' in the senses of legal title to ownership.


It is 'private' property - owned privately, exclusively. It is 'state' property - owned by the state. It is 'common' property - owned by many together. After the revolution there will be no ownership, only use.


...
After the revolution property will certainly be redistributed (hopefully more fairly) but will not cease to exist. Hopefully at least land and natural resources will become common property but I'm fairly sure most other stuff will remain in some sense private property, or possessed to use more commie-friendly language, even if its distribution becomes more decentralised.

Not at all - if property is not abolished then of necessity another class system will emerge. I'm certainly not going through the mess of revolution for another class system, we already have one of them.

If you think there will be 'in any sense' private property after the revolution, there is no reason to have the revolution, because you support, not the overthrow of existing social conditions, but a slight tweaking to the system we have.

[anarchomedia]

Definition of property - (Oxford dictionary)
noun (plural properties)



1 [mass noun] a thing or things belonging to someone; possessions collectively: she wanted Oliver and his property out of her flat the stolen property was not recovered
a building or buildings and the land belonging to it or them: he’s expanding now, buying property [count noun]: the renovation of council properties
(properties) shares or investments in property: properties ran into profit-taking, with Haslemere 176p
Law - the right to the possession, use, or disposal of something; ownership: rights of property
old-fashioned term for prop



2an attribute, quality, or characteristic of something: the property of heat to expand metal at uniform rates

In red is the defo I am working with regarding property. So if you say property will be abolished that just sounds to me like you think no one will have the right to possess, use or dispose of anything...

[Blake's Baby]

Pretty much. You have a bike that's been given to you to use by the rest of society (you didn't 'pay' for it). When you're done with it it reverts to the general use of society. You don't 'posses' it, you don't 'dispose' of it (you don't destroy it, you don't try to pass it off to someone else as your property that you're transfering to them), you just use it (like you use air and sunlight without either of them ever being your 'property').

I think you may be mistaking the proposition that the right to the 'possession, use or disposal' of property means that any of those actions renders that acted on property; but in fact, it's the combination of the three that's important. Using something doesn't make it your (or anyone else's) property, I regualrly use things that don't belong to me (roads, TV signals, air, language...) but I can't posses or dispose of them. In classical economics 'ownership' contains three rights, usus (use), abusus (abuse, alienation),and fructus (fruit, product). If you don't have those three rights - the right to use something, the right to detroy or get rid of it, and the right to the products of it, then you don't 'own' it; and after the revolution, you won't have those rights. So you won't own anything, and neither will anyone else, because no-one will have those classical property rights.

[anarchomedia]

Fine but I call that common property not no property and I am cool with that but what I am not cool with is if our society wants to impose this way on others who don't get it. That's the thing you see not everyone is going to want to do things that way. They are not going to want to come home and find a whole bunch of strangers just moved in and they have to go and find some other place to sleep until the strangers are finished using it. They are not going to want to finish work and find they have to walk home because someone else is using their car. Some people really do need to own the stuff they use and bless them they are quite prepared to work hard to earn the right to that ownership.. The whole point of this thread is for me to be reassured these people aren't going to get wasted just because they like owning stuff.

[Blake's Baby]

'wasted' - unlikely.

'disappointed' - maybe.

If you want to 'own' stuff, my advice is fight the revolution tooth and nail. Because afterwards you won't 'own' shit, though you'll be able to use stuff you never thought possible (and will never have access to in a propertarian system). But, that's not what you want, you want to be able to say 'mine, not yours'. And that's what we're all about destroying.

[anarchomedia]

Alright but I think there won't be one monolithic revolution, I think there will be an uncountable number of revolutions happening at different times with different people in different places and the multitude of new societies that emerge will all be coloured by different ideas and ways of doing. I just don't see the an-com vision being even slightly significant in the near term, at least not anywhere near me in rural England. I think where I live will take an an-cap and / or mutualist turn but full blown an-com will be utterly inconcievable for 99.999% of people in my part of the world. I am sure I am the only an-com for 100 miles in every direction...

[NGNM85]

Is there property in your 'anarchist' society? If there is, I think that the anarchists here (who represent the real currents of anarchism that have actually existed over the last 160 years, not some weird Rothbardian cult dreamed up 30 years ago) would argue that you're not an anarchist.

Anarchism is absolutely opposed to property, in the sense of 'capital'; state supported monoplies on objects, etc., used to exploit people for profit. Anarchism is not philosophically opposed to; 'property', in the sense of personal posessions, as you go on to suggest. That is utter nonsense.

[Blake's Baby]

Alright but I think there won't be one monolithic revolution, I think there will be an uncountable number of revolutions happening at different times with different people in different places and the multitude of new societies that emerge will all be coloured by different ideas and ways of doing. I just don't see the an-com vision being even slightly significant in the near term, at least not anywhere near me in rural England. I think where I live will take an an-cap and / or mutualist turn but full blown an-com will be utterly inconcievable for 99.999% of people in my part of the world. I am sure I am the only an-com for 100 miles in every direction...

I'm prepared to bet you're not. I can't think of any part of England with no Anarchist-Communists within 100 miles in any direction.

Tell me which county you're in and I can find some within 100 miles I'll bet you.




Anarchism is absolutely opposed to property, in the sense of 'capital'; state supported monoplies on objects, etc., used to exploit people for profit. Anarchism is not philosophically opposed to; 'property', in the sense of personal posessions, as you go on to suggest. That is utter nonsense.

If you mean 'toothbrushes' then I agree, no-one is suggesting that we'll all share a toothbrush. But is it that what anyone means when they say 'property'?

[Conscript]

If you mean 'toothbrushes' then I agree, no-one is suggesting that we'll all share a toothbrush. But is it that what anyone means when they say 'property'?

You apparently do, you brought up bikes. That is not property, it's a commodity. It looks like you're arguing for a form of rationing of use values based on whether you're 'using' something or not, rather than just abundance of goods and treating them as possessions, distinct from property.

[Red Banana]

If you mean 'toothbrushes' then I agree, no-one is suggesting that we'll all share a toothbrush. But is it that what anyone means when they say 'property'?

You'd be surprised how many people think we want to seize their toothbrushes and iPods when we say we want to abolish private property. I've always had to go through lengths to explain the difference between private and personal property when talking to liberals.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm quite happy with the idea that after the revolution, I'll change my toothbrush more often because I won't be buying them any more, but I don't see them as being my 'property'. They're something I'll use and then discard. That's not 'property'.

Conscript - a bike is not a toothbrush. Even under capitalism there are communal bike schemes. I don't know what you plan to do with your bike, really, but unless you're inserting parts of it into yourself (or anyone else) I don't see what the problem is with sharing.

[anarchomedia]

Blake's baby - okay you probably right, I am probably not the only an-com within 100 miles, but I stand by my assertion that there are not enough to substantially lead the direction of the emerging new societies towards an-commism. Syndicalists will have more luck but even they are going to be outnumbered by those either trying to restore a 'better' capitalist state or just do capitalism without the state. Whichever vision is dominant not everyone is going to want to follow that vision. So we do need to figure a way that say commies, syndicalists and capitalists can interact peacefully. Actually capitalists and syndicaltists already do that in practice now so I think they will continue to do that after the rev. Us commies need to figure a way we can do that too or end up marginalised, isolated and finally withered out of effective existence.

I think we can do that but not if we have unrealistic expectations of being able to persuade everyone to sign up to a common property of all things.

[Blake's Baby]

Class consciousness develops in struggle. The development of both the Bolsheviks and the Anarcho-syndicalists in Russia between 1905-1917 was as a result of the working class taking action and the organisations responding to that. The creation of soviets wasn't part of anyone's programme, it was a practical activity undertaken by the working class that particularly the Bolsheviks, and a section of the Union for Anarcho-syndicalist Propaganda (the Golos Truda or 'Voice of Labour' group), came to see as the necessary form of the revolution.

It's not so much about persuading everyone to sign up to anything, it's about realising that the revolution will have a dynamic that won't necessarily conform to schemata of 'we will collectivise production of shoes but not of carrots, we will collectivise the provision of bicycles but not of toothpaste' or any such nonsense. The working class will make the revolution. We won't be pulling them along, we'll be trying to shape it from the inside. That won't be a question of compromising with capitalists to avoid being 'marginalised'.

[anarchomedia]

What happened between the bolsheviks and the makhnovists in the end? Exactly competing visions leading to conflict.
I would expect an stalinist to have a total contempt for the concept of free agreement but anarchists should know better, otherwise what's the fucking point?
It really not hard for communism to happen it can happen now, you just can't expect everyone to agree to do it if they don't agree which mostly they don't. Just do it with those that get it and let the rest do as they please.

[Blake's Baby]

I no longer have any idea what point you're making.

You started by saying that we have to find a way of working with capitalists to avoid being marginalised, now you're saying anarchists should form communes on their own because Stalinists don't understand them?

Read Kropotkin's 'Advice to Those About to Emigrate', also known as 'Small Communal Experiments and Why They Fail', that's my advice - http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1893/advice.htm

[anarchomedia]

Oh I am not suggesting making communes in distant lands or doing so in some other kind of social isolation in fact exactly the opposite.
The first thing is to overthrow the state. After that all sorts (an-caps, socialists, syndicalists, christian fundies, fascists, hedonists, greenies and so on) will be trying to make new societies. So while making close social organisations with those with very similar world views, an-coms in our case, we should also find ways to work with societies with different but non-hostile views too.

[Don't Swallow The Cap]

After that all sorts (an-caps, socialists, syndicalists, christian fundies, fascists, hedonists, greenies and so on) will be trying to make new societies. So while making close social organisations with those with very similar world views, an-coms in our case, we should also find ways to work with societies with different but non-hostile views too.For Communism to exist, it must be global.
You cannot simply have Communism in say North American and Fascism in the rest of the world. As well, I don't think that Fascism has any incarnations in which the state is non-existent

[Blake's Baby]

You can't overthrow 'the state' if you don't overthrow 'capitalism', and you can't overthrow capitalism unless you abolish 'property' so we're back at square one. Unless you abolish property, you will necessarily have a class system (because a class system is the reflection of a property system) and if you have a class sytem you will necessarily have a state (because a state is an automatic emanation of a class system).

As I've said elsewhere, to be against the state without being against capitalism is to be against weight but in favour of gravity. You're trying to abolish the symptoms while supporting the causes.

[anarchomedia]

ontheground - if anything has to be global to exist it will never happen. Funny no one ever says 'for fascism to exist it must be global!' or 'for capitalism to exist it must be global'. So that's bollocks for a start.

Blake's baby - Sorry your analysis is a huge fail. Class system's are function of the state not capitalism. The state is only 'a self-legitimised local monopoly on violence' - all you need to do to break up the state is break its monopoly and cut off its supply of funds. Capitalists had to do business with the state because if they didn't they wouldn't have a business. They will survive the fall of the state although absent the state market dynamics will swing away from favouring capital to favouring labour and so progressively their capital concentrations will disperse until most workers are also capitalists and most capitalists are also workers.

Post-state - Most people will trade an-cap style, but as capital disperses more and more evenly amongst the workers, capital intensive projects will require the cooperation between many, many capital owners and so an-capism will naturally give way to syndicalism as the main economic praxis. Gradually as syndicates and coops become the mainstream economic organisations they will for sake of reducing accounting overhead opt for a gift economy with trusted partners. At this point we are well past artificial scarcities even being thinkable let alone achievable. Wealth is so abundant that counting the cost of anything becomes just unnecessary and then global or near global communism will emerge.

[Blake's Baby]

Are you an American, Anarchmedia? You keep talking about England, but you write like all those teenage American An-Caps on Facebook. 'absent the state...' - do you mean 'without the state'?

So, anyway, you reject a class analysis of society, and think that capitalism is not a class system. Fair enough. I'll leave now, and let the Anarchists talk to you. It's been fun, if not particularly enlightening. But one last request - read this: http://www.infoshop.org/AnAnarchistFAQ

[Don't Swallow The Cap]

if anything has to be global to exist it will never happen. Funny no one ever says 'for fascism to exist it must be global!' or 'for capitalism to exist it must be global'. So that's bollocks for a start.Perhaps you may want to look at the qualities of a communist society. It of course is stateless, moneyless,classless ect.

I would say it would be quite difficult for such a society to exist amongst a group of hostile capitalist counties, given they they tend to be rather unkind to these sorts of movements. Thus, the need to organize some sort military or self-defense would arise, as the other nations would not care to play nice.

For this society to survive, it may wish to consider some trading partners. As it is moneyless, this may prove to be quite the fruitless endeavor. A national currency would likely follow.


Given these conditions I think it is pretty fair to say that a new state would be born out of necessity, kinda negating the whole stateless thing

[anarchomedia]

Blake - I'm English and I'm not on facebook. Oh and I'm nearly 40 years old, married and a parent. I guess you would make a poor sherlock holmes. I don't reject class analysis but my analysis has lead me to realise that the state is the primary driver of class distinction. I'm a freethinker and so don't get stuck on dogmatism. Free market capitalism without the distorting factor introduced by the state would result in workers accumulating capital and the hard distinction between the 'haves' and 'havenots' dissappearing. The problem with stateless capitalism is only the extra inefficiency introduced by the accounting overhead needed to keep property and exchange well defined. Stateless communism will have an efficiency advantage due to the absense of accounting overhead. In a stateless society it is possible for capitalistic, syndicalistic and communistic economies to coexist and cooperate all that is needed is for sensible interfaces to allow the different accounting models to interact. Actually that can happen and does even in the presence of the state. At this time in history communistic accounting is not very popular because few people are psychologically able to trust strangers. In the future this may change.

ontheground - Neither defence nor money require the state. They are activities that the state makes a high priority of capturing but they can and have been done without the state.

[NGNM85]

If you mean 'toothbrushes' then I agree, no-one is suggesting that we'll all share a toothbrush. But is it that what anyone means when they say 'property'?

Sometimes; yes. When Radicals use the word;'property', they are usually speaking exclusively in the sense of; 'capital', as opposed to simply something one posesses. What you're suggesting is something wholly different.


I'm quite happy with the idea that after the revolution, I'll change my toothbrush more often because I won't be buying them any more, but I don't see them as being my 'property'. They're something I'll use and then discard. That's not 'property'.

It's your property in the sense that it is your possession, but it is not capital.


Conscript - a bike is not a toothbrush. Even under capitalism there are communal bike schemes. I don't know what you plan to do with your bike, really, but unless you're inserting parts of it into yourself (or anyone else) I don't see what the problem is with sharing.

I don't think anyone suggested there's anything wrong with sharing, what people are taking issue with, myself included, is the idea that we are morally, or philosophically obligated to share bicycles, (That kinda sounds like a euphamism.) that they must be community bicycles. Not only is this assertion a substantial departure from the majority view, certainly among Anarchists, I don't find it remotely pursuasive.

[Don't Swallow The Cap]

:confused:

When has there been such a place?
Perhaps long before modern conditions were in play, but I don't think it be entirely relative to this situation.

[anarchomedia]

bitcoins, silver and gold are all stateless money. A modern example of stateless defence would be hezbollah in lebanon. Then there is Somalia.