Debating An-Caps and the like....

[Ahab Strange]

Not something limited to this forum, but I was reminded of this phenomenon when browsing through the OI board, bear with me:

When confronting various Libertarians and Free-Marketeers, we often level the criticism that a state of perfect competition or a free market in equilibrium has never been documented and inst at all how capitalism actually functions.

Their common riposte to this is ususally that the State intervenes and distorts the performance of the market, meaning it doesn't perform optimally. Many go as far as to say that True Capitalism *has never existed*.

Now, when people ask questions about Socialism and site things like the Soviet Union as examples of its shortcomings, we are quick to dismiss it, often along the same line of reasoning, i.e. That True Socialism Has Never Existed.

Now I know there are many who dispute the nature of the SU and just how Socialist it was or not, and I dont want to dig up that debate here. My bottom line is, are we guilty of using a kind of "theoretical virginity" argument to defend socialism, but use the same lack of historical examples to attack the Libertarian/An-cap model of a perfect free market?

[tuwix]

My strategy of discussion with that sort of guys is simple: as the majority of the free market definitions states a free market is impossible to exist because there is no market limited by nothing. There will always something that limits a market. Thus their ideology is idiocy because is based on something completely impossible. And they're idiots because they can't read definitions with understanding of them.

[Loony Le Fist]

I think we can draw a distinction between capitalism and socialism and explain why socialism can actually accomplish what it aims to do and why and capitalism is cannot.

First let's consider capitalism for a minute. Free-market evangelists will explain that capitalism is about having competition to keep prices low and therefore make things cheaper, more efficient and better for the consumer. On some occasions this construction comes true in practice. But let's consider what the interests of business owners are. Is competition good for individual business owners? What business owner wants competition? Capitalism is self-contradictory, because the aims of the individuals working in the system don't match up with the aims of the system as a whole--namely to keep prices low and efficient. Pure capitalism is a logically unsound.

Depending on your incarnation of socialism--it doesn't suffer from this problem. Everyone in a socialist system is working for the same goals. It no longer has the adversarial contradictions caused by individuals. The idea is that workers own and manage the means of production. Decisions are made democratically and collectively, instead of through adversarial decision making that works against the aims of a better society.

So if we are comparing the ideal state's of both systems, socialism is actually feasible theoretically, and capitalism is not. That is why it makes sense to talk about an ideal socialist state, and it makes no sense to talk about an ideal capitalist state.

When it comes to libertarians they themselves must concede that the state is required. You cannot have these so-called "free-markets" without government intervention because a government is required to set the rules. How would we distinguish between the so-called winners of this capitalist game from the losers? Libertarians must concede there must be some kind of a state. But their philosophy suffers from these problems, nonetheless. The less legal protection citizens have from private tyrannies the more these tyrannies will encroach on citizens. It is simply in the capitalist's interest to do so because it brings them profit. In the US it is grounds for a lawsuit for a company executive to make a decision that could lead to lower profits. A company executive sympathetic to workers is placed in the position of threat of tort and removal from their position if they don't do layoffs to increase profits.

Anarcho-capitalists are a different story. There are a lot of problems with the idea of having a lawless capitalist based society. There is a huge problem with the accumulation of wealth. And wealth is a multiplying factor. Though some have argued the contrary (and I welcome some more discussion on this) capitalism is a zero-sum game. Every winner means there is a loser. Eventually someone ends up winning all the chips. At that point you end up with totalitarianism to an unaccountable authority. It is basically rule by mafia.

[Krasnyy]

By definition, it's impossible to be an Anarcho-Capitalist, considering that Anarchism seeks to end all authority.
By definition, what one might call an "Anarcho-Capitalist" is just a Libertarian Capitalist, or a LibCap.

[Bombay]

Ask them if they support democracy. If you get rid of the state, all the power goes to the hands of private companies. And since the public can't control what the private companies do, democracy would be gone 100%. I'm sure they think the power goes to the hands of the people if there is no state. You don't need a counter argument for that. Just laugh at them :grin:

Another thing is that without state control, there would be monopolies and cartels worse than any state monopoly.

[Ahab Strange]

To play devils advocate here, they would argue that there would be less monopolization. They would argue that in a free market, any cartel forming to fix/raise prices artificially would be vulnerable to anyone who is able to undercut them and steal their business, so it would be a disincentive to monopolization.

I find anarcho-capitalism slippery as although it is based on free-market mysticism and some wishful thinking about human behaviors, some of its proponents do come across quite well and present some interesting arguments, arguments that need to be engaged with in detail I feel.

The fact that it exists on theoretical bubble can be quite seductive as anyone can go "look at our lovely snow white theoretical system, if only we had this then bad thing X or bad thing Y wouldn't occur".


More and more people thinking that more and more capitalism will help the world is a chilling prospect