Criticisms of "Anarcho-Capitalism"?

[Crisis of Democracy]

The title's fairly self-explanatory. I need some arguments/criticisms of "Anarcho-Capitalism"; feel free to be as lengthy as you like.

[Marxizm]

Well to me the main problem in my opinion with Anarcho-Capitalism is individualism is placed above all else essentially, leading to Social Darwinism, Survival of the Fittest, which may be effective, its incredibly immoral. The way I see it is do we want to live as bee's who share and work together, only attacking those who attack the hive? Or do we want to live as Spiders and kill our own to get ahead in life caring only of ourselves killing everything in our way for personal gain?

[Luís Henrique]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2632934&postcount=24

Luís Henrique

[Mr. Piccolo]

I am not too familiar with anarcho-capitalism given that it is a completely ahistorical theory. Capitalism has always been "statist" to one degree or another.

The best argument I can think of right now is, how would a non-state version of capitalism enforce contracts, private property, and other aspects of the capitalist system? What is stopping one set of capitalists from using violence to defeat their rivals and to eventually become a state entity?

[Collective Reasons]

It's difficult, since the proponents of anti-state capitalism generally understand economics in ways that simply avoid any of the usual critiques. The key to the debate is "exploitation," but you'll probably have to wrestle with their twisty logic and self-serving definitions to actually get on the same page with them enough to argue the question. For example, a common claim among capitalists is that, due to a "double inequality of value," all exchange profits all parties. Now, that means that one can, using the capitalist definition, "profit" while suffering catastrophic material losses. The capitalist economist and the capitalist bookkeeper require different lexicons. But you'll find cases where no amount of patient explanation will make that slide in meaning clear to the capitalists. In general, they won't respond to marxian terms with anything but misunderstanding and scorn, as a key function of their economic language is to inoculate them against precisely those critiques. I sometimes have a little better luck with Proudhon's terms, if only because they don't have talking point responses.

[tuwix]

The title's fairly self-explanatory. I need some arguments/criticisms of "Anarcho-Capitalism"; feel free to be as lengthy as you like.

I'd start to undermine a basis of their views that is free market. It's phenomenon impossible to exist according to its own definitions. You should cite a definition according to free market is impossible. Then if basis of ideology is false, then whole ideology is false.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Who are you arguing against, and for what reason?

I mean, I don't think political ideologies are like scientific theories in that you can set up a scattering experiment, look at the readouts and go, "oh well, it looks like ideology X is inconsistent with the data" (and yes, I know science is a bit more involved than that, but I'm simplifying in order to make a point without derailing the thread). Marxism includes the science of historical materialism, for example the explanation of how exchange value is formed (and to be honest, you could wail on most "anarcho-capitalists" for having a piss-poor understanding of value, and for saying things that would imply wild and unpredictable fluctuations of prices for everything, which are not actually observed), but Marxist socialism is this scientific understanding, plus a commitment to our own actual, material interest as workers, minorities etc.

What I'm trying to say is that your response depends on your audience. If you're talking to a member of the bourgeoisie, he won't be impressed by statements about how capitalism doesn't work - for him, it does, quite well in fact.

You could point out that anarchy, as generally understood my human beings except basement-dwelling fedora-wearers, is incompatible with capitalism, or markets and property of any form for that matter. You have to be ready to slog through a tedious argument about the use of the word in that case, though. I think it's generally pointless; everyone knows what "anarchism" means, and if some kid who's read too much Gibson and doesn't know his Bakunin from his Kropotkin doesn't, whatever.

If you're talking to a working-class person, just point out that, even though what the "anarcho-capitalists" advocate (on paper) is impossible, the state being required to protect private property, any society that came close to their ideas would still be capitalism, the thing that fucks them over daily.

[#FF0000]

Well to me the main problem in my opinion with Anarcho-Capitalism is individualism is placed above all else essentially, leading to Social Darwinism, Survival of the Fittest, which may be effective, its incredibly immoral.

Effective at what?


The way I see it is do we want to live as bee's who share and work together, only attacking those who attack the hive? Or do we want to live as Spiders and kill our own to get ahead in life caring only of ourselves killing everything in our way for personal gain?

Fortunately this isn't the choice human beings have to make.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well to me the main problem in my opinion with Anarcho-Capitalism is individualism is placed above all else essentially, leading to Social Darwinism, Survival of the Fittest, which may be effective, its incredibly immoral. The way I see it is do we want to live as bee's who share and work together, only attacking those who attack the hive? Or do we want to live as Spiders and kill our own to get ahead in life caring only of ourselves killing everything in our way for personal gain?

Socialism is pretty much the opposite of living in a hive.

I don't know, if you want to live in a hive there's always fascism.

I would moderate my response a bit but the number of people who think socialism is what Draper back in the day used to call "communionism" is out of control.

In fact let's quote the old bastard directly:

'4. “Communionism.” – In his 1930 article Max Eastman called this “the united-brotherhood pattern,” of “the gregarian or human-solidarity socialists” – “those yearning with a mixture of religious mysticism and animal gregariousness for human solidarity.” It should not be confused with the notion of solidarity in strikes, etc., and not necessarily identified with what is commonly called comradeship in the socialist movement or a “sense of community” elsewhere. Its specific content, as Eastman says, is a “seeking for submersion in a Totality, seeking to lose himself in the bosom of a substitute for God.”

Eastman is here pointing to the Communist Party writer Mike Gold; another excellent case is Harry F. Ward, the CP’s hardy clerical fellow-traveler, whose books theorize this kind of “oceanic” yearning for the shucking-off of one’s individuality. Bellamy’s notebooks reveal him as a classic case: he writes about the longing “for absorption into the grand omnipotency of the universe;” his “Religion of Solidarity” reflects his mistrust of the individualism of the personality, his craving to dissolve the Self into communion with Something Greater.

This strain is very prominent in some of the most authoritarian of the Socialisms-from-Above and is not seldom met in milder cases like the philanthropic elitists with Christian Socialist views. Naturally, this kind of “communionist” socialism is always hailed as an “ethical socialism” and praised for holding class struggle in horror; for there must be no conflict inside a beehive. It tends to flatly counterpose “collectivism” to “individualism” (a false opposition from a humanist standpoint), but what it really impugns is individuality.'

[RedKobra]

I once got into a debate with a fairly active Voluntarist activist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism and we barely got anywhere because from the off he refused to acknowledge that there was such a thing as human need. To him there are only wants, which is convenient because it enabled him to group everything from hunger to needing life saving surgery as mere desire and ergo a matter of the purest triviality to the passive onlooker. It seems to these people obligation is the purest form of evil.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I once got into a debate with a fairly active Voluntarist activist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism and we barely got anywhere because from the off he refused to acknowledge that there was such a thing as human need. To him there are only wants, which is convenient because it enabled him to group everything from hunger to needing life saving surgery as mere desire and ergo a matter of the purest triviality to the passive onlooker. It seems to these people obligation is the purest form of evil.


It ought to be legal to shoot such people in the liver, then refuse to do anything because you haven't entered into a contract to do it. And obviously he doesn't need medical attention, he just wants it.

Which is not to say that we should take a narrow view of needs; Marx himself takes a very broad view, and to reduce human need to mere survival is a dangerous thing for a socialist.

[RedKobra]

I wholeheartedly agree.

[Thirsty Crow]

The best argument I can think of right now is, how would a non-state version of capitalism enforce contracts, private property, and other aspects of the capitalist system? What is stopping one set of capitalists from using violence to defeat their rivals and to eventually become a state entity?
The answer is - inherent moral principles, and the fact that laborers under contract with them could legitimately seek better employment elsewhere. Because violence is fundamentally a state induced phenomenon and because fundamentally capitalists always seek to expand their operations so as to employ more people - and offer them better terms because they're smart to know that all workers are entrepreneurs in the making and react to such incentives with increased work effort and productivity.

If you're dealing with an unusually smart anarcho-procapitalist, they'll point out that voluntary humanitarian associations will take care of those underemployed and unemployed, to the happiness of all. I don't think I've ever come across a rationalization of the first point about violence though, but I raher wouldn't. Because all things considered - it is evident this is a fairy tale, from the mystified view of moral principles in relation to social relations, to the crude delusions about economic performance and effects of either regulated or unregulated at all capitalist production.

I mention both of these - regulated and unregulated - due to the fact that these folks consistently and persistently claim state intervention - of any kind - is either the only of most important source of the history of capitalist crises. As such, it is a kind of a bulletproof position, somewhat akin to what some communists claim - the analysis is untestable completely (more importantly, it is very, very far from plausible in both its assumptions and concrete arguments, e.g. about the FED in 2008 near meltdown) and proposals are not realizable within this system.

I should add that when I draw comparison with what some communists claim, I mostly mean those folks who have a standard retort to any perceivable crisis moment - "it is capitalism you see, there's no way out of this now". Telling anyone it's capitalism is productive only under a specific et of circumstances (e.g. explaining just how capitalist production is inherently crisis prone).

[Marxizm]

Effective at what?



Fortunately this isn't the choice human beings have to make.

Its efficient in the same sense that slavery is efficient. Its not efficient for the worker, but for the guy working him.


Socialism is pretty much the opposite of living in a hive.

I don't know, if you want to live in a hive there's always fascism.

I would moderate my response a bit but the number of people who think socialism is what Draper back in the day used to call "communionism" is out of control.

In fact let's quote the old bastard directly:

'4. “Communionism.” – In his 1930 article Max Eastman called this “the united-brotherhood pattern,” of “the gregarian or human-solidarity socialists” – “those yearning with a mixture of religious mysticism and animal gregariousness for human solidarity.” It should not be confused with the notion of solidarity in strikes, etc., and not necessarily identified with what is commonly called comradeship in the socialist movement or a “sense of community” elsewhere. Its specific content, as Eastman says, is a “seeking for submersion in a Totality, seeking to lose himself in the bosom of a substitute for God.”

Eastman is here pointing to the Communist Party writer Mike Gold; another excellent case is Harry F. Ward, the CP’s hardy clerical fellow-traveler, whose books theorize this kind of “oceanic” yearning for the shucking-off of one’s individuality. Bellamy’s notebooks reveal him as a classic case: he writes about the longing “for absorption into the grand omnipotency of the universe;” his “Religion of Solidarity” reflects his mistrust of the individualism of the personality, his craving to dissolve the Self into communion with Something Greater.

This strain is very prominent in some of the most authoritarian of the Socialisms-from-Above and is not seldom met in milder cases like the philanthropic elitists with Christian Socialist views. Naturally, this kind of “communionist” socialism is always hailed as an “ethical socialism” and praised for holding class struggle in horror; for there must be no conflict inside a beehive. It tends to flatly counterpose “collectivism” to “individualism” (a false opposition from a humanist standpoint), but what it really impugns is individuality.'

Im not saying being a Socialist is EXACTLY like being a bee and being a Capitalist is EXACTLY like being a spider, I dont really believe Capitalists eat their children :closedeyes: its just an analogy to point to the fact Socialists believe in Collectivism, Capitalists believe in Individualism, same as spiders and bee's essentially, no not EXACTLY the same but very similar.

[#FF0000]

Its efficient in the same sense that slavery is efficient. Its not efficient for the worker, but for the guy working him.

Yeah but slavery isn't as efficient as, say, wage-labor when it comes to input-output. I'm still not sure what you mean by efficient.