Wouldn't anarchy just re-create capitalism, totally meritocratic capitalism?

Then your claim that people have the right to the fruits of their own labour is hypocritical. The laws exist to protect the right of the capitalist to steal the fruits of the workers labour. But they, like the wider population that support socialised healthcare, do not count. Law is like any other area in class society, power is brought to bear and used by an elite to dominate and exploit by means of their economic hegomony. You are simply a pro-capitalist with a fantasy idea that what you support is based on some kind of twisted idea of rights or fairness in a world dominated by unequal economic power and ridiculous means of remuneration. Its an old boring story.

Because they feel like it, honestly. I'm going to be a history teacher because it's a job I'll enjoy and something I've wanted to give back to the world and do something involving things I'm interested in.

Well, I was speaking from a purely economic view. If being a Doctor pays the same as being a street sweeper why bother with spending 6 years obtaining a medical degree?

Well, assuming you are fed, housed, and clothed and are able to obtain that degree for free, I see no reason not to. Why work at an entry level job for 6 years instead of getting a free education?

How is that going to happen in an anarchist world? Whose going to provide it, the non-existant state?

This oughta be good ....:laugh:

Communists would argue a community or collective could be in charge of providing this. No one would be forced to enter this community, and people would only get the benefits of this association (healthcare, education, food) if they contributed to it (work collectively to achieve a goal, agree on democratic voting on tasks, etc)

I suspect that in a true anarchy there would be different forms of organization for all tastes. As long as there is mutual respect for other institutions, and there are alternatives for those unhappy of where they are, there would be little conflicts.

So disabled people would not get the benefits of it since they never contributed to it?

I dont know for sure. Im not particularly advocating this. If it were up to me, it would all boil down to agreements. Would the community agree on sharing the burden of a disabled person? maybe. Would the community turn to the family of the disabled and say: we think you should work a bit harder in compensation for the community sharing its resources towards that disabled person. That could happen as well.

Likely the rationed resources of the community could support a couple hundred disabled people (depending on the size of the community).

Well, let's look at that for a moment. Let's assume that it is a fundemental component of freedom to keep the fruits of your labour.

So, there you are. And there we all are. Let's call you 'you' and us 'society'.

So, you say you want to keep the fruits of your labour. We say fair enough, does that mean that we (society) get to keep the fruits of our labour? Presumably, you'd say yes. Otherwise, you're in favour of expropriating us, in other words, you advocate thieving from the rest of us for the sake of your own selfishness. If that's what you want... well, you don't want freedom, just gangsterism.

But let's assume that you agree that society gets to control what society produces (we don't want to "keep" it, as you do, we want to use it, but we both are concerned with controlling what we produce).

What are 'your' products as opposed to social products? Well, maybe they're the things you make with the your own labour power. OK; but... where do you get the tools to make things from? Where do you get the raw materials? Are these not themselves social products?

Haven't the tools and machines been produced by the rest of us? Haven't we drilled for the oil to make the plastics, and mined the coal to make the electricity? Didn't we forge the iron to make the machines you're using?

So; these things are social products, it was our labour not yours that created them, and we get to decide what happens to them. Is there any reason we should let you appropriate our social products if you are not part of society?

But, you might reason, you could scavenge wood from trees to make tools, and win your own coal (maybe). Chances are, those trees were planted by someone, or at the very least were the result of previous social actions of land-clearance or forest management, and therefore using your logic would 'belong' to us... but let's let that go. Maybe you could go out into the wilderness and found a one-man civilisation and scavenge everything for yourself (not in England though, and wherever you were, I doubt you'd last long).

But, hang on. Society hasn't finished with you yet. We've invested 20 or more years in you. Your very body is made up of atoms derived from the food we grew, harvested, processed, transported and prepared. Done much of that lot yourself? probably not. So your body is made up social products - our products, the fruits of our labour, not yours.

But you're more than a body, surely? What about your mind? Well, we're having this conversation in English, another product of society, not an individual creation of yourself. Your education, your opinions, you found in books and evolved through discussion with other people - they are social products. And they belong to society as a whole.

Even your genetic coding was given to by your parents, who are part of society. Mentally and physically, even down to a genetic level, you are a social product. How could, in that instance, "you" claim anything as being "your product"? "You" only exist as part of society.

Now we, as society, could say, "well this bit of social product (that is, you) wants to expropriate some other social product" but that would make as much sense as my screwdriver claiming that the shelves I put up belonged to it.

Unless of course you can demonstrate that there is something of "you" that is no way derived from your mental or physical being, your genetic data, your concepts, ideas or education, training, language or any other aspect of your development that has relied on other people.

In other words, if you are a self-created entity living completely seperately from, and in ignorance of, the rest of the human race (ie 'society'), I think most of us on this forum would believe that you had some sort of claim on "your" products. Otherwise, as I think I've just shown, the idea is a nonsense.

Yes: Trade.

It's not steal or be stolen. You're leaving out trade. I made something you want, you made something i want, let's trade it and we will be both better off.

And to feed my child i had to work, to produce something in exchange for that food you made. When we traded it, we exchange ownership. Therefore, you DO NOT OWN my child.

English appeared naturally by people wishing to communicate with one another. But lets assume your premise is correct. English was intentionally created by someone. Where are they? They're dead. Who owns the english language now? It can't be society, because the parts of society that invented english have died, and i don't think they left any testament saying: "we shall give ownership of the english language to the society". So cappiej having any claim on the english language is as valid as you claiming current society has any claim on it.

Thinking in terms of society is very confusing, misleading, and doesn' really explain actions. How about speaking of individuals?

Your speech strongly resembles what I call "a mystic of muscle".

The good, you claim, is Society-a thing which you define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.

Man’s mind, you say, must be subordinated to the will of Society.

Man’s standard of value, you say, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute.

The purpose of man’s life, you say, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

His reward, you say, will be given on earth-to his great-grandchildren.

Selfishness, you cry, is man's evil. Sacrifice, you cry, is the essence of morality, the highest moral ideal man can reach.

'Sacrifice' does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.


If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and gave it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.

If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.


If you renounce all personal desire and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full virtue: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to serving men you hate-that is the greatest of the virtues you can practice.


A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek no gratitude in return for your sacrifice, no praise, no love, no admiration, no self-esteem, not even the pride of being virtuous; the faintest trace of any gain dilutes your virtue. If you pursue a course of action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward-if you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of moral perfection.

But of course, moral perfection, by this standard, is impossible. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.

Well tough luck, because I do not recognize your right to seize the products of my mind, or to enslave me in any manner whatsoever for whatever "society" deems as good. If you want it, come and get it, because i certainly didn't stole it.

Not aware that anyone mentioned "intention" up to now... can you show me where it was, I must have missed it.

Why? Individuals only have meaning as components of a society. You may as well say 'speaking of people is confusing, why not speak of cells?'

We are social beings. It is our interactions with other people that give us meaning as human beings. Deducing the worth or rationality of human action from the point of view of the individual is ultimately pretty meaningless, because 1 - a single human being is not a viable unit of survival, and therefore any particular individual matters less than a society, and 2 - people's subjective opinions are necessarily so fragmented that any attempt to extrapolate from the specific to the general is doomed to failure.

You cannot deduce the course of World war Two by reading Spike Milligan's Diaries, and by the same token, any particular attempt you might make to determine what is meaningful in human existence starting from the specific individual is pointless.

I'm very glad for you.

1 - wrong; I never mentioned 'good' at all. I'm merely trying to establish whether or not Cappiej thinks he doesn't need the rest of us for anything.
2 - wrong; the physical form of society is the people who make it up. It'd be a pretty mystical society that could produce all the things it has while simultaneously not having any members. Unless you've invented Star trek replicators and not told us.
3 - wrong, probably, depending on your definition of 'being'; society is a set of relationships.
4 - correct; only mad dictators think that one person can embody a society.
5 - wrong; 'everyone in general' is actually, 'specifically, everyone'.
6 - wrong; I am part of society, it is Cappiej who seems to think he is not.

No I don't. What goes on in your mind is your business. As far as I'm concerned, you can think what you like. It's when you act on that thought and impact on the rest of us that I think we get to voice our opinions.

Hey, you're really good at making stuff up mate. Perhaps you could write things for the telly.

I say nothing about sacrifice. I say that recognition of the truth that we are all the result of history, all shaped by the world around us, is fundamental to understanding what it means to be human.

Don't care about your religion. I've cut lots of waffle.

You have no 'right' to assert your own worth above anyone else's; any more than you have the 'right' to assert that gravity will not hold you. In other words, you can assert it all you like, but it doesn't matter. You are a social being who gains meaning and validation through your interaction with other people. In other words, you are a product of society. And it's up to society how society's products are used.

One problem in your reasoning, its not me and society.

Its me and every other person as individual entities.

You could withold your products from me but it would be foolish as I have money to buy them with and you would be denying yourself that money that you can in turn buy things with. You have that freedom now, you make something you decide what happens to it, unless of course you agreed to make it for someone (e.g. an employer) for a fee, or wage.

I'm not talking about not relying on one another for mutual gain I'm talking about not relying on the state.

My problem is with paying for benefits grabbers and other people's medicine when I've never even been asked about it.

Indeed it could, there's enough to go around of most things, but should it?

Now I feel a little sleazy when I think I'm advocating leaving paraplegics without wheelchairs or mentally handicapped people to fend for themselves but I guess its part of the individualist package.

That society COULD support a few hundred disabled people, but if they were not being supported since they don't contribute to it (well some may in a limited way but let's assume they can't as there shall inevitaby be those who can make no contribution) it would diminish the size of the contributors' rations would it not?

We COULD feed Africa but we'd have to cut down our own portion sizes, something we're not prepared to do.

No, really it isn't. I'm sure that there'd be other individualists after the revolution, you wouldn't be entirely on your own... of course, that would be a problem for you, you'd have a start a "society of individualists" and you wouyld either have to learn to get along, or end up as cannibals or *****es to the big man within a month or so; or maybe you could all sit on a hillside taking pot-shots at each other shouting "I killed this rabbit with my bare hands y'barstards!" while you slowly freeze, but hey, if that's what you like, it's not my place to stop you.

Part of the point is that you are already a social product, you are a product of this society. You idea that we have the right to our own products mean that the rest of us have say in what you do with our expended social labour.

Part of the rest of the point is that, as a socialist, I understand money is a crock of shit and we would abolish it after the revolution. So you'd have a hard time selling anything. If you're in society, you can use the goods society produces. If you don't want to be part of society, that's your choice - but why should society support you if you won't contribute? Your money is worthless. We haven't allowed you to remove our social products from our society. We repudiate the notion of trade.

Society shouldn't support me full stop! Or anyone else.

what's the problem then? You can starve yourself after the revolution because you don't want anything to do with the rest of us, and we build socialism. In that case, the answer is, "no we don't reproduce meritocratic capitalism".

You live in a world populated by other people, live with it or go live in a cave.

Yes I do, so what? I don't have to pay for their healthcare do I, or they for mine? Just because I don't want to operate as a bloody charity doesn't mean I'm anti-social.

Yes, it does. If you are on principle opposed to "society" then you are "anti-social".

People need to live and work together to function as human beings. You need to recognise that. No man is an island. Really.