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

Society, 'nuff said.

Using the tern individual just happened to be more easy to understand and explain phenomena than using the blank word "society".

Interactions with other people might be what give you meaning as a human, but it doesnt give me meaning.

Every human can be a single unit of survival. If that were not the case, humans would have never lasted so long until now. How am i a single unit of survival? I have a brain, that thinks, that can make logical conclusions, and i can hunt or discover how to farm and use the knowledge to my survival.

Man is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. If the products of my work were from society (who may or may not have done anything about them), then I am a slave, because a slave by definition:

Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be, or treated as, the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages).

Sure there is no whip, but i don't get to keep the product of my work, because it belongs to "society". This is EXPLOITATION.

Yet you keep saying that everything about me is a product of society. Well, actually no. Everything you now see around you (well mostly anything) was a product of individuals being free to receive the products of their labor and trading it. When you trade something, you exchange ownership. This is why a carpenter that exchanges a chair he made for a bread the baker baked no longer OWNS the chair but now OWNS the bread.

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality-to think, to work and to keep the results-which means: the right of property.

Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort.

You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional consent, and this is how most of the genius structures and machines you see today were created and traded.

Except, pretty much everything that has been produced for the last 5,000 years has been produced by class societies, therefore, under unfree conditions, and this is why socialists reject the notion of private ownership. You cannot 'own' the products 'you' produce, as that implies that we, who produced you, and everything that you used to produce 'your' products (food, raw materials, techniques, language and all the rest), own both you and those products.

Honestly, if you were a self-created being with no connection to the rest of us (perhaps a psychic alien from another planet), then you'd have a point. But you're not, so you don't.

Let's consider.

It's the morning after the revolution. we are all happy, you are sad, because you have give up being exploited and become a fully rounded human being who is forced to live in a society where you have to take responsibility for other human beings. NO! you say. I will not do it!

So, while we are all getting on with stuff and making each other breakfast, you decide that you will strike out on your own. You walk - somewhere - where there is no one else. You find some wild grass. You plant it. It's now lunch time, and you've missed breakfast. Never mind, you think, in 4 months or so I'll have something I can make into bread. And at least none of those lazy bastards is going to get any of my labour power.

Within 2 months, you have died, in a field. You never do get any breakfast.

This is why, in a nutshell, 1 human being is not a unit of survival, and talk of the 'individual' as the basis of society is a nonsense.

Ok let me make my point even clearer so i can be sure you really understand what I am saying:

You say i am productof society, and that it's society, not me, who gets to decide on the products of my labor/action.

But since i am a part of society (that which you havent defined yet), then i have an equal say on everybody's products of labor as they have in mine.

There must be some way for society to decide what to do, so lets assume democratic vote.

There will obviously be some clashes of interests, so lets assume "society" takes care of this by defining that whatever the majority votes, goes.

Again there will be clashes of interests, by a minority. But since "society" defined the will of the majority is that goes, the minority is powerless.

This if the majority votes to take away the minorities products because they argue:
1)they belong to the rest of society and
2)the minority would not manage them like the majority wants

then effectively the minority becomes the sacrificial animals who are to be enslaved and exploited by everyone else. And a society based on plunder and brutality and human sacrifices is wrong.

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Also you never define ownership. What is your definition of ownership so that I have an equal say in my neighbour's TV as he has in his own tv?

The fact that I exist allows me to claim ownership of other people's property? Why?

I have not "mixed my labor" with it, which is a common communist definition to justify workers being able to own what they create when employed.

So why could I ever claim I own, or society owns, a new motor that was just invented? Was the idea taken from society by force? No, it was invented. Were the materials necessary to build the motor taken by force? Most inventors, including new motor inventions as the example, get the materials by trade and by recognizing the ability for individuals to possess or own property.

No, I say you are a product of society. You say that the producer has the right to it's product. Therefore, by your logic, we own you.

I think we own everything in common. And that means you, as long as you are a member of society, get to make as many decisions and have the same input as the rest of us.

Consider the lillies...

No, consider going to the pub. You and your mates are talking about going out. 3 of you fancy the Dog and Flatcap, but 2 fancy Bar Pretensioso. Do you enslave the two mates who disagree, and get them to buy you drinks all night, for being a minority? Of course not, because you're not arseholes. So what's the problem? Of course people will disagree. But the maximum imput into decision making is better than "the rich man decides" which is what we have now.

my parents are the only ones who produced me. Everything else i consumed until now was voluntarily traded through everyone else's consent (or mostly at least)

What do you mean by this?

No it wasn't, because capitalism is an exploitative social system in which consent is forced and property is theft. Engels said "the state is gangs of armed men organised for the defence of private property". Everything 'voluntarily traded' was expropriated from someone, which is why socialists don't accept capitalist property.

Everything that you have consumed up until now, food, electricity, plastic, ideas, language, has been a product of society (the interaction between human beings). Therefore you are a product of society. And, if the producer has the 'right' to its product, society has the 'right' to you.

And I hope that answers Trivas 7's question too.

Let's see...

I produce an apple. I trade the apple for a chair. The guy who made the chair eats the apple. Have i now produced the guy who made the chair? No. Yet that is the assumption you have been basing on to claim everyone is a product of society.

Hey i don't like capitalists as well, and the state even more, but many of the things you are criticizing would have happened with or without any state and with or without any capitalists as a result of people following different self-interests.

How do you produce an apple, not being an apple tree?

Is your need to sit down the same as the chair-maker's need not to starve? If not, there is an element of coercion involved in the excghange. You could sit on the floor, he could starve.

Your example is meaningless. As I don't believe that "individual producers" have the right to "their own" product, that isn't a problem for me, but it is for you.

Yes, I agree, the chair-producing apple-eating man is a product of society. The social interaction (that you don't think exists, from what I can gather) is you giving the apple to him. Does that mean he belongs to "you"? Of course not. He is a member of society, just as you are. You persist in thinking of all of this as confering some sort of "ownership" when I've repeatedly said it doesn't.

So my version of what you say is:

As for the last bit, I don't remember claiming otherwise. All class societies are based on differential access to the means of production. But it's also as much "self interest" to live in a free access society. I think my interests would definately be served by a society where all of my material needs could be met, allowing me to freedom to persue more 'spiritual' endevours.

If not, there is no coercing here. For someone to be coerced, someone has to be coercing him. Who is? I'm not certainly coercing him, because i did nothing at all. I didn't use threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force, which is why i didn't engage in leverage, to get the "victim" to act in a certain way.

Unless for you nature itself is coercion, because you are the victim of the universe, because you have to supply for yourself, follow a specific path, to get food to survive.

It is for me because you keep using the term society which is not useful to describe and understand human action.

There is a social interaction, but its done between individuals, not "society".

Society has not made any investment, because all the other people, in that particular instance, didn't engage in any activity. It was an activity done exclusively by 2 human beings, alone. Yes, in order for both of them to exist, they had to consume, but it was not "society" (which is actually a weasel word in this case) that allowed them to live. It was different people supplying different products and services to meet demand (with a varying degree of coercion by capitalists and the state depending in a specific case) that allowed them to live.

And your point is?

Nature for me is not co-ercion. The urge to eat is not coercive, but the act of withholding food from someone who needs it is co-ercion; this is not nature, because private property is not 'natural'.

If you have an apple, and a starving man has a chair, and you will only give him the apple if he gives you the chair, you have coerced him. You have used the implicit threat of starvation to get a chair out of him at what can only be considered a bargain price. Under normal (not-starving) circumstances, he would say, "f*** you pal, you'd have to give me 200 apples for the chair, but what would I do with 200 apples? Give me $80 instead."

Of course "society has made an investment", this man with the chair (whether hungry or not) is not a spontaneously self-created alien being that popped into existence (with his chair) a second before you decided you needed to get rid of your apple; he is a human being, who belongs to a human society, has grown up in it, been fed clothed and educated in it, and even learned how to make chairs in it - whether that happened in a society of free access (ie socialism), or a society of oppression and exploitation (eg capitalism, or any other class society) is irrelevent.

It would only be an interaction "exclusively betweem 2 people alone" if neither of the actors involved had been shaped in any way by the anything done ever by other human beings.

But as that idea is frankly madness, then the whole set-up you posit is flawed to the point of being meaningless.

The entire set-up of the intereaction with chair-man is in fact conditioned by a series of other interactions going back to... well, further than any of us can untangle. As Marx said, we make history, but we don't chose the circumstances in which we make it. The circumstances are always constraining or influencing factors on what we do. Among these factors are social factors. All of the things that happened before you were born contribute to who you were at birth (you didn't chose any of that, nor did you buy it off anyone who did), the schools your parents sent you too, the lives of the people who chose to work in them, all of this rich tapestry of existence has combined to produce the "you" that you are.

Of course, you think you just "freely chose" to be as you are. But if that's the case, it would be really spooky that you happen to have chosen to speak the same language as your neighbours, you chose to exist inside capitalism spookily like all the other people that you live around (weird co-incidence, huh?)... if it was all free choice, then the man has chosen to only conduct business in Catalan; he has also chosen not to be constrained by your concept of law; he also has chosen to work on a 27 hour clock, and when you approach him with the apple he is asleep; he has chosen to poke all apple-offerers with sticks.

Is any of this likely? No, because there are socially derived rules. Really there are, whether you can see them or not, and no matter how many people you think are weasels.

Points being debated:

-The word "society" as a concept is not very useful
-Using the word "society" to describe complex individual interactions in order to argument against private property is flawed.

So in nature, you wouldn't have to work to get your food? you wouldn't have to produce? or to act? it would fly just to your mouth? Interesting

The man who made the apple had to bear a cost: his time, his effort, his knowledge. You (chair maker) bared a cost as well. Why can't you accept that he can do whatever he wants with the apple like you can do whatever you can do with the chair? Because its an essential product? Then you go get it yourself. The man who made the apple did not exploy any workers and it certainly doesn't have the monopoly on resources, knowledge, time. If he had the monopoly, then you would be right in complaining.


If thats your definition of coercion, and you find coercion bad, then I DEMAND you give me any food you have in exchange for a pen that i have. Otherwise you are coercing me because i can starve.

ok. he has grown thanks to several people who contributed to this. He owes them nothing, because his parents already traded something for the growth of their children initially.

there you go, you're starting to adopt a less weasel word: human beings. SOME humans SHAPED their lives. Not "society", because society englobes everyone. Now inside that category of "some humans", we have individual x which started a school, and individual y who made the design of the chair he learned at school, and so on.

Yes, before i was born i didn't choose anything. Nor could I a few years after my birth. But after that I CAN CHOOSE. I can choose to get a new hair, to change my body, to believe in other ideas, to do new things, etc

I havent chosen to speak that language, i was "forced" (kinda strong word) by my parents and the school. But i can NOW choose to speak other languages. I can NOW choose to go to other non-capitalist (or less capitalist) societies.

Yes i agree, there are socially derived rules. This is called emergent order, but it doesnt serve to justify any of the "points we were debating" i mentioned above.

So to you 'withholding food' is the same as 'having to work'? Wow. What a strange world you live in. Can't even begin to tease that apart, because you are like Humpty Dumpty. Whatever word you use, you use exactly as you wish with no conception of how other people use it.

You can't demand I give you food for a pen. Unless you live in a different world from the one I live in (which is possible, given the oddness of many of your statemants) we both live in a capitalist system. In capitalism, unless I have a very good reason to give you something, I won't.

We don't accept the valididty of the 'trades' you speak of. Everything under capitalism is the result of unequal power relations. These are not 'chosen'. They are historically determined. If you live in America, then you inherited the conception of property in your society from England; England inherited it from the Catholic Church, the Church found it lying around down the back of the Roman Empire somewhere.

The reason the Church established property relations on individuals rather was that communities - in this case families and others with customary rights to proerties - kept getting pissed off when individuals left them to the Church (to pay for priests to prey for those individuals' souls). Individual property was not a concept recognised by the 'barbarians' who replaced Roman society, so it was necessary for the Church to introduce the concept.

At what stage did you as an autonomous individual "chose" to live in a society with property relations established in the 6th century and modified subsequently by feudalism and capitalism? Did it just occur to you, or did you have a meeting? A vote maybe? Or did you just, you know, make it up?

What does "englobe" mean? Bedeck with spheres? Turn into a planet?

You seem quite bright, so I'm surprised that you have so much problem with the concept of society. You know what a family is, yes? You understand the concept of a group of friends? How about fellow-passengers on a bus? People in your neighbourhood? You can get your head round the idea that people can form groups, yes?

Well, every single human being that has ever existed is the result of interactions between other groups of human beings - in other words "societies". Everything produced by people is the result of these interactions also (and obviously, the result of these inteactions on the natural world). These are therefore all "social products" - the result of "social interactions".

So, the collection of all human beings throughout history - in other words, society - has produced the world we have today. Everything that people have produced has been the result of thoughts and actions that are themselves social processes. Fot the last 5,000 years or so these social interactions have taken place on the basis of class society, that is unequal power relations viv a vis the means of production; as a result of this, for socialists, all the laws and customs relating to property are just justifications for these unequal relations. We repudiate them.

Please read my arguments carefully

Withholding food from someone is not coercion. Sure it's terrible (for the hungry fellow), but its not coercion. The apple owner does not owe him a debt for his knowledge on growing apples. Nobody owes anybody else anything - except freedom, but that isn't in one hands to give, it's man's natural state (although throughout most history this has not been the case).

Coercion (pronounced /kɵˈɜrʒən/ or /kɵˈɜrʃən/) is the practice of compelling a person or manipulating them to behave in an involuntary way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force. These are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way. Coercion may involve the actual infliction of physical pain/injury or psychological harm in order to enhance the credibility of a threat

The man who made the apple had to bear a cost: his time, his effort, his knowledge. You (chair maker) bared a cost as well. Why can't you accept that he can do whatever he wants with the apple like you can do whatever you can do with the chair? Because its an essential product? Then you go get it yourself. The man who made the apple did not exploy any workers and it certainly doesn't have the monopoly on resources, knowledge, time. If he had the monopoly, then you would be right in complaining.

So if you can only give me food if i offer something valuable to you in return, why do you project the same scenario but with different conclusions to the apple/chair example? Because of the system? Let's imagine there is no "system", just you and me (which in this particular case, even in capitalism, is what actually happens). Nobody is forcing you to decide, so you make the call.

Most things under capitalism are, in effect, the results of unequal power relation. In a free society, relations are done in a more equal stance, both for workers and employers, or for self-sustaining people, or for communities, communes and collectives.

The problem with the word society is the following: society is the sum of all groups of people, like you said. If certain group of people engage in an action, but some other groups don't (which is mostly the case), then "society" as a whole can't be held accountable, when there are clearly cases where some members did not engage in such activity and oppose it. Example: jewish genocide by nazi germany. Jewish people were a group of the german society. So were other germans that didn't engage in the massacre. Should all germans be held accountable for the massacre? No, only the ones who actually engaged in it directly or indirectly.

This also applies for groups. A group is the sum of a certain number of individuals. One cannot claim a "group" did this or that unless all the members engaged in the action and/or accepted it. I have nothing against the use the word, but in the matters we are discussing it is simply a confusing word.

There you go, you are again using the word society that further complicates discussion:

The collection of ALL human beings throughout history has NOT produced the world we have today.

What has been produced exactly?

Technological development, infrastructures, buildings, science, medicine, etc.

Who has done it?

Architects, engineers, workers, doctors, scientists.

By further breaking down, we can clearly see that not ALL architects, engineers, workers, doctors and scientists contributed to the current world. Some things were created without these people: a person decided to build his own house without any knowledge of architecture, someone accidentally discovered a new way to produce something, etc.

Of course MOST times new advances ARE INDEED the work of these highly skilled and/or unskilled people, but that doesn't mean its the case everytime, and as such its very dangerous to go on and start engaging in hasty generalizations because these can be used to justify a lot of ethnic and racial conflicts (not that i think you are doing it btw).

If the state magically disappeared presently, then yes capitalism would most likely emerge. That is why any sensible revolutionary pushes reform.

That's why we push revolution, reform is counterproductive.

So if you overthrow the state tomorrow how will you organize society, do you expect workers to organize in collectives? I think they would just recreate the state without prior organization and autogestion. Just overthrowing the state and killing capitalists is counter productive.

No. The road to revolution involves communizing our neighborhoods and increasing conflict with state and capital. NOT reform.

Yup, and withholding food from a hungry person to get a chair cheap is manipulating someone through action or inaction. Please read your arguments carefully.

What does 'indirectly' mean? The ones who knew but did nothing, like the British and American governments who refused to bomb the railway lines? Are they responsible? What about the train drivers? Are they responsible? What about the railway engineers? Are they responsible? What about the people who make the sandwiches that the train drivers had for lunch? What about the cobbler who mended the shoes of the man who went to work at the bakery that made the bread that the bus driver who took the railway engineer to work, who fixed the points so that the next day a train taking 1,000 people to Auschwitz could go through? Who exactly is responsible?

Not everyone in Americca speaks English. So, "Americans don't speak English" is a reasonable statement in your book is it?

Seems to me that you're the only person who finds the term "society" confusing.

Yeah, everyone has in some ways contributed to everything.

A bloke called Tony dropped a fag packet on the street. He made the world a slightly different place. A woman called Maureen led her children across the road at a particular time, meaning that the bus slowed down instead of running the lights and knocking over a chap called Sean, on his way to a conference about how to make internet connections work better. Trevor, the old man down the road, has been personally responsible for turning at least 8 young children turning from a potential life of crime. In the future, more than 2,000 people in his neighbourhood will be spared petty crime because of it...

Yes; and Dr Asid, who has just pioneered a new form of cancer treatment, did it through the support work of 35 people in the labs, who themselves were trained by 600 other people over the years, in statistics and bio-chemistry and a whole host of other disciplines; they were transported over the three years of the project by more than 3,000 transport workers, their workplaces were cleaned by 70 ancilliary staff, the supplies (made in 35 different factories employing 27,000 staff) were brought by 800 delivery workers whose vehicles were built and serviced by more than 3,000 staff, the results were announced over time in 60 magazines (combined staff 18,000 people) and on more than 600 websites (12,000 regular contributors), the computers at the lab were serviced by the IT department of 40 people, built by 700 more, the software they used was written by 40 different companies employing more than 160,000; and after all this, if his life was just work, and transport to and from work, DR Asid would be dead because he hasn't eaten anything. And neither has anyone else involved.

The 1.2 million food production (farming, processing, cooking, catering staff, food retailers, and the transport and support staff for all these, etc) workers and family support (his wife making the dinner etc) have all contributed to this process. So; while Dr Asid may be the name on the front of Scientific American, without the work of all these 1.5 million other people, he wouldn't have been able to do his job.

"For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe, a horse was lost; for the want of a horse, a rider was lost; for the want of a rider, a message was lost; for the want of a message, the battle was lost; and all for the want of a nail" (I quote from memory).

And yet, you insist that in wars, nails are not important - at times you even seem to claim there are no nails, or at least no processes leading from nails, merely riders, who are independent of anything else. You are, how can I put this, "wrong" I think is the word I'm looking for.