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Agorism
Markets have existed since the dawn of mankind. Why agorism, market anarchism, does not qualify as plain anarchism akin to mutualism is beyond me. Can someone explain?
Eppur si muove -- Galileo Galilei
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anarchism means without rulers,
markets which are based on capitalist property creates a hiarchal society, this has been shown over and over again, anarchism does NOT only mean "no official state" it means without rulers, and a capitalist is a ruler just as a king is.
Any ideology with private property laws or some equivilent is not anarchist because of that.
But the point of agorism is that it is not based on capitalist property relations. I can only assume that for you anarchism is not a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges -- which is exactly what a free market is.
Eppur si muove -- Galileo Galilei
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How are all relations AMONG (notice the grammar) people voluntary exchanges when a limited amount of people are allowed to control property and derive power from that ownership? You might as well say a state is voluntary, and indeed many agorists seem to think choosing among different forms of states - like a Somalia state, or a United States incorporated state - would be fine.
The old "voluntary" line is from capitalism and is a myth. You are voluntarily allowed to choose among products and resources that you have virtually no control over, that basically eliminates the interface at which the public and the private meet one another in a way that not even modern corporate America does, and deprives people of access to the resources their labor creates.
Agorists also subscribe to discredited Misean logic and economics, support black-markets which:
a. have never revolutionized society, and
b. are actually even more oppressive than social "free-markets."
They are just there to make anarchists look dumb so people inevitably will support the state as a better alternative to their nightmare scenario.
Your equation of property rights with compulsion and force is nonsense. Free markets are human activity in all its manifold voluntarism. Property rights are not an impediment to human freedom, but its only guarantee. Violitional consciousness -- human consciousness -- is not secondary to human freedom, but in some sense its very definition.
I have no doubt that capitalism as currently practiced is destructive of human beings, but the wish to do away with free markets is the wish to do away with human beings as such.
Eppur si muove -- Galileo Galilei
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It's not "nonsense." Many of the greatest things in society have been created without any need for a market. Property rights are a force. And by changing everything into a matter of satisfying your personal needs you remove the public interface that is essential for survival. Early humans worked together and made decisions together about what to do with property, and even today we do this to some degree. Your claims are nonsensical and unverifiable. You want to force everybody to accept private landlords and dictators without any public input whatsoever.
So agorism is tyranny; an even worse tyranny than what already exists.
Oh yeah, these women volunteered for the job from the bottom of their hearts.
You cannot downplay Capitalist property relations because a market is BASED on capitalist property relations, you can say agorism is all about markets, not capitalist property, but markets are all about capitalist property, so theres the problem.
I don't see what the connection is with property and human consciousness, as far as I can tell there is no connection.
Markets are only a result of capitalist property laws, our goal is not limiting markets its getting rid of capitalist property, which will thus, get rid of markets.
free markets have NOTHING to do with human consiousness, or freedom, or vonluntarism, it has everything to do with Capitalist Property.
Then you don't understand what is significant re human consciousness and consequently human economic activity.
This only demonstrates your ignorance of history. Markets have existed long before capitalism.
Eppur si muove -- Galileo Galilei
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Not before property laws.
Well aparently I don't understand what significance markets have with human consciousness, explain it to me.
market's aren't based on capitalism. capitalism is based on a particular sort of market. one where resources can accumulate, owned by a person, family, or corporation. i.e. capitalism is based on a market system where capital can accumulate. hence the name.
other market system prevent capital from accumulating, including, i assume, any truly anarchist market system. (an anarchist market system would have to prevent capital accumulating, because otherwise it wouldn't be anarchist. if a person was able to accumulate capital, they would then be able to have more power over others.)
what is a market? a market is simply a method of exchanging goods, resources and similar. they have existed long before capitalism, and i'm sure would even existed in an early communist society.
i have a particular aptitude at making bread and other baked goods. joan over there makes delicious stews, soups and similar. timmy is excellent at crafting eating utensils. it it could happen that we simply share all our food etc., or, we could exchange it instead. the result is virtually the same, we get a variety of food and means of eating it, and we remain free in each case.
so, why is the market based system not-free in this case?
ok, on a wider scale, looking at a community. a market based system (even if everyone gets the same amount of "money" to start with), allows people to decide what products are in greater demand. etc. (the invisible hand bullshit).
it isn't perfect, but it doesn't mean that the community is any less free.
so, what was my point? market's aren't nessecerily bad. though personally, i think that in the far future pure communism will reign supreme. to get there, we may use whatever tools avaliable. many people suggest anarchist-collectivism, which uses markets, as a form of 'transitional economy' towards communism.
agorism is only a branch of market anarchism; ie: the branch that proposes the use of grey and black markets to create alternative institutions which remove power from the state.
As far as market anarchism/mutualism goes, it does not necessarily rest on capitalist property rights, but on democratic intersubjective consensus among communities, which means that there will necessarily be different "property rights" within certain communities (some might abolish land ownership, others might abolish rent and interest, others might keep all these, and others might even abolish all vestige of property, whether private or personal)
Personally, i see no historical evidence that a society with equality of opportunity and a free-market, with a common law which defends land ownership, rent, interest, etc will degenerate into tyranny (at least, greater or equal than the one we experience today).
To speculate is human; to hedge, divine
This is a very good post. I have a question though:
Would you say that accumulation of capital is always bad or only when other people are also prevented from accumulating capital?
In a way, what i'm asking is that if we were to have a society with equality of opportunity and freedom to accumulate capital, how could the accumulation of capital restrict other people's freedom?
To speculate is human; to hedge, divine
What I don't see is how under any sort of anarchism people would voluntarily, as a whole, democraticaly decide to creat property laws, and they they would through mutual consent agree to any sort of property laws that would allow rent, profit, wages, interest, or anything of that sort.
First of all, we cannot examine a anarchist economy in the same way we examine a capitalist economy, its like using a telescope to try look at a cell.
It restricts other peoples freedom when they need to give up their freedom to the one with a lot of capital, the fact is I'm all for democracy, or mutual concent, and if somehow (because of some dementia or whatever), an absolutely free and demcoratic society VOLUNTARILY creates property laws, then so be it, but I seriously doubt that, given the history of anarchism, socialism and capitalism.
Comrade, do not forget about Agorist Class Theory.
In order for markets to work you have to have people trading commodities for another commodity. Since the bread maker has to rely upon the same market as everybody else, he would necessarily have to make a profit from his bread making. He has the land exclusively; if someone comes up with better tactics to make bread he'd either have to sell it to the current bread maker or try and start his own business, which is difficult because of supply and demand and the point at which capitalism starts creating monopolies.
In a free, non-market society, people's resources would be provided by communities. If I needed bread I would go get it. People's wants could be satisfied by their contribution to the public good. So if I was a carpenter, I would work where the community needs carpenters and receive more in return. This system eliminates a lot of the problems of capitalism and has been proven to work.
If leftists want to advocate competition among groups, which should be eliminated but probably will exist even after capitalism, they could advocate guild socialism, competition among socialist communes.
Well, some will, others won't. Some have a belief that a property system will make them better off, others won't. As long as both communities do not enforce their views on each other, fine by me.
Why do people need to "give up their freedom" to someone who has a lot of capital, provided there is equality of opportunity?Originally Posted by RGacky3
To speculate is human; to hedge, divine
Indeed. I placed a link to it on an earlier thread of mine regarding agorism.
To speculate is human; to hedge, divine
do you know of nozick? he wrote a book called anarchy, state and utopia.
in this book, nozick presents the example of a basket ball player:Originally Posted by wikipedia
he argues that this is compleatly fair, as it was all voluntary. he also argues that this situation would not impact on anyone else's freedom.
in this case, and in the case of capital accumulation generally, it does impact on other people's freedom. the most obvious reason is that it prevents others from using those resources, even though they are not being used directly by the owner. it also means that the wealthier individual can out-bid others, depriving them of resources and goods they would otherwise have been able to afford.
in a truly anarchist system, capital accumulation could not (would not?) happen, because it creates a hierarchy. the person with more capital, has more resources, and thus more power.
that's why most truly anarchist market theoreticians generally refer to "ownership" as only "occupancy and use". that is, if you don't use it, it reverts to the commons. i would suggest that any writer who agrees that capital accumulation can happen without impacting the freedom of others, is not truly an anarchist. capitalists, no matter how anti-state they are, are not anarchists.
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other critiques of nozick can be found : http://world.std.com/~mhuben/nozick.html
i don't really want to spend any more time on this argument just now, so i'll just direct you to the wikipedia article on cost the limit of price.
anyway, i don't really see much differences between competition between "guilds" or communities and individuals. could you expand on that a bit more?
