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Anarcho-Capitalism?
So of all the Schools of Thought I have read about under the anarchism umbrella this one has been the most confusing to me. Everything I know about anarchism and capitalism, make them very incompatible. I always figured that capitalism was the consequence of a free market which anarchism was opposed to. So I looked it up and it seems to be fairly popular.
Is allowing private companies to fund and run police forces even close to compatible with anarchist ideals. I just cant see it. Maybe there is something I am missing.
Can someone give me there perspective? I can already assume that I will get a fair amount of answers from people who don't agree with this mindset. Can I get some answers from someone who agrees with it?
Either way can someone help me clear this up?
Knowledge and logic is opposed to free market, firstly.
Free market's definotion states:
"A free market is a market structure in which the distribution and costs of goods and services, along with the structure and hierarchy between capital and consumer goods, are coordinated by supply and demand unhindered by external regulation or control by government or monopolies"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
Such circumstances are just imposible. In capitalism, there are always "external regulation" and monopolies.
"Property is theft."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"the system of wage labor is a system of slavery"
Karl Heinrich Marx
'Anarchism" cannot prescribe how people will act. I just implies people should be free to peruse their lives. *How* they might act is where it gets confusing.
Private property necessitates a state. That should be the end of the discussion. Capitalism, free market or not, also necessitates perpetual expansion. This "anarcho" capitalist market expansion (even if somehow "anarcho" capitalists managed to find hundreds of millions of people who would "voulentarily" work for a boss) demands that the areas/regions the market is expanding into are voluntarily open to market relations. In reality this market expansion has required military to facilitate. Without market expansion capitalism will go into crisis/stop functioning. In their world privatized armies would be doing the dirty work just as their privatized police/military/courts would be legitimizing private property. They advocate a privatized state. Capitalism is also the first system that creates a mass of systemically unemployed people. Without the state giving 'the reserve army of labor' social benefits there would be no unemployed work force to call on in boom times. Just a bunch of dead bodies and workers who had jobs would have too much leverage to demand better wages/benifits in so making profit impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
I have had many discussions with people over anarcho-capitalism and if it is truly a type of anarchism at all. The main arguments against it are that private property is coercion and that negates the principles of anarchy or that private property requires a state to maintain. I don't see it that way, because I believe private property is the only sensible mechanism for avoiding conflict in a world of scarcity and I see no reason why local militias or private security organizations couldn't provide security instead of the state providing it.
Another argument against, is that anarchy is against all sorts of hierarchy, even those that are voluntary, that's why it is inherently against capitalism, because in capitalism there will always be bosses and workers. I find this argument much less compelling, because it is completely impossible to have prolonged human interaction without some sort of hierarchy. Even if a carrot farmer buys potatoes from another farmer, that's hierarchy, but they choose to engage in it of their own free will, because they each decided it will be beneficial for them. I really can't see anything wrong in this scenario.
There are various flavors of An-Cap, but it all can be traced back to Murray Rothbard and his followers.
Rothbard, in turn was inspired by Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian school. It's virtually impossible to win an argument against an Austrian or Rothbardian, because their entire ideology is based on pseudo-science, namely praxeology.
The thing is, though, An-Cap can go in either right-wing or left-wing directions. You have super-duper right-wingers like Lew Rockwell, and then you have hippie-inspired New Left veterans like the late Samuel Edward Konkin, III and his still-living diciple/fanboy J. Neil Schulman, both of whom helped found Agorism.
Konkin's New Libertarian Manifesto and Agorist Class Theory are worth reading, if only for the sake of recognizing where these guys are coming from (and how oh so very wrong they are).
Like many other terms bandied around these days, 'state' is a nebulous term, and so is 'private'. If you want to define 'private property' as people having control over the houses they live in and the things they operate, and 'state' as outsourcing the protection of property/owning, then absolutely, private property requires a 'state', as well as formal legislation to back it up. Some myopic cretins, such as myself, view the desire to own stuff as timeless, immutable and inevitable, and the desire to banish these motivations requiring coercion. So ultimately it gets down to an opinion of how you think people *want* to act. 'Anarcho capitalism', defined as you do, definitely requires a 'state', defined in your way.
I'm a former "libertarian", was an "an"-cap, then minarchist, now I'm something people call libertarian socialist.
Nope. Anarchism is opposed to hierarchy, and there are anarchisms that support free markets- they're called individualist anarchism and mutualism.
Capitalism is defined mainly by the employer-emplyee relationship and it can be both free market and statist (where the state takes the role of the private employer).
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As far as "Anarcho"-capitalists are concerned, the confusion arises because they use the term anarchism in a destorted way as meaning only "against state" or "stateless"; and a more precise term for them would be stateless capitalists, or voluntaryists.
Actually, it's interesting that the first "An"-Caps are from a little earlier time. Even though Rothbard is the most respected explounder, the first thinkers of the school are Bastiat, de Molinari and Auberon Herbert.
Actually, it is pretty much impossible to win a debate against them because they are very rationalistic, and thereby very clear and consistent, so the only way to win an argument with them is to go at their first principles from which they logically derive their views. I was 'converted' from voluntaryism that way.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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Seriously? I'm really interested in what made you change your mind.
"Anarcho-"capitalism (or as Murray Rothbard once suggested it be called, nonarchism) is incompatible with the basic principles of anarchism, as a political theory. Anarchy had and has two distinct meanings, a political theory regarding egalitarianism and an 'apolitical' word for describing a situation of chaos resulting from impotent government or lawlessness. The "anarcho-"capitalists use the 'apolitical' meaning of the word and make it political, rather than express a continuity between the political-theoretical definition of anarchy.
Proudhon laid the basis for the meaning of anarchism, which he described as the "absence of a master or sovereign." This is clearly indicative that anarchism necessarily stresses opposition of social hierarchy, or more positively, advocates egalitarianism.
If we look at it from the perspective of freedom, then capitalism is oppressive as well. The decision to partake in wage-labour is only nominally free as wealth and power was already divided and owned prior to being born, thus one's social position is to a large extent already predetermined. Secondly, inequality of bargaining power in the favour of those whom were privileged enough to be able to monopolise productive resources means that decisions cannot be truly free. Free market fundamentalists ignore the context ("context dropping" Ayn Rand, ironically, may have called it if she hadn't been blindsided by her idiotic ideology).
pew pew pew
An insight on the genesis of Argumentation ethics. I was explained that Hoppe was a student of Habermas, and basically ripped off his framework of Communicative rationality and Discourse ethics and just put capitalism in it. When you know only about Hoppe, and you come to see that framework is right, you naturally accept voluntaryism, because (compliments to Hoppe's intellectual honesty in referencing his teacher) it is the only conclusion you are offered. I suppose you could think of alternative conclustion, if you're a really creative thinker, which, unfortunatelly, I am not. It took someone to point out to me that the a priory norms of argumentation are not voluntaryist, but actually anarchist- being that argumentation negates not only aggression, but also hierarchy; and that capitalist property is not only not implied, but in fact contradictory with the notion of individual sovereignty (/self-ownership) because 1) labor is de facto inalienable, and yet de jure alienable in the employment contract (making the employment contract void), and 2) any unearned income contradicts the fact that property is product of labor.
Last edited by Sotionov; 2nd July 2013 at 16:36.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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Free of regulation capitalism is the shortest way i can describe anarcho-capitalism
It has way more in common with anarchy (political disorder and lawlessness) then anarchism.
You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror...
Could you explain the ideas of Communicative rationality and Discourse ethics a little? I went through the wikipedia articles, but those philosophical terms were completely unintelligible to me.
I don't see paying someone a wage as the only way to deprive them of their work. If someone produces pens and you buy one from them, that means that the pen is probably worth more to you than the asking price, so when you buy the pen you're doing the same an employer would do if he was paying the guy for making pens. The worker might be better off on his own, but he might also be better off working for someone.
What do you mean by unearned income?
Communicative rationality is pretty much the notion that there exist something called a priori norms of communication, it was first espoused by Thomas Reid, and then reiterated by Habermas, from whom Hoppe got it. Discourse ethics is something like Argumentation Ethics, but Habermas pointed out that argumentation's norms pertaining to inter-personal ethics are autonomy (invidiual sovereignty, something like NAP is implied), and power equality (most importantly- no hierarchy). Argumentation itself is a libertarian socialist framework, it's obvious when you think about it- it is not only aggression that negates argumentation (giving us NAP) but also giving orders negates argumentation- making non-hierarchy also an a priori norm of argumentation, that is- an ethical axiom.
It's not the only way, but it is the way that it's done today.
Not even close. The customer buys pens, the employer buys labor-hours from the laborer. If I am self-employed, and I make pens and then Jim buys them, the pens are mine, and the money Jim gives me is mine. If you employ me to make pens, and Jim buys pens, neither the pens nor the money are mine, being that I have sold the labor to you, and de jure both the pens and the money are yours, because my labor is yours- that's why you get to order me when, where, how to make pens, what to wear while making them, when I can take breakes while making them, etc, I am literally rented to you, just like a slave would have been bought.
It is similar for services- intangible products of labor. If I paint walls as a self-employed painter, and Jim comes as a customer- I go and paint his walls, he gives me money and that's that. If I am your employee, when I paint Jim's walls the money he pays for the painting of the walls is never mine- it is de jure yours because my labor is de jure yours, even though labor is de facto inalienable. And when you have a contract that specifies alienation of something that is non-transterable, and labor is inalienable being that only I can labor with my own body, that kind of contract is simply void and illegitimate.
Renting. Renting means of production, renting money, renting anything generates unearned income, being that to rent something is not labor, and yet generates income, and being that only labor produces property, the rentier is appropriating the products of someone else's labor, thereby making rent contracts void just like the employment contract.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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I guess I have some reading to do before being able to form a proper opinion on this.
Well, the pens are yours when you make them yourself, but when you sell them, they cease to be yours. The only thing that you have left is the money you received in return, which is what made you start making pens in the first place. And being paid to work in a pen factory nets you the same result.
What about traders then? If you make pens, and someone buys a whole bunch of them, to sell them on in a different area and making a profit in this way, is that also exploitation?
Except in that case I sell my labor, the pens are never mine, I don't manage the production process, but am managed by the person who I sold my labor to.
Why would it be? He isn't employing anyone or renting anything.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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The process of production is different, of course, but it doesn't make what you're doing much different. You make pens for money. If you make your own pens you have some additional overhead, like communicating with clients, purchasing raw materials and managing the production process, but in the end this would all be unnecessary if it didn't lead to pens getting produced and sold.
I'm just trying to figure out where you draw between exploitation and fair business practices. What about if a trader offered the pen maker a contract, where they agree on the pen-maker making X pens per month at the price of Y per pen? What if the contract is exclusive, so the pen-maker gets paid more per pen, but he promises not to make pens for anyone else? What about if two pen makers join forces to make pens more cheaply, and one focuses on the pen-making while the other focuses on managing the production process including the former pen maker?
If you consider being autonomus not much different then being controlled by someone else's orders, then something's wrong with you.
Right to property is by definition of property same as the right to the products of one's labor.
Firstly- labor is inalienable, thus every contract that establishes transfer of labor (and thus putting ownership of the products of labor not in the hands of the laborer but of someone else) is void, neccessitating abolition of all bosses, meaning establishment of worker self-managment. Secondly- renting something creates income without labor, and because no income can come from thin air, that means it has come from someone else's labor- meaning that the one renting something is denied the product of their labor. The first is direct and the second indirect exploitation. Voluntariness of contracts means nothing when contracts are fictitious or in contradiction with the very subject they deal with.
The pen-buyer doesn't get to decide anything about the pen-makers production, when, where, how etc the pens are made, his only concern would be yh
Firstly, legitimate contracts are not promises, but title transfers (read your Rothbard), but ok, if we were to rephrase it, something like such a contract is possible, nothing wrong with it.
You can't contract away your ability to manage youself, that is- you can, but that kind of contracts are unfulfillable- therefore anything but self-management of people cannot be a part of a legitimate legal system.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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Well, you don't really sign away your autonomy when taking a job somewhere. You can still quit, do what you want in your free time and you always have an agreement on what things the employer can order you to do during your work hours. Some employers I had didn't really concern themselves with how, where and when I did my job, they only cared that it got done by the deadline, and that the quality wasn't lacking. In some other cases, a well-organized schedule and hierarchical management is necessary for performance reasons, like in a factory, or in a construction project. Even in a system of public cooperation and public ownership of the means of production, when building a big project, people couldn't just come whenever to the construction site, bringing whatever they decided that was needed that day etc. If they wanted to do a good job, the only way to go about it would be someone drawing a plan of the building, someone organizing the workers into shifts, assigning roles to each and calculating how much of what is needed etc.
I forgot to bring this up, but I guess you're ok with division of labor?
It's not the management of himself that the pen maker would be contracting away, but the management of a pen production process. The other guy would make sure raw materials and pen-making equipment would get there on time, he would organize the system of production, so that it would be more optimal and that more pens could be made in the same amount of time.
How do you feel about private property btw? And what about banks loaning money and charging interest on the loan?
If you make your own work hours, determine your own breakes, manage the way you perform your job, then you're almost certainly self-employed. Employees do none of that, and to say that they do would imply that you have not witnessed a workplace in your life (except for maybe some home-based, IT online job, 'work-place').
If I voluntarily obey orders, that doesn't mean that I am not obeying orders, otherwise it wouldn't be called obeying orders. Subordination is in itself illegitimate, and therefore it's voluntaryness cannot make it legitimate.
That's just simply not true. You can look at a book called No contest which enumerates and elaborates more then 400 studies that show that cooperatives are much more productive and efficient then businesses with hierarchical workplaces.
Yes, it seems that non-hierarchial construction businesses are doing the impossible by existing.
There is nothing wrong with it in itself, but if it's hierarchical- it's illegitimate.
And being that the pens are not produced miraculosely, but by the labor the pen-maker, management of the pen production process is the same as management of the actions of the pen-producer.
Then the other guy can be the first guys colleague in the workers' cooperative that's in the business of making pens.
Private property is not illegimate in itself, but with the labor theory of property consistently applied- the system of private property that exist today would be radically changed. Land (territory) could only be usufruct possession, and not property; and any means of production that requires more then one person to operate would have to be collective property and not private (being that the right to property, that is- the right to the full product of labor- is only achievable if the means of production that a laborer uses are in the ownership of that laborer), also every rent would be considered illegitimate, to answer your next question- including rent of money.
The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence. (General rules of IWMA)
Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist- as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others. (Malatesta)
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