Libertarianism versus Anarchism

turgon

asdasd wrote: »

do you use the word "capitalist" to mean workers in capitalist society.

He also labels any other kind of person, such as an imperialist or an American frontiersman, who lived in a capitalist system as being capitalist. Thus does he attribute the deaths caused by African imperialism and American expansion to capatilism.

Its really quite silly, if you give it any thought.

Permabear

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Permabear

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Sunn

You havent explained anything. You say stuff. You write profusely. But you explain nothing. The " the concept of autonomous groups acting together to produce things" is meaningless garbage.

Even in capitalism there is some level of co-operation, people working towards the same goal isn't such a foreign concept its just a different way of doing things.

In any case I dont have to explain to you how something that already works, works.

Capitalism doesn't work on behalf of everyone it only benefits a few at the expense of many, its a boom or bust nature and completely unsustainable ( current look at how unregulated financial capitalism has landed us in a right mess, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0703/1224249965637.html?via=mr)

You are making the extraordinary claim that something that is clearly unproven ( and utterly mad) will work with no detailing of the actual procedure. You are claiming that a company with no hierarchy, no management ,and no pay, and no way of paying suppliers will work. Because of "autonomous groups acting together"

There have been case points in history, spain, ukraine and more recent events in south america (particularly the zapatistas). Again all of that last part has been explained to death at this stage, the whole concept of participatory democracy in the workplace and community, how work places operate under worker control and the decentralization of power.

You seem to keep missing the point that there isn't a "detailed blueprint", again, for the 4th time its up to the indivduals/communities to decide things operate.

A company of 10,000 workers probably makes millions of decisions a day. Somebody is responsible for all those decisions. Building a plane, in particular, needs double, triple, and quadruple checks on everything and someone in authority signing off on that bolt, or that electrical system being safe.

Specialist positions are still there, it has nothing to do with been a boss.

In your system, there would be a mass meeting. For all decisions.

No there wouldn't, communities/workplaces would have delegates in order to communicate with each other rather than x number of people showing up.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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In a world where everywhere is private property, there would be nowhere for these kids to go. At least now they can stand on street corners or in the public parks, in your world they would be constantly hounded by the various securty companies. Not very free, for those kids

I've already explained why that is highly unlikely to happen. Even if it did, surely homeless renegades would be no match for armed security professionals?

Completely missed the point. The point is that the homeless would be criminalised and brutally oppressed by the private security firms.
Your comment above affirms this

Consider, however, your own society. What about people who are unwilling to participate in the highly collectivized, highly bureaucratized world you envision? What if bands of people decide to "go it alone" and prey on the collectives through robbing and stealing? What are you going to do about that?

if there were raids on a community, the community would have to defend themselves.
The difference between these two scenarios is, in one scenario, there are people who are marginalised and unable to provide for themselves through no choice of their own (or through a seriies of bad luck or bad choices), in the other scenario, it is people who deliberately decide to steal when there are other options available to them

What if nobody volunteers to become a dustman or a toilet scrubber? What happens then? Who is going to collect the bins?

The workload will be divided up so that everyone will do their share. Everyone would be expected to muck in.

The alternative is that we have classes of toilet scrubbers, and classes of admionistrators.

This is the point at which capitalists gasp as they tend to think they are too good for that kind of work, which should be delegated to the 'desperate' who are 'prepared' to work in these jobs.

You've stated that "there would need to be debate within each community about what level of personal posessions are deemed to be socially desirable." So if the outcome of the debate was that electric toothbrushes are not socially desirable, because they create unacceptable inequalities in dental hygiene, wouldn't electric toothbrushes be banned?

No, they would be owned in common, not banned. And You are the one who made me introduce the absurd thought of commonly owned electric toothbrushes.

Permabear

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Kama

homeless renegades would be no match for armed security professionals?

The point is that the homeless would be criminalised and brutally oppressed by the private security firms.

I'm quite tired at this stage of repeatedly refuting this point, only for you to keep raising it over and over again.

Libertarianism, where rich and poor are free alike to piss on the privately-owned street, sleep under privately-owned bridges, and be moved on by the privately-owned security...Oh Brave New World!

Less acerbically, DF's account of how all social-welfare functions would be autonomously generated by self-organizing charities and social organizations is quite symmetrical to the left-anarchist position on how all the economy with be organized.

I'm sceptical in both directions; as the Left assumes a working macro-economy (I think it has already been demonstrated in-thread that in small-scale and micro-economies anarchist modes of production can work) will fall from the Heavens, the Right-Lib seems to argue that a satisfactory social function will just 'come to be'. DF says he will bring a girl home and house her, but I don't view relying on the chance of individual altruism as a sufficient structural solution to social probelms in an advanced economy. It's a disorganized, ad-hoc, sure-it'll-be-grand approach; much the same as the opposite anarchist krewe on the conventional economy.

One point which has come up repeatedly is the concept of coexistence, and whether it is possible; again, if 2 non-statist ideologies cannot agree on rules for coexistence, then happy are we who dwell in the State, tbqfh.



Eh, the terms anarchist/socialist/communist etc are being thrown around slightly interchangeably here. Just for the sake of clarification:

Anarcho-communism is the view of abolishing markets entirely and instituting a gift economy based on direct democracy. Bookchin and Kropotkin in this box.

Anarcho-syndicalism is the system in which interlocking labour unions compose the economy, governed by worker-self-management, and instituted by direct action. The Wobblies and the WSM go here.

Mutualism is the approach that the means of production is common, or should be available, while private property is permitted, in an 'anti-capitalist free market', but credit and currency is reformed. Proudhon goes here.

All the above are libertarian anarchist poisitons (feel ftree to call me on if I've misrepresented any) much as libertarian capitalism has Randians, Mises, etc.

"If nobody is going to volunteer to collect the bins, then somebody will be forced to do it." Once again, we discover the coercive core of this "free" society.

Question: is peer pressure, and a sense of responsibility, coercion?

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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You clearly do not understand what democracy is. I am not the dictator of the anarchists, I do not make the decisions. There are a number of equally valid solutions to most problems, and I am not the one who would get to make them.

If i was in that meeting, I would vote that the picasso belongs to everyone as it is a treasure, but I could be out voted by those who think that it's only a painting and think the individual has a right to keep it.

I said it before, and others have also said the same thing, there is no clear dividing line that distinguishes property from posessions, The boundaries would be decided by each collective on the basis of their favoured version of anarchism. This would provide a great deal of variety and thus a great deal of choice about which collective you would like to join.

Your, and others, insistence on there being a concrete blueprint of all anarchism everywhere is completely missing the point

Sand

If i was in that meeting, I would vote that the picasso belongs to everyone as it is a treasure, but I could be out voted by those who think that it's only a painting and think the individual has a right to keep it.

In reality, would it not come down to a popularity contest? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of it, if you made a point of claiming the painting and the other individual made a point of keeping it would it not come down to who could count on the most votes - through patronage, or friendship or whatever?

Unless the individual had an absolute right to their own property, which cant be voted away from them, democracy is just the tyranny of the majority or the charismatic leader/demagogue who can sway opinion and votes to their view. What protection does your system offer the unpopular minority? The right to leave and the resulting polarisation of society into mono cultural group think where anyone who dissents is faced with exile?

The workload will be divided up so that everyone will do their share. Everyone would be expected to muck in.

The alternative is that we have classes of toilet scrubbers, and classes of admionistrators.

This is the point at which capitalists gasp as they tend to think they are too good for that kind of work, which should be delegated to the 'desperate' who are 'prepared' to work in these jobs.

Would you take a trained doctor from their patients to go out and collect bins just to establish the principle of class equality?

Akrasia

asdasd wrote: »

No. I gave an example of how my sister, who owns two properties, is not as rich as someone in Killiney who owns one. I would've thought this would be a pressing problem for an egalitarian. So, far from engaging in ad hominens, I was contradicting your claim that the number of properties is relevent in any way. As for anarchist being posh, I have never met one in my working day. Or life. Coming across them on the street they talk posh.


And as for Ad Homimens:


I am a worker as I have made clear numerous times.

I think you mentioned something about private schools to DF.

But my post was pointing out a huge inconsitancy in anarchism. Who gets to live where.

I am a worker, I have a job, no i;m not a student, and I know a lot of other people who share many of my beliefs who also have jobs. You might think you have never met another anarchist because to you, an anarchist is a kid in dreadlocks. So you speak about politics to everyone you meet during the day?

How can you know what other people's political views are.

Permabear

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synd

Do you actually know anything about the sociopolitical history of Sweden? Please do some reading, particularly about the century of rapid industrialization, economic growth, and ever-increasing prosperity from 1875–1975, which was driven by liberal capitalism, not socialism.

Sweden enacted high protective tariffs in 1816 - banning undesirable imports and exports. The high tariffs and ban on imported cotton goods in conjunction with low tariffs on raw cotton led to increased productivity in the textile industry. From 1830 protections where lowered until 1880 - the short lived free trade era ended in 1880 when tariffs where used to protect the agricultural sector from US competition. By 1913 tariffs on manufactured products where among the highest in Europe. In the 1930s Sweden ranked only after Soviet Russia in its level of manufacturing protectionism. The socialist party came to power in 1932. The heightened regulation proved very successful with massive support for R&D leading to new innovations. State owned industries developed include Ericsson and ASEA.

Hardly free market liberalism

Question - Provide me with one historical example of a nation that has developed via free market policy.

You want "proof" that Sweden's history of Lutheranism encouraged industriousness and a strong work ethic? Erm, there's an entire literature on this. You could start with Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Swedish growth had nothing to do with the power of God - is was a direct consequence of high tariffs, agricultural and industrial protectionism and massive state investment in R&D.

Great. So you're perfectly happy to see enormous shrinkages in European populations, so long as those who are born have good "outcomes"? That's hardly sustainable. At some point, the "outcomes" must include extinction.

Developing nations tend to have higher fertility rates due to the fact that children are seen as a source of surplus labor. In the absence of state care children act as a form of social security, taking care of parents in old age. Low fertility is a sign of a developed social welfare system/state care.

Permabear

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Permabear

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synd

I disagree. The welfare state is effectively a twentieth-century innovation,

Actually the Romans issued social welfare.

and so the non-governmental provision of welfare—through families, communities, charities, and churches—has a long, established history.

In the US alone - people would have to given ten times the amount they currently give to charity in order to meet the level of social welfare. I don't see any reason the upper class would increase charitable donations tenfold in the event of state collapse.

By contrast, the social anarchist position on economic organization is completely untested beyond the small-scale cooperative or commune.

Socialist anarchism has proved successful wherever its been implemented in terms of productivity. Free market capitalism has ''never'' existed - and to the (extent) tried its proven itself a disaster. I would appreciate a historical example of free market capitalism.

Well, firstly, you've left out the important Anglo-American school of individualist anarchism (anarcho-capitalism), which includes figures such as Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Murray Rothbard. These are also libertarian anarchists, although they are all staunchly opposed to socialism.

Anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, it supports the consolidation of social power into the hands of a moneyed elite via the mechanism of market competition. Moreover its never existed and its not hard to understand why.

No—but the inevitable town-hall meeting, and the inevitable vote to determine who would collect the rubbish and clean the toilets, would have very strong elements of coercion. Ultimately, somebody would be told that he was on toilet duty, whether he liked it or not. Such is the "democratic will of the collective."

Iv been over this. Collective decision making can either be democratic or despotic, either everyone can an equal say in the construction and implementation of the decisions that effect their lives or decisions can be made by a handful of elitist despots.

Liberal free markets allocate labour so as to maximize the productivity and efficiency of each individual. An architect is an architect all the time, because he is most effective and productive at his drafting table. In turn, he uses the product of his architectural labour to purchase goods and services from other specialist employees—barbers, car mechanics, plumbers, organic produce growers.

Under capitalism, technicians clean toilets due to disparities in currency. Under libertarianism the same problem would exist, in fact it would be more exaggerated given the inability to regulate disparities in labor supply. Not to mention the waste within the financial trade. Anarcho socialists merely seek a re-adjustment in the organization of existing social labor, facilitating social choice as opposed to market autocracy. Moreover production under libertarianism would be directed towards profit maximization as opposed need fulfillment - labor would be wasted producing luxury goods instead of meeting needs. Social anarchism would produce luxury goods however it would prioritize and plan accordingly - something an un-regulated market is incapable of.

Most basically, it takes years of specialist training and hard work to become an architect, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a mathematician.

The notion that professionals ought to have higher wages due to the time and money they invested in education is case specific. Under socialism society would bare the entire cost of individual education thus annulling the concept that graduates be compensated with higher earnings.

The socialists in this thread romanticize "the workers," as all socialists do. But they have evident contempt for genius, for artistic greatness, for scientific and mathematical brilliance. And they have a thinly veiled desire to punish anyone who dares rise above the mediocre. They actively want to see genius debased.

Why is it a debasement to clean toilets ? Is their something wrong with it ? Its clearly a form of socially undesirable labor, few people dream of cleaning toilets. You evidently think some should be regulated to de-basing labor due to their socio-economic position or intellectual disposition.It is the very fact that superstars don't clean toilets that makes the activity ''seem'' debasing. If everyone cleaned the toilet it would loose whatever degrading connotation it once held, consequently elevating all. Capitalism does not reward genius, it rewards privilege and punishes disadvantage.

Kama

Df, I don't know where you get your textbook of Sweden, but it appears to have given you a highly blinkered view of the nations development; you claimed it went into decline in '76, which is precisely when the Social Democrats fell. You represented it as a Liberal country, when it has a distinct social model mediating both a strong state interventionist and free markets, an export-oriented socialist market-state.

donegalfella wrote:

I disagree. The welfare state is effectively a twentieth-century innovation, and so the non-governmental provision of welfare—through families, communities, charities, and churches—has a long, established history.

And one they are free to continue. Welfare states were enacted due to the shortcomings of these aforementioned in the face of the task, rather than their success. I agree that this informal sector would be forced to provide more, but I disagree that it would be as equitable or effective. This communitarian vision does not provide for individuals, but opens up a coercive vision from the past, of the workhouse, of charity, of the Church. The same problem of 'what of those who are unpopular?' arises.

I don't assume that it will just materialize out of thin air, but I'm aware of the large and thriving network of private charities that existed in the nineteenth century—in the U.S., for instance—before they were crowded out by government-provided social services in the twentieth.

It is interesting that the first half of the period is before industrial take-off, while the second is the Robber Baron period, marked by crony capitalist monopolies, no labour law to speak of, and high unemployment, leading to massive labour unrest, which led to the rise of the Progressives in the 20th century. I for one have no wish to return there.

People pass a homeless person on the street now and think, that's the government's problem. People hear a story about a child whose parents have died in a car crash and think, the social workers will take care of her. Individual and community responsibility disappears.

Individual and collective responsibility have not disappeared, they are instantiated through NGO's, private charities, and State care. And it is jarring to see the complaint of the loss of responsibility after the earlier claim that the mistakes of others are 'not my problem'. The Informal, 19th century provision you advocate will certainly not materialize if your 'not my problem' attitude was generalized; it is for this very reason that (outside of those who advocate a ethics of selfishness) it is seen as an unethical attitude. Either it is not my problem, and I have no responsibility to either pay tax to support, or support through a charity; or it is my problem, and I am responsible, whether through State, charity, or personal. Either/Or.

Well, firstly, you've left out the important Anglo-American school of individualist anarchism (anarcho-capitalism), which includes figures such as Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, and Murray Rothbard.

I by no means meant to be exhaustive; there are as many schools of libertarian as there are libertarians. I enumerated left-anarchisms that I had seen defended or espoused on the thread, because there are relevant differences between them in the discussion; eg. a complaint that there will be no market signals is irrelevant as a critique of Proudhonian Mutualism. And I'm quite sympathetic to Rothbard; have you read The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult?

Ayn Rand never identified herself as a libertarian; in fact, she had little but scorn for the label. It's more correct to refer to her as an objectivist.

Objectivists, seemingly, are quite hostile to libertarianism, as Rand was, yet libertarians are generally well-disposed to Rand, a copy of Atlas Shrugged has been on the shelf of every libertarian I have ever known. I can see no distinct conceptual distinction between Rand and broad-libertarian, my apologies if she isn't canonically one. Am I to assume you are a Randian?

No—but the inevitable town-hall meeting, and the inevitable vote to determine who would collect the rubbish and clean the toilets, would have very strong elements of coercion. Ultimately, somebody would be told that he was on toilet duty, whether he liked it or not. Such is the "democratic will of the collective."

Equally, the toilet-cleaners position in the capitalist social orgnization carries 'strong elements of coercion'. Coercion is either limited to violent means, or it is extended to include other factors. The treatment on this must be consistent; you cannot have it both ways.

See, the problem with the anarcho-socialist allocation of labour is that it all seems to be oriented around the putative ideal of fairness rather than the goals of productivity and efficiency.

I regard optimizing between them as a far more fertile approach than attempting to maximise either; much as I regard there to be an optimal level of state 'interference', I think there is an optimal level of inequality, and so on.

I asked Akrasia above whether he would be happy to see Einstein on his knees cleaning toilets, and whether he would consider that work beneficial to "society." He did not respond—a telling moment, I think.

Perhaps Einstein should speak rather than be spoken for, since he was a renowned socialist. Given that the man did his best work while a patent clerk, he is an unlikely example to use for a justification of the benefits of the profit motive in creating revolutionary and genius-grade discovery...

Einstein wrote:

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the "free labor contract" for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present-day economy does not differ much from "pure" capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an "army of unemployed" almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Perhaps, when you recruit a famous figure to stand duty in your argument, check they are on your side?

Permabear

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synd

What is the Latin for "dole queue"?

Yes the Romans distributed food in the form of grain - an early form of social welfare. Refutation of your assertion that welfare state was ''an invention of the twentieth century''. :pac:

Would people give more to charity if they weren't already being taxed through the nose to fund the welfare state? I wonder.

Welfare is merely the re-expropriation of of social surplus - albeit a small portion. The money the upper-class decide to re-invest in society isn't theirs to begin with, besides charities are localized and poorly equipt to deal with large scale problems.

Can we have some examples of productive socialist anarchist regimes, please?

"The artisans and small workshop owners, together with their employees and apprentices, often joined the union of their trade. By consolidating their efforts and pooling their resources on a fraternal basis, the shops were able to undertake very big projects and provide services on a much wider scale.The collectivisation of the hairdressing shops provides an excellent example of how the transition of a small-scale manufacturing and service industry from capitalism to socialism was achieved.''

''Before July 19th, 1936 ''the date of the Revolution'', there were 1,100 hairdressing parlours in Barcelona, most of them owned by poor wretches living from hand to mouth. The shops were often dirty and ill-maintained. The 5,000 hairdressing assistants were among the most poorly paid workers. Both owners and assistants therefore voluntarily decided to socialise all their shops. "How was this done? All the shops simply joined the union. At a general meeting they decided to shut down all the unprofitable shops. The 1,100 shops were reduced to 235 establishments, a saving of 135,000 pesetas per month in rent, lighting, and taxes. The remaining 235 shops were modernised and elegantly outfitted. From the money saved, wages were increased by 40%. Everyone having the right to work and everyone received the same wages. The former owners were not adversely affected by socialisation. They were employed at a steady income. All worked together under equal conditions and equal pay. The distinction between employers and employees was obliterated and they were transformed into a working community of equals -- socialism from the bottom up." ["Collectivisations in Catalonia," The Anarchist Collectives, pp. 93-94]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUig0lFHDDw

"Due to disparities in currency"? I don't think so. The low wage rate in Poland and other Eastern European nations is a direct consequence of communism. Freed from the shackles of statism and central planning, young Poles flocked to Ireland of their own free will, eager to embrace free markets and capitalism. It wasn't the democratic will of the majority that put toilet brushes in their hands, that's for sure.

Il quote myself here considering my point on the USSR was conveniently ignored.

''Did the USSR fail ? Well lets look at the facts. The liberal assertion that the USSR was a failure is predicated upon its being compared economically with the USA or Europe within a given time frame - a ridiculous comparison in that that these areas had been developed prior - you would have to go back about 800 years before both economies where alike. The rational comparison would be to look at nations that were similar to the soviet states in 1910 and compare their level of development in 1990. So we could compare Russia and Brazil or Bulgaria and Guatemala ect. Brazil for example should be a wealthy nation given its vast natural resources - peace ect (Russia being destroyed by world wars). Brazil is actually better equipped to develop than Russia ever was. Theirs a reason no-one undertakes the above comparison - because the result exposes liberal sophistry.

For Brazil about 5-10% of the population enjoy a high living standard, however the remaining 80% live in conditions comparable with central Africa. For the vast majority of Brazilians Soviet Russia would have looked like heaven. In fact when you look at the rate of industrial development within the USSR - it surpasses that of the developed western world. Living standards shot up from around 1917 - 1950 in terms of average income. The economy stagnated around the mid 60s until its collapse. Now if we compare living standards from the last period of the soviet regime - to the period of economic liberalization we see something very interesting, massive reduction in living standards and an increase in poverty levels. UNICEF documented half a million additional deaths a year in Russia alone due to the implementation of capitalist reform, or more accurately the removal of social supports and price controls. In the Czech Rep poverty went from 5.7% in 1989 to 18.2% in 1992. In Poland during the same period from 20% -40%. The massive votes retained by the eastern European communist parties aren't hard to explain at all in light of the facts - with the Russian CP alone averaging with roughly a third of the vote. Some months ago Moldova voted the communist party back into power. Now its often thrown around by misinformed liberals that this is due to the ''youth vote'' - who had no experience of soviet misery. The truth is actually the opposite - the majority of communist party voters are the elderly. So did the USSR fail ? - well the USSR had internal problems - social repression, difficulty with adequate production esp in the form of consumer goods ect. However its clear that it resulted in a higher standard of living than economic liberalism would have provided within the given time span.''

You can't "annul" the higher earnings of graduates simply by compensating them for the cost of their educations. Higher wages also reward dedication, hard work, intelligence, capability, and more professional skill sets.

Oh you can, its quite possible you just disagree with it. Something that should really be stressed is that your disapproval does not = impossibility, just thought Id clear that up. Now, the fact that individual effort cant be quantified aside, are you seriously suggesting that those who arn't collage educated are less dedicated, capable or skilled ? :rolleyes:

Blinkered? I completely stand by what I've written about Sweden. Meanwhile, Comrade Synd is trying to claim that Ericsson and ASEA were developed by the Swedish state after 1932—when both had, in fact, been in existence as privately owned companies since 1876 and 1883 respectively. I don't notice any comment from you on that?

Admittedly my blunder, private companies - although they did develop under protectionism second to that of Soviet Russia. A mistake, but one that refutes your initial argument nonetheless

Blinkered? I completely stand by what I've written about Sweden

You stand by what you said ? Please explain how massive levels of protectionism within manufacturing = liberal capitalism.

Kama

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Note the pattern: you made a statement of fact. You were called on it. You made a joke, and attempted to move on.

Charities are much more targeted and effective than notoriously wasteful state bureaucracies.

State welfare is a right, rather than an act of charity. You wish the recipients to beg from their betters, or breed to have minders in their dotage. To most, this appears profoundly reactionary.

Can we have some examples of productive socialist anarchist regimes, please?

Can you supply the libertarian ones? Shall we include Oceania (fell apart from lack of interest), the attempt to gain ownership by 'mixing concrete with a Tongan reef' by the Phoenix Foundation (repelled by the powerful Tongan navy) and Abaco (finding a white secessionist militia for secession from majority-black rule in the Bahamas)?

Now, social anarchist communities include the Zapatista Municipalities, Christiania, the Spanish Anarchists before Franco, to Cascadia (until its destruction), the 'tradition' emergent from Bey of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (theoretically interesting for anti-statists) , and the kibbutzim movement (more appropriately so in the earlier period, though). Plenty of examples, for starters, all the way back to the Diggers (as an alternative origin point for anarchism). They tend to be violently put down; we used crack a joke in Chiapas that if you wanted to find a EZLN village, you'd drive along til you saw a military base on the right of the road, then look left. ;D

Blinkered? I completely stand by what I've written about Sweden. Meanwhile, Comrade Synd is trying to claim that Ericsson and ASEA were developed by the Swedish state after 1932 I don't notice any comment from you on that?

You can stand by it all you like, but apparently you cannot substantiate it.

I'm not an expert on Sweden, I admit, I scratched the head, said 'that doesn't sound right', and did the background reading. And your story didn't check out, oir at the very least requires an highly selective reading of Swedish industrial, economic and social policy. You claimed knowledge, which has not been backed up. You claimed Sweden went into decline in 76 from the scourge of socialism, which was when the Socialists lost power, and the decline was due to changes in the international balance of trade, and had been successful for decades previous; that its policy regime previous to this was archetypically Liberal, when it was strongly corporatist and compromise-based since circa 1930 domestically, while remaining an open export-oriented economy, and used this example as an attempt to refute the original point: that the vast majority of the highly-competitive economies of the world have active state involvement, from Swedens SDP to Singapores PAP. State 'interference', state infrastructural investment, redistribution, and strong social protection for citizens; a welfare state, oriented towards high labour market participation and human capital investment in context of an open, financially liberal economy. Which if the state is as inefficient as you say, and it's interference in markets so very pernicious, should not be possible, in theory or practice. Sweden used low tariffs and free trade, in the context of a strong domestic socialist component, aka the Swedish Model.

Again, can you account for the competitive success of economies which veer so far from the libertarian ideal?

Having just finished reading Jürgen Neffe's biography, I can hardly be accused of ignorance when it comes to Einstein's life and politics!

Then do you not appreciate the irony of using him in an attempt to argue against socialism? It bears little relevance to the internal logic of the argument, but is somewhat ridiculous in context of presenting it. Perhaps their is a humor here too subtle for me to notice...I'm thinking of Ayn Rand volunteering for scrubbing a floor with her electric toothbrush in a public urinal for the good of mankind...

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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So you're worried about the 'element of coersion' in someone being assigned a few hours work for the upkeep of the community, but see nothing at all wrong with 'the element of coersion' of someone being assigned work by an employer. The difference is that in the anarchist community, the individual has much more say in what work he gets to do, and the crappy jobs are done on a shared basis, instead of done full time by a lower serving class.

The problem with the anarcho-socialist allocation of labour is that it all seems to be oriented around the spurious ideal of fairness rather than the goals of productivity and efficiency.

The concept of fairness is an innate one (going back to your 2 year old, "that's not fair" is the war cry of the child)
Anarchism tries to build a society that is as fair as possible, Libertarianism completely ignores fairness and gives all the sweets to the boy with the richest parents.

asdasd

The difference is that in the anarchist community, the individual has much more say in what work he gets to do, and the crappy jobs are done on a shared basis, instead of done full time by a lower serving class.

Have you volunteered, yet? Remarks like "lower serving classes" etc give me an idea that you have a slighyl superior attitude to the working man, despite what you may think.

Nobody is co-erced into doing any job under capitalism, in fact you can choose to do none. The "lower serving jobs" are something that we all do, if we come from certain backgrounds, for some time in our life. As for collecting rubbish, that is a pleasant outdoor activity with a bit of excercise attached. Your dislike of lower class jobs is merely posh-boy snobbery. The dustman plies his trade, and is served by the restaurant manager ( who hopes to own one day), who goes to the hairdresser, who buys a video game made a geek. All of these guys are "subservient" to the others when working. All can choose to leave their jobs, at any time. And people who use physical labour have a snobbery to those who dont - pencil necked geek destined to a job in the Office, is one I have heard directed at myself with a bit of disdain, when I worked construction.

Do we want to pay physical workers more? Sure, why not... although that is impossible if there are massive amounts of surplus labour entering the country every decade. Something posh boy anarchists generally are in favour of.

Anarchism tries to build a society that is as fair as possible, Libertarianism completely ignores fairness and gives all the sweets to the boy with the richest parents.

we could do the latter with a 100% inheritance tax. Why wait for the "autonomous communes" to produce a plane, something we have shown to be impossible.

As we have seen you have no clue how any industry works, in fact you have no clue how any kind of business works. This indicates to me that you are a posh boy, or a perennial student.

Even at the simplest level a restaurant kitchen ( where I have worked - as well as contruction, factories, Offices, and as a social service volunteer) needs a head chef. A vote on the menu every day , without the responsibilty to produce, would get no-body fed. And a restaurant is a trivially simple enterprise

Asdasd is a class warrior, not a libertarian, and he wants an inheritance tax. Also, asdasd is in favour of affirmitive action against the children of the elite - that is, Trinners students, privately schooled students, people with Dublin 4 accents. Thats the real elite, not this diffuse "capitalist" class which makes money on one generation, and can come from anywhere, and increase the wealth of their workers. Take the guy in Killorglin in Kerry who set up a company called stock photo, hired some locals, and made them all millionaires.

Why would the proletariat be opposed to their betterment? You know what makes them poorer, dont you - the professional class cartel, the taking of taxes to pay for your education ( which is clearly limited to "theory"). Capitalists create wealth, your class consume it.

So instead of waiting for the unlikely revolution against a capitalist class which can come from anywhere, why not join a cause that actually reduces the privilidge of the real Irish elites.

Join with Asdasd's affirmative action revolution.

asdasd

The money the upper-class decide to re-invest in society isn't theirs to begin with,

it depends. Obviously inherited wealth doesnt deserve any money. On the other hand someone who sets up a software company, hires some people, and makes them all rich ( the example I gave earlier) is totally entitled to his money.

in fact he hs far more entitlement to his money, than most members of the State classes. Certainly a Marxist professor, for instance, producing codology that nobody wants or needs; and which is clearly falsifiable is a far more egregious parasite than any capitalist I can think of.

In terms of how much "surplus value" is expropriated per worker, is most modern capitalist organizations with low margins there can be very little progfit per employee. hence the push on wages. If the profit rate is low, the company is not being that expoitative. So were a normal company to become a "commune" returning the profit back to the worker, they would be between -10% to +10% better off these days: depending on whether the company is in loss or profit.

Far more money is being expropriated by the State, per worker.

So who is feeding you? What do you live on?

asdasd

I am going to garner up some figures on "capitalism" in Ireland. as you may imagine, there really is not a huge capitalist class. This isnt all that surprising, since we import capital, and modern capitalism is diffuse, anyway. Also, since it is not 1852 anymore, the diffuse capitalist class - shareholders - can come from any class. My civil servant mother owns some stocks she bought on retirement. Ruling class she is not. The shareholders in the banks were wiped out by the inefficiencies of a managerial class ( and that class is stratified). The shareholders were mostly poorer than the managerial class.

That leaves a small business class, and the figure I remember seeing was that that class earns on average about 45K profit a year.

The anger against capitalism seems a bit misplaced then. Capitalists are not the people living in the millionaire suburbs, which may explain the "anti-capitalist" feelings in Dalkey. Well, judging, by letters to Madame.

So, um, lets go after the real elites, shall we.

Permabear

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Akrasia

asdasd wrote: »

Have you volunteered, yet? Remarks like "lower serving classes" etc give me an idea that you have a slighyl superior attitude to the working man, despite what you may think.

I don't know how you could possibly come to that conclusion. If anything, it is the libertarians who have that attitute, "why should I have to help clean toilets" Is usually phrased as "why should a trained doctor have to clean toilets" but the thing is most libertatians tend to see themselves as part of the professional class in their future world, and not the toilet cleaning class.

Nobody is co-erced into doing any job under capitalism, in fact you can choose to do none.

And then die starving and homeless on the streets. some choice.

The "lower serving jobs" are something that we all do, if we come from certain backgrounds, for some time in our life. As for collecting rubbish, that is a pleasant outdoor activity with a bit of excercise attached. Your dislike of lower class jobs is merely posh-boy snobbery.

You and the other libertarians are the ones who keep bringing up toilet cleaning and rubbish collectors. All I have ever said is that the necessary jobs that nobody volunteers to do, would be divided out equally amongst everyone.

Do we want to pay physical workers more? Sure, why not... although that is impossible if there are massive amounts of surplus labour entering the country every decade. Something posh boy anarchists generally are in favour of.

That's enough. I'm not going to engage with you anymore. You refuse to participate in a civilised way

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Anarchists would be in favour of educating everyone, and developing talents and expertise amongst all the community, rather than just the top 20%

There would be more trained surgeons, more engineers, more architects etc, and In a participarory workers self managed workplace, there would be more opportunities for workers to gain experience in all the aspects of the business rather than simply being experts in the role that they do all day everyday (and can often be fully trained to do that role in a few weeks)

And Just to prempt the 'you're naive, don't know anything about the real world" here are some of the jobs I have worked in and and became expert in over the course of my working life.

Barman, Plaster Coving fitter, Warehouse worker, waiter, shop assistant, car wash, Assembly line production assistant, office clerk, Insurance claims assessor, cabinet maker.........
There is nothing to stop us training twice as many professionals as we do currently and having them work half the hours (enough to give them the ability to retain their skills and also participate in other areas of interest and assist in the other tasks required by the community.

Permabear

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Sunn

A surgeon, engineer, or architect is most effective when he can devote his career to pursuing his chosen profession. But you want everyone to be jack of all trades and master of none.

He didn't say that,

there would be more opportunities for workers to gain experience was what the actual point was.

Unless you have a serious amount of cash its very difficult to become a surgeon, architect etc. Under anarchism the whole concept would be different, everyone would have the actual opportunity to pursue a career they wanted, not everyone wants to be a surgeon. Some people may find that after a number of years career "x" is not for them anymore, the chance to be retrained would always be an option and encouraged under an anarchist society, the more people can do the better it is for the community.