Libertarianism versus Anarchism

synd

Surely, in a free market economy, transactions will take place only if both parties believe they will be happier as a result of the exchange? As such, if I own a house, and I rent it to you for €500 a month, why can't that be a mutually beneficial interaction? I am happy to get €500 a month, and you are happy to have a house to live in. Where exactly is the exploitation?

Incorrect, under capitalist transactions there exists an indentured class disparity in purchasing power defined by capital relation. The worker must subordinate himself before the capitalist given that he needs to work, the army of unemployed labor considered the capitalist is in a position to negotiate an exploitative contract. The value of the workers labor may = 60 on the market however the capitalist sets a wage of 10 thereby expropriating the workers surplus value. The worker does not accept a given wage based on ''observation of future value'' (as Austrian economists would say) - he accepts based on his social position, the fact that he is an expendable unit dependent on capital and by that relation the class who control it.

Freedom is incompatible with capitalism - If I own an island whoever lives on it must accept my terms, the capitalist rules via property rights. Furthermore under conditions of market competition wealth and power invariably become concentrated. This is why constitutional liberalism (with its emphasis on property rights) lies at the heart of bourgeoisie ideology.

On the issue of democracy - in the process of collective decision making only two options are logically possible. Majority decree and minority decree. The insidious liberal propagandist deceptively makes reference to a third method of governance ie (constitutional). Which is ''in reality'' a form of oligarchy in that it was compiled by the bourgeoisie minority, and designed in such a way that property rights ''the tool of upper class domination'' are enshrined as sacrosanct.

Genuine democracy can only exist in the public realm, under capitalism competition forces new sites of investment to be opened up, this leads to an inevitable compulsion to privatize all public domains. Consequently sites of democracy are by degrees eroded with the necessary exception of those liberal elections required to legitimize the ''very process of de-democratization''

Liberals like to project themselves as rational, objective and non-ideologically driven, frequently denouncing those with alternative perspectives as (crazed radicals). However the concept of radicalism is entirely relative – needless to say that in a socialist society it would be the liberals who embrace (radical) ideology. The liberal claim to objectivity is little more than a deceptive ruse designed to discredit ideas which oppose to the process of bourgeoisie rule.

Not quite true. Look at our current system. If I want to build a house, I can't just hire a contractor and set to work. I have to apply for planning permission. I have to publish a notice on my site and in the newspapers. And everyone in the community gets a right to comment or object. If they believe that my house affects them in any way, they get to register that complaint. And yet they don't have an ownership stake.

To refute the self serving lie that the state and capitalism are or can be separate entities. Market competition invariably results in the consolidation of wealth and power - leading companies will then either utilize or create external institution in order to maintain competitive advantage ie. the state. State capitalism is capitalism - the right wing libertarian appeal to a non existent model is predicated upon a fundamental distortion of economic history. Utopian capitalism of the sort you describe has never existed - and is actually just used as benchmark to justify the inherent flaws ''class rule'' within real existing capitalism.

Well, I'd very much like to see a blueprint of your system. How do you avoid the pitfalls, inefficiencies, and shortages inherent in Soviet-style central planning, for instance? How do you make sure that innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity continue?

Historically collectivized industry has resulted in increased productive output, its all on record - ie. anarchist Catalonia, the Argentinian factory movement, EZLN Chipias ect. Today we could conceivably have a planned economy via IT - computers such as the Fujitsu VP200 or Hitachi S810/20 can be utilized. Many of the problems associated with info accumulation under the soviet system would no longer be an issue. Price and wage can be calculated in terms of socially necessary labor time ect.

Around a century ago, we had an organization that talked very much like this. They were known as the Bolsheviks. And they caused some of the most barbaric and inhumane slaughter ever seen on this planet, in an effort to effect "a transformative change in the economic, social and political relationships within society." How do you make sure the same thing doesn't happen again?

The condemnation of the Bolshevik revolution is a central component within contemporary bourgeoisie ideology/propaganda.

First: Id like to highlight the exploitation, genocide and conquest that capitalism is predicated upon. The noble slaveholders who founded the first capitalist republics should come to mind for those not in denial about history. The industrial revolution occurred in the UK largely due to the massive profits made from imperialism - 5% in the 1st year from the slave trade alone if memory serves me, not to mention the opium trade ect. In the US the industrial revolution was fulled by textiles/cotton, and it was cheap not because of ''market forces'' - rather due to the extermination of the native population and the importation of African slaves.

On violent revolution - that is the replacement of one regime with another is most always bloody. Right wingers understandably suffer historical amnesia when it comes to the question of how capitalism came to be the predominant form of social organization. The rising mercantile class facing massive taxation at the behest of the third estate/landed gentry decided to overthrow them in violent revolution thus assuming position as the ruling class - I don't have an exact statistic for how many heads where chopped off, but if anyone cares to provide one id be thankful . Yes, bloody revolution is only a crime when aimed at the overthrow of the bourgeoisie - (a similar argument didn't dissuade them from committing the same crime youl find )

I've heard of these various ideas, yes. And I don't know of any serious scientist, entrepreneur, or artist who "copylefts" his work, do you? The "movement," such as it is, tends to be restricted to people who want to create a freely available clone of the Unix operating system, or amateur "editors" of Wikipedia.

Intellectual property rights severely thwart the progression of scientific research, most advanced breakthroughs being made in the public sector and then sold off ect.

Here are a couple. Firstly, consider the self-employed person and the small-business ownership. Is the self-employed individual a capitalist? Or is he a worker? Which side of the fence does he sit on—exploiter or exploited? What about the small-business owner who owns his own business, employs three other people, but works harder than any of them himself? Is he part of the "ruling class"? Secondly, owners of stock and shares. Are they owners or are they workers? If the company in which they own stock performs well, the share price goes up and they receive dividends. Does that make them exploitative capitalists -- even if they go to work, too?

The small proprietor, the petite-bourgeoisie is usually considered a member of the working class. The orthodox Marxian conception of class cannot be utilized in the modern era - anarchist theory is more fitting. Class should be defined with regards the degree of socio-economic power one holds. A small shareholder for instance is a member of the working class - while a politician ''although a wage earner'' is a member of the ruling class.

And how is communist anarchism not collectivist?

Collectivism supports a wage system

Permabear

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Permabear

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Joycey

donegalfella wrote: »

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Must read upon what I missed of the thread but seeing as I came in the door and I saw this... Someone else will probably do it much better:

Example of capitalist: someone who has a piece of paper which represents a claim of ownership of some property through which they appropriate capital (resources)

Example of worker: someone who is an employee (possibly employer?), ie they get paid by someone else/a corporation for their labour

Now I assume you wanted it spelled out in a way that was mutually exclusive, but seeing as there have been several posts saying that there were multitudes of shades of grey, I dont see why this is necessary


While I think of it: DF, dont you think its a bit inconsistent to recognise that there exists such a thing as a corporation but not a society? Why should a corporation, which is after all nothing more then a shorthand way of talking about the collection of shareholders/employees which comprise that corporation, be granted certain rights (such as the right to sue as an entity in its own right) when it is nothing more then an aggregate abstraction?

silverharp

Kama wrote: »

Minarchist 'NightWatchmen' formulations cherrypick the parts of the state which protect propertied interests, and as in the anglo-liberal case mentioned by Akrasia, the United States, those massive 'minimal' prison systems are disproportionately populated by the less-propertied. 'Small' states on this model correlate quite well with high prison populations, and high-and-rising expenditures on the penal-justice complex; the apparent link between liberal policy and high incarceration seems an indigestable one for those who profess a love of liberty.

I'm not sure I buy that , I made a point at the start of the thread that that the state creates offences where none would exist , drug crime and related is a prime example. The prisons would be pretty empty if there were no drug laws

The welfare state also adds to the pool of potential criminals in that it indulgences unmotivated young adults and gives them space to get involved in disfunctional behaviour.

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

I'm not sure I buy that , I made a point at the start of the thread that that the state creates offences where none would exist , drug crime and related is a prime example. The prisons would be pretty empty if there were no drug laws

The welfare state also adds to the pool of potential criminals in that it indulgences unmotivated young adults and gives them space to get involved in disfunctional behaviour.

I think chances are if there isnt going to be any support net for people who are unable to find employment in your libertarian society there are going to be massively increased levels of theft and violence done in relation to property. People are going to resort to crime before they starve, and this is not now so much a last resort as plan B after not being able to get a job.

This will be the new mode of "cleansing" those seen as undesirable and unecessary by the capitalist system, the current one being the war on drugs, as you say.

turgon

A note about the holy grail: direct democracy. This system, whereby everyone is given a voice, was used in the Swiss Confederation in times past. However most cantons have abondened this practice as it has proven to be inefficient. What is the other democracy ye speak of?

Additionally, it seems for any new project to get off the ground in anarcho-socialism the "community" must give it approval. Thus they must think it will work. But take something like Twitter. If the founders had come to me before it was started and described it to me - or most people - they probably would have been laughed at. However it has become a huge success.

Yet someone cant do anything outside of the community. It seems ye demand people work at things the majority deem appropriate.

Joycey wrote: »

While I think of it: DF, dont you think its a bit inconsistent to recognise that there exists such a thing as a corporation but not a society?

Not at all. A corporation is something someone can voluntarily join. People however make sure that you must join society and thus be compelled by the rules and restraints this involves.

Akrasia

Kama wrote: »

I'm very interested in this discussion; close family tend to have the bitterest arguments, and libertarianism and anarchosocialism often appear indistinguishable to anyone without an ideological stake in either position, or an advanced degree in political science.

I dont see how it can be hard to tell the difference between both sides, libertarians are ultra capitalist, anarchists are anti capitalist.

Both profess the same aims, freedom and liberty, but the implementation could hardly be more different.

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

I think chances are if there isnt going to be any support net for people who are unable to find employment in your libertarian society there are going to be massively increased levels of theft and violence done in relation to property. People are going to resort to crime before they starve, and this is not now so much a last resort as plan B after not being able to get a job.

If by support net you mean coercive transfer of resourses from one person to another (sounds like a definition of theft ) I disagree , the Libertarian society will produce a voluntary response either via family/community or charity, alot of charities around today were started in the 19thC for instance, it was the welfare system that crowded out private charity.
This will always come back to the Libertarian principle that you cannot commit a crime or enslave people to meet a percieved need or meet the policy objectives of a particular government.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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I think now is a good time to ask you to define 'ownership'.

What is ownership? You say you own your own house, what confers that ownership?

Clearly your 'ownership' of that property is a social construct based on the agreement of the rest of society to respect your boundaries, and also on there being a mechanism for you to protect that property from anyone who tries to violate it.

It is nothing 'real' it is a human invention, and it is not respected by any other aspect of nature other than human society (try telling floodwaters not to violate your property rights, or a colony of ants that decides you are a valuable source of food)

You keep asking who 'owns' the individual houses in an anarchist society. The answer is that there is no private property. There is no social convention to agree ownership or to protect exclusive private property.

There is no state police force or army that can be called in to pacify rebellious workers in a factory. If you want something done, you're going to have to work to convince others that it is worth doing. In capitalism, you rull by decree based on arbitrary heirarchical 'rights' conferred by a piece of paper giving you title deed over a piece of property.

There is nobody who can sell someone a piece of land because there is no land registry. (again, a construct enforced by coersive law) Nobody would pay money to 'buy' land from someone who doesn't have any more of a claim to sell than you do.

And to buy more land, he has to earn enough money to pay the going market rate for land to its current owner, with whom he will engage in a consensual, mutually beneficial economic transaction. Why is that problematic? As for acting as a dictator within his own boundaries—yes, he can, but he won't keep his tenants for long if he does so!

It is problematic because there are a great number of ways in which people can acquire land that they have no personal interest in and sell it out from under the feet of the people who live there, to someone who would like to pursue a development that is not supported by the local residents.

Example one. A benevolent landlord dies and leaves his property to his only son, His son lives in a different country and has no interest in keeping the property so he puts it on the market where it is bought by another local landlord who has a reputation as a tyrant. Suddenly, through no fault of their own, the tenants of the old landlord find themselves ruled by a tyrant and their only recourse in a libertarian system is to either accept his decrees, or try and leave to live somewhere less oppressive.

Example two. A landowner attempts to start a business which is unsucessful and he goes bankrupt, the bank reposesses his collateral and liquidates all his other businesses closing them down and stripping them of their assets for quick settlements of the debts.

Example 3. Someone wants to build a super dump in an area that us used for agriculture. The agricultural land value is 1000 per acre, but the superdump would make more profit than agriculture, so the local landowners are offered 10000 an acre for their land, Most are totally opposed to the idea as it would ruin their home area but a few are greedy and sell, knowing that they can buy 10 times the land somewhere else with the profits. As soon as the superdump owner has enough land to build his facility, the land values of all the other farmers who didn't sell are reduced to 50 pounds an acre and the quality of life for the locals is drastically reduced.

etc etc etc etc etc etc

I could think of plausible examples of negative impacts on others of the dictatorship of the landowner untill the cows come home

So would anarchist policy be formulated at, say, large town-hall meetings? What happens, as commonly happens, when no agreement can be reached?

policy would be decided on from the bottom up, neighbourhood meetings, perhaps once a week, delegates are chosen to relay the wishes of each neighbourhood to the next level and upwards depending on what level of society the decision would affect.

The mundane tasks could be delegated to administrators who have no power to enact policy, and would be immediately recallable if they violated their strict mandate.

Everyone would be entitled to attend, but not everyone would attend every meeting, they would choose which topics they have an interest in and participate in those discussions and decisions.

It might sound like a lot of discussion and you might think that this would be ineffective and people would get bogged down and nothing would ever get done, but there are very many real world examples of bottom up direct democratic decision making that operate today on very key issues, including participatory budgeting (where the public spending allocation of entire cities are decided by the collaboration of hundreds or even thousands of neighbourhood councils)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

If people are able to come to democratic agreement on the raising of taxes and specific spending allocations, then they'll be able to agree pretty much anything.

Libertarians would uphold the same right, actually, since they are also quite alive to the problem of the tyranny of the majority. In the libertarian world, though, there is no a priori presumption of a collective—it is assumed that people can enter into or leave voluntary associations as they wish.

As long as they're not tied in by a 'free contract'
If you have a lease agreement with a landlord for 12 months and after the first month you find the terms of the lease (that you signed up to) too oppressive, he would be entitled to charge you a very large penalty if you wanted to leave. If you have an employment contract, there can be penalties for leaving without proper notice, or clauses to prevent you from working with a competitor for a certain length of time afterwards.

If you are a low paid worker, you are severely restricted to where you can move to, and under the market system that you prefer, the worst landlords would have the cheapest rents, but these may be the only accommodation the low paid workers could afford. It's not much freedom to say to people "you are free to leave at any time" if the alternative is unemployment, destitution, homelessness and/or starvation.

If someone signs a contract, presumably having read all the clauses, terms, conditions, etc., then he should know what agreement he is entering into. If he feels that the contract was deceptive or misleading, he can take legal action for redress. Again, where is the problem?

Firstly, you 'presumably having read all the clauses' is presumung far too much, and even if they did read them, there is no guarantee they would understand them or how those clauses would be interpreted if challenged in court.

There is a power imbalance, Have you ever ever heard of a McDonalds burger flipper negotiating his own employment contract. Of course not, they are given a contract and told to sign it or they'd hire someone else. The burgerflipper may or may not understand the contract he is signing, but that is irrelevent because he has no choice but to accept the employers terms or else remain unemployed.

The poor have very very little negotiating power when it comes to contracts. If they want to do anything, they have to accept terms that are written to protect the other party more than them.

You say they can challenge unfair contracts, but to who? A judge in a capitalist court where property rights are inalienable and 'free contracts' are the basis of all human interaction.

Yes, but people who form businesses must cooperate with each other in order to create the company. In the marketplace, the companies compete.

The partners who own the business cooperate with each other, the workers follow orders.
I suppose someone barking orders and workers fulfilling them is a form of cooperation, but this is coersive cooperation rather than true voluntary cooperation.

First, that's not the kind of "cooperation" I was referring to! Second, cartels and oligarchies are generally unstable and short-lived, since relationships are often strained by the incentive to cheat. The cartel position is not a Nash equilibrium in game theory.

Individual cartels may be unstable, but collusion to fix prices and maintain profits appears to be the natural instinct of the capitalist much more than compeition (this instinct is a byproduct of the human tendancy to work together rather than individualism)

If you think collusion is only a temporary state in capitalism, please explain to me why petrol stations so clearly operate in a cartel manner and why supermarket prices almost always match each other to one or two percent of each other in a given market segment while the retail chains are making enormous profits and rapidly expanding around the world?

By the way collusion doesn't have to be men meeting up in darkened rooms, it can be an implied understanding not to engage in price compeition and to carve out the market through marketing and non price promotions

It wouldn't attempt to ensure certain outcomes—that's the point. The libertarian doesn't attempt to save people from themselves; he only makes them aware of the consequences of their actions.

So libertarianism will do nothing to rescue people who have fallen on hard times because of 'moral hazard', and nothing to protect the children of people who have become drug addicts because 'they're the responsibility of the parents', and you can't see how this might accumulate into major social problems in the short to medium term?

The relevant point is that free-market agriculture maximizes productivity and minimizes costs. As such, it produces extremely high yields very efficiently. Higher yields make more efficient use of farmland and help to support larger populations. Surely you would see that as a good thing? However, collectivized agriculture has always been hampered by inefficiency, waste, and low productivity, meaning that it takes more land and more farm labourers to support fewer people.

Industrial agriculture is not sustainable. It pollutes the environment, reduces biodiversity and the long term health of the eco system. There is no shortage of workers, there are almost half a million unemployed people in Ireland right now. I don't understand why it is more efficient to have fewer workers working longer hours while there are hundreds of thousands of people who want to work but there aren't enough jobs. It's more profitable for the capitalist, and it allows them to 'compete' with imports from abroad, but that wouldn't be an issue in an anarchist system where the emphasis would be on locally producing as much as practical and as sustainably as possible.

The U.S. prison population has exploded due to the destructive War on Drugs, which has seen the prison population grow from 40,000 prisoners in 1980 to around 500,000 prisoners today. Libertarians do not support the War on Drugs, as I'm sure you're aware.

There are 2.3 million people in U.S. jails, not 500 thousand
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1
The biggest 2 factors in the rate of incarceration in U.S. jails are race and class. If you're from a poor black family you have a 1 in 3 chance of spending some time in jail during your lifetime. The 'war on drugs' is part of the reason for the incarcaration, but it's really a war on poverty. There are inadequate social supports for the poor in America and so they turn to crime to support themselves. (and from some of the documentaries I have seen, they are better off on the inside than they are outside because the conditions in which they are expected to live are appalling)

Another factor is the huge increase in the number of private jails in america which make huge profits from incarcerating poor people, and using them as a source of slave labour for industry. The system is corrupt because the profits are so enormous.

What would the jails be like in a Libertarian society? Would there be forced labour to pay the costs? What about when the judges are paid backhanders to sentence people for longer sentences for pettier crimes?

By the way, your Chinese figure does not include the communist system of "reforming" political dissidents through forced labour. The number of inmates in China's forced-labour camps today is estimated by the BBC to be in the region of 2 million.

Yes it does, the 1.6 million figure includes the extra judicial labour camps. I looked for that BBC figure but couldn't find it.
But even if it is true, china still has 4 times the U.S. population, and does not refer to itself as 'the land of the free'

Joycey

Excellent post Akrasia.

Turgon: how about attempting a systematic defence of your beliefs, the way you asked so many others to do in the communist thread? You are leaving all the legwork to donegalfella, chipping in every now and again with a response to a small segment of someone elses post

silverharp wrote: »

I disagree , the Libertarian society will produce a voluntary response either via family/community or charity, alot of charities around today were started in the 19thC for instance, it was the welfare system that crowded out private charity.

First of all, you cant state this as fact, it hasnt happened yet and you have no plan to make it happen, you are relying on a prediction of this behaviour spontaneously emerging at a massive scale, something which you have no right to assert as truth.

Secondly, research has shown that people actually give far less if they are given a choice then they do in countries where there is an institution of taxation, now I know more work needs to be done to justify taxation or some other means of collectively contributing resources for the common good (which I think has already been discussed in the thread), but your claim that an equivalent system of care will be set up voluntarily in a capitalist libertarian system I view with strong scepticism

turgon

Joycey wrote: »

Turgon: how about attempting a systematic defence of your beliefs, the way you asked so many others to do in the communist thread? You are leaving all the legwork to donegalfella, chipping in every now and again with a response to a small segment of someone elses post

I think its pretty clear that DF better educated in political theory than I am, and I don't want to insult your intelligence by presuming I'm better versed then ye. Also I'm not a Libertarian to the extreme DF is, however it is obvious I'm a lot nearer to him than to you. But anyway...


I believe that criticisms of capitalism are often based on picking a situation or scenario and, without any contextualisation whatsoever, denounce that scenario as evil.

For example: Akrasia tells of the uncaring son who sells his Fathers land to a tyrannical landowner who then treats the tenants like crap. If I had just landed on earth and saw this situation as it was of course I would see the landowner as evil.

But there are many questions to be asked; many contexts to be evaluated. Why, for instance, don't the tenants own their own land? Surely if they were ambitious people who worked hard they would have accumulated enough money to purchase their own land? It would seem that those tenants who have to stay that way do so because they cannot get any better. The question is "why cant they?" And "should everyone else have to pay for this?".

Also, Akrasia's scenario gives the impression there is only one plot of land on earth, and that the tenants have no choice. But consider the landowner next to the tyrant. He sees what's going on and decides to "woo" the tyrants tenants with lower rent prices and a nicer attitude. The tenants rightly flock to him. So he has just made a lot of money, while the tyrant has lost all his tenants. Such is competition.

Why did the new landowner act nicer? Why did he provide a better service? Because in cases like this, capatilism rewards better service directly by attracting new customers. He knew that the better he was, the more money he would make.

An analogy - Windows vs Linux

This spreads beyond simple scenarios. Consider computer giant Microsoft. Why do Microsoft improve their services? Not because Microsoft genuinely care about the customer - they don't! They improve because Apple and Linux give them the challenge, and their whole financial survival depends on them constantly improving their software to keep up. So thus has the corporate stability of Microsoft been tied to what is ultimately best for the consumer.

This is a good example because you can now rightly complain about how Microsoft have an unfair dominance and how they abuse their position to give customers crap software such as Internet Explorer. And its a genuine complaint.

But here's the thing: I don't use Windows - I converted to Linux Ubuntu 2 months ago and I know that in most ways imaginable Linux is better. If you were in my position you might begrudge Microsoft and say they have to provide as good an Operating System (OS) as Linux, and that because they dont they should be wound up. But I see my having a better OS as me taking an interest in what is best for myself, and acting on it. I took a moderate interest in computers, then took a leap by trying a new OS and I am being rewarded for this by having a much better user experience.

The moral of the story is: it should not be the state/government/community that decides what is best for the person, it should be the person that finds out and decides what is best for themselves.

What motivates innovation and productivity

Basically I believe in capatilism because I think it is the best system for innovation and productivity, and thus the best for "society". If you are innovative and productive, and the fruits of your labour help others you can get material gain by selling at a price. Thus has the quality of your work, and the amount of material gain you receive become in some ways equal.

Ok Im going to unearth Ayn Rand, and I know everyone just cringed there because its probably typical of "libertarians" to mention her, but she does make a few good points. And one of them is this: the highly talented architect does not care about the client whatsoever. He only cares about the clients needs. And fundamentally, when you get an architect you dont want someone who will tell you your hair looks nice, you want an architect who will design you a good building. And although not caring about the client may seem heartless, it is what is best for the client. The best service is gotten because the architect focuses solely on the best solution. And he does this because the better the solution, the higher chance he will receive material reward.

In capatilism the focus is on gaining money, the universal currency of reward. This encourages people to deliver products and services that people need and want, to the highest standard.


Apologies for the length, and any repetition and/or boredom induced. I want to talk more about personal responsibility tomorrow, and how socialism can reward those who have none.

asdasd

I am reading the "Anarchists" with much amusement. Clearly property ownership is a human construct when laws are applied, it is an animal construct when property is held by force. Try taking a bone from a dog, or a big cat.

So lets give an an example of how primitive property would have existed.

A tribe moves from hunter gathering to agriculture.
Putative farmers tear down trees and make arable land.
They grow stuff on the land.
Their claim on the land comes from the work.

Later, A thief tries to steal their produce. The Farmer fights them off.
More thieves arrive. Some claim they want the land. The Farmers organise and see them off. This of course means they are both police and farmers.

Eventually they hire someone to protect their land. That would be a proto-police force. The beginnings of a police force, if you like.

Disputes will arise between farmers ( not necessarily thieves) about land, and that would need to be resolved. So some kind of proto-law is devised to transfer ownership. t might just be , at first, a wise man. Eventually it could be codified, even in oral form. This law does not even need a State - Brehon lawyers were mendicants but private property existed - and people accepted their judgements.

The property , however, has to be owned by force, custom, as well as law. And if by law, by the force of the State. Otherwise if a group of people are more powerful they take the land. In effect they "own" the land. Ownership, like the dog's bone, depends lastly on force. On the ability to keep it.

In feudal times that is what happened. Later, the resolutions and disputes could be solved by law, but during the Norman invasions land was owned by "right of conquest". It is only in a strong State, which in democratic theory is owned by the people, that the physically powerful dont get to take my wealth or wages ( although the State is a power in it's own right, and can).

So libertarians who believe that the State needs to exist - to defend property - are correct. Anarchists who believe that property ownership needs a State are not. It needs a man with a gun. Without a State the guy with the biggest private army owns the land. After all that is what happened after the anarchy of the dark ages, the biggest gangsters became feudalists.

That kind of property ownership is not one I would recommend unless you have a strong disposition, or an alpha male quality to lead your army into battle, something I imagine average anarchist lacks. The anarchist mush about people meeting and deciding what to do about "shared property" is mush. You can have your meetings, without a State protecting the "shared property" it will cede ownership to the guy with the biggest gun.

silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

First of all, you cant state this as fact, it hasnt happened yet and you have no plan to make it happen, you are relying on a prediction of this behaviour spontaneously emerging at a massive scale, something which you have no right to assert as truth.

Secondly, research has shown that people actually give far less if they are given a choice then they do in countries where there is an institution of taxation, now I know more work needs to be done to justify taxation or some other means of collectively contributing resources for the common good (which I think has already been discussed in the thread), but your claim that an equivalent system of care will be set up voluntarily in a capitalist libertarian system I view with strong scepticism

I never said it would be equivalent but neither would it be all or nothing. As I say the important point is that the Libertarian position is that you cant start from a coercive premise, and providing a welfare system along current lines is massively coercive

Permabear

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Akrasia

asdasd wrote: »

I am reading the "Anarchists" with much amusement. Clearly property ownership is a human construct when laws are applied, it is an animal construct when property is held by force. Try taking a bone from a dog, or a big cat.

That is a pretty feeble justification of property, that an animal will get agressive if you try to take it's food.

Private property is a human institution, only human societies allow ownership over something that they are not directly utilising and defending themselves at that specific time.

In nature, animals defend territory, they only defend the territory that they need to survive, and they only have a claim to that territory while they are actively defending it.

That is nothing like human private property where one can 'own' property by an arbitrary legal process of titles and deeds and where your ownership is defended by a third party institution (the state)

So lets give an an example of how primitive property would have existed.

A tribe moves from hunter gathering to agriculture.
Putative farmers tear down trees and make arable land.
They grow stuff on the land.
Their claim on the land comes from the work.

Later, A thief tries to steal their produce. The Farmer fights them off.
More thieves arrive. Some claim they want the land. The Farmers organise and see them off. This of course means they are both police and farmers.

It also means that the land is 'owned' in common by the people who work and defend it.

Eventually they hire someone to protect their land. That would be a proto-police force. The beginnings of a police force, if you like.

Very very crude and simplistic but i'll go with it....

Eventually, like a few thousand years later, and in a situation where it's not the 'farmers' who hire the army, it's a lord or a king who lays claim to more land than he can defend himself, so he hires mercinaries to prevent the farmers who actually live on and work the land from defying his 'authority'

Disputes will arise between farmers ( not necessarily thieves) about land, and that would need to be resolved. So some kind of proto-law is devised to transfer ownership. t might just be , at first, a wise man. Eventually it could be codified, even in oral form. This law does not even need a State - Brehon lawyers were mendicants but private property existed - and people accepted their judgements.

Disputes arise, not between farmers, but between the nobles and the gentry who lay claim to the land, so they devise laws to govern how they can keep their 'property rights' and the taxes they charge the serfs and peasents who do all the work

The property , however, has to be owned by force, custom, as well as law. And if by law, by the force of the State. Otherwise if a group of people are more powerful they take the land. In effect they "own" the land. Ownership, like the dog's bone, depends lastly on force. On the ability to keep it.

I agree with this bit. Property is not the natural state of affairs, it requires violence or the threat thereof to prevent the propertyless or the greedy from violating the 'rights' of the landowners. (not just land, look at the controversy over music piracy at the moment. the record companies are fining and imprisoning people for violations of their 'property rights' by sharing art freely amongst themselves.

So libertarians who believe that the State needs to exist - to defend property - are correct. Anarchists who believe that property ownership needs a State are not. It needs a man with a gun. Without a State the guy with the biggest private army owns the land. After all that is what happened after the anarchy of the dark ages, the biggest gangsters became feudalists.

I agree with this too, though I have said in this thread already that the ability to defend the 'ownership' of land is the crucial element that defines property, but a for property to be 'legitimised' it needs the institutions of a state.

That kind of property ownership is not one I would recommend unless you have a strong disposition, or an alpha male quality to lead your army into battle, something I imagine average anarchist lacks. The anarchist mush about people meeting and deciding what to do about "shared property" is mush. You can have your meetings, without a State protecting the "shared property" it will cede ownership to the guy with the biggest gun.

No matter how big the guys gun is, if it's only one guy, he won't be able to defend more than one room at a time. Anarchists would need to be in the majority to survive, and the difficulties with the actual establishment of an anarchist society are obvious. There would almost certainly be armed conflict, and the capitalists tend to have bigger guns. (this of course is slightly irrelevant to this thread, because Libertarians all claim to be opposed to violent coersion and wouldn't try and force into submission like Franco did in Spain

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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My point about human constructs is that they can be changed, they are not written into the laws of physics. We can change the rules of marriage, it's happening right now in our lifetime, homosexual relationships are being officially recognised as marriages in many parts of the world.

We can change the way we govern ownership of resources, that is the point I was making. Just because things are a certain way now does not mean that it's the default or the natural way of things.

But you've already said that people who wanted to own property privately, and to live in a free-market libertarian manner, would be free to do so. Now you're contradicting yourself by saying that there would be no provisions to protect private property.

I believe what I actually said was something like 'if a load of libertarians wanted to go off and live on an island somewhere and trade land property with other, I wouldn't try and stop them, but I also said that there would be conflict if the libertarians tried to force anarchists to recognise their private property rights (eg, if they expected us not to enter fenced land, or if they tried to force us to pay to use 'copyrighted material' that they claim to own.

The Libertarians could claim to own whatever they liked, they would be in for a disappointment when the anarchists refused to recognise their titles though, This not to say that anarchists would deliberately try and violate their space, but it is inevitable that as capitalists expanded, they would come into conflict with those who refused to play by their rules.

Would there be a police force that could be called in if people were being raped and murdered?

Anarchists believe that crime would be significantly reduced under anarchism as many of the causes of crime would be eliminated or reduced.
Inequality and poverty are two major drivers of crime, as is greed.

Anarchists would not advocate a professional police force, but would deal with anti social behaviour through voluntary militia which would be open to all members of the community to participate (subject to their character of course).
The trials of rapists and violent criminals would be heard by independent courts elected by the people and a random jury system similar to the courts we have today (the differences would be that there would be no need for lawyers as the cases would be heard on their own merits and the juries would decide based on their own conscience, and not complex legal directives.

Again, this conflicts with your previous statements that libertarians would be allowed to own property if they wished. If private and public property is to co-exist, how can you say there would be no land registry?

The capitalists can keep a registry if they like, the anarchists would have no interest in it and would ignore the claims to ownership.

So why aren't all these things already happening in today's world?

They do happen to a certain extent, but luckily, we don't live in a libertarian society, there are regulations and restrictions on the use of property. Zoning of land, planning permission that requires public participation in the planning process (Anarchists consider that this is inadequate, Libertarians believe that this is a violation of their rights to do whatever they like with their 'private' property)

But these decisions take place within the modern capitalist system, which has things like money, budgets, and so on. Didn't you say that your socialist anarchic society would have no money? So how do you have participatory conferences on budgets.

I was just using that as an example of large scale participatory decision making. Instead of allocating a budget, anarchists would be allocating resources. Why even raise that objection to my point? Are you just playing semantics?

But that's why people read the terms and conditions of leases before they sign them! You seem to believe that libertarianism consists of deceiving people by getting them to sign legal documents that designed deliberately to deceive. That's a huge and very problematic assumption.

I'm not saying it 'consists' of that, But are you denying that it would happen?

Where I work, I deal with people every single day who have been sold something that does not suit them without having been informed of the terms and conditions that they were signing up to.

The more important the contract, the more complicated the legal documentation becomes, and the more difficult it becomes for ordinary people to fully understand. And in a libertarian society where each individual would sign up for dozens of important contracts a year from health insurance, to employment contracts, to lease agreements etc. Very few people would have the time or the inclination to understand every term of every contract.

In the current system, there are financial regulators, ombudsmen and laws that out law predatory practices (and these laws need to be strengthened) A libertarian system would have fewer of these restrictions if any
(for example, would libertarians outlaw pyramid selling?)

Yes, and it's up to you whether you sign such a contract. It's a free, consensual choice.

that becomes legally binding once it's signed, meaning you become legally constrained by all the 'free choices' you make which doesn't sound particularly free to me.

(something mundane like buying a cd involves a contract which prohibits you from playing the music in public. If the record company wanted to, they could enforce that clause and imprison or fine people for having house parties without the appropriate license)

I'm simply presuming (a) that most people are not ignorant dupes, and (b) if someone is confused as to the terms and conditions of a contract, they can take said contract to a solicitor and have it explained to them.

That's a big presumption. Most people do not read all the contracts that they sign. (the taoiseach didn't even read the Lisbon Treaty FFS)
Even if you read a contract, unless you are an expert, you can not know how each clause is interpreted in law, and not everyone can afford to go to the solicitor to explain to them what the exclusions on a health insurance policy is before they sign it (and presumably several other health insurance policies if they are to be able to make an informed choice between the different products out there)

If I don't like the terms and conditions set by McDonalds, I can go off and work someplace else! That's the point about the free market. You're probably going to respond by outlining a hypothetical scenario in which the McDonalds job is the last job on Earth, and that the prospective employee will starve to death if he doesn't take it, but such scenarios really aren't realistic.

No, I am merely going to state the obvious, that nobody grows up as a child dreaming of one day becoming a burger flipper at a fast food shop, so it is safe to say that these workers don't have many better alternative choices for employment.
There are 400k unemployed people in Ireland today. If it wasn't for the welfare system, there would be even bigger queues for the toilet cleaning jobs than there already are. (but hey, if they don't like the contract for the toilet cleaning job, they can always 'choose' to spit shine sewer pipes)

That's correct—except for the part about a "capitalist court," because I don't know what you mean by that.

the capitalist court where the laws are 'agreed' by ideologues who believe private property rights are the fundamental good that all of society should be based on.

It is not hard to imagine which person would be better protected, the landlord, or the tenent.

With regards to the price of oil, you only have to look at OPEC, which is a government-sponsored cartel. Hardly a free market, is it? You also have to look at the government's role in price fixing in the grocery industry in Ireland. The government actually prevents overly aggressive cost-cutting in this area.

OPEC has nothing to do with the fact that petrol costs 1.21 in pretty much every station in ennis, but 1.17 in Limerick.

The government recently eliminated the ban on below cost selling and it had zero impact on the price of groceries in Ireland.

No, "libertarianism" will do nothing. If community charities want to help the poor, that is up to them—but there will be no mandatory body commanding everyone to give up a portion of their earnings to the poor and the addicted.

This will not accumulate into major social problems, as you put it. It will do quite the opposite.

You just state that without any supporting reason. 'charities will do it' and all these broken families will in fact cure social problems rather than cause them.

well that's great. All the rich people who are so offended by the government taking money off them to help drug addicts, will give the same amount of money to charities instead.

Where is your 'moral hazard' argument now? If charities went around helping all the drug addicts, wouldn't it just encourage drug addiction?

And what has collectivized agriculture ever done to combat pollution or enhance the health of the ecosystem? Soviet collective agriculture was a disaster, on every conceivable level.

Centrally planned 5 year plan industrial agriculture was a disaster, I agree with you. Locally produced fruits and vegetables, urban gardens, horticulture would be far less likely to destroy the environment. The people who live in an area are less likely to make decisions that will pollute their own environment, however, absentee landlords or individuals driven by greed are more likely to put aside environmental considerations.

There are of course many examples of local communities destroying their own environment for profit, but most forms of anarchist theory do place an emphasis on sustainabiity and the mindset of an anarchist society would probably be more aware of green issues and strive to maintain a proper balance between development and the eco system.

And you want them all to go and work on collective farms?

Nope, but if labour efficiency is a factor in why you think capitalism is better, then it is wise to point out that while productivity per person can be high, when you include the people who are excluded from working at all, it brings down the efficiency per person quite a bit and suddenly, even if collective farms were less efficient than capitalist monoculture, with zero unemployment, society would still be better off.
(and with zero unemployment, the working day for everyone should be shorter, giving us all more free time to pursue other interests like arts, sports and education

Because if we deliberately cut working hours across the board, we lose our ability to compete economically when the economy picks up.

That wouldn't be a problem in an anarchist society. We wouldn't be worried about 'competitiveness' or profits, only that we do enough work to provide for our needs and our wants. And if we can develop a technology that increases productivity, this should lead to better living standards for the society, not simply more unemployment (as people are laid off) and higher profits for the inventor like we have in capitalism.

asdasd

That wouldn't be a problem in an anarchist society.

unproven.

We wouldn't be worried about 'competitiveness' or profits, only that we do enough work to provide for our needs and our wants.

i want to live in Killiney.

And if we can develop a technology that increases productivity, this should lead to better living standards for the society, not simply more unemployment (as people are laid off) and higher profits for the inventor like we have in capitalism.

Technologies do not just happen... Inventors invent by either getting funding from the State, or as private individuals with the hope of getting a profit for their work.

Better living standards, by the way, happen with increases in productivity in capitalist societites, as we can produce more goods with less workers, rather than getting increases in unemployment, we get increase in per-capita living standards ( after all that is what having more goods available per-capita means). Uneomplyment is not related to "changes in technology" - that is luddite nonsense.

Also nonsenscial is the idea that there will be no umemplyment. That means that the "communes" would have to employ everyone regardless of their ability to do anything. Communes are hardly going to compete for crap workers, now are they.

As for "equality" if the communes are different, they will have different earning abilities. Although I am not sure if currenciy exists in this horrible dystopia of yours.

asdasd

In the current system, there are financial regulators, ombudsmen and laws that out law predatory practices (and these laws need to be strengthened)

(the differences would be that there would be no need for lawyers as the cases would be heard on their own merits and the juries would decide based on their own conscience, and not complex legal directives.

You are going to have to decide whether you are in favour of Law, or not. Otherwise I have no clue what exactly you want.

by the way much of the "anarchist" manifesto is like America - elect the police force ( think of the old West), elect the Judges , direct democracy [ california] - and yet the US had private property. There was effectively no State in the Wild West - hence the name. They did have law, although to be fair in the American south the randomly selected jury ignored law and allowed lynchers off with lynching. The Federal courts had to intervene to arrest people for civil rights violations. That was opposed State's rights aficionados. What is the anarchist position?

Personally I think the human desire for property is inate. As is the desire for relative status. Sociologists tend to point to "hunter gatherers" as sharing in common - that isnt true, in fact hunter gatherer societies were often quite cruel ( letting the old, die, for instance - so much to each according to his ability). And there was currency, or some stand-in ( wampum, for instance) , which was personally owned and not held equally.

The more surplus a society produces the more property is owned.

Ireland, under Brehon law, did not have a State law ( although it did have law, otherwise you get mob justice). It did have private property.

Permabear

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asdasd

This seems like a highly problematic legal system to me. I can see it producing a great many shoddy and tendentious verdicts, and I can see many innocent people going to prison—and many guilty people getting off.

It is not really a legal system, is it? Just mob justice. If juries were not constrained by law they would bring back the death penalty for a lot of crimes, castration for accused rapists, tarring for mendicants, lynchings for out-groups.

The lack of legal representation would make the timid more likely to be found guilty than the articulate. One of the reasons we have a dedicated barrister class is not just because the law is necessarily complex, but because most people are not good public speakers.

Absent of law, with a jury deciding mob justice, and no judge - an articulate member of an in-group can accuse an outsider of theft, rape or murder and win in court because of his own popularity and his victim's timidity.

More horribly utopian ideas. The only anarchist I have met in real life are from the very upper social classes. They really dont understand general human nature.


By the way, I must make a list of people whose jobs cannot survive anarchism - along with capitalists, share owners, owners of property, owners of any kind of wealth we can include police and lawyers amongst the groups whose services are unnecessary in an anarchist state. It may never get going.

Kama

Akrasia wrote:

I dont see how it can be hard to tell the difference between both sides, libertarians are ultra capitalist, anarchists are anti capitalist.

Easy if you just declare it to true by definition, but like I said, I believe ideologies to be more platypus than duck; most anarchists I have met believe and describe themselves to be social libertarians, 'frinstance, and the language of free and autonomous self-organization of a society without the intrusions and deformations caused by an interfering sovereign power is common to both Hayek or Proudhon. Both are hence an-archist, in that they regard the rulers, authority, the State, as the chief bogeyman or obstacle, in favor of peoples free association. Both are libertarians, in their view of human rights and freedom. And like this debate, both are in precisely the other direction from each other.

Isaiah Berlin said that freedom for the pike is death to the minnow, which encapsulates neatly that rights can be hellah zero-sum; the 'freedoms' of the libertarian eutopia restrict the rights of the less-advantaged, or those who have more of a stake in a functioning welfare system, while the 'freedoms' of the anarchist eutopia will tend to require the 'euthanasia of the rentier class', as Keynes put it, or perhaps the liquidation of some other Kulak or yeoman class...after all, we are merely confiscating back to the commons what was stolen originally, n'est pas? In both cases, what Paulites call a 'Reboot' is necessary, and rarely do they happen in history without blood...

asdasd wrote:

A tribe moves from hunter gathering to agriculture.
Putative farmers tear down trees and make arable land.
They grow stuff on the land.
Their claim on the land comes from the work.

Later, A thief tries to steal their produce. The Farmer fights them off.
More thieves arrive. Some claim they want the land. The Farmers organise and see them off. This of course means they are both police and farmers.

This little parable has an analogue, of course, for the Other Side:

Farmers grow crops, and raiders arrive and steal their crops. The farmers try and fight them off, but aren't any good at it, since they are farmers. Eventually the raiders become tired of the effort of moving in and raiding, and settle themselves inside the village, and call themselves Kings.

Which would be the origins of property in expropriation, Enclosure of the Commons, and suchlike Leftist shibboleths, rather than the foundational myth of the brave liberal yeoman. Things look different on the other side of the Looking Glass.

A Proudhonian analysis seems interesting here; rather than a claim on the land due to their work, they possess a private-property claim on the produce due to their work, 'mixing their labour'. The means of production is held in common, as to exclude from the ability to produce is a severe restriction on freedom. While Proudhon is best remembered for 'property is theft', did he not also claim 'property is freedom'? Course that was because he was a bourgeois shill, according to Marx, for being too market-friendly. Mind you, markets weren't invented by capitalists; we can find exchange of goods far into pre-capitalist times.

It does draw out the paradox or incoherence with libertarian socialism; much as I hear platitudes like 'no free speech for facists', there's a tendency toward 'no association rights for capitalists'.

So...assume no State...in our case assume State failure due to bankruptcy, service retrenchment IMF style is tried and failed, all the dominos fall...(happily for we good anti-statists this is not as fantasist a scenario as it might once have been)...and we lonely individuals are starting over, in Social Contract 2.0

Now...do the left-anarchists accept the right to contract and property? If not, why? What justifications can be sufficient to deny the ability to enter into an enforceable agreement?

Silverharp wrote:

I'm not sure I buy that..The prisons would be pretty empty if there were no drug laws

And I'm unsure you can sell that to me....if there was no law, there would be no criminals...While perhaps true in a technical sense, unhelpful.
Given that law enforcement would be privatized (somewhere between Blackwater/Xi and IRMS?) can we not assume that the carceral function follows suit? The growth of corporations such as Wackenhut and CCA spring to mind.

Again, there's the common trend; unsubstantiated (and necessarily unsubstantiable) asssumptions about how things would be, after the Revolution, once the Free Market was finally unleashed from the last of it's fetters, all that religious Eschatological stuff that lies Over the Rainbow....

asdasd wrote:

The only anarchist I have met in real life are from the very upper social classes

With respect, and apologies for any presumption, but you clearly don't seem to hang around in enough squats...

Mind you, most non-upper class anarchists are held in derision by those from the bottom, for much the same reasons: effete posers who are into it for a trendy lifestyle. That and they can't handle themselves in a fight. And so on.

They really dont understand general human nature.

Who does? People have been claiming to for a while, and history seems to show us their concepts tell us more about them than the Thing Itself. Human nature seems to include keeping things to ourselves, and sharing them, selfless love and rape, heartbreaking joy and ennui, and Hayek and Proudhon. Claiming 'it's selfishness' or 'it's altruism' resembles the Greeks arguing over whether the arche was water or fire...crude reductionist grappling at a slippery eel...even if you grasp it hard enough to hold on, it's likely to smack you in the face.

silverharp

Kama wrote: »

Isaiah Berlin said that freedom for the pike is death to the minnow, which encapsulates neatly that rights can be hellah zero-sum; the 'freedoms' of the libertarian eutopia restrict the rights of the less-advantaged, or those who have more of a stake in a functioning welfare system, while the 'freedoms' of the anarchist eutopia will tend to require the 'euthanasia of the rentier class', as Keynes put it, or perhaps the liquidation of some other Kulak or yeoman class...after all, we are merely confiscating back to the commons what was stolen originally, n'est pas? In both cases, what Paulites call a 'Reboot' is necessary, and rarely do they happen in history without blood....

I've aked this question but nobody took it up, if people will not vote away their property rights, pension funds etc. is a coup required? I'm going with yes for until somone can show me otherwise.
As for the Libertarian side, there is no coercive mechanism avaivable however if the economic viewpoint has any merit it warns that the welfare state experiment will to some degree collapse under its own weight. If I had a forecast it will be that younger peole in particular will begin to see that they are paying into a system from which they can never hope to benefit from, and will demand change. Will DF ever get his way? I doubt it but dont rule out a relative roll back of the state or where currencies go back to a gold standard (which 5 years would have brought howls of laughter)

Kama wrote: »

And I'm unsure you can sell that to me....if there was no law, there would be no criminals...While perhaps true in a technical sense, unhelpful.

there would still be property and crime against the person law but drug laws would be dropped, smuggling etc. Tax crimes would be dropped or it would not be possible to commit the crime.




Now for the anarchists , does the consumer society still exist?? will it look like Cuba, or will London , Paris etc still look pretty much the same?

2nd Question? how can one country adopt it if it doesnt go global from day 1? will people be free to move as vast numbers will??

I'm assuming its impossible for one country to adpot in isolation without putting up a "Berlin wall" to hold on to the productive people. I am also assuming production will drop like a brick and that air travel etc will only be the preserve of the "priests" of the new order

synd

That's correct. And if they don't like your terms, they can go and live on another island, which is run in a manner that they like.

Yes that's a great arrangement for the property owners - not the inhabitants. Liberalism when confronted with this problem - states that the inhabitants should go elsewhere and seek preferable conditions of socio-economic subordination/despotism. Naturally liberals shiver when they hear the socialist solution ie. the inhabitants take capital under public ownership and organize themselves democratically - no cries the liberal, that's against our ''inalienable'' property rights (echoing the sentiments of their aristocratic predecessors).

Do you have some stats to support that assertion? I myself seem to have observed the "workers" becoming rather better off over time, given how many of them seem to be driving new cars, going on holidays, and buying up flat-screen TVs. As for the alleged concentration of power, wasn't it under conditions of market liberalism that the vote was extended to women and the non-propertied? Isn't power less concentrated today than it was in pre-capitalist feudal societies?

Yes plenty of statistics. To the extent that economic liberalism has been implemented its proven itself a complete disaster. What tends to happen is that wages stagnate in conjunction with rising productivity. Take the US as an example, the epoch of economic Liberalism starting with Carters uneasy shift towards deregulation - prior to Regans regime of market fundamentalism.




The duration of time spent in work actually falls under liberalism - the capitalist is ''pressured'' to cut expenses reduce hours and intensify workloads, squeezing more surplus from the employees in less time. Profits soar amongst the upper class while living standards typically stagnate or decrease for the majority. So while the federal minimum wage stood par with the poverty level in 1980 it fell 30% below that level by 1990. Average CEO pay from 1990 - 1995 rose from $2.34 million - $3.86 million. Corporate profits rose from $212 billion $317 billion. Compare this to average wages during the same period which reduced from $27,615 to $27,448. The consequences of market liberalism are apparent in every nation to have implemented it - esp Latin America, Eastern Europe ect.

It would be naive to conceptualize the liberal program as a mistake, its clearly beneficial to the process of bourgeoisie accumulation as illustrated above. The attacks on public services, unions and welfare serve the function of creating dependency on the market thus facilitating exploitation. Essentially the removal of supports acts to discipline the existing workforce. Make no mistake - the liberal project is an upper class transgression against working class people. Observation of who provides sponsorship to right wing parties and pseudo academic'libertarian'' think-tanks speak volumes. The Cato institute ect.

And back to central economic planning we go. It has been a fiasco every time it was tried—and I don't have great faith in the Fujitsu VP200's ability to solve the problem of supply and demand in the absence of the market.

Fiasco ? I suppose your referring to the soviet style command economy - not quite what I advocate. Still, I should address the issue of the USSR since its held as the manifestation of ''socialist failure'' within liberal propaganda. The USSR is very important to liberals - something that should be understood, however their portrayal of the soviet system and consequent claims about its ''failure'' are entirely skewed and predicated upon a mixture of rhetoric and historical distortion.

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.

As for using IT to plan an economy - its entirely visible. Furthermore it would be to the benefit of the majority - its been calculated that if income differentials where removed and an egalitarian system of payment where introduced most quartiles of worker would see a 50% rise in real wage before tax. The only category of worker to see a decline would be the top 20% of male white collar office workers. Unemployment could be eradicated, education made accessible - or based of labor credits. We could also cut out the risk of crisis - as we can all see the the capitalist market is reactive and lacks foresight - causing all sorts of problems, overproduction - speculation ect. If price was determined by SNT - production was planned democratically and wages distributed in the form of a non-circulatory medium, we would have sustainability. The market dynamic with its inflation, unemployment and predisposition to crisis cannot be relied upon to deliver socially desirable outcomes. Capitalism doesn't work - something more and more people are beginning to realize.

Are you trying to suggest that right-wingers have suppressed the historical memory of the American Revolution and the French Revolution? I don't believe that to be true at all!

To be a consistent liberal its essential to have a selective memory when it comes history. Only a liberal could preach about the benefits of industrial capitalism - (overlook the imperialism, slavery and brutality that its built upon) and then denounce socialists on the premise that soviet development came at a human cost.

silverharp

synd wrote: »

Yes plenty of statistics. To the extent that economic liberalism has been implemented its proven itself a complete disaster. What tends to happen is that wages stagnate in conjunction with rising productivity. Take the US as an example, the epoch of economic Liberalism starting with Carters uneasy shift towards deregulation - prior to Regans regime of market fundamentalism.

The duration of time spent in work actually falls under liberalism - the capitalist is ''pressured'' to cut expenses reduce hours and intensify workloads, squeezing more surplus from the employees in less time. Profits soar amongst the upper class while living standards typically stagnate or decrease for the majority. So while the federal minimum wage stood par with the poverty level in 1980 it fell 30% below that level by 1990. Average CEO pay from 1990 - 1995 rose from $2.34 million - $3.86 million. Corporate profits rose from $212 billion $317 billion. Compare this to average wages during the same period which reduced from $27,615 to $27,448. The consequences of market liberalism are apparent in every nation to have implemented it - esp Latin America, Eastern Europe ect.

what you said needs to be put in context, the worst combination appears to be deregulation within the conxext of an unrestrained federal gov and central bank. The free market guys would agree with you that there has been an increasing financialisation of the economy and upward shift in wealth away from middlle class to wealthy people.

The graph below shows quite clearly that the US economy has been reliant more on debt and not income for decades

it would be a wrong conclusion to say that this is a free market failure

asdasd

Yes plenty of statistics. To the extent that economic liberalism has been implemented its proven itself a complete disaster. What tends to happen is that wages stagnate in conjunction with rising productivity. Take the US as an example, the epoch of economic Liberalism starting with Carters uneasy shift towards deregulation - prior to Regans regime of market fundamentalism.

The real reasons for the reduction in take home pay in the US are related to increases in immigration, out-sourcing and the globalization of labour. In fact the fall of communism plays a part. From 1945-1970 take home pay massively increased. You also need to factor in the fact that house-hold incomes increased because of dual incomes increasing. This increase in the labour force put pressure on the individual incomes, but household wages increased. The last factor was globalization. It is hardly the American workers fault that China was freed from Communism, and India opened up, and Eastern Europe too. In effect this increased the world supply of workers in the capitalist market enormously. It has seen massive increases in per-capita incomes in China ( since world growth has increased enormously).

I love the cherry picking of Statistics. Brazil, largely a Statist command type economy anyway ( albeit of a rightist disposition) is compared against the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union is "young". In fact the Soviet Union began its life with the public capital of the Russian Empire , including most of it's subjected peoples, and Brazil is as old as the US. Compare the US in 1800-1900 with the Soviet Union in 1900-2000. Compare China in the last ten years with it's command economy. It was also an imperialist state, as was it's predecessor, and benefited from the oil resources, and labour of it's subjugated people, from Western central Europe to the Pacific. The fact that there is little left wing intellectual produce on Soviet post-colonialism and the effects of Soviet colonialism, shows just what **** leftism is.

So did the USSR fail ?

Yes it did. Notice that is is no longer around? Fail.

Essentially the removal of supports acts to discipline the existing workforce. Make no mistake - the liberal project is an upper class transgression against working class people. Observation of who provides sponsorship to right wing parties and pseudo academic'libertarian'' think-tanks speak volumes. The Cato institute ect.

As a two cheers for capitalism kinda guy I would agree with some of this. Most people would support the mixed economy with the State around 40%. We need capitalism to create the wealth we re-distribute. I suspect that you lefties are on the same side as the capitalist classes when it comes to the two main ways to keep wages in check ( both of which I think need to be constrained) - out sourcing and immigration. in fact you are one with the libertarians on that.

(overlook the imperialism, slavery and brutality that its built upon)

Dumb statement since capitalist development - in Ireland - depends on none of that. The Soviet Union most certainly depended on its Empire - it was an Empire - not least in the complete theft of German industry after WWII. Notwithstanding that, Western Germany, starting from nothing after WWII, was much richer than the Soviet Union within a generation.

something more and more people are beginning to realize.

Indeed, at this moment of capitalist crisis when Marxist nuts should be making hay, as we can see in the European elections - the far left loses it's deposit, and the centre left is decimated. I wouldn't be presuming any communist revolution any time soon.

In other news the economist had a survey asking people what they thought of the statement ( true, or false) that Free Markets are the best route to prosperity.

80% of Chinese, and 75% of Indians agreed, higher than any other part of the world. Higher than the US.

There is only one game in town, the question is how to control capitalism, not to listen to the nuts who have no program to replace it ( anarchists), or support an old utterly failed economic system. ( Stalinists).

You people are a side-show, hidden in the farther recesses of the internet, an utter irrelevance, less important than Trekkies - who probably have more supporters, and certainly better economic ideas.

turgon

I dont think theres any point me replying to Akrasia as asfaik Im on his ignore list.

synd wrote: »

Did the USSR fail ? Well lets look at the facts.

Whatever about economics, that real fact is that at least 54 million people were killed in the USSR, and therein lies the ultimate failure.

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

And dont forget that theres nothing to stop this burger fliper from starting his own restaurant.

donegalfella wrote: »

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Just to re-emphasise this point: the Irish government places restrictions on discount retailers such as Aldi and Lidl which means their shops cant be bigger than a certain size. This is in the interest of "protecting" Irish businesses. Of course this only results in higher prices for the consumer.

Kama

Silverharp wrote:

I've asked this question but nobody took it up, if people will not vote away their property rights, pension funds etc. is a coup required? I'm going with yes for until somone can show me otherwise.

For a democratic anarchist or libertarian socialist, a coup or confiscation on these lines is out, for the same ideological reasons as the libertarian, coercion. Isn't it nice to share key principles?

For the more 'Realist' state capture proponent, asdasd's 'Big Gun' concept, whether of the Anarchist or Chicago Boys persuasion, then the ends justifies and hallows the means. Which means all bets are off, for our pleasant non-coercive intellectual eggheads...

I'd hazard a third possibility, where the utility of property rights is outweighed by the disutility; with enough disruption, or a nasty enough L-shape curve, the system of property rights could enter a legitimation crisis. Remember, one of the key attractions of the Soviet Union during the Depression was as much the poor performance of the market as the strong performance of the command economy.

Now for the anarchists , does the consumer society still exist?? will it look like Cuba, or will London , Paris etc still look pretty much the same?

Depends on which anarchist you ask, tbqfh, as they/we are unsurprisingly a herd of cats, due to a strongly held belief in human freedom and autonomy!

The cheap answer is it's not knowable, because it wouldnt be predetermined. I honestly get slightly confused when someone says A: all rules will be democratically emergent and B: makes determinate statements about how society will be organized. Seems more than slightly contradictory. Goethe also springs to mind, that grey is all theory, but green the tree of life

2nd Question? how can one country adopt it if it doesnt go global from day 1? will people be free to move as vast numbers will??

Bracket the assumptions for a moment. My quick answer would be extend principles like subsidiarity into localist autonomy. Let a region, subregion etc apply Polity SourceCode A, and another Code B. I know libertarians should jump at this, it looks cheaper and less windswept than Seasteading, and the best part is, we can do real comparative political economy. Let the libertarians try their Ayn Rand mountain village, let the Mutualists make their open-source factories, let a thousand flowers bloom...

Obviously grotesque idealism, but I like it...Squares (some of the) circle, for me...

asdasd wrote:

less important than Trekkies - who probably have more supporters, and certainly better economic ideas.

Interesting you mention Trekkies...a continuity problem for the recent filjm was how to relate a near-time still-capitalist society with the clearly socialized society of the original Kirk era (with the notable exception of Federation Standard Credits, which was declared Non-Canon later). The critical point here is that if an economy is not based on scarcity, different rules apply. In Star Trek, energy is not scarce, and replicator technology can deal with production, hence a post-market situation can develop.

We see something similar (someone brought up Ubuntu earlier) with agalmics and open-source, with the applied anarchism of hacker culture, and the recent political growth of the Pirate Party. Sharing increases value in once sense, destroys it in the other. Creative goods have to be produced, but physical goods have only to be designed; closer to reality, this is the philosophical dressing for Rapid Prototyping as an economic movement. Whew! Trekkie Alurt!

Live Long and Prosper!

silverharp

Kama wrote: »

For a democratic anarchist or libertarian socialist, a coup or confiscation on these lines is out, for the same ideological reasons as the libertarian, coercion. Isn't it nice to share key principles?

good to know , it would still have the follow on question of how this society would exist if its neighbours adopted a different system, if the talented wanted to move would hey be allowed if it endangered the continued existance of the project

Kama wrote: »

Live Long and Prosper!

Spock was an Austro-libertatrian apparently:D I'll go through the Ferengi rules of acquisition another day ;-)


Being a Vulcan means to adopt a philosophy, a way of life which is logical and beneficial. We cannot disregard that philosophy merely for personal gain, no matter how important that gain might be. — Journey to Babel

Or in other words, if you want to understand the social sciences, adopt the praxeological method of a priori logic. You need to have your theory straight before you begin to try to come to some clear understanding of how the world around you works


Violence in reality is quite different from theory — The Cloud Minders

In other words, a coherent and orderly society cannot be imposed by force but rather results from agreeement and exchange. Force results in consequences different from that anticipated.


Men of peace usually are brave — The Savage Curtain

If you fail to stand up to attack, expect to be attacked. You must defend your property if you are to retain it. You must be brave to defend yourself. But never break the first and only Vulcan commandment: the use of force is justified only in response to force, or a threat of force, directed against one's property rights. This is the way of peace.


Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality. — Spectre of the Gun

Avoid the smoke and mirrors empiricism of the Chicago School, especially Coase. (The Vulcans seem to have this intense bitterness towards the Chicago school, or the Romulans, as they themselves call them. Romulans, they believe, are almost like Vulcans, leading to a confusion of the two distinct philosophies by outsiders. By the way, the Vulcans have no problems with the Klingons, because at least these armored buffoons can be seen in daylight for what they truly are; straightforward warmongering statists.)


Insufficient facts always invite danger — Space Seed

We can never have all the facts, so it is folly to attempt to draw broad conclusions only from what we can observe.

asdasd

Has synd come up with a defence of North Korea yet? Expecting one Real Soon Now.