Libertarianism versus Anarchism

Joycey

silverharp wrote: »

ok, so lets roll out Bill Gates from central casting, does the fact that he is billionaire oppress the the software engineers or clerical staff etc that earn a good living working for him?

Well if we were to follow donegalfellas arguments from the beginning of the thread to their natural conclusion, then absolutely, yes. More importantly, although you could argue that his domination over his employees is more extreme then non-employees in other ways, according to this argument it is all those who do not derive any material reward and who are massively poorer then Bill Gates (99.99999% of the world) who experience a lesser degree of freedom then does he.

donegalfella wrote:

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asdasd

Well if we were to follow donegalfellas arguments from the beginning of the thread to their natural conclusion, then absolutely, yes.

Good man. Now take that argument out of the sheltered cloisters of whatever upper-middle class suburb you hail from, and picket MicroSoft Ireland. Surely they need to know of their oppression? Also tell them what their lack of Oppression would mean - you're the Stalinist, not the anarchist - so you want a State owned version of a software company, producing an Irish OS, or whatever part of it they make, now. Also their stock options will be worthless and owned by the State. So they will get poorer.

Practicalities, dear boy. If you are going to transform the world you better have solutions, not just a list of problems. A workers paradise does need the workers on board, not just upper middle class types on trust funds ( which asdasd would tax at 100% - a pratical radical solution).

I would argue that private property is what enables the individual to escape tyranny.

Private property - especially housing - not just the preserve of the wealthy anymore.

But is always 1842 in the Marxist mind, is it not?

Joycey

asdasd wrote: »

Akrasia is a good example of the cultist mind. There is no actual way to convince him he is wrong.

Very interesting. I have found you to be possibly the most obtuse member who regularly posts lengthy replies on the forum. Your sneering attitude and refusal to ever moderate your own views or accept that any fallibility accords to what your saying makes me feel that it is you who has the "cultish" mindset. The fact that your cult happens to be more mainstream is no excuse.

I was thinking last night about how ive never really seen DF actually concede a point, or accept even the slightest critique of capitalism as a system. My argument about an aspect of our humanity being entirely suppressed remains unanswered, as does any answer to the problem of human freedom which has been supported by many many examples and is consistently pushed away with the simple repitition of the mantra "free choice".

I dont see what you have to lose by accepting critique of your beliefs, by actually engaging and overcoming, or accepting that your own beliefs need to be changed, you end up with a much better system.

asdasd

Your sneering attitude and refusal to ever moderate your own views or accept that any fallibility accords to what your saying makes me feel that it is you who has the "cultish" mindset.

Um. I am promoting a system that, however flawed, works. As I pointed out recently I am a fan of the mixed economy, not a libertarian, in fact I think you both equally simplistic. In fact far from being a unapologetic supported of capitalism, I believe in radical attacks on Old Wealth - which is quite practical. I would tax the non-producers in the millionaire suburbs on their property at 10% a year, no bother. Better than taxing me on my income. ( by non-producers I mean people who have inherited wealth, or wose houses are far in excess of what they paid).

and I oppose, unlike anarchists, the free flow of labour around the world - something I have in common with most members of the working classes.

When I ask questions as to how we get from here to your paradie based on my own experiences as a worker, I get silence.

But you are right, I so and will sneer at cults.

Permabear

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Joycey

asdasd wrote: »

Good man. Now take that argument out of the sheltered cloisters of whatever upper-middle class suburb you hail from, and picket MicroSoft Ireland. Surely they need to know of their oppression?

Again with the sneering attitude, not only entirely unjustified, given you know absolutely nothing about me, but also very well timed, see above.

Also tell them what their lack of Oppression would mean - you're the Stalinist, not the anarchist - so you want a State owned version of a software company, producing an Irish OS, or whatever part of it they make, now. Also their stock options will be worthless and owned by the State. So they will get poorer.

I thought I made it adequately clear that im not a Stalinist in the communist thread, but apparently not.

In answer to your comments then yes I would rather have the State, which is after all at least meant to be representative of me, accountable to me, and in existence in order to benefit me (and the rest of the country), in control of these massive concentrations of power. Otherwise you are left with all the resources which are entailed in the operation of this beurocracy, including all the labour and resources traded for in selling the final product, being appropriated by a few select individuals with no legitimate claim on them.

However, given that I am opposed to heirarchy prima facie, and as such feel that every instance of heirarchy needs to be justified, I see the state as equally illegitimate as I do corporations. However, given that they are currently the lesser evil, by a very very large stretch, they are necessary until we can affect the revocation of the appearence of legitimacy which surrounds the institution of private property.

Practicalities, dear boy. If you are going to transform the world you better have solutions, not just a list of problems. A wokers paradise does need the workers on board.

Quite right old bean :rolleyes:. If my vision of the future cant be affected through a peaceful revolution then Im not sure it can ever happen. I think Synd believes in the necessity of violent revolution but i would take a lot of convincing. What I should be doing is travelling around South America, seeing instances of what we are talking about in place and then deciding what to do next. In order to actually convince a lot of people you really need to dedicate a lot of your life to the project, which im not sure is what im going to do with my life. However it is necessary for a lot of people to do this, to create awareness and try to bypass the apathy of a lot of horribly poor, subjugated people in order to change public opinion.

Although your sneering attitude and assumptions regarding my position couldnt be less welcome, your recognition that it is only from the bottom up that such change can actually occur, without simply creating a society with new rulers, is absolutely correct.

Private property - especially housing - not just the preserve of the wealthy anymore.

But is always 1842 in the Marxist mind, is it not?

I dont consider the position of someone with a mortgage, who is constantly in a state of debt, who is essentially still renting, is in possession of their property. How is it "mine" if someone else can throw me out of it if they do not get their co-ercively enforced debt money from me?

Just because private interests have instilled this notion in the people does not make it so.

Joycey

Donegalfella: can you direct me towards a libertarian account of freedom, or of property? Perhaps I would be better getting it straight from the horses mouth and then I can post here when im done

Permabear

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asdasd

What I should be doing is travelling around South America, seeing instances of what we are talking about in place and then deciding what to do next.

Thats a rich boys trip. A little bit of revolutionary rich-boy Che guevara bullcrap. Only available to the faux-socialist elites.

In answer to your comments then yes I would rather have the State, which is after all at least meant to be representative of me, accountable to me, and in existence in order to benefit me (and the rest of the country), in control of these massive concentrations of power.

The concentration of power idea is nonsense. Ownership of stocks like MS are widespread. It is not 1842.

There is no way the actual working classes of this country want the Irish State to run the Irish operations of MS. That nonsense can only be believe by rich kiddies playing with radicalism. And I was, unfortunately, at an anarchist parade once - I came upon the charade - and you were all rich kiddies. the accent gives it away.

In my extended working and lower middle class families we have hairdressers( self employed), taxidrivers (SE), teachers, software engineers working for MS, security guard working for google, cops, a truck driver (SE), and jobs like that. Not a radical amongst them. Plenty of self employment. And no way would the employees of the American corporations want the Irish State to socialise the Irish operations of their corporations. it would lose them their share options. It would mean no work. Ireland is not going to have a State owned internet search operation. The self employed certainly want no State involvement. The teacher owns stocks.

Only rich boys would even begin to think like radicals. The rest of us have to live in the real world.

Know what I think? you faux radicals are faux radicals about global capitalism because it is defuse.. and because attacking capitalism in reality attacks no-one and everyone.

I am tired to my tits of SWP members in Trinity ( the only time I have ever seen them, and I am not a student or alumin there), of the pseuds whose radicalism can never be enacted, because it is absurd. They never protest against the Doctor, Lawyer, Dentist cartel - just he American corporations ( whose real crime is meritocracy).

Asdasd is all for radicalism against real elites ( the upper middle class cartels), but fears the radicals will vacate once we point out where real power is in Ireland.

Permabear

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Joycey

donegalfella wrote: »

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True capitalism is a fairy tale. What we protest against is the reliance of the capitalist system on the public sector for funding, research, preferential legislative treatment etc etc. That doesnt mean that pure, untamed version is any better, probably much worse, but that most people who assert that "free-market" capitalism could really exist are not living in the real world. Or if it could exist, it needs to be demonstrated that this is the case, much as we need to point to instances of what we are proposing in order to be taken seriously, you need to show us instances of free-market capitalism working, of which there are none AFAIK.

But this tolerance doesn't go both ways. As we've seen, while individualist anarchists are willing to extend the freedom of communal property ownership to communist anarchists, but the latter are unwilling to expect the private property rights of the former. So-called socialist anarchy is thus inherently authoritarian.

Again, you are misunderstanding what it is to be free. If you wanted to oppose coercion, violence done to people, massive concentrations of wealth then you would oppose private property. However given your misunderstanding of the initial conditions it is no suprise that you end up with such a skewed means of implimenting your ideal society.

See, I myself wonder how the Left reconciles statements such as these with the fact that the lot of the average person is dramatically different today than it was 50, 100, 200, or 300 years ago. Free-market liberalism has brought about absolutely phenomenal increases in knowledge, productivity, and human well-being—and yet people like synd seem oblivious to every fact but one: In a free-market society, everyone is not equal.

Its actually very easy. Society is more unqual now then it was, say, 50 years ago, right? Now while you can justifiably argue that our GDP is higher, that the average person has a higher real wage etc etc, this argument is misleading on two counts.

Firstly, it doesnt actually refute the original statement. Synd (i think it was) was saying that private property leads to concentration of resources, power etc. The fact that society is now more unequal means that there is a larger concentration of power at the top then there was previously. End of story.

Secondly, choosing GDP as the sole indicator of quality of life shows the depth of the libartarian capitalists ignorance or intentional blindness towards the question of what it is to be a human being. I have many, many more needs then simply being provided for materially, none of which are anywhere accounted for by GDP (directly at any rate). What about the human drive to create beyond oneself? What about the need for close social networks, trusting relationships etc, all of which I would highly doubt will be enhanced under your radically individualist notion of human utopia.

Preventing people from owning property has been used as a means of domination for all of human history. And yet that's exactly what you propose. The Irish fought for centuries for their right to own land—and now you want to take it away from us again.

Its only domination when there is some propertied class doing the subjugation. The point is that it is by the appearance of the legitimacy of property that it becomes a goal to acquire it. Given a society where no one has need of the power of exclusive rights to use something, in other words, where resources are democratically destributed and needs are provided for, no such insitution of power inequality is necessary.

No, it isn't, because there is no clear dividing line anymore between an "owner" and a "worker." When workers buy stock, shares, mutual funds, and the like, they become the owners.

Making the system of worker subjugation harder to spot, and incriminating even those in the middle of the range, is not a justification of that system.

You are arguing from the socialist position that the individual, qua individual, has no rights. I've tried to explain to you the fallacy of this position, but I don't know that you're really open to the idea of the sovereign individual with inalienable rights.

I dont think you have explained it at all. I was busy after the last time you replied and got lost in about 3 pages of thread, but let me put it to you again:

Suppose two people are on an island, at the beginning of their stay, seeing as no one else appeared to have "mixed their labour" with it previously, it was unclaimed property. They claimed it. Equally. They split it straight down the middle.

According to you, if person A has a piece of paper, in which person B signs away, presumably consentually, rights to his half of the land, and person A does not feel the need to return the land, person A's rights to the land are inaliable. Right? (given of course no previous "owner" turns up and tosses them both out).

Now person B realises, only after the transfer of the land, that it was actually a stupid idea to give away his land, becuase now the only water he has access to is actually A's water. A refuses to give B any of his water, and so B is forced to die due to lack of water, or else impinge of A's inaliable right to that property and risk being coercively reprimanded and deprived of his rights.

Now, please explain how it can be even vaguely plausibly maintained, that A's "right" to property should be preferenced over the right B presumably has to be provided with sufficient water? Surely B's right to water is not only similarly "inaliable", but should come before such secondary things as property. After all, who is going to "own" the land if there is no one alive to maintain the relationship? And surely if the justification for property ownership is that

-I own myself
-> I own my labour
-> if I mix my labour with something, I have put a part of me in it
-> I own whatever segment of the natural world I mixed myself with

it should follow that a "right" which I have to maintain myself, which follows much more naturally and less abstractly then does the above argument, should be preferenced over my "right" to whatever part of the natural world it is that I have claimed.

Please, account for the above. Im actually genuinely interested to hear what you have to say

Permabear

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Akrasia

asdasd wrote: »

Akrasia is a good example of the cultist mind. There is no actual way to convince him he is wrong. I am really here to show anarchists up to neutrals. He "states as facts" the position in anarchism without regard to human nature, previous history, science, reason or logic. His addled brain thinks that public property ( parks etc.) are private property, seemingly because the State far too occasionally removes it of anti-social elements ( which is the least the tax-payer funded State can do for the taxpayer who wishes to use a park he subsidises). he thinks that a state police force, subject to law, is a private police force - but is should be clear that anarchism needs private police forces as there will be no State.

The only fact I have asserted in this thread is the fact that "anarcho capitalism" is an oxymoron

Your main problem with me appears to be in your own interpretation of the things I say. I never said that public parks in the current system are oppressive, I mentioned public parks because in a libertarian world, all land is privately owned by someone (or shareholders), and so public parks wouldn't be public, they would be private parks and could be defended from 'trespass' by the private security forces.

I have made my heirarchy of preferences clear on this and other threads. I am in favour of the elimnination of private property and for all production and decision making to be organised through libertarian socialist principles. Failing that, as long as there are capitalist markets, I believe there needs to be very strong regulation to protect the weak against the strong.

I am in favour of democracy.

And we still dont know how to get from here to there. Do we? I asked a few simple questions about a series of existing Irish workers, and their circumstances and how they could be transformed. I may as well have been talking to a brick.

For those of us with scientific training this is a delight. I will continue the fun with more questions on how we transform society later.


Neutrals can expect no answers.

You mentioned a pharmacutical company and what would happen to it after the revolution.
Well forst of all, the factory would be collectivised without compensation to the 'owners'. The workers if they chose to remain with the collective could then organise themselves into divisions based on their interests and expertise and democratically decide on how best to allocate the resources of the collective (eg, to keep manufacturing viagra, or to switch to chemotherapy drugs or whatever they believed would be more beneficial and can be produced given the resources available)

The produce could then be traded amongst other syndicates that the collective are afilliated with or through their network of contacts, to procure the necessary plant and raw materials required to produce the drugs.

The benefits of such a system are that the there is still an element of supply and demand, but the mechanism for deciding production is democratically controlled based on the the social benefits of production, and not simply based on the profits that can be made.

The system is based on social solidarity and interconnectedness would tie people together rather than competitive forces of trying to outcompete others in the same industry and constantly battling with suppliers over who gets to make the most profits

Permabear

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Permabear

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silverharp

Joycey wrote: »

Its actually very easy. Society is more unqual now then it was, say, 50 years ago, right? Now while you can justifiably argue that our GDP is higher, that the average person has a higher real wage etc etc, this argument is misleading on two counts.

Firstly, it doesnt actually refute the original statement. Synd (i think it was) was saying that private property leads to concentration of resources, power etc. The fact that society is now more unequal means that there is a larger concentration of power at the top then there was previously. End of story.

wrt concentration What principle is at work here? , whats too much? whats too little? when is it good? when is it bad? it seems very nebulous to build a core belief or system around.

Joycey

asdasd wrote: »

Thats a rich boys trip. A little bit of revolutionary rich-boy Che guevara bullcrap. Only available to the faux-socialist elites.



The concentration of power idea is nonsense. Ownership of stocks like MS are widespread. It is not 1842.

There is no way the actual working classes of this country want the Irish State to run the Irish operations of MS. That nonsense can only be believe by rich kiddies playing with radicalism. And I was, unfortunately, at an anarchist parade once - I came upon the charade - and you were all rich kiddies. the accent gives it away.

In my extended working and lower middle class families we have hairdressers( self employed), taxidrivers (SE), teachers, software engineers working for MS, security guard working for google, cops, a truck driver (SE), and jobs like that. Not a radical amongst them. Plenty of self employment. And no way would the employees of the American corporations want the Irish State to socialise the Irish operations of their corporations. it would lose them their share options. It would mean no work. Ireland is not going to have a State owned internet search operation. The self employed certainly want no State involvement. The teacher owns stocks.

Only rich boys would even begin to think like radicals. The rest of us have to live in the real world.

Know what I think? you faux radicals are faux radicals about global capitalism because it is defuse.. and because attacking capitalism in reality attacks no-one and everyone.

I am tired to my tits of SWP members in Trinity ( the only time I have ever seen them, and I am not a student or alumin there), of the pseuds whose radicalism can never be enacted, because it is absurd. They never protest against the Doctor, Lawyer, Dentist cartel - just he American corporations ( whose real crime is meritocracy).

Asdasd is all for radicalism against real elites ( the upper middle class cartels), but fears the radicals will vacate once we point out where real power is in Ireland.

"rich kiddies" x3
"faux radicals" x2

Didnt actually read the post but given that I have actually bothered to read several of your other posts, especially in the communist thread, I think my assumption that no real content was contained in the post is a good one.

Unlike you, I will engage with someones ideas if they are put forward, I dont really care who is talking to me but will listen equally whether they were Chomsky, Nozick or you or Turgon. If I hear Chomsky talking complete sh1t and I know that he is, I will tell him, and take everything he says with an added grain of salt afterwards.

Im a middle class Irish male. What do you want from me? Does this mean I am prohibited from joining any kind of radical movement? Surely a much greater degree of responsibility accords to me to use my position in society, and the fact that I have had access to education due to no action of my own means to actually benefit those on whom my relative wealth of oppurtunity relies?

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Actually, the irish fought for self determination, and the 1916 proclaimation of independence was a manifesto for a socialist republic where the resources of the island are all owned by the Irish people.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people

It was much more important to the people who fought for freedom that the people be allowed to control our own destinies and not be usurped by foreign powers.
Absentee landlords were one of the most hated segment of the rulling class, because they declared the right to rule over people they have no connection with other than a 'claim' to own the land.

No, it isn't, because there is no clear dividing line anymore between an "owner" and a "worker." When workers buy stock, shares, mutual funds, and the like, they become the owners.

They do not have any decision making power, it is not democratic. The individual workers might own a 'share' in the business they work in, but their share is never going to be anywhere near a controlling interest unless the business was set up as a cooperative or a small partnership.
Corporate 'democracy' is one dollar one vote, so to bring Bill Gates back into the discussion, he has billions of votes, and the average worker has 30,000 votes. (actually far less because the majority of his income is spoken for to pay essential bills and expenses, while the billonaire's income is mostly discretionary and can be used for whatever he likes)

You are arguing from the socialist position that the individual, qua individual, has no rights. I've tried to explain to you the fallacy of this position, but I don't know that you're really open to the idea of the sovereign individual with inalienable rights.

Hold on a minute, Where did you get that Idea?
Anarchism would fully respect human rights, the only difference is that we don't believe in the right to private property, and by extention, don't believe that people can be traded as commodities (by hiring out labour for a fee)

People would have the right not to be attacked or harmed, they would have the right to self determination and the right to participate in public life as equal partners with their peers.

These are greater rights than those afforded by libertarianism, where you have the right to own property, or the right to be imprisoned by a private security firm in a pivate prison for breaking a contract or trespassing on someone else's property.

Joycey

donegalfella wrote: »

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Right, they are tied up together, they are all part of the one system. Hence there never having been an instance of pure capitalism.

You can argue that we've never had a purely free-market system—but we've certainly had a lot more liberalism in (for example) nineteenth-century America and Britain. And you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it didn't work.

Really not historically knowledgable enough to get into this with you, cant point to instances of the private sector being propped up by the state for example, even though they almost certainly exist.

However there is also a question around what is meant when you say "worked". If what you mean is that the GDP goes up at a massive cost in terms of free time, working conditions, quality of life etc then you are almost certainly right. However if what you mean by "work" is that quality of life is improved once you discount the increase in GDP which could equally have come about under a more humane system, then a more free market almost certainly failed.

Why don't you talk to someone old enough to remember Ireland in the 1950s? Ask them if they'd prefer to go back, and they'll most likely say "no."

But think about the advances in technology etc that make our lives so much safer, easier etc etc. Now you or Turgon or anyone else has not come close to convincing me that innovation will stagnate under a non-capitalist system, I think your opposition is due to a complete oversimplifaction of human motivation and psychology, and if you base your entire justification of capitalism on this then I am fully entitled to just reject your conception outright.

So a further argument is needed then to just point and say "look how much better off we are now". Of course we are, think how many resources have been expended on making our lives better.

Synd is at a loss to explain why the average person today is healthier, better educated, and materially much more comfortable than he would have been 50, 100, or 200 years ago. If Synd's argument about the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and power under capitalism were correct, the standard of living of the average person would be falling, not rising.

See above. And you completely misunderstood my point about the concentration of wealth, as did silverharp i think it was. Here you go:

in the last 50 years:
-those at the bottom got richer
-those at the top got richer
-those at the top got richer then those at the bottom
-resources = wealth

-> a greater concentration of wealth at the top is now in existence then there was 50 years ago.

Im not implying anything from this, not making any grandiose conclusions, just correcting your interpretation of what synd said earlier.

I'll remind you that it was free-market liberals who strenuously argued against the ultimate concentration of power in just one person: the monarch.

Rediculously oversimplifying the situation... Economics wasnt the main focus of the revolution, people were campaigning for the instituion of parliament to either come into existence or to be expanded. To reduce the entire movement to "free-market radicals" is just facile.

You'd surely be hard-pressed to argue that people have not been freely creative under free-market liberalism.

Thats not what im argueing. Im saying capitalism as an institution systematically deprives people (especially those at the bottom) of the produce of their labour. Im not alert enough at the moment to spell it out the way I did here
but the point is the same.

Shakespeare wrote for the market. Beethoven composed for the market. So have millions of others. If it weren't for the market, we simply would not have the sheer variety of art, literature, cinema, etc., that surrounds us today.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Yeah the market is a really good judge of quality art, without the market we wouldnt have Justin Timberlake, Madonna or Akon, what a loss to the world.

If artists were actually reliant on the market then we wouldnt have had Nietzsche for example, who was subsitent on an income from the public sector having been a teacher in a university and injured in war. He sold about 100 copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his lifetime, one of the most influential books of his time. Similarly, if artists were actually provided for regardless of the marketability of their work then Blake would not have had to dedicate his time to printing other peoples work and could have focused on his own. He didnt have a prayer of selling his work in his day and age at the scale necessary to make a living.

I know there are plenty of people doing quality, innovative artwork around in Cork City, yet they recieve sweet f*ck all money from the state, and because they are not simply repetitively processing through the same tired populist formulas but rather pushing boundaries so that others may follow, they are not able to subsist on their talents as artists. They must compromise themselves either by doing formulaic muck for the market or work a second job which deprives society of someone talented and innovative.

Under Soviet collectivism,

Are we proposing Soviet collectivism? No

artists, composers, and writers were ordered to create for the state and were "purged" when they failed to follow the doctrine of socialist realism. So much for the human drive to create.

Thats not what we are proposing.... I could list filmmakers like Vertov, Eisenstein etc who, although eventually exiled from soviet russia for engaging in what was called "formalism", would never have been able to make the progressive, revolutionary filmmaking that established them and made them acceptable to the market had they not already have been subsidised by the Russian state.

Markets are short sighted, CEO's have a duty to their shareholders to make money for them. If that money doesnt accrue in the course of the shareholders lifetime the CEO has failed. Hence the capitalist system is not conducive to trully groundbreaking research or art. While it may come about, you need to have some steady source of funding which does not depend on short term, money making advances which probably wont benefit anyone all that much in the long run.

Of course they will. Haven't you ever heard of voluntary association? Individualism doesn't mean that people won't have relationships!

They will but the structures through which society operates will not be conducive to such voluntary association. People will be encouraged to see eachother as competitors, to maintain business relationships when business should be a means rather then an end to human endeavors.

I love it.... Faced with the argument that the line between "owners" and "workers" has been dismantled by public stock ownership, you respond by describing this as a nefarious plot to disguise worker subjugation.

You really need to either read my posts more carefully or stop deliberately misrepresenting them. I never said it was a plot. I said that the fact that it is now harder to spot the division between employer and employee, given the fact that there is some (exceptionally small, if you really believe that a meritocracy exists) degree of social mobility, does not mean that the system within which people may become upwardly mobile is not dehumanising and oppresive.

What about the worker who accumulates a substantial portfolio and retires wealthy because of the profitability of the companies in which he owns stock? Are you going to argue that he has been oppressed?

Up until the point he retires wealthy and oppresses others yes. And he can both be oppressed and oppress others at the same time. Think of the way Palestinians treat homosexuals.

The obvious point here is that Person B did something completely dumb, and should have thought of the consequences before he signed away his rights to his land. The "look before you leap" principle applies to any contract, whether it be a marriage, a property transfer, a loan agreement, etc. That's why acting impulsively without thinking through the consequences is generally a bad idea.

That is possibly the worst attempt at defending a theoretical framework from which an entire system of governence is supposed to be realised I have ever come across.

You completely ignore the point about the absurdity of maintaining that a secondary concern like property should be (for some reason) preferenced over a much more basic one such as water.

Libertarians, and indeed many proponants of absolute, inaliable rights, have absolutely no answer to such a scenario.

Rights are inventions of classical enlightenment humanistic absolutist thinking. They are guidelines, no more. Worthy guidelines, but guidelines none the less. To maintain that property rights of all things should be absolutely sacrosanct is just mindblowing. How do people still believe this in this day and age?

A right to a part of the natural world (such as a home or a garden) is not in conflict with the "right" to maintain oneself; in fact, it is coextensive with it.

It is if more then one party is involved and two people have "rights" over something where there is only enough for one. I just have no patience with this whole ideology, it just seems so ill conceived and poorly thought through. If you can direct me towards a more adequate defence then perhaps I will revise my view.

Joycey

Just as an aside, was looking through that Hoover Institute website you linked to earlier DF, the one attacking Chomsky.

The following is a list of significant funding organisations:
The Hoover Institution receives much of its funding from private charitable foundations, including many attached to large corporations. Its recent donors include

* Archer Daniels Midland Foundation
* ARCO Foundation
* Boeing-McDonnell Foundation
* Chrysler Corporation Fund
* Dean Witter Foundation [14]
* Exxon Educational Foundation [15]
* Ford Motor Company Fund
* General Motors Foundation
* J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust
* Merrill Lynch & Company Foundation
* Procter & Gamble Fund
* Rockwell International Corporation Trust
* Transamerica Foundation [14]


Interesting but hardly surprising that the institute which is attacking him is one which is comprised of exactly the segment of society which he is most outspoken against.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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Considering that the 'anti globalisation movement' is mostly comprised of lefties and there was no such as globalisation in 1842, that's a bit of a false perception. Also, anarchists are constantly looking for new ideas and possibilities, Michael Albert's 'Parecon' theory is one such new development, there are movements such as copyleft and open source libraries and software that are all consistent with anarchist theory.

Personally, I used to have a subscription to the economist magazine, I regularly read the sunday business post, I studied economics in first year of university. I have read Adam Smyth and have a masters degree in a political science field. I certainly don't restrict myself to 19th century socialists

Joycey

Akrasia wrote: »

Michael Albert's 'Parecon' theory is one such new development, there are movements such as copyleft and open source libraries and software that are all consistent with anarchist theory.

heres a link (for DF and others if they are interested) to a very brief intro of this parecon idea which you mention by that Albert guy.
http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3114

Personally, I used to have a subscription to the economist magazine, I regularly read the sunday business post, I studied economics in first year of university. I have read Adam Smyth and have a masters degree in a political science field. I certainly don't restrict myself to 19th century socialists

Just out of interest, did you find that there was any provision whatsoever for any kind of radical theory in university? My experience with political theory as an undergraduate has put me off, I found them teaching Nozick seriously despite the fact that he cant even put together an argument and yet there was not so much as a mention of anyone on the left, from Marx upwards. Perhaps it was just the lecturer I had but it has seriously put me off doing a masters in it now...

Sunn

donegalfella wrote: »

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Why do you assume there would be a decreased level efficiency or quality of anything in an anarchist society? What ten year list are you talking about?
If anything your "we don't care buddy" attitude sums up the current system we live in, where products are made as cheap as possible to maximise profits, the raw materials, labour and time are sacrificed and exploited at production to get every last penny.

In an anarchist society the producer would also be the consumer, the relationship would be completely different.

Most of the posts against an anarchist society have in fact got nothing to do with anarchism at all, 12 pages on and people still think anarchism is state socialism. So far I haven't really seen an argument put forth against anarchism apart from the hypothetical "what if..." scenarios.

There isn't a direct blue print for what would happen in an anarchist society, there are many unknowns but thats somewhat of the point. Its up to individuals/communities to decide what direction they want to go in rather than a few deciding for the many.

Akrasia

donegalfella wrote: »

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There are 6.5 billion people in the world today. 3 billion of those people live on less than 2 dollars a day. 30,000 children die every day due to malnourishment.

Your 'average person' statistic completely ignores the billions of people out there who have absolutely nothing and who are being exploited by capitalists to priovide the kinds of cheap consumer items that give us, (and the vast majority of people in Ireland and the west are enormously wealthy compared to the majority of the world) the illusion of luxury.

asdasd

Why do you assume there would be a decreased level efficiency or quality of anything in an anarchist society?

Its a circular round of nonsense, this thread. We assume that anarchism will not work because not one of you have demomstrated how the system would work except by mouthing meally platitudes about how "Efficient" it would be.

we already asked how a plane could ever be assembled by this nonsensical system of producer consumer councils. Read the thread. It wasnt answered.

Also unanswered is how a Irish MS "commune" would develop software for MS. There never is an answer, just links to people who have also no clue how the present economic system works, or how anything works having not darkened the door of a factory, software house, or any unit of production in their lives.

What ten year list are you talking about?

The one the producer comsumer council put us on.

If anything your "we don't care buddy" attitude sums up the current system we live in, where products are made as cheap as possible to maximise profits, the raw materials, labour and time are sacrificed and exploited at production to get every last penny.

Is a BMW cheap? Is an iPhone shoddy. Get a grip.

In an anarchist society the producer would also be the consumer, the relationship would be completely different.

Jesus wept. I must inform myself that I dont consume.

Its up to individuals/communities to decide what direction they want to go in rather than a few deciding for the many.

Tell me how an iPhone is devloped in this environment. How is a plane built? How is a metro built. For anarchists - who funds the hospitals. I want detailed answers. Not "it will work"," the few and the many".

Do any of you people have a real job? Have you ever even researched how businesses work.

No, I thought not. Bourgeois radicalism, suburban radicalism akin to declaring yourself a satanist.

asdasd

Your 'average person' statistic completely ignores the billions of people out there who have absolutely nothing and who are being exploited by capitalists to priovide the kinds of cheap consumer items that give us, (and the vast majority of people in Ireland and the west are enormously wealthy compared to the majority of the world) the illusion of luxury.

Moslt of those people are being pushed out of poverty by capitalism. Poverty in India, and China, was caused by Fabian type socialism and communism.

It seems that come the revolution we are all to be equal to the average world wage? What happened to just gutting the capitalist class?

Give us a speech - to the employees of BMW in Germany to pick an old style Fordist workforce - on how much exactly their wages are going to be after the revolution. I think you may not be getting one Western proletarian on board at this stage...

Still though. We should try some equality. Lets reduce the take home pay of any member of any anarchist group to the world average.

Asdasd is a revolutionary for the revolutionarys.

Kama

Akrasia wrote:

Anarchists main enemy is heirarchy and domination. The state is one representation of that

Ok, so the state is a second-order problem, hierarchy/domination the first order. Can we equate domination to coercivity? Secondly, is any hierarchy inherently evil, or merely a domnant or coercive hierarchy? If the first, tiered levels of syndicalism constitutes a hierarchy, as does levels of political representation. If not, we need to distinguish between pathological and healthy hierarchies. Which is imo a far more interesting question, without as easy answers.

The power relationship between owners and workers is absolute

If and only if the distribution of property rights is absolute. Many socialists and libertarians would argue (again I'd reference Proudhon, Property is Freedom), that the solution is to allow property, and hence power, to be distributed throughout society, either through collective syndicalist ownership or capitalist forms such as the joint-stock corporation.

donegalfella wrote:

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Any non-coercive anarchist would reciprocate your tolerance, and any which wouldn't, I would agree (or argue) are authoritarian anarchists, which (to me) is inherently contradictory. Voluntarist or non-coercive anarchists have precisely the same concerns as you, and a history of being put down violently, and their socially-held capital expropriated. One of the proximate causes of the EZLN rising was the shift in the Mexican constitution to outlaw collective land rights in favour of a liberal-individualist model.

The only bugbear remaining is the problem of initial conditions. The constitution of our property system has typically been one of force and conquest, worldwide, and for a strict voluntarist hence illegitimate. While tempting to dismiss on 'you gots to stop somewhere' lines, I consider it's solution to be non-trivial.

asdasd wrote:

Neutrals can expect no answers.

Happily, questions are far more interesting! Mind you, I don't see many 'neutrals' in the argument, even among the advocates of a mixed economy.

trust funds ( which asdasd would tax at 100% - a practical radical solution).

Mmhmm! The only point at which a libertarian-capitalist society can make a claim to meritocracy with a straight face is with 100% inheritance taxation; of course, this would be as politically unpopular a move as any from the anarchists, and breaches the freedom to do-as-you-will of the libertarians. Hereditary wealth, and the benefits it bestows/barriers it creates, is to me one of the key critiques for a ethical (in the Rawlsian Veil-of-Ignorance sense) capitalist economic organization.

I would tax the non-producers in the millionaire suburbs on their property at 10% a year, no bother....Asdasd is all for radicalism against real elites ( the upper middle class cartels)

I like you more and more since the 2 cheers comment, hehe...When I swing meliorist-capitalist, it's Pigouvian taxation and the liquidation of rentiers that floats my boat. Is Asdasd is the authentic class warrior here?

donegalfella wrote:

If it weren't for the market, we simply would not have the sheer variety of art, literature, cinema, etc., that surrounds us today.

Several of my family are artists. 2 of them have earned a considerable living at it over their lifetimes, and recognized for their work. None of them went into it for the money. The advice I was given as a child was 'do it if you love it, and for god's sake don't do it if you wouldn't be happy doing it and being poor all your life'. To claim the profit motive is the source of art doesn't gel with the lived experiences of most artists I have ever met in my lifetime.

Now, I concede readily that without the means to produce art, your output will be negligible (vide systems such as patronage in the Renaissance), but I'd prefer you to substantiate that the human artistic urge (which goes back to cave paintings and doubtless before) requires the market in the manner you seem to be describing. Preferably without Argument-by-North-Korea.

Sunn wrote:

There isn't a direct blue print for what would happen in an anarchist society, there are many unknowns but thats somewhat of the point. Its up to individuals/communities to decide what direction they want to go in rather than a few deciding for the many.

Hear hear! Imagine an opposite debate:

'What will the liberalised market produce?'

'Well, stuff people want...'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Eh, things...lots of things'

And so on...

Joycey

asdasd wrote: »

Its a circular round of nonsense, this thread. We assume that anarchism will not work because not one of you have demomstrated how the system would work except by mouthing meally platitudes about how "Efficient" it would be.

How do you suggest we demonstrate it? Other then pointing at instances of factories which are organised in the manner which we are advocating in parts of the world which are more progressive then our own then what do you want us to do?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
http://www.global300.coop/en/node/3
http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/food-stores/4261725-1.html
http://ed.acrewoods.net/node/201

Examples of successful co-operatives. If we can have one then why not more?

we already asked how a plane could ever be assembled by this nonsensical system of producer consumer councils. Read the thread. It wasnt answered.

Much the same way it is now. Except with the profits acquired from the production not being appropriated without it being in accordance with difficulty/length/danger of labour given.

Also unanswered is how a Irish MS "commune" would develop software for MS. There never is an answer, just links to people who have also no clue how the present economic system works, or how anything works having not darkened the door of a factory, software house, or any unit of production in their lives.

Whats your point? I dont play ice hockey, never have. I can still watch a game and comment on it. The fact that the capitalist mode of production affects everyones lives in the society means that I actually have a responsibility to speak my mind.

The fact that I have never worked in a factory means that I have no right to talk about the mechanics of production. Hence my linking to instances in effect as of right now. Why do you need me to explain how to build an iPhone when you know just about as much as I do about what it takes to build one. The point is that the workers know how to build one, and the fact that they are doing it for their own benefit rather then Steve Jobs' means that they will probably do it more efficiently, not less.

The one the producer comsumer council put us on.


Is a BMW cheap? Is an iPhone shoddy. Get a grip.



Jesus wept. I must inform myself that I dont consume.

More sneering, arrogant BS.

Tell me how an iPhone is devloped in this environment. How is a plane built? How is a metro built.

See above.

For anarchists - who funds the hospitals. I want detailed answers. Not "it will work"," the few and the many".

If by fund you mean who will provide the resources, then it will be the people who are affected by the operation of the hospital.

This is something that needs to be worked out in a democratic way, the previous sentence is certainly what I would advocate but Im not sure whether I cant speak for everyone.

Bourgeois radicalism, suburban radicalism akin to declaring yourself a satanist.

Not really, where satanism is a rediculous posturing as irrational and arbitrary as is an outspoken belief in any supernatural phenomena, being politically outspoken is a result of observing the operation of the world and seeing something wrong with it. Cant really see the comparison.



I really dont see why you need to come across as such a w@nker in your posts, what do you achieve by it? All you prove to me is that you have no interest in actually working through anything, and are instead happy to simply dismiss any views that dont accord with your own and derride their proponents.

Sunn

Also unanswered is how a Irish MS "commune" would develop software for MS. There never is an answer, just links to people who have also no clue how the present economic system works, or how anything works having not darkened the door of a factory, software house, or any unit of production in their lives.

Its amazing you haven't heard of linux?

Is a BMW cheap? Is an iPhone shoddy. Get a grip.

I am not talking about the product, its the cost at making it. An iphone isn't shoddy, theres very little to it, but how much does the person who assemble it get considering how much they retail for? For a profit to be made you have to undercut someone if it be the worker or the consumer or both. That is capitalism.

Also have you been watching the utter collapse of financial capitalism and the affect this has had on the motor industry in america?

Jesus wept. I must inform myself that I dont consume.

Not really sure what your problem is here, the relationship would change.

Tell me how an iPhone is devloped in this environment. How is a plane built? How is a metro built. For anarchists - who funds the hospitals. I want detailed answers. Not "it will work"," the few and the many".

Despite your calls this question has been answered at 5 times since page one also nobody can give you a 100% this is how it will work scenario

Do any of you people have a real job? Have you ever even researched how businesses work.

No, I thought not. Bourgeois radicalism, suburban radicalism akin to declaring yourself a satanist.

Permabear

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