If anarcho capitalism didnt exist, would you rather be a minarchist or an anarcho leftist (communist/syndicalist/mutualist whatever)?
Id rather be one of the anarcho left, not sure which one.
Well maybe not, i mean minarchy is not THAT bad if you like to compromise principle...
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
Well damn... I was gonna make a thread like this... And hell I probably still will.
Anyway, definitely minarchist, leftist anarchism has potential, but not in the absence of a capitalist society.
i dunno but the anarcho left has some pretty good music... riot folk, poison girl, etc
leftist anarchism has potential
I'd like you to make a thread on this. I've noticed you saying things before like this, I'd be interested in hearing why you have the sympathies.
All I know is everytime I develop any sympathies with any of their theories -or even "empathy" with any of their concerns, it turns out I hit a brick wall.
Anyway - in so much as minarchy means "custom law with a mostly capitalist system" - certainly minarchy. I seriously don't know how radical leftism as I have seen it stated will lead to anything but a catastrophe.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
Mutualism doesn't seem all thaaaaat evil, but with the loose definitions of "minarchy" some people like to have, I'll go with minarchy. (Some minarchists are essentially AnCaps but are afraid of the anarchist label - they want all government services to be paid for by voluntary fees, and although the government maintains a monopoly on the law they believe in infinite secession - essentially AnCap).
maybe cuz im still young and radical i lean towards left anarchy more, but it is a kinda abstract theory
"kinda?"
It's hella abstract as I've seen it stated! They're against "hierarchy" and they prefer to leave the actual definition of hierarchy "undefined" so that they can adapt to the situation.
Mutualism doesn't seem all thaaaaat evil
That's what I thought at first. But they seem to be hardcore money cranks. And when you start asking about intrest, rent, etc - they tend to get very very obscure and slippery; they pull a lot of tap dances with purposefully annoying terms (e.g."free markets" NOT "capitalism" - insist on being called "leftist" because of theFrench assembly or whatever other types of fashionable word Platonisms they wish to use)
We talk about elastic property rights and custom law, AND THEY STILL WISH TO USE different terminology. Something is fishy.
Do they understand that money is just a medium of trade? Money in itself is not evil, but the attitude that which you look at money can be.
Well, i said kinda, because i thot i was too dumb to understand it (wikipedia is good, but hard to understand sometimes)...
Do they understand that money is just a medium of trade
I have no idea what they understand. If you look through threads here where LL's have come up in flares and fits - they simply duck out ofargument and slip into sloganing and have a penchant for caring more about labels.
Just go to the all-left.net forum to see them in their natural environment. 99% of it's all about the right (left) way to support the right (left) cause, and how they hate ancaps.
Anyway,
you're not too dumb to understand anything. You just have no need to understand something at the moment, you arein the process of learning something, or it is gibberish. Don't doubt yourself on these trivial things that people try to cram down your throat and lord over you. The minute somone does that laugh in their face and move on,and that will easily demonstrate the uselessness of the BS they're trying to sell you.
So you saying they just talk all rhetoric..
hurr durr greedy capitalists and their sweatshops viva la revoluciya!!!!!!!! change, be different blah blah blah, fuck masters..!
Im sure there are very intelligible left anarchists though
Like ronald reagan.... says he will spend less and tax less
spends money on sdi
If the issue of left vs. right anarchism hinges solely on the issue of property, I could very comfortably be a 'left anarchist'. By this I mean an individualist anarchist in support of an occupancy/use property scheme. In fact I often find myself indifferent to the effectual differences between usufruct (occ/use) and private property. Even if there were no minarchy, I'd still probably go to an anarcho-leftist territory, because at least it would be fascinating.
I'm sure there are some problems with the effects of usufruct and the moralistic prescriptions of various mutualist doctrines, but I can't pinpoint them right now. I used to think that it would be a big problem for consumers to be able to provide demand for capital goods, but realized there could easily be a business bond market rather than an equity one, wherein investors or more creditors than capitalists. People could deposit savings in banks and indicate whether they would like to warehouse or invest, whereafter banks could place their money on the business bond market or refer it to a financial advisor. All in all I think it would work out ok. The biggest problem with investment is whether leftists would even give a shit about it, thinking that investment is for guys who wear khakis, not understanding the structure of production. Oh well, I think it could work out ok, in the manner outlined above.
On the Mutualist monetary crankiness, it's really not a problem at all. Their whole proposal is for people to issue notes based on promises for labor or time. That's fine. But it'll get the shit discounted out of it at banknote clearings, in favor of gold. That seems obvious to me, and humorously telling of the leftist mindset, which always ignores the restraints of the market, seeking to build pies in the sky. Let them have their 'mutualist bank' it won't make any difference, until of course they go violent on the gold reserve banks. Though I would expect it might not come to that.
Also, goddamn the LibertarianLeftists. Instead of bridging the gap between anarchisms, they've only made the leftists hate anything right of the ALL, meaning the whole Mises crowd, despite the two sharing an identical politico-economic prescription. The whole 'emphasis' thing is bullshit, despite some fantastic literature produced by that crowd (Carson specifically).
On usufruct: is it really so bad? What would it change so significantly that the end of subsidized transportation wouldn't already largely put into effect? Let me know.
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
I think alot of people who oppose capitalism, often mix up corporatism with true capitalism.
This is very true and a big problem. I've oft ventured into the Anarchism subreddit, to have AnComs tell me they don't 'believe' that there would be a difference between a free market and a state-corporate one. It's mind-boggling. As a gross generalization, most anarcho-leftists view anarchy like porn: no masters, no bosses, no god = sexy... but freedom of contract, capital accumulation, rule of law = *snore* get off the stage old man!
There are some anarcho-leftists who kind of get it, and would even be willing to cooperate within an individualist property paradigm, whether usufruct or private, but still favor the aesthetic of a more communal society. It's for this reason that I am currently liking usufruct. If more Rothbardians were Tuckerites, maybe there could be a real bridge. The whole point is to double the number of anarchists in agreement, though typical AnCom 'hotheadedness' (read: stupidity) often gives me cause for concern.
Can I haz karma now?
What is usufruct?
@ Wheylous - Lol
@ Kevin - Usufruct is property paradigm based off of occupancy and use.
Releveant to the thread:
Market of Anarchists
From the very little I understand:
I don't think it's bad at all, is probably somewhat desirable, and in fact may be necessary in a way(?). Isn't this essentially the work of Ostrom?
The main thrust is though, one can not base a theory out of it. This is a consequence of the market / institutional process and structure. One can not start with what instutions ought to be or look like, nor can one emphasize such things. That's where it gets very deadly (literally) and "top down" intellectual masturbation. This comes with part ofmy confusion with mutualism - it looks more at plausible ends and wishes to make that the focus.
vive la insurrection: The main thrust is though, one can not base a theory out of it. This is a consequence of the market / institutional process and structure. One can not start with what instutions ought to be or look like, nor can one emphasize such things. That's where it gets very deadly (literally) and "top down" intellectual masturbation. This comes with part ofmy confusion with mutualism - it looks more at plausible ends and wishes to make that the focus.
Hmm. You're sounding kind of historicist here, in terms of assuming that private property is an outcome of what historical market process has existed, which suprises me. I don't see how one cannot base theory of the usufruct principle. Though I completely agree that much of mutualist (and worse, what's left of it) doctrine is about painting pictures and giving suggestions on what color to paint the cooperative-kitchen, that does not mean that there isn't room for the theoretical fleshing-out of usufruct.
There's kind of a tendency in this kind of literature to say: look how horrible this shit is right now, let's become free and then sort it out amongst ourselves. I agree that this could lead to mass starvation. But just because private property has been the reigning paradigm of the last few centuries does not mean that it and market process are inextricable, or have I misunderstood you?
The left needs more rightists writing their own literature for them. Treatises not flyers. Maybe then we could throw most of it in the trash once it reveals itself in plain english.
the respect for private property is when people respect the product of another man's labor.
Actually that's precisely what usufruct is. How is it labor when someone is just entitled to a plot of land and can charge rent on it when he lives a state away?
You're sounding kind of historicist here
That wouldn't surprise me being that I have been reading far more Weber and Lachmann than Mises this past year. As you may have noticed from my past few posts in topics, there is a bit of a dissonance in how I am thinking about economics lately. I am probably a bit more confused in my thoughts than I was a year ago.
does this relate to Elinor Ostrom's work on the commons? If so, it is indeed very interesting stuff.
Furthermore, I am wondering if one could actually make a defence of what we have now (that is something that actually factually exists) vs a pie in the sky argument. Mercantilism, Keynesianism, Corprotism are "real" things to me as they are merely managment theories on real actions and real processes. This makes them less dangerous than abstract social structures to me, and more preferable.
If I heard people say "screw it we are reorganizing to this Platonic vision" - I would immediatley recoil and my mind wouldturn to the French,1848, and Russian Revolutions
I haven't read Ostrom's work but it's basically a refutation of "The Tragedy of the Commons" and Hardin revised his title to the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons. If it's correct then I think it would indicate the feasibility of voluntary collective life. That said, usufruct doesn't depend on the feasibility of collective life in order to function. It would function very similarly, in my opinion, to an orthodox market setup, except that firm size would be smaller as the boss (if there was one) would have to be present at the factory at which he worked, and there would be no more people living solely off of rent. Probably more people owning their own businesses, lower profit rate, few employees per firm. As I said above I think there's also a possibility for the emergence of a stock-market equivalent.
I think the advantage in effect that private property would have is in inviting more investment, though a mutualist territory could become just as wealthy.
vive: seen this? http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard56.html
OP - Minarchy, if you can keep it.
What:? not a republic??
i see what you did there ^^^
Yeah,
I never really bought that narrative all too much. I really think Catholicism has been irrelevant in actual factual actions of relevant things since the Reformation / Printing Press at the earliest to the fall of the Louis XVI at the latest, since than it has been effectively "in the dustbin" so to speak. Moreover I think the narrative was made by "Catholic Pride Right Wing Types" as an ad hoc thing because they like Catholicism and they like capitalism - so it's just one ofthose things tomake themselves feel better, not really much of a social theory as it is a "rah rah" thing to me. As for social theory in relation to Weber, right or wrong, it has to show how people made use of it. I think British naturalism had far more of an effect on peoples minds and the way it dictated behavior than Scholastic thought, for better or worse.
More importantly,I think the point for Weber isn't so much "what really happened" in history which he may kind of giggle at, but how to do a genreal exagesis to understand what is going on in an intelligible way. That is to say, there is nothing inherent about "Protestantism" that leads it to capitalism - however real fashions and real actions happened to arise from it, than so be it. Furthermore nowhere does Weber claim that Protestantism is soley responsible for capitalism - he just uses it because it is useful to do so (he points out that Florence was capitalist, but never really exploited that fact to a degree of significance)
Of course minarchism. I would find a world of city-states (my conception of minarchy) perfectly good for the time being , if not a necessary station toward anacapistan. If anarcho-capitalism can't work for some reason, a global web of competing mini-states is still an alluring vision by any standard.
I congratulate kelvin_silva: the thread is very intelligent, it allows one to differentiate left- form right- leaning libertarians.
riot folk, poison girl, etc
Riot folk = shitty and unrelated. Poison Girls = amazing 'obscure' Crass Records material.
I'd rather be minarchist, as "anarcho"-leftist (see what I did there?) actually tends to be much more statist than minarchism, if the anarcho-capitalist definition of "state" is used. A lot of the branches of leftist anarchism are confused - especially mutualism. They're also concerned a great deal with acquiring and maintaining power over freedom, but that's rather hidden by their use of the word "freedom" to refer to both positive physical ability and the absence of opposing coercion.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Wheylous:Mutualism doesn't seem all thaaaaat evil, but with the loose definitions of "minarchy" some people like to have, I'll go with minarchy. (Some minarchists are essentially AnCaps but are afraid of the anarchist label - they want all government services to be paid for by voluntary fees, and although the government maintains a monopoly on the law they believe in infinite secession - essentially AnCap).
Not to derail the thread, but infinite secession doesn't seem compatible to government maintaining a monopoly on the law.
vive la insurrection:Mutualism doesn't seem all thaaaaat evil That's what I thought at first. But they seem to be hardcore money cranks. And when you start asking about intrest, rent, etc - they tend to get very very obscure and slippery; they pull a lot of tap dances with purposefully annoying terms (e.g."free markets" NOT "capitalism" - insist on being called "leftist" because of the French assembly or whatever other types of fashionable word Platonisms they wish to use) We talk about elastic property rights and custom law, AND THEY STILL WISH TO USE different terminology. Something is fishy.
That's what I thought at first. But they seem to be hardcore money cranks. And when you start asking about intrest, rent, etc - they tend to get very very obscure and slippery; they pull a lot of tap dances with purposefully annoying terms (e.g."free markets" NOT "capitalism" - insist on being called "leftist" because of the French assembly or whatever other types of fashionable word Platonisms they wish to use)
Mutualism is really, really confused IMO. For one thing, its support of usufruct over ownership seems like just a rationalization for its opposition to profit, interest, and rent - which means it opposed those things to begin with, and therefore for different reasons. For another, who's to say that usufruct rights can't themselves be alienated (i.e. given away or traded for other things)? And if they can, then doesn't that make them owned? Finally, usufruct in no way prevents the kind of substantial wealth disparities we've seen in history. Indeed, usufruct over land was apparently the norm in the ancient world.
kelvin_silva:What is usufruct?
The term "usufruct" comes from Roman law, which considered there to be three kinds of rights in ownership - rights to use (usus), rights to the products or "fruits" of use (fructus), and rights to alienate (abusus). Usufruct, then, entails only the first two kinds of rights. As a result, it's not the same as ownership. However, usufruct itself can be "commoditized" - that is, it can be considered alienable on its own.
usufruct was the norm? so what about feudalism? and state control of land?
as for your first point, i dont think that usufruct abolishes profit or interest, but it would do away with rent. one could easily be the boss of a factory and work there, have employees, and make profts. i think much of the mutualist claims of abolishing profit come from their banking idea, which is entirely of no consequence. the banknotes mutualists propose could probably be circulated but always much less valuable than things like gold. unless they tried to somehow enforce a currency monopoly, which i find doubtful as much mutualist theory rails precisely against that. more than anything mutualist banking would just be a big disappointment to its proponents, which is not a problem for market anarchism. it just means the marking down of low quality money.
usufruct rights could be traded away, but the reciever would have to use the land otherwise the occupiers would take it. that said, its not necessarily an impediment to market of profit bearing shares. bonds would take over the role of equities.
in the ways in which mutualism in confused, in its propsals on what the glorious people shold do it is of no consequence for market anarchists. just bad business going down. and theres also the usufruct, which i dont really think would be such a bad thing.