Capitalism and Socialism: Strategic Dead Ends

Where have all the anarcho-anarchists gone? 

In his classic essay "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty", Murray Rothbard describes socialism as a "middle of the road doctrine" in that it supports political or conservative means in the name of achieving radical, revolutionary or liberal ends. This problem can even be seen in many allegedly anarchistic socialists, many of whom still seem to take a rather Marxist approach in that they seem to think that the state can be used to crush "the capitaliists" and socialize everything, and then the state will just wither away, which is absolutely silly. "We must destroy private property first, then we can worry about dismantling the state", they say. They also have a tendency to function as apologists for the state in the name of anti-corporatism. For example, while Noam Chomsky claims to be an anarcho-syndicalist, I think he is actually functioning as a social democrat because he has openly defended the welfare state, advocates plenty of government interventions domestically, has argued that the government is "at least somewhat susceptable to popular control" and thinks that if the state were dismantled now we would be left with "private tyrannies". So how can someone like Chomsky claim to be an anarchist?

I completely agree with Rothbard's analysis in the essay. But perhaps we should turn this analysis on its head, or perhaps extend it further. Is this not also true of the "capitalists", including many "anarcho-capitalists"? Are not many "capitalist" libertarians openly advocating conservative means as well? When they're advocating all kinds of interventions to fight immigration, anti-abortion laws, and enthusiastically campaigning for conservative Republicans? Are many libertarians, at least "vulgar" ones, not functioning as apologists for corporatism or corporations by using the theory of a free market to defend currently existing "capitalism" as if it is a free market or came about as a result of such a process? If "capitalism" is thought of as just another strategy for using the state, one based on use the state to try to protect property titles or property classes (regaurdless of justice) and maximize efficiency, then it ends up being not much better then "socialism". The disagreement between the two appears not to be one of fundamental principle at all, but a matter of which interest groups state intervention should be used to benefit and which interest group we want to be apologists for (the state vs. the corporations, the workers vs. the employers, "the rich" vs. "the poor", and so on)

I don't see how my strategic objection to Noam Chomsky does not apply just as much to certain right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. When I see libertarians argueing that since the state still exists, we should view it and use it as if it were a private property owner in the present and we should use the political process to our short-term advantage, my mind is blown. "We must stop this influx of people into the territory and work within the system to get good guys elected first, then we can worry about dismantling the state", they say. Isn't this kind of "post-ponement" logic precisely what has always gone wrong with the socialist movement, namely, that they have advocated and used political means towards their ends in the present under the hopes that it will lead to a future anarchy, while in objective reality that are functioning as statists and have reinforced the institutional framework that the state thrives upon? While many social anarchists may be functioning as social democrats in reality, perhaps many self-proclaimed market anarchists are functioning as conservatives in reality or classical liberals at best, because they are still functioning with a statist strategic mindset.

In my view, both capitalism and socialism have basically become anti-concepts with no objective meaning anymore. Their meanings change depending on context, and this leads to self-contradictary connotations to the words. There is definitional chaos. In the case of socialism, worker's control and government ownership are inherently contradictary. In the case of capitalism, free economic activity and government protection of buisiness and property titles are contradictary. Socialists often end up advocating government ownership as a strategy in the name of worker's control, which is self-defeating in principle because you cannot have worker's control when the government is owning the means of production, considering that the government and the workers are mutually exclusive. Capitalists often end up advocating government protection of property titles in the name of the free market, which is self-defeating in principle because not all currently existing property titles are just, and no free market exists.