I don’t know what you mean by “off their own back”? And “getting money and buying food and paying rent or whatever”? So you acknowledge that you need an economy based on voluntary exchange of goods in a scarce world?
The problem is that this kind of idyllic socialism ignores a series of economic problems, for example how goods are produced and how scarcity and opportunity cost works. It just can’t work in reality. I recommend reading Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics before going ahead and theorizing on a completely flawed foundation.
No worries. 
So you don’t think anyone ever sells his labor because he wants to? Besides, no one ever “has to” sell his labor (in the sense of having no choice about it) - the choice of whether to do so always exists.
However, when you mention “any need to earn one’s subsistence [would be taken out of the question]”, I have to ask you how you think (or believe) this could be done. Even in the mythical, super-abundant Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve presumably had to eat the fruits of the trees on their own - the nutrients didn’t magically materialize in their stomachs. In other words, they had to put forth effort (i.e. earn) their subsistence.
On the one hand, “standard of living” can’t be measured objectively, strictly speaking. A person could value the (seeming) independence of growing his own food, building his own shelter, etc. over depending on other people to do so. But on the other hand, there’s no question that the (relatively) high productivity of modern society is due to the division of labor that you point out. This division of labor is ultimately driven by the phenomenon of scarcity. Finally, just because you can imagine a better standard of living for yourself, let alone “everyone”, doesn’t mean it’s actually possible. Again, this is ultimately due to scarcity.
It’s the Federal Reserve Bank, and it’s not exactly privately owned.
To me, the word “control” implies absence of choice. A person faced with “losing his house” (more accurately, having his mortgage called in, the likelihood of which raises a whole host of issues that I won’t get into here) still has a choice. Just because it may be highly likely that he’ll “go along to get along” doesn’t mean the choice ceases to exist.
Okay. Could you please point out those other posts? Links would be fine.
“You have to understand the political, economic and social background for what the Nazi’s did; or look at Milgrims study. But when people aren’t compelled to pick the ‘right team’, then generally they don’t advocate the elimination of a race”
Again, if you do not accept the principle, why support the policy?
“Well, all of them - the IMF, the World Bank and so on, they are all in it for profit.”
Yes, those are horrible institutions, but not because of profit, it is because of their relationship with the States around the world…
“But you advocate them starving to death? That is if you accept pure capitalism, without a welfare system of any kind. Well either way, you have the same problem. What do we do with people who don’t want capitalism? Well, you don’t do anything to take into account their interests. Nice one!”
what an assumption that is. there is a welfare system in capitalism… But i guess if a person chooses to be lazy and not work , and has knowledge that he cannot support himself with then yes, if he chooses to starve, I’ll let him.. But do not blame that on capitalism , blame that on my Thoreau influence… But what is the solution to this problem in your version of anarchy?
‘off their own back’ - on their own accord.
‘getting money and buying food and paying rent or whatever’ - refers to the selling of ones labour in order to get money, money which is then exchanged for subsistance.
I don’t think this world is as scarce as you make out. I mean, we can create food artificially, and we can produce renewable energy - so there is no need to worry about food and energy. Water is hardly a problem, we can use desalination to purify water, so we don’t need to worry about that. So it doesn’t seem that we need to worry about surviving in an anarcho-syndicalist society. After that, it’s just about focusing on increasing human wellbeing which will come with time.
This is just one example of an invisioned moneyless world. (http://www.thevenusproject.com/)
Perhaps some people want to be physical slaves, but that isn’t an argument for slavery. And in fact, there are plenty of people who would describe the selling of ones labour as wage-slavery.
As I’ve already said, automated-machines would carry out the mundane onerous jobs.
If you look at the Spanish Anarchist during the Civil War we see amazingly high levels of productively. To prove that, they had to fight the fascists and communists on two fronts and lasted quite a while considering.
Well of course, you could say we all have a choice. For example, I could take a gun, go into a bank and shoot the bankers. But It doesn’t mean I would ever do it, but in some sense I have that choice. Just like that person who is loosing their house could go into the same bank and shoot everyone. And the slave, who is in chains and could bang their head into their cell wall until they die, has that choice. But realistically, most of these choices aren’t realistic. Realistically, most people have no control.
From another post:
'If someone wanted to work, then they would be free to do so, but they wouldn’t have to do so if they didn’t want to. That’s one difference between capitalism and anarcho-syndicalism. In capitalist society you have to work as a means to survive, in a anarcho-syndicalist society you wouldn’t have to work as a means to survive. That said, if someone wanted to work then they would be free to do so, but they wouldn’t be doing it for the sake of survival.
I wouldn’t say that I am that informed on the matters of our current technological level and whether it could be implemented now. But it does seem that it is possible at least, and I would say we should at least try. In fact, there is one product on the market (http://www.irobot.com/) which is an automated vacuum cleaner. But we’ll have to see where the technology goes from here.
Whilst we are saying we think the world should be run differently, I don’t think it is as centralised as you think; I mean, just because there are a few of us who share some ideas, doesn’t mean we are going to start forcing people into this kind of society if it ever came to that. I think any introduction of an anarcho-syndicalist society would be because the majority wants it - for that matter, I don’t even see any other way of it coming about other than that.’
Chris,
Thanks for making clear. At the moment I don’t want to talk about the feasibility of post-scarcity world. I know the Venus Project and their claims.
So now we can come back to my initial question: If you agree that we would get goods then only against money (which is just the most marketable good), how would I get money if I would not work to get food to survive? (Leaving aside now that somewhat strange thing that it would be somehow anarcho syndicalism with money..)
You can moralize the evils of “wage-slavery” all you want, goods and services still don’t appear out of thin air without people producing them. Everyone is free to reject the offers of employers, buy some land, grow your own food. Capitalism only offers an opportunity, it does not compel you to do anything.
Where will those machines come from? What makes you think capitalism would not be better at inventing them? If we do have these machines then we don’t need to work in capitalism either, so I don’t see the benefit of syndicalism.
How many or how few people would describe selling one’s labor as wage-slavery is completely irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, people who sell their labor do so willingly. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to. No one is coercing them into doing so (despite what Laotzu might say, even though I disproved him).
A fundamental difference between your thinking and mine is that you seem to ignore the issue of causality. In your mind, a person is “hurt” if he imagines being “better off”, but isn’t. In my mind, on the other hand, a person can only be “hurt” if something he already has is taken away from him against his will. Basically I think you’re arguing from the nirvana fallacy - because we don’t have everything we want under capitalism, capitalism is bad.
Okay, who would build the machines? Who would maintain them? Couldn’t those be mundane, onerous jobs in themselves? If you’re imagining an entire “artificial ecosystem” of self-replicating machines, who would take the time (how much?) to develop the technology for it? Etc., etc.
I have no idea what you mean by “amazingly high levels of productivity” - can you please explain?
Realistically, people do have control. All of those choices you listed above are entirely realistic. It’s not like someone “choosing” to float away on a cloud or conjure 100 lbs. of gold in front of them.
Okay, how would those who choose not to work survive? How would they obtain food, water, clothing, and shelter - to say nothing of more elaborate items?
I’m sorry but here it sounds like you’re simply saying “I think we should all do what I want and not what the rest of us want.” Why should people value your preferences more than their own?
If a majority wants it, do you think it would be okay for it to coerce the minority into following it?
Yes, ultimately we can overcome scarcity. But that will happen because we want it enough. I mean, what’s the theory there? That scarcity exists because nobody figured out until now that we could just wish it away? You Venus project people don’t understand basic supply and demand economics, sorry. You think you can create post-scarcity by wishing for it. But we can’t build robots because we don’t have the resources to build them. If automation is more efficient, then entrepreneurs will produce it to make profit. Post-scarcity will not come about because we desire it enough but because we produce it with capitalism. You really, really have to lean economics before you try to understand the worlds problems.
The calculation problem isn’t some bureaucratic obstacle on the way to a free lunch, it means that economic activity without prices is fundamentally impossible. Without prices you can’t efficiently allocate resources and there will be more scarcity, not less. Democratic decisions can never efficiently allocate resources because no human knows the implicit opportunity costs that are hidden throughout the economy. No human has all the information that’s dispersed in the economy. And democratic decisions will likely be driven by wasteful fads and fashionable nonsense.
I said nothing about capitalist countries or mixed markets, I said “countries that most heavily rely on the profit motive”. That is undeniably true, as countries that attempted to get rid of the profit motive still heavily rely on lumber and coal for energy while countries that did rely on the profit motive have been getting progressively cleaner energy for centuries and now heavily rely on nuclear energy and natural gas. It is easy to explain why: Cleaner energy is also more efficient, because it contains less carbon, so entrepreneurs will use it as soon as we have the capacity to do it. That capacity is not going to appear out of thin air because we want it enough. You say that the profit motive is somehow in the way of using renewable energy. But in reality scarcity is in the way of using renewable energy. We simply don’t have enough steel or concrete to get all our energy from renewable sources. Abolishing the profit motive is not going to make steel more abundant. In fact it is going to make it less abundant because nobody has an incentive to mine it and even building the mining equipment would be impossible without a pricing economy.
You wouldn’t need money to get food. I think it’s a ludicrous idea that the essentials of human life have to be earnt. So much for the right to life.
In a capitalist society, how will you buy land without money? How would you pay for heating and the building materials to build a house without money? How would you pay the hospital bills without money? It isn’t practical in a capitalist society to do that. And the only way to can get money short of robbing a bank, is by working. So in reality you aren’t free to reject the offers of employers - unless you think starvation is an acceptable alternative.
We would make them. The benefit of syndicalism would be that it probably be the closest form of direct democracy and it would allow us to do what we want. If we didn’t have to work in capitalism, and everyone acted on that and stopped working, then capitalism would cease to be. How can a system which is built around the selling of labour continue when there is no labour to sell?
It is true that, if you have no savings, you would have to work to buy some land in the first place But a little land is very cheap these days. You could not afford modern housing or heating, or modern health care, it would be a pre-capitalistic standard of living. What you expect is that people should have a capitalistic standard of living without capitalism. That is simply not possible. Without capitalism these goods and services would simply not exist. This is a typical response from people who do not understand that progress does not come naturally, but is the product of exchange and specialization in a propertarian society. You expect the benefits of capitalism without any of the downsides, such as wage-labor.
Democracy can not magically overcome scarcity. This is where syndicalists simply live in a dream world without any regard for economic necessity. See my recent post on this.
As I said to EmperorNero, if you consider starvation an alternative, then yeah, we are free. But personally I don’t, and so we are force to earn our survival through selling our labour.
No, I don’t think I am. I mean, I don’t propose syndicalism to be perfect; so if I were arguing that, then I would also disaprove of syndicalism as well.
The mantenance of the machines would be a far less onerous task than carrying out the tasks ourselves, and it would free up a huge number of people from those tasks. As to the machine specifics I really don’t know, you would have to ask those who actually build them. Also, It’s quite good that you are attacking these specifics, since it suggests that the actualy theory of syndicalism and the criticism of capitalism is pretty sound, or I’m sure you would have attacked them by now.
They managaed to survive against the fascists on one hand, and the communists on the other, for relatively long time - this was all without the support of the western ‘liberal democracies’ as well. And you have to remember that they had just made the transition to a syndicalist society, and with that they had a lot of work to do. So I think it is fair to say they were highly productive.
Well, like I already said, if you think starvation, death or jail are alternatives then yeah we do have choices. Much like Caesar in Greece when he was surrounded by Pompey, he could have told his army to march into the sea and to their deaths. But I wouldn’t consider that an option.
The same way those who do work obtain it.
I would only enter an anarcho-syndicalist society if that’s what those entering it wanted. I think in general people don’t want to be told what to do, so it would only come about with those who are willing.
No.
Perhaps you should go to the poor areas of your society and see the standard of living. Because, generally, it isn’t as high as you’d think - that’s capitalism. Also, you seem to value progress as material wealth. I’d say that it is more to do with personal happiness and wellbeing, which is partly influenced by material wellbeing, but not fully.
What scarcity are you talking about? Food? Water? Energy?
Chris, the main complaint coming from the anarcho-capitalists concerning democracy is that in a direct democracy that deals with the allocation of resources, there can be no structure of production. An-caps see the structure of production as arising from basic property rights and that is how wealth increases. I think the onus may be on the democracy fans to show how they can generate wealth without property rights or prices.
Aside from a natural rights perspective (which, if objective morality is real, I would lean towards), there is a strong utilitarian case to be made that this may be the quickest way to get people fed. China and India, for example. It may be unfortunate that the only position in which they are in is to sell their labor, but sans this opportunity, it’s either live year to year on subsistence farming or definitely starve. If you force greedy companies to do things they don’t want to do, they won’t bother to re-invest or continue growing in the certain area that extorts them to follow regulations.
The three pages was a little tl;dr for me, but I skimmed through most of it. Majoritarianism is going to exist in society no matter what, but democracy centralizes it. The classic 51/49 example, where if the 49 buys into democracy but hates the policy, they have to allocate their resources and these resources are acting as if there is 100% demand since the 51 gets its way. There’s an issue of rational ignorance as well when it comes to voting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter).
I’d imagine, if you were the single human on this planet, you’d probably move your a** and LABORIOUSLY reach out for that hanging fruit lest you die. But, since other humans exist, the necessity to move your a** to survive (i.e. to “earn the essentials”) should suddenly vanish? Others are somehow bound to prevent your death, simply because they exist? Who do you think should earn the essentials for your life?
The poor areas of my society, Chris, tend to be ones where the government has active welfare schemes, horrible public schools, and high taxation. At least in America.
z1235, I’ve always thought that under the socialists’ definition of coercion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them believe that nature is coercive (I’m not directing this towards Chris Bacon, but I’m speaking in general). “But I want to fly!” is almost the same thing as “but I want people to care about me even though I’ve done nothing to earn their respect!”
Starvation isn’t necessarily even the only alternative! You’re arguing a false dilemma. Otherwise, choosing to ignore alternatives and other possibilities doesn’t mean they no longer exist - if you deny reality, you do so at your own peril.
On another note, let me ask you this: do other people owe you a living? That is, do they owe you a certain amount of food, water, clothing, shelter, etc.?
So why don’t you disapprove of syndicalism? After all, it won’t give you everything you can imagine having - or being, for that matter.
My point is that, as far as I can tell, your argument seems to have the following form:
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I don’t have X.
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I can imagine myself having X (or I want X).
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Therefore, I’m being forced from having X.
This is a blatant, glaring, obvious, gigantic non sequitur. I’ll be happy to explain why if it doesn’t make sense to you.
How do you know? Please provide reasoning and/or evidence to support these assertions.
This suggests you’re “taking it all on faith”. If so, then I’ll simply reject your faith-based assumptions and move on.
Wrong - I’ve been attacking them indirectly.
My understanding was that the communists essentially took them over in relatively short order. Otherwise, how is mere redistribution of resources a form of productivity? Then again, I also understand that the urban “workers’ collectives” were run in a basically capitalist way - at least at first.
See above - you’re denying part of reality. You’ve also done nothing to obviate my point here. People are still in control of themselves whether you accept that fact or not. This fact will continue to stare you in the face no matter how hard you try not to look at it. No matter which way you turn, it’ll still be there, looking right at you.
Which is?
How do you delineate one “society” from another?
In the case of a majority of people in an area wanting anarcho-syndicalism and a minority not wanting it, what do you think each group can legitimately do?