I don’t really have much knowledge on anarcho communist etc, but as I understand it, anarcho communists, advocate abolishing the state under the belief that everybody would then voluntarily live in communes etc. If this did happen would anarcho communism and the like not be products of the free market and therefore capitalist (if we chose to define capitalism in the free market sense of the word).
If on the other hand, people decided to live outside of the communes and acquire property, if the collectivist anarchists accepted this, would they not merely be market anarchists? If they didn’t and used coercion to stop people acquiring property, they wouldn’t be anarchists. The only justification for this would to claim that property is coercive which is ridiculous.
Or am I missing something? Because otherwise it just seems to me that people calling themselves anarcho communists or anarcho syndicalists seems a bit silly, either they accept what follows from abolishing the government or they resort to coercion, if they fit into the former category are they not recognising property rights as legitimate?
This is one of those great questions that’s difficult to answer, given the amount of hostility between anarcho-left and anarcho-right. It would seem that we’re all anarchists, if we believe in a society without government. Alas, there are disagreements about what constitutes aggression and how it would be handled in a world without government.
While anarcho-capitalists have gone into this in some detail, anarcho-leftists tend to be rather vague about how it would work–they’re much more focused on alternative economic arrangements than on legal systems. Is a hierarchical business arrangement coercive and exploitative, even if someone would willingly choose it in an anarchist society?
Still, in the years since I first ran into this argument, there seems to be some progress–I’m encountering more anarchists who are much more reasonable and tolerant of other anarchist types.
Your post starts off with a false assumption. Anarcho-communists do not suppose that everybody would voluntarily live in communes anymore than a market anarchist would dare suggest everybody would select a private business model for defense. I also have to object to equating the market with all forms of free association - a gift economy is not equatable to a market exchange - but that’s an irrelevant discussion in relation to the topic at hand.
At what point would you count an anarcho-communist for being a statist? Opposing property that creates force and coercion is one hallmark of anarchism, and I would be quite skeptical of any market anarchist who claimed otherwise. If an anarcho-communist saw a landlord laying claim to unimproved land, or the only fertile region in a large desert, he’s probably going to call for a more equitable condition. Left-anarchists believe that any property which creates coercion should either not exist or be turned over into equal ownership. To me that sounds like a reasonable anarchist solution.
For a small example, a lot of communists consider the freeware and piracy movement to be a branch of communist economics. Anarcho-capitalists are split on the role of intellectual property, but communists and left-anarchists are mostly unified against copyrights and patents. Would the communist be a statist for ignoring someone’s property, or would the capitalist be a statist for forcing property rights onto another person?
In short, the anarcho-communist would kill the owner of the fertile region, or at least chase him away with the threat of killing him, and take it over, soon turning it into barren desert (much like Mugabe and his thugs taking over the farms in Zimbabwe); the anarcho-capitalist, on the other hand, would probably assume that the reason it’s the only fertile region in a large desert in the first place is because the owner made it so, and congratulate him. (Even if it’s a natural feature, the communist had no right to it…)
That’s quite a straw man you came up with since I clearly stated left-anarchists believe it should fall under equal ownership. If the fertility of land was a bi-product of this person’s labor I’m not aware of any left-anarchist or anarcho-communist who would call for others to intrude under the principles of anarchism. Your last statement is quite telling about what system you envision. To utilize the natural world as a way to create coercive hierarchies and relationships is statist.
What is statist is aggression (the threat or use of initiatory physical force) and hegemonic hierarchies based on this. How are you defining coercion, GeneCosta? Simply owning property and using it as you see fit, so long as you don’t interfere with the equal rights of others to their own property, is not aggressive and so is not statist. Private property is not statist.
And if the original owner didn’t want to have his property equally divided, then what? (And “equally” between whom, anyway? Equal shares for every person in the world?)
The definition you provided excuses behavior that allows for the protection and ownership of land that hasn’t even been “broken in.” Charters, at best. My criticism is not targeted towards private property as an abstract or even existing idea. It is a criticism of any notion that an absolute land ownership system can be turned into a coherent position for anarchists.
Who is to say that an unimproved bit of land should be his property in the first property? Him? He has just made himself into a state by doing so, and I will gladly contest that argument. The land is not being divided into equal blocks. That would only complicate the situation whenever a new person finds himself (or herself) interested in the area. Ownership is extending to all parties interested in improving the land. They must do so to be considered the owners.
I’m not sure what you mean by any of that. What exactly does “aggression as the only thing that violates rights” excuse that you want to prevent by force? If you’re not criticizing private property per se then where is it we disagree? What do you mean by absolute land ownership system? You don’t believe in private ownership of land?
If it’s unowned, he can homestead it. To homestead it, he has to do something with it. He can’t just claim it from a distance or stick a flag in it (a la the US with the moon).
I don’t see this. You’re going to have to be far more specific in your arguments. At the moment, you’re being too cursory.
Why should it be?
Why? Unowned land is not given to all in common. There’s no reason why there has to be equal ownership of land.
Claiming ownership over property that does not rightfully belong to that source is the main method a state (tries) legitimizing itself.
You’re making a case for a different argument. The situation I referenced would involve a wealthy individual using his resources to protect vast tracks of land for speculation or rent purposes. Having never improved the land, he has no right to ownership. People would be right to diminish and abolish his control until the tenants became owners - both by ignoring his calls for payment and confronting his defense agency.
But someone who homesteads unowned land is thereby the rightful owner. Thus, no statist.
When you bring up rent, you raise a red flag. Do you believe renting land or other property is wrong? I don’t. And I don’t see that renting out one’s property diminishes one’s rights in them.
If a wealthy person homesteads or buys a tract of land and rents it out to farmers, say, I don’t see a problem with this. He doesn’t have to actually farm it himself. Hiring wage laborers to do the farming for him would be little different. If he homesteads or buys some land, does he have to put to use in some way, say farming, right away? That strikes me as obviously unfair. How much time does he have before the land is considered abandoned? (Even Lockean free market anarchists have to have some allowance for abandoned property.)
Also, I don’t see a problem necessarily in individuals or groups homesteading or buying up some land to create a nature preserve for which few improvements can be made by definition. They might mark off the territory in some customary, intersubjectively objective and agreed upon way at its borders and charge a small fee to hunters, campers, tourists, etc., maybe set up a few low impact campsites, paths or roads but otherwise leave the land pristine. I would not agree that anyone can just go in and become a squatter and start accruing rights to that land.
All of our discussions about homesteading, buying and selling land assume some customary ways of doing so that are largely agreed upon: marking off territory in some way that others will recognize, making a claim with known property registration services so that others can easily determine whether or not the land is owned by checking with the registry, etc.
You’re probably envisioning some disturbing scenario involving some irrational capitalist who buys up huge swaths of land and bizarrely refusing to do anything with it while preventing anyone else from doing anything with it too.
Renting unimproved land certainly is. If you want to rent your house, or car, or farm, be my guess.
That opens up a whole grocery list of new problems by freely admitting that someone can refuse to improve land and still acquire it as their own against others who would want to homestead the land for their own benefit. Obviously we’re going to work with some leniency in a post-state society - some fool may claim urination as a process of acquisition - but large-scale private ownership of unimproved land would be hotly contested. I refer back to a previous statement about equal ownership for everyone interested in managing such land.
On the contrary, land speculation and land rent are utilized quite frequently even with the state’s monopoly being so present.
Are you ruling out homesteading or buying land and then either hiring farmers or renting the land out to them then? If so, I don’t think I can agree with you.
This goes back to customary means of homesteading, buying, selling, and abandoning land. Are you not an environmentalist? Or at least interested in preserving some tracts of land in their pristine state to provide places that people can enjoy in their natural state as tourists, campers, hikers, hunters, etc.? I doubt it anyone could get away with homesteading unreasonably large tracts of land for this purpose, so I don’t see the problem here. I think reasonable nature preserves would come to be accepted as legitimate private property, sometimes as non-state public property that is owned jointly by certain communities, sometimes just owned by individuals or firms. As for your fear of wealthy speculators, as I said, our discussion is assuming customary means of homesteading, buying, selling and abandoning land. I strongly doubt urination will become a customarily acceptable means of homesteading. Owning large tracts of land is also not necessarily a problem. If you leave it unused for too long, it might be considered abandoned, however. But you have to give people some time to use the land they homestead or buy. This can’t all be determined apriori from the philosopher’s armchair.
You say ‘even’. I might say instead that to the extent that land speculation and land rent are bad, it is largely because of the state. That you say ‘even’ implies you think the state actually serves to put a strong check on powerful plutocrats and big corporations. It doesn’t. It enables them, privileges them against everyone else. The state and big corporations benefit each other, even as each tries to be the dominant partner.
That depends on the particular scenario. If you are trying to enforce yourself as the property owner to land that has never been touched (say, a plot of unspoiled land on the outskirts of an expanding city) neither I nor anyone else have any ethical obligations to pay rent, nor would you be able to easily evict someone. It would probably be the reverse; that tenant would evict you. Now, if you offer me thirty handcrafted birdhouses in exchange for creating you a house on this same plot of land, that is another matter entirely.
Nor did I presume as much.
Of course. There will be fluctuations, and large disagreements, and probably some instances of open conflict between two differing views of what constitutes justified acquisition. I am merely pointing out that people who claim large portions of unimproved land as their own are going to have a hella’ hard time, and rightfully so. Natural reserves would probably come about through a wide or small variety of people pooling their land together, perhaps turning it over to a cooperative or workers’ council styled organization. As for environmental degradation I imagine unions as well as consumer activist groups would be able to pressure most firms into proper resource replenishment programs.
Heh, I would have to dispute any association with that conclusion. I’m squarely in agreement with yours. I have yet to admit as much for fear of being ostracized, but I think it’s pretty obvious I fall along the left-libertarian/libertarian socialist perspective. I have a largely different view of a post-state society than most people here in that I believe communist, collectivist, market, and bartering economies will all be just as regular as their counterparts. I also think people will prefer consensus and majority democracy associations over business models. Personal matters, of course. Seeing Rothbard, Benjamin Tucker, and Karl Marx as good sources of inspiration takes a toll in discussions on most forums.
I utilized the word “even” because large reserves of land are blocked from private development and acquisition.
And yes, I do consider myself an environmentalist.
What unimproved land? You initially said “if an anarcho-communist saw a landlord laying claim to unimproved land, or the only fertile region in a large desert …”; I didn’t mention to “unimproved land”, just the “fertile region in a desert” (which is assumed to not be “unimproved land” by the meaning of “or” ;else it’s subsumed by the first and why mention it separately? If you know what the Austro-libertarian position on land ownership is, there’s no argument; and if you don’t, you really should look that up before trying to argue about it!)
Right-o. In stark conditions where acquiring the natural world would put your immediate neighbors into a grave disadvantage people will convene to prevent economic coercion. This would be true in almost any scenario. I’m sure D. Friedman would agree, although he may find the act revolting, whereas I uphold the libertarian socialist maxim that the best possible scenario is the one that minimalizes economic, political, social, and religious coercion. In the desert example choice is severely limited to the point it produces a condition where death or virtual slavery exist as the strongest possibilities. The town need not even be isolated. If a large enough population has such a pressing issue, there’s going to be social upheaval. The defense agency will either have to arbitrate or cut into their profit margin by expending ammunition.
To assume nothing like that would happen is pure mental masturbation.
I’m well aware of the Austrian response. Like anything else I don’t put all my reason into one basket. The Austrian school is very strong in its beliefs, but not perfect. Nor should it be substituted for perfection.
So you want to minimize coercion, but you support coercion against the guy who owns the oasis because…??
And what do you mean by “economic, social and religious coercion”? If they hold a gun to your head, that’s political coercion; if they don’t, it isn’t coercion at all.
Well, the choice is not to move into a desert if you can’t survive there!