Anarchy and Communism, Two Sides of the Same Detrimental Coin

Economics Political Theory
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In my research of the formulation of Marxist Communism and the USSR, I noticed how similar the results are to anarchy. Communism, or the abolishment of private property, is something that is meant to help the community out, in essence. It is all so that people have enough, or so Marx and Engels would lead one to think.

But more importantly, communism paves the way to a disempowered people. With no property rights, the good will of humanity is the catalyst for benevolence, et cetera, and the people become disempowered. Thus the road to a police state or a gangland is paved. Either that, or the initial confiscation of private property from the Bougeoise, or middle class property holders, which is essentially socialism, is intended to redistribute property and manage the communistic movement, which the USSR teaches us cannot work; mainly due to a lack of capitalism, but more importantly due to greed.

Anarchy starts at a completely different end of the spectrum, but what is required? A complete lack of government, and the result is an apparent ignorance of human tendency, which I will refer to as human nature. Similar to the communists, who believe that if people have enough that desire for more will go out the window, many anarchists believe that without a government, people will find their natural groove and not steal, lie, cheat and have nothing but unlimited purchasing of property for their private use, et cetera.

But what of anarchy? Has human nature suddenly changed? Have the people in Egypt, who were rioting to tear apart the government and who are quite literally in a state of anarchy, not descended into a state of chaos? Have they not looked for a new leader, the essence of which is analogous to government, thus defeating the anarchist ideal? Have women not been raped and people not been robbed and murdered in this anarchical state?

I’m welcome to alternative interpretation. Any takers?

2

No, we think that security and law enforcement can be better provided by private agencies on the free market. A monopoly provides terrible products everywhere else, so why is the product of safety and security such an exception to the rule? Governments are terrible at providing it.

There will always be criminals. There’s no need to give them power, influence and legitimacy by allowing them to become politicians and soliders. Government is the greatest threat to safety and security that has ever existed.

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Hi James, thanks for your input. My only curiosity with the framework you propose, though, is the relativity of law. With security and law enforcement companies, which I agree sounds a hell of a lot better than what we have, is there still only one law they would uphold? Basically, would law be determined by city, county, state or nation? Would there be no federal, or national, law?

Also, let’s say I wanted to open up a law enforcement agency. How would one do so? And for corruption, how would one avoid it? Could a cop arrest a person for subjective things such as swerving in the lane, aggressive driving, etc? Also, how would the organization be funded? For instance, I understand if I call the cops for a burglar, I would essentially pay them like a business. But what if there’s a roadway crash, and the road gets set on fire. Who pays the fire department? Who pays the police?

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This is Utopianism and has nothing to do with anarchism.

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Look up David Friedman’s “Machinery of Freedom”. I believe it is available online for free at his website.

Get a big stick and make up some business cards.

Transparency.

On a privately owned road, what authority would a cop have?

By providing a service which people demand and have the means to pay for.

The insurance agencies for the drivers, or the roadway. Could be anyone. Whoever really wants police and fire will pay for it.

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What is going on in Egypt is not “Anarchy” it is the replacement of authoritarian government and the means of monopoly theft by other folks doing the same things. Anarchy is the absence of an institution with a monopoly on the use of violent force and not what you define it which is the temporary loss of a government because the current government vacated leaving several groups fighting to reclaim the government.

I really do not believe, although I would like to see it in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Lybia or anywhere else, that a group of people who live under tyranny would suddenly evolve the attitudes and respect for private property that it would take to live in a society without an institution with a monopoly on the use of force and coersion.

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The reason why this kind of confusion often happens is because there is a fundamental difference between anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism. I use the term ‘voluntaryism’ to depict anarcho-capitalism since it escpaes a lot of confusion. Only anarcho-communists believe in abolishing property rights, some advocating syndicalism others advocating peaceful means; voluntaryists believe individuals would pay insurance for private protection agencies (PPA) to protect property rights that are assigned either according to contract theory or Lockean Homesteading Theory. Gustave de Molinari was the first writer to discuss how a system of PPAs would work.

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Brutus,

I would suggest you read “Society Without a State” by Murray Rothbard: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard133.html

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Great post. I agree with you that many anarchists end up getting into the “but what if human nature was just a little different than it is?” end of the spectrum or even outright denial of human nature.

I was briefly what you could call an “anarchist” but I have since eschewed anarchism as a “social goal” because it is inherently collectivist thinking. “Society oughtta be communal.” “Society oughtta be anarchic.” These statements have more in common than they have in distinction.

Nevertheless, the principle behind anarchism is a thorough-going rejection of governance in all its forms. I used to have in my sigline “To govern is to conquer” which is my own quote but based on AC reading. Government is status quo conquest, it is the equilibrium that emerges when a people is in a steady-state of subjugation. The initial act of subjugation is tumultuous and causes massive upheaval as the people to be subjugated resist the forces of subjugation. This is what we usually think of as “conquest”. But, usually after a couple generations (the Irish excluded), things settle down and people just “pay their taxes” rather than keep the fight up. Taxes are annuitized tribute. They are protection monies paid to keep “bad things” from happening. This is still “conquest” but we call it “government” because it doesn’t have the earmarks of armed resistance and chaos that we ordinarily associate with the word “conquest.” It’s just steady-state conquest.

The root problem is that people accept governance and explaining why people accept governance is an unsolved problem, IMO. Hoppe posits an alliance between a populist Prince and contract-breakers, bankrupts, rent-avoiders, and other sluggards who join forces to jilt creditors, property owners and other produceres out of their property. But I think this explanation is deficient since such a situation would be profitably defensible, that is, property owners could simply hire companies to protect them against contract-breakages and so on, leaving the Prince unable to deliver on his promises to the public. I suspect the problem runs a little deeper as I explain here.

I think your final paragraph confuses anarchy with breakdown of the social order.

Clayton -

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Oddly enough, a poll found that a majority in Egypt found the collapse of the Soviet Union “mainly a bad thing”.

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Clayton-

Speaking of the Irish, do you know of any good sources about the history of the Irish rebellion and Irish history in general?

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@Phaedros: No, I don’t, I’m speaking more from generic knowledge of the long-running resistance of the Irish to British domination.

Clayton -

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This was an interesting piece. I really liked and agreed with a lot of it, but Rothbard seems to have difficulty constructing the schema for anarchy due to, as he said, the unforeseen future and the natural complexity of such a movement of unrestriction, let’s say. Almost like predicting the ripples in a pebble thrown into a lake.

However, I view his weakness to be in the area of law enforcement. He mentions different ways people can be punished for wrong doing, one of which is both parties giving consent to an unbiased, third party prior to any trial. Another is by excommunicating the criminal or disallowing the criminal to participate in the capitalism, which is fueled by voluntaryism, as someone else pointed out.

This causes a bunch of problems. It’s too layered with variability. How is a degree of crime to be determined? By whom? What are the parameters of a region or a society, naturally being different from a state? What of wrong doing or law enforcement corruption? What will be the punishment for a crime of murder, for instance, if the family wants to engage in justice on its own? Will it be restricted from doing so by some form of governing body even though it is not monopolized?

I would say the easiest way to ensure freedom, which is the point of all this philosophical discourse anyway, is to eliminate taxation and federal salaries and funding, and to severely limit state, county and city salaries. Working for the government should be something almost voluntary and, of course, temporary.

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Somali Xeer is an interesting topic. Van Notten has written on them.

I think at the core of libertarian legal theory is the theme of individualism which is favoured over utilitarianism: http://mises.org/daily/4468.

If you steal from me, then I will be seeking reparations (and retribution for a violent offence) from you. We are not concerned here with the concept of ‘society’; it is only my (me, as the victim of a crime) rights I am concerned with. I have a claim to your assets. But, unlike what a lot of people seem to think, this doesn’t have to be left down to brute force; an old lady does not need to break into her mugger’s house to seize back her purse. You may employ a private protection agency (by insurance) to do so for you, provided you have evidence of the original crime committed against you. And if you are poor and uninsured, you have money if you have a claim on your perpetrator’s assets because these can be shared with your insurance scheme to cover the costs. And what happens to a private protection agency that starts using force illegitimately against their clients or acts in a poor, uninformed, unbusinesslike manner? They lose clients and other private protection agencies (PPAs) will declare that particular PPA illegitimate/unlawful. But under today’s state, if you do not like the police, then you must continue to pay for their services regardless.

I also imagine that shops and local businesses would employ private security to do patrols on the street; the reason they would do this is to make the consumer feel safer. If the consumer does not feel safe in an area they will not stick around to shop there which will mean that local business will suffer. The state does not allow businesses to do this in the modern day. This is one of the many reasons why we have ‘ghettos’ and rough neighbourhoods; just imagine if people could employ private security to patrol their neighbourhood and help them feel safe rather than having to rely on the police. I believe that estate agents would also hire security to protect the property of their clients; this way they promote themselves as a reliable and trustworthy business that will protect their clients. For this reason, they will attract more consumers to purchase their property.

Security is a business just like any other business. The modern day state has a monopoly on ‘security’ (i.e. police) purely to protect itself from citizens and to violate private property rights, not defend them. And since security is a business just like any other, it functions poorly so long as it is part of a useless government bureacratic scheme.

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Conflict resolution is always a subjective processes unless you’re looking for some sort of Code of Hammurabi. All law of the sort you’re discussing is man made, not divinely received.