It's Official: Anarcho-capitalism must be abandoned

Economics Political Theory
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Today at the G-20 our beloved president of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stated that the world is living “a kind of anarcho-capitalism, in which no one controls anyone.” She further stated that we need to “return to serious capitalism.”

This could be the first of the elite’s puppets to begin the semantic war on anarcho-capitalism. If anarcho-capitalism can be linked to “normal” capitalism (as the term is currently erroneously used) then the term will become useless. The word anarchy has long been used by the elite to describe chaos, and now it seems they want to equate it with the current world financial and economic calamity.

When I discuss these things with my friends here in Argentina I use the phrase “private law society.” Anarcho-capitalism just sends people running. But they are very receptive to private law society, probably because it has the word “law” in it.

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I don’t like the term ‘anarcho-capitalism’ even tho I use it b/c anarchy implies leftist socialism and leftist violence. We should start calling ourselves voluntaryists instead.

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It is not only the Elites who use it this way. While the word etymologically derives from “no government”, it is used to describe any sort of social chaos occurring in a power vacuum (collapse of the market in the production of security).

I think that private law society is in every way a better label both because it is more accurate and because it means about what it sounds like it means. The person hearing the term “anarcho-capitalism” for the first time has in mind a very different concept than what anti-state, free-market theory actually is. Furthermore, the term “anarcho-capitalism” sounds - to the uninitiated - to be primarily concerned with money and economics which, while important, is far from the root issue in society. Law, on the other hand, is much closer to the root problems in society.

There is, I believe, an even deeper problem and that is the moral problem. In order to get from here (statist society) to there (private-law society), there will have to be a reformation in ideas about morality. In the long run, I believe this reformation is inevitable. It will happen, sooner or later. However, later could be very, very much later and there’s no reason that sooner couldn’t start right now. One of the catalysts for this reformation is the academic study of praxeology and its popularization. Another catalyst is simply right living, that is, setting the example and showing the rest of the world how it’s done. This begins in the family, the church* and the community.

Clayton -

*Yes, the church is generally regarded as a relic today but I think religion gets a bad rap for what has been done to it by the State. Religion originated in purely voluntary action but has been subsumed by the State precisely because of its crucial role in influencing the moral character of society. The priesthood was the very first profession to be subjugated to State control and ultimately made an organic part of Leviathan. It continues to play its all-too-crucial role to this day, all pretenses of “separation of church and state” aside.

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Great post, Clayton. Concerning the church I believe it’s just another institution of the State. Private beliefs and religious practices are great. I think the institution of the church as we know it today would cease to exist in a private law society and religion would return to being a healthy practice for those that believe in it, unlike today where the altar is sometimes used for sermons about typical modern fallacies and memes.

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you dont think it is healthy for a sermon to address modern fallacies and memes?

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What I meant is that many times the theme of a sermon is anti-libertarian. Don’t forget that today’s priests grow up in the same culture as everyone else, which means they are spoon-fed Statism for years in school and on TV, just like us. And I think we all know that the Vatican, for example, chases some goals that would hardly be termed holy. I have heard through sermons justifications for taxes, war, occupation of foreign countries and sacrificing oneself for their neighbor. Unfortunately, and despite the good intentions of the pastor, these ideas are not compatible with freedom.

BTW, I did not mean to start a religious flame war, so if I offended anyone I apologize now!

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Definitely. It is primarily an agent of inculcation of values and ideas that are useful to the State to have infused into the masses. People do not understand that “secularism” is no protection because the political use of religion is not nor has it ever been about literal belief in spirit beings or the afterlife, at least, not in the clergy. Religion as a tool of the State is about inculcating fear and euphoria; metaphorically speaking: heaven and hell.

But heaven and hell are not truths in themselves and are not meant to be. They are metaphorical veils over the very real heaven and hell that exist right here in this world. Obey, conform, contribute, don’t make trouble, and teach others to do the same, and you will be liberally showered with benefits. Disobey, rebel, withdraw, make waves and teach others to do the same and you will be cast into outer darkness to be tormented by demons.

Two hundred years ago, hell was being locked in a dungeon where you would be racked, raped and have your eyes put out with red hot pokers by the sociopathic dungeon-keeps employed by the Prince precisely for their unlimited appetite for brutality. Today, things are little different. If you are imprisoned and you are not a professional criminal or already belong to a dangerous gang with a presence in prison, you will be subjected to every brutality known to man - not by the guards, mind you, but by the other inmates. These sociopaths are the dungeon-keeps.

If you obey, conform, pay your taxes, teach others to do likewise and do not happen across an agent of the State under unfortunate circumstances, you will be rewarded with a mid-level job, a picket-fence house and children who you will raise to repeat the cycle, even as you exhaust your life’s savings on their higher education, leaving you dependent on the State’s “retirement” system in your old age.

All the basic ideas of the “major” religions are allegorical restatements of the reality of State-controlled society. But the collection of these ideas into a cohesive whole did not happen overnight. They were cobbled together from many different religious ideas over thousands of years. When you investigate the origins of the “major” religions, such as Christianity, you find that the monolithic view presented by the surviving religious organizations is heavily revisionist. In the early centuries of Christianity, for example, there was an extremely wide variation of teachings, Christian schools of thought, and so on. While there is still variation today, there is dramatically less variation per capita. Conforming religious ideas held by large swathes of people spread across huge geographic areas simply did not exist. I think there is a circular cause-and-effect relationship with the State.

Clayton -

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Religion originated in purely voluntary action

With what little history I know, I think I might disagree with you there. The creation of religion happened at the same time as the first human settlements (neolithic revolution). Religion appears to be a way to control the masses. Surely there was spiritualism before this, but organized religion seems to be caused by the existence of first settlements.

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Even hunter-gatherers (e.g. Native American tribes) had relatively organized religion. So I think it goes deeper than the Neolithic.

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It is interesting. This woman is using term anarcho-capitalism to describe current state of affairs. In her mind it literary means lot’s of capitalist states living in state of anarchy against each other. Which, considering her statist worldview, makes perfect sense. This is another global governance plea.

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You are right. As usual for polititians, she has no idea what her words mean. I have translated the rest of the quotes from the link.

“It’s not too late to change the current situation, although to change it will be necessary to touch powerful interests, small but powerful.”

“I am telling you because of the experience Argentina went through in 2001.”

She insisted on a “necessary regulation of the financial markets.”

“We are living in an anarcho-capitalism in which today we invest in oil, tomorrow in something else, just for speculation.”

“There cannot be food security without jobs, which is what gives people the possibility to buy food.”

“Capitalism means that people consume, [we need to] return to serious capitalsm [instead of] this kind of anarcho-capitalism in which no one controls anyone.”

Typical NWO hogwash. But as far as I know it is the first time a president has used the term anarcho-capitalsm. It could be a coincidence. Maybe she or her advisors thought up the term by themselves without knowing about Austrian theory. Or maybe it’s a deliberate attack on libertarianism using the typical strategy of misusing the language to confuse people. Just look at what politicians and intellectuals have done to the word capitalism.

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  • “Capitalism means that people consume”

Oh boy I love that one. Yes, without Capitalism, nobody would consume anything and we’d live in harmony!

Personally, I don’t use the term Anarcho-Capitalism that much, I’ve tried to use “voluntarism” or “free market” more often to avoid the confusion and negative reactions it sparks in those not familar with the ideas. That said, I do hope that it doesn’t get another “mainstream redefinition”, as this would really confuse anyone looking at the literature. I’m no conspiracy theorist but this kind of stuff always reminds me of Newspeak and Doublethink from 1984. I mean, look at what happened to the term “Liberal”.

Then again the anarcho-leftists are always yelling at us for stealing “Libertarian” from them, so it cuts both ways. :stuck_out_tongue:

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About the whole religion thing, it depends how you are defining the term. Wheylous seems to be referring to “organized religion”, which did begin with sedentary living (skull cult of Jerhico, bull cult of Catal Hyuk, etc.) and agriculture, culminating in the full blown collusion between king and priests resulting in the ziggurats/communal granaries. As he said, tribal mysticism surely has much older origins (the cave paintings of shamans at Lascaux, the tassil n’ajjer “bee man”, etc.)

To Autolykos, I might question so broad a generalization of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. There is certainly a correlation between sedentary agriculture and the rise of organized, centralized religion. Certainly, the entire spectrum was once represented here (The simple animism of the Inuit, versus the elaborate monuments and ceremonies of the Aztec). I’m willing to venture that the more heavily organized the religion of any society (not sure what “native american tribes” you were referring to) is, the more dependent on agriculture, and the more sedentary, it is.

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About the whole religion thing, it depends how you are defining the term. Wheylous seems to be referring to “organized religion”, which did begin with sedentary living (skull cult of Jerhico, bull cult of Catal Hyuk, etc.) and agriculture, culminating in the full blown collusion between king and priests resulting in the ziggurats/communal granaries. As he said, tribal mysticism surely has much older origins (the cave paintings of shamans at Lascaux, the tassil n’ajjer “bee man”, etc.)

Yes, that’s what I was taught in Art History class.

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I see no qualitative distinction between the simple animism of the Inuit vs. the elaborate monuments and ceremonies of the Aztec. It’s simply a difference of degree. Both of the religions are/were organized to some extent. And where exactly was I generalizing?

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This is the first time market anarchy has been name-dropped by an international figure! We’re making progress

Seriously though, I have no clue what she is referring to. Let me get this straight: the governments control the currencies and the interest rates, yet somehow our financial system is in uncontrollable anarchy?

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That’s cognitive dissonance at work. The financial system is controlled by governments and banks, yet we are led to believe that lack of regulation causes the business cycle.

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Autolykos,

Yes, this is only a discussion as to what qualifies as “organized religion”. It is very similar to defining what a “state” is. Do we consider one clan shaman eating fly agaric to enter the spirit world to heal a sick person as “organized” as the Roman Catholic church? Probably not. But, do we both consider them “organized” to some degree? Perhaps. Is the clan chief in this scenario head of a “state” as much as Stalin was for the USSR? Again, probably not. I’m sure an argument could be made that it can be considered a “state” nontheless.

That’s where the generalization comes in. If anything remotely spiritual is “organized religion”, then the term loses enough intellectual resolution to become practically useless.

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OK, that’s my point. For whatever reason, people have held superstitious beliefs and engaged in mystical rituals and passed on wisdom and morality tales without any connection to an aggressive property-rights violator. The origins of religion are, in fact, completely voluntary. I think it’s a mistake to read the word “religion” as synonymous with “The Vatican” or “the 700 Club”.

Clayton -

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My own definition of “organized religion” is something like “a set of rituals (praxis) and beliefs (doxis) that are passed from one generation to another”. It certainly seems to me that that definition in no way excludes hunter-gatherer cultures. Does that make more sense? Obviously I’m not referring to anything and everything that’s remotely spiritual as “organized religion”.