Libertarian Socialism?

Economics Economics Questions
81

But there are many types of labour that would not exist if it was not for the larger organisation. To restrict people from working for someone else would be to restrict the division of labour and reduce the possibilities available to everyone. My job would not exist in your socialist society.

What happens if 30 people work to build a house that I want to live in? Do I only posses the house, while the 30 people who built it actually own it. Now that is just idiotic and not pragmatic. That would create so many conflicts and just makes no sense.

You still have not commented on why anarchism is not compatible with socialism. What happens to all those people that don’t want to participate in your view of property ownership and labour? It would be impossible to avoid a form of hierarchy in your socialists society. How could you possibly force people that do not want to comply without coercion and thus a form of hierarchy.

82

Why cantt construction workers own capital/stocks etc(Ive worked in a factory while owning stocks, how is that possible)?

But the owner of the means of production(building/machines etc) has contributed by producing the means of production that the workers operate/use.

But Im not refering to commodities/land etc, but the fruits of the owner of the means of productions labor, i.e. why shouldnt the owner of the means of production get the full product(i.e. what he contributes by letting other people make use of the building/machines etc that the owner produced/mixed his labor with) of his labor? AnCaps/minarchists etc are not proponents of the illegtimate means/statism you`re refering to?

83

We have taxation of income, which is not flat, i.e. it varies, and there are various deductions etc which also changes the tax burden for different people/sectors etc. I.e. everyone are not taxed the same, i.e. everyone doesn`t pay a fixed amount for the “services” government forces upon them.

Is the tax rate the same, can the hiree sell is labor through a LLC/a company?

It`s an artficially low price of buying power/money due to a fiat-monetary system/central banking/inflation of the currency.

The owner gets to borrow cheaply, using the tractor as collateral, and the principle on the loan is made relatively smaller by the inflation.

Limited liability companies.

84

“Oh wait” is right - you just had your fantasy destroyed. No capitalist = no factories = no jobs = no workers.

A starving population of people scrabbling around for roots and berries and maybe the odd artist hoping someone will trade him their thatched hut for a marble bust he carved. Ha ha ha ha.

85

Thanks for your answers Johhny;

We have taxation of income, which is not flat, i.e. it varies, and there are various deductions etc which also changes the tax burden for different people/sectors etc. I.e. everyone are not taxed the same, i.e. everyone doesn`t pay a fixed amount for the “services” government forces upon them.

I see nothing to disagree with here.

Is the tax rate the same, can the hiree sell is labor through a LLC/a company?

I suppose their tax rate would be the same if they had the same level of income. I don’t see any reason why the hiree couldn’t sell his labor through an LLC. (Unless there’s some legal barrier to this that I’m not aware of.)

It`s an artficially low price of buying power/money due to a fiat-monetary system/central banking/inflation of the currency.

When I think of cheap credit, I’m sort of imagining an interest rate that people ‘find’ to be cheap, but which doesn’t necessarily have to be artificially low. Although I suppose in our present situation the rate is rather disconnected from reality. (Apart from the reality of it being more or less set by a central bank.)

The owner gets to borrow cheaply, using the tractor ascollateral, and the principle on the loan is made relatively smaller by the inflation.

I don’t see how this doesn’t apply to anyone who doesn’t own a tractor as well, by using their future labor as collateral.

86

The tractor exists, the future labor might not happen, i.e. the person who promises future labor can receive the loan, spend it, and never work again.

87

(not even gonna attempt to figure out the right tags to post a video or this crappy abandonware text editor will probably explode)

The old duckspeaker dude in the video says “Socialism never existed and it was just ‘state capitalism’.”

Whenever somebody says this I simultaneously laugh at its absurdity and then feel utterly hopeless. One, not because I don’t believe the term is valid, but because I have no idea what the hell they mean when they say it, and two, because of how it’s such a perfect example of doublethink.

People saw socialism right in front of their eyes but denied what the results were, defining it out of existence as ‘capitalism’.

But couldn’t the same be said when a libertarian describes something as ‘crony capitalism’ or ‘corporatism’ and that the free market never really existed?

State Capitalism as I understand it is essentially equivalent to what is described here as ‘crony capitalism’ or ‘corporatism’. So does that mean that Stalin was a capitalist? Any time a government invests or owns capital and engineers things, that is capitalism?

Socialism never existed? Ever? It was all the work of capitalists?

“State Capitalism”. The Government is the Free Market.

88

Hilarious! I feel your frustration. :smiley:

Quasi-free markets may have existed within various microcosms, but prices are always heavily distorted from the governmental fees and regulations. And, like “pregnant”, “free” is one of those things you either are or you’re not, so I’m not inclined to concede that we’ve ever really had a free market.

89

The tractor exists, the future labor might not happen, i.e. the person who promises future labor can receive the loan, spend it, and never work again.

Then it seems non-capitalists have a greater advantage from inflation/cheap credit than capitalists.

90

The slave sold himhelf. He is still entitled to himself, because selling oneself is illegitimate. Renting oneself likewise.

You remove a recourse from the state of nature and it’s yours. You can own stone, ore, wood, and similar, but by exerting some sort of possession over them, by mixing labor with them. If having a paper that says you own an area is all connection that you have with that area, in socialism you could use that paper only to wipe your a**. Recourses on that area could be yours only if you labored to get them.

Who else worked to build it?

All those things would be done by workers who belong to the a building coop.

What is that job?

A building coop would build a house and sell it to you.

What? Anarachism is socialism. There cannot be non-socialist anarchism.

What about fraudsters in a stateless capitalist society? They would be banned by laws. Likewise in socialism capitalism would be banned by law as a type of fraud.

Why?

Prohibiting establishment of hierarchies is not hierarchical, it is by definition the opposite.

In socialism construction workers (with other workers in the firm) as a collective will be the owners and controllers of their construction company.

He has not contributed by labor.

He should. He contributed by his machine, and he is entitled to be recompensated for the machine. If I give you a machine so you can produce something, I’m entitled only to a recompensation for the machine, I cannot be legitemately entitled to recieve a cut of your earnings because “the machine is mine”, that would be me denying you the right to the full produc of your labor, that is- violating your right to property, which is theft. Likewise if I give you money, and you produce stuff, I’m entitled only to get my money back, the only way I would be entitled to continously get a part of your earnigns would be if would to continously do a part of labor toghether with you.

The other way around. No workers = capitalists starve to death unless some of them become workers.

No capitalist = workers are free to be the masters of their own productive life. Like it happened in Revolutionary Spain.

Totally true.

State having property over land, factories, firms.

USSR was dismissed as state capitalist by all anarhists and orthodox marxist groups as state capitalism as soon as bolsheviks abolished worker coucils and established state control. All mutualists, anarcho-collectivists, and anarcho-communist (and their sub-type anarcho-syndicalists), with the marxists groups souch as council communist, de leonists, world socialists, decists, workers’ opposition, workers’ truth, even the esers, dismissed the bolsheviks as state capitalists.

Bakunin said that state controling the economy to bring about socialism is nothing then state capitalism, and he said that many years before Bolshevik even existed.

Yes. A state capitalist. Someone posted here a video of Chomsky where he says something like “we never had capitalism” talking about pure market capitalism. Of cource socialists know the difference between the stateless capitalism (what you here are advocating), state capitalism (USSR and similar countries) and mixed capitalism (the system prevalent today), and I think almost all us are will admit that state capitalism is the worst of the three, but we still reject all of them, because we think that only non-hierarchical (economic) systems are justified, and that excludes all forms of slavery, feudalism and capitalism.

It existed in Free Territory, Revolutionary Catalonia and Andalusia, and exists in Zapatista Chiapas. The Free Territory was destroyed by Bolsheviks, Revolutionary Spain by both USSR troops and Franco’s fascists, and the Zapatista Chiapas is totally cut off from the world by the Mexican state that surrounds it (armed conflicts stopped about 10 years ago, Mexico now just tries to keep them totally locked down).

91

The slave sold himhelf. He is still entitled to himself, because selling oneself is illegitimate. Renting oneself likewise.

But the laborer didn’t sell himself. He sold his labor.

Who else worked to build it?

Everyone from the mixer of the cement to the electrician and the interior decorator.

All those things would be done by workers who belong to the a building coop.

So what? They would still only own individual pieces of the finished product.

92

[sorry for double spacing, text editor sucks]

What about a means of exchange? Is that allowed in socialism or is that capitalists and would also be banned?

So this building coop would build my house and all the individuals that make up the coop will be reimbursed exactly how for their labour? How will the logistics of their payment to these individuals work exactly? What about a waiter who works at a restaurant, he does not own the restaurant. Would you then say that all restaurants would have to be owned by the waiters and the cleaners and so on? The waiters and cleaners might have no idea how to run a restaurant and everything that entails, they are specialist waiters and specialist cleaners, they don’t know how to run a restaurant. This is what the division of labour does and without the employee and employer relationship this all breaks down. This is why past communist societies are always terribly under advanced and have a terribly low standard of living.

I work for an IT managed services company that has various clients in various industries. For example law firms, I do not work directly for the law firm. The law firm pays the company I work for an annual payment for the services, as a part of that services they get loads of benefits that they would not be able to get if i worked directly for the law firm. If the IT company had to be coop by fear of being banned as a result of socialists fraud laws that service would not be viable. An IT coop would also not be viable because businesses need hierarchical structures in order to efficiently run the business. The IT company needs the different layers of technical experience and different layers of managerial experience. An IT coop could not exist because the service of the IT is far too complicated to exists with only one tier of operational procedure.

Anarchism and socialism is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron.

Fraudsters would not be banned by law. They would be forced to pay compensation to their victims by commercial arbitration and would have their reputation negatively affected, but they would not be “banned by law”. Ok so lets talk about the logistics of this mechanism. How would the socialist society enforce the ban and which organisations would create the laws that would be enforced by this organisation. What would stop people from ignoring the bans and who would prevent this enforcement agency from turning in to another state? Would these organisations have any competition? if they did not have any competition then would they not be especially at risk of becoming another state?

You don’t seem to get it. To force people to do anything you have to use coercion. This means that some people will be coerced in your socialist society. You can not have coercion of that sort without a form of hierarchy. You can not ban hierarchy because that is a contradiction. As banning hierarchy would require hierarchy and thus it is not possible. There is no magic wand to ban hierarchy, that would require a standing army or a mass brainwashing machine.

But this is just your definition of anarchism that I am using against you. I do not even think that anarchism is defined as a ban of hierarchy, anachism means no rulers, not no hierarchy. Specifically referring to a political ruling class, a monarchy, a state and so on. Would your ban on hierarchy include petty hierarchy, say in your kids scout club or your local kids football team?

Well surely the producer did not just magically make machines appear. Usually the producer will have to labour in his own life to either build up capital in the form of money to purchase the machines. Other times he has had to build up his capital in the form of knowledge in order to seek out capital investors and convince them that he is capable of making money for them. Some machines cost more money than an operator of the machine could ever earn in his life time. This is not to say that operator is under paid, just that the machines cost are high. Some machines also require multiple individuals in order to operate them safely and effectively. It is just not possible for the owner of that type of machine to operate and run the machines himself and thus needs to employ people to operate the machines. IF the producer was forced by your socialists system (by magic) to go in to a coop with the operators then it may not be viable for the producer to even own the machines. This is what occurred in other communism systems in the past and this is why they were never technologically advanced.

In a capitalists system individuals are free to become producers, employees, investors, owners, renters whatever they want. There is nothing stopping individuals in a capitalists system from creating their own coop, from starting their own business, from becoming a producer. But in your socialists system opportunity is restricted to one type of business model. Surely by restricting opportunity to one type of model that will increase unemployment. Not all businesses will be viable under one type of business model.

No that was real communism and a result of marxist influenced individuals that got in to power and enacted marxist based policies. That did not resemble capitalism so therefore it was not capitalism. So where would italian fascism fit in to your wonderful set of definitions?

Marxists realy are another breed. I bet you would have no problem with murdering people because they advocate capitalism.

93

Still waiting on your definition of “hierarchy”, stsoc.

94

Being a collective means they own the product of their collective work as a collective.

Please read what I write and do not ask redundant questions. I have said multiple times that IMO the bulk of economic activity in socialism will be conducted or mututalistic principles. That means a free market in currency, but I guess it would mostly be mutual credit. (interest would be banned)

So this building coop would build my house and all the individuals that make up the coop will be reimbursed exactly how for their labour?

When they sell you the house, they will share that money as they democratically agree to, as does any workers’ cooperative that exists today.

I work for an IT managed services company that has various clients in various industries.

Your company fill be a coop that provides services to customers. When you do that services and recieve recompensation you agreed for, you workers in that firm will share the earnings the way you have all agreed on.

Anarchism and socialism is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron.

It’s a pleonasm.

Why is anarchism also called libertarian socialism:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secA1.html#seca13

Isn’t libertarian socialism an oxymoron:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secI1.html

How would the socialist society enforce the ban

By the same mechanism law enforcment agencies would enforce it’s law in a stateless capitalism system- threat of force.

which organisations would create the laws that would be enforced by this organisation.

Plebiscite.

What would stop people from ignoring the bans

Law enforcment agency and most people around them.

who would prevent this enforcement agency from turning in to another state?

Armed populace who by majority support socialism.

Would these organisations have any competition?

Law enforcment would be a branch of industry that would be controlled by the community.

To force people to do anything you have to use coercion.

How about forcing people not to murder? Or to steal? Or to commit fraud? Making profits (in the classical economics sense) would be banned as a type of fraud, and someone trying to be a capitalist would be regarded as being a swindler.

This means that some people will be coerced in your socialist society.

Just like most people today are “coerced” into a liberal (no-slavery and no-serfhood) society. Damn, what a loss for a free society- people are not free to be or own serfs or slaves.

You can have coercion of that sort without a form of hierarchy. You can not ban hierarchy because that is a contradiction. As banning hierarchy would require hierarchy and thus it is not possible.

First you say you don’t need hierarchy for banning something (“coercion”) [which is true, it just takes organization, and organization can be non-hierarchical], and they you say you bann something without a hierarchy. Talk about contradictions

There is no magic wand to ban hierarchy, that would require a standing army or a mass brainwashing machine.

An army can be non-hierarchical, such armies have established socialism twice in Europe. They are voluntary and organized as a direct democracy where the officers are elected by the soldiers as representatives (without delegation of authority). Zapatista Army of National Liberation is such an army that exists today, and it defends socialist territories of Chiapas from the surrounding Mexican state, and also enforces the law in those territories (laws are determined on plebiscites).

anachism means no rulers, not no hierarchy.

Anarchism means no rulers of any kind, and that includes no state, no slavery, feudalism or capitalism, no patriarchy, no racism or nationalism etc etc, no subordination of other people.

Well surely the producer did not just magically make machines appear.

Neither did the capitalist. And surely it wasn’t the capitalist that build them, but workers.

Usually the producer will have to labour in his own life to either build up capital in the form of money to purchase the machines.

Or can be just born with property over means of production (like land, mines, factories, a bunch of money, etc).

This is what occurred in other communism systems in the past and this is why they were never technologically advanced.

During socialism in Spain, in Catalonia, many new trams were build, also trucks and cars (mostly for military use, but nonetheless), also many agricultural machines to be sent to rural areas. It was a modern, industrial society, fully functioning and successful by organizing itself as a mix of anarcho-syndicalism (which is type of anarcho-communism, meaning most stuff were free for people who contribute to production) and of anarcho-collectivism, meaning some stuff (of which there were not enough to be available for free) were bought from the community by labor vauchers (which were earned by duration and difficulty of labor done, and on the number of family members not capable for work); and that sort of a economy, even though it warred againt Franco’s fasctists and USSR supported troops, and even thought it didn’t have any economic help from outside (the western countries financied Franco), experienced a boom and a rise of productivity in every branch.

In a capitalists system individuals are free to become producers, employees, investors, owners, renters whatever they want.

Serfs, slaves. You are advocating a society that would tolerate slavery and serfhood, I don’t see can there by any justification for calling yourself an anarchist or a libertarian; slavetarian would be more fitting than those. Voluntaryism is somewhat suitable, under the definition of “no direct coersion”.

Surely by restricting opportunity to one type of model that will increase unemployment.

Under socialism people will organize into coops, bakuninist collectives or kropotkian communes (and of course communes in the modern sense of the word, but those are small scale units). Land will be possessed only by it’s “occupancy-and-use”, so there would plenty of land for everyone unemployed to go and use, or they could could be a self-employed artisan, if they wouldn’t want to join some coop, collective or commune. That’s anogh options, there’s is not need to add options of buying slaves or other subordinates to carry out your orders and make you money.

No that was real communism

Why is “state socialism” just state capitalism:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secH3.html#sech313

hat did not resemble capitalism so therefore it was not capitalism.

Capitalism is defined by the notion of private property. In USSR and similar states, state held private property over land, factories and firms. Therefore- state capitalism.

I bet you would have no problem with murdering people because they advocate capitalism.

Wow, what an amount of bigotry, I suspected you were brainwashed, but not this much. Even socialist that do not, like me, accept a form fo deontological ethics, but are utilitarians, would not suggest a thing like that. Murder (aggressive killing) is never justified.

95

It’s no use, he is Borg. Guinan can tell you all about them…

96

I’d be more of a Syrranite Vulcan. Autolykos would be something of a Cairnite, who don’t use words like everyone else does, so there’s difficulties in communication between them and other races.

97

…says the guy who thinks “anarchism” and “socialism” are synonymous…

98

I thought you were advocating stateless socialism. Who is doing the banning and enforcing in your scenario?

What happens when someone decides they want to keep the money and not share with the cooperative?

For you, democracy is a god that makes everything right, and hierarchy the mortal enemy. But its useless, because democracy is also inherently aggressive (in the sense of using coercion unethically).

But who made the ban, and how are other such laws made?

Ah, so democracy once again. Fail. Democracies force laws on minorities, and are thus unethically coercive. They are dictatorships by majorities.

Here’s the problem with that. In murder and theft and fraud you have a victim. Someone who direly doesn’t want the other to take advantage of them. In capitalism, or employment, you have no victim at all.

You should really think deeply about that. Personally, I support the right of someone to freely engage in a transaction that they think would be good for them but that I think would be negative for them, as long as there’s no outright fraud or deception going on, which always means not giving what was promised in the transaction.

In employment there is no fraud and there is no victim. By banning it, you’d be banning two people from associating who, if you were not there to ban it, would continue to associate, perhaps happily, for years on end.

The problem is you don’t have clarity on ethical matters and think employment is somehow wrong. But, stick around here long enough, and read enough material outside the socialist echo-chamber, and maybe you’ll find the sticking point in your thinking. Just know that it’s dangerous to your current world-view to stay here. There are contradictions in your way of thinking and they will be rooted out inevitably. There’s never been a more consistent ideology than libertarianism.

Suppose some people wanted to step outside your system and begin employing others, and both employee and employer do so willingly, will you still stop them or will you leave them alone?

I suggest you read Ethics of Liberty by Rothbard.

But coercion without a victim is wrong. You’re in favor of a police-state that can do whatever it wants if you base your theory of justice on the idea that the police can bring charges when there is no victim.

Listen, it’s not hierarchy that is wrong, it’s compulsory hierarchy. It is not cooperation that libertarians are against, it is compulsory cooperation.

Wrong, you’ve conflated social justice with societal justice. Anarchism means people are free to voluntarily associate and build whatever associative structures seem best to them. That -would- allow for hierarchy, it would also allow for racism–though the anarchist believes racism is its own punishment and that the market would tend to weed out such mindsets, and thus there is no need for coercion to weed them out directly. Furthermore, as a corollary of individual ownership, one has the right to free speech and freedom of association. Without law, without society-derived moral concepts, neither patriarchy, nor racism, nor nationalism can be legally instituted. It’s the legal institution of these things that is wrong.

You sure about that? There’s never been a capitalist in history that built anything with his hands first, prototyped the first device? How did the capitalist get his money to invest? Out of thin air? Or did he have to work for that?

And where did his ancestors get the money to give him? And if it’s their money, why should you have any say in what they do with it or who they give it to?

Please define slavery for us. I don’t think you know what it is.

If you can quit your job, you’re not a slave. Don’t mistake the derisive metaphor of calling a job ‘slavery’ for actual slavery. Such would be grossly irresponsible thinking and a complete insult to actual slaves who could not quit their jobs and received no pay for their work.

When the state owns everything, it’s either pure communism or fascism. Not state capitalism :\ When the state owns something, it’s no longer “private” property, but public.

99

Socialism means economic anarchy, that is- non-hierarchical economy.

He is free not to join a coop. Belonging to a coop means contributin to collective labor, of which the product is collective.

Democratic organisation / absence of hierarchy is an a priori norm of discource (or as you call it here- argumentation).

Scope of democracy is limited by ethics, which is objective. Democratically deciding that murdering someone is ok is as legitimate as democratically deciding that 2+2=5.

Democracies that I’m for are “dictatorship by majority” in the same way a society of non-murderers is dictatorial towards murderers.

Employee is denied the full product of his labor.

Fraud falls under that.

Why not? There’s no coercion in lying, is there?

The capitalist decieves the laborer that he is entitled to a part of the product of his labor, but he isn’t, everyone is entitled to the full product of his own labor.

I’d like to see that claim demonstrated and soundly argumented. I’ve was as a younger a social-democrat, but turned socialist by various dialectics (you call them debates) with lots of people.

If there were to physically “step oustide the system” where socialism has been established, socialist from that system have nothing to do going there. Maybe only to agitate for a revolution.

I’ve read it, and was not convinced. I will maybe write a response once, but I’ve only started (to participate in) writing, I have to first finish that. I found Hoppe much more inspirational, with his merger of the action axiom with the discourse ethics; I totally disagree with his counclusions, but the framework is great.

I disagree.

Which is what is the meaning of anarchism that has been used by the Enrages, Proudhon, Dejackue, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Warren, Tucker, Spooner, and every anarchist to the 70s, when some capitalists in USA started to call themselves that, even thought anarchism came into being as a movement against capitalism.

Concquest, wars, state connections.

A person holding another person as property. In stateless capitalism, voluntaryism, slavery that is not coerced is “ok”.

Communism is community owning property, not the state. Fascism is a type of mix between state and market (laissez faire) capitalism.

It is the same notion of property that socialism (in it’s forms of mutualism, collectivism or communism) wants to abolish.

100

Could you please tell me what “everyone else’s” definition of “hierarchy” is?