It is not forced on you, if you want to try something different, try a different community. It does not include those who do not wish to participate.
Then what are we arguing about? If you don’t want to impose it,our systems are not mutually exclusive. I argue that your system doesn’t work, but that doesn’t concern me as long as you’re not trying to force me to be in it. Earlier you appeared to suggest that you want “the community” to impose it.
As for the last sentence.. no. There was a time, early in the revolution when the soviets (worker councils) were permitting local autonomy, and participatory democracy. But this was quickly wiped out. From the onset the USSR became nothing more than an imperialist enterprise. There are many reasons for this, but that’s a different discussion.
Exactly my point. Somebody takes power, it’s human nature.
How dare you disrespect my sheep! Why/how are they an exception?
What if I hired you to wash my car… the one I use for my sheep sales business? Becomes yours, or not?
This discussion is either a great spoof or, if serious, you must at least have had the thought that you may be completely mad.
Z.
[/quote]
If its your home, personal belongings (transportable goods - including your car) it doesn’t count as private property. If it can be used for a profit, i.e. land or capital then it is private (unless it is community owned in which case it is collectivised). Sheep were the exception here because that signifies a farm (hence land that can be derived for a profit). I also happen happen to think the idea of privatising the commons is quite mad.
The difference between us is you want to keep in tact the state structures protecting private property; we do not.
This was the fault of the Mensheviks who persuaded the workers against anarchist means and reeled them into the state bureacracy.
[quote=“EmperorNero”]
I don’t think I’ve mentioned a plurality anywhere; rather I’ve tried to explain the system in terms of participatory politics, rotating roles in the community and autonomosy for worker owned enterprises (syndicates). They might take it “to the vote” on some issues but certainly not every issue.
If it is central planning on a smaller and therefore more manageable scale, it is decentralised planning (lol). Capitalism still has planning systems in the hierarchical firm. You talk about “market signals” but there wouldn’t be market interaction as such under a gift economy; most signals for labour would be obtained by requests for given goods or services in the community (demand) topped off by the supply of given goods and services by producers operating. That way, delegates and other people working for the community know whether or not to adjust the value of given goods or services in comparison of the relative signals for said goods or services; . Again, syndicates would mostly be handling their own affairs so this saves some form of bureacratic planning board. If, for instance, they present business plans to participants taking an active role in the community they can decide on a supply of investment funds (in terms of labour vouchers) which they could coordinate the spending of themselves. If they crash its their problem. We could enhance the system either by having the producers submit their paperwork for the public eye or perhaps by sending inspectors around at random; this prevents them fixing accounts and so forth. I don’t deny there would be a calculation problem but when you think about it there is a calculation problem under any system.
I have to admit I haven’t read much into the theme of a privatised legal system but who do you think it would work for? Bodies with capital or bodies without capital? I have read somewhere that Rothbard advocated a “libertarian law code” that was not made by law courts but found “objectively” according to the reasonings and customs of society but this quite ironic and incosistent with the theme of individualism since it assumes that man is one consistent body and has an objectively found ethical code. In other words we have different customs and reasonings that are likely to clash. Its quite obvious where private judicial services would obtain their funding from so who do you think they are most likely to biased towards?
Also, I made a blog about the impact of property on environmentalism (and therefore potential externalities) along with a condensed summary at the beginning so you don’t need to read it all; http://syndicalistlibertarianism.blogspot.com/
You see, this is another ironic thing because Mises consistently argues that value is subjective and not objective in “Economic Calculation in The Socialist Commonwealth” but he simultaneously argues for a price mechanism objectively determined by market transactions. Marx made a distinction between a commodity’s use value or physical properties and useful labour embodied in the commodity on the one hand and its value or relative form when compared with other commodities through market transactions and its abstract labour embodied in the commodity on the other. We realise there is a subjective evaluation to be considered. We can calculate this as a quality, which I’ve explained before, the producer is not paid by the community bank unless is product is consumed (which must be purchased by labour vouchers, by the way). So, when syndicates spend their investment funds, they must consider this important scenario; whether somebody would be willing to to pay for it. So the expansion of projects would not be decided for in townhall meetings.
The only problem here is that I am only decribing my own particular brand of anarchism (collectivism). If you ask other people they will say different things. However, I think the best thing about anarchy is that it encourages initiative and spontaneity; passionate debate and discussion. People will consider the most libertarian forms of socialism (since the most libertarian forms will likely be the most efficient and the most morally ethical) and the best systems will catch fire, not just around the community but around the country. Social anarchism is all about the masses; it is an admiration of their spontaneious activity and rapid free flow of information that can be achieved when they are not suppressed by structural forms of hierarchy; God, the State or otherwise.
How do you know why I have my sheep and what I am doing with them? And how is it any of your (and who else’s,btw) business? What if I (or anyone else ) disagreed with your separation of my property into two or more classes?
No, I think it’s quite mad to be oblivious to the concepts of:
Not-Mine (or None-Of-My-Business) Property …be it private, personal, recreational, industrial, communal, co-op, corporate, etc.
Minding my own f-ing business.
What is the “commons” (The whole universe minus everyone else’s toothbrushes?) and why should you have any say in what does and doesn’t get done to it?
Right, without getting overly antagonistic, here, we don’t need to know what you do with your sheep; if you need to make transactions with the bank of the people then these transactions will be registered and then we will know. In the majority of farming cases, the land is managed by a small, friendly family unit. Under these circumstances, there need not be any issues over management. However, when it starts to become more of a business and we have issues of surplus value, any labourers you employ legitimately have the right to claim management on the provisio that property that is enhanced, produced, blah blah blah.
The commons in the context I was referring to was land that already exists that is not owned. Land and capital have long since existed before property rights and pieces of paper.
My only points are that the lib-right defend private property on the grounds of:
natural rights; but natural rights are universal.
occupancy; but the vast bulk of capital and land is not occupied by its own users.
labour; but the outcome of labour by non-propertied bodies is owned by the propertied.
Nice. I love it when non-antagonistic people start getting interested in what I do with my sheep. What if I exclusively made transactions with a bank (or entity) other than “the bank of the people”?
“Blah blah blah” exactly. What if no “surplus value” was actually created? What if I employed 100 laborers to paint 100 perfectly good red Ferrari’s neon pink and now no one wants them? Was anything “enhanced”? Was anything “produced”? Are my “laborers” also responsible for the losses that ensued? What if my “laborers” voluntarily agreed to just do whatever I told them in return for receiving a paycheck?
And related to all of the above (which you conveniently skipped), what’s your view on the concepts of:
Capital, too? IBM’s and Apple’s capital existed before the concept of private property emerged among humans? Do tell more.
I was referring to our exchanges here when I mentioned the word “antagonistic” - not whether members of society would be antagonistic.
I skipped those points because I had/have no clue what you mean. Also I explained the justification of communal property in terms of labour, occupancy and natural rights.
Capital simply “consists of raw materials, instruments of labour, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new instruments, and new means of subsistence” - Marx, Wage Labour And Capital. Modern industry (IBM and APPLE) is merely a modern form of capital.
(I will note that my quoting of Marx is a little facetious here because he goes on to explain that the above definition is that of “bourgeois economists” and that “social relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production” and that “Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour, and raw materials, not only as material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All products of which it consists are commodities. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of material products, it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes. Capital remains the same whether we put cotton in the place of wool, rice in the place of wheat, steamships in the place of railroads, provided only that the cotton, the rice, the steamships – the body of capital – have the same exchange value, the same price, as the wool, the wheat, the railroads, in which it was previously embodied. The bodily form of capital may transform itself continually, while capital does not suffer the least alteration.” In other words, the commodity as an exchange value is what makes it capital. However, I have to say that I agree with the “bourgeois economists” on this one; I would term Marx’s definition as private capital. However even by this definition, yes capital in its general form still existed before property rights and pieces of paper.)
Z1235:
What if I exclusively made transactions with a bank (or entity) other than “the bank of the people”?
Sorry I sort of effed up the quote above and forgot to address this point (argh, I hate the quote system on this forum!). Right, this is the question of whether capitalist activity would arise since you are essentially asking about making transactions with a non-socialistic banking system (I hate using the term “bank” by the way). You’d be able to if you wanted but consider that since private property is not protected by a statist structure a non-socialistic bank is (and producers therefore have a legal claim to property), technically speaking impossible. Also it would take a huge level of capitalist activity to overthrow the socialist model; just like it will take a huge level of socialist activity in the present day society to overthrow the capitalist model. The question is whether people will want to change the system and this depends on living standards and so forth.
Z1235**:**
“Blah blah blah” exactly. What if no “surplus value” was actually created? What if I employed 100 laborers to paint 100 perfectly good red Ferrari’s neon pink and now no one wants them? Was anything “enhanced”? Was anything “produced”? Are my “laborers” also responsible for the losses that ensued? What if my “laborers” voluntarily agreed to just do whatever I told them in return for receiving a paycheck?
You are still attempting to make some sort of profit out of your land which you are trying to make into a business. However it would be likely that you wouldn’t be producing 100 cars in the first place since the bank funds the syndicate (investment funds in labour vouchers) according to supply and demand for given goods and services. You’d probably have to present them with a decent business plan; you and the other labourers that you work with would have to show in some way that you’d put in the research for the relevant trends in consumer transactions as well as other variables. As for responsibility, it depends how you mean “responsibility”. If no one wants your goods you aren’t paid by the community bank and you and everyone else who invested their time and energy loses out. I must emphasise here that labour vouchers are not currency given their non-circulatory nature.
You don’t think anyone would get antagonistic toward people oblivious to the concepts #1 and #2? Here they are again for convenience:
Not-My Property
None-Of-My Business
In other words, oblivious.
Listen, can we agree to disagree? Can’t you implement whatever scheme you fancy on your property or on the co-op, communal, or whatever co-mingled property of like minds, and leave everyone else alone? Would you agree to leave me and all my voluntary interactions with others alone, if I agree to leave you and all of your voluntary interactions alone? What more could you possibly want, especially if you’re particular about minimization of antagonism?
Care to clarify the obvious contradiction? Where exactly did IBM’s and APPLE’s capital exist before property rights emerged?
If you think the hierarchical firm is an example of autonomy, then god help us all.
Is that a response to this? Because it sure doesn’t look like it. Avoid the obvious contradiction all you want - but please don’t start filling the void with unsubstantiated and unrelated garbage.
Cooperative projects can’t grow without investment in capital:
“A worker-managed firm lacks an expansionary dynamic. When a capitalist enterprise is successful, the owner can increase her profits by reproducing her organisation on a larger scale. She lacks neither the means nor the motivation to expand. Not so with a worker-managed firm. Even if the workers have the means, they lack the incentive, because enterprise growth would bring in new workers with whom the increased proceeds would have to be shared. Co-operatives, even when prosperous, do not spontaneously grow. But if this is so, then each new co-operative venture (in a capitalist society) requires a new wealthy radical or a new group of affluent radical workers willing to experiment. Because such people doubtless are in short supply, it follows that the absence of a large and growing co-operative movement proves nothing about the viability of worker self-management, nor about the preferences of workers.” David Schweickart, Against Capitalism, p. 239
Before you say “oh well that means they can’t work”, no. It means they can’t obtain growth under capitalism.
You seem to misunderstand me. I am saying that capital (in general) has existed ever since people figured out they could use the earth’s resources. IBM’s and APPLE’s capital only grew when IBM and APPLE started up rolls eyes. Arguably though, their capital was transformed from raw materials that have existed since the start of the earth. So to clarify my position, land and capital as a concept (you are confusing concept for noun) has existed since before property rights and pieces of paper.
I’ll advise you to get a clue. Capitalism or not, you won’t last long around humans without having any clue as to what is or is not your business.
Shall I imply your “no” answer to the above?
So what? If you want your project to grow then I advise you and your comrades to do whatever you think would make it grow. If you prefer not to grow it, then don’t. Are you telling me that the only possible way for you to implement your project is if you put a gun to my head and made me join in, as well? And you want me to not become antagonistic about it to boot?
In your world, is anyone left with no alternative but to submit to the will and “plan” of any barking lunatic that comes their way? And you want to live in that world? So disturbing.
Libertarian socialism is, at best, an oxymoron. More often it is a confused dissimulation. On rare occasions it is simply pleonastic.
A person who acknowledges the justice of private property and free exchange, whatever particular organization he prefers, is a market anarchist, anarcho-capitalist or whatever you want to call it. There is no more need for the term ‘libertarian socialist’ in this case than there is a need for ‘libertarian monkist’ for those who choose a monastic life.
A person who does not acknowledge the right of individual property and free exchange is not a libertarian.
A person, such as Benjamin Tucker, who uses ‘socialism’ to mean a society in which people use social (i.e. non-violent) means of organization solely is simply pointlessly duplicating meanings.
Ok, let me phrase it another way. Here’s a question for you; “Can’t you and me just agree to get along and remove the coercive state structures enforcing the private accumulation of capital whose existance has ony come about by coercive expropriation, theft, slavery and plundering of wealth and gold from colonised nations which was the historic basis for forcing formerly self-employed artisans and peasants into poverty and wage labour?”
All I’m saying is that to build a libertarian society, we need to remove all coercive state activity, including the enforcement of contract theory. Due to this state enforcement of wage labour and private capital accumulation, we can’t possibly grow or develop a socialist economy. Its quite simple really: we can “work together” as long as your prepared to remove those state structures indirectly preventing socialist growth as I have explained above in terms of capital investment.
I don’t want to force people to build cooperative projects. Hopefully they themselves would act spontaneously to develop an adequate new system of production in the absence of property rights.
This brings me back to my original point that use rights would be acquisitioned on the basis of labour enhancing the property. So it is perfectly legitimate for labourers to claim right to land which is legally there’s under such a system; we don’t need “gun lunatics” to establish a perfectly reasonably justified system of use rights in place of property rights. In fact it is a group of gun lunatics (the state) that protect property rights in the present day so I’m not overly impressed that you think anarchists are a bunch of thugs when it is the state who have the most guns and all too eagerly defend the capitalist economic order through brutality.
So what this all boils down to is this; are property rights more justified or are use rights more justified? Well, I can justify use rights in terms of natural rights, because natural rights are universal, occupancy, because the propertied classes do not occupy the bulk of their capital or land and labour, the outcome of which is owned by the propertied classes not the labourer himself. Property rights are far harder to justify; investment, risks, profit, natural rights, occupancy, labour, etc.; none of those things legitimately justify private property.
In essence, your argument is “I have a gun so get off my lawn” but mine is, “What makes it your lawn and not the people who grow crops and harvest them on “your” lawn?”
No. I don’t wan’t to agree and get along with you. I am asking if we could simply agree to disagree. In “my” world, we definitely can. In “yours”, not so much. Smell a difference?
There’s no “we” in my world. Live and let live. Simple really.
And who, pray tell, would ensure the “absence of property rights” and how? What are you going to do with the people who “spontaneously” develop “systems of production” different from your master plan, including “systems” that perhaps involve private property?
Try coming onto my property and see whose gun is protecting it.
What are “use rights”? Everyone has the “right” to use whatever they’re using? Why “rights”, and not simply “free-for-all”? State or no state, humanity has repeatedly preferred (and, hence, flourished in) private property over free-for-all schemes.
Since you can not commit to an agreement to disagree, I’m done with you.
A person who acknowledges the justice of private property and free exchange, whatever particular organization he prefers, is a market anarchist, anarcho-capitalist or whatever you want to call it. There is no more need for the term ‘libertarian socialist’ in this case than there is a need for ‘libertarian monkist’ for those who choose a monastic life.
There seems to be an obsession with many left-lib types in playing the crystal ball game. It is very frustrasting. That said “libertarian socialist” isn’t really an oxymoron, so far as I am concerned the word “libertarian” is socialist in origin. I think in Europe the word “libertarian” still referes mostly to socialists, where the word “liberal” may have a somewhat more market oriented bend.
I would be fine with abolishing the state tomorrow. Our disagreement is about property rights, not the state. As I mentioned, our ideas are not mutually exclusive, one city can be propertarian an the next be socialist. I think your system can’t work, but that’s not my concern if it’s not forced on anyone. What I fear is that your type of anarchist simply wants to impose his system on everyone, since you seemed to suggest that.
Ok, it was someones fault. Every anarchist commune that failed had someone who’s fault it is. That’s the point. Humans mess it up. They are not angels who can get along and share. That’s why all anarchist communes failed. The religious ones lasted the longest. That’s why, in my opinion, socialists have largely given up on the voluntary path and simply try to impose it through the government.
A pure democracy would be ruled by a plurality. The individual is just as coerced by the decisions of a plurality as by a single ruler. It would be no less authoritarian than “factory fascism”, where people are told what to do by a boss. So socialism would at the outset not be more voluntary than a propertarian system. Just that you like that kind of organization and don’t perceive it to be authoritarian.
It is beautiful if people can get along and come up with stuff like rotating roles. But you just can’t get the decisions done. People bicker over minor details and the decisions that get made are bad decisions. People have stupid ideas, you know. It wouldn’t be lean and efficient like a propertarian system. The only way to introduce any efficiency into socialism is to centralize the decision-making and become authoritarian. As such socialism is a trade-off between poverty and authoritarianism. It would either be a mess of bickering or leaders emerge and it would be authoritarian.
It is centralized planning in the sense that decisions are made by a planning board and not by systemic market forces throughout the economy. Call it local planning. Economically it would be like Russia just with smaller states, and less evil.
Yes, but at least that gets the job done. Also capitalism isn’t actually hierarchical in the sense socialists are talking about. Capitalists have no power over workers.
If the signal for demand is sent through requests, people don’t ration themselves efficiently. They would simply ask for whatever they can get. Some planning board would have to decide who gets how much of what they requested. That’s precisely how the Soviet economy worked… after 1924. Requests aren’t objective markets signals, they don’t communicate scarcity.
So it would be central planning on the level of factories. All the stuff I said above applies. Also there would only be economic cooperation on a very local scale. In in capitalism a factory in Britain might be closed because one in China is more efficient, there’s no way to for workers councils to make that kind of determination. You can resort to capitalism to some degree, but the less you do the less efficient it is.
Not really. There’s only a calculation problem if humans try to rationally calculate economic activity.
To be honest, those arbitration agencies are a crazy anarchist theory too, so I’m leaving the realm of tested realities now. But the idea is that we each have a protection agency, and if you step on my foot my protection agency and your protection agency figure out what you owe me. If they can’t agree, it just goes one level up to a higher arbitration agency. There are various objections, but the literature deals with that.
What Rothbard means is not that man has one objective ethical code. But actually the opposite, that each dispute would create it’s own ethical code. As a whole the decisions would result in sort of a virtual ethical code that would be created by precedent, so you know what crimes you can’t get away with. But it wouldn’t be one code that doesn’t change or would be the same everywhere.
I think you are wrong to assume that arbitration agencies would be biased towards the rich. They have an incentive to be trustworthy and fair. And there wouldn’t a financial elite in the way there is in state capitalism. Socialists always think there is this inherent bias towards the rich in a propertarian system. And while that might be plausible it just doesn’t hold true. Markets equalize standards of living.
I’ll read it, and maybe comment on it. So far I can say that I think you got it exactly backwards. History has shown that propertarianism is the only environmentalism that has ever worked. Free markets always lead to an improvement in the environment. Pollution is a socialist problem.
You know, you can come up with all sorts of plausible schemes. But in the end what you’re trying to do is to centrally plan the economy. Since it is precisely the unfair allocation of resources through pricing you want to avoid, you can’t avoid the economic calculation problem. Actually you want to avoid economic calculation by design, that’s the point of socialism, by necessity you can’t avoid the problem. You can come up with theories on how to fix the problem, but theories don’t always work. Of course if you were to say it’s better to live in socialism to have lots of stuff, that argument can be made. I just don’t want any part of it. And I thin it would be selfish, because your productivity would be lost to society.
What people? You, me, that guy? There’s no collective us. Somebody has to have control over a resource or nothing gets done. What you are saying is with private property rights other people control the resources, so you can’t.
Z1235: