I’ve spent more than an hour reading up on it online at the link you provided.
People can leave. That’s cool. Do they get to take a share of the capital with them when they leave? If they have to leave capital goods behind, do they get a share of the future production from those goods? If they brought capital goods to the group, can they take what they brought when they leave?
I didn’t see a lot in there about dispute resolution.
I believe in Non-Aggression because I respect property rights. I have no right to another’s property, and thus I have no right to their person since they own themselves. From what I have read about ParEcon, there is no provision for property rights, so I am wondering what a non-aggression principle under ParEcon would be based upon.
Also, you didn’t refute what I said. You only indicated I made my claim ignorantly, not that it is incorrect. Would you care to dispute it?
No, they (by “they” I mean most an-socs) believe our current system of capitalism is evil. We have never seen true free market capitalism in this country.
They enjoy living together in co-op communities. Many of them already do. They don’t want to take your property. They might invite you to join them, but if you don’t want to then just ignore them. I don’t see why you’re so hostile towards the leftist anarchists. Did one of them piss you off at some time in your life? Have you ever spoken with one face to face?
We currently have mixed economies. The closer you get to socialism, the greater the gap between rich and poor, the more poverty and the lower the standard of living. The closer you get to capitalism (free market) the more prosperity, efficicency and social justice you have.
Right, but they also endorse and live by a ideology that doesn’t recognize my right to my property, correct?
Because I think they are counterproductive to the liberty movement as a whole. If we’re going to impose any standards on what constitutes a good alliance, as an ancap, as an anarchist and as a libertarian, property rights have to be close. I don’t give a crap about anything else to be honest. Property rights are the foundation of liberty.
Yeah, I’ve spoken to some. I don’t have a problem with the individuals. I have a problem with the ideology. To me, it’s just like statism. There is no individual. There is only the group. That is the justification for war, for regulation, for discrimination, for redistribution etc. I don’t know that I will ever be able to reconcile it with what I believe.
Those specifics depend on the individual participatory businesses. They would compete for an-socs (or anyone else) to join them.
Ok, you said that ParEcon says, “Markets are bad. Free choices by individuals are bad.”
What do you mean by “markets”? ParEcon is about reforming markets not abolishing them. And that second part about free choices is totally incorrect. People join participatory businesses and use consensus because they want to know what other people need. They aren’t giving up their free choice. They choose to be part of the participatory economy.
It’s not some “small aspect” that we are all against the state. It is the fundamental belief that all anarchists share. It’s what sets us apart from all the sheep in the world. All other goals that each individual group of anarchists may have cannot be achieved until the state’s monopolies are dismantled. The state wants us to be divided into different types of anarchists. Divide and conquer is the motto of the tyrant.
Anyone who is against all coercion is your ally. The day that everyone realizes this is the day that we win.
I can be against the state because I want to be King. That doesn’t make me your ally.
Robin, you seem like a very nice person. I’m sure you are against coercion. But many anarcho-socialists are not. They believe that coercion is inevitable, it’s who wields it and for what end that makes them different than the statists. Basically, the ends justify the means.
Socialism is inherently a coercive system. Participatory socialism is an oxymoron in my opinion. You always have to keep a group of people who produce more than they consume to subsidize those who under produce. Now some people are all noble and egalitarian like that, but the notion of carrying everyone else, but having an equal say not proportionate to your output, well eventually people get real pissed off about that.
As one of my much earlier posts said, they can believe whatever they want, illusion or reality, but they do so at their own cost. To attempt to plunder the productive would come at even greater cost, perhaps their lives. The ultimate manifestation of this is a peasant’s revolt. Are those usually successful? And they are against the state, not the productive classes of society. In other words, who cares? If the starving socialists come to plunder us, they’ll realize their survival is better-ensured by asking us for jobs.
When you join the syndicate, unless you are extremely foolish, you will demand certain pre-conditions through free contract; and if the syndicate violates these at any time, you hire someone else to enforce your contract, or you enforce it yourself. If you do not reserve some rights or conditions that cannot be democratically dismissed, that’s a big error on your part.
Of course, rights are inviolable. You may say that socialism violates property rights. This isn’t true. Property can be freely exchanged and communally owned. This is possible due to property rights. If you freely exchange it to the collective when joining, you rights to property remain intact. It is only your ownership of your former property that is impaired. To demand it back when leaving is a violation of the property rights of others, unless this was contractually agreed upon beforehand.
Of course, people violate contracts. In enforcement of contracts, yes, violence can ensue; but if that’s necessary for justice, then that’s just the way the wind blows. Or maybe things can be peacefully worked out, especially if the syndicate faces a power greater than its own, who it could not defend against without suffering greater costs than compliance.
Finally, you have replaced the Marxist myth of wage slavery with capital slavery, another myth. You are essentially arguing that unforeseen negative outcomes destroy civil society. I beg to differ. People suffer investment losses daily. Risk is an essential part of the capitalist system, just as is submitting yourself and your property to democratic control. If the losses continually outweigh the benefits, your continued participation in the system should be abandoned. IE - you should accept your losses without resorting to violence, just as a capitalist would when he makes a bad investment.
Again, simply because I don’t like decision A, doesn’t mean I am compelled to accept it. You are mixing coercion with preference. You are claiming that one can “voluntarily” accept the benefits, then claim the costs are compulsion where he disagrees. Indeed one may disagree with a collective choice, but he retains his individual freedom of choice between remaining a part of or abandoning this collective. If he chose to relinquish his property ownership when he joined the collective, that is yet another free individual choice. Accepting a job where I have to work Sundays doesn’t mean I no longer have free will on Sunday. It simply means I prefer my pay over my Sunday freedom, because I am free to quit whenever I want.
Sure it does. Might makes rights, not logic. The reason rights exist is because most men are motivated to defend them and pursue their violation with force. Rights work into a framework for a free, civil society by creating consistently logical sets of rights. So long as everyone’s rights are not broken, there is no justification nor motivation to pursue violence. The facts are, however, that rights are violated all the time. Thus, we desire a system where violence is more successful in defending rights than in violating rights. Without such a system, arguments about rights are simply laughable.
I think we would agree that anarcho-capitalism best describes this system. The fact that others believe anarcho-socialism is better is not important. Until they actually resort to violation of rights (or threat thereof), there are no moral grounds, or even logical motivation, to use violence against them. That doesn’t mean they must violate our rights. If they violate the rights of their own members, we (some anarcho-capitalist defense/justice agency) could establish justice for them. We could do this for a fee, or pro bono. However, where we use violence, we must do so openly to the public and ensure we are pursuing justice. Else, we face the same fate, while simultaneously facing market losses (I am assuming the public would not seek defense/justice services from unpredictable gangland defense agencies whose encounters would escalate into quasi-warfare, inflicting massive collateral damage upon society). Attempting to establish justice when the supposed victim has not claimed to have his rights violated, is borderline, if not outright, statism. A clear example of this are laws against narcotic consumption, where the victim and perpetrator are the same person.
You are arguing logic, law, and ideals. I am arguing about practical enforcement of the same principles. If you abandon your rights to property by joining a collective, you still have power over that property through democratic voting. In addition, you gain the power to compell others to action, so long as they wish to remain part of the collective. This doesn’t mean you have statist power, as you cannot prevent them from abandoning the collective.
I am not drawn to anarchism because of the logical consistency of free market principles, which require anarchism to be fully realized. Rather, I favor it because I think it would best defend these principles, without ever fully realizing them.
Property rights exist under anarcho-socialism. Assume everyone operates their own, one-man collective. This arrangement of various collectives is no different from market capitalism. No collective (or individual) can coerce the use, output, or free exchange of another’s property. This differs from state socialism, where all capital is forcefully stolen by the state, and all citizens are compelled by force to remain part of the single collective.
What you fail to see is that the property ownership is a communal rather than individual arrangement. Collective ownership is is no different from corporate stock ownership. You are entitled to a share of output and get a say about how the capital is used. If you don’t like it, you can leave; but you must leave upon the pre-conditions for membership/stock ownership. You have no right to demand ownership of your share of the capital.
Do you not believe in communal property ownership? Rothbard and Mises would have severe qualms with that position. Mises once said the fundamental difference between a capitalist and socialist nation is a functional stock market for capital.
So long as ansocs do not believe in forced membership into some “master collective” and that individual property rights exist in all forms of goods, they are our allies.
Ever heard of a pre-nuptial agreement? Despite planning, half of marriages end. Does this mean property rights cease to exist? No. Property ownership is simply rearranged during its transition from its communal marriage to its individuals.
Not really. One’s power regarding the stock market is generally based upon the size of investment, seeking to maximize calculable profits from market sales, while a democratic commune is democracy-based, seeking the approval of the majority of its members. That’s a huge difference. One vote per share is not one vote per head, and the ultimate goals are different.
The fact that common ownership of property among many individuals exists in both cases makes them similar, however.
In any case, the basic model called capitalism because of its intrinsic tendencies of private ownership of means of production, hierarchical corporate divisions of labor, and competitive markets, not only doesn’t facilitate solidarity, diversity, equity, and participatory self-management, it violates each of these values producing virtually the exact opposite.
Capitalist economics revolves around private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and corporate divisions of labor. Remuneration is for property, power, and, to a limited extent, contribution to output, all causing huge differences in wealth and income. Class divisions arise due to differential property ownership and due to differential access to empowered versus obedient work. Huge differences exist in decision-making influence and in quality of circumstances. Buyers and sellers one-up each other, and the broader public reaps what self-interested competition sows. Antisocial trajectories of investment and personality development result. Decision-making ignores or exploits ecological decay. Reduced ecological diversity results.
I like how he says that self-interested market behaviour leads to antisocial trajectories.
In a new economy consistent with just international relations, all citizens own each workplace in equal part. This ownership conveys no special right or income. Bill Gates won’t own a massive proportion of the means by which software is produced. We will all own it, or symmetrically, no one will own it. Ownership becomes moot regarding distribution of income, wealth, or power.
Does this sound like “only within the anarcho-socialist commune, where everyone is participating voluntarily”? The beginning of the article where he endorses the WTO and IMF as originally being progressive made me ill.
You are an anarchist, but the guys behind ParEcon clearly are not.
This is what we would call a free market. But I think I showed that the ParEcon rhetoric is pretty anti-free market.
Then explain why pre-nuptial agreements exist. This seems exactly like the point. A clear plan of how to transition joint ownerships to individual ownerships..
You are saying that one’s entire belief system is based upon their idea of economics. Most people could care less about economics. They just want to live well. With a free market, consisting of capitalists individuals, syndicates, and whatever else, most people would take the exact opposite of the approach you just described. They would not discover a philosophy and embrace it heart in hand. They would experiment, listen to the opinions of others. And their ultimate preferences wouldn’t simply be based upon what delivers the most pudding. Being your own boss can be rewarding as well.
Such a social scenario would simultaneously serve to destroy most economic myths that have existed throughout history. This would be a welcome blessing to me. Then you would complain about the socialists coming into capitalist society to loot it. Do you see refugees from socialist nations coming here (USA) to loot, or to embrace capitalism and work hard?
I am amused that this is your response. We have a common agreement - when someone can simply claim the property of others as their own, or indirectly do so by regulating how they use or exchange it, then we fail to have property rights.
What we fail to agree upon is whether you think property rights can exist communally/jointly. I am assuming that you are saying they do when you own stock in a corporation, but not when they are owned by the workers of a syndicate. Can you give me an adult explanation as to why they wouldn’t in the latter expample?
You would say that the more productive worker in the syndicate subsidizes the less productive worker. This may not be true, per se, even though it would probably tend to if there was direct democracy, which a syndicate might not have. Even so, that does not mean the more productive’s property is taxed. He never owns more than the syndicate doles out. That is his agreement with the syndicate, and in turn he gets to use its capital in cooperation with the other workers. He may consider this little different from owning stock in and working for his company, then donating some of his earnings to the less productive and less paid co-workers.
Additionally, syndicates may indeed have plans for termination of business relations. To ensure against violence, this seems wise. The exit plan for stock ownership is to sell it via an exchange. Syndicates could have some objective value in terms of a universal money for their fraction of their contribution to their accumulated capital. In other words, they’d buy them out. If they were super-marxist, they’d buy him out with their own products; and we’d probably agree that would create serious divisibility, portability, etc. problems. That’s why money exists, Karl.
Then you may counter - but they would simply refuse. And I would counter, then he could bring his case to the public, via some defense agency, in an attempt to attain justice, which is the purpose of anarchism - to ensure that those providing justice are not free to pursue injustice without facing more serious consequences than they currently are.
What parEcon seems to be arguing is that socialism would be a more beneficial form of economy. Does it claim that capitalists outside of a socialist nation/syndicate/whatever are somehow restraining them economically, or simply the workers that those capitalists employ? Does it claim the state prevents them from practicing their ideal form of economy? What Robin seems to be saying is that the state, not capitalists, are preventing the practice of free market syndicalism, with each syndicate free to operate its capital how it chooses, not how the state tells them, and free to enjoy the fruits of their labor, rather than being taxed away by the state. In other words, property rights. I would agree.
What Robin and parecon are additionally saying is that capitalism is restraining workers from a more productive and enjoyable living. We would both disagree with them here.
But we all agree that workers should be free to choose whether they work for a capitalist enterprise of they work for a socialist syndicate. Property rights enforcement would be agreeably enforced by either capitalist enterprises or socialist syndicates, done in public view. Most of the time, this would be peaceful between these two groups. If a capitalist agency violates the property rights of a syndicate, other capitalist agencies or socialist agencies could be called to attain justice. And vice versa. Ultimately, justice is enforced by the market.
I finally get what you are saying and I agree with you. I am not an anarchist. I do not wish an end to government. What I want is an end to government without consent.
I do not think “multiarcho-capitalism” really tells people what I believe though.
Why? Why are you being excessively vague? The only reason I have continued this conversation is because I don’t think Liberty Student understands how anarchism works.
What Liberty Student seems to be saying is that he’s not an anarchist. He has moral qualms not simply about allying with socialists of any kind, but even tolerating their existence. I would agree that if they sought to impose socialism onto others or their property, they would be statists and their aggression would not be tolerated. But he seeks implicitly to impose statism onto anarcho-socialists by refusing to recognize the property rights of syndicates, expressed as communal ownership. He considers such to be theft.
How is that not minarchism?
As far as anarchism vs. panarchy vs. anarchy vs. multiarchy, etc., I find it is more effective to call it “self-governance”. When people inevitably say, “Aren’t we self-governed?” I reply, “No, you are allowed a very minute mechanism to direct the monopoly government, but you cannot refuse to be governed by it, without it intentionally and directly harming your life, freedom, and property.”
Individual sovereignty is “self-governance”. They are synonomous. It is the tyranny of state sovereignty that should be opposed by any and all anarchists. Sovereignty lies solely in the individual and any form of governance should derive its authority from the universal support of its individual members. By what social, economic, or philosophical means such governance expresses that authority is of no real importance so long as individual sovereignty is maintained.