I like the second one better because, as you say, it gives people a better prima facie grasp of our philosophy.
I am going to start calling myself a “stateless libertarian”.
Egalitarianism can be a wonderful thing, so long as it’s not applied to wealth. Of course, equality under the law is simply not acheivable, simply because enforcement of the law depends upon wealth. At least some states aim at equal rights instead of equal wealth, which I view as a noble goal.
Anyway, if anarcho socialists don’t care what the state does, then they are simply socialists. Why would they add “anarcho” if they don’t oppose the state?
The reason that I would associate myself with them is because it seems the basis of anarchism is peaceful tolerance of different systems, not wholehearted devotion to capitalism, or anything other than intolerance of statism really. If we are going to label all socialists as statists because of the nature of their system, we might as well be statists ourselves. If we can claim outright that their belief system creates oppression, we will be labeled exactly the same. Essentially if we do not believe economic systems can be free of statism, then there is no such thing as anarcho-anything.
The truth is, we share a common root of philosophy with anarcho-socialists, which is that the state serves a double role in creating a privileged upper class and an oppressed lower class. In one sense, the state ARE the privileged upper class, in that they have arbitrary power over the property of others. Hence, they partially own ALL property. Secondly, they promote disequality of the law for their favored special interests. Anarcho-socialists believe that these are the tools the state uses to keep an oppressive capitalist structure in place and that without them, socialist syndicates would at least have a competitive shot at excelling in economic markets. We say the exact same thing, except about capitalist markets. In the absence of the state, these two groups could live in isolation or develop trading methods. I don’t see why people believe that socialists don’t respect property rights. Anarcho-socialism, according to every advocate I’ve talked to, says nothing about “socializing” the means of production belonging individuals who are not members. That’s Marxism, clearly statist. Instead, ansocs believe in creating their own capital, or receiving it willingly from new members.
Does no one see the irony in this? What is our problem with government? Is it too statist, or is it too socialist? Well, the ansocs would answer, “Is it too statist, or is it too capitalist?” Both see the state as the hindrance to create their own, free system, maintained by respect for property rights, even though the systems themselves are wildly different.
And anarcho-socialism is not inherently majoritarianism. Any specific syndicate could use a number of means to make decisions. It would be ironic if ansocs and ancaps lived in isolation from each other and one day met and discovered they had a adapted a number of similar means to solve disputes. For example, the most productive syndicate worker may be given more voting power, just like the largest shareholder. This is more likely the result of necessity for syndicates to maintain competitiveness than idealistic socialist mantra. What most arguments against ansoc miss is that ansocs typically don’t want one giant syndicate to produce everything. They prefer a variety of syndicates, each devoted to a particular line of production. These syndicates can trade with each other and other market entities, such as capitalists individuals or businesses. They can compete for members, or even to produce the same goods/services. Their membership contracts, allocation of capital, and investment plans will adapt to be competitive in the marketplace. As such, we shouldn’t expect the sort of extreme wealth egalitarianism present in state socialist systems. Often those are used to score political points in democracy, whereas syndicates look more to compete for productivity in the marketplace. In other words, those that advocate direct majority democracy to decide all issues may quickly become too impoverished to survive.
But why not let the free market decide? The pre-condition to this is creating a free market, which means squashing statism.
What you are saying many people should have issue with. Others can outcompete you in a marketplace, but no one can compete with you for your individual happiness. If I maximize my psychic profit by building auto’s with a screwdriver, even if I can’t sell them profitably on the market, that is purely and simply a matter of individual preference. Your ideal community will not be someone else’s ideal community, simply because your ideals are not the ideals of others. Economic success means nothing if all I want is to meet sexually unrestrained heathens.
However, I believe you are correct about the relative economic success of capitalism, and its greater ability to provide services such as defense and justice. Thus, I think the point of contention, that anarcho-socialists would become statist, is simply moot. If there were indeed this tendency, why would ancaps feel they couldn’t defend themselves or establish justice?
I still feel this entire argument against ansocs is paranoia. I don’t support socialism, but I do support anarchism; and if people can’t see why ancaps and ansocs can work together constructively, then I see little hope for this movement.
I agree with the gist of the above, but a lot of anarcho-socialists would disagree that anarchism is simply anti-statism, and that is where the opposition to anarcho-capitalism comes from. As for anarcho-syndicalism, it is a different beast, and is not subject to the calculation argument as socialism is, for the reasons you outlined.
In researching the differences between anarcho-syndacalism and anarcho-socialism/communism, I appear to have made a number of huge mistakes here. I owe a big apology to those I was arguing with.
I was under the assumption that anarcho-syndicalism was a means of expressing socialism. In other words, a syndicate could employ collective ownership of capital, direct democracy, wealth equality, and other socialist ideals. I had assumed that a anarcho-socialism was nothing more than support for socialist-flavored syndicates.
This does not appear to be the general philosophy of anarcho-socialism, which seeks to make all property public property. They also seek to eliminate money…and market practices. They seem to assume they can produce more than people will demand, even when everything is inherently free.
To be honest, such a system seems completely unworkable, and offers no common conception of property rights. I would agree that there is little means for any partnership as such. This is actually intruiging. The reason I did not think this could possibly be how it was reasoned is because this makes no sense to me. I am actually going to read a lot more about this. The whole thing sounds like an attempt to square a circle.
Bingo.
Most socialism is. It’s almost all predicated on a labour theory of value, limited or no private property, democracy and is usually hostile to free exchange.
It’s so far from what an Austrian/Anarcho-Capitalist presumably believes in (market, liberty, property) that to say we have a common battle is outrageous IMO.
See - we do agree…as I predicted. Only I was wrong [:P]
On the other hand, I believe Robin may actually be a syndacalist.
Most of the anti-globalization, anti-capitalist political activists are. I’m still trying to figure out the difference between anarcho-syndicalism and mutualism. Mutualism claims to be market anarchism, but seems to draw on ideas that don’t seem compatible with the market (to me at least…)
One immediate difference I think anyone could or at least should notice is that mutualism is critical of Marxist theory. I also do not think mutualism sees the state as a valid vehicle to abolishing the state itself, which seems to be a popular paradox that marxists & syndalcists sometimes dabble in.
Not Marxist class theory. And not Marxist capital theory.
As near as I can tell at least.
As far as capital theory goes, Carson has an article on mutualist capital theory here. And for class theory, the only difference between an-caps and mutualists on this point is that many an-caps see parts of the corporate class as being part of the “exploited class”, while mutualists would place them firmly in the ruling class. Some an-caps seem to place the welfare-recieving poor in the ruling class, too, but I can’t make any sense of that argument.
Thank you very much!
Exactly. Mutualists think if you have capital, or you direct a firm, you are evil. If are just an employee, you are exploited for trading your labour.
Which is basically Marxism.
An Caps understand that the state serves cartelized labour, just as much as it serves corporate ownership. But that’s bad for Mutualist recruitment to attack the inefficient, unskilled, lazy worker drones who are protected by the state and cartelization because that comprises the majority of it’s base. You won’t find small business people buying into Mututalism, they are too busy trying to fend off their employees who use state power to exploit their accumulated capital. But then, last time I checked, no mutualist could define how big a firm has to be, or under what business model, in order to fit their class theory and qualify for “massive evil” status.
[:)]
Personally, I just call myself an “abolitionist,” because I think that sounds awesome.
It was my understanding that anarcho-socialism and anarcho-syndacalism were the same thing, and if they aren’t, then that’s pretty important. Where was it that you got that information showing their difference? I’d like to do some reading.
I just finished reading a book by Daniel Quinn called “Beyond Civilization.” (same author as “Ishmael”) Most people consider Daniel Quinn an anarcho-primitist, but this book totally redefined that word, and also changed the way I see the entire anarchist movement.
Here are some of the points he makes:
- Government programs will never be able to do as much good as the market. Government programs just waste time and resources.
- Our current legal system almost always puts more emphasis on punishing people than it does on trying to find the root of the problem (some examples he uses are the prohibition of drugs and homelessness).
- Anarcho-primitists are wrong if they think re-wilding is the answer. There is simply not enough land for 6 billion people to do that.
- It’s possible to set up a business structure/lifestyle that is by design both environmentally friendly and fulfilling (He thoroughly explains how in the book).
- Communes (the attempt to equally share land) almost never work out and often lead to economic failure.
- When a business voluntarily (and he stresses that it can only work if voluntary) shares the means of production it often benefits the business (he gives tons of examples of this).
I think this book can appeal to any anarchist. No matter what they have after the hyphen. It’s only 200 pages, go read it.
To comment on the original purpose of this thread: I think words like anarcho-capitalist/socialist/syndacalist/primitist/etc almost always cause the average person to turn off their brain and start using a negative bias. I suggest we just all call ourselves abolitionists.
We are the 21st century abolitionist movement. We want to end slavery (aka coercion). I can’t think of anyone who would be against an abolitionist.
Thanks,
Robin
Possibly because of the vagueness of the word “socialism”. I guess you could subsume syndicalism under it, to a degree. However it differs drastically from what is typically denoted by the term, including what Mises understood by it. Any anarchist system that were to abolish private ownership of the MOP (which excludes syndicalism) is subject to the calculation problem.
I don’t want to end slavery.
I want to re-establish private property rights.
Big difference.
Cool. I just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
It seems to me that the communist side believes that there will be one giant commune, while the syndacalist side believes that there would be many cooperating but sovereign communes. In practice, they may actually be similar. I cannot imagine one commune being a natural state of society without statism.
You don’t want to end slavery?..
If we own ourselves, then ending slavery would probably be a big deal to anyone re-establishing private property rights. Doesn’t sound like a big difference to me.
I don’t want to put words in liberty student’s mouth, but slavery is not necessarily wrong. If someone voluntarily contracts with another person to become their slave, they should have the right to do that. Thus, slavery as such should not be abolished.
Well, I was teasing you there. I do want to end slavery. But the only way to do that, is to establish private property rights.
One has to come before the other, or you are not free. And if you get your “freedom” and choose to renounce your private property rights (say, in a commune) you are back to being a slave, even if you choose to be in the commune.
I must respectfully disagree with you here. Slavery, by definition, is involuntary. What you are describing is just an extraordinarily long and horrible contract. If you CHOSE to sign it and were not under any duress when you signed it you are NOT a slave. You may have made a very, very, very unwise choice but it was a choice.
I understand Robin’s point about calling oneself an abolitionist but most people would simply assume you were an activist against modern slavery (in the traditional sense of that term) and this would not be an indication of actuall political beliefs except for that single issue.