In addition, I think that as far as the schools of anarchy go, leftist anarchism would be more suited for wars. It’s an essentially protectionist economic state of affairs, seeing as they don’t respect property rights of foreign capital. No one would invest there. The division of labor would also probably be extremely immature due to the numerous structural problems with anarcho-leftism. Their industries then, would probably be arms production and farming, if they knew what was good for them. Their autarkic and backwards economic situation would much better prepare them for at least a guerilla war.
But AnCaps are convinced that their amorphous blobs of capital held in accounts at politically unaccountable DICs will transform quickly to a fighting force equipped with armor and materiel at the drop of a war declaration.
I think a better model for propertarian anarchists would be to form union’s which practice riflery and distribute Electromagnetic Pulse Generators and have everyone grow their own potatoes. But that’s a very volunteeristic model. The economic realities of AnarchoLeftism would force them into something like this, whereas with Propertarian Anarchism it would depend on civic virtue.
I’m not sure which ancaps are being referenced here, but I agree that this is a farfetched scenario. the main problem, as I see it, is that the human capital involved in the private protection industry is better suited to protection than aggression. this is with good reason, as those companies have had to be that way to sell their services. it actually takes a lot of work to create and maintain an aggressive fighting force.
I don’t have a real problem with your first point (although I think it’s foreign governments, not foreign investors that would be the problem since these investors would probably acknowledge that their investment would go south if their governments won the war), but I disagree that the leftist society would be better at anything because of how backwards the society would be.
I also think that guerilla tactics would be one of the things the anarchist society would excel at. I do agree that the extent that “voluntaryism” prevails is the extent to which the anarchist society can fill in the cracks such as what we’ve been talking about.
Dunno. It’s hard to say. I just think that a leftist society, since it need not conform to consumer’s desires, would be heavy on military production, despite the backwardness that would inevitably define the economy.
I think that the radically immature division of labor would be a wartime advantage for the following reasons:
A higher percentage of their capital stock is devoted towards the base necessities - food and defense. Infrastructure would probably be crap as well, making invasions hard. They would already be a hardy autarkic people, accustomed to living in ‘sustainable’ conditions. There probably would not be a huge difference between wartime and peacetime quality of life. I envision a lot of potato gardens and a lot of opensource-produced AK74s, and that’s probably it.
Inherently I don’t think that you’re wrong, but remember that this society, would probably have originated out of the capitalist society. I don’t think that anyone is going to be too happy about seeing their living standards steadily go down over time, so I think that this would make the society inherently unstable and prone to uprisings. If the society does stay together and remains true to its ideology, then remember that these these are the hippy, liberal, progressive anarchists that are supposed to be running things, so I don’t think that they would be too keen on war
Oh noes, a foreign government wants to pull its capital out of my company and declare war on me! I am honor-bound to send him his capital and then fight the war.
How does the company, which is witholding people’s private property, know that war will be declared? If the demands for returning capital held at the company are not respected, then that company is criminal and has made a fool of itself on the international market.
Companies can also be played off of each other. Foreign investors/states can tell DIC’s that they will only spare a handful of them in the territory. Would you like to be the one living or the one dead? How many profit-oriented businessmen will select the latter? What reason is there to believe that virtue can be leaned on?
“Because an entrepeneurs goal is profit. And the foreign investors needn’t attack said entrepeneur’s organization. He could just step aside.”
And the entrepreneurs’ company would be duly confiscated and most of its wealth would dissipate
“Foreign investors/states can tell DIC’s that they will only spare a handful of them in the territory. Would you like to be the one living or the one dead? How many profit-oriented businessmen will select the latter? What reason is there to believe that virtue can be leaned on?”
What country do you see as waging this war, exactly? Justifying war against anarchist states would be hard enough without slaughters.
Jargon, even if it were a real possibility that foreign governments would invest in DIC/PDAs and then pull the capital and then declare war, this is all assuming that DIC/PDAs in Ancapistan would be publicly traded companies. I see no necessary reason to assume this.
Would it though? Imagine the headlines “Anarchy territory is a breeding ground of hard drugs and Taliban sympathizers!” “Anarchists producing chemical weapons and hard drugs and distributing them to terrorist organizations!” “Anti-American sentiment festers in the den of the enemies of order!” and so on. One would only need an unexpected and violent event as pretext for a war.
well they still havent conquered all of afghanistan, its hard to imagine how long it would take to conquer an anarchist area. its more likely to get nuked, which is why people need to spread austrolibertarianism, so it happens more than one place.
but its not like they ever conquered iraq either? they wanted to stay longer and the iraqis put them out of it. its hard to explain but its like the culture goes underground, even areas that are under physical control arent really conquered, thats why all the violence. you guys have to think about how much support an occuppying force requires. those assets are all vulnerable.
in a counterinsurgency mission, the force has to engage the population because combatants are indistinguishable from civilians. in engaging the populace, they eventually find out what the people want in order for the violence to stop. guess what, they want to be left alone. usually they get a lot of bullshit demands prior to this. but thats why coalition forces pulled out of the citiesand suburbs of iraq for years before the main withdrawal.
If you are from a place that is culturally/linguistically distinct but that is small, and you go ancap and thrive. Wouldn’t tens of millions of poor-off Chinese, Africans or Latin Americans want to come to your ancap paradise. And if they do, wouldn’t — without the state — their language become dominant so that you would fail to pass down your culture to your grandchildren who would instead grow up to be Chinese/English/French/Spanish speakers?
If you are from a place that is full of natural resources, especially if the place is sparsely populated and the resources are mostly “public property” and not being exploited. And you go ancap, wouldn’t Exxon Mobil and the rest of them huge, foreign state-connected corporations come in an profit from and deplete “your” resources in your country? And then without a direct benefit to yourself, which you can apparently have in the present arrangement? (Eg I believe the Norwegians actually receive a check for every year in the mail from oil sales proceeds.)
How exactly would a war machine that was not centrally-directed look like? There has been so much writing on what economy minus the state would appear, but so little on how may an army minus the state look like.