What we call ourselves.!

Miscellaneous General
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Question:

Most of us call our way of thinking anarcho capitalism or voluntarism and i dont understand why.

I personally dont like either terms. Whenever i mention ancap to people they always think about some idiot goth kid who hasnt bathed in months and goes around throwing rocks at cars on friday nights. Then they ask why do you believe in what “they” believe in? Like someone who is clean cut and typically dresses business casual cant hate the government? (im sure jeffrey tucker gets much stranger looks when he says it to ppl) Then any further conversation they shut off and dont care. Even my best friends are like ok whatever dude.

when i mention voluntarism they think im some naive hippy dbag that is completely unrealistic. “why would people just voluntarly work together? they could do that right now and they dont.” At this point they will give you an example as proof why it cant work. Then you answer and they respond with well ok what about this. then you answer. Then they will realize that this conversation can go on for years giving millions of examples and me answering them. This ultimately ends with well i just dont believe you, and they shut off again and dont care. I cant force them to educate themselves in freedom or AE nor can i sit there for hours on end explaining freedom. Also Im not in a position to call myself such an expert that i can now be a teacher.

Obviously i am over generalizing their reactions, but we all have seen their faces/reactions/responses when they hear you are an anarchist or a voluntarist.

My question why dont we use a term everyone already knows and understands? Why dont we use a term that most Americans believe in and believe they are? Why dont we use a term that embraces a sense of pride in themselves and pays homage to their ancestors?

The term is capitalism. Why do we think we are so different or special to rate our own term like ‘Ancaps’ or ‘Voluntarists’.

Is there really anything fundamentally different in the definition of ‘capitalism’ vs ancap or voluntarism?

Try it next time you have a conversation about politics or economics. Tell them that you are a capitalist or believe in capitalism or to raise the probability of a resonse say you believe in 'pure, big, bad, in your face capitalism (what is 'pure big bad in your face capitalism? i have no clue, its no different than just regular capitalism but it will get more of a reaction out of them) The only thing you need to say if someone attacks capitalism is “thats not capitalism” because whatever downside of capitalism they suggest will not be capitalism. This response will challenge them to actually think on their own ‘ok what IS capitalism’. They will come to the conclusion for themselves that capitalism isnt the use of force, isnt war, isnt bailouts, isnt debt, isnt mandated favoritism of special interest groups, its fair, and just.

Even socialist democrats think and realize they have incorrectly defined capitalism. Now you probably wont get them to get a ‘V’ tattoo on their forehead, but you will get them thinking ‘is capitalism the problem’? or hopefully if you do a good job, ‘if capitalism isnt the problem what is?’

Then for the average American who believes that capitalism works they will be more open to you, they will like you more, and they will trust you because you will remind them of a brother, sister, father, grandfather, any relative, a friend, neighbor, or teacher. There is someone in every family that has a relative who KNOWS that they were able to provide an opportunity and a chance of a better future for their children because of CAPITALISM.

I’ve heard suggestions that we should embrace our fellow anarchist of other varietals including anarcho commies. This is a horrible idea. Why should we go after another fringe subsection of society just to multiply our antigovernment numbers by a small percentage? We already have the VAST majority of the world believing in our way of life. I dont care if people read Mises or even know what Austrian Economics is. The important thing to do is to redefine capitalism back to its proper definition. When that happens the people will begin to ask our elected officials ‘why did you vote for this and that’, we are capitalists and “that is not capitalism”. The paul krugman’s of the world wont be able to hide behind responses like ‘well i believe in capitalism, but it needs to be heavily regulated by the state’ What the hell is that?! THATS NOT CAPITALISM. Thats not what the vast majority of people believe in. Obama couldnt get elected by calling himself a capitalist when he certainly is not. We should not allow them to hide behind the mask of a propagandized definition of capitalism. All we have to do is shout anytime anyone incorrectly defines capitalism, “THATS NOT CAPITALISM”.

This goes for libertarianism too. Why are we fighting the current? How many of us actually come from a libertarian family? How many of us have a majority of libertarian friends? None? maybe a few, we are a republican or democrat society. Why are we trying to pick off republicans and democrats to join a libertarian cause? They are already with us, they believe and understand the fundamentals of why capitalism work. We need to embrace what they embrace, capitalism. This is the core issue.

The law of diffussion of innovation goes something like this. 2.5% of the population are innovators. We are the social, political, and economic innovators of society. We took it upon ourselves to go out on the fringes to understand why we believe what we believe. The next 13.5% are called ‘early birds’. This is why so many politicians seem to go from terrible polls in the primaries (the innovators are voting for them) then can jump like herman cain, gingrich, santorum, and bachmann can jump to the teens over night. They convince the early birds to vote for them. The next group of people are the early majority at 34% and the late majority at 34%. These people are the people who dont take risks and follow the crowd. These people were waiting on the innovators and early birds to stick with a candidate so they can vote for them, and ultimately why Mitt Romney won. The early birds couldnt make up their minds so they ended up voting for the safest most stable voting numbers and that was romney. What this law tells us is we cannot have success until we convince the early majority and late majority to buy what we are selling. So what are we selling? No government, no laws, no mandates, freedom and liberty. Does 68% of population believe in anarchy? I dont think so. Does 68% of the people believe in no laws or mandates? NOPE. Do they believe in freedom and liberty? Maybe, but then we get into the question of what is freedom and liberty? People can believe freedom is laws that ban guns because ‘that will give them the freedom from not being shot’. Freedom from from enemy nations? People will say that going to war is freedom for us at home. So i dont think we can convince the 68% to believe in freedom and liberty.

So whats left that we have in common with the majority? In a Rasmussen poll conducted in early 2011 found that 10% of Americans believe communism is better than what we have. And 12% unsure. If socialism rallies, as we know how the parasitic nature of socialism can, then that will put them at the 22% and in the majority sector of the law. That means that getting the 68% of sheep to jump ship will become increasingly easier with each percentage point. In a 2009 Rasmussen poll, only 53 percent said that capitalism was better than socialism for society.

Still not the 68% we need, plus we want the 2.5% innovators AND the 13.5% early birds. Since we arent looking to win a SINGLE election, we are looking for a REVOLUTION of ideas. What the Rasmussen poll did find is that communists, socialists, independents, republicans, democrats, ect 95% of this country BELIEVE that capitalism is better for the economy than any other system.

We try and get people to understand by throwing out ideas and concepts one by one that challenges their notions that government is beneficial. Thats working from the outside in. When what we need to do is work from the inside out. Capitalism is in the people. We must start there.

Anarcho-Capitalism!?! What the hell is that? Why are we willing to give up the fight for capitalism by calling ourselves ancaps?! We already lost the word liberal to the history of time we must not lose capitalism. We must stop considering ourselves to be on the social paralysis fringe. We are the majority.

The Libertarian Party requires people to stop affiliating themselves with who they are, and to change. A Capitalist Party envelops the essence of what they know in their soul to be true.

What is game theory?
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I’m not a capitalist. I have very little capital. I’m a Rothbardian anarchist.

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Well, yeah, kind of there is. For one thing “capitalism” doesn’t fully express the details. It doesn’t necessarily suggest anarchism. And this is to say nothing to the hundred different ways people define it today. Just listen to Michael Moore. “Capitalism” not only doesn’t do a very good job of fully expressing your political philosophy, plenty of people already assume it means something that it doesn’t even say in the dictionary.

I talk a bit about “capitalism” and relaying the concept to ignoramuses here.

My question is, why is having a label so important in the first place?

If your goal is really educating people, I don’t really see labels doing much to help that process. In fact I don’t see them doing much more than potentially harming it. The way you describe this scenario is very romanticized and unrealistic. If these people were such truth seekers, and were so easily able to be reached through logical appeal and reason, why are they advocating for the return of Stalin and Che?

Just who are these “average American[s] who believe that capitalism works”? Even people who would say they are “pro-capitalism” or “pro-free market” will openly advocate bailout, subsidies, regulations, drug laws, drone strikes, militarism…this is so far against what someone who subscribes to “voluntarism” believes in, it’s utterly foreign. When you say “There is someone in every family that has a relative who KNOWS that they were able to provide an opportunity and a chance of a better future for their children because of CAPITALISM”…I think that is really stretching it.

We have a President preaching “you didn’t build that”, and you think people are walking around crediting “capitalism” for their relative prosperity? I’m not sure you really appreciate what we’re dealing with here.

Some say the same thing about the minarchists you seem to think are allies.

I’m not completely positive what you mean by this, but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.

I think Gary Johnson is kind of shooting for the same thing with his whole “you’re libertarian, we’re libertarians, be libertarian with me” campaign…trying to convince people that they already agree with him. I mean it kind of has an appeal, as on the surface it would seem that convincing people to change their minds is quite a bit harder than simply convincing them they’re already on your side and are just using the wrong words.

But I’m not sure how effective that is…especially when, again, people are literally outright saying “I’m pro-intervention”.

I’m not sure exactly how you think you’re simply going to “trick” people into being anarchists by the cunning use of definitions.

I say again, why are labels so important? Why can’t you just relay the ideas? People will come to terms with terms on their own.

From The Ultimate Beginner meta-thread:

What you should be doing### To Any Who Were Once Apathetic: What Brought You In?### A model of the liberty message…this is what you can be### This is what you can do with OccupyWallStreet### How Would You Teach Capitalism?### Why Ron Paul is so effective### Recommendations on policy when dealing with newbs/statists.### Details on best practices### Pamphlet content recommendations### Stuff we can do

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Anarcho-capitalist to differentiate between any kind of state capitalism. And state capitalism is what most people think of when they think of capitalism. Voluntaryist to demonstrate that we support voluntary and cooperative social interactions. It does not mean we are against violence per se, but that we are for cooperation. Who is against cooperation? Thugs.

Capitalism does not necessarily mean free market capitalism. Most people do not associate the word in that way. Putting in the qualifier “free market” or “anarcho” demonstrates the difference clearly.

Telling them this will be more likely to make them think you are dogmatic and claiming No true Scotsman.

I see nothing wrong with using different labels. Anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, voluntaryist, libertarian, etc., there is no reason why we must use one term and one term only. If the people you are talking with shut down because of these labels, then you are either not explaining it well or they are not worth talking to regarding this issue. These labels are not remotely similar to something disgusting like Nazism or the KKK. There is no reason for anyone to shut down after hearing “voluntaryist” unless you are doing it wrong or they are not worth your time. Not everyone can learn or even want to learn.

Just don’t talk politics with your friends and spend your time talking about it with people who seem more interested.

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There’s a good one.

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gotlucky - cooperation is capitalism. I dont see any difference is ancap, voluntaryism, libertarianism, or capitalism. Whether you have a little of capital or are dead broke. We believe in the voluntary system of capitalism. All the deviations further puts us on the fringes. Why are we doing this when we are already at the heart of the country when we call ourselves capitalist.

the ‘no true scotsman’ makes sense, but i dont like it. Im not challenging what the people believe is the definition of what capitalism is. I think if you break it down for them, they will reach a very similar definition of what capitalism is. What they are calling capitalism is the implementation of ‘capitalism’ by our government. I believe the people know government action isnt capitalism if you ask them. As ive done and i they realize it.

I agree we should use one term and one term only, but why are we using negative terms? or terms that people dont know? they might not be nazism or kkk like you say, but they have a negative perspective fo them. Even libertarian, most ppl wont ever be true libertarians so they will never change their voting patterns. The term capitalism lets 95% of the population to continue to believe and understand what they already believed yesterday. They dont have to change their beliefs to be capitalists.

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I’ve come to like the term “Market Anarchist”. It says what it does right on the tin: Markets (ie. free exchange of property/capital/resources) and Anarchy (ie. a lack of a territorial monopoly on force. I’ve found that anarcho-capitalism is too loaded of a term, and too linked to Rothbard specifically to represent my views. Voluntarism is a good term also, but as you’ve said it’s kind of wishy-washy and doesn’t have the same descriptive power as other terms. People hear “voluntary society” and think it’s all about drum circles and hugs. Still, depending on the audience and how they are introduced to the term, Voluntarism can certainly be effective.

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I prefer to just call myself a libertarian when speaking with the great unwashed.

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ya i like market anarchy, and it typically doesnt get a negative response. i receive a more of an inquisitive response. Though people dont connect social implications of market anarchy. They are inclined to think thats the way you believe business should be conducted. What about medicare? food stamps? public transportion? You will have to again break down a definition for them which you will start to pushing beliefs they dont agree with.

Capitalism includes an obvious exclusion of government from intervention of people interacting in a voluntary manner, and they know it works. You dont really have to explain anything to them once you clarify its definition.

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“I prefer to just call myself a libertarian when speaking with the great unwashed.”

-Minarchist

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Not again

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I completely agree Grant, libertarians need to embrace the word Capitalism, it is what we are, and it is mainstream. All these other descriptions require a building of understanding from the ground up, what’s an anarcho capitalist, what’s a voluntaryist, even libertarian, where do you/they stand on issue A,B,C,D,E,F? Most people do understand what capitalism means. I do agree with GotLucky also though, that we have to be sure to distinguish ourselves from Corporatists. I often call myself a “pure”, or “true capitalist”, taking ownership of the term, we are capitalists, we’re not a subset of corporatists, they are a subset of socialists.

I think it would be a great move for the Libertarian Party to rename themselves the Capitalist party, while Ron Paul may have brought more understanding to some there are a ton of people that think Libertarians are just hippies that want to legalise drugs, with no understanding of the deeper reasoning behind it.

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minarchist - libertarian is good, and one that is roundedly accepted. However the problem i see is you arent going to convince people to be libertarian or vote libertarian. They are a good republican or democrat just like their daddy. They look at it as a political ideology with the same type of politicians as repub and dems. So why change their vote? The libertarian party can only get the 17% of the vote as defined in the law of diffusion of innovation coincidentally the virtually the exact same percentage ron paul was polling at (and mind you he was running as a republican). We need the majority. The only thing we have in common is our belief in capitalism.

jj - lots of info, ill respond tonight as im too busy to read now. Thanks.

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  • Capitalism includes an obvious exclusion of government from intervention of people interacting in a voluntary manner, and they know it works. You dont really have to explain anything to them once you clarify its definition.

Eh, I’m not so sure that “obvious exclusion” is so obvious. A lot of people have come to define capitalism as the status quo. And historically many people have defined it as a system that relies on state priveleges to maintain itself. I’m not so sure trying to save the term “capitalism” is worth as much time as people devote towards it. Better to use other terms that don’t have the baggage.

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logisticearth - try it. Ask someone, does capitalism involve the government? if they say yes (which they might), ask what definition are you using that has government involvement in capitalism. They will say something along the lines of well not in real capitalism, but ______ this is where they will throw in bank bailouts, something related to corporations own DC., fill in your own leftist punchline. They know just as much as we do that that is not capitalism. They just dont have a word for it so they call it a part of capitalism and its not. Tell them the truth, its socialism. Capitalism has nothing to do with government.

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Those terms are generally used to mean the same thing by libertarians, but the problem is with the people who are not libertarian.

LogisticEarth’s point is spot on, that the term ‘capitalism’ has been used to mean different ideas, and historically it has been identified with requiring the state to support big business. I don’t know if you are familiar with this piece of Rothbard’s, but it is specifically about whether libertarians are anarchists. There was a time when even Rothbard did not want to call himself an anarchist, but eventually he changed his mind. Right or wrong, the meanings of words can change over time, and apparently enough libertarians wanted to identify as anarchists so the term can actually refer to libertarians. But the fight for that word is not over. Not everyone hears anarchist to mean libertarian.

But I don’t think that it’s necessarily worthwhile to try to reclaim words. Consider the word ‘gay’. Do you really care about it so much that you want it to mean ‘happy’ instead of ‘homosexual’? Are you going to use it in your daily speech in order to reclaim the word? In my opinion, it would be a waste of your time. Too many people consider ‘gay’ to mean ‘homosexual’ that you would just be confusing everyone and wasting your time.

I see a similar situation with the word ‘capitalism’. I’m not saying we ought to ditch it entirely, but too many people simply do not equate the word with free markets. Right or wrong, most people just simply do not see the word the same way you do. And if everytime you have a conversation with people you need to explain what you mean by the word, I think that might be a signal that other people do not understand the word in the same way. So by saying ‘anarcho-capitalist’, you are signalling to others that you are a capitalist - someone who either acquires capital or supports a system where individuals may acquire capital - and that you are also anti-state.

The people who are in the best position to reclaim the word ‘capitalist’ are those who write regular columns or essays or are on some sort of media, such as radio or tv. They are in the best position to reach a large audience in order to convince people that a word should really mean something else. But if you try to do it one person at a time, you aren’t going to get anywhere.

Just to be clear, I do not believe that we ought to use one term only. I see nothing wrong with having more than one term, and sometimes those terms might have a subtle nuance that can be really important to some people.

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jj - finished my project much faster than expected.

by saying we are capitalist we arent pushing an anarchy agenda or a libertarian agenda. We are pushing an economic fact that capitalism works, and 95% of the population agrees it works. Who cares about the little things? The little things like private schools, private roads, privatized everything is the conclusion of capitalism.

When you say that capitalism doesnt fully express the details, that EXACTLY why im for it. It doesnt require the 95% of the population to believe in anything different from what they believed yesterday. Picking at the little things prevents people from seeing the big picture.

We stress here freedom and liberty with the end deduction being in order to have freedom it means economically too. Well ppl have so many different aspects of what freedom and liberty is that we will never get the majority. Its going upstream without a paddle.

Lets do it the other way around! if 95% of the population knows that capitalism works best economically then lets push that! Anarchy and libertarianism is capitalism realized.

“I talk a bit about “capitalism” and relaying the concept to ignoramuses here.” - i revert back to it being the best part. We want to unite the people not divide it. We can talk all day to people about freedom and they wont care. Ask if capitalism works, and they will agree. If they dont know that economic freedom (capitalism) realized is libertarianism why should we change their mind? They will realize it when we get capitalism back. They also wont fight it because its what they wanted! They were the capitalist revolution.

"people are literally outright saying “I’m pro-intervention” - just as we are the innovators, the 2.5%, those people are the 2.5% for socialism. Its impossible to get 100%. All i care about is the silent majority in the middle with 68% of the population. If those are the people we are up against we cant lose. If we draw a line in the sand, that government isnt capitalism (which i believe vast majority of people will understand and believe) then those advocating intervention will have to say they are something other than capitalist.

as for gary johnson’s campaign stragedy - they still have to vote libertarian which only 17% will do. Could we of really asked for a better candidate than Ron Paul? How do we expect anyone to be better than him? He went after freedom and liberty when i think he should of gone after capitalism. Of course hindsight is 20/20.

I think the biggest problem is that EVERYONE (elected officials) preaches freedom, liberty, and prosperity. Its hard for ANYONE to stand out preaching that. In 2008, i was the in the 68% and didnt even waste time looking at ron paul. Although i like a lot of what he said i didnt waste anytime reading up on him because i thought he was just like every other politician (basically because i knew he wasnt going to win). This election i was the same until finally a close friend said i had to look at him because he preaches what i preached. We think its easy to see that ron paul was the obvious choice. As a part of the majority its not. I had to dig deep into voting records and study what he meant. I didnt agree on a lot of what he said, but i had to find out why he differed on those things when most of what he said was IDENTICAL of what i believed. Then i figured he was the best candidate, but i still disagreed on a lot. So i picked up ‘revolution’ and then he had to convince me that in fact those things that i disagreed with him on that I was the one that was wrong. Thats almost impossible considering how hard headed i am.

Thats what we have to do if we want the majority to go libertarian.

If he just would of preached capitalism, something that i knew was right and moral, pointed out how the other candidates arent capitalists i would of been voting for him without a second thought. Thats something i could relate to. Thats something 95% of the population relates to.

Do we as libertarians really care if people vote for libertarianism in the name of capitalism? Do we care if social democrats vote for libertarianism because economically speaking its the right choice? NO.

What we wont get, as Ron Paul proved, a majority of the people voting for our concept of liberty.

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got lucky - ill read the rothbard today, and i dont believe i have read it.

I know ive said ‘redefine’ capitalism or take the word back, but its not exactly what i mean. Its more along the lines of people already know the correct definition of capitalism they are just misusing it or a lot of times havent even considered what it means. If we just let them consider the definition they will reach that conclusion.

Even saying anarcho capitalist you have to explain what you mean by anarcho and capitalism. When we can just use capitalism.

Every avenue leads to requires people to think. Why not make it easy on them and just have them think about one thing. What is capitalism? The people know they just havent thought about it.

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If it’s ever asked I don’t give a straight answer, it comes out like, “Vaguely along the lines of a ‘libertarian’ or anarcho-capitalist,” and then I’ll name off some influences or some other b/s.

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@JJ

“I prefer to just call myself a libertarian when speaking with the great unwashed.”

-Minarchist

I’ll just repeat for emphasis until you understand your mistake.

I prefer to just call myself a libertarian when speaking with the great unwashed.

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We already k ew you claimed to be a libertarian. We didnt know that you talk to yourself.