Yes, my answer is still no…
This is the worst attempt at trying to corner me into reinventing wage labor I’ve ever seen.
I don’t know. I suppose if the workers gained equal rights once they were “hired” then it might not be a problem. Any sort of contract would be problematic. I would like to study co-ops more before I make any firm conclusions.
Anarchism is not just an institutional solution, and that’s an important thing to remember. Anyone that thinks such-and-such an institution can do no wrong is in for a sore surprise. Co-cops can have shitty policies, that why co-ops as such are not considered anarchist unless explicitly stated. Anarchism suggests a constant renewal and self-review, not an unprecedented authority on all things free.
I keep saying that anyone ready for a dream-world where everything is fixed might as well give up. If tomorrow there’s a syndicalist revolution we don’t all stop organizing and start skipping through the fields. There will still be shit to get done.
I guess it’s kind of an all or nothing approach. Either the co-op excludes the worker from everything or includes em in everything. This is why I’m kind of skeptical of mutualism. It seems a bit tribalistic to me.
Edit: that was a follow-up to my previous post and not a reply to BP.
BP, salaries are set by democracy but do not have to be equal, right?
In the co-op situation, yeah. But just like FOTH, I’m not a Mutualist. I find myself agreeing with anarcho-communists more and more these days.
Since you’re leading into the inequality in wages argument, I’ll just respond to that now. First of all, no one, not even Marx, suggested that wages between workers must be equal. But beyond that, the institutional ability to create tiers of workers and hierarchy within the worker’s association are exactly the reasons I would probably end up fighting those institutions. I don’t consider them unanarchistic, but I do see problems with them. Realistically, there will be authority problems in any society. And Anarchists should be ready to deal with them. The co-op situation allows people a voice, a place to fight hierarchy and oppression on the inside. The second that stops, I start talking about overthrowing them.
So what makes an-com different from mutualism?
I will ask again, please define socialism. The fact that Tucker and Carson call themselves socialists does not make them commies or Marxists. Brad Spangler calls himself (and Rothbard!) a socialist in the Tuckerite sense.
Mutualism is more market oriented. Anarcho-communism does away with money and what we’d usually call trade. It’d be like, “you’re in the collective? Cool. You have access to everything we have. Tomorrow some friends and I are building bikes at the local bike shop. Come join us.”
Obviously, this kind of shit doesn’t apply to things like housing the same way, and each person and group of persons can excersize free association and act autonomously as much as they’d like.
Brad Spangler calls himself (and Rothbard!) a socialist in the Tuckerite sense.
WTF??? Why does Spangler think Rothbard was a socialist AT ALL when Rothbard spent his entire life preaching against and exposing the evils of socialism/collectivism?
I’d actually be interested in hearing Spangler’s reasoning as well, especially given some Rothbard quotes like this:
“To us poor folk it might seem absurd to say that the life of a multi-millionaire is hard and thankless, but it seems clear that this is an important point for us to remember.”
It doesn’t seem like Rothbard is even a socialist in the most traditional sense.
“Workers control of the MoP” = mob rule. Simple as that. 51% of the workers taking everything away from the other 49%. Thats anarcho-socialism incld. mutualism in a nutshell. Mutualists are IMHO just as bad as all other socialists. They don’t believe in private property rights. There also taking over the FSP in NH which you can tell by looking at FSP forums and blogs. Anarcho-capitalists should do more to refute them.
They don’t believe in private property rights and you don’t believe in rights of the commune.
Communes as reified entities separate from individuals don’t have rights. People have the right to associate by way of a commune.
As long as it agrees with the NAP, I’m okay with it. Frankly, I’d like to see what kind of systems of order would arise in a stateless society. The bad ones would fail, and good ones would rise up and become compatible if freedom is allowed. I like Roderick Long a lot, and agree with a lot of what he says. I disagree with use of the left libertarian label.
How is Joe the Plummer owning his own van and wrench mob rule? How is a worker coop mob rule? They are not. So when the majority of firms in a market are self employed individuals or worker coops why is that mob rule?
Tucker and Spooner believed in private property rights, just not total private property rights in land, which is why Rothbard coined the term “anarcho-capitalism” rather than use individualist anarchism. I recommend you read Rothbard’s critique of Tucker and Spooner to get a better idea of what they actually thought.
If it’s true that mutualists are ‘taking over’ the FSP, I don’t see how this could be that bad. If they are supporting a mostly Rothbardian movement it would suggest they agree with me about the differences between mutualism and Lockeanism being much smaller than the possibility for a political alliance between the two camps.
http://bradspangler.com/blog/archives/473
That’s my point. You need to define your terms. If your opposed to socialism so much that you are willing to throw Tucker and Spooner under a bus for their use of the phrase, you better make sure you are using the same definition as they are.
Good article, but I thought it was quite a bit of a leap there.
Regardless, I quit arguing about whether or not ancaps are allies. My only hope is that if/when the revolution comes I see ancaps with pitchforks and a bunch of businessmen trembling about all that deregulation they wanted.
“Left-libertarian” is a vague and broad gaga neologism. There is no “left-libertarianism” in any coherent family resemblance sense. Everything put forward under the label consists of either the mere confusing of language (Rod Long, Brad Spangler), typically deleterious anti-libertarian constructivism (Otsuka, Vallentyne, Proudhon, etc.) or simply a rehash of standard libertarianism under a pointlessly divisive new label. There is nothing sound in this group of ideas that was not put forward more eloquently and sanely by David Friedman or Hayek or Smith. And absolutley nothing is gained by adopting the aesthetic of obselete industrial socialism or the butthurt demeanor of partisan far-leftists.
Anarcho-capitalism is not about “permanent ownership” as emergent norms of abandonment and easement and so forth are presumed to continue their operation. The difference is that ancaps don’t prescribe a constructivist refashioning of the concept of property on the basis that the time until property is considered abandoned should be much shorter than it typically is… that’s really all there is to it.
How is a worker coop mob rule?
Worker coops are ENTIRELY based on mob rule. 51% of the members get to dictate everything to the 49%. And how are coops supposed to function AT ALL? Sure a 10-person coop probably could manage but what happens in a factory of 200+ workers??? Coops are just democracy and statism under a different name/form.
If it’s true that mutualists are ‘taking over’ the FSP, I don’t see how this could be that bad.
The FSP is full of mutualists and left-libs who openly state they want to end capitalism. If they get their way private property will be abolished.