market anarchism

I'm currently doing research into market anarchism.

I can safely "anarcho" capitalism is not market anarchism ( it supports capitalism, capitalism cannot exist without a state and anarchists have been against capitalism for the entire 150 years that anarchism has been around ) and neither is agorism (it came out of "anarcho" capitalism and supports capitalism, so it isn't anarchism either. I don't want people to think I'm somehow being bossy and insisting people take my view of what anarchism is and isn't. it's that just I, and a lot of other anarchists, actually know what anarchism is whereas "anarcho" capitalists have used the limited and inaccurate dictionary definition of anarchism as just not having government, whereas in actual fact there are a few basic tenets that all anarchists believe in that gives each school of anarchism a basic thread that ties them together in the broader tradition of anarchist thought,). I have previously shown that rothbardians (and therefore agoreists by assosiation) actually do support a state it's just they've twisted the definitions of what a state is, so that it looks like they don't.

this looking into market anarchism may prove to be interesting and I'll write my thoughts here.
Having anarchist-without-adjectives leanings I am very tolerant of other forms of anarchism, even types I don't particulary like, such as egoist-anarchism- but if it isn't anarchism but protends to be and basically subverts it then obviously I'll have a go at it every now and again

the domination of terms

I have noticed that certain terms are dominated and distorted by certain groups in a way that often distorts arguments a bit. for example: socialism.

the authoritarian state socialists (ie Marxists,Leninists etc) dominate this term quite a lot and this brings about a fair amount of confusion in some parts. it kind of plays into the hands of anarcho-capitalists (whose philosophy is largely propped up by misunderstandings of terms) who, when a genuine anarchist correctly says "anarchism is a type of socialism"will then say "anarchism isn't a type of socialism, you need a state for that. socialism is the state owning the means of production."

This is nonsense. Socialism has never been a single ideology, it is a multiple group of schools of thought and anarchism is one of them. when an anarchist says he or she is a socialist it means that person wants the workers to own the means of production and for the distribution of wealth to be equal and fair. Now of course all anarchists are against state socialism, where (in theory) the state is comprised of workers who own the means of production and share them out with the rest of the workers/people. in other words they want a dictatorship of the proletariat. this does not work. It always becomes a dictatorship OVER the proletariat. you take a proletarian out of his work and put him in charge of a council, pretty soon he's a bourgeoisie, you are just replacing one set of coercive bureaucracies with another.

In anarchism on the other hand this does not happen because there is no illegitimate authority and no middleman. It's just the people doing it for themselves.

Another group of terms that gets dominated are the terms "market" , "free-market" and "market anarchist".

capitalists, and by extension "anarcho"-capitalists like to make out that if you are against capitalism, then you are against markets.

now.

There are anarchists who are against markets. I think they are wrong here, but I'm willing to agree to disagree on that one.

however, you can have a market without it being capitalist. it is perfectly possible to have groups of producers trading the fruit of their labours without it being capitalist. if you had group of individuals voluntarily coming together to form a cooperative, where every individual collectively owns the means of production and make decisions by discussing it with each other and trading with other cooperatives by making deals without outside regulation, that would be a non-capitalistic way of having a market. property would of course be based on personal use (in other words Proudhon's notion of "possessions" rather then the capitalistic notion of private property which is based on robbery).

Now how about the free-market?

a free market is a market that is unregulated by the state and the particular groups that are making the deal come to their own terms fairly without government bullying.

Any market in an anarchist society would be free-market because there would be no state to pass laws or boss the cooperatives around.

how about market anarchists?

A market anarchist is simply an anarchist who advocates there being a free market in what he/she thinks of as the ideal society. That makes me a market anarchist. the reason I don't generally use that term is due to the fact "anarcho"-capitalists dominate it and too many people automatically think you are a capitalist or at least lump you in with that lot.

sure, I'm pro-free-market. But I am VERY anti- capitalist too.

since capitalism cannot, I repeat cannot exist without a state, the closest a capitalist society could come to free-market is if there were a market with minimal state interference.

Capitalism cannot exist without a state because it requires the state to protect the dishonest and vile practice of private property and to generally prop it up and maintain the inequality of wealth and therefore the crime it creates.

"anarcho"-capitalists advocate private defence agencies to fulfil the role. This is a idea they cribbed from tucker (who was a form of mutualist and always maintained was socialist). however, in a anarcho capitalist system, they would represent a monopoly of force in a certain area and would therefore be a sort of mini-state. The capitalist/landlord would be making the decisions and would therefore constitute a form of government. This means anarcho capitalists want there to be a state, albeit a set of small private police states.

One of the main problems i have with "anarcho" capitalism is that is forces anarchists to spend time argueing over terms in order to show them that they are not anarchist, when they could be talking about important issues.

do not confuse anarcho-capitalism with market anarchists. Thats what they want you to do.

quotes

quotes found on check your premises showing that "anarcho"-capitalism is NOT anarchism.

“There’s a good reason the poor are poor, they’re less intelligent than the wealthy.”

“As such, it follows that legitimacy is derived from the claim that the government can help the poor. The poor buy into this as a result of moral and intellectual weakness.”

“Nonetheless we do favour individuals with authority, in the form of a natural elite.”

“If the parents wish to use force, then so be it. The child consents by continuing to live off his parents.”

“Libertarianism doesn’t support equal negative rights, a child does not have the same rights as an adult.”

“This doesn’t imply equal negative rights for adults. Some adults, such as primitives, are not capable of rational argumentation and cannot be brought peacefully into the division of labour. Moreover, they have no conception of property rights nor any enforcable claim.”

“These people (tribal or less developed cultures) simply aren’t capable of rational argumentation, and therefore have no rights, whether this is biological or cultural makes no differences.”

“The fact is they often cannot be brought within the division of labour and without any concept of property rights it’s impossible that they own anything. Moreover they have no legitimate claim to any of this territory and as such it’s free to be homesteaded.”

“People incapable of moral choice must either abide by the decisions of those who are or they must be removed from free society.”

“Against people who have no law, the initiation of force is fully justified.”

“It was not wrong for the spanish to overthrow an empire that literally fed on its slaves in religious rituals and replace it with its much milder form of serfdom.”

“Childish rejection of a natural order and authority isn’t the opposite to subservience. It’s a bad trait that needs to be kept down until the youth have matured sufficiently.”

“A private ruler must respect property rights simply because his wealth depends on clearly defined laws explaining what is, and isn’t legitimate property and how people should act in regards to this.”

“Anarcho capitalism and anarchism are synonomous. Anything that can’t be subsumed under anarcho capitalism, is internally inconsistant, and needs to be thrown out.”

“So long as government commands a monopoly over all land, the closed border position is defensible.”

“It is only reasonable to expect the state to fulfill its duties as a land owner.”

“The only system that would have no borders would be a world government.”

“Seeing as towns would be owned by single entrepreneurs…”

“Why wouldn’t people sell their land to a single entrepreneur? The have no interest in owning land, only in being able to lease it from some owner.”

“There’s nothing new about left-libertarians. They are still the same anti-capitalist who hated big business when Lenin promised to keep control of the commanding heights of the economy.”

“Anybody can benefit from the state and anybody can become a part of it.”

“It’s necessary to remove bad elements from a movement. Which is exactly what the libertarian movement should be doing to non Austrians and the likes of Molyneux. Lenin was exactly right in this regard.”

“Opposition to the family and church sounds somewhat Marxist to me, any libertarian society will be founded upon those two institutions so in a sense yes, one does need to be a cultural conservative to be a libertarian.”

“The state by it’s very nature is egalitarian in the widest sense of the word.”

“The only unifying principle of a secular, multicultural society is the democratic state.”

“Feudalism is actually an entirely appropriate model for anarchist society, and my prediction is it’s coming whether the anarchists like it or not.”

“A system of feudal holdings all competing with each other for human and fiscal capital stacks up pretty good against a system whereby the parasitic majority lives off the productive minority.”

the quote about feudalism really justifies my calling them feudalists.

apparently these quotes are all from those wankers at mises.org.

definition twisting and the pernitiosness of rothbardian feudalism.

Though It's followers claim to be against the state, they are not. All through reading about this ideology, I've come to the same feature. Instead of using the actual definition of something, they change and twist it around to make it work the way they want. This is immature and unscientific. they do it with the whole government/state definition for example. The government and the state are two actually separate things, although they do overlap and are virtually joined at the hip. you cannot have one without other. The state is the monopoly of force. it is the coercive power, the enforcer of law. It is the controlling force of the police and military(although the police and the military are becoming more and more indistinguishable around the world) . The protector of private property. When I say I am against private property, I mean in the actually existing unjust system. I only support private property in the proudhonian sense of the term . The Government is the maker of policy, the brain if you will.


In a so-called anarcho-capitalist system, what I call rothbardian feudalism, the landlord/capitalist/entrepreneur/ whatever you want to call it, would hire "private protection companies" which would protect the stolen goods (i.e what capitalists call property,which is theft). these companies would, in their areas of territory, have a monopoly of force. this would make them a form of state, with their clients being the government ruling over their employees as they would need a workforce to get anything made. so you see, they do support there being governments and states, just as long as they are the government and they steer the state.


they are not anarchists. the state is the arm of the rich elite. The government hold a monopoly of power and that monopoly is the state. any positive social change that the government and the state accept is only allowed because it pacifies the broad mass of the people and makes them think that those in power actually care about them. centralisation of power breeds tyranny and capitalism is the ideal system through which to do this. as long as the people actually think they have a choice, they don't rebel. give them burger kings and a vote on which glove puppet to have as the face of their oppressor, and they'll kneel down and allow themselves to be raped by big business.

which brings me to a common misconception that they bring up when a real Anarchist actually tries to stick up for anarchism. Socialism.

when I watch debates between anarchists and these hypocrites, they constantly insist that anarchism is NOT socialist. This is bullshit (pardon my french there).

Socialism is not and has never been a single and uniform school. there is a whole spectrum of different types of socialism and anarchism is one of them. state socialism is not true socialism. it is simply the government and the state owning the means of production. this is tyranny. the people have no true control and become slaves to the state (even more then they are now). unions are controlled by the oppressors and do what the owners of the workforce tell them instead of the union being a legitimate way of getting the bosses to actually do things to benefit the worker's rights, which is what it should be. There are the multiple forms of state socialism and then there are the multiple forms of anarchism. these are two wings of the same bird.

Anarchism is a type of socialism. Even individualists like Tucker said so. Yeah, anarcho-communists and anarcho individualists agreeing.

Also the way they seem to monopolise the term "market anarchism", as if these 'narco-capitalists are the only market anarchist (when they are not even anarchists). Mutualism is the original form of market anarchism, in fact its the first type of anarchism full stop.

take away anarchocapitalism and it's pseudo-left wing little sister agorism, then mutualism becomes the only type of market anarchism (as far as I know).

These pseudo-anarchists are like baby cuckoos invading another bird's nest. They try to absorb anarchism. their insistence that they are anarchists, despite all arguments to the contrary, misleads those who are new to anarchism and is therefore bad for the movement.

rothbardian pseudo-libertarian crypto-fascism

I've kind of been looking for an alternative term for "anarcho"-capitalism. The more I look at rothbard and read the anarchist FAQ (on my list of links) the more I believe it isn't even libertarianism, but more a sort of decentralised authoritarianism. In a society run along these lines, the means of production and property would be owned along Private lines and tenants would live on areas of land owned by the capitalist landlord and he/she would control things and this means that he/she would have power over his/her subjects. naturally the landlord would be thinking about his/her interests and would therefore be more concerned about how much profit could be raked in . this means tenants would be under the subjugation/power of the landlord and would be limited in there free speech or freedom of choice by constantly having to think about what the landlord would want.

Plus, the landlord could be free to kick the tenant out at ANY time, even if that tenant would then be homeless and facing serious problems. And there needn't be any regulations protecting the tenants, because a)the landlord makes the rules, being the overall mini-dictator and b) have you noticed company heads often need regulations to do stuff for their employees before they do it, even when you would think it's obvious, you know like health and safety and things like that.

these rothbardians do in actual fact support governments if you think about it. These landlords with there competing private protection companies (which I forgot to mention are another feature- basically there would be people with guns who would compete with other companies to be hired by different landlords to be their own personal army, and we can see where the problems here) are govenments, or rather dictatorships.

now what does this remind you of? Yes. feudalism. thats right. perhaps without a central king and split into parts and territories, but basically yes.

feudalism.

Rothbardian-feudalism.

that could be my new term for these so-called anarchists.

wow. didn't expect to come up with a name as I was typeing this. Kind of shows what I ,meant yesterday when I said I use these posts as a thinking area.