Well, if we lived in a society which was based on voluntary social interactions - which are by definition mutually beneficial - and where bodily attacks and forcible expropriation by dint of the "right" of superior force was deplored and defended against by the majority, I'd call that a capitalist society.
How can private property exist in such a society? If you and I both claim to own some land and we can't come to an agreement, isn't it going to be decided with superior force?
How is this society mutually beneficial by definition? If I own the fields and decide to destroy the produce (it's mine, I can do whatever I want?) while the locals starve, this is fine right?
> isn't it going to be decided with superior force?
Yes. There is always going to be a superior force and it decides who owns what.
Practically, the point of anarchism is that the force should be limited (voluntarily, like how armies in a healthy democracy voluntarily subordinate themselves to the voters) to the absolute minimum role possible. For example, the popular configuration right now is that the group that controls the strongest army (ie, 'the government') is also seen as responsible for providing healthcare and welfare. The anarchists think this is stupid because there is no reason to think that there is an organization that is simultaneously good at so many things at once.
> How is this society mutually beneficial by definition?
Anyone using force to achieve their aims gets removed from society, so all that is left is people transacting mutually beneficially. It isn't so radical, that is close to what we have now. The vision is basically you go to the shops and buy stuff.
That there is any barrier for the force to remain limited beyond the barriers already established in our current governments. In this argument it seems that we've established that force is needed. But there is no compelling argument put forth by anarchism that establishes a reasonable control mechanism for limiting said force. Yea "You can't tell my what to do by force" seems like a good mantra, but it really sucks the moment someone else gathers up enough people voluntarily (or monitarialy) to subdue the limited resistance your type of governance allows. The "We'll all get together and fight the enemy" sounds good until you realize that about half the battle put forth by the enemy will be psyops in getting the anarchist to fight themselves allowing them to be even more easily defeated. Once a significant portion of the anarchist are convinced to give up and not fight the enemy, and if they give up those that will fight they will be spared, the remaining pockets of resistance will much more easily collapse. You're back to 'anarchist nationalism" to prevent just this from happening.
> But there is no compelling argument put forth by anarchism that establishes a reasonable control mechanism for limiting said force.
That is already a solved problem. The force chooses to exert itself in a limited way. The largest military in the world currently works like that - the US army does whatever the US Congress tells it to. They don't have to, the army has the guns and the US Congress only has annoying geriatrics and comfortable seats - not much of a contest if the army makes it one. The army chooses to limit itself because they understand it will lead to the best outcome for them.
The radical part of anarchism isn't the use of force, it is the argument that the people who exert force shouldn't be trying to solve social problems with force. The barrier to that isn't the behaviour of the army, it is the beliefs of the polity.
> How is this society mutually beneficial by definition
I wrote "voluntary social interactions [...] are by definition mutually beneficial". A voluntary interaction implies that all participants in the interaction have chosen to do so by their own free will. That implies that they value going through with the interaction higher than to forego the interaction. Hence, it benefits all of them.
> If you and I both claim to own some land and we can't come to an agreement, isn't it going to be decided with superior force?
That's merely a technical problem. A land register might be a solution.
The cited article quotes Kropotkin talking about ants and how they cooperate. It says if an ant does not cooperate by sharing food, they are treated as an enemy.
This is what he meant by mutual aid.
> Kropotkin was fascinated by how ant cheaters (those who refuse to dispense aid) are dealt with: “If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves.”
A 19th century Russian prince that became a socialist perhaps thinks of something different when he thinks of "beaurocracy" or "government" than a 21st century HN reader does.
Yes, I know. I read the article. I also think it is sensible to be aware of cheaters and treat them accordingly, though we're not a haplodiploid species. Bear in mind that dealing with cheaters must not be taken as an excuse for violence or robbery.
What is your point regarding my answer to gp post? I didn't even mention the words "bureaucracy" or "government". Rest assured though, that I despise them both.
The article used those terms, in a way that cast Kropotkin in a "right libertarian" light which struck me as anachronistic given his time period.
Your comment seemed to echo that, talking about some Anarcho-capitalist libertarian ideal buzzword society, linking that to his anarchism and then further attaching the generic word 'capitalist' to it.
> Anarcho-capitalism is also distinguished from anarchism, an anti-capitalist movement that opposes unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, and social anarchism, a branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as interrelated with mutual aid. Unlike anarchists, anarcho-capitalists support private property and private institutions. Anarcho-capitalists also reject the libertarian socialist economic theories of anarchism, arguing that they are inherently authoritarian or require authoritarianism to achieve, while believing that there is no coercion under capitalism. Despite its name, anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of anarchism and is more closely affiliated with capitalism, right-libertarianism, and liberalism
Having an obscure historical claim to a word commonly associated with people who you disagree with is the best kind of Technically Correct, but not great for communication.
I was mostly trying to point out that there are disagreements about what "anarchist" means and avoid confusion.
This seems like a horrible notion of how to run a human society and is shocking if that is a foundational observation leading to his anarchist outlook. In a capitalist society, someone who refuses to share also fails to thrive as much as they could (natural consequence), possibly falling into poverty. But there is no need to violently rip them apart. In a society in which all is given freely, the only alternative for lack of cooperation would seem to be active punishment, either violence or some kind of exiling.
Even if one is okay with punishing those who refuse to work for the good of all, when does it get invoked? Who decides? What if there is a mistake in that notion?
And this is in the context in which work is generally simple to observe and equate. In a modern society, work is very unequal. How do you figure out appropriate levels of working across nursing, serving coffee, working in a sewage treatment plant, mining, farming, teaching, walking dogs, long-distance hauling, programming, managing, etc. Who would make those decisions? Do you have agreed upon shifts? If someone shows up late or doesn't show up, is there some consequence meted out by someone?
In an economic system, one has the price system where all of that gets figured out. If you think you are underpaid in such a system, you can seek to get paid more by doing something else. If you think someone is overpaid, you can undercut their prices. If you don't show up for work, you don't get paid. This creates the changing conditions that lead to better allocation of resources, including labor. It is unclear how this could work in a society where everyone just works for the betterment of society and the fruits of all labor are distributed "equally" (things are not equal, so someone has to decide some kind of price-equivalent system for this, I presume)?
> Who would make those decisions?
Some anarchists have everyone vote on such matters. Some have a legal system that is elected.
> Do you have agreed upon shifts?
Yes. These are established by vote of the workers.
> If someone shows up late or doesn't show up, is there some consequence meted out by someone?
Yes.
Rather than using prices to set which work is desirable people vote on it. Some anarchist societies today distribute undesirable work across the entire community. Everyone takes one cleaning shift a week for example.
If you're curious, you should read The Dispossessed. I especially recommend that book because it does not paint a utopian picture of an anarchist society. And most anarchists will be honest that you will loose benefits moving from a capitalist-statist political economy to an anarchist one. The goal in moving to an anarchist society is not to create a society where individual access to material wealth is the same as in a capitalist society. The goal is to create a society in which the unstated forms of domination that exist in "free" societies today are weakend.
There's all sorts of interesting arguments about how various libertarian societies would enforce their non-aggression, property rights and contract law etc.
It's very lazy to claim that any society doesn't have this requirement.
Also, anarchism (or socialism) and markets are not necessarily mutually exclusive, there's many different types, though some of those may claim they are exclusive and only theirs is the true anarchism/socialism.
That's not a capitalist society. This is the correct definition for Capitalism:
> an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
It doesn't imply voluntary social interactions, it doesn't imply some sort of protection against the "superior force" you mention.
The values you enounce belong to any healthy society as voluntary social interactions happen in socialism too, where the majority (the proletariat) is protected against the use of superior force by the rich.
Now, would you please explain how can social interactions be voluntary in a system where property-less people have no other choice to survive but to accept the least bad offer from those who own the means of production?
Interactions can really be voluntary once neither of the parts depend on the interaction to survive. Once we free exchanges from such power play, then we can talk about will.
This is why the only just and free system can be one where nobody has to struggle for the material needs necessary for their survival.
And how would you suggest that someone could become and stay wealthy, if their only legal means to acquire wealth is to provide value to society?
Would you rather take what you desire by force, under the pretense that you somehow deserve to own what others have peacefully acquired? That would be the mentality of a street thug.
> And how would you suggest that someone could become and stay wealthy, if their only legal means to acquire wealth is to provide value to society?
The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than others has no value to me. I care much more about the possibility of people starving or living a terrible life due to lack of basic material needs.
> Would you rather take what you desire by force, under the pretense that you somehow deserve to own what others have peacefully acquired? That would be the mentality of a street thug.
Capitalism thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An entire economy was born out of the extermination of the Jews, and capitalists made tons of profits out of it. They also profited immensely from the now cheap and union free labor force, all thanks to the fascist police beating and arresting any unionist.
There were also wealthy people during periods where only birth right could give you wealth, and those aristocrats would not hesitate to abuse of the population with violence.
It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does not guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing, it usually pushes for the opposite.
> The possibility of "someone" becoming wealthier than others has no value to me.
In a system of voluntary exchange ("capitalism") they can only become wealthier if they are freely given their wealth by someone, even if that someone's not you.
> I care much more about the possibility of people starving or living a terrible life due to lack of basic material needs.
I hold with Kropotkin, we are a social species. As long as there is sufficient wealth, people will be cared for. The best way to make sure that is the case is to maximize that wealth. That's what free, voluntary exchange does. It's not a zero-sum game but it's always win-win. Only the economically illiterate would claim otherwise.
> Capitalists thrived during Nazism and Fascism. An entire economy was born out of the extermination of the Jews, and capitalism made tons of profits out of it.
Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be judged entirely correct.
> There were also wealthy people during periods where only birth right could give you wealth, and those aristocrats would not hesitate to abuse of the population with violence.
Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange and your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?
> It is clear that the existence of wealthy people does not guarantee free and voluntary exchanges. If nothing, it usually pushes for the opposite.
That was not the argument. You got it exactly backwards.
> Nazism and Fascism both were self-avowedly anti-capitalist Ideologies. Insofar as neither cared for peace nor for property rights, this self-assessment must be judged entirely correct.
This is just refuting historical truth without providing any evidence. It doesn't matter that Hitler used a kind of anticapitalis rethoric before getting in power. What happened once he did, is that the capitalist of the country got cheap and obedient labor force provided by the nazist police. They got rich out the war and the extermination of Jews as well.
> Hence not capitalist. I argue for voluntary exchange and your counter-argument is "thugs, murderers and slave drivers existed, therefore capitalism bad"?
No, not really. You argue for the possibility of becoming wealthy. I tell you that I don't think a right to become wealthier than others should exist, nor that people being wealthy is a guaranteed benefit for society, as shown in my examples.
You also keep mixing capitalism and voluntary exchange, and again as I've proven you those are not necessarily linked. I restate this, capitalists thrived during nazi germany due to the subjugation of the labor force.
> As long as there is sufficient wealth, people will be cared for.
This has been disproven time and time again, you're ignoring the matter of wealth inequality. The existence of wealth improves the general life conditions of the people only if such wealth is properly distributed. All the reductions in poverty we've seen in recent times are due to the conquests of the social movements, taking from the wealthy things like healthcare, retirement, decent working hours, safety on the job, unemployment benefits, public education, etc.
That you do not agree with the definition of capitalism that was given at the origin of this exchange does not mean that I have to abide by yours.
You can argue against your strawman-capitalism all you want, I do not care. If you insist that capitalism is not about protecting everyone's right to their property, I see no point in carrying on.
That's not my definition, it's the Wikipedia definition. Where does yours come from?
Also would you answer to my initial request to explain how transactions can be voluntary in a capitalist system where most people dont own property, the means of production.
Even the very same Wikipedia article you quote admits that central characteristics of capitalism include competitive markets, private property, property rights recognition, and voluntary exchange.
Neither National Socialism nor Fascist corporatism had strong protection of
- competitive markets: markets where heavily regulated and great parts of national production and ressources where directed and allocated by the government, preventing competition and free exchange
- property rights: lots of property was outright stolen from their rightful owners, the means of production were ultimately controlled by the government
- voluntary exchange: lots of people where forced into slave labor, which is decidedly involuntary
So yes, these were state socialist societies, not capitalist ones.
Oh, you probably meant "state capitalist". The definition of that fits to a tee.
> State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). [...] Other examples include Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and Turkey, as well as military dictatorships during the Cold War and fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany.
Lol, "Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state".
Excuse me, when I respectfully decline that definition. What makes or breaks capitalism is private property, including and specifically of the "means of production", also called "capital goods".
"Engels argued that the tools for ending capitalism are found in state capitalism", that's like saying that eating your steak well done gives you the tools for slaughtering the cow.
OTOH, "It is not commonly realized that State Capitalism covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism, Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-essentials from the classic ideal of egalitarian Socialism". At least one can find some sensible definitions in the article.
Look at where there were massive famines with people starving to death. Were those capitalist societies? How many people have starved to death in the semi-capitalist countries such as the US? How many starved to death in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea? When China pivoted to a kind of capitalism, did people start starving or did they start prospering? Allowing individuals to accumulate wealth by being of service is the key to general prosperity. This is the heart of capitalism.
The more a society is capitalist, the more wealth gets created and that wealth is spread out to all. The less a society embraces capitalism, the more desperate the poor become. Inequality does increase with capitalism which is a problem for stability, but the government exacerbates that issue by imposing laws that prevent competition and take from the poor to give to the rich. In a freer society than we have in the US, it would be harder for the rich to become super-rich. They have to keep being useful in such a society.
Begnal famine: Controlled by the British during WWII with rice imports blocked due to Japanese occupation of Burma, wartime inflationary policies, trade barriers imposed, food forcibly diverted to those important to the war effort, etc. These were not capitalist policies, but rather statist policies.
Ireland: Reading the description of Ireland, it sounded like aristocratic English landlords brutalizing tenants. I could not find a definitive claim about how the land was acquired, but it did not sound like capitalist acquirement of lands, but rather forceful appropriation. A significant factor was the inability of tenants to profit from improvements which could be taken away from them at anytime by the absentee landlords except in Ulster which then prospered more than the rest. It should be noted that the migration of the Irish to a much more capitalist society (US) is what helped minimize the deaths of the famines. This can certainly be a warning about potential dangers of massive land holdings and could arise from capitalist accumulation, but it is not clear that it actually was such a thing. Rather, it seems more akin to imperialist extraction.
Cuba: Not sure what you mean. Do you mean the various periods of famine under communist rule? Are you blaming the US statist policies of trade embargos? I found the following article to be a succinct and seemingly balanced history of Cuban farming in the past few decades: https://www.anywhere.com/cuba/travel-guide/agriculture Despite embargos, the US has supplied a lot of food to Cuba. Cuba got out of some of the worst famine by doing half measures towards privatized farming though they never let the markets really work as they should.
Dust bowl: I can't find any statistics about deaths. There was massive migration to more profitable areas which allowed these people to survive. It isn't pleasant, but it is better than starvation. This is how capitalism works when disaster strikes. It doesn't prevent the problems, but it does mitigate them by allowing people the agency to adjust their lives to maximize their chances for success. Is your blame on capitalism about the bad farming practices employed? I am not sure that any other governing ideology would have had different outcomes. But the farmers learned what needed to be done and have implemented it such that those conditions have not returned for almost a century. It should be noted that the 1930s time period coincided with strong federal government intervention in the economy as they implemented work restrictions, price controls, wage controls, and explicit governmental crop destruction policies. In fairness, they also implemented measures to deal with the underlying problems causing the Dust Bowl.
That would not be an accurate label. Nothing you wrote implies any economic system. Of course the society you describe would allow for capitalism, but it equally allows other models.
...in your estimation. I and many others would call it such, and with good reason. In our estimation it is capitalism that allows for other models, as long as they are peaceful and respect property rights.
Nothing about capitalism hinders you to follow your social instincts. You are free to share your possessions with whomever you choose. You can jointly own whatever you want with whomever you want. That is capitalism.
I can't run my own bank and abolish the capitalist system. I first need ten million dollars worth of capitalist money just to get started. Every clever path to eliminate capitalism from within is blocked through absurd licensing requirements by the government.
The amount of loopholes I have to go through just to end capitalism from within are ridiculous and can hardly be described as voluntary.
To abolish capitalism you need to provide cost effective liquidity, this means you will have to start an alternative money or payment system with a demurrage fee. The challenge is using existing constructs in the law to create something that cannot be banned by the government or the central bank. How voluntary...
After you have done that you must now gather members and build the actual payment network because liquidity isn't provided by money, it is provided by the people trading with money. This is in fact the easiest problem because demurrage currencies are superior competitors to the capitalist system which is why they had to the banned before world war two or else people wouldn't become polarized enough to want Nazis in power.
Third you will have to bypass banking regulations and somehow offer most of the services banks offer without a banking license. I haven't found any, de facto illegal. There is nothing voluntary about this.
Finally, you have to somehow convince the government to adopt the non capitalist system for tax payments. If you cannot do so, you must wreck your brain trying to find an incentive structure that is competitive enough to make people who have freshly received money from the government put it into your money system faster than they pull it out by paying their taxes. Again, the fact that the government forces all economic activity to go through the capitalist system is not very voluntary. If anything, it is lipstick on a pig.
I believe the banking loophole and the tax incentive structure can be solved but that only shows how fragile and ridiculous capitalism is, if an obviously superior system has so much trouble establishing itself even though it is superior in almost every respect and it is highly competitive.
