stop using our words for your capitalist pig theories!

[Vagos]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll wait for the next nice here's-how-something-will-be flippin-awesome-in-our-AC-utopia thread to wade into the fray with my flamethrower

[/ QUOTE ]

AC isn't utopia though...in fact, it seems to me that socialist anarchism is the ULTIMATE utopia.

As for my own personal AC philosophy, I went from being Libertarian to ACist. I believe strongly in capitalism and concluded that a completely free market is one without a government. If that doesn't make me a "true" anarchist or whatever, I don't really care.

Anyways, welcome to the forum!

[almostbusto]

[ QUOTE ]
This Wikipedia entry might be something worth checking out.

[/ QUOTE ]


i can't believe this articles section on common property. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

this view of common property and public property have both been absolutely destroyed. They don't maximize freedom, as a libertarian might want, and they don't come close to maximizing welfare, as a utilitarian might want.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

A lot of ACists like to borrow from libertarians and/or economists but its funny how so many completely ignore so much theory

[John Kilduff]

I don't know much about anarchism, and my exposure has been limited to reading discussions of AC on this board.

Well, now I'm curious: in Classical Anarchism, how does Socialism fit in without a government? I thought Socialism requires a government for implementation purposes? (except maybe on very small scale, such a a family unit or perhaps a commune).

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
Yet on this board I find a lot of people talking about AC principles without ever reckoning with the extreme radical break that AC represents in terms of its relationship to the vast majority of anarchist thought.

[/ QUOTE ]

Call it something else, then. Don't get hung up on labels. Anarcho-Capitalism by any other name would still smell as sweet.

[Skidoo]

[ QUOTE ]
I find that compound phrase to be completely oxymoronic (as no doubt some of you would find the phrase "libertarian socialist")

[/ QUOTE ]

Reconciling anarchy and capitalism is improbable, though I think that is a misreading of the term. The way to make sense of "anarcho-capitalism" is to translate it as anarchy-of-capital-ism, meaning a system in which capital (i.e. wealth) is without restraint by the rule of law.

Maybe you will add a bit of much-need hole patching to the Swiss cheese of AC "theory" and liven up the debate around here.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
I've just never seen so many people in one place that reconcile anarchist thought and capitalist economics as sympatico rather than strongly opposed.

[/ QUOTE ]

The 2+2 community is of higher than average intelligence. One can expect a higher than average adoption of correct theory, particularly if there are vocal posters advocating that theory.

I have argued before that the steady rate of conversion of intelligent posters to free market anarchism (anarcho-capitalism if you prefer) constitutes prima facie evidence of its theoretical veracity, without reference to the theory itself.

[latefordinner]

now now almostbusto, we both agree that the US economy is on the verge of a monumental collapse and that the fiat currency system is ridiculous, so there's something to build on [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I agree that it makes sense to view anarcho-capitalism and libertarian socialism as divergent philosophies that grow out of extremely different backgrounds (and in some ways can be echoed in other fundamental Western philosophical splits such as Locke vs Rosseau) and that the rejection of capitalism that came to characterize both anarchist thought and authoritarian/vanguardist socialist thought came out of the analysis of capitalism that later came to be characterized as Marxist (though as with any philosophy was the product of many theorists) and I agree that any libertarian socialist needs to firmly (though I hesitate to point out that Proudhon was chucked out of the International for pointing out to Marx that his dictatorship of the proletariat idea was a recipe for disaster, that the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Civil War were sold out and massacred by the authoritarian socialists and also that most self-identified anarchists I know utter the word "socialist" to refer to authoritarians and vanguardists (the ISO, etc) with even more contempt than most of you) come to terms with why socialism and authoritarianism became so seamlessly wedded in a particularly awful way - (as I would point out that ACists also need to come to terms with why capitalism has led to many disasterous outcomes in many parts of the world and the particularly awful wedding of corporations and authoritarianism that characterizes the Fascist experiments of the 20th Century) -- if you can claim that the current tremendous concentrations of wealth and power are a result not of capitalism but of the State and you expect me to listen to you, then too I expect to at least encounter at least a slight entertainment of the possibility that libertarian socialism is in many ways the antithesis of the authoritarian and brutal regimes that came to be characterized as socialist in the 20th Century

I'm not interested in defining who is a "true anarchist" but rather in talking about what our visions of a future society could look like -- Unlike many anarchists, I think there are some important commonalities between social anarchism and AC and important political work that could be done together - eg, I have been involved in a free school project in the past that had a lot of AC types involved (though I have found in the past that the majority of AC are not interested in activist work) and while I don't believe in any "post-revolutionary" society where our respective Utopias will magically come into being, I do think that it's possible to envision a world where there are libertarian capitalist societies and libertarian socialist societies existing in relative proximity (and emphatically reject the notion that we can somehow theorize our way to the perfect prescription for an ideal society rather than continually building, trying, rejecting, accepting different things)

so in short, I don't particularly need a primer on neo-classical economics, the Austrian school, or Robert Nozick and I don't want to kick you out of the anarchist tea party -- I do think that believing that capitalism is 1) a sustainable economic system and 2) compatible with freedom are both wrong assertions and I'll make my points to that effect when I see them come up

I was just rereading some old threads and found myself wondering repeatedly if the people espousing AC views had a familiarity with classical anarchist thought or not as what they were expressing (eg; the importance of property rights in a free society rather than seeing property as antithetical to a free society) have been well covered in both classical and contemporary libertarian socialist theory

[Borodog]

Dude. Periods. Are. Good.

I ran out of breath just reading your post in my head.

[Borodog]

latefordinner,

We need to define our terms. If you don't mind, please define "capitalism" for me.

[latefordinner]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, now I'm curious: in Classical Anarchism, how does Socialism fit in without a government? I thought Socialism requires a government for implementation purposes? (except maybe on very small scale, such a a family unit or perhaps a commune).

[/ QUOTE ]

that's what the running pig dog lasseiz-faire crazies would have you believe (we would argue on the other hand that the massive theft and exploitation that characterizes global capitalism has always been made possible through violence and that in Statist societies the "legitimate" use of this violence is of course monopolized by the State so that capitalism has only been possible through the massive and continual use of State violence [insert 5000 AC rebuttal examples of thriving capitalist microeconomies that exist without the violence of the state and lots of theorizing about why a true capitalist society would all but eliminate large-scale violence here]

Enclosure (read: property, read: theft) is at the core of capitalism and while we can argue that maybe it is possible to go forward into our Great Capitalist Future without violence, it remains a historical fact that the original process of this enclosure was always violent in nature

(and of course I haven't touched on the inherent structural violence of a capitalist system, which resorts in death in so many ways - from starvation to the gradual and slow draining of life from being forced to be a 12 hour a day wage slave in a demeaning and boring job just so that you can pay rent (to the capitalist landlord) and buy food (from the elite that own the farms and so generously pay people to grow food on them so they can sell it)

but with that brief anti-capitalist aside -- tell me what what aspects of socialism that you think would require a centralized State to function and I can provide my thoughts on why that isn't so...otherwise, if you are in an open minded kinda browsing mood any google search for anarchism will reveal hundreds of pages that explore how various anarchist thinkers have theorized about what libertarian socialism looks like in practice

(though i would agree with you in terms of scale - but I would hope that any ACer would not be thinking about the nation-state as the most useful boundary for a socioeconomic system to function within either)