Anarchocapitalism = economic totalitarianism?

[Kaj]

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So "klepto-capitalism" replaced "klepto-socialism", right? Because all those assets were already in the hands of an elite, powerful group, right? Now you are being intellectually honest here, right? Concentration of wealth and power was already established in Soviet Russia long before the first reforms came along, right? Right?


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LFD is not pro-soviet, so you're not making a point here. Actually, it's pretty screwed up to blame anarchists for anything in the USSR, since stalinists executed, tortured, or imprisoned many anarchists. It's honestly the same as blaming the jews for hitler.

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I'm not implying he's pro-Soviet. Merely implying the concentration of power in Russia was far older than the introduction of capitalism. It was he who decided to use Russia as an example of capitalism gone awry.

[Kaj]

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simply pointed to the fact that just acquisition MUST BE a fundamental concern of ACers since the simple removal or implosion of the State can result in a country entering into a market economy where those who have strong amounts of power simply seize as much as they can get their hands on.

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True enough. And concentration of power MUST BE a primary concern for anarchosocialists who would resort to force to prevent such a situation. For the record, I'm not an ACist.

[SNOWBALL]

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They slaughtered us in Spain as well. [censored] commie fascists.

In fact among historically minded left-anarchists today I would say that the distrust of any group that identifies even remotely with strains of authoritarian socialism is greater than even their conservative opponents given that anytime in history that left-anarchists have said "look, we don't think that this whole dictatorship of the proletariat and gradual elimination of the State thing is gonna work, but since we both oppose the tyrannical system we live under, we'll go ahead and fight with you now and worry about how that will work later - if things get [censored] you can just let us live in AS world and you can have your State Socialist world" the authoritarian socialists have always, after coming into power, summarily imprisoned and killed anarchists that opposed their power structure - Russia, Spain, Cuba, etc.


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LFD,

Don't forget that the trotskyists were on your side in spain. Anyone who hasn't read it should read Homage to Catalonia by Orwell. It documents his volunteer service in a workers militia in spain during the civil war, and how he and his comrades were betrayed by the communists.
If you're super lazy, just rent Ken Loach's movie that's based on the story called Land and Freedom.

[latefordinner]

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I'm not implying he's pro-Soviet. Merely implying the concentration of power in Russia was far older than the introduction of capitalism. It was he who decided to use Russia as an example of capitalism gone awry.

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In all statist societies the concentration of power has gone awry, thus being opposed to statism, but you can't simply say smash the state and let the market sort it out, hence the entire discussion earlier in this thread about how corporations would or would not be reappropriated to the people. If we accept (which I don't nec) that the only reason so many corporations are economically larger than small countries and wield so much power in a market is because of state interventionist policies, especially in the heaily developed countries during the last century post - Industrial Revolution, then it is a problem of how do we deal with than in an AC transition. I also think the future generation problem is a corrolary of that issue - if we accept that any voluntary actions in a market economy will break up egalitarianism and result in wealth disparities, and that people can pass down their assets to their children if they wish, then we are accepting that even if AC could magically start off with an egalitarian distribution, that future generations must simply accept being born into a situation where they have tons of property or no property at all simply because of the wise decisions (or luck or greed or violence) of their ancestors.

[ShakeZula06]

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Capitalism has also always required a massive amount of people /not/ to own capital.

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Why?

[latefordinner]

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Homage to Catalonia

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Land and Freedom.

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I own both [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

The May Days were truly an appalling example of Stalinism at its finest and I think a strong argument can be made that the Communist massacre of anarchists and Trotsyists is a large reason why the fascists won.

[neverforgetlol]

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Capitalism has also always required a massive amount of people /not/ to own capital.

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Why?

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I don't know about massive, but for capitalism to be present you must have capital owners, who buy labor power, and those that must sell their labor power because they lack capital.

[Kaj]

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I'm not implying he's pro-Soviet. Merely implying the concentration of power in Russia was far older than the introduction of capitalism. It was he who decided to use Russia as an example of capitalism gone awry.

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In all statist societies the concentration of power has gone awry, thus being opposed to statism, but you can't simply say smash the state and let the market sort it out, hence the entire discussion earlier in this thread about how corporations would or would not be reappropriated to the people. If we accept (which I don't nec) that the only reason so many corporations are economically larger than small countries and wield so much power in a market is because of state interventionist policies, especially in the heaily developed countries during the last century post - Industrial Revolution, then it is a problem of how do we deal with than in an AC transition. I also think the future generation problem is a corrolary of that issue - if we accept that any voluntary actions in a market economy will break up egalitarianism and result in wealth disparities, and that people can pass down their assets to their children if they wish, then we are accepting that even if AC could magically start off with an egalitarian distribution, that future generations must simply accept being born into a situation where they have tons of property or no property at all simply because of the wise decisions (or luck or greed or violence) of their ancestors.

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I appreciate what your trying to say but it goes against the facts of human nature. Fine, give every one tomorrow the exact same amount of capital, the exact same amount of education, and the same job. By the end of the month, you'll again have rich and poor. What are you going to do then? Styeal it all back and try again? How many times are you going to repeat that until you realize you can only have wealth equality at the point of a whole lot of guns, and now how is that much different in practice than totalitarian communism?

[neverforgetlol]

No one said anything about doing that, we're just saying that the removal of capitalists will severely dismantle the class system, which is the real problem.

[ShakeZula06]

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Capitalism has also always required a massive amount of people /not/ to own capital.

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Why?

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I don't know about massive, but for capitalism to be present you must have capital owners, who buy labor power, and those that must sell their labor power because they lack capital.

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You pretty much just rephrased your original assertion. What about capitalism requires large amounts of people without capital?