A Case for Anarchism - Page 4

On March 11 2008 00:37 nA.Inky wrote:
Captain Murphy, you seem to take a very pro-capitalist position, yet identify with "anarchism." What is interesting to note is that most anarchists are highly critical of capitalism, just as they are critical of the state. This is not to say your position is "wrong." It is merely an observation, as you represent yourself as "anarchist" and most anarchists would not side with your post here.

The other thing is that you seem to spend all your post talking about free markets, when the main point of anarchy in general is to disable systems of rule, to work for the greatest possible freedom. You can of course argue that laissez faire capitalism is the best way to go about that, but from my perspective, arguing for laissez faire can, at best, only be a small part of making a case for anarchy.

As to free markets themselves, there is a good quote: "free markets mean that those who don't have enough money to buy what they need do not have a right to live." This is troubling to me, and to many other people. This does not, of course, mean I am automatically in favor of a welfare state.

Another thing that troubles me is that I see no reason to think corporations would be any more just or humane than governments. Indeed, much of what is going on today reflects the fact that governments are increasingly run in the interest of corporate power and profit. To think that corporations might run amok, completely free of regulation is scary for me. Whether it is corporations or the state, it is still the same people, and with the same goals. Neither case looks particularly good to me!

Anarchy means "no rule." It is an ideal, an extreme, and an abstraction - a pure thing with no basis in reality. Still, we can be closer or further from the purity of anarchy. If you identify as an anarchist, and you favor laissez faire, you have to make the case that laissez faire better matches anarchy than some other school of anarchy (and there are many).

Anarchists are, of course, critical of power. Anarchists want freedom from coercion. Along these lines, anarchists are critical of the state. It makes sense. Why should the government have all this authority over us, to tax us, to wage war in our name, etc? But is the state the only source of domination and coercion? Of course not! So what other structures or institutions might exist that perpetuate coercion and domination?

Anarchists tend to see heirarchy in general as the problem. With heirarchy comes domination and coercion. So, as a laissez faire capitalist, you have to make the case for laissez faire being the system that best reduces heirarchy.

Now, we all know that capitalism concentrates wealth and power - this has always been true. This lends itself directly to heirarchy. Those who own the means of production own the means to life; they hold all the bargaining chips. Those with nothing must surrender to those who have everything, or else die. Power corrupts.

So, most anarchists agree with you - the state must go. But they take the critique further. Capitalism concentrates wealth and power, and sets the stage for domination and coercion. Therefore, capitalism must go, too.

Anarchist critique can go even deeper than this. Some anarchists argue that technology itself leads to domination. Consider time, which is a technology, and how time is used to dominate and coerce. Time itself is used to synchronize the movements of masses of people - something obviously useful to large scale heirarchical systems. Some anarchists argue that agriculture was the step that led to massive imbalances of power, so they argue for a return to the "primitive" state.

My point here is not to advocate any particular position at all, but to point out that anarchism is about eliminating rule, eliminating heirarchy and domination and all that stuff.

What you seem to have done is read up on economic theory, and base your anarchism entirely on the economic sphere. This is a good first step, but to think that domination and coercion are located only in the government is short sighted. Look beyond economics. I recommend getting into sociology and culture studies, and you'll see many other dimensions to critiques of power.

On the other hand, you may freely admit that laissez faire is not really anarchist, but is still the best possible solution to X problem. Many people do this, just as many people would prefer the state to whatever "real" anarchy might be.

can you elaborate on what quasi-socialist means? I haven't met a single liberal who didn't believe in the free market.

On March 11 2008 03:40 nA.Inky wrote:
I'm not sure you read me closely. I was not talking about efficiency of production for any good. I was talking about anarchist critique. We can disagree on the meaning of "anarchy," but if you take it to mean "without rule/rulers," which is how it is used in most anarchist literature and the vast majority of anarchist schools of thought, then anarchy must be critical of power in general, whether corporate or state or otherwise. Efficiency is not at issue.

I'm not arguing here with your economic thinking at all (I don't agree with it, but I'm not arguing it.) I am arguing that what you present as anarchism does not best represent anarchy. It is anarchist in the sense that it dispenses with the state. But again, if you take anarchy to be a state without rules and rulers, a state without domination or heirarchy, it must go beyond the state. The state is not the only thing that has ever dominated and oppressed people. Theoretically, an anarchist thinking might be used to critique some unknown african tribe just as quickly as it would critique capitalism or a particular government.

Well, I am unconvinced. In history "no state authority" has led, in almost all cases, to "bad anarchy" rather than "good anarchy", so I think the position is defensible that the objective to just discontinue government is a silly one. If you want market anarchy, it is hardly as simple as that. It is so complicated, in fact, that I wonder if it's not best to let go of the idea entirely and to be satisfied with what we've got - a democratic society is an immense improvement over both "bad anarchy" and oppressive government - worth the trouble even of fighting civil wars over it. How much better is market anarchy than democracy?

Of course, you might think that after everybody has been "properly" educated, it will actually be as simple as discontinuing government, as everybody would then proceed to do the right thing. Unlikely, but I'll concede that perhaps then we might at least have a shot at a more coordinated effort to create a stable anarchist society.

At any rate, education shouldn't hurt, and we should be able to talk about things, but I don't think the circumstances here are right. Our government today is everywhere. It does so many things! Many bad things I'm sure, but also many things that people will hold crucial for a well-functioning society. There isn't enough space here in a single thread to go through every issue and convincingly argue that government intervention there is not only not crucial but also not desirable. Assuming, of course, that said position is even possible to convincingly defend.

What you might do here is plant a seed of doubt. People might concede that coercion and extortion are not the most elegant solutions to society's problems. They might be willing to investigate whether - at least for one particular issue - "laissez faire" might magically do just as well as government intervention or perhaps even better. There is, however, a not entirely unreasonable fear that if we don't do anything about certain kinds of problems, disaster follows. To break through this, you will have to argue rigorously. A few light lines here and there as response won't do. You need sound theoretical arguments backed up by solid research (but at least do some paragraphing ).

I propose the following. Every so often, you will highlight one especially irritating (to you) government intervention in your blog (or take requests). We will then try to gather facts and discuss whether it is a crucial or unwelcome intervention. If we take our time and give the opposing view an honest chance, we might actually see this go somewhere. Your job is done when you have demonstrated that every government intervention is unwelcome. Perhaps then we can talk about controlled anarchy and PDAs.

For example:

- How will roads get built?

- How will people get educated?

etc. Dedicating a couple of days and a thread to a smaller issue will make it much easier for us to have meaningful discussions.

On March 11 2008 04:03 nA.Inky wrote:
To offer more of my own political perspective, in case you are interested, Murphy, I'll say this:

I think the problem is deeper than capitalism or government or communism or what have you. It has to do with how humans relate to other humans. We run into problems when there is too great a division of labor, or too many middle men. What happens is that causes are very isolated from their effects. This causes a breakdown in morality. This causes an erosion of humanity. This is why, I believe, welfare states don't work. This is why communism didn't work. This is why capitalism today is not working (unless your idea of "working" means having a lot of consumer merchandise available.)

Even pure capitalism will have this flaw if it is practiced on a large scale. If you look into health issues and things of that nature before certain regulations took effect, you'll see that capitalist firms had no problem with poisoning their consumers, offering up all kinds of dangerous products. You'll see that people worked in extremely unsafe working conditions. The free market does not protect people. IT does not necessarily give them what they want.

Of course, today, with regulations and so on, in some ways things have improved, but there are ways to circumvent the system. The issue is not government or corporations - the issue is scale. Things are so big now that there is an erosion of humanity. People will sacrifice the environment, or human and animal wellbeing in the interest of profit, and they can and will consistently get away with it.

Communist governments were no better - perhaps worse.

In short, I am not invested in communism or capitalism... I see big problems with both. I think a lot of it has to do with scale. I don't see this in black and white, but there is some level of technological development, some level of division of labor, etc, that leads to big problems.

I'll say here at the end that I would be very skeptical of any school of thought that passes itself off as absolute. Nothing is perfect. Laissez faire is not perfect. It is tempting in its purity, but there is no purity. No pure state. We cannot devise some philosophy and say "this is perfection - if only things were this way, all would be well." Such philosophies are tempting because they free us of responsibility. We can just fall back on God, on Laissez Faire, on Communism, on Anarchy, and say "well, this is the way it is meant to be... it's perfect. If you have a problem with it, it's probably you that is the problem."

There is no purity. There is only gray, and we must continually find balance in a shifting world.

On March 11 2008 04:43 Ancestral wrote:
Captain Murphy, again your arguments are always well prepared, but since I have finals this week, I haven't the time to read all of them.

However, as to my previous post, our positions are less different than you think. I think the state is an outdated relic and will inevitably be abolished; the reason I say you are coming to fallacious conclusions based on pro-mixed market / big state views is that in order for good debate, you have to see that the other side is not entirely unreasonable.

For many people in western nations, the current system has worked reasonably well. And it's due to the current system we have. It's very flawed, but it does not reduce to the ridiculous situations you're describing. Unless these are rhetorical tools. If there's one thing I love, it's high rhetoric. But just dismissing alternate arguments as you are doesn't seem good for progress or understanding.

On March 11 2008 06:58 geometryb wrote:
i don't read every post in here so i don't know if you've mentioned anything about these but i'll just name a few important issues that markets can't address.

markets don't address emissions
the governance of the open seas, skies, or space
climate change
endangered species
ecological devastation (overfishing, pollution, water use)
murder, theft, and other crimes
protection of intellectual and private property

On March 11 2008 07:02 CaptainMurphy wrote:

What I've said several times is that this blog is not meant to discuss specifics, you can check my first blog for that, or you can check this link:
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp
Short answer: the market can address all these concerns.

On March 10 2008 15:36 CaptainMurphy wrote:
Note: I will no longer, in this blog entry, be entertaining questions that fall under the the format "how would good so-and-so be provided if not by the state?" My answer to all these is simply that the private sector can provide it more efficiently. The burden of proof is on you to argue why a particular good should be taken off the free market and given to a coercive monopoly. You cannot take this as a premise unless you are advocating communism. If people do want to bring up these questions, I would point them to my first blog entry, where all conceivable situations of the aforementioned type have already been raised. For the anarchist perspective on the provision of the most commonly disputed points, I direct you to this link:
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p215
See Chapter 12 on police, the law, and the courts.

There already are private defence agencies and they only protect those who can afford them. Why don't they serve the poor.

The rich already have better security and the gap will only get bigger with free market. Thats right the poor have to rely on the cops. Better then nothing what they will get in anarcho capitalism where the PDA are more likely to be their muggers. The goverment provides services people would be deprived from in the free market. The goverment maintains these services to be available to everybody. So also to the people who can't afford it privately.
The free market makes write offs. I don't expect charity to help people with their basic needs. Millions of people will be living at the grace of the whim of their benifactors who factually decide if they are worth to live another week.

i read it. i couldn't find the answer. i don't see how the market can address any of the issues. could you plz explain it to me?