Czech workers during the communist era used to say “If you’re not stealing from the state, you’re stealing from your family” (“Kdo neokrádá stát, okrádá rodinu”)
The side effect of capitalism is that not only money becomes concentrated, but also power. Not only because money buys power, but because the one who ones the machines can dictate how the one who operates it works. Anarchism refutes the idea that one has power over another, and as such accumulation of money and not owning the means of production is antithetical to anarchism
This reminds me of a small organic farm owner who said something to the effect of “why can’t I just trade my extra produce with the farmer down the street who has extra eggs? And then I can use the eggs to make pastries and trade those with my neighbor who makes homemade clothing?” Someone responded, “congrats, you just invented capitalism.”
Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead. Storage and transmission of this value store could become useful trades in their own right.
This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition. In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
No, thats not capitalism but trade. You need to read up on what actually is capitalism and how accumulation of useful resources (wheat, cocoa, spice) is different from accumulation of money. Basically: it only makes sense inasmuch as you can consume the accumulated stuff, so a million ton of wood logs won't matter as much as one million ton of coins.
> This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
You're still thinking in a capitalistic world and you don't seem like you can't get out of it. The whole point of alternative economic systems is to produce enough for everybody. Such that needs are provided by the community. If everyone has what they need, why would there be a price on anything ? Why would more-than-enough wheat trade against more-than-enough wood ? It doesn't make sense. Trade happens because it's a way to solve scarcity, but the whole idea behind anarchism is to understand what is needed and make sure there is no scarcity there.
> In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force? Do you force the farmer not to grow anything?
In anarchism, all decisions are taken by everyone. No one forces anything on anyone. I know, it's a hard concept to grasp, but communities can think and decide what's best for them.
The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own. It's all about what is good for the group and what makes us go forward, together.
Nobody’s stopping you from starting a anarchist syndicate or commune or kibbutz or whatever. They are out there, but I don’t think they are any kind of utopia.
> radical projects tend to founder, or at least become endlessly difficult, the moment they enter into the world of large, heavy objects: buildings, cars, tractors, boats, industrial machinery. This is in turn is not because these objects are somehow intrinsically difficult to administer democratically; it’s because, like the DAN car, they are surrounded by endless government regulation, and effectively impossible to hide from the government’s armed representatives.
Concretely, for a collective to possess a car, they have to (by law) elect a president or whatever, to conform to undemocratic standards of corporate governance. It's literally impossible to do what you suggest in our current system.
Let's assume I start my own demurrage currency and division of labor, there is an obvious problem that if the project has any success whatsoever, it will be shut down by the central bank because I am stepping on their toes.
Even if the central bank is not banning my currency, I will still have to pay taxes in the national currency, I have absolutely nothing against paying taxes but the point of the entire idea is that taxes will be paid in the new currency, if there is a constant outflow of my currency into euro or whatever, then the demurrage currency will go out of circulation very quickly. This problem isn't unique to demurrage, it is true of any non legal tender currency but foreign currency has countries where the money can be used to pay taxes which gives it a leg up over any non national currency.
So now I must go to a tax haven even though I have no desire to avoid paying taxes. Most tax havens are islands that are incredibly far away from any continental mainland. The cost of living will be much higher because of shipping costs and exporting will be prohibitive for anything that with a short shelf life and isn't priced in whole euros per kilogram.
Even if I find a tax haven, I will have to migrate there and most tax havens are incredibly expensive to migrate to, requiring $250k of investments for permanent residence. Once I am there I will need to cover my own living expenses there. This means I am going to need a remote job or work in some tourist industry as anything else is nonviable due to the extreme distances and the lack of land to be self sufficient for the island as a whole.
Even if I successfully migrate, I will now need to buy my own land and start a land trust that charges a land value tax and pays out every resident a citizen's dividend.
Once I have done all that, I am going to need to start a regular business that competes in the capitalist system, because I cannot rely on the island to immediately recognize my currency as legal tender instead I would have it start out offering payment in both the national currency and the local currency while offering 0% financing in the local currency to encourage people to use it.
All of this is incredibly difficult, it will take decades of working in the capitalistic system to escape it and then there is the very real risk of it failing.
There is no way I can succeed at this. Everything is stopping me. I could try to skip doing this legally by conquering my own land with military force but that isn't what I believe in.
So what I have decided to do is try my luck and see how far I can go by planning to retire in one of those locations but I have no delusions that my plans will actually happen within a lifetime if I go at it individually.
> If everyone has what they need, why would there be a price on anything?
Will everyone really always have what they need, or is that a theoretical state that is actually very unlikely to be achieved? Also, is it in human nature (in general, discounting outliers) to be entirely satisfied and not want more, especially in relation to the people around you?
> The farmer can grow whatever they want, but if it doesn't benefit the community then they are on their own.
What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists? Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
Basically I’m curious how things would shake out in reality, compared to theoretic models that presupposes that everyone acts in the best interest of society as a whole (given that they can all agree on what that is), and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
> Will everyone really always have what they need, or is that a theoretical state that is actually very unlikely to be achieved?
Just like our current system, there is no guarantee that everyone will have all their needs met. What differs, though, is what happens when those needs aren't met. On one side all you can do is complain and hope, on the other you get to raise the point to the community and you share the power to solve the problem.
> What happens if more than just one farmer opts out of the anarchistic lifestyle, they embrace capitalism, and outcompete the anarchists?
An anarchist society will produce enough for everybody. You can't outcompete what is already available for free through the community.
> Could that ever reach a point where it would be necessary to stop them by force in order to preserve the anarchistic society?
If that's what the society decides, then yes. It's all about the community decides for themselves.
> and not themselves in particular (which I think is more realistic, on average).
That's actually not true, the myth of the individualistic human, sold with stories of the proud family man who is the only one on earth who's able to save their progeniture, is largely wrong.
>Someone responded, “congrats, you just invented capitalism.”
What? That isn't capitalism. Where is the obsession over owning all the land, all the farms, all the factories? These people aren't interested in capital, they just want to trade.
>Since eggs go bad and produce is heavy, maybe we could invent a durable “value storage” or “token” or “fiat” to trade instead.
Egyptians simply deposited grains at grain banks and obtained something akin to clay tablets. Those clay tablets had an annual storage fee because grains spoil. They had no capitalism because the nature of their money made them willing to trade without charging any extra fees that come from the superiority of money over goods.
The fact that we started with a system like that and had almost no trouble for thousands of years means the modern capitalist is more ignorant about the nature of money than even people 4000 years ago.
Or rather the opposite is the case, people are fully aware of the nature of money and how making it superior over eggs gives the money capitalist the ability to extort concessions from the farmer. Since money is necessary as a medium of exchange, the money capitalist can always refuse to trade until the economy is about to collapse because all the spoiling goods in the economy are going bad and producers refuse to replenish their stock until the people are suffering from starvation and then become ready to accept debt under even worse conditions. To prevent this from happening, you are going to pay that fee ahead of time, you are going to constantly borrow new money into the economy.
>This sounds like a very natural thing to do, almost like it would arise on its own without anyone having to _force_ this on anyone, as opposed to literally every other economic system, including your definition.
The government declares a single currency to be legal tender, that is effectively a state enforced monopoly. I honestly can't comprehend how people like you stick their head in the sand.
>In your “anarchism” how do you enforce the non-ownership of the means of production except by force?
Grains spoil, so that just means money must spoil and the easiest way to make money spoil is by eliminating the zero lower bound cash, either by abolishing cash which was introduced by force through the government so undoing it requires no additional force, alternatively the government can issue cash with an expiration date, which again just dials back the amount of force being used to issue risk free, perfectly liquid and costless cash.
>Do you force the farmer not to grow anything
Why the hell would I need to tell anyone to do anything? Telling the farmer to not grow anything is what the money capitalist does because that is how he gets to extort the farmer and break his spirit.
By the way, by money capitalist I mean anyone holding money liquid and immediately spendable without paying for that privilege and for the harm they are causing to society at large
I am honestly frustrated by comments like yours. Abolishing capitalism requires no force, no revolution, no deaths, no jealousy, no redistribution, merely a free market that actually lives up to that name, not a capitalistic market labeled as free market. In fact, capitalism itself leads to the abolishment of capitalism, hence the only problem that we need to solve is, once capitalism ends itself, how do we keep it that way instead of it devolving into a depression or another world war?
