If Anarchy can work, how come there are no historical records of it working?

[hawkeye]

I know all these utopian and ahistorical arguments of the so called ancaps very well, and I found, that most of these enthusiasts are employees, not self-employed. They even don't realise, that they are enslaved. They are too busy to think, while the real homines sapientes in the non-business-doing communities in the rain forests are dancing and living. This enthusiasm with production, markets and trade within a worldwide hypercollective has its origin in the christian labor (slave-) ethos, and the ancaps are unfortunate victims of this collectivist religion which is destroying the planet with exponentially increasing speed.  

For a start Ancaps are NOT utopians.

Yes, I am enslaved.  Here's how I define slavery.  Being forced to give up the fruits of your labours.  Having authorities tell you what you can and can't do, where you can and can't live and under what circumstances you will be permitted to earn money.    All of this comes not from any justified authority, merely from historical tradition which when you examine it closely is revealed as complete BS.  ie.  the situation we are in right now that ancaps seek to extricate ourselves and everyone else from.

And what does it matter if an ancap is an employee or self-employed?

If the real people are dancing and living in the rain-forests why not go join them?  Is it because it is a life of virtual poverty?  There's a reason most people don't do that kind of thing anymore.

[ktttn]

@MoonShadow
Sup with all the namecalling and aggression?

When did I call you an unsupported "name"?

However, your position (anarcho-communism) does not permit a dissenting sub-culture to exist.

Black and pink flag o'er here!

As a member of a union, you must have frustrations with union politics, unless youre the person folks are frustrated with.

All life is poitics.

Confirmed for scab union boss.

A global perspective, you don't have.
Get one.

Son, you really don't know me, and you are not guessing well either.

My gender's on my profile. I'd prefer kiddo. That "I dont know what capitalism is" is your whole arguement.

At yer local third world malwart manufacturing plant.

Capitalists see reds everywhere.

[myrkul]

@MoonShadow
Sup with all the namecalling and aggression?

When did I call you an unsupported "name"?

However, your position (anarcho-communism) does not permit a dissenting sub-culture to exist.

Black and pink flag o'er here!

Which is anarcho-communism with more glitter and assless chaps. (or tattoos, plaid and denim, depending)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-queer

[ktttn]

@MoonShadow
Sup with all the namecalling and aggression?

When did I call you an unsupported "name"?

However, your position (anarcho-communism) does not permit a dissenting sub-culture to exist.

Black and pink flag o'er here!

Which is anarcho-communism with more glitter and assless chaps. (or tattoos, plaid and denim, depending)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-queer

I took you off ignore to read this? WTF?
Not off topic example of anarchy working: Queer squats in urban decay. Queer zine libraries. I can go on, and on.

[myrkul]

@MoonShadow
Sup with all the namecalling and aggression?

When did I call you an unsupported "name"?

However, your position (anarcho-communism) does not permit a dissenting sub-culture to exist.

Black and pink flag o'er here!

Which is anarcho-communism with more glitter and assless chaps. (or tattoos, plaid and denim, depending)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-queer

I took you off ignore to read this? WTF?
Not off topic example of anarchy working: Queer squats in urban decay. Queer zine libraries. I can go on, and on.

Now that you have me off ignore, let me save you some time next time you get pissy with me:

<------ unignore button                                                                                                  Show post---------^

You won't have to take me off ignore to read what I've written.

And nobody has ever said that anarcho-communism doesn't work. In fact, it works great - for small, close knit groups like a particular city's gay community. Get beyond that "us," however, and it breaks down fast. Until it's no longer communism, or no longer anarchy.

[ktttn]

I know all these utopian and ahistorical arguments of the so called ancaps very well, and I found, that most of these enthusiasts are employees, not self-employed. They even don't realise, that they are enslaved. They are too busy to think, while the real homines sapientes in the non-business-doing communities in the rain forests are dancing and living. This enthusiasm with production, markets and trade within a worldwide hypercollective has its origin in the christian labor (slave-) ethos, and the ancaps are unfortunate victims of this collectivist religion which is destroying the planet with exponentially increasing speed.  

For a start Ancaps are NOT utopians.

Yes, I am enslaved.  Here's how I define slavery.  Being forced to give up the fruits of your labours.  Having authorities tell you what you can and can't do, where you can and can't live and under what circumstances you will be permitted to earn money.    All of this comes not from any justified authority, merely from historical tradition which when you examine it closely is revealed as complete BS.  ie.  the situation we are in right now that ancaps seek to extricate ourselves and everyone else from.

And what does it matter if an ancap is an employee or self-employed?

If the real people are dancing and living in the rain-forests why not go join them?  Is it because it is a life of virtual poverty?  There's a reason most people don't do that kind of thing anymore.

That reason is affluence and the ability and encouragement to exploit.
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secC2.html

"We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those the barbarous times, But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations." [Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, pp. 31-2]

Whoever labours becomes a proprietor --this is an inevitable deduction from the principles of political economy and jurisprudence. And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, --I mean proprietor of the value his creates, and by which the master alone profits . . . The labourer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he was produced." [What is Property?, pp. 123-4]

If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

[MoonShadow]

And nobody has ever said that anarcho-communism doesn't work. In fact, it works great - for small, close knit groups like a particular city's gay community. Get beyond that "us," however, and it breaks down fast. Until it's no longer communism, or no longer anarchy.

Specificly, any social structure is stable to Dumbar's Number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) but this has more to do with the fact that members share values and futher tend to value those relationships.  Beyond Dumbar's Number, only certain types of societies are stable, and all of them are either dependent upon human nature or maintained by the threat of force.  There is literally nothing in between that is stable beyond 3 generations.

[myrkul]

If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, voluntary trade of products and services - including those privately-owned means of production) works just fine in a stateless world.

[NewLiberty]

If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, voluntary trade of products and services - including those privately-owned means of production) works just fine in a stateless world.

On communism.
Marx also expected communism to result in a stateless world, and the withering away of the state, as people worked toward a common good without coercion, and that the state would disappear out of obsolescence, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
Seems naive today, but that was his idea.

[myrkul]

If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, voluntary trade of products and services - including those privately-owned means of production) works just fine in a stateless world.

On communism.
Marx also expected communism to result in a stateless world, and the withering away of the state, as people worked toward a common good without coercion, and that the state would disappear out of obsolescence, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state

He did, but Communism ends up requiring a State. That Dunbar number means that outside of a small community there are no common goals.
Henry Hazlitt wrote a fine critique of a Communist State, and explained why it is inevitable, in Time Will Run Back. An entertaining read, if you like discussions of economics (which I assume most of us here do).

[Biomech]

If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, voluntary trade of products and services - including those privately-owned means of production) works just fine in a stateless world.

On communism.
Marx also expected communism to result in a stateless world, and the withering away of the state, as people worked toward a common good without coercion, and that the state would disappear out of obsolescence, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
Seems naive today, but that was his idea.

Well, really Engels. Marx got the credit, but Engels was the brains of the outfit. Just couldn't write for shit, and good ol' Karl could

But yes, that was his goal. His means, however, don't work. He is elegant though. The communist manifesto is beautiful. Seductive, in fact. Unfortunate that it's core program just don't work.

I think his more anarchic contemporaries such as Bakunin and Kropotkin were closer to something real, but again their systems require that no one has any different ideas, thus it requires coercion and top-down hierarchies, while denouncing them.

(yeah, still here. Got delayed another day. Moving was so much easier when I didn't have a family )

[NewLiberty]

But yes, that was his goal. His means, however, don't work. He is elegant though. The communist manifesto is beautiful. Seductive, in fact. Unfortunate that it's core program just don't work.

It may not work, but folks are working toward it anyhow.
Marx/Engels may have had a more profound effect on US politics than many of his contemporary presidents.  Seems like we are following his playbook more than not:
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

[Biomech]

But yes, that was his goal. His means, however, don't work. He is elegant though. The communist manifesto is beautiful. Seductive, in fact. Unfortunate that it's core program just don't work.

It may not work, but folks are working toward it anyhow.
Marx/Engels may have had a more profound effect on US politics than many of his contemporary presidents.  Seems like we are following his playbook more than not:
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

politicians never let pesky things like reality get in the way of plundering us making our lives miserable surreal better.

[MoonShadow]

As a member of a union, you must have frustrations with union politics, unless youre the person folks are frustrated with.

All life is poitics.

Confirmed for scab union boss.

What?

A global perspective, you don't have.
Get one.

Son, you really don't know me, and you are not guessing well either.

My gender's on my profile. I'd prefer kiddo. That "I dont know what capitalism is" is your whole arguement.

My error on your stated gender aside, you don't know what capitalism is.  You can't define it in a coherent way.  If you could, I'd have something to work with.  In it's simplist form, capitalism is defined as private possession and control of the means of production.  It's really much more complex than that, and forms naturally from a known set of naturally arising default rules of humanity; but you have to start somewhere.  But capitalism isn't a political system.  Despite claims to the contrary, capitalism existed even in the Soviet Union at all times.  And I can prove that.  There is really no way to avoid it completely.

At yer local third world malwart manufacturing plant.

Capitalists see reds everywhere.

Who are you talking to here?  If you are still talking to me, I don't see 'reds' anywhere.  I've never even met a true communist that I'm aware of.  Forums on the Interent are the only places I've ever had conversations along these lines, and I've lived in Chicago and California. 

[ktttn]

As a member of a union, you must have frustrations with union politics, unless youre the person folks are frustrated with.

All life is poitics.

Confirmed for scab union boss.

What?

A global perspective, you don't have.
Get one.

Son, you really don't know me, and you are not guessing well either.

My gender's on my profile. I'd prefer kiddo. That "I dont know what capitalism is" is your whole arguement.

My error on your stated gender aside, you don't know what capitalism is.  You can't define it in a coherent way.  If you could, I'd have something to work with.  In it's simplist form, capitalism is defined as private possession and control of the means of production.  It's really much more complex than that, and forms naturally from a known set of naturally arising default rules of humanity; but you have to start somewhere.  But capitalism isn't a political system.  Despite claims to the contrary, capitalism existed even in the Soviet Union at all times.  And I can prove that.  There is really no way to avoid it completely.

At yer local third world malwart manufacturing plant.

Capitalists see reds everywhere.

Who are you talking to here?  If you are still talking to me, I don't see 'reds' anywhere.  I've never even met a true communist that I'm aware of.  Forums on the Interent are the only places I've ever had conversations along these lines, and I've lived in Chicago and California.  

I don't need a dictionary to spin, arm out, pointing in all directions, referring to the neoliberal capitalism rampant today, the capitalism that built railroads or the capitalism that came out of the dissolution of landed nobility.
I go to a commune or a co op and I see hippies, but I also see a basic building block for society.  I'm as much a communist as Bakunin.
Unions are a building block, too. Within capitalism, they devolve into union bosses and halfassery.
A guild or syndicate, on the other hand, are not subservient to a capitalist proprieter.
Edit: Can we talk about Slavoj Zizek now?
Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

[MoonShadow]

Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start.  What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form.  Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles. 

The first principle is this...

Who owns you?  Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself?  If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

[NewLiberty]

Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start.  What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form.  Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles. 

The first principle is this...

Who owns you?  Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself?  If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

True, but also don't ignore the validity of Kittn's point that:
The difference between the philosophic capitalism and what is in practice are not the same.  Using the same word for both is confusing.
"Communism" likewise.
"Anarchy" as well.
The terms are appropriated by popular culture and media.

[Biomech]

Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start.  What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form.  Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles. 

The first principle is this...

Who owns you?  Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself?  If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

True, but also don't ignore the validity of Kittn's point that:
The difference between the philosophic capitalism and what is in practice are not the same.  Using the same word for both is confusing.
"Communism" likewise.
"Anarchy" as well.
The terms are appropriated by popular culture and media.

This is the thing that frustrates the hell out of me. These words have specific philosophies behind them that have come to mean other things. I'm finally on the road today, but when I get back online I'm going to have written up a rather long treatise on my take on the subject(s). It's gonna start with working definitions.

As I've noted elsewhere, capitalism is an economic theory, not a political one. I am a capitalist, philosophically, because every system of economics out there is based on the mechanics of capitalism despite railing against it.

Kittn, your point is valid, but it's also proof of mine. Insomuch as the moneyed people had the LEGAL RIGHT OF INFRINGEMENT because of buying or subverting the political entities, they often screwed people over. Do gooders, regardless of economic beliefs, are the most dangerous people on earth because they will oppress the hell out of you on the (mistaken) premise that they know what's best for you. I would honestly rather deal with a straight up thief than a do gooder.

I suspect that New Liberty, Moonshadow, Myrkul and others in that vein have already done so, but Kittn and Zarathrusta (and anyone who hasn't) should read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith AND For a New Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard to get a better understanding of what ancaps and voluntaryists mean when we use the word capitalism. Otherwise we end up battling strawmen that you probably didn't mean to create.

It is an unfortunate truth that words often have multiple meanings, and that just as often leads us astray in our proposals and arguments.

[MoonShadow]

I suspect that New Liberty, Moonshadow, Myrkul and others in that vein have already done so, but Kittn and Zarathrusta (and anyone who hasn't) should read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith AND For a New Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard to get a better understanding of what ancaps and voluntaryists mean when we use the word capitalism. Otherwise we end up battling strawmen that you probably didn't mean to create.

It's too early for either of those books.  IMHO, anyone new to this realm of thought should read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and Whatever Happened to Justice? first, followed by Economics in One Lesson before trying to tackle either one of those volumes.

[ktttn]

Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start.  What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form.  Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles. 

The first principle is this...

Who owns you?  Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself?  If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

My body is an object, it is owned by me. The systemic, unidealized process of selling my labor for a wage or other price is not dissimilar to slavery. I cannot sell my labor for a fair price, because my labor cannot be returned to me. I can be coerced into selling my labor by circumstances beyond my control, namely the stigma of joblessness, the risk of homelessness and starvation, the boot of the cop, the irs agent and the soldier.
Who has a claim on my labor? Every living person has a fraction of a claim as long as they don't put me on their books as an employee.
Mutual aid, not greed or euphamisms for it drive the evolution of the world. Capitalism is dying.
Ive read and studied The Wealth of Nations. These ideologies are not new to me.
I prefer Murray Bookchin. Yall ought not patronize so hard.