How do you stop "capitalist acts between consenting adults"?

Question

I didn't see a clear answer to the initial question. We are in an anarchist society, and I have a lawn mower, a truck, and some lawn tools. I would like to hire you as my employee to mow people's lawns. The customers will pay me, and I will pay you.  Every party to these transactions is satisfied with them.  But anarchist society cannot tolerate this, because you and I are in a capitalist-proletariat relationship. I own the means of production, and you work them and sell me your labor. Capitalism has broken out!  How will you suppress it? If you use organized violence or threats on behalf of the community, you are a state and there is no anarchy.

Comments

interesting, from what you've written, it seems that actual engagement is the last thing you want.

you probably mean to be on the site alternative-capitalism101.org.

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"Any acquisition of property must leave enough and as good left for others" would mean, for me, that there can't be any acquisition of property - assuming I even wanted to abide by this concept in the first place. Any property ownership would inherently restrict my ability to live.

And who gets to decide what "enough" is? Why would property ownership ever be preferable to holding things in common? Why should we care what Locke has to say about anything? Why bother responding to this one comment and not the scores of others?

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I get that you don't like lawns and yard tools. I still haven't seen a response to my question.

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Thanks though. It's been fun. Sort of.

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I still haven't seen a response to my question.

 

No...none at all.

Answer 1

As to being in an 'anarchist society,' I'm uncertain as to what you mean, exactly.

I can tell you this, as anarchist who desires a deepening sense and expression of anarchy, I have no use for your tools which aid in creating and maintaining such a worldview as believing lawns and lawn-tools, are in the least bit necessary or desirable.

Since you wish to begin your thought-experiment entailing a budding Ancapistan within an actual anarchist milieu, I'd probably answer that If you try to fence me in by encircling me with your 'private properties', oh capitalist prick-tater, I do believe I'd fight you, rip-down your fences, and if I couldn't do it myself, I'd become affiliated with others to kick your ass away from me and all I love, given the poisons capitalism has offered in so many forms: slavery, enclosure, ecocide, genocide, colonialism; all grounded in a pathetic worldview where all relations become reified "things' to be bought, sold, destroyed, as long as it all adds up nicely to those who steal the most.

Which brings me to:

It's not so much that anarchists 'cannot tolerate' capitalist (anti-)social relations, as much as capitalist relations are neither social, nor do they even come close to hinting of 'anarchy.'

Answer 2

A person under threat of hunger or displacement cannot consent to being exploited economically, just like a person under threat of violence cannot consent to being exploited sexually.  The latter is rape.  The former is slavery.  Many people recoil from this simple, accurate comparison because they don't want to think of themselves as slaves.  Or slavers.

So, the apparent conundrum is an error in your premise.  The employee cannot consent to their own exploitation, because economic coercion precludes consent.  The employee's "satisfaction" at temporary relief from coercive economic pressure is akin to a rape victim's relief when the attacker leaves.

Comments

Visceral.  Succint.  Excellent.

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i initially upvoted this answer for the same reasons, cb, but something stuck in my craw and i'm still trying to figure out what.

i think that it's the word "exploit" when used for rape. i don't think rape is about exploitation (or at least not most of the time). and putting the two concepts together is loaded and conceptually dangerous, i think.

i appreciate the point that is being made, and i think i agree with it, but i still have that creepy feeling on the back of my neck.

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and on an entirely unrelated note, the original question obviously has a different definition of consent, so this whole answer wouldn't make sense to the OQ.

for it to make sense, there would have to be (more) agreement about the definition of capitalism, which neither side of this conversation is likely willing to shift on.

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We may have different definitions of exploitation, too.

To me, when a person uses a differential in power for their own purposes, to the detriment of someone else, that is an exploitative act.  That definition puts a cop angling for promotion through BS arrests, a rapist gratifying their desire for power & control, a CEO using imminent domain to destroy homes, and a slaver coercing labor from the economically oppressed, all in the same general category of "exploiters."

How do you use that word?

Edit: I don't mean to imply moral equivalence between all those acts. They are all bad, but differently bad.

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let's do this!
http://anarchy101.org/10412/how-do-anarchists-define-exploitation

;)

(also, i want to think about it more.)

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[random thoughts:]

k.lin::

"gratifying their desire for power & control"

I think that does, at the core, apply to every Thing we hate - sexist structures, capitalist structures, police state structures, monoculture, and on and on...
(Though there is always an aspect of fear in the agent, goading on that gratification.)

 

dot::

Yes, any mention of 'rape' definitely loads the conversation, but perhaps we are overly scant with our priming powder?  I freely admit my near-ignorance on the subject, (and am woefully trying to balance the experience of the individual, with the patterns aggregated over the broadscale of our societies), but i read your comments as meaning harm of one individual against another individual (personal or impersonal).

Yet systemic sexual exploitation sleets by us everyday - u.n. 'peacekeepers' accused of exploiting children for candy and favors (the latest in a long line of the same);  women in impoverished african towns trading the fishermen - sex for fish, because they have no other way to feed their children;  the near-endless litany of abuses from the orphanages and residential schools, run by both church and state, in nation after nation;  the coerced sex trade around us this very day - how can you consent to anything, with an empty belly and a roving addiction and violence at every turn?
(Blindspot??  i know it is for me, a common weakness?)

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rape is used for too wide a variety of types of interactions. the idea that every coerced sex act should have the same word is (among other less toxic things) emotional blackmail, demogoguery, and politically simplistic.

not saying that k.lin is doing anything bad (or maybe, not intentionally bad, or avoidably bad... whatever, k.lin's point is fine), just that our language options are fucked up, and the best i can do at the moment is point that out.

(maybe we need a question about rape? ugh :( )

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dot::

i think i over-generalised this.  k.lin and yourself both were speaking in the specific to start, it was me that dragged it into the general debris.

 

Maybe best to let it lie for now; but this keeps coming up in my mind - the interwoven complexities of individual acts of violence, the individual reactions to that violence, the effect of the social pressure to react with a prescribed level of outrage to some affront to social norms (without regards to the health or mind of the individuals involved.)

So much deadwood in that thornbush, needing to be cut out slowly and gently, before we can begin to make our way through...

But i fear that if we don't address the issue, both in broadscale and in detail, that it will remain a pressure point that can be used at will to manipulate many of us.  Someday soon, but not today.

Answer 3

ok, cl93, here you go:

as long as consenting adults are acting in ways that do not impact ANYONE that has not consented to those acts, i'd have no need or desire to stop them.

acts of capitalism DO impact others that have NOT consented to those acts, pretty much by definition. so, like anything else in this anarchist's world, those involved would be dealt with like anyone else acting in ways that have undesirable impact on my life. anything from a friendly discussion to violent death (of one or the other of us), depending on the specific context.

[made comment an answer, using super secret, ultra high tech hacking techniques along with tor. thanks dot! (for having a functioning brain when mine was on break.) ]

Comments

thank you for not responding to cl93, once again. :-)

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FA, you're awesome. i helped with ultra high tech hacking techniques!