Is anarcho-capitalism an anarchist school of thought?

Question

Is anarcho-capitalism an anarchist school of thought?

Okay, that is your view on anarcho-capitalism, but it is different to remove the comments and answers from anarcho-capitalism. This means as anarchists, you don't accept anarcho-capitalists(some sort of grudge against the ideology). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but then is anarcho-capitalism not allowed to be discussed on this site?

You were assuming that the quote from "about us" is relevant to the question I asked, but it clearly isn't if I am not an anarcho-capitalist.

and the fourth have been comments and answers by people who call themselves anarchist capitalists. Posts by so called nationalist anarchists will also be removed. This should really go without saying, but there we are.

This would only be relevant if I referred to myself as an anarcho-capitalist.

commented Jul 21, 2016 by Zer0 (290 points)

not only does capitalism require the state, it requires a state of mind, a morality, which is authoritarian to its core, and not only encompasses other humans, but all lives and relations. that which cannot be reified into a commodity and exchanged is irrelevant (as 'mere subjectivity' for instance) or dispensed with altogether (wiped out). as much as crapitalists claim otherwise, this morality is hardly value-free and contains very euro-centric, rationalistic, white-supremacist, imperialist/colonial roots and stems.

these latter realities are exactly why they've clung to and expanded upon the absurd Lockean 'homesteading' myth. it allows them to cherry-pick those realities and place each in the Good slot (capitalism) or Evil slot (the State) according to their cartoon-ish manichean worldview.

commented Jul 21, 2016 by AmorFati (7.5k points)

af, i definitely agree with the gist of your post. but one thing you mention raises questions for me. the "euro-centric" aspect.

some of the core elements of capitalism that i find repulsive - accumulation of material wealth, the assumed "right" to completely impose upon and enslave other living beings and ecosystems in order to accumulate that wealth, etc - go way further back in history than anything that i would consider euro-centric. every known "civilization" i am aware of exhibited those behaviors (possibly to varying extents). and most of them were primarily non-white. of course i am not arguing the reality of the white-supremacist imperialism that has dominated much of the planet for the past couple millenia; i am simply questioning the association of that (white supremacy et al) with those long established capitalist/domination tendencies in every civilization that i am aware of.

have i misunderstood your point there?

commented Jul 21, 2016 by funkyanarchy (13.4k points)

funky@, i won't disagree with your points here totally. yes, i do see that many elements of capitalism arose in various other places and peoples, but much the same can be said of catholicism, no?

capitalism as a formulation cannot be separated from euro-colonialism/imperialism, -religion (be it missionary activity and/or a general disenchantment of the world),-rationalism (science/technology), -political forms (representational democracy in particular), -educational systems (the university), etc., all of which coalesced in europe.

all of this can be interpreted as a sense of euro-superiority/-centricity to be internalized by former colonized peoples. we can hear this in their language of 'development,' 'higher standard of living,' 'prosperity,' 'economic independence,' 'democracy,' 'innovation,' 'competing in the global market,' and so on.

capitalism seems to me very much grounded in a particular (euro-derived) way of seeing and relating every bit as much as outright political dominance.

commented Jul 21, 2016 by AmorFati (7.5k points)
edited Jul 21, 2016 by AmorFati

"I know of an anarchist(at least calls himself one) that believes capitalism is compatible with anarchism because he believes anarchism is only opposed to the state."

and even this oft-repeated assertion undermines itself as do most ancap assertions. why? for the simple fact that capitalism has not once arisen spontaneously among people without a state. either capitalism has involved a state undermining its own inhabitants as in the case England's enclosure movement or a state has colonized another people, thoroughly pilfered the land and left little other choice but joining the 'global market' via sweatshops, shitty mining operations and factories, etc. in other words, capitalism is always outright state policy or comes in the wake of state action.

commented Jul 22, 2016 by AmorFati (7.5k points)

zer0: if you are saying there was no answer to this question:

"Does owning some means of production individually require a state?"

then you are looking for a yes or no (binary) answer to a question that, for critical thinking anti-capitalists, is much more complex and nuanced than a yes/no answer could possibly provide.

embedded in that question is a host of assumptions about production (and therefore consumption), ownership, statehood, capitalism, and economic systems in general. those assumptions are rejected by a number of critical thinking anarchists that do not confine themselves to the left/right binary. that seems to be something you are unable to get past.

edit:

if, instead, you were referring to this question:

"Why would capitalism need the state to survive?"

then you clearly did not read the links i posted, or you are purposely ignoring what was said in them. if you read them and disagree, please do elaborate.

commented Jul 25, 2016 by funkyanarchy (13.4k points)
edited Jul 26, 2016 by funkyanarchy

"embedded in that question is a host of assumptions about production (and therefore consumption), ownership, statehood, capitalism, and economic systems in general. those assumptions are rejected by a number of critical thinking anarchists that do not confine themselves to the left/right binary. that seems to be something you are unable to get past."

I don't care how many "critical thinking anarchists" reject certain assumptions. The left-right binary isn't a box you think inside of, it is just a way to categorize peoples political philosophy(I don't see how this relates to my question anyways).

The marked answer on that question didn't answer why capitalism requires the state. It assumes that since the state and capitalism both operate on institutions of operations, then they both must need each other. I was expecting an answer like, private property is a legal status, so by definition, it needs a state to enforce property rights for private ownership. That, of course, has its own assumptions as well(but more valid ones).

commented Jul 26, 2016 by Zer0 (290 points)

Good. Then, to muddy the waters: Anarcho-capitalists don't actually mean remotely the same thing as do anarchists when they say capitalism. What they mean is free trade on an unregulated market. You can attack this definition on a few grounds, but especially on the grounds that the market requires the state, however this is an essentially stupid thing for anarchists to do as it just gets off into the weeds and let's the anarchist feel smug having bested another of those ignorant ancaps.

My position on ancaps is that they are the right wing equivalent of the spot on the Venn diagram where left anarchists and non-anarchist left radicals overlap. Some ancaps are just market libertarians and some are actually "post-right" anarchists using radically different language because their heritage is from an entirely different place than post-left anarchists. Like all the post-left anarchists who have all kinds of feels surrounding anti-oppression politics and rape culture, post right anarchists have all kinds of feels around free markets and men's rights.

Post-left anarchists basically never get to see this, though, because the conversation gets lost in the foundationally incompatible languages of the two groups, and that these interdenominational arguments happen on the internet, because their social ties are to different groups and thereby are never given cause to be in a room together.

commented Jul 26, 2016 by StrawDog (1.4k points)

" I was expecting an answer like, private property is a legal status, so by definition, it needs a state to enforce property rights for private ownership. "

that would have been a decent answer to the question "why does capitalism rely on the state?" yet, if you have expectations about answers, it says something about your motivation for the question.

apio ludd's answer to that question :

"Because, being based an an accumulation of capital (i.e., wealth) into the hands of a few people at the expense of the rest, it requires the accumulation of power into the hands of a few people operating through a system of institutions of domination in order to protect the accumulation of wealth. This system of institutions of domination is what constitutes the state, and without it, the accumulation of capital necessary to capitalism would be implausible, if not impossible, simply because people wouldn't be that likely to put up with it."

zer0's interpretation:

"The marked answer on that question didn't answer why capitalism requires the state. It assumes that since the state and capitalism both operate on institutions of operations, then they both must need each other."

seriously?

commented Jul 26, 2016 by funkyanarchy (13.4k points)

Anti-state capitalism proposes a different sort of governmental relation, but a very, very similar set of economic relations. Significantly, virtually all capitalists agree that what critics have called exploitation is actually a legitimate distribution of the fruits of industry and commerce. Now, the explicit anarchist tradition began, or very nearly so, with Proudhon and a critique of capitalism and governmentalism as two examples of the same kind of exploitation. In order for anti-state capitalism to be included among the forms of anarchism, that critique would have to be abandoned and some other defining critique put in its place. But there just doesn't seem to be any coherent, specific critique of governmentalism or statism that would not also exclude the capitalism that the "an-caps" still support.

commented Aug 8, 2016 by humanispherian (450 points)

OK, I see why dot suggested I not answer any more questions.

I propose for your consideration that capitalism rests on a fundamental belief that a person can justly claim ownership of property acquired without any productive labor on his or her part.

As Proudhon states, such people are non-productive members of society. Parasites. They take the fruit of labor of others without exchanging for it anything of real value. They represent a net cost to society, a drain.

In a just, fair society, says Spooner, who claims that all humans have an innate sense of justice, each participant is given his due. The man who doesn't make anything using his own labor -- in the form of physical and intellectual work -- is due nothing. The only way they can actually live in a just society is by alms or robbery. In current times the robbery is done through the force of the state.

So I disagree with dot and AmorFati when they suggest (if I understand correctly) that market = capitalism. In a just market labor is exchanged for labor; labor alone creates value and can justify ownership of property by the one who brought it into existence or traded fairly for it with total transparency and honesty.

I can be a free-market anti-capitalist.

commented Aug 18, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

i don't necessarily see markets = capitalism, although i do see markets (as idea and activity) as arising only within the context of a civilizing process, which has never been 'voluntary,' and everywhere has sought to become totalizing in scope. ingrate put forth fredy perlman's Againt His-story, Against Leviathan which i see as relating to this very point.

i'm very much aware of the free-market anti-cap movement (ex: C4ss.org) which proposes a market economy outside both state and capital, but i still see such a movement as refusing the core issues of civilization and technological systems . this is why they often rely upon the retrospective hypothetical mythos of 'homesteading' to justify what 'the state,' that is, civilizing, has already done for them...always violently. here, they're no different than capitalists, they just feel sorta bad for the outcomes.

commented Aug 18, 2016 by AmorFati (7.5k points)

RE: Perlman. So far I've only read the first 3 chapters and the very last chapter, and skimmed middle parts, but here are some reactions to it:

Perlman: Chapter 3:

« The surplus product, the famous margin, did not give rise to the Leviathan. On the contrary, it is the Leviathan that gives rise to the margin. Communities of human beings needed this margin no more than communities of wolves.

Bees need a margin to feed their queen. The Leviathan needs a margin to feed, not only the gods and their shrine keepers, but mainly the Lugal and the Ensis and the Scribes as well as all the springs and wheels with which to make war. »

Me:

Not so clear what gave rise to what, Leviathan and surplus product. The truth in Perlman's statement is that the Leviathan needs the surplus to feed is non-productive parts, and therefore works to make sure there is a large surplus within its grasp. But I maintain that there can also be surplus without the non-productive parts (Lugal, Scribes, etc.). Simply by the self-organizing division of labor that happens when individuals actually try to matter to each other. Growth of non-productive elements at the expense of productive elements would actually make the creation of surplus very difficult (it is only created by the productive elements) and forced division of labor is much less efficient in production than market-guided differentiation and specialization according to individuals' relative strengths and weaknesses.

I agree that we don't need surplus production. But it is a natural by-product of division of labor, which is the result of individuals' efforts to "fit in", to find a useful, non-competitive niche in the social ecosystem. There's no way to stop surplus -- except by the suppression of freedom.

Chapter 24:

Perlman: « They want to be taken in because they share the European longing to be something other than what they are, at least in appearance. They do not want to see themselves as zeks but as buyers and sellers, as Businessmen, even if they have nothing to sell but their labor power. »

Here's how I would re-write that bit:

They share the universal longing to be something other than they are, in truth. They do not want to see themselves as meaningless but as useful and helpful to other things, as Businessmen ; they can do that as equals because the only thing anyone has to offer another is his or her labor power.

commented Aug 20, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

continued....

Perlman, still in Chapter 3:

"Trade is very old. In the state of nature, trade is something people do to their enemies. They don’t trade with kin."

A very narrow view of trade. If he saw, as I do, trade = exchange, he might see that trade is simply mutually empowering interaction and communication: Joe offers Bill this product of his own effort and intelligence; Bill might not actually need this product in the strictest sense, but does see some worth in it. So Bill shows how much he values Joe's work by offering in exchange a product of his own effort and intelligence of equal value. Maybe, just a trade of a smile for a smile. Joe might say, If that's all its worth to Bill I'll look for someone else who could use a smile more than Bill. Have you ever given a gift and then the receiver just tosses it aside with a shrug? Not very satisfying for the giver. Antisthenes apparently advised to only make love to someone who will thank you for it.

Perlman continues:
"A person gives things, just as she gives songs or stories or visions to her kin. The receiver may or may not reciprocate on some other occasion. The giving is the source of satisfaction. We will be so far removed from this, we will not understand. That will be our shortcoming, not hers.

She trades only with enemies. If a hostile group, whether near or distant, has something she wants, she and several well-armed cousins go to the hostiles with something the hostiles might want. She offers her gift, and the hostiles had better offer the thing she wants on the spot or she’ll carry her gift right back to her village."

I think people - at least as much as possible (which is a lot when someone is fine with simple living) -- just want to trade with people they like. Maybe with enemies in the hopes of making them friends.

Satisfaction in giving with no expectation of reciprocal giving? Undeniable. But here Perlman has no empathy with the receiver. There is much more satisfaction in giving than receiving. So isn't a straight-up gift a little selfish? What about the pride and dignity of the receiver? What about, at the very least, giving a gift and, rather than saying or implying "I'm a good person, but you can't really give me anything I would want," how about giving a gift and saying, "I am not giving you this out of pity or a desire for the satisfaction of giving; it is payment for what you give me. I want you to know how much you mean to me."

commented Aug 20, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

"You can see that over half the grain in the storage bins rots every year, unused. And you know that in the Zargos Mountains and in the Levant there are camps of foreigners who rarely store enough food to tide them through a hard winter. Those in the Zargos Mountains wear beautiful fur garments, and those in the Levant derive a purple dye from shells.

You, a Priest’s brother and an Ensi’s cousin, set out toward the Zagros Mountains with forty zek-drawn cartloads of grain, a years output of forty zeks. You go at the end of a long, hard winter. You get ten fur robes for every cartload. They claim not to have so many furs. Perhaps it has dawned on them that they are being plundered, that the relation they’ve established with you is not a relation between their furs and you grain, but between themselves and the zeks who harvest the grain, and that you are a thief who is stealing from both.

So you rush back to Ur with your grain and return to the foreigners’ camp with you cousin the Ensi and a band of well-armed men. The Ensi’s men remove the robes from the foreigners’ backs. There still are not enough robes, so the Ensi’s men return to Ur with several of the foreigners’ sons and daughters.

Ur has progressed to the stage of engaging in foreign commerce."

Come on Perlman ! this does not fit all "trade" and "business," not even the vast majority of it. Only what everyone would call "unethical" trade and business. Is ethical exchange so unimaginable?

There is a hidden key in Perlman's wholesale condemnation: a notion of trust. they "claim" to not have so many furs. Not that the wheat isn't worth so many furs. Why don't they say, "your grain is so appreciated that we'll do our best to supply you with furs over the next several years to thank you." Then it boils down to trust/distrust. Look: Perlman says perhaps they've figured out their true relationship is with the zeks who actually produce the grain -- and you really take more value than you add. If so, then you are just a thief, a bad-guy, and they will, when possible, find a way to weaken you.

I can assure you that ethical business and trade does exist. But in my experience, ONLY BETWEEN SELF-EMPLOYED BUSINESSMEN WITH NO EMPLOYEES OR ENFORCEABLE DEBTS.

I know because I live my convictions. I have negotiations with partners wherein we argue to pay MORE than what is asked. We give CREDIT in payment terms (here's my product, you pay me later) and structure deals according to PROFIT-SHARING (here's my product, rather than a fixed price, you give me a share of what you can get by adding value to it). Our deals are NON-ENFORCEABLE; we only write up contracts in order to not forget what we've agreed to, since we are hoping for long-term relations and distrust our own memories.

We find meaning in doing something for one another. It is why I get up in the morning. I can look at myself in the mirror and ask "give me one good reason not to kill you." And respond "because X is counting on me to do Y."

There are many, many people who don't get it. They are employees and employers. Yeah, they are bound by constraints to each other within their self-imposed forced-labor camp. They don't have the flexiblity or the pride to really do ethical business in any sustainable way. They make a distinction between work and life; they try to separate family and business. The self-employeed does not do that.

commented Aug 20, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

Perlman:

"A businessman is a human being whose living humanity has been thoroughly excavated. He is by definition a person who thrives in, an on, the Leviathan’s material entrails. People reduced to things are amongst the objects in the beast’s entrails and are obviously fair game to this hunter of profits. The businessman’s axiom, long before Adam Smith will publicize it, is: Every man for himself and the gods against all."

I just wonder where Perlman gets the authority to make such a claim. I would replace the first sentence with "To the extent a company or community is large in numbers of individuals its living humanity has been thoroughly excavated." That seems obvious, becaused fused humans make something that isn't human. People reduced to things? I would suggest an inversion of attitude to Things (at least legitimate, tradeable property) recognized as the embodiment of bits of the lives of people. If such is fair game to the hunter of profits, then this hunter of profits is not very ethical and needs to be weakened. Doesn't make business bad in itself. Only the wrong attitude in business is demeaning, cruel and evil.

commented Aug 20, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

Perlman:

« All the sweat and labor expended hourly in the beast’s entrails presupposes the beast’s perpetual existence. The notion of a Progress that culminates in a final collapse is Christian but not Leviathanic. The notion is of a piece with Christianity’s commitment to the absurd, and is not altogether absurd if life is considered a vale of tears. But for Leviathan such a notion is contradictory, and Leviathan is an eminently logical entity.

Leviathanic existence, a vale of tears to Christians and outsiders, is to Leviathan a paved highway, and Progress along this highway cannot lead to an Apocalypse but only to more Progress.

Leviathanic self-consciousness expresses itself in the currents of thought known as Enlightenment, Illuminism, Masonry, Marxism, plus a few others. These currents supply the all-swallowing beast with a language suitable to its last days. »

I am a Businessman. Yet I see no capital-P-Progress ; this is a big problem I have with most thinkers I read, as they seem to see an ultimate goal towards which the « March of Progress » is leading mankind. I see Perlman's absurd « final collapse » as inevitable. We are going to die. All life will cease. But that is an empowering thought : it makes crying and worrying and pants-wetting seem silly. We can die with dignity. Go out with a fight as brothers and sisters in arms against the infinite improbability of free-will. If we follow the greedy then life will cease with shame and regret, before we even know it's gone.

commented Aug 20, 2016 by Syrphant (600 points)

Dang it! That post by Marv had me riled up enough to write this, but by the time I finished, the moderators had taken down the post after only 20 minutes. Didn't want my mini-rant to go to waste, so here it is.

Marv, you need to ask a question instead of making a series of statements based on a complete misreading of actual history, and an absurd denunciation of anti-capitalists as "commies." With a few outlying exceptions who have had scant influence on almost every actual anarchist throughout history and contemporarily, anarchists have been explicitly anti-capitalist since the 1840s. Please read about this one-time member of the American section of the First International (not exactly a hotbed of "free trade"...): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner See especially the problems he had with setting up a private mail service (obviously an example of "free trade") that was crushed by the US government. Even though Spooner is claimed by right-wing so-called Libertarians, his views on capitalism were ambiguous at best, but negative for the most part -- especially as the rich benefited from various interventions taken by the state.

commented Aug 24, 2016 by lawrence (570 points)
moved Aug 24, 2016 by dot

1 Answer

StrawDog · Answer 1 · 2016-08-29T17:38:00+0000

For the sake of having an actual posted answer:

Here is what Murray Rothbard, the father of Anarcho-capitalism, has to say on the matter:

"We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist. Then, when, in the jousting of debate, the inevitable challenge 'are you an anarchist?' is heard, we can, for perhaps the first and last time, find ourselves in the luxury of the 'middle of the road' and say, 'Sir, I am neither an anarchist nor an archist, but am squarely down the nonarchic middle of the road.'"

Furthermore, Capitalism requires private property rights (as distinct from personal property) *and* requires a legal or de facto obligation to work for someone else, whether through the prevention of homesteading, slavery, or some other means (see Marx Capital Vol. 1 for the full explanation and extensive historical demonstration) *and* alienated value synonymous with currency, and all these things require a monopoly on force synonymous with statehood to be realized.

So, no, it isn't.

Edit:
For more information on the need to force people into the wage labor relationship, I recommend Marx's Capital Vol. 1. The whole, iirc, last section is not economic theory but rather actual historical examination of what had to be done in the United States, Australia, and Scotland to make it possible for capitalist farmers and workshops to exist with repeated examples of how time after time capital holders found themselves unable to establish themselves in these places until the State intervened explicitly on their behalf.

For more information on the necessity of the State to establish and maintain currency, see Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years.

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