My Conversation With a Left-Anarchist

On my last post, I received a very in-depth criticism of my opinions, from a user who says he is a Left-Anarchist. I engaged with him with a sort of debate style response, and he quickly replied back. We went on for a day or so, replying to each other, and I have to say, I am glad that this happened. The user seemed to be quite well written and also well read about Left-Anarchist theory, and was able to respond to me with good explanations and viable opinions. I really appreciate when I am able to have a constructive conversation with someone from the other side of politics, without it becoming an angry swear-fest, so I thought I may as well bring it out to everyone else, and show them what I learned from the other side. The user's name is @chamberpunk if you are interested.

Before I begin, it may be a good idea for you to read the post (it is only short): The State of Anarchism

The First Response

In his first response, he corrects me on the definition of anarchy. I say that "Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions", which seems to make sense, as anarchy is generally said to be "anti-government". @chamberpunk defines anarchism as, "A none-hierarchical form of organizing society" which I suppose also makes sense, but more so to a leftist as they (from my understanding) see a hierarchical form of society to be a system where wealth inequality and certain other things such as "wage-slavery" (leftist theories) are present, aka a capitalist society. I am being brief with this but @chamberpunk's reply will further elaborate this for you.

I can definitely see where the Idea of anarchism being against a hierarchical form of society comes from, but I can also see how anarchism being a self-governed, voluntary society comes from. So, from this first point, I became aware that the definition of anarchism, at this point in time, is not set in stone and is viewed differently depending on individual opinion. To me, my definition made sense, to @chamberpunk, his definition made sense.

His argument went on to cover some different points, but most of them are what you might expect from a leftist, however he did throw in some new ones that I hadn't heard before, which is why I enjoyed talking to this man. He was willing to show me a different side of things.

His full reply:

My reply really just touched on some basic capitalism, I responded to a couple things that @chamberpunk said about "wage-slavery" and also his definition of human-rights, which he defined to include health-care, education and food. I also included a couple of examples of failed communist and socialist states. I won't go into to much detail on my reply, because you can read it, but I really am trying to pull apart @chamberpunk's response for my own learning, and perhaps yours too.

Opinion on Capitalism

I found this to be quite interesting. @chamberpunk provided me with a rather simple drawing depicting capitalism in a bad light. It put the worker in the centre of what drives the economy, labelled as PRODUCTION (exploitation of labour). The image also depicts that taxes, imperialism and land theft through imperialism as a part of capitalism.

I can see his negative view on capitalism, especially if it has been butchered to the extent of being the cause of imperialism and government intervention. As many Anarcho-Capitalists know, real capitalism doesn't involve government, which is the reason you are Anarcho-Capitalist instead of just Capitalist.

Another interesting viewpoint he showed was the opinion that it is exploitation to pay a worker less than the entire wealth he/she has produced for the company, wealth which is taken by the business owner. I saw this as another way of expressing workers seizing the means of production therefore receiving the full profit of what the individual has worked to create. He also used extreme examples of wealth inequality between Bill Gates, and Chinese factory workers of which he considered to be slaves to capitalism. His reply was significantly larger than the last one and too big to fit in a screenshot so I suggest you go and have a read.

My first response was to clear up the fact that government intervention is a cancer on a capitalist society because it disallows the natural flow of wealth through the system, and generally tends to promote “corporatism”. I went on to then explain a concept which I believe to be very important in order to understand economic growth... Incentive. I believe that I can best just quote myself here as I seemed to explain it well in my reply:

"You mention how you think that when value is generated by the workers, that value is scammed away from them and they only receive a portion of the wealth they are creating, and the rest goes to the capitalist (business owners, investors, etc). I would like to bring in something called “incentive”. Incentive is what pushes people to do things. You seem smart I assume you know what it means. If nobody had incentive, tell me, would anything ever be accomplished? You obviously have an incentive to prove me wrong about capitalism, that is why you are putting effort into replying to me with such in depth and thought out explanations. So, taking this idea of incentive, let’s apply it to someone who wants to start a business. Let’s say that the person is going to use his earnings from the business to better himself and his family. He will be able to afford a house, a car, food, anything he wants, plus, he is creating more jobs and is going to be able to employ more people and therefore he is also benefitting the rest of society and boosting the economy. Now that sounds pretty good to him, so he will go ahead and start the business. Now, let’s say that this aspiring business owner lives in a socialist/communist society. If he were to start a business, all of his surplus earnings would be taken, redistributed, and he would be left the same as if he never started the business in the first place. The aspiring business owner has no incentive to put in the time and effort it would take for him to start a business, therefore, the jobs that could have been made, and the wealth that could have been generated, never occur."

The point of this was to explain how and why economic growth occurs best in a capitalist society, and why it slows and halts in a socialist one. The rest of my reply was just addressing the smaller points in his reply, which you can go and read if you want: The State of Anarchism

We also had a rather unimportant discussion about socialist countries through the entire conversation which saw rights and wrongs on both sides.

A Mutual Agreement?

In @chamberpunk's final argumental reply, we seemed to agree on some things. The first was on the topic of what I guess can be called freedom/liberty, and I guess this is where our anarchist mindsets come to meet each other.

He said:

"If you want to sell flowers out of a cart on the street, go for it. If you want to fix cars out of your garage, go for it. If you want to run a bakery, go for it. If you want to extract oil from Iraq and use imperialistic might to squash anyone who thinks otherwise, yeah that's where my problem is."

I suppose I was shocked to hear this come out of a leftist's mouth. I have always been told by leftist's that the people need to be under a stricter routine of designated work and other things along those lines. I was glad to hear such things come out of a conversation like this, and @chamberpunk's seemed to be aswell...

"I think the left and right libertarians need to have dialogues like this because I think it's constructive and we need to work together if things are ever going to improve. Like, if the left and the right anarchists worked together we'd probably double of collective might. Meaning we might actually have a chance at getting some things done.

We both oppose imperialism, we both oppose the state(even though I think we have different concepts of the state), and we both oppose Neo-liberal global capitalism. I think the difference is more on how we solve these issues."

Conclusion

I am still set in my right-wing ways, absolutely, but because I support freedom of speech and free thought, I was interested in the opinions of the other side because I know that if we all listen to each other, eventually, we will begin to quickly progress as a society.

Thanks @chamberpunk's for talking with me. I appreciate it mate! Please correct me if I misunderstood anything you said to me.

Full post: The State of Anarchism