You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Open Borders vs. Closed Borders: A Market Anarchist Perspective
But does anarchism advocate private property? I have seen many debates about this, I found this one on anarchism.net, I'm just copying something, I actually have no definite conceptions about this:
PROPERTY IS A TROUBLESOME issue. It is not only a matter of definition, but a matter of values. Some anarchists value property as a guarantee for freedom and prosperity, whereas other anarchists see property as a means of oppression and therefore wish to see it abolished completely. And there are other anarchists taking a “middle stance”--both pro and con--through advocating only possession.
Excellent point. Yes, market anarchists and Voluntaryists base their whole conception of anarchism on property, stemming from the fact that each individual owns himself.
Anarcho-communist thought holds this to not be the case.
You could also say anarcho-Marxist or voluntaryist-Marxist or agorist-Marxist thought.
Commies get a bad rap. And often should. Communism is pretty shit, and pretty much always has been since it forked from socialism. It started out as a just-okay idea, pushed on the world by the elites, etc. And of course it all got corrupted as hell. It's just another totalitarian state system like western capitalism.
People like Richard D. Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis are self-proclaimed Marxist economics professors who study capitalism and communism and do not like them. They have newer ideas about cooperating at the grass roots level - voluntarily and fairly. These ideas include turning (not by force) an existing capitalist business enterprise into a worker directed cooperative to democratize the workplace rather than just be the boss's dictatorship. From privatized interests to community/social/cooperative interests.
Turning privatized interests into voluntary cooperative ones presupposes individual ownership of the means of production, which also requires that individuals have the ability to exclude others from utilizing their owned means of production. That seems to be something that gets lost in translation a lot, I've noticed. Communism and socialism cannot be voluntary; if they are voluntary, by definition they cannot be communism or socialism, as both of them preclude individuals from excluding others from their property.
Yes-ish.
This is the problem. We all see it. Everywhere. Capitalism is certainly no better.
Voluntaryism, Marxism, "free-marketism" - they are all fantasies well worth striving for, but ultimately its a practical balance because some tribal people want or need the state systems and gang "leaders". There's just no escaping them - they're everywhere!!!
Communism, a socialist fork, is totalitarian, like western capitalism.
Socialism is so vague some forms CAN be voluntary and participatory, to some degrees. Try Burning Man for example.
Writing my previous comment I was going to throw in an example that I'll now illustrate, a peaceful, voluntary, transfer of power, from privatized to cooperative: A successful business man owns a shoe factory filled with employees. He has two kids who with a fine education decided to go into other careers and his kids have no interest in running or owning an inherited shoe factory. He cares for his employees and community and does not want to shut down the factory and all those jobs - so with lawyers, bankers, community leaders, and all of the factory employees they create a worker's cooperative to receive the factory and hand him a fat check.
If I understand your argument, anyone off the street cannot voluntarily just walk in that factor and make their own shoes, because the privatized "coop club" now owns it rather than the "boss". With that coop foothold in the community they can start other cooperative coops to make dishwashers, furniture, etc. and maybe that guy can work there...
Mondragon is the best example where a poor region collected together successfully in a new bottom up system. I've never been but would really like to see it. I wouldn't expect it to be perfect, but they have a good thing going.
https://www.google.com/#q=mondragon
It's not perfect. But it's better than what we've got, better than welfare and/or the universal basic income trap - or just starvin. Or war for profit.
I'm all for coops, but they presuppose the right to exclude. Like you said, Joe Smith can't just walk into the factory and start using it to make his shoes unless the property owners - the coop - are fine with that. I don't like differentiating private and cooperative, because they're not mutually exclusive; private property can be owned and operated cooperatively. All private property does is seek to reduce conflict over resources by assigning use claims. It's something we all do, and it's intuitive.
As long as it's all voluntary, I'm all for it. Consent is king.
I like that: "Consent is king."
Coops are a HUMONGOUS step better.
A democratic workplace that serves your interest versus working for a dictator who exploits you to the legal maximum and may fire you at any time.
Cooperatives aren't violent so far as I know.
A boss who threatens to fire you is not cool.
Maybe if someone came in and started some shit in a coop I suppose they'd call the state in. Communism has a state monopoly on violence just like capitalism. Thug police.
How could you have something that doesn't "exclude."
Would it be possible to fuse coops with voluntaryism? An open-coop?
Also, I wrote a new post:
OSAPAP 003 - Project Concepts And Limitations For The Open Source Anti Propaganda Animation Project
Voluntaryism doesn't preclude private property. Again, the only moral way for people to engage with each other is by consent, which requires the ability to exclude (freedom of association). Coops, so long as they're consensual, are by definition voluntary.
Working for someone isn't inherently bad or unjust; you agree to provide your time and perform tasks in exchange for something that's worth more than your time doing something else. A coop is no more required to employ you or let you use their cooperatively owned resources than a traditional boss is.