Topic: If Anarchy can work, how come there are no historical records of it working? - page 3. (Read 17155 times)

It's called commieland, where working for the benefit of everyone else is voluntary, and working for your own benefit is slavery. Also, War is Peace, and Ignorance is Strength.

If work without pay is volunteer, and with pay is slavery, then we are in a place I've never been.  Or heard of for that matter.

I feel you're just being contradictory. Debtors prison? Honestly... I'm out of touch but... seriously, yo.
Labor, rather Toil to put it more accurately, is more than just time in my opinion.
Also, the influence of your community is not so easily ignored. You are not an island. You owe your support system mutual support. Shoulders of giants..
I'm convincing you that capitalism and anarchism are not compatable, and that capitalism requires some slavery. We seem to be agreeing more and more.
I think your image of me and my values is a bit lacking, not your image of yourself.
Also, also, look up Socrates. Now, there's an arguing fellow!
Edit: Abe Lincoln wouldn't have called that 'word salad'.

They may have a say, (the right to express an opinon on the matter) but there can only be one person who "owns" me.  I'm the decider.  How my decision about me affects others is secondary at best.


In short, no.


My decisions to respect their rights also considers what I consider to be rights.  As long as I'm not trying to harm them, my decision to harm myself or my own property has no effect upon their rights.


Labor is time.  Nothing more, nothing less.


I've already presented many arguments that you have simply ignored.  Why waste my time, when you aren't really trying?  I'm not at all obligated to convince you of anything, It's you that is trying to convince me, remember?


This doesn't parse.  Do you think I have a poor self-image?


If they have the choice to quit without being thrown into some kind of debtors' prison, it's not slavery no matter what the conditions may be.


There really isn't a middle ground.  Either labor is voluntary or involuntary.


It needs at least one verifiable, objective, fact.  A subjective opinoin never qualifies.  Are you a liberal arts major?


No, they are not.  Argumetns are about objective facts put inot a hypothesis about the causes and effects of those facts.   Nothing less is an argument.  You might as well be blabering about how you 'feel' about things.


More word salad.

Thus the term "goods and services." Goods are objects, services are labor.

I aspire to be a bot of some kind in the future.
Rights are funny, in that your decision to destroy yourself affects others- they rightfully have a say, don't they? It is after all your decision to respect their right.
Labor is not an object. It is an effect on objects. The attempt to commodify labor commodifies laborers instead.
No argument? Neat.

I think pretty highly of myself in general- its unfortunate for me that youv'e committed to the reverse standpoint.

I can submit that slavery is involuntary after an examination of the term voluneer. Someone self employed might be a volunteer, someone who works for free is also a volunteer.
An office worker might not be a volunteer, anyone with hardly another choice about what they do certainly cannot be a vollunteer.
We have slave vs volunteer, where do you see a real middle ground?

Finally it is my opinion that the human slave trade, in the most objectionable sense, provides the basis, the base price, for which the conditions, wages and finally salary of more and more priveleged slaves, or employees are determined.
Its a pretty solid opinion, if you ask me, doesnt need too many citations to have a useful and revealing streak of truth to it.
After all, most arguments are about opinions.
Now- about the state enforcement of rights to ownership of slaves... Hmm.

If she's a person, she's one with no filter from brain to hands.

Lovely opinion.  Did you have an argument?


Says you.  Argument?


By my understanding of the term, slavery implies involuntary servitude.



You think that highly of your own opinion, do you?

Maybe for some people, but some people are easily influenced.  I'm not one of those people.  I require some convinceing, and you are falling down on the job.


I disagree, my labor is as much to sell as anything else of my property.  If you disagree, make an argument.


So what if it is?  If my life is mine, I have the right to dispose of it as I see fit, including to waste or destroy it.  And no one else has the right to trump my decision.


Are you a person or a random word bot?

if space ships can really go to space, how come there is no historical record of them prior to 1957?

if gravity can work, how come there is no historical records of it working prior to 1687?



ie


maybe some new stuff hasn't been done yet, but can be done

if we try

maybe we could try a world without central authority and tyranny and killing each other



man i sound like a hippie, oh well, embrace your inner hippie and think about new ideas

I don't intend to accept that we are at an impasse or are basically incompatable.

Market price for labor is how slavery works.
There is no such thing as a fair price, because the human slave trade determines the market price from the most abject slavery to the mcdonalds employee to the middle management and way on up to the CEO. A one way "market" is not a market. I cannot buy back my labor.


Overlapping happens.
The offer is coercive.
The deal is a threat.
The wanting of wages is the motivation toward selling yourself into the modified slavery of employmemt.


"Voluntary" slavery is real. Employment all too often restricts personal development.


Indoctrinated, doubtlessly. Hopelessly? Hopefully not.
Well put opinions make for persuasive arguments.


Your labor is not yours to sell, its everyone else's inevitably and can't be fairly sold. Why not work for free? Your will is not up for purchase. Your life is yours, but selling it is suicide.
Do you respect a world commiting suicide? (Skinny Puppy is awesome)

So we do agree on this basic root principle.  We are already getting somewhere.

I'll address the next princple after addressing your other statements...


I don't disagree, but nor do I agree completely.  My issue with the above statement is that what is a 'fair' price is a matter of perspectives, but what is the market price is independent of such perspectives. 

Again, we don't disagree on the substance, but on the causes.  While the above is true enough, it's not the fault of the employer that you cannot get a better wage than what he chooses to offer for his work. nor are the circumsatances that compell you to seek employment his responsibility, so long as he is not conspiring with those agensts of the state to do so, in which case we are talking about fascism again.


And why is that, if you were to choose to reject such claims?  If you choose to honor such claims, or honor an ideology that respects such claims, this cannot be slavery since it's voluntary on your part.  What about those who have a different ideology than yours?  Is is then acceptable to force your claims upon their person?


What you call capitalism is, hopefully, dying.  For myself and my family, I wish no part of it.  You project your biases upon those you percieve as being in opposition to your ideal worldview, without honestly or accurately considering why there is oppossition at all.  While it's possible that we are all deluded or hopelessly indoctrinated like you seem to assume, we are certainly not all ignorant nor stupid.  What would that foretell of the likely future successes of your ideology, be it correct or not, if you cannot change the minds of a few moderately to well educated people on an internet forum?  Simply decrying our perspectives as faulty, particularly lacking a rational argument as to why, is unlikely to do more than waste a lot of time.  And the quote you provided from Bookchin is not an arguement, it's an opinion.


You should not project so hard.  Personally, I don't consider Adam Smith to be the best author in this realm.  His language is difficult to read, which inhibits comprehension; and his was mostly arguing against mercantilism, not so much in favor of capitalism.  In some sense, he was arguing about national policies, and thus was arguing in favor of a soft facism.  Adam Smith was a great (classic) liberal, but he was still stuck in the idea that nation-states are necessary for such ideas as he advocated. 

Now back to the regularly scheduled discussion...

If you agree that your body belongs to yourself, do you agree that my body belongs to me?  If so, then do you agree that my life also belongs to me, since I can't have one without the other?

This is a beautiful and generous sentiment.
To do that which is meaningful for many is aspirational and laudable.
One who can make a contribution to every living person is rare and precious.

One of the risks of the philosophical is that we can lose touch with the broad popular usage of words to which we may ascribe a narrow meaning and purpose.
In the broad sense, capitalism is dying, it is killing, it is wickedness, greed, corruption, selfishness, jealousy and all manner of other wrongs.
In the narrow sense the philosopher might say those were not capitalism, but greed and the corruption inherent in creating and empowering the engine of a government useful for turning against our fellows and coercing what is theirs for our benefit.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
That capitalism instead is the pure and noble voluntary exchange for mutual benefit which depends on having some decision authority (capitalism's ownership) over what we each might exchange.  To seek a higher mutual affluence through trade.
But this philosopher can only speak with other philosophers who use the same definitions, and those are likely already in agreement about much.
And so broad labels often do not serve us well, and when we use them to attack an argument we unwittingly often engage in making straw men.

We also forget why we argue at all, which is to benefit our common understandings, rather than to defeat a foe.  I suspect the only foes I can ever address are the wrong ideas I myself hold.  For all I've written, I may never have convinced anyone else of anything.  I may like to think I am helping someone else in understanding something, but in honesty admit that is more likely vanity.

Capitalism is evil because it has no built-in limit, it keeps eating and eating, destroying people as a rule. The goal never gets close.
On the other hand, if the goal of trade is not limitless private affluence, but mutual aid and enrichment, we have a much less greviously disparate global and local culture.

I shouldn't have said y'all..
Mainly talking about MoonShadow with the whatever happened one lesson stuff.
As far as I can tell the only big difference between you and I, is a semantic one. You see utlility in communicating using what I consider to be a total misnomer, capitalism.
Bookchin mainly summarizes other anarchist writers. I couldn't reccomend his works more.
Here's a nugget:

haven't read Bookchin, and will remedy it. Didn't intend to be patronizing. Sorry if I came off that way. I'm a pedant

The closest thing you can get to anarchy is if you distribute sovereign power only to small localities and let individual cultures govern themselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.