[SolarCross]

Socialists naturally object to aristocrats and crony-capitalists but yet some socialists crave the coercive powers of the state as a remedy to these problem characters. Isn't this just replacing one disease with another equally bad disease? Can you really replace a monarch with a people's dictator or a plutocracy with red oligarchy and not get exactly the same problem just waving a different coloured flag?

Which is better liberty or wealth? Maybe your red tyranny will allow a bigger food ration for the workers than the preceding plutocracy but they will still be bullied into subservience, slaves in effect.

I would rather be a starving freeman than a well fed slave. For me liberty is worth more than wealth. I would prefer to live in stateless society of individualistic trading money junkies (an-caps) than be coerced into subservience by a patronising red state (state-socialism).

Is it not true that the real problem with capitalism and socialism is just the state. To cure the problems of capitalism or socialism you need only remove the state.

[Decky]

Fallacy.

A phallacy would be something penis related.

I believe this has already been discussed somewhere else but we need the power of the state to crush the capitalists. I has been thus far a force working in the interests of the bourgeoisie to oppress all other class and it will be turned on its head.

If you (just post revolution) abolished the state you would be handing control back to the capitalists. You might as well throw them a parade while you are at it.

[michael3]

Fallacy.

A phallacy would be something penis related.

I believe this has already been discussed somewhere else but we need the power of the state to crush the capitalists. I has been thus far a force working in the interests of the bourgeoisie to oppress all other class and it will be turned on its head.

If you (just post revolution) abolished the state you would be handing control back to the capitalists. You might as well throw them a parade while you are at it.

No, it's not necessary to 'crush' anybody at all, Capitalism and the State will destroy themselves.

The internal contradictions of both Statism and Capitalism will play out thusly;

1. Capitalism will take increasingly libertarian/objectivist/anarcho-capitalist forms, gradually devouring the State which provides Capitalism the very protection it needs to prevent total collapse. Irony of ironies, the Capitalists will be the vanguard of the overthrow of the State.

2. With Capitalism in it's final cut-throat and warlords phase, and the survival of mankind threatened, people will turn to self-governing, democratic, and communistic structures to survive....Anarchist Communism.

[SolarCross]

Fallacy.

A phallacy would be something penis related.

I believe this has already been discussed somewhere else but we need the power of the state to crush the capitalists. I has been thus far a force working in the interests of the bourgeoisie to oppress all other class and it will be turned on its head.

If you (just post revolution) abolished the state you would be handing control back to the capitalists. You might as well throw them a parade while you are at it.

whoops most embarrassing spelling mistake of the year goes to .. erm me.

Moving on. I put it to you that the problem with capitalism comes from the state. The state corrupts capitalism. The state will also corrupt socialism just the same. In fact it has done that everywhere socialism captured the state (actually the state just captured socialism) such as USSR, DPRK, Cuba etc. Absent the state whether you want to be a capitalist or a socialist can be a matter of choice.

[Decky]

If you say so fella. I'm sure the choice to be a socialist will be an easy one to make when the capitalists are rounding people up in chains and shipping them off to the plantations.

[SolarCross]

If you say so fella. I'm sure the choice to be a socialist will be an easy one to make when the capitalists are rounding people up in chains and shipping them off to the plantations.

The state is a monopoly on violence. It will always 'ship people off in chains' whether they do it waving a red flag or a blue one is immaterial. To be free you have to be armed. No state can tolerate that. When you are disarmed by the state then yes you will end up robbed and in chains (real or legal) but a red state will do that exactly the same as a blue one. So the oppressor is not the trader it is the state. Abolish the state, let the people arm themselves and the traders will get real polite and respectful to their fellows.

[Decky]

Abolish the state, let the people arm themselves and the traders will get real polite and respectful to their fellows.

Indeed, it's not as if the trader will have more money (and thus more guns, tanks, planes and bombs) than the people is it?

[SolarCross]

Indeed, it's not as if the trader will have more money (and thus more guns, tanks, planes and bombs) than the people is it?

How does the trader pay for this stuff? That's right by using the state to tax the working people! Without the state they won't want to pay for this stuff or afford it. It is easy to afford weapons when you steal the wealth used to pay for them.

[michael3]

"How does the trader pay for this stuff? That's right by using the state to tax the working people! Without the state they won't want to pay for this stuff or afford it. It is easy to afford weapons when you steal the wealth used to pay for them."

This is precisely what makes my point about the disconnect of those reared in an Capitalist society, that they actually have come to believe that the Trader can survive without the protective context of the State. They will try, but they will fail, proving the truth of both Anarchism and Communism in practically one blow.

I think what Decky and others need to understand is that there are Anarchists who aren't pacifists, who believe in self-defence and well-armed militias without recourse to the State and it's tactics of true coercion.

[quetzalcoatl]

There seems, at least to me, to be a conceptual difficulty with idea of freedom. Not just with libertarians and anarchists, but the concept itself.

If you define freedom as simply absence of state control, then libertarians will automatically win every argument. But defining freedom as a negative or absence fails to deal with our intuitive ideas about freedom. Freedom can't just be about absence of control, and especially not about absence of control from some rather narrowly-defined sector (government).

Freedom, if it is to mean anything, is about personal autonomy. Personal autonomy, as practical matter, cannot be implemented without options being available to you as a person. This suggests why liberty is more attractive to persons born under advantaged circumstances: they start out with objectively better and more numerous personal options than the less advantaged.

Let me make an obvious reductio ad absurdum argument, but a useful one. Consider two humans born the same day, hour, and minute. One is born of parents fleeing famine in Ethiopia, the other born to a stable and wealthy family in Connecticut. Which individual will have more options in life? Of course, it is possible to make the argument that the Ethiopian will, by some superhuman dint of effort and willpower might ascend to some more autonomous state, or at least some less horrible state.

Once you open the door to even the smallest intervention to even the playing field, the purity of the ideal is sunk. This seems to mean an intellectual and emotional committment to allowing fate and sheer luck to determine one's initial state of autonomy.

Fair enough, I suppose, but this simply deprecates any universal ideal of freedom, and tends to trivialize the very idea of personal autonomy.

[Malatant of Shadow]

The state is a monopoly on violence. It will always 'ship people off in chains' whether they do it waving a red flag or a blue one is immaterial. To be free you have to be armed. No state can tolerate that. When you are disarmed by the state then yes you will end up robbed and in chains (real or legal) but a red state will do that exactly the same as a blue one. So the oppressor is not the trader it is the state. Abolish the state, let the people arm themselves and the traders will get real polite and respectful to their fellows.

So many fallacies in that paragraph (to borrow from the thread title -- and I'll get to what should really be called "state socialism" in a moment).

The state HAS a monopoly on violence; it IS not a monopoly on violence. (Actually it isn't even true that it has a monopoly on violence, or as it's more often phrased on legitimate violence. I can use violence to defend myself or others as a private citizen.)

It will always punish criminals, defined as such according to law; the implication of bringing up red and blue flags however relates to political prisoners and that is not a constant or an inevitability.

To be free you do not have to be armed, and in fact the attempt to use private violence against the state is futile. If a state is to be brought down, the people can do that simply by refusing to cooperate with it. If you have to actually fight the forces of the state, that's a sign you don't have enough support to succeed in bringing it down, and you are going to lose the fight.

Abolish the state and traders as we know them will cease to exist.

Now, about state socialism; what that term usually means isn't "socialism in the presence of the state," but rather a form of socialism in which the state owns the means of production. The idea of socialism is to democratize ownership of the economy rather than having it concentrate into a few wealthy hands. State socialism attempts to accomplish this by proxy, so that the state owns the economy and the people own the state. It can in theory work if perfect political democracy exists, or something approximating it. (Obviously that rules out the Soviet experiment, and in fact the results of that attempt were lamentable.)

This isn't the best way to implement socialism in my opinion. We're much better off democratizing on a business-by-business level, so that the workers in any business elect the executives and are entitled to a share of the profits based on their work. Centralized, state socialism gives the government too much power and centralizes control to an excessive degree.

That said, socialism cannot exist without a state to perform the basic necessary functions of a state, so if what you mean by "state socialism" is "non-anarchist socialism," then the term shifts from referring to a poor idea to referring to a redundancy.

[fuser]

The state corrupts capitalism.

So you are saying capitalism left to its own, will automatically solve every conflicts with working class? Well, this exactly right here is "Utopia" and nothing else.

How does the trader pay for this stuff? That's right by using the state to tax the working people!

As if bourgeois by their control over means of production won't be able to afford highly disproportionate amount of fire arms relative to other classes?


And good post quetz. Freedom and coercion has many forms other than state control which is totally neglected by an caps and such.

[quetzalcoatl]

"How does the trader pay for this stuff? That's right by using the state to tax the working people! Without the state they won't want to pay for this stuff or afford it. It is easy to afford weapons when you steal the wealth used to pay for them."

This is precisely what makes my point about the disconnect of those reared in an Capitalist society, that they actually have come to believe that the Trader can survive without the protective context of the State. They will try, but they will fail, proving the truth of both Anarchism and Communism in practically one blow.

I think what Decky and others need to understand is that there are Anarchists who aren't pacifists, who believe in self-defence and well-armed militias without recourse to the State and it's tactics of true coercion.

True coercion?

There is no practical difference between an armed soldier that receives a paycheck from the state, and some armed militiaman who must inevitably extort his share of grain (Seven Samurai style) to survive. A gun is still a gun after you have abolished the state, and calling a gang a 'militia' does not change its nature.

[SolarCross]

@Quetz
Yes personal autonomy is the essence of liberty in a political sense. Of course people's talents and resources differ so even absent wealth redistribution by the gun personal autonomy will be practically variable between individuals. Okay is there anything wrong with people exercising their personal autonomy for reasons of kindness to help those disadvantaged by circumstance? Can you ever really trust a bureaucrat to help those people with the wealth he steals?
I find it hard to see people as just dumb cattle who need to be herded and milked by bureaucratic elite wielding dogs and cattle prods to 'help' the cattle people who were unlucky. So that is why I am an anarchist. I am also a socialist because I do care about the Ethiopian or whoever it is that had some bad luck. Kindness can't be coerced. Coercion kills kindness. I would find it a lot easier to help people even unluckier than myself if I weren't always being bullied and robbed by stupid bureaucrats.

[SolarCross]

True coercion?

There is no practical difference between an armed soldier that receives a paycheck from the state, and some armed militiaman who must inevitably extort his share of grain (Seven Samurai style) to survive. A gun is still a gun after you have abolished the state, and calling a gang a 'militia' does not change its nature.

I've seen Seven Samurai. The villagers chose to hire the samurai. Militia can be decentralised to the point where every swinging dick is a part-time soldier. Like Hezbollah. You know they are charity? Israel invaded lebanon, the lebanese government was completely useless so the people in the south had to make their own defence. Those that couldn't fight donated food or money and those with courage and youth donated their time and bodies to make a militia, Hezbollah. All voluntary.
I agree there is nothing in a name, militia, army whatever, what matters is whether it is voluntary or coerced.

[michael3]

"I've seen Seven Samurai. The villagers chose to hire the samurai. Militia can be decentralised to the point where every swinging dick is a part-time soldier. Like Hezbollah. You know they are charity? Israel invaded lebanon, the lebanese government was completely useless so the people in the south had to make their own defence. Those that couldn't fight donated food or money and those with courage and youth donated their time and bodies to make a militia, Hezbollah. All voluntary.
I agree there is nothing in a name, militia, army whatever, what matters is whether it is voluntary or coerced."

Well said. And to extend the 'seven samurai' analogy further (which I enjoy, it's one of my favorite movies), the Bandits who regularly invade the Village every year and take what they want are the very image of the State in action.

And keep in mind that not only was the Lebanese government impotent facing the Israeli invasion, Hezbollah beat Israel (the very acme of Statism) badly...Much as would any properly motivated and organized Anarchist voluntary militia.

[SolarCross]

Well said. And to extend the 'seven samurai' analogy further (which I enjoy, it's one of my favorite movies), the Bandits who regularly invade the Village every year and take what they want are the very image of the State in action.

And keep in mind that not only was the Lebanese government impotent facing the Israeli invasion, Hezbollah beat Israel (the very acme of Statism) badly...Much as would any properly motivated and organized Anarchist voluntary militia.

Yes you are right about the bandits they are proto-state in the making.

Yes in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon 3000 Hezbollah volunteers fought off 10,000 IDF conscripts. In the last few days the numbers swelled to 10,000 Hezbollah vs. 30,000 IDF. Moreover the heavy war gear was all on the Isreali side - fighter jets, gunships, tanks, apcs.. Hezbollah had none of that stuff. The volunteers defeated the conscripts despite being outnumbered and out-gunned.

[quetzalcoatl]

...And to extend the 'seven samurai' analogy further (which I enjoy, it's one of my favorite movies), the Bandits who regularly invade the Village every year and take what they want are the very image of the State in action...

But bandits are not the state, that's the whole point. They have no state legitimacy, they are ad hoc groups that form on their own initiative, just like the seven Samurai. And the villagers would never have "freely" chosen to hire the Samurai absent the bandits in the first instance. These are all actions that occur in a no-state or collapsed-state environment.

What are the odds that the Seven Samurai were bandits themselves in the off periods they weren't helping hapless villagers?

[SolarCross]

But bandits are not the state, that's the whole point. They have no state legitimacy, they are ad hoc groups that form on their own initiative, just like the seven Samurai. And the villagers would never have "freely" chosen to hire the Samurai absent the bandits in the first instance. These are all actions that occur in a no-state or collapsed-state environment.

What are the odds that the Seven Samurai were bandits themselves in the off periods they weren't helping hapless villagers?

The bandits were an unsophisticated state but in terms of legitimacy no different. Here is how it works.
People of low character get together with others like them to prey on those less able to defend themselves. First off they just raid stuff - this is just banditry. But then realise that taking everything all at once is not very clever. It is better and safer to just threaten violence for a share of the wealth that way they can milk their victims for a longer period perhaps indefinitely. This is the 'protection' racket.
Eventually they will get cleverer still and in addition to the protection racket will run permission rackets. They will say 'peasent you are not clever enough to use a cart without my permission so give me some money and I'll give you permission to use a cart' or 'hey peasent you can't just build an extension to your house without my permission - give me some money and I'll give you permission.'
Now the bandits are indistinguishable from any state you care to name.
This the evolution of parasites.
1. Bandits - forcefully steal everything
2. Mafia - extort under threat of force
3. State - in addition to all of the above - run innumerable permission rackets.

Quetz - do you believe people have the right of self-defence?

[Malatant of Shadow]

No, Taxizen, that is not how any state in actual history has been formed.

Ever.