[Someone5]

Double Post.

[eugenekop]

I still fail to see how an anarcho-communist society will be able to function. I mean people are different. They have different cultures, different values and so forth. Since people in anarcho-communist society have a lot of positive rights such as the right for education, health care and such, who will be obliged to provide these rights? Who defines what are these rights? After all everyone has a different opinion about them.

In an anarcho-capitalist society this is not a problem because no one is obliged to provide anything to anyone, so conflicts are minimized. But in anarcho-communist society it seems that conflicts will be constant and abundant. Who will for example oversee that people don't get acquire too much property without sharing it? What if someone hoards a lot of inventory in his home without sharing it? Who will be have the right to claim parts of this inventory? There are so many potential conflicts.

[Nunt]

So what? If you don't like your community, move.

Well the idea is that the globe is my community. Therefore, I wouldn't need to move from Mexico to the US in order to have my share of the spoils from a US based operation.

Or maybe, my community is my family. Therefore I wouldn't need to share any of the spoils on the other side of the city.

[Someone5]

I still fail to see how an anarcho-communist society will be able to function. I mean people are different. They have different cultures, different values and so forth.

This is no more a problem for anarcho-communism than it is for capitalism. How can people possibly agree on the value of ownership? They have different cultures, different values, etc. It's not really a meaningful critique. Obviously anarcho-communists would have recognized that anarcho-communism is the better system within their own cultural framework. Maybe their justifications are different than the justifications promoted by people elsewhere. So what?

Since people in anarcho-communist society have a lot of positive rights such as the right for education, health care and such, who will be obliged to provide these rights? Who defines what are these rights? After all everyone has a different opinion about them.

Hold up a moment. I'm pretty sure you're operating under a misconception here. There is a difference between anarcho-communism and plain old regular communism, and the point you made is kind of at the root of it. All anarcho-communism does is make it possible for you to easily provide those things for yourself (or your children) by freeing up access to resources, capital, and communities. Changing the relations of production, as it were.

In an anarcho-capitalist society this is not a problem because no one is obliged to provide anything to anyone, so conflicts are minimized. But in anarcho-communist society it seems that conflicts will be constant and abundant. Who will for example oversee that people don't get acquire too much property without sharing it?

That doesn't even make sense. How can you have any property at all without a government recognizing your claim of ownership and granting you rights to use it, and defending that claim against disputes? Property claims require active defense to maintain--absent a government there can't be any property at all so worrying about people acquiring too much of it without oversight is pretty nonsensical. Anarcho-communists mean to dispense with property entirely, not merely to make sure someone doesn't acquire too much of it. No oversight is required--eliminating property requires nothing other than a society that stops recognizing the claims.

What if someone hoards a lot of inventory in his home without sharing it? Who will be have the right to claim parts of this inventory? There are so many potential conflicts.

Are you going to suggest that there are not a lot of potential conflicts in a capitalist system? For a relevant example currently, take a look at Oracle v. Google in a property dispute over the ownership of intellectual property. So what if there are conflicts? Presumably the community would come up with some agreeable method of arbitration. Maybe that agreeable method is "Joe and Jane go before the local arbiter and ask for a third party ruling on the matter." Maybe that agreeable method is "Joe and Jane go out to the field and face off in a duel." So what? The point would be that the community would get to decide on what they would like to have as their preferred method of resolving disputes. I tend to think that most people would prefer the non-violent approaches in general. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but if I am wrong about it, by what right do you have to suggest that the majority shouldn't get their way?

[mikema63]

Unless your hypothetical society were willing to declare its own borders and never move beyond them, there would be a fundamental and unavoidable contradiction that would create violent conflicts. The capitalists would quickly run out of resources within their borders and start seizing the "unclaimed virgin territory" of the communists. That's basically how capitalists have always viewed and treated lands no one was currently claiming ownership over.

There's no way in hell that an ancap society and a left-anarchist society could coexist as neighbors. The ancaps are too rooted in claims of ownership and violent assertions of property to manage that.

why not? legally speaking from the ancap societies veiw you guys would collectivly own you stuff, its against general ancap code to do anything violent against you, it wouldn't be legally veiwed as unclaimed virgin territory and nothing you do with it would be illegal because its a voluntary society. also ancaps are all for trade if we needed resources from you we would offer you something in exchange that you would either except or wouldn't, no need for you to come rushing in with your millitias to kill us because our society meets your disaproval.

of course you guys would have to respect boundries of an ancap society like you would the boundries of anyone else.

While certainly a left-anarchist society would be able to use its prosperity as a social weapon in a long-term conflict, I can't help but think there would be tremendous animosity between a hypothetical right-anarchist and hypothetical left-anarchist society. The two philosophies are not at all compatible, mainly because neither would be able to keep itself separated from the other and there would be some very deep, fundamental contradictions between them. Not to mention the left-anarchists might well start to resent having to keep rehabilitating right-anarchist refugees. You know, providing them adequate education as adults, teaching them how to be functional members of a society, conditioning them not to mindlessly take from others, treating the no doubt extensive psychoses that would develop among the right-anarchists, etc.

Come to think of it, that could make an interesting story for a sci-fi book.

my my you do have a dim veiw, it would make a good sci-fi story, but i find it telling that mine would have less killing of any groups that disagreed with me to much.

[eugenekop]

Someone5, you basically described just any kind of anarchy, that is people getting along without a central government. Why is it communist though?
Also it seems that your depiction of community is close to some kind of central government. Why is it different from central government?

[KlassWar]

I still fail to see how an anarcho-communist society will be able to function. I mean people are different. They have different cultures, different values and so forth. Since people in anarcho-communist society have a lot of positive rights such as the right for education, health care and such, who will be obliged to provide these rights? Who defines what are these rights? After all everyone has a different opinion about them.

In an anarcho-capitalist society this is not a problem because no one is obliged to provide anything to anyone, so conflicts are minimized. But in anarcho-communist society it seems that conflicts will be constant and abundant. Who will for example oversee that people don't get acquire too much property without sharing it? What if someone hoards a lot of inventory in his home without sharing it? Who will be have the right to claim parts of this inventory? There are so many potential conflicts.

When neither culture wants to forcibly impose its way of life on the other, two very different tribes can coexist admirably well. Once those that believe they can impose their outdated Puritan morals on society at large are no longer a problem, different cultures and communities will probably get along quite well, especially when exploitative relations of production are turned into just a bad memory. Without either oppression or exploitation, there's little cause for real conflict.

In a communist society, resources are communal. Nothing is taken from anybody in order to give to someone else, for people don't have a right to private property to begin with, so they can't "accumulate property" and become a threat. People have personal posessions (which nobody's gonna take away from'em) and the means of production belong to the community as a whole. The working masses will thus be able to keep the entirety of their productive output for their own consumption. This is currently impossible because there's a whole class of contemptible leeches getting fat off other people's labor. We call those leeches bourgeois.

Once the bourgeois have been squished and looted, and the loot is redistributed among the workers, we'll be so goddamn rich we won't have to think about freeloaders anymore. Have you seen all that stuff the rich have? When it's us proles who have it, we're gonna live like Kings!

[eugenekop]

I don't think most anarcho-communists want to look the bourgeois. I think most would consider it a crime. So if a capitalist nearby has a factory in which 100 workers work, and there is an agreement between the workers and the capitalist that the production goes to the capitalist, then that would be a voluntary association which anarcho-communists should respect. Otherwise they are not anarchists as I see it.

[KlassWar]

Anarcho-communism, by definition, strives to expropriate the exploiters: We stand for the dismantling of all hierarchy and privilege, both social and economic. Human emancipation cannot happen while a powerful moneyed elite hoards all the damn wealth.

People's material needs (and, to an extent, their desires) have to be fulfilled in order for people to actually be able to live free. At any rate, the bourgeois have accrued their bounty through organized violence, oppression and terror. Their forceful expropriation is not aggression, it's actually a proportionate reprisal.

[eugenekop]

So if I ask John to help me with production on the condition that the fruit of the labor goes to me and he gets compensation, then you think force will be justified to stop this agreement?
If that's the case then you are against free association which means you are not really an anarchist according to my understanding of anarchism.

[KlassWar]

There's something you're not quite grasping: John has no reason at all to accept such an unequal arrangement. The only reason people do put up with it it's because the bourgeois hoard all resources and there's little meaningful alternative.

It's in the workers' self-interest to take over (self-evident enough to be axiomatic). Since individual proletarians cannot actually afford private armies in order to become warlords, the only chance at hegemony they stand is by seizing stuff collectively. This (expropriation and takeover) is what would most benefit proletarians, and it's what they'll promptly proceed to do as soon as there's no thugs in blue protecting the Means of Production.

Capitalism, as all exploitative systems, can only work when maintained by force. If the apparatus of repression that's bolting it in place falls, the whole capitalist house of cards comes crashing down, 'cause its operation is inimical to the class-interests of most of the population.

[eugenekop]

So free association is okay unless the state of affairs is such that the "bourgeois hoard all resources"?

[KlassWar]

Kinda: If this was the Frontier Era all over again, we could go separate ways without conflict: But all land and resources have been divvied up, and the bourgeois got the lions' share. The option of peaceful separation is not actually open to us all.

The existing property structure is itself the fruit of coercion, violence and exploitation. I wouldn't call it legitimate. For starters, proletarians are given the option of either working to enrich someone else or starving. In many cases, the bourgeois have been flat-out receiving grants of privilege from the government.

The working masses cannot condone this or tolerate it, 'cause it would be suicidal class treason.

[mikema63]

an ancap society is going to be using homesteading, there is quite a lot of land open to use and not "owned" by ancap standards.