A bit debatable on the individual level but that’s likely what it would lead to. Some ancaps are weirdly anti-corporate though. They think somehow big powerful corporations were created by the state. Which is true in some cases but clearly not in others.
All corporations are created by the state. Corporations only exist because of the laws that create them. Without that special legal status it’s pretty much impossible to grow to the sizes most corporations do.
You got that exactly backwards. You can’t “surrender” something that you have no immediate control over (because if you had, it would be personal property. But no one wants you to surrender your toothbrush).
Private property (and capitalism) needs state enforcement to exist.
All of those are things that you personally use, i.e. personal property. Contrast that for example to a house that someone doesn’t use and extracts rent from.
Capitalists made a good job in confusing these two concepts in every day use, similar to how they like to confuse capitalism with market-economy, or try to appropriate terms like libertarianism, which originally meant freedom from economic coercion, not freedom to economic coercion. It’s a cheap trick to make gullible people support capitalist interests.
I’m not sure I fully agree… some corporate entities are large enough to be self reinforcing. In practice they may end up recreating the state, but I don’t think it’s necessary impossible for large corporate structures to emerge in a stateless society. Of course, the nature of the stateless society is a very important variable here. A society that is hostile to accumulated wealth and social domination would make this much more difficult.
A corporation is a legal construct. While it’s theoretically possible for a single business to grow very large, most of the exploitation and legal cover provided by the simple act of incorporation becomes nearly impossible.
Plus without a state to push down competition, it becomes a lot harder to monopolize a market. Ideally there wouldn’t even be a market to monopolize, but that’s a different discussion altogether.
Incorporation is just a formality required by law. Corporations could still exist through internal cooperation without that, as long as there is no outside force that disrupts them.
In the absence of the state, a corporate structure can pursue its own coercive methods to maintain market dominance. And of course, some markets are naturally prone to monopoly due to the barriers to competition.
Anything the state can do, a large enough corporation can do as well. So this logic just doesn’t add up.
But without a state above them to reinforce laws the corporation would have to enforce them. So they don’t have to follow their own laws, and thus become something else. More like a warband of kingdom or junta.
You could argue at some point it wouldn’t be one anymore but what I’m saying is that nothing in this process of gaining power requires a state.
In a functional and lasting anarchist society, there would need to be norms and systems in place to stop this kind of authoritarianism from cropping up.
Personally, that just feels like semantics to me. They’re a structured group of people that exists to generate profit. Whether they technically meet the definition of a corporation doesn’t change what they’d be like under anarcho-capitalism.
Yes, shockingly, the definitions of words are semantics!
And to literally ask if something meets a definition then try to dismiss the response as semantic while offering your own incorrect definition is fantastically silly.
Gangs are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit illegally.
Unincorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally.
Incorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally with the special legal status of personhood.
Part of the point @mark3748@sh.itjust.works was making is that corporations are nearly identical to other organizations, even illegal ones, except they have a legal status that lets them do far more damage.
A royal charter from King Charles II incorporated “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson’s Bay” on 2 May 1670.[6] The charter granted the company a monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern parts of present-day Canada.
And the HBC did nothing to induce the state to act in such a way? The King just decided, hey, I like these HBC folks, I’m going to give them an entire nation, because I’m swell.
They had some prominent backers as the article explains, but regardless of that the fact remains that HBC was created by a state with the clear goal to establish a another client state through it (hence the monopoly rights). Britain’s rivalries with France probably also played a role as France was the dominant colonial power in that area at the time.
If they didn’t blatantly steal ideas from the left and twist it to support rich people, where would they get ideas? Have you stopped and considered how mentally bankrupt they are?
Having “less government” eventually crosses a threshold into having “no functional macro government at all”.
What you do after that threshold is entirely open ended.
Anarchism is not owned by one political group, the ideation of what comes next is. (In leftist groups, collectivism via willful participation, focused on meeting the needs of all members of the group. In right groups, what amounts to libertarian bartering and more insular communing.)
Anarchism is about opposition to all oppression and unjust hierarchies. If you are pro-capitalism, pro-patriarchy, pro-white supremacy, or pro-nationalism, you aren’t an anarchist. Sorry.
And if you aren’t any of those things, what affinity do you have with the political right?
Are you asking me? Or being hypothetical?I’m none of those things, nor an anarchist, I’m just capable of reading the definition .
If that was directed at me, Kinda shitty you assumed that about me as i made a complete abstract statement, without showing my favor.
a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or other controlling systems.
the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.
My previous comment aligns, especially with the second definition.
Many, many on the right want far less government and less of anyone telling them how to organize their communities. they absolutely want a new version of the world with small and increasingly absent governance. The fact that they are shitty doesn’t discount their desire for anarchist changes in macro governance.
Frankly, your descriptions of what you believe “true” anarchism proves my point. A right aligned person could come in and confidently describe their key points as they believe just as well.
MY core point was that it’s the transition to micro governance, free of external systemic pressure is not isolated to leftist ideals, edit though, it could be! In your post collapse world.
Chill, it’s just a rhetorical you, directed at any who identify with it. If you don’t, then that’s fine. I know nothing about your ideology.
Anarchism is unique to the left though. I’ve never met someone in the right who doesn’t subscribe to some kind of hierarchical domination of other people, usually one of multiple of the examples I gave. If they don’t, then in my view they are confused about their own ideological position.
If you destroy some hierarchies and not others, the systems newly freed from competition for dominance in society will rapidly expand and replace them. Anarchism has always been about opposition to capitalism as much as to the state. You can’t just abandon one of the core tenets and still claim to belong—although the first ancaps were never anarchists. They were capitalists who discovered a clever and dishonest way to advocate for their own dominance over society.
Just saying it was pretty leading, when I worked hard to keep my comment neutral. Clarifying if I’m being put in a box is not being triggered or whatever.
The point is after the dissolving of macro scale government, all bets are off on what’s next. Neither the left or right has ownership of the idea of “absence”
It’s no worries we cleared that up, we are just chatting about an interesting but potentially loaded topic.
I understand anarchism as it is known in leftist groups has a well defined ethos and criteria.
My point is that that the core motivation isn’t unique, others have their own interpretation. The desire to reduce macro scale government is certainly not unique to leftist groups. And those.other groups have their own well defined ideation around the ideal post transition society.
That’s all true, I just think it’s very annoying that they chose to graft themselves onto an existing political movement by taking their name when they share very little of the core ethics. It makes communication more difficult and implies an affinity that I don’t believe exists.
Having “less government” eventually crosses a threshold into having “no functional macro government at all”.
What you do after that threshold is entirely open ended.
I think that is where you leave what anarchists define as anarchism. It doesn’t end there, it’s not open ended. If you end up with some town or camp that is ruled by a leader and/or a priesthood and police force to keep law and order, it’s not anarchism. If you can own land and impose your vast property rights so others don’t have anything, you’re not anarchist.
Exactly how a voluntary collaboration of anarchists is supposed to work to avoid quickly growing small systems of power again (chiefs or warlords) I never figured out so don’t ask me. Best answer is that “because the people already overthrew the existing power structures they will have an easier time preventing future power structures”. So I think they assume the belief system is powerful enough so that once people are indoctrinated, they would reject any systems of control again. How such an indoctrination is achieved and maintained would be my next question.
Of course there are theories like anarcho-syndicalism. And I think in generally anarchism is understood as merely being of a mindset that any authority has to justify itself or be abolished, but necessary authority is not. So you’d still pay taxes for roads and schools.
more ramblings
Personally I believe that without AGI and a powerful and benevolent and incorruptable mind a la “The Culture” any ideology is just window dressing and temporary. If humanity wants someone to watch the watchers, we need to build the perfect watcher that can do that.
How is it fundamentally a left wing movement? I like lib left ideals, but fundamentally speaking, How can you have centralized economic planning as well as anarchism?
You’re thinking of the liberal/conservative spectrum as a line, which is common simply because political parties have a stranglehold on things and you vote for representatives instead of directly voting for policy. The side effect of voting for representatives is that it inherently ties social and fiscal policy together, because you as an individual don’t have any choices that diverge from that left/right line.
But political policy is really closer to a graph with an X/Y direction. Social policy on one direction, and fiscal policy on the other. You’re thinking of liberal social and financial policy, which is communism. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative is anarchism.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I need clarification how capitalism is inherently hierarchical. I know that for example starting from a state where everybody has the same “capital” things tend be be distributed unequally because more capital grows at a larger rate than less capital. But this is more something that emerges from capitalism rather than an inherent property.
capitalism is a system of production in which the means of production are held as private property by a capitalist class. with the abolition of the state will necessarily come abolition of private property, so capitalism cannot exist in anarchy.
That’s a huge claim. Do you by any chance have a review paper on that? I’d guess that if that’s the case there should be plenty of anthropological evidence that early hunter gatherer tribes were hierarchical.
There is sort of a word missing for people who believe in inequality, that the weak should be ruled by the strong and might makes right, who believe in authoritarianism. I mean besides insults like bootlicker. Because ancaps would just flock to the nearest warlord / land baron.
Amazon’s Human Resources Department buys all the land around where you stand, kills you of you violate the NAP by trespassing, and then barters for your unending indentured servitude in exchange for food and water.
Anarcho-capitalism is like taking the worst parts of feudalism and chattel slavery, but with fewer human rights.
Fuck yea, animal liberation all the way. Not sure why you’re using that to defend capitalism tho. Doesn’t really feel like a good faith comment to make.
You’re right that there is a definition of anarchism that nobody will meet, just like there’s a definition of feminism or capitalism or communism that nobody will meet. Those definitions are therefore useless, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.
There’s a difference between self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after oppressive systems and consciously include oppressive tools in their proposals for change and self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after systems that can help empower anarchism and that try to include as little archism in their proposals for change as possible.
The anarchist movement isn’t a static definition, it’s a vector force pulling at present-day society. Ancaps don’t pull along that vector. Non-vegan anarchocommunists do.
No one said they are the “true enemy”. US “Libertarians” (another stolen term) are largely irrelevant and just propped up by billionaires like Peter Thiel. They are the court-jesters of the oligarchs and deserve ridicule for being so naive and not noticing it. “Natural allies” for what? In boot-licking?
Books banned, women and children forced to give birth against their will, total depredation of the environment, oligopoly, corruption, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and fascism.
Other than the book banning, that sounds like your average libertarian to me.
I’m just talking about word definitions here. If you support hierarchical dominance of some humans by others, you aren’t an anarchist by any reasonable definition.
That doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate on certain issues, though of course I’ll have to use my judgment as far as whether that collaboration does more harm than good, as I do in all cross-ideological collaboration. But our ideological differences are not very trivial so I don’t agree that we are natural allies either.
If you’re tired of having this argument just stop calling ancaps anarchists. It’s not accurate and even big papa Rothbard admitted as much in unpublished writings.
I reject the premise that right-wingers can be anarchists. I don’t care what they call themselves. Anarchism is a left-wing movement, fundamentally.
anarcho-capitalism is actually corporate fascism
A bit debatable on the individual level but that’s likely what it would lead to. Some ancaps are weirdly anti-corporate though. They think somehow big powerful corporations were created by the state. Which is true in some cases but clearly not in others.
All corporations are created by the state. Corporations only exist because of the laws that create them. Without that special legal status it’s pretty much impossible to grow to the sizes most corporations do.
The same is true for private-property and capitalism in general, which is why “anarcho-capitalism” is so absurd.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Private property is abolished now guys, surrender it immediately but like at your option because there’s no government or police to compel you 🤡
You got that exactly backwards. You can’t “surrender” something that you have no immediate control over (because if you had, it would be personal property. But no one wants you to surrender your toothbrush).
Private property (and capitalism) needs state enforcement to exist.
So, uh, who do I turn over the deed to my house and title for my car to?
How am I getting to work on Monday? And where am I going to sleep?
All of those are things that you personally use, i.e. personal property. Contrast that for example to a house that someone doesn’t use and extracts rent from.
Capitalists made a good job in confusing these two concepts in every day use, similar to how they like to confuse capitalism with market-economy, or try to appropriate terms like libertarianism, which originally meant freedom from economic coercion, not freedom to economic coercion. It’s a cheap trick to make gullible people support capitalist interests.
I’m not sure I fully agree… some corporate entities are large enough to be self reinforcing. In practice they may end up recreating the state, but I don’t think it’s necessary impossible for large corporate structures to emerge in a stateless society. Of course, the nature of the stateless society is a very important variable here. A society that is hostile to accumulated wealth and social domination would make this much more difficult.
A corporation is a legal construct. While it’s theoretically possible for a single business to grow very large, most of the exploitation and legal cover provided by the simple act of incorporation becomes nearly impossible.
Plus without a state to push down competition, it becomes a lot harder to monopolize a market. Ideally there wouldn’t even be a market to monopolize, but that’s a different discussion altogether.
Incorporation is just a formality required by law. Corporations could still exist through internal cooperation without that, as long as there is no outside force that disrupts them.
In the absence of the state, a corporate structure can pursue its own coercive methods to maintain market dominance. And of course, some markets are naturally prone to monopoly due to the barriers to competition.
Anything the state can do, a large enough corporation can do as well. So this logic just doesn’t add up.
But without a state above them to reinforce laws the corporation would have to enforce them. So they don’t have to follow their own laws, and thus become something else. More like a warband of kingdom or junta.
What do you think is the quality that would make such an organization still be a “corporation”?
You could argue at some point it wouldn’t be one anymore but what I’m saying is that nothing in this process of gaining power requires a state.
In a functional and lasting anarchist society, there would need to be norms and systems in place to stop this kind of authoritarianism from cropping up.
Are large street gangs (Crips, etc.) not an example of a huge corporation operating outside the benefits of the law?
A corporation by definition benefits from the law.
Corporations are businesses that have been given the the legal rights of a person. As if they had a body. Or corpus, if you will.
Personally, that just feels like semantics to me. They’re a structured group of people that exists to generate profit. Whether they technically meet the definition of a corporation doesn’t change what they’d be like under anarcho-capitalism.
Yes, shockingly, the definitions of words are semantics!
And to literally ask if something meets a definition then try to dismiss the response as semantic while offering your own incorrect definition is fantastically silly.
Gangs are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit illegally.
Unincorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally.
Incorporated businesses are structured groups of people that exist to generate profit legally with the special legal status of personhood.
Part of the point @mark3748@sh.itjust.works was making is that corporations are nearly identical to other organizations, even illegal ones, except they have a legal status that lets them do far more damage.
No. Not all organizations are corporations.
Same with pirates. They have an internal structure and share profit, but are very illegal.
Sometimes states are created by corporations. Eg, Canada and the Hudson Bay Company
Except that they were literally given a monopoly and funding by the British monarchy:
And the HBC did nothing to induce the state to act in such a way? The King just decided, hey, I like these HBC folks, I’m going to give them an entire nation, because I’m swell.
They had some prominent backers as the article explains, but regardless of that the fact remains that HBC was created by a state with the clear goal to establish a another client state through it (hence the monopoly rights). Britain’s rivalries with France probably also played a role as France was the dominant colonial power in that area at the time.
It’s just latter-day feudalism. Their program is to Make Landlords Lords Again.
If they didn’t blatantly steal ideas from the left and twist it to support rich people, where would they get ideas? Have you stopped and considered how mentally bankrupt they are?
Literally I think I’ve seen a handful or fewer conservative memes that weren’t just a shitty spin on a leftists meme.
Back The Blue supporters jamming to Rage against the Machine for decades then suddenly getting upset at the band.
Same vibes as when they got mad at Green Day for trashing Trump. Like they never paid attention at all.
But a punk band trashing a right-wing president? That’s never happened before!
It’s not like their most widely recognized song was written to trash a right-wing president /s
Having “less government” eventually crosses a threshold into having “no functional macro government at all”.
What you do after that threshold is entirely open ended.
Anarchism is not owned by one political group, the ideation of what comes next is. (In leftist groups, collectivism via willful participation, focused on meeting the needs of all members of the group. In right groups, what amounts to libertarian bartering and more insular communing.)
Anarchism is about opposition to all oppression and unjust hierarchies. If you are pro-capitalism, pro-patriarchy, pro-white supremacy, or pro-nationalism, you aren’t an anarchist. Sorry.
And if you aren’t any of those things, what affinity do you have with the political right?
Are you asking me? Or being hypothetical?I’m none of those things, nor an anarchist, I’m just capable of reading the definition .
If that was directed at me, Kinda shitty you assumed that about me as i made a complete abstract statement, without showing my favor.
the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.
My previous comment aligns, especially with the second definition.
Many, many on the right want far less government and less of anyone telling them how to organize their communities. they absolutely want a new version of the world with small and increasingly absent governance. The fact that they are shitty doesn’t discount their desire for anarchist changes in macro governance.
Frankly, your descriptions of what you believe “true” anarchism proves my point. A right aligned person could come in and confidently describe their key points as they believe just as well.
MY core point was that it’s the transition to micro governance, free of external systemic pressure is not isolated to leftist ideals, edit though, it could be! In your post collapse world.
Chill, it’s just a rhetorical you, directed at any who identify with it. If you don’t, then that’s fine. I know nothing about your ideology.
Anarchism is unique to the left though. I’ve never met someone in the right who doesn’t subscribe to some kind of hierarchical domination of other people, usually one of multiple of the examples I gave. If they don’t, then in my view they are confused about their own ideological position.
If you destroy some hierarchies and not others, the systems newly freed from competition for dominance in society will rapidly expand and replace them. Anarchism has always been about opposition to capitalism as much as to the state. You can’t just abandon one of the core tenets and still claim to belong—although the first ancaps were never anarchists. They were capitalists who discovered a clever and dishonest way to advocate for their own dominance over society.
Just saying it was pretty leading, when I worked hard to keep my comment neutral. Clarifying if I’m being put in a box is not being triggered or whatever.
The point is after the dissolving of macro scale government, all bets are off on what’s next. Neither the left or right has ownership of the idea of “absence”
Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.
But I think you are confused about what is meant by anarchism. We’re talking about a specific political movement, not a mere absence of government.
It’s no worries we cleared that up, we are just chatting about an interesting but potentially loaded topic.
I understand anarchism as it is known in leftist groups has a well defined ethos and criteria.
My point is that that the core motivation isn’t unique, others have their own interpretation. The desire to reduce macro scale government is certainly not unique to leftist groups. And those.other groups have their own well defined ideation around the ideal post transition society.
That’s all true, I just think it’s very annoying that they chose to graft themselves onto an existing political movement by taking their name when they share very little of the core ethics. It makes communication more difficult and implies an affinity that I don’t believe exists.
I think that is where you leave what anarchists define as anarchism. It doesn’t end there, it’s not open ended. If you end up with some town or camp that is ruled by a leader and/or a priesthood and police force to keep law and order, it’s not anarchism. If you can own land and impose your vast property rights so others don’t have anything, you’re not anarchist.
Exactly how a voluntary collaboration of anarchists is supposed to work to avoid quickly growing small systems of power again (chiefs or warlords) I never figured out so don’t ask me. Best answer is that “because the people already overthrew the existing power structures they will have an easier time preventing future power structures”. So I think they assume the belief system is powerful enough so that once people are indoctrinated, they would reject any systems of control again. How such an indoctrination is achieved and maintained would be my next question.
Of course there are theories like anarcho-syndicalism. And I think in generally anarchism is understood as merely being of a mindset that any authority has to justify itself or be abolished, but necessary authority is not. So you’d still pay taxes for roads and schools.
more ramblings
Personally I believe that without AGI and a powerful and benevolent and incorruptable mind a la “The Culture” any ideology is just window dressing and temporary. If humanity wants someone to watch the watchers, we need to build the perfect watcher that can do that.
So what else do you call not-having-a-government-ism?
Anti-statism. Anarchism is against all hierarchy. Including class.
Anarchism. A king is a government.
The terms “right wing” and “left wing” are quite nebulous, anyways.
How is it fundamentally a left wing movement? I like lib left ideals, but fundamentally speaking, How can you have centralized economic planning as well as anarchism?
Left-wing does not necessarily imply a centralized or planned economy.
What policy do you hope to see, and how will it be achieved?
abolition of all unjust hierarchy
You’re thinking of the liberal/conservative spectrum as a line, which is common simply because political parties have a stranglehold on things and you vote for representatives instead of directly voting for policy. The side effect of voting for representatives is that it inherently ties social and fiscal policy together, because you as an individual don’t have any choices that diverge from that left/right line.
But political policy is really closer to a graph with an X/Y direction. Social policy on one direction, and fiscal policy on the other. You’re thinking of liberal social and financial policy, which is communism. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative is anarchism.
What about anarcho-capitalism?
Ancaps aren’t anarchists any more than buffalo have wings. Anarchism is the rejection of hierarchy, and capitalism is inherently hierarchical.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I need clarification how capitalism is inherently hierarchical. I know that for example starting from a state where everybody has the same “capital” things tend be be distributed unequally because more capital grows at a larger rate than less capital. But this is more something that emerges from capitalism rather than an inherent property.
Well if it naturally gravitates to inequality, l would call it an inherent property.
capitalism is a system of production in which the means of production are held as private property by a capitalist class. with the abolition of the state will necessarily come abolition of private property, so capitalism cannot exist in anarchy.
Humanity is inherently hierarchical.
That’s a huge claim. Do you by any chance have a review paper on that? I’d guess that if that’s the case there should be plenty of anthropological evidence that early hunter gatherer tribes were hierarchical.
Ancaps aren’t really anarchists, they just coopted the word.
There is sort of a word missing for people who believe in inequality, that the weak should be ruled by the strong and might makes right, who believe in authoritarianism. I mean besides insults like bootlicker. Because ancaps would just flock to the nearest warlord / land baron.
I think the word for people who believe in authoritarianism is “authoritarian”.
Well… touche. But that doesn’t sound like an insult and more like praising them for their great authority.
That’s exactly what was meant.
Amazon’s Human Resources Department buys all the land around where you stand, kills you of you violate the NAP by trespassing, and then barters for your unending indentured servitude in exchange for food and water.
Anarcho-capitalism is like taking the worst parts of feudalism and chattel slavery, but with fewer human rights.
Removed by mod
You can not be an anarchist while supporting the hierarchical system of capitalism. Full stop.
Yes, well, you can not be an anarchist while supporting the exploitation of animals, either, but look around you.
Fuck yea, animal liberation all the way. Not sure why you’re using that to defend capitalism tho. Doesn’t really feel like a good faith comment to make.
What I am saying is that you are going to have to search pretty fucking hard for a “real” anarchist once you start applying the actual definition.
You’re right that there is a definition of anarchism that nobody will meet, just like there’s a definition of feminism or capitalism or communism that nobody will meet. Those definitions are therefore useless, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.
There’s a difference between self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after oppressive systems and consciously include oppressive tools in their proposals for change and self-styled ‘anarchists’ who name themselves after systems that can help empower anarchism and that try to include as little archism in their proposals for change as possible.
The anarchist movement isn’t a static definition, it’s a vector force pulling at present-day society. Ancaps don’t pull along that vector. Non-vegan anarchocommunists do.
yes, you can. basically every anarchist who has ever lived has been ok with animal exploitation.
No one said they are the “true enemy”. US “Libertarians” (another stolen term) are largely irrelevant and just propped up by billionaires like Peter Thiel. They are the court-jesters of the oligarchs and deserve ridicule for being so naive and not noticing it. “Natural allies” for what? In boot-licking?
Other than the book banning, that sounds like your average libertarian to me.
I’m just talking about word definitions here. If you support hierarchical dominance of some humans by others, you aren’t an anarchist by any reasonable definition.
That doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate on certain issues, though of course I’ll have to use my judgment as far as whether that collaboration does more harm than good, as I do in all cross-ideological collaboration. But our ideological differences are not very trivial so I don’t agree that we are natural allies either.
If you’re tired of having this argument just stop calling ancaps anarchists. It’s not accurate and even big papa Rothbard admitted as much in unpublished writings.
Have you seen any of the Mad Max movies?