Anarchism

Originally posted by DINSTAAR
Labor is a commodity.
It is my time, my effort. I am selling it voluntarily.

Under capitalism you are exploited, not paid the full value of your labour, and no it is not voluntary because you have no choice but to work for a private owner.

Under socialism you wouldn't have to rely on a private owner to give you a job, and them not pay you the full worth of what you produce.

Religion has skewed the way we view society for the entire history of humanity. Ever since prehistoric man started explaining things he didn't understand and using those explanations to reap benefits has this been a problem. Capitalism hasn't even been around more than 1000 years in its current form. We are violent, we have violent god's. We punish pleasure, we start wars over who's invisible sky daddy has a bigger member.

I agree that religion has screwed our way of thinking but it is not the only thing that has done that. It is just one part of the system. When feudalism changed to capitalism the power of the capitalists took over from the power of the church.

Religion and our belief systems about how we raise our children have greatly skewed and corrupted our worldview.

Yes it has but that does not mean capitalism hasn't.

Economies are not zero sum games. They can grow and shrink.

They grow and shrink because of the need for capitalism to make profit, at the expense of workers and society as a whole.

www.economictheories.org...

The past two hundred years have merely coincided with a longer running trend. Humanity, with its new found freedoms created a new world in a short span of time, inversely, with its old-world religious beliefs and system of child abuse we have indeed created the most horrific methods of killing each other ever.

How is it we can launch a rocket into space with a handheld phone but still believe that we need to permanently maim and neurologically damage infant boys because some ancient account of god said we need to cut their penis? Something is lagging in our ethics system. We are holding on to too much baggage. And a new development is that we are turning the state itself into a religious dogma.

Yes the running trend has been capitalism that replaced feudalism in the late 1700's, which lead to the industrial revolution that forced people into factories and mills to produce good for capitalists to sell to other capitalists (Workers couldn't afford them).

How does a worker owned company operate? If by democracy, then it will operate like any violent monopoly would.

If you don't already know this then how can you argue against it? How would the worker owning the means to produce be a monopoly? A monopoly is when a minority controls a resource. When we all own the places we work at there would be no monopoly on production. In a need based system we over produce to meet needs, not under produce to make profit.

True, which I think is good.... because we shouldn't be taught anything in state schools

Well I never said we had to be taught in state schools, but as long as we have them then yes kids should be taught there is an alternative to capitalism instead of being conditioned to accept it without question.

I would say its biased towards obedience and taking on tremendous debt.

That also. The capitalist system wants you in tremendous debt, and it wants obedience.

Worker ownership does not precipitate some 'needs' based system. It may be intended so, but it won't be the reality. Just look at any socialist system set up in the world today. They manage to be more totalitarian, more poor, and more economically unfair then even the corrupt form of state-corporatism we have in the West. It seems when you get rid of Capitalism, you just replace it with a clunky, tyrannical state.

Workers interests lie in producing what they need. Give people the machinery, and they will produce what they need. Profit based systems come from people who already own what they need.

Without a system of violence like the state or any ruling party mafia faction, violence, coercion, or fraud could not be used to promote oneself with impunity.

I agree that is why we need socialism. Or better yet libertarian socialism. You seem to fail to see that it is capitalism that is the root of the state system we have. Capitalism requires the violent state system in order to keep workers from revolting. This they learned well before WWII, when the workers were extremely organized and opposed to capitalism.

Been to a couple myself.... its a function of state power, used by fascists to actually exploit people as well as kill people.

War is used by capitalists to control resources. Why do you think we are in the ME?

The mafia has bats and guns. The mafia has force. The state has force. If a person had a factory and entered contracts with three people for their labor to gain a profit, where are the guns? If there are any, the state still has them.

State force keeps workers from revolting against capitalism. The state maintains the exploitation of labour. Capitalists use the state to condition and control the population.

You don't need guns to force people to do what they wouldn't choose to do, if they don't have another choice.

Capitalists want profits, so they create resources.

Profits is the problem, artificial scarcity of resources is due to making profit. In a needs based system we could produce all we need, no scarcity, no poverty.

No. I am saying that capitalism is not ethically wrong because it is a voluntary contract between willing parties. It is a free interaction if not supported by a state like in its current form. As well, socialism is not ethically wrong if it is not supported by a state. I support free market anarchy because it allows for these ideas to compete without violence.

But it isn't voluntary. Workers have to, mostly, work for a private owner.

But all anarchism is free-market, socialism is free-market, capitalism is not free-market, and can not be anarchist. The fact that when someone privately owns, and controls, the means to produce what we need makes them an authority, as they control the production and distribution of resources, and will control them in order to make profit instead of meet peoples needs.

In a true free-market labour would have to be treated like any resource, and the supplier of that labour should receive the full worth of their labour. The only way that can happen is if the worker owns the means to produce, and to do with what they produce as they wish, not a third party private owner. The private owner is unnecessary.

I used to call myself an anarchist, but then I started realising that the word has become associated with a particular group of people who not only think they own it, but who also adhere to several ideas that I don't agree with.

In particular, I don't agree with the complete abolition of private property. I view that issue as existing on a spectrum, with left anarchy being at one end, and Friedman, Rand et. al., being at the other. I consider both to be unhealthy extremes, and that it is possible for a person to have some possessions without it being socially harmful.

I also felt that Infoshop's Anarchist FAQ was a bad joke, for a few different reasons.

a] It's almost pure collectivism, to a degree that I consider chronically imbalanced. I don't condone every man for himself, but I certainly don't condone allowing myself to be unquestioningly swept along with some giant herd, either. Collectivism taken to that extreme, will produce an end just as undesirable as the ovine behaviour that we have today.

b] The institutional Left in general don't use their brains, to a disturbingly large degree. The Anarchist FAQ consisted almost entirely of the writings of a group of Russians who've mostly been dead for close to 160 years now; at least two of whom (Marx and Trotsky) I consider to have been covert shills for the Rothschilds.

I've read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and with apologies to Noam Chomsky, I know what I'm getting when I listen to him. I'm getting the approved opposition. I basically view the whole Left/Right paradigm to be directly analogous to the pill question in The Matrix. They're even the right colours, for crying out loud.

If you take the blue pill, (the Right/fascists/conservatives) you get The Matrix. You're assumed to be happy with the hallucination and illusion as it already is, in conventional terms, so they don't need to do much with you, other than let you stay in the mousewheel as you already have been.

If you take the red pill, (Leftists/communists/anarchists) you're assumed to be unwilling to accept the Matrix, so you get given Zion. A dream of utopia, where you expend every ounce of your energy into doing what you think is fighting the system, only to eventually find that you've been duped, and the cabal have still been entirely in control of your preferred faction all along.

Anarchism is fun for everybody! If your not totally pissed off by what's happening in this country and around the world, then you have chosen not to pay attention. All forms of government...basically... SUCK.

Originally posted by petrus4
I consider both to be unhealthy extremes, and that it is possible for a person to have some possessions without it being socially harmful.

But 'private property' in this context is not your personal possessions.

It is capital used to exploit labour.

You can own anything you like, it's when you use it to hire labour for a wage, and then make profit from that labour that is the problem. Because for someone to make profit the worker has to produce more than they are paid for. This is the fundamental basis for socialism and anarchism. Worker ownership of the means of production in a free association of producers. You earn the full fruits of your labour, as you should. Why should someone profit from your labour, just because they're lucky enough to own capital?

In the anarchist, Marxist and socialist sense, free association (also called free association of producers or, as Marx often called it, community of freely associated individuals) is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that has abolished the private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production so they can freely associate themselves (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their needs and desires.

en.wikipedia.org...

Socialism and 'private property' apply only to the work place, the system of production, not your private personal life and property. In fact you own more under socialism because you own the fruits of your labour, you have control over what happens to what you produce. There would be no landlords or mortgages, everyone would own their own home etc.

Originally posted by petrus4

a] It's almost pure collectivism, to a degree that I consider chronically imbalanced. I don't condone every man for himself, but I certainly don't condone allowing myself to be unquestioningly swept along with some giant herd, either. Collectivism taken to that extreme, will produce an end just as undesirable as the ovine behaviour that we have today.

Collectivism is simply another word for cooperative. As in all the workers collectively own the place they work at.
It is nothing about being a herd.

b] The institutional Left in general don't use their brains, to a disturbingly large degree. The Anarchist FAQ consisted almost entirely of the writings of a group of Russians who've mostly been dead for close to 160 years now; at least two of whom (Marx and Trotsky) I consider to have been covert shills for the Rothschilds.

But the original writings are what anarchism is, you can't ignore them. Marx and Trotsky were not shills for the Rothchilds, that is complete BS. But they are also not the definition of socialism, they are just one form of socialism. I'm not a Marxist or a Trotskyist.

There are many other writers you could read, Bakunin, Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, Murrray Bookchin, Alexander Berkman, Lucy Parsons, Pierre- Joseph Proudhon, etc.

I've read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and with apologies to Noam Chomsky, I know what I'm getting when I listen to him. I'm getting the approved opposition. I basically view the whole Left/Right paradigm to be directly analogous to the pill question in The Matrix. They're even the right colours, for crying out loud.

Huh the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was an antisemitic hoax claiming Jewish desire for global domination. What does that have to with Chomsky, or anarchism?

There is no 'matrix', I think you watch too many movies and ignore classic works from history. The planet is controlled by the capitalist class, in order to make profit from you more efficiently. It's not as complicated as people want to believe if you understand that. The problem is people don't want to believe that, and so have to make up complicated excuses for our global problems. The idea of a 'matrix' was probably made up by the capitalist class in order to shift focus off of them.

As I have explained before, if you understand the history of the socialist working class pre-WWII, and how that all changed post WWII, you will see the patterns of capitalist control over society.

Originally posted by Atzil321
Anarchism sounds like a great idea on paper, in the same way communism sounds great in theory. I think marx believed anarchism would eventually be the end product of communism in a perfect world. As we all know we do not live in a perfect world... I realy don't think either system is viable at all unfortunately 'not because they are bad ideas' but because we lack the maturity as a species to implement them in any meaningful way.

In my humble opinion, Anarchism is compulsory. The present paradigm(s) of hierarchical, pyramids of corruption are non-sustainable and will implode under the weight of it's own, bloated, rotting carcass. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!