The "no alternatives" argument: why it's terrible

A common argument that leftists use to herd the rest of us into their labor camps is that workers "have no alternative" but to work for wages. In the still-continuing comments to SE's post mocking Franc, poster named littlehorn gives us the standard argument:

I would first ask if there are cooperatives in his line of work. Or such other arrangements where labor reaps its fruit, instead of something like 7% of it. (But let's not call that exploitation.)

If there aren't, then pointing to the 'voluntary' 'agreement', the one that occurred in the absence of any meaningful alternative to the system that he repudiates, is a pretty shallow point to make. You agreed to what you had no choice to refuse, so duh, that's not exploitation. It's only exploitation if no choice at all is involved.

A couple of comments:

1) Cooperatives do exist

Cooperatives (or at least quasi-cooperatves) do exist in his line of work. So the entire premise has already come crashing down.

However, even if no cooperatives existed in his line of work, Franc still has the option of buying stock in his company. Thus, he is already free to have his labor "reap" it's fruit, and "have a say." Why won't he do so? I'll tell you why: because he wants the profits without any of the risk. He wants to bag the profits when the company succeeds, but not bear the losses when it fails. Sorry, but reality doesn't work that way, regardless of how many "syndicalists" would like it to be so.

2) Why coops are rare

Our leftie comrade is right about one thing: coops are rare. But he fails to ask the question: why are they so rare? Left-libertarians claim it's due to state intervention, but that's a pretty dubious conclusion. State intervention seems to be the only reason they even *exist* in so many parts of the world.

According to the co-op supporters themselves:

Cooperatives have developed more extensively in areas with some history of
operating cooperative structures and/or a cooperative or socialist ideology. Government
support -- in the form of grants, favorable terms for borrowing capital, favorable taxation
policies, preferential treatment in awarding government contracts, and establishment of
barriers to outside investment and trade -- has been important in sheltering the development
of cooperatives in an otherwise hostile environment.

This is the case all across the globe.

Canada:

From September 2000 to 2003, the Worker Co-operative Fund Pilot Project, a $1.5 million investment fund funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation (CWCF), successfully created new, and expanded existing, worker co-operatives in all regions of Canada by assisting in their capitalization.

Spain:

Significant growth in this area has been attributed to supportive state policies and programs. For example, the Spanish constitution requires that public authorities encourage co-operatives and promote them via local legislation and local provisions. Furthermore, worker co-operatives benefit from a preferential tax rate of 20% as opposed to the generally available 35%.

Venezuela:

Chavez is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and tax revenue on the cooperatives. Although there have been allegations of gross inefficiency and graft, cooperatives have become a powerful part of the economy and society.

More than 700,000 impoverished workers across the nation have suddenly become stakeholders, such as the 200 families in Bolivar state that were recently given the right to operate a toll road connecting state capital Ciudad Bolivar and Puerto Ordaz. Poor workers are now operating steel and textile factories, fisheries and dairy farms across Venezuela with the prospect of sharing in whatever profits the enterprises turn.

Meanwhile, capitalist enterprise remains strong virtually everywhere, despite being regulated nearly to death. I wonder why that it is? Could it be that it's just a superior business model much of the time? Perish the thought.

3) The fallacy of "perfect circumstances"

This argument assumes that in order to be free, one must have a 100% perfect set of circumstances in every imaginable situation. But this is absolutely impossible. There is no such thing as a life that has a flawless package of options for you at every given moment. To enforce this absurd entitlement would be to end the freedom of everyone else!

If you want to work in a cooperative, you are not "unfree" because it doesn't instantly materialize in front of your eyes. You are going to have to *shock* *gasp* save your own money for the project instead of enslaving others to do your bidding.

The left-libertarians will of course respond that they have no money to form their co-ops. Well, life is a bitch sometimes, isn't it? Again, there are no "perfect circumstances." We are confined by the laws of nature and reality. A co-op is not going to magically spring up from the damn ground the second you desire it. There are *no* businesses that have that kind of advantage.

Contrary to LL claims, it IS possible to save money and "own the workplace." In The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman spends an entire chapter explaining how easily it could be done. He points out that if you take away taxes and examine the income of workers, all of them could buy their own workplaces (or at least the majority of onwership) tomorrow if they wanted.

Easier than a violent revolution, right? That certainly sounds like an "alternative" to me! Strange, then, that none of them are doing it.

My coughed-up conclusion

The "no alternatives" argument is terrible. First, because there are alternatives. Second, because any lack of "alternatives" is generally due to their inefficiency or lack of state protection. Third, because it's impossible to have a perfect set of "alternatives" at any moment. So the "no alternatives" argument is an epic fail.

Hierarchy and usury, once again

As I've stated numerous times, my principal objection to left-libertarianism is not cultural, but economic and scientific. A real-life economy simply could not function on left-libertarian principles. This is because the simplistic rule of "no hierarchy" essentially means "no division of labor."

The entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, and "men of the mind" (as Rand called them) will always be the leaders, the risk-takers, and the project managers. Everyone else will always be (voluntary) followers, for their own benefit. As Tom Woods put it:

Leaving aside the odd view that only manual laborers engage in “work,” all the brawn in the world could never have produced a steam engine or a Pentium processor. Only when informed by the knowledge of inventors and supplied with the capital saved by capitalists can the average laborer produce the tiniest fraction of what he is today accustomed to producing.

So the left-libertarian desire to "smash hierarchy" amounts to "smash the brains of the operation" and "smash the division of labor." Let the workers democratically replace the mind of the person in charge! (And let's allow hospital janitors to "vote" on the decisions of surgeons while we're at it.)

A comment on Rad Geek's blog also discusses the inescapability of the division of labor:

Well, let’s set this straight: the difference of talents and character will certainly produce labor contracts wherein the capitalist assumes the (entrepreneurial) risk-taking weight and the wage-earners obtain a fixed income where there was none in a self-“employment” setting. This vertical division of labor is far superior (as the horizontal or trade type) to independent laboring. The fact that you find it forming over and over, spontaneously (see Menger-Hayek-Leoni) in small populations, deserted areas and anarchic settings (no black flags or blogs, just the lack of any State presence suffices) must tell you something about its validity as an institution.

When I bring these types of arguments up to left-libertarians, they get angry very quickly and claim (unconvincingly) that they aren't against the division of labor. But it has to be one or the other--either no hierarchy or no division of labor. Take your pick.

Other left-libertarians realize how weak their position is after you explain it to them. Some will gradually concede, "Fine, there has to be some hierarchy and a division of labor. It's the autonomy of teh workers I'm concerned about."

Fine. I'm concerned about that too. Focus on autonomy, then. But I won't be satisfied until all of them confront these problems head-on instead of evading them (before going on to ramble about "hierarchy" again, as if they have some keen insight the rest of us are unaware of).

Another dilemma left-libertarians refuse to confront is that of "usury." Few of them will give a straight answer on whether they think it's ok to make profits off a firm one doesn't work in. IMO, anyone not opposed to that is not a leftist or left-libertarian, but some breed of capitalist.

So ends another post on a subject that's getting tiresome. But I had to get my thoughts out there.

Left-libertarian Messiah Goes Corporatist

Dean Baker author of the online book, The Conservative Nanny State (frequently cited by left-libertarians), is just another apologist for corporatism.


*This post has been rewritten, because it was written badly.

Why I'm Suspicious of Social Anarchism

I've already posted on why social anarchism is extremely impractical, in the economic sense. But it's also destined to be authoritarian.

Whenever I hear social anarchists describe their preferred institutions, my blood curdles. I am deeply suspicious of all this talk of "democracy," "libertarian municipalism," "delegates," "federation," and most of all, "voting." I do not have one scintilla of trust in any of this "social democracy" gunk, which always somehow manages to be very state-like in practice..

The social anarchists have done little to reassure us that their system would be truly libertarian. Many of them ally with Leninists or Democratic Socialists, and view scum such as Che Guevara as "comrades." A number of them are lean heavily Marxist. Most of them support far greater state control over the economy than what we have now, endorsing socialized health care, public schools, powerful unions, and other statist institutions.

Rarely, if ever, do they condemn state-socialism. Oh sure, they'll pay lip service to opposing it (at least when the Leninists let them off their leashes). But do they? I don't think they do. They certainly don't ever act like they do. They don't seem to oppose government at all, except in the rare instances that it protects individual rights.

The basic problem is that while the "community" may own the means of production in theory, it always amounts to a small group of elites controlling and planning the economy in practice. The reason for this is that it's ludicrous to think that the individual would actually have a "say" under a system specifically designed for collective mob rule. Rothbard was right when he said:

"But more deep than that is the fact that Karl [Hess] after having been an anarcho-capitalist for some time shifted over to become an anarcho-communist or anarcho-syndicalist. I don't really see any basis for collaboration between the two groups, because even if we are both against the existing state, they would very quickly come up with another state. I don't think you can be an anarcho-communist or an anarcho-syndicalist. You know if the commune runs everything, and decides for everything, whether it is a neighborhood commune or a mass country commune – it really does not matter in this case, somebody's got to make the communal decision. You can't tell me that you'll have participatory democracy and that everybody is going to equally participate. There is obviously going to be a small group, the officiating board or the statistical administrative board or whatever they want to call it, whatever it's going to be, it's going to be the same damn group making decisions for everybody. In other words, it's going to be a coercive decision for the collective property. It will be another state again, as far as I can see. So I really can't see any basis for collaboration. That is really part of a broader analysis of the communist versus the individualist position."

The idea that you could organize any kind of significant economy and give every single individual within it an equal say is 100% impossible. There is no way it can be done. Any system that says otherwise is a fraud.

The Impossibility Of Any Form Of Planned Economy

The statist Left has long supported a planned economy run by a centralized state. As we're all aware, the project has failed miserably and produced massive tyranny everywhere it's ever been tried, without any exceptions.

The anarchist Left supports a planned economy as well, but with a few tweaks. First, they want it to be more decentralized. (How this is going to work with the "confederation of Communes" or whatever they want is anyone's guess.) They also picture it being "voluntary" and more democratic, with everyone having an opportunity to participate. This, they seem to believe, will iron out the wrinkles in the central-planning slacks.

But this is still basically impossible. Why?

Every single day of our lives, we make numerous, spontaneous economic decisions. In a given day we might choose to fill up with gas, buy a Coke at a vending machine, replace a light bulb, whatever. As anyone with experience in marketing research knows, most people cannot come close to accurately predicting the economic decisions they will make (how much they'll spend and on what), even in the very near future.

Think of all the different things you might buy in just a single trip to the grocery store: eggs, hamburger meat, tooth paste, shoe laces, shampoo, deodorant, aspirin, head phones, whatever. Think of all the different, often far-away places each of these items came from, as well as how they were made and distributed. Then think about all the diferent, far-away places the producers had to buy the materials from, just to produce those items (and so on).

Despite the different origins and producers of each item, they are all just sitting there, immediately available for you to consume at this location, at a second's notice. It is hard to realize just how convenient and efficient all of this is, until it's gone.

When you check out of the grocery store, you don't have to argue with every other stranger shopping there over who deserves to get what, or why. You don't have to defend your choices. You don't have to worry about how many groceries other people are buying, or whether they're freeloading. You rarely have to worry about what you need not being available, because supply and demand are taken into account. Again, the ease and convenience of this is taken for granted by most on the left.

And of course, you don't have to directly haggle with the people who produced each individual good you're buying.

Under a planned economy, even a "voluntary" one, all of this goes out the window, and we're left with an unworkable nightmare.

The complicated, rapidly changing and widespread nature of an entire economy simply cannot be planned, especially not through "voting" or "workers' councils." (Sure, there have been small communes, but most of them have been failures and all of them have had to leech off of the capitalist system for survival.) To think otherwise is utopian and downright religious...certainly not scientific in any sense of the word. Capitalistic businesses exist on every corner of practically every country--we know that they work. Anarcho-leftie societies do not exist anywhere, because they can't possibly sustain any large, free, heterogeneous group of people.

What market anarchists understand is that wishing for a certain society doesn't make it possible. While I don't like quoting Ayn Rand, she was right when she said, "facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears." Socialism and planned economies will always fail miserably, regardless of how many brainy intellectuals, do-gooders, or crackpot theorists wish otherwise. This is a matter of simple science.

The next time you're at the grocery store, be thankful you're not under a planned economy.

Are We "Rich White Teenagers?"

From a comment on a post on Francois' blog:

BWAHAHAHAH OMFG OMFG HAHAHA *slaps knee* HAAAAA *cough* HAHAHAAAHAHA *wheeze* HAHA… HA… HAHAHAHAH!!!!!
I would love to see an “anarcho” capitalist rally, a bunch of rich white teenagers and a few rich, white, bourgeois economists.
I’ll check out more of your blog, Francois.

As usual, there are no real arguments here--just ad hominem attacks. And of course, simply putting quotes around the "anarcho" in anarcho-capitalism does not count as an actual argument (though it must be the best they've got at this point). But I had a few comments to make on this, er, comment, since I've heard many similar attacks on us.

1) This post combines multiple instances of racism, ageism, and classism in a single sentence. Not that I really care (a PC nut I am not), but it's quite hypocritical for a leftist.

2) It is extremely ironic that any left-anarchist would accuse anyone else of being a "rich white teenager," considering that virtually all of them fall into this category. According to RevLeft.com, "the average age range of our active users is 16-20." Infoshop.org once conducted a poll showing the average (left) anarchist was about 20 years old--probably rounding upwards. The YouTube crowd only reinforces this stereotype.

However, the real problem with them is not which demographic category they fall under (there is nothing wrong with being rich, white, or a teenager--unless the Democratic Party's entire base is wrong). It's that their arguments stink.

3) We are constantly criticized by the left for not marching around in asinine rallies, chanting and demanding free stuff all day long. But what would they say if we actually did so? Do any of us really believe that we would actually be given "credit" for it? Of course not. They would mock us even more. And if we showed up at a left-wing antiwar rally, who actually thinks we would be accepted or treated with respect? Nobody who isn't extremely naive.

4) As for "bourgeois" (ie, real) economists--how many of them are rich, white teenagers? Thomas Sowell? Walter Williams? Hans Hermann Hoppe? A bunch of loud, suburban teenage punks, all of them.

Common Gulags

Leftie websites like Common Dreams tend (rightly) to be critical of both police brutality and the growing prison population in the US. This is indeed a problem everyone should be concerned about: throwing people who have committed victimless “crimes” into prisons for most of their lives (“rape cages,” as Anthony Gregory and others on LRC correctly call them) is a monstrous, sick, and inhumane way of running a supposedly free society.

What the Common Dreams lefties never really seem to get is that they’re part of the problem.

Let’s take Ralph Nader, whose worthless godawful commentary sometimes shows up on the front page of Common Dreams (in the same way that flaming bags of shit sometimes show up at the front door, or dead bodies sometimes wash up on the seashore). Nader has rightfully scorned the way the war on drugs is being run and the excessive prison population it has created. Sounds good, right?

Well, except that Nader would create about a zillion other victimless crimes and then throw people in prison for those instead. As Bill Anderson explained, Nader is a fascist totalitarian whose oppressive nanny state would consist of nothing but throwing people in prison for victimless crimes.

Lefties love taxes. But where do they think tax evaders go? The answer: prison. Just ask Peter Schiff’s dad, who declined his “patriotic duty” to pay the state’s ransom. How many lefties do you see condemning his imprisonment? Ask one and prepare to hear crickets chirping. When a left-anarchist advocates “universal health care,” remind him that he is really advocating more prisons, along with a vicious assault on human rights.

Lefties love laws against smoking, trans fats, discrimination, hate speech, firearms, inequality, Wal-Mart, and everything else they don't like. They love regulatory agencies. It has apparently never occurred to them that all of these coercive schemes are ultimately enforced by armed, jack-booted thugs and backed by the barbaric US prison system.

So if police brutality and bloated prison populations are what lefties oppose, then they sure do a bad job of it.

Cultural Conservatism: OK When Proudhon Does It, Wrong When Hoppe Does It

Left-libertarians have been having a field day with a collection of quotes from the Mises.org forums.

In response to Brainpolice's post on Proudhon, I couldn't help but leave a few comments on what I saw as blatant hypocrisy:

You left out the part where Proudhon attempted to impose an income tax and national bank on the populace. Does it make sense for left-libertarians to bash Ron Paul while praising Proudhon, when the latter is less radical than the former?

Does it make any sense for left-libertarians to bash Hoppe but praise Proudhon, when the latter is far more culturally conservative?

Not that I'm a die-hard Paul or Hoppe fan, but I can't help but notice the double standard...

...If Proudhon had been a senior fellow at the Mises institute, I have a feeling the left-libertarians would be ripping him apart...

...Hoppe is kooky, and I've never said otherwise. But Proudhon was worse. Check out his views on blacks and Jews, along with his love for Napoleon, and then get back to me...

Now, I agree with Carson that those Mises forum comments are ridiculous (his comment You get the impression that capes and cigarette holders, and maybe pictures of Franz-Ferdinand, are popular in such circles? had me cracking up for about five minutes). I don't consider myself a culture warrior and don't even really care about Proudhon's views on race, gender, monarchy and whatnot. But let's face it: this is a double standard if there ever was one.

Has Anyone Else Noticed This?

I don't want to give the impression that I'm having some kind of anti-left-libertarian field day on this blog, especially since I don't disagree with LLs on everything, and am generally only criticizing the excesses of some self-described LLs.

But I've always found it kind of ironic that LLs (including the authors of "An Anarchist FAQ") are so obsessed with self-employment, considering that self-employed people are mostly right-leaning. According to wikipedia, "Republicans are about 50 percent more likely to be self-employed." (Some other interesting political statistics here.) Add in all the independent conservative and libertarian-leaning individuals who aren't Republicans, and who knows how high the number would get?

Do the left's constituencies really identify with this interest in self-employment? At all? It seems like more of a "rightie" thing.

Anyhoo...just a random observation I've made.

O'Neill Takes On Chomsky

..in an excellent article.

One of my favorite quotes from it:

are corporations really "about as close to the totalitarian ideal as any [institution] that humans have so far constructed," as Chomsky contends? Is Starbucks as close to the totalitarian ideal as, say, the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler? Is Walmart as totalitarian an institution as the Bolshevik state of Vladimir Lenin? Even to ask these questions is to see their patent absurdity.

Yep, you're 100% right, Ben. But it's exactly what these lunatics believe.

What's extraordinary is the amount of time O'Neill devotes to stressing that state intervention gives many businesses dangerous forms of power and authority. The poor dude thought he had covered all his bases in avoiding a hysterical charge of "vulgar libertarianism."

Surprise, surprise! The obnoxious 'left-libertarians' still found plenty to nit-pick (as they always do). This time, the complaint is that he dared to imply that there may be a single business in ancapistan containing a minuscule trace of "hierarchy." Sigh.

Long writes:
..even forms of power that don’t involve or depend on coercion can still be harmful and worth fighting..

Dude. You and your posse can believe whatever the crap you want about hierarchies. The rest of us are just getting annoyed with the way you guys sculpt your predictions to match those beliefs, and then complain when others don't accept them.

I wish more left-libertarians would just admit that they oppose hierarchies per se, regardless of whether or not they could exist or flourish under a free market economy. If hierarchy is what they want to criticize, then they should criticize it.

However, they have a knack for disguising their criticisms of hierarchy as criticisms of state intervention. I believe they do this so other libertarians will be forced take their arguments seriously. Switching the subject from hierarchy (which libertarians don't oppose) to coercion (which libertarians oppose) means libertarians have to play their little game. Y'see? It's a clever trick, and they've become better and better at it. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.

Leftists Cheer On Bail-Outs

Abolish all capitalist businesses! But bail them out and prop them up first!

This is oddly reminiscent of the "abolish the state, but empower and kowtow to it first" mantra we get from the (anarcho) left.

It's Official: Franc Is A Communist

Or at least that's what his most recent post sounds like.

Slowly but surely, Franc continues to slide into the wackier backwaters of ultra-leftism. He's starting to sound indistinguishable from the 16 year-old Tater Trots at RevLeft.

Some excerpts:

The consumerist view of progress is that corporations exist to “serve the customer” by providing ever-expanding alternatives, advancements, by lowering the prices of the resulting products, and by providing more of them. This is possible due to the profit motive: the more they sell, the more they profit, and there are always more expensive novelties to introduce to compensate for lower prices elsewhere. In the labour view, economic organizations serve the needs of their workers and the community, not primarily profit.

"Serve the community, not profit!"

Sounds like loser talk to me.

In the labour view, poverty can be eliminated if the poor self-organize and reclaim their own labour from the ruling elites, working solely for their own benefit and the benefit of their community.

*coughdirtycommiecough*

Psychologically, the consumeurist view leads to mental passivity. As consumers, we watch ads (now, even down the aisles of the stores and at the checkstands) which appeals to his most primitive emotions, wanders around aisles of brightly packaged products which are geared towards the lowest common denominator, and just generally gets in the same mindset that leads to the acceptance of propaganda in general.

And the Frankfurt School begins to rear its ugly head. Blech.

Will he keep going or will he one day realize how crazy all this blather is?

Anarcho-Soviets

Everyone at Mises.org is taking a thwack at the anarcho-communist pinata, and ignoring the tired "They're our allies! Our disagreements are just semantics!" bullshit that some ancaps have been claiming. Good for them.

Make no mistake: I am sure there are some decent anarcho-commies out there who want are picturing something like the kibbutz. But it seems like the vast majority want something more like Venezuela..

My Debate (Well, Sort Of) With SilentRadical

This is an older debate I had over left-anarchism and market anarchism, and I felt I'd post it just for the hell of it. Much of it takes place in the comment sections to these posts. (Obviously, I've dropped the left-Rothbardian label since, because I think it has been perverted.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Kinsella On Left-wing Idiocy

Echoing some of my own recent comments, Stephan Kinsella takes out the trash over at Austro-Athenian Empire.

For some reason these disaffected “anti-corporate” types, who appear to largely be stuck in dismoded Marxian economics and social analysis, have no comprehension of the way real enterprise works. It’s as if a bunch of Che-teeshirt wearing grad students whose Republican daddies paid for their scholarships to Princeton and never worked a day in their lives were railing against “Wal-Mart.” They have some inexplicable, useless, and self-destructive (in the Darwinian sense; would that we had not short-circuited Darwinism with our modern capitalist largesse) animus against commerce and market life.

Hey, to each his own–but it’s not libertarian (IMHO), and it certainly doesn’t justify breaking the windows of merchants. They may feel “alienated” (though how pampered grad students and trust-fund babies can be alienated from labor you don’t actually perform with your own hands is a mystery), but to assume, Marx-like, that this is a natural condition of actors on the market is antiquated, to say the least.

So I would of course as a libertarian favor a rule whereby non-state actors having some color of title to property have a presumptive right to use it as owners until someone else can establish a better claim thereto. Pocahantas’s great—–grandniece can establish a better claim to the property than you? Fine. Hand it over. Such cases would be rare; and covered by title insurance. In the meantime: the world is for the living. Rand was not wrong about everything.

We as libertarians must–we must–support productive achievement, commerce, the market, freedom, free enterprise, the division of labor, economies of scale, individualism, and, above all, as Nozick said, capitalist acts between consenting adults–which these ignorant savages rail against.

Enough. Yes, we can appreciate the caution against vulgar libertarianism. But it is too much. Give me George Reisman’s “vulgar” libertarianism any day over the rock-throwing–and condoning–NON-libertarian misfits.

Bravo!

Anyone thirsty for even more trashing of these worthless degenerates should click the Anti-Left tag at the bottom of this post.

It is best to think of the Left as one gigantic drain on society.

"Why are you so obsessed with economics? Isn't there more to life?"

The question is one that social anarchists commonly hurl at market anarchists: "Isn't there more to life than economics? Why do you care so much about it?"

The fact of the matter is that human beings cannot survive without a viable economic system. It is a life or death matter. What are some of the possible consequences of having a flawed economic system? Mass starvation, waste of resources, bread lines, unemployment, worthless money, fear, panic, chaos, and even civil warfare.

Economics determines nearly everything, including whether you get to put food in your mouth tomorrow. It is not something that can be toyed with at whim, or sculpted according to one's delusions or "feelings." A system that is not based on sensible economics is not one that will last. It is VERY dangerous to not take economics seriously.

Social "anarchists" can sneer all they want. They can revolt against reality all they want. But they have no idea how good they really have it. Most of them are spoiled brats and know-nothings who will never have to know the horrors of living under a system without some degree of capitalism. They take it for granted that they're able to make a quick drive to the store when they need something, instead of having to plan it out months in advance in some anarcho-syndickalips council.

Sometimes starvation and suffering are the only ways to change the minds of people who are willfully ignorant. But in my opinion, few people become radical lefties because they actually give a rat's ass about the poor or working class. (In fact, they mock and viciously ridicule them on a regular basis, calling them "rednecks," "retards," "hicks," "small town scum," "trailer trash," and so on.)

They want to be in the Cool Club so they can pretend to be smarter than the rest of us. This is common in social "anarchist" circles. They want to hold esoteric beliefs and act like they know something the rest of us don't (when they don't). They think they're awfully clever and enjoy watching us try to figure out what the hell is going their heads. "A bunch of vacuous drivel" is the answer, most of the time. As long as they can feel wise for knowing The Truth, that's all that matters to them.

They are starved for attention, and want to get "street cred" for being in the Cool Club (the leftist club). They have the need to be part of the protestors, academics, and critics of "big business." Because it's hip as fuck!

Or at least they think it's hip. It's really just lame, cliched, and idiotic. Their whole crusade is just so obvious and childish that it's laughable. I don't think any more highly of someone because he or she is a radical leftist. In fact, I tend to think such a person is either delusional or going through some stupid phase he'll be embarrassed about when he gets older.

So they aren't interested in "what works" or "what's sane." They just want to be left-wing because it "feels good." And who would want to worry about reality when they can just believe a bunch of horseshit that makes them feel good?

The Authoritarianism of Socialism

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace.
-Milton Friedman

The Socialist Community is a great authoritarian association in which orders are issued and obeyed. This is what is implied by the words "planned economy" and the "abolition of the anarchy of production." The inner structure of a socialist community is best understood if we compare it with the inner structure of an army. Many socialists indeed prefer to speak of the "army of labour." As in an army, so under Socialism, everything depends on the orders of the supreme authority.
-Ludwig von Mises

After reading these quotes, it should not come as a surprise that Hitler was a socialist. Fascism and neoconservatism also have socialist roots.

There has never been a single example of a large (or even moderate) scale, working socialist society anywhere. Ever. A question for anti-capitalists: if socialism were really possible and truly better than capitalism, don't you think someone, somewhere would have been able to get it to work some place on the planet by now? Why do markets and businesses exist everywhere, while socialism exists nowhere?

Ah, I forgot. It does exist. In Zimbabwe, Cuba, Noth Korea, Venezuela and other totalitarian hell holes. Why, then, don't you guys move there instead of just sitting in your boxers, posting on RevLeft.com (before mommy and daddy get home)?

For the same reason, I suspect, that Nazis don't volunteer to go to the gas chambers.

"Anarcho"-communism: Tyranny With a Smiley Face

A writer for the Libertarian Alliance explains why he chose to abandon "anarcho"-communism:

My former goal of a stateless communist
society became repellent to me. Jealous of
preserving my individuality I had no wish to
have my ego dissolved into the
amorphousness of an egalitarian herd.
Communism would render me powerless
before the economic collectivity. The
common ownership of the means of
production would confront me with the
choice: integrate or perish. Any group, or
federation of groups, can be as powerful as
any State if it monopolises in any given area
the possibilities of action and realisation. The
result would be social totalitarianism, even if
it were done in the name of "anarchism". In
practice stateless communism would vest all
executive power in the hands of mass
assemblies or elected delegates. Either way it
would be expressed de facto government of
the individual by the majority. What power
could I exercise for example if I were stuck
at the base of the pyramid of workers'
councils proposed as the administrative
structure for industries in the communist
society?

Rothbard on leftist "anarchism":

The nearest those anarchists have come to resolving the problem has been to uphold syndicalism as the ideal. In syndicalism, each group of workers and peasants is supposed to own its means of production in common, and plan for itself, while cooperating with other collectives and communes. Logical analysis of these schemes would readily show that the whole program is nonsense. Either of two things would occur: one central agency would plan for and direct the various subgroups, or the collectives themselves would be really autonomous. But the crucial question is whether these agencies would be empowered to use force to put their decisions into effect. All of the left-wing anarchists have agreed that force is necessary against recalcitrants. But then the first possibility means nothing more nor less than Communism, while the second leads to a real chaos of diverse and clashing Communisms, that would probably lead finally to some central Communism after a period of social war. Thus, left-wing anarchism must in practice signify either regular Communism or a true chaos of communistic syndics. In both cases, the actual result must be that the State is reestablished under another name. It is the tragic irony of left-wing anarchism that, despite the hopes of its supporters, it is not really anarchism at all. It is either Communism or chaos.

Also recommended:

The Anarcho-Statists of Spain
The Coercive Anarchism of Noam Chomsky
The Fallacy of 'Libertarian Socialism'
The Death Wish of the Anarcho-communists

Why I Am Not a Mutualist

Mutualism, particularly its Tuckerite branch, has fascinated me since my discovery of it several years ago. Why is it so fascinating to me? Because it is widely regarded by scholars as a leftist branch of free-market libertarianism. It’s genuinely left-wing…but it’s still free market libertarianism/anarchism. Who the hell doesn’t want to jump on that bandwagon? Where do I sign up?

Unfortunately, the more I looked into and thought about it, the more I began to realize why Rothbard created anarcho-capitalism in the first place. Mutualism is a confusing, dated, convoluted mess of a political philosophy with very dubious positions on economics. (I'm not going to spend much time on the labor theory of value, since it has been done elsewhere.)

“Syndical Syndrom:” Rothbard’s Critique of Mutualism

Most market anarchists are familiar with Rothbard’s critique of some Mutualist ideas in The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist’s View. Less are aware of his critique in Syndical Syndrom, which in my opinion is a far better article. Excerpt:

In free-market capitalism, there have never been
any restrictions on workers banding together in producers'
coops to own their own capital equipment. And yet, in the
free economy, producers' coops have been notorious by
their non-existence, or rapid failure in competition with
'capitalist" firms. The reason is that, unknown to the
economically ignorant syndicalists, the capitalists perform
an extremely important service to the workers, as a
result of which most people prefer to be hired by capitalists
rather than be self or cooperatively employed. The
two basic functions are those of the "capitalist" per se
and those of the "entrepreneur". As a capitalist, the employer
saves money from his possible consumption, and
invests the money in paying workers their income in advance
of sale of product. In an automobile factory, the
capitalist pays workers their weekly wages now; in a producers'
cooperative factory, the workers would have to go
without income for months or years, until their product is
finally sold to the consumers. The capitalist earning of
"interest" for this advance payment is precisely equivalent
to the creditor who earns interest by lending someone
money now while being repaid at some point in the future.
In both cases, "interest" is earned as payment for savings
and time preference for income now rather than waiting
for the future.

The second service performed by the employer is to
assume the significant risks of entrepreneurship. A producers'
cooperative firm invests resources in a product,
and then hopes to sell that product to the consumers at a
net profit. But suppose that the efficiency and the foresight
of the workers is minimal; suppose, in short, that
they produce an Edsel that fails to sell? If they do, their
income is negative rather than positive, and they lose
capital assets which they can scarcely afford. In the
capitalist economy, the employer assumes these capital
risks, and only he therefore is subject to monetary losses
if his product is inefficiently produced or if he cannot achieve
satisfactory sales.

Most workers are unwilling or unable to assume these
risks of entrepreneurship, and therefore they greet the
employer's willingness to do so, as well as to pay them
in advance of sales, with sighs of relief. Or would if they
understood the process. We can confidently predict that
if Yugoslavia ever allows full-scale capitalist employment
(as it does now for small-scale enterprise) that its
producers' coops will rapidly give way to orthodox "capitalist"
modes of production - to the benefit of all concerned.

These are striking blows, IMO, to the mutualist position on rent, interest, and profit. How exactly are people going to survive when they have to wait YEARS to get paid? How many people have the money to invest in, say, a new airline, even if they wanted to? Without profit, I don't even see how modern retailers or wholesalers could exist. The mutualist answer to this argument has been mostly unimpressive. Kevin Carson's response:

Time preference is not a constant. It is skewed much more to the present for a laborer without independent access to the means of production, or to subsistence or security. Even the vulgar political economists recognized that the degree of poverty among the laboring classes determined their level of wages, and hence the level of profit.

Ok, fair enough, so state intervention and social standing are obviously going to impact one's time preference to some extent. But does anyone seriously believe that interest and profit are going to fall to zero!? Or that everyone is going to happily wait for months or years to get paid?

Even modern anti-capitalist individualist anarchists are a little queasy about these positions:

Benjamin Tucker, a 19th Century individualist anarchist, and perhaps the most famous individualist anarchist of all, at one point, thought that not only ownership of land, but also all rent, business profits, and interest were wrong, and their victims should never be compelled to pay any of these, unless it was their choosing. He even thought that workers, renters, and lendees, who had once voluntarily agreed to respect these capitalist institutions, should later be able to go back and seek compensation for the wrongs done to them.

Today, with more developed economic theory, this doesn't seem to make so much sense -- if you prohibit all rent, profit, and interest, what will most likely happen is nobody will rent, lend, or make capital investments, and the poor will simply not be able to obtain housing, money, or physical capital to work with.

Another critique of the Mutualist position echoes Rothbard:

In a given anarcho-socialist business, production is owned entirely by those who worked upon the capital (for they own the capital,) and is presumably sold in some form of market.

Given that no one would give capital to an anarcho-socialist business for free, and given that no one can invest in an anarcho-socialist business for they can gain no return, therefore to gain employment workers must be forced to contribute capital. Which means that workers without capital are in an irresolvable situation, for they can neither gain employment nor capital, unless some charitable person were to grant them capital for free. A loan of capital to the worker is out of the question, for consider; the creditor purchases capital upon which the worker is employed, the creditor takes some of the production in return, which is no different from capitalist investment!, and this holds true even if the loan is issued by their future co-workers.

All workers must invest capital, and their remuneration must be commensurate with the amount that they invest; for any other would be grossly unfair. Workers however do different types of work, for different durations, requiring different skills. remuneration must also be commensurate with the type of work they do. Given that the remuneration, or ownership of production if you like, is dependent upon the level of investment and of work, both of which vary, why not allow people to invest and do no work, as per capitalism? And this brings to light the false distinction, for anarcho-socialism contains the capitalist element of capitalism, just that investors must work on their capital, which seems to me -- utterly stupid. Any level set by law which determines whether an individual investor is really ‘a worker’ or ‘an evil capitalist’ will be an arbitrary ratio between the level of investment and the level of work contributed. Now, the judgment by members of a business as whether to employ an additional co-worker will depend not only on the skills of the particular worker, the amount of remuneration relative to their contributed work that they desire and the business can afford, but also the amount of capital which this particular worker can and wishes to contribute. Given that this is specific to the worker, and given that each business will have different needs for capital, there will be no market-price for any type of labor, and so no reliable guide.

By forbidding all investment where the capitalist does not also work on the capital, businesses can only gain investment by employing more people, and individuals cannot invest unless they work, which means they also cannot distribute risk in their investments.

Unlike in the capitalist system, workers must work without pay until the product is sold.
The results of an anarcho-socialist system are inevitable; substantially reduced investment, increased poverty.

Assume though that an anarcho-socialist system were viable, and that one day a former worker decides to invest his/her earnings, except that he/she does not wish to work upon capital. Consider though that he/she offers employment to someone working elsewhere in a similar line of work for an anarcho-socialist business, and that the offer includes; immediate pay, no requirement of investment and therefore no risk, and a higher wage, and that the product is sold at a lower price to consumers. This would be forbidden. Yet... what is so wrong about it that it requires legislation?

To be fair, I don't believe Kevin Carson or other Mutualists would "forbid" this. Yet, this just leads to the next part of my critique:

Mutualism and Wage Labor: The Contradiction That Just Won't Go Away

Confusingly, many Mutualists support/supported wage labor, despite their opposition to profit. Huh!? That's right.

As Tucker put it,

...the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism.

He also believed that...

When interest, rent, and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make no difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others. In any case they can get nothing but that wage for their labor which free competition determines. Therefore they need not become their own employers.

Your average reader (whether a follower of Rothbard or Kropotkin or Marx) is now confused shitless. How, exactly, are you going to have wage labor without profit? Why in the world would you bother paying someone wages if you aren't hoping to see a return? It would defeat the entire point. A number of mutualists themselves (at least some on message boards and blogs) seem to think this is a contradiction.

The answer is even more confusing. Tucker wanted wages to absorb profits. In other words, he wanted wages to rise to the laborer's "full product." Don't worry, I don't understand it either.

Nobody in the real world is going to put that much effort and risk into a project, just to let some schmuck off the street get the profits. Again, that would defeat the entire point of hiring someone.

If there is an answer to this contradiction, I haven't heard it.

"Occupancy and Use"? Maybe in the 19th Century.

Mutualists believe private property in land should be run on an "occupancy and use" basis. The problems with this are enormous.

If we followed this "occupancy and use" thing consistently, we would no longer have hotels, college dorms, or even parking spaces. Life would become extremely inconvenient. All companies that expanded beyond one building would not be able to operate. How a highway road would operate without being owned by someone is anyone's guess. And god help you if you want to go on a vacation (or not own a home).

D. Burton (again) is also skeptical of how well this would work today.

..individualist anarchists have traditionally opposed the unlimited ownership of land, especially absentee ownership, for the purpose of passively collecting rent. In the 19th Century, the main idea was some kind of squatter sovereignty, in which individuals only had a right to land while they were using it. Any unused land was free for someone else to claim. That made a lot of sense in the frontier-type situation of 19th Century America. Today, there is a lot more complex and innovative though to deal with space constraints and environmental issues.

Out With The Old, In With The New

Most individualist anarchists today disagree with mutualism, but still find much to admire in it. I will admit that I greatly enjoy reading what Kevin Carson has to say, and that Tucker is one of my favorite anarchists. I may not always agree with their views, but I still find mutualism and old-school individualist anarchism to be quite fascinating.

To conclude, I'm going to cut and paste what I said in an earlier post:

Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, influenced by Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, retains most of their spirit but omits their silly ideas and errors (such as the labor theory of value, which nobody believes in anymore). In my opinion, it is simply a modernized form of market anarchism with the crap cut out. Does that put it outside of historical/classical anarchism a bit? Yes. Who cares?

More Hysterical Denunciation From the Left; I Love It!

Peter Marshall's whiny tirade against anarcho-capitalism is a real hoot. Typical of most drivel that comes from the left, he does little else than allow his emotions and imagination to run wild.

In the utopias of the anarcho-capitalists, there is little reason to believe that the rich and powerful will not continue to exploit and oppress the powerless and poor as they do at present.

How awful!

Indeed, the anarcho-capitalists deny the very existence of collective interests and responsibilities.

Oh, my! Someone had better set up a dictatorship to stop these wild-eyed egoists!

In their drive for self-interest, they have no conception of the general good or public interest.

Those monsters! Have they no shame?

The rest is just hilarious. One can almost picture the teary-eyed milquetoast banging on his computer with childish rage, perhaps looking at the Che poster on his wall for guidance.

Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. Their critique of the State ultimately rests on a liberal interpretation of liberty as the inviolable rights toand of private property. They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. Their claim that all would benefit from a free exchange in the market is by no means certain; any unfettered market system would most likely sponsor areversion to an unequal society with defence associations perpetuating exploitation and privilege. If anything, anarcho-capitalism is merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and cunning would benefit. It is tailor-made for 'rugged individualists' who do not care about the damage to others or to the environment which they leave in their wake. The forces of the market cannot provide genuine conditions for freedom anymore than the powers of the State. The victims of both are equally enslaved, alienated and oppressed.

"Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!?"

As such, anarcho-capitalism overlooks the egalitarian implications of traditional individualist anarchists like Spooner and Tucker. In fact, few anarchists would accept 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice. Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practising voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists.

Evil, evil, eeevil! Every last one of them.

Chomsky said so.