Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 3)

This is my third response to a conversation with Cork that follows from my "Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 2)" blog post.

I agree with you that Benjamin Tucker denies that anyone in his system has to be self-employed. I explicitly said “I did not mean to imply that Tucker was against wage labor in the sense of an employee-employer relationship with my observation that he talks about getting rid of the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-takers” and then confusingly refers to the arising non-hierarchical relationship as “wage” labor.” I explained that “Tucker is inconsistently saying that he can remove the coercive dynamic between employee-employer without abolishing the actual employee-employer relationship.” I even mentioned your quote from Benjamin Tucker’s letter to Bellamy as a good example! One of the main things I am pointing out is that “If Tucker was correct about not needing to abolish individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor to ensure everyone receives his or her “full wage”, his program would still entail the same effect as destroying the actual employee-employer relationship.”

No, Kevin isn’t lying in that quote you provided. I completely agree with your quote from Kevin Carson. Of course Tucker is not lying about his own beliefs. Quit attacking me for things I never actually claimed. I never disagreed with you about Benjamin Tucker being fine with employee-employer relationships, individual ownership over the means of production, and wage labor. There has apparently been much ambiguity and misunderstanding. What I disagree with is your claim that Benjamin Tucker is a supporter of capitalist property rights. If you support capitalist property rights, you are necessarily a capitalist. That is clearly not the case for Benjamin Tucker, as you readily admit. If you aren’t a capitalist that necessarily means that you do not support capitalist private property. At least you acknowledge that Benjamin Tucker was not a capitalist unlike some anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians I have met.

The problem lies in what you and I think constitutes “support for capitalist property rights.” We seem to both be defining that differently. For me Bejamin Tucker’s points of contact with capitalist property rights such as employee-employer relationships, individual ownership over the means of production, and wage labor are not enough to claim that he supported capitalist private property. You would think that just Tucker’s conception of occupancy and use rights for land would be enough that no one would claim that he supports capitalist property rights. I have heard many anarcho-capitalists decry property rights based on occupancy and use as theft from the rightful capitalist owners. Indeed, Tucker’s whole philosophy is based on an intended “depriving capital of its reward.” Interest, rent, and profit would be gone. This entails complete destruction of the effects of capitalist property rights. So in what meaningful sense is Tucker for capitalist property rights then? He isn’t. Benjamin Tucker is clearly talking about a world without capitalism. How much proof do you need to accept that Benjamin Tucker did not support capitalist private property?

It is funny how you talk about the revisionism being led by An Anarchist FAQ when they actually agree with you that Benjamin Tucker supports wage labor. You appear to be misunderstanding An Anarchist FAQ in the same way that you are misunderstanding me. An Anarchist FAQ says, “As we noted in section G.1.3, there is one apparent area of disagreement between Tucker and most other socialists, namely the issue of wage labour. For almost all anarchists the employer/employee social relationship does not fit in well with Tucker's statement that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 86] However, even here the differences are not impossible to overcome. It is important to note that because of Tucker's proposal to increase the bargaining power of workers through access to mutual credit, his individualist anarchism is not only compatible with workers' control but would in fact promote it (as well as logically requiring it -- see section G.4.1).” In reference to people like Benjamin Tucker An Anarchist FAQ also says, “The Individualist anarchists argue that the means of production (bar land) are the product of individual labour and so they accept that people should be able to sell the means of production they use, if they so desire.” Therefore, I think your arguments against An Anarchist FAQ and myself are largely misplaced.

Concerning my shipwrecked island scenario and African American debt slavery, you have completely missed the point. I understand how you may have misunderstood what I was trying to get at, but I honestly did not mean to imply that the shipwrecked person or the African American would necessarily be a slave to one particular owner for the rest of his or her life. People eventually die and there is always the possibility of transference of ownership in terms of land, resources, debt, etc. Naturally there is still some socioeconomic mobility even within a capitalist society. If there wasn’t this illusion of “enough” or “just” socioeconomic mobility within capitalist societies then the foundations of the capitalist system would more readily be struck at by the general population. I am trying to get at the illegitimacy of the dominant-submissive relationship itself, while you try to circumvent the issue by pointing out that the exploited can sometimes become exploiters—like that’s a good thing. This is what I am referring to when I mention that “just because slaves can occasionally become slave owners doesn’t make the situation of slavery right.”

In general I was talking about what’s in the self-interest of capitalists, and certainly it is in the self-interest of capitalists to keep the people below them dependent and enslaved to debt for as long as possible. It would certainly benefit the capitalist if he or she could keep someone enslaved for their entire life through economic coercion. Clearly capitalism places artificial constraints upon socioeconomic mobility that are not based on the merits of valued labor. Capitalism necessarily entails hierarchical authoritarian control. It is a fact that anarcho-capitalists defend economic hierarchy and believe that private rule by capitalist owners is somehow compatible with individual liberty. It is because anarcho-capitalists believe that economic domination occurs as a result of merit-based capitalist superiority.

The whole shipwrecked island scenario is clearly meant to parallel a more complex society within which a capitalist class actively works to subjugate the lower classes and profit off them. My point about shipwrecked islands and African American post-Civil War debt slavery wasn’t necessarily about being dominated by one individual for the rest of one’s life, but about general subjugation by an entire class of individuals. Being able to move from exploited to exploiter doesn’t really entail much of a change at all. There is still an un-free relationship of dominance-submission which is repugnant to a free and equal people. The unjust situation is still present. Just because African American’s aren’t debt slaves to the exact same people from the post-Civil War sharecropping days does not exonerate capitalism in the least. Somehow managing to get out from under the rule of others (and typically under the rule of someone else) does not justify the existence of dominant-submissive relationship in the first place. Just because there are a few “rags to riches” stories does not get capitalism off the hook. Such examples are the exception to the rule. Capitalism is still all about supporting economic rule by a capitalist class which is completely antithetical to equal-liberty.

Yes, I really was an anarcho-capitalist at one time. There is much written proof available on essembly if you really need to see it. My writings there also had some good support from many other anarcho-capitalists. There are plenty of people who came into contact with me when I was an extremely orthodox anarcho-capitalist. Anyways, if I traveled to some un-owned oasis and built a fence around it, I wouldn’t at least own the fence? You seem to be telling me that that I wouldn’t even own the fence according to anarcho-capitalism even though I used my labor to transform the natural resources at my disposal. The fence is a product of my labor, so according to anarcho-capitalism I do believe that I would indefinitely own the fence and the land it rests upon. In anarcho-capitalism I believe I have the right to exclude whomever I wish from my private property, so “just owning the fence border around the oasis is enough to effectively deny others access.” I am surprised that you don’t understand what I mean when I say, “Therefore even if one person is unable to homestead an entire island by him or herself, the claims of many other homesteaders can be bought up by a single powerful capitalist.” Consider Murray Rothbard’s Crusoe scenario that you have provided:

“…return to our Crusoe “model,” Crusoe, landing upon a large island, may grandiosely trumpet to the winds his “ownership” of the entire island. But, in natural fact, he owns only the part that he settles and transforms into use. Or, as noted above, Crusoe might be a solitary Columbus landing upon a newly-discovered continent. But so long as no other person appears on the scene, Crusoe’s claim is so much empty verbiage and fantasy, with no foundation in natural fact. But should a newcomer—a Friday—appear on the scene, and begin to transform unused land, then any enforcement of Crusoe’s invalid claim would constitute criminal aggression against the newcomer and invasion of the latter’s property rights.”

“Note that we are not saying that, in order for property in land to be valid, it must be continually in use. The only requirement is that the land be once put into use, and thus become the property of the one who has mixed his labor with, who imprinted the stamp of his personal energy upon, the land. After that use, there is no more reason to disallow the land’s remaining idle than there is to disown someone for storing his watch in a desk drawer.”

I never denied that anarcho-capitalism requires an initial transformation of land through use. Murray Rothbard says, “One form of invalid land title, then, is any claim to land that has never been put into use. The enforcement of such a claim against a first-user then becomes an act of aggression against a legitimate property right.” I completely understand this facet of anarcho-capitalism and haven’t denied it in my shipwrecked island or private oasis scenario. Where I disagree is with your conclusion that anarcho-capitalist rules for private property ownership would make it impossible to privately own an island or an oasis. Now we can consider what would happen if Friday could sell his homestead to Crusoe. It would result in a greater percentage of the island becoming privately owned by one person who can then deny others access to parts of the island that aren’t actually being personally occupied and used. Crusoe can work years homesteading different parts of the island himself and/or he can buy up the homesteads of others. Such an occurrence is completely compatible with anarcho-capitalism. We already observe that the more money and resources you have means that you can better command even more money and resources. Gradually (possibly over a few generations) one person could easily come to own huge swaths of land in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles. Capitalism is completely fine with this accumulation of land, wealth, and resources at the top of an economic hierarchy. It is indisputable that capitalists support permanent absentee landlord ownership. For capitalists, once an individual has mixed their labor with land and resources, it becomes their private property forever and ever. Therefore, according to anarcho-capitalism it is definitely possible for one person to legitimately come to own an oasis or an entire island and if it were possible it would also be completely compatible with anarcho-capitalist principles for one person to privately own the entire world.

No, paying for the usage of a co-operatively owned road is not the same thing as landlordism. If you pay for a road you own through personal occupancy and use, then there is no tenant-landlord relationship. You can’t pay rent to yourself. Your ownership of the road means that you have a direct say in the maintenance and building of the road. Those decisions are no longer being made for you by a landlord. You are essentially the landlord and tenant, which is already the case in housing co-operatives today. Applied to co-operative roads, this means how much you pay for the road is determined by you in cooperation with others. You aren’t paying more for the road than you have to because no one is in a position of higher bargaining power over you through private ownership of the road. A user-fee in a co-operative situation does not constitute rent because you own the land through occupancy and use. A user-fee is more akin to a business expense in a co-operative situation. Cost-based user fees are completely compatible with mutualist co-operatives of all types.

If none of the co-operative owners want to pay for the roads in terms of time, energy, money, planning, and resources then there simply will be no roads. Take how owners of a capitalist business endure expenses and are therefore essentially paying to use what they own. They are simply paying to cover the cost of things like electricity, water, sewage, etc. This is no different in a co-operative business. If you don’t want or need these things, then you can just occupy and use your property without paying for anything. If you can sustain yourself on property you own without any outside help, then you won’t have to pay for anything—you directly receive the product of your own labor through your own sacrifices. You go out and pick an apple from a tree and enjoy it right there. However, this level of self-sufficiency isn’t the case for most people. Just like we see reinvestment back into things like capitalist businesses, I don’t see why you would think that this wouldn’t be the case for co-operative businesses running roads, utilities, housing, healthcare, insurance, retail, etc. You are only having a larger group own the business in a co-operative. If you can have one person own a road in a capitalist situation then you can logically have many people owning the road in a co-operative situation. Many of the same economic rules would still apply, but it would just be related to a situation in which you have many more owners. It is completely in the self-interest of the co-operative road owners to democratically decide upon a pay plan to maintain and build the roads that they personally occupy and use. Consider that in co-operatives there is also stronger incentive not to overproduce roads, but instead to keep costs as low as possible while satisfying the owner-users. With co-operatives you are getting rid of the opposing forces inherent in employee-employer relationships. Now to me, that sounds good for business.

No, it is not necessary for everyone to co-operatively own every road and highway. Naturally this will all be determined by the voluntary agreements made between different communities of various sizes. The information relayed by interactions within a socialist free market will help determine the optimal size for co-operative road networks. Experimentation helps the fittest organizational structure evolve for co-operative ownership within particular environments. On a road trip, I foresee those individuals just passing through a community’s co-operatively owned road network paying for temporary usage (which isn’t the same as occupancy and use), while those residing in the community that personally occupy and use the road network daily can pay via subscription. I can actually turn your road trip question back upon you. In a capitalist society could someone necessarily go on a road trip? What happens when the private capitalist owner of a road decides to use his or her bargaining power to extort money from those who need the freedom of movement to provide for their own survival? Can a capitalist deny whomever he or she wants from having access to his or her private road? I’m sorry, but that sounds a lot like the same dilemma that the desperate shipwrecked man had when dealing with the owner of a private island. You tell me that one individual can’t own vast swaths of land like an entire island, an oasis, or the world, but I am fairly certain that I have heard anarcho-capitalists talk of private ownership over the roads. I seriously hope that you aren’t going to deny that anarcho-capitalists support privately owned roads now.

I know this will be hard to believe, but I actually don’t believe you set out to be a tyrant although I do fear that if your anarcho-capitalist conception of the world could actually be sustained in the absence of state-government that the result would be privatized tyranny. I don’t think you have intentionally set out to enslave workers and help the rich, but I fear that would be the end result of what you support. I know that is not what I set out to do when I was an anarcho-capitalist myself. I wasn’t a bad guy when I was an anarcho-capitalist, but unfortunately some of my ideas were bad. I believe that it is hard for you and many others to see the coercion inherent in capitalist property rights and the resulting hierarchical concentrations of economic power. When I was an anarco-capitalist, I know that for a long time it was extremely hard for me to even begin understanding libertarian socialism. I couldn’t figure out where they were seeing this coercion inherent in capitalist property rights and how a society could function in the slightest without capitalism. Most people don’t set out to hurt and oppress others, and instead start out with good intentions. There often isn’t just one side to an individual. Take any politician that we anarchists believe to represent and serve the coercive institution of state-government. I am sure that George Bush and even Adolf Hitler had loving friends and family. Minus their atrocities, many probably experienced these individuals as though they were good people. The humanity of these monsters is often the scariest part of all. Like myself, I believe you are just another individual trying to better understand the world in an attempt to do what is right—even if you do start off every morning by clubbing cute baby puppies.

I am not a fan of representative “democracy” but I do think that it is better than monarchy. I am disappointed that monarchy is apparently capable of being considered more compatible with the principles of anarcho-capitalism. The truth is that minorities can be screwed in different ways under many different systems—and that includes your anarcho-capitalism with its hierarchical concentrations of economic power. Sometimes things like cultural issues are separate from the system to an extent. You could have slavery, racism, irrationality, bigotry, sexism, etc. perpetuated by the people within just about any form of human society. You may have the right system (anarchism), but there may still be attitudes and behaviors lingering that need changing through further human action. Ultimately, it is always up to people cooperating together to put an end to immoral activities that infringe upon equal-liberty. However, if your institutions embody the libertarian principles of freedom and equality, then it is much more unlikely that minorities will be oppressed. The system itself plays a huge role in promoting certain attitudes and behaviors. The ability to associate and disassociate at will and having a direct democratic say in decisions that affect you life creates a system that tends towards promoting libertarian attitudes and behaviors. Many people, especially in the “ruggedly individualist” USA, have a tendency to overplay the role of the individual and underplay the role of the system. Furthermore, you appear to be confusing the representative “democracy” of the USA with the direct democracy of libertarian socialism. If you permitted voluntary direct democracy in the South, then the African American population would actually have quite a large say in their own lives. The libertarian organization of society would naturally mean that African American’s wouldn’t be bound by decisions made by organizations that they do not voluntarily choose to participate in.

I think that division of labor has been taken too far by capitalism with its deskilling of labor in order to create a favorable labor market providing cheap disposable human cogs for their machines. In a co-operative economy I expect the optimal level of “division of labor” to be decided upon by economic pressures within a free market absent capitalist privileges. You ask me “Are assembly-line workers going to know which specialists to hire for marketing, accounting, etc. or what kind of business strategies to pursue?” Well answer me this: Do you or do you need to know everything about the medical profession in order to pick a good doctor? Of course not, and the assembly-line workers don’t need to know everything about marketing, accounting, etc. to search for and hire people with specialized knowledge in those areas either. When searching the market we look at credentials, reviews, results, etc. to come to informed conclusions about who we want to hire, fire, consume from, work for, trust, etc. Those with relatively scarce specialized knowledge and skills are expected to command more compensation within a socialist free market. Such people would be valuable to the worker-owners of a co-operative. Those who know what kind of business strategies to pursue will naturally be asked to present their plans for careful consideration and then aid in implementation. There can be business consultant co-operatives from which other co-operatives hire outside management. If the assembly-line workers don’t know how to determine who works in every different department and how it is run then other sources can naturally be hired to help those decisions get made. However, I would venture to say that the individuals working in their department typically know how to run their department. Capitalist management selfishly squanders much time and energy figuring out how to squeeze as much as they can out of labor for the least amount of compensation possible instead of focusing on more worthy issues. The important thing is that any higher compensation is coming from valued labor (i.e. specialization) instead of capital.

I have heard the arguments about the greater risk involved in co-operative businesses. Worker risk aversion definitely needs to be addressed by co-operative institutions. This inherent riskiness certainly seems to be true in our predominately capitalist world where there is much ideological and institutional bias against co-operatives. However, I do believe that there are other ways of lowering risk besides resorting to capitalist tactics like diversified stock portfolios. A national co-operative credit union should be created to address things like the shortage of funds for co-operative development. Having property rights based on personal occupancy and use at least assures people that they will own some land beneath their feet. Sure some products take years to sell and some machinery takes years to build. That doesn’t change for co-operatives, but naturally there needs to be non-capitalist solutions to address these issues. By your own logic if a start-up business is not selling anything, then I don’t know how a capitalist business is going to be paying employees in advance of the sale. Obviously that start-up capital has to come from banks—and for co-operatives it would come from a mutualist interest-free bank. Worker-owners also share the gains and losses, which means risk is spread out more evenly among more people.

Different strategies can be taken to counteract a situation within which a product doesn’t sell at all. The worker-owners aren’t any more screwed than capitalists when a business venture fails. The same inputs are required for a co-operative business as they are in a capitalist business. If liquidation occurs the worker-owners would simply receive whatever value was salvageable and incur the losses. Risk would be addressed to some extent by mutualist banking that provides interest-free credit and places access to the means of production within the reach of all, and there are always well-established co-operatives where people can accumulate wealth for other ventures. In some ways having workers assume more risk would be a good thing because it also provides more incentive to avoid irresponsible and corrupt behavior that could endanger the success of the business. Those who engage in an activity should bear the full risk and cost of their actions. There shouldn’t be this irresponsible “limited liability” nonsense.

In any case, I believe you can lower risk without resorting to the restoration of capitalist privileges. You can organize mutualist insurance companies, friendly societies, and other forms of mutual aid. Cooperation in general is a good strategy for lowering risk. It creates a social safety net. Sharing reduces risk. The co-operative ownership of land, resources, and businesses lowers risk to an extent by spreading cost in smaller increments among the worker-owners. If you are a capitalist you personally have quite a lot to lose in a business venture, but if you are a worker-owner along with a bunch of other people then the size of the investment amount you could lose is smaller. There are also other costs involved in maintaining the opposition between employees and employers within the capitalist business form. For example, capitalist businesses require more authoritarian monitoring and external punishment/reward schemes in an attempt to keep employees in line. The gains involved in co-operative organization can in some ways counteract any inherent costs in terms of risk.

I am probably not the one to turn to as a source of a complete understanding of co-operatives, so below I have provided some excerpts from scientific research papers that would probably help answer some of your more technical questions about co-operatives:

In “Worker Democracy and Worker Productivity” William Heard Kilpatrick explains, “A major source of oppression in industrial and post-industrial society is the restrictive and highly authoritarian nature of the workplace. One response is to democratize the workplace by increasing the participation of workers in making decisions and in choosing and evaluating managers as well as sharing in the ownership of the firm. These are not new ideas, and there are many examples of organizations pursuing various forms of democratic practices. However, a major objection is that such participation would compromise economic and other types of organizational productivity. This article examines the empirical support for that argument over a wide range of types of organizations in which workers participate in important decisions affecting their welfare. The overall results of this survey across many different forms of work organization suggest that the evidence supports the opposite conclusion, that worker participation increases productivity, particularly when workers share the benefits of higher productivity. The challenge is to ascertain ways of spreading these practices more widely.”

“The Comparative Efficiency and Productivity of Labor-Managed and Capital-Managed Firms” by Chris Doucouliagos says, “The available empirical literature comparing the efficiency and productivity of labor-managed and capital-managed firms is reviewed and meta-analysed. The results suggest that labor-managed firms are not less efficient or less productive than capital-managed firns. Labor-managed firms have lower output-to-labor ratios and even lower capital-to-labor ratios. However, the differences in these ratios are not statistically significant. The labor-managed firm's democratic governance, industrial relations climate, and organisational setting do not appear to adversely affect productivity and efficiency.”

In “Why Capitalist Firms Outnumber Labor-Managed Firms” Chris Doucouliagos says, “Orthodox economists argue that capitalist firms outnumber labor-managed firms (LMFs) because capitalist firms are more efficient. This paper reviews the literature on the economics of LMFs and argues that efficiency has very little to do with the dominance of capitalist firms. Capitalist firms outnumber LMFs because LMFs are disadvantaged in capitalist economies and because of ideological bias against LMFs. The principal obstacles faced by LMFs are: cultural and social backgrounds, workers' educational experience, worker risk aversion, financial discrimination, forces inducing degeneration and ideological bias. The importance of `shelter organizations' and a cooperative culture in supporting LMFs are discussed.”

Whether co-operative strategies can combat riskiness in the same way or to the same extent as capitalist strategies ultimately does not provide a death-blow to the co-operative economy. From real world experience we know that co-operatives are capable of functioning adequately in every industry. Whatever the pros and cons are, this whole capitalist “get your money to work for you” has got to go for the sake of individual liberty. Someone somewhere is always doing the labor to produce the value that you receive for your investment. This is clearly a case of making money off of simply having money. It undeniably involves theft from the fruits of productive labor. If everyone had their money working for them, then we would all starve to death. It is like one of those old economic parables decrying the evils of theft—usually in reference to taxation. The message is that there could not be thieves if we were all thieves—to have theft you always have to have someone somewhere producing something of value to steal. It’s funny how the same thing can be applied to the theft perpetuated by capitalist private property. In the case of losses in terms of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, etc., I am still of the opinion that any negative consequences would be an acceptable price to pay for political, social, and economic equal-liberty. Just because capitalist exploitation and economic coercion may benefit business does not make relationships of dominance and submission acceptable. African American slavery makes labor even cheaper, but we don’t defend it even when it increases business profit. Would you reject anarcho-capitalism if it were proven to be incapable of providing the exact same economic efficiency or standard of living that we currently enjoy under the coercion of state-government? I know that I would take justice over profit any day.

Conversations WIth A Left-Rothbardian Anarco-Capitalist (Part 2)

This is my second response to a conversation with Cork that follows from my "Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 1)" blog post.

Okay, I agreed that Benjamin Tucker inconsistently supported a part of capitalism when he agreed with private ownership over the means of production and wage labor. I also explained that you have to consider Tucker’s inconsistent comments within their proper historical context. He was envisioning a society predominately made up of self-employed peasants/artisans. Even I am all for the individual ownership of the means of production when there is no employee-employer relationship. Does that make me a supporter of capitalist private property? No, it does not. Benjamin Tucker’s points of contact with capitalist property rights are still not strong enough to make him a supporter of capitalist property rights, which is what I understand you to be erroneously claiming. My problem is that these few points of contact with capitalism apparently lead you to believe that An Anarchist FAQ and libertarian socialists in general are wrong to say that Benjamin Tucker did not support capitalist private property rights. If he were a full supporter of capitalist property rights, which requires more than individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor, it would have made him an anarcho-capitalist and not the individualist anarchist that he actually was. Claiming Benjamin Tucker as a supporter of capitalist private property flies in the face of everything he stood for. I don’t believe you are doing so, but I have had too much experience with anarcho-capitalists trying to claim people like Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner as one of their own to let such revisionism go unchallenged. When I point out that these people were involved in things like the labor movement and called themselves socialists, I have had many anarcho-capitalists go completely ballistic on me.

Clearly Tucker was not a proponent of unlimited private ownership over land. That is just one of the few things that shows Tucker is pitted squarely against capitalist private property. I just don’t know how you can claim someone supports capitalist private property when they are denying the legitimacy of accumulating an unlimited amount of land—considered one of the most important forms of capitalist private property. Sure you can point out Tucker’s inconsistent support of wage labor and individual ownership over the means of production, but such points aren’t enough to show support for capitalist property rights—especially when the intent is to “deprive capital of its reward.” I am pretty sure Tucker would revolt at a few individuals having monopoly control over the means of production since he wanted capital to be reachable by all through mutualist interest-free banking. He is simply going about the destruction of usury in an incomplete way by denying that workers should own their workplaces in accord with his own principle of occupancy and use. Tucker’s comment that he wants to “deprive capital of its reward” displays his true intent against capitalist private property even while he inconsistently supported individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor. Capital receiving a reward is the whole point of capitalism. Without it, there is no capitalism. In the absence of interest, rent, and profit there simply is no capitalism. That is what Benjamin Tucker wanted even though he approached the eradication of usury inconsistently. If you could get rid of interest, rent, and profit while still retaining private ownership over the means of production and wage labor, then the situation still couldn’t accurately be described as capitalism.

Benjamin Tucker refers to there being a “wage” when he says he envisions a world where “there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor…not to abolish wages but to make every man dependent upon wages and to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism.” He is obviously referring here to all forms of compensation for labor as receiving a “wage” because what he says necessarily covers things like self-employment. When we refer to wage labor we are typically talking about capital hiring labor. So it seems inaccurate to call it a “wage” when only labor hires labor. Tucker makes it clear that he doesn’t want capital hiring labor, so there is no meaningful sense in which one can claim he is in favor of capitalist property rights and all it entails. For Benjamin Tucker, as long as you don’t have capital receiving its reward, any resulting employee-employer relationship would not entail the hierarchical dominant-submissive dynamic. The existence of wage labor and individual ownership over the means of production would become moot points if it were really possible to “deprive capital of its reward” at the same time they exist. I think Benjamin Tucker’s ideas would go a long way towards accomplishing the intended disappearance of usury, but I believe doing so also requires the eradication of wage labor through co-operative ownership over the means of production.

Yes, I understand that with the abolishment of the money, land, tariff, and patent/copyright monopolies Tucker thinks that wages will raise to the value of the worker’s “full product.” I suppose I have been somewhat unclear. Note that I sometimes don’t make it obvious that I am explaining what I believe or trying to explain what I understand Tucker to believe. I did not mean to imply that Tucker was against wage labor in the sense of an employee-employer relationship with my observation that he talks about getting rid of the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-takers” and then confusingly refers to the arising non-hierarchical relationship as “wage” labor. I have agreed that he was inconsistent about these points from the start. In reality, if you get rid of such a distinction by removing capital from the equation, everyone is essentially self-employed, and it is unfortunate that Benjamin Tucker was never able to see that. Everyone would be self-employed or potentially self-employed thanks to “occupancy and use” property rights and being able to readily receive the capital necessary to start a business through utilization of a mutualist bank.

Tucker is inconsistently saying that he can remove the coercive dynamic between employee-employer without abolishing the actual employee-employer relationship. To me that is definitely strange and confusing, but still very antithetical to capitalism and its private property rights. You accurately pointed out that in his letter to Bellamy, Tucker stated “When interest, rent and profit disappear under the influence of free money, free land, and free trade, it will make little difference whether men work for themselves, or are employed, or employ others.” All I meant to highlight here is that Tucker’s program of erasing the distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-receivers” would effectively end the exploitation that is fundamental to the capitalist employee-employer relationship. Therefore, Tucker is obviously still coming to extremely anti-capitalist conclusions. If Tucker was correct about not needing to abolish individual ownership over the means of production and wage labor to ensure everyone receives his or her “full wage”, his program would still entail the same effect as destroying the actual employee-employer relationship. Such an occurrence would in no way be favorable towards capitalist private property.

Occupancy and use is not just for unused land, but also for scarce goods including raw materials, products, equipment, materials, buildings, structures, etc. That is what I believe, and I am fairly certain it is what Benjamin Tucker believed. In “Instead of a Book” he shows his disapproval of unlimited holdings of scarce goods when he says, “in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use.” Therefore I don’t see Tucker being for a capitalist monopoly over capital goods even though he stated support for individual ownership over the means of production. For Tucker, the legitimacy of any such individual ownership over the means of production still requires it be within the reach of all by not being “so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities.” If property rights are founded upon personal occupy and use of land, then I also don’t see how it can get around entailing the occupancy and use of whatever resides upon the land—meaning abandoned buildings, means of production, etc. It seems to me that if you are for occupancy and use of land you must necessarily be for occupancy and use of capital goods.

I explained, “The important idea being that the desperate shipwrecked man’s need to occupy and use part of the island would involve another individual not being able to sustain their own life.” All I am trying to say is that you can’t legitimately deny a man access to something with which he could use to sustain his own life. If you can spare something without dying or unreasonably harming yourself, you are obligated to help the shipwrecked man. Doing otherwise is incompatible with individual liberty. You can’t be free if you are dead. It would be like watching a child drown to death in a pool of water when it was easily within your power to save the child. You can’t claim to be for individual liberty while claiming that you don’t have to help the child because you would lose something by, say, ruining your good clothes. For the maintenance of individual liberty, human life must always come before any consideration of material possessions.

For anarcho-capitalists, the homestead principle requires mixing your labor with unclaimed land and resources. If building a fence does not meet this anarcho-capitalist requirement for a legitimate private property claim, I don’t know what does. I am truly dumbfounded that you believe that no anarcho-capitalist claims that you can own land or natural resources by simply building a fence. Come on, you can’t truly expect me to believe this. I would like to know what constitutes legitimate private property for an anarcho-capitalist such as yourself then. I know I would have claimed building a fence around an oasis would constitute a legitimate property claim when I was an anarcho-capitalist. Even if the standard is that there needs to be a “transformation” of the oasis itself to claim entire ownership, just owning the fence border around the oasis is enough to effectively deny others access. This would have the same effect as claiming the entire oasis as one’s private property. For anarcho-capitalists, once the “transformative” mixing of labor occurs, continual occupancy and use is not required to retain ownership. It becomes your property indefinitely until you make the conscious decision to sell it or give it away. Therefore even if one person is unable to homestead an entire island by him or herself, the claims of many other homesteaders can be bought up by a single powerful capitalist. So it is definitely conceivable that one individual could easily meet the anarcho-capitalist standard for owning an entire island, and it is very plausible that a fence could be built around an oasis and used to “legitimately” deny desperate passersby any water in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles. The main thing here is that concentrated economic power is a severe threat to individual liberty.

Contrary to what you have said, things like co-operative roads would be operated on a pay-for-use basis, subscription, or some mixture of both. Supporting co-operatives doesn’t mean being opposed to a pay-for-use basis. Such a pay scheme is completely compatible with occupancy and use. If you use it, you pay for it, and you also own it. Under co-operative ownership, you are considered part-owner of the road if you use it, and you have a direct democratic say in the construction and maintenance of the road. The same problems you have with co-operatives being able to handle large highway construction and maintenance could be leveled against your anarcho-capitalist privatization of roads, which also lacks recourse to taxation. In a genuine free market it is very possible that the cost of building a large road network outweighs the benefits. Instead of such a large need for cars in an anarchist society, you might see the proliferation of mass transit which is easier to maintain on a pay-for-use basis. We shouldn’t always assume that anarchism’s inability to sustain big business, big roads, big industry, big military, big energy, big whatever constitutes a weakness. The bigness of our society carries with it many double bind consequences that are very likely to prove unsustainable in the long-run. The free market will send the proper signals under the given circumstances to signify what is inefficiently too small or too big. If giving up the institutions of huge size and scope we see today is the price for individual freedom and equality, those calling ourselves anarchists should be willing to pay it.

It is incredible that you defend such big business monopoly control in your supposedly “free” market. Monopoly is completely incompatible with a competitive free market. When you have a monopoly there is no longer a “serving of others” required but an even more extreme case of “serving yourself” at the expense of others. For you, the issue obviously isn’t about concentrations of power. You’re apparently all for that. Your only concern is with who has that power. You are for centralization as long as power is held by the private sector and not state-government. As long as big capitalist corporations are using their coercive concentrated power efficiently in service of profit, everything is peachy keen for individual liberty. Yeah, right. How is it that the notion that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” magically doesn’t apply to concentrations of economic power? It is truly frightening that you would be fine with one person or a few people owning the world “if they treated (you) like a god, and all of us (got) to live in mansions with free foot massages, tennis courts, etc at barely any price (which is the kind of value they would have to be providing to even get half that far).” Your faith in the benevolence of private “free” market rulers of the world is truly astounding. Is it any wonder that some anarcho-capitalists like Hans-Hermann Hoppe defend monarchy as a “lesser evil” over democracy? I guess we should go back and undo the American Revolution then—one of the few revolutions I though many right-libertarians look favorably upon. You would think democracy would be considered the more “libertarian” of the two since more people get some kind of say in decisions that affect their lives, but no! Instead you see anarcho-capitalists defending monarchy where a few individuals in a royal family get to rule over their property. In a monarchy you get to be king or queen over your own little private kingdom where you are free to treat other individuals like property—your subjects are there only for your own benefit. Yeah, that sure smells like freedom to me.

Your assumptions about what would have to occur for someone to own the entire world in accord with anarcho-capitalist principles are way off base. If what you were saying were true, then we would already observe this “being treated as kings” occurring to some extent even in our restrained capitalist market. It is simply not occurring. Capitalist corporations try to manipulate and screw over customers and their employees at every turn. To take one example, look at the rise of sweatshop labor. State-government didn’t initiate it. Capitalist corporations worked to establish it all on their own—often through the manipulation of state-governments. It is really very hard to attack state-government without attacking corporate capitalist economic power. Indeed, corporations are typically the prime movers and shakers of state-government policy. Maybe we should look at Blackwater where profit is quite vividly held above individual life and liberty. For capitalism “profit over people” is the name of the game. Do you think that privatization of the water supply in countries like Bolivia was done for the benefit of the people or for the benefit of private corporate interests? I think the resulting water price increases and resulting riots speak for themselves. Even if we inaccurately assume that a capitalist corporation would initially have to unfathomably satisfy their customers to accumulate enough to own the entire world, after having achieved world ownership, the owner(s) wouldn’t have to do squat in order to maintain their “legitimate” anarcho-capitalist property. After you own the world, you can sit back and reap the rewards of everyone else’s labor and pass the same coercive privilege on to whomever you desire. It would be “I own the world, so you have to do whatever I say. Otherwise, get off my property!” The blown up exaggerated “ownership of the world” example is just meant to bring into sharper focus the real-world examples of capitalist coercion. This reaping the rewards of others labor and not having to really satisfy anyone once you become a capitalist at the top of some private tyranny is what we are trying to point out by denying the legitimacy of interest, rent, and profit. If you really want a free market to operate on the basis of merit then you need to remove capital from the equation. Labor must be the source of the free market pricing feedback loop. Only then will you be commanding wealth through perpetually satisfying the needs of your fellow human beings while also satisfying yourself. Corporations must be directly accountable to the lives their decisions effect instead of just being responsible for delivering a profit to its shareholders. Good luck getting your private capitalist owners of the world to treat us all like kings. You might as well try getting state-government to treat us all like kings, too.

Being your own boss does not deny ever working in order to satisfy the needs of someone else. It means owning your industry. It means equal opportunity bargaining power based on subjectively valued labor instead of having bargaining power based on capital controlled access to the means of production. In fact, cooperation defies the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy by making it so that my fate is linked with yours. With cooperative forms of organization we sink or swim together. It is all about satisfying others while also satisfying yourself, whereas completion is a zero-sum game where one person gains at another’s expense. In competition the only way to win is to make someone else lose.

Besides Walter Block, I know that Robert Nozick also supported voluntary slavery. I have also personally known many less famous anarcho-capitalists and right-libertarians that have defended voluntary slavery. I myself defended voluntary slavery when I was an anarcho-capitalist because it was the only logical outcome of my incomplete conception of freedom. I don’t see how you can be a consistent anarcho-capitalist without supporting voluntary slavery. You can’t really own something unless you can sell it. Self-ownership is one of the cornerstones of laissez-faire capitalist ideology. Therefore, since you own yourself you can sell yourself.

Who said anything about African Americans being debt slaves to the exact same line of people from right after the Civil War? Your incredulity is misplaced. All you asked me was if African Americans are still slaves to debt. Yes, they are along with countless others. My point is that capitalism obviously doesn’t give people a fair shake. Regardless of occasionally being able to get out from under one debt collector (and typically under another), it is plain to see that socioeconomic mobility is artificially hindered by capitalist property rights, which runs counter to merit-based mobility founded upon valued labor. Furthermore, just because slaves can occasionally become slave owners doesn’t make the situation of slavery right.

I did not say that Mondragon and Publix employ zero wage labor and I have nothing against specialists/managers hired by labor instead of capital. People are naturally going to be better than others at doing certain things. I have no problem per se with specialization and division of labor. I have a problem with the systematic deskilling of labor perpetuated by capitalism to further increase dependency on a ruling capitalist class. As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said, “In cases in which production requires great division of labour, it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among the workers…because without that they would remain isolated as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage workers, which is repugnant in a free democratic society. But where the product can be obtained by the action of an individual or a family…there is no opportunity for association.” So co-operatives are not necessarily against specialization and division of labor, but are for empowering more individuals through self-management. The best way of learning is by doing. This is about providing access to the resources necessary to more fully develop towards ones full potential. It is about better developing and releasing our individuality.

For some of these co-operative companies there is usually some percentage of the business made up of worker-owners. Ideally everyone involved in a co-operative would eventually become a worker-owner. Right now I believe that to legally be considered a co-operative in some places you must have at least half of the business owned by the workers. The rules naturally vary from place to place. No matter how imperfect, these co-operatives are definitely a step in the right direction and are living proof that co-operatives work and can function on quite a large scale. Just check out the situation in Argentina for instance. Let’s also not forget that these co-operatives have to thrive within a market place biased towards capitalist business forms due to state-government intervention. Zero wage labor would occur if everyone working in the co-operative was an owner. Ideally that is what libertarian socialists would want.

I know that there is usually a trial period before employees have an option to buy into the company and become worker-owners. Even if this practice were retained in an anarchist society, the important thing is that everyone can easily become a worker-owner somewhere and everyone has access to the means necessary to sustain themselves through their own hard work. The point is that people don’t have their compensation artificially reduced by the coercive bargaining power of capitalist private property. These worker-owners make decisions on a one-person-one-vote basis, so even if you can own more stock in the co-operative you don’t receive more decision-making power. Some co-operatives use consensus decision making while others democratically elect a board of directors. Naturally what method you use can also be effected by size and the type of work involved. Your comment about “hundreds of thousands of employees hold(ing) meetings every day to decide on each and every aspect of when and how to work” reveals a profound misunderstanding of how co-operatives function and the way libertarian socialists expect them to work.

Naturally there is room for deviation, but the way I ideally desire co-operatives to run would be along the following lines: Immediately or after a trial period, every worker would have the option of buying into the business and becoming an owner. You would have a face-to-face general assembly held as often as needed at which time company policies would be laid down and/or amended. These policies then provide mandated guidelines within which a democratically elected board of directors is appointed to coordinate certain activities. The manager-delegates are rotated and are recallable by the general assembly if there is an unacceptable departure from the mandated policies.

As already noted, ideally we should be working towards a situation in which an individual has a say in decisions proportionate to the degree by which he or she is affected by them. So a hospital janitor obviously wouldn’t have a great deal of say in the decisions of a surgeon, and a flight attendant wouldn’t have much of a say in the decisions of a pilot. It all depends on who the decision affects that determines who has a say. Certainly you didn’t think we are saying that a janitor with little to no knowledge on the subject gets to influence how a surgeon performs brain surgery. Such a thing wouldn’t be in anyone’s self-interest. If need be, you can certainly have separate smaller general assembly meetings held by different company departments. Many decisions can be made spontaneously on the floor with fellow co-workers anyways.

Also, notice how co-operatives bring into alignment the self-interest of the workers and the success of the business by making everyone an owner. Consider how receiving compensation directly from “profit” provides workers an internalized incentive to reduce wasteful and inefficient activities. In a capitalist corporation an employee doesn’t care about wasting company resources because he or she knows that doing so is unlikely to make much if any difference in how much he or she receives from the capitalist boss. In capitalism wages are inversely related to profit. In a co-operative culture, worker-owners understand that hurting the bottom line of their business directly hurts themselves. There is more of an internalized incentive to monitor yourself and your co-workers in a co-operative instead of having an authoritarian capitalist boss externally threatening you to fall in line.

In some co-operatives everyone might own an equal amount, while in others that is not the case. Some co-operatives pay everyone the same, while others don’t. These things are all decided upon by the worker-owners themselves and are influenced by the particular situation at hand. It’s not even like hiring and firing decisions aren’t made in co-operatives. No one denies the necessity of such decisions. What we are worried about is where this decision-making power is coming from. The main thing is giving people equal opportunity through denying capital its reward and only rewarding labor. While Mondragon and Publix aren’t perfect examples of what libertarian socialists want in a co-operative, they do display that co-operatives are compatible with complex industrial society. Most importantly, there is plenty of freedom for these co-operatives to adapt to their respective situations.

Yes, co-operative retailers buy things and then sell them at a higher price to make a “profit.” Note that co-operatives operate in a capitalist “free” market, so that is going to impose certain constraints upon co-operatives. In a socialist free market we would expect economic pressures to cause cost to approach or become the limit of price. The “cost” of labor is considered to be the subjective cost (i.e. the amount of suffering or sacrifice involved). Profit is therefore defined as money withheld from laborers who produce products using equipment or land owned by a capitalist. Profit is therefore possible because capitalists are assumed to own the products that are made with their equipment, otherwise, they would charge the laborers rent to achieve the same effect. We are not opposed to someone taking natural resources, applying his or her labor to create a product, and then bartering or selling it for whatever can be received through subjective valuations within the free market. We aren’t opposed to “profit” in that sense—in the sense of benefiting from the provision of a good or service. Even if we call it “profit” the main thing is that it does not involve surplus value extracted from the productive labor of others by capital. Such a “profit” going directly to the workers and not to a capitalist controlling access to the means of production is acceptable. What we want is equal exchange—you should get back the same value that you produce. When we oppose profit, the coercive hierarchical relationship allowing capital to extract surplus value from the labor of others is really what we are talking about.

Conversations With A Left-Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalist (Part 1)

This is a response to a conversation with Cork started in the discussion section of my "Who Am I?: The Journey That Shaped Me" blog post.

Cork, I have actually read the entirety of Benjamin Tucker’s “Instead of a Book” and haven’t solely received my information from secondary sources. I quoted An Anarchist FAQ simply because it already clearly explains my own conclusions about Tucker. Ok, let’s make the issue of Benjamin Tucker’s capitalism really simple. Did he or did he not proclaim himself to be a socialist? Can a socialist be a capitalist? The answers to these questions are hopefully obvious enough to circumvent your attempted revisionism of Benjamin Tucker’s socialism. He declared himself a socialist in “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, And Wherein They Differ” and a socialist obviously can’t be a capitalist. Benjamin Tuker was a smart enough thinker that I seriously doubt he has made a mistake in calling himself a socialist.

I have looked over some material and have found where Benjamin Tucker supported wage labor and became inconsistent with his own ideas about “occupancy and use” while still coming to extremely anti-capitalist conclusions. Observe Tucker’s “Should Labor be Paid or Not?” In it Tucker says that he supports the ability of individuals to buy the labor of others, while in the same breath opposing “the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously.” Even here he is completely at odds with some of the fundamental aspects of capitalist private property rights.

Tucker goes on to say, “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 to secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury.” The erasure of a distinction between “wage-payers” and “wage-receivers” as well as "depriving capital of its reward" sounds very much like opposition to the very foundation of capitalism to me.

The problem seems to be arising here because Benjamin Tucker is confusing the word “wages” by not considering its possible usage in reference to different kinds of economic relationships. Tucker is using the word “wage” to refer to “any kind of compensation for labor” when it is typically used to refer to “compensation received from a capitalist owner/boss.” For Tucker a “wage” would occur when “an individual is hired to mow a lawn” while most of us think of a “wage” as meaning “a capitalist hiring an employee.” I am in favor of the former and opposed to the latter. Think about the difference between a wage and a salary. In a worker co-operative everyone is technically a self-employed owner, and thus there is no wage labor. In the lawn mowing scenario, there is no employee-employer relationship, so most of us don’t consider that a “wage”, but Benjamin Tucker has confusingly referred to it as such.

Also consider the context within which Tucker is saying that he is for individual ownership over the means of production and the ability to hire the labor of others. Benjamin Tucker is referring to a world containing predominately self-employed peasant/artisan production. That means no employee-employer relationship involved in the idea (in your words) that “literally everyone should sell their labor.” For him even if there were some labor sold in the sense of an employee-employer relationship, the abolishment of the money, land, tariff, and patent/copyright monopolies would still ensure people receive their “whole wages” within the workings of a socialist free market. You can’t have capitalism without capital ownership receiving tribute in the form of profit, interest, and rent. So even by erroneously being for what he calls “wage” labor and individual ownership over the means of production, Benjamin Tucker is still espousing ideas that are very much against capitalist property rights. He is just doing it inconsistently. Ultimately, Benjamin Tucker’s saying that he is for wage labor in our current world would be in direct conflict with his ideas about “occupancy and use” which must logically be extended to the workplace containing the means of production.

Honestly, it is impossible for someone who says “Interest is Theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder," to be considered a genuine proponent of capitalist property rights even with tenuous inconsistent points of contact with capitalism. You say, “I didn’t say he supported profit, I said that he supported capitalist property rights.” Tell me then, where do profits come from? They can only come from capitalist property rights, which mean private ownership over the means of production/survival. Interest, rent, and profit all stem from capitalist property rights. Sorry, but you simply can’t oppose those things without rejecting capitalist property rights. Tucker has very clearly placed restraints on the amount of property one can own, which is in direct conflict with the most fundamental principles of capitalist property rights. Also note that I am fine with anarcho-capitalists voluntarily organizing around capitalist principles as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others to completely disassociate with their system of “voluntary slavery.” So in that sense only I am not opposed to people freely forming wage labor relationships, while personally being opposed to wage slavery. So in that sense, like Benjamin Tucker, I am for the “untrammelled right to take usury” while being personally opposed to any of its exercise. It is interesting to observe how Tucker himself makes this distinction in “Right and Individual Rights” where he says, “In defending the right to take usury, we do not defend the right of usury.”

Yes, occupancy and use is still a system of property ownership. I have already said that. However, it is not a capitalist form of property rights. You are correct that if someone was occupying and using every part of the island it wouldn’t change the guy’s circumstances much. The important idea being that the desperate shipwrecked man’s need to occupy and use part of the island would involve another individual not being able to sustain their own life. Otherwise, there are no legitimate grounds for denying the shipwrecked man anything. If there is only one glass of fresh water available and both of us need to drink its entirety to survive another day, then one of us is going to be out of luck. Sometimes scarcity is an unavoidable aspect of a situation. The problem with capitalist private property is that it produces artificial scarcity whereas possession does not. Capitalism is building a fence around an oasis in the desert, claiming it as your homesteaded capitalist private property, and denying thirsty passersby a drink even though there is enough fresh water there to sustain yourself and countless others. It is certainly much more unlikely that so much of an island would be occupied and used that no arrangement could be made to sustain the shipwrecked man without harming or killing another inhabitant of the island. On the other hand, there are real world examples of privately owned islands where capitalists would no doubt support the owner’s right to shoot or remove trespassers. Again, the important difference is genuine scarcity involved in possession as opposed to the artificial scarcity of capitalist private property. Capitalism adds a layer of artificial scarcity to the genuine scarcity of our planet’s land and resources.

Hotels, parking lots, college dorms, roads, and recreation centers can all be organized by people on co-operative basis. There is already co-operative housing that addresses the issue of hotels and college dorms. Instead of privately owned roads you can have co-operatively owned roads such as the ones in rural Finland. We already have some utility co-operatives providing things like electricity . You can do this same sort of thing for parking lots and recreation centers. Any of your left-Rothbardian capitalist private business model solutions to hotels, parking lots, college dorms, roads, and recreation centers can be accomplished by workplace democracy in accord with the co-operative organizational form.

So according to you it is a good thing that bigger businesses destroy smaller businesses. Nice, so we would have an even greater narrowing of choice and the limiting of individual autonomy. We should have an even greater consolidation of coercive economic power into the hands of a few. Therefore, you obviously would be fine if one person or a few people could come to own the entire world just as I suspected. You can’t be for individual liberty and be okay with capitalist businesses forming huge, hierarchical, inefficient, state-like, bureaucratic, and centralized monopolies that deny people any say in the running of their own lives. The choice to work for one of several capitalist boss masters or suffer hunger, thirst, homelessness, poverty, sickness, and death is no choice at all. To be free you must be your own boss. I am actually fine with whatever size organizations can reach as long as the people involved have a direct say in decisions proportionate to the degree that they are affected by them. Naturally this means that organizations would be much smaller, sustainable, and more local than they are today.

Ask anarcho-capititalists if it is legitimate for someone to sell him or herself into irrevocable slavery and you will soon find out just how opposed to slavery they really are. Yes, African Americans today are still debt slaves. There are very real socioeconomic and structural reasons why there is such a low degree of social mobility for African Americans. You better believe that being kept without property, in debt, and dependent upon state-government welfare has a lot to do with this and that the reason isn’t because African Americans are inherently lazy, ignorant, violent, and stupid. “The average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family. But the disparity of wealth is a lot greater. The average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family.” Total debt as a percent of net worth for African Americans is 42.3% while it is 16.5% for Whites. Many of us, not just African American’s, are in fact debt slaves. See the fantastic educational animation “Money As Debt” to better understand our unsustainable monetary system which is producing an out of control spiral of indebtedness to banks.

Furthermore, there is nothing within the worker-owned business model that relegates it solely to small local businesses. What we are proposing isn’t “a bunch of dinky little co-ops” with no division of labor or economies of scale. There are already co-operative retailers that employ economies of scale on behalf of its retail members, so you are grossly mistaken that “you couldn’t even have retailers." The following are a couple of examples large enough to extinguish notions that co-operatives are incompatible with a modern industrialized economy:

Concerning Mondragon : "Located in Spain, this conglomerate has a net worth of ten billion dollars and employs three thousand worker/owners."

"Publix Super Markets, Inc. (commonly known as Publix) is an American supermarket chain based in Lakeland, Florida. Founded in 1930 by George W. Jenkins, it is an employee-owned, privately held corporation and was ranked No. 4 on Forbes' 2006 list of "America's Largest Private Companies...Publix has operations in five states: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. It employs over 146,000 people at its 922 retail locations, corporate offices, eight grocery distribution centers, and nine Publix brand manufacturing facilities which produce its dairy, deli, bakery, and other food products"

"Cooperatives range in size from large enterprises, including U.S. Fortune 500 companies, to single, small local storefronts."

"Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) : is the largest worker-cooperative in the country, providing employment opportunities to 1,050---many of whom were low-income residents of the South Bronx who transitioned from public assistance after graduating from our nationally-recognized paraprofessional training program."

Furthermore, the libertarian socialism that we are talking about has actually worked in practice. I highly recommend reading Harold Barclay's "People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy." In it he explains, "anarchy is by no means unusual; that it is a perfectly common form of polity or political organization. Not only is it common, but it is probably the oldest type of polity and one which has characterized most of human history." He describes examples of anarchy among hunter-gatherer, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural societies. He also explains, "While it may be said that anarchy occurs most frequently in a small group situation and is probably easier to perpetuate in this condition, this is not to say that it is impossible in a modern more complex context. Rather it is more correct to say that it is not very probable. Yet we do have examples of anarchic polities among peoples of the Tiv, Lugbara, Nuer and Tonga, numbering in the hundreds of thousands and with fairly dense populations, often over 100 people to the square mile."

Right, I understood that you don’t think it is possible for someone to own the entire world. I don’t think it is possible for one individual to own the entire world either. That is just an exaggerated worst case scenario that hopefully clearly exposes the flaws in capitalism. It is meant to expose the coercive nature of capitalism. The same points in my exaggerated hypothetical scenario still hold when a small group of individuals can come to owns more land, resources, wealth, and power than the rest of the population. That is the situation we are now in. Your answer that it is impossible for one person to own the entire world completely dodges the important questions. The issue I have is that you apparently think that in it would be completely legitimate for someone to own the entire world if it was really possible and it was the sole result of purely capitalist market transactions and a so-called "really, really, really satisfying customers." Thus you also obviously don’t see the trouble with having a small group of people privately own the majority of our planet’s land and resources. My problem is that you apparently don’t see the coercion contained within a situation that is completely compatible with capitalist principles.

Trust me, I know what my life is like, and you don’t. I know what attitude I have towards life in general. Naturally, my emotional state fluctuates, but in general I don’t let the bad things in life get me down. I enjoy plenty in life and I don’t let the impoverished state of the world ruin the things I love. I have no problem rebelling against everything around me that needs rebelling against. I don’t have a problem being angry at what deserves my anger. Isn’t that an unavoidable part of being an anarchist or libertarian anyways? Furthermore, most of the miserable people in this world aren’t even anarchists. There are plenty of other things in this world to be miserable about, but not everyone adopts a pessimistic outlook towards life. Despite what you think, even a libertarian socialist like myself can find happiness in an imperfect world.

A Rant Against The Offensiveness Of Tacky Patriotism

The following is an old bit of writing I created in September 2006 when I was still an anarcho-capitalist responding to someone whining, “I find the plastering of the United States flag all over clothing and tacky merchandise offensive. One may express a form of pride (or a desire to sell merchandise to those who feel such a form of pride) while the other expresses anger or even hatred, but I personally find this flag-plastering as distasteful as flag burning.”

The United States flag does not offend me. Why would I be offended at a piece of cloth or some artistic rendering? That would be silly. However, I do want to get rid of countries, with their arbitrary borders, and the mentality that sustains them. So ultimately I am looking to get rid of the collectivist manifest destiny nationalistic nonsense that is represented by the US flag. I will not dawn a US flag or engage in any flag worship of any kind, but if other people want to act silly and let themselves be brainwashed that is fine. Just don't expect me to be silent when that brainwashing has real world consequences attached to it. I am not offended by your silly little symbols. Squabble about which ones offend you and which ones don't. Wave them around and plaster them on whatever you like. We don't have a right not to be offended.

The flag is kind of pretty isn't it? You have been conditioned through all sorts of behavior modification to associate warm, happy feelings of pride, awe, joy, and inspiration at the sight of it. You hear the National Anthem start up and it is an automatic response to jump up and stare at that flag waving hypnotically in the wind and worship the powerful authority figures that it represents. You have people that would beat a fellow human being if they were burning the flag or flying it upside down. I am not offended by some clueless, harmless schmuck who wears a USA flag t-shirt, baseball cap, pin, and boxer shorts as a “beautiful” matching outfit. All it would tell me is the level of intelligent thought I can expect from that person. I am offended by what is perpetrated in the name of those symbols. Individuals that commit evil and help sustain systems of coercion offend me.

Petit Bourgeois Anarchist: Enemy or Ally?

Right now, I have received a bachelors of science in Business Administration from a small liberal arts college and am currently working in small restaurant owned by my family. I started out with that major because I ultimately plan on taking over the family business. And strangely enough I became a libertarian socialist, which rejects the capitalist values I was taught. Now my major doesn’t seem like much of a fit with who I am. Maybe I would have been happier learning something else, but what’s done is done. I am not sure that I will be continuing my education any time soon, but I never let school get in the way of my education anyways. As far as plans go, I am already getting more involved in the family-owned restaurant. Since I have been born, my family has been very well off, but they had to work up from having next to nothing. So I’ve been part of the upper middle class for my entire life. I know that there are quite a few libertarian socialists out there who are part of the petite bourgeois and can probably relate to some of the feelings of guilt I am experiencing. On the flipside, I definitely believe that my family’s financial success gave me the time, resources, and opportunity to develop my own thoughts. Their success may actually be partially responsible for my ever reaching my beliefs in libertarian socialism. Unfortunately, the nature of state capitalism seems to do a really good job at preventing many people from having the time, resources, and energy to thoughtfully consider things like anarchism.

I am currently working at our family restaurant, and I am doing my own research to better organize and improve upon our restaurant’s success. In keeping with my libertarian socialist beliefs, I am trying to implement better pay while dealing with my parents who are blocking my suggested changes. I am trying to come to a compromise with them by actually developing a pay scheme that would somehow fall between a co-operative form of profit sharing and a normal hierarchical small capitalist business. I just can’t convince the rest of my family to bring in others to share in the ownership of the business. They understandably want to keep the business solely within the family, and I do want to respect their wishes. At the same time, I can’t help but feeling like I am being part of the problem. A small part no doubt, but a part nonetheless. I’m certainly wealthy, but I am not disgustingly super rich. The consolidation of global big business interests is certainly doing no favors for small business.

I know that many anarchists could consider my being a small business owner and therefore a boss fairly hypocritical. To some extent I agree, although I look at anarchism as trying to make everyone his or her own boss. We want everyone to essentially be business owners, and that naturally sounds very petit bourgeois. Although I could probably be called a “petit bourgeois anarchist”, which is a dirty word for some libertarian socialists, I believe that because I live in a State Capitalist society, where money unfortunately buys freedom, I don't have much of a choice other than to use the system to thrive and survive. It would just be a lot to risk giving up. I cannot give up what my grandparents and parents have painstakingly built from the ground up throughout the years. They themselves had to struggle through financial hardship, and I want to make sure that my children and grandchildren don’t have to go through that. I simply do not have the confidence to radically restructure an already very successful business and believe that it would be immensely foolish to give up what I have. Furthermore, I can use the resources gained from our business to hopefully promote some good. We can see that as anarchists we face a never-ending inward and outward struggle for freedom and equality.

Most of us want more money and thus more freedom and power within the current state capitalist system. For the most part, we have no choice but to play their corrupt game. If we don’t, our lives can become quite uncomfortable. Trying to destroy an inequitable system that saturates our society can be very risky to ones own security, health, comfort, and life. Once you move up the socioeconomic ladder it becomes very hard to destroy the very ladder you had to climb to get where you are. It’s understandable that my parents and grandparents, who had to scrape by and work extremely hard to create a successful small business, would be very leery of my desire to share the wealth, comfort, and control with others. Fighting the system can be very risky business. It is for that reason that I believe the anarchist movement needs to do a better job at giving those who don’t want to directly confront the state-government a better outlet for exercising their beliefs. I have no qualms about those who engage in illegal acts such as vandalism, squatting, and violent protest, but unfortunately such activities seem to alienate many people who would like to be doing something for the anarchist movement. While some of us are directly confronting the state-government power head-on, we need others to more actively circumventing the system through the anarchistic organization of their daily lives. As we can see, we certainly have an incredibly uphill battle.

It is clear why a movement that desires such radical change needs the widespread support of the working class (they are the ones who have the least to lose) but I am unsure that the petit bourgeoisie has no role to play. The petit bourgeois has things to gain from libertarian socialism as well. When oppressor an oppressed interact it is not only the oppressed who suffers although they arguable suffer the most. The oppressor also suffers from alienation, dehumanization, guilt, and inner turmoil that result when still being an oppressor with a human conscience. Unfortunately, a large part of the problem is that many in the working class desperately want only to move up the socioeconomic ladder. Many can only see the option of becoming the oppressor to alleviate being oppressed. They see that as the only realistic option to get out of their desperate situation. Many can’t see the alternative of destroying the oppressive ladder altogether. That is a huge part of the problem with our fight against the state capitalist system. The truth is that those within the working class need to step up and assume the roles of management and capital ownership. As anarchists have always said, the revolution needs to come from below and not from above. The working class needs to start becoming small business owners and self-managers of their own communities.

I might not seek to change my current family-owned business into something more compatible with my libertarian socialist ideals, but I personally dream of eventually opening up a separate worker-owned store of some kind. It is certainly possible that this might become a reality thanks to my current access to property and resources. It would ultimately depend upon my technical understanding, financial situation, human resources, level of interest, and will power. Maybe then the rest of the anarchist community won't consider me too much of a hypocrite. It would definitely be a risky venture, so I will be keeping our current restaurant as financial backup instead of trying to radically restructure it. Hopefully, my access to capital will help me further put my principles into action. This control over resources is what the working class desperately needs to really progress the libertarian socialist movement. I also plan on supporting counter-economic activities by promoting things such as the use of alternate forms of currency. While trying to bring down the system, the anarchist movement must also be about finding peace and freedom within our own personal relationships. Even if we can’t completely bring down the state-government and capitalism, there are things all of us could probably do to make ourselves freer. At least we have our freedom of thought. It’s about seeking out and enjoying our own little slice of freedom. So is a petit bourgeois anarchist an enemy or ally? What’s the verdict? We must all fight the enemies outside and within ourselves.