Agna:

[JBeukema]

Geezus Aggie.....cant i leave you for more than a day....every post your in people want to ring your neck....what did i tell you about talking to grown ups?...lets go over it again.....talking with grown ups,is not the same as when your playing with your Ken and Barbie Dolls....and no....Dude is not Jeff Bridges....

lollol:lol

Again, you demand they be given that which they refuse to work for, stealing from the laborers what is rightfully theirs through their own labor.

Such a compulsory act is tyrannical, it is theft, and it is authoritarianism- where you are the authoritarian

Nope. I don't "demand" any such thing. Consistent with libertarian principles, I've always insisted that such decisions be the domain of the individual collective or commune. Since many anarchists have tired of the slovenly apathy of the financial class and their theft from the working class in presently existing conditions, they can be expected to have little patience for such laziness in such a form of economic organization. So any provision of the minimal means of life would be purely voluntary on the part of individual collectives and communes.

You don't know jack shit about anarchists, boy....Just come out and admit it.

are all self-proclaimed 'anarchists' as contradictory and foolish as agna?

 

[Oddball]

are all self-proclaimed 'anarchists' as contradictory and foolish as agna?

Absolutely not.

I know anarchists...I work with anarchists...I party with anarchists...I debate/argue with anarchists....Anarchists are very, very good friends of mine.

Take it from me, Agnaplebe is no anarchist.

 

[garyd]

Wouldn't matter a whit how broad the voting base is agna. Such things as you describe eventually if not immediately compel conformity at all costs simply because without it the social underpinnings of society collapse and all hell breaks loose. It'd work just fine if we were the Borg or ants but we aren't.

When Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations" he wasn't creating an economic system out of whole cloth he was explaining the natural economic order much as Darwin tried to explain the natural biological order.

In any true anarchy the order of the day will be laissez fair capitalism.

 

[JBeukema]

In any true anarchy the order of the day will be laissez fair capitalism.

Has not true or pure laissez fair capitalism demonstrated itself to be ripe with abuse, fraud, and corruption? A certain level of regulation (such as requiring transparency and full disclosure) is necessary to protect the general populace.


What's needed is a system that calls for minimal regulation while providing such protections

 

[Agnapostate]

Has not true or pure laissez fair capitalism demonstrated itself to be ripe with abuse, fraud, and corruption?

Nope. That would imply that it had existed, which is not the case.

 

[roomy]

Has not true or pure laissez fair capitalism demonstrated itself to be ripe with abuse, fraud, and corruption?

Nope. That would imply that it had existed, which is not the case.

What time is it where you are?

 

[Agnapostate]

what time is it where you are?

13:21.

 

[roomy]

what time is it where you are?

13:21.

Indeed? Where are you?

 

[Agnapostate]

Indeed? Where are you?

Open your window.

 

[roomy]

Indeed? Where are you?

Open your window.

Why? It doesn't smell in here and it isn't warm enough, even though it is summertime.

 

[Agnapostate]

it was you who said they would, per your proposed system. not may- would. They would receive it; compliance with that being condition of your system

Are you now officially changing that position and saying you no longer support such compulsion, since JB has enlightened you?

Wrong again. I was merely offering my own conception of an ideal commune; since I don't believe communism itself should be compulsory, as I've always maintained, it seems absurd to suggest that the practices of individual communes should. The only thing you've enlightened me about is your poor reading comprehension skills.

Information can be obtained freely by those who wish to seek it.

Utterly incorrect. Perfect or costless information is nonexistent in the capitalist economy.

If they are not happy with the contract, they can renegotiate it- or do you not support unions and instead support forcing those who work to build successful businesses to bow to those who wish to take what is theirs, denying the businesses the right to hire those willing to strike the best deal?

It's not a matter of "taking what is theirs" in the first place, since capital accumulation is based on theft. Until you are able to plausibly deny that the extraction of surplus labor during the production process and subsequent utilization in the circulation process to sustain capital accumulation occurs, you have no means of claiming otherwise. Do you have anything to offer us except regurgitation of inane rightist platitudes?

To expect the entire populace to be fully informed on every matter is naive at best, and more probably deceptive tactics to manipulate the People by leading them to believe they are informed

That's precisely correct, and an integral reason for the failure of capitalism. But regardless, you are once again derailing your own thread with comments that would be better suited for KittenKoder's thread. You can feel free to do that if you wish, but you'll run the risk of getting yourself lost in a jumble of incoherence, particularly since your comments aren't of the most cogent nature.

Wait, first it was exploitation.. then simply coercion...

We're almost on our way to you admitting that a labor contract is exactly that- a contract, which can be renogotiated.

Actually, the contextual terms of renegotiation are themselves worthy of examination, since asset specificity is a source of coercive exchange in the labor market, and one that might not be completely eliminated in the market socialist economy. There would be an elimination in the non-hierarchical marketless socialist economy and there would certainly be an elimination of other major sources of coercion, such as market concentration.

But unsurprisingly, you've ignored the two interdependent elements that have been mentioned. First, you've ignored the nature of wage labor. Not only have you ignored the unjust extraction of surplus labor in the production process and subsequent utilization in the circulation process used to sustain capital accumulation, you've ignored the nature of authoritarian and hierarchical structure in the workplace that would be condemned as such were it manifested through the vessel of a state. Now, you evidently think this acceptable because transition to other occupations throughout the labor market is an availability (though I doubt you'd claim authoritarianism in a certain country is acceptable because migration to other countries is an availability), but that relies on ignorance or dismissal of the aforementioned reality of a permanent rate of equilibrium unemployment in the capitalist economy, which would thus cause necessary static inefficiency. It doesn't surprise me that your utopian conception of unemployment doesn't contain job search frictions, or any element of labor market failure that's prone to exist in actual conditions.

Now, it's next necessary for you to consider inequivalent power between laborers and employers that subject the former to a greater degree of coercive influence (recalling what work and subsequent subordination in the workplace is an effective necessity). As noted by Adam Smith, "in the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate," and as noted somewhat more complexly by Alfred Marshall, "labor is often sold under special disadvantages arising from the closely related groups of facts that labor power is 'perishable', that the sellers of it are commonly poor and have no reserve fund, and that they cannot easily withhold it from the market." Then consider the observation of Sidney and Beatrice Webb:

[T]he manual worker is, from his position and training, far less skilled than the employer...in the art of bargaining itself. This art forms a large part of the daily life of the entrepreneur, whilst the foreman is specially selected for his skill in engaging and superintending workmen. The manual worker, on the contrary, has the smallest experience of, and practically no training in, what is essentially one of the arts of the capitalist employer. He never engages in any but one sort of bargaining, and that only on occasions which may be infrequent, and which in any case make up only a tiny fraction of his life.

Then return to Robert Dahl's spectrum of influence terms, from rational persuasion to manipulative persuasion to inducement to power to coercion to physical force. Considering the numerous disadvantages of the working class in terms of their sustenance reserve, their lesser skills of negotiation that have been bred by the capitalist economy, the role of equilibrium unemployment in serving as a threatening influence to ensure effort extraction, and the role of extraction of surplus labor and subordination under hierarchical authority in the workplace itself, it seems absurd to suggest that workers are not subject to one of the more negative forms of influence, such as "power" or "coercion." The consistent libertarian will condemn such influence terms.

The laborer seeks the best pay, the employer seeks the lowest cost. It is exhacnge like any other and free entry into such exchange of goods and labor is a basic right of all persons and critical to any system that ios going to remotely resemble a 'free' market in whcih all persons may seek to improve their condition, includuing but not limited to working conditions and the benefits they reap for their labors

The labor contract is not composed of the free and rational exchange of goods and labor, since there exist power differentials between the employer and the laborer, as well as the aforementioned problems of information asymmetries. Are you not familiar with the agency problems of adverse selection and moral hazard? You indicated an ignorance of principal-agent problems before, so I wouldn't doubt it...but I digress. I never presumed to favor the restriction of the free exchange of goods and services. A socialist economy is merely centered around the more insidious coercive elements of capitalism that don't blatantly manifest themselves.

You have been able to discount any of this, and you merely rely on the words of other- because even you cannot comprehend any way in which such a system as your propose could be stable, secure, and maintain its soverignty while protecting the rioghts of the People or avoiding the tyyrannies I have pointed out. This is why you are unabel to defend such a system in your own words

Nope! Your crude speculation on that topic is merely based on the eventual military defeat of the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. The problem is that this doesn't illustrate the failure of anarchist or libertarian principles of military organization; it illustrates the failure of the individual anarchists for allying with treacherous mutineers, and it illustrates the fact that the anarchists simply went down with the rest of the Republican army as a result of Franco's military superiority (the Nationalist revolt was essentially a military one, after all). However, this does not illustrate the failure of anarchist or libertarian organizational principles as a whole. For example, we can consider the case of the Ukrainian anarchist guerilla leader Nestor Makhno, the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (the Black Army or the "Makhnovists") that he led, and the Free Territory of Ukraine that they defended, which was not as anarchist purist as the collectives of the Spanish Revolution, but still organized in a broadly libertarian manner using effectively republican principles. Now, we should consider the army itself. As put by Peter Arsinov:

For a period of three years the Makhnovshchina heroically cleared a path in the revolution by which the working people of Russia could realize their age-old aspirations -- freedom and independence. In spite of the savage policy of the Communist government to smother this current, to distort and befoul it, it continued to grow, live and develop, struggling on several fronts in the civil war, frequently dealing serious blows to its enemies, arousing and supporting the revolutionary expectations of the workers and peasants of Great Russia, Siberia and the Caucasus.

The Makhnovists did indeed score impressive victories against the tsarist White Army, namely the troops of Anton Denikin. However, they remained undersupplied by their "allies" of the Red Army, since it was a favorite trick of Trotsky's to undersupply them and then blame their consequent failures on their decentralized organizational principles, which he then used as an excuse to undersupply them further. And though their leadership was betrayed by the Bolsheviks after they were declared "untrustworthy" (never trust an authoritarian masquerading as a "socialist"!), their legacy remains one of successful military organization through the use of libertarian principles for a time. Broadly speaking, this would include the use of direct democracy and assemblies of individual squads, platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, divisions, etc. to make organizational decisions on a decentralized level to the extent that they were individually affected, which would mean that the army as a whole would not be managed to a great degree by mass referendum. This would also include the election of officers, who would be instantly recallable and subject to to some degree of challenge in appropriate contexts (i.e. not in a battle).

Geezus Aggie.....cant i leave you for more than a day....every post your in people want to ring your neck....what did i tell you about talking to grown ups?...lets go over it again.....talking with grown ups,is not the same as when your playing with your Ken and Barbie Dolls....and no....Dude is not Jeff Bridges....

Are you drunk again, Harry? Get your dumb ass the fuck out of here and listen to John and Ken. We're working a little above your head here.

You don't know jack shit about anarchists, boy....Just come out and admit it.

Think again, son. My anarchism is merely based on the definition offered by Peter Kropotkin, for example:

Anarchism, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economic and the political fields which characterize the nineteenth century, and especially its second part. In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And in common with the most advanced representatives of political radicalism, they maintain that the ideal of the political organization of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations--freely constituted--all the infinitely varied needs of the human being.

Anarchism is necessarily both anti-statist and anti-capitalist because to be "without rulers" necessitates the absence of coercive and hierarchical authority in all realms of life. Of course, my objection is far more expansive than a mere "moral" one. There are legitimate efficiency gains made by the establishment of democratic institutions in the economic realm, and capitalism cannot facilitate economic democracy due to the role of market and wealth concentration, which bears out Marx's prediction of the increasing concentration of capital over time.

are all self-proclaimed 'anarchists' as contradictory and foolish as agna?

"Contradictory and foolish"? I hate to break it to you, slappy, but your frenzied grasping at straws is rapidly becoming pointless for you. You've already indicated an amazingly vast ignorance of anarchist political theory (you're rivaled only by Dud in that regard, but at least he doesn't write long replies that pose as sufficient responses), and somehow are simultaneously cocky and arrogant about your own ignorance...as though you've actually accomplished something.

Absolutely not.

I know anarchists...I work with anarchists...I party with anarchists...I debate/argue with anarchists....Anarchists are very, very good friends of mine.

Take it from me, Agnaplebe is no anarchist.

You're full of shit, Dud. Every single comment that you've made here and elsewhere has illustrated your deep and severe ignorance of anarchist and libertarian organizational principles.

Wouldn't matter a whit how broad the voting base is agna. Such things as you describe eventually if not immediately compel conformity at all costs simply because without it the social underpinnings of society collapse and all hell breaks loose. It'd work just fine if we were the Borg or ants but we aren't.

Nope! What I've described is not based on mandated consensus, and the role of decentralized participatory management in individual sectors of collectives maximizes a diverse array of ideological opinions and positions.

When Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations" he wasn't creating an economic system out of whole cloth he was explaining the natural economic order much as Darwin tried to explain the natural biological order.

You'll want to be careful here, since Smith's legacy has been misappropriated almost to the same extent that George Orwell's has. For example, consider consultation of Nolan's Adam Smith and the Contradictions of the Free Market.

Smith's analysis of the market mechanism was an attempt to lay bare the fundamental laws governing economic development. At the same time that he sought to identify these principles, he devoted scrupulous attention to the underlying contradictions of the market economy. He did believe that the free market was the fundamental driver of economic progress. However, he demonstrated that this driving force contained deep internal contradictions from the point of view of people as both producers and as consumers. In respect to both issues. Smith insisted that the dynamism of the free market economy should be considered alongside its deep ethical shortcomings. He was unable to answer satisfactorily how the latter shortcomings could be resolved, but his intellectual honesty and driving sense of moral purpose led him to display these contradictions clearly and passionately.

You'll also want to refer to Houseman's The Use and Abuse of Adam Smith:

It is in the area of taxation, more than in any part of the sum of his legacy, that Smith and his supposed heirs diverge the most. Smith favors using the revenue-raising powers of government to go after the "wastrel" spending of the idle rich, and he recognizes the need to tax most heavily rental income, the major crutch of the wealthy in his day, and also wealthy persons' housing. He then proceeds even further by advocating steeply progressive taxes as part of the ideal revenue-raising system. Smith's demand for this structure is repeated and strident (pp. 346-47) and is clearly at odds with recent White House, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes calls (among others) for a flat or flatter income tax

As aptly put by Noam Chomsky, "as a true classical liberal, Smith was strongly opposed to all of the idiocy they now spout in his name."

In any true anarchy the order of the day will be laissez fair capitalism.

If free markets were existent, I'd agree. However, they're not, and attempts to implement "laissez-faire" capitalism will inevitably degenerate to a state of actually existing capitalism, thus causing a conflict with anarchist principles, since the authoritarian hierarchy present in the capitalist economy is simply a flagrant contradiction of "anarchy" meaning "without rulers." Supporters of laissez-faire don't disagree that such conditions are currently present in the capitalist economy; they themselves title actually existing capitalism "corporatism" or "state capitalism."

 

[garyd]

Communism can only work to the dgree that such behavior is made compulsory either by law or by force of social opprobrium for the violators.

 

[Agnapostate]

Communism can only work to the dgree that such behavior is made compulsory either by law or by force of social opprobrium for the violators.

I'd say that's true in the case of what's popularly conceived as "communism," but would more appropriately be called state capitalism, but if you were to read Kropotkin's Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles, you'd see a radically different agenda presented, per his proclamation that "we are communists. But our communism is not that of the authoritarian school: it is anarchist communism, communism without government, free communism. It is a synthesis of the two chief aims pursued by humanity since the dawn of its history--economic freedom and political freedom." But what I'd regard as far more critical than the most complex theoretical explanation is the successful implementation of such in the past, a feat that laissez-faire capitalism has not achieved. As put by Gaston Leval:

In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was very quickly collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried managers, or the authority of the state.

Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle of communism, 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.' They co-ordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganisation of social life. They replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity...

This experience, in which about eight million people directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other.

What I've unfortunately encountered here and elsewhere is inaccurate reference to state capitalism as evidence of the "failures" of "socialism" and "communism" (despite the incessant opposition of anarchists and libertarian socialists to all authoritarians masquerading as socialists) and low-brow mumbling about "human nature" rather than consultation of empirical reality.

 

[JBeukema]

It's not a matter of "taking what is theirs" in the first place, since capital accumulation is based on theft.

So says you.


You're defining a willful contract as 'theft' in order to argue that their property and wealth is not rightfully theirs in order to seek justification for seizing it from them. No matter how many ways you try to beat around the bush on the matter, that is ultimately all you have been doing.

That's precisely correct, and an integral reason for the failure of capitalism.

it is why your system can not succeed where republicanism can. Representative democracy allows for those chosen by their peers to focus their efforts on the matters that the average person simply does not have the time to ceoncern himself with.

Actually, the contextual terms of renegotiation are themselves worthy of examination, since asset specificity is a source of coercive exchange in the labor market,

You have never demonstrated any coercion; you have merely declared it to be so as axiomatic to your argument

Not only have you ignored the unjust extraction of surplus labor

Nothing that is willful and arises from mutual negotiation can truly be unjust; if it were, then the system would have never been so successful.


N

ow, it's next necessary for you to consider inequivalent power between laborers and employers that subject the former to a greater degree of coercive influence

You have never demonstrated any such thing to be inherent to capitalism

The labor contract is not composed of the free and rational exchange of goods and labor, since there exist power differentials between the employer and the laborer,

The employee can walk, as can the employer. Just as the company competes with other companies, the employee competes to self his labor at a competitive rate.

The capitalist market is the natural progression from the archaic barter you hold so dear.


Time and again you refuse to defend your statements, and when you do make an attempt, you are unable to do so yourself and must borrow wholesale ready-made arguments with no evidence that you even comprehend them. That, i suspect, is why you always take so long to respond anytiome anyone ever challangs you,.

 

[editec]

In any true anarchy the order of the day will be laissez fair capitalism.

In any TRUE anarchy laissez fair capitalism is also called PLUNDER and PILLAGE.

Agna's so-called anarchy is basically a communal system without an overarching civil authority.

It's more like the Plymouth Plantation than anarchy.

And you all probably know what a tyrannical government that really was, right?

There is nothing more democratic than a lynch mob, folks.

 

[JBeukema]

There is nothing more democratic than a lynch mob, folks.

only one dissenting vote...

 

[JBeukema]

participation in the mob is strictly voluntary, though those who do not participate will be told to leave...

 

[Agnapostate]

I see that you've again engaged in your practice of providing a gradually diminished response, which does not surprise me. Your inability to respond to the entirety of my arguments has been apparent from the beginning, but your desire to pretend otherwise is irritating and has lost its initial comedic effect.

You're defining a willful contract as 'theft' in order to argue that their property and wealth is not rightfully theirs in order to seek justification for seizing it from them. No matter how many ways you try to beat around the bush on the matter, that is ultimately all you have been doing.

Let me educate you on argument form. You make Claim A. I refute Claim A. From that point, you're certainly not supposed to repeat Claim A; you're supposed to provide a rebuttal to the refutation of Claim A. What you've been doing here is repeating your claim about "willful contracts" despite the numerous arguments that I've presented against the disingenuous nature of that conception. You've ignored the comments that have been made about workers' inferior economic conditions subjecting them to forms of negative influence that are antithetical to libertarian principles because it's not convenient for you to do otherwise. You've of course not rebutted David Ellerman's analogy:

It is a veritable mainstay of capitalist thought . . . that the moral flaws of chattel slavery have not survived in capitalism since the workers, unlike the slaves, are free people making voluntary wage contracts. But it is only that, in the case of capitalism, the denial of natural rights is less complete so that the worker has a residual legal personality as a free 'commodity owner.' He is thus allowed to voluntarily put his own working life to traffic. When a robber denies another person's right to make an infinite number of other choices besides losing his money or his life and the denial is backed up by a gun, then this is clearly robbery even though it might be said that the victim making a 'voluntary choice' between his remaining options. When the legal system itself denies the natural rights of working people in the name of the prerogatives of capital, and this denial is sanctioned by the legal violence of the state, then the theorists of 'libertarian' capitalism do not proclaim institutional robbery, but rather they celebrate the 'natural liberty' of working people to choose between the remaining options of selling their labour as a commodity and being unemployed.

While I never claimed that labor market activity was marked by actual physical force, the influence terms of power and coercion continue to abound, and such authoritarian elements are anathema to the maximization of liberty. With that said, that's not the chief reason for desiring the establishment of economic democracy. Considering the empirical literature into workers' ownership and management, it's clear that there are genuine efficiency gains brought about by the establishment of such, and the basis of a socialist economy is thus sound in that specific regard.

it is why your system can not succeed where republicanism can. Representative democracy allows for those chosen by their peers to focus their efforts on the matters that the average person simply does not have the time to ceoncern himself with.

That would be a relevant objection if the participatory system that I advocated was centralized and based on public approval of every single decision in every single component of policy through community assemblies and workers' councils. However, it is neither. Apart from the facts that there are not an infinite number of opinions to be expressed nor a desire by every single individual present at every single assembly or conference to ramble endlessly, grassroots direct democracy entails a focus on issues or policy only to the extent that individuals or individual units are affected by them, which means that concentration of managerial power on a local level would minimize excessive entanglement with irrelevant affairs. Apart from that, I never expressed support for the prospect of one major local assembly managing absolutely every facet of absolutely every local industry and component of infrastructure; I can certainly envision appropriate divisions of management to one's respective industry (the auto workers would not be managing hospitals, for example) just as there would exist the aforementioned appropriate divisions of management according to geographic boundaries. Moreover, it's necessary to draw a distinction between policy formation and policy administration. While various community assemblies and workers' councils would be responsible for the formation of policy to the extent that they were personally affected by its repercussions, they would not be responsible for the detailed administration of every single facet of the policies that they created. Rather, it's likely that committees and delegates would be elected to this task, with the proviso that they be instantly recallable and not responsible for independent formation of policy, so as to not restore republicanism. Hence, when such organizational formulas are appropriately calibrated and implemented, libertarian grassroots democracy is sustained. For example, consider Gaston Leval's commentary on the existence of such successful methods in anarchist Spain:

The syndical assemblies were the expression and the practice of libertarian democracy, a democracy having nothing in common with the democracy of Athens where the citizens discussed and disputed for days on end on the Agora; where factions, clan rivalries, ambitions, personalities conflicted, where, in view of the social inequalities precious time was lost in interminable wrangles. Here a modern Aristophenes would have had no reason to write the equivalent of The Clouds.

Normally those periodic meetings would not last more than a few hours. They dealt with concrete, precise subjects concretely and precisely. And all who had something to say could express themselves. The Comite presented the new problems that had arisen since the previous assembly, the results obtained by the application of such and such a resolution . . relations with other syndicates, production returns from the various workshops or factories. All this was the subject of reports and discussion. Then the assembly would nominate the commissions, the members of these commissions discussed between themselves what solutions to adopt, if there was disagreement, a majority report and a minority report would be prepared.

This took place in all the syndicates throughout Spain, in all trades and all industries, in assemblies which, in Barcelona, from the very beginnings of our movement brought together hundreds or thousands of workers depending on the strength of the organisations. So much so that the awareness of the duties, responsibilities of each spread all the time to a determining and decisive degree.

As he put it, "[t]hey instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life." This high level of functionality cannot be achieved by republicanism because of the alienation from genuinely participatory elements of the democratic process that it entails.

You have never demonstrated any coercion; you have merely declared it to be so as axiomatic to your argument

This is decidedly incorrect; you have merely ignored the examples of coercion that I have provided. Consider the words of Mikhail Bakunin:

Juridically they are both equal; but economically the worker is the serf of the capitalist . . . thereby the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time. The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realisation, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery.

As I've noted, this is a reality that was addressed by even so great a proponent of capitalism as Adam Smith, through his observation that "in the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate." Temporarily dismissing the fact that his "laissez-faire" tendencies are absurdly exaggerated by modern rightists, it should speak volumes to you that individuals across the economic spectrum recognize the elements of coercion in the capitalist wage system that I've elaborated on, even if they did not explicitly identify them as such. However, you have chosen to utterly ignore this reality and simply repeat inane platitudes over and over and over again without paying heed to the progression of this discussion, a habit that has grown thoroughly tiresome at this point.

Nothing that is willful and arises from mutual negotiation can truly be unjust; if it were, then the system would have never been so successful.

This is obviously fallacious on its face. Putting aside the reality that the "system" is in many ways decidedly unsuccessful, it survives not because of its "justice," but because the financial and coordinator classes continue to have a strong interest in its preservation. All who have power fear losing it. The working class is not a cohesive force and lacks the financial means to reverse the increasing market and wealth concentration that bears out Marx's prediction of the increasing concentration of capital.

You have never demonstrated any such thing to be inherent to capitalism

Then you've not been paying attention. Capitalism is constituted by the private ownership of the means of production, the existence of markets, and the establishment of wage labor. As long as those conditions exist, and as long as there is no means of reversing the market and wealth concentration that the capitalist economy has generated, it will indeed be the case that inequivalent power between employers and laborers will be the norm in the capitalist economy.

The employee can walk, as can the employer. Just as the company competes with other companies, the employee competes to self his labor at a competitive rate.

It seems that you again forget that "labor is often sold under special disadvantages arising from the closely connected group of facts that labor power is 'perishable', that the sellers of it are commonly poor and have no reserve fund, and that they cannot easily withhold it from the market." Your conception of the labor market is of course a utopian one that is not only characterized by an ignorance of that aforementioned coercive element, but is also characterized by ignorance of the existence of information asymmetries and consequent agency costs and problems, barriers to entry generated by excessive concentration, and various other forms of market failure and disequilibria.

The capitalist market is the natural progression from the archaic barter you hold so dear.

Nope! Capitalism is antithetical to the maximization of legitimately productive market activity. The market and wealth concentration that occurs in the capitalist economy is an obstruction to the existence of legitimately competitive market enterprise that would not be tolerated in a socialist economy. Then again, the realities of market concentration are simply more features of capitalism that you've chosen to ignore thus far, so I'm not expecting the most substantive response...

Time and again you refuse to defend your statements, and when you do make an attempt, you are unable to do so yourself and must borrow wholesale ready-made arguments with no evidence that you even comprehend them. That, i suspect, is why you always take so long to respond anytiome anyone ever challangs you,.

If I were merely "borrowing" arguments, then it seems more plausible that I would be able to respond extremely quickly, because I would not be troubled with the imposition of constructing arguments myself. More importantly, the fact that you are unable to understand the arguments that I have presented is certainly not evidence that I or anyone else here does not understand them. However, it is evidence of the fact that you should perhaps be somewhat less arrogant when participating on this forum, because as previously noted, ignorance and arrogance are a truly despicable combination.

 

[Agnapostate]

In any TRUE anarchy laissez fair capitalism is also called PLUNDER and PILLAGE.

Agna's so-called anarchy is basically a communal system without an overarching civil authority.

It's more like the Plymouth Plantation than anarchy.

And you all probably know what a tyrannical government that really was, right?

There is nothing more democratic than a lynch mob, folks.

While you're certainly not one of the troglodytes who dimwittedly regurgitates one-liners, your perspective is marked by an incorrect belief that anarchism is necessarily reliant on utopian conceptions. Its adherents are "utopian" only if they believe that anarchism or libertarian socialism will be implemented in our lifetimes. However, that couldn't happen; there are too many powerful people with a strong interest in the sustainment of capitalism and too few people with an expansive awareness of its numerous deficiencies and the prospective alternatives. That said, anarchism itself is relatively sound in its organizational principles. The distortion of what it entails is merely another tactic to prevent its adoption, since the system itself simply made such bottom-line sense. As Chomsky put it, "it's like referring to Soviet-style bureaucracy as 'socialism,' or any other term of discourse that's been given a second meaning for the purpose of ideological warfare. Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant 'chaos' --- in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below." The problem is that the propaganda is instilled too deeply for widespread realization of this to occur, as evidenced by our friend JBeukema's belligerent and idiotic opposition to the reality that anarchism does not entail "chaos" or "disorder."

participation in the mob is strictly voluntary, though those who do not participate will be told to leave...

"Mob"? If you hadn't been ignoring the arguments and empirical evidence provided about the implementation of anarchism and libertarian socialism, you'd be fully aware of the reality that there was and would be a higher and more functional form of organization in grassroots direct democracy than republicanism can ever provide.

 

[editec]

In any TRUE anarchy laissez fair capitalism is also called PLUNDER and PILLAGE.

Agna's so-called anarchy is basically a communal system without an overarching civil authority.

It's more like the Plymouth Plantation than anarchy.

And you all probably know what a tyrannical government that really was, right?

There is nothing more democratic than a lynch mob, folks.

While you're certainly not one of the troglodytes who dimwittedly regurgitates one-liners, your perspective is marked by an incorrect belief that anarchism is necessarily reliant on utopian conceptions.

I think I'm probably the expert on what you beliefs necessarily are reliant on, don't you, Ag?

What you like to call anarchism is not anarchistic. Anarchy is a complete lack of authority. Your system is hardly that.

Its adherents are "utopian" only if they believe that anarchism or libertarian socialism will be implemented in our lifetimes.

You also presume to insinuate arguments into my position which are not there. Libertarian socialism is not anarchy, either.

Anarchy is the complete lack of authority. Nothing but that. Words have meanings. What you advocate is not anarchistic, it is communial socialistic. It may be a good system but it is in no way shape or form remotely anarchistic.

We'll continue to have that debate, I am sure, forever. Words have meanings. When we attemtp to obfuscate what we say by perverting the language, we do a disservice to truth and understanding.

I don't give a flying fuck what you've learned in school, what language perversions they've stufffed into you head, either. Anarchy is the complete lack of authority.

However, that couldn't happen; there are too many powerful people with a strong interest in the sustainment of capitalism and too few people with an expansive awareness of its numerous deficiencies and the prospective alternatives.

Yeah...I know.

That said, anarchism itself is relatively sound in its organizational principles.

It is if you mean that it's organization prinicple is that there is no organization. If you mean something else, then you as a budding social scientists ought to use the correct words that describe the system of governance you advocate.

This really is the ONLY debate you can I can have about you system that matters, you know.

I actually think that system you advocate is rather interesting and, were we given an opportunity to start from scratch, I'd probably be advocating something like it.

But it isn't ANARCHISTIC.

The distortion of what it entails is merely another tactic to prevent its adoption, since the system itself simply made such bottom-line sense. As Chomsky put it, "it's like referring to Soviet-style bureaucracy as 'socialism,' or any other term of discourse that's been given a second meaning for the purpose of ideological warfare. Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant 'chaos' --- in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below." The problem is that the propaganda is instilled too deeply for widespread realization of this to occur, as evidenced by our friend JBeukema's belligerent and idiotic opposition to the reality that anarchism does not entail "chaos" or "disorder."

You're preaching to choir.

participation in the mob is strictly voluntary, though those who do not participate will be told to leave...

"Mob"? If you hadn't been ignoring the arguments and empirical evidence provided about the implementation of anarchism and libertarian socialism, you'd be fully aware of the reality that there was and would be a higher and more functional form of organization in grassroots direct democracy than republicanism can ever provide.

You do seem to believe that a democratically elected group can do no wrong, you know.

Hence my reminder that a lynch mob is also a form of democracy.

This mob statement in no way negates the merits of your system, you know.

It's merely a reminder that mankind's nature (both individuals' psychopathologies and mass psychopthologies) can fuck up even the best devised goverment that exists.

No system is fool-proof, AG, because there's no limit to fools' abilities to screw things up.