Anarchists or statists?
Per Bylund recently published an article on strike-the-root on the statist mindset of (many) anarchists. Because, as a matter of fact, a lot of self-declared anarchists are actually statists, or, in Bylund's words, pseudo-statists.
Bylund uses the example of Mikhail Bakunin, who wanted to turn over the means of production in the hands of worker's federations, who in turn would be parts of higher federations, all the way up to a global federation. Like Bylund points out in his excellent article, what is this if it is not a state?
There are "anarchists" who talk about anarchist police and anarchist courts. I have debated too many times with one of them, on Bylund's forum, giving me the "proper definition of anarchy", which, if I remember correctly, is an egalitarian society without hierarchies. When I have argued against this, arguing that anarchy above all means a society of free individuals, making their own choices, receiving the fruits of their labor, and taking responsibility for their own actions, and where free individuals can enter any contract of their own choice, as long as they do not initiate force or fraud against a third party, I have been told, by this specific self-declared anarchist, that my ideology is not anarchism, but plutarchism, since my ideology involves a market, and markets per se, it has been claimed by this person dozens of times, creates hierarchies, and thus it cannot be anarchy.
I do not agree with those. First of all, a free market contract does not in itself create a hierarchy. Both (or all) parties in a free market contract depend on each other's free choices, and they are all free to cancel the contract. There is no hierarchy here. I have also been told that markets create inequality.
Well, this may be true, that is only because different people value different things, and some will produce more wealth than others, and thus rightly earn more of it. There will of course never be a perfect justice, enabling everyone with the exact same chances from birth, since this is an impossibility. Some people have rich parents, some people have poor parents. Some people are good at soccer, some (like me) are not. But there is no better solution than a free market, because on a free market, there are opportunities for everyone, and there will be people and institutions willing to invest in talent.
What those "anarchists" fail to understand, is that anarchism is not, unlike e.g. socialism and fascism, a system, but an anti-system. Anarchism is not about how everyone will live (voluntarily or not) in the same utopia. Anarchism is about freedom, and letting everyone make their own choices, reap the benefits from them, and take the full responsibility of them. It is not about forcing your ideals upon others.
I am convinced that in anarchy, there will be both private and collective property, there will be private companies with bosses and employees, there will be self-employees, there will be cooperatives, there will be insurance companies and insurance associations, there will be religious societies and atheist societies, and there will be voluntary socialist societies, and there will be lots of other kinds of societies, that I cannot think of right now.
In an anarchistic world, there will be societal experimentation. However, there will be no social engineering. These experiments will consist of voluntary individuals who participate in them of their choices, and anyone of them will be free to leave when they choose to. Some of these experiments will prosper, some of them will fail.
There will be markets, free markets. No one will be forced to participate in the free market, but I believe that most people, including socialists, will do so voluntarily, when they feel they can gain something. Because, like any good economist (e.g. Ludwig von Mises or Murray N. Rothbard), I strongly believe that people respond to incentives.*
I call myself a free market anarchist, because I believe that a free market is a necessary outcome of a free society, not because I wish to force it upon anyone. That would not be very anarchistic of me.
*I am not claiming that I am a good economist.
Bylund uses the example of Mikhail Bakunin, who wanted to turn over the means of production in the hands of worker's federations, who in turn would be parts of higher federations, all the way up to a global federation. Like Bylund points out in his excellent article, what is this if it is not a state?
There are "anarchists" who talk about anarchist police and anarchist courts. I have debated too many times with one of them, on Bylund's forum, giving me the "proper definition of anarchy", which, if I remember correctly, is an egalitarian society without hierarchies. When I have argued against this, arguing that anarchy above all means a society of free individuals, making their own choices, receiving the fruits of their labor, and taking responsibility for their own actions, and where free individuals can enter any contract of their own choice, as long as they do not initiate force or fraud against a third party, I have been told, by this specific self-declared anarchist, that my ideology is not anarchism, but plutarchism, since my ideology involves a market, and markets per se, it has been claimed by this person dozens of times, creates hierarchies, and thus it cannot be anarchy.
I do not agree with those. First of all, a free market contract does not in itself create a hierarchy. Both (or all) parties in a free market contract depend on each other's free choices, and they are all free to cancel the contract. There is no hierarchy here. I have also been told that markets create inequality.
Well, this may be true, that is only because different people value different things, and some will produce more wealth than others, and thus rightly earn more of it. There will of course never be a perfect justice, enabling everyone with the exact same chances from birth, since this is an impossibility. Some people have rich parents, some people have poor parents. Some people are good at soccer, some (like me) are not. But there is no better solution than a free market, because on a free market, there are opportunities for everyone, and there will be people and institutions willing to invest in talent.
What those "anarchists" fail to understand, is that anarchism is not, unlike e.g. socialism and fascism, a system, but an anti-system. Anarchism is not about how everyone will live (voluntarily or not) in the same utopia. Anarchism is about freedom, and letting everyone make their own choices, reap the benefits from them, and take the full responsibility of them. It is not about forcing your ideals upon others.
I am convinced that in anarchy, there will be both private and collective property, there will be private companies with bosses and employees, there will be self-employees, there will be cooperatives, there will be insurance companies and insurance associations, there will be religious societies and atheist societies, and there will be voluntary socialist societies, and there will be lots of other kinds of societies, that I cannot think of right now.
In an anarchistic world, there will be societal experimentation. However, there will be no social engineering. These experiments will consist of voluntary individuals who participate in them of their choices, and anyone of them will be free to leave when they choose to. Some of these experiments will prosper, some of them will fail.
There will be markets, free markets. No one will be forced to participate in the free market, but I believe that most people, including socialists, will do so voluntarily, when they feel they can gain something. Because, like any good economist (e.g. Ludwig von Mises or Murray N. Rothbard), I strongly believe that people respond to incentives.*
I call myself a free market anarchist, because I believe that a free market is a necessary outcome of a free society, not because I wish to force it upon anyone. That would not be very anarchistic of me.
*I am not claiming that I am a good economist.
Labels: anarchism, Per Bylund, statism, STR
posted by Johan R. Sjöberg at 2:32 PM
1 Comments:
I do wonder if we (and by we I mean ancaps in general) spend too much time arguing with extreme socialists, i.e. those who wish to abolish any notion of property, or at least individual property. These people would refuse to even accept the compromise of allowing an ancap society to have it's area of land along side a socialist society. By their insane standards, we would still be oppressing them by not allowing them access to any piece of land they want (and incidently oppressing ourselves, which they will generously help stop!).
Most people are not this extreme though and most people generally go along with idea of property as a solution to allocation of scarce resources. It is just that they are inconsistent over specific issues. I have often wondered why these communists and extreme socialists are so obsessed with attacking us, but then why do we (and I include myself) waste so much time defending ourselves against their absurd views when they have such little impact on the real world.
Unfortunately our impact on the wider world is also small, but perhaps if we turned our attention to the moderate statists rather than the insane socialists we would make more progress.
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