Anarchism, what it is and what it is not, I: property

I use the labels anarchist and libertarian to describe where I stand ideologically and philosophically. In another post, I explained why anarchists must be libertarians, and why libertarians must be anarchists. However, both labels cause confusion (as labels often do). Therefore, I would like to explain what I mean, and do not mean, by describing myself as an anarchist.

There are many misunderstandings about what anarchism means, even among people who call themselves anarchists. One of these common misunderstandings is that anarchism is incompatible with private property, or property at all, since Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said that "property is theft". If one accepts Proudhon as an anarchist icon, it seems hard to combine this with the defense of private property. There are, however, different opinions about what Proudhon actually meant by that statement. Some claim that Proudhon only referred to state property, and to property created through state privileges. After all, he was a mutualist.

Besides, there are anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker, Murray Rothbard and David D. Friedman, who all defend a free market and private property, and consider these institutions as either necessary for a stateless society, or the logical consequence of such a society.

This is also why I consider myself a free market anarchist (or a libertarian anarchist). There are other anarchist traditions, which Per Bylund tells more about here. One of these traditions is voluntaryism, which says (obviously) that all human action should be voluntary. Although this theory, if I understand it correctly, mostly concerns collective action, the essence of voluntaryism must be that all peaceful interaction between human beings, be it intellectual, cultural, sexual or commercial, must be allowed. This means that under voluntaryism, there would be free markets, and thus, anarchism is compatible with private property, which means that I do not support throwing rocks at office buildings, or food stores.

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.

The worst murderer in history

Government is the worst murderer in history (and it still is). Red China killed millions of its own citizens. So did the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia, to mention a few. Previous US governments killed hundreds of thousands of native Americans. Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds. The Turkish republic slaughtered a million Armenians, and thousands of Kurds. The Mugabe regime of Zimbabwe has so far killed thousands of people. The Chilean government of Pinochet, and the Spanish government of Franco killed thousands of people.

It's not only history. The US government, and its allies, is killing Iraqis and Afghans today. Israel is killing Palestinians. The list of governments killing (not to mention other wrongdoings by different regimes) can go on and on, almost forever.

When I discussed this with a former colleague, he said something like "The state isn't killing people. Persons who belong to the state kill people". This is a common counter-argument against anarchism's claim that government kills. I've heard it many times, and I'm going to hear it many times.

I propose that you change the sentence above. Exclude the word "state" and insert the word "mafia" in its place. If you claim that the mafia isn't killing people, nobody takes you seriously. But somehow, you'll get taken seriously when you claim that states aren't killing.

Anarchy, institutions and big business

I don't doubt that government is helping big business at the expense of small business. I know many examples of that myself. One example is when IKEA decided to establish themselves in my old hometown, Karlstad. The city of Karlstad sold the ground to IKEA for 1 million SEK (which was way below "market value").

Other Swedish municipalities have been paying wages for big business employees for years when they've established themselves there, as a thanks for "creating jobs" in the area.Does small business get the same treatment?

No.And the result of this discrimination in favor of big business? In Hagfors, Sweden, there was a call center. The company didn't have to pay wages for the employees, the local Arbetsförmedling (government's employment agency of Sweden) did that for them for three years.

Guess what? After three years, the call center was shut down.So there is no question of whether government and big business are in the same boat ("Staten och kapitalet sitter i samma båt", for those of you who understand Swedish and have heard Ebba Grön).

But there is another question: In Anarchy, there will still be institutions, and there would be no (coercive) limits of how big a company can grow, right?So there would still be big business, although they would now have to be more efficient than the competition. Right?

A short definition of anarchy

Anarchy means a society without coercion. It means responsibility for one's own actions. Being an anarchist means claiming the right to govern yourself, and respecting other individuals right to govern themselves.

Anarchy does not mean chaos.

Party politics will not lead to anarchy

I have been a libertarian/market anarchist since the spring of 2001, when I was 23 years old. Back then, I was active in Moderata Ungdomsförbundet, the youth organization of Sweden's conservative party, Moderata samlingspartiet.

I then believed that anarchy could evolve from political reforms, i.e. that politicians (that is, the right politicians), would eventually make themselves unnecessary by deregulating society, selling or handing out government property into private hands, and more or less abolishing the state through a legislative act of parliament.

I was wrong. I spent eight years (1995-2003), being active in party politics. Someone might call this a waste of time. I would not go that far. Granted, trying to persuade people to vote for Moderata samlingspartiet, and trying to recruit new members was a waste of time. But my activism in youth politics also exposed me to libertarianism/anarchism and it exposed me to libertarians (both minarchists and anarchists). It gave me ideological input, and I had interesting discussions with many libertarians and others.

However, on the issue of whether anarchy can be declared by an act of parliament, I eventually realized that it is naïve to think so. That is for a simple reason. Party politics attracts people who seek power, and for those people, power goes before principles. Those active in party politics who are not power freaks are not interested in positions, and in a way, they serve as useful idiots for the power freaks (I was a useful idiot).

Political parties are, in a way, supplying opinions and politics on a market. This market is different from other markets, though, because there is a limit, which is the same as the number of seats available in the governing bodies. This means that parties will assume popular opinions, rather than challenging them. This tendency will effect all political parties who gain power. Some examples of this is the Swedish Moderata samlingspartiet, British Labour Party, Republican Party (US), and recently also the British Conservative Party.

As long as a party is a small movement, it can stand firmly by its principles. But when it gains support and thereby power, it starts to attract power freaks, and, as mentioned above, they care less for principles and more for power. If they notice that their ideas (in case they have any) are not well enough by the voters, they will modify, or change, their message in order to attract more support and gain more power.* Sweden's new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, is a master of this art.

Parliament will never give us anarchy, because the power freaks want to keep their power.

*This point was made by David D. Friedman in "Machinery of Freedom", where he predicted what now has happened to the Libertarian Party (US).

Libertarianism=Anarchism

Which are the libertarian principles? The word libertarianism comes from the the English word liberty. Principled libertarianism is usually based on the Lockean trinity of rights: the right to life, liberty and property, and many libertarians also refer to the non-aggression principle (NAP), which means that you are not allowed to initiate use of force against others. You are, however, according to the NAP, allowed to use force to defend yourself and others, and in case of restitution.

Which are the anarchist principles? The word anarchism comes from the ancient Greek words an arkos, which means "no ruler". From what I understand, the basic anarchist principles are that no force and no fraud should be allowed.

Both libertarian and anarchist principles leads to the same conclusion: the right of individuals to make agreements, based on their own free will.

The effects of this simple conclusion are not easily understood, neither by those who call themselves anarchist, nor by those who call themselves libertarians. Many anarchists fail to understand that the right to make agreements means that there will capitalistic forms of production in an anarchy, i.e. firms, bosses and employees. At the same time, many libertarians fail to see that said right means that the state is an illegal institution that must be abolished, and that without state regulations of the market, there would be more competition from small firms against bigger corporations, more competition for labor, and that that in turn would drive wages up.

The way I see it, libertarians must be anarchists, and anarchists must be libertarians.