Becoming an Anarchist ?

When I talk to people about anarchism, they all think the same thing at first : anarchy = violence. I wasn’t thinking that myself before looking more into anarchism, but I must admit I had strong bias concerning anarchy.

For instance I was surprised when I found out that Gandhi was considered by some people to be an anarchist… but it makes sense since he was fighting the stat.

So all this is called anarcho pacifism, and we can also talk of philosophical anarchism.

Anarcho-pacifism (also pacifist anarchism or anarchist pacifism) is a form of anarchism which completely rejects the use of violence in any form for any purpose.

Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought which contends that the State lacks moral legitimacy but does not advocate revolution to eliminate it. Though philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of the State, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey the State, or conversely, that the State has a right to command.

This kind of anarchist view is less “extreme” and it seems that some of the philosophical anarchists like William Godwin accept the idea of a minimal state (minarchism). I will discuss minarchism later on, since this is an interesting theory.

Well all that sounds really nice, but can it lead to change ? We fall back once again to my question on the effectiveness and justifications of riots. I guess history showed that both the approaches worked (e.g. the French revolution, and the Indian Independence Movement)…

After reading a comment made by Anok of Identity Check, I started looking into fair trade and gift economy.

“I find that for purposes of practicality - being that we live in a world that is not at the moment conducive to Anarchism of any real sort - the mixed economies that we are moving towards are best for the moment.

I myself, prefer fair trade barter and gift economies - keeping in mind that in my ideal Anarchist world the social structure would be very different than it is now.

The other aspect of Anarcho-capitalism that I take issue with is inequality. Class, or caste systems are inherent to capitalism, which is why most Anarchists oppose it. Now, when I talk about economic equality, I mean that each person’s contribution to society is deemed valuable, and equal in worth. Think about it - the factory worker’s job is as important as the waste management guy’s job, which is as important as a mother’s job to raise her child, which is as important as the seamstress, and teh farmer etc and so forth.

Without each part of society working together, society has a very hard time functioning. But in capitalist societies, those whose jobs are unsavory, pay less, or are simply deemed “fringe” or unworthy become the determining factor of that person’s social status in life.”, Anok

He was reacting to a post I made about anarcho-capitalism.

So what is fair trade and gift economy. Let’s ask wikipedia as it is usually a good way to start !

Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach to empowering developing country producers and promoting sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods.

So from what I understood the fair trade system is already here and is working fine to help people in less developed countries. To me this is really good since this is based on the following principles :

• Market Access for Marginalised Producers
• Sustainable and Equitable Trading Relationships
• Capacity Building & Empowerment
• Consumer Awareness Raising & Advocacy

It will therefore help small producers make a better living by including them in the economy and giving them access to the market. All this is based on the idea that a well informed consumer will stand up for fair trade and prefer to help small producers, and it actually work for a part of the population. The system is actually helping a lot of people in less developed countries, so it makes it good !

The only thing I start to wonder is what is the difference between the “fair market value” and the “market value”. In the end both are what the customer is willing to pay for a product. I must have my definitions wrong…

A gift economy is a social theory in which goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future quid pro quo. Typically, a gift economy occurs in a culture or subculture that emphasizes social or intangible rewards for solidarity and generosity: karma, honor, loyalty or other forms of gratitude.

So now this is the part that I don’t agree with. It sounds like something wonderfull, but I don’t see how that could work. I know that there is already a part of “gift” in our current system (blood donation, charity, open source…), but in my opinion it can’t be the base of an economy. It can work in a small community, but now that everything is global, how could we switch to a gift economy without going back to the middle age ?

This system is based on the fact that everyone is nice and everyone is equal. It would be great, but we really are not. Jobs are also not equals, some are harder, some require a special strenght, some require special knowledge… and if no one has an incentive to get these skills, in the end no one will do the hard jobs.

Also, if someone want to start a business, he will have to work hard. At some point he could get people to help him out, since it’s impossible to imagine an economy without some kind of employees or partners. Well the guy starting the process will have put a lot of work into his project… but in the end he will get just as much as the guy that just joined the project. So what would he start the project in the first place ?

It would be great if people were just all altruists, but they are not. Some are, and it’s a good thing, but we need to realize that not everyone is ready to work hard for the same thing as the guy next door.

Another point made in this comment was :

The other aspect of Anarcho-capitalism that I take issue with is inequality. Class, or caste systems are inherent to capitalism, which is why most Anarchists oppose it.

To me it is hard to remove all inequalities, and this is sure that capitalism leads to problems of this kind. But there is no way that a global economy could work without problems. We could forget all about the globalization of exchanges and go back in time… but is this really going to happen ? Is this really going to work ?

But the thing that still bothers me about capitalism is not the extra hierarchy : if a hierarchy is prooved to be justified, why abolish it? Of course I’m not saying that all hierarchy are justified, but sometimes it is needed. The thing that bothers me is the fact that an anarcho-capitalist system would fail in providing help to the people in need. I haven’t seen a credible alternative to the state in that case.

This is a question that I’m asking to myself and to whoever get to this website.

As an anarchist, should you refuse to vote and therefore loose the only control you could have over the government, but in the meantime make a statement by demonstrating your oposition to the system ? I’m not sure that you would call that civil desobediance, but you get the point, right ?

Or should you vote and try to find a candidate that fits with your beliefes, or, in the end, the “lesser of the two evils” ? For instance if I could vote in the USA today, I would vote for Obama… but then again I seriously doubt the democratic system, so would that make sense to vote ?

I honestly don’t know since I’ve heard from people believing either one or the other and I can’t make up my mind about it. Good that I still have time since I don’t define myself as an anarchist and I have a few years ahead of me since getting to vote again.

I just watched this video in what the author claims that he can proove that anarchy works :

His whole “nuke” theory doesn’t make any sense. Just look at terrorism. The USA have nukes, right ? But still it can be subject to terrorism since there is no clear and simple way to retaliate and therefore prove that this is not enought.

In the end this DRO system might end up being a government of its own if it gets too powerfull. I read somewhere, that if that happens then we would just be back at the state we are in today, making anarchy a “what do we have to loose?” situation. Well, if that happens the system we fall back in could be even worst, like some kind of tyrany.

His system is way to simplistic! Ok we have a way to approach exchanges and security, but what about some kind of charity to help people ? How about environmental issues ? There are so many issues that he didn’t discussed that it makes me doubt of what he said. But I’m downloading his book right now, so we’ll see how that goes.

“In a democracy, the nonvoters can hadly be said to support the rules, and neither can the voters for the losing side. But even those who voted for the winners may well have voted for the ‘lesser of the two evils’. The interesting question is : Why do they have to vote for any evil at all ? Such terms are never used by people when they act freely for themselves, or when they purchase goods on the free market. No one think of a refrigirator as an “evil” - lesser or greater. In such cases, people think of themselves as buying positivive goods, not as resignedly supporting a lesser bad. The point is that the public never has the opportunity of voting on the State system itself; they are caught up in a system in which coercion over them is inevitable.

[...]

Setting all these matters aside, however, and even granting that a state might be enthusiastically supported by a majority, we still do not establish its volontary nature. For the majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.”

“Power and Market - Government and the Economy” by Murray N. Rothbard.

This makes a good point don’t you think ?

When I was thinking about anarchism, I only thought about the black flag. But I later discovered that there was a whole set of flags depending on the “school” of anarchism of the people waving it.

Wikipedia has a good article and the subject, I’ll come back on it later. But now here are the flags :

There is different views on capitalism depending on which anarchist will speak about it. The most common idea would be that an anarchist would be against capitalism and therefore tending more toward communism. But after reading some articles, I see that you might be able to conciliate both.

Therefore we can see that some anarchist advocate free market and laissez-faire. What are those ? Let’s see wikipedia :

A free market is a market in which property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers.

Laissez-faire : From the French dictum first used by the eighteenth century physiocrats as an injunction against government interference with trade, it became used as an economic ideology which advocates minimal state intervention on the economy.

In that case, it would basically be “as long as people want to exchange, let them be”. No government intervention, no tariff, no taxes. This would lead to free global exchange and extreme capitalism, I guess.

The problem with that is that it create a new form of exploitation (the boss versus the employees) and we go back to Marx’s theory of surplus value, or something like that. The main problem is centered around profit : if there is profit, it means that the wages are not high enough. If a company is able to gain more than it needs, why not giving this to the employees ? If all the profits is not splitted, then we get into some kind of exploitation of the workers, meaning that they don’t get paid fully for what they accumplished. It also means that the owner of the company keeps the product of the employees’ work for himself.

To me this can be kind of right, but in the end in a free market everyone is free to choose to work for a specific company or even free to create one ! So is there really exploitation when someone is willing to work ?

And to me, I always have this problem with “everyone is 100% equal”. It is just not possible. We can (we should) get the same rights, the same duties, but in the end two person will be different, even if only by their choices. Someone may want to get a nice quiet job and the other may want to create a huge company to take over the world.

So why not letting people do what they want? If I want to create a company and if people are willing to join me by working for me or partnering up, why not let all that be? I want to have total liberty over what I do of my time and what I own.

And of course, if I want to create a company, I will have to put a lot of time and work into that process. I will have to find investors, find partners… why can’t I be rewarded for that ? And if I’m not, why should I do it ? What I’m trying to say is that if people don’t see a point into creating a business, creating wealth, creating jobs, why would they do it ? Let’s be realistics here, humans are not that nice, a large majority will not kill themselves at work just to end up with the same thing as the next guy who stayed home watching TV. Some will. Most won’t.

So what to do with capitalism in all that ? Should one be able to live without doing nothing because people are working for him ? I’ll quote Bakunin :

“What is property, what is capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property owner they mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live without working…[and so] the power and right to live by exploiting the work of someone else…those…[who are] forced to sell their productive power to the lucky owners of both.” The Political Philosophy of Bakunin

Hum. Good point… but it looks like something is missing. He’s not talking about self-made men and so on. So is that way of thinking really valid ?

Right now I am reading “Power and Market - Government and the Economy” by Murray N. Rothbard. This book try to explain how in a totally free market people will be able to live and consume safely. The author also talk about why taxes and tariffs are not legitimate and could be avoided without no consequences but positive ones.

Welcome to this new blog of mine.

First of all you have to know that I’m not a native english speaker, so I’m sorry if I do some mistakes, you can correct me in the comments I don’t mind.

So let’s get to the point : during the past months I felt 3 things :

• My government (French) is a joke. So is the USA’s and pretty much all governments.
• The concept of democracy is a faillure
• Frontiers is a ridiculous concept

After a life of believing blindly in democracy, it was kind of anoying to discover that all what I was standing for was to throw away. Well, I’m not that old, so I guess that’s alright…

Anyways, after realizing that I had to find an alternative to my previous way of thinking about the whole “political scene”. After a while I found articles about anarchism and it shocked me that I agreed with a lot of theories and that the anarchist really had a good point.

So the idea behind this blog is to tell you about the process of me learning more about anarchism. I’m not sure if I will end up proclaiming myself as “an anarchist” or if I will just go back to voting hoping that someday people will be less stupids. Or something else. Let’s just see how that goes, ok?