...read on and learn also that capitalism == mass slavery [LART],
and that, very definitely, property == theft [LART].
For an anarchist, he also seems a little too eager to invoke the authority
of the dictionary to support his claims [CLUESTICK - get 2 free LARTs].
FableOfNamesMonger http://www.politechbot.com/p-01275.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded from http://www.radio4all.org/anarchy/guerin.html
Purported Author/Host: (Reach out and touch him ;-)
TRUE OR FALSE?
"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a
socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man."
This statement was made by Daniel GuZrin in his excellent book, _Anarchism_. I
included it at the top of my web page as a way of making it clear that anarchism
isn't merely a lifestyle or is somehow compatible with capitalism, but is a
radical, revolutionary social theory that, should it ever be successfully
implemented (barring the genocidal force that capitalist powers have and
continue to put to bear against any popular socialist revolutions that arise),
would transform society in ways we can scarcely imagine today.
The ideas of the key thinkers as well as the history and practice of anarchism
backs this view up.
*_"Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism"_*
What does this mean? To the individual raised on decades of unrelenting
anti-communist propaganda, the mere mention of the word "socialism" prompts a
knee-jerk reaction, typically involving references to evil, repression, mass
murder, totalitarianism.
This is largely a result of the multi-million dollar campaigns waged for the
past 80 years against socialism by the capitalist nations of the world.
Apologists cite the brutality of Stalin as "proof" that socialism is synonymous
with mass murder. However, it should be noted that the capitalist West actually
INVADED the nascent USSR in the immediate wake of the October Revolution.
President Woodrow Wilson ordered Marines sent to Russia, who ransacked villages,
murdered peasants, and threw their lot in with the Tsarist White Russians
(beginning an long-repeated tradition of support for fascist/monarchist regimes
at the expense of popular uprisings).
So, even before Stalin came onto the scene, the capitalist West was determined
that socialism be stamped out!
But one thing that is very important to note is that what came about in the USSR
wasn't really socialism in practice--rather, the Bolsheviks seized political
power and control of the state (and set about destroying the anarchists within
Russia, who actually took the revolution seriously--from 1917-1921, the
indigenous anarchist movement in the USSR was systematically wiped out, making
the anarchists the first victims of Bolshevik repression!)
So what we had in the USSR was a party vanguard (the Bolsheviks) seizing power
FOR the people. Lenin, Trotsky, and the other Bolsheviks had no intention of
allowing the state to "wither away". They, instead, killed the Revolution and
spent time consolidating their power.
And this, first off, is a very important distinction: the Communist Party ruled
in the USSR; NOT the people themselves. Thus was totalitarianism born.
Socialism, according to the _American Heritage Dictionary_, is defined as:
1. A social system in which the producers possess both political power and
the means of producing and distributing goods.
Think about that for a moment.
*- Were the Bolsheviks the producers? NO! They were a vanguard party acting (so
they said) IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKERS. This is an important
distinction. They used brutal police and military force to enforce their
power over the genuine producers.
*- Did the workers of the USSR possess the means of producing and distributing
goods? NO! In fact, it was the actions of the anarchists in the Ukraine, in
the worker soviets, and in the City of Kronstadt to do precisely that
(worker control of production and distribution of goods) that the Bolsheviks
put a violent end to!
In other words, the Bolsheviks wanted to put an end to SOCIALISM! Why? Because
they wanted to secure power for themselves. And that they did, as history has
shown.
Let's look at the definition of communism, for the sake of completeness...
1. A social system characterized by the absence of classes and by common
ownership of the means of production and subsistence. 2.a. A political,
economic, and social doctrine aiming at the establishment of such a
classless society
So we see that the defining principle of communism proper is by definition
common ownership of productive means and an absence of classes.
- *_Were productive means commonly owned in any "state socialist" regimes?_* NO!
They were owned by the state, by the government. The workers had no say in
what was produced, hence the "command economy" or state-planned economy that
characterized this system.
- *_Was Soviet society classless?_* NO! For, after all, the concept of the "state"
is largely an abstraction. What is the state, or government? It is an idea.
Without people, there could be no free-standing state. Thus, the government
is actually whomever controls the means of authority in a given region. And
in the USSR (and the other "state socialist" regimes) that was the Communist
Party. Thus, within these societies, there WAS a class: it was membership
within the ruling political elite, or failure to belong...two classes:
worker and vanguard party member.
So we find that the "cardinal example" of "socialism" and "communism" to not be
much of an example at all, to not even match up to a couple of basic definitions
of the terms.
Thus, what resulted in the wake of the Bolshevik coup of 1917, in the Maoist
uprising of 1948, and in the Cuban revolution of 1959 (and elsewhere) followed
the party vanguard (or Marxist-Leninist) model of POLITICAL, and not SOCIAL,
revolution. The Marxist-Leninist model of political revolution was an
aberration, producing vanguardist, command-economy states, and NOT true
socialist communities.
Rather than liberating the oppressed workers by dissolving the power structure
of government, the vanguardists merely put themselves in charge of the same
power structure, confident that THEY would not succumb to the temptations of
power.
So, when you compare the definitions of socialism and communism with anarchism,
you see that far from being antithetical, they are complementary...
*- For a society to be anarchistic (e.g., no rulers) would it have to
classless? YES.
*- For a society to be anarchistic, would producers have to have common control
of the means of production? YES.
*- For a society to be anarchistic, would all people have to have political
power? YES.
It is in this sense that the first part of GuZrin's statement is, in fact,
accurate. It is also for this reason that some anarchists term themselves
"libertarian socialists" as a way of showing the obvious link between the
theories: libertarian polity, socialist economy.
For, when you contrast what happened in the vanguardist regimes with the core
principles of socialism, you can see how socialism is, in fact, incompatible
with the desire to secure power for oneself or one's party.
*_"The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the
exploitation of man by man."_*
This is the key statement to explore, for if someone doesn't have a problem with
the exploitation of man by man, they are in no way an anarchist. It simply isn't
ideologically consistent, and, as radicals, we put much importance on this.
The anarchist rejection of rulers stems from our opposition to exploitation. Why
do we oppose the government? Because the government's purpose is to control the
populace: the only reason people "need" to be controlled is to allow their
exploitation to continue (and expand) unfettered.
Government exists to protect property. That is the sole reason for its
existence. Without a government (of some sort, meaning a relative and systematic
monopoly of influence in a given region) to enforce property rights, there is
simply NO WAY for capitalists to make their profits from others' labor.
The fiction of "natural law" establishes that property rights are a "natural
state" for mankind; however, this is simply not true: property rights can only
be maintained through force. Once a given group "claims" X plot of land, they
have to defend that claim. If property rights were natural, they wouldn't need
force to maintain them.
Anarchists have always opposed property for this reason; property is claimed to
make the owner rich. That is why property exists. It's not unlike a
profit-generating battery, although it's important to note that the profit comes
from the labor of the workers, rather than simply magically appearing...money
does not as yet grow on trees.
Workers are routinely and systematically exploited by capitalism. After all, if
workers were actually paid the value of their labor (represented by the goods
they produced), the owners wouldn't make a profit! Profit is, in its nature,
SURPLUS. This surplus comes from selling the manufactured goods at a higher cost
than it did to make them (anywhere from a 30% to a 300% markup, even more, if
demand is high). Which means that no worker is ever paid the full value of what
they produce. It is this con-game that allows the owner to grow rich atop the
backs of the workers.
Because this is not an equal transaction between owner and worker, the worker is
being exploited. Would the workers *voluntarily* accept this ripoff in the
absence of a government power to enforce this? Of course not. The government
(whatever that particular government is, e.g., whoever rules) protects the
owners from the consequences of their exploitation and allows them to profit
accordingly.
It is for this reason that *_anarchists were among the most militant opponents of
capitalism, and remain so today_*. Government and capitalism walk hand-in-hand,
partners in crime, robbing the vast majority of the people for the private gain
of an elite.
Capitalists continue to underpay and overwork their workers (one California
sweatshop paid its workers $.60 an hour and forced them to work 70-80 hour
weeks), make use of child labor (this is on a comeback, sadly; anarchists around
the turn of the century fought child labor vigorously, forcing reformists to
draft child labor laws--this has been largely circumvented by NAFTA, where
less-stringent restrictions on child labor can allow capitalists to make use of
this cheap pool of labor now more than ever by relocating their factories in
Third and Fourth World nations).
The exploitation will continue and will expand unabated, because capitalism is,
in fact, synomyous with exploitation. The exploitation produces the profit by
which owners grow very, very rich.
So, far from being hyperbole, GuZrin's statement is an accurate one, as has been
shown in history by the direct action and commitment to social revolution that
characterizes true anarchism. Anarchists have uniformly risen against
exploitation wherever it has arisen, at the cost of many of their lives. It is
why we oppose vanguardist state socialists as much as capitalists and their
fascist cronies.
It is our dream to ultimately bring about a successful social revolution that
will put an end to the institutionalization of exploitation that is
characterized, practiced, and manifested by government and capitalism.
*- DO CAPITALISTS OPPOSE EXPLOITATION?
*_Economists are agreed that there are four methods by which wealth is acquired by
those who do not produce it. These are: interest, profit, rent and taxes, each
of which is based uupon special privilege, and all are gross violations of the
principle of equal liberty. --Charles T. Sprading, _Liberty and the Great
Libertarians_*
First, I'll define my terms:
exploit: 1. To employ to the greatest possible advantage; utilize; 2. To
make use of selfishly or unethically.
exploitation: 1. The act of exploiting; 2. The utilization of another person
for selfish purposes.
The capitalist is one who profits from the labor of others by virtue of their
ownership of productive means, like a business, or factory, or even the tools
used by workers. The capitalist makes money by not paying the workers the full
value of what they produce. If workers were paid the full value of a given
product they manufactured, there would simply be nothing "left over" for the
capitalist to steal.
The justification for this theft is that, without the capitalist, the workers
would be unemployed, and therefore the capitalist is doing the workers a favor
by even hiring them in the first place. However, this is a circular,
self-serving argument, viewing workers as simple drudges -- capital assets
waiting to be used.
However, it _does_ illustrate the utility of unemployment to the capitalist -- it
creates a labor pool of individuals suitably desperate enough to take _any_ job
offered, no matter how demeaning. If the "choice" is homelessness and starvation
to employment in a bad job, the rational worker "chooses" continued survival.
So, this arrangement, erroneously termed "free agreement" (in which the worker
is "free" to starve if they don't want to work for someone) is innately
exploitative, because it:
1. Allows a privileged owner, the capitalist, to profit from others' labor
2. Eliminates the free choice of the worker -- in propertarian society, you
cannot choose not to work and expect to thrive
What is considered a "fair" wage is one that the worker will accept -- in other
words, a wage that is better than the alternative of homelessness and
starvation, which is invariably the bludgeon used to control the worker in
capitalist society.
Only capitalist apologists can deny the exploitative nature of their economic
system with a straight face. However, they do so only by ignoring the realities
of the transaction involved. The worker will never, ever get rich; the
capitalist will, by virtue of the unequal, unjust distribution of profits
inherent in this system.
Thus, the definition _cannot_ read:
*-The capitalist is one who opposes the exploitation of man by man.
because exploitation is build directly into the system. A better definition is:
*_The capitalist is one who exploits the labor of others for personal profit by
virtue of private ownership of productive means!_*
This is an accurate definition of what it means to be a _capitalist_.
The libertarian socialist model of production revolves around the collective or
the commune, where all workers within the given collective profit _equally_ from
what they produce. *_The ones who actually do the work get the profit_*. This is, in
essence, the core of our economic ideology.
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