CDR: Re: anarchism = socialism

Beautiful sentiment, and much of it I'm not prepared to argue with. First of all, I'm going to place my comments among your message. This is not to present the appearance of a winning arguement, but only for ease of keeping track of the points. At 10:41 AM 10/4/2000, Secret Squirrel wrote, or rather forwarded:

...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 GuÚrin 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!

News to me, I won't argue. We've done it before, we're doing it now, we'll do it again.

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.

If means of production means property, then consider the following concept. I, joe farmer, have with my own two hands built a tractor. This tractor is now the product of my production, but by it's very nature, it's also the means of production. Who owns it? Do I benefit by my own labor? Or does society, for the greater good, "liberate" it from me as a means of production? If it's to be "liberated", what's the point of me even bothering to go to the trouble of producing a tractor when the next ten people, who used thier time wisely to manufacture guns, decides they need it more than I do? I, as joe farmer, have "reclaimed", (inaccurate, as the land was not previously claimed for this use, but the terminology seems current), a farm, on which I intend to grow grain. I get the grain up to about knee height and just producing a harvestible crop, when Brett Rancher, decides to use this common land for graising. Do I as the person who toiled on the land to make it produce get to keep the grain? Or is it mutual property that is fair game to all? If I'm not going to reap what I sow, what's the point of wasting a growing season carrying water, and weeding rows? Now I'm Joe Farmer Jr. My father built a tractor, scratched a farm out of the wilderness, and defended both against all comers because they were the product of his own two hands. He, wanting to pass on the heritage, bequethes, (yes, I know, the spelling isn't right), this produce to me. I didn't produce it myself, rather I was expected to work it until I reached majority, and have over the last 20 years assumed more and more responsibility as my father has lost the capacity to continue to work the land. I still went to him for guidance, but it was my own two hands that overhauled that old tractor, and without my labor, the farm would have reverted to wilderness. Are these products of my labor, or means to production? If means to production, what reason do I have to do more than absolutely necessary to keep the two running until my father passes away? Since I'm going to lose control of both at that time. Now I'm Joe Gentleman Farmer 3rd. I have built on the work of my father and his father, and now find that to adequately work with what I have requires more than my two hands, or those of my children and wife, to work. Using some of my surplus produce, I've taken on an additional pair of hands to facilitate the work. He's not worked this land since birth. He hasn't, nor have his ancestors, toiled to make the tractor or farm feed the family. Does he deserve an equal share to the output? I've invested 40 years of my life. My father invested 60+ of his, and his father 60+ of his, all with the assumption that this produce would stay in the family. This worker has yet to invest one hour. Does this make me a capitolist?

*- For a society to be anarchistic, would all people have to have political power? YES.

If people have unfettered political power, what is to prevent the mob from turning on the most productive to cough up their hard-earned gains for the "less fortunate"? Perhaps the less fortunate, who since all wages are equal anyway for all producers, since there is often no real way of guaging who did more, particulary when more than one stage of production exists, decided to underrepresent their talents so that they could get off lighter? When the many lead the few, you have the makings for a tyranny. When the few lead the many, you have the makings for a tyranny. If there is any chance of one man being more diligent than another, then one man will become more prosperous than another in the first generation. In the second generation, I'll grant you, the less prosperous man's son may be more diligent, but starting from a weaker position.

It is in this sense that the first part of GuÚrin'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.

Except by taking that produced by anothers labor, but inadequately defended. Granted, that happens anyway. Only the methods of defense shift from most deadly and determined, to most litigous, (my apologies to the lawyers of this list, my spelling was never my strong suit,) and determined, both modified by resources at ones disposal to make good on threats. (Ammunition, friendly laws.)

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.

If natural law does not exist, why does my dog urinate on my tire? Are you saying we are much evolved from beasts? I'd like to think so, but I find my own natural impulses too closely mirror those of "animals". Including the desires to breed, attract a good mate, (through demonstration of my ability to support her), keep others of my kind at arms reach, etc.

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, GuÚrin'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.

So, if I were a master craftsman of looms, but had about the textile manufacture talent of a rock, I would not be allowed to maintain my looms and live by their produce? Are you suggesting price protection for labor? Or that I be forced to sell my looms. Doesn't sound like I'm very free if I'm forced to liquidate that that I produced.

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

Are you saying that in a non-propertarian society, that I could simply choose not to work and still benefit the same as everyone else? Sounds good to me, sign me up. Of course, if there are too many of us, how are you going to feed us all and yourself too? If we're going to be forced to work, you're now talking about limiting freedom. How are you to guage that I'm doing my fair share? Perhaps I'm an economist, who's labors don't translate well on paper but still are key to the functioning of society as a whole. OR, perhaps I'm a valued leader of men, who can organize to better effeciency the labor of others. But, if I'm a manager, who can coax 10% extra result from the same effort of those who follow me, does that mean that I should have that 10%, or a fixed share of it, as my contribution? Sounds like a manager, or a boss, to me.

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!_* I'd say a capitalist is one who strives to gain more than he had, by

I won't argue that there are abuses. Any system will have abuses. Capitalism has the abuse that those who have inherited the produce of thier forefathers, but none of their drive, will still flourish. While those who have not the gains of their ancestors, but the determination that the former lack, will not see all, or even most, of their value. The problem is, in a socialist system, the man without any skills or the desire to gain, or use, them, can be just as abusive. There are, in my opinion, far more lazy persons then there ever could be wealthy persons. And far more lazy persons in general, than there could ever be lazy wealthy persons. I seem to remember that "Utopia" literally meant "doesn't exist". trading in a market, and in the process produce more, and better methods of production, since with better methods of production, more can be produced with the same effort. I'd hate to have to hoe a row by hand. Tractors are much more efficient. Can you honestly see any type of industrial revolution occuring from common labor? If I gain status by developing steam power, then I've just been elevated to a new class. If I gain profit from the licenses, same deal.

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.

Return to the Anarchy for Anybody Homepage. http://www.xs4all.org/anarchy/

This really is unfair, since the original author isn't on the list to refute. But I'm sure he, (or she), will find a worthy champion. Good luck, Sean Roach