What is the value of the State?

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Sun Apr 30 22:50:07 PDT 2017


On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 02:57:02PM +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
> On 2017-05-01 10:58, \0xDynamite wrote:
> >How does anarchy provide the high-level of organization needed to
> >produce a car?  From ore, to smelting steel, to engineering, to
> >molding, to paints, batteries, upholstery and textiles, etc?
> 
> Anarcho socialists and anarcho communists have provided vague and
> evasive answers on this question, which answers I interpret as
> saying the central planning committee will command what is to be
> produced and ration what is to be consumed, as in Soviet Russia or
> today's Venezuela and North Korea.  And if you do not produce as
> directed, or if you attempt to consume more than allotted, off to
> the gulag you go.

Sounds like communism - I've never heard of "anarcho communism" and
that sounds like an oxymoron.


> Aside from not being very anarchistic, this does not work very
> well. The planners strangle themselves in red tape and when you go
> to collect your bread ration, there is no bread.  Google Venezuela
> bread.

Political anarchy however presupposes a strange concept called "free
will", and so that little "off to the gulag" bit doesn't mesh with
anything (AIUI) that could be associated with anarchism.


> Anarcho capitalists of course have a simple and obvious solution,
> and, for a change, will actually tell you their solution: Which is
> that the rich capitalist purchases the resources needed to build a
> car, purchases or builds the tools necessary to build a car, hires
> people to build cars, and tells them what to do.  In this model all
> rights are property rights, and if you violate someone's property
> rights, private security takes care of you.

Well this sounds straightforward on the surface, but there's an
unspoken unintended-by-you deception (courtesy The State's ministry
of truth and TPTB marketing speak), which is the concept of
"property".

If I build or buy some machinery, do you agree that I have:
 - the right to use that machinery
 - the right to protect that machinery
 - the right to exclude others from using that machinery
??

Now, assuming these "physical" property rights is what most
anarchists who comprehend the term would accept as foundations of
anarchy.

The problem is the predatorial intention which "created" non-physical
"property rights" and used the machinery of "the democratic state" to
institute punishment for violation of said purported "property
rights", namely copyright, trademarks and patents, which are all mere
virtual or intellectual constructions and "agreement", and are not
based in physical reality other than by that agreement, or rather
enforcement and "punishment according to statute" for violation.

Enforcement of these virtual "property rights" is insidious,
anti-community, anti-abundance, and anti-freedom. It is nothing but
the despotism of those with the power to so enforce.


This discussion, to be useful, must absolutely distinguish these to
types of "property rights" - conflating them is in the interests of
TPTB and is antithetical to political anarchy.



Next, "anarcho capitalism" is the term used by those who wish to
either disparage political anarchy, or highlight what are its
presumed problems.

To have an objective conversation we must identify and or remove
unspoken biases from the phrases we use, and to this end, the term
"anarcho syndicalism" speaks hopefully more accurately to this
concept:
 - humans have a right to associate, to syndicate, by their own free
   will and agreement
 - that is, humans have the right to work together, or to work in any
   arrangement of employer/employee that they so choose

To have anything work well, be it The State, political anarchy and
syndicalism or any other construct, requires humans to be educated.
In all cases, whilst they are uneducated and or unwilling or unable
to get educated or unable or unwilling to move towards better
relationships/ syndications/ agreements/ contracts, than problems
will continue, and usually continue to get worse, so education is
paramount to any "better future".


> With the rise of the reactionary right, there is now also an
> anarcho feudalist movement, which proposes feudalism with a weak
> king appointed from time to time by a board composed of or
> representing the aristocracy. Sounds awfully like an electoral
> republic with a restricted franchise, but the difference is that
> aristocrats make local laws and administer local justice.

And anarchists say "fine, let people submit to whatever king/
benevolent dictator or otherwise, but let them withdraw from such
submission at any time they choose", which leads to the thought:

the only "unlawful" contract or agreement is one which states, or
implies, that there is no right to exit the contract under reasonable
and reasonably possible (actualisable), terms.

This also reiterates the necessity for humans to be educated and
willing enough to act in self interest and not enter any contracts
nor agreements which proclaim such "fundamentally unlawful" terms.


> Now I am sure that anarcho socialists can point out all sorts of
> horrid problems with other variants of anarchism, but when there is
> no bread, no one is going to worry about those problems.

Indeed, without food, most humans readily submit to any tyranny
promising bread.


> The failure of socialism tends to be more fundamental and less
> abstract.

What's truly insidious is that at the present point in time, the
majority of humans on this planet are caused to acquiesce to tyranny,
without their conscious awareness that they are so acquiescing.

Acquiescence is tacit consent.

Tacit consent is default or implicit consent.

Consent is agreement, be it consciously affirmative (by word or deed)
or unconscious and tacit/ implicit.

Seriously we need better education of humans, and less schooling of
robots.

Regards,



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